Post-classical goodness, and electronic weirdness tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN for that reallllly cool bit… stream on demand from FBi, podcast from here.

Jim Perkins – Faces in a Crowd [bigo & twigetti]
Jim Perkins – Foundling [bigo & twigetti]
Jim Perkins – Phantoms [bigo & twigetti]
Aisha Orazbayeva – Lizard Dance [bigo & twigetti]
Madeleine Cocolas – Autumn Sky [bigo & twigetti]
We’re starting tonight with some beauties from adventurous UK classical/electronic/ambient label bigo & twigetti, who’ve been putting out compilations for the seasons since 2014’s Winter. The last season (obviously Autumn) is out in a fortnight, and we have a couple of exclusive listens (for now), starting with label boss Jim Perkins’ gorgeous compositions mixing classical precision and virtuosity with drone and complex electronic programming & processing. We hear Perkins’ cuts from Winter (Vivaldi-esque violin meets beats) and Spring (his own classical guitar with glitchy processing) as well, and then brilliant Kazakh violinist Aisha Orazbayeva layering her instrument on a track from last year’s Summer. And finally, back to Autumn, we’ve got ex-pat Aussie Madeleine Cocolas, now based in New York, with her pulsating keyboards and dreamy vocals.

Leah Kardos – Little Phase [bigo & twigetti]
Leah Kardos – Repeater [bigo & twigetti]
Leah Kardos – Sexy Monday [bigo & twigetti]
Jim Perkins & Tom Gaisford – Kyrie (Leah Kardos remix) [bigo & twigetti]
Leah Kardos – Novice [Spirit Level]
Leah Kardos – Somnia Dub [bigo & twigetti]
And following all this bigo & twigetti music… more from the label! Leah Kardos is another ex-pat Aussie, who’s been based in & around London for at least the 2010s. Her new album is an experiment in pushing herself into risky waters, having found herself too comfortable with pretty piano, digital edits and chopped up beats (plenty of which we’ll also hear tonight). This first track I played actually originally appeared on the Spring compilation from bigo & twigetti, complete with electronic beats, and has been re-arranged and re-recorded for this album with live drums. The next two tracks, from her first & second albums respectively, embody her “comfortable” talents at classical piano & composition melded with digital editing, complex beat programming and a strong pop aesthetic – “Sexy Monday” features lyrics swiped from oft-nonsensical spam emails, sung by soprano Laura Wolk-Lewanowicz. Among various label-related collaborations, Leah last year remixed label boss Jim Perkins & singer Tom Gaisford’s William Byrd tribute “Kyrie” with bass’n’beats’n’processing… and then we had her take on the “post-classical” genre’s twinkly muted, close-mic’d piano from Aussie label Spirit Level’s Piano Day compilation from earlier this year, effortlessly outdoing even the Nils Frahms of this world with enveloping gorgeousness. And finally returning to the new album we have electric piano, drum machine and tape delays lulling us into uneasy sleep.

Antwood – Disable Ad Blocker [Planet µ]
Antwood – Overlay Network [Planet µ]
Antwood – Protocol/Domain/Application [Planet µ]
Antwood – FIJI Water [Planet µ]
Canadian microbiologist Tristan Douglas put out a few releases as Margaret Antwood – in keeping with a penchant among a certain generation for silly spoonerisms and bad puns – but wisely dropped the “Margaret” and the quasi-gender appropriation when signing to Planet µ last year. Given the currency of Margaret Atwood due to the chilling TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s for the best. That aside, his music is super awesome – embedded in the YouTube generation of vaporwave artists, drawing equally from idm, grime and footwork as well. The first Planet µ album Virtuous.scr (represented by the middle two tracks here, the second of which is a Bandcamp exclusive) derives much of its titling from computer technology (including the screensaver extension .scr on the album title), while the new album focuses on the terminology of the post-internet world, particular the “Web 2.0” world of always-on marketing, easy-access everything, and the empty sadness at the centre of it all.

Sote – Flux of Sorrow [Opal Tapes]
Sote – Subconscious (Pure Mix) [Warp]
Sote – Dastgaah track 1 [Record Label Records]
Sote – Aroma Therapy [Record Label Records]
Ata Ektekar & the Iranian Orchestra For New Music performing the music of Alireza Mashayekhi – Little Tales 4point5 (excerpt) [Sub Rosa]
Sote – Ebb [Ge-stell]
Sote – Holy Error [Opal Tapes]
Iranian composer/producer Ata Ebtekar exploded into view in 2002 with his first EP as Sote, released by the revered Warp label in a strange kind of accident, as it contained some experiments that he’d made in rave/techno-influenced music while studying in San Francisco. The two tracks on this EP, followed up some time later by a few others from this early archive, are massively distorted drum’n’bass with righteous basslines and crazy drum programming. By the time they were released he’d already moved on in his practice, and much of his music for the last 10+ years has seen him, now based in Iran again, exploring traditional & classical Persian music through the lens of advanced electronic processing. Going back as far as Dastgaah, from Record Label Records in 2006, we see him working with instruments like the santour, processing them sometimes harshly. For his new album for Opal Tapes he collaborates with santour player Arash Bolouri and setar player Behrouz Pashaei, either directly processing their sounds or responding to them with electronics, often to stunningly beautiful effect (such as track 2, “Boghze Esfahan“, which I wasn’t able to fit in tonight). Even on this album his love of techno comes through on the last track, “Holy Error”, where the acoustic sounds are chopped and looped into a 4/4 pulse, while from last year’s Hyper-urban 20 30 EP we heard a proper techno track. Record Label released an EP back in 2007 called Wake Up which returned to the jungle beats & basslines of his debut, and recently a couple more tracks surfaced from those sessions. I didn’t manage to cover a chunk of his looser beat-based stuff from the last while, but we did hear a little bit of his tribute to Alireza Mashayekhi, the (probably) sole member of an earlier generation of Iranian electronic composers. Ebtekar is a big proponent of Iran’s growing experimental & electronic scene, so to some extent we have him to thank for the plethora of wonderful music coming from Iran & Iranian artists abroad in the last few years.

Listen again — ~210MB

Tonight we start with indie shoegazetronica, but focus on industrial technoid and noise sounds for the most part…

LISTEN AGAIN for the exhilaration and bliss… stream on demand, or podcast here.

Jesu & Sun Kil Moon – Father’s Day (feat. Rachel Goswell) [Caldo Verde Records]
Jesu & Sun Kil Moon – Needles Disney [Caldo Verde Records]
As a fully-paid-up Justin K Broadrick fan, these collaborations with Mark Kozelek aka Sun Kil Moon were initially a bit hard of a hard pill to swallow. As is his wont, Kozelek just sings and talks about himself over Broadrick’s gorgeous beats, and it can sometimes feel like he’s dominating what should be an equal collaboration. Nevertheless, they really are artistic collaborations, and Kozelek drops Justin’s name at various points (even when he’s talking about some other song he’s writing, or some gig he played some day). It’s odd, but both albums have some utterly compelling highlights, such as, er, today’s song, “Father’s Day” from the first album (featuring shoegaze royalty in Slowdive‘s Rachel Goswell), and the plaintive “Needles Disney” from the new album, with its sparse beat and heavy bass.

Nordra – Ships [Nordra Bandcamp]
Nordra – Regret 1 [SIGE]
Around Seattle, WA (and further afield in the US at least), Monika Khot is known as one half of the psychedelic rock/noise outfit Zen Mother. Last year she released an album-length score to a dance work called PYLON II, but now she’s had a self-titled LP released through the fantastic SIGE Records – Washington State-based label run by Faith Coloccia of Mamiffer and Aaron Turner of ISIS, Old Man Gloom, SUMAC et al. It’s truly magnificent, with mournful synths, heavy industrial beats, glitching samples etc.

Enderie – Sore [ROOM40]
Brisbane artist Andrew McLellan, now relocated to Sydney, has been known for the unclassifiable noisy band Cured Pink in the past, but as Enderie he’s now released two cassettes of primitivist, industrial techno stuff. Inspired by the urban landscape, it’s lo-fi and nice and noisy.

MSRMNT – 011_01 [unreleased]
This is the only track I’ve found from Nik Kaloper of The Jezabels but hoo boy this is great – minimal and then maximal electronics, noisy synth riffs and chaotic drum machines… great stuff.

Peder Mannerfelt – Obey [Wallroom]
From a new single, very rave-influenced, quite minimalist techno/jungle from Sweden’s Peder Mannerfelt, one half of Roll The Dice. Really nice stuff.

Pessimist – Through The Fog [Blackest Ever Black]
Bristol’s Pessimist has released his debut album on Blackest Ever Black, and it’s being billed as drum’n’bass, which obviously on a track like this it is – but it’s really a darkstyle d’n’b/techstep-influenced techno album, with some growly ambient passages and some much more 4/4 beats around. All very dark, suitably!

Shit and Shine – Notified [Editions Mego]
Shit and Shine – Kitten Mask [Riot Season]
Shit and Shine – Am I A Nice Guy? (feat. Pete Simonelli) [Riot Season]
Shit and Shine – People Like You… REALLY! [Riot Season]
Shit&Shine – Bass Puppy [Badmaster Records]
Shit & Shine – Value [Diagonal Records]
Shit and Shine – Bus Station [Editions Mego]
$HIT AND $HINE – Fuck That [Diagonal Records]
Shit & Shine – Jreemteem [Gang of Ducks]
Shit and Shine – The Crocodile [Editions Mego]
Here’s our special on the noise/electronic project of Craig Clouse with various collaborators – spinning away from his hardcore punk & doom roots into various types of rhythmic and beat-based musics. Often overdriven to the extreme, it has roots in noise but has tended particularly in the 2010s to quite danceable forms, although it will just as easily veer off into glitchy, timestretched stumblings. Clouse is joined by various drummers at various times in the band’s history, and also on a few occasions by spoken word artist Pete Simonelli, of San Francisco postpunk band Enablers. I’d heard some of the band’s music in a noise context, but when the “Bass Puppy” 12″ came out in 2010, with its freakishly distorted take on dubstep, I realised I needed to delve deeper into this stuff. More recently, his releases on Powell’s Diagonal Records and on Editions Mego among other labels have more explicitly explored disco, electro/house and breakbeat influences, albeit with glitchy intrusions and processing – and the occasional outbreak of hardcore punk to keep us on our toes. Taken as a whole, it’s a pretty amazing body of work.

LCC – Titan [Editions Mego]
LCC – Adámas (Throwing Snow remix) [Editions Mego]
LCC – She [Editions Mego]
Previously known as Las CasiCasiotone, LCC is a duo made up two women from northern Spain, Ana Quiroga and Uge Pañeda. Our last track comes from their new album for Editions Mego, named after the ancient Egyptian goddess Bastet. Like their previous album d/evolution (heard at the top of this set), it features evocative soundscapes and beats of a mysterious, somewhat industrial nature – electronics and clanging, crackling field recordings. 2015’s remix album showed their interest in connecting this ritualistic, primal music with modern dance music (such as the junglist take by Throwing Snow) as well as fellow electronic experimentalists such as Tujiko Noriko. I haven’t seen nearly enough media about this group – it’s super quality work.

Listen again — ~209MB

Classical and classic indiepop tonight… howbowdah?

LISTEN AGAIN for the pure joy of it! You know you want to stream it on demand, it’s the FBi thing. Or podcast it here…

Dead Light – Sleeper (Andrea Belfi Remix) [Village Green]
Dead Light – Trills (Dead Light Remix) [Village Green]
A duo made up of pianist Anna Rose Carter (also of avant-garde ambient/classical duo Moon At The Dark) and producer/composer Ed Hamilton, Dead Light are inspired by the countryside where they moved after living in London for some time. On this just-released EP we get some quite varied remixes, including one by the brilliant Andrea Belfi.

Hauschka – No One [1631 Recordings]
Hauschka – 6 AM [1631 Recordings]
This EP by Volker Bertelmann, 5 Movements, crept out at the end of last year as part of a little duet of releases with Dustin O’Halloran’s 3 Movements, released by Swedish post-classical label 1631 Recordings. Although the first track here is quite pretty and upbeat, there’s some deliciously moody stuff on here, with breathy strings and lots of subtlety.

Sophie Hutchings – We Move [1631 Recordings]
Sophie Hutchings – Candela [1631 Recordings]
Sydney’s Sophie Hutchings also has a new EP out on 1631, following her album Yonder from earlier this year. It was recorded over some late nights at her home, including some overdubbed additional piano lines and some lovely quiet vocals. For what’s technically a bit of a filler EP, it’s quite special. Coming out later this week.

Nick Photinos – and the sky was still there (composed by David T Little) [New Amsterdam Records]
Nick Photinos – Petits Artéfacts 2. Information (composed by Florent Ghys) [New Amsterdam Records]
Nick Photinos – Petits Artéfacts 3. Cuisine (composed by Florent Ghys) [New Amsterdam Records]
Three tracks here from the debut solo album for cellist Nick Photinos, who’s a member of the Grammy Award-winning chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird, and who’s worked with many indie heroes like Justin Vernon and Björk. For this album on the hip classical label New Amsterdam he’s selected some great contemporary compositions. The first we heard tonight accompanies an amazing spoken text from composer David T Little’s friend Amber Ferenz about being in the US Army during the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell years – rather apposite for recent awful behaviour from the 45th President (not to mention local idiotic politics). You can read the text here.
The other two tracks come from the title work of the album, a collection of short pieces by double bassist and composer Florent Ghys. There’s something composed around the cadences of a woman speaking, and something nicely glitchy and haunting.

Dina Maccabee – Even When the Stars Align [Dina Maccabee Bandcamp]
Dina Maccabee – Someone Fearless [Dina Maccabee Bandcamp]
Achingly beautiful songs from violist Dina Maccabee, who expertly feeds her viola through laptop, looping and processing the sounds in realtime while also singing. The songs speak of a kind of languid longing which suits the viola to a tee. Maccabee was in Australia last year touring with Julia Holter singing backing vocals and using her viola through this very setup – you can hear her on Holter’s live album from this year. It’s so great to have a solo album from her. Grab it!

Grizzly Bear – Wasted Acres [RCA Records]
Department of Eagles – Sailing By Night [Isota Records/Melodic Records]
Grizzly Bear – Deep Sea Diver [Kanine Records/Rumraket]
Grizzly Bear – Don’t Ask (Final Fantasy Version) [Kanine Records/Rumraket]
Grizzly Bear – Easier [Warp]
Daniel Rossen – Graceland [Grizzly Bear blog maybe?]
Department of Eagles – In Ear Park [4AD]
Grizzly Bear – Southern Point [Warp]
Grizzly Bear – Sleeping Ute (Nicolas Jaar Remix) [Warp]
Grizzly Bear – Cut-Out [RCA Records]
It’s hard to overstate how much Grizzly Bear and Daniel Rossen mean to Utility Fog. They’ve been there since the first full year, 2004, when some of the best folktronica was coming out, and both Grizzly Bear and Rossen’s first duo Department of Eagles in their ways represented a way for electronic, experimental music to be melodic and romantic – or perhaps for melodic indiepop to be experimental!
Grizzly Bears’ debut is like a glitchy home cassette recording that’s been buried in a soggy basement for years before being unearthed; Department of Eagles’ is a veritable hodgepodge of laptop experiments – but both have the glint of brilliant songwriting of Droste and Rossen respectively. For me, it was so exciting hearing the unchained chord changes and melodicism of Rossen paired with some manic breakbeats and crazy programming on that first album. But even though Grizzly Bear released an amazing remix album of inventive folktronic & electronic reworkings and then ended up signed to Warp for a few albums, they mostly abandoned the overtly electronic elements pretty soon, as did Department of Eagles on their long-delayed follow-up that was released by 4AD. I was obsessed for ages with two tracks which Dept of Eagles had up on their MySpace – “Deadly Disclosure” and “Balmy Night”, which shared a chord sequence and were indelibly paired in my mind. Musical genius… Sadly only one made it on to In Ear Park, and the other had to wait for an offshoots album closing the Dept of Eagles story a few years later.
Rossen’s talent for unusual cover versions is represented here by his low-key Paul Simon adaptation, although we could just as easily have heard his melodramatic/romantic take on JoJo’s bubblegum pop hit “Too Little Too Late” or Judee Sill’s “Waterfall“…
Veckatimest is probably the album that bought Grizzly Bear the widespread popularity they deserved, with some classics of expressive purity from Ed Droste and some complex postrockish stuff from Rossen like the incredible opener “Southern Point”.
Shields seemed somewhat tepid and perhaps too straightforward in its structures in comparison to what came before – despite having some great songs on it! Still, an absolute highlight was the dark, minimal and extra-soulful reworking of “Sleeping Ute” the following year by Nicolas Jaar.
So, 5 years after Shields’ original release, now signed to a major label, there’s a new album – and it’s actually a return to some more electronic production, and more quirky songwriting from both frontmen, even if there are also a few nods to more conventional songwriting and arrangements. Having come to this album not expecting a great deal, I was rewarded with something that emphatically reminds me of why I’ve loved these guys for so long.

Listen again — ~110MB

A musical adventure today, from acoustic cello+songwriting through chugging doom’n’drone, shoegaze, electronica and glitchy folktronica…

LISTEN AGAIN for the drifty feels, via FBi’s listen on demand, or podcast here.

Mary Rapp – Passers By [Mary Rapp Bandcamp]
Mary Rapp is a highly accomplished double bass player, performing with various jazz ensembles (her own and others’) – but she’s also an accomplished cellist, playing both instruments in contemporary classical circles as well as jazz. This piece showcases another side of her talent, however, for incisive, unbridled songwriting. Live, she performs vocals and cello simultaneously, acoustically, but here there are two cello lines layered along with the vocals. Hopefully we hear more from this project soon!

Kryshe – Lullaby (Liminal Drifter Night Train Remix) [Hidden Shoal]
Liminal Drifter – A Love Song for Ghosts [Hidden Shoal]
Liminal Drifter – One Little Nudge Mash (p_Frisk remix) [Hidden Shoal]
Perth academic Simon Order released his first album as Liminal Drifter in 2015 on Hidden Shoal – a lovely release full of ’90s-style electronic beats & ambience. This new album is mainly remixes of the original album – the mysterious p_Frisk here mashes up the original track I played above with some other stuff – but also features the artist himself on the remix duties as we heard at the top.

FOREVR – Columbus [Tym Records/FOREVR Bandcamp]
FOREVR – Living With A Black Dog [Tym Records/FOREVR Bandcamp]
After featuring a few tracks from Brisbane shoegazers FOREVR last week, we’re back for a second helping this week. They released not one, but TWO albums last week, and we neglected Classics in favour of the slightly more experimental Death is a miracle, so tonight we start with a cut from the other album. They’ve really nailed the combination of electronics with shoegazey songwriting and guitars. Top quality.

thisquietarmy – Welcome To Mendacity [Midira Records]
thisquietarmy – Transhumanism [Midira Records]
Montréal artist Erci Quach has been quietly releasing reams and reams of drone & doom as thisquietarmy for over 10 years, including collaborations with the likes of Aidan Baker of Nadja et al. His new album Democracy of Dust originated with synth parts recorded during a residency in São Paulo, with guitar heaviness added back home.

Caudal – Murk (TQA Remix by thisquietarmy) [Midira Records]
Piiptsjilling – Kobbeswerk (Ninemiles Remix) [Midira Records]
Piiptsjilling – Smjunt [Peter Foolen Editions]
thisquietarmy also turns up on Midira Records‘ massive 4 cassette boxset of label remixes, which swaps tracks around artists like Machinefabriek, Aidan Baker, Andrea Belfi, Zenjungle and many others.
Dutch quartet Piiptsjilling also appear, here remixed by Midira regular Ninemiles, taking their drone’n’spoken-word into pulsing, tribal patterns. Piiptsjilling also have a new album out themselves on Peter Foolen Editions. The band features brothers Jan & Romke Kleefstra on spoken word and guitar, artist Mariska Baars on vocals and Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek on sounds. They’ve released a number of albums now of moody, shifting textures underscoring Jan Kleefstra’s poems, which you & I are not alone in not understanding, as they’re delivered in Frisian, a language spoken only in a northern area of The Netherlands. I find it fascinating to listen to.

Shinya Sugimoto & Jeremy Young with Julia Kent – Fiction 3 [Phinery]
Shinya Sugimoto & Jeremy Young with Julia Kent – Nocturne [Phinery]
Incredible album here in which the piano of Shinya Sugimoto, organ of Jeremy Young and cello of Julia Kent enter into a kind of dialogue with Young’s field recordings and tape manipulations. It’s kind of what I’d like “post-classical” to be (although more of that next week…) – I can’t recommend this highly enough for your ambient reveries (if you don’t mind some strange dreams).

Minced Oath – Not Without My Spine [Countersunk]
Minced Oath – 38 Petaflops [Countersunk]
Dunk Murphy is best known probably for his melodic, funky, complex idm as Sunken Foal, and was heard most recently on this show with a few releases with singer/songwriter Carol Keogh as The Natural History Museum. His latest project as Minced Oath finds him going all Selected Ambient Works Vol II, with beautiful wafting melodies and pads, and occasional pulsations.

Mark Templeton – Cab Lights [Graphical Recordings]
Mark Templeton – I Cut Along Lines [Anticipate Recordings/Mark Templeton Bandcamp]
Mark Templeton – West of Fabric pt. 2 [Anticipate Recordings/Mark Templeton Bandcamp]
Mark Templeton – organ moods [Sweat Lodge Guru/Mark Templeton Bandcamp]
Mark Templeton – kingdom key [Under The Spire/Mark Templeton Bandcamp]
Mark Templeton – factory fire [Mark Templeton Bandcamp]
Mark Templeton – Gentle Story Part 1 [Graphical Recordings]
Canadian artist Mark Templeton has been putting out grainy, glitchy ambient & folktronica for over 10 years now. Acoustic instruments come in and out of focus, sometimes processed digitally, sometimes stuttering and rewinding. Mostly the sound sources are his own or field recordings, although there’s a cheeky sample of Kate Bush’s “The Man With The Cloud in His Eyes” on the 2007 track “I Cut Along Lines”. Much of his back catalogue was released on Ezekiel Honig‘s Anticipate Recordings, although he’s branched out into various indie labels in the ambient/experimental space, and his new album – the third in the “heart” trilogy – comes through his own Graphical Recordings. Templeton’s classic Utility Fog material, well worth exploring on his Bandcamp.

Listen again — ~194MB