Post-classical & weird improv-folk start things off tonight, with some minimal electronics and industrial techno later on!

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Experimental musician Frank Schültge is quite renowned for his challenging, experimental productions, sometimes quite folky or jazzy, sometimes more noisy. Collaborations are a big part of his work, including Sack Und Blumm with Harald “Sack” Ziegler, an album with David Grubbs, work with Andi Otto aka Springintgut and many other duos and groups. Dag Eins Tag Zwei is his third collaboration on Sonic Pieces with the rather ultra-famous Nils Frahm, and its character seems predominantly influenced by F.S. Blumm’s playful folk & improv aesthetic – but Frahm’s twinkly muted piano is very present too, and there are some soft, sweet mutations of jazz classics on this latest release too.

I discovered Asheville, NC trio The Library of Babel via The Wire Magazine‘s Wire Tapper 40 (amazing that they’re up to 40 volumes). They have a wonderful sound, the rounded but metallic sound of the acoustic guitar of Shane Parish offset by the deep double bass of Frank Meadows and often just as deep cello from Emmalee Hunnicutt, bass plucked more than bowed, cello bowed more than plucked. It’s a kind of free Americana, with superb performances from all three musicians.

Western Skies Motel, despite making a kind of Americana also, hails from Denmark. René Gonzàlez Schelbeck takes as a starting point the cyclical fingerstyle guitar of John Fahey or more likely James Blackshaw, but overlays shoegazey drones and shimmery shadowing effects. It’s another beautiful release from Lost Tribe Sound, coming out later this week.

Erik Schoster has been making experimental electronic music since 2002 as He Can Jog. He’s featured a fair bit on this show, especially in the last half-year or so as he’s started uploading a fair bit of very cool stuff to his Bandcamp. The West Allis Auto Body Co. EP features pieces recorded between 1998 and 2016, ranging from a live string quartet to glitchy choppy electronics.

Chambers is a new duo from the Pacific Northwest, made up of Vancouver artist M.Red and Portland’s Gabriel Mindel Salomon (now also based in Vancouver) of the sadly departed Yellow Swans. Satellites is their take on “dub”, and ambient techno, through a tape haze.

Perth’s Kane Ikin found himself dropped right into international renown with the first release from his duo Solo Andata in 2006, and not hard to see why – the folktronic sounds, whether more ambient or propelled by gentle beats, are beautifully produced and musically sensitive. Kane struck out solo a few years later with a release on 12k (who had also released Solo Andata’s second album), and gradually ambient gave way more to muffled or clanking techno & broken hip-hop/dub beats. Never less than lush and forward-thinking, his releases are not to be missed.

Tom Smith appeared on the scene in 2007 as Cleptoclectics with a couple of glitch-hop inspired beat CDs. He changed his moniker to Thomas William and now Thomas William Smith in the interim, collaborating with Marcus Whale, and has recently released some more ambient & blunted techno stuff as T.Morimoto. On his own Bandcamp now comes a mixtape of material from 2011-2013, which he describes as representing no particular style or contemporary movement; hence Non Times. It does bear the hallmarks of Tom’s productions, from the fidgety world music cut-ups of his earlier works to the buried orchestral samples in some of T.Morimoto. It’s great.

Finally, Brisbane’s Pale Earth, a frequent visitor to these playlists, releases a limited lathe-cut 7″ split with co-Brisvegans Golden Bats called By George, and by george if they aren’t both George Harrison covers! Pale Earth’s takes the already quite psychedelic “Blue Jay Way” into droney doom metal territory.

F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm – Day Two Three [Sonic Pieces]
f.s. blumm & nils frahm – wanda marimba [Sonic Pieces]
f.s. blumm & nils frahm – ten [Sonic Pieces]
F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm – Day One Four [Sonic Pieces]
The Library of Babel – Branching [Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records/Shane Parish Bandcamp/Emmalee Hunnicutt Bandcamp]
The Library of Babel – Blind Corners in Wild Dawn [Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records/Shane Parish Bandcamp/Emmalee Hunnicutt Bandcamp]
Western Skies Motel – Falling Leaves [Lost Tribe Sound]
Western Skies Motel – Two Worlds [Lost Tribe Sound]
He Can Jog – & Rebuilding [He Can Jog Bandcamp]
He Can Jog – Dents [He Can Jog Bandcamp]
Chambers (M.Red & GMS) – Emerald (2) feat. prOphecy sun [Beacon Sound]
Kane Ikin – Tap Tap Collapse [Type]
Solo Andata – The Echo’s Left Behind [Hefty]
Kane Ikin – Titan [12k]
Kane Ikin – B.N.R [This Thing]
Kane Ikin – Bishop [This Thing]
Kane Ikin – Intro / Bloom [Blowing Up The Workshop/Kane Ikin Bandcamp]
Kane Ikin – Slowburner [Blowing Up The Workshop/Kane Ikin Bandcamp]
Kane Ikin – Auto Dialler [Type]
Kane Ikin – Pulp [Type]
Thomas William Smith – Way Back [Thomas William Smith Bandcamp]
Thomas William Smith – Don’t Get Mad [Thomas William Smith Bandcamp]
Thomas William Smith – Extra Non [Thomas William Smith Bandcamp]
Pale Earth – Blue Jay Way [Pale Earth Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~189MB

Heavy and quiet, distorted and clean, deadly serious and tongue in cheek… bit of all that tonight.

LISTEN AGAIN on the podcast here or the streaming on demand from FBi.

Been a massive fan of the body for a few years – they inhabit the more extreme end of the metal continuum, but have slowly been leeching into electronics and other forms, so it’s not actually that surprising that their latest non-collaborative album No One Deserves Happiness is a kind of “pop” album… according to them anyway. They set out to create the “grossest pop album ever”, and you can see where they’re coming from, although the black metal, doom metal, noise, industrial and other electronic elements are still all there – and what’s more the brilliant women who contribute vocals here, particularly Maralie Armstrong and Chrissy Wolpert and their Assembly Of Light Choir, have worked with The Body for years. Their collaborations are always incredibly fruitful, producing a transcendent beauty and often peacefulness over the degraded, mournful, extreme textures. To all extents and purposes these women are members of the band now, appearing on many of their other collaborations too.
And The Body do love collaborating with other like-minded artists, a couple of which I played tonight. On touring with Japanese metal/post-classical/electronic band Vampillia last year they released an incredible collaboration which still amazes me every time I listen; and almost simultaneously with No One Deserves Happiness comes a collaboration with hardcore punk/grindcore band Full Of Hell, famous themselves for collaborating with Merzbow. It’s definitely got some more hardcore elements, but also plenty of electronics and straight vocals… and it’s got the beauty/ugliness thing going on too. Both albums are fantastic.

Canadian drone/glitch artist Tim Hecker hardly needs any introduction. He’s been doing the ambient/drone thing for years, with a fuzzy, grainy sound akin to Christian Fennesz et al, and he’s collaborated with countless artists along the way as well, but to my ears around 2011’s Ravedeath, 1972 his composition and musical construction started to get really impressively advanced. The piano on the 2011 albums, and the additional instrumentation and production techniques found on 2013’s Virgins have swept him right into the stratosphere; Love Streams, with its choir and squiggly synth parts from Kara-Lis Coverdale, extend his sound yet further. From earlier in his career I chose a couple of unusual cuts – a live studio improv with fellow Montreal postrockers Le Fly Pan Am and experimental artist Christof Migone featured on Constellation‘s compilation Song of the Silent Land in 2004, and of a similar vintage is his stunning remix of one of the greatest bands ever, post-metal iconoclasts ISIS.

Jenny Hval should also need no introduction to listeners of this show – and her Norwegian accent is salted with Australian as she spent a few years studying in Melbourne. She put on some intense & rather strange (and wonderful) shows at the Sydney Festival earlier this year, and her album of indie music from last year was highly acclaimed. This takes her back to the somewhat (or at least even) more experimental sounds of earlier albums like Viscera on Rune Grammofon, working with composer/guitarist Kim Myhr, and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra to create sound works which couch her familiar lyrical and vocal style in both very composed jazz and classical arrangements, and enjoyably chaotic improvised elements. It’s not really that challenging, and should be enjoyed by any fans of Jenny’s work as well as the jazz heads.

Garry Bradbury‘s humourous-profound electronic works have been a feature of the Sydney experimental music scene for many decades, since he joined Tom Ellard & co in some of the early incarnations of Severed Heads. Some of the tape collage aesthetic remains in the digital sampler/drum machine/synth works he’s been putting out in the last decade+, and there’s very much a tension between terrifyingly advanced musicality and cheeky larrikin spirit. The old Aussie woman’s monologue in which each phrase ends with “the what” gets me every time – and it’s made creepy and unsettling with the soundtrack-style collage it sits in. I would’ve featured even more of Bradbury’s sounds but ran out of time. You can grab it all from his Bandcamp anyway, so hop to it!

the body – Shelter Is Illusory feat. Maralie Armstrong [Thrill Jockey]
Vampillia + the body – cold bark bite [self-released/Birds Robe]
the body – I Would For You feat. Chrissy Wolpert [self-released]
the body & Full Of Hell – One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache [Neurot]
the body & Full Of Hell – Fleshworks [Neurot]
the body – Adamah feat. Maralie Armstrong [Thrill Jockey]
the body – The Fall And The Guilt feat. Chrissy Wolpert [Thrill Jockey]
Tim Hecker – Castrati Stack [4AD]
Tim Hecker – Voice Crack [4AD]
Le Fly Pan Am + Tim Hecker & Christof Migone – Tres Tres “Avant” [Constellation]
ISIS – carry (first version by Tim Hecker) [Hydra Head]
Tim Hecker – The Piano Drop [Kranky]
Tim Hecker – Sketches 2 [Kranky]
Tim Hecker – Virginal I [Kranky]
Tim Hecker – Violet Monumental II [4AD]
Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Kim Myhr & Jenny Hval – Something New [Hubro]
Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Kim Myhr & Jenny Hval – Mass [Hubro]
Garry Bradbury – Affective Trajectories [No Ware]
Garry Bradbury – The Ampullae of Lorenzini [No Ware]
Bradbury – Big Man on Campus [Dual Plover/Bradbury Bandcamp]
Bradbury – The Nevsky Project [Dual Plover/Bradbury Bandcamp]
Bradbury – Cheap Wagnerian Dynamics [Dual Plover/Bradbury Bandcamp]
Garry Bradbury – The Miry Verge [No Ware]

Listen again — ~193MB

A hip-hop focus, ‘Fog style, tonight. While there’s a lot of hip-hop and rap in the Utility Fog back catalogue playlists, including idm collaborations, experimental sound-art poetry, noise-hop and all sorts of other stuff, tonight we feature three very individual artists (well, one is band but they are still very individual!)

Listen back to the conscious poetry, worldsamplebeats, lo-fi genre mashings and more… podcast here, stream on demand there.

Starting with brilliant, eccentric Melbourne hip-hop crew Curse ov Dialect – multi-cultural, anti-racist, anti-homophic, surrealist… Their DJ/producer Paso Bionic (also known for his work with the more mainstream hip-hop crew TZU) sources samples from Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Indian, Asian and other musics of the world, as well as western classical music, as much as from pop music and the more traditional jazz/soul/funk fodder of hip-hop. This reflects the very varied backgrounds of the group themselves, which surfaces frequently in their lyrics (it’s right there in Volk Makedonski’s stage name, and Raceless, who is in fact of Maltese background). While they formed originally in 1994, their most stable lineup got together around 2000. They’re renowned for their unhinged live shows, featuring elaborate costumes and Dadaist antics. After appearing with various Anticon artists at This Is Not Art in Newcastle in 2001, they connected with US experimental hip-hop-connected label Mush, and stayed with them for a couple of albums, but subsequently found themselves internationally on the German experimental electronic/postrock label Staubgold, and now on another experimental European label MonotypeRecords. It’s interesting that this is the connection for them overseas, although they’ve stayed with indie labels in Oz. The new album is as wide-ranging and sharp as ever – welcome back!

Poet, actor, musician, rapper, iconoclast – Saul Williams is a one-of-a-kind. My earliest memories of him are on the one hand his rapping over beatboxing and violin, but then also ranting over tech-step drum’n’bass, and then on the other hand performing the ideal anti-war poem “Not In My Name” in the wake of the second Gulf War. Although Williams is highly connected to African American history and the civil rights movement, and although he is also totally connected to the history of hip-hop, he critiques and deconstructs that history and connection in his raps and in the production they’re married with – in his early works, particularly with drum’n’bass. Later, we hear amen breaks chopped into a hip-hop beat on his auto-biographical “Black Stacey”. From touring with Nine Inch Nails, his third album was co-produced with Trent Reznor, bringing an industrial rock influence but the creative direction is all Saul Williams. Originally this album was self-released and had a hybrid model where lower-quality mp3s were available for free, and higher-quality with extras cost a small amount (an approach Reznor was keen on at the time, but one that totally fits with Williams’ own attitudes too). Interestingly it’s a very “hip-hop” album as well as industrial & experimental – on “Tr(n)igger” we hear a classic Public Enemy sample cut up and then commented on in Williams’ own lyric. The following album was produced with French world/pop producer Renaud Létang, and had more of a rock feel, while the new album brings in Justin Warfield, known for his hallucinatory WS Burroughs-influenced vocals on Bomb The Bass‘s “Bug Powder Dust”, as well as the hip-hop/rock group One Inch Punch and so on. MartyrLoserKing is a great “return to form” for Saul Williams, heavy, erudite, hard-hitting, experimental.

I ran out of time to feature as much music from Andrew Broder & Fog as I wanted, but I tried to cover a range of stuff. His new album For Good is on the wonderfully-titled Totally Gross National Product label that he’s associated with, and it’s a brilliant mixture of his laid-back regretful indie rock/pop/jazz, experimental electronics and contemporary hip-hop production – including some juke hi-hats and trap snares in there… Fog has always been to me a hip-hop related project, if often inhabiting indie rock, or free jazz/noise/experimental musics in various guises. Broder has made beat tapes, noise collage pieces, and experimental electronic productions in collaboration with people including Adam Drucker aka doseone – and the Anticon connection also goes back to his beloved indie-hop collaboration with Yoni Wolf of Why?, Hymie’s Basement. 10th Avenue Freakout is a particular high point, combining the lo-fi indie feel with jazz arrangements & improvisations, bits of drone, noise & electronica – weirdly genre-crossing pieces but really well-controlled emotive songwriting. I didn’t get to play anything off the most indie rock album, 2007’s Ditherer, nor his collaborations with Coldcut, Dntel and others, but I did slip in a track from the incredible collaborative 7″ with Jesu from back in 2009.

Curse ov Dialect – Twisted Strangers (feat. Hemlock Ernst) [Valve/MonotypeRecords]
Curse ov Dialect – Red Candles [self-released, now available at Curse ov Dialect Bandcamp]
Curse ov Dialect – Baby How? [Valve/Mush]
Pasobionic – Black Ink Concerto [Elefant Traks]
Curse ov Dialect – Broken Feathers [Valve/Mush]
Curse ov Dialect – Media Moguls [Mistletone/Staubgold]
Curse ov Dialect – Legend of Leigh Bowery [Valve/MonotypeRecords]
Saul Williams – Think Like They Book Say [Fader Label]
Saul Williams – Twice The First Time [Big Dada/Ninja Tune]
Saul Williams – Penny For A Thought [American Recordings]
Saul Williams & DJ Krust – Coded Language (excerpt) [American Recordings]
Saul Williams – Pledge of Resistance [free download from 2003]
Saul Williams – Black Stacey [Fader Label]
Saul Williams – Tr(n)igger [self-released/Fader Label]
Saul Williams – Fall Up [Sony Music]
Saul Williams – Horn of the Clock-Bike [Fader Label]
Fog – King Kuna [Totally Gross National Product]
Fog – fuckedupfuckfuckup [Ninja Tune]
Hymie’s Basement – 21st Century Pop Song [Lex Records]
Fog – The Rabbit [Lex Records]
Jesu/Fog – Nowhere [Kissing Kin]
Fog – Cory [Totally Gross National Product]

Listen again — ~198MB

Piano Day, folktronic goodies etc tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN to these acoustic-electronic crossovers, melodies, field recordings and beats… Podcast is here, stream on demand is there.

Nils Frahm decided a year ago that the 88th day of the year (because pianos have 88 keys typically) would be Piano Day. Pianists of various stripes around the world have taken to actually celebrating the piano and indeed creating new music for it. That’s just what Sydney musician Sophie Hutchings has done, and we heard her new track to start the show. Her brother Scott created a video for it which you can watch here.
I should mention also that Sophie is in the midst of a crowdfunding campaign to release a vinyl edition of her new album (which, *ahem*, features me on cello). If you’ve liked her music in the past, you can pre-order the album through the Pozible (even on CD) to help make it happen.

Keeping with the Sydney piano theme, next up a little feature on the one & only Chris Abrahams, who’s just been touring with The Necks, and has a new album out on Room40 very soon. As usual with his solo works on Room40, it’s quite challenging at times, quite beautiful at others, and uses electronics (including his beloved Yamaha DX7), field recordings and even electric guitar as well as his piano. There’s even, in the last track, some hefty distorted sub-bass drone in there, just to keep things totally up-to-date. We didn’t go back that far in his catalogue, but heard a piece from his last solo album and also something from his second collaboration with the Italian spoken word & experimental electronic artist Alessandro Bosetti.

William Yates aka memotone is an artist who has turned up a lot on this show in the last few years – particularly in 2012 when some landmark EPs and his debut album dropped. He’s a talented multi-instrumentalist who features his drumming, piano and even strings on his music, but also sits comfortably in the contemporary bass/techno beats of his main label home Black Acre. So it’s exciting to have a new album, CHIME HOURS, as an excuse to backtrack over some of his career tonight. I discovered him probably in 2012 via his Hands EP on the experimental/folktronic label A Future Without but he’d in fact already been releasing excellent techno/electronica on Black Acre in 2011, and we start there with a collaboration with another brilliant electronic musician & multi-instrumentalist Leafcutter John, who contributes vocals (and possibly production). One of my favourite early tracks, “Sad Sack”, was part of a stash of tunes available only as a download and stream direct from the artist, and its combination of melancholy drones, clattering clicky beats and reverberant piano ostinati is exemplary of Yates’ unique sound. The new album also incorporates Yates’ own vocals, folded in I suspect from a more pop oriented project called Wy (unless that still continues in parallel with memotone). Although it’s been a few years since the last solo memotone album, in 2014 he released a fantastic collaborative release as Memoosh with Brighton/Glasgow artist Soosh, from which we heard a piece of technoid jungle and a gorgeous post-classical piano number.

Hex are a new duo from the UK, made up of Charlie Noon and Tom Field, releasing their debut EP on Mute‘s electronic/techno/bass sublabel Liberation Technologies. The glitchy post-grime sound of M.E.S.H is a good point of comparison – it’s technically adept, complex and dark stuff, and I’m looking forward to hearing what they do next.

Feral Media recently released the latest in their Aussie remix battle compilations, Strain of Origin V, with various choice Australian artists remixing other artists (most artists are both remixer and remixee). Tonight we heard from a Melbourne pairing, with weirdo footwork artist Dylan Michél remixed by Wabz into a piece of junglist techno.

Speaking of jungle-meets-footwork(-meets-dubstep?), the kings of slow-fast and the jungle revival Sam Binga & Om Unit have released the second EP in their Bunit series. While the opening track is an excellent bouncy jungle/footwork hybrid that will ring a bell for folks familiar with Sam Binga’s latest productions, the closing piece is something else again – almost more like the dronescapes of Roly Porter, it’s a gluggy miasmah of distorted tones and sub-bass that’s as surprising as it is welcome.

Back to the Feral Media comp to finish, we have this time a Brisbane pairing, with Andrew Tuttle‘s fingerpicking guitar & electronics being reinterpreted by composer, postrock & electronic musician Chris Perren in his Software of Seagulls guise.

Sophie Hutchings – In The Wake [self-released for Piano Day 2016]
Chris Abrahams – Clung Eloquent [Room40]
Chris Abrahams – Stabilised Ruin [Room40]
Alessandro Bosetti & Chris Abrahams – La Nourriture [Unsounds]
Chris Abrahams – 1 Liter Cold Laptop [Room40]
Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – O [Shelter Press]
Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – OL [Shelter Press]
memotone – Across The Divide [Black Acre]
memotone – All Collapsed [Black Acre]
memotone feat. Leafcutter John – Four Minute Hallway [Black Acre]
memotone – Sad Sack [self-released/unreleased]
memotone – Many Things [A Future Without]
memotone – Stalker [Black Acre]
memotone & Soosh – First Avenue [Project Mooncircle]
memotone & Soosh – Aponi [Project Mooncircle]
memotone – Bird Eating Spider [Black Acre]
Hex – Miasma [Liberation Technologies]
Hex – Foreign Tongue [Liberation Technologies]
Dylan Michél – Clicks (Wabz Remix) [Feral Media]
Sam Binga & Om Unit – Windmill Kick [Bunit]
Sam Binga & Om Unit – Planetary Reboot [Bunit]
Andrew Tuttle – Charm Intersection (Software of Seagulls Remix) [Feral Media]

Listen again — ~157MB