Tonight it’s an all-women Utility Fog. I was going to do a show like this soon anyway, and I don’t always draw attention to it (I think it ought to be totally natural to play 2 hours of music by women, given how easy it is to slip into hours of male-dominated works).
But, while it’s been a week of fantastic releases from women as you’ll hear… it’s also been a week of tragedy. The rape and murder of Eurydice Dixon by a 19-year-old man while walking home at night in Melbourne has lain heavily on the hearts of many Australians, a visceral tug on the constant fears most women carry with them whenever they’re out alone. And another young woman’s life was also taken within days of Dixon’s, again by a 19-year-old man – this time the flatmate of the murdered woman Qi Yu. These stories are all too common, and it’s hard to escape the realisation that a toxic (if ancient) masculinity is at the core of what’s wrong. It’s particularly alarming how young these perpetrators were, carrying out acts of ultimate possessive, sexual violence. This has to stop, and it has to start with men. We recoil from acts like these but we must look to our own behaviour too.
I’m not honestly all that good at resisting the pull of patriarchy, but I’m trying. In this context all I can do is play music, so this show’s a nudge in the right direction. As usual when I put together all-female playlists, people of all genders write in to say how great the music is (usually without noticing the gender thing), which is exactly as it should be.

LISTEN AGAIN, because this really is the best music… stream on demand from FBi, podcast from here.

Aphir – Generalisation (feat. Freya) [Aphir Bandcamp]
Aphir – Dyscircadian (feat. alphamale) [Aphir Bandcamp]
After a, well, shitty experience outside her studio in Melbourne, electronic musician and singer Becki Whitton aka Aphir decided to put together an EP of collaborative music in one week, and release it not long after. Artists contributed drones and weird noises, and Whitton created amazing pieces of experimental electronic pop out of them. So there’s the vocoded/autotuned vocals and beats over drones from Freya, and a stunning piece featuring coruscating viola and drones from Canberra’s Hannah de Feyer aka alphamale.

Ptwiggs – Eternal Chains [Ptwiggs SoundCloud – free download]
Sydney’s Phoebe Twiggs most recently has appeared as one half of Eternal, as duo/label/promoter of experimental electronic music in Sydney. Her new (new/old) EP showcases her industrial/rave sound, with heavy beats and samples hinting at gabba or drum’n’bass…

Sophia Loizou – Morphogenesis [Cosmo Rhythmatic]
Sophia Loizou – Baptisia [Astro:Dynamics]
Sophia Loizou – Genesis ’92: The Awakening [Kathexis]
Sophia Loizou – Shadows Of Futurity [Houndstooth]
Sophia Loizou – The Interior Life Of Another [Cosmo Rhythmatic]
Bristol-based composer / producer Sophia Loizou has swiftly become one of those buy-on-sight artists since her first releases in 2014. Her first album Chrysalis came out on London label Astro:Dynamics, with a mixture of minimalist drone and heavy “power ambient”, but on 2016’s Singulacra, out on Boston label Kathexis, she began her piercing look at ’90s rave music through a nostalgic, ambient, contemporary lens. Earlier this year Loizou contributed a track to Houndstooth‘s In Death’s Dream Kingdom, foregrounding the junglist beats even more than before, and messed up though they are, those beats are pretty prominent again on the new album Irregular Territories released on the noisy experimental label Cosmo Rhythmatic run by Shapednoise.

Eartheater – Switch [PAN]
Eartheater – Galactic Human [Eartheater Bandcamp] {no longer available?}
Meredith Monk – Double Fiesta [ECM]
Eartheater – Homonyms [Hausu Mountain]
Eartheater – Mask Therapy [Hausu Mountain]
Show Me The Body – In A Grave (feat. Denzel Curry, Moor Mother & Eartheater) [self-released]
Eartheater – MMXXX ft. Moor Mother [PAN]
Alexandra Drewchin aka Eartheater‘s debut solo album on PAN is out now, after two excellent albums on the eclectic noise-meets-IDM label Hausu Mountain and a number of releases as part of Greg Fox‘s Guardian Angel trio. Drewchin, a performance artist and extraordinary contortionist dancer, has a remarkable vocal range as well as being a multi-instrumentalist and producer. Drewchin’s love of Kate Bush is well known, but on listening to her early track “Galactic Human” I felt a strong sense of the genius composer & vocal iconoclast Meredith Monk in there – and we just don’t hear enough Meredith Monk these days, so there you go, and 31-year-old track on the ‘Fog. Meanwhile we re-join Drewchin with her debut album Metalepsis, and its follower RIP Chrysalis which, although released the same year, seems to these ears to be a significant progression (although both are great!) So there’s been an few years’ gap between albums, and PAN seems an appropriate place to end up, straddling noise, experimental electronic and occasional forays into song-based work. Last year Drewchin appeared as Eartheater on the massive Corpus I mixtape which I loved from NYC hardcore punks Show Me The Body – on a track which incidentally also featured a scathing contribution from the goddess Moor Mother, who is one of two collaborators on the new Eartheater album, and who just destroys (in the best way) anything she appears on.

SOPHIE – Faceshopping [MSMSMSM/future classic/Transgressive]
SOPHIE – Pretending [MSMSMSM/future classic/Transgressive]
I meant to play SOPHIE‘s single “Faceshopping” when I first heard it in all its bizarre glitched-up industrial pure pop glory. Somehow I missed the boat, but now the album OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES is out. In a lot of ways it’s a direct expression of SOPHIE’s “coming out” as transexual, a fact that perhaps was always obvious but also was presented in an arty way that could be interpreted or misinterpreted in many ways. In any case, ideas of self-presentation, identity and gender and explored on this album, and to me what’s interesting is the way it challenges ideas of what pop music can be. I love the cavernous stretched ambience of “Pretending”, and also the outro “Pretend World”, as much as I love the heavy beat-destruction.

Jasmine Guffond – Niche Service [Karlrecords]
Natalie Beridze – Mapping Debris Pattern [Karlrecords]
Nothing from Sydney artist Jasmine Guffond over the last few years (and longer) has been anything less than brilliant, and this little vignette tonight is no exception. Jasmine was based for some years in Berlin, and appears on Berlin label Karlrecords on a compilation celebrating the 200th birthday of that famous Karl, Marx. Her glitchy textures are accompanied tonight by some gorgeous textural work in a similar, even lusher vein, from Georgian producer Natalie Beridze. Proceeds from this compilation go to homeless charity Berliner Obdachlosenhilfe, and immigration advocacy organisation ProAsyl.

Ana Dall’Ara Majek – Bacillus Chorus [Empreintes Digitales]
From a larger work and album called Nano-Cosmos (detailed notes at that link!), Montréal-based French composer Ana Dall’Ara Majek conjures up the world of bacteria in this enveloping electro-acoustic work. It’s a surprisingly accessible (albeit challenging) work from the usually very high-concept art music label Empreintes Digitales.

Sophie Hutchings & Julia Kent – Earth Bound [Thesis Project]
Thesis Project is a label dedicated to bringing ambient/post-classical artists together for unexpected collaborations. They release hand-made vinyl & other editions, and have recently collected some of these works together on a double CD release called THESIS COLLECTED 01. Tonight we heard a rather exquisite melancholy piece coupling many layers of looped cello from Julia Kent with a plangent, fragmentary piano melody from Sydney’s own Sophie Hutchings.

Sophie Hutchings – My Love [flau]
Meanwhile Sophie also appears on a lovely, sweet compilation put together by Japanese label flau to celebrate their 10th birthday. It should in fact have come out last year, but they suffered a burglary at their offices which set all their plans back. Circles is a waltz album, a delightful idea, and one that suits Sophie Hutchings to a tee, with a gorgeous ballad, as usual as much redolent of Aussie indie music as it is of any idea of “post-classical” piano tinkling.

Listen again — ~202MB

Back from the crammed tour around the country! Hi! Thanks to Krishtie Mofazzal for filling in last week.

LISTEN AGAIN tonight for all the good, goooood shit. Podcast here, but go stream on demand via FBi!

Happy Axe – Cheshire Heart [Spirit Level/Bandcamp]
Wonderful new single from Canberra’s Emma Kelly aka Happy Axe. A mysterious rhythm from some kind of field recording underpins layers of violin and electronics, plus beautiful layers of vocals. It’s very low-key, very beautiful. Really looking forward to the rest of this album!

Tom Hall – Remains [Elli Records]
Tom Hall – As To Think It’s OK [Complicated Dance Steps/Sonoptik]
Tom Hall – Vast Limitations [Elli Records – now available at Tom Hall Bandcamp]
Tom Hall – 1123581321 [Elli Records]
Great to have a new album from Brisbane’s Tom Hall, for some years now based in LA. He’s got roots in both the noise and ambient scenes, and thus his electronic releases have a pleasing edginess and mania bubbling away under the usually beatless, synthesised constructions. He’s a master at tweaking and fucking up his sounds, so that they sometimes feel like they’re just a breath away from completely falling apart – but you know they’re doing just what he wants them to. He also injects a surprising amount of melody, often coming at you from unexpected directions. To me his production took a turn to the sublime (although I loved his noisier work as AXXONN as well) with the 2011 album Muted Angels, from which we took a cut in the middle.

Air Max ’97 – Kermes [DECISIONS]
Air Max ’97 – Nacre [DECISIONS]
Air Max ’97 – IP68 [DECISIONS]
Melbourne’s Oliver van der Lugt is the hard-to-google Air Max ’97, and he’s been making tunes for about 5 years, tearing up clubs around the world with his bass-heavy broken beats. Nacre, as his first full-length, allows him to spread into some slightly less obviously club-oriented stuff, such as the title track – still beat-driven, but a little more off-kilter. He’s adept at catchy melodies and interplay between tight, skittery beats and bass. You can see why he’s talked about all around the world.

Peder Mannerfelt – Every Day Had A Number [LazyTapes]
Peder Mannerfelt – Limits to Growth feat. Glasser [Peder Mannerfelt Produktion]
Hodge & Peder – All My Love [Wallroom]
One of the most noteworthy electronic producers of current times, Sweden’s Peder Mannerfelt covers a lot of ground. He works with Karin Dreijer of The Knife in Fever Ray, with soundtrack composer Malcolm Pardon in the brilliant Roll The Dice, and has released a string of EPs and albums under his own name exploring club architecture of various sorts – usually with a nod to rave and sometimes drum’n’bass, as well as cut-up experimentalism. His new EP on Cera Khin‘s LazyTapes has the most bewildering beats I’ve heard in a while, still somehow repeat in patterns that you can totally groove along to. Masterful.
His albums tend to focus on unexpected themes – 2016’s Controlling Body being all about the communicative power of the human voice, even as his collaborator Glasser finds her vocals chopped up into almost abstract units. And on last year’s collaboration with Bristol producer Hodge we have that jungle ting, twisted into a techno shape.

Philip D Kick – Drown [Astrophonica]
As Philip D Kick (a punny artist name I can totally get behind!), Om Unit pioneered the mashing up of Chicago footwork with UK jungle. He’s since made a bunch of first class pure jungle/drum’n’bass stuff, as well as the dubstep/drum’n’bass slow-fast hybrid, but it’s nice to have some new stuff from Philip D Kick, here sampling Gang Starr. This one’s definitely the hip-hop/jungle hybrid, and there’s some funky acid elsewhere… pretty mixed up stuff and very nice.

Beta 2 – The Rolls [Metalheadz]
Dom Purcell has been making drum’n’bass as Beta 2 for a few years, with a couple of EPs on a Metalheadz sublabel, and now one on the label proper. Reminding me a little of Tim Exile‘s classic tweaked, restless drum’n’bass circa 2005, this is excellent jumped up stop-start dark funky beat-making.

Oneohtrix Point Never – warning feat. Prurient [Warp]
Oneohtrix Point Never – we’ll take it feat. ANOHNI [Warp]
Oneohtrix Point Never – same feat. Prurient & ANOHNI [Warp]
Oneohtrix Point Never – last known image of a song [Warp]
Once upon a time Daniel Lopatin’s Oneohtrix Point Never was a weird project by an analogue synth-obsessed dude who I started playing because of his connections with New York’s noise scene around 2010. Since then he’s found his way on to various legendary labels such as Editions Mego and now Warp, and through these transitions he’s branched out far from the analogue realm into digital glitch-fuckery and all manner of genre destruction. And of course he’s a world famous superstar – but for all that the first single from this album was an odd piece of electronic pop featuring James Blake on keyboards and ANOHNI on vocals, Age Of is probably his strangest album yet. I’m loving the gutteral vocal contributions of noise legend Dominick Fernow aka Prurient, and ANOHNI on a track like “same” is perfectly strident in her delivery. A number of tracks also feature jazz cellist, keyboardist and singer Kelsey Lu.

Boards of Canada – olson [SKAM/Warp]
Yeah I dunno, there’s this flute line in “last known image of a song” that really reminded me of “olson”, so there you go…

Paco Sala – Tu m’enseigne à vivre [SEAGRAVE]
Paco Sala – It’s Been A Long Time Since I Cared & It Feels Good [SEAGRAVE]
Paco Sala – Associate Producer [SEAGRAVE]
After shelving his much-loved ambient/folktronic Konntinent project, Antony Harrison formed Paco Sala with Berlin-based Quebecois singer Marie-Pascale Hardy. With pitch-shifted vocals and beats that draw from footwork, trap, disco and who knows what else, Paco Sala still has an air of mystique, not quite pin-down-able, with that vaporwareish tendency towards short tracks that shift perspective and often sound fragmentary and incomplete. Which I love.

Feryal Dawa – Cairo Boy feat. Abu AMA [SEAGRAVE]
DJ Melania 666 – Saviour / Terminator [SEAGRAVE]
Compiled by The Fissure Family, Animal Chin is a new compilation also out on SEAGRAVE, with some fairly obscure artists doing cool experimental electronic stuff. I don’t know the provenance of Feryal Dawa, although I guess she may be Egyptian? And she’s collaborating here with London-based Abu AMA. And we finish up with some noisy sardonic stuff from DJ Melania 666.

Listen again — ~210MB

So much good music, and that’s lucky because we only play good music over here!

LISTEN AGAIN, over and over… podcast here, stream on demand via FBi!

Shoeb Ahmad – “lope” [Art as Catharsis]
Shoeb Ahmad – “status anxiety” (tilman robinson remix) [Art as Catharsis]
Finally, Shoeb Ahmad‘s new album is dropping tomorrow – released through the all-label, the grand poobahs of good taste, Art As Catharsis. Borne from a period where she grappled with gender identity, and the intersection of this with identities of race and religion as well as the external identity expectations of friends, family and strangers, it’s a masterwork of indie-soul songs with creative arrangements. There’s a special CD edition accompanied by a slew of great remixes, and I won’t play you any of the exclusives yet, but here’s a stunning take by Melbourne-based Perth composer Tilman Robinson from last year (it’ll be included).

Tourist Kid – Discourse II [Melody As Truth]
Tourist Kid – Learn [Melody As Truth]
Speaking of Melbourne-based Perth artists, Tourist Kid‘s new album is out now, on Dutch label Melody As Truth. I heard of him last year via a remix of Perth postrock band Original Past Life, but he also has a previous on uber-cool Melbourne label This Thing. This is quite exquisite stuff, juxtaposing stuttery chopped-up glitch elements and expansive pads along with some strings and wordless vocals.

Liminal Drifter – The Dreams [Hidden Shoal]
Nice to have something new from Dr Simon Order aka Liminal Drifter. Also from Perth, what is it with that city? Although Order is originally from the UK, but clearly settled there because of its great music scene… With some funky melodic idm-tinged beats here.

The Black Hundred – Completion (Mangabros Mucking Fuddle Mix) [Polyglot Records]
Melbourne’s The Black Hundred are now… well, inasmuch as they’re sometimes just James McGauran, they’re now based in Sweden. Out now is a remix album with an international cast of like-minded artists across the industrial, postrock and electronic spectrum doing their takes on The Black Hundred’s material – tonight we heard from UK oddball post-industrial collective Mangabros.

Philippe Petit & Friends – The Hammer + The Compliant Man feat. Eugene S. Robinson [Aagoo]
Dagger Moth & Philippe Petit – Ovaries (Philippe Petit Rmx) [Jelodanti Records]
Philippe Petit & Friends – U & I feat. Jad Fair [Aagoo]
The latest album from Philippe Petit, that musical travel agent from Marseilles, is once again a collaborative affair with his “& Friends”, including as usual Hervé Vincenti and many others. This isn’t the first time he’s worked with Eugene S. Robinson of art-punks Oxbow, but it’s delightfully unhinged. Equally freaky is the track featuring legendary US outsider artist Jad Fair, whose vocals are relentlessly processed throughout. Meanwhile, as I was putting together the playlist Philippe sent me another new release – a 7″ with Italian experimental pop artist Dagger Moth aka Sara Ardizzoni.

Sonae – Soul Eater [Monika Enterprise]
Sonae – White Trash Rouge Noir [Monika Enterprise]
The second album from Sonia Güttler aka Sonae is called I Started Wearing Black. A lot of it nicely fits the description from Resident Advisor found on her webpages of “patient forest techno” – but there’s also a darkness & heaviness you’d associate with that album title. There’s some expert sound design in here – indecipherable field recordings, processed acoustic instruments and pure electronics, ambient passages and crunching beats.

Jemh Circs – 000 [Cellule 75]
Jemh Circs – Ordre [Cellule 75]
Jemh Circs – Lac Dali [Cellule 75]
Second album from Marc Richter aka Black to Comm‘s vaporwave alias Jemh Circs. Eviscerated pop and YouTube samples, digitally chopped and layered… disorienting fun. Middle track is from the first album.

Mind Over MIDI – Våken drøm [Hibernate]
Mind Over MIDI – Himmelflukt [Hibernate]
Norwegian producer Helge Tømmervåg aka Mind Over MIDI makes rainy far-north ambient stuff. Icy cold but comfortingly warm as well, with plinky-plonky soft basslines and synth pads under field recordings.

Cameron Day – My Body and My Blood [Fluid Audio]
Cameron Day – The Myth of Disenchantment [Fluid Audio]
Fluid Radio‘s label arm, Fluid Audio, release incredibly intricate art pieces as limited physical CD editions, with impeccable curation. Here they’ve found Chicago artist Cameron Day, who works with arcane, beautiful tape manipulation of looped classical and other samples. I noticed that the second track I played is basically a cheeky manipulation of Björk‘s “Frosti” from Vespertine. I’ve found one other release here, also charmingly weird.

Sunna – Amma (Good Moon Deer Remix) [Sunna Bandcamp]
We’ve heard the excellent vocal/electronic songs of Sunna before, including the original version of this track which was featured on a Wire Magazine compilation a few months ago. Here’s she’s remixed by fellow Icelander Good Moon Deer, whose moniker is a humorous take on his actual first name. Guðmundur Úlfarsson in fact co-runs new label Unfiled, who released an excellent EP by Allenheimer also a few months ago – hope we hear more from them soon!

Rain Text – 2.2 [Bastakiya Tapes]
Rain Text – 2.1 [Bastakiya Tapes]
This is the second release from the Italian duo Rain Text, made up of legendary experimental sound-artist Giuseppe Ielasi (sometimes known as Inventing Masks) and electronic artist Giovanni Marco Civitenga (who’s had an album released on Brainfeeder). They make minimal techno with broken beats, built from a constrained range of sound sources on each track, each gradually revealing more as it progresses.

clipping. – Face (Youth Code Remix) [Deathbomb Arc]
Here’s one of the bonus remixes featured on the reissue/remaster of clipping.‘s fast EP, originally released by Deathbomb Arc in 2012. EBM duo Youth Code (here I think just Sara Taylor) take it straight to the industro-gothic dancefloor.

Listen again — ~201MB

Emotional intensity, electronic withdrawal, we’re running the gamut tonight…

LISTEN AGAIN for the fruits of emotional labour. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast over here.

Carla Bozulich – Written In Smoke (feat. Sarah Lipstate) [Constellation]
Carla Bozulich – Let It Roll (feat. John Eichenseer & Andrea Belfi) [Constellation]
The extraordinary Carla Bozulich never fails to create amazing sounds, both sonically creative and emotionally dense. Her background in the industrial scene from the ’90s – albeit the insane, cabaret-influenced Ethyl Meatplow – contributes to the way Bozulich is always stretching the boundaries of what songforms can be, and is always playing with production techniques… but equally she’s a huge country music fan, and is famous also for her alt-country/punk band The Geraldine Fibbers. Anything new from Bozulich is hotly anticipated round these parts, and this album delivers in spades.

the body – the last form of loving (feat. Chrissy Wolpert) [Thrill Jockey]
the body – the west has failed (feat. sample of Eek-A-Mouse) [Thrill Jockey]
the body – nothing stirs (feat. Kristin Hayter) [Thrill Jockey]
Taking their latest album’s title from the suicide note of Virginia Woolf is fairly audacious, even for a band long obsessed with that final act. I have fought against it, But I can’t any longer. takes the body into their most electronic realms yet, and in many ways the furthest away from their sludge/black metal origins. Everything’s sampled, including the guitar riffs when they appear, mostly from their own work (a notable exception being the brilliantly-deployed Eek-A-Mouse sample on “the west has failed”, worthy of a Massive Attack album). As usual Chip King’s horrific screech is offset by beautiful female vocals from regular contributor Chrissy Wolpert (surely an honorary member) and also this time from Kristin Hayter, who gets pretty metal – as well as some stirring orchestral arrangements. Beats switch from full drumkit to drum machine, to glitchily chopped breaks. Everything’s in there, and by some kind of magic it all works.

TOMAGA – The Dancer in the Lake [Emotional Response]
I discovered the music of TOMAGA playing in a second-hand record store in London last year, but no doubt I would have encountered them soon enough anyway. A psych rock rhythm section turned into a band in their own right, they meld postpunk guitar and drums with synths and all sorts of percussion to create a freeform kraut/psych/instrumental rock experience like no other. Percussionist Valentina Magaletti can also be found with postpunk/breakbeat duo Raime and various other outfits.

Jasmine Guffond – Kin Hue [listenagain]
It’s always a pleasure to have new music from Jasmine Guffond, even if it’s not the newerest of newness. This is from a split release originally intended to come out in 2014, but delayed for the usual obscure reasons. Impeccably produced electronics, with granular processing often of acoustic or live sound sources – all sounds exquisitely immediate but deeply immersive. I was also excited to discover Turkish artist biblo, and I’m planning to feature some of her music in an upcoming show.

Ben Marston & Hugh Barrett – Sleepyhead [Art As Catharsis]
Ben Marston & Hugh Barrett – The Crisp Breath of Dawn [Art As Catharsis]
Canberran duo Ben Marston & Hugh Barrett present an impressive array of approaches to the trumpet and keys duo here – from acoustic piano and trumpet to spooky Jon Hassell/Jan Bang harmonised trumpet to In A Silent Way-era Davis with Hancock/Corea and more. Even in the more unusual modalities, there’s an attractive Australianness to the ambient/minimalist jazz sensibility. I love the way sampled & looped piano weaves its way through the live jazz jamming on a number of tracks. This is really textural music. Released mid-June, get your pre-orders in!

Splashgirl – Carrier [Hubro]
The ever-reliable Hubro deliver the goods once again – Splashgirl are a trio made up of pianist Andreas Stensland Løwe, double bassist Jo Berger Myhre (whose rich tones we’ve encountered before on this show) and drummer Andreas Lønmo Knudsrød. Being on Hubro, this isn’t your standard jazz piano trio though, with synths and expansive, cinematic production lending a unique tone to the operation. The album was produced by the legendary Randall Dunn, giving everything that warm glow.

part timer – Sunday Sketch Blurred [part timer Bandcamp]
A welcome return for Melbourne-resident pom part timer, who used to be an almost weekly regular on this show with his impeccable folktronica, until children and jobs got in the way. He’s quite possibly literally dusting off hard drives on a new release of warm acoustic sounds and electronics – leaning back to the glitchy folktronic roots but with the cavernousness of his later drone-influenced outings. More soon please!

Meyers – Self Portrait [Shelter Press]
Meyers – Expectations 1 [Shelter Press]
The last album from composer/producer Justin C Meyers dealt with a debilitating chronic illness and near-death experience that necessitated changes in the artist’s practices. This new one of course has that state of affairs hanging over it, dealing (in its instrumental electronic way) with the experience of trying to be an artist while suffering an illness that found him laid off from his job and spending a lot of time in hospitals. Piecemeal, glitchy, fractured, it’s quite a visceral work, deserving of a close listen.

Comatone & Foley – Laptop Microphone [Art As Catharsis]
Comatone & Foley – String Thing [Art As Catharsis]
Comatone & Foley – One Five Nine [Art As Catharsis]
Blue Mountains producer Comatone was a stalwart on Utility Fog in the pretty early days, with his intricate idm productions released by Feral Media. And drummer Alon Ilsar has long been a regular on this show too, as part of Gauche, or more recently playing AirSticks with his band The Sticks. The first Comatone & Foley album Trigger Happy was originally released 10 years ago, and is now made available by Art As Catharsis, along with the long-awaited sequel. Intricate VSnares-style beat processing and idm-style electronic melodies, from a duo equal in their inventiveness.

Appleblim – NCI [Sneaker Social Club]
A few years after dubstep’s ascendency, the Skull Disco emerged out of Bristol, merging the weight of dubstep with the trancelike states of Basic Channel style dub techno, founded by Sam Shackleton alonside Appleblim. ‘Blim moved on to other realms in the UK hardcore continuum, and on his debut(!) album released just now on Sneaker Social Club he presents an homage to all things rave, with breakbeats wending their way around techno & house beats. It’s friendly stuff with a dancefloor sheen.

Listen again — ~196MB