So. Tonight’s interview with the lovely Mr James Blackshaw was a little delayed but did go ahead. We also had a number of tunes from the amazing BJ Nilsen, and ran the gamut from melodicism to drill’n’bass… Checkit.
LISTEN AGAIN link at the bottom as usual! You can also download the James Blackshaw interview on its own here (~19MB).

Starting tonight with a lovely bit of field recording-meets-drone courtesy of BJ Nilsen. It’s the title track to his new album and features the amplified sound of a chair being dragged across the floor. Yum.
Then we had the closing track from the ever-wondrous Pikelet’s new album – folky guitar and heavenly harmonies.

James Blackshaw was a bit of a focus for tonight. I had a bit of difficulty getting through due to a misunderstanding about area codes, but once I sorted that out we had a fantastic chat about his music. You can download it separately here.
The first track I played showcases his beautiful cyclical fingerpicking guitar style. Later we had works featuring strings and voice (from his latest album and first on the Young God label), more fingerstyle guitar, and lastly one piece featuring Blackshaw on piano.
You can catch James Blackshaw in two Sundays’ time, 7:30pm on the 7th of March at Raval in Surry Hills. Tix here.

We heard a track from Axxonn’s excellent new cassette release last week. Tonight, another piece of shuddering drone. Follow the link to buy the cassette with a free download, or purchase it digitally here.

As you may have heard, Michael Gira has announced that he is reforming his legendary gothic rock group Swans, with a new album in the works. Hugely exciting news. In the lead-up, he released a third album of home recordings, including a number of awesome new tunes he played last year on his Australian tour. Tonight’s was one of the highlights.

Ah, Keith Mason, another artist going by his first initial! This track is a trial run for his shambolic EP of last year. You can download it for free, whaddaya waiting for! Grungey keyboard bassline, electric guitar that sounds like a pirate coming to cut your throat.

Shearwater have another album out – third in the trilogy that started with the glorious Palo Santo and continued with Rook… unashamed romantic melodicism, owing much to late-period Talk Talk. Wonderful stuff.

These New Puritans, on the other hand, how to characterise this group? With classical arrangements for woodwinds and choir, plus a highly rhythmic core that points at dancehall and perhaps grime, along with a punkish attitude, and… heck, just check out the video for “We Want War”!
The album was produced by Mr Graham Sutton, giving me an excuse to play one of my favourite songs ever, Bark Psychosis’s Bloodrush.

Next up, Low’s Alan Sparhawk returns with a second album for his ROCK side-project Retribution Gospel Choir. It’s heavy and it’s got Sparhawk’s songs and vocals – what more could we want? That Low song I played could possibly be one of the greatest songs ever too.

Squat Club is one of many Sydney acts based around the crew called QWERTY whose drill’n’bass/idm tunes I used to play a lot when they dropped them into the station a few years back. Squat Club is fabulous epic prog stuff, and goes down a treat. Meanwhile Josh Head’s Calmon H Salmon continues the QWERTY tradition of crazed beats and synths. Yes please.

As well as another lovely soundscape from BJ Nilsen, we had something a little different, from the excellent 10×7” set Recovery from Fractured back in 2008. Nilsen covers Joy Division, although you probably wouldn’t notice :) Still, beats and stuff!

Meanwhile, first hint of the debut album from Sydney’s Actual Russian Brides, electronic pop experimentalism, followed by some more electronica from Sydney: Loopsnake’s dubsteppy debut EP and Monk Fly’s wonky swung beats (released on the Bay Area’s Daly City Records).

And finally, a couple of tunes in tribute to the wonderful Chris Knox. Next week, we’ll have more Knox, Tall Dwarfs, and covers from the fabulous Stroke comp that’s out to raise money to help him recover from last year’s, yes, stroke. Tonight, the lo-fi masterpiece “the slide” is followed by fellow NZ legends The Chills covering a very early Tall Dwarfs tune…

BJ Nilsen – The Invisible City [Touch]
Pikelet – Elbow Equals Bend [Chapter Music]
James Blackshaw – Spiralling Skeleton Memorial [Important Records]
Axxonn – Drone Study1 [Bedroom Suck]
James Blackshaw – Cross [Young God]
James Blackshaw – Sunshrine [Kning Disk]
M Gira – Promise of Water [Young God]
K Mason – Untitled Demo November 2004 [Download from K Mason]
…interview with James Blackshaw…
James Blackshaw – The Cloud of Unknowing [Tompkins Square] {in background under interview!}
James Blackshaw – Gate of Horn [Tompkins Square]
Shearwater – Landscape at Speed [Matador]
These New Puritans – We Want War [Angular/Domino]
Bark Psychosis – Bloodrush [3rd Stone]
Retribution Gospel Choir – Electric Guitar [Sub Pop]
Low – Belarus [Sub Pop]
Retribution Gospel Choir – Destroyer [Sub Pop]
Squat Club – Corvus [self-released]
Calmon H Salmon – karnageminitinkles [self-released, available through addictech]
BJ Nilsen – Heart and Soul [Fractured] {Joy Division cover!}
BJ Nilsen – Finisterre [Touch]
Actual Russian Brides – Puppet [demo/unreleased]
Loopsnake – Is It The Devil In You? [self-released]
Monk Fly – Bumpin Joints [Daly City Records]
Tall Dwarfs – the slide [Flying Nun]
The Chills – Luck or Loveliness [Merge]

Listen again — ~ 179MB

Tonight’s show covered quite some ground, from early ’80s Sydney with the M² label to contemporary Melbourne with Pikelet’s wonderful new album, with minimal techno, drone and much more in between.
LISTEN AGAIN link at the bottom, finally (once shonky internets were fixed…)

When Pikelet played a couple of Sydney shows in Sydney in 2008, she was already road testing some new material, and the wonderful “Toby Light” turned up in a few live sets. It’s been quite a wait, but finally that song opens her fabulous new album Stem, which you should run out and purchase right now! Charming songs based around loop pedals and a plethora of different instruments, perfectly constructed little wonders.

Ascension Records have just released a 4CD box set of all (or most?) of the material released by legendary Sydney label, studio and collective M² during the early 1980s. It’s quite appropriate to start with The Makers of the Dead Travel Fast and their “hit” song “Tael Of A Saeghors”. Even though they weren’t the originators of MSquared, they came on board very early in the piece and this song got quite a bit of radio airplay at the time.
The folks at Vinyl on Demand put out a big vinyl boxset of MSquared stuff last year, but unlike this CD set, that was all unreleased material. Height/Dismay teams up the ubiquitous Patrick Gibson with Dru Johnson (also of Scattered Order and others). This untitled track loops a crying baby under a plaintive tune. It’s quite beautiful, if rather disturbing too…

Next up, Newcastle’s The Atlas Room (I think it’s a solo project) handed in a demo at FBi recently with a pretty impressive range over its 4 tracks. First up we took the almost post-punk “Iris”, and then there’s the more ambient “Dendrite”.
In between, first track from the stunningly-produced Black Noise album by German artist Pantha du Prince. It’s described as minimal house or minimal techno, but it seems to me that only covers part of what he’s doing – with krautrocky elements, a bit of an African influence, almost folktronic hints and a really lush sound.

Sydney (or central coast) artist Edwin Montgomery is on a roll, and has released two albums for free download at his website. Topography just uses a Roland SH2 monophonic analog synthesiser – yes, just a monophonic synth, with loop and delay pedals. It’s quite a lovely ambient and nostalgic sound.
Continuing the synth nostalgia, we have a couple more tracks from Brooklyn’s Oneohtrix Point Never, and then Edwin gives us one of the pieces from his other recent album, 4 Violins – beautiful layered violin drones.

Keeping it stringy, cellist Danny Norbury contributes the first of tonight’s tracks from Ian Hawgood’s Home Normal label, and it’s a remix (or reworking) of Ian Hawgood’s own work. From the same CD, we also had a fabulous folktronic feast from Color Cassette.

Next up, one-time folktronic poster-boy Minotaur Shock teams up with one of the members of the Iskra String Quarte for the second entry in the L-O-A-F Explorers’ Club. Something a bit different for Minotaur Shock and one of the best things I’ve heard of his in ages.

BJ Nilsen’s productions are still new to me, and pretty friggin’ awesome. Source material can be field recordings, strange objects or musical instruments, and everything has a generous helping of computer processing. It’s not unlike what Machinefabriek is doing, but the results, in terms of track structures and probably sonic intentions, are quite unique. The first track we heard tonight starts with digitally distorted birds, abruptly chops off, and then grows into this almost electric organ thing.

Next up, Justin Broadrick & Andrew Broder aren’t really a pair you’d expect to see together on vinyl, but the latest 7″ in Hidden Hive’s Kissing Kin series doesn’t just split sides between them – they’re two collaborations, with Broadrick’s familiar Jesu onslaught of guitars and drum machines, and Broder’s familiar Fog drawl. Strangely, it works. More please!

After more Pikelet, we skipped back to 1990 and the second Necks album. I still remember buying this album, with its original artwork (so sad that they changed it for the reissue). Shorter tracks, unlike most live Necks gigs, and some interesting instrumentation and studio experimentation. Their gig this Friday night at the Metro in Sydney can’t come highly enough recommended from me.
From 1990 Sydney back to the early ’80s, Patrick Gibson gives us a little bit of ambient electronica. I never cease to be amazed at how nonchalantly forward-looking people like these, Severed Heads and others were around this time.
Perhaps also forward-looking, albeit released on cassette, are Brisbane’s Axxonn. At least the cassette releases come with a free download, and Bandcamp very sensibly allow you to choose pretty much any format you like for downloading purposes. Axxonn’s music is powerful stuff, and the beautiful chord progressions and saturated noise are all-enveloping here.

Rejoining the lovely Home Normal, we have one track of glitchy acoustic guitar from offthesky, the processed vocals and drone of L / M / R / W, and the very chilly ambience of Konntinent.

No other new artists in the rest of the playlist, but the last Pikelet selection from her new album has a sweet little bit off the original piano-and-vocal demo version (“Take Off The Face Paint”) which she was selling at gigs in 2008; so I thought we should hear another of those tracks. “My Piano” features some very nimble piano playing and multi-tracked vocals.

Pikelet – Toby Light [Chapter Music]
The Makers of the Dead Travel Fast – Tael Of A Saeghors [M²/Ascension Records]
Height/Dismay – Untitled [M²/Vinyl on Demand]
The Atlas Room – Iris [demo]
Pantha du Prince – lay in a shimmer [Rough Trade]
The Atlas Room – Dendrite [demo]
Edwin Montgomery – Waves of Trilithium [self-released] {free download from his website!}
Oneohtrix Point Never – Behind the Bank [No Fun Productions]
Oneohtrix Point Never – Betrayed in the Octagon [No Fun Productions]
Edwin Montgomery – 4 Violins – I [self-released] {free download from his website!}
Ian Hawgood – A Film By Danny Norbury [Home Normal]
Ian Hawgood – A Film By Color Cassette [Home Normal]
Minotaur Shock and J Underwood – Monodon Monoceros [L-O-A-F]
BJ Nilsen – Scientia [Touch]
Justin Broadrick & Andrew Broder – Nowhere [Hidden Hive]
Pikelet – Swooping Buzzards [Chapter Music]
The Necks – Garl’s/Nice Policeman Nasty Policeman [Spiral Scratch, reissued on Fish of Milk]
Patrick Gibson – Bland A [M²/Ascension Records]
Axxonn – Urine Mote [Bedroom Suck] (cassette+download – or digital from Bandcamp)
offthesky – Light Like [Home Normal]
L / M / R / W – Clay [Home Normal]
Konntinent – Frost Fair [Home Normal]
BJ Nilsen – Into Its Coloured Rays [Touch]
Pikelet – Face Paint [Chapter Music]
Pikelet – My Piano [self-released]
Scattered Order – Personal Safety [M²/Ascension Records]
Pantha du Prince – es schneit [Rough Trade]

Listen again — ~ 175MB

WORST
CASE
SCENARIO
(first draft)
What a great song to start off tonight’s show! Violin, post-Tom Waits dirty roots giving way to artsy indie rock. deUS’ first album has been “gently remastered” and this came from the Deluxe version with bonus CD and DVD. I haven’t even watched the latter yet, but it’s a stone-cold Belgian classic.

Meanwhile, LISTEN AGAIN if you wish – link at bottom!

We had a remarkable amount of violin-led postrock, folk and indie tonight. We started with Queenslanders Bremen Town Musician, violin in the foreground, and an angular rock backing. Next up, Slow Six, from their third album. I haven’t yet heard the others, one of which is all classical arrangements and sounds fascinating, but here the violin is mixed up in the traditional postrock dynamics, making for a very distinctive sound.
On the same label, Balmorhea have a new album coming, and if this preview is anything to go by it’ll eclipse their last effort and then some. Stunning banjo, strings and percussion… We also had a reprise (from a few weeks back) of Peter Broderick’s charming remix of the band, in which he narrates his thoughts while building up one of his gorgeous layered numbers with strings and vocals.

Newcomer Charlie Alex March follows, coincidentally turning up with a brace of string arrangements in his pocket. It’s a confusing album, mixing almost-cheesy electronics with tightly arranged emotion-imbued strings, but at its best it’s highly successful.
I feel I could keep playing tracks from Owen Pallett’s week in and week out, and I probably will. He’s a goshdarned genius and I hope he graces our shores again this year.

Speaking of goshdarned genius, how about Cerberus Shoal, eh? If you don’t know them, or much of their stuff, then I too was so afflicted until late last year. I’m catching up and gave little overview tonight. They mutated into the exquisite acoustic Americana practitioners Fire on Fire and released an album as such on Michael Gira’s Young God last year, but I hear that they’re still around as Cerberus Shoal too. In any case, a few tracks from a few different releases, and also a track from Herman Düne from the split CD between the two bands. Oh boy, I have to find more by Herman Düne! European indie-folk or something…

We edge our way back into the electronic realm via Savvas Ysatis & 12k supremo Taylor Deupree, bringing some beautiful shoegazey folk. Then we’re into the more electric shoegaze of Konntinent, whose tracks tonight garnered quite a bit of interest from listeners. He’s a bit of a hidden gem, and I hope he can get some recognition, as his two albums so far are very fine efforts. We had one track from his debut album (released by Japanese label Symbolic Interaction) and then another from the new one on sterling English label Home Normal, showcasing his glitchy beats and textures.

And then we had a pretty serious feature on new releases by Machinefabriek. Seriously, you should go and download De Jonge Jaren (2001-2004), featuring (unsurprisingly) music recorded between 2001 & 2004, and handed out to friends and acquaintances in tiny CDR editions. It’s great stuff, unlike the drone and sound-art he’s best known for in that it features beats and more “normally” structured tracks, but still with plenty of processing and a fantastic ear for sonic texture.
Meanwhile, he’s got three new 3″ CDs out, and we heard something from each – two of them constructed from processed field recordings, and one made from guitar sounds. Finally, his collaboration with Leo Fabriek, Mariska Baars (who doesn’t appear on this track) & Wouter van Veldhoven is another beautiful low-key coup for Home Normal, wrapping you up in its tinkling beauty.

Most of the rest of the show was dedicated to the music of Melbournian Philip Brophy, who’s been around for yonks, pioneering the use of synthesisers along with peeps like David Chesworth. He’s equally comfortable making melodic electronica of all sorts and more conceptual sound art. His I Am Piano from last year explores the timbres of the piano via granulated processing of a number of jazz piano greats, while other tracks were made to accompany an Andy Warhol film, another short film, and a couple of events at the Melbourne Planetarium. While Brophy’s liner notes can seem somewhat (self-?)mocking in their art-punk way, and the Sound Punch releases’ packaging is presumably deliberately kitschy to the point of being blindingly ugly, he has an incredible body of work that should be heard by more people.

Finally, my FBi colleague Andrew Maxam of Friday night’s Liquid Electric passed on his debut EP under the new Loopsnake moniker, and it’s high-quality dubstep-infused stuff. Nice clattering beats and bass on the last track track, also the last track for tonight!

deUS – w.c.s. (first draft) [Island]
Bremen Town Musician – Governor Wren [self-released]
Slow Six – These Rivers Between Us [Western Vinyl]
Balmorhea – Bowsprit [Western Vinyl] {wonderful promo for new album – find it here (for instance)}
Balmorhea – November 1, 1832 (Peter Broderick remix) [Western Vinyl/Longtime Listener]
Charlie Alex March – Melodie [L-O-A-F]
Owen Pallett – Midnight Directives [Domino]
Charlie Alex March – Mao [L-O-A-F]
Cerberus Shoal – Train Car Nursery [North East Indie]
Herman Düne – That Woman is a Murderess [North East Indie]
Cerberus Shoal – Sweetie [North East Indie]
Cerberus Shoal – The Land We All Believe In [North East Indie]
Savvas Ysatis & Taylor Deupree – live ice on a summer’s day [12k]
Konntinent – Numeral [Home Normal]
konntinent – This Searing Heat [Symbolic Interaction]
Konntinent – Surrender Number [Home Normal]
Machinefabriek – Kalite [Machinefabriek] {free download album of old stuff, De Jonge Jaren (2001-2004). Go grab it — it’s awesome!}
Machinefabriek – Slovensko 2 [Machinefabriek]
Machinefabriek – Ax [Machinefabriek]
Machinefabriek – The Breathing Water [Machinefabriek]
L / M / R / W – Tegendraads [Home Normal]
Machinefabriek – The Shopping mall [Machinefabriek] {also from De Jonge Jaren (2001-2004).}
Philip Brophy – I Am Andrew Hill [Sound Punch]
Philip Brophy – Blooming Pout [Sound Punch]
Philip Brophy – Whispering in the Dark [Sound Punch]
Philip Brophy – Deep Space / Super Nova / Blue Dwarf / Black Hole [Sound Punch]
Loopsnake – Diamond Sign VIP [self-released]

Listen again — ~ 176MB

Good evening! Many monstrous and wonderful noises tonight!
LISTEN AGAIN link goes at the bottom, after this huge essay.

Starting with a pretty amazing collaboration between the legendary Tony Conrad, C. Spencer Yeh (see next track!) and Norwegian bassist Michael F. Duch. Harpsichord and piano scintillations give way to dual-violin drones and scrapes, while Duch holds a bass pedal. Wondrous stuff…
Spencer’s new Burning Star Core album is in fact an old album, from a number of years ago, but originally released in a very small tour run on his own label. Hospital Productions give it their beautiful glossy treatment for this release, and it’s pretty stunning acoustic drone stuff. It may be half a decade down the line, but it still could be game-changing in its way!

More strings follow, courtesy of Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra, still going strong. Maybe I should do a little retrospective on them in a coming show. They’ve dropped the Tra-La-La Band probably because of a change of line-up, but they still have the incredible propulsive bass of Theirry Amar, and violins from Sophie Trudeau and Jessica Moss, along with Efrim Menuck’s guitar and vocals. A pretty rockin’ number was my choice!

I can’t tell you how excited I was to get the CD edition of My Brightest Diamond’s four Shark Remixes EPs this week! Four quite different artists, with backgrounds in classical music (like Shara Worden herself) as well as electronic and your usual Ashmatic Kitty-style indie – really interesting filters for Worden’s work. First comes from the relatively little-known Alfred Brown, with a wonderful bass rumble in the middle.

Melbourne postrockers Radiant City have a new album on its way, but meanwhile you can grab the single “Two Against Eight” from their website. We heard an excellent slow-growing remix that’s exclusive to the CD single.
To follow them up, Sydney improv Forenzics bring us their singular sound. With electric bass central to the mix, along with guitar, percussion and electronic elements, it’s fascinating listening.

Apropos of nothing much, a little spray from the amazing anarcho-punks Crass. It’s a stone-cold classic and mixes raucous punk with off-key post-punk keyboards and bass, plus right-on political lyrics.

Then some wonderful noise from, in this case, Deterioration Yellow Swans – a nice “D” word to preface them with for a 2008 album of the same name. Call it drone, noise, or whatever you like, it’s beautiful as well as harsh. Fabulous stuff.
We follow it with a track from Carlos Giffoni’s new album, in which he explores analogue synths in his own special way…
And then, on Carlos’ No Fun Productions, Emeralds take us on a synthesised journey into the sea of information… while Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin takes us in the hyperdawn with his sequenced synths & melodies.
And yes, that’s him on guitar in the next track too! Plus nice lo-fi production and noises going on.

The wonderful Leeds band The Boats then take us in more of an IDM/techno direction with a track from one of their very limited CDR editions. Sounding very mid-’90s I guess.
London wunderkind Bullion is doing wonderful things in the wonky arena and related. This features some cute samples and creates a nicely psychedelic pop feel.
And in a similar vein, Eskmo’s sampled vocals are the icing on the cake of this incredible cross-rhythmic wonky tune. What do I mean by “cross-rhythmic”? You’ll have to listen to the interplay between the beats, the bass and the vocal samples to hear how he swaps between swung rhythms and duples (2s and 4s), often pitting one against the other – it’s a typical wonky/dubstep technique which the lesser producers don’t always understand.

We follow with the other artists remixing My Brightest Diamond. Amazing anticon artist Son Lux combines classical and electronic in the most dance-oriented remix, with quite a dazzling arrangement — after which Ecuadorian ex-pat Roberto C. Lange adds South American percussion to loops and minimalist classicisim.
Finally we have two sort-of untitled tracks from fellow Asthmatic Kitty artist and long-time friend of Worden’s DM Stith. I chose these as the most sideways approaches to her work — one with Stith’s own lovely vocals brought to the fore.

And yes, there’s a new Four Tet album out. His angel echoes to us that There’s love in you, and I’m sure there is…
Israeli soprano Hila Baggio brings us a famous madrigal by William Holborne from the 16th century, with very subtle treatments from the Dub Mentor, as part of a series of singles called Allergy To Consciousness. I’m not sure if they’d heard the ambient/dub/techno remixes of Miranda Sex Garden, but I sure remember them – and I still have the CD single, so here you go — enjoy some early ’90s ambient why don’tcha!

After confessing to me last week that he doesn’t really get all this drone music, Melbourne’s part timer decided he’d try his hand at it, and emailed me the results. I keep falling for this – somehow it made it on air! Maybe it’s because it’s really great.
And we close with a very beautiful and bass-heavy drone work from ex-Northern Territorian Robert Curgenven, whose work melds field recordings and musical elements in a way that few have done as successfully. Hopefully you’ll hear an interview when Rob is in Sydney in March.

Tony Conrad/C. Spencer Yeh/Michael F. Duch – Musculus Trapezius (excerpt) [Pica Disk]
Burning Star Core – inside the shadow (w. metals) [Hospital Productions]
Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra – I Built Myself A Metal Bird [Constellation]
My Brightest Diamond vs Alfred Brown – You Are Now Untouchable (Esto Perpetue) [Asthmatic Kitty]
Radiant City – Urban Drilled (Urban Drill remix by Marcus Newman [Wireless Records]
Forenzics – womb 1.0 [4N6]
Crass – You’re Already Dead [Crass Records]
Deterioration Yellow Swans – Reintegration [Modern Radio]
Carlos Giffoni – The Hermit [Hospital Productions]
Emeralds – Alive in the Sea of Information [No Fun Productions]
Oneohtrix Point Never – Hyperdawn [No Fun Productions]
Oneohtrix Point Never – I Know It’s Taking Pictures From Another Plane (Inside Your Sun) [No Fun Productions]
The Boats – cars, bikes, boats, babes (version) [Our Small Ideas]
Bullion – Say Goodbye To What [Bullion Bandcamp]
Eskmo – Let Them Sing [Planet µ]
My Brightest Diamond vs Son Lux – Inside A Boy [Asthmatic Kitty]
My Brightest Diamond vs Roberto C. Lange – Queen [Asthmatic Kitty]
My Brightest Diamond vs DM Stith – ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Asthmatic Kitty]
Four Tet – Angel echoes [Domino]
Hila Baggio – Gush Forth, My Tears (ATC version, treated by Dub Mentor) [EnT-T]
Miranda Sex Garden – Gush Forth My Tears (The First Steppes Mix by Thrash, Fortran 5 & PK) [Mute]
part timer – 5 pillars [direct from artist]
Robert Curgenven – Gran Coda Andante [LINE]

Listen again — ~ 183MB