On one of the best days of 2020, we have folktronic musings on death, poppy experimental jazz, jazzy postrock, juddering electro-acoustic drone and quiet experimentalism from all round the world.

LISTEN AGAIN with more than a little relief, by streaming on demand at FBi, or podcasting right here.

Tunng – Eating the Dead (feat. AC Grayling) [Full Time Hobby/Bandcamp]
Tunng – Three Birds [Full Time Hobby/Bandcamp]
It was fantastic to find original Tunng singer & songwriter Sam Genders rejoining the band alongside producer Mike Lindsay in 2018. Genders & Lindsay’s original duo incarnation of Tunng – and the following couple of albums at least – were hugely important to Utility Fog’s early years, after I discovered their first single well before their debut album was released; arcane, authentic-feeling English folk rubbing up against glitchy electronic production and club memories. Following the 2018 reformation, they’re back with a concept album of sorts for 2020, Tunng presents… DEAD CLUB, in which they interrogate death and grief, inspired by Max Porter’s novel Grief is the Thing With Feathers. Porter (the brother of the great post-dubstep/power ambient producer Roly Porter) appears on the album reading two poignant, beautifully-written short stories, “Man” and “Woman”, which I recommend checking out – but I’ve gone for two songs which are very much vintage Tunng in sound. The first features a snippet of a conversation Genders had with the philosopher AC Grayling.

Mary Halvorson‘s Code Girl – Bigger Flames (feat. Robert Wyatt) [Firehouse 12/Bandcamp]
Robert Wyatt – The United States of Amnesia [Rough Trade/Hannibal/Domino]
Mary Halvorson & John Dieterich – vega’s array [New Amsterdam/Bandcamp]
Mary Halvorson‘s Code Girl – Artlessly Falling [Firehouse 12/Bandcamp]
I’ve played American jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson before on this show as part of cellist Tomeka Reid‘s quartet. Her skillful playing is instantly recognizable whenever she twists her melodies with the whammy bar. Halvorson is so talented and idiosyncratic that she was recognized last year with a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Following that comes her second “Code Girl” album, Artlessly Falling, for which she wrote all the lyrics as well as music, and she’s joined by jazz singer Amirtha Kidambi on most tracks, but she pulled off the remarkable feat of luring the mostly-retired Robert Wyatt to sing on three of the tracks. Wyatt is one of my favourite singers & musicians, so I headed to 1986’s Old Rottenhat for a song about America’s destructive colonial history. Also in the middle there, an extraordinary track from Halvorson’s 2019 collaboration with Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich, featuring that distinctive sharp-edged shine of Halvorson’s melodic playing.

Voice & Strings & Timpani – Escargot [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Strings & Timpani – Umpf Collection [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Voice & Strings & Timpani – Talk Tick Talk [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Prolific guitarist Stephan Meidell and drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde together are Strings & Timpani, whose first album Hyphen was full of wonderful acoustic postrock crescendos and jazz dexterity. For Voice & Strings & Timpani they are joined by Mari Kvien Brunvoll (who plays with Hegg-Lunde in post-jazz/folk trio Building Instrument and brings electronics as well as vocals to the ensemble) and Eva Pfitzenmaier (aka By the Waterhole, playing flute & keyboards as well as vocals) – and they also get extra drumming from Kim Åge Furuhaug. It’s a big sound, again full of jazz and postrock dynamics – a typical Norwegian, shimmering joy, the kind of stuff Hubro excels in.

Susanna Gartmayer & Christof Kurzmann – Little Rage [Klanggalerie/Bandcamp]
Austrian electronic musician Christof Kurzmann bridges the divide between experimental improvised music and electronica, with many projects over a decades-long career. He has a wonderful indietronic/jazz ensemble The Magic I.D. with experimental singer/songwriter Margareth Kammerer and two avant-garde clarinettists, but this new project finds him working with bass clarinettist Susanna Gartmayer, who uses extended techniques to create drones and overtones as well as melodies (and I note plays with The Vegetable Orchestra with Ulrich Troyer, among others), in combination with Kurzmann’s loops, samples, processing and voice. Their album Smaller Sad as beautiful as it is challenging, really something else.

Phaeton – Silverback [Oxtail Recordings]
Following clarinet with oboe, played here by Luke Gallagher alongside his brother Matthew on synthesizer for their project Phaeton on Oxtail Recordings. Oboe is not always the most forgiving instrument, but in these siblings’ hands it’s the perfect melodic instrument for these slow-moving, bubbling, kosmische electronic pieces inspired as much by ecology and evolutionary biology as they are by the usual new age concepts of ambient music.

Erland Dahlen – Desert [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Erland Dahlen – Monkey [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Erland Dahlen – Bones [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Back to Norway and Hubro, with some more jazz-inspired postrock (or is it the other way round?) from the excellent drummer Erland Dahlen. His four albums all cover similar territory to the latest, Bones – expansive and percussive, with melodies from the whistling musical saw and countless other musical instruments and found objects, along with drum machines and electronic production. It’s stirring and cinematic, an abundant sound created by one guy.

Kcin – Global South [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Sydney drummer & live electronic musician Nick Meredith has been promising the debut album proper from Kcin for a while now, and it’s coming out from Spirit Level… soon? We now have the first single “Global South” from Decade Zero, a thumping number drawing on the revolutionary, much-needed politics of Naomi Klein.

Xani – Injured Animal [Xani Bandcamp]
Xani – Fragmented [Xani Bandcamp]
Melbourne violinist Xani Kolac has made her mark on Melbourne’s indie and folk music scene as part of The Twoks and playing with many other musicians, and has released three albums of excellent instrumental music. Her new album for 2020, From the Bottom of the Well sees her finding her songwriting & singing voice, but for Utility Fog I’m drawn again to the instrumental tracks. We’ve had quite a percussive show and “Injured Animal” features the drumming of Brooke Custerson along with lots of lovely violin effects and processing; “Fragmented” is a whispy piece with Erica Tucceri’s flute joining Xani’s violin.

Gregory Paul Mineeff – Dimanche [Cosmicleaf Records]
After a few mostly piano-based tracks from Wollongong musician Gregory Paul Mineeff, his new single “Dimanche” is a little bit of blissful Sunday synth work. A talented artist floating mostly under the radar – you can find a lot of singles and an album or two on Cosmicleaf’s Bandcamp.

Subespai – City Circles (excerpt) [chemical imbalance]
Here’s an excerpt from a new work composed by Sydney musician Mauri Edo aka Subespai for the 2020 Australasian Computer Music Conference. Released by chemical imbalance, City Circles buries evocative field recordings of an unnamed city with pure, enveloping, pulsating drones.

part timer – donut day for victoria [part timer bandcamp]
part timer – quiet streets after 9 [part timer bandcamp]
The return of part timer in 2020, the folktronic/ambient project of UK-born, Melbourne-based John McCaffrey, was sudden but unrelenting. It’s like the mid-2000s again, when John would send me music every week or so, and I’d faithfully play glitchy pieces of sampled acoustic instruments and clunky beats. Now he’s taken to the piano, playing exquisite little études alongside his subtle, scratchy electronics. He’s quite unfairly talented, but who can deny the pleasure of a Melbourne musician celebrating the end of their gruelling lockdown? These Satie-inspired pieces are enchanting.

Listen again — ~204MB

Trying to fit everything in tonight, whether it’s creepy collage, contemporary classical, idm, bass-led dancefloor sounds, or various forms of songwriting.

LISTEN AGAIN to everything, whether stream on demand from FBi, or podcast right here.

Black To Comm – Oocyte Oil [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Black To Comm – Cheap Trick [Dekorder/Cellule 75]
Black To Comm – 39 [Dekorder/Cellule 75]
Mouchoir Étanche – Argent de rêve [Dekorder/Bandcamp]
Black To Comm – Rataplan, Rataplan, Rataplan (Arms and Legs Flying in the Air) [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
As Black To Comm, Hamburg-based sound-artiist Marc Richter released one of the albums of 2019 with Seven Horses For Seven Kings, the culmination of over a decade of great hallucinatory releases on labels like Type, Dekorder and De Stijl. The work is now followed by Oocyte Oil and Stolen Androgens, an album that comes with little contextualisation but once again works as high art music and low culture, spun from collaged samples and unsettling ambiences. I love how the piano follows the spoken word in the last track. Meanwhile, as usual Richter is so busy that he’s overflowing into other places. A few years ago, Black To Comm was supplemented by the You Tube-sampling vaporwavey project Jemh Circs. Now comes Mouchoir Étanche, which translates as “waterproof handkerchief”. I’m not sure how much this music differs from core Black To Comm – but simultaneously with the Mouchoir Étanche album Une fille pétrifiée comes another BTC album, A C of M. Both play up the more absurdist, surrealist aspects of Richter’s work, and as a set, all three albums are highly rewarding.

Bridget Chappell – Birrarung Marr [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp]
Bridget Chappell – Freshwater Falls [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp]
Last time we heard Naarm/Melbourne artist Bridget Chappell on the show it was for the ute-sampling deconstructed jungle breaks of “Toyota”, under their Hextape alias. Now their new project Undertow is released under their own name on adventurous Melbourne label Heavy Machinery Records. This work was commissioned by the City of Melbourne and uses their Open Data Platform to sonify contemporary & historical data about water management, along with manipulated samples of the Federation Bells in Birrarung Marr Park. The location of the Federation Bells was once underwater, and the colonial aspects of water management can’t be ignored, as well as the environmental aspects. Colonialism and climate change are central to Chappell’s practice, and it’s great hearing these come out alongside Chappell’s cello playing and love of rave & industrial beats.

Autechre – DekDre Scap B [Warp]
Autechre – marhide [Warp]
Everyone knows that Autechre albums need to be followed by a second album (even if it’s sometimes called an EP), and after a period of weird sprawling non-album creations (which I thought were excellent), here we have PLUS following hot on the heels of SIGN. It’s been a while since Ae’s stuff was genuinely surprising, and nothing here or on SIGN sounds that different from anything they’ve done 10 years really – but they were so far ahead of the curve for so long that that hardly matters. There’s head-nodding beats, gritty textures, beautiful meandering melodies, and to me there’s a bit more edge to this than the other album. I’m happy!

tsx x psygod – silberringe swud [generate + test]
I’ve mentioned recently that those pioneers of ’90s glitch Farmers Manual have of late taken to Bandcamp with a vengeance, sticking up archival works galore and making creative use of the digital platform – something not unforeign to them, as they infamously loosed days’ worth of live recordings on the web decades ago. Releasing other people’s music is not foreign to them either, and generate + test is the latest venture. Here we have tsx, which is a solo incarnation of FM’s Oswald Berthold, creating glitchy drum machine tunes created solely on mobile, with various collaborators. I have no info on “psygod”, but this is a nice bit of quasi-glitch-hop.

Mutant Joe – Masquerading as Matter [Mutant Joe Bandcamp]
Mutant Joe – Boom, Drop [Natural Sciences]
Mutant Joe – Atrophy [Mutant Joe Bandcamp]
Only just twigging to the work of Brisbane’s Mutant Joe, who now has a few releases on international labels, at the ripe old age of 20. It’s awesome that there’s an Aussie producer, not from Sydney or Melbourne (or Perth), doing absolutely on-point leftfield dancefloor music, and it’s a super interesting mix too. Bass music is at the core, whether it’s southern US-style hip-hop or jungle/dubstep/garage mutations. A new EP, Cortisol just dropped on his Bandcamp, and earlier this year Manchester label Natural Sciences released the album Vagrant.

ETCH – Naitsri Complex [Seagrave/Bandcamp]
UK producer ETCH loves the UK bass music continuum, as does the ever-reliable Seagrave Records, and they’ve teamed up for ETCH’s latest album, Strange Days, which covers breakbeats at all tempos. “Naitsri Complex” is the most jungle-like, but there’s much slower and everything in between.

Smurphy – Instinct [Bokeh Versions/Bandcamp]
UPGRAYEDD SMURPHY – I love you [Smurphy Bandcamp]
Smurphy – Intellect [Bokeh Versions/Bandcamp]
Under the name Smurphy, Mexican producer Jessica García has been making psychedelic, dub-influenced sounds for some time. She moved to LA for a time, moved back to Mexico in 2017, changed the name to UPGRAYEDD SMURPHY for a time and then back, and has been absorbing and recombining the sounds of UK bass/dancefloor music, juke, and techno over the last few years. Along with net releases like Sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you, in 2018 she created the 20-minute rave journey #InterDimensionalMagic for Sydney’s Longform Editions, which I strongly recommend grabbing too. Her newest EP is released by Bristol dub/not-dub label Bokeh Versions and draws significantly from juke among her various interests. Label proceeds will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, who work with impoverished people to address global deforestation.

exael – Circle (Squishy Mix) [Berlin Atonal/Bandcamp]
Aho Ssan + Exzald S – Wondertomb [Berlin Atonal/Bandcamp]
In this age of no clubs, Berlin Atonal have re-ignited their record label with a massive 5×12″ compilation called More Light. I understand that it’s big and supports the club (and artists), but the digital is still insanely expensive on Bandcamp – but I noticed it’s considerably cheaper at Boomkat for some reason. It’s a helluva selection of artists, worth a good look over. While I wasn’t that excited about a few contributions from generally great artists, there’s some brilliant stuff all the same, such as the bumpy bass number from exael. Teaming up with French sound-artist Aho Ssan, whose Simulacrum on Subtext Recordings was an early 2020 highlight, is Exzald S, French singer who used to be known as Fawkes. Their track is like a more abstract Kate Bush through a deconstructed club lens…

Lack The Low – Know What It’s Like [Provenance/Bandcamp]
Kat Hunter aka Lack The Low has just gone through Melbourne’s extended, life-sapping lockdown – an incredibly successful feat at squashing a scary second wave, but one that took a huge toll on the citizens. “Know What It’s Like” is a one-off song that Provenance are releasing next week, in which Hunter layers and layers her violin under an emotional vocal about human connection.

shoeb ahmad – hipless [Shoeb Ahmad Bandcamp]
shoeb ahmad – bloodwork [Shoeb Ahmad Bandcamp]
This coming Friday also sees the release of Shoeb Ahmad‘s follow-up album to her acclaimed 2018 album “quiver”. Unlike “quiver”‘s pared-back indie-punk production (as pared-back as Sia will get), a body full of tears brings the full arsenal of distortion, industrial beats, processed guitars and misused keyboards, to underscore (and overwhelm) songs about about identity. It’s possible to identify her love of artists as wide as Hood, Fennesz, Primal Scream and Andy Stott in here, but it’s deeply personal work that reflects a musical history that’s all her own.

epic45 – Rainstorm Breaks [Wayside & Woodland/Bandcamp]
epic45 – Buildings Aren’t Haunted, People Are [Wayside & Woodland/Bandcamp]
The second album for 2020 from UK’s epic45 sees them returning to the indietronica-meets-postrock-meets-electronica of their England Fallen Over era – a little more upbeat than they’ve been of late, partially due to the full membership of drummer James Yates (who’s worked with The Declining Winter among others). The Hood influence looms large, with the twisted junglism of “Rainstorm Breaks” reminiscent of Hood’s Chris Adams’ early work as Downpour – but elsewhere there’s that melodic sensibility which makes epic45 a favourite among many indie types. A very strong album.

Sam Amidon – Reuben [Nonesuch/Bandcamp]
Nico Muhly – The Only Tune III (feat. Sam Amidon) [Bedroom Community/Bandcamp]
Sam Amidon – How Come That Blood [Bedroom Community/Bandcamp]
Sam Amidon – Walkin’ Boss [Nonesuch/Bandcamp]
Sam Amidon – Warren [Nonesuch/Bandcamp]
Sam Amidon – Maggie [Nonesuch/Bandcamp]
In 2007, Sam Amidon released his first album on Icelandic label Bedroom Community – at the time a seeming anomaly of (wonderful) American/Appalachian folk music on this classical/experimental electronic label. But it wasn’t long until the relationship made a lot of sense: he appeared on Bedroom Community composer Nico Muhly‘s second album, with a stunning piece mixing a fragmented folk tune with minimalist composition and glitchy collage techniques; and Muhly’s orchestrations joined Shahzad Ismaily‘s instrumentation and Valgeir Sigurðsson‘s production on the stunning second album I see the sign. Even as he’s moved to the Nonesuch label and at times leaned more on the traditional folk/country/folk-rock arrangements, experimentation hasn’t been far from Amidon’s work. So with his self-titled new album, he again takes a set of traditional American tunes and underscores them with subtle electronics or hypes up the weirdness. It helps that he’s a tremendously talented singer and musician – now with a fantastic body of work.

Listen again — ~207MB

Quite the trip tonight, from soft, irridescent piano music through acoustic doom, doom/black metal & noise/electronic fusion, drill’n’bass & jungle, industrial hip-hop, jazz/drum’n’bass fusion, and a host of extraordinary noise & electronic sounds from Iran. Exciting!

LISTEN AGAIN and unravel the present into the future… stream on demand from FBi, or podcast here.

Machinedrum – Sleepy Pietro (feat. Tigran Hamasyan) [Ninja Tune/Bandcamp]
We featured the incredibly talented Armenian-American pianist Tigran Hamasyan on the show a few weeks ago, so it’s quite a spin-out to find him playing piano on a track from the new Machinedrum album. A View Of U is not quite as shiny and poppy as his last album, which I couldn’t really get into at all, but it’s still pretty sparkly. It has a bit of drum’n’bass fusion which I’ve been enjoying, and some good glitchy beats at lower tempos too. Worth a listen.

James Rushford – Música Callada, Book I: Quarter note ([M.M.] =54) [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
James Rushford – Música Callada, Book I: Placide [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
Two compositions by Federico Mompou from his Música Callada, performed by Australian sound-artist & composer James Rushford. These pieces were composed in the late ’50s & early ’60s, and are cult favourites in the sense of being well-loved among those who know, but unfairly obscure in general. Catalan composer Mompou is known mostly for his piano works (and some songs). Clearly influenced by Satie, Ravel, Debussy et al, with a touch of absurdity and more than a touch of beguiling otherness, they’re beautifully simple, straight to the heart. As well as his sensitive interpretations, this new album of Rushford’s also features a set of his own longer piano compositions, each around 12 minutes long, a little more challenging but still with quiet poise.

part timer – unlikely ally [Part Timer Bandcamp]
part timer – irreparable [Part Timer Bandcamp]
Just after an excellent EP of throwback folktronica, Melbourne’s part timer returns with a mini-album’s worth of exquisite pieces for piano, field recordings, and, at times, muffled beats. How does he do it? None can say, but we’re glad he’s back at it – these pieces are small wonders.

Jasmine Guffond & Erik K Skodvin – Spirifer (feat. Islaja) [Sonic Pieces/JG Bandcamp/EKS Bandcamp]
Jasmine Guffond & Erik K Skodvin – White Eyes [Sonic Pieces/JG Bandcamp/EKS Bandcamp]
Monique Recknagel impeccably curates the Sonic Pieces label out of Berlin, and for its 10th birthday celebrations early last year she selected artists from the label for special duo performances. One was Sydney artist & frequent Berlin resident Jasmine Guffond, working with Recknagel’s husband and Miasmah label boss Erik K Skodvin – two contemporary greats in yr humble narrator’s opinion. The two enlisted their friend Merja Kokkonen aka Finnish artist Islaja to contribute wordless vocals, which are weaved into dark acoustic and electronic textures – a shimmering, pattering cymbal, stark piano, farfisa organ. I thought I could hear Skodvin’s cello being tapped at some point too. There’s a sense of doom and even grief, reflected in the titles which are named for animals either extinct or near-extinct. Music for the current anxiety.

The Body – A Lament [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
The Body & Braveyoung – Song One [At A Loss Recordings/Buy from Thrill Jockey]
MSC & The Body – All See What Other Sees [MSC Bandcamp/The Body Bandcamp]
MSC & The Body – PKK [MSC Bandcamp/The Body Bandcamp]
Things are only darker here. The Body are simply one of the music important bands of current years, with collaboration at the heart of the work of duo Chip King and Lee Buford. Thrill Jockey have just announced their new album for February 2021, describing it as a return to the basics of heavy guitar & drums and strangled vocals which placed them in the blackened doom metal camp originally. However, they’re still using the studio as a weapon, as you can hear from the artful cut-outs in the drastically downtuned riffs on first single “A Lament”, adding to the sense of unease & terror.
As this show is not generally focused on metal, I have to find the right context to play this kind of stuff, and thus it’s taken a little while to play this other Body release, even though I think it’s phenomental. I Dont Ever Want To Be Alone is their second collaboration with MSC, and even that’s misleading – MSC used to be known as Braveyoung (after initially being called Giant). They moved from hardcore punk & black metal into elegiac postrock & drone, and now as MSC they incorporate samples & electronic beats. Zac Jones from MSC is a frequent member of The Body’s live lineup too. Back in 2011 The Body & Braveyoung released Nothing Passes, pulling The Body into a more cinematic postrock space… On the other hand, the new MSC & The Body album is an onslaught of crashing distortions, tricked-out beat juggling, samples of international news, hip-hop and ragga, sub bass drops, and gorgeous strings. In a better world it would be in all the charts and best-of lists.

John Frusciante – Amethblowl [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
John Frusciante – Genex 44 [SoundCloud/Not currently available on Bandcamp]
John Frusciante – Blind Aim [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
For some, the idea of Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante releasing an album on Planet µ is an extreme oddity – but those in the know would be aware of his long-held love of UK rave and idm music, and his friendship with Aaron Funk aka Venetian Snares. Some years back I played some material from his Renoise Tracks 2009-2011 set (represented by “Genex 44” tonight), which incorporated drill’n’bass & acid into his songwriting. Since then he’s released electronic music under his own name and as Trickfinger. This new album Maya is a delight – dedicated to his late cat of the same name (Songs About My Cats, anyone?), it’s a beautiful throwback to ’90s melodic drill’n’bass, jungle & hardcore techno, with influences from footwork and acid thrown in as well. Frusciante isn’t just a dabbler from the rock world – this music clearly means a lot to him.

Isomov – Aurora Torus [DECISIONS]
Last week I previewed a few tracks from the excellent CONSEQUENCES compilation released for Melbourne label DECISIONS‘ 5th birthday. But I decided to only play Australian tracks, and this one from previous DECISIONS artist, New Yorker Isomov, really needs to be highlighted too. It fits nicely into the idm-tinged jungle of the last batch of sounds with harpsichord or sequenced acoustic guitar melody and wordless vocal harmonies harkening back to the green & pleasant pastures of ’90s electronica.

clipping. – Pain Everyday (with Michael Esposito) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
clipping. – All In Your Head (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Robyn Hood) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
clipping. – Chek the Lock [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
Finally, a year after their first horrorcore/African-American horror themed album There Existed An Addiction To Blood, clipping. have released the long-awaited sequel Visions of Bodies Being Burned. It was always planned as a duology, but the familiar circumstances we’re all living with delayed the second album somewhat. Happily it was worth every minute of the wait, with the noise grounding of William Hutson and breakcore/techno experience of Jonathan Snipes again providing the perfect foil for the erudite, rapidfire delivery of their half-Jewish, half-African American rapper Daveed Diggs. As always the political & the cultural are intractably intertwined, and pop hooks coexist with extreme noise. “Pain Everyday” references that Venetian Snares bloke with strings & 7/8 breakcore beats alongside field recordings from occult researcher & noise artist Michael Esposito. And as well as the most extraordinary track from last year’s twin album, we heard the disquieting funk of “Chek the Lock”.

Female Wizard – Pagan Youtube [Anterograde/Bandcamp]
Melbourne’s Female Wizard is well-known for forward-thinking DJ sets ranging from Soft Centre to Boiler Room to Melbourne queer night Le Fag. Lately they’ve transitioned into production as well, and the excellently-titled Messy-Podge-Mania finds Alexander Powers released by Melbourne label-of-the-moment, Anterograde, including a handsome USB drive in 12″ sleeve edition. The music is entirely of-the-moment too, with splattercore beats revved into high gear, and fourth world samples mixed in with harsh noise. It’s out this coming week, so pre-order now!

For the rest of the show, we are featuring a slew of extraordinary experimental electronics from the Persian disapora. Ata Ebtekar aka Sote founded his Zabte Sote label in 2018 to feature Iranian experimental music, with the help of Opal Tapes to handle international manufacturing & distribution. This coming Friday sees the release of the latest quartet of cassette releases on the label, and all four are superb.

Rojin Sharafi – Boloor [Zabte Sote]
Rojin Sharafi – Pedarkoshi[Zabte Sote]
Starting with what for my money is the most exciting of a very strong selection, Tehran-born, Vienna-based sound-artist & poet Rojin Sharafi‘s second album for Zabte Sote, Zangaar. Electronics throb and burble under electrifying performances of her poetry. If like me you can’t understand Farsi, there are descriptions of each piece on the Bandcamp page. While contemporaries like Lucrecia Dalt might sprint to mind, this is sui generis work (indeed, it shares that characteristic with Dalt’s work too…) and utterly essential listening.

Pouya Ehsaei – RocRast #67 [Zabte Sote]
London-based musician Iranian musician Pouya Ehsaei is leader of Cuban/Iranian band Ariwo and founder of electronic improv night Parasang. His new album RocRast is entirely made up of live modular performances, that constraint making for a particular continuous and organic-feeling nature free of edits and jump-cuts. It’s dub-tinged burbling techno and a pleasure to tune in & drop out to.

Arash Pandi – Dashti [Zabte Sote]
Denmark-based northern-Iranian Arash Pandi is an educator, sound-designer & musician who is finding ways to situate experimental electronic techniques in a non-western tradition. Persian rhythms and melodies form the basis of the striking noise & drone works on his Exotic Paradox album, which meditates on the contradictions in humanity’s relationship with nature & culture: our exclusion & denigration of immigrants who enrich cultures worldwide, our destruction of wilderness and nature for food while 10% of the world goes hungry, our love of animals juxtaposed with our maltreatment of animals bred for food. It’s noise and distortion in service of emotion, thought-provoking and moving work.

Tegh – Smelled Like Rotting Flesh [Opal Tapes]
Before we hear the last of Zabte Sote’s new releases, here’s something from a few weeks back from Iranian drone/sound-artist Shahin Entezami aka Tegh. Zabte Sote have released his great techno duo Temp-Illusion, but Emergent Errors comes out through Opal Tapes. The tracks here draw from a fascination with the Cotard delusion, in which the sufferer believes that they are dead, or part of their body is. The horror & distress of this rare condition are expressed through crescendos, drones and occasional industrial rhythms, as well as the beautiful layered violin of 9T Antiope‘s Nima Aghiani on the opening track.

SAHAB – SEQ [Zabte Sote]
SAHAB – MOCHA [Zabte Sote]
Finally, also released on Zabte Sote this coming Friday is the seventh album from Iran-born, Fresno, USA-based artist SAHAB. Unlike the preceding releases, this is rather pretty and quite subdued – summery, nostalgic synth pads, drum machines and vocals. Truly lovely.

Listen again — ~201MB

That new Autechre at the start signals the crossed channels of tonight’s show – there’s ambient (post-classical/postrock/glitch) in there, but also idm (drill’n’bass/techno/glitch) too. Classic UFog when it comes down to it.

LISTEN AGAIN to all that stuff, stream on demand from FBi or podcast here.

Autechre – r cazt [Warp]
It’s a new album from Autechre! There’s been a HEAP of music from Autechre over the last 4 years – countless live albums, the 8CDs (and 8 hours) of the NTS Sessions, the 4+ hours of Elseq 1-5… but it really has been 7 years since a real album from the pair, one that fits on one CD and 2 sides of vinyl. Sign is really nice, but to me as a real Autechre fanatic, it feels just “nice” – I don’t get a sense of any of the tracks being classics, or of there being anything that really progresses from what they’ve been doing over the last 5 years, not to mention the last decade+. But that’s OK, new Ae is good!

Oliver Coates – Soaring X (featuring Malibu) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
Oliver Coates – Caregiver part 3 (slorki) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
The previous solo albums from English cellist Oliver Coates have either been performances of contemporary composers, or, generally, have mixed layers of his pristine & processed cello with beats & electronics. For his new album skins n slime, again on RVNG Intl., Coates drops the beats, instead delivering a selection of tonal drones, repeating ostinato phrases, and interpolated elements of processed sounds, the cello at times sounding like a synthesiser or a distorted guitar or even voice. Right at the end, frequent collaborator Malibu, the French ambient artist and singer, contributes evocative spoken word to the final track.

Memory Drawings – Dead To Me Now [Second Language Music/Bandcamp]
Memory Drawings – Exit Wounds (Giulio Aldinucci remix) [Second Language Music/Bandcamp]
Memory Drawings – Days I’m Happy To Forget [Second Language Music/Bandcamp]
About 8 years ago, Richard Adams of legendary indietronic band Hood and more recently The Declining Winter came out with a new project, the hammered dulcimer-led postrock band Memory Drawings – fruit of a collaboration with the originally-Minneapolis-based dulcimer player Joel Hanson. Along with Adams on bass, another Declining Winter member Sarah Kemp plays violin, and another ex-Hood member, Gareth S Brown can be heard on piano and keyboards. On many of their releases, I’ve contributed cello here and there, and for the latest album Joel got me on enough tracks that he invited me to be a fully-fledged member, to my great honour! Nevertheless, I consider this Joel’s project above all, and I’m really happy to play a bunch of their tracks tonight – the opening “Dead To Me Now” is one of my favourites, and I’m not on it.
Like most of their releases, new album A Few Scattered Hours comes with a bonus disc of remixes & reworkings, among them the inventive Italian sound-artist Giulio Aldinucci, who made my heart sing with his stretched-out, interleaved, pitch-shifted take on my cello parts.
Note, there’s also a vinyl edition available from Spanish label Zozaya with the remixes as a download – blue and black vinyl can be pre-ordered from Norman Records.

Son Lux – Undertow [City Slang/Bandcamp]
Son Lux – Live Another Life (Heal For Me) [feat. Nappy Nina] [City Slang/Bandcamp]
When Son Lux first appeared, it was the solo work of West Coast USA composer Ryan Lott – a unique mix of classical orchestration, indie songwriting and glitchy electronics, released on the primarily hip-hop-focused Anticon. label. In the ensuing years, Lott has been joined by guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang in Son Lux, but the project retains the sound-art element – hear the processing on the drums and also the guest string quartet on the first track here, which comes from the first of a pair of albums from the ensemble this year, Tomorrows I. New single “Live Another Life” is taken from the forthcoming Tomorrows II, and comes with an alternate version featuring verses from the brilliant Nappy Nina.

Andrew Broder, Denzel Curry & Dua Saleh feat. Haleek Maul – Bloodrush [Lex Records]
Staying on an experimental hip-hop tip, here’s a new one from the ever-restless Andrew Broder, aka Fog. This is a single from the soundtrack to Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins’ forthcoming film The Show, which Broder worked on with various collaborators including Adam Drucker aka Doseone (it’s not their first collaboration with the prickly reclusive genius Moore). This single is full of big names in experimental hip-hop, with main verses from Denzel Curry, melodic vocals from Dua Saleh, and a guest spot from Haleek Maul. Very keen to hear the rest of the music – and indeed see the film!

Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – Locked in Syndrome [BFDM Records/Bandcamp]
Simo Cell – Crystal [BFDM Records/Bandcamp]
Abdullah Miniawy – Criteria of good [Abdullah Miniaway Bandcamp]
Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – Music Gene [BFDM Records/Bandcamp]
I discovered the Europe-based Egyptian poet, actor, singer & musician Abdullah Miniawy last year via a collaborative release with German trio Carl Gari released by AD 93 (prev. Whities). A week or two ago we also heard Miniawy’s extraordinary vocals on a track with DJ Hvad via Irsh Cairo, and now we have this monster duo with French bass artist Simo Cell. As well as this label, Brothers From Different Mothers, Simo Cell has been released on labels like Livity Sound & Timedance, but I thought I’d play a moody bass techno number from a previous BFDM EP released in 2017; meanwhile I also wanted to showcase Miniawy’s own production talents with a track he put out on his own Bandcamp the following year. The new duo release Kill Me Or Negotiate combines bass-heavy club grooves with Miniawy’s Arabic vocals and trumpet, to brilliant effect.

Hence Therefore – Path Dependents [Decisions/Bandcamp]
Emily Glass – Scribble Machine [Decisions/Bandcamp]
Hard to believe that Air Max ’97‘s Decisions Records are 5 years old. Home to forward-thinking club & *ahem* deconstructed club styles from Melbourne, Australia and the world, they are celebrating their anniversary with the release of the Consequences compilation next Friday, from which we heard two previews: Sydney’s Hence Therefore with his twitchy techno/bass, and Adelaide’s Emily Glass with creepy post-classical keyboards and a scrabbling trudge of bass & beats.

Tim Shiel – Get Into Your Love (feat. Lucy Roleff) [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
After a series of game soundtracks, Tim Shiel is back making electronica, here with a second team-up after the phenomenal Coliseum with Genesis Owusu. This time the uk garage-style beats are paired with a lovely vocal from classically-trained songwriter/producer Lucy Roleff.

Tennis Pagan – HOLDER [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Tennis Pagan – Heads [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
As well as producing music and presenting almost daily on Australia-wide Double J radio, Tim Shiel runs the Spirit Level label. This week saw the release of the third EP in 2020 from the MAYBE new artist Tennis Pagan – shrouded in mystery, it could be an alias for someone we know??? Each EP has been a bit different, with this one a little more kosmische – still redolent of times past; as a reminder, the first EP Was old-school idm & downtempo, and “Heads” should take us nicely into the next track…

◙ – ◙ (1) [EOD Bandcamp]
Norway’s Stian Gjevik is best known as EOD, but his latest series of releases on Bandcamp has the conceit of naming each release after a different almost-indistinguisable placeholder Unicode character. Each release is a collection of electronic nostalgia, with a mixture of idm and downtempo beats and melodies, always with a hefty dose of acid. Lovely stuff.

seskamol – Empty [Force Inc./Bandcamp]
seskamol – Sausage Cancer [Force Inc./Bandcamp]
The debut release in a new series of “Hyperglitch” for the revived Force Inc., curated by idm artist Woulg, this is music of intense contradictions from Turkish electronic audio-visual artist Umut Gonca aka seskamol. Glitch, clicks’n’cuts, juxtaposed ambient & accelerated beats have all been around for decades now, but I’m willing to take their word for it that hyperglitch is something new, and I’m certainly looking forward to more of this, especially from Seskamol!

sluta leta – utegångsförbud [generate + test/Bandcamp]
sluta leta – whispers special (med angelika koehlermann aka anne laplantine)
sluta leta – snöade läger [generate + test/Bandcamp]
The story goes that sluta leta began as the duo of Bengt Liljstad and Jonas Bergkvist, formed in a small town in the north of Sweden, who got in touch with the folks from pioneering Austrian glitch label MEGO and released a series of 12″s on that label and others including Chocolate Industries. It’s fairly transparently always been a joke story, and the core members were Ramon Bauer & Andi Pieper, co-founders of Mego and the guys behind the groundbreaking electronic experimentalists General Magic. With Sluta Leta they indulge their disco, hip-hop & pop side, often in collaboration with Austrian techno producer Gerhard Potuznik and various guests. It’s quite a surprise, in any case, to find after more than a decade and half’s gap that they’ve put together another Sluta Leta album, entrée contrôle, released by another group of Austrian glitch royalty, Farmers Manual, recently very active on Bandcamp, through their generate + test label.

Ulrich Troyer – NOK 5 [4Bit Productions]
Ulrich Troyer – NOK 9 (Fennesz Remix) [4Bit Productions]
Originally released in 2000 on the great Austrian label MEGO before it dissolved and reformed as Editions Mego, Ulrich Troyer‘s debut release (as Uli Troyer) was a cute little 3″ CD called NOK. Mostly clicky glitch-beats, it had only a little of the dub influence that’s pervaded his music since, but it’s a very fine bit of European glitch and it’s need to see it re-released in vinyl+CD(+digital) form now, with bonus tracks and a couple of new remixes. Obscure Austrian glitch artist (*ahem*) Christian Fennesz contributes a lovely ambient take as of his usual style (complete with smeared guitar).

Listen again — ~204MB