Ah, the world keeps creating kickass music and I keep playing it to you. It’s the way things should be.
LISTEN AGAIN because it rocked. You know the drill. Stream on demand. Podcast (see sidebar). Download from bottom of playlist.

Started tonight with a big special on the amazing Japanese postrock band toe. So glad I visited White Noise Records in Hong Kong in July. They’re obsessed with these guys, and have co-released or re-released most of their music for HK. Some Hong Kong artists guest on their more recent releases too. They have that joyful love of glitchy digital cut-up studio stuff, an absolutely insanely great drummer, they drop vocals in when they feel like it, and altogether keep the freak flag flying for this kind of fun, energetic postrock. Love it.

Also from Japan are some absoultely amazing sounds from young Tokyo producer Ametsub. His first album came out in 2006 on Progressive Form and is pretty hard to find these days, but the other two are still available, and all are amazing. There’s lushly-recorded piano on a lot of tracks, liberally processed, chopped up and generally fucked with, along with electronics, samples and crunchy beats. There are some real head-nodding contemporary-sounding beats in there too, as well as some more . Very very fine, do check this out.

Sydney artist Mannheim Rocket has relocated to Berlin for a while, but that hasn’t slowed the releases on his 3BS Records. The latest is a split with Glasgow artist Mount Analogue, with the two swapping samples on the two “sides”. Nice hearing some good ol’ fashioned breakcore from Mount Analogue here.

And we continue the frenetic beats with 0.1 from his 2009 release Liquid Mirror, mixing mad glitchy drill’n’bass with a kind of wispy post-rock songwriting aesthetic. Looking forward to an eventual release on Feral Media

Next up, the new release from Brighton artist Chris Cook, a free download on wombnet. Previously known as Remote, Hot Roddy and Same Actor, he lights out here under his own name for the first time, with an album featuring his characteristic sitar and laptop beats and long with some vocals this time… It’s quite dark and distinctly odd, definitely worth a listen.

Hiva Oa are an awesome discovery courtesy of their label mini50records. An Edinburgh trio of guitar/vocals, cello and bass, they’re augmented by female vocals, field recordings, studio chatter and some nice processing, as well as drums on a few tracks. It’s pretty special stuff, ranging from indiefolk songs to guitar and cello soundscapes and dark upbeat numbers.

Fieldhead‘s an old Utiity Fog favourite and it’s great to have a new album out now (only on vinyl and digital unfortunately). I’ll be playing more from him next week, but it’s more of his fantastic drones, acoustic instruments and minimal beats, including the violin of Elaine Reynolds from The Boats.

And we finish with a really exciting release from Perth duo Gilded, due out next month. It’s a new collaboration between Adam Trainer of legendary postrock band Radarmaker and Matt Rösner aka Pablo Dali. Acoustic instruments, drones, Hood-like vocals, it’s gonna be fantastic. They’re playing Sydney in late October, so keep an eye out.

toe – the future is now [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – all i understand is that i don’t understand [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – メトロノーム (metronome) [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – グッドバイ / Goodbye [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – モスキートンはもう聞こえない#1 [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – モスキートンはもう聞こえない#2 [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – Our Next Movement [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – ordinary days [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
Ametsub – Dimmur [nothings66]
Ametsub – Roving Pianist [Progressive Form]
Ametsub – Lichen With Piano [Mille Plateaux]
Ametsub – Time for Trees [Mille Plateaux]
Ametsub – Precipice Drive [nothings66]
Mannheim Rocket – B1 [3BS Records]
Mount Analogue – B2 [3BS Records]
0.1 – a worm ate the starting point [available from Bandcamp]
Chris Cook – The Gospel According To Dale [wombnet]
Chris Cook – Stand Up [wombnet]
Hiva Oa – Badger [mini50records]
Hiva Oa – The Minder [mini50records]
Hiva Oa – Mindful Of [mini50records]
Fieldhead – neon, ugly [Gizeh Records]
Gilded – Cluttered Room [Hidden Shoal]

Listen again — ~ 106MB

Tonight we range from dark folk through folktronica and glitchy drill’n’bass to alt hip-hop and post-classical. Everything you need from a ‘Fog!
LISTEN AGAIN people, you know you want to. Link at bottom, or stream on demand from FBi…

So lovely to start with the chilled out, somewhat creepy sounds of Matthew Sweet’s Boduf Songs. His whispery voice is accompanied by fingerpicked acoustic guitar and spectral effects, plus sometimes full-blown rock riffage. But mostly it’s quiet and doom-laden. I love his use of effects and sound, but frankly he can be just as effective with only voice and guitar, as he’s a very fine songwriter. Highly recommended to check out his back catalogue, especially 2010’s This Alone Above All Else In Spite Of Everything.

We get into the folktronic spirit next with Milwaukee’s Erik Schoster He Can Jog. It’s funny how many excellent artists there are out there who you can discover well into their career. I’ve heard a number of He Can Jog’s remixes in the last couple of years, and a great release on Nomadic Kids Republic, but only just picked up 2008’s Middlemarch — and it’s excellent abstract folktronica, with pointers towards the more drone-heavy recent works.

We’ll get to David Edwards’ Minotaur Shock shortly — as an intro I played a pretty funky, choppy track from the new album, which I think really deserves more wide airplay. But then…

Greg Stone from Underlapper/Feral Media alerted me to the music of Bob Streckfuss aka 0.1 earlier this week. And wow, intricate glitchy programming with something resembling Sigur Rós vocals and postrock dynamics. You can download a fair lot from his Bandcamp and SoundCloud, and expect a release from Feral Media pretty soon!

So, Minotaur Shock. His first 12″ came out on Melodic in 2000 and helped establish it as the go-to for folktronica for a few years back then. Eventually those excellent 12″s were collected on CD as Rinse, but in 2001 he also released his debut album of delicate acoustic sounds and clattery laptop beats. It set the stage even when Four Tet was only making his way into beats plus glitches plus acoustic guitars. Edwards then went on to sign to 4ad, but a restructuring of the label’s focus meant physical formats were released late, and Minotaur Shock was left by the wayside — a sadly familiar story for a mid-range artist picked up by a big(gish) label. His next album was initially self-released on his own website, then picked up on CD by Audio Dregs in the US, and it’s lovely to find him back home on Melodic for the new one.
There’s a definite progression in quality of sound and confidence in execution, but also a definite thread from his beginnings to now. The acoustic instruments are to the fore in many tracks, but there are plenty of beats and digital cut-ups. A very satisfying album that, for all the cageyness about “folktronica” as a genre or genre name, fits the bill perfectly.

Next up, I have the chance of dropping a track by Bracken, by virtue of the remix being by Buddy Peace, who produced almost all the beats on the new B. Dolan record. We heard a couple of oldies from him as well, displaying his amazing beat-poetry raps, but the best is saved for last — a classic protest song recorded by all the greats, sampled with a head-nodding beat and augmented by Bernard Dolan’s right-on excoriation of intolerance in hip-hop culture. Check the official video for more political context.

Finally, another that I’m incredibly proud to have played on, from Sophie Hutchings‘ gorgeous new album Night Sky.

Boduf Songs – Temping [Morc Tapes]
Boduf Songs – lord of the flies [Kranky]
Boduf Songs – Decapitation Blues [Kranky/Under The Spire]
Boduf Songs – I Have Decided To Pass Through Matter [Kranky/Under The Spire]
Boduf Songs – Infernal memo [Morc Tapes]
He Can Jog – Suite Part Four [Audiobulb]
He Can Jog – My (Mother’s) Records [Audiobulb]
Minotaur Shock – Lending Library [Melodic]
0.1 – radio edit [available from Bandcamp]
0.1 – Interstellar [available from Bandcamp]
0.1 – star jelly [available from SoundCloud]
Minotaur Shock – Ocean Swell [Melodic]
Minotaur Shock – Avon Ranger [Melodic]
Minotaur Shock – First To Back Down [Melodic]
Minotaur Shock – Zookeeper [Audio Dregs]
Minotaur Shock – Janet [Melodic]
Bracken – We Cut The Tapes and Scatter (Steinbeck Ultramagnetic remix by Buddy Peace) [no label/Anticon]
B. Dolan – Still Here [Strange Famous Records]
B. Dolan – Love Will Survive [Strange Famous Records]
B. Dolan – Economy of Words (Bail It Out) [Strange Famous Records]
B. Dolan – Which Side Are You On? [Strange Famous Records]
Sophie Hutchings – The Near Side [Preservation]

Listen again — ~ 106MB

Two great gothic bands (very very different) have new albums out this week, plus we have some new electronic sounds and lovely post-classical stuff…
LISTEN AGAIN by all the usual tried-and-true methods. Stream on demand. Download below playlist. Podcast (see sidebar).

One of the biggest releases of the year is clearly going to be the new Swans album The Seer, which is just out this week. The CDs and vinyl are still winging themselves around the world, but digital is available now. A massive 2CD set, it features some massive tracks, with the title track weighing in at 32 minutes long(!). Especially with my 2hr timeslot now, I can’t really play such epics (although I’m sorely tempted by the very excellent album closer “The Apostate”, at a mere 23 minutes), but “The Seer” is followed immediately by the 6-minute “The Seer Returns”, which heads into far more song-like territory while preserving the drive and single-mindedness of the title track itself. One of the tracks of the year, I’d say. Of similar length is the opener “Lunacy”, with its stunning ending comprised of the repeated, layered vocals of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk of Low joining Michael Gira on the refrain “Your childhood is over”. Indeed.
In between Swans incarnations, of course, M. Gira’s main outlet was the folk-revivalist Angels of Light, with as truly indispensable a back-catalogue as the Swans themselves. In my opinion their last album, We Are Him is a masterpiece, and I had to drop one track into tonight’s playlist.

In a slightly different rock vocabulary, we join OM next for two pieces of metal riffage-meets-Middle Eastern melody. The bass/drums duo keep it heavy on the new album, but are also joined by strings on all tracks, and female guest vocals as well.
It’s a nice intro to the pan-cultural exoticism of our main feature for tonight…

Dead Can Dance. It’s interesting to note that this duo are so firmly citizens of the world that it’s easy to forget they’re originally from Melbourne. Both have roots in Ireland, where Brendan Perry has lived for many years, but Lisa Gerrard still lives in Victoria. They started in 1984 very much of a piece with the post-punk gothic, early-industrial music of the time, but within an album or so they’d begun to take their moniker seriously, pouring in their fascination with ancient musical forms, still realized mostly with synthesisers and vocals. With both members (it didn’t take long for the band to become just the couple at its centre) possessing stunning voices, it’s still a surprise just how huge they got — apparently the biggest selling act on 4ad for many years. And their back catalogue is full of wondrous songs, albeit never very obviously structured. In “Ulysses”, one of my favourites, Brendan Perry’s vocal doesn’t even enter until halfway through. But the hazy production and shape of the melody are so irresistibly evocative of the passing of time from ancient to present that it sticks with you.
I talked a little on the show about problems of Orientalism with DCD. They have certainly always been gregarious with their cultural appropriation, whether from the semi-ancient past or from non-European cultures, and it’s even problematic that living cultures are treated as equal fodder as historical ones. I think for us to investigate this more fully we’d need to delve into academic contexts that I’m not altogether familiar with, as well as, no doubt, interviewing the artists themselves. In any case, it’s wonderfully evocative music and very much uniquely idiosyncratic, for all that we might have some concerns about its vague, uncredited appropriation…

In not-quite contrast, Matthew Herbert is an artist who’s built the last 12 years of electronic music creation around a manifesto called PCCOM (his “Personal Contract for the Composition Of Music”), in which, among other things, he eschews any pre-recorded samples. This comes to its natural apex in his work as Wishmountain, resurrected after many years for a new album created entirely from the 10 top-selling items from 2010 at British supermarket chain Tesco. We heard the opening track, “Lucozade”, in which beats, melodies, basslines and everything else are created from this one product. You couldn’t tell, and regardless of sound sources it’s very fine, crunchy, sonically-complex electronica.
I recently played one of his new Björk remixes, but tonight I wanted to reprise an old favourite — from way back in 2001. It’s unusual to have such a fine original track as “Pagan Poetry” comprehensively reimagined so effectively.

It’s lovely to have something new from new Sydney artist Jacqui O’Reilly, whose sets her folk-derived songs to electronic arrangements. Somehow the warm, enveloping synth patterns here fitted nicely into tonight’s Dead Can Dance and even the previous Björk track.

Melbourne’s Peter Knight joins us again, with the titular ingredients surfacing through the track: plaintive trumpet lines subsumed by processing and amp noise. As well as download, this is available in a deluxe USB flash drive edition!

And next up we come to the part of the show where I play myself. I’m reluctant to play my own solo stuff on the show, seems wrong… but when it’s my cello on someone else’s music, I’m not going to penalize the lovely artists :) And Sophie Hutchings‘ new album is pretty special. So, introspective piano with violin and cello, plus various found instruments in various studios, buried spoken samples and field recordings. Perfect Utility Fog fodder.

Finally, I’ve already featured Memotone on the show, but this week I came across a big Bandcamp compilation from renowned electronic music podcast Electronic Explorations, featuring scads of great artists, and the Memtone contribution is gorgeous, so there’s the perfect ending for tonight’s show.

Swans – Lunacy [Young God]
Angels of Light – Not Here / Not Now [Young God]
Swans – The Seer Returns [Young God]
OM – State of Non-Return [Drag City]
OM – Addis [Drag City]
Dead Can Dance – Anabasis [PIAS]
Dead Can Dance – Cantara [4ad]
Dead Can Dance – Ulysses [4ad]
Dead Can Dance – Bird [4ad]
Dead Can Dance – The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove [4ad]
Dead Can Dance – Agape [PIAS]
Wishmountain – Lucozade [accidental]
Björk – Pagan Poetry (Matthew Herbert Handshake Mix) [One Little Indian]
Jacqui O’Reilly – from a quiet constellation [download from SoundCloud]
Peter Knight – Unknowness 1 [listen/hear collective]
Sophie Hutchings – By Night [Preservation]
Memotone – Stop running and they will catch you [Electronic Explorations]

Listen again — ~ 103MB

Tonight, Sunken Foal special, and Japanese music special by way (mostly) of Hong Kong’s White Noise Records…
LISTEN AGAIN via link at bottom or stream on demand from FBi.

Started tonight with a pretty massive special on Irish electronic artist Dunk Murphy aka Sunken Foal. From the early 2000s he had a duo with Trev O’Reilly called Ambulance, who released a stunning granular idm album on Planet µ in 2003. Then his first solo album came out in 2008, opening with the languorous piano and electronics of “Dutch Elm”, but keeping for the most part the crunchy beats, along with some vocals and well-placed samples (including this incredibly creepy poem from the 1961 movie The Innocents)…
Like many from ostensibly the idm world, Murphy has been attracted to dubstep/”Bass” beats more recently, some of which came to the surface in his excellent remix of trip-hop/dubstep artist Blue Daisy. We also heard a more upbeat track from his mini-album on Acroplane from last year, and then something a whole lot more downtempo from his duo The Natural History Museum with singer/songwriter Carol Keogh, featuring piano and subtle beats along with the vocals.
On the new album there’s everything from mandolins & ukuleles to deep post-bassline grooves, vocodered raps and cut-up female vocals. It’s free and it’s awesome, so go get it!

Heading down to Melbourne, we join The Atlas Room, who moved from Sydney about a year ago and is making fab minimal techno grooves & submerged dubscapes. Grab it from Bandcamp.
And Perth’s Kučka is taking the wobbly lopsided template of contemporary beats and dropping it under her very original and odd songwriting and piano. One to watch for sure (and also a a free download!).
Meanwhile Sam Gilles also donated a track to the latest New Weird Australia compilation. We’ve heard him before on the show with his Cycle~440 duo. Nice to hear the mysterious spoken samples along with piano and processing here.

And then we head north to Japan, courtesy of the awesome White Noise Records of Hong Kong, who I had the pleasure of visiting a few weeks back. First up is jazz/post-rock ensemble Mouse on the Keys, whose one or two (or sometimes three?) pianos plus incredible drumming have graced two EPs and an album, plus a DVD so far. Their latest EP just came out this year, and follows the same pattern of interlocking piano patterns and drum’n’bass-influenced drumming, with more jazzy/groovy tracks and some studio experimentation in between. Just great.
They’re released on MachuPicchu Industrias, which is the label formed by the guys from post-rock band extraordinaire toe. White Noise Records are big fans and have recently re-released toe’s earliest album and EP, but I did miss out on the fact that toe had a NEW EP out in late June as well, so that one’s still on its way to me. They bear, to my ears, a bit of an influence from Mice Parade, with free-wheeling melodies and acoustic guitars along with double-speed drumming mixed up in the standard post-rock instrumentation, along with some nice mixing techiques and some electronics and piano in later material, and the occasional vocal collaboration. I’ll get to some more of their stuff when the new EP arrives!

Next up, one of the more drill’n’bassy tracks from Go-qualia‘s album on the mighty World’s End Girlfriend‘s label Virgin Babylon Records. There’s some more glitchy ambient stuff on the record, with beats often popping up halfway through tracks — it’s classic Japanese electronica, in fine style.
And ditto for Fredricson, whose two albums have been released by Preco, the record label run from out of Tokyo’s Linus Records. Wonky samples, melodies and accelerated beats are the order of the day here. Sometimes I feel like Japan is keeping up the “my kind of music” job with an uncanny accuracy and reliabilty not always reflected in the rest of the world. NICE ONE NIPPON.

Sunken Foal – Cool Arms of Love [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – Drain the Dropsy [Countersunk]
Ambulance – The Tams [Planet µ]
Sunken Foal – Dutch Elm [Planet µ]
Sunken Foal – Triplehorn [Planet µ]
Blue Daisy – Blood Petal Roses (Sunken Foal remix) [Black Acre Records]
Sunken Foal – Gift Knee Pads [Acroplane]
The Natural History Museum – The Small Hours [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – Chizzlers (feat. Carol Keogh) [Countersunk]
Sunken Foal – Monkey Puzzle [Countersunk]
The Atlas Room – Physika [available from Bandcamp]
The Atlas Room – Reprise [available from Bandcamp]
Kučka – rewind [Wood & Wire]
Kučka – polly (serialkillersundays) [Wood & Wire]
Sam Gilles – People Are Afraid To Merge On The Highway [New Weird Australia]
Mouse on the Keys – 最後の晩餐 [MachuPicchu Industrias]
Mouse on the Keys – Completed Nihilism / Spectres de mouse [MachuPicchu Industrias]
Mouse on the Keys – aom [MachuPicchu Industrias]
toe – 向こう岸が視る夢 (mukougishi ga miru yume) [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – music for you [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
toe – グッドバイ Album Version (feat. Toki Asako) [MachuPicchu Industrias/White Noise Records]
Go-qualia – 2 [Virgin Babylon Records]
Fredricson – rub [Preco]
Fredricson – Chk in bird [Preco]

Listen again — ~ 106MB