Tonight on Utility Fog we heard some astounding pioneering electronic music from over 50 years ago, during an interview with Damien Ricketson, co-artistic director of Ensemble Offspring, talking about their performances of this iconic work on Thursday night (at the Sydney Opera House – quote “fbi” for a special deal when booking!) and Friday night (at Electrofringe – free!) – also featuring a collaboration with pimmon!
LISTEN AGAIN link below…

We started with a thing of beauty from Heather Woods Broderick, sister of Peter Broderick, who worked with her on the arrangements for her debut album, on the fantastic Sydney label Preservation. Expect an interview with her in the next few weeks, as well as one with Aaron Martin, who gave us another track from his new album.
A couple of pimmon tracks bookended our interview with Damien – as one of Sydney’s most important electronic musicians, it’s only fitting that he’s working with these musicians.
Tyondai Braxton has a background that spans classical composition, free jazz, math rock and electronica. A few tracks on his new album manage to cross just about all of those at once, although a few others are still testing my patience.
We had a couple of tracks from Mary Anne Hobbs’ latest compilation on Planet µ, Wild Angels, including another beauty from Sunken Foal, all acoustic guitars and lovely beats. The other track was Paul White’s astounding remix of Tranqill’s “Payroll”, with a brilliantly scary intro (listen on headphones & you’ll know what I mean) and brilliantly wonky beats with disturbing gaps…
LA & the Bay Area are a houthouse of fantastic dubstep & wonky sounds at the moment, and Mimosa is the latest offspring of that scene I’ve discovered, collaborating here with MC Souleye.
More hip-hop/Bass music next from Two Fingers, with a really dirty remix from The Bug, followed by the duo’s original collaboration from 2003, and a track from their still-hard-to-find Instrumentals album.
Sydney’s Danimals, mostly an electronic psych-pop (um, something like that) project for Jonti Danielwitz of Sherlock’s Daughter. As well as hearing a track from Sherlock’s Daughter’s lovely EP, we heard a couple of tracks from their singer Tanya Horo with producer Jono Ma, whose indietronic gems I used to play back around 2005.
Danimals are supporting Why? at the Annandale in December, and as the new Why? album has just hit the CD racks, I thought we’d better hear a few tracks from his/their history. Although recorded in the same sessions, Eskimo Snow isn’t a patch on last year’s brilliant Alopecia. Nevertheless, it has a few excellent tracks, and I admit it’s growing on me.
Shadow Huntaz keep it hip-hop with their latest album produced by Funckarma, from whom we heard possibly their most drum’n’bass track ever. And Silkie’s “Quasar” is dubstep with a drum’n’bass influence.
We had two tracks from the latest pair of releases in Feral Media’s POWWOW series – Broken Chip’s ambient electronica and afxjim’s folky postrock.
One of the best releases in the last few months is Sparklehorse + Fennesz’s entry into Konkurrent’s In The Fishtank series, of which I’ll be playing plenty more in coming weeks. It’s all you could hope for and more from a collaboration like this.
And Sydney’s Psychic Date keep the guitar effects going strong for our last track.

Heather Woods Broderick – For Misty [Preservation]
Aaron Martin – Lightning in Meadow Grass [Preservation]
pimmon – %macro.end [Fallt]
Stockhausen – excerpt 1 from Kontakte
…interviewing Damien Ricketson, co-artistic director of Ensemble Offspring…
pimmon – the sacred dance of Mimi Lush [Tigerbeat6]
Tyondai Braxton – Dead Strings [Warp]
Sunken Foal – Of Low Count and Light Pocket [Planet µ]
Tranqill – Payroll (Paul White’s Clean Dub) [Planet µ]
Mimosa – Delivery (feat. Souleye) [Muti Music]
Two Fingers feat. Ce’Cile and Sway – Bad Girl (The Bug remix) [Ninja Tune]
Doubleclick & Amon Tobin – 0wnage [Ninja Tune]
Two Fingers – Twelvses (Two Fingers remix) [Ninja Tune]
Danimals – Cyclic Love feat. Otayo Dubb [forthcoming]
Tanya Horo & Jono Ma – toadmobile [unreleased classic Sydney indietronica from 2005!]
Soma For Kinder – spooked [unreleased – this is the band they became]
Sherlock’s Daughter – Sons and Daughters [via Inertia] {Tanya’s band now, produced by Jono…}
Why? – This Blackest Purse [Anticon]
Why? – you’ll know where your phone is… [Anticon] {produced by Odd Nosdam, and originally from their Split EP}
Why? – Act Five [Anticon]
Why? – These Few Presidents [Anticon]
Shadow Huntaz – Then Again [Porter Records]
Funckarma – Bion Glent [Sublight]
Silkie – Quasar [Deep Medi]
Broken Chip – Argo Buoys [Feral Media]
afxjim – Arequipa [Feral Media]
Sparklehorse + Fennesz – If My Heart [Konkurrent]
Psychic Date – Reflections [self-released]

New! Listen again — ~258MB.

Tonight featured an interview with the fabulous Caethua, whose 2CD release on Sydney’s Preservation has received many a spin on this show already.
LISTEN AGAIN – see bottom of playlist! Or download the Caethua interview separately.

Started with a couple of tracks from the amazing Dominick Fernow aka Prurient, the first in collaboration with Chicago guitarist Kevin Drumm. Fernow runs the Hospital Productions label and is a centrepiece of the US noise scene. The Kevin Drumm collaboration covers quite a spectrum of sound, as does all of Prurient’s recent stuff, but listen to too much in one go and your brain starts shutting down.
So next up we had Lawrence English from his beautiful new album, second in his set of seasons. This one (A Colour For Autumn) featured New Zealand guitarist/vocalist/genius Dean Roberts’ vocals stretched and slowly decontextualised.
NikaSaya is a new act on Lawrence’s Brisbane-based Someone Good label, a spin-off from the lovely Tenniscoats, with charming folky songs.

Next, we talked with Clare Hubbard aka Caethua about her life and music – a fascinating conversation with an important new artist. I strongly recommend downloading the interview.

Label-mate and fellow American Aaron Martin followed, showing his immense multi-instrumental talent, and in particular his cello playing, which seems to have come a long way. The new album is out on Preservation soon.
We followed this with a remix by Melbourne’s Part Timer of a recent track on the Under The Spire label, itself to be released on that label in the not-too-distant future.
More string playing multi-instrumentalists followed, with Peter Broderick’s 4-track tape recordings, and then Ian Hawgood’s slowly evolving drone.
Hawgood’s alias Koen Park took us into electronic territory. Scuba’s album always struck me as highlighting the crossover between idm and dubstep, and led into a similarly head-nodding bassline from Silkie. Two of the best dubstep albums of the last two years.
On the Planet µ label, Burnkane’s debut 12″ combines a dubstep lurch with r’n’b’s obsession with auto-tune…
More hip-hop followed, with a cut from the new Shadow Huntaz album, once again produced by the formidable brothers Funcken aka Funckarma. We had a bit of nostalgia with some older Shadow Huntaz tracks which I do recall playing the arse off 5 or so years ago.
Courtesy of this month’s Wire Tapper compilation from Wire Mag, we heard Italian postrock band Stearica collaborating with experimental noise-hop group Dälek (who are idolised in these quarters).
The noise connection gave us license for one final Prurient track, an immense text-sound piece on the Cold Spring label.
An epic track from England’s Ecka Liena almost rounded out the show. 16+ minutes of drone, riffs, processing and marching beat, quite wonderful stuff.
Finally, two tracks from Sydney psych-prog-ambient group Psychic Date, whose very fine sounds will get an earlier showing next week.

Prurient & Kevin Drumm – On This Slab [Hospital Productions]
Prurient – Cocaine Death [Hospital Productions]
Lawrence English – Droplet [12k]
NikaSaya – Pandooman [Someone Good]
Caethua – Day Break [Preservation]
…interview with Caethua, feat
Caethua – Post mortem lines [Saxwand]
Caethua – Lament [Preservation]
Aaron Martin – New Madrid [Preservation]
Aaron Martin vs Part Timer – Climbing Into Water (Drowned) [forthcoming on Under The Spire]
Peter Broderick – a low end rumble [Type]
Ian Hawgood – Specks Then Flakes [Dragon’s Eye Recordings]
Koen Park – Isle Of Sheppey [Acroplane] {free download!}
Scuba – Suck [Hotflush]
Silkie – Head Butt Da Deck [Deep Medi]
Burnkane – You Will Forget (feat. James J K Hughes) [Planet µ]
Shadow Huntaz – Lock, Stock & Barrel [Porter Records]
Shadow Huntaz – figure of speech [SKAM]
Shadow Huntaz – fasho [SKAM]
Stearica – Occhio (feat. Dälek) [Homeopathic Records]
Prurient – Rose Comet [Cold Spring]
Ecka Liena – Paralysis [Dead Pilot Records]
Psychic Date – Shaker [self-released]
Psychic Date – Monks [self-released]

New! Listen again — sticking with one big file, ~257MB.

OK, last minute self-promotion here as usual.
FBi and 2ser, Sydney’s two awesome community radio stations, in conjunction with Carriageworks, are putting on this cool event called Rethreads this Saturday.

You may have heard about it. Click the link to read more. Basically it’s a clothing, music and book exchange thing – take things and swap thems!

Anyway, I’m here to tell you to get there early! There’s great live music all day, but if you’re there between 9:45am and 10:30am, you will hear “Fbi DJ” aka ME playing choons for y’all. Then you can pop outside to the awesome Eveleigh Farmers’ Market and purchase the best food this side of urban sprawl. It’s a win-win situation, and you know it.

Tonight we had heaps of great Aussie and Sydney music, and heck, heaps of great overseas musics too!
You can now LISTEN AGAIN – check the bottom of the playlist.

Sydneysider edwin montgomery is launching not one but TWO albums this coming Friday night, the 18th of September, at Bill & George in Redfern. Should be an awesome night with polyfox and the union of the most ghosts coming down from the Central Coast as well.
We heard an original number from his new(er) album, woken up in a strange place, and later on we had one of the numerous excellent covers off that album, and an epic piece from roads, as well as two delightful (as always) polyfox tracks.
After Edwin, we had Grace Before Meals’ pop hit (if only) before heading into electronic territory…
Lusine’s new album is charming the pants off many an FBi listener at the moment. I thought it’d be nice to delve into his earlier work. I couldn’t find anything as “L’usine” (I think it must be on vinyl) but found some excellent tunes as Lusine ICL from a couple of compilations – one more minimal and one more frenetic.
We also had one lovely tune from the best dubstep/wonky albums I’ve heard of late – Silkie’s City Limits Volume One.

Tonight’s guest was violist and vocalist Nadene Pita, from whose lovely album we heard two tracks. Nadene is launching the album at Stone Gallery (Paddington Uniting Church) this Saturday, the 19th of September – with guests like Kate Adams & Chris Abrahams in a semi-improvised format, it should be great.
Still on a string tip, we heard a track from Melbourne cellist Gareth Skinner’s forthcoming second solo album. It’s a pretty amazing brew of all-out misanthropic rock and delicate Arthur Russell-like stuff such as the track I played tonight. I can’t wait to play more next Sunday.
Keith Mason’s new album has been a LONG TIME coming. To prove it, I played an awesome track from the new one and an awesome track from the old one, which came out 8 years previous. How glitched-up scrambled vocal samples and grungey blues guitar fit together so well is anybody’s guess.
From the album I featured last week, Italian duo Tellaro gave us another cut of their indie/folktronica, and then we had something rather beautiful and un-droney from Jasper TX, from a couple of years back. In a similar vein, we revisited the latest album Italian post-rock stalwarts Giardini di Mirò, a soundtrack album of some impressive musical breadth.
After more Edwin and some Polyfox, we had some beautiful shimmering crackles from aus’s Light in August, Later – Japanese music on a Brisbane label, as well as State River Widening’s very SRWesque remix of aus from last year.
Staying in Japan briefly, we had a riff-a-riffic taste of LITE’s math-rock. And then sticking with all-caps bands, another fantastic track from HEALTH’s new noise/shoegaze opus, Get Color.
New Sydney artist End Pitch gave us a bit of zany electronica, and Silver Bone Tone gets all noisey and droney for us, and it does him good.
More noise from the wonderful new Noveller album on No Fun, and we finish with an excellent Pink Reason track which I’ve played before, but it’s so perfectly morose, not to mention a little bit evil that it needed another spin.

edwin montgomery – the river [self-released]
Grace Before Meals – Runway Approach Lights [CAD Factory]
Lusine – Cirrus [Ghostly International]
Lusine Icl – Neon [u-cover]
Lusine Icl – shin [Tigerbeat6]
Silkie – Beauty [Deep Medi]
Nadene Pita – Burn [self-released]
…interview with Nadene Pita…
Nadene Pita – Parachute Man [self-released]
Gareth Skinner – Wingspan [Rubber Records]
K Mason – Bows and Arrows [K Mason]
K Mason – Non Song 1 [Lo-fi Killers, re-released on Spanish Magic but again out of print]
Tellaro – Vacuum [2nd rec]
Jasper TX – Bending spoons [pumpkin seeds in the sand]
Giardini di Mirò – La cenere (part II) [Unhip]
edwin montgomery – mountain (mist–from the top) [self-released]
edwin montgomery – the black angel’s death song [self-released] {Velvet Underground cover}
polyfox and the union of the most ghosts – upset polyfox finds monofrog blissfully basking [Monstera Deliciosa]
polyfox and the union of the most ghosts – hang by a thread [skyhut]
aus – a world of dazzle [Someone Good]
aus – Headphone Girl (State River Widening Remix) [Preco]
LITE – Ef [seven four records]
HEALTH – In Violet [Popfrenzy]
End Pitch – Ya [demo]
Silver Bone Tone – Big Rev [demo]
Noveller – Rainbows [No Fun]
Pink Reason – New Violence [Savage Quality Recordings]

New! Listen again — sticking with one big file, ~259MB.