A bit of electronic pop, ambient, and lots of lovely skittery jungle & jungle-adjacent beats for you tonight. Everything’s going crazy, but we’ve still got music, and rest assured we always will have music.
Take solace in music and LISTEN AGAIN – stream on demand @ FBi, podcast right here.
Aphir – Autonomy (feat. Brambles) [Provenance/Bandcamp]
Becki Whitton was going to release the first single from a triumphant new pop album from Aphir this week. But then the world decided to become a whole lot darker and more uncertain, and that music seemed to not quite belong in the current moment. We’ll still get to hear that when the time is right, but because Becki just can’t stop – and she loves a collaboration – we get her amazing ritual to banish fear instead. On both of these tracks she has adopted a vocal style in which she speaks the lyrics rather than singing melodies. And tonight’s track features synth from Brambles, whose earlier work was stunning post-classical/folktronic ambient, but whose more recent work ventures into a more explicitly electronic sound palette.
Panoptique Electrical – Spiral Song [Panoptique Electrical Bandcamp]
Jason Sweeney has been a stalwart of experimental, electronic, indie, ambient and more music scenes in Adelaide and Melbourne for some decades. He was responsible for some of the greatest idm to come out of Australia in the mid-’90s with Pretty Boy Crossover. But for years now his solo work has mostly coalesced around Panoptique Electrical, from whom we now have a lovely set of ambient piano compositions – Five Pianos. Written for theatre and installations, they’re redolent of melancholy and quietude. Maybe just what you need at this moment!
ju ca – Essence [angoisse]
ju ca – Essence (Flora Yin-Wong Remix) [angoisse]
Melbourne’s Justin Cantrell has for the last few years been developing a body of work as ju ca that explores space through a predominantly digital palette, on international labels like Denmark’s phinery and now Spanish label angoisse. Alongside ju ca’s pristine, stark pieces are a number of remixes. Tonight we heard London-based Chinese-Malaysian producer Flora Yin-Wong‘s glitched-up take on the same track.
ckeener – Run Out [Them There]
ckeener – Heads Chat Shit [Them There]
Carl Brown may be slightly better known as Preston Field Audio, under which name he mainly releases field recordings. As ckeener, he’s just released an album on UK label Them There which sees him branch out into off-kilter electronica and beautiful ambient, including some gorgeous cello improvisations on a couple of tracks from Ailsa Mair Hughes. The sounds here are very strange and otherworldly – not all ambient like “Run Out”; the second track I played veers from noise into wonky beats.
Köhn – TP [Köhn Bandcamp]
Köhn – Doktöhr [Köhn Bandcamp]
As you may remember from a million years ago, aka last week, on Friday the 20th of March Bandcamp decided to forego their revenue share of all sales in a gesture towards the fraught situation of musicians the world over due to COVID-19. This prompted a lot of artists to upload new or lost material. Here Belgian electronic master Köhn, aka Jürgen De Blonde (among other things, also a member of Belgian indie/postrock pranksters de Portables) has compiled various tracks from the last 15 years which have never seen release. It’s by no means second-rate offcuts. There are delicious crunchy granular drones, pulsating synths, cut-up guitars and lots more – replete with outrageous titles like “Wuhan Clan” and “Köhvid-19” – the album itself is called Köhrona. To be honest it’s not a bad intro to the work of a highly talented experimental artists. The at times skittery beats of the second tracks lead us nicely into the next phase of the show…
Nicolas Jaar – Faith Made of Silk [Other People]
Nicolas Jaar – The Governor [Other People]
Nicolas Jaar – Don’t Break My Love [Clown & Sunset]
This week, Chilean-American musician Nicolas Jaar released his new album Cenizas on his Other People label. It’s mostly patient music built around a desire for real feeling, of healing – quite a beautiful sentiment for the times we’re in. And while much of his club & beat tendencies find their outlet in his Against All Logic project, there are always beat tracks or programmed beats in amongst his material, so tonight we heard from one of those jungle-ish, idm-ish things he lets slip now and then, the closing track “Faith Made of Silk”. And I decided to wander through a couple of other Jaar beats – the incredible “The Governor” from 2016’s Sirens, and about half of 2011 track “Don’t Break My Love”, a kind of James Blakeian jazzy post-dubstep tune with some double-time beats. Always just lovely.
CA2+ – Gait Cycle (Mormal Version) [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
CA2+ – Gait Cycle [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
CA2+ – Deleese (Intro) (excerpt) [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
CA2+ – Lure Protrusion [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
For his new release Overtone Window, once again through the Northern Electronics label, Swedish producer & photographer Andreas Lübeck takes his CA2+ alias back into dark beats. It’s that kind of club/bass-informed idm that’s about a lot these days, and this is sharp & intense & deep. It’s also impressive because his previous release, Lonely Hearts Club found him deep in sound design, creating almost contemporary-classical sounding pieces of sonic architecture – check the sliding tones, quasi-melodies and discordant harmonies of “Deleese (Intro)”. Lübeck likes creating strange alternate versions of his own tracks – the new EP features the “Mormal Version” of the title track from his earlier Gait Cycle EP, speeding up the beats for something more crushing, funkier and less loose, whereas the original “Deleese” on that same first EP is a faster-moving and more distorted work than the exquisite “(Intro)” from last year. All three releases couldn’t be more highly recommended.
JASSS – We Solve This Talking [Whities/Bandcamp]
JASSS – Every Single Fish In The Pond [iDEAL Recordings]
Brainwaltzera – Ten Ton Fenix (JASSS Remix) [Touched Music]
It’s been a long while since the last solo release from Berlin-resident Spanish producer JASSS. Her debut album Weightless came out in 2017 and made a huge impression, with its amalgam of industrial, jazz influences, and contemporary beats. Now she’s just released a pair of excellent tracks on the mighty Whities label, both drawing on jungle breaks & rave aesthetics in a bass techno context – and simultaneously this triumphant return finds TWO remixes released the same week; one is a breaky take on Alva Noto, while the other sees her taking on latter-day idm wunderkind Brainwaltzera, preserving the melodic nature of his beloved track, but amplifying the beats into junglist mayhem. Genius.
AYA – “Oneohtrix Point Never – Along (LTJ Bukem Remix)” [AYA Bandcamp]
AYA – think i’m gonna make a move [AYA Bandcamp]
Manchester’s AYA also loves her jungle and rave stylings, inserting mashed amen breaks at any opportunity. She dropped a new compilation two oh won nein for last Friday’s Bandcamp extravaganza, full of crazy mashups, edits and unauthorized remixes. It’s incredibly cheeky to name a track “Oneohtrix Point Never – Along (LTJ Bukem Remix)” – it clearly is a remix of the Oneohtrix Point Never tune, but I’m not deep enough in the back catalogue of d’n’b don LTJ Bukem to know if it’s a mashup of him or just a little bit in his style. The other piece tonight is a junglified take on Cassie‘s 2005 hit “Me & U”. Sweet as.
Christoph de Babalon – Webs Of Wraith [A Colourful Storm]
Mark – Incantation For The Protection Of JC [A Colourful Storm]
Finally for tonight, newly released on Melbourne’s A Colourful Storm is a Split EP from older & new Berlin – furious industrial drum’n’bass alongside ambient. Christoph de Babalon has been making jungle and experimental electronic (and dark ambient) since the Digital Hardcore days of the early to mid ’90s – the Berlin scene was on to jungle impressively early, with their own cyberpunky, apocalyptic, political take. It’s impressive that de Babalon is still producting full on-point material decades hence, and he’s had an influence on multiple generations of musicians – presumably including Melbourne-by-way-of-Berlin character Mark, aka Klon Dump, whose latest jungle/techno EPs have come out through the experimental sub-label Unterton of Berghain‘s Ostgut Ton. Here Mark shows us his chops, with epic dark d’n’b of tonight’s “Incantation For The Protection Of JC” juxtaposed with literally a “Duet For Melodica And Claves”, a wistful and lonely piece. Check it out.
Listen again — ~191MB
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