Utility Fog

There’s more pop (arguably) than usual in tonight’s Utility Fog, and more ambient (loosely) tonight as well. There’s 4/4 dub of various sorts, processed field recordings and a surprising number of cellists doing unusual things.

LISTEN AGAIN and be inspired. Stream on demand via FBi, podcast from here.

Lucidvox – Don’t Look Away [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Starting tonight with something heavy and melodic that reminds me of early ’90s 4AD – Lush perhaps? Lucidvox are a Russian quartet, all women, who were originally based in Moscow but left for various parts of Europe and the Middle East when Russia invaded Ukraine. I get the impression that there’s a lot of stylistic diversity across this album, so I look forward to hearing the rest – but the dense riffs, effects and vocals both sweet and harsh here are just the ticket.

Peter Gabriel – Love Can Heal (Bright-Side Mix) [Real World Records/Bandcamp]
I’m surprised that it’s been quite a long time since I played Peter Gabriel, a hugely inventive musician through 5 decades and many twists and turns. His new album i/o is coming out sometime this year, and he’s setup a subscription on Bandcamp, where he’s releasing every track from the album (and some bonuses) throughout the year. Each song is released with two different mixes (as well as some kind of 3D sound which I can’t make work): The “Bright-Side” mixes are by Mark “Spike” Stent, and the “Dark-Side” ones by Tchad Blake, both weapons-grade producers/sound engineers, and it’s been fascinating hearing the differences in their takes – sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic. There have been some of his trademark upbeat funk-pop numbers, plenty of “world music” influence and use of technology – although you can forgive a 73-year-old for not being quite at the vanguard of musical and technological invention. But he’s a wonderful songwriter still, as this pensive song ably demonstrates.

JOBS – Ask New York [Ramp Local/Bandcamp]
Here’s some more experimental pop from a bunch of experimental musicians including renowned jazz/improv violist Jessica Pavone, along with bassist Ro Lundberg, guitarist Dave Scanlon, and drummer Max Jaffe. Jaffe recorded & mixed the album but all contribute some keyboards, and all sing. Their music can be deceptively straightforward postpunk pop, but there are a lot of electronic elements (Jaffe plays a custom hybrid drumkit), and Pavone’s viola is a significant force throughout.

Loraine James – I DM U [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Hard to believe that this is only Loraine James‘ third album for Hyperdub – but there was the Whatever The Weather for Ghostly International, and the Julius Eastman reworks for Phantom Limb. James has always had so-called IDM in the mix among other things, so the title “I DM U” is particularly cute – but it turns out that this one’s driven by some beautifully cut-up acoustic drums. Absolute pleasure.

Harry Klein – Who Floats Above [Harry Klein Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney artist Harry Klein takes a left turn from the soulful electronic pop of his previous album with new single What Floats Above. Here it’s instrumental electronica, by turns dreamy & melodic, and heavy and glitchy on the beats.

Sumn Conduit – What Energy [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
Sumn Conduit – A, B or C [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
We’ve been talking a lot about FBi Radio’s 20th birthday, and Stu Buchanan is someone who was very important in its history in various capacities. One of those was co-presenting New Weird Australia for some years, and this Scottish immigrant’s service to Australia’s experimental music community has continued in the form of the record label of the same name (among other things! Stu is a busy man!) This week we got two new albums released on the digitals, both Pay What You Can (if you do pay, the proceeds go to the artists). First up is Sumn Conduit, the duo of Dharawal/Inuk vocalist Sonya Holowell and Ben Carey, whose solo modular synth work we heard earlier this year. Valve Is Released is the duo’s first studio album, after some live documents, and it’s audibly more structued (as well as being divided into separate tracks). Once again Carey’s modular synth work is breathtaking – controlled, yet constantly in motion – and whether the electronics are harmonious or dissonant, Holowell finds ways of inserting melody. Really, don’t let this one pass you by.

salllvage – O’Drone Park [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
New Weird Australia’s other release this week is equally stunning. salllvage is Kombumerri man Rowan Savage, currently living on Wangal Land, who works with processed field recordings made on-Country in Kombumerri country and Gadigal country. He does an amazing job of keeping enough of the source sounds’ nature while transforming them into melodic and rhythmic material for his post-club and ambient musical works.

This Friday at the Art Gallery of NSW the Volume Festival event showcases First Nations artists from around the world, including Joe Rainey. Sonya Holowell will perform both solo and as part of Sumn Conduit, and salllvage’s sounds will loop throughout the night. Maybe I’ll see you there?

Gentleforce – Plant Commune Dub [Oxtail Recordings]
Eli Murray has been making ambient techno as Gentleforce since at least 2010, but before that he was organising dubstep and drum’n’bass events around Sydney’s Northen Beaches. He’s also known to many as the composer of the music for Kinderling‘s meditation series for kids called Bedtime Explorers. Fucken cute! His new short album Life Anthems, out through the ever-reliable Oxtail Recordings, is made up of ambient tracks with gentle techno beats and field recordings, all made while on the go with family & friends. Gentleforce draws here from children’s open & unmediated way of being in the world, making music intended to be a healing force. Come commune with the plants.

unpropped – Inner [unpropped Bandcamp]
Spanish musician Germán Sánchez spent time in a variety of places before settling, for the time being, in Germany. While he spent time studying electronic music in France, the music on his new EP Acausality seems a perfect fit for his current home, where glitchy dub techno is a native form – although that said, he’s also spent time in Mexico, home of Murcof. The 5 tracks on Acausality, mastered by Stefan Betke aka Pole, have lovely clicky 4/4 beats, dub effects, and lovely pads, all put together with a lot of care.

The Bug – Possessed(The Light of Shaka) [Pressure]
I guess at some point The Bug will release something where I’m insufficiently enthused and I’ll skip playlisting it, but so far each of these Machine EPs have just been nicely heavy-riffing distorted basslines and beats, with all the grit that characterises Kevin Martin’s productions.

JK FLESH – NO MAN NO CRY [Avalanche Recordings]
Justin K Broadrick isn’t quite as prolific as Kevin Martin, but still there’s frequent missives from JK FLESH in between albums from Godflesh, Jesu and Final, along with myriad other projects. NO EXITS is the latest from his JK Flesh identity, established for some years now as an outlet for acerbic 4/4 industrial techno with a nod to dub. Broadrick is a master of texture and structure even in this maxi-minimalist vein.

Playing these two next to each other, it’s also worth noting that, following their reformation as a duo under the name Zonal in 2019, they’ve now arranged for Relapse to re-release their classic Techno Animal albums from the 1990s and early ’00s. First cab off the rank is the 1995 double album Re-Entry, and I’m waiting for the 2CD set to arrive, as well as a t-shirt because the album has reimagined artwork from the brilliant Simon Fowler. (Not unreasonably as the original artwork is very much of its time, created by the Future Sound of London-affiliated Buggy G Riphead).

Kaya North – Lava [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
Speaking of stunning artwork! Lost Tribe Sound‘s Ryan Keane can always be relied on to create luscious packages with evocative art and an immaculate design sense, down to the colour choice. So it’s notable that the artwork for Kaya North‘s album Myths is black & white. The imagery is of giant hairy beasts from the ice age. The music’s by Caleb R.K. Williams who, like some crazed ventriloquist, seems to be the person behind all of the artists in The Eagle Stone Collective. Based in France, Williams makes dark drone, “Americana ambient” and a kind of minimalist industrial techno but played on acoustic percussion. You’re listening to mysterious rituals occurring deep in the caves of the bleak, snowy mountain that you’re traversing. Actually you’re listening to the cassette recording you made of the mysterious rituals while you were traversing the bleak mountain. Anyway, it’s quite a trip!

Leyla McCalla – Crown [Anti-/Bandcamp]
Here’s something quite surprising. I’ve been in the Leyla McCalla fanclub (so to speak) since her first album. A Haitian-American cellist (, guitarist, singer) playing a mixture of bluegrass, Haitian folk, blues etc? What’s not to love! Her own songs are joyously creative and moving in turn, but she’s a wonderful interpreter too, so here we have her take on a song from Kendrick Lamarr‘s last album. She remarked on Instagram that she wanted to hear what this heavily emotional song sounded like in a Black woman’s voice, and she’s gifted it to us. Initially it’s just her voice and guitar, but I love the quiet, affecting strings that enter near the end.

Michael Peter Olsen – Terms of Desertion [Hand Drawn Dracula/Bandcamp]
Speaking of cellists… You’ve maybe heard Toronto’s Michael Peter Olsen in these shows in the past… His credits run the gamut of Toronto indie acts: The Hidden Cameras, Arcade Fire, Great Lake Swimmers, Drake (OK, so not just indie!) – oh, and Fucked Up. Anyway, none of that matters, because his solo music is just great standing on its own. This second single from the forthcoming Narrative of a Nervous System is prettiness via electric cello and delay lines. There’ll probably be more before the album’s released on Oct 27th, so watch this space (or go pre-order it!)

RETE – Tape Loop 1 [901 Editions/Bandcamp]
Vasilis Liolios & Savvas Metaxas are two sound-artists based in Thessaloniki, who record together as RETE. Their collaged pieces involve analogue synths, found objects, field recordings and at times other musical instruments, and the warm saturation and analogue pliability of tape machines is central to their music. 9°(3) is their contribution to Italian label 901 Editions‘ “virtual residency” series that the label’s conducting on Bandcamp. Throughout September RETE are adding tracks to the album (an excellent 5th track appeared on Sunday as I was putting the show together), and as long as you remember to check back, you’re rewarded with a growing collection of wonky, angular, abstract sound works. Really worth digging into.

Ljudbilden Boelja – Oxygenation 2 [Malmö Inre/Bandcamp]
Kristofer Ström and Markus Clemmedson are separately veterans of Swedish ambient music. Together they’ve formed Ljudbilden Boelja, a lovely name that I sadly have no hope of pronouncing correctly. But the music is really engrossing – like RETE above this is sound-art made from unidentifiable acoustic sources, with a lot of electronic processing, cutting & pasting. The album is by turns rhythmic and dronelike, and it’s all selected from 24 hours of studio improvising. As above, really recommend checking this out.

Erik K Skodvin – Quiet states of anxiousness [Sonic Pieces/Bandcamp]
Here’s another quietly spooky alubm from Erik K Skodvin, proprietor of the Miasmah label who just happens to also be a cellist. His new album Nothing left but silence is released on Miasmah’s sister label Sonic Pieces, run by Monique Recknagel (out of the same office). Recknagel’s releases are gorgeously packaged boutique objects, expensive but worth saving up for. The material here resembles that of Skodvin’s 2017 album Apart, released on Miasmah under his alter ego Svarte Greiner. But where that album was recorded entirely on cello in an abandoned building, the minimalist, spacious and spooky sounds here are from one electric guitar, an amp and a reverb unit. This is captivating stuff of a sort pioneered by Skodvin over years of music-making, and close kin to the acoustic doom (and non-acoustic) favoured by the Miasmah label.

glacis – White Chalk Among The Ivy (Simon McCorry) [Whitelabrecs/Bandcamp]
Scottish musician Euan Millar-McMeeken appears in collaborations with Matthew Collings as Graveyard Tapes, with Johan G Winther as Gallowglas, with Michael Cottone (The Green Kingdom) as Dead Bell, and with Craig Tattersall of The Remote Viewer & Hood as Civic Hall (coming later this year from Lost Tribe Sound!) So it’s perhaps not surprising that his first solo album as glacis for Whitelabrecs is a set of remixes, or reworks, or rather Interpretations by musical friends. Tattersall’s there as The Humble Bee, The Green Kingdom’s there, Tape Loop Orchestra is there, and there’s a lovely piece from Naarm/Melbourne’s own Claire Deak & Tony Dupé. Euan’s piano is sometimes prominent, at other times completely obscured. Tonight I chose a rework by yet another cellist, Simon McCorry, again not (as far as I can hear) using cello at all. The sparkling ambient textures are eventually joined by buried, distorted acid thrums, like a distant rave party revving its engine.

Marcus Fischer – Night Paving [Zum/Bandcamp]
My Heart, an Inverted Flame – The Ever-Expansion [Zum/Bandcamp]
We finish tonight with two very different selections from Zum Audio Vol 5, the latest big compilation from US label Zum, run by siblings Yvonne Chen (ex-Xiu Xiu) and George Chen (of many bands). Their shared musical loves run from noise (e.g. Yellow Swans) through Americana (perhaps p:ano), indie jangles, punk, metal, experimental electronics, and various types of ambient & sound-art. It’s a lot to take in over 2 CDs, but well worth the ride. Marcus Fischer is best known for his work on 12k, here contributing one of the most subdued tracks on the album, in which soft chiming chords are chopped up over very soft guitar drones and distant, sparse percussion. And the guitarless synth+drums duo My Heart, an Inverted Flame, made up of noise/metal veterans Andee Connors and Marc Kate, is a nearly 8-minute journey through pounding drumkit and swirling, swooping distorted synths. Rad.

Listen again — ~203MB