Electronics from dancefloor to your inner psyche tonight, with some modern classical on the side…
LISTEN AGAIN. It’s good for you. Stream on demand at FBi, podcast here.
Absolutely floored by this debut album from Melbourne duo friendships. Producer Nick Brown & artist Misha Grace put together a collection of impeccably-produced tunes ranging from storming drum’n’bass to breaks-heavy bass techno, post-dubstep and grime… and dropped in between, some beautiful & creepy glitchy ambient moments, with touching and sometimes menacing spoken word. It’s unlike anything else you’ll hear this year, up with the best Aussie releases of 2016.
Not played tonight, but the autobiographical track “The Roof” comes with an amazing video that you can view here.
Although he’s based in Berlin now, FIS is originally from the antipodes as well – New Zealand. Starting out in the drum’n’bass scene there, he’s released a few EPs in the outskirts of the dancefloor, but it didn’t take long for the rhythmic and structural forms to become more abstracted, to the extent that there’s plenty of bass on the new album but precious little in the way of beats. We heard a few of his amazing mutant beat creations in the middle, from 2012 & 2013, and then a gorgeous piece of piano, processing and noise from last year’s The Blue Quicksand Is Going Now. His new album finds him on the Bristol label Subtext Recordings, sitting comfortably with the other ex-pats of the bass music world there, like Paul Jebanasam & Roly Porter. There’s some gorgeous stuff inside.
Irish producer Eomac is one half of experimental techno masters Lakker, and you can hear the connection to their taut and rhythmic sounds in his solo work. His productions have usually drawn from dancehall, bass music and drum’n’bass along with the usual techno tropes, but for his new one he was asked by the UAE-based Bedouin label to produce some tunes around the authorized use of samples of music from around the Arab & Islamic world. He was so enamoured of these sounds that he ended up producing a whole album, released now as a double LP. His cavernous bass and beats here mutate melodic, textural and percussive elements from the source material into a music that seems to live in an in-between world.
Quebec artist William Jourdaine aka Automatisme‘s Momentform Accumulations is one of three releases from the Constellation Records label released this coming Friday. We’re hearing two tonight, and this one is the most electronic release I’ve heard yet on a label best known for expansive postrock and acoustic music with a distinct analogue recording aesthetic. Automatisme’s music fits well with the techno we’ve been hearing tonight – hazy and grime-filled beats, weird signal generators and field recording sources. It’s handmade stuff that somehow suits the label despite being something of an oddity in their catalogue.
Also released on Constellation, Montréal-based saxophonist Jason Sharp has recorded with various artists on the label in the past, including Matana Roberts and Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra. He takes his bariton & bass saxophones into noise territories (much like his Toronto-based compatriot & labelmate Colin Stetson) with extended techniques, but on his new album he augments this with compositions for strings, pedal steel, electronics and percussion, mixing scored parts with production in keeping with the more electronic music we’ve been hearing tonight. The theme of the beating heart and blood passing through the body lends an almost claustrophobic air to the beautiful sounds found here. I’ve been returning to this release quite a bit in the last few weeks…
Marc Richter’s Black to Comm with ambient, dark, glitchy sounds. He’s inaugurating a new labe, Ceullule 75 to release archival and new material by unveiling another mysterious alias, Jemh Circs, in which he eviscerates vocal samples of pop music sourced mostly from YouTube. It’s got that vaporwave thing going on, bright and shiny but defocused and a little manic.
We finish up with two tracks from the Summer compilation from British label bigo & twigetti. The album slowly augments live instruments with electronics & processing, so London-based Kazah violinist Aisha Orazbayeva starts us off with a beautiful piece of looped and layered violin, while ex-pat Aussie Leah Kardos embodies this transition with a track that starts off with lazy piano and adds some downtempo beats halfway through.
friendships – Purebred Dogs (feat. Yaw Faso & thelovelyme) [Dot Dash]
friendships – Keep Smiling At Me Like That And You’ll Be Picking Your Teeth Up Off Of The Gutter [Dot Dash]
friendships – Paradise [Dot Dash]
FIS – Independently Together [Subtext Recordings]
FIS – Patupaiarehe [Exit Records]
FIS – Mildew Swoosh [Tri-Angle]
Fis – Pedal [Loopy]
FIS – CMB Inna [Subtext Recordings]
Eomac – Oasis [Bedouin]
Eomac – SU Riddim [Killekill]
Eomac – Ascension [Bedouin]
Automatisme – Touched 1 [Constellation Records]
Automatisme – Touched 3 [Constellation Records]
Jason Sharp – In The Construction Of The Chest There Is A Heart [Constellation Records]
Jason Sharp – A Boat Upon Its Blood (Pt 2) [Constellation Records]
Jason Sharp – A Boat Upon Its Blood (Pt 3) [Constellation Records]
Jemh Circs – Comp [Ceullule 75]
Jemh Circs – Ordre [Ceullule 75]
Aisha Orazbayeva – Lizard Dance [bigo & twigetti]
Leah Kardos – Little Phase [bigo & twigetti]
Listen again — ~201MB