A night of long tracks… but we start with a few “shorter” pieces.
As usual, you can LISTEN AGAIN. Bottom linky, podcasty, on-demandy streamy.

So exciting that Sydney’s beloved postrockers Founder are about to put out their long-awaited new album! Entitled Into The Frightened Air, it’s being launched at the Petersham Bowling Club on Friday the 24th of Feb (Facebook event). It’s got shouty indie songs, soundscapey postrock, proggy bits (one track which I’m sure they won’t be offended if I say it sounds like Pink Floyd circa Meddle), trumpety bits and more.

The new Shearwater, their first on Sub Pop, is finally also out. It continues from where they left off – perhaps with a bit more of a rocky outlook, but with plenty of the late-Talk Talk vibes still in there. These two tracks are the highlights, Insolence in particular.

Cubenx is a Mexican electronica artist, making for this release a modernised ’80s electro-pop thing. I got it, of course, for the Downliners Sekt remix, and it’s up to their superlative standards — evolving over its length, with shimmering pads in the second half sealing the deal.

While we’re on the electronic tip, let’s have a nervy, fidgety glitch beat from the fantastic Robert Lippok album from last year. raster-noton in top form.

Finally the new Icarus album came out on Monday. If you haven’t got your own unique copy, what are you waiting for? Of course part of the coolness of this release is that each version is different (an amazing feat of programming, mixing and mastering). Icarus have arranged that all owners can go on a special mailing list where they’ll be able to arrange to swap versions with people, so as to build up a better picture of how the versions vary.
We heard an almost melodic, skittery drum’n’folktronica track, and then two quite drastically different versions of the second track on the album.

Very glad that the second release from Futuresequence’s net-label is from Sun Hammer. His spacious ambient/drone/post- works are always worth checking out, and he mixes in a surprising influence from bass/post-dubstep. There’s no beats to be found on this mini-album, but there are waves of throbbing bass in parts. It’s very hi-fi, very evocative, well worth settling back to with your eyes closed.

We also heard a surprisingly ambient piece from wonderful freak-folkers Au, enlisting the help of avant-garde sax genius Colin Stetson. Marvellous. I presume this is a non-album track, so I hope Stetson appears on the new album too.

And so it’s time for the first epic track of the evening – 25 minutes from Nadja, the duo of Aidan Baker with Leah Buckareff. They’re best known for huge doomy riffs, but also explore ambient and “postrock” territories. On their 2010 album Autopergamene they’re joined by strings on two 25+minute pieces and one shorter one. I love how the last track starts with lonely acoustic guitar and then strings, then crashes in with full-on slow-mo riffs, and then in the last 3rd, slowly fades with fizzing and crackling guitars and keyboards, while otherworldly voices sigh variations on the track’s title. Stunning.

Aidan Baker collaborated with Kevin Micka on an excellent album last year, and Micka also contributed drums to a few of the tracks on his insane Spectrum of Distraction album that just came out. On looking him up, I discovered that he’s Animal Hospital, and I had to pull out his incredible Memory album from 2009. Floating strings are gradually subsumed by an enormous crunching bass guitar riff over the majority of this piece. Later in the album, the riff reappears in other forms. It’s a crying shame this album’s out of print (although now that I look, it is available digitally).

The Animal Hospital track was “only” 17 minutes long, and next up, we’re down just below the ten minute mark! Petrels is the very welcome solo project for Oli Barrett of Bleeding Heart Narrative, no well and truly a full indie band. The two tracks on this EP are slow-growing concoctions of electronics, strings and noise. Available along with the album from Bandcamp, as well as in physical formats…

Down to more bite-size track lengths, we have a recent track from Oval, whose new album is a CD+DVD set of older rarities, new material and a huge archive of sounds from his releases, which are meant to be used with his software, but we’re still waiting for that to become available :) Meanwhile, nice to hear crunchy beats and distorted acoustic sounds as per his recent material.

And we finish with a few pieces inspired by imminent appearance of a new album from Charles Hayward. I should have it in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, post-This Heat Hayward formed Camberwell Now, and we hear his almost-junglist breakneck talents along with his vocals (and political lyrics) on “Working Nights”, plus the bass-driven post-punk dance number “Speculative Fiction” (should’ve been a hit!), and a recent live set with literally 20 minutes of live breakbeat with punchy jazzpunk bass and guitar which you can download for free.
Oh — and I first heard Charles Hayward’s name on a track by Chris Adams from Hood‘s Downpour project — proto-breakcore from 1997 on what’s probably still one of my favourite releases of all time.

Founder – Cat Eat Machine [Understandation Records]
Shearwater – Run The Banner Down [Sub Pop]
Shearwater – Insolence [Sub Pop]
AFXJIM – Mouth In Motion [Feral Media] {free download from Bandcamp!}
Founder – 1997 [Understandation Records]
Founder – Vaster [Understandation Records]
Cubenx – These Days (Downliners Sekt remix) [InFiné Music]
Robert Lippok – sugarcubes [raster-noton]
Icarus – Spineez of Breakout (version 400) [Not Applicable]
Icarus – Shallow Tree (version 029) [Not Applicable]
Icarus – Shallow Tree (version 300) [Not Applicable]
Sun Hammer – Concerning the Change of Address of S. Akalin [Futuresequence]
Au – Under/Epic feat. Colin Stetson [Aagoo Records]
Sun Hammer – Nighttime in Jefferson National Forest [Futuresequence]
Nadja – you write my name in your blood [Essence Music]
Aidan Baker with Kevin Micka – Trouble on the Planet of the Surf Monkeys Pt4 [Broken Spine]
Animal Hospital – His Belly Burst [Barge Recordings]
Petrels – Thomas Muntzer [Denovali/available from Bandcamp]
Oval – Pockyrocky [Shitkatapult]
Camberwell Now – Working Nights [Ink Records/reissued by ReR Megacorp]
Downpour – Hey Charles Hayward [Drop Beat]
V For Victory – Escapism (excerpt) [free download from Charles Hayward’s site]
Camberwell Now – Speculative Fiction [Ink Records/reissued by ReR Megacorp]

Listen again — ~ 260MBhttp://www.frogworth.com/utilityfog/mp3/UFog+20120212.mp3

Tonight featured some nice flashbacks to instrumental hip-hop, idm and folktronica of the past decades, plus some brilliant sounds from Aidan Baker…
LISTEN AGAIN via the usual link at the bottom, the usual podcast and the usual on demand streaming.

First up, though, George from Seekae is Cliques, and his first track under that name is the unreleased “Rooty Hill”, a smooth electronic ride through Sydney’s west. No RSL clubs to be found, clubs maybe though.

Next up, I had to feature another track from Icarus‘s new album, which is available NOW. It’s genius – 1000 variations on the one album, so when you buy it you get your very own special copy. The changes are fairly subtle, so you know you’re getting approximately what everyone else is getting, but sections might start and end at different times, sounds might be altered slightly… At some stage the duo are going to let the digital owners communicate with each other to swap versions, so you’ll be able to get a picture of how the sounds vary. And it’s all their usual wonderful mix of electro-acoustic/folktronic sounds and drum’n’bass backbone.

DJ Food has been many things over the years. Initially it was the major-label escape plan for Matt & Jon of Coldcut, but from the start it involved PC (Patrick Carpenter) and Strictly Kev (Kevin Foakes). These days it’s actually possible to refer to DJ Food as “him”, as it’s been just Strictly for some time. It’s still a sampladelic extravaganza, a little less trip-hoppy and a fair bit more technologically proficient, but still wonderful cut-up breaks and classic samples galore. The new album The Search Engine comes in a gazillion different formats, and I opted for the deluxe CD with a comic-style book of Henry Flint‘s incredible artwork, plus a flexidisc (which I’ll never listen to, since I have the track already – but it’s cute!)
I played one of the only exclusive tracks on the album — Kev’s cover of the The The classic GIANT was present as an instrumental on one of the recent EPs, but appears here with vocals added by The The’s Matt Johnson himself. Stunning. We also heard the classic rock’n’roll-sampling “Discovery Workshop”, which adorns the flexidisc, and two earlier tunes from way back in the ’90s: the broken-down and reconstructed funk of “Half Step”, and the cinematic glory of “The Crow”, in its original form from Funkungfusion.

We follow with the album debut of Diagrams, or “what Sam Genders did next”. I’m tremendously glad that Sam Genders did something after quitting Tunng — they went from being one of my favourite bands ever with their first 2-3 albums, brilliant folktronic production and pitch-perfect arcane English folk, to some kind of singalong Glasonbury Festival jam band, with uninspired songs and not enough of Mike Lindsay’s clever production. Diagrams are not so folktronic in the glitchy studio-trickery way, but they combine folk and indie and electronic pop like the best of the Beta Band (a common comparison given Genders’ vocal style). A couple of the tracks from last year’s EP are still some of their best, but I loved the closing track on the album, and also the hidden track (although I wish people would give up on the 20-minutes-of-silence thing, or at least stick it in the gap between tracks… please?)

Homegrown folktronica comes next, from Sydney’s Piers Twomey. He’s now playing postrock with the wonderful Grün, but the long-awaited launch of his solo album is happening this Tuesday night at The Green Room on Enmore Rd. Produced by Tony Dupé of Saddleback and many many Australian albums, it combines touchingly personal songwriting with beautiful arrangements and a taste for quirky studio touches, like bursts of pitched-up violin and guitar, or chopped drum beats. Recommended.

Rabbit Rabbit Radio is the groundbreaking new project for two of my favourite musicians, violinist and singer Carla Kihlstedt & her multi-instrumentalist partner Matthias Bossi, both of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. For as little as $1/month you get a monthly output of music, video and all sorts of other stuff from these powerfully creative people. February is the debut, with the epic “Hush-Hush”, driven by frenetic violin and Kihlstedt’s vocals, insistent and then soaring.

Taking the classical and prog rock influences in another direction is Extra Life, who’ve had this shtick for a little while now. Somewhere between baroque and 20th century classical, their melodies are angular and weird, fitting the math-rock meets prog of the arrangements. Easy to admire, possibly hard to love.

The least Telafonica remix EP is out, and this time it’s the very catchy “I Can Hear There’s A Peace In The Dark”. In a little bit of a coup they’ve got indie rock legent Dave McCormack of Custard to do a remix. Nice one.

In the ’90s, Mark Van Hoen worked with post-rock/shoegaze originators Seefeel and made solo music under the name Locust. His Truth is Born of Arguments album from 1995, with a classic cover featuring brightly-lit disdainful female models, is something of a hidden gem, with incredibly heavy distorted beats and tiny slivers of female vocal samples on the first few tracks, plus Aphex Twin-style chilling ambient and worldbeat. It’s wonderful that the mighty Editions Mego have released a new album from him that returns to some of these themes — crunchy beats, vocal snippets, and even some ambient idm are all present. Totally unmissable.

Italian percussionist Andrea Belfi has had some high-profilel collaborations, including Machinefabriek and David Grubbs, but it’s great to have a solo album from him, on Brisbane’s ROOM40 no less. Machinefabriek, Greg Haines and various others appear as guests, but it’s very much Belfi’s vision, sumptuous rhythm-led creations with both abstract sonic textures and beautiful strings and guitar. One of the best ROOM40 releases in some time, and that’s saying something.

I’m a little late to the party with Aidan Baker. I knew of his work with doom rock/postrock outfit Nadja, and knew that he was an inveterate collaborator, but I’ve only gradually collected his solo back-catalogue works. They can feature drones, delicate rhythms, jazz post-rock with piano, bass and drums, electronics or heavy riffs and noise. Recently he’s cultivated a slicing, jagged guitar sound perfect for angular post-punk chords. We heard only a small amount of what I’d like to cover, so there should be more next week, but tonight there was a solo more post-rocky album, a lovely collaboration with Animal Hospital‘s Kevin Micka, and a slew of tracks from his latest (2012) release The Spectrum of Distraction, a 2CD set which comes, faintly ridiculously, with nearly 6 hours of bonus download material. The album features collaborations with an amazing list of drummers, and the sounds range from almost-drill’n’bass to heavy head-nodding riffage of all sorts to more experimental segments. It’s meant to played on shuffle, with a lot of the pieces slip up into tracks as short as 11 seconds (and as long as a few minuts). Pretty cool, all in all!

Cliques – Rooty Hill [unreleased]
Icarus – Colour Field [Not Applicable]
DJ Food – GIANT feat. Matt Johnson [Ninja Tune]
DJ Food – Half Step [Ninja Tune]
DJ Food – The Crow [Ninja Tune]
DJ Food – Discovery Workshop [Ninja Tune]
Diagrams – Peninsula [Full Time Hobby]
Diagrams – Woking [Full Time Hobby]
Tunng – Tale From Black [Static Caravan]
Diagrams – (hidden track) [Full Time Hobby]
Piers Twomey – Strange Advice [Laughing Outlaw]
Piers Twomey – A Misty Sea [Laughing Outlaw]
Rabbit Rabbit Radio (Carla Kihlstedt & Matthias Bossi) – Hush-Hush [Rabbit Rabbit Radio]
Extra Life – Righteous Seed [Northern Spy Records] {free download from Stereogum}
Telafonica – I Can Hear There’s A Peace In The Dark (Dave McCormack Version) [4-4-2 Music] {available free from Bandcamp}
Mark Van Hoen – Don’t Look Back [Editions Mego]
Locust – Penetration [R&S]
Mark Van Hoen – Where Were You [Editions Mego]
Andrea Belfi – B [ROOM40]
Aidan Baker – Dream Trips Pt 1-6 [Broken Spine]
Aidan Baker – You Are A Dream Monster Pt 1 [Broken Spine]
Aidan Baker with H Walker – Blood On The Handle Pts 1 & 2 [Broken Spine]
Aidan Baker – You Are A Monster Pts 3 & 4 [Broken Spine]
Aidan Baker with Simon Scott – You Are Microscopic [Broken Spine]
Aidan Baker with Kevin Micka – Chainsaw [Basses Frequencies]
Aidan Baker – fanciful flights [consouling sounds]

Listen again — ~ 161MB

Yo. Quite a trip tonight, from minimal and not-so-minimal d’n’b through idm to drone and then on to psych folk and prog rock.
You should really LISTEN AGAIN hey! Link at bottom, podcast to subscribe to, On Demand streaming if you’re online!

Started tonight with some drum’n’bass. It used to be my One True Genre. Gimme chopped-up beats at 170+ bpm and I’d be happy. These days the party anthem style of the mainstream of d’n’b isn’t very interesting, and we’re so post-drill’n’bass that there’s hardly anyone even making breakcore anymore. No matter — the d’n’b scene has been getting more interesting itself again over the last couple of years, with a nice and technical minimalist sound creeping in. dBridge‘s Exit Records is one source of great contemporary d’n’b, and at the very end of last year New Zealand artist Consequence released a very interesting and deep album — albeit only about half what I’d call drum’n’bass. There’s a number of ambient tracks, and some halfstep things which aren’t exactly (post-)dubstep but…

Meanwhile, we also had some decidedly upbeat and just adorable tracks from Luke Vibert’s Plug, resurrected apparently from DAT tapes from the mid-’90s and released to our great pleasure by the mighty Ninja Tune this month. Everything we need is here — the classic breaks chopped up, punchy basslines, hilarious and effective vocal samples. Pure genius.

Next up we have a date with Balkan Vinyl. Full credit here, John McCaffrey aka Part Timer prodded me to go listen to the brilliant AGT Rave Cru track, and its “is it hardcore circa ’92 or halfstep circa yesterday?” sound had me hooked. The label, run by idm/electro duo Posthuman, focuses at least as much on acid house, electro and techno, but has some very fine idm and breaks stuff at its disposal too. I’ve heard idm from Point B before, but in his remix of Kansas City Prophets we get very fine Bass music. The exclusive Plaid is so perfect Plaid it hurts, and LJ Kruzer takes the label bosses themselves into lovely glitchy ambient beats territory.
All this from 2010’s colour-based EPs. More please!

Quick detour to Sydney as I realised I needed to commemorate the very sad end of Ghoul. One can only hope the members will go on to bigger and better things – one of Sydney’s most talented and inventive ensembles.

The aforementioned Part Timer pops up next with a UFog exclusive (for now) — a remix of UK’s Northerner to appear on a remix disc from Home Assembly Music in the near future. It’s subtle and quiet, with some loping rhythms that surprisingly morph into something clicky and 4/4 and then fade off again. And from his scissors and sellotape alter-ego, some tasty and tasteful piano loops and delays.

Seth Chrisman‘s Aetherdrift, Do You Copy is the latest release from Sydney’s Flaming Pines label, and the most field recording-heavy yet. I’ve never really been sold on field recordings as such, but particularly on “LR”, the mournful guitar chords lend deeper meaning to the disembodied sounds (for me).

From the archives, this week I also found a 2010 release from A Setting Sun, who I discovered last year as Sun Hammer, making heavy, crunchy Bass music without (predominantly) the beats. This EP features a brilliant lineup of remixers, and we heard spangled majesty from Italy’s Giueseppe Ielasi and then heavy doom duo Nadja apparently admitting they (sometimes) make post-rock :)

Last year we heard two amazing and huge free download compilations from Futuresequence. This year they branch into single-artist releases with a mini-album from Radere, with well-produced drone. Snarly noises are always welcome here. I’m delving into his back catalogue now.

If you’ve exhausted your UFog listening sometime this week and want some mind-expanding sounds, please allow Kevin Purdy to offer your KOSMIC DAZE, a krautrock/psych folk mix, impeccably programmed. In it I heard Matching Mole and knew I had to play some Robert Wyatt tonight. He’s one of my favourite singers, has with his wift Alfreda Benge an amazing ear for incisive lyrics, and has created some of the most beautiful, bizarre and inspiring music of the last 4 decades.

Alexander Tucker has been a name to watch in psychedelic multi-instrumental songwriting over the last 7 years or so. His duo Imbogodom takes things into considerably weirder territory with tape experiments and esoteric sounds, but keeps a songwriting component on each release.

And just to go into full folk freak-out mode, we ended tonight with over half an hour of ex-Cerberus Shoal/Fire on Fire family band Big Blood. It’s Americana through a very warped looking glass, with the post-punk-prog experimentalism of Cerberus Shoal and the high-pitched wail of Colleen Kinsella aka Asian Mae. It’s really a duo with Caleb Mulkerin, but often credited as a kind of virtual quartet with their alter egos. And nobody could cover Can in such a perfect yet totally unexpected fashion.

All Big Blood releases are available for free download through Free Music Archive, so check their stuff out there, but you should go and support them at their Etsy store.

Consequence – Magda Trench [Exit Records]
Consequence – Soul Sees Spirit [Exit Records]
Plug – Come On My Skeleton [Ninja Tune]
Plug – Mind Bending [Ninja Tune]
Consequence – Untitled Dream [Exit Records]
Plug – Back On Time [Ninja Tune]
AGT Rave Cru – You Shop We Drop [Balkan Vinyl]
Kansas City Prophets – Navigator (Point B remix) [Balkan Vinyl]
Plaid – Fum [Balkan Vinyl]
Posthuman – The Ottawa Object (LJ Kruzer remix) [Balkan Vinyl]
Ghoul – 3 Mark [Speak n Spell]
Northerner – To Where? (Part Timer Remix) [Home Assembly Music] {forthcoming}
scissors and sellotape – Personal trainers [Facture]
Seth Chrisman – LR [Flaming Pines]
Giueseppe Ielasi vs A Setting Sun – Flower Garden of Doom [Moodgadget Records]
Nadja vs A Setting Sun – Solaris Ocean (Skipping Post Rock Mix) [Moodgadget Records]
Radere – I’ll Make You Quiet [Futuresequence]
Matching Mole – Gloria Gloom / God Song [CBS] {to be re-released shortly through Esoteric}
Robert Wyatt – Sea Song [Virgin, re-released Domino]
Imbogodom – Rubbings [Thrill Jockey]
Imbogodom – Slate Grey Light [Thrill Jockey]
Big Blood – Creepin’ Crazy Time [Don’t Trust The Ruin]
Big Blood – Vitamin C [Don’t Trust The Ruin]
Big Blood – Got Wings? [Don’t Trust The Ruin]
Big Blood – The Sound And The Sea [Don’t Trust The Ruin]
Big Blood – Run [Phase!]

Listen again — ~ 160MB

Great that 2012 is getting started already with some great new music.
As usual, you can LISTEN AGAIN. Scroll to the bottom for the direct link, or sign up to the podcast, or stream on demand.

We started with a track from Markus Mehr, whose new album is made up of two almost-half-hour pieces, one of which I did in fact play later on. This, however, is from 2010 and is glitchy ambient of a much more sensible length.

Next up, very very exciting to hear news of a new Clark album coming out soon. This track can be download for the cost of giving them your email address here, and it’s vintage Clark – energetic warm melodic synths and idm beats. Can’t wait for the album!

Speaking of vintage, Luke Vibert’s Plug project was what he released his early, brilliant forays into drum’n’bass under. Since then we’ve had Amen Andrews, for more raucous ragga jungle, and regular d’n’b numbers from Wagon Christ and eponymous releases, but Plug is where the greatest genius lies — detailed rhythm juggling, crazy sample juxtaposition, and his incredible talent for melody. So it’s a huge pleasure to have a whole new album’s worth of vintage Plug — all the tracks date from the original Plug era of the mid-’90s. Also played Vibert’s intense remix of Nine Inch Nails, and one of my favourite Plug tunes from back in the day.

Speaking of drum’n’bass roots, English duo Icarus began around about when these Plug tracks came out, with some forward-looking, incredibly-programmed d’n’b. They’ve never let the drum’n’bass pulse disappear from their music, but have become increasingly interested in electro-acoustic music, 20th century electronic composition, and folktronic techniques. They are therefore one of those groups that personify so much of what Utility Fog is about… and do it so well!
The new Icarus album, released on the 6th of February, is something else, though. It really is… something else. Read up on it at their Fake Fish Distribution page, but in summary, what it is is a limited digital release of 1,000 unique editions. The music you download when you purchase it will your very special version of the album. Icarus carefully prepared their software so that the 8 tracks on the album each varied according to a number of parameters — so while certain aspects of drum programming and melody/harmonic movement stay the same, all sorts of features of the tracks can change. Most tracks remain within about half a minute of each other’s lengths across the albums, but even when two versions are the same, the trajectory they take can change. It’s fascinating and frankly amazing that they made it work, but it really is a very fine album regardless of all this — and if you heard someone else’s version you’d know it instantly, even if (as with two performances by any regular band) there would be subtle differences which would surprise and delight you…

Icarus have also done their fair share of remixes (including a stellar Four Tet one which introduced a whole new audience to them). It’s bizarre to find them dealing with the distinctive rapping of Chuck D, but here he is, working with London audio-visual collective Eclectic Method. You can see the unhinged video for their remix via the link below.
Sydney is very lucky now to have Icarus’ Ollie Bown in residence. He’s actually been based in Australia for a while, previously in Melbourne, and we hear him tonight remixing Melbourne dronesters Infinite Decimals (whose finite decimal track titles always disturb me a little).
The duo (both together and separately) also collaborate a lot with improvisers, and this month sees the release on their own Not Applicable imprint of an album of live performances with trumpeter Tom Arthurs and clarinettist Lothar Ohlmeier. If a limited edition of unique variant albums wasn’t enough, this live collaboration has its own special level of kookiness, because neither Ollie nor Sam (under his Isambard Khroustaliov alias) were present at these shows. They were present in the form of their software proxies, reactive programs that manage to improvise with the live musicians. Again it’s pretty bizarre that this works, but it does.

I’ve previously discussed the beautiful idea Sydney’s Hinterlandt had of asking local musician friends to remix his work — but providing only tiny building blocks, so that the pieces created would be entirely new works. It’s true that the resulting album isn’t particularly cohesive, but it has a ridiculously high hitrate of great tracks, and there’s no doubt that his original work, a highly eclectic ode to travel and resettlement, had an impact on all the tracks. Broken Chip’s contribution is one of many beautiful ambient works he created last year.

And so we get to a big collaboration project for the start of the year. From the Mouth of the Sun is Kansas multi-instrumentalist (and significantly, cellist) Aaron Martin and Swedish drone master Dag Rosenqvist (up until recently Jasper TX), and it follows the latter’s patient, evolving drone structures, but with gorgeous cello-scapes and acoustic sounds. They’re a perfect fit for each other. I’ll give the album a better listen when I have the physical copy, but Experimedia will give you an immediate download if you pre-order it right now!
Also a perfect fit is the powerful experimental minimalism of Danny Saul on the remix, who really ought to release some more music himself.

And so in droney minimalism we return to our opening artist, Markus Mehr. I sometimes find the ambient sounds on Perth’s Hidden Shoal to be a bit too, well, “ambient”, but Mehr creates floating, grumbling and sometimes crashing soundscapes that never stop moving despite their stretched-out nature. The 26 minutes of “Komo” take one beautiful string loop and ride it through waves of different effects, later adding semi-indistinct spoken samples and gloriously extreme distorted noise. In a different context entirely, from last year’s remix album by Danish heavy postrock band Salli Lunn, Mehr produces a glitchy, crunchy piece of post-industrial rock.

As far as “noisy” goes, you can’t really go past C. Spencer Yeh and his Burning Star Core, which has sometimes been him solo, and sometimes a supergroup of like-minded noise and psychedelic musicians. Just this past week on his Dronedisco SoundCloud he’s made available two unreleased sets of tracks. One dates from 2002 and is some of the earliest music we’ve heard from him — not as noisy and brash, synth and drum machine based pieces which nevertheless have their own charm. The other is from 2008 and features the greatest psych-noise line-up of BxC the band. The piece I played tonight isn’t the craziest, but shows the total freedom that the group was able to operate in. Amazing music that I hope isn’t forgotten in a few years’ time.

I’ve been on a bit of a Rune Grammofon tip lately, partly because the wonderful quirky alog had a new album out late last year, partly because Jenny Hval‘s album was easily one of my favourites of 2011, and partly because I’ve been finally discovering the wonders of experimental jazz group Supersilent.
alog take mainly acoustic samples, chop them up and reframe them into constantly surprising new shapes, from quasi-techno to newly-discovered folk forms. They’re quixotic and endlessly engrossing. As well as a track from their new album, we had one from a recent Rune Grammofon compilation in which they briefly reimagine themselves as a trashy indie rock group.
Supersilent make entirely improvised music with trumpet, drums (in their earlier incarnation) and various electronic sound generators. They can range from all-out free jazz cacophany to heavy rock to stunningly gorgeous post-jazz rivaling the delicatness of late-period Talk Talk. Their albums are consecutively numbered, with the tracks numbered therein, so we heard 6.2 from 6, which I feel is the best in a truly stellar catalogue.

We finished with two local lads. Limetipe is released on FBi’s own Chris Hancock’s Frequency Lab label, and takes the usual woozy hip-hop template into a slightly dubbier, heavier direction. Really nice. And from about a year ago, still sadly one of the most recent tracks from Katoomba’s Comatone — scrabbling almost-drum’n’bass beats and glittering production.

Markus Mehr – Softwar [Hidden Shoal]
Clark – Com Touch [Warp]
Plug – Flight 78 [Ninja Tune]
Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug (Plug remix) [Nothing/Interscope]
Plug – Snapping Fuss [Law & Auder] {also released as “Natural Suction” on his Musipal album on Ninja Tune (under the Wagon Christ moniker)}
Icarus – MD Skillz [Not Applicable]
Icarus – Dumptruck Cannibals [Not Applicable]
Chuck D / Eclectic Method – Outta Sight (Icarus remix) [Eclectic Method] {check out the insane video here}
Infinite Decimals – 2.54421781 (Ollie Bown remix) [available from their SoundCloud]
Tom Arthurs / Lothar Ohlmeier / Isambard Khroustaliov – NK, Berlin (from Long Division) [Not Applicable]
Broken Chip – Particle Motion [Feral Media] {free download from Bandcamp!}
From the Mouth of the Sun – Color Loss [Experimedia]
From the Mouth of the Sun – Pools of Rust (Danny Saul remix) [Experimedia] {free download from SoundCloud}
Markus Mehr – Komo [Hidden Shoal]
Salli Lunn – Parachutes Forever (Markus Mehr remix) [Hidden Shoal]
Burning Star Core – BxCPrac4-19-08-4 [available from BxC SoundCloud]
Burning Star Core – Bodies Turn Cold [available from BxC SoundCloud]
alog – my card is 7 [Rune Grammofon]
alog – the mountaineer [Rune Grammofon]
Supersilent – 6.2 [Rune Grammofon]
Limetipe – Ten Blades [The Frequency Lab]
Comatone – Lamplit Screenprint [Comatone SoundCloud]

Listen again — ~ 160MB