Tonight we’ve got a stack of music from Bandcamp’s Juneteenth Friday special (raising money for NAACP), an array of beat-related experimental electronic music, and a feature on memotone‘s big stash of 2020 music…
Friday the 19th of June is Juneteenth, a most significant day for Black Americans as it commemorates the day on which slavery ended in Texas, the last US state to do so. Like many, this year was the first time I heard of Juneteenth – but worse, it was probably the first year than many non-Black Americans heard of it too. And this year Bandcamp donated all of their profits on Juneteenth to NAACP and promised to do so every Juneteenth moving forward. So quite a bit of tonight’s selections come courtesy of this gesture by Bandcamp and music released in connection with the day.

LISTEN AGAIN for your mortal soul. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Speaker Music – Amerikkka’s Bay (ft. Maia Sanaa) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Speaker Music – Of Our Spiritual Strivings (ft. Syanide) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
The album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry by Speaker Music, the alias of theorist and journalist DeForrest Brown, Jr, was surprise-released on Friday in conjunction with Planet µ – his second release on the label. It combines the frenetic rhythms found on his recent Percussive Therapy EP with sampled spoken word about the recent protests, field recordings, jazz samples, noise, and some brilliant guest appearances, along with pointed titles. A particular highlight is the moving poem written & read by 18-year-old artist/actor/singer/dancer (and whatever else she chooses to be) Maia Sanaa on the first track “Amerikkka’s Bay”. I chose to juxtapose this with a track featuring limpid presumably by guest Syanide.

clipping. – Chapter 319 [clipping. Bandcamp]
Also released for Juneteenth is the new single from clipping., which highlights the connections between Trump, white supremacy & police violence against Blacks, while being designed as a catchy, danceable track that can be played through boomboxes at protests. And it sure is! It’s backed with the incredible, devastating “Knees on the Ground”, another track about police brutality which they created in 2014 during the protests in Ferguson, and which was only available on SoundCloud.

700 Bliss – Sixteen [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Loraine James – Microdancing Or Something [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Hyperdub recently put together their second compilation in collaboration with Adult Swim – which is always annoying because for some reason Adult Swim’s musical ventures are geoblocked so Australia has no access. In any case, like last time Hyperdub have now made Stimulus Swim available from the label, and it’s great. Moor Mother and DJ Haram as 700 Bliss contribute a beautiful piece about escaping into the dancefloor, and London’s genius Loraine James creates a bubbly new genre of not-quite-footwork/drill’n’bass on “Microdancing Or Something”.

Vessel – Red Sex (Re-Strung, feat. Rakhi Singh) [qu junctions Bandcamp]
Matana Roberts – Breathe [qu junctions Bandcamp]
English promoter/booking agency Qu Junktions have now put out two compilations on Bandcamp featuring exclusive work from their amazing roster of artists – designed as a way for those artists to make up a small part ofo their lost profits from COVID-19 lockdowns. There’s really some high quality stuff on both comps. Vessel‘s “Red Sex” should be familiar to a lot of people from its original incarnation on his 2014 album Punish, Honey. Here it’s reworked with Rakhi Singh‘s sliding violin alongside the freakish electronics. Seb Gainsborough aka Vessel and Rakhi Singh have teamed up to form new label Palpu, as Tri-Angle has now shut down. Following this we heard from sound-artist & free jazz musician Matana Roberts with a collage of febrile drones, buried hints of turmoil and massed voices.

Rider Shafique / The Bug – Burn [Pressure]
Frequent dubstep/drum’n’bass/grime collaborator Rider Shafique here works with deep bass don The Bug for a masterful new track referencing Black history and current events, with all profits going to Shafique’s charity bringing books by Black authors to Black children.

Pinch – All Man Got (ft. Trim) [Tectonic/Bandcamp]
Pinch – Entangled Particles (ft. Emika) [Tectonic/Bandcamp]
Despite many high profile collaborations – albums with Adrian Sherwood and Shackleton, EPs with many different peeps – it’s been a long time since a solo album from Bristol dubstep original Pinch, and he’s come to the party with a true genre-spanning monster, with house & techno represented along with dubstep & grime (for the latter, see Trim on the poised, minimalist first track tonight) – but also some tantalising bits of almost breakcoreish drum’n’bass in there at times. It’s weird hearing that appear halfway through the almost-trip-hoppy track featuring longtime collaborator Emika, but I’m not complaining! Excellent work.

Torana – Bladesmith [Weaponry]
I can’t tell you much about drum’n’bass crew Torana, except that they seem to be plural, and they’re connected with Seattle-based d’n’b master Homemade Weapons, and have appeared at times on Samurai Music comps. Their latest EP Rust combines contemporary jungle-infused drum’n’bass with halftime, dubstep influences, particularly creative on “Bladesmith”, heard tonight.

E-Saggila – Blue Amps [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
BHMF – Mörkertal [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
Dream Eater – Flowers of Neptune [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
JS Aurelius – Crime is the Highest Form of Sensuality [Northern Electronics/Bandcamp]
Swedish label Northern Electronics released their latest Scandinavian Swords compilation last week, which is spread over a 3xLP and 3x cassette edition, making for a total of 40 tracks over 3 hrs and 22 minutes. Hard to take in, so a week and a bit later, here we are – mostly with selections leaning into the jungle breaks, of which there’s a surprising amount alongside techno, ambient and other genres. So we start with Toronto’s Rita Mikhael aka E-Saggila, with some distorted junglist techno that you love to hear… Then Swedish duo BHMF, previously named Bandhagens Musikförening, with a similar tonic of 4/4 techno with distorted drum’n’bass breaks and glorious rising synth pads. And Dream Eater is apparently Emil Hammarlund of Stockholm’s Struktur Records, giving us ambient textures and anxious, stuttery beats – the only selection tonight from the triple cassette, most of which is on the more ambient side of the label (but clearly not all!). Finally, Ascetic House co-founder JS Aurelius gives us some glitchy bass techno.

Lakker – July [Lakker Bandcamp]
Berlin-resident Dublin duo Lakker – aka Ian McDonnell of Eomac and Dara Smith of Arad – have been UFog favourites for years, with their bassy techno sounds. I’d heard a few of their ravey idmish earlier work on some compilations, but it’s cool to see them collecting some of that stuff as Rave System Demos [2005-2006] on their Bandcamp. The first is early ’90s-style pre-jungle hardcore, while the second, from which this is lifted, is a bit more classic jungle (albeit a bit more breakcore style). Looking forward to the third to drop soon!

ScanOne – Breeze [SEAGRAVE]
Ice_Eyes – Silk01d [SEAGRAVE]
Always great to have a new compilation from SEAGRAVE – it’s been a bit longer since the last one, but Fugitive Pieces is again “compiled by The Fissure Family” and collects some great idm-style breakbeat/bass from artists connected with the label. Present are Etch, Brain Rays + Quiet, SDEM , REQ and many others. Tonight we’ve got electronic breaks from ScanOne, and glitch breaks from Greek duo Ice_Eyes.

Marcus Whale – Lucifer [Marcus Whale Bandcamp]
The third single from Marcus Whale‘s solo album is the title track “Lucifer”. The album, to be released on July 24th, casts Lucifer as queer icon, and promises to combine Marcus’s many talents, as did his previous album – classical background, silky vocals, thought-provoking poetry, heaps of bass and glitched, ravey beats. Can’t come soon enough.

O.G. Jigg & Friends – Harvest (Grime Man Next Door Mix by Iceman Junglist Kru) [Memotone Bandcamp]
memotone – Disembodied [Memotone Bandcamp]
memotone – Waining Bow (excerpt) [Memotone Bandcamp]
memotone – Peaches of Immortality [Diskotopia/Memotone Bandcamp]
HALFNELSON – MIND THE GAP [Memotone Bandcamp]
O.G. Jigg & Friends – May Queen [Memotone Bandcamp]
O.G. Jigg & Friends – May Queen (unperson version) [Memotone Bandcamp]
The multi-talented Will Yates is best known as memotone. A self-taught musician, he’s got roots in post-dubstep bass music, techno & the like, but combines these electronic genre roots with idiomatic piano, cello, live drums and percussion, and a dab hand at the MPC sampler as well, resulting in electro-acoustic music that can float between musique concrète, folktronica, post-classical, jazz, noise and more. The second track tonight, “Disembodied”, comes from his soundtrack to the horror/suspense movie Il Sonnambulo, and it’s followed by the equally creepy and gorgeous scratchy strings & percussion of “Waining Bow” from a recent experimental/ambient album called SUPA LUNA. Then we heard one track from the most “official”, most recent album Invisible Cities, which is somewhat more jazzy and evocative, but does have beats at times. And HALFNELSON is Yates’ alter ego often for more minimal techno, but here he’s sampled ’80s & ’90s skate tapes and created tracks from sequenced samples and live takes on the MPC 1000. Both of these releases only came out in the last month or even couple of weeks, with the others not much earlier even – but this Friday he managed to slip another one out. O.G. Jigg & Friends’ Originals/Remixes is a limited cassette & even more limited t-shirt with a set of English folky jigs, reels and arcane stuff, then remixed by friends from the Bristol scene, including noise/experimental collective Avon Terror Corps of which he’s a member. So at the top we had the rarely very junglist Iceman Junglist Kru with some pitched-down grimey stuff, and at the end we had some gorgeous glitchscapes from unperson. It’s excellent, and all profits will go to the BAME-led Black South West Network, working for racial justice in the south west UK.

Listen again — ~201MB

Good evening. Black Lives Matter. People still don’t seem to get it – especially those involved in policing.
Black American music is literally in the origins of all the music I play on this show, of all the pop music we listen to… Tonight we’ve got hip-hop, Ugandan percussion, and international dance music based around sampled and re-sampled breaks and techno originals. Sending out love to all.

LISTEN AGAIN, keep listening again until you get it! Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Armand Hammer – Slewfoot [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
Armand Hammer – Pommelhorse ft. Curly Castro [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
Last year billy woods, founder of Backwoodz Studioz, put out two of the best hip-hop albums of the year – Hidden Places with Kenny Segal in particular was top of my list. The year before, his duo Armand Hammer with ELUCID released one of the most bewildering and brilliant albums of that year, Paraffin, so their follow-up this year had a lot riding on it. And Shrines by and large pulls it off. The lyrics as usual are rapidfire, dense and reference-laden, frequently apposite to the current situation, which after all is just drawing attention to the reality of life for Black Americans that white people have the privilege of staying oblivious to (much like in Australia). Musically it’s as strange and unexpected as ever – highlighting the fact that hip-hop has always been experimental music.

Nihiloxica – 190819 [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
Nihiloxica – 170819 [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
Nihiloxica – Choir Chops [Nyege Nyege Tapes]
Nihiloxica – Dubugwanjuba [Nyege Nyege Tapes]
Nihiloxica – Salongo [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
Bugandan electro-percussion group Nihiloxica formed in 2017 when the Ugandan percussion group Nilotika Cultural Ensemble fused their music with the warped synth playing of pq and the hybrid live/electronic drumkit of Spooky-J. They released two amazing EPs of dark, raw music on Kampala-based Nyege Nyege Tapes, and now have signed to legendary Belgian label Crammed Discs for their debut album Kaloli. It’s both the same and different – in some ways more polished, a little less edgy, but allowing more freedom for experimental skits and the beautiful flute & synth piece “170819” among others. Whatever, it’s great that this creative, brilliant band will get more followers through this wider release, and can hopefully tour widely once things open up again…

Tennis Pagan – GALAXIES A MESS [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Tennis Pagan – Dirge [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Tennis Pagan – [unlisted] [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Melbourne’s Tennis Pagan continues to be resolutely anonymous – we know he’s a pagan who’s into tennis… actually we don’t even know that at all. His second EP for Spirit Level continues to harken back to woozy ’90s idm, drill’n’bass & downtempo, with a current-era edge to it. It was also delightful how the fluttering synths and percussive backing of the first track conveniently flowed out of Nihiloxica.

MoMA Ready – The Other Side [MoMA Ready Bandcamp]
MoMA Ready – An Exorcism [MoMA Ready Bandcamp]
Gallery S/MoMA Ready – The Subtle Sound of Dying [MoMA Ready Bandcamp]
New York producer Wyatt D. Stevens embodies New York’s gregarious club traditions with his MoMA Ready project and the similarly art world-focused “Gallery S”, as well as his label HAUS of ALTR. The music ranges across techno, house, breakbeat etc, with a pervasive love of jungle in there too. It’s bizarrely hard to pin down in a wonderfully queer way – while “The Other Side” is pure junglist rave, the rest of the EP of that title is everything else; last year’s A Demon / An Exorcism is a little more consistent, with effectively three variants of the one beat-juggling track. This year’s Gallery S is co-credited to Stevens’ alternate project of the same name, an arty exploration of dance music of all forms, even though I’m of course focusing on the jungle & breakbeat energy. Brilliant stuff.

ASC – Moment of Truth [Samurai Music/ASC Bandcamp]
James Clements’ ASC started off as a drum’n’bass project, but after helping pioneer the autonomic sound in the 2010s, he’s strayed further into techno & ambient climes – so it’s wonderful to hear new EP An Exact Science, courtesy of Samurai Music, who encouraged him to unearth some old breakbeats and create four storming tracks of junglist beat science.

Luke Vibert presents Amen Andrews – Bass Kick [Hypercolour]
Amen Andrews – Fast & Bulbous [Rephlex]
Luke Vibert presents Amen Andrews – Ready Again [Hypercolour]
Of all the “drill’n’bass” producers of the mid-’90s – Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, µ-Ziq et al – even though I believe they all genuinely loved jungle & drum’n’bass, I always felt Luke Vibert pulled it off the best with his Plug alias. Best known for his dubby hip-hop sounds as Wagon Christ, and for his effortless melodic acid techno & funk (often under his own name), Vibert returned to jungle in the early 2000s as Amen Andrews (indicating that Plug could only be created on the long-gone old-school sampling technology). From the very first Amen Andrews EP I’ve played a cute track that samples Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, Captain Beefheart and of course The Winstons. This year Vibert’s putting out three breakbeat-focused albums through Hypercolour, and the first sees a welcome full-album return of Amen Andrews. Relentlessly fun stuff.

Nahash – Changement de Régime [Svbkvlt]
Nahash – The Horns feat. Osheyack [Svbkvlt]
Montreal producer Raphaël Valensi is Nahash, producing bass & jungle-riffing deconstructed club music with a strong political undercurrent, especially on the new album Flowers of the Revolution for Shanghai’s Svbkvlt – he lived for some years in Shanghai, and the new album features Shanghai-based Osheyack on one track (as well as a set of remixes including our own DJ Plead). Nahash delves deep into Western & Evangelical Christian interference with countries the world over – installing right-wing dictators, bringing a neo-liberalism that, as he says, they “could do very well without it”. And the harsh industrial bass and amen breaks are rad…

Arad – Barometric Shuffle [VOITAX/Bandcamp]
Arad – Inti [Bedouin Records]
Arad – Vortex [VOITAX/Bandcamp]
Dara Smith’s duo Lakker with Ian McDonnell aka Eomac have been favourites on this show since their IDM days, and their take on bass techno – very much informed by their move from Dublin to Berlin years ago – is very close to this show’s heart. I was very much taken with Arad‘s 2018 EP on Bedouin Records, The Glimpse, which melded autotuned & vocoded vocals with syncopated machine funk. His new EP Radiance Haze on Berlin label VOITAX leans back towards techno but still features his voice and of course that broken-beat funk.

Liminal Drifter – Connected [Hidden Shoal/Liminal Drifter Bandcamp]
Liminal Drifter – A Love Song for Ghosts [Hidden Shoal/Liminal Drifter Bandcamp]
Liminal Drifter – Choir on Mars [Hidden Shoal/Liminal Drifter Bandcamp]
Dr Simon Order is the UK-born, Perth-based musician behind Liminal Drifter, with 5 years and 4 albums of melodic, blissful electronica under his belt. Connected continues the theme started on Troubled Mystic in 2015 – touchpoints would be Plaid, Boards of Canada, The Orb’s ambient techno and the downtempo instrumental hip-hop of the ’90s, although there’s something recognizably his own about Order’s basslines and melodies. It’s a delight to have him back.

Listen again — ~207MB

Another week of protest, and another week also featuring Bandcamp Friday again – and this week many independent artists and labels have been passing on their earnings, including Bandcamp’s largesse in waiving their fees – to organisations related to the Black Lives Matter movement, to bail funds in the US, and to Aboriginal justice organisations in Australia. As usual while I’ve bought lots, I haven’t had enough time to take it all in, so most of this is stuff that’s already been released or was coming out anyway.

LISTEN AGAIN because you can. Stream on demand from FBi Radio, podcast here.

Rrawun Maymuru w/ Nick Wales – Nyapillilingu; Spirit Lady [stream on SoundCloud – available on iTunes and possibly elsewhere]
Starting with an extraordinary collaboration between Yolngu songman Rrawun Maymuru and Sydney composer/electronic musician Nick Wales. This work sets a Songline from the Mangalili clan on Rrawun’s paternal side with electronic production and orchestral arrangements. The spirit lady Nyapillilngu [pronounced Na-pil-lil-new] provides safe passage between the Earth and Milky Way. It’s a beautiful work, created for Sydney Dance Company’s Ocho.

Run The Jewels – Out Of Sight (Ft. 2 Chainz) [Run The Jewels]
Run The Jewels – Early (feat. BOOTS) [Run The Jewels]
Run The Jewels – Goonies Vs. ET [Run The Jewels]
Finally, four years after RTJ3, the fourth album from Killer Mike & EL-P’s Run The Jewels came out this week. Slated for Friday, they decided to drop it early, because everybody needed a bit of good news maybe! It hits just as hard as previously – EL-P’s production is impulsively danceable, and still hints a little at the industrial & experimental influences his work has often borne. And while Killer Mike’s always been politically outspoken & eloquent, this is probably the most explicitly anti-racist and political, being their first created during the Trump presidency. I’m playing two highlights from my first couple of listens – I particularly love the chopped vocal “oh” that accentuates the downbeats in the breakdowns. In between, probably my favourite RTJ tune “Early” comes from their second album, and is both a brilliant production and a moving piece about police brutality.
As usual the new album is a pay-what-you-want download ahead of its physical release, with all profits going to the Mass Defense Program that provides legal aid to political activists, protesters and movements for social change.

zeroh – The Fade [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
zeroh – YOP [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
zeroh – MDNmoves [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
zeroh – Rites of Passage [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
zeroh – Metacine [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
The debut album proper from LA rapper/producer zeroh, BLQLYTE (“blacklight”) dropped on Leaving Records a few weeks ago. It features contributions from Busdriver under the guise of his FR/BLK/PR (“free black press”) project, and that’s probably how I heard about it, although it’s gotten some well deserved press lately anyway. The production is psychedelic, disorienting and brilliant, covering a bewildering amount of ground – especially when you go back to his re-released five-volume 0 EMISSIONS project from 2016. He’s Edwin Liddie Jr, and he’s released music as Blaqbird and was associated with LA’s Low End Theory as an MC for many years – but he was never really foregrounded. This album should do something about that, even though he smudges and obfuscates everything throughout. It’s pretty amazing.

C Trip A – Draco [Translation Loss/Bandcamp]
End Christian – Karaoke_So [Corpse Flower Records]
The Brazilian Gentleman – Fog Variation [Lazy Thinking/Bandcamp]
The Brazilian Gentleman – You’re Boring [Lazy Thinking/Bandcamp]
C Trip A – Wave Lord [Translation Loss/Bandcamp]
And now for a series of releases gathered around Christian McKenna (aka Christian Alexander, of psych/post-metal band Hex Inverter and before that post-hardcore band Empty Flowers) and Alap Momin, best known as Oktopus from noise-hop pioneers dälek.
There’s not much metal involved with any of these projects, truth be told. New duo C Trip A is a murky hip-hop collaboration with rapper Anthony Adams, with help from Momin and multi-instrumentalist Colin Marston among others. Their debut Ozzy Nights is out later this month but is available now digitally on Bandcamp. Meanwhile, almost at the same time the second album from McKenna, Momin et al’s The Brazilian Gentleman has dropped, co-released by Sydney’s own Lazy Thinking. L & L is a tribute to, and featuring members of, the late-period shoegaze band All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors – and among the experimental electronics and auto-tuned vocals there are some jangly guitars! It’s all very weird stuff that I find fascinating and addictive.

Ash Koosha – Nutshell [Ash Koosha Bandcamp]
While London-based Iranian artist Ash Koosha continues to explore the possibilities of the virtual artist, he’s also putting out random tracks & mixes all the time. This one is described as “2020inanutshell” on Bandcamp, and even though it’s only a couple of weeks old, it already seems very premature to try and summarise this year anytime before it’s over! But it’s as intense and furious as you’d expect.

Hadi Bastani – interference [Flaming Pines]
Hadi Bastani – ecbatan (excerpt) [Flaming Pines]
Also an Iranian ex-pat, Hadi Bastani is a sound-artist and anthropologist at the Queen’s University Belfast. Bastani deals in synthesised electronic sounds, field recordings, voices and “recycled sounds” sourced both in Tehran and more recently in Belfast. It’s music that has seen him forge connections with musicians in his homeland through his research, having found his way to Belfast as a refugee over 10 years ago. Bastani expertly creates a fine balance here between the austerity of pure electronics and the warmth of human creation.

Kcin – Freedom Capital Exchange [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Kcin – New England [Hospital Hill/Bandcamp]
Kcin – Well it’s their Fault for Bringing their Kids Into a Battle [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Nick Meredith’s Kcin is a frequent visitor to these playlists – well, he has insisted on releasing a plethora of music these last few months! Here’s something new and solo, and it’s apparently not the debut album proper. Bushmaster is instead billed as a mixtape – an interlinked album-length collection of his typical processed live percussion, overdriven synths and, here, a collection of intercepted military transmissions. At a time when heavily militarised policing around the world is coming under increased scrutiny (in some circles at least), these sampled communications can be quite chilling – e.g. “Well it’s their Fault for Bringing their Kids Into a Battle”. There’s some furiously high-speed rhythms in here too – it’s a highly individual Australian take on industrial electronics, just how we like it.

Machinefabriek & Anne Bakker – Voorwaarts [Where To Now? Records/Machinefabriek Bandcamp/Anne Bakker Bandcamp]
Anne Bakker – Stars in her Eyes [Anne Bakker Bandcamp]
Machinefabriek & Anne Bakker – Sirene [Where To Now? Records/Machinefabriek Bandcamp/Anne Bakker Bandcamp]
Rutger Zuydervelt returns with yet another Machinefabriek album for 2020, here working with longtime collaborator Anne Bakker on violin, viola & vocals. Bakker’s improvisations form the building material for a series of electro-acoustic works, some pulsingly rhythmic & eerie, some abstract, some opulent. It’s some of their best work. Bakker is a very versatile musician, playing with folk groups, with neoclassical pianist/singer Agnes Obel, Iron Maiden’s Blaze Bayley and others. I only recently discovered her solo album Vox/Viola which showcases her unadorned playing & singing with wonderful folk-inspired songs.

Mabe Fratti – Aire (with Gibrana Cervantes) [Tin Angel Records]
We only just heard from Mexico-based Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti a few weeks ago, and now she has a new song coming out next week. A piece originally created by Fratti when she first arrived in Mexico, it would be a harrowing dirge with Fratti’s sawing cello and Gibrana Cervantes‘s violin, but for the sorrowful, high vocals which elevate it to another place.

Sumn Conduit – TRACK (excerpt) [Sumn Conduit Bandcamp]
Finishing with an excerpt from the debut release from Sydney duo Sumn Conduit, formed by Indigenous Australian vocal improviser Sonya Holowell and Sydney composer, saxophonist and modular synthesist Ben Carey. TRACK is a nearly-hour-long recorded live at Carriageworks late last year. It demonstrates their impressive ability to merge extended vocal techniques with synthesised drones & noises. It’s a sustained tour de force, from which I’ve played an excerpt that tries to showcase both musicians’ virtuoso technique and their merging together as an ensemble.

Listen again — ~202MB

Given the events of the last few days, I kinda wish my whole show was like the first two songs, but I’m glad that Drew Daniel has provided something so brilliant and timely anyway. We have plenty of weird, heavy and twisted songs tonight alongside some weird sound-art old & new, and some wonderful minimal techno.
If you’re in Australia and want to do something, you could donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, although at this point there are protests in cities all around America and people are being arrested who need help making bail – especially at a time when going to jail means high risk of COVID-19 infection. So there are other organisations like the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund are also helpful.
That said, in Australia we must not forget that we have police forces around the country that consistently target brown people over white people. Single Aboriginal women are incarcerated at horrific rates in Western Australia because they can’t pay fines – donate to help Sisters Inside Inc. There’ve been at least 400 Aboriginal deaths in custody, zero convictions. David Dungay‘s last words were “I can’t breathe”. This stuff is sickeningly familiar.

LISTEN AGAIN for the usual emotional and cerebral sustenance… Stream on demand @ FBi, podcast here.

The Soft Pink Truth – Fuck Nazi Sympathy (Aus-Rotten cover) [The Soft Pink Truth Bandcamp]
The Soft Pink Truth – Protest and Survive (Discharge cover) (feat. Angel Deradoorian) [The Soft Pink Truth Bandcamp]
A few weeks ago I played some excerpts from what I consider to be one of the greatest albums of the year, The Soft Pink Truth‘s Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? (the link, by the way, goes to the 2-track mixed version which is different from the multi-track digital version and flows much better). Drew Daniel of Matmos is The Soft Pink Truth, and he used that album to express love and peace at at time of great anguish, anxiety and anger for the world, and particularly America. Now, just in time for the discord in America to rise once again in the face of racist, violent police and a white nationalist, kleptocratic President, Drew has released a companion album to SWGOSSTGMI?, which is much more in the format of the usual Soft Pink Truth catalogue. Am I Free To Go? sees him covering a selection of crust-punk anarcho-protest songs in various electronic stylings, breakcore, glitch techno etc, with appropriately gutteral vocals alongside some clean singing. On the last track, the anarchy gives way to the beautiful voice of Angel Deradoorian, serving as a segue into Shall We Go On Sinning…, on which she sings as well. Masterful & timely.
The album is pay what you can and profits go to the International Anti-fascist Defence Fund.

Kcin & Brendan Clark – Short bow [Focused Silence]
Kcin & Brendan Clark – An economy of ghosts [Focused Silence]
We’ve heard Nick Meredith’s Kcin on this show a lot with his overdriven electronics and live percussion. After a collaboration on Trestle Records recently he’s here again working with another Sydney muso, bassist Brendan Clark of Lisathe, Broken Mountain etc for an album on UK label Focused Silence of targeted noise, drones & crushed beats. The sound of machines & buzzing amplifiers abounds, and it’s a shock (in a good way) when Clark’s slow-bowed double bass makes an entry at some points.

Party Dozen – Auto Loser [GRUPO]
Party Dozen – Dead Friends [GRUPO]
More Sydney noise now, from the long-awaited (truly!) second album from Party Dozen. It’s everyone’s drummer & producer Jonathan Boulet and saxophonist Kirsty Tickle (also singer/songwriter as Exhibitionist). Once again the full-frontal assault of noisemaking machines and sax is the main focus, but with plenty of other electronics and varied sounds in the mix. Two ridiculously talented musicians, and let’s hope our R-thingy value is low enough by November to see them perform together again around the country…

Mrs. Piss – Nobody Wants To Party With Us [Sargent House/Bandcamp]
Mrs. Piss – Knelt [Sargent House/Bandcamp]
Oathbreaker – Ease Me (Chelsea Wolfe Remix) [Deathwish Inc/Bandcamp]
On tour together, Chelsea Wolfe and drummer Jess Gowrie started new project Mrs. Piss under which they’ve now released possibly the heaviest stuff they’ve done – their love of industrial metal really comes through, but of course it’s also superbly melodic and full of heartfelt emotion. The equally melodic and unusual Belgian hardcore/indie/experimental band Oathbreaker have just released new single Ease Me featuring 4 “interpretations”, including JK Broadrick in Jesu mode, James Kelly’s Wife and also Chelsea Wolfe, who mixes up heavy guitars and fragile piano & electronics in fine form.

Fuse Box City – Shine On [Weeping Prophet Records]
New London band Fuse Box City are here with their second single, anticipating debut album Shipwreckers, released on July 31st. Rachel Kenedy’s blissful shoegazey vocals give way to spoken word, electronic beats and glitches. It’s the kind of rock/electronic fusion that could’ve happened in the early ’90s, and it’s interesting (and welcome!) to hear it now. Looking forward to the album.

Dolphins of Venice – Dark Ivor [DataDoor/Bandcamp]
Here’s another of Adelaide IDM maestro Tim Koch‘s new collaborations, this one with the excellent US IDM/ambient producer Adrien75. Dolphins of Venice insist on writing all their titles in extreme emoji, but the album title is Insect Spread. The music is full of glitchy beats, buried vocals, and blissful shoegazey textures.

Bec Plexus – mirror image [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp]
Bec Plexus – think out loud [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp]
Amsterdam-based singer Bec Plexus released her new album Sticklip in collaboration with New York neoclassical label New Amsterdam Records a couple of months ago. A lot of the tracks (including the second one tonight) are produced with Melbourne composer/post-punk synth legend David Chesworth, and most tracks find her working with various other composer/lyricists – the first tonight is from Pascal Le Boeuf, the second by Molly Joyce. There’s a general air of sarcastic remove to these tracks, but also a viciously talented musicianship. This is not music for the faint-hearted, and one should expect the unexpected.

Marion Cousin & Kaumwald – La loba parda [Les Disques du Festival Permanent]
Marion Cousin & Gaspar Claus – Ametleret abundós [Les Disques du Festival Permanent]
Marion Cousin & Kaumwald – Las bodas de Inesilla y el Brillante [Les Disques du Festival Permanent]
The first album by French singer Marion Cousin to explore the Iberian Peninsula was made with cellist Gaspar Claus in 2016 and explored work songs from Minorca and Majorca. For her second in this open-ended series, she moves to a remote region of Spain called Estremadura, and works with experimental electronic duo Kaumwald, made up of Clément Vercelletto and Ernest Bergez aka Sourdure. The result, on both albums, is an extraordinary, hypnotic take on folk musics, freely updated and extemporised.

Marion Cousin – Confinuum #10 ‘Agustina y Gloria’ [Murailles Music/Bandcamp]
Jean-Brice Godet ft Achille – Confinuum #18 [Murailles Music/Bandcamp]
One more track from Marion Cousin, here solo on a compilation from self-described iconoclastic French label Murailles Music, whose Confinuum asks artists to take over one from another in a series of tracks, which turned out to be beautiful and challenging in turn. Experimental artist Jean-Brice Godet‘s contribution appears a lot further down the line, with tape manipulation and queasy piano.

Beatriz Ferreyra – Echos [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
Beatriz Ferreyra – Deux dents dehors [Persistence of Sound]
Bernard Parmegiani – Dedans-dehors (part 1) [Ina-GRM]
Active since the 1960s, Argentine composer Beatriz Ferreyra is still making music now, and has (luckily for us) just had a couple of new releases of her works come out. A couple of months back, ROOM40 put out a 12″ called Echos+ which collected the incredible 1978 work “Echos” heard tonight alongside another vocal-derived work from 1987 and one using percussion sounds from 2007. “Echos” chops and inter-layers the voice of her niece, who tragically died in a car crash, and forms a gorgeous and joyful tribute. And now, perhaps coincidentally, new musique concrète-focused UK label Persistence of Sound has released Huellas entreveradas (“Interspersed footsteps”) with works as recent as 2018. “Deux dents dehors” from 2007 is a punning tribute (literally meaning “two teeth outdoors”) to her colleague, the great Bernard Parmegiani, written for his birthday. The piece referenced, Dedans-dehors, actually translates as “inside-outside” of course, and it’s lovely to be able to play the first part: composed in 1977, it’s extraordinarily contemporary-sounding electronic work.

Panasonic – Zoviet France Remix [Sähkö]
An incredbile find here; Finnish label Sähkö were apparently sent remixes of the great Pan Sonic by :zoviet*france: (as it’s usually styled) and Muslimgauze in 1996 (so long ago that they were still called Panasonic!) and for some reason they were set aside and never released. Which is insane because they’re fantastic. Like, so so good. I tried to play as much as I could tonight of the blissful 13-minute take by :zoviet*france:, with a pulsing techno beat and fluttering waves of choral sounds. No idea what the source is, but this is ambient techno of a less dark & industrial nature than I’d expect from :zoviet*france:, but I’m not an expert on their music (I should probably correct this sometime soon!) The other two tracks are vintage Muslimgauze, as is to be expected.

Listen again — ~198MB