Utility Fog

Sunday, 6th of May, 2012

Oren Ambarchi interview tonight, as he's up in Sydney for the Aurora Festival this coming week, along with Merzbow.
As usual, LISTEN AGAIN via the podcast, link at the bottom, or the lovely ol' FBi on demand streaming. If you want to just listen to the Oren Ambarchi interview, you can download it here.

This weekend brough the awful news that Adam Yauch aka MCA of the Beastie Boys passed away from the cancer he's been suffering from these last few years. I was going to play some favourite Beasties songs (there's certainly plenty) but decided to opt for the slightly more oblique path with two of dj BC's surprising and fun covers ‐ the first a nod to last week's show opener, Steve Reich, who I prefer by far to Philip Glass, but nevertheless dj BC's refits in Glassbreaks work perfectly.

As mentioned, Japan's noise maestro Merzbow is in town, and while we didn't delve into his aural nightmares themselves, we heard a couple of remixes from two big 2CD remix sets, both from 2003 (the year of FBi's and UFog's birth). Plug retains the sonic mayhem of the original but adds classic Vibertian vocal samples and amen breaks, and the Fennesz track predates his predominantly twinkly latter-day phase, so we have a nice wall of washed-out noise.

We heard a good array of Oren Ambarchi's music, not going back to his various '90s noise groups, but from his early solo guitar works, in which electric guitar was sent through an array of guitar effects the end product of which was something akin to minimal electronica. The interview is well worth listening to (within the show or separately) for some insights into how his creative process has changed over the years, as well as some great anecdotes from 2 decades of deep involvement in the noise and experimental music scene.

From Adelaide, Wolfpanther (previously known as Marxist Real Estate) picks up the four-track recorder after too long away, and gives us a slice of motorik noise-rock.

One of my albums of the week comes from the pairing of Benoît Pioulard & Rafael Anton Irissari as Orcas. Released on Morr Music, it's a kind of ambient indietronica, taking familiar elements from both artists, but somehow inspiring some truly beautiful songs and deep arrangements - grainy drones, washed-out shoegazey guitars, and a really gorgeous repeated piano motif in one track. Highly recommended.

Benoît Pioulard (aka Thomas Meluch) is no stranger to collaboration, and has worked with Praveen Sharma before. He appears on about half the tracks on a very ambient & folky new Praveen release only available via the Ghostly Music Service.
We last heard Praveen last year in his amazing post-footwork/post-r'n'b duo with Machinedrum, Sepalcure, so I slipped in a track from them too.

Onwards to our next special, and another album of the week — Filastine's £00t. For three albums now, he's explored the rough edges of the post-colonial, post-global world, with tight up-to-the-minute beats and production underpinning a real sensitivity to the cultures he borrows from (or collaborates with), while allowing the listener to just enjoy the music without being hammered with ideology (if they really want to). He's aided by the pretty extraordinary vocals of Indonesian singer Nova on a couple of tracks here, and some guerilla cello from Amélie Bouard. I can't find out anything about Jessika Skeletalia Kenny, whose very middle-eastern-sounding vocals adorn some earlier Filastine tracks.

Björk is still seeking out weird and wonderful artists to remix her, and so after last year's Exmilitary mixtape made a big impact, and their debut album proper The Money Folder has just come out, Death Grips do their manic, unhinged thing with two Biophilia tracks. The Money Folder is growing on me, but I still kind of feel it's a slight let-down after Exmilitary. But there's a second Death Grips album due out later this year — in fact they've cancelled all live gigs in order to finish it!

And from the first Biophilia remix single we had one of Current Value's typically bass-heavy drum'n'bass/dubstep reworks. We heard his work a week or two back as part of the excellent dubstep-meets-breakcore-meets-trip-hop group Underhill.

Almost finally, a hint of the sounds of Japanese electronica-loving songstress Coppe'. I picked up her remix album with UK-based collective bit-phalanx from last year, along with the insane coppe' in a bloc package which features the new album rays with Georgian producer Nikakoi, and a 2GB lego-shaped USB stick with hours and hours of remixes, collaborations, videos and DJ mixes. Crazy and mostly very very good! The bit-phalanx remixes are all of one track, "Yogurt", which is simple and catchy enough to happily stand 14 (very varied) repeat listens. And I first heard Nikakoi on his debut album in 2002, and followed him through his incarnation as Erast — we'll hear more of his melodic and complex idm next week, along with more Coppe'.

Also next week we have an interview with the lovely Cameron Webb aka Seaworthy, from whose album we took a beautiful piece of processed guitar. Hopefully he'll bring some instruments and play something live for us too.

dj BC - Einstein on the Beast [mashup you'll have to search for] {RIP MCA}
dj BC and the Beastles - Sure-Bla-Di Shot-Bla-Da [mashup you'll have to search for] {RIP MCA}
Plug vs Merzbow - Untitled [Important]
Fennesz vs Merzbow - Frog Remix [Misanthropic Agenda]
Oren Ambarchi - Girl With The Silver Eyes [Touch]
...interview with Oren Ambarchi including selected tracks...
Oren Ambarchi - murmur [Touch] {under interview}
Oren Ambarchi - The Strouhal Number [Touch] {under interview}
Ambarchi / O'Rourke / Haino - Tima Formosa 2 [Black Truffle/CCA Kitakyushu] {under interview}
Oren Ambarchi - Fractured Mirror [Touch]
Oren Ambarchi - concurrents [Touch]
Wolfpanther - Easter Analog Continuation [unreleased]
Orcas (Benoît Pioulard & Rafael Anton Irissari) - Pallor Cedes [Morr Music]
Orcas - Arrow Drawn [Morr Music]
Orcas - Until Then [Morr Music]
Praveen - King (feat. Benoît Pioulard) [Ghostly Music Service]
Sepalcure - Eternally Yrs [Hotflush]
Filastine - colony collapse (with Nova) [Post World Industries/Muti Music]
Filastine - gendjer2 (with Nova) [Post World Industries/Muti Music]
Filastine - crescent occupation [Soot/Über Lingua]
Filastine - autology (feat. Jessika Skeletalia Kenney) [Soot/Über Lingua]
Filastine - fitnah (feat. Jessika Skeletalia Kenny) [Soot/Post World Industries/Über Lingua]
Filastine - the sinking ship [Soot/Post World Industries/Über Lingua]
Filastine - sidi bouzid [Post World Industries/Muti Music]
Björk - sacrifice (Death Grips remix) [One Little Indian]
Death Grips - Guillotine [self-released]
Death Grips - Double Helix [Epic]
Björk - solstice (Current Value remix) [One Little Indian]
coppe' - yogurt (Gareth Clark remix) [mango + sweetrice/bit-phalanx]
coppe' - yogurt (t-toe's muesli and honey remix) [mango + sweetrice/bit-phalanx]
coppe' + nikakoi - forbidden: remix [mango + sweetrice]
nikakoi - climb [WMF Records]
Seaworthy - The Rustle of Weather Beaten Leaves [Preservation]

Listen again — ~ 160MB

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