Folktronica, hip-hop, and experimental electronic sounds tonight, very much the core of where Utility Fog started, albeit in a contemporary way.

LISTEN AGAIN to the great musical feast. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Origamibiro – Zoo [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Wauvenfold – Stab [Wichita Recordings]
Origamibiro – dissect ephemeral [Expanding Records]
Origamibiro – Quad Time and the Genius of the Crowd [Denizen/Abandon Building/Bandcamp]
Thomas William Hill – Willow [Village Green/Bandcamp]
Origamibiro – Attract/Repel [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Released on the 26th of March is the new album from Tom Hill’s folktronic project (at times in collaboration with Andy Tytherleigh) Origamibiro. It’s been 7 years since the last album from this project, so you’d be forgiven for going “Who?”, but they’re pretty important for UFog, and in the meantime as Thomas William Hill he’s released two lush albums of more post- (or neo-?) classical music for Village Green – the second, Grains of Space, is particularly stunning. Strings & orchestral elements were present in Origamibiro before, but it tended towards the “chamber music” sound, with subdued textures and scrappy found-sound beats, so it’s very nice to see that aesthetic combined with the orchestration on Origamibiro’s Miscellany, out from Denovali on the 26th of March. From the crunchy IDM of his 2001-2002 duo Wauvenfold through to now, Tom Hill has grown into a composer of restraint and depth.

Madlib – Hopprock [Rappcats/Bandcamp]
Madlib – Riddim Chant [Rappcats/Bandcamp]
Madvillain – Great Day (Four Tet remix) [Stones Throw]
Madlib – Loose Goose [Rappcats/Bandcamp]
Otis Jackson Jr aka Madlib is a consummate musician – brilliant DJ and producer, a sometime MC who has worked with some of the greatest MCs of the last 3 decades, including of course the late lamented MF DOOM as Madvillain. Along the way Jackson created brilliant ersatz-jazz as Yesterdays New Quintet (with all roles played by himself). As well as DOOM, he worked with the great J Dilla as Jaylib. Meanwhile Kieran Hebden, as Four Tet, has a nice career as a techno/house producer of unique musicality, but we of course remember his early solo albums as core folktronica – although none of those artists liked the term, and when I interviewed Kieran years ago he always insisted what he did was hip-hop. Four Tet’s remixes of Madlib & DOOM’s Madvillain were stunning even at a time when Hebden was churning out superb remixes at a rate of knots, and he & Jackson remained friends since, meeting up and nerding out over music, and it was Hebden who suggested further collaboration. So, I’d been expecting Sound Ancestors to be a proper duo album, but what we get is something else, a collection beautiful instrumental hip-hop tunes made up of beats & samples from Madlib curated, sequenced and arranged by Four Tet. It’s hard to know what “arranged by” means here, but there are probably edits by Hebden as well as some mixing magic; it’s a tribute to his sensitivity as a producer, and his love of hip-hop and of the source material, that he’s brought us such an impeccable album.

Simona Zamboli – A Lightning Bolt Strikes the Mountaintop [Mille Plateaux]
Simona Zamboli – Dream But Be Careful [Mille Plateaux]
Milan-based producer and broadcast sound-engineer Simona Zamboli is the latest artist to join Mille Plateaux, with an album of dark glitchy electronics and beats that are a little more abstract than her recent techno & industrial releases. As usual the Mille Plateaux press release strings words & sentences together into some kind of facsimile of Continental theory-speak which you’re welcome to try and make sense of, but luckily as usual the music speaks for itself.

Kamron Saniee – Badinage [SVS Records/Bandcamp]
Kamron Saniee – Eutessaron [SVS Records/Bandcamp]
Iranian-American sound-artist who makes use of his classical background on a release that bridges sound-art and techno. “Badinage” repurposes a melody from 18th-century French composer Marin Marais, albeit in a pretty abstract manner. The euphoric feeling sought on this EP may be an “everyday euphoria”, but the energy of these rhythmic pieces bring joy even if it’s not in a club at high volume dancing with friends & strangers.

Gantz – MAD HONEY [Gantz Bandcamp]
Gantz & El Mahdy Jr – Rising [Deep Medi/Bandcamp]
Gantz – Hinges Creak [Gantz Bandcamp]
Gantz – U WONT MIND VIP [Gantz Bandcamp]
Istanbul-based Gantz is an outlier in the dubstep world, crafting melodic pieces with unexpected timbres, branching out into trip-hop or elsewhere, occasionally incorporating Arabic music (see the collaboration with El Mahdy Jr from 2014), and always paying attention to mood. Appearing on various labels including Deep Medi, Gantz has been slipping out a few special EPs on Bandcamp since last year, including the excellent RUFF1 just this week. Among the offerings last year was the Shanked EP which brought some rarities to the general public, including some much-desired VIPs.

ZULI – Bro! (Love it) [UIQ/Bandcamp]
ZULI – Robotic Handshakes in 4D [UIQ/Bandcamp]
ZULI – Trigger Finger [Haunter Records/Bandcamp]
ZULI – Kollu l-Joloud (ft. MSYLMA) [UIQ/Bandcamp]
ZULI – Tany [UIQ/Bandcamp]
Cairo producer Ahmed El Ghazoly makes incredibly forward-thinking beats as ZULI (All Caps, as his new EP reminds us). Since 2016’s Bionic Ahmed his releases have been compulsory for me, and this was only intensified with the jungle-leaning Trigger Finger in 2018. Cruelly, after the Terminal album was released in 2018, his laptop was stolen with an almost-completed follow-up along with his whole setup & sound library, forcing him to rebuild. Finally we have the substantial new EP All Caps, with two absolutely mangled jungle tunes and mashed beats of all sorts. Final track “Bro! (Love it)” satirises western fans & critics’ ugly tendency to filter all expectations through the lens of his ethnicity.

Moon Sign Gemini – 003 [Moon Sign Gemini Bandcamp]
Moon Sign Gemini – Mitchy [Moon Sign Gemini Bandcamp]
Moon Sign Gemini – Notte [Moon Sign Gemini Bandcamp]
I was so glad to discover the electronic music of Adelaide punk/indie musician Dylan Cooper last year through New Weird Australia. His music as Moon Sign Gemini is unfairly well done for someone who’s apparently just doing this on the side – from the orchestral breakcore of EP1 to the more recent overdriven bass tunes on last year’s Queen Marie EP and new single SOLE/NOTTE. I like how there are choral samples and other classical references through through the later tracks too.

Gregory Paul Mineeff – Mood Triptych [Cosmic Leaf Records]
While we wait for a new (electronic?) album from Wollongong’s Gregory Paul Mineeff, he can’t help sneaking out singles – the pretty piano on “Mood Triptych” is supported by the little electronic touches which are Mineeff’s signature.

Listen again — ~204MB

Many examples of the interface between physical and digital, acoustic and electronic tonight.

LISTEN AGAIN for the highs and lows, ebbs and flows. Podcast here, stream on demand from FBi.

Machinefabriek – MD EV IZ (with Martin Dosh, Els Vandeweyer, Ingar Zach) [Esc.rec/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
Machinefabriek – AB TB YO (with Alexandra Bellon, Tim Barnes, Yuko Oshima) [Esc.rec/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
Machinefabriek – VT JW KW (with Vasco Trilla, Jim White, Karen Willems) [Esc.rec/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
Machinefabriek – SA AJ ET (with Shane Aspegren, Anja Jacobsen, Eric Thielemans) [Esc.rec/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
The remarkable new album from Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek, With Drums, could be seen as a successor to his 2019 album With Voices, or conversely of his self-performed Drum Solos. Mostly, though, it’s an unexpected extension of his large ouevre of sound art, and his penchant for collaboration – 24 short tracks, each collaged from contributed recordings from three drummers (a total of 42 drummers are featured, with many recognizable names appearing). This is not predominantly rhythmic music – some contributions feature tuned percussion, or bowed percussion, some are free jazz flourishes, and some do coalesce into grooves. Zuydervelt’s command of sound and space is such that these disparate contributed recordings are sculpted into 37 minutes of music that flows as a single work, which is never less than gripping, and charming.

Jerusalem In My Heart – Qalouli [Constellation/Bandcamp]
As the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns set in last year, iconic Montréal label Constellation created their first digital-only series of releases, Corona Borealis, with single tracks of varying length (10 minutes on average), each with an accompanying video work, with all funds going straight to the artists. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s Jerusalem In My Heart is perfect for this project, as it has always existed as an audiovisual collaboration with filmmaker Erin Weisgerber. Moumneh’s track “Qalouli” is 6 minutes of beautiful glitched Arabic strings.

Innode – Odessa [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Innode – Rote Wueste [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Longtime associate of Mego / Editions Mego Stefan Németh co-founded the great Radian among other groups, and returns to Editions Mego with the second album of his Innode project. Here he’s joined by two drummers – fellow Austrian Bernhard Breuer and Steven Hess, who’s equally known for the black/drone metal of Locrian, the post-metal of RLYR, ambient/postrock with groups like Pan•American and Anjou, and the improv/sound-art of ensembles like Haptic (Hess also appears on Machinefabriek’s With Drums). Innode combines sputtering electronics and dub hypnotism with crackling live drumming – I can’t get enough of this new album, Syn.

Loefah – Candy [Bandcamp]
Dubstep don Loefah has been sneaking out unreleased tracks on his Bandcamp lately, as well as great early tunes (you can find Mud, Ruffage, Root and The Goat Stare all there – all eternal foundations in the dubstep canon). The latest, “Candy”, combines an oblique spoken sample with stripped-bare bass & beat in the style of those classics.

Goth-Trad – Apes [DEEP MEDi/Bandcamp]
Goth-Trad – Skin No Longer Scars feat. dälek [Back To Chill/Bandcamp]
Japanese producer Goth-Trad found himself a dubstep insider quite early in the game, with some essential releases on DEEP MEDi among others. Prior to this he was creating madcap IDM and weird noise, and he happily jumps around genres still. He’s just retured to DEEP MEDi with a much-desired VIP of his 2012 track “Airbreaker”, and I love the triplet-ridden flipside “Apes”. Through his own Back To Chill label, on Bandcamp he’s just been digitally releasing a bunch of back-catalogue and unreleased old material, and this week the originally very limited Psionics got the re-release treatment, including the two collaborative tracks originally only found on vinyl – one with Boris and one with noise-hop legend dälek.

John Roberts – Nothing [Brunette Editions/Bandcamp]
Last year, John Roberts deviated the furthest he has from the dancefloor with the sumptuous sound-art of Can Thought Exist Without The Body? For 2021 he’s just put out the second themed single, “Nothing” (it follows “Zero”), which is a beautiful bit of gliding deep house which he does so well. Hopefully some more empty/circular titles to come?

effe effe – Self sprung [NeMu]
effe effe – Eight pointed star [NeMu]
Milan musician Federica Furlani is a violist, but as effe effe she brings her viola into the electronic world. On her lovely debut album Tuning scapes the viola appears with layered, processed recordings alongside programmed beats.

Matt Mehlan – Slow Dance #1111 [Shinkoyo/Bandcamp]
Matt Mehlan – Slow Dance #0121 [Shinkoyo/Bandcamp]
It seems like only yesterday (but actually a couple of months ago) that I featured the brilliant Skeletons on the show. Now main Skeleton Matt Mehlan is back on his Shinkoyo label with Slow Dances, an album which is also a card game and a choreography work… Confused? So am I, but it’s great music – instrumental, mostly electronic, with strange injections of jazz solos and more ambient segments.

Warped Dreamer – ixwele [Consouling Sounds]
Warped Dreamer – Camphor Bush [Consouling Sounds]
The provenance of the four members of Warped Dreamer couldn’t be stronger: Arve Henriksen is the brilliant trumpeter & sometimes wordless singer with Norwegian improv masters Supersilent, and Stian Westerhus has played with Jaga Jazzist, Ulver and many others. On the Belgian side, Rhodes player Jozef Dumoulin and drummer Teun Verbruggen are part of the improv/electronic/noise act The Bureau of Atomic Tourism. Their new record Live at Bimhuis has the highs offered by such great musicianship – magically soft melody work, intense full ensemble work, and a mess of self-sampling electronics.

Benjamin Finger – Children Rhyme [KrysaliSound/Bandcamp]
Benjamin Finger – Auditory Colors [KrysaliSound/Bandcamp]
Also from Norway, Benjamin Finger represents a different school of music – electronics and acoustic music wedded to a more ambient end, generally. His new solo album Auditory Colors explores synaesthesia, with music that’s intended to stimulate the visual sensorium as well as the audio. Frequent collaborator Inga-Lil Farstad’s voice appears on the title track, as do unidentified children’s voices elsewhere. It’s deceptively dense and deep work as always with Finger.

Kirk Barley – Lake of Gold [Health]
Lately we’ve heard a lot of work from Kirk Barley with drummer Matt Davies, so it’s interesting to hear his delicate processed electronics on their own for new single Lake of Gold / Primer. Great stuff as ever.

Other Joe – More Hauntings ft Nico Niquo [Nice Setting/Bandcamp]
Melbourne musician Joseph Buchan is Other Joe, a shapeshifting project which often features the piano alongside contemporary electronics. He runs the excellent .jpeg Artefacts label, but his new EP Champagne is released by fellow Melbourne label Nice Setting, including a delightful CD edition. It’s beautiful, twinkly but not twee, including an appearance from neo-new-age artist Nico Niquo.

part timer – after [Bandcamp]
The final Bandcamp EP for a little while from Melbourne’s part timer is another collection of delicate piano & electronics called before, during, after. The releases he’s doled out for us since October feature some of his best work – his sense of melody and arrangement is highly impressive, and there’s a murmuring of the clicky rhythmic elements from his early folktronica in the background at times too. Hopefully he gets an album together soon and gets it released by someone for more prominence than his own Bandcamp and this radio show…

Ashleigh Hazel – Gemini [Bandcamp]
Canberra-based experimental musician Benjamin Drury has just unveiled their new project Ashleigh Hazel, with this new single “Gemini”, a soft piece of layered guitars, field recordings and half-heard vocals. Evocative and nostalgic-feeling.

Listen again — ~203MB

Dark, heavy, rhythmic is the flavour of the day tonight – not necessarily all three at the same time, but that’s mostly where we’re at.

LISTEN AGAIN to the river of dread… Stream on demand from FBi or podcast here.

Senyawa – Menuju Muara [a whole host of labels]
Senyawa – Alkisah II [a whole host of labels]
Senyawa – Menuju Muara (Zaliva-D Remix) [MOUHOI/Qiii Snacks/WV Sorcerer Productions]
Senyawa – Alkisah II (Jad Atoui Remix) [Annihaya/Ruptured]
Senyawa – Kabau (1800s Internet Remix) [Drowned By Locals]
Indonesian duo Senyawa‘s new album Alkisah comes with the motto “DECENTRALIZATION SHOULD BE THE FUTURE”. The album has just been released across the whole world with the collaboration of something like 44 different labels – including among those I didn’t end up playing tonight, Melbourne’s Silent Army Records and Bristol’s Avon Terror Corps. Many of the editions come with locally-produced remixes, some are released in cassette, vinyl or CD editions, some are digital-only. The album proper is phenomenal. Rully Shabara’s vocals are imposing and thrilling, and Wukir Suryadi’s homemade instruments and noise-makers produce a fantastic doomy racket – all of which lends plenty of stirring material for people across the globe to get their teeth into. “Once Upon A Time” is the rough translation, a story of impending doom and what comes next… Part of what comes next is this decentralized, democratic distribution system Senyawa have devised, with the enthusiasm of creatives all round the world. There’s even collaboration at the release level – the “CN Edition” is released by three labels in conjunction: on cassette from Hong Kong’s MOUHOI, digitally through Qiii Snacks, and vinyl plus remix CD through WV Sorcerer Productions. Familiar & unfamiliar names from the Chinese electronic & noise scenes are here, and Zaliva-D keep surprisingly true to the original song’s spirit while adding industrial techno momentum. The “Beirut Edition” meanwhile comes from two great experimental Lebanese labels – Annihaya & Ruptured – and is again consistenly excellent. Jad Atoui‘s remix is a kind of minimalist skittery idm piece. And not far away in Ammar, Jordan, is Drowned By Locals, whose “DBL Edition” brings artists from Jordan, Egypt and other nearby locales, here represented by 1800s Internet – both these editions draw interesting comparisons between Senyawa’s Indonesian traditions and these labels’ regions.

dirty pictures – peeling off [Mille Plateaux]
dirty pictures – linn [Mille Plateaux]
Russian musician Lëps Dubasov has a background in punk/industrial bands. With Dirty Pictures he debuts with Segregation for the Mille Plateaux label. It starts off as if it’s going to be doom or drone metal, but within a few tracks it turns out that’s a slight misdirect, as we start to hear stretched-out piano, fluttery synth sequences and flittering acoustic sounds. There’s surprising beauty in here among the “Ultrablackness” the label copy touts.

Tomoko Mukaiyama / Yannis Kyriakides – Ito Rumba [Tomoko/Yannis Kyriakides Bandcamp]
I’ve been a longtime fan of the Netherlands-based Greek Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides, whose contemporary composition for orchestras, choirs and smaller ensembles is often augmented and disturbed by electronic processsing and sampling. He also has a longtime duo with the brilliant guitarist Andy Moor of The Ex, with whom he co-runs the Unsounds label. This new work, La Mode, was conceived of and commissioned by the Dutch-Japanese pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, originally as a multimedia performance. The work juxtaposes the closed world of classically-composed piano with the rhythmic dance music often found in fashion shows – the beats are particularly prominent in this track, with the piano mostly a source of distorted, splintered sound. I would have loved to fit in a longer piece with more piano, but you’ll just have to check it out yourself.

Mouse On Mars – The Latent Space [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Mouse On Mars – Artificial Authentic [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
The new album from veteran German electronic duo Mouse On Mars (over 25 years now!) is not that surprising musically, with familiar squelchy MoM synths and melodies at times, along with lots of skittery beats. What makes it different is the theme of “Anarchic Artificial Intelligence” (the titular AAI), which turns up in various disembodied voices which are actually artificially generated, discussing the development of AIs into the future, as they learn conscience, empathy, and become “anarchic”, in the sense of being unpredictable. It’s a lot to take in – but it’s also pretty fun music if you just want to enjoy it on that level.

Fire! – Each Millimeter of the Toad, Part 1 [Rune Grammofon]
Fire! – Each Millimeter of the Toad, Part 2 [Rune Grammofon]
Every album by the Swedish free jazz ensemble Fire! is different – although all have the core of Jonas Berthling’s basslines, Andreas Werliin’s steady and free-flowing drums, and the noisemaking of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. On their latest, Defeat, the cathartic crescendos of the linked Fire! Orchestra are tamped down mostly, with only a couple of guest horn players used sparingly. Gustafsson often plays flute rather than sax – a revelation – as well as his electronic noisemakers. But the payoffs are plenty. “Free jazz” it may be, but Fire! is one of the most easily pleasing of Gustafsson’s projects, and this is a wonderful addition to their catalogue.

Tim Koch – Estranger [Central Processing Unit]
Adelaide’s greatest musical export (don’t quote me on this) is IDM hero Tim Koch, still going strong after over 2 decades. Here he appears on the now somewhat legendary Sheffield label Central Processing Unit for an EP of beat-heavy tracks called Tourbillon, very different from the recent granular processing of Scordatura, but displaying his talent for melody and emotion amongst the drum machines.

Dale Cornish – Reconstruct (Blademir‘s Is This Masculinity? Remix) [Vanity Publishing]
Dale Cornish – Suomi (Grischa Lichtenberger 0520_12_dale q7_recs_-6db Remix) [Vanity Publishing]
Lifetime Croydon resident Dale Cornish released his electroclash/club/masculinity-recontextualising album Thug Ambient last year as another left turn in a strange career ranging from the art pop of No Bra to very abstract, conceptual electronic works. The direction of Thug Ambient is now taken further with the Thug Ambient Remixes – to be clear, this isn’t ambient music, on the whole. It’s experimental beat stuff. That said, Happa leads the pack with his more experimental alias Blademir, with roaring drones and chopped vocal outbursts – not likely to hear this on the dancefloor. Later, Grischa Lichtenberger takes things into jungle/drill’n’bass tempo, and again nobody’s gonna dance to this, except in their heads maybe. My brain cells enjoyed it thoroughly!

ASC – Forever [Auxiliary]
ASC – Cautionary Tales [Samurai Music]
Lichtenberger leads us into some real jungle & drum’n’bass now. ASC continues his forays into complex junglist breaks with the Ideasthesia EP, featuring four flowing, high-intensity tracks. As a reminder, we heard something from last year’s Isolated Systems, masterful beat-juggling and slamming basslines, pure dark energy.

Holsten – Projectiles [DROOGS]
For a while now the techno/drum’n’bass crossover label UVB-76 has taken to their DROOGS sub-label for more dancefloor-oriented drum’n’bass and jungle. Holsten has appeared a few times before, and now gets his own EP, four tracks of tough beats and head-nodding basslines. Timeless quality.

Subreachers – Rev [Ruff Cutz]
Finally on the drum’n’bass tip, Manchester label Ruff Cutz brings us breakbeat madness from Belgian bass producer Subreachers, who moved from dubstep origins into drum’n’bass, and really chops & shuffles these breaks, while keeping it held down in the sub-bass region.

Whisper Room – Lunokhod03 [Midira Records/Bandcamp]
Aidan Baker can be relied on to pump out releases every year, and whether it’s the doomy slo-mo metal of Nadja, or any of his other ambient/flittery/postrock/electronic projects, it will all be high quality. I do have a particular fondness for Whisper Room though, with sound-artist Neil Wieirnik on bass and brilliant drummer Jakob Thiesen bringing a skittery krautrock energy. All three also contribute electronics, and on Lunokhod they’re joined by Robin Buckley on additional percussion, and Scott Deathe on additional electronics. Despite the number of members, the sound remains surprisingly sparse, with Baker’s drones and Thiesen’s drumming (mixed quite far back) still the main focus. Dreamy half-focused whispery music.

Listen again — ~201MB

Electronic craziness galore tonight – from broken-down club sounds, ambient glitch & idm through musique concrète and acousmatic music, and folktronica.

LISTEN AGAIN to the electronically reproduced sound… Stream on demand with FBi, podcast here.

266sx – UN VELETA [Ascetic House/Bandcamp]
266sx – chino burbank van nuys [Ascetic House/Bandcamp]
We’re starting tonight with a few selections from the 2020 batch of releases from Ascetic House, the brilliant Tempe, AZ-based label which puts out batches of releases each year that can be anything from punk to techno to idm & glitch, always with a fantastic visual aesthetic and always forward-thinking musically. Their Twitter account, run by J.S. Aurelius, reinforces this aesthetic with on-point anti-fascist & anarchist politics. All the 2020 releases appeared on the 31st of December, strangely enough. So, first up tonight we have the work of the fairly anonymous Lázaro Común as 266sx. SOMOS TU ÚLTIMA ESPERANZA (“We are your last hope”) is an all-out psychic attack of glitching ambience & beats, and even some cut-up guitar and vocals. The first track here, “UN VELETA” translates as “one candle”, while the second, perhaps a clue to the artist’s provenance, lists a few neighbourhoods of LA.

Baby Blue – Human [Ascetic House/Bandcamp]
Baby Blue – Tear Soaked Stone [Ascetic House/Bandcamp]
Also released on Ascetic House on December 31st is the very emotive, yet equally glitchy and electronic Death of Euphoria from Baby Blue. There’s gorgeous glitched ambient textures here, and some bass & beats in the mix, along with disqueting sampled video game dialogue and more. Fantastic work from this Vancouver-based artist. More technoid, computer gamey material can be found on her own Bandcamp.

Free The Land – Permafrost Loss and bacillus anthracis outbreak in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug [Ascetic House/Bandcamp]
Our third selection from Ascetic House’s end-of-2020 drop is from Free The Land, which may not seem familiar, but is in fact the work of Frederikke Hoffmeier (aka Puce Mary) and partner Jess Sanes, who have also recorded together as JH1.FS3. Under this name, their music veers a little away from their industrial/noise roots, with a suite of tracks about climate change in the far north, with field recordings and lush electronics, albeit still appropriately heavy and dark.

sunnk – weaving ritual [Mille Plateaux]
sunnk – a broken hand [Mille Plateaux]
Not too far off the sounds we’ve just heard is the album weaving ritual from sunnk, the third in a series of so-called “hyperglitch” releases from the new incarnation of Mille Plateaux. I’m always up for some stuttery granular electronics and what the original version of this label called “clicks & cuts”, but what raises this album above the generic in this space is the piano that forms the basis of much of the chopped-up sound, and grounds the hyperactivity. There are some segments of real beauty amidst the madness.

Pierre-Luc Lecours – Impacts discrets (2014) [empreintes DIGITALes]
Now some new acousmatic, electro-acoustic work – not quite new, but not decades old either – from Montréal composer Pierre-Luc Lecours. A new album from the French label empreintes DIGITALes, dedicated to the electroacoustic, acousmatic and musique concrète forms, collects a series of four Éclats (shards) plus the work we heard tonight, “Impacts discrets“, in which an artificial physical space is created, drawing from the composer’s recording of snow & ice hitting the roofs of Old Quebec. In amongst the contemporary composition and academic techniques on this album appear sub-bass and percussive hits (shards?) that could be informed by the dance music strand of the last few decades of electronic music.

Bernard Parmegiani – Ponomatopées (1970) [Ina-GRM]
OK, but here’s a little something from the great ground-breaking acousmatic composer Bernard Parmegiani, born in 1927. From 1970, “Ponomatopées” features garbled, cut-up liturgical voices, swathes of feedback and what sounds like a looped riff from a rock band. Forward-thinking electronic music indeed.

Patrick Charbonnier & Lionel Marchetti – Je suis gong [Lionel Marchetti Bandcamp]
And now something from the excellent contemporary composer of acousmatic & concrète works, Lionel Marchetti, along with fellow experimental musician Patrick Charbonnier. The two play a variety of instruments including clarinet, trombone, percussion, kora and other instruments from around the world, along with amplified found objects, synthesisers, tape machines and plenty of electronic treatments. The slow repetition and gradual build of this track is particularly compelling, but it’s a great, immersive album.

Grasscut – Edges Of Night [Lo Recordings/Bandcamp]
Grasscut – The Tin Man [Ninja Tune]
Grasscut – Reservoir [Lo Recordings]
Grasscut – Radar [Lo Recordings/Bandcamp]
Grasscut – Coprolite Tip [Lo Recordings/Bandcamp]
It’s wonderful to have a new album from English duo Grasscut. Their first album 1 inch: ½ mile came out through Ninja Tune in 2010 and sits alongside Tunng’s best as perfectly poised English folktronica. They’ve since released 3 albums on Lo Recordings, each with evocative songwriting drawing on an English sense of place, with gorgeous orchestrations and detailed but un-showy electronics. It’s primarily the work of BAFTA-nominated, Emmy-winning composer Andrew Phillips, while manager Marcus O’Dair also plays double bass and synth. All description aside, Phillips creates melodies and harmonic progressions that tug at the soul, while pulling together arrangements that use technology to hold them outside of time.

Scanner, Allen Ginsberg – Elegy for Neal Cassady (feat. Allen Ginsberg) [Allen Ginsberg Estate]
Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Allen Ginsberg – Hum Bom! (feat. Allen Ginsberg) [Allen Ginsberg Estate]
Out now digitally, with CD & vinyl editions coming on June 4th, is Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America – a 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute, which finds a very varied cast of musicians setting Ginsberg’s important suite of poems to music. The collection is dedicated to the late Hal Willner, whose brilliant curation of eclectic tribute albums no doubt inspired the artistic selections here. There are songs written to some of the poems, by the likes of Andrew Bird, Devendra Banhardt and Angelique Kidjo, but a large proportion choose to use the wonderful recordings of Ginsberg reading his own poems, interpolating his very musical spoken word into their pieces, whether it’s the Americana of Bill Frisell or the electronica of Howie B with Gavin Friday, or an ambient soundscape in their recent vein by Yo La Tengo… The collection opens with a beautiful minimalist work by Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, and later there’s angular jabs from ex-Sonic Youths Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore. Ginsberg’s poems if nothing else show that in half a century America has only progressed further in its fall…

OnominO – Masza [echogene]
From new Melbourne label echogene comes a collection of improvisations for percussion (Niko Schäuble) and modular electronics (Jon Tarry). Starting with some quite sparse pieces, the album gradually works up to dense works like “Masza”, with low-end drones and burbles, and motorik drumming.

still cloud – CIRCLES [still cloud Bandcamp]
The first release from new Melbourne trio still cloud is a meditative piece for percussion, synths and guitars called “CIRCLES”. Guitarist & percussionist Seth Rees is a veteran of various postrock & indie acts as well as an experimental solo artist, and here he’s joined by fellow musicians Clalla and Rosa. All sing and play various instruments – hopefully more to come soon!

Sebastian Field – Yellow Hearts [Provenance Records/Bandcamp]
Taken from Provenance Records‘s Textures, which we also featured a couple of weeks ago, is a gorgeous piece from Canberra’s Sebastian Field in which his voice and guitar are smeared into, yes, lovely textures. Seb is a lovely songwriter, but I’d gladly hear an album in this style.

part timer – time just spent staring at a monitor [part timer Bandcamp]
And finally, another EP of sad piano from Melbourne’s John McCaffrey aka part timer, beautiful contemplative work with sad sampled strings adding extra colour. A lot of us can identify with the opening track, “time just spent staring at a monitor”.

Listen again — ~199MB