Some doomy sounds in a postrock/indie vein and in a more acoustic nature tonight, moving into some other post-classical & experimental music.
LISTEN AGAIN to float along the river Styx, your boat creaking and moaning, the water splashing disconsolately… Oh, and also, please sign up to SUPPORT FBi, because our listeners’ support is what keeps the station on-air, and it really doesn’t cost that much m’kay? FBi does awesome things like, you know, you can stream this show on demand for a good while after it airs. Podcast also here.
Big ‡ Brave – Tussle [Build A Fort]
Big ‡ Brave – Oh The By-And-By And Thereon [Southern Lord]
Big ‡ Brave – Borer [Southern Lord]
Montréal trio Big ‡ Brave have released their last two albums on Southern Lord, the label run stuff Sunn O))) dude Greg Anderson. Frontwoman Robin Wattie has a declamatory style that’s at once piercing and hypnotic, along with the band’s frequently simple 2-chord structures which give them some musical association with doom metal, despite not really being metal at all. The Montréal connection is audible in their music too – meditative but heavy, and indeed the last 2 albums were recorded at Constellation-affiliated studio Hotel2Tango. I’m in love with this intense, epic, uncompromising music.
Svarte Greiner – floor [Miasmah]
Svarte Greiner – Easy on the bones [Type/Miasmah]
Svarte Greiner – passage [Miasmah]
Erik K Skodvin coined & initiated the mysterious genre of “acoustic doom” in 2006 with his first album Knive as Svarte Greiner – moving away from his early electronic productions into spooky sounds from his cello, guitar and field recordings (his duo Deaf Center had a similar progression). Beautifully close-mic’d sounds travel around the stereo field, echoing and rumbling. It’s like an abstract European horror movie. That first album has been reissued in a luxurious vinyl edition for those into that, and there’s a new LP mini-album out now too, featuring sumptuous, slightly terrifying cello pieces recorded in an abandoned building in Switzerland. The amount of detail in these new recordings is insane – I can’t believe they’re entirely solo – there must be a small amount of overdubbing or at least processing, particularly in “passage”, with those hanging, fluttering drones. Something to fall into, but careful – you might never find your way back out!
Dead Light – Broods and Waits [Village Green]
Dead Light – Falling In (Luke Abbott Remix) [Village Green]
Dead Light – Sleeper [Village Green]
While their music is much more expansive and bright, Dead Light are nevertheless exploring the world of deeply-recorded acoustic music, and indeed on the first track tonight the guest cello of Carys Davies and violin of Alicia Jane Turner screetch pleasingly in a more polite take on . The piano, tape machines & electronics of Anna Rose Carter and Ed Hamilton have an immersive quality that utterly transcends the mute-pedal piano post-classical ambient genre. Wonderful.
Shoeb Ahmad – “status anxiety”, Tilman Robinson version [Shoeb Ahmad Bandcamp]
Canberran experimental artist Shoeb Ahmad, much beloved of this show, continues her interrogation of gender & identity on the second single from the forthcoming album quiver, “romance”, which we didn’t hear today (it’s a great piece of indiepop!) – also continuing is the approach of releasing remixes with these singles of tracks we have not otherwise heard yet. So “status anxiety” is going to sit well within the framework of the album’s songwriting & politics, but tonight we heard a gorgeous piece of ambient classical based on that song by Melbourne composer/producer Tilman Robinson.
Giulio Aldinucci – Exodus Mandala [Karlrecords]
Giulio Aldinucci – Division [Karlrecords]
Italian producer Giulio Aldinucci works in experimental electronic soundscapes and field recordings. For some time he’s been incorporating spectral, layered sounds sampled from choral recordings, and these surface gorgeously through his new album, exploring Borders And Ruins for Karlrecords. But as captivating as the drones are, some of the highlights are where the immense wall of sound drops out and strange disquieting noises appear.
Memory Drawings – A Shining Path of No Return [Memory Drawings Bandcamp]
Memory Drawings – Sunstruck [Second Language]
Memory Drawings – The Island Of The Day Before [Hibernate Recordings]
Memory Drawings with Yvonne Bruner – Subtle Transformation [Memory Drawings Bandcamp]
Memory Drawings – The Light You Cannot See (Edward Ka-Spel Remix) [Memory Drawings Bandcamp]
I came to the dreamy, semi-acoustic, post-classical-meets-indie sounds of Memory Drawings via their guitarist Richard Adams, of Hood and The Declining Winter. They’re led by hammered dulcimer player Joel Hanson, which gives them a unique sound – exotic, yet familiar. Because it appears mainly in folk music, but doesn’t sound unlike a harp or harpsichord, it imbues their music with a kind of classical flavour, but it also somehow reminds us of Asian instruments like the kora. Their first album was released in 2012, and there tends to be a tradition of including a second disc of reworkings and remixes – here including The Declining Winter and also Manyfingers, beloved solo project of new member Chris Cole as well. Not for the first time, the bonus disc also includes a vocal reworking featuring Yvonne Bruner, and this time round they’ve also managed to snare Edward Ka-Spel for a really sensitive snoozy remix!
Listen again — ~190MB
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