Big experimental pop album released this week, but there’s also an array of experimental sounds from around the world…

LISTEN AGAIN, it’s your royal duty. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Jockstrap – Angst [Rough Trade/Bandcamp]
Jockstrap – Joy [Kaya Kaya Records]
Jockstrap – The City [Warp/Bandcamp]
Jockstrap – Beavercore 3 [Warp/Bandcamp]
Jockstrap – Debra [Rough Trade/Bandcamp]
So here it is. After a couple of brilliant singles, following the two extraordinary EPs released on Warp in 2020, and their debut EP on Kaya Kaya Records in 2018, UK duo Jockstrap‘s first full album I Love You, Jennifer B is finally out from Rough Trade. The songs and sumptuous string arrangements of Georgia Ellery (also of Black Country, New Road), with the shiny-but-experimental production of Taylor Skye, make Jockstrap a unique and joyful experience. Part of Jockstrap’s brilliance is the juxtapositions: irreverant humour with deep emotion, luscious jazz harmonies & progressions with glitched programmed beats, intensely catchy pop sensibility with experimentalism. The album covers all the ground of their previous EPs, including frequent references to “the city”, and tracks named after women’s names. And that pop sensibility is unquestionable.

Nathaniel Mellors – Digital Worms [Nathaniel Mellors Bandcamp, coming soon]
British artist Nathaniel Mellors is one quarter of the brilliant, unclassifiable band The God In Hackney, who have a new album coming out soonish. Mellors is perhaps better known internationally, though, as a multidisciplinary artist, working in video, painting, sculpture, animatronics and more. A new exhibition called Estate is opening soon at Matt’s Gallery in London, featuring Neanderthal-themed works from the last decade, including videos for Mellors’ solo work and The God In Hackney, and along with that is a limited 7″ single with two tracks – “Life Becomes A Promo” and “Digital Worms”, of which I chose the b-side to play tonight. Mellors’ work abounds in work-play and genre-slippage, as can be found here.

Bird Eternal – Forest Burial [Bird Eternal Bandcamp]
From around 2008 to 2016, Melbourne-via-Blue Mountains musician Bob Streckfuss released a slew of brilliant experimental electronic music as 0point1 (or, earlier, 0.1). He mixed postrock & shoegaze influences with glitch and idm in a unique way. He’s back now under the new name Bird Eternal, with a beautiful track of processed vocals and electronics. His incredible digital art can be found on Instagram.

Briana Marela – You Are a Wave [Briana Marela Bandcamp]
Briana Marela – Eclipse [Briana Marela Bandcamp]
After her third album Call It Love was released in 2017, Briana Marela moved to Oakland to complete an MFA at Mills College. Her previous albums combined her talents at indie songwriting with electronic processing, but You Are A Wave is both more personal and more unforgiving for the listener. The influence of her fine arts studies is here in the extended instrumental modular synth works, stridently unmoored in melody or rhythm, and in her collaboration with the contemporary music-focused Eclipse Quartet, but so is the upheaval of the pandemic, and the tragic loss of her father in April 2022 – he was in Peru, and she was unable to return for over a year. The combination of uncompromising sound-art and her ethereal vocals singing of loss makes ultimately for a very contemporary album, one well suited to a time where pop music, indie music, jazz, club and experimentalism have very slippery boundaries at best.

Nonsemble – Argentavis [Nonsemble Bandcamp]
Nonsemble – Argentavis (Madeleine Cocolas Remix) [Nonsemble Bandcamp]
Something like 15 years ago I discovered Brisbane musician Chris Perren via his folktronic solo work and his postrock band Mr Maps. In the interim, he also formed the contemporary classical ensemble Nonsemble, where his compositions, guitar and electronics are joined by a group of strings, piano and percussion. It’s been a while since the last Nonsemble release, but they’re returning now with a recorded version of their Archaeopteryx Cycle inspired by prehistoric birds. The first single celebrates the carnivorous Argentavis, probably the heaviest flying bird to have ever existed. A nice mix of rhythmic strings and electronics, it’s supported on the single by a blissful remix with added vocal drones by fellow Brisvegan Madeleine Cocolas.

Catherine Graindorge featuring Iggy Pop – Mud II [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Last year Belgian violist/violinist Catherine Graindorge released a lovely album on Glitterbeat of dark, layered electronic string works. It seems they caught the ear of veteran pre/postpunk all-round rock ledge Iggy Pop, who played some tracks on a radio playlist he put together, and one thing led to another and Graindorge sent him some tracks which he spoke/sang on. Although the title track is the lead song on The Dictator EP, I liked the vibe of “Mud II”, and it segues nicely into the ultra-dark of our next act…

The Bug – Satan ft Nazamba [Pressure Records]
The Bug – Oceans ft YL Hooi [Pressure Records]
Kevin Martin was asked to provide a remix for post-metal/sludge superground Absent In Body (a group whose future is in doubt now that Scott Kelly (also ex-Neurosis) has been outed as an abuser). The first thing he sent them was rejected as not heavy enough(!) and so instead it became the Absent Riddim, a versatile instrumental that, dancehall/dub style, he shared with a whole slew of collaborators to create versions ranging from ethereal song to hard-hitting rap. This technique is something Martin’s used in the past, with b-sides of tracks like “Poison Dart” and others featuring alternate versions with different MCs. The riddim is sludge-slow and covered in sooty static, very clearly The Bug, and his choices of collaborator range from Jamaican and grime MCs, US underground rappers, to metal vocalists, indie singers and jazz musicians. Two of the artists tragically passed away very recently – one is Jamaican MC Nazamba, who died of a heart attack, and who contributes a hellish set of verses titled “Satan”. Also present is incendiary jazz trumpeter Jaimie Branch, whose death two weeks ago at age 39 came as a massive shock. I didn’t play her track tonight, but it’s wonderful – mostly her singing but with some trumpet in there too! There are so many great people on here, including frequent sparring partner Justin K Broadrick, the great industrial hip-hop MC dälek, King Midas Sound‘s Roger Robinson (featured on last week’s show), Moor Mother and many more. Two Australians also appear: Jonnine Standish of HTRK, and Melbourne’s YL Hooi, who I played tonight.

YL Hooi – Always In Jokes [Efficient Space/YL Hooi Bandcamp]
Russian-Chinese musician Valya Ying-Li Hooi is YL Hooi, a member of Kallista Kult with every-present Melbourne noisemaker Tarquin Manek – which provides a direct connection to Carla dal Forno, who I’d see as one touchpoint for YL Hooi’s sound, along with HTRK‘s Jonnine Standish. Not that Hooi is derivative in any way – in fact, other than her delicate, semi-detached vocal style, the connections are more about the postpunk/dub style that inhabits some of her work. But you’ll just as likely find her making massive granular drones out of her voice, or sparse filligree soundscapes, or strange Casio keyboard ditties. The anything-goes approach on her twice-released Untitled is intruging and both redolent of that Melbourne scene and of the current zeitgeist (e.g. the Briana Marela album above). I hope her presence on The Bug’s album indicates more things to come, as this album is a few years old now!

Tom Allum – under [Tone List/Bandcamp]
Tom Allum – time [Tone List/Bandcamp]
Not long after exploratory Perth label Tone List released 504’s Salvage Rhythms, made out of repurposed found sounds & field recordings, they now bring us Tom Allum‘s CANAL ROCKS. Here the burbling landscape of Canal Rocks, near Margaret River in Western Australia, is documented and repurposed by Allum in various ways. Field recordings are processed and “blasted back into the environment at night”; hydroponic recordings featured from deep under the water. All these watery sounds are played both straight and chopped into rhythms and shapes at times, and they are overlaid with synth pads and guitar at times. It really is evocative of a place where the sea meets the land.

KAVARI – Mirroring (Like Me) [KAVARI Bandcamp]
KAVARI – Attachment Style [KAVARI Bandcamp]
Glasgow artist KAVARI (Cameron Sofia Winters) has some great collabs under her belt and demented edits & remixes, but it feels like Suture EP is her most fully-formed work yet. Here she she effortlessly combines jungle, dubstep and trap influences with current experimentalism (have we stopped using “deconstructed club” now?), including creepy metal-adjacent vocal growls. All of that makes for ideal Utility Fog music, so get on it.

Ibrahim Alfa Jnr – TQSM [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
Ibrahim Alfa Jnr – NPNX [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
Brighton-based Ibrahim Alfa Jnr has been making his brand of wonky, rhythmically-unusual techno since the mid-to-late ’90s. It’s not a surprise to find him now on the re-formed experimental imprint Mille Plateaux, but it is a surprise to find many of the tracks on Messier87 sporting jungle breakbeats. Mille Plateaux, in their theory-infested way, call it “Hypercussion”, which is a nice coinage anyway. I like the buried swing beats at the start and end of the first track tonight, and the hyper nature of this new music in a new direction from a techno veteran.

Frank Bretschneider and Giorgio Li Calzi – In The Dark [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
Frank Bretschneider and Giorgio Li Calzi – Human-to-Human [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
Jazz trumpet melded with electronics has a long heritage – back to Miles Davis easily, along with Jon Hassell and Nils Petter Molvær. Giorgio Li Calzi has also worked his trumpet in with electronics during his long career, and here the electronics are provided by another veteran, Frank Bretschneider, co-founder of the Raster label, before it merged with Alva Noto’s Noton, and then de-merged a few years ago. This album, though, is released on the forward-thinking Mexican label Umor Rex. With Zero Mambo the two artists switch between glitchy machine funk and more sparse & dubby feels, with the translucent trumpet of Li Calzi perfectly aligned with the purity of Bretschneider’s tones and hits. Man-machine music.

Carl Stone – Vatanim [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
We’re not done with veterans yet. Our last track comes from LA/Tokyo-based pioneer of sampling and granular techniques, Carl Stone. Unseen Worlds showcased his back catalogue on two compilations in 2016 & 2018, which catalysed a renaissance of creativity in Stone, with multiple EPs and albums released through the label since then. Gall Tones, a typically punning title, is an EP produced on laptop & headphones in hospital following a gall stone operation, with the subject of his rhythmic chop-and-shuffle being pop music of some sort. There’s a brass link here though – some kind of mambo horn section is stuttering about in this track, it seems. Unhinged as only Stone can do it.

Listen again — ~203MB

He’s baaaaack! Huge, inadequate thanks to Marcus Whale for his brilliant work filling in over four shows. He’s instinctively included many of the releases I would’ve played (shout out for Kim Myhr!) and done an all-round wonderful job.
Many of the tunes tonight are delayed plays of material I would have featured over the month, but it’s all pretty new stuff anyway.

LISTEN AGAIN, to one person’s idea of where it’s at. Podcast here, stream on demand from FBi.

Boris – (not) Last song [Relapse Records/Bandcamp]
When Boris are on, they’re on (it’s most of the time), and so not long after the brilliant W comes Heavy Rocks, their third to be bestowed that name. Indeed note their website – borisheavyrocks. They do rock, heavily, most of the time, and this album is dedicated to heavy rock in all its heavy rockiness. Nevertheless, Boris are not to be pigeonholed, and this album was again produced by the brilliant suGar Yoshinaha of Buffalo Daughter. On the last track, *ahem* “(not) Last song”, we get a piano refrain with periodic glitches, crackling noises, guitar feedback, and pained vocals from Atsuo. It’s typically atypical for Boris, and just rad.

Chat Pile – Pamela [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Chat Pile – I Don’t Care If I Burn [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Keeping with the heavy bands for just a moment longer, here’s Oklahoma’s Chat Pile, whose album on The Flenser has been eagerly awaited. Their combination of hardcore punk, noise rock and sludge/doom metal is unapologetically political – in a recent interview they said the album is an attempt to “capture the anxiety and fear of seeing the world fall apart”. There’s a surprising amount of clean vocals, rendering the lyrics comprehensible, and there are plenty of catchy riffs and basslines. It’s also mostly very menacing, especially with the quietly suspenseful “I Don’t Care If I Burn”, with just a kick drum and a half-spoken, half-sung vocal.

Yo-Yo Ma / Stuart Duncan / Edgar Meyer / Chris Thile – No One But You feat. Aoife O’Donovan [Sony Classical]
Aoife O’Donovan – B61 (Olga Bell Remix) [Yep Roc Records/Bandcamp]
Here I’ve allowed myself a little indulgence in playing a track from the beloved Goat Rodeo Sessions from 2011, in which the great, restless cellist Yo-Yo Ma teamed up with some of the top bluegrass musicians in the world – banjo player Stuart Duncan, bassist Edgar Meyer and certified genius Chris Thile of the Punch Brothers on mandolin & vocals. On a couple of tracks the band are joined by Irish-American singer Aoife O’Donovan, and she’s the reason for this inclusion. Her song with Thile, “No One But You”, is gorgeously heart-pulling, and so I always notice her name when it comes up. The lovely track “B61” from her recent album Age of Apathy has now been remixed by Russian-American producer/composer/musician Olga Bell, turning the gentle folk-pop into a transportive piece of minimal techno. It’s beautifully unexpected.

Utility – Flooot – DJ Plead Rework [SUMAC]
In 2019, Tom Smith and Austin Buckett created a bewilderingly conceptual album called Nexus Destiny made up entirely of unaccompanied monophonic arpeggios for software synths. It’s one of those “uh, OK, if you say so” things for me, but… cool? In any case, 2 and half years later comes an excellent selection of remixes thereof by friends (Tom’s T.Morimoto among them, as Utility seems to be just Austin now?) Our DJ Plead is top notch as ever, with cycling percussive beats matching the synth arpeggios.

Fugazi – So Tired (Morwell remix) [Morwell Bandcamp]
Croatian-English producer Max Morwell loves his UK bass music, through from hardcore & jungle to grime, dubstep and uk funky. It all bubbles up and around the music he makes, but he also loves his pop and rock and r’n’b, and that comes out in the various bootleg remixes that he has a habit of popping out frequently. Remixes Vol 5 may be the most enjoyable yet, and marrying the least characteristic Fugazi song with a jaunty beat and dubby bass/fx inna ’90s style is perversely inspired.

LSN & Roger Robinson – Pray [Artikal Music/Bandcamp]
Speaking of ’90s, trip-hop is back, as I think I’ve mentioned before! Dubsteppers are particularly enjoying bringing the trip-hop vibes, and who better for LSN to invite than the poet Roger Robinson of King Midas Sound and more. There’s more than a little of Massive Attack circa Mezzanine on these four tracks, with heavy ponderous riffage sweeping in at times, but there’s also the influence of dubstep and grime. References aside, this is deeply evocative stuff, deserving of a wide audience.

First Circle (feat Don Sinini) – Sad Day (Ghost Phone Remix) [All Centre]
London’s All Centre released First Circle‘s song “Sad Day” (feat. Don Sinini) only a few weeks ago, and followed it up with this Ghost Phone remix which I like even more – it’s sparse and haunted, with bass and skittery hats floating in and out with the vocals, like the best UK drill, and works like a contemporary counterpart to the more nostalgic sounds of LSN & Robinson.

Chad Dubz ft. Riko Dan – In The Red [Deep Medi/Bandcamp]
New on Deep Medi is a minialbum of heavyweight dubstep from Chad Dubz, Bristol founder of Foundation Audio. The vocal tracks are heaviest of all, with grime collabs and intense productions like this one, with snarling riffs a la Distance or The Bug, and indeed Riko Dan has worked with The Bug before. Here he spits lines about all the ways his enemies will get, well, fucked up.

Yunzero – Cupid Television [West Mineral Ltd/Bandcamp]
Yunzero – Acryclic Germ [West Mineral Ltd/Bandcamp]
Next up, from Naarm/Melbourne is our man Yunzero, with his most high-profile release yet, Butterfly DNA, out on Huerco S‘s West Mineral Ltd. It’s honestly so good seeing new people getting hip to the unique madness of Yunzero’s sound, drawing on beats from trip-hop & jungle to dubstep & footwork, doing “deconstructed club” in very much his own way, and equally doing the ambient/illbient of vaporwave/dreamgaze in his own woozy way. Utterly brilliant.

Saint Abdullah & Eomac – Capping Verse [Other People/Bandcamp]
Saint Abdullah & Eomac – Bareekullah Picnic [Other People/Bandcamp]
Here’s a surprising but perfect collaboration between Ian McDonnell aka Eomac (one half of Lakker) and NY-based Iranian brothers Mohammad & Mehdi aka Saint Abdullah. With Saint Abdullah, the brothers explore various aspects of their culture and the way it’s filtered and twisted in the “Western” context, melding field recordings and samples of Iranian music with dub and IDM-inspired beats and ambiences, free jazz and noise. McDonnell too has brought traditional Irish music into his techno and experimental electronics, and the artists were able to find parallels between the ways religious traditions in their cultures have been used to oppress their peoples. The album runs like many Saint Abdullah albums, with crackling samples from Iran & the Middle East and further afield, and abstractions of various types of dance music. If you like this awesome work, be sure to follow up their many previous releases.

Thugwidow – A Reduction In Stress [Western Lore]
Following the “sampler” EP, here’s the full new album from Wales’ finest trader in jungle & rave nostalgia, Thugwidow. Some tracks are pure dancefloor fillers, while others follow his frequent forays into Burial-like hauntology, with beats floating in & out of beds of washed-out ambience.

Gunjack – House of Glass [Gunjack Bandcamp]
Gunjack – Awaken [Gunjack Bandcamp]
Gunjack – Honeysuckle (feat. Sun Ra) [Gunjack Bandcamp]
Brian Gunjack is a US artist with very eclectic styles. I’ve particularly liked the Hyperjazz Volume 1 EP, which finds him in drill’n’bass/breakcore mode but with a jazz core – indeed “feat. Sun Ra” on the last track here does indeed refer to at least the jazz god’s spoken words. In between, a track from the digital part of RTX Gold, a highly limited cassette release which touches on jungle, but also delves into trip hop and other breakbeat forms. Very nice stuff, and I hope Hyperjazz Volume 2 is coming soon…

ize – Crack 45 [Ize Bandcamp]
ize – Sugar Spice feat. Eartheater [Ize Bandcamp]
Don Gonzalez aka ize popped up on my radar a couple of years ago when Ize Cream Man first dropped – psycho rapping like a punk Danny Brown, with jungle and hardcore smashed up against grime and hip-hop. AceMo was on production for some of those beats (see This Is Not A Drill), but his new EP Crack Kong is instrumentals produced by himself – presumably a harbinger of something more official soon. Meanwhile, Ize Cream Man is up on his Bandcamp, including a rad collab with Eartheater.

Alienationist – Das ist Doch Demokratie [Alienationist Bandcamp]
Berlin-based producer Philipp Rhensius runs the Arcane Patterns label, DJs on Noods Radio and elsewhere, and for his reassuringly-titled album Don’t Worry, You Can Always Be Reborn As a Screenshot blends jungle and hardcore breaks & basslines in amongst field recordings, processed spoken word and ambient textures. Hard to pin down, just how we like it.

Dylan Peirce – Heights [Digital In Berlin/Bandcamp]
Pindrops by Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Dylan Peirce is the second release on the new label for the music platform/promoter/event Digital In Berlin. It sure is arty, coming with a whole lot of text that starts by informing us that “you first need to understand that it is not meant to be understood in the conventional sense of that word”. This is reassuring, as I don’t really understand any of it, but it’s about different levels of perspective, with sounds from close-mic’d objects to field recordings, and from widescreen ambience to detailed rhythmic studies like the one I played tonight. Here we have acoustic sounds edited into IDM-like complex patterns. Part of the album’s conception is that the gradual widening of perspective is linked to ecological theory – so check the whole (excellent) release and let that play around in your head while you listen.

Deep Learning – Spring Landscape [Oxtail Recordings]
Deep Learning – Message Your Loved Ones [Oxtail Recordings]
Richard Pike is of course the brother of Laurence Pike, with whom he played in Pivot/PVT. These days under his own name he’s building a fruitful career writing film & TV scores, and as Deep Learning he’s focused on minimalist compositions. The tunes on Evergreen are by and large peaceful, but with plenty of movement going on. The glitchy loops that form the music’s basis call back to the early works of Markus Popp as Oval, but Pike’s far too deliberate a composer to let that randomness define the music. It’s lovely, melodic, elusively rhythmic work.

Tilly Webb – May You Grow Strong and Tall [Tilly Webb Bandcamp]
Originally from Sydney, Tilly Webb is now based in Naarm/Melbourne, where she studied interactive composition at the Conservatorium. She’s written music for dance and film, and her released music combines composition, ambient soundscapes, glitch and beats in the way that comes naturally to the current generation of artists. So her new EP Inside and Out has everything from field recording-based ambient to electronic pop, with this track transforming along the way, with a lovely organic-sounding beat and pretty synth melodies. An artist to pay attention to.

Flightless Birds Take Wing – Given Terrace [4000 Records]
When I played the remarkable new album Spectral from Brisbane’s Madeleine Cocolas a couple of months back, I wasn’t aware of her new duo with fellow Brisvegan, saxophonist Marike Van Dijk. Flightless Birds Take Wing describe their music as “Tropical Ambient Bangers”, which… well, OK. It’s charmingly loose and experimental, with field recordings of birds matched with IDM-ish rhythms, beautiful ambient pads, and overdriven noise all given a look-in. On this track, distorted, looped saxophone(?) gives way to delicate piano phrases and what may or may not be sampled traffic noise. Before you know it you’re drawn in, and hardly notice as electronic pads join the piano. Unexpected bliss.

Natalie Beridze – Salt [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
Just before I left, I played some tracks from the brilliant album of studio off-cuts from Georgian mainstay Natalie Beridze. The album was sourced from a large selection of material, enough to supply another five tracks on follow-up EP In Front Of You. Everything here is as good as the album proper, and the noise loops, ambient pads and pitch-shifted vocals here are gorgeous.

Listen again — ~205MB

I’m taking August off to travel around Europe, so after tonight I’ll see you again on the 4th of September!
Tonight spans melodic indie-doom, LOTS of piano – ambient, processed, jazz – as well as jungle (of course), dubby house, IDM, glitchy ambient and a doomy orchestral soundtrack.

LISTEN AGAIN – we’re all catching up! Stream on demand on the FBi website, podcast here.

June McDoom – The City [Temporary Residence/Bandcamp]
Here’s an incredible track to start off the show tonight. “The City” is the first recorded output of NYC singer-songwriter June McDoom. A generation before she was born, her family uprooted themselves from Jamaica and moved to NYC. This particular song points more at old soul and indie (via Grizzly Bear) than roots reggae, but it’s there too. This is beautiful rich analogue production with a song that I’ve just been leaving on repeat.

Ani Klang – distorted thots, juni 2019 [New Scenery]
Ani Klang – to pacify the asinine [New Scenery]
On UK label New Scenery comes the latest album from Californian artist Ani Klang, very much focused on rave madness – machine-gun beats and glitchy samples evoking the early-to-mid ’90s on the whole. And then there’s the last track, which I played first here – the exquisitely named “distorted thots, juni 2019” brings us queasy piano, glitching drones and processed vocals, a thing of unsettling beauty.

Aura T-09 & Baseck – West Coast pt. 1 [Evar Records]
Marci Pinna aka Aura T-09 is also one of the people behind the rave & IDM-loving EVAR Records, and here she teams up with Baseck for three jungle/breakbeat tracks celebrating the US west coast. That does seem to be a centre for dubstep & drum’n’bass in the USA – see Ani Klang above too.

DJ Trax – Polar Opposite [Over/Shadow/Bandcamp]
The ongoing jungle & rave revival is seeing many names from the early nineties turning up with new material. Over/Shadow is run by 2 Blind Mice and associated with the legendary Moving Shadow, providing the connections with many such artists including here one of the originators, DJ Trax, providing two classic-sounding jungle tracks.

Herbert – Fantasy (Herbert’s Greenery Dub) [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
Change of pace into dubby, glitchy deep house as only Matthew Herbert can do it. Herbert’s Musca from last year was a beautiful highlight in his “domestic house” oeuvre, and Musca Remixes hands tracks out to a select few, including Floating Points, who takes this same track on a 15-minute minimal trip. It’s lovely, but there’s nothing like a Herbert remix, even of himself.

ronan – Geodesis [On Loop/Bandcamp]
Four tracks from French producer ronan, who runs the Eternal Ocean label (see Tristan Arp et al). Released by London label On Loop, Interdépendence features four lovely dubby techno tracks to get your head nodding and/or your legs shuffling.

Rutger Zuydervelt – Hinkelstap 1 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Rutger Zuydervelt – Hinkelstap 3 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
I was very lucky to get a pre-release copy of Rutger Machinefabriek Zuydervelt’s new EP Hinkelstap – in fact, I got to preview it before it was finished. Here Zuydervelt is taking a rare plunge into an unusual space for him – entirely electronic music, complete with basslines and beats. It owes more than a little to the IDM we both grew up with in the ’90s, and the hardcore/drum’n’bass continuum – melodic synths, slow repetitive basslines and jittery, head-nodding beats. It’s always great to hear a musician pushing themself outside of their comfort zone – if Machinefabriek can be said to have a comfort zone. I thorougly enjoyed these tracks, which were premiered here (the EP is now out as I’m writing this rather late!)

Thor Harris – Day 32 of Quarantine (with Lawrence English, Stine Janvin Motland) [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]
Thor Harris – I Miss You So Much (with Adam Harding) [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]
Texan percussionist Thor Harris is much-loved across the music scene. He’s known for playing with luminaries like Shearwater, Xiu Xiu, the problematic Swans & Angels of Light, and appearing with many other artists live and on record. His original Doom Dub album came out in 2020 as a lockdown project bringing together friends from around the world under the not unreasonable theory that basically all musicians love classic dub. Like its predecessor, Doom Dub II approaches dub loosely as a philosophy of music creation and mixing, and draws on well-known and obscure artists from all over (Thor really has a lot of pals!) to create experimental and enthralling sounds about living through the pandemic in a world that’s anyway on the way to seeing humans off, along with much of our biodiversity. Doom indeed. And like its predecessor, there are any number of Aussies involved. Lawrence English appears again in a couple of places, including here with the arresting vocals of Norwegian musician Stine Janvin Motland. And Thor collaborator Adam Harding, who sings touchingly on “I Miss You So Much”, hails from Geelong – much though he’s spent a lot of time making rock videos in LA.

Natalie Beridze – Drift [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
Natalie Beridze – Door Part II [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
Georgian musician & DJ Natalie Beridze has a long & illustrious career both in her native Georgia and in Berlin, with recordings ranging from techno to IDM and ambient across many notable labels, both under her own name and as TBA or TBA Empty. Her new recordings for ROOM40 – both this album, Of Which One Knows, and its accompanying EP In Front Of You – find her in mostly contemplative mode, collecting unreleased studies and pieces which never made it on to other recordings. Despite this provenance, the material is highly cohesive, a real journey through drones, sparse piano and strings, vocal snippets, glitches and field recordings. Don’t let that make it sound more nebulous or half-formed than it actually is though. This is beautiful and assured music that deserves multiple listens.

part timer – Unflow [part timer Bandcamp]
Bandcamp affords artists an unparalleled workflow from creation to publication. John Part Timer sent me a preview of the two tracks on Unflow/Utopia, and within minutes of my telling him they need to be released, they were up on Bandcamp. It helps that he’s been producing scads of uncanny faux-instrument faux-artwork using AI tools lately. These two electronic tunes harken back to the folktronic & IDM origins of Part Timer, always a delight.

Robin Carolan & Sebastian Gainsborough – Strike, Brother [Sacred Bones Records]
Robin Carolan & Sebastian Gainsborough – Slave Work [Sacred Bones Records]
Robin Carolan & Sebastian Gainsborough – Svið Night, Pt. 2 [Sacred Bones Records]
Robin Carolan & Sebastian Gainsborough – Cut The Thread Of Fate [Sacred Bones Records]
Robert Eggers’ recent film The Northman sports a cast of famous names including Björk and her daughter in its atmospheric tale of Viking revenge. The creators of the soundtrack may surprise you – Sebastian Gainsborough is the versatile bass producer Vessel (recall “Red Sex“), and here he’s joined by Robin Carolan, who used to run the Tri Angle label that released Vessel’s early productions among many others. There’s little of the hi-tech beats & bass here though. Heavy bass surges through as befits any dramatic film score these days, but mostly the music is infused with the Scandinavian folk influence it requires, with strings including the brilliant Rakhi Singh (a previous Gainsborough collaborator), and a choir. It’s dark and dramatic, and a good listen on its own despite obviously being a collection of film cues.

Nick Storring – Music from ‘Wéi 成为’ — III [Orange Milk Records/Bandcamp]
Nick Storring – Music from ‘Wéi 成为’ — VII & IIX [Orange Milk Records/Bandcamp]
Here’s one I’ve been waiting a while for. Nick Storring sent me a few previews of his Music from ‘Wéi 成为’ a while ago – deconstructed piano in various forms, from the mic’d up insides of an upright piano to the unnaturally-dextrous computer-controlled Disclavier. The works were composed for a dance work by Yvonne Ng, and so while they’re sound works they have a sinuous flow even at their most granular or cloud-like. At other times the piano is used percussively or chopped rhythmically in quasi-folktronic fashion. There’s a lot going on in yet another engrossing work from a highly creative musician.

John Zorn – Passacaglia [Tzadik]
John Zorn – Air [Tzadik]
From deconstructed piano to an idiosyncratic take on the classic jazz piano trio form from longtime master John Zorn. Zorn has composed for string quartets and ensembles of all sorts as well as playing raucous punk and hardcore and seemingly everything in between, as well as running his massively influential downtown New York label Tzadik and for many years earlier the Japan-based Avant label. Despite his reputation as an enfant terrible back in the ’80s and ’90s, there’s plenty of beautiful melodic work in his repertoire too, inspired by Jewish liturgical music, klezmer, and his hero Ornette Coleman among many others. For this incredible new Suite for Piano, he looks to the entire history of piano music, naming pieces after early classical forms – but it’s still avant-garde jazz, with upright basslines anchoring the rhythm section, and composed heads which are then embellished with soloing before returning to the head. There are of course some Zorn-standard fast-moving bebop doggerel tracks that I can never get my head around, but there are also head-nodders in lopsided time signatures and pieces of incredible beauty. The compositions are supported by brilliant playing from Brian Marsella on piano with Jorge Roeder on bass and Ches Smith on drums.

Rishin Singh with Martin Sturm – said the roots to the twig (excerpt) [Beacon Sound]
We finish with exquisite and disquieting sound of the Liszt pipe organ at Denstedt in rural Germany. Martin Sturm performs compositions by Berlin-based, Australian-educated Malaysian composer Rishin Singh on mewl infans, pushing the organ out of its comfort zone, so to speak, with tremulously breathy voicings and anxiety-inducing alternative tunings. The music occupies a strange middle ground between difficult and transcendent listening – a great achievement in itself.

Listen again — ~200MB

Drum’n’bass & jungle mutations of all sorts tonight, plus industrial technoid dub, indietronic deconstructed club, and glitchy ambient/illbient/unbient (I just invented the last one, look out for it in all the cool blogs!)

LISTEN AGAIN, pay close attention! FBi has the stream on the demand, or you can podcast it here.

ABADIR – El 3ataba Interlude [SVBCVLT]
ABADIR – Another One [SVBCVLT]
Rami Abadir is one of the more prominent members of the very healthy experimental electronic/deconstructed club scene from Egypt. He’s based between Cairo & Berlin and his latest album Mutate is released through the very international Shanghai label SVBCVLT. What’s being mutated here are different Arabic rhythms such as the pervasive Maqsoum, looped and accelerated and combined with various club sounds reggaeton to footwork to jungle. As he says, it’s not exactly “deconstructed” here (as is often the case with this tbh overused term). It’s not unlike our own DJ Plead‘s approach with Lebanese wedding dances. Call this fusion, or just call it great dance music… and each “side” has a deep ambient track as a break from the drum breaks.

dgoHn – Ninnyhammer (Djrum Remix) [Love Love Records/Bandcamp]
dgoHn – Invisible Sandwich [Love Love Records/Bandcamp]
dgoHn – Robin’s Windmill (Skee Mask Remix) [Love Love Records/Bandcamp]
UK jungle/drumfunk master dgoHn released one of the best albums of 2020 with Undesignated Proximate – check the middle track for an example, with flowing drums and just the right mix of joy and darkness. Now every track on the album has received the remix treatment by many of the cream of the contemporary junglist crop. There are very few who have the talent for insane beat science of Djrum, who somehow combines that with top-notch compositional chops as well. Meanwhile, German producer Skee Mask is one of the Ilian Tape artists fusing techno, electro and ambient with drum’n’bass influences, and createst something typically… untypical here. The only shame – and it’s a big one – is that there’s not one female artist featured here. It shouldn’t be hard.

DJ FLP – [ spirit link ] feat. mardee [DJ FLP Bandcamp]
Michigan producer DJ FLP loves mixing the footwork of nearby Chicago with UK’s jungle, and drops tracks regularly on his Bandcamp. Here he’s joined by Denver’s mardee for a bit of euphoric jungle pleasure.

Grids/Units/Planes – Squid Neuromesh [Memories Melt]
We only just heard from Brisbane’s Grids/Units/Planes, and here he is again. The single “Squid Neuromesh” encapsulates producer Andrew Foley’s love of games of all sorts – it comes with a cute “print and play” game that carries the cyberpunk aesthetic with a theme of hacking brains, and the track itself is very computer gamey drill’n’bass.

Thugwidow & Bruised Skies – A Digital Right To The Soul [Hooversound/Bandcamp]
Thugwidow – Put Me Out Like The Bins [Western Lore/Bandcamp]
Welsh artist Thugwidow seemed to have slowed his output last year after a firehose of releases over the previous 4 years. But 2022 is again seeing a flood of jungle-meets-ambient from the artist, including some collaborations along the way – so here’s Blimey, his collaboration with the usually ambient/post-classical artist Bruised Skies, released on Hooversound. It’s definitely jungle/uk hardcore flashback stuff, with that knowing hauntological sheen that Thugwidow tends to cultivate turned up to 11 via Bruised Skies’ contribution (I presume) – a Burial-like smudged quality. Meanwhile, Thugwidow also has a new album coming out on Western Lore soon, and the label has a strange habit of releasing “samplers” that are actually releases in their own right rather than excerpts from albums – so we have the Seventh Circle of Litness (LP Sampler) – four tracks not appearing on the album, as far as I can see. Thumping jungle and lengthy spaced-out interludes.

Pelican Company – Lowlife Hi-Tech Occult (ZULI Remix) [Peder Mannerfelt Produktion]
Swedish electronic legend Peder Mannerfelt uses his “Produktion” label to release tasty morsels from the Swedish scene, and Pelican Company are no exception – synth maven Johan Antoni and Henrik Johansson aka Smyglyssna teamed up on Peder Mannerfelt Produktion a few years back for some arcane synth bobbles that have now been remixed by Weightless pioneer Logos on the one hand, and Cairo beatmaking genius ZULI on the other. ZULI’s mix is one part sound-art and one part fucked jungle. Rad.

Atsushi Izumi – Casaurius [Ohm Resistance]
Last week I played a heavy drum’n’bass cut from Ohm Resistance‘s free download comp Perihelion Infinite, the last in their Perihelion series, showcasing the label’s interest in post-industrial techno, dubstep, drum’n’bass and power ambient. A month or so ago I featured some tracks from Atsushi Izumi‘s incredible Houzan Archives, as well as some of his earlier work. The shudderingly heavy techno cut here is of a piece with that work – again I have to exhort you to check this dude’s back catalogue!

Fausten – Mercenary EP (Fret Rework) [Acroplane]
Fausten – Phosphorus [Acroplane]
The first album from UK duo Fausten was released on Ad Noiseam (RIP) in 2013. They’re made up of breakcore & industrial dub artists, Derek Szeto aka Stormfield and Julien Caraz aka Monster X. No doubt Mick Harris’ Scorn is a huge influence, so it’s nice that their return EP Mercenary, released through long-lived Belfast netlabel Acroplane, is remixed in its entirety by Harris’ techno alias Fret. It’s super nice dark industrial dub shiz, get it up ya.

Angel Eyes – Curtains clap [Angel Eyes Bandcamp]
Angel Eyes – Exhaust [Angel Eyes Bandcamp]
Listeners to Utility Fog may know Melbourne musician Andrew Cowie best as Match Fixer, under which he’s produced various kinds of minimalist electronic music, from glitchy ambient/dub techno to skittery IDM. But before Match Fixer, he was Angel Eyes, and he’s returned to the indietronic sounds now with Door Ajar. It’s fantastic, certainly more songform than Match Fixer although many tracks are instrumentals. There’s a mixture in here of everything from ’80s electronic pop through ’90s IDM to contemporary dreamgazetronica.

Rita Revell – Uglie Man [Rita Revell Bandcamp]
Rita Revell – X-12 [Rita Revell Bandcamp]
Melbourne’s Rita Revell debuted with the cassette I Had a Very Bad Time! in 2014, followed by the multimedia Zastani from the much-missed This Thing (was it in fact their last release?) Five years later we get the brilliant self-released Depozit. This is genreless music, timeless too, hardware-based études that can be lo-fi techno or woozy ambient loops, harsh and pretty.

Delay/Aarset – Single 09 [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
Delay/Aarset – Single 13 [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
We heard the new Vladislav Delay album on Planet µ last week, but equally exciting is this collection from ROOM40 of Delay (aka Sasu Rippati) with Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset. I’m familiar with Aarset for his work in the Norwegian jazz/postrock scene, as well as the ECM ambient jazz set. Aarset & Delay already met on the Sly & Robbie album Nordub with Norwegian ambient-jazz-tronic trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, but this is very different stuff. It’s a little less chaotic than Delay’s recent stuff, nor as lush as Aarset’s usual realms. It’s rather a strange emulsion of both artists’ tendencies, with drama, rhythm, deep textures, strange left-turns, glitches and grains. Really great.

Bridget Ferrill & Áslaug Magnúsdóttir – Tapestry [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Bridget Ferrill & Áslaug Magnúsdóttir – Metal Slug Sings [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
US-born sound-artist and engineer Bridget Ferrill – now based in Berlin – and Icelandic musician Áslaug Magnúsdóttir, clarinettist in Icelandic electronic pop group Samaris and now based in Denmark, met in Reykjavik while Ferrill was living there. Much of Ferrill’s recent work involves processed classical instruments and works, including collaborations with viola da gamba player Liam Byrne; and Magnúsdóttir has a classical background too. Nevertheless their new duo work Woodwind Quintet is not a quintet and doesn’t feature woodwind in any obvious way, which perfectly encapsulates the artists’ strategy here. The album uses classical signs and sounds (possibly including viola da gamba, harp and choral samples from Ferrill’s previous work) while avoiding classical forms. Sounds are glitched and granular processed, obfuscated from their origins but recognizable enough. The cover photo – by Liam Byrne – depicts a beautiful zither splattered with concrete and dropped into a half-filled bath. Apposite!

504 – some problems with scale [Tone List/Bandcamp]
Perth experimental institution Tone List bring us an intriguing album of glitched samples and loops from flatmates Alex Turner & Lachlan Kettell, made up of field recordings from Boorloo (the traditional country of the Perth area), Dunsborough (south of Perth) and NYC. The album collects improvised pieces created from these samples, echoing the pioneering glitchwerk of Mego label artists with absorbing stuttering collages, at times drawn from recognizable instruments (spacey electric guitar, percussion, choir samples?) as well as domestic and industrial sounds. Salvage Rhythms is a fitting title – the looped, evolving samples do pulse and shift in quasi-rhythmic ways, as if surfacing from the foam of an ocean miles from where they were discarded.

Listen again — ~207MB