Utility Fog

Sunday, 5th of July, 2015

The bulk of tonight's show was be taken up with a massive special on the music of Dominick Fernow aka Prurient aka Vatican Shadow (etc).

LISTEN AGAIN for crushing frequencies, explosive beats, mangled wails and gorgeous orchestrations - podcast here, streaming on demand over there.

We start, though, with something also nice and dark from Sydney-resident NZ expats Kompost. They've been trickling tracks out one by one on Bandcamp for some time, often played on this show, but it's been a while between tracks so it's very nice to have them back.

World's End Girlfriend's label Virgin Babylon Records is one of the most exciting new labels to come out of Japan in a while - pretty much everything he releases is awesome, and it reflects the eclectic nature of his own music, from glitch to breakcore to idm to postrock to psych rock to post-classical, the list goes on. This recent release is a split between WEG himself and the utterly brilliant Vampillia. It's made up of four vocal tracks and four instrumental versions, although they're fairly radical remixes rather than just the originals with vocals removed. I like the vocals plenty, but I really like how WEG notches up the beats and effects, AND brings up the strings at the end of this one.

Instead of playing a Vampillia track from that split release, I played two from an INSANELY great collaborative EP they just put out with none other than inveterate collaborators the body, who we've heard of late with fellow metallers (probably sludge/doom more than black) Thou and before that with sound/beat designer of the moment The Haxan Cloak. This collaboration seems to see the body taking electronic production tips from the latter collaboration, but for all we know all that is Vampillia. Electronic beats & bass rub up against Vampillia's piano & violin, operatic vocals & soundscapes as well as metal riffing and black metal screaming. Everything's there...

A lot of that is there, in varying levels of lo & hi-fi, in the music of Dominick Fernow, as Prurient, Vatican Shadow, Exploring Jezebel and others. As Prurient he's been one of the biggest stars in the noise / power electronics scene since the early 2000s, combining black metal-influenced screaming with extreme frequencies and volumes across a multitude of cassette, CD & vinyl releases. The sound evolved from its rawest beginnings to incorporate sophisticated sample & tape manipulation and every sort of electronics, and around 2011 started to display influences from techno, '90s electronica, even '80s synth-pop as well - and around that year Vatican Shadow emerged as another alias to house the cyclical, beat-oriented works. There's a clear tribute to Muslimgauze in these works - evident from the titles - along with earlyish Autechre and more, and on the whole the noise takes a back seat (although it's never anything less than dark).
I hardly made a dent into Fernow's back catalogue - there are plenty of other aliases that were missed, and really early (on the whole noisier) releases which I either didn't have or didn't have time for, in amongst it all. But we did hear from the amazing cassette-only collaboration with the great Burning Star Core (one of my musical heroes), and also the split and semi-collaborative release (see the mashup remix) with another musical hero JK Flesh, the latter of which was the final ever release on the incredible Hydra Head Records. Fernow's own Hospital Productions continues to release other artists as well as his own projects, and Prurient finds himself now on Profound Lore, the brilliant metal label which have taken on a lot of Hydra Head's more experimental artists. Vatican Shadow, on the other hand, of late finds itself on Modern Love, the Boomkat-related label that's home to Andy Stott & others, quite a fitting home for his electronica/techno project.

Kompost - Komposition E [Kompost Bandcamp]
world's end girlfriend - 春日狂想 (Instrumental) [Virgin Babylon Records]
Vampillia + the body - cold bark bite [Vampillia Bandcamp]
Vampillia + the body - chikatilo [Vampillia Bandcamp]
Prurient - Greenpoint [Profound Lore]
Prurient & Kevin Drumm - On This Slab [Hospital Productions]
Prurient - Subject [No Fun Productions]
Prurient - Dog Of Addiction [Hospital Productions]
Burning Star Core/Prurient - Wheel Of Fortune [Hospital Productions]
Burning Star Core/Prurient - Confiscation (under talking) [Hospital Productions]
Prurient - Let's Make A Slave [Hydra Head Records]
Prurient - Time's Arrow (Unsolved) [Hydra Head Records]
Vatican Shadow - Chopper Crash Marines' Names Released [Hospital Productions]
Prurient - I Understand You [Hydra Head Records/Daymare]
JK Flesh - JK Flesh Merges Prurient [Hydra Head Records/Daymare]
Vatican Shadow - Jet Fumes Over The Reflecting Pool [Hospital Productions]
Vatican Shadow - Koresh Lamb [Modern Love]
Vatican Shadow - Living On And Off At The Shadow Motel [Modern Love]
Prurient - Shoulders Of Summerstones [Profound Lore]

Listen again — ~114MB

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