Full playlist of awesome music for you tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN for twice the recommended dose of daily aural nutrition. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast from here.

Starting with some stunningly lovely stuff from Cave In The Sky, the project of Australian multi-instrumentalist Cye Wood, recorded predominantly in Byron Bay, produced by Paul Corley and mastered by Icelandic master Valgeir Sigurðsson. It’s got a bit of that Icelandic wind-swept epic feel to it, and it’s got that feel of acoustic postrock, with piano and strings and guitar with occasional softly-sung vocals, lush sub-bass and in general envelopingly lush production. Highly recommended when it comes on 26th of February from 1631 Recordings, a label setup by Mattias Nilsson from Kning Disk and David Wenngren from Library Tapes to release quality contemporary/post-classical and electronic music.

From Melbourne, Jade Foster is waterhouse. She’s been making electronic music for a few years and has collected some of those on a new mini-album on Melbourne’s Decisions Records. It’s not as dancefloor-focused as much of that label’s output (see the deservingly successful Air Max ’97), but there are some nice thudding beats on some tracks, as well as some late-night ambience and some dronenoise stuff.

Oren Ambarchi‘s second collaboration with Swedish bass player Johan Berthling (of the incendiary Fire!) came out lateish last year on Berthling’s Häpna label. I picked it up finally when Fire! visited Sydney a couple of weeks ago, and it’s really something. Ambarchi’s love of repetitive krautrock grooves, seen over the last few years’ releases, is here in spades along with Berthling’s talent for the perfect bassline. There’s lots of other sonic stuff going on – bouncing delays, organ drones etc. Two 15+-minute tracks to be savoured.

The latest release from Machinefabriek is a selection of his remixes from 2005 to 2015. That’s quite a long period, covering most of his history as an experimental/drone/sound-artist. There are some beats here and there – he does after all remix Amon Tobin among others – but also plenty of glitches and amazing sonic textures… Tonight we heard Dag Rosenqvist‘s shoegaze band de la Mancha and Berlin/London post-everything improv group Fiium Shaark, an exclusive to this collection.

Fellow Dutch artist Michel Banabila oscillates between quite experimental sound work and more approachable world-beat stuff, all of which I love, and the recent Feedback + Modular + Radiowaves III is mostly in the former camp, but one track is a piece of shimmering ambience and two long washes of crescendo and decrescendo.

Like Cave In The Sky, UK’s Iskra String Quartet are released on the 1631 Recordings label. The quartet have worked with some quite well-known pop and electronic acts in the last few years, as well as commissioning works from some leftfield UK composers. They have a remix EP coming out in a couple of weeks, and it’s great hearing one of the beloved artist of the original folktronica crew, Minotaur Shock, still making some tunes. Here he contributes a blissful piece of Jon Hopkins-style techno. Slightly more ambient is the reworking by French soundtrack composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouche.

Spanish duo Cello + Laptop have been making music with their titular instruments for a while, fitting somewhere between the post-classical world and drone and glitch. Their latest album Transient Accidents came out in one of the lush and intricate limited CD editions from Fluid Audio and is now available digitally from their Facture sublabel’s Bandcamp. It’s very detailed, deep listening.

The mysterious artist haddock’s eyes hails from Sydney according to their Bandcamp, but give nothing else at all away – except that some of their music is dubbed from cassette from 1993/4, whereas some is new. They range from lo-fi punk to jangly indie to lo-fi country, to granular-processed helium vocal pop, and it’s pretty much amazing. Some sleuth-work suggests it’s the work of Benjow, and originally-Adelaide-based artist who’s played in groups like the somewhat legendary cult band The Bedridden.

Finally, we have a preview of the new album from Iranian electronic musician Ash Koosha, coming out soon on Ninja Tune. He released a free mixtape on Old English Spelling Bee last year, from which we took a couple of tracks – bass-heavy glitch-hop type stuff, which seems to be the order of the day on the new album too. Great stuff.

Cave In The Sky – Threads of the Sun [1631 Recordings]
Cave In The Sky – Sönghellir [1631 Recordings]
waterhouse – Untitled 2 (1248am) [Decisions]
waterhouse – 3415 [Decisions]
waterhouse – Song For A Prince In Exile [Decisions]
Oren Ambarchi & Johan Berthling – Tied [Häpna]
de la Mancha – Release All Light (Machinefabriek Remix) [Zoharum/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Fiium Shaark – Krypton Tunning (Machinefabriek Remix) [Zoharum/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Machinefabriek – John Davis [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila – Cycling To Pluto [Tapu Records Bandcamp]
Iskra String Quartet – Blue Notebook (Minotaur Shock Remix) [1631 Recordings]
Iskra String Quartet – Chorale (Five) (Emilie Levienaise-Farrouche Remix) [1631 Recordings]
Cello + Laptop – State Of Transilience [Fluid Audio/Facture Bandcamp]
haddock’s eyes – sins / victory over the sun [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
haddock’s eyes – wednesday [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
haddock’s eyes – they die [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
haddock’s eyes – boat [haddock’s eyes Bandcamp]
Ash Koosha – XXXL / Harbour [Old English Spelling Bee]
Ash Koosha – Mudafossil [Ninja Tune]

Listen again — ~192MB

Slightly strange mix of indietronic pop and industrial, minimal electronics tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN, because you won’t get this anywhere else (probably) – stream on demand at FBi or podcast here.

I tried to end last week’s show with Marcus Whale‘s remix of LUCIANBLOMKAMP, but time got away from me and I was only able to play the first minute or so. It’s a storming piece of dark pop in the vein of Whale’s upcoming album, and I really felt I needed to spin the whole thing. Here’s hoping Good Manners get the album out soon! Blomkamp’s album is also out soon, and you can get hold of this remix for free (for an email address) at this link.

German postrock/post-jazz/experimental group Kammerflimmer Kollektief have been around since 1999, formed by Thomas Weber, who remains the only founding member although the current lineup as been fairly stable. They’re part of that German trend for experimental but accessible bands combining glitchy electronics & free improv with postrock & dub arrangements. When Heike Aumüller joined, some vocals were added, and so we end up with the very pretty melody of “Evol Jam (Edit)” offsetting the skittery, clattery noises.

The Chap are one of those uncategorizable English & European bands who draw on everything from punk, indie & krautrock to experimental electronica and techno. Their lyrics are extremely arch & arty, referencing and parodying consumerism, the rat race, world politics, technology and pop culture itself, all with the robotic precision of performance artists. But the weird thing is, despite their sui generis quirkiness, and despite their Brechtian detachment, they unfailingly manage to write incredibly catchy pop songs. In putting together tonight’s special, I had to pare down the selections from every album (and a couple of EPs), and I still ended up playing two tracks from Ham, their brilliant second album – and a few from the new one, The Show Must Go, which I think is their strongest in some years. Get into it.

Yves de Mey is one of the newer batch of electronic musicians who are both fine musicians and also supremely good producers. When you listen to de Mey or say Yair Elazar Glotman/KETEV you’re hearing incredibly controlled sound design, whether it’s harnessed for post-industrial, abstract electronic grooves or static-filled soundscapes. De Mey works with Belgian techno producer Peter Van Hoesen as Sendai, which is slightly more explicitly beat-based stuff, although still in an experimental vein.

We segue from de Mey to our next artist, Ricardo Donoso, via a remix de Mey did in 2014 for Donoso’s last release on the great (possibly now defunct) Digitalis Recordings. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Donoso has been based in Boston for some years now, and composes for film. His music is certainly epic in scope, mostly constructed from analogue synths, although on last year’s Saravá Exu album they were augmented with his percussion and some digital edits & processing. The forthcoming remix EP invites like-minded artists to give their takes on a few tracks, with Canadian industrial/techno duo Orphx sticking to the warm, dark analogue electronics. Brooklyn’s Archie Pelago, on the other hand, deal in jazzy polyglot music, a trio made up of trumpet, cello and sax (all also contribute electronics). Their remix starts as lushly orchestrated contemporary classical music, but gradually adds electronics – awesome.

LUCIANBLOMKAMP – Comfort (Marcus Whale remix) [Good Manners]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Evol Jam (Edit) [Staubgold]
Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Désarroi, Pt. 1: Mayhem! [Staubgold]
The Chap – Joy in depression [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – Guitar Messiah [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – (Hats Off To) Dror Frangi [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – The Premier At Last [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – I Am Oozing Emotion [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – Proper Rock [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – Nice Face [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – Nevertheless, The Chap [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – We Are Nobody [Lo Recordings]
The Chap – Student experience [Lo Recordings]
Yves de Mey – Moinen [Spectrum Spools (Bandcamp)]
Sendai – Further Vexations [Time To Express]
Yves de Mey – Box Caisson [Opal Tapes]
Sendai – Anti-Jupiter [Archives Intérieurs]
Ricardo Donoso – The Sphinx (Yves de Mey Remix) [Digitalis Recordings]
Ricardo Donoso – Versperum (Orphx Remix) [Denovali]
Ricardo Donoso – Matutinium (Archie Pelago Remix) [Denovali]

Listen again — ~197MB

Unbelieveably, we’re almost at the end of the first month of the 17th years of the 21st century (pedants can bugger off).

LISTEN AGAIN to folktronic pop, drones, rhythmic glitch, jungle, minimal techno and more… Stream on demand from the FBi website, or podcast from here.

Starting with a duo whose album I’ve been waiting only about 4 1/2 years for… The Natural History Museum‘s first track came out as a free download from Dunk Murphy’s Countersunk sometime in 2011, featuring a yearning piano line, beats, and the vocals of fellow Dubliner Carol Keogh. Murphy’s better known to Utility Fog listeners as folktronica/idm artist Sunken Foal, while Keogh is a singer/songwriter in her own right, but her vocals (sometimes reminiscent of Liz Harris or Kate Bush) gel beautifully with Murphy’s quirky harmonic constructions and analogue-meets-digital production.

Back in 2013, Odd Nosdam made an EP in tribute to the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast, who passed away tragically early from a brief illness contracted at the end of an Australian tour. The T r i s h EP has now been released on vinyl, so it’s been appearing on the music distro sites again, and it’s truly beautiful stuff. Although the liner notes credit Grouper’s Liz Harris on track 4, I find that confusing because there don’t appear to be any vocals (unless heavily buried) on track 4, while the title track which I played tonight has vocals which certainly sound like Harris…

Coming out soon on Flaming Pines is a compilation of experimental Iranian music called Absence, curated by Arash Akbari. I’m very pleased to have been introduced to a huge array of amazing artists from this country (only a few of whom I’d heard of before), and tonight we hear from Paris-based duo 9T Antiope with noises and vocals, and an electronic/post-classical soundtrack from Pouya Pour-Amin. Pre-order the compilation from the Flaming Pines Bandcamp

Orson Hentschel is a multimedia artist from Düsseldorf, whose debut album is out in February on the Denovali label. The bio draws a connection with the classical minimalism of Steve Reich et al, but sonically they are more like glitch or techno – but even when there are no beats, rhythm is central, drawn from the way the samples are chopped, looped and phased.

Also making somewhat minimalist/maximalist music is Sydney’s Hence Therefore, whose forthcoming EP on 3BS Records sees him visiting minimal techno climes with skittering percussion, warm sub-bass and wheezing synth melodies. It’s high quality stuff that deserves a global ear.

Sully‘s original productions were grime/dubstep but for the last year or two he’s been recreating early jungle in perfect style, and his new 12″ is no exception.
Also harkening back to pre-’95-era drum’n’bass is Downpour, aka Chris Adams of Hood and Bracken. While a new Bracken album is just around the corner, he’s just released another Downpour EP which is explicit in its nostalgia. Although the beat-juggling is absolutely front & centre, the last track takes us into the chill out tent at the rave so we can lie and stare at the ceiling in rapture…

A couple of years back, a new artist called Joane Skyler released a very interesting woozy, experimental electronic release and found a bit of fame. It wasn’t that unknown at the time, but it’s actually an anagramattical pseudonym of a male artist called Jason Kerley. There’s been some discussion of the negative effects of musicians – particularly electronic musicians in a genre very much dominated by male artists – taking on female pseudonyms, and while I believe that context matters, it’s a point well taken. Kerley himself has taken this on board, although I feel like he probably ought to be serious enough about it to drop the name; he’s acknowledged that one big problem is that his music has found its way into female-only venues (and may well have been played on one of my “UtiLadyFog” shows in fact).
In any case, it’s great music, and the remixes are strong and varied. As well as hearing a bit of drill’n’bass from Kerley under his Blackpepper we had a frenzied piece of madness from new Planet µ signing Yearning Kru.

Belgian-Italian duo Lumisokea‘s dark, industrial techno and ambient music has featured a fair bit on this show in the past. A cellist and percussionist making cutting-edge electronic music must be a kind of Utility Fog ideal really, and their new album, returning to Opal Tapes, is one of their strongest. Meanwhile, cellist Koenraad Ecker released an excellent second album for 2015 very late in year, which had previously only been heard on a fairly obscure split cassette. There are some low, rumbling string sounds on there, as well as some more industrial and electronic sounds.

We finished with a tiny bit of Marcus Whale‘s remix of LUCIANBLOMKAMP while Jordan Sexty fixed some technical issues, but we’ll have to play the whole thing next week when we’re not running overtime!

The Natural History Museum – Winter Bee [Countersunk]
The Natural History Museum – The Small Hours [Countersunk]
The Natural History Museum – Nightfisher/Australophithecus [Countersunk]
Odd Nosdam – T r i s h (feat. Liz Harris) [Odd Nosdam Bandcamp]
9T Antiope – Venator [Flaming Pines]
Pouya Pour-Amin – Exterior wash [Flaming Pines]
Orson Hentschel – 16 mm [Denovali]
Orson Hentschel – Feed The Tape [Denovali]
Hence Therefore – North Pacific Gyre [3BS Records]
Hence Therefore – Cicada Death Roll [3BS Records]
Sully – Rotten [Rua Sound]
downpour – Trust me [downpour Bandcamp]
downpour – Curfew [downpour Bandcamp]
Yearning Kru vs Joane Skyler – the ground remix [Reckno Records]
Blackpepper vs Joane Skyler – the ground remix [Reckno Records]
Lumisokea – Hyman Otor [Opal Tapes]
Koenraad Ecker – The soul of the white Ant [Koenraad Ecker Bandcamp]
Lumisokea – Generation Z [Opal Tapes]
LUCIANBLOMKAMP – Comfort (Marcus Whale remix) [Good Manners]

Listen again — ~194MB

What a week. Obviously it’s sad when anyone dies, but two very special people who touched a lot of the world died this week.

LISTEN AGAIN and cry with me… not really, there’s happy music too! Podcast it here, stream it from FBi.

A few days ago I was going to bed when I got a notification on my phone that the wonderful English actor Alan Rickman had died. It took me an hour and a half longer to get to bed as I trawled through clips of all his films I remembered, and read people’s reminiscences. But my favourite is always going to be the sweet romantic comedy (because it is a comedy) about a cellist who comes back from the dead to be with his widow – Truly, Madly, Deeply. And I still remember when I first heard my favourite indie band of the early ’90s, The Clouds, playing their song “Ghost of Love Returned” – their most shoegazey song- and realised it’s a tribute to that movie. So farewell, Alan, you were one of the best.

Well, when I started last week’s show with David Bowie I knew that his new album was a remarkable event, but none of us had realised yet that it was his farewell to us all. I wasn’t planning to do my own tribute, but I did listen to an awful lot of Bowie this week and those instrumentals on side B of “Heroes” snuck up on me and tapped me on the shoulder… And the “drum’n’bass album” from 1997, Earthling is actually really great so let’s hear something off that too.
It wasn’t until later in the week that I remembered that Atom™ had done a cover of my favourite Bowie song way back in 1999 under his Lassigue Bendthaus alias. It’s glitch-pop in excelsis, and a great tribute to the original song’s experimental production.

Some years ago young New Zealand pianist Aron Ottignon was living in Sydney – his brother Matt still lives here but Aron’s been based in Europe for some time. His first album came out with his band Aronas while he was based here – weird electronic production rubbing up against funky melodic piano jazz. From the sounds of his latest couple of EPs, the sound hasn’t changed that much, and it’s still utterly joyful music.

In 2014 my favourite new artist was an Israeli contrabassist based in Germany called Yair Elazar Glotman, making extraordinary bass/techno music as KETEV and equally extraordinary sound art/ambient stuff under his own name. Last year under his own name came an enveloping album of double bass sonics, and it’s great to have KETEV back at the start of this year – back on Where To Now?, who released his second EP in 2014 after the self-titled KETEV EP on the legendary Opal Tapes label. Like so much Opal Tape stuff it’s a combination of the lo-fi scrapes and saturation of tape with high-tech contemporary sound design and perfectly-honed beats, while under his own name he concentrates more on ambient electro-acoustic sound design, spectacularly focusing on the highly-amplified sounds of his double bass last year.

I discovered composer Brian Harnetty a number of years ago when I heard about his first album of recontextualised archival recordings of Appalachian folk music. He embedded himself in the Brerea College Appalachian Sound Archives in Kentucky, where he was able to use amazing recordings from the early in the 20th century, weaving his own compositions around this music. A couple of years later, he visited some more of these recordings along with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and he returned to them last year in a double CD that brings us the sound of schoolchildren telling some quite gruesome Appalachian folk tales.

The Clouds – Ghost of Love Returned [Red Eye Records]
David Bowie – Neuköln [Sony Music]
David Bowie – Little Wonder [Sony Music]
lb – Ashes to Ashes [Form & Function]
Aron Ottignon – Waves (à la Reunion) [Aron Ottignon Bandcamp]
Aronas – Happy Song [Vitamin Records]
Aron Ottignon – Waterfalls in Tanzania [Aron Ottignon Bandcamp & digital everywhere]
Aron Ottignon – Jungle [Aron Ottignon Bandcamp]
KETEV – Linger [Where To Now?]
KETEV – Uruk [Opal Tapes]
KETEV – Akko [Where To Now?]
Yair Elazar Glotman – Sunken Harbour [Glacial Movements]
Yair Elazar Glotman – Retenant [Subtext]
KETEV – Probabilities of a stranger’s eyes [Where To Now?]
Brian Harnetty – Merrywise [Dust to Digital]
Brian Harnetty – i’ll cross the briny ocean, i’ll cross the deep blue sea [Atavistic]
Brian Harnetty & Bonnie “Prince” Billy – The Night Is, And Lights Are [Atavistic]
Brian Harnetty – Jake and His Master (Instrumental) [Dust to Digital]

Listen again — ~187MB