Good evening! I’m back after a week in Radelaide, with lots to play you!

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We start with a bit of an unusual special on Björk. I didn’t want to focus on album tracks from her history or anything – we all know that (brilliant) stuff. So I found a few oddities & rarities to play you tonight.
It seems to me that Vulnicura might be Björk’s best album yet – it’s soul-baring and very difficult listening, but it’s also beautifully produced and beautifully composed. The beats are still cutting edge (made with Arca), the mix intense in every way (thanks The Haxan Cloak!), and Björk’s string arrangements are incredible. The lyrics are jagged and painful, brutally honest and yet as poetic as she’s ever managed – and there are some sweet references to her other work, such as “Find our mutual coordinates” in “stonemilker”, sung to accentuate the connection to “mutual core”; for that matter, the first few string notes of the same song recall The Brodsky Quartet‘s celebrated version of “Hyperballad”.
I didn’t play any of The Brodsky Quartet collaborations tonight, but we had a few other interesting tidbits: People forget that even recently Björk has been happy to guest on other people’s work (e.g. Ólöf Arnalds second-last album), and she’d worked with The Black Dog since the beginning of her solo career; so it makes sense Plaid asked her to sing on a track on their debut album after leaving The Black Dog. They’ve also remixed her a number of times.
In 2008 Stereogum decided to put together a tribute to Post, Björk’s second album, and invited a selection of indie artists to cover all the tracks. It made a lot of sense to have Owen Pallett (appearing in Sydney this Saturday March 21st!) as Final Fantasy, and Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear to cover “Possibly Maybe”, with a scintillating string arrangement melding with electronics in its original form. They strip it down to mainly drum machine and Pallett’s own strings, and sing the lyric deadpan without swapping gender (nor should they).
Meanwhile, in the lead-up to the release of Vespertine (still probably my favourite), idm-heads were excited about the presence of Matmos in the production credits (along with other electronic heroes of the time like Opiate and The Notwist‘s Console). Prior to the album’s release, Matmos leaked a few very odd “remixes” of studio sessions, and “Hearts & Bones” is how I always thought of “Hidden Place” for quite some time…

Next up, a new generation of fearless female electronic performer. Holly Herndon is shortly to release her second album, this time through 4AD in conjunction with RVNG Intl.. Before we get there though, I discovered she put out a standalone single, running for 11½ minutes. It’s pretty abstract! Some of her processed vocals appear hear and there along with what sound like very processed field recordings and hints at beats or basslines. Herndon’s fractured music balances precariously between dancefloor accessibility and academic abstruseness. I’m very interested to hear what the album brings…

Firmly on the dancefloor, but no less abstract for that, is the new single from Sydney’s Cassius Select aka Lavurn Lee. Broken beats point at grime and uk garage as much as house. You can see him along with Marcus Whale and Jared Beeler in the incredible Black Vanilla this Friday the 20th of March at Civic Underground.

EVA (a reference to space walks and the like) is Brisbane’s Amelia Paxman. Her new EP is a lovely lo-fi affair with analogue electronics, drum machine, piano and vocals.

Gurun Gurun are a folktronic, slightly post-classical (yeah that makes sense) group from Czech Republic, although they sound like they should be Japanese. Their music is released by an English label based in Japan, Home Normal (soon to become a Japanese label based in England) and their forthcoming album does feature some well-loved Japanese vocalists such as Cokiyu and Cuushe. Before we get the album, Home Normal have released a single on their Bandcamp with some fine remixes and all proceeds go to a great charity.

Now to a little special on Snow Ghosts, who released their second album on the great Houndstooth last month. It continues the trip hop meets contemporary beats of Hannah Cartwright aka Augustus Ghost and Ross Tones aka Throwing Snow, but adds multi-instrumentalist Oliver Knowles into the mix. It feels bad to criticise when I actually love their music so much, but unfortunate to my string player ears many of the violin are hard to listen to – wavering pitch doesn’t sit nicely with electronic instruments. That aside, the sounds are stunning, as much based around filthy noise drones as cutting-edge chopped beats. We heard some of those beats that Throwing Snow has become known for after mosty abandoning his early gentler folktronic sound – Mosaic album was one last year’s album highlights, jumping between styles and dipping its toe into some drum’n’bass-like breakbeat juggling here and there. We also heard Kwesi Darko remixing a track which he contributed to on the album as Blue Daisy; here he unearths his dark rapper alter-ego Dahlia Black for a forbidding take on the same song.

I wanted to play more from Brisbane’s Benjamin Thompson aka Pale Earth, but I ran out of time – so more next week. I’ve been a fan since his first 3″ CD on a little label of John Chantler‘s, which mixed indiefolk songs with field recordings and electronics. He’s a member of indietronicnoisepunk band The Rational Academy, and I’m very impressed with the drones, cut-ups and beats he’s doing under this new name. He also contributed the latest soundtrack to FBi’s Ears Have Ears.

Björk – stonemilker [One Little Indian]
Plaid – lilith (ft. björk) [Warp]
Final Fantasy & Ed Droste – Possibly Maybe [Stereogum]
Björk – Isobel (The Carcass remix) [One Little Indian]
Björk & Matmos – Hearts & Bones [unreleased, download from Matmos back in 2001]
Björk – family [One Little Indian]
Holly Herndon – Recruit [RVNG Intl.]
Cassius Select – He Ain’t Worth [Unknown To The Unknown]
EVA – Lost In Spaces [EVA Bandcamp]
EVA – Deja Vu [EVA Bandcamp]
Gurun Gurun – Tsuki ni te feat. Cokiyu [Home Normal]
Gurun Gurun – Atarashii hi (Pawn / Hideki Umezawa remix) [Home Normal]
Snow Ghosts – Drought [Houndstooth]
Snow Ghosts – The Wreck [Houndstooth]
Throwing Snow – Pyre [Local Action]
Snow Ghosts – Murder Cries [Houndstooth]
Snow Ghosts feat. Dahlia Black – Covenant (Remix) [Houndstooth]
Throwing Snow – Maera feat. Adda Kaleh [Houndstooth]
Snow Ghosts – On Knifes [Houndstooth]
Pale Earth – Racey Leopard [Pale Earth Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~106MB

Variegated musics from aroumd the world tonight!
Next week I’ll be in Radelaide for WOMADelaide, so I’ll see you in two weeks!

LISTEN AGAIN and again and again… stream on demand or podcast here…

Pelicans are perhaps best known as an instrumental post-metal band, embodying that mix of post-rock dynamics and metal heaviness. On new single “The Cliff” they add vocals to the mix, and have asked a couple of friends to contribute some remixes. There’s a typically great one from genre-defying rock god JK Broadrick, and one by Palms, which we heard tonight. Palms is the band that the “other” members of ISIS formed after Aaron Turner (another genre-defying rock god if ever there was one) dissolved the band. Featuring Chino Moreno of the Deftones, their album was a decidedly less challenging affair than ISIS – but they’re all superlative musicians, and their remix here is an exploratory journey.

We heard expat Brisvegan Mirko last week on the show, and hear another track from his forthcoming digital EP on Room40 tonight. Synth drones and pulsating basslines ahoy!

Speaking of synths, Canberra’s Raus gives us a veritable Casio keyboard odyssey in almost 13 minutes from his LP from last year on hellosQuare. You can listen to an hour-long mix I just finished (including spoken bits) of my favourite hellosQuare releases right now at Mixcloud.

Adelaide’s Michael Radzevicius aka Glamour Lakes has played in a few bands through the years including Aviator Lane – and the previous incarnation of Glamour Lakes was a more indie-pop (electronic) affair. The new material sees him taking tips from Tim Hecker as well as Vatican Shadow, from a more glitchy ambient sound. It’ll be interesting to hear what else turns up in the album due out in May.

Hessien is the cross-continental duo of Charlie Sage aka y0t0 (Queenbeyan, NSW) and Tim Martin aka Maps and Diagrams. Guitars and dreamy electronics brush up against each other in ambient almost-drone tracks which give up a lot of detail if you immerse yourself in them.

Daniel W J Mackenzie has been making music as Ekca Liena for some years, also inhabiting the world of not-quite-drone. His Slow Music For Rapid Eye Movement made a big impression when I came across it a few years ago; he’s made drones, noise rock, space rock, and even collaborated with Aidan Baker along the way, but this is his first “album proper” in some time. The 13-minute track we heard tonight is the centrepiece of an album that encompasses a lot of those styles. Here we have drones, but plenty of movement, a repetitive rock groove and noise crescendo. Quite excellent.

Richard Adams of Hood has by now been making music for long enough as The Declining Winter – with or without accompanying band – that I shouldn’t need to refer to his previous band, except that they’re one of the most important (if neglected by the mainsteam) bands of the last couple of decades. Suffice to say they’re hugely important for me, and so when one of the Adams brothers has a new release it’s big news. And this is definitely Richard’s best work outside of Hood – great songs of great variety, and although his signature lurching guitar patterns are there in some tracks, there’s also strumming postpunk phrasings, some great plodding synth basslines, and even a bit of indiepop with organ and piano in there. Out on March 23rd, pre-order your copy now!

Dublin producer Dunk Murphy has been featured a lot of UFog over the years, from his duo Ambulance to his solo work as Sunken Foal. Electronica which isn’t afraid to build its melodies around acoustic guitar or piano, it’s as melodic as the best of Plaid, say, and as rhythmically inventive as Luke Vibert, say. And it’s lots of fun.

Grasscut started out on the Ninja Tune label, but have found a home now with Lo Recordings. Their new single is surprisingly (indie-)pop, but the b-side has that gentle early-Tunng-like folktronic feel that they’re known for. There’s a new album coming out soon.

We heard from Sydney artist CORIN a few weeks ago as she’s released a remix EP, but tonight we heard from last year’s Deluge EP, with a lovely synth composition to round out the show.

Pelicans – The Cliff (Palms Remix) [Pelicans Bandcamp]
Mirko – A Soft Fall [Room40]
Raus – Odyssey [hellosQuare]
Glamour Lakes – Altitude Into Light [Glamour Lakes Bandcamp]
Hessien – Man Overboard [Long Story Recording Company]
Hessien – five sisters feat. jane williams (zelienople remix) [Fluid Audio]
Hessien – Army Of David [Long Story Recording Company]
Ekca Liena – Free Precipitation [Consouling Sounds]
The Declining Winter – Around The Winding Roads [Home Assembly Music]
The Declining Winter – Hurled To The Curb [Home Assembly Music]
The Declining Winter – When Things Mattered [Home Assembly Music]
The Declining Winter – A Field Defunct [Home Assembly Music]
Sunken Foal – Piss Into The Smash (ft. Foxy Box & Bobby Softrock) [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – Hotel Bristol [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – White Night Flight [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – Hard Rime Lattice [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – Family Floor Tune [Countersunk]
Grasscut – September’s Night Sky [Lo Recordings]
CORIN – Riverboat [CORIN Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~104MB

Nice big range of stuff tonight including a good wad of Aussie music, with some politics embedded in parts, and then later some very cinematic, very dark stuff from Belgium & the Netherlands.

LISTEN AGAIN at the stereo stream or the podcast here.

To start off tonight, something topical: Sydney’s folk-meets-prog/post-rock legends The Crooked Fiddle Band are playing this Thursday night at the Basement, as a special one-off with a whole (well, as much as they can fit) orchestra in tow! Should be awesome, with Jess Randall’s already epic violin lines augmented… But equally awesome is Joe & Gordon’s hopefully very short-lived hardcore band Until Abbott Gets Gone, who will break up as soon as, yes, Tony Abbott is out of office. While our political problems with climate change, human rights, education and so much more will not be solved by the demise of one odious man, it’s a sentiment I can get behind, and an ingenious way of achieving (in a short time) some very good publicity for their political views (and great music).

Room40 are celebrating their 15th year this year, and still releasing innovative music in beautiful editions. Presumably Mirko Vogel‘s LP later this year will be one of those editions, but first up we have a 3-track digital EP out soon. Once a member of Brisbane’s power pop band Sekiden, having toured with fellow Modular artist Cut Copy, he’s now based in London and making sounds very much suited to Room40, with bass-heavy drones and distant pulsing beats.

2XX FM is Canberra’s much-loved community radio station, therefore comrades of a sort to FBi in Sydney. Michael Norris and Reuben Ingall host an experimental electronic music show there called Subsequence Radio and late last year released a compilation of excellent electronic music from Canberra on their Bandcamp. There’s a mixture of artist I know and those I don’t – falling into the latter camp, P A R K S, with some nice chunky, crunchy beats. Meanwhile experimental producer and frequent collaborator with Ingall Paul Heslin covers Tassie two-piece Paint Your Golden Face, and ex-Underlapper Gatherer gives us some dense, evolving loops.

Reuben Ingall, one half of the radio show responsible for that compilation, has also just released a cassette with two live versions of his Microwave Drone Ritual, in which he cooks a pie (for 10 minutes apparently) and turns the microwave’s hum into a magnificent drone piece, augmented by his own vocals. Strangely compelling.

Speaking of drones, and with a rather different take on music as politics compared to tonight’s opening track, next we have an excerpt from Robert Curgenven‘s They tore the earth, and, like a scar, it swallowed them. Featuring field recordings from around Australia, along with drones on pipe organ, turtables and low frequency oscillators, it’s a powerful meditation on the damage caused by colonialism…

Our final Australian track for tonight comes from ex-Faux Pas, current Double J broadcaster, current Gotye band member Tim Shiel. A couple of years ago he did the soundtrack to the massively successful Aussie mobile game Duet, and they’ve now released an expansion pack of new chapters. Tim’s soundtrack is as sensitive and lovely as the previous works, and again features various live and acoustic instruments in the mix with his electronics.

Now we move overseas to Belgium where we join Pepijn Caudron with his acoustic doom project Kreng. In fact, up until this new album, most of the music was based around samples of films, and jazz and classical music. For his new album he’s joined by a 12-piece orchestra and various other musicians including Belgian doom metal band Amenra. But we delved a fair bit into his back catalogue, going right back to old tunes which sound sortof like early Amon Tobin on mogadon.

Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek is well into his (as usual) packed schedule of releases for this year, and there’ve already been a number of sublime moments, but for me The Measures Taken on Polish label Zoharum is the highlight. One slow-moving piece split into 5 parts, it’s got throbbing synths and quiet beats, radically treated field recordings, glitches and drones. Highly recommended.

Until Abbott Gets Gone – Climate Septic [Until Abbott Gets Gone Bandcamp]
The Crooked Fiddle Band – Puncture [Crooked Fiddle Bandcamp]
The Crooked Fiddle Band – Vanishing Shapes (Ribongia remix) [Crooked Fiddle SoundCloud]
Mirko – Glass [Room40]
P A R K S – Midwinter [Subsequence Radio Bandcamp]
Paul Heslin – Workwalker [Subsequence Radio Bandcamp]
Gatherer – Sōunkyō Snow [Subsequence Radio Bandcamp]
Reuben Ingall – Microwave Drone Ritual [Moontown Records]
Robert Curgenven – Scene 3. The Heat At Their Necks [Recorded Fields]
Tim Shiel – Something In You (feat. Luke Howard & Biddy Connor) [Tim Shiel Bandcamp]
Kreng – Alcyone [fant00m]
Kreng – Kolossus [Miasmah]
Kreng – Opkopper [Miasmah]
Kreng – Snuff – part 2 (excerpt) [Miasmah]
Kreng – Introduccion [sonic pieces]
Kreng – The Summoning (feat. Amenra) [Miasmah]
Machinefabriek – The Measures Taken Part II (excerpt) [Zoharum]

Listen again — ~105MB

Tonight we have an all female Utility Fog, or UtiLADY Fog perhaps? A pretty wonderful array of artists and a particularly sizeable focus on Jasmine Guffond.

LISTEN AGAIN via the on-demand streaming at the FBi Radio website. OK now we have a podcast, of the stream.

We start with a couple of projects from Kristina Esfandiari, once a singer with (infamous?) Bay Area shoegazers Whirr. Miserable is her solo project, with hazy dark folk rock the name of the game. It’s lovely stuff, sometimes on the depressing side (go figure, with that name, not to mention the Sylvia Plath reference in the second song) – but it all goes up a notch with King Woman, which takes the dark folk but throws doom metal in with the shoegaze noise already present.

Sydney’s Bianca Calandra moved to France a few years back simultaneously with forming her duo Machine est mon Coeur with Gabin Lopez. Their debut album (after a self-released EP) is finally out this week and it’s a stunner. Lopez’ piano and synths accompany Calandra’s singing and guitar, but everything is both underpinned and undermined by strange dub delays, loops and tape effects. Occasional beats or drums on one track also both ground and disorient. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Physical copies are available from Berlin, or you know, digital RIGHT NOW!

Jasmine Guffond is also originally from Sydney, although resident in Berlin for many years now. She formed the minimal electronic duo Minit in 1997 with New Zealander Torben Tilly, pioneering the drone/glitch sound in Australia and influencing many, despite remaining relatively obscure. She also played bass in the all-grrl indie/electronic disco-punk trio Alternahunk, and as Jasmina Maschina writes folky indie songs, although always with the sound-art aspects of her work smudging and disturbing the arrangements. Her new album yellow bell is the first under her own name, and it’s a low-key tour de force. A return to a more abstract sound-world of drones and glitched processing, but with acoustic and live instruments, and occasional fragments of song creeping in, it’s a magical listen. It should also be noted that Sonic Pieces’ packaging is gorgeous, so it’s well worth picking up the CD.

Finally, we hear a few tunes from Sarah Lipstate aka Noveller, who’s most famous as a noise/drone artist, wrangling her guitar through stacks of pedals. There’s plenty of gentle beauty, which makes it all the more pleasing when the heaviness hits. Occasionally, thudding rhythm or even something like prepared piano enter the mix, although for all I know everything is treated guitar. She’s lately going from strength to strength and I feel her new album Fantastic Planet is her best yet – although 2013’s No Dreams comes close.

King Woman – Wrong [The Flenser]
Miserable – Kiss [Miserable Bandcamp]
Miserable – Bell Jar [The Native Sound]
King Woman – Burn [The Flenser]
Machine est mon Coeur – Grow [Blank Records/Machine est mon Coeur Bandcamp]
Machine est mon Coeur – You know me, I know you [Machine est mon Coeur Bandcamp]
Machine est mon Coeur – Moon prophet [Machine est mon Coeur Bandcamp]
Machine est mon Coeur – Sweet memories [Blank Records/Machine est mon Coeur Bandcamp]
Machine est mon Coeur – Trainwreck [Blank Records/Machine est mon Coeur Bandcamp]
jasmine guffond – useful knowledge [sonic pieces]
Alternahunk – Green Tara [Dual Plover]
minit – cg [Staubgold]
Jasmina Maschina – Slow Walker [Staubgold]
Jasmina Maschina – Asleep (Minit Variation) [Staubgold]
Jasmina Maschina – love you more and more [Monika]
Jasmina Maschina – Sun [Staubgold]
jasmine guffond – rr variation [sonic pieces]
Noveller – Into The Dunes [Fire Records]
Noveller – The Fright [Important Records]
Noveller – Pulse Point [Fire Records]

Listen again — ~58MB