Utility Fog

Sunday, 18th of November, 2012

I chatted with Nat Hawks aka Padna tonight, who has a new album out on Preservation.
You can download the interview and surrounding tracks separately here if you wish.
LISTEN AGAIN to the whole show via the link at the bottom, the podcast feed, or stream on demand from FBi.

Started with a nice acoustic yet shoegazey track from Padna. More about him later.

Alyx Dennison and Freya Berkhout put out their first album as kyü a couple of years, and found almost instant success, with gigs at major festivals and venues – and it seems as though it came too quickly, as the pair want more time to study and develop their craft. This is a brave and wise move, but it's certainly sad for us, given how wonderful their second album is, so go grab it at Bandcamp.

As total contrast we go from a female multi-instrumentalist/vocalist duo to the testosterone-fueled aggression of long-lived Adelaide hard-rockers The Mark of Cain. I can justify playing them on the 'Fog in as many ways as you like – not least because they're so tight and play such irresistible heavy riffs and catchy shouted choruses. And their influence is large and wide. But their drummer for over a decade has been John Stanier, best known to us perhaps sitting out front with his insanely high crash cymbal in Battles. And back in 1996 (pre-Stanier) they put out a ground-breaking EP of remixes, including artists like Justin K Broadrick. I played Paul Mac's very '90s, very excellent take (pretty sure it got a lot of airplay on the J's back at the time) but also wanted to air the creepy journey into the heart of darkness with another female duo, B(if)tek.

A couple of weeks ago I played a beautiful piano rendition of Philip Glass by Cornelius, and promised more from the remix album Beck has just put together. I have to admit I'm not as big a fan of Glass as, say, Steve Reich (who's been the subject himself of a remix album and 12"). I find him often trite and un-nuanced, don't sue me. Still, I'm a fan of the remix album, and there's a surprisingly high ratio of successes here, not least Beck's own 20-minute megamix which combines his own sweet-voiced vocals harmonies with an uncredited tour through Glass's canon.
The lack of credits for the original works is quite frustrating, so I was annoyed that there's no mention that "Warda's Whorehouse" is a collaboration with Foday Musa Suso. You may have heard me obsessing before about dj BC's excellent Philip Glass mashups album Glassworks, and that's where I heard this originally, mashed with the Fugees (it's on YouTube - listen NOW!). Amon Tobin is very much in-character in his remix, which is a good thing: there's enough of the original to enjoy the connection, but it's dark and bulky and heavy as you'd expect. Peter Broderick, too, is in character, evoking Glass with broken chords, within his post-classical/folk context, and building it up in a nice drone-wise way.

Next up, we hear a lovely piece of acoustic guitar looping and contact-mic scraping from Padna, with whom I had a 20-minute conversation about musical communities, live vs recording, physical formats and digital distribution. Well worth a listen! And his music's fantastic too :)

We then dive into breakcore-land with cdatakill, who has a very welcome new album out on Hymen. He dabbles with dubstep, like so many breakcore producers, but also drops some chopy amen breaks on a few tracks and some ridiculously (in a good way) heavy death metal riffs to shock you out of your seat. Going back through his history (a tiny bit), we heard a sick breakcore take on Billie Holiday's rendition of "Strange Fruit", something even heavier and more crazily distorted, and a remix from 2002 sampling Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 (hear Abelcain's original with more of the Shostakovich). A pretty heady mix.
Planning more breakcore & dubstep from Ad Noiseam next week!

Padna - Shoeg [Preservation]
kyü - Everything's a Centipede [self-released on Bandcamp]
kyü - Quiche [self-released on Bandcamp]
kyü - Scratch Piano [self-released on Bandcamp]
The Mark of Cain - Barkhammer [Feel Presents]
The Mark of Cain - The Contender (Paul Mac remix) [rooArt]
The Mark of Cain - R&R (Apocalypse Mix by B(if)tek) [rooArt]
Philip Glass - Warda's Whorehouse (Amon Tobin's Inside Out Version) [The Kora Records/Ernest Jenning/Orange Mountain Music]
Philip Glass & Foday Musa Suso - Warda's Whorehouse (excerpt) [Point Music]
Philip Glass - Island Remix (by Peter Broderick) [The Kora Records/Ernest Jenning/Orange Mountain Music]
Padna - Pelts [Preservation]
...interview with Nat Hawks aka Padna...
Padna - Green Plastic Prism (G.P.P.) [Preservation]
cdatakill - battleworn [Hymen]
cdatakill - Strange Fruit [Low Res]
cdatakill - Yesterdays [Ad Noiseam]
Abelcain - Black Bone Orchid (Remixed by Cdatakill) [Ad Noiseam]
cdatakill - The World Is Coming To Another End [Hymen]

Listen again — ~ 104MB

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