Last “new” show for the year! What a rollercoaster year it’s been… and I’ve still got a full complement of mostly very new music to play tonight!
LISTEN AGAIN and catch every detail via stream on demand at FBi, or podcast over here?
Erland Dahlen – Clocks [Hubro]
Erland Dahlen – Pyramid [Hubro]
Erland Dahlen – Hammer [Hubro]
Erland Dahlen – Glas [Hubro]
Starting off tonight catching up with a few releases which came out in the last few months. And, it’s fair to say I’m catching up altogether with the solo music of Norwegian drummer Erland Dahlen. Norway’s Hubro is a label I’ve come to trust for high quality whether it’s in post-rock, inventive jazz or folk/classical hybrids, and occasionally more pure electronic music. Dahlen has played with various bands in some of these genres, and his solo work is almost entirely the multi-tracked work of just him. Rhythmically driven, but with plenty of melody and rich synths and tuned percussion as well. Whistling, glissandoing melodies from the bowed saw often feature (although it could be mistaken for a theremin), and the end result is something absolutely cinematic and widescreen.
Bookended by tracks from his new album Clocks, we also heard a tune each from his previous solo albums, Rolling Bomber and Blossom Bells.
Erik Honoré – Surge [Hubro]
Second cab off the rank, also on Hubro, is the Norwegian writer, singer & producer Erik Honoré, who’s mostly known for his collaboration with ambient & experimental artists like David Sylvian, Jan Bang & Arve Henricksen, as well as his duo with singer Greta Aagre. Unrest is only his second album, and the rich, tremulous sound should not be surprising for those who know any of the other artists here. There is, however, a slightly darker, industrial edge to some of these sounds which elevates it above just being more (high quality) fourth world ambient stuff.
Daniel O’Sullivan – The Projector [O Genesis/DOS Bandcamp]
Daniel O’Sullivan – Apocryphonium [O Genesis/DOS Bandcamp]
Catching up, also, with the solo album from Daniel O’Sullivan, which came out a good few months ago. I was lucky to catch DOS playing at the Audioscope 2017 one-day festival in Oxford a few weeks ago, and he alternated between weird rickety tape loops along with hand-built sampler rhythms and vocal loops on the one hand, and more straightforward songs with electric piano. This solo album features a lot of his pop side, heard also in his duo Grumbling Fur with Alexander Tucker – and also pointed at from his previous solo act Mothlite. But O’Sullivan has also worked closely with Ulver & Sunn O))) among others – a versatile artist to say the least!
Arrom – Now Won [Provenance]
Aphir – Asymptote [Provenance]
KAIA – Praey [Provenance]
Stu Buchanan’s latest project, the Provenance, rounds out 2017 with a compilation featuring exclusive tracks from all its artists. I sadly didn’t have time to fit an over-10 minute track from Shoeb Ahmad, but here are three tracks from fantastic female Australian producers.
I loved Arrom‘s debut EP (mini-album?) a couple of months ago. Her layered choral-trained vocals are underpinned and undermined by industrial-tinged glitchy beats & bass, also on display in the head-nodding rhythm for this track. Technological collaboration came from Aphir, who appears here with a similarly lovely piece of electronic pop, as does KAIA, who like Aphir is Melbourne-based but originally hails from Canberra.
Parris – Hot-Blooded [The Trilogy Tapes]
Bristol producer Parris came from the outer wilds of dubstep but can be found producing tweaked house, weird grime or bewildering bass-centric ambient tunes at any particular time. I love how this track from his new EP just stops, bar some crackly ambience, in the middle, before pulling itself back into its bass-heavy house beat. It’s simple but not simplistic, perfectly judged.
DJ Sports – For Real For You [Firecracker Recordings]
Danish producer Milan Zaks has been becoming notable for his lovely throwback sounds to spacey ambient house, melodic jungle and the like as DJ Sports. He runs a few labels too, including Help, and in fact only recently toured Australia in October. I’m catching up tonight on the excellent Modern Species album from earlier this year with a lovely bit of lightweight junglism.
Artilect – Ashen [Samurai]
Ancestral Voices – Izula [Samurai]
Now Berlin-based, originally New Zealand label Samurai Music has now been pushing adventurous drum’n’bass both for the dancefloor and into further reaches for a decade. They formed HORO for more experimental sounds, along with various other sub-labels, but have decided now to merge it all back together, and their “Phase 1” compilation of the Samurai Music Decade mixes the dancefloor-honed sounds of Tokyo Prose, Nucleus & Paradox and the sadly missed Marcus Intalex with the experimentalism of AnD and others. Manchester’s Artilect provides a dark techy number with amen breaks intruding here and there, and there’s also a typically tribal and epic tune from Ancestral Voices, beloved as one half of Akkord.
9T Antiope – Lemniscate [eilean rec.]
Bill Seaman – (Re) Erasures And Displacements [eilean rec.]
We’ll be hearing from Nima Aghiani and Sara Bigdeli Shamloo’s 9T Antiope in our best of 2017 in coming weeks for sure, but it’s lovely to hear something new from the Paris-based Iranian duo as the French label eilean records is celebrating their year of releases with a compilation of exclusive music from the label’s artists. It’s a fantastic showcase of talent, centred around crackly, droney ambient, more or less post-classical, but with a lot of variety and deep listening to be found. Music academic & theorist Bill Seaman can be found in various ensembles, making absorbing electro-acoustic sound-worlds whether with tape loops or computers. The drones, shuffles, crackles and muted piano tones here are like dusty memories from a state of half-sleep.
Andy Nice – Atlantean [Front & Follow]
IX Tab – The Seams Of Goodwill (Original Quincux Version) [Front & Follow]
UK label Front & Follow are also celebrating 10 years of existence this year, and I’m just catching up with playing their 2CD compilation Lessons on the show. It’s impressively varied, from ambient to idm & glitchy house to folk and other acoustic sounds such as the beautiful melodic multi-tracked cello of Andy Nice on our first selection tonight. How could I not play this, cellist that I am? And on the other side, here’s the “original quincux version”(?) of a track from IX Tab‘s amazing debut album Spindle & The Bregnut Tree – arcane, glitchy, queasy electronic folk or folk electronic or…? In any case, it’s long and very strange and you should check out all of his stuff.
Listen again — ~109MB
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