Utility Fog

Sunday, 18th of July, 2010

Quite a trip today, through electronic music, postrock, 20th century classical, laptop folk...
LISTEN AGAIN via the link at the bottom!

Tonight we started with an awesome crunchy electronic tune from Loopsnake, who can be found spinning electronic music on FBi on Friday nights. To my mind this is his best work yet.

Aaron Martin is taking his always-beautiful music into the stratosphere on a new EP. Released on cassette & CDR, Night Erased Them All was written out of a need to have some music for a late-night road trip, and it's certainly journeying music, quite psychedelic at times. Highly recommended — you can get it direct from the label.

See the last two playlists for a description of the Herfsttonen release. Tonight I played the last track (there are only three), from Gluid, post-rock and sound-art, featuring cello and vibraphone along with computer.

Next up, These New Puritans inspired a few tracks this week via their awesome mix for FACT Mag. Their recent album Hidden displayed broad influences including, clearly, that of 20th century composer Benjamin Britten, from whom we heard a couple of lovely English folk-inspired compositions, along with two highlight tracks from These New Puritans, and one track I found on that mix, the dark occult electronics of Salem.
And speaking of dark English-folk-influenced music, how about the very first single from Tunng?

Back to vibraphone (or something like it) with a rather lovely piece of electronic songwriting from proem, who some may remember from the IDM days.
Meanwhile, percussion meets electronica in a different way on So Percussion & Matmos’ collaborative album. It's not as adventurous as I'd hoped, but it's certainly very pretty...

Well, other than our Benjamin Britten detour earlier, perhaps the meat of the show is our little special on The Books. This is a band that's been special to me for a long time - since before Utility Fog started with FBi in 2003. So I played at least one track from each of their albums, with acoustic guitar and cello combined with their love of weird found recordings. Obviously my favourite is the lemon of pink, and obviously just like all the artists who were doing the "acoustic instruments meet digital glitchery" thing in the mid-'00s, they couldn't or were unwilling to keep it up.
Still, what they went on to with the next album, and further continue now, is fun and clever stuff, and there are truly beautiful songs in there too. I find they verge (as ever, perhaps) too much on jokey vocal samples now and then, but they always take a surprising, sideways approach to their material that can't help grabbing the ear and the mind.

A rather convenient segue (er, in the middle) took us to Brisbane and producer Chris Perren's Mr Maps project — named, as you might guess, for the Books track we heard before. This track comes from a very excellent forthcoming remix-swap project between Sydney's Feral Media and Brisbane's lofly, and here we had a remix of a favourite tune from the lovely afxjim.

Karsten Pflum’s debut album made an impression when the legendary English label Worm Interface released it in 2002. A few albums later, he's still releasing melodic electronica with plenty of nice beats, and has even put out a dubstep-influenced 12" on Ad Noiseam (might have that for next week's show). I thought it was worth having a couple of older tracks along with a newie tonight.

Mike Cadoo's been making electronica for ages, as part of Gridlock, as Dryft, and more recently as Bitcrush. His latest release is a remix album, and typically I've chosen the Funckarma remix tonight.

Loopsnake’s EP is backed with a beautiful drone piece, completed with distorted crescendo and decrescendo. Lovely.
One of the attractions of Owen Pallett’s remix 12" (other than that it's Owen) was that it featured a Benoît Pioulard remix. Pioulard has two lovely folky, shoegazey, experimental albums on Kranky, and here takes orchestral samples and fragments of the original track into a hazey vision very much his own.

Melbourne's Part Timer has a new album coming soon, on US label lost tribe sound, and you're gonna love it. With vocal contributions from Heidi Elva, Nicola Hodgkinson and his wife Dani, and some subtle beats, it's been a long time coming (despite the steady stream of exclusive tracks and remixes he feeds me...)
Also on offer is a remix album which you can get direct from him and from selected online retailers. The many fine contributions include fellow Melbourneites Children of the Wave.

Finally, an artist we'll be hearing much more from next week — Sydney composer Rob Underwood aka This Is How It All Begins. Piano compositions rub shoulders with chugging guitars, washes of distortion, and ambient passages. His album is very much made for full-album listening, but you can get a picture of his approach from individual tracks. I'm wondering, from the increasing distortion in "In a Layer of Frost", whether the Frost being referenced is our Ben Frost. In any case, definitely an artist to watch.

Loopsnake - Good Morning Raver VIP [free download from Loopsnake!]
Aaron Martin - Limb Study [Sonic Meditations]
Gluid - 101009 (Hellige Ding'n) [esc.rec.] {you can get this album for €3 from Bandcamp - c'mon!}
These New Puritans - Hologram [Angular/Domino]
Benjamin Britten - The Driving Boy (Spring Symphony Mvt IV) [London Decca]
These New Puritans - We Want War [Angular/Domino]
Benjamin Britten - Dirge from Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings (performed by Peter Pears, Barry Tuckwell, English Chamber Orchestra) [London Decca]
Tunng - Tale From Black [Static Caravan]
Salem - Water [Merok Records]
proem - skulls [n5MD]
So Percussion & Matmos - Needles [Cantaloupe]
The Books - IDKT / I Didn't Know That [Temporary Residence/Spunk]
The Books - enjoy your worries, you may never have them again [Tomlab]
The Books - the lemon of pink / the lemon of pink [Tomlab]
The Books - An Animated Description of Mr. Maps [Tomlab]
afxjim - The T in Tchina (Mr Maps remix) [Feral Media/lofly] {forthcoming...}
The Books - Thirty Incoming [Temporary Residence/Spunk]
Karsten Pflum - Thael Spir [Mindwaves Music]
Karsten Pflum - Te [Worm Interface]
Karsten Pflum - God [Rump]
Bitcrush - Colder (Funckarma remix) [n5MD]
Loopsnake - As If To Sleep [free download from Loopsnake!]
Owen Pallett - Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (Benoît Pioulard remix) [Domino] {the EP is free for an email address still, if you're lucky!}
part timer - the runner (feat. heidi elva) (Children of the Wave remix) [self-released, click here for purchasing options]
part timer - interalia [lost tribe sound]
This Is How It All Begins - In a Layer of Frost [self-released, get from Bandcamp!]

Listen again — ~ 172MB

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