Much postrocky goodness tonight, and some indietronica, electronics and post-noise techno to round things out. Yep. Dig it.

Look folks, you should never miss a ‘Fog. You can always LISTEN AGAIN – there’s a link at bottom, a podcast to subscribe to, or best of all you can stream on demand at FBi for the full stereo experience.

I’ve been a fan of Mice Parade since 1998, released on one of Fat Cat‘s earliest 12″s. Originally the solo project of the anagramatically-eponymous Adam Pierce, it was such a great example of the multi-tracked self-recorded musician, and fulfilled the potential of postrock as live-performed electronica (among other things), with brilliant drum’n’bass-informed live drumming, dinky keyboards, vibraphones along with acoustic guitar and myriad instruments from around the world. Adam Pierce also played with his friend Dylan Cristy in The Dylan Group, following a similar path but very much driven by the vibraphones and marimbas.
Adam also ran the label Bubble Core Records, releasing these two bands and various others, but his relationship with Fat Cat was such that a few years later he had basically become Fat Cat USA, increasing the audience for that very important label. Mice Parade lives on as both a live and recorded band with Cristy and various others, and has umpteen releases under its belt, but after widening its scope somewhat once it became a live act, it hasn’t changed dramatically for years now. The new album’s pretty nice but probably lacks the excitement of the early exploratory releases, so I played a few highlights from their history tonight.

Sydney’s Prop were no doubt highly influenced by Adam Pierce’s music, but sadly stopped before they could realise their potential, as Kim and Julian from the band formed the rather insanely successful Presets. Such is life!

So, sticking with the jazz-informed postrock or folktronica or whatever you want to call it, we have a lovely remix of Inch-time from earlier this year by Australian artist Tristan Coleman, and a track from his debut EP on Inch-time’s Mystery Plays Records. There’s strings and clarinets on the EP as well as jazz drums and electronic pop – a versatile and talented artist.

Back to the brilliant new Spartak single I featured last week, we heard Icarus taking it into their abstract d’n’b territory, and then Inch-time himself with a reverent version that just slightly emphasises the electronic pop elements.

The highlight remixer from that EP was Canberran Reuben Ingall, who appears tonight in more abstract form with glitchy pianos, from a split cassette with Transmissions, who works a lot with illegal sampling and collage but here turns in a great piece of doomy electronic loops an sparse beats.

As with many noise artists of late, Prurient has gravitated towards various types of acid and techno, toning down the distortion and, frankly, screaming, in favour of lush, dark synth melodies and drum machine beats. It’s quite beautiful, if a little disqueting.

Autechre‘s new album Exai came out early digitally as per usual, a month and a bit ago, but physical hit this week, and I’ve been listening to it again since I received my lovely double CD pack. I actually really liked their album and, er, other album (released as an EP) from 2010. This one’s a double CD (or quadrupal LP!) and to be honest I’m not convinced it needed to be. There’s only one or two great tracks on the first CD, while the last 3 tracks at least are stone cold Ae genius. So, if you’re sampling it, definitely don’t give up early, or maybe just start with CD2 :)

Nickolas Mohanna had a droney synth album on Sydney’s Preservation back in 2011, but his first and now new album on Low Point show a wider remit, albeit still pretty much on the drone tip – but with synth drones fading into contemplative bass guitar and then clanging bells on these two tracks, it’s pretty varied and evocative stuff.

Mice Parade – listen hear glide dear [Fat Cat]
The Dylan Group – Bittersweet [Bubble Core Records]
Mice Parade – My Funny Friend Scott [Bubble Core Records/Fat Cat]
The Dylan Group – Towers of Dub [Bubble Core Records]
Mice Parade – satchelaise (Nights Wave EP version) [Bubble Core Records/Fat Cat]
Prop – Landing [Silent Recordings]
Inch-time – Night Falls (Tristan Coleman mix) [Mystery Plays Records]
Tristan Coleman – Good Money [Mystery Plays Records]
Spartak – Catch/Control (Icarus remix) [hellosQuare Recordings]
Spartak – Catch/Control (Inch-time remix) [hellosQuare Recordings]
Reuben Ingall – kitchen [Reuben Ingall Bandcamp]
Transmissions – Uranium Glass (Demo) [Reuben Ingall Bandcamp]
Prurient – Through The Window [Blackest Ever Black]
Autechre – deco Loc [Warp]
Autechre – YJY UX [Warp]
Nickolas Mohanna – Cascade / Down Yonder [Low Point]

Listen again — ~ 109MB

Tonight we ranged from indietronica through ambient and beats to cello looping, noise and drone, with a side order of postrock. Just the usual, then.

If you missed out, do not fret: you can LISTEN AGAIN (for the first time!) – link at bottom, podcast to subscribe, or stream on demand at FBi for the full stereo experience.

Here at Utility Fog Towers we’ve been following the work of Spartak since the beginning – if not before, as Shoeb Ahmad’s hellosQuare Recordings (which is now co-run by his other Spartak half, Evan Dorrian) have been with us since we were only a couple of years old.
Spartak started as a pretty experimental venture crossing postpunk, postrock, processed drones and elastic drumming. Their newest release sees them reingesting material that had been slated for release under the Savages moniker – they’ve decided that it’s all Spartak after all, so now we have an incredibly beguiling piece of indietronic pop, catchy and musically challenging all at once, and accompanied by some first-rate remixes. Icarus, Inch-time and newcomer Deaf Cat all feature with excellent interpretations, but it’s Reuben Ingall who wins this round, extending his incredible work from last year with a piece that refits the song with stark guitar strums and glitchy textures before gradually mutating back into its pulsing electronic origins.

Kate Carr‘s new album featured quite late in last week’s show, so we have another beautiful cut up nice and eaerly, with subtle guitar textures and field recordings.

From Perth, we have two tracks from an EP by Katie Campbell aka Catlips, who I discovered collaborating with y0t0 recently. A very varied release, with r’n’b-inspired vocals on some tracks, as well as idm beats. Great work.

Russia’s Oceania put out one of my favourite EPs last year, and they’re now back with the follow-up, again featuring the mysterious N on additional vocals on some tracks. It’s techno/post-dubstep/post-r’n’b that could be the lovechild of early James Blake and Various Production… if you want a really awkward way of describing it. Great beats and genuinely evocative songwriting.

And Objekt has put out some of the most compelling beats also in the techno/post-dubstep crossover area, and his latest side from a split 12″ on Bleep‘s new Green Series imprint keeps up the quality.

Now London-based Israeli musician Guy Gelem takes us from the electronic beats to cello looping and other more experimental sounds, with two tracks from his new Eighteen Minutes EP on the excellent Edinburgh label mini50. It seems to me like his best work yet, following on from some excellent compilation tracks last year.

Oliver Barrett released one of UFog’s albums of the year in 2008 under his Bleeding Heart Narrative moniker. Bleeding Heart Narrative then became a full-blown band, complete with songs and lyrics, and then sadly split up last year; but meanwhile, Oli had moved his solo work over to Petrels, continuing the drones, tribal percussion, noise elements and occasional singing. So it’s great to have a new mostly-solo album from Oli!

Next up another stone-cold awesome track from Matthew Collings‘ album wot I ravend about (a little) last week. With some nice clarinet textures in there along with indie songwriting mojo and drone & post-rock influenced arrangements.
Speaking of drone & post-rock, I also came across a fantastic EP from Collings in collaboration with the wonderful Talvihorros, shimmering drone-informed shoegaze.
From Talvihorros we heard an amazing track which I missed last year, from his split album (not a collaboration) with Damien Valles on Textura, plus a gorgeous piece from Audio Gourmet‘s second Hidden Landscapes fundraiser compilation.

And finally, utterly sweet and musically compelling, Heather Woods Broderick decided to do a cover of one of the excellent tracks her bro Peter Broderick put out last year, and we’re all the winners.

Spartak – Catch/Control [hellosQuare Recordings]
Spartak – Catch/Control (Reuben Ingall remix) [hellosQuare Recordings]
Kate Carr – Untitled (dreams of Hawaii) [Flaming Pines]
Catlips – Dumpling [Catlips Bandcamp]
Catlips – Ethnicity [Catlips Bandcamp]
Oceania feat. N – Black [7even Recordings]
Oceania – Mantra [7even Recordings]
Oceania – Strange People [7even Recordings]
Objekt – Shuttered [Bleep Green]
Guy Gelem – Search, Find, Keep [mini50records]
Guy Gelem – Upper [mini50records]
Petrels – Trim Tab pts 1 & 2 [Denovali]
Petrels – Trim Tab pts 1 & 2 [Denovali]
Bleeding Heart Narrative – bhn [Tartaruga]
Petrels – Time Buries The Door [Denovali]
Matthew Collings – Pneumonia [Fluid Radio/Matthew Collings Bandcamp]
Talvihorros/Matthew Collings – ten drops [Hibernate]
Talvihorros – From Within A Hollow Body (Part 1) [Textura]
Talvihorros – Etude VIII [Audio Gourmet]
Heather Woods Broderick – Outside In Here [Peter Broderick website]

Listen again — ~ 105MB

Good evening! Huge thanks to Scarlett Di Maio for filling in last week!

LISTEN AGAIN is back! – link at bottom, podcast to subscribe, or stream on demand at FBi for the full stereo experience.

Hot on the heels of the new Boduf Songs, Matthew Collings this week gives us another early album of the year candidate. Shoegaze textures, a wide array of acoustic and electric instruments, lots of dynamics, and the excellent production of Mr Ben Frost. Stunning widescreen stuff.

This week also marks the release of a new Matmos album, quite a few years in the making. Or perhaps it’s just that the last one left me totally cold. But I’ve been a fan for a very long time (since the first two albums), and I felt the need to play one of my favourite sections from their conceptual breakthrough release from 1999, The West, which pitted folky Americana against their cut & paste sampling to produce a new genre, years before “folktronica” was a thing.
The new album is based around the bizarre Ganzfeld experiments which used sensory isolation to explore ESP. I don’t think any positive signs of mind-reading were found, but their subjects’ theories about the subject matter of the new Matmos album certainly contribute fruitfully (and frequently very amusingly) to the new album itself. Musically it’s as wildly varied as ever but features acoustic instruments along with electronics collaged together in pleasing ways, including some hilarious death metal vocals on the last track… There’s a bit of everything, and it’s got all the charm of Matmos at their best.

Australian musician Tristan Coleman first came to my attention via a remix of the wonderful Inch-time, under the name Old Growth in Asia. Inch-time’s Stefan Panczak runs the Mystery Plays Records label and Coleman is the latest artist to be released via that label, with an EP influenced by jazz and classical music as well as electronica, with some lovely string and clarinet samples in there, and even some vocals. It’s a varied release showcasing a very promising talent, highly recommended.

We also heard from Adelaidian Tim Koch tonight, one of the pioneering electronica artists from Australia, and the track is in fact an old one, although Tim is working on new material for Ghostly International. This comes from one of a series of awesome free electronic compilations on French label Pavillon36 Recordings, and if you like classic idm, drill’n’bass, acid and the like, you should do yourself a favour and grab all three Circuits Imprimés comps from their Bandcamp.

Speaking of old unreleased idm tracks, µ-Ziq is one of the originals, hugely important and influential. Of course Mike Paradinas’ even bigger claim to fame now is running the Planet µ label, but he was at least as important to me as Aphex Twin or Squarepusher, and it’s great to hear 2 albums’ worth of sounds from the early-to-mid ’90s, even though the album absurdly only released on vinyl in an absurdly small run, with the second album as a digital download only available with said vinyl. Or, you know, less legally.

I have to admit I haven’t been floored by Thom Yorke’s quasi-sequal to The Eraser with Atoms For Peace, featuring the touring supergroup with Flea on bass and Nigel Godrich on, you know, stuff. It’s funky and jittery, with Yorke & Godrich’s singular take on electronic beats, and there’s nothing wrong with it at all. It just hasn’t really grabbed me. Still, some good sounds and melodies m’kay.

It’s probably been obvious how excited I was about the JK Flesh/Prurient split that came out at the beginning of the year, even though it’s very sad that it spells the end of the amazing Hydra Head label. Trusty Japanese label Daymare have released it on CD now, so I have my physical copy, and it contains some bonus tracks, including two incredible mashups (I guess) but Justin K Broadrick of his and Prurient’s tracks. With heavy beats, noise and even some amen breaks in there, this is one of my favourite JK Broadrick tracks in recent times, and his last few years have been particularly strong. Wow.

Keeping it noisy (noise-y?), we have a new album from Lexington, KY’s Hair Police, two of whom have been central members of C Spencer Yeh’s Burning Star Core in its psychedelic noise rock band incarnation. It’s great hearing them keep it real with free noise where Prurient, Yeh and many others veering into variants of ’80s electro-industrial-pop in the last year or two.

B/B/S/ is another supergroup of sorts, featuring Italian experimental percussionist Andrea Belfi, shoegaze/doom rock guitar maestro Aidan Baker and Miasmah boss, cellist and dronemeister Erik K Skodvin (one half of Deaf Center). It’s just the kind of longform immersive sound art you’d expect from the three of them, recalling the great Oren Ambarchi albums from last year among other things. Brilliant stuff.

And we finish with a new track from Kate Carr. After a number of fantastic compilations on her Flaming Pines label, the Sydney artist has finally released a new album of her own, Landing Lights, with guitar and electronics joining her field recording work. Beautiful.

Matthew Collings – Vasilia [Fluid Radio/Matthew Collings Bandcamp]
Matthew Collings – Paris Is Burning [Fluid Radio/Matthew Collings Bandcamp]
Matmos – You [Thrill Jockey]
Matmos – The West (2nd half) [Deluxe Records/Vague Terrain]
Tristan Coleman – Rituals (Part 3) [Mystery Plays Records]
Inch-time – Two Courtesans (Old Growth in Asia mix) [Mystery Plays Records]
Tim Koch – Mocean [Pavillon36 Recordings]
µ-Ziq – Jewel Tea [Planet µ]
µ-Ziq – Airto [Planet µ]
Atoms For Peace – Reverse Running [XL Recordings]
JK Flesh – JK Flesh Merges Prurient 1 [Hydra Head/Daymare]
Hair Police – Mercurial Rites [Type]
B/B/S/ – Brick / Mask [Miasmah]
Kate Carr – Not a cloud in sight [Flaming Pines]

Listen again — ~ 107MB

So much for you tonight! Surprise early digital release of the new Autechre (not that surprising, it’s what they’ve done the last few times), stunning new Boduf Songs album, sleepmakeswaves and Inch-time remixes, Aaron Spectre/Drumcorps on Bandcamp, the list goes on…

Our internal logging is down so no podcast this week, but you can still stream online at FBi!

We start tonight with my first premature album of the year nomination, Boduf Songs‘ Burnt Up On Re-Entry, which takes further the more electric/electronic sound of the amazing This Alone Above All Else In Spite Of Everything, as well as his collaborative project Infinite Light Ltd.. Matthew Sweet’s whisper-soft vocals continue to be slightly sinister, but the bleeps and bloops, beats and grainy textures accompanying the guitars take it to a new level.

Sydney’s postrock keepers-of-the-faith sleepmakeswaves have just released a very fine remix album, and enlisted not just electronic producers but other postrock bands to lay waste to their tracks. Perth’s Tangled Thoughts of Leaving do a particularly fine job, and recent touring mates 65daysofstatic do exactly what you’d expect.

Excellent to have something new from Queenbeyan’s y0t0, continuing his fascination with space travel (and science fiction), and collaborating here with Perth electronic artist Catlips. We also heard the incredibly Downliners Sekt remix from a couple of years ago that actually introduced me to their work.

And yes, the new Autechre album was as usual released early digitally. Physical arrives at the start of March, but meanwhile we can listen to this epic 2CD (and 4LP!) set. It’s hard to avoid the feeling that it could easily have been edited down to a really strong single album, but it’s full of their highly recognizable electronic manipulations, buried melodies and a pleasing amount of head-nodding beats. As a huge fan, I had the choice of their entire back catalogue to slip in a bonus track, and while I’m usually drawn to the Envane/Chiastic Slide era, tonight I decided to go a bit further back, with a classic bit of electronica from just about where their beats were getting crunchier and their sounds more uncompromising. Dig the sliding synths!

I’ve been a fan of Aaron Spectre since way back when the show started, and was pretty excited to find most of his back catalogue up on his Bandcamp, under his Drumcorps moniker, which was originally founded to take his love of speedcore/metal/punk and apply it to the breakcore production mentality. He was part of the mid-’00s resurgence of ragga jungle (and one of the best), but also worked with ambient and shoegaze artists, and brought (the original) dubstep to the US before many others were playing it. So as well as catching up on some of his recent stuff, we went on a trip back to some of his earlier sounds.

Canberra/Sydney(?) band Golden Blonde used to be Kasha, but have moved to a kind of cut-and-paste indie thing that throws acoustic, electronic, live and studio-constructed all into the blender. It’s one of the most exciting local releases in ages. No idea how they manage it live.

Finally, the wonderful Inch-time (ex-Adelaide, now based in London) has a new remix EP out on his Mystery Plays Records label from his album of last year. The album was electronica with live performances from some excellent London jazz musicians, and so the electronic/improv crossover of Leverton Fox is a very appropriate choice for remixing, featuring Sam Britton from Icarus.

Boduf Songs – Fiery The Angels Fall [Southern Records]
Boduf Songs – lord of the flies [Kranky]
Boduf Songs – Song To Keep Me Still [Southern Records]
sleepmakeswaves – a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun (“keep my father” remix by Tangled Thoughts of Leaving) [Bird’s Robe Collective]
sleepmakeswaves – we like you when you’re awkward [Bird’s Robe Collective]
sleepmakeswaves – our time is short but your watch is slow [Bird’s Robe Collective] {under the talking}
sleepmakeswaves – our time is short but your watch is slow (65daysofstatic remix) [Bird’s Robe Collective]
y0t0 – Sunn Over Blue Mountains (with Catlips) [BLWBCK/y0t0 Bandcamp]
y0t0 – Uriarra Crossing Mirror Condensation (Downliners Sekt remix) [fac-ture]
y0t0 – Deckard [BLWBCK/y0t0 Bandcamp]
Autechre – YJY UX [Warp]
Autechre – eutow [Warp]
Autechre – recks on [Warp]
drumcorps – there are two moons [drumcorps Bandcamp]
Aaron Spectre – look out fi liar [Death$ucker Records/now available from drumcorps Bandcamp]
Aarktica – Ocean Remix by Aaron Spectre [Ad Noiseam]
drumcorps – headstrong and heartfoolish [drumcorps Bandcamp]
Golden Blonde – Joan [Golden Blonde]
Inch-time – Stapedius (Leverton Fox Remix) [Mystery Plays Records]