Lots of great music for you tonight… from acoustic, violin-led sounds to very crunchy electronics!

LISTEN AGAIN to these talented and creative women. Podcast is here, stream on demand is there.

Starting tonight’s show with the rapturous violin, accompanied by other acoustic instruments, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Sarah Kemp, aka brave timbers. On her new album she’s joined by Andrew Scrogham, with whom Kemp played in the Newcastle indie band Lanterns on the Lake. Kemp keeps busy – she’s also a member of the electronic-meets-postrock band Fieldhead (although the remixes here tonight are probably the solo work of Paul Elan), Hood member Richard Adams’ The Declining Winter, and another of Adams’ projects, Memory Drawings. Kemp’s solo music is delicate and gentle, but while there some melancholy in her first album from 6 years ago, the new album lives up to its title of hope.

We move to Montréal, Canada next – another “Sarah” violinist, Sarah Neufeld, who is perhaps best known as the violinist in the Arcade Fire. Her debut album on Constellation showcased not just her composition abilities, but also some remarkable techniques, with sliding fingers around double & triple stops, and a vast sound coming out of primarily just one instrument. This is a talent she shares with her husband Colin Stetson, the incredible saxophonist who I’ve featured many times on this show. Last year they released a mindblowing collaborative album – the slow sax bassline, thumps and squalls, along with the reverberant tremolo violin on “With the dark of of time” are incredible. While he appears on her new album, the most notable fact is that her sound is augmented with a drummer and occasional bass. It’s still emphatically violin-led music though (now with some vocals from Neufeld) and is again absolutely unmissable.

The Natural History Museum‘s debut album came out early this year from Dunk Murphy’s Countersunk – it’s a duo project in which he’s joined by fellow Dubliner Carol Keogh. They’ve followed the album up quickly with the Manmade EP, which emphasises the acoustic & live sound over programmed beats – even though the track tonight is led equally by its synth bassline and the acoustic guitar. Keogh’s vocals are smooth and her singing & songwriting style melds beautifully with Murphy’s talent for weird, lugubrious chord changes.

Swiss/Nepalese-Tibetan producer Aïsha Devi released an album last year on Houndstooth deeply influenced by the mysticism (and sound worlds) of Tibetan monks and Sufism. Houndstooth have now released a remix EP with some creative takes on her processed vocal chants – seguing nicely from our previous track as the brilliant duo Lakker are also originally from Dublin (and currently based in Berlin). Their recent expansive, tough techno is here sped up into an intense percussive workout (harking back to their breakcore/idm beginnings) before opening out to showcase Devi’s vocals. Meanwhile Aussie-born Kate Cooper aka Mind:Body:Fitness brings a footwork influence to her take, still foregrounding those vocals.

Berlin-based These Hidden Hands released a brilliant album of industrial techno a couple of years ago, and it’s great to have them back. For their new single they’re joined by Barcelona-based Argentinian singer/producer/genius Lucrecia Dalt, whose barely-audible lead and choral backing lines take the intense, slow-fast bass techno (on both tracks) into another dimension. Just put these two tracks on repeat all afternoon.

Really excited to bring you this next track tonight. I wanted to play even more but given it’s as yet unreleased (and you can stream the whole EP at SoundCloud) I’ll stick to the one track. Hviske is a new duo made up of two Sydney luminaries of the noise & experimental scene – extreme vocalist Kusum Normoyle and experimental/noise artist Ivan Lisyak who also plays drums in various indie bands. They’re sensibly touting these sounds to labels local & international, and it’s truly quality sounds so I hope it gets big! Normoyle’s vocals on the first track recall nothing less than the spectral vocal snippets on early Aphex Twin ambient & techno productions, but their sounds are crunchy and driving and very much up-to-date in the beats & production department.

The earlier These Hidden Hands / Lucretia Dalt collaboration very briefly appeared on the latest Wire Magazine download comp, Below The Radar 22. I guess some kind of licensing issues got in the way (or the fact that the EP is only two tracks and is out now!) but anyway, it disappeared.
There are lots of other highlights though, and very exciting is an exclusive track from the brilliant Swedish producer Klara Lewis, which will not appear on her forthcoming album on Editions Mego. This piece is made up of field recordings processed and rearranged into rhythms and melodies of sorts. Her music straddles the line between almost academic sound-art, very experimental or noise production, and techno & electronica. We heard a couple of tracks from her 2014 debut album and an EP from the same year, and I’m very excited for this new album coming out again from Mego in May.

We finish with the debut single from new Brisbane-based artist Julia R. Anderson. It’s a lovely shiny indie pop song, with psychedelic & experimental edges to it. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from this talented newcomer, so stay tuned!

brave timbers – first light [Little Crackd Rabbit Records/Gizeh Records]
brave timbers – more like the oak than the willow [Second Language Music]
brave timbers – out with the tide [Second Language Music]
brave timbers – more like the oak than the willow (Fieldhead remix) [Second Language Music]
brave timbers – Seasons Past (Fieldhead remix) [Little Crackd Rabbit Records/Gizeh Records]
brave timbers – First Light (The Green Kingdom remix) [Little Crackd Rabbit Records/Gizeh Records]
brave timbers – the well worn path [Little Crackd Rabbit Records/Gizeh Records]
Sarah Neufeld – The Ridge [Paper Bag Records]
Sarah Neufeld – Hero Brother [Constellation]
Sarah Neufeld – You Are The Field [Constellation]
Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld – With the dark hug of time [Constellation]
Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld – Never were the way she was [Constellation]
Sarah Neufeld – We’ve Got A Lot [Paper Bag Records]
The Natural History Museum – Button Moon [Countersunk]
Aïsha Devi – Anatomy Of Light (Lakker Remix) [Houndstooth]
Aïsha Devi – Mazdå (Mind:Body:Fitness Remix) [Houndstooth]
These Hidden Hands feat. Lucrecia Dalt – These Moments Dismantled [These Hidden Hands Bandcamp]
Hviske – 1X [unreleased EP1]
Klara Lewis – Shall/Should [Below The Radar 22, subscriber download for April’s edition of The Wire]
Klara Lewis – c a t t [Editions Mego]
Klara Lewis – Msuic 1 [Peder Mannerfelt Produktion]
Julia R. Anderson – In The Beginning [self-released]

Listen again — ~193MB

The world is full of great music, and I just don’t have time to play it all on this show. That’s all the apology you’re getting. Stop complaining, tonight’s show is as good example as any of how much great music I bring you!

LISTEN AGAIN to the great music! Podcast is here, stream on demand is there.

We start tonight with the second album from Bristol-based composer & producer Sophia Loizou (not to be confused with Sydney’s Sofie Loizou). Her debut combined her classical composition background with bass-heavy electronic production, and was an essential album of 2014. The new release is an ambient music haunted by the ghosts of rave & jungle, with breakbeats and skittering hi-hats just audible in the background, along with occasional chopped diva vocals, not entirely disquieting but not quite peaceful either. In a way it’s the classic “chill out” tent music, ambient waves accompanied by the hi-nrg sounds of the main tent next door. But coming a good 2 decades after the music it’s referencing – despite the recent resurgent of jungle & rave – gives it an extra feeling of nostalgia.

Paul Jebanasam, originally from Sri Lanka, has been based in Bristol for some years now and has been closely associated with the Bristol dubstep scene – but before that he was integral to Sydney’s own dubstep scene, and broadcast for some years on our very own FBi Radio as part of the Garage Pressure crew. He’s been releasing music on Subtext Recordings for a while, and while the sub-bass and production skills may give away his dubstep past, it’s beat-free wide-screen music with distinct (post-)classical overtones. The latest album takes us on a journey into space, although buried in the faux-mathematical title is a personal message…

Irish multi-instrumentalist Drombeg makes a post-classical / electronic crossover of a different variety, highlighting the acoustic instruments along with occasional field recordings, in a rapturous high-fidelity glow. Bass notes here are used to highlight pedal notes rather than snarling like primal energy fields; in general this sounds like the soundtrack to a nature or historical documentary, very embedded in a sense of place, I feel.

I obviously don’t have my ear sufficiently to the classical(ish) ground as I managed to miss out on the extraordinary 2010 album by Sarah Kirkland Snider in collaboration with Ensemble Signal and the incomparable vocals of Shara Worden. That album was a reimagining (with lyrics by Ellen McLaughlin) of The Odyssey from the point of view of Penelope, Ulysses’ wife who stays home and waits patiently(?) as he goes on his epic adventures. Kirkland Snider’s new album also features Worden’s vocals, along with the beautiful Padma Newsome of Clogs (an Australian connection!) and the equally beautiful DM Stith. It’s another song cycle, a haunting (and haunted) remembering of a childhood in rural Massachusetts, with lyrics by Nathaniel Bellows. Both albums are stunningly conceived and performed and should be on your radar.

Japanese artist Ytamo is releasing her new album MI WO on ROOM40‘s “pop” sister label Someone Good. It’s full of shiny, complex electronic music with acoustic & classical sounds. Based in Kyoto, she has released music on her own Bandcamp in the past.

After Dutch idm duo of brothers Funckarma‘s prodigious output slowed a few years back, the mantle was taken up (or perhaps held) by one half, Roel Funcken. Even he’s slowed recently, and while I was a bit concerned in the late Funckarma releases that they’d gone a little too far down the rabbit hole of digital sound design and heavy, obnoxious dubstep bass, it seems like with his new album Funcken has returned to their idm roots with melodic synths, glitchy beats and a lightness of touch, and even a touch more “humanity” to the compositions. It’s a reminder of why Funckarma were the kings of idm for so long in the 2000s :)

It’s incredible to think that the Houndstooth label, in-house label of Fabric London with A&R by Rob Booth, has only been around for 3 years, such has its impact been. Forward-thinking post-bass/techno/jungle/everything artists like Akkord, Special Request, Throwing Snow, Snow Ghosts & Aïsha Devi (among others) are creating impeccably-produced electronic music well aware of its history and interested in what can be said through it today. Always a label to watch, and the Tessellation compilation contains a selection of quality exclusive tracks.

We’ve been following Washington State duo Cock & Swan on this show since their appearance on an early compilation on Lost Tribe Sound. The ramshackle acoustic-electronic sound of those tracks has on the whole receded in favour of the analogue synths & beats (plus vocals) they were originally known for locally, and they’ve found a home with Seattle’s Hush Hush Records. Their latest release is a soundtrack to a rather interesting sounding dance work called Splurge Land, with “post-internet” themes for which this music sounds perfect…

It’s hardly news that there’s a new Venetian Snares album out on his own imprint via Planet µ, with his usual weird-time-signature breakcore/drill’n’bass, all made live in his studio on modular synths. But if you ordered the album direct from the label you got a whole bonus album on CDR, featuring alternative takes and bonus tracks from these same sessions. There’s some pretty interesting stuff on here, some slower jams and less busy music in amongst the usual chaos.

Sydney indietronic collective Telafonica have embarked on a project for 2016 to try to write & record one track each a month and release them as EPs on Bandccamp as they go. It’s a brave undertaking, but their second month has already borne delicious fruit with some noisy electronics and pretty acoustic fingerpickings. Looking forward to more as the year progresses!

Brisbane’s Andrew Tuttle has been patiently exploring his special hybrid of fingerstyle guitar / banjo and granular, experimental electronics for some time, under his own name and previously as Anonymeye. His latest album refines these techniques further and is by turns pretty and noisy.

Sophia Loizou – Divine Interference [Kathexis]
Sophia Loizou – Baptista [Astro:Dynamics]
Sophia Loizou – Genesis 92: The Awakening [Kathexis]
Paul Jebanasam – depart as | air dx stop δρ/δ /dt somewhere = +Δ•(ρ sigma*(y waiting -x) v)=0 δρ/dy/dt for = you x dim [Subtext Recordings]
Drombeg – There Has To Be A Heaven [Futuresequence]
Sarah Kirkland Snider feat. Padma Newsome, DM Stith, Shara Worden and the Unremembered Orchestra – The Barn [New Amsterdam Records]
Sarah Kirkland Snider feat. Shara Worden and Signal – This Is What You’re Like [New Amsterdam Records]
Sarah Kirkland Snider feat. Padma Newsome, DM Stith, Shara Worden and the Unremembered Orchestra – The Witch [New Amsterdam Records]
Ytamo – Hamon [Someone Good]
Roel Funcken – Android Robson [Funckarma Bandcamp]
Roel Funcken – Night Brubian [Funckarma Bandcamp]
Aïsha Devi – Sheen Saker [Houndstooth/Houndstooth Bandcamp]
Akkord – Vector [Houndstooth/Houndstooth Bandcamp]
Cock & Swan – #seethrume [Hush Hush Records]
Cock & Swan – #splurgegod[Hush Hush Records]
Venetian Snares – Terrazen 1012nc [Planet µ]
Telafonica – Warumbul [Telafonica Bandcamp]
Telafonica – The Barren Woman and the Eunuch [Telafonica Bandcamp]
Andrew Tuttle – Forgotten Username [Someone Good]
Andrew Tuttle – Forgotten Password (excerpt) [Someone Good]

Listen again — ~191MB

Big thanks to Heli Newton for first-class work sitting in for me last week on the show!
TONIGHT we have awesome Sydney music from quirky indie experimentalism to deep electronica, and we have some heavy expansive electronics from overseas.

LISTEN AGAIN via streaming on demand at FBi or podcast right here.

It seems like the font of new & old music from Aussie underground indie/experimental musician Benjow (as haddock’s eyes) isn’t going to end anytime soon. This week we can play you tracks from two more phenomenal collections of odd & lovely music. cut sick (1994-2001) is evidently archival material, including the very affecting and beloved “fell in love”; listen with all your ears listen showcases more experimental, less song-oriented material, with noisy loops, mysterious sampled vocals and longform lo-fi psychedelic pieces. Stream, purchase, download!

Hence Therefore‘s dubby techno featured on the show a month or so ago, but the fantastic cassette just came out, so I’m giving it another spin. Motorik electronic music that could have been made 25 years ago but sounds totally contemporary. Boomkat would go apeshit for this surely.

I was bowled over by the debut album from Sydney’s Eli Murray aka Gentleforce in 2010. I was pleased to interview him for Cyclic Defrost that year, for an issue where he was also the cover artist. He’s an accomplished visual artist & designer and an equally accomplished sonic artist. He cut his teeth putting on shows in the north of Sydney, bringing dubstep & bass music to suburbs that aren’t always so well catered for, but when it came to releasing his own music, it had a much more ambient and techno bent. Impeccably produced sounds in touch with both internal spaces and the environment. The new album is out soon and you can pre-order it now from his Bandcamp.

Roly Porter continues his obsession with physics, space travel and science fiction on Third Law, now on Tri-Angle Records. As one half of Vex’d, he brought a heavy, industrial, experimental edge to dubstep before dubstep had hit anything like the mainstream. Despite this, Vex’d was certainly dancefloor music, and while the heaviness continues through Porter’s solo music, there are rarely rhythms repetitive enough to be called beats. The production is widescreen, detailed and frequently incredibly bass heavy, but also draws from contemporary classical influences like other artists on his previous label Subtext (including fellow dubstep defector Paul Jebanasam, from whom we’ll be hearing next week). I wanted to play evert track from the new album tonight, so just three shows some restraint. Then I also wanted to play everything from the previous two… but given how long most of it is, we ended up with a few older selections, only a couple from Vex’d, and I’ll let you explore or revisit the rest yourself!

Venetian Snares‘ latest album isn’t exactly Traditional Synthesizer Music – in fact, it’s pretty much traditional VSnares music, in odd time signatures (tonight’s tune is in 11/8, so I guess he’s moved on from 7/8), with drum’n’bass/breakcore-derived rhythms and simple melodies. But it’s all created in one-off fashion on modular synths, recorded in one take. That’s pretty cool.

John Frusciante is best known as the former guitarist from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but has made very idiosyncratic music as a solo artist for ages. A lot of it is now up on his Bandcamp, and thus we get to hear a bunch of insane drill’n’bass tracks made with the Renoise software between 2009 & 2011. Post-Squarepusher beats collide with Frusciante’s funk-rock pop songs and occasional cheesy guitar solos. It’s pretty bizarre but also pretty cool I think? Apparently there’s a footwork/jungle-inspired EP coming soon, so watch this space!

And finally, in keeping with these sounds we have a fun bit of drill’n’bass from French breakcore/electronic producer Ruby My Dear.

haddock’s eyes – fell in love [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
haddock’s eyes – zeke [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
haddock’s eyes – maumikelly [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
haddock’s eyes – and even if you’re wearing gloves [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
Hence Therefore – North Pacific Gyre [3BS Records]
Gentleforce – Singing over Shibuya [Gentleforce Bandcamp]
Gentleforce – Lift Up Your Weary Head [Feral Media]
Gentleforce – Our Last Day Together [Feral Media]
Bushranger – The Billabong Speaks [Built Environment]
Bushranger – Dry Creek Bed [Built Environment]
Gentleforce – Naoshima (God is in the water) [Gentleforce Bandcamp]
Roly Porter – Mass [Tri-Angle Records]
Roly Porter – In Flight [Tri-Angle Records]
Vex’d – Slime [Planet µ]
Vex’d – Nails [Planet µ]
Roly Porter – Tleilax [Subtext]
Roly Porter – Gravity [Subtext]
Roly Porter – Known Space [Tri-Angle Records]
Venetian Snares – Everything About You Is Special [Planet µ]
John Frusciante – Genex 44 [John Frusciante Bandcamp]
Ruby My Dear – Peanuts on Train [Kaometry]

Listen again — ~198MB

Here we are… technical difficulties plaguing the start of the show but so be it. Bit of a feature on UK-based sound artist Autistici tonight.
I’ve got a gig on next Sunday so Heli Newton is stepping in to fill in on the ‘Fog.

LISTEN AGAIN via streaming on demand at FBi or podcast right here!

Sydney wunderkind Marcus Whale has been played on Utility Fog for many years – in fact the first music he sent me was when he was about 15 years old. I played his duo Collarbones before they’d released anything and I’m a big fan of his club/r’n’b/trap trio Black Vanilla too… and he made all kinds of experimental music as Scissor Lock. But only recently has he decided to present his music under his own name. It’s certainly a very personal vision, combining complex classical orchestration with a heavyweight metal-influenced (and complex) double drumming onslaught, and plenty of electronics along with his distinctive vocals. The forthcoming album’s pretty amazing, and it’s exciting to be able to play the first single on the radio.

The artist behind Piña is a Colombian percussionist who relocated to study in Sydney recently. I was sent his music by a local composer friend who thought I’d be interested, as indeed I am. This EP was made when Piña first arrived in Sydney, and is created entirely from recordings made on a portable sound recorder in his then-local surrounds of the Northern Beaches of Sydney – although the sounds are processed quite heavily. It’s got a sunny feeling to it, with some audible field recordings and some lovely glitchy electronica, and an undercurrent of Colombian rhythms.

Inventing Masks is a new pseudonym for Italian experimental musician Giuseppe Ielasi, under which he has released an EP of minimalist rhythmic sampling experiments. It’s similar to a lot of his other minimalist rhythmic music before it, but where they were based around clunking home-made motorised machinery, crackling records or other more abstract sound sources, here the sounds are more conventional beats. His love of dub and even hip-hop is audible, but it’s still rather off-kilter stuff. I find his music endlessly fascinating, and I’m clearly not the only one, as his various solo releases, collaborations and projects such as the duo Bellows receive a lot of attention from the likes of Boomkat.

Next up, a couple more remixes from Machinefabriek‘s new collection Wendingen. Collecting remixes that the Dutch artist has made over the last 10 years, there’s everything from abstract sound-art to Amon Tobin’s heavy beats and then stuff like the Dutch brass band Mensenkinderen, and the gorgeous duduk of Djivan Gasparyan, melting into Rutger Zuydervelt’s granular ocean.

The big feature tonight is on the music of Sheffield’s David Newman aka Autistici, longtime curator of the Audiobulb label, and maker of beautiful, detailed electro-acoustic music released on labels like 12k, Home Normal, Hibernate and Dronarivm. I’ve often, in my head, lumped him in with various minimalist “drone” artists and the like, but while he’s been released on those kinds of labels, his music is often a little more upbeat and changeable than that might lead you to expect. There can be beats made from sampled acoustic sounds; in general there’s a lot of processing of acoustic sounds, which puts his music firmly in the Utility Fog realm. So it’s no surprise that I’ve chosen to feature an idiosyncratic selection of his music on tonight’s show. Hopefully you’re inspired to explore further.
His latest release is a collaborative album with musique concretète-influenced artist Justin Varis, and it comes with a second disc of remixes by like-minded producers, many of which are equally wonderful. We heard a reworking from composer Monty Adkins and, later on, a remix from UFog fave offthesky. And on the flipside, we heard a remix by Autistici of Portuguese electronic pop artist :papercutz, released on Newman’s own Audiobulb label.

Brisbane’s Nonsemble are one of the many projects of composer/producer Chris Perren, featuring classical instrumentation along with drum kit, combining Perren’s interest in math rock and postrock with his classical composing background. They’ve been releasing music on English classical-crossover label Bigo & Twigetti for some time, but their forthcoming EP is a bit of a change, adding vocalists on all tracks for a rather impressive stab at the indiepop limelight.

Marcus Whale – My Captain [Good Manners]
Piña – I. Custom [Cocora Records]
Piña – II. 92 Pasos [Cocora Records]
Piña – III. The Dance of the Valley Pt1 [Cocora Records]
Piña – IV. The Dance of the Valley Pt2 [Cocora Records]
Inventing Masks – 3’34” [Error Broadcast]
Inventing Masks – 3’34” [Error Broadcast]
Mensenkinderen – Een Blauwe Maandag (Machinefabriek Remix) [Zoharum/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Djivan Gasparyan – Moon Shines at Night (Machinefabriek Remix) [Zoharum/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
autistici & justin varis – grey orange red [Eilean Records]
autistici & justin varis – grey orange red (monty adkins – auva remix) [Eilean Records]
autistici – colonic people [Audiobulb]
Autistici – Annualized Light (2.2) [Kesh]
:papercutz – A secret search (Another location Autistici remix) [Audiobulb]
Autistici – Religion of Water and Air [Home Normal]
Calika & Autistici – Blue stem sister [Audiobulb]
Autistici – Opened Up Too Quickly [Dronarivm]
autistici & justin varis – yellow [Eilean Records]
autistici & justin varis – orange red grey (offthesky remix) [Eilean Records]
Nonsemble – Bricks (feat. Shem Allen) [Bigo & Twigetti]
Nonsemble – Somnambulists (feat. Mel Tickle and Shem Allen) [Bigo & Twigetti]

Listen again — ~196MB