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. LISTEN ONLINE now! Click here to find the start time for the show at your location! {Hey! Sign up to Utilityfoglet and get playlists emailed to you after each show!}
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Sunday, 30th of September, 2012
Playlist 30.09.12 (10:06 pm)
Space beats, dubstep-meets-'80s-pop, intricate drum'n'bass, improvtronica, field recordings meet ambient, post-classical meets noise, we've got it all tonight! Collarbones' long-awaited second album was FBi's album of the week last week, and deservedly so. It's even more influenced by their love of r'n'b, and perhaps not as much is typical UFog fare, but they still love constructing their music out of unusual chunks of sound (tiny vocal samples etc). "Soul Hologram" is more along the glitchy lines of their earlier work, while "Teenage Dream" is perhaps as close as they'll get to a dubstep beat, which takes us nicely into the next selections... Mala's one of the undisputed kings of dubstep, since the beginning, and has made and released some of the most iconoclastic tunes of the genre, solo, as part of DMZ and with his Deep Medi label. Initially, Gilles Peterson's idea of having Mala collaborate with Cuban musicians seemed a bit odd – Mala's roots are Jamaican, and his music is dark, heavy, slow-moving in ways that I couldn't imagine gelling with Cuban music's rhythms and jazzy sensuality. But he's made it work, especially on some of the highlight tracks – mostly, I think, by making classic dubstep rather than trying to warp his sound. It's beautiful when the Cuban piano chords, percussion or bass sneak through here and there, but it's certainly more "Mala" than "Cuba". Young Scottish producer Rudi Zygadlo is certainly not a dubstep traditionalist. On his first album and this new one he hangs his '80s(?) pop vocals, odd quasi-classical string arrangements and post-Zappa jazz off a post-dubstep framework... it's unlike anything anyone else is doing. It's on that borderline between totes naff and pretty cool, but heck, I enjoy it :) Great to hear another excellent song with Martina Topley Bird on Clark's new EP. For all that it's been described as the dancefloor cousin of the album Iradelphic, to me it doesn't sound that different. He can be a lot more techno than this – but I prefer him in this mode anyway. The last track, which I also played, seems like classic '90s ambient idm, of the like that µ-Ziq used to make. Keep the faith, Christopher! Awesome that Finnish d'n'b/breaks maestro Fanu has just setup a Bandcamp for himself. We get to grab his earliest 12"s for a steal, plus there's a whole free album's worth of unreleased tracks! But peeps, if you're partaking of the free shit, consider buying something too m'kay? Fanu's a master at intricate break choppery at all tempos, but he doesn't skimp on melody, bass and all the rest. And he has one or two very fine female vocal collaborators too. Not to be missed. Speaking of d'n'b technicians, you probably couldn't be unaware of my obsession with Icarus, and both members have any number of side projects going on. Sam Britton releases solo records as Isambard Khroustalov (nope, no idea why), but here with Fiium Shaarrk he's collaborating with Rudi Fischerlehner on drums and Maurizio Ravalico on percussion, so it's pretty free improv (like a lot of his stuff), but also pretty rhythmic. I'll be playing some more from this soon for sure. Sydney's Kate Carr's doing amazing work with her Flaming Pines label and I have two new releases to spin tonight, both (as usual) mixing field recordings and more "musical" elements. First up is a split between Kate Carr herself, with natural sounds brushing up against electric guitar, and the always-amazing Gail Priest mixing vocals in with her electronics – reminiscent of Motion Sickness of Time Travel (or is it the other way round?) Also on Flaming Pines is young Perth artist Michael Terren, who dragged an upright piano into a field in his childhood farm, and the sounds of birds and cows coexist with his minimalist piano pieces without (potentially) the need for any fancy mixing. And it's beautiful music, which helps! And another split release follows, from two contemporary noise/not-noise artists who are willing to bury true beauty beneath squalling distortion or awesomely ugly digital edits. Rene Hell comes on all neo-classical on his side, with screetching noise over pensive piano, somewhat reminiscent of Burning Star Core. Oneohtrix Point Never, meanwhile, comes on all early Fennesz, with glitching micro-samples. We finish with not a split release but a collaboration between Edinburgh-based sound artist Matthew Collings & Sweden's Dag Rosenqvist (no longer Jasper TX), with beautiful acoustic sounds, drones and heavy noise, on an essential 3" CD from Hibernate. Collarbones - Missing [Two Bright Lakes] Listen again — ~ 179MB
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Sunday, 23rd of September, 2012
Playlist 23.09.12 (10:10 pm)
Huge amount of stuff came in this week, of which I managed to play perhaps 2/3. Which is fine, because more great stuff next week! Opening track tonight comes courtesy of the lovely string duo Geese, who sent me their remix of trip-hoppy collective Rude Audio. Geese remixes are always pretty much amazing, and this is no exception — bouncing bows and driving rhythms, most excellent. No idea what the original sounds like, mind you :) And then we dive into a pile of awesome tunes from Californian solo artist yyu. His new album's on the tape (and Bandcamp) label Beer on the Rug, but he has a bunch of stuff also on his own Bandcamp, and it's the kind of bewildering music I love, never settling on one particular genre, with strummy indiefolk tunes being interrupted by glitching edits in the middle, beats that would suit the Tri-Angle label and minimal glitchscapes. All with excellent musicianship and songwriting charmingly hidden by ramshackle production. Love it. From Brisbane, the rather unsettling ambience and spoken samples of Guatemala seemed to flow on nicely. Reminiscent of the most mysterious of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol II, it's one of the two first releases on new Brisbane label Duskdarter, off to an excellent start. Skipping now down to Melbourne, we join Children of the Wave for their second album. It pretty much carries on from where 2008's Carapace left off, which is awesome: odd song structures with ambient interludes (or prefaces), quasi-beats here and there, genuine songs floating out of weird world samples, and some very fine guest musicians. One of the Aussie album highlights of the year so far. And then, because I've been a fan since the start, we had one track from the new Grizzly Bear album. It's certainly their most pop, one could say MOR, album yet, but still pretty great, and this song in particular has an ending that's just straight out of the Talk Talk songbook, as everything drops down to the basics, with muffled loping percussion, clarinet, piano and muted screeching strings. And the last 20 seconds are just gorgeous. And thus we come to Talk Talk. A lot of people have problems with cover albums and remix albums. They feel they're superfluous, don't add anything to the originals, are just a lazy maybe? I'm not sure to be honest. But to deride covers is to deny music's millenia-long history. Any classical musician spends the majority of their time playing & interpreting other people's music, and most folk, jazz and world music involves the same. Rude Audio - Wise Blood (Geese remix) [direct from Geese] Listen again — ~ 102MB
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Sunday, 16th of September, 2012
Playlist 16.09.12 (10:03 pm)
We've got post-classical, drone, even some prog-metal later on... It's great to have something new from Edwin Montgomery to play you. His cinematic (that word comes up a lot with his work), post-rocky sounds have graced the show a lot in the past, but it's been a little while, and he's back with an EP of honest-to-goodness songs! It's somewhat misleadingly called 4 Songs, given it has 6 tracks, but 4 of them are songs. Ought to get more widespread airplay! We preview a couple more tracks from the awesome new duo from Adam Trainer and Matt Rösner aka Pablo Dali, Gilded. Beautiful acoustic and electronic music which is too minimalist to postrock or indie, but too much going on for drone. They'll be in Sydney in a bit over a month - I'll let you know! Also a reprise from last week, Edinburgh trio Hiva Oa bring us more gorgeous acoustic/experimental sounds, from layered cello to strummed indiefolk with an electronic edge. I like the way it doesn't try and fit into any trends — it's just very varied, very idiosyncratic stuff. And beautiful. And before our big special for the night, a bunch of tunes from the wonderful Fieldhead, late of Leeds (er, Leeds area before someone corrects me), once upon a time a member of The Declining Winter, more recently living in Canada. His new album continues the grainy textures and precise beats of the his first, with perhaps more emphasis on the acoustic elements. Highly recommended. And now the majority of the second hour of the show is dedicated to the music of the wondrous Tin Hat (Trio) and their violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, one of musical heroes. I first heard them at a venue in Manhattan's East Village called Tonic, which was closely associated with the Tzadik label, although Tin Hat are west coast representatives. Mark Orton's guitar skips around tango rhythms while Carla Kihlstedt's violin and Rob Burger's accordion entwine in gorgeous old-worlde harmonies. But there's a clue in the hidden track, where Mike Patton guests in semi-disguise, and not longer after we find Carla appearing on the last Mr Bungle album. Still, despite their connections with experimental and improvised music, Tin Hat, as a trio and later augmented, always emphasise the very approachable, melodic, tender side of their music, incorporating Americana, jazz, klezmer and classical traditions in a playful way. Their new album, the first in a good few years, is a tribute to the poetry of e.e. cummings, one of my favourite poets (speaking, admittedly, as not much of a connoisseur of poetry). I can't really speak for whether these are sensitive settings of the words; the one poem I'm very familiar with ("anyone lived in a pretty how town") didn't really sound like that in my head, but also seems to fit very well with what they've done. To me it's a wonderful opportunity to hear a whole new album of Tin Hat's fabulous music, benefiting from the Ben Goldberg's heavy contra alto clarinet, while Goldber's clarinet, the violin and new member Rob Reich's accordion weave familiarly delicious harmonies elsewhere. After all this, I managed to slip in one track from the lovely Memory Drawings, some pretty folk/post-classical from a free Bandcamp EP. And then we close with something pretty bizarre and cool: Machinedrum lovely a track from the end of a Boards of Canada live bootleg so much, he decided to recreate it, piece by piece — beats, synths, samples and all. His "edit" features elements from the original (including the crowd cheering at the end), but sounds very much like Machinedrum, but whether it's an authentic rendition of BoC or not, it's a bloody good track. Edwin Montgomery - The Abyss [available from Bandcamp] Listen again — ~ 101MB
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Sunday, 9th of September, 2012
Playlist 09.09.12 (10:13 pm)
Ah, the world keeps creating kickass music and I keep playing it to you. It's the way things should be. Started tonight with a big special on the amazing Japanese postrock band toe. So glad I visited White Noise Records in Hong Kong in July. They're obsessed with these guys, and have co-released or re-released most of their music for HK. Some Hong Kong artists guest on their more recent releases too. They have that joyful love of glitchy digital cut-up studio stuff, an absolutely insanely great drummer, they drop vocals in when they feel like it, and altogether keep the freak flag flying for this kind of fun, energetic postrock. Love it. Also from Japan are some absoultely amazing sounds from young Tokyo producer Ametsub. His first album came out in 2006 on Progressive Form and is pretty hard to find these days, but the other two are still available, and all are amazing. There's lushly-recorded piano on a lot of tracks, liberally processed, chopped up and generally fucked with, along with electronics, samples and crunchy beats. There are some real head-nodding contemporary-sounding beats in there too, as well as some more . Very very fine, do check this out. Sydney artist Mannheim Rocket has relocated to Berlin for a while, but that hasn't slowed the releases on his 3BS Records. The latest is a split with Glasgow artist Mount Analogue, with the two swapping samples on the two "sides". Nice hearing some good ol' fashioned breakcore from Mount Analogue here. And we continue the frenetic beats with 0.1 from his 2009 release Liquid Mirror, mixing mad glitchy drill'n'bass with a kind of wispy post-rock songwriting aesthetic. Looking forward to an eventual release on Feral Media Next up, the new release from Brighton artist Chris Cook, a free download on wombnet. Previously known as Remote, Hot Roddy and Same Actor, he lights out here under his own name for the first time, with an album featuring his characteristic sitar and laptop beats and long with some vocals this time... It's quite dark and distinctly odd, definitely worth a listen. Hiva Oa are an awesome discovery courtesy of their label mini50records. An Edinburgh trio of guitar/vocals, cello and bass, they're augmented by female vocals, field recordings, studio chatter and some nice processing, as well as drums on a few tracks. It's pretty special stuff, ranging from indiefolk songs to guitar and cello soundscapes and dark upbeat numbers. Fieldhead's an old Utiity Fog favourite and it's great to have a new album out now (only on vinyl and digital unfortunately). I'll be playing more from him next week, but it's more of his fantastic drones, acoustic instruments and minimal beats, including the violin of Elaine Reynolds from The Boats. And we finish with a really exciting release from Perth duo Gilded, due out next month. It's a new collaboration between Adam Trainer of legendary postrock band Radarmaker and Matt Rösner aka Pablo Dali. Acoustic instruments, drones, Hood-like vocals, it's gonna be fantastic. They're playing Sydney in late October, so keep an eye out. toe - the future is now [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records] Listen again — ~ 106MB
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Sunday, 2nd of September, 2012
Playlist 02.09.12 (10:11 pm)
Tonight we range from dark folk through folktronica and glitchy drill'n'bass to alt hip-hop and post-classical. Everything you need from a 'Fog! So lovely to start with the chilled out, somewhat creepy sounds of Matthew Sweet's Boduf Songs. His whispery voice is accompanied by fingerpicked acoustic guitar and spectral effects, plus sometimes full-blown rock riffage. But mostly it's quiet and doom-laden. I love his use of effects and sound, but frankly he can be just as effective with only voice and guitar, as he's a very fine songwriter. Highly recommended to check out his back catalogue, especially 2010's This Alone Above All Else In Spite Of Everything. We get into the folktronic spirit next with Milwaukee's Erik Schoster He Can Jog. It's funny how many excellent artists there are out there who you can discover well into their career. I've heard a number of He Can Jog's remixes in the last couple of years, and a great release on Nomadic Kids Republic, but only just picked up 2008's Middlemarch — and it's excellent abstract folktronica, with pointers towards the more drone-heavy recent works. We'll get to David Edwards' Minotaur Shock shortly — as an intro I played a pretty funky, choppy track from the new album, which I think really deserves more wide airplay. But then... Greg Stone from Underlapper/Feral Media alerted me to the music of Bob Streckfuss aka 0.1 earlier this week. And wow, intricate glitchy programming with something resembling Sigur Rós vocals and postrock dynamics. You can download a fair lot from his Bandcamp and SoundCloud, and expect a release from Feral Media pretty soon! So, Minotaur Shock. His first 12" came out on Melodic in 2000 and helped establish it as the go-to for folktronica for a few years back then. Eventually those excellent 12"s were collected on CD as Rinse, but in 2001 he also released his debut album of delicate acoustic sounds and clattery laptop beats. It set the stage even when Four Tet was only making his way into beats plus glitches plus acoustic guitars. Edwards then went on to sign to 4ad, but a restructuring of the label's focus meant physical formats were released late, and Minotaur Shock was left by the wayside — a sadly familiar story for a mid-range artist picked up by a big(gish) label. His next album was initially self-released on his own website, then picked up on CD by Audio Dregs in the US, and it's lovely to find him back home on Melodic for the new one. Next up, I have the chance of dropping a track by Bracken, by virtue of the remix being by Buddy Peace, who produced almost all the beats on the new B. Dolan record. We heard a couple of oldies from him as well, displaying his amazing beat-poetry raps, but the best is saved for last — a classic protest song recorded by all the greats, sampled with a head-nodding beat and augmented by Bernard Dolan's right-on excoriation of intolerance in hip-hop culture. Check the official video for more political context. Finally, another that I'm incredibly proud to have played on, from Sophie Hutchings' gorgeous new album Night Sky. Boduf Songs - Temping [Morc Tapes] Listen again — ~ 106MB
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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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