Utility Fog

Sunday, 14th of September, 2014

Evening! How's things? Been good? Good!

So LISTEN AGAIN because you won't get these sounds anywhere else... Download/podcast here, stream on demand there.

We have some excellent retro-electronic-experimentalism from Mark Barrage, then a couple of tracks from Unsound Festival's new compilation attached to this month's Wire Magazine, with an exclusive look at Atom™ & Robin Fox's glitchy techno collaboration (but without the visuals obvs) and Poland's Aleksandra Grunholz aka We Will Fail.
Then we head to the UK for some extraordinary post-rave minimalism(?) from Akkord. They worked separately & together on dubstep, techno & drum'n'bass as Synkro & Indigo, but when they paired up officially as Akkord something seems to have instantly clicked - nothing out of place, ascetic electronic tones & beats, almost disquietingly pure.

And yet more strings for you this week, starting with cellist Oliver Coates, first up with a cover of a techno track by Prah Recordings compatriot Bryce Hackford, followed by a stunning cover of minimalist indie stars Adult Jazz, with vocals by the singularly-named Chrysanthemum Bear.
Then we have some wonderful viola & electronics from the Netherlands courtesy of Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel, and more from Peter Broderick + Gabriel Saloman who also featured last week.

I don't always let my obsession with the weirder reaches of black metal, doom metal, grindcore et al bubble over into the show, but a lot of it fits with the drone/noise side of the 'Fog. Wreck and Reference apparently started off with some guitar in the mix as we hear in their earlier tracks tonight, but have devolved into basically just electronics and drums. And screaming. When their vocalist wants to, he can sound like perfect '80s New Romantic, but he's as likely to emit black metal howls. You can hear Slint and Shellac in the earlier releases, and it was kind of wonderful to discover that stuff along with the latest noise/metal/pop weirdness...

Penultimately, a couple of remixes from Hecq's Conversions set of unreleased reworkings, shifting from French breakcore producer Ruby My Dear to Norwegian acoustic doom/drone producer Svarte Greiner, the latter of which points to Hecq's work under his own name, Ben Lukas Boysen.

And we finish up with some rather pretty indie/electronic sounds from Canberra's Raus on the hellosQuare label.

Mark Barrage - He's My Dad [Endless Melt]
Mark Barrage - Dead Badger [Endless Melt]
Atom™ & Robin Fox - Double Vision (excerpt) [Unsound via Wire Mag]
We Will Fail - 061 [Unsound via Wire Mag]
We Will Fail - V.02 [Monotype]
Akkord - Gradient [Monkeytown]
Akkord - Folded Edge [Houndstooth]
Akkord - Continuum [Houndstooth]
Oliver Coates - Another Fantasy (cover of Bryce Hackford) [Prah Recordings]
Oliver Coates - Hum (feat. Chrysanthemum Bear) (cover of Adult Jazz) [Adult Jazz SoundCloud]
Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel - Nothing but Blue Sky [Tapu]
Peter Broderick + Gabriel Saloman - Lament For Philip Seymour Hoffman [Beacon Sound]
Wreck and Reference - Stranger, Fill This Hole In Me [The Flenser]
Wreck and Reference - Bankrupt [The Flenser]
Wreck and Reference - Evening Redness / Desire, Ether [Wreck and Reference Bandcamp/The Flenser]
Wreck and Reference - Spectrum [The Flenser]
Ruby My Dear - Hawa (Remix by Hecq) [Ad Noiseam]
Svarte Greiner - Final Sleep (Remix by Hecq) [Ad Noiseam]
Raus - House [hellosQuare]

Listen again — ~108MB

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