Utility Fog

Sunday, 19th of February, 2012

Many wonderful sounds tonight, post-jazz, postrock, post-drone (OK doubt there's such a thing)... soundtracking your late night Sydney storm. Lovely!
So you'll be wanting to LISTEN AGAIN, right? Do the On Demand streaming thing, or if you want to be offline, there's the podcast or direct link at the bottom.

The CD of From the Mouth of the Sun has finally arrived — Aaron Martin and Jasper TX in collaboration — and looking back to when I got the mp3s, it seems this track was the highlight then too! I'll have to play something else from this lovely album in the next week or two.

I received some promo this week from Dutch jazz/electronic artist Michel Banabila, including an excellent duo album with saxophonist/clarinettist Mete Erker, which is a combo of jazz and experimental electronic (I vaguely categorise this stuff as post-jazz), along with a solo album which is much more on the experimental electronic tip. I love hearing jazz musicians working in the electronic/noise/ambient/beats realms, and Banabila does it wonderfully. Some of his solo stuff (see later in the show) has quite a Brian Eno influence, and on his Bandcamp you can find a (highly recommended) album of spoken samples from radio cut-up and pitch-shifted with electronics, which surely owes a lot to David Byrne & Brian Eno's classic My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Really great stuff all round.

Melbourne's Sam Price has started putting up new solo tracks (as well as some from his duo Peon) on his SoundCloud, and they're as impressively varied as ever, from abstruse pure electronic music to ambient beats and percussion works. Definitely worth checking out.

Back in 2008, German techno artist Shed put out an album that was in the main a bit too 4/4 for my tastes, but featured the incredible deep dubby track "Estrange". That one track has enough cachet with me that I took note when I heard he had a new EP. Tonight's cut is a long techno track that gradually becomes more idm-like, with nice crunchy sounds and a submerged melody in the mix. Bodes well for the new album.

Also on a somewhat techno tip is the amazing Objekt, also from Berlin. His first EP blew me away last year, as did his Radiohead remix later in the year. The new EP has more repetitive robotic beats, with his precise ear for strange, angular drop-outs and cuts. It's not glitch, but it seems like his form of pounding electronic funk couldn't exist without the glitch.

A taste of things to come later in the show, one of the highlights from the Tyme. x Tujiko album which sees Tujiko Noriko working with Japanese electronic producer Tyme.. She's a fantastic producer herself (as we hear later on), but loves collaborations as well, as it's nice to find her back on (Editions) Mego, who without the "editions" started her off over 10 years ago. The new album is as poppy and straightforward as she gets, which is hardly mainstream of course...

Even further off the beaten path is John Wiese, whose music is usually at the far end of piercing noise. Those high-pitched are still present but toned down on his latest album, which sees sine waves pitted against mysterious acoustic sounds, quiet but distinctly disquieting. I'll play a longer track on a later show.

And finally we get to tonight's epic performance — all 33 minutes of Oren Ambarchi’s "Knots", from his latest album Audience of One. I could do without the first (vocal) track, but this one is incredible: Joe Talia's driving cybmal rhythms and drumkit throughout, Oren's guitar and the other instruments coming in waves over the rest, and for the last 5+ minutes, crushing guitar destruction. Pretty much perfect.

An equal highlight for this week comes from a sort of supergroup, Infinite Light Ltd. — made up of Aidan Baker, Nathan Amundson (Rivulets) and Mat Sweet (Boduf Songs). As you might expect, it's minimal folk/roots, drone, postrock and even bits of glitch... and it's pretty spectacular. Hope it's not just a one-off. And Denovali are doing brilliant work lately.

In between Infinite Light Ltd tracks we heard a lovely piece of postrock from the new Founder album. The beloved Sydney band are launching this album on Friday at the Petersham Bowling Club.
It should be an awesome gig, but I feel obliged to point out that there's competition on that night, from none other than myself playing cello with Greg and Matt from Underlapper, as Haunts — along with Making, Thomas William vs Scissor Lock and Simo Soo, at Dirty Shirlows. Both gigs should be awesome — how stressful!

So, in celebration of her new album on Editions Mego, I thought it was worth scanning through the back catalogue of Tujiko Noriko. Naturally there was way more that I wanted to play than I could fit it, and we might have a couple more flashbacks next week. If I'm not always 100% taken in by every song, or by the timbre of her voice, there are still always a good few brilliant tracks on every release. She's an adventurous producer herself, using glitchy samples and crunchy beats in weird and wonderful ways, and chooses well in her frequent collaborations. We went back to the beginning, then through her album for Tomlab (a definite highlight) and collaborations including our own Lawrence English | John Chantler with two albums on their Room40 label. This trip down memory lane has cemented her importance in my mind, and I hear her influence a lot in more recent Japanese music in particular.

We then headed back to the wonderful Banabila and Erker, and then heard one piece of ridiculously great hard rock from Making, followed by another new Founder track, and then a couple of lovely oldies, from more than 10 years ago! Ah, time how she flies.

From the Mouth of the Sun - Color Loss [Experimedia]
Michel Banabila and Mete Erker - Read My Lips (Route Plannet Mix) [Tapu Records]
Sam Price - Refinery [download from SoundCloud]
Shed - Estrange [Ostgut Tonträger]
Shed - RQ-170 [50 Weapons]
Objekt - Porcupine [Hessle Audio]
Tyme. x Tujiko - ten to sen [Editions Mego]
John Wiese - The New Dark Ages [Pan]
Oren Ambarchi - Knots [Touch]
Infinite Light Ltd. - December 12 [Denovali]
Founder - Patches (I'm depending on you son) [Understandation Records]
Infinite Light Ltd. - All Blues [Denovali]
Infinite Light Ltd. - (hidden track) [Denovali]
Tujiko Noriko - Bebe [Editions Mego]
Tujiko Noriko - Narita Made [Tomlab]
Tujiko Noriko - Tablet for Memory [Room40]
AOKI Takamasa + Tujiko Noriko - fly2 [Fat Cat]
Tujiko Noriko | Lawrence English | John Chantler - Ising [Room40]
Tyme. x Tujiko - vacation of god [Editions Mego]
Michel Banabila and Mete Erker - Skyscrapers [Tapu Records]
Michel Banabila - In Other Words [available from Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila - I Wont Play Your Game [Audio Tong]
making - Earth (Tundra) [available from Bandcamp]
Founder - Castro [Understandation Records]
Founder - Happy Cycling [available from their Bandcamp]
Founder - beckon of cowes (soul juice version) [Heavy]

Listen again — ~ 167MB

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