A small flood (yes. A small flood) of 3″ CDs tonight, among the excellent new releases.
The Machinefabriek is from a late 2008 release that I only just got hold of. Beautiful detailed minimalism, occasional distorted outbursts and acoustic guitar licks among the hum and static. I’ll play another excerpt next week hopefully.
John Oswald brings us tonight’s tribute (if you like) to the recently departed King of Pop (as the newspapers inform me he was… I’d be more inclined to nominate Daniel Rossen or Andrew Bird but there you go).
James Blackshaw has a new album out for 2008, and he’s found his home at the wondrous Young God Records, a very suitable venue for his cyclical guitar/piano works, beautifully augmented here with wordless vocals, violin and cello. Fire on Fire remind us that Young God released another of my favourite albums of the year so far.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting Years’ album since I heard a preview track at Arts&Crafts’ site, and it doesn’t disappoint. Ohad Benchetrit of Toronto’s Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene brings us glitchy acoustic guitars and drum edits, joyful horn sections and more. Awesome.
Two classical-sampling Busdriver tracks (see below) follow, showcasing his astounding vocal prowess.
And then we get to Nosaj Thing, with more of that west-coast USA wonky sound. Nosaj Thing’s music harks back to the blissful melodies and basslines of idm as much as it references dubstep’s bassline growl and relaxed tempos, but whatever you call it, it’s irresistible.
Nice to hear new Lusine on Ghostly International, with an update idm’s vocal snippet love. And more quasi-grime (? I dunno) from Milanese and Two Fingers, collaborating with some excellent vocalists.
Speaking of vocals, Venetian Snares sings on his latest EP, Horsey Noises, and… I won’t comment on the lyrics, but it’s vintage VSnares, especially on the remix I played.
Melbourne’s Buttress O’Kneel played an awesome on Saturday night at the Liquid Architecture 10th birthday gig. For some reason the track I played tonight wasn’t breakcore at all, despite following Snares. You should download heaps of BO’K from Alias Frequencies for free right now!
We had more from Bibio, and followed it with two tracks from an amazing CD/book boxset on the Kning Disk label. Sydney’s own The Dead Sea contributed the gorgeous final track, which also appears on their debut album. And there’s also something new from the brilliant Hans Appelqvist.
And then a couple more of those 3″s. Melbourne’s Part Timer has released an EP called Taped Recordings, which I assume is just that, although as usual quite a few are wonderful clicky folktronica, as well as featuring acoustic guitar and tape noises. Lovely packaging, available direct from the artist for a mere $10.
And we had another of Peter Broderick’s lovely Film Score Outtakes.
Canberran duo Spartak are touring in a week and a bit to launch their new EP, from which we took an evocative track tonight. Dirty Shirlows, Thursday June 9th. Marcus Whale is putting the gig on, and we took another excellent track from his duo Collarbones afterwards.
Then something weird and wonderful that I found via a City Slang sampler: Panda Bear remixing (well actually covering) The Notwist! And then, just because I can, one of my favourite songs – Thee More Shallows’ 2 A.M. Could listen to this on repeat just about forever…
More amazing indiefolk from Townsville’s The Middle East, and rounding it out with some new and not-so-new Dirty Projectors. Sing it: BITTE ORCA, ORCA BITTE!

Machinefabriek – Stukjes 3-8 [Machinefabriek (White)]
John Oswald – dab (by “Alien Chasm Jock”, a scrambled Michael Jackson) [pfony]
James Blackshaw – Cross [Young God]
Fire on Fire – Haystack [Young God]
Years – The Assassination of Dow Jones [Arts&Crafts]
Years – The Major Lift [Arts&Crafts]
Busdriver – Me – Time (With The Pulmonary Palminpsest) [Anti-] {sampling from Mozart’s Ronda a la Turka}
Busdriver – Imaginary Places [Temporary Whatever] {sampling from the Badinerie from Bach’s Orchestral suite BWV 1067}
Nosaj Thing – Fog [Alpha Pup]
Lusine – Two Dots [Ghostly International]
Nosaj Thing – Lords [Alpha Pup]
Milanese – Disclosure (ft. Ben Sharpa) [Planet µ]
Two Fingers feat. Sway & Sweet P – Not Perfect [Ninja Tune]
Venetian Snares – Horsey Noisers [Planet µ]
Buttress O’Kneel – Imagination [via Alias Frequencies]
Bibio – haikuesque (when she laughs) [Warp]
The Dead Sea – Nulla Desiderata [Kning Disk]
Hans Appelqvist – Hälsingar Från Skogen [Kning Disk]
Part Timer – Taped Recording 1 [self-released]
Peter Broderick – Film Score Outtake 5 [Secret Furry Hole]
Part Timer – Taped Recording 6 [self-released]
Spartak – In a Field of Light [hellosQuare]
Collarbones – Weatherman [Internet Archive – free download!]
The Notwist – Boneless (Panda Bear remix) [City Slang]
Thee More Shallows – 2 A.M. [Monotreme]
The Middle East – Blood [Spunk]
Dirty Projectors – Useful Chamber [Domino]
Dirty Projectors – Thirsty and Miserable [Dead Oceans]
Dirty Projectors – Bitte Bitte Orca [Domino]

New! Listen again: part 1; part 2; part 3.

Good evening! We’re saving FBi all month! Goto http://www.fbiradio.com/ to donate or sign up as a supporter – or, during the day, call 1300 FBI 945.
Wonderful Canberran due Spartak return this week with a new EP, from which we had one long track at the start and another later on.
Bibio‘s new album, his first for Warp, is a corker. Combining his pastoral murky folktronica with Prefuse-style glitch-hop and excellent vocals, it should make a lot of people very happy.
Collarbones are Sydney/Adelaide duo Marcus Whale and Travis Cook, mixing crunchy beats, vocals and processed sounds. You should download the EP right now! (see below)
Moderat is Apparat & Modeselektor teaming up for some lovely indietronica and 2step/dubstep-influenced technoish stuff. Obviously the single, Rusty Nails, is a little slice of pop genius, but the Busdriver collab is also awesome. Much more from Busdriver next week methinks, but two tracks from his album this week. Some of the best alt.hop out there :)
Cheap Red is the latest incarnation of Steward & Jen of 555 Recordings of Flagstaff, AZ (late of Leeds, UK), with some friends. Charming trashy indiepunkpop. The album comes with a bonus CD of remixes, and Bracken turns in a characteristic slice of brilliance, with wobblywobbly bass, totally transforming the original.
Milanese‘s new album is his most grimey yet, with awesome bass action going on, and his usual scrunched up vocals (mostly by Ben Sharpa). Followed by a nice bit of tech-step from years back by µ-Ziq, and an awesome bit of new drum’n’bass from Survival.
Longtime listeners will have heard a lot by the boats on Utility Fog. Their latest features a lot of minimal dubby electronica, but also some great folktronica with vocals by Chris Stewart.
Of Dragging Pianos I know little except that they write great indiepop and there’s some connection with The Middle East. Lee Tran Lam has more at the Local Fidelity blog.
sleeps in oysters put out a lovely folktronic mini-album last year, but I missed out on the comp that tonight’s track comes from. If anything, even better than their other stuff!
And you can imagine I couldn’t possibly resist Lucky Dragons remixing Dirty Projectors. To be honest, it probably didn’t turn out as awesome as I’d hoped, but still very nice stuff.
Orla Wren makes a reappearance after last week, and will hopefully be hanging around for a bit longer – there’s a lot to digest on that album.
Peter Broderick‘s film music features himself on piano, cello, violin, guitar and laptop, and is beautiful quiet stuff. His remix of soccer Committee & Machinefabriek is also a beauty.
And finally, a new cover by Daniel Rossen – always going to be magical stuff, and indeed it is. The compilation is comes from (see below – it’s a free download right now) looks to be great too. Wahoo!

Spartak – Sleet/Skid [hellosQuare]
Bibio – cry ! baby ! [Warp]
Clark – Ted (Bibio Remix) [Warp]
Bibio – s’vive [Warp]
Collarbones – Paper Dolls [Internet Archive – free download!]
Moderat – Rusty Nails [BPitch Control]
Cheap Red – 3 Day Drunk (Bracken Remix) [555 Recordings of Flagstaff, AZ]
Moderat – BeatsWaySick (feat. Busdriver) [BPitch Control]
Busdriver – Split Seconds (Between Nannies and Swamis) [Anti-]
Milanese – The End [Planet µ]
µ-Ziq – Approaching Menace [Planet µ/Virgin]
Survival – Terrain [Exit Records]
the boats – service before self [home normal]
Gareth Davis & Machinefabriek – Soundlines I [Machinefabriek (White)]
the boats – we sometimes forget [home normal]
Spartak – The Distance From Here To Time [hellosQuare]
Dragging Pianos – Food Chain #2 [from FBi show Local Fidelity‘s wonderful CDR]
The Middle East – Beleriand [Spunk]
Dirty Projectors – Two Doves [Domino]
sleeps in oysters – new pressed pennies [Seed Records]
Dirty Projectors – Stillness is the Move (Lucky Dragons remix) [Domino]
Orla Wren – The Unbowed Hand [Flau]
Peter Broderick – Film Score Outtake 3 [Secret Furry Hole]
soccer Committee / Machinefabriek – christopher (for suzanne) (Peter Broderick remix) [Machinefabriek]
soccer Committee / Machinefabriek – for i have none [digitalis/morc]
Daniel Rossen – Waterfall (cover of Judee Sill) [American Dust] {download from Stereogum!}
Busdriver – Unsafe Sextet/Gilded Hearts of Booklovers [Anti-]

New! Listen again: part 1; part 2; part 3.

Tonight’s big event was the broadcast of Sydney musician/sound artist Roger Mills‘ incredible multi-stream project Idea of South (more info at the link).
We started with an Iranian lullaby from the new Kronos Quartet album, apposite tonight as Iran seems on the brink of revolution after the shamefully (if not surprisingly) rigged election results. Realtime info has been available on Twitter, even while little appeared in the mainstream media.
Not in any way related, the track that followed was from Townsville’s wonderful indie-folk-thingy band The Middle East. A band to watch, if ever there was one.
I’ve been playing a lot of Sweet Billy Pilgrim lately, and was finally able this week to play something from their first album. Beautiful stuff, if not quite as scintillating as the new one.
Another track, also, from the inspired collaboration between chris weisman & greg davis – quirky (if not downright kooky) songs from Weisman, expanded, broken up and refracted through Greg Davis’s superb production.
After the Idea of South broadcast, two more tracks from Scanner‘s new album, both sampling vocals of one sort or another, and separated by Dublin’s Herv, longtime resident of Utility Fog’s playlists courtesy of the very broad range of influences he brings to his electronica.
Two drum’n’bass tracks on Exit Records, as I got hold of the new Survival album this week. After dBridge‘s excellent album last year, I hoped this would be good and it sure is. Signs that there’s still life in the d’n’b scene – it’s not just big pop anthems and rewinds.
A reprise of Sydney trio forced perspective‘s excellent three-track EP from last year – hopefully an album’s on the way from these guys.
Only fitted in one track from Dirty Projectors tonight, one of any number of highlights from the new album. Maybe next week I’ll fit in a couple of older tracks and at least one new one. Much though I’m enjoying it, I think we’ll avoid the more Led Zep-influenced tracks for this show :)
A very fine track from Sydney’s Dead Letter Chorus, remixing themselves in collaboration with their now-ex-bassist Andrew Rose. A good indie band remix can work wonders, and this is lovely stuff.
One of a couple of older things I picked up this week, Re:‘s track comes from their second album on Constellation – predominantly field recordings, drones and clattering beats, but this track has beautiful piano chords in amongst it all. Meanwhile, Orla Wren‘s album is quintessential folktronica, the quietest kind – you’ll be hearing more of this in coming weeks.
Sydney’s Nadene Pita, a violist and singer, just released her debut album, recorded in collaboration with the fabulous Tony Dupé, and we took a beautiful wordless improvisatory piece, with loops and skittery jazz drums. It was followed by more strings, from an amazing drone album of Jim O’Rourke‘s from the early ’90s.
Another track (see last week) from koen park‘s remixes (etc) album, in which he remixes Japanese shoegaze band all apologies with some rather lovely stringy sounds, leads into more string drone, from A Broken Consort – one of the better-known monikers of Richard Skelton.
And we finished off with some post-classical music of a rather different bent, math baroque maybe? From last year’s album by Pattern Is Movement, very cool (alright, maybe “cool” is not the right word…)

Kronos Quartet – Lullaby (traditional Iranian) [Nonesuch]
The Middle East – The Darkest side [Spunk]
Sweet Billy Pilgrim – God In The Details [Wonderland Avenue]
Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Longshore Drift [SamadhiSound]
chris weisman & greg davis – new americans [autumn records]
Idea of South – 30 minute simultaneous broadcast on FBi and 2SER, and net stream. A unique multicast experience!
Scanner – Broken Faultline [BineMusic]
Herv – Sometimes Open, Sometimes Absent [Acroplane] {free download, as with all Acroplane releases!}
Scanner – The Last European [BineMusic]
Survival – Walk On By [Exit Records]
dBridge – Cast A Cold Eye [Exit Records]
forced perspective – exit strategy [self-released]
Dirty Projectors – Fluorescent Half Dome [Domino]
Dead Letter Chorus – Down In Your Valley (Dead Letter Disco Remix) [Code One]
Re: – Pawk [Constellation]
Orla Wren – First Wooden Words [Flau]
Nadene Pita – Burn [self-released]
Jim O’Rourke – ascend through unspoken shadow [Drag City]
all apologies – air (ian hawgood remix) [i, absentee]
A Broken Consort – Weight of Days [Sustain-Release] {also available on Tompkins Square}
Pattern Is Movement – bird [Home Tapes]

New! Listen again: part 1; part 2; part 3.

For the next month we’re doing everything we can to Save FBi, with gigs galore. If you’ve enjoyed Utility Fog over the years, we’d love you to either come along to some of these gigs, or maybe consider donating or becoming a supporter of the station. More suggestions and supplications through the month. This is important stuff – the station’s future is really on the line, which means this show’s future along with it!

I started with the rare event of playing my own band – not so much because we have a new album coming out shortly (*ahem*) but because Sunday Night At The Movies was playing the wonderful Buttress O’Kneel, and I have a stash of 5 incredible remixes she did for us over a year ago, that we haven’t managed to release yet. I think we’ll get them out not toooo long after our fourth album proper, Fourthcoming, drops.
Followed this with a few tracks from the amazing Andrew Coleman aka Animals on Wheels, who’s started releasing new music again. We had an old favourite from his drill’n’bass days (back in 1997), a track from his excellent new dubstep single, and a glorious bit of folktronica from a 2001 album under his own name.
Following this, I had an in-depth chat with Roger Mills, whose Idea of South we’re taking part in next Sunday. It comprises three broadcasts – ours on FBi, simultaneously with 2SER and a netcast – intended to be listened to simultaneously. On-air at 10:30pm next week. Check the Idea of South page for full info.
Then we had a couple more tracks from Arbouse‘s Musique pour Statues-Menhirs comp, two different styles of ambient music from Austrian maestro Fennesz and English artist Orla Wren.
Telafonica are on a roll at the moment, and this track is from a promo for a gig they’re doing on June 11th at Bar Me in Kings Cross. As always, excellent indietronica. Also Telafonica member Lessons in Time with an excellent track I’ve played before.
When I grabbed Animals on Wheels‘ new EP on La Madame Avec Le Chien, I also picked up a compilation called Tail Wagging Music, and tonight featured two tracks from there. Miami’s Sindri contribute a lovely piece of piano-and-glitch, while Emergency Broadcast System‘s track is idm with chopped-up hip-hop vocals.
More chopped up vocals come courtesy of koen park/Ian Hawgood, whose 2CD set remixes, reworkings and reimaginings I got hold of this week. A very limited release (mine’s #45/100!), one CD has remixes of Koen Park, and the other is remixes by him. Lots of great idm/folktronica there. Great to see entertainment for the braindead there, who I came across via Melbourne’s part timer. Also had a couple of tracks from his releases on acroplane (all of which are free downloads!) and one from his part in a triple-3″ CD set on the lovely Mobeer.
Penultimately, we had a wonderful 20 minute piece from Richard Skelton in his Heidika guise, one of a number of releases I picked up from his Sustain-Release Private Press – wonderful hand-made pieces of art/music. Heidika is probably his most electronic guise, although a lot of it could be hurdy-gurdy(?) – beautiful drone.
And finally, Lich is the new dubstep alias of idm/drill’n’bass/breakcore artist Wisp, who has a new album out on Rephlex. This, however, is from Terminal Dusk‘s new 4-track vinyl compilation Azure. I was hoping this would be a full compilation CD, like their previous (a breakcore comp called Crimson), but perhaps we’ll have to wait for that. Four great tracks here anyway.

FourPlay String Quartet – 2+2=5 (ThoughtCrime Mix by Buttress O’Kneel) [unreleased!]
Animals on Wheels – Hate Me [iLL]
Animals on Wheels – Ball [La Madame Avec Le Chien]
Andrew Coleman – plot lost sixteen [Thrill Jockey]
…Chatting to Roger Mills, whose 3-way multicast Utility Fog will be participating in next week. It’s called Idea of South – follow the link for more info!…
Roger Mills – Three Sisters [UCM Production]
Fennesz – Sundial [Arbouse]
Orla Wren – The climbing rope [Arbouse]
Telafonica – The Quest For Love Aboard The Belafonte [unreleased promo – I assume!]
Sindri – Impromptu [La Madame Avec Le Chien]
Lessons in Time – How very good this feeling is [4-4-2 music]
Emergency Broadcast System – Waiting For Dorsal [La Madame Avec Le Chien]
koen park – i fall into you (falling into you remix by das rote telefon) [i, absentee]
entertainment for the braindead – colors (washed with pastel remix by ian hawgood) [i, absentee]
koen park – Computers As Brains [acroplane] {free download label!}
koen park – Computers Are Not Our Friends [acroplane] {free download label!}
Ian Hawgood – Map Rusu [Mobeer]
ryu furusawa – A Starlit Night [Mobeer]
Heidika – Tide of Bells [Sustain-Release]
Lich – The Bahamut [Terminal Dusk]

New! Listen again: part 1; part 2; part 3.