More new music for you tonight, on a more or less ambient tip, from dark drones and sub-bass to delicate guitar.

LISTEN AGAIN for the immersive ambient experience – stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

I came across the Portuguese avant garde guitarist Norberto Lobo a while ago and haven’t kept track of his music, but I’m glad to discover via the latest Below The Radar compilation from The Wire that he’s still making extremely interesting music. It’s hard to imagine this piece being played on guitar – but I assume that somewhere in there the source material is guitar.

Also originally performed on guitar by Perth artist Jameson Feakes is the next piece, composed by Josten Myburgh, from the first in a series of remix EPs from the Tone List label. Perth artist Atripat is on remix duties here, turning the experimental guitar music into something abstract and electronic.

12k‘s Taylor Deupree has been involved in a considerable number of collaborations over the last few years, but it’s been almost 4 years since the in-demand mastering engineer last released a solo album. Somi is an exquisitely patient, slow-moving release in which an electric piano plays languid melodic musical figures and sparse field recordings float around a softly reverberant space. It’s lovely.

German artist Arovane developed a following in the late ’90s for his icy take on IDM – windswept melodies and razor-sharp beats. A few years back he returned to producing music, some of it in the same style, but a lot of it much more ambient. Tonight we hear him working with the Iranian artist Porya Hatami, who we’ve encountered on this show before courtesy of the Australian label Flaming Pines. Hatami pushes the sounds into a more field recording-oriented direction, with more acoustic sounds entering the picture than in Arovane’s solo work. It’s an absorbing release.

I played a beautiful track from UK guitarist Seabuckthorn last week on the show featuring bowed guitar, one that will feature on his new album later this year from US label Lost Tribe Sound. That’s a technique that Andy Cartwright uses a fair bit in his music, but as we heard tonight he’s extremely adept at beautiful fingerpicking guitar and other more rhythmic styles as well. You can pick up his older releases (including the tracks heard tonight) on his Bandcamp, and there’s a new album out on Lost Tribe Sound later this year.

Montreal-based cellist Alder & Ash is also released on Lost Tribe Sound and was heard last week on the show – this album is being re-released in a limited CD edition soon, with a follow-up album coming out later in the year. While there’s a lot of lovely acoustic cello in there, he’s not afraid to process the instrument, producing heavy bass thumps and distorted melodies, with a dark, processional mood reminiscent of doom metal. Looking forward to what comes next from him.

Scottish sound artist Joshua Sabin‘s debut album appears on the Bristol-based Subtext Recordings label this week, and it’s very well suited to that label, with ominous sub bass and fluttering, whirling processed sounds abounding. It’s apparently produced from processed field recordings made in transit around Kyoto, Tokyo and Berlin, as well as “electromagnetic field recordings” from Edinburgh & Glasgow. For all that, it’s very musical with evolving harmonies and rhythmic elements.

Tonight I’m very excited to play you some tracks from the new collaboration from Swedish drone & sound artist Dag Rosenqvist (previously known as Jasper TX) & Scottish composer & sound artist Matthew Collings. It’s their second time working together, after a mini-album on Hibernate back in 2012, and both are full of beauty and surging noise. This album is released on Denovali later this week, and I’m sure you’ll love it – it’s got the best of both of these wonderful artists, from Dag’s big crescendos and plaintive piano, Matt’s clarinets and glitches, and the crackling, bass-heavy noise they both love.
I also managed to neglect to play anything from Dag’s beautiful solo album elephant when it was released last year on Dronarivm, so we heard a long track tonight. It’s a truly beautiful musical statement and well worth your time.

Dutch brothers Romke and Jan Kleefstra have been collaborating with other experimental Dutch artists for some time, including Machinefabriek, and their trio with another Dutch artist, Anne Chris Bakker, is now on to a few releases too. It features Romke Kleefstra and Bakker on strummed, thwacked and droned guitars and Jan Kleefstra intoning spoken word – and it’s always surprising to me how absorbing and comforting it is hearing these works even though I don’t understand the Frisian dialect Kleefstra speaks in (let alone any other Dutch)…

Italian percussionist & electro-acoustic musician Andrea Belfi, as well as playing drums with a tonne of indie, postrock and experimental musicians, has by now released a stack of solo records featuring his subtle percussion and idiosyncratic electronics. His latest album is out through French publisher IIKKI as a photo book + LP. In the book, Matthias Heiderich‘s photography explores the urban architecture of Italy, and the music is inspired by these visuals. By and large, it’s quiet and mysterious stuff in keeping with Belfi’s other solo work.

Norberto Lobo – Solesticio [three:fourthree:four via The Wire]
Jameson Feakes & Josten Myburgh – a window in Sicily (Atripat remix) [Tone List]
Taylor Deupree – Aoka [12k]
arovane + porya hatami – SpeCreature [Karl Records]
arovane + porya hatami – (rhizOme) [Karl Records]
arovane + porya hatami – Micro Organism [Karl Records]
Seabuckthorn – Returnee [Lost Tribe Sound]
Seabuckthorn – I Could See The Smoke [Lost Tribe Sound]
Alder & Ash – Ikejime [Lost Tribe Sound]
Alder & Ash – At Night in the Slaughterhouse [Lost Tribe Sound]
Joshua Sabin – Terminus Drift [Subtext Recordings]
Joshua Sabin – U12 [Subtext Recordings]
Dag Rosenqvist & Matthew Collings – You don’t have to tell me about hell [Denovali]
Dag Rosenqvist – In All the Hours of Every Day [Dronarivm]
Matthew Collings & Dag Rosenqvist – Wonderland Part One [Hibernate/Matthew Collings Bandcamp/Dag Rosenqvist Bandcamp]
Dag Rosenqvist & Matthew Collings – Streets [Denovali]
Dag Rosenqvist & Matthew Collings – Renaissance [Denovali]
Kleefstra Bakker Kleefstra – De Holle as Asem [Midira Records]
Andrea Belfi – vano [IIKKI]
Andrea Belfi – abito [IIKKI]

Listen again — ~186MB

It’s Utility Fog innit. Music. Yeah, music – organised sound.

LISTEN AGAIN, or you will regret it. Stream on demand whenever you like via FBi’s state-of-the-art website, or podcast here if you like.`

Starting with a big compilation (33 tracks!) put together by Josh Nee of legendary New Orleans black/doom metal band Thou to raise money for the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank in the wake of damaging floods in Louisiana in 2016. As well as featuring many of Thou’s fellow travellers in adventurous metal (including UFog faves The Body, SUMAC and Old Man Gloom), the compilation showcases many local Louisiana artists – so tonight we discover the joyful live electronics of A Living Soundtrack and shuddering dronescapes of Proud/Father.

Longtime underground indie musician haddocks’ eyes can’t help but make new music – even when he’s meant to be remastering and packaging his older music for release this year. So we’re gifted with an album of long, mysterious tracks based around drum machine and processed/effected guitar along with other elements like the odd pitched down computer vocals on this track. His music is never less than fascinating, often beautiful.

US label Lost Tribe Sound have a big 2017, and have announced a subscription series to keep up with all their music, with CD and heavyweight vinyl editions as always in sumptuous packaging. As well as plenty of world & classical-influenced sounds from LTS regular William Ryan Fritch there’s some beautiful stuff in the ambient/shoegazey folk vein from guitarist Seabuckthorn (featuring bowed guitars), and some amazing layered cello music from Montreal’s Alder & Ash (based mainly around plucked cello). Really looking forward to full releases from both of these artists.

Experimental, ambient, dubstep and techno-influenced drum’n’bass is now enough of a phenomenon that the Samurai drum’n’bass label started a dedicated sublabel Samurai Horo to release stuff like that a few years ago. It’s a natural fit for the latest releases from Liam Blackburn, who’s half of one of the most exciting electronic acts of the last few years, Akkord. For years he released dubstep, dub and drum’n’bass as Indigo (a highlight is the Storm EP, from which we took a brilliant jungle track tonight), but he’s made a defined switch into more arcane, ambient and tribal sounds as Ancestral Voices. I’d totally missed the fact that he released two EPs last year on Samurai Horo. Both continue the tribal/ambient/new age interests Blackburn made explicit with Ancestral Voices, but also have plenty of clear references to dubstep and drum’n’bass in the productions. Incredibly great.

Sentence is a new duo project from black metal/acid/idm/breakcore producer Surachai and techno/dark ambient producer Drumcell. The industrial techno and dark idm on display on these two tracks suggest it’ll be a very fruitful collaboration indeed.

Emptyset grabbed my attention in 2009 with their self-titled album, which built up techno tracks with mathematical precision from ringing bass and simple, chopped & distorted sine tones. With releases on Subtext Recordings (which they co-run), raster-noton and others, they’ve moved away from dancefloor patterns into a more pure interest in growling, sub-bass noise, projecting their sounds into spaces such as churches and subterranean caves. After a break, their latest album finds them on Thrill Jockey, a label that after practically inventing post-rock, has been releasing some of the most important experimental metal in the last few years. It seems suitable for a group that focus on the noisier aspects of electronic music. A few tracks are more rhythmic than they’ve been of late, and there also seem to be some ringing strings (bass guitar perhaps) producing some of the tones here.

I’m kind of embarrassed I’ve never played Chris Dooks on the show before. I loved his Accretion Disc album from last year and enjoyed his idm-influenced stuff from the late ’90s and early ’00s as Bovine Life. He’s now Dr Chris Dooks, having completed a PhD in his cross-disciplinary field of study, combining philosophy, music and healthcare work to treat both his own chronic fatigue syndrome and other people suffering from various illnesses including depression & anxiety, bi-polar, schizophrenia and more. He’s now focused on the health of his daughter Oona, who has a rare neurological condition that severely limits her abilities – but with help she’s made enormous progress, and he’s looking to raise funds for some equipment which will help her further. The new album AlpenOo sees Dooks enlisting the help of some excellent experimental musicians from around the world, including Machinefabriek and Michel Banabila, who were asked to remix Dooks’ seed track (the “Chris Dooks Stem” I spoke over this evening), at which point Dooks took all their material and wove a beautiful 20 minute track out of them. It’s an interesting concept and produced some lovely results with a surprising variety of sounds, from contemplative piano to glitchy beats.

A Living Soundtrack – Expanding Consolidation [Thrill Jockey Bandcamp]
Proud/Father – La Paz en la Aqua [Thrill Jockey Bandcamp]
haddocks’ eyes – you are no longer beloved [haddocks’ eyes Bandcamp]
Seabuckthorn – The Trail Already In My Mind [Lost Tribe Sound]
Alder & Ash – Seen Through Cedar Smoke [Lost Tribe Sound]
Memotone – Ghosts and Magic Trees (Tape Version) [Bastakiya Tapes]
Memotone – Docklands [Bastakiya Tapes]
Ancestral Voices – Jadian Sun [Samurai Horo/Samurai Bandcamp]
Indigo – Spirit Of The Winds (feat Versa) [Samurai Music/Samurai Bandcamp]
Ancestral Voices – burialground [Samurai Horo/Samurai Bandcamp]
Ancestral Voices – Priests of MU [Samurai Horo/Samurai Bandcamp]
Sentence – Azimuth [Surachai Bandcamp/Drumcell Bandcamp]
Emptyset – sight [Thrill Jockey]
Emptyset – Gate 3 [Caravan Recordings]
Emptyset – retrieve [Thrill Jockey]
Emptyset – ground [Thrill Jockey]
Chris Dooks – Alpenglühn (Michel Banabila Stem) [Chris Dooks Bandcamp]
Chris Dooks – Alpenglühn (Chris Dooks Stem) (excerpt under talking) [Chris Dooks Bandcamp]
bovine life – ether works part 2 (feat. samples from Third Eye Foundation) [BiP_HOp]
Chris Dooks – Night Time Hats [Chris Dooks Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~190MB

Covering all bases tonight, we’ve got raucous rock, postrock, electronic beats, and various forms of post-classical and ambient.

LISTEN AGAIN, you’ll pick up more every time – stream on demand via FBi or podcast here.

I’ve been flipping out about The Peep Tempel since late last year when I discovered their new album. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know then earlier (although like most people I’d heard “Carol” from their previous album). Their brilliant pub/nk rock storytelling as exciting as anything that’s happening in Oz music at the moment, and reminds me of the halcyon days of the early ’80s when the Hunters & Collectors and Midnight Oil were advancing rock music in resolutely experimental ways while remaining incredibly catchy and incisively political.

Inescapably, the abrasive music & sardonic storytelling of The Peep Tempel tends to draw comparisons to the Nottingham-based duo Sleaford Mods. Although musically they tend towards a minimalist bass & drums postpunk sound, the mostly-spoken vocals and laptop performances put them somewhere between grime/hip-hop and punk. Ultimately they’re in a class of their own. And they’ve been hugely tipped by Norman Records since their earliest releases, always a sign of quality!

On a somewhat different rock tip, Norway’s Monkey Plot play a lovely brand of improvised rock with guitar-bass-drums, recalling the early days of postrock when hardcore punk blended with jazz and electronica. There’s something quite comforting about the grooves, riffs and melodies here. It’s a classic sound and done really well.

Andi Otto has mostly released music in the past under the moniker Springintgut, combining acoustic & electronic sounds in a folktronic way that’s seen him played frequently on this show. He’s also the developer of the “Fello”, and electronically augmented cello that allows him to process the cello sound as he plays it. There are plenty of strings on the new album, and the electronics are tamped up into a house/techno vein with a 100bpm kick drum through most tracks. Also strongly felt is an Indian influence – the album was partially recorded in Bangalore, and singer MD Pallavi appears on a couple of tracks.

From the early ’00s, beloved German indietronic/postrock band The Notwist have worked on instrumental soundtrack work in parallel with their work as a rock band. It shouldn’t be surprising that they branched out in that direction, as instrumental works have appeared from them before, and members are variously involved in pure electronic outfits and experimental jazz groups. One of the central Acher brothers, Markus, has continued the soundtrack work under the Rayon moniker, and last year he released a new album of Rayon work which appears not to be attached to any visuals. A beat of silence, which appears on the brothers’ Alien Transistor label but teams up more explicitly with longtime Notwist associates Morr Music, is still instrumental, but with an expanded pallette of percussionists and other musicians, bringing to mind Javanese gamelan as well as electronic and classical influences. It’s all beautiful stuff, and I decided to delve back into the Notwist’s own soundtrack work, going back as far as 2003’s Lichter soundtrack, one of the earliest releases on Alien Transistor.

Swedish composer Marcus Fjellström makes music ranging from purely composed, orchestral scores to dark electronic works. He’s got a few releases through Erik Skodvin’s Miasmahlabel, which fit perfectly into label’s “acoustic doom” milieu. His latest is a particularly noirish creation, referencing early electronic horror soundtracks as much as it draws from his classical background.

As Son Lux, Ryan Lott is known for his indie songwriting and electronic production, first appearing on the Anticon label in 2008. He’s a very versatile musician who’s worked with Sufjan Stevens and My Brightest Diamond, and we’ve heard his compositional chops in works written for yMusic a few years ago, but now we get to hear some more as he’s just released a collection of older instrumental compositional work from 2009 called View Partially Obstructed on his Bandcamp. It’s a lovely combination of piano and strings along with electronics, originally commissioned for a dance work with live visuals. It’s just the kind of hybrid stuff that Utility Fog loves. Listening to it I was reminded of a very early, gorgeous Son Lux track from Asthmatic Kitty’s Habitat compilation.

Finishing still in the electronic-classical vein we join two Italian producers appearing on the Russian ambient label Dronarivm’s free 2017 compilation Illuminations. I’ve always had an affinity with Italian experimental artists, so it’s amusing that I’ve entirely accidentally chosen two Italians from this very international collection. Giulio Aldinucci used to be known as Obscil, so I’ve actually played him on the show before. His track is a luscious piece of almost choral classical-drone. Matteo Uggeri is an enthusiastic collaborator and I haven’t heard much of his solo stuff – this is a stunning piece of field recordings, cello or double bass and deep bass rhythms.

The Peep Tempel – Constable [Wing Sing]
The Peep Tempel – Kalgoorlie [Wing Sing]
Sleaford Mods – Silly Me [Harbinger Sound]
Monkey Plot – They suddenly Disappeared [Hubro]
Monkey Plot – Shyly upon everything [Hubro]
Andi Otto – Gianna Anna [Andi Otto Bandcamp]
Andi Otto – Zindagi Club High [Andi Otto Bandcamp]
Rayon – Dots [Alien Transistor/Morr Music]
The Notwist – Lichter 1 [Alien Transistor]
The Notwist – The Hague [Alien Transistor]
Rayon – Il Collo e la Collana 04 [Alien Transistor]
Rayon – Libanon 05 [Alien Transistor]
Rayon – Cuts [Alien Transistor/Morr Music]
Marcus Fjellström – Modulus [Miasmah]
Marcus Fjellström – Aunchron [Miasmah]
Ryan Lott – hope calculus [Ryan Lott Bandcamp]
Son Lux – Speak [Asthmatic Kitty]
Ryan Lott – shudder and whisper [Ryan Lott Bandcamp]
Giulio Aldinucci – Soffia [Dronarivm]
Matteo Uggeri – Radio Days [Dronarivm]

Listen again — ~190MB

Another turbulent week of monstrosities being signed into being, and of inspiring actions by people on the ground…

LISTEN AGAIN for the weekly immersion, by streaming on demand via FBi or podcasting here.

So it’s lovely to be lulled into our show with a glorious 21-minute piece from The Necks, Sydney’s beloved minimalist jazz ensemble. Their latest album is an oddity for them, commissioned by Stephen O’Malley‘s Ideologic Organ and therefore released on vinyl (oh well). It’s four sides, each track limited to 22 minutes max, and three are pretty lovely but nothing to write home to Mum about. On the whole the Necks perform at their peak (which places them among the best music creators in the world) at their usual length of about an hour. But the 21 minutes of “Blue Mountain” shimmer into glory almost immediately, sustaining and building on this grandiose beauty over the entire length.

One of the more challenging recent releases on Perth’s Tone List came from the solo clarinet of Shoshana Rosenberg. Following last week’s remixes of guitarist Jameson Feakes, Rosenberg’s works are the subject of a second remix EP this week from the label, with Melbourne’s Papaphilia creating something abstract but still deliciously clarinetty out of her sounds.

It’s been a little while since I’ve played Sydney’s haddocks’ eyes on the show, although he pumps out the new tracks at quite a rate, so it’s probably only been a few weeks! The latest batch of tracks see repetitive programmed drums slowly swamped by looped guitar noise and then yet more jagged guitar. At their extended length the tracks become quite hypnotic and weirdly ritualistic.

Richard Youngs weirdly straddles the line between outsider art and, well, “insider”. He’s certainly acclaimed among those in the know, and is both a brilliant experimental musician and accomplished creator of song in folk, electronic and punk contexts. Buy his musical outlook is such that everything he creates is strangely sideways to the norm – in a really good way. the rest is scenery seems to me his best album in at least a couple of years, a set of rootsy folk songs done as only Youngs can, one-note basslines with acoustic guitar strums, piano ostinati, juddering guitar noise, chanted singing… and an incredible performance by Youngs’ young son Sorley on one track, sounding somewhere in between a world-weary Nico and a sinister English pixie.

This week along with everything else, we had to farewell the extraordinary drummer Jaki Liebezeit, human breakbeat behind the seminal krautrock band Can. It’s impossible overestimate the band’s influence in terms of musical sound design, long, focused jams and of course, driving rhythm. But unlike the motorik drums of Neu!‘s Klaus Dinger, Liebezeit brought a propulsive syncopated rhythm that seemed to pre-empt the sampled funk breakbeats of hip-hop and drum’n’bass by decades. I played a track each from Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi tonight, both of which are completely centred around Jaki’s beats.

Keith Fullerton Whitman continues to digitize and release one archival DAT tape a month on his Bandcamp, with February coming a little early as he’s on tour next month. This time round there’s a long noise set from his early band El-Ron, and then three short & sweet early drum’n’bass experiments, two of which came out on the first proto-Hrvatski 12? Attention Cats, which I caned in the late ’90s… but one is unheard as of now, so I gave it a spin tonight… It’s exactly what the title describes, a bit of an attempt at µ-Ziq or Plug-style drill’n’bass I feel.

Gareth Clarke released one album on the late lamented Sublight label in 2007, pretty much out of nowehere, and then disappeared again. It was great, melodic drill’n’bassy idm. He returned a couple of years ago with some archival work and some new stuff, some of which is more acid techno and some of which is the good ol’ frenetic breakbeat juggling. Fun stuff tonight from a new mini-album.

Japan’s Quarta303, long known for his 8-bit dub and techno, finds his drum’n’bass groove on his new EP for Hyperdub, combining computer game bleeps with superfast breakbeats and a bit of a footwork impulse here and there.

In 2014, German-based Japanese singer Kiki Hitomi (of King Midas Sound etc) got together with German/Japanese/English producers Dead Fader, DJ Hotel and DJ Die Soon to produce some shuddering, out-of-focus, massively bass-heavy jams. These became the blueprint for Hitomi’s fantastic solo album of Japanese digidub from last year, but these are much more primal, heavy and twisted.

Myra Davies is a Canadian spoken word artist who’s been associated with the German industrial & electronic music scene since the early ’80s, along with her producers on this new album, Gudrun Gut and Beate Bartel, both of whom were associated with early Einstürzende Neubauten. On this album three of Davies’ biting spoken word works comprise a modernised, punkish take on Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, last opera of the Ring Cycle, while others are commentaries on life & art as personal and political. Despite not being traditional songs, the words & music fit together in a deeply pleasing manner. It’s thought-provoking and very listenable.

His newest release in over a year sees Helm documenting a live performance at a theatre in Cairo in the middle of a cross-continental tour. There are variations on tracks from his Olympic Mess album and new pieces, and there’s a great energy to the performance, whether it’s more abrasive noise/drone or swooping sub-bass.

The Necks – Blue Mountain [Ideologic Organ/Bandcamp]
Shoshana Rosenberg – Deliaisons with Supremacy within Future Impossible by Papaphilia [Tone List]
haddocks’ eyes – the weight of lies [haddocks’ eyes Bandcamp]
Richard Youngs – hey! hey! hey! utopia [Glass Redux]
Richard Youngs – where are you going to get your luck from (feat. Sorley Youngs) [Glass Redux]
Can – Oh Yeah [Spoon Records]
Can – Vitamin C [Spoon Records]
Keith Fullerton Whitman – Fuzz Bass D+B Seq [KFW’s DAT ERA Bandcamp]
Gareth Clarke – Caviar (…And English To My Dog) [Love Love Records]
Gareth Clarke – Hearseback Riding [Love Love Records]
Quarta303 – The Faeries’ Homecoming [Hyperdub]
Quarta303 – Digital Lotus Flower [Hyperdub]
NoinoNoinoNoino (Kiki Hitomi, Dead Fader, DJ Hotel, DJ Die Soon) – Marriage of synaps Kyozon [Caoutchou]
NoinoNoinoNoino (Kiki Hitomi, Dead Fader, DJ Hotel, DJ Die Soon) – Wash me away [Caoutchou]
Myra Davies – Get Down Boy (Götterdämmerung 2) [Moabit Musik]
Myra Davies – Mobilis in Mobili [Moabit Musik]
Helm – Fog Variations II [Alter Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~191MB