Utility Fog

Sunday, 19th of August, 2012

Tonight, Sunken Foal special, and Japanese music special by way (mostly) of Hong Kong's White Noise Records...
LISTEN AGAIN via link at bottom or stream on demand from FBi.

Started tonight with a pretty massive special on Irish electronic artist Dunk Murphy aka Sunken Foal. From the early 2000s he had a duo with Trev O'Reilly called Ambulance, who released a stunning granular idm album on Planet µ in 2003. Then his first solo album came out in 2008, opening with the languorous piano and electronics of "Dutch Elm", but keeping for the most part the crunchy beats, along with some vocals and well-placed samples (including this incredibly creepy poem from the 1961 movie The Innocents)...
Like many from ostensibly the idm world, Murphy has been attracted to dubstep/"Bass" beats more recently, some of which came to the surface in his excellent remix of trip-hop/dubstep artist Blue Daisy. We also heard a more upbeat track from his mini-album on Acroplane from last year, and then something a whole lot more downtempo from his duo The Natural History Museum with singer/songwriter Carol Keogh, featuring piano and subtle beats along with the vocals.
On the new album there's everything from mandolins & ukuleles to deep post-bassline grooves, vocodered raps and cut-up female vocals. It's free and it's awesome, so go get it!

Heading down to Melbourne, we join The Atlas Room, who moved from Sydney about a year ago and is making fab minimal techno grooves & submerged dubscapes. Grab it from Bandcamp.
And Perth's Kučka is taking the wobbly lopsided template of contemporary beats and dropping it under her very original and odd songwriting and piano. One to watch for sure (and also a a free download!).
Meanwhile Sam Gilles also donated a track to the latest New Weird Australia compilation. We've heard him before on the show with his Cycle~440 duo. Nice to hear the mysterious spoken samples along with piano and processing here.

And then we head north to Japan, courtesy of the awesome White Noise Records of Hong Kong, who I had the pleasure of visiting a few weeks back. First up is jazz/post-rock ensemble Mouse on the Keys, whose one or two (or sometimes three?) pianos plus incredible drumming have graced two EPs and an album, plus a DVD so far. Their latest EP just came out this year, and follows the same pattern of interlocking piano patterns and drum'n'bass-influenced drumming, with more jazzy/groovy tracks and some studio experimentation in between. Just great.
They're released on MachuPicchu Industrias, which is the label formed by the guys from post-rock band extraordinaire toe. White Noise Records are big fans and have recently re-released toe's earliest album and EP, but I did miss out on the fact that toe had a NEW EP out in late June as well, so that one's still on its way to me. They bear, to my ears, a bit of an influence from Mice Parade, with free-wheeling melodies and acoustic guitars along with double-speed drumming mixed up in the standard post-rock instrumentation, along with some nice mixing techiques and some electronics and piano in later material, and the occasional vocal collaboration. I'll get to some more of their stuff when the new EP arrives!

Next up, one of the more drill'n'bassy tracks from Go-qualia's album on the mighty World's End Girlfriend's label Virgin Babylon Records. There's some more glitchy ambient stuff on the record, with beats often popping up halfway through tracks — it's classic Japanese electronica, in fine style.
And ditto for Fredricson, whose two albums have been released by Preco, the record label run from out of Tokyo's Linus Records. Wonky samples, melodies and accelerated beats are the order of the day here. Sometimes I feel like Japan is keeping up the "my kind of music" job with an uncanny accuracy and reliabilty not always reflected in the rest of the world. NICE ONE NIPPON.

Sunken Foal - Cool Arms of Love [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal - Drain the Dropsy [Countersunk]
Ambulance - The Tams [Planet µ]
Sunken Foal - Dutch Elm [Planet µ]
Sunken Foal - Triplehorn [Planet µ]
Blue Daisy - Blood Petal Roses (Sunken Foal remix) [Black Acre Records]
Sunken Foal - Gift Knee Pads [Acroplane]
The Natural History Museum - The Small Hours [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal - Chizzlers (feat. Carol Keogh) [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal - Monkey Puzzle [Countersunk]
The Atlas Room - Physika [available from Bandcamp]
The Atlas Room - Reprise [available from Bandcamp]
Kučka - rewind [Wood & Wire]
Kučka - polly (serialkillersundays) [Wood & Wire]
Sam Gilles - People Are Afraid To Merge On The Highway [New Weird Australia]
Mouse on the Keys - 最後の晩餐 [MachuPicchu Industrias]
Mouse on the Keys - Completed Nihilism / Spectres de mouse [MachuPicchu Industrias]
Mouse on the Keys - aom [MachuPicchu Industrias]
toe - 向こう岸が視る夢 (mukougishi ga miru yume) [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe - music for you [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe - グッドバイ Album Version (feat. Toki Asako) [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
Go-qualia - 2 [Virgin Babylon Records]
Fredricson - rub [Preco]
Fredricson - Chk in bird [Preco]

Listen again — ~ 106MB

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