Utility Fog

Sunday, 10th of July, 2011

Evening! I have "moving house" head tonight, so wish me luck! Great interview though with the lovely boys from ollo...
Meanwhile, LISTEN AGAIN via the link at the bottom or the podcast feed.

OK folks, seems like the write-up gets your attention, right? Better get down to it!
Peter Knight & Dung Nguyen’s astounding album Residual was featured on last week's show, and despite being firmly rooted in Vietnamese music, every track manages to be sincerely different. This one pulses and eventually phases in a Steve Reich fashion, and is rather beautiful.

The Book of Knots is something of a supergroup, and features one of my favourite musicians, Carla Kihlstedt on violin and vocals, along with frequent partner Matthias Bossi (both of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tony Maimone of the legendary Pere Ubu and prolific producer Joel Hamilton. It's a mix of rock, Americana and experimental audio, and the latest album completes a trilogy of sea, land and air, over which many other leading lights of rock's fringes have joined them.
Tonight we start with an amazing contribution from Blixa Bargeld, and at the end the Minutemen's Mike Watt, both semi-narrating, semi-singing. Crazy and brilliant.

A total surprise is the new single from The Haxan Cloak. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to their album, although I should — but this is acknowledged as something quite different... Some sort of arcane English folk techno.

And then we got Lars & Alex, the wonderful Sydney duo ollo, in to chat about their work at Underbelly Arts 2011, this year being held on Cockatoo Island. We heard an old favourite of theirs plus two very exciting exclusive new tracks which form part of the EG1/EXT project, drawing together a deliberately limited pallette of classic synthesisers with an examination of the working class's position at times of industrial decline.

Next up, the incredible return to form from 1990s US idm legends Phoenecia. Recalling the more experimental work of Autechre, it's nonetheless rather affecting at times, and has a compelling rhythmic impetus.

And rhythm is where we go next. Still caning the new kangding ray album, and "Mojave" is a highlight of irresistble maxi-minimal beats and bass.
Silkie’s City Limits Vol. 1 was 2009's dubstep album of the year without a doubt for me, and I can't see this year's Vol. 2 being eclipsed either, at least for straight-up head-nodding dubstep. Silkie has an incredible talent for jazzy chords and melody that makes him a cut above your run-of-the-mill dancefloor stuff, and his tracks work as dance music but stay on the right side of too repetitive — often they're surprisingly through-composed.

I felt that the Bersarin Quartett I played last week deserved some more plays, even though it's a couple of years old. It's a beautiful concoction of post-classical arrangements and ambient electronica with occasional beats. To me it's very German.

German ambient and indeed post-classical artist Field Rotation seems to be popping up all over the place at the moment, and contributes a lovely track to the Japan earthquake relief comp Kanshin that we heard from last week.
But the Orla Wren with Katie English is rather gorgeous in its subtle way. English, also known as Isnaj Dui, contributes tasteful flute to Orla Wren's electronic and acoustic textures.

After a couple of repeat artists we find ourselves back in Australia with recovering psy-trance artist Sunsaria, whose Australien album is rather lovely ambient dub on the whole. And Desiseq, also from Melbourne, writes the updated idm of our age - glitch-hop and semi-drill'n'bass type stuff, good fun.
We heard another lovely tune from Tim Fitz, who combines his piano-pop stylings with mangled beats in a charming home-recording fashion. I was sad to miss him at The Gate Presents at Pablo & Rusty's in Epping a couple of weeks ago.

Suddenly, before we heard the Mike Watt contribution from the new Book of Knots, we descend into the murky hell of Tasmania's Machines of Indeterminate Origin, who fairly accurately tag their music as Metal. It's stripped down and raw, instrumental, and a bit more Slint-style post-punk than Metallica, but let's call it metal and enjoy it for what it is.

Peter Knight & Dung Nguyen - Phase Pedal [Parenthèses Records]
The Book of Knots - Drosophila Melanogaster (feat. Blixa Bargeld) [Ipecac]
The Haxan Cloak - Hounfour [Aurora Borealis]
ollo - trouble is [Groovescooter]
...interview with Alex & Lars from ollo, talking about their EX1/EXT project, part of Underbelly Arts 2011 at Cockatoo Island...
ollo - Harpoon [demo]
...more interview with ollo...
ollo - Transistor Resistor [demo]
Phoenecia - IV Port [Schematic]
kangding ray - Mojave [raster-noton]
Silkie - Selva Nova [Deep Medi]
Silkie - Feel (feat. Truth) [Deep Medi]
Silkie - Beauty [Deep Medi]
Silkie - Taxi Mi Get [Deep Medi]
Bersarin Quartett - Die Dinge sind nie so wie sie sind [Lidar]
Field Rotation - A Pondering Silence [Fluid Audio] {from very worthy Japan fundraiser comp Kanshin}
Orla Wren with Katie English - Swallowtail Yellow [Fluid Audio] {from very worthy Japan fundraiser comp Kanshin}
Bersarin Quartett - St. Petersburg [Lidar]
The Haxan Cloak - Observatory [Aurora Borealis]
Sunsaria - Deep Space Blues [Tempest]
Desiseq - DeQuanta [Hopskotch]
Tim Fitz - Hopelessman [available from Bandcamp]
Machines of Indeterminate Origin - Nurse !? [Sonoptik]
The Book of Knots - Yeager's Approach (feat. Mike Watt) [Ipecac]

Listen again — ~ 220MB

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