So a lot of tonight’s material has some claim to “classical” music provenance for some reason, although there’s nothing you could claim to be classical music. Some is more-or-less ambient, some is anything but.

LISTEN AGAIN. There will be a test. Stream on demand via FBi, podcast here.

Nicholas Thayer – on growing [Oscillations/Bandcamp]
Nicholas Thayer – on stretching [Oscillations/Bandcamp]
Nicholas Thayer – on refracting [Oscillations/Bandcamp]
I’m so glad that I’m following new London label Oscillations, which started operations last year with an EP from Gabriel Prokofiev, the composer who founded the nonclassical label back in 2004. Oscillations calls itself an electronic music label, but so far has had a “composer” lean to it, and it has gifted us with this brilliant album from Nicholas Thayer, a composer & producer from the Netherlands who happens to have some ties to Australia – he’s composed for Sydney Dance Company and Queensland Ballet, although he’s now based in Groningen the north of the Netherlands I believe. The music here is again for a dance work, titled in:finite, commissioned for the Swedish Skånes Dansteater, and in the vein of contemporary dance, it encompasses abstract sound-art, contemporary composition, glitched audio and even some beat-heavy sections. Thayer clearly has a love for drum’n’bass in there, with fidgety programmed breaks on some tracks, and growling neuro basslines elsewhere (d’n’b/dubstep legends Noisia happen to hail from Groningen too). I also can’t pass by the Motley Crüe reference in his bio! Cello is the main acoustic/classical instrument here, beautifully performed by Mikko Pablo, expressively interpreting Thayer’s score which is at times straightforwardly melodic, elsewhere processing the sound or employing extended techniques. It makes sense that the performance this music is written for is considered a work of “multilayered hybrid art”, combining choreography, music, set and costume design, as this is not just music for accompanying a stage performance – it’s a very rich, satisfying listen on its own, highly recommended.

Willis Anne – Comfort Zone [LAN]
Willis Anne – Jazz [LAN]
French-born, Berlin-based DJ & producer Willis Anne marks the 20th release from his LAN label with a solo album of his own. Comfort Zone follows an EP on Shall Not Fade and appearances on Tresor and Infiné among others. There’s a club basis to his music, but in keeping with the “regularly irregular” ethos of his label, his new album is quite abstracted from the dancefloor, with acidy noise workouts as much as scattered breakbeats, 4/4 drum machines, minimalist jazzy house and more. No track does quite what you expect, from the glitched breakdown near the end of “Comfort Zone” to the off-grid blurting break snippets of “Span” and the raw not-quite-footwork of “Jazz”.

J-Shadow – Beneath The Undertow [Sneaker Social Club/Bandcamp]
J-Shadow – Arsu [Sneaker Social Club/Bandcamp]
Jason Kan has been exploring the dancefloor’s outer reachers for about 4 years, in a genre-crossing form influenced by Mumdance’s “weightless” sound – his debut full-length album Final Departure was appropriately released on Keysound, with uk garage, dubstep and jungle splinters giving way to ambient rave memories. His follow-up album The End Of All Physical Form is out now on the home of all things bass/dubstep/hardcore/jungle, Sneaker Social Club, and once again combines its irrefutable junglist touchpoints with ambient passages even in beat-driven tracks (or is it the other way round?), and with excursions into ukg and techno. When the jungle breaks come, they’re as intricate and driving as anyone’s making these days.

Simone Sims Longo – Babele [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
Simone Sims Longo – Fondale [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
Coming soon on the highly dependable Dutch experimental label Esc.rec is an album of electro-acoustic sound-art from Italian composer-producer Simone Sims Longo. Paesaggi integrati (integrated landscapes) takes sound from a host of acoustic instruments – sax, cello, horn, violin, accordion, tuned percussion and clarinet – and transforms them into electronic music, split into granular fragments, flittered across the stereo field in rhythms that accelerate and decelerate, seemingly referencing deconstructed club techniques but outside of the club context. The sense of discombobulation is only heightened on headphones by the use of mid/side technique – technically this means that the left & right are in opposite polarity (so if you try to listen in mono you’ll lose a lot of the signal!), but it also means that the stereo image is particularly vivid.

Anything Pointless – what happens is here [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
Anything Pointless – subside [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
Turin’s Anything Pointless, now based in London, is a producer and mixing/mastering engineer, whose latest album Shape Time Divide comes courtesy of Salmon Universe, the label run by Richard Pike and JQ. Much like fellow Italian Simone Sims Longo above, the music here takes acoustic instruments (flute, strings, voice etc) and mutates them into the bright, contemporary electronic soundscapes that have characterised his music thus far. Even the synthesizers, digitally bright, move and flex in organic-feeling ways, only finally bursting into beats in the latter half of the last track. In a way, this is the inverse of Longo’s album: IDM & deconstructed club that’s found its way into the forests of the “fourth world”, where Longo’s acoustic instruments are dragged, unprepared, into the club. Both albums fascinate and delight.

Suura – Drevelnis feat. Joe Talia [bwaa./Bandcamp]
Suura – Adieu [bwaa./Bandcamp]
Back to Esc.rec for a sec, earlier this year I played a couple of tracks from the gorgeous album Aare by the Belgian acoustic trio Erem. Two thirds of Erem, Nicolas Van Belle and Stan Maris, are half of the adventurous post-acoustic (I just made that up) quartet Suura where, like in Erem, Van Belle’s guitar & bouzouki and Maris’ accordion are subject at times to subtle electronic effects, alongside the saxophones and clarinet of Benjamin Hermans and the double bass of Emanuel Van Mieghem. Van Belle and Van Mieghem are credited as composers, and this music does sit somewhere between 20th century chamber composition and the folk-jazz of Bill Frisell, Tin Hat Trio et al – but on at least half the tracks these warm, expressive instruments are transfigured into strange burbling, distorting drones or other unlikely shapes. The music is no less expressive, but the sense of the uncanny, already present in the compositions, is heightened further. This transforming of acoustic instrumentation seems to be a theme tonight…

Helen Money / Will Thomas – Trace [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Helen Money / Will Thomas – Thieves [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
As Helen Money, Alison Chesley has never been a conventional cellist, preferring to play through guitar pedals and amps even on her solo work, as well as playing with the likes of Earth, Neurosis, Russian Circles – and I do believe she used to call herself a “doom cellist”. Her last album Trace – her third on Thrill Jockey – drew away from the looped metal riffs which on the previous two had been augmented with drums from Neurosis’ James Roeder, instead complementing riffs with drones and melodies accompanied with piano and synthesizers, including electronics from soundtrack composer & producer Will Thomas. Now we have a whole duo album from Helen Money & Will Thomas, even more sumptuous and experimental than the last. On our first selection tonight, the title track, dancing lines of electric cello play off against repeating piano chords until a staticky rhythm enters, and as the cellos multiply orchestrally, chunks of distortion are dropped into the reverberating space, finally taking over at the end. Meanwhile “Thieves” takes shimmering loops of cello harmonics and accompanies them with stop-start industrial techno beats and thrums of distorted cello. It’s cinematic stuff, the work of two excellent musicians working on the same wavelength.

Erik Levander – In i stunden [Supple9/Bandcamp]
Erik Levander – Kvad [Rumraket/Bandcamp]
Erik Levander – Väv [Supple9/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based Swedish musician Erik Levander started his career in the early 2000s making glitchy electronic and electro-acoustic music, but has unleashed his industrial leanings on some albums, and has also played clarinet with Efterklang. It was Efterklang who released his 2008 album Kondens, which struck a balance between glitch, rhythm and drone. That album happens to feature a track called “Kvad”, in which choral voices float under busy synths and electronic noise. In Danish “kvad” translates as to chant or sing, and there can be no coincidence between that old track’s title and his new album Kvad, released by boutique Berlin label Supple9. The story of this album is that a few years ago Levander discovered an old recording of his from 2001 of a choir rehearsing in the Lunds Domkyrka cathedral. He couldn’t identify the work, but it became the backbone of this entire album – spectral voices floating in tape hiss, with waves of distorted bass, electronic drones and pulses. Additional choral voices add to the majesty of this cold yet enveloping Scandinavian music.

Magic City Counterpoint – Dialogue [Magic City Counterpoint Bandcamp]
Once again I have the honour of debuting a new track from Brisbane duo Magic City Counterpoint. Here the opening reverberating voices might be from Madeleine Cocolas, or might also be a sampled choir, but certainly once the heavy bass hits, it’s Madeleine’s voice shimmering alongside the crunchy beats. This collaboration between Cocolas and Chris Perren is producing music for game soundtracks at the moment, but regardless of the provenance this is lovely music and we must have more!

Bartosz Dziadosz – GABI [DRONARIVM/Bandcamp]
Peace is the first solo album that Bartosz Dziadosz has released under his own name, after many years as Pleq. Like his work as Pleq it combines post-classical aesthetics with electronics. His music is particularly expansive here, in a work that’s dedicated to the end of the horrific, continuing war between Russia and Ukraine, recorded at a time when Dziadosz found himself with no fixed abode travelling around his native Poland. Notably Dmitry Taldykin, who runs DRONARIVM, left Moscow in horror in the early stages of the invasion and now bases himself in Israel. The stretched out vocal drone that carries through this piece gives both urgency and peace through the crescendos and drops, the mix saturated with synths and this vocal, with single piano notes echoing through. While I can find post-classical piano ambient quite cloying, this music is full of sincerity and beauty.

Panoptique Electrical – Slowly The Sorrow [sound in silence]
The Humble Bee – Small Copper [sound in silence]
Greek ambient/electronic/experimental CD-R label sound in silence celebrates its 100th(!) release with a low-key compilation of 18 artists associated with the label. The crackling final track from Hainbach is wonderful, but in the context of tonight we heard two equally wonderful pieces. Adelaide’s Jason Sweeney appears as Panoptique Electrical, with his piano reverberating through his track like Dziadosz before, and a doubled-up cello line probably provided by Zoë Barry. Gritty noise gives way to pure drones, heavily saturated piano, and disturbed synth playing through what sounds like a broken woofer in the gorgeous contribution from The Humble Bee, the continuing work of Craig Tattersall, formerly of Hood, The Boats, The Remote Viewer, The Famous Boyfriend et al. Tattersall and Sweeney both have rich histories in many genres.

William Ryan Fritch – Vascularity [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
ARROWOUNDS – Blue Entombed [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
Finally, two tracks from the ever-industrious Lost Tribe Sound. Cohesion is the second album in a 2023 trilogy from composer and multi-instrumentalist William Ryan Fritch which are exploring the many calamitous water crises already affecting life around the planet. While January’s Polarity made music by feeding electronic sounds through solenoids, speakers and other electromagnetic drivers, Cohesion uses largely acoustic wind instruments – saxophones, clarinets, oboe, bassoon etc – to mimic electronic music, close-micing them and processing them so that finger clicks and breaths are augmented into elements of their own. It’s not unlike the sounds produced by Colin Stetson on his bass saxophone, but harnessed towards a particular kind of abstract expression here. Meanwhile Athens, Ohio based Ryan Chamberlain aka ARROWOUNDS follows up on the submerged techno of his first release with a promised 4CD set called the “Therianthrope Series”. The first of these human/animal hybrids is In The Octopus Pond, whose subject is a legend of ancient octopoeds in a green world that slowly succumbs to fire and violence. This arcane setting is evoked through Cocteau Twins guitars, slow moving bass and drums and shuddering delays. We’re left needing to know where both these artistic series will go next.

Listen again — ~203MB

We continue our investigation/celebration of amen breaks & jungle tropes in other musics – this week, it’s metal! Also jazz-meets-West-African, some lovely IDM throwbacks as well as a contemporary evolution of IDM, and some more minimalist electronics.

LISTEN AGAIN to these two hours of this little corner of human history. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Samuele Strufaldi – Cammino, senza sapere dove [Música Macondo/Bandcamp]
Samuele Strufaldi & Tommaso Rosati – Soundbnuos [Auanda/Bandcamp]
Samuele Strufaldi – Abodan [Música Macondo/Bandcamp]
Samuele Strufaldi – Tutte le cose dentro [Música Macondo/Bandcamp]
Pride of place at the top of this week’s playlist goes to a fantastic project between Italian composer/producer/jazz pianist Samuele Strufaldi and the villagers of Gohouo-Zagna on the Ivory Coast. It’s formed as a collaborative work, eschewing the ethnographic, even colonialist aspects of much cross-cultural fusion music. It began in Strufaldi’s native Florence, with djembe player Boris Pierrou inviting him to experience the Guéré music of his home village. Strufaldi embedded himself in village life, and learned that Pierrou intended to build a library for the people of his village, thus this project was formed as a way to help fund the library. The singing of traditional songs, percussion, hand-claps and creative sound-making of the locals are incorporated into Strufaldi’s compositions, sometimes jazz, sometimes informed by electronic club music (even drum’n’bass), and in amongst these songs are conversations from the villagers (if you purchase the vinyl you’ll find liner notes explaining the context of all the recordings). So I’ve decided to play a couple of pieces that meld the Guéré music with Strufaldi’s gregarious work, as well as what seems to be a straight traditional Guéré song, beautifully recorded in the village. Strufaldi’s 2019 collaboration 1.15K with electronic sound-artist Tommaso Rosati was where I first discovered the Florentine musician, and I was just as impressed re-listening this week, so we heard one of the more radical tracks from that album too.

billy woods & Kenny Segal – Hangman [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
billy woods & Kenny Segal – Babylon by Bus featuring ShrapKnel [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
billy woods & Kenny Segal – Waiting Around featuring Aesop Rock [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
The 2019 album Hiding Places was a phenomenal collaboration between iconic underground rapper billy woods & the creative producer Kenny Segal. The sequel Maps has a lot of expectations hanging on it – but as fans we know these two artists well enough to know that defying expectations is built into their art. So while Maps has its fair share of opressive atmospheres and doom-laden verses, there are also plenty of lighter beats like “Waiting Around”, with its catchy chorus and a first verse from the great Aesop Rock. Segal as usual pulls samples from everywhere & anywhere, pitching guitars way down inside drones and sub bass, dropping pop snippets, looping lopsidedly, scratching – and I had to highlight the (heavily slowed-down) Aphex Twin sample at the start of the ShrapKnel-featuring “Babylon by Bus”. The theme of travel & touring permeates the album, from the joy of flight and seeming freedoms to the pain of separation and the exhaustion of having no home. Although every album from billy woods’ and Armand Hammer’s repertoire is of the highest quality, this second Kenny Segal collab does feel destined to become a classic on the level of Hiding Places.

Poppy – Spit [Sumerian Records]
On this cover of Canadian all-female indie/metal band Kittie, Poppy‘s back in full-on metal mode – in fact there’s less clean vocals here than on the original. But the main reason I’m playing it is of course the amen breaks skittering between the riffs (something that Kittie weren’t averse to!) I’m kind of dreading that jungle’s ubiquity means it’s going to burn out again soon, but let’s enjoy it while it lasts!

fromjoy – Icarus [fromjoy Bandcamp]
fromjoy – machine [fromjoy Bandcamp]
fromjoy – seraph (feat. iRis.EXE) [fromjoy Bandcamp]
fromjoy – Eros [fromjoy Bandcamp]
Speaking of… The latest album from Texans fromjoy handily combines industrial metal with breakcore and, if not hyperpop then at least ethereal pop in places. There’s plenty of twisted breaks sliding into double-kick metal drumming, plenty of hardcore vocals and lovely clean vocals (especially in the cameo from iRis.EXE). The ’80s easy-listening sax music in the second last track and the album fadeout is the vapourwave icing on the cake of this cyberpunk dream made real.

Gunjack – Cult of the Drum [Gunjack Bandcamp]
Brian Gunjack continues to be prolific as ever, and in between the techno & house gear are splattery jungle workouts (beyond his “hyperjazz” coinage of last year I’d suggest). Knife Crime Origami is a case in point – dark jungle at accelerated tempo.

Madobe Rika – Ara=hill=imi=tci=tci [Virgin Babylon Records]
Mysterious breakcore idoru Madobe Rika is back on Virgin Babylon Records with hyperspeed computer-game synths and breakcore beats accompanying an almost traditional Japanese-sounding song?

DJ Sofa – Over And Over [Myor]
Park Shadow – Alley Cat [Straight Up Breakbeat/Bandcamp]
Jungle/d’n’b from Finland now, with DJ Sofa delivering two of her best cuts yet for Coco Bryce’s Myor label, while Park Shadow mix junglist break edits in with straighter drum’n’bass on their pretty lush Cosmic EP for Straight Up Breakbeat.

NPLGNN – Skankin’ [Hundebiss/Bandcamp]
Naples-born, Barcelona-based DJ Giovanni Napolano aka NPLGNN here drops two tracks on Italian experimental label Hundebiss. Napolano takes dancehall as his base but both tracks on this percussive EP rattle around jungle territory in unique ways.

Adrien75 – Novadeck [DataDoor/Bandcamp]
Adrien75 – Twenty Seven [DataDoor/Bandcamp]
When Tim Koch sent me the new EP from Adrien75, he described it as a return to his Worm Interface style, referencing the IDM label run out of the legendary, much-missed Berwick St record store Ambient Soho. Adrien Capozzi, however, is from the US, and in the late ’90s co-founded the Carpet Bomb label that released a handful of lovely IDM releases including the barnstorming, never-repeated, long-out-of-print compilation Highways Over Gardens, whose detailed drum’n’bass programming imprinted itself on me at the time. Technicolor Wackies does indeed reference his early styles, with a few tracks skittering into almost-drill’n’bass territory. Lovely lovely stuff.

Wakati – wa [Wakati Bandcamp]
What’s this? IDM from Melbourne? Well, Wakati is the name that John McCaffrey aka Part Timer has decided to use for some of his more electronic tracks that don’t fit the Part Timer aesthetic. And this is far more maximalist stuff, but melodic as heck, wearing its Plaid influence on its sleeve.

Tim Koch – Tim 05 [DataDoor/Bandcamp]
Back to Tim Koch, the second release this week on his DataDoor label has been a long time coming. He’s been friends with fellow electronic musician Keith Baylis for decades, and since Baylis records as Vim, a record credited to “Vim and Tim” seemed inevitable. It is however each artist taking a solo side to the Olio and Rammel cassette, each deriving inspiration from the broad scope of Krautrock. Here’s a very expansive number from Tim’s side.

upsammy – Patterning [PAN/Bandcamp]
upsammy – Green Lung [PAN/Bandcamp]
Amsterdam musician Thessa Torsing’s music as upsammy explicitly reimagines IDM for the 2010s and ’20s, taking the genre’s melodic roots and influences from Detroit techno, dub, drum’n’bass and electro into this post-vapourwave world – especially on Germ in a Population of Buildings, her second full-length and first for PAN. Here jerky beats fracture into tiny pieces while little electronic melodies sprout and helium-high vocals sometimes float overhead. The album’s title evokes scale, with microscopic organisms abutting massive artificial constructions. Despite all the references, upsammy’s focus on ecosystems and architecture, organisms and artefacts lets her create something quite unique.

arovane – i.o. [DIN/Keplar/Bandcamp]
arovane – Nachttal [Puremagnetik/Bandcamp]
arovane – Woben [Puremagnetik/Bandcamp]
One of the most notable references for upsammy’s sounds is the early music of Uwe Zahn as Arovane. The collection of his earliest EPs released on Torsten Pröfrock‘s DIN has now been remastered & re-released on vinyl by the Keplar label. icol diston and the also-released debut album Atol Scrap were themselves heavily influenced by early Autechre & Gescom, but with a windswept iciness all his own. More recently arovane has been a more ambient affair, often exploring flora and fauna and microsystems through composition and granular synthesis. On miniaturen, released last month on US label Puremagnetik, we get a window into Zahn’s practice, with a collection of, literally, “miniatures” – mostly short musical ideas that remained on hard drives after not quite making it on to other releases. Here we hear Zahn experimenting with gritty loops and glittering synths, performing short musical ideas with often only one or two sound sources. It’s testament to his musical talents, as there are many heart-pulling moments in these studies.

Sweeney – The Basement [Observable Universe Recordings]
Sweeney – It’s Behind You [Observable Universe Recordings]
In the last year or two Adelaide’s Jason Sweeney has been unearthing and archiving early works from various projects – something I celebrated a few times on Utility Fog last year. But his music-making continues, and the latest album released under his surname, Corporeal, continues to see him exorcising personal ghosts, fears and uncertainties about embodiment, queerness, trauma. Through Corporeal Sweeney voices this self-haunting in spoken tracks, in between songs based around his emotive voice, piano, and many studio effects. “The Basement” is a harrowing encounter with the paranormal with driving percussion and the disembodied ghostly voices that haunt the album – hanging also above the piano and voice of “It’s Behind You”, under which a kick drum throbs like a racing heartbeat.

Alva Noto – Sehnsuchtsvoll – Reverso [Noton]
Alva Noto – Unwohl [Noton]
Carsten Nicolai also uses piano through his soundtrack to Simon Stone’s Komplizen, released (as Alva Noto) on his Noton label this month under the title Kinder der Sonne. The album’s title translates as “Children of the Sun”, one of the two Maxim Gorky play on which the new work is based. The milieu of the 1905 Russian Revolution isn’t really audible in these works, but there’s much drama and tension. I’ve chosen two of the most electronic pieces on the album to finish tonight – soft synth pads, static and almost-voice, followed by sub-bass and distortion in quite familiar Noton style.

Listen again — ~203MB

We have interesting cases of genre-bleed tonight: you’ll never quite be sure if you’re listening to sound-design or contemporary classical or improv; songwriterly work or experimental folktronica or grime or dubstep; r’n’b or drum’n’bass? Is this hip-hop or processed live percussion? Of course the answer is always “por que no los dos?”

LISTENing AGAIN will cure your aches and pains. Take aurally via FBi’s on demand streaming or the UFog podcast here.

Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective – Pressure [Nhạc Gãy/Bandcamp]
Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective – What Cherubs [Nhạc Gãy/Bandcamp]
When I first came across Vietnamese musical explorers Rắn Cạp Đuôi, it was through their wonderful collection of sodden glitchscapes on Flaming Pines called Degradation. But everything about them changes radically from release to release, whether it’s lo-fi punky indie or post-rock, messy proto-hyperpop, or deconstructed club sounds. Last year’s album on Subtext, with production help from Ziúr, gained them a substantial new following, and on follow-up *1 key member Zach Sch is on most mixing duties, with production shared collectively (two tracks are mixed by Raphäel Valensi aka Nahash). The result is an album that combines all their previous influences and more – there’s a lot of World’s End Girlfriend there with breakcore and hard-chopped digital edits, and then there are choral vocals from a host of members, confounding switches to live guitars or equally to plunderphonic collages. Like their catalogue as a whole, you never know what’s coming next, and that makes for highly enjoyable repeat listens. Get this on your stereo stat!

aus – Swim [flau/Bandcamp/Lo Recordings/Bandcamp]
aus – Landia [flau/Bandcamp/Lo Recordings/Bandcamp]
aus – Make Me Me (feat. Grand Salvo) [flau/Bandcamp/Lo Recordings/Bandcamp]
Yasuhiko Fukuzono, the man behind aus for almost 2 decades, is an important, albeit self-effacing, member of the Japanese music scene, releasing fragile, detailed, glittering music on the his flau label since 2006 (an ever-popular early album from Australia’s Part Timer was released by them). Some traumatic events a decade ago meant that we haven’t heard any new music from aus for that long. Everis is an extremely welcome return, and the mixture of melancholy and ecstatic, of acoustic and electronic, of expansive and contained, places it squarely in the contemporary aesthetic. Fukuzono’s impeccable musicianship is evident throughout, and I want to particularly note the beauty of his collaboration with Naarm/Melbourne’s Paddy Mann aka Grand Salvo, in which Mann’s voice is accompanied by a simple drum machine, piano and synthetic strings, the piano gently stepping into chromaticism and the strings braiding into delirious rippling dis/harmony as the track progresses. What a return this is!

Jungstötter – Nothing Is Holy [[PIAS] Germany]
Jungstötter – Burdens [[PIAS] Germany]
Years after the more overtly rock/pop of his first band Sizarr, singer Fabian Altstötter moved out solo as Jungstötter with a kind of gothic pop, his voice now vibrating with emotion like Scott Walker or David Sylvian, the songs rooted in piano like the work of his partner Anja Plaschg aka Soap&Skin. By his second album One Star, released his week through [PIAS] Germany, the comparisons to Walker and Sylvian are not just in his vocals. Lyrical melodies are buried in industrial rumblings and shifting electronics, pitch-shifted shadows of themselves, scrabbling beats interrupt the flow, horn and string arrangements grow raucous. This is dramatic music from a resounding Berlin tradition.

The Selva – Dança Babuíno [Clean Feed/Bandcamp]
Portugal is a hub of adventurous improvised music, in & out of jazz traditions, as well as exploratory electronics. The trio of Ricardo Jacinto on cello & electronics, Gonçalo Almeida on double bass & electronics, and Nuno Morão on drums & percussion, ably exemplifies this. Their 2017 debut as The Selva (jungle in Portuguese) cleaved more to the acoustic possibilities in the instruments, while on the 2019 follow-up Canícula Rosa the free jazz workouts, and the more funky or lyrical pieces, are still played straight or with simple amplification. However, in 2021 the group teamed up with sound-artist extraordinaire Machinefabriek, deconstructing the individual instruments’ sounds into a strange memory of an acoustic ensemble. So their new album Camarão-Girafa finds the electronics incorporated into the ensemble, operated by cellist Jacinto & bassist Almeida while playing their respective roles – with mixing help from Manuel Pinheiro. Some pieces are swathes of drone-noise from the strings, while on others Nuno Morão is a rock drummer, or krautrock groove-provider, and on tonight’s excerpt the cello is treated to granular delays pitch-shifting, reverse and glitching the sound in aleatoric rhythms. I want to say that all avant-garde attributes aside, this is highly engaging & enjoyable music, taking bass strings + percussion (already an unusual proposition) into new territories.

Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 & Tim Shiel – Mirror Flower 镜花水月 [Music In Exile/Bandcamp]
Here’s the welcome return of guzheng virtuoso Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 and electronic wizard Tim Shiel, whose Nervous Energy EP was a highlight of 2021. “Mirror Flower 镜花水月” feels like classic West-meets-East with a gentle chord progression over Shiel’s downtempo beats and dropped-in samples (and hints of slide guitar?) – and Meng Wang gorgeously decorates her melody throughout.

Ayala – Intra [lovejoy/Bandcamp]
Following last year’s evocative All prayers flow to the stormdrains with Zac Picker‘s spoken word, Ayala/Donny Janks returns with solo EP Rainfruit (Picker joins him on the final track, which I played a few weeks back). Here the Eora/Sydney DJ mixes up Four Tet-like house, downtempo melodic IDM and breakbeat techno, all with an ear for musical assonance and emotion.

TRAKA – Yosai (Commodo Remix) [YUKU]
Prague label YUKU has emerged as a home for exploratory electronic music & arts across Europe & beyond. YUKURMX001 inaugurates their remix 12″ series and is a case in point for the label’s international remit, with two tracks from Serbia’s TRAKA and two from Istanbul’s Granul remixed by two Turkish artists, Palestine’s Muqata’a (heard later tonight) and Sheffield, UK’s dubstep iconoclast Commodo, who puts his current TV cop-show dub-funk spin on a TRAKA‘s track “Yosai”.

Bisweed – Matrix [Artikal Music/Bandcamp]
Wraz. – Knock [BLXCK TXPES/Bandcamp]
Two tracks here with technoid takes on dubstep. First a robotic sci-fi track from Estonia’s Bisweed with a martial beat – his debut on UK’s Artikal Music. Then we’re pulled in the slipstream of the undulating synths and basslines of Québec’s Wraz., last heard also on Artikal Music but here appearing on BLXCK TXPES, a sister label of Belgium’s dubstep powerhouse Duploc.

Kahn & Neek – Delayed Atoms [Kahn & Neek Bandcamp]
Kahn & Neek – Rally (feat. Riko Dan, Killa P, Irah, Long Range & Armour) [Kahn & Neek Bandcamp]
Bristol’s Kahn & Neek have worked together for years – both are members of legendary post-dubstep collective Young Echo and together previously formed Gorgon Sound – but Lupus et Ursus (Latin for Wolf & Bear) is their debut album together. There’s a selection of more abstract textures a la Young Echo (always heavily dub-infused), but lots of lovely dubstep, with many guests from UK grime crew including the big team-up on “Rally”. It’s altogether prime UK bass music, not to be missed!

Izambard – Glue Glugger [A2B2 Records/Bandcamp]
Izambard – Ghost Note [Kingdome Recordings/Bandcamp]
And here’s a rather different mutation of UK bass music from London enigma Izambard, affiliated with the Kingdome crew and a2b2, the deeply confusing project of Death Grips’ Andy Morin. Izambard’s latest EP B4 collects four tracks of digitally cut-up beats, syncopated bass and the artist’s ever-changing voice, from gruff to high-pitched, spat into the mic at speed. It’s fun stuff, as is his debut album Y from 2021, with a similar range and approach. It takes SOPHIE’s industrial crunch a la Faceshopping or Ponyboy and grinds off the more overtly pop elements. On “Ghost Note” the clanging beats accelerate into drum’n’bass territory while somehow suddenly the vocals are in Deftones emo-metal land? Don’t try and understand it, just take the pummeling.

Chimpo – All Of The Above [Box N Lock]
Manchester’s Chimpo is never one to shy away from pop fun in his bass music, and he’s a dedicated junglist. His Box N Lock is the place for all his artistic expression, with the latest being a bouncing drum’n’bass number with Chimpo MCing over his own beats. Most importantly, it’s Chimpo, it’s fun!

Liv.e – Gardetto. [In Real Life/Bandcamp]
Slightly delayed but never too late, here’s Dallas r’n’b innovator Liv.e (the “e” is silent), whose indubitale r’n’b chops shine through on many tracks on her new album Girl In The Half Pearl, but more than ever the sweet harmonies and orchestrations are heard through a patina of experimental techniques – industrial distortion, technoid loops or, on a few tracks, drum’n’bass beats. Anyone who found Janelle Monäe’s early work too challenging will run a mile, but this is catnip for leftfield music fans – it was FBi Album of the Week in February when it was released. Much of the production is from Liv.e herself, developed after an Artist in Residence stint at London’s Laylow, and it feels like UK dance music crept into the mix with adventurous jazz/soul & r’n’b a la FlyLo, Thundercat et al.

kœnig – Last Dance (ft. Nappy Nina) [Ventil/Bandcamp/PTP/Bandcamp]
kœnig – Due Dilligance (ft. Dälek) [Ventil/Bandcamp/PTP/Bandcamp]
I loved the debut album from Viennese drummer Lukas König under his kœnig alias – live industrial/electronic percussion and post-processing that detoured from its more abstract moments into collaborations with the likes of experimental rapper Sensational. New album 1 Above Minus Underground is co-released by Vienna’s Ventil Records and New York’s PTP, and features an incredible line-up of MCs and guest musicians, including Moor Mother and Aquiles Navarro from Irreversible Entanglements, Vienna-based Iranian sound-artist Rojin Sharafi (whose collaboration I featured late last year), Guilty Simpson, Victoria Shen and her record needle nails, Elvin Brandhi, and Sensational again. It combines clattering live percussion with free jazz and hip-hop to brilliant effect. Tonight we heard Nappy Nina‘s conversational contribution and noise-hop pioneer Will Dälek Brooks with interjected apocalyptic horns from Martin Eberle and Chris Pitsiokos. This is really good, don’t miss it!

Muqata’a – Irbak [Exist Records/Bandcamp]
UmKuBu & Firas Shehadeh – 01011 [Exist Records/Bandcamp]
Being born & growing up in Gaza, under permanent occupation and frequent attack, effectively imprisoned, results in “unsustainable” levels of PTSD among Palestinian children in Gaza. As described by Exist Records/Festival, Skate Gaza, a skate park near Gaza City, provides some temporary reprieve from their oppression, a sense of freedom and hope. The Exist Festival and label formed in 2019, and has put together the compilation No ComplY to expand Skate Gaza’s ability to support Palestinian youth. The compilation features hip-hop, pan-African rap and experimental electronic sounds, including breakcore from BLKM3TA, who I’ve recently played, MC Yallah & Debmaster, who recently visited Sydney, and many others. The brilliant Ramallah producer Muqata’a appears with clickity beats and sub bass drops, and the compilation opens with two more Palestinians – UmKuBu‘s spoken words over glitchy beats and ambience from Firas Shehadeh.

Elisabeth Klinck – Winter Song [Hallow Ground/Bandcamp]
Elisabeth Klinck – Kiki [Hallow Ground/Bandcamp]
Belgian electroacoustic composer & violinist Elisabeth Klinck created her debut album Picture a Frame during a week in the Spanish Pyrenees, working with her friend the artist Oscar Claus collecting field recordings and experimenting with sound & space. The results glide between heavy electronic drones and raw violin extended techniques, glitched vocals and more. It’s the sort of music that catches you unaware, suddenly realising you’ve been captivated for minutes.

Martyna Basta – Presentiment [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
Martyna Basta – Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
Martyna Basta – Back and Forth [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
Like many, I was stunned by the debut release from Kraków-based sound-artist Martyna Basta, 2021’s Making Eye Contact With Solitude. Adam Badí Donoval‘s Warm Winters, Ltd. again releases her equally wonderful new album Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering. Again we have patient music build from found sounds, vocal snippets and layers, guitar loops, zither, violin… These elements (including a guest spot from fellow sound-conjuror claire rousay) serve to build half-remembered emotional resonances, gentle tension and subtle release – and they add up to undeniable beauty. One to self-medicate with whenever required.

Listen again — ~210MB

Experimental pop, noise artists not being noisy, ambient artists being noisy…
Cut out the noise by LISTENING AGAIN on stream on demand @ FBi Radio, or podcasting here.

The God In Hackney – In This Room [Junior Aspirin/Bandcamp]
The God In Hackney – Bardo! [Junior Aspirin/Bandcamp]
You may remember nigh on 3 years ago, I discovered transatlantic band The God In Hackney via the cover CD on an issue of experimental music mag The Wire. “The Adjoiner” is still one of my favourite tracks from their second album Small Country Eclipse but there’s way more to enjoy there, and now we can extend our enjoyment further with The World In Air Quotes, out this coming Friday. This is left-field art-pop with leanings to ’80s pop experimentalists like Peter Gabriel or Magazine, but with everything and the kitchen sink thrown in, whether krautrock, drum’n’bass, free jazz… It’s undeniably arch (I mean, “The World In Air Quotes”), and “art”, but there’s some kind of sincerity there too, such as the Tears For Fears-ian “In This Room”. After all, an album about the current moment is going to be struggling with the visibly collapsing anthroposcene and the rise of far-right populism, as well as the degredation and atomisation of the public sphere. Meanwhile “Bardo!”, also heard tonight, somehow manages to encompass live d’n’b drums, big band brass, and… Peter Gabriel fronting Talking Heads? The album is co-dedicated to the late Andrew Weatherall, drawing in other clear influences: dub and techno. The second dedicatee is the late Brian Catling, an often challenging performance artist, poet and sculptor, whose various artistic pursuits overlap considerably with those of TGIH singer Nathaniel Mellors.

Richie Culver – Daytime TV (Rainy Miller Remix) [Participant/Bandcamp]
Richie Culver – Love Like An Abscess (Aho Ssan Remix) [Participant/Bandcamp]
Another artist combining poetry, art, sculpture and music is Richie Culver, whose late-2022 album I was born by the sea carried his apocalyptic, declamatory poetry with abstractions of rave music. Tracks from that album have now been remixed by an inspired list of musicians, available on vinyl and digital. A notable earlier release was a provocative collaboration with bleak northern drill master & choreographer Blackhaine, and frequent Blackhaine producer Rainy Miller puts his dark drill silt over one track, while Paris-based Ghanaian sound-artist Aho Ssan floats Culver’s voice in granular soundwaves and sub-bass.

ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT – Waiting For The Light To Quit [Constellation/Bandcamp]
ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT – Lie Down In Roses Dear [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Speaking of ambient waves, synthdrone is a big element of the new duo ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT, the Montréal duo of Ariel Engle, recent Broken Social Scene member sometimes working as La Force, and Efrim Manuel Menuck of, well you know: Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A/Thee Silver Mt. Zion etc. The curmudgeonly Menuck has long been dedicated to hating things deserving of hatred (the music industry, capitalism), and has apparently now decided to add guitars to that mix, and in 2021 put together a demo tape with Engle of shoegaze-noise-folk that established the duo as equal parts This Mortal Coil, Emeralds and The Pentangle. Debut album “Darling The Dawn” (yes, the double quotes are part of the title) fleshes out some of those pieces, emphasising the folk roots by adding Jessica Moss‘s violin to the glistening synths on “Lie Down In The Roses Dear”. But mostly it’s Menuck’s stacked synths and his usual anguished singing juxtaposed with Engle’s sweeter voice.

Aphir – viscosity angel [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
Vocals with drones become vocals as drones on The Halo Is Shapeless, the beautiful new album from Melbourne’s Becki Whitton aka Aphir. 2021’s Plastichoir documented her marathon processed vocal improvisations livestreamed over the months before its release, feats of stamina and creative dedication that Whitton has continued to build on since then. Eclectic Sydney label Art As Catharsis, best known for various strains of metal, had been keen to work with Aphir, and the progressively-built artificial choirs of The Halo Is Shapeless proved the perfect resonance for the label. Shapeless these pieces are not, however: vocal edifices are constructed, and then carefully pulled apart and reshaped, as the first single able demonstrates – for the rest you’ll have to wait a month or so!

The Leaf Library vs Kemper Norton – Iris [Front & Follow/Bandcamp]
Andrew Haines vs Steve Hadfield – A 500AD Portal to the Boomkat Attics [Front & Follow/Bandcamp]
Manchester label Front & Follow has a very solid back catalogue of varied left-field artists from experimental electronics to folk, and also a strong line in thought-provoking compilations, which goes back a good 10 years to Joseph Stannard’s cross-genre catalogue of the uncanny, The Outer Church. Mid-2020 they started on a five-volume project called Isolation and Rejection poking fun at the endless Covid isolation comps by collecting previously-rejected songs – each volume’s profits being donated to a charity helping out the least privileged people in the Manchester area. The brilliant, spooky and uncanny compilation You Can Never Leave followed in 2021, parodying aspirational luxury apartment complexes while raising money for the homeless. Elaborating on that theme are the RENTAL YIELDS compilations: three volumes in 2022, and now RENTAL YIELDS: VOLUME FOUR. Each track on these compilations pits one artist against another – well, kind of. I’m not sure whether the right-hand side of the “vs” is always the original artist and the left-hand the remixer/appropriator, but it’s never stated, so these roles remain obscure. UFog faves The Leaf Library, part indie band, part space rock, part electronic entity, have previously appeared on the other side of the vs. Here they adapt a piece by the wyrd “slurtronic” folk bloke Kemper Norton, ethereal but slightly menacing. And Andrew Haines attempts to lighten up the usually dark & industrial Steve Hadfield‘s sounds with glitchy beats. These masses of music may seem overwhelming, but rest assured that it’s not just the rental yields that are high. Stream them on Bandcamp and put 5 quid down on a couple, hey?

Marc Codsi – The Entity [Discrepant/Bandcamp]
Among the plethora of electronic acts and releases from the so-called Middle East are a plethora of different musical approaches, of course. Storied Lebanese musician Marc Codsi has worked with many key players in Lebanon, Egypt and beyond as well as writing soundtracks; his previous solo album A New World created a purely electronic Arabic ambient music as a venture into hopeful world-building, and Songs from the Aftermath continues its musical interests, with quarter-tone scales conveying a sense of strangeness – and perhaps newness – to those used to the common 12-tone equal tempermanent found in pop music and “Western” synthesiser works. I love the dancing 24-tone sequences of the opening track, but I opted tonight for the mysteries of “The Entity”, which expands the palette with percussive quasi-glass bell sounds over drones and warm bass. The slow synth melody that enters halfway through opens up this space to transcendence.

Soheil Shayesteh – Perceptual Deformation [Zabte Sote]
The Zabte Sote label was founded in 2018 by Ata Ebtekar (aka Sote, visiting Sydney in June for Soft Centre!) and continues to promote adventurous music from Iranian artists. Two albums were released in March: first tonight, we hear from Amsterdam-based Soheil Shayesteh, whose nhA is an electro-acoustic wonder build primarily from the rich sound of his kamancheh – but far from a collection of string drones, the music veers wildly from evolving granular loops of plucked strings through melodic bowing, coupled with a soprano on one track, to the shuddering digital slabs and sliding sub-bass drops on the track heard tonight. Wonderful.

Hamid Rahmati – Joyous Indifference [Zabte Sote]
The second March release from Zabte Sote comes from Tehran-based composer Hamid Rahmati whose acoustic contributions, alongside electronics and field recordings, come from piano and electric guitar. These instruments may make it sound like this music is more contemporary classical than classical Persian, but it’s filtered through digital signal processing, made with 24-tone tunings, and shot through with beautiful spectral melodies at surprising moments.

Ana Quiroga – Atalaya [Bandcamp for EarthPercent]
Last week we heard Ana Quiroga‘s remix of On Man, and this week she’s back courtesy of EarthPercent, an organisation co-founded by Brian Eno to encourage the music industry to help fight the climate crisis by giving 1% of their earnings towards climate action. Of course for many musicians that’s a moot point as their earnings are frequently negative, but the low percentage of philanthropic giving that contributes to protecting the environment is striking. Each Earth Day, EarthPercent compiles a huge selection of exclusive music from a wide variety of musicians via Bandcamp, and you can pick & choose as you prefer if £25 is too much for the whole shebang. Quiroga’s track Atalaya combines field recordings of the natural world with undulating synths.

Lagoss – Mango UFO [Discrepant/Bandcamp]
Lagoss – Los Aquachachos [Discrepant/Bandcamp]
Featuring Discrepant boss Gonçalo F Cardoso, Lagoss is a Tenerife-based trio imagining future sub-tropical archipelagos via an electronically mutated tropicalia and faux field-recordings, sidestepping the problematic appropriative aspects of “fourth world” music by engaging its ethnography with an imaginary future civilisation based in their home in the Canary Islands west of Africa. Palestinian producer Muqata’a also contributes a glitchy remix.

dprk – CRAZY LITTLE CORKSKREW [Studio Fabrik/Bandcamp]
From the deep recesses of Eora/Sydney’s noise, free improv and industrial scene/s comes new quartet dprk. Richard Fielding has been making weird noises since his involvement in Severed Heads’ tape music years in the early ’80s, founding The Loop Orchestra shortly after, and Nick Dan is a free/noise scene stalwart particularly with his duo xNoBBQx. They’re joined by visual artist & recent Loop Orchestra member Juke Wyat and also Christian Durham. This is sometimes motorik, sometimes sludgy primitivist, proto-industrial synth stuff. Despite any noise and industrial references Shitville Tourist eschews the harsh tones of power electronics for other abstractions, and opening track “Crazy Little Corkscrew” could almost be early IDM, with unaligned loops of synthetic xylophone, tape crackle and a parping bassling burbling along pleasantly for 7 minutes. The album title indicates a different kind of enthnography from Lagoss’ faux-future island life, instead exploring the scungy backstreets of insalubrious city suburbs.

Michel Banabila – Threat [Tapu Records Bandcamp]
Dutch sound-artist/composer/multi-instrumentalist Michel Banabila has managed to maintain a consistent musical character (and quality!) through his 40-year career, with a sustained interest in sound manipulation (through tape, samplers and computers), non-Western instruments, processed voices and so on. More recently he’s extended his interest in classical instruments (such as the viola and electronics from 2014) to creating ersatz compositions, constructed through computer editing – and on Tightrope classical piano and strings uneasily cohabit with drones. The style, if not mood, seems to change every track, and on “Threat” we have mysterious electronic tones and a beat that slowly grows to pummelling quasi-techno.

Shit and Shine – BBC BEACH [The state51 Conspiracy/Bandcamp]
Shit and Shine – DIRT BIKE [The state51 Conspiracy/Bandcamp]
London-based (still?) Texan maverick Craig Clouse has at times extended Shit and Shine/Shit&Shine/$&$/etc into a full-blown band, but it’s usually safe to say it’s himself solo these days – and while the psych-noise roots still inform the sound, he’s found a singular style with a kind of disco-funk base, with cut-up glitch-beats, hip-hop, industrial and more thrown in, along with his trademark YouTube-sampled bizarro spoken word. As usual with $&$ there’s a good dose of trying your patience and wrong-footing your groove, so yes, 2222 and Airport could only be Shit and Shine, and I for one wouldn’t have it any other way.

France Sauvage – Tears me, love me [Murailles Music/Bandcamp]
France Sauvage – Faire les dents repousser [Murailles Music/Bandcamp]
Here again is some kind of free noise collage industrial that somehow isn’t the aural confrontation you’d expect. Courtesy of Murailles Music we’re introduced to France Sauvage, long-lived trio whose latest incarnation finds all three on electronics. Drum machine beats, wobbling processed vocals, remnants of exotica – this is strange music from the wilds of France, captured and ready for your hi-fi stereo system.

Fire! Orchestra – ECHOES: I see your eye, part 1 [Rune Grammofon]
Scandinavian free jazz big band Fire! Orchestra continues to thrill on their latest for Rune Grammofon, a big double CD and triple LP set that, as usual, confounds the “free jazz” tag with beautiful orchestrations and right-on riffs: the rhythm section of Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin are unparalleled, completed in trio form with fellow Swedish musical royalty Mats Gustafsson on roaring saxophone and noise-making machines. When Fire! Orchestra first assembled it was a full big band of brass and wind instruments plus three of Swedish jazz & improv’s greatest vocalists. The extraordinary Mariam Wallentin does appear, and it concludes with a mind-bending vocal turn from legendary jazzer Joe McPhee, but it also has vignettes for smaller ensembles, a few covers, and some gorgeous string arrangements, beautifully played by arranger Josephin Runsteen and ensemble (there are two violins, two cellos and another double bass credited). “Echoes: I see your eye, Part I” opens with a traditional Fire! Orchestra sound, hypnotic bassline carrying through almost 10 minutes of arrangements and soloing. The album’s a lot to take in, but it’s married together with various “Echoes” variations throughout, returning to “I see your eye” right at the end with McPhee’s vocal turn replacing the strings. Incredible work.

Leah Kardos – Pegs [bigo & twigetti]
Winding things up tonight with a different take on “classical” from London-based, Australian raised academic, composer & producer Leah Kardos. The bigo & twigetti label have coaxed another track out of her for their Perceptions Vol. 4 compilation of piano music – no drastic mutations, but pretty Spotify-friendly music in the main. Kardos offers here a piece in her vein of cyclic prepared piano (Aphex Twin drukqs fans will be in familiar territory) – and Kardos has a keen ear for the heart-pulling chord changes. It’s simple enough, with a couple of crescendos bringing a bassline in and tapering back to finish, but it’s the kind of stuff I’d happily leave on repeat for hours.

Listen again — ~204MB