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. {Hey! Sign up to Utilityfoglet and get playlists emailed to you after each show!}
Please Like us on Facebook! Here it is: Utility Fog on Facebook {and while you're at it, become a fan on Facebook} Sunday, 18th of December, 2011
Playlist 18.12.11 (10:16 pm)
So crazy that I'm still bringing you new music at this time of year. Our first track tonight is a taste of things to come — one of the bonus Hood tracks on the boxset that were started sometime in 2005 and finishedin September 2011. I guess it's too much to hope that the Adams brothers are going to go back into the studio to record something more together again... Much more on Hood later on though! Last night (Saturday) in Sydney saw the launch of the much-awaited (by a select few anyway) collaborative album between Sydney's Thomas William and Scissor Lock. The two of them set up their laptops, mini-mixing desks, pedals and microphones facing each other, and proceed to output dense washes of sound and vocal loops. The beats of Thomas William are absent, but his samples still pulsate as they would if they were there. Marcus Whale's signature vocal loops are there, along with lots of processing, and it all somehow comes together. Great to have this on CD, courtesy of New Weird Australia's New Editions series. The Haxan Cloak has had a great debut year, with an amazing album of deep scraping cello and percussion, and it's great that this highly limited vinyl EP is now available digitally. Two long tracks of arcane techno, deep and mysterious. As a massive fan of his noise/psych outfit Burning Star Core, I'm very excited about the new solo album from C. Spencer Yeh. While BxC was often Yeh solo anyway, this is the first album (as opposed to many EPs and other sundry releases) that he's put his own name to, and perhaps it is a more personal statement. Many tracks are just entitled "Drone" or "Vocal", or "Two Guitars", leaving the sounds to speak for themselves. While the drones are indubitably what they are, the vocal pieces are cut up to extreme levels — none of his frequent gutteral groaning — and later on some more noisy elements do come through. For an album where everything's broken down to its constituent elements, it's an absorbing listen. The wonderful Icelandic label Bedroom Community] ring in the end of the year with their second Yule compilation (see here), which is a free download with any purchase from their online store at the moment. Exclusive remixes and new music, albeit mixed into one track (I downloaded the FLAC and split it up, because that's how I roll). Next up, Peter Broderick. Before playing a couple of tracks from his rather amazing and slightly disturbing soundtrack Music for Confluence, I played his entry into the 2CD set Satie et les nouveaux jeunes, from French label Arbouse. It's a pretty impressive collection of names, all interpreting or taking influence from Erik Satie. As a lover of his music, I can say that some people "get" him better than others, so as expected there are some pedestrian efforts, and also some real gems. Sad I only got to one track tonight. A few others before our big special tonight. With Vladislav Delay you know what you're going to get — dubby textures with stop-start, broken beats and deep electronic sounds. Another perfectly-suited raster-noton release, in a rather awesome couple of years for the label. I hope to have the most recent album for Daniel Mackenzie's Ekca Liena for you shortly, but meanwhile he sent me this single track, which shows the breadth of his production — too detailed to really be drone, perhaps, although that's where this sound is headed. Very fine. German indietronic artist Teamforest has enlisted some quality help for his latest EP, including Melbourne's own Sympático, but tonight I couldn't resist the opportunity to head back towards Hood via the bizarre bracken remix. Both Adams brothers from Hood contribute remixes, but here Chris goes from wonky hip-hop with vocoder, through strummy guitar and his own vocals, and out the other side. So... Hood. It's hard to know where to start with this most Utility Fog of bands. If anyone embodies postfolkrocktronica it's them. And no surprise, I've been obsessed with them for well over a decade. As I said on air, I was familiar with two electronic side-projects well before I really knew who Hood were. In 1997, completely immersed in idm via the likes of the Warp and Skam labels, I came across Downpour’s Windstorms Broken Microphones EP. Sampled female vocals, swathes of noise, mega-distorted chopped-up amen breaks — this was heaven. It was the beginnings of breakcore, and Chris Adams (Hood's main songwriter and vocalist) was there. Only a couple of years later did I realise the connection with Hood, and start to gather what an important group they were. So my Hood story goes sideways and backwards from these masterful electronic releases, back through to their earliest punky indie days, tape noise experiments, their work with Matt Elliott in Bristol and with Richard Formby and Choque Hosein in Leeds, their numerous works of genius relegated to b-sides and highly limited EPs, and then through their albums and EPs on Domino. They synthesised all their influences into something incredibly special, with live drumming rubbing up against glitchy drum programming, samples and drones mixed in with jangly guitars, mournful violin and clarinet with muffled vocals, bizarre and bizarrely successful collaborations with the iconic anticon rappers, short experimental tracks, long immersive tracks (no less experimental), true indiepop gems and sometimes almost impenetrable vocal meanderings. Their influences were many and venerable, from Robert Wyatt through late Talk Talk, Bark Psychosis, Disco Inferno, Third Eye Foundation and many more, and their influence on many younger bands immeasurable, but there's never been anyone like them, and long may they keep making music — separately at least, assuming "Hood is finished", really, 6 years on now. Hood - hymn to the hill [Domino] Listen again — ~ 221MB {sorry it's bigger this time, forgot to do that thing y'know?} 3 Responses to “Playlist 18.12.11”
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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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December 26th, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Hello, thanks a lot for mention of the remix I made for Daniel Bjarnason. You can find more music on my soundcloud http://soundcloud.com/montaukinfebruary/dan-el-bjarnason-spindrift. a.o. very soon a remix for "a winged victory for the sullen" (dustin o'halloran & adam wiltzie) that will be the "erased tapes christmas gift". (Im not danish at all, actually belgian but it doesnt matter ;-))) enjoy !
December 26th, 2011 at 11:43 pm
Hey Pierre,
Sorry for getting your nationality wrong - stupid mistake due to writing things up too late at night! Thanks for the great sounds, will look out for the Winged Victory remix :)
January 3rd, 2012 at 6:37 am
Hi peter, the winged remix is out now on erased tapes soundcloud and free on download ! Enjoy ! http://soundcloud.com/erasedtapes/a-winged-victory-for-the-sullen-xmas-remix