Sound-art, experimental song, experimental beats, experimental ambient? Experimental guitar. Yeah, everyone’s experimenting.

Enrich your life! LISTEN AGAIN over at FBi’s website, or podcast here.

Sandy Chamoun – HAWALTOU حاولت [Dreaming Live]
Badawi – Qaher [Dreaming Live]
A week ago, a really big compilation came out from the organisation Dreaming Live, organised by the artist Mayss, in solidarity with Palestine, and calling for a ceasefire, and donating funds to Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah’s Children’s Fund. ENOUGH! is 63 tracks long, and covers a range from minimal industrial to dark ambient and noise, deconstructed club to singer-songwriter, with plenty of Arabic artists as well as artists from all around the world. Sandy Chamoun is a wonderful singer & experimental electronic producer, whose track “HAWALTOU حاولت” (meaning “I tried”) is a clear highlight. She’s also the singer with the incredible postpunk/psych/free-jazz/etc group SAMAN. Without going into all the artists, there’s people like Martin Rev of Suicide, ZULI, Jerusalem In My Heart, Sarah Davachi, Larkin Grimm and many others. The second track I played was percussive beats and Shepherd flutes from Badawi, aka Raz Mesinai, who’s been involved in multiple music scenes in New York since the ’90s, including illbient, reggae/dub, avant-garde composition and rock, and more. His Israeli & Arabic roots have always played a major part in his music, and he’s against the occupation and the genocide (see his recent album Sonically Dismantling Western Imperialism). It’s great to see him included here.

Tashi Wada – Flame of Perfect Form [RVNG Intl/Bandcamp]
Tashi Wada – What Is Not Strange? [RVNG Intl/Bandcamp]
What Is Not Strange? is the first “real” full-length album from LA-based musician Tashi Wada, even though he’s been active in the LA music scene for years, across contemporary composition, ambient/experimental and indie music. The album’s very much a family affair, significantly because the album’s creation spanned the death of his father, Fluxus member Yoshi Wada, and the birth of his first child with his partner, Julia Holter. Wada appears on Holter’s latest album (also released this year), and her voice is found here on some of the strange song-like pieces, but there are also more abstract pieces of burbling electronics, field recordings etc. Wada runs the Saltern label, releasing minimal contemporary classical works, and the breadth of music here might explain why it’s come out on the ever-adventurous RVNG Intl. And strange it is, in the best possible way.

Iceboy Violet & Nueen – Through the Fire [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Iceboy Violet & Nueen – Slammd (Interlude) [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Iceboy Violet & Nueen – Terrences Time Bomb [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Like Lila Tirando a Violeta & Sin Maldita, here are two young artists finding success on Hyperdub together. We’ve heard Iceboy Violet working with the likes of aya, Loraine James (both released on Hyperdub), and they are an excellent producer in their own right as well as rapper/singer. Here they’re working with Argentinian-Spanish producer Nueen, who’s been released on Balmat and 3XL. So this isn’t quite grime or drill, despite its connections to UK hip-hop and bass music; it has a little in common with the experimental r’n’b coming from the likes of Niecy Blues or Liv.e, and certainly is in a similar space to aya’s album on Hyperdub, im hole. As much as it’s a deep excavation of a now-ended relationship, it’s also a powerful expression of the smudged, defocused world we find ourselves in.

Crimewave – Torrent [Notes By Design/Bandcamp]
Released on New York clubmeister Swami Sound‘s Notes By Design, here’s Manchester’s Crimewave, also documenting the cold, blurry life of the north (hey I’m in Australia, everything’s “the north”). “Torrent” is the Crimewave sound for sure – sidechained shoegaze guitars, sadboy indie vocals, post-garage beats. Hood meets Burial? Don’t mind if I do.

bani haykal – SAVE YOUR SPIT FOR THE GRAVE OF YOUR CONSCIENCE [bani haykal Bandcamp]
ANONYMOUS CURSES from Singaporean musician/artist/writer bani haykal is full of eerie, distorted, glitched electronics, crushed percussion, distorted drum machines, and also incisive words, spoken, whispered, growled: whatever it takes. The EP is dedicated to a truth-speaking or prayer/curse-casting against those creating a world of destruction, through colonialism, extractivism, occupation and apartheid. He also links to Gaza Funds, a source for campaigns helping families evacuate to safety. Like a South-East Asian Saul Williams with contemporary electronics, spitting wisdom over technology.

Copper Sounds – Sequenced Ceramics (Memotone‘s Inebriated Cop Following Suspect Mix) [Copper Sounds Bandcamp]
Bristol-based duo Isaac Stacey and Sonny Lee Lightfoot have been making sounds, since 2015, out of unusual physical objects like copper records, homemade spring reverbs, and notable, specially-produced ceramics which are beautiful sculpted objects in themselves. Although their press mentions club/ambient music, they have generally been more interested in the sonic properties of their objects than the rhytmic potential, at least until new album Sequenced Ceramics. Still, it’s far from club music, and even the very creative remixes have pushed into varied directions. Will Yates aka Memotone‘s work is always going to be cool, and his “Inebriated Cop Following Suspect” remix does evoke a ’70s cop-show vibe. Just don’t knock over that expensive vase!

FaltyDL – Full Spectrum [Central Processing Unit]
FaltyDL – Further [Central Processing Unit]
Sheffield’s CPU Records (aka Central Processing Unit) are a haven for IDM fans, but to my ears it’s usually more in the electro or acid areas. Drew Lustman as FaltyDL has explored plenty of acid and rave genres around IDM for over 15 years, and his new album on the label, In The Wake Of Wolves, is no exception in terms of range. Nicely melodic, different BPMs, crisp production, thumbs up.

Toupaz – 891 [Toupaz Bandcamp]
Austrian producer Toupaz works in non-specific BPMs and genres too, but he clearly likes his bass music and his breaks, and his latest EP Frantic Gestures is definitely appropriately named. This may not exactly be jungle, but it has intricate skitteriness in between the beats… Yep, frantic.

al dente – overnight (White Fluff Remix) [Pure Space/al dente Bandcamp/White Fluff Bandcamp]
The Naarm/Melbourne native, but Paris-based producer calling himself al dente just released an EP through Eora/Sydney’s Pure Space (helmed by FBi’s Andy Garvey). multiform is in that techno-meets-d’n’b space that Pure Space often likes to inhabit, and the most drum’n’bassy track also finds itself remixed by Meanjin/Brisbane bleep enthusiast White Fluff, upping the d’n’b-ism and widening the bass. Lovely.

Aroma Nice – 12 Hours [YUKU/Bandcamp]
For Czech label YUKU, here’s UK jungle maniac Aroma Nice with three archival tracks and a remix by his mate Earl Grey (longtime drumfunker/junglist). Proof if we need it, following last year’s Lost Realms and this year’s Old Haunts, that Luke Fashoni is up there with the best of them in terms of incredibly technical and funky jungle production. Seriously good shit as always.

Duran Duran Duran – Hot Chicken [Woodland Creatures]
Ed Flis as Duran Duran Duran was one of the recurring figures in the breakcore scene from back in 2003 – indeed, if you look back, here he is remixing “Donna Summer” aka Jason Forest on a Utility Fog playlist from way back in November 2003. Supernatural Beast City, his new album on Berlin’s Woodland Creatures, has some hallmarks of breakcore, but filtered through the somewhat more nuanced beat-crafting and production of today’s nu-skool jungle and yesterday’s jungle tekno. Great stuff.

Kop-Z – Fading Light Above Us All (Fanu Remix) [Pinecone Moonshine/Bandcamp]
The Pinecone Moonshine label, based in Portland Oregon and run by Nic TVG, is a haven for drumfunk and more experimental beat-messing. There are always remixes either as part of the releases or on their own – like here, the Remixes IV compilation which lets loose 12 artists on the Pinecone Moonshine discography, even including some more ambient or lower tempo things. Finland’s Fanu is always super high quality of course (he’s also a certified Ableton trainer and there are heaps of great videos on his Patreon for producers). Here he’s putting his own take on a track from UK producer Kop-Z.

Xylitol – Okko [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
One of the best decisions of Planet µ recently (and they’re one of my favourite record labels) was the signing of Catherine Backhouse aka Xylitol, who’s been around the UK experimental electronic scene for well nigh a couple of decades, making minimal house, synth-pop, ambient, who knows what else. She DJs under the name DJ Bunnyhausen, and is something of an expert on Eastern European pop and electronica. And we’re fortunate that right now she’s focused on jungle and garage, so the frequently epic tracks on her Anemones album are full of clattering, ever-changing breaks and pretty melodies. This is single #2 (the first is 9:33 long!), with the rest of the album following in early July.

L’Église du Mouvement Péristaltique Inversé – Triptyques de monarques assis [L’Église du Mouvement Péristaltique Inversé Bandcamp]
Their name’s a mouthful even in French I guess… L’Église du Mouvement Péristaltique Inversé is The Church of Reverse Peristaltic Motion (aka Retroperistalsis, generally a precursor to vomiting), and that gives you a bit of an idea of where they’re coming from – dark but darkly comedic. They call their genre “cold pop”, and certainly there’s new wave & postpunk in there with krautrock and of course French chanson. This is their second album, following their self-titled album released in *checks notes*… 2001. Basically the French do things their own way, and long may they continue!

KMRU – Natur (extract) [Touch/will be at Bandcamp]
We’ve got the collab between Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU and Kevin Richard Martin coming soon, but in the meantime the great Touch label, home to much field recording, ambient, glitch and other experimental music, announced a new album from KMRU called Natur. It’s a stunning single piece almost 53 minutes long, but I’ve got a 8½ minute excerpt to play you tonight. Kamaru is from Nairobi, where he was forever surrounded by the sounds of nature as well as urban sounds; when he moved to Berlin, he found it comparatively silent, with nature’s sounds swamped by the built-up city. Since 2022, Natur has been a staple of his live set (I’m guessing it’s what we heard at Dark Mofo last year?), so it’s been honed to perfection, with sizzling drone-noise generated by electromagnetic microphones, and field recordings of “nature” creeping in at times. Beautifully crafted, it’s not to be missed.

Mark Templeton – Relaxations [enmossed/Bandcamp]
Mark Templeton – White Ink [enmossed/Bandcamp]
Canadian media artist Mark Templeton has been making idiosyncratic sound-art (and matching visual material) since at least 2007, pushing out a few releases every couple of years. By my calculations, this is his first since a couple of releases in 2021, and there will be at least one other this year. Inner Light, released on enmossed, deconstructs ’70s & ’80s ideas of ambient music (meditation tapes found in a church library), warping and disintegrating the original sources, and further manipulating them with digital edits. It’s as good a place as any to start with Templeton, and there’s a lot more to explore on his Bandcamp.

Luca Perciballi – Sacred Habits V [Kohlhass/Bandcamp]
Luca Perciballi – Sacred Habits VIII [Kohlhass/Bandcamp]
For Luca Perciballi, music and composition starts from performance, and on Sacred Habits he’s pushing the limits of what one performer can do with an electric guitar, extending the sound-generation with preparations on the guitar and even the speakers, and using foot percussion and other objects. Despite this, the music is not cluttered, usually focusing in on some particular approach and then expanding out from there. For an experimental work with few melodies or riffs, it’s quite gripping listening, never slipping into the background or becoming overly abstract.

Helvetica Noise – How to Listen To Storms [Helvetica Noise Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney trio Helvetica Noise combine spoken word (Aviva Shifreen) along with synths (Genevieve Von Black) and other noisemakers (Matthew Syres) in their first available track. Part psych/kraut, part drone/noise, it’s a vivid evocation of a deluge. (Just noting that I played an edit of the full track, which is almost 10 minutes long!)

Kate Carr – One piece of cake (a banana cake), and remembered excavations [Persistence of Sound/Bandcamp]
Kate Carr – Crossing the river: I am getting hungry and lots of people are talking about food. Also Jesus loves me [Persistence of Sound/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney sound-artist Kate Carr has lived in London for quite a while now, basing her excellent Flaming Pines out of there too. She is one of the most creative artists working with field recordings at the moment, and her latest album Midsummer, London covers a day travelling across the city on the longest day of the year, taking in recordings of trains, traffic, people and wildlife. It’s one long work but the track titles give us a lovely insight into her journey. They’re not necessary, though, to enjoy the reconstructed journey and the subtle & clever interplay of field recordings and music.

France Jobin + Yamil Rezc – Cómo IIego aqui? [LINE/Bandcamp]
Canadian sound-artist France Jobin has recently been found on ROOM40, and a few years ago had a beautiful release on Editions Mego called Death is perfection, everything else is relative, including a gorgeous collaboration with Klara Lewis. Here she has put together a collaboration with Mexican composer Yamil Rezc, who also makes experimental electronic music as Transgresorcorruptor. Their album Un d​í​a en México was indeed created on one day in Mexico City – well, initially, after which it was edited & refined over the following year. The three tracks – ranging from 5 mins to 10 mins to 30 mins – are beautifully detailed drone works, usually with at least two voices combining in spacious production.

Listen again — ~205MB

Another week, another selection of sounds from all over, this week encompassing very experimental indie songwriting and lo-fi hip-hop, glitched mashups, dreamy instrumental guitar-picking, fourth-world electronica, IDM, drumfunk & drum’n’bass, post-classical ambient…

LISTEN AGAIN and run the gamut… Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Michael Ackroyd – Inseam [Michael Ackroyd Bandcamp]
Michael Ackroyd – Vice Grip [Michael Ackroyd Bandcamp]
Over quite some years, Eora/Sydney musician Michael Ackroyd has put together his beautiful debut album Delicate Puncture. A little searching shows I played “The Architect” on this show in 2020, and that song appears here. There are nods to Talk Talk, Radiohead, contemporary post-club production etc, but it’s unfair to play the comparison game too much as Michael is an excellent songwriter and both creative and skilled in his production. The songs are from the heart – he has gone through a lot, suffering from chronic pain that led to opioid addiction (sadly very common), so finally completing this wonderful album is a real achievement, and more people should hear it.

FIN – Object Of Fire [Hausu Mountain/Bandcamp]
FIN – The Known World [Hausu Mountain/Bandcamp]
Sometime in early 2018 I must have discovered Alexandra Drewchin’s music, in the lead up to the first PAN release from Eartheater. Hausu Mountain released her first two albums, so I was digging around their Bandcamp and came across the first FIN album, Ice Pix, a collection of glitchy experimental electronic pop that I enjoyed easily as much as the Eartheater releases. It’s taken 6 years for Fin Simonetti to release her second album Cleats – probably because she’s been busy making incredible sculptural art (no seriously, incredible!) – but the new album is as weird & cool as her first. Not much more to say – the glitchy pop might have elements of Björk, Glasser, or heck, our own Aphir, but even compiling those comparisons was something of a reach – it’s uniquely weirdo electronic pop, huge thumbs up!

John Glacier – Steady As I Am [Young/Remote Control/Bandcamp]
I’m at least an EP late with English underground hip-hopper John Glacier. Her first EP for 2024, Like A Ribbon, came out in Feb, and Duppy Gun follows on June 20th. Unlike some of the shiny stuff on Young (fka Young Turks) like Jamie XX, hers is a determinedly experimental, lo-fi expression of what hip-hop can be in 2024, produced with Kwes Darko (fka Blue Daisy). Whatever – this is good shit.

Heyes – Wednesday, 27 October 2004 [Heyes Bandcamp]
Heyes – Wednesday, 19 August 1970 [Heyes Bandcamp]
Late last week, Lachlan Stevens, a man with excellent taste who presents Freshly Squeezed on Instagram (you should totally follow), let me know that he’d put up a really interesting new work on SoundCloud. Those We Follow is an exercise in creative tribute, de-fanged nostalgia, sincere love. Since I played these tracks on Sunday, I had a couple of people independently get in touch to say they really liked “the one by the guy about his grandmother”, so Lachlan has now put it on Bandcamp as a free download (he releases music as Heyes). Lochie talks about how his grandma had slowly succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and how the one thing that stuck with her was music. So, each of the tracks is made from three pieces of pop music (from across many decades and genres), sampled and brutally smashed to bits. The musical sources here are suggested by various family members, so clearly they’re a family of music lovers! The originals are rarely recognizable, although some tiny samples instantly announce themselves. But somehow he’s constructed a beautiful journey of scattered nostalgia, riffs and fragments built variously into rhythmic snippets of blurred beatless techno, glitchy ambient or some kind of folktronica. The album is meant to be heard as one continuous mix, so either download it or stream on SoundCloud I suggest.

Danny Paul Grody Duo (Danny Paul Grody and Rich Douthit) – Hawk Hill [Three Lobed Recordings/Bandcamp]
Guitarist Danny Paul Grody co-founded the incredible freewheeling postrock band Tarentel, and later The Drift. He’s been making circular, dreamy ambient folk under his own name for a while. His forthcoming Arc of Night album is being released as Danny Paul Grody Duo, as drummer Rich Douthit is central to all the music (Douthit was also in The Drift, among others). It’s certainly still low-key folk, and Douthit’s drums and percussion add to the atmospheric feel. On “Hawk Hill”, the second preview track, Trevor Montgomery, also of The Drift, adds electric bass. Looking forward to the rest!

D.C Cross – Light dancing on e’en water (Seine) [Darren Cross Bandcamp]
D.C Cross – Failed Gen X Love Story [Darren Cross Bandcamp]
Back in 2019, decades after being part of Sydney indietronic legends Gerling, Darren Cross released the first of his albums under the D.C Cross moniker, based around John Fahey-like “American Primitive” fingerpicked guitar alongside some more sweeping ambient guitar manipulation. Said techniques continue to be the features of D.C Cross, and Gookies Guit. is the latest album in that vein. Tonight we heard both the nimble and melodic “Light dancing on e’en water (Seine)” and the wistful ambient of “Failed Gen X Love Story”.

Michel Banabila – Hometapers Tricky Universe [Knekelhuis/Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila – AI Brainfire [Knekelhuis/Bandcamp]
Mark Knekelhuis‘s eponymous label releases anything from punk, new wave & industrial to ambient and contemporary electronica. Dutch maestro Michel Banabila released Echo Transformations on the label in 2021, and returns now for Unspeakable Visions. Here, Banabila is focusing on a recurrent element of his work: voices. It might sound like we’re hearing ethnomusicological recordings, but the voices are all either artificially created or manipulated from his own voice. Along with assorted acoustic instruments, tape effects, field recordings and lots of electronics, Banabila creates a contemporary form of “fourth world” ambient. Wondeful as always.

sideproject – double zebra [SVBKVLT]
sideproject – cannonposting [SVBKVLT]
Most of us discovered Icelandic electronic trio sideproject via their remix for Björk a couple of years ago (they also contributed production on the track “ovule“). They make crazy idm stuff influenced by today’s bass music – there’s a stack of older stuff on their Bandcamp, but this week the Shanghai/UK label SVBKVLT released a new album, sourcepond. It’s simultaneously the melodic end of contemporary electronic and the most IDM-influenced end of bass music, strangely organic, very moist.

Mattr – Gaija [Mattr Bandcamp]
Mattr – Fever [Mattr Bandcamp]
Speaking of IDM, while UK artist Mattr has furnished dancefloors with leftfield house, he’s been very much on an IDM tip for some time, and 40 minutes of that material are conveniently collected in his new album Pheno. Tracks range from sedately paced to skittery almost-jungle, and there’s a lovely sense of turn-of-the-millennium 2nd gen IDM like Arovane as well as early Autechre’s melodic sensibilities. Always recommended.

dgoHn – Debbie Will Deck You [WeMe Records/Bandcamp]
dgoHn – Sad Stay Snakebitten [WeMe Records/Bandcamp]
If you want full-on drum fuckery of the highest order, you’d better call for John Cunnane aka dgoHn, drumfunk maestro for almost 20 years now. Brussels label WeMe Records is dedicated to electronic music of all sorts – IDM, acid, dubstep, jungle – and so they’re a comfy home for dgoHn’s latest, Alterations in Gyral Form. It’s not all drum’n’bass/jungle BPMs, but at whatever speed, dgoHn implacably brings the funk.

Andy Odysee – Ex-Astra Heights [Odysee Recordings/Bandcamp]
Although active in the original jungle/drum’n’bass times, Odysee Recordings has seen a resurgence and new significance in recent years, spearheaded by Andy Baddaley, who first joined the label in 1999, but in fact went to school with Jim Baker of Source Direct, a highly influential drum’n’bass act usually mentioned in the same breath as Photek. Baddaley is now responsible for a lot of extremely high quality productions on the label, also very much in the vein of the intricate, dark d’n’b/jungle of Photek and Source Direct in that mid-’90s period. The 5th volume in his Odysee Black Series is no exception, and I recommend exploring the label’s Bandcamp for quality reissues and new material, noting that Source Direct now have their own Bandcamp page.

Monoconda – Progression [Salon Imaginalis]
Monoconda – I Was Programmed [Salon Imaginalis]
Berlin-resident Monoconda is from Kyiv, and his new EP Disturbing does live up to its name, evoking an upturned, unstable world. There’s a kind dub-electro vibe to it, but with fidgety IDM rhythms, and half-audible robot-like female vocals (“I Was Programmed…”) Unusual, experimental stuff.

Roel Funcken – Mugam v2 [Roel Funcken Bandcamp]
I can quite honestly say that I was following Dutch IDM legends Funckarma from the beginning. In 1999 I was travelling in Europe on my own before a tour, and found myself in a little electronic music shop in Antwerp, in northern Belgium. I was talking to the owner, and learning a bit about my taste – I’m guessing particularly Autechre and Arovane at that point – he handed me a brand new 12″, or maybe it was two – maybe it was Parts 1 & 2? Anyway, I was instantly sold on the melodic IDM & glitchy beats, and followed them ever since. They made regular appearances on this show from the beginning, and through their dubstep-influenced period until one of the two brothers, Don Funcken, decided to hang up his apron and stop making music. But Roel Funcken kept the faith, and has a large collection including heaps of old Funckarma on his Bandcamp. The best way of keeping up is through his Bandcamp Subscription, which has exclusive music every month, and he’s kindly let me play one of the exclusives for May here tonight. Very nice, kinda dark, pure Funcken.

Toada – Onda Tempest [plüma / Toada Bandcamp]
Late in 2023 we heard Lisbon/Berlin producer Toada (Valdir da Silva) revisiting ’00s folktronica with the Slow-Paced Tangents EP. He returns now with Alta Onda 01, first in a series of EPs on his own plüme label, melding club leanings and ambient introspection. With a comfortably-paced 4/4 kick going through the tracks, there are low-slung shuffly grooves and electronic arrangments inspired by the music of Southern Hemisphere as he says (particularly Central & South America). Very lovely, worth signing up for the follow-ups.

Chris Dooks – COWLAIRS [Chris Dooks Bandcamp]
Chris Dooks – WARCOILS [Chris Dooks Bandcamp]
I’m pretty sure I first came across Chris Dooks under his Bovine Life alias, making IDM and glitch, often with collaborators. By the end of the ’90s he was already a respected filmmaker, and multimedia art has been a continuing feature of his work. But for many years I’ve thought of him primarily as a drone and sound-artist – including works for “self-excited harmoniums”, and pure field recordings, often including people talking (as opposed, in my mind, to “spoken word”). In any case, all this aside, I was surprised to find this new EP, Cowlairs, appearing unannounced on his Bandcamp, its six anagrammatical titles enclosing six pieces of lo-fi melodic synth pieces. A couple of these pieces do incorporate field recordings, and one even has electronic beats. It’s a beautiful unexplained artefact.

Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements – The Top of Thomas Street [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Rain on the Road, the first duo release from Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements, mostly showcases their unique approaches to their main instruments – Lattimore’s harp and McClements’ accordion. Like their own solo work, it’s ambient music from acoustic instruments and some processing, with field recordings and other instruments appearing at times. I particularly loved the closing track, where McClements substitutes piano for accordion. Comforting sounds for a turbulent world.

Listen again — ~205MB

Everything from groundbreaking postrock to glitch-jazz, auto-techno to bass musics fast & slow – and more.

LISTEN AGAIN, you deserve it! Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Gastr Del Sol – The Seasons Reverse (live) [Drag City/Bandcamp]
Gastr Del Sol – The Bells Of St. Mary’s [Drag City/Bandcamp]
It’s almost impossible/unnecessary to describe Gastr Del Sol here, but then I did write about Steve Albini a couple of weeks ago, so. They were the duo of Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs, both independently massive influences on experimental music, postrock, sound-art, improv, you name it. They were also key members of Chicago’s music scene, from postpunk & hardcore through the defining period of postrock as Tortoise formed out of ensembles both had been involved with, while simultaneously O’Rourke was making freeform sound-art on tape and then computer. It’s almost impossible to overstate the significance of their albums, especially (I’d suggest) their final album Camoufleur. Some 26 years after that album was released and they disbanded, we’re treated to a double CD & triple LP collecting rarities and previously unreleased live tracks, and from the very start, Camoufleur‘s beloved opening track “The Seasons Reverse” appears in live form from a performance the year before the album was released, and sounding remarkably full given that the album was quite non-linearly constructed by O’Rourke out of recordings from both musicians apart and together. The song, and the music here in general, shows what classic songwriters both were, and also how willing they were to bury their gorgeous songs 10 minutes in to drones and abstract sound-art, or deconstruct those songs. “The Bells of St. Mary’s” was recorded for a Japanese Christmas compilation, and as O’Rourke quite rightly detests Christmas music, it’s a complete deconstruction of glitching electronic bell tones, minimalist piano and organ drones that kind of is Christmassy if you squint and look at it from the right angle. Lovely stuff, lucky us!

John Kameel Farah & Nick Fraser – Dirge [Nick Fraser Bandcamp]
John Kameel Farah & Nick Fraser – Waltz [Nick Fraser Bandcamp]
I discovered Toronto pianist, jazz composer, electronic musician John Kameel Farah way back in 2010, somehow via a breakcore/idm link I think – yes, the album Unfolding was released by the Canadian breakcore label Dross:tik. It’s a mix of brilliant jazz piano, electronic processing and Squarepusher-style beats. It’s been 15 years since that album came out, and here’s Farah working with the Toronto drummer Nick Fraser, key player in the Toronto jazz/improv scene. Fraser reached out to Farah specifically for this project, which is rooted in improvisation. From an initial set of studio improvisations, Farah worked on the recordings – with Fraser’s guidance – with all sorts of electronic interventions. The result is very different from that earlier Farah album, but carries the spirit of technically proficient jazz, with an emotive/emotional core, and advanced electronics/rhythms. You don’t need to be a jazz head at all to enjoy this though! And this kind of interaction between improvisation and electronic post-production is central to this show’s mission – especially when it’s done as beautifully as it is here.

Frédéric D. Oberland, Grégory Dargent, Tony Elieh, Wassim Halal – Black Powder [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Venerable Belgian experimental label Sub Rosa here releases a collaboration between four seasoned collaborators. Frédéric D. Oberland has appeared frequently on Sub Rosa as part of the great postrock/psych band Oiseaux-Tempête, who have themselves collaborated deeply with Middle Eastern & north African artists; French oud player Grégory Dargent works deeply with musicians from Lebanon, Algeria and further; Tony Elieh is a key member of Lebanon’s music scene, from shoegaze to improv and noise; and darbuka player Wassim Halal has also worked with musicians from Lebanon and Turkey among others. Their music together includes all these instruments, electric guitars and bass, and many variegated electronics, and together they create their own new language. At times abrasive and atonal, at times weirdly melodic, and entirely unpredictable.

Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne – Traction [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne – Plads [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
In 2018, UK electronic duo Nightports inaugurated their “Nightports w/” series with experimental/post-classical pianist Matthew Bourne, with an album that explored the expressive and physical nature of the piano. Bourne was an ideal collaborator, an exploratory musician himself, and after some excellent work with percussionist Betamax and double bassist Tom Herbert, as well as some processed field recordings, they’re back again with Bourne but working with very different sounds. The dulcitone is a very rare gem of an instrument, mechanically a bit like a Fender Rhodes – an array of tuning forks hit by piano hammers – with a clear bell-like sound. The name “Dulcitone 1804” doesn’t refer to when it was built (they’re mid-to-late 19th century instruments) but rather the manufacturer’s number for the instrument used. Already an unearthly-sounding instrument, the dulcitone is further manipulated both by Bourne in his performances and by Nightports’ Adam Martin and Mark Slater on electronics, both live and in post-production.

Splashgirl & Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – More Human [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Norwegian trio Splashgirl are a postrock band made of jazz musicians, or maybe a jazz trio leaning into postrock, or maybe I’m just getting bogged down in genres. The three musicians are adventurous in their own rights, and in particualr we’ve heard double bassist Jo Berger Myhre in various contexts on this show. Myhre and the two Andreases on piano & drums are joined here by another jazz-influenced experimenter, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, often known as Lichens, whose history takes in punk & metal, industrial and experimental rock, as well as ambient and drone. Their album together, More Human, addresses what humanity is in a world dominated by ersatz humanity in AI and automation, with lovely vocals from Lowe and even a Talk Talk cover of sorts. Released by the ever engaging Hubro label.

James Devane – Searching I [Umeboshi/Bandcamp]
James Devane – Kilter [Umeboshi/Bandcamp]
James Devane – Last Strut [Umeboshi/Bandcamp]
Bay area musician James Devane follows up his 2022 album Beauty Is Useless with Searching, again released on Swedish label Umeboshi. The former smeared sounds from the techno idiom into fuggy textures that sometimes highlighted beats, and sometimes buried them entirely. On Searching a different technique abstracts techno into lopsided patterns that point at dub or minimal techno without quite lining up. You’ll hear bits of Laurel Halo, Flying Lotus, Actress, Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas and Vladislav Delay, but none quite describe the artful disorientation here.

Bjarni Biering – I can let go (Jlin Rework) [Curious Music/Bandcamp]
Icelandic composer Bjarni Biering released his Andvaka Suite on US label Curious Music in 2021. Its classical/electronic evocations of stillness were transportive, and have now earned a release on vinyl, along with which a remix of “I can let go” has been commissioned from Jlin aka Jerrilynn Patton. Of course Patton, who has gained high respect from folks like Philip Glass and Michael Vincent Waller of late, does wonderful work here.

NikNak – You Were Supposed To Be Good (Feat. Grifton Forbes Amos & Cassie Kinoshi) [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
NikNak – Break My Bones [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
The amazing Ireti is a masterful debut album from UK turntablist, producer, composer NikNak aka Nicole Raymond. Released by Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records, it paints its Afrofuturist, post-cyberpunk vision of dystopia with help from friends like trumpeter Grifton Forbes Amos and saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi (both prominent in the UK jazz scene, with NikNak performing on Kinoshi’s recent album for International Anthem), singer & flautist Chisa Agor and singer Agaama. Still, most of the album is NikNak’s production and vinyl manipulation, sumptuous arrangements, intricate beats and all. Each time I listen to this I’m sure it’s one of the albums of the year, and the multiple listens are a pretty good sign of that too. Don’t miss it!

Krampfhaft – Anticline [Maloca Records/Bandcamp]
HIIIT are a versatile ensemble, formerly known as Slagwerk Den Haag (I first heard them in Lunch Music, a brilliantly weird collaboration with Netherlands-based composer Yannis Kyriakides). Renaming themselves after many decades to indicate that they’re no longer just a percussion ensemble, HIIIT have been producing a number of collaborations – you can see a bunch of YouTube videos of music made with Jlin. SIIIX is a project released by Brussels label Maloca, which is presented as a compilation – HIIIT are not actually credited unless you look at the description. Each artist, from drummers Valentina Magaletti & Julian Sartorius to producers such as upsammy and Azu Tiwaline, created sketches over which HIIIT improvised layers of sound which were then given back to the artists to create new pieces. I could happily have played any of the tracks, all of which creatively use percussion with electronics, but chose Utrecht (Netherlands) producer Joris Van Grunsven aka Krampfhaft, who created a patiently evolving piece of syncopated bass music. The compilation is highly recommended.

David August – Workout I [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]
Italian-German composer David August is the founder of 99CHANTS, with a small catalogue of great ambient & experimental music. For many years he was making house music, but founding 99CHANTS took him in more experimental directions, and last year’s VĪS was a mystical mixture of ambient, post-classical, and deconstructed club music. For the WORKOUTS EP he’s in rhythmic mode, with four pieces of tumbling, percussive bass techno. This first Workout is a good indicator of the goodness to come.

Kiwanoid – ក្ផានអវី [Mille Plateaux]
Dizzying glitch for Mille Plateaux here from the Estonian “multichannel meta-artist” Kiwanoid. Each track title is apparently the word “nothing” in various languages – although “Vanat​ü​hi“, the album title, is “Old one” in Estonian (according Google translate anyway!) There are a lot of manipulated voice samples in here, along with not so much deconstructed club as demolished club. Fun though!

Mutant Joe – Malfeasance [99CTS RCRDS]
Meanjin/Brisbane’s Mutant Joe (based, I think, in Berlin) is an expert at, well, mutant beats in various genres, and on this new EP for NYC/Paris label 99cts (it’s meant to be 99 cents I think), there are four stomping hybrids of hip-hop, dubstep and other bass genres, with nods to jungle around the edges. Quality.

Ben Pest X Kursa – Totally Kippered [Love Love Records]
Mutant bass from two heavy operators from the UK, Ben Pest and Kursa. All the tracks here are somewhere around grime or dubstep, but inflected/infected with jungle/d’n’b, techno and electro. But the bass slams on all these dancefloor weapons.

The Lazy Jesus – Smok (Dengue Dengue Dengue remix) [Shouka/Bandcamp]
Ukrainian musician/DJ/producer Ehor Havrylenko aka The Lazy Jesus takes ancient music of Ukraine and brings it into the percussive world of contemporary techno and bass music. The UA Tribal Vol. 2 EP is out later this month via French-Tunisian label Shouka, along with two remixes. Peruvian duo Dengue Dengue Dengue up the percussive energy in their remix of “Smok”.

Thief – Paramnesia [Prophecy Productions/Bandcamp]
Thief – Dulcinea [Prophecy Productions/Bandcamp]
Dylan Neal has been a member of cult black metal/dulcimer band Botanist, but his solo material as Thief is a very different affair (even though Botanist can sound more like folk-shoegaze or even trip-hop more than metal at times). With Thief, Neal makes industrial electronica with characteristic choral samples all through. The poppier ends of Nine Inch Nails are recalled and there’s IDM-influenced beat programming. Bleed, Memory finds Neal dealing with his father’s descent into dementia, and how that affected his memory and personality, as well as his perception of the world around him. Neal’s granularly-manipulated choral samples give these songs an unearthly aura – the album is intentionally haunted, and it’s touching listening.

Moin – Lapsed [Kuboraum Digital Sound Residency/Bandcamp]
Kuboraum are, as far as I can see, a Berlin-based designer of glasses frames (“masks”) who also have various artistic ventures, one of which is the Kuboraum Digital Sound Residency, offering music downloads for those who sign up to their newsletter. The first 12 of these are now available on vinyl and also as downloads on Bandcamp, and it’s a pretty impressive list, including exclusive music from Space Afrika, Emma DJ, MC Yallah & Dembaster, Ziúr, µ-Ziq, Lucy Railton and others. Moin‘s track matches what they’ve made in the last couple of years – angular postpunk riffage with decontextualised vocal samples. Excellent.

KRM & KMRU – Ark [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
Stunning, unexpected collab here in which Kenyan ambient sensation Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU teams up with Kevin Richard Martin, and not just because of the three letters. Under his full name, KRM has been making extremely washed-out uneasy ambient that still has a core of the heavyweight dub/dancehall/dubstep he makes as The Bug. Surprisingly, at Martin’s request, the record features Kamaru’s voice on some tracks, although “Ark” (one of two preview tracks available) is instrumental, with gaseous synths driven by a very Bug-like pulse.

Véronique Serret – Migrating Bird [Véronique Serret via Planet Company/MGM/Bandcamp]
Full disclosure: I’ve known Véronique Serret since we were school kids in youth orchestras. She’s a brilliant violinist who has made a successful classical career – playing in the Australian Chamber Orchestra as well as with Bangarra Dance and Sydney Dance Company, as well as being concertmaster of the Darwin Symphony. But she’s also been involved with non-classical music for as long as I have (*ahem*), as a founding member of CODA with composer/violist Nick Wales, and later a member of improvising string quartet The Noise, as well as contributing or directing strings for many international & local musicians. Migrating Bird is her first solo album of music written by herself, and performed on six string violin along with her own voice. Kim Moyes of The Presets (also a classically trained muso from way back) provides electronic touches in the production, and Véronique has incorporated many field recordings Mt Cootha/Meanjin which accentuate the music’s theme of the natural world. These songs evoke the landscape and fauna of the Australian continent and also of her homeland Mauritius. Great stuff.

Claire Cross – Theta [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
Finishing with an accomplished jazz musician from Naarm/Melbourne (now Berlin-based), Claire Cross, taking her electric bass into ambient territory on an album that explores the Sleep Cycle. The ensemble here features drums, bass and voice, all used with copious effects, playing and improvising around compositions from Cross that draw from the frequency ranges detected in EEGs during the different phases of the sleep cycle. So let’s float away with delay-ridden textures from all four musicians…

Listen again — ~204MB

Sound-art, glitch, breakcore, jungle, bass, minimal electro-pop, acoustic arrangements of a glitch-drone classic… a lot to get through tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN, I implore you – on FBi’s stream on demand, or podcast here.

Koichi Shimizu – Evenfall [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Koichi Shimizu – Imprint [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Unknowingly, when I previewed and immediately grabbed the new album Imprint from Koichi Shimizu, I’d first heard the artist 25 years ago. As just Koichi, Shimizu released a split 12″ on legendary (if very obscure) UK IDM label Worm Interface (sadly the label’s releases have never been available digitally, except perhaps from individual artists). The breadth of Shimizu’s musical taste and talents was formed during two stints living in Thailand as well as in Japan and elsewhere, and he’s quite well-known for the music & sound work he’s done for/with Thai independent film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He’s also collaborated with the brilliant, shapeshifting Singaporean band The Observatory, another connection I’d failed to make immediately – seriously, Demon State is an incredible mix of industrial, experimental electronics and noise side by side with postrock, gamelan and who knows what else. In comparison, Shimizu’s new solo album Imprint is not nearly so intense, but there are clear industrial techno undertones along with beautiful glitchy ambient composition and cinematic scope. I’ve been returning to this album quite a bit because there’s enough detail and left turns that you know it’ll retain its pleasures repeatedly.

Pentu – This Doesn’t Exist Anymore [mappa/Bandcamp]
Pentu – I’m Noticing The Blossoms More This Year [mappa/Bandcamp]
Two new releases from the Slovakian label mappa now: Pentu‘s And I Saw My Devil And I Saw My Deep Blue Sea is out now, with the London-based producer evoking that slightly lost, disturbed feeling of navigating the contemporary mediascape, especially when in the throes of a relationship ending. The artist’s previous work was more directly song-oriented, but here a track might start in an ambient space, with glitched electronics and decontextualised YouTube samples, before grinding into brief metal snarls and riffs, or short sweet song excerpts.

adaa – p1.fr [mappa/Bandcamp]
Coming on June 3rd from mappa is the album …img… from Rhode Island’s adaa. Like Pentu, adaa creates her music by collaging snippets of found-sound along with her own electronics, guitar and processed voice. And then there’s this little track which somehow starts with ASMR voice and muted piano, building into some kind of hyper-pop and the further into a saturated mess of distortion.

Rika Madobe – Opening party [Virgin Babylon Records]
Rika Madobe – Window moon [Virgin Babylon Records]
For some reason Madobe Rika, the idoru breakcore pop star discovered by World’s End Girlfriend‘s Virgin Babylon Records has switched to Rika Madobe – I know that one is the typical Japanese order with family name first, but I’m not sure which is which. In any case, Infinite Window is the debut album proper from the artist, who has previously released some incredible EPs of what might be vocaloid-style pop with breakcore production (they’ve referred to her as a “virtual girl”), and then snuck out a few singles ahead of this album. There are some slightly more subdued tracks here too, like the pretty piano of “Opening party” – at least until things start accellerating and glitching! Super fun, super kawaii.

Anom Vitruv – Ohne Titel 4 [Präsens Editionen/Bandcamp]
Anom Vitruv – Ohne Titel 5 [Präsens Editionen/Bandcamp]
The mysterious Anom Vitruv first appeared around 2012, and barring a couple of untitled releases has mostly been released on vinyl. Now, six years after his last release, comes the enigmatically titled 6.4311, a full album available on CD as well as digital from Switzerland’s Präsens Editionen. Each track is untitled (“Ohne Titel” in German), giving little away about the music’s content or the artist’s intent (although now at least we know he’s based in Switzerland). Various approaches to ambient emerge, including gentle synths, reversed vocals, cavernous reverb, spoken word, and then cut-up classical piano, but on the fifth untitled track the cavernous space is filled with clattering jungle breaks. It’s music that would have fitted perfectly in a chill-out room at a mid-’90s rave, albeit through a post-vaporwave lens.

rush2theUnknown – Ulterior [Disktopia/Bandcamp]
rush2theUnknown – Taken Flight [Forthcoming on Soul In Motion]
Also harkening back to ’90s jungle and drum’n’bass are New Zealand duo rush2theUnknown, made up of documentary maker Nick Dwyer and producer Devin Abrams. Their EP1 is out through Disktopia, with plenty of that break-juggling syncopation, melded 2020s-style with influences from new age/ambient music, including Japan’s own kankyõ ongaku style of new age video game music. A second EP of similar material entitled Taken Flight will be out in mid-June on UK d’n’b label Soul In Motion.

Special Request – Bounty Hunter [Special Request]
One of the beginnings of the ongoing jungle revival came when London renowned house & techno DJ Paul Woolford started releasing hardcore & jungle 12″s as Special Request around 2012 (notably the ridiculously great remix of Lana Del Ray’s “Ride”). In the intervening decade, Special Request has been an outlet for IDM, acid and various experimental club sounds as much as jungle, but there’s always some of it around – so on Portal 3, the third in his current 12″ series, there’s the frenetic acid-jungle of “Bounty Hunter”.

Allis – Nichts [The Collection Artaud]
Look up Allis and you’re likely not to find any information. That’s because the latest release on Yu Miyashita‘s label The Collection Artaud is in fact himself, under a new alias. In amongst the glitch and idm-inflected beats is spoken word from Miyashita. The a-side (“Alles”) actually sounds more like a funky ’80s electro vibe with Miyashita’s murmuring voice (I think it’s in Japanese?) but the b-side (“Nichts” – nothing, the opposite of “all”) is a very µ-Ziq style melodic idm thing complete with junglist beats. And Miyashita’s voice. I’m curious what the words are about.

Social State – Play No Games (feat Technically True) [Social State Bandcamp]
In 2021, UK producer Social State released his album Sacrosanct, which mixed up jungle and grime-like beats with more hip-hop or trip-hop vibes. On new track “Play No Games” it’s tricksy jungle, and a lot of fun.

Lila Tirando a Violeta, Sin Maldita – All Day I Hear The Noise of Waters (Verraco Remix) [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Verraco – Godspeed > [Timedance/Bandcamp]
We’ve heard Amnesia Scanner’s remix of Lila Tirando a Violeta & Sin Maldita, and the full EP of remixes from last year’s Accela album is coming soon. This week we have Verraco from Colombia, taking “Accelerated” as an instruction, with fidgety and fluid rhythms. Verraco also has a new EP coming out on Bristol’s Timedance, with dembow grooves on the first single.

COIDO – Traces [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Well, I don’t know much about Berlin-based Fabrizio Carlini aka COIDO (being Berlin-based is near meaningless these days!), but he’s been making gnarly bass techno for YUKU since last year, from near-dubstep-tempo to jittery near-d’n’b or juke, and the Traces EP sits comfortably in between. It’s too chunky to be ukg, and too fast to be dubstep, too syncopated really to be techno, so let’s settle for “bass”. Fuckin’ great anyway.

RM Estali – C+R [Virtual Forest Records/Bandcamp]
French ravers Virtual Forest Records release the first EP from RM Estali, who has been involved with the electronic scene in Paris for a while. The four tracks on Dynamic Slicing are carefully made bass tracks with an emphasis on dub production. Lovely to hear.

Conna Haraway – Cortisol (with L V J) [INDEX:Records]
Conna Haraway, co-founder of Glasgow’s INDEX:Records, has a few releases under his belt including a debut album from last year on Eora/Sydney’s own Theory Therapy. On Cortisol, the same track accompanies two voices: The brilliant Sensational (who has appeared on productions from the likes of Autechre, NHK yx Koixen, Kœnig and many other experimentalists) drops mysterious lines over a fairly abstract version of the beat, while L V J‘s rap and the beat behind it are somewhat more in-focus.

Valerian Swing – Badman(ting) feat. Flowdan [Pax Aeternum/Bandcamp]
Strangest combo of the week is finding grime legend Flowdan on a track from Italian jazz/postrock/math rock band Valerian Swing. The band’s Liminal album, befitting its title, is exceptionally hard to pin down, and the band’s slow groove and synth-led energy do strangely support Flowdan’s flow.

Church Andrews & Matt Davies – Yucca [Odda Recordings/Bandcamp]
The first release on The Leaf Label publicist Thea Hudson-Davies’ Odda Recordings collected beautiful electro-acoustic and post-folk material from Kirk Barley, and for the third, we’re back with Barley’s alter ego Church Andrews and his longtime collaborator, drummer Matt Davies. The two have an astonishing way with melding modular synth and live drumming. I’ve watched this video a few times and I still can’t understand how the electronic rhythms line up with the drumming – I mean it’s obviously led by Davies, but I’m not sure how the synth lines are following. In any case, Davies’ beautifully precise but complex beats meld with Andrews’ strangely evocative synth tones in an eerily organic way. Once you’ve watched the video for Yucca, which I played tonight, follow it up with Roses, and then buy the EP.

santpoort – big destructive devices (ft. Imagiro) [Friends of Friends/Bandcamp]
From LA’s Friends of Friends label comes the latest album from santpoort, aka Sydney-based Dutch musician Julien Mier. It’s friendly music indeed, but there’s a melancholy as Maybe Not Tomorrow is driven by “the urgency of global climate change”. A collection of wistful, jazz-inflected electronica, there are a number of guest singers throughout, including Bath-based singer/producer/musician Imagiro.

Fake Hudson – Shifting Shape [Fake Hudson Bandcamp]
The new single from Naarm/Melbourne’s Fake Hudson (actually a real Hudson) flows nicely from Santpoort. It’s a lysergically slowed-down piece of r’n’b-adjacent ambient pop, including cello and trumpet alongside Hudson Grant’s vocals and production.

Taylor Deupree – Recur (For Guitar, Cello, Double Bass, Flute, Lap Harp, & Percussion) (arranged by Joseph Branciforte) [greyfade/Nettwerk/Bandcamp]
NYC composer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Joseph Branciforte has been a lifetime fan of minimalist electronic/electro-acoustic producer and renowned sound engineer (and 12k boss) Taylor Deupree. Some 5+ years ago Branciforte began a project arranging an electronic work of NYC’s Kenneth Kirschner for Three Cellos. That composition was released by Branciforte’s greyfade as the inagural work in their FOLIO format – a luxurious hardcover book that comes with a high-res download. Clearly a glutton for punishment, Branciforte was fascinated by the idea of taking Deupree’s groundbreaking album Stil. and arranging it – as faithfully as possible – for acoustic instruments. Deupree’s original created ambient music from constantly moving & evolving layers of loops, so the arrangement would need to capture that – as well as the timbres of the original electronic sounds. Over a long period, Branciforte worked with a number of accomplished New York musicians, notably clarinettist Madison Greenstone, and once the time came to arrange “Recur” (my favourite from the original album) it was clear that the piece needed a small ensemble of musicians. The performances here are superbly poised, mimicking the repetition and – yes – stillness from Deupree’s album while being richly rewarding listening in their own right. It’s an amazing achievement from Branciforte and Deupree and the performers – Ben Monder on acoustic guitar, Christopher Gross on cello, Sam Minaie on double bass, Laura Cocks on flute plus, on this track, Branciforte on percussion and Deupree himself on lap harp. If you can afford the book (plus shipping!) it contains the full score and detailed notes about the original works and their adaptation.

Megan Alice Clune – Mountaineer (live) [Megan Alice Clune Bandcamp]
I loved Eora/Sydney composer & instrumentalist Megan Alice Clune‘s album Furtive Glances, released by Room40 last year – a collection of music recorded when doing something else (in many cases waiting in between students). These self-effacing gems have found new life in live performance, captured on Furtively Glancing while Clune was in another liminal state, that of jet lag not long after arriving in Tokyo. Like last year’s album, these are disarming windows into a natural musician’s practice.

Listen again — ~213MB