Utility FogYour weekly fix of postfolkrocktronica, dronenoise, power ambient, post-everything improv... and more? Sunday nights from 9 to 11pm on FBi Radio, 94.5 FM in Sydney, Australia. LISTEN ONLINE now! Click here to find the start time for the show at your location! {Hey! Sign up to Utilityfoglet and get playlists emailed to you after each show!}
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Monday, 31st of May, 2010
Paul's Playlunch 31.05.10 (1:08 pm)
Filling in for Paul Gough! Indie/indietronica abounds. Radarmaker - Arm vs Fiery Antenna [self-released] Listen again — ~ 55MB Sunday, 30th of May, 2010
Playlist 30.05.10 (11:13 pm)
Ah, music! You love it, I love it. We may hate each other's guts, but we've got this to tie us together, for all time. MWAHAHAHA. The Australian Chamber Orchestra are putting on the first Australian performances of Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver right now, and I had a chat with cellist Julian Thompson about it, among other things. I later discovered that Julian & I have met many times because he used to play in a Canberran band called Closet Klezmer - small world! I started with an old favourite by Talk Talk. Interestingly, I'd been listening to some Radiohead to play in the Jonny Greenwood context, and the Kid A version of "Morning Bell" is one of their songs I keep going back to. The weird sketchy noise solo burrowing around in the background was reminding me of something, which I realised was Talk Talk's "Ascension Day", but it wasn't until I put that song on that I realised the drum beat (and tempo) is incredibly similar. While melodically they're fairly different, the influence is palpable. From our Mr Greenwood we heard some of his classical composition going back to 2003's Bodysong soundtrack (way back in December 2003, UFog's & FBi's first year of operation, I gave listeners a sampling of the work of Olivier Messiaen that's so clearly an influence). And from his soundtrack to There Will Be Bloody we heard a couple of pieces that are in fact extracts from Popcord Superhet Receiver, and bear the mark of composers like Xenakis and (even moreso) Penderecki. Next up, a mighty special on the mighty Paradise Motel, who are back from the dead to deliver a really wonderful Australian Ghost Story in the next week or two. ...Which brings us to another indie band who I'm rediscovering through no fault of theirs. You may have heard me playing the fantastic solo work of Perth's Adam Trainer on this show before - one track featured tonight. He played in the post-rock/indie band Radarmaker, whose two CDs are actually forever enshrined in the Utility Fog Hall of Fame (development application lodged with council pending funding). And thence to - oh! oh! - new Emeralds, on Editions Mego no less. It's more of the same — analogue synths of all descriptions, sequenced patterns, psychedelic noises, yummy yummy. And this is how you manage a couple of nice smooth genre-changes, kids. You as Caribou and Four Tet, and they make sure it's all hunky-dory. I've really warmed to Caribou's latest album, which seemed a bit too electronic at first. In comparison, the housey beats of the new Four Tet still haven't really taken me in, but I went a little bit overboard with some of his old remixes for tonight... Oh — and one new one. I'd better find out if The Acorn are as good as this track makes out! We thus find our way into the realms of hip-hop via Four Tet, and in particular one of his much-acclaimed Madvillain remixes. However, the original version of "Accordion" is just beautiful, and of course once you've heard that you have to hear the Daedelus track from a few years earlier that uses the same accordion... And we end up back with Sydney music for our last few tracks. Of Yucuna I know little, except that we need to hear more! Freak folk meets noise? Shades of Gang Gang Dance maybe... Improv string quartet The NOISE are curating the Thursday night Left Coast Festival gigs at Sedition throughout June. They're making some pretty fantastic sounds on these Feedback Experiments, and all the Thursday nights look great (I'm playing there on the 24th!) And Heidi Elva, recently re-located to Melbourne, has a lovely new single out! With a dubby bassline and her delicate harp and vocals, it's just what you're looking for on a rainy day. Talk Talk - Ascension Day [Polydor] Listen again — ~ 174MB Sunday, 23rd of May, 2010
Playlist 23.05.10 (11:14 pm)
Ah, network problems abound tonight, but I'm staying up late for you, kidz! So yes, you can LISTEN AGAIN, check bottom of playlist. Started tonight with three tracks from the excellent North / South / East / West compilation of Bass music from both sides of the Atlantic. Daedelus’ track is one of his best in ages. I meant to play something else from Daedelus, but the whole segment with Four Tet remixes etc will have to wait till next week! Emika is a new (to me) dubstep producer, and she takes the genre into the pop world with some very nice vocals. The Scuba remix is on par with all his recent stuff, but her original mix is even better! I played a mix of a whole stack of Clubroot tunes - mostly from his new album II - MMX, during which I think I convinced myself it's a whole lot better than I'd though :) It has very much that ambient/rave-comedown thing going on, as did the previous, but that's his style. It's lovely listening. From Emika we went to Valerie Trebeljahr's disembodied vocals in the classic bomb the bass / lali puna track "clearcut", here remixed by an artist I've been rediscovering this week, Thomas Knak aka Opiate. We had a number of examples of his highly intricate production, including another couple of remixes, of Piano Magic (from a wonderful remix 12" that's now available digitally) and, more recently, Icarus. Also from the archives (although only back to 2005) is alog’s wonderful track, combining Reichian minimalism with a sortof folktronic bent. Coincidentally I was reminded of alog when chatting with Shoeb Ahmad a few weeks back, and we heard next from his duo Spartak, whose track was described (approvingly) as "weird shit" by one listener. Next up, a little Autechre-fest, in celebration of their Australian gigs coming up this week. Friday at the Forum in Sydney, huge anticipation building up. I have to say, both tracks I played from their new album Oversteps show them at the top of their form - sonically inventive, imbued with emotion... Oneohtrix Point Never has a new album out next month on legendary Austrian electronic label Editions Mego, but tonight I played the title track of a recently-reissued single. I'm pretty sure this is quite an old recording, but it shows his aptitude for analog synths and sequencers, and the second half is very pretty indeed! Next week we'll be hearing from fellow travellers Emeralds’ newie, also on Mego. Crab Smasher continue to produce some of the most intriguing and effective music in the Sydney area. The live piece is a kind of noisy krautrock, and the track from their new cassette is really beautiful. From the looks of the first track released from the new Menomena album, it's gonna be awesome. This track has all their trademarks, from the vox and big drums to the piano refrains and even saxophones (used in a good way, don't worry!) Finally, another track from the truly fantastic new Sage Francis album. This one, featuring Califone among others, is one of the highlights musically on the album. I'm still to listen closely to the lyrics, but there's some good shit there. Daedelus - A Bloodworth [Bleep] Listen again — ~ 178MB
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Sunday, 16th of May, 2010
Playlist 16.05.10 (11:07 pm)
Tonight's another one of those "fixate on certain artists" things I like to do :) Sage Francis starts the show with his hip-hop poetry. His new album, Li(f)e, sees him dispensing with the breaks and samples, instead working with various indie and alt.country bands. What with recent ventures from contemporaries like Sole & the Skyrider Band, not to mention Why?’s metamorphosis into an indie band, this isn't entirely surprising - and indeed I played a few tracks from as far back as 2005 which show Sage's interest in a venture like this. I also wanted to play a more "traditional" hip-hop tune with beats by longtime collaborator Alias, because Alias produced the entire new album by Sage's mate B. Dolan, which was released on Sage's Strange Famous label, and fantastic it is too. And somehow that leads us to that maverick of UK music Mark E Smith and his band The Fall. With multitudinous different lineups since the late '70s, he's released about a thousand albums to date, and the latest has at least a couple of top-rate tracks. "Chino" is led by a sinister circular bass line, and features a fantastically wild guitar solo as well as MES's trademark snarl. The last track, by contrast, starts almost jangly pop but the last 2/3 is fuzzy bass noise and MES's intonations. In between, we heard from Smith's unlikely collaboration with Mouse on Mars from 2007, Von Südenfed, with a ridiculously catchy song called "Rhinohead". Matthew Herbert’s new album takes his PCCOM manifeso (read it!) to its logical conclusion, with all sounds produced only by Herbert himself. Some have complained about his at best workmanlike vocals, but in a way I think they make the album. "Tonbridge" is a touching track with a lovely bouncy beat. And bouncy is the beat from Sydney wonky producer Know-U, inaugurating The Frequency Lab’s "Fictitious Sevens" series. I love the swing that all the electronic artists seem to be introducing into their beats since the advent of dubstep and wonky. (Of course Herbert is a longtime lover of the swing...) Also from west coast USA is Flying Lotus, who's flying high currently on the back of his best album yet. Taking influences from J Dilla on the one hand, but also the dubstep and wonky sounds from the UK, computer games, and his aunt Alice Coltrane’s transcendent jazz. We had a tiny bit of that range in the two tracks tonight. The reason for the two Ben Frost tracks I played next is that I saw this weekend one of (sadly) the last performances in the Sydney run of Mortal Engine, an incredible work of dance, light and sound by Chunky Move. It features Robin Fox’s lasers, Frieder Weiss’s interactive video design and stacks of music from Ben Frost’s brilliant 2006 album Theory of Machines. Hearing the raw Swans sample in the middle of "Stomp" on the huge Sydney Theatre sound system was pretty amazing, but tonight I thought I'd play the track with the beep-beep. Incredibly tasty stuff, and I had to play something from his latest album too... Machinefabriek also likes to combine beautiful minimal sounds with swathes of noise, as we heard on his first track of the evening. And he works very well with acoustic instruments in the mix too, like Richard Skelton’s stringed things. We heard from his two most recent releases, and the album Daas is released on UK label Cold Spring, who I know from their black metal, dark ambient and noise stuff, such as the scary but not all that screamingly noisy track I played from Prurient... I was glad to receive a new CD of recordings from Sydney contemporary music group Ensemble Offspring. It's impressive how easily a contemporary classical composition such as founding member Matthew Shlomowitz’s fits in among the noise and experimental what-have-you, but when you've got two clarinets, accordion, percussion and live lo-fi tape playback, it's not all that surprising! This is a beautiful work. Perth's Adam Trainer has been featured on Utility Fog ever since he was playing in postrock band Radarmaker, and he makes consistently fine experimental music. He's on tour in East Asia at the moment with Shoeb Ahmad (they just played Bangkok!) and sent me this Tour EP of rareish tracks... And I'm told he's taking over as Music Director at Perth's excellent community radio station RTRfm. Final band to take over their bit of tonight's UFog is Hamilton Yarns. The lovely Sydney band Telafonica recently put together a mixtape for Stu Buchanan's Discontent blog, and included a track by these guys, so I went and got hold of a few of their albums direct from their site. And finally, I've had Eli Murray's lovely music as Gentleforce on my mind because I'm interviewing him tomorrow for the next issue of Cyclic Defrost. Classic ambient electronica, wonderfully trippy stuff. Sage Francis with Jason Lytle - Little Houdini [Strange Famous/ANTI-/Epitaph] Listen again — ~ 224MB Sunday, 9th of May, 2010
Playlist 09.05.10 (11:08 pm)
Many wonderful sounds for you tonight, including an interview with Michael Muller from the wonderful Texan band Balmorhea... But to start off, an album that I really shouldn't have neglected for the last month or two. Second album proper from High Places, whose music I first heard in the excellent Tokyo record store Warszawa, the perfect setting for something of a spin-out. They haven't exactly gone mainstream since then, and the effects-laden tribal percussion and other freaky sounds are still present; but there might be a bit less tampering with the vocals, which leads to a fantastic weird pop album. This week I also finally got hold of Clint Mansell’s beautiful soundtrack to Duncan Jones' extraordinary movie of last year, Moon. A highly effective two-note piano refrain, and an excellent post-rock in this piece. Of course if I'm playing Clint I have no choice but to play something from the Poppies, who were for more than half a decade my favourite band in the whole world. I decided to play it safe(ish) and not jump back to their grebo origins or even their intergalactic punk-rock hip-hop, but instead we had the epic remix of "Everything's Cool" by the ubiquitous (at the time) Youth. Andrew Khedoori's Preservation label is a decidedly internationalist Sydney label, and while you may not have heard of most of their artists when they first arrive on the label, the quality is guaranteed. The latest offering is from Finnish artist Ous Mal, previously released on the equally reliable UK label Under The Spire. It's got that strangely Finnish sensibility - out of focus, unfamiliar influences clashing in pleasing ways. Plus cello, which always helps :) Speaking of cello, a goodly portion of the new album from the boats (which compiles hard-to-find tracks from the last few years with a bunch of unreleased stuff, and is well and truly their best work in yonks) features the brilliant cellist Danny Norbury. The best results combine his multi-tracked cello with the minimal electronics the boats do so well. And as for minimal electronics, we had a memory brush past us of Craig Tattersal's other band the remote viewer’s timeless classic first album from 1999. This desparately needs re-releasing, or at least needs to be made available digitally. Which brings us to Balmorhea. Michael Muller is a lovely fellow and had some very interesting things to say. I'm afraid I forgot to offer the interview as a separate download as well, but if you're keen to have it on its own, let me know and I can probably arrange it. I think the selection of their tunes shows their impressive range - almost postrock, folky Americana, post-classical (if you will), drone and field recordings... Balmorhea's closing piano extravaganza somehow put me in mind of the harp runs from one of the albums of the week, Flying Lotus’s incredible Cosmogramma. FlyLo is the nephew of jazz great Alice Coltrane, who is referenced in the first of a few tracks I played tonight. There's also some cute scatting, some Ninja Tune-style hip hop and some off-kilter wonky goodness too. Another American playing in the outskirts of dubstep & hip-hop is Starkey. The new album ramps up the dancefloor sheen and adds vocalists to about half the tracks, and so it doesn't all suit Utility Fog (although very fine stuff). "Marsh", from his debut album, is as wonderfully twisted as ever. Japanese electronic artist Geskia also likes play with the hip-hop beats. Tonight we didn't hear one his own productions as such, but sampled instead the heavy dubby sound of perennial UFog favourite Bracken. Also wonkying up the beats is Vorad Fils, aka John Hassell, from Seekae. After the familiar delight of those kidz' "Void", we had a lovely long ambient piece from John. Speaking of ambient and long, ex-pat Aussie Robert Curgenven is in town for one more week before heading overseas again. He's playing this coming Sunday at the Cad Factory, for Harmonic Territories #8, also featuring improv trio Espadrille, sound artist Kraig Grady and experimental songwriter Anna Chase. Should be fantastic. Finished tonight with a short piece from Edwin Montgomery’s quiet guitar album - gorgeous guitar fx - and some scary goodness from Monstera Deliciosa and Crab Smasher Grant Hunter. High Places - On a Hill In a Bed On a Road In a House [Thrill Jockey] Listen again — ~ 208MB
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email: utilityfog at frogworth dot com bsky Mastodon Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Whether cataloguing the jungle resurgence, tracking the ups and downs of noise and drone, or unearthing the remnants of glitch and folktronica, all is contextualised within artist & genre histories for a fulfilling sonic journey. Since all these genre names are already pretty ridiculous, we thought we'd coin a new one. So "postfolkrocktronica" it is. Wear it. Now available: free "Live on Utility Fog" downloads! We got tasty rss2 or atom feeds - get Utility Fog playlists in your favourite RSS reader/aggregator. There's also a dedicated podcast feed. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. Archives of all previous playlists and entries are available:
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