Tonight, a mix of Utility Fog’s obsessions, from mutant electronic songs and folktronica to cello & strings mixed with electronics, to bass, techno, hip-hop & jungle alloys.
It’s Supporter Drive time @ FBi – an important time for any community radio station, and these last two years have been difficult to negotiate for all sections of the music industry.
If you enjoy what I do week in & week out on this show, please head to the FBi website and help contribute to keeping this station on air!

So LISTEN AGAIN and give generously. Stream on demand @ FBi, podcast here.

Myxomy – A little opaque [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Myxomy – Toxin out [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Ziúr & James Ginzburg are both important musicians in the ex-pat Berlin scene. Ginzburg’s work with Emptyset was influential minimal techno and then influential bass-oriented sound-art; his Subtext Recordings is home to adventurous music of all shapes, including various artists from the bass scene exploring outside of standard categories. Myxomy, just released on that label, finds him working with Ziúr, who also mutates bass & techno genres to her own ends. Ziúr incorporates autotuned, distorted pop vocals into some of her music, while Ginzburg has released gorgeous atmospheric folk among other things, and both artists’ voices appear in some form or other on this very interesting work. There’s also lots of messed-up beats and bass drops and granular textures of all sorts.

A Country Practice – Sometimes I Feel Like a Conduit Between Two Worlds (Channeled by Reuben Ingall) [A Country Practice Bandcamp]
A Country Practice – Words and Lines (Shoeb Ahmad dub) [A Country Practice Bandcamp]
Out this week is a phenomenal collection of remixes from the recent album by Brisbane trio A Country Practice, who make country-influenced songs with circuit-bent keyboards and other electronics along with guitar and vocals. There’s a raft of great electronic artists from round the country contributing here, but tonight we heard from two Canberrans – something epic and dramatic from Reuben Ingall, and something distorted and bass-heavy from Shoeb Ahmad. Don’t miss this!

Marissa Paternoster – White Dove [Don Giovanni Records/Bandcamp]
This stunning single from Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females is taken from her forthcoming album Peace Meter, much of which I believe was co-created with Andy Gibbs from the phenomenal adventurous metal band THOU, with contributions also from cellist Kate Wakefield from the Cincinnati-based band Lung – notable because there’s so much cello & strings in tonight’s playlist. I’ve had this song on repeat for some time, and can’t wait for the whole album to drop.

mira calix – an infinite thrum (archipelago) [Warp/Bandcamp]
mira calix – fundamental things [Warp/Bandcamp]
You never know what you’re going to get from a Mira Calix release, which is part of the joy. Chantal Passamonte was the first female artist signed to the Warp label, at a time when the electronic music scene was not exactly a comfortable place for women, and she has forged a path from electronic productions through to luminous contemporary classical works (including an exquisite cover of Boards of Canada featuring Oliver Coates on cello). Her new album absent origin is a collection based around the idea of collage (extending to the artwork). The tracks derive inspiration from collage artists throughout history – many of whom are or were women – and Passamonte engages in various collage techniques on different tracks. As well as field recordings, ramshackle beats and vocal samples, there is an abundance of strings, which in the spirit of collage may well be sourced from existing Mira Calix works. In any case, it’s intriguing and often beautiful stuff.

Au Revoir Hands – Spindrift [Au Revoir Hands]
The debut album from Melbourne electronic musician Anthony Lyons and now-Blue Mountains-based cellist Emily Williams, working together as Au Revoir Hands, is now released. I’ve played a couple of singles from Hemispheres, and it’s great to hear the full work now, with sinuous modular synth lines and beats weaved through with layers of cello. Now that lockdowns are lifted and borders opened, there’s a chance that we’ll get to see them do this live soon – fingers crossed!

Resina – Manic [130701/Bandcamp]
Resina – Horse Tail [130701/Bandcamp]
Speaking of cello, Polish cellist Karolina Rec aka Resina releases her third album proper on Fat Cat‘s contemporary classical label 130701 next week, and it’s her best work yet. Among others, it features a full choir, some excellent production & mixing collaboration from Daniel Rejmer, and drumming from Mateusz Rychlicki. Rec’s cello is still there, looped and multi-tracked as rhythmic beds and melodies, but augmented by the choral arrangements (often rhythmical as well), percussion and sound design, all of which combine in symbiotic ways – as I’ve suggested, the instruments, choir and production all play intermixed roles, and it adds up to a pretty thrilling whole.

Mabe Fratti + Concepción Huerta – Mar de Voces [SA Recordings/Unheard of Hope]
Meanwhile, over in Mexico Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti has swiftly become an exciting voice in contemporary experimental music – and yes, voice is also an important part of her music. As well as her effected, processed cello and her soaring vocals, Fratti loves mixing in electronics, and on her new EP Estática we find her working (not for the first time) with Mexican experimental musician Concepción Huerta, both of whom work with customized pedal boards full of all sorts of effects for live sound processing. The two artists have also created a sample library to go with the EP.

Laura Cannell, Kate Ellis & Chris Watson – Cloaked By Ravens Wings [Brawl Records]
As the year nears its end, there are only two more EPs left in Laura Cannell & Kate Ellis‘ year-long project These Feral Lands – A Year Documented in Sound and Art. For their October Sounds, like the last couple of months, the British violinist & cellist invited a number of collaborators to join them. Tonight we hear their instruments in eerie conversation with ravens recorded by field recording master (and ex-Cabaret Voltaire member) Chris Watson.

Gideon Wolf – Objects & Apparitions [Fluid Audio/Facture/Gideon Wolf Bandcamp]
London composer and musician Tristan Shorr records as Gideon Wolf – a varied mix from noisier strains of electronic & drone through to plangent post-classical as heard on his new album Objects & Apparitions, his fifth now released through Fluid Audio. The album is a full-length soundtrack to a film released last year, and features variations on a simple, but affecting, series of phrases for strings, which phase and pulse like electronic drones, quite beautiful to get lost in.

From the Mouth of the Sun – I Draw You Close [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
Aaron Martin & Dag Rosenqvist have worked together as From the Mouth of the Sun since 2012. Martin’s talents at minimalist Americana, on cello and other mostly acoustic instruments, mesh with Rosenqvist’s experience with captivating drone works, which have often incorporated acoustic instrumentation as well as distortions and throbs from his love of postrock. While there’s always a fair share of darkness in their work, there are some quite hopeful pieces among the latest works. It’s as beautiful and patient as ever.

Atrice – Intensified [Ilian Tape/Bandcamp]
Atrice – Corcovado [Atrice Bandcamp]
Atrice – Hatara [Ilian Tape/Bandcamp]
Via the ever-great Ilian Tape, it’s great to discover the beat-juggling bass science of Atrice, the Zurich-based duo of Lino Schilling & Pablo Chacon-Pino. They’ve had a series of releases in the last couple of years, as well as collecting some equally great tunes from 2018 & 2019 on their own Bandcamp. IDM and UK bass genres are a big influence, including some fully-fledged drum’n’bass/jungle tracks, but generally they do that Ilian Tape thing (also found in tunes from Andrea, Skee Mask et al) of drum’n’bass-influenced beat science slipped into bass techno. However we label them, the technique is superb.

They Hate Change – 1000 Horses (feat. SARGE) [Jagjaguwar/Bandcamp]
They Hate Change – Screwface [godmode/Bandcamp]
The Tampa-based duo of Dre (27, he/him) and Vonne (27, they/them), as They Hate Change, make what’s undeniably US-style underground rap, but it’s heavily influenced by UK styles – grime MCs, and heaps of drum’n’bass/jungle beats. It’s just one example of how much jungle has found its way into the US underground – not just the club scene with artists like MoMA Ready but also hip-hop. Their 666 Central Ave. EP from last year on godmode is an instant classic, and they’ve now signed to Jagjaguwar, with a couple of singles slipped out so far…

Dom & Roland – Whispers (1996) [Dom & Roland Bandcamp]
Speaking of full on jungle, Dom & Roland is known for his intelligent, emotive, and very dark drum’n’bass, but a new EP of unreleased tunes through the ages brings us this 1996 track, circa his classic The Storm, with full-on amen choppage and warm sub bass action.

DJ FLP – moonlight [DJ FLP Bandcamp]
Speaking of jungle’s influence on US sounds, from Michigan, DJ FLP melds jungle and IDM influences with the footwork & juke of neighbouring Michigan. This tune is all blissful synth pads and manic beats somewhere in between jungle & juke, a tendency found throughout his Bandcamp catalogue.

ilex – Levitate [ilex Bandcamp]
Calming things down to finish tonight with the drawn-out sounds of Sydney percussionist Holly Conner, also found in jazz crossover ensemble Microfiche. As ilex, her percussion takes the form of bells, gongs and other instruments attenuated through effects and blended with synths to produce a shimmery kind of ambient not unlike the vapourwave, dreamwave and whatever other waves cutting edge artists are doing these days. It’s the perfect chill-out/comedown after the rave tracks we’ve just been treated to.

Listen again — ~205MB

A major supergroup release, a major expanded re-release, plus glitches & textures, post-club beats, and another brilliant re-release!

LISTEN AGAIN to the again-listenings of future-past and past-future. Stream on demand the FBi, way, podcast here.

Springtime – The Island [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]
Springtime – Jeanie In A Bottle [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]
I’ve been waiting a while to be able to play this incredible album. Springtime is what happens when Gareth Liddiard of Drones/Tropical Fuck Storm gets together with Chris Abrahams of The Necks and Jim White of The Dirty Three. Of course Abrahams and White are masterful collaborators, and Abrahams’ piano and organ on here, along with White’s idiosyncratic drums, perfectly join with the raucous guitar and anguished vocal cords of Liddiard. It’s an ensemble that feels like it’s always existed, somehow, in the Platonic musical plane. Liddiard here returns to his typical storytelling vein, although the lyrics to a couple of the tracks come from his Irish uncle, Ian Duhig – “Jeanie In A Bottle” is one of those. It’s mostly the sound of three consummate musicians playing together in a room, although there are subtle effects like the vocal delays and pitch-shifting on “Jeanie” which just add to the listening thrill.

Radiohead – Pyramid Song [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
Radiohead – Pyramid Strings [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
Radiohead – Pulk/Pull (True Love Waits Version) [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
Radiohead – The Amazing Sounds Of Orgy [Parlophone]
Radiohead – Kid A [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
You’ve heard of Radiohead before, I presume. By 2000 they were already huge, and it was already after a pretty big left turn with OK Computer into sprawling prog-pop after the fairly trad emo-indie of The Bends and their much-regretted first hit. I was a fan since hearing “Creep” on Triple J, I must admit, but it’s this pair of albums that really cemented them as being incredibly important to me. I always felt Kid A & Amnesiac were one album – I’m pretty sure we knew when the former came out in 2000 that there was a sequel. And despite “Pyramid Song” being an all-time fan favourite (and it segued too well out of Chris Abrahams’ piano for me to skip it), Amnesiac has always been underrated, but I consider it one of their best. So it’s particularly excellent to see them celebrated together after 20/21 years as KID A MNESIA. I was a little disappointed with the two “unreleased” tracks that came out as singles (they’re lovely songs though), but there are some quite interesting oddities on the Kid Amnesiæ bonus disc – such as the isolated strings from “Pyramid Song” and “How To Disappear Completely”, and the extra untitled interludes (echoes of the little hidden twirl at the end of Kid A), and the truly bizarre version of “True Love Waits” with the glitch rhythms of “Pulk/Pull” (apparently fans have long known that’s where “Pulk/Pull” came from). Nevertheless it’s a shame that the excellent Amnesiac-era b-sides didn’t get re-collected (except for a few on the Japanese CD release, and some also on a very limited cassette), so we revisited one as well tonight. And to finish, I’ve always felt like the title track “Kid A” is pure indietronica – released a year ahead of The Notwist’s Neon Golden but perfectly of the era. This is music that’s resonated through the last 2+ decades, as well it should.

Cedie Janson – The Silence [Cedie Janson Bandcamp]
Cedie Janson – Transformation No. 1 [Cedie Janson Bandcamp]
Cedie Janson – Sideways Optimism [Cedie Janson Bandcamp]
Naked Maja – #59 [Naked Maja Bandcamp]
Cedie Janson – Transformation No. 2 (you can feel it) [Cedie Janson Bandcamp]
Cedie Janson – Day of the Long-winded Breath [Cedie Janson Bandcamp]
Cedie Janson – The Water [Cedie Janson Bandcamp]
Way back in the early ’10s I played some tracks from a noisy experimental rock band from Brisbane called Naked Maja. At some point they disappeared from view, but then a few years back I was sent some lovely sparkly electronic tracks by Cedie Janson, and Aussie living in LA, and discovered that he’d been part of Naked Maja. The stuff on his two earlier solo EPs is fairly different from that band – very synthetic, with skittery techno beats mostly. But for his new album Thoughts on the Top Floor, Janson has turned back to songforms, mixing his vocals and spoken word by Dillon Howl into the mix of electronic beats and synths. The album is one long work, with the songs segue’d together with interludes (“Transformation No. 1” etc), shifting tempos like a house party – albeit a house party where the hosts have great taste in music! Janson is still based in Los Angeles, working on a career writing film soundtracks, and it would be a shame if this slipped under the radar – an excellent genre-crossing album.

Leo Abrahams – Harm Organ [figureight/Bandcamp]
Released on Shahzad Ismaily’s label figureight in December is the new album Scene Memory II from in-demand guitarist Leo Abrahams, whose solo work and much of his work with people like Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins et al involves processing his guitar into glitchy rhythmic soundscapes. Opening track “Harm Organ” is a beautiful case in point, and I’m looking forward to playing more from this album soon.

Marina Rosenfeld – Triadic [Room40/Bandcamp]
Every time I hear something new from Marina Rosenfeld it’s absolutely striking and captivating. Of late Room40 have been re-publishing some old limited edition works of hers, but also releasing some works that have only been incompletely documented on recordings – e.g. the incredible Teenage Lotano, featuring choral compositions performed by teenagers with iPods, in the case of the title work performing a version of a classic (gorgeous) work of dissonance from György Ligeti. New album Index comes with a small book documenting various turntable performances and containing a conversation between Room40 boss Lawrence English and Rosenfeld. The music is built from Rosenfeld’s selection of dubplates, which she has used in idiosyncratic ways in her work for many years, producing unique, fragile, breathtaking music like that found within.

Takuma Watanabe – Tactile [SN Variations/Bandcamp]
Delay x Takuma – Clouds Fall x Tactile [Constructive/Bandcamp]
It’s lovely to revisit the stunning compositions on Takuma Watanabe‘s Last Afternoon which I cannot believe actually came out this year (the equal longest year in recent human history). Febrile strings are caught in granular webs and shimmer and shift. We’re hearing this again because Constructive, the sister label of SN Variations, have just released a 12″ on which Vladislav Delay deconstructs tracks from Watanabe’s album (two tracks mashed up per side). It’s got its fair share of Delay’s force-of-nature bass pressure, with cracked reflections of those strings filtering through.

Bastian Void – Poly’s Hallway [Oxtail Recordings]
Bastian Void – Heart’s Location [Oxtail Recordings]
Joseph Bastardo aka Bastian Void has released a large number of albums since his debut on Brad Rose’s legendary Digitalis 10 years ago. For just as long he has also run the cassette & CDR label Moss Archive, with an air-brushed VHS aesthetic akin to that of Orange Milk (and Bastardo’s artwork is absolutely on-point). It’s very nice to find his latest album Topia released on the now-Sydney-based cassette label Oxtail Recordings. A mélange of beats and ambient scenes, with sounds produced on various classic analogue synths and a harmonic palette to match, at times echoing the heart-pulling of Boards of Canada.

Om Unit – High Plains [Om Unit Bandcamp]
Sometime last year Om Unit announced that he’d had enough of drum’n’bass and was moving on to different tempos and sounds. It’s understandable, but a shame because he’d produced some incredible music since turning to drum’n’bass’s various contemporary variants sometime around 2013. Nevertheless, complex beats are not too far away, and this special Bandcamp-only track is a lovely piece of deep 160pm breakbeat.

Loppy B – Grotto [DECISIONS/Bandcamp]
Here’s some “grotto rave” from new duo Loppy B, made up of Air Max ’97 and SCAM (aka DJ Tommy Pickles) and released on Air Max’s DECISIONS Records. It’s that combination of UK & US bass stylings of the sort you’d expect from both of these types, both currently Sydney-based.

Weyón – QUICAVÍ (SCAM REMIX) [Weyón Bandcamp]
Weyón – OYE [Weyón Bandcamp]
Speaking of SCAM, here they are remixing Sydney-based Latinx artist Weyón, again with the low-slung percussion-heavy sounds, from Weyón’s new EP CUEQUEVA. Two deconstructed club numbers are featured from Weyón along with various mostly-local remixes, including the recently-featured Ayala.

Eomac – Battle for Your Mind [Eomac Bandcamp]
Eomac – Gather To Move, Gather To Live, Gather To Be [Bedouin Records/Bandcamp]
Eomac – Mind in Heart, Heart in Mind [Eomac Bandcamp]
7 years ago, Ian McDonnell, one half of Lakker, got into conversation with Bedouin Records boss Salem Rashid about making an EP for the label, and Rashid sent him a cache of sounds from the Arabic & Islamic world to use for the purpose. Clearly it made a big impression on the Berlin-via-Dublin artist, who created an entire album for the label – Bedouin Trax, and now it turns out that there’s at least another album’s worth of material from the time. Released as Bedouin Trax II on Eomac’s Bandcamp, it’s got more Arabic percussion and voices combined for your psychedelic dancefloor or home listening. There’s beautiful stuff in here.

Pamela Z – I Know [Freedom To Spend/Bandcamp]
Pamela Z – Badagada [Freedom To Spend/Bandcamp]
In the middle of this year (again this is insane, it feels like at least a year ago!) I played some tracks from A Secret Code, the third album from African-American composer & singer Pamela Z, released by Neuma Records. It’s crazy that it was only her third album, as she’s been doing groundbreaking work with extended vocal techniques and live sampling & processing since the 1980s, and courtesy of Freedom To Spend, we now get to hear some of her earliest work, on the amazing Echolocation, originally released in 1988. Some of the tracks bear the signs of that period – the drum machines, and sequenced lines – but her work with delays and cut-ups is remarkable. Nowadays she works with gestural controllers for laptop, but she clearly had the methodology worked out way head of the technology. Unmissable.

Listen again — ~203MB

From deep (home) house to drum’n’bass & jungle, with ambient interludes.

LISTEN AGAIN for maximum switched-on-ed-ness. Stream on demand @ FBi, podcast here.

Herbert – Might As Well Be Magical (feat. Allie Armstrong) [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
Herbert – Back To The Start [Plug Research]
Herbert – Suddenly [!K7/Bandcamp]
Herbert – Two Doors (feat. Joy Morgan) [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
Sometimes trilogies can take a long time to manifest. Back in 1998, Matthew Herbert released the first of his “domestic house” albums, going just by his surname. Around The House was co-written with his then partner, Dani Siciliano, and featured jazz & r’n’b-informed deep house pop songs. Then in 2001 his masterpiece Bodily Functions was released, again mostly featuring Siciliano. And it’s taken 2 decades and a lockdown to bring us Musca. Named for Musca domestica, the common housefly, it’s got typical downbeat deep house and electronic tunes, with that jazz/r’n’b feel, and the vocalists are all relatively new or unknown artists, none of whom Herbert had met in person or worked with previously. The singers do a wonderful job, and the tracks are moody and blissful; despite being music for the home/music for the heads, it’s got that head-nodding pulse, and spots of euphoria here and there, courtesy of Herbert’s strong musicality, and his band’s and singers’ great musicianship. Joy.

Rydeen – Hanenbow [Rydeen Bandcamp]
Sydney producer Rydeen is part of the FBi family, and has offered hop tips to Utility Fog over the last few years too, so it’s nice hearing their production talents get better & better. They’re a lover of broken 4/4 beats and glitchy vocal samples, and they’ve been helped on this forthcoming EP FLWR DLVRY with mastering by Oli Air Max ’97.

Makeda – Another Trance [Music Company/Bandcamp]
Brisbane-via-Melbourne-via-Brisbane producer Makeda has deep connections to club music, but has always avoided making tracks that really work as dancefloor bangers, despite jungle breaks or thumping kicks, booming subs or tweaked acid lines all appearing at times. New EP Venus Leak came to fruition through the collapse of touring & income for musicians over the last year and a half, and Makeda’s decision to return home to Brisbane, but it embodies these aspects of her musical practice – it’s more about becoming comfortable in her own skin, rather than a sea change. Experiences of abuse, bad relationships, external expectations twisted by racial background & neurodivergence, all play into the artistry found in this release.

vhvl – treee [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
vhvl – hem [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
Harlem producer Veronica Lauren aka vhvl put out a couple of releases on Leaving Records some time ago, but hem/sew, a surprise release just out on RVNG Intl., is her first substantial work for over 5 years. Call it a mixtape, but it’s a document of a confident producer of experimental beats and pulsing ambiences.

Michel Banabila – MltVz 5 [Knekelhuis]
Out on 13th December from Dutch label Knekelhuis is a new album from the great Michel Banabila, longtime inhabitant of this show’s playlists. It’ll be out on LP for the vinyl heads, with two sides of crackly fourth world ambient, sampled percussion, dubby downtempo beats, tape loops and his trademark eerie alien vocal snippets. Keep an eye out at Knekelhuis’ Bandcamp.

Big Yawn – Sharehouse Stovetop [Heavy Machinery Records/Research Records/Big Yawn Bandcamp]
Big Yawn – Pressure Acts [Heavy Machinery Records/Research Records/Big Yawn Bandcamp]
Melbourne four-piece Big Yawn combine an array of synths, drum machines and samplers with live drums for a sound rooted in krautrock, dub and punkish electronica. The title track of their new album Pressure Acts has a great half-time drum’n’bass feel, with stomping sub-bass every other bar, and just a hint of pitter-patter.

Enfuse – Orchestrate [onesevenfour Records]
Aus drum’n’bass label onesevenfour Records have passed on a sampler of 2022 tracks, and this beauty from Brisbane’s Enfuse instantly grabbed my attention – flowing drum’n’bass with a clarinet melody and lush pads, and some nice surprises in the harmonic changes.

Pixl – Outer Reaches [Love Love Records/Bandcamp]
Part of a series of 12″s for the end of the year on Love Love Records is Outer Reaches from London’s Pixl, sporting remixes from Love Love’s Scrase and the reliable Tim Reaper. Both originals are delightful mid-’90s style jungle bliss, with the title track recalling classic Photek with its opening pads and jittery beats.

Paradox – Marxism [Paradox Music]
Paradox – Soviet [Paradox Music]
Speaking of classic beat jugglers, Dev Paradox Pandya has long been one of the best, and never lost the faith. New single “Soviet” is extraordinary even by his standards, with raging amen breaks and a nimble, bassline that seems to express all the despair and anger felt at Boris Johnson’s Tories and their utter contempt for the music & arts and anyone without scads of money. It’s dystopian music for dystopian times. Given Pandya chose to dub this “Soviet”, I decided to also revisit the equally passionate “Marxism” from 2012, remastered and sounding shit-hot in 2020.

The Untouchables – Grassroots [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]
Belgian duo The Untouchables represent a modern, stripped back, percussive form of drum’n’bass, very much at home on the German drum’n’bass label Samurai Music. But their new album Grassroots feels like it owes a little to the continuing jungle revival, with considerable detail and lots of high-paced sounds along with the thumping kicks (that shared syncopated rhythm of tango, dancehall and drum’n’bass). Among the highlights is the title track, which closes out the album with considerable panache.

GCOM – XO 4 (Wolf 1061c) [!K7 Records/Bandcamp]
GCOM – XO 2 (Kapteyn b) [!K7 Records/Bandcamp]
Tom Middleton partnered with Mark Pritchard through much of the ’90s with the legendaray ambient techno of Global Communication – but their partnership also took in the funk & breakbeat of Jedi Knights, the techno of Reload, the jungle of Chameleon and more. Pritchard revisited jungle along with grime and other bass genres in recent years, but Middleton was travelling round DJing house music sets (as I recall) and has of late been integrating scientific concepts from neuroscience and psychology into ambient music for wellbeing, sleep, anxiety etc. His new album E2-XO, a long time coming, appears from !K7 Records under the GCOM moniker, and melds the space-age ambient dreams of Global Communication with razor-edge digital sound-design, thumping subs and beats ranging from downtempo to post-dubstep to splattercore, with help on a few tracks from the late Qebrus. The album is a journey from climate change-ridden Earth to various exoplanets in search of an “Earth 2”, in an imagined post-catastrophe future for humanity. It’s certainly science fictional enough, and although it’s not all drum’n’bass by a long shot, these tracks fit nicely into tonight’s context.

A Country Practice – Gardening Concerns (Grids/Units/Planes remix) [A Country Practice Bandcamp]
Here’s another remix of Brisbane country-tronic trio A Country Practice. The whole Recorded, stored, absorbed, ignored looks to be excellent, given the contributors list, and this preview from Brisbane’s Grids/Units/Planes gives us acoustic guitar and dreamy mournful vocals with slow-paced electronic beats, sequenced synths and lots of nice reverb over everything.

Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi – Ravenna [Shelter Press/Bandcamp]
Giuseppe Ielasi & Andrew Pekler – Yalta [Planam]
Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi – Trebizond [Shelter Press/Bandcamp]
Berlin’s Andrew Pekler and Milan’s Giuseppe Ielasi last worked together 8 years ago for the vinyl release Holiday For Sampler. Their new offering for Shelter Press, much like the first, combines their tendencies for subtle sound choices, short loops, glitches and juxtapositions. Palimpsests are texts which are repeatedly rewritten and overwritten, and on these tracks, improvisations recorded in 2015 in Milan have been edited, chopped, recombined and processed to result in the scratchy remnants here. It’s as absorbing as Ielasi’s work with Nicola Ratti as Bellows, with hints at Pekler’s early work in dub, downtempo and IDM.

Anne Bakker | René Aquarius | Rutger Zuydervelt – Hallucine (edit) [Consouling/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
And finally, here’s a short excerpt from an extraordinary 33-minute work by Rutger Zuydervelt Machinefabriek, blending together two solo works by fellow Dutch collaborators Anne Bakker and René Aquarius. Zuydervelt’s instinct that the violin, voice and sounds of Bakker would fit with Aquarius’ cymbals and field recordings was inspired – Hallucine is a wondrous and dramatic construction. This 5 minute excerpt can’t do it justice, but hopefully serves to draw you to the complete work, released on CD by Belgian label Consouling, and available digitally also now.

Listen again — ~206MB

I thought this was going to be an electronic beats show but it turns out that’s only part of the picture. We have modern composition, indie-crossover, sound-art and… stylefree.

You’d LISTEN AGAIN, if you know what’s good for you. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Dos Santos – Palo Santo [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Dos Santos – acábame [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Dos Santos – City of Mirrors [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Chicago label International Anthem is thought of as a jazz label, but it seems like you can’t be from Chicago without connecting to the Tortoise strain of postrock, and Makaya McCraven connects the free jazz with hip-hop. Meanwhile Chicago’s musical traditions can’t help peeking though the gorgeous latin songwriting from Dos Santos; along with cumbia, along with latin melodies and lush horns, there are surf guitar riffs, postpunk guitar jabs, psych rock turns, and Tortoise’s jazz-flecked postrock for sure. It’s intoxicating and irresistable.

Matador – Paradise (Demo Version) [Moabit/Monika Enterprise/Bandcamp]
Matador – Mother (Sonae Mix) [Moabit/Monika Enterprise/Bandcamp]
Matador – Mother (Demo Version) [Moabit/Monika Enterprise/Bandcamp]
Malaria! – I Will Be Your Only One (Lucrecia Dalt Mix) [Moabit/Monika Enterprise/Bandcamp]
Three important bands (all beginning with M) from the German underground are celebrated here, courtesy of Gudrun Gut‘s Monika Enterprise. Matador, Mania D. and Malaria! all featured Gut, two featured Beate Bartel, two featured Bettina Köster and two featured Manon Duursma; all were all-female acts, working in post-punk, industrial and a particularly German strain of synth-pop. There’s a direct link between this seminal music, Gut’s deep involvement in the Berlin music scene, and the work she does with Monika Enterprise, including the “Werkstatt” she convenes with multiple generations of female electronic & experimental artists. Many of the Werkstatt artists appear on the first disc of M_Sessions, the new collection which unearths, celebrates and recontextualises this music. Along with a disc of “Rare Originals”, with demos, live versions and non-album tracks all remastered, the first disc sees these works remixed and recreated by artists like Midori Hirano, AGF, Natalie Beridze, Gut and Bartel, and featured tonight, Sonae and Lucrecia Dalt. Quality stuff.

Gantz – Sleepless Elite [Innamind Recordings]
Gantz – Avert Your Eyes [Innamind Recordings]
Turkish dubstep/trip-hop original Gantz has put out a few collections of tracks on his own Bandcamp recently, but here he is on another label, London’s Innamind Recordings with his Pusher Acid EP. At various different tempos, it’s bass music for the dancefloor, with heart and brains equally engaged (and, you know, feet). Always love me some Gantz.

aya – Emley lights us moor (feat. Iceboy Violet) [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
aya – tailwind [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
aya – I Will Not Come At Your Beck And Call I Am At Home Preemptively Mashing Up The Dance That Is Where I Am [Illegal Data]
A2A – Lilac [Local Action]
After some years mashing up breaks with deconstructed club, footwork, jungle and other bass music as loft, Manchester-based Aya Sinclair switched to aya as her musical name of choice. On her debut album for Hyperdub, Sinclair brings vocals to the fore, exploring and problematising expectations and biases around being an out trans person with her customary humour, with a few collaborations including non-binary rapper Iceboy Violet. Another collaborator is for the physical format – not a record, CD or cassette, but a book, co-designed by Oliver van der Lugt. Lugt just happens to be now-Sydney-based producer Air Max ’97, who’s also partnered with aya in the A2A project. I couldn’t resist revisiting some of the masterful break mashing from aya’s past (and from A2A) as well – leading us into the next couple of tracks…

Sheba Q & No Nation – He Loves Me (Zimmer Mix) [Shubzin/Bandcamp]
Siu Mata – In The Shadows [Shubzin/Bandcamp]
According to London label Shubzin, they are named for “shubz”, a house party or rave – Urban Dictionary backs them up. I would be in my happy place shubzin to the tunes on their fourth compilation. The jungle revival continues apace, and here we have jungle, breakbeat and drill’n’bass of the melodic sort that takes me back to the halcyon days of idm, although this isn’t just throwback music. We have the nimble breaks of Sheba Q teaming up with No Nation, and then from France the percussive sounds of Siu Mata. SHUBZINVA004 is Pay What You Can, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. And do pay, as you’ll be supporting the efforts of Sisters Uncut to fight domestic violence in the UK, among other things.

Simon Goff – Wooden Islands (Daniel Brandt Remix) [7K!/Bandcamp]
Here’s something interesting. Violinist Simon Goff has worked with the likes of Aidan Baker and Thor Harris in the past, and this year released an album on 7K!, the post-classical arm of venerable German electronic label !K7. On this just-released track, Daniel Brandt of Brandt Brauer Frick takes the already-motorik violin riffing from Goff’s original, and the bassline and legato melody – and cuts them up in amongst a percussive techno arrangement.

A Country Practice – Little Birdie (Happy Axe rework) [A Country Practice Bandcamp]
Brisbane band A Country Practice do a kind of folk music for electronic instruments. They just released their debut album I will leave this town while there’s still light and I somehow missed it! So I’ll be correcting that soon, but meanwhile they have sent me some previews of the remixes that are going to accompany the album on a limited second CD called Recorded, stored, absorbed, ignored, which is a great name and features many great people. Digital purchases also get these on download. Tonight we premiered Emma Kelly aka Happy Axe doing essentially a cover, with her customary looped violin and vocals. Absolutely lovely.

XANI – Towards The Light [demo version] [Xani Bandcamp]
Melbourne violinist XANI also loops her violin and uses it as a percussion instrument. In her band The Twoks she sang and played violin with drummer Mark Leahy, making energetic folk & rock. Her solo album from last year, From The Bottom of the Well, is a fully studio-produced affair, but now in true lockdown fashion we can hear some of these songs in entirely solo mode on the Depths EP, including this rather upbeat, folky instrumental – apparently an early version of the much darker “Injured Animal” from the album.

Jessica Pavone – In the Action [Jessica Pavone Bandcamp]
Jessica Pavone – Ingot [Chaikin Records/Bandcamp]
I only recently discovered the solo work of Brooklyn violist/violinist Jessica Pavone. The start of the title track from her 2019 album In the Action suits the previous folky sounds very nicely, with rootsy viola licks gradually deconstructed, but then for most of the track a rhythmic throb issues from her amp while her viola interacts with the distortion and feedback, an approach she takes across the whole album. New album Lull extends her music for the “Jessica Pavone String Ensemble”, which work with drone and repetition, here blowing out the string quartet to an octet, and adding percussion and trumpet on one track each. On “Ingot”, Nate Wooley’s trumpet is clear and warm, its stretched out notes sitting comfortably within the string tones. Pavone’s compositions combine instructions with freedom for the musicians, and although it’s minimalist, it’s not durational music – drones give way to repeated ensemble notes, and no single idea lasts more than a minute or two. Gradually the peaceful long notes crescendo into scratchy acoustic distortion, giving way in the last minute to an open harmony with slowly alternating notes from the musicians.

nobuka – The sorrow [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
nobuka – Of lovers and innocent bystanders (w/ Michel Banabila) [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
nobuka – The people (w/ Machinefabriek) [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
From Dutch label Esc.rec here’s a gem of an album from Michel van Collenburg as nobuka (he’s from the Netherlands despite the vaguely Japanese-sounding name). Reiko contemplates the feeling of living in pre-apocalyptic times (see more at the dedicated micro-site), with field recordings and electronics combining with strings & acoustic found-sounds for a mostly-instrumental narrative of tension and real beauty. It’s not minimalist, and not overly polite, and it also mostly avoids the surging sub-bass intensity of a lot of current-day experimental ambient. Nobuka also collaborated with two Dutch artists close to this show, Michel Banabila and Machinefabriek, should that tempt you to look further. I hope you do, because this is a very fine album indeed.

Prophets – Chorus Love Affair [Ah!Puch!Records!/Prophets Bandcamp]
Prophets – Dreem [Ah!Puch!Records!/Prophets Bandcamp]
If the masked musicians behind Prophets are to be believed, they hail from the Planet Stylefree, but I’m going to go on record suggesting that for all their mysterious names (CTRL+ALT+MAN, BONSPEAKEREYESDRUMHEAD, DOT.WAV et al) they are actually from much closer to home. A large collective of musicians from Melbourne & Sydney, they do live up to the “stylefree” moniker, with suggestions of free jazz/free improv, folk, sound-art and more. It feels like experimental music that could be enjoyed by the whole family at an outside market – better than endless covers of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” cover, hey? The junkyard percussion that ends the show tonight is quite touching.

Listen again — ~206MB