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Playlist 15.01.12 - Best of 2011 stragglers and we start a new year (10:05 pm)
Tonight, a few highlights from Sydney Festival, a stack more awesome 2011 tunes, and some new 2012 releases already! I haven't been writing up the "best of 2011" posts, mainly because it's exhausting, and also because I am shortly going to do a big best-of post. So tonight I'll talk mainly about the new stuff. I started with some ancient music, but a new recording. Taraf de Haïdouks & Kočani Orkestar are two wonderful gypsy bands from eastern Europe — Taraf are a much-loved band of Romanian gypsies featuring violins, piano accordions, double bass, guitars and cimbalom, who, gypsy-style, have toured the world for many years with their incredible shows, after which they are guaranteed to be found outside the venue continuing to ply their trade, playing brilliantly while passing around the hat. Kočani are slightly younger, a brass band who now have a few even younger musicians who seem to know their jazz and Cuban music too. They have a fantastic groove, but can also play beautiful ballads with sustained notes and virtuosic melodicism. When the two groups team up together it's a true gypsy supergroup, and their show at the Enmore Theatre on Thursday was spectacular. Goth-Trad is Japan's original dubstep maestro, very much a mainstay in the central UK scene now, and his new album is an instant winner. The beats are a bit more towards the 4/4 and a bit faster now, and with a whole album to play with, he's able to slip in some less dancefloor-oriented, quite complex pieces as well. Next newie is from The Boats, beloved folktronic act descended from Hood via The Remote Viewer... Their new album is made up of four 10 minute tracks, each a little journey in itself — the one we heard tonight moved from shoegazey ambience into a electronic minimalist featuring regular collaborator Danny Norbury on cello, and then a striking switch with minor synth chords and a beat dropping for the last 3rd. It's an album worth immersing yourself in. I unfortunately only received the "new" album from Ekca Liena as I was piecing together the best-of-2011 shows, so I've only just gotten around to playing it. It's actually a 2008 release, re-released in 2011 with a bonus disc of remixes and covers. The album proper is tremendous, the equal of 2011 favourites by Simon Scott and Damian Valles, and similar in scope: broadly based around the drone/ambient sound world, but with plenty of postrock and electronic elements. The bonus disc does not disappoint, and we'll be hearing more from it in coming weeks. Tonight I chose Nick Hudson's second version, adding vocals to an originally instrumental track, while keeping the chord structure and, remarkably, the feel of the original. Sydney improvising string quartet The Noise are playing a gig in the beautiful surrounds of Warehouse 15 on Cockatoo Island this Wednesday (Facebook event here). They're quite happy making abstract improvisations, but also descriptive pieces, such as tonight's "Moths". Another Sydney act with a classical connection, Mannheim Rocket makes Bass music with (usually unrecognizable) samples from classical music. He's playing with two other Sydney electronic acts at a gallery space called The Newsagency on Enmore Rd on Friday the 27th - Facebook event here. As well as a couple of the Sydney Festival acts coming up this week, and some more highlights from 2011, I played two tracks from days of yore, as I've had the luxury of listening through some older stuff while new releases die down over this period. I had a stack of compilations playlisted up, and came across some tunes from 1996 that deserved airplay. From the second of Kevin Martin's amazing Macro Dub Infection 2CD compilations, Ice (featuring both Martin and his ex-Napalm Death bandmate Justin K Broadrick) are pitted against Palace (aka Will Oldham of course), in that perfect crossover realm of heavy, noisy dub beats and howling yet delicate country vocals. And two relatively unknown artists Ragga + The Pylon King pair up for the second in Lo Recordings' legendary compilation series, entitled Collaborations. Taraf de Haïdouks & Kočani Orkestar - Talk To Me, Duʂo [Crammed Discs] Listen again — ~ 164MB
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email: utilityfog at frogworth dot com bsky Mastodon 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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