Utility Fog

Sunday, 27th of April, 2014

Another great week of music, but finished off with a tragedy - the death of Chicago footwork legend DJ Rashad way before his time.
Drum'n'bass up-and-comer Alix Perez is joined by the late DJ Rashad & his frequent collaborator DJ Spinn on his excellent new EP. Then we have mysterious act Hardware on Various Production's label, sounding a lot like Various but with plenty of heft, a good combo of Bass, drum'n'bass and footwork.

From the Blue mountains, Comatone has often dealt in idm & breakcore stylings, but his new mini-album is a little mini-soundtrack in style. Very nice ambient and bass-heavy sounds.
And just to change the pace a little, Jamie Hutchings of Bluebottle Kiss has turned his regular backing band into a real collaborative band called Infinity Broke, and there are a couple of excellent long rock jams on their debut album, including a radically-adapted BBK track I played, featuring his sister Sophie on vocals and piano.
And Sydney's Fabels have a piece of angsty trilingual shoegaze-punk as an intro to hopefully a good lot of new material again this year.

And now a serious lot of William Ryan Fritch, who's having a really big year at Lost Tribe Sound, with a big subscription series of albums coming with bonus EPs & download soundtrack albums and other stuff. I played a range of tracks from the first EP and album, along with something from a recent soundtrack and some other stuff. He's a highly accomplished artist, under his own name coming out from behind the mainly-instrumental Vieo Abiungo moniker, having done some stints playing with SkyRider alongside political hip-hopper Sole , with whom he still works too. He has a trademark sound of world-influenced beats & percussion, guitars, cello and now often vocals, full of emotion and drama.

I finished up with an epic tribute to (international) Barcelona duo Downliners Sekt. Their new album finds them on Infiné Music after some long stints of self-released EPs and albums, and takes them into a post-dubstep world of techno beats & heaps of atmosphere. They started off in idm territory, and released some pitch-perfect early takes on dubstep without (apparently) having even heard the sounds coming out of East London; then they did an incredible melding of postrock/instrumental rock with electronica, followed by a series of EPs that took them from the slower, heavy dubstep sound into more of an r'n'b-techno hybrid, still with the sub-bass movements holding down the bottom end. In particular "negative green" was some kind of obsession for me for months when I first discovered it... A really important band slowly becoming less obscure.

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Alix Perez, DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn - Make It Worth [Exit Records]
Hardware - Checking One [Various]
Hardware - Your Move [Various]
Comatone - End Titles [Feral Media]
Comatone - Anodised Autumn Failures feat. Donna Amini [Feral Media]
Infinity Broke - Termites [Infinity Broke Bandcamp]
Fabels - Against It [Fabels Bandcamp]
William Ryan Fritch - in a tame world [Lost Tribe Sound]
William Ryan Fritch - late blooms [Lost Tribe Sound]
William Ryan Fritch - Left To Wander [Lost Tribe Sound]
William Ryan Fritch - sun on cold skin [Lost Tribe Sound]
Downliners Sekt - Soul Débris [Infiné Music]
Downliners Sekt - benz [self-released]
Downliners Sekt - Scope Creep [self-released]
Downliners Sekt - negative green [self-released]
Downliners Sekt - Incerta Glòria [self-released]
Downliners Sekt - hockey nights in canada [self-released]
Downliners Sekt - Silent Ascent [Infiné Music]

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