Utility Fog

Various variants of song in all its experimental glory tonight, as well as other genre-mashing and electronic delights.

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Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal – Signs [Beacon Sound/Bandcamp/Ruptured Music/Bandcamp]
Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal – Still Life [Beacon Sound/Bandcamp/Ruptured Music/Bandcamp]
Out in a couple of weeks from excellent Portland label Beacon Sound and great Beirut label Ruptured Music is the beautiful album Snakeskin from Lebanese duo Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal. Sabra is one third of dream pop trio Postcards, all of whose releases have been produced by Tabbal. Inevitably it’s deeply influenced by the massive Beirut port explosion of August 2020 that left hundreds dead, thousands injured, and destroyed countless people’s homes, but it also references other events from the region: the Palestinian uprising and Israeli crackdown in Sheikh Jarrah, and Azerbaijan’s invasion of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Armenia. Sabra’s soft voice expresses tragedy and loss, and the duo bring glitches and drones along with dubby Arabic percussion at times, all embedded in reverb. At times the more aggressive aspects of Postcards’ shoegazey rock emerge, but mostly it’s more quietly compelling. Don’t sleep on it.

Dominic Voz – Dan Ryan [Accidental Records/Bandcamp/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
A couple of weeks ago we premiered some tracks from Dominic Voz‘s album Right to the City, also co-released by Beacon Sound, with none other than Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records. The album’s out today, and I wanted to showcase this track, named for Dan Ryan Jr, who helped construction of expressways around Chicago including the Dan Ryan Expressway, opened shortly after Ryan’s death. The track combines all the album’s characteristics, from sliding synths supported by classical instruments to urban field recordings and glitched rhythms.

Oren Ambarchi – III [Drag City/Bandcamp]
Oren Ambarchi – IV [Drag City/Bandcamp]
Ever since 2012’s Audience of One, Sydney/Melbourne experimental hero Oren Ambarchi has had a strain of rhythmic-melodic longform work based around repetitive patterns on guitar, shimmering ride cymbal and other instrumentation. I think of it as a form of krautrock, but it’s as much influenced by Ambarchi’s childhood love of heavy metal, minimalist composition, techno, funk fusion and more. The latest, Shebang, is constructed from recordings made around the world by Ambarchi’s collaborators, who include Joe Talia on drums as usual, Jim O’Rourke on synths, Chris Abrahams with a characteristically restrained piano solo, Johan Berthling on double bass, Julia Reidy on 12-string guitar (seemingly tuned in an orthodox manner here rather than just intonation), the legendary BJ Cole on pedal steel, and Sam Dunscombe on bass clarinet. These are all musicians whose work, like Ambarchi’s, extends from the most challenging climes of anti-music through to expressions of harmoniousness your least adventurous family members could enjoy. Shebang, despite existing as one 35-minute piece (divided into four for digital), is probably the most approachable yet of Ambarchi’s compositions, despite also being pieced together from separate musicians’ recordings during the pandemic, with counter-intuitive elements like guitar-triggered piano riffs blending into the whole undetectably. It’s a wonder.

Keeley Forsyth – Wash (Yann Tiersen Remix) [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
Keeley Forsyth – Limbs (Simon Fisher Turner Remix) [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
A couple of weeks ago I played the brilliant Ben Frost remix of British actor-turned-singer Keeley Forsyth. The Phantom Limbs remix EP is now out in its entirety, and it’s all just as good. Yann Tiersen we’ve heard quite a bit on the show – if you think he’s just the Amelie guy you’re missing out on French chanson melded with indie, postrock, electronic and “neo-classical” before there was such a thing. Here he shows that he can still surprise, with soft and then heavy drones supporting Forsyth’s powerful voice. On a completely different tangent, the brilliant sound-artist Simon Fisher Turner (also once an actor, turned pop musician, turned experimental sound-artist) turns in a sparse glitch-space in which to situate Forsyth’s avant-garde song.

Saint Abdullah & Eomac – In One Corner The Male Relatives [Other People/Bandcamp]
Lakker – Thought, Voice & Hand [Lakker Bandcamp]
Yes, here’s another album we previewed a few weeks back – the collaboration between New York-based Iranian brothers Saint Abdullah and Dublin’s Eomac. Patience Of A Traitor came out this week from Nicolas Jaar’s Other People. Those familiar with Saint Abdullah’s work will find this takes a similar tack, with field recordings and sampled voices in Farsi and Arabic weaving through electronic textures and beats. The brothers’ IDM tendencies are brought out here by Eomac. That’s Ian McDonnell, who is one half of Lakker with Dara Smith aka Arad, and we’ve been hearing a bit of Lakker through the year as they release an EP every month. LKRTRX009 has just come out for September, and it’s a bit less on the fierce side, but still repurposing rave signatures with bass and beats.

Eusebeia – Hopes + Dreams [Livity Sound]
Wiltshire’s Seb Uncles has been releasing modern jungle & drum’n’bass along with some slower-paced music for a few years as Eusebeia. It’s a slight surprise to find him on Bristol’s Livity Sound, who generally inhabit the dubstep-techno-house space, but jungle is certainly part of their make-up, and creative genre-crossers like Forest Drive West have found homes for their music there. On the Cosmos EP there are a couple of full-on drumfunk numbers like this one among ambient tunes and more trip-hop-paced pieces. As good an intro as any to the Eusebeia sound.

Kuedo – Ant City (µ-Ziq Remix) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Jamie Teasdale was known as Jamie Vex’d for a little while after his groundbreaking industrial dubstep duo Vex’d, with Roly Porter, dissolved sometime around 2008 when the pair moved to different cities. A couple of years later he’d settled on Kuedo as a split from the dubstep history. His first album under that name was the sci-fi Severant, reissued this month on 2LP with a bonus track. While the music has more to do with classic synth soundtracks than the UK dance continuum, Planet µ boss Mike Paradinas’ µ-Ziq is first cab off the rank for the associated Severant Remixes, sending the Blade Runneresque sounds into overdrive on the junglist tip of his recent 2022 releases.

clipping. and ZULI – Make Them Dead (ZULI‘s Life After Death Remix) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
A mere week after REMXNG 2.1, clipping. have followed it up with the second out of 4 remix EPs coming this year. There’s a very nice junglist remix by LA’s Baseck on there, but I’m not going to pass up the opportunity to play Cairo’s ZULI, here mashing the amen breaks at hip-hop tempo and somehow scrambling Daveed Diggs’ vocals in amongst the rhythmic stuff.

Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 & Tim Shiel – My Love Is Not What It Was 嗔念 (3ASiC Remix) [Music In Exile/Bandcamp]
Nervous Energy, the collaboration between Melbourne-based guzheng player Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 and tireless electronic producer and broadcaster Tim Shiel, was one of the most exciting releases of last year. MMW’s beautiful, creative playing on the ancient Chinese zither, her dedication to bringing the guzheng into new musical contexts, brought out the best in Shiel, with four tracks of the best kind of fusion. Now each track is remixed, one by Tim Shiel himself, one by Brisbane violinst & contemporary musician Flora Wong, one from Sydney-born, London-based pan-Asian musician Justin Tam aka Tzekin and finally Shenzhen-based bass producer 3ASiC. Each takes the compositions in their own directions, and while the originals are untouchable, this is a lovely way of revisiting and extending the collaborative works.

Madobe Rika – ばく [Virgin Babylon/Bandcamp]
Madobe Rika – 炉心融解(cover) [Madobe Rika Bandcamp]
So, who is Madobe Rika? She is a virtual girl. Virgin Babylon, who have just signed her, claim they don’t even know who she is. Or should I say “she”? The Baklava EP up on Virgin Babylon’s Bandcamp is a three-track Pay What You Want introduction to her music, with tracks from her two OpenWindow volumes. The second track I played today comes from last year’s OpenWindow vol.2 and is a cover of “炉心融解” (“Meltdown”) by Kagamine Ren, a Vocaloid and obviously a virtual girl herself. The song is actually by producer iroha(sasaki) and you can see the video here – it’s demented enough in itself (although there are many versions of the song so I can’t be sure which this even is), but Madobe Rika takes it into full breakcore territory, like much of her music. Vocals that could almost be real until that zoom up into stratospheric pitch, sentimental melodies splattered into concrete. You can see why World’s End Girlfriend wanted to release her music, and hopefully this EP precedes a full album and a lovely Japanese CD.

PETBRICK – Ayan (Bubblelogue Mix) [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp]
PETBRICK – Pigeon Kick [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp]
PETBRICK – Raijin [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp]
The interface between breakcore and metal has always been eldritch thin. Here’s a perfect example: one half of PETBRICK is Wayne Adams, who made breakcore for years as Ladyscraper, but has also been in hardcore bands like Death Pedals, and party noise rock band Big Lad. Adams’ foil in PETBRICK is none other than Igor Cavalera, founding drummer in Brazilian heavy metal band Sepultura, but also electronic music producer and touring drummer with Soulwax. I first discovered PETBRICK through their incredible collaboration with Brazilian punk/experimental/noise group Deafkids, DEAFBRICK. It’s hard to pin down what’s producing the noises on PETBRICK’s second album Liminal – there are metal/industrial riffs that could be synths, drones that could be guitars, beats that could be live drumming but are often clearly sampled and programmed. It’s at times intense and rhythmic, at other times sparse or doomy. Hardcore/metal vocalists guest as well as underground rappers. As a response to a world falling apart, it’s quite visceral and yet also pretty fun. Meanwhile, back in May they released the Ayan EP, with four versions of the eponymous track, including remixes from techno veteran Surgeon and ex-breakcore veteran Cardopusher, but the real gem is their own “Bubblelogue” remix, which despite the reference to Aphex Twin’s Analogue Bubblebath releases is more in line with the annagramatic Hangable Auto Bulb EPs, drill’n’bass madness.

Isolated Gate – Confusion Is Bliss (Full Version) [Darla Records/Bandcamp]
The latest release from Adelaidian IDM/glitch hero Tim Koch and Japan-based English shoegaze musician Ian Masters (ex-Pale Saints) is the EP No Heart No Home. The 15-minute title track is a gorgeous long composition by Koch with cut-up cello samples and melodies from yours truly, and angelic vocal lines from Masters. The shorter tracks on the other side are varied, with “Confusion Is Bliss” sounding almost like a lost shoegaze classic, interrupted by electronics between its verses. Isolated Gate is a pretty special thing and trust me when I say it, despite limited streaming provided by Darla Records.

JWPaton – Oxy Lance [Oxtail Recordings]
It’s a shame I was only able to preview the first 7 minutes or so of Western Sydney-based Yuin musician JWPaton‘s new work “Oxy Lance“. It’s a pretty stunning track, almost 20 minutes long, which you should experience in video form if possible, with lush drones and buried rhythms juxtaposing peace and domesticity with various interruptions. I strongly recommend checking the whole piece out, and purchasing it via Oxtail Recordings.

Perera Elsewhere – Hold Tite [Friends of Friends Music/Bandcamp]
Perera Elsewhere – Stranger [Friends of Friends Music/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based, London-born Sasha Perera aka Perera Elsewhere is a very versatile musician, a restlessly creative electronic producer and educator, as well as a creative vocalist and songwriter. Her new album Home, released by LA’s Friends of Friends Music, is balanced between pop and electronic experimentation, an extension of the style she’s coined as “doom-folk”, although it’s full of beats and bass as well. Not infrequently, Perera’s voice is distorted through pitch shifting and other effects, allowing Perera to express many personalities, while on this album nevertheless centring the idea of “Home”, and of some kind of peace and freedom, juxtaposed with the “Elsewhere” of her taken name, and the “doom” of her earlier work. It’s a catchy, enjoyable listen even at its weirdest.

Björk – Mycelia [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
Björk – Her Mother’s House (feat. ísadóra bjarkardóttir barney) [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
I had a lot of trouble with the initial singles for Björk‘s new album Fossora. I’ve been a fan of hers since before Debut was even released, but there have always been aspects of her art that I find difficult: the melodies that can be exquisite but can also prod and prod until my head aches; the weird phrasing that deliberately accents the wrong parts of words and stretches melodies over single syllables; harmonies that reach for atonality in awkward ways (from a composer capable of glorious harmonisation); rhythms that, especially on this gabber-inspired release, hammer even at slower tempos without remorse. Even “Ancestress“, the song on the album most directly about her late mother, which many have been powerfully moved by, I find quite painful listening, its verse melody strained by repetition and portentous pauses, and the the chorus, even as it recalls the beautiful “Unison” from her masterpiece Vespertine, still exhibiting so many of those foibles (the incredibly awkward scansion!). Perhaps it’s because it’s very operatic, and (I’m sorry) I hate opera.
In any case, it’s still Björk and there is still beauty and genius here. The bizarre fungal references are all over “Mycelia”, a lovely vocal vignette with increasingly glitched voice samples, and there, at the end, is the sublime “Her Mother’s House”, once again referencing Björk’s late mother Hildur while featuring her daughter Ísadóra (Dóa). Here the wind ensemble provides a bed instead of parping like a school band, and around Björk’s own vocal lines Dóa and an oboe weave glittering scale patterns. Anyway, this is one guy’s musical opinions and it’s all aesthetics, so don’t be offended if you love it all. You’re absolutely right, even if I’m not wrong. And Björk is a treasure, forevermore.

Listen again — ~207MB

Vocals weave in & out of tonight’s selections, often in unusual settings, from minimalist arrangements to glitch-beats, mangled raps and stretched choirs…
If you’re in Sydney this week, can I recommend you pop over to the Powerhouse Museum for Powerhouse Late between 5 & 9pm on Thursday the 29th? I’ll be DJing for the whole four hours, so you can enjoy some Utility Fog selections in person!

LISTEN AGAIN because you can ‘Fog at home anytime. Stream on demand with FBi, or podcast right here.

Ellen Arkbro & Johan Graden – Close [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Ellen Arkbro & Johan Graden – Other side [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
If you know the work of Swedish musician Ellen Arkbro, it’s probably as a composer of super-minimalist works for organ or horns or guitar, with strange chords ringing out one by one. Thus her stunning new collaboration with fellow Swede Johan Graden, a free jazz pianist & arranger, might come as a surprise. Yes, it’s minimalist, but the deceptively simple arrangements for multiple bass clarinets, tuba, contrabass and piano, as well as occasional sparse drums, trumpet and other instruments, underscore Arkbro’s fragile, candidly melodic voice. The opening track is a beauty, but “Other side” stands out from an already stand-out album with its unusual harmonies (each piano chord includes two notes a tone or semitone apart), the all-bass orchestration (bass clarinet, tuba and contrabass join the piano’s left-hand in the second half), and the gorgeous, subtle vocal loop that carries through the last phrases. No sign of Chet Baker among these originals, but I Get Along Without You Very Well achieves all the subdued emotion of the jazz standard it’s named after, with even fewer ingredients.

Ian William Craig – A Crack and a Shadow [130701/Bandcamp]
Ian William Craig – A Given Stack [130701/Bandcamp]
This album’s source comes as a surprise for the classically-trained singer and tape manipulator Ian William Craig. His free-floating, looped, fluttering and degraded vocal lines and modular synths don’t immediately scream “computer game soundtrack”, yet Music for Magnesium_173 is just that – full tracks (some over 10 minutes long) in Craig’s usual style, written to accompany a quantum mechanical puzzle game released on the Steam platform. As the game development was delayed (not an uncommon experience), some earlier works created for it came out on his 2018 album Thresholder. Suffice to say it’s vintage Craig, lovely experienced on its own.

Abdel Ja7eem Hafeth – Eed B Eed (Ma3 El Shaytan) ft. Sheekie Sheekie [Drowned By Locals]
Produced by 1800s Internet, this piece from the people behind the Jordanian label Drowned By Locals is a rather touching tribute to Daniel Johnson, mostly just piano and cigarette-stained voice, but steeped in noise and faint backing vocals. Lovely.

Jason McMahon – You Dear, Woody Houses? [Shinkoyo/Artist Pool/Bandcamp]
Jason McMahon – Enchant a Rare Time Wander [Shinkoyo/Artist Pool/Bandcamp]
Jason McMahon – Who’d Forecast Shade [Shinkoyo/Artist Pool/Bandcamp]
Run by Matt Mehlan of the experimental b(r)and Skeletons, Shinkoyo and the associated co-operative venture Artist Pool are gradually releasing some very creative & inspiring music. I loved Chicago cellist Lia Kohl‘s Too Small to be a Plain earlier this year, and now we have the second solo album, It’s That Time Again, from guitarist Jason McMahon. It’s a mostly-instrumental song suite meant to be played all the way through, and so we’re excerpting three tracks in a row here. It’s somewhere between psych-rock, psych-folk and folktronica perhaps, all performed by McMahon except for some memorable drumming from Greg Fox on one track. While the one vocal track isn’t featured tonight, I do want to mention that McMahon describes it as “sung in my faux-gibberish style”, and if that’s not a drawcard I don’t know what is.

Makaya McCraven – High Fives [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Makaya McCraven – This Place That Place [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
I feel like by now Makaya McCraven has been heralded enough on this show and elsewhere that he doesn’t need a huge introduction. A brilliant drummer and producer of “organic beat music” in which improvisations and arrangements performed by the cream of free jazz musicians from around the world are carefully, both subtly and radically edited, he really is something of an iconoclast. New album In These Times represents a milestone for McCraven that’s been a long time coming, as he’s honed tracks in his songbook that are based around odd time signatures, recorded them in studios and performance spaces all around Chicago and further afield, and spent countless hours editing. The result is a little more smoothed around the edges than his previous albums for International Anthem, at times almost too polite, but that would be to ignore the stellar playing, the off-kilter rhythms, and the utter sumptuousness of the arrangements and compositions.

Ahm & Defpet – Searching [Ahm Bandcamp/Defpet Bandcamp]
Ahm & Defpet – Slipping [Ahm Bandcamp/Defpet Bandcamp]
Following some intense solo IDM/deconstructed club releases and remix work, it’s great to hear Melbourne producer Ahm aka Andrew Huhtanen McEwan working in a more live setting with fellow Melbournite Hannes Lackmann aka Defpet on drum kit and myriad other instruments. It’s uncategorisable music that slips between experimental electronica, jazz, postrock and more. Just what we like on the ‘Fog.

Naco – Sanc [Scuffed Recordings]
Kyoto-based Naco runs the 85acid label and produces the kind of music that melds house & techno with breaks & jungle and more, which perfectly suits London’s Scuffed label. Here chopped amen breaks are inserted in increasingly complex, syncopated fashion into a 4/4 structure, dizzyingly joyful.

Patrick Brian – Flooring It [Sneaker Social Club]
This new release on Sneaker Social Club, home of UK bass music and that whole ‘aardcore continuum, comes from an LA native. Patrick Brian is highly influenced by grime and drill, as well as predecessors like uk garage, and he skilfully channels those styles on this new EP while putting his own spin on them.

µ-Ziq – Hello [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
It’s been a big year for Planet µ boss Mike Paradinas aka µ-Ziq, with the 25th anniversary re-release of his brilliant Lunatic Harness album, and a series of releases with new music on the same tip – melodic idm inspired by jungle and hardcore techno – the archetypal drill’n’bass. The final release in this series is the Hello EP, mirroring the Goodbye EP and, if his recent sets in Canberra & Melbourne are any guide, going deeper into the jungle. The CD edition features all the Goodbye tracks as well, for fans like me :)

pale sketcher – today [GIVE/TAKE/Bandcamp]
pale sketcher – golden skin [GIVE/TAKE/Bandcamp]
It’s been many years since we’ve heard from Pale Sketcher, the IDM project of Justin K Broadrick. It’s a long way from the pioneering grindcore of Napalm Death, the industrial metal of Godflesh, or even the shoegaze metal of Jesu, but in fact the origins of Pale Sketcher come from a set of deconstructed ambient/electronic remixes Broadrick made of his 2007 Jesu album Pale Sketches. The tunes on new album golden skin were created a little after this, up until 2013, and were originally going to be released on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex Records before the label shut down. They’ve now finally found a home on US label GIVE/TAKE, which is a blessing because this stuff is just so good. It’s got a bit of the shoegazey outlook of the Jesu origins, but with those wordless vocal snippets playing the same role they do on the recent µ-Ziq work, and among the crunchy beats are plenty of accelerated drill’n’bass funtimes to be had. JKB has hinted that there will be more actually-new Pale Sketcher material coming too – can’t wait!

Dev/Null – Time 2 Rhyme (GOOOOOSE Remix) [Evar Records]
Breakcore veteran Dev/Null released his tribute to jungle & jungle tekno, Microjunglizm, on LA’s Evar Records a year ago. Evar now follow that up with Microjunglizm Remixes, featuring a bunch of jungle/hardcore proponents from both sides of the Atlantic, but it’s excellent that they also chose to invite Shanghai’s GOOOOOSE to the party. It’s not the first time he’s mashed up jungle breaks in his music, and as usual it’s brilliantly skewed.

s8jfou – Soft [s8jfou Bandcamp]
s8jfou – Phase [s8jfou Bandcamp]
French musician s8jfou‘s name is a pun. It’s pronounce “‘suis-je fous?”, as 8 = huit in French, and translates as “Am I mad?”. And perhaps he was mad to create his new album Op-Echo using only the Operator synth and the Echo effect in Ableton. It’s an exercise in proving you don’t need modular synths and outboard gear to create something special, and it seems to me he’s succeeded admirably. It’s a bit of a love song for UK dance music and IDM, yet the melodies give it a distinctly French twist – I hear a similar temperament to the violintronica of Chapelier Fou or a much less manic Ruby My Dear. Well worth checking out.

Aphir – Red Giant [Provenance/Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne mastering/mixing engineer, producer, singer and songwriter Becki Whitton is soon releasing her very personal electronic pop album Pomegranate Tree through Provenance, the label that she took over and rebuilt into a collective a few years ago. The album is an elegant and emotive exploration of her experiences growing up with, grappling with, and eventually leaving the Christian faith, and Whitton’s dedicated studies in electronically-mediated quasi-choral work, her beat-making and her well-honed production skills all serve to make this album something to anticipate.

Aasthma – It’s Just Your Style (feat. Jonnine) [Monkeytown Records/Bandcamp]
Aasthma – Power Ambient Piano Ballad [Monkeytown Records/Bandcamp]
OK look, here’s what I said when I last played Aasthma on the show: Pär Grindvik and Peder Mannerfelt have been intrinsic members of the Swedish electronic music scene for the last decade or more – Grindvik runs the Stockholm LTD label, the latter his eponymous Peder Mannerfelt Produktion, as well as being part of the experimental duo Roll The Dice and a frequent collaborator with Fever Ray (Karin Dreijer Andersson of The Knife). That was 2019, and it’s taken a few years for their album Arrival to… arrive… courtesy of Modeselektor‘s Monkeytown Records. While there were collaborations on their singles (including the wonderful Penelope Trappes), it still seemed more of a club project than a pop project. That’s flipped on its head for this album, where even the instrumentals are full of sampled vocal hooks, big synths and sparkly melodies. It seems to lean into Euro-dance-pop rather gleefully, while still allowing itself to be charmingly weird, especially on the closing “Power Ambient Piano Ballad”. Among the guests is the very busy Jonnine Standish of HTRK, who also appeared recently on The Bug’s Absent Riddim.

clipping. and Evicshen – Sheba [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
clipping. and TENGGER – Say the Name (TENGGER Remix) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
Six years after their last REMXNG outing, noise-hop masterminds clipping. are releasing a series of four remix EPs (compile them on CDs guys!) starting with REMXNG 2.1. The tracks are all credited to clipping. and the remix artist, with some more like collabs than remixes. Victoria Shen aka Evicshen destroys “She Bad” from Visions of Bodies Being Burned, further upping the horror quotient with blasts of noise and mangled vocal samples; but “travelling musical family” TENGGER, from Seoul, take a tiny bit from the outro of “Say the Name” and construct a blissed out ambient oscillation from it.

part timer – no voice [part timer Bandcamp]
part timer – with a whisper [part timer Bandcamp]
John part timer McCaffrey continues to make magic with just a laptop and a piano (I’m not sure it’s even a real piano). While in COVID isolation, he made five tracks of subtle post-classical beauty, with sparse orchestrations on wind instruments and strings conjured from the aether. It’s a fitting closer after Arkbro & Graden’s opening tracks tonight, so go support great music.

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Algiers feat. billy woods & Backxwash – Bite Back [Matador/Bandcamp]
When I first heard about Algiers, the idea of gospel-influenced vocals mixed with punk sounded decidedly unattractive. Yet the band makes it work, and the way they draw on politically-charged music of all sorts – particularly black musics like house & rap – means it’s even hader to pin them down to any style. That’s at the forefront of their return with new single “Bite Back” in which they’re joined by two of the greatest unerground rappers the moment, the low-key, experimental billy woods and the high-energy, metal-and-postrock-influenced Zambian-Canadian Backxwash. “Punk” hardly fits at all here, with a marching synth bassline, orchestral stab-style samples, and skittering hi-hats, and halfway through a righteous DJ Shadow-style beat. Electrifying.

Keeley Forsyth – Land Animal (Ben Frost Remix) [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
Gospel is also a touchpoint for the unique voice of British actor-turned-musician Keeley Forsyth, with Scott Walker and Talk Talk as frequent comparisons. Her second album Limbs has been remixed by four beautifully-chosen artists – the others are industrial royalty Cosey Fanni Tutti, post-classical don Yann Tiersen, and sound-art genius Simon Fisher Turner – but released first is Iceland-based Aussie Ben Frost, whose throbbing low-end growls and compositional sensibility are ideal to enhance the emotive, androgynous range of Forsyth.

Lueenas – Souls Sliding [Barkhausen Recordings]
Lueenas – Witches Brew [Barkhausen Recordings]
Copenhagen duo Ida Duelund (double bass) and Maria Jagd (violin) create improvised soundscapes as well as music for soundtracks and installations with their amplified instruments, voices and effects as Lueenas. Their self-titled debut album proper comes out on Barkhausen Recordings on November 4th, but in the meantime they’ve released two quite different singles. One leans on electronics, half-ambient and half a kind of throbbing analogue techno. The other uses strings and voices in a dark ambient folk fashion. It shows the range of these two women, and while we wait for the rest of the album, I’m going to check out their soundtrack material on their own Bandcamp! Also notable, Duelund was based for a time in Melbourne – always nice to have an Oz connection.

Bridget Chappell – And When You Reach The Plains After Crossing The Mountains [Absorb/Bandcamp]
Cypha – Mist Music [Absorb/Bandcamp]
Speaking of Naarm/Melbourne and strings, we turn now to the new(ish) compilation from new(ish) Naarm label Absorb, whose compilation The World I Want Would Be Celestial, Wet features experimental artists from the city and surrounds, from quasi-classical through ambient electronic to techno. Bridget Chappell, who also makes industrial/electronic/breakcore as Hextape, here brings their cello, multi-tracked with percussive sounds and processed delays. Gorgeous. And the comp ends with some jittery bass-techno from the excellent Cypha.

Wishmountain – Break [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
Wishmountain – Hammer [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
The programmed clunks of Cypha’s beats blend nicely into the sampled clonks of Matthew Herbert’s Stonework, recorded 1000 metres down in the UNESCO World Heritage Zollverein mine in Essen, Germany – and then sampled and edited assiduously in Herbert’s Wishmountain fashion. The last Wishmountain album was 10 years ago, deconstructing consumerism on Tesco. Wishmountain encapsulates Herbert’s old PCCOM Manifesto (Personal Contract for the Composition Of Music) in its most pure sense – among other things, it requires no sampling of existing recordings or sounds that exist prior to the music being created; no presets; no drum machines, and more. It’s not clear whether he still follows this as such – all Google results lead to forums and articles about it rather than his own sites. Nevertheless, here we have a set of fairly sparse rhythmic studies based around his recordings of rocks and stones, from the mine and also the Ruhr Museum and Mineralien-Museum Essen. There are pitched sounds and drawn out sounds as well as beats, and there’s something characteristic about the way they are processed that makes them clearly Herbert. It may be the opposite of the homely jazz-house of last year’s Musca, and it may be under the Wishmountain alias, but it’s certainly all Herbert.

Dominic Voz – Las Cuentas [Accidental Records/Bandcamp/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
Dominic Voz – Right To The City I [Accidental Records/Bandcamp/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
Sound-art and social justice are at the heart of the work of Chicago-via Portland artist Dominic Voz. His Portland origins connect him with the adventurous Beacon Sound, who are co-releasing his new album Right To The City with Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records. The title “Right To The City” references Voz’ dedication to fair housing and contestation within urban settings, but also more generally his love of cities (something I very much share). Instruments and voices of friends are found throughout, often disarmingly casually dropped into the recordings, and ruthlessly sliced digitally, along with Voz’s own instrumentation (is that him on cello?) and his folktronic, deconstructed production techniques. It’s a beautiful combination of early-’00s style folktronic acoustic manipulation, ’90s early jazz-fusion postrock and contemporary sound-art ambient. You’re gonna love it.

Marc Baron & Jean-Philippe Gross – B6 [Eich Records]
Marc Baron & Jean-Philippe Gross – Y2 [Eich Records]
Marc Baron & Jean-Philippe Gross – P4 [Eich Records]
Marc Baron & Jean-Philippe Gross – Y6 [Eich Records]
Black, Pink and Yellow noises is a collection 20 short tracks created with tape and electronics by two French musicians working in the intersection of instrumental music (Baron is a saxophonist as well as sound-artist) and electronics. Some tracks are repeating loops with tape fuzz and various types of instrumental distortion, strums and thrums. Others are flickering drones or waves of raucous noise. The analogue warp and weft of magnetic tape are frequently present, as is the unprocessed hiss. Fans of early Mego, noise and drone take note.

Scattered Order – Alastair Sim [Rather Be Vinyl (Scattered Order Bandcamp)]
Scattered Order – Rummage [Rather Be Vinyl (Scattered Order Bandcamp)]
Sydney’s venerable, oft-reincarnated postpunk/post-industrial group Scattered Order continue their latest reincarnation, now happily emanating noises for over 12 years in itself. These days it’s Mitchell Jones (the little hand of the faithful) on beats, guitar and processed vocals, Michael Tee (A Cloakroom Assembly) on guitars & bass along with fellow traveller Shane Fahey on synths and other electronics. It can be abrasive and chaotic, but also weirdly melodic and beat-driven. Always a pleasure.

Tim Reaper & Kloke – Museum [!K7 Records/Bandcamp]
Inveterate, energetic jungle collaborator Tim Reaper releases collabs on labels of his own such as Future Retro and other contemporary jungle & drum’n’bass labels, but here appears on venerable German label !K7 Records with two tracks made with Melbourne-based producer Andy Donnelly aka Kloke. It’s a reprise of their collab on Tempo Records last year, and both tracks are perfect for headphone listening and for dancefloors.

J:Kenzo ft Flowdan – Like A Hawk (Boylan Remix) [Artikal Music]
Remixes of J:Kenzo‘s 2019 Taygeta Code have been coming out over the last couple of years, with three 12″ packages so far from Artikal Music. Stylistically they reflect J:Kenzo’s own comfort inhabiting both the dubstep and drum’n’bass worlds, and the third remix EP that just dropped showcases this with three 140bpm reworkings, with grime producer Boylan‘s take particularly strong, supporting the menacing and deep voice of the don, Big Flowdan with heavy production.

Swimful – Backwards [SVBKVLT]
Swimful – More Distant on Approach (Phelimuncasi Remix – prod. DJ Scoturn) [SVBKVLT]
Shanghai-based producer Swimful‘s five releases on SVBKVLT have found him changing styles with ease each time, and Rushlight has a dubstep/garage feel but equally is influenced by South African gqom and ampiano – clearly evidenced by the brilliant Phelimuncasi crew remixing an older track with young producer DJ Scoturn at the helm. It’s music that should rip up dancefloors, and that Phelimuncasi remix is some of their best recent work too.

Andy Moor – Perseverance [Unsounds]
Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) – The Fall, The Freedom [Unsounds]
Scottish, Amsterdam-based guitarist Andy Moor aka Andy Ex co-founded the great exploratory label Unsounds with Netherlands-based Greek composer Yannis Kyriakides and graphic designer Isabelle Vigier in 2001. The label showcases sounds from contemporary classical to postpunk to field recordings and experimental electronic pop, always conceptually on-point and of unwavering quality. Their latest release, curated with Andrea Stillacci, is a double LP simply called CLAP, that sees 11 musicians dissect the concept of applause across different contexts. Kyriakides, for instance, samples and stretches the applause at the end of a Maria Callas performance; others like Moor Mother create collages from field recordings, street sounds, etc. Andy Moor‘s own piece uses handclaps along with sampled speech (recorded during NASA’s space probe Perseverance entering the Martian atmosphere and landing) and throbbing bass to build a house track, while Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) slowly builds a pulsing drone with slow-flanged beats and synths that gradually reveal the source material (the fall of the Berlin Wall). It’s always great to have a conceptual work where the music is first class, and that’s what we’ve got here.

Radboud Mens – Conversion [Radboud Mens Bandcamp]
Radboud Mens – Modular [Radboud Mens Bandcamp]
I first heard about Dutch instrument maker and producer Radboud Mens via numerous collaborations with Michel Banabila. His latest release is a double CD called Continuous Movement that encapsulates Mens’ various styles – drones, glitchy digital clicks and minimal (dub) techno, all together. The two albums exist separately but make the most sense together, with a cohesive feel whether it’s head-nodding beats, beatless pulses, deeply encompassing or more sparse. A great introduction to an interesting & sometimes challenging artist.

Listen again — ~205MB

Big experimental pop album released this week, but there’s also an array of experimental sounds from around the world…

LISTEN AGAIN, it’s your royal duty. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Jockstrap – Angst [Rough Trade/Bandcamp]
Jockstrap – Joy [Kaya Kaya Records]
Jockstrap – The City [Warp/Bandcamp]
Jockstrap – Beavercore 3 [Warp/Bandcamp]
Jockstrap – Debra [Rough Trade/Bandcamp]
So here it is. After a couple of brilliant singles, following the two extraordinary EPs released on Warp in 2020, and their debut EP on Kaya Kaya Records in 2018, UK duo Jockstrap‘s first full album I Love You, Jennifer B is finally out from Rough Trade. The songs and sumptuous string arrangements of Georgia Ellery (also of Black Country, New Road), with the shiny-but-experimental production of Taylor Skye, make Jockstrap a unique and joyful experience. Part of Jockstrap’s brilliance is the juxtapositions: irreverant humour with deep emotion, luscious jazz harmonies & progressions with glitched programmed beats, intensely catchy pop sensibility with experimentalism. The album covers all the ground of their previous EPs, including frequent references to “the city”, and tracks named after women’s names. And that pop sensibility is unquestionable.

Nathaniel Mellors – Digital Worms [Nathaniel Mellors Bandcamp, coming soon]
British artist Nathaniel Mellors is one quarter of the brilliant, unclassifiable band The God In Hackney, who have a new album coming out soonish. Mellors is perhaps better known internationally, though, as a multidisciplinary artist, working in video, painting, sculpture, animatronics and more. A new exhibition called Estate is opening soon at Matt’s Gallery in London, featuring Neanderthal-themed works from the last decade, including videos for Mellors’ solo work and The God In Hackney, and along with that is a limited 7″ single with two tracks – “Life Becomes A Promo” and “Digital Worms”, of which I chose the b-side to play tonight. Mellors’ work abounds in work-play and genre-slippage, as can be found here.

Bird Eternal – Forest Burial [Bird Eternal Bandcamp]
From around 2008 to 2016, Melbourne-via-Blue Mountains musician Bob Streckfuss released a slew of brilliant experimental electronic music as 0point1 (or, earlier, 0.1). He mixed postrock & shoegaze influences with glitch and idm in a unique way. He’s back now under the new name Bird Eternal, with a beautiful track of processed vocals and electronics. His incredible digital art can be found on Instagram.

Briana Marela – You Are a Wave [Briana Marela Bandcamp]
Briana Marela – Eclipse [Briana Marela Bandcamp]
After her third album Call It Love was released in 2017, Briana Marela moved to Oakland to complete an MFA at Mills College. Her previous albums combined her talents at indie songwriting with electronic processing, but You Are A Wave is both more personal and more unforgiving for the listener. The influence of her fine arts studies is here in the extended instrumental modular synth works, stridently unmoored in melody or rhythm, and in her collaboration with the contemporary music-focused Eclipse Quartet, but so is the upheaval of the pandemic, and the tragic loss of her father in April 2022 – he was in Peru, and she was unable to return for over a year. The combination of uncompromising sound-art and her ethereal vocals singing of loss makes ultimately for a very contemporary album, one well suited to a time where pop music, indie music, jazz, club and experimentalism have very slippery boundaries at best.

Nonsemble – Argentavis [Nonsemble Bandcamp]
Nonsemble – Argentavis (Madeleine Cocolas Remix) [Nonsemble Bandcamp]
Something like 15 years ago I discovered Brisbane musician Chris Perren via his folktronic solo work and his postrock band Mr Maps. In the interim, he also formed the contemporary classical ensemble Nonsemble, where his compositions, guitar and electronics are joined by a group of strings, piano and percussion. It’s been a while since the last Nonsemble release, but they’re returning now with a recorded version of their Archaeopteryx Cycle inspired by prehistoric birds. The first single celebrates the carnivorous Argentavis, probably the heaviest flying bird to have ever existed. A nice mix of rhythmic strings and electronics, it’s supported on the single by a blissful remix with added vocal drones by fellow Brisvegan Madeleine Cocolas.

Catherine Graindorge featuring Iggy Pop – Mud II [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Last year Belgian violist/violinist Catherine Graindorge released a lovely album on Glitterbeat of dark, layered electronic string works. It seems they caught the ear of veteran pre/postpunk all-round rock ledge Iggy Pop, who played some tracks on a radio playlist he put together, and one thing led to another and Graindorge sent him some tracks which he spoke/sang on. Although the title track is the lead song on The Dictator EP, I liked the vibe of “Mud II”, and it segues nicely into the ultra-dark of our next act…

The Bug – Satan ft Nazamba [Pressure Records]
The Bug – Oceans ft YL Hooi [Pressure Records]
Kevin Martin was asked to provide a remix for post-metal/sludge superground Absent In Body (a group whose future is in doubt now that Scott Kelly (also ex-Neurosis) has been outed as an abuser). The first thing he sent them was rejected as not heavy enough(!) and so instead it became the Absent Riddim, a versatile instrumental that, dancehall/dub style, he shared with a whole slew of collaborators to create versions ranging from ethereal song to hard-hitting rap. This technique is something Martin’s used in the past, with b-sides of tracks like “Poison Dart” and others featuring alternate versions with different MCs. The riddim is sludge-slow and covered in sooty static, very clearly The Bug, and his choices of collaborator range from Jamaican and grime MCs, US underground rappers, to metal vocalists, indie singers and jazz musicians. Two of the artists tragically passed away very recently – one is Jamaican MC Nazamba, who died of a heart attack, and who contributes a hellish set of verses titled “Satan”. Also present is incendiary jazz trumpeter Jaimie Branch, whose death two weeks ago at age 39 came as a massive shock. I didn’t play her track tonight, but it’s wonderful – mostly her singing but with some trumpet in there too! There are so many great people on here, including frequent sparring partner Justin K Broadrick, the great industrial hip-hop MC dälek, King Midas Sound‘s Roger Robinson (featured on last week’s show), Moor Mother and many more. Two Australians also appear: Jonnine Standish of HTRK, and Melbourne’s YL Hooi, who I played tonight.

YL Hooi – Always In Jokes [Efficient Space/YL Hooi Bandcamp]
Russian-Chinese musician Valya Ying-Li Hooi is YL Hooi, a member of Kallista Kult with every-present Melbourne noisemaker Tarquin Manek – which provides a direct connection to Carla dal Forno, who I’d see as one touchpoint for YL Hooi’s sound, along with HTRK‘s Jonnine Standish. Not that Hooi is derivative in any way – in fact, other than her delicate, semi-detached vocal style, the connections are more about the postpunk/dub style that inhabits some of her work. But you’ll just as likely find her making massive granular drones out of her voice, or sparse filligree soundscapes, or strange Casio keyboard ditties. The anything-goes approach on her twice-released Untitled is intruging and both redolent of that Melbourne scene and of the current zeitgeist (e.g. the Briana Marela album above). I hope her presence on The Bug’s album indicates more things to come, as this album is a few years old now!

Tom Allum – under [Tone List/Bandcamp]
Tom Allum – time [Tone List/Bandcamp]
Not long after exploratory Perth label Tone List released 504’s Salvage Rhythms, made out of repurposed found sounds & field recordings, they now bring us Tom Allum‘s CANAL ROCKS. Here the burbling landscape of Canal Rocks, near Margaret River in Western Australia, is documented and repurposed by Allum in various ways. Field recordings are processed and “blasted back into the environment at night”; hydroponic recordings featured from deep under the water. All these watery sounds are played both straight and chopped into rhythms and shapes at times, and they are overlaid with synth pads and guitar at times. It really is evocative of a place where the sea meets the land.

KAVARI – Mirroring (Like Me) [KAVARI Bandcamp]
KAVARI – Attachment Style [KAVARI Bandcamp]
Glasgow artist KAVARI (Cameron Sofia Winters) has some great collabs under her belt and demented edits & remixes, but it feels like Suture EP is her most fully-formed work yet. Here she she effortlessly combines jungle, dubstep and trap influences with current experimentalism (have we stopped using “deconstructed club” now?), including creepy metal-adjacent vocal growls. All of that makes for ideal Utility Fog music, so get on it.

Ibrahim Alfa Jnr – TQSM [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
Ibrahim Alfa Jnr – NPNX [Mille Plateaux/Bandcamp]
Brighton-based Ibrahim Alfa Jnr has been making his brand of wonky, rhythmically-unusual techno since the mid-to-late ’90s. It’s not a surprise to find him now on the re-formed experimental imprint Mille Plateaux, but it is a surprise to find many of the tracks on Messier87 sporting jungle breakbeats. Mille Plateaux, in their theory-infested way, call it “Hypercussion”, which is a nice coinage anyway. I like the buried swing beats at the start and end of the first track tonight, and the hyper nature of this new music in a new direction from a techno veteran.

Frank Bretschneider and Giorgio Li Calzi – In The Dark [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
Frank Bretschneider and Giorgio Li Calzi – Human-to-Human [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
Jazz trumpet melded with electronics has a long heritage – back to Miles Davis easily, along with Jon Hassell and Nils Petter Molvær. Giorgio Li Calzi has also worked his trumpet in with electronics during his long career, and here the electronics are provided by another veteran, Frank Bretschneider, co-founder of the Raster label, before it merged with Alva Noto’s Noton, and then de-merged a few years ago. This album, though, is released on the forward-thinking Mexican label Umor Rex. With Zero Mambo the two artists switch between glitchy machine funk and more sparse & dubby feels, with the translucent trumpet of Li Calzi perfectly aligned with the purity of Bretschneider’s tones and hits. Man-machine music.

Carl Stone – Vatanim [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
We’re not done with veterans yet. Our last track comes from LA/Tokyo-based pioneer of sampling and granular techniques, Carl Stone. Unseen Worlds showcased his back catalogue on two compilations in 2016 & 2018, which catalysed a renaissance of creativity in Stone, with multiple EPs and albums released through the label since then. Gall Tones, a typically punning title, is an EP produced on laptop & headphones in hospital following a gall stone operation, with the subject of his rhythmic chop-and-shuffle being pop music of some sort. There’s a brass link here though – some kind of mambo horn section is stuttering about in this track, it seems. Unhinged as only Stone can do it.

Listen again — ~203MB