Challenging minimal pop, experimental beats, eclectic improv tonight…
Take up the challenge by LISTENING AGAIN, via on-demand streaming at FBi’s website, or podcasting here.

Richard Youngs – Modern Sorrow [Black Truffle]
When the show was broadcast, an uploading error of mine meant that most of this track was missed. Luckily on the stream-on-demand and podcast you can hear it from the start (or just go to Bandcamp and grab it!) Richard Youngs is a legend of UK experimental music, active since the beginning of the 1990s both solo and in many collaborations (notably with Simon Wickham-Smith) making very challenging experimental sound. But Youngs also has an extraordinary voice, strong & emotive, that featured on a string of brilliant albums for Jagjaguwar – anything from raw a capellas to incredibly stripped-down folk and weird effects. He’s also done weird takes on electro-pop, with smashed, scattered drum programming that deliberately doesn’t line up with the vocals. And that’s just a small glimpse (the man is prolific!), to give some context for this remarkable release on Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label. The title track of “Modern Sorrow” is 17 minutes of what might either be pure agony or pure bliss – for me it’s certainly bliss. A stripped-down pattern begins, with a snatch of piano and a tiny blurt of voice, before a drum machine rhythm joins, and a good while in, we get the… “song”… The slow-moving chord pattern has already been established, and now Youngs’ voice warbles quasi-melodically with intense auto-tune effects, utterly artificial and yet strangely moving. The coda is stripped back to where we were at the beginning, again patiently carrying on for about as long as you can bear. It’s pure Youngs, gorgeous and grotesque.

Chewlie – Flood Me [BRUK]
Berlin-based BRUK gives very little away on its mostly-unused social media let alone on Bandcamp. I’m told it’s one of the labels that Low End Activist has a hand in (in fact it’s right there on his Discogs page), and that’s a stamp of quality given Sneaker Social Club and his own multifarious productions. It’s also no surprise that BRUK is also focused on soundsystem music, albeit mixed in with a little more cerebral sound-design tendencies. Latest from the label is an EP from Swiss artist Chewlie, aka Julia Häller, who’s been active for only the last couple of years. Her Diagon EP moves through bass music of various BPMs, with attention to sculping the atmosphere as well as the beats. Her earlier EP from this year can be found on Czech label YUKU.

On Man – Worse Than It Seems feat. Tailor (Ana Quiroga Remix) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
On Man – Squares and Triangles feat. F-M-M-F (Katie Gately Remix) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Last year’s self-titled album from On Man was one of the most “pop” directions the Houndstooth label has taken, albeit resolutely “left-field”, as the label puts it. But if some of the production there wasn’t enough, the artist & label have assembled a phenomenal cast of artists to remix the album, including UFog faves Wordcolour, The Bug, Joe Rainey & Andrew Broder(!) and more. The now London-based Ana Quiroga‘s deceptively straight remix stood out before I realised she was one half of Spanish duo LCC, who had some fantastic released on Editions Mego some years ago. Her remix starts off with a simple beat and Tailor‘s original vocal, but then we’re treated to a beatless soundscape with reversed vocal abstractions, and a lovely cathartic return to the song to close. Meanwhile, Katie Gately preserves London rapper F-M-M-F’s vocals but in her idiosyncratic way constructs an entire new song from On Man’s building blocks, singing her own lyrics and layering & chopping like only she can do.

Boofy – Boomer Technology [Boofy Bandcamp]
Bristol dubstep mainstay Boofy has run or co-run the Sector 7 label for about a decade, but has released solo tracks separately in recent times. His Bandcamp holds mostly single tracks, two from 2021 and two from 2022, but his latest single comes with a remix by New Zealand’s Epoch. It’s a 140bpm track that crosses dubstep with 4/4 music, sampling a discussion about the problems with big tech.

Peverelist – Pulse III [Livity Sound/Bandcamp]
Speaking of Bristol, dubstep-hybridisation pioneer Peverelist hasn’t had a solo release for over 5 years, and returns to his own Livity Sound to mark their 60th release with the Pulse EP. None of this is dubstep, but that was to be expected. It’s four variants on 4/4 bass music. I particularly liked the forward momentum from the hi-hats on “Pulse III”, which is nothing like jungle but has that nice interaction between the drums and the bass yo.

ShrapKnel ft. billy woods – Mescalito Remix (prod. by DJ Haram) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
billy woods‘ Backwoodz Studioz would be a legendary underground hip-hop label purely for his music & that of his duo Armand Hammer with ELUCID, but in fact it hardly ever falters in quality. Their new High Bias compilation showcases their talents with a selection of unreleased tracks and alternate versions from many of their key artists. ShrapKnel – the duo of Curly Castro & PremRock – is a case in point in terms of quality, but how about we add billy woods himself into the equation, and then hand it over to DJ Haram on the version? DJ Haram released an incredible album last year from her duo 700 Bliss with Moor Mother, and is in fine flight here, with creepy hip-hop beats shifting in & out of clattering amen breaks.

nickname & Tim Shiel – Druidz [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Heading to Naarm/Melbourne now on our jungle quest. Young producer nickname released a couple of great EPs last year mixing up genres with bass & breaks and syncopation galore. This single track “Druidz” is possibly the furthest into jungle that the good Mr Shiel has headed, but it’s equally sweet on those jungle-techno 4/4 kicks. Whatever it is, it’s a whole lot of fun.

BAMBII – One Touch [BAMBII Bandcamp]
Toronto DJ BAMBII is joyously gregarious in the sounds she pulls together for her DJ sets, and for her own music. She wrote a fantastic essay for Dazed last year on her experiences becoming a DJ – and a successful DJ – within scenes that marginalised blackness and queerness despite the obvious roots of the music. Her own Jamaican roots inform her music as much as footwork, r’n’b, techno and the like – and reggae & dub are fused into jungle on her latest single, “One Touch“, with sampled and pitch-shifted vocals and tasty breaks.

DJ Sofa – Ready Set Go [Future Retro]
Kia Súmen aka Finnish producer DJ Sofa, also offers some reggae-infused jungle on her single-artist 12″ for Tim Reaper’s Future Retro, featuring hardcore-leaning sounds as well as jungle, and a remix from breakcore veteran Pete Dev/Null.

Foxconn Suicide – Advena [A Flooded Need]
Italian experimental/industrial label A Flooded Need introduce us to Italian duo Foxconn Suicide, who have jungle beats creeping into their cut-up, disorienting industrial sound. Their self-titled EP (not heard tonight) is a bit more explicit in the jungle aspects on a couple of tracks – both releases are recommended.

µ-Ziq – Mesolithic Jungle [Balmat/Bandcamp]
µ-Ziq – Asda [Balmat/Bandcamp]
After a huge year for Mike Paradinas last year, here’s ANOTHER new album from him, this time straying from his own Planet µ to the relatively new Barcelona-based Balmat, an imprint of Lapsus run by Lapsus founder Albert Salinas and prolific & influential music writer Philip Sherburne. This album is wildly different from the drill’n’bass/idm/jungle nostalgia/renewal of 2022. 1977 suggests a more distant nostalgic focus, although Paradinas turned 6 in 1977, so I’m not entirely sure of the significance. But by mostly abandoning beats, Paradinas is content to salt the melodic ambient bliss with an oft-abrasive miasma – distorted drones, out-of-focus detuned pads, crunching beats, all reminiscent of his beloved early years. Even the breaks of “Mesolithic Jungle” are distorted and half-buried. And it couldn’t be more µ–Ziq – celebrate!

Nondi_ – Nondi Shadow [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Nondi_ – Healing Rain [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Tatiana Triplin, once Yakui, now Nondi_, runs the netlabel HRR, which is in fact immediately intriguing. Who runs a netlabel these days? I mean, the point being, everybody does. Sure, some still do physical releases, but there are so many Bandcamp labels. Following this, HRR continues to intrigue by focusing on Web Folk, Nightcore and Dubst, absolutely made-up genres but they all make absolute sense – and they do make sense when listening to Nondi_’s debut album on Planet µ, Flood City Trax. There’s a dusty dub feel to these sounds, a late-night feel, and it’s utterly online. “Flood City” provides more context: Triplin lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, one of those cities built by capitalism and then abandoned by capitalism to poverty, and it’s a place that’s prone to floods and never quite recovered from its big ones. The Wikipedia page points at more recent cultural initiatives, but Triplin’s description of her hometown suggests decay and despondency. Her music is dusty and decayed, dance music styles like footwork and breakcore heard through tinny speakers and iPhone ear buds at low bitrates, and filtered through with beauty and yearning. It’s wonderful to hear her on Planet µ, and very interesting hearing her approach alongside Mike Paradinas’ own mulched beats.

Tim Koch – Drungums [DataDoor/Bandcamp]
The Tourbillon EP was first released on CPU Records back in 2021 by Adelaide IDM impressario Tim Koch (I just put “impressario” there because it sounded good, but Tim is very impressive). The restless fellow has now made an extended (“étendue” en français) version on his own DataDoor label, adding three similar crunchy electronic tracks and extending all four originals too. The music here has a long-limbed organicness to it, recognizable as IDM evolved. “Drungums” particularly suited the theme of distorted buried beats preceding it.

Tim Hecker – Total Garbage [kranky/Bandcamp]
Tim Hecker – Sense Suppression [kranky/Bandcamp]
In the time since 2018’s Konoyo and its 2019 sequel Anoyo, Canada’s king of glitchdrone Tim Hecker has had two scores released – for the TV show The North Water starring Colin Farrell, and for the film Infinity Pool by Brandon Cronenberg. Now No Highs brings him back to music-for-music’s-sake, with an album that mostly cleaves to its promise of, well, no highs. It’s anti-feelgood music, anti-euphoric, frequently creepy and anxious, making good use of (fellow soundtrack composer) Colin Stetson’s otherworldly sax tones as well as pulsating synths and gurgling granular processing. It’s not that this music in any way wallows in self-pity and sadness, but rather that it refuses to provide (false) comfort or soothe nerves.

MultiTraction Orchestra – Reactor One, Part I [Superpang/Bandcamp]
MultiTraction Orchestra – Reactor One, Part V [Superpang/Bandcamp]
The prolific Rome-based label Superpang‘s 154th release since its formation in 2020 as a kind of response to the coronavirus pandemic comes from a lockdown ensemble. Formed by Kraków-based guitarist & producer Alex Roth also originally in 2020, the elastic lineup features, on debut album Reactor One, many members of the improv scene in his previous hometown of London, as well as Sweden-based Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen. Henriksen’s bewitching trumpet graces two tracks, including Part I, and the cello of Kate Ellis (heard throughout 2021 in collaboration with Laura Cannell) grounds all but one. Despite being collaged from remote recordings, the pieces were composed together, with Roth at the centre, and exhibit the intuitive interactiveness of experienced improvisers. Post-jazz indeed!

James Holden – Four Ways Down The Valley [Border Community Records/Bandcamp]
10 years ago, James Holden released his shockingly good second album The Inheritors, which took the dancefloor-filling techno that he was known for, and transmuted it into something organic, mulchy, craggy, natural. The just-released Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities shares a lot with that album, while also having kinship with the intervening album The Animal Spirits‘s strange folk feeling. It’s described in the label copy as a kind of pastoral rave album, and there are indeed many references to rave & techno, despite it being neither. It’s certainly a journey, strange and joyous.

haddocks’ eyes – miasma [haddocks’ eyes Bandcamp]
haddocks’ eyes – dumb as a picture [haddocks’ eyes Bandcamp]
Some years ago, I was introduced to the music of Sydney-based (ex-Adelaide) musician Benjow aka Douglas MacKay, member of cult band The Bedridden during the ’90s, through the strange, anonymous sound of Haddocks’ Eyes. Much of the material was written with Dave Wiffler and Baterz of The Bedridden, some even before that band existed, and songs from that period have been reworked & repurposed multiple times through the cycle of Haddocks’ Eyes’ quasi-existence. To me these sounds were exciting because of the way they combined guitar-based indie songwriting with electronic effects, but also because there were some incredibly touching songs. Versions came and went as MacKay struggled with his mental health, but to my knowledge Benjow finds himself in a much better place these days, and the “new” release mute with fury (2015-2023) works as a kind of clearinghouse of old works – many of which I actually have because he snuck them out track-by-track on his Bandcamp. And many of the works actually date from much earlier, including “miasma” here, and songs like “twenty two” and “dumb as a picture”, which probably date back to the ’90s. Here, MacKay uses the beautifully affecting, alienating device of pitch-shifting the vocals to both commemorate and undermine these fragile songs about depression and self-alienation. With these songs (re-)released, I hope there’ll be new songs to share soon!

Mücha – Spectral Interference [Frequency Domain/Bandcamp]
Amanda Butterworth’s 2021 album Fall was a striking introduction to her work as Mücha, shoegazey songs embedded in IDM/jungle/techno beats. This year the Frequency Domain label is releasing two albums from Mücha, the first of which is Hello Caller, out now. There was a minimalist aesthetic to Fall, despite the business of the beats, and that’s deepened here with the pallette of one vocal loop and one piano loop along with some standard electronic devices (sub bass drops, crickety beats) and plenty of processing. Each song iterates through these elements in different ways, from ambient to minimal techno to jittery IDM, and the wonderful glitchy, slow-fast dub of “Spectral Interference” – not a million miles from the hard-chopped backing that Richard Youngs gave himself at the start of the show.

Penelope Trappes – The Bitterness Of Parting [Nite Hive/Bandcamp]
Penelope Trappes – Entangled [Nite Hive/Bandcamp]
Australian musician Penelope Trappes released three self-titled albums since being based in London, the first through JD Twitch’s eclectic Optimo Music, and the following ones through the forward-looking Houndstooth. But the idea of her own label, run by women for women and non-gender-conforming artists, is one that I believe has been on the burner for a while now, and thus Nite Hive is inaugurated with Trappes’ new album Heavenly Spheres. The trilogy of Penelope albums already established a practice of ethereal songwriting with ambient backings and beats, and 2021’s Mother’s Blood Edition further stripped back those songs, dissolving and suspending the original works, removing the lyrical content and any vestiges of rhythmic backing. Heavenly Spheres takes a similar aesthetic into a new realm, creating music with just an upright piano and a reel to reel tape machine supporting her voice. The tape is used as a substrate for beds of noise and sound manipulation, saturating and distorting the material in the fashion of Ian William Craig. This is a beautiful progression for Trappes, and a great start for her label, which will soon feature releases from Patricia Wolf, Pefkin, Karen Vogt, and Madeliene Cocolas.

Listen again — ~201MB

Music is good. Good music is gooder.
Enjoy (good) music by LISTENING AGAIN to this here show – podcast here or stream on demand via FBi.

Holy Tongue – Saeta [Valentina Magaletti Bandcamp]
Holy Tongue – Kaneh Bosem [Valentina Magaletti Bandcamp]
In 2020, the extremely prolific percussionist Valentina Magaletti added to her long list of projects a duo with Al Wootton – UK producer of bass music from techno to dubstep, garage to d’n’b. Together they released three EPs of energetic, raw postpunk dub, until a couple of months ago when this full album was announced. Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare augments the duo with Magaletti’s Vanishing Twin bandmate Susumu Mukai taking on additional bass guitar and percussion duties – presumably freeing Wootton up to control FX and keys and such in a live context. When I heard the opening “Andalusian catholic march” on the first track, I knew it had to be the opener for tonight’s show. Although the album inserts these strange alien side-quests along the way, the basis is the sinuous basslines and percussion – it’s a studio project, but it’s live postpunk dub at its root, wonderfully done.

Ayala – Rainfruit Kulnara feat. Zac Picker [lovejoy]
Last year Eora/Sydney musician & DJ Donny “Ayala” Janks released the wonderful EP All prayers flow to the stormdrain with physicist and writer Zac Picker – a brilliant combination of Ayala’s electronics and Picker’s evocative spoken word. Later this month, Ayala will release an EP titled Rainfruit on the lovejoy label, and the semi-title track of that EP again features Zac Picker’s spoken word. Here the music and words are more equal players, Picker’s words mixing science and poetry, left behind as the second half of the track crescendos through sequenced synth lines to its conclusion.

Antoine Ferris – Hount Orbe [now available at Bandcamp]
I was lucky to discover this track via longtime friend-of-the-show Angus Cornwell – sometime radio DJ, cellist and LinkedIn troll. It’s out there on Spotify, but exists primarily as the soundtrack to a beautiful black & white film on YouTube – but I insisted Angus source me the audio file to play for you! Antoine Ferris is an electric bass player from France, a member of the Baraque à Free collective of improvising musicians in the Toulouse region. This track captures something of the joy of early Fennesz & Mego glitch-works for me, but it’s entirely made from electric bass – stuttery edits and pitch-shifts, and occasional outbursts of skronky distortion.

Iztok Koren – .     .      [Torto Editions/Bandcamp]
On Italian label Torto Editions, we have a solo album from Iztok Koren, a Slovenian multi-instrumentalist best known as a member of the extraordinary alien-folk band Širom. The album Praznina / Emptiness (the second word being the translation of the first) was recorded in the aftermath of a cancelled trip by Širom to Sarajevo, with Koren shacking up in a remote area of Slovenia, where he ended up recording the entire album in one day. As usual for the musician, many different instruments are used, but usually only one or two on any particular track. This means that we’ll go from an ornate eastern European banjo improvisation into the feedback-laden string instrument noise heard here, to sparse percussion, and over & round again. The tracks vary wildly in length, and some of the best are nearly 10 minutes – my favourite might be the 12-minute track on guembri with some overlaid percussion and what I think is the guembri being bowed. Maybe this album will fill some emptiness in your life, if you let it.

V – The Stain [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp]
V – Faithless featuring the Faithless Choir [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp]
I premiered one of the tracks from this excellent album a few weeks ago, now released in full: V‘s third album Faithless is a gothic album that takes Naarm/Melbourne’s Federation Bells (a frequent feature on Heavy Machinery’s releases) and adapts them to the artist’s own purposes. The bells echo through many of these tracks, as rhythmic devices or tolling omens, while V wields electronics, guitars, industrial-influenced beats and tape machine to create an almost symphonic meditation on the inadequacy of mental health care in Australia… and on the last track they’re joined by an 11-person choir to fully realise the dramatic impact of this work.

Happa – Only Darkness (feat. shame) [Happa Bandcamp]
Samir Alikhanizadeh, Leeds/London’s half-Persian prince of the dancefloor (Happa originally stood for “HalfAPersianPrinceAnd”), has just popped out a typically varied EP by the name Party Chat on his Bandcamp, music that might be situated in the club, but might be dreamed of after a particularly intense night, or heard while arguing with the bouncers on the other side of the door… He’s aided by the also-part-Iranian Lafawndah on one track, and London post-punks shame on “Only Darkness” – not just vocalist Charlie Steen. Happa has previously remixed shame, and it does sound like many of the band’s instruments contribute to the wholly dark, ponderous track, that’s a little like an industrial Leonard Cohen.

Katie Gately – Seed [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Katie Gately – Chaw [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
It feels simultaneoulsy like Katie Gately‘s music, her aesthetic and technique, arrived fully formed almost as soon as she started (seriously, check the vocal manipulations on 2013’s “pipes” and b-side “acahella“), and at the same time she develops palpably on each release. Maybe it’s that I forget the impact of her dense arrangements and songwriting, full of those layered, chopped up vocals, freewheeling samples, restless harmonic progressions echoed at times with electronic beats leaning into industrial climes. Speaking of progression, Fawn/Brute is the mirror twin of its predecessor Loom. Loom was written in the shadow her mother’s impending untimely death from a rare cancer, and is full of seismic emotions and upheaval. Fawn/Brute was written through the artist’s own experience of motherhood for the first time, and reflects both the light and dark of a young life. The cacophany of sounds recalls the cartoon soundtracks she’s sampled here, with a saxophone parping out melodies and riffs through various tracks, contributing to the righteous basslines Gately has long mastered (“Lift”, the opening track from 2016’s Color is always pure joy). Equal parts pop excess and experimental sound-art, long may we experience the creativity of Katie Gately.

Carl Stone – Morangak (2005) [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
Far off in August, Japan-based US sampling innovator Carl Stone will release his third archival collection Electronic Music from 1972-2022 on Unseen Worlds. We’ve had the joy of scads of new work from Stone of late (and some of us might be lucky enough to see him in Tasmania in June!), but the man has been cutting up and slicing his way through prior recorded works or field recordings for many decades, and pioneered the use of personal computers in performance in the 1980s. From the title, this collection will be the most wide-ranging yet – and indeed it will contain some of his earliest tape cut-ups, as well as very recent works. Mostly, the source material for his jaunts is obscured enough to be unrecognizable, so it’s hilarious that the first single from this collection, “Morangak”, from 2005, is quite obviously “Bicycle Race” by Queen. Stone turned 70 earlier this year, and is as creatively energetic as ever.

indri – Mariah [indri Bandcamp]
indri – Contact [indri Bandcamp]
We first heard Reece Beuzeville’s music as indri back in 2019 with debut release hello, from over here… on Eora/Sydney label Empirical Intrigue. That release combined field recordings with evocative electronic compositions, and 4 years later, his latest release takes this concept even further with a beautiful and intriguing set called Hall of Egress. The egress in this case was from the city – in 2021, Beuzeville took off in his Volvo (I love this small detail) to places unknown, travelling around NSW. Raw field recordings (including some specifically identified fauna) mix with minimalist compositions, including the glitched Mariah Carey micro-samples on the first selection (echoing Mr Stone above).

Joni Void – Parallax Error (+N NAO) [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Excited for the third album on Montréal’s venerable Constellation label from Joni Void. First single from it is in the Joni Void tradition of mostly-female guest collaborators, here N NAO, using myriad samples of the artist & guests, casually recorded and cut-up, processed and collaged by Joni Void into things resembling songs. This glitchy, overtly digital aesthetic is something that would’ve been anathema to Constellation and Godspeed in the early days, but has been increasingly embraced over the decades.

ben sloan – toomuchinternet (feat. serengeti & josiah wolf of why?) [New Amsterdam Recordings/Bandcamp]
ben sloan – muted colors (feat. liz wolf of why?, josh jessen, adam peterson) [New Amsterdam Recordings/Bandcamp]
You may not realise it, but you’ve probably heard Ben Sloan‘s playing before. He’s a drummer who’s played with artists such as *quotes from bio* The National, Moses Sumney, Beth Orton, Mouse on Mars, Rozi Plain, Serengeti, and WHY? – many of whom as you can see here appear as guests on his restless, rhythm-heavy, eclectic debut solo album muted colors, released by New Amsterdam Recordings (a label known for boundary-pushing contemporary classical music, but also branching out into other kinds of experimental music and indie/pop). In amongst the expert playing & singing from himself and his guests there are field recordings and other found sounds that he’s collected over many years. The result is a very dense, very enjoyable record that retains a core of skilfully skittery percussion through myriad briefly-touched-on genres, from schoolchildren singing through drill’n’bass with half-heard hip-hop vocals, to contemplative piano, modal jazz, hints at r’n’b pop and more. Nothing is immune to interruption from manic drums or beats, although the closing track featuring Moses Sumney does the best at keeping to a sunny jazz-pop template with experimental edges. I feel like listeners to this show will find a lot to love here, so don’t let it pass you by!

Pépe – Goma (Prime Mix) [Lapsus Records/Bandcamp]
Pépe – HSC [Lapsus Records/Bandcamp]
Named presumably for the footballer, Pépe is a Valencian producer known more for lo-fi house and techno, but on his debut for fellow Spanish label Lapsus Records, he branches out in all directions, anywhere from orchestral instruments and sampled vocals collaged into new melodies, to skittery IDM and breakbeats. Reclaim is lush, and rhythmic in surprising ways, although I’ve chosen a couple of the most jungle-adjacent tracks tonight.

Mattr – A-Break [Mattr Bandcamp]
Birmingham producer Mattr makes breakbeat-heavy electronica, lo-fi house and IDM tracks, and on his latest A-Break EP it’s classic IDM fare with broken beats and gorgeous pads. On the title track, though, it felt incredibly familiar, and I eventually tracked down the influence to a pair of Gescom (Autechre) tracks from around 1998. Not in any way suggesting this is a rip-off, but it feels like a distinct tribute: check where the synth pads come in at 0:28 in Mattr’s track, and listen to “Viral Revival (Rmxd by Ae)” from the This EP released on SKAM back in ’98. Mattr’s chopped-vox rhythms and those pads are very Ae, but the track diverges from this influence pretty soon after. The Gescom track is a version of the Ad Vanz vs Gescom track “Viral” from Fat Cat’s legendary split 12″ series – the pads enter at 2:19 in this track FWIW. These similarities aside, it’s lovely hearing IDM of this calibre in the 2010s, and I recommend jumping around some of the other tracks on Mattr’s Bandcamp.

Stefan Goldmann – In Aggregate [Macro/Bandcamp]
Berlin techno maestro Stefan Goldmann continues on his unpredictable course through rhythm with new 10″ In Aggregate / Carob. The beats here are polyrhythmic and infectious, and the bar lines don’t hit where you expect, yet it still manages to sound like classic techno. The flip is almost entirely one rhythm fed through a ring modulator, simultaneously recalling Aphex Twin’s early techno experiments and reaching out to possible futures.

Jack Prest – Object II [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
Jack Prest – Dusk [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
Sydney composer, sound engineer & musician Jack Prest staged his daring multi-disciplinary work The Risk of Hyperbole at Phoenix Central Park in 2022, merging dance, visual art, and live musical performance in a host of genres. In recorded form, the first volume – Sound – focused on the sound-art aspects of the work, while Vol.2 – Object is more about the contemporary composition and their interactions with sub bass drops and shimmering effected electronics. Live percussion floats in space over subtle drones and carefully modulated reverb, or minimalist double bass notes, impressionist piano and fractured cello compete with processed drumkit and snarling synths. It’s an intoxitaing blend. We’re looking forward to Vol.3 when it arrives, with the techno, hip-hop and other beats to be showcased.

The Declining Winter – The Darkening Way [Home Assembly Music/Bandcamp/The Declining Winter Bandcamp]
The Declining Winter – The Fruit of the Hours [Home Assembly Music/Bandcamp/The Declining Winter Bandcamp]
I often claim that my favourite band ever is Leeds noise/postrock/indietronic iconoclasts Hood, with the core of brothers Chris & Richard Adams joined by an ever-changing cast of brilliant collaborators as bandmates until their permanent hiatus in 2005 or ’06. Chris branched out into proto-breakcore and drum’n’bass/jungle as Downpour and indietronica and other electronics as Bracken, while Richard eventually formed his indie/postrock band The Declining Winter (with more recent solo excursions into electronics as Western Edges). Rich’s songwriting and singing has only gotten better & better through the Declining Winter story, and his latest album Really Early, Really Late is not just his best, but one of the best indie releases of the year so far. I’m very lucky to have been asked by Richard to contribute some cello, appearing on a couple of tracks including tonight’s closer built around a lovely piano pattern from ex-Hood chap Gareth Brown. I would’ve loved to play you the album’s centrepiece title track, with its gorgeous Talk Talk vibes, but as it’s a bit too long, instead we had the album’s opener, a typical Richard Adams song swept away with layers of Sarah Kemp‘s violin.

Listen again — ~199MB

Industrial, post-industrial, warped electronic song, beats, sound-art and… neo-classical? It all fits together right here, right now.

LISTEN AGAIN before it’s right there, right then. Podcast is here, stream on demand there @ FBi.

Lana Del Rabies – Master [Gilgongo Records/Bandcamp]
Lana Del Rabies – Hallowed is The Earth [Gilgongo Records/Bandcamp]
Sam An assumed the Lana Del Rabies identity around 2015, using this ghoulish parody moniker as a vessel for heavy, emotive industrial music – gothic pop songs, mechanistic rhythms, swathes of distortion. After two albums in 2016 and 2018, An concluded that the Lana Del Rabies name was too tied to the pop star whose own non de plume she had plundered, and shifted to Beata (“Blessed” in Italian) and then Strega Beata (“Blessed witch”, or thereabouts), under which she slipped out a few new demos. But the gravity of a well-known artist name was too great, so she’s decided to preserve good old Lana Del Rabies, using the new name instead for the next album title. Strega Beata is very much a continuation of the style established with her first two releases, and while it doesn’t relinquish the power of distortion, harsh vocals and thundering industrial rhythms, it also allows for more expansive textures, beats that draw from trip-hop and electronica, and varied vocal delivery encompassing spoken word and beautiful harmonies. With lyrics and emotion derived from the personal and planet-wide tragedies of the last few years, there’s a striking range to the music on this album, and recurring motifs that tie it together, through beatless lulls and cathartic explosions.

Depeche Mode – My Cosmos Is Mine [Columbia Records]
Depeche Mode – Don’t Say You Love Me [Columbia Records]
When Andy Fletcher died last year, it was touching hearing the tributes to a man who’d been part of Depeche Mode since their beginnings as an ’80s synth-pop band, through their industrial phases, their kind-of-stadium-rock phases, and all the references to various types of club music and electronic music through the years and decades. Fletch didn’t really play anything or write any music, but he was known as the soul of the band, the vibe guy who kept it together and had an ineffable but essential input into the band’s creative direction. And apparently he was just a genuinely lovely bloke. In any case, Martin L Gore remains a talented, emotive songwriter, David Gahan a remarkable and emotive singer (Gore is too, in fact), and the bandmembers have always found a producer and other collaborators to realise the electronic aspect of their creativity – from Vince Clarke (later of Erasure) through Alan Wilder (later of the excellent Recoil) and then at times drawing in luminaries of the electronic world like Bomb The Bass’s Tim Simenon and the late Mark Bell (of LFO and many a Björk production). This time it’s James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco, which surprises me, but he’s got the chops for that classic synth-pop sound with emo/new-romantic leanings. Also there on engineering, programming and mixing duties is Marta Salogni, who has an impressive list of production/mixing work on her website, and also has a collaboration coming out which I’m excited to hear, with the late Tom Relleen of Tomaga. If I had to guess I’d say Ford is responsible for the undeniable Kraftwerk-isms throughout, and Salogni perhaps the more textural elements, but it’s very likely all-in on everything. And it sounds sumptuous, and there are catchy hooks, and it’s vintage Depeche Mode, which is just a lovely thing to receive in 2023.

Baskot Lel Baltageyya – Baskot (Cookies) [Akuphone/Wall of Sound/Bandcamp]
Baskot Lel Baltageyya – 3azeezy.. (Dearest..) [Akuphone/Wall of Sound/Bandcamp]
A few years ago, the world was introduced to a collaborative Egyptian album called Lekhfa which featured Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh, prodigious Egyptian experimental music Maurice Louca and Palestinian singer Tamer Abu Ghazaleh adpoting the tropes of Egyptian folk and pop songs with experimental electronic production and psychedelic arrangements. The spirit of that collaboration (with lyrics provided by Egyptian poet Mido Zoheir) is felt strongly in the new self-titled album from Baskot Lel Baltageyya (translating as Cookies For Thugs), a project of multi-instrumentalist / producer Adham Zidan and poet Anwar Dabbour (in fact, Mahmoud Waly plays bass on both projects). Here, Zidan’s psych-folk project with Alan Bishop, The Invisible Hands, and his atypical solo folk project Today Is Tomorrow feed into the darkly humourous songs, with often vocoded vocals, drum machines mixed with live drums, synthesizers and electric organs corralled into music which sometimes seems like typical shaabi, sometimes more like Western folk/psych. I wish we had more translations of the lyrics, but we can get a lot out of these odd songs regardless.

5299NOIR – the nude [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
5299NOIR – arc [Esc.rec/Bandcamp]
Describing this one is hard – and that’s undeniably good! Andrea Bambini is a Berlin-based Italian pianist & composr trained in the classical & jazz traditions, also working as a DJ, and on trying to be born before dying, from the ever-intriguing Esc.rec, he hands us a collection of… songs? Deconstructed post-something, hinting at jazz and cabaret, crackling and jolting through hard edits, rumbling into distorted bass, and then folding into quasi-trip-hop samples. These tracks have been sitting on Bambini’s hard drive for some years, and I suspect the title is a reference to getting the material out before it’s lost its vitality or relevance, but to be honest 5299NOIR sounds like about as cutting-edge now as music gets – or one branch of it anyway.

Isabassi – Escapist Foley [Super Hexagon/Bandcamp]
Isabassi – Inadequacy [Super Hexagon/Bandcamp]
Like Bambini above, Isabassi (aka Isabella Bassi) is an Italian musician based in Berlin (and Milan), although she is in fact a Brazilian of Italian extraction. In Isabassi’s work, experimental beats meet dub and bass musics, with found-sounds and field recordings making up the pallette as much as electronics. It’s not all deconstructed/reconstituted club music though – the layered, glitched guitars of “Inadequacy” provide a lovely contrast. It’s all expertly done.

Aphir – Pomegranate Tree (Lack the Low Remix) [Provenance Records/Bandcamp]
Aphir – Red Giant (Arrom Remix) [Provenance Records/Bandcamp]
Provenance Records chief and all-round music biz legend Becki Whitton aka Aphir released her cathartic album Pomegranate Tree in October last year, using her electronically-mediated songs – including her looped, layered “choral” practice developed over the preceding year – to work through some personal turmoil. Despite the very personal nature of this material, she turned over a selection of tracks to close friends for remixing, and the results range from highly simpatico electronic pop to dancefloor works. Kat Hunter aka Lack the Low‘s extraordinary rework of the album’s title track adds lush string arrangements, deep basslines and rattling drums, while Melissa Valence aka Arrom maintains crunchy electronic beats until the last third of her version floats into vocal drone. Speaking of which, the EP is rounded out by Becki’s own choral drone rework as a bonus.

Glamour Lakes – Threadsuns [Glamour Lakes Bandcamp]
We’ve heard a couple of fascinating singles from Adelaide’s Glamour Lakes this year, and now the full album Native Coils is released. It’s a whole album of emotive synth-pop of a somewhat “New Romantic” bent, but only some of the songs have anything resembling ’80s production. We’ve heard the amen breaks on a couple of the songs, and here we have more breaks and interesting production approaches.

Om Unit – Forward [Om Unit Bandcamp]
For a while Om Unit was making some of the most cromulent drum’n’bass & jungle around, but he started out with instrumental hip-hop, dubstep blends and more in the mix, and thus his post-d’n’b output has reached in all sorts of directions (and we just heard the latest/last of his Philip D Kick jungle-footwork blends). The Atlantis EP is very much in techno vein, mixing dub and acid influences, but also “breaks”, like here.

Lynx – This Is Not An Exit [31 Recordings]
Usually Doc Scott’s 31 Recordings is home to very nice dark tech-step style drum’n’bass. You could argue that the new two-tracker from Portsmouth’s Lynx is in that style, but there’s so much sound design and narrative to the tracks – particularly “This Is Not An Exit” – that it seems like something else entirely. It’s not that this hasn’t been done before, by the likes of Dom+Roland or Blocks & Escher for example, but it’s a little surprising when you were expecting ‘floor-fitted traditionalism. I shouldn’t have though, if I’d paid attention to the Lynx name eh!

Somah – Aversion [Somah Bandcamp]
Joe Somah‘s someone I tend to think of in the dubstep context, but here are two tracks that feel more like drum’n’bass/jungle, albeit with a weird half-time nod to them. I love this kind of hybrid shit when done well, as it certainly is here.

contactghost – Escape [Stolen Groove]
London’s Stolen Groove describes itself as “multi-genre”, covering dubstep, breaks and other UK club genres – including drum’n’bass & jungle. Here we have a sparse & fierce jungle track from young Nottingham producer contactghost.

Loopsnake – Elubatel [Loopsnake Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney’s Loopsnake is Andrew Maxam, who hosted a much-loved electronic music show on FBi for some years called Liquid Electric. It’s been a while since we’ve heard his DJing talents or production skills, but now he’s back with Shape Change, a varied EP of IDM, bass and a kind of jittery lo-fi techno on this track.

EXIT ELECTRONICS – KNEEJERKS [JK Flesh Bandcamp]
Last year, Justin K Broadrick debuted EXIT ELECTRONICS as a danker, slower, filthier version of the ultra-distorted industrial techno he’s been doing as JK Flesh. This stuff is just as overdriven to the max, bass heavy and relentless – well, not quite relentless. Tracks like this as just a tiny bit less maxed out pehraps. Broadrick dropped this second album, believe anything, believe everything on Bandcamp with no warning this week.

Koenraad Ecker – RACING MUSIC #4 [Koenraad Ecker Bandcamp]
Koenraad Ecker – Copper Mountain [Koenraad Ecker Bandcamp]
Koenraad Ecker – Mami Wata (feat. Audrey Chen) [Koenraad Ecker Bandcamp]
Somehow we’re managing to follow JK Flesh/Exit Electronics with something almost as intense… briefly. Belgian cellist and sound-artist Koenraad Ecker is known to me equally for his mutated club music with duos Lumisokea and Stray Dogs (both of which strayed into beatless sound design frequently), and for his electro-acoustic works involving cello and myriad sound sources. Ecker has recently uploaded a stash of unreleased music to his Bandcamp, encompassing stereo mixes of installation works, high-definition field recordings, found-sound constructions, and the two works featured tonight. RACING MUSIC is two short, sharp electronic tracks made for a car racing game – perhaps the level of distortion along with hammering kicks was too much for the game designers. In high contrast is Copper Mountain, a rich and wondrous electro-acoustic stew of differently pitched (and re-pitched, stretched, bent) chimes (including a “very drunk carillon”), field recordings, and one one track, the haunted voice of fellow cellist and vocal experimentalist Audrey Chen, accompanied by low-pitched chimes & hard-to-place field recordings. Beautiful and surprising.

Jim Nopédie – winter sun through train window [Jim Nopédie Bandcamp]
Jim Nopédie – clear rushing river [Jim Nopédie Bandcamp]
When I last played the music of James Gales on this show, I commented that his music as Jim Nopédie didn’t really have the impressionist piano gestures you’d expect from the Eric Satie reference in his name. New mini-album Keep It Rolling clearly shows, though, that Satie and his ilk are dear to Gales’ heart. Gales approached the music here with the intent of creating something gentle & positive, in contrast with the feeling of the times. And so indeed, we get shimmery piano improvisations and skipping, light-footed electronica. If you’re looking for a little respite from the heaviness of the now, look no further.

Gregory Paul Mineeff – To Quieten [NOOX]
To round things out, some even more subdued piano from Wollongong’s Gregory Paul Mineeff, who often combines piano or guitar with electronics, but here it’s pure piano for Piano Day 2023. UK-based composer Doug Thomas released the Piano Day compilation Cristofori on the guideline of “composition meets improvisation”, which is right up Mineeff’s alley. “To Quieten” begins with a simple classical chorale before the melody beautifully winds out into baroque, jazz-like twirls.

Listen again — ~210MB

Industrial metal/hip-hop/jungle crossovers, mutant beats, lysergic dub, psychedelic electronic pop… Got you covered.

LISTENing AGAIN is your privilege and pleasure. FBi lets you stream on demand, or podcast here.

BRACT X BAYANG (tha Bushranger) – INTRO [Bract Bandcamp]
BRACT X BAYANG (tha Bushranger) – HOMESICK [Bract Bandcamp]
BRACT X BAYANG (tha Bushranger) – BLOODYFIST (ft. ZK King) [Bract Bandcamp]
Some 5 years ago or so I discovered an Eora/Sydney band called Coward Punch, making growling, throbbing industrial metal & noise, and sending all the profits of their EPs to Grandmothers Against Removal (debut) and Black Rainbow (follow-up). Those releases sat in my collection, but somehow I missed that the band renamed themselves BRACT, so when this phenomenal collaboration with Dharug/Western Sydney-based rapper BAYANG (tha Bushranger) came out, it took me a minute to make the connection. Anyway, BAYANG has clear delivery and hella flow (check this drum’n’bass-laden track produced by Kuya Neil), and hearing him over these chugging industrial rhythms and murky textures is a strange thrill. The artists see it as a musical representation of the often-hellish melting-pot that is Sydney, a place where (thankfully) punk, noise, hip-hop and club sounds rub freely up against each other – something I’m convinced we can at least to some degree thank FBi Radio and its various music directors for. In any case, this is a no-holds-barred, vicious, scungey piece of filth – although there are moments of light, like the vocal from ZK King (aka Jamie Marina Lau).

Mutant Joe – 87 Yams ft. Apoc Krysis [Steel City Dance Discs/Bandcamp]
Mutant Joe – Collapse [Steel City Dance Discs/Bandcamp]
Originally from Meanjin/Brisbane, now based in Berlin, Mutant Joe is truly a purveyor of mutant beats, and he’ll mutate any beat as long as it’s got strong bass and syncopation, so it seems to these ears. Thus on Collapse, his new EP for Steel City Dance Discs (themselves originally from Mulubinba/Newcastle and now based in the hellscape of London), we’ve got hard drum and dancehall-influenced techno, heavy on the bass, with rappers from the US & UK – and yes, the final instrumental track is an anxious drum’n’bass banger.

Bandish Projekt – Shyam feat. Isha Nair [Bheja Fry Records]
Drum’n’bass is one of the genres that feeds into the hybrid musical spaces of Bandish Projekt. At times it’s been a trio, but now it’s back to Mayur Narvekar with collaborators. On “Shyam”, Isha Nair sings a bandish in Raag Puriya Dhanashri. This is good as any example of what Narvekar is doing with Bandish Projekt – combining beautifully performed Indian classical melodies with Western beats. There’s a long tradition of fusion of this sort by South Asian musicians, and I’m always excited to hear something new from Bandish Projekt, especially as we’re only getting one or two tracks a year these days.

Pugilist & Tamen – Synesthesia [Dext Recs/Bandcamp]
Both Pugilist & Tamen are based in Naarm/Melbourne at the moment: Alex Dickson moved there from NZ, and Luke O’Higgins spent some time as a jungle DJ and promoter in Barcelona before coming to Oz. Pugilist has been making world-class music from dubstep through bass/breaks-infused techno to jungle/drum’n’bass since his New Zealand Days. The Lithium EP is the latest junglist monster from the duo… or is it? It’s certainly junglish, all the way through, but it opens with a techno/breaks hybrid that’s like a harcore jungle tekno track from the very early ’90s updated for modern ears. And track 2, which we heard tonight, is a deep, moody 160bpm burner, that sweet spot where dubstep/dancehall bass interacts with jungle breaks. On the flip, Tim Reaper and Dwarde take the title track up a gear into jungle territory, and the EP ends with more hardcore/jungle tekno biz.

Law – All Styles [RuptureLDN/Bandcamp]
From just north of London, Repertoire boss Law (who coincidentally released Pugilist & Tamen’s first EP) joins RuptureLDN with an EP perfectly suited for their love of cutting-edge jungle. Each track slices & dices beats in different ways, whether hinting at tech-step’s one/two rhythms, or blasting full breaks – but oh, the lovely percussive intro on the opener, and that bass drop at 1:10! Gorrrrrgeous.

Antagonist – Observe [R&S Records/Bandcamp]
Manchester drum’n’bass producer Mike aka Antagonist goes deep on his debut for R&S Records, the Rites EP. No question the drum’n’bass roots are present here, but there’s a widescreen cinematic feel, and I love the cymbal-smashing live drum loop sitting at the centre of the beats on “Observe”.

The Blood Of Heroes – Salute to the Jugger [Ohm Resistance]
The Blood of Heroes – New Orleans [Ohm Resistance]
Submerged – Inexorable [Ohm Resistance]
The Blood of Heroes – Lower Atlantis [Ohm Resistance]
Kurt Gluck’s Ohm Resistance label has provided consistent fodder for Utility Fog basically since the start. In the early-to-mid 2000s, breakcore was a big part of the show’s genetics; a little later there was dubstep, and industrial influences have always been favoured too. Gluck’s own music manifests in solo form as Submerged (it was very briefly a duo at the start), with tough, heavy drum’n’bass that’s moved with the times and has room for other heavy musics like metal guitars and industrial textures, and at times some respite from the storm. Submerged re-emerged last month with FURY, an intense & angry album over 2 CDs with clever rhythm-work and sonic detail that initially masquerades as a relentless tumult of beats and distortion. The second CD holds something magic though, with a 20-minute and a 12-minute track which cast the net wide, capturing classical samples and almost-calm sorrowfulness as well as further bouts of FURY.
But this is not Gluck’s only release for 2023. Just out this coming week is the new album from the brilliant The Blood Of Heroes, a supergroup of sorts that began in 2010 with an album featuring Bill Laswell on bass (a frequent collaborator with Submerged on many of his own fusions of jazz & other genres with drum’n’bass), the ever-great UFog favourite Justin K Broadrick on guitar, Enduser providing beats & textures alongside Gluck, and Dr Israel on vocals (there are more but that’s the core). Dr Israel’s lyrics base themselves around the rich post-apocalyptic world of the Australian-American cult movie The Salute of the Jugger (released in the United States as, yes, The Blood of Heroes), which featured not only Rutger Hauer, but also Joan Chen & Vincent D’Onofrio among others – oh, and it was written & directed by David Webb Peoples, co-writer of Blade Runner and later co-creator of 12 Monkeys. If you’re choosing a film to immerse your industrial metal/breakcore/dub supergroup in, you probably couldn’t choose better – but really, the self-titled debut of this group easily transcends the “supergroup” concept as well as its Mad Max-ish setting with the evocative thrums and thrashes of Broadrick’s guitar (somewhere between Godflesh and Jesu), Laswell’s bass grounding, the dub/dubstep/drum’n’bass beats rising and falling (along with Balázs Pándi’s live drums on a few tracks)… and Dr Israel’s righteous delivery. There was a second album from the collective in 2003 and then it seemed to be over… yet here we are in 2023, gifted with Nine Cities, once again with Broadrick’s guitars, Dr Israel’s further vocal riffs on the movie’s setting, both Submerged and Enduser along with Mick Harris (Scorn), Fear Factory’s Burton C Bell, and many others. Again it’s that kind of massive collaboration that suggests overblown overreach, but thanks to Gluck & co’s good judgement, it’s just another collection of great songs merging these very sympathetic genres together. Long may they reign!

Moderat – FAST LAND (The Bug‘s Kevin Richard Martin Remix) [Monkeytown Records/Bandcamp]
Moderat – UNDO REDO (ZULI Remix) [Monkeytown Records/Bandcamp]
I slightly lost track of Moderat, the collaboration between the Modeselektor duo and Sascha Ring aka Apparat, but when any of these folks compile a remix album you’d better pay attention. EVEN MORE D4TA does the business, easily. There are TWO remixes from The Bug – one in the style of his G36 collaboration with Gorgonn, and one in more expansive “Kevin Richard Martin” style. There’s good female representation, with Sydney’s Logic 1000, yeule & Kin Leonn, Marie Davidson and SHERELLE all present. There’s something murky & ambient from Bristol’s Batu, French dancehall-mutator Sylvere, South African gqom pioneer DJ Lag, and then there’s Cairo’s brilliant ZULI, who here creates something absolutely manic, building from weirdly overlaid vocal snippets into a deconstructed footwork monster.

Kemperton – Jeopardizer Dubwav [raghoul/Bandcamp]
Archidi – Vº]V[ºV [raghoul/Bandcamp]
I said last week that the compilation Crocodile Tears in a Reptilian World from the Morocco/Netherlands label raghoul was brilliant – almost every track warrants airplay over here. So, here are two more tracks, both from Moroccan artists based in Casablanca. Both bring the bass (“raghoul”) in uncompromising fashion. Kemperton‘s sub bass throbs under a trip-hop-style beat, wobbling synth delays and processed howls, while Archidi‘s overdriven glitching drum machines grow out of distorted timestretched vocal samples.

Lårry – Angela’s Knife [BRUK/Bandcamp]
Who is Lårry? They’re a Berlin-based artist working in the interstices of techno, IDM and contempoorary jungle, with releases on various influential European labels and now landing on soundsystem-obsessed BRUK, one of a number of labels connected with Low End Activist. The bruk is strong on the four sparse & spooky tracks on Lårry’s How Was That For You, with super-tweaked amen breaks rattling in & out of techno, dancehall & dubstep hybrids, finally landing on something properly drum’n’bass-like by track 4.

Morwell – In the Dark [Morwell Bandcamp (forthcoming)]
Once again Max Morwell has graced us with a sneak peek at his next release, in this case an EP called In the Dark which will be up on his Bandcamp next week I believe. It is somewhat on the dark side, with lopsided beats and short-cut vocal samples – oh, but then the third track “Because of You” has sweet dancehall vocal samples and judicious bass drops throughout – keep your eyes out for the whole EP!

Tadleeh – The Unexpected [YOUTH]
HR FOR DRUG DEALERS – COCAINE [YOUTH]
Manchester’s iconoclastic YOUTH label is run by DJ Andrew Lyster in gregarious fashion, with bass at its heart, but everything from ambient to postpunk to weirdfolk allowed entry if Lyster favours it. Their third compilation, Sports 3 has just come out on CD & digital, and showcases this proudly leftfield range, with contributors far beyond Manchester’s sprawl. Indian-born Milan-based Hazina Francia aka Tadleeh brings bass swoops and spooky keys for her entry, while the mysterious and cheekily-named HR FOR DRUG DEALERS take jazzy keys and bury them in wub-wubbing sub-bass and a glitched-out beat.

Keplrr x Human Resources – Spring [Pressure Dome]
Bristol label Pressure Dome celebrate collaboration with their Two [Is Great Than] One compilation, teaming label mainstays up with some great external producers. You’ve got syncopated bass techno master Delay Grounds and sound-art/beatsmith Wordcolour, and throughout there are unconventional re-settings of jungle, like the collab here between London’s Keplrr and Bristol’s Human Resources, fracturing its pleasant static synth loops and dancehall-techno headnoddery with raging break-choppery.

Isolated Gate – Mankind Will Disappear [Darla/Bandcamp]
Isolated Gate – As the Great Brain Pulsates [Darla/Bandcamp]
The team-up of Adelaide’s post-IDM auteur Tim Koch and angelic-voiced shoegaze-legend Ian Masters, once of 4AD’s Pale Saints, seemed at first like a strangely unexpected phenomenon, but Koch’s sweeping granular constructions and Masters’ instinct for melody fit together like your favourite combo of things that go together, you know the one. Although there have been a couple of excellent EP/mini-album thingies already, the weird & wonderful US label Darla have now brought us the debut album proper, Universe in Reverse. Full disclosure: the first selection tonight features layers of cello constructed from recordings I made with Tim on a visit just as things were opening up last year. I take no credit, though, for the wonderful music they’re weaved into. This is psychedelic, swirling, throbbing, crunching experimental electronic pop of the highest order. There will be vinyl & CD coming soon, but grab the digital on Bandcamp now, or stream it if you fucking insist. Geez.

Listen again — ~214MB