Eclectic selections coming down the line for you tonight…

LISTEN AGAIN because who can keep up? Podcast here, stream on demand there.

It may just be the circles I walk in, but there’s hardly an Australian artist around being hyped as much as Katie Dey at the moment, and for good reason too – she’s making traditional dirty indiepop, but with gloriously messy electronic processing all over it – helium vocals, fuzzy crunchiness. Even when she does a bit of more straight distorted guitar-pop, the beats are made of clattering home objects. Most importantly, her songcraft is impeccable, reminiscent of the best in slacker pop as well as contemporary pop – and in “debt” recalling the under-appreciated Aussie genius Machine Translations – up to and including the string version that makes up the interstitial track following it. These interstitials separate all the songs on the album, instrumental pieces providing little studio offcuts, segues, or entire alternate approaches like this.

Land Systems is young Sydney artist Nathan Moas, releasing music on cassette & digital through muffled records. The EP as a whole features ambient and sometimes aggressive/industrial sounding electronics, but the one vocal number (featuring Sydney artist mara) points towards some more song-oriented music to come from him. The experimental sounds herein suit me just fine though – lots of sound art mixed in, and some beats…

WWWINGS are the ultimate internet band… residing in different parts of the ex-Soviet Union, making post-techno bass music, tough and fucked up, lots of crazy samples and YouTube channel-skipping. Beats and rhythms are made up as much out of chopped & screwed samples as 808s and breaks, creating a mixture of industrial and ambient. They have strong connections with the LA scene – apart from Planet µ, two of the labels they’ve been released on and many of their collaborators are from LA, although the equally achingly hip Infinite Machine is locates itself in both Montréal and Mexico City. So internet.

Out of Denver, GILA has just released an EP of ambient loveliness and beats. Crisp stop-start beats and a clear sense of melody show why XL Recordings have jumped on this artist. The second track is a bit more techno although still bearing the hip-hop boom baps.
Also on XL is Overmono with their debut EP Arla – but while it may be a debut for these brothers together, separately they’ve both released excellent post-dubstep/post-uk hardcore techno as Tessela and Truss.

Tommy Four Seven and Alain Paul‘s These Hidden Hands have just released their second album, and if you’ve been following this show you’ll known I’m a big fan of what they do. Their sound mixes industrial techno with melodic influences, and recently they’ve been found collaborating with vocalists like Lucrecia Dalt. The new album sees this continue, with excellent work from Julia Kotowski aka Entertainment for the Braindead and Ale Hop opening up the duo’s own music into new vistas outside the tough dancefloor beats. Much though I love what they’ve been doing, this extra dimension is welcome.

French poet & spoken work artist Anne-James Chaton has worked with The Ex guitarist and Unsounds co-owner Andy Moor a number of times in the past. For their new project Heretics they hooked up with Thurston Moore, like Moor a veteran of the postpunk scene but from a very different direction, workshopping material in a residency in St Nazaire, France. Their interest in heretical figures throughout history surfaces perhaps obliquely in the texts that they created, supported by guitar and effects and electronics. Moore’s declarative style fits surprisingly well with the dispassionate lists of Chaton. I can only assume the often corny nature of the statements is the point of it… One hopes…

katie dey – only to trip and fall down again [Joy Void]
katie dey – don’t be scared [katie dey Bandcamp]
katie dey – debt / (f8) [Joy Void]
katie dey – so you pick yourself up / (f6) [Joy Void]
Land Systems – esc feat. mara [muffled records]
Land Systems – thrived [muffled records]
WWWINGS – Infinity (ft. Ebbo Kraan) [Planet µ]
WWWINGS – Death Wish [Symbols]
WWWINGS – EXOCORTEX [TAR]
WWWINGS – Glacial [Infinite Machine]
WWWINGS – Melt (ft. Barla, Graves & Pope) [Planet µ]
GILA – Tuff Whisper [XL Recordings]
GILA – SnoPack [XL Recordings]
Overmono – Programmer [XL Recordings]
These Hidden Hands – The Telepath (feat. Julia Kotowski) [These Hidden Hands]
These Hidden Hands – Ivy [These Hidden Hands]
These Hidden Hands – These Moments Dismantled (feat. Lucrecia Dalt) [These Hidden Hands]
These Hidden Hands – Dendera Light [These Hidden Hands]
These Hidden Hands – Lima 3AM (feat. Ale Hop) [These Hidden Hands]
Anne-James Chaton, Andy Moor and Thurston Moore – Poetry must be made by all [Unsounds]
Anne-James Chaton + Andy Moor – Princess in a Mercedes Class S 280 feat. Chiara Solari [Unsounds]
Anne-James Chaton, Andy Moor and Thurston Moore – Concoctions [Unsounds]

Listen again — ~198MB

A very electronic UFog for you tonight…

LISTEN AGAIN for the hottest tips on the hottest blips! Podcast here, stream on demand there.

Starting tonight with a quite experimental remix of a quite quirky cover of a Taylor Swift song. Sydney indie band OM Collective covered the song a little while ago, and young Sydney-based classically-trained electronic musician Mlekö has snuck in everything from jazz & classical influences to glitchy beats. Nice work.

Aussie underground indie musician Benjow continues to release idiosyncratic sounds as Haddocks’ Eyes – from drone works and electronic experiments to old tapes of stunning indiefolk songs. This one’s a take on an old song, with his signature vocal pitch-shifting and heaps of processing over everything.

Canberran duo Spartak featured recently on this show with their new EP, and we take a couple more tracks from it tonight. Released by fledgeling label Provenance, the newest venture of FBi alumnus Stuart Buchanan, 2 of its 5 tracks are actually kind of remixes. One tonight sees material from Spartak mixed & compiled into a piece by glitch pioneer Oval.
Before the Spartak tracks we heard a short excerpt from an amazing concept piece by Spartak’s Shoeb Ahmad, which was debuted in Canberra a couple of months ago in celebration of the Tour de France. It’s a cycling-inspired chamber composition-cum-postrock/electronic work-cum-gallery exhibition called Two Pedals.

And next up we reach a large portion of the show in which we focus on the massive new compilation from Touched, the label that raises money for British organisation Macmillan Cancer Support. Their first compilation came out in late 2013 and it was pretty massive – 123 tracks. The second one basically doubled that, and I shudder to think what the fourth will look like, because Touched 3 is 417 tracks long, clocks in at over a day and a half of music, and at standard v0 encoding the mp3 download from Bandcamp is 4.17GB. That’s a lot to take in, but along with various little-known (and often great artists) it has many many heavyweights: idm & electronic heroes like Autechre, Plaid, Funckarma, Ital Tek, Kid606, BALAM ACAB, Dntel, Ulrich Schnauss, The Gasman turning in a drill’n’bass classic a la Squarepusher or µ-Ziq… and Mr. Projectile with 17 minutes of evolving drum’n’bassy idm. There’s techno bods like 808 State, Mark Franklin, experimental types like Leafcutter John, drone/ambient artists like Aaron Martin and Offthesky. There’s something from Alec Empire, something surprisingly ambient from Cardopusher, there are some ’90s drum’n’bass heroes like Arcon 2 and Klute.
And that’s all artists I couldn’t fit into tonight’s playlist!
So what have I selected? We start with something really cool from Epic45, showing their Hood influence on their sleeves yet again with glitched-up guitar and drums.
Then we have the English oddball musical genius John Callaghan, who I first discovered courtesy of his extraordinary mutation of Autechre’s “Tilapia” on one of the Warp20 compilations – see a video here.
This compilation, like most electronic music genres, is disappointingly low in female contributions. I’ve chosen one excellent piece, from ex-Planet µ artist Mrs Jynx & vocalist iAM9. Among the other women on the compilation is Holly Herndon, although her track is taken from her latest album.
Last week on the show we heard some excellent music from Moscow label Full of Nothing. Russia is producing heaps of excellent electronic music at the moment, and tonight we hear from St Petersburg artist Antrru with a lovely piece of electronic pop.
And speaking of electronic pop, Adelaide artist Clue to Kalo returns to his “Superscience” electronic roots with a gorgeous song that can also be found on a single from earlier this year.
And from Ireland, we have the wonderful Sunken Foal (who also appears here with his old duo Ambulance) remixing a piece by Irish indie artist Si Schroeder from 2012 (but released officially for the first time here).
There are plenty of unknowns on here who are pulling their weight easily – here’s the mysterious Tworist, doing an incredibly effective Boards of Canada impression with heart-pulling analogue synth melody and fidgety hip-hop beats.
But there’s nothing like the classics, and Bola aka Darrel Fitton dates back to the early days of idm, even collaborating with Autechre on one of the first Gescom EPs. He’s apparently got a new album coming out later this year according his Facebook page, and I can’t wait!
And finally, another new artist to me is Th’idiot, who here contributes a bit of pitch-perfect drill’n’bass-style idm, with mournful repeating chords/melody and gradually more manic drum programming.

German minimal electronic mainstay (and To Rococo Rot member) Robert Lippok also appears on Touched 3, but I didn’t have time to play his track tonight. Instead we’re hearing the bonus track from a vinyl re-release by Japanese label flau of his raster-noton EP Open Close Open. It was only ever available on CD, from back in 2001, and for the vinyl release he’s added another track of similar minimal dub with field recordings, chatter etc. It’s delightfully off-putting.

Back to St Petersburg with celebrated drum’n’bass duo Abstract Elements, who’ve contributed quite a bit to the “autonomic” subgenre of drum’n’bass, which is a more minimal, stripped-down version of the genre. Here they gradually fill in the gaps with junglist breaks, but keep the basic rhythm in a dancehall syncopation. It’s available on Convex Industries now.

And finally tonight we hear from Welsh label Serein, home of much lovely ambient & postrock/jazz type stuff, with the first in a new compilation series called Orbital Planes and Passenger Trains. There are some piano miniatures from Deaf Center‘s Otto A Totland, a contribution from Japanese jazzy-electronica dude Ametsub, and various Serein regulars, among whom we heard first from Hidden Rivers, aka Huw Roberts who runs the label. Australian artist Brambles made a big impact with his debut album on the label in 2012, and contributes a track from a similar period which originally appeared from a Futuresquence compilation. This will be the first time you can own it on CD or vinyl though, and it’s a real beauty of post-classical elegance. And finally, some jazz-infused postrock (or is it the other way round?) from Chicago band Colorlist. Another highly recommended compilation, out in the next week or two!

OM Collective – Touched (Mlekö Remix) [Stream on SoundCloud]
Haddocks’ Eyes – acquiesce (2016) [Haddocks’ Eyes Bandcamp]
Shoeb Ahmad – Twin Pedals Section 2 (excerpt) [unreleased]
Spartak – flags for an organization [Provenance]
Spartak – seasonal (mix + production by Oval) [Provenance]
Epic45 – People At Work [Touched]
John Callaghan – Just Be [Touched]
Mrs Jynx & iAM9 – For Afters [Touched]
Antrru – Nuar [Touched]
Clue to Kalo – Tender Anchoret [Touched]
Sunken Foal & Si Schroeder – Jump Ship [Touched]
Tworist – How Did We End Up Here [Touched]
Bola – Expermiate [Touched]
Th’idiot – Willem [Touched]
Robert Lippok – + [flau]
Abstract Elements – Right Way [Convex Industries]
Hidden Rivers – What’s Up G? [Serein]
Brambles – Petrichor [Serein]
Colorlist – Gone To Ground [Serein]

Listen again — ~191MB

We’re in very electronic mode tonight until later on – starting with a great new Aussie compilation from TEEF, then some northern European sounds from Russian label Full of Nothing, segueing into Norwegian experimental label Hubro and finally a psycho-acoustic clarinet duo!

LISTEN AGAIN via podcast right here, or stream on demand over at FBi!

A couple of days ago saw the release of the second Imperium In Imperio compilation from TEEF Records – once again it is raising money for OXFAM’s Syrian refugee appeal, so it’s well worth dropping some real money on it.
It’s a great selection of new & exclusive electronic sounds from around the country, so tonight we have Adelaide’s Tracy Chen with some glitchy vocal ambience, a bassy uk garage number from Sydney’s Iljus Wifmo, an excellent remix of Sydney’s beloved hardcore punkish lovers Making by Hence Therefore (bringing out the postrock vibes), and some epic postrocky thing from Melbourne’s Sylva feat. Jamieson Moore.
Hence Therefore is playing with some other cool cats at an event in Sydney’s inner west on Saturday week, the 13th of August.

Next up, a special on the amazing Russian label Full of Nothing and some of its artists. Not all are Russian, although there’s clearly a fertile experimental electronic underground there right now. We start with Swedish artist Erik Levander, whose new album is a lot heavier and more rhythmic than his (excellent) past glitchy electronic & electro-acoustic works. In a connection with our final artists coming up tonight, he’s a clarinetist, and we can hear that instrument in among the glitches and electronic tones of his solo productions, as well as lots of other acoustic sounds in his earlier works. He’s also played clarinet & other noises with Efterklang, whose label Rumraket released his second-last album eight years ago. The new album recalls the heaviness of Nine Inch Nails circa The Downward Spiral, albeit in a glitchy, contemporary, electronic way.

Next up from Full of Nothing is Russian electronic producer Fedor Pereverzev aka Moa Pillar. I was introduced to him via the latest Wire Tapper compilation from Wire Magazine, which features an amazing track from his forthcoming album Hymns. Last year’s Humanity saw him moving into epic club territory with some epic ambient thrown in; previously he’s covered uk garage, folktronica and idm as well as techno.
Pereverzev also collaborates with fellow Russian Anastasia Tolchneva aka Lovozero on the more ambient & folk-influenced Tikhie Kamni.

Another duo on Full of Nothing hail from Norway. Kvien & Sommer features two very accomplished musicians, both known here by their middle names; Mari Kvien Brunvoll is an singer in various improv/jazz/electronic outfits and combinations, and we’ll hear from one of those shortly, while Espen Sommer Eide is one half of one of my favourite folktronica/experimental electronic acts, Alog. Their music is abrasive and beautiful, mixing analogue and digital, acoustic & electronic into a mysterious noise.

So Mari Kvien Brunvoll is also a member of the Norwegian trio Building Instrument, whose folk- and jazz-inspired sound also fits nicely into Scandinavian postrock. She’s joined by drummer/percussionist Øyvind Hegg-Lunde and synth player Åsmund Weltzien here, and their second album is just out right about now, as with their first on the iconoclastic and extremely productive Norwegian label Hubro, home to scads of jazz & experimental music from the extremely fecund Norwegian (mostly) scene. We heard a blissful track from the first album and a percussion-driven one from the new album.

Building Instrument drummer Hegg-Lunde also plays in the duo Strings & Timpani with guitarist Stephan Meidell, whose debut release on Hubro has also just been released. It’s again jazzy experimental stuff with a postrock bent, sounding on tonight’s track almost like Battles.

Finishing up tonight with two collaborative works from the unique Berlin clarinet duo The International Nothing, made up of Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke. Generally they appear panned left & right in their recordings, and they use the pure sound of the clarinet to create works that sound like minimal electronic noise, often focusing on the psycho-acoustic effects of discords. But they also work with many collaborators, including the amazing experimental singers & electronic musicians Margareth Kammerer and Christof Kurzmann in their wonderful band The Magic I.D. Their new album is billed as The International Nothing (…and something), featuring Christian Weber on double bass and Eric Schaefer on drums, a rhythm section from heaven to underpin their sinuous lines.

Tracy Chen – Eggs [TEEF]
Iljus Wifmo – Scatter [TEEF]
Making – Amazon (Hence Therefore remix) [TEEF]
Sylva – Arkwell feat. Jamieson Moore [TEEF]
Erik Levander – Innesluten [Full of Nothing]
Erik Levander – Avedølre [Neon]
Erik Levander – Vid Fönstret [Rumraket]
Erik Levander – Ballast [Full of Nothing]
Erik Levander – Bläck [Full of Nothing]
Moa Pillar – Sun Stood Still [Full of Nothing courtesy Wire Magazine]
Moa Pillar – Nature Theme 1 [Jumble/Fuselab]
Moa Pillar – Essence [Full of Nothing]
Tikhie Kamni – Sokolgora [Full of Nothing]
Kvien & Sommer – Gynger [Full of Nothing]
Building Instrument – Historia [Hubro]
Building Instrument – Farge Tida Sakte [Hubro]
Strings & Timpani – New Radio [Hubro]
The International Nothing (…and something) – The Golden Age of Miscommunication [Monotype]
The Magic I.D. – Mambo [Staubgold]

Listen again — ~194MB

Indietronica in various guises tonight, plus ambient world whatnot and industrial weirdtechno and… stuff…

LISTEN AGAIN and then listen further, listening is good. Podcast here, stream on demand from FBi.

Originally a Canberra duo, Spartak have been making challenging and beguiling postrock & indietronica for some years. Shoeb Ahmad (guitar, vocals, electronics) and Evan Dorrian (drums, vocals, electronics) form the core of Spartak, with various other collaborators including Matt Lustri of Cracked Actor. This new EP includes three new tracks, all featuring the engaging vocals of Melbourne artist Becki Whitton aka Aphir, and two reworkings from Oval and My Disco member Kangaroo Skull.

A bit of a feature from the intriguing US artist yyu, now based in the Chicago area and drawing idiosyncractic influence from footwork as well as other contemporary electronic genres. They’ve always happily mixed up lo-fi jangly indiefolk guitar songs with hi-fi (if deliberately ramshackle) electronics. yyu prefers to be referred to with the genderless pronoun “they”, and often performs under a sheet. Rather than a calculated move towards mystery, I see this as simply staying true to their own sense of self, which is highly admirable and which is reflected in their unique and wonderful music.

Grasscut also combine folky and electronic approaches, but they couldn’t be more different from yyu, starting from the very essential Englishness to their music. After an initial single & album on Ninja Tune, they gravitated to the lovely Lo Recordings, where they still reside today. The central members are composer Andrew Phillips and musician & academic Marcus O’Dair. Phillips’ talent for melody and for gorgeous twists of harmony is part of what makes them so special, as is their understanding of musical history and what you might call musical geography – indeed, maps and locations have been a big part of their releases in the past.
They’ve just released a remix album, which calls on a number of other electronic/avant-garde producers who are also composers, including Oliver Coates, the second generation Penguin Cafe and Mira Calix as well as the artists featured tonight. Leo Abrahams has collaborated with Coates and also Jon Hopkins and Brian Eno, and strips “The Field” back with a lovely violin arrangement; John Metcalfe is a highly in-demand composer & violist, a New Zealander based in the UK, who has created a stunning string quartet arrangement of the track “Radar”.

Richard Youngs is another artist with a deep Englishness to his art. His music ranges from acoustic folk to tape processing to analogue noise to digital sampling, all the while doggedly pursuing his own aesthetic that only sometimes intersects with musical norms. It’s a huge back catalogue but there’s a lot of exquisite stuff in there, especially on the various Jagjaguwar albums. Lately he’s started releasing his much-sought-after limited editions on Bandcamp, including unreleased gems and new material. Herfordshire Retreat dates from 1999 but appears to be freshly released a few weeks ago, and features acoustic guitar, banjolin, rhythm preset, shakuhachi, sitar, tape machine, violin, and voice.

Dutch composer & electronic musician Michel Banabila has appeared a lot on this show, in collaboration with other Dutch musicians like Machinefabriek and Oene van Geel as well as on his own. His music ranges from beautiful drones to worldbeat, layered rhythmic vocal samples and processed acoustic instruments, and he’s comfortable in the digital space – so it’s fascinating to hear these unearthed early works, mostly dating from the mid 1980s. Here we hear his art growing into itself, and his style can already be sensed, where gossamer melodies run over muted percussion and wheezing drone instruments. You can hear stacks of his music on his Bandcamp, and it’s highly recommended. This may be as good a place as any to begin.

Russian musician Alexey Devyanin has been making music as Gultskra Artikler since the early 2000s. More recently he’s become well known for shiny computer game dance music as Pixelord; Gultskra is an outlet for more experimental sounds, whether the incredibly acoustic-sampling dark sounds found on his Miasmah releases, the more recent YouTube-exploring glitchscapes on Umor Rex or this latest album on Opal Tapes, appropriately titled Industria.

And finally tonight, Gravy Murphy is originally from the UK, but after being based in Perth, WA for some time he’s now relocated to Melbourne. His productions sometimes recall the heyday of ’90s idm, albeit in a contemporary setting; there’s some lovely minnimal techno here as well as some fancy break-juggling and plenty of melody. Recommended – check the album and earlier EPs on Bandcamp.

Spartak – maps of the sounds of tokyo (feat. Becki Whitton) [Provenance]
Spartak – eulogist (feat. Becki Whitton) [Provenance]
yyu – teu [Lillerne Tapes]
yyu – car keys [yyu Bandcamp]
yyu – yyyy [Beer on the Rug]
yyu – eggo [Beer on the Rug]
yyu – mix 4 [yyu Bandcamp]
yyu – karaoke 1 [Lillerne Tapes]
Grasscut – The Field (Leo Abrahams Remix) [Lo Recordings]
Grasscut – Sorel Point [Ninja Tune]
Grasscut – The Tin Man (featuring sampled vocals of John McCormack) [Ninja Tune]
Jaga Jazzist – Toccata (Grasscut Remix) [Ninja Tune]
Grasscut – Reservoir [Lo Recordings]
Grasscut – Islander [Lo Recordings]
Grasscut – Radar (John Metcalfe Remix) [Lo Recordings]
Richard Youngs – Dirge [No Fans Records Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila – October (Des Traces Retrouvées III) [Bureau B]
Michel Banabila – Des Traces Retrouvées I) [Bureau B]
Michel Banabila – The Workers (Des Traces Retrouvées III) [Bureau B]
Gultskra Artikler – Shipping Details To Track 1 [Opal Tapes]
Gultskra Artikler – ——o——-o—o-o [Opal Tapes]
Gultskra Artikler – Melted Percussions [Opal Tapes]
Gravy Murphy – Murmuration [Gravy Murphy Bandcamp]
Gravy Murphy – Mumps [Gravy Murphy Bandcamp]
Gravy Murphy – Honeybunch [Gravy Murphy Bandcamp]

Listen again — ~111MB