Tonight is the last new music show for the year, even though artists & labels don’t seem willing to let up! Next week and the week after I’ll be cataloguing some of my favourites in Best of 2022 Parts 1 & 2!
Tonight, highly experimental electronic pop music, hyper-whatever, postpunk dubstep, nebulous strings, nebulous piano, nebulous modular synths. What even is a nebule? Answers on a cloud of nanotech to Utility Fog Towers, Newtown NSW 2042.

LISTEN BACK, your life may depend on it! Podcast here, stream on demand there.

Baker Ja Lehtisalo – Racing After Midnight [Ektro Records/Broken Spine Productions/Bandcamp]
On reflection, this was inevitable. Both Aidan Baker (of Nadja) and Jussi Lehtisalo (of Circle) are unstoppable collaborators and unquenchably prolific. Their duo album basically does exactly what you’d expect of a collaboration between these two, with expansive, dense waves of guitar and gruff downbeatness from Baker, and anthemic metal and synths from Lehsitalo, who has of late been rather fascinated with a form of electro-pop. They describe the music as new wave industrial doom songs, which is as good or bad as any descriptor I guess? I dig.

Eliot Sumner & Ben Frost – White Rabbit [Invada/Bandcamp]
Just a couple of weeks ago, I played some tracks from Ben Frost‘s soundtrack to the Netflix series 1899, a superbly Ben Frostian work of orchestral instruments, Chinese traditional instruments, voices and electronic treatments. Not found on the soundtrack itself is this cover of Jefferson Airplane’s much-loved White Rabbit (you may recognise the song from its appearance in The Matrix Resurrections‘ trailer), which 1899 uses in the title sequence. Frost is joined by Eliot Sumner on vocals, who we’ve also heard quite recently under their Vaal alias. This isn’t a particularly faithful rendition (don’t expect those gorgeous key changes), but it’s quite powerful in its own right.

Sandy Chamoun – Ahlam al khayal احلام الخيال [Sandy Chamoun Bandcamp]
I discovered Sandy Chamoun on two recent compilations from Lebanon: 2021’s Beirut 20/21 and the recent Beirut Adrift. The long-awaited Fata17 فتى١٧ is her trilogy (three tracks) about the 17 October Revolution, and the complex feelings of hope and fear that arose from the protests, which toppled a government but whose ultimate achievements are difficult to measure and overwhelmed by the tragedy of Beirut explosion and the dampening effects of Covid-19 on organising. Chamoun’s previous group The Great Departed issued political and social satire through acoustic Arabic music in a kind of cabaret folk vibe. Here Arabic music feeds into Chamoun’s extremely well-produced electronic pop songs, deeply influenced by industrial and noise. Chamoun sings of “dreams of the imagination”, in which “the people are a fantasy / the light is a fantasy / the streets are a fantasy… / injustice is a fantasy / subjugation is a fantasy / solitude is a fantasy”, and ultimately “death is a fantasy / the tears are a fantasy / eternity is a fantasy”. All these are dreams of those who rose up in the protests from the 17th of October, 2019, joined with those rising up in Chile, Iraq and elsewhere. Samples recorded by Chamoun in the streets appear alongside heavy electronics and her voice. It’s powerful stuff.

Björk – Atopos (sideproject Remix) [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
sideproject – come get me [post-dreifing/Bandcamp]
I was not terribly impressed by Björk‘s album fossora when it came out earlier this year. Give or take a couple of tracks, I found it musically quite unlikeable. Still, Björk always does good remix, and for the first fossora remix she introduces us (or me at least) to Icelandic trio sideproject, who bring a restless energy and glitchiness to “Atopos”. I found them on Bandcamp and played a similarly IDMish track from their 2022 released kingfisher.

Xao – Bone Theory [C.A.N.V.A.S./Bandcamp]
Xao – Hyperfixate For Me [C.A.N.V.A.S./Bandcamp]
On his first album for the London-based C.A.N.V.A.S. after a couple of releases on Astral Black, UK artist Xao, now based in Berlin, explores self-stimulation in the cyberworld of information overload. Xao’s roots in bass genres like trap & grime are still audible, but it’s mostly highly dense electronic psychedelia, either beatless or off-the-grid. The music touches on the dancefloor at times, but usually veers off in weird, synthetic directions. The sci-fi references in the titles are apt, and I particularly like “Threnody For The Child of Omelas” (for the reference, you can read Ursula K Le Guin’s parable here).

Objekt – Bad Apples [Objekt]
TJ Hertz’ Objekt projekt started with his eponymnous whitelabels 11 years ago (Objekt #1 is now available on Bandcamp), so it’s nice to have edition #5 out. It actually came out mid-year but I missed it somehow, and the vinyl seems to be making its way out in the world now. Two low-slung bass techno tracks, highly club-oriented but still brilliantly strange – I love the demented synths in the last third of this track.

Commodo – Eyewitness [Mysterious Trax]
A couple of months after the first Mysterious Trax EP, Sheffield’s Commodo returns with a second that continues the winning combo of postpunk bass guitar lines with dubstep beats. Commodo’s been making some of the most exciting sounds to come out of the dubstep world in the last few years, and vinyl lovers will be pleased that the two Mysterious Trax EPs are available together in a vinyl edition too.

Major Oak – Tune For Tune [Stolen Groove]
Nottingham dubstep duo Major Oak land on London’s Stolen Groove with two tracks that deftly insert jungle breaks and UKG influences into the 140bpm dubstep template. Both topnotch tracks.

Feloneezy – Lipstick On My Double Chin [Knekelhuis]
Lara Sarkissian – Eternal Repose [Knekelhuis]
The Amsterdam label Knekelhuis put out its first compilation and felt like… in June 2021. Now they’re following that up with …it wasn’t really me, another compilation reflecting their eclectic taste, spanning ambient dub to ambient techno. There’s an exclusive track from Purelink, whose Puredub on Lillerne Tapes was a highlight of 2022 – and another Lillerne connection is Slowfoam. Serbian producer Feloneezy contributes a lovely piece of dubby trip-hop, and Armenian-American DJ Lara Sarkissian has a piece of bubbly peacefulness.

Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith – Song Of The Highest Tower (Atom™ Remix) [Bella Union/Bandcamp]
In 2019 and 2020, the Soundwalk Collective released three albums with Patti Smith, each a tribute to a different French poet or writer, collectively titled The Perfect Vision. Each found the collective travelling around the globe to understand the writers’ experiences and source audio for the projects. Mummer Love took them to Ethiopia, following Arthur Rimbaud, and beautiful Sufi chants are interpolated with Patti Smith’s spoken words. Now selected tracks from the triptych have been remixed by some significant artists for The Perfect Vision Reworkings – Brian Eno, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Laraaji, Lotic, Lucrecia Dalt and Jim Jarmusch are the others! But I’ve chosen a longtime Utility Fog favourite, glitch master Atom™, who also contributed to the last Soundwalk Collective album, Lovotic, featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg. Here Atom™ develops a slow chugging techno track with fragments of the Sufi chants and fragments of Patti Smith’s phrases. Its repetitiveness does give it a trance-like quality.

Glass House Mountain – Foundation [Glass House Mountain Bandcamp]
Melbourne duo Glass House Mountain (Benjamin Graham and James O’Brien) released their debut single Perspective I in June, accompanied by a delightful tricksy video. Follow-up Foundation comes out just in time for the end of the year, with another Melbourne-centric, but more abstract video. The sound is a mix of synth-based postrock, techno and jazz, with live drums and driving rhythms, always brightly enjoyable.

KEDA – Flow pt. 4 [Parenthèses Records/Bandcamp]
French duo KEDA is made up of E’Joung-Ju, who is a master of the Koren zither called geomungo or hyeongeum, and the Burkina Faso-born French sound-artist Mathias Delplanque, who percussive pan-world music we heard a few weeks ago on the show. The four tracks on KEDA’s Flow, just released by Brussels-based Parenthèses Records/, were created for a dance performance by the Swiss Compagnie Linga. On the first track, individual plucks from the geomungo are scattered in a windy ambience, while on the second the ambient textures become heavier and E’Joung-Ju draws more sinister tonalities from the geomungo, at times bowing the instrument. Part 3 is a beautiful solo piece for geomungo, while on part 4 (heard tonight), the instrument plays a lead melody supported by chugging rhythms and drones. Four very different settings, each as compelling as the other.

Lueenas – Scream [Barkhausen Recordings]
Lueenas – Codicil [Lueenas Bandcamp]
Lueenas – End Titles – Baby Pyramid [Barkhausen Recordings]
Only at the start of November, Copenhagen duo Lueenas released their self-titled album, but now they are releasing their soundtrack to the Danish movie Baby Pyramid, which explores the expectations and emotions around women’s infertility. It contains music composed by contrabassist Ida Duelund Hansen and improvisations & compositions with the other half of Lueenas, violinist/violist Maria Jagd. Ida Duelund also plays drum machines and electronics at times – including a notable dance-pop tune with vocals from Emma Acs – but mostly it’s the evocative sounds of the two string players and their arrays of effects pedals. The title music is a beautiful piece of almost-classical music that goes through a few iterations of drawn-out strings, and is also included in a lovely piano demo form. Soundtracks are a core part of Lueenas’ work, and I’d like to also draw attention to The Raid, which came out last year (see middle track). Martin De Thurah’s short Viking film is still showing at the National Museum of Denmark if you happen to be in Copenhagen (I wish I’d known!) and the music is their typically dark and mysterious work.

Kaan Bulak – Shapes of Patterns [Feral Note]
Kaan Bulak – Falling In A Dream [Feral Note]
It seems like a popular time at the moment to release genre-crossing albums of piano with electronic processing, and here’s another fine example. Turkish-German musician Kaan Bulak alternates his piano – sometimes avant-garde, sometimes pretty and melodic – with synth, electric piano and other keyboards, sometimes embeddeding it in clicky beats owing a debt to his sometime collaborator Robert Lippok, and sometimes adding strings. Each track seems to inhabit a subtly different world (there’s even an electric guitar piece), but with a consistent production and melancholy from Bulak holding it together.

Fieldhead – Engine Idling, Around 5am [Home Assembly Music/Bandcamp]
Fieldhead – this train is a rainbow [Home Assembly Music/Bandcamp]
Fieldhead – Save Our Steel [Home Assembly Music/Bandcamp]
I first fell in love with Paul Elam’s music as Fieldhead way back in 2008 when his demo EP Introductions was included with a CD of The Declining Winter, with whom he was playing. From the start, Fieldhead used acoustic instruments in a folk and neo-classical way along with postrock dynamics and – at the time – quite heavy electronics. Debut album they shook hands for hours (see middle track tonight) is still a thrilling mix of that folktronic/post-classical tendency with dronenoise sidechained against minimal techno beats. He’s back with the Leeds-based Home Assembly Music now for new album Engine Idling, Around 5am, joined as usual by Elaine Reynolds‘ weeping violin. The material switches between heavily-edited uncanny piano and programmed synths, accompanied by violin, and there’s a disquieting tension between the very artificial electronics and the acoustic instruments, as there is between peacefulness and urgency. It’s nice to have Paul and Elaine back.

Ben Carey – α [Ben Carey Bandcamp]
Surprise EP from Sydney modular synth guru Ben Carey (who also happens to be an ace saxophonist). Performed live at 107 Projects in Redfern, it’s incredibly fresh-sounding, patient sound-design, which must have been a real pleasure to witness live (even though as the notes explain, Sydney was enveloped in a “miasma” of smoke haze from the unprecedented bushfire season that was underway. Over four lower-case Greek-lettered tracks, Carey slowly builds arrhythmic pulses from percussive-sounding synthetic sound and drones. The third track sounds like it’s also got fluttering saxophone embouchure in there, but α, which we heard tonight, is an entirely synthetic, austere slow burn.

Listen again — ~206MB

Ambient to frenetic to intense to low-slung to delicately glittery…

LISTEN AGAIN for that comforting fear. Stream on demand via FBi, podcast here.

KŒNIG – جنگ، خودِ حقیقت است‎‎ – war is the unveiling of the truth (ft. Rojin Sharafi) [PTP/Bandcamp]
Starting tonight with a single track from Austrian percussionist KŒNIG, although the centre of this track is the voice and vocal processing of the brilliant Vienna-based Iranian musician Rojin Sharafi. Sharafi reads a poem by Parham Shahrjerdi that directly addresses the atrocities committed by the Islamic Republic, the forces who have ruled Iran in one way or other for decades. It’s a fantastic piece of audio, and you can read the text in English on the Bandcamp page. PTP are passing on all proceeds to the Woman*-Life-Freedom Collective in Berlin, to support the feminist uprising.

Fatäk, Romance Relic, Tettix Hexer – To The Beauty Of Being [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp]
Eastern Nurseries is a Portuguese label that releases experimental music seemingly of any nature, including plenty of noise and drone. There’s something of that on this collaborative track, as well as contemporary sound design, and a sensual poem by Aude Barras which turns sinister courtesy of the production. Spoken word aside, it’s the work of two Danish producers – Fatäk and Tettix Hexer – and the Finnish Romance Relic. As best I can work out. In any case, it’s great.

Stick In The Wheel – White Copper Alley [Stick In The Wheel Bandcamp]
Stick In The Wheel – Robot [Stick In The Wheel Bandcamp]
When I’ve played Stick In The Wheel in the past, I’ve emphasised the connection between Ian Carter and Nicola Kearey – now a duo – and the dubstep innovators Various Production. Among the bass tunes on their early 7″s, Various inserted strange occult English folk pieces, and Stick In The Wheel began as a project to resurrect or keep alive the English folk tradition. Along the way, they’ve released “mixtapes” in between the albums proper, with remixes and strange re-arrangements of their songs, but even those “proper” albums have dabbled with autotuned voice, electronics and amplified instrumentation. For the end of 2022 they’ve released mini-album Endurance Soundly Caged, which documents their live sound (albeit in-studio) with George Hoyle on bass and Siân Monaghan on drums. Here we find the band in quite raucous folk-rock mode, but there are also synths and the infamous autotune on their early single “As I Roved Out”. On new track “Robot”, Kearey tells a tale of a time-travelling robot, in her broad accent, with a melancholy guitar melody leading the band in a postrock-like surge.

Morwell – This Word, Life (21.11.22) [unreleased]
Max Morwell has continued dropping new material on his Bandcamp at considerable pace this year, with ravey reworkings of pop music and his own bass/jungle/hardcore/techno hybrids as well. However, lucky me, I’ve also been handed some unreleased gems, of which I’ve selected “This Word, Life” tonight. Max claims this is unfinished, but it sounds pretty fucking ace to me. Pitched-down spoken word samples, a head-nodding beat that goes double-time, warm subs… great stuff.

Arcane & Jon1st – Honey Dew [Defrostatica/Bandcamp]
Here’s a surprising team-up showing the versatility of scratch DJ (one-time DMC champion) Jon1st who we heard earlier in the year with the aforementioned Stick In The Wheel. Here he’s working with excellent Bristol junglist Arcane on an EP that flips jungle and techno tropes alongside Jon1st’s turntable gymnastics.

Keita Sano – Inner Hall [ROW Records/Bandcamp]
Keita Sano – C2 [Keita Sano Bandcamp]
Keita Sano – TV (Tape Mix) [Keita Sano Bandcamp]
Keita Sano – Legacy From Leyton (Dayzero Remix) [ROW Records/Bandcamp]
Always love new discoveries. Keita Sano is by no means a new artist, but by and large his focus has been on house and disco, so I’ve not encountered him until recently. His second EP on ROW Records just dropped (he spent some time in Berlin before moving back to Okayama) and Legacy From Leyton brings a nice mix of head-nodding techno, IDM influences and even a bit of jungle, along with a classy garage/dubstep remix from Tokyo-based Dayzero. But a little search shows up that Sano has his own Bandcamp with a shocking amount of material uploaded just this year and last – surely so much that a lot is archival – and a huge range of styles is found. 2021’s Keep The Party Going On seems to take on a different dance music genre on just about every track, with low-slung beats abiding, distorted snares, b-boy drum machines, even a bit of drum’n’bass. On other EPs mini-albums there are junglist versions of dub tracks, IDM-style beatworks and even some proper d’n’b, some very lovely grainy distorted slow techno a la Andy Stott, and lots more. Well worth exploring in depth!

Tapefeed – Snakes in Suits [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
The debut EP from Italian duo Tapefeed on Houndstooth takes them beyond the industrial techno they’ve released thus far, with some more syncopated bass styles, albeit still in a pretty 4/4 and industrial-influenced fashion. It’s highly dancefloor-optimised (except for one ambient track), suitably since Houndstooth is an offshoot of London’s fabric club, where Tapefeed have a residency. Looking forward to some more left-of-centre material from them on Houndstooth next year.

Gold Panda – Plastic Future (Skee Mask Remix) [City Slang/Bandcamp]
Always love a remix of a track I haven’t heard – or a remix compilation of an artist I’ve never heard. I vaguely know Gold Panda but his music never really clicked with me. However Münich producer Skee Mask is a hero, and here gives us a skittery 5 minutes of percussive fun and a sunny vibe.

Sijya – Another Thing [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
Sijya – 52 [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
The latest release in a busy year from Accidental Records is the debut EP, entitled Young Hate, from young New Delhi graphic designer Sijya. Her understated songs sit comfortably in the context of Matthew Herbert’s label, the soft vocals and wistful textures recalling the minimalist r’n’b of Tirzah, or the trip-hop references of Sevdaliza, but all self-produced. No hate here – these are touching little pieces, and this is another EP I exhort you not to let pass you by.

Arve Henriksen & Kjetil Husebø – Syntax [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Arve Henriksen & Kjetil Husebø – Slow Fragments [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Two big figures in the Nordic jazz and experimental scene get together for some blissful electronics and jazz here. Arve Henriksen is a purveyor of gorgeous, melodic & mellow trumpet, often electronically treated, as well as otherworldly vocals – especially in the extraordinary Supersilent. Kjetil Husebø is a classical & jazz-trained pianist with a particular interest in combining live piano with live electronics. Although the music is highly informed by jazz and improvisation, it was recorded separately, Henriksen in Gothenburg, Sweden (although he is originally from Norway) and Husebø in Oslo, Norway. Both musicians employ clouds of electronics as well, creating big textured drones on some pieces, while Husebø is inclined more towards melody on his piano than chordal harmonies – even on the one track where Henriksen sings (not in his usual falsetto), where sampled, reversed and treated piano nevertheless moves as a single bass counter-melody to Henriksen’s singing, with further decoration from mostly-untreated piano and trumpet. Booming and shuddering sounds from the physicality of the piano are sampled for reverberant or percussive effect, as are breaths through the trumpet and patterns of prepared piano. This is a striking pairing of musicianship with technology at every level, and a striking pairing of two musicians who long admired each other.

To Move – Mirroring [Sonic Pieces/Bandcamp]
To Move – In Pink [Sonic Pieces/Bandcamp]
We last heard from Welsh pianist Anna Rose Carter and her partner, musician & sound-artist Ed Hamilton when they released a wonderful album as Dead Light back in 2016. Earlier still, Carter had a legendary duo called Moon Ate The Dark which combined her always attractive neo-classical piano with Christopher Bailey‘s tape effects, synths and other electronics (and also violin from Carter). Hamilton also loves tape manipulation and drones, and the pair made some powerful cinematic music as Dead Light for Village Green. Their latest project To Move finds them back on Monique Recknagel’s Sonic Pieces (who released the Moon At The Dark albums), for a set of recordings made with fellow pianist, film composer and filmmaker Alex Kozobolis. Whenever Kozobolis visited Carter & Hamilton’s home in the English countryside, the two pianists would improvise together (four hand piano, with one player on the bass end and one at the treble), full of the characteristic heart-pulling musicality of Carter that’s clearly shared by Kozobolis, while the sounds are degraded and crumbled by tape and other analogue effects. It’s as gorgeous as you’d expect if you know their previous work, and worth getting in one of the boutique physical editions if you can afford it!

Elyse Tabet with Pascal Semerdjian and Yara Asmar – Low Toms [Ruptured Records/Bandcamp]
Elyse Tabet with Pascal Semerdjian and Yara Asmar – Bright Bells [Ruptured Records/Bandcamp]
Yet more wonderful music from Lebanon, courtesy of Beirut label Ruptured Records. I played Elyse Tabet a few weeks ago from the Beirut Adrift compilation, from a duo album she made with the brilliant Jawad Nawfal, and from the same compilation I also featured Yara Asmar‘s wheezing accordion. For Low Toms Bright Bells and Darkest Spells, Tabet enlisted Asmar to play metallophone, and Pascal Semerdjian on drums. Semerdjian plays with shoegazers Postcards, whose singer Julia Sabra we heard in October with Fadi Tabbal on their album Snakeskin (co-released by Ruptured and Portland’s Beacon Sound). For this new album, Tabet initially setup a recording session with Semerdjian to play drums along with drum machines and synths. Asmar later overdubbed the brightly ringing metallophone, and the removal of the drum machine beats leaves a trio of tracks suffused with mystery, two percussionists jamming with each other’s ghosts, fragments of sounds looped and glitched, placed in artificial spaces, shuffled and re-composed. It’s artfully done, all sounds beautifully recorded by Fadi Tabbal and edited, shaped and deconstructed by Tabet. As a bonus, the North Carolina-based Lebanese sound-artist Bana Haffar contributes a shimmering remix that begins ambient and becomes urgenty rhythmical.

Pretty Boy Crossover – Echo 12 [Nice Music/Bandcamp]
Pretty Boy Crossover – Echo 1 [Nice Music/Bandcamp]
Pretty Boy Crossover – Echo 7 [Nice Music/Bandcamp]
Adelaide musical legend Jason Sweeney had a busy year (and last year) collecting reams of archival music from his various projects – much of it on his Observable Universe Recordings Bandcamp. His duo with Cailan Burns, Pretty Boy Crossover (named after a cyberpunk short story by Pat Cadigan, PDF here), is of particular importance to me, responsible for a remarkable early artefact of Australian IDM that I originally heard on CD-R in about 1998. In October 2021 the duo offered up a collection of rarities and unreleased material called Traces Backwards, and sometime this year Jason hinted that new Pretty Boy Crossover material may be in the offing. Interestingly, their return with Echoes In The Sound Mirror feels rather like a clearing out of hard drives, with many of the tracks (each titled merely as a numbered “Echo”) cutting off mid-flow, not even blending together mixtape style. It’s an odd decision which denies these snippets their full power, but perhaps that’s the idea. PBX’s music was always redolent of indeterminacy, out of phase and out of its time, and perhaps the Sound Mirror that’s producing these Echoes is cracked. It’s wistful and evocative, a little disquieting, and essential even if one hopes there’s something a little more complete on its way.

Third Space – Dowlais [New Weird Australia/BandcampA]
alsi – When you touch me, I see visions [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
After a pair of single-artist albums, Stu Buchanan’s New Weird Australia returns to its original strength of impeccably-selected compilations of Australian experimental artists. Fragile States takes as its referents ’90s ambient compilations such as Kevin Martin‘s incredible Ambient 4: Isolationismam, and as such, there are desolate drones (Madeleine Cocolas‘ literally breathtaking opening track), there’s delicate softness, beatless maximalism and much more. And it’s not, in fact, all beatless: Naarm/Melbourne’s Third Space often makes techno that flirts with drum’n’bass tropes (or is it the other way round?) and here the first half of his track is ambient, and then it accelerates into skittering beats. Also hailing from Melbourne, on unceded Wurundjeri land, is alsi, whose disembodied voices are interlaced with glitched crackles and ominous sound-design on her track “When you touch me, I see visions”.

Aviva Endean – Between Islands [Room40/Bandcamp]
Aviva Endean – What Calls In The Quiet [Room40/Bandcamp]
Solo work from Naarm/Melbourne clarinettist Aviva Endean is always a gift. Her contributions are always notable in other contexts – for instance, with Yolŋu musicians on the Australian Art Orchestra album Hand to Earth, with Senyawa and others on The Prey And The Ruler, or with Evelyn Ida Morris a few years back. As primarily a performer, making her latest solo album on Room40, Moths and Stars, afforded her the opportunity to carefully craft sounds, close-micing her clarinets for an uncommon intimacy, but splicing them with field recordings, e-bow and voice. But far from drone, the album starts with the pink and white noise of breaths through a clarinet’s body, bubbling and shuddering across the stereo spectrum, while gradually pitched tones join. By the second track we have the pure clarinet tones drifting closer, at times beating, and across the first three continuous tracks the music shifts between interlocking tones and convulsive sibilants. The second half is another three continuous tracks, where slightly detuned clarinet tones slowly replace fast-moving ostinato patterns, initially peaceful, slowly attenuated by the final track into high- and low-pitched discords and disquieting plucked interjections. Moths and Stars couldn’t be more apposite as a description. It’s eerie, brilliant work.

Listen again — ~200MB

We have through-lines of distortion, breakbeats and classical orchestration tonight, weaving through many genres, most of which are presented in unusual ways.

LISTEN AGAIN and blow your mind, via stream on demand @ FBi’s website, or podcast here.

Joe Rainey – once the reaper [Psychic Hotline/Bandcamp]
Niineta, the debut album from Native American Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey, is one of my favourite albums of the year. Released in May by 37d03d, it’s produced by Andrew Broder aka Fog in his current style – hi-tech, overdriven, lots of sound processing, heavy beats and granular soundscaping – but its core is Rainey’s powerful, moving singing and his samples from Pow Wows around the country. New single once the reaper / d.m.ii is a nice surprise at the end of the year, released by Psychic Hotline, with the same intense Broder production. Extraordinary stuff.

Bird Eternal – Silence Is The Loudest Shape [Bird Eternal]
Previously known as 0point1, Blue Mountains musician Bob Streckfuss has returned recently as Bird Eternal, continuing a unique style that combines post-rock and shoegaze tendencies with indietronica and glitchy electronica. His songs are never anything but lush, and this week two have appeared on his Bandcamp. This one has a lovely video accompanying it.

Aasthma – C’mon Creeper feat. Louisahhh [Aasthma Bandcamp]
Only two months after their album Arrival was released on Monkeytown Records, the Swiss duo Aasthma (made up of Swedish club/experimental electronic legends Peder Mannerfeld and Pär Grindvik) released a new single with the Paris-based Louisahhh. They describe it as a power ambient ballad: maybe? It’s not precisely a ballad, but it’s not a club banger either. It’s great though, heavy and passionate and sardonic.

Air Max ’97 – Testrip [fabric Selects]
Bambounou – In Depth Beauty Routine [fabric Selects]
fabric is of course a legendary London club – in fact, their woes during COVID lockdown brought a call-to-arms that brought real change. There’s already a label associated with the club – Houndstooth – but it has its own identity. But in addition to their DJ mix series, fabric has for a while been releasing artist releases under fabric presents, and now they’re celebrating their newest imprint with a compilation, fabric Selects I. There are both established and new artists on here, ranging from heavy club sounds to breakbeats & bass. Sydney’s (slash-Melbourne/NZ/London) Air Max ’97 turns in a typically syncopated, complex piece of breakbeat’n’bass. And French producer Bambounou, known for dancefloor-filling club productions and more experimental fare, here turns in a melding of techno and junglish breaks, very delicious.

Brainwaltzera – G.B.D.F [separated] [FILM/Bandcamp]
Brainwaltzera – Medal Headz [G.B.D.F] Peshay Remix [FILM/Bandcamp]
Over the last 5 years, the mysterious Brainwaltzera has quickly become a big name in IDM, as a practitioner of classic ’90s-style melodic electronica with complex beats and lovely sounds. I’m pretty sure it’s a guy from Eastern Europe or maybe Central Europe, and it’s certainly not a known IDM musician under an alias. Anyway, there’s a track on his ITSAME album from earlier this year called “Medal Heads [G.B.D.F]”, and the initials aside it felt like a nod to a certain well-known drum’n’bass label. Even so, it’s a nice surprise to see that connection cemented on the new Medal Headz single with a remix from d’n’b legend Peshay. It’s epic in scope, preserves just enough of the original but takes it into deep, free-flowing drum’n’bass territory. Meanwhile, Brainwaltzera does his own VIP-style extended mix, and also separates, it seems, the “G.B.D.F” bit into a bit of melodic non-d’n’b IDM pleasantness.

Outer Heaven – More Hardcore [UVB-76]
Petar Zivanic’s Outer Heaven is the latest artist to have an EP on Bristol’s UVB-76 label. Run by Ruffhouse & Gremlinz, it’s a little less drum’n’bass-centric than its sister label DROOGS, but still focuses on d’n’b and murky techno, and here we have three tracks which vary between pretty up-tempo drum’n’bass and slower breakbeat. It’s dark and energetic.

Slacker – Love As A Devil [Soft Raw]
Soft Raw is a new label founded by Bristol DJ Danielle covering a broad range of club musics. The debut release comes from London’s Sam Black aka Slacker, whose 6-track Damage To Be Undone brings his halftime d’n’b and jungle into more of a techno realm – although each track stands in a slightly different position between these points. I chose one that emphasises the kinetic jungle breaks, no regrets!

Gunjack – The Dead Pool [Gunjack Bandcamp]
Gunjack – Winterlude [Gunjack Bandcamp]
A few months after his Hyperjazz volume 1, US producer Gunjack brings us the promised second volume, subtitled The Social Music. Again it’s manic drill’n’bass with moody jazz keys and samples, super well done. In between these releases, Gunjack has dropped house, acid, techno, whatever takes his fancy – also notable this month is the superb album-length ’90s-“ambient” style mix Substance Abuse which veers between ambient, trip-hop, acid, dub and even a bit of drill’n’bass. It’s very Future Sound of London or The Orb, obviously too long to play here but well worth your time.

Lakker – Sliding [Lakker Bandcamp]
And here’s Lakker with the second-last EP of the year from the Dublin-via-Berlin duo. Back to techno according to them, but this track is pretty wild & out there – insistent hammerbeats but somehow still structured enough.

Murcof – rios [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
Murcof – MFRelay [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
It’s nice to be reminded of some great music from the early 2000s. Between 2002 & 2007 Mexican producer Murcof released a series of albums on The Leaf Label that combined sampled and manipulated classical music with micro-house beats. On his website, Murcof credits these composers as some of the sources: Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Henryk Górecki, Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, Valentin Silvestrov. A nice mix of well-loved and obscure! Leaf have remastered all these albums for sumptuous new vinyl editions. If you have the CDs and would only get digital, there’s not a lot of reason, but the Martes + Utopía collection does have a few unreleased tracks which are pretty damn nice as bonus tracks. The vinyl skips the added remixes on the original Utopía, but they’re included in the digital too. The clicky beats and relatively minor bass content are strange to listen to today, but it’s still strikingly lush a lot of the time, very well constructed and emotive.

Ben Frost – Kapitan [Invada/Bandcamp]
Ben Frost – Mainframe [Invada/Bandcamp]
Ben Frost – Wirus Sie Rozprzestrzenia [Invada/Bandcamp]
Following his excellent soundtracks for the three seasons of Netflix’s German science fiction series Dark, Iceland-based Aussie composer Ben Frost is continuing to work with the makers of Dark, soundtracking their new series 1899. This is a truly excellent soundtrack, up there with Ben’s studio albums, with full orchestra, various vocal contributions, and a plethora of electronics as well. Ben’s typical bass-heavy surges do make appearances, along with beautiful pitch-bent synth melodies and shuddering, stuttering studio effects. And although there are segments of the music you could claim are scene-setting soundtrack stuff, it’s mostly anything but: there are creepy and eldritch vocal pieces, moving orchestral & synth compositions, and even thundering percussion. Don’t ignore it.

Noémi Büchi – Screaming At Brutism [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Noémi Büchi – Elemental Fear [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Earlier this week the latest four pieces came out from Sydney’s Longform Editions, including the rather rhythmic 21-minute Paroxysm from Swiss electronic composer Noémi Büchi. Mere days later, Zürich label -OUS released her debut album Matter, which sees her drawing on early and mid-20th century composers to create maximalist electronic pieces. Electronic attempts at orchestral & other classical compositions can result in cheesy or embarrassing simplifications, but Büchi has managed to internalise and very effectively adapt aspects of the compositional approaches of the composers she’s drawing from, with her suitably “maximalist” electronics engaging in harmonic movement, dense arrangements and rhythmic complexity that echo the past while surging ever forward.

Pierre-Yves Macé – You Cannot [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Pierre-Yves Macé – More Gloom and the Light of That Gloom [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Sylvain Chauveau – JG [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Sylvain Chauveau – DC [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Sylvain Chauveau – LN [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Here’s an unusual project. French polymath Sylvain Chauveau created a collection of small pieces of audio, composition ideas, snippets of vocals and so on, and sent them to his friend Pierre-Yves Macé, another French composer & producer, with whom he has collaborated frequently in the past. This time it’s not really a collaboration – both artists have taken Chauveau’s initial ideas and created a full album from them. Cult Belgian label Sub Rosa has released both under the title L’Effet Rebond (The Rebound Effect), with Macé’s subtitled “Version Iridium” and Chauveau’s “Version Silicium”. The source material and the artists’ similar aesthetics mean that the two works fit together very well, but they have certainly put their own spin on the proceedings. Each album consists mostly of short studies, with Macé finding space to craft beautiful melodic vignettes on piano, strings, woodwinds and other acoustic instruments, but the composer also inserts glitchy crackles and edits. His half ends with a beautifully subtle 18-minute piece of minimalism, with tiny piano samples slowly burbling away, harmonies gradually expanding and shifting. Chauveau meanwhile begins his half with a 17-minute work with cyclical guitar, clarinet and piano, but it’s not made from studio edits – although much of the rest of his album is small pieces, often just single phrases. Both composers have enlisted various colleagues to join them, with Peter Broderick & others on backing vocals with Chauveau, and our friend Rutger “Machinefabriek” Zuydervelt contributing electronics (he also did the gorgeous layouts & design). Conceptual elements aside, this is very enjoyable listening and right on point for Utility Fog’s liminal genre-agnosticism.

Aries Mond – Dear [Aries Mond Bandcamp]
Aries Mond – Hope [Aries Mond Bandcamp]
Aries Mond – Gentiana [Aries Mond Bandcamp]
Discovering Boris Billier’s music as Aries Mond via Mathias Van Eecloo’s Eilean Rec in 2018 was a revelation. Van Eecloo also released Billier’s second album on his IIKKI label a year later, but I missed last year’s Gaps and Shortcuts, so I’m very glad that Billier contacted me about Skinscape, which will be released on December 5th, so I’ve been able to preview two tracks for you tonight along with one from Gaps and Shortcuts. Aries Mond’s music could initially have been classified as “post-classical” or “neo-classical” but his approach was always a little different from the oh-so-pleasant melodic piano with polite electronics. Billier keeps to minimalist material from his acoustic instruments, including the physical sounds of the instrument, and foregrounding edits and glitches. The latest two releases stray further: Gaps and Shortcuts is frequently also very minimalist, but from its opening track (featured tonight), it declares its interest in folktronica or laptop-folk with a strident acoustic guitar line and ramshackle beats. There are also gorgeous chopped vocals, sub-bass thumps and other electronics. Skinscape heads further into electronic territory, with microsound elements, glitch-rhythms and synths – but there are still acoustic instruments, micro-chopped vocals and intriguing hints of melody. A self-effacing artist highly worthy of greater attention.

Chat Pile – Badman V: A New Beginning [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Chat Pile – TAH [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Chat Pile – Tenkiller [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Having released one of the albums of the year already – the scungey, impassioned punk/noise/sludge/doom of God’s Country – Oklahoma’s Chat Pile have only gone and dropped a second whole album on us in November! It’s a bit different though. Tenkiller is the soundtrack to an indie film of the same name, and sports something like a country song, tracks with bells and glockenspiels (I’m guessing here), along with plenty of filthy, cracked loops worthy of a Wolf Eyes record, and a few bits of heavy riffage and anguished howls. Rad.

Listen again — ~202MB

Original hyperglitch tonight from a shortly-forthcoming album, plus wyrd arcane industrial folk, percussive variations, dub, jungle, iPhone-folk and ambient tape-loops…

LISTEN AGAIN and find what was lost… Podcast here, or stream on demand at FBi.

Metal Preyers – The Preyers Forest [Nyege Nyege Tapes]
Metal Preyers – Ecto Green Code [Nyege Nyege Tapes]
Metal Preyers feat Lord Tusk – Metal Mans Revolt [Nyege Nyege Tapes]
London musician Jesse Hackett and Chicago-based visual artist Mariano Chavez have worked together since 2018 as Teeth Agency, but as an offshoot or alias they have been releasing music via mixtapes and albums for the last couple of years as Metal Preyers on the Kampala-based Nyege Nyege Tapes label. Understanding it as an art project is in some ways helpful in unravelling the dense, polysemous, mysterious music (and I should mention that the visuals are awesome). The first track we heard tonight is one of a few featuring vocals from Hackett’s 6-year-old daughter Wonder, and when I first heard it I assumed it was a slightly questionable ethnomusicological sample. Often, though, the provenance of the music seems to be an arcane reconstruction of British folk, or some 20th-century European classical composition – or that intersection-of-weird where proto-industrial and musique concrète meet. As often as not, though, the music does veer into a more contemporary beat-crafting or sound-editing realm, particularly emphasised with collaborators like Lord Tusk. Intriguing and rewarding.

BEFA – bonhomía a garrotazos [Ohm Resistance/Bandcamp]
BEFA – fuego verde [Ohm Resistance/Bandcamp]
Keeping things enigmatic and industrial, we join Spanish artist BEFA with their new album audienteogénica courtesy of Ohm Resistance. It’s not immediately clear who BEFA is or what it stands for, but they’re an antifascist collage/industrial/ambient/dub artist, well suited to the Ohm Resistance stable. There are a few experimental Spanish acts collaborating here, and notably a couple of contributions from Justin K Broadrick collaborator Dave Cochrane, who played in influential proto-hardcore punk/industrial band Head of David among others. Like Metal Preyers, the music here never quite settles into recognisable dance music genres, but will appeal to lovers of industrial dub and weird sound-art.

T5UMUT5UMU – Bottomless Valley [Hakuna Kulala]
Back to Kampala, where the Nyege Nyege-affiliated Hakuna Kulala label is based. But the Sea of Trees EP, while infused with percussion and influenced by gqom, is from Japanese producer T5UMUT5UMU. As the label says, he manages to take dance music forms of all sorts and rebuild them from the ground up – the title track sounds to me like a twisted take on Samurai-style tribal drum’n’bass, and tonight’s cut is a gqom/dembow/half-time thing, with rattling subs.

Coco Bryce – Purim [Myor Bandcamp]
Coco Bryce – I’ll Hide U [Myor Bandcamp]
Dutch producer Yoel Bego has gone by Coco Bryce for over a decade – although earlier on he was making hip-hop/dub/downtempo beats as well as skweee. But for some time now he has been a highly creative and talented force in contemporary jungle. He also runs the Myor label, and it’s via that imprint that we’ve been given the 16-track Grand Larceny (Bootlegs 2012-2022) which runs the gamut from hip-hop and skweee through to hardcore and jungle. I admit I don’t recognise all the pop tunes that are desecrated here, but I do recognize the cute Yiddish children’s song “Chag Purim”, sampled in the kind-of happy-hardcore track named for one of the, well, happiest Jewish festivals. And Kosheen’s breakout drum’n’bass hit “Hide U” is transformed via pitch-shifting into some kind of horror…

Fracture – Booyaka Style [Astrophonica/Bandcamp]
Fracture – From The Very Top [Astrophonica/Bandcamp]
London drum’n’bass/jungle mainstay Charlie Fieber aka Fracture, also boss of the great Astrophonica label, has just released his new album/mixtape/project 0860, which is a tribute to London’s pirate radio (and extending to the pirate radio broadcasts in other UK cities like Manchester & Bristol). At 0860.fm there’s a heap of supporting material including interviews with people behind some of the important pirate radio stations, going right back to the ’80s. Pirate radio played a big part in rave culture from the beginning, as well as soundsystem culture, and was absolutely central to the “hardcore continuum” of hardcore techno through jungle, drum’n’bass, uk garage, dubstep, grime and more. As Fracture describes, kids would be tuning in well before they could go clubbing themselves, and because anyone within range could tune in, it disseminated the culture far more widely than would have been expected. The Bandcamp download comes with a selection of excellent jungle tunes in Fracture style, as well as a full mixtape with all those tracks mixed in with radio interference, bits of interviews and callouts and the like. Fun stuff.

Ryoji Ikeda – ultratronics 11 [Noton/Codex]
Ryoji Ikeda – C8 :: can(n)on [Touch/Bandcamp]
Ryoji Ikeda – C4 :: contexture [Touch/Bandcamp]
Ryoji Ikeda – C5 :: cuts [Touch/Bandcamp]
Ryoji Ikeda – data.triplex [raster-noton]
Ryoji Ikeda – supercodex 04 [raster-noton]
Ryoji Ikeda – ultratronics 07 [Noton/Codex]
If you’ve engaged with the art world in the last few years, the world of installations and the interface where performance and installation work meet, you’d be hard pressed to have avoided Ryoji Ikeda. Back in the mid-to-late ’90s when his early digital cut-up and glitch works were emerging, primarily on the Touch label, he seemed like a futuristic, very experimental and deliciously obscure artist, whose work bridged cerebral concept-art and experimental electronic dance music. Indeed, his razor-sharp cutting techniques and rhythmic complexity meant that he somehow crossed between the accelerated syncopations of jungle and IDM and the austereness of minimal techno. In recent years, Ikeda has become a giant of the art world, with exhibitions ranging from towers of light outside MONA in Tasmania and next to the Houses of Parliament in London to precise flickering light installations to walk through, under and around, seen in London, at Carriageworks in Sydney, and all around the world… and further, to intense multi-screen data visualisation works such as the one (inside) at MONA and one involving a performance aspect, shown among other places also at Carriageworks. These are often monumental works, and it’s pleasing that their size, power and audience-friendliness mean that people are, knowingly or not, consuming his wonderful, complex minimal/maximal glitch music as well. In his audio work – within the installations and on record – Ikeda keeps the masses of data and finely chopped sounds within a rhythmic grid – albeit heavily syncopated. There’s a purity to much of the sound: even though he has composed for string quartets and percussion ensembles, much of his work is entirely electronic, and mostly created within the digital realm. Some earlier works concern themselves with sine waves and interference patterns, but I would venture that it’s the dense, rhythmic stuff that is most characteristically Ikeda. Ultratronics is his latest album, to be released in a few weeks, following almost a decade after Supercodex. It explores the same themes that have been present for ages – big data from genetics, quantum physics and astronomy, rendered into propulsive digital audio. Ikeda understands that this kind of aural reification requires movement, and light shows with big soundsystems in enclosed rooms can’t help but evoke dance clubs. On Ultratronics he reminds of this with voice samples, croaking speech synthesis and even chunky breakbeats. It’s wonderful to have a new recording from such an iconoclastic figure.

Mathias Delplanque – Seuil 8 [Ici d’ailleurs/Bandcamp]
We last heard the Burkina Faso-born, Nantes-based Mathias Delplanque on Utility Fog back in July in the very unusual context of his collaboration with veuze player François Robin. There the French bagpipe and other acoustic instruments went up against Delplanque’s electronics in a strange parallel dance/folk music. Delplanque has multiple musical origin stories, drawing influences from his childhood in West Africa and a love of Jamaican music, which flows into his electronic music – including the dub techno project Leda – but he is also a composer and sound designer, and he has previously created stunning folk/ambient/sound-art work for Ici d’ailleurs‘ Mind Travels series. His new album Ô Seuil maintains the core aspects of that previous work, where a plethora of acoustic instruments from around the world meet sound design; but here there’s a mighty percussive focus, and alongside the internationalist outlook there’s a kind of industrial (or post-industrial?) feel to these rhythmic works – or maybe it’s just because I’ve been listening to those albums at the top of the show tonight…

pole – Alp [Mute/Bandcamp]
Master mastering engineer Stefan Betke has recorded as pole since the late ’90s, with his series of glitch-dub albums from 1998 being central works in the mythology of glitch as “revered malfunctions” – in this case, a defective pole filter which made a crackling noise, fizzing and snapping its way through his minimalist works. He also ran the excellent ~scape label with like-minded artists and some very nice compilations. To be honest I found pole hit or miss from the start, and that extends through the dub techno and other phases of his work. But nevertheless there’s always the “hit” side, and there are some very tasty sounds to be found here. I can’t imagine that the fans will be disappointed.

Stefan Goldmann – Lattice [Ash International/Bandcamp]
Here’s a rather arcane and verrrry nice release from Stefan Goldmann, Berlin techno mainstay who is also the son of composer Friedrich Goldmann. Goldmann runs the macro label, releasing his own techno work and other experimental (somewhat) 4/4 techno, while more recently he’s explored nonstandard intonation systems and intriguing cross-rhythms – not to mention the most interesting jazz album I’ve heard recently. But Call and Response, released by the Touch-affiliated experimental/minimalist label Ash International, is even more of a cerebral concept album, based around different kinds of reverb units fed with tiny electronic clicks. From these seeds Goldmann constructs massive drone works that slowly explode or implode, and abstract rhythmless dark-ambient dub. Considering the lack of anything much resembling pitch or rhythm – even on the clicky track I played, which uses reverbs more like tap-delays – it’s quite engrossing and varied work.

Chloe Kim 김예지 – My Arrhythmias [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
Korean-born drummer Chloe Kim 김예지 is well-known to Sydney music lovers from her performances in many and varied groups in the jazz, improv and even jazz-leaning postrock worlds. Her latest solo release comes via the UK’s Phantom Limb, four tracks of her highly inventive and agile drum kit playing (with a tiny smattering of electronic sounds). If you’ve seen her playing solo live, you’ll know that she can be absolutely dazzling, and so it is with the pieces here. “My Arrhythmias” sees her fondly settling in to 6 minutes of intricate skittery patternlessness, homogeneous yet ever changing. A little bit of magic.

Giacomo Zanus – Iro [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
Last week we featured some incredible music from Italian musician Nicholas Remondino aka LAMIEE., whose new piece PATCHWORK was just released by Dutch label Esc.rec as part of a batch of new cassettes. Here’s a piece from another of those cassettes, from another Italian: guitarist Giacomo Zanus, whose Inside a frame presents four “sonic frames” inspired by Iranian artist Abbas Kiarostami’s final film 24 Frames, in which he digitally animated 24 still photographs. Each of Zanus’ four tracks encapsulates a kind of animated stasis – field recordings and electric guitar subject to digital edits in the folktronic style.

Madobe Rika – Stille Nacht [Virgin Babylon/Bandcamp]
A couple of months ago, Japanese label Virgin Babylon introduced us to “virtual girl” Madobe Rika with her Baklava EP. Now she returns with a single track Stille Nacht, which is not a Christmas carol (to my great relief!) but rather a quite pretty piece of indie pop that turns all breakcore in the middle. Just what the doctor ordered.

anrimeal – 1. skin deep [Objects Forever/Bandcamp]
anrimeal – I Am Not [anrimeal Bandcamp]
anrimeal – 14. seat seat seat [Objects Forever/Bandcamp]
anrimeal – 16. narrative pt.3 [Objects Forever/Bandcamp]
Ana Rita de Melo Alves’ solo music as anrimeal was one of my favourite discoveries of 2021, via a compilation on The Leaf Library‘s Objects Forever label. Her 2020 album Could Divine (from which we heard “I Am Not”) is a very fine example of “laptop folk”, in which acoustic instruments and her voice are manipulated digitally so that real performances and fractured editing blur and merge – all in service of gorgeous melodic songwriting. In 2021, anrimeal released an unusual form of remix album with Could Divine, Remembered, where remixes by fellow travellers are woven into spoken word commentaries and reminiscences about the creative process, and de Melo Alves’ own self-reworkings. For Objects Forever, she has now released Skin Deep: A Study on Human Skin and Concert, which is a kind of audio diary of the month of April this year. It’s mostly recorded and mixed(!) on iPhone using Voice Notes and GarageBand, with spoken commentary (often disturbingly ASMR – apologies, but ASMR is horrific and creepy, just stating facts), beautiful vignettes on synths, guitar, vocals and guests on harp, violin and other instruments. It’s deliberately unpolished and inconclusive – a characteristic of laptop folk, particularly on The Books’ masterwork The Lemon of Pink – and serves as a wondrous interlude along the way to the “true” follow-up to Could Divine. I’ll keep you posted – now go listen!

Carla dal Forno – Stay Awake [Kallista Records]
From her roots in the experimental/noise/free music scene of Melbourne, to some years making solo music in the UK, now to the country life in Castlemaine (northwest of Melbourne), Carla dal Forno is a distinctive voice in self-produced songwriting. She’s a composer of subtle songs that marry deceptively simple melodic catchiness with sparse arrangements that can go from the stripped-down postpunk of guitar/bass/drums to lonely cello, Casio keyboard, buzzing amps or unplaceable electronics. She has taken tips from the sonic experimentation of the noise scene, emptied out the aggression of punk, turned the wistfulness of folk revivalism to her own use, and delivers all this in a deadpan that, at its best, tugs the heartstrings despite – or because of – its muted emotiveness. Her albums are always softly powerful, and Come Around – her second released on her own Kallista Records imprint – is no exception.

Broken Chip – Tree Line [Broken Chip Bandcamp]
Broken Chip – Spool [Broken Chip Bandcamp]
Blue Mountains-based musician Martyn Palmer has made hazy ambient music as Broken Chip for over a decade, often in parallel with his organic beat-making as Option Command. For the last few years, sporadic Broken Chip releases have leaked out – including a beautiful album on Kate Carr’s Flaming Pines label. The latest is an EP called Erosion, whose source material is short tape loops of an analogue synth – the Korg Minilogue XD – further treated with granular synthesis. Thus grainy sampling and sound degradation in both the analogue and digital realms contribute to the not-quite-there, out-of-focus feel of this music. The Blue Mountains are named for the blue haze the surrounds them when seen from a distance – perhaps due to volatile compounds emitted by the eucalyptus trees found throughout the region. Here Palmer takes us into a dreamscape in which the once-distant haze envelops us as we wander the valleys and bushland of the ancient mountains. Careful not to get lost!

Listen again — ~203MB