Punk/grunge/hip-hop, drum’n’bass, drill’n’bass, experimental beats, industrial beats, contemporary & “neo-classical”, tape experiments, vocal sampling and drones…

LISTEN AGAIN to the in sound from way out, via podcast here or stream on demand from FBi Radio.

Wu-Lu – Night Pills Feat Asha [Warp/Bandcamp]
Wu-Lu – Blame [Warp/Bandcamp]
Wu-Lu – Ten [Warp/Bandcamp]
Brixton’s Miles Romans-Hopcraft has been making hip-hop as Wu-Lu since 2015, but for his new album Loggerhead, his debut on Warp, he’s gotten angry and political, and backs up the rapping with a mix of grungy punk and even drum’n’bass beats at times. It puts him in the company of the likes of Tampa Bay’s They Hate Change on the one hand, and fellow Londoners Bob Vylan on the other. Wu-Lu doesn’t really sounds like either, let alone the ’90s intergalactic punk-rock hip-hop of Pop Will Eat Itself or anyone else. And sounding exactly like oneself is a great place to be, especially at a time like this.

Jaise – Subterranean [Ohm Resistance]
The Ohm Resistance label released tha latest (and last?) of their free download compilations, Perihelion Infinite this week, featuring their usual mix of intense industrial, drum’n’bass, dubstep and techno. Here we have an excellent piece of dark jungle/d’n’b from Perth’s Jaise, who’s had releases on the likes of Metalheadz.

Forest Drive West – Sustain [Ilian Tape/Bandcamp]
UK artist Forest Drive West has one of the most intruging careers, successful both with bass-heavy techno and jungle. That’s perfect for the great Ilian Tape, where for his debut on the label he starts with the weight somewhat on the techno side, but leans heavily on jungle & d’n’b for most, including a superb rolling track in 7/4.

Christoph de Babalon – I Trusted You [Super Hexagon/Bandcamp]
It’s been nice hearing scads of archival material from Digital Hardcore veteran Christoph de Babalon over the last few years, but also getting new material of equal darkness and fierceness. His Leaving Time EP for Super Hexagon retains the junglist roots, but the four tracks are more around the 140bpm range, bringing a different tone to the approaching menace.

lynyn – stumbling [Sooper Records/Bandcamp]
lynyn – in dust [Sooper Records/Bandcamp]
Chicago producer Conor Mackey debuts as lynyn for the gregarious Chicago label Sooper Records with Lexicon, an album that nods furiously towards ’90s IDM, especially drill’n’bass, especially, it has to be said, Squarepusher – as well as the early drill’n’bass/breakcore of The Flashbulb. The breakneck basslines and chopped beats are all there, but there’s a contemporary twist to the production and the frequent shifts throughout the tracks. It’s super fun anyway.

Kode9 – Lagrange Point [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Kode9 – The Break Up [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Hyperdub boss Steve Goodman aka Kode9 hasn’t released an album since 2015, but then that was his one solo album – the previous two being collabs with the sadly-missed poet The Spaceape. Still, he’s released a bunch of killer EPs & singles through the years (and many a genius remix), and last year’s 2-tracker The Jackpot/Rona City Blues is a nice prequel to this new album Escapology, which is part deconstructed club and part sci-fi soundtrack fx, and acts as a musical prequel itself to a “sonic fiction” called Astro-Darien, coming out in October on Hyperdub sub-label Flatlines. Here we have Kode9’s signature fidgety toppy sounds influenced by uk garage and footwork as well as dubstep and drum’n’bass. It’s bass music, but strangely with an emphasis away from the bass frequencies. Fascinating and influential dude anyway.

Church Andrews & Matt Davies – Ghost [Health]
Church Andrews & Matt Davies – Romanesque [Health]
Kirk Barley has released music on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records as Bambooman, under his own name, and more recently as Church Andrews. He’s collaborated for a long time with drummer Matt Davies, and their duo has developed into a masterful interchange of modular synthesis and live & programmed drumming, with the two musicians melding into one mind, lopsided rhythms moving together on synths and drums. Apparently the drums in part trigger the electronics – and perhaps vice versa? Absorbing and never not odd.

Vladislav Delay – Isovitutus [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Vladislav Delay – Isooo [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti, most frequently known as Vladislav Delay, has always kept himself busy. In the last few years he’s released an album under his “Ripatti” pseudonym, an album with Sly & Robbie and a previous one with the duo and Norwegians Nils Petter Molvær and Eivind Aarset and the albums Rakka and Rakka II as Vladislav Delay – as well as various other collaborations including one we’ll hear next week. Isoviha is his new album on Planet µ, and it’s a successor to the two “Rakka” albums, which were tributes to the awesome power of nature. Here we find ourselves rather in the city, and the “industrial” sound of Rakka is make manifest with pummelling rhythms – albeit infrequently in any kind of recognizable metric. In any case it’s vintage Delay.

Enxin/Onyx – Dorothy [Enxin/Onyx Bandcamp]
Here’s a really interesting new duo project. Enxin here is Nicky Mao, best known as Hiro Kone, groundbreaking techno and experimental electronic artist from New York. Tot Onyx is the alter-ego of Tommi Tokyo, one half of Berlin/Tokyo experimental techno duo Group A. Their debut EP Dorothy showcases both musicians’ love of postpunk as much as hardware-based techno, with angular rhythms, sinuous basslines and at times Tokyo’s snarling vocals.

Barking – Host [brokntoys/Bandcamp]
Barking – Vacuum [brokntoys/Bandcamp]
Also based in Berlin nowadays is Melbourne musician Gareth Psaltis, aka Barking. His new self-titled album (or mini-album, or… long EP?) is released on long-lived UK label brokntoys, and also shows a postpunk influence alongside IDM and techno strains. Tracks vary from dark and percussive to soothingly melodic.

Angelina Yershova – Walking On Water [Twin Paradox Records/Bandcamp]
Angelina Yershova, Ynaktera – Cluster Light [Twin Paradox Records/Bandcamp]
I discovered Rome-based Kazakh composer Angelina Yershova in 2019 with the release of her Cosmotengri album on her own Twin Paradox Records, an ecological album of piano and electronics, which succeeds in being nothing like the reams of post-classical (sorry, “neo-classical”) piano with tasteful electronics which reproduce via Spotify playlists. Her follow-up, Time For Change, emphasises the electronics not only on Yershova’s own tracks but also through collaboration with Italian producer Ynaktera, who I first heard via his 2018 album with Japanese pianist Kenta Kamiyama. The two musicians’ styles fit very well together, and the album comfortably follows Yershova’s last one.

Cheri Knight – Water Project #2261 [Freedom To Spend/Bandcamp]
Cheri Knight – Prime Numbers [Freedom To Spend/Bandcamp]
Freedom To Spend, who I last encountered with their timely revival of Pamela Z‘s Echolocation album from 1988, now unearths a selection of early 1980s recordings from American musician Cheri Knight. You’d be forgiven for not recognizing Knight’s name, as she performed in the alt-country band Blood Oranges in the ’90s, and then disappeared from musical life. But in the early ’80s, she had the opportunity to experiment with multitrack recording and constructed some extraordinary before-their-time collages, whether of piano-with-field recordings, or a number of wonderful pieces of layered staccato vocals with abstract yet incisive lyrics and little more than a drum machine. It’s exciting to have the unfairly-buried work of female artists from decades past revived and celebrated like this.

Ola Szmidt – Rooted [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
Ola Szmidt – C Tactile Afferent [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
In an unplanned parallel, we move from Cheri Knight’s vocal layers to Ola Szmidt‘s self-sampling and processing, for her understated, stunning EP3, her first to be released on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records. Here Szmidt, a Polish musician based in the UK, draws from her knowledge of jazz, soul, contemporary classical, and various European folk traditions, to create beguiling abstract songs from vocal sampling and looping. Herbert’s label is a perfect fit – also of note is a prior mentorship with Four Tet. Hopefully more material will follow through Accidental.

Madeleine Cocolas – Presence [Room40/Bandcamp]
Madeleine Cocolas – Resonance [Room40/Bandcamp]
We finish with a gorgeous new work from Brisbane musician Madeleine Cocolas, who returned to Australia a couple of years ago after time in Vancouver and New York. Spectral finds Cocolas weathering the Covid lockdown in her own way, collecting the sounds of her neighbourhood on daily walks, which are woven into a musical narrative, expressing deep emotions through the sounds of industrial machinery, swarms of crickets and huge storms, combined with Cocolas’ sensitive keyboards and piano. In the middle of the album, eight-minute track “And Then I Watch It Fall Apart” is a harrowing crescendo of tension, and while I couldn’t fit it tonight, its tension wondrously releases in the following track “Resonance”, which closes tonight’s show.

Listen again — ~199MB

IDM, glitch, postrock and folktronica – all the core Utility Fog genres tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN at the FBi website for stream-on-demanding, or here for podcasting.

µ-Ziq – Midwinter Log [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
µ-Ziq – Brace Yourself Jason [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
µ-Ziq – Kubba [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
So here it is – no, not that, the other one. The (wonderful) new µ-Ziq album Magic Pony Ride, released a few weeks ago, is a tribute to the jungle and hardcore sounds that Mike was deeply invested in when he produced the music for his dearly beloved Lunatic Harness album and accompanying EPs in 1997. Now that album is re-released with all the EP tracks and a few other rarities, in 2CD and quadruple(!) vinyl form. Following the drum’n’bass experiments of Urmer Bile Trax Vol 1 & 2, Lunatic Harness finds all the melodic invention, faux-classical synths and super-crunchy beats of µ-Ziq’s earliest work combined with thrilling jungle-inspired cut-up beats. There are clear links to Aphex Twin & Squarepusher’s adaptation of jungle, but the character of Paradinas’ composing and production is like noone else really. It’s a delight to have this celebrated 25 years later, and vinyl lovers will be happy with the multiple-disc set.

ltfll – lY11 [irsh]
Yaseen – Siteh ft Dakn [irsh]
Ismael – Faster [irsh]
Egyptian DJ Rama and Egyptian electronic producer/genius ZULI started irsh in 2020, as a way of getting together with friends and sharing sessions on YouTube. The pandemic quickly killed off the in-person get-togethers, and the project became a label, releasing the brilliant compilation did you mean: irish in September of that year, with many experimental electronic artists from Egypt featured. Now comes the second compilation, again amusingly referencing Google’s suggested misspelling, and this time featuring some of the same higher-profile artists along with new and lesser-known Egyptian producers. There’s a range from ambient sounds with MENA influence to a lot of jungle-inspired tracks, and more. Alexandrian George Farid aka ltfll gives us the junglist beats of “lY11”, Cairo’s Yaseen Akram collaborates with Palestinian Dakn combining rap with halftime jungle beats, and also from Cairo, Ismael Hosny’s “Faster” also has junglist beats at its core.

Cocktail Party Effect – C_A_T_C_R [Sneaker Social Club]
A Londoner based in Berlin, Cocktail Party Effect always mixes up the UK bass sounds, with dubstep, garage, techno and drum’n’bass influences all present. From his new EP for Sneaker Social Club I’ve chosen, yep, the most jungle-inspired of the tracks.

Maya Q – beno (soft) [All Centre]
But speaking of UK garage, here’s a lovely melodic piece reminiscent of Four Tet’s garage period from Maya Q. Her track appears on a split 12″ with Endless Mow released on the excellent forward-thinking London label All Centre.

Grids/Units/Planes – Follow The City’s Lights [False Peak Records/Bandcamp]
Grids/Units/Planes – Harp Particle Pursuit [False Peak Records/Bandcamp]
I first discovered Grids/Units/Planes last year remixing the countrytronic A Country Practice. Brisvegan Andrew Foley has a number of projects, including circuit-bent YEARNS with Joel from A Country Practice, and the shoegazetronica of Make A Montage. As G/U/P it’s the most IDMish, beat-oriented stuff, albeit still with pretty shoegazey textures – very nice.

Wrecked Lightship – Found Beast [Dead Bison]
Wrecked Lightship – Radial Geometry [Dead Bison]
Some deep aquatic sounds from Wrecked Lightship, the duo of Adam Winchester from experimental bass project Dot Product and Laurie Osborne aka Appleblim. Both artists’ background in mutated dubstep is here in the dubby atmos and bass frequencies, but it’s all very submerged and often rather abstract.

Deepchild – Mystery Not Yet Become [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
Deepchild – Final Breath [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
Deepchild – Now It Is Me Being Breathed (unreleased bonus track) [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
Surely album of the week here from Sydney legend Rick Bull aka Deepchild, who’s had his own shows on FBi and 2ser in the past, and spent many years in Berlin DJing at Berghain and the like and solidifying his techno credentials. This is not techno really though. Released on the also legendary now-revived ’90s label Mille Plateaux, it has nods to the classic minimal techno of Basic Channel and the glitch of early Mego and of course Mille Plateaux itself – moreso than the current hyperglitch and other trends MP is following. The gorgeous Fathersong finds Deepchild simultaneously waxing nostalgic for a closed-down club scene and dealing with the heartache of watching from afar as his father passes away in aged care – one of the great injustices of the pandemic lockdowns. The result is deeply moving, from ambient recollections of chorales to half-heard distant techno.

Tegh & Adel Poursamadi – Ijaad ایجاد [Injazero Records/Bandcamp]
Tegh & Adel Poursamadi – Mornaal مرنال [Injazero Records/Bandcamp]
Istanbul/London label Injazero Records releases the first in a new series from Tehran’s Tegh working with acoustic instrumentalists. On Ima ایما fellow Iranian violinist Adel Poursamadi draws from Persian classical music as well as drone, arranged by Tegh along with his signature rumbling bass and stretched, glitched electronic processing. It’s powerful stuff – that we’re promised a whole series of this is something to be excited about.

Michel Banabila – Sounds From An Unforgettable Place 2 [Michel Banabila Bandcamp]
There’s no doubt that the late Jon Hassell‘s “fourth world” ambient is a big influence on the experimental analogue/digital electronic world music of Dutch musician Michel Banabila. Hassell passed away in June last year, and the digital EP Sounds From An Unforgettable Place is Banabila’s touching tribute to Hassell.

Rok Zalokar – McBeing [Nature Scene Records/Bandcamp/via Wire Mag]
One of the tracks from Tegh & Poursamadi’s album is featured on the latest Wire Tapper cover CD from UK experimental music institution The Wire, and from that same CD is a track by Slovenian pianist Rok Zalokar. Zalokar’s gregarious approach to genre (a jazz-trained composer also playing in a noise/hip-hop duo) is evident here in this sampled & programmed organised chaos.

Party Dozen – Risky Behaviour [GRUPO/Temporary Residence/Bandcamp]
Party Dozen – Earthly Times [GRUPO/Temporary Residence/Bandcamp]
Sydney’s Party Dozen are finally poised to take over the world, with features in all sorts of international press thanks to their new album The Real Work being released internationally via Temporary Residence (*ahem* also the label of my band Tangents). As usual there’s sampled riffage and tough drums from Jonathan Boulet and wailing saxophone and occasional vocals-through-sax from Kirsty Tickle (and a prominent if brief cameo from Nick Cave on one track). There are also a couple of slightly less hard rockin’ tracks there: “Earthly Times” sports a sinister Birthday Party-like bassline, post-punk drums and snake-charming sinuous sax, with free jazz outbursts (The Thing and Fire! come to mind), while album closer “Risky Behaviour” brings sumptuous Wurlitzer-style organ along with the rhythm section to support Tickle’s impassioned saxophone – recreating the funksploitation sampled by trip-hoppers back in the day.

Mice Parade – Finding Faces [Mice Parade Bandcamp]
Mice Parade – Milton Road (Blizzard Version) [Mice Parade Bandcamp]
Once regular UFog faves, Mice Parade haven’t released a new album since 2013. They represent a kind of alternate path for postrock, which in the late ’90s got bogged down in Mogwai/Explosions in the Sky/MONO-style tremolo melodies and loud/soft/loud rock theatrics for decades hence, while the jazz inflections, live/electronic beats and fusions of the likes of Tortoise and yes, Mice Parade, were mostly sidelined. Adam Pierce started Mice Parade as an entirely solo affair (it’s an anagram of his name after all), a side-project from the marimba & vibraphone-led Dylan Group, also released on Pierce’s Bubble Core label, which mixed slacker-indie with electronic and postrock. Mice Parade turned into a full band with members of June of 44 and múm among others, and a keen interest in mixing world music influences into the indie, postrock and electronic stew. The music on lapapọ was developed in the intervening years since Mice Parade’s last album and tour, with many historic members contributing, and it lay completed for a year or two while the pandemic (of course) interrupted plans for a regrouped world tour. It comes now with a limited vinyl edition and is finally available digitally on Bandcamp as well. It does have everything that we loved about Mice Parade in the first place, a nice nostalgic reminder of a different musical path.

Akusmi – Divine Moments of Truth [Tonal Union/Bandcamp]
That said, there are elements of the Mice Parade / Tortoise approach to postrock in ’00s folktronica and electronic-meets-jazz of folk like our own Triosk. Here London-based French composer Pascal Bideau aka Akusmi mixes classical minimalism with jazz, electronic and Indonesian gamelan, producing a new take on folktronica, with saxophone, trombone, drums, acoustic guitars and gamelan percussion pulsing and phasing rhythmically in ways that elude identification of what’s performed live and what’s arranged electronically. At its best it’s exhilarating.

Listen again — ~204MB

Experimental song, experimental folk, experimental beats, sound-art.
Thanks to the legend Marcus Whale for stepping in at the last minute last Sunday when I fell ill with Covid and was entirely unable to do the show. Feeling better now thanks (but will the fatigue ever go away?)

LISTENING AGAIN may improve your symptoms. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Shearwater – Xenarthran [Polyborus/Bandcamp]
Shearwater – Everyone You Touch [Polyborus/Bandcamp]
I first fell in love with Shearwater circa their very first album, where Jonathan Meiburg started making folky postrock with Will Sheff as a side project from Okkervil River. The influence of late-period Talk Talk has always lain heavily over their music (including bird & tree motifs on their early album artwork), but there’s a characteristic Shearwater sound, partly purely from Meiburg’s soulful vocals and his melodic/harmonic tendencies, and partly from the subtleties of the arrangements, the skittery jazzy percussion and postrocky dynamics. The last Shearwater album came out in 2016, just in time for Donald Trump to take power in the US. Six years later, Trump’s gone and there was some sense of hope (much of which has been sapped now with the realisation of the intentions of the Republicans’ Supreme Court), and that ambivalent sense of, well, something, is what led to The Great Awakening, which is a return of sorts to the original sound – with particularly phenomenal string arrangements adorning many of the tracks. It’s a special one, this.

Ashley Paul – Escape [Orange Milk Records/Bandcamp]
Ashley Paul – Not Myself [Orange Milk Records/Bandcamp]
Following a couple of stunning albums on Slip, the wonderful London-based American musician Ashley Paul returns to Orange Milk Records with the same trio as her 2020 album Ray – Yoni Silver on bass clarinet & viola, Otto Wilberg on double bass, and Ashley Paul herself on sax, clarinet, percussion and vocals. This is another set of sparkling yet subtle songs, obliquely touching.

Hatis Noit – Jomon [Erased Tapes/Bandcamp]
Hatis Noit – chuchr ideins ouy [Virgin Babylon Records/Bandcamp]
Singular Japanese singer Hatis Noit releases her first album on Erased Tapes with Aura. It’s one of those weird signings that makes total sense when you hear the final product – I knew Hatis Noit for her very Japanese, glitchy productions like the bizarre track I played second, from the mighty Virgin Babylon Records, with her multi-tracked choral constructions chopped up in fine fashion. For this new album, her voice is the only instrument, very much layered up but not edited in any obvious way. Operatic and choral sounding techniques abound, but so do full-throated approaches from Bulgarian folk styles, and extended techniques. The original recordings from Japan were taken to London during lockdown, where Erased Tapes’ Robert Raths suggested re-amping them in a church, giving the multi-tracked recordings a physical, live feel.

Cameron Deyell, Laurence Pike – Greta [Endless Recordings/Bandcamp]
Cameron Deyell, Laurence Pike – Calling [Endless Recordings/Bandcamp]
Two jazz-trained, broadly exploratory Australian musicians team up here for Isola, an album of shimmering soundscapes and skittering rhythms. Guitarist Cameron Deyell plays with many jazz masters, but also with pop stars. Laurence Pike is of course known for his complex drumming with PVT and Triosk, and here his playing draws from the drum’n’bass-via-jazz of his earlier work and also the percussion and live samples of his more recent solo efforts.

François Robin & Mathias Delplanque – Perdu [Parenthèses Records/Bandcamp]
L’Ombre de la Bête (“Shadow of the Beast”) finds François Robin pitting his chosen instrument the veueze (a French bagpipe), along with doudouk, mizmar and violin, against the electro-acoustics of Mathias Delplanque. The result isn’t so much folktronica as a natural music from a parallel reality, with krautrock grooves, drones and plucked ostinati combining in whirling motion.

Nanook Of The North – Heide III [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Nanook Of The North – Heide VII [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Nanook Of The North – Pingajoq [Denovali/Bandcamp]
The debut self-titled album from Polish duo Nanook Of The North was a revelation at the time – combining the talents of DJ/producer Piotr Kaliński, who records club-adjacent music as Hatti Vatti, with classical musician Stefan Wesołowski, a collaborator with another electronic/post-classical Polish artist, Michał Jacaszek. The first album has a very northern European feel, with ambient depth and bassy beats. For follow-up Heide, again released on Denovali, the duo emphasize their classical side, with very few beats and with help from mezzo-soprano Margarita Slepakova on many tracks. It’s very cinematic and rather avant-garde.

Prequel Tapes – Alone [VEYL/Bandcamp]
Prequel Tapes – I Hate You [VEYL/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based Prequel Tapes has been responsible for some nostalgia-fuelled ambient and techno, driven initially by unearthed VHS & DAT tapes from his youth. On his latest album The Golden Cage, Marco Freivogel includes his own voice for the first time, albeit mostly through vocoder effects, and this is a guide to the approach – ’80s electronic pop meets rave aesthetics through a contemporary glaze. It’s energetic and works well as a pop/dancefloor crossover.

The Fear Ratio – Death Switch (feat. King Kashmere) [Tresor/Bandcamp]
The Fear Ratio – STMS [Tresor/Bandcamp]
IDM duo The Fear Ratio are made up of UK techno producers James Ruskin and Mark Broom, so it’s a little bit less bizarre to find their latest effort released by legendary Berlin techno club Tresor. Nevertheless, this is typical little melodies, crunchy syncopated beats and basslines found in IDM since the ’90s, albeit with some vocal guests on a few tracks such as UK rapper King Kashmere – a reminder of their recent EP from Seagrave under the Deadhand alias. UK bass genres like grime certainly feature here too, but it’s mainly glitchy beats as per Gescom et al, and very fine too.

Sig Nu Gris – Amphibia Blip Eladril [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Sig Nu Gris – Space Alen 100 [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Melbourne’s Erin Hyde aka Sig Nu Gris became essential listening as soon as Spirit Level released her first earliest singles, including the edits she calls “Fixations“. Her debut album Threshold finds her trying to express the inexpressible about surviving Melbourne’s endless lockdowns with very little to do except make music. So the dancefloor is there, mashed up with IDM and experimental sound techniques, along with ambient sound design and a strange psychedelia. It’s undeniably fun though, and brilliantly produced.

Esc – Lumberjack’s Groove [Straight Up Breakbeat/Bandcamp]
Finland’s a surprising home to a highly dedicated drum’n’bass & jungle scene, and Straight Up Breakbeat has become a great outlet for that talent. Here’s Esc with some dark jungle-tinged d’n’b from Summer of ’96, the “extended EP and mixtape” version of the label’s Midsummer Murdas EP. As well as Esc’s track there’s another bonus track and a two-sided DJ mix from label head Dizzy available on cassette and digital.

Wordcolour – Babble [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Wordcolour – Crescent [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Young UK artist Wordcolour wrote music for TV & film before releasing his sound design-oriented club tunes, starting with the incredible Tell Me Something for Lapsus in 2020. The producer is highly adept at UK club forms of all sorts – Djrum‘s presence as remixer on the recent Bluster single is a good indicator – and so we get jungle-influenced tunes, hints of dubstep and deep house, and always IDM, but also crystalline ambient passages with distinct classical and jazz influences and crazy glitch interjections a la Japanese figures like Kashiwa Daisuke. Spoken word throughout adds to the pleasant sense of mystery and gives additional depth to a thought-provoking album, one I can see myself returning to a lot this year.

part timer – loose leaf [part timer Bandcamp]
part timer – freeway [part timer Bandcamp]
It feels silly to still be banging on about the “return” of John McCaffrey to making music as part timer, given this recent phase started about 3 years ago in 2019. But every new drop brings much joy, and self-released new album Interiority Complex is a magnificent synthesis of the sensitive, poised post-classical piano & string arrangements he’s produced of late with the glitchy, head-noddy beats and samples of his early folktronica, which featured nearly every week on Utility Fog for years, back when. If you haven’t gotten behind the new part timer phase then shame on you, but for $10 AUD on Bandcamp, Interiority Complex is the perfect place to start.

Machinefabriek with Anne Bakker – Speling [Machinefabriek Bandcamp/Anne Bakker Bandcamp]
Machinefabriek with Anne Bakker – Folklore [Machinefabriek Bandcamp/Anne Bakker Bandcamp]
Dutch violist Anne Bakker has collaborated with Rutger Machinefabriek Zuydervelt for some years now – the earliest work I can find is from 2007, with Greg Haines included. Wisps is their third duo album together, based around a selection of violin, viola and vocal improvisations Bakker recorded and passed on to Zuydervelt. The short tracks range from folky sounding strings to rather abstract sound works, all quite bewitching. Oh, and listen out for the Don Cherry samples on a couple of tracks!

Alexandra Spence – Air Pockets [Room40/Bandcamp]
Alexandra Spence – Wind [Room40/Bandcamp]
Finishing with some quietly stunning sound-art from Sydney’s Alexandra Spence. Her latest album for Room40 is Blue waves, Green waves, an exploration of bodies of/and water, and particularly the Pacific Ocean. As usual with Spence’s work, concrete sounds produced from specific objects merge with musical elements and at times spoken word. The glooping, sliding “Air Pockets” are a particular highlight.

Listen again — ~203MB

Dark dubby techno / dubstep / grime / drill tonight, but also jittery idm and classical electronic fusion.

LISTEN AGAIN with FBi on the stream-on-demands, or podcast here, for pure pleasure.

Blackhaine – Prayer (ft. Iceboy Violet & Blood Orange) [Fixed Abode/Bandcamp]
Blackhaine – Armour Freestyle [Fixed Abode/Bandcamp]
So here’s the new EP from Lancashire’s Blackhaine, the rapper, choreographer & dancer who named himself in part after the incendiary French movie La Haine (Hate). With cohort Rainy Miller and also Croww on this EP underlining and entwining his anguished howls and poetry with industrial menace, Blackhaine (aka Tom Heyes) gives visceral voice to the depressing realities of working class life in post-Brexit England. Armour II careens between intense industrial throbs and no-less intense quietude, with guests Iceboy Violet & Blood Orange adding additional points of view on “Prayer”.

Azu Tiwaline – Deep Theko [I.O.T/Bandcamp]
Azu Tiwaline x Cinna Peyghamy – Lowww [I.O.T/Bandcamp]
Azu Tiwaline & Al Wootton – Light Transmission [Livity Sound/Bandcamp]
French DJ & producer Azu Tiwaline is expert at dub-techno and uk bass storytelling, with sounds from her Saharan Tunisian roots combining to create something unique. On her solo EP for Livity Sound in 2020, she collaborated also with French-Iranian percussionist Cinna Peyghamy, who appears here also on Vesta, her new EP on her own I.O.T Records. Deep dub textures and beats. Earlier this year Azu Tiwaline collaborated with Al Wootton for a follow-up on Livity Sound, dub/bass beats both syncopated and 4/4…

Holy Tongue – River Cannot Wash it Away [Amidah Records/Valentina Magaletti Bandcamp]
Holy Tongue – Spirit Mask [Amidah Records/Valentina Magaletti Bandcamp]
Meanwhile, there’s a third EP from Holy Tongue, Al Wootton‘s continuing duo with Valentina Magaletti. As with their previous two releases, this is stripped-down live dub, with Magaletti’s muscular drum kit and Wootton’s electric basslines and plenty of dub delays throughout.

Low End Activist ft. Emz – Get Get [Sneaker Social Club]
Low End Activist – Parity [Sneaker Social Club]
Jamie Russell is a very busy man of many aliases. Not only does he run co-run Hypercolour Records, he also helms the incredible Sneaker Social Club, and although it’s difficult to unravel it all, he is also the man behind Low End Activist, sometimes also aka Patrick Conway, one half of Trinity Carbon, and somewhere in there he runs a bunch of other labels too. Across all of this, Russell covers just about every electronic genre, and Low End Activist is there for everything on the ‘ardcore continuum, from jungle through to grimey dubstep and all that wotnot. There are a bunch of great grime MCs on his new album Hostile Utopia, including a heavy hitter from Killa P, but it seems to me that “Get Get”, featuring Emz, is a real hit.

Slikback – GEOMETRY [Slikback Bandcamp]
Nairobi’s Slikback won’t stop either. Every month at least, there’s a few new tracks on his Bandcamp, very internet dance music, rhythmic stuff of all sorts and also hi-tech ambient biz. Always rad.

JK Flesh – Human/Nature [KR3 Records/Bandcamp]
The don Justin K Broadrick, of Godflesh, Jesu and a billion other incarnations, has been churning out acerbic, bracing techno under his JK Flesh for some years now. The latest is Veneer of Tolerance for Italy’s KR3 Records, with the usual 4/4 beats of at various tempos dark textures and dark outlook.

tsx – squidge feat. Sue Tompkins [generate and test/Bandcamp]
tsx – know you don’t [generate and test/Bandcamp]
Oswald Berthold is a member of the legendary Farmers Manual, who started their glitching, generative techno/idm/breakbeat work in the mid-’90s, pioneered net labels and webcasts before they were a thing, and are now releasing idiosyncratic idm & related music on their generate and test label through Bandcamp. Solo, Berthold has been releasing glitchy beats under the name tsx (it stands for different things depending where you look), at times with collaborators like English performance artists Sue Tompkins and the mysterious psygod. It’s all good and worth checking out.

Bienoise – FFF THIS MEANING TODAY [Mille Plateaux]
Bienoise – LAC – Silence Half Speed [Mille Plateaux]
Piedmontese musician Alberto Ricca is Bienoise. He’s studied electronic music, and now teaches it too, and his album THIS MEANING TODAY has a typically elusive philosophical concept as per Mille Plateaux‘ usual tendencies. As well as intense stuttery barrages, there’s a rather beautiful Autechrian ambient piece.

Luis & Lis Dalton – timmy chalamet [AD 93/Bandcamp]
Luis – or anyone said it [AD 93/Bandcamp]
New York house master DJ Python revives little-used alias Luis for an EP of delightful Boards of Canada-style idm for AD 93 titled 053 (Schwyn). The most BoC-like is named for the equally pretty Timmy Chalamet, and is a collaboration with UK’s Lis Dalton.

Florent Ghys – Quatre Fromages [Cantaloupe/Bandcamp]
Florent Ghys – Météos [Cantaloupe/Bandcamp]
Florent Ghys – Véranda [Cantaloupe/Bandcamp]
French musician Florent Ghys is a composer, double bassist, electronic musician and video artist. He’s a longtime Bang on a Can collaborator, so it’s no surprise to find his latest album released on the New York collective’s Cantaloupe label. It’s two albums, Ritournelles released on CD and the accompanying digital Mosaïques (tracks from both will appear on a special vinyl edition later in the year). The former album focuses on double bass and other instruments, but they’re often sampled and edited into complex tapestries, while the latter is more electronic, with Ghys’ penchant for sampled speech coming to the fore, but there’s also plenty of double bass on that album too. They’re cut from the same cloth, and are well taken together. Fans of The Books will love what they find here – a wonderful revelation.

Flora Wong – Heroes (Movements I II) [Corella Recordings/Bandcamp]
Fans of The Books will also appreciate the work of Brisbane’s MJ O’Neill, performed by Brisvegan violinist Flora Wong on her solo album of recent Australian compositions, Geburtstag, released on new label Corella Recordings run out of the University of Queensland School of Music. All the works are very creative and somewhat transgressive, performed with gusto by Wong, and “Heroes” juxtaposes Wong’s looped violin with samples from school climate strikers arguing passionately for a future they’re being denied.

Frances Shelley – For Now We See Darkly (Drexler Rework) [Drexler Bandcamp]
Finishing with a lovely piece of neo-classical piano meeting with electronics when London-based ex-Sydney composer Drexler reworks a track by UK composer & pianist Frances Shelley. It’s a nice follow-up to Drexler’s debut album and accompanying remixes from 2020.

Listen again — ~206MB