Utility Fog

Weird indie, weird improv, weird Persian, Egyptian, Moroccan, weird junglisms and weird electronica. If it’s not weird, it’s not worth it.

LISTEN AGAIN if y’know what’s good for you. If y’do, stream it on demand from FBi, or podcast it here.

Kee Avil – I too Bury [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Kee Avil – Drying [Constellation/Bandcamp]
Montréal’s Vicky Mettler co-founded Concrete Sound Studio, and curates an online live series there as well as producing music. She’s played with many musicians in the Montréal experimental music scene, including Sam Shalabi’s Land of Kush, and her production skills and experimental credentials all feed into her solo work as Kee Avil. The songs on this album are very hard to pin down – often strangely amelodic, but also strangely compelling, with timbres and orchestrations that sometimes seem like postpunk or indie, sometimes like freak folk. Programmed beats coincide with queasy piano or wheezy accordion. It’s an album that deserves multiple listens to really unravel what’s going on.

Iguan – Waves [Studio LAB’UT/Bandcamp]
Based out of Studio LAB’UT in Strasbourg, Claire Trouilloud (voice, composition) and Yérri-Gaspar Hummel (live electronics, composition) make up Iguan, whose music, as you can guess from the credits, is partially contemporary composition and partially improvised, in between oratorio and musique concrète.

Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz – Ishtar [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
Sussan Deyhim / Shirin Neshat – Turbulent [Venus Rising Records]
I first discovered NYC-based Iranian musician Sussan Deyhim in a gallery in Portugal where the astonishing film Turbulent by fellow ex-pat Iranian Shirin Neshat was playing. Projected on two opposing walls of a small room are a male performer, in front of an audience, and a woman, standing in shadows on her own. The man performs a beautiful traditional tune, to great applause, and then watches in astonishment as the woman performs a breathtaking avant-garde piece for solo voice (and subtle delays). You can watch it here. Deyhim’s piece, also titled “Turbulent”, showcases her incredible vocal range, and the way, from the mid-’80s onward, she was reintrepreting the music of her homeland in the context of the ’80s and ’90s avant-garde. Alongside collaborations with Adrian Sherwood and Bill Laswell, Deyhim has worked closely with her partner Richard Horowitz, and their first album Desert Equations: Azax Attra has just been reissued by Crammed Discs, remastered with bonus tracks, as part of their revival of their Made to Measure composers series. Although some aspects of this album date it very much to the mid 1980s – up-front programmed drum machines in particular – the Jon Hassell-style fourth-world ambient aesthetic that Horowitz brings is very much in vogue now, and Deyhim’s voice is so otherworldly that this music can’t help sounding strangely futuristic.

Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy – Pearls for orphans (live) [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy – B’aj بعاج [Whities (AD 93)/Bandcamp]
Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy – Protruding cheeckbones (live) [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
In 2019, AD 93 (or Whities as they were then known) released the first full collaborative album between German trio Carl Gari with France-based Egyptian poet & singer Abdullah Miniawy. The Act of Falling from the 8th Floor harnessed the evocative poetry and trumpet of Miniawy with the dubwise sounds of Carl Gari – on “B’aj بعاج”, Miniawy narrates a poem told from the point of view of a man who has jumped from the 8th floor, and describes the activities on the balconies as he falls. Miniawy is an excellent electronic producer himself, and in late 2020 released an EP with French bass producer Simo Cell, but it’s a pleasure to find him back with Carl Gari for Between The Bullet And The Front Sight, Casting Lots, which was recorded live at Munich’s Haus der Kunst but could easily be a studio album. It’s mostly new material, once again pairing Miniawy’s poems about Egypt under al-Sisi, his trumpet, and Carl Gari’s mix of dub, psych and bass music.

Ö – St. Henri [PC Music/Bandcamp]
Ö – AFK [PC Music/Bandcamp]
The full new EP Hypernormality from Nicolas Petitfrère, the latest signing to PC Music, should be out now. Previously known as Nömak, he’s now switched to just Ö. He’s produced tunes with Charli XX and Christine and the Queens, and enlists A.G. Cook for the intense glitches of single “AFK”, but much of this EP is more in the Animal Collective vein – dreamy electronic folk with slow crescendos and odd electronic undercurrents. It’s really lovely.

Virgil Abloh, serpentwithfeet – Delicate Limbs (Special Request Extended Mix) [Sony Music]
This track is a year old, but for some reason I missed it when it came out, and only discovered it now through DJ C‘s most righteous Nu Jungle mix. The original track by the late lamented fashion designer Virgil Abloh and dream-r’n’b singer serpentwithfeet is great, but Special Request up-ends it into a junglist banger.

DJ Ride – Halfjung [Together with Ukraine]
Workforce & Halogenix – Don’t Give Up [Together with Ukraine]
Submarine – Obeisance [Together with Ukraine]
And that brings us to the immensity that is Together with Ukraine – 136 tracks, over 10 hours of music, from drum’n’bass (and “bass”) artists from around the globe, released on Bandcamp to raise money for the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. It’s quality music, but it’s still rather nice that it did so well – hitting the #1 spot on Bandcamp, and raising thus far over £60,000. It covers a good range of drum’n’bass and jungle subgenres too, with dancefloor-fillers, some neurofunk and some of the minimalist tribal sound Samurai are championing, as well as some real jungle revivalist shit. Tonight we’ve got Portugal’s DJ Ride with a kind of halfstepper, Workforce & Halogenix from the UK with hard-hitting breaks and euphoric vocal samples, and from Cologne’s Submarine there’s shuddering bass and complex, shifting breaks. It’s honestly a well-priced overview of the d’n’b/jungle scene today, and for a great cause.

Adred – Levitation [31 Recordings]
New York producer Adred appears on Together with Ukraine, but this week he also has a new EP out on Doc Scott’s 31 Recordings. It’s quite expansive stuff, with varied beats and creative basslines and synth pads, one of my favourites on 31 for a while.

3xOJ – Shaheded [3xOJ Bandcamp]
3xOJ – sneper.exe [3xOJ Bandcamp]
3xOJ feat. Al Nasser – Stork [Hakuna Kulala]
Last year Hakuna Kulala released an excellent EP from Moroccan producer 3xOJ in which he teamed up with Cassablanca-based MC Al Nasser for some antifascist bass music. This led me to 3xOJ’s own Bandcamp and his earlier release sneper.exe that draws on various styles of bass music along with North African & Arabic influences. 3xOJ’s latest EP, just released, is Shaheded, which sees him moving into junglist territory on the title track – also remixed in fine form by fellow Moroccan producer P3RY.

Cristian Vogel – Hyphaedelity [Mille Plateaux/Cristian Vogel Bandcamp]
Cristian Vogel – Angle Phase Life (Disintegration Mix) [Mille Plateaux/Cristian Vogel Bandcamp]
Born in Chile, educated in the UK, now based in Denmark, Cristian Vogel straddles musical traditions as well as countries. He’s studied electronic composition and writes music for theatre and dance, creates incredible sound-art, but also has been involved with the techno and experimental electronic scenes for decades – he was a founder of Brighton’s No-Future collective in the ’90s, a forerunner of Wrong Music’s breakcore and wonky, irreverant experimentalism. As well as remixing Radiohead and Thom Yorke, Vogel also formed Super_Collider with Jamie Lidell, a weird & wonderful melding of glitchy electronics and Lidell’s soulful vocals. He worked with the original Mille Plateaux label in the ’90s, and his latest album appears on the reinvigorated label. 1Zhuayo contains a familiar mix of submerged dub, techno and sound design. To my ears it’s his best work in some years.

Alexis Weaver – A Mouthful of Locusts [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
Zacharias Szumer – Stilted Cycle [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
Aphir – Airlock [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
Orbits – Ultraviolet [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
And finally for tonight, I’m pleased to be able to premiere a bunch of tracks from New Weird Australia‘s Collapse Theories, which will be released this coming Friday the 18th of March. As usual Stu Buchanan has excelled himself in selecting 26 brilliant experimental tracks from around Australia (including my little-seen trio Haunts, which Stu has kindly supported for years). There’s an emphasis on electronic music – often abrasive, sometimes melodic – but also some distorted guitars and jazzy postrockisms in there. From Sydney, Alexis Weaver‘s electroacoustic piece evokes her title, “A Mouthful of Locusts”, with vocal samples beautifully glitched and bounced around aural field. Multi-talented Melbourne journalist and musician Zacharias Szumer also brings glitched up sounds and unbalanced beats. Aphir aka Becki Whitton, who took over the operation of Provenance from Stu a year ago and reforged it into a collective, provides a piece of characteristic experimental pop with chanted, processed vocals and driving rhythms. And finally for tonight, Orbits (who, like Becki, are migrants from Canberra to Melbourne) showcase their electronic side with delay-fuelled drones, heavy bass and gated drums.

Listen again — ~209MB

Quite a trip tonight from shining songwriting to avant-garde experimental and sound-art.

LISTEN AGAIN because what did I tell you about “not to be missed”? Stream on demand from FBi Radio, podcast here.

Lack The Low – Satum [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
Lack The Low – Brigid [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
I wrote a few weeks ago about the last single from this brilliant album by Melbourne’s Kat Hunter aka Lack The Low. God-Carrier finds Hunter playing violin, cello, guitar, keyboards, producing and of course singing these very cathartic songs (released again by Sydney label Art As Catharsis). Augmented by drummers, and on a few tracks a clarinettist, Hunter forms songs as full of heart as they are of complex arrangements, driven by her emotive voice. Not to be missed.

romæo – no music comes from me [Provenance/Bandcamp]
Provenance/Bandcamp]
Last week I played Lack The Low’s contribution to Provenance Collective‘s latest compilation, Marks of Provenance V. The second such collection since Prov re-formed as a collective, it sees musicians from around the country supporting each other in all sorts of ways – indeed Becki Whitton, aka Aphir, who is a major force behind the label’s revival, also mastered Lack The Low’s new album. Whitton contributes a sampling of her recent vocal layer & processing ouevre (see last year’s Plastichoir), while Sydney’s romæo feeds her voice through harsh autotune over her beats.

Tanya Tagaq – Tongues [Six Shooter Records/Bandcamp]
Tanya Tagaq – Colonizer (Tundra Mix) [Six Shooter Records/Bandcamp]
Over the last 2 decades, Indigenous Canadian singer Tanya Tagaq has lost none of her fervour. She’s famous for the Inuit throat-singing of her culture, but also for embracing experimentalism in her music (having collaborated with Björk in the Medúlla era) – and on Tongues she’s aided by production collaborator Saul Williams and Gonjasufi in the mix. Her theme of decolonisation and Indigenous survival is well served by her powerful voice – whether speaking or singing – as well as the electronics and percussion of her accompaniment.

The Pond – Pane Caldo [Syrphe/Bandcamp]
The Pond – Linger [Syrphe/Bandcamp]
Jetzmann – Lingeringering [Syrphe/Bandcamp]
ЯE89 – Salomean Acid Funk [Syrphe/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based singer Elisabetta Lanfredini and sound-artist/composer Nicolas Wiese form The Pond, a project which on last year’s Turchesi Miracolosi fractures classical vocals among soundscapes and glitches (all made from Lanfredini’s voice). I missed Syrphe‘s release of the original album last year, but I’m glad to discover it now alongside the just-released RE-Works, which further abstracts these sounds, some adding (abstract) beats, some stretching or up-ending the vocals into unrecognizability. As with his massive compilations of experimental & electronic music from Asia and Africa, Cedrik Fermont here mixes little-known European artists with some better-known ones. All do justice to the source material.

Gantz – gone long before left [Gantz Bandcamp]
Gantz – silence [Gantz Bandcamp]
Turkish producer Gantz continues to drop enigmatic releases on his Bandcamp with regularity. true love mixes underwater hi-hats and monophonic synths with occasional nods to his dubstep origins. Never less than intriguing.

Machinefabriek – Prisma (Thigh Slapping Without Tears Mix by Matt Wand) [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Last year Rutger Machinefabriek Zuydervelt released a 17-minute experiment in programmed MIDI synths and beats as a free download, as it was quite a departure from his usual sound-art. The track now makes it on to CD accompanied by a suite of remixes in Prisma+, including mechanical assemblages triggered by the original track from Canadian cellist & creator Nick Storring, ambient beauty of equal length to the original from Scottish sound-artist Phil Maguire, and two different remixes from UK experimental maestro Matt Wand (known for the cut&paste madness of Stock, Hausen & Walkman). In fact, Wand created so many off-shoots from Zuydervelt’s track that he’s uploaded an entire album of further remixes at his Small Rocks Bandcamp.

Lakker – Ghost Ship [Lakker Bandcamp]
Berlin-based Irish duo Lakker came up from IDM & breakcore roots to break through with incredible bass-oriented techno, with experimentalism never far with their duo productions or solo as Eomac and Arad. This year on Bandcamp they’re releasing a series of EPs celebrating everything dance music, from techno to drum’n’bass to grime or trance – whatever takes their fancy. LKRTRX002 came out a couple of weeks ago, with this slab of bass techno featured.

mick harris – Prime[non stop v] [Mick Harris Bandcamp]
mick harris – Shuffler [Mick Harris Bandcamp]
Mick Harris has appeared on this show a lot with his groundbreaking dubstep-predicting Scorn project, and more recently I’ve been featuring the continuing HedNod sessions he’s releasing under his own name on Bandcamp. The dub bass and beats are right out of Scorn, but the beats swing more in a hip-hop fashion, and the heaviness is offset with a lightness of attitude. It’s fun and head-nodding.

Harmony – Crazy Eyes [Deep Jungle Bandcamp]
Lee Bogush has been making jungle as (DJ) Harmony since the early days in the ’90s, and formed Deep Jungle as an outlet for the archival DAT tapes of mostly-unreleased tunes from many of the greats. It’s a central player in the jungle revival, and Harmony’s own music is a frequent highlight. So it’s appropriate that DAT050 – the label’s 50th release – is from Bogush himself, and I particularly love the warm bassline and crisp breaks of “Crazy Eyes”.

Eli Keszler – The Vaulting Sky [LuckyMe/Bandcamp]
It’s arguable that the complex skittering beats and floating electronics of much of New York drummer Eli Keszler‘s solo work are influenced by drum’n’bass – among other electronic genres. His album for LuckyMe was a highlight of last year, expanding the jazz-meets-jungle into rain-washing cyberpunk streets, and it’s fitting that the album’s “Static Doesn’t Exist” has now gotten a remix from Hyperdub boss Kode9. It’s the B-side of his new single, but love the understated drumkit and electronics of the main track – very much in keeping with Keszler’s recent work.

Aidan Baker – Nutripon [Bibliotapes/Aidan Baker Bandcamp]
Aidan Baker – Ergot [Bibliotapes/Aidan Baker Bandcamp]
Just a week or two after a new album from his mighty doomdrone duo Nadja with partner Leah Buckareff (itself accompanied by a solo work by Baker), Aidan Baker has released a soundtrack to a classic sci-fi novel by John Brunner called The Sheep Look Up. Brunner was warning of environmental destruction decades ago (the novel is 50 years old). Baker’s music here isn’t all doom & gloom, but it’s certainly evocative of futures past, as well as Baker’s love of Japanese psych-drone and European krautrock.

Sharif Sehnaoui – Relent (radio edit) [Al Maslakh/Bandcamp]
A very different kind of guitar technique is exhibited on the second volume of “unprepared guitar” from Lebanese experimental mainstay Sharif Sehnaoui. Sehnaoui is part of the fabled “A” Trio with trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, who we heard from last week, and double bassist Raed Yassin. The two tracks on this 12″ feature tumbling, scrabbling open-tuned acoustic guitar, with no effects or preparations. It’s enjoyably listenable free improv, released on his & Kerbaj’s Al Maslakh label.

Minus Pilots with friends – You Engineers, You Architects (with Rothko & Machinefabriek) [PLAYNEUTRAL/Bandcamp]
Last last year London label PLAYNEUTRAL released the first EP All The Changing Hues from London bass/drums/electronic duo Minus Pilots “with friends” – I featured a couple of tracks. The second release, When Lilacs Last, is out now with a similar selection of pals creating unpredictable music from old vinyl, drones, strings, clarinet, drums and who knows what else. On this track they’re joined by bass-ambient phenomenon Rothko and UFog regular Machinefabriek.

Lia Kohl – First Picture of the Weather Pattern [Shinkoyo/Bandcamp]
Lia Kohl – Moon Bean [Shinkoyo/Bandcamp]
It’s always a pleasure to discover another cellist taking their instrument into uncharted territory, so I’m thankful to Matt Mehlan of Skeletons‘ label/collective/thing Shinkoyo/Artist Pool for introducing me to Chicago cellist/sound-artist/performer Lia Kohl. Her album Too Small to be a Plain is a stunning concoction of acoustic cello loops, mournful/calm synths, field recordings and voice. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Listen again — ~198MB

Pow Wow singings recontextualised, drum’n’bass & UK garage in US hip-hop and juke, Lebanese experimental trumpet remixed, fourth world electronic, post-krautrock reimaginings, Turkish double bass dronenoise, avant-garde Korean classical, delicate Icelandic classical… that’s just some of what we have tonight!

LISTEN AGAIN to the vibe of the day… Stream on demand via FBi, podcast here.

Joe Rainey – No Chants [37d03d/Bandcamp]
Coming in May (digital – physical in July) from 37d03d is what promises to be an astonishing album from Ojibwe singer Joe Rainey, who has collected and made recordings of Pow Wows from his Native American culture for many years. The album features his powerfully moving vocals combined with heavily distorted and edited percussion and other sound from Rainey’s archives, produced by the great Andrew Broder, whose production has moved aeons on since the (excellent) early lo-fi days of Fog. The songs here draw on a musical tradition that has been banned by the US government, and is central to Rainey’s culture, but to protect the sacred art (I believe), the songs are all Rainey’s. It’s going to be devastating, don’t miss it!

Denzel Curry – Zatoichi (feat. slowthai) [Loma Vista Recordings/Bandcamp]
A couple of years ago Denzel Curry released a whole EP produced by Kenny Beats which was pretty out there. Even so, Curry now states that was going through depression & anger issues until recently, and on his new album he’ll be fusing elements from other loves along with the hip-hop, like drum’n’bass and jazz. Hence the junglist beats slipping in & out of this great new single with slowthai, produced by Powers Pleasant.

Nahash & SNKLS – Amon Tobin [POLAAR/Bandcamp]
Nahash – Recrudescence [POLAAR/Bandcamp]
Originally from France, Raphael Valensi spent some years in Shanghai and was heavily involved in the experimental and underground music scene there – hence his previous album Flowers of the Revolution coming out through Shanghai’s SVBKVLT label. New EP Tides is released by French label POLAAR, and two of the four tracks are co-productions with French 160bpm maestro SNKLS. This release may not seem as explicitly anti-imperialist as the last one, but his political commitment is not far away – “tides” refers to the way the global south pays for wealthy nations’ growth; but it could also refer to the coming climate collapse and social collapse that it will bring. If this is the soundtrack to the end of the world, I’ll dance to it…

DJ Hank – Mkwa [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
DJ Hank – Lift Gate [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Chicago footwork/juke has been hybridized with UK genres for over a decade, with jungle-footwork a staple by now. A Minnesotan migrant to west Chicago, DJ Hank is a lover of that post-jungle genre UK garage, and his mutant footwork-garage tracks are rightly being championed by Hyperdub now with his new mini-album City Stars. The female vocal samples here are essential to footwork but perfectly fit the garage/2step side too, and the breaks and halftime bass accents make these tracks step hard.

Dividens – Bionic [Pure Space/Bandcamp]
Dividens – Tell Dem [Pure Space/Bandcamp]
Emerging Naarm/Melbourne producer Dividens debuts on FBi’s own Pure Space with four tracks influenced by drum’n’bass & dubstep as much as dub techno – especially on “Tell Dem”, where dub techno chords meet dubstep bass scattered through with jungle breaks.

Ziúr – Bottoms [Ziúr Bandcamp]
Berlin’s Ziúr is a seasoned master of deconstructed club music now, melding IDM and glitch, pop sensibilities and dancefloor know-how on albums for PAN and Planet µ among others. In between major releases, she’s just started a series of what she describes as “dancefloor singles” with Bin There Vol 1. The dancefloor here is as deconstructed as ever, but that said, it would be my kind of dancefloor…

Deena Abdelwahed and Mazen Kerbaj – Blue Malediction [Morphine Records/Bandcamp]
Muqata’a and Mazen Kerbaj – Untitled [Morphine Records/Bandcamp]
Trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj is a key member of the Lebanese experimental music & free improv scene. His name appears frequently on experimental releases from Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere in the region (as well as Berlin, where he’s now based), and he’s a member of the brilliant “A” Trio with Sharif Sehnaoui and Raed Yassin. Kerbaj has released two volumes already of solo trumpet recordings, but for this third one, the original recordings are put together as a “sampler”, with a multitude of short pieces (from tiny blips up to 40 seconds or so) showcasing Kerbaj’s toolbox of extended trumpet techniques that he’s developed over two and a half decades of playing. That’s only half of Sampler / Sampled though – the “Sampled” half turns these sounds over to a selection of musicians from around the world to reinterpret the sounds – artists like Marina Rosenfeld, Rrose, Bob Ostertag, Electric Indigo, Exquinoxxx’s Gavborg and more. Tunisian electronic musician Deena Abdelwahed preserves much of the character of Kerbaj’s original sounds, marshalling them into a strange techno beat, while Palestinian producer Muqata’a constructs a characteristically evocative glitchscape.

Michel Banabila – VPRO Breed Dreiging [Banabila Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel – VPRO Breed Broken Homes
Michel Banabila – VPRO Breed Grillig [Banabila Bandcamp]
Back in 2007, Dutch electronic/fourth world musician Michel Banabila released Traces, a collection of music for films and documentaries. Now, exclusive to Bandcamp, he’s published a monumental second volume. With 69 tracks, it clocks in at just on 3 hours long, most of the music tagged for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO. It’s incredibly varied, from folky acoustic works to drones to kosmische modular synths, techno and other beats. There are a few collaborators strewn through it, including a batch created with Dutch violist and previous Banabila collaborator Oene van Geel. You might find 3 hours daunting, but if you’ve listened much to this show you’ll know Banabila’s great talents, and there’s very little throwaway stuff in here. Great music to study or work to, or just mind-travel to.

mookoid – Lagu Anak-anak [Provenance Collective/Bandcamp]
Lack the Low – Moose Sighting at Great Slave Lake [Provenance Collective/Bandcamp]
Aus label Provenance, newly minted in 2021 as a collective, continue their compilation series with Marks of Provenance V, which sees label regularls like Aphir, Arrom and Sebastian Field joined by various fellow travellers like Melbourne’s mookoid aka Mick Lampert, who turns in a mysterious piece of percussion & ambience, while Lack the Low‘s contribution is markedly different from the passionate rock crescendoes of her shortly forthcoming album God Carrier: here her voice and violin combine for a kind of ambient Americana. There’s lots to discover on this great, varied comp.

Malcolm Pardon – Penelope Trappes meets ‘Silent Rumble’ [The New Black/Bandcamp]
Just last week I showcased Peder Mannerfelt’s contribution to a batch of remixes of last year’s beautiful solo album by Malcolm Pardon. I loved Hello Death, his album from last year which isolated the synths and piano from his duo with Mannerfelt, Roll The Dice, to explore the fear and acceptance of death. Now the final of the four reworkings has dropped, and it sees ex-pat Aussie Penelope Trappes drawing Pardon’s composition into her reverb-drenched world, to beautiful effect.

Pjusk – Febertanker [12k/Bandcamp]
Pjusk – Ordene som blåste bort [12k/Bandcamp]
Since 2007, Norway’s Pjusk have plied a particularly Scandinavian brand of ambient – icy and windy, electronic productions but shot through with the warmth of acoustic instruments and the reassurance of downtempo beats at times. New album Salt og Vind (literally “Salt and Wind”), their fourth for Taylor Deupree’s 12k is no exception, even though Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik is continuing the band solo now. This is remarkably evocative, very pleasurable music, not unlike the ambient beats of the original em:t label from the mid-’90s (high praise!)

Tim Story and Contributors – Riff 2g (with Tim Story) [Curious Music/Bandcamp]
Tim Story and Contributors – Elbow 1 [Curious Music/Bandcamp]
Tim Story and Contributors – Strip 31 (with Eve Maret) [Curious Music/Bandcamp]
Celebrated US sound-artist & composer Tim Story has worked for decades in the interface between electronic and acoustic music. He’s also worked for a long time with important figures in European electronic music like Hans-Joachim Roedelius and the late Dieter Moebius. It’s the latter with whom this new release is concerned – a document of an audio installation of the same name, Moebius Strips is built from a collection of thousands of samples & loops produced by Moebius, which are recomposed by Story and, as the credits say, “Contributors” – among them Moebius contemporaries, as well as contemporary experimental musicians like Eve Maret – into very Moebius-like creations which Story punningly dubs “strips”. In amongst these pieces are pulsating krautrocky synths, glitchy rhythms and strange cross-rhythms, beautiful queasy piano, distorted vocals and much more. It’s extremely my jam.

Park Jiha – Light Way [tak:til/Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Park Jiha – Nightfall Dancer [tak:til/Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
The third album from Korean musician Park Jiha is just as remarkable as her first two. While previously she invited guests to merge jazz sensibilities or even spoken word with her traditional Korean instruments, here all sounds are produced by Jiha herself – the double reed piri, a mouth organ called saenghwang, and the characteristic hammered dulcimer the yanggeum – as well as glockenspiel. So along with the percussive harp-like colours there are breathy chords and unhinged melodies across these very varied pieces. Picture-sound.

sanr – vesvese [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
After albums on Flaming Pines and Fallen Moon Recordings, Turkish duo sanr now find themselves on the sumptuously-packaged, impeccably-curated Lost Tribe Sound label for their third album ramak. Neither Altuğ Kaptan nor Devrim Kınlı had any experience playing a double bass before they spent a six hours producing and recording as many sounds as they could with a borrowed instrument with only one string. The result is not just drones, lovely though they are, but percussive sounds, clanks and booms and creaks. This is pure sound-art, a journey into wood and steel-wound catgut. Musique concrète, or musique organique?

Bjarni Biering – I am, I am, I am [Curious Music/Bandcamp]
Returning to US label Curious Music, who released the Tim Story/Moebius album, we finish with an emotive piece for piano and viola by Icelandic composer Bjarni Biering from his new work The Andvaka Suite. “Andvaka” is sleeplessness or insomnia in Icelandic, and these peaceful pieces combine electronic treatments with the classic instrumentation to remind the listener to slow down, to “create moments of stillness”. I’m always suspicious of “tasteful electronics with piano”, but Biering is a sensitive and sophisticated composer and this album is truly transportive.

Listen again — ~206MB

Cavernous sounds and skittery details, from dub to sound-art to drill’n’bass to ethereal folk… to gothic pop.

LISTEN AGAIN, for your life depends on it! Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Sote – I’m trying but I can’t reach you father [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Sote – Forced Absence [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
Here at Utility Fog Towers we’ve been devoted followers of Ata Ebtekar Sote since his first 12″ released on Warp in 2002. That was insanely overdriven breakcore/drum’n’bass, and he’s gone through variants of breakcore, hardcore techno and other mind-bending electronics since, but there’s also a rich vein of Persian classical music and Iran’s own history of electro-acoustic music that runs through his sound. You can get a bit of a tour of Ebtekar’s work via the interview & selections in this 2019 episode of Utility Fog. The venerable Belgian electronic/experimental label Sub Rosa has released Ebtekar before, very much on the Persian classical tip, and it’s nice that this new release is back with Sub Rosa. Majestic Noise Made In Beautiful Rotten Iran references his essential Hardcore Sounds From Tehran from 2016, but while it’s certainly majestic it’s not exactly noise music – and nor does it draw from Persian classical instrumentation or musical structures. Instead it’s all-electronic, using many of the idiosyncratic techniques he’s developed of late for sliding DSP effects, percussive punctuations and stuttery glitches, with warm and glittering digital synth pads adding up to a beautifully emotive energy.

Wordcolour – Bluster (Djrum Remix) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Felix Manuel aka Djrum is a Utility Fog fave, comfortable in drum’n’bass, techno and dubstep realms as well as hints at modern classical, so he’s a very nice fit for remixing a new tune for Houndstooth/Lapsus artist Wordcolour. The original is a very nice piece of breakbeaty techno, at a quite slow tempo with shifting beats and intercut vocal stabs and little piano riffs. Djrum centres his intro & outro on a piano that’s tuned to the harmonic series produced by an alpen horn (pretty weird!) and accelerates through madcap drum’n’bass (almost drill’n’bass) programming.

Apulati Bien – Holoh [KRAAK/Bandcamp/Promesses/Bandcamp]
Apulati Bien – Blé Noir [KRAAK/Bandcamp/Promesses/Bandcamp]
I’m new to the Brussels-based French artist Apulati Bien, whose debut vinyl release came out this week through excellent long-lived Belgian label KRAAK as a co-release with French/Belgian label Promesses. He’s had a few previous releases on Promesses and elsewhere, and I’ve really enjoyed the sounds on Azone which very nicely reference classic idm/drill’n’bass with a modern post-dubstep/juke twist. There are some glitched/processed vocals on a few tracks, and the only complaint is that it’s mastered super quiet for digital. Recommended nevertheless!

Commodo – Living Bones [Black Acre/Bandcamp]
In 2020 Commodo put out three EPs of dingy TV show soundtrack vibes mixed up with dubstep swagger. Now he’s back on Black Acre with the three track EP Deft 1s which breaks the mould once again. The closest I can think of is some of Distance‘s old stuff fusing distorted metal riffs with dubstep, but here’s it’s nimble postpunk basslines and riffs. It’s phenomenal, I’ve had it on repeat all week.

Montel Palmer – Catastropheland [Planet Rescue/Bandcamp]
Montel Palmer – Satellite Bounce [Planet Rescue/Bandcamp]
Cologne trio Montel Palmer have previously created weird electro bloops-and-bleeps, but for their new album Catastropheland on Planet Rescue they’ve found bass, and their drum machine emanations are now wrapped in dub echoes. It’s a kind of psychedelic krautrock dub, and I for one am not complaining.

Vacuum – Pulse [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp/It Records/Bandcamp]
Vacuum – Pulse (Lakker Remix) [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp/It Records/Bandcamp]
This one’s been due for a long time. I previewed the self-titled album from Melbourne duo Vacuum in late November, but it was delayed until now, when you can finally hear their postpunk dub techno sounds. Jenny Branagan and Andrea Blake met playing in bands on the Nihilistic Orbs label, and have played live together as Vacuum for years, but this is finally their first recorded release. Alongside their dark sounds (Suicide meets early HTRK at a dubstep club?) there are remixes by fellow Melbourners Ela Stiles and Sow Discord, industrial hip-hop vibes from the legendary Dälek, and tonight’s outing from Dublin-born UFog faves Lakker.

Slikback x Rosa Forever Ft. Kayokyokou – Kwangya [Slikback Bandcamp]
Slikback x Malibu – Uendeligt [Slikback Bandcamp]
Following last year’s all-collaborations album MELT, Kenyan producer Slikback with another batch of brilliant crossovers, CONDENSE. His style of glitchy bass music, drawing from trap, juke, dubstep, techno, IDM and more, is distinctive and very online, lending itself to this sort of inter-connectedness, and so we get the high energy syncopations of his track with Poland-based Rosa Forever and someone calling themselves Kayokyokou, while France’s Malibu entices Slikback towards her more ambient tendencies.

Malcolm Pardon – Peder Mannerfelt meets ‘The Blindspot’ [The New Black/Bandcamp]
I was much enamoured of the debut solo album Hello Death from Swedish musician Malcolm Pardon last year. I’ve been a fan of his duo Stockholm duo Roll The Dice since their debut on Digitalis Recordings in 2010, and here we had piano and synths with none of the sentimentality of a lot of “post-classical” composition. Now he is trickling out a series of remixes from that album. Techno don Regis has already had a go, and the wonderful Klara Lewis contributed a remix you really ought to check out too. But tonight it’s his partner-in-crime in Roll The Dice who we’re hearing, the ever-unpredictable Peder Mannerfelt, who here creeps into a slow techno pulse with dark sweeping synths.

Jack Prest – Sound I [Jack Prest Bandcamp]
Jack Prest – Sound II [Jack Prest Bandcamp]
Last year, Sydney composer Jack Prest put together an ambitious interdisciplinary work at Phoenix Central Park involving live musical performance, dance and visual art called The Risk of Hyperbole. Now he’s released the first of three volumes of music extending the work presented at Phoenix – this one’s just titled Sound. Musicians who performed with him are drawn from Ensemble Offspring predominantly, with Claire Edwardes on percussion, Jason Noble on clarinet, Freya Schack-Arnott on cello as well as Ben Freeman on piano and Nicholas Meredith (aka Kcin) on drum kit. Recorded sounds are also interpolated of dancer Azzam Mohamed breathing and moving, and of artists Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier working with poles, ropes and fabric. The performed work varied from field recordings to ambient and classical through to techno and hip-hop-inspired beats, and there’s a bit of all of that on here, with more to come in the further volumes.

Bryce Hackford – Is Anyone Home [Futura Resistenza]
For over a decade, New York musician Bryce Hackford‘s work has sat somewhere in between dance music, sound-art, pop and contemporary composition. In 2014, UK cellist Oliver Coates reworked “Another Fantasy”, a techno piece of Hackford’s, and Hackford returned the favour with two remixes of Coates. Hackford’s new album Cloud Holding is out next week on Brussels label Futura Resistenza, and on it Hackford sources sounds from many fellow travellers: Ka Baird, Shelley Burgon, Alice Cohen, Michael Hurder, Dominika Mazurova, Camilla Padgitt-Coles. These contributions are mixed with the strange sounds of the Suzuki “Nobara” synthesizer, which emulates the koto, allowing the user to tune it to Japanese or Western scales. There’s something quite ethereal about the music here, sometimes veering into vapourwavey sacharine sweetness, but often charmingly off-kilter.

soccer Committee – Le Jardin (Wouter van Veldhoven version) [Moving Furniture Records/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
Last year I celebrated the first new album from soccer Committee, the solo work of singer Mariska Baars, for 14 years. It turns out that her other album was in fact her second, and the self-titled soccer Committee was released in a limited run on CDR in 2005. It’s now available again via Moving Furniture Records, in a proper CD edition with two remixes – one from Machinefabriek, who’s the reason I originally heard of soccer Committee, and the other from another hidden genius of Dutch music, Wouter van Veldhoven, whose fragile tape constructions have beguiled me for years. Van Veldhoven collages Baars’ voice and maybe guitar into waves of tape hiss.

Robbie Lee & Lea Bertucci – Twine and Tape [Telegraph Harp]
Robbie Lee & Lea Bertucci – Image Mirror [Telegraph Harp]
I know NYC composer Lea Bertucci from her exploration of site-specific acoustic phenomena (e.g. the brilliant Acoustic Shadows), work with computer, and her own playing on clarinet, sax, flute and other instruments. On Winds Bells Falls however, she’s working tape and effects in realtime while fellow New Yorker plays Robbie Lee plays celeste, flutes, gemshorn, contrabass recorder and orchestral chimes. These different instruments each interact in beautiful and strange ways with their tape-manipulated shadows, warping in pitch and flickering in and out alongside their real counterparts. A little bit of magic.

Machinefabriek – Kim’s Back / Sixty-Nine [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek, has of late been releasing material from dance works. Our Arms Grew Together is his second collaboration with Marta & Kim, who combine dance with circus performance. This is quite an avant-garde score, made with typical restraint, but occasional rhythmic passages appear as well.

part timer – genix [part timer Bandcamp]
Speaking of occasional rhythmic passages, having explored crystalline piano & strings over the last couple of years, Melbourne’s part timer is now striking out into glitchy beats, reminiscent of his folktronic beginnings, albeit with a gentle ambient tilt. What I’ve heard of his recent studies (some of which you can hear at his SoundCloud) suggests there’s much more exciting stuff to come…

Sweeney – The Break Up [Observable Universe Recordings/Sound In Silence]
Sweeney – You Will Move On [Observable Universe Recordings/Sound In Silence]
We’ve heard a lot from Jason Sweeney recently on Utility Fog – solo works, duo Pretty Boy Crossover, Other People’s Children and ambient as Panoptique Electrical. Under his surname he’s focused of late on gothic pop works, with dramatic vocals, piano and electronics. Stay For The Sorrow, released on vinyl via his Observable Universe Recordings and CDR through Greek label Sound In Silence, is a record of a break up, a broken heart, and a slow mending. It’s dramatic and beautiful.

Listen again — ~199MB