Utility Fog

Sunday, 16th of October, 2011

Strings, remixes, piano, folk-and-tronica, all featured tonight...
The usual LISTEN AGAINage available, see bottom of playlist, On Demand, podcast.

Sydney's Charge Group play indie music with a violin leading them into the frey. It's a mix of folk and indie rock, and it's only appropriate that they have some lovely ambient remixes on their new single (along with a couple of bizarrely clubby ones).
And Seaworthy always brings a tremendous sensitivity to his remixes. Beautiful work.

Speaking of indie strings, we've heard plenty of Melbourne's Wintercoats on this show, and here's another pretty tune from his new 12" on Mistletone.

Here's an interesting team-up: Prepared piano maestro Hauschka working with ambient/postrock cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir. What they've created together is a hybrid of their sounds which is more experimental than the standard (wonderful) post-classical sounds of Hauschka, but perhaps more structured than Hildur Guðnadóttir's usual work. In any case, it's music with depth and magic to it. And the packaging, as always with Sonic Pieces, is stunning.

Leah Kardos is the most exciting discovery of the week. Once from Australia, she's now based in the UK, and when recording under her own name she makes subtle glitchy piano-based music. Ambient piano, jazzy rhythmic piano with glitchy beats, minimalist chopped-up piano, it's all in there. Highly recommended, for only £5 from her Bandcamp.

You might have noticed Björk has a new album out... Last week I played "Mutual Core" with hardcore eruptions suitable to the volcano theme from 16bit. Tonight's track, "Sacrifice", features some more heavy beats, from drum'n'bass producer Current Value.

And while we're hangin' with the blockbuster artists, let's hear from Radiohead, whose remix EPs I picked up along the way, but they've just released the lot as a 2CD set. The Caribou remix was a delight from the start - sparkly harpsichord-like sounds and a head-nodding beat. This mixed in nicely with the other head-nodding genius remix, from Berlin's Objekt. And after a quick detour with The Bug's remix of Thom Yorke from 2007, we heard the stunningly evocative and murky Harmonic 313 remix.

Nick Zammuto's on a roll at the moment with his new solo project. Last week he dropped two new tracks, both excellent. I'm still in love with last week's "Harlequin", but this one is an energetic move in yet another new direction.

Speaking of energetic, UK audiovisual duo Sculpture do a nice turn in live sample-based drill'n'bass here, courtesy of the latest digital compilation from The Wire. I'll have to pick up their latest album, even though it's vinyl only (and it does look like a stunning package).

Thomas William has always made somewhat frenetic and discombobulating sample-based music which... what's that? You've never heard of him? Well that's because it's the new moniker for Sydney's glitch-hop fave Cleptoclectics. He has a new album coming out in a month or so from Melbourne label This Thing, and it's ace.

The interestingly-spelled Fabels are a Sydney shoegaze duo featuring Hiske Weijers of Psychic Date and Ben Aylward of beloved '90s indie shoegazers Swirl. Vintage stuff, with a contemporary twist. They're launching their debut EP at the Lansdowne next Sunday (23rd of Oct), so head down there before listening to next weeks's 'Fog :)

Back with Charge Group, we heard the single "Run", which moves from folky violin patters into shouty indie rock and back, while their own (I guess?) remix is if anything even more ambient than Seaworthy's!

From Flaming Pines' fantastic 10x3"CD project Rivers Home, tonight we heard the evocative field recordings and guitar of Broken Chip, from the Blue Mountains.

And back with the Wire Magazine compilation, Espers' Meg Baird gives us a timeless folk guitar song. Another one straight on the "to buy" list.

I'm very excited about the new Origamibiro album — out on CD any minute now. It's the best folktronic stuff I've heard in a good while. To preview the album they released a free download remix EP, and one of the remix artists was Juxta Phona. I hadn't heard of them before, but quickly discovered it's either an alias for Jason Corder of offthesky or a group he's part of.
I played a track from offthesky's Home Normal album tonight, glitchy guitar and submerged 4/4 beat.
But in the meantime I went in search of Juxta Phona, and found an album that offthesky and Juxta Phona did together (whatever that means, given the overlap) called !escape kit!. Now that I've received the CD, the packaging is as beautiful and detailed as the music. It's a bit folktronic, a bit jazzy postrock, and altogether excellent.

Interspersed, we had a couple more tracks from Spartak's brilliant new album, recorded live in Japan (although you couldn't tell it's a live album), and we finished with a new remix, hot off the press, of Underlapper by FBi's own Loopsnake.

Charge Group - The Gold is Gone (Seaworthy remix) [Microphone & Loudspeaker]
Wintercoats - Forest of Lovers [Mistletone]
Hauschka & Hildur Guðnadóttir - #283 [Sonic Pieces]
Leah Kardos - Apology [available from her Bandcamp]
Leah Kardos - Remnant 2 [available from her Bandcamp]
Hauschka & Hildur Guðnadóttir - #320 [Sonic Pieces]
Leah Kardos - Repeater [available from her Bandcamp]
Björk - Sacrifice [One Little Indian]
Radiohead - Little By Little (Caribou Rmx) [Ticker Tape/XL Recordings]
Radiohead - Bloom (Objekt Rmx) [Ticker Tape/XL Recordings]
Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill (The Bug Remix) [XL Recordings]
Radiohead - Bloom (Harmonic 313 Rmx) [Ticker Tape/XL Recordings]
Zammuto - Weird Ceiling (working version) [SoundCloud]
Sculpture - Bonus Level (Live) [Dekorder] {via Wire Mag}
Thomas William - By Proxy [This Thing] {forthcoming}
Thomas William - History Shock [This Thing] {forthcoming}
Fabels - Clotheslines [Rabbit Releases]
Charge Group - Run [Microphone & Loudspeaker]
Charge Group - Run (Buckminster's Dystopic Remix) [Microphone & Loudspeaker]
Broken Chip - Cox's River [Flaming Pines]
Meg Baird - The Land Turned Over [Drag City] {via Wire Mag}
offthesky - Little Subtle Secret [Home Normal]
Origamibiro - Quad Time (Juxta Phona Remix) [Denizen/Abandon Building Recordings] {free download remix EP}
offthesky & juxta phona - dark matters [available from Bandcamp]
Spartak - Snowflake Reception (Close) [New Weird Australia]
offthesky & juxta phona - trust & roulette [available from Bandcamp]
Spartak - Wire + Water [New Weird Australia]
Underlapper - These Six Skeletons (Loopsnake Remix) [Feral Media]

Listen again — ~ 156MB

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