Utility Fog

Sunday, 13th of January, 2013

Evening all! Here we are again! Unearthed from vinyl which I bought mid-last-year, we have some truly amazing sounds from Cédric Stevens. I need to play you more of this!

About the first half of this show is "new" music - including some genuinely released in 2013! The other half is overflow from our best of 2012 list, which is ongoing and will feature throughout January (at least!)

LISTEN - link at the bottom, subscribe to podcast, or better, stream on demand from FBi!

We started with Cédric Stevens, whose 2LP set The Syncopated Elevators Legacy collects music recorded between 1997 and 2005 as The Syncopated Elevators Legacy, along with a remarkable set of remixes from Fennesz, Sylvain Chauveau, My Cat Is An Alien, Burning Star Core, Motion Sickness of Time Travel and Leyland Kirby. The original music, while varied, centres around analogue synth explorations that fit perfectly into today's noise-meets-ambient directions of Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never et al. I have to say I bought the album for the remixes, and they are uniformly brilliant, but the original material is no less fantastic.
It's just a shame it's released only on vinyl, and in a very limited edition at that. Not just because I essentially don't buy vinyl, but because it limits its reach so much. And for a rare vinyl listener like me it's taken half a year for me to wire up the stereo to my laptop in order to record it to my hard drive, where it's now in a format where I'll be giving it repeated listens for sure!

Awesome to have a second album out from crazy huge dub/breakcore/metal supergroup The Blood of Heroes. No Bill Laswell this time round, but still with end.user and Submerged on the beats, Dr Israel's vocals and the genius Justin K Broadrick on guitars. Not to mention the legendary Tony Maimone also on guitars, and many others... It's heavy and truly, truly great.

Speaking of Broadrick, his JK Flesh project which was inaugurated last year takes him as close as he's been for years to Godflesh. Sad to hear, Hydra Head Records are closing up shop, and JK Flesh has teamed up for a split 12" with Prurient to send off the label. Wow, what a combo. Prurient's tracks are noisier than his recent album, but without going total screamo. And the last track is a sort of noise-laden ambient piece, and really beautiful. The JK Flesh tracks are each better than the other (whichever order you play them in). Heavy, even when there's no guitars, with industrial beats influenced by dubstep, hip-hop, drum'n'bass, whatever. Yes.

And so now we get in to more Best of 2012. I didn't write up the other best-ofs, and I probably won't with this either - the idea is to do a big post with my favourite music, but I'm not sure I'm un-lazy enough to get to it!

However, I do need to draw your attention to the Why? tracks. I didn't listen to Mumps, etc properly during 2012. I heard it once but was waiting to get hold of the CD. WHICH IS HARD THESE DAYS, although I don't know why it was so hard with this album. In any case, I had rudely underestimated this album. Turns out it's awesome - not quite Alopecia levels of awesome, but really great. He's still got the bizarre and thought-provoking turns of phrase, strange melodic sensibility, and the band's arrangements are very fine, including some great string parts!

Cédric Stevens - The Siamese Level - Linear Enlightenment mix [Discrepant]
Cédric Stevens - Disguised Telescopes on Their Way to Planet Bottle (Burning Star Core remix) [Discrepant]
The Blood of Heroes - Piration [Ohm Resistance]
The Blood of Heroes - The Last Forest [Ohm Resistance]
JK Flesh - Obediant Automaton [Hydra Head]
Prurient - I Understand You [Hydra Head]
Jessica Bailiff - take me to the sun (so warm, so ready) [Kranky]
Boduf Songs - Temping [Morc Tapes]
Alexander Tucker - Window Sill [http://www.thrilljockey.com/]
Imbogodom - Slate Grey Light [http://www.thrilljockey.com/]
Grumbling Fur - Huthering Whites [Latitudes]
Why? - Distance [Anticon]
Why? - Bitter Thoughts [Anticon]
björk - dark matter (alva noto remodel) [One Little Indian]
Goth-Trad - Man in the Maze [Deep Medi]
Komonazmuk - So Crazy [Hench]
Cristian Vogel - Lucky Connor [Shitkatapult]
Icarus - Dumptruck Cannibals [Not Applicable]

Listen again — ~ 107MB

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