Indietronica, idm, indiefolk, electro-acoustic experimentalism, and ambient electronica on the agenda for tonight!

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It’s been some years since the last Telafonica album. In the meantime they completed their project of releasing a remix EP for every song on that album, and they did slip out an EP in 2013. But it’s great to have them back with a whole album’s worth of delightful indietronica. They continue to pair creative electronic (and folktronic!) production with classic songwriting chops.

Many column inches have already been spent on Sufjan Stevens‘ new release, bourne from the grief of losing his mother. It’s wrenchingly personal, musically very subdued, a Sufjan to the core. I’m not sure whether it ranks quite up there with my favourites (Seven Swans, Age of Adz and Illinois) – but the more I listen, somehow the more touching it becomes. Immerse yourself in it and you’ll feel the encompassing warmth of deep sadness. There are acoustic folk songs like the title track (which also features iPhone field recordings which evoke a certain personal meaning without us being able to know quite what they signify), but there are also muted electric piano pieces (the like of which we heard here and there in the Sisyphus tracks from last year) and a number of tracks have beautiful shoegazey instrumental outros.
Carrie & Lowell is being compared a lot to Seven Swans, and I couldn’t help but play one of the intense devotional songs from that album.

It’s been a while also since we heard from Lucky Dragons, stalwarts of this show since their roots in visionary folktronica. There’s always some kind of deeply-thought-out conceptual basis to their music, but their electro-acoustic, experimental approach is not academic but rather playful and quite accessible. It’s rarely electronica with beats, but nor is it pure sound-art or drone, and this track is a case in point – cut-up snatches of vocal pulse and overlap over 6 minutes to produce something that sounds surprisingly like minimal techno.

Also deceptively like minimal techno (except in the sense of having much in the way of a discernible beat) is the new release from Italian experimentalists Giuseppe Ielasi & Nicola Ratti as Bellows, this time round on Boomkat‘s in-house label. Dub elements can be found all the way back in their self-titled album of 2007, but come to the fore here with scattered sub-bass gestures in amongst reticent, clicky percussive almost-rhythms, vinyl scratches and delays.
Their debut self-titled album is perhaps the least “pure”, combining most of those above elements with guitar and other musical elements to create a postrock/minimal electronic fusion. The incredible handcut album utilises only vinyl, with rhythms from run-out grooves, and deeply worn fuzzy ’80s pop scratched back and forth, while 2012’s Reelin’ uses spare synths and drum machines to similar effect. In fact it could be suggested that an abstracted form of dub lies at the heart of everything Bellows have done.

Direct from the artist we have some exclusive analogue electronica from Comatone up next. The reclusive (ha) genius producer from the Blue Mountains started these tracks some years ago and has surfaced them now inspired by Aphex Twin’s clearing out of the archives. And the melodic, acid-influenced tracks do point a bit towards early ’90s AFX. Keep an eye out for this…

Finally tonight a special on the sounds of Jason Corder aka offthesky aka Juxta Phona. Tonight’s 35-minute special focuses more on the beat-based elements of his work, as the new Juxta Phona release on Home Normal is more along those lines, while offthesky has become more of a drone & quiet music outlet. Under his belt are collaborations with violinists & cellists, other drone & postrock artists, along with a string of great remixes under both names. I only had a chance to play one tonight, of another recently-featured Home Normal artist, Gurun Gurun. It’s a doozy though, processed guitars, beats & electronics. In general, his music has a dreamy outlook even when the beats are complex and clattery… It’s easy to get lost in.
Since I’ve mostly neglected the droney/post-classical/minimalist music Corder writes tonight, we didn’t hear from another recent release of his, the album Possession on Sydney label Flaming Pines made in colaboration with Cody Yantis and Carl Ritger of Radere. It’s very dark drone/noise work and also comes highly recommended – hear some samples on the Flaming Pines SoundCloud.

Telafonica – What Remains [4-4-2 Music]
Telafonica – The Quest For Aboard the Belafonte [4-4-2 Music]
Telafonica – Home Song [4-4-2 Music]
Sufjan Stevens – Fourth of July [Asthmatic Kitty]
Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell [Asthmatic Kitty]
Sufjan Stevens – To Be Alone With You [Asthmatic Kitty]
Sufjan Stevens – Blue Bucket of Gold [Asthmatic Kitty]
Lucky Dragons – Inside [Vestibule]
Bellows – Rustl track 5 [Boomkat Editions]
Bellows – Bellows track 03 [Kning Disk]
Bellows – handcut 04 [Senufo Editions]
Bellows – Reelin’ track 06 [Entr’acte]
Bellows – Rustl track 5 [Boomkat Editions]
Comatone – Using The Instruments [tune your v.c.o. – is this going to be released I have no idea…]
Juxta Phona – alleyway angelwitch way [Home Normal]
offthesky – cold as your eyes can be [Stilll]
Juxta Phona & offthesky – low spark of high squealed toys [Somnia]
Gurun Gurun – Karumi (offthesky mix) [Futuresequence]
offthesky vs kinder scout – faded faces in vanishing voices [Home Normal]
Juxta Phona – we are the shakers of the world [Home Normal]

Listen again — ~104MB

Another eclectic selection tonight… how does he do it? We’ll never know.
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It’s getting late in the evening, so we’ll start with some Talk Talk. A very pleasant way to start the show, date-appropriate. In some ways this represents the point of transformation of Talk Talk from ’80s electro-pop band into the quiet experimental proto-post-rock that’s been so hugely influential on so many that came after.

Three years after the release of experimental pop duo kyü‘s second album (itself released after they’d decided to call it quits), we finally have a new solo album from one of the members, Alyx Dennison, and boy was it worth the wait. She doesn’t seem to have dispensed with much of the duo’s adventurousness, with heavy live percussion and vocal acrobatics still in there, although equally it’s full of ultra-personal songwriting backed up by touching and dare I say catchy melodies. She’s gonna go far.

You’d never guess that the following track was Panda Bear – not even, I daresay, if you knew the original, despite the fragments of vocal harmonies speckled over the middle part. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if you identified it as Andy Stott. It’s on the more upbeat side, but it has the impeccably dirty production values, sub-bass, and post-d’n’b/2step references you’d expect. Heavy stuff.

Melbourne guitarist Tim Catlin has teamed up with Dutch UFog regular Machinefabriek for a second album on Low Point, featuring short (for Machinefabriek anyway) electro-acoustic works which are sometimes clearly guitar-based and sometimes at most one element in the mix. There are even some rhythmic almost-beats in there, as well as the expected glitches and drones and skittery, skritchy sounds.

I first came across Antony Harrison’s work as konntinent in 2009 when his first (ish) album was released on Japanese ambient label Symbolic Interaction. It was one of the less ambient releases on the label, its slow-moving tracks liable to feature bouts of noise, glitchy postrock instrumentation or beats along with the drones. It’s tended to continue that way, with appearances on labels known for drone and quiet, folky ambience, mostly slightly bucking the trend. While all his work’s worth checking out, the new album on Home Normal seems like his best work yet, which makes it extra sad that he’s decided to hang up the konntinent moniker in order to work more with his electro-pop duo Paco Sala. Luckily he’s making excellent music with the latter too, albeit in a slightly different vein.

Tim Shiel‘s continuing his run of pretty melodic electronica with a soundtrack not to an indie game this time, but to a film about indie games called GameLoading: Rise of the Indies. Perhaps even more than with the soundtracks of the last year or two, the pieces here are quite clearly cues, many quite short and without much musical development. But there are some great sounds, as we heard here (and the acoustic piano slips very nicely in amongst the electronics on the second track – not sure if this is Luke Howard here).

And finally a Melbourne artist I’d not heard of, Justin Cantrell aka rituals., with a new cassette & digital release out soon on This Thing. It’s somehow just right for a cassette release – woozy, noisy, just discernable as having hip-hop roots if you squint.

Talk Talk – April 5th [EMI]
Alyx Dennison – Triptych [Popfrenzy]
kyü – sunny in splodges [Popfrenzy]
kyü – Scratch Piano [kyü Bandcamp]
Alyx Dennison – I Don’t Love You Anymore (Felicity Yang Remix) [SoundCloud]
Alyx Dennison – LAX [Popfrenzy]
Alyx Dennison – Boat [Popfrenzy]
Panda Bear – Boys Latin (Andy Stott remix) [Domino]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek – Sweep [Low Point]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek – Whorl [Low Point]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek – Flutter [Low Point]
Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek – Yowl [Low Point]
konntinent – The Luxury of Without [Home Normal]
konntinent – Amongst the Islanders (feat. Cuushe) [Home Normal]
konntinent – This Searing Heat [Symbolic Interaction]
Paco Sala – Tous Les Orages feat. Félicia Atkinson [Digitalis]
konntinent – Creep Sxene [Hibernate]
Paco Sala – Put Your Hands On Me [Digitalis]
konntinent – Geschrei Zwei [Home Normal]
Tim Shiel – Become Daylight [Tim Shiel Bandcamp]
Tim Shiel – Dharmarp [Tim Shiel Bandcamp]
rituals. – bakk [This Thing]

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Wide-ranging show of interesting music tonight! Folk, postrock, post-classical, gothic metal cello, experimental & arcane electronics…

LISTEN AGAIN because you can’t afford to miss out! Podcast here, stream there.

John Renbourn, the second legendary folk/crossover guitarist from English band The Pentangle has passed away this week. It’s been a while since I found myself playing them in tribute to Bert Jansch, and it’s sad to be remembering them again for this reason. What amazing music though, cross-fertilizing English folk with jazz, blues, Americana, with virtuoso playing and pure English singing from Jacqui McShee.

It’s always an Event when Godspeed You! Black Emperor release an album, especially given the 10 year gap before the last one – and the last one was 3 years ago! It’s not quite an epic or double album or anything – in fact all the tracks segue into each other and it could be considered a single 40-minute composition in 4 parts. The middle two tracks are fantastic drone works, quite different from each other, and the first & last are nice heavy riffage with strings and soaring melodies, the full Godspeed. It’s quite wonderful – in some ways I prefer it this way, as the big extended bombast can get a bit wearying. That a strong endorsement people, imbibe this.

href=”http://www.nilsfrahm.com/”>Nils Frahm has declared the 88th day of the year (usually March 29th) Piano Day and is using the inaugral event as the day to release his new album solo. It’s available as a free download from the site, but you can also find information about a behemoth of an instrument that he’s trying to get funded, so maybe get the vinyl or CD edition as well to help with that! It’s very pretty, mostly unadorned piano, but runs from quiet contemplative stuff to rhythmic thumping and one reverb-laden piece for “Four Hands” which obviously featured multitracked Nils (well, I didn’t see another player credited).

Nils Frahm also appears on the next track, which I’m using to segue into the next special… here he’s collaborating with incendiary doom cellist Helen Money aka Alison Chesley, along with the Marseilles-based musical travel agent Philippe Petit. It’s quite a seductive piece and one of the highlights from an excellent album of varied collaborations from Petit.

Next up, though, we have a truly wonderful offering from Helen Money working with the legendary Jarboe. The tracks are credited variously to one or other artist both together, or one “with” the other, presumably representing who came up with the original ideas. We have massive distorted doom cello lines, Jarboe’s keyboards and sometimes guitar, and it’s pure perfection.
Nothing like a good excuse for an artist special, so we delved back into a very small & personal (for me) selection of Jarboe’s archives, from her iconoclastic work with Swans to collaborations with experimental metal legends Neurosis and Jesu, and contemporary Japanese metal/post-classical geniuses Vampillia.

Félicia Atkinson has been making low-key lo-fi and not-so-lo-fi music under her own name and as Je suis le petit chevalier and has built up a name for herself for her drone works and for very strung-out indie songs and experimental electronic works. Her latest album A Readymade Ceremony features avant-garde pieces for electronics and acoustic instruments. Earlier works featured electronic cut-ups and vocals, and more recently she’s concentrated on more minimal drones. This new album is a challenging and recommended listen.

And we finish up with some arcane and spooky sounds from IX Tab. Taking some cues from Coil in terms of magickal references and weirdly processed electronics. He loves timestretched vocals and other sounds, stuttering through half-recognizable shapes while pulsating grooves hover like interference patterns in some quantum physics experiment. It’s bizarre in the best way.

The Pentangle – Train Song [Shanachie]
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!’ [Constellation]
Nils Frahm – Four Hands [Piano Day free download/Erased Tapes]
Philippe Petit & Alison Chesley & Nils Frahm – Succumb to Gravity [Home Normal]
Alison Chesley & Jarboe – For My Father [Aurora Borealis]
Swans – Songs For Dead Time (Jarboe version) [Young God Records]
Neurosis & Jarboe – Within [Neurot Recordings]
Jesu – Storm Comin’ On (feat. Jarboe) [Hydra Head]
Vampillia – tui feat. Jarboe [Virgin Babylon]
Alison Chesley with vocals by Jarboe – Wired [Aurora Borealis]
Jarboe & Alison Chesley – Hello Mr. Blue [Aurora Borealis]
Félicia Atkinson – Carve The Concept And The Artichoke [Shelter Press]
Félicia Atkinson – Guitar means mountain [Spekk]
Félicia Atkinson – Against Archives [Shelter Press]
IX Tab – Blasted [Twiggwytch Recordings]
IX Tab – The Seams of Goodwill (Blue Blood) [Exotic Pylon/IX Tab Bandcamp]
IX Tab – The Burned Wretch [Front & Follow]
IX Tab – Blowm (for Alan Turing) (tiny excerpt) [Twiggwytch Recordings]

Listen again — ~104MB

Selection of noise, strings with electronics, folk guitar and subdued post-punk electronic… yeah that makes sense.

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Starting tonight with some music from Brisbane’s Benjamin Thompson, who ended last week’s show as well. Having been a member of The Rational Academy for years, he’s got plenty cred in the indie/indietronic/noise/experimental electronics world already. But under his Pale Earth moniker he’s releasing some of his most exciting music yet – electronic music unfettered by genre concerns.
Last year he also put out a release with Ian Rogers of No Anchor on the sadly defunct Wood and Wire label as Black Pines. It’s a shouty mix of hardcore and noise, fierce and sparse.

Dutch producer Michel Banabila & violist Oene van Geel have just released their second album of gorgeous experimental electronics and viola. Van Geel first came upon my radar with another Banabila collaboration, the lovely Cloud Ensemble from earlier last year, with world-influenced beats and instruments and vocals from all n4tural. The first Music for viola and electronics was strictly van Geel’s viola improvisations & compositions with Banabila’s electronics by turn lush and abrasive. The new one follows the same sonic path but adds further instrumentation: bass clarinet, cello, trumpet, drums (see link below for full lineup). It’s not all experimental modular electronics & extended techniques, but nor is it all lush world beats & string melodies – it strikes a nice balance. They’ve both stayed on my virtual turntable a lot recently.

Brisbane’s Chris Perren is one talented individual, with a musical pedigree that crosses from classical training in composition and guitar through math rock bands and glitchy electronic cut-ups to post-classical meets postrock. His new release is under the name Software of Seagulls from Sydney’s beloved Feral Media label, a longtime collaborator with him. Our first track features a beautiful electric violin performance from Fern Thompsett, while there are also bits of folktronica and his other interests across the new album. We also heard something from his rare first solo recording, and an unreleased remix of my own band FourPlay String Quartet (from a frequently-delayed remix album that needs to get out there soon…) Chris’s post-classical/postrock group Nonsemble released a single last year on respected British label Bigo & Twigetti, with an album due out this year.

Tomkins Square Records have been releasing extraordinary compilations of fingerstyle guitar – all solo finger-picked guitar – for 10 years now. It’s a style which has had experimentalism at its core for decades, with John Fahey as one of its American figureheads and second-wave pioneers. A decade later, the latest album is compiled by young guitarist Hayden Pedigo and features some great new artists as well as some legends like Simon Scott of shoegazers Slowdive. We heard a lovely almost-shoegazey track from Michael Vallera and something from adventurous Portuguese guitarist Norberto Lobo. In between, a beauty of fingerpicked guitar and delays from Greg Davis (make some more music, Greg!).

Finishing up with some new music from the prolific Aidan Baker, one half of heavy dreamy doom duo Nadja. Here he gives us quiet, whispery songs with clear-toned electric guitar over a glitchy backdrop of noises produced from an unfortunate but serendipitous hard disk crash. It’s immersive music that slowly unfolds in your mind – small grabs might seem monotone, but the songs have patient shapes that reward your attention.

Pale Earth – Racey Leopard [Pale Earth Bandcamp]
Pale Earth – Mia [ROOM40]
Black Pines – Die Out [Wood and Wire]
Pale Earth – Duo [Pale Earth Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel – Vleugels [Tapu]
Cloud Ensemble – Hide and Seek [Tapu]
Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel – Dondergod [Tapu]
Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel – Chaos [Tapu]
Software of Seagulls – Redundant Array of Independent Worlds [Feral Media]
Chris Perren – A New Logic [self-released]
Mr. Maps – Your Heels in Sand, Soul in Pursuit (original version) [Lofly]
Nonsemble – Go Part 3c [Bigo & Twigetti]
FourPlay String Quartet – Now To The Future (Chris Perren remix) [unreleased]
Software of Seagulls – Adelaide St. [Feral Media]
Michael Vallera – USA Self [Tompkins Square Records]
Greg Davis – Sleep Architecture [Tompkins Square Records]
Norberto Lobo – Enchiridion [Tompkins Square Records]
Aidan Baker – Hart [Pleasence Records/Aidan Baker Bandcamp]
Aidan Baker – Something Less [Pleasence Records/Aidan Baker Bandcamp]

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