This week, Utility Fog, like my beautiful hosts FBi Radio, turns 15! It’s been an amazing one and a half decades, and I hope to continue much longer, bringing you great, interesting music from all around the world.
LISTEN AGAIN and stop living in the past – it’s 2018 now, get with it. Stream on demand from the birthday station, podcast right here?
Oren Ambarchi, Konrad Sprenger, Phillip Sollmann – Suez (Version) [A-TON/Bandcamp]
Here we find Sydney/Melbourne/the world’s Oren Ambarchi in minimal kosmische mode, working with two German composer/producers. Konrad Sprenger‘s real name is Jörg Hiller; he works with minimalist composers among others; Phillip Sollmann is best known as minimal/deep house & techno producer Efdemin, and this EP is released on A-TON, the experimental side-label of the label run out of Berlin cult club Berghain. This ain’t techno (or deep house), but it’s got the pedigree.
Kajsa Lindgren – Stratus (remix by David Granström) [Hyperdelia/Bandcamp]
Kajsa Lindgren – Cocoon (Cotton) (remix by Félicia Atkinson) [Hyperdelia/Bandcamp]
Swedish experimental electronic artist Kajsa Lindgren hands over the sounds from her album WOMB (which I’m going to check out asap) to some really interesting artists for this remix EP. Fellow Swede David Granström brings his algorithmic electronics to bear with a beautiful piece of imposing ambience, swaying between low and high, aleatoric yet melodic. And Félicia Atkinson creates one of her disturbing not-quite-peaceful ASMR soundscapes, perfectly constructed as ever.
Sonae – Majority Vote (Electric Indigo Remix) [Monika Enterprise]
Sonae – Soul Eater (Natalie TBA Berizde Remix) [Monika Enterprise]
Sonia Güttler aka Sonae released her excellent second album I Started Wearing Black earlier this year on Berlin’s Monika Enterprise, and now we have a four-track remix album with some top female producers. Electric Indigo, founder of female:pressure, gives us some lovely beats and melodic electronics, while Georgian Natalie Berizde (aka TBA) mixes ambient piano with cavernous bass and electronic percussion and skittery mid-range sounds, plus some nostalgic keyboards, giving it a kind of vaporwavey fourth world vibe.
R.A.N. – Ay [Karlrecords/Bandcamp]
R.A.N. – Sabah [Karlrecords/Bandcamp]
R.A.N. aka Roads At Night is the alias of Hüma Utku, originally from Istanbul and currently based in Berlin (because isn’t everyone?). Her music combines traditional instruments with distorted industrial electronics (a typical Berlin sound at the moment), field recordings and even some post-classical piano. It’s very cinematic and evokes her personal experiences and reflections on the turmoil and devastation around the Middle East.
Yair Etziony – Gesundbrunnen Ghosts [False Industries/Bandcamp]
Faction – Inside Out [Neo Ouija]
Yair Etziony – Imperium Romanum (Alec Empire Remix) [False Industries/Bandcamp]
Yair Etziony – Macrocosmos [Lamour]
Israeli producer Yair Etziony has been active in the electronic music scene for a decade and a half, and is now based in… where else than Berlin. And his music has taken a decided turn for the dark and distorted. This year has been a big one, as he’s released a remix album with both older electronica types and Berlin artists including the legendary Alec Empire… and also two new albums, one on his own False Industries and now another on Swedish label Lamour. In the early 2000s he was one half of idm/glitch duo Faction with Rani Golan, who released The End of Tel Aviv on Neo Ouija – a minimalist, glitchy sound with clicky beats, quite removed from what Etziony is doing nowadays, which is inspired by Berlin’s industrial techno/ambient scene, albeit at times with a lighter touch. The new album As Above So Below was recorded with only a limited amount of hardware, a Eurorack modular system plus a Roland drum machine and synth.
Broken Chip – Reneform [Flaming Pines]
Broken Chip – Nothing To See Here [Feral Media]
Option Command – Polybell Strategy [King Deluxe]
Broken Chip – there’s always tomorrow [Broken Chip Bandcamp]
Broken Chip – Forest Floor [Flaming Pines]
Broken Chip – Unlocked [Flaming Pines]
Martyn Palmer has produced lovely ambient music out of the Blue Mountains as Broken Chip for about a decade, and it’s lovely to have a new album from him, out soon on the excellent Flaming Pines label with whom he’s had a relationship for quite a while. Martyn’s music treads that great line with ambient music where it’s peaceful and beautiful and delicate, but still has excellent weird little distortions and disturbances that make it even more interesting. For a time Martyn also made excellent wonky beats as Option Command, and I hope there’s some more of that in him too…
Listen again — ~206MB
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