A cinematic vibe across a lot of tonight’s sounds, whether it’s krautrock/shoegaze, psychedelia, acoustic doom or who knows what else…
LISTEN AGAIN and fly to the stars and back… FBi does the stream on demand, podcast here.
Romeo Moon – It All Goes [Hotel Motel]
Melbourne musician Kevin Orr has released a couple of things before as Romeo Moon, but this is the first track in a couple of years. While he’s a songwriter, this is a beautiful instrumental work, a slow burning meld of shoegaze and krautrock with a loping beat and shimmering drones.
LaBrecque / Barakat – Planet R-101 [Karlrecords]
Paul LaBrecque is best known as a member of long-lived psychedelic group Sunburned Hand of the Man, while German-Palestinian musician Ghazi Barakat is known as Pharaoh Chromium as well as various rock groups such as The Golden Showers. This duo release sees them creating two quite contrasting sides – side A is psych rock freakout, while tonight’s side B achieves that feeling of static movement – things changing slowly but keeping in the same space for over 11 minutes until the delays and reverbs become more intense and then a Middle Eastern melody enters – and even then it takes a couple more minutes before it really takes off! Quite a trip indeed.
Elsen Price – Assemble: The Spirit Controlled [ABC Music]
Sydney double bassist Elsen Price is equally at home playing complex contemporary music scores, improvising jazz, playing with Middle Eastern ensembles, and creating solo double bass works live with looping pedal. On his solo album Descent of the Free he lets loose with every kind of double bass technique, conjuring beautiful high melodies, a tremolo choir of basses, plucked basslines, percussive slaps and more.
Deaf Center – Red Glow [Sonic Pieces via The Wire]
Cellist & drone/sound-artist Erik K Skodvin and pianist Otto A Totland have worked together as Deaf Center for a decade and a half. Their music started off a little more electronic and ambient, but gradually moved towards the spooky acoustic doom of Skodvin’s solo work. To say I’m looking forward to their new album would be an understatement! I was even willing to pay vinyl prices for the limited CD edition – Sonic Pieces releases are always gorgeously packaged, but you pay for it…
Good Moon Deer – Aloner [ via The Wire]
Brussels-based Icelandic musician Guðmundur Úlfarsson basdardises his own name as Good Moon Deer, under which he releases lovely glitchy electro-acoustic stuff. This track slowly builds the chopped vocals and synths until the drum edits and bass drops take over. More soon please!
Machinefabriek – sidder [Nomad Exquisite]
Machinefabriek – zinder (feat vocals from Rie Mitsutake and Alden Penner) [Nomad Exquisite]
Rutger Zuydervelt is taking his music (as Machinefabriek and under his own name) into continually unexpected new vistas all the time. Here, for a short EP on Chicago label Nomad Exquisite he’s created off-beat rhythm-and-bass, with synth pads and noises, all of which wouldn’t be out of place on an updated idm release, say, or a well-hyped Boomkat-approved hot young thing. Excellent as always.
Lee Gamble – BMW Shuanghuan X5 [Hyperdub]
Lee Gamble – In The Wreck Room [Hyperdub]
I’m not sure why I didn’t end up playing this in February, but better late than never! Lee Gamble can never be predicted, except that he’s going to be cutting edge and conceptual, yet linked to the dancefloor all the same. Here we have one track which is a kind of concrète ode to an extravagant Chinese knock-off car, and then a track that’s half ambient pads, half cool finger clicking bass and half jittery drill’n’bass breaks – and it exists in the folds of higher dimensions where you can have three halves.
Laurence Pike – Drum Chant [Leaf]
After a long break from solo work, Laurence Pike put out an album last year of placid percussion and live-triggered samples. Another new album is coming soon, and this first single is somewhat more frenetic in its percussion, again combining live drums with samples and electronics.
DJ Plead – Salt and Pepper [Nervous Horizon]
Now based in Melbourne, Jared Beeler continues his solo work as DJ Plead where he left off with last year’s Get In Circle – Lebanese percussion meets bass music. Except this time he’s released by London label Nervous Horizon and getting repped all over the place. His productions for BV were always first class too.
Aidan Baker, Faith Coloccia, Jon Mueller – Harmony In Distance [Gizeh/Bandcamp]
Barnett + Faith Coloccia – Bachelor’s Grove [SIGE Records]
Barnett + Faith Coloccia – Switch [Blackest Ever Black]
Barnett + Faith Coloccia – AM Horizon [Blackest Ever Black]
Barnett + Faith Coloccia – Fountain of Youth [SIGE Records]
It’s going to be a big year for Faith Coloccia, with a new solo release as Måra in the works, and a new release from her long-running duo with Oakeater‘s Alex Barnett – and coming in late April, a trio release with prolific guitar mangler Aidan Baker and brilliant, versatile percussionist Jon Mueller. On the latter release, Coloccia layered vocals through tape machines to create a beautiful wordless addition to the glitched & processed guitars and primitive percussion. It’s a beautiful album, released on LP & digital through Gizeh in late April – tonight’s track is an exclusive for now.
The Barnett + Coloccia duo has been producing precessional, arcane electronic works since 2013’s Retrieval, only occasionally including Coloccia’s angelic vocals, focusing rather on dark synthetic textures which could feel at home on an ’80s industrial/gothic release a lot of the time. 2015’s Weld continued, again with subtle melodies, abstract noise and sometimes drum machine beats. The latest, VLF, is released on SIGE Records, the label Coloccia runs with husband Aaron Turner. All three releases are evocative works that I return to quite often.
haddocks’ eyes – fury and disgust [haddocks’ eyes Bandcamp]
The musical emanations from Aussie artist Benjow aka haddocks’ eyes come at irregular intervals and vary from indie songwriting to folk guitar picking to electronic processing – anything really. This track is typically outsiderish – highly processed vocals and dirgelike guitar and drum machine. Benjow is capable of creating gorgeous, emotive songs, but even when he’s in alienation mode I find his stuff highly compelling.
Listen again — ~206MB
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