Playlist 10.10.21 (10:16 pm)
Music of upheaval, music of glitches and breaks...
Listen again and set your head a'noddin'. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Jerusalem In My Heart - Qalaq 7 (w/ Tim Hecker) [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Jerusalem In My Heart - Qalaq 9 (w/ Mayss, Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin) [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Jerusalem In My Heart - Al Affaq, Lau Mat, Lau Lau Lau Lau Lau Lau (The Hypocrite, If He Dies, If If If If If If) [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Jerusalem In My Heart - Tanto (w/ Lucrecia Dalt) [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Jerusalem In My Heart - Abyad Barraq (w/ Greg Fox) [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Qalaq is the fourth album from Montréal-based Lebanese musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh as Jerusalem In My Heart. I was stunned by his work from the start - his first was released by Constellation in 2013. Far more grounded in digital processing than most of the Constellation output, Moumneh's music combines Arabic singing and instrumentation with electronics, granular processing and editing, with his impassioned, beautiful vocals often fed through harmonisers and auto-tune and then chopped into tiny pieces. Qalaq sees him ruminating on the sense of "deep worry" that the world has had to offer lately, particularly with the disastrous management of Lebanon by their secular government (even before the horrors of the Beirut explosion a year ago), and the continued bombing and other atrocities in Gaza. The album features different guests on every track, drawn together by Moumneh's distinctive production - elsewhere we have Moor Mother ruminating on deep worry, and many musicians from the Montréal postrock scene and from the Middle East & North Africa appear. Tonight we heard tracks with Tim Hecker's soundscapes, the voice & modular synthesis of Lucrecia Dalt, and Greg Fox's incendiary drumming, while the shattered sounds of the last track include contributions of some sort from Mayss and Lebanon's "A" Trio (also heard last week with Maurice Louca) of Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin.
Sepehr - Survivalism [Shaytoon/Bandcamp]
Sepehr - Plane of Fear [Shaytoon/Bandcamp]
Shaytoon is a new label run by New York native of Persian heritage, Sepehr Alimagham. His new mini-album Survivalism sees him looking back at '90s drum'n'bass & jungle, with some breakbeat & techno mixed in, and hints at his Middle Eastern background. I've really enjoyed these dark, fierce tracks.
DJ Sports & Tim Reaper - Wormhole [Future Retro]
Tim Reaper continues his Meeting of the Minds series on his Future Retro label with volumes 7 & 8, each featuring 4 collaborations. Here Reaper and Danish producer Milan Zaks aka DJ Sports do their best to mash up breaks as comprehensively as possible, whooshing cymbals forward & backwards and stopping and starting in fine junglist fashion.
Dev/Null - Time 2 Rhyme [Evar Records]
Dev/Null - Broken Bell [Evar Records]
Pete Dev/Null comes from way back in the early '00s breakcore scene, and has continued to make jungle-influenced tunes. Recently he found himself in possession of a Pocket Operator, a tiny portable sequencer, and that inspired him to go back to chopping breaks in the style of the jungle originalists from the early '90s, who loaded breaks into primitive samplers and programmed them via MIDI sequencing - this is where a lot of the classic choppage came from. Microjunglizm, out soon from Evar Records, harkens back to the days of UK hardcore & jungle techno, and on "Time 2 Rhyme" Dev/Null swipes a classic digidub bassline originally created by Bobby Digital as the riddim for Shabba Ranks' Peanie Peanie (and used extensively in jungle sets). Meanwhile "Broken Bell" has intense sub-bass pressure and slamming breaks.
SCALPING - Deadlock (AQXDM Remix) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
SCALPING - Empty Cascade (Azu Tiwaline Remix) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Bristolian band SCALPING combine postpunk riffage and techno in a way that reminds me of an instrumental Pop Will Eat Itself, although the appearance of Mogwai on this remix EP should hint at where they're coming from too. Each of the remixes on Flood Remixed takes the tracks in a different direction. AQXDM, the jungle-meets-industrial techno project of Aquarian and Deapmash, is a drum'n'bass rave with heavy riffs, while the wonderful Tunisian producer Azu Tiwaline weaves percussion and electronics that sound more like an original of hers than a remix.
Slikback x Objekt - Apex [Slikback Bandcamp]
Slikback x KMRU - Dissociation [Slikback Bandcamp]
Another album of collaborations for tonight, this one from Nairobi producer Slikback, one of the big recent names to come out of the electronic renaissance across the African continent. One of the surprises slipped in there is his team-up with Berlin's Objekt, with skittery programming around Slikback's typical big bass moves. And also pushing things in another direction is fellow Kenyan KMRU, with whom Slikback produces a warm surging ambient work with some percussive hints near the end.
Good Moon Deer - WWYWT [Unfiled]
Good Moon Deer - Audible Gasp [Unfiled]
A couple of years back I discovered Icelandic producer Good Moon Deer (punning on his name Guðmundur Úlfarsson) via a track on a Wire Magazine compilation. Two and a half years later the track finally appears on the album Point, released on Unfiled, the label he runs with fellow Icelandic producer Allenheimer. It's a mix of bass techno and IDM, very nice head-noddy stuff, and I'm glad I was following the label so I got notified of this release!
Beau Ambien - Granite [Club Moss]
Sydney's Harrison Rae is founder of the excellent Club Moss tape & digital label, and has recently been making tunes as Beau Ambien. There's some nice jungle/IDM/breaks stuff on his Bandcamp under the anagrammatical Henri O. R. Asar, but his two releases for Club Moss as Beau Ambien are alternate soundtracks to the apparently famous video games Banjo Kazooie and now Banjo Tooie, spanning dubby techno and bass sounds. Rad.
Consulate - The Fear [Pure Space/Bandcamp]
New release from Andy Garvey's Pure Space, based here in Eora/Sydney. Consulate is a Naarm/Melbourne based artist whose EP here is a mix of electronic styles, including dubby techno and jungle-influenced breaks, but this track is a half-time dubby, almost dubstep piece. A great, varied EP.
the little hand of the faithful - The bear wrote it [the little hand of the faithful Bandcamp]
the little hand of the faithful - Smoke every day (Don't) [the little hand of the faithful Bandcamp]
Mitch Jones of Scattered Order apparently never stops making tunes. And although SO started over 4 decades ago, he's a deft hand at electronic beats and samples, and puts the solo stuff out under the alias of a small stuffed bear named the little hand of the faithful. His latest collection is The world needs referees, on which we find many pleasant head-nodding beats at different tempos, with some live bass and guitar at times. There's a track that's a bit like drum'n'bass rock'n'roll (reminding me a bit of what Amon Tobin's doing as Only Child Tyrant) and something hinting perhaps at dubstep. Very very nice as always.
Sunken Foal - Greyscale Dreamcoat [Countersunk Bandcamp]
Sunken Foal - Chicken Switch [Countersunk Bandcamp]
Dunk Murphy first introduced his solo act Sunken Foal with a couple of magnificent releases on Planet µ back in 2008, following a legendary album from his duo Ambulance on the same label. For a long time now his music has appeared on his own Countersunk label on Bandcamp. It definitely comes out of IDM, which is often a very melodic form of head-nodding, cut-up beats and such, but Murphy is an excellent multi-instrumentalist, including banjo, acoustic guitar and other instruments - the new album Two Moon Junction brings back piano, which appeared beautifully on those original Planet µ releases - and he's also extremely good at strange & unexpected harmonic turns which further elevate the music from well-produced, richly-orchestrated IDM & folktronica into something often very special indeed. It feels like Two Moon Junction is one of his best releases since the first album and the three volumes of Friday Syndrome. A pretty good entrypoint if you want one.
memotone - Rain Hut [memotone Bandcamp]
memotone - Blackcap Crossing [memotone Bandcamp]
It only took Will Yates a bit over a decade to decide to give memotone its own self-titled LP, but now is the time, apparently. Initial EPs were situated very much in the post-dubstep bass techno vein, but Yates is a talented multi-instrumentalist, whether on live drums, keys, MPC, or myriad other instruments, and he's at home making contemplative sound work, jazzy breaks, Ye Olde English Folke pastiches or four-on-the-floor techno bangers. This album has a bit of the jazzy beat-edits, and a fair chunk of Jon Hassell-style fourth world ambient, including live-harmonised clarinet. It's his excellent musicianship which makes it so great, as always. A talented, multi-faceted artist.
Listen again — ~207MB
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