Here we are… A number of brilliant women take up more than half of the show tonight – indie noise folk, and electronics, leading into a couple of other awesome electronic musicians.

LISTEN AGAIN to these arcane and alluring sounds… podcast here, stereo stream over there.

Starting with a focus on the musical work of Geneviève Castrée, French-Canadian cartoonist (graphic novelist?) and musician. She once made music as Woelv, and had an album released on Chapter Music in Australia; 5 or 6 years ago she switched to Ô Paon and while her singing style didn’t change, there seems to be a greater emphasis on electric guitars and barrages of sound. Oh and also she’s married to Phil Elverum – which does come through in some of the arrangements, although her sound is very much her own! Emotionally cracked melodic vocals, chants, acoustic and electric guitars, occasional surprising grooves, drones, and in one collaboration some lovely piano accompanying her singing… and a marvellous collaboration with fellow Canadian Aidan Baker from his Already Drowning album, and even moreso than on the title track, you can feel the drowning in this track (it’s actually quite spooky – the title means “Just under the surface, I watch”).

Following Geneviève Castrée we have an equally idiosyncratic and talented artist, from the USA – Clare Hubbard aka Caethua. I discovered her when Sydney’s own Preservation released an incredible double CD album (or pair of albums) in 2009, although there are a plethora of cassette and vinyl releases around – many not available digitally at all. Luckily this new one, Red Moon, is available digitally as well as on vinyl, so we get to hear a few cuts tonight. She has a distinct, langorous but somehow urgent vocal style, and her music, though frequently electric, owes a lot to folk as well as rock and experimentalism. Strange lo-fi loops sometimes form rhythmic beds, along with field recordings, but often it’s just vocals and guitar or piano. Very very worthwhile tracking down the Preservation album as well as the new one, and whatever else you can find…

A track by Karen Gwyer appeared last week in our Opal Tapes special, but I hadn’t properly looked into her EP from 2013. It’s only three tracks, but they’re all long and multipart, and as good an example of synth and drum machine sequenced stuff as you’ll find at the moment.

These analogue electronics lead nicely into Boston-based Brazilian percussionist and electronic musician Ricardo Donoso. He’s had a few released on underground(ish) noise labels, and then a few fantastic 12″s on Brad Rose’s Digitalis Recordings, warm and dark sequenced synthesiser compositions. He’s now found a home at the all-consuming Denovali label, and there he’s taking things into new climes, adding big percussion and some digital processing/glitching (well, it sounds it to me at least). The new album Saravá Exu is his best work yet, although the Digital releases are total class too.

And via a remix of Donoso, we find our way back to Yves De Mey. Back, because I featured this Belgian sound designer / techno producer last week also in my Opal Tapes special and wanted to feature him a bit more tonight. It’s impeccably-produced techno, as interested in sonic exploration as it is in the dancefloor – as is his duo with Peter Van Hoesen as Sendai. It’s also a nice melding of the analogue sensibilities of peeps like Donoso with precise digital clicks & cuts & processing.

Ô Paon – Boue / Fleuve ii [TAUS/Ô Paon Bandcamp]
Ô Paon – Transcanadienne [TAUS/Ô Paon Bandcamp]
Woelv – Chanson, Cachee [L’Oie de Cravan]
The Watery Graves of Portland and/et Geneviève – Inquiétude [Marriage Records]
Woelv – “La Petite Cane Danse le Nappe de Pétrole” [K Records/Chapter Music]
Ô Paon – La Cible [TAUS/Ô Paon Bandcamp]
Ô Paon – Sainte Patronne De Rien Pantoute [TAUS/Ô Paon Bandcamp]
Aidan Baker – Tout Juste Sous la Surface, Je Guette (feat. Geneviève Castrée) [Gizeh Records]
Ô Paon – Fleuve iii [TAUS/Ô Paon Bandcamp]
Caethua – Red Moon [Bathetic Records]
Caethua – Day Break [Preservation]
Caethua – Waning Moon [Bathetic Records]
Caethua – Chariot [Bathetic Records]
Karen Gwyer – Free Food / One Men Striper [Opal Tapes]
Ricardo Donoso – Galliciniuim [Denovali]
Ricardo Donoso – The Redeemer [Digitalis Recordings]
Ricardo Donoso – Matutinium [Denovali]
Ricardo Donoso – The Sphinx (Yves De Mey remix) [Digitalis Recordings]
Sendai – Further Vexations [Time To Express]
Yves De Mey – Box Caisson [Opal Tapes]
Sendai – Anti-Jupiter [Archives Intérieurs]
Yves De Mey – Slew Modified [Semantica Records]

Listen again — ~106MB

Evening! So much great electronica for you today from across the globe.

LISTEN AGAIN to catch every single goodie because you need them all! Then go and buy them. Stream there, podcast here.

It’s strangely appropriate, with ageing rave-punks The Prodigy staging a comeback (to mostly raucous laughter from the press it must be said), that the new one-sided single from Burial sees him revisiting the halcyon pre-jungle days of rave music. Complete with sped-up vocal samples near the end which are a clear reference to The Prodigy. It’s the best thing I’ve heard from Burial for a while. YMMV.

Blue Mountains-based producer Bob Streckfuss aka 0point1 makes incredibly idiosyncratic music. While the influences are clear – from Sigur Rós vocals to mega-processed postrock instrumentation and dril’n’bass beats (among other things) – the way it’s all mashed together it’s totally his own. It can be quite bewildering to listen to, but it works either way – let it wash over you, or concentrate and enjoy the details!

The Sticks have just finished up their residency at The Dock in Redfern, with “The Air Sticks”, a gestural interface controlling beats and sampling/processing, as well as keyboards and bass. It’s live electronica and very stylishly done.

And so to Aphex Twin. There is no legend too large to apply to him, and half of them seem to be true (or half-true?) So, shortly after releasing the truly new-sounding Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt (EP), a SoundCloud account appeared at SoundCloud (originally there was one fewer 0 in there) and made a cheeky comment on the official Aphex Twin SoundCloud. In truly arch fashion, Aphex replied, so initially there was a pretense that this person was another 43-year-old musician who’d been making electronic music back in the day. But it didn’t take long to confirm that this was Aphex, who over an incredibly short number of days dumped 110 tracks (in fact 112, as a couple were withdrawn) on this anonymous SoundCloud, dating from back in the “85-92” period of the first Selected Ambient Works album, through Analogue Bubblebath acid, …I Care Because You Do hip-hop beats, and even some 7 Up children talking with Hangable Auto Bulb era drill’n’bass. It’s the motherlode, and it’s quite imposing at 8:42 of music, so I had a go at pulling out some of the highlights tonight.

Having found a couple of really exciting discoveries from 2014 releasing on Opal Tapes, I’d been meaning to explore the label for a while. I knew their first release featured Sydney’s own Dro Carey in his more technoid Tuff Sherm guise, and I knew that there was a fair bit of house on the label, which isn’t necessarily my thing – but there’s a plethora of varied stuff going on there.

Ñaka Ñaka‘s first release on Opal Tapes is quite housey, and the 4/4 beats continue on 2014’s Mundo Harsh, but the reason I started with this NY producer should be clear as soon as you hear the tracks: there’s a striking echo of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 to the lambent synth chords and melodies hovering around the beats. If not Aphex, the closest comparison would be the early works of Arovane, a 2nd-gen idm producer whose icy, melodic works were themselves regularly compared to Mr Twin’s.

Yves De Mey is a Belgian artist who’s appeared on the UFog horizons before, but I was remiss in properly researching him. His Opal Tapes EP from 2013 is a brilliant work of sub-bass and glitch sound design, with head-nodding bass and beats, and that post-industrial heavy yet delicate sound that we’re getting a lot of in the most advanced electronic productions from the last few years. Highly recommended.
And this leads us into the Cambiare compilation from last year, which conveniently features exclusive tracks (for those concerned about redundancy) but also gives us a great view into Opal Tapes circa 2014. Karen Gwyer‘s track is speed techno with a melodic bassline and stuttering kicks.

There’s also a KETEV track unique to the compilation, with beats so deeply submerged they only half surface in the second half. I’ve featured the works of Yair Elazar Glotman a few times on the show – a new artist from 2014 who’s already had a huge impact. We don’t really hear his double bass in his KETEV works, but he’s got the sound design chops and beatsmithing down pat too. Andy Stott is sometimes hinted at, but equally his Opal Tapes compatriots and other contemporary electronic genres, all high-tech with a dirty lo-fi rumble and hiss.

Lumisokea have also featured a few times on this show. A duo featuring Belgian cellist Koenraad Ecker (although the duo tends to be purely electronic) and Italian producer Andrea Taeggi (who I just discovered is also Gondwana), they also take a sound design approach to techno, with heavy elecronics and sometimes frenzied beats here – but they are in fact very versatile over their releases (as well as individually).
I literally only just realised that Gondwana was half of Lumisokea, or I would have swapped the order here – but this debut album from 2015 is a beauty, with more of those heavy sub-bass punches and long periods of crackling, organic ambience/drone.

Michael DeMaio‘s release (also new for 2015) mixes hard 4/4 techno with faster-moving stuff, ambience and those incredible skittering hi-hats in “South”, which might just be track of the week for me.

Burial – Temple Sleeper [Keysound Recordings]
0point1 – Hypernova [0point1 Bandcamp]
0point1 – 3D trees-emotive [0point1 Bandcamp]
The Sticks – Suriol [unreleased]
Aphex Twin – 9 Square Dance [SoundCloud]
Aphex Twin – diskhat1 [Warp]
Aphex Twin – piano un1 arpej [Warp]
Aphex Twin – 12 Rough Beat Tune [SoundCloud]
Aphex Twin – 14 Make A Baby [SoundCloud]
Aphex Twin – 24 Afx 71 1 [SoundCloud]
Ñaka Ñaka – jAaz [Opal Tapes]
Ñaka Ñaka – dardos (excerpt) [Opal Tapes]
Yves De Mey – Box Caisson [Opal Tapes]
Yves De Mey – Faux Movements [Opal Tapes]
Karen Gwyer – Girl With Pitbull [Opal Tapes]
KETEV – Aleph [Opal Tapes]
KETEV – Akkad [Opal Tapes]
Lumisokea – Eleven [Opal Tapes]
Michael DeMaio – South [Opal Tapes]
Michael DeMaio – Knives Like Dresses (excerpt) [Opal Tapes]
Gondwana – Þingvellir (excerpt) [Opal Tapes]
Gondwana – Right Brainer [Opal Tapes]

Listen again — ~109MB

It’s January and there’s already a tonne of new music!

You better LISTEN AGAIN if you want to keep up! Over there you’ve got your stereo stream, over here the podcast.

It was a particularly cruel and thoughtless person who leaked Björk‘s album this past week. Not only was it a long way off the release date, the rip was a terrible sub-cassette-quality 128k thing that was a travesty to the wonderful music. Her label One Little Indian felt boxed in by this, and ended up rushing the release out, first as an exclusive to iTunes (ugh!) and then through a few other services as well. It’s sad that it came out this way (I still eagerly await the CD in March), but we’re lucky to experience this incredible, franky, beautiful work now.
Co-production comes from Arca, and if you’ve heard his album or FKA Twigs‘ from last year that’ll be very obvious in places – but it should be made utterly clear that as always the bulk of the programming as well as songwriting is by Björk herself. Also featured are her very fine string arrangements. It sounds like the work with Arca was very much an in-person collaboration, but at some point Björk and Arca also invited none other than consummate producer/cellist/sub-bass explorer The Haxan Cloak to bring his mixing skills to the songs. It seems clear to me that the track “family” is the one to also have some co-production from him, with bubbles of bass and crunchy beats cutting in and out, and then some somewhat avant-garde cello in there.
It’s a wonderful and album from start fo finish, not to mention heartbreaking.

Sydney artist CORIN released an EP of piano and synth sounds & tasteful beats last year, which I wish I’d known about at the time – but fortunately now that she’s put out a remix EP I get to hear the originals as well. Nice to have representation from fellow female Sydney electronic artist Moon Holiday here, also adding her own vocals to the mix, and meanwhile I know nothing about Tennis Boys…

We don’t hear nearly enough from Perth piano-and-electronics duo Cycle~ 440, perhaps partly now because pianist Kevin Penkin has moved overseas. It feels like the track we excerpted here is the most fully-formed thing I’ve heard from them, or maybe it’s just the one I’ve enjoyed the most. It’s from one of the releases that sadly mark the end of an era: the end of Stu Buchanan’s Wood & Wire label and the movement that spawned it – first as an FBi radio show, then also a compilation series, label and more, New Weird Australia has promoted a lot of wonderful Australian music in its years of operation. It’s fitting that Brooke Olsen & Scarlett Di Maio’s Ears Have Ears contribute to the last release, with four of the original “soundtracks” they host from experimental artists around the world.

And recently announced, now released is the new Aphex Twin, defined in that strange Warp fashion (Aphex and Autechre at least both do this) as an “EP” despite having 13 tracks. Well, some of them are quite short anyway! It’s Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments, involving those robots he discussed in some interviews around Syro last year, and it’s actually great. It’s exactly what it says on the tin – acoustic instruments playing Aphex’s supple, drum’n’bass & acid-inflected rhythms, some kind of presumably computer-controlled piano, maybe some bass and stuff that’s synthesized (this time we don’t have a complete list of instruments used!) I enjoyed it a lot more than Syro to be honest.

Afrikan Sciences is producer Eric Porter, affiliated with Deepblak Recordings but appearing here via the experimental-meets-dancefloor label PAN. On this album his beats sound like a cross between idm-tinged electro and some kind of Sun Ra jam. People have mentioned Flying Lotus and there’s something to that, but it’s pretty individual stuff, definitely worth a listen.

Dunk Murphy’s music a longtime favourite of UFog, prior even to Sunken Foal with his duo Ambulance. At the end of 2012 and 2013 he released two great albums of extremely varied style entitled Friday Syndrome Vol. 1 & 2, mixing up his folktronica and idm among other styles. Apparently there’s a Vol. 3 coming, and prior to that we have a new single with vocals from fellow Irish singer/songwriter Si Schroeder plus a couple of instrumental b-sides. Always worth grabbing.

The Seaport & The Airport, from Sydney, has the unlikeliest name in electronica, but somehow makes some pretty interesting sounds, a bit drum’n’bass, a bit r’n’b-sampling. Interested in what the rest of this album will sound like!

Speaking of drum’n’bass, Sam Binga is doing some of the most interesting stuff in jungle crossover at the moment – slow/fast, footwork crossover etc. He works a bit with grime MC Redders, and their new single is another classic in the making. He also makes the supremely uninteresting CHVRCHES sound great on an unreleased remix, and a b-side from the new single is more straight-up d’n’b.

Finally, Amit is a newish drum’n’bass producer who also works in dub and dubstep. Many of his releases feature Irish vocalist Rani and it’s a great update on the trip-hop sound. These tracks are both on dBridge’s forward-thinking drum’n’bass label Exit Records, but he also has a lot available from his own Bandcamp. Last track is a Machinedrum remix circa his amazing Vapor City album, doing the dub/hip-hop to jungle thing in fine style.

Björk – atom dance (feat. Antony) [One Little Indian]
Björk – It’s Not Up To You [One Little Indian]
Björk – family [One Little Indian]
CORIN – Images II (Moon Holiday remix) [CORIN Bandcamp]
CORIN – Glue [CORIN Bandcamp]
CORIN – Riverboat (Tennis Boys Remix) [CORIN Bandcamp]
Cycle~ 440 – Lingering Echoes of the Tempest (excerpt) [Wood & Wire/Ears Have Ears]
Aphex Twin – diskhat ALL prepared1mixed 13 [Warp]
Aphex Twin – hatb 2b 2012b [Warp]
Aphex Twin – piano un10 it happened [Warp]
Afrikan Sciences – Tell Me Who Like That (Bedside Manner) [PAN]
Afrikan Sciences – Circuitous [PAN]
Sunken Foal – Never Knew (feat. Si Schroeder) [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – Gravy Ladle [Countersunk]
The Seaport & The Airport – Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave [SoundCloud]
Sam Binga – Tek Nuh Chat ft. Redders [Critical Music]
CHVRCHES – Recover (Sam Binga remix) [Sam Binga SoundCloud (still unreleased?)]
Sam Binga – Chasic [Critical Music]
Amit – You Look Better Dead (ft. Rani) [Exit Records]
Amit – Human Warfare (Machinedrum Remix) [Exit Records]

Listen again — ~107MB

Back after an extra week’s gap when I went off to see Ben Frost & Tim Hecker!

LISTEN AGAIN for the highs and the lows (there are no lows though)! Stereo stream, mono podcast over here!

It’s been a surprisingly long while between drinks for Telafonica . Their last album seemed like a single factory, full of wonderful indietronic marvels, and the new one’s off to a great start with this rapturous single.

Last year I played some great experimental indie rock from Brisbane’s Naked Maja, and tonight we hear from the first single from member Cedie Janson – a purely electronic affair full of bright synth pads.

It’s no secret that Demdike Stare, who made their name as purveyors of murky hauntological ambience and occasional dub excursions, are big fans of rave, drum’n’bass & techno. Miles Whittaker, is also the Millie half of Millie & Andrea with Andy Stott, who years ago released some brilliant darkside jungle & UK garage 12″s, and an equally brilliant album last year. In 2013, Demdike released a mind-boggling slab of melted-down jungle on their first Testpressing 12″, nothing like what they’d previously released, and the series has continued with various post-rave genres. Apparently #007, just released this weekend, spells the end of the series, and it’s a great pair of tracks to end with. Hopefully they’ll be collected on CD (well, stranger things have happened), but whatever they do next is keenly anticipated in Utility Fog Towers…

I first discovered world’s end girlfriend on a Japanese electronica compilation in 2002 and it was love at first sight (aural sight obvs peeps). At the time Japanese releases were rather hard to come by outside of Japan, so it took some time to collect everything, but I did my best because this was my music to a tee – chopped-up acoustic guitars or strings colliding with complex breakneck drill’n’bass beats, eventually augmented with rock riffs, free jazz, awesome string quartet arrangements… all the best genres all at once! It’s “clever” music but also emotive, and also lotsa silly. And hella heavy.
No time for a bit special tonight just because of a new EP, but what a great EP it is, with all his signature styles as usual. Certified genius.

Jon Mueller is something of a musical chameleon, working with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon in Volcano Choir, releasing pure percussion compositions under his own name, and also exploring in various media his thoughts about life’s termination in his Death Blues project. I only recently twigged to the fact that Aaron Turner’s magnificent SIGE Records (the one small mercy coming out of the sort-of death of Hydra Head a couple of years ago) released a 12″ with two more-than-15-minute tracks from Death Blues. This incarnation sees Mueller joined by Ken Palme and Jim Warchol on “hammered acoustic guitar”, and along with Mueller’s chants and tribal percussion they make a dirge-like music a lot like an acoustic version of doom metal. The solo Jon Mueller album Death Blues from 2013 features similar work in shorter lengths, and meanwhile another Death Blues album, Ensemble, was release last year with sizeable input from UFog stalwart William Ryan Fritch – and kind of doomier, dirgier (but only slightly) adaptation of Fritch’s own ecstatic world-meets-classical concoctions.

Teho Teardo has appeared a fair bit on this show courtesy of his splendid string arrangements and glitchy beats on various soundtracks and collaborations – including most recently an album and EP with Blixa Bargeld. The industrial connection goes right back to Teho’s first releases with his Meathead duo, albeit a good generation later than Blixa. In 1997 he released an album with industrial dub/hip-hop pioneer Mick Harris of Scorn et al, but I first came across him in collaboration with one of my favourite cellists, Erik Friedlander. More recently he’s worked with the Balanescu Quartet and Julia Kent among other string players and other musicians. Whoever he works with, there will be masterful arrangements, warm production, tasteful crunchy beats and processing… The Blixa collaborations in particular show just how a melding of minds should work.

Telafonica – What Remains (Single Edit) [4-4-2 Music]
Cedie Janson – Light Curve [Lost Race]
Demdike Stare – Rathe [Modern Love]
Demdike Stare – Collision [Modern Love]
Demdike Stare – Primitive Equations [Modern Love]
world’s end girlfriend – Unable [Virgin Babylon Records]
world’s end girlfriend – Girls [Virgin Babylon Records]
Death Blues – Participant [Rhythmplex]
Jon Mueller – Acceptance [Hometapes/Taiga]
Death Blues – Do [SIGE Records]
Teho Teardo – The outside force [Spècula]
matera – constant thing [Invisible]
Erik Friedlander & Teho Teardo – to the red flag [BiP_HOp]
Teho Teardo – Nemmeno Io [Spècula]
Teho Teardo / Balanescu Quartet – I’ll Meet You On That Other Shore / Never The Same [Radiofandango]
Teho Teardo – wilder mann feat. Balanescu Quartet [Spècula]
Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld – What If…? [Spècula]
Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld – The Empty Boat [Spècula]
Teho Teardo – Poisonous his envy [Spècula]

Listen again — ~105MB