Experimental pop, experimental beats, ambient weirdness, Burroughsian cut-ups, remixed classical…

LISTEN AGAIN and keep Sydney weird!(?) Podcast here or stream on demand @ FBi.

Martha Skye Murphy – Need (ft. Roy Montgomery) [AD93/Bandcamp]
Martha Skye Murphy – Kind [AD93/Bandcamp]
I first heard English experimental singer/songwriter Martha Skye Murphy on a duo release with double bassist Maxwell Sterling on American Dreams in 2022. The two long tracks were the result of long improvisations melding Sterling’s processed double bass and Murphy’s wordless vocals. Martha Skye Murphy’s solo work is a stark contrast, with emotive songs using piano and guitar as well as electronics, although nothing is quite so straightforward. The album is, after all, released on AD93, best known for experimental club productions (albeit by no means exclusively), and the home also of Sterling’s early solo work. It’s full of beautiful, unusual songs, which evoke the likes of Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos, but wilfully go in strange directions or pile on the noise like the end of “Kind”. Then there’s the delicate collaboration with claire rousay, field recordings and all, and the stunning single “Need” that was created with legendary NZ guitarist Roy Montgomery.

Mary Ocher – Digital Molam [Mary Ocher Bandcamp]
Mary Ocher – I am The Occupation (feat. Serafina Steer) [Mary Ocher Bandcamp]
Mary Ocher – The Rubaiyat Medley (Part I) (feat. Your Government) [Mary Ocher Bandcamp]
Last year’s Approaching Singularity: Music for the End of Time from Mary Ocher was a revelation. A Russian Jew who grew up in Israel and has based herself in Berlin for her adult life, her leftwing politics are inescapably intertwined with her music – each album comes with an accompanying text, and this album’s essays is “A Guide to Radical Living“, which articulates one part of that politics (it’s subtitled “Why wealth needs poverty and how not to play along”). On the new album, one song is directly aimed at Israel (the satirical “I am The Occupation” that also features processed harp from Serafina Steer), and please don’t miss the excellent single “Sympathize” that I didn’t include due to tonight’s flow… But there’s also the three-part setting of Omar Khayyam’s Rubáiyát inspired by Dorothy Ashby‘s version – and some nice glitchiness too, on “Digital Molam”.

KÁRYYN – the REAL [Mute/Bandcamp]
Armenian-American producer & songwriter KÁRYYN has melded her voice with electronics for some years, but the electronics really come to the fore on Calm KAOSS!, the title of which is a tribute to her trusty Kaoss Pad, an effects unit beloved of vocalists. These are strong pop songs that are also strong on electronic manipulation. “the REAL”, which I featured tonight, is also remixed by Aussie club sensation HAAi, bumping up the bass and beats to great effect.

John Cale – Funkball the Brewster [Domino]
John Cale – Company Commander [Domino]
Considering John Cale released the uncompromising Mercy last year at age 81, it’s ridiculous that he’s out with another this year. POPtical Illusion has all the humour and quirkiness – and energy – that Cale’s had since being somewhat overshadowed by Lou Reed in the Velvet Underground. I’ve always loved Cale as a songwriter and singer far more than Reed anyway. This album *is* more poppy than the last, which is perhaps both a good and a bad thing, as some of the songs kind of washed past me, but there’s plenty of the pre-post-punk bravado there too. Keep healthy, John!

Kevin Purdy – Rooms Full of Elephants [Soft Records/Bandcamp]
Between 2014 and 2024, Kevin Purdy has released 3 albums, but the time & effort the Sydney music stalwart has put into his new self-titled work clearly shows. His influences, from classic outsider rock, krautrock, psych, folk and more, are all on display with these songs, and on this instrumental tune Kevin has taken old cello sessions I’ve done with him in the past, er… decades?… and constructed an amazing string section. Pretty great!

Comatone – 81zspcmidiot (1999) [Feral Media]
Katoomba’s finest beatmaker Comatone continues his streaming-only series of unreleased-archive-diving – here’s a tune from a few years earlier than his first release, One Into One Out. Here he’s already a skilled practitioner of skitter IDM beats, made in whatever the tracker software du jour was in 1999.

MICROCORPS – WRM [The Tapeworm]
The first few releases from Alexander Tucker were a kind of psych-folk, acoustic folk with undercurrents of doom metal maybe… Then came his duo with Daniel O’Sullivan, Grumbling Fur, which emphasised the psych rock and experimental elements. In 2023, he employed field recordings and granular processing to create a strangely beautiful homage/collaboration to/with Keith Collins, partner of the renowned queer experimental filmmaker Derek Jarman. And then there’s MICROCORPS, an alias he uses for alien minimal techno/sound-art explorations, starting with 2021’s XMIT. Having heard that The Tapeworm was releasing another collection of these strange electronic mutations, I was pleased to see that only a couple of months later they unleashed it in digital form. So here’s Macrocorpse – 2021-2024, in which Tucker’s voice is manipulated alongside machine drones feeding back into themselves and glitching into almost-techno rhythms. It’s quite hypnotic.

Tot Onyx – Wrecker [Antibody Label/Bandcamp]
A highlight of Dark Mofo in 2018 was a hypnotic performance by Group A, the duo of two Berlin-based Japanese women, Tommi Tokyo and Sayaka Botanic. The duo has been relatively quiet for a while, but Tommi Tokyo has been developing a solo project as Tot Onyx, which like Group A is based around the organic development of techno-like structures with industrial roots. On her new album Satire of Desire the industrial often comes to the fore, in the vein of ’80s industrial artists dragging pieces of metal and concrete around and creating disturbing sound-structures. The album comes from the merging of conscious & unconscious, dream & irreal invoked by the Covid lockdowns, and it’s appropriately sinister.

AIR LQD – Take Up From Where They Left Off [Noods Radio/Bandcamp]
Weird Weather – Paint (Mother’s Lost Ops Mix) [Noods Radio/Bandcamp]
Bristol’s Noods Radio is a bit of an institution that nurtures the left-of-field music scene there in much the way FBi does in Sydney. Their current home Mickey Zoggs (yes apparently that’s the building where their studio lives) is under threat of redevelopment, and thus Noods may have to stop broadcasting. This album is a fundraiser, with exclusive tracks from an impressive range of artists from the area and further afield. Looking at the crowdfunder, they’ve already passed their £70,000 target to buy the venue (that’s for the deposit), but it’s good to support a sister community radio station, and honestly it’s just a great compilation. Justin K Broadrick appears both as JK Flesh and FINAL, Memotone is melodic and woozy as usual, Richie Culver is his own grizzled self, and more. AIR LQD is Brussels-based Mehdi Kernachi, not to be confused with legendary ’90s techno unit Air Liquide. Kernachi contributes a piece of bassy minimal industrial techno, a kind of hi-fi updated Suicide, and Avon Terror Corps-affiliated Weird Weather bring twitchy, squelchy percussive dub.

Allis – Everything [The Collection Artaud]
Just last month, Yu Miyashita snuck out another alias on his label The Collection Artaud, this one seemingly an outlet for adding his spoken vocals to the idm/glitch/jungle that he makes under his own name and as Yaporigami. Everything/Nothing is the English counterpart to Alles/Nichts although I’m pretty sure both are partially in Japanese. The lyrics seem to be exploring the contradictory status & experience being an Asian in a European country (he’s based in Berlin), among other forms of stereotyping. And the beats are great, naturally!

µ-Ziq – Fogou [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
µ-Ziq – Manscape [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
I was excited, like a little kid, when Mike Paradinas announced the 25th anniversary edition of µ-Ziq‘s 1997 album Lunatic Harness a couple of years back. That year we had not only the remastered & expanded classic of idm/drill’n’bass but also new material of melodic jungle fun from Paradinas – the man behind the great Planet µ label and so much brilliant music from the ’90s and early ’00s. So it’s pretty rad to have another album in a pretty similar vein in 2024. Grush represents in part a very pragmatic decision: the label needed a cash injection, and it seems its label head tends to bring the ££ in. Makes sense. But there’s nothing cynical or routine about this – it’s melodic, rhythmically complex, and well produced (better produced than the ’97 material all things considered). It’s just a joy. Oh and it’s worth mentioning that “Manscape” is a µ-Ziq remix of Mike’s partner Lara Rix-Martin’s Meemo Comma – a super different version from the one on her Cloudscape single. The two have a truly delightful geeky uncle thing on the social meejas – I mean, come on, look at this. Actually that’s an announcement about their YouTube channel which is just lovely (later in that livestream you can hear the Slikback remix of “Hyper Daddy” – too rad!)

Abstract Drumz & Optimystic – Energy To the Universe [Transmute Recordings]
With a back catalogue going back to 2005, Transmute Recordings have released a lot of the nu-jungle & drumfunk originators. They’ve had a few releases a year for the last few years, and the first for 2024 brings four collaborative tracks in fine junglist style. Abstract Drumz & Optimystic‘ track combines dreamy pads with tough drums to great effect.

David August – Workout IV [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]
Italian producer/composer/DJ David August runs the 99CHANTS label, which over 6 years has released some really interesting ambient music, including from August himself. But he was originally producing tech house & deep house in the ’00s, and on the Workouts EP he returns to the dancefloor with four hybrid tracks – a bit of ’90s ambient house (Future Sound of London meets Jean-Michel Jarre?) with contemporary percussive beats and sampled vocal yelps. Tremendous.

Latex Pets – Aubade (Time) [Latex Bandcamp]
Sydney musician Latex Pets is also Sydney poet T. Banks-Vittin, although Latex Pets is an instrumental affair – sometimes edging into techno, often drone and ambient. “Aubade (Time)” somehow sits somewhere in betwee. The pretty synth patterns could come from a techno track, but devoid of beats the influence of minimalist composers like Philip Glass becomes audible. It might not be body-moving, but it’s a moving, meditative piece of work.

Flirting with Shadows (黑芝麻 Hēi zhī ma & eudegne) – 我想你了 [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
T. Morimoto – cold rock [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
Tracy Chen – Something true (draft) [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
Tracy Chen – Dirt [Tracy Chen Bandcamp]
Usually New Weird Australia releases are curated by Stu Buchanan, but the new compilation Worlds Only World is compiled by the ambient/experimental collective Worlds Only. There’s a track by the group on the album, but the group’s self-definition is as a “transient ambient group”, so I take it their output might encompass events, scene snapshots like this and writings even. Here they’ve collected a selection of artists making quite disparate music – a lot of electronic music, some with beats and some ambient, glitched indie, solo piano (woo Monica Brooks!)… Our first piece was from Naarm-based duo Flirting with Shadows, made up of 黑芝麻 Hēi zhī ma (who was involved with FBi Radio when based in Eora/Sydney) and eudegne, here giving us a lovely piece of drone-pop. Then there’s Worlds Only member T. Morimoto, who used to be Thomas William Smith and before that Cleptoclectics, and also used to be based in Eora. His piece is exemplary in bending the space between foreboding ambient, new age and post-club sounds. And finally, from Tarnanya/Adelaide is Tracy Chen, who beautifully opens the compilation with a fragment of a piece with minimalist synth bass, ominous sound design and a female voice that’s cut off midstream. I haven’t heard anything from Tracy for some years, but there are a few pieces from between 2014 & 2016 on her Bandcamp, fragile songs perfectly glitched out of shape.

David Lee Myers – Riding the Rails [Unexplained Sounds Group]
Allan Segall – The Cities of The Red Night [Unexplained Sounds Group]
New from Raffaele Pezzella’s Unexplained Sounds Group is an album called Cut UP. Deconstructing W. S. Burroughs which takes its impetus from Burroughs’ technique in the late 1950s into the ’60s of cutting up and rearranging texts to bring new meaning and new experiences to the work. Of course tape cut-ups have been present in music since the musique concrète era, and digital cut-ups that were newly riveting in the 1990s are part & parcel of our postmodern era (in fact, they’ve been a key part of the Utility Fog aesthetic since the beginning). That’s not to denigrate anything appearing here though, because a) the tracks are uniformly fantastic and b) they do indeed, in one way or other, interface with Burroughs’ own work. Surprisingly few tracks actually use Burroughs’ very distinct voice, familiar to ’90s alt-culture kids particularly from two 1993 works: Kurt Cobain’s noise/spoken word collaboration The “Priest” They Called Him, and Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, produced by Hal Willner and The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. So… that was a long time ago. Burroughs has long had an influence on the industrial & noise music subcultures because of the frequently transgressive nature of his writing, and that’s the natural home of Pezzella’s curation, so there’s a lot of dark and ominous music here, including Pezzella’s own project Sigillum S. Adi Newton time-stretches a phrase from Burroughs over throbbing drones; PBK chops Burroughs’ voice along with electronic scribbles and soundtrack-like cues, as does Paolo L. Bandera. On the other hand, composer Allan Segall cuts up, pitch-shifts and otherwise transforms someone else’s voice reading Burroughs’ words, with sparsely creepy piano chords and flecks of distortion, David Lee Myers glitchily recontextualises easy-listening synth & sax.

Büşra Kayıkçı – The Middle of Nowhere (Jaar Rework) [Nicolas Jaar Bandcamp]
Turkish pianist Büşra Kayıkçı released her album Places on Warner Classics late in 2023, after some early studies on her Bandcamp and a post-classical/electronic duo release with Ah! Kosmos last year called Bluets. Here we find a sensitive reworking of the opening & closing tracks of Places by Nicolas Jaar, released on his Bandcamp, and I’m so pleased he did because now I’ve been introduced to Kayıkçı’s gorgeous compositions, which remind me a little of the harmonic modes found in Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan’s work. Her playing is delicate, and aside from Jaar’s remix, her own music benefits from her sound design too, which is inspired in part by her qualifications in architecture. Discovery of the week!

Listen again — ~211MB

Sound-art, experimental song, experimental beats, experimental ambient? Experimental guitar. Yeah, everyone’s experimenting.

Enrich your life! LISTEN AGAIN over at FBi’s website, or podcast here.

Sandy Chamoun – HAWALTOU حاولت [Dreaming Live]
Badawi – Qaher [Dreaming Live]
A week ago, a really big compilation came out from the organisation Dreaming Live, organised by the artist Mayss, in solidarity with Palestine, and calling for a ceasefire, and donating funds to Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah’s Children’s Fund. ENOUGH! is 63 tracks long, and covers a range from minimal industrial to dark ambient and noise, deconstructed club to singer-songwriter, with plenty of Arabic artists as well as artists from all around the world. Sandy Chamoun is a wonderful singer & experimental electronic producer, whose track “HAWALTOU حاولت” (meaning “I tried”) is a clear highlight. She’s also the singer with the incredible postpunk/psych/free-jazz/etc group SAMAN. Without going into all the artists, there’s people like Martin Rev of Suicide, ZULI, Jerusalem In My Heart, Sarah Davachi, Larkin Grimm and many others. The second track I played was percussive beats and Shepherd flutes from Badawi, aka Raz Mesinai, who’s been involved in multiple music scenes in New York since the ’90s, including illbient, reggae/dub, avant-garde composition and rock, and more. His Israeli & Arabic roots have always played a major part in his music, and he’s against the occupation and the genocide (see his recent album Sonically Dismantling Western Imperialism). It’s great to see him included here.

Tashi Wada – Flame of Perfect Form [RVNG Intl/Bandcamp]
Tashi Wada – What Is Not Strange? [RVNG Intl/Bandcamp]
What Is Not Strange? is the first “real” full-length album from LA-based musician Tashi Wada, even though he’s been active in the LA music scene for years, across contemporary composition, ambient/experimental and indie music. The album’s very much a family affair, significantly because the album’s creation spanned the death of his father, Fluxus member Yoshi Wada, and the birth of his first child with his partner, Julia Holter. Wada appears on Holter’s latest album (also released this year), and her voice is found here on some of the strange song-like pieces, but there are also more abstract pieces of burbling electronics, field recordings etc. Wada runs the Saltern label, releasing minimal contemporary classical works, and the breadth of music here might explain why it’s come out on the ever-adventurous RVNG Intl. And strange it is, in the best possible way.

Iceboy Violet & Nueen – Through the Fire [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Iceboy Violet & Nueen – Slammd (Interlude) [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Iceboy Violet & Nueen – Terrences Time Bomb [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Like Lila Tirando a Violeta & Sin Maldita, here are two young artists finding success on Hyperdub together. We’ve heard Iceboy Violet working with the likes of aya, Loraine James (both released on Hyperdub), and they are an excellent producer in their own right as well as rapper/singer. Here they’re working with Argentinian-Spanish producer Nueen, who’s been released on Balmat and 3XL. So this isn’t quite grime or drill, despite its connections to UK hip-hop and bass music; it has a little in common with the experimental r’n’b coming from the likes of Niecy Blues or Liv.e, and certainly is in a similar space to aya’s album on Hyperdub, im hole. As much as it’s a deep excavation of a now-ended relationship, it’s also a powerful expression of the smudged, defocused world we find ourselves in.

Crimewave – Torrent [Notes By Design/Bandcamp]
Released on New York clubmeister Swami Sound‘s Notes By Design, here’s Manchester’s Crimewave, also documenting the cold, blurry life of the north (hey I’m in Australia, everything’s “the north”). “Torrent” is the Crimewave sound for sure – sidechained shoegaze guitars, sadboy indie vocals, post-garage beats. Hood meets Burial? Don’t mind if I do.

bani haykal – SAVE YOUR SPIT FOR THE GRAVE OF YOUR CONSCIENCE [bani haykal Bandcamp]
ANONYMOUS CURSES from Singaporean musician/artist/writer bani haykal is full of eerie, distorted, glitched electronics, crushed percussion, distorted drum machines, and also incisive words, spoken, whispered, growled: whatever it takes. The EP is dedicated to a truth-speaking or prayer/curse-casting against those creating a world of destruction, through colonialism, extractivism, occupation and apartheid. He also links to Gaza Funds, a source for campaigns helping families evacuate to safety. Like a South-East Asian Saul Williams with contemporary electronics, spitting wisdom over technology.

Copper Sounds – Sequenced Ceramics (Memotone‘s Inebriated Cop Following Suspect Mix) [Copper Sounds Bandcamp]
Bristol-based duo Isaac Stacey and Sonny Lee Lightfoot have been making sounds, since 2015, out of unusual physical objects like copper records, homemade spring reverbs, and notable, specially-produced ceramics which are beautiful sculpted objects in themselves. Although their press mentions club/ambient music, they have generally been more interested in the sonic properties of their objects than the rhytmic potential, at least until new album Sequenced Ceramics. Still, it’s far from club music, and even the very creative remixes have pushed into varied directions. Will Yates aka Memotone‘s work is always going to be cool, and his “Inebriated Cop Following Suspect” remix does evoke a ’70s cop-show vibe. Just don’t knock over that expensive vase!

FaltyDL – Full Spectrum [Central Processing Unit]
FaltyDL – Further [Central Processing Unit]
Sheffield’s CPU Records (aka Central Processing Unit) are a haven for IDM fans, but to my ears it’s usually more in the electro or acid areas. Drew Lustman as FaltyDL has explored plenty of acid and rave genres around IDM for over 15 years, and his new album on the label, In The Wake Of Wolves, is no exception in terms of range. Nicely melodic, different BPMs, crisp production, thumbs up.

Toupaz – 891 [Toupaz Bandcamp]
Austrian producer Toupaz works in non-specific BPMs and genres too, but he clearly likes his bass music and his breaks, and his latest EP Frantic Gestures is definitely appropriately named. This may not exactly be jungle, but it has intricate skitteriness in between the beats… Yep, frantic.

al dente – overnight (White Fluff Remix) [Pure Space/al dente Bandcamp/White Fluff Bandcamp]
The Naarm/Melbourne native, but Paris-based producer calling himself al dente just released an EP through Eora/Sydney’s Pure Space (helmed by FBi’s Andy Garvey). multiform is in that techno-meets-d’n’b space that Pure Space often likes to inhabit, and the most drum’n’bassy track also finds itself remixed by Meanjin/Brisbane bleep enthusiast White Fluff, upping the d’n’b-ism and widening the bass. Lovely.

Aroma Nice – 12 Hours [YUKU/Bandcamp]
For Czech label YUKU, here’s UK jungle maniac Aroma Nice with three archival tracks and a remix by his mate Earl Grey (longtime drumfunker/junglist). Proof if we need it, following last year’s Lost Realms and this year’s Old Haunts, that Luke Fashoni is up there with the best of them in terms of incredibly technical and funky jungle production. Seriously good shit as always.

Duran Duran Duran – Hot Chicken [Woodland Creatures]
Ed Flis as Duran Duran Duran was one of the recurring figures in the breakcore scene from back in 2003 – indeed, if you look back, here he is remixing “Donna Summer” aka Jason Forest on a Utility Fog playlist from way back in November 2003. Supernatural Beast City, his new album on Berlin’s Woodland Creatures, has some hallmarks of breakcore, but filtered through the somewhat more nuanced beat-crafting and production of today’s nu-skool jungle and yesterday’s jungle tekno. Great stuff.

Kop-Z – Fading Light Above Us All (Fanu Remix) [Pinecone Moonshine/Bandcamp]
The Pinecone Moonshine label, based in Portland Oregon and run by Nic TVG, is a haven for drumfunk and more experimental beat-messing. There are always remixes either as part of the releases or on their own – like here, the Remixes IV compilation which lets loose 12 artists on the Pinecone Moonshine discography, even including some more ambient or lower tempo things. Finland’s Fanu is always super high quality of course (he’s also a certified Ableton trainer and there are heaps of great videos on his Patreon for producers). Here he’s putting his own take on a track from UK producer Kop-Z.

Xylitol – Okko [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
One of the best decisions of Planet µ recently (and they’re one of my favourite record labels) was the signing of Catherine Backhouse aka Xylitol, who’s been around the UK experimental electronic scene for well nigh a couple of decades, making minimal house, synth-pop, ambient, who knows what else. She DJs under the name DJ Bunnyhausen, and is something of an expert on Eastern European pop and electronica. And we’re fortunate that right now she’s focused on jungle and garage, so the frequently epic tracks on her Anemones album are full of clattering, ever-changing breaks and pretty melodies. This is single #2 (the first is 9:33 long!), with the rest of the album following in early July.

L’Église du Mouvement Péristaltique Inversé – Triptyques de monarques assis [L’Église du Mouvement Péristaltique Inversé Bandcamp]
Their name’s a mouthful even in French I guess… L’Église du Mouvement Péristaltique Inversé is The Church of Reverse Peristaltic Motion (aka Retroperistalsis, generally a precursor to vomiting), and that gives you a bit of an idea of where they’re coming from – dark but darkly comedic. They call their genre “cold pop”, and certainly there’s new wave & postpunk in there with krautrock and of course French chanson. This is their second album, following their self-titled album released in *checks notes*… 2001. Basically the French do things their own way, and long may they continue!

KMRU – Natur (extract) [Touch/will be at Bandcamp]
We’ve got the collab between Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU and Kevin Richard Martin coming soon, but in the meantime the great Touch label, home to much field recording, ambient, glitch and other experimental music, announced a new album from KMRU called Natur. It’s a stunning single piece almost 53 minutes long, but I’ve got a 8½ minute excerpt to play you tonight. Kamaru is from Nairobi, where he was forever surrounded by the sounds of nature as well as urban sounds; when he moved to Berlin, he found it comparatively silent, with nature’s sounds swamped by the built-up city. Since 2022, Natur has been a staple of his live set (I’m guessing it’s what we heard at Dark Mofo last year?), so it’s been honed to perfection, with sizzling drone-noise generated by electromagnetic microphones, and field recordings of “nature” creeping in at times. Beautifully crafted, it’s not to be missed.

Mark Templeton – Relaxations [enmossed/Bandcamp]
Mark Templeton – White Ink [enmossed/Bandcamp]
Canadian media artist Mark Templeton has been making idiosyncratic sound-art (and matching visual material) since at least 2007, pushing out a few releases every couple of years. By my calculations, this is his first since a couple of releases in 2021, and there will be at least one other this year. Inner Light, released on enmossed, deconstructs ’70s & ’80s ideas of ambient music (meditation tapes found in a church library), warping and disintegrating the original sources, and further manipulating them with digital edits. It’s as good a place as any to start with Templeton, and there’s a lot more to explore on his Bandcamp.

Luca Perciballi – Sacred Habits V [Kohlhass/Bandcamp]
Luca Perciballi – Sacred Habits VIII [Kohlhass/Bandcamp]
For Luca Perciballi, music and composition starts from performance, and on Sacred Habits he’s pushing the limits of what one performer can do with an electric guitar, extending the sound-generation with preparations on the guitar and even the speakers, and using foot percussion and other objects. Despite this, the music is not cluttered, usually focusing in on some particular approach and then expanding out from there. For an experimental work with few melodies or riffs, it’s quite gripping listening, never slipping into the background or becoming overly abstract.

Helvetica Noise – How to Listen To Storms [Helvetica Noise Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney trio Helvetica Noise combine spoken word (Aviva Shifreen) along with synths (Genevieve Von Black) and other noisemakers (Matthew Syres) in their first available track. Part psych/kraut, part drone/noise, it’s a vivid evocation of a deluge. (Just noting that I played an edit of the full track, which is almost 10 minutes long!)

Kate Carr – One piece of cake (a banana cake), and remembered excavations [Persistence of Sound/Bandcamp]
Kate Carr – Crossing the river: I am getting hungry and lots of people are talking about food. Also Jesus loves me [Persistence of Sound/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney sound-artist Kate Carr has lived in London for quite a while now, basing her excellent Flaming Pines out of there too. She is one of the most creative artists working with field recordings at the moment, and her latest album Midsummer, London covers a day travelling across the city on the longest day of the year, taking in recordings of trains, traffic, people and wildlife. It’s one long work but the track titles give us a lovely insight into her journey. They’re not necessary, though, to enjoy the reconstructed journey and the subtle & clever interplay of field recordings and music.

France Jobin + Yamil Rezc – Cómo IIego aqui? [LINE/Bandcamp]
Canadian sound-artist France Jobin has recently been found on ROOM40, and a few years ago had a beautiful release on Editions Mego called Death is perfection, everything else is relative, including a gorgeous collaboration with Klara Lewis. Here she has put together a collaboration with Mexican composer Yamil Rezc, who also makes experimental electronic music as Transgresorcorruptor. Their album Un d​í​a en México was indeed created on one day in Mexico City – well, initially, after which it was edited & refined over the following year. The three tracks – ranging from 5 mins to 10 mins to 30 mins – are beautifully detailed drone works, usually with at least two voices combining in spacious production.

Listen again — ~205MB

Another week, another selection of sounds from all over, this week encompassing very experimental indie songwriting and lo-fi hip-hop, glitched mashups, dreamy instrumental guitar-picking, fourth-world electronica, IDM, drumfunk & drum’n’bass, post-classical ambient…

LISTEN AGAIN and run the gamut… Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Michael Ackroyd – Inseam [Michael Ackroyd Bandcamp]
Michael Ackroyd – Vice Grip [Michael Ackroyd Bandcamp]
Over quite some years, Eora/Sydney musician Michael Ackroyd has put together his beautiful debut album Delicate Puncture. A little searching shows I played “The Architect” on this show in 2020, and that song appears here. There are nods to Talk Talk, Radiohead, contemporary post-club production etc, but it’s unfair to play the comparison game too much as Michael is an excellent songwriter and both creative and skilled in his production. The songs are from the heart – he has gone through a lot, suffering from chronic pain that led to opioid addiction (sadly very common), so finally completing this wonderful album is a real achievement, and more people should hear it.

FIN – Object Of Fire [Hausu Mountain/Bandcamp]
FIN – The Known World [Hausu Mountain/Bandcamp]
Sometime in early 2018 I must have discovered Alexandra Drewchin’s music, in the lead up to the first PAN release from Eartheater. Hausu Mountain released her first two albums, so I was digging around their Bandcamp and came across the first FIN album, Ice Pix, a collection of glitchy experimental electronic pop that I enjoyed easily as much as the Eartheater releases. It’s taken 6 years for Fin Simonetti to release her second album Cleats – probably because she’s been busy making incredible sculptural art (no seriously, incredible!) – but the new album is as weird & cool as her first. Not much more to say – the glitchy pop might have elements of Björk, Glasser, or heck, our own Aphir, but even compiling those comparisons was something of a reach – it’s uniquely weirdo electronic pop, huge thumbs up!

John Glacier – Steady As I Am [Young/Remote Control/Bandcamp]
I’m at least an EP late with English underground hip-hopper John Glacier. Her first EP for 2024, Like A Ribbon, came out in Feb, and Duppy Gun follows on June 20th. Unlike some of the shiny stuff on Young (fka Young Turks) like Jamie XX, hers is a determinedly experimental, lo-fi expression of what hip-hop can be in 2024, produced with Kwes Darko (fka Blue Daisy). Whatever – this is good shit.

Heyes – Wednesday, 27 October 2004 [Heyes Bandcamp]
Heyes – Wednesday, 19 August 1970 [Heyes Bandcamp]
Late last week, Lachlan Stevens, a man with excellent taste who presents Freshly Squeezed on Instagram (you should totally follow), let me know that he’d put up a really interesting new work on SoundCloud. Those We Follow is an exercise in creative tribute, de-fanged nostalgia, sincere love. Since I played these tracks on Sunday, I had a couple of people independently get in touch to say they really liked “the one by the guy about his grandmother”, so Lachlan has now put it on Bandcamp as a free download (he releases music as Heyes). Lochie talks about how his grandma had slowly succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and how the one thing that stuck with her was music. So, each of the tracks is made from three pieces of pop music (from across many decades and genres), sampled and brutally smashed to bits. The musical sources here are suggested by various family members, so clearly they’re a family of music lovers! The originals are rarely recognizable, although some tiny samples instantly announce themselves. But somehow he’s constructed a beautiful journey of scattered nostalgia, riffs and fragments built variously into rhythmic snippets of blurred beatless techno, glitchy ambient or some kind of folktronica. The album is meant to be heard as one continuous mix, so either download it or stream on SoundCloud I suggest.

Danny Paul Grody Duo (Danny Paul Grody and Rich Douthit) – Hawk Hill [Three Lobed Recordings/Bandcamp]
Guitarist Danny Paul Grody co-founded the incredible freewheeling postrock band Tarentel, and later The Drift. He’s been making circular, dreamy ambient folk under his own name for a while. His forthcoming Arc of Night album is being released as Danny Paul Grody Duo, as drummer Rich Douthit is central to all the music (Douthit was also in The Drift, among others). It’s certainly still low-key folk, and Douthit’s drums and percussion add to the atmospheric feel. On “Hawk Hill”, the second preview track, Trevor Montgomery, also of The Drift, adds electric bass. Looking forward to the rest!

D.C Cross – Light dancing on e’en water (Seine) [Darren Cross Bandcamp]
D.C Cross – Failed Gen X Love Story [Darren Cross Bandcamp]
Back in 2019, decades after being part of Sydney indietronic legends Gerling, Darren Cross released the first of his albums under the D.C Cross moniker, based around John Fahey-like “American Primitive” fingerpicked guitar alongside some more sweeping ambient guitar manipulation. Said techniques continue to be the features of D.C Cross, and Gookies Guit. is the latest album in that vein. Tonight we heard both the nimble and melodic “Light dancing on e’en water (Seine)” and the wistful ambient of “Failed Gen X Love Story”.

Michel Banabila – Hometapers Tricky Universe [Knekelhuis/Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila – AI Brainfire [Knekelhuis/Bandcamp]
Mark Knekelhuis‘s eponymous label releases anything from punk, new wave & industrial to ambient and contemporary electronica. Dutch maestro Michel Banabila released Echo Transformations on the label in 2021, and returns now for Unspeakable Visions. Here, Banabila is focusing on a recurrent element of his work: voices. It might sound like we’re hearing ethnomusicological recordings, but the voices are all either artificially created or manipulated from his own voice. Along with assorted acoustic instruments, tape effects, field recordings and lots of electronics, Banabila creates a contemporary form of “fourth world” ambient. Wondeful as always.

sideproject – double zebra [SVBKVLT]
sideproject – cannonposting [SVBKVLT]
Most of us discovered Icelandic electronic trio sideproject via their remix for Björk a couple of years ago (they also contributed production on the track “ovule“). They make crazy idm stuff influenced by today’s bass music – there’s a stack of older stuff on their Bandcamp, but this week the Shanghai/UK label SVBKVLT released a new album, sourcepond. It’s simultaneously the melodic end of contemporary electronic and the most IDM-influenced end of bass music, strangely organic, very moist.

Mattr – Gaija [Mattr Bandcamp]
Mattr – Fever [Mattr Bandcamp]
Speaking of IDM, while UK artist Mattr has furnished dancefloors with leftfield house, he’s been very much on an IDM tip for some time, and 40 minutes of that material are conveniently collected in his new album Pheno. Tracks range from sedately paced to skittery almost-jungle, and there’s a lovely sense of turn-of-the-millennium 2nd gen IDM like Arovane as well as early Autechre’s melodic sensibilities. Always recommended.

dgoHn – Debbie Will Deck You [WeMe Records/Bandcamp]
dgoHn – Sad Stay Snakebitten [WeMe Records/Bandcamp]
If you want full-on drum fuckery of the highest order, you’d better call for John Cunnane aka dgoHn, drumfunk maestro for almost 20 years now. Brussels label WeMe Records is dedicated to electronic music of all sorts – IDM, acid, dubstep, jungle – and so they’re a comfy home for dgoHn’s latest, Alterations in Gyral Form. It’s not all drum’n’bass/jungle BPMs, but at whatever speed, dgoHn implacably brings the funk.

Andy Odysee – Ex-Astra Heights [Odysee Recordings/Bandcamp]
Although active in the original jungle/drum’n’bass times, Odysee Recordings has seen a resurgence and new significance in recent years, spearheaded by Andy Baddaley, who first joined the label in 1999, but in fact went to school with Jim Baker of Source Direct, a highly influential drum’n’bass act usually mentioned in the same breath as Photek. Baddaley is now responsible for a lot of extremely high quality productions on the label, also very much in the vein of the intricate, dark d’n’b/jungle of Photek and Source Direct in that mid-’90s period. The 5th volume in his Odysee Black Series is no exception, and I recommend exploring the label’s Bandcamp for quality reissues and new material, noting that Source Direct now have their own Bandcamp page.

Monoconda – Progression [Salon Imaginalis]
Monoconda – I Was Programmed [Salon Imaginalis]
Berlin-resident Monoconda is from Kyiv, and his new EP Disturbing does live up to its name, evoking an upturned, unstable world. There’s a kind dub-electro vibe to it, but with fidgety IDM rhythms, and half-audible robot-like female vocals (“I Was Programmed…”) Unusual, experimental stuff.

Roel Funcken – Mugam v2 [Roel Funcken Bandcamp]
I can quite honestly say that I was following Dutch IDM legends Funckarma from the beginning. In 1999 I was travelling in Europe on my own before a tour, and found myself in a little electronic music shop in Antwerp, in northern Belgium. I was talking to the owner, and learning a bit about my taste – I’m guessing particularly Autechre and Arovane at that point – he handed me a brand new 12″, or maybe it was two – maybe it was Parts 1 & 2? Anyway, I was instantly sold on the melodic IDM & glitchy beats, and followed them ever since. They made regular appearances on this show from the beginning, and through their dubstep-influenced period until one of the two brothers, Don Funcken, decided to hang up his apron and stop making music. But Roel Funcken kept the faith, and has a large collection including heaps of old Funckarma on his Bandcamp. The best way of keeping up is through his Bandcamp Subscription, which has exclusive music every month, and he’s kindly let me play one of the exclusives for May here tonight. Very nice, kinda dark, pure Funcken.

Toada – Onda Tempest [plüma / Toada Bandcamp]
Late in 2023 we heard Lisbon/Berlin producer Toada (Valdir da Silva) revisiting ’00s folktronica with the Slow-Paced Tangents EP. He returns now with Alta Onda 01, first in a series of EPs on his own plüme label, melding club leanings and ambient introspection. With a comfortably-paced 4/4 kick going through the tracks, there are low-slung shuffly grooves and electronic arrangments inspired by the music of Southern Hemisphere as he says (particularly Central & South America). Very lovely, worth signing up for the follow-ups.

Chris Dooks – COWLAIRS [Chris Dooks Bandcamp]
Chris Dooks – WARCOILS [Chris Dooks Bandcamp]
I’m pretty sure I first came across Chris Dooks under his Bovine Life alias, making IDM and glitch, often with collaborators. By the end of the ’90s he was already a respected filmmaker, and multimedia art has been a continuing feature of his work. But for many years I’ve thought of him primarily as a drone and sound-artist – including works for “self-excited harmoniums”, and pure field recordings, often including people talking (as opposed, in my mind, to “spoken word”). In any case, all this aside, I was surprised to find this new EP, Cowlairs, appearing unannounced on his Bandcamp, its six anagrammatical titles enclosing six pieces of lo-fi melodic synth pieces. A couple of these pieces do incorporate field recordings, and one even has electronic beats. It’s a beautiful unexplained artefact.

Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements – The Top of Thomas Street [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Rain on the Road, the first duo release from Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements, mostly showcases their unique approaches to their main instruments – Lattimore’s harp and McClements’ accordion. Like their own solo work, it’s ambient music from acoustic instruments and some processing, with field recordings and other instruments appearing at times. I particularly loved the closing track, where McClements substitutes piano for accordion. Comforting sounds for a turbulent world.

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Everything from groundbreaking postrock to glitch-jazz, auto-techno to bass musics fast & slow – and more.

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Gastr Del Sol – The Seasons Reverse (live) [Drag City/Bandcamp]
Gastr Del Sol – The Bells Of St. Mary’s [Drag City/Bandcamp]
It’s almost impossible/unnecessary to describe Gastr Del Sol here, but then I did write about Steve Albini a couple of weeks ago, so. They were the duo of Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs, both independently massive influences on experimental music, postrock, sound-art, improv, you name it. They were also key members of Chicago’s music scene, from postpunk & hardcore through the defining period of postrock as Tortoise formed out of ensembles both had been involved with, while simultaneously O’Rourke was making freeform sound-art on tape and then computer. It’s almost impossible to overstate the significance of their albums, especially (I’d suggest) their final album Camoufleur. Some 26 years after that album was released and they disbanded, we’re treated to a double CD & triple LP collecting rarities and previously unreleased live tracks, and from the very start, Camoufleur‘s beloved opening track “The Seasons Reverse” appears in live form from a performance the year before the album was released, and sounding remarkably full given that the album was quite non-linearly constructed by O’Rourke out of recordings from both musicians apart and together. The song, and the music here in general, shows what classic songwriters both were, and also how willing they were to bury their gorgeous songs 10 minutes in to drones and abstract sound-art, or deconstruct those songs. “The Bells of St. Mary’s” was recorded for a Japanese Christmas compilation, and as O’Rourke quite rightly detests Christmas music, it’s a complete deconstruction of glitching electronic bell tones, minimalist piano and organ drones that kind of is Christmassy if you squint and look at it from the right angle. Lovely stuff, lucky us!

John Kameel Farah & Nick Fraser – Dirge [Nick Fraser Bandcamp]
John Kameel Farah & Nick Fraser – Waltz [Nick Fraser Bandcamp]
I discovered Toronto pianist, jazz composer, electronic musician John Kameel Farah way back in 2010, somehow via a breakcore/idm link I think – yes, the album Unfolding was released by the Canadian breakcore label Dross:tik. It’s a mix of brilliant jazz piano, electronic processing and Squarepusher-style beats. It’s been 15 years since that album came out, and here’s Farah working with the Toronto drummer Nick Fraser, key player in the Toronto jazz/improv scene. Fraser reached out to Farah specifically for this project, which is rooted in improvisation. From an initial set of studio improvisations, Farah worked on the recordings – with Fraser’s guidance – with all sorts of electronic interventions. The result is very different from that earlier Farah album, but carries the spirit of technically proficient jazz, with an emotive/emotional core, and advanced electronics/rhythms. You don’t need to be a jazz head at all to enjoy this though! And this kind of interaction between improvisation and electronic post-production is central to this show’s mission – especially when it’s done as beautifully as it is here.

Frédéric D. Oberland, Grégory Dargent, Tony Elieh, Wassim Halal – Black Powder [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Venerable Belgian experimental label Sub Rosa here releases a collaboration between four seasoned collaborators. Frédéric D. Oberland has appeared frequently on Sub Rosa as part of the great postrock/psych band Oiseaux-Tempête, who have themselves collaborated deeply with Middle Eastern & north African artists; French oud player Grégory Dargent works deeply with musicians from Lebanon, Algeria and further; Tony Elieh is a key member of Lebanon’s music scene, from shoegaze to improv and noise; and darbuka player Wassim Halal has also worked with musicians from Lebanon and Turkey among others. Their music together includes all these instruments, electric guitars and bass, and many variegated electronics, and together they create their own new language. At times abrasive and atonal, at times weirdly melodic, and entirely unpredictable.

Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne – Traction [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne – Plads [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
In 2018, UK electronic duo Nightports inaugurated their “Nightports w/” series with experimental/post-classical pianist Matthew Bourne, with an album that explored the expressive and physical nature of the piano. Bourne was an ideal collaborator, an exploratory musician himself, and after some excellent work with percussionist Betamax and double bassist Tom Herbert, as well as some processed field recordings, they’re back again with Bourne but working with very different sounds. The dulcitone is a very rare gem of an instrument, mechanically a bit like a Fender Rhodes – an array of tuning forks hit by piano hammers – with a clear bell-like sound. The name “Dulcitone 1804” doesn’t refer to when it was built (they’re mid-to-late 19th century instruments) but rather the manufacturer’s number for the instrument used. Already an unearthly-sounding instrument, the dulcitone is further manipulated both by Bourne in his performances and by Nightports’ Adam Martin and Mark Slater on electronics, both live and in post-production.

Splashgirl & Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – More Human [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Norwegian trio Splashgirl are a postrock band made of jazz musicians, or maybe a jazz trio leaning into postrock, or maybe I’m just getting bogged down in genres. The three musicians are adventurous in their own rights, and in particualr we’ve heard double bassist Jo Berger Myhre in various contexts on this show. Myhre and the two Andreases on piano & drums are joined here by another jazz-influenced experimenter, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, often known as Lichens, whose history takes in punk & metal, industrial and experimental rock, as well as ambient and drone. Their album together, More Human, addresses what humanity is in a world dominated by ersatz humanity in AI and automation, with lovely vocals from Lowe and even a Talk Talk cover of sorts. Released by the ever engaging Hubro label.

James Devane – Searching I [Umeboshi/Bandcamp]
James Devane – Kilter [Umeboshi/Bandcamp]
James Devane – Last Strut [Umeboshi/Bandcamp]
Bay area musician James Devane follows up his 2022 album Beauty Is Useless with Searching, again released on Swedish label Umeboshi. The former smeared sounds from the techno idiom into fuggy textures that sometimes highlighted beats, and sometimes buried them entirely. On Searching a different technique abstracts techno into lopsided patterns that point at dub or minimal techno without quite lining up. You’ll hear bits of Laurel Halo, Flying Lotus, Actress, Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas and Vladislav Delay, but none quite describe the artful disorientation here.

Bjarni Biering – I can let go (Jlin Rework) [Curious Music/Bandcamp]
Icelandic composer Bjarni Biering released his Andvaka Suite on US label Curious Music in 2021. Its classical/electronic evocations of stillness were transportive, and have now earned a release on vinyl, along with which a remix of “I can let go” has been commissioned from Jlin aka Jerrilynn Patton. Of course Patton, who has gained high respect from folks like Philip Glass and Michael Vincent Waller of late, does wonderful work here.

NikNak – You Were Supposed To Be Good (Feat. Grifton Forbes Amos & Cassie Kinoshi) [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
NikNak – Break My Bones [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
The amazing Ireti is a masterful debut album from UK turntablist, producer, composer NikNak aka Nicole Raymond. Released by Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records, it paints its Afrofuturist, post-cyberpunk vision of dystopia with help from friends like trumpeter Grifton Forbes Amos and saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi (both prominent in the UK jazz scene, with NikNak performing on Kinoshi’s recent album for International Anthem), singer & flautist Chisa Agor and singer Agaama. Still, most of the album is NikNak’s production and vinyl manipulation, sumptuous arrangements, intricate beats and all. Each time I listen to this I’m sure it’s one of the albums of the year, and the multiple listens are a pretty good sign of that too. Don’t miss it!

Krampfhaft – Anticline [Maloca Records/Bandcamp]
HIIIT are a versatile ensemble, formerly known as Slagwerk Den Haag (I first heard them in Lunch Music, a brilliantly weird collaboration with Netherlands-based composer Yannis Kyriakides). Renaming themselves after many decades to indicate that they’re no longer just a percussion ensemble, HIIIT have been producing a number of collaborations – you can see a bunch of YouTube videos of music made with Jlin. SIIIX is a project released by Brussels label Maloca, which is presented as a compilation – HIIIT are not actually credited unless you look at the description. Each artist, from drummers Valentina Magaletti & Julian Sartorius to producers such as upsammy and Azu Tiwaline, created sketches over which HIIIT improvised layers of sound which were then given back to the artists to create new pieces. I could happily have played any of the tracks, all of which creatively use percussion with electronics, but chose Utrecht (Netherlands) producer Joris Van Grunsven aka Krampfhaft, who created a patiently evolving piece of syncopated bass music. The compilation is highly recommended.

David August – Workout I [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]
Italian-German composer David August is the founder of 99CHANTS, with a small catalogue of great ambient & experimental music. For many years he was making house music, but founding 99CHANTS took him in more experimental directions, and last year’s VĪS was a mystical mixture of ambient, post-classical, and deconstructed club music. For the WORKOUTS EP he’s in rhythmic mode, with four pieces of tumbling, percussive bass techno. This first Workout is a good indicator of the goodness to come.

Kiwanoid – ក្ផានអវី [Mille Plateaux]
Dizzying glitch for Mille Plateaux here from the Estonian “multichannel meta-artist” Kiwanoid. Each track title is apparently the word “nothing” in various languages – although “Vanat​ü​hi“, the album title, is “Old one” in Estonian (according Google translate anyway!) There are a lot of manipulated voice samples in here, along with not so much deconstructed club as demolished club. Fun though!

Mutant Joe – Malfeasance [99CTS RCRDS]
Meanjin/Brisbane’s Mutant Joe (based, I think, in Berlin) is an expert at, well, mutant beats in various genres, and on this new EP for NYC/Paris label 99cts (it’s meant to be 99 cents I think), there are four stomping hybrids of hip-hop, dubstep and other bass genres, with nods to jungle around the edges. Quality.

Ben Pest X Kursa – Totally Kippered [Love Love Records]
Mutant bass from two heavy operators from the UK, Ben Pest and Kursa. All the tracks here are somewhere around grime or dubstep, but inflected/infected with jungle/d’n’b, techno and electro. But the bass slams on all these dancefloor weapons.

The Lazy Jesus – Smok (Dengue Dengue Dengue remix) [Shouka/Bandcamp]
Ukrainian musician/DJ/producer Ehor Havrylenko aka The Lazy Jesus takes ancient music of Ukraine and brings it into the percussive world of contemporary techno and bass music. The UA Tribal Vol. 2 EP is out later this month via French-Tunisian label Shouka, along with two remixes. Peruvian duo Dengue Dengue Dengue up the percussive energy in their remix of “Smok”.

Thief – Paramnesia [Prophecy Productions/Bandcamp]
Thief – Dulcinea [Prophecy Productions/Bandcamp]
Dylan Neal has been a member of cult black metal/dulcimer band Botanist, but his solo material as Thief is a very different affair (even though Botanist can sound more like folk-shoegaze or even trip-hop more than metal at times). With Thief, Neal makes industrial electronica with characteristic choral samples all through. The poppier ends of Nine Inch Nails are recalled and there’s IDM-influenced beat programming. Bleed, Memory finds Neal dealing with his father’s descent into dementia, and how that affected his memory and personality, as well as his perception of the world around him. Neal’s granularly-manipulated choral samples give these songs an unearthly aura – the album is intentionally haunted, and it’s touching listening.

Moin – Lapsed [Kuboraum Digital Sound Residency/Bandcamp]
Kuboraum are, as far as I can see, a Berlin-based designer of glasses frames (“masks”) who also have various artistic ventures, one of which is the Kuboraum Digital Sound Residency, offering music downloads for those who sign up to their newsletter. The first 12 of these are now available on vinyl and also as downloads on Bandcamp, and it’s a pretty impressive list, including exclusive music from Space Afrika, Emma DJ, MC Yallah & Dembaster, Ziúr, µ-Ziq, Lucy Railton and others. Moin‘s track matches what they’ve made in the last couple of years – angular postpunk riffage with decontextualised vocal samples. Excellent.

KRM & KMRU – Ark [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
Stunning, unexpected collab here in which Kenyan ambient sensation Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU teams up with Kevin Richard Martin, and not just because of the three letters. Under his full name, KRM has been making extremely washed-out uneasy ambient that still has a core of the heavyweight dub/dancehall/dubstep he makes as The Bug. Surprisingly, at Martin’s request, the record features Kamaru’s voice on some tracks, although “Ark” (one of two preview tracks available) is instrumental, with gaseous synths driven by a very Bug-like pulse.

Véronique Serret – Migrating Bird [Véronique Serret via Planet Company/MGM/Bandcamp]
Full disclosure: I’ve known Véronique Serret since we were school kids in youth orchestras. She’s a brilliant violinist who has made a successful classical career – playing in the Australian Chamber Orchestra as well as with Bangarra Dance and Sydney Dance Company, as well as being concertmaster of the Darwin Symphony. But she’s also been involved with non-classical music for as long as I have (*ahem*), as a founding member of CODA with composer/violist Nick Wales, and later a member of improvising string quartet The Noise, as well as contributing or directing strings for many international & local musicians. Migrating Bird is her first solo album of music written by herself, and performed on six string violin along with her own voice. Kim Moyes of The Presets (also a classically trained muso from way back) provides electronic touches in the production, and Véronique has incorporated many field recordings Mt Cootha/Meanjin which accentuate the music’s theme of the natural world. These songs evoke the landscape and fauna of the Australian continent and also of her homeland Mauritius. Great stuff.

Claire Cross – Theta [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
Finishing with an accomplished jazz musician from Naarm/Melbourne (now Berlin-based), Claire Cross, taking her electric bass into ambient territory on an album that explores the Sleep Cycle. The ensemble here features drums, bass and voice, all used with copious effects, playing and improvising around compositions from Cross that draw from the frequency ranges detected in EEGs during the different phases of the sleep cycle. So let’s float away with delay-ridden textures from all four musicians…

Listen again — ~204MB