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!
LISTEN AGAIN via the usual methods: stream online, download below or podcast.

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]
Collarbones – Soul Hologram [Two Bright Lakes]
Collarbones – Teenage Dream [Two Bright Lakes]
Mala – Curfew [Brownswood Recordings]
Mala – Changuito [Brownswood Recordings]
Rudi Zygadlo – Russian Dolls [Planet µ]
Rudi Zygadlo – Catharine [Planet µ]
Rudi Zygadlo – Black Rhino [Planet µ]
Clark – Secret Slow Show (feat. Martina Topley Bird) [Warp]
Clark – Dove In Flames [Warp]
Fanu – Next To The Divine One I Awake [Lightless/Fanu Bandcamp]
Fanu – Going Home [Fanu Bandcamp] {free release!}
Fanu – Controversial [Fanu Bandcamp] {free release!}
Fanu – Salem (with Gigi) [Lightless/Fanu Bandcamp]
Fiium Shaarrk – We Advance Covered [Not Applicable]
Kate Carr – an inky night [Flaming Pines/Metal Bitch Recordings]
Gail Priest – randolph’s dream [Flaming Pines/Metal Bitch Recordings]
Michael Terren – Cureakling [Flaming Pines]
Michael Terren – These Ones [Flaming Pines]
Rene Hell – Meta Concrete [NNA Tapes]
Oneohtrix Point Never – The Letter [NNA Tapes]
Matthew Collings & Dag Rosenqvist – Wonderland Part One [Hibernate]
Matthew Collings & Dag Rosenqvist – Precipice [Hibernate]

Listen again — ~ 179MB

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!
Huge special on Talk Talk, mind you, took up much of the second half — due to the release this week of the 2CD tribute compilation Spirit of Talk Talk.
LISTEN AGAIN as usual… stream online at FBi, subscribe to podcast, download below.

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.
That said, the last 2 1/2 Talk Talk albums are some of the most exquisitely poised, perfectly conceived and executed music ever recorded. There, I said it. Well, they are. So what can an artist covering these tunes hope to add? I suppose what this double CD set achieves, undoubtedly, is the status of a tribute. All the artists are extremely respectful of the music, and many turn in deeply honest, emotion-laden takes on some wonderful songs. Some of the entirely straight renditions like Lone Wolf‘s “Wealth” and S. Carey‘s “I Believe In You” are lovely to hear even if they can’t be expected to surpass the originals, just because of this. Frequent collaborators Nils Frahm & Peter Broderick join with Goldfrapp/Coldplay string arranger and guitarist Davide Rossi for a version of one of my favourites, “It’s Getting Late In The Evening”, setting the synths (I think) of the instrumental as close-scored strings, but losing some of the edge of the original.
On the other hand, some stretch and bend the originals into something new, so Matthias Vogt Trio set “April 5th” as instrumental jazz piano quintet, with upright bass and piano taking turns with the melody. It’s occasionally too pleasant, but a beautifully executed idea. And Depeche Mode’s Alan Wilder, who helped curate the compilation, appears twice as Recoil. I played his take on “Inheritance”, featuring spoken words from Linton Kwesi Johnson and sung vocals from Paul Marshall of Lone Wolf, in a kind of Mezzanine-era Massive Attack interpretation. It shouldn’t work, but it really does.
A lot of the majesty of Talk Talk, which influenced so many bands that came later, is the uncanny restraint in these works. The least successful covers are lacking in this regard, or lack the jagged edge of the improv aspects found particularly on Laughing Stock and Mark Hollis’ self-titled solo album. I played a few of the originals, too, just because, including the lo-fi rough & ready indie romanticism of Heligoland, the solo project of producer Tim Friese-Greene, who was so integral in their latter-day sound.

Rude Audio – Wise Blood (Geese remix) [direct from Geese]
yyu – when you said that [Beer on the Rug]
yyu – moo.1 [yyu Bandcamp]
yyu – SHOVELKITENOW [yyu Bandcamp]
yyu – BREAKFASTSANDWICH [yyu Bandcamp]
yyu – yyyy [Beer on the Rug]
Guatemala – A Dying Girl’s Message [Duskdarter]
Guatemala – Parapet [Duskdarter]
Children of the Wave – Far Away Choirs [Sensory Projects]
Children of the Wave – Kora [Sensory Projects]
Children of the Wave – Dip Your Toe Into The Water [unreleased?]
Children of the Wave – Start Stop [Sensory Projects]
Grizzly Bear – What’s Wrong? [Warp]
Matthias Vogt Trio – April 5th [Fierce Panda]
Nils Frahm/Peter Broderick/Davide Rossi – It’s Getting Late In The Evening [Fierce Panda]
Talk Talk – The Rainbow [Parlophone]
Mark Hollis – The colour of spring [Polydor]
Recoil (feat. Linton Kwesi Johnson & Paul Marshall) – Inheritance [Fierce Panda]
Do Make Say Think – New Grass [Fierce Panda]
Talk Talk – Ascension Day [Parlophone]
Heligoland – Creosote & Tar [Calcium Chloride]

Listen again — ~ 102MB

We’ve got post-classical, drone, even some prog-metal later on…
LISTEN AGAIN as per usual – link’s at bottom, it’s in the podcast, and of course you can stream on demand from FBi.

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.
And Kihlstedt is as accomplished a singer as she is a violinist and arranger. I wanted to play HEAPS of her stuff too but time and sense intervened, so we just had a few: one solo track and one from her trio 2 Foot Yard (named after the first album with a similar lineup), exemplifying incredible chamber arrangements with a punk spirit, twisty harmonic shifts and of course brilliant musicianship; and one track from the legendary Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, featuring Kihlstedt and her partner Matthias Bossi alongside Dan Rathbun and Nils Frykdahl in a bizarre amalgam of prog, metal, classical and… who knows what else; and finally a track from Kihlstedt & Bossi’s latest project, Rabbit Rabbit Radio, a monthly subscription service delivering one new track, plus video, images and words from the two plus regular collaborators. A treasure trove of awesome.

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]
Edwin Montgomery – Sunday Night [available from Bandcamp]
Gilded – Tyne [Hidden Shoal]
Gilded – Expand/Contract [Hidden Shoal]
Hiva Oa – Seadog [mini50records]
Hiva Oa – These Hands [mini50records]
Fieldhead – a correction [Gizeh Records]
Fieldhead – this train is a rainbow [Home Assembly Music]
Fieldhead – he’d found the sea [Home Assembly Music]
Fieldhead – northern canada [Gizeh Records]
tin hat – the enormous room [New Amsterdam Records]
tin hat – unchanging [New Amsterdam Records]
tin hat trio – fire of ada [Angel Records]
Tin Hat Trio – Helium [Angel Records]
Tin Hat Trio – Nickel Mountain [Ropeadope]
Carla Kihlstedt – Rooting for the Shy Librarian [Tzadik]
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Formicary [Polymorph Recording]
2 Foot Yard – Borrowed Arms [Yard Work – self-released] {try CD Baby}
Rabbit Rabbit Radio – The Curious One [Rabbit Rabbit Radio, now available from Bandcamp]
tin hat – little i [New Amsterdam Records]
Memory Drawings – High Sea Light [free from Bandcamp]
Boards of Canada – Untitled (Machinedrum edit) [available from SoundCloud]

Listen again — ~ 101MB

Ah, the world keeps creating kickass music and I keep playing it to you. It’s the way things should be.
LISTEN AGAIN because it rocked. You know the drill. Stream on demand. Podcast (see sidebar). Download from bottom of playlist.

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]
toe – all i understand is that i don’t understand [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – メトロノーム (metronome) [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – グッドバイ / Goodbye [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – モスキートンはもう聞こえない#1 [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – モスキートンはもう聞こえない#2 [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – Our Next Movement [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – ordinary days [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
Ametsub – Dimmur [nothings66]
Ametsub – Roving Pianist [Progressive Form]
Ametsub – Lichen With Piano [Mille Plateaux]
Ametsub – Time for Trees [Mille Plateaux]
Ametsub – Precipice Drive [nothings66]
Mannheim Rocket – B1 [3BS Records]
Mount Analogue – B2 [3BS Records]
0.1 – a worm ate the starting point [available from Bandcamp]
Chris Cook – The Gospel According To Dale [wombnet]
Chris Cook – Stand Up [wombnet]
Hiva Oa – Badger [mini50records]
Hiva Oa – The Minder [mini50records]
Hiva Oa – Mindful Of [mini50records]
Fieldhead – neon, ugly [Gizeh Records]
Gilded – Cluttered Room [Hidden Shoal]

Listen again — ~ 106MB