Spooky acoustic doom, spoken word, industrial influences, Egyptian-Parisian jazz, jungle and dubstep and bass, and… double bass!

LISTEN AGAIN to the sound of now. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Kelly Lee Owens – Rituals [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Like last year’s super LP.8, the four tracks on companion EP LP.8.2 were co-produced with Norwegian sound-specialist Lasse Marhaug. If anything these tracks take her further into experimental climes, but her sumptuous vocals ground the works. Still, check those glitchy beats in the latter part of the opening track! So thankful to have more of this stuff.

Aperture – Siren [Stray Signals/Bandcamp]
WSR – No Horizon [Contort/Bandcamp]
Aperture – In These Awkward Voids [Other/Other Recordings/Bandcamp]
Aperture – Weightless [Stray Signals/Bandcamp]
Siblings Elisabetta and Emanuele Porcinai, Italians based in Berlin, work together in various ways. Elisabetta’s artwork has adorned the releases by Emanuele under the name WSR – beautifully strange mixes of industrial & bass influences with bowed guitars and glitched acoustic textures – as well as other releases from the wider Berlin scene that Emanuele has appeared in. But with Threads in 2018 the brother & sister became a musical duo, Aperture, in which Elisabetta’s poetic spoken words, in Italian and English, are embedded in Emanuele’s productions. The debut album was described as an exploration of “aural intimacy”, an apt description also of their follow-up Stanze five years later. The self-described intimacy is achieved through explicitly spatial mixing and recording techniques, in which acoustic and electronic sounds creep and rattle around virtual rooms while the voice whispers close, or finds itself shudderingly degraded through slap delays. Simple poised acoustic guitar or piano lines are interrupted or underlined with huge industrial bass thrums or unplaceable percussive anti-rhythms of found-sound. Many of these techniques are common to both albums, but on the new release the duo are joined by guests on a few tracks – including brief, crushing drums from Andrea Belfi on one track – and notably Elisabetta’s words are sung by Emanuele on two pieces. This is uncompromisingly avant-garde, experimental music, but sonically engrossing in a way that should have broad appeal.

Sara Persico – Fugace [Karlrecords/Bandcamp]
Sara Persico – Boundary [Karlrecords/Bandcamp]
Did someone say industrial-influenced music with spoken word by Berlin-based Italians? This accidental confluence connects two quite different artists, though. Aperture are originally from Milan, and Sara Persico hails from nearly the opposite end of the country, Naples. Persico draws from influences in Naples’ noise scene as much as her creative DJing combining bass-heavy beats with abstract electronics and more. Thus the common elements here – lyrics in Italian & English, spoken word and whispers with short, sharp delays, intimate field recordings – are contextualised in deconstructed club sounds, sometimes pounding beats, and at times emotionally direct singing. Boundary is Sara Persico’s debut release, with a full album on its way soon too.

Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy – Pearls for orphans (live) [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
Le Cri du Caire – Pearls for orphans [Les Disques du Festival Permanent]
Le Cri du Caire – Sadiya (Purple feather) [Les Disques du Festival Permanent]
Poet, singer, trumpeter, actor, electronic producer: it seems there’s little that the Europe-based Egyptian Abdullah Miniawy cannot do. He has a long-running collaboration with German trio Carl Gari, fusing dub, techno and trip-hop influences with rapturous sufi singing and jazz trumpet, and those same inputs from Miniawy are present in his 2020 album with French bass producer Simo Cell. His own Bandcamp carries obscure electronic self-productions and poetry, and a different take on pre-Islamic Egyptian spirituality can be found on his collaborative album with Danish producer of Indian descent HVAD (previously Kid Kishore among others). Meanwhile the jazz comes to the fore with the astonishing ensemble Le Cri du Caire. The group started with Miniawy’s meeting with French saxophonist Peter Corser, a little later the legendary French trumpeter Erik Truffaz joined. This is notable enough, but the group really comes together with the addition of Paris-based German cellist Karsten Hochapfel. Sensitive playing and creative arrangements support and augment Miniawy’s songs and compositions, making their self-titled debut album a thrilling listen, whether you’re a fan of jazz or not. It’s very interesting hearing the ensemble’s version of “Pearls for orphans” compared to the version from last year’s live album with Carl Gari – they’re substantially different, but Miniawy’s melodies (and poetry) do tie them together.

Happy Axe – Tiny Animal [Provenance/Bandcamp]
Aphir – Can’t Be Killed [Provenance/Bandcamp]
I mentioned last week that Provenance Collective’s latest compilation Marks of Provenance VI is hella strong. So two tracks last week are followed by two more this week. There are no beats accompanying the violin & vocals from Happy Axe‘s Emma Kelly, but her sweet folky song soon adds reversed sounds into the mix. Last week we heard Aphir‘s frenetic remix of romæo, and this week it’s a Becki Whitton original, with chanting vocals, pitch-shifting and a thumping beat. Long live Provenance!

clipping. – All in Your Head (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Robyn Hood) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
Aeon Four – Shadow Leakage [Straight Up Breakbeat/Bandcamp]
There need be no excuse to play clipping.‘s “All in Your Head”. It’s a perfect song, one of the greatest from one of the greatest groups of the last decade, made untouchable by Robyn Hood‘s incisive raps and Counterfeit Madison‘s glorious singing – and that glorious crescendo. Let’s take a minute and watch that video again, and again.
Anyway, we do have an excuse, because Finnish drum’n’bass duo Aeon Four must have listened and thought “Amen”? Now there’s a jungle reference if ever there was one – and so Madison’s gorgeous vocal becomes a refrain on the title track of their new EP for Straight Up Breakbeat, Shadow Leakage. It took me a minute to place the sample, and then “yikes!” quickly turned to, well, how could you not, after all? And if you’re going to, please make it like this – melancholy keys, intricately programmed beats, heaps of dynamics, and a lovely turn halfway through dropping in some operatic samples as well. Rewind.

Meemo Comma – Kyle [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
The second single cometh from Lara Rix-Martin’s superb new album Loverboy, out soon from Planet µ. Rix-Martin is head honcho of Objects Limited, an imprint focused on artists of marginalised gender, but this album fits her husband’s label to a tee – in fact “Kyle” is basically Rix-Martin doing Mike Paradinas, absolutely pitch-perfect. The album is Rix-Martin’s tribute to ’90s rave in all its glory, and we’ll be hearing more from it very soon.

Cocktail Party Effect – 767 [Nervous Horizon/Bandcamp]
Cocktail Party Effect – Fixing the Roof [Nervous Horizon/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based South Londoner Cocktail Party Effect starts the year with an EP on Nervous Horizon, a London label that’s open to club sounds from around the world (an early release was Lebanese percussion-led bass from our own DJ Plead). So we have beats at all tempos, including a jungle-influenced track and some more head-nodding sounds. The robot-funk of the title track is a helluva thing.

Atrice – Taxon [MIRAS]
Atrice – Digital Lilies [MIRAS]
Great to have a somewhat-full-length from the Swiss duo Atrice. They excel at ultra-syncopated machine funk, somewhere between IDM, breaks, drum’n’bass, techno and bass music. After some top-notch releases on Ilian Tape, Mutualism is released on their own MIRAS label. The brilliant rhythm programming is present here, but there are also a couple of surprisingly lovely almost-jazzy ambient pieces here.

Wraz. – Spooked [Artikal Music/Bandcamp]
Now bass gives way to dubstep. First up, on Artikal Music we have Québecois producer Wraz., with a deliciously dark piece of martial dubstep.

Substrada – Babiru [Infernal Sounds]
E S P – Open Mind [Infernal Sounds]
Stoke-on-Trent-based label Infernal Sounds is a specialist in 140bpm bass music – thus generally dubstep. Their Future Forms comp came out in late Januray, featuring mostly young artists from all around the world. We had a fidgety, head-nodding piece from the Belgian Substrada, complete with pitched-down vocal snaps, and then came closer to home with Brisbane’s E S P, whose track is a blissful piece with smooth bass tones, bell-like synths and burbling dub effects through out.

Rutger Zuydervelt – Haast 1 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Rutger Zuydervelt – Haast 3 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Following last year’s Hinkelstap and Tuimelval, Rutger Zuydervelt continues with his experiments in beats and purely electronic music. Haast has more IDM-ish, glitchy rhythms and nice bass. It’s super different from the usual Machinefabriek fare (or even what Rutger might otherwise put out under his own name), but shows the same attention to sonic detail and musical construction.

Mike Majkowski – Spiral [Fragments Editions]
Australian double bassist Mike Majkowski has for some time now been based in Berlin, getting right in the thick of the improv scene. But his new album Coast has very little to indicate that there’s any double bass at all – it’s two 20-minute tracks of gorgeous throbbing tones – some hints of hi-hats but mostly seemingly electronic, or created through subtle feedback. Both tracks are minimalist and beautifully poised. Leave any expectations at the door and just soak in the ambiance.

Listen again — ~203MB

Various strains of experimental hip-hop, jungle/drum’n’bass influences, dubstep and heavy dubby music, and other weird shit tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN, you’ve got to keep up. Stream on demand via FBi, podcast here.

Andrew Broder – Flash Avenger [Lex Records/Bandcamp]
Andrew Broder – Sleeping Car Porters (feat. Moor Mother & billy woods) [Lex Records/Bandcamp]
A long time coming, Andrew Broder‘s soundtrack to the very strange film THE SHOW by comics auteur, author and magician Alan Moore is finally here! Fragments of THE SHOW (Original Soundtrack) have been released as singles over the last couple of years, and there are many high-profile guests, from Moor Mother & billy woods (presumably recorded circa their own duo album of late 2019) to Denzel Curry, Dua Saleh, Haleek Maul, serpentwithfeet and KAZU. These artists mostly operate in the underground hip-hop scenes in the US, and Broder started off under the alias Fog making lo-fi beats and raps on Ninja Tune, and working as Hymie’s Basement with Yoni Wolf, whose Why? alias eventually became a band. Fog too became a band, melding indie rock and free jazz influences into the hip-hop sound, but Broder’s interest in production led him to hone a high-tech electronic style in many ways the inverse of the old Fog sound. His astonishing work with Joe Rainey on Rainey’s album and 7″ last year is testament to his continuing creativity and production chops, and it’s wonderful to have this set of extensions of cues from THE SHOW film finally available as a solo Andrew Broder album. Broder’s production chops are at their full power, and he is joined by Alistair Sung on cello, CJ Camerieri on horns and the wonderful Mara Carlyle adding additional vocals, along with the many guests. Well worth the wait!

Young Fathers – Shoot Me Down [Ninja Tune/Bandcamp]
Young Fathers – Be Your Lady [Ninja Tune/Bandcamp]
It’s probably 10 years since I discovered Young Fathers, with their Tape Two released by Anticon., including the brilliant non-covers Queen Is Dead, Freefalling and Way Down In The Hole, among others. Three men, all the same age, all named after their fathers, hailing from Edinburgh but two with roots in Liberia / Ghana and Nigeria / USA. The template set on those early releases continues through the last decade to Heavy Heavy, their first album in 5 years. If anything the production is even more dense than ever, with soulful vocals and raps accompanied by layers of samples and instruments and beats. What this adds up to, as always, is nothing short of rapturous, even when the density abates, as at the start of “Be Your Lady”. But yeah, you know something’s coming, and it’s yells and horrifying stomps until the falsetto vocals come in again – and that’s Young Fathers. An insane mélange of sounds that probably shouldn’t go together but there they are.

Teether & Kuya Neil – MYTH [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]
Teether & Kuya Neil – PROCESS (feat. Realname) [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]
A hell of a mixtape here from Naarm/Melbourne underground rapper Teether and producer Kuya Neil. We had a taster a few weeks ago with the amen-breaks-infused single “RENO”, and the rest of the tracks follow a similar trajectory – impeccable productions that reference the distorted, time-out-of-joint club musics of the moment, skittery chopped beats & plenty of bass, with low-key melodic raps from Teether and occasional guests like Realname. Best shit.

The Drizzle – Unruly (Hit The Deck!) (DJ Sofa Remix) [Future Retro]
Tim Reaper continues to push out top quality jungle on his Future Retro label. This 12″ features Eusebeia on the A-side, and a really fun ravey track by an artist remaining anonymous on the flip. Even better is the break-fest of DJ Sofa‘s remix – we should be hearing lots more from her soon.

Redpine & Solo – Warp [Studio Rockers]
Opening the new Studio Rockers @ The Controls Level 5 is one of a few jungle & drum’n’bass tunes before things settle into jazzier climes towards the dubstep roots of the label. Redpine & Solo released two brilliant EPs on the label in 2020, and they return with this driving sci-fi 7/4 jungle monstrosity.

San – Last [Rua Sound]
The techno producer who records jungle as San likes to biggup himself in the hilarious advertorials he posts on his Instagram – but sometimes the talent is undeniable, so yes San is worth it. The Under the Scope EP finds him back on Rua Sound, the forward-thinking jungle label based in the town of Galway on the west coast of Ireland. What you get with San is complex junglisms informed by the darkness of drum’n’bass and comfortable with current-day production values. “Future of jungle” may be a little overblown, but… only a little?

NERVE – Zendo [Heavy Machinery/Bandcamp]
Here it is! Courtesy of the ever-industrious Heavy Machinery Records, here is the debut “proper” EP from Naarm/Melbourne’s Joshua Wells under his NERVE moniker. For the last couple of years, Wells has been releasing excerpts from live sets and other tracks via AR53 and A Colourful Storm. It does feel odd to declare this a debut of any sorts, but it does collect four fantastic NERVE tracks together in a traditional 12″ format – and it’s all heckin’ good. The NERVE style is a special sauce of tightly programmed beats that somehow speak of drum’n’bass while being techno, captured in electro’s straitjacket and smothered in industrial noise. It’s a mixed metaphor for a reason alright? That’s what NERVE is, you need it, don’t deny it.

Slikback – ARMOR [Slikback Bandcamp]
Slikback – HOPE [Slikback Bandcamp]
Is there anyone more prolific, yet consistent, than Slikback at the moment? The Kenyan producer’s Bandcamp features at least an EP a month, then a collaborative track here or there, and then an album like K E S S E K I, ten concise tracks of varied beats, but in keeping with our transition from jungle towards other climes…

exael – wet look [SE:CD]
…but what’s this? It’s naemi aka exael with two tracks of – well, something, for new Berlin imprint SE:CD. We’re informed that this track is classic dubstep trance, but both this and the b-side (do digital releases have b-sides? sure) have bloopy drum machine breaks accelerated and filtered with dubby treatments, all to psychedelic effect. Their aesthetic of pale text on slightly-paler background and washed-out imagery simultaneously references ’90s shoegaze & techno and ’00s vaporwave. It’s all very referential, but in no way reverential, just how it should be.

Roody – Nazanid o [Apranik Records]
SarrSew – Wronka [Apranik Records]
Apranik was a Sasanian military commander and later guerilla leader, a woman leading native Persians against the invading Arab Muslims. She therefore has a strong resonance for the Iranians fighting to remove the oppresive Islamic Republic, which has ruled since the end of the 1970s. Women did have freedom, including the freedom to be leaders, to make art and music, before the religious extremists took over, and the protests that began in September 2022 and continue today were triggered by the murder of a woman, Mahsa Amini, by police for wearing an “improper hijab”. The protesters took up the Woman, Life, Freedom slogan originally used by Kurdish feminists associated with the incredible Jineology movement. And so Apranik Records was recently started by two female Iranian DJs: Nesa Azadikhah, based in Tehran, and AIDA, based in west-coast Canada & USA. Their first release is a compilation titled, of course, WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM and featuring fantastic female Persian electronic artists from across genres – and across the world. The compilation is opened by the wonderful Paris-based singer SarrSew aka Sara Bigdeli Shamloo, one half of 9t Antiope and their Farsi-language Persian-electro-pop alter-ego Taraamoon. The song features her rich, melodic vocals with distorted drones and other electronic weirdness. We also heard from Roody, a renowned Iranian rapper who for some years had to keep her identity secret because of the morality police. Her track is in fact an instrumental – a slightly sinister piece of burbling noises and drum machine beat. The compilation is highly recommended.

Arrom – Pied Currawong [Provenance Records/Bandcamp]
romæo – Good To Look At (Aphir remix) [Provenance Records/Bandcamp]
The Provenance Records label/collective celebrate six years with Marks of Provenance VI, as strong a collective release as they’ve ever made. There’s so much to choose from, including violin-led electronic pop from Happy Axe, an incandescent almost-rap from Aphir, and a pulsating ambient version of a track from Marcus Whale‘s last album. But tonight we have the melodic vocal loops and beats of Melbourne’s Arrom, and Aphir‘s junglist remix of an anthemic tune from Sydney’s romæo.

Glamour Lakes – Unconnected Mobile Phone Towers [Glamour Lakes Bandcamp]
Michael Radzevicius’s most recent work as Glamour Lakes tended to the more ambient spectrum – sometimes glitchy, sometimes tape-scuffed. But recent singles including “Unconnected Mobile Phone Towers” take the Adelaide/Canberra artist back towards the electro-pop world, albeit with hazy production and, on this tune, a hefty dose of amen breaks.

Aiden Marceron & Marcus Whale – interesting35352 [Marcus Whale Bandcamp]
Oh, did I mention Marcus Whale? Well we might not be hearing his Provenance track tonight, but there’s a whole EP out on his Bandcamp, titled 0. On this EP, Marcus hands the production duties over to young US artist Aiden Marceron, whose rather overdriven yet blissful sounds accompany Marcus’s songs about – to quote the man himself – “sexual encounters with inconceivable forces, the feeling of being consumed and transformed and loving it, keeping my eyes wide open”.

Sightless Pit – False Epiphany (feat claire rousay) [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Sightless Pit – The Ocean of Mercy [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Sightless Pit – Resin on a Knife (feat Midwife) [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
When Sightless Pit first appeared in 2020, it featured the remarkable Kristin Hayter alongside Lee Buford of the body and Dylan Walker of Full of Hell. This lineage suggests squalls of heavy metal and hardcore punk with industrial influences, all of which is there, but all three artists are highly explorative, and the beauty of Hayer’s voice (which has often appeared on the body’s albums too) and her piano are present along with a lot of digital interventions & processing with the aid of Seth Manchester, legendary engineer at Machines with Magnets. Hayter announced late last year that she was retiring the Lingua Ignota name due to its association with too much trauma and abuse, and while she is not retiring from music, she did not join Buford & Walker on their second album, Lockstep Bloodwar (she made a statement on Twitter). So instead, Sightless Pit’s second album is filled with collaborators, mostly women, including YoshimiO of Boredoms, the late lamented Gangsta Boo, Lane Shi Otayonii of Elizabeth Colour Wheel and many others. As well as those from the hip-hop world, there is the celebrated sound-artist claire rousay, and the shoegazey tones of Midwife (who’s in the past described her music as “heaven metal”). Buford’s many projects have taken his love of noise and metal and blended it with jungle, drum’n’bass & dancehall, industrial and folk, while Walker’s band Full of Hell have memorably collaborated twice with the body, and also featured Nicole Dollanganger‘s vocals a few albums ago. Walker’s buried screams do remind us that metal & punk are always there, but at its root this is a dark industrial dub album laced with hip-hop, shoegaze and noise, struggling with the constrained, adversarial nature of the world.

Gorgonn – Life as a Beast [SVBKVLT]
Dokkebi Q – Vomit Dub [Murder Channel]
Gorgonn – Abyss [SVBKVLT]
The latest release on Shanghai’s SVBKVLT is from Japanese producer Goh Nakada aka Gorgonn, based for many years now outside of Japan – these days in Berlin. I was first aware of his productions in Dokkebi Q, his duo with Kiki Hitomi that fused dancehall-influenced pop with dubstep and breakcore. More recently he’s been making dub-heavy techno with Kevin Martin as G36, and not surprisingly his producions as Gorgonn are similarly heavy – apocalyptic-dark dub that points at techno, dubstep and noise. Nakada refers to his sound as “sci-fi steppas”. Sure, that works.

Jamie Hutchings – Secret Girl’s World [Jamie Hutchings Bandcamp]
Ever since his first band, the challenging, beloved Bluebottle Kiss, Jamie Hutchings has embedded experimental tendencies into his catchy indie-rock. Hutchings’ love of free jazz no doubt percolates into the angular sounds of BBK and Infinity Broke, but neither of these bands nor Hutchings’ previous solo work is quite preparation for the sound of his forthcoming album Making Water. Here, Hutchings almost entirely lets go of the constraints of songwriting per se – while there are vocals at times (including those of his wife Cholena), and guest performances from Infinity Broke bassist Rueben Wills and Hinterlandt’s Jochen Gutsch, the music here is mostly derived from instrumental improvisations on detuned guitar, percussion and non-musical sound sources. It is both surprisingly very “Jamie Hutchings” and very different. I’m looking forward to spinning more tracks, but for now here’s the first single.

Listen again — ~209MB

The experimental pop of John Cale opens tonight, and we follow with other experimental twistings of pop, classical and folk before rolling into some classic jungle selections from Bristol and some new IDM.

LISTEN AGAIN because let’s face it you’ve probably forgotten it all by now – age creeps up on us all! Stream on demand @ FBi, podcast here, we’re all happy!

John Cale – Not The End Of The World [Domino]
John Cale – The Soul Of Carmen Miranda [All Saints Records/Bandcamp]
John Cale – Everlasting Days feat. Animal Collective [Domino]
John Cale – Heartbreak Hotel [Island Records]
He’s older than my mother, and when you realise how old I am, that’s old. John Cale is 81 years old, and sprawling and murky thought it is, Mercy is as cutting-edge an album as you could want from an octogenarian. For what surely will be the great Cale’s last album, he enlisted many folks from experimental pop, rock and electronic music to contribute sounds and musicianship – even though many of their contributions are not easily decipherable from Cale’s sounds and his producers. There’s the likes of Laurel Halo, Actress, TOKiMONSTA and Dev Hynes on here, as well as a fairly invisible contribution from Fat White Family on a fairly hip-hoppy track! But the track with Animal Collective does have recognizable AC vocals and a good bit of their weirdo-euphoria (oh and Avey Tare’s sister Abby Portner did the artwork!) Sadly Cale is no longer playing viola, but he did write the wonderful string arrangements. Outside of the two tracks from the album, I found time to slip in two older works. “The Soul Of Carmen Miranda” is a piece of electronic beauty (with viola contributed by Nell Catchpole) from 1989, and a collaboration with Brian Eno a year or so before their extraordinary collaborative album Wrong Way Up. Meanwhile, Cale first covered Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” in 1975, and it’s surely the canonical version – a squalling horror halfway between glam and punk, as befits one of the godfathers of experimental rock, punk and so much more.

Ned Collette – Since My Baby Left Me [Penultimate Press/Bandcamp]
Dean Roberts – Lisa Marie Elvis [Penultimate Press/Bandcamp]
T.V.S.T – Aweful Staedele [Penultimate Press/Bandcamp]
So… Elvis. The guy was the subject of a feature film by Australia’s most controversial director, and so… one night in late December, Australia’s most controversial ex-record seller Mark Harwood (a true legend who ran Synaesthesia in Melbourne for many years and introduced many of us to scads of brilliant experimental music), now based in Berlin, came home drunk and decided to watch the film. Except he made the mistake of streaming it on some dodgy service, and the mighty forces of the European Union detected this infrimgement and sent him a bill… for nearly €1000. Ouch! So. Since leaving Oz, Mark ran an excellent little CD shop inside London’s Cafe OTO for ages, and started up his Penultimate Press, which he now runs out of Berlin. So to try and offset some of this exhorbitant cost, he’s enlisted many experimental music friends to contribute tracks to an album satirically dedicated to the movie’s subject, Elvis. Among them are many European musos and also more than a fair share of Aussies – some, like Ned Collette, also based on Berlin. Ned’s “Since My Baby Left Me” is not a cover of the song above. It’s… delightfully silly and very Ned. New Zealander Dean Roberts, also a longtime Berlin resident, contributes a slightly bent, somewhat touching tribute to Elvis’ late daughter Lisa Marie, partners cris cole & Oren Ambarchi appear, as does MP Hopkins, Francis Plagne and legendary Berlin mastering engineer Rashad Becker. Many contributors are more obscure, perhaps because they’re tampering with recorded material. I’m not sure who T.V.S.T is, but maybe there’s a connection with Jacob Stoy, credited as mastering the track? In any case, it’s a varied collection with lots of fun for those interested in obscure & odd music.

Refree – Lo que esconden [tak:til/Bandcamp]
Refree – Todo el mundo quiere irse ya [tak:til/Bandcamp]
El espacio entre (the space between) is the second solo album on Glitterbeat‘s experimental sub-label tak:til from the great Spanish producer & multi-instrumentalist Raül Refree. Refree is famed as a great collaborator and producer of Iberian artists, including pop superstar Rosalía and Portuguese fado singer Lina. But despite his connection to pop and to European song traditions, Refree is also a restless experimental musician. I discovered him in 2019 working with the brilliant Richard Youngs on the singular album All Hands Around the Moment, and fairly simultaneously with none other than Lee Ranaldo on Names of North End Women – two albums I can’t recommend highly enough. All of which is to say that a solo album from Refree (as he is often known) is something to pay attention to. What we get here is very much sui generis – it’s a little bit laptop folk/folktronica, with influence from the Iberian strands of acoustic music, and also some “re-compositions” of early 17th century madrigals by Monteverdi. Throw in radio static and snippets of blast beats and you have something that’s impossible to pigeonhole – a very good thing.

Ryuichi Sakamoto – 20220207 [Milan Records]
Ryuichi Sakamoto – 20220404 [Milan Records]
A couple of weeks ago I played some reworkings of the great Ryuichi Sakamoto that came out late last year, and mentioned a new album was coming too. And here it is – entitled 12, it collects 12 pieces mostly improvised on dates throughout 2022, either on his signature piano or synthesisers or both. These are very sparse works even when involving the electronics, ranging from quite short studies to still quite short, beautiful contemporary classical works. Sakamoto has always been brilliant at heart-pulling little melodies – he is after all a soundtrack composer as much as a pop musician, electronic trailblazer and all the rest – and those are certainly present. So are little ambient works along the lines of his old friend Brian Eno, but there are also some more avant-garde piano works here. I was honestly expecting something much thinner than what we have here – it’s a genuinely captivating work of some substance, only made more touching because Sakamoto is again fighting cancer, with quite possibly only some months left to live – tragically!

Erem – Melantroop [Esc.rec./Bandcamp]
Erem – Bedaard [Esc.rec./Bandcamp]
New on Dutch label Esc.rec. is the debut album Aare from Belgian (mostly) acoustic trio Erem. Their core began with the meeting of jazz-trained guitarist and bouzouki player Nicolas Van Belle with accordionist Stan Maris. Their alchemical blend, however, is completed with the addition of vocalist Mirte Leconte. There’s a mystery to this music, coming from sparse guitar melodies, heaving accordion drones and mostly wordless vocals. When the music opens up, it can sound like baroque chorales, the chamber folk of Bill Frisell or Tin Hat Trio, or the more abstract (post-)folk of Tape, but this is a singular music in a singular lineup, and it’s bewitching stuff that you’d be inadvised to miss.

Lia Kohl – sit on the floor and wait for storms [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
Some more magic here, from Chicago cellist Lia Kohl. Kohl’s debut last year on Shinkoyo, Too Small to be a Plain, was an extraordinary collection of music that refused to be pinned down, combining her cello with synthesizer, treated voices and found-sounds and “radio”. Live radio will also feature on new album The Ceiling Reposes, out from American Dreams on March 10th. This first single demonstrates that the beguiling combination of cello, electronics and oddness will be present here in spades.

Batu – Built On Sand [Timedance/Bandcamp]
Opal, the long-awaited album from Timedance boss and Bristol mainstay Batu, was a slippery highlight from last year, with the many directions of UK dancefloors referenced, as long as bass is present. But the album also had its fair share of sound-designy beatless works, and this outtake from the same sessions is another sumptuous example of his skills.

YATTA – Fully Lost, Fully Found [PTP/Bandcamp]
Absolute stunner from Ricky Sallay Zoker aka YATTA, originally from Houston and now I believe based in New York. Their music has mostly come out through the mighty PTP, and twists and turns so that it can be lonely accidental acoustic recordings at one moment, fully-orchestrated jazz or neo-classical, then switch into electronic processing. Their 2020 release with Moor Mother, DIAL UP, is also genius, and slowly new solo work is forming. This track, which is featured in the soundtrack to the movie Nanny, perfectly encapsulates YATTA’s skilful melding of musicianship and technology.

NERVE – Akimbo [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp]
After multiple single-track outings, Naarm’s Joshua Wells aka NERVE has finally dropped his EP Meridian Blaze via the ever-industrious Heavy Machinery Records. Four tracks representing Wells’ dedication to tough industrial beats and textures, which reference drum’n’bass, techno, electro and more, often in ways that distort mainstream notions of genre. In short, vital stuff.

More Rockers – The First Time Remix (ft Joanna Law) [RSD Bandcamp]
Statik Sound System – Revolutionary Pilot (Rob Smith Remix) [RSD Bandcamp]
RSD – Let’s Go [RSD Bandcamp]
Rob Smith has been active in the Bristol music scene since the 1980s. One main outlet was the groundbreaking duo (sometime trio) Smith & Mighty, who helped forge the Bristol sound of hip-hop, r’n’b and dub-reggae soundsystem culture that also birthed Massive Attack. In the ’90s Smith was also highly active with More Rockers, a DJ & production duo with Paul D (also much involved with Smith & Mighty) who released many incredible early jungle 12″s and dubplates which have found themselves in countless DJ mixes over the years, and were collected in various ways on mix CDs, but unsurprisingly as incomplete versions. So it’s something of a miracle (or rather a gift) to find Smith loosing TWO massive compilations of his jungle productions on us on Bandcamp this week – grab Jungle Archive Collection 1 first, get the 50% off code for Jungle Archive Collection 2 and you’re set. Everything’s basically credited as RSD – i.e. “Rob Smith Dubs”, under which Smith continues to release dub, dubstep, jungle and whatever else he likes – but it’s possible to piece together the probable original credits from the relative timeframe of a lot. “More Rockers” tracks were always just Smith or Paul D (not co-productions), so many of these would be More Rockers by any other name. There are TWO great versions of Joanna Law‘s a capella of the folk song “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (memorably used also in jungle context on Coldcut‘s Journeys By DJ), and also a remix of Bristol crew Statik Sound System, who featured the now-Sydney-based trumpet player & electronic music researcher Roger Mills. All in all this is an important missing link from UK dancefloor history, and just a whole lot of absolute bangers.

Polinski – Distant Friend, I Love You! [Data Airlines/Bandcamp]
Regular listeners will know the significance of Sheffield postrock/breakcore/idm outfit 65daysofstatic to this here radio show. After a couple of years of solid (amazing) creative activity, the band are on sabbatical, but it’s wonderful that Paul Wolinski has resurrected his solo alter-ego Polinski for highly idm-ish melodic skitteriness, with this single heralding an album coming soon on Data Airlines. We await lovingly from the distance.

DJ FLP – Ritual [DJ FLP Bandcamp]
And speaking of album previews, here’s one from Michigan’s DJ FLP, deftly combining the skitteriness of footwork with the break-manipulation of jungle. Always a producer worth watching.

Dancefloor Classics – Working With [Rajaton/Bandcamp]
Vladislav Delay – Wallfacer [Rajaton/Bandcamp]
And finally, Sasu Ripatti is starting the year as he means to go on, with TWO EP series on his new imprint Rajaton. Dancefloor Classics is jittery chopped-up club music in the style of his Ripatti alias (in fact, the promo I received was credited to Ripatti, but Bandcamp credits Dancefloor Classics with the EP titled Dancefloor Classics Vol 1), while Hide Behind The Silence uses the familiar Vladislav Delay name, and positions itself in the classic Delay soundworld, glitch-ambient-dub. Vinyl collectors will love the 10″ form factor (it really is a lovely in-between size) and Delay fans (glitch fans, deconstructed dancefloor fans) should get a lot out of this material. Let’s see what comes in the respective volumes 2!

Listen again — ~198MB

Tonight we reach into the more experimental depths of sound-art. There’s jungle-influenced beats but they’re deformed and mutated, heard from a misaligned alternate dimension or reinterpreted by aliens. There’s post/neo-classical of a sort, and post-jazz of a sort, but also both post- and sideways. Come sail the slideways with us!

LISTEN AGAIN to the flipside… Stream on demand @ FBi, podcast right here.

Teether & Kuya Neil – RENO [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]
The second mixtape/minialbum on Chapter Music from the brilliant Melbourne underground hip-hop duo of Teether & Kuya Neil is out on the 3rd of February. Single “RENO” is a perfect intro: lackadaisical, comfortably melodic rapping over contemporary bass beats, with jungle breaks inserted througout. You just know this will be a huge release. Meanwhile you can catch up on two releases from 2021.

Brandon Juhans – Tree Chops [Brandon Juhans Bandcamp]
Brandon Juhans – What Else is New? [Brandon Juhans Bandcamp]
Brandon Juhans – Only Net [Brandon Juhans Bandcamp]
Around 2018, the sadly now-lost Tri-Angle label introduced us to Hanz, the alias of Brandon Juhans. His music in fact goes back to 2012, as you can find on his Bandcamp, but those Tri-Angle EPs found Juhans’ music fully formed in the mode that he’s continued under his own name over the last few years. It’s very much beat-driven, but in a way that doesn’t conform to the usual expectations: hip-hop beats crammed into drum’n’bass tempos, beats stuttering and chopped up in ways that defy the grid, or that stop & start in sputtering ways, while other samples collide rhythmically. It reminds me of the early work of Bisk (see the four albums here), which felt like drum’n’bass with the roles of the samples all mixed up. In any case, Brandon Juhans’ music is a glorious mess – the kind of mess that can only be achieved through careful construction.

Ourobonic Plague – Elementals [Ourobonic Plague Bandcamp]
DOOM DATA – NUMBER NINE [Ourobonic Plague Bandcamp]
Melbourne entity Ourobonic Plague makes strange dark psychedelic electronic music, mixing drone and noise with industrial beats and weird occult references. But last year they released an album called Stepping It Lightly Towards the Abyss which combined jungle & drum’n’bass influences with their usual tendencies. I’m playing them now because of the launch of a new project called DOOM DATA in which Ourobonic Plague collaborates with US songwriter & vocalist James Quentin Devine. On their debut single, Devine brings a post-apocalyptic post-punk aura to the proceedings, with crunchy beats provided by Mr Plague.

inaud1bl3 – Stars are Falling [generate and test/Bandcamp]
inaud1bl3 – %/$ [generate and test/Bandcamp]
Christian „Gigi“ Haudej uses the inaud1bl3 moniker to release music of just about any nature – from ambient loops to glitchnoise, breakcore to strummy guitar songs. He’s somehow connected to farmersmanual – perhaps because he’s Austrian, albeit now based in Berlin – and has now released four albums through their generate and test imprint. He was also half of breakcore duo Übergang with the legendary Christoph de Babalon aka Jan-Christoph Walter. There’s not much breakcore on new album Hydrogen, but there are glitchy, sometimes frenetic beats, and there are songs of sorts as well as short bursts of abstract noise. Charmingly odd.

crimeboys – trippin’ [3 X L]
crimeboys – holodeck blue [3 X L]
Here’s one of those team-ups of peeps associated with West Mineral Ltd, connected with folks like exael and Ben Bondy. Specifically, crimeboys is Special Guest DJ and Pontiac Streator, bringing cyberpunk-infused rave memories – ambient jungle, dub techno and breakbeats of all sorts floating in & out of ambient wetness. Lovely.

Kl.ne – Drinking Up the Ocean [Kl.ne Bandcamp]
Kl.ne – TV Tower [Kl.ne Bandcamp]
Berlin-based producer Philipp Rhensius co-runs the Arcane Patterns label, DJs on Noods Radio and elsewhere… Last year he released his debut album under the Alienationist alias, but the Kl.ne name has been around a little longer (I get the feeling it’s meant to be pronounced “clone”) and covers similar ground to Alienationist. Rhensius is inspired by ’90s jungle and trip-hop, UK bass music of all sorts. The Rewind the Century EP presents these influences at the relatively stately tempo of 130pm, and much like crimeboys above it’s the memory of a rave through rain-soaked window.

Saving Kaiser – Mellow Mint [Feral Note]
Saving Kaiser – Lush [Feral Note]
Here’s something altogether stranger, but still hinting and jungle and IDM. Saving Kaiser is the duo of jazz drummer Thomas Wörle and jazz/classically-trained pianist Roman Rofalski, but on their debut EP Digital Snowflake, released on Kaan Bulak‘s Feral Note label, there are no acoustic instruments. Instead it’s all electronic beats & sounds, but arranged in ways that sound organic, in fact deliberately messy. It’s all improvised music, and the musicianship is clearly felt in this very alien work.

Yannis Kyriakides – Cottonstone [Unsounds/Bandcamp]
Yannis Kyriakides – Enaerios [Unsounds/Bandcamp]
Greek composer Yannis Kyriakides is co-founder of the Unsounds label with Scottish guitarist Andy Moor – both of whom are Netherlands-based – and Brussels-based designer Isabelle Vigier. Kyriakides has released a number of wonderful duo albums with Moor as well as substantial works for classical instrumentation, often also involving electronics. His latest album Amiandos is resolutely solo, however, and highly personal. The album is named for the asbestos mine in the south of Cyprus, where his grandfather worked and his father was born. The electronic tracks here chronicle the effects of the mining industry on the land and the people. “Cottonstone” is a literal translation of the ancient Greek word for asbestos (in modern Greek it’s αμίαντο – yes, “amianto”), and the track uses processed drum machines and processed field recordings to create an imposing noisescape. On “Enaerios”, Kyriakides follows the 36km cable car from the mine down to the port of Limassol, and we sit with his grandfather in a cafe by the dock where he would play backgammon, drink and listen to cassettes of ’50s Greek music; the decontextualised, pitch-shifted voices of Trio Kitara appear throughout this track to stunning effect. Kyriakides is a formidable composer and collaborator, and this entirely solo work is a wonder.

Gail Priest – indeciphers [Metal Bitch Recordings]
Gail Priest – clone drone [Metal Bitch Recordings]
Now Katoomba-based, Gail Priest has long been a master of conceptually-based electronic works. paravox finds her focusing on the interface between voice and machine over 5 tracks (available both in stereo and binaural mixes). Three of these pieces were created during a residency at M.E.S.S., and on the gloopy “indeciphers” we hear the effects of voice driving the signal chain of a Doepfer modular system. Meanwhile opening track “clone drone” explains itself – it’s an artificial voice based on Priest’s own voice, and is about as creepy (and engrossing) as you’d expect.

Ryuichi Sakamoto – Choral No.1 (Devonté Hynes Remodel) [Milan Records]
Ryuichi Sakamoto – The Sheltering Sky (Alva Noto Remodel) [Milan Records]
Legendary Japanese composer & electronic musician Ryuichi Sakamoto has been diagnosed with cancer for the second time, and appears to be near the end of his life. (Tragically, his Yellow Magic Orchestra compadre Yukihiro Takahashi passed away last week). Very soon there’ll be a new album of piano & synthesiser works from Sakamoto entitled 12, but in December last year To The Moon And Back, a compilation of “remodels” by friends & fellow travellers, was released. It’s impressively broad-ranging, including frequent collaborators like David Sylvian & Fennesz alongside Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir (a fellow soundtrack composer), the great experimentalist Otomo Yoshihide and polymath Thundercat. Another polymath, Devonté Hynes, contributes a chamber arrangement of the originally solo piano piece “Choral No.1”, while another longtime Sakamoto collaborator Alva Noto takes the beautiful “The Sheltering Sky” and pulls it apart into pulses of strings and piano.

Chris Abrahams – New Kind Of Border [Room40/Bandcamp]
For his many albums for Room40, Chris Abrahams has often felt comfortable to veer away from the piano into sound-works for Yamaha DX-7, or collage works; but the piano is never far away from Chris’s composing ear, and so the four works on his 2022 album Follower find his various characteristic Chris Abrahams piano gestures creeping around sound-worlds made from synthesisers or organs and scattered, jangling percussion reminiscent of some more recent sounds from his Necks colleague Tony Buck. Of course Abrahams’ solo piano is more than capable of speaking for itself, but here it acts as one part of a whole, less lead instrument, more textural.

C. Spencer Yeh – A Few Things Can Be Happening at the Same Time [Bocian]
Anla Courtis – DTRPNKL [Bocian]
Two tracks from a big compilation of noise & experimental artists (31 tracks!) by Polish label Bocian called The Border. In this case it’s the border between Belarus and Poland, where refugees from mostly Middle Eastern & Central Asian countries are attempting to make their way into Europe, and are either trapped in a no-man’s land between two countries which are both hostile to their human rights or experience violence on one side or other of the border. The Border Group, who this compilation supports, is an unofficial organisation of local residents, volunteers and some NGOs dedicated to providing aid to those caught in this humanitarian crisis, and it seems to me they definitely need all the funds they can get. But that aside, this is a great compilation with lots of big names in experimental & noise music – at least two Australians (Robert Curgenven and Mike Majkowski), Mats Gustafsson, Maja Ratkje, Martin Brandlmayr & Martin Siewert (both of Radian et al), Ben Vida, and, well, heaps more. I was really excited to see C. Spencer Yeh there, as a massive Burning Star Core fan, and also this is neither a solo violin nor solo voice track, but rather a free noise kind of thing. And Anla Courtis (aka Alan Courtis, a founder of Reynols and incredibly prolific & important Argentine musician) contributes a beautiful subdued piece of bass guitar thrums.

Ilia Belorukov – High Shrubs Forming a Thicket [Crónica/Bandcamp]
The latest cassette from the always-splendid Portuguese internationalist experimental label Crónica comes from Russian sound-artist, saxophonist and writer Ilia Belorukov. Composed during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020-21, it features field recordings melded with percussion sounds, modular synthesis and various instruments. The idea was to take these many inputs along with some computer-generated responses to the sounds, and find a way to create something coherent, consonant, harmonious even – and thus we have beautiful works of composed sound, where the sounds could come from nature, or a human, or a computer. It takes a human to pull it all together though, and Belorukov has done so with great panache.

Nika Son – Trinsar puddle [Below The Radar 41, with The Wire issue 467]
Hamburg musician Nika Breithaupt aka Nika Son makes music for film, art, DJs and more (“owl” is rather enigmatically included on her website bio). Her solo music seems to draw equally from techno, industrial, synthwave etc and musique concrète & other early electronic music. One of the many perks of subscribing to The Wire is the bonus compilations that come with a good 2/3 of the issues, and from last month’s edition of the download comp Below The Radar, we get an otherwise-unreleased track from Nika Son, with burbling electronics and percussion eventually joined by a voice speaking in French. It’s slightly spooky and lovely.

Listen again — ~209MB