Industrial, post-industrial, warped electronic song, beats, sound-art and… neo-classical? It all fits together right here, right now.
LISTEN AGAIN before it’s right there, right then. Podcast is here, stream on demand there @ FBi.
Lana Del Rabies – Master [Gilgongo Records/Bandcamp]
Lana Del Rabies – Hallowed is The Earth [Gilgongo Records/Bandcamp]
Sam An assumed the Lana Del Rabies identity around 2015, using this ghoulish parody moniker as a vessel for heavy, emotive industrial music – gothic pop songs, mechanistic rhythms, swathes of distortion. After two albums in 2016 and 2018, An concluded that the Lana Del Rabies name was too tied to the pop star whose own non de plume she had plundered, and shifted to Beata (“Blessed” in Italian) and then Strega Beata (“Blessed witch”, or thereabouts), under which she slipped out a few new demos. But the gravity of a well-known artist name was too great, so she’s decided to preserve good old Lana Del Rabies, using the new name instead for the next album title. Strega Beata is very much a continuation of the style established with her first two releases, and while it doesn’t relinquish the power of distortion, harsh vocals and thundering industrial rhythms, it also allows for more expansive textures, beats that draw from trip-hop and electronica, and varied vocal delivery encompassing spoken word and beautiful harmonies. With lyrics and emotion derived from the personal and planet-wide tragedies of the last few years, there’s a striking range to the music on this album, and recurring motifs that tie it together, through beatless lulls and cathartic explosions.
Depeche Mode – My Cosmos Is Mine [Columbia Records]
Depeche Mode – Don’t Say You Love Me [Columbia Records]
When Andy Fletcher died last year, it was touching hearing the tributes to a man who’d been part of Depeche Mode since their beginnings as an ’80s synth-pop band, through their industrial phases, their kind-of-stadium-rock phases, and all the references to various types of club music and electronic music through the years and decades. Fletch didn’t really play anything or write any music, but he was known as the soul of the band, the vibe guy who kept it together and had an ineffable but essential input into the band’s creative direction. And apparently he was just a genuinely lovely bloke. In any case, Martin L Gore remains a talented, emotive songwriter, David Gahan a remarkable and emotive singer (Gore is too, in fact), and the bandmembers have always found a producer and other collaborators to realise the electronic aspect of their creativity – from Vince Clarke (later of Erasure) through Alan Wilder (later of the excellent Recoil) and then at times drawing in luminaries of the electronic world like Bomb The Bass’s Tim Simenon and the late Mark Bell (of LFO and many a Björk production). This time it’s James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco, which surprises me, but he’s got the chops for that classic synth-pop sound with emo/new-romantic leanings. Also there on engineering, programming and mixing duties is Marta Salogni, who has an impressive list of production/mixing work on her website, and also has a collaboration coming out which I’m excited to hear, with the late Tom Relleen of Tomaga. If I had to guess I’d say Ford is responsible for the undeniable Kraftwerk-isms throughout, and Salogni perhaps the more textural elements, but it’s very likely all-in on everything. And it sounds sumptuous, and there are catchy hooks, and it’s vintage Depeche Mode, which is just a lovely thing to receive in 2023.
Baskot Lel Baltageyya – Baskot (Cookies) [Akuphone/Wall of Sound/Bandcamp]
Baskot Lel Baltageyya – 3azeezy.. (Dearest..) [Akuphone/Wall of Sound/Bandcamp]
A few years ago, the world was introduced to a collaborative Egyptian album called Lekhfa which featured Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh, prodigious Egyptian experimental music Maurice Louca and Palestinian singer Tamer Abu Ghazaleh adpoting the tropes of Egyptian folk and pop songs with experimental electronic production and psychedelic arrangements. The spirit of that collaboration (with lyrics provided by Egyptian poet Mido Zoheir) is felt strongly in the new self-titled album from Baskot Lel Baltageyya (translating as Cookies For Thugs), a project of multi-instrumentalist / producer Adham Zidan and poet Anwar Dabbour (in fact, Mahmoud Waly plays bass on both projects). Here, Zidan’s psych-folk project with Alan Bishop, The Invisible Hands, and his atypical solo folk project Today Is Tomorrow feed into the darkly humourous songs, with often vocoded vocals, drum machines mixed with live drums, synthesizers and electric organs corralled into music which sometimes seems like typical shaabi, sometimes more like Western folk/psych. I wish we had more translations of the lyrics, but we can get a lot out of these odd songs regardless.
5299NOIR – the nude [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
5299NOIR – arc [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
Describing this one is hard – and that’s undeniably good! Andrea Bambini is a Berlin-based Italian pianist & composr trained in the classical & jazz traditions, also working as a DJ, and on trying to be born before dying, from the ever-intriguing Esc.rec, he hands us a collection of… songs? Deconstructed post-something, hinting at jazz and cabaret, crackling and jolting through hard edits, rumbling into distorted bass, and then folding into quasi-trip-hop samples. These tracks have been sitting on Bambini’s hard drive for some years, and I suspect the title is a reference to getting the material out before it’s lost its vitality or relevance, but to be honest 5299NOIR sounds like about as cutting-edge now as music gets – or one branch of it anyway.
Isabassi – Escapist Foley [Super Hexagon/Bandcamp]
Isabassi – Inadequacy [Super Hexagon/Bandcamp]
Like Bambini above, Isabassi (aka Isabella Bassi) is an Italian musician based in Berlin (and Milan), although she is in fact a Brazilian of Italian extraction. In Isabassi’s work, experimental beats meet dub and bass musics, with found-sounds and field recordings making up the pallette as much as electronics. It’s not all deconstructed/reconstituted club music though – the layered, glitched guitars of “Inadequacy” provide a lovely contrast. It’s all expertly done.
Aphir – Pomegranate Tree (Lack the Low Remix) [Provenance Records/Bandcamp]
Aphir – Red Giant (Arrom Remix) [Provenance Records/Bandcamp]
Provenance Records chief and all-round music biz legend Becki Whitton aka Aphir released her cathartic album Pomegranate Tree in October last year, using her electronically-mediated songs – including her looped, layered “choral” practice developed over the preceding year – to work through some personal turmoil. Despite the very personal nature of this material, she turned over a selection of tracks to close friends for remixing, and the results range from highly simpatico electronic pop to dancefloor works. Kat Hunter aka Lack the Low‘s extraordinary rework of the album’s title track adds lush string arrangements, deep basslines and rattling drums, while Melissa Valence aka Arrom maintains crunchy electronic beats until the last third of her version floats into vocal drone. Speaking of which, the EP is rounded out by Becki’s own choral drone rework as a bonus.
Glamour Lakes – Threadsuns [Glamour Lakes Bandcamp]
We’ve heard a couple of fascinating singles from Adelaide’s Glamour Lakes this year, and now the full album Native Coils is released. It’s a whole album of emotive synth-pop of a somewhat “New Romantic” bent, but only some of the songs have anything resembling ’80s production. We’ve heard the amen breaks on a couple of the songs, and here we have more breaks and interesting production approaches.
Om Unit – Forward [Om Unit Bandcamp]
For a while Om Unit was making some of the most cromulent drum’n’bass & jungle around, but he started out with instrumental hip-hop, dubstep blends and more in the mix, and thus his post-d’n’b output has reached in all sorts of directions (and we just heard the latest/last of his Philip D Kick jungle-footwork blends). The Atlantis EP is very much in techno vein, mixing dub and acid influences, but also “breaks”, like here.
Lynx – This Is Not An Exit [31 Recordings]
Usually Doc Scott’s 31 Recordings is home to very nice dark tech-step style drum’n’bass. You could argue that the new two-tracker from Portsmouth’s Lynx is in that style, but there’s so much sound design and narrative to the tracks – particularly “This Is Not An Exit” – that it seems like something else entirely. It’s not that this hasn’t been done before, by the likes of Dom+Roland or Blocks & Escher for example, but it’s a little surprising when you were expecting ‘floor-fitted traditionalism. I shouldn’t have though, if I’d paid attention to the Lynx name eh!
Somah – Aversion [Somah Bandcamp]
Joe Somah‘s someone I tend to think of in the dubstep context, but here are two tracks that feel more like drum’n’bass/jungle, albeit with a weird half-time nod to them. I love this kind of hybrid shit when done well, as it certainly is here.
contactghost – Escape [Stolen Groove]
London’s Stolen Groove describes itself as “multi-genre”, covering dubstep, breaks and other UK club genres – including drum’n’bass & jungle. Here we have a sparse & fierce jungle track from young Nottingham producer contactghost.
Loopsnake – Elubatel [Loopsnake Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney’s Loopsnake is Andrew Maxam, who hosted a much-loved electronic music show on FBi for some years called Liquid Electric. It’s been a while since we’ve heard his DJing talents or production skills, but now he’s back with Shape Change, a varied EP of IDM, bass and a kind of jittery lo-fi techno on this track.
EXIT ELECTRONICS – KNEEJERKS [JK Flesh Bandcamp]
Last year, Justin K Broadrick debuted EXIT ELECTRONICS as a danker, slower, filthier version of the ultra-distorted industrial techno he’s been doing as JK Flesh. This stuff is just as overdriven to the max, bass heavy and relentless – well, not quite relentless. Tracks like this as just a tiny bit less maxed out pehraps. Broadrick dropped this second album, believe anything, believe everything on Bandcamp with no warning this week.
Koenraad Ecker – RACING MUSIC #4 [Koenraad Ecker Bandcamp]
Koenraad Ecker – Copper Mountain [Koenraad Ecker Bandcamp]
Koenraad Ecker – Mami Wata (feat. Audrey Chen) [Koenraad Ecker Bandcamp]
Somehow we’re managing to follow JK Flesh/Exit Electronics with something almost as intense… briefly. Belgian cellist and sound-artist Koenraad Ecker is known to me equally for his mutated club music with duos Lumisokea and Stray Dogs (both of which strayed into beatless sound design frequently), and for his electro-acoustic works involving cello and myriad sound sources. Ecker has recently uploaded a stash of unreleased music to his Bandcamp, encompassing stereo mixes of installation works, high-definition field recordings, found-sound constructions, and the two works featured tonight. RACING MUSIC is two short, sharp electronic tracks made for a car racing game – perhaps the level of distortion along with hammering kicks was too much for the game designers. In high contrast is Copper Mountain, a rich and wondrous electro-acoustic stew of differently pitched (and re-pitched, stretched, bent) chimes (including a “very drunk carillon”), field recordings, and one one track, the haunted voice of fellow cellist and vocal experimentalist Audrey Chen, accompanied by low-pitched chimes & hard-to-place field recordings. Beautiful and surprising.
Jim Nopédie – winter sun through train window [Jim Nopédie Bandcamp]
Jim Nopédie – clear rushing river [Jim Nopédie Bandcamp]
When I last played the music of James Gales on this show, I commented that his music as Jim Nopédie didn’t really have the impressionist piano gestures you’d expect from the Eric Satie reference in his name. New mini-album Keep It Rolling clearly shows, though, that Satie and his ilk are dear to Gales’ heart. Gales approached the music here with the intent of creating something gentle & positive, in contrast with the feeling of the times. And so indeed, we get shimmery piano improvisations and skipping, light-footed electronica. If you’re looking for a little respite from the heaviness of the now, look no further.
Gregory Paul Mineeff – To Quieten [NOOX]
To round things out, some even more subdued piano from Wollongong’s Gregory Paul Mineeff, who often combines piano or guitar with electronics, but here it’s pure piano for Piano Day 2023. UK-based composer Doug Thomas released the Piano Day compilation Cristofori on the guideline of “composition meets improvisation”, which is right up Mineeff’s alley. “To Quieten” begins with a simple classical chorale before the melody beautifully winds out into baroque, jazz-like twirls.
Listen again — ~210MB
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