Here we are… October… time for revolution. Well, maybe later this month, heck.
Quite a range of sounds tonight, from hip-hop to jungle to house esoteric electronics and electro-acoustics, gorgeous drones and shoegazey indiefolk.
LISTEN AGAIN on your public holiday if you’re in NSW or your first day of work elsewhere! Podcast here, stream on demand there.
Starting with Sydney underground music stalwart Tom Smith aka Thomas William, who’s been twisting hip-hop into new forms since his early recordings as Cleptoclectics in 2007. It’s always great to have something new from him – leaning less on the ethnic samples and glitches this time round.
There’s no drum’n’bass producer I’ve been more excited by in the last few years than Sam Binga, one of those involved in bringing jungle back into currency, combining it with grime and Chicago footwork alongside the “slow-fast” movement. Bouncy stop/start beats, basslines front and centre, and MCs all over the place, with a dub/dancehall feel never far away. Great stuff. His new album is almost 100% collaborations, with only one track credited just to him – although the various digital bonuses include a few instrumental versions, along with some deep drum’n’bass remixes and some more grimey ones.
Chicagoan sound engineer Casey Rice has worked extensively with the likes of Tortoise while living in that city, but has been based in Melbourne for some time, with Australians benefiting from his mixing and mastering expertise. His productions as Designer have always been few and far between, but it’s cool to discover that the latest release will be a collaborative 12″ with Four Tet on his TEXT label. Tonight’s selection is the b-side, direct from Mr Rice himself.
Sydney artist Corin Ileto put out her debut solo EP Deluge last year to some acclaim. On that release, acoustic piano appeared alongside ambient electronics, but her new album Wave Systems sees her concentrating more on strange sound structures from analogue keyboards. There’s not much to compare it, even though there are the occasional beats you can nod your head to. Recommended listening.
We accidentally heard the first Kyle Bruckmann track ahead of Corin due to outrageous playlist mismanagement, but now for the rest… Based in Oakland, California (we’d think of it as a suburb of San Francisco really but it’s part of the Bay Area hey), he plays oboe and other reeds, often in that area of composed jazz meeting free jazz, but the releases I know him for, on the Entr’acte label, see him bringing his reeds into the world of strange, malfunctioning electronics. Not really malfunctioning but certainly deliberately warped, given the title of the first of these releases was Technological Music Vol. 1 – or, Regarding the Misuse of Tools and the Rigorous Application of Capriciously Derived Organizational Principles… The new one takes itself just as seriously/tongue-in-cheek, as Technological Music Vol. 2 – or, Regarding, in Addition to Concerns Previously Explicated, Matters of Process, Artifice, and Verisimilitude, and they are also available as a double album from the label.
Jason Corder’s been making music as offthesky for a good 10 years now out of somewhere in the middle of the USA… He came to my attention via a group called Color Cassette who put out a release on the beloved Moteer label, making a lovely kind of folktronica, while offthesky has generally been a more ambient affair, sometimes with clicky beats, and Juxta Phona has been his outlet for the somewhat more idm-influenced beats. He has two major releases this year, the stunning solo album the serpent phase on UK label Hibernate, and an equally commanding album with Polish ambient/post-classical artist and serial collaborator Bartosz Dziadosz aka Pleq.
Post-classical piano buddies Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm have made a couple of previous EPs & singles together, and with this latest one comes an announcement that the material will be collected on a double album along with some new stuff. It’s nice stuff, the Juno synth beloved of Nils, occasional dub techno thud and occasional clicky non-beats.
And finally, some tracks I’ve been meaning to play for a while, from a split 12″ on Rural Colours which sold out almost instantaneously and is now available from the two artists’ Bandcamps. Isnaj Dui is English flautist Katie English, who’s played with many drone, folk, postrock (of sorts) and electronic artists – but on this release she’s focusing on her other instrument, the cello. The track I’ve chosen is a burbling stew of layered electric cello and never fails to thrill my ears.
On the flipside is the lovely Richard Adams of The Declining Winter. Since Hood broke up for reals (*sob*), he’s been holding the fort with a regular schedule of indie music, and his album of earlier this year was the best rendering of his sound yet. On this EP he goes for an acoustic shoegazey sound reminiscent of Benoît Pioulard, perhaps, although Richard’s songwriting is very distinctive.
Check out both sides digitally!
Thomas William – Tuition (feat. Kid Kairo & Chun Yin) [Plastic World]
Sam Binga – Wasted Days (feat. Warrior Queen) [Critical Music]
Addison Groove & Sam Binga – Thr3id [50 Weapons]
Sam Binga – Freezy [Modulations]
Sam Binga – Steppin ft. Redders (Foreign Concept mix) [Critical Music]
Sam Binga & Om Unit – Reclaim [Critical Music]
Four Tet + Designer – Dark [TEXT]
Kyle Bruckmann – Music for Dancing [Entr’acte]
Corin – Empress [Speaker Footage]
Corin – Morning [Corin Bandcamp]
Corin – Images II (Moon Holiday Remix) [Corin Bandcamp]
Corin – Hydrate [Speaker Footage]
Kyle Bruckmann – Four Investigations Of A Dubious Premise I [Entr’acte]
Kyle Bruckmann – Four Investigations Of A Dubious Premise III [Entr’acte]
Kyle Bruckmann – Irreproducible Result A2 [Entr’acte]
offthesky – well worn sting [Hibernate]
offthesky & pleq – wands upon a thousand fields [Infraction]
Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm – Wide Open [Erased Tapes]
Isnaj Dui – Radial Field [Rural Colours/Isnaj Dui Bandcamp]
The Declining Winter – Lost In Huge Light [Rural Colours/The Declining Winter Bandcamp]
Listen again — ~105MB
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