Utility Fog

Sunday, 21st of July, 2013

Folktronica of a sort, world-tronica, guitar loops, black metal drone and omnichord improv make up tonight's show...
LISTEN (again?) via the usual link at the bottom, podcast, or stream on demand from FBi.

The first time I heard Washington (the US state, not the capital city) based duo Cock and Swan was the lovely acoustic track "Unrecognized" on a Lost Tribe Sound compilation. So it was something of a surprise to discover that they were better known as an electronic pop group. In any case, their Lost Tribe Sound album, Stash, was one of my favourite albums last year, and was much in the vein of that song: warmly organic but bustling with rhythmic interplay - reminiscent of Broadcast and Stereolab at their best. So it's pretty great to get a pre-release promo of their new album for Seattle label Hush Hush (I'm actually not quite sure when it comes out).
It's recognizably more electronic and sample-based, but the busy beats, keyboard patterns and most importantly the vocals are familiar and delightful to settle back into. Highly recommended stuff (well you can get Stash now, and hopefully the newie's just around the corner!)

Various Production are still trickling tracks out in singles and pairs, and they're still mostly pretty excellent. That's probably all I need to say. Check it.

Filastine's £oot album from last year was a masterful collection of world-influenced beats, made transcendent through the collaborations with Indonesian singer/rapper Nova. Because of the distinctive sound and the central role of Filastine's production, I didn't have very high hopes for the remix album he's just released. But there are some pretty nice takes on his tracks, including Aussie Brian May, now based in Berlin, in his DJ Delay guise, and some very Burialesque sounds from Danish producer Unkwon. Prior to Nova Ruth's work with Filastine, his albums featured the Persian-influenced vocals of Jessika Kenney, known now for her collaborations with partner Eyvind Kang. I wanted to play her highlight tracks from both albums, but resisted, and the glitchy classical/Flamenco guitar & beats of "the sinking ship" were worth it.

Back to Sydney, we heard a number of tracks from young producer Jordan T Sexty aka Blackout. His music is created predominantly from guitar and loop pedals, but ranges from familiar instrumental shoegazey tracks to experimental miniatures and more cinematic productions. An artist to watch.

For a lot of this year & last I've been obsessed with the outer reaches of metal, post-metal, black metal and so on - but I haven't wanted to let too much of that leak into the show. Still, given I like to play noise & drone, and given I've played plenty of remixes of this stuff, I'm not sure there's any reason to section it off. This goes especially for Chicago trio Locrian, who are as likely to make drone as some kind of black metal. On the occasion of their latest album coming out, I played a bit of a retrospective, with older tracks covering everything from crackly drones to synthscapes, screaming vocals to string arrangements, while the new album opens with an upbeat instrumental metal track which sounds like the least dark thing they've done, and also features a lovely unplugged groove accompanied by some shrieking synth distortion.
We also heard from one of their collaborative albums, with metal/Americana/drone maestro Horseback, this one remixed by one of the grand masters of the grindcore/drone/post-metal/electronic world, James Plotkin.

And finally, a bit of ambient omnichord improv from Adelaide's Wolfpanther, who released a large array of music in tiny quantities as Marxist Real Estate for many years, and has started up again under this new name, again with a freeform approach to genre. Hopefully more coming in unexpected ways and times...

Cock and Swan - Following [Hush Hush]
Cock and Swan - Stash [Lost Tribe Sound]
Cock and Swan - Secret Angle [Hush Hush]
Cock and Swan - Unrecognized [Lost Tribe Sound]
Cock and Swan - Kicking In [Hush Hush]
Various - Key [Various]
Filastine - Gendjer2 (with Nova) (DJ Delay Remix) [Post World Industries]
Filastine - autology (feat. Jessika Skeletalia Kenney) [Post World Industries/Soot/Über Lingua]
Filastine - the sinking ship [Post World Industries]
Filastine - colony collapse (with Nova) [Post World Industries]
Filastine - No Step (Unkwon Remix [Post World Industries]
Blackout - Inbred Seed [Blackout Bandcamp]
Blackout - Flower Power / Valley Cuts / Soundtrack To A Scandal [Blackout Bandcamp]
Blackout - Sleeper [Blackout Bandcamp]
Locrian - Eternal Return [Relapse]
Locrian - The Crystal World (Instrumental) [Utech Records]
Locrian - Elevations And Depths [Utech Records]
Locrian - Coprolite [Fan Death Records/Relapse]
Horseback | Locrian - The Gift (remix by James Plotkin) [Relapse]
Locrian - Two Moons [Relapse]
Wolfpanther - Auto Bass Sync [Wolfpanther SoundCloud]

Listen again — ~103MB

Comments are closed.