Post-classical to fluttery drone to vocal gymnastics, industrial techno of various types and some fun, crazy junglisms tonight.
LISTEN AGAIN for the low highs and high lows… stream on demand at FBi, podcast here.
Jim Perkins – Swimmer Among The Stars [bigo & twigetti]
British composer & producer Jim Perkins runs the excellent post-classical label bigo & twigetti, who releases peeps like Leah Kardos. His own approach has been a mixture of composed music for strings and piano with glitchy electronics edits & beats. This new track is the first from a new album he’s preparing this year, and is a beautifully-recorded piece for string ensemble, with cavernous reverb and plenty of bass in the mix, moving from dynamic crescendoing long notes into chugging quaver rhythms for the whole small orchestra.
GreyWing Ensemble – Hostage (by Catherine Ashley) [Tone List]
Perth ensemble GreyWing are releasing TWO albums on excellent local label Tone List, both consisting of interpretations of graphical scores (and both come in limited physical editions of the scores themselves – see Bandcamp). Some of the pieces – from WA composers such as Sam Gillies, Lindsay Vickery, Cat Hope and others also feature field recordings, but on the whole it’s small chamber ensembles interpreting graphical scores. Tonight’s piece is from GreyWing’s own harpist Catherine Ashley, and it’s a particularly lovely piece of near-static fluttery textures.
Hannah Silva – Talking To Silence – Part 1 [Human Kind, courtesy of Wire Magazine]
Sunna – Amma [self-released, courtesy of Wire Magazine]
Ammar 808 feat. Cheb Hassen Tej – Esoug Rsam [Glitterbeat, courtesy of Wire Magazine]
A new edition of cover CD The Wire Tapper from Wire Magazine always comes with interesting new music to discover. We start with two women doing very different interesting stuff with voice. UK playwright and poet Hannah Silva contributes some amazing vocal percussion along with percussion and electronic production, and Icelandic singer Sunna gives us a track made up of soft overlapping vocal samples and a quite accessible song. I’m really looking forward to discovering more from both these women. Finally we hear from Tunisian Ammar 808, with some wonderfully distorted 808 beats & bass along with various vocal collaborators – here fellow Tunisian Cheb Hassen Tej. German internationalist label Glitterbeat is putting this out later in the year – can’t wait!
TeChSlo – Mountain Side [Gos Music Studio]
TeChSlo – Fire in the Cave [Gos Music Studio]
Sydney producer Chris Hancock of The Frequency Lab is perhaps best known as Monk Fly, one-time Elefant Traks member and producer of hip-hop, wonky electronica and other electronic forms (and recording engineer for all genres under the sun). For his new project making deep, enveloping minimal dub techno, he’s chosen a new moniker, TeChSlo, and his second EP is released by southern Italian label Gos Music Studio. It’s a cute name pointing to the fact that it’s really slowed-down techno, and the dub is strong here – “Fire in the Cave” in particular is impossibly slow if you think of it as a 4/4 beat, but there’s plenty going on in the delays, crackling percussive hits and high-pitched squeals…
Eomac – Resist All Dogma [Eotrax]
Eomac – Resist All Dogma (Shaddah Tuum Remix) [Eotrax]
Shaddah Tuum – Merkabah [Portals Editions]
Berlin-resident Irish producer Eomac, one half of Lakker, releases here the first single from an album out in April. With frenetic footwork-influence percussion in a kind of industrial techno context, and his own screamed, wordless vocals interjecting here and there, it’s an impassioned howl against the modern world. Backed with a slowed-down remix by Shaddah Tuum, Berlin-resident duo of Niko LFO (Shaddah) and Brandon Rosenbluth, who were responsible for the debut release on the excellent Portals Editions label they co-founded in 2014 with Yair Elazar Glotman (and others?).
We will fail. – Night (Ziúr Remix) [Refined Productions]
Polish prdocuer Aleksandra Grünholz is pushing her We will fail. project forward with a new label, Refined Productions, that she’s running along with Monotype Records, the Polish experimental label that put out her first releases. There’s actually an Eomac remix on this EP, but I chose to play female Berlin producer Ziúr‘s digitally corroded take. A second EP is out soon with another new track alongside further exciting names on the remixes.
The Fear Ratio – GBA Live [Skam]
It’s always a surprise that Manchester IDM label Skam still exists, but of course they put out the brilliant Bola album last year… The Fear Ratio are the duo of James Ruskin & Mark Broom, both veterans of the UK branch of Detroit techno, doing IDM-infused breakbeat techno which has always been super fun. The Live EP showcases material mostly from their last album (now a few years old) repurposed for the live setting, generally twisted in different ways from their original forms. Precision-tooled for weirdass dancefloors everywhere.
Bicep – Opal (Four Tet Remix) [Ninja Tune]
Kieran Hebden’s been the go-to remix guy for at least a decade and a half now, and in some ways this is a perfectly by-numbers contemporary Four Tet remix, but it’s also super pretty, happy breakbeat house, remix late-period Ninja Tune act Bicep.
Etch – When The Soul Departs The Body [Altered Roads Vol. 1]
Etch – Send For Everyone People That Know Anyone Of Everyone [Jungle Warz on SoundCloud]
Third Person Lurkin – Prismatic (Etch Revision) [Sneaker Social Club]
Etch – The Scientists (Breaknology) [Soundman Chronicles]
LL Cool J – Mama Said Knock You Out (Etch Said UK Hardcore Refix) [BTG/Etch]
Etch – Lore Of Samurai [Altered Roads Vol. 1]
Brighton producer Zach Brashill aka Etch has been a force in drum’n’bass/jungle, as well as dubstep/UK garage/downtempo for the last 5 years or so. With appearances on Keysound, DJ Parris‘ Soundman Chronicles and Sneaker Social Club and others, he’s made quite a name for himself – along with many remixes, both legitimate and not so much. With new label Altered Roads setup as a side label of Soundman Chronicles, he’s taking a genre-ambivalent approach, bringing out unusual influences. We heard quite a bit of this across the selections tonight – jungle & breakbeat are very prevalent but there’s also the fun East Coast Jungleworx taking east coast US hip-hop classics and basically just mixing up the (often very recognizable) instrumentals into jungle/UK hardcore/footwork concoctions.
Listen again — ~198MB
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