Utility Fog

Sunday, 15th of September, 2024

A mixed bag tonight, from experimental indie-jazz to krautrock, post-industrial to electroacoustic, percussive beats to ambient beatscapes, doom dub to d'n'b to noise metal to electroacoustic sound-art to jazz-folk and back to experimental indie.

LISTEN AGAIN, second time's a charm! Stream on demand on FBi's new website, or podcast here.

Wendy Eisenberg - Viewfinder [American Dreams Records/Bandcamp]
Wendy Eisenberg - In the Pines [American Dreams Records/Bandcamp]
Starting with the avant-garde songwriting and contemporary jazz of Wendy Eisenberg, a talented and unique guitarist working in the jazz & improv worlds, with solo albums of aleatoric improv and extended techniques a la Derek Bailey, but also songwriterly albums of spiky, lo-fi songs the closest comparison to which I can find is London-based American musician Ashley Paul. Eisenberg's latest album Viewfinder is released by the impeccable American Dreams Records, and is one of the songwriterly albums, but brings in more musicians so Eisenberg can expand their arrangements with bass, drums, horns, piano and electronics on various tracks - and some of those tracks are very long! The middle pair of tracks are 22 minutes and 12 minutes long, ranging from fully composed to improv sections. The album arose from Eisenberg's experience with laser eye surgery, the disorientation that comes with seeing the world with new clarity, and the questions that remain about the ways that seeing imposes the see-er's assumptions upon the visual world. Hence "Viewfinder", the title track of which appears as a sparse 4-minute work for voice and solo trumpet ("Viewfinder (Intro)"), and then a 4 minutes of grinding distorted guitar interleaved with that avant-garde trumpet, percussion and bass, with Eisenberg's vocal melodies not quite sitting in key with the rest. But the best is saved for last, after all this chaos... For over two minutes, "In the Pines" begins with the soft, warm plucked double bass of Tyrone Allen II, before falling into a slow waltz-time jazz-blues, with Eisenberg's two-note guitar chords, and Booker Stardrum's brushed snare all that accompanies Eisenberg's heart-pulling vocal melody. And then the second verse adds Andrew Links' piano, a gorgeous moment that opens the song up while keeping the Andante tempo and the general sparseness. And then on into a completely restrained trombone solo from Zekereyya el-Magharbel. "In the Pines" is one of my songs of the year, and I've already listened to it half a dozen times. Pure poise and gentle bittersweetness. "God what a lonely / lonely point of view... Can you be / can you be / can you just be?"

Clark - Head Phone Hospital [Throttle Records]
Clark - Blood [Throttle Records]
Last year's Sus Dog and Cave Dog from Clark found him singing for the first time. He's now back with another soundtrack, In Camera, which expands on the cues he wrote for Naqqash Khalid's film of the same name. The IDM beats are toned down in favour of electronic arrangements that echo the classical orchestrations of some of his recent work, but it's nice to hear his voice appearing - not only on the rather lovely cover of "Superstar", a song originally popularised by The Carpenters, but also across the album, often used texturally like we heard on the two tracks here - reversed and twisted but still emotive in the way only voice can be.

Mazza Vision - Sun Riser [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Claude Pailliot and Gaëtan Collet were both members of Tone Rec, the eccentric experimental electronic/postrock band who released a few albums on the great Brussels-based Sub Rosa label in the 1990s. They then then took a left turn into a kind of electro-clash as DAT Politics, which I never enjoyed as much as Tone Rec, so it's interesting to find the core pair with a new project called Mazza Vision, which turns back to weird noise-rock-tronica. That combination of glitch, krautrock and drone results in slow burners like the first track here taken from their debut album Ohm Spectrum, the rest of which we'll get to hear next week.

Lint - What's wrong with that sentence [Lint Bandcamp]
Lint - Curb Cloud [Lint Bandcamp]
Mitch Jones is a founding member of Sydney industrial/electronic originators Scattered Order, and his wife Dru Jones has been involved either making brilliant art or with noisemaking too since the early '80s. Despite this, it's only for the last 5 years or so that the two have released music together in duo form, as Lint. Mitch solo is the little hand of the faithful, and Dru is Skipism. Together they weave the artistic, sample-collage of Dru's iPad-mediated work with Mitch's further sample deconstruction and strangely contemporary beats - but I feel like Mirror of your own hopes sees the duo finding its own character more than ever before, something quite freeform, almost sinister at times, but also quite humorous.

Martina Berther - Obertone [Kit Records/Bandcamp]
Martina Berther - Mini Gong [Kit Records/Bandcamp]
Martina Berther x Vic Bang - Arco [Kit Records/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year, UK label Kit Records released a very idiosyncratic album from Swiss bass player Martina Berther. Bass Works: As I Venture Into is performed on Fender Jazzbass, but you can hardly hear that on many of the tracks, where the instrument is stretched into drones or compressed into chipmunk riffs, or played as percussion. I discovered this album through an EP of remixes by Argentinian sound-artist Vic Bang, who transposes "Bass Works" into Brass Woks, disassembling and rebuilding Berther's sounds into two tracks of furious activity that's as much IDM as it is electroacoustic or musique concrète.

Nídia & Valentina - Nasty [Latency/Bandcamp]
London-based percussion Valentina Magaletti seems to be everywhere these days, doing everything from postpunk dub to indiepop to experimental improv, and now she appears on French experimental label Latency collaborating with Afro-Portuguese dance producer Nídia Sukulbembe. Nídia's club-tooled kuduro is already all about the rhythm, but here it's tempered with Magaletti's own drums as well as melodic percussion like marimba, while Magaletti also contributes melodies on flute and synth. Tom Halstead of the duo Raime, who collaborate with Magaletti as Moin, edited and mixed these contributions into their final shape. Estradas means "roads", and the cover shows the burnout marks as Nídia and Valentina speed off into the distance, while we follow in their wake.

gi - Weir [world of knots]
Dina Rocaille - Seuvrage [world of knots]
A few weeks ago I played the incredible debut album from Eora/Sydney's Gigi De Lacy, released on Naarm/Melbourne's Absorb. But gi has been putting together her own label, and this coming week sees the first compilation from world of knots. Gi herself contributes a piece of her organic, busy IDM, and she's gathered a troupe of like-minded producers from around the world. Tellingly, the album is "not intended as a collection of songs but as a singular listen", with ambient pieces and more techno/d'n'b-influenced pieces all sharing a certain aesthetic of organic grime and musical abstraction. I'm not sure this genre has a name yet, but the artists here are at the forefront of it. As well as gi, I played Lyon-based Dina Rocaille's skittery beats which emphasis bass and bar-lines a little more than the label boss.

Harvestman - Clouds are Relatives (The Bug - 'Amtrak Dub Mix') [Neurot Recordings/Bandcamp]
The Bug - Floored(Point of impact) [Relapse Records/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year, Steve Von Till of post-metal heroes Neurosis - who are behind the essential Neurot Recordings - announced a Triptych of albums under his instrumental Harvestman alias. Harvestman is one expression of Von Till's "rural psychedelia", mixing folk traditions with the electronics of Neurosis' alter egos Tribes of Neurot, and making concrete the links between the low-slung, slow-moving genres of doom and dub. Each of the three albums feature a long doom-folk-psych track that's reprised in a dub version - and who better to provide the third dub than The Bug? Kevin Martin has roots going back decades in metal and punk, having booked some of the earliest Godflesh gigs and then partnered with Justin K Broadrick on a run of groundbreaking albums as Techno Animal. The pair still work together now, and in the wake of Relapse's reissues of two '90s Techno Animal albums, the label has signed The Bug. The first release is Machine, an album-length collection of heavyweight tracks from the five Machine EPs that Martin released on his own Pressure label between late 2023 and earlier this year. These tracks were created to push his massive Pressure soundsystem to its limit (I've bathed in its sub bass glory a few years back in London), and I'm glad to see that all five EPs are available in a 2CD set alongside the 12-track vinyl release.

Braille - Dirt Fam (Maude Vôs Rude Remix) [Hotflush Recordings/Bandcamp]
Hotflush Recordings released the full Triple Transit album from Praveen Sharma aka Braille last month, preceded by a string of singles, and the album continues to give, with the first EP of Triple Transit Remixes out now. The album surfs garage and rave sounds and avoids the slower climes of dubstep, so LA experimentalist Maude Vôs dubs out the vocal stabs and dense production of "Dirt Fam" into a kind of dub techno/dubstep hybrid complete with wub-wub bass and sweeping synth clouds.

Mako - Direct Source [Metalheadz/Bandcamp]
One of the most-anticipated drum'n'bass albums of the year comes from Mako, who runs Bristol's Utopia Music but also has a long connection with Metalheadz. Oeuvre Part 2 does indeed follow Mako's 2020 album Oeuvre, also released by Metalheadz, and is full of high-energy d'n'b, looking back at the genre's history while also nodding at more recent hybrids with footwork, other bass musics, and the resurgence of jungle. The constant rhythmic invention of "Direct Source" is jungle at its finest.

KK Null - Ghost Dub Awakening 02 [No Rent/Bandcamp]
Circling back towards metal & noise we join KK Null, whose highly influential band Zeni Geva combined noise rock with elements of prog, metal and hardcore. But Kazuyuki Kishino is just as well known as the extremely prolific KK Null, and has moved between guitar and electronic noisemakers, and has a unique style of dense digital sample destruction. Ghost Dub Awakening, released on Pennsylvania's No Rent Records, throws breakbeats into his digital blender, resulting in something that sometimes has rhythms you could dance to without breaking too many bones.

The Body - End of Line [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Meanwhile, recent Wire Magazine cover stars The Body have made their own journey from blackened doom metal to something all their own, mixing metal with industrial, dub and just about anything else. The Crying Out of Things which is out in early November on Thrill Jockey, promises more glorious negativity, more mashing up of genres into a industrial metal stew with Chip King's high-pitched screaming and all-consuming guitars, Lee Buford's massive drums and various guests, all tied together with the electronics and ultra-saturated production of Seth Manchester. Gird your loins and save the date!

Ghost Phone (uncredited) - DARKNESS FINDS HOME WITH U [Ghost Phone]
It's not entirely possible to identify the artists on Ghost Phone releases, even though the name is sometimes used for remixes - it's an anonymous collective as far as I can tell, and GHOST PHONE 008 is named as V/A. It's four tracks of various types of bass music from Bristol, r'n'b edits taking in weightless 160bpm, Jersey Club and footwork-laced jungle, before finishing up with wispy Bristolian post-dubstep on "DARKNESS FINDS HOME WITH U".

Elio Martusciello / Ossatura - etèrico [Elio Martusciello Bandcamp]
Elio Martusciello / Ossatura - sottrazione immateriale [Elio Martusciello Bandcamp]
The new album from Italian sound-artist & composer Elio Martusciello, AKOUSMA-MOTHER - subtitled "umbilical cord" - serves as an autobiographical document, channel-jumping through an array of genres from electroacoustic improv to songform, experimental rock to grainy cut-up piano. It's also a tribute to Martusciello's late mother, describing the pre-natal world as "amniotic and acousmatic": the term "acousmatic" was used by Pierre Schaeffer and others to describe music reproduced electronically with the original source obscured. Much of the material on the album is derived from his long-running trio Ossatura, with Luca Venitucci on piano/electric piano and electronics and Fabrizio Spera on drums, and on some tracks the full band is clearly heard, while elsewhere Martusciello obscures the sounds through processing and editing. As much as it's a conceptual album about the cycle of life and our sensation of the world, there's beauty here and humour too. Right in the middle of the album, the song "etèrico" appears, and the warm vocals from Martusciello have the demeanor of Tom Zé's modernised samba, for all that it's sung in Italian with deconstructed drums and wisps of guitar accompanying it. It's really charming.

Build Buildings - Scattering Shreds of Wickerwork [laaps/Bandcamp]
Ben Tweel makes electroacoustic music as Build Buildings, processing acoustic instruments and household sounds - on the album Ecotone, released by laaps, he's using the iPad app Samplr, which allows for processing audio using the iPad's multitouch screen. The results are glitchy yet smooth, shifting layers of sound that are constantly moving but peaceful. On tonight's track, "Scattering Shreds of Wickerwork", the sounds of Tweel's daughter Mia on clarinet are fed into the sampler.

Adrian Myhr Trio - Begynnelse [Øra Fonogram]
It's always nice to include some purely acoustic music among the hybrid sounds, and there's a wealth of this on the first album from Norwegian bassist Adrian Myhr's eponymous trio (out shortly on Norway's Øra Fonogram). After 2 decades playing with ensembles in the Norwegian jazz scene, Myhr leads his trio through a different kind of hybrid music from our earlier electroacoustic works, melding folk with jazz and contemporary classical along with influences from Indian raga and Albanian vocal music. Myhr wields his bass as a melodic instrument as well as holding down basslines, while Rasmus Kjorstad brings his folk music experience on both violin and the Norwegian droned zither called the langeleik, and Jan Martin Gismervik switches between drums, a hanging vibraphone and harmonium. This chamber-folk-jazz is something of a speciality in Norwegian music, beautifully applied here: you can hear tight-knit string harmonies between harmonium, violin and double bass, with melody handed between the instruments, or folk violin sawing over rhythmic bass, or vibraphone chimes resonating over plucked bass and violin... Somewhere in here you can hear comparisons with Norwegian acts on the Hubro label, or Swiss musicians like Andreas Söderström or Tape, or the chamber-folk-jazz of Tin Hat Trio - all of which is to say, this is wonderful stuff worthy of seeking out.

My Brightest Diamond - I Saw a Glimpse [Western Vinyl/Bandcamp]
Shara Nova's music as My Brightest Diamond has covered a lot of ground in the 18 years since her debut album Bring My Workhorse was released on Sufjan Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label. Like Sufjan himself, Nova applies classical rigour to indie rock, draws on electronic music and on her evangelical upbringing, and ends up with an incredibly rich body of work. I'm particularly fond of the album she made with New York contemporary classical ensemble yMusic, All Things Will Unwind. Her new album Fight The Real Terror is out now through Western Vinyl, and is some of her rawest music, forged in emotional times and inspired by the late, great Sinéad O'Connor. Nova's demo versions of most of these songs ended up forming the basis of the album, with additional orchestrations and enhancements added on top, so it's held down by grungy guitars, simple and direct. Of course with a musician and songwriter as talented as Shara Nova, a raw directness can be magical, not least on the closing track, which presents as a traditional folk song mourning today in hope for a better tomorrow, and right at the end the declamatory guitar swirls in a fug of distorted drones caught in a delay loop the decays for almost a minute before tailing off.

Listen again — ~204MB

Sunday, 8th of September, 2024

Indie/folk/rock takes us into some beautiful crunchy indietronica, shoegazetronica and contemporary out-rock, before we move into dub & bass-oriented beats, some first class contemporary drum'n'bass, glitchy ambient/idm and decentred ambient of various ilks. There's also some industrial post-club spoken word weirdness, and later some newer & older approaches to post-classical, as they probably don't call it.

LISTEN AGAIN and oppose duality! Stream on demand at fbi.radio, podcast here.

Ned Collette - Little Hans [Ned Collette Bandcamp/Poison City (Aus-based vinyl)/ever/never Bandcamp (US-based CD & cassette)/Sophomore Records Bandcamp (US-based vinyl)]
Naarm/Melbourne musician Ned Collette has been with us since almost the beginning of Utility Fog. The much-beloved indie/postrock band City City City put out two legendary albums between 2003 & 2005, with Ned on guitar and also eventually singing, and the great Joe Talia on drums. Ned's music has floated between avant-garde and classic rock/folk/pop for those 2 decades too, with a few great albums with Wirewalker, his trio with Joe Talia and another City City City alumnus, Ben Bourke. Ned's been based in Berlin for a while, but I'm pretty sure he's around Oz quite a bit too. His latest album Our Other History continues with his catchy songs and melancholy delivery, always recalling Leonard Cohen but I also see Roy Harper namedropped, and Nick Drake - as well as the subtly-avant-garde-informed pop of Jim O'Rourke. The album's released in various formats through various peeps as you can see in the listing above.

Glen Rey. - coming out of coles [.jpeg Artefacts/Glen Rey. Bandcamp]
empress - homeward sounds (remixed by styrofoam) [555 Recordings of Leeds, UK and then Flagstaff, Arizona]
styrofoam - i will try if you need it [styrofoam Bandcamp]
Mitch Reynolds has released music as Bluetung for a while, but has just renamed himself as Glen Rey. The Eroa/Sydney musician is inaugurating this moniker with a small single on Naarm's great .jpeg Artefacts, one live collaboration with Luke De Zilva and one low-key gorgeous cover. "Coming out of Coles" is originally by the partially-Aus-based UK duo New North Wales, aka Nicola Hodgkinson and Chris Coyle, who were previously the core of the fragile, minimalist indie/tronic empress. This enabled a nifty segue, because I wanted to play something from the "new" release by Belgian indietronica artist Arne van Petegem aka styrofoam. The titled of The lost album (previously unreleased recordings 2000-2001) is slightly misleading, since some of the tracks were previously released, between 2000 & 2003 or so, so I know a few of the tracks. But a few were on very obscure vinyl releases - "I will try if you need it" was originally titled "This Is All Wrong", from a split 7" with Dntel in 2002, and it's a lovely slab of melancholy melody and glitch-beats. The connection? The great 555 Recordings of Leeds (later Flagstaff, AZ), run by Steward Anderson, released the legendary (to me) compilation chihuahuas and chinese noodles in 2000, with indie/postrock/idm/experimental artists remixing each other, and Styrofoam did a beautiful, minimalist, glitchy remix of Empress' "Homeward Sounds". Pure crunchbliss.

Belong - Crucial Years [kranky/Bandcamp]
In 2006, artist/producer Michael Jones and electronic producer Turk Dietrich released their first album as Belong. October Language has gone into some kind of legend, possisbly because of scarcity, and a few years ago it was re-released on vinyl by Spectrum Spools. I knew of Dietrich from his connections with Joshua Eustis & Telefon Tel Aviv (with whom he'd later form glitch/techno duo Second Woman). Belong always adopted the shoegaze aesthetic, even if in a more granular/ambient vein, and their third album (in 18 years) Realistic IX is explicit in its major 7th chords and whammy-bar guitar bends at times. But it does also like its granular, digital deconstruction, as heard in the vignette here.

Good Sad Happy Bad - Shaded Tree [Textile Records/Good Sad Happy Bad Bandcamp]
Previously Micachu and The Shapes, Good Sad Happy Bad named themselves after their last album under that name. Now Raisa Khan takes on lead vocals as well as keys, while Mica Levi is still in the band along with Marc Pell aka Suitman Jungle on drums, and CJ Calederwood on sax, vocals etc. They have an album called All Kinds of Days coming in November from French indie label Textile Records, and the lead single shows that the mix of jangly indie, homemade beats and genre-plasticity of Micachu's original material still drives their new material. Can't wait!

Party Dozen - The Righteous Front [Temporary Residence Ltd/Bandcamp]
It's fair to say that Party Dozen are a force unto themselves. The multi-talented Jonathan Boulet plays drums and samples, while Kirsty Tickle's saxophone roars (even when she's not yelling through it). Their latest album, Crime In Australia, focuses on the dire time in Australian politics when the corrupt Joh Bjelke-Petersen government ran QLD - but in an instrumental band, what is the music really about? Well it has heaps of energy and it does sound quite dark. The track I've chosen has an almost trip-hop feel, but still brings the noise.

Jay Glass Dubs - Blue Plate Special [Digital Edition on Bandcamp, extended CD available from yr favourite retailers]
Dimitris Papadatos has made highly idiosyncratic music as Jay Glass Dubs since 2015, spread across various interesting labels. DJ Humble was a project from last year that claims to be influenced by jungle and drum'n'bass, although heavily filtered through the Jay Glass Dubs approach to decentred dub. There are certainly rhythms that suggest drum'n'bass, albeit sitting more in a 4/4 space - and there are drum breaks scattered throughout. There's now an extended CD edition with more tracks in this strange vein. Music for alien dancefloors.

Pearson Sound - Twister [Hessle Audio/Bandcamp]
As one of the co-founders of Hessle Audio, David Kennedy has had a substantial influence on the UK bass music scene. To my ears, both as Ramadanman and as Pearson Sound, he never fitted comfortably into dubstep, and you're more likely to hear 4/4 kickdrums with unusual basslines and squiggly synths - but he started off DJing drum'n'bass, and the jungle influences are up-front in the two preview tracks from his new Which Way Is Up EP. "Hornet" had programmed broken beats and that insectile buzz, while "Twister" mixes jittery drum machine breaks with a constantly moving bassline and insistent kicks at an almost-d'n'b 165BPM.

Ocean Dawn - Wax Cool [Future Retro]
Damon Kirkham is best known as Jon Convex, one half of autonomic d'n'b pioneers Instra:mental, and also Kid Drama. Ocean Dawn is his new moniker for expansive jungle, and he has a new EP on Future Retro, the label of jungle's most enthusiastic proponent Tim Reaper. Just a very nicely done piece of contemporary jungle.

John Rolodex - Seeing Around Corners [Over/Shadow/Bandcamp]
Canadian d'n'b hero John Rolodex has released a lot on his own Machinist Music (which also releases other artists, mind you), but he's recently had a digital release and then one vinyl/digital on Metalheadz. He can craft a pure d'n'b tune with machined tech-step beats and basslines, but there's usually also some crazy beat-fuckery going on too, which brings us to the title track of Seeing Around Corners, his new EP for Over/Shadow. Pure darkness Arcon 2 style. If you like the moodiness of dark drum'n'bass but the complexity of jungle, this EP's a must.

Objekt - Ganzfeld (Djrum Remix) [Kapsela Records/Bandcamp]
When Objekt's first 12"s came out in 2011, they were among the most creative music in the post-dubstep world, electro/techno full of gnarly syncopation, weird edits, great basslines. As he's continued, at times sporadically, his music has spread out into sound-designy territory, at least on the albums, but his music is still closely attached to the dancefloor. The early 12"s were self-released, and his two albums came out through Pan, but now he's returning to self-releasing in a slightly different way, with a label called Kapsela. The first release revisits an obscure track from ten years ago, one side of a split 12" with electro heroes Dopplereffekt. His track is reprised here, along with a few new remixes. I'm intrigued to hear the one from Ulla, but who better to kick things off than the extraordinary Djrum, who as is his wont encompasses quasi-classical faux-jazz, drum'n'bass, halftime and more, all while maintaining a tenuous hold on the original. Another mind-bender from the man.

KASHIWA Daisuke - Infrared [Virgin Babylon]
Only a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about being surprised that KASHIWA Daisuke had a new track out, only a few months since his latest album Ice came out. That track, "Green", is very much of a piece with this new one, "Infrared" - both have minimalist piano with skittering glitchy beats. I love this sound, so here you go!

Ran Slavin - Dawn Four [Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings]
Here's an electroacoustic soundscape that falls somewhat into the "fourth world" ambient aesthetic. Tel Aviv-based Ran Slavin is known for his creative film work as well as experimental audio works that have been released by Crónica among others. Following Oolong: Ambient Works, released by Mille-Plateaux earlier this year, New Dawns takes a different approach to "ambient", with acoustic bass walking through granular samples and the detritus of easy listening music.

Murcof - All These Worlds Part. II [InFiné/Bandcamp]
When his first albums appeared in the early '00s, Mexican producer Murcof was at the forefront of a new generation deconstructing classical music through minimal techno or micro-house. Many years later, he's abstracted his sound further into ambient and sound-art, but the micro-grooves are still there in this first single from Twin Color Vol. I, out on Nov 15th through French electronic label InFiné. Those warm, crisp bass tones are delicious.

Comatone - Carpenters Towers (2012) [Feral Media]
Celebrating 20 years since his debut release, Katoomba's Greg Seiler aka Comatone has been releasing a series of C-TONE 20 EPs featuring mostly-unreleased music from across his history. There's a lot of tasty IDM, broken beats, basslines and the like. The 6th and last EP (they're currently only available on streaming services) looks more to the ambient side of things, but that's not to say it's devoid of beats. This 2012 cut bubbles murkily with pitched-down loops until the beats straighten things out halfway through. Cyberpunk vibes. As we're at the end of this Comatone celebration now, I've got to mention the incredible dubstep/trip-hop remix he did of my band FourPlay String Quartet some years ago - listen here.

Rita Revell - Pretty Ugly [Nice Music/Bandcamp]
Rita Revell - Persus [Nice Music/Bandcamp]
Great to have something new from Melbourne's Rita Revell, a couple of years since her Depozit. As usual, it's hard to pigeonhole these strange electronics, which draw emotion from crackling old tech: lo-fi samples stretched into new shapes; shuddering distorted beats and pretty synths; weathered choral tapes struggling through static; sparse drones and echoing bass guitar samples. Gorgeous stuff, and Nice Music have kindly done a limited CD edition too.

EPRC - DARK RED [Stray Signals/Bandcamp]
Deep listeners to this show will know I'm a huge fan of Elisabetta Porcinai's duo Aperture with her brother Emanuele. When I heard the two tracks on SOMETIMES from her duo EPRC with Roberto Crippa I immediately connected it with Aperture, before realising it is in fact Elisabetta's voice. A visual artist, her spoken word adorns both groups, along with industrial-leaning electro-acoustic audio. EPRC's debut album BODIES is out now, and the two tracks from their debut SOMETIMES appear here in slightly different form. Desolate synths, pummeling industrial electronics, and Elisabetta's spoken and occasionally half-sung words. A winning combination.

claire rousay - ily2 (Maral remix) [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
When I heard claire rousay's touching, self-alienated confessional album Sentiment earlier this year, I never expected it to be followed with a remix album. With the likes of more eaze and Patrick Shiroishi featured, it's released in early November. The first single sees Iranian-American beat-maker Maral setting rousay's answering machine & vocoder pop to a kind of trip-hop beat, keeping it as off-kilter as the original.

Razen - Lazy Lazy Eye [TAL/Bandcamp]
Ameel Brecht and Kim Delcour have formed the core of Belgian minimalist troupe Razen since 2010. Both play multiple acoustic instruments, and augmented by players of hurdy-gurdy, Ondes Martenot and other unusual instruments, they've created uncategorizable, hypnotic works that feel plucked out of time - ensembles from centuries past puzzling their way around post-industrial, post-club musical forms. Every album is different, so on Rain Without Rain, their first on Stefan Schneider's TAL label, wheezing recorder melodies rise up out of guitar amp noise, primitive electronics and the natural reverberation of an abandoned pedestrian tunnel in Düsseldorf, where it was recorded late one night. An evocative story for evocative music.

Laurence Pike - The Undreamt-of Centre [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
Laurence Pike - Orpheus In The Underworld [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
I've played a couple of previews from the new album by Eora/Sydney drummer/percussionist/producer Laurence Pike, and it's now out in its entirety. In The Undreamt-of Centre, Laurence's usual drums, samples and keyboards are augmented by the Sydney Philharmonia Choir's VOX choir (made up of 18-30 year olds), with the gravitas of a requiem - which it kind of is, memorialising his father-in-law's decline and death during the Covid lockdowns. But the texts are drawn from Rainer Maria Rilke's poems inspired by the myth of Orpheus & Euridice - hence we have here "Orpheus In The Underworld", where he goes seeking his lover. The blending of the choir's harmonies with electronics, set apart from Pike's drums, makes for a poignant, otherworldly experience.

Max Richter - A Colour Field (Holocene) [Decca Records/Online Store]
Max Richter - Life Studies IV [Decca Records/Online Store]
Max Richter - Only Silent Words [Decca Records/Online Store]
Max Richter - Life Studies V [Decca Records/Online Store]
I first played Max Richter on this show in *ahem* 2004, when his second album The Blue Notebooks was released on Fat Cat's 130701 imprint. That album was re-released in 2018 with bonus tracks & remixes, and as it now reaches 20 years old, Richter has returned to the contemplation of, well, books, but also to a series of dualities: acoustic sounds & electronics, classical music & electronica, the human & the natural world, and ultimately life's big questions juxtaposed with the small pleasures of life. Thus each of the album's compositions, which do range from classical strings & piano to Enoesque electronic studies, are separated by a series of "Life Studies", incorporating field recordings found sounds, including crackly old recordings. It's lovely, thoughtful, and genuinely unpretentious.

Listen again — ~202MB

Sunday, 1st of September, 2024

A few important albums came out this week, so we're doing that Utility Fog thing of multiple tracks from the same artist/release. And it's allll great. Of course.

LISTEN AGAIN for your soul's sake. Stream on demand at fbi.radio's new home, podcast here.

Kim Gordon x Model Home - razzamatazz [Matador/Bandcamp]
Less than six months after her album The Collective came out, Kim Gordon's back with a new single that's just as crunchy and weird as the last 2 albums. This time it's a collaboration with weird rap duo Model Home, whose collab with Wolf Eyes from last year is excellent too. Gordon's speak-singing fits well with Model Home's rapping.

Patio - Inheritance (Mandy, Indiana Remix) [Fire Talk]
One of my favourite bands of last year, Manchester's Mandy, Indiana, here deliver a beefed up, noisier version of the song "Inheritance" from their label-mates Patio. The New York band use the tag "pastel post-punk" on their Bandcamp, although equally they fit well into the '80s/'90s all-female indie rock space. The original song is from their second album Collection, which comes recommended if you're into that kind of stuff (think Throwing Muses, The Breeders etc).

Seefeel - Multifolds [Warp Records/Bandcamp]
Seefeel - Lose The Minus [Warp Records/Bandcamp]
Coming a mere 13 years after their last release, which itself came some 14 years after their first run, Everything Squared is immediately utterly Seefeel. The "band" is now pared down to Mark Clifford's production, with mailed-in vocal samples from Sarah Peacock, who's now based in Berlin. It's really just an EP, but an absolute pleasure to have them back anyway, with pulsing fragments of vocals, dubwise bass and micro-melodies. As I said a few weeks ago, they've always had a temporally displaced sound - constructed entirely through digital technology but somehow analogue, even organic sounding. They could just give us... more?

Christopher Chaplin - The Feathered Girl [Fabrique Records/Bandcamp]
British composer Christopher Chaplin's music works contemporary classical elements into experimental, post-industrial and krautrock-influenced spaces. His latest EP Door 1 Door 2 is out later this month, exploring how myths are part of collective memory, with spoken word by Carmen Alt-Chaplin.

Chelsea Wolfe - Dusk (Ash Koosha Remix) [Loma Vista/Bandcamp]
Chelsea Wolfe - Whispers In The Echo Chamber (Forest Swords Remix) [Loma Vista/Bandcamp]
The latest album from Chelsea Wolfe, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, found her in her most electronic setting yet, albeit still with her usual gothic metal vibes. Six months later comes the Undone EP, with remixes from the likes of ††† (Crosses), Justin K Broadrick, Full of Hell and Boy Harsher, to give you an idea of the breadth. But tonight I played a glitchy take by Ash Koosha and a deconstruction by Forest Swords, both of which play with slow-fast beats.

Flower Storm - World's Creator Is My Ally (Aceed Mix) [Flower Storm Bandcamp]
Disapora Iranians (like Ash Koosha above) Sepehr (NYC) and Kasra Vaseghi (London) formed Flower Storm in 2023 with the aim of recontextualising the sounds of their culture with the club styles they love. Together they created a huge sound library with traditional Persian percussion and string instruments, sampled vocals and more, which they cast into techno, house, drum'n'bass and so on. Do O Nim collects three mutated versions of tracks from their first 2 EPs, with the "Aceed Mix" here taking "World's Creator Is My Ally" into skittery junglish acid.

gyrofield - Lagrange [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
With previous releases on drum'n'bass labels like Critical Music and Metalheadz as well as more experimental works, Bristol-based Hong Kong producer gyrofield lands on XL Recordings with a bang with their four-tracker These Heavens. It's drum'n'bass with ambient and hyper-pop influences, continuing pushing the trajectory of d'n'b into uncharted waters.

Reeko - Urmah 2 [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]
The most unexpected forays into drum'n'bass/170bpm in the last 2 years have come from longtime techno mainstay Reeko, aka Architectural, aka Spanish producer Juan Rico. The Berlin-based Samurai Music has already been exploring the space where minimal drum'n'bass meets techno, and perhaps for that reason Rico sent them a demo which became his first EP for the label, Confront the Serpent, last year. This was followed by Tomorrow Doesn't Exist earlier this year, and now the incredible six-track mini-album Urmah. There's a lot of dub techno in these head-nodding tunes, but also explosive percussion and breaks. It really is a hybrid style like no other, dazzling at its best.

Tigran Hamasyan - The saviour is condemned [naïve/Project website]
Tigran Hamasyan - The curse (blood of an innocent is spilled) [naïve/Project website]
Tigran Hamasyan - Postlude after seven winters [naïve/Project website]
The new album from Armenian jazz piano virtuoso Tigran Hamasyan is a whole project, featuring the stunning artwork of Khoren Matevosyan. Yes, it's a double album (double CD and somehow fitting on 2 vinyl records), but it's also an online video game and multimedia stage production and film. Titled The Bird of a Thousand Voices, it reworks an old Armenian legend called Hazaran Blbul, and so the album follows the story from start to completion. Musically it's everything Tigran always offers - insane time signatures, bewitching melodies, those gorgeous Armenian harmonies, incredible piano playing and incredible supporting musicians on drums, bass, violin and vocals, with heavy metal and electronic influences. I played a couple of energetic early tracks plus the beautiful coda.

Laurie Anderson - This Modern World [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - To Circle the World [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - I See Something Shining (feat. ANOHNI) [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Take-off [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Aloft (feat. ANOHNI) [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Road to Mandalay [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Lucky Dime [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Only four years after Landfall, her album with Kronos Quartet about the the flooding of New York City by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Laurie Anderson returns with another concept album. Amelia follows the doomed last flight of the pioneering airplane pilot Amelia Earhart, whose plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean three-quarters of the way through her attempt at circumnavigating the globe. It's taken 25 years to be completed in this final form, performed by Anderson in her speak-singing style, playing violin & viola and some electronics, while ANOHNI takes care of the more melodic singing, with a band featuring Marc Ribot and Kenny Wollessen, plus Rob Moose, Nadia Sirota and Gabriel Cabezas' Trimbach Trio on strings and the Filharmonie Brno on orchestral duties. Despite this loaded crew, it's a surprisingly low-key, un-showy album, with passages depicting the peaceful monotony of Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan's travel. The sound of the motor, and its imitation by sliding strings, returns throughout the piece, which is bookended by the words "It was the sound of the motor I remember the most". It's a masterful work, at times joyous, often soothing, and more than a little haunting.

Lia Kohl - Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren [Moon Glyph/Bandcamp]
Lia Kohl - Tennis Court Light, Snow [Moon Glyph/Bandcamp]
Chicago cellist and sound-artist Lia Kohl has built up a gorgeous catalogue of odd, inquisitive and considered sound works over a very short period of time, with releases on Skeletons' Shinkoyo, Longform Editions and American Dreams. Her new album Normal Sounds is released by the adventurous Portland (Oregon) tape/vinyl label Moon Glyph, and the album title is a nice description of Kohl's practice (as are the track titles). As well as field recordings and the sounds of "normal" human activity, Kohl likes to incorporate the randomness of a radio scrolling through frequencies and settling on whatever happens to be on the airwaves. And of course there's her cello, which along with electronics can slip into the mix and transform everything. It's not always clear even from the titles what we're hearing ("Tornado Siren"?) but Kohl is second to none in melding these real-world "normal sounds" with her layered, processed instrument and synths. Another beautiful work from a unique artist.

Daniela Huerta - Fondo [Elevator Bath/Bandcamp]
Daniela Huerta - Seqvana [Elevator Bath/Bandcamp]
Long-lived Texas label Elevator Bath encompasses musique concrète, electroacoustic sound-art, noise and drone... at least. Label boss Colin Andrew Sheffield has kindly shared the debut solo album from Berlin-based Mexican artist Daniela Huerta, which comes out in late October. Huerta is one half of Huerta Ensamble with Concepción Huerta (I think no relation!) and DJs as Baby Vulture at venues like Berghain and CTM. Soplo bears some aural indicators of contemporary experimental electronic, but draws as much from musique concrète and electroacoustic music. The album opens with the dripping and flowing water of "Seqvana", which is combined with muted, pinging synth tones and clanging sounds. There's always a clear sense of space. Water sounds percolate through the whole album, joined with blurred voice, trembling organs, reverberating choirs and more. So when we reach "Fondo", the album's seventh track, it's a surprise to hear an almost march-like two-note bassline underscoring lurching synth horns (and bubbling water). Halfway through the bassline disappears and the synth tones are engulfed in increasingly resonating pink noise. Soplo is an artful album of sonic illusions, concrète music as it was always intended.

Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman - At Seventy-Three Miles [Basin Rock/Bandcamp]
Michael Chapman - Untitled #7 [Basin Rock/Bandcamp]
Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman - A Third Revision (Or Evolution) [Basin Rock/Bandcamp]
British guitarist and singer-songwriter Michael Chapman worked across many genres up until he passed away in 2021 aged 80. His latter-day following was confirmed in the Tompkins Square-issued compilation Oh Michael, Look What You've Done: Friends Play Michael Chapman, featuring Lucinda Williams, Meg Baird and Thurston Moore among others. One Australian fan was Brisbane's Andrew Tuttle, who's made a career around electronically-mediated banjo and acoustic guitar-picking soundscapes. By luck, Chapman's partner Andru had been enjoying Tuttle's album on Basin Rock, Fleeting Adventure, in the years after Chapman's passing, and so Andrew Tuttle has had the privilege of expanding on and reworking the unfinished final instrumental recordings of Chapman. The album Another Tide, Another Fish is out through Basin Rock and features the original recordings on a second disc, allowing us to hear just how sensitively Andrew has transformed the original works. Each of Tuttle's track titles contains numbers that allow us to reference them to the originals, so I played "Untitled #7" after Tuttle's "At Seventy-Three Miles". Chapman already takes his beautifully assured fingerpicked guitar into spacey electronic waters, and Tuttle dives deep into the currents with granular processing, timestretching and other techniques, as well as adding his own banjo. A pretty remarkable project altogether.

Loop Year - Heel Turn [Loop Year Bandcamp]
Tim Koch this week alerted me to Loop Year, a new ambient/IDM project from Adelaide's Cailan Burns, who was one half of seminal Aussie electronic experimentalists Pretty Boy Crossover with Jason Sweeney. Sweeney appears here on "Bass guitar noodles", which Tim suggested makes this an ersatz Pretty Boy Crossover revival, and Tim added cymbal splashing and mixing know-how. It's lovely electronic (g)loopiness as per the original PBXO.

Connor D'Netto - Witness [Room40/Bandcamp]
Last week when I played some material from the brilliant duo release Material from Connor D'Netto x Yvette Ofa Agapow, I mentioned that a composition of D'Netto's was caught up in a controversy recently. Pianist Jayson Gillham has been performing a series of concerts with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and at a recent MSO concert, as an encore he performed D'Netto's composition "Witness". The piece is dedicated to the journalists of Gaza, although the work more generally refers to the idea of recasting doom-scrolling as "bearing witness" to the horrific images we are seeing not only from Gaza, but "from Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, the riots in Bangladesh, school shootings in the USA, and closer to home the treatment of First Nations People in incarceration". When Gilham performed the piece a couple of weeks ago he drew the audience's attention to the appalling number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza (a number already far too high before October 7th). In response, the MSO management (it's not clear who) immediately cancelled the remaining performances by the orchestra. There was widespread outrage, and a campaign by my union, MEAA, who represent both Australian journalists and Australian musicians, called for the decision to be reversed. Surprisingly, this did happen - the MSO claimed "a mistake" was made, and now there will be an independent review into the orchestra's decision-making, led by Peter Garrett(!) Nevertheless, this speaks to the horrendous censorious situation in the arts and beyond, worldwide, when it comes to any speech sympathetic to Palestinians. So it's pleasing to find D'Netto's touching piece - performed by Gillham - now available via Room40, with all proceeds to be donated to PARA - Palestine Australia Relief and Action.

Saoirse Prince - Earthy flavours envelop my tongue and slide down my throat [Saoirse Prince Bandcamp]
We finish tonight with another piece of delicate piano music, from new Sydney artist Saoirse Prince, whose debut album Late Winter is her personal take on the "neoclassical" piano genre, drawing pleasingly from the likes of Sophie Hutchings as much as any of the big international names. I'm particularly attracted to the pieces that complicate the piano sound with electronics, such as the persistent delay throughout this track, mushrooming into distortion before petering out.

Listen again — ~201MB