Well, what a week in politics it’s been. The biggest. Gotta say, it’s the women who won it. About time they took over.
Anyway, enough of that – I’ve got a stack of great music for you as usual. Let’s get to it…

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Pleased to note that Run The Jewels 3 is FBi’s album of the week this week. It’s the third in a trifekta of fantastic albums from the hip-hop duo of El-P and Killer Mike. They just seem so perfectly suited to each other, it makes sense that this is basically the sole outlet for both of their creativity now. El-P’s sound is still influenced as much by Nine Inch Nails, idm and his Dad’s jazz as it is by classic hip-hop, but there’s also the sub-bass and swing of trap in there. Killer Mike’s been a very prominent proponent last year of Bernie Sanders’ campaign and in general against Trump.
In an interview with The Wire this month, Mike talks about how after meeting El-P he immediately never wanted to work with another producer again, which is sweet – although there are some collaborators such as BOOTS on the albums… and another heavy-hitter, DJ Shadow, had them guest on his album of last year!

Speaking of DJ Shadow, we also heard keyboard wunderkind Nils Frahm on a funky track from the Shadow album. It’s not quite Nils’s muted piano and twinkly stuff anymore, hey…

But speaking of muted piano twinkly stuff, Max Richter has ably covered the meeting of piano-based classic music and electronica for some years now, referencing ambient Aphex Twin works as much as Steve Reich or Philip Glass. His latest album from Deutsche Grammophon, out this Friday, is a collection of music written for works by the early 20th century modernist author & feminist Virginia Woolf. Tonight we heard a few of the tracks written for Orlando, Woolf’s centuries-spanning, gender-challenging epic. I highly recommend the album for the gorgeous 22-minute closing track, which is based around the heartbreaking letter (read by Gillian Anderson) Woolf wrote to her husband upon discovering her dementia (“madness”) returning, having decided to take her own life.

Continuing the piano theme from the last Richter piece, we join English composer & producer Daniel W J Mackenzie, who I’ve been playing for years on the show under his Ekca Lienaalias, for his new album every time feels like the last time, released on the excellent French ambient label eilean records. This one took me by surprise, which I’m a little embarrassed about because Mackenzie’s music has always been deep and complex. It’s not just a pretty ambient piano album – while solo piano tracks form its basis, there are twisted strings, scraping electronics, and droning distortions nudging their way into the picture, making for something a little more unsettling than you might expect. One to enjoy on a dark night.

In a few weeks, Lawrence English will release his new album Cruel Optimism on his legendary Room40 label. As he’s known for now, it’s a heavy, dense album of drones, built from largely indistinguishable contributions from a massed array of contributors on acoustic instruments like piano, cello, vibraphone et al. As you can tell from the titles, it’s very much a meditation on these turbulent times, and while that’s something you’ll need to infuse into the music yourself, it’s very interesting to ponder Enlgish’s thoughts while listening to these majestic, tectonic sounds.

Last week on the show we heard a new release on the Perth label Tone List from guitarist Jameson Feakes. Tonight we’ve got a remix of that work from Perth producer Kynan Tan, taking the exploratory sounds of the original and pounding them into 11 minutes of pulsating, glitchy electronic tones. It’s quite something!

Cristian Vogel‘s always been a really interesting producer, and an interesting chap. From the early days he was heavily involved in the experimental end of electronica, whether breakcore, idm, techno, or dub, putting on shows with his No Future collective, as well as compiling the occasional compilation album. His music’s surfed the edges of minimal dub/techno, but also headed into hyper-processed electronica & breakbeat… he’s pretty unpindownable. Back around the turn of the century (lol) he had an amazing glitch-soul duo with Jamie Lidell called Super_Collider which was the first place I heard Lidell’s vocals (I knew him before that as a crazy idm producer!). Vogel’s last three albums on Shitkatapult all mix up those roots of techno and dub into mutant forms, with ghosts of rave and experimental touches never far off.

Slightly farther out, or more far out perhaps, in the electronic waters are Second Woman, the duo of Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv and longtime collaborator Turk Dietrich. Having now heard some early Telefon, it’s almost harkening back to that with its somewhat abrasive, very electronic tones and beats. It’s often fast-paced and stuttery, sliding away from perfectly graspable rhythmic patterns. Their new EP (appropriately weirdly entitled E/P) anticipates an upcoming album with two tracks and two remixes, including celebrated footwork maverick Jlin.

Run The Jewels – Oh Mama [Run The Jewels]
Run The Jewels – Sea Legs [Run The Jewels]
Run The Jewels – Early (feat. BOOTS) [Run The Jewels]
Run The Jewels – Thieves! (Screamed The Ghost) (feat. Tunde Adebimpe) [Run The Jewels]
DJ Shadow – Nobody Speak (feat. Run The Jewels) [Mass Appeal/Liquid Amber]
DJ Shadow – Bergschrund (feat. Nils Frahm) [Mass Appeal/Liquid Amber]
Max Richter – Memory is the seamstress (feat. Sarah Sutcliffe) [Deutsche Grammophon]
Max Richter – Modular astronomy [Deutsche Grammophon]
Max Richter – Entropy [Deutsche Grammophon]
Max Richter – Love songs [Deutsche Grammophon]
Daniel W J Mackenzie – Abandonment II (Twenty Five Years) [eilean records]
Daniel W J Mackenzie – Blut und Boden [eilean records]
Daniel W J Mackenzie – Varnes [eilean records]
Lawrence English – Object Of Projection [Room40]
Lawrence English – Negative Drone [Room40]
Jameson Feakes – Traced Over (composed by James Bradbury) (remixed by Kynan Tan) [Tone List]
Cristian Vogel – Snowcrunch [Shitkatapult]
Super_Collider – It Won’t Be Long [Loaded Records]
Cristian Vogel – Deepwater [Shitkatapult]
Cristian Vogel – The Merman’s Dream [Shitkatapult]
Second Woman – 1 E/P [Spectrum Spools]

Listen again — ~191MB

Tonight on the ‘Fog we have some nice crunchy techno & drum’n’bass, some nice crunchy drones & sound-art musickiness, and even some nice crunchy acoustic music…

LISTEN AGAIN because you love it. You do. You will. You do. Stream on demand at FBi, podcast here.

We start with two tracks released on French label Human Mistake Records by a Melbourne artist, Warm Stranger. It’s dark, crunchy and head-nodding, and almost as spooky as the album cover the label has given it. Well recommended.

Next, and incredibly quiet but really beautiful composition by Perth composer James Bradbury, rendered by Perth guitarist Jameson Feakes, who plays bowed guitar while a computer shadows and re-voices what it’s just heard.

Olivier Alary is a Montreal-based French artist who I’ve been a fan of since his first album of glitching electronics & vocals on the Rephlex label. He’s had a long association with Fat Cat, so it makes sense that his first album under his own name is coming out on their post-classical sub-label 130701. To introduce it, the label has released a two track EP on which he trades remixes with his wonderful labelmate Ian William Craig, who here contributes vocals and then winds Alary’s composition through his trademark tape recorders.

I first came across Canadian experimental artist Damian Valles through his 2011 album Skeleton Taxa, from which we heard the beautiful twangy guitar, percussion & organ drones of “Ascent Of The Past” tonight. I’ve sometimes pigeonholed him as “drone” or dark ambient, but it’s clear from the get go that there’s way more going on here… Even the two albums on French label VoxxoV, while based around dark, drawn-out textures, still have glitchy, stuttering guitar accents and quite a lot of movement. He’s begun 2017 with his best foot forward, releasing a collection of off-cuts and unreleased archival tracks on his own Bandcamp which hangs together as an impressively cohesive and strong album that starts to push his music into new territories.

English label Opal Tapes is one of the cassette labels at the absolute forefront of quality electronic music these days, ostensibly focusing on house & techno but with a distinctly left-of-centre, experimental bent, and plenty of dub & bass thrown in. Their latest compilation Contemporary Dance features a few well-known acts and plenty of new (to me!) artists. I discovered the brilliant Belgian-Italian duo Lumisokea through Opal Tapes and have followed them and their other projects obsessively since, while I discovered Leeds-based techno artist Happaremixing Four Tet (here he appears in collaboration with an old friend called Jacob, who is not really a character from Twin Peaks). Emra Grid is a mysterious artist only known for another release on Opal Tapes, contributing something deliciously dark.

Like Opal Tapes’, Project Mooncircle‘s 15th Anniversary Compilation already counts as a 2017 release. In a boxset handsomely designed by the legendary Dave McKean, it compiles a tonne of tracks that are as diverse as the label’s usual lineup, ranging from house to drum’n’bass, folktronica to hip-hop. Not played tonight are two great tracks from one half of Akkord, Synkro, channelling Burial with plaintive late-night ambient 2step… Tonight’s selections were the bouncing, pulsating techno of Erik Luebs segueing from Opal Tapes followed by the jazz-fusion hip-hop of CYNE and the footwork-jungle fusion of Deft.

Speaking of jungle, breakcore legend end.user has returned after a number of years’ absence, at least in terms of album releases. The new album is pretty much straight, if tricky, drum’n’bass, with jittery drum programming and expansive synth pads as is his wont. It’s not exactly shiny, happy music, but it’s a real pleasure to sink into.

And we finish with a surprising drum’n’bass/jungle segue into the music of Mark Van Hoen, aka Locust, idm/ambient/shoegaze legend who’s still making music today. His 1997 album The Last Flowers from the Darkness was originally released by Touch on CD, but now sees a 20th anniversary remaster & release on vinyl by Medical Records, including a number of never-before-heard bonus tracks. The first track we hear was one of his few true jungle-influenced tracks from back in the day, and the bonus track is some really nice crunchy bass-techno in the mid-’90s style.

Warm Stranger – Apron & Valium [Human Mistake Records]
Warm Stranger – Lightsbroken [Human Mistake Records]
Jameson Feakes – Traced Over (composed by James Bradbury) [Tone List]
Olivier Alary – Nollywood (IWC Remix) [130701]
Damian Valles – Poison Tooth [Damian Valles Bandcamp]
Damian Valles – Ascent Of The Past [Drifting Falling]
Damian Valles – Weathered 2 [VoxxoV Records]
Damian Valles – Cause of Motion [VoxxoV Records]
Damian Valles – Heavy Icebreaker [Damian Valles Bandcamp]
Happa & Pete Martell – NR Off [Opal Tapes]
Lumisokea – Jenseits (Dub) [Opal Tapes]
Emra Grid – Overhead Lume [Opal Tapes]
Erik Luebs – Frozen Eye [Project Mooncircle]
CYNE – On the Head of the Crimson King [Project Mooncircle]
Deft – No More [Project Mooncircle]
end.user – projection [Hands Productions]
end.user – emerge [Hands Productions]
Mark Van Hoen – Another Light Casts its Will [Touch/Medical Records]
Mark Van Hoen – Dispelling 84-94 [Touch/Medical Records]

Listen again — ~192MB

2017 babeyyyyy. Well, today’s show is all pretty new music, but basically all still released last year – a lot of it December. Next week you can expect a surprising amount of 2017 music, courtesy of a few heavy-duty compilations already. But for now…

LISTEN AGAIN to the newest & best sounds around – stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

In December, just as I was putting together my best of 2016 playlists, Adult Swim‘s music division released a big compilation entitled N O I S E. It features some definite big names in “noise” music, including Prurient who we hear tonight in less-abrasive form, Wolf Eyes, Noveller and others. But there are also artists from further afield, such as the industrial techno of Vessel and the astonishing throat singing (and straight singing) of Canadian-based Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq. And opening the compilation is the amazing clipping., who could well be the people most responsible for bringing the sounds of noise, industrial, power electronics to new ears, through their catchy (yet uncompromising) hip-hop. Here they team up with Boston noisemeister Sickness for a track about violence and guns…

It’s great having Jasmine Guffond around Sydney again at the moment. She will be playing at the NOW now festival in a few weeks along with a whole slew of interesting experimental artists (check the link for the program). A split CDR just released from Beartown Records gives us four live tracks of beautiful layered & processed sounds, along with along with a 22-minute drone track from UK duo Plurals.

Next up is another release, from the very reliable Indonesian cassette label Tandem Tapes. Run by an Aussie based in Jakarta, it often releases split cassettes with Australian and Indonesian artists, although it’s also teamed up artists from Europe and elsewhere. The latest release, featured tonight, has Melbourne duo FAD on one side, with percussion and electronics, and Jakarta-based experimental artist Mahesa Almeida with some fantastic crunchy electronics and also some scattered percussion.

Back in November last year I played a couple of tracks from a brilliant new discovery, Icelandic singer & producer Sigrún. She’s worked with Sigur Rós, and remixed a couple of tracks as well, and we can maybe hear that in the crunching heavy bass that’s appeared in their more recent work. Of course comparisons to Björk are easily found, not just in the vocals but also in her attraction to experimental electronic production. I particularly love the outbursts of amen breaks in “Haltu Fast”, settling into a full-on jungle/breakcore segment before being overwhelmed by thick synths and multi-layered vocals.

Also bringing in a jungle influence with chopped up amen breaks, but situating it more in a muted/mutant techno space is Portuguese artist MUTUAL. I really enjoyed his first EP on Hush Hush in 2015, but it looks like it never made it on to my playlists, so we heard a track in the middle tonight – but the new EP is really exciting with its melding of jungle, techno and later on some lovely orchestral samples.

On his new EP Chambers as WSR for Samuel Kerridge’s Contort label, Manchester producer Emanuele Porcinai brings the sounds of cello, double bass and custom-made string instruments into very dark & murky territory. Along with low-pitched, moaning string drones and scratches, there are plenty of clattering industrial beats. It’s like ’80s industrial and contemporary industrial techno mixed with the double bass drones of Mohammad… In the middle there’s track from his previous Contort EP Stainless.

I was very sad when Anthony Harrison abandoned his Konntinent project, which produced a large amount of amazing drone and detailed minimal folktronica. But he’s still making music, now with his electronic pop duo Paco Sala, who have just signed to Denovali and released a spooky new single. Expect more this coming year.

aYia are a slightly mysterious electronic/ambient pop act from Iceland, who have released a single track in digital format from the formidable Bedroom Community. It’s a beautiful piece which justifies its presence on a label known for combining classical composition and cutting-edge electronics. Hopefully there will be more than this one track available from them soon!

And finally, Sydney duo Disruptive Dumpling feature guitar/bass and synth/flute, with a jazzy, head-nodding piece of instrumental hip-hop and some kind of guru expounding upon some important matters of mind and philosophy. Nice.

clipping. feat. Sickness – Body for the Pile [Adult Swim]
Prurient – Everything You Know Is Wrong [Adult Swim]
Tanya Tagaq – Erie Changys [Adult Swim]
Jasmine Guffond – GPS Dreaming (live in Istanbul, 2015) [Beartown Records/Plurals Bandcamp
Jasmine Guffond – RR Variation (live in Berlin, 2015) [Beartown Records/Plurals Bandcamp]
FAD – DDDDD [Tandem Tapes]
Mahesa Almeida – 727.16 [Tandem Tapes]
Mahesa Almeida – krom [Tandem Tapes]
Sigrún – Teygir [Sigrún Bandcamp]
Sigrún – yyUyy [Sigrún Bandcamp]
Sigrún – Haltu Fast [Sigrún Bandcamp]
MUTUAL – Arché [Hush Hush]
MUTUAL – Surface Effects [Hush Hush]
MUTUAL – Contingency pt. II [Hush Hush]
WSR – Carved Out [Contort Records]
WSR – No Horizon [Contort Records]
WSR – Exclave (Unlearned) [Contort Records]
Paco Sala – Ko Yo [Denovali]
aYia – Water Plant [Bedroom Community]
Disruptive Dumpling – So on [Disruptive Dumpling Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~187MB

And so we’ve somehow made it to 2017. Here’s to a year in which at least the terrible things are terrible things we’re expecting, and the people who die are mostly… 2nd tier celebrities.

LISTEN AGAIN because the best… well, it’s the best. Stream on demand from FBi or podcast here.

Tonight is my second selection of the best music of 2016! And whatever else happened last year, it was a helluva year for great music.

World’s End Girlfriend – Angel Ache [Virgin Babylon Records]
Odd Nosdam – BOW THEY WILL !!! [Odd Nosdam Bandcamp]
Bracken – You’re Unstoppable feat. L. Sharkey [Home Assembly Music]
downpour – Trust me [downpour Bandcamp]
¬ b (fka Lee Bannon) – 3m6-disc1 [Lee Bannon Bandcamp]
Scatterbrain – I Need A… (feat. Kiri Cantle) [Milke Thistle Records]
radian – scary objects [Thrill Jockey]
Akkord – Scalar Wave [Houndstooth]
Lakker – Fierljeppen [R&S Records]
These Hidden Hands – These Moments Dismantled (feat. Lucrecia Dalt) [These Hidden Hands]
Demdike Stare – Curzon [Modern Love]
Andy Stott – New Romantic [Modern Love]
Sophia Loizou – Genesis 92: The Awakening [Kathexis]
KETEV – I Know No Weekend [Portals Editions]
Blessed Initiative – Borderline spamming [Subtext]
John Callaghan – Just Be [Touched]
Roly Porter – In Flight [Tri-Angle Records]
Kane Ikin – Tap Tap Collapse [Type]
Hence Therefore – North Pacific Gyre [3BS Records]
JK Flesh – trinity [Electic Deluxe]
We Will Fail – Didn’t Work Out [MonotypeRec]
Reuben Ingall – Tomorrow [Tandem Tapes]

Listen again — ~195MB