Utility Fog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen again — ~199MB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen again — ~210MB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen again — ~214MB

Sound-art and beats, it’s the Utility Fog way.

LISTEN AGAIN and hear that sound. Dance, dance! Stream it on demand via FBi, podcast it here.

Lia Kohl – the moment a zipper [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
Lia Kohl – or things maybe dropping [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
It was a pleasure to discover the music of Chicago-based cellist, sound-artist and performer last year with her debut album Too Small to be a Plain, released through Matt Mehlan‘s Shinkoyo/Artist Pool. The wonderful American Dreams have picked up Kohl’s follow-up, The Ceiling Reposes, another stunner. Again, Kohl incorporates radios scanned across the frequency band, stopping briefly for interesting sounds (whether spoken or even musical), crackling in the background of tracks otherwise constructed from layers of cello, keyboards, voice, percussion and more. Like the best of the fabled Books, found sounds, field recordings and these fuzzy radio broadcasts are folded into Kohl’s compositions, making a musical whole which sounds organic, natural, at times chaotic, but is meticulously constructed – and all the more beautiful for it. Kohl’s art emcompasses these recorded compositions, creative and humourous performance pieces, jazz ensemble playing and string orchestration and more (see credits here), but deserves wide recognition for the quietly radical invention of her solo work.

Accelera Deck – Keep [Accelera Deck Bandcamp]
Back in 2020, I featured a chunk of the archival material compiled by Chris Jeely from works released through ’98 to about ’06 as Accelera Deck and myriad other aliases, before he paused operations for some time. Since then, new work continues from time to time, and his latest EP Keep looks back 25 years to his debut album Narcotic Beats, repurposing material from the time into four tracks, as usual merging shoegazey guitar textures with dubby and drum’n’bassy beats.

Glamour Lakes – The Extinct Volcano Does Not Dominate The Town [Glamour Lakes Bandcamp]
Adelaide musician Glamour Lakes has been slipping out a few singles since the start of the year from an upcoming album to be called Native Coils. It’s a departure from recent disquieting ambient, heading into electro-pop territory, but like the last single, it’s underpinned by clattering amen breaks. Fun (and a rad title).

the little hand of the faithful – You’re in the streets [Mound of Sound/Bandcamp]
the little hand of the faithful – Living by the last pass [Mound of Sound/Bandcamp]
I don’t know how Mitch Jones continues to make so much creative music so regularly still, over 40 years after the founding of Scattered Order and the M Squared label in grimey inner-city Sydney. Now based in Katoomba with his wife, artist & musician Drusilla Johnson-Jones (who is thanked here for her inspiration), Mitch’s solo efforts now come under the alias of a small stuffed bear named the little hand of the faithful. Grid is Good expresses love for the good old grid that anyone who’s used a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is deeply familiar with, and this perhaps explains something of his productivity – with four decades of working with sound in media from 2-inch tape with scissors through to primitive hardware samplers and to the present, the tools we have at our disposal on cheap laptops or even tablets remove much of the time-consuming side of music production, leaving an experienced master of his art to just pile in the sound sources, basslines and melodies. Jones is talented at keeping his beats adjacent to contemporary tendencies (in his own way), while inserting jagged postpunk guitars and at times his own buried vocals into what the label copy describes as “off kilter, wide screen pop”. That is is, that it is.

Noise Diva – Crying For 6 Minutes In The Club Toilet [Raghoul/Bandcamp]
BLKM3TA – Drklight [Raghoul/Bandcamp]
Based between Morrocco and the Netherlands, the Raghoul label positions itself as a non-hierarchical space for musicians from North Africa and the Middle East to explore, in particular, bass music – indeed “raghoul” is a word from the language of the Amazigh (sometimes known as Berber, the indigenous people of the Maghreb) that roughly translates as “bass”. The second release on the label is the compilation Crocodile Tears in a Reptilian World, and you owe it to yourself to grab this right now. Every track is quality, but for this week I chose two. Yara Said is an Amsterdam-based DJ, artist and producer working under the name Noise Diva, whose track “Crying For 6 Minutes In The Club Toilet” collages spurts of noise with Arabic singing and ambient sequenced synth lines for a distinctive take on chill-out. BLKM3TA are a trio of members from Barcelona-based collective Jokkoo, whose “Drklight” is a slow crescendo into tumbling amen breaks, massive sub-bass and what sounds like looping Arabic samples used Public Enemy-style. For anyone with any interest in where electronic music (beats, sound-art, noise) is at the moment, this is an absolutely vital collection of music.

KEITA SANO – Octa Wednesday Re-master [Keita Sano Bandcamp (no longer available)]
Japanese producer KEITA SANO, now based in Osaka after some years in Berlin, typically makes variants of house music, disco edits and so on, but has a very wide remit throughout his large archives, with Andy Stott-style tape-smudged techno, IDM, hip-hop and at times jungle – like this re-mastered track. Bewilderingly, a week after this went up on his Bandcamp, it’s no longer there – just like a few of the tracks I featured in December last year. If you’re interested in a creative, talented producer, I suggest following his Bandcamp and grabbing the occasional thing before he takes it away again :)

John Rolodex – Formless [Metalheadz/Bandcamp]
In the early 2000s, John Knoll, a young Canadian DJ & drum’n’bass obsessive made a huge impression on the d’n’b scene under the name John Rolodex – see the brutal Dragon for instance. After some years’ break, he returned in 2020, and now his Formless EP for Metalheadz isn’t so much a return to form as a whole new chapter. While no less dark, there’s a lightness of touch which allows for jazz elements, and on the title track a highly infectious take on drumfunk. A brilliant surprise for both Rolodex and Metalheadz.

Mantra – Victory Dance [Sneaker Social Club]
Indi Khera is a driving force in UK drum’n’bass & jungle, not just as DJ Mantra but also as the founder of Rupture London with her partner Double O – first as a club night and then a record label focusing on jungle & breaks-related styles within d’n’b. Still, it’s taken some time for her debut EP to arrive. The Damaged EP is out through Sneaker Social Club, ranging from tense, sparse breaks to rolling, roaring amens. It’s everything she & Double O nurture over at Rupture, and let’s hope she has time to craft plenty more tunes in the near future.

Kloke & Tim Reaper – Foundation (Kloke VIP) [Future Retro London]
Jungle’s busiest collaborator Tim Reaper has worked with Naarm/Melbourne producer Kloke on a few occasions now. Their “Foundation” was the first track on the very first Meeting of the Minds EP Reaper put out on his Future Retro label in 2020. New series *ahem* FRMOTMVIP (Future Retro Meeting Of The Minds VIP) sees various MOTM collaborators breaking out of the mind-meld, so to speak, with their own VIP mixes. It’s actually really interesting hearing the individuals’ takes on these joint productions, and the Aussie Kloke truly does us proud here, with tweaked breaks, lush synths and sweet, sweet sub bass, joined by Reese bass and finely chopped amens as the track progresses.

Rufige Kru – No Angels [Metalheadz/Bandcamp]
Metalheadz began their 25 Years of Metalheadz series in 2021 (so actually 26 years after the beginning), but the imprint continues to roll out remastered classics and either unearthed classics or new tunes in classic style – so here is Goldie‘s Rufige Kru alias, here finding him working with James Davidson, one half of Ulterior Motive. “No Angels” in indeed classic-sounding, harkening back to when jungle was just going darker and tougher. Nice, nice stuff.

Noroi & VSC – Untitled Jungle [SPHERES/Rua Sound]
Galway, Ireland-based jungle/drum’n’bass label Rua Sound introduces their new sublabel SPHERES with the Adrastea EP from Rome-based DJ & producer Noroi aka Alessandro Diaz Espinoza, founder of events series & label Reveries. SPHERES is intended to allow Rua Sound to expand from their jungle focus, and two tracks here are slower breaks tracks, but in particular “Untitled Jungle” is a gorgeous piece of junglist beat-juggling with ambient synth pads and vocal samples, created with drum’n’bass DJ & fellow Roman VSC. You can discover more of Noroi’s breaks-fusion tracks on the first Reveries compilation Double Phase.

AMIT – Trial Run [AMAR]
London-based visual artist & producer Amit Kamboj is closely associated with the half-time/halfstep hybrid of dubstep and drum’n’bass. He’s released on many labels in the past including Exit Records, but his own AMAR Records is home to most of his music now – although it’s been 3 years since his last releases. His new EP Trial Run / Burning the Retina gives us only two new tracks, but both are sumptuous specimens of his craft – thumping, rumbling bass at head-nodding tempo with skittering hi-hats, dubby slap-back delays and freaky synth chords.

Zoë Mc Pherson – Lamella [SFX/Bandcamp]
Zoë Mc Pherson – On Fire [SFX/Bandcamp]
French-Irish sound-artist Zoë Mc Pherson released their first album String Figures in 2018, with an album that grew out from their early experience with jazz drumming and Irish fiddle, with tracks formed around field recordings and musical recordings from around the world. The album also existed in audiovisual form in collaboration with multimedia artist & motion designer/director Alessandra Leone, and a couple of years later the pair founded their label SFX with Mc Pherson’s second album States of Fugue, which features more of their (often processed) voice with complex percussion and sound-art. Now the artist’s third album Pitch Blender has finally dropped, irrevocally influenced by the pandemic that changed the world within a month of the previous album’s release. Here again are environmental recordings, Mc Pherson’s voice and electronic backings, all thoroughly mutated, but here also are the most club-ready, drum’n’bass-influenced beats yet from Mc Pherson – “foley rave” as veteran label head & music journalist John Twells puts it in the press release. “Lamella” represents the most direct “song” Mc Pherson has released to date – there’s a slightly extended instrumental version included too, but the vocals are a key part of this piece and the music in general. A very strong progression from an always ground-breaking artist.

Slikback – WARAU [Slikback Bandcamp]
Once again, Nairobi’s greatest, Slikback, drops an EP on Bandcamp with no notice. H I K A R I is his usual combination of interests: bass, hard dance, distended samples, hints of trap, no small amount of noise.

Hannah Lee – Healing [Pronoia Souvenirs/Bandcamp]
Currently based in Mexico City, Hannah Lee is a music producer & DJ from LA with roots in Ecuador. Their third EP Transiciones is released by Mexican label Pronoia Souvenirs, featuring keyboard & electric organ textures, glitchy rhythms and processed percussion – somewhere between uneasy ambient and dub techno.

Carrier – Ten By Ten [The Trilogy Tapes/Bandcamp]
Carrier – Chlorine [The Trilogy Tapes/Bandcamp]
Guy Brewer has gone by many aliases over the last couple of decades, including as an early member of drum’n’bass act Commix, but his solo work tends to the dark & industrial. He’s probably best known as Shifted, making minimal techno weapons aimed at cavernous Berlin club dancefloors or fizzing, atonal ambient that only occasionally brings in throbbing beats. In many was his latest alias, Carrier, is of a piece with the Shifted material, but it makes sense to separate it. On Lazy Mechanics, released by The Trilogy Tapes, there’s ambient crackle and slow 4/4 beats, but by “Product Of Environment” we’ve got skittering cross-rhythms and syncopated bass that hints at an ascetic, modernised view of those early d’n’b days, while those skittery hi-hats are embedded in more of a dub techno space on “Ten By Ten” – a vibe also carried by the more sinister opener “Chlorine”.

Tim Koch – Gambiér [Tim Koch Bandcamp]
All of a sudden, there’s a new album from Adelaide’s Tim Koch. He’s mostly shed his IDM roots now: there are occasional crunchy beats, some beatless rhythms, occasional granular terror… “Gambiér”, named for the city and actual mountain (with no accent, thanks Tim) near the western edge of South Australia. These are lovely, calm textures of what could be acoustic guitar, chopped and scattered and reversed. Skilful stuff.

Listen again — ~206MB