Utility Fog

Sunday, 31st of January, 2010

Good evening! Many monstrous and wonderful noises tonight!
LISTEN AGAIN link goes at the bottom, after this huge essay.

Starting with a pretty amazing collaboration between the legendary Tony Conrad, C. Spencer Yeh (see next track!) and Norwegian bassist Michael F. Duch. Harpsichord and piano scintillations give way to dual-violin drones and scrapes, while Duch holds a bass pedal. Wondrous stuff...
Spencer's new Burning Star Core album is in fact an old album, from a number of years ago, but originally released in a very small tour run on his own label. Hospital Productions give it their beautiful glossy treatment for this release, and it's pretty stunning acoustic drone stuff. It may be half a decade down the line, but it still could be game-changing in its way!

More strings follow, courtesy of Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra, still going strong. Maybe I should do a little retrospective on them in a coming show. They've dropped the Tra-La-La Band probably because of a change of line-up, but they still have the incredible propulsive bass of Theirry Amar, and violins from Sophie Trudeau and Jessica Moss, along with Efrim Menuck's guitar and vocals. A pretty rockin' number was my choice!

I can't tell you how excited I was to get the CD edition of My Brightest Diamond’s four Shark Remixes EPs this week! Four quite different artists, with backgrounds in classical music (like Shara Worden herself) as well as electronic and your usual Ashmatic Kitty-style indie - really interesting filters for Worden's work. First comes from the relatively little-known Alfred Brown, with a wonderful bass rumble in the middle.

Melbourne postrockers Radiant City have a new album on its way, but meanwhile you can grab the single "Two Against Eight" from their website. We heard an excellent slow-growing remix that's exclusive to the CD single.
To follow them up, Sydney improv Forenzics bring us their singular sound. With electric bass central to the mix, along with guitar, percussion and electronic elements, it's fascinating listening.

Apropos of nothing much, a little spray from the amazing anarcho-punks Crass. It's a stone-cold classic and mixes raucous punk with off-key post-punk keyboards and bass, plus right-on political lyrics.

Then some wonderful noise from, in this case, Deterioration Yellow Swans - a nice "D" word to preface them with for a 2008 album of the same name. Call it drone, noise, or whatever you like, it's beautiful as well as harsh. Fabulous stuff.
We follow it with a track from Carlos Giffoni’s new album, in which he explores analogue synths in his own special way...
And then, on Carlos' No Fun Productions, Emeralds take us on a synthesised journey into the sea of information... while Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin takes us in the hyperdawn with his sequenced synths & melodies.
And yes, that's him on guitar in the next track too! Plus nice lo-fi production and noises going on.

The wonderful Leeds band The Boats then take us in more of an IDM/techno direction with a track from one of their very limited CDR editions. Sounding very mid-'90s I guess.
London wunderkind Bullion is doing wonderful things in the wonky arena and related. This features some cute samples and creates a nicely psychedelic pop feel.
And in a similar vein, Eskmo’s sampled vocals are the icing on the cake of this incredible cross-rhythmic wonky tune. What do I mean by "cross-rhythmic"? You'll have to listen to the interplay between the beats, the bass and the vocal samples to hear how he swaps between swung rhythms and duples (2s and 4s), often pitting one against the other - it's a typical wonky/dubstep technique which the lesser producers don't always understand.

We follow with the other artists remixing My Brightest Diamond. Amazing anticon artist Son Lux combines classical and electronic in the most dance-oriented remix, with quite a dazzling arrangement — after which Ecuadorian ex-pat Roberto C. Lange adds South American percussion to loops and minimalist classicisim.
Finally we have two sort-of untitled tracks from fellow Asthmatic Kitty artist and long-time friend of Worden's DM Stith. I chose these as the most sideways approaches to her work — one with Stith's own lovely vocals brought to the fore.

And yes, there's a new Four Tet album out. His angel echoes to us that There's love in you, and I'm sure there is...
Israeli soprano Hila Baggio brings us a famous madrigal by William Holborne from the 16th century, with very subtle treatments from the Dub Mentor, as part of a series of singles called Allergy To Consciousness. I'm not sure if they'd heard the ambient/dub/techno remixes of Miranda Sex Garden, but I sure remember them - and I still have the CD single, so here you go — enjoy some early '90s ambient why don'tcha!

After confessing to me last week that he doesn't really get all this drone music, Melbourne's part timer decided he'd try his hand at it, and emailed me the results. I keep falling for this - somehow it made it on air! Maybe it's because it's really great.
And we close with a very beautiful and bass-heavy drone work from ex-Northern Territorian Robert Curgenven, whose work melds field recordings and musical elements in a way that few have done as successfully. Hopefully you'll hear an interview when Rob is in Sydney in March.

Tony Conrad/C. Spencer Yeh/Michael F. Duch - Musculus Trapezius (excerpt) [Pica Disk]
Burning Star Core - inside the shadow (w. metals) [Hospital Productions]
Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra - I Built Myself A Metal Bird [Constellation]
My Brightest Diamond vs Alfred Brown - You Are Now Untouchable (Esto Perpetue) [Asthmatic Kitty]
Radiant City - Urban Drilled (Urban Drill remix by Marcus Newman [Wireless Records]
Forenzics - womb 1.0 [4N6]
Crass - You're Already Dead [Crass Records]
Deterioration Yellow Swans - Reintegration [Modern Radio]
Carlos Giffoni - The Hermit [Hospital Productions]
Emeralds - Alive in the Sea of Information [No Fun Productions]
Oneohtrix Point Never - Hyperdawn [No Fun Productions]
Oneohtrix Point Never - I Know It's Taking Pictures From Another Plane (Inside Your Sun) [No Fun Productions]
The Boats - cars, bikes, boats, babes (version) [Our Small Ideas]
Bullion - Say Goodbye To What [Bullion Bandcamp]
Eskmo - Let Them Sing [Planet µ]
My Brightest Diamond vs Son Lux - Inside A Boy [Asthmatic Kitty]
My Brightest Diamond vs Roberto C. Lange - Queen [Asthmatic Kitty]
My Brightest Diamond vs DM Stith - ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Asthmatic Kitty]
Four Tet - Angel echoes [Domino]
Hila Baggio - Gush Forth, My Tears (ATC version, treated by Dub Mentor) [EnT-T]
Miranda Sex Garden - Gush Forth My Tears (The First Steppes Mix by Thrash, Fortran 5 & PK) [Mute]
part timer - 5 pillars [direct from artist]
Robert Curgenven - Gran Coda Andante [LINE]

Listen again — ~ 183MB

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