Lovely piano quietness to start with tonight, from two quite disparate acts. Jump to the bottom of the playlist if you want to LISTEN AGAIN!

Department of Eagles have released (er, are about to release) a compendium of recordings from between their two albums — mostly material they recorded towards an aborted second album. Dan Rossen put down a number of sketches in the studio, one of which turned into a small part of a Grizzly Bear song (see later this evening), and a couple of which have some lovely little tape manipulations plus piano.

And piano is what you expect from the greatness that is Chris Abrahams. A bit later on, I’m hoping to bring you a bit of his work which is more like solo Necks piano, but his new album for Room40 is a Numba One Stunna, as this piece for organ and glitchy piano bits shows.

Around 2006, a couple of new tracks appeared on Department of Eagles’s MySpace, and I loved them so much I ripped them off there. While “Balmy Night” finally made it on to their real second album, In Ear Park, its partner “Deadly Disclosure” has remained unreleased until now. The whole of the new Archives 2003-2006 really is great, but this one song is worth the price of admission 11 times over…

And then… guess what? Amanda Fucking Palmer has been recording Radiohead covers, and OMGZ they’re great! Well, the one that we’ve gotten to hear so far is! Her trademark ukulele, plus piano à la the original, and it’s a really great take on a great song! Can’t wait to hear more.

Speaking of great takes on great songs, Vancouver’s CFCF is one of a number of artists to taken on Owen Pallett on a new 12”, and adds a stompin’ beat and yet leaves the song to do its great thing.

Meanwhile… earlier this week, in a move that was either very canny or completely insane, Wiley decided to dump 11 enormous zipfiles full of music on the internet, as a way of clearing the decks so he could start afresh. It’s an amazing, scattered, mostly un-tagged mess of sound he’s bequeathed us. The ACOUSTIC tune sounds awfully like a little bit of Crash Test Dummies… on the other hand the other track is quite a manic piece of electronica. Nice!

Speaking of free downloads… the two Funckarma tracks from tonight are free, but only if you’ve bought something from their online store. Since re-vamping their website over the last 6 months (at a guess), they’ve been putting up deluxe versions of some of their older (and also more recent!) work in download formats, so it’s been well worth frequenting their store. These two tracks are a little “thank you” from them to the people who’ve supported them in this way, and both are great. Bass-heavy electronica, nice warm and big sounds and hard-hitting beats.

Sydney’s Silver Bone Tone continues to make music at an alarming rate. Tonight’s tune was some very nice dubbed-out electronica. Check out some of the music of this hard-working local musician at his Bandcamp.

Future Sound of London have been gradually flooding the world with copious amounts of music from their archives, and somehow in the midst of it all have started sneaking out new music under the FSOL moniker – real ambient techno stuff, rather than the (also excellent) psychedelic pop/rock stuff they’ve been doing as Amorphous Androgynous. Environments 2 and now Environments 3 (certainly the latter) appear to be new music, and it’s very fine too, including some live piano and strings. Looking forward to number 4, guys!
At some point in the near future I might do a bit of a look back at the 20-odd years of FSOL’s music. There’s many treasures to be found there (as the foot or so of FSOL CDs on my shelves can attest to…)

From there we found our way to a very very nice drum’n’bass tune from 2007, featuring Macc (from whom we heard last week), and 0=0 (from whom we used to hear quite a bit in the breakcore years). I really hope 0=0’s much-vaunted (for many years) album on Planet µ really does arrive sometime in the near future; meanwhile Macc & dgoHn’s album on Rephlex is out soon and you’ll definitely be hearing from it here.
Back in 2003, when UFog and FBi began the long journey to today, 0=0 released an insane little verison of the Super Mario Brothers theme, which I revisited tonight. Gamers take note!

I received a rather beautiful and mysterious package from Estonia in this week’s mail, complete with nice Estonian stamps. It came from the artist Evestus, whose industrial breakcore-influenced music has really impressed me. We heard the sort-of title track “Dramacore”, which features amen breaks, yelling and I think some of that cello quartet that’s all over the album. It’s crazy stuff as only Eastern Europeans can do.

Back to Australia, we join Edwin Montgomery who has some Travel Ideas, to be released soon. The most song-oriented of this evocative multi-instrumentalist’s releases yet, it’s a challenging and rewarding affair.
Zeal’s debut album (after a number of well-received EPs) is delightfully raw (yet accomplished) indietronica, and it won the heart of FBi’s Dan Zilber, who has made it this week’s Album of the Week. Always nice to hear something out of the ordinary getting some extra spins.

And thence, back to Chris Abrahams. His new album (and second) for Room40 is pleasingly experimental, and we had some nice chopped drum breaks and found sounds in my second selection; meanwhile I thought I’d also play a solo piano piece from his 2001 album Glow, and something bizarre and lovely from the first Room40 album, Thrown. However, I’ve just now been listening through just about the entirety of the The Necks’s back catalogue, over a marathon 2-day period, and I wanted to give a bit of context with this iconoclastic trio of his, so we heard from their second album (from 20 years ago!), which rather cheekily starts with a brief sample of their debut album Sex, before a sinuous bassline from Lloyd Swanton takes over, Tony Buck joins on drums, and Chris starts with a very bizarre, perfectly off-key piano thing.
Chris is also an inveterate collaborator, and I thought I’d play a favourite track from a couple of years ago, from Dean Roberts’ autistic daughters project. Lovely stark songwriting.

From the same compilation that brought us Paul de Jong’s track last week, we hear Dutch artist MiaMia, who combines field recordings from the Okkenbroek area with spoken word and ambient electronics. Beautiful stuff. I’ll play the last track from this comp next week!

And from Holland to Italy, with the remarkable sound artist Fabio Orsi, who has recently released a 3CD set on the boutique UK label Privileged To Fail Records. One can only hope it does really well for them — it’s very nicely presented, and compiles a large amount of really great music from Orsi, washes of shoegazey guitar and electronic chords, disembodied samples, some beats, plenty of glitches and crunches. It’s something I imagine most Utility Fog listeners would get a lot out of.
Last year, Sydney’s Preservation label released a collaboration by Orsi with another Italian, Valerio Cosi. Wonderful drones and post-punk vocal samples and buried beats.

And finally… two more tracks from the wonderful Department of Eagles. First off, a studio sketch from Dan Rossen, part of which turned into the intro for Grizzly Bear’s “Easier”. Second was one of a number of just great indiepop songs that would have remained unreleased were it not for this collection. So let’s give thanks to Bella Union and go and grab another 31 minutes of beautiful sounds from Dan & Fred…

Department of Eagles – Practice Room Sketch 5 [Bella Union]
Chris Abrahams – There He Reclined [Room40]
Department of Eagles – Deadly Disclosure [Bella Union]
Department of Eagles – Balmy Night [4AD]
Amanda Palmer – Idioteque [self-released] {yes, through Bandcamp! Rock it}
Owen Pallett – Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (CFCF Remix) [Domino]
Wiley – ACOUSTIC / IIIIIMMMMMMM [both released as part of his great big Twitter dump a couple of days ago! Try this Grimeforum thread for a round-up of all the links…]
Funckarma – Clod Nuem [a free download for people who’ve bought music direct from funckarma.com]
Silver Bone Tone – DS Template [unreleased, but heaps of his tunes available at his Bandcamp]
Funckarma – Stamp [a free download for people who’ve bought music direct from funckarma.com]
Future Sound of London – Heart Sick Chord [Jumpin’ & Pumpin’]
Macc & 0=0 – Bridge Over Broken Water [Subtle Audio]
0=0 (as “mr. mezzy”) – s.m.b.#1, w-1,l-1 [Dross:tik]
Evestus – Dramacore [self-released Estonian industrial gothic breakcore madness]
Edwin Montgomery – train song [self-released, due out soon!]
Zeal – Vigilante [self-released]
Zeal – Robellion [self-released]
Edwin Montgomery – recollections [self-released, due out soon!]
Chris Abrahams – Twig Blown [Room40]
The Necks – Garl’s [Fish of Milk]
Chris Abrahams – Self Taught Bouncer [Vitamin]
Chris Abrahams – Can of Faces [Room40]
autistic daughters – bird in the curtain (feat. Chris Abrahams) [Kranky]
MiaMia – The Branches And The Frogs [esc.rec.]
Fabio Orsi – I’m Happy Here (parts 3 & 4) [Privileged To Fail Records]
Fabio Orsi – Radio Passing [Privileged To Fail Records]
Fabio Orsi / Valerio Cosi – The Frozen Seasons of Lysergia (Part One) [Preservation]
Department of Eagles – Practice Room Sketch 2 [Bella Union]
Department of Eagles – Brightest Minds [Bella Union]

Listen again — ~ 168MB

Read about it, and LISTEN AGAIN via the link at the bottom. Good innit.

String arrangements, gotta love ’em. Started tonight with one of my favourite pop song string arrangements, from country singer Bobbie Gentry, who also happens to be a brilliant story-teller on this song.
Story-telling is also central to Nina Nastasia’s craft, and she tells her very personal stories through beautiful vocals and amazing songs, but on her new album she’s got a string quartet and a wind quartet doing absolutely wondrous songs. It’s transcendent stuff, and when the strings let fly on a track like “This Familiar Way”… oh yes.

Meanwhile, Martin Dosh is exploring Americana from a rather different perspective, and this piano-led piece is just beautiful. The whole album (perhaps cheekily titled Tommy) has really grown on me. Lots of motion, great sounds, and some very nice glitchy changes scattered throughout.

Following Nina Nastasia’s second song we have the highlight track from the excellent Mount Wittenberg Orca EP from the unlikely-on-paper (but instantly-perfect-when-you-hear-it) pairing of Dirty Projectors + Björk. To me it sounds like another branch of Americana, and so delightfully positive too.

The chirping vocals drew my mind to the sampled vox on the adorable Machine Translations song “Happy”, which can’t help but put you in a Happy mood. Well, if you’re me. You are, aren’t you?

And thence we arrive once more at Oneohtrix Point Never. Daniel Lopatin sings on a couple of tracks on this album, although his vocals are obscured by a harmonising pedal and other effects. It’s quite a beautiful effect over his analogue synths. I strong recommend checking this album out.

Another regular on this show, the boats drop another incrrrredibly limited EP on their boutique label through Boomkat. If you hurry they might still have some copies! Very minimal and in this case quite sensual electronica.

The other track from Oneohtrix also has submerged vocals, and like the opening track on the album is a much more chaotic, computer-edited affair. But we’re headed into analogue-synth territory again courtesy of an ultra-limited, ultra-amazing cassette release from the legendary (yeah, why not) Keith Fullerton Whitman. Here he brings his not inconsiderable skills to the process of auto-generated analogue synthesis. It’s mesmerising stuff.
Mesmerising, perhaps too, is his older work as Hrvatski: proto-breakcore that I was obsessed by in the 1997-200x period. Heck, I wouldn’t say no if he went back to making some of these crazy beats, but tonight what we heard was from the really early period. I still remember receiving the translucent green vinyl of the Attention: Cats “compilation”, which I held some suspicions about as regards to the multiple artists therein. But the one definitely real independent personality was his brother Brian Whitman, who released a few excellent delicacies as Blitter, and with whom Keith collaborated for an imaginary computer game soundtrack which I caned back in ’98/’99. So fine.

Nothing like a bit of a drum’n’bass rinse-out, and over the next few tracks we discover that there’s still some great beat-fuckery going on in the crevices of the drum’n’bass world, along with some really nice minimal stuff, the likes of which we’ve heard over the last few weeks.
Macc and dgoHn were both new to me until I was alerted to their recent release on the Rephlex label. They have a full-length album coming out soon, but they also have plenty of back-catalogue independently. Their stuff, separately and together, has the best qualities of your Squarepusher, Vibert or µ-Ziq tweaked breaks, but production-wise is as dancefloor as you might want. No surprise, then, that they’ve had releases on Paradox’s label among other things. Really great stuff, can’t wait to hear more. You can get their duo EP from the revamped Rephlex site right now.

In there we also heard one of the best beats from the incredible sabre album a wandering journal, a double CD set. The first disc is one long mix, and features a few tracks not separated out on disc 2; it also has “pt. 1” of the fantastic half-speed track “leveling out”, featuring full vocals from Maxwell Golden, and leading us nicely into our wonky hip-hop segment.

First up, Funckarma have their fourth Dubstoned EP out now (vinyl and digital) and it’s the best yet – crunchy and bassy with a good dubsteppy feel. This is one of their acid-meets-dubstep kind of things, very tasty.

Lorn’s debut album Nothing Else, for Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label, is one of the most musical and rhythmically satisfying albums coming out of a really exciting west-coast USA scene. Great listening music, great head-nodding music. Take’s Only Mountain also has great tune after great tune, and doesn’t stick to one tempo or one style either; there are some more traditional instrumental hip-hoppy things and all sorts of sounds. And Nosaj Thing, well I hope we know Nosaj by now. Absolutely blissful synth lines floating and marching along to a shuffling hip-hop beat.

It was slightly hilarious and slightly disturbing to discover Autechre swinging the beat in this rather abstract take from their new album (or EP? It’s a WAP catalogue number) Move of Ten. You couldn’t really claim it has any connection with wonky or dubstep, but it’s got a great movement to it, if you focus in the right way. This release is seriously still sinking in, but the CD version should be arriving soon, so it’ll get some more outings then.

Part Timer is putting together a raft of remixes for an upcoming album, and his mate Jazzy Jones Is Nano has handed in an absolute corker. The folky acoustic guitar and the breathy vox of Heidi Elva drift in and out, along with perfect sampled strings and idm beats. Again I say, somebody release this guy’s music!
And we have, for now, and exclusive track from Sydney’s own Gentleforce. It’s a lovely epic thing with tribal beats and his trademark evocative chords.

I had wanted to play more than one track from this compilation Herfsttonen, so you’ll be hearing more next week. Three musicians were asked to make a musical rendering of the Dutch town of Okkenbroek, for a festival occurring there. Paul de Jong, cellist in everyone’s favourite laptop folk duo The Books, created a gorgeous piece with sampled conversations and field recordings, and multiple cello lines (presumably live and pre-recorded). Amazingly, the other two tracks on this CD are equally magnificent.

Finally we have the final track from Dosh’s new album, which travels from postrock through electronic interventions and into heavy guitar riffage. It’s an album with hidden depths, for sure.

Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billy Joe [EMI International]
Nina Nastasia – You Can Take Your Time [Fat Cat]
Dosh – loud [Anticon]
Nina Nastasia – This Familiar Way [Fat Cat]
Dirty Projectors + Björk – On and Ever Onward [self-released – download for donation to protect precious marine life!]
Machine Translations – Happy [Spunk]
Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal [Editions Mego]
the boats – The book is red [Our Small Ideas]
Oneohtrix Point Never – Preyouandi [Editions Mego]
Keith Fullerton Whitman – Generator 5 [Root Strata]
Hrvatski – Patience [from Okapi Tracks, long-disappeared collection of long-disappeared tracks from the first incarnation of mp3.com. We’re talking 1997 or 8 I think]
Mouly / Hubley / Leroux – Scrub [Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge]
Sick – Steaktippin’ [Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge]
Blitter & Hrvatski – Nuclear Cats Get New Home [Lucky Kitchen]
Macc and dgoHn – Things go Brown [Rephlex]
sabre – peril (club mix) [Critical Music]
Macc – Nuñez [Transmute]
dgoHn – Headspace Sampling Apparatai [Subtle Audio Digital]
Macc and dgoHn – July 39th [Rephlex]
sabre – leveling out pt. 1 (feat. Maxwell Golden) [Critical Music]
Funckarma – Kopf [Eat Concrete]
Lorn – None An Island [Brainfeeder]
Take – Before You Think [Alpha Pup]
Nosaj Thing – Fog [Alpha Pup]
Autechre – Cep puiqMX [Warp]
Part Timer – The Runner (Jazzy Jones Is Nano remix) [forthcoming on…?]
Gentleforce – New Ground [exclusive!]
Paul de Jong – Okeenblues [esc.rec.]
Dosh – gare de lyon [Anticon]

Listen again — ~ 181MB