Utility Fog

Sunday, 5th of April, 2015

Another eclectic selection tonight... how does he do it? We'll never know.
LISTEN AGAIN or for the first time and take notes. Podcast here, stream there.

It's getting late in the evening, so we'll start with some Talk Talk. A very pleasant way to start the show, date-appropriate. In some ways this represents the point of transformation of Talk Talk from '80s electro-pop band into the quiet experimental proto-post-rock that's been so hugely influential on so many that came after.

Three years after the release of experimental pop duo kyü's second album (itself released after they'd decided to call it quits), we finally have a new solo album from one of the members, Alyx Dennison, and boy was it worth the wait. She doesn't seem to have dispensed with much of the duo's adventurousness, with heavy live percussion and vocal acrobatics still in there, although equally it's full of ultra-personal songwriting backed up by touching and dare I say catchy melodies. She's gonna go far.

You'd never guess that the following track was Panda Bear - not even, I daresay, if you knew the original, despite the fragments of vocal harmonies speckled over the middle part. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if you identified it as Andy Stott. It's on the more upbeat side, but it has the impeccably dirty production values, sub-bass, and post-d'n'b/2step references you'd expect. Heavy stuff.

Melbourne guitarist Tim Catlin has teamed up with Dutch UFog regular Machinefabriek for a second album on Low Point, featuring short (for Machinefabriek anyway) electro-acoustic works which are sometimes clearly guitar-based and sometimes at most one element in the mix. There are even some rhythmic almost-beats in there, as well as the expected glitches and drones and skittery, skritchy sounds.

I first came across Antony Harrison's work as konntinent in 2009 when his first (ish) album was released on Japanese ambient label Symbolic Interaction. It was one of the less ambient releases on the label, its slow-moving tracks liable to feature bouts of noise, glitchy postrock instrumentation or beats along with the drones. It's tended to continue that way, with appearances on labels known for drone and quiet, folky ambience, mostly slightly bucking the trend. While all his work's worth checking out, the new album on Home Normal seems like his best work yet, which makes it extra sad that he's decided to hang up the konntinent moniker in order to work more with his electro-pop duo Paco Sala. Luckily he's making excellent music with the latter too, albeit in a slightly different vein.

Tim Shiel's continuing his run of pretty melodic electronica with a soundtrack not to an indie game this time, but to a film about indie games called GameLoading: Rise of the Indies. Perhaps even more than with the soundtracks of the last year or two, the pieces here are quite clearly cues, many quite short and without much musical development. But there are some great sounds, as we heard here (and the acoustic piano slips very nicely in amongst the electronics on the second track - not sure if this is Luke Howard here).

And finally a Melbourne artist I'd not heard of, Justin Cantrell aka rituals., with a new cassette & digital release out soon on This Thing. It's somehow just right for a cassette release - woozy, noisy, just discernable as having hip-hop roots if you squint.

Talk Talk - April 5th [EMI]
Alyx Dennison - Triptych [Popfrenzy]
kyü - sunny in splodges [Popfrenzy]
kyü - Scratch Piano [kyü Bandcamp]
Alyx Dennison - I Don't Love You Anymore (Felicity Yang Remix) [SoundCloud]
Alyx Dennison - LAX [Popfrenzy]
Alyx Dennison - Boat [Popfrenzy]
Panda Bear - Boys Latin (Andy Stott remix) [Domino]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek - Sweep [Low Point]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek - Whorl [Low Point]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek - Flutter [Low Point]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek - Yowl [Low Point]
konntinent - The Luxury of Without [Home Normal]
konntinent - Amongst the Islanders (feat. Cuushe) [Home Normal]
konntinent - This Searing Heat [Symbolic Interaction]
Paco Sala - Tous Les Orages feat. Félicia Atkinson [Digitalis]
konntinent - Creep Sxene [Hibernate]
Paco Sala - Put Your Hands On Me [Digitalis]
konntinent - Geschrei Zwei [Home Normal]
Tim Shiel - Become Daylight [Tim Shiel Bandcamp]
Tim Shiel - Dharmarp [Tim Shiel Bandcamp]
rituals. - bakk [This Thing]

Listen again — ~102MB

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