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Fennesz – Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder) [Editions Mego/Moikai/Bandcamp]
The headline music news for this week is surely that of the death of Brian Wilson, as notified by his family. I’m not the hugest Beach Boys fan, but I do believe “God Only Knows” is one of the greatest pop songs ever written, and I don’t need any convincing that Brian Wilson was a genius. I was fortunate to get to play with him in Sydney when he toured his album That Lucky Old Sun in 2008, and he seemed like a quiet man dealing with mental illness but still deeply committed to his music. I wasn’t sure how or whether to commemorate his passing until I remembered Fennesz’ crackling, luminous “cover” of a Beach Boys song on the flipside of his “Paint It Black” cover on the 7″ single (later released on CD on Jim O’Rourke’s boutique Moikai label) Fennesz Plays. So, some shimmering glitch guitar to begin tonight’s proceedings.
Teether & Kuya Neil – SCRATCH THE FLEA POINT (FT NERDIE) [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]
Working out what to play out of 6 weeks’ new releases is a challenge, but there’s been a suite of great underground hip-hop that’s come out since the start of May. Following their landmark mixtape STRESSOR from 2023, Naarm rapper Teether & producer Kuya Neil have now released their debut album proper, YEARN IV (which I’ve just realised is a pun). I’m never sure why some releases are dubbed mixtapes, because all the elements were there 2 years ago – Teether’s laconic flow and Kuya Neil’s rave/bass-influenced beats. Teether did release his remarkable 5th solo album, It Must Be Strange to Not Have Lived last year, but there’s definitely a spark of genius between the two together.
I’d like to add that Guy Blackman & Ben O’Connor have released scads of great music across countless genres with Chapter Music over 3 decades, and it’s sad news that the label is kinda-sorta closing down (for new releases at least!), but also totally understandable.
Aesop Rock – Checkers [Rhymesayers Entertainment/Bandcamp]
There’s none more genius than Aesop Rock in the hip-hop world, with vocabulary to spare, and quite honestly the most comforting tone of voice. Going back a few albums now, Aes has been producing all his beats himself, and they’re just so good. Whether the subject matter’s a climate apocalypse or the horrors of late-stage capitalism or the horrors of getting older, Aes has elliptical lyrics delivered with perfect flow.
Isaiah Hull – A IS FOR AFRICA [Young/Bandcamp]
Released through the Young label, who put out the great John Glacier album earlier this year, is the new single from “standup tragedian” Isaiah Hull. John Glacier’s executive producer Kwes Darko (fka Blue Daisy) also produces this track, giving the necessary impact to support the manic energy from Hull in his alphabetic statement of intent. “A IS FOR AFRICA” is an alphabet for our times.
billy woods – All These Worlds Are Yours (feat. E L U C I D, DJ Haram & Shabaka Hutchings) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
Aside from Aesop Rock, the most notable hip-hop release of the year so far must be Golliwog, the intense new album from billy woods. The sinister imagery of the deeply racist ragdoll character that gives the album its name is a pointer to what’s inside. It’s a kind of take on horrorcore from a Black perspective, and as usual it’s got brilliantly murky production with weird interludes and great guests on beats, instruments and verses, sparsely but smartly used.
MA.MOYO – Libation [Accidental Meetings/Bandcamp]
One of the strange higlights of last year was the debut album Jump Ship, Sit Lean, Be Still, Stand Tall from Portico Quartet’s Duncan Bellamy and Marseille/London-based, Zimbabwe-born author, poet and sound-artist Belina Zhawi. Zhawi’s solo alter-ego MA.MOYO has now released her solo EP Viva Voce Vol. 1 in collaboration with Danish producer Nova Varnrable. As you might expect, it’s centred around Zhawi’s voice, whether contributing layered drones, spoken word or melodies, accompanied often by nothing more than cut-up field recordings. Interludes feature found-sound conversations with CJ Calderwood’s sax like a busker caught soloing to themself in a tunnel. This is very avant-garde, but also entirely engaging.
Anysia Kym & Loraine James – tension [10K/Bandcamp]
Here the very versatile London producer Loraine James, best known for her IDM-influenced dance music, extends on some of the more pop/r’n’b elements of her solo work with a short EP in collaboration with NYC vocalist, drummer and beat-maker Anysia Kym. These hazy, hazy songs are really short vignettes in glitchy style – the shortest’s under a minute, and only one tops 3 minutes – which bears the hallmarks of both artists in every bar. Clandestine indeed.
Rainy Miller – Mud in my Mouth. (Predetermined Definitions) [Supernature/Bandcamp] Rainy Miller – Chrome, Hallowed be. [Supernature/Bandcamp]
A clear highlight of the first half of 2025, Joseph, What Have You Done? is the brilliant new album from Rainy Miller, collaborator with the likes of Blackhaine, Space Afrika and Richie Culver. Like these collaborators, Miller’s art focuses on the drab oppressiveness of life in England’s north, and the sociopolitical realities – which Miller or his protagonist does his best to resist – of class and culture. It’s done through the lens of broken-down drill, grime and jungle as well as desolate ambient. That all these elements pull together into something devastating and beautiful is a huge achievement. On this album Miller has overcome any Predetermined Definitions and more than realised his potential.
Patrick Watson – Peter and the Wolf [Secret City Records/Bandcamp]
Formed in 2006 to release Patrick Watson‘s gorgeous breakout album Close to Paradise, Montréal’s Secret City Records has gone on to form a small but perfectly formed roster that includes or has included the likes of SUUNS, Owen Pallett and Braids – melodic chamber pop & rock with a big of an edge. And Watson himself is still going strong, as heard in this first single for his upcoming album uh oh. “Peter and the Wolf” doesn’t quote from Sergei Prokofiev’s symphony-with-spoken-word, but does reference it in the text. In the tale, Peter is a resourceful young boy who ignores his grandfather’s warnings and captures a wolf outside his house. Watson’s song is a dreamlike tale of distant bass, and the approach of something that could be a car or train’s headlights, or could be a lover catching the protagonist’s eye. The music is based around a softly-slapped piano’s syncopated chords, a song that’s got all of Watson’s folk-jazz indiepop, but it does also feature deep sub-bass pings at the top of each verse and subtle wub-wubs at other times. It’s typical Watson, using plenty of experimental techniques but hiding them behind a strong pop sensibility and great musicianship.
Brian Campeau – These Waves [Art As Catharsis/Bandcamp]
What is this? Who is Jo Dellin and what are the Bone Spurs? Well, the album cover suggests that Naarm-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer Brian Campeau has gone country – and there is some country music on here, but there are also other kinds of folk and indie rock that Brian incorporates into his sneakily experimental, frequently beautiful style of music-making. And yodelling. There will be yodelling, but “These Waves” happened to come out the same week as Patrick Watson’s song above, is in the same key (except it’s major not minor), and Brian has handily left his voice counting in each section. It’s also got enveloping delays swelling through the song like, well, waves. If you go back reallly far in these playlists, you’ll find I’ve been a fan since his debut double CD Two Faces came out in 2006, and the lusciousness and cheekiness remains to this day.
These New Puritans – A Season In Hell [Domino Records/Bandcamp]
On every album, These New Puritans have remade themselves to a degree. Their debut was angular postpunk, but by the time its sequel came along – with its ever-stunning single “We Want War” – brothers George and Jack Barnett had already found their impossibly-inflated ambition, and seemingly achieved it with ease. Hidden‘s release included a limited edition as a scorebook, the pretentiousness of which is negated by the fact that the orchestral & choral arrangements that accompany the industrial, catchy songwriting are absolutely spot on. It’s Benjamin Britten meets Tears for Fears, and it’s perfect. So of course they followed that a few years later with an album that’s come the closest (since close collaborator Graham Sutton’s Bark Psychosis) to the revered austere beauty of Talk Talk’s last two albums. The releases since then have admittedly not been as revolutionary, but they have certainly sustained their quality, and this year’s Crooked Wing shows no sign of a downturn. It’s lovely to sink back into These New Puritans.
Pyramids – Pretty Pigs [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
You could be forgiven for not knowing about Texas band Pyramids, because their albums are so few & far between – but they have some hugely significant releases in their archive, including the incredible self-titled debut from 2008, combining black metal and shoegaze with electronics and accompanied by a remix album featuring the likes of Jesu, Loveliescrushing, James Plotkin and Birchville Cat Motel. In 2009 was the monumental collaboration with Nadja, also featuring Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins among others, with a bewitching vocal from Chris Simpson in the middle of the dark postrock/noise of “Another War“. Following some other brilliant collaborations, in 2015 they released A Northern Meadow on Profound Lore, which extended all these elements – looking back, I described it as “melodic, like a beautiful aria emerging from an active volcano in hell…?” And yet that album also surfaced more “pop” elements than ever before. Now, nearly a decade later, The Flenser have picked up their return, Pythagoras, which somehow shoehorns the shoegaze-metal into a baffling amalgam with reggaeton and neoperro, enlisting Buenos Aires singer Emy Smith along the way. It’s their strangest move yet, and I’m still not clear on whether it works or not. But maybe that’s a meaningless question – you like it, or you don’t, right?
Crystal Sting – HD Umbrella [POW Recordings/Bandcamp]
But hey, blissed-out neoperrogaze is pushing us towards the/a dancefloor, so here’s a piece of super-compressed hyperpopped hi-nrg dance music. Almost jungle, almost a song but sung by an artificial intelligence that’s trying its best. It’s kind of joyful and summery, which is the opposite of whatever it is in Sydney right now.
Ahm – Careful [Ahm Bandcamp]
Naarm-based Andrew Huhtanen McEwan is a composer & sound engineer who doesn’t release his own music often enough, so it’s a blessing to have an unexpected full album from him. Futurist emphasises his love of intricate jungle breaks, endlessly tweaked over tight basslines and sweeping pads. Couldn’t have asked for more, honestly.
Overcast – Wolfe [IR77/Bandcamp] Mark Newlands is a key person in Australia’s hardcore scene, as founder of the highly influential Bloody Fist label and one third of Nasenbluten, and he’s also an accomplished turntablist as Mark N. It’s been yonks since he’s released anything under his jungle/hardcore alias Overcast, so here’s one side of his new 12″ on IR77 / Iridium. Eagle-eared listeners will note that the classical sample is from Arvo Pärt’s Fratres.
Ancestral Voices – Annwn [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]
Liam Blackburn made bass music for years as Indigo, and with Joe McBride aka Synkro formed the precision-tooled experimental bass machine Akkord. Ancestral Voices was his project to move away from typical drum’n’bass/dubstep forms into ambient and percussive music influenced by ancient Celtic culture. One of my favourite Indigo EPs, Storm came out on Samurai Music some 12 years ago, so it’s nice having Ancestral Voices back on the label with Nemeton, his most drum’n’bass-coded release in a long time. It’s still epic and deep and not always focused on the beats. The beats are often percussion-oriented rather than breakbeat-oriented, and it won’t all work on the dancefloor, but in fact it’s kind of thrilling hearing music so cinematic and different that’s nevertheless deeply informed by drum’n’bass.
Slikback – Taped [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Nairobi’s finest, Slikback, is now based on Poland and has signed to Planet µ – a very suitable home, it seems to me. Because of this I was fortunate to see him performing his mutant bass beats live at something like 4:30am at the Planet µ 30th party in London (the day I arrived!) at the start of May. Obviously this is going to be brilliant, and characteristically won’t stick to any particular style. It’s deconstructed club but it’s still for the club. Hanging out for July 11th.
Nick Wales – Dark Paradise [Nick Wales Bandcamp]
I’ve known Nick Wales since – I’m pretty sure – we were teenagers: since I was a cellist and he was a viola player in various youth orchestras in the 1990s. An era from before time itself existed. Somehow we both formed “bands” with our stringed instruments around the same time too, but moved in somewhat different directions. Nick studied composition at Sydney Uni and has made a career out of writing music for Sydney Dance Company and others, as well as various other projects including co-producing my mate Sophie Hutchings‘ ARIA Award-winning album A World Outside and producing an incredible single with Yolŋu songman Rrawun Maymuru last year. Lux Tenebris is a new album of music Nick originally made for Sydney Dance Company and choreographer Rafael Bonachela in 2016. It’s rich with classical instrumentation as well as thunderous sub bass and glitchy electronics – brilliant work.
Content Provider – Overdrive [Bokeh Versions/Dali de Saint Paul Bandcamp/Drowned By Locals] Dali de Saint Paul is a key part of the Bristol experimental music scene and beyond, and a name that’s passed through these playlists quite frequently of late – a great example being her bewitching vocals on “Habibi“, the opening track of UKAEA‘s incredible Birds Catching Fire in the Sky, which has turned up in a number of my DJ mixes since it came out (and before). Now, as Content Provider, we find de Saint Paul stepping behind the mixing desk for an album of her own productions – only occasionally featuring her own voice, and sporting quite a few feature spots for other vocalists in Bristol’s linked Bokeh Versions & Avon Terror Corps scenes, with additional connections from the excellent Jordanian label Drowned By Locals, co-releasing the label with Bokeh. The tracks are all over the place in the best possible way, from grime to noise, post-industrial to vaporwave, with a ragga/dub vein throughout. When talking about being the producer here, she states. “I like the idea of being the woman who is making men sing, (when for so long, they have been making me do the singing).” Brilliant!
The Bug – Buried Dub [Relapse Records/Bandcamp]
When Kevin Martin aka The Bug put out his series of five Machine EPs from late 2023 into 2024, they were rough & ready scuzzy dub/dubstep tools for testing the intensity of his Pressure soundsystem. But a riddim’s always in search of a deejay, so he’s enlisted Logan and Magugu to flip them into vocal tunes. Thus “Buried (Your Life Is Short)” becomes “Bury Dem (ft. Logan)” and “Drop (Machine Sex)” is “Deep in a Mud (ft. Magugu)”… But then Martin can’t help but re-dub these, so we get “Buried Dub”. It’s considerably different from the original “Buried”, and you can hear fragments of Logan’s voice echoing through the machines.
MOAB – Drool [Knekelhuis/Bandcamp]
Coming from Montréal via Dutch label Knekelhuis is the improv quintet MOAB, whose album Laws Ov Nature is a strange amalgam of not-quite-jazz improv, krautrock, hip-hop and dub. It’s the realm of slow dubby beats and reverbs, electronic textures, and at times electric bass and what sounds like acoustic instruments being fed into the loops.
TL;DR – Cumulus (edit) [Earshift Music/Bandcamp]
Following his tenure as leader of the Australian Art Orchestra, Naarm trumpeter/composer/producer Peter Knight hasn’t stopped to rest. The wonderful Hand To Earth was formed as a project of the AAO but continues as its own thing. TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) is a new quartet with three younger musicians in the Naarm jazz scene. Brilliant bassist Helen Svoboda is here playing basslines but also showcasing her melodic bowed harmonics and her voice; guitarist Theo Carbo, like Peter Knight, contributes electronics as well as his instrument; and Peter’s son Quinn Knight brings 15 years of experience improvising with his dad to the fore. This is dreamy music, ambient-dub-jazz – and the internet-jokey name aside, the cloud titles are perfect for these floating, soulful pieces.
Maurice Louca – Trembler II ترمبلر [Simsara/Bandcamp]
Egyptian musician Maurice Louca is a bit of a polymath. The earliest recordings I’ve heard are experimental electronic, and he’s lent production to many artists, but he’s also a member of psych rock/free jazz group The Dwarfs of East Agouza, and Egyptian/Lebanese/Turkish experimental rock/jazz supergroup Karkhana among others. And Louca’s solo music has moved into similar territory, losing most of the electronic elements in the last couple of albums. Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي is his latest, an album full of dancing rhythms, grounded in acoustic instruments. These are trance-like, experimental pieces with Arabic music at their core.
While you’re here, I have to point you to the stunning Arabic indietronica album Lekhfa الإخفاء Louca made in 2017 with Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh and Palestinian singer & multi-instrumentalist Tamer Abu Ghazaleh.
Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila – Closing Time: The Party Is Over [Pingipung/Bandcamp]
The first collaborative album between French mechanical instrument maker Pierre Bastien and fourth world electronic producer & composer Michel Banabila was a strange affair, lovely but perhaps a bit tentative. On their follow-up, Nuits Sans Nuit, it feels like they’ve found a singular voice together. Both musicians are multi-instrumentalists interested in taking traditional instruments into weird, uncanny places, and on tonight’s closer (which doesn’t close their album!), a very European chamber melody winds its way to our ears through an open doorway somewhere just out of view…
Because I’m away, this has been taking me forever, so apologies for the wait – here it is now!
You can LISTEN AGAIN via stream on demand on the FBi website, or podcast here. While you’re there, LISTEN BACK also to the shows from my excellent colleagues.
SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 1 [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp] SUMAC & Moor Mother – Hard Truth [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Last year, alongside their remarkable, heavy-as-fuck album The Healer was released, sludgey hardcore supergroup SUMAC released an EP called The Keeper’s Tongue with two remixes: recent Wire Magazine cover star, Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon, and the brilliant avant-garde hip-hop/free jazz genius Moor Mother. And what a combo the latter was! SUMAC leader Aaron Turner was singer & guitarist with two of my favourite post-metal bands, ISIS and Old Man Gloom (the latter not in past tense), but SUMAC feels like his purest vision, engineered with precision along with the rhythm section of Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook of hardcore legends Botch and post-metal legends Russian Circles. Turner also ran the greatest metal/experimental label in the world, Hydra Head, and now has a smaller – impeccably curated – operation with his wife Faith Coloccia called SIGE. After the incendiary impact of that Moor Mother remix, it still came as a surprise to discover that this full album collab was just around the corner. The Film is one large work split into tracks, with as much (disquieting) quiet as crashing noise. And who but Moor Mother could compete with Aaron Turner’s roar? Poetic and deeply political, scathing about colonialism and capitalism, it’s incredibly powerful.
Violeta García & Hora Lunga – i think i just died a lil bit [-OUS/Bandcamp] Violeta García & Hora Lunga – There’s Still Fun Stuff To Do [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Out from Swiss label -OUS is the debut duo album of Argentinian cellist Violeta García & Swiss musician Hora Lunga, I’ll wait for you in the car park. Their shared background in composition, improvisation and sonic experimentation led to this transformative music, in which clattering rhythms and distorted noise drones can come from the cello, electronics or field recordings. The album & track titles suggest a prosaic, distanced affect which is probably intentional, and the production does aim to undermine the performances – but if you’re here then you’re probably like me in loving deconstructed sounds, so this should be right up your alley.
Civilistjävel! x Mayssa Jallad – Holiday Inn (January to March) (Version) [Six of Swords/Ruptured/Six of Swords Bandcamp/Ruptured Bandcamp]
A couple of years ago, Beirut label Ruptured put out an amazing album by Lebanese singer/songwriter and researcher Mayssa Jallad called Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels. In touching experimental songs, Jallad chronicled the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, in which Christian Nationalists and pro-Palestinian leftists fought a violent battle amongst the high-rise hotels in Beirut, leading to the Green Line dividing the city, a rift that lasted for 15 years. The stunning album was picked up by burgeoning Bristol label Six of Swords, and given a co-released vinyl edition later in the year. Now the two labels are co-releasing a radical reworking of the material by Swedish producer Civilistjävel! (aka Tomas Bodén), into spectral pieces of dub techno and withered ambient. While the first single is out now, you can hear another collaboration between the artists on Civilistjävel!’s album Brödföda from last year.
Joy Moughanni – The Voice I’ve Yet To Understand [Ruptured/Bandcamp] Ruptured also released two new albums on Friday. From Joy Moughanni, a sound engineer involved in Tunefork Studios in Beirut, comes a beautiful album of granular & taoe processed piano recordings made between 1975 & 1985 by Georges Tarazi, along with archival radio recordings which bring the music into conversation with Lebanon’s many upheavals, and adds layers of emotion to the historical audio. A Separation From Habit might be more deeply wrenching if you understand Arabic and know the last 50 years of Lebanese history, but it packs a punch regardless.
Claudia Khachan & Ziad Moukarzel – Gone beginnings [Ruptured/Bandcamp] Claudia Khachan & Ziad Moukarzel – Spitfire 67 [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
The second Ruptured release this week is from Beirut artists Claudia Khachan and Ziad Moukarzel. It mostly came together when Moukarzel (part of the Beirut Synth Center) was travelling while Khachan remained in Lebanon, so Khachan’s vocals float untethered over a morass of Moukarzel’s electronics (as well as Khachan’s guitar & organ). And while the glitchy textures share an aesthetic with Joy Moughann’s release, partway through the last track a jittery drum break coughs into motion as if we’ve suddenly found ourselves at a rave… and then it peters out again.
Both these releases are strangely hypnotic, and handily demonstrate why I’m such a fan of the Ruptured label.
Raf Reza – Cry Of The Baul [Telephone Explosion/Bandcamp]
Toronto-based producer Raf Reza has released his debut full-length album Ekbar, which showcases his Bangladeshi heritage mixed in with music influenced by soundsystem culture – dub through to jungle. South Asian musicians have been central to bass music scenes in the UK, so it’s nice seeing a Canadian artist picking up on this too. Reza wanders through various bass music styles, but the dub aesthetic is never far away.
Moa Pillar – Ballroom [ПИР/Bandcamp]
Once Moscow-based, Fedor Pereverzev aka Moa Pillar now lives in London – for reasons that should be obvious (“FUCK THE WAR” reads the description on the Bandcamp of his label ПИР / Peer). His music is a mix of spacious ambient and high-intensity club sounds. There’s a somewhat anxious sense of motion, as Pereverzev’s constant movement – movement away, if not towards a known destination – took him to a small space in East London.
Eter Dex – deadn ess nouns [Hundebiss Records/Bandcamp]
Somehow Italian label Hundebiss Records has a knack for finding unusual music with a strange relationship to club styles. This includes artists from across the Mediterranean in Egypt, like Abdullah Miniawy and Assyouti, but has also included Hype Williams and Aaron Dilloway in the past. Eter Dex (or sometimes Eternal Index) is a fellow Italian making strange translations of percussive techno. On the opening track “deadn ess nouns” the beats cycle around pitch-shifted, processed words from Australian poet & experimental musician Amanda Stewart (co-founder of groundbreaking sound-art/poetry/free improv group Machine For Making Sense). I think it may be this piece, although it’s rendered (more) unintelligible.
Skee Mask – LCC Rotation [Ilian Tape/Bandcamp]
The Munich producer known as Skee Mask has a distinct style of sound production that’s his own whether he’s making techno, downtempo beats or jungle-influenced tunes. His releases, usually on the also Munich-based Ilian Tape, can be relied upon for airy production, acid squiggles, ambient interludes and funky beats of all sorts, and his breakbeat technique is first class, as heard on this track from his new EP Stressmanagement.
Djrum – Let Me [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Felix Manuel aka Djrum is also a reliable producer, although what he can be relied upon for is surprise: constantly changing things up, from jazzy/classical piano, cello and wind instruments to techno, jungle, dancehall, dubstep and anything in between. While Under Tangled Silence represents a kind of renewal for Manuel (not least because the first version of the album was lost in a hard drive crash), it’s really got all the elements established on his early 12″s and previous brilliant album Portrait With Firewood. With Djrum “more of the same” is the highest of praise – and nothing is ever quite the same with him.
Lila Tirando a Violeta – Retumba en tu Piel [Unguarded/Bandcamp]
The latest album from Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta comes via Berlin label Unguarded. Apparently Dream of Snakes comes from a recurring dream of Lila’s, literally about snakes, somehow mixed in with her experiences moving from the Netherlands to Ireland, which despite the subject matter was strangely comforting. I’m not sure if the same can be said of the album, which continues the producer’s work in post-industrial, post-IDM bass music, mashing up Latin rhythms with the breakbeats and drum machines, with irruptions of vocals within synthscapes and sample collages. It’s the futuristic music of the present.
Andrey Kiritchenko – Movement II [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
It’s lovely to hear so much new music from Ukrainian electronic icon Andrey Kiritchenko at the moment, who’s worked across IDM, glitch and forms of experimental electronic pop for over 20 years (around as long as Utility Fog’s been on-air in fact!) In contrast with the dancefloor-aimed breakbeats & bass on the Rust Trust EP coming from POLAAR in June, Ultra Marshes is a project tailor-made for Flaming Pines, the label run by Aussie ex-pat out of London, where Kiritchenko is also currently based. Its four movements and prologue are a celebration of the Hackney Marshes, a piece of public parkland in east London, so even though it’s resolutely electronic music, it’s deep connected to a sense of place – and it warmly pays tribute to a place that welcomes people of all stripes. The pulsating electronics and shifting harmonies are gorgeously enveloping and I could listen to them for hours.
Anysia Kym & Loraine James – shy (interlude) [10K/Bandcamp]
Here the very versatile London producer Loraine James, best known for her IDM-influenced dance music, extends on some of the more pop/r’n’b elements of her solo work with a short EP in collaboration with NYC vocalist, drummer and beat-maker Anysia Kym. These hazy, hazy songs are really short vignettes in glitchy style – the shortest’s under a minute, and only one tops 3 minutes – which bears the hallmarks of both artists in every bar. Clandestine indeed.
Nazar – War Game [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
When Nazar first burst upon the electronic music scene, his music was reflective of the violent reality of his home country Andorra over 27 years of government repression and civil war, “weaponising” the sounds of conflict within the music he dubbed “rough kuduro”. On his second album Guerrilla he directly addressed the conflict through his family’s experience, including his father who was a Rebel General. Five years later comes Demilitarize, both the name and the delay imply the intervening events, in which Nazar was significantly weakened from a bout of Covid that allowed latent tuberculosis to overcome his body. The previous violence here is lost in a haze, with dreamy vocals hidden in undefined textures, the beats also often nearly lost. It’s an audacious change, beautifully done.
Jerome Blazé – Living Room (with Zion Garcia) [Jerome Blazé Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Jerome Blazé is engaged with music across multiple dimensions: as a producer, live keyboardist, songwriter and academic. Last year’s Living Room album was a home-recorded album combining influences from soul, neo-classical and dance music. The album put collaboration up-front, with instrumental and vocal collaborators from across the Sydney music scene as well as songwriting collaborations and a fully-credited list of sampled artists (and birds!) taking in local friends and international influences like BADBADNOTGOOD, Punch Brothers, Al Green and more. The album’s being given a vinyl deluxe edition this year, expanded through reworkings of each track (which he seems to be doing in reverse order) that open up his music to deeper collaborations. So here’s an adaptation of the title track featuring the versatile Zion Garcia.
Passepartout Duo – From Belgrade [Passepartout Duo Bandcamp]
The peripatetic pair of musician/inventors Passepartout Duo have been based in Sydney for the past few months (Parramatta to be precise), and are releasing a 12-track, year-long album called Pieces From Places with each track showcasing one location of their ever-continuing global residencies. “From Belgrade” comes across almost like Tortoise-style postrock, with its shuffling 12/8 groove and sparing amounts of slowly-drawn-out melody.
Stefan Goldmann – Builders [Macro/Bandcamp]
Berlin’s Stefan Goldmann co-founded the excellent Macro label, and is well-known for his techno productions and his association with Berghain and its Panorama Bar, although meanwhile his electronic productions have gotten ever-more experimental, stretching into unorthodox harmonic systems and exotic mathematical rhythm science. His Dad Friedrich Goldmann was a renowned composer & conductor, and Goldmann also has a thread of mostly-beatless avant-garde live performances – site-specific works, the latest of which was made for Istanbul’s Borusan Müzik Evi. This music was sparked from Goldmann’s fellowship at Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul, and flows through a variety of evolving textures, including the pulsating synth blurts of “Builders”.
Ava Rabiat – The End [FUU/Bandcamp] FUU is a label/collective of visual & audio artists in Berlin including Ah! Kosmos, Büşra Kayıkçı & Hara Alonso – three women who’ve featured on this show relatively recently. To them is now added Ava Rabiat, who sings and speak-sings in her native Polish. On Elektro Erotyk she creates mysterious, minimalist, glitchy post-cabaret numbers, distorted and stretched though they may be.
Siavash Amini – Stilla [Room40/Bandcamp]
Coming on July 11th is a new album from brilliant Iranian sound-artist Siavash Amini, returning once more to Meanjin/Brisbane’s Room40. On Caligo he’s in dialogue with some old, mysterious piano recordings from Iran – Amini doesn’t give us much more info about these recordings, but they’re fed into some pretty intense processing. At times the piano source is obvious, at other times it’s distorted and twisted into new, anguished forms. There’s an emotional depth to Amini’s work which makes it compulsive/compulsory listening.
Gregory Paul Mineeff – Acceptance [Cosmic Leaf/Bandcamp]
On his latest album, Exhumed, Wollongong-based artist Gregory Paul Mineeff uses his substantial sound & composition skills towards an ambient music with some anxious emotions around the edges – at least until “Acceptance”, which closes the album and this show with some comforting felted piano.
Let me take you on a trip1… from lo-fi hip-hop to mutant jungle, dub techno to generative IDM, mushed free jazz to mutant harps and other acoustic instruments… It’s just another week in the Utility Fog office. (there is no office)
1Credit: Depeche Mode
LISTEN AGAIN, or don’t, but then don’t come crying to me. fbi.radio provides the stream on demand, here we have the podcast.
John Glacier – Home [Young/Bandcamp] John Glacier – Don’t Cover Me [Young/Bandcamp]
Following an early album in 2021 called SHILOH: Lost For Words, London rapper/singer John Glacier restarted her career last year with two brilliant EPS on Young, Like A Ribbon and Duppy Gun. Along with Angel’s Trumpet, the three titles represent the three sections of her new album, although at least on digital the tracks don’t quite match up. In any case, we’re talking lo-fi hip-hop with low-key vocals, in the Tirzah/Coby Sey mould, albeit I think a different hip-hop tradition. Executive producer – and producer of many of the tracks – is Kwes Darko, who used to be Blue Daisy, with his own particular take on UK r’n’b as well as post-dubstep stylings, but here John Glacier’s own style of post-punk aesthetics really emphasises how quietly innovative and fresh this is.
R. Rebeiro – PE_3 [R. Rebeiro Bandcamp]
Rohan Rebeiro is drummer in much-loved & respected Naarm/Melbourne postpunk/postrock outfit My Disco, and has a longstanding electronic/industrial techno project as R. Rebeiro – at least I think it’s been around a bit for live performances, and last year birthed the album Unrendered Language, which I need to catch up on stat! Meanwhile, the Public Eye EP brings us four raw beats made for club performances around Naarm, somewhere between techno, dub and drum’n’bass.
Dacamera – Dalian Image [Pinecone Moonshine/Bandcamp]
From a split with the excellent London drum’n’bass & drumfunk producer Opius, Houston producer Dacamera brings jazz inflections and drum’n’bass darkness to his nimble beats, suitably complex and drum-oriented for Nic TVG’s Pinecone Moonshine label. Both producers are at the top of their game, so it’s an essential release IMHO.
Wraz & Motus – Spliff [Wraz Bandcamp]
I know Montréal producer Wraz primarily as a dubstep producer, and Motus, who appears here with vocal contributions, is also associated with dubstep. But on Wagwan/Spliff, Wraz is applying his snarling bass weight to something more like drum’n’bass. Of course the dub pressure is very much there – spliff, anyone?
Noneless – Delicate Sin [Noneless Bandcamp]
The North Sydney/Kuringgai artist now known as Noneless previously released some pretty crazy breakcorey hybrid music as elfaether, and a couple of years ago returned to music production with their amazing album A Vow of Silence, released on ☯ anybody universe ☯, the label run by Japanese IDM/breakcore latter-day legend Laxenanchaos. Now they have a new EP in the works, Delicate Sin, the title track to which is now out. It’s that combination of classical influences and splintered jungle breaks that sit together just so.
Paul Frick x TigJez x Chache – 90 Cents Dub feat. Matthias Engler [forthcoming from Paul Frick Bandcamp]
German electro-acoustic trio Brandt Brauer Frick tend to make minimal techno, cut through with acoustic instruments drawing from classical and jazz. Individually, Daniel Brandt has made a name for himself with film work and post-classical work, but Paul Frick‘s most attention-grabbing move a few years ago was joining Tangerine Dream, admittedly in a lineup that no longer contains any of the original krautrock/kosmische trailblazers. He releases collaborative singles occasionally, and there’s one coming out on March 7th called “90 Cents”, with vocals from TigJez and “viola percussion” from Charlotte Oelschlegel (credited as Chache). It’s melancholy but upbeat, and the dub pushes things further into the abstract but rhythmic, with additional percussion from Matthias Engler.
Matthew Ryals – etude no. 30 (take 2) [3OP/Bandcamp] Matthew Ryals – etude no. 26 (take 7) [3OP/Bandcamp]
I first came across Brookyln’s Matthew Ryals when he released the brilliant free-jazz-tronica of Voltage Scores on the by-then Eora/Sydney-based Oxtail Recordings. Then in 2023 he began an undertaking that is now coming to its close: three EPs, each in three versions, consisting of generative works for modular synths, where the tracklist is the same on each volume, but they feature different takes. Like the first two volumes, the works on Generative Etudes Vol. 3.0 manage to extract some real emotional heft in amongst the burbling, chittering electronics. This is particularly notable on “etude no. 10 (take 8)”, but unfortunately at almost 9 minutes I wasn’t able to fit it in – so you’ll just have to go listen for yourself. This time round, the three EPs will also be available on one CD, which I would absolutely partake of if the postage from the US wasn’t twice the cost of the album itself.
Ai Yamamoto & Dan West – Gossamer [Audible Artefacts/Ai Yamamoto Bandcamp]
I generally think of the work of Naarm/Melbourne’s Ai Yamamoto as ambient, music made from field recordings or sounds about the house, with delicate electronics. Here she’s teamed up with Dan West, who is also a sound-artist but can also be found making beats of all sorts of varieties – and thus Microdoses, their first collaborative album, is one part delicate electro-acoustic sounds, and one part glitchy IDM beats. There are field recordings here, sometimes morphing into microbeats, and there are acoustic instruments comfortably cohabiting with synths. It’s a lovely album, from which I was pleased to play a preview tonight.
Benjamin Fulwood – Speedboat [Room40/Bandcamp]
A lockdown highlight for me was Ai Yamamoto’s Pan de Sonic – Iso released on Lawrence English’s Room40, in which she made an album out of the sounds of her home during Melbourne’s painfully long lockdown (including the purring of her cat). So that’s a nice segue into Benjamin Fulwood‘s new album The Stars Are Very Far Away From All Of This, released this week on Room40. The original recordings here are Fulwood’s saxophone and clarinet, recorded in late nights after office work in Tokyo – but after a bicycle accident, he was unable to play and turned to electronics to transform these unbridled improvisations into something new – densely layered reed instruments, sometimes gradually transformed into electronic noises. Even the free jazz drumming of Lav Kovač on “Speedboat” has to struggle to rise above the maelstrom, to thrilling effect.
Sarah Pagé & Patrick Graham – Tempest [Envision Records/Bandcamp] Sarah Pagé & Patrick Graham – Burning [Envision Records/Bandcamp]
I’m very grateful to my mate Luke de Zilva, fellow FBi broadcaster with Surfacing, for introducing me to this remarkable album from two Canadian musicians: harpist Sarah Pagé & percussionist Patrick Graham. Under Pagé’s hands the harp takes on many unexpected qualities, although it’s supplemented with bass koto and sarangi (the latter a bowed south Asian string instrument). In addition to familiar percussion, Graham plays waterphone, hamon and – perhaps most obscurely – the electro-acoustic nano garden. All these sound sources are all very well, but the music – whether composed or improvised – is performed with great sensitivity, and the many electronic touches add to the elusive yet evocative nature of the album.
The title Littoral States refers to regions of bodies of water between the deepest depths and the very edge – the shifting shallows, where objects may be submerged or revealed, and nothing is static. None of this really conveys how lovely this partnership is though, so if you enjoyed the lengthy excerpts tonight, put your headphones on, close your eyes and immerse yourself.
Scott Gordon – Tilts I [Diagonal Records/Bandcamp]
A new release on Powell’s Diagonal Records is always going to be… not what you expect. And so it is with Metals from Scott Gordon aka SDGORDON aka Hiax, who sometime back was making uk garage-adjacent stuff as Loops Haunt. Haunted is what this album is, its two sides representing two different approaches to Gordon’s use of metals as sound sources. And yet, nothing here sounds like Einstürzende Neubauten – nothing is aggressive, in fact for a lot of the time it is not rhythmic at all. Gordon’s scrap metal bars resonate as they’re struck by little motorised hammers. In the first half (And Away I-III) this generates lovely numinous drones; in the second (Tilts I-IIII) the motors speed up and spit flickering rhythms, accompanied I think by some electronics. It’s hard to balance the desire to know more about how this is generated with the pure enjoyment of listening. I don’t think you need to know the sound source to enjoy this as abstract experimental music.
Nour Sokhon and Stefan Christoff – Every moment [Forthcoming on Ruptured Music]
I’ve been very lucky recently to be able to bring you previews of new music coming out on Beirut/Montréal label Ruptured Music. Here is a beautiful duo from Berlin-based Lebanese sound-artist & researcher Nour Sokhon and Montréal broadcaster, activist and musician Stefan Christoff. Christoff’s contemplative improvised piano lines are embedded in – and sometimes overwhelmed by – field recordings from Lebanon & Germany, and electronic noises. The album, titled Beyond All Borderlines, extends out of Sokhon’s broader ongoing research/performance project “And Who Are We Now?”. Through specific sounds and field recordings, it asks the listener to confront the questions “Why are you here?” and “Where are you from?”, questions which carry painful and sometimes sinister undercurrents for displaced people. But the piano always centres these works with a sense of humanism. A world without borders is a vision completely at odds with the inward-turned, outwardly aggressive fascism shouldering its way into our current age, and I for one am on board.
From the Mouth of the Sun – The Last Shepherd [Forthcoming on FTMOTS Bandcamp] From the Mouth of the Sun – He Left Alone [Forthcoming on FTMOTS Bandcamp]
Both Aaron Martin and Dag Rosenqvist are notable music creators, making their own forms of minimalist folk, drone and experimental music (for many years, Dag was at the forefront of drone’s crossover with postrock as Jasper TX). Togther they have worked as From the Mouth of the Sun since 2012’s brilliant Woven Tide, with Martin’s melancholy cello and other acoustic instruments combined with guitar noise and electronic textures. And from the start their music was used in film, TV and in stage works. Tonight I’m able to bring you a couple of previews from the wonderful new FTMOTS album In Wind or Dust, released in a couple of weeks. This is an album adaptation of music the pair wrote for the dance work In Wind or Dust created by choreographer duo Danae & Dionysios of the Small Axe dance company, inspired by the life of Kawa Niangji, a Tibetan environmental activist and poet who died at age 26, drowned while attempting to dismantly an illegal fishing net in Qinghai Lake. FTMOTS’s music is at times delicate and intimate, at times monumental and distant. It feels like the perfect conduit for this story.
Stein Urheim – Speilstemt [Hubro/Bandcamp]
A couple of weeks ago I played a new song from Norwegian trio Building Instrument, a weird kind of electric folk featuring singer Mari Kvien Brunvoll. Brunvoll is a longtime collaborator with guitarist Stein Urheim, whose latest solo album Speilstillevariasjoner (literally “Mirror-style variations”) finds him playing multiple stringed instruments as well as various analogue & digital electronics, field recordings and percussion. On top of this is the distinctive live sampler performance of Ikue Mori, Sam Gendel on saxophone & electronics, Hans Kjorstad on violin and Siv Øyunn Kjenstad on drums and voice, resulting in yet another set of music that could somehow only come out of Norway (or perhaps Sweden), equal parts folk, jazz and avant-garde electronics. The Hubro label is the natural home for such hybrids, an ever-overflowing font of Norwegian creativity. Long may they prosper.
The Cloud Maker – The Godly River [The Cloud Maker Bandcamp]
I decided to slip in one more preview of the wonderful The Cloud Maker, a new project involving an international cast of brilliant women, convened by clarinettist, improviser and experimental musician Aviva Endean. Endean is a member of the remarkable project Hand to Earth with Yolgnu songman Daniel Wilfred, didgeridooist David Wilfred, trumpeter & sound-artist Peter Knight, and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim. Kim and Endean were involved in a residency in Banff (Canada), where they met Te Kahureremoa Taumata, a practitioner of Taonga Pūoro (a word that describes a suite of Māori musical instruments). Their fruitful musical collaboration began with the Māori moth goddess Raukatauri, whose story is the origin story of one of those taonga pūoro, the cocoon-shaped flute called Putorino. In the Adelaide Hills, the group expanded to include contemporary cellist Freya Schack-Arnott (who also plays a traditional Swedish multi-stringed instrument called the nyckelharpa which you can hear in her duo Runa Cara with Bonnie Stewart), and percussionist/sound-artist Maria Moles. So yes, it’s a project overflowing with talent & creativity. Each member contributes stories of goddesses from their own folkloric traditions, and The Cloud Maker‘s music is as varied as its members. “The Godly River” centres around pulsating chords and textural percussion, with a stunning vocal performance from Te Kahureremoa Taumata. Watch the beautiful video now.
Open to the Sea – Shallows of the Black Sea [Matteo Uggeri Bandcamp] Matteo Uggeri – …for God [Matteo Uggeri Bandcamp] Matteo Uggeri – Observing, Waiting for… [Matteo Uggeri Bandcamp]
And to finish tonight, we head to Italy, where we join Milan’s Matteo Uggeri and his many collaborative projects. The most prominent, and now quite long-lived, is with Venetian sound-artist Enrico Coniglio, which began with an album credited to the two called Open to the Sea, and which became the name of the project (it’s a “process”, not a band!), with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Saverio Rosi. Open to the Sea is itself a melting pot of regular guests such as cellist Andrea Serrapiglio and trumpeter Alessandro Sesana, along with various vocalists who float in & out of tracks which, much like the sea, ebb and flow. This isn’t drone, and it’s not quite postrock, nor folktronica. Even though it’s very much electronically constructed, it’s very organic-feeling music – even though the musicians’ contributions are generally asynchronous, and the final combinations built up by Uggeri along with the other musicians. In the 8 years since its founding, the project has released perhaps 5 albums (it depends how you count them), but they’ve also amassed a miscellany of other material, whether on limited-run 3″ CDs, or as bonus digital material from the very limited “puzzle” editions of their albums. Thus they have now collected all this semi-released material on the 2CD collection Watering Paper Flowers and Snakes, which ends up as a wonderful collection of evocative, hard-to-pin-down music that’s anything but a collection of second-rate off-cuts.
But when listening to this, I had to jump back to a release from last year, a rare solo album from Uggeri himself called Growth. You’ll see from the track titles that it deals with some very personal themes – relationships with the world and with family, fatherhood… The music is, surprisingly, performed live on each track. It’s not live instrumentation though – these are performances of short snippets of piano recordings (or even little orchestral & operatic samples) that are snipped & looped into undulating quasi-drones, and fed through degenerative effects and dub-techno-like delays and reverbs. Think William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas, Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto. It’s not quite any of those things, although they’re all in its DNA, and it captures the same beauty in dissolution. Highly recommended.
A lot going on in the world at the moment, dizzying amounts of WTF and it can be pretty anxiety-causing. But humanity continues to create great art, so let me share with you some of the boundary-pushing music of note for this week.
LISTEN AGAIN for that special fix. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Squid – Cro-Magnon Man [Warp/Bandcamp] Squid – Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence) (feat. Clarissa Connelly) [Warp/Bandcamp] Cowards is UK postpunk band Squid‘s latest album for Warp, and it finds them continuing the progression from 2023’s O Monolith of adding expansive arrangements and proggy structures to their songs. For an album that’s all about the evil that men do (to summarise), it’s relatively upbeat and not always angry. It’s nice hearing contributions from Clarissa Connelly, another recent Warp signing whose World of Work album last year was a revelation.
Edvard Graham Lewis – Last Scene [Upp/Bandcamp] Edvard Graham Lewis – Key Weapon [Upp/Bandcamp]
Postpunk is also a genre closely associated with Edvard Graham Lewis, a founding member of Wire since 1976. Although Lewis’ work can be found in many contexts – as a songwriter, experimental sound-artist, and collaborator in many groups (see last year’s LEWISPYBEY with Mark Spybey, and 2021’s Elegiac with Blurt’s Ted Minton and Icarus’ Sam Britton), his solo releases are few and far between. In 2014, Editions Mego released experimental soundtrack/installation works on All Under and more song-oriented material on All Over (and it’s notable that his daughter, Klara Lewis has a number of brilliant releases on the same label). So 11 years after those albums, Alreet? is a laconic & energetic album of EGL songs, with many hidden depths. There are dense arrangements and angular sparseness, elusive Lewis lyrics and quotes from Shakespeare’s Tempest. It’s great.
they are gutting a body of water – beautysleep [tagabow Bandcamp] they are gutting a body of water – glittering too [tagabow Bandcamp]
This isn’t technically a new album from Philly experimental shoegaze weirdos they are gutting a body of water (tagabow) – it was “released” on SoundCloud mid-last year and on streaming services, but they just stuck it up on Bandcamp this Friday. It’s standard tagabow fare, which means anything but standard music – My Bloody Valentine-style bent guitar noise battles with jungle beats, glitched breaks, chopped samples of all sorts. Dizzyingly weird, aggressively lo-fi, utterly superb.
Big Blood – No Rain Tonight [Big Blood Bandcamp] Big Blood – In The Night Sky [Big Blood Bandcamp]
Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin – and sometimes their daughter Quinnisa – have been recording as Big Blood for almost 2 decades now, which is crazy. Both were also members of the legendary postrock/junk-folk/prog-punk troupe Cerberus Shoal, who I long adored, who reincarnated (sort of) as weird Americana band Fire on Fire with many of the same members. And then Colleen & Kinsella formed Big Blood, which has elements of folk, but it’s very psychedelic and electric – well, it’s anything they want it to be, really! Electric Voyeur is insanely cool because it’s the culmination of years of studying and making their own electronic instruments at home. There’s an instrumental version to foreground the electronics, but that’s more of a curiosity, as the vocals make these into songs, and the album is quite a trip! Big Blood at their best, IMHO.
Desideria – Meine Tarar [Desideria Dreams]
Sung in Guthnic, the almost-forgotten language of Gotland, the new single from Swedish singer Desideria is entirely produced by herself, with lovely glitchy beats & textures that recall Björk in the best way. I’m not sure it will turn up on her Bandcamp, but the WASP- 76-b EP from 2020 is pretty nice stuff too, with crunching beats and writhing vocals. This single is from her debut album Princess WWW which I believe is due out at the start of March, so I hope to play you more then!
Yasmine Hamdan – Hon هون [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
While I’ve featured quite a bit of Lebanese music on this show, it’s leaned towards the experimental. Yasmine Hamdan‘s career goes back to the late ’90s with indie/trip-hop band Soapkills, all three of whose independent albums have been re-released by Belgian powerhouse Crammed Discs, whose catalogue covers postpunk and experimental music as well as “world music” from all over the planet. Hamdan released two previous solo albums with Crammed, and new single “Hon هون” presages her third. Its titled means “Here”, and the lyrics, co-written with Palestinian poet Anais Alaili, were in fact written in the aftermath of the disastrous Beirut port explosion on August 4th, 2020, but resonate with the devastation left by Israel’s assault on Lebanon and both Gaza and the West Bank. It’s a beautiful song which begins soft and acoustic but blooms into a fuller and more electronic arrangement.
Ben Chatwin – The Beginning [Ben Chatwin Bandcamp]
Scotland-based composer Ben Chatwin used to be a notable figure in the drone world under the name Talvihorros. His work under his own name hasn’t been a huge change, as he always had an impressive range, but if you’re expecting the two 3½ pieces on new single The Beginning to be typical crescendoing drones then you’ll be surprised as rhythms (almost beats) drive the music forward, and vocals from Jen White lift the music further towards the end. Confusingly, the equally great “b-side” is titled “The End”, but it’s only the end of the beginning, as Ben has more new music on the way, hopefully at least as cathartic as these two pieces.
Christophe Bailleau – Reaagall vst VIP hall owl [Mahorka/Bandcamp] Christophe Bailleau – Ethno barbecue (AI ghost) [Mahorka/Bandcamp]
Belgium-based French musician and sound-artist Christophe Bailleau is an inveterate collaborator – his Covid album Shooting Stars Can Last was credited to “Christophe Bailleau and Friends”, and was a superb, genre-crossing amalgam featuring artist from across the Francophone world. His latest album, Insight and Vision, on the other hand, is a much more solo affair, the third in a trilogy of albums that he says are about “creativity in the face of autistic disorders”. CHUVA ORBITAL : Armadillo Time and Vertical Moon Phase Charm both came out in 2023, and feature a similar range of guests to this new one, with some instrumentation and writing collaboration – and Criele Antennaa O’Farrell is credited with “motivation”, which I can attest to being a hugely valuable contribution. While Bailleau’s work goes back to techno productions in the 1990s, the music here is very modern-sounding, with weirdly glitched and sequenced General MIDI sound pallettes rubbing up against processed acoustic instruments, jump-cuts and shiny hyper-dissonance. Well worth looking into all three, whether you count yourself as neuro-divergent or not.
Joey – Spooky Emote [Elicit Records/Bandcamp] Sam Link – Raster [Elicit Records/Bandcamp]
Here’s a great introduction to London label Elicit Records, covering bass music to techno, jungle, footwork, with an emphasis on the in-between stuff… Connected 02 starts with a great 1-2 punch from two US artists: Midwest US producer Sam Link (who you may know from a couple of brilliant YUKU releases) brings breakbeats and jazz syncopation, and Brooklyn producer Joey has a wonderful bass-heavy half-tempo groove with little flutters throughout.
Bokonon – Becoming The Locust [Rooms Inc/Bandcamp]
The aforementioned Sam Link has been released on Rooms Inc‘s 12″ series, each of which is named after a colour. The latest is Scarlet, with the usual mixture of bass and techno-related beats, all in evidence with the track from the Kurt Vonnegut-inspired Bokonon, with junglified techno and lovely electronics.
Tutu Ta – Low Veil High Ground [Tutu Ta Bandcamp] Tutu Ta – Rootless [Tutu Ta Bandcamp]
Enigmatic UK dub experimentalist Tutu Ta names themself “Nomad the Shadow Dancer”. Previous releases have had the arcane, eerie feel of Demdike Stare’s early folk-dub mysteries, sometimes with an ersatz jazz tilt, and the latest EP Low Veil comes with no description. The tracks here connect more with post-dubstep/grime/jungle genre signifiers, complete with some low-key muffled vocals on one track. It’s so good I played 2/3 of it tonight.
F L V X X X – Over [Reveries/Bandcamp]
Rome-based label Reveries puts an Italian tilt on contemporary dance music – bass, percussive techno, jungle. They host club nights with international bass & techno luminaries, but by and large their releases are from Italian artists. Their first release of 2025 is Manière Dub, is joint EP from Reveries co-founder Her Nice Too and Rome-based duo F L V X X X. All four tracks (one from each artist, a collaboration and a remix) draw inspiration from dub soundsystems’ pervading influence on electronic music, from percussive techno to deconstructed dancehall. I loved the vocal samples and head-nodding swung 123-bpm riddim of F L V X X X’s opener “Over”, which Her Nice Too straightens out into an electro rave roller at the end of the EP.
Shugorei – Three Pathways (feat. Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 ) [4000 Records]
We’ve recently heard Meanjin/Brisbane duo Shugorei with a breakbeat-driven remix of Ghostwoods and a delirious piece of ’80s-’90s-style hyperpop. So of course their next single is a contemplative piece with guzheng master Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 . That’s not to say that it’s purely acoustic or ambient – Nozomi Omote’s percussion enters sparsely, while Thomas Green’s electronics introduce reversed reverbs and glitchy detail. It’s a gorgeous piece of cross-cultural folktronica, auguring greatness from their forthcoming album Memories of Magic—魔法の記憶—Mahō no Kioku.
Sara Persico – Brutal Threshold [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based composer & sound-artist Sara Persico, originally from Napoli, released released a brilliant EP on Karlrecords in 2023, and I’ve been waiting for an album since then. In contrast to the fizzing distortion, thrumming bass and crunched beats sometimes in evidence on that EP, her debut album Sphaîra seems at first glance to be a sparser, more shapeless affair, but this would be inaccurate. The album is slower paced, focused on sound design, on sonic architecture: much of the material was recorded in a stunning space in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, part of a monumental, unfinished exhibition complex. The Experimental Theatre, shaped as a massive dome, was designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer to propagate sound around the space. So while there are plenty of electronics here, Persico also recorded her voice and the sounds of stones, pieces of metal, and even the outside world filtered into the dome. Somehow knowing this makes the album an even more electrifying listen. Released by the ever-reliable Subtext Recordings.
Matt McBane – Absence [Gradient Music]
The lovely synthesiser & piano sounds herein are just one facet of the work of Matt McBane, a violinist and composer as well as an electronic musician. Buoy, out on February 28th, is his first entirely solo album, and while it’s very much focused on synths, the acoustic instrumentation is combined in various lovely ways, like the limpid piano phrases glistening over the stuttering electronics on “Absence”, or the way McBane’s violin follows the synth arpeggios on “Arpeggiator” (it’s the kind of finger exercises I would have hated practicing as a kid – kudos!) Meanwhile, the last track (about half the album is streaming now on Bandcamp) matches a violin melody with vocals fed through fizzling electronics. Keep an eye out for the full album to drop.
Joona Toivanen Trio – Infinite Fields [We Jazz/Bandcamp] Joona Toivanen Trio – Gravity [We Jazz/Bandcamp]
I’m so often blown away by the music that Finnish label We Jazz releases. Their catalogue is firmly in the jazz camp, but reaching out into the wilds of electronica, sound-art and other experimental musics. I’ve certainly known for a long time that the Swedish & Norwegian jazz scenes are special – check labels like Rune Grammofon, Hubro and others – and the Danish jazz scene is renowned, if seemingly more conventional. Here we have the Joona Toivanen Trio, originally all from Finland although now only drummer Olavi Louhivuori is there, with pianist Joona in Gothenburg, Sweden, and his brother Tapani in Copenhagen, Denmark. Having all grown up together, they have an instinctive rapport that comes through in their improvised music. But Gravity is particularly unusual & inspiring, made in a fairly random studio in the Finnish countryside, in a 2-day gap during touring. You can hear the effect of only having access to an upright piano – lots of lovely felt muting – along with old organs and synths, and what they describe as “tribal drums”. Sometimes constraints and unfamiliarity generate something remarkable, especially with seasoned improvisers, and the gorgeous sounds here are testament to that.
Alex Jasprizza – Wetland [Alex Jasprizza Bandcamp]
Finally, an artist not unfamiliar with jazz, but making a space all his own, is Eora/Sydney-based saxophonist Alex Jasprizza. I’ve played a few of his lovely pieces mixing improvised saxophone with field recordings of nature – sometimes performed in those spaces, sometimes overdubbed. His album Waterways is finally coming out in March, with opener “Wetland” bringing multiple sax lines with piano, synthesizers and the burbles of running water. His own take on ambient jazz, a real beauty.
One month into 2025… watching a country being dismantled is quite a horror story, so let’s stay away from the news if we can, and listen to experimental music!
LISTEN AGAIN via fbi.radio or our podcast here – it might keep the wolves at bay.
Infinity Broke – Abject Object [Forthcoming at Infinity Broke Bandcamp and on Love As Fiction Records]
Jamie Hutchings fronted Bluebottle Kiss from the mid-’90s till the mid-’00s, making abrasive but emotive indie rock with a substantial following. In 2014 he and BBK drummer Jared Harrison formed Infinity Broke with Jamie’s brother Scott Hutchings on second drumkit & percussion, and Reuben Wills on bass (Reuben is the husband of Jamie’s sister, ARIA-award-winning pianist Sophie Hutchings). When I played the debut album I noted the “excellent long rock jams”, with the double drums and bass holding things down while Jamie’s penchant for free jazz avantgardism only emphasises the krautrock feel for me. This first single from their forthcoming album This Masthead has all those elements present and correct, with a helluva vocal performance too.
Mogwai – God Gets You Back [Rock Action Records/Temporary Residence Ltd./Bandcamp] Mogwai – Hi Chaos (Demo) [Rock Action Records/Temporary Residence Ltd./Bandcamp]
I don’t play so much postrock on Utility Fog anymore. Mogwai represent one strand of the genre, such as it is – one that’s the most dominant, with mostly-instrumental LOUD-soft-LOUD rock – but I used to love that “post-rock” could refer to Tortoise or Mice Parade, even if Simon Reynolds’ original coining referred to Bark Psychosis’ Talk Talk-inspired sound. In any case, Mogwai roll on, ever on, decades hence, and The Bad Fire is mostly “core Mogwai”: soaring guitar melodies, epic crescendos, all that. I’m really glad I grabbed the limited edition double CD, as the demo versions on the bonus disc are quite different from the final productions, and they sound great. Always nice to see some of the inner workings of a band’s creativity.
Building Instrument – Saunte [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Norwegian trio Building Instrument have been around for a little over a decade now, but are perhaps not very well-known outside of Norway, excepting those who follow the great, genre-crossing Hubro label. Mari Kvien Brunvoll sings and plays electronics/live sampler – she is also known for her duo with Stein Urheim. Åsmund Weltzien plays keyboards of various sorts, and Øyvind Hegg-Lunde drums. But despite the predominance of electronics, the band has a strong folk/jazz sense, and on this new single (taken from an album to be released in March), I’d go so far as to say it’s folktronica – lots of glitching keyboard lines and stuttery beats, and Mari Kvien Brunvoll’s pixie-ish vocals. Can’t wait to hear more.
General Magic – Elfer [Editions Mego/Bandcamp] General Magic – Tyrell [Editions Mego/Bandcamp] General Magic – Datna Éclat [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Andreas Pieper & Ramon Bauer were there at the very beginning of the MEGO label, which swiftly became the centre of the “glitch” movement of experimental sound coming out of Vienna and further around Europe – from which Christian Fennesz also arose. The two formed General Magic, and with Peter Rehberg aka Pita released some formative material that’s collected as Fridge Trax Plus, made out of the buzzes and throbs of an old fridge. More generally they were interested in mistakes and malfunctions – or at least things that sounded like that. Awkwardly cut (or rather, carefully cut) samples that stuttered and clicked due to sharp digital discontinuities, and a love of overdriven noise via digital clipping; this was the native experimental music of the digital era, and I played one track from their debut album Frantz, a longtime favourite of mine. It’s no surprise that these days this is both the sound of retro-kitsch and also futuristic sound-art (just with much, much more sophisticated & readily available tools).
So anyway, as you may know, the label disbanded a few years later, and Rehberg restarted it as Editions Mego, run with great enthusiasm by the man basically on his own. And tragically, decades later and just a few years ago, Rehberg passed away. So the label and its offshoots are now run by various artists connected with Mego, releasing music that was already slated to come out, along with other related material. I hope this latest batch isn’t the end: There’s a new LP – technically one 45-minute track – out now from Peter Rehberg under his own name called Liminal States, a long evolving drone work. Annnnd there’s this! Bosko follows Nein Aber Ja from 2023 as a new renaissance of Pieper & Bauer’s General Magic, and it’s an incredibly strong work. No doubt fans of Hausu Mountain releases would immediately peg it as not quite from the same era, but there’s a jump-cut everything-piled-in-together thing going on that’s in common with Hausu, who I’m sure in turn are influenced by the Mego scene. So here we have harsh noise drones, chopped riffs, what must be an AI voice attempting to sing in one or two tracks, and speedy piano samples juxtaposed with crunching hardcore beats. Joyful noise, done as it should be.
Ester – Sermon [Khnum Crew] Ester – Dour [200+]
From Adelaide, on the stolen land of the Kaurna, comes the classical/breakcore-melding sound of Ester – previously known as Bleakcore, unleashing an updated sound under this new moniker. With Ester, he’s combining the gabber-speed breakcore madness with a mixture of high-quality string & piano samples and some live violin. It might initially seem like random splattercore, but particularly on the beautiful “Dour” (from the To Bask in the Absense of Silence release with Eora’s 200+) you can hear how the beats are in conversation with the piano melody. This is goooooood.
s8jfou – Your Silence [Satellite Era]
Chicago label Satellite Era has released the last in their Distant Arrays series, Volume 08, compiling four tracks of experimental bass music from around the world. 50% of revenue will go to California Community Foundation (CCF) to aid people affected by the LA wildfires. Tonight I played a brilliant piece of glitch-hop/jungle from French producer s8jfou, who has a full album coming out soon – if this is an outtake, the album will be pretty special.
Sophie Gordon – Gate [Sophie Gordon Bandcamp]
Here’s someone who would be familiar to FBi’s audience and friends. Sophie Gordon has broadcast in many slots on the grid, including the indescribable Robbie’s Modern Life. But here she’s producing some alluring beats that start in a hypnotic dubby trip-hop/techno vibe and about 2/3 of the way through slip into double-time jungle. It’s pretty dreamy, ambient beatz cooked to perfection.
Atoloi – Contaminazioni Riddim [Amphibian Records] INN – Phantom Wave [Amphibian Records/Bandcamp]
Last year, Prague-based label Amphibian Records released a brilliant album by Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy, their third release together combining dub & bass music with Miniawy’s Arabic vocals and trumpet. They’re back now with a big compilation called Transmission for Lebanon which, while highlighting the genocide in Palestine, focuses on supporting the Lebanese people subject to Israel’s aggression. 100% of proceeds will go to organisations on the ground in Lebanon, including the Beirut Synth Center. There are artists from all around the world here, including from Czechia, but tonight I played Milanese artist Atoloi who I believe often works in noise & sound-art, but here brings an amalgam of dancehall, hard dance and jungle; and Taiwanese artist INN, who contributes a piece that’s part fast techno, part half-time drum’n’bass.
Sectra – Entry Point ft. Trisicloplox [Tectonic Recordings/Bandcamp] Sectra – Glass Clutch [Tectonic Recordings/Bandcamp]
This week Denver producer Sectra releases his new album Through The Static on legendary Bristolian dubstep label Tectonic Recordings. He describes the album as being a metal record that follows the formula of dance music, which is a pretty good explanation. The first single featured the great Dis Fig, hot off her collaboration last year with experimental metal band the body. The album is full of crackling static and bass beats, as well as some beatless tracks. There are some dubsteppy sounds here, but also pulsating techno with shuddering bass like “Entry Point”, featuring fellow Denverian Trisicloplox.
Architectural – Eternity Land [Turbo Recordings/Bandcamp]
Better known as Reeko, Spain’s Juan Rico has made thumping minimal techno for many years, and in the last few years branched out into drum’n’bass and 170BPM beats, mainly for Samurai Music. His long-established Architectural alias turned up a couple of years back on R&S Records, and here brings four varied tracks, including this one which is unusually euphoric for a generally very dark producer.
pucemoment – Bugaku [Parenthèses Records/Bandcamp]
Nico Devos and Pénélope Michel are known in one incarnation as the “ghost opera” band Cercueil, making perhaps a kind of French electroclash. However, their forthcoming album Sans Soleil is different enough to warrant a new name, hence pucemoment (although I’m also seeing it spelled as Puce Moment). This is moody and dramatic music, based around the pair’s recordings from Tenri, of the ancient Japanese music known as Gagaku. The acoustic instrumentation is reconstructed along with electronics and Michel’s voice. This kind of music is bread & butter for the Brussels-based Parenthèses Records, a label which began life in Boorloo/Perth, and has a particular interest in traditional music coaxed into new forms. I’ll play more from this album closer to its March 21 release date.
MMMD – Soley Kouche [Antifrost/Bandcamp]
Greek band MMMD used to be known as Mohammad, making monolithic bass drones with double bass and electronics. These elements are still present, but more recently they’ve taken to something more akin to coldwave or synthwave… There’s an album coming I believe, and meanwhile I’ll keep an eye on these singles as they appear.
dogs versus shadows – Ghost Artery Part 1 (radio edit) [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Nottingham artist dogs versus shadows appears on Kate Carr’s brilliant label Flaming Pines with a kind of narrative about the River Trent, that winds through Nottingham and has been subjected to various forms of degradation through human activity. This highly polluted river has dangers lurking beneath its surface, and dogs versus shadows dredges these up with the use of “field recordings, tape loops, dying vocals from broken dictaphones and snatches of shortwave radio”. The two full tracks are a little under 15 minutes each, and each is an engrossing quasi-narrative of watery field recordings and seemingly unrelated sounds – chopped up snippets of speech, electronic pulsations and almost-rhythms. It’s fascinating and you’ll probably want to go back and listen again when it’s over.
Hara Alonso – Veins (Veils) [forthcoming on her Bandcamp]
“Veins (Veils)” is the first single from touch•me•not, the forthcoming new album from Stockholm-based, Spanish-born pianist and sound-artist Hara Alonso. It doesn’t seem to be out in the world yet, so enjoy it here, and I really recommend spending some time on her Bandcamp. She knows her muted-piano post-classical technique, but happily confounds it with found sounds and studio trickery. Wonderful stuff.
Adam Coney & Richard Pike – A Corner Of Light [Trestle Records/Bandcamp]
UK guitarist Adam Coney released a gorgeous album, Ashwin & Above, on Trestle Records in 2023. Richard Pike is an Aussie living in London, well known for Pivot/PVT, now making film & TV music, as well as ambient stuff as D E E P L E A R N I N G and co-running the experimental label Salmon Universe. During lockdown, Pike began filming some contemplative pieces sitting at the piano, and when Coney discovered them, he decided to overdub his own pensive guitar on one piece. That’s actually here as the first track on their album Driftingland – and these pieces do drift, very pleasingly. The rest of the material was recorded together in regular duo sessions, and the works here show the artists’ simpatico sensibilities. Although it’s mostly acoustic, there are sections where Coney gently adds electric guitar, allowing for some subtle effects – phasing or slow pulsing volume modulation.
Lawrence English – ETHKIBVIII [Room40/Bandcamp]
Brisbane’s Lawrence English is a key figure in Australian experimental music, known as much for his curation of big international events for the likes of Dark Mofo and Carriageworks as he is for his gently influential label Room40, and his keen ears when mastering other artists’ work. But of course he makes his own music, often based around field recordings, and frequently in collaboration. Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds handily combines some of these threads, as it’s made out of carefully selected extracts from sound-works commissioned by Jonathan Wilson for the Art Gallery of NSW – during the two VOLUME festivals and perhaps at other times. So Lawrence has gathered a tremendous list of artist who’ve contributed here – check the Bandcamp page for the full list, but including claire rousay as well as Jim O’Rourke, Amby Downs and JW Paton, and quite prominently, the piano of Chris Abrahams. Although it’s split into 8 parts, a work like this is really one continuous exercise in slow evolution, so it felt right to join in right near the end, and let English, Abrahams and co play us out.
Today is the day when so-called Australia is meant to celebrate its founding as a British colony. It’s a day of sadness and contemplation for indigenous Australians, and should be for all of us. This always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
I’m starting with the beats tonight, as I have quite a bit of sound-art and experimental song coming up later.
LISTEN AGAIN to get on top of it all. Stream on demand at fbi.radio, podcast here.
Insignio – Everytime (A.Fruit remix) [Yanked Beats/Bandcamp] A.Fruit – Midnight Coffee [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Afonso Silva is Insignio, one of the people behind Portuguese label Yanked Beats. He also makes drum’n’bass as Crawler, but the music under Insignio is a bit less balls-out distorto-bass stuff. Anyway, Barcelona bass producer Anna Fruit, aka A.Fruit, recently mentioned that she had a remix on this single, and it’s very excellent as you can hear. She also has a new EP out on YUKU called Somnambulism, which shows off her various sides of bass, footwork, jungle and ambient, all expertly produced.
DJ Don’t Sleep – No Shut [Stolen Groove] Celine Arnauld – Reaktor II [Celine Arnauld Bandcamp]
Pablo Miranda, from Seville, started off making speedcore, breakcore and the like, but primarily he releases music now under the name Celine Arnauld, taken from a key poet from the Dada movement (it was a pseudonym of hers too – her real name was Carolina Goldstein). There’s a certain playful aspect to the music of Celine Arnauld, which can range from ambient to jungle & IDM to conceptual sound-art. Late last year, Arnauld released the Ensemble EP, in which he is in dialogue with his younger self, using “ensembles” he created in Native Instruments’ Reaktor software from 2005-2011. “Reaktor II” is a nice piece of glitchy bass-techno. But earlier in 2024 Miranda unleashed another alias, DJ Don’t Sleep, under which he released the first album on UK hardcore/jungle/bass label Stolen Groove, Digital Subscriber. There’s jungle & d’n’b with a hardcore techno (pre-jungle) twist on some tracks, with ambient interludes. Quality.
Leese x Nathalie Froehlich – Holy [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Back to YUKU, who must be one of the most-played labels on this show of late. Here they’ve handed control to Brussels-based DJ & producer Leese (Leslie Deboeur) and Swiss DJ & producer Chewlie (Julia Häller), whose “Invite” series collects club-focused bass music by female producers & artists. Here Leese teams up with Swiss rapper Nathalie Froehlich with a hard-hitting bass track.
Opius – Pizazz [Subtle Audio/Bandcamp]
Vinnie J. Smith’s output as Opius goes back to a series of drum’n’bass 12″s in 2004-2005, but he’s picked up steam a lot in the last 5 or 6 years, more on a drumfunk tip – his In Session on Inperspective last year is wicked, as is the more dark d’n’b-styled EP+remixes The Calling, released in 2023 on Polish label Offish Productions. Meanwhile, Irish label Subtle Audio has been around for a whopping 20 years itself, and they released two multiple CD collections (Subtle Audio Vol II and Vol III) that turned me on to a lot of great drumfunk/jungle in 2010 and 2014 respectively. They’re now back in the compilations game with SUBTLE001COMP :: Rhythmic Idyllic, a 10-track selection of contemporary jungle & drumfunk with 4 tracks also released as a vinyl EP. Opius’ “Pizazz” appears on both – it’s a brilliant piece of jazzy drumfunk, mostly in a half-time swing.
Djrum – A Tune For Us [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
One of the greatest rhythm scientists of recent years is Felix Manuel aka Djrum. But the beats have always been tempered with lush orchestrations of electronics, samples and instrumental performances. “A Tune For Us” is his first release of 2025 and features cello from Zosia Jagodzinska, who also played on his spectacular 2018 album Portrait With Firewood. Gorgeous Djrum-style neo-classical that slides into very unusual beat patterns in the second half.
tunng – Snails [Full Time Hobby/Bandcamp] tunng – Drifting Memory Station [Full Time Hobby/Bandcamp]
Look, you know the story. OK, maybe you don’t. In 2004 I was lucky enough to go to Sónar in Barcelona with a press pass courtesy of Cyclic Defrost. Among the memories and goodies I brought back was a promo CD of some sort that featured an incredible track on it, which happened to be the first single by Tunng, “Tale From Black”. I found shortly after that this was released on a lathe-cut 7″ by the excellent little indie label Static Caravan. I was obsessed, and played this and its b-side, and then the second single, to death. And this is where I get confused, because 2025 is the 20th anniversary of their debut album Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, but Geoff from Static Caravan kindly sent me the album early, so I was playing tracks off it from October 2024. “Folktronica” was a genre name already bandied about for the likes of Four Tet, Manitoba (pre-Caribou) and Minotaur Shock, all of whom used acoustic guitar and other acoustic samples in a cut-up, glitchy hip-hop fashion. This was a different version, songs with an arcane, pagan British folk feel courtesy of singer Sam Genders, and glitchy production from Mike Lindsay which referenced club sounds but never leaned too much on beats. I’m still super fond of that album and its follow-up, but Genders left after the third album and I didn’t warm so much to the following couple of albums. Then after a 5-year break, Genders was back with the band for Songs You Make At Night in 2018, and 2020’s concept album Tunng Presents…DEAD CLUB. It’s been four years, but here’s Love You All Over Again, an album that’s unabashedly nostalgic, looking back 20 years to that debut. So yes, it’s folky and glitchy, and it’s pretty easy-going stuff, but sweet & catchy and unique as ever. I rather like the downtempo instrumental “Drifting Memory Station” too, its title a nice evocation of nostalgia.
Nick Storring – Roxa I (radio edit) [We Are Busy Bodies/Bandcamp]
Everyone knows I collect experimental cellists (not to embalm them and put them on my shelf – preferably just their CDs). Toronto musician & composer Nick Storring is someone I’ve followed for over 10 years – here’s me in 2013 discovering his 2011 album Rife – and I was pretty stunned by the lush orchestrations (performed by Storring on a cornucopia of instruments, some homemade) on his 2020 album My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell and 2021’s Newfoundout. Now this March, We Are Busy Bodies are releasing Mirante, which is ostensibly Storring’s homage to Brazil – and I do think I can feel some kind of Braziliana in this first single, as it becomes more dense & rhythmic. Like those predecessors (and some earlier works), this album features a host of musical instruments and non-musical objects all performed by Storring, meticulously built into opulent orchestrations. There are field recordings from Brazil woven into later tracks on this album too – it’ll be something very special.
Sam Amidon – I’m On My Journey Home [River Lea Recordings/Bandcamp]
I discovered US folk avantgardist Sam Amidon via the minimalist composer & producer Nico Muhly, who used Amidon’s voice and banjo on the third section of his album Mothertongue in 2008. Amidon’s first solo album actually came out the previous year on the same label, Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Bedroom Community. Amidon combined a deep knowledge of American folk music traditions with an interest in contemporary music & production, but the key I feel is his raw, emotive voice, and his proficiency on violin, banjo and guitar. Over the years, Sam Amidon’s music has varied from fairly direct folk – both interpretations of traditional songs and his own pieces – and fusions of folk with free jazz, contemporary classical and electronic music. His new album Salt River, released on Rough Trade sub-label River Lea Recordings, leans away from experimentation by and large, and is a rewarding, dreamy listen.
The Cloud Maker – Shaman Dance [The Cloud Maker Bandcamp]
Here’s a preview of a wonderful new project involving an international cast of brilliant women, convened by clarinettist, improviser and experimental musician Aviva Endean. Endean is a member of the remarkable project Hand to Earth with Yolgnu songman Daniel Wilfred, didgeridooist David Wilfred, trumpeter & sound-artist Peter Knight, and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim. Kim and Endean were involved in a residency in Banff (Canada), where they met Te Kahureremoa Taumata, a practitioner of Taonga Pūoro (a word that describes a suite of Māori musical instruments). Their fruitful musical collaboration began with the Māori moth goddess Raukatauri, whose story is the origin story of one of those taonga pūoro, the cocoon-shaped flute called Putorino. In the Adelaide Hills, the group expanded to include contemporary cellist Freya Schack-Arnott (who also plays a traditional Swedish multi-stringed instrument called the nyckelharpa which you can hear in her duo Runa Cara with Bonnie Stewart), and percussionist/sound-artist Maria Moles. So yes, it’s a project overflowing with talent & creativity. Each member contributes stories of goddesses from their own folkloric traditions, and The Cloud Maker‘s music is as varied as its members. “Shaman Dance” will have a video released in a few weeks, and is a perfect example, with Māori flutes, unbridled vocals and energetic percussion.
Penelope Trappes – Red Dove [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
In April, London-based Aussie musician Penelope Trappes will release A Requiem, her first album on the One Little Independent label. We’ve heard two singles already, and here’s the third – just as dark and stark as the previous ones. The Red Dove of the title was held in the hands of a boy at the end of a particularly apocalyptic dream of Penelope’s, and she has channelled this imagery into a reflection on our society’s general numbness to violence and toxicity. Couldn’t be more apposite for the current moment really. There’s the cello scraping, cavernous bass and Penelope’s voice. This will be a powerful album.
Ida Duelund – Læmira [Initiated Records/Bandcamp] Ida Duelund – Misi Miamo [Initiated Records/Bandcamp]
I’ve been looking forward to Sibo, the debut album from Danish double bassist & singer Ida Duelund, for a while. Duelund is one half of the experimental string duo Lueenas with violinist Maria Jagd, and spent some time studying in Naarm before finding her way back to Copenhagen. This album is a strange, uncanny concoction that’s ambient double bass whalesongs one moment, then exquisite chamber jazz, then heavy electronics… Duelund’s incompletely-white-painted face on the cover is an indicator of the humour and weirdness within, but the wrenching beauty may catch you unawares.
Reuben Ingall – Stung [Reuben Ingall Bandcamp]
Canberra’s Reuben Ingall may be known for making drone works out of a microwave heating up a pie (well, maybe he’s not, but he performed it a lot, and it was… delicious), but he’s a disarmingly lovely songwriter, and his matter-of-fact vocals with guitar sent through custom glitch patches never fail to grab me from the inside. An unfairly talented man who’s happy enough lurking in the background. At the very end of last year he released a little EP called SONG SONGS, which is actually an EP never released in 2014, and completed, re-mixed, or just released now. It’s so good.
Nickolas Mohanna – Night Horses [AKP Recordings/Bandcamp (forthcoming)]
Here’s a special thing just for you – the first single from Nickolas Mohanna‘s album Speaker Rotations, which is out via AKP Recordings on March 7th. NY-based composer & musician Mohanna continues here with his practice of the last few years building cyclical structures of krautrock rhythms and riffs that shift, at intervals, into new shapes. As I commented on his excellent 2023 album Double Pendulum, the joy is often in these transitions, which recontextualise the more static passages around them – which can make it hard to play representative excerpts, but in “Night Horses” you’ll hear the motorik snap and pop of guitar harmonics and controlled feedback, and as it cuts off you’ll hear it start to mutate somewhere else.
Mitchell Keaney – Snowbird Pass [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp] Mitchell Keaney – Northern Butte [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp]
Portuguese experimental label Eastern Nurseries (actually co-run out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne) has a strong track record of uncovering unusual, strangely gripping music, and this is one of their strongest in a while, from Arizonan sound-artist Mitchell Keaney (now based in Berlin). The music is inspired by the striking environment of Arizona, from the deserts to the towns, and bewilderingly shifts from literal field recordings (at times with music being played in the background) to deep, abstract walls of sound. It’s incredibly engaging and evocative work.
dprk – Mountain Garden at Eki-Kita 駅北の山庭 [Studio Fabrik/Bandcamp]
I’m glad that this Eora/Sydney experimental group are continuing to make their uncategorizable noise/psych/kraut primitivist stuff. dprk is made up of Richard Fielding (Loop Orchestra, early Severed Heads), Nick Dan (of noise obscurists xNoBBQx) and Juke Wyat (also recently of Loop Orchestra). Their second album dragonfly mountain トンボ山 documents a tour of Japan, and sees them inviting drummer/saxophonist Yusuke Akai into the fold. It’s not really following any trends, nor is it imitating any past genres either – free music, with its own logic. Cool.
Final Fantasy – A [Final Fantasy Bandcamp]
La Fielding & Sydney Jarrett recently formed Final Fantasy as a “melodic noise” duo, using violin and synths with amps and effects. Swansong is a long, freeform jam performed at Lazy Thinking in Dulwich Hill (Sydney’s inner west). It’s been a long time since Owen Pallett was calling himself Final Fantasy, so the name’s up for grabs! This reminds me nicely of Yellow Swans, which is a very good thing.
Kate Carr and Matt Atkins – Chloroplast [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Finally for tonight, on Kate Carr‘s own Flaming Pines label is a duo with fellow sound-artist Matt Atkins imagining what it might sound like inside our cells, where proteins fold & unfold, metabolic processes occur, cells divide and duplicate through mitosis and meiosis… Organelles is the result, using Carr’s and Atkins’ practices of amplifying common objects and sequencing recorded sounds. The pieces teem with off-kilter micro-rhythms and nano-melodies, floating in ever-moving stasis.
Singles & tracks from forthcoming albums and new releases from hip-hop to doom, postrock to experimental electronic, breakbeat to techno, post-classical to post-jazz.
LISTEN AGAIN, stick it in your pipe and smoke it. You can stream it on demand on fbi.radio, or podcast here.
The Asthmatix – 10,000 FACES [MXD APE] The Asthmatix – Mum Beez Tax Zombie Jackets [MXD APE]
Eora/Sydney trio The Asthmatix have been around for quite some time now, but with members based outside the country, it’s seemingly taken a long time to get their debut album Abacus Earthling out the door. Violinist Daniel Weltlinger is based in Berlin, playing with the best gypsy and klezmer musicians in Europe, while DJ/producer Micke Morphingaz was based in Sweden for a while. Keyboardist Daniel Pliner plays latin jazz, contemporary jazz, live experimental electronic and more. As The Asthmatix, the three are dedicated to having a fun time mixing traditional Jewish music with classic hip-hop beats and sampling, and I’m glad they’ve got this album out. You can buy it as a Digital Video Keyring.
Divide and Dissolve – Loneliness [Bella Union/Bandcamp] Divide and Dissolve – Disintegrate [Bella Union/Bandcamp]
Somewhere around recording their last album, Divide and Dissolve‘s drummer Sylvie Nehill left the band, leaving it as the solo project of Takiaya Reed. In no way has her vision changed, but Insatiable sometimes lets Reed’s klezmer/gypsy-like saxophone melodies stretch into entire songs, without losing any of the heavy doom riffage – and she even sings on one track. Reed’s is a project fundamentally opposed to colonialism and white supremacy, and couldn’t be more relevant to the world today.
Quade – See Unit [AD 93/Bandcamp]
There’s a special strain of English indie music that’s deeply attached to a sense of place, and the *ahem* Cycle of Days & Seasons – the wonderful Hood being a prime example, and their descendents such as epic45. Quade don’t quite approach this in the same way as Hood, but I do feel there’s a kinship there. Quade meld postpunk rawness with more lyrical, melodic tendencies in the vocals and from the violin. If anything, on “See Unit” the predecessor is the proto-postrock of Bark Psychosis, and that’s a great achievement.
Ināra Quartet – A Blue Room [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
The gorgeous sounds on the four tracks of Ināra Quartet‘s debut release feel comfortably, beautifully Swedish to me, probably because I was brought up on the jazz/folk/postrock of Tape. For their part, as much as Ināra Quartet draw from Swedish & Scandinavian folk traditions and jazz, they are also influenced by the harmonies and rhythms of traditional Bulgarian music, minimalist composers, Sufi poets and more. Nevertheless, the jazz-trained percussion of Mischa Grind help place the music along a certain seam of postrock that goes through Tape back to Tortoise, along with two Agnas brothers – Mauritz on double bass & cello, and Kasper on guitar – and Johan Graden on synths and harmonium. A couple of years ago Graden made an incredible album with minimalist composer Ellen Arkbro called I get along without you very well, understated jazz songs with Arkbro singing and Graden on piano & keyboards, with gorgeous arrangements for mostly bass instruments. The sensitivity from that work bleeds over into the pieces here. I’m very excited to find out what’s next.
Matmos – Changing States [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
If you’re one of the lucky few who got to see Matmos performing at Phoenix Central Park in August last year, you would have seen the pair duo sampling not just from destroyed Bread records but from metallic objects of all kinds – cymbals, ball bearings, pots & pans (as I recall). I’m lucky to have seen Matmos quite a lot, and from as far back as 1999 (when I saw them twice, in Edinburgh and then in New York), their performances have always been based around live sampling and a good quantity of humour. But both Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt are also deeply thoughtful individuals and excellent musicians, and that performance was bewitching as much as it was hilarious. They are also a couple, and they celebrated their 25th anniversary with the Plastic Anniversary. In 2025, that would make them 31, but it’s not a stretch to imagine that Metallic Life Review was conceived and created around their 30th anniversary. Like the plastics of that earlier album, this one is built around the sounds of metallic objects, extending into the pedal steel of the sadly recently-departed Susan Alcorn, among other guests. They are well aware of the genre connotations of “metal”, as much as they are of the accuracy-or-not of their music as musique concrète, found-sound or field recordings, but something I always note with pleasure is that they can’t but help express their musical roots in ’90s experimental electronica – as much as the proto-folktronica, postrock and Americana found on the beloved 1999 EP The West and 2003 album The Civil War. When you’ve been together for 30 years, as life partners and creative partners, certain themes would tend to repeat while others would be turned away. So raise a stainless steel tumbler to one of music’s greatest couples, and go and “pre-save” or pre-order Metallic Life Review.
even – The Shades [Electroménager/Bandcamp]
French label Electroménager announce the upcoming self-titled debut from experimental duo even, made up of Greek mutant bass music explorer Jay Glass Dubs and France-based harpist Sissi Rada (real name Sissi Makropoulou). And yup, this first single has it all – a postpunk sensibility with exploding dub echoes and rolling harp-eggios. Just great.
A.Fruit – I’m so Bored [A.Fruit Bandcamp]
I’m convinced Anna A.Fruit is one of the most exciting newer talents in bass/club music at the moment. Her fusion of footwork, jungle and other bass music is coupled with first class sound design and lots of experimental touches. I’m so Bored is 160bpm footwork-jungle and a little bit of a hyperpop twist.
Lila Tirando a Violeta – Rest & Relaxation [Unguarded/Bandcamp]
Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta is masterful at bass, breaks and percussive beats – and she’s very much in the “deconstructed club” camp. Having based herself in the Netherlands for a while, she relocated to Ireland where she fell in love with the countryside there – and no doubt found comparisons with her original homeland. There are many collaborations as usual, including Irish experimental producer Lighght, but I seem to have gravitated to her solo pieces, full of beats & breaks thrown around with glee, fragments of vocals and manipulated field recordings.
Gesture – Free Lunch [YUKU/Bandcamp] Rizio – Nexus [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Czech label YUKU pumps out releases at a rate of knots – generally more than one a week – and they’re often showcasing pretty new talent doing creative & experimental stuff with all sorts of bass music. Following a call-out to listeners to submit their own music, YUKU this week released not one, but TWO compilations of “Fresh Faces” – here’s Part I and Part II. To my ears, the first is the stronger, but there’s valuable stuff on both. Tonight, from Part I we heard London’s Gesture with 130bpm bass & junglism, and from Part II, Finland’s Rizio with a medium-paced percussive techno roller.
Ryoji Ikeda – data.matrix (Crosstalk Edit) [No longer available]
Late last year Brazilian producer Crosstalk put up on his Bandcamp an album of edits, mostly of pop stuff. But a couple of weeks ago, a blink-and-you-missed edit appeared of a Ryoji Ikeda track from his 2005 album dataplex. The original has the typical Ryoji Ikeda tics that you’ll recognize from his audiovisual installations and albums – high-pitched beeps, clicky beats that are utterly austere while somehow preserving some of their roots in jungle and IDM. Crosstalk slows it down to the 140bpm range, complete with wub-wub bass and uk garage beats – and the orchestral sample Ikeda so artfully deploys in the middle. But either someone from Ikeda’s team or elsewhere asked him to take it down, or Crosstalk decided to, so. You can hear it here until… well, ssh!
Bokonon – Cavern [Hypercell/Bandcamp]
After a lovely bit of junglified techno on Rooms Inc, the Vonnegut-inspired Bokonon has released the Writhe on his own Hypercell Records. It’s four slabs of techno in various styles, from acid to percussive bass techno with wasps… But “Driven By Wasps” is almost 11 minutes long, and I do like the water droplets and dub chords of “Cavern”.
Rust – Kharif [Thawra Records/Bandcamp]
Based in Prague, Lebanese-Syrian duo Rust create what they call “electro-tarab”, blending contemporary electronic dance music with traditional Arab music. Petra Hawi sings in Lebanese, and for this project, Rust collaborated with Lebanese poet Jana Salloum; Hany Manja is an electronic producer and also performs on oud, one of the traditional instruments that accompanies the voice in tarab music. I love the mad glitching synth loops in “Kharif”, but Rust succeed also in retaining their music’s traditional roots through the noise and thunder.
Simon Henocq – CONCOURSE A [Carton Records/Bandcamp]
French record label Carton Records gregariously supports artists across just about all genres, and many of their releases have the genre-free je ne sais quoi of Simon Henocq‘s We Use Cookies. Henocq is a sound-artist, producer and self-taught musician who also convenes French collective COAX, a gathering-together of musicians of all genres along with dancers, visual artists and more. I would loosely define Henocq’s album as noise, but it coalesces into a kind of industrial techno often. At other times you’ll get a fizzling, crackling tone that slowly grows into a snarling miasma. Quite exhilarating.
Ursula Sereghy – Wet and Innocent [Mondoj/Bandcamp] Ursula Sereghy – Magic User [Mondoj/Bandcamp]
Following her excellent debut OK Box in 2021, Czech musician Ursula Sereghy has released her follow-up, Cordial, on the Polish label Mondoj. It’s not exactly IDM, it’s not pop enough for hyperpop, it’s not club enough to even be deconstructed club… and it strays quite far from ambient, in my opinion. The sampled droplets of vocals create uncanny melodies over glitched shuffles and fragmented General MIDI chamber orchestrations. Odd music for odd times.
Tlön – Huxley [Jazzland/Bandcamp]
By now I’ve well and truly emphasised my love of English/Norwegian duo BirdWorld, a genreless exploration of percussion, cello, found sounds and more. BirdWorld’s very recent album Nurture featured a guest appearance from Norwegian violinist Sara Övinge, and thus I found out about her duo Tlön with BirdWorld’s cellist Gregor Riddell. And, perhaps not coincidentally, mere weeks after Nurture, Tlön’s debut album Reality has arrived! It’s released via Norwegian label Jazzland, a label whose name is perhaps misleading even though “jazz” is broadly at its core. And Tlön, like BirdWorld, draws on its members’ classical backgrounds and their talents as improvisers and composers, as well as following BirdWorld in their concrète approach to sound. While Bokonon above is named from Kurt Vonnegut, Tlön of course take their name from Jorge Luis Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius“, one of his reality-warping, inter/intra-textual wonders – and thus the music here twists and turns in surreal ways, so you thought you were listening to classical cadences but your attention strayed for a minute and now it’s heaving electronic drone? The musicianship is first class, and the surreal mix of found-sound, spoken word and warm strings often uncovers real beauty.
Drank – Min [Trost/Bandcamp]
Austrian label Trost is the home of noise-leaning free jazz bods like sax manglers Peter Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson, but also for instance Christof Kurzmann, who flits easily between glitch, indietronica and avant-garde spheres – and indeed they’re also the label that released the two Keiji Haino + Sumac albums, a somewhat different beast from Sumac’s Moor Mother collab we started the show with. But past avant-gardism, Trost releases can seemingly go anywhere, and the two releases here are a case in point. Drank is the duo of two key members of Austria’s improv/experimental scene: Ingrid Schmoliner on prepared piano and Alexander Kranabetter on trumpet & electronics. Each of the four tracks on their debut album Breath in Definition is a constellation of sound. Schmoliner draws an amazing array of sounds from her piano preparations, very conscious of the psycho-acoustic effects of dense walls of sound, while Kranabetter’s electronics mutate his trumpet into unrecognizable forms. Although I love the second track – so much so that I played its entire 11 minutes and 35 seconds – the last 2 tracks are notable for renowned percussionist & electronic experimentalist Lukas Koenig‘s marimba & electronics, followed by Anja Plaschg aka Soap&Skin‘s breathy vocals on the last track.
Paul Wallfisch & Dana Schechter – Wolfram Lotz Watches a Western Spy Movie and Decides to go Shopping for a Lowrider [Trost/Bandcamp]
Meanwhile, The Heart of a Whale is a very different thing. It’s a meeting of two musicians’ quite different styles – the crumbling cabaret of Little Annie collaborator Paul Wallfisch and the growling guitar noise of Dana Schechter (Swans member and the force behind the “cinematic noise” band/solo act Insect Ark). Still, there are deep connections here – both musicians are interested in soundtrack & multi-mode performance. And indeed the Weimar cabaret style is deeply ingrained in the work of no lesser industrial/noise don than Blixa Bargeld. The Heart of a Whale is a soundtrack of sorts, for a performance by the Vienna Volkstheater of the exploratory, satirical work “Die Politiker” by contemporary German poet & playwright Wolfram Lotz. In keeping with the experimental but incisive work they’re soundtracking, Wallfisch & Schechter roam far with their music, inserting slabs of distortion in amongst the Tom Waitsian pump organ, piano et al. I feel like if any of these references resonate with you, you’re in for a treat!
Luke Abbott, Lotte Betts-Dean, Jack Wylie – Endless Joy [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
With our own Laurence Pike, UK keyboardist Luke Abbott and saxophonist Jack Wylie make up the psychedelic electronic jazz group Szun Waves. In late May comes a new project from Abbott and Wylie, joined by Melbourne-born mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean. Endless Joy will be released on Salmon Universe, the label Laurence’s brother Richard Pike runs out of London with Joe “JQ” Quirke. As the album’s title track and first single shows, Betts-Dean is by no means singing in full-throttle operatic mode, layering her voice through electronic processing, with prepared piano and further electronics from the other two members. As you’ll hear when the full album comes out, no single track captures the whole of this album. It’ll be launched in London when I’m playing up the road at Portals Festival – actually the following day, so I’m hoping to go along, but I won’t be on-air again until a few weeks later, so stick this in your wishlist or whatever!
Strange conglomerations of fluttery acoustic sounds, skittery electronic beats, seemingly-clashing cultural milieus…
LISTEN AGAIN if you dare! Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowning. God’s Black Tears. ft. The Lil Black Oxen Émile Joseph Weeks, Nicolas Ratany [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
Tariq Ravelomanana is not your usual hip-hop producer. A longtime fan of experimental music, he blends any and all styles into his Infinity Knives project. This combined with Brian Ennals‘ unbridled political & personal raps makes for an unconstrained body of work akin to clipping., even if the artistic connection is tenuous. However, the stunning vocals from the male gospel choir “The Lil Black Oxen” on their new album’s title(ish) track does put my mind to “Long Way Away“. But Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals’ ambitions here are different, both musically and lyrically, taking in acoustic guitars and metal riffs, anti-colonial politics and mental health. And it’s an album worthy of its ambition – dive in!
SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 4 [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Last year, alongside their remarkable, heavy-as-fuck album The Healer was released, sludgey hardcore supergroup SUMAC released an EP called The Keeper’s Tongue with two remixes: recent Wire Magazine cover star, Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon, and the brilliant avant-garde hip-hop/free jazz genius Moor Mother. And what a combo the latter was! SUMAC leader Aaron Turner was singer & guitarist with two of my favourite post-metal bands, ISIS and Old Man Gloom (the latter not in past tense), but SUMAC feels like his purest vision, engineered with precision along with the rhythm section of Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook of hardcore legends Botch and post-metal legends Russian Circles. Turner also ran the greatest metal/experimental label in the world, Hydra Head, and now has a smaller – impeccably curated – operation with his wife Faith Coloccia called SIGE. After the incendiary impact of that Moor Mother remix, it still came as a surprise to discover that this full album collab was just around the corner. The Film is one large work split into tracks, with as much (disquieting) quiet as crashing noise. And who but Moor Mother could compete with Aaron Turner’s roar?
Katarina Gryvul – ZOVSIM NISKIL’KY [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
There’s classical music and folk mixed up in the avant-garde electronics and vocals of Ukrainian composer Katarina Gryvul‘s new album. SPOMYN is released on the great Subtext Recordings, fitting in with the likes of Pyur or even Sara Persico. Gryvul multi-tracks her vocals for that full Balkan-like women’s choir effect, albeit with constantly evolving effects on the vocals and bursts of electronic noise. The result is a melancholy, but also at times degraded and sinister sound.
Kuunatic – Disembodied Ternion [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp] Wheels of Ömon, the second album from Japanese all-female psych rock trio Kuunatic, continues from where their first left off. Stentorian riffs and group vocals, and then echoes of traditional Japanese music…. Drummer Yuko Araki is a brilliant musician across many genres & instruments – she released a stunning noise/industrial album on Room40 in 2023. Bassist Shoko Yoshida previously made beautiful acid folk in the fragile DIY Japanese tradition while keyboardist Fumie Kikuchi is also a vinyl DJ. Just calling this acid rock is highly misleading – there’s so much to sink your teeth into, I think maybe even moreso on this second album.
Maurice Louca – El Taalab الثعلب [Simsara Records/Bandcamp]
Egyptian musician Maurice Louca is a bit of a polymath. The earliest recordings I’ve heard are experimental electronic, and he’s lent production to many artists, but he’s also a member of psych rock/free jazz group The Dwarfs of East Agouza, and Egyptian/Lebanese/Turkish experimental rock/jazz supergroup Karkhana among others. And Louca’s solo music has moved into similar territory, losing most of the electronic elements in the last couple of albums. On May 30th comes Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي, an album full of dancing rhythms, albeit acoustic. On the first single, violins and double bass chase synths and percussion around with chiming electric guitar somewhere in the mix, the repetitive folky phrases only opening up into beautiful diminished harmonies and lyrical melody just before the 3 minute mark.
While you’re here, I have to point you to the stunning Arabic indietronica album Lekhfa الإخفاء Louca made in 2017 with Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh and Palestinian singer & multi-instrumentalist Tamer Abu Ghazaleh.
Violeta García & Hora Lunga – i think i just died a lil bit [-OUS/Bandcamp]
On the 25th of April, Swiss label -OUS is releasing the debut duo album of Argentinian cellist Violeta García & Swiss musician Hora Lunga. Their shared background in composition, improvisation and sonic experimentation led to this transformative music, in which clattering rhythms and distorted noise drones can come from the cello, electronics or field recordings. I’m still digging into this, and finding more at every turn.
Laurent Pernice – ProvidenZad (ft. Alain Damasio) [Le label beige] Laurent Pernice – Il y a les ombres (ft. Héloïse Brézillon) [Le label beige]
“There are shadows” is the new album from Laurent Pernice – Il y a les ombres in the original French – and as much as it’s about the darkness of shadows, it’s about the shadowy future that lies ahead. Pernice draws on his background in sample-based industrial music in the 1980s, incorporating many live instruments and many guests (his mate Jacques Barbéri plays “genetically modified sax”). But the future history aspect is enhanced on more than half the tracks with guest vocalists reading their own poetic works, including author Alain Damasio (well-known in the francophone world), Black Sifichi, experimental pop producer Judith Juillerat, and young poet, performer and sci-fi writer Héloïse Brézillon. It’s sumptuous and rich music, as is typical of Pernice – recommended even you don’t know any French.
Julien Mier – Scrap (ft. Daisuke Tanabe) [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
Sydney-based electronic producer Julien Mier – also known as Santpoort – has a new album under his own name coming out from the excellent Barcelona label Lapsus. Gradually sees Mier reflecting on not just being Dutch in Australia, but having a French background as well – I’m always jealously admiring of multi-lingual people! – and the album is structured around those three backgrounds. The first single features Japanese producer Daisuke Tanabe, whose own love of jungle breakbeats and sound design is echoed across this new work of Mier’s. It’s gonna be a doozy!
Briain – Only When You Look At It [Art-E-Fax/Bandcamp]
Barry O’Brien works as a sound engineer at Berlin clubs Ohm and Tresor, so you’d think he’d be making thudding techno, but his album Cognitive Dissonance leans more towards acid, electro, breakbeat and IDM. Released on breaks-centred Berlin label Art-E-Fax, it’s the kind of br(i)aindance that would’ve haunted the Rephlex label way back when, and wouldn’t be out of place on CPU Records. Always lovely to hear this kind of melodic electronica.
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – supermatr1x [Bios Contrast Bandcamp]
The current issue of The Wire has an interview with Kolkata-based electronic producer Nilotpal Das, who is variously named as Bios Contrast, under his own name, as DJ Nilo… and frequently as “Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das“. He makes super-complex beats with dense sound design, which he’s dubbed brahmancore. The album SSAC42 is on its way, and “supermatr1x“, which popped up on his Bandcamp at the end of last year, is slated to appear on it.
Flower B – Big shitty life [Big Science/Bandcamp]
Lyon-based DJ & producer Flower B has just released his debut album on Lyon label Big Science, entitled Locked In. The French underground electronic music scene has always been strong, with a love of hardcore and breakcore as much as UK & US bass music (not to ignore the big club stuff which revolves around house, electro & disco music I guess). On this release, Flower B is definitely making heavy bass music with equal influences from industrial techno and ghetto house.
Hmr – Chronos [Straight Up Breakbeat/Bandcamp]
OK well here’s some proper drum’n’bass, from Finland’s Straight Up Breakbeat, and Hmr is a Finnish producer featured on the label’s Zero Five EP. All four tracks are well-produced jungle & d’n’b tracks. Hmr’s “Chronos” is decidedly Photek-like in its precision minimalism.
Hedchef – Inertia of the Real [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Out via Prague powerhouse YUKU is new EP Only Time Will Tell from Naarm/Melbourne’s Hedchef. Hedchef expresses his impatience with the ’90s/’00s sounds that are around at the moment, and I can see where he’s coming from, despite loving the way jungle, trip-hop and even folktronica are reincorporated into modern bass music & experimental approaches. In any case, on this EP we do hear precision rhythms in alien forms, held down by a solid low-end. Highly suited to their home on YUKU.
Obelisk – fakemink – LV Sandals (Obelisk remix) [Obelisk Bandcamp]
A couple of weeks back, FBi’s own Ryan O’Rourke – presenter of Mithril late on Thursday nights – released a couple of sneaky edits on his Bandcamp. The original LV Sandals, by EsDeeKid, fakemink & Rico Ace goes hard enough, but Obelisk beefs it up into industrial proportions.
Clay Teeth – Chapel Fire [Natural Sciences]
I’ve known Greg Stone since quite early days in FBi’s history, as lead singer of Sydney indietronic/postrockers Underlapper, and – full disclosure – our trio Haunts will finally be releasing something in the coming months. But a little while back, Greg was inspired by the tribal drum’n’bass championed by Samurai Music to try his hand at producing dark d’n’b himself, and he quickly became highly adept at it. This track is released on Manchester label Natural Science‘s eclectic, noisy compilation Flesh Renewed, but it will also feature on the upcoming album. Contra to what I’ve just said, this is more like techno than d’n’b.
Mitch Elliott – No Dream [Garden Seat/Bandcamp]
Originally from Newcastle, Mitch Elliott is now based in Eora/Sydney, where he makes noise music and experimental sounds. His latest release is out on Naarm’s Garden Seat, and was recorded live in Indonesia last year. It’s music that’s based around feedback and distortion, so no surprise that the recordings themselves are beset with “foul distortions”, as described by Elliott. But there’s a purity to distortion which can itself be penetrating, although soon enough the echoing bass tones in “No Dream” are ridden over with a squalling feedback melody.
Kettel – Conrector [Kettel Bandcamp]
The music of Dutch musician Reimer Eising comes from a different direction – since the early ’00s Kettel‘s always been an IDM & ambient project, with some neo-classical elements a few years in. But tonight’s track makes use of pulsating echoes that, well, echo Mitch Elliott’s. It’s one of the darker tracks on Kettel’s new album Dubio. Like his 2013 album ibb & obb, this is a video game soundtrack, for a game that combines puzzle solving with parkour. Never less than melodic, Kettel’s music here has a lush, nostalgic feel that eschews the precision of programmed music, and is more human for it.
Will Parker – Devine Blink [Difficult Art And Music/Bandcamp] Red Lake, Black Mine, the new album by UK composer & audio-visual artist Will Parker, might initially sound like minimal glitch, but it was born out of walks around the post-industrial landscape of inland Cornwall, land that’s been transformed by mining, and poisoned by its toxic outlets. The work exists as an album – digital and on CD – and a performed version, but also an art book that doubles as graphic scores. The combination of concrète sounds, electronics and digital editing is quite ingenious and the mix is incredibly spacious. It’s a visceral listen.
Theresa Wong – Light in the Grotto [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
I’ve known of American cellist Theresa Wong for a long while, as a collaborator with Carla Kihlstedt (including a duo album on Tzadik), a collaborator with minimalist composer/instrument maker Ellen Fullman, and more. Her new album for ROOM40, Journey to the Cave of Guanyin, is a beautiful collection of pieces for solo cello – sometimes just the single instrument, sometimes multi-tracked – that are created to evoke a sense of peace and mental focus. Guanyin is a Chinese deity embodying infinite compassion, and these pieces are prayer-like in their minimalist repetition. The cello is down-tuned substantially from the typical A 440, and – when the instrument isn’t producing fluttery almost-percussive ricochets – the harmonies are in just intonation, which tunes the intervals to the harmonic series based on a particular fundamental, so that chords other than the tonic sound eerily “out of tune” to our ears, accustomed to equal temperament. Wong has put a lot of thought into these pieces, using technique honed over many years of composing, improvising and studying. The result is something bewitching and strange.
Matthias Kaiser & Reinhold Friedl – lamento [Tonkunst Manufactur/Bandcamp]
Acoustic instruments are fractured and transformed on the album ololuge from two German experimental musicians, violinist Matthias Kaiser and pianist Reinhold Friedl. Friedl directs the new music ensemble zeitkratzer, known for interpretations of early Kraftwerk, and work with Terre Thaemlitz, Keiji Haino and power electronics terrorists Whitehouse – generally all done acoustically. “Ololuge” is a word from ancient Greek meaning “ululation” – wailing, trilling… There are similar words in many languages. So from this concept, Kaiser and Friedl draw out unconventional sounds from both instruments, with prepared piano and harmonics, glissandi and extended techniques on the violin. Despite the distinct avant-garde nature of the work, the music is highly expressive – suitably for the subject matter – and “lamento” is a particularly emotive piece.
Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila – Le Système Déraille [Pingipung/Bandcamp]
The first collaborative album between French mechanical instrument maker Pierre Bastien and fourth world electronic producer & composer Michel Banabila was a strange affair, lovely but perhaps a bit tentative. On their follow-up, Nuits Sans Nuit, it feels like they’ve found a singular voice together. First single “Le Système Déraille” has unconventionally-tuned ocarinas(?), muted trumpet, what sounds like a vinyl runout groove, and electronically stretched piano chords. The little melodies could be mechanically produced, but sound gradually more like they’re electronically sequenced. Looking forward to hearing the rest!
Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson – Bone Bells [Pyroclastic Records/Bandcamp]
Two incredibly accomplished improvisers and performers of contemporary jazz and contemporary classical music getting together is quite something, and these two women are easily at the top of their game, Sylvie Courvoisier on piano and Mary Halvorson on electric guitar. For some reason electric guitar and acoustic piano seem like an ill-fitting combination to me, but Courvoisier & Halvorson prove it to be as natural as anything. This is their third collaboration, so I blame myself for not discovering the duo earlier. Courvoisier has played with many of those in the “Downtown NY” jazz scene, including her husband, also-legendary jazz violinist and John Zorn mainstay Mark Feldman, and his frequent partner-in-strings (and hero to me), cellist Erik Friedlander. Halvorson, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, is known as an innovator, technically explosive and incredibly sensitive, and has a characteristic way with the whammy bar – except remarkably it’s not: the pitch-bending effects are from swivelling the delay time (using an expression pedal) on a Line 6 DL4 delay unit! So, suffice to say this was always going to be mind-bending, beautiful and riotous – as it indeed is. Even if you’re not a jazz aficionado, you should give this a go.
Alex Zethson & Johan Jutterström – If I (Tålamod) [thanatosis/Bandcamp]
Stockholm musicians Alex Zethson (piano) & Johan Jutterström (saxophone) have known each other since they were teens. Now Zethson runs the Thanatosis label, releasing jazz and free improv and sometimes drone/noise, and also collaborates widely. Zethson & Jutterström’s duo album If I Could / If I is a mixture of cleverly-chosen covers and beautiful originals by Jutterström. A few weeks ago I played their cover of John Lurie’s “It could have been very very beautiful” – and, in fact, it was! And they cover “It couldn’t happen here” from the Pet Shop Boys’ brilliant second album, in lovely wistful fashion. But Jutterström’s original compositions really are gorgeous, and the playing of the two musicians is exquisitely restrained (I try not to use “exquisite” too often, so please take it as the chef’s kiss that it needs to be).
Everything’s off-kilter this week. It’s not just the deranged tarrif-spewing orange menace… it’s also the music? But… in a good way? Yeah.
LISTEN AGAIN if you’re off-kilter too. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Infinity Broke – Snowdome of Dreams [Love As Fiction Records/Bandcamp] Infinity Broke – Scum Valley ’86 [Love As Fiction Records/Bandcamp]
Jamie Hutchings fronted Bluebottle Kiss from the mid-’90s till the mid-’00s, making abrasive but emotive indie rock with a substantial following. In 2014 he and BBK drummer Jared Harrison formed Infinity Broke with Jamie’s brother Scott Hutchings on second drumkit & percussion, and Reuben Wills on bass (Reuben is the husband of Jamie’s sister, ARIA-award-winning pianist Sophie Hutchings). When I played the debut album I noted the “excellent long rock jams”, with the double drums and bass holding things down while Jamie’s penchant for free jazz avantgardism only emphasises the krautrock feel for me. That’s still absolutely my feeling – with all of the passion in Jamie’s singing and the abrasiveness of his guitar, but held down by the low-slung bass and the double percussion. Rad!
The Ex – Beat Beat Drums [The Ex Bandcamp] The Ex – Wheel [The Ex Bandcamp]
It’s exhilarating to have a new album from Dutch anarcho-punks The Ex. Their history goes back to 1979, although only guitarist Terrie Hessels is still with them. We’ve heard GW Sok, their original vocalist, a lot on this show, appearing with Oiseaux-Tempête and recently on that incredible Sopa Boba album that came out in February; in 2009 he was replaced by Arnold de Boer of Zea. Meanwhile, Andy Moor (not the DJ) has played guitar with the band since 1990 – he’s one of the people behind the essential avant-garde label Unsounds. And Katherina Bornefeld joined on drums in 1984 and has been with them ever since. De Boer manages a handy resemblance to GW Sok in delivery, but it’s always nice to hear Bornefeld singing on one or two tracks. I could write pages and pages on The Ex – “anarcho-punk” refers to their politics and way of living in those early days, but the politics, while still present, is not perhaps the main focus. They dived heavily into improv in the 1990s (if not earlier), and worked extensively with Ethopian saxophonist Getachew Mekuria in the last decade or so of his life. In the 1990s they made two incredible albums with pioneering New York cellist Tom Cora: Scrabbling At The Lock and And The Weathermen Shrug Their Shoulders. Seriously, give them a listen.
Oh No Noh – Dog Years [TELESKOP/Bandcamp] Oh No Noh – Orb [TELESKOP/Bandcamp]
Love hearing some music that, stylistically, takes me back to the early days of postrock and folktronica (I know these were not the same early days). Leipzig’s Markus Rom is Oh No Noh, playing a multitude of instruments and electronics, putting it together in post-production to make head-nodding guitar-driven instrumental rock, folktronic near-pop, and more abstract sound-arty collage. Across the album he’s worked with the likes of KMRU, The Notwist‘s Andi Haberl, and the album is adorned with artwork from legendary cartoonist Anna Haifisch. Amazingly, a lot of this was performed by musical robots Rom has programmed – see a live performance here.
Giuseppe Ielasi – 01 [Senufo Editions/Bandcamp] Giuseppe Ielasi – 11 [Senufo Editions/Bandcamp]
All that iconic Italian sound-artist/producer/guitarist/etc Giuseppe Ielasi says about his latest release an insistence on material vol. 1 is “new series // first volume // march 2025 // thanks for listening”. Which, fine. Past series of Ielasi’s have involved mechanical machines butting their heads paper hooked up to contact mics, or music made from run-out grooves of vinyl records, or blurry guitar loops – just about anything really, including minimal beats (from strange sources). So “an insistence on material” could be an insistence on physical sound sources… or it could just be, you know, putting out material of some sort? These numbered tracks are vintage Ielasi – strangely cut, warbling tape (or vinyl?) loops, anonymous sputtering anti-rhythms… Wonderful.
BirdWorld – Opposite Hinges (feat. Sara Övinge) [Dugnad rec/BirdWorld Bandcamp] BirdWorld – Let Sleeping Babies Lie [Dugnad rec/BirdWorld Bandcamp]
When I discovered BirdWorld in 2018, it was love at first sight – a cello and percussion duo? And yet so much more? Cellist Gregor Riddell and percussionist Adam Teixeira are both virtuosos at their chosen instruments, but in the mysterious albums of BirdWorld – their debut UNDA and now the follow-up NURTURE – you’ll find Teixeira playing kalimbas (thumb piano) and other tuned percussion, or synths, while Riddell adds guitars, piano, and even vocals at times. Field recordings and rhythmic jazz/almost-postrock coexist with an impeccable solo cello piece, throwing plucked and bowed notes around like a seasoned juggler, while at times guests join – like Swedish violinist Sara Övinge, who’s comfortable in classical or jazz contexts, and has a duo with Riddell called Tlön, with an album on the way on legendary Norwegian label Jazzland. The gregarious nature of these recordings, and the willingness to go in unexpected directions mid-stride, reminds me of The Books or Lucky Dragons, groups who first turned me on to the possibility of just dispelling all preconceptions, and not making music for instant gratification or consumption. More power to them! Don’t let this one slip by.
Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman – Harmonic Rain [Blackford Hill/Bandcamp]
Paradoxically, one of the most “ambient” tracks of the night is leading us into the beats? Guitarist Morgan Szymanski and artist Tommy Perman are childhood friends, who released their first album together in 2022, and “Harmonic Rain” is the first track from their follow-up, Songs for the Mist Forest. The roots of the album – and of this track – come from a soundtrack that the two worked on for a documentary (you can see a trailer here) about the ongoing ecocide from overdevelopment of the beautiful Valle de Bravo in Mexico. You can see more of the forest in the beautiful video for this track, made by Szymanski’s friend Juan Pablo Ortíz. But what about the music? Szymanski’s guitar does indeed play dancing harmonics as well as little melodies, while Perman builds beats which may partially be sampled from guitar taps. Around the edges are drawn-out scraping/bell-like tones; it’s a very effective evocation of a misty forest.
Carrier – Slow Punctures [Carrier Bandcamp]
For a couple of years now, Guy Brewer has been releasing a unique strain of bass music as Carrier. This follows his influential minimalist techno as Shifted, but seems to look back at his early work with drum’n’bass trio Commix (now the solo work of George Levings). But rather than the more rigid rhythms of either d’n’b or techno, Carrier explodes everything into its constituent elements, especially on his latest EP Tender Spirits. Here, Brewer’s skittery rhythms float untethered inside dub techno textures, and even when the syncopated sub-bass thumps through the stunning “Slow Punctures”, the rest of the rhythms seem only loosely moored to that fundament. The third & last track takes this to its logical conclusion – the white noise hi-hats flutter to an unrecognisable beat, frequently fizzling out, while the bass tones struggle under the murk, never quite getting going. It’s Stygian dub, a properly haunted dancehall, the club’s deconstruction finally complete.
Ziyiz – Plastic Sentiments [Plasma Sources/Bandcamp] J-Shadow – X-38 [Plasma Sources/Bandcamp]
“Worldwide artistic collective” Plasma Sources covers a wide ground of electronic music, from electro, grime & downtempo to techno to drum’n’bass & jungle. Their first compilation Multi-Source showcases experimental takes from across this range, with an insane piece of jungle – almost breakcore – closing the album from J-Shadow. And the mysterious Ziyiz, archaeologist of the future, unearths some strangely degraded bass music (see their Instagram for visual artefacts).
Kid Spatula – Spitalfield [Third Kind Records/Bandcamp] Mike Paradinas, boss of the one of the most on-the-money labels in the world, Planet µ, has released music- as µ-Ziq for well over 3 decades, and in that time countless people have missed the fact that µ = the Greek letter µ, so the name is a pun… Too often I’ve found him categorized under U for u-Ziq. He’s kept at it (even though the internet presences now tend to spell it out – thus planet.mu as the label URL), but there have always been other aliases. Tusken Raiders clearly covers a murky kind of industrial techno, Jake Slazenger is a kind of woozy, sleazy funk, but Kid Spatula is harder to define. Is it µ-Ziq but staying away from obvious dancefloor styles? Well, a lot of µ-Ziq does that, and there’s plenty of drum’n’bass on, e.g. 2004’s Meast. So I’m just going to count us lucky to have another Mike Paradinas album. Joozy is released by the boutique Brighton label Third Kind Records (locals for Paradinas, over in Hove), and takes a lot from the melodic, slightly twisted jungle he’s put out in the last few years, but equally isn’t that far from 1977, released a couple of years back on Balmat. Much though I’m a jungle head, I was always an IDM head too, and it’s lovely hearing the woozy synths and crunchy beats here. More! More!
Pépe – Grane Drum [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Spanish producer Pépe has been everywhere lately. His 2023 album Reclaim, released on Lapsus, found him branching out into bass music, jungle and IDM, from his previous house & techno productions, and also saw him reaching into the future for his inspiration. Now on YUKU comes his Slow Cancellation of the Future, very pertinently named from a phrase from Italian Marxist philosopher Franco Berardi, as channelled by the late philosopher & hauntologist Mark Fisher. For this EP, Pépe is consciously adopting and adapting the “hardcore continuum“, as Simon Reynolds dubbed the UK bass musics that came out of hardcore techno in the late ’80s & early ’90s – jungle, drum’n’bass, 2-step/UK garage, grime, dubstep and so on. By looking to the dismal future with clear eyes on the ever-distracting present, Pépe has developed his own compelling deconstruction of club music. It’s a trip!
Raf Reza – Mirror Of Love [Telephone Explosion/Bandcamp]
Toronto-based producer Raf Reza announces his debut full-length album Ekbar with the first single “Mirror Of Love”, which showcases his Bangladeshi heritage mixed in with music influenced by soundsystem culture – dub through to jungle. South Asian musicians have been central to bass music scenes in the UK, so it’s nice seeing a Canadian artist picking up on this too.
Polonius – The Pauper [Souk Records/Bandcamp] Discrepant sub-label Souk Records is where they put the experimental beats, and there’s an emphasis on MENA artists, from the great Palestinian beat-maker Muqata’a to Turkey’s Grup Ses. You Didn’t Hear It From Me an album of delightfully odd bass music from Egyptian-French producer Seif Gaber aka Polonius. There are suggestions of jungle, dub and other bass music, but couched in a hallucinatory framework.
Hair & Treasure – In The Coin of Disaster [Discrepant/Bandcamp]
Meanwhile, Discrepant boss Gonçalo F Cardoso has also released a new album from his project Hair & Treasure, a duo with Alex Jones augmented with some other weird musicians. Disc Rot is also weird beats or otherwise weird sonic emanations, drawing on noise, sound-art and technoid quasi-beats. It’s an appropriate title!
Dangerous Creatures – CTHULU feat. Dan Peter Parker [Weaponize Records/Bandcamp]
Billed as an “open universe collective”, Dangerous Creatures is nevertheless primarily the project of producer Mimski and UK rapper King Kashmere. Mimski brings ultimate heaviness to her beats, at times channelling The Bug or clipping., but there’s always a jaunty hip-hop bounce. Guests abound in this apocalyptic celebration/warning, from the US and the UK, but the core of it is King Kashmere’s lyricism. “Welcome to the future” indeed.
Jeremy Young – Whirld, Pt. II [Halocine Trance/Bandcamp] Jeremy Young – Moray [Halocine Trance/Bandcamp]
Montréal sound-artist Jeremy Young is part of the much-loved electro-acoustic/post-classical trio Sontag Shogun, among other projects; he also initiated the brilliant oscillator-based trio Associated Sine Tone Services with Nicolas Bernier and Machinefabriek last year. His solo work is always beautifully engrossing and highly individual. His new album Cablcar is built from “magnetic tape and analogue oscillators”, but there’s way more than that might suggest – Young himself plays piano, guitar, contact mic’d objects and: “‘the’ radio, grief, lightning, self-doubt, & bourbon”… and there are some guest voices here & there. But those analogue electronic tones and those lovely warping tape effects are central to the music, even when he somehow structures it into some kind of bass beats on “Moray”. Young is a brilliant (analogue) sample digger and curator of sound, who happens to also be a great musician. Cablcar is highly recommended.
Lonnie Holley – I Looked Over My Shoulder ft. Billy Woods [Jagjaguwar/Bandcamp]
For most of his creative life, Lonnie Holley was known as a creator of powerful sculptural assemblages and other visual & physical art. His untrained musical creations began, I believe, in about 2006, and his first studio recordings were released on Dust-to-Digital in 2012. Just Before Music and 2013’s Keeping a Record of It were deeply weird and very effective works of what was being called “outsider art”, a term which probably should never have existed. In any case, Holley is highly adept at storytelling, and his performances as well as his recordings are always entirely improvised – I saw a stunning performance of his at AGNSW’s Volume in 2023, with Mourning [A] BLKstar. His 2023 album Oh Me Oh My invited many guests to join him, including Michael Stipe, Moor Mother and Bon Iver, and both it and new album Tonky are creatively and sympathetically produced by Jacknife Lee. This time round there’s an even more wide ranging list of collabs, including the crown prince of underground hip-hop Billy Woods as well as Saul Williams, and from other spheres, experimental harpist Mary Lattimore and wonderful folk singer/songwriter Jesca Hoop. Holley’s improvised stories/songs are as powerful as ever, chronicling a world that’s not so much gone wrong as always been wrong. This is the guy, after all, who viscerally Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America – stunningly predicting Trump’s return on the wave of non-specific “anti-woke” hatred… Stone cold genius.
Penelope Trappes – Sleep [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
We’ve been waiting since last November for this album to finally drop! A Requiem is the first album on One Little Independent for the Brighton-based Australian musician Penelope Trappes. I’ve played a bunch of singles, ranging from drone works with scratchy cello to choral fragments and deep bass booms. It’s songwriting turned inside-out, and it’s an album worth listening through from start to finish, a ceremony eulogising parts of herself that she’d long suppressed. Tonight I’ve revisited that first single, a horror story of the legend of the “sleep hag”, viscerally dramatised in its video.
Hüma Utku – Comfort Of The Shadows [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
I started following Turkish electronic producer Hüma Utku on Karlrecords in 2018. A true statement of intent, she was already there combining dense, sometimes rhythmic electronics with traditional Arabic instruments and samples from the region. She gained the attention of Editions Mego while Peter Rehberg was still alive, releasing The Psychologist in 2022 (it was ready earlier but delayed by Rehberg’s tragic death in 2021). Now comes Dracones, named for the Latin phrase “hic sunt dracones” – here be dragons. It’s very much about the fear of the unknown in tremulous times, more relevant day by day, with emotions only heightened by the fact that Utku was recording this while pregnant. I should note that this music rewards careful headphone listening, where you will realise that these electronic-sounding drones and pulses contain acoustic & electric instruments including – as well as cello, guitar & vocals – an electromagnetic instrument called the Lyraei which you need to read about!
Hara Alonso – Millions of other Suns [FUU/label Bandcamp/artist Bandcamp]
Very pleased to finish tonight with the engrossing sounds of Stockholm-based Spanish pianist & sound-artist Hara Alonso. It seems like each release of hers inhabits a different sound-world, from the most piano-based neo-classicism to electro-acoustic works, and by that measure touch•me•not is both her most electronic work and also her most composed work, featuring an ensemble of percussion, double bass and voice around her piano & electronics. The sonic realisation was aided by FUU label’s Başak Günak aka Ah! Kosmos, creating an otherworldly sensory halo.
Lots of speedy beats tonight, whether underpinning grime vocals, post-classical synths, postpunk agitprop or… you name it. Plus contemplative guitars & strings, shoegaze and indie-jazz-pop.
LISTEN AGAIN to capture all the details. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Postcards – I Stand Corrected [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
We’ve heard a lot of brilliant experimental music from Lebanon in recent years, a lot (although by no means all) of it courtesy of the Beirut-based Ruptured label (now partly run out of Montréal). Among the highest of highlights are the songs of Julia Sabra, both with Fadi Tabbal as Snakeskin, and solo. But Sabra’s first band was Postcards, an indie rock/shoegaze band that’s among Beirut’s longest-lived, going back to 2012. So we’re fortunate to have an actual new album from the band, produced though it was (as always, by Fadi Tabbal) under the very dark cloud of Israel’s regional aggression. As the opening song recites: “Destroy, rebuild, you know the drill / Destroy rebuild, repeat and kill”.
Snapped Ankles – Dancing In Transit [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
In the words of novelist Alice Walker, quoted by UK postpunk ravers Snapped Ankles, “hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof”. And their latest album, named from the quote, is perhaps their most dance-oriented – riffing on single-oscillator “log” synths, dancing away the madness of the modern times (in case, in 7/8, making Venetian Snares proud).
Use Knife – Demain Sera Mieux [VIERNULVIER/Bandcamp]
Following last year’s remix EP Peace Carnival, Belgian-Iraqi trio Use Knife have released their second album État Coupable. With the heavy electronics of Belgian musicians Kwinten Mordijck and Stef Heeren and the vocals and percussion of Saif Al-Qaissy, this is urgent music of the moment. Here they’re telling us that “tomorrow will be better”, but to be clear: only if we make it thus. Oh, and this is in 10/8 I guess – two groups of 5, bouncy!
Eartheater & Shygirl – Dolphin [Chemical X/Eartheater Bandcamp]
Unexpected team-up? Here’s Alexandra Drewchin aka Eartheater bringing UK queen of bass/rap/club, Shygirl, on two of her tracks. Suitably, there’s a UK tilt to the production, with PinkPantheress-esque jungle beats pushing “Dolphin” along through the waves…
OHYUNG – 5 strings {lake} ft. J. Fisher [NNA Tapes/Bandcamp] OHYUNG – crush [NNA Tapes/Bandcamp]
Lia Ouyang Rusli is a film composer whose 2022 album imagine naked! was a collection of beautiful minimalist ambient tracks, but her new album as OHYUNG takes a very different tack. You Are Always On My Mind combines glitch & post-rave beats with often-processed vocals (and a guest rap from J. Fisher), and it’s a kind of conversation between her trans self and her pre-transition self, powered by a collection of generic string samples found in online sample packs.
aya – Time at the Bar [Hyperdub/Bandcamp] aya – droplets [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
No longer requiring “fka LOFT”, aya brings us her second album on Hyperdub, but it’s still as full of angst as im hole was, just in different ways. Here, aya is concerned with addiction, as it often is, indelibly twisted around trauma. The themes are carried by her always sardonic vocal delivery (this time round there are no other guests, except James Ginzburg of emptyset/Subtext Recordings helped out with the mixing), and to be clear, the music can be really claustrophobic and discomfiting. Or it can be cathartic. It’s also funny that aya tends to keep the more straight drum’n’bass or other dancefloor styles off her full albums – which makes sense as they’re more conceptual affairs, imagined as a full-length work, and showcasing her incredible talent & skills. Prettttty damn impressive.
Kalabash – Major ft. Jelani Blackman (Radio Edit) [Tropopause Records/Bandcamp]
UK singer and rapper Jelani Blackman brings out the grime in this new track from London-based collective Kalabash, who are slowly gearing up to release their Decompression Tapes Vol. 1 later this year. At 4:10, this “radio edit” feels fully formed, so I’m curious what the full length track will sound like. Blackman’s lyrical prowess is on show here, over a high-paced beat and production that seems to draw from all over. Also noting that their 2-track single from earlier in March showcases two other sides: “Decompress” is tough jungle-techno with a cinematic interlude, while “Concrete” is a tense 4/4 number.
Rivet – Patitur Butcher [Editions Mego/Bandcamp] Rivet – Sacrosanct [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Swedish producer Mika Hallbäck is perhaps best-known for his industrial techno as Grovskopa, drawing from the likes of Surgeon & Regis but mixing in a love of contemporary classical and experimental music. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he arrived on Editions Mego in 2020 with On Feather and Wire. While Hallbäck’s production had widened in scope since his adoption of the Rivet name in 2011, On Feather and Wire allowed him to diverge entirely from the techno template at times, verging into mutated pop and beatless (not rhythmless) synth excursions. Now Peck Glamour, his second album following the tragic and traumatic death of Editions Mego’s Peter Rehberg, expands in further experimental directions, whether it’s weird polyrhythms or percussive bass-adjacent music with disembodied sampled vowels(?) It’d be a shame if this was relegated to the category of experimental oddity, as it’s fun, creative and always engaging.
JANKA – Ale To Ty Dzwonisz Dub [outlines]
The two members of JANKA are longtime members of Poland’s electronic music scene; Daniel Szlajnda made DJ mixes as Daniel Drumz from the mid-’00s, and his own beats later on; Piotr Kaliński is better known as jazzy electronic producer Hatti Vatti, as well as being half of cinematic post-classical/bass duo Nanook of the North. As JANKA, it’s all about the dubs; last year they released three longform ambient glitch-dubs on YUKU with Japanese experimental artist CRZKNY. Earlier this year they contributed an excellent dub to the incredible remix album for REIFSMA on Polish post-footwork label outlines, and now they’ve got an album on outlines sublabel guides. “But You’re The One Calling” is the translation of tonight’s selection, where bubbly dub techno meets footwork with an almost jungle/d’n’b energy.
Gloorp – Angggry [JOLT Music/Bandcamp]
Forthcoming on New York’s JOLT Music is the second (and perhaps final?) album from Philadelphia’s Garrett Burke aka Gloorp. Burke is a purveyor of finely crafted breakbeats and gloopy electonic textures, which feel to me like they have a direct heritage from US electronic labels like Schematic or Tigerbeat6. What’s really notable about this jungle-adjacent new track and the album it comes off (deftly titled Gloorp ‘Em Up is that there’s very little sequencing involved – it’s played live on sampler or acoustic instruments. Keen to hear how the rest of the album shakes out.
RAVL – Smart Fella [[re]sources/Bandcamp] [re]sources is one of the best bass labels coming out of France at the moment, and on the occasion of their 10th birthday they’ve released their fourth compilation, Club Hexagon IV. There’s influences from footwork, uk garage, grime and jungle, and the particular high-speed beats here from Marseille’s RAVL fit with a new kind of jungle-footwork-techno hybrid that’s being expressed in different ways around the globe at the moment. Excellent.
Insignio – Thinking About It [Yanked Beats/Bandcamp] Insignio & LowfatiK – Roses Somewhere [Yanked Beats/Bandcamp]
Case in point re jungle-hybrids, Afonso Silva as Insignio, one third of Portuguese label Yanked Beats, whose new album Lost keen is jungle/d’n’b with a marked footwork influence that doesn’t always rely on breakbeats. I played the remix of single “Everytime” by Barcelona’s A.Fruit recently, and here tonight we also heard a collab with another member of the Yanked Beats collective, LowfatiK.
Pugilist & Tamen – ESS [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]
How about some proper jungle? Well actually… Naarm/Melbourne’s Pugilist & Tamen are well familiar with jungle breaks and other forms of bass music, and here debut together on Berlin’s Samurai Music, pioneers of a more tribal, stripped-down form of drum’n’bass but also digging into the nu-jungle sphere. Finding themselves on Samurai, Pugilist & Tamen have crafted a somewhat more minimalist, moody version of their jungle rinse-outs, albeit still fuelled by clattering breaks. Exhilarating.
Harry The Nightgown – Bell Boy [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
A band that call themselves Harry The Nightgown are just gonna be an art pop kind of affair, right? For their debut album the LA band were engineer/producer Spencer Hartling aka tp Dutchkiss and sound engineer/singer/guitarist/etc Sami Perez, but they are now joined by Luke Macdonald, who tours with one of Perez’ bands, Cherry Glazerr. There’s no way of telling who played or programmed what, but the first single from Ugh (an album with a title for the times if ever there was one) is complex & melodic, segueing comfortably out of our jungle segment, with a sped-up funk bassline and lopsided maybe-sample, skittering into groovy synth chords that could come from an early James Blake track. It’s glitchy, catchy and super-cool.
goat – Quest [Latency/Bandcamp]
Referred to as goat (jp) to differentiate from the Swedish psych rock behemoth, this goat are experts are precise rhythmic patterning. Boomkat described them as “math rock”, which I find misleading because there’s precious little postpunk angularity with goat – and especially so on Without References / Cindy Van Acker, a highly percussive album created for Belgian choreographer Cindy Van Acker and released on the exclusive, unpigeonholeable French label Latency. It’s maximinimalist stuff, and the band is intensely tight in all their cross-rhythmic glory.
Ah! Kosmos & Hainbach – Shelter [FUU]
Turkish electronic producer Başak Günak aka Ah! Kosmos first teamed up with fellow Berlin resident and fellow electronic production nerd Stefan Goetsch aka Hainbach for Blast of Sirens in 2023. Their second album is on the way, and from the singles so far, no track will be the same. “Shelter” is powered by skittering percussive sounds that sound like they could be deconstructed footwork in a different context, with bright synth melodies floating on top. There is something comforting about this music, despite the tumbling beats and the lovely low-end surges that grow through the second half.
Homeward – A Cloud On A Dream [Styles Upon Styles]
New Yorker Philip Tortoroli co-runs Styles Upon Styles, which is a record label and also a radio show. On his own label he’s just released the mini-album Odes under the name Homeward. Styles Upon Styles is unsurprisingly very eclectic, with a close interest in UK bass music among other things, but Odes harkens back to the trip-hop of the ’90s (rather than New York’s brief Illbient scene). It’s a nostalgic sound, all the moreso for “A Cloud On A Dream”, which Tortoroli describes as “an ode to love in the rear view”.
Jerome Blazé – Over Salzburg [Jerome Blazé Bandcamp] Jerome Blazé – Rosella Blessing (with Beryl, Hannah McKittrick and Kathleen Frances) [Jerome Blazé Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Jerome Blazé is engaged with music across multiple dimensions: as a producer, live keyboardist, songwriter and academic. Last year’s Living Room album was a home-recorded album combining influences from soul, neo-classical and dance music. The album put collaboration up-front, with instrumental and vocal collaborators from across the Sydney music scene as well as songwriting collaborations and a fully-credited list of sampled artists (and birds!) taking in local friends and international influences like BADBADNOTGOOD, Punch Brothers, Al Green and more. The album’s being given a vinyl deluxe edition this year, expanded through reworkings of each track (which he seems to be doing in reverse order) that open up his music to deeper collaborations. Here, the bright “Rosella Blessing” – originally driven by interlocking piano and drums with bird samples and a simple vocal refrain – is up-ended. It begins with the closing piano, to which verses by folk duo Beryl, Naarm/Melbourne singer/songwriter/broadcaster Hannah McKittrick and Bristol singer/songwriter Kathleen Frances are added, bringing a lush wistfulness and expanding on the theme of birds and blessings. It’s a very special piece of music that gains depth if you know the original.
Daniel Bachman – Tight tangles of being intersecting in every direction [Daniel Bachman Bandcamp]
In the last few years, “American primitive” folk guitarist Daniel Bachman has been deconstructing his traditional acoustic music using digital technology, as a response to climate change and as an exploration of his musical heritage. His latest album, self-released, is Moving Through Light, and it’s perhaps the most abstracted yet. Other than some drum machines, everything is collaged and adapted from his own guitar playing, but it walks through noise and glitch to make it home – here and there – to fingerstyle guitar picking. It can be challenging music, but it rewards deep listening.
Aidan Baker – Drowning Not Waving [Gizeh Records/Bandcamp] BOW & Aidan Baker – DE 1 [Cruel Nature Records/Aidan Baker Collaborations]
There are many facets to Aidan Baker‘s art. The Berlin-based Canadian guitarist may be best known for his doomgaze band Nadja with his wife Leah Buckareff, but he’s been making minimalist, ambient, experimental music since before that band existed, and collaboration has always sat at the core of his work. Still, a solo Aidan Baker record can be a gripping listen too, especially his patient slowcore songs, so I can highly recommend & You Still Fall In for this vein of music. Amp buzzes, guitar gestures, dull thumps. Lovely. One of Aidan’s recent collaborative projects documents two performances with Belgian contemporary/experimental string quintet BOW. Their aesthetic is finely matched with Aidan Baker’s, to the extent that you can’t always tell what are string drones and what are guitar loops. But there’s a remarkable amount of beauty captured in these recordings, worth tuning into on a quiet night.
Experimental song, guitar-triggered sample-mashing, electro-dub, industrial dub-metal, intricate percussion, ambient jazz… Just some of the well-known genres heard tonight.
LISTEN AGAIN and invent some new genres. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
Yasmine Hamdan – Shmaali شمالي [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
While I’ve featured quite a bit of Lebanese music on this show, it’s leaned towards the experimental. Yasmine Hamdan‘s career goes back to the late ’90s with indie/trip-hop band Soapkills, all three of whose independent albums have been re-released by Belgian powerhouse Crammed Discs, whose catalogue covers postpunk and experimental music as well as “world music” from all over the planet. Hamdan released two previous solo albums with Crammed, and a third is coming, with second single Shmaali شمالي now released. Much like Etyen & Salwa Jaradat, whose Qoumi EP we heard last week, in this song Hamdan draws on tarweeda, a tradition dating back to the latter period of the Ottoman Empire and the British mandate in which Palestinian women used coded language to express themselves under oppression and occupation. The arrangements are a natural combination of traditional music and electronics.
Building Instrument – Baby, når du sover [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Norwegian trio Building Instrument have been around for a little over a decade now, but are perhaps not very well-known outside of Norway, excepting those who follow the great, genre-crossing Hubro label. Mari Kvien Brunvoll sings and plays electronics/live sampler – she is also known for her duo with Stein Urheim. Åsmund Weltzien plays keyboards of various sorts, and Øyvind Hegg-Lunde drums. But despite the predominance of electronics, particularly on new album Månen, Armadillo, the band has a strong folk/jazz sense. I’d go so far as to say it’s folktronica – lots of glitching keyboard lines and stuttery beats, and Mari Kvien Brunvoll’s pixie-ish vocals.
EDT – This Feeling [Across the Horizon/Bandcamp]
Providence Rhode Island-based cellist, composer, songwriter and more Emily Dix Thomas records as EDT, and although I’d heard of her via various session appearances here & there, I’d never heard her own songs, so I’m incredibly grateful to the Across the Horizon project (a co-production of Northern Spy Records and Bob Holmes of SUSS and the Ambient Country Podcast) for bringing us “This Feeling“, a beautiful new song of hers performed mostly on cello and voice, with a little percussion. For Across the Horizon, eight artists (as part of Volume 1) each curate a little three-track selection – one piece by them, and two others they’ve chosen. So really we have guitar master Marisa Anderson to thank for including EDT in her segment.
Circuit des Yeux – Truth [Matador/Bandcamp]
The trajectory of Haley Fohr’s Circuit des Yeux has been an unusual one, from a very experimental start to the discovery of the power of her multi-octave voice, and through various styles of songwriting (including her kind-of alt-country alter ego Jackie Lynn). Last year she released standalone single “God Dick” which gave an indication of the heavy electronic sound here – especially the emphatic Scott Walker influence, which I remarked on when the single came out. It’s an obvious reference, given her rich, expressive, near-operatic voice, her strong artistic vision and refusal to temper the more experimental parts of her art. It’s perhaps no surprise to find that she enlisted Andrew Broder for a final pass on the production – an artist whose music spans backpack hip-hop and free-jazz indie into bass-heavy electronics, who has of late lent experimental electronic production to Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey, among many other collaborations. But in all honesty, any talk about the change in Fohr’s sound here ignores the fact that this is very clearly Circuit des Yeux in every aspect – stirring songs with a kernel of the weird.
Bibi Club – Orgiastic [Secret City Records/Bandcamp]
Québecois duo Bibi Club released their Feu de garde last year to some acclaim. They span languages (English & French to equal degree), and genres (indie rock, synth-pop, French chanson?) and what I’ve heard certainly doesn’t hide the influence of Stereolab (you know, melodic indie/pop meets krautrock, sung in English & French…?). Well, in May they will release the deluxe version of the album, Feu de garde (les braises) (and let me just insert here that “Feu de garde” is protecting fire, and “les braises” are “the embers”). And one of the additional tracks on “les braises” is this cover of “Orgiastic” from Stereolab’s first album Peng!. It’s both true to the original and transformative, just as a cover ought to be. Very jangly, very middy (hardly hits the bass register!), very rhythmic, very oui, s’il vous plaît.
YHWH Nailgun – Sickle Walk [AD 93/Bandcamp] YHWH Nailgun – Changer [AD 93/Bandcamp]
What could be more of-the-moment than combining postpunk and jungle? In this case the drum’n’bass beats that surface at times are performed by YHWH Nailgun‘s drummer Sam Pickard, while Zack Borzone’s tortured vocals reach into hardcore punk territory; meanwhile guitarist Saguiv Rosenstock is doing angular postpunk, and Jack Tobias ties it all together on synths & electronics. On my first couple of listens it felt like each member is playing a different genre, but – Borzone’s vocals aside – now it feels like they’re all playing all the genres, all at once. Pickard’s drumming certainly references drum’n’bass, but also African music and jazz, with his substantial use of pitch-shifting rototoms. The stabby guitar and synths seem to point at the interface of postpunk and pop in early ’80s David Bowie or INXS (seriously), and you could argue that most of the time the other three are just trying to keep up with the drums – Borzone shouting over them, the other two jabbing their way into the cracks. It’s kind of thrilling.
Feliks Mirenskiy – All in My Mind, Girl? [TOPOT/Bandcamp]
OK, this is absolutely insane stuff. Feliks Mirenskiy is a Russian-born guitarist & improviser, now based in Cyprus. Do You Remember? is his response to electronic music made by staring at the screen of a laptop. And so, you may think you’re hearing intricate-yet-chaotic edits of samples and electronic instruments, but in some way everything here is created via his electric guitar. Occasionally you *do* actually hear the guitar, but mostly it’s dense thickets of multifarious sound. Probably the weirdest thing you’ll hear this week.
Laura Masotto – The Body Is a Tree (Ekranoplan Rework) [7K!/Bandcamp]
Italian violinist Laura Masotto inhabits the space of contemporary “neo-classical” music, but doesn’t make pretty, simple piano songs with broken chords. There are some subtle electronic touches to her own work, but on The Spirit of Things Reworks, she and 7K! have invited a handful of contemporary electronic producers to up-end her original pieces. Robert Lippok of To Rococo Rot twists and turns Masotto’s work into some surprising and challenging places, and as heard tonight, Italian electronic producer Ekranoplan brings a kind of postpunk electronic energy with clattering dub delays on the percussion.
the body, Intensive Care – Unwanted [Closed Casket Activities/Bandcamp]
Industrial music has been close to the aesthetic of the body for a long time, especially as they moved from their almost-orchestral black metal/doom into the very electronic hybrids they’ve been creating over the last 10 years. Here they’re collaborating with industrial duo Intensive Care, whose Andrew Nolancollaborated with Full of Hell last year (and, because time is circular, Full of Hell have worked twice with the body on two extraordinary albums). Anyway, no surprise, this particular body collaboration sounds a lot like the body, and particularly the bass-heavy electronic pieces are very excellent.
memotone – Wisdom [MOTHER] [Discrepant/Bandcamp]
We’ve been fans of Will memotone Yates here at Utility Fog Towers for a long time – I’m thinking 2012, when the Hands EP came out with that lovely track sampling “Ghosts” by Japan? Yates is a talented multi-instrumentalist, and from his beginnings on the fringes of UK bass music he’s covered ground from gentle folktronica or lo-fi jazz to oddball English folk and thickety bass-techno & house. I wouldn’t say that’s all present on his new LP Pruning released on the reliably-weird Discrepant, but – well, maybe I would? It’s a collection of off-cuts from other projects, and if it’s lo- in fi, it’s hi- in quality.
NVST – Coming & Going (Stillstuck Edition) [Maloca Records/Bandcamp] Dreaming Of Us While Slowly Catching Fire In a Place I Never Belonged is the very descriptive title of the new EP from Swiss DJ NVST. She applies glitched treatments & dub delays to her own spoken voice and bassy electro beats – it’s super moody stuff, and beats get more complex before dropping out for the majority of the last track, made of spooky pads and scattered vocal shards. Highly recommended.
Heith – You In Reverse [PAN/Bandcamp]
The last full album from Italian musician Heith, founder of eclectic experimental label Haunter Records, was 2022’s X, wheel, a mystery-laden amalgam of electro-acoustics, quasi-classical arrangements and post-industrial beats. Weirdly, I’m sure I saw that album announced years earlier? In any case, I somehow missed Heith’s The Liars Tell… EP from last year, but new track “You In Reverse” is indeed the first single from a new album due in April. With a cut-up beat trundling along under processed vocals, it quite nicely fits the current trip-hop revival (and then that sax solo…), and I’m interested in where this will fit in with what will no doubt be a wide-ranging album.
Venetian Snares – Drums [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
It’s been a long time since there’s been new solo material from Canada’s greatest purveyor of 7/8 jungle & breakcore, and what better occasion than the 30th birthday of Planet µ, who probably released more of his material than anyone else? Planet Mu 30 (conveniently spelling out the Greek letter µ, for all those who never got the µ-Ziq pun) is a 25-track, 2CD compilation featuring a cross-section of artist from early days (Mike Paradinas/µ-Ziq himself, Luke Vibert) through dubstep to many of the footwork artists µ has championed, and many oddballs from around the world. Can’t wait.
DJ Sofa – Hypervigilance [Repertoire/Bandcamp]
UK jungle/drum’n’bass label Repertoire welcomes Finland’s Kia Súmen aka DJ Sofa on a 12″ with two solo tracks, plus a collab with fellow Finn ODJ Pirkka and a remix from Finnish heavyweights Esc & Mineral. DJ Sofa’s sound tends to have hints of old-school jungle-tekno in amongst the breakbeat edits; working with ODJ Pirkka leads her into more darkcore territory with some intense breaks, and then Esc & Mineral bring early d’n’b vibes.
JANKA – YAMANOTE DUB [outlines]
The two members of JANKA are longtime members of Poland’s electronic music scene; Daniel Szlajnda made DJ mixes as Daniel Drumz from the mid-’00s, and his own beats later on; Piotr Kaliński is better known as jazzy electronic producer Hatti Vatti, as well as being half of cinematic post-classical/bass duo Nanook of the North. As JANKA, it’s all about the dubs; last year they released three longform ambient glitch-dubs on YUKU with Japanese experimental artist CRZKNY. Earlier this year they contributed an excellent dub to the incredible remix album for REIFSMA on Polish post-footwork label outlines, and now they’ve got an album on outlines sublabel guides. In advance of the album, we have the title track “YAMANOTE DUB” (title track in the sense that all their tracks are suffixed with “DUB”). It’s a brilliant application of dub techno aesthetics to footwork sensibilities.
Simon Barker (feat Hinano Fujisaki) – Terrains of Transition [Simon Barker Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney drummer Simon Barker doesn’t directly reference footwork or jungle with the ultra-detailed rhythms on this 2-track EP Tymbal Echoes. It’s a collaboration with brilliant young Sydney saxophonist Hinano Fujisaki, and the idea came about from considering the hypnotic sound of cicadas, burbling creeks, crackling fires. Barker’s drums are augmented with drones from the self-modulating Lyra-8 synth, while Fujisaki underpins it all with sax overtones. Engrossing.
Sophie Gordon – Knock – B [Sophie Gordon Bandcamp]
You can hear Sophie Gordon on FBi Radio at the moment on Tuesdays on The Bridge, with excellent idiosyncratic Sydney selections. As well as producing promos for the station, she’s quietly crafting electronic music, and the most recent is a pair of tracks called Knock. Both are patient dubby numbers: part A keeps things super spaced-out, with sub-bass murmurings and clicky beat fragments occasionally surfacing; but in part B, she allows a full-blown beat to clatter in, with dubstep wubs as well, even if everything is still held at a certain reserve.
Puce Moment – Bugaku [Parenthèses Records/Bandcamp]
Nico Devos and Pénélope Michel are known in one incarnation as the “ghost opera” band Cercueil, making perhaps a kind of French electroclash. But as Puce Moment they make music for dance and film, a more abstract, classical/art music. Sans Soleil is moody and dramatic music – not at all abstract – based around the pair’s recordings from Tenri, of the ancient Japanese music known as Gagaku. The acoustic instrumentation is reconstructed along with electronics and Michel’s voice. This kind of music is bread & butter for the Brussels-based Parenthèses Records, a label which began life in Boorloo/Perth, and has a particular interest in traditional music coaxed into new forms. If you like the likes of Ben Frost or Tim Hecker, or ex-Perth, Melbourne-resident Tilman Robinson, this should be right up your street.
Ledley – Better Than [Impossible Ark Records/Ledley Bandcamp] Ledley – FOBTW Pt1 [Impossible Ark Records/Ledley Bandcamp] Ledley – FOBTW Pt2 [Impossible Ark Records/Ledley Bandcamp]
London-based saxophonist Chris Williams and trombonist Raph Clarkson are both big football fans as well as jazz musicians, and they’ve named their collaborative project after Ledley King. This is not an area I’m familiar with, but I can vouch for the music therein, which can venture into high energy, but is also interested in micro-sounds and hidden melodies, and is underpinned by electronics & effects from both musicians, as well as Riaan Vosloo (both live and in post-production). What we heard tonight is how their self-titled album begins, with a very soft swell of scrabbling sounds that tumble into two “FOBTW” tracks in which the two instruments begin their conversation. The trombone spits a rhythmic backing skipping between repeated notes at the tonic and a minor third above, while the saxophone improvises mellifluous melodies on top; when we reach part 2, the saxophone becomes more excitable and the trombone gradually shifts to a more recognizable jazz bassline, while electronic shards rise up at intervals. Excellent free jazz sonics.
Macie Stewart – I Forget How To Remember My Dreams (ft. Lia Kohl) [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Chicago multi-instrumentalist Macie Stewart can be heard playing violin and other instruments with many other musicians (such as Makaya McCraven and Japanese Breakfast), and has composed music for film & dance. She also writes songs, jazz-inflected indie music which can be heard on the beautiful Mouth Full of Glass album released in 2021 on Full Time Hobby. Her debut album on Chicago’s International Anthem approaches jazz from a minimalist perspective, using prepared piano, violin and voice, and embedding the music in field recordings of the hustle and bustle of normal life. These mostly-dreamy compositions are evocative of something nebulous, helped along by the wonderful Chicago cellist Lia Kohl as well as Whitney Johnson aka Matchess and double bassist Zach Moore. I love the way Lia Kohl’s cello parts swell in & out on tonight’s excerpt – I feel like they’re reversed in parts? This music will welcome you in its journey to parts unknown.
Ai Yamamoto – Buddha on the Moon [Le Mont Analogue]
Ambient label Dronarivm has recently launched a couple of limited cassette sublabels, and on the “tape and analogue sound” label Le Mont Analogue, one of the initial batch is Naarm’s own Ai Yamamoto. Less Hype More Hyphae takes its inspiration from funghi: hyphae are the long, branching filaments by which most funghi grow. The music here is composed of soft & delicate analogue synths, sometimes single lines, sometimes interlocking patterns, sometimes accompanied by field recordings. It’s calming music, so don’t expect a psychedelic mushroom trip.
squncr – Mistral 1AM [Fluid Audio/Bandcamp]
Last time we heard François Larini’s squncr on the show was 2023’s …drowned out…, a captivating set of hauntological sound-art pieces based around recordings of an African catholic mass, which interrogated the French colonial past of Burkina Faso. New album The Moorish Field is also haunted: it’s set in a villa on the French Riviera (near where Larini is based in Nice) and the Moorish Shield was a Moroccan symbol – a protection agains the evil eye – placed there by the novelist William Somerset Maugham. The darkness inherent in this old house in a picturesque landscape is conjured with out-of-tune pianos, tape-manipulated samples and half-caught radio signals. Masterful ghost-ambient.
Kirk Barley – Balanced [Odda Recordings/Bandcamp]
Finishing tonight with a new solo album from Kirk Barley, with sonic illusions made from modular synths in odd tunings and odd cross-rhythmic time signatures. One track features his mate Matt Davies on drums (with whom he records as Church Andrews), but the rest is him solo. On tonight’s selection, the way the various electronic percussion sounds loop and shift, the way the pitches drift from standard tuning, is strangely off-kilter, which (also strangely) makes “Balanced” the perfect title. Like a magic trick, you go back and listen again to try and grasp it.
Thanks so much to Amy Li for her fascinating selections last week while I was in Naarm with Zoe Jungist of FBi’s own Variable Depth Audit DJing at the incredible Absorbed IV!
That means I’ve got two weeks of new music to somehow summarise into 2 hours of radio, so we’re jam-packed.
LISTEN AGAIN and catch up with me! Stream on demand @ fbi.radio, podcast here.
Postcards – Dust Bunnies [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
We’ve heard a lot of brilliant experimental music from Lebanon in recent years, a lot (although by no means all) of it courtesy of the Beirut-based Ruptured label (now partly run out of Montréal). Among the highest of highlights are the songs of Julia Sabra, both with Fadi Tabbal as Snakeskin, and solo. But Sabra’s first band was Postcards, an indie rock/shoegaze band that’s among Beirut’s longest-lived, going back to 2012. So we’re fortunate to have an actual new album from the band, produced though it was (as always, by Fadi Tabbal) under the very dark cloud of Israel’s regional aggression. The first single is an impassioned scream of everything that’s gone wrong with Lebanon. Keep an eye out for more, or just go pre-order it already!
Spoil – Flash Break [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
It seems to have been about a year between this one’s announcement and its release – when I got the release email in my inbox I briefly had no idea what it was. What it is, though, is very very good. Rosa Anschütz is an artist as well as a musician, and formed Spoil with Till Funke and Jonas Yamer, both members of Carl Gari, the bass-heavy electronic/krautrock band who collaborate deeply with Abdullah Miniawy. Yamer also runs the eclectic label Molten Moods, who’ve released this debut EP by the trio entitled Fucking Maniac. It sits somewhere on the current spectrum of postpunk melded with trip-hop, with Anschütz’s tightly emotive vocals sung or spoken over rumbling bass, dub-echoing drums or squalling guitars, organ drones or skittering hi-hats. Each track is different, but it’s a strong, distinctive sound. I hope the trio’s an ongoing prospect.
Mücha – You Make Me Go Under [Frequency Domain/Bandcamp]
In 2021 I discovered the music of DJ, sound-artist and musician Amanda Butterworth aka Mücha via her album Fall, made up of a hard-to-pin-down combination of clicky dub techno, jungle and at times her own vocals. Across a couple of follow-up albums she maintained this aesthetic, where everything is smudged, even when full of glitchy detail. Her latest release is a two-track single, Skin / You Make Me Go Under, both exercises in abstraction as much as they’re songs. The latter has dreamy vocals and close-edited breakbeats punctuated by bass drops. The two excellent originals are accompanied by heavy-duty remixes: Surgeon’s floaty trip-hop-inflected techno and Datassette’s ’90s-style skittery d’n’b.
Etyen & Salwa Jaradat – Ya Tali’een [Thawra Records/Bandcamp]
Beirut-based producer Etyen and Palestinian singer Salwa Jaradat released their first EP together in 2022, and now follow it up with the Qoumi EP, adapting Palestinian folk songs and a tradition of using coded language to resist censorship and oppression. The songs shine through with Jaradat’s strong vocals, and Etyen retains the songs’ essence while adapting them to the era of bass music and electronic sound design. Recommended.
Npcede – Tabula Rasa [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]
Getting even more industrial now is Naarm/Melbourne’s Npcede, who claim that in a perfect world, they wouldn’t need to exist. So… luckily this world is very fucking imperfect. This is industrial hip-hop, with intense bass drive and crashing noise accompanying a menacing rap. While you’re here, you might want to watch the dystopian video for first single “Spleen”…
Flaaryr – YOU CAN’T KILL ME IN A WAY THAT MATTERS (A LEDA VALLADARES) [post-dreifing/Bandcamp]
Argentinian guitarist & producer Diego Manatrizio is based between Barcelona & Reykjavic, the latter explaining how he’s ended up on exploratory Icelandic label/collective post-dreifing. His project Flaaryr is all about noise guitar, but here the instrument – sometimes absolutely howling with distortion – is embedded in clattering percussion, a little too fast and wayward to suit the dancefloor. At its noisiest, this short release is thrilling, and at its most electronic it’s almost blissful, but liable to turn at any moment.
clipping. – Change the Channel [Sub Pop/Bandcamp] clipping. – Ask What Happened [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
A new clipping. album is always an event. Daveed Diggs may be very busy with his acting career, but he’s a serious rapper and lyricist and clearly dedicated to this very weird band. Weird because the two musicians who complete the trio are both noise artists, William Hutson tending to the more cerebral, and Jonathan Snipes also well-known for his irreverant hardcore/rave shenanigans with Captain Ahab back in the day. clipping.’s music absolutely works as hip-hop, and Diggs is a masterful rapper; but they also draw on avant-garde contemporary composition, glitch, noise and – absolutely – jungle & rave. This all goes to show that a concept album on cyberpunk suits them just as well as their two horrorcore tributes, and their space opera before – all masterpieces. Dead Channel Sky is named for the first sentence of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, an ur-text of cyberpunk: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” – which in 1984 of course meant a staticky grey, later on could mean blue, and now probably just prompts confused looks from the post-Gen Z generation. I haven’t listened closely enough to the lyrics yet, but it seems less of a through-narrative than Splendor & Misery, but as a series of snapshots it depicts the way that we are careening head-on into a not-unfamiliar form of the grimy, ultra-capitalist dystopias depicted in cyberpunk since the mid-1980s. That the music mixes jungle and industrial, while glitches and other sonic manipulation echo the various discarded technologies that inspired the genre, goes to show that clipping. are the band to do this right.
Zoë Mc Pherson – Salted and Sweet [SFX/Bandcamp] Zoë Mc Pherson – Farewell [SFX/Bandcamp]
All the deconstructed club tics that became popular in the last few years are themselves an expression of cyberpunk a couple of generations on. Are the jungle beats inspired by video game music or by the ’90s originals? Does it matter? Zoë Mc Pherson is particularly adept at sonic manipulation in the club/bass music context, and their ongoing partnership with audiovisual artist Alessandra Leone ensures that the visual side is equally contemporary & futuristic. Mc Pherson’s vocals appear more on Upside Down than ever before, and on an album that seeks a sense of connection and hope in accelerating times, it’s perhaps not surprising that it’s less “deconstructed” than before as well. Still, there are ambient sound design interludes, and field recordings in amongst the trance synths and rave/jungle beats.
TRAKA – Shoot the Legs [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Serbia & Montenegro duo TRAKA have been a central act in the stable of Prague label YUKU for a while, and have just dropped their latest full-length, Aptid. And it’s very much YUKU music – bass-driven, mixing up dubstep & garage, grime, footwork and jungle, although the collaborators this time are other bass artists rather than any MCs. Polished production from a talented pair.
Nuphlo – Sarangi [Machinist Music/Bandcamp]
Here, though, is some real drum’n’bass. Although even Nuphlo, a UK producer released here on Canadian producer John Rolodex’s Machinist Music, is mixing up the standard rhythms of d’n’b, emphasising different beats of the bar, with fidgety sub-divisions. On the Draa EP, the artist is looking to his South Asian heritage, and it’s nice to hear that sneak through too, among the bass and breaks. South Asia has a long association with British dance music, particularly jungle & drum’n’bass but even going back to the early 1980s, and it fits very well with this modern approach too.
Noneless – Apocalypse [Noneless Bandcamp]
Late in 2023, I was stunned to hear a brilliant breakcore album with classical overtones from a local artist, released on the rather exclusive ☯ anybody universe ☯ label run by Japanese IDM/breakcore artist Laxenanchaos. Noneless had previously been known as elfaether, but their return with A Vow of Silence debuted this new alias. Originally from Eora/Sydney, they’re currently based in Oxford, UK, whence they have gifted us this new EP, Delicate Sin, mixing mournful piano samples and their violin with intensely mashed breakcore beats. Just like the doctor ordered. (It’s me. I’m the doctor. I order you to listen to this.)
Whatever the Weather – 11°C (Intermittent Rain) [Ghostly International/Bandcamp]
The wonderful Loraine James shot to fame when she signed to Hyperdub for 2019’s For You and I, a distinctive take on IDM, jazz memories, grime and other bass musics. And of course she’s followed that with two other brilliant albums, but in 2022 she also released a lovely album on Ghostly International under the name Whatever the Weather. It was billed as “ambient”, but had plenty of skittery beats even so. Somehow the follow-up, although it’s also anything but beatless, does sound a little more ambient to me. As with the previous, it’s based around temperatures, and there’s a kind of genius to the way the tracks do feel freezing, rainy or heavy with heat. There are also lovely snippets of spoken word and field recordings. Proof, if we need it, of an artist who continues to get better & better – from a running start.
T. Gowdy – Anonymous V [Constellation/Bandcamp] T. Gowdy – Flit [Constellation/Bandcamp] Joni Void – Joni Sadler Forever [Constellation/Bandcamp]
I wrote this a few weeks ago, adapted here:
Montréal’s Constellation Records is of course famous as the home of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A/Thee Silver Mt. Zion and a host of other legendary Canadian postrock bands, and their spiritual home the Hotel2Tango is a 24-track analogue studio – so for many years I felt sure that the label’s aesthetic was incompatible with the digital realm of cut-ups and glitches. That said, Do Make Say Think were incorporating digital edits and weird studio shit fairly early on. In any case, in the last decade the label has signed the likes of minimal glitch-techno producer Automatisme, and a few years ago we received the flickering ambience of T. Gowdy and the gorgeously obtuse cut-up haunted trip-hop of Joni Void. Both have just released beautiful new albums. T. Gowdy’s flickery micro-edits here underpin wordless vocals reaching back to Medieval choral music, while at times the rhythms approach the beats of glitchy minimal electronica. Joni Void again presents a ghostly version of trip-hop or electro-acoustic indie, but the lovely “Joni Sadler Forever” features another Joni, a beloved drummer in the Montréal scene as member of Lungbutter and other bands, and also Director of Communications at Constellation from 2017, who tragically passed away of a brain aneurysm in 2021. Having her drumming memorialised on this beautiful slow burner of a track is truly special.
Bird Battles – Bird Battles [Sleep In The Fire]
Here’s “Bird Battles”, one of two tracks on the debut release Bird Battles, from new duo Bird Battles. Hopefully there will be a lot more than these two tracks though. Bird Battles features the voice and other sounds of London-based Scottish musician Euan Millar-McMeeken, better known as glacis and also one half of Graveyard Tapes with Matthew Collings and of Civic Hall with Craig Tattersall. Here he’s working with visual and sound-artist Jesse Narens, whose love of birds is all over his visual art and audio work. “Moth River” is a lovely piece of indie songwriting with a very sparing drum machine, but I do love to hear Euan in noisier mode, and the title track’s distorted drone really hits the spot.
Scattered Order – Daisy and Lucy [Scattered Order Bandcamp]
Whenever I play Scattered Order I end up characterising them as venerable stalwarts of the Sydney experimental music scene, starting off sometime in the late ’80s, and still making gripping music today. That’s all true, but I always kind of thought they’d be here forever. But tragically, last year founding member Michael Tee passed away after a long illness. So the poignantly named Continue is a tribute to Michael, created by founder Mitch Jones and Shane Fahey, a longtime fellow traveller and member of the group at various junctures. They’ve used drones Michael had alreadsy recorded, but no doubt the creative process was different. Mitch sings in his exploratory fashion, the sounds are sometimes discordant, and there’s a pervading sense of melancholy. Long may they continue.
Vile Karimi, Haizea Huegun – </body> [Colectivo Casa Amarela/Bandcamp]
Portugal’s Colectivo Casa Amarela reliably introduce unusual music of unpredictable genre. Here classically-trained composer and musician Haizea Huegun joins with experimental musician Vile Karimi to create something neither artist would have made on their own. Unsettling ambience, glitched keyboards and field recordings grapple with the more discordant and more consonant tendencies of the two artists.
Passepartout Duo – From Taipei [Officially announced later this week!]
Internationalist musicians & inventors Passepartout Duo have just arrived in Australia, and are currently in residence in Parramatta, here in Eora/Sydney. I jumped the gun playing this track, but it’s from a project they’ve announced called Pieces from Places, which will see a new track added each month for a year, created on location as part of their continuing travels. While the music is really lovely, it’s best experienced on video, where you can see the traditional and invented instruments the two are playing. So keep an eye on their socials and their Bandcamp. They are also playing in Sydney at The Vanguard on April 8th, opening for another UFog favourite, Mary Ocher.
Grand River – Tuning the Wind (excerpt) [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
Following a beautiful, experimental album on Editions Mego in 2023, Berlin-based Dutch-Italian sound designer & composer Aimée Portioli now surfaces on Mexican label Umor Rex with Tuning the Wind. Like the previous album, the electronic music here is constructed with a composer’s ear for structure and timbre. It’s one long work – 36 minutes – so I’ve excerpted a section where one musical idea is moving into another. You can hear samples of maybe a car engine (or maybe just howling wind?), and wind that has literally been “tuned”, sculpted so that you can’t tell what’s a field recording and what’s a real instrument. You might think a conceptual work that’s over half an hour is challenging, but you’ll find yourself tuning in and unaware that time’s passed. It’s pretty wonderful.
Alex Jasprizza – Tides [Alex Jasprizza]
Another musician deeply embedding their work with field recordings is saxophonist Alex Jasprizza, based on Eora land, and connecting with the Waterways around us. He’s posted a clip of how he recorded the water sounds for this track – Tides – on an Instagram post here. Alex responds to these recordings with great sensitivity, making the water part of the music and vice versa, as the saxophone and, in this case, upright piano swirl and gurgle.
Kate Carr – spring back and creak [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
OK but if we’re talking about field recordings and found sound and music, Kate Carr (originally from here but London-based for ages) is a master of the art, and tirelessly promoting others through her Flaming Pines label. Rubber Band Music is a particular sound experiment, using homemade devices of wood, metal and rubber bands. So we’ve got sproings and buzzes and wobbles, slowed down, filtered, rebuilt. Abstract yet physical.
Dorothy Carlos – My Buddy (Miss You In Ear World) [29 Speedway/Bandcamp] Dorothy Carlos – Always – My Ideal Is Windy [29 Speedway/Bandcamp]
NYC experimental label 29 Speedway here brings us an amazing little release from NYC/Chicago cellist & sound-artist Dorothy Carlos. These pieces – most around 3 minutes long but as short as 30 seconds and as long as 7 minutes – are described as “sound collages”. Her voice and her cello are caught up in glitching granulations, but it’s done so artfully that somehow the melody sneaks through the cracks. “Always” is cracked & collaged from chopped samples of non-verbal vocal tics and breaths. This is, of course, Utility Fog’s bread & butter, whether it was The Books or Lucky Dragons back in the day, and I’m so glad to hear people (especially cellists!) doing this now.
Judith Hamann – seventeen fabrics of measure [Shelter Press/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based cellist Judith Hamann is originally from Naarm/Melbourne, and specialises in contemporary & experimental music. I’m especially fond of Music for Cello and Humming, both as a concept and a work. Her new solo release Aunes finds her perfectly suited to Félicia Atkinson’s Shelter Press. The album refuses to stay in one place, although each track is peaceful in its own way, from detuned organs and field recordings, definitely some humming and other soft vocals, to incredible, static cello tones. It’s for the cello that I played “seventeen fabrics of measure”, although there are electronic and other elements in there too. The end of the LP gives 16 minutes to a slow, patient duet of hummed vocals and cello, although I think both voice and instrument are double-tracked too. It’s an exercise in perfect poise. Remarkable.
Your experimental fix for tonight has vocals sung and spoken and screamed, in a few different languages and in no language at all. Also jungle beats mushed into other genres, slapback echoes, manic electric guitars and soft piano. And that’s not all!
LISTEN AGAIN for the whole gamut, on FBi’s schmick site or podcast here.
Lucrecia Dalt – cosa rara (ft. David Sylvian) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
I’ve been following Lucrecia Dalt‘s music since she was The Sound of Lucrecia, making lovely indie music that only fainly hinted at the highly experimental electronics or Latin music that would come into her music in latter years. Her last album, 2022’s ¡Ay!, somehow combined her modular synth work with the music of her Colombian roots and incredible, counter-intuitive orchestrations – a masterpiece. Now comes a new single, cosa rara, another slice of Latin experimental pop, with the added spice of a spoken outro by David Sylvian, who also contributed “feedback guitar” and completed the final mix. The song, whose title translates as “strange thing”, is sultry and just a little menacing, and the single is rounded out with a typically radical rework by Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and a “dopamine dub” remix by Chilean-German techno producer Mathias Aguayo.
Los Pirañas – Los pendencieros del Latin [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Sticking with Colombia for just a little longer, the trio Los Pirañas are a supergroup of Colombian experimental rock, whose latest album Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida (One more chance to succeed in life) has just been released by Glitterbeat. The album’s full of angular riffs on scrappy electric guitars, fed into a laptop and looped while the group improvise these pieces live in the studio. It’s not jam band music, it’s more a kind of Latin postpunk jazz – what’s not to love?
Satomimagae – Many [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
On the first single from her new album Taba, Japanese musician Satomimagae embeds a plaintive acid folk song in between ominous drones. It’s a small piece, only 2 minutes long, but it has a gravity to it – I’ve listened to it a few times already.
Maud The Moth – Kwisatz Haderach [The Larvarium/Bandcamp]
Amaya López-Carromero, born in Spain and now based in Scotland, has been part of the European scene for ages, as part of the band healthyliving among others. Under her alias Maud The Moth, she has now released her solo album The Distaff. It’s full of rapturuous gothic pop with piano songs as well as more noisy guitar numbers, like the Dune-inspired song tonight. Also appearing on the album are Seb Rochford of Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet and Pulled By Magnets, and legendary metal cellist Helen Money (aka Alison Chesley).
Ursula Sereghy – Fight Child [Mondoj/Bandcamp]
Prague-based musician Ursula Sereghy grew up playing saxophone in the jazz world, but then discovered synths and electronics, and in 2021 released her debut OK Box, full of weirdly abstracted sounds of acoustic instruments and field recordings – hints of classical and jazz – chopped and processed into an electronic world, with glitchy beats sometimes joining the granulated samples. Four years later, her follow-up Cordial will be released on Polish experimental label Mondoj, and it’s very much a continuation of that aesthetic, with snippets of vocals jittering into impossible melodies, everything pristine and yet everything slightly off. This will be a great album – keep an eye out in April.
Lyra Pramuk – Vega [7K/pop.soil/Bandcamp]
On her debut solo album Fountain, operatically & classically-trained composer & producer Lyra Pramuk focused entirely on her voice – whether her own range of expression, extended techniques, or all manner of processing and sampling. The electronic aspect was heightened on the massive remix/collaboration double album Delta that she released in 2021. It’s been a few years again, but now Pramuk is starting a new label, pop.soil, in conjunction with 7K (!K7‘s classicall/ambient imprint that they’re back-referencing as 7Klassik). This first single seems like a departure for 7K as much as the artist herself, interestingly taking things in a more toughened electronic direction, but still with her transformed voice. Hoping this turns out to be the first single for a new album on the way!
Desideria – Serotonin [Disideria Dreams]
Swedish musician Desideria creates cyberpunkish songs with glitchy electronics along with her own voice, often sung in Guthnic, the nearly-extinct language of Gotland. Her debut album Princess WWW is out now, albeit not on her Bandcamp, and features the brilliant song “Serotonin“, a song which she originally released as a single back in 2020.
Fade Evare – Keep Talking [Astral People Recordings/Fade Evare Bandcamp]
Newly signed to Astral People Recordings are Naarm-via-Eora band Fade Evare, centred around 21-year-old frontwoman Mira Holleman and older brother producer Tori Holleman, member of Sydney/Melbourne indie-electro 3-piece Retiree. Their second single “Keep Talking“, like last November’s debut “Yamaha Dreaming“, is mantra-like, with cyclic drumming, melodic bass guitar and synths accompanying a repeating vocal line.
Glass Fountain – Crow Flies (Live at the Belfry) [Watch on YouTube/elsewhere]
Last year I featured an excellent live track from Naarm/Melbourne duo Glass Fountain (fka Glass House Mountain), recorded at the Belfty – the upstairs, wood-panelled studio at Bakehouse Studios. It’s one of three tracks now all released with lovely videos demonstrating how they do their mix of drums, synths and electronics live. Cool stuff in a cool space.
Nickolas Mohanna – Future Light Cone (excerpt) [AKP Recordings/Bandcamp] Nickolas Mohanna – Method Actor [AKP Recordings/Bandcamp]
When I played a preview from Nickolas Mohanna‘s new album Speaker Rotations, I mentioned how the highlights in his long, evolving compositions are often the transition points. So tonight we heard a healthy excerpt from the opening track and its mutation into its follower: gritty belling guitar tones shudder away amongst crackles until chirping synths erase the guitars – and by the end of the second track you can hear the one-note bass guitar riff gearing up for the next section. This is minimalism written in the rock vernacular.
hoyah – 808s n Trance Gates [hoyah/more info]
Berlin-based musician Shmuel Hatchwell makes dope lo-fi hip-hop as Ehye אֶהְיֶה, and debuted his hoyah incarnation with the disorienting glitched sax samples of Set + Setting on Low End Activist’s BRUK label last year. His new 2-track single has a QR code as its cover image, which takes you to this site explaining something of the politics of the piece and its real cover art. Here Hatchwell is deconstructing an antisemitic image created in Austria at the turn of the last century – the sort of dehumanising imagery that led to the Shoah, and which Hatchwell – an observant Jew – wanted to re-appropriate as part of examining what kinds of expression Jews can make. This is particularly notable in the context of his adopted home of Berlin, where non-Jewish German authorities routinely shut down Jewish speech that’s critical of Israel or simply supportive of Palestinians. And the irony of the suppression of Jewish speech via accusations of antisemitism is particularly heightened by the fact that Hatchwell was not able to use his chosen cover.
The single itself, “808s n Trance Gates” embeds granulated samples of klezmer clarinet and Arabic-sounding voices with shuddering low-end and eventually a chunky hip-hop beat. Paired with the video which you can see on the linked site, its important political questions are clear, but the aural aspects add another layer of social commentary: the clarinets represented the European Jewish (Ashkenazi) culture while the voices come from the “Mizrahi” traditions of Jews whose roots have always been in the Arabic world. And yes, you don’t need any of this context to enjoy the music… but it helps!
Dub Syndicate – Alive And Burning Bright [On-U Sound/Bandcamp]
As part of On-U Sound‘s ongoing compiling of the catalogues of their many iconic groups, the second Dub Syndicate box set collects the later works of the band led by Style Scott, legendary Jamaican drummer in the Roots Radics, tragically murdered(?) in 2014. As with much of the On-U catalogue, Dub Syndicate worked with Adrian Sherwood at the controls, and for this box, Sherwood revisited the original tapes from these 1989-1996 albums to create fresh new dubs. Proving that dub is the most timelessly futuristic musical form.
Grup Ses & Gökalp K – Okul Terk [Souk Records/Bandcamp] Grup Ses & Gökalp K – Cambul Cumbul (feat Obookubo) [Souk Records/Bandcamp]
I first heard the heavy hip-hop sound of Istanbul producer Grup Ses with fellow Turkish rapper Ethnique Punch back in 2019. Now back on Discrepant sublabel Souk Records again, Grup Ses teams up with Istanbul sound-artist and beatmaker Gökalp Kanatsız aka Gökalp K to make an album of wonky beats using Turkish music & found sounds. There’s a collaboration with Ethnique Punch too, and things accelerate into drum’n’bass territory with Istanbul junglist Obookubo.
DJ Strawberry – Ritim Atölyesi [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Now based in Berlin, Emre Öztürk aka DJ Strawberry also hails from Istanbul. After a couple of greatreleases on Polish post-footwork label outlines, DJ Strawberry ends up on Prague’s great YUKU label, known for top-quality experimental bass music. These 160+ BPM productions are still rooted in Chicago footwork, but they spin & skitter in new ways, clearly referencing jungle and other bass musics – it really is a “Ritim Atölyesi” (rhythm workshop)! Brilliant stuff, rounded off with a couple of remixes from artists at the top of their game: Belgian beatmaker Leese and UK producer Wordcolour.
.618 – Nil [Éditions Appærent/Bandcamp]
Haitian-Canadian sound designer Nick Rony launches .618 with a mini-album on Montréal label Éditions Appærent. The first single from Goodbye ONY pits frantic percussive, resonant synths against matching beats and occasional pads. It’s minimalist, but ferocious.
Cocktail Party Effect – Clutter In The Attic [Shepard Tone Recordings/Bandcamp]
Released on his own his own Shepard Tone Recordings in conjunction with Osiris Music (run by Simon Shreeve of Kryptic Minds and Sandwell District), Radioactive Fruit is the first (mini-)album of the year from Berlin-based UK producer Cocktail Party Effect. He’s a master at mashing up UK bass styles with ambient passages and weird structures. As well as the beats – which you’d be hard pressed to find on the dancefloor – there are lovely glitchy interludes.
s8jfou – You Erase Us [s8jfou Bandcamp]
Finally the new album from French IDM/bass maestro s8jfou is out! Dognip was made only with Ableton 11 and Max/MSP – no plugins or hardware – and doesn’t seem to suffer in sound quality or tweaked-ness at all. His name, as I’ve mentioned before, is a French pun – it reads as “suis-je fou?”, i.e. “am I crazy?” I don’t think he’s crazy, but he does like his constraints – his 2022 album Op-Echo was even more constrained, using only Ableton Live’s Operator synth and Echo delay module. There’s bass music from dubstep to jungle (drill’n’bass?), melodic and glitchy. All proceeds go to Livyj_Bereh, rebuilding homes in Ukraine.
Max Cooper – I Exist Inside This Machine feat. Aneek Thapar [MESH/Bandcamp]
After a series of EPs and singles, Max Cooper has dropped his new alubm On Being. He’s always melded high concept with the dancefloor, and this time the concept is that his audience provides the seeds of the art. The prompt was to pose deep questions about what it means to be human in the current age. One such submission inspired the last single from the album, “I Exist Inside This Machine”, created in collaboration with British-Asian producer/sound-designer Aneek Thapar. It might be contemplative subject matter, but there’s tweaked, crunchy beats and dynamic sound processing galore. Good stuff.
Use Knife – Freedom Asshole (feat Spooky J) [VIERNULVIER/Bandcamp]
Following last year’s remix EP Peace Carnival, Belgian-Iraqi trio Use Knife have released their second album État Coupable. With the heavy electronics of Belgian musicians Kwinten Mordijck and Stef Heeren and the vocals and percussion of Saif Al-Qaissy, this is urgent music of the moment. The whole album’s out on March 28th, but meanwhile here’s a collaboration with Spooky J, who’s usually seen alongside pq adding his electronic touch to the Bugandan percussionists in Nihiloxica.
Djrum – Three Foxes Chasing Each Other [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
So look, I’ll probably play every single that Felix Djrum Manuel releases in the lead-up to new album Under Tangled Silence. This is one of those rhythmic-illusion pieces where the beats are constantly shifting around, from drum’n’bass and footwork to techno. Even the melodic sounds are bells or steel drums. It does indeed convey the energy of “Three Foxes Chasing Each Other”.
Leah Kardos – Rattle Cage [bigo & twigetti/Bandcamp] Mike Lazarev – a little bit [bigo & twigetti/Bandcamp]
UK neo-classical label bigo & twigetti are adept at curating themed compilations from their stable of artists, and their latest is looking for concision: each piece on Shorts must be only a minute long, and must say what it needs to say, musically, within that time frame. Really, the best thing about this compilation is coaxing a new little piece from London-based Australian composer/producer/academic Leah Kardos. “Rattle Cage” came out of the Covid lockdowns in 2021, originally as a collaboration with a friend suffering in Milan, and it’s made up of pots and pans rattling along with the insides of a piano. Meanwhile Headphone Commute‘s Mike Lazarev takes a gentler approach, a waltz from an airy muted piano and domestic sounds.
Kvedarkvintetten – Brest [Heilo Records/Bandcamp] Tagal is the latest album from Norwegian vocal quintet Kvedarkvintetten, featuring music composed by Jorun Marie Rypdal Kvernberg. The title translates as “to keep silent” or “mute” or “wordless”, so these songs feature almost no text. The quintet’s previous work was primarily based around their interpretations of the traditional vocal music of the Hallingdal region of Norway, so even though Kvernberg provided musically notated scores, the group brought their own interpretation. This is highly melodic music, performed with dedication and emotion.
The Cloud Maker – Daughters Of The Forest [The Cloud Maker Bandcamp]
Finally the wonderful The Cloud Maker is out. The project involves an international cast of brilliant women, convened by clarinettist, improviser and experimental musician Aviva Endean. Endean is a member of the remarkable project Hand to Earth with Yolgnu songman Daniel Wilfred, didgeridooist David Wilfred, trumpeter & sound-artist Peter Knight, and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim. When Kim and Endean took part in a residency in Banff (Canada), they met Te Kahureremoa Taumata, a practitioner of Taonga Pūoro (a word that describes a suite of Māori musical instruments). Their fruitful musical collaboration began with the Māori moth goddess Raukatauri, whose story is the origin story of one of those taonga pūoro, the cocoon-shaped flute called Putorino. In the Adelaide Hills, the group expanded to include contemporary cellist Freya Schack-Arnott (who also plays a traditional Swedish multi-stringed instrument called the nyckelharpa which you can hear in her duo Runa Cara with Bonnie Stewart), and percussionist/sound-artist Maria Moles. So yes, it’s a project overflowing with talent & creativity. Each member contributes stories of goddesses from their own folkloric traditions, and The Cloud Maker‘s music is as varied as its members.
Jeugdbrand – Lonely, Sure, but It Is Getting Late and My Grandmother Is Calling [Futura Resistenza/Bandcamp] 3 × hullo, hullo is the bizarre title of the bizarre new album from Jeugdbrand. Jeroen Stevens, who plays percussion, melodica and organ, has recently been playing with the iconic Belgian folk-classical-electronic-experimental ensemble DAAU; Dennis Tyfus, responsible for the terrifying vocals as well as piano, organ and tapes, founded the experimental label Ultra Eczema. They are joined for this album by Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, also responsible for tapes, who is a founding member of cult experimental band Stilluppsteypa; and finally, Gerard Herman, best known as a visual artist, provides loops.
Penelope Trappes – A Requiem [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
While Penelope Trappes‘s album A Requiem is still a while off, we can now hear the title track. Trappes’ voice creaks around cello drones until multiple voices bloom outward. The beautiful choral parts are the closest we’ll get to a classical requiem though: this is spooky music, both forlorn and unsettling.
Lots of vocals tonight, as spoken word, as songs, as cut-up textures… As usual we’re already at a point where there’s waaaay too much music out there. But hey, that means that everything here is rolled gold.
LISTEN AGAIN, at long last, have you no ears? Stream on demand at FBi, podcast here.
Sopa Boba – That Sweet Moment [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
This is pretty stunning, IMHO. New Belgian/Dutch ensemble Sopa Boba blend spoken word, noise electronics and classical strings. Key members are Pavel Tchikov aka Ogives and G.W. Sok, ex-vocalist with The Ex and frequent vocalist with Oiseaux-Tempête. The album That Moment adapts a text of that name by Moldavian writer Nicoleta Esinencu (she’s been referred to as the “angry voice of Moldova”), with dramaturgy by Jean Vangebeergen, and the words are magically presented by G.W. Sok, as naturally as if they were his. It’s a cutting text that satirises late-stage capitalism, with its starting point the apparently true news item in which a Moldovian father cut off his son’s finger with an axe for stealing a bit of money from his wallet. As well as being responsible for the electronics (with some additions from Stéphane Diskus), Tchikov composed the string parts which act as a an emotive counterpoint to Sok’s laconic & sardonic delivery. I think it’s this whole combination which makes the work so striking for me, as this kind of hybrid genre-erasing is what Utility Fog has always been about.
Enxin/Onyx – Flare and Coil [Other People/Bandcamp]
The highly anticipated album from Hiro Kone (aka Nicky Mao) and Tot Onyx (aka Tommi Tokyo) is here, courtesy of Nicolas Jaar’s Other People. Enxin/Onyx, as they go by, did release an EP called Dorothy in 2022 with two of the tracks here, but In Rupture brings seven tracks to vinyl. Tokyo’s abrasive electronics and punkish vocals are present from her solo work as Tot Onyx and her previous duo group A, and in amongst the more freeform industrial electronics are the bass-heavy techno sounds familiar from Hiro Kone’s earlier work. The thrilling energy of their live performances comes through on every track.
Noémi Büchi – Disappointing the Desire to Last [-OUS/Bandcamp] Noémi Büchi – Fair Enough feat. Joséphine de Weck [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Swiss/French composer Noémi Büchi‘s debut album Matter translated classical orchestrations into contemporary electronics in an original and compelling way. Last year’s Does It Still Matter reframed the former title as a question about artistic pursuit in the face of an increasingly threatened world. New EP Liquid Bones brings her artistic practice back to a more personal level, with a lighter touch that pulls the compositions into more rhythmic and melodic shapes. If this personalised approach has a voice, though, it’s that of Belgian actress and writer Joséphine De Weck, who has also been the “face” of Büchi’s recent live shows. On the one vocal track, de Weck’s voice is treated as another texture, looping back on itself, splintered into sibilants. Liquid bones indeed.
The Young Mothers – Lijm [Sonic Transmission Records/Bandcamp]
In 2009, Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten found himself in Austin, TX, amongst a highly diverse scene which took in experimentation in rock, hip-hop and electronic music. There he formed The Young Mothers with a group of local musicians who shared his interest in mixing all these styles together – along with jazz, of course. Better If You Let It is the third album from this group in just over 10 years, and follows Flaten’s return to Norway. The album amply demonstrates the way the players shift genres – on “Lijm”, trumpeter Jawwaad Taylor begins by rapping over a drum machine beat, which invisibly but instantly morphs into a full jazz arrangement about a minute in. Somehow in the last few minutes we find ourselves nonchalantly back in electronic territory. John Zorn’s Naked City used sharp genre turns to punkishly induce whiplash; when The Young Mothers shift genres it’s a way of welcoming all sorts into the camp. Nice.
DIIV – Brown Paper Bag (upsammy Remix) [Fantasy Records/Bandcamp]
Dutch electronic producer Thessa Torsing aka upsammy is known for intricate ambient productions – there might be skittery beats but they’re just part of the general scenery. It’s interesting hearing her here remixing jangly indie rock band DIIV, who sound like they could easily come from the mid-’90s. And upsammy’s version is somewhat trip-hoppy, with reversed vocals, drum machines and blurpy acid squiggles – although I’m thinking more like Styrofoam or Dntel’s indietronica from the mid-’00s. Lovely stuff anyway.
Mount Kimbie – The Trail (Astrid Sonne Remix) [Warp/Bandcamp]
And here’s another surprise – Danish experimentalist Astrid Sonne remixing Mount Kimbie. She takes “The Trail”, which is a kind of indie rock song with beats, and totally transforms it with glitchy sampled pads and a wholly new vocal, a slice of Danish posh isolation.
Jules Reidy – Satellite [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp] Jules Reidy – Search Light [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
When Jules Reidy moved from Australia to Berlin over a decade ago, they started making music on 12-string acoustic guitar and electric guitar that made use of strange tunings, dense thickets of strumming, aleatoric improvisation and noise. In 2019 they released the incredible 12″ In Real Life on Black Truffle (the label run by another Australian guitar innovator, Oren Ambarchi), and the two 20-minute sides introduced vocoded vocals and other electronics along with the guitar thrums. Albums followed on Editions Mego and Shelter Press among others, but Ghost/Spirit, released on the venerable Thrill Jockey, represents a more concerted turn towards song, albeit glistening and shivering with those guitar strings in just intonation. Its two halves represent the transformative period of the album’s creation – a self-described dissolution of self and a reconstruction that brought with it a new sense of personal identity and a mystical understanding of their place in the universe. The interconnected self is represented by the presence throughout of samples from musical compadres: bassist Andreas Dzialocha, cellist Judith Hamann, percussionist Morten Joh, drummer Sara Neidorf and trombonist Weston Olencki.
Joni Void – Cloud Level (with Ytamo) [Constellation Records/Bandcamp] T. Gowdy – Blest Age! [Constellation Records/Bandcamp]
Montréal’s Constellation Records is of course famous as the home of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A/Thee Silver Mt. Zion and a host of other legendary Canadian postrock bands, and their spiritual home the Hotel2Tango is a 24-track analogue studio – so for many years I felt sure that the label’s aesthetic was incompatible with the digital realm of cut-ups and glitches. That said, Do Make Say Think were incorporating digital edits and weird studio shit fairly early on. In any case, in the last decade the label has signed the likes of minimal glitch-techno producer Automatisme, and a few years ago we received the flickering ambience of T. Gowdy and the gorgeously obtuse cut-up haunted trip-hop of Joni Void. These two both have albums due on March 14th, and the second singles are things of beauty. Joni Void has again enlisted friends from Japan and elsewhere, here with Ytamo floating above twitching electronic haze and loping beats, while T. Gowdy’s flickery micro-edits here underpin wordless vocals reaching back to Medieval choral music.
Psymon Spine – Be the Worm (Disq Remix) [Northern Spy Records/Bandcamp]
Oh and now we’re back to remixed indie music. The chaotic remix of NYC psych/postpunks Psymon Spine here, going from electro to manic drum’n’bass and hardcore, trancey ambient and back again, is not by some deconstructed club producer – it’s from postpunk/indie rockers Disq, havin’ a fuckin’ ball in the studio, and it shows. Heaps fun.
Impérieux – Deliro [Macro/Bandcamp]
Berlin label Macro is home to Stefan Goldmann, whose music bends between dancefloor techno and highly conceptual work. He co-runs the label with DJ Finn Johannsen and their curation goes far afield to glitched jazz and even works of Goldmann’s composer father Friedrich Goldmann. But there’s techno as well, and Impérieux very much fits the bill – both in the dancefloor connection and the experimentalism. Alper Durmush is from Kırcaali, a Bulgarian city with a history tied up with Turkey and Greece. Bulgaria’s the connection – Goldmann is part-Bulgarian, and Impérieux has recorded for Sofia Records, the label of Bulgarian techno legend KiNK. Of course this is Macro records, so the techno here is never straight-laced. And of course I like it with breakbeats and syncopated bass hits. There’s lots going on here, and lots of nice breakbeat manipulation too.
celine arnauld – {data ∩ control} [Polygon Network/Bandcamp]
Well, speaking of beat manipulation, a few weeks back we heard from Spanish producer Pablo Miranda under the DJ Don’t Sleep alias with his incredible haunted rave album Digital Subscriber on Stolen Groove. But his stuff under the Celine Arnauld very much references rave tropes as well as IDM and glitch, and his data control v1 really pushes the bleeps & breaks into experimental territory. Each track, with titles referencing functional mathematics and set theory, comes out of little experiments in Ableton & Max for Live, each of which was then resampled and cut up into glitchy, alien dance music. Released on the experimental electronic label Polygon Network, based in Bilbao, in northern Spain.
Hence Therefore – Elite Panic [All Centre/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney’s Hence Therefore has settled into the non-pattern of just releasing music every so often, but when he does it’s worth immediate attention. His latest two-tracker Elite Panic is his second on the excellent UK left-of-centre dance label All Centre, with two tracks of snappy, fidgety 170bpm beats, somewhere between footwork and jungle-techno.
Aroma Nice – Trublz [Rua Sound]
After an album and EPs on his mate Earl Grey‘s Hyperchamber Music some years back, UK junglist Luke Fashoni aka Aroma Nice released a couple of brilliant EPs on YUKU in the last couple of years. The pair are also Monlogue, whose second EP came out on Irish label Rua Sound – and now the same label has brought Aroma Nice into the fold with new EP His Rotting Tongue. Fashoni is one of the best beat manglers in the game at the moment, and he has a great ear for basslines and samples, and a great sense of pacing. Wicked.
Rutger Zuydervelt – Credits [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
In 2016, Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefbabriek) released his score for the video game Astroneer – actually a second part came out the following year. Now comes his follow-up, a soundtrack to Microtopia, which has pretty gorgeous graphics. Rutger’s music is mostly more towards the sound-art and ambient – this is not an action game! – but the credits theme is punctuated by crashing bass pulses. Lovely.
Constantine Skourlis – Collapse (Tilman Robinson Remix) [Bedouin Records/Bandcamp] Bedouin Records – now based in Japan – has only put out a few releases in the last year or two, but there has been a bit of activity from Greek composer & sound-artist Constantine Skourlis, including a big sound-work last year called Dawn Eternal. His major work Eternal Recurrence came out in 2020, and now its opening track has received a potent remix from Tilman Robinson, Perth composer & producer based in Naarm/Melbourne. The themes of environmental & political collapse are close to Tilman’s heart as well, so this is apocalyptic, resonant stuff.
Markus Sollid – Spirit Cable Error [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp] Eastern Nurseries is one of those Portuguese (in their case, part-Portuguese) labels putting out consistently interesting stuff of indeterminate genre. Copenhagen’s Markus Sollid here presents two short tracks – both under 5 minutes – which seem to last much longer. You could describe it as drone, but that gives the lie to the fact that they’re quite rhythmic in their way, with lots of gurgling, shuddering granular disintegration. I’ve ended up listening to these multiple times as they’re evocative and full of detail.
VIRUS2020 ( فيروس ٢٠٢٠ ) – A FROG فيروس٢٠٢٠ ـ ممكن في رأسي ضفدع [Unexplained Sounds] VIRUS2020 ( فيروس ٢٠٢٠ ) – فيروس٢٠٢٠ ـ تلاقين [Unexplained Sounds]
Tunisian musician & producer Rami Harrabi aka VIRUS2020 ( فيروس ٢٠٢٠ ) released his debut non-self-released album in 2023 on Unexplained Sounds, the experimental international label run by Raffaele Pezzella. Khushue was a mixture of performance and sampling of North African & Middle Eastern instrumentation, processed into strange forms of industrial drone. With the sequel A FROG A GUN AND A SAD MAN فيروس٢٠٢٠ ـ الضفدع ، المسدس و الرجل الحزين, the samples limp and warble in reverberant space, cut in uneven ways, slowed down and stretched out like chopped & screwed hip-hop shorn of beats. It’s a haunting lugubriousness that sometimes twists into noise, an album to sink into and let it work its magic.
Demdike Stare and Kristen Pilon – A Grave Fall (January) [DDS] Demdike Stare and Kristen Pilon – Was He Good – The Bunny Business [DDS]
You rarely get the same thing twice with Demdike Stare, whose earlier works were haunted by strains of arcane English folk and psychedelia, but who have deep links to UK bass music as well. Their latest release, To Cut and Shoot is drawn from sound material created by US filmmaker & musician Kristen Pilon for an experimental film of the same name, chopping & screwing her piano, strings and voice into something broken & namelessly evocative, at times noisy and rhythmic in an almost clubby way, but mostly set adrift in warp and glitch. As might be obvious, this maps quite specifically on to Utility Fog’s central concerns, and, helpfully, it’s really really good.
Alister Spence Trio – Moment Between [Alister Spence Bandcamp]
It’s been a while since we heard from Alister Spence Trio as a trio. In 2020 the trio teamed up with Ed Kuepper for the excellent Asteroid Ekosystem, which was followed with the equally great live album in 2023. But a pure trio album hasn’t been heard since 2017’s Not everything but enough. Although they’re led by Alister on the piano and sampler, the three members are all essential: The Necks’ Lloyd Swanton is a sensitive & creative bass player, who also comfortably plays his role in the rhythm section with Toby Hall, and both have been essential members of the Sydney jazz scene for decades. In my opinion, the Alister Spence Trio is a key part of this country’s jazz landscape.
Alex Zethson & Johan Jutterström – It could have been very very beautiful (Live at Liljevalchs) [thanatosis/Alex Zethson Bandcamp]
Stockholm musicians Alex Zethson (piano) & Johan Jutterström (saxophone) have known each other since they were teens. Now Zethson runs the Thanatosis label, releasing jazz and free improv and sometimes drone/noise, and also collaborates widely. Zethson & Jutterström’s duo album It could / If I is out in April, but it’s preceded by a little 7″ featuring two of the tracks. When I played this on air I’d mistakenly read the credits wrongly; “It could have been very very beautiful” is actually a cover of a song by John Lurie of The Lounge Lizards (click the link to listen). It’s actually highly abstracted from the original’s late-night noir, but it’s got its own beautifully wistful thing going.
Tim Hecker – Monotone 3 [kranky/Bandcamp]
Wonderful to have a new Tim Hecker album out, and even though this one collects Shards of music originally made for film & TV projects, it’s got all the hallmarks of Tim Hecker’s musical talent. Granular & glitchy, droney but full of acoustic samples as well, it’s a beauty. “Monotone 3” has bass clarinet arpeggiating throughout from Victor Alibert.
It’s the time of experimental pop at the moment – for very stretched interpretations of pop, perhaps. So we have many weird-ass songs tonight. Also some storming beats and some messed-up beats, some gorgeous acoustic sounds and some pretty messed-up acoustic sounds. It’s Utility Fog. It’s another week. It’s Sunday.
LISTEN AGAIN – stream on demand @ fbi.radio or podcast here.
ROMÆO – Wariness [ROMÆO Bandcamp]
After a couple of excellent singles, the new EP from Eora/Sydney singer/producer ROMÆO is finally out. Eternal Recurrence has a recurring theme of Stoicism – amor fait is loving, or accepting, one’s fate – seen through an ended relationship and more general ennui. “Wariness” comes directly before the closer, “Something New”, and describes the feeling of having to unearth long-unused abilities when there’s a need for change…
Majken – High up on a Mountain [sing a song fighter]
Swedish singer-songwriter Majken grew up in a Pentecostal household where music was ever-present. And while she now believes that “politicized religion is the most dangerous thing in the world”, those musical roots are still heard in the blissful harmonies in her songs – her new album is called Korus after all. The record, released on October 24th, is mostly performed by herself, on guitar, piano, synths and samples, and a harp recorded in a Malmö concert hall. The contradictions between choral arrangements and Majken’s non-belief, between gentle indie-folk and electronics, bring a tension to the work which enhances the beauty of Majken’s voice and songwriting.
R/A/D – Red [Prohibited Records/Bandcamp] R/A/D – Mauve [Prohibited Records/Bandcamp]
French-American vocalist Brisa Roché heard French guitarist and Prohibited Records founder Nicolas Laureau in one of his bands and was moved to get in touch – and everyone knows when two musicians meet, another band is formed. R/A/D pairs voice and guitar as spoken word and drone, until melodies are heard from the voice, and the guitar becomes more structured, or more electronic-sounding. Pretty rad indeed.
Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Inuti-I [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
When I went to the Planet µ 30th gig in London (and I apologise for constantly bringing it up), I got to see experimental electronic mastermind Rian Treanor performing some new material with experimental vocalist Cara Tolmie. It was really special, but it does help, I think, to be able to experience these works at home or on headphones. It’s a super varied album – from extended vocal techniques from Tolmie to spoken word and even singing(?), with Treanor slipping between post-rave deconstructions, glitched ambient and the more cerebral, academic or avant-garde, all of which connects and differentiates him from his father Mark Fell (Treanor absolutely has his own aesthetic and is extremely talented at whatever genres he sets his sights on). A few weeks ago I mentioned with regard to the wonderful album closer “Endless Not” that t’s hard not to be reminded of Big Hard Excellent Fish’s 1990 broadside “Imperfect List“. That’s true, and it’s high praise, but as I’ve said here, that’s only one aspect of the whole, so here’s a track with demented beats and Tolmie speaking, stuttering, singing in full flight. This is an amazing album – don’t be turned away by the experimentalism or spoken word!
Ship Sket – Vendetta’s Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. InitiatriX is out on October 31st, with three tracks already available including the single “Vendetta’s Theme” with vocals from UK multimedia artist Charlie Osborne just about audible through the chaotic mix. Feels like this will be a helluva thing.
IFS meets MA – Kamen [guides (outlines)/Bandcamp] IFS meets MA – Kiloqh [guides (outlines)/Bandcamp]
The combination of Polish experimental electronic duo IFS and Japanese experimental rapper MA on the album REIFSMA was a surprising highlight of 2023. MA is an experimental rapper whose delivery conveys a lot even for those of us who don’t speak Japanese – from last year, see his collaboration with DJ DIE SOON, DIEMAJIN. And the footwork tempo of most tracks seemed to suit his flow. Late last year, outlines released REIFSMA Remixed, with adventurous – mostly footwork – producers from round the world reworking that first collaboration, but now comes a slightly different collaborative project. Billed as IFS meets MA, this is planned to be followed by other “IFS meets…” works, which I’m absolutely here for. Meanwhile though, MA is an amazing rapper & vocalist, over some quite abstract electronics here and some varied beats.
Kirin McElwain – Youth [AKP Recordings/Bandcamp]
If you know me at all, you know I’m a cellist and I collect adventurous cellists (not physically, at least not often) of all stripes. Brooklyn-based cellist Kirin McElwain is releasing her debut solo album Youth on October 10th. First single “Closer” demonstrates not just her cello but the cello-like halldorophone, a hybrid acoustic/electronic instrument created by Halldor Úlfarsson that has also been used by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Turkish musician Başak Günak among others. The halldorophone produces feedback through sympathetic strings and resonances, and these otherworldly drones are augmented with further electronics by McElwain throughout the album. The title track here starts with a few notes on the cello, which are joined by some plucked cello-bass, but by halfway through there’s an insistent synth pulse pushing through McElwain’s repeated vocal refrains. Lovely stuff.
Friend of a Friend – beautiful ppl (Armaan Sabharwal Remix) [Earth Libraries/Eventually on Bandcamp?]
Here’s something really interesting. Chicago duo Friend of a Friend are an indie rock band with a strong electronic backbone, whose recent single “beautiful ppl” combines melodic keyboards with upbeat drums that hint at drum’n’bass, and a vocal melody from singer Claire Molek that hints at Jason Savsani’s Indian heritage. Now the band have handed the song over to rising Indian pop/fusion star Armaan Sabharwal, who interjects his own vocals on top of and in between Molek’s lines, and intensifies both the drum’n’bass and Indian elements. It’s brilliant – while it’s not yet up on Bandcamp (and I’m writing this a couple of weeks late), you can hear it here and elsewhere on streaming services.
Fracture & Tim Reaper – Dancing Toms [Astrophonica/Bandcamp/Future Retro/Bandcamp]
Two generations, two undisputed greats of the current jungle/drum’n’bass scene, 3 years to complete these 4 tracks. Co-released on Fracture’s Astrophonica and Tim Reaper’s Future Retro, this would have to be of the highest quality or something’s very wrong with the universe. I mean… something really is wrong with the world, but let’s be absolutely clear: this is fucking class, right through its four tracks. Crisp beats that skitter & flip & judder to a halt, basslines that go from one-note specials to bouncing melodies in their own right, and plenty going on in the mid-range too when it’s needed. A must for junglists everywhere.
Sheba Q – Asterix (Dub One Remix) [Over/Shadow/Bandcamp]
Jungle DJ & vocalist Sheba Q comes out with her own solo EP on 2 Bad Mice‘s Over/Shadow label. The original of “Asterix” was co-produced with Newcastle junglist Nectax, and it’s got a blissful, nostalgic feel. But on the flip, Dub One drops us into darkstyle rave hell, mid-’90s style. All three tracks are quality.
Travis Cook – cradle [Travis Cook Bandcamp]
So our Travis – or technically Adelaide’s Travis Cook – is planning to release a track a week on his Bandcamp for a year. Travis was one half of Collarbones with our (Sydney’s) Marcus Whale, so yeah, he has the production chops and ear for weird pop down pat. “Cradle” is kind of in that almost-drum’n’bass realm. If it didn’t cut off just after 2 minutes it’d be even better :)
Katharina Ernst – x_10 [Extrametric Records/Bandcamp]
It’s been 7 years since Berlin-based drummer & artist Katharina Ernst released her debut album Extrametric. Extrametric II takes off where the debut ended (literally, in the sense that the numbering continues after the debut’s closing track “x_07”). While Extrametric did have electronics and melodic elements, it felt like it could have been performed live (albeit in some mind-bending way). The intense works found on the second album feature Ernst’s voice, spoken and sung and warbled, with amplified percussion and synths making it more of studio-constructed, multi-tracked affair, but there are powerful percussive performances at heart of most of the compositions. Combining noise and industrial with a very German detached artiness, this is highly compelling work, and you shouldn’t let it pass you by.
Ujif_notfound – Catch The Gifts [I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free/Bandcamp] Ujif_notfound – Coda Misto [I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free/Bandcamp] Georgiy Potopalskiy is well-known in his home country of Ukraine not just for his experimental electronic project Ujif_notfound but as a composer of electro-acoustic operas and as a multimedia artist. I discovered him in 2019 via a huge conceptual collection of music on USB Card on the now sadly-defunct Ukrainian label Kvitnu. Both artists behind that label now run Prostir and child label I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free, whose name is self-explanatory for a Ukrainian label. The third album from Ujif_notfound on ISSUMLIF is Postulate, which detours into intensely distorted guitars and crunching beats, depicting the constant terror of wartime living. Among the heavy-duty noisetronics there are occasional bouts of uneasy calm. Powerful to listen to in context.
Einmal Immer – Darkred [Playdate Records/Bandcamp]
Bergen’s Playdate Records here release a project combining three great musicians from across Norway’s music worlds. Einmal Immer features Espen Sommer Eide of pioneering electro-acousticfolktronic band Alog, Stephan Meidell of jazz/postrock band Cakewalk among many others, and Øyvind Hegg-Lunde of avant-garde electronic folk/jazz/pop group Building Instrument and many others. Live instruments (Meidell’s baritone guitar and Hegg-Lunde’s drums) combine with Espen Sommer Eide’s modular synth and all sorts of studio trickery from both him and Meidell. It’s impossible to peg it down to krautrock, postrock, very experimental electronic music or… jazz? In this way, it’s perfect Utility Fog music, and I love them for it.
André Vida – Changing Lockets [André Vida Bandcamp]
Berlin-based saxophonist and experimental musician André Vida writes about how as a kid he used the saxophone as a kind of way to hide from social interactions, and breathing (and “speaking”) through the saxophone became his norm. Four decades later, he was starting to feel caught in the same musical gestures, the same ways of modulating the column of air through the sax’s body. Thus, on his new album Breathless he’s removed the mouthpiece and close-mic’d the instrument, amplifying the sounds produced by holding and percussively tapping the keys. The aural similarity with glitched sound processing, the way the very percussive rhythms modulate the hidden melodies in the resonances, is remarkable. While many wind instrumentalists will have experimented with this “breathless” slap-style playing, Vida has gone deep and built up a new language here.
Poor Isa + Evan Parker/Ingar Zach – Ply [Aspen Edities/Bandcamp] Ruben Machtelinckx is one the core artists connected withg genre-defying Belgian label Aspen Edities. A keen collaborator, he can be found in ensembles with folk, jazz, postrock and electronic leanings, often all together. The Poor Isa duo features Machtelinckx and percussionist Frederik Leroux both playing banjo and woodblocks, making a strangely deconstructed version of traditional folk, classical or jazz forms. Their new album (simply titled after the participants) finds them collaborating with two more adventurous musicians: British free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach. This is a natural extension of Poor Isa’s musical aesthetic: Parker plays both with restraint and comes unchained, at times echoing the breathless wind-percussion of the aforementioned André Vida, while Zach slips inside the woodblocks and extended techniques with resonances that are textural as much as rhythmical. The best kind of acoustic experimentation, exploratory and beautiful.
Giuseppe Ielasi – 02 [Senufo Editions Bandcamp] Giuseppe Ielasi – 05 [Senufo Editions Bandcamp]
Italian sound-artist/producer/guitarist/etc Giuseppe Ielasi has now released the sequel to an insistence on material vol. 1, and yep, it’s an insistence on material vol. 2. Past series of Ielasi’s have involved mechanical machines butting their heads on paper hooked up to contact mics, or music made from run-out grooves of vinyl records, or blurry guitar loops – just about anything really, including minimal beats (from strange sources). So “an insistence on material” could be an insistence on physical sound sources… or it could just be, you know, putting out material of some sort? Like the first volume, these numbered tracks are vintage Ielasi – strangely cut, warbling tape (or vinyl?) loops, anonymous sputtering anti-rhythms… Wonderful.
Lovers – Dancing In The Dark [Thanatosis/Bandcamp]
Out now on Alex Zethson‘s Thanatosis is the debut from Lovers, the duo of vocalist Linda Oláh and guitarist Giani Caserotto. But “voice and guitar” this ain’t: the music here inhabits a glitched, transformed space of electro-acoustic experimentation – although the duo have modelled Lettres d’amour on the tradition of love serenades, performed by troubadors accompanying themselves on lutes. If so, this is the past seen through a crack’d mirror.
Susannah Stark – Trì stiùirichean [Night School Records/Bandcamp/STROOM.tv/Bandcamp]
When Utility Fog started back in 2003, folktronica was a genre of which I was very fond – but it was already pretty hazy as to what it was. Slightly glitchy hip-hop sampling acoustic instruments like Four Tet was what I thought, I guess, although when Tunng came on the scene literally later that year, it held a lot of similarity without quite being the same. And meanwhile The Books were doing studio-mediated music with acoustic instruments that somehow was something else entirely, despite arguably fitting the mould. So I love that in the years since, there have been untold different approaches to “folk” + “electronics”. On her forthcoming album Minor Gestures, Scottish musician Susannah Stark takes her Gaelic (Gàidhlig) folk music in experimental directions, which might involve drone passages on harmonium or modular synth, interpolated field recordings, or sample-based programming. The production touches only serve to heighten the sense of an arcane, otherworldly setting, as if being performed just out of sight or transmitted from a past-future. It’s quite a remarkable album.
Alban Schelbert – Vanity [Präsens Editionen/Bandcamp]
Zurich-based composer Alban Schelbert appears for the second time on the adventurous Swiss label Präsens Editionen, with two pieces from a score he made for a solo dance performance by Thibault Lac. We’re often talking these days about post- or contemporary classical music blurring into experimental electronic production, but rarely do we have compositions as fully-realised and orchestrated as these, yet interspersed with yawing sub-bass and other electronic production techniques. With a total playing time of less than 7 minutes, this is just a little taster, but a very tasty one at that.
Patrick Shiroishi – …what does anyone want but to feel a little more free (feat. Aaron Turner & Faith Coloccia) [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
The prolific Japanese-American musician Patrick Shiroishi has been mostly known to me as a saxophonist – see his incredible solo album Hidemi from 2021 – and working across jazz & improv to noise & punk. But he’s credited nowadays as multi-instrumentalist and composer, as indeed he is. So his latest album Forgetting is Violent may not be as heavy on multi-tracked saxophone as his previous, but it shares with them the thematic background: racism & discrimination, particularly the experience of Japanese people in the USA. During World War II, Japanese Americans – Shiroishi’s grandfather among them – were imprisoned in what were effectively concentration camps because Japan was the “enemy”. On this new album, Shiroishi is joined by many additional musicians, mostly drawn from the metal & punk scene, including Chinese musician otay::onii aka Lane Shi Otayonii of Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Savages’ Gemma Thompson and BIG|BRAVE’s Mathieu Ball. Tonight we heard an incredible track with both SUMAC/Old Man Gloom/ISIS‘s Aaron Turner and his wife Faith Coloccia of Mamiffer and Mára. Powerful stuff.
Gregory Paul Mineeff – 1a. That peace we seek [Off/Bandcamp] Gregory Paul Mineeff – Two Trunkless legs of stone [Off/Bandcamp]
I’ve been playing Wollongong musician Gregory Paul Mineeff‘s music on Utility Fog for ages. I admire his combination of contemplative piano with synths and tape effects, and I’ve been pleased to hear his progression into other forms, bringing guitars in more recently, and on this new album, vocals for the first time. Greg has spread out from Greek label Cosmic Leaf lately, to be found on UK ambient label whitelabrecs, and now Belgian label Off. The album takes inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem Ozymandias, which describes a grandiose power from the deep past, now collapsed and buried in sand. Among the ambient soundscapes, Mineeff’s honest-to-goodness song “Two Trunkless legs of stone” is very evocative, a direction I can’t help hoping we’ll get more glimpses of in the future.
Experimental song reaching out from all quarters tonight, in extremely different ways. A surprising South & Central American focus. We also have some experimental beats, some classical and jazz hybrids, and some sound-art.
LISTEN AGAIN and sing yourself awake… Stream on demand @ fbi.radio, podcast here.
SANAM – Habibon – حبيبٌ [Constellation/Bandcamp]
I was instantly hooked when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background; this second album is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop; Chamoun’s auto-tuned vocals, the cascading keyboards, soft-but-motorik percussion and floating guitars take this in a very different direction from the first single. I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it.
Crimewave – White Label [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp]
Manchester’s Crimewave makes a pretty unique mixture of UK bass & experimental electronic styles with shoegazey indie guitar music. He now finds himself of New York label Fool’s Gold Records with new single “White Label“. It’s short & sweet and definitely hits those old-new vibes, kinda ’90s rock-gone-electric with near-d’n’b rhythms and jittery synths. Don’t leave us waiting so long this time, Crimewave!
plus44Kaligula – Home [plus44Kaligula Bandcamp]
Cally Statham, who performs as plus44Kaligula, hails from England’s north and makes the kind of pop music that lives somewhere between performance art and pop, in the experimental traditions of English pop songwriters like Kate Bush, David Bowie, Annie Lennox et al. There’s a political consciousness to the three songs on this short EP, hidden behind a sardonic, satirical image. And there’s an electronic backbone that takes it out of vaudevillian cabaret into something un-pin-downably modern.
Lucrecia Dalt – the common reader (feat. Juana Molina) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp] Lucrecia Dalt – stelliformia [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
I’ve been following Lucrecia Dalt‘s music since she was The Sound of Lucrecia, making lovely indie music that only fainly hinted at the highly experimental electronics or Latin music that would come into her music in latter years. Her last album, 2022’s ¡Ay!, somehow combined her modular synth work with the music of her Colombian roots and incredible, counter-intuitive orchestrations – a masterpiece. On her new album A Danger To Ourselves, the connection to Latin America is still strong, but it feels like Dalt’s electronics take more of a leading role. There are violins and cello, saxophone and percussion throughout, with some bass and guitar on some tracks. And as well as Dalt’s now-partner David Sylvian, who co-produced the album, there are a few prominent South American guests including Mexican singer & sound-artist Camille Mandoki and the wonderful Juana Molina, whose loop-based, hypnotic songwriting was a favourite on Utility Fog since 2004, and it’s a treasure to hear her voice with Dalt’s here. The balance, if you could call it that, between the experimental and the “pop” elements on this album is thrilling.
Titanic – La dueña [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp] Titanic – Gallina degollada [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp]
Guatemalan (Mexico-resident) cellist Mabe Fratti and longtime collaborator Héctor Tosta de la Rosa (who records as I. la Católica) released their first album as Titanic in 2023. The project is an outlet for I. La Católica’s compositions and arrangements with Fratti’s distinctive, creative cello playing and her emotive voice comfortably at home. Vidrio is now followed by Hagen. There’s some absolutely gorgeous songwriting on here, mostly by I. La Católica, with some co-writes by Fratti, whose singing on all tracks is possibly her best ever. Of course she plays cello too, all over these tracks alongside I. la Católica’s instruments and the pair’s electronics. Hagen has a guest spot from Daniel Oneohtrix Point Never Lopatin on one track, and Lopatin collaborator Nathan Salon adds instrumentation and production on about half the album; the brilliant drummer (and yes, OPN compadre) Eli Keszler also appears. As expected, this is evocative, glistening, and not quite like anything else.
Shapednoise – Repeater (feat. Armand Hammer) [Weight Looming]
When the last Shapednoise album came out, I pointed out that Nino Pedone has one foot in the noise realm, with releases on Prurient’s Hospital Productions among others, and one foot in the bass world, collaborating with Mumdance & Logos on the cyberpunk project The Sprawl. That was Absurd Matter, an ambitious set with many guest vocals, set to massively overdriven beats & bass, and electronic walls of noise (and sometimes melody). Out on September 17th, Absurd Matter 2 is the sequel you’d expect, with both Armand Hammer and Moor Mother returning as guests. And Armand Hammer are easily able to rap over the collapsing structures here – apocalyptic visions.
Ziúr – Though The Trees feat. Iceboy Violet [Kuboraum Editions/Bandcamp]
Based in Berlin, Ziúr has been taking her own path through club music and pop, punk and glitchy experimentation for about a decade, with releases on PAN and Planet µ among others. Her new album Home, released through Berlin’s Kuboraum Editions, reflects on what it means to be “home”, in both geographical and personal terms. This is Ziúr’s least dancefloor-oriented album, leaning more into a kind of cabaret-pop as explored by plus44Kaligula earlier tonight. But it’s also her most personal, featuring Ziúr singing in English and also for the first time in German. The guests helping her along here, who include Elvin Brandhi, Sara Persico, cellist/sound-artist Martina Bertoni, doom metal/electronic producer James Ó Ceallaigh and UK rapper/producer Iceboy Violet, make it clear that a found/chosen community is home too.
Sacred Lodge – A Bo Biboa [Avon Terror Corps]
Out through Bristol collective Avon Terror Corps is the second album from Paris-based Matthieu Ruben N’Dongo, under the alias Sacred Lodge. Ambam comes out of his ethno-musicological studies into the Fang people of Central Africa, from whom he’s descended via his father. On top of his dubstep-influenced beats, his own voice is central: he “uses the scream as a vocal act of liberation in the face of oppression”, joined on a few tracks by guests, including Sara Persico who we heard a few weeks ago, and Cairo-based producer El Kontessa. Elements from Equatorial Guinea, horrorcore rap and bass music come together powerfully on this album – just as exciting as the African metal/bass music fusion of Lord Spikeheart.
electroneya, MARTINA, TNSXORDS – (NO WAY OUT!) !مفيش مفر [raghoul/Bandcamp]
From Moroccan bass label raghoul here’s a three track EP, (SAFETY HAZARD) مخاطر السلامة, from Egyptian producers/DJs electroneya and MARTINA (Martina Ashraf), who each contribute one track and then collaborate together with London-based TNSXORDS. These tracks express claustrophobia and repression through deconstructed, percussive bass music.
Lila Tirando a Violeta, sideproject – Ostrich/Ñandú [Unguarded/Bandcamp]
An unexpected single-track collaboration, “Ostrich/Ñandú” is just what you’d expect to get when crossing Icelandic IDM duo(?) sideproject and Ireland-based Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta – percussion-soaked frenetic beats, with even the backing tracks mostly jittering along in rhythm. Nobody here’s burying their head in the sand.
Brandon Juhans – The Saw I Saw [Relaxin Records/Bandcamp] Brandon Juhans – Gardenia [Relaxin Records/Bandcamp]
And scant relaxin’ here despite Relaxin Records‘ name. They’re the home for North Carolina producer Brandon Juhans‘ latest album, Recycler which, true to its name, repurposes sounds from Juhans’ past music under his own name and previously as Hanz, much in the way that his own music freely samples from any kind of music and dices it up into material for his sui generis productions. When he gets going, Juhans’ music sounds like hip-hop trying to be jungle, or jungle turned inside out. It’s a disorienting approach in the most pleasing way.
Blawan – NOS [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
In the last few years, Jamie Roberts aka Blawan has released some of the most forward-thinking, fucked-up bass music around. From 2021’s Woke Up Right Handed, the bass rumbles and throbs, the beats syncopate and shuffle but hit haaaard. In 2023, Dismantled Into Juice went considerably left-field, with a couple of tracks featuring vocals from Monstera Black. And if last year’s BouQ veered back towards the dancefloor, it’s no less experimental for that. Notably in the meantime he also paired up with longtime collaborator Arthur Cayzer aka Pariah for two albums of industrial grindcore & noise rock (with hints of bass music) as Persher. This all culminates in October with the full-length album SickElixir, of which only one of its 14 tracks has a title announced. “NOS” has the high-tech sound design of those recent releases, along with a chugging rhythm that suggests this album will be essential from start to finish.
POD & Edward Richards – Polar Phase [Kinetic Vision]
As POD, the Naarm/Melbourne producer also known as JXTPS and Wu Kush has tended to focus more on bass music, from dubstep to jungle. For the forthcoming Polar Phase EP he’s working with Edward Richards, his partner in running the Kinetic Vision label, exploring the potential of 100BPM – somewhere between bass music and techno. What we get is a verrrry nice slab of kind-of dub techno, with slow-growing synth drones and pulses. “Polar” seems apt.
Joaquín Cornejo – Garúa [YUKU/Bandcamp] Cap I Cua from Ecuadorian producer Joaquín Cornejo is one of the prettiest releases YUKU have ever released. It doesn’t eschew complex beats at all, but they’re there more as hints at jittery IDM and footwork, with very little sub bass. It’s beautiful from top to bottom, and when you settle in, the rhythmic elements dance around you, like the skittering hi-hats in “Garúa”.
james K – Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream [AD93/Bandcamp]
While I loved the first trip-hoppy song I heard from james K, it’s indicative of her versatility that the first thing I really heard was the very avant-garde ELEKTRA (Scream Through the Eyes of a Statue), a 74-minute work interrogating the idea of the female voice, that came with a quote from Anne Carson that reads “Why is female sound bad to hear?” Carson is both specifically referencing the descriptions of women’s sounds as awful and wild in Greek mythology, and extending to the continued silencing of women’s voices in patriarchal society. In that work, james K and accompanying performers took the screams of Elektra in Sophocles’ tragedy as the starting point for their work. In contrast, her album Friend filters her voice through vapoury trip-hop, both a callback to the genre’s ’90s atmospheres and breakbeats and a futuristic take through vaporwave, dreampop and deconstructed club sounds. There’s a lot here, but it is a Friendly listen.
Oli XL – CONSPIRACY GIRL (ft. Valeria Litvakov) [Warp/Bandcamp]
I’ve been aware of Swedish producer Oli XL since a 2018 compilation on Denmark’s Posh Isolation, but he signed to Warp in 2021, released a 2-track single and then fell silent until now (seems there were some legal/label issues, but he’s still on Warp!) Anyway, Lick The Lens / Pt.1 is in fact half an album, with Pt.2 still to come this year. Hopefully it’ll take him stratospheric, as this is pop, hip-hop, r’n’b, whatever you like, and it’s also super complex electronica. Heaps of great guests including the aforementioned james K, and the Berlin-based Valeria Litvakov on a couple of tracks. Rad.
Susannah Stark – Caochan [Night School Records/Bandcamp/STROOM.tv/Bandcamp]
When Utility Fog started back in 2003, folktronica was a genre of which I was very fond – but it was already pretty hazy as to what it was. Slightly glitchy hip-hop sampling acoustic instruments like Four Tet was what I thought, I guess, although when Tunng came on the scene literally later that year, it held a lot of similarity without quite being the same. And meanwhile The Books were doing studio-mediated music with acoustic instruments that somehow was something else entirely, despite arguably fitting the mould. So I love that in the years since, there have been untold different approaches to “folk” + “electronics”. On her forthcoming album Minor Gestures, Scottish musician Susannah Stark takes her Gaelic (Gàidhlig) folk music in experimental directions, which might involve drone passages on harmonium or modular synth, interpolated field recordings, or sample-based programming. The production touches only serve to heighten the sense of an arcane, otherworldly setting, as if being performed just out of sight or transmitted from a past-future. It’s quite a remarkable album, as you will get to hear in coming weeks.
Blue Lake – Flowers for David (single edit) [Tonal Union/Bandcamp]
It sometimes seems like Americana is a genre that’s kept alive by Scandinavia. You’ll hear its influence in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish jazz & folk, and it really does feel like it belongs in their landscapes. I do forget this sometimes, so it was a double-take moment when I realised that Blue Lake is not an American project – Jason Dungan is Danish, based in the lovely city of Copenhagen. With forthcoming album The Animal, technically his second album of 2025 after Weft, Dungan somehow imbues this acoustic music with the feel of gentle postrock or folktronica, without explicit electronic or electric sounds. As well as himself on various guitars, zither, keyboards and percussion, he has bass clarinet, strings and a drummer, most of whom sing as well (even though these aren’t really songs or choral works). It’s a joy to listen to.
Gabriel Prokofiev feat. FAMES European Youth Orchestra – Dark Lights [Nonclassical/Bandcamp]
I’m not quite sure how, but I was in with the Nonclassical label since the very beginning, with founder Gabriel Prokofiev‘s String Quartet No. 1 performed by The Elysian Quartet, accompanied – as many releases following were – by remixes from across the experimental, dubstep & club spectrum. Prokofiev (who is the grandson of the great Russian neo-classicist & modernist Sergei Prokofiev) continued writing works for piano, chamber ensembles and orchestra, and incorporating electronics – I’ve played him quite a bit over the years. Now he’s back on Nonclassical with the first single from an upcoming album, “Dark Lights“, which incorporates the playing of the FAMES European Youth Orchestra with grime-influenced electronics. There’s also a remix by composer/producer Adhelm aka Beni Giles – both versions are great.
Johnny Richards & Dave King – Gene Heard Wrong [False Door Records] The Bad Plus (especially when they were a piano trio) are one of the great crossover-jazz ensembles of the last few decades, known for their surprising covers (Aphex Twin, Pixies, Stravinsky etc) and their brilliant original material too. And if you know that Aphex Twin cover, you’ll know that Dave King is a machine of a drummer when he needs to be, as well as a sensitive ensemble member. Leeds, UK pianist Johnny Richards is a member of the Ethio-jazz-inspired Sorcerers (listen to their excellent new album!) and the virtuosic, surreal improv troupe Shatner’s Bassoon. Together, their duo album The New Awkward is out now. It was created remotely, started during COVID lockdown, but there’s no sign of that in the alchemical creations from the pair. Richards uses the piano like a percussion instrument, with layers of prepared piano and straight piano in conversation with King’s busy percussion. In keeping with Utility Fog’s longtime interest in music between the genres, Richards’ metal preparations recall Javanese gamelan, while the compositions draw from the counterpoint of J.S. Bach – elsewhere there are inspirations from Mr Bungle and Frank Zappa, 20th century composers like Hindemith and Schoenberg, early Robert Wyatt and more.
Flur – Nightdiver [Latency/Bandcamp]
New jazz from London-based trio Flur, released on the uncategorizable French label Latency. Made up of Austrian-Ethiopean harpist Miriam Adefris, and British saxophonist and drummer Isaac Robertson and Dillon Harrison, this is chamber jazz of an unusual nature, restrained where it needs to be, but willing to unleash as well. Sparingly-used production techniques add to the air of mystery.
Lea Bertucci – In This Time [Cibachrome Editions]
It should be well-known and universally acknowledged now that Lea Bertucci is one of the best sound-artist/composers of the last decade and a half. Whether site-specific works exploring & exploiting – for instance – the resonance of a hollow bridge in Köln (2020’s Acoustic Shadows), myriad works live-processing her own saxophone and other instruments, or her work with reel-to-reel tape machines, she’s a master of her craft. Recent times have seen a number of incredible collaborations from Bertucci: in 2022, she operated tapes & electronics around Robbie Lee‘s baroque & medieval instruments on Winds Bells Falls, while on Murmurations, her tapes were as prominent, but she also brought various wind instruments and her voice to the table, next to Ben Vida‘s synths & voice; and on her tectonic collaboration in 2023 with Brisbane’s own Lawrence English cello, viola and lap steel guitar emerge as well; earlier this year Lawrence’s ROOM40 released an astounding work of Bertucci together with another masterful sound-artist, Olivia Block. So needless to say her new album The Oracle, out on October 17th, is a tour de force, engaging her many instruments, field recoridngs and, importantly, her own voice, all filtered through tape manipulation and digital processing (unless it’s all tape!) Only on the last track are percussionists from the Wesleyan University Taiko Ensemble enlisted for a booming – yet obscured – finale. Of course, it’s not just technially interesting or impressive (although it is those things) – it’s also music that will draw you in and move you, despite the vocals being twisted into non-textual shapes. It’ll easily be high on my albums of the year list for 2025.
soccer Committee – Pretty little foxes [Morc Records/Bandcamp/soccer Committee Bandcamp]
I have been a dedicated fan of Dutch singer-songwriter Mariska Baars for many years, via Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek – both working with him under her own name, and then in equally mysterious projects such as Piiptsjilling and FEAN with the Kleefstra brothers and others. Where Jan Kleefstra performs his poetry in Frisian, Baars sings either wordlessly or in English. Her work, as soccer Committee and in other groups, is characterised by an exquisite restraint, whereby if you’re listening you can’t help but be drawn into the patiently unfolding melodies and subtle but essential textures. Even without Machinefabriek’s sensitive deconstructions around the edges of their collaborative work, Baars seems to dismantle and rebuild the fabric of her songs so that they are as attenuated as possible while still holding together. In 2023 she released ❤️ /Lamb, her most confident and fully-realised album yet, and only 2 years later, she’s back on Morc Records with eye, which will no doubt be equally gorgeous and tenuous.
I do want to point you to where I discovered Mariska Baars, with Machinefabriek on their incredible album Drawn, which birthed the Redrawn compilation of remixes and covers – an album I return to frequently.
Experimental maneuvres in pop, hip-hop, jazz, rock and electronics, percussive approaches to musique concrète as well as jazz-rock-tronica, vinyl manipulations with dark electronics, spoken word, field recordings, ambient installation work and post-classical piano.
LISTEN AGAIN to the percussion, the glitches, the samples. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
Marcus Whale – Eye [Blue Void/Bandcamp]
Two Eora/Sydney ledges bundled into one split single… Grasps and Marcus Whale have put together a four-track release on which both artists created one song and then one ambient version. And not only that, they’ve done a CD version (split CDs always seemed odd, but they’re still beautiful CDs so hey…) I wanted to play Grasps’ ambient version, but I just couldn’t find the space… so suffice to say all four tracks are great. Here we have Utility Fog mainstay Marcus Whale with a typically catchy piece of experimental electronic pop, complete with jungle breaks. Thematically, it could easily have come off last year’s Ecstasy album.
Lessons In Time – Deuteronomy 1:8 [4-4-2 Music/Bandcamp]
Due to families and life, it’s been a while since we’ve heard much from the Telafonica family, a Sydney indietronic band with various offshoots of different members, generally released through 4-4-2 Music, the label run by Telafonica’s Adrian Elmer. One of my favourites was always the weird & passionate music of Blake Wassell under the name Lessons In Time. And here, more than a decade since his last release, is a new EP from Lessons In Time. Each track is named after some bible verses, and central to Moses and a Lowrey is the Lowrey organ. But Blake’s got everything severely limited past the distortion point, crashing into hard edits and generally creating chaos that’s offset by the fact that he writes lovely melodies that Sufjan Stevens would be proud of. Great to have him back.
Anne-James Chaton, Andy Moor & Yannis Kyriakides – Pas De Danse [Unsounds/Bandcamp]
This Handmade series of singles from the Unsounds label represents in some ways the core of the label – although Unsounds encompasses everything from modern composition to experimetnal postpunk to glitchy pop. Along with graphic designer Isabelle Vigier, the label was founded by two of the players here: Netherlands-based Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides and Scottish guitarist Andy Moor, who’s played for decades in the Dutch anarcho-punk band The Ex. They’ve made a bunch of albums together, with Moor’s instinctual command of angular guitar phrasing and Kyriakides’ electronics producing unexpected (and brilliant) results. Moor has also collaborated with French avant-garde writer and artist Anne-James Chaton for ages, and their duo recordings follow a similar pattern to these tracks – motorik rhythms looped on guitar, and Chaton’s oblique spoken word poetry slotting in over it. Playing with minimalist rhythms is familiar for Chaton as he’s also worked with Alva Noto; on this series, Kyriakides joins in with additional electronics. Art-punk for (very experimental) dancefloors?
doseone & Height Keech – Wood Teeth [doseone Bandcamp]
Following his brilliant album All Portrait, No Chorus with Steel Tipped Dove earlier this year, veteran alt.hip-hop mouth doseone has dived right back into the swing of things. Here’s a new EP produced entirely by Baltimore beatmaker Height Keech, which is laser-focused on the current moment – it was written and recorded in June 2025. And of course it’s about the descent of the USA into fascism, basically. What a time to be alive.
Kae Tempest – Diagnoses [Island Records]
The journey to being Kae Tempest has been a big & daunting one. Lauded as one of the best writers in the rap world since their extraordinary 2014 album Everybody Down, they were painfully confronted with their presentation as a cis woman with long curls. In 2020 Tempest came out as trans, using they/them pronouns, and the 2022 album The Line Is A Curve is very much about that transformation, but now Self Titled brings further transformation, as Tempest has now had top surgery and is taking testosterone. You can hear that in his voice on some of these tracks. I love the album title: self-titled albums often denote a turning point for an artist, but naming the album “Self Titled” comments nicely on an artist who’s found his true self. There’s a confidence in the delivery and the lyrics here which supports that. Everybody Down featured beautiful vignettes about different people in an apartment building; now the artist it the subject of the art. “Diagnoses” comments on the explosion of diagnoses of neurodivergence, dysphoria, anxiety, and so on, “But it’s the world that’s sick, baby, we’re alright”. Yeah that about sums it up.
John Glacier – Fly With Me [Young/Bandcamp]
Despite living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, the poet & rapper known as John Glacier has been constantly on the rise for a few years – working as a model as well as an experimental musician. Her album Like A Ribbon – collecting three EPs from last year and this year – came out in February, and she’s already put a new single out. “Fly With Me” was made again with Kwes Darko, with Glacier’s low-key delivery over what initially sounds like Darth Vader’s theme in hip-hop form. “I’m a sight to see, not a sight for sore eyes…”
She’s Analog – narrow pass [Carton Records/Carton Bandcamp/Torto Editions/Bandcamp/She’s Analog Bandcamp] She’s Analog – danse macabre [Carton Records/Carton Bandcamp/Torto Editions/Bandcamp/She’s Analog Bandcamp]
The second album from Italian trio She’s Analog is a compelling mix of (post-)jazz, postrock, electroacoustic music and more. At times they can sound like a minimalist jazz piano trio, at other times like a motorik, minimalist postpunk band. It’s clearly put together from partly improvised elements, but there’s also careful composition here, drawing different moments from the album together, with electronic elements also pointing to the way this music was crafted in the studio. But there’s also a real melodic sense that draws you in for repeat listens, which I’ve been enjoying this week.
Tim Barnes – Just A Suggestion (feat. Joshua Abrams and David Daniell) [Drag City/Bandcamp]
US percussionist Tim Barnes has appeared with a host of musicians from the rock, jazz and experimental scenes over a few decades. The list is long, and includes Jim O’Rourke and two bands he’s had a hand in, Wilco and Sonic Youth, as well as Stereolab, Faust and Alan Licht to give you an idea of the breadth. Sadly, a few years ago Barnes revealed that he was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s, making it hard to communicate verbally. It’s an awful disease for the sufferer’s loved ones too. So Ken Brown, aka Tortoise founding member Bundy K Brown, decided to organise a benefit release for Barnes and his family. So many of his friends & colleagues joined in that it’s turned into two albums, Noumena and Lost Words, with members of the aforementioned bands, John Dieterich of Deerhoof, our own Oren Ambarchi and many more. This track seemed to fit in with the percussion around it tonight, with contributions from experimental musicians Joshua Abrams and David Daniell.
Andrea Taeggi – Clothespins II (function) [Andrea Taeggi Bandcamp] Andrea Taeggi – Micro [Andrea Taeggi Bandcamp]
I’ve followed the work of Berlin-based sound-artist and musician Andrea Taeggi since the early releases of his duo Lumisokea with cellist and sound-artist Koenraad Ecker. Lumisokea made a wonderful strain of experimental electronic/industrial bass music mixed with the “acoustic doom” sound of the Miasmah label, making them a perfect fit for the Opal Tapes, and it was Opal Tapes that also released Taeggi’s first solo album AUM, under the Gondwana alias. He later made the bass music connection explicit with his 5HT2 project, but his first instrument was piano, and now it finds its way into his music in a very… deconstructed fashion. He’s used the piano in this way on a couple of earlier releases, but on Chaoticism you can do at home, it’s explored systematically, and in depth. As well as sounds from a prepared piano at EMS Stockholm, Taeggi uses preparations on his upright piano (it’s generally easier to place objects on top of the strings of a grand piano). There are percussive sounds here, I think generated from the body of the piano, but as you can hear, the sounds are thoroughly rearranged: Taeggi chopped up the recordings according to the type and source of sounds, and then constructed tracks from them – largely in two contrasting ways. The “fluid” approach allows for longer samples, which are stretched and processed but give the listener an idea of the physicality of their origins. Meanwhile the “functional” tracks use smaller samples as rhythmic elements, pushing them closer to the techno, IDM & bass music side of his work. I love those rhythmic tracks, but there’s a lot of fascination to be had from the fluid tracks (and a few that are unlabelled). Please take the opportunity to explore the artist’s earlier work, including Lumisokea, whose last album was in 2016 (the bulk of their catalogue is on their Bandcamp).
António Feiteira – Synthesized Chronos Turned Organless Aion [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp] Eastern Nurseries is one of a number of Portuguese labels that reliably turns up surprising new sounds from unfamiliar artists. So here’s a brilliant debut EP from Porto-based percussionist and sound-artist António Feiteira, titled Performing the Heimlich on an Ouroboros. I love the first track, a contemplative, crackling glitchscape, but because we’re on a percussion tip tonight, I’ve chosen the middle track, which retains some of the glitch textures, but foregrounds Feiteira’s drumming. A really great EP.
Orchestroll – P3 [Éditions Appærent/Bandcamp]
Montréal duo Orchestroll already released an album this year, the “scorched new-age” of Corrosiv. They’ve followed it up now with Big P, an altogether darker affair. Or is it? “P1” is ascending synth arpeggios which get wilder and more distorted; “P2” is synth drones and horror movie folio. So… yeah. Anyway, “P3” is dark ambient drones and crazily accelerated breakcore beats, like a lost Christoph De Babalon track. Check this album, pretty sure you’ll dig it!
Chris Inperspective feat. Charlotte Koolhaas – Pictures (OK Well) [The Jah Rich Project] Leon Mar – Unity Dub [The Jah Rich Project] The Jah Rich Project is a gathering of drum’n’bass and jungle producers to raise some money for JahRich, admin of the Jungletrain forums, who’s battling cancer. There’s a good array of contemporary productions, with a few standout highlights. Chris Inperspective samples the voice of Charlotte Koolhaas to build a loping rhythm that’s clearly drum’n’bass without referencing any typical breaks. Leon Mar is the not-quite-real name of the producer behind the storied darkcore alias Arcon 2. His real name is Noel Ram, but generally credited with the reversed name, and his Leon Mar work is generally lighter and jazzier. That’s kind of the case here, but it’s pretty fierce all the same.
NPLGNN – Dubwise Paranza [NPLGNN Bandcamp]
Italian beatmaker NPLGNN is back with another 12″, Novena / Dubwise Paranza, exploring more of the territory that the Naples producer has staked out for a few years. Both tracks have a resemblance to dancehall as well as contemporary bass music and percussive techno, with an industrial edge. There’s plenty more to discover on his Bandcamp.
tedzi تدزي – Goomi [mnjm/Bandcamp]
Coming soon on Berlin label mnjm is the Mn Dehab album from Berlin-based producer Teddy Tawil aka tedzi تدزي. First single “Goomi” is a frenetic piece of almost-jungle/IDM. Tedzi leans towards the abrasive, but there are nods to his Lebanese background in one or two tracks – I’ll be featuring more when the EP’s out.
Cherrystones x Demdike Stare – Where Evil Grows [DDS]
Available from Boomkat, who I’m pretty sure handle all of Demdike Stare‘s DDS imprint, here’s a pretty incredible piece of dark ambient, post-industrial, chopped & screwed bad-trip-hop… Cherrystones is a UK DJ & producer with a similar aesthetic to Demdike Stare – hauntological looting of the arcane past, and recontextualising into strange contexts. So from this collaboration we get crunchy, overdriven beats, vinyl-manipulated voices, tape-destroyed noise loops, all fed through dub delays. It’s supremely fucked-up and one of my favourite things I’ve heard lately.
Nour Sokhon – Here birds come close [via The Wire Tapper 68/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year, Berlin-based Lebanese interdisciplinary artist Nour Sokhon released an album on Ruptured with Montréal musician and activist Stefan Christoff called Beyond All Borderlines in which Christoff’s piano lines stood alongside Sokhon’s electronics and field recordings from Lebanon and Berlin. The music here was actually released earlier – in October last year on Sokhon’s album Beirut Birds, but “Here birds come close” appeared on The Wire Tapper 68, included for subscribers with the The Wire’s August 2025 issue. The album is a “sonic memory capsule” that branches out from interviews Sokhon conducted with Lebanese people inside and outside the country, with multiple instruments and treatments added that respond to the experiences of migration – hopeful or traumatic. Lovely, and thought-provoking.
Michel Banabila – Through Global Frequency – Aunt Nadira [Tapu Records/Bandcamp] Michel Banabila – Through Global Frequency – Philisiwe Twijnstra [Tapu Records/Bandcamp]
Dutch musician Michel Banabila appears often in these playlists. Releasing music since 1983 (a fabulous, forward-thinking album), Michel has amassed a large discography, with many collaborations – including a series of albums with Machinefabriek. Through Global Frequency is a project that’s been brewing for some time. It began as a poem, composed from the titles of recordings from his discography, with an original ambient track to go with it. But then he began asking friends and family to read the text in their own languages, culminating in this album with 10 languages – each with their own backing music – plus the initial mix. I was chatting with Michel while he was putting it together, and he asked if I could send him some cello, so I sent a few minutes of melodies and strums, and you can hear them alongside the voice of Maryana Golovchenko reading the poem in Ukrainian (this is not inappropriate as my mother’s family were Jews living in Odesa at the start of the 20th century).
Tonight I’ve played Michel’s own Aunt Nadira from Yemen, reading in Arabic, and then Philisiwe Twijnstra, a South African author & playwright based in Durban, reading in isiZulu. All the tracks have their own attraction – the voices, the sound of their languages, the music Michel has composed.
Andy Cartwright – There Was Never Any Doubt [Whitelabrecs/Bandcamp]
UK musician Andy Cartwright (now based in France) came to my attention under the Seabuckthorn alias, with albums on Lost Tribe Sound among other labels, with stunning fingerpicking guitar works mixed with bowed guitars, slide, and shoegazey electric guitar textures. Not one to sit still, the Seabuckthorn material kept mutating, and eventually he started using his own name for albums that mostly eschewed guitar for electronics, samples, field recordings. The glitchy soundscapes on Yonder are enveloping and have the feeling of being both static and ever-changing. This kind of music made by an accomplished musician takes it to another level.
Otto Reitano – SH04 [Otto Reitano]
The two new singles from Eora/Sydney sound-artist and musician Otto Reitano were originally written for a 32-channel audiovisual installation in the Muru Giligu tunnel at the new Martin Place Metro Station. They’ve been adapted for general listening in stereo, with some added vocals and guitar from Steve Shanahan. It’s lovely ambient music and I’m keen to hear it in place – Otto says it should be returning to the tunnel sometime in August.
Aries Mond – Hittes [Whitelabrecs/Bandcamp]
The Andy Carwright album above came out in March, but I only got hold of it when I ordered a bunch of things from Whitelabrecs, including this recent album from French post-classical/electronic/glitch artist Aries Mond, who I’d first discovered on the eilean rec and IIKKI labels run by Mathias van Eecloo. His new album Edge Angles is pieced together from piano lines played in fleeting moments between other jobs, so it has a looser feel than his previous work, but it still has the slight edge (so to speak) that sets it apart from some of the other “modern classical” piano music around.
Beautiful songs and churning glitchscapes, accelerated hyperpercussion and sparse bass drops… A night of contrasts.
LISTEN AGAIN to the song of life. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
Herbert & Momoko – Calm Water [Strut/Herbert Bandcamp/Momoko Gill Bandcamp] Herbert & Momoko – More And More [Strut/Herbert Bandcamp/Momoko Gill Bandcamp]
Back in 2022, Matthew Herbert released a short album called Drum Solo in collaboration with Swiss drummer Julian Sartorius. It was intended to be the first in a series of “Album In A Day” releases, but also the first in a series of collaborations with different drummers. Last year, Herbert revived his Parts EP series with Part 9 which opened with “Fallen”, featuring drummer & vocalist Momoko Gill. Gill is clearly as perfect a foil for Herbert’s glitch-infused, jazz-influenced productions as Dani Siciliano or Róisín Murphy, and as well as her silky-smooth vocals and sinuous melodies her percussion and drumkit are central elements throughout – notably more prominent on the remake of the Part 9 song, “Fallen Again”. The album benefits from the restraint of both artists, often using sparing arrangements with just enough – a minimalist rhythm, shuffling sampled hi-hats, a bassline… Often the only other elements are Gill’s vocals, multi-tracked and sampled. Lovely stuff.
Tortoise – Oganesson (Saul Williams Remix) [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Well, Tortoise are of course among the originators of postrock, a genre signifier which in the early days meant many different things. Let’s not rehash that history right here, but jazz has always been part of Tortoise’s makeup as much as instrumental rock and studio trickery (not to mention the hardcore punk origins of various of their members), so it’s lovely finding their comeback record being released by Chicago’s most forward-thinking jazz label, International Anthem. The album’s actually a co-release with the venerable Nonesuch Records, but before the album lands, International Anthem have furnished the first single Oganesson with a suite of remixes. From the outset, it’s pure Tortoise – skittery breakbeats from John McEntire with jazzy chords (some playing backwards) and a bouncy bassline, all in 7/8. It’s interesting that of the remixes, Heba Kadry, Broken Social Scene and Makaya McCraven all straighten it out into some more like 4/4 – each in very different ways mind you! The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney keeps the 7/8 meter and somehow turns it into driving kinda-dance music anyway. And the mighty Saul Williams keeps it in 7/8, for half the song with little more than that backmasked keyboard line, laying his trademark super-conscious poetry over the top – and then halfway through the drums enter. It’s pretty powerful stuff from a master of his craft.
Melt – Dawn Chorus feat. Reuben Ingall [Melt Bandcamp]
Canberra’s Melt aka Jordan Rodger explores the intersection of free jazz, krautrock, ambient and postrock, in varying combinations. For his new album Warbling he began by recording a series of guitar improvisations, each in just one take, and multitracked various instruments over them to end up with tracks that sound like full band takes or abstract ambience or other stuff… But on a few tracks he invited some local guests, so “Dawn Chorus” (in keeping with the “Warbling” bird theme) features the unassumingly (some might say unfairly) brilliant Reuben Ingall adding warbling tape manipulation and low-key vocals.
Nitrada – Il Romanticismo Dell’apocalisse [2nd rec/Bandcamp]
In the early days of Utility Fog, I was receiving promos from all round the world, and I’m pretty sure some came from Hamburg label 2nd rec. Among other artists they released a run of great stuff from Italian postrock/indie/experimental band Giardini di Mirò (for the headz, there’s a Hood remix in there, but seriously Giardini are a top tier band). But 2nd rec also released lovely electronic & indietronic material from Nitrada, aka Christophe Stoll, co-founder of the label. Now in 2025, some 20 years after the label ceased operations, they’re back, and their first new release is Nitrada’s Everything That Is Not Counted Will Be Lost. It’s emotive electronic music mixed with indie rock, krautrock and even industrial elements, and all in all I’m really glad to have them back.
Oï les Ox – Cinéma du Look (Jan Jelinek remix 1) [Construtive/Bandcamp]
British composer & sound-artist Adrian Corker setup the SN Variations to showcase contemporary composition and classical-related experimental music. Construtive was formed a while later, probably as a way of releasing a broader range of music – such as French experimental songwriter & composer Aude Van Wyller aka Oï les Ox, whose second album AI les Axes came out on the label last year. Now they’ve commissioned glitch/minimal electronic maestro Jan Jelinek to remix one of the tracks from the album. He turns an already experimental song into a submerged cathedral, with sunken beats and wavering vocals – a beautiful effect.
Mizmor – Mnemonic – III [Profound Lore/Bandcamp] Mizmor – Mnemonic – I [Profound Lore/Bandcamp]
Liam Neighbors, usually credited as A.L.N., makes what he calls “wholly doomed black metal”. There are two puns here: there is a subgenre more generally termed “blackened doom” combining elements of black metal and doom metal, but as well as the inversion, the word “wholly” is a homophone of “holy”, and Mizmor’s name means something like “psalm” when translated from the Hebrew מזמור. Mizmor is a project that Neighbors developed in the process of losing his Christian faith, and he describes the earliest recordings of the project as “hymns”. For this new album he reached back not only to these, but to very lo-fi recordings as The Zarconiac when he was a teenager, homing in on the “lamentful melodies”, and then radically transforming them into drones and echoing soundscapes. Mnemonic: Ambient Mosaic is quite a beautiful album, with deep emotion and a lot more to musically latch on to than simple time-stretched drone transformations. Highly recommended.
Jack Prest – Dawn [Forthcoming on Jack Prest Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney composer & sound engineer Jack Prest performed his ambitious interdisciplinary work The Risk of Hyperbole at Phoenix Central Park in 2022 along with musicians largely drawn from Ensemble Offspring, merging electronic music, classical and improv with dance and visual art. Since then he’s put together two albums on music extrapolated from that initial work: The Risk of Hyperbole – Vol.1 – Sound in 2022 and 2023’s The Risk of Hyperbole – Vol.2 – Object. Both albums came out of recordings with the musicians from the project, including improvisations, composed passages and many electronic elements. Now Movement: The Risk Of Hyperbole Vol.3 is coming, with a couple of tracks now on the streaming services. With more of the classical/experimental/electronic approach, it’s going to be compelling listening.
Jeremy Segal – Scriptspeak II [Forthcoming on Jeremy Segal Bandcamp]
Boorloo/Perth field recordist, electronic producer & musician Jeremy Segal has previously appeared on this show with transformed field recordings and environment-like minimal techno and ambient. Now in Berlin studying for a Master of Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, he’s continuing to put music up on his Bandcamp, and coming in a week or so is Lunge for an Exit, an EP of rhythmic glitchy, granular cut-ups. It’s inspired by a description of hardcore band Negative Approach’s music, accelerated to the point that resembled a “desperate lunge for an exit”. The music is of course a world away from hardcore punk, but Segal chops his samples (on “Scriptspeak II” based on spoken phonemes) into fast-chopped rhythms where the negative space accentuates the syncopations. Follow Jeremy on Bandcamp to get notified when this releases (I mean, check out his other stuff while you’re there too…)
Lyra Pramuk – Crimson [7K/pop.soil/Bandcamp] Lyra Pramuk – Oracle [7K/pop.soil/Bandcamp]
On her debut solo album Fountain, operatically & classically-trained composer & producer Lyra Pramuk focused entirely on her voice – whether her own range of expression, extended techniques, or all manner of processing and sampling. The electronic aspect was heightened on the massive remix/collaboration double album Delta that she released in 2021. It’s been a few years again, but now Pramuk is starting a new label, pop.soil, in conjunction with 7K (!K7‘s classicall/ambient imprint that they’re back-referencing as 7Klassik). The label debuted with a wonderful standalone single called “Vega“, and now a full album, Hymnal has followed. The album once again focuses on the voice, layered, sampled, chopped and reamplified, but they are underpinned and complemented by rich strings from Sonar Quartett and additional double bass. Pramuk’s classical training melds with her embedding in Berlin techno to form a work that really is symphonic in feel, transformative and powerful. Pramuk suggests that these hymns don’t need a connection to formal religion, and coupled with Mizmor’s transformed hymns above, I’d say that’s clearly proven. (Anyway, the composer of the greatest classical requiem, Gabriel Fauré was not a believer.)
Julien Mier – Soil [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
On his first album for Barcelona’s Lapsus, Eora/Sydney-based Dutch musician Julien Mier has chosen to use his birth name rather than Santpoort. Gradually is a highly personal album in three parts, each representing a part of Julien’s background: his French heritage, Dutch upbringing and his life now in Australia. “Soil” is firmly in the Australian setting, with an opening field recording/drone silenced by a hard-chopped glitchy rhythmic which is dark until the twinkling keyboards enter. Gradually Mier raises the energy with an almost synth-pop melody and more beats, before a long elegiac fade-out with sampled strings, burbling water and a granulated drone.
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – everyth1ng 1n l1fe (feat. K_anti) [Infinite Machine/Bandcamp]
The May 2025 issue of The Wire featured an interview with Kolkata-based electronic producer Nilotpal Das, who is variously named as Bios Contrast, under his own name, as DJ Nilo… and frequently as “Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das“. He makes super-complex beats with dense sound design, which he’s dubbed brahmancore. His new album, SSAC42 is now out through Mexican label Infinite Machine, and hoo-boy those beats are insane. There’s a kind of breakcore in here, kind-of footwork and jungle, but mostly it’s percussive sounds programmed into jabbering rhythms, possibly interacting with some bass elements, or not. A few of the tracks bring in K_anti‘s voice to float over the chaos. And finally on the last track “Blue Box Recovery” there are tablas and Indian voices (over plunging sub-bass), giving at least a nod to Nilotpal Das’ home.
Hoavi – Predicate [Gost Zvuk/Bandcamp] OL – 2024-02-23 M [Gost Zvuk/Bandcamp]
Russian label ГОСТ ЗВУК / Gost Zvuk started in house & techno but quickly branched out into experimental forms of electronic music and further afield. In 2022 they released a compilation called STOP THE WAR! which I assumed meant a positive relationship towards Ukraine. But on further reading I’ve found that they’re accused of visiting Crimea, which had been (illegally) annexed by Russia (from Ukraine) in 2014. But that Gost Zvuk event happened in 2021, before they released the STOP THE WAR! compilation? Hoavi‘s track here is in keeping with his incredible skittery not-quite-jungle techno, and OL provides some warped ambient dub, in amongst more high quality music. But if you’re loath to support Russia, however obliquely, let’s listen to some Ukrainian music instead.
Low End Activist – Wave 01 [Best Intentions/Bandcamp]
Last year Kasra of drum’n’bass mainstays Critical Music formed a new label Best Intentions with the aim of branching out from d’n’b. Even though Tim Reaper has recently explored non-jungle styles, his EP inaugurating the label was pure junglism. On the other hand, drum’n’bass prodigy gyrofield used her release on the label to explore slower BPMs in bass, techno and IDM (much like we heard last week). Now the third EP on Best Intentions has appeared, from UK bass legend Low End Activist. Superwave‘s four tracks inhabit a ultra-tight, sparse environment of deep sub bass pings and sci-fi synths, too bare to be dubstep or garage, but still clearly in the UK bass music space. It’s pretty incredible.
Bushranger – The Billabong Speaks [Unexplained Sounds Group]
Raffaele Pezzella’s Unexplained Sounds Group is a label (or group of labels) focused largely on industrial and ambient music, but also dedicated, in its Sound Mapping series, to bringing exploratory, experimental music to light from across the globe. It’s quite strange finding our continent in the spotlight with Anthology Of Experimental Music From Australia, and it’s certainly a particular angle on our fragmented scene (which Pezzella is quick to acknowledge), but there’s some top class stuff here including Alexandra Spence, Wytchings, Amby Downs and Automating, to name a few. So field recordings and drones and clanking industrial soundscapes dominate, but in many different iterations. I’ve chosen to include an Eora mainstay, Eli Murray, who’s best known as Gentleforce but also helps present jungle, drum’n’bass and dubstep nights in Sydney, something he did in his youth on the northern beaches too. In March last year he unveiled another project, Bushranger, via the album Gully Music, which blurred and blended the sounds of the Australian environment with electronics, somehow fashioning lo-fi techno and noise from his field recordings of the land & water and the creatures therein. “The Billabong Speaks” continues on this path, murky and mulchy as it is.
Brady Cohan – Untitled 1 [theme for a film] [Brady Cohan Bandcamp]
LA-based composer & guitarist Brady Cohan‘s latest album Wash had its beginnings in some ideas for a sci-fi soundtrack based on a script he was sent in which deceased loved ones can be downloaded into humanoid robots. There’s an emotive thread here of how people deal with grief, but it’s also tied up in this idea of the human/machine interface, so the music here (for a film that was never in fact made) features classical string players (especially Noah Hoffeld on cello) cut up and collaged with tape loops and modular synths. It’s fair to say that Cohan achieves his goal of obfuscating the edges of the human performances and artificial elements. Beautiful stuff.
Sary Moussa – A Storm, a Gift [Other People/Bandcamp] Wind, Again – the new album from Beirut musician Sary Moussa and his second on Nicolas Jaar‘s Other People – is vastly different from his earlier work, blooming out into jazz and classical waters, winding its way through improvisations and generative electronics to some revelatory sounds. Moussa, who is now part-based in France, recorded this album at Tunefork Studios in Beirut with many familiar names from the Lebanese scene – Julia Sabra of Snakeskin and Postcards providing piano and Hammond organ, Fadi Tabbal of Snakeskin on guitar, Postcards drummer Pascal Semerdjian, clarinet from Paed Conca of Praed & more, and buzuk from Abed Kobeissi, who’s worked with the likes of Oiseaux-Tempête. There’s a sad kind of nostalgia haunting these pieces, both offset and enhanced by the electronic interventions. You know it’ll be brilliant.
Farah Kaddour & Marwan Tohme – Tajmid Ejbari [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Staying with Beirut a little more, the latest album on Ruptured comes from Arabic folk & classical specialist Farah Kaddour on buzuk and Postcards‘ Marwan Tohme on guitar & electronics. If you remember SANAM, the Lebanese band being released soon on Constellation, both musicians are members of that outfit – but while SANAM is experimental, angular rock music, the music on the duo’s album Ghazel is a much more gentle affair, Kaddour leading with Arabic folk style melodies and motifs, and Tohme sometimes following on guitar, sometimes adding electronic textures & drones. It’s beautiful & understated.
super inter – tape current [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp] Hannah Silva – Snake Jar [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Here are two quite different tracks from a Cassette Album (so titled) of eight interpretations of tape scores prepared by Salomé Voegelin. This follows an earlier “scores compilation” of Voegelin’s from 2022, also on Flaming Pines, called Paint your lips while singing your favourite pop song. The earlier compilation used “text scores” presented to each artist, and her new one is about tape, in all its forms. Of course, the interpretations range widely, presumably selected in conjunction with Flaming Pines’ Kate Carr. Berlin-based Ukrainian artist super inter progressively granulates a recording of bells ringing, while UK poet Hannah Silva chops up her own syllables both with her mouth and with electronics, and finally into distorted feedback. Each of the pieces here is evocative and strange.
Jacaszek – Far and Beside [Touch/Bandcamp]
Polish musician Michał Jacaszek‘s earliest works I can find are some odd electro-acoustic Polish jazz/pop songs released in 2005 (you can hear them here). But his career really starts in 2008 with the first album under just his surname, Treny. One of the earliest releases on Erik K Skodvin’s Miasmah label, it fits well into that label’s aesthetic – dark, electro-acoustic music combining classical string parts and restrained beats. And that’s pretty much how it’s continued, with Jacaszek working his electronics in with classical musicians. New album Idylla is his third for the venerable Touch label, following 2014’s Catalogue des Arbres (“tree catalogue”) with modern music ensemble Kwartludium and 2024’s Gardenia, which is based around field recordings from the South African savanna. For Idylla, Jacaszek took field recordings and converted them to MIDI, taking advantage of accidental melodies that would be found. These then formed the basis of scores that were performed by classical musicians and the 441Hz Choir. This is patient, otherworldy music. Sometimes the live performances and instruments dominate, at other times they’re heavily processed or swamped in electronics, but it’s never heavy. There’s lots of silence. It’s still basically a form of the “acoustic doom” that Skodvin’s Miasmah label has continued to champion. Anyway, this is a first class album.
Trondheim Voices & Asle Karstad – Angel Farewell [MNJ Records]
The Norwegian all-female choir Trondheim Voices have collaborated with sound-designer Asle Karstad since at least 2017. The choir have individual effects units, designed by Asle Karstad and Arnvid Lau Karstad, that they carry with them that let them process and loop their own voices. Their music is largely improvised, but they have such a close sense of each other’s voices that it hangs together like a choir. Their latest album is a soundtrack to the movie Sobre las Olas by Mexican-Spanish director Horacio Alcalá. Over five years, the soundtrack was developed by the choir in studio sessions, organically creating a soundtrack to the film’s themes and characters. The scenes of the film were built around the sounds. Of course the music stands on its own, and is enveloping and evocative.
Jane Sheldon – o you tender ones [Ba Da Bing/Bandcamp]
Australian-American soprano & composer Jane Sheldon has a long connection with Utility Fog. Her first band Gauche released their first EP in 2003, the same year fbi.radio and this show began. They embodied a genre-resistent strain of music-making that this show was about from the beginning, with a classically-trained vocalist, a drummer who imitated sampled breabeats (and went on to develop the amazing AirSticks), and members who went on to form Hermitude, The Tango Saloon and more. Jane is a superb vocalist, and a great interpreter of contemporary composition, but she also holds a PhD in Music Composition herself. In 2022 she released her first solo album in 20 years – like, really solo: i am a tree, i am a mouth is composed by herself, sung in multitracks by herself, with only gorgeously elongated gong sounds as droned accompaniment. It’s an extraordinary album, and notably there’s one non-Jane Sheldon element, which is that the lyrics are all drawn from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke – specifically, his Book of Hours. The Ba Da Bing label paid attention immediately, and now release her follow-up, flowermuscle. This time her compositions and singing are aided by legendary Australian sound engineer/sound designer Bob Scott, opening up into a very different sound-world from i am a tree‘s impossible soft vocals in each ear. Once again the lyrics are drawn from Rilke’s sensuous poetry (you can find English translations here), and rather than inward-facing, they place us within the vastness of creation – Sheldon suggests the “feeling that you’re in erotic resonance with everything else in nature”. You need to hear that.
Following Israel’s unprovoked (according to all trustworthy intelligence) attack on Iran mostly as a distraction from the genocide they’re still undertaking, Donald Trump unilaterally decided to bomb Iran today, bringing the world to the brink of… something, nothing good. Nobody wants this. But least of all ordinary Iranians, and I have all my Iranian friends – in the diaspora and also living in Tehran – in my thoughts at the moment. Iranians are caught between an out-of-control Israel and the Islamic regime in their own country – which they consider equally harmful – and now a USA run by a racist idiot. There are a lot of uninformed opinions around. Listen to a wide range of Iranian voices, of whom there are an embarassment of riches in the experimental music scene.
LISTEN AGAIN to the sounds within. Stream on demand via fbi.radio, or podcast right here.
ZÖJ – Forever Tehrani [Parenthèses Records/Bandcamp]
As a start, here’s the wonderful Australian-based Iranian singer and multi-instrumentalist Gelareh Pour and drummer Brian O’Dwyer with their second album as ZÖJ. The combination of O’Dwyer’s skittery jazz drums and Pour’s voice, kamancheh and qheychak alto – augmented here with guitar from Brett Langsford – creates something special, rooted in Persian music but drawn into ambient sound-art, jazz and improv. Like their debut, Give Water To Birds is relased by Australian-Belgian label Parenthèses Records, and it’s an evocative beauty.
SANAM – Harik – حريق [Constellation/Bandcamp]
I was really impressed when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background to say that their new single is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music and experimental rock – I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it.
Titanic – Gotera [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp]
Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and longtime collaborator Héctor Tosta de la Rosa (who records as I. la Católica) released their first album as Titanic in 2023. The project is an outlet for I. La Católica’s compositions and arrangements with Fratti’s distinctive, creative cello playing and her emotive voice comfortably at home. Vidrio is now to be followed by Hagen, and the first single, “Gotera” (a co-write with Fratti) is a gorgeous piece that could easily be from one of Fratti’s solo albums. Hagen has a guest spot from Daniel Oneohtrix Point Never Lopatin on one track, and Lopatin collaborator Nathan Salon adds instrumentation and production on about half the tracks (this one included); the brilliant drummer (and yes, OPN compadre) Eli Keszler also appears. So you know this will be evocative, glistening, and not quite like anything else.
Nadah El Shazly = ندى الشاذلي – Kaabi Aali [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
In July 2018, The Wire put Nadah El Shazly on the cover as part of an in-depth look at the underground music scene in Cairo & Egypt – a couple of months after featuring a fantastic playlist from El Shazly of experimental Egyptian music. I already knew a few of the players in the diverse, experimental and creative Egyptian music scene, but her playlist and then interview were the introduction to many more, and showed what an important figure El Shazly herself was in that scene. She’s now Montréal-based, and her beautiful 2024 soundtrack The Damned Don’t Cry was recorded at the legendary Hotel2Tango studio mentioned above, with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh on the mixing desk, and Canadian musicians like the brilliant harpist Sarah Pagé contributing essential performances. Laini Tani, El Shazly’s second album outside of soundtracks & collaborations (many, many collaborations), was also recorded with Moumneh at Hotel2Tango, with one of Cairo’s most creative electronic musicians, 3Phaz, on co-production duties. It’s honestly a quite incredible album, one I hope I can pull out of the weekly grind of new stuff and devote some time to. It’s a re-setting of trip-hop into Arabic musical traditions, experimental pop of the highest order.
On Diamond – Letting the Wheel Go By [Eastmint Records/Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne indie band On Diamond have taken their time to get to their second album. They followed their self-titled debut with an excellent EP of experimental remixes, but while their follow-up album was recorded a couple of years ago, it’s only just coming out soon now. First single “Letting the Wheel Go By” seems to be about being held back by the past, and I love the noise guitar solo that sneaks in and then takes over momentarily.
The Cure – Alone (Ex-Easter Island Head Remix) [Universal Music] The Cure – Drone:Nodrone (Daniel Avery Remix) [Universal Music]
So there’s this band… Look, I don’t think I need to give a rundown on who The Cure are, but it’s worth saying that in my late school/early Uni days they were one of my obsessions. And apart from the ultra-processed & distorted sound of Pornography, and the adventurous production on parts of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and other ’80s albums, and apart from this legendary standalone song from The Crow soundtrack, it’s Mixed Up, the career-spanning remix album from 1990, which has endured for me. The remixed versions are are by and large the default versions of those songs for me. (Like, Fascination Street always needs the rhythm section to crash back in after the original end of the song!)
So… last year’s Songs of a Lost World was a lovely reminder of this special band (although Robert Smith’s ALL CAPS social media posts have always been a delight). For me, music-wise it’s nice but not incredibly notable, but it’s really interesting hearing 3 versions for each track off the album completely recontextualised. Three versions? Well, Mixes of a Lost World comes in various forms, and for some reason there’s a 2CD standard and 3CD deluxe version (and similarly with the vinyl). Of course many of the best ones are on the somewhat more radical/experimental third disc, including 65daysofstatic remixing The Cure for the second time(!), Deftones’ Chino Moreno returning the favour, and Craven Faults and Mogwai both going as epic as you’d expect. All in all there’s a lot of upbeat dance-pop, but even most of that’s fine?
It must have been impossible to resist giving Daniel “Drone Logic” Avery “Drone:Nodrone”, and he gives it a glitchy grandeur. But enlisting mallet guitar minimalists Ex-Easter Island Head was a stroke of genius, and their take on “Alone” is even more lonely, a little masterpiece.
Shapednoise – I Saw The Light (feat. Loraine James & Moor Mother) [Weight Looming]
When the last Shapednoise album came out, I pointed out that Nino Pedone has one foot in the noise realm, with releases on Prurient’s Hospital Productions among others, and one foot in the bass world, collaborating with Mumdance & Logos on the cyberpunk project The Sprawl. That was Absurd Matter, an ambitious set with many guest vocals, set to massively overdriven beats & bass, and electronic walls of noise (and sometimes melody). Out on September 17th, Absurd Matter 2 is the sequel you’d expect, with both Armand Hammer and Moor Mother returning as guests – and on the Moor Mother track, Pedone also enlists Loraine James to contribute glitchy idm beats inside all the chaos.
The Young Gods – Tu en ami de temps [Two Gentlemen]
Swiss industrial band The Young Gods formed in the mid-1980s (they are named after the Swans’ second EP, which gave its name to their label too) with the idea of playing only electronics. They had massive guitar riffs, but they were all made up of guitar samples “performed” on sampler. Then they discovered how great live drums sound like alongside drum machines and synths, and that’s been the basis of their sound ever since – although to be fair, they’ve evolved a lot. I like the glitchy production to this track, pushing it firmly into Utility Fog’s universe, and I like that it’s sung in French (for some reason I often forget that French is one of the official languages of Switzerland).
JASSS – Eager Buyers (Edit) [AWOS/Bandcamp]
Four years after her previous album A World Of Service, released on Berghain’s in-house label Ostgut Ton, Berlin-based Spanish producer JASSS is readying her third album Eager Buyers, this time coming via AWOS, her new platform for releases, events and broadcasts. The album’s a meditation on the current age of late-stage capitalism, melding ’80s postpunk & goth aesthetics with ’90s trip-hop and jungle, noise and current-day production. From this first single it looks like it’ll be a good’un.
ZULI – Care [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Almost a year ago, Egyptian master electronicist ZULI release his Lambda album, his first on Subtext Recordings. That album took about 3 years to finish, with good reason: he relocated from Cairo to Berlin, and having lost his laptop, ended up on quite a different path, with far less emphasis on the high-tech beats he’d begun his career with (“Robotic Handshakes in 4D” from his Bionic Ahmed EP still sounds like it was recorded tomorrow). Well, new EP Care doesn’t exactly prove him to have become prolific again, with one track under 2 minutes and another being a remix (Ludwig Wandinger further mutating Coby Sey’s guest spot from Lambda). But the title track is a new piece, almost 5 minutes long, and it’s something else again: clanging guitars, street noise and electronics, surging together like nothing else.
Julien Mier – Steen [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
On his first album for Barcelona’s Lapsus, Eora/Sydney-based Dutch musician Julien Mier has chosen to use his birth name rather than Santpoort. Gradually is an album in three parts, each representing a part of Julien’s background: his French heritage, Dutch upbringing and his life now in Australia. So “Steen”, Dutch for “Stone”, references the dance music that he discovered as he grew up in the Netherlands, mixed in with his talent for both sound design and composition. Gradually is Julien’s most personal album, and also his most ambitious, and that’s paid off in spades.
BAMBII – Island Criminal (feat. Aluna) [Because Music/Bandcamp]
Toronto’s BAMBII follows up her 2023 statement of intent with Infinity Club II, again combining various styles of bass music with various styles of Caribbean music and its descendants, of course including dancehall and jungle. Many of the same guests appear here as on the first Infinity Club, including Lady Lykez and Aluna. Highly entertaining, extremely well done.
The Flashbulb – Forever [The Flashbulb Bandcamp]
With his incredibly influential and brilliant YouTube channel publishing essential, in-depth investigative journalism (and occasional gear reviews), we could have been forgiven for assuming the only new music from Benn Jordan would be in the background of his videos, available via some tiers of his Patreon. So it was a very nice surprise to find a whole new album from his beloved alter ego The Flashbulb this week. Papillon certainly recalls the idm/breakcore beginnings of The Flashbulb, which I was playing waaaay back when, along with the often dazzling musicianship found on albums like Kirlian Selections, which was released in 2005 and went on to be a firm Utility Fog favourite in those years. And while Papillon does allow Benn to flex his performance chops, I think all the elements were there 20 years ago. In any case, there are tricksy time signatures, manic beats, and great musicianship. Although I value his journalism very highly, it’s nice to have him back on the Flashbulb tip too!
Francesco Leali – Drop, pt. I [99CHANTS/Bandcamp] David August‘s 99CHANTS label is leaping back into action this year, after some top-notch releases from August himself (Workouts was a highlight of 2024). First cab off the rank is Milan’s Francesco Leali, whose Ultrabody presents a stripped-back approach to club/bass music, half post-classical sound-design, half deconstructed grime & jungle – or half industrial ambient, half industrial techno. It’s great.
Unfiled – The Image and the Word [Unfiled Bandcamp]
I first discovered the music of Atli Bollason and Guðmundur Úlfarsson via the granular processing, postrock and electronica of Atli’s Allenheimer project in 2018. Then in 2021, Guðmundur released his second album, Point under the punning name Good Moon Deer, also granular and hard to pin down, but definitely circling around the bass music dancefloor – anything from junglish IDM to minimal techno. So now the label name Unfiled unites them as a duo on the album they’ve also named Unfiled. It’s excellent, heavy electronics that could be characterised as industrial techno, or industrial bass or something. No one track can quite cover it, so check it out, as well as both artists’ releases mentioned here.
Matmos – Norway Doorway [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
If you’re one of the lucky few who got to see Matmos performing at Phoenix Central Park in August last year, you would have seen the pair duo sampling not just from destroyed Bread records but from metallic objects of all kinds – cymbals, ball bearings, pots & pans (as I recall). I’m lucky to have seen Matmos quite a lot, and from as far back as 1999 (when I saw them twice, in Edinburgh and then in New York), their performances have always been based around live sampling and a good quantity of humour. But both Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt are also deeply thoughtful individuals and excellent musicians, and that Phoenix performance was bewitching as much as it was hilarious. They are also a couple, and they celebrated their 25th anniversary with the Plastic Anniversary. In 2025, that would make them 31, but it’s not a stretch to imagine that Metallic Life Review was conceived and created around their 30th anniversary. Like the plastics of that earlier album, this one is built around the sounds of metallic objects, extending into the pedal steel of the sadly recently-departed Susan Alcorn, among other guests. They are well aware of the genre connotations of “metal”, as much as they are of the accuracy-or-not of their music as musique concrète, found-sound or field recordings, but something I always note with pleasure is that they can’t but help express their musical roots in ’90s experimental electronica – as much as the proto-folktronica, postrock and Americana found on the beloved 1999 EP The West and 2003 album The Civil War. Here the central concrète element is indeed a door creaking on its hinges – presumably recorded somewhere in Norway. When you’ve been together for 30 years, as life partners and creative partners, certain themes would tend to repeat while others would be turned away. So raise a stainless steel tumbler to one of music’s greatest couples, and join them in their Metallic Life Review.
gyrofield – Vegetation Grows Thick [Kapsela/Bandcamp]
If you know the music of now-Utrecht-based Hong Kong producer Kiana Li as gyrofield, you’d know her as an insanely talented jungle & drum’n’bass producer, whose earliest Bandcamp tracks are from when they were 15. A scant few years later was being released on labels like Critical Music and Metalheadz. But with that head start, it’s not too surprising that since the age of about 21 they’ve been branching out from drum’n’bass into mutated forms of other genres – and given that, Objekt‘s new label Kapsela is a good place to be stretching forms. Each of the four tracks on Suspension of Belief is a different kind of weirdness. Opener “Vegetation Grows Thick” juggles backmasked vocals with pulsating bleeps and skittery hi-hats before the thumping kick drums enter. Exhilarating stuff.
Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, Hahn Rowe – Piece 2 at 77BPM [Balmat/Bandcamp]
At the beginning of 2023, Stephen Vitiello – one of the foremost sound-artists of the past few decades – released a surprising EP/mini-album on his Bandcamp: a collaboration with Fugazi/Messthetics drummer Brendan Canty. Not, of course straight-edge punk or punk of any variety, it was a truly lovely piece of experimental post-rock, and I highly recommend giving it a listen. Then later that year came a 17-minute track titled “First“, released on the sadly now defunct Longform Editions, in which the duo were joined by widely-collaborative violinist & multi-instruemntalist Hahn Rowe. Well, a title like that is clearly leading somewhere, and now we have their Second release, out via the Balmat label run by Barcelona-based music critic Philip Sherburne and Lapsus‘ Albert Salinas. These are versatile musicians jamming out iteratively in various studios, with all the musicians playing multiple roles. There are atmospheric loops & textures, but the backbone is Canty’s muscular grooves, while melodies snake through from all three (as well as a couple of guest spots). It has the exploratory nature of early postrock and its antecedents, but crafted by three musicians with decades of experience behind them. A beauty.
Timothy Fairless – Emanation of Smut [Dragon’s Eye Recordings/Bandcamp]
The latest album from Meanjin/Brisbane composer/producer Timothy Fairless is released on Yann Novak‘s Dragon’s Eye Recordings. Keep Talking to Me is as musically layered as it is conceptually. It’s an interrogation of the interplay between “language, technology and understanding”, with its basis in recordings of an interactive audio installation that responded to its surroundings by replaying sounds back to the listener. The idea of machines that give a facade of understanding by mirroring our own communications back to us is hyper-pertinent in the age of Large Language Models, but the allure of ChatGPT and its siblings is mirrored in the enthralling strange loops found through the 5 tracks on this 45 minute release. Fairless’ work is always deeply thought-out and rewards thoughtful listening.
Vanessa Tomlinson – Shimmer Shake [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
The work of Australian percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson is vast and deep, including 2 decades of work with Erik Griswold as Clocked Out, as well as collaborations with Annea Lockwood, Anthony Pateras, Australian Art Orchestra and more. Her exploratory nature extends to her solo work, but solo releases are few and far between – in fact, I think The Space Inside from 2018 may be her first. That release, on ROOM40‘s A Guide To Saints imprint, encompassed two 15-minute pieces, each for just one percussion instrument (bass drum and tam tam). For her second solo album The Edge is a Place (again through ROOM40), Tomlinson again restricts her palette, but much more broadly, allowing for objects such as knitting needles and chopsticks and a glass bowl of water to mix with vibraphone, shakers, cymbals and so on (there are also 3 planks of wood, and “3 indian bells with no donger”). The full list (found on the Bandcamp page) may give an impression of a large ensemble, but in practice Tomlinson uses all of these with great concision. Each piece is a work of true sound-art, painting with this constrained palette only what’s needed. Repeat listens only reveal more.
Jane Sheldon – the double realm [Ba Da Bing/Bandcamp]
Australian-American soprano & composer Jane Sheldon has a long connection with Utility Fog. Her first band Gauche released their first EP in 2003, the same year fbi.radio and this show began. They embodied a genre-resistent strain of music-making that this show was about from the beginning, with a classically-trained vocalist, a drummer who imitated sampled breabeats (and went on to develop the amazing AirSticks), and members who went on to form Hermitude, The Tango Saloon and more. Jane is a superb vocalist, and a great interpreter of contemporary composition, but she also holds a PhD in Music Composition herself. In 2022 she released her first solo album in 20 years – like, really solo: i am a tree, i am a mouth is composed by herself, sung in multitracks by herself, with only gorgeously elongated gong sounds as droned accompaniment. It’s an extraordinary album, and notably there’s one non-Jane Sheldon element, which is that the lyrics are all drawn from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke – specifically, his Book of Hours. The Ba Da Bing label paid attention immediately, and now release her follow-up, flowermuscle. This time her compositions and singing are aided by legendary Australian sound engineer/sound designer Bob Scott, opening up into a very different sound-world from i am a tree‘s impossible soft vocals in each ear. Once again the lyrics are drawn from Rilke’s sensuous poetry (you can find English translations here), and rather than inward-facing, they place us within the vastness of creation – Sheldon suggests the “feeling that you’re in erotic resonance with everything else in nature”. You need to hear that.
Lia Kohl & Zander Raymond – Woven things rest [unjenesaisquoi/Bandcamp]
Chicago cellist Lia Kohl has appeared in these playlists a lot since her incredible debut album Too Small to be a Plain came out in 2022. Her cello coexists with field recordings, small synths, occasional voice and the magical sound of detuned radios. Fellow Chicagoan Zander Raymond is a visual artist as well as a musician, who also uses field recordings alongside modular synths in his work. The focus of their duo album In Transit is the in-between spaces of travel – bus stops, train stations, taxis – and field recordings of those spaces are built up with Kohl’s cello and electronic sounds, and Raymond’s accordion & modular synths. Thematically this album directly relates to Kohl’s wonderful Normal Sounds album from last year, and she’s found a sympatico foil in Raymond. For a collaboration that leans more on the instrumental aspects, Kohl worked with viola player Whitney Johnson aka Matchess on the luscious drones of For Translucence, released a few months ago.
Jasmine Guffond – Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity One (excerpt) [LINE/Bandcamp]
Since at least 2017’s brilliant Traced, Sydney/Berlin sound-artist Jasmine Guffond has traced the often antagonistic interface between humanity and technology – particularly online surveillance, which was also the subject of 2020’s Microphone Permission for Editions Mego (she completed a PhD in “sound as a method of investigation into online surveillance cultures” in 2021). For Richard Chartier‘s LINE she now addresses one of the dystopias of our current age: capitalism’s obsession with “productivity”. Thus, Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity, which is just as strangely disquieting as those previous works, with help from Hilary Jeffery on trumpet & tuba and Kai Fagaschinski on clarinet. With this kind of sound-art, an excerpt can only reveal so much, so do listen to the whole thing – quietly, in the background, if it lets you!
Tonight we’re showcasing quite a lot of genre-bending songcraft, with metal, hardcore punk, electro-pop, hyperpop, Afro-Caribbean, post-folk and other tendencies melting together. We’ve also got percussive workouts, minimal techno, maximal jungle, unclassifiable rhythmic noise and glitched ambient piano in there somewhere.
LISTEN AGAIN a bend your own genres. Stream on demand over at fbi.radio, podcast here.
Rún – Your Death My Body [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp] Rún – Terror Moon [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp]
The Irish word that gives the uncategorizable trio Rún its name can mean “secret, mystery, or love, or perhaps some elusive combination of the three”. The sense here of multiple possibilities and elusive meanings is not a bad metaphor for the band and their debut, self-titled album. Each member comes from distinct backgrounds: singer Tara Baoth Mooney has worked as a voice actor and experimental filmmaker, and has experience with folk and choral music traditions; Diarmuid MacDiarmada has been collaborating with industrial/sound collage pioneers Nurse With Wind and has performed with/arranged/produced musicians across folk, ambient, metal and elsewhere – and his brother Cormac is a member of drone-folk pioneers Lankum; and Rian Trench is a sound engineer and member of psych/jazz-tinged electronica duo Solar Bears, whose earliest releases were on Planet µ. But this album is released on Rocket Recordings, known for prog, postrock & metal’s outer limits as much as anything else, and the folk & electronics here do feel mediated through a kind of psychedelic rock and doom miasma. Yet, the most melodic parts are very beautiful. There’s so much to this album that I don’t think I’ve had time yet to fully appreciate it, but I know it’s going to be up there with the best this year.
Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – Radioactive Dreams [Computer Students™/The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Oklahoma is surprisingly rich with heavy and raucous bands, but the band that’s made it to the top of the pile, so to speak, are Chat Pile (named after the piles of chat, or toxic waste from lead-zinc mining), who combine sludge and hardcore with highly-strung noise rock and postpunk. They are apparently big fans of Hayden Pedigo, a man who embraces contradiction – or at least, is a lot of things all at once: a model, a politician (having run for mayor in his hometown of Amarillo, successfully exposing corporate corruption, if not actually winning) and a fingerpicking guitarist who embodies the avant-garde elements that were there since John Fahey at least. Chat Pile themselves always match their songs with experimental material and strange off-genre detours. So this is going to be an interesting & unpredictable album to say the least, with Chat Pile members singing clean vocals the perfectly match the dark folk undertones.
Wreck and Reference – All That I Want [The Flenser/Bandcamp] Wreck and Reference – Dogtracking [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Also released via The Flenser are the emo/black/post-metal/electronic/noise originals Wreck and Reference, who we haven’t heard from since 2019’s occasionally-noisy, incredible Absolute Still Life – except for one spot-on Deftones cover. The duo are made up of drummer/noise musician Ignat Frege (aka Hand Model) and singer/multi-instrumentalist Felix Skinner. Here, again, their sound is predominately electronic, yet it can switch from minimal into screamo and back if it needs to. It’s all anxiety and only a little catharsis, and it doesn’t really manage to obey its own directive to Stay Calm.
ROMÆO – Something New [ROMÆO Bandcamp]
Something (else) new from Eora/Sydney’s ROMÆO, second track from her forthcoming EP. Starting with her voice low, this song quickly jumps into Four Tet-like house with bouncy, clicky percussion, as the narrator tries to make the most of daily tedium.
Del4raa – Tehran [Apranik Records/Bandcamp]
The Apranik Records label was setup by Iranian DJs Nesa Azadikhah and AIDA to embody the #womenlifefreedom movement, promoting the work of Iranian women. Delara Toyuri aka Del4raa is one half of Iranian techno duo Antechamber with Doci, and now releases her debut solo EP Zhian on Apranik. The EP is a musical chronicle of her experiences leaving her home in Iran to live in exile in France – the trajectory of grief to strength & resilience, and how “remembrance becomes resistance”. It begins beatless, moving through dense electronic textures until the beats finally arrive. There continues to be an incredible wealth of electronic music coming out of Iran.
Obeka – Pressure ft. Entrañas [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Manchester-based producer Obeka draws substantially on his Afro-Caribbean roots, moving from Bermuda to the UK as the country’s history of colonialism and class divides has brought itself fully into the open. His heavy bass music is showcased on his forthcoming album A World No More, drawing from gqom, kuduro, batida, dancehall and Afrobeat, but the album also features his own voice for the first time, heard on the first single which also features Ecuadorian producer Entrañas. It’s powerful work, auguring a brilliant album in late October.
Valentina Magaletti & YPY – One Hour Visa [AD 93/Bandcamp] Valentina Magaletti & YPY – Her Own Reflection [AD 93/Bandcamp]
Koshiro Hino, aka YPY, is leader of the percussion-centric math rock band goat (jp) (so named to differentiate them from the Swedish prog/psych/whatever group Goat…) The Japanese goat wield percussion and electronics with mathematical precision, and that’s present here too in YPY’s collaboration with the ubiquitous, brilliant drummer/percussionist Valentina Magaletti. Obviously rhythm is at the centre of the duo’s work, and there’s a magical confusion of where the live drums end and the electronic interventions begin – sometimes you hear reversed percussion hits and splatters that make it obvious, but they’re beautifully integrated into the live playing. Honestly it’s kinda crazy genius, I don’t know how these two musicians play so tightly and yet loosely.
L own – Reincarnation [Western Lore/Bandcamp]
Out on Western Lore, the jungle label run by Alex Eveson/Dead Man’s Chest are the incredbily evocative sounds of Russian producer L own. Daybreak Survivors Pt.1 is the first half of an album from the producer, who builds his jungle and breakbeat techno beats into cinematic works that recontextualise the nostalgic feel of the rave beats into a different kind of nostalgia.
Mineral – Shaolin [Metalheadz/Bandcamp]
Helsinki d’n’b producer Mineral is no stranger to Metalheadz, but his latest EP Kage No Michi is a cut above. Dark atmospherics, razor sharp beats melding jungle with drum’n’bass… Superb.
Klahrk – Sent Spinning [Different Circles/Bandcamp]
Back in 2014(!), UK bass producers Mumdance and Logos founded the Different Circles label, with their first 12″, Weightless Vol. 1 also coining a new genre. “Weightless” is a vibe, but it’s one you can clearly recognize, combining grime and sound-art, somehow inverting bass music… Now there’s a new label compilation, Ping Volume One, which brings with it a new genre again. What’s Ping? You’ll know it when you hear it, but it’s the focal point that can be found in Weightless music where a single percussion hit (or synth ping) – not a kick drum – embodies the music’s rhythmic centre. This seems to me to extend from the real innovation of dubstep and grime, which turned the assumptions of jungle-drum’n’bass-uk garage on their head: rather than the beats impelling the music forward, garlanded by the basslines, it was the bass itself that held the rhythmic impetus. The beats were often able to syncopate and rubato out of their expected subdivisions – so theoretically, here those errant beats take centre-stage. The tracks on this compilation are pretty varied around UK bass styles; here trickster Klahrk sits the ping on the upbeat (the fourth beat of a 4/4 bar), surrounding it in frenetic bass-heavy electronic percussion which is kind of like jungle turned on its head.
Scott Gordon – SKIM 3 [Superpang/Bandcamp]
In a scant 5 years, Rome-based label Superpang has made itself an essential portal into experimental music worldwide, whether digital sound-art, avant-garde classical, free noise or, I dunno, anything! For some reason I find myself out of sync with Scott Gordon, aka SDGORDON aka Hiax, who I used to follow when he was making something like uk garage as Loops Haunt. Earlier this year he released an incredible album called Metals on Diagonal Records – not heavy metal, but electro-acoustic music made from metal bars hit mechanically with beaters, creating sounds which were predominantly not rhythmical! On the other hand, SKIM, his new release on Superpang, takes as its source material various power tools and miscellaneous debris (full list is on the Bandcamp page) which are processed through modular synth and laptop. And on this release, abstract though it often is, the results are somewhat more rhythmic. This is a parallel universe industrial music, or equally a parallel universe IDM. Put your headphones on and be boggled.
Bogdan Raczynski – Say It Before [Disciples/Bandcamp]
I have a weird relationship with Bogdan Raczynski‘s music. When his earliest albums came out – and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before – they were mixed in mono, which I found uncomfortable listening, and the Raczynski’s quirks of spoken word and other interludes didn’t quite click with me. It’s hard to deny that often Bogdan’s style is one of self-undermining, and more power to him. Now Disciples have released a new album called Slow Down Stupid, a sentiment many of us could take on board. And yes, this album features somewhat ambient pieces and beats which are like 45-played-at-33pm compared to IDM/rave stylings. The self-deprecating humour of the track titles notwithstanding, this is some deep stuff which really rewards sitting with it and avoiding the distrations. You know… slow down, stupid.
Damian Valles – Acicular [Damian Valles Bandcamp]
Ottawa musician Damian Valles appeared quite a bit on these playlists a while ago when making drone/sound-art that slowly moved into noisier territories. It’s been more than eight years since the last “solo” release from Valles, although in the last few years there was a series of techno/IDM releases under the name Nats (and I just discovered there’s a whole album too). But new EP Assemblage, released again under his own name, slips away from techno into sound-as-sound – although the noises here are arranged more or less into rhythms, whether juddering pulses or strange industrial orchestrations. It’s really good, and makes me hope there’s more on its way. If you dig this, don’t sleep on 2017’s Frameshifting while you’re there.
Grischa Lichtenberger – 0225_05_re_0824_22_lv rs 1 [saga.domaine/Bandcamp]
I’ve been following German producer Grischa Lichtenberger for many years, mostly through his albums on Raster (and previously Raster-Noton). A cross-media artist, Lichtenberger works in visual arts, making multimedia & installation works as well, but it’s from his complex, glitchy electronic music that I know him. Somewhere along the way I came across the Berlin-based saga.domaine label, and their recent compilation from July, V/A I happens to feature Lichtenberger with some lopsided, glitching beats, along with artists across many genres – there’s some intense double bass improv from Erez Meyuhass, for instance. Interestingly, the label has roots in Tel Aviv, but the label is donating earnings (and matching them) to various humanitarian aid & human rights groups operating in Gaza & the West Bank.
Will Glaser – Illusions of Abundance [Not Applicable/Bandcamp]
London-based drummer Will Glaser is very busy in the London jazz & experimental scene, appearing on records or live with the likes of Yazz Ahmed, Kit Downs, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, James Allsopp, Alex Bonney and more. Prior to this release, the only solo works Glaser has released are the all-drums Some Drum Sounds and the mostly-drums Some Drum & Other Sounds (both of which are excellent mind you). However, on October 24th comes his first major solo work as auteur, the name of which is hard to even fit into a sentence: Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is about as sci-fi as you can get, imagining a musical artefact from sometime in the late 21st century, after the oncoming climate collapse. Glaser’s drums/percussion and electronics are accompanied here by brilliant musicians including Ruth Goller, Agathe Max, Tara Cunningham, James Allsopp and Alex Bonney (I’m mostly listing people whose work I know). The album claims influences as wide as Harry Partch, Tom Waits, Justin Broadrick (see below) among others, and there’s no dearth of electronics there too – appropriately for the avant-garde Not Applicable label, co-run by both members of Icarus among others. It’s super weird and great. I’ll be playing more off this as it approaches release date.
Justin K Broadrick – 28 [Avalanche Recordings] Justin K Broadrick – 15 [Avalanche Recordings]
It’s been a long time since you could have thought of Justin K Broadrick as just a metal musician (if a hugely influential one). In fact, it was never true, even when he was part of Napalm Death’s original lineup as a kid. Godflesh pioneered industrial metal, often featuring Broadrick’s more electronic & experimental dubs, while for much of the ’90s Broadrick also collaborated with Kevin Martin (aka The Bug) as Techno Animal. In the early 2000s he released a series of hard-hitting drum’n’bass EPs as Tech Level 2 and invented shoegaze metal with Jesu, while since way back in the 1980s he made ambient drone-noise as Final. But the album JKB just released on Bandcamp is presented under his own name. SOLO GUITAR. 1997 is an oddity: 40 short solo guitar vignettes, almost a kind of sound library. Each track presents simple guitar chords or motifs, perhaps run through some effect, little minimalist demos. There’s something spooky about a lot of these, but also quite soothing. JKB’s a genius in my estimation, and this does nothing to tarnish that.
Tracy Chen – Untitled [Tracy Chen Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne composer, musician, sound-designer Tracy Chen hardly ever releases music, and when she does it’s created with the most incredible restraint. With maybe one instrument (piano, acoustic guitar?) and maybe her voice, she takes languid performances slathered with seemingly-extraneous noise and chops them up, often in a seemingly haphazard way that’s actually carefully constructed. Last year, a new track from Chen called “something true (draft)” appeared on New Weird Australia’s Worlds Only World compilation, which appears now (no longer labelled “draft”) on a self-effacing two-track release on her Bandcamp with a second piece, both with her glitched vocals and quietly hazy instruments. Her small discography is a must to check out.
Romeo Moon – Like Rain [Romeo Moon Bandcamp] Romeo Moon – Patterns D1.2 Pad Gtr [Romeo Moon Bandcamp]
It’s been a long wait, but Naarm/Melbourne artist Romeo Moon has released his new Spirit Phase, and yeah, it’s extremely worth the wait. I first heard Kevin Orr’s music as Romeo Moon on the 2019 EP It Unfolds. In late 2023 there was an in-between release, but it’s been a while since that one too. I love his style, which takes in Talk Talk-style postrock, Radiohead-style songwriting and production, elements of krautrock but also acoustic folk (dare I say Nick Drake?) I had the pleasure of playing cello on the closing track, “Like Rain”, which Kevin has some very kind words about, but as you can hear, cello or not it’s a beautiful song that floats in and floats out again, like a not-unwelcome cloud blowing over and leaving sparkling water on everything. Elsewhere you can hear the experimental techniques Orr uses to construct his songs, which are rarely structured with typical verse/chorus/verse. Orr writes on the Bandcamp page that these songs were rescued from a hard drive crash, but nothing seems incomplete – it’s raw and honest as he says. (And… multiple backups, kids. It’s Rule #1!)
Experimental pop hybrids, underground hip-hop, hip-hop-jazz hybrids, free jazz, free rock, dub, dub techno and industrial techno, experimental electronics of all sorts, North African electronic mutations, grinding drone, ambient-jazz Yolŋu, Norwegian folk-jazz…
LISTEN AGAIN to some really good shit. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
Water From Your Eyes – Spaceship [Matador Records/Bandcamp]
The follow-up to Water From Your Eyes‘ breakthrough album Everyone’s Crushed is maybe their most “pop”, but still decidedly odd & experimental. It’s A Beautiful Place features three short interludes under 1 minute and one slightly longer at 1:29, and then a bunch of songs that are influenced by grunge and earlier indie rock (hello The Pixies), but with Nate Amos’s many quirks of electronic production, and Rachel Brown’s always-laconic delivery. It’s great.
John Cale – 1000 Years [Domino]
Having just released two new albums in 2 years – Mercy in 2023, POPtical Illusion in 2024 – the now-83 year old John Cale has now released the outtakes & remixes album MIXology (Volume 1), because one volume is never enough. If anything, it feels like an even stronger & more interesting collection than those albums, but maybe that’s just because it’s the one I’ve listened to most recently. There’s a brilliant song driven by a perfect drumbreak from the late Tony Allen, and there’s the murky, almost trip-hoppy feel of “1000 Years”. Don’t mistake this for an aside: it’s the real deal, just the latest album from a musical legend whose influence stretches from the pre-punk Velvet Underground through avant-garde minimalism to orchestral pop, adversarial but brilliant work with Brian Eno, production on The Stooges as well as Nico’s astonishing three albums The Marble Index, Desertshore and The End…, epochal cover versions (“Heartbreak Hotel“, “Hallelujah“) and honestly so much more. He played with his band at Unsound in Adelaide in July and there were some transcendent moments (much though I missed hearing, well, just about any of the songs I’d hoped for, except for “Heartbreak Hotel”).
Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Nom De Guerre (feat. Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp] Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Shadowstep [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
In 2022 billy woods released the incredible Aethiopes album, fully produced by Preservation. One of the guests was Gabe ‘Nandez and it was there that the seeds of this full-album collaboration were sown. The darkness of Preservation’s productions suit ‘Nandez’ searching lyrics, but also notable was the fact that both are French speakers: it’s ‘Nandez’ first language, via his Haitian side, and Preservation is half French. So apart from the album title Sortilège being French, some of the movie samples that always litter Backwoodz Studioz releases are here heard in French, and ‘Nandez swaps lines with his frequent collaborator Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko, switching between English & French without breaking the flow. The range of sounds Preservation uses is wild, from weird proggy synth drones to piano jabs, beats that boom and bap and shuffle and slap. It’s a journey, it’s a trip.
Makaya McCraven – Technology (featuring Theon Cross & Ben LaMar Gay) [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Chicago drummer Makaya McCraven has released a series of albums and mixtapes now on International Anthem, generally taking full performances with jazz musicians from around the world and ripping them apart and recontextualising them in a way that’s influenced by hip-hop but still mostly done with a jazz sensibility. He’s just announced a collection of four EPs, all to be released simultaneously, which will also be available as a 2CD and 2LP set titled Off The Record. The idea behind the four EPs is that each is built from a particular performance or session. There are four singles out now – one from each EP – and the comparatively electronic track I chose is from Techno Logic (featuring Theon Cross & Ben LaMar Gay), the only one directly listing the collaborators in the title. Theon Cross is credited to tuba and electronics, while we find Ben LaMar Gay on cornet, voice, percussion, synths, electronics and diddley bow! And in the post-production McCraven adds more keys & synths as well as vibraphone and other percussion – so the electronic sound (“Techno Logic” after all) is baked in, and perhaps no surprise this is the one I leant towards for tonight. You know all four of these EPs are going to be rad though.
Endlings w/ VNM – if all silence orders me [Whited Sepulchre Records/Bandcamp]
I’ve never been a big fan of Deerhoof somehow, but I admire what they do (e.g. recently pulling out of Spotify), and guitarist John Dieterich does lots of cool stuff, e.g. this duo with Mary Halvorson. Endlings is another duo, with the brilliant Raven Chacon, who works across noise music and composition – his astonishing Voiceless Mass won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2022, and he’s released music on Faith Coloccia & Aaron Turner’s SIGE Records and remixed Turner’s band SUMAC last year alongside Moor Mother, among many other achievements. Their first two releases are fucking phenomenal noise/electro-acoustic/experimental whatnot – they’re on their Bandcamp. What’s this though? Parallels 03 is an album, made with longtime collaborators from the Vancouver New Music Circle. It’s also a website with a trippy matryoshka text which you should click around and you might learn something. I did. And yeah, it’s New Music, it’s free improv, it’s noise, it’s electro-acoustic weirdness.
Anna Högberg Attack – Hematopoesi [Radio Edit] [fönstret/Bandcamp]
There’s something in the water in Sweden that seems to help grow monstrous saxophonists. But comparisons are odious and the massive sound of Anna Högberg Attack is all its own – and all the vision of the brilliant Swedish saxophonist, bandleader and composer Anna Högberg, here leading a version of her “Attack” that’s a double sextet! Alongside her alto sax is tenor sax, trumpet, trombone & tuba, turntables from renowned Viennese experimental musician Dieb13, piano from Thanatosis label boss Alex Zethson, guitar from Finn Loxbo and double bass from Gus Loxbo (both of whom also play saw), and two drummers. The sound is immense, at times sounding like heavy rock riffage, at times the multi-soloing of free jazz, but utterly under control, beautifully structured (Högberg wrote it for her late father, so as heavy as it is, it’s full of love). This excerpt is awesome, but you need to hear it in context too – the first side spans nearly 18 minutes, the second over 15 minutes. fönstret is the label of edition festival, an experimental/free improv/jazz festival run in Stockholm by ex-pat Aussie John Chantler, who also released the massive 5CD set of free jazz quartet أحمد [Ahmed], recorded at the 2022 festival.
Phenomenal World – bliberdublub [Rock Is Hell Records/Bandcamp]
All three members of the experimental trio Phenomenal World have been active in the Viennese experimental music scene(s) for decades – they no doubt have connections with Dieb13, who played with Anna Högberg Attack above. Michael Fischer here plays “feedback saxophone”, an instrument he invented 2½ decades ago, which uses acoustic phenomena to generate feedback (not through amplification); he’s able to create percussive and otherworldly sounds which only sometimes sound like sax. Philipp Quehenberger and Didi Kern (aka Ddkern) have worked together for years, and both have had some involvement with the glitch/experimental electronic pioneers (Editions) Mego. Here Quehenberger plays synthesizer, DDkern plays drums, and they act as rhythm section and give the album foundation in electronic music, techno, krautrock etc. Whether you hear this as avant-garde or not, this fits well into the lineage of Austrian/German postrock/electronic, from Radian to Kammerflimmer Kollektief, To Rococo Rot to Trapist.
Adrian Sherwood – The Well Is Poisoned (Dub) [On-U Sound/Bandcamp]
Introducing Adrian Sherwood in the notes of this playlist would be a fool’s errand, and probably superfluous anyway, but suffice to say that Sherwood, sometimes credited as Crocodile, or Adrian Maxwell, pioneered dub production in the UK from the late 1970s, meaning he was able to work with the best first & second-wave Jamaican musicians, learning mixing and production from the ground up. And while he absolutely brings real authenticity and respect for the originators – having worked extensively with the likes of Lee Scratch Perry and The Roots Radics’ Style Scott – he also brought dub production into avant-garde territories (e.g. early African Dub Charge, Little Annie Anxiety), was involved in the cross-pollination of punk & reggae (with The Slits and with The Slits’ Ari Up in The New Age Steppers), melding dub with industrial and funk with TACK>>HEAD and more. I’m particularly partial to the blending of UK club & electro with dub & reggae on The Emotional Hooligan, credited to Gary Clail & On-U Sound System.
OK, that’s our little history lesson. The Collapse of Everything is Sherwood’s first solo album (not a collaboration or compilation) since 2012’s Survival & Resistence and only his fourth ever, by my counting. And the thing is – the thing is, often great producers and mixers are really great at that stuff far more than songwriting and composition. Of course Sherwood draws on many friends, from Tackhead/Dub Syndicate colleagues Doug Wimbish & the late Keith LeBlanc to the likes of Brian Eno and Gaudi, and the musicianship is impeccable. But there’s something too polite about this – vaguely Eastern European/West Asian scales, reggae off-beats, nice melodies, and awfully tasteful dub production. I mean, it’s lovely and special in its way, but given the range of groundbreaking work Sherwood’s done, I wish it had more edge. Anyway, this one I played is a nice’un.
Travis Cook – Australian brainrot [Travis Cook Bandcamp]
I love how Travis Cook just casually drops a tune or two on his Bandcamp when the feel comes over him. Travis was one half of Collarbones with our Marcus Whale, and he’s still based in Adelaide – I ran into him at Unsound in July and it was great to see him in the flesh. Here’s a cool little tune about a very common malady Down Under, with some kind of pitched-down vocal sample and energetic beats.
Microcorps – ZONA ft REGIS [ALTER/Bandcamp]
Seeing the evolution of Alexander Tucker from psych-folk troubador into (still psychedelic) experimental rock and through to the experimental beats he’s making as Microcorps has been extremely gratifying. Tucker brings great musicality to whatever he’s doing, and still plays strings (sometimes homemade, sometimes cello) and includes his voice (often manipulated). New album CLEAR VORTEX CHAMBER promises to be the best electronic music he’s made, with help from the likes of industrial techno pioneer Regis, the great Justin K Broadrick and others. This is heavy beats with granular processing on strings and voice, at once high-tech and primitivist.
Grant Deane – With Less Of A Jolt Than We Were Braced For [◢sidehatch./Bandcamp]
UK producer Dean Grant Collier, who releases music as Grant Deane, presents us with A Coruscating Hope, an album of minimal techno with prisms of activity flickering around it, released on ◢sidehatch., the somewhat more dancefloor-oriented sister label of Woodland Creatures. Little vocal and instrumental snippets are tossed up in the foam, synths pulse and fizz. It’s surprisingly up-tempo, and “coruscating” indeed.
Brandon Juhans – Illusion Break [Relaxin Records/Bandcamp]
When I first discovered North Carolinan producer Brandon Juhans, he was known as Hanz, with a few releases on the now-defunct Tri-Angle Records. With new album Recycler due out from Relaxin Records on September 5th, his modus operandi is much the same, and still singular. This single shows that Hanz style in full effect: samples mangled and rearranged into detailed rhythms that sound like drum’n’bass without quite using the expected sounds.
ltfll – Nested Skins [irsh/Bandcamp]
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Cairo label irsh, the label founded by DJ Rama and genius producer ZULI in 2020. They released two compilations of rad experimental electronic music from Egypt, did you mean: irish and did you mean: irish vol. 2, and George Farid’s ltfll (that’s a lower-case L at the start) appeared on both. With nested skins, his new EP coming out on irsh on Sept 19th, Farid makes intricate bass music with rhythms from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, experimental but firmly aimed at the dancefloor.
Max Cooper – When I Sit Alone. In My Thoughts. I Am Crushed. (Sorcery Remix) [Mesh/Bandcamp] Max Cooper – My Choices Are Not My Own feat. Tawiah, May Kaspar (Bredren Remix) [Mesh/Bandcamp]
Good ol’ Max Cooper‘s a bit of an oddity to me. There’s a significant proportion of his stuff that I always love, because he’s definitely into his IDM, drum’n’bass and the like. It’s just that he still has this commercial sheen that I can’t quite figure – I don’t think his music’s commercial? I think I just don’t quite know where to place him. Anyway, happy he continues to release stuff, and he’s long been a connoisseur of the remix, so here’s the latest collection. Last year’s On Being album was a kind of collaboration itself, in which Cooper encouraged his online community to respond to the question “What do you want to express, which you feel you cannot in everyday life?” The responses were surprisingly moving; the words sung by Tawiah on “My Choices Are Not My Own” were written by contributor May Kaspar, which is why she doesn’t otherwise have an online presence I can find. Belgian trio Bredren‘s remix builds on the drum’n’bass aspects of the original. Meanwhile Sorcery‘s remix takes the fuzzy ambient distortion of the original track, a collaboration with Aho Ssan, and drags it into uptempo 2-step territory. Nice.
Corps Citoyen – Barrani (The Double Absence) [Hundebiss/Bandcamp] Corps Citoyen – أحنّ إلى خبز أمّي [Hundebiss/Bandcamp]
“I miss my mother’s bread” is the translation of the Arabic-titled second track I played here. Corps Citoyen (citizen body) are a multidisciplinary and multilingual collective of Tunisian and Italian artists, whose decolonising work aims at increasing access to cultural activities for those living in fragile communities in the fringes. In particular, they are concerned with “reclaiming who has the right to speak in the public sphere.” So where there are words, they’re in English, Arabic, French or probably other languages; there’s percussive tracks and ambient tracks, it’s very atmospheric, and yes the track about “my mother’s bread” has beautiful vocals. An excellent debut, and Hundebiss is a label well worth following.
Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Endless Not [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
When I went to the Planet µ 30th gig in London (and I apologise for constantly bringing it up), I got to see experimental electronic mastermind Rian Treanor performing some new material with experimental vocalist Cara Tolmie. It was really special, but it’ll help, I think, to be able to experience these works at home or on headphones. I also think it’s going to be very varied – from extended vocal techniques from Tolmie to spoken word and even singing(?), with Treanor slipping between post-rave deconstructions, glitched ambient and the more cerebral, academic or avant-garde, all of which connects and differentiates him from his father Mark Fell (Treanor absolutely has his own aesthetic and is extremely talented at whatever genres he sets his sights on). To my mind, the closing track, “Endless Not”, is already a huge drawcard, with Treanor’s spooky synth pulses and Tolmie’s dispassionate listing of “Not” things. It’s hard not to be reminded of Big Hard Excellent Fish’s 1990 broadside “Imperfect List“.
Ruben Borgers – Lofting [Colectivo Casa Amarela/Bandcamp]
Another winner from Portuguese Colectivo Casa Amarela, this is the full album debut of Belgian musician Ruben Borgers, who has also released wonky bass music under the name Maglim – there’s one track on a recent YUKU compilation. The sound design nature of that track is reflected in the impressive pieces here, which can be stark or dense, each a little journey mediated through very organic, physical-feeling synth work. Immersive and rich.
Kirin McElwain – Closer [AKP Recordings/Bandcamp]
If you know me at all, you know I’m a cellist and I collect adventurous cellists (not physically, at least not often) of all stripes. Brooklyn-based cellist Kirin McElwain is releasing her debut solo album Youth on October 10th. First single “Closer” demonstrates not just her cello but the cello-like halldorophone, a hybrid acoustic/electronic instrument created by Halldor Úlfarsson that has also been used by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Turkish musician Başak Günak among others. The halldorophone produces feedback through sympathetic strings and resonances, and these otherworldly drones are augmented with further electronics by McElwain throughout the album. On this track, electronic musician Matthew Ryals – an artist we’ve heard a bit on this show – adds additional modular synths.
Hand To Earth – Ŋurru Wäŋa Part II [Room40/Bandcamp]
When members of the Australian Art Orchestra collaborated with Yolŋu songmen Daniel and David Wilfred on the extraordinary album Hand to Earth in 2021, it must have already been clear this was a really special project. With trumpeter Peter Knight (who was AAO’s Artistic Director at the time), clarinettist (among other wind instruments) Aviva Endean and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim, the Wilfreds weave songlines, yidaki (didgeridoo) and bilma (clapstick) around sensitive sonic experimentation, with all three other members processing their sounds. On this third Hand To Earth album, their second on Room40, label boss Lawrence English also contributes sounds, and Peter Knight’s son Quinn contributes percussion (acoustic and electronic) on our selection tonight, “Ŋurru Wäŋa Part II”. In an echo of the millennia-spanning songlines, the group bend time, sculpting the songs in an iterative process following the original voice, yidaki and bilma recordings. There’s so much depth to this music, an evocation of our environment and the varied cultural backgrounds that find their home on this continent.
Benedicte Maurseth – Sommarbeite [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Since 2009 Oslo’s Hubro label has nurtured a strain of Norwegian music that has its roots in jazz and improv but deeply breathes the chilly air of Norwegian folk music while hybridising with electronic music and postrock. Hardanger fiddler, singer and composer Benedicte Maurseth started her career before Hubro existed, and on her second album for the label, Mirra, the distinctive sound of her Norwegian violin evokes the wildlife and windswept scenery of the Hardangervidda plateau, in Norway’s south. Maurseth is joined by Hubro-connected musicians Håkon Stene (on both 12-string guitar and various percussion instruments), bassist Mats Eilertsen and keyboardist Morten Qvenild, the latter two also bringing electronic touches. You think this is pure folk music until it takes a left turn into improvisation or pulsing krautrock. Wonderful stuff at home on a wonderful label.
There’s a lot of really interesting & strange pop, r’n’b, grime or even folk music tonight, proving perhaps that this is an era where flouting norms is the standard, and the paradox within that is celebrated.
LISTEN AGAIN and flout some norms. Stream on demand via fbi.radio’s state-of-the-art technology, podcast here.
helen island – stalker guardian angel (2nd mix) [Knekelhuis/Bandcamp]
This is the second single off the silence extended EP from Parisian enigma helen island. The original of “Stalker Guardian Angle” (a kind of paradox in itself) was on their album silence is priceless released earlier this year by eclectic Amsterdam label Knekelhuis. This is some kind of vapor-pop with trip-hop influences, although a slowed-down amen break isn’t your usual back-beat. I don’t think this is a person called helen, but I also don’t know if it’s a woman singing or much else! Cool doe.
EYDN – Gold (feat. Rainy Miller) [Fixed Abode/SUPERNATURE/Bandcamp]
The now-Belgium-based duo EYDN, made up of Emma van Os (Bobbie Orkid) and Thomas Parigi (Tumy), have their debut EP As Can Be coming out from Rainy Miller‘s Fixed Abode & SUPERNATURE in September. First single “Gold” has extra vocals from Miller, with a breakbeat and fizzly hi-hats dropping in and out around an acoustic guitar loop. It’s a swirly piece showing that contemporary trip-hop is finding its own sound.
Tony Njoku – SPIRIT WAR DUB (feat. Gaika) [Studio Njoku Bandcamp] Tony Njoku – WEAPON [Studio Njoku Bandcamp] Tony Njoku – CATATONIA (feat. James Massiah) [Studio Njoku Bandcamp]
British Nigerian musician Tony Njoku also draws from trip-hop in his post-everything r’n’b melange. Njokou’s productions favour crystalline piano and hazy synths, with unexpected explosions of bass heralded by creepily-distorted metal vox at the edge of hearing. The trip-hop cred is signalled by the presence of Tricky on one track, the nebulous dub atmospherics connected via Space Afrika, while experimental r’n’b & dancehall would be suggested by the presence of Warp & Big Dada’s Gaika. London poet, rapper & musician James Massiah (also known as noisenik and Dean Blunt collaborator DJ Escrow) lends his voice to one track too, as do Coby Sey and Ghostpoet, making this a substantial meeting of black British auteurs – albeit overwhelmingly male. In any case, this is a highly creative album and one that rewards multiple listens.
anrimeal – 4. Chapter I – Small things [Lost Wisdom/demo records/anrimeal Bandcamp]
London-based Portuguese musician Ana Rita de Melo Alves has appeared on this show under her anrimeal alias a lot since I discovered her music via The Leaf Library‘s Objects Forever label. On January 1st she released the intriguing 56-second track “1. Title – Half Fool Half Empty” as a teaser for an album / book / soundtrack which she is announcing today, on her 30th birthday! The album is also titled Half Fool Half Empty, and is arranged in two halves – one more playful, one more serious – although all of Alves’ work can be seen as a combination of those two creative impulses. Beautiful acoustic songwriting is digitally interrupted or corrupted, gorgeous layered vocals hang in frozen stasis, musical elements appear in the midst of a field recording. This album will accompany a book, and the track titles are a guide to the sections of the text they mirror. It’s a wondrous album and I’m glad to bring you one of the initial pair of singles tonight.
Herbalistek – Ego [YUKU/Bandcamp]
The first of two new releases on YUKU this week is from Japanese bass music duo Herbalistek. Experimental tracks rooted in sub-bass, with glitched beats and vocal samples, for deep home listening or adventurous sound systems.
Distance – Shut Them Down [Chestplate]
One of the original heavy-hitters of dubstep, (DJ) Distance is still slipping out new tunes influenced by metal riffage and cyberpunk atmospherics. Melodic basslines and rhythms you can’t deny.
Rarelyalways – Paid (feat. Nia J) [Innovative Leasure/Bandcamp]
London’s Rarelyalways aka Ricco Komolafe is a jazz musician as well as grime producer and rapper. His Paid Annual Leave EP focuses on work – the drudgery and effort behind wage-slavery. Jazz trumpet and flittery footwork percussion accompany his sing-song rapping and various guests, including Charlotte rapper Nia J.
Labake Sabbath – Life And Struggle [The Gate/courtesy of The Wire]
London’s Labake Sabbath is a member of The Gate, based in Shepherd’s Bush, providing arts and other resources for people with learning disabilities. This track, which appeared in this month’s Below The Radar Vol. 48 from The Wire, was originally released on her METAL MADNESS album, which uses various styles (mostly hip-hop built from funk loops and the like) to evoke the constant… well, struggle of living with a disability.
A.Fruit – Hours in Between [A.Fruit Bandcamp]
Anna A.Fruit reached 10,000 followers on SoundCloud, so she’s uploaded a free (or pay-what-you-want) track on her Bandcamp. It’s as usual a melding of bass genres, mostly I guess dubstep? She has lots of great tutorials on her YouTube and also an active Patreon, if you’re looking to learn or improve your skills in bass music.
Jasper Byrne – UK Gqom [YUKU/Space Recordings Bandcamp]
For more than 2 decades, Jasper Byrne has made drum’n’bass under the Sonic alias, much of which can be found on his Space Recordings Bandcamp. Now shifting to a broader genre remit under his own name, his full album Escape is the second release of the week on YUKU. There’s everything here from jungle techno to ambient, and “UK Gqom” really is a hybrid of South African gqom and UK bass. Nice.
Neinzer – Parabol [Neinzer Bandcamp]
After a pair of jazzy deep house EPs on Yumé in 2013–14, and more of a dub techno foray in 2016, Emil Lewandowski’s Neinzer released two remarkable EPs in 2020: Whities 025 on the label now known as AD 93 and the sublime Shifting Values on the sadly defunct Where To Now? Records. The dub and jazz influences are very much to the front, along with a psychedelic ambient tilt. Especially the second half of both releases use empty space to their advantage, and the final track on Shifting Values, “Cause Pan Tact Insoluble“, is a remarkable study in poise and slow evolution. Lewandowski’s upcoming Voil EP, self-released this time, is somewhere in between that earlier minimalism and 2023’s resolutely techno return to Yumé. “Parabol” has both poise and forward momentum, based around a shuffling, head-nodding house beat, with chiming vibraphone chords and subtle changes to the beat throughout.
Pulse Emitter – Energy Flying [Hausu Mountain/Bandcamp]
Portland, Oregon-based composer & synthesist Daryl Groetsch is a classically-trained composer, who uses an extensive number of analog and digital synths in his combination of new age, kosmische, progressive music. Hausu Mountain are releasing Tide Pools, his third album on the label, and honestly it’s got that Hausu aesthetic (as much as they have one), in keeping with the pixellated art of the label’s Max Allison aka Mukqs. Rhythmically driving despite being beatless.
Monrroe – Understand [Gutterfunk/Bandcamp] DJ Die‘s Gutterfunk brings its first single from Elijah Symons aka junglist Monrroe. It’s two tracks of precision-tooled breaks and immense but tight bass. Corker.
Conrad Subs – Texture [Metalheadz/Bandcamp]
Man like Conrad Subs, back on Metalheadz with three tracks of smooth, expansive drum’n’bass, peppered with lovely vocal samples and synth pads. These are DJ tools but equally pleasurable on a late-night drive.
Matthew Ryals – etude no. 10 (take 7) [Matthew Ryals Bandcamp] Matthew Ryals – etude no. 30 (take 2) [3OP/Bandcamp] Matthew Ryals – Knots [Infrequent Seams/Bandcamp]
Out in early September is the challenging & rewarding album Exalge from UK modular synthesist Matthew Ryals, recorded live with Italian violist & electronic producer effe effe aka Federica Furlani. The latest single, “Knots”, is Ryals solo, although I’ll have the opportunity to play the duo soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to add in a couple of tracks from the third and last volume of Matthew’s Generative Etudes. Each “volume” is made up of three EPs, hence Generative Etudes Vol. 3.0, which came out on Feb 15th, Vol. 3.1 in March and Vol. 3.2 in April. Each trio of EPs features different version of each track – this is generative music, which proceeds from the same setup in similar-but-different ways, so I recommend setting the three EPs next to each other and feeling how their elements play out. For what it’s worth, I felt that take 7 of “etude no. 10”, found on Vol. 3.2, and take 2 of “etude no. 30”, from Vol. 3.0, were highlights, but hey – you might like a different take of each. However you cut it, this is strangely melodic and rhythmically complex IDM. On “Knots”, Ryals loosens things up further, and broadens the sound palette to make his machines sound weirdly naturalistic at times.
Reuben Ingall – Haircut Neutrality [Gastric Acid]
Canberra’s Reuben Ingall has released some of my favourite experimental indie music over the years, mournful lo-fi guitar songs played through glitching Max/MSP patches – see 2010’s don’t give up or 2011’s Dealt – but also riotous mashups as Dead DJ Joke and more recently Pav Dundee, and the notorious live-pie-reheating opus Microwave Drone Ritual… among other things. Since 2019 he’s been doing a series of no-input mixing-board EPs (hence NIMBY), the latest of which is NIMBY #5, this one released on Gastric Acid, a label apparently located in the central-Western NSW town of Dunedoo. Here Reuben’s no-input mixer is not always no-input, with primitive drum machine, pedals and other sound sources also involved. You can watch Reuben creating this very track live on YouTube!
rosza daniel lang/levitsky – a tkhine far di yorn fun sirenes, fun bruklin tsu khan yunis (A Tkhine for the Years of Sirens, from Brooklyn to Khan Yunis) [lider mit palestine] Isabel Frey, Esther Wratschko & Benjy Fox-Rosen – goles-himen (Diaspora Hymn) [lider mit palestine]
OK, so. Hebrew was for most of the last 2 millennia a language only used in liturgy and Talmudic study. The language was revived in the late 19th and early 20th century as part of the Zionist push to establish a Jewish homeland in the so-called Land of Israel (a contested idea even then, as “Eretz Yisrael” is not equivalent to a geographical area or nation-state). The establishment of this modernised Hebrew as the official language of Israel made it the default “Jewish language”, but for centuries a polyglot Germanic-based language, Yiddish, was the primary language of Jews in much of Europe. Yiddish mashes up German with a lot of Slavic languages and bits of Hebrew (and it was traditional written in the Hebrew alphabet, albeit idiosyncratically). Wikipedia records some 85% of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust as being Yiddish speakers. Second to the Holocaust in the decline of Yiddish was, I would say, the highly politicised adoption of Modern Hebrew as the Jewish language in the British Mandate of Palestine and then the new nation-state of Israel. In the diaspora, Yiddish was brought to the English-speaking world through the mass migration of Jews from Nazi Europe, and many loan-words from Yiddish became common (you’ll know a lot of them: schlep, shlemazel (“shermozzle”), chutzpah, dreck, glitch(!), mensch, meshugge, nebbish, shtick, shtum, tush, and many more).
Why is any of this relevant? Well, along with Yiddish came the celebratory Eastern-European music called klezmer, which flourished in amongst the jazz and gypsy music in the States, and was revived from the 1970s & 1980s, blending it with jazz and avant-garde styles. As a form of music associated with the Jewish diaspora, and connected to Yiddish – a language pushed to the periphery in Israel – these musical and linguistic traditions have also been connected with left-wing politics, and one often finds solidarity with Palestine and outright anti-Zionism in the Yiddish world. You may recall the Godspeed-related Constellation band Black Ox Orkestar reaffirmed their non-nationalist, diasporic music with their 2022 album Everything Returns.
Post-October 7, a number of Yiddish musicians from the US and Europe created a collection of “New Yiddish Songs of Grief, Fury and Love”, LIDER MIT PALESTINE, collected now on Bandcamp with all profits going to Gaza Birds Singing, an on-the-ground initiative in southern Gaza to bring music therapy to kids living in the unimaginable conditions there. The compilation is quite varied: there’s fragile a capella music, recalling the cantorial singing in shul (synagogue); there are songs with accordion and violin, cello and the very klezmerish clarinet; and then there are some quite experimental pieces – this is a welcoming community despite some Zionists’ likely fear & hate on encountering it. I love a lot of this album, and felt two tracks particularly suited being given an airing here. rosza daniel lang/levitsky was a member of queer Yiddish anarchist/anti-Zionist punk band Koyt Far Dayn Fardakht. Their song is a tkhine – a Yiddish prayer usually from a woman’s point of view, here sung against a discordant synth drone, recalling the proto-punk antagonism of Suicide (both members of which were Jewish). And then we hear a stunning a capella setting of Hatikva, an ancient melody adopted as the Israel national anthem. Here Austrian singer and activist Isabel Frey adapts the song as an anti-nationalist, Bundist hymn for the Jewish diaspora, sung with Esther Wratschko & Benjy Fox-Rosen. Here is the English translation of the lyrics:
There, where we live, there is our homeland.
Our task is resistance.
We don’t need armies, we don’t want a state.
Our strength doesn’t come from artillery.
Here in diaspora, here is our home.
Freedom is the brick, and love is the clay.
Out of the prisons of all the nation-states.
All around is yerushalayim.
Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri – I Felt I Deserved More than That [Fluid Audio/Facture Bandcamp] Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri – So I Held My Breath to Listen [Fluid Audio/Facture Bandcamp]
Finally tonight, two amazing tracks from the second collaboration between two Italian musicians: the prolific Matteo Uggeri is an inveterate collaborator, and his projects like Open To the Sea create music that sits between classical, folk, ambient and electro-acoustic; Giulio Aldinucci is a master at creating moving drone music from choral samples. Moreso than their previous album together, The Promise of a Threat blends their two styles, creating something exquisitely new. Uggeri isn’t averse to using beats, so we find a dulled but noticeable, slow rhythmic cycle to these electro-acoustic pieces, with Aldinucci’s ghostly choirs floating in the ether. This really is one of the loveliest drone/sound-art albums I’ve heard recently.
Neo-classical electronic pop, contemporary jazz both electronic and acoustic, experimental metal, experimental beats.
LISTEN AGAIN, experimentally. Stream on demand vai fbi.radio, podcast here.
Darian Donovan Thomas – Microcosm Friend [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp]
Last year, American violinist, composer and multimedia artist Darian Donovan Thomas released his debut album A Room With Many Doors: Night, which drew on equal parts melodic classical arrangements and hyperpop songwriting & production. The album title clearly heralded a series, and thus in late August we’ll have A Room With Many Doors: Day. Beginning with looped, glitching violin, this one turns quickly into an experimental pop song very quickly, with gently-autotuned vocals, drum machines and splashes processed violin, it’s perfectly-executed neo-classical hyperpop.
alice does computer music – The candle of eternity burns for all [JOLT/alice does computer music Bandcamp/Nina]
New Yorker Alice Gerlach is a cellist, but also a singer & electronic producer. Her solo work comes out under alice does computer music, with her excellent debut album Shoegaze 5G released in 2023. Her new album Bliss is made up of four tracks, each exactly 10 minutes long, each finding their own balance between multi-tracked cello orchestrations, experimental beats and voice. The album’s available on cassette & vinyl as well as digital, and you can find it on Nina as well as Bandcamp – but if you do want a download, there’s a free link up on her website! Recommended.
HAAi – Hey! [Mute Records/Bandcamp]
Originally from the coastal town of Karratha in WA (nearer to Broome than Perth), Teneil Throssell has been steadily on the rise over the last decade, since swapping rock bands for DJing after relocating to London. Humanise, out on October 10th, will be her second album for Mute Records, full of floor-filling techno tracks, but there’s always an exploratory aspect that pulls her music into this show’s orbit. There’s a lot more vocals on this album, both computer-generated and human, with a sardonic thread about “AI”, and guests like UK non-binary choir TRANS VOICES. I’m particularly keen for the James Massiah feature.
Sebaas – No Plastic [forthcoming on Sebaas.Waveform Bandcamp]
Amsterdam-based producer Sebaas has a couple of releases under his belt, which he describes as “multifaceted floor-groove”. Seems about right – percussive bass music, whether techno or on a more 140 tilt. “No Plastic” is based around a sample of Spanish singer Nathy Peluso rapping “I’m a nasty girl, fantastic / este culo es natural o no plastic” (found here), switching up the minimalist reggaeton for high-energy bass-heavy breaks. According to my promo it’s meant to be out now, but it ain’t, so keep an eye on his Bandcamp.
Leese x Christian Coiffure – ○○ [YUKU/Bandcamp] Leese x Ancestral Vision – ΞΞ [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Belgian producer Leese aka Leslie Deboeur has released some first-class experimental bass stuff on YUKU in the last couple of years, and also co-curated (alongside Swiss producer Julia Häller aka Chewlie) an all-women EP called Leese and Chewlie Invite 001 on the label earlier this year. But prior to the two curators’ collab there, Deboeur has habitually created music on her own, so new album Δ is a deliberate move outside her comfort zone, inviting others to collaborate. The result is a very YUKU album, and still very Leese, but you can hear how her co-creators pull her music into new directions. With Rennes, France-based producer Lucas Marciniak aka Christian Coiffure she brings syncopated & skittery percussion with a squiggly bassline pushing things along. But Prague’s Ancestral Vision draws things into even more frantic territory. It’s interesting how very dancefloor-oriented this collection is, but across a pretty broad range of tempos. I expect Leese’s own music will be richer for it.
Sobolik – Sandbox [early reflex/Bandcamp]
Brooklyn producer Sobolik lands on Turin’s early reflex with two contrasting tracks of bass music. “Sandbox” has a low-slung thump with a repetitive one-note bassline and lots going on in between the beats. On “Turning Back” the tempo rises for a ring-mod bassline and synth sweeps which gradually take over. Nice stuff.
Carrier – The Fan Dance (feat Gavsborg) [Modern Love/Boomkat]
Guy Brewer continues his Carrier project with a slab of half-time d’n’b, with skittery beats flickering over the bassline while contemporary Jamaican legend Gavsborg (of Equinoxxx et al) informs us not unconvincingly of his sexiness.
Tutu Ta – Samurai Igloo [Long Gone/Bandcamp]
If it seems like I was only playing London’s Tutu Ta last week, that’s because I was – and the week before! He’s just popped out the Pepper album, which leans in to his dancehall, dub, bass music side. But now the Violence or Violets EP has been announced on London’s Long Gone, his second on the label, with a handsome vinyl edition as well as digital, and the first track available is this slightly dubby postpunk dance number. Very nice.
Melvin Gibbs – Felonious Monk [Hausu Mountain/Bandcamp]
When his previous album The Anamibia Sessions Vol.1: The Wave was released on Editions Mego (post-Peter Rehberg’s tragic passing), the label copy said “Melvin Gibbs is the renowned bass player and producer from Brooklyn who’s vast resume includes playing with Sonny Sharrock, John Zorn, The Rollins Band, Dead Prez, Caetano Veloso and Femi Kuti amongst others. A solid resume, no doubt, but what is Gibbs doing on Editions Mego?” Well, the answer was that he had been working on a whole lot of electronic, experimental tracks highlighting sound design, albeit still bass-led. Now Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2 has been announced, on the very experimental, generally electronic-focused Hausu Mountain. The punning “Felonious Monk” manages to transition from bass-led Dilla-esque beats into more contemporary bass music. There’s a big list of musicians on the Bandcamp page, including the likes of John Medeski, who plays organ on this track, French hip-hop/jazz beatboxer Napoleon Maddox on a few tracks, master drummer Greg Fox on one track and many more.
Match Fixer – saving skin [Match Fixer Bandcamp]
Andrew Cowie released lo-fi drone-pop or out-rock or *mumbled-genre-name* for years as Angel Eyes, but in 2017 debuted a new project, Match Fixer, for weird-beat experiments – and by 2018’s Rubble he was already creating genius breakdowns of electro/IDM, ascending to the psychedelic ambient/IDM of Done last year. Somewhere in there was another experiment, a collection of tunes that was almost released as an album but Cowie held back at the last minute, not convinced of the direction they’d taken. From 2019 until now is long enough that it’s hard to discern the particulars of what made him drop the release, and it’s nice having some new-old, definitely weird beat stuff.
Cornel Wilczek, Alex Olijnyk – The Beginning of Something Wonderful! [Lakeshore Records (now available on Bandcamp)] Cornel Wilczek, Alex Olijnyk – MUSCLE RELAXANT! [Lakeshore Records (now available on Bandcamp)]
Dave Franco and Alison Brie’s darkly comedic horror movie Together is getting quite a lot of press, for its premise, and the fact that Franco and Brie are real-life partners, and for some controversy around possibly-swiped concepts. In any case, it’s awesome that its awesome soundtrack is by a couple of Aussies. Cornel Wilczek was a bit of an old favourite even pre-Utility Fog – his first album as Qua, forgetabout, came out in 2002, the year before FBi & Utility Fog started. I wrote a rave review of that album in the very first proper print issue of Cyclic Defrost – on p16 of the PDF here (print page 30). “With forgetabout, Qua has brought a new level of craftmanship to Australian electronica”. Young Peter had some annoying writing mannerisms but surprisingly good taste. In the intervening years, Cornel has moved from beautifully-crafted folktronica to beautifully crafted film and TV scores, with a lot of amazing credits including recent Aussie horror sensations Talk To Me and Bring Her Back. Film scoring tends to be a collaborative venture, and for a number of recent commissions, Cornel has worked with young Melbourne film composer Alex Olijnyk – in fact, she’s credited on all the tracks that I shortlisted to play tonight! For a creepy film it’s pretty creepy music, suspenseful and dynamic, with full orchestrations melded with electronic processing, particularly effective when voices are mixed in. I’ve always enjoyed listening to film music even when I haven’t seen the film, and this score is both clearly a collection of film cues and also a dramatic and enjoyable listen on its own. I hope Wilczek and Olijnyk both find continued success in this area, as they’re skilled at writing for the medium while also willing to push the envelope.
Submerged – Ojanurme Inferno [Ohm Resistance/Bandcamp]
Kurt Glück, boss of the long-lived industrial techno/drum’n’bass/breakcore/dubstep label Ohm Resistance, has been making music as Submerged for even longer. It’s generally been about drum’n’bass and related genres, but his latest, Reparations Collected In Flesh, leans heavily on the industrial side, with beats slower than d’n’b, and even sinister vocals slid into the mix. He’s calling it “Outdustrial”. This is heavy shit, reminiscent of JK Broadrick’s Godflesh and JK Flesh work or perhaps early Scorn, perfect for cathartic banishing of evil spirits.
Lord Spikeheart – ANNYNAKI feat. Brodinski, Vina Konda [Hækalu/Bandcamp]
Martin Kanja was lead singer of the groundbreaking Kenyan extreme metal band Duma, released on Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Tapes. His solo work as Lord Spikeheart began in earnest with last year’s album The Adept, involving an all star cast of producers in heavy, experimental electronic music supporting Kanja’s varied metal vocals. That album initated Lord Spikeheart’s Hækalu label, which is intended to highlight heavy music from the African continent. The second release is the three-track Reign EP, with two French producers on the first track. Brodinski also appeared on The Adept, and here Vina Konda is on board too – both of whom work in the hip-hop/bass/industrial space. Hard-hitting indeed.
Chat Pile (+-) – Lost 3 [Dungeon Earth] Chat Pile (+-) – She’s an Original [Dungeon Earth]
Oklahoma’s heaviest, Chat Pile, are a very political band but also incredbily creative. You’ll not just hear hardcore or doom metal from them – there’s a lot going on, from grunge influences to noise to just plain experimentation. When they were recording last year’s Cool World they got together with various fellow travellers to do regular in-studio improv sessions. Contributing more concretely to the record were a collection of manipulated tape loops created from cassettes found in thrift stores (as they call them in the USofA). It’s noisy, lo-fi stuff, whether rhythmic like the improv I played first, or more of a wash of doomy thrashing. Love me some noise.
BlankFor.ms – A Fleet Of Celebrants [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
I think of Tyler Gilmore aka BlankFor.ms in the jazz space because of a lovely album he did 2 years ago called Refract, in which the piano of Jason Moran and the drums of Marcus Gilmore are sampled, looped and manipulated on tape by Gilmore. Out on September 5th is After The Town Was Swept Away, his second solo album for Leaving Records following 2023’s In Part. The earlier album collected 6 textural ambient tracks with queasy tapes wowing and fluttering grainily, electronic and acoustic sounds minced up. The first single from the new album offers a a surprisingly structured, Four Tet-like wordless song with a 4/4 kick, although everything’s melted into the background. The second single is a gorgeous layering of lopsided loops, with hisses and clunks as rhythm and various organ tones pumping and glistening as the track progresses. A quiet stunner, this.
BELIEVE – Spirits of the Dead Are Watching [Forthcoming on Relative Pitch]
On Saturday night I was lucky to be in the audience at the album launch for Sydney improvising quartet BELIEVE, who have been playing and playing for the last couple of years, becoming a single organism of improvising prowess. Their album Spirits of the Dead Are Watching is out soon through Relative Pitch. The band is made up of four of Sydney’s best improv & jazz musicians, from a younger generation through to, well, mine. Sax player Peter Farrar would be found at just about every improv gig around town, either attending, playing, or doing sound. Novak Manojlovic is pianist and keyboard player with Microfiche among many others, and was heard only a few weeks ago with TRUE SILOS doing gorgeous minimal jazz. Double bassist Clayton Thomas organised weekly improv gigs at Space 3 in Chippendale back in the ’00s, founded the NOW Now Festival and continues to convene improvising musicians around town regularly, recently Sound(ing) the Alarm about the genocide of Palestine. And Laurence Pike was drummer in Pivot/PVT and Triosk, helping show Sydney what improvised music could be in the ’00s, and has released a series of excellent solo albums of late. The group are dedicated to improv as situated in history, as an act of listening to our forebears and our fellow musicians, and letting loose when called for. The title track here starts with harsh saxophone calls from Farrar, only joined by drums one & a half minutes in, and despite the frantic nature of the saxophone, this is a fragmented piece that draws drama from quietness. Prepared piano takes us through the mid-section, while all four musicians contribute percussion as well. 7 minutes in, the other three drop out again and Farrar’s trilling saxophone carries us out.
Erik Griswold – Wake Up [Room40/Bandcamp] Erik Griswold – Wild West [Room40/Bandcamp]
Queensland musician Erik Griswold is a seasoned improviser and composer, with 2 decades playing with Vanessa Tomlinson in the Clocked Out duo, and his composition & performing history going back more than 3 decades to when he grew up in San Diego. Griswold has released many brilliant albums of percussive, melodic, textural prepared piano on Room40, going back to 2004’s Altona Sketches, through many other albums exploring the entire physicality of the piano. His new one, Next Level Avoidance, references the now-ten-year-old Pain Avoidance Machine, an album recorded before Brexit, Trump or LLMs, which nevertheless was concerned with insular politics, the spiral of social media and ugh, the stifling heat… As he says in this album’s description, “If only I had known how far we had to go.” Honestly, if we ever get to talk to those innocent souls ten years ago, just be kind and don’t mention it (unless they’re in a position to effect change?) In any case, this album is a lovely thing to settle into, whether you know Griswold’s earlier work or not. Sparkling prepared piano numbers, wild sound processing snippets, flittery synths. The goods.
Andy Graydon + Klaus Janek – Premeridian [Room40/Bandcamp]
Also out on Room40 is an electro-acoustic album from Andy Graydon + Klaus Janek. The two musicians are, on paper, from quite separate domains – Janek is a double bassist and Graydon works with field recordings and no-input mixer, a staple of noise sets. But Janek works deeply with electronics, processing his double bass in realtime, and the two have worked together for years. A Book of Waves came about when Graydon moved from Berlin to the USA, and the musicians wanted to continue their creative relationship. But the two musicians know each other so well that the pieces on this album feel like a single creative vision – the acoustic string sounds notwithstanding, it’s not always possible to disentangle who is making what noises. But Janek’s beautiful playing encompasses high melodies and harmonics, tremolo bowing and percussive, wooden sounds, as well as crackling granular processing of those sounds, which weave in and out of field recordings and controlled feedback from Graydon. It’s worth listening to this actively, although if you let it play in the background you’ll probably find your ears pulled back in.
Another wet day in Sydney, a day on which an estimated 100,000+ of us walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge to protest Israel’s starvation and genocide of Gaza, the occupation, the killing of children, and Australia’s complicity. It was clearly more than the police had expected, because as the front of the march was pouring into Milson’s Point and North Sydney, the tail end was still on the other side, and they freaked out about the number of people and made us all turn back around. Mass confusion and outrage, but we made it back in an orderly fashion it must be said. It was a truly heartening thing to be part of.
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Editrix – The Big E [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp] Editrix – Another World [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]
Last year’s Viewfinder album by Wendy Eisenberg was one of my albums of the year, and their “In The Pines” will be up there in songs of the decade I daresay. A guitarist’s guitarist, Eisenberg is a master musician, also playing tenor banjo and working with electronics, and playing in ensembles ranging from jazz and free improv to, well, what we have here: just brilliant avant-garde punk. I’ve seen Editrix described as math rock, and OK maybe, but really it’s just great, knotty, melodic punk to me, with Eisenberg joined by a great rhythm section: Steve Cameron on bass and Josh Daniel on drums. Our opener, their third album’s title track, has one of those melodies where the intervals are all bent out at angles, making it catchy as hell. The whole album’s perfect riffs, noise sections and top-of-the-lungs vocals. They’ve just signed to Joyful Noise Recordings, and this is absolutely a joyful noise.
Laurén Maria – Conversate [Warm Winters Ltd./Bandcamp] Laurén Maria – Filled Up Smile [Warm Winters Ltd./Bandcamp]
I first heard Berlin-based Laurén Maria on a 12″ from Yu Miyashita‘s label The Collection Artaud, two tracks of deconstructed electronics with processed vocals hidden within. Her second album, You’re Beautiful, is a masterpiece of deconstruction, in which guitar-led songs jostle with glitch-noise and the subs and fractured beats of the club lurk around the edges. Whether it’s indie-emo songs, screamo tangents or abstracted electronics, Maria somehow makes it all hold together into a strangely affecting album. Also notable, her duo with Diamantista, LICITIR.
Lovers – Could I Expect Love No Matter What [Thanatosis/Bandcamp]
Forthcoming in mid-September from Alex Zethson‘s Thanatosis is the debut from Lovers, the duo of vocalist Linda Oláh and guitarist Giani Caserotto. But “voice and guitar” this ain’t, any more than Laurén Maria above is… The two singles both inhabit a glitched, transformed space of electro-acoustic experimentation – although the duo have modelled Lettres d’amour on the tradition of love serenades, performed by troubadors accompanying themselves on lutes. If so, this is the past seen through a crack’d mirror. Looking forward to the rest of the album.
On Diamond – Downslide [Eastmint Records/Bandcamp]
Here’s the second single from the long-awaited new album from Naarm/Melbourne’s On Diamond. On “Downslide” singer Lisa Salvo evokes a feeling of being lost and helpless. It’s a lovely song, lifted higher with the harp of Genevieve Fry, and ending with some deranged synth/guitar soloing (an On Diamond special).
Bird Battles – Overgrown [Sleep In The Fire Records]
Earlier this year I was pleased to play the incredible debut “Bird Battles” from the duo of the same name – in fact there I am quoted on the Bandcamp page! I expressed hope that more was to come, and here is the album announcement! Bird Battles features the voice and other sounds of London-based Scottish musician Euan Millar-McMeeken, better known as glacis and also one half of Graveyard Tapes with Matthew Collings and of Civic Hall with Craig Tattersall. Here he’s working with visual and sound-artist Jesse Narens, whose love of birds is all over his visual art and audio work. This promises to be emotive, raw songwriting, delicate and noisy, touching through abstraction.
Juanlu Barlow & his Love-Fi Recordings – Red lights [Oigovisiones/Bandcamp] Juanlu Barlow & his Love-Fi Recordings – Beat street [Oigovisiones/Bandcamp] This is not a new Three Broken Tapes album declares the new album credited to Juanlu Barlow & his Love-Fi Recordings. Those of us not acquainted with the Spanish indie scene (specifically Málaga) may not understand the reference, but Three Broken Tapes was a project started by Juanlu Gutierrez in 2009, who was then joined by Fran Barrionuevo until the band’s last release in, as far as I can see, 2018. Gutierrez is usually known now as Juanlu Barlow, and has for some years been releasing masses of music via “my private underground“, mostly under the electronic alias Lüüü and the more indie rock Little Bradley. Both musicians from Three Broken Tapes are also visual/film artists, and while the Oigovisiones label is much more focused on experimental music, they’d long wanted to put out a Three Broken Tapes release of some sorts. This isn’t it, but it has the indie rock basis, with krautrock and lo-fi electronic seams running through it. It’s super-quirky, experimental by definition, and it’s always great to discover a weird music scene from somewhere new!
Tutu Ta – Evil Cry (Ft. Lady I) [Tutu Ta Bandcamp] Tutu Ta is a UK producer otherwise known as “Nomad the Shadow Dancer”, and nothing more identifying as far as I know, although there’s a connection with the Accidental Meetings crew somehow. His music is often dub or dubstep/grime/jungle based, but just as much can float towards some kind of arcane folk or postpunk jazz thing. He’s now released an 8-track album, Pepper, and this dancehall-ish, grimey track is the opener. Not sure who Lady I is!
Xzibit – Concentrate (Deepchild VIP) [Deepchild Bandcamp]
Here’s one from the vaults – not mine, but Deepchild‘s. A bootleg remix of Xzibit‘s 2006 single “Concentrate“, this is Deepchild at his most glitchy, IDM, almost drum’n’bassy, with the song sped up and the voice re-pitched. A million miles from either the Berghain techno or the ambient stuff Rick’s doing these days, but rad all the same.
Ceramic Model – Self Lick [General Merchant/Bandcamp]
From Eora/Sydney label General Merchant comes a two-tracker from local producer Ceramic Model. Like the most adventurous music coming out at the moment, it’s not quite techno or drum’n’bass, it’s kind of modern IDM but more for the dancefloor. Excellent, detailed production.
STEMcell feat. Propus – Ore [STEMcell/Propus Bandcamp]
The second release from artist collective STEMcell is once again credited to “STEMcell feat” a specific artist. Propus is presumably the alias of someone more well-known, but keeping the real identity hidden to focus on the sounds. It’s great, IDM-meets-bass stuff. I note that Propus is given the locaion of Colombia, while the first release from “Sceptrum” (also recommended) is located in Berlin. Make of that what you will.
Aitch – Metronotte [Hundebiss Records/Bandcamp]
A couple of weeks ago I played an excellent trip-hoppy single from Milan group Cortex of Light. I thought they were a duo, but in fact they’re a trio, and Aitch is one of the three. On his new single for the excellent Hundebiss Records, he presents two tracks of mutant bass music, with that two-tiered thing that goes back to jungle or further, where the bass pumps at a comfortable tempo and the beats jitter around in double-time. With Chicago footwork in the mix now the world over, bass music is a broad church.
Abstract Drumz – Rain Dub (2025 Remaster) [Abstract Drumz Bandcamp]
Adrian Walmsley aka Abstract Drumz is perhaps Wales’ greatest purveyor of modern jungle, and he’s not un-prolific, but some tunes still end up on the cutting-room floor. That’s what Unreleased Drumz Pt 1 is for – the first EP of old tracks that have been sitting on his SoundCloud for some years. “Rain Dub” was one of the most requested ones, and you can see why – brilliantly varied drumz, reversed and pitch-bent as well as shuffled around, and lovely warm bass. He says this one required quite a lot of EQing and other tricks to bring out the subs and bring clarity – which I’d say he’s done brilliantly.
Skee Mask – Untitled 1017 [Skee Mask Bandcamp] Skee Mask – Van99 [Skee Mask Bandcamp]
Bryan Müller, the Munich DJ & producer known as Skee Mask (now based in Berlin), is usually released on the also-Munich-based Ilian Tape label, but for thelastfewyears, in between those releases, he’s been popping big unmastered collections of old tunes up on his old Bandcamp. The latest of these is E, with tunes from 2016-2021, and as per the previous alphabetical comps, they are very much unmastered. The music runs the gamut from ambient to techno, downtempo to drum’n’bass, and even in these flat, squished forms there’s a lot to love.
Povoa – OK [99CTS/Bandcamp] 99CTS Records is run half out of Paris and half out of NYC by globetrotting DJ Miley Serious. Her French connection brings us the latest release, the NPT EP from Paris producer Povoa. Every track has incredibly filthy snarling bass, but past that, each track is different, from the syncopated garagey bass of “OK” to percussive house and high-speed techno. Crazy shit.
Kuntari – Kerak Terusi [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]
Indonesian duo Kuntari refer to their genre as primal-core, and you can hear them tapping into deep seams on their new album Mutu Beton, released on David August‘s never-predictable 99CHANTS label. Originally Kuntari was the solo project of Tesla Manaf, whose musical career began in classical music, broadened into jazz and then electronic music, but he’s now swivelled back to acoustic instruments, from the length and breadth of Indonesia and further afield. In Kuntari he’s now joined by percussionist Rio Abror, and together they reference but dismantle Javanese gamelan, including saron and various other metallophones, xylophones, glockenspiels and marimas, plus wind instruments like the cornet and hulusi, and rhythmic percussion like the thumping Rebanam, but they’re as interested in Indonesia’s storied metal scene or twisting trance rituals into technoid pulses. And it never doesn’t sound like Indonesian music, which is a joy.
Memotone – Glimpse [World of Echo/Bandcamp]
A new album from Will Memotone Yates could go anywhere, from the dubstep & uk garage-influenced early EPs to the minimal jazz-meets-folktronica that followed quickly on, with Yates playing just about any kind of instrument – percussion, piano, clarinet, cello… Not to mention the extra-saturated industrial techno/house stuff he does as HALFNELSON. New album smallest things, released by World of Echo, mostly pares things down to multi-tracked acoustic instruments, and whether it’s folk, avant-garde classical or jazz doesn’t really matter. On a track like “Glimpse”, there are beats but they’re acoustic; it’s folktronica Memotone style. Incredibly accomplished, and not a bad place to dive into Memotone – but don’t leave it here. There’s a huge range of his stuff right there on his Bandcamp (and further afield).
Andrew Staniland – Dancer Portraits No. 2 [Andrew Staniland Bandcamp] Andrew Staniland – Dancer Portraits No. 1 [Andrew Staniland Bandcamp]
Canadian composer Andrew Staniland has written music for classcial ensembles, orchestras, operas and film, but he also works in electronic music. At Memorial University in St John’s Newfoundland he founded MEARL (Memorial Electroacoustic Research Lab), where he’s developed a number of new musical instruments, including a beautiful controller called Mune Music, and a multi-modal instrument called JADE which sonifies biological or environmental input – most notably, EEG data, i.e. the electrical activity in the brain. He’s just released an album called The Laws of Nature, which originated from music he created for a dance work commissioned by Kittiwake Dance Theatre. The first half is comprised of six “Dancer Portraits”, each a sonification of EEG data from a dancer in motion. As you can hear, the EEG data can be translated into washes of sound and effects, or it can be used as MIDI triggers for piano samples – there’s a lot of choice from the composer, but he’s working with rich data from artists in a different discipline. Just knowing how this electro-acoustic music was made adds an interesting overlay to the listening experience. The second half of the album, which lends it its title, takes this source material and integrates it with more direct compositional and sound-design work. If you’re attracted to the kind of genre-hybridisation that Utility Fog thrives on, you’ll find a lot to love here.
Caimin Gilmore – MVE II [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp]
Some more crossover-classical now, from Irish double bassist Caimin Gilmore. As well as being a member of contemporary classical (and crossover) group Crash Ensemble, Gilmore has lent his double bass to many well-known artists including Leonard Cohen, Damon Albarn, Sam Amidon and Dirty Projectors. For his debut solo album BlackGate Gilmore brings in the brilliant cellist Kate Ellis (who’s also in Crash Ensemble and has workedextensively with Laura Cannell) and Dutch harpist Lavinia Meijer. Gilmore’s background in pop and folk as well as classical informs the compositions, which are also enhanced with the distinctive FM synthesis of his Yamaha DX-7. The album’s quite a trip, with Segues in between the “MVE” tracks that may twist into surprising noise drones, while any prettiness imparted by the harp and strings can be interrupted and problematised with strange electronics or inventive discords whenever Gilmore wants to wrong-foot the listener. This doesn’t lessen the listening experience; rather it’s just what makes it pleasurable over multiple listens. Adventurous compositions with impeccable musicianship.
SPIRIT RADIO – A Sighting 6 [Editions Vaché/Bandcamp]
When I played SPIRIT RADIO‘s album last year, I started by saying: The project of Stephen Spera & Tamalyn Miller, SPIRIT RADIO really does feel like a transistor radio trying to tune into nearly-departed spirits. The weathered, double-exposed, scratched & smudged photography of Spera is perfectly matched by his aural vision, and Tamalyn Miller adds to the unworldliness with her handmade horsehair fiddle as well as her vocals. Their new EP, DEW POINT, features the titular track, near-11 minutes of shimmering ambient – echoing bells, crackle and hiss, out from which disembodied voices partially emerge. The rest of the EP is taken up by 8 versions of “A Sighting”, whose base form is made up of see-sawing vocal figures in different registers, some possibly sped up or slowed down. Each version then recasts these loops into more or less degraded settings: white noise drones, reverberations, more of those bells, field recordings, distortion… Lovely stuff.
Madeleine Cocolas – The Lion Gate [Room40/Bandcamp]
For her third album on Room40 (depends how you’re counting mind you), Meanjin/Brisbane composer, musician and sound-artist Madeleine Cocolas collected sounds from her ancestral homeland of Greece on a visit decades after she’d last set foot there. Those sounds are woven into electronics, piano, voice and sundry other instruments. In some ways, this is a less “ambient” album than her previous couple, although that’s quite a loaded term. No two tracks use the same structure or the same sound palette, and if Cocolas’ use of these sounds is very personal, there’s plenty for us to imprint our own feelings on.
Snawklor – To Work Only at Loving and Being Loved [Snawklor Bandcamp]
In 2021, after about a decade’s absence, the originally-Melbourne-based duo of Dylan Martorell and Nathan Gray returned as Snawklor, to much celebration round these parts. They released a pair of EPs, one in 2021 and one in 2022, and three years hence they’re suddenly back again with a 7-track album called Materialising Distance – an album originally slated for 2023. The album takes its creative cues, as well as sonic material, from the musicians’ geographical separation. A lot of this album is made of small synthesized sounds somehow accreting together into melodies. “To Work Only at Loving and Being Loved” is the most like earlier Snawklor works, with percussive sounds colliding and vibrating around an abstract synth melody.
Felicity Mangan – Magnet, Paper, Frog [Elevator Bath/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based Australian sound-artist Felicity Mangan is an expert at disguising field recordings as instruments and electronics as field recordings. Her latest album String Figures is her first for Texas label Elevator Bath, run by Colin Andrew Sheffield. The album’s themed around vibrating strings, but it ends with this gorgeous piece of resonating fields (magnetic) embedded in a field recording, creating an eerie beauty.
Uncanny simulacra abound through the music tonight. What is real?
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Mal Devisa – Next stop [Top Shelf Records/Bandcamp] Show Me The Body – Halogen (feat. Mal Devisa) [self-released] Mal Devisa – Crowd Pleaser [Top Shelf Records/Bandcamp]
This Wednesday, US label Top Shelf Records is re-introducing the incredible poet, musician, singer & rapper Mal Devisa with a big album called Palimpsesa. The woman born Deja Carr came up with the Mal Devisa project as a solo vehicle after a funk band she formed with friends at school. A poet and rapper who’s also an expressive singer with a huge range, she’s also a producer & musician, and can easily span acoustic folk, jazz & soul, bass-heavy hip-hop, funk and rock, all with a healthy experimental backbone. Across 90 minutes, Palimpsesa showcases a breathtaking depth of work, with a ridiculous number of strong, catchy songs that deserve wider recognition. She writes of blackness, queerness, gender and intersectional liberation with an artistic ear. Here, read some of her poetry.
Perera Elsewhere, Andy S – Fuck Le System [Friends of Friends/Bandcamp]
I loved Sasha Perera aka Perera Elsewhere‘s 2022 album Home, an album of “doom-folk”, but actually experimental electronic pop songs. The following year she put out an album of remixes with some excellent contributors, and in October there’s finally another album, Just Wanna Live Some. Her musical net is cast wide, mixing UK soundsystem culture in with music from different parts of Africa, Indonesia and Europe (she’s based in Berlin). The first double single features two tracks with Côte d’Ivoire MC Andy S, rapping (mostly) in French over infectious beats.
Rachika Nayar & Nina Keith aka Disiniblud – It’s Change (feat. Willy Siegel, katie dey & Julianna Barwick) [Smugglers Way/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
The two women who make up Disiniblud come from different backgrounds, neither of which is immediately indicative of what their self-titled album has to offer. Rachika Nayar‘s music has generally been based around her guitar, albeit granulated and processed, and on her last album expanded with synths, subs and occasional beats. Nina Keith, on the other hand, writes delicate chamber music, played by herself on various acoustic instruments. When they first worked together (to my knowledge) on RVNG Intl.‘s 2021 Salutations compilation, the seeds of Disiniblud were already there – shining melodies and glitchy harmonic textures – more ambient perhaps, but no less ecstatic. On their album, these same textures and emotional gestures are more fully orchestrated, with various guests contributing often wordless vocals. The unspoken is as important: the guests are all female or trans; it’s particularly lovely (for this listener anyway) to hear Tujiko Noriko‘s unmistakable voice on the last track. It’s a celebratory album, of the artists’ friendship and of the queer/trans utopia that could be.
Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe – Your Lips Covering Your Teeth [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp] Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe – Assembling Air [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp] Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe – The Air of An Error [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
From Adam Badí Donoval‘s perfectly-curated Warm Winters, Ltd. comes an album of beautiful, uncanny vocal simulacra, working together in a strange kind of plainsong, hinting at Medieval music as recalled by malfunctioning robots. Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe both make exploratory sound-art: Wennborg is interested in the exchange involved with listening and “sounding”, and makes art from the digital transformation of the sound of people together; Duncombe’s work transforms her voice and others, glitching and reassembling the sound, pushing them into the surreal or irreal. Accordingly, this is a haunted album, in which the artificial voices never quite succeed in voicing complete melodies, instead looping and stuttering, pitched outside their intended registers, mournfully ironising the title, Joy, Oh I Missed You. The results are queasily beautiful.
Giant Claw – No Life [Orange Milk Records/Bandcamp] Giant Claw – Decadent Stress Chamber [Orange Milk Records/Bandcamp]
Under his own name, Keith Rankin is an incredible visual artist, whose retro-futuristic style is found much further afield than his own Orange Milk Records, but it certainly helps define the label’s aesthetic, as it does his own music as Giant Claw. This is a project that uses General MIDI instruments and either vocal samples or computer-generated vocals, artfully cut up in a way that makes it clear that everything’s sampled and reconstructed. On Decadent Stress Chamber the tracks are the closest he’s gotten to pop songs, but are peppered with chopped heavy metal guitars and weird fake-outs in the structures. You’d be hard-pressed to find a greater master at the uncanny.
tedzi تدزي – Mn Dehab [mnjm/Bandcamp]
Lebanese producer and multi-instrumentalist Teddy Tawil releases electronic music as tedzi تدزي. His debut album Mn Dehab is balanced about half-half with industrial-strength glitched bass and IDM on the one hand, and deep, granular (and no less “industrial”) beatless pieces. The full liner notes for this album show the state of mind projected into these sounds: it’s a kind of poetic manifesto for survival, pitting the west’s relentless thirst for brown people’s blood and the internet’s relentless thirst for our attention against the need to write music, to make rooms shake with sound. Sha ke aaaal ll l l l l lll the rroo ms.
also with sound.
we’re made of gold
من ذهب
Chewlie – Die Berge, Sie Schweigen (Alan Johnson Sunder Remix) [YUKU/Bandcamp] Chewlie – Slow Love (DJ Strawberry remix) [YUKU/Bandcamp]
The latest album from Swiss producer Julia Chewlie Häller, Transforming Matter, came out in 2024. But 2022’s Creature already showed her sound design and experimental bass music talents, and it’s that album that’s now the subject of a 9-track remix album from artists chosen by YUKU and Chewlie. As she comments herself, the remixes are by-and-large more dancefloor-oriented than her originals, and span everything from dubstep/grime through techno to drum’n’bass. In fact UK duo Alan Johnson‘s remix traverses all those BPMs through its 8-minute runtime, switching up every time it drops back and restarts. Turkish producer DJ Strawberry is usually found doing experimental takes on Chicago footwork, but his remix here is full to the brim with jungle breaks.
DJ DIE SOON – Intro ft. Kiki Hitomi [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp] DJ DIE SOON – Unfinished ft. Kiki Hitomi, Franco Franco [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp] DJ DIE SOON – Botu [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp]
Daisuke Imamura uses the awesome alias DJ DIE SOON, which is both a reference to his own name and to the great jungle producer DJ Die. But DIE SOON’s beats rarely venture into jungle or drum’n’bass, partly because they rarely resemble traditional beats at all. He was the perfect collaborator for avant-garde Japanese rapper MA on their DIEMAJIN project last year, and now he returns to Jordanian label Drowned By Locals for a solo album, My Brother the… no wait, My Brothel The Wind. Yep, dude likes his wordplay. On this album he’s joined by various fellow travellers in experimental genres, including Rully Shabara of Senyawa and experimental vocalist/sound-artist Sara Persico. But oftentimes the vocals are somehow blended into the whole mash of sound, like Kiki Hitomi‘s voice in the Intro track or the mysterious MC Schlumbo who’s credited in a few spots. The second track is one of the more song-like, with rapping from Hitomi and Italy’s Franco Franco, but even so, the beats seem to be on their own timetable compared to the vocalists… Very excellent, very strange music.
Tutu Ta – Papillon Riddim (Ft. Feral Is Kinky) [Tutu Ta Bandcamp] Tutu Ta is a UK producer otherwise known as “Nomad the Shadow Dancer”, and nothing more identifying as far as I know. His(?) music is often dub or dubstep/grime/jungle based, but just as much can float towards some kind of arcane folk or postpunk jazz thing. An 8-track album, Pepper, is out this coming Friday, and one of the singles is this quasi-grime post-dancehall track featuring English ragga toaster Feral Is Kinky aka Caron Liza Geary.
Nick Sylvester – Clyde [smartdumb/Bandcamp] Nick Sylvester – Hisham [smartdumb/Bandcamp]
It’s a little bit wrong for these next tracks to appear during the beat-driven section of the show, because you’d be hard-pressed to dance to this. And yet, all the tracks on Nick Sylvester‘s Stereo Music for Breakbeats and Samplers are made from glitched drum breaks and modular synths. The LA-based producer has worked with the likes of Yaeji and studied with the best – Drew Daniel & MC Schmidt of Matmos, Keith Fullerton Whitman (whose earlyworkasHrvatski pretty much defined breakcore while also connecting it with musique concrète and modular synthesis), then James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem… That’s quite the name-dropping, and oh hello! Each of the tracks here is also the name – the first name, anyway – of a famous drummer. Some are admittedly easier to scope out than others – Yoshimi of Boredoms, Jaki Leibezeit of Can, Moe Tucker of The Velvet Underground… Our first track here is Clyde Stubblefield, who played with James Brown and is immortalised in one of the most famous breaks of all time. One presumes the second is Hisham Bharoocha of Black Dice, Kill Alters etc. I have to say, the drum fuckery here sounds a lot like what you could get out of the legendary destroy fx Buffer Override DSP plugin (still available!). Super fun stuff anyway.
Manslaughter 777 – Child Of (featuring MSC) [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp] Manslaughter 777 – Silk Barricade [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
When I played Manslaughter 777‘s first album I couldn’t resist referring to it as “metal heads doing Metalheadz”, and that’s no less true of their second masterpiece, God’s World. The duo are The Body drummer Lee Buford and longtime collaborator Zac Jones of MSC/Braveyoung, who’ve collaborated a lot over the years. Compared to their other bands, Manslaughter 777 is stripped entirely of the metal trappings, focusing on live and manipulated beats & samples, drawing on their love of dub, hip-hop and drum’n’bass/jungle. Working again with engineer Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets, they’ve layered rhythm upon rhythm, pushed the bass up to 11, switched BPMs whenever they feel like it, but mostly it’s two continuous sides that would keep the right kind of dancefloors pumping all the way. Brilliant.
Sudden Debt – SMS [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp] Sudden Debt – RAM [New Weird Australia/Bandcamp]
Great to have some new artist albums back on New Weird Australia! We did hear Sudden Debt back on the Collapse Theories compilation in 2022. The Naarm/Melbourne trio’s modus operandi was already clear: minimalist postpunk bass & drums, with vocals through tightly slapping delay effects. Around this, noise guitar solos are also fed through the delay. It’s a winning formula – not to suggest that it sounds at all formulaic. Album opener “SMS” is martial in its rhythmic drive, while the guitar smashes out chords that are caught in infinite delay feedback. In contrast, the album’s closer “RAM” feels elegiac as the warm bass holds and slides, and the drums pick out little more than kick, hi-hat, kick, hi-hat. There’s something of early HTRK and My Disco in here, in an idiosyncratic way. These bleak tableaux are strangely touching.
Bonniesongs – Weightless [Impressed Records/Bandcamp]
It’s a joy to have the second album from Irish-Australian singer/songwriter/guitarist/drummer Bonnie Stewart finally out. While Stewart has been involved with lots of improv & experimental acts for a few years, her songs as Bonniesongs are catchy, cheeky, sometimes a little disturbing, drawing from indie rock, grunge, punk and folk, prog and jazz… The songs don’t take the expected path structurally, but they’re driven along by the inventive arrangements and great musicianship of not just Bonnie Stewart but fellow travellers like cellist Freya Schack-Arnott (and *koff* me on cello on the opening track), bassist Thomas Botting, drummer Tully Ryan on a few tracks and guitarist Rhys Motley. Bonnie is expert at winding melodies and odd phrase lengths that sound totally natural, but lend the songs a gorgeous strangeness (not for nothing is the album called Strangest Feeling). The album was co-produced in two parts, some with Alyx Dennison & David Trumpmanis (who produced & engineered her debut Energetic Mind), and part by renowned local producer Tony Buchen (who also donates some electric bass). This really should be heard wide & far.
Patrick Shiroishi – There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening (feat. otay::onii) [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
The prolific Japanese-American musician Patrick Shiroishi has been mostly known to me as a saxophonist – see his incredible solo album Hidemi from 2021 – and working across jazz & improv to noise & punk. But he’s credited nowadays as multi-instrumentalist and composer, as indeed he is. So his latest album Forgetting is Violent may not be as heavy on multi-tracked saxophone as his previous, but it shares with them the thematic background: racism & discrimination, particularly the experience of Japanese people in the USA. During World War II, Japanese Americans – Shiroishi’s grandfather among them – were imprisoned in what were effectively concentration camps because Japan was the “enemy”. On this new album, Shiroishi is joined by many additional musicians, mostly drawn from the metal & punk scene, including SUMAC/Old Man Gloom/ISIS’s Aaron Turner and his wife Faith Coloccia of Mamiffer, as well as Savages’ Gemma Thompson and BIG|BRAVE’s Mathieu Ball. The first single, “There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening”, features the distinctive vocals of Chinese musician otay::onii aka Lane Shi Otayonii of Elizabeth Colour Wheel, who has experienced America’s racism herself at first hand. This is a moving track, both ambient and confronting.
Isambard Khroustaliov & Ben Carey – Closer! Closer! Alien UFO! [Not Applicable/Bandcamp]
Another saxophonist, focused on other instruments, now: Eora/Sydney musician Ben Carey is an expert modular synthesist, and here he joins London producer Sam Britton aka Isambard Khroustaliov on an album of electronic abstraction titled Field Recordings From Other Constellations. Britton also has a Sydney connection as he’s the cousin of Ollie Bown, now based here, with whom he formed drum’n’bass and experimental electronic duo Icarus in 1997. There are no beats here, but it’s also not as daunting as one might guess. Carey is brilliant at coaxing beguiling, quasi-organic music from his modular synths, and Britton frequently performs with jazz musicians as well as some postpunk legends. More xenoanthropology to come as this is released in September.
Ryan Packard – GV II [Dinzu Artefacts/Bandcamp]
From LA experimental label Dinzu Artefacts comes a dizzying album made of mostly a singular instrument on each track. Ryan Packard is primarily a percussionist, and the instruments are mostly percussive: amplified bass drum or amplified snare drum, each augmented with triangles (but nothing else), amplified bell plate (a hanging metal sheet), and for the finale, amplified cymbal, speaker cone and snare drum. There’s a hint at what Packard’s doing here: each sound source is amplified, and it’s the way these sounds ring & resonate that Packard is interested in as he modulates their sound over each repetitive track. It’s trancelike sound-art, utterly engrossing, but the piece I’ve chosen is the odd one out in that it’s not an object being struck. What sounds uncannily like a revving engine is an amplified bullroarer – an instrument used as a long-distance communication device by First Nations people in Australia and the Americas, as well as in ancient Greece, Scandinavia and elsewhere. But heard amplified here, the full brunt of this object as it’s swung round & round is felt inside us.
Teddy Abrams – The Scream [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp]
There’s an element of the uncanny about our last piece too. Teddy Abrams is a Grammy Award-winning classical conductor, clarinettist and pianist. On Preludes he’s wearing his composer hat as well as that of the pianist, but these short compositions have been overlaid with a variety of production techniques by Abrams alongside Gabriel Kahane and Casey Foubert. Sometimes it’s just a delay, tastefully extending the tail of the piece, but elsewhere it’s quite overwhelming. On “The Scream”, multiple takes are layered and, among other things, sidechained against a kick drum which does not itself appear in the mix, creating a disorienting, smudged effect. These are lovely pieces (which you can buy the sheet music for!), and the studio approach makes for a unique listening experience.
As I was putting this show together, it felt like it was leaning heavily into bass & beats – and it is, to an extent, but it also has highly ethereal sounds, acoustic doom and acoustic prettiness, post-jazz forms and post-classical hyperpop(?) And lots of music from albums that are yet to be released.
LISTEN AGAIN and identify the genres. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Darian Donovan Thomas – Ugly Betty [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp]
Last year, American violinist, composer and multimedia artist Darian Donovan Thomas released his debut album A Room With Many Doors: Night, which drew on equal parts melodic classical arrangements and hyperpop songwriting. The album title clearly heralded a series, and thus in late August we’ll have A Room With Many Doors: Day. With its autotuned vocals, tricksy 5/4 time violin loops and skittery live drums, the first single “Ugly Betty” is still very much rooted in hyperpop and classical.
Johnny Richards & Dave King – Sleepless In Settle [False Door Records] The Bad Plus (especially when they were a piano trio) are one of the great crossover-jazz ensembles of the last few decades, known for their surprising covers (Aphex Twin, Pixies, Stravinsky etc) and their brilliant original material too. And if you know that Aphex Twin cover, you’ll know that Dave King is a machine of a drummer when he needs to be, as well as a sensitive ensemble member. Leeds, UK pianist Johnny Richards is a member of the Ethio-jazz-inspired Sorcerers and the virtuosic, surreal improv troupe Shatner’s Bassoon. Their forthcoming duo album The New Awkward was created remotely, started during COVID lockdown, but there’s no sign of that in the alchemical creations from the pair. Richards uses the piano like a percussion instrument, with layers of prepared piano and straight piano in conversation with King’s busy percussion. In keeping with Utility Fog’s longtime interest in music between the genres, Richards’ metal preparations recall Javanese gamelan, while the compositions draw from the counterpoint of J.S. Bach – elsewhere there are inspirations from Mr Bungle and Frank Zappa, 20th century composers like Hindemith and Schoenberg, early Robert Wyatt and more. I’ll play some more of this as the release date approaches.
Blurt – Mecanno Giraffe [All City Records/Bandcamp]
There’s no band quite like Blurt, the post-punk/free jazz group fronted since 1980 by Ted Milton, who alternates between largely spoken vocals and sputtering, yelping saxophone. And that’s usually it, but it doesn’t fully describe the jagged punk energy, nor Milton’s very working class British delivery, nor his surreal yet political poetry. The flipside of this 7″ is 18 minutes of Milton’s poetry, just spoken word with no music. As for the music, here are some other genres that have been used to describe it: psycho-funk, afro-punk, fake no-wave, pogo-jazz. Yeah.
James Massiah meets Lord Tusk – Might Be The One [Accidental Meetings/Bandcamp]
This one track and its dub are the sequel to last year’s “Open Up“, an equally-intoxicating dub mantra invoked by London poet & musician James Massiah over a killer minimal dub-house steppa from Lord Tusk. I was lucky enough to see them together at Cafe OTO in London at a night curated by Accidental Meetings back in May, and they have the wonderful chemistry of blokes who’ve worked & created together in various forms for many years.
Richie Culver – Chase Money [SUPERNATURE/Bandcamp]
Having already released one of the albums of the year with Rainy Miller‘s Joseph, What Have You Done?, SUPERNATURE now ready another bloinder from Miller & Blackhaine collaborator, poet and conceptual artist Richie Culver. In fact, somewhat confusingly, this album also follows Miller’s as the 12th release on his own Fixed Abode label although they don’t inhabit its Bandcamp as yet. I Trust Pain follows the path of the aforementioned Blackhaine and Miller into cold and harsh, dark UK drill – a genre that’s hard to pin down to a particular sound, except that it nods at UK bass music and is tightly restrained. Hearing Culver’s poetry spoken in more familiar rap phrasing is a revelation, even if half of it’s gutteral or shrieked. A bleak first single, and I trust the rest will be just the kind of northern desolation we’re looking for.
Mumdance – Ping Devil Meme [Different Circles/Bandcamp]
Back in 2014(!), UK bass producers Mumdance and Logos founded the Different Circles, with their first 12″, Weightless Vol. 1 also coining a new genre. “Weightless” is a vibe, but it’s one you can clearly recognize, combining grime and sound-art, somehow inverting bass music… Now they’re preparing the label compilation Ping Volume One, which brings with it a new genre again. What’s Ping? You’ll know it when you hear it, but it’s the focal point that can be found in Weightless music where a single percussion hit (or synth ping) – not a kick drum – embodies the music’s rhythmic centre. This seems to me to extend from the real innovation of dubstep and grime, which turned the assumptions of jungle-drum’n’bass-uk garage on their head: rather than the beats impelling the music forward, garlanded by the basslines, it was the bass itself that held the rhythmic impetus. The beats were often able to syncopate and rubato out of their expected subdivisions – so theoretically, here those errant beats take centre-stage. That said, the two preview tracks, by the label’s two founders, do not eschew rhythmic driving beats or basslines, so I’m keen to discover what it is that holds all these tracks together.
Shapednoise – Oblivion Step [Weight Looming]
When the last Shapednoise album came out, I pointed out that Nino Pedone has one foot in the noise realm, with releases on Prurient’s Hospital Productions among others, and one foot in the bass world, collaborating with Mumdance & Logos on the cyberpunk project The Sprawl. That was Absurd Matter, an ambitious set with many guest vocals, set to massively overdriven beats & bass, and electronic walls of noise (and sometimes melody). Out on September 17th, Absurd Matter 2 is the sequel you’d expect, with both Armand Hammer and Moor Mother returning as guests. But it’s not all guest spots: as you might expect from a track called “Oblivion Step”, this second single is a cool shuffling breakbeat piece – just sheathed in pummeling distortion.
Muskila – YARAO [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Here’s a new single announcing an album from young YUKU artist Muskila, a Copenhagen-based artist with roots in North Kurdistan. It’s percussive bass music with a beautifully open sound stage, bumping bassline and vocal snatches. Very YUKU, and you know that’s the shit.
Sicaria – Rhassoul [Tectonic Recordings/Bandcamp] V.I.V.E.K – Gone W3st [Tectonic Recordings/Bandcamp]
When Rob Ellis, aka (DJ) Pinch, founded Tectonic Recordings in 2005, he cemented Bristol as the second home of dubstep after South London. As well as release some of the most classic early dubstep tunes, Tectonic released a series of iconic compilations, beginning with Tectonic Plates Vol. 1 in 2006. More than anything, it’s the callback to these great compilations that made me excited to discover that Pinch is revitalising the label with the 2CD (and 6 vinyl boxset) Tectonic Sound. The label boss opens the proceedings with the album’s title track, which shudders between OG dubstep minimalism and vocal snaps & busy percussion. Across the compilation there’s a whole spectrum of 140bpm, from the rolling percussive house (yet still dubstep) on dubstep mainstay V.I.V.E.K‘s “Gone W3st” to the percussive dubstep from London-based Moroccan DJ Sicaria, a rising bass music star. Elsewhere there’s eerie electro-acoustic minimalism from Flora Yin Wong (which also manages to still be dubstep), the distorted crunch of dubstep legend Distance, and the methodical dubstep-dub from Bristol legend Rob Smith aka RSD. If you have any interest in 140bpm bass music, this is essential listening.
Slikback – Knot [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Slikback – Spend [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Back in May, the day I arrived in London I was able to attend the Planet µ 30th celebration at Corsica Studios. The last act I saw before my body gave out (something like 5am) was the brilliant Slikback, playing his set with a lot of live input. I was super pleased to find out that Planet µ had signed Slikback, and in a recent Wire interview, Slikback talks about the creative guidance Mike Paradinas gave him (something I’ve heard from a number of Planet µ artists). It’s not that Attrition is wildly different from what we’ve been hearing from Slikback over the last 5+ years, but here his talent for sound design and intricate beats is fashioned into an album, with some callbacks between tracks and room for in-between spaces. Just what you’d want from Slikback on Planet µ.
DJ Haram – Stenography ft. Armand Hammer [Hyperdub/Bandcamp] DJ Haram – Distress Tolerance [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
It’s kind of weird to be told that Beside Myself is DJ Haram‘s debut album, given how important she’s been in the US experimental beats/hip-hop scene for the last 10 years. Notably, she released the incredible Nothing To Declare with Moor Mother as 700 Bliss in 2022, and it was much-awaited by the time it came out. As a producer, the artist born Zubeyda Muzeyyen has worked with billy woods, ELUCID and their duo Armand Hammer, as well as work with Debby Friday and even Kronos Quartet. Calling the album “Beside Myself” indicates that it’s Muzeyyen’s vision in totality (as well as denoting a righteous anger at the world), but it is nevertheless choc full of collaborations, including both Armand Hammer and Moor Mother of course, as well as Palestinian rapper & producer Dakn, Egyptian producer El Kontessa and other musicians like Irreversible Entanglements trumpeter Aquiles Navarro. As well as all the guests, Muzeyyen’s voice is found throughout, particularly on “Distress Tolerance”, a poem of self-affirmation in the face of a hostile world. “You know my heart lives with the resistance”.
Christophe Bailleau O’Farrell + Innocent But Guilty – C’ABC [Mahorka/Bandcamp] Tim Koch + Waldgrenze – Air From Other Planets [Mahorka/Bandcamp]
Bulgarian label Mahorka tends to slide across my awareness at regular intervals – most recently with the glitched General MIDI-meets-electro-acoustic of Christophe Bailleau, now going by Christophe Bailleau O’Farrell. And in 2022 I loved Mutuals by Dolphins of Venice, a collaborative project from Adelaide’s Tim Koch and US producer Adrien 75. All these artists appear on thae label’s 10 Anniversary Compilation Making Things Happen, for which the label asked artists associated with the label to collaborate, often across borders and oceans. Still, the distances here aren’t so far. Franco-Belgian Christophe Bailleau O’Farrell works with Bordeaux-based Innocent But Guilty on a track that’s part field recording, part drone, part bent new-age synth. And Tim Koch reaches out almost due east to Canberra where Polish producer and academic Waldgrenze is currently based, for some granular processed live instruments and skittery IDM beats.
Cortex of Light – United feat. Lamby [Cortex of Light Bandcamp]
Milan duo Cortex of Light recently released a great album of glitchy idm and spacey ambience on Special Guest DJ‘s 3 X L label. I didn’t play it, purely because it was right in the middle of my 6 weeks overseas, so here instead is a new single from them, on their own Bandcamp. Featuring muffled post-punky vocals from visual artist and singer Lamby, it’s a kind of acid house trip-hop filtered through post-vapourwave sensibilities. That’s a whole phrase that 99% of the world would have no way of parsing, but I’m sure you get what I mean (right?). It’s great, and they say all proceeds will be donated in aid of Palestinian victims.
Mark Van Hoen – I’ve Got To See The Light (Featuring George ‘Tony’ Subratie) [Mark Van Hoen Bandcamp]
Almost as soon as his second album in 2 years dropped, Mark Van Hoen is back with a new EP. The title track is from The Eternal Present, but the rest are additions. I’m gonna recycle what I said about the new album, mostly:
Sometime around 1997 maybe, or 1998, I was introduced (by Seb Chan, no doubt) to the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments by Locust, the sometimes-used pseudonym of Mark Van Hoen. I guess I would’ve known some of Seefeel‘s work already, so I knew Van Hoen had been part of the lineup early on, and some of the vocal samples on that album were from their singer Sarah Peacock. But the massively overdriven beats, which stopped and started and shuddered with fragments of female voice and very sparse electronics, were enough to blow my tiny mind – not to mention the weird world-beat and disquieting ambient found elsewhere on the album. It’s still an album I happily go back to anytime I get an excuse. For some time (at least 6 years, maybe more) Van Hoen has had a subscription available on Bandcamp with heaps of exclusive music, some of which leaks out as Bandcamp-only releases (and then slips back behind the wall), including really early experiments, live performances, and essentially demos of tracks that later appear on “proper” releases, like the two recent ones on Dell’Orso label: The Eternal Present and last year’s Plan For A Miracle (and for folks like me there’s now a double CD collecting both albums).
Van Hoen has an interesting background, born in Croydon to African-Jamaican and Punjabi Indian parents. These influences are mostly indirect on his own music, but this new EP has a lovely remix-cum-cover of a 1970s reggae/dub single by the late George ‘Tony’ Subratie.
Ourobonic Plague – This Torsion [Ourobonic Plague Bandcamp]
All this year, Naarm/Melbourne oddity Ourobonic Plague has been releasing EPs as part of his G.A. (Green Annex) Project, with a whole magickal/apocalyptical fiction background that you don’t need to know in order to enjoy the music. As per Ourobonic Plague’s usual sound there are influences from breakbeat & bass genres as well as industrial & noise. As it’s now July, 12 tracks have been collected into The Green Annex Mid-Year Report, so if you’d like distorted beats and drones and dubs, it’s right there and it’s name your price too.
Ujif_notfound – Peace Your Tranquility [I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free/Bandcamp] Georgiy Potopalskiy is well-known in his home country of Ukraine not just for his experimental electronic project Ujif_notfound but as a composer of electro-acoustic operas and as a multimedia artist. I discovered him in 2019 via a huge conceptual collection of music on USB Card on the now sadly-defunct Ukrainian label Kvitnu. Both artists behind that label now run Prostir and child label I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free, whose name is self-explanatory for a Ukrainian label. The third album from Ujif_notfound on ISSUMLIF is the forthcoming Postulate, which detours into intensely distorted guitars and crunching beats, depicting the constant terror of wartime living.
Makram Aboul Hosn – Double Bass Part 2 [Ruptured/In-Resonance Bandcamp]
Earlier this year I played a new album from Berlin-based Italian sound-artist Sara Persico called Sphaîra, which was recorded inside what’s now called The Dome, an unfinished theatre at the Rachid Karami International Fair in Tripoli, Lebanon. Designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, The Experimental Theatre was not yet completed in 1974, as Lebanon descended into all-out civil war. Persico was no doubt not the first to make use of the extraordinary acoustic properties of the space, nor the last, but now Beirut label Ruptured, in association with the In-Resonance Collective, have released a compilation of Lebanese musicians performing in and responding to the space. The Dome Sessions gives us a range of beautiful site-specific music, from group and individual improvisations to songs and a choral performance. There’s a film about the space coming, using footage and music from these performances, but the sound is plenty evocative in itself. I loved the deep exploration of his instrument from double bassist Makram Aboul Hosn, across two improvisations – plucking and scraping, tremolo and harmonics, ricocheting through the space.
David Donohoe and Kate Carr – A Storm and its Aftermath (excerpt) [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
On the latest album from Flaming Pines, A Storm and its Aftermath are recreated by London-based Australian sound-artist Kate Carr and Irish composer & sound-artist David Donohoe. It’s a conjuration of a storm’s sound-world, where field recordings merge unobservably with drones, where musical elements appear shockingly in the middle of the artists’ careful mimicking of nature. An excerpt like I played tonight can only give a flavour of the whole 45 minute work, so when you have a chance, sit in a darkened room and listen with your headphones on.
Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman – Birds of Paradise [Blackford Hill/Bandcamp]
The second album from Scottish multimedia artist Tommy Perman and Mexico-based guitarist Morgan Szymanski grew from music they recorded for the documentary El Dragón de los Bosques de Niebla (The Dragon of the Mist Forest) about the environmental devastation being caused by overdevelopment in the Valle de Bravo, where Szymanski now lives. The combination of classical guitar, subtle electronics and field recordings is gently evocative of the area’s beauty, and of the many species endangered by the ongoing ecocide. It’s a touching work.
memotone – In Dreams (w/ Eva May) [World of Echo/Bandcamp]
A new album from Will memotone Yates could go anywhere, from the dubstep & uk garage-influenced early EPs to the minimal jazz-meets-folktronica that followed quickly on, with Yates playing just about any kind of instrument – percussion, piano, clarinet, cello… Not to mention the extra-saturated industrial techno/house stuff he does as HALFNELSON. New album smallest things, out on August 1st from World of Echo, mostly pares things down to multi-tracked acoustic instruments, and whether it’s folk, avant-garde classical or jazz doesn’t really matter. The last track, however, is a gorgeous understated song underpinned by muted piano, over which Eva May sings a melody that blooms out into multi-tracked vocals and clarinets. It’s gorgeous.
True Silos – STILL (excerpt) [Miles Thomas Bandcamp]
I would love to have played all 35 minutes of this piece, but on a 2hr show I had to take a 10-minute excerpt. This is patient, minimalist jazz or “postrock”, in the sense of late-period Talk Talk. You might think of The Necks, and this trio is also made up of three guys from Eora/Sydney playing keyboards, bass and drums, but it would be lazy to namecheck The Necks and leave it at that. “STILL” was created by “exponential improvisation”, repeatedly playing over their own recordings. Because each take is still improvised live together, it sounds like a single performance – albeit surreal around the edges. Drummer Miles Thomas brings in Brendan Clark on bass and Microfiche’s Novak Manojlovic on keys, although Thomas & Clark often use found objects rather than their instruments, and Manojlovic might stretch drones and long melodies out of his keys. Somewhere in the last 10 minutes, Manojlovic’s piano spins away into jazz-like phrasing and soloing, and the insistent percussion pattern finally drops away. The whole room is mic’d up so it feels like you’re in the studio, with the sun slipping away, the musicians only half paying attention to what they’re playing. Just lovely.
We have lots of miscellaneous experimental beats tonight, and different experimental versions of song, plus sound-art and noise, and kinds of ambient. I’m catching up on some stuff from when I was overseas, but also looking ahead to things not released yet. I’m also exploring the eternal present – all of now.
LISTEN AGAIN, now and now. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
ROMÆO – All Of Now [ROMÆO Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney singer/songwriter/producer ROMÆO has a new EP called Eternal Recurrence coming, and out now is the first single, “All of Now“. In the wake of a relationship ending, the song – in all its evolving 7 minutes – is an invocation of nowness. From a swung trip-hop feel, it slips into drum’n’bass-influenced beats and then just keeps going. Put it on repeat to stretch the moment even longer.
Sharpie Smile – So Far (Feat. Leng Bian) [Drag City/Bandcamp]
Previously art-rock-post-punks Kamikaze Palm Tree, Dylan Hadley & Cole Berliner have just released an album of sometimes-experimental electronic pop as Sharpie Smile. “So Far” is a super pretty, emotive song that skitters into light-weight jungle with added twinkliness from harpist Leng Bian.
Eli Keszler – Ever Shrinking World [LUCKYME®/Bandcamp]
The remarkable new album from Eli Keszler was released on the 2nd of May, the day I left for 6 weeks in UK & Europe, and got lost in the flood of… stuff… But I can’t let it go unplayed because it’s a wonder, even among Keszler’s many brilliant releases. Keszler’s earliest material used his skills at fast-paced, complex percussion to experimental ends, but he’s also a longtime collaborator with Oneohtrix Point Never and Laurel Halo, among others. His 2018 album Stadium, released by Shelter Press, heralded a change in focus along with a move to Manhattan. Here, the skittery beats resembled IDM and jungle, and came along with electronic textures and small melodies. This has continued to be Keszler’s modus operandi, but with LUCKYME® as his more recent home, more pop elements have crept in, evoking trip-hop and noir jazz, with various guest vocalists. “Ever Shrinking World” has no guests listed, so maybe it’s Keszler himself intoning the phrase. In any case, this is a richly-produced album of late-night moods, somewhere between elegance and paranoia.
Mark Van Hoen – No-One Leave (feat. Clare Dove) [Dell’Orso/Bandcamp] Mark Van Hoen – Shine (feat. Rachel Goswell) [Dell’Orso/Bandcamp]
Sometime around 1997 maybe, or 1998, I was introduced (by Seb Chan, no doubt) to the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments by Locust, the sometimes-used pseudonym of Mark Van Hoen. I guess I would’ve known some of Seefeel‘s work already, so I knew Van Hoen had been part of the lineup early on, and some of the vocal samples on that album were from their singer Sarah Peacock. But the massively overdriven beats, which stopped and started and shuddered with fragments of female voice and very sparse electronics, were enough to blow my tiny mind – not to mention the weird world-beat and disquieting ambient found elsewhere on the album. It’s still an album I happily go back to anytime I get an excuse. For some time (at least 6 years, maybe more) Van Hoen has had a subscription available on Bandcamp with heaps of exclusive music, some of which leaks out as Bandcamp-only releases (and then slips back behind the wall), including really early experiments, live performances, and essentially demos of tracks that later appear on “proper” releases, like the one that’s just come out: The Eternal Present. The second Mark Van Hoen album on the Dell’Orso label, it follows last year’s Plan For A Miracle, and for folks like me there’s now a double CD collecting both albums. The material on these releases spans three decades, meaning it reaches back as far as that seminal Locust album, but it’s totally cohesive, and in many ways as contemporary as anything – or as timeless. The Eternal Present indeed.
Molly Joyce – August 9 1999 [130701/Bandcamp]
Composer, instrumentalist and singer Molly Joyce was in a car crash at age 7 which almost amputated her left hand. Over the following 8 years she experienced multiple surgeries, and still has an impaired hand. This trauma is imbued in all of her work, and ableism / disability activism is a constant theme. Her latest album State Change is her most directly autobiographical piece yet, poetically presented though it is: words and phrases taken from the actual medical reports from each of her surgeries form the lyrics, which are accompanied by synths played on keyboard and also through various gestural controllers. The results can be harrowing, with clusters of noise and vocal processing knocking the songs out of balance. It’s a beautiful example of abstraction as storytelling.
DJ DIE SOON – SAQ4IME ft. Sara Persico [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp] Dadub – Hunger for Oblivion ft. Sara Persico [OPAL/Bandcamp] Sacred Lodge – Wa Wa Ke Wa Wa Yi (Feat. Sara Persico) [Avon Terror Corps]
Somehow in the last couple of weeks, Berlin-based Italian musician & singer Sara Persico has turned up on three separate releases – two of them pre-release singles, one on a new release. Persico’s debut album Sphaîra came out earlier this year, following the excellent Boundary EP in 2023, both of which showcased her experimental vocals and an array or production techniques.
First up, a new single from Berlin-based Daisuke Imamura aka DJ DIE SOON, who did an absolutely off-the-charts album last year with Japanese rapper MA, and now the same label – the Jordan-based Drowned By Locals – is set to release his new solo album My Brothel The Wind. Among the guests are Senyawa’s Rully Shabara and WaqWaq Kingdom/King Midas Sound/Dokkebi Q’s Kiki Hitomi, but from Sara Persico we have mangled vocalisations accompanied by mangled beats.
Out this week was a full album from Berlin-based Italian duo Dadub, following EPs on the likes of Stroboscopic Artefacts and Ohm Resistance. Industrial bass is one way to describe them, but industrial techno and… industrial ambient too? Among the many guest vocals, Persico here is singing a little more tunefully, but this is still dark stuff, from a dark, evocative album.
AND also this Friday, Bristol collective Avon Terror Corps announced a new album from Paris-based Matthieu Ruben N’Dongo, under the alias Sacred Lodge. Ambam comes out of his ethno-musicological studies into the Fang people of Central Africa, from whom he’s descended via his father. On top of his dubstep-influenced beats, his own voice is central: he “uses the scream as a vocal act of liberation in the face of oppression”; but Persico adds distorted yelps and auto-tuned interjections. Can’t wait to hear the rest.
RSD – Push [RSD Bandcamp]
Hailing, like Avon Terror Corps, from Bristol is Rob Smith, who with Smith & Mighty was instrumental in the birth of trip-hop, melding dub bass with hip-hop, house and r’n’b in the scene which birthed Massive Attack, Portishead et al. Smith was also one half of the jungle originals More Rockers, and I’ve mentioned the junglearchivecollections Smith put up on his Bandcamp back in 2023 – essential listening IMHO – but Smith was also there as dubstep spread in the mid-2000s, and still enjoys the 140bpm realm. In May he released four 140bpm tracks on the Warm EP and another four have just followed on Warm Pt.2 – just lovely dubby, breaky stuff.
Measure Divide – Stretchlike [Air Texture/Bandcamp] S.A.T.I.N. – Break [Air Texture/Bandcamp]
Berghain-resident DJ & producer JakoJako is an afficionado of hardware production, so when NY label Air Texture asked her to curate a compilation, she pulled in artists who she’s felt connected to through hardware. The result is Hardwired, a 23-track compilation that’s mostly pounding 4/4 beats, but also takes in pulsating ambient and scurrying micro-beats at times. As JakoJako recently released a mostly ambient EP on Mute, it’s not surprising to hear an almost beatless track from sunroof, the label’s Daniel Miller & Gareth Jones; The Field also contributes 6 minutes of churning midrange. But tonight, Toronto’s Measure Divide brings a syncopated bassline to his fast-paced 4/4 beats, while UK duo S.A.T.I.N.‘s track begins with thumping kicks so syncopated that it takes the ear a few bars to catch up when the crunching snare & hit-hat drop in – industrial techno at its finest.
Jay Glass Dubs – Mirror In Decay [Jay Glass Dubs Bandcamp]
Dimitris Papadatos, the Greek producer known as Jay Glass Dubs, has forged a unique path through bass music for a decade now. It’s rare to find any clear genre designators, granting that dub is always a reference point, but the slippery nature of the music, hinting at postpunk, ambient, techno and who knows what else, is very much the point. So this Bandcamp-exclusive EP is doubly outsider stuff: music from an unpigeonholeable artist that didn’t quite fit in his other releases between 2020 and 2024. My favourite piece here, “Mirror In Decay”, is a little less slow-paced than his norm, and is pieced together from little more than a never-changing chord, fragments of percussion and almost-melodies sent through a dub delay, with a sinuous bassline dropping in & out of the mix.
Facetoucher – The Great Mutator [Burnt Seed Records/Bandcamp] Dr Trousers – Wickerman [Burnt Seed Records/Bandcamp]
Next to FBi Radio here in Eora/Sydney, Borloo/Perth’s RTR-FM is a station very dear to my heart, even though I’ve never lived there. Of course Melbourne, Brisbane etc have great community stations too. But RTR are absolutely nurturing and passionate, and look! Now there’s a second RTR. RTR2 is online-only and maybe more freeform, an outlet for artists, labels, fans etc can put music together and anyone can listen back on demand. As the station launched, one of the groups who contributed were Burnt Seed Records, and if you look at their first podcast, you’ll see there’s quiiiiite a bit of overlap with this here show’s interests. As part of their four-episode residency, they put a callout to artists to contribute, and now the fruits of that can be found in the 13-track Bandcamp comp RTR2 Sessions. As nice a selection of under-the-radar experimental music from Australia as you could ask for. Randomly, the two tracks I’ve chosen are both from Naarm/Melbourne artists – well, not too randomly since I know Facetoucher, and incredbily talented, incredibly prolific artist under many different aliases, some of which I know I can’t reveal. Suffice to say that whatever they do is brilliantly crafted, thoughtful and – most likely – bonkers (well, look, here’s SOME of it). The 2 minutes of stretched glitch here appealed to me before I checked the tracklisting. Also from the same vicinity is Dr Trousers, who I didn’t know, and whose track is clanking industry and rumbling drones, with near-hidden vocal snatches until it clambers out of the basement for the last 45 seconds, a flickering, crackling menace.
Amuleto Apotropaico – Albedo e Rito [Perf/Bandcamp]
Just last week I played a track by Portuguese drummer & producer António Feiteira released on Eastern Nurseries. Amuleto Apotropaico finds him in a duo with Francisco Pedro Oliveira, who plays flutes and electronics – and on tonight’s track, Ricardo Jacinto drops some lovely cello into the mix. Feiteira’s drums clatter and tumble more like natural phenomena than beats, and everything floats around them. Add Perf label to the list of creative, uncategorisable Portuguese labels.
Family Ravine – Dense crowds under too hot cameras [Death Is Not The End]
Last year, UK label Death Is Not The End released an excellent album titled (I’ll) waltz in and act like (I) own the place from K.W. Cahill, the multi-talented artist behind Family Ravine and many other projects. Now comes the equally quirkily-titled Wet Lands Dry Me, a set of abstract texture-works for various guitars, melodica and thumb pianos. These instruments could be describing some twee indie-folk but it’s nothing of the sort (no shade at twee indie-folk). These are lo-fi, low-key pieces like out-of-focus photographs or blurred scenery flitting past a train’s window. But it’s not background music either – check the constantly wailing distorted notes sliding up and down in “Only one way to hit the threshold”. So good.
Aho Ssan & Resina – Egress VII [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp] Aho Ssan & Resina – Egress IV [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
When Paris-based producer Aho Ssan (aka Niamké Désiré) put together his 2023 album Rhizomes he assembled a list of collaborators to die for, from Northern English emo-drill hero Blackhaine to Iranian experimental duo 9T Antiope, Moor Mother to Valentina Magaletti to name a few. One of my favourite tracks, “Till The Sun Down”, featured perennial favourites clipping. as well as Polish cellist Resina (aka Karolina Rec). Aho Ssan & Resina first met at a virtual Unsound Festival during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, organised by Nicolás Jaar – and it was Jaar who released that album on his Other People label (as well as appearing on a track himself). Now the duo’s full album Ego Death has been released on the redoubtable Subtext Recordings, and it has the beauty of Resina’s cello multitracks and loops, and the glitchy, heavy immersion of Aho Ssan’s electronics, with heaving bottom end and even some percussive, rhythmic elements at times. This is some of the best work of both artists, emotive and bombastic and smart.
Siavash Amini – Maculate [Room40/Bandcamp] Caligo is the latest work from Tehran’s master sound-artist Siavash Amini, returning once more to Meanjin/Brisbane’s Room40. Here he’s in dialogue with some old, mysterious piano recordings from Iran – Amini doesn’t give us much more info about these recordings, but they’re fed into some pretty intense processing. At times the piano source is obvious, at other times it’s distorted and twisted into new, anguished forms. There’s an emotional depth to Amini’s work which makes it compulsive/compulsory listening.
Shugorei – The Charm (feat. Shêm Allen & Karin Schaupp) [4000 Records/Bandcamp]
Brisbane percussion & electronics duo Shugorei continue releasing collaborative singles, one at a time, and here they are with another gem. This one almost sounds “post-classical”, and when you realise the song sits in a bed of beautiful classical guitar from Karin Schaupp, that starts to make sense. It’s an achingly pretty love song with vocals – in English and Japanese – from Shêm Allen as well as Camille Barry’s violin and frequent collaborator Dan Curro on cello, so yeah… classical-ish! And for me, at least, gorgeous enough that I listened to it three times in a row when I first heard it.
Caimin Gilmore – MVE I [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp]
Some more crossover-classical now, from Irish double bassist Caimin Gilmore. As well as being a member of contemporary classical (and crossover) group Crash Ensemble, Gilmore has lent his double bass to many well-known artists including Leonard Cohen, Damon Albarn, Sam Amidon and Dirty Projectors. On his forthcoming album BlackGate Gilmore brings in the brilliant cellist Kate Ellis (who’s also in Crash Ensemble and has workedextensively with Laura Cannell) and Dutch harpist Lavinia Meijer. Gilmore’s background in pop and folk as well as classical informs the compositions, which are also enhanced with the distinctive FM synthesis of his Yamaha DX-7.
Yearns – Washed on the shore [Room40/Bandcamp]
We finish tonight with the gently desolate sound of Meanjin/Brisbane duo Yearns, featuring Joel Saunders of A Country Practice and Spirit Bunny, and Andrew Foley of An Heirloom, who records solo as Grids/Units/Planes. Between them, the pair work with various kinds of analogue & digital electronics, from circuit-bent Casio keyboards to archaic software to tape loops. For Room40’s A Guide To Saints series, Yearns have released Fata Morgana, which takes its name from the visual phenomenon that can happen when light is bent from over the horizon, creating a shimmering mirage. And this music is oceanic and shimmering and slightly out of focus.
Mid-January, we’re very much on the way with 2026’s new music, but I’ve got a few 2025 catch-ups in here too.
I’ll be away in Japan the next two weeks, and Holly Conner on the 25th and Lachlan Stevens on the 1st of Feb will be your excellent hosts.
LISTEN AGAIN & feel the feels. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
Puma Blue – Hush [Play It Again Sam/Bandcamp]
Jacob Allen has been making music as Puma Blue since about 2014. He has a jazz background but is making a kind of Radiohead-like pop music influenced by trip-hop, dub techno, and even jungle. On this, the third single from the forthcoming album Croak Dream, it’s pure trip-hop, and great for it.
Pebble Seven – Strangers [42far/Bandcamp]
Czech musician Daša Bulíková started making music as just DASA, but has now become Pebble Seven, under which name she’s signed to new Slovakian label 42far, run by Adam Badí Donoval of Warm Winters Ltd. The vibe here is certainly more pop than the beautiful experimental fare on his other label, but nor is it a straightforward indie-pop song. Keen to hear more from Bulíková, and from Adam’s new label.
Alev Lenz – Domestisizer (on F) [Alev Lenz Bandcamp] Alev Lenz – Mother Tongue (on B) [Alev Lenz Bandcamp]
Turkish-German composer, songwriter, singer & producer Alev Lenz has composed works for theatre, for the contemporary music choir Roomful of Teeth and famously composed the song “Fall Into Me” for the Netflix series Black Mirror. That lovely piece was based around a C-drone, which inspired this new album of hers, 4 in a Cycle of Thirds, which traverses the 12 semitones of the western scale with a song that hovers around each note. Sometimes the drone/pedal note is obvious, sometimes the harmonies seem too nimble to be based around the one note – but they all are. Regardless, these are great songs with some pretty sharp lyrics and very sharp performances, which draw from Lenz’s musical experience in the classical & jazz worlds as well as experimental music & songwriting.
Kee Avil – itch [NNA Tapes/Bandcamp]
Via the excellent NNA Tapes, here’s a new single track from Montréal experimental musician Kee Avil, who’s released two great albums on Constellation a few years ago. New song “itch” came directly after releasing Spine in 2024, but it’s a more conventional approach initially: a creaky home-recorded piano and fragile vocal. But true to her experimental practice, by halfway through the piano & vocals are joined by half-buried beats and granular distortions. Lovely.
Mi3raj معراج – Medley ميدلى [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Here’s the first of two new releases on Beirut’s Ruptured Records for 2026. Abdelrahman Shaat and Mohamed Tarek Moussa, who make up Mi3raj معراج, are from Cairo. This is a beautiful album that mirrors Toni Geitani‘s Wahj in some ways – Moussa’s Arabic lyrics which he speaks, sings, multi-tracks and sometimes growls, are accompanied by electronics, live and processed instruments and beats from Shaat. Wonderful stuff.
Dééfait – Molokh ∞ [Ici d’ailleurs/Bandcamp]
Paris band Dééfait have been gigging around the French capital city for a couple of years, and bring their debut self-titled EP now via venerable French label Ici d’ailleurs. This is intense psych/krautrock that doesn’t let up, with Mexican-born vocalist Riki Lara singing, chanting, shouting in Spanish, French and English at times. It can be pretty thrilling.
Zu – Pleroma [House of Mythology/Bandcamp]
One of Italy’s longest-lived experimental rock outfits, Zu are uncategorizable almost by definition, made up of saxophone, bass/guitar and drums – but also because they are committed collaborators, sporting releases with the likes of American avant-gardist Eugene Chadbourne, Norwegian sax mangler Mats Gustafsson, Japanese shapeshifting producer Nobukazu Takemura and terrifying punk/noise singer, journalist, MMA fighter etc Eugene Robinson. Oh, and of course powerhouse Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. Oh, and Mike Patton. On their latest album, Ferrum Sidereum, Zu offer a riff-heavy form of hardcore that’s dripping with synths, guitars that sound like tremolo orchestral strings, sax that sounds like heavy guitars… The album’s produced by multiple-Grammy winner Marc Urselli, who has a close working relationship with John Zorn, as well as artists like Laurie Anderson and many others – and it sounds just slick enough but still heavy and raucous enough too.
Zone Null – There will be poems (condensed) [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based duo Zone Null is made up of Burkhard Beins and Lebanese experimental musician Tony Elieh, both known for playing electric bass and electronics. On their album Phase I from Beirut’s Ruptured Records, the pair also wield electronics, processing their instruments into glitchy, granular loops and crunchy textures, as well as raucous punk noise.
Richard Francis – Phase effect on wet road [Room40/Bandcamp]
Aotearoa/New Zealand sound-artist Richard Francis draws from the same well as Zone Null’s crunched, crackling loops for his Room40 debut, Combinations 4. These lo-fi, evolving soundpieces are often strangely beguiling, showing a keen ear for turning seemingly simple ingredients into something special. No wonder then that the first 3 Combinations were released on celebrated London/Antwerp label Entr’acte (RIP), Jason Lescalleet‘s Glistening Examples and Giuseppe Ielasi‘s Senufo Editions. Really recommend sinking into this.
Damian Valles – Pt.4 [BLWBCK/Bandcamp]
OK, so now over to Ottawa sound-art/dronester Damian Valles, who I was very pleased to find last year returning to abstract(ed) sound with the Assemblage EP. He filled the time in between with some excellent minimal techno/IDM stuff as Nats (there’s a whole album too). I really recommend Damian’s back catalogue, much of which you can find on his own Bandcamp, but new album Sundowning can be found via BLWBCK, a non-profit based in Toulouse, France. The broad spectrum of “drone” music, which used to be a classification I used a fair bit for music I played on this show, has always accommodated music that did a lot more than sustain notes through long crescendos… and I’m not sure it makes sense to refer to this music as “drone” now anyway, but Damian Valles has a way of incorporating looping, loping rhythms, mysterious processed acoustic sounds, industrial ominousness etc into his works such that there’s always something really interesting going on, both in the foreground and around the edges. That said, the piece I played tonight it straight-up sonic attack, crushing, glitching, splintering. It’s also full of weird sonic illusions – sounds that seem immense suddenly captured under a close-up acoustic sound. Just so great.
Pita – 4 [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Much like Fennesz‘ immortal Hotel Paral.lel, every time Peter Pita Rehberg’s Get Out receives a remaster/re-release I think “Come on, that’s already been re-hashed”, and then I remember it’s been… a while. Rehberg tragically and unexpectedly passed away in 2021, but the label he co-founded and then solely ran in its own reincarnation as Editions Mego continues on via the many artists it long supported, and for the vinyl lovers, it’ll be a joy to have Rehberg’s gem of a digital noise album now available again (for the record, the CD was reissued/expanded in 2008 – that’s quite a while!). Connoisseurs (including myself) adore track 3, with its looping, ever-more-distorted Ennio Morricone sample, but the rest is as intense and at times beautiful in its own way. Couldn’t come more highly recommended round these parts.
Luís Fernandes + Pierce Warnecke – Culatra II (excerpt) [Room40/Bandcamp]
Portuguese musician Luís Fernandes has created beautiful avant-garde electro-acoustic works for Room40 before. Here he’s teamed up with another Room40 alum, Pierce Warnecke, creating two long pieces from close-up field recordings from the fishing island of Culatra, off the coast of Portugal. Considering the setting, with ocean filling most of the horizon, the processed sounds edited together in these pieces sound surprisingly industrial.
Travis Cook – 9am [Travis Cook Bandcamp]
Yes, Adelaide’s Travis Cook continues to release one track a week. That means this one’s a few weeks behind by the time I’m writing this. Very ominous for 9am, which… sounds about right.
Atte Elias Kantonen – EEEE [OOH-Sounds/Bandcamp] Atte Elias Kantonen – Aluhart [OOH-Sounds/Bandcamp] Cyan Music, from Finnish sound-artist Atte Elias Kantonen, channels the colouring of its title and album cover by being equal parts overwhelming and peaceful. But let’s be honest: that cyan-on-cyan lettering on the cover is pretty dizzying, and so it goes with this music, at least in parts: stuttery sample-choppage, faux bowed instruments, wobbling quasi-vocaloids. Recorded at EMS in Stockholm, each track is a vignette based around one single synth source (or thereabouts), and along with the destabilising wonkiness there’s no small amount of melodic emotiveness wrung from these synthetic sounds.
Leif – Yes No [AD93/Bandcamp]
If you’re familiar with Leif‘s Igam-Ogam EP on Livity Sound, you might, like me, be expecting something more aimed at the dancefloor – dubby house/techno vibes? They’re kinda there on his excellent Collide album for AD93, but wrapped in warm electric guitar and synth loops, with rhythms coming from pulsating lo-fi patterns more than drum machines & breaks. Sometimes it feels like you’re listening to shoegazey, trip-hoppy postrock, and that’s a lovely thing indeed.
Joanna – Gardeners World – ddwy Remix [New Feelings/Bandcamp]
So at the end of the 1980s, a bunch of musicians from a town somewhere between Liverpool & Manchester started a band, and called themselves Joanna. Typical, four blokes using a female name for their band, but we’ll let that slide – it was the ’80s OK? (meh) Anyway, they recorded an album(-ish) and while Madchester bloomed around them, they never got it released. So last year, Hello Flower possibly took the world record for the longest-delayed release ever – about 36 years… Well, I love me some baggy, jangly Britpop, but we’re hearing about them here because there’s now a couple of lovely remixes out, which take advantage of the ’90s love with some trip-hoppy, breaky ambient house vibes. Welsh duo ddwy are Naomi & Ronan, and everything about their remix screams early 1990s to me, in the best way. Note also that Naarm DJ Andras (also one half of ambient-indie-folk duo Wilson Tanner) pulls Joanna’s original apart and delicately applies dubby effects. Very nice, both sides.
DJ Punx – Gas [YUKU/Bandcamp] Hotto Potto is the first release on YUKU from Milan-based producer & graphic designer Simone Quartucci, also known as Simo404 – and now DJ Punx. He’s released zine-albums with music influenced by footwork as well as Asian and African percussion, and collaborated a lot with other artists & musicians. This EP fits the outer limits of the YUKU mould very nicely – twisted bass music drawing on squiggly acid electro harkening back to glitchy IDM.
ugne&maria – a tidal pull [Hands In The Dark/Bandcamp] ugne&maria – slip [Hands In The Dark/Bandcamp]
Back in 2023 we heard a beautiful album from Lithuanian musician Maria Rasa Kudaba as emer, called Sea Salt, and not long after, her duo with Ugné Vyliaudaité as ugne&maria released their debut full-length, HEALING, on Belgian label Futura Resistenza. The duo are both Lithuanian, but are based in Brussels, and their equally beguiling follow-up Zotasphere is brought to us courtesy of much-respected French label Hands In The Dark. Their music harkens back to ’90s ambient beats, infused in dub and hazy samples, with Vyliaudaité’s violin used texturally as much as melodically. Music for underwater dancefloors and lethargic raves.
False Aralia – Borgesian Term 04 [False Aralia Bandcamp]
Most people are referring to False Aralia as a label, with each release named as if it’s a new artist, but from Zero Key through to Borgesian Term, each release is primarily the work of Izaak Schlossman (credited as IS) with various vocal contributions, often from Anya Prisk (the two have more of a pop project together called Loveshadow). 12″s are shepherded into the world via Peak Oil, two at a time, each a very subtle take on postpunk minimalism, trip-hop and proto-house – but it’s more ethereal than any of thoes genre signifiers might imply. On Borgesian Term, Schlossman enlists DJML aka Daniel John Myers Letson on drum kit, but for most of the EP the sounds still have that melted-tape warble. Like Raime played on a Walkman with dying batteries.
Erdfisch – Honig [tier.debut/Bandcamp] Jan Matiz aka Marius Mathiszik and Henning Rohschürmann have played in projects together since meeting about 15 years ago while studying music in the Netherlands. Mathiszik bases himself in Athens, Greece, where he runs his tier.debut label, while Rohschürmann is based in north-western Germany. Both play guitar, drums and various electronics, creating loops and textures and rhythms that marry jazz with lo-fi noise, glitchy ambient with glitchy proto-beats. You’re never sure whether you’re listening to jazz fusion or postrock or electronica, old-school or futuristic. Whatever, it’s really great.
Welcome to the first new music show of 2026 – and thanks to Giulio aka Parcae for his great selections last week!
We have a certain amount of catchup from last year, but we also have a surprisingly large amount of new music already, either released this week or last, or forthcoming.
LISTEN AGAIN in a new year. Stream on demand from fbi.radio or podcast here.
hidden_attachment – sorry this was just something i had to do [ky/hidden_attachment Bandcamp] hidden_attachment – in moncton i spent all my money on pinball and beer [ky/hidden_attachment Bandcamp]
In November I played a track from Ky Brooks, the Montreal artist who recorded an album in 2023 called Power Is The Pharmacy for Constellation under the name Ky. They appear under various aliases, the most current of which is hidden_attachment, and they were previously known for making noise-punk with Lungbutter and freeform experimental stuff with Nag, among many others. The new hidden_attachment release is an EP described as “a tiny horrible opera”, which seems misleading – horrible is a matter of opinion, “opera” perhaps less so, but this is a small epic of practically ever genre other than opera. Jangling indie rock, electro-pop, bedroom drum’n’bass, bedroom punk, experimental ambient pop… ish. It’s weird & fun!
Silvia Tarozzi – Lucciole [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp] Silvia Tarozzi – Le ossessioni [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
When US label Unseen Worlds introduced us to Italian violinist/singer/composer and more Silvia Tarozzi, it was her first album Mi specchio e rifletto, an album that reflects her broad musical experience, from working with groundbreaking minimalist electronic composer Eliane Radigue to contemporary music with Ensemble Dedalus, to the folk music of her local region, improvisation, and playful studio experimentation. There was more than a hint of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Then in 2022, Tarozzi released another extraordinary work, Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore (“Songs of war, work and love”), with the cellist Deborah Walker, presenting a collection of music inspired by folk songs from rural Emilia which came from working class women involved with the partisan resistance in World War II, including songs sung by choirs of female rice field workers – music that the pair had grown up with. In April 2025, some of us were incredibly lucky, in Sydney and I think Melbourne, to witness Tarozzi & Walker performing these songs together, with just their instruments and voices – one of those occasions when musicianship seems like magic. So there’s a lot of anticipation with this new solo album from Tarozzi – or there would be, except that Lucciole appeared seemingly out of nowhere, available digitally on Bandcamp on December 12th. We’ll have to wait for April this year for the LP and CD, but the whole album’s there if you’re willing to stump up $10USD. Once again this is a wonderful tapestry of an album, with brass ensemble arrangements that set it somewhere between classical & folk music, along with synths, field recordings and turntables bringing modern twists. Her voice is lovely and some of the songwriting evokes the baroque pop of Sufjan Stevens in the best way.
Winged Wheel – I See Poseurs Every Day [12XU/Bandcamp] Winged Wheel – Speed Table [12XU/Bandcamp]
A US experimental rock supergroup, Winged Wheel began as a filesharing process between various musicians including violist Whitney Johnson aka Matchess, resulting in the 2022 debut album No Island. But for their new album Desert So Green, the band (expanded further to include, among others, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley) had toured extensively, and headed into the studio together. The result is an album with psych-kraut-rock intensity and rhythmic drive, blurts of postpunk harshness, shards of viola, and vocals at times. It’s a real surprise, and really worth digging into.
Èlg & la Chimie – La ville cachée [Murailles Music/Bandcamp]
I don’t speak much French, not well anyway, but there’s just scads of great music from France – and francophone artists from Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, not to mention other former colonies – and you know I’m happy to play music in any languages as much as instrumental music. But understanding the pure breadth of francophone music is still challenging, so I’m happy when French artists fall into my lap. The entity known as Èlg is Laurent Gérard, and he’s been involved in experimental rock, sound-stuff, weird electronic etc for a good couple of decades. La chimie (chemistry) was a project of his in 2013, made up of weird electronics and loops – but now it’s also his band, in which he plays amplified guitalele (ukulele/guitar hybrid) and keyboards, with Marie Nachury on bass, electroncis and percussion, and Johann Mazé on drums and drum triggers. All three also sing, and they make a righteous noise, sometimes starting off as normal-sounding songs until something super-weird happens; in particular, often magnificent grooves on booming, clattering drum kit, and thumping bass. No two tracks are anything like each other, but there’s a through-line of unchained inspiration. Truly something else.
JJJJJerome Ellis – Evensong, part 3 (for and after Jessica Valoris) [Shelter Press/Bandcamp]
This wonderful album came out in November, but I didn’t properly get to it until too late to include it last year. JJJJJerome Ellis is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, academic, cross-media artist and more; they are of Grenadian-Jamaican-American heritage, and they’re a disabled person with a stutter – something that they’ve ingrained in their practice, including in the spelling of their first name. This album, Vesper Sparrow, draws from Black American and Caribbean culture as well as pop and experimental music, while being placed primarily in a composed jazz context. Most of the tracks are written for, and sometimes feature, fellow artists, poets and theorists. Alongside granular processing and sampling, Ellis’s stutter features and becomes a structural part of the music – but whatever the theoretical basis, this is beautiful and incredibly creative music.
Toni Geitani – Ya Sah [Toni Geitani Bandcamp] Toni Geitani – Wasla [Toni Geitani Bandcamp]
Originally trained in filmmaking, Lebanese musician Toni Geitani has since gained a Masters in live electronics in Amsterdam, where he is based now. His Masters thesis is titled “Sampling as a Political Medium”, which sounds fascinating. In his music, he melds Arabic vocals with classical instrumentation and experimental electronic production – the three preview tracks from his forthcoming album Wahj are stunning. “Wahj” (وهج) means “radiance”, and Geitani invites us to look through the collapse we see around, and seek that light.
Obelisk – Salty Lemon Air [Geometric Corruption/Bandcamp]
FBi’s own Ryan O’Rourke, presenter of Mithril for all things heavy & experimental, also makes music as Obelisk. It’s heavy and experimental for sure, but very electronic, very deconstructed club with aspects of breakcore, groaning distorted bass, trance keyboards and glitch. Obviously it’s awesome.
Kloke – Silk [Subtle Audio/Bandcamp]
Huuuuge jungle/drumfunk/drum’n’bass compilation incoming! Limerick, Ireland label Subtle Audio put out a series of great 2 or 3CD compilations in the mid-’00s with early drumfunk and jungle-inclined drum’n’bass – at the time it felt like the best source of really great beat production around. Many years later, here’s another 3CD set: Our Atmosphere has 2CDs of original tracks and tracks taken from label releases in a broadly “atmospheric” jungle, drumfunk and drum’n’bass, with a huge list of great producers, plus a DJ mix from label head Code on the 3rd disc. Oh – and the CDs arrived in the mail just as we hit the new year, but the digital version (without the 3rd disc) won’t be available until Feb 6th, so this is a sorta-kinda exclusive of Naarm’s own Kloke, one of many highlights here.
Aftawerks & Earl Grey – Swingfunc Jungle [Earl Grey Bandcamp]
Nathan Firman aka Aftawerks has been plying his trade in funky acid, IDM & jungle for over a decade, and Jim Earl Grey released an EP of his on his Hyperchamber Music label way back in 2013. I’m a pretty big fan of Earl Grey (in fact I first heard his stuff on those Subtle Audio comps back in the day!) and this collaboration between the two is just mad shit in the best way.
Homemade Weapons – Leviathan (HW Remix) [Weaponist/Bandcamp]
Seattle’s Homemade Weapons has his own particular take on the minimal/tribal drum’n’bass championed by Samurai Records, and as well as releasing on that label (and others) he runs his own label, Weaponist. The latest label release is the Bumura EP from the artist himself, with two new tracks and two remixes he’s made of tracks that were originally collabs – tonight’s cut was originally made with Sacramento’s Red Army. I do appreciate the way that elements of jungle are dropped into the very minimal d’n’b feel.
BMA – Middle Age REFLEKT [Industrial Coast/Bandcamp] Moa Pillar – Fight Them Back [Industrial Coast/Bandcamp]
The Industrial Coast label is based in Middlesborough, about an hour’s drive south of Newcastle, so fairly grim-up-north territory (I actually lovely Newcastle when I played there last year). The label is pretty dedicated to the cassette as a format, and generally most of the music on Bandcamp is unavailable digitally without the physical objects (set at £999) – but they do do retrospective compilations, and open up other releases briefly at times. So Deconstructed Reconstructed Retrospective is a double-compilation, in that it collects tracks from the labels Deconstructed/Reconstructed series of compilations in which industrial & experimental artists cover or remix artists such as Crass or music related to movements like anarcho-punk or Rock Against Racism. With 50 tracks, it covers plenty of ground. Sometimes you can immediately tell who the subject is, sometimes you have to try and look it up, and artists appear under various guises too – such as Iceman Junglist Kru (lo-fi industrial junglism), half of whom is also Stonecirclesampler (arcane ambient weirdness) aka Liquid DnB-like Ambient Grime 2… Unfortunately it’s long enough after it went up that it’s now priced at £999, but you can still stream the tracks. Tonight, US drum’n’bass producer BMA takes on hardcore punk originals Minor Threat, while London-based Russian deconstructed trance guy Moa Pillar does a tribute to Linton Kwesi Johnson.
John Wall – Iconvt [John Wall Bandcamp]
The ineffable John Wall stands somewhere between glitch & computer music, musique concrète, plunderphonics, and free jazz. Astonishingly, he didn’t start making music until he was 40 (in 1990). He’s worked with the cream of UK free jazz, and I’ve also featured a fair bit of his work with spoken word poet Alex Rodgers – here’s an example. He recently revisited his 1999 Constructions I-IV, which combined samples from live improvisers with samples of modern classical compositions, in order to remove the deliberate glitch-sound, which he now finds ugly (although I’m not the only one who likes that sound!) But now he’s put a single new track called “Iconvt“, which sounds like a command-line tool (iconv in Linux is a command that converts a string to a different character encoding). The source sounds here are not obviously revealed – it sounds mostly electronic; there are some fairly inscrutable quotes in the description, plus a reference to fellow avant-gardist Sunik Kim. But the music is some of the least-inscrutable stuff Wall has done, with rumbling bass, quite a bit of melody, and a fair bit of glitch, all things considered!
Low Flung – Niksen [Low Flung Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Danny Wild has been Low Flung for a long while now, and tends to lean more ambient than beat-driven. On his last release from 2025, Type-D we find him in a contemplative mood, but also in a dub techno mode – the first track has a super slow tempo with percussive chatter around the edges, but the other two tracks are faster but no less dubby.
SAWT – Phase Collapse [Beacon Sound/Bandcamp] T. Gowdy – 00L00 [Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
Excellent Portland, Oregon label Beacon Sound enlists many brilliant friends to contribute to their important new compilation Gaza is the Moral Compass, benefiting on-the-ground mutual aid groups in Gaza. The organisers point out that Israel has violated the so-called ceasefire hundreds of times; Israel’s fascist government is joined by Donald Trumps’ fascist governmnent in trying to remake the Middle East while Australia’s Labor governments are falling over themselves to protect the interests of a foreign state, at least partially in the name of “Jewish safety” which as a Jew I categorically reject. Cultural practice is not neutral, the organisers remind us, and that includes what art/music/culture you consume and how you do so. So here we have many artists associated with the Constellation label, artists originally from Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, and indeed Japan – the quality is incredibly high throughout, and all the music is exclusive to the comp (for now). SAWT is Kamel Badarneh, based in Brussels, whose contribution is a nice piece of throbbing techno, while Constellation’s T. Gowdy does his shimmering sample-shifting thing but with an Arabic-sounding sound source.
Filippo Ansaldi & Simone Sims Longo – +1 [Umor Rex/Bandcamp] Filippo Ansaldi & Simone Sims Longo – Illusione [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
A few years ago, Italian musician Simone Sims Longo released a brilliant electro-acoustic album called Paesaggi integrati (integrated landscapes) on the great Dutch label Esc.rec – still one of my favourites on the label. There, he processed the sounds of various acoustic instruments; on Solo Suono, Sims Longo is working with saxophonist Filippo Ansaldi, and it’s his instrument that he’s processing. At times we’re hearing the saxophone solo, or multi-tracking into beautiful chordal movement; elsewhere the instrument is splintered and looped. The saxophone is an instrument uniquely suited to experimental approaches, and Ansaldi and Sims Longo here go deep into some of its sonic possibilities.
Dual Dialect – Conglomerate III – Meme-leak Mosaic [4000 Records/Bandcamp]
Speaking of sax, Meanjin/Brisbane’s Dual Dialect feature Andrew Garton of Ghostwoods on “mutant saxophone” alongside Andrew Foley of Grids/Units/Planes, YEARNS etc, creating disintegrated beats and abstract pads according to their very accurate Instagram bio. But there’s some surprisingly blissful stuff here too – a kind of jazz fusion that hints at downtempo stuff from the ’90s, Jon Hassell’s fourth world work in the ’80s, and post-’00s glitchy electronics. Recommended.
Aroma – After The Rain [Urban Trout Records/Bandcamp]
And we finish tonight with a collaboration by an artist whose debut album with Eora/Sydney jazz piano quartet Aronas was a defining work for the early days of Utility Fog (you can stream Culture Tunnelson SoundCloud and elsewhere). Pianist & composer Aron Ottignon had moved to Sydney from New Zealand (his brother Matt still plays around this city in many ensembles), and the group embodied the post-jazz feel, at least on record, that sat perfectly with the UFog sound. Aron soon decamped to the UK & Europe, embedding traditional musics from around the world into his art (Aronas’ album Culture Tunnels was influenced by South Pacific rhythms). Now the Aroma project sees Aron playing the Osmose “expressive synth” alongside singer, sound-artist, label head & Afro-futurist Nina Kahle. This song, recorded in Senegal, is their take on the beautiful John Coltrane tune “After The Rain”, using the multiple gestures the Osmose adds to each individual key of the piano keyboard, with Kahle’s vocals and field recordings ebbing and flowing.
Somehow it’s the second-last month of the year? And yet, this year has lasted about 3 years so far, so it’s not too surprising? We do have a surprise new album from Aesop Rock, new weirdpop of various sorts, trip-hop vibes, Halloween spookiness, sadcore/hardcore crossover, industrial sad-hop, experimental electronics both beat-wise and not, some jungle and some blissful ambient pop to take us out. It’s Sunday.
LISTEN AGAIN & re-live the ancient future – stream on demand at fbi.radio, or podcast here.
Yunzero – B1 [Best Effort/Bandcamp]
One of Aus’s most creative producers, Jim Sellars as Yunzero builds tracks out of dusty YouTube samples and a sharp sense of rhythm and the surreal. While his latest release is a collection of edits (vol. 1), they’re very much twisted in the Yunzero way. This one’s a harder take on the Ying Tang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song)“.
ŽIVA – Unrest [ŽIVA Bandcamp]
Croatian musician Lucija Ivšić has been based in Naarm/Melbourne for a while now, and having fronted the postpunk band Punčke in Croatia, she now makes music as ŽIVA with clear roots in new wave and ’80s electronic pop but also contemporary electronica & techno. The Friday after this show aired, ŽIVA played at the Vanguard here in Sydney, and I’m really glad she released this song ahead of it. It’s about dealing with OCD, fighting with your own brain… Gotta say I can identify with burnout right now, as I think a lot of us neurodivergent folk can.
celosiafields – Newletter ft. Raj Mahal [self-released – stream here & elsewhere]
Balram Veeragoo Naidu is a composer, filmmaker, producer & programmer working on Gadigal land, and going by celosiafields for his artistic work. He’s gradually releasing an album called Newletter, much of it with post-classical piano and synth work, and with some amazing videos – I particularly like this one from a couple of years ago. The title track of the album starts with soundtrack-like piano, but halfway through a minimalist beat builds up, over which Eora-based rapper Raj Mahal adds some verses. Great crossover stuff.
Jerome Blazé – You Can Find Us Out Your Way [Jerome Blazé Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Jerome Blazé is engaged with music across multiple dimensions: as a producer, live keyboardist, songwriter and academic. Last year’s Living Room album was a home-recorded album combining influences from soul, neo-classical and dance music. The album put collaboration up-front, with instrumental and vocal collaborators from across the Sydney music scene as well as songwriting collaborations and a fully-credited list of sampled artists (and birds!) taking in local friends and international influences like BADBADNOTGOOD, Punch Brothers, Al Green and more. This year, Jerome released the album on vinyl, and accompanying it, has been expanding the album with alternate reworkings of each track – in reverse order! However, in late October he put out this new single, “You Can Find Us Out Your Way“, a piece of classic indie-pop replete with a classical sample (from Australian composer Alex Turley) that sweetly echoes The Verve’s illicit Rolling Stones sample on “Bitter Sweet Symphony”. It’s a really great song, and to cement the connection, there’s a video of Jerome & friends on the Sydney Harbour Bridge that echoes The Verve’s classic video. Honestly so great, got to give it way more views.
Penelope Trappes – Bleed [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
Well, last November was when we first heard a single from Brighton-based Australian musician Penelope Trappes‘ album A Requiem, her first on One Little Independent. I played a bunch of singles, ranging from drone works with scratchy cello to choral fragments and deep bass booms. The album is kind-of songwriting turned inside-out, and it’s an album worth listening through from start to finish, a ceremony eulogising parts of herself that she’d long suppressed. However, a year after that first single, here Penelope offers us her second album of the year, suitably following A Requiem with Æternum. This is very much a companion album, and the material here is as strong and moving as the “main” album. I had the pleasure & privilege of playing cello with Penelope at a performance at Lazy Thinking earlier this year – and while we’ve known each other for quite a while, it was the first time we’d met in person. I can only hope she’ll be back at a venue of the size that reflects her stature. (All love to Lazy Thinking though, one of the best things about this here city!)
Bird Battles – Overgrown [Sleep In The Fire Records]
Earlier this year I was pleased to play the incredible debut “Bird Battles” from the duo of the same name – in fact there I am quoted on the Bandcamp page! I expressed hope that more was to come, and here’s the album! Bird Battles features the voice and other sounds of London-based Scottish musician Euan Millar-McMeeken, better known as glacis and also one half of Graveyard Tapes with Matthew Collings and of Civic Hall with Craig Tattersall. Here he’s working with visual and sound-artist Jesse Narens, whose love of birds is all over his visual art and audio work. This is by turns fragile and intense, noisy and delicate. Some of Euan’s best work, and lately he’s been on a high.
Hilary Woods – Taper [Sacred Bones Records/Bandcamp]
One of a number of Halloween releases that came out this week is Night CRIÚ, the new album from Irish experimental musician & songwriter Hilary Woods. After a career in indie rock, she took a break and came back with a unique form of dark, experimental songwriting – part folk, part drone, part soundtrack. In fact, her last album was dramatic instrumental drone music, so it’s notable that Night CRIÚ sees her return to vocal music. The second word in its title, “criú”, does seem to be Irish for “crew”. These are gothic tales inspired, like the music, by a wide range of art and contemporary experience, and the evocative production makes it hard to always make out the lyrics – there’s a lot of Hope Sandoval mixed in with strummed guitar, sparse drumkit, soaring strings and arrangements for brass band and children’s choir.
Laura Moody – The Witch [Laura Moody Bandcamp]
Years ago, when I discovered the Nonclassical label, it was their very first release, the first string quartet by Gabriel Prokofiev, along with some remixes, and it was performed by The Elysian Quartet. Tragically the quartet doesn’t exist as such anymore, although The Elysian Collective does in its place, and Laura Moody remains their cellist. Now, 11 years after her first solo album, Laura has dropped a small EP that’s perfect for Halloween, called Haunted – three tracks for cello & voice, originally commissioned for a performance called “Deep Night, Dark Night” at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. They sit somewhere between classical and gothic folk, dramatic and creepy. The lyrics to “The Witch” come from Mary Elizabeth Coleridge.
Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – The Magic of the World [Computer Students™/The Flenser/Bandcamp] Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – Fission/Fusion [Computer Students™/The Flenser/Bandcamp]
Oklahoma is surprisingly rich with heavy and raucous bands, but the band that’s made it to the top of the pile, so to speak, are Chat Pile (named after the piles of chat, or toxic waste from lead-zinc mining), who combine sludge and hardcore with highly-strung noise rock and postpunk. They are apparently big fans of Hayden Pedigo, a man who embraces contradiction – or at least, is a lot of things all at once: a model, a politician (having run for mayor in his hometown of Amarillo, successfully exposing corporate corruption, if not actually winning) and a fingerpicking guitarist who embodies the avant-garde elements that were there since John Fahey at least. Chat Pile themselves always match their songs with experimental material and strange off-genre detours. Nevertheless, the combination of these artists is utterly unexpected and highly fruitful, bringing out melodic singing from Chat Pile’s Raygun Busch, and lurching between fingerstyle guitar, sludge rock, proggish metal and punkish yowls, with tape loops and field recordings finding their way in & out of the mix. It’s legitimately excellent.
Ship Sket – Casting Call (ft. S280F) [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Ship Sket – Mimikyu [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. Following a number of singles, InitiatriX is out now. Comprehensively mutated bass music, electro-acoustic manipulation, distorted classical samples, and multiple guest spots including the mysterious S280F (who visited our shores for Soft Centre earlier this year). Weirdest shit.
December – Stonemilker [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp]
French producer Tomas Lefebvre has been making music as December for over a decade, a combination of weirdly-shaped textures and beats. In contrast to the heavier beats of some of his earlier work, his new album I Stumble, I Walk, released on Jordanian label Drowned By Locals, is a noir movie of whispered voices, jittery bass-fueled IDM and even trip-hop. Walk these darkened streets: try not to trip.
Synkro – Excursion [Of Paradise/Bandcamp]
UK label Of Paradise bring techno & bass music as always on their Shapes compilation, and it’s nice hearing Synkro on here doing a brilliant bit of minimal d’n’b/jungle, starting super-stripped down with dub delays and kick + hi-hat, until the drumbreak drops. Synkro was one half of the revolutionary bass experimentalists Akkord with Indigo (now Ancestral Voices), and their precise, pared-down sound is missed, but this is definitely in the ballpark.
San – Core of the Earth [Rua Sound/Bandcamp]
The anonymous Irish techno producer who makes jungle as San only drops EPs every so often – the last one was in 2023. He and the (excellent) Rua Sound label milk the mysterious identity with over-the-top promotion, but a San release really is big news in these circles, and In Plain Sight does not disappoint. It’s dark, hard-hitting jungle with classic Photek atmos and precision. More people need to get amongst it.
Dak – Triagen [Straight Up Breakbeat/Bandcamp]
Aki Haapaniemi comes out of the wealth of great drum’n’bass producers from Finland. His productions as Dak are few & far between, but always quality – his last seems to have been 10 years ago but it could be even longer. Straight Up Breakbeat has made itself the home for a lot of great Finnish d’n’b, and now releases the Solaris EP from Dak – four tracks of tuff, no nonsense beat-juggling drum’n’bass. Complex yet melodic enough, with pumping subs. Yep, quality
Julien Mier & thedieyoungs – Dolphin Tears [Julien Mier Bandcamp]
Not satisfied with having released his brilliant album Gradually, at the beginning of November Sydney-based Dutch-French musician Julien Mier has released a long-gestated project called Pluto Exchange Program with the very talented Sydney jazz-trained keyboardist thedieyoungs. There’s electric piano jazz licks aplenty, ambient textures and some jungle/IDM beats skittering around. In keeping with the cartoonish artwork, it’s super fun, super bright stuff.
Mattr – Fade [Mesh/Bandcamp]
We’ve heard a lot of UK producer Mattr on this show, with a lot of melodic jungle-paced IDM. It’s actually a great fit for Max Cooper‘s Mesh label, but this is his first appearance with them, on the label comp Lattice 004, a five-track EP of varied tracks with great sound design.
xin – opening [appendix.files/Bandcamp] xin – trash dub [appendix.files/Bandcamp]
Once Berlin, now (again?) UK-based producer xin released an EP in 2018 and then full-length album MELTS INTO LOVE in 2019, both on Subtext Recordings, and in the meantime has been DJing but I don’t think releasing much music. Now via appendix.files we get a small album, Wasted, which is about as deconstructed as club can get, and which reveals its layers of meaning not just through the intricately constructed beats and samples, but through a zine which you can also read online. The zine has two texts: one is a deep look at the decline of dance music culture, as it’s eaten by corporate interests and the familiar, enormous glut of new music being pumped out week-by-week; the other is a look at our Age of Waste, the unsustainability of our lifestyles, and the acceleration thereof. These themes are of course deeply interconnected, and xin provides an astute examination of them. But if you’re interested in post-club music with an environmental bent, you can’t go past the album itself.
Ipek Gorgun – Edgelord [Touch/Bandcamp] Ipek Gorgun – Exocannibalism [Touch/Bandcamp]
Turkish composer/sound-artist/musician Ipek Gorgun released her last solo album Ecce Homo seven years ago. In the meantime she’s had works performed in prestigious venues, but has also been through multiple traumas – electrocution, cancer treatment, anaphylaxis… So her remarkable new album Earthbound is an act of defiance as well as an act of surrender. The darkness of these years is audible here, but so is an earthy sense of liveliness and humour. There is endless detail in each of these soundworks, but some do stand out, especially those incredible swooping glissandi in “Edgelord”.
Bridget Ferrill – What was the World to me [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based synth builder and sound-artist Bridget Ferrill likes to mess with classical music’s sonic identifiers, sometimes performed by herself, and often by – among others – her longtime collaborator Liam Byrne on viola da gamba. So here we have collaged string playing with de/reconstructed melodies, surface/tape noise, found-sounds. It’s like The Books but inside-out; it’s minimalist composition for baroque instruments and a malfunctioning sampler. It’s cool.
IKSRE – karijini (iron. spinifex) [IKSRE Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne musician Phoebe Dubar makes ambient-not-ambient music as IKSRE (it stands for I Keep Seeing Rainbows Everywhere), often using her voice and synths, teasing the sounds out into short epics, insubstantial but full of movement. Her new album expansion a (south) collects music made on the road – literally, in a solar-powered caravan traveling around outback Australia, the tracks dedicated to the feeling of specific places. It’s gorgeous stuff, sometimes glitchy, sometimes raw, sometimes smooth. The title clearly implies a sequel, and by the time I’m writing this the secret sister release expansion b (south) is out, and is just as lovely.
All over the place tonight, whether folktronica, percussive experimentalism, minimal dub techno, various drum’n’bass & jungle mutations, proto-postrock, or eerie sound-art…
LISTEN AGAIN on fbi.radio’s stream on demand, or podcast right here.
tunng – Anoraks [Full Time Hobby/Bandcamp]
Look, do you need to hear the story again? OK, gather round little ones.
In 2004 I was lucky enough to go to Sónar in Barcelona with a press pass courtesy of Cyclic Defrost. Among the memories and goodies I brought back was a promo CD of some sort that featured an incredible track on it, which happened to be the first single by Tunng, “Tale From Black”. I found shortly after that this was released on a lathe-cut 7″ by the excellent little indie label Static Caravan. I was obsessed, and played this and its b-side, and then the second single, to death. And this is where I get confused, because 2025 is the 20th anniversary of their debut album Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, but Geoff from Static Caravan kindly sent me the album early, so I was already playing tracks off it from October 2024.
“Folktronica” was a genre name already bandied about for the likes of Four Tet, Manitoba (pre-Caribou) and Minotaur Shock, all of whom used acoustic guitar and other acoustic samples in a cut-up, glitchy hip-hop fashion. This was a different version, songs with an arcane, pagan British folk feel courtesy of singer Sam Genders, and glitchy production from Mike Lindsay which referenced club sounds but never leaned too much on beats. I’m still super fond of that album and its follow-up, but Genders left after the third album and I didn’t warm so much to the following couple of albums. Then after a 5-year break, Genders was back with the band for Songs You Make At Night in 2018, and 2020’s concept album Tunng Presents…DEAD CLUB. More than four years later, they released Love You All Over Again early this year, an album that’s unabashedly nostalgic, looking back 20 years to that debut – folky and glitchy, sweet and catchy.
And now, to see the year out, here’s a non-album single – bless them for not doing some kind of revised “deluxe” version of the album. This one’s interlocking acoustic guitars, and samples of a cute (children’s?) story in a cute English accent. It’s a song about nostalgia and memory, and sits *just* on this side of cloying.
Majken – Re-entering [sing a song fighter]
Swedish singer-songwriter Majken grew up in a Pentecostal household where music was ever-present. And while she now believes that “politicized religion is the most dangerous thing in the world”, those musical roots are still heard in the blissful harmonies in her songs – her new album is called Korus after all. The record is mostly performed by herself, on guitar, piano, synths and samples, and a harp recorded in a Malmö concert hall. The contradictions between choral arrangements and Majken’s non-belief, between gentle indie-folk and electronics, bring a tension to the work which enhances the beauty of Majken’s voice and songwriting.
Lawrence English + Stephen Vitiello – with Brendan (Single Edit) [American Dreams Records/Bandcamp] American Dreams Records, who brought us Lawrence English‘s astonishing collaboration with Lea Bertucci a couple of years ago, are now gearing up to release Lawrence’s third album with the great sound-artist Stephen Vitiello – appropriately titled Trinity. That’s not just because it’s their third, but also because on each track the duo is completed by a third musician – and here it’s Brendan Canty, drummer from legendary post-hardcore/straight-edge punk band Fugazi and these days the jazz/punk project The Messthetics. Vitiello has by now made a few releases with Canty, including this great EP and this album with avant-garde violinist Hahn Rowe. So bringing Canty in for this “with” project was an obvious choice, and it’s wonderful to hear the sound-art textures with Canty’s beats.
Will Glaser – Theft [Not Applicable/Bandcamp]
London-based drummer Will Glaser is very busy in the London jazz & experimental scene, appearing on records or live with the likes of Yazz Ahmed, Kit Downs, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, James Allsopp, Alex Bonney and more. Prior to this release, the only solo works Glaser has released are the all-drums Some Drum Sounds and the mostly-drums Some Drum & Other Sounds (both of which are excellent mind you). However, on October 24th comes his first major solo work as auteur, the name of which is hard to even fit into a sentence: Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is about as sci-fi as you can get, imagining a musical artefact from sometime in the late 21st century, after the oncoming climate collapse. Glaser’s drums/percussion and electronics are accompanied here by brilliant musicians including Ruth Goller, Agathe Max, Tara Cunningham, James Allsopp and Alex Bonney (I’m mostly listing people whose work I know). The album claims influences as wide as Harry Partch, Tom Waits, the aforementioned Justin K Broadrick among others, and there’s no dearth of electronics there too (appropriately for the avant-garde Not Applicable label, co-run by both members of Icarus among others). It’s honestly a really great album, and all those influences are justified. Strongly recommend giving it a listen.
JQ & Richard Pike – Free [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
Joe Quirke (JQ) & Richard Pike (originally from Sydney, now London-based) run the experimental/ambient label Salmon Universe together and have played together for years as part of the ambient-jazz trio Forgiveness, but new album Tessera is their first duo recording together. These are granular dubscapes, sometimes ambient sound-design and sometimes verging into Basic Channel-style dub techno. Here we’ve got some sparse, crunchy beats and bass pings on one of the more upbeat pieces. Very deep, very tasty.
Paul St. Hilaire & Gavsborg – Confidential [Kynant Records/Bandcamp] Paul St. Hilaire & Cousin – Back Inna Business [Kynant Records/Bandcamp]
Until about 2003, the Jamaican vocalist Paul St. Hilaire was known as Tikiman, under which name he collaborated with many experimental electronic musicians including The Bug and Tarwater, but most famously Berlin techno heads Mark Ernestus & Moritz Von Oswald of dub-techno labels/projects Basic Channel, Chain Reaction and Burial Mix, particularly under their Rhythm & Sound alias. These releases were ground zero for minimal techno and dub techno, quite unlike anything else heard at the time. While many 12″s featured Tikiman on vocals, there were others, and eight tracks with eight different vocalists were collected on Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists. So that’s the starting point for Paul St. Hilarie – w/ The Producers – nine tracks here, with ten producers from the dub & techno worlds, channeling (by and large) the Basic Channel template. It’s really an excellent album, but here are two highlights: first from Jamaican producer Gavsborg, of the experimental crew Equinoxx, whose track is utterly stripped back; and then Eora/Sydney DJ & producer Cousin (aka FBi’s Jackson Fester), who keeps things beautifully smooth and minimal, supporting St. Hilaire’s repeated phrase “Back Inna Business”.
Carrier – Carbon Works [Modern Love/Boomkat]
So Guy Brewer has been creating incredible post-d’n’b enigmas as Carrier for some years now, following a successful career making stripped-down techno as Shifted. Indeed, early on he was a member of drum’n’bass act Commix, and when he shifted to the Carrier alias, the minimal drum’n’bass influence has been palpable despite the beats never quite reaching the complexity of obvious syncopation of drum’n’bass. It’s an interesting balancing act, one that I think a newer generation of producers is working on very creatively, but in the context of the previous two tracks I think it’s also interesting how the Photek vibes are balanced by a kind of murky Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound atmos, and it makes me wonder where the Carrier name is a reference to this Rhythm & Sound EP (actually it definitely is – here’s the track). Now Carrier lands on the Boomkat-operated Modern Love, with the full album Rhythm Immortal (following a single earlier this year, The Fan Dance, featuring the aforementioned Gavsborg). Amd those Rhythm & Sound influences are as plain as can be, as are the whisps of drum’n’bass, like a shape made of smoke dissipating into the air.
ealing – Down the Rabbithole [General Merchant/Bandcamp]
OK so now we’re moving into more explicit jungle/drum’n’bass references with Eora/Sydney-by-way-of-Taipei producer ealing. Like the equally hyper-detailed kisseswhipthevision from last year, Revelry is a Gateway to the Valley Above the World comes with a story describing a future history… The text perfectly suits the futuristic sounds, which for the first 3 tracks are a particular bass music hybrid of minimal d’n’b. On the last 2 tracks, the operatic vocals of Enryka blend the ancient future into the mix.
Pushlock – Oblique Strategy [XCPT/Bandcamp]
Over to Italy now with the XCPT label, which last year released an excellent album from Naarm/Melbourne’s Barking. Here’s adventurous Italian bass music producer Pushlock with his third album on XCPT, Stuck in a Cell. It’s a good example of how bass music styles are mixed’n’matched by a lot of producers these days – jungle breaks slipping in & out of the mix, with a general dubstep feel. It’s not slow-fast either, but rather uses signifiers from multiple bass music styles. If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, you’ll know that’s exactly how I like it.
The Untouchables – Rude Enforcer [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]
The Samurai Music sound is representative of a particular thread of drum’n’bass that emphasises deep repetition and tribal percussion over typical breaks – although they can swarm upwards at times. Belgian husband-and-wife duo The Untouchables have their own expression of that sound, very much in touch with the dub influences and not averse to bringing in elements of jungle, like the jittery beats through “Rude Enforcer”. It’s deep, dark dancefloor-oriented music.
Disiniblud – Blue Rags, Raging Wind (Kerry McCoy Remix) [Smugglers Way/Bandcamp/Bandcamp] Rachika Nayar & Nina Keith put out their brilliant album as Disiniblud earlier this year to great acclaim. Created by two trans women, superficially from different musical worlds, the album featured ecstatic shoegazey guitar, glitchy textures, melodies, and guest vocals from many female & trans musicians. And much though I think of it as a “rock” album of some variety, it’s ripe for remixes, and the remix album features the likes of Kelly Moran & The Field, as well as a couple of bonus tracks. But how about this? Sitting, somehow, perfectly among these jungle & bass tunes is a remix by one Kerry McCoy, who only happens to be the guitarist in black metal/shoegaze legends Deafheaven. He’s clearly having a great time here, and the production and beatmaking is spot on.
PVAS – Terminal [Kapsela/Bandcamp]
The latest release on Objekt‘s burgeoning Kapsela label is from Berlin-based Canadian DJ PVAS, who has connections with the mysterious vaporclub labels like West Mineral, Ltd. and 3XL. This is club-adjacent music, certainly, but whether it’s minimal techno, gusty ambient or dusty jungle depends how & where you look. Certainly on “Terminal” we’re in the jungle, albeit maybe a sub-oceanic jungle.
Igorrr – ADHD [Metal Blade Records/Bandcamp]
Gautier Serre has been mashing up genres for his whole career. His albums – with Whourkr and as Igorrr have alternately been released on breakcore/idm labels like Ad Noiseam (RIP) and metal labels like Crucial Blast and Metal Blade Records – but particularly with Igorrr, along with the breakcore/drill’n’bass/glitch and the death metal there’s been a hilarious operatic aspect. Not surprising that Igorrr and the recently-featured Ruby My Dear made an EP together about 11 years ago. So, the new Igorrr album, more explicitly a full-band affair, is at first glance more of a metal/opera thing. But it’s called Amen, and yes, there are outbursts of crazy breakcore drum programming and surreal… er, well, everything’s kinda surreal? It’s an Igorrr album. So fun.
Obeka – A World No More [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Manchester-based producer Jahday Ford aka Obeka draws substantially on his Afro-Caribbean roots, moving from Bermuda to the UK as the latter country’s history of colonialism and class divides has brought itself fully into the open. His heavy bass music is showcased on his new album A World No More, drawing from gqom, kuduro, batida, dancehall and Afrobeat, but the album also features his own voice for the first time. On this track, a poetic spoken introduction by Ford culminates in expansive percussion.
Temp-Illusion – Hoax Haven [Paradoxe Club/Bandcamp]
The Tehran-based duo of Shahin Entezami (aka Tegh) and Behrang Najafi (aka Bescolour) have played together as Temp-Illusion since 2011. Their releases often document live performances, often at SET, the experimental arts festival they co-run. Their latest EP BIKH, released on Paris’s Paradoxe Club, comes out of a live performance at an Illegal Tapes club night in Paris, although it’s a studio recording. It’s like a cross between ’90s Autechre and current Autechre, but more directly dancefloor-facing. Which is to say, rad.
Impérieux – Trampa [Macro/Bandcamp]
In the time since this episode aired, Macro released a set of edits from this EP by label co-founder Stefan Goldmann. The twist is that the edits are only available if you subscribe to Macro on Bandcamp, something which not enough people are doing, considering the cheeky and cool exclusives that appear there regularly. In any case, that was technically the third Impérieux release on Macro for this year, after the brilliant and discombobulating album Rezil in February, and this follow-up EP In and Out in October. Both releases feature the Berlin-based, Bulgarian producer’s trademark breakbeat house & techno that sit somewhere between abstraction and club.
Seefeel – moodswing (demo) [Too Pure/Beggars Archive/Bandcamp]
When I was discovering IDM in the ’90s and Warp Records were king, I discovered Seefeel via their exquisite, eldritch track “Spangle” on Warp’s Artificial Intelligence II compilation. Of course, Seefeel never quite fit in with Warp, but nor did they fit in the shoegaze scene, and despite having a vocalist they weren’t indie rock. The Disjecta project of Mark Clifford’s did fit the experimental electronic mould more, and in retrospect perhaps Seefeel do seem to suit that classification. But before they joined Warp, they released some EPs on Too Pure, a label that was associated with experimental indie rock with the likes of Stereolab, PJ Harvey’s incredible debut album and others. Too Pure don’t exist anymore, but their parent Beggars Banquet (or rather Beggars Archive?) have recently re-released their first album proper, Quique in remastered form (TBH the 2007 remaster sounds at least as good), and now the early EPs collection Pure, Impure (known to many of us as Polyfusia as released by Astralwerks in the States) gets a very slightly expanded remaster. The one bonus track is a demo of “Moodswing”, stripped down to a core of drum machine, sampled vox and head-nodding bass – and it’s excellent!
Nate Scheible – 02 [Nate Scheible Bandcamp]
It’s a sign of how overloaded I am (we all are) with new music that I was convinced I’d played experimental sound-artist Nate Scheible before, but it seems I never managed to fit something in. Criminal! Last year’s or valleys and is a phenomenal work that’s adjacent to noise, free jazz, electro-acoustic & musique concrète – stuff I’m increasingly lumping into “sound-art” because labels are reductive anyway. For all this abstraction, though, Scheible brings forth a lot of emotion, and none more so than on his latest album then, inaudibly. As he describes, he is usually reluctant to anchor his music to a narrative or non-musical events – something I closely identify with – but this recording is imprinted with the death of his mother. Various musicians play acoustic instruments, including John Dierker‘s bass clarinet on this track, and, touchingly, the fragmented voice of Scheible’s mother Kat.
John Wall – Construction I “Stat:Unt:Dist” [John Wall Bandcamp]
British electronic musician John Wall is a genre, a practice or praxis, all unto himself. Self-trained in computer music, he started making plunderphonic constructions, but moved soon into works that complement and grow out from avant-garde musics, particularly free jazz and contemporary composition. Having started in the mid-1990s when he was already in his 40s, Wall was, in his own way, part of the “glitch” scene whence Fennesz, Pita, Farmers Manual, Oval and many others came, but his new release Construtions I-IV.2025 revisits work from 1999 with a revised aesthetic. In the intervening 2½ decades, Wall has fallen out of love with the glitch – particularly when used with non-electronic sound sources. If you know me, you’ll know that’s exactly where I love The Glitch, but I’m of course fascinated with Wall’s self-critique and revision. By taking out the clicks that delineate the sample-chopping (a painstaking process reflective of the painstaking nature of all of Wall’s work), these pieces become something more like new compositions, or imaginary improv sessions – technically, a mashup of all of that. In any case, if John Wall is a name you don’t recognize, or have seen mentioned, have a rummage through his music, which is all on Bandcamp. It may just be a revelation.
Razen – hi-mawari [KRAAK/Bandcamp]
Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour began and remain the core duo behind the arcane Belgian ensemble Razen. Sometimes you’ll find them making a minimalist kind of ancient music – is it baroque or Renaissance music, or some long-buried European or trans-continental folk music? And yet, the next thing they’ll release is a collection of slippery drones on primitive synthesizers. A quick consultation of their Discogs page shows 19 albums released in 15 years. They may be slowing down, as only one of them came out last year, and Mirages is their only release from this year. They’re back on venerable Belgian experimental institution KRAAK (at times known as (K-RAA-K)³), a label that easily accommodates these genre-illusions. This time Ameel Brecht plays “oscillator” and harmonium – combining primitive electronics and ancient acoustic engineering – while Kim Delcour brings wind instruments from the world over: the Vietnamese sáo trúc, Dutch fijfer, French chalumeau, oh and the Persian santur (a hammered dulcimer, not a wind instrument). But to these potential folk or classical contributions they add experimental turntablist Guilhem All. Thus “Mirages” is all too suitable – whatever you think you’re hearing will dissolve into the air when you reach for it, hovering near the horizon. This shit is weird, and that’s as high an accolade as I can give.
Yara Asmar – to die on any hill (if it’s easy enough to climb) [Hive Mind Records/Bandcamp]
One of the most celebrated members of the Beirut experimental scene (if one can call it that), Yara Asmar is a uniquely creative cross-media artist, who makes beautiful & strange puppets, whimsical lo-fi videos, and music with accordion, metallophones & xylophones & toy pianos, homemade music boxes, tape recorders and I guess some digital processing too. As usual, Asmar gives her tracks sweetly sardonic titles, and the music sits satisfyingly somewhere between shapeless and stirring, and just a little sinister.
Nesa Azadikhah – The Wound Where The Light Enters [Phantom Limb/Imaginal Soundtracking/Bandcamp]
UK’s Phantom Limb label have revived their Imaginal Soundtracking series to commission 5 filmscores for the same 3-minute short film by Iranian director Somayeh. The film, titled The Wound Is Where The Light Enters (view it in full on Vimeo), is an unsettling view of a relationship, with only whispered words and a small amount of foley sound. The five artists invited to make soundtracks are all Iranian: Siavash Amini, Saint Abdullah, Roxanna Albayati and sohme range from experimental dub & club to towering drone and sound-art; and Nesa Azadikhah was one of the first female DJs to come to prominence in Iran, and she has supported the Woman, Life, Freedom movement via the Apranik label that she co-founded with AIDA. Within the bounds of this very short film – it’s only 3 minutes long – Azadikhah has created a touching & powerful piece of sound-art (she actually extends the time out to 3:46), beginning with a deep drone that expands with pulsating whooshes and echoing whispers that sit on the edge of comprehensibility. All five interpretations are beautiful and worth your time.
LISTEN AGAIN to the art of sound… stream on demand at fbi.radio or podcast here.
Not Drowning, Waving – Amaravot [Not Drowning, Waving Bandcamp]
We’re starting with an Australian band who were really decades ahead of the ball with ambient pop, melding field recordings and live tapes with creative studio techniques, acoustic instrumentation, effects and electronics. Because of David Bridie‘s soft voice and slice-of-life lyrics, I feel Not Drowning, Waving were seen as less revolutionary than they really were – and yet when David released solo albums that emphasised songwriting over sonic creativity, the music media predictably celebrated his “maturity” and suchlike nonsense. I love David’s solo work, and the often-twee but always lovely work of the post-NDW acoustic ensemble My Friend The Chocolate Cake, but Not Drowning, Waving nevertheless hold a special significance. For many, their career higlight was the groundbreaking album Tabaran, much of which was recorded with musicians in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea including the remarkable vocalist Telek (now Sir George Telek MBE!). Their travels to PNG triggered the band’s strong sense of social justice, and they became tireless promoters of West Papuan independence. The song “Blackwater“, about the brutal suppression of independence for West Papua, is haunting and still as relevant today.
Fast forward to now, and David Bridie & George Telek have been friends for more than half their lives. A concert performing Tabaran was put together early last year, celebrating 50 years of Papua New Guinean independence, and the band (including Telek) enjoyed being together so much that they created a whole album’s worth of new material. My dirty secret is that, despite the stunning highlights like “Blackwater”, I always preferred the albums before (Cold and the Crackle and Claim) and after it (Circus) in their catalogue because I wasn’t so into the Papuan stringband music. However, whether I’ve mellowed over the years (lol, lmao) or whatever it is, this new album feels wonderful from start to finish, and Telek is an integral member. What an achivement! I have no idea how it sounds to those who didn’t, to some extent, experience the band while they previously existed, but I hope they have an enduring legacy.
On Diamond – It’s Me Calling [Eastmint Records/Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne’s On Diamond are the perfect example of indie pop done experimental. Frontwoman Lisa Salvo writes beautiful, touching songs that have slippery chord changes and deeply unusual arrangements created together by the band. Previous members, often involved in the more experimental end of Naarm’s music scene include the brilliant drummer/composer Maria Moles, drummer Joe Talia (who recorded & mixed the album), and guitarist/vocalist Hannah Cameron (who contributes backing vocals along with Aarti Jadu and others). Along with Salvo’s vocals, Jules Pascoe on bass, Myka Wallace on drums and Scott McConnachie on synths and those frequently demented guitar solos, the band itself now features the glittering harp of Genevieve Fry and the percussion of Australian legend Duré Dara, born in Malaysia to an Indian background, a celebrated restaurateur with Order of Austrlaia Medal as well as jazz musician and improvisor. That’s a loaded band, put in service of Salvo’s aforementioned songs, which take strange, sidelong looks at matters of grief, longing and the passing of time. In a better world we’d be hearing these songs on rotation all day, but you – yes you – have the power to fix that, in the palm of your hand.
gushes – Game One [PTP/Switch Hit Records/Bandcamp] gushes – CUT [PTP/Switch Hit Records/Bandcamp]
Trust PTP (aka Protect The Peace, fka Purple Tape Pedigree) to release one of the most bizarre & brilliant albums of the year (in conjunction with artist collective Switch Hit Records). Jennae Santos’ gushes presents an unrestrained amalgam of prog metal, psych rock, jazz & classical and electronic experimentation. But there’s more than just this: the album begins with voices talking in Tagalog, and influences from Indigenous Filipinx psychology and combat swirl around with land-sea ecologies, plant medicine and queer politics of decolonization… Delicious Collision is a fully-through-composed experimental rock opera, appropriately given Santos’ background (on top of everything else) in theatre, site-specific performance & dance.
Agriculture – The Reply [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
With The Flenser you know you’re going to expect dark, probably metal-adjacent music, and you know it’ll probably diverge from typical genre norms. Ecstatic black metal band Agriculture do indeed employ black metal’s tremolo guitars and blast beats to reach for altered states, but then the thunder gives way to a different kind of ecstasy at times – gorgeous harmonies and clean guitar? The last track on the album somehow combines it all together – blissful chugging blackgaze, and a fragile interlude of just voice and guitar. Channeling Zen Buddhism and social collapse alongside queer history & survival, The Spiritual Sound is easily among the albums of the year.
sunn O))) – Raise the Chalice [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
So yeah, the southern lords of drone metal, sunn O))), have signed to Sub Pop, the little label that could. That’s the Sub Pop that was the centre of the Seattle sound, from Mudhoney & early Soundgarden to Nirvana – in fact Nevermind‘s profits, after their contract was bought out by Geffen, were what brought them back from early ’90s financial difficulties, and their (excellent) debut Bleach, which remained a Sub Pop release, was enough to keep the label chugging along for ages. The label pretty quickly expanded out of Seattle/grunge into all sorts of other areas, as diverse as Fleet Foxes, The Postal Service, and the greatest, Clipping. Still, the stentorian, rumbling noise of sunn O))) is an interesting step sideways, hopefully a great move for both parties. Their first EP for Sub Pop follows a 7″ (yes, two tracks under 6 minutes each!) back in 2023 for the Sub Pop Singles Club, but one side of this 12″ is the 14-minute “Eternity’s Pillars”, while the flip has 2 tracks each around 8 minutes – still pretty contained. The band for these tracks is the back-to-basics core duo of Greg “The Lord” Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, and the crushingly slow unison guitar/bass is by and large the totality of the sound, but I do love the disconcerting high-pitched flicker that rises through the last part of “Raise the Chalice”.
Susannah Stark – Minor Gestures [Night School Records/Bandcamp/STROOM.tv/Bandcamp]
When Utility Fog started back in 2003, folktronica was a genre of which I was very fond – but it was already pretty hazy as to what it was. Slightly glitchy hip-hop sampling acoustic instruments like Four Tet was what I thought, I guess, although when Tunng came on the scene literally later that year, it held a lot of similarity without quite being the same. And meanwhile The Books were doing studio-mediated music with acoustic instruments that somehow was something else entirely, despite arguably fitting the mould. So I love that in the years since, there have been untold different approaches to “folk” + “electronics”. On her new album Minor Gestures, Scottish musician Susannah Stark takes her Gaelic (Gàidhlig) folk music in experimental directions, which might involve drone passages on harmonium or modular synth, interpolated field recordings, or sample-based programming. The production touches only serve to heighten the sense of an arcane, otherworldly setting, as if being performed just out of sight or transmitted from a past-future. It’s quite a remarkable album.
Haykal, Julmud, Acamol | هيكل، جلمود، أكامول – A’saab أعصاب [Bilna’es/Bandcamp]
Cross-media artistic duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Ramme formed the record label & publishing platform Bilna’es along with producer Muqata’a as a space for artistic expression & criticism in Palestine & beyond. Along with the amazing productions of Muqata’a, a highlight was the 2022 solo album from Julmud, Tuqoos | طُقُوس. Now Julmud teams up with label founder Abbas, the latter under the name Acamol (Arabic for Panadol/paracetamol), along with Palestinian rapper Haykal on a new album Kam Min Janneh | كم من جنّة (How Many Heavens). The beats, produced by Julmud & Acamol separately & together, present a glitched version hip-hop drawn from the music & percussion of the MENA region, while Julmud & Haykal swap verses evoking the life of dispossession under occupation, colonization & genocide. It bears mentioning that while the killing continues in Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire, settlers continue to violently disrupt the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity – destroying property, beating and killing people and blocking access to their own land. In that context, this is a powerful work of resistance and solidarity (and some injections of humour). As I’m writing this late, you can read Emad Al Hatu’s excellent article on fbi.radio, as this was made album of the week at the beginning of November.
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi – Zendegi [Latency/Bandcamp] Mohammad Reza Mortazavi – Silent [Latency/Bandcamp]
French label Latency have no interest in following any kind of expectations – they’ll flip from chamber jazz to minimal techno to post-classical to percussive bass. In 2019 they released the album Ritme Jaavdanegi by Berlin-based, Iran-born percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, and now Mortazavi is back on Latency with his new album Nexus. The previous album showcased Mortazavi’s incredibly detailed and complex rhythms on traditional Persian instruments – the tombak and daf. On Nexus, Mortazavi’s playing is just as accomplished, but he extends the percussion with electronic effects and his own voice. The music is full of an otherworldly sensation, of suspension in time and place. There’s an incredible 25-minute remix by Ricardo Villalobos of the track “Swamp” from this album, coming out on December 5th – don’t miss it!
IKI – Regenerate [IKI Bandcamp] IKI – Dance [IKI Bandcamp]
It’s a sure bet that anything involving Danish singer Randi Pontoppidan is going to be something unique, challenging and beautiful. While she hasn’t been a member of Scandinavian vocal ensemble IKI since the beginning, she’s a perfect fit for IKI’s improvisational, electronically-mediated style. Pontoppidan joined Danish, Norwegian & Finnish singers Anna Mose, Guro Tveitnes, Johanna Sulkunen and Kamilla Kovacs four or five years ago, and BODY is their most intimate album. It can sound extremely electronic at times, but even at their most sharply edited & granulated, every sound comes from the voices of the five women. The recorded works reflect the group’s interest in how life extends past the body, and explores how the women become one organism when performing together.
georg-i & Older Brother – To Be A Man [GRACE/Bandcamp]
Portugal-based MC Darius Rodrigues aka Older Brother has been working with London producer George Harris aka georg-i for ages. Now the duo have finally come out with the Warm Skin EP on Berlin-based DJ Katiusha‘s label GRACE. And these four tracks of trip-hop-inflected bass music do walk with grace, holding Older Brother’s lyrics about the state of the world, and – on this closing track – seeking a new, post-patriarchy definition of maleness.
Sun People – Herbie’s Delay [All Things Records]
Austrian producer Sun People has released some creative and hard-hitting jungle & drum’n’bass that hybridizes with footwork and techno. His All Things Records provides an avenue for music of all kinds, so his new LP Look Within isn’t tied to any tempo – faster or slower than 160bpm, with a few beautifully-produced beatless tracks too. But as with “Herbie’s Delay”, there’s still some creative, syncopated jungle/d’n’b to be found too.
Hyperfocus – Sentinel [Machinist Music/Bandcamp]
For his fifth release (in two years!) on Canadian drum’n’bass master John Rolodex‘s Machinist Music label, Hyperfocus brings beats precision-tooled in the Machinist Music labs with evocative atmospheres and restless basslines. This is where the jungle revival bleeds back into the d’n’b mainstream, and I’m here for it.
San – In Plain Sight [Rua Sound/Bandcamp]
Appearing for a third time on Dublin jungle/bass label Rua Sound is Bristol’s San, a slightly mysterious individual who is apparently a techno producer working under a separate alias. This is dark stuff for haunting rave dancefloors and lying on your back with headphones on. Constantly changing cut-up breakbeats, deadly deep subs and spooky atmos, taking the cyberpunk ethos of mid-’90s drum’n’bass and applying it to contemporary jungle.
POL100 – TRIBE [early reflex/Bandcamp]
Turin’s early reflex label brings as usual cutting-edge experimental bass & club music as part of their Eyes series of two-track EPs. Here’s Italian producer POL100 mutating jungle and techno into strange new shapes – it’s half drumfunk and half electro maybe? Well worth your time.
Hello Psychaleppo – Al Wa6an | الوطن [Fake Lines/Bandcamp] Joy Moughanni – I Can’t Seem to Find it At Home | مش عم لاقيه بالبيت [Fake Lines/Bandcamp]
The first release from non-profit label Fake Lines has launched itself with a mega compilation – 36 tracks over 3 vinyl LPs – called Fake Lines: Sono Levant. It’s packed to the brim with excellent music, gregarious with genre – it may lean towards electronic music but there’s folk, hip-hop and rock of a sort. There’s an emphasis on Levant artists, but the tracklist also reaches further afield to other MENA countries and more. Montreal-based Syrian DJ Hello Psychaleppo contributes some stuttering samples and bass heft, while Lebanese producer Joy Moughanni combines jagged almost-rhythms and sound design to impressive effect.
Lone – Ascension.png [Greco-Roman/Bandcamp]
I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with Lone‘s music, but new single “Ascension.png” combines chromed cyberpunk and fuzzy vaporwave with jungle and rave bliss, and that makes a winner.
Kelly Moran – Chrysalis [Warp/Bandcamp]
A year and a half after releasing her last album, Moves in the Field, Kelly Moran returns to her more familiar territory of chiming prepared piano and electronics, with an album that’s complementary to last year’s. For Moves in the Field, Moran took her piano compositions and programmed them into a Disklavier, a physical piano that can be played via digital programming. So Moran was able to perform alongside her digital copy, with dazzling patterns climbing up and down the keyboard. On Don’t Trust Mirrors, the sound is more uncanny – synths and prepared piano melting into each other – but the performances are more clearly human. And those familiar with the previous album will hear echoes of those pieces throughout.
Quartz Sand – Chemical Sedimentary (excerpt 2) [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
I was lucky to get to see Kate Carr & Cath Roberts playing together at a gallery in Hoxton, London back in May. Carr is an Australian sound-artist who runs the impeccable Flaming Pines label and is one of our finest proponents of field recording, as well as music made from non-musical objects; Roberts is an improviser and composer who has been working with the Lyra-8 synthesizer, an “organismic” synthesizer, whose 8 voices interact in non-linear ways along with some effects. The duo’s name, “Quartz Sand”, suggests minerals and inorganic matter (quartz is silicon dioxide, perhaps the most basic inorganic molecule), and the idea of the album’s title, Stratigraphy, is to imply a vertical structure – rather than a typical horizontal time-based structure – as primary. But don’t be fooled: these two near-half-hour pieces aren’t static at all. It’s just that the action happens often between the crinkly, whistly high frequencies and the gurgling, grinding bottom end. It’s like listening to a cross-section of the earth’s crust – in a good way.
Lea Bertucci – Two Way Mirror [Cibachrome Editions]
It should be well-known and universally acknowledged now that Lea Bertucci is one of the best sound-artist/composers of the last decade and a half. Whether site-specific works exploring & exploiting – for instance – the resonance of a hollow bridge in Köln (2020’s Acoustic Shadows), myriad works live-processing her own saxophone and other instruments, or her work with reel-to-reel tape machines, she’s a master of her craft. Recent times have seen a number of incredible collaborations from Bertucci: in 2022, she operated tapes & electronics around Robbie Lee‘s baroque & medieval instruments on Winds Bells Falls, while on Murmurations, her tapes were as prominent, but she also brought various wind instruments and her voice to the table, next to Ben Vida‘s synths & voice; and on her tectonic collaboration in 2023 with Brisbane’s own Lawrence English, cello, viola and lap steel guitar emerge as well. Earlier this year Lawrence’s ROOM40 released an astounding work of Bertucci together with another masterful sound-artist, Olivia Block. So needless to say her new album The Oracle is a tour de force, engaging her many instruments, field recordings and, importantly, her own voice, all filtered through tape manipulation and digital processing. Only on the last track are percussionists from the Wesleyan University Taiko Ensemble enlisted for a booming – yet obscured – finale. Of course, it’s not just technially interesting or impressive (although it is those things) – it’s also music that will draw you in and move you, despite the vocals being twisted into non-textual shapes. It’ll easily be high on my albums of the year list for 2025.
Alexandra Spence – Magenta (with Delphine Dora) [Students of Decay/Bandcamp]
Back to Sydney to finish, Alexandra Spence is another brilliant sound-artist who works with field recordings and found objects to tell a story about place and memory. Her lasttwo albums (from 2022) arose from a fascination with oceans and waterways; the scope is wider here, from mountains to backyards, but the ecological and geological also interact here with the personal. As well as recordings of places and non-musical objects, Spence (a clarinettist) here uses sounds from Serge Modular synths and a custom-built lyre, and on tonight’s track, Spence also brings in the voice and instrumentation of French composer & musician Delphine Dora.
Huge thanks to Holly Conner for her great curation last week while I was playing at Essence Festival in Canberra.
Tonight we’ve got mutant pop and folk, mutant bass, mutant classical and ambient… and beautiful slippages between genres.
LISTEN AGAIN & mutate with me. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Cerys Hafana – Angel [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
There’s not much new music in the world being sung in Welsh. An exponent of the Welsh triple harp, Cerys Hafana has now released three albums of adventurous songs with their instrument, sung in Welsh. Not one seemingly to ever sit still, they also released a remarkable album of solo piano works, Difrisg, earlier this year, but now Angel has found its place on the reliably great Glitterbeat label, giving Hafana a much broader audience. If there’s a distinct folk backbone to their songs, and hints at classical composition, Hafana is no traditionalist, preparing the harp with blu-tak to dampen the sound, and creating compositions that draw on minimalism, jazz and avant-garde harmonies and structures (on the album Hafana is joined by double bass, alto sax and drums on some tracks), and other nearby folk traditions. These are evocative songs, sung beautifully in a language quite alien to most of us, with uncommon arrangements.
Aphir – Messengers [Aphir Bandcamp]
Well, it’s been a minute since Becki Whitton released an Aphir album of her experimental electronic pop songs. She’s been building a practice of semi-improvised “choral drone” works with live vocal looping and processing, and it’s great – there’s a choral drone remix of this new single in fact. But there’s a new Aphir pop album coming in the new year! The first single sounds like it might be one of those choral pieces, a simple prayer-like melody… until it gets wild, industrial beats and shrieking synths. Rad rad rad.
Snakeskin – Ready [Ruptured/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year, Beirut indie band Postcards released their fourth (or is it fifth?) album via key Lebanese label Ruptured. Postcards singer Julia Sabra and their longtime producer Fadi Tabbal have just come through with their third album We live in sand, co-released by Ruptured with Portland’s Beacon Sound. The album is unavoidably influenced by the troubles of Lebanon and the horrors of the genocide being conducted by Israel. It’s mournful and sometimes angry, the product of two exceptionally strong music-makers. When I saw them live in London in May, both musicians had tables entirely covered in electronic equipment, noisemakers and effects, Sabra singing while processing her voice (given the setup, it was nearly impossible to tell who was making any particular noises other than that). This album might not seem as experimental as that performance implied, but it’s hard-hitting and there’s nothing else quite like it.
Sijya – Safe [One Little Independent Records/Bandcamp]
New Delhi visual designer and audiovisual artist Sijya released her debut EP Young Hate on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records in 2022. Beautifully minimalist electronic pop songs, with glitching textures and slow-moving beats that harkened back to trip-hop, it’s one of my favourite debuts of recent years. So it’s great seeing her signed to One Little Independent Records for her follow-up. It’s another collection of six songs, leaning ambient until they don’t – see the distortion that wells up with the vocals on “Rust”. “Safe” is a musical sequel to “Another Thing”, one of the highlights of her debut, processional beats and minimalist-yet-emotive vocals. A talent to watch.
feeo – Win! [AD93/Bandcamp]
So sometime last year The Wire published a lovely story about how experimental vocalist and producer Theodora Laird and bassist/improviser Caius Williams got together – as a couple, as well as a duo, putting together a wonderful exploratory album together. Now we get to hear Laird under her guise as feeo, with a solo album on AD93. Goodness is adorned with a beautiful overexposed black & white photo of a crowd, presumably an audience at a gig, with the stage off to the left shining a bright light on the people. Some are transfixed, some are looking the other way, and one woman stares right into the camera. This strange mix of solitude and connection, of light and dark, is what powers this album too. It’s mostly just Theodora Laird solo, but Caius Williams contributes different instruments on a few tracks, Theo Guttenplan plays drums on one track, and her Dad, actor Trevor Laird, reads his own poetry (I think) on Days pts 1 & 2. Those two tracks are a case in point: Trevor Laird’s voice is nearly buried under droning and then pulsing sub-bass, until he finally appears half-way through part 2. It’s a small vignette, odd in the British way, made sinister by its surrounds. But then the majority of songs are similarly subdued, nearly-there things, with minimal avant-garde electronics accompanying Laird’s beautifully subtle, exquisitely controlled voice. From their distinctly weird parts, Laird constructs post-r’n’b songs of quiet power. Even when accompanied by Williams’ guitars, Laird inserts nebulous synth drones. These songs constantly undermine themselves, but they’re too good to stay under. My goodness.
IFS meets AGF – Limits [outlines]
Well, so far it seems like Polish duo IFS will only “meet” all-caps artists (I know, this is soon to change). Following their second brilliant collab with Japanese rapper MA, here they are with the poemproducer herself, AGF, who’s right at home with the duo’s IDM-influenced bass-ambient. There’s very little in the way of experimental footwork, the outlines label’s bread-and-butter; rather these are spooky, playful, avant-garde soundscapes, using beats sparingly, a perfect foil to Antye Greie-Ripatti’s equally sparing, equally oblique storytelling. The album’s title, East-West Logistics, might sound like European transport solutions, but it actually has something to say about making this sort of music in Eastern Bloc countries, places where little of the so-called “Western world”‘s cultural production reached behind the Iron Curtain until the 1990s. This is deep stuff, sonic excavation through the rubble of time, so put on your headlamp and let’s go!
Sluta Leta – First Order [Cheap Records/Bandcamp]
The background of Sluta Leta has always had the feel of a tall story. It’s hard to believe that their earliest releases (here’s a 1998 EP) were by a group of unknown Swedes, shepherded into production by Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper of early Mego label-affiliated glitch pioneers General Magic (whose 1997 album Frantz is one of my favourites of the early glitch shit). They were often joined by fellow Viennese electro-head Gerhard Potuznik, and as well as Mego were associated with another experimental Viennese label, Cheap Records. General Magic have re-formed recently, putting out some cheeky and odd records, so why not bring back Sluta Leta? In fact Sluta Leta released an album 5 years ago via farmersmanual (also fellow glitch etc etc), and now Cheap Records have revived themselves for Sluta Leta’s Drift Dekoder album. While General Magic’s music would be constructed around weird noises and broken samples, Sluta Leta has always been more about the funk – electro-funk – and cheesy hip-hop stylings; fun but still weird, right? Case in point, from way back in 1995. This album does nothing to change that image, to be honest, and it’s cool, sure. I did really enjoy the spoken word here, which is actually a reading of a forum comment by Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the ubiquitous Linux operating system, giving a comprehensive dressing-down to some right-wing, er, “moron of the first order”.
Human Error Club & Kenny Segal – Night Time ft. E L U C I D [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
Brooklyn hip-hop label Backwoodz Studioz, run by billy woods, has long supported producer-led albums as much as rappers. This is a bit different, though. Here LA legend Kenny Segal, who’s made two stunning albums with billy woods and recently a brilliant one with K-the-I???, has teamed up with the very unusual jazz trio Human Error Club, also from LA, for the strangest house party. A drummer & two keyboardists, Human Error Club already bring a kind of hip-hop sensibility to their music with electro keys, MPC beats as well as drumkit, floating Rhodes and funky electric piano… And here their studio jams are cut up in Segal’s inimitable style, preserving the live feel, un-quantized, full of very human errors (they’re not errors, don’t put in the post that I said errors). And yr Backwoodz crew are here in force, on a third of the tracks anyway – K-the-I???, Quelle Chris & Cavalier, Moor Mother & billy woods, and woods’ Armand Hammer partner E L U C I D, who rides the acid funk with lackadaisical ease.
Ship Sket – Mimikyu [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. InitiatriX is out on October 31st, with a number of singles preceding it. Comprehensively mutated bass music, electro-acoustic manipulation… feels like this will be a helluva thing.
Blawan – WTF [XL Recordings/Bandcamp] Blawan – Style Teef [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
In the last few years, Jamie Roberts aka Blawan has released some of the most forward-thinking, fucked-up bass music around. From 2021’s Woke Up Right Handed, the bass rumbles and throbs, the beats syncopate and shuffle but hit haaaard. In 2023, Dismantled Into Juice went considerably left-field, with a couple of tracks featuring vocals from Monstera Black. And if last year’s BouQ veered back towards the dancefloor, it’s no less experimental for that. Notably in the meantime he also paired up with longtime collaborator Arthur Cayzer aka Pariah for two albums of industrial grindcore & noise rock (with hints of bass music) as Persher. This all now culminates with the full-length album SickElixir, which is seriously messed-up bass music, sick to the core. Club music for messed-up times.
Tackle – Wisp [Steeplejack Records]
Naarm/Melbourne sound engineer Greg Steele studied sound production and then spent a few years in Berlin honing his talents at sound design as well as putting together his own style as music-maker under the name Tackle. Almost 10 years ago he moved back to Naarm and started his own business as Steele Audio, and he’s done sound design work for environmental and advocacy groups like Greenpeace, The Australian Greens, Seed Mob and many others. “Wisp” is super slow/fast stuff, head-noddin’ half-time skipping quickly into dancing amens skittering and flying off into dub-like echoes. The other two tracks take a more machine-funk approach, but still in that IDM/jungle-electro space. Verrry nice.
Klahrk – Tension [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Ben Clarke aka Klahrk has been doing the IDM/jungle/breakcore thing inna nu style for some time, and with a new EP on YUKU you’d expect nothing less than bass-heavy chaos. It’s not as messed-up as Blawan, but it’s absolutely powered by unstoppable kinetic energy, with chittering footwork hi-hats, jungle breaks and thumping bass syncopations rolling ever onwards. Excellent.
Ruby My Dear – J’adore le soleil [PRSPCT/PRSPCT Bandcamp/Ruby My Dear Bandcamp] Ruby My Dear – Grosse Hyène [PRSPCT/PRSPCT Bandcamp/Ruby My Dear Bandcamp]
Julien Chastagnol named his breakcore/idm project Ruby My Dear after a Thelonious Monk tune, and Monk is one of the many jazz artists he’s sampled over the years, as well as scads of classical music. For his new album he’s gone to the beach for a jam… Confiture à la plage is classic Ruby My Dear, a demented confusion of joy and lightness, creeping horror and discombobulation. But really, it’s a delight, with sunset beach strums taking turns into 7/8 breakcore, and classic Satie turned into IDM – yes “gross hyène” (big hyena) is a pun on “Gnossienne“.
drumcorps – The Bogus [drumcorps Bandcamp] drumcorps – Looking for Stars [drumcorps Bandcamp]
Sometime in the mid-2000s, US musician Aaron Spectre realised he could combine his love of hardcore (punk) with hardcore (jungle, breakcore), and thus was drumcorps born. His remix of DJ C’s “Conscience a Heng Dem” with Capleton was one of the hits of 2000s ragga jungle, and was caned on Utility Fog in the early days (it came out the year we began). These days, drumcorps is Aaron’s name for releasing anything, including ambient glitch and postrock-leaning stuff as well as jungle and the punk/breakcore mashup, but For Everything definitely cleaves to the original idea for the name, noisy blurts of anger at living through the “multicalypse”, riffs colliding with breaks, cyberpunk glitches asserting themselves, grounded in bass. Dance me to the end of the world.
Kendu Bari – Main [Who’s Susan/Bandcamp]
When Amsterdam-based drum’n’bass producer Sam Young switched to using Kendu Bari for his productions, it was part of widening his focus to all forms of bass music, something that also underpins his label Sann Odea. All four tracks on his new EP Drink For Your Machine are dominated by bass, combining dubstep’s throb with techno and breakbeat, and on this track jungle influences.
Gabriel Prokofiev, FAMES European Youth Orchestra, (ft. Etienne Abelin & Viviana-Zarah Baudis) – Green March (Nicholas Thayer remix) [Nonclassical/Bandcamp]
I’m not quite sure how, but I was in with the Nonclassical label since the very beginning, with founder Gabriel Prokofiev‘s String Quartet No. 1 performed by The Elysian Quartet, accompanied – as many releases following were – by remixes from across the experimental, dubstep & club spectrum. Prokofiev (who is the grandson of the great Russian neo-classicist & modernist Sergei Prokofiev) continued writing works for piano, chamber ensembles and orchestra, and incorporating electronics – I’ve played him quite a bit over the years. Now he’s back on Nonclassical with new album Dark Lights, which incorporates grime-influenced electronics into the playing of the FAMES European Youth Orchestra, conducted by Etienne Abelin with piano by Viviana-Zarah Baudis. As usual there are a few remixes too, including this one by Nicholas Thayer, a composer and producer himself, who’s made music for Sydney Dance Company and Queensland Ballet as well as working with Thijs de Vlieger aka Thys from Dutch drum’n’bass legends Noisia. Thayer keeps the composition pretty much intact, just upping the electronic aspects very nicely.
Bendik Giske – Slipping (aya been caught mix) [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
In 2023, Norwegian saxophonist Bendik Giske released a self-titled album produced by the remarkable minimalist electronic producer/composer Beatrice Dillon, which stripped away any spacial recording techniques for a sharp focus on the saxophone and the saxophonist’s body-in-movement. Now, two years later, comes an EP simply titled Remixed, with a rework by Dillon herself along with avant-garde producers like Carmen Villain, Wacław Zimpel, Hanne Lippard and Heiroglyphic Being – and UK shapeshifter aya, who here eschews jungle breaks or showy production trickery, instead forming a hypnotic mass of sax button clicks and cyclic delay patterns.
Katatonic Silentio – Tidal Reverie [A Walking Contradiction/Bandcamp]
Italian producer Mariachiara Troianiello works as Katatonic Silentio with strange abstractions of dance music that of late have sounded submerged, or bobbing on the surface, something embodied by her latest EP, Water Dubs, released by Swiss label A Walking Contradiction. Here, technoid, grimey and junglish forms are submerged into murky depths, but somehow retain enough substance to keep their grooves. That’s some aural magic.
JQ & Richard Pike – Tessera (Suns) [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
Joe Quirke (JQ) & Richard Pike (originally from Sydney, now London-based) run the experimental/ambient label Salmon Universe together and have played together for years as part of the ambient-jazz trio Forgiveness, but new album Tessera is their first duo recording together. These are granular dubscapes, sometimes ambient sound-design and sometimes verging into Basic Channel-style dub techno, as heard on this sort-of title track “Tessera (Suns)”. Deeeeeeep listening.
Broken Chip – Silent Sky [Broken Chip Bandcamp]
Martyn Palmer has plied his trade with ambient electronics & field recordings as Broken Chip for a decade and a half, at times (years ago) making sampler-driven beats as Option Command. On his self-released new album Small Piano, dusty recordings of a piano are looped and resampled on tape and digital, creating fragile spaces for contemplation. He’s recently had some higher-profile releases on Ian Hawgood’s Home Normal, and hopefully people around the world keep discovering his understated genius.
Rrawun Maymuru and Nick Wales – Nguy Gapu (Ocean Water) [unreleased]
For a long while now, Sydney composer, violist and electronic musician Nick Wales has had a working relationship with the wonderful Yolgnu songman from Northeast Arnhem Land, Rrawun Maymuru (lead singer of East Journey). This week the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra have been performing an innovative programme called Water Music that interleaves orchestral works by Nick, mostly with Rrawun singing, with movements from Handel’s Water Music. These compositions are mostly also water-related, including a piece called Harbour Light that you can find an alternate version of on Nick’s Bandcamp. They also performed an orchestral version of a piece co-written by Rrawun and Sophie Hutchings, from Sophie’s ARIA Award-winning album A World Outside. I finished tonight with a piece called “Nguy Gapu (Ocean Water)” which bookended the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra performances. It’s stirring, evocative music in its own niche.
Arabic trip-hop? Nordic jazz-inflected indie pop? Minimal drum’n’bass? Bees?
Whatever you’re looking for, we’ve got it.
LISTEN AGAIN, with a vengeance! Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here!
Yasmine Hamdan – Vows سبع صنايع [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp] Yasmine Hamdan – Daya3 ضياع [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
While I’ve featured quite a bit of Lebanese music on this show, it’s leaned towards the experimental. Yasmine Hamdan‘s career goes back to the late ’90s with indie/trip-hop band Soapkills, all three of whose independent albums have been re-released by Belgian powerhouse Crammed Discs, whose catalogue covers postpunk and experimental music as well as “world music” from all over the planet. Hamdan released two previous solo albums with Crammed, and after a few singles (of which I’ve played a couple), her third album I remember, I forget is out now. It’s no surprise that this is album deeply affected by what’s happened to Beirut and Lebanon over the last few years, including the horrific port explosion in 2020, the intensifying of its economic collapse as well as continuing incursions by Israel. It’s actually a bittersweet album as Hamdan, who is based in Paris, has great affection for her birthplace of Beirut. It’s a beautiful, compulsively listenable collection of songs that easily fuses Arabic pop and trip-hop.
Snakeskin – Blindsided [Ruptured/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year, Beirut indie band Postcards released their fourth (or is it fifth?) album via key Lebanese label Ruptured. Postcards singer Julia Sabra and their longtime producer Fadi Tabbal have just come through with their third album We live in sand, co-released by Ruptured with Portland’s Beacon Sound. This album, too, is unavoidably influenced by the troubles of Lebanon and the horrors of the genocide being conducted by Israel. It’s mournful and sometimes angry, the product of two exceptionally strong music-makers. When I saw them live in London in May, both musicians had tables entirely covered in electronic equipment, noisemakers and effects, Sabra singing while processing her voice (given the setup, it was nearly impossible to tell who was making any particular noises other than that). This album might not seem as experimental as that performance implied, but it’s hard-hitting and there’s nothing else quite like it.
Majken – Mister Kristus [sing a song fighter]
Swedish singer-songwriter Majken grew up in a Pentecostal household where music was ever-present. And while she now believes that “politicized religion is the most dangerous thing in the world”, those musical roots are still heard in the blissful harmonies in her songs – her new album is called Korus after all. Religion is directly addressed in this song, of course. The record, released on October 24th, is mostly performed by herself, on guitar, piano, synths and samples, and a harp recorded in a Malmö concert hall. The contradictions between choral arrangements and Majken’s non-belief, between gentle indie-folk and electronics, bring a tension to the work which enhances the beauty of Majken’s voice and songwriting.
Mikoo – Ties [Sofa Music/Bandcamp] Mikoo – Blues [Sofa Music/Bandcamp]
Norway’s Sofa Music is a consistent home to music that’s off the beaten path – jazz, sure, but not only, or hybridised with contemporary classical, folk and electronics. Mikoo is a case in point, a band led by their drummer Michaela Antalova, a Slovakian musician based in Oslo. The music is mostly written by Antalova, in collaboration with the band, a highly talented collection of musicians on keyboards, guitars & zither, bass and vocals. Singer Ina Sagstuen does often write her own vocal melodies, and mostly the lyrics, which on their gorgeous new album It Floats mostly revolve around concepts of inheritance, including inherited trauma as well as traditions behaviours. These are dark songs in intimate chamber setting, with the percussion never far from prominence. It could easily pass you by – you may not hear about it anywhere else – and I really recommend giving it a listen when you have some quiet time.
The Leaf Library – The Long Dead King (Mücha remix) [Objects Forever]
When, as mentioned above, I saw Snakeskin playing in London, they were actually supporting spacerock/indietronic band The Leaf Library – two UFog faves on one night! When chatting with Matt from the band, he let me know they had a remix album on its way, and here it is: Flowers at the Border, released on their own label Objects Forever. The full album’s out on October 24th (and as I’m writing this late, it’s already happened!), with reworkings of past TLL songs by various fellow travellers, pretty much in keeping with the band’s gregarious approach which takes in spacerock/krautrock and electronic influences. Here’s some lovely looping electro from London’s Amanda Butterworth aka Mücha, whose interest in yoga and the philosophy of body-in-the-world influences her deep electronic productions.
Crimewave – Semaphore [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp (single)/Bandcamp (album)]
Manchester’s Crimewave makes a pretty unique mixture of UK bass & experimental electronic styles with shoegazey indie guitar music. He now finds himself of New York label Fool’s Gold Records with new single “Semaphore“. His second new single, this was a pretty sure indicator of an album on its way, and now Scenes has been announced! This track leans more on the electronic side, with ethereal voices and a twitchy, loping beat.
Bomb A Lil Joy – Unpaid Attorney [Translation Loss/Bandcam]
OK so, right out of leftfield comes this… Just nonchalantly dropping a new band name, Bomb A Lil Joy is actually a kind of weird heavy music supergroup. Christian McKenna, on whose Translation Loss label this album will be released, released a few albums as End Christian/Xtian and with various psychedelic rock bands, and while Translation Loss Records are mostly a metal zone, his C Trip A is a weird hip-hop project with rapper Anthony Adams, and Pynuka is electronic pop/trip-hop with singer Anda Szilagyi and the great, versatile Justin K Broadrick. Here McKenna is working with the legendary vocalist Eugene S Robinson of terrifying experimental rock band Oxbow. Robinson’s presence brings a poetic, chaotic and sinister note to these pieces, aided by frellow travellers like JK Broadrick, Kevin Hufnagel and others. Very interested to hear the rest of this!
BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Nerdie – Ridgy [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp]
Korean Australian producer/sound-artist Angus Alec Minhyuk Jin does incredible sound design for TV commercials, films and more, but as Nerdie his roots are in hip-hop. BAYANG (tha Bushranger), mind you, has roots in death metal, but on their collaborative album WAR WITH CHINA the pair address Australia’s cultural alienation, as they put it, riffing into punk as much as hip-hop. Good stuff.
Will Glaser – Bees [Not Applicable/Bandcamp]
London-based drummer Will Glaser is very busy in the London jazz & experimental scene, appearing on records or live with the likes of Yazz Ahmed, Kit Downs, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, James Allsopp, Alex Bonney and more. Prior to this release, the only solo works Glaser has released are the all-drums Some Drum Sounds and the mostly-drums Some Drum & Other Sounds (both of which are excellent mind you). However, on October 24th comes his first major solo work as auteur, the name of which is hard to even fit into a sentence: Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is about as sci-fi as you can get, imagining a musical artefact from sometime in the late 21st century, after the oncoming climate collapse. Glaser’s drums/percussion and electronics are accompanied here by brilliant musicians including Ruth Goller, Agathe Max, Tara Cunningham, James Allsopp and Alex Bonney (I’m mostly listing people whose work I know). The album claims influences as wide as Harry Partch, Tom Waits, the aforementioned Justin K Broadrick among others, and there’s no dearth of electronics there too (appropriately for the avant-garde Not Applicable label, co-run by both members of Icarus among others). It’s super weird and great – the titular Bees of this track most certainly make an appearance!
Wottakku – Moonlanding [Ornament170]
Russian drum’n’bass producer Hoji has made some substantial releases via Berlin-based Samurai Music, home of a tribal, minimalist form of drum’n’bass. He’s recently started his own label Ornament170, which seems to be on a similar tip, and very well-curated thus far. It’s not at all clear who Wottakku is – there’s some suggestion this isn’t their first release, but I can’t find any info… It is, in any case, four tracks of super dark, super stripped down d’n’b beats with outbursts of intensely-chopped jungle breaks. Pretty special.
Rutger Zuydervelt – Fragment 16 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp] Rutger Zuydervelt – Fragment 40 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
When I first started playing Machinefabriek on this show, I’d discovered his longform drone works and then his remarkable sound-art, pieces of electro-acoustic music put together in mysterious ways… It was music that immediately stood apart. Over many years Rutger Zuydervelt has honed his craft, working with talented musicians, improvisers, classical musicians and more – but recently he’s also become interested in working in the box, so to speak, on purely electronic music. He’s also over some years been involved with soundtrack writing for theatre and dance, as well as TV, and now has been creating musical cues for the VPRO (Dutch public broadcaster) show Frontlinie, 30-minute in-depth journalistic pieces by acclaimed journalist Bram Vermeulen. Zuydervelt goes into a bit more detail about his process in this Substack post, but it’s almost all created with MIDI instruments in Logic Pro. Clearly the alliterative possibilities were too much to resist, so he’s now dropped a selection of cues as Fifty Favorite Frontlinie Fragments – short pieces evocative enough to stand without the visuals. There’s a wide variety of stuff here – it’s like a library music collection, except all selections that already had a home.
The Dwarfs of East Agouza – Goldfish Molasses [Constellation/Bandcamp]
One of the weirdest permutations in the Egyptian underground, The Dwarfs of East Agouza are three central players: Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls, aka Alvarius B, co-founder of Sublime Frequencies etc etc; Maurice Louca of Lefkha and many incredible solo releases and other collaborations, and Sam Shalabi of Shalabi Effect, Land of Kush and so much more. Shalabi has a long association with Constellation Records, and has been based in Montréal for slabs of his life – but Sasquatch Landslide is the trio’s first album for the label. As one might expect, it’s completely bizarre stuff, no two tracks are the same and much of the material is abrasively abstract. “Goldfish Molasses” is perhaps no less chaotic, but the molasses it’s played through slow it right down into a murky sludge.
Bernard Parmegiani – Sadiquement Votre III [Transversales Disques/Bandcamp]
It’s crazy that 12 years after his death, there’s still new music coming out from pioneering French musique concrète/acousmatic composer Bernard Parmegiani. Mind you, it’s also crazy looking at his career, knowing he started off splicing tape in the late 1960s, and was making computer-based works until his death in 2013. The Transversales Disques label has released two Mémoire Magnétique compilations of little-heard or unheard material made for film, TV, radio and theatre. As these are typically short cues and the like, there’s an opportunity to hear wonderfully strange audio experiments, and Mémoire Magnétique, vol. 3 compiles material from 1967-1971, so it’s pretty trippy stuff. I’m always interested in the rhythmic stuff, which is nothing like techno or IDM but has strange parallels.
Saint Abdullah – The Wound Where The Light Enters [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
UK’s Phantom Limb label have revived their Imaginal Soundtracking series to commission 5 filmscores for the same 3-minute short film by Iranian director Somayeh. The film, titled The Wound Is Where The Light Enters (view it in full on Vimeo), is an unsettling view of a relationship, with only whispered words and a small amount of foley sound. The five artists invited to make soundtracks are all Iranian: Saint Abdullah are brothers now based between Tehran and London. I’ve played their collaborations with Eomac extensively, and before that their earlier works that melded hypnotic dub with the sounds of Shia Islam, field recordings from Islam, TV broadcasts etc. The duo here focus on the movement between the male & female actors, creating a dizzying piece of prepared piano & clarinet, shuddering noise, strummed guitar, and violin and vocal samples (I think). It’s very filmic.
Ivar Grydeland – Virkning av lysets brytning [Sofa Music/Bandcamp]
Norwegian guitarist Ivar Grydeland is a member of two quite different, important bands: the post-jazz/post-folk/post-rock of Huntsville and the avant-garde improv ensemble Dans les arbres. Both have been released on the wonderful Hubro label, on which Grydeland has a couple of solo albums, but his latest lands on the equally rad Sofa Music. Here we find Grydeland twisting his guitar into new shapes – sometimes it’s the pure drones of the sort that Oren Ambarchi became famous for in the ’00s; elsewhere subtly-detuned chords flicker rhythmically through glitched gates, abstract in a way that only makes it more beautiful. In the middle of the first track, Michaela Antalová of Mikoo contributes a loping beat; the rest is pure, shimmering, processed electric guitar. Super special.
Alister Spence – Interior Signal [Room40/Bandcamp] Alister Spence – Breath Formation [Room40/Bandcamp]
Sydney pianist Alister Spence is a key part of this city’s jazz and improv scene, and his trio with Lloyd Swanton of The Necks and drummer Toby Hall is a unique, evocative partnership (all three were also part of Sandy Evans & Tony Gorman’s legendary Clarion Fracture Zone). But Alister’s creativity takes him in all directions, and his forthcoming album Within Without is perfectly conceived for the Room40 label. Here, his creative impulse swoops away from the piano, and often away from the keys altogether, diving inside the beloved, chiming, throbbing heart of the Fender Rhodes (an instrument Spence has very much made his own too, over decades of playing). Prepared piano is now a well-established way to draw new sounds from the piano, and highlight its inner workings; so here’s Alister Spence’s prepared Rhodes. His suite of effects is never far away, but mostly we’re hearing the insides of the instrument, tapping and buzzing and yes, chiming. It’s hard to make the Rhodes not beautiful, and its inherent warmth is not denied or countered even in the most abstract pieces here. Delicious.
Balmorhea – I Thought I Wanted to Meet You [Deutsche Grammophon]
A few years ago the US folk/postrock duo Balmorhea surprised the Utility Fog team (that’s me) with an album on the venerable German classical label Deutsche Grammophon. This is partly due to DG getting on the post/neo-classical bandwagon (admittedly their ReComposed series of remixed symphonic works goes back to at least 2005), but it’s also less surprising when you remember that Balmorhea have incorporated classical instruments and styles from very early on. Their albums for DG have been rather pared back, and quite bewitching at their best. The Trap is a movie soundtrack, so it has classical and ambient gestures, and it’s for-purpose music, but it’s as touching as their other work. Here’s floating piano & organ, muttering clarinets(?) and background distortions, eventually fading into gorgeous close-mic’d felted piano.
soccer Committee – Little Sorrow [Morc Records/Bandcamp/soccer Committee Bandcamp]
I have been a dedicated fan of Dutch singer-songwriter Mariska Baars for many years, via Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek – both working with him under her own name, and then in equally mysterious projects such as Piiptsjilling and FEAN with the Kleefstra brothers and others. Where Jan Kleefstra performs his poetry in Frisian, Baars sings either wordlessly or in English. Her work, as soccer Committee and in other groups, is characterised by an exquisite restraint, whereby if you’re listening you can’t help but be drawn into the patiently unfolding melodies and subtle but essential textures. Even without Machinefabriek’s sensitive deconstructions around the edges of their collaborative work, Baars seems to dismantle and rebuild the fabric of her songs so that they are as attenuated as possible while still holding together. In 2023 she released ❤️ /Lamb, her most confident and fully-realised album yet, and only 2 years later, she’s back on Morc Records with eye, which is equally gorgeous and tenuous.
I do want to point you to where I discovered Mariska Baars, with Machinefabriek on their incredible album Drawn, which birthed the Redrawn compilation of remixes and covers – an album I return to frequently.
Paul Jebanasam – be earth now [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
FBi Radio alum (back when he was part of the Garage Pressure crew) Paul Jebanasam, originally from Sri Lanka, has since based himself in Bristol, where he co-founded Subtext Recordings with James Ginzburg (who now runs the label on his own). It was from the start “post-dubstep”, but still focused on bass weight, and Jebanasam’s earliest recordings combined a contemporary classical ambition with that bass heritage, much like Roly Porter‘s solo work post-Vex’d. You can find some of Paul’s dubstep work with Farj (also of Garage Pressure) here. Still based in Bristol, Jebanasam continues to create ambient work with galactic scope and sub-bass. His new album mātr, out on December 2nd, explores the duality of geological and human time frames, its title meaning “mother” in Sanskrit but also inevitably referencing “matter”. Adjusting our thinking towards geological timelines may help humanity out of its most destructive tendencies… we wish…
The Form Group – Defence Loop/NATO Dream Slip [Wayside & Woodland Recordings/Bandcamp]
Matt Ashton from aforementioned UFog faves The Leaf Library makes ambient/experimental music as The Form Group that’s some distance away from The Leaf Library’s spacerock and krautrock excursions, if in keeping with their penchant for experimentation. His Provincial Echo is coming on epic45‘s Wayside & Woodland Recordings. First previews suggest Fennesz’s arid glitchscapes as well as the cold ambient of Biosphere and even Sunn O))). This is evocative ambient music of substantial scope.
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin – Panj [Drag City/Bandcamp] Ghosted III is the third album from the trio of iconoclastic Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi with the Swedish rhythm section of the incredible Fire! – bassist Johan Berthling & Andreas Werliin. It’s still driven by the wonderful cyclic basslines and rhythms of Berthling & Werliin, but on this album it opens up its scope from those patient cycles. It’s still deeply embedded in these artists’ oeuvres: the krautrockain period of Ambarchi’s that started with “Knots”, the centrepiece of 2012’s Audience of One, and similarly the hypnotic sound of Berthling & Werliin’s groundbreaking earlier band Tape as well as the freer Fire! and Fire! Orchestra. Opener “Yek” (the titles are the numbers 1-6 in Persian) has chiming post-postpunk guitars over a skipping bassline and drums, and it’s followed by the starker “Do”, which could be a long-lost Tape track. But there’s still minimalist blues like “Panj”, on which Ambarchi’s guitar sounds like a droning organ. These musicians’ careers have intersected multiple times in their swerving trajectories. Long may they reign in this trio formation!
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BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Nerdie – Bankistan [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp]
Korean Australian producer/sound-artist Angus Alec Minhyuk Jin does incredible sound design for TV commercials, films and more, but as Nerdie his roots are in hip-hop. BAYANG (tha Bushranger), mind you, has roots in death metal, but on their collaborative album WAR WITH CHINA the pair address Australia’s cultural alienation, as they put it, riffing into punk as much as hip-hop. Good stuff.
Ho99o9 – Godflesh [Last Gang Records/Bandcamp] Ho99o9 – Immortal feat. Chelsea Wolfe [Last Gang Records/Bandcamp]
Few are doing hardcore punk/metal meets hip-hop quite like Newark’s Ho99o9 (it’s pronounced “Horror”). I’m not sure you’d call this horrorcore, but it’s ho99o9core at least. A perfect melding of punk riffage you could pogo to and the finest beats & raps. Not much more to say. They’ve been around a lot longer than you’d expect, and their style hasn’t changed dramatically since 2017’s United States of Horror, but damnit they do seem to have perfected it. And yes, there’s industrial metal trappings (there’s no way that the title “Godflesh” doesn’t refer to JK Broadrick & G.C. Green’s iconoclastic duo), but there’s an emotional undercurrent which surfaces particularly with the brilliant Chelsea Wolfe‘s guest spot.
clipping. – Night of Heaven (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
So yeah, back in March, clipping. released one of the albums of the year… or did they? If so, then what’s this? Why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months ago in various physical formats… Annnyway, an album more fitting for the digital age could not exist – this is clipping. doing cyberpunk, employing Daveed Diggs’ incredible wordsmithery and Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson’s backgrounds in noise, breakcore, soundtracking and more to bring to life the genre that’s both decades out of style and horrifically descriptive of our current-day dystopia. So, finally we have the “pt. 1” to the original release’s “Mirrorshades pt. 2” (the deadly Molly Millions in William Gibson’s cyberpunk ur-text Neuromancer “wears” mirrored sunglasses – except they’re permanently sealed into her skin; a couple of years later Bruce Sterling edited a definitive anthology of early cyberpunk titled Mirrorshades). Needless to say, following their previous concept albums on afrofuturist space opera and horror & blaxploitation, clipping. nail the cyberpunk genre here, both in terms of “style” and intertextuality. But anyway, not only is “Mirrorshades pt. 1” a certifiable banger, but on “Night of Heaven” clipping. collaborate again with the astonishingly-voiced Counterfeit Madison, with cuts provided by Kid Koala. My CD player aches with jealousy.
toso toso – lluvia de meteoritos [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
Last year we were privileged to receive two albums from two quite different ensembles led by Brooklyn artist isabel crespo pardo, both trios: sinonó melds Latin American folk song with free improvisation, combining crespo pardo’s voice with cello (Lester St. Louis) and double bass (Henry Fraser); tilt finds crespo pardo joined by trombonist Kalia Vandever and double bassist Carmen Quill, with all three singing. These two ensembles conjured remarkable music from voice and low-register instruments. Now in November comes the debut album from crespo pardo’s quartet toso toso, following two singles from last year. Here the palette is expanded, in size and breadth and genre, much more electronic and paradoxically a little more conventional – at the core it’s piano/drums/guitar. Wait, guitar? Yes, in contrast to those other two groups, there’s no bass here at all. This is very different music from those other two ensembles, yet the voice of isabel crespo pardo instantly ties it to their other work. Here, the scope is as wide as musical palette – this single is a “meteor shower” after all, with a loping rhythm on the drumkit, sweeping synths and isa crespo pardo’s voice soaring over it all.
SANAM – Hadikat Al Ams – حديقة الأمس [Constellation/Bandcamp] SANAM – Sayl Damei – سيل دمعي [Constellation/Bandcamp]
I was instantly hooked when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background; this second album is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop. There really are many different directions taken here, from trip-hop like pieces with auto-tuned vocals to punky numbers with jagged guitars – I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it.
JASSS – It’s A Hole feat. james K and Alias Error [AWOS/Bandcamp]
Four years after her previous album A World Of Service, released on Berghain’s in-house label Ostgut Ton, Berlin-based Spanish producer JASSS has released her third album Eager Buyers, this time coming via AWOS, her new platform for releases, events and broadcasts. The album’s a meditation on the current age of late-stage capitalism, melding ’80s postpunk & goth aesthetics with ’90s trip-hop and jungle, noise and current-day production. JASSS’s own vocals are featured alongside some guests, including recent AD 93 artist james K and Berlin-based DJ/singer/producer Alias Error.
Shugorei – Cat Dragon [4000 Records/Bandcamp] Shugorei – Water Music [4000 Records/Bandcamp]
Meanjin/Brisbane duo Shugorei finally release their album Memories of Magic—魔法の記憶—Mahō no Kioku after a brilliant series of singles, starting last year with the ’80s-pop-meets-hyperpop of “Roboto”, moving through contemplative electro-acoustics with Mindy Meng Wang 王萌, and gorgeous post-classical pop with Shêm Allen‘s voice & renowned classical guitarist Karin Schaupp. With frequent guests on cello & violin as well, this album conmfortably straddles the worlds of classical, traditional Japanese and electronica, throwing in breakbeats and field recordings, live percussion and glitchy production. Seriously so great, don’t miss it!
bonnie cooth – out of my mind [cooth interactive studios] bonnie cooth – roly poly [cooth interactive studios]
With a spooneristic pseudonym only fans of Fawlty Towers will likely appreciate, the duo of electronic artists who make up bonnie cooth make music that’s part ’90s IDM throwback and part lo-fi hyperpop & ’20s breakcore revival. Their second album is, of course, titled bonnie twooth and like the first, it comes with the conceit that it’s actually a late ’90s (I’m guessing) or early ’00s video game. So yeah, nice melody electronica vibes, not quite chiptune, not quite breakcore, and occasional computer songs. Good stuff!
Microcorps – Folded [ALTER/Bandcamp]
Seeing the evolution of Alexander Tucker from psych-folk troubador into (still psychedelic) experimental rock and through to the experimental beats he’s making as Microcorps has been extremely gratifying. Tucker brings great musicality to whatever he’s doing, and still plays strings (sometimes homemade, sometimes cello) and includes his voice (often manipulated). New album CLEAR VORTEX CHAMBER might just be the best electronic music he’s made, with help from the likes of industrial techno pioneer Regis, the great Justin K Broadrick, Japanese punk/experimental legend Phew, experimental songwriter Karl D’Silva and experimental singer/sound-artist Elvin Brandhi. This is heavy beats with granular processing on strings and voice, at once high-tech and primitivist.
Ecko Bazz – VAWO MPITEWO [Hakuna Kulala/Bandcamp]
Back on Hakuna Kulala 3 years after the incredible Mmaso, which was mostly produced by MC Yallah collaborator Debmaster, Ugandan MC Ecko Bazz here presents a 3-track EP, Nsiga Ensigo, with beats by Italians STILL and Talpah keeping it bass-heavy and pumping. Hard-hitting, even if you don’t understand the Lugandan lyrics.
ltfll – Maelstrom [irsh/Bandcamp]
I first heard the beats of Alexandria-based producer ltfll (aka George Farid) on the two compilations from Cairo’s irsh label, started by ZULI and Rama to support Cairo & Egypt’s underground electronic scene. After a couple of year’s break, irsh is back with ltfll’s new EP Nested Skins, in which Farid takes the rhythms and grooves of Egypt and its surrounds and embeds them in crunchy, idm-influenced techno. You won’t find anything else quite like it.
Muskila – 68 [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Bass music here, YUKU-style, from Muskila, who was born in Copenhagen with North-Kurdistani roots. The percussive backbone to all the rhythms here, and Muskila connects with Nigerian rapper Aunty Rayzor, and remixers from Cairo (Hassan Abou Alam) and Jordan (Toumba). Low-slung and minimalist, these tracks have a strong sense of style.
enduser – Movement [enduser Bandcamp]
In the early years of the show, Lynn Standafer’s enduser was a key artist, making musically sensitive, dark drum’n’bass, jungle and breakcore, frequently with well-judged use of indie rock and pop samples (This Mortal Coil, Björk, Lamb, Lush, Tasmin Archer) as well as tuff hip-hop and ragga samples (if you can identify the sample used both here and here I won’t be the only one grateful!) Standafer’s still at it, more on the d’n’b side perhaps than breakcore, and “Movement” is a recent one, with yearning synth pads and crisp drums that I think deserves an outing.
Rainforest – As Above So Below [AGN7 Audio/Bandcamp]
From Mexico, Rainforest brings four tracks of hard-hitting jungle-influenced drum’n’bass to US label AGN7 Audio (pronounced “agent audio”). It’s perhaps what Photek would sound like if his drum’n’bass phase had been influenced by footwork and jungle hadn’t fallen out of fashion. That is to say, it’s very very good.
WTVR & 451F – Clouded Foot Slide [Yanked Beats/Bandcamp]
And now over to Portugal with the Yanked Beats label, showcasing two stalwarts of the Portuguese underground electronic scene. WTVR & 451F bring four tracks of footwork-jungle, with enough of a halftime feel to sit with bass music.
Shapednoise – Crash Landing (feat. ICECOLDBISHOP) [Weight Looming]
When the last Shapednoise album came out, I pointed out that Nino Pedone has one foot in the noise realm, with releases on Prurient’s Hospital Productions among others, and one foot in the bass world, collaborating with Mumdance & Logos on the cyberpunk project The Sprawl. That previous album was Absurd Matter, an ambitious set with many guest vocals, set to massively overdriven beats & bass, and electronic walls of noise (and sometimes melody). Absurd Matter 2 is the sequel you’d expect, with both Armand Hammer and Moor Mother returning as guests among many others. On “Crash Landing”, ICECOLDBISHOP‘s voice bounces around, over & under Pedone’s frenetic, crunching, almost-rhythmic soundscapes. “Off with his head!”
Ani Zakareishvili – Artificial me, artificial you, artificial us [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
Adam Badí Donoval’s Warm Winters, Ltd. reliably uncovers the most incredbile music from Eastern Europe. Here, Tbilisi’s Ani Zakareishvili createst deep, spooky sound-works that have one foot in the urban future and one in the pastoral past. Can’t wait to play you more from this!
Siavash Amini – Severed Like The Red Moon pt.1 [Room40/Bandcamp]
Brilliant Iranian sound-artist Siavash Amini follows up his remarkable Caligo album on Room40 with an EP titled Severed Like The Red Moon. Like that album, these pieces are based on an early Iranian piano recording that Amini has comprehensively destroyed, with chords frozen into rumbling drones or crackling glitchscapes. Paired with the imagery of the red moon as a severed head floating in space, it’s quite the horror story…
Marja Ahti – Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth (radio edit) [fönstret/Bandcamp]
Finland-based Swedish composer & sound-artist Marja Ahti releases two sides on the Stockholm-based fönstret label, run by ex-pat Aussie John Chantler. On this track, Ahti initially worked with a clarinet/cello/percussion trio at EMS Studios in Stockholm, and then at the Seventh Edition Festival (the home of the fönstret label) the same trio performed while Ahti manipulated the EMS recordings using INA-GRM’s Acousmonium “speaker orchestra”. The piece has undergone further iterations since that 2024 performance, notably imbued with intense bass pressure… This is extraordinary sound-art, worth hearing both sides in full.
Dissociative Identity Quartet – A spark of hope [Mahorka/Bandcamp]
Adventurous Bulgarian label Mahorka brings us the latest album from the anonymous musicians / sound-artists behind Dissociative Identity Quartet. The quartet’s approach has involved taking random sounds and organising them into something abstract but musical. But Melodies and Voices finds them extending that approach into a more melodic settings, including the use of voices. Calling it a “pop album” is a stretch, but they’ve hit upon something that experimental artists converge on at times, where a particular abstraction of sound subtly allows for humand and melodic expression to imprint itself on the sound. It’s quite touching.
Agriculture – Dan’s Love Song [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
With The Flenser you know you’re going to expect dark, probably metal-adjacent music, and you know it’ll probably diverge from typical genre norms. Ecstatic black metal band Agriculture do indeed employ black metal’s tremolo guitars and blast beats to reach for altered states, but then the thunder gives way to a different kind of ecstasy in a piece like this – shimmering shoegaze guitars and a creatively-harmonised melody, showing why The Spiritual Sound is shaping up to be one of the albums of the year.
Heya, so here we are, the end of 2025. Good riddance I say.
As is traditional, this is a DJ mix – almost 2 hrs, with a bit of speaking at the front. It’s pretty strange, this one, although there’s a lot of dance music. There’s also a lot of detours and oddities, but that’s what UFog is about, so I hope you enjoy!
You can stream on demand from fbi.radio, or you can listen right here:
Perera Elsewhere, Andy S – Fuck Le System [Friends of Friends/Bandcamp]
I loved Sasha Perera aka Perera Elsewhere‘s 2022 album Home, an album of “doom-folk”, but actually experimental electronic pop songs. The following year she put out an album of remixes with some excellent contributors, and now there’s finally another album, Just Wanna Live Some. Her musical net is cast wide, mixing UK soundsystem culture in with music from different parts of Africa, Indonesia and Europe (she’s based in Berlin). The first double single features two tracks with Ivorian MC Andy S, rapping (mostly) in French over infectious beats.
Harry The Nightgown – Bell Boy [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
A band that call themselves Harry The Nightgown are just gonna be an art pop kind of affair, right? For their debut album the LA band were engineer/producer Spencer Hartling aka tp Dutchkiss and sound engineer/singer/guitarist/etc Sami Perez, but they are now joined by Luke Macdonald, who tours with one of Perez’ bands, Cherry Glazerr. There’s no way of telling who played or programmed what, but the first single from Ugh (an album with a title for the times if ever there was one) is complex & melodic, skippy junglist beats with a sped-up funk bassline and lopsided maybe-sample, skittering into groovy synth chords that could come from an early James Blake track. It’s glitchy, catchy and super-cool.
N-Type & Kromestar – Don’t Be Afraid ft. Sgt Pokes & Breezy Lee [Wheel & Deal Records/Bandcamp]
I don’t play a lot of dubstep on the show these days, simply because it doesn’t always fit in, and the same goes for grime “as such”, although I love those genres. So unfortunately this lovely song that melds trip-hoppy r’n’b vocals, grime and dubstep, wasn’t played during the year – but here it fits nicely in this space between electronic pop and dub. Both N-Type & Kromestar go back to the early days of dubstep, and the voice of Sgt Pokes has been heard at many a dubstep night. Breezy Lee also has been associated with the UK bass scene for a while, as well as jazz & cabaret, and she brings just the right amount of soulfulness to this tune.
Modeselektor featuring Paul St. Hilaire – Movement [!K7 Records/Bandcamp]
We’ll get back to Paul St. Hilaire in a minute, but I have to confess I’ve always had a soft spot for Modeselektor. They are essentially a Berlin take on bass music and techno, and through their long career have often found great collaborators to join them on their albums and mixes. It’s nice to see them doing what’s surprisingly their first DJ-Kicks mix, inserting a good quantity of experimental stuff, and of course there are some exclusive tracks. “Movement” is a thudding, bouncy piece of bass techno, and the echoing voice of Paul St. Hilaire (fka Tikiman) provides great atmosphere to what’s really a skeletal track (which is all it needs to be).
Kvedarkvintetten – Brest [Heilo Records/Bandcamp] Tagal is the latest album from Norwegian vocal quintet Kvedarkvintetten, featuring music composed by Jorun Marie Rypdal Kvernberg. The title translates as “to keep silent” or “mute” or “wordless”, so these songs feature almost no text. The quintet’s previous work was primarily based around their interpretations of the traditional vocal music of the Hallingdal region of Norway, so even though Kvernberg provided musically notated scores, the group brought their own interpretation. This is highly melodic music, performed with dedication and emotion.
Simon Henocq – CONCOURSE A [Carton Records/Bandcamp]
French record label Carton Records gregariously supports artists across just about all genres, and many of their releases have the genre-free je ne sais quoi of Simon Henocq‘s We Use Cookies. Henocq is a sound-artist, producer and self-taught musician who also convenes French collective COAX, a gathering-together of musicians of all genres along with dancers, visual artists and more. I would loosely define Henocq’s album as noise, but it coalesces into a kind of industrial techno often. At other times you’ll get a fizzling, crackling tone that slowly grows into a snarling miasma.
Paul St. Hilaire & Gavsborg – Confidential [Kynant Records/Bandcamp]
Until about 2003, the Jamaican vocalist Paul St. Hilaire was known as Tikiman, under which name he collaborated with many experimental electronic musicians including The Bug and Tarwater, but most famously Berlin techno heads Mark Ernestus & Moritz Von Oswald of dub-techno labels/projects Basic Channel, Chain Reaction and Burial Mix, particularly under their Rhythm & Sound alias. These releases were ground zero for minimal techno and dub techno, quite unlike anything else heard at the time. While many 12″s featured Tikiman on vocals, there were others, and eight tracks with eight different vocalists were collected on Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists. So that’s the starting point for Paul St. Hilarie – w/ The Producers – nine tracks here, with ten producers from the dub & techno worlds, channeling (by and large) the Basic Channel template. It’s really an excellent album, but among the highlights was the track from Jamaican producer Gavsborg, of the experimental crew Equinoxx, whose track is utterly stripped back. Also notable: Eora/Sydney DJ & producer Cousin (aka FBi’s Jackson Fester), who keeps things beautifully smooth and minimal, supporting St. Hilaire’s repeated phrase “Back Inna Business”.
gyrofield – Vegetation Grows Thick [Kapsela/Bandcamp]
If you know the music of now-Utrecht-based Hong Kong producer Kiana Li as gyrofield, you’d know her as an insanely talented jungle & drum’n’bass producer, whose earliest Bandcamp tracks are from when she was 15. A scant few years later she was being released on labels like Critical Music and Metalheadz. But with that head start, it’s not too surprising that since the age of about 21 she’se been branching out from drum’n’bass into mutated forms of other genres – and given that, Objekt‘s new label Kapsela is a good place to be stretching forms. Each of the four tracks on Suspension of Belief is a different kind of weirdness. Opener “Vegetation Grows Thick” juggles backmasked vocals with pulsating bleeps and skittery hi-hats before the thumping kick drums enter.
Sebaas – No Plastic [unreleased on Sebaas.Waveform Bandcamp]
Amsterdam-based producer Sebaas has a couple of releases under his belt, which he describes as “multifaceted floor-groove”. Seems about right – percussive bass music, whether techno or on a more 140 tilt. “No Plastic” is based around a sample of Spanish singer Nathy Peluso rapping “I’m a nasty girl, fantastic / este culo es natural o no plastic” (found here), switching up the minimalist reggaeton for high-energy bass-heavy breaks. I received a promo of this and it doesn’t seem to have ever come out – perhaps copyright issues.
Mac Seldom – ILUVU [Hotflush Recordings/Bandcamp] Hotflush Recordings was founded by Paul Rose aka Scuba in 2003, at the very cusp of dubstep’s advent, but it always featured pre-dubstep sounds like UK garage, and increasingly the dub techno that Rose as Scuba was hybridizing into his own dubstep. Gradually the label has turned its focus more to techno & other 4/4 genres, but I still follow for the gems. Newcastle Upon Tyne producer Mac Seldom spent years making music for film in Berlin, but Dance W/ Me collects three tracks of pristine uk garage/bass house stuff with heaps of bounce and syncopation.
Kalabash – Major ft. Jelani Blackman (Radio Edit) [Tropopause Records/Bandcamp]
UK singer and rapper Jelani Blackman brings out the grime in this new track from London-based collective Kalabash, who planned to release their Decompression Tapes Vol. 1 in 2025, but it hasn’t eventuated. In any case, Blackman’s lyrical prowess is on show here, over a high-paced beat and production that seems to draw from all over. Also noting that their 2-track single from earlier in March showcases two other sides: “Decompress” is tough jungle-techno with a cinematic interlude, while “Concrete” is a tense 4/4 number.
Muskila – JAH NAM (INTRO) [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Bass music here, YUKU-style, from Muskila, who was born in Copenhagen with North-Kurdistani roots. The percussive backbone to all the rhythms here, and Muskila connects with Nigerian rapper Aunty Rayzor, and remixers from Cairo (Hassan Abou Alam) and Jordan (Toumba). Low-slung and minimalist, these tracks have a strong sense of style.
Vier – VAI PULANDO [Machinedrum Bandcamp]
Some kind of dance music supergroup here… Travis “Machinedrum” Stewart here teams up with Thijs “Thys” de Vlieger of Noisia, Dutch producer/academic Salvador Breed and Portuguese DJ/producer Miguel “Holly” Oliveira. This is intensely soudn-designy bass music, but also very ravey and dancefloor-friendly. Two of the quartet are Dutch, so they named the group “Vier” (four). “Vai Pulando” is Brazilian Portuguese on the other hand, and means “Keep Jumping”. I concur.
Pushlock – Scarecrow [XCPT/Bandcamp]
Over to Italy now with the XCPT label, which last year released an excellent album from Naarm/Melbourne’s Barking. Here’s adventurous Italian bass music producer Pushlock with his third album on XCPT, Stuck in a Cell. It’s a good example of how bass music styles are mixed’n’matched by a lot of producers these days – jungle breaks slipping in & out of the mix, with a general dubstep feel. It’s not slow-fast either, but rather uses signifiers from multiple bass music styles. If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, you’ll know that’s exactly how I like it.
Sacred Lodge – Wa Wa Ke Wa Wa Yi (Feat. Sara Persico) [Avon Terror Corps]
Out through Bristol collective Avon Terror Corps is the second album from Paris-based Matthieu Ruben N’Dongo, under the alias Sacred Lodge. Ambam comes out of his ethno-musicological studies into the Fang people of Central Africa, from whom he’s descended via his father. On top of his dubstep-influenced beats, his own voice is central: he “uses the scream as a vocal act of liberation in the face of oppression”, joined on a few tracks by guests, including Sara Persico and Cairo-based producer El Kontessa. Elements from Equatorial Guinea, horrorcore rap and bass music come together powerfully on this album – just as exciting as the African metal/bass music fusion of Lord Spikeheart. On this track, Sara Persico adds distorted yelps and auto-tuned interjections. Intense(ly good).
Shugorei – Water Music [4000 Records/Bandcamp]
In September Meanjin/Brisbane duo Shugorei finally released their album Memories of Magic—魔法の記憶—Mahō no Kioku after a brilliant series of singles, starting in late 2024 with the ’80s-pop-meets-hyperpop of “Roboto”, moving through contemplative electro-acoustics with Mindy Meng Wang 王萌, and gorgeous post-classical pop with Shêm Allen‘s voice & renowned classical guitarist Karin Schaupp. With frequent guests on cello & violin as well, this album conmfortably straddles the worlds of classical, traditional Japanese and electronica, throwing in breakbeats and field recordings, live percussion and glitchy production. Seriously so great, don’t miss it!
Matmos – Changing States [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
If you’re one of the lucky few who got to see Matmos performing at Phoenix Central Park in August 2024, you would have seen the pair duo sampling not just from destroyed Bread records but from metallic objects of all kinds – cymbals, ball bearings, pots & pans (as I recall). I’m lucky to have seen Matmos quite a lot, and from as far back as 1999 (when I saw them twice, in Edinburgh and then in New York), their performances have always been based around live sampling and a good quantity of humour. But both Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt are also deeply thoughtful individuals and excellent musicians, and that performance was bewitching as much as it was hilarious. They are also a couple, and they celebrated their 25th anniversary with the Plastic Anniversary. In 2025, that would make them 31, but it’s not a stretch to imagine that Metallic Life Review was conceived and created around their 30th anniversary. Like the plastics of that earlier album, this one is built around the sounds of metallic objects, extending into the pedal steel of the sadly recently-departed Susan Alcorn, among other guests. They are well aware of the genre connotations of “metal”, as much as they are of the accuracy-or-not of their music as musique concrète, found-sound or field recordings, but something I always note with pleasure is that they can’t but help express their musical roots in ’90s experimental electronica – as much as the proto-folktronica, postrock and Americana found on the beloved 1999 EP The West and 2003 album The Civil War. When you’ve been together for 30 years, as life partners and creative partners, certain themes would tend to repeat while others would be turned away. So raise a stainless steel tumbler to one of music’s greatest couples, and enjoy listening to Metallic Life Review.
Sicaria – Rhassoul [Tectonic Recordings/Bandcamp]
When Rob Ellis, aka (DJ) Pinch, founded Tectonic Recordings in 2005, he cemented Bristol as the second home of dubstep after South London. As well as release some of the most classic early dubstep tunes, Tectonic released a series of iconic compilations, beginning with Tectonic Plates Vol. 1 in 2006. More than anything, it’s the callback to these great compilations that made me excited to discover that Pinch is revitalising the label with the 2CD (and 6 vinyl boxset) Tectonic Sound. The label boss opens the proceedings with the album’s title track, which shudders between OG dubstep minimalism and vocal snaps & busy percussion. Across the compilation there’s a whole spectrum of 140bpm, from the rolling percussive house (yet still dubstep) on dubstep mainstay V.I.V.E.K‘s “Gone W3st” to the percussive dubstep heard here from London-based Moroccan DJ Sicaria, a rising bass music star. Elsewhere there’s eerie electro-acoustic minimalism from Flora Yin Wong (which also manages to still be dubstep), the distorted crunch of dubstep legend Distance, and the methodical dubstep-dub from Bristol legend Rob Smith aka RSD. If you have any interest in 140bpm bass music, this is essential listening.
The Bug – Bury Dem (ft Logan) [Relapse Records/Bandcamp] The Bug – Buried Dub [Relapse Records/Bandcamp]
When Kevin Martin aka The Bug put out his series of five Machine EPs from late 2023 into 2024, they were rough & ready scuzzy dub/dubstep tools for testing the intensity of his Pressure soundsystem. But a riddim’s always in search of a deejay, so he’s enlisted Logan and Magugu to flip them into vocal tunes. Thus “Buried (Your Life Is Short)” becomes “Bury Dem (ft. Logan)” and “Drop (Machine Sex)” is “Deep in a Mud (ft. Magugu)”… But then Martin can’t help but re-dub these, so we get “Buried Dub”, which is considerably different from the original “Buried”, and you can hear fragments of Logan’s voice echoing through the machines.
clipping. – Change the Channel [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
A new clipping. album is always an event. Daveed Diggs may be very busy with his acting career, but he’s a serious rapper and lyricist and clearly dedicated to this very weird band. Weird because the two musicians who complete the trio are both noise artists, William Hutson tending to the more cerebral, and Jonathan Snipes also well-known for his irreverant hardcore/rave shenanigans with Captain Ahab back in the day. clipping.’s music absolutely works as hip-hop, and Diggs is a masterful rapper; but they also draw on avant-garde contemporary composition, glitch, noise and – absolutely – jungle & rave. This all goes to show that a concept album on cyberpunk suits them just as well as their two horrorcore tributes, and their space opera before – all masterpieces. Dead Channel Sky is named for the first sentence of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, an ur-text of cyberpunk: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” – which in 1984 of course meant a staticky grey, later on could mean blue, and now probably just prompts confused looks from the post-Gen Z generation. I haven’t listened closely enough to the lyrics yet, but it seems less of a through-narrative than Splendor & Misery, but as a series of snapshots it depicts the way that we are careening head-on into a not-unfamiliar form of the grimy, ultra-capitalist dystopias depicted in cyberpunk since the mid-1980s. That the music mixes jungle and industrial, while glitches and other sonic manipulation echo the various discarded technologies that inspired the genre, goes to show that clipping. are the band to do this right.
And yet… why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because as of September, Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months earlier in various physical formats… and one of the best tracks is “Night of Heaven”, featuring both the brilliant Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala, and yeah it’s not on my CD 😢 (I played it in my Best of 2025 Part 1). But I should note: clipping. did a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert late in the year, with electro-mechanical percussion, harmonium and Sharon Udoh (the aforementioned Counterfeit Madison) on piano and vocals, and while every rendition is a highlight, “Night of Heaven” is the second-last track, and Kid Koala hops up on the turntable too!
A.Fruit – What Is This [A.Fruit Bandcamp]
It hasn’t been the biggest year for releases from the ubiquitous, mega-talented Anna Fruit, but there have been tracks here and there, and in January the Somnambulism EP. She’s a great producer (you can get production tips on her Patreon) and is a master at creating experimental bass music that draws from jungle, footwork, dubstep, techno and more, often in the same track. This is a hypnotic piece of pulsing techno at the edge of your subconscious.
ltfll – Nested Skins [irsh/Bandcamp]
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Cairo label irsh, the label founded by DJ Rama and genius producer ZULI in 2020. They released two compilations of rad experimental electronic music from Egypt, did you mean: irish and did you mean: irish vol. 2, and George Farid’s ltfll (that’s a lower-case L at the start) appeared on both. With nested skins, his new EP released on irsh this year, Farid makes intricate bass music with rhythms from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, experimental but firmly aimed at the dancefloor.
Lila Tirando a Violeta, sideproject – Ostrich/Ñandú [Unguarded/Bandcamp]
The 2025 album from Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta came via Berlin label Unguarded. Apparently Dream of Snakes comes from a recurring dream of Lila’s, literally about snakes, somehow mixed in with her experiences moving from the Netherlands to Ireland, which despite the subject matter was strangely comforting. I’m not sure if the same can be said of the album, which continues the producer’s work in post-industrial, post-IDM bass music, mashing up Latin rhythms with the breakbeats and drum machines, with irruptions of vocals within synthscapes and sample collages. One of a few collaborations on the album, Ostrich/Ñandú is just what you’d expect to get when crossing Icelandic IDM collective sideproject and Ireland-based Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta – percussion-soaked frenetic beats, with even the backing tracks mostly jittering along in rhythm. It’s the futuristic music of the present.
Mantra – Ruffhouse [Ilian Tape/Bandcamp]
Indi Khera aka DJ Mantra is a dedicated and influential drum’n’bass & jungle DJ, who co-founded Rupture London with her partner Double O in 2006 as a club night for d’n’b, jungle & breakbeat vibes, and six years later founded the RuptureLDN label with the same ethos. In the last few years, she’s finally started releasing her own productions, with all the rhythmic & tonal smarts you’d expect. Here she is for the second time on Munich’s Ilian Tape, with four tracks running from breaky dub-house to dubby garage, dubstep-techno like this track and kind of dreamy jungle-techno.
Ancestral Voices – Annwn [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]
Liam Blackburn made bass music for years as Indigo, and with Joe McBride aka Synkro formed the precision-tooled experimental bass machine Akkord. Ancestral Voices was his project to move away from typical drum’n’bass/dubstep forms into ambient and percussive music influenced by ancient Celtic culture. One of my favourite Indigo EPs, Storm came out on Samurai Music some 12 years ago, so it’s nice having Ancestral Voices back on the label with Nemeton, his most drum’n’bass-coded release in a long time. It’s still epic and deep and not always focused on the beats. The beats are often percussion-oriented rather than breakbeat-oriented, and it won’t all work on the dancefloor, but in fact it’s kind of thrilling hearing music so cinematic and different that’s nevertheless deeply informed by drum’n’bass.
Pol100 – Pastel Clouds [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Italian producer Pol100 had a great 2-track EP earlier this year on Turin label early reflex mutating jungle and techno into strange new shapes, between drumfunk and electro. However, this track comes from the FIFTH of FIVE compilations put out by the ever-energetic Prague-based bass label YUKU celebrating, as they say, Five Years in the Wild. The label is both prodigious and high quality, always worth a watch – or you can subscribe on Bandcamp for about 250 CZK a month, which at $18 is admittedly a commitment.
Kendu Bari – Main [Who’s Susan/Bandcamp]
When Amsterdam-based drum’n’bass producer Sam Young switched to using Kendu Bari for his productions, it was part of widening his focus to all forms of bass music, something that also underpins his label Sann Odea. All four tracks on his new EP Drink For Your Machine are dominated by bass, combining dubstep’s throb with techno and breakbeat, and on this track jungle influences.
Igorrr – ADHD [Metal Blade Records/Bandcamp]
Gautier Serre has been mashing up genres for his whole career. His albums – with Whourkr and as Igorrr – have alternately been released on breakcore/idm labels like Ad Noiseam (RIP) and metal labels like Crucial Blast and Metal Blade Records – but along with the breakcore/drill’n’bass/glitch and the death metal there’s been a hilarious operatic aspect to Igorrr. Not surprising that Igorrr and the recently-featured Ruby My Dear made an EP together about 11 years ago. So, the new Igorrr album, more explicitly a full-band affair, is at first glance more of a metal/opera thing. But it’s called Amen, and yes, there are outbursts of crazy breakcore drum programming and surreal… er, well, everything’s kinda surreal? It’s an Igorrr album. So fun.
Overcast – Wolfe [IR77/Bandcamp] Mark Newlands is a key person in Australia’s hardcore scene, as founder of the highly influential Bloody Fist label and one third of Nasenbluten, and he’s also an accomplished turntablist as Mark N. It’s been yonks since he’s released anything under his jungle/hardcore alias Overcast, so here’s one side of his new 12″ on IR77 / Iridium. Eagle-eared listeners will note that the classical sample is from Arvo Pärt’s Fratres.
Sun People – Herbie’s Delay [All Things Records]
Austrian producer Sun People has released some creative and hard-hitting jungle & drum’n’bass that hybridizes with footwork and techno. His All Things Records provides an avenue for music of all kinds, so his new LP Look Within isn’t tied to any tempo – faster or slower than 160bpm, with a few beautifully-produced beatless tracks too. But as with “Herbie’s Delay”, there’s still some creative, syncopated jungle/d’n’b to be found too.
Will Glaser – Bees [Not Applicable/Bandcamp]
London-based drummer Will Glaser is very busy in the London jazz & experimental scene, appearing on records or live with the likes of Yazz Ahmed, Kit Downs, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, James Allsopp, Alex Bonney and more. Prior to this release, the only solo works Glaser has released are the all-drums Some Drum Sounds and the mostly-drums Some Drum & Other Sounds (both of which are excellent mind you). However, on October 24th his first major solo work as auteur was released, the name of which is hard to even fit into a sentence: Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is about as sci-fi as you can get, imagining a musical artefact from sometime in the late 21st century, after the oncoming climate collapse. Glaser’s drums/percussion and electronics are accompanied here by brilliant musicians including Ruth Goller, Agathe Max, Tara Cunningham, James Allsopp and Alex Bonney (I’m mostly listing people whose work I know). The album claims influences as wide as Harry Partch, Tom Waits, and even Justin K Broadrick among others, and there’s no dearth of electronics there too (appropriately for the avant-garde Not Applicable label, co-run by both members of Icarus among others). It’s super weird and great – the titular Bees of this track most certainly make an appearance!
Carrier – The Fan Dance (feat Gavsborg) [Modern Love/Boomkat]
So Guy Brewer has been creating incredible post-d’n’b enigmas as Carrier for some years now, following a successful career making stripped-down techno as Shifted. Indeed, early on he was a member of drum’n’bass act Commix, and when he shifted to the Carrier alias, the minimal drum’n’bass influence has been palpable despite the beats never quite reaching the complexity of obvious syncopation of drum’n’bass. It’s an interesting balancing act, one that I think a newer generation of producers is working on very creatively, but I think it’s also interesting how the Photek vibes are balanced by a kind of murky Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound atmos. In fact, the Carrier name is a reference to this Rhythm & Sound EP (here’s the track). Carrier released the brilliant full album Rhythm Immortal this year on the Boomkat-operated Modern Love, but the album was preceded by this slab of half-time d’n’b, with skittery beats flickering over the bassline while contemporary Jamaican legend Gavsborg (of Equinoxxx et al, heard earlier on production duties) informs us not unconvincingly of his sexiness.
Mark Van Hoen – I’ve Got To See The Light (Featuring George ‘Tony’ Subratie) [Mark Van Hoen Bandcamp]
In June Mark Van Hoen dropped his second album in 2 years, The Eternal Present – and shortly after, he was back with a new EP, Only Me. The title track is from the album, but the rest are additions. I’m gonna recycle what I said about the new album, mostly:
Sometime around 1997 maybe, or 1998, I was introduced (by Seb Chan, no doubt) to the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments by Locust, the sometimes-used pseudonym of Mark Van Hoen. I guess I would’ve known some of Seefeel‘s work already, so I knew Van Hoen had been part of the lineup early on, and some of the vocal samples on that album were from their singer Sarah Peacock. But the massively overdriven beats, which stopped and started and shuddered with fragments of female voice and very sparse electronics, were enough to blow my tiny mind – not to mention the weird world-beat and disquieting ambient found elsewhere on the album. It’s still an album I happily go back to anytime I get an excuse. For some time (at least 6 years, maybe more) Van Hoen has had a subscription available on Bandcamp with heaps of exclusive music, some of which leaks out as Bandcamp-only releases (and then slips back behind the wall), including really early experiments, live performances, and essentially demos of tracks that later appear on “proper” releases, like the two recent ones on Dell’Orso label: The Eternal Present and last year’s Plan For A Miracle (and for folks like me there’s now a double CD collecting both albums).
Van Hoen has an interesting background, born in Croydon to African-Jamaican and Punjabi Indian parents. These influences are mostly indirect on his own music, but this new EP has a lovely remix-cum-cover of a 1970s reggae/dub single by the late George ‘Tony’ Subratie.
Julien Mier – Ciel [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
On his first album for Barcelona’s Lapsus, Eora/Sydney-based Dutch musician Julien Mier has chosen to use his birth name rather than Santpoort. Gradually is a highly personal album in three parts, each representing a part of Julien’s background: his French heritage, Dutch upbringing and his life now in Australia. “Ciel” is of course in the French section (it means “sky”), and it never fails to make me smile – it’s a sunny track with glitchy loops heading into a funky halftime feel with jazzy keys that have a lovely nostalgic feel, and gradually the beats turn into jungly IDM before slipping back into halftime and ending with a percussive breakdown. This is a lovely album, deeply thought-out, as forward-thinking as it is backwards-looking. Massive recommendation.
Joaquín Cornejo – Garúa [YUKU/Bandcamp] Cap I Cua from Ecuadorian producer Joaquín Cornejo is one of the prettiest releases YUKU have ever released. It doesn’t eschew complex beats at all, but they’re there more as hints at jittery IDM and footwork, with very little sub bass. It’s beautiful from top to bottom, and when you settle in, the rhythmic elements dance around you, like the skittering hi-hats in “Garúa”.
Earl Grey – Doss House [YUKU/Bandcamp]
As mentioned above, YUKU turned five this year and released five compilation albums of exclusive tracks from label-related artists. Here longtime junglist hero Earl Grey takes us into the opium-drenched haze of a “Doss House”, with no beats except the creepy sound of a phone ringing unanswered, while sub bass pulses throb, discordant drones float and pink noise bubbles up. Perfect mid-mix malaise.
bonnie cooth – out of my mind [cooth interactive studios]
With a spooneristic pseudonym only fans of Fawlty Towers will likely appreciate, the duo of electronic artists who make up bonnie cooth make music that’s part ’90s IDM throwback and part lo-fi hyperpop & ’20s breakcore revival. Their second album is, of course, titled bonnie twooth and like the first, it comes with the conceit that it’s actually a late ’90s (I’m guessing) or early ’00s video game. So yeah, nice melodic electronica vibes, not quite chiptune, not quite breakcore, and occasional computer songs. I think I might be the only person to adore this song, but I do, from the enthusiastic vocals to the slippery tempo changes and the joyous melodic breakcore. Dig.
Max Cooper – My Choices Are Not My Own feat. Tawiah, May Kaspar [Mesh/Bandcamp]
Good ol’ Max Cooper‘s a bit of an oddity to me. There’s a significant proportion of his stuff that I always love, because he’s definitely into his IDM, drum’n’bass and the like. It’s just that he still has this commercial sheen that I can’t quite figure – I don’t think his music’s commercial? I think I just don’t quite know where to place him. Anyway, happy he continues to release stuff – this year brought the reliably eclectic On Being album, which was a kind of collaboration, in which Cooper encouraged his online community to respond to the question “What do you want to express, which you feel you cannot in everyday life?” The responses were surprisingly moving; the words sung by Tawiah on “My Choices Are Not My Own” were written by contributor May Kaspar, which is why she doesn’t otherwise have an online presence I can find. Later on Cooper brought us a remix album with some excellent junglist, technoid and bassy takes on some of those tracks.
EYDN – Gold (feat. Rainy Miller) [Fixed Abode/Bandcamp]
In September, the now-Belgium-based duo EYDN, made up of Emma van Os (Bobbie Orkid) and Thomas Parigi (Tumy), released their debut EP As Can Be via Rainy Miller‘s Fixed Abode & SUPERNATURE. The first single “Gold” was adorned with extra vocals from Miller, with a breakbeat and fizzly hi-hats dropping in and out around an acoustic guitar loop. It’s a swirly piece showing that contemporary trip-hop is finding its own sound – and fits beautifully into more jungle/d’n’b sounds.
Chewlie – Wallflower [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Back to YUKU, and in fact back to 5 Years in the Wild V, we join Swiss producer Julia Häller aka Chewlie for a piece of IDM-infused bass chaos, with acidic bass gestures and beats that slowly build up out of drum machine patterns and crashing jungle breaks. It’s pretty unhinged.
enduser – Movement [enduser Bandcamp]
In the early years of the show, Lynn Standafer’s enduser was a key artist, making musically sensitive, dark drum’n’bass, jungle and breakcore, frequently with well-judged use of indie rock and pop samples (check it: This Mortal Coil, Björk, Lamb, Lush, Tasmin Archer) as well as tuff hip-hop and ragga samples (if you can identify the sample used both here and here I won’t be the only one grateful!) Standafer’s still at it, more on the d’n’b side perhaps than breakcore, and “Movement” is a highlight from 2025, with yearning synth pads and crisp drums.
Abstract Drumz – Alone (2025 Remaster) [Abstract Drumz Bandcamp]
Adrian Walmsley aka Abstract Drumz is perhaps Wales’ greatest purveyor of modern jungle, and he’s not un-prolific, but some tunes still end up on the cutting-room floor. This year he popped out two EPs collecting tracks that have been sitting on his SoundCloud for years. Both are great, but Unreleased Drumz Pt 2 featured a track called “Alone” that has personal relevance to him, coming out of a difficult period that he doesn’t want to revisit. But it’s well-loved and you can see why – it’s a sensitive reworking of Dinah Washington’s beautiful song “This Bitter Earth” (actually written by Clyde Otis) which some of us will know from Venetian Snares’ Moonglow EP. Walmsley completely resets the vocal with a heart-pulling synth string arrangement – hugely imperssive.
Sheba Q – Asterix (Dub One Remix) [Over/Shadow/Bandcamp]
Jungle DJ & vocalist Sheba Q comes out with her own solo EP on 2 Bad Mice‘s Over/Shadow label. The original of “Asterix” was co-produced with Newcastle junglist Nectax, and it’s got a blissful, nostalgic feel. But on the flip, Dub One drops us into darkstyle rave hell, mid-’90s style, with possibly the drop of the year. All three tracks are quality.
Hello Psychaleppo – Al Wa6an | الوطن [Fake Lines/Bandcamp]
The first release from non-profit label Fake Lines has launched itself with a mega compilation – 36 tracks over 3 vinyl LPs – called Fake Lines: Sono Levant (the fake lines are countries’ borders drawn up by colonial powers as a way of instilling regional instability). It’s packed to the brim with excellent music, gregarious with genre – it may lean towards electronic music but there’s folk, hip-hop and rock of a sort. There’s an emphasis on Levant artists, but the tracklist also reaches further afield to other MENA countries and more. Montreal-based Syrian DJ Hello Psychaleppo contributes some stuttering samples and bass heft, but I do recommend checking out this very varied compilation.
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – ap0calypse 42 [Infinite Machine/Bandcamp]
The May 2025 issue of The Wire featured an interview with Kolkata-based electronic producer Nilotpal Das, who is variously named as Bios Contrast, under his own name, as DJ Nilo… and frequently as “Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das“. He makes super-complex beats with dense sound design, which he’s dubbed brahmancore. In 2025 he released his album SSAC42 through Mexican label Infinite Machine, and hoo-boy those beats are insane. There’s a kind of breakcore in here, kind-of footwork and jungle, but mostly it’s percussive sounds programmed into jabbering rhythms, possibly interacting with some bass elements, or not. Mind you, there’s plenty of older and newer stuff on his Bios Contrast and Brahmancore Bandcamps.
Bleakcore / Ester – Sermon [Khnum Crew]
From Adelaide, on the stolen land of the Kaurna, comes the classical/breakcore-melding sound of Ester – previously/also known as Bleakcore, unleashing an updated sound under this new moniker. With Ester, he’s combining the gabber-speed breakcore madness with a mixture of high-quality string & piano samples and some live violin. It might initially seem like random splattercore, but on many tracks you can hear how the beats are in conversation with the piano melodies. He released the Augmented Torment EP via Brazil’s Khnum Crew, and also the To Bask in the Absense of Silence release with Eora’s 200+.
The Young Gods – Tu en ami de temps [Two Gentlemen]
Swiss industrial band The Young Gods formed in the mid-1980s (they are named after the Swans’ second EP, which gave its name to their label too) with the idea of playing only electronics. They had massive guitar riffs, but they were all made up of guitar samples “performed” on sampler. Then they discovered how great live drums sound like alongside drum machines and synths, and that’s been the basis of their sound ever since – although to be fair, they’ve evolved a lot. I like the glitchy production to this track, pushing it firmly into Utility Fog’s universe, and I like that it’s sung in French (for some reason I often forget that French is one of the official languages of Switzerland).
Hence Therefore – Elite Panic [All Centre/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney’s Hence Therefore has settled into the non-pattern of just releasing music every so often, but when he does it’s worth immediate attention. His one release in 2025 was the two-tracker Elite Panic, his second on the excellent UK left-of-centre dance label All Centre, with two tracks of snappy, fidgety 170bpm beats, somewhere between footwork and jungle-techno.
Tutu Ta – Papillon Riddim (Ft. Feral Is Kinky) [Tutu Ta Bandcamp] Tutu Ta is a UK producer otherwise known as “Nomad the Shadow Dancer”, and nothing more identifying as far as I know. His(?) music is often dub or dubstep/grime/jungle based, but just as much can float towards some kind of arcane folk or postpunk jazz thing. An 8-track album, Pepper, was one of his 2025 releases, from which we heard this quasi-grime post-dancehall track featuring English ragga toaster Feral Is Kinky aka Caron Liza Geary.
Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri – I Felt I Deserved More than That [Fluid Audio/Facture Bandcamp]
So pleased to be including something from the second collaboration between these two Italian musicians: the prolific Matteo Uggeri is an inveterate collaborator, and his projects like Open To the Sea create music that sits between classical, folk, ambient and electro-acoustic; Giulio Aldinucci is a master at creating moving drone music from choral samples. Moreso than their previous album together, The Promise of a Threat blends their two styles, creating something exquisitely new. Uggeri isn’t averse to using beats, so we find a dulled but noticeable slow rhythmic cycle to these electro-acoustic pieces, with Aldinucci’s ghostly choirs floating in the ether. This really is one of the loveliest drone/sound-art albums I’ve heard recently, and I’m particuarly pleased to feature it in the depths of this dance mix.
Stefan Schultze, boxn – CV RMX [Stefan Schultze Bandcamp]
German composer & pianist Stefan Schultze has a background in jazz, having studied in Cologne and New York, but his interests extend from improvised jazz into extended techniques – prepared piano, microtonality, AI tools and gestural interfaces to control electronics alongside acoustic instrumentation. In November he released a quartet of works based around piano: Tides features prepared piano and un-prepared piano improvisations, welcoming unexpected moments and making use of silence as a musical gesture. Black MIDI Ballet on the other hand is one 16-minute composition for human-played piano alongside an electronically-controlled one, channelling Conlon Nancarrow & others’ handmade player piano reels to create clusters and sweeps impossible for a human to play. And then Glitch God (Come Hither) pulls in everything from Schultze’s years of research, including preparations, automated pianos, microtonality and of course samples and digital edits. The electronic intensity there is finally brought into a new context with the help of Switzerland-based producer boxn, remixing material from Schultze’s 2018 album System Tribe – glitched samples edited into frenetic rhythmic patterns, beatless IDM/jungle/footwork. Exhilarating.
Ship Sket – Vendetta’s Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. InitiatriX was released in October, with one single being “Vendetta’s Theme”, with vocals from UK multimedia artist Charlie Osborne just about audible through the chaotic mix. Throughout there are classical samples, odd time signatures, and a kitchen sink’s worth of genres referenced and swiped away.
Hyperfocus – Sentinel [Machinist Music/Bandcamp]
For his fifth release (in two years!) on Canadian drum’n’bass master John Rolodex‘s Machinist Music label, Hyperfocus brings beats precision-tooled in the Machinist Music labs with evocative atmospheres and restless basslines. This is where the jungle revival bleeds back into the d’n’b mainstream, and I’m here for it.
Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowning. God’s Black Tears. ft. The Lil Black Oxen Émile Joseph Weeks, Nicolas Ratany [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
Tariq Ravelomanana is not your usual hip-hop producer. A longtime fan of experimental music, he blends any and all styles into his Infinity Knives project. This combined with Brian Ennals‘ unbridled political & personal raps makes for an unconstrained body of work akin to clipping., even if the artistic connection is tenuous. The stunning vocals from the male gospel choir “The Lil Black Oxen” on their new album’s title(ish) track do put my mind to clipping.’s “Long Way Away“. But Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals’ ambitions here are different, both musically and lyrically, taking in acoustic guitars and metal riffs, anti-colonial politics and mental health. And it’s an album worthy of its ambition – dive in!
Insignio – Everytime (A.Fruit remix) [Yanked Beats/Bandcamp]
Afonso Silva aka Insignio is one third of Portuguese label Yanked Beats, and his new album Lost keen is jungle/d’n’b with a marked footwork influence that doesn’t always rely on breakbeats. The excellent A.Fruit remix came out as a single at the very end of last year, but it’s also on the album.
Ruby My Dear – Grosse Hyène [PRSPCT/PRSPCT Bandcamp/Ruby My Dear Bandcamp]
Julien Chastagnol named his breakcore/idm project Ruby My Dear after a Thelonious Monk tune, and Monk is one of the many jazz artists he’s sampled over the years, as well as scads of classical music. For his new album he’s gone to the beach for a jam… Confiture à la plage is classic Ruby My Dear, a demented confusion of joy and lightness, creeping horror and discombobulation. But really, it’s a delight, with sunset beach strums making left turns into 7/8 breakcore, and classic Satie turned into IDM – yes “gross hyène” (big hyena) is a pun on “Gnossienne“.
Kuntari – Kerak Terusi [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]
Indonesian duo Kuntari refer to their genre as primal-core, and you can hear them tapping into deep seams on their new album Mutu Beton, released on David August‘s never-predictable 99CHANTS label. Originally Kuntari was the solo project of Tesla Manaf, whose musical career began in classical music, broadened into jazz and then electronic music, but he’s now swivelled back to acoustic instruments, from the length and breadth of Indonesia and further afield. In Kuntari he’s now joined by percussionist Rio Abror, and together they reference but dismantle Javanese gamelan. You can hear saron and various other metallophones, xylophones, glockenspiels and marimas, plus wind instruments like the cornet and hulusi, and rhythmic percussion like the thumping Rebanam – but they’re as interested in Indonesia’s storied metal scene or twisting trance rituals into technoid pulses. And it never doesn’t sound like Indonesian music, which is a joy.
Rutger Zuydervelt – House of Strength [DRONARIVM Derde Series/Machinefabriek Bandcamp] House of Strength is the fourth collaboration between Dutch composer/sound-artist Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) and Netherlands-based dancer & choreographer Roshanak Morrowatian. On this stunning album, released through the Netherlands-based Russian ambient label-in-exile DRONARIVM, Zuydervelt underlines the ritualistic qualities of the work with slow-burning pieces using Iranian percussion alongside sounds from the club and glitchy production.
This year Rutger also released the latest of his compositions for circus/dance duo Marta & Kim, entitled FLUX, a collaboration with cellist Lucija Gregov replete with extended cello techniques, drones and melodies. Also wonderful. In any case, I’m glad once again to sneak some Machinefabriek into my dance mixes.
POD & Tamen – Dolphin [Echo Chamber Sound]
In May, Naarm/Melbourne-based jungle/dub/bass label Echo Chamber Sound released the three-track Lek EP from Eora/Sydney producer POD and Naarm’s Tamen. POD broadly makes techno, and Tamen is best known for his jungle productions, including many collabs with Pugilist on many great labels. Breaks are thrown around in unconventional ways, with some dub techno influences, but “Dolphin” is probably the most straight-up jungle track.
Noneless – Apocalypse [Noneless Bandcamp]
Late in 2023, I was stunned to hear a brilliant breakcore album with classical overtones from a local artist, released on the rather exclusive ☯ anybody universe ☯ label run by Japanese IDM/breakcore artist Laxenanchaos. Noneless had previously been known as elfaether, but their return with A Vow of Silence debuted this new alias. Originally from Eora/Sydney, they’re currently based in Oxford, UK, whence they have gifted us this new EP, Delicate Sin, mixing mournful piano samples and their violin with intensely mashed breakcore beats. Just like the doctor ordered. (It’s me. I’m the doctor. I order you to listen to this.)
Djrum – Three Foxes Chasing Each Other [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Felix Manuel aka Djrum is also a reliable producer, although what he can be relied upon for is surprise: constantly changing things up, from jazzy/classical piano, cello and wind instruments to techno, jungle, dancehall, dubstep and anything in between. While Under Tangled Silence represents a kind of renewal for Manuel (not least because the first version of the album was lost in a hard drive crash), it’s really got all the elements established on his early 12″s and previous brilliant album Portrait With Firewood. With Djrum “more of the same” is the highest of praise – and nothing is ever quite the same with him. This one is one of those rhythmic-illusion pieces where the beats are constantly shifting around, from drum’n’bass and footwork to techno. Even the melodic sounds are bells or steel drums. It does indeed convey the energy of “Three Foxes Chasing Each Other”.
r hunter – Intra [Absorb/Bandcamp]
New music doesn’t come often from Naarm’s r hunter aka Asher Elazary, and when it does it’s an event. In November Absorb released his latest album Yield and it’s what you’d expect if you know r hunter – abstract beats to cry over? Following Djrum above, you’ll similarly find bustling rhythms that you can’t quite pin down, and absolutely intense sound design. Pretty inexplicable, better listen again & again.
Blawan – Creature Brigade [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
In the last few years, Jamie Roberts aka Blawan has released some of the most forward-thinking, fucked-up bass music around. From 2021’s Woke Up Right Handed, the bass rumbles and throbs, and the beats syncopate and shuffle but hit haaaard. In 2023, Dismantled Into Juice went considerably left-field, with a couple of tracks featuring vocals from Monstera Black. And if last year’s BouQ veered back towards the dancefloor, it’s no less experimental for that. Notably in the meantime he also paired up with longtime collaborator Arthur Cayzer aka Pariah for two albums of industrial grindcore & noise rock (with hints of bass music) as Persher. This all now culminates with the full-length album SickElixir, which is seriously messed-up bass music, sick to the core. Club music for fucked-up times.
Eli Keszler – Speak For Me (Eli Keszler Version) [LUCKYME®/Bandcamp]
The remarkable new self-titled album from Eli Keszler was released on the 2nd of May, the day I left for 6 weeks in UK & Europe, and it got lost in the flood of… stuff… It’s a wonder, even among Keszler’s many brilliant releases, and eventually I played something off it. Keszler’s earliest material used his skills at fast-paced, complex percussion to experimental ends, but he’s also a longtime collaborator with Oneohtrix Point Never and Laurel Halo, among others. His 2018 album Stadium, released by Shelter Press, heralded a change in focus along with a move to Manhattan. Here, the skittery beats resembled IDM and jungle, and came along with electronic textures and small melodies. This has continued to be Keszler’s modus operandi, but with LUCKYME® as his more recent home, more pop elements have crept in, evoking trip-hop and noir jazz, with various guest vocalists but I think also Keszler’s own voice. On December 10th, the four-track Eli Keszler Remixes was released – too late for me to play before this best-of show, but that gives me the perfect opportunity… All the reworks are top tier, especially Tim Hecker’s, but Keszler’s own beefs up the beats and the weirdness on “Speak For Me”. Brilliant.
Phillip Golub – Loop 7 [greyfade/Bandcamp]
New York pianist & composer Phillip Golub released his Loop 7 early this year, extending his interesting “loops”, repetitive pieces for piano which don’t engage technology but rather ask the listener to hear the inconsistencies that come from a performer’s interpretation. Already then I knew I’d want to slip it into a DJ mix. On 2022’s Filters you can hear how these pieces are informed by Eric Satie’s Vexations as much as John Cage’s musical theory, and Philip Sherburne is right (in his review-comment) that Federico Mompou’s Música Callada feels present in the work too. Well, Loop 7, released via Joseph Branciforte’s greyfade label, is an extended take on this in the sense that it’s 28 minutes long, but also in that it explodes this idea into a group format, the piano augmented with subtle electric guitar, vibraphone, and electronics. But it’s also… extended inwards, so to speak – and this is where it gains both its uneasiness and its otherworldly beauty, because the “piano” here is a pair of Yamaha Disklaviers – physical pianos that can be electronically controlled – that are tuned in a 22-note per octave system. This lends the cycling chords a deeply weird out-of-tuneness, and allows the harmonies to shift downwards in ways that our ears – attuned to Western equal temperament – can perceive but can’t quite pin down. Helpfully there’s a gorgeously shimmery octave-like gesture at the beginning of the loop, allowing us to feel like we’ve arrived back home each time the harmonies descent far enough to shift back in place (it’s constructed a bit like a Shepard Tone so that the lower notes slowly disappear and higher notes are added back, giving the listener the impression that it’s in a never-ending descent while strangely remaining static). The ideas behind this might be fascinating, but the music works because Golub’s sense of how to harmonise in this tuning scheme is so sensitive, and the additional instruments add an almost imperceptible timbral tingle to the sound. It’s a real trip.
T3AL – Weightless (Om Unit‘s Sunrise Dub) [Spiritual World]
In 2024, sisters Ashleigh & Melissa Ball released their debut EP as T3AL, Bluish Green, on Toronto label Spiritual World. It was an un-pigeonholeable amalgam (typical of these postmodern times), hinting at trip-hop’s soul-meets-dub, but leaning ambient, and with flutes. This is a little cheat as the remix itself came out in December last year, but in January 2025 the Bluish Green Remixes was released on vinyl, sporting among others, not one but TWO Om Unit remixes. His “Sunrise Dub” is a lovely piece of sunny (yes) dub techno.
Tonight it’s Part 2 of Utility Fog’s best of 2025, which encompasses all the music that’s not vocal-driven or beats-driven. So there’s contemporary jazz, abstract sound-art, glitch electronics, glitchy postrock, field recording, tape manipulation and more. There’s even voice at times.
LISTEN AGAIN and sound your art – stream on demand at fbi.radio, or podcast here.
Laura Jurd – Praying Mantis [New Soil/Bandcamp]
There has, I think, been more “jazz” on Utility Fog this year than in previous years – but there’s always been some, often in a faux genre of “post-jazz” that I’ve used to lump together glitchy hybrid-jazz with electronics. But in general jazz is a living genre that can’t help but draw from everything from punk & metal to electronica and folk. One of the jazz highlights this year was the new solo album from UK trumpeter Laura Jurd, who had stepped away from music to tend to her family, but returns here in astonishing form. Jurd’s Mercury-nominated band Dinosaur embodied the “fusion” aspect of whatever post-jazz wants to be, using synths along with a spiky rhythm section that funks out where necessary. On Jurd’s Rites & Revelations, the folk aspects (also present in Dinosaur) are often to the fore, and that’s all kinds of folk including Scottish and English, but also Eastern European and Western Asian to my ears. And as well as Jurd’s usual drummer Corrie Dick and contemporary UK jazz mainstay Ruth Goller on bass, the band features accordianist Martin Green and violinist/violist Ultan O’Brien. It’s an album unlike any other, drawing deeply on the past while pointing in new directions.
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin – Panj [Drag City/Bandcamp] Ghosted III is the third album from the trio of iconoclastic Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi with the Swedish rhythm section of the incredible Fire! – bassist Johan Berthling & drummer Andreas Werliin. It’s still driven by the wonderful cyclic basslines and rhythms of Berthling & Werliin, but on this album it opens up its scope from those patient cycles. It’s still deeply embedded in these artists’ oeuvres: the krautrockain period of Ambarchi’s that started with “Knots”, the centrepiece of 2012’s Audience of One, and similarly the hypnotic sound of Berthling & Werliin’s groundbreaking earlier band Tape (one album on Bandcamp) as well as the freer Fire! and Fire! Orchestra. Opener “Yek” (the titles are the numbers 1-6 in Persian) has chiming post-postpunk guitars over a skipping bassline and drums, and it’s followed by the starker “Do”, which could be a long-lost Tape track. But there’s still minimalist blues like “Panj”, on which Ambarchi’s guitar sounds like a droning organ. These musicians’ careers have intersected multiple times in their swerving trajectories. Long may they reign in this trio formation!
TL;DR – Cumulus (edit) [Earshift Music/Bandcamp]
Following his tenure as leader of the Australian Art Orchestra, Naarm trumpeter/composer/producer Peter Knight hasn’t stopped to rest. The wonderful Hand To Earth was formed as a project of the AAO but continues as its own thing. TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) is a new quartet with three younger musicians in the Naarm jazz scene. Brilliant bassist Helen Svoboda is here playing basslines but also showcasing her melodic bowed harmonics and her voice; guitarist Theo Carbo, like Peter Knight, contributes electronics as well as his instrument; and Peter’s son Quinn Knight brings 15 years of experience improvising with his dad to the fore. This is dreamy music, ambient-dub-jazz – and the internet-jokey name aside, the cloud titles are perfect for these floating, soulful pieces.
Alister Spence Trio – The Gathering [Alister Spence Bandcamp] Alister Spence – Interior Signal [Room40/Bandcamp]
Sydney pianist Alister Spence is a key part of this city’s jazz and improv scene, and his trio with Lloyd Swanton of The Necks and drummer Toby Hall is a unique, evocative partnership (all three were also part of Sandy Evans & Tony Gorman’s legendary Clarion Fracture Zone). In Februrary this year, the trio released their latest album of melodic, energetic jazz, Gather. But Alister’s creativity takes him in all directions, and his Within Without album is perfectly conceived for the Room40 label. Here, his creative impulse swoops away from the piano, and often away from the keys altogether, diving inside the beloved, chiming, throbbing heart of the Fender Rhodes (an instrument Spence has very much made his own too, over decades of playing). Prepared piano is now a well-established way to draw new sounds from the piano, and highlight its inner workings; so here’s Alister Spence’s prepared Rhodes. His suite of effects is never far away, but mostly we’re hearing the insides of the instrument, tapping and buzzing and yes, chiming. It’s hard to make the Rhodes not beautiful, and its inherent warmth is not denied or countered even in the most abstract pieces here. Delicious.
Alexandra Spence – The Spring [Students of Decay/Bandcamp]
Staying in the experimental space, we join Alexandra Spence, a brilliant sound-artist who works with field recordings and found objects to tell a story about place and memory – and who happens to be the daughter of Alister Spence. Her lasttwo albums (from 2022) arose from a fascination with oceans and waterways; the scope is wider here, from mountains to backyards, but the ecological and geological also interact here with the personal. As well as recordings of places and non-musical objects, Spence (a clarinettist) here uses sounds from Serge Modular synths and a custom-built lyre, and even the voice and instrumentation of French composer & musician Delphine Dora. Spence is a master at combining disparate sounds – when performing live she uses contact mics and found objects which meld with pre-recorded field recordings and other in-the-box sounds in a way that can only be described as alchemical.
Kate Carr – spring back and creak [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
OK but if we’re talking about field recordings and found sound and music, Kate Carr (originally from here but London-based for ages) is a master of the art, and tirelessly promoting others through her Flaming Pines label. Rubber Band Music is a particular sound experiment, using homemade devices of wood, metal and rubber bands. So we’ve got sproings and buzzes and wobbles, slowed down, filtered, rebuilt. Abstract yet physical.
Ipek Gorgun – Edgelord [Touch/Bandcamp]
Turkish composer/sound-artist/musician Ipek Gorgun released her last solo album Ecce Homo seven years ago. In the meantime she’s had works performed in prestigious venues, but has also been through multiple traumas – electrocution, cancer treatment, anaphylaxis… So her remarkable new album Earthbound is an act of defiance as well as an act of surrender. The darkness of these years is audible here, but so is an earthy sense of liveliness and humour. There is endless detail in each of these soundworks, but some do stand out, especially those incredible swooping glissandi in “Edgelord”.
dogs versus shadows – Ghost Artery Part 1 (radio edit) [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Nottingham artist dogs versus shadows appears on Kate Carr’s brilliant label Flaming Pines with a kind of narrative about the River Trent, that winds through Nottingham and has been subjected to various forms of degradation through human activity. This highly polluted river has dangers lurking beneath its surface, and dogs versus shadows dredges these up with the use of “field recordings, tape loops, dying vocals from broken dictaphones and snatches of shortwave radio”. The two full tracks are a little under 15 minutes each, and each is an engrossing quasi-narrative of watery field recordings and seemingly unrelated sounds – chopped up snippets of speech, electronic pulsations and almost-rhythms. It’s fascinating and you’ll probably want to go back and listen again when it’s over.
António Feiteira – Ghost Hiss, Resonant Hip [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp] Eastern Nurseries is one of a number of Portuguese labels that reliably turns up surprising new sounds from unfamiliar artists. So here’s a brilliant debut EP from Porto-based percussionist and sound-artist António Feiteira, titled Performing the Heimlich on an Ouroboros. I love the first track, played here: a contemplative, crackling glitchscape. The middle track “Synthesized Chronos Turned Organless Aion” retains some of the glitch textures, but foregrounds Feiteira’s drumming. A really great EP.
A little later in the year, Feiteira released a self-titled album with Francisco Pedro Oliveira as Amuleto Apotropaico, on another Portuguese label, Perf. Fascinating stuff, including an appearance from cellist Ricardo Jacinto, also recommended.
She’s Analog – danse macabre [Carton Records/Carton Bandcamp/Torto Editions/Bandcamp/She’s Analog Bandcamp]
The second album from Italian trio She’s Analog is a compelling mix of (post-)jazz, postrock, electroacoustic music and more, co-released by the great French label Carton Records and Italian Torto Editions. At times they can sound like a minimalist jazz piano trio, at other times like a motorik, minimalist postpunk band. It’s clearly put together from partly improvised elements, but there’s also careful composition here, drawing different moments from the album together, with electronic elements also pointing to the way this music was crafted in the studio. But there’s also a real melodic sense that draws you in for repeat listens, which it certainly received from me this year.
BirdWorld – Opposite Hinges (feat. Sara Övinge) [Dugnad rec/BirdWorld Bandcamp]
When I discovered BirdWorld in 2018, it was love at first sight – a cello and percussion duo? And yet so much more? Cellist Gregor Riddell and percussionist Adam Teixeira are both virtuosos at their chosen instruments, but in the mysterious albums of BirdWorld – their debut UNDA and now the follow-up NURTURE – you’ll find Teixeira playing kalimbas (thumb piano) and other tuned percussion, or synths, while Riddell adds guitars, piano, and even vocals. Field recordings and rhythmic jazz/almost-postrock coexist with an impeccable solo cello piece, throwing plucked and bowed notes around like a seasoned juggler, while at times guests join – like Swedish violinist Sara Övinge, who’s comfortable in classical or jazz contexts, and has a duo with Riddell called Tlön, who also released an album this year on legendary Norwegian label Jazzland. The gregarious nature of these recordings, and the willingness to go in unexpected directions mid-stride, reminds me of The Books or Lucky Dragons, groups who first turned me on to the possibility of just dispelling all preconceptions, and not making music for instant gratification or consumption. More power to them! Don’t let this one slip by.
Dorothy Carlos – My Buddy (Miss You In Ear World) [29 Speedway/Bandcamp]
NYC experimental label 29 Speedway here brings us an amazing little release from NYC/Chicago cellist & sound-artist Dorothy Carlos. These pieces – most around 3 minutes long but as short as 30 seconds and as long as 7 minutes – are described as “sound collages”. Her voice and her cello are caught up in glitching granulations, but it’s done so artfully that somehow the melody sneaks through the cracks. “Always” is cracked & collaged from chopped samples of non-verbal vocal tics and breaths. This is, of course, Utility Fog’s bread & butter, and I’m so glad to hear people (especially cellists!) doing this now.
Erik Friedlander – The Tree of Knowledge [Skipstone – Erik Friedlander Bandcamp]
New York cellist Erik Friedlander has been a stalwart of the Downtown scene for decades – playing with John Zorn, and with jazz and avant-garde ensembles of all sorts. He’s also a great bandleader and composer himself, and makes highly varied music as a solo musician – it’s easy for me to forget that he’s not just a brilliantly adept improvising cellist. I remember coming across an ambient electronic work of his in the early days of internet compilations, and in the COVID days he was putting a track up a month on his Bandcamp. So that brings us to Origami, a new album he released in October which made it to Australia in a box for me just in time for these best-of shows. For this album, Friedlander took the stems from his 2024 project Floating City, with his cello joined by Sara Serpa’s voice, Wendy Eisenberg’s guitar and Mark Helias’s bass, and completely deconstructed them. This is remixing as transformation, and the result are glitchy electro-acoustic pieces that hint at their jazz origins but fit beautifully with the sort of stuff Utility Fog usually loves.
The Cloud Maker – Selkie Shimmer [The Cloud Maker Bandcamp]
Finally the wonderful The Cloud Maker is out. The project involves an international cast of brilliant women, convened by clarinettist, improviser and experimental musician Aviva Endean. Endean is a member of the remarkable project Hand to Earth (see later tonight) with Yolgnu songman Daniel Wilfred, didgeridooist David Wilfred, trumpeter & sound-artist Peter Knight, and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim. When Kim and Endean took part in a residency in Banff (Canada), they met Te Kahureremoa Taumata, a practitioner of Taonga Pūoro (a word that describes a suite of Māori musical instruments). Their fruitful musical collaboration began with the Māori moth goddess Raukatauri, whose story is the origin story of one of those taonga pūoro, the cocoon-shaped flute called Putorino. In the Adelaide Hills, the group expanded to include percussionist/sound-artist Maria Moles and contemporary cellist Freya Schack-Arnott (who also plays a traditional Swedish multi-stringed instrument called the nyckelharpa which you can hear in her duo Runa Cara with Bonnie Stewart). So yes, it’s a project overflowing with talent & creativity. Each member contributes stories of goddesses from their own folkloric traditions, and The Cloud Maker‘s music is as varied as its members. Tonight’s piece continues our cello theme with Freya’s fluttering, scraping cello as the focus.
Lia Kohl – Train, Antwerp to Amsterdam [Dauw/Bandcamp]
Chicago cellist Lia Kohl is a frequent visitor to these playlists, making beautifully odd pieces with not just extended cello techniques but radios, synths and field recordings. Released on Belgian ambient/experimental mainstay Dauw, her 2025 album Various Small Whistles and a Song is ultra-conceptual even for Kohl, made up of sixteen 1-minute tracks, each collaging and cataloguing ordinary places and events, with additional field recordings from friends such as Macie Stewart, Patrick Shiroishi, claire rousay and others. It’s a delight.
Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart – Stone Piece I [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Lia Kohl is a seasoned collaborator as well as a solo musician, and here we find her with two other brilliant Chicago-based string players: Whitney Johnson on viola and Macie Stewart on violin. All three women also sing. On BODY SOUND [STONE PIECE], released by Chicago (post-?)jazz label International Anthem, they perform two versions of “Stone Piece”, based around improvised melodies & drones. That’s lovely enough, but the key here is that each musician also feeds their sounds into a tape machine (one of five!) where they’re grainily pitched down and stretched out. It’s really worth watching this gorgeous transformation happen in realtime in this video.
Saba Alizadeh – Women of fire (feat. Sanam Maroufkhani) [30M Records/Bandcamp]
Iranian musician Saba Alizadeh is a master of the kamancheh, a Persian stringed instrument. But his works on Berlin label Karlrecords (Scattered Memories) and Hamburg-based 30M Records (2021’s I May Never See You Again) bring the music and his instrument into a contemporary setting, with stunning sound design – electronics, drones and at times beats. His new album Temple Of Hope carries an audacious theme in extremely dark times. He takes inspiration from the “Woman Life Freedom” movement, incorporating field recordings of crowds and historical radio broadcasts alongside his beautiful instrument, and these human elements are made both alien and more poignant through electronic processing, even alongside bursts of no-input mixer noise. Among his collaborators is the Amsterdam-based Iranian musician Sanam Maroufkhani, whose multilayered vocals are juxtaposed with stuttering digital percussion. The second track here features a moving kamancheh performance gradually swamped by a looped field recording of a protest about water shortages in the Iranian city of Susangerd, in an area now called “Dasht-e-Azadegan”, roughly translating as “Plain of the free”. Alizadeh has created a stunning album rooted in Persian music and recent history, asking us to find hope in times of horror.
Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe – Assembling Air [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
From Adam Badí Donoval‘s perfectly-curated Warm Winters, Ltd. comes an album of beautiful, uncanny vocal simulacra, working together in a strange kind of plainsong, hinting at Medieval music as recalled by malfunctioning robots. Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe both make exploratory sound-art: Wennborg is interested in the exchange involved with listening and “sounding”, and makes art from the digital transformation of the sound of people together; Duncombe’s work transforms her voice and others, glitching and reassembling the sound, pushing them into the surreal or irreal. Accordingly, this is a haunted album, in which the artificial voices never quite succeed in voicing complete melodies, instead looping and stuttering, pitched outside their intended registers, mournfully ironising the title, Joy, Oh I Missed You. The results are queasily beautiful.
Bernard Parmegiani – La Ville en Haut de la Colline II [Transversales Disques/Bandcamp]
You might think it strange that the iconoclastic French electro-acoustic/musique concrète composer Bernard Parmegiani is still releasing new music 12 years after his death, and you’d be right. But aside from the L’Œuvre Musicale en 12 CD boxset, and the updated COMPLETE WORKS released on his Bandcamp (both via Ina GRM), the Transversales Disques label has been mining his personal archives for works created for TV & film. This year Mémoire Magnétique, vol. 3 (1967-1971) was released, and there’s certainly some freaky shit on there. It’s always weird to work out that this pioneering work was going on at the same time that rock musicians were experimenting in the studio, and King Tubby & co were revolutionising the use of effects & mixing techniques. Nevertheless, the work going on in “the academy” was very fruitful and still echoes through today, and weird vignettes like those on these Mémoire Magnétique compilations can be as mind-boggling as the major works.
Machinefabriek – Verpulver [Champion Version/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Rutger Zuydervelt’s music is increasingly being released under his own name rather than Machinefabriek, but he remains a stalwart on Utility Fog, whether for his works for dance, for TV and games, or sound-art works for their own sakes. The UK label Champion Version has released Machinefabriek before, and early this year put out a 7″ with two short tracks, under 3½ minutes, entitled “Verpulver” (pulverize) and “Pulver” (powder). Those words nicely describe the sound of granular synthesis, and both these tracks are fairly sparse pieces with percussive elements broken down among drones and distortion.
Lea Bertucci – In This Time [Cibachrome Editions]
It should be well-known and universally acknowledged now that Lea Bertucci is one of the best sound-artist/composers of the last decade and a half. Whether site-specific works exploring & exploiting – for instance – the resonance of a hollow bridge in Köln (2020’s Acoustic Shadows), myriad works live-processing her own saxophone and other instruments, or her work with reel-to-reel tape machines, she’s a master of her craft. Recent times have seen a number of incredible collaborations from Bertucci: in 2022, she operated tapes & electronics around Robbie Lee‘s baroque & medieval instruments on Winds Bells Falls, while on Murmurations, her tapes were as prominent, but she also brought various wind instruments and her voice to the table next to Ben Vida‘s synths & voice. And on her tectonic collaboration in 2023 with Brisbane’s own Lawrence English cello, viola and lap steel guitar emerge as well. Earlier this year Lawrence’s ROOM40 released an astounding work of Bertucci together with another masterful sound-artist, Olivia Block. So needless to say her new album The Oracle is a tour de force, engaging her many instruments, field recordings and, importantly, her own voice, all filtered through tape manipulation and digital processing (unless it’s all tape!) Only on the last track are percussionists from the Wesleyan University Taiko Ensemble enlisted for a booming – yet obscured – finale. Of course, it’s not just technially interesting or impressive (although it is those things) – it’s also music that will draw you in and move you, despite the vocals being twisted into non-textual shapes. I promised it would be high in my top albums of 2025, and here it is.
Giuseppe Ielasi – 11 (from an insistence on material vol. 2) [Senufo Editions Bandcamp]
In March this year, Italian sound-artist/producer/guitarist/etc Giuseppe Ielasi released an insistence on material vol. 1, and followed it up in September with an insistence on material vol. 2. Past series of Ielasi’s have involved mechanical machines butting their heads on paper hooked up to contact mics, or music made from run-out grooves of vinyl records, or blurry guitar loops – just about anything really, including minimal beats from strange sources. So “an insistence on material” could be an insistence on physical sound sources… or it could just be, you know, putting out material of some sort? On both volumes, these numbered tracks are vintage Ielasi – strangely cut, warbling tape (or vinyl?) loops, anonymous sputtering anti-rhythms… Wonderful.
Demdike Stare and Kristen Pilon – A Grave Fall (January) [DDS]
You rarely get the same thing twice with Demdike Stare, whose earlier works were haunted by strains of arcane English folk and psychedelia, but who have deep links to UK bass music as well. Their latest release, To Cut and Shoot is drawn from sound material created by US filmmaker & musician Kristen Pilon for an experimental film of the same name, chopping & screwing her piano, strings and voice into something broken & namelessly evocative, at times noisy and rhythmic in an almost clubby way, but mostly set adrift in warp and glitch. As might be obvious, this maps quite specifically on to Utility Fog’s central concerns, and, helpfully, it’s really really good.
Cherrystones x Demdike Stare – Where Evil Grows [DDS]
Available from Boomkat, who I’m pretty sure handle all of Demdike Stare‘s DDS imprint, here’s a pretty incredible piece of dark ambient, post-industrial, chopped & screwed bad-trip-hop… Cherrystones is a UK DJ & producer with a similar aesthetic to Demdike Stare – hauntological looting of the arcane past, and recontextualising into strange contexts. So from this collaboration we get crunchy, overdriven beats, vinyl-manipulated voices, tape-destroyed noise loops, all fed through dub delays. It’s supremely fucked-up and one of my favourite things I heard this year.
General Magic – Elfer [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Andreas Pieper & Ramon Bauer were there at the very beginning of the MEGO label, which swiftly became the centre of the “glitch” movement of experimental sound coming out of Vienna and further around Europe – from which Christian Fennesz also arose. The two formed General Magic, and with Peter Rehberg aka Pita released some formative material that’s collected as Fridge Trax Plus, made out of the buzzes and throbs of an old fridge. More generally they were interested in mistakes and malfunctions – or at least things that sounded like that. Awkwardly cut (or rather, carefully cut) samples that stuttered and clicked due to sharp digital discontinuities, and a love of overdriven noise via digital clipping; this was the native experimental music of the digital era, exemplified on their debut album Frantz, a longtime favourite of mine. It’s no surprise that these days this is both the sound of retro-kitsch and also futuristic sound-art (just with much, much more sophisticated & readily available tools).
So anyway, as you may know, the label disbanded a few years later, and Rehberg restarted it as Editions Mego, run with great enthusiasm by the man basically on his own. And tragically, decades later and just a few years ago, Rehberg passed away. So the label and its offshoots are now run by various artists connected with Mego, releasing music that was already slated to come out, along with other related material. I hope this latest batch isn’t the end: There’s a new LP – technically one 45-minute track – out now from Peter Rehberg under his own name called Liminal States, a long evolving drone work. Annnnd there’s this! Bosko follows Nein Aber Ja from 2023 as a new renaissance of Pieper & Bauer’s General Magic, and it’s an incredibly strong work. No doubt fans of Hausu Mountain releases would immediately peg it as not quite from the current era, but there’s a jump-cut everything-piled-in-together thing going on that’s in common with Hausu, who I’m sure in turn are influenced by the Mego scene. So here we have harsh noise drones, chopped riffs, what must be an AI voice attempting to sing in one or two tracks, and speedy piano samples juxtaposed with crunching hardcore beats. Joyful noise, done as it should be.
Also notable: Pieper & Bauer’s (even more) cheeky alias Sluta Leta released Drift Dekoder later this year, weird electro-funk with help from frequent collaborator Gerhard Potuznik on a few tracks.
Nate Scheible – 02 [Nate Scheible Bandcamp]
It’s a sign of how overloaded I am (we all are) with new music that I was convinced I’d played experimental sound-artist Nate Scheible before, but it seems I never managed to fit something in. Criminal! Last year’s or valleys and is a phenomenal work that’s adjacent to noise, free jazz, electro-acoustic & musique concrète – stuff I’m increasingly lumping into “sound-art” because labels are reductive anyway. For all this abstraction, though, Scheible brings forth a lot of emotion, and none more so than on his latest album then, inaudibly. As he describes, he is usually reluctant to anchor his music to a narrative or non-musical events – something I closely identify with – but this recording is imprinted with the death of his mother. Various musicians play acoustic instruments, including John Dierker‘s bass clarinet on this track, and, touchingly, the fragmented voice of Scheible’s mother Kat.
NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST – Keine Nichtmusik Drei [Cellule 75]
Hamburg musician Marc Richter is perhaps best known as Black To Comm, but has also appeared as Jehm Circs and Mouchoir Étanche (*ahem* “waterproof handkerchief”) and indeed under his given name. Under any of these aliases the music is hallucinatory, surreal collage work, taking in drone, krautrock, queasy soundtrack works and even something approaching woozy hip-hop at times. A number of Black To Comm albums have come out through Thrill Jockey, all brilliant (I cannot recommend Seven Horses For Seven Kings highly enough), but he is also spread around his own labels Dekorder and Cellule 75 – yeah, it’s a lot.
OK, so what do we have here? NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST (“new German art”) seems primarily to have been an art project, producing exceedingly strange artworks of grotesque quasi-humans and brightly coloured objects, clearly generated through AI prompting that preserves this specific aesthetic. So releasing this album, Keine Nichtmusik, under the NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST name suggests an extension of this artistic practice (the album title, a play on “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik“, means “No non-music”). The album is described as “Music for the films of the artists’ group Neue Deutsche Kunst” and you can see some of those filmworks on Vimeo. They’re short scenes cut together, with a strong aesthetic but the visible artefacts of AI generated video. So, the music? It’s vintage Black To Comm basically, bizarre collages of German song and avant-garde classical (yet Baroque feeling) composition – but the Bandcamp credits it as “Recorded by noone 2024-2025 / 🍄 100% Menschenfrei” (human-free). I’m not so sure – even if it was trained on Richter’s own work, the clarity of the sound, the voices and the audio effects feel to me like there’s a human’s work in there, albeit an impish human. Perhaps some AI-generated audio then collaged by Mr Richter? I’m intrigued.
Géraldine Eguiluz & Michel F Côté – Territoires perdus #2 [Ambiances Magnétiques/Bandcamp]
Fascinating faux-ethnomusicology, or self-ethnomusicology here from two prolific avant-garde francophone musicians. Géraldine Eguiluz is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist & researcher born in Mexico, brought up in Bogotá, Lisbon and Paris, and now based partly in Mexico and partly in Montréal. And Montréaler Michel F Côté as been associated with the Ambiances Magnétiques label since the 1980s and now runs another label, Sono Sordo. He’s a drummer & percussionist making various types of avant-jazz, strange lo-fi pop and variants of beautiful sound-art. This particular collaboration is named hORs TempS (out of time, or timeless), hinting at its provenance: Eguiluz uncovered cassette recordings she’d made in the early 1990s in Paris, which she re-sampled and collaged into new forms and then sent to Côté for him to respond to, and between them they deconstructed & reconstructed the music. The result is simultaneously genreless and pan-genre, an exoticised adaptation of found-sounds that are not anonymised ethnomusicological field recordings but rather the innocently all-encompassing music of a highly talented young artist. There are a few different threads throughout the recording, of which the “Territoires perdus” are tributes to resistence by indigenous communities.
Christophe Bailleau – Reaagall vst VIP hall owl [Mahorka/Bandcamp]
Belgium-based French musician and sound-artist Christophe Bailleau is an inveterate collaborator – his Covid album Shooting Stars Can Last was credited to “Christophe Bailleau and Friends”, and was a superb, genre-crossing amalgam featuring artist from across the Francophone world. His latest album, Insight and Vision, on the other hand, is a much more solo affair, the third in a trilogy of albums that he says are about “creativity in the face of autistic disorders”. CHUVA ORBITAL : Armadillo Time and Vertical Moon Phase Charm both came out in 2023, and feature a similar range of guests to this new one, with some instrumentation and writing collaboration – and Criele Antennaa O’Farrell is credited with “motivation”, which I can attest to being a hugely valuable contribution. While Bailleau’s work goes back to techno productions in the 1990s, the music here is very modern-sounding, with weirdly glitched and sequenced General MIDI sound pallettes rubbing up against processed acoustic instruments, jump-cuts and shiny hyper-dissonance. Well worth looking into all three, whether you count yourself as neuro-divergent or not.
Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, Hahn Rowe – Rhythmic Rhodes [Balmat/Bandcamp]
At the beginning of 2023, Stephen Vitiello – one of the foremost sound-artists of the past few decades – released a surprising EP/mini-album on his Bandcamp: a collaboration with Fugazi/Messthetics drummer Brendan Canty. Not, of course straight-edge punk or punk of any variety, it was a truly lovely piece of experimental post-rock, and I highly recommend giving it a listen. Then later that year came a 17-minute track titled “First“, released on the sadly now defunct Longform Editions, in which the duo were joined by widely-collaborative violinist & multi-instrumentalist Hahn Rowe. Well, a title like that is clearly leading somewhere, and now we have their Second release, out via the Balmat label run by Barcelona-based music critic Philip Sherburne and Lapsus‘ Albert Salinas. These are versatile musicians jamming out iteratively in various studios, with all the musicians playing multiple roles. There are atmospheric loops & textures, but the backbone is Canty’s muscular grooves, while melodies snake through from all three (as well as a couple of guest spots). It has the exploratory nature of early postrock and its antecedents, but crafted by three musicians with decades of experience behind them. A beauty.
Hand To Earth – Ŋurru Wäŋa Part II [Room40/Bandcamp]
When members of the Australian Art Orchestra collaborated with Yolŋu songmen Daniel and David Wilfred on the extraordinary album Hand to Earth in 2021, it must have already been clear this was a really special project. With trumpeter Peter Knight (who was AAO’s Artistic Director at the time), clarinettist (among other wind instruments) Aviva Endean and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim, the Wilfreds weave songlines, yidaki (didgeridoo) and bilma (clapstick) around sensitive sonic experimentation, with all three other members processing their sounds. On this third Hand To Earth album, their second on Room40, label boss Lawrence English also contributes sounds, and Peter Knight’s son Quinn contributes percussion (acoustic and electronic) on our selection tonight, “Ŋurru Wäŋa Part II”. In an echo of the millennia-spanning songlines, the group bend time, sculpting the songs in an iterative process following the original voice, yidaki and bilma recordings. There’s so much depth to this music, an evocation of our environment and the varied cultural backgrounds that find their home on this continent.
Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila – Closing Time: The Party Is Over [Pingipung/Bandcamp]
The first collaborative album between French mechanical instrument maker Pierre Bastien and fourth world electronic producer & composer Michel Banabila was a strange affair, lovely but perhaps a bit tentative. On their follow-up, Nuits Sans Nuit, it feels like they’ve found a singular voice together. Both musicians are multi-instrumentalists interested in taking traditional instruments into weird, uncanny places, and on tonight’s selection (which doesn’t close their album!), a very European chamber melody winds its way to our ears through an open doorway somewhere just out of view…
Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Endless Not [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
When I went to the Planet µ 30th gig in London (and I apologise for constantly bringing it up), I got to see experimental electronic mastermind Rian Treanor performing some new material with experimental vocalist Cara Tolmie. It was really special, but it does help, I think, to be able to experience these works at home or on headphones. The album is very varied – from extended vocal techniques from Tolmie to spoken word and even singing(?), with Treanor slipping between post-rave deconstructions, glitched ambient and the more cerebral, academic or avant-garde, all of which connects and differentiates him from his father Mark Fell (Treanor absolutely has his own aesthetic and is extremely talented at whatever genres he sets his sights on). To my mind, the closing track, “Endless Not”, is a huge drawcard, with Treanor’s spooky synth pulses and Tolmie’s dispassionate listing of “Not” things. It’s hard not to be reminded of Big Hard Excellent Fish’s 1990 broadside “Imperfect List“.
It’s December, with 3 Sundays left of the year, so that’s Best of 2025 Parts 1, 2, and 3! Tonight it’s “songs” – well, that includes raps. I’ve had to leave SO much out, y’all! As usual, the amount of music being released only goes up, and it’s not like the years are getting longer…
As always, you can LISTEN AGAIN on stream-on-demand at fbi.radio, or podcast right here.
clipping. – Night of Heaven (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
So yeah, back in March, clipping. released one of the albums of the year… or did they? If so, then what’s this? Why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months ago in various physical formats… Annnyway, an album more fitting for the digital age could not exist – this is clipping. doing cyberpunk, employing Daveed Diggs’ incredible wordsmithery and Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson’s backgrounds in noise, breakcore, soundtracking and more to bring to life the genre that’s both decades out of style and horrifically descriptive of our current-day dystopia. So, finally we have the “pt. 1” to the original release’s “Mirrorshades pt. 2” (the deadly Molly Millions in William Gibson’s cyberpunk ur-text Neuromancer “wears” mirrored sunglasses – except they’re permanently sealed into her skin; a couple of years later Bruce Sterling edited a definitive anthology of early cyberpunk titled Mirrorshades). Needless to say, following their previous concept albums on afrofuturist space opera and horror & blaxploitation, clipping. nail the cyberpunk genre here, both in terms of “style” and intertextuality. But anyway, not only is “Mirrorshades pt. 1” a certifiable banger, but on “Night of Heaven” clipping. collaborate again with the astonishingly-voiced Sharon Udoh aka Counterfeit Madison, with cuts provided by Kid Koala. My CD player aches with jealousy.
Note: clipping. did a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert late in the year, with electro-mechanical percussion, harmonium and the aforementioned Sharon Udoh on piano and vocals, and while every rendition is a highlight, this song is the second-last, and Kid Koala hops up on the turntable!
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Dogeared (feat. Kapwani) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
It’s been a huge year for Backwoodz Studioz, and a few others of their releases appear tonight, but here’s the second full-length album from Studioz boss billy woods and E L U C I D‘s Armand Hammer working exclusively with The Alchemist. Like Haram, their first collaboration, Mercy benefits from The Alchemist’s commercial experience, but the producer perfectly mindmelds with Backwoodz’ aesthetic, with bizzaro samples that are by turns wonky and sinister – but whatever the loop is that “Dogeared” is built around, it’s the most earwormy sample of the year, and Kapwani brings beautifully melodic vocal layers along with it. In his verse, a woman asks woods, “What’s the role of a poet in times like these?”, and while he’s still grappling with it by the end of the song, it’s not unfair to say that it’s this very grappling that’s their added value – as well, I’d like to suggest, as their pure artistic worth.
billy woods – Waterproof Mascara [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
The most notable hip-hop release of the year – albeit with much competition – must be Golliwog, the intense new album from billy woods. The sinister imagery of the deeply racist ragdoll character that gives the album its name is a pointer to what’s inside. It’s a kind of take on horrorcore from a Black perspective, and as usual it’s got brilliantly murky production with weird interludes and great guests on beats, instruments and verses, sparsely but smartly used. The murky production from Preservation on “Waterproof Mascara” underlines a truly disturbing autobiographical story from Woods.
SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 1 [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Last year, alongside their remarkable, heavy-as-fuck album The Healer was released, sludgey hardcore supergroup SUMAC released an EP called The Keeper’s Tongue with two remixes: recent Wire Magazine cover star, Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon, and the brilliant avant-garde hip-hop/free jazz genius Moor Mother. And what a combo the latter was! SUMAC leader Aaron Turner was singer & guitarist with two of my favourite post-metal bands, ISIS and Old Man Gloom (the latter not in past tense), but SUMAC feels like his purest vision, engineered with precision along with the rhythm section of Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook of hardcore legends Botch and post-metal legends Russian Circles. Turner also ran the greatest metal/experimental label in the world, Hydra Head, and now has a smaller – impeccably curated – operation with his wife Faith Coloccia called SIGE. After the incendiary impact of that Moor Mother remix, it still came as a surprise to discover that this full album collab was just around the corner. The Film is one large work split into tracks, with as much (disquieting) quiet as crashing noise. And who but Moor Mother could compete with Aaron Turner’s roar? Poetic and deeply political, scathing about colonialism and capitalism, it’s incredibly powerful.
doseone & Steel Tipped Dove – Restaurant Not [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
It’s been so lovely reading the background of this album. Adam Drucker aka doseone was one of the founding forces behind alt. hip-hop or whatever you want to call it in the last 1990s and early ’00s, founding with various other hip-hop outliers the Anticon collective and label (it took me ages to realise that the name referenced their “ant icon” logo). He’s played a part in a lot of the music that was this here radio show’s bread & butter for many years, including collabs with indietronic/postrock bods like Hood and The Notwist – and the album Circle that he made with Boom Bip way back in 2000 was massively influential. In 2018, beloved fellow Anticon founder Alias passed away from a sudden heart attack, and Anticon slowly fizzled out. So yeah, years later dose started hearing the output of billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz – specifically I believe a ShrapKnel album – and felt the creative spark that he’d been missing in grief and isolation. He hooked up with frequent Backwoodz producer Steel Tipped Dove, and they quickly created a whole body of new work. Some of the anything-goes abandon of Jel & Odd Nosdam’s early Anticon productions can really be heard here (and, I’d suggest, across the Backwoodz catalogue), and Dose spits out his poetic, circumspect lyrics with all the energy of the best of Themselves, Subtle and the rest. It’s nice to see Andrew Broder aka Fog – a frequent Anticon collaborator and lately a brilliant producer – adding turntable to all tracks, and there are notable features across the album from hip-hop legends like Mykah 9 and Antipop Consortium’s M.Sayyid, Open Mike Eagle, and Backwoodz’ own billy woods.
The second track here, “Restaurant Not” has a deconstructed Anticon-style beat that upturns dose’s vocals perfectly – and it also has a fun, colourful video.
Haykal, Julmud, Acamol | هيكل، جلمود، أكامول – A’saab أعصاب [Bilna’es/Bandcamp]
Cross-media artistic duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Ramme formed the record label & publishing platform Bilna’es along with producer Muqata’a as a space for artistic expression & criticism in Palestine & beyond. Along with the amazing productions of Muqata’a, a highlight was the 2022 solo album from Julmud, Tuqoos | طُقُوس. Now Julmud teams up with label founder Abbas, the latter under the name Acamol (Arabic for Panadol/paracetamol), along with Palestinian rapper Haykal on a new album Kam Min Janneh | كم من جنّة (How Many Heavens). The beats, produced by Julmud & Acamol separately & together, present a glitched version hip-hop drawn from the music & percussion of the MENA region, while Julmud & Haykal swap verses evoking the life of dispossession under occupation, colonization & genocide. It bears mentioning that while the killing continues in Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire, settlers continue to violently disrupt the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity – destroying property, beating and killing people and blocking access to their own land. In that context, this is a powerful work of resistance and solidarity (and some injections of humour). As I’m writing this late, you can read Emad Al Hatu’s excellent article on fbi.radio, as this was made album of the week at the beginning of November.
Nadah El Shazly = ندى الشاذلي – Kaabi Aali [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
In July 2018, The Wire put Nadah El Shazly on the cover as part of an in-depth look at the underground music scene in Cairo & Egypt – a couple of months after featuring a fantastic playlist from El Shazly of experimental Egyptian music. I already knew a few of the players in the diverse, experimental and creative Egyptian music scene, but her playlist and then interview were the introduction to many more, and showed what an important figure El Shazly herself was in that scene. She’s now Montréal-based, and her beautiful 2024 soundtrack The Damned Don’t Cry was recorded at the legendary Hotel2Tango studio mentioned above, with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh on the mixing desk, and Canadian musicians like the brilliant harpist Sarah Pagé contributing essential performances. Laini Tani, El Shazly’s second album outside of soundtracks & collaborations (many, many collaborations), was also recorded with Moumneh at Hotel2Tango, with one of Cairo’s most creative electronic musicians, 3Phaz, on co-production duties. It’s honestly a quite incredible album, one I have returned to as best I can against the weekly/daily onslaught of new music. It’s a re-setting of trip-hop into Arabic musical traditions, experimental pop of the highest order.
SANAM – Sayl Damei – سيل دمعي [Constellation/Bandcamp]
I was instantly hooked when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background; this second album is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop. There really are many different directions taken here, from trip-hop like pieces with auto-tuned vocals to punky numbers with jagged guitars – I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it.
Yasmine Hamdan – Vows سبع صنايع [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
While I’ve featured quite a bit of Lebanese music on this show, it’s leaned towards the experimental. Yasmine Hamdan‘s career goes back to the late ’90s with indie/trip-hop band Soapkills, all three of whose independent albums have been re-released by Belgian powerhouse Crammed Discs, whose catalogue covers postpunk and experimental music as well as “world music” from all over the planet. Hamdan released two previous solo albums with Crammed, and after a few singles (of which I’ve played a couple), her third album I remember, I forget is out now. It’s no surprise that this is album deeply affected by what’s happened to Beirut and Lebanon over the last few years, including the horrific port explosion in 2020, the intensifying of its economic collapse as well as continuing incursions by Israel. It’s actually a bittersweet album as Hamdan, who is based in Paris, has great affection for her birthplace of Beirut. It’s a beautiful, compulsively listenable collection of songs that easily fuses Arabic pop and trip-hop.
Aesop Rock – The Red Phone [Rhymesayers Entertainment/Bandcamp]
There’s none more genius than Aesop Rock in the hip-hop world, with vocabulary to spare, and quite honestly the most comforting tone of voice. Going back a few albums now, Aes has been producing all his beats himself, and they’re just so good. Whether the subject matter’s a climate apocalypse or the horrors of late-stage capitalism or the horrors of getting older, Aes has elliptical lyrics delivered with perfect flow. Incredibly, after this great concept album, Aes released a second full album in October, I Heard It’s A Mess There Too, stripping the beats down to the basics and rhyming commiseratively about this fucked-up world – a world that’s nevertheless better for having Aesop Rock in it.
Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Nom De Guerre (feat. Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
In 2022 billy woods released the incredible Aethiopes album, fully produced by Preservation. One of the guests was Gabe ‘Nandez and it was there that the seeds of this full-album collaboration were sown. The darkness of Preservation’s productions suit ‘Nandez’ searching lyrics, but also notable was the fact that both are French speakers: it’s ‘Nandez’ first language, via his Haitian side, and Preservation is half French. So apart from the album title Sortilège being French, some of the movie samples that always litter Backwoodz Studioz releases are here heard in French, and ‘Nandez swaps lines with his frequent collaborator Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko, switching between English & French without breaking the flow. The range of sounds Preservation uses is wild, from weird proggy synth drones to piano jabs, beats that boom and bap and shuffle and slap. It’s a journey, it’s a trip.
aya – the names of Faggot Chav boys [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
No longer requiring “fka LOFT”, aya brings us her second album on Hyperdub, but it’s still as full of angst as im hole was, just in different ways. Here, aya is concerned with addiction, as it often is, indelibly twisted around trauma. The themes are carried by her always sardonic vocal delivery (this time round there are no other guests, except James Ginzburg of emptyset/Subtext Recordings helped out with the mixing), and to be clear, the music can be really claustrophobic and discomfiting. Or it can be cathartic. It’s also funny that aya tends to keep the more straight drum’n’bass or other dancefloor styles off her full albums – which makes sense as they’re more conceptual affairs, imagined as a full-length work, and showcasing her incredible talent & skills. Prettttty damn impressive.
I want to note that I got to see aya twice this year – launching the album in London at Ormside Projects in May, and then at Unsound Adelaide in July. Both were utterly energetic, calculatedly chaotic performances, hilarious and brilliant. The album topped many best-of lists this year, and deservedly, but even so, those performances were hard to beat.
Rainy Miller – Chrome, Hallowed be. [Supernature/Bandcamp]
A clear highlight of the first half of 2025, Joseph, What Have You Done? is the brilliant new album from Rainy Miller, collaborator with the likes of Blackhaine, Space Afrika and Richie Culver. Like these collaborators, Miller’s art focuses on the drab oppressiveness of life in England’s north, and the sociopolitical realities – which Miller or his protagonist does his best to resist – of class and culture. It’s done through the lens of broken-down drill, grime and jungle as well as desolate ambient. That all these elements pull together into something devastating and beautiful is a huge achievement. On this album Miller has overcome any Predetermined Definitions and more than realised his potential.
California Girls – Sorrowful Meat [Blue Void]
Eora/Sydney’s California Girls is the work of Angus McGrath, a multifarious musician who’s also Gus McGrath of fbi.radio mainstays Sleepless in Sydney with longtime musical collaborator/flatmate/etc Marcus Whale. With California Girls’ third album Wheel of Ashes, Gus has created a work of glitchy club-infused industrial pop with fractious shouty vocals that fight back against the anxiety of modern life.
Teether & Kuya Neil – SCRATCH THE FLEA POINT (FT NERDIE) [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]
Working out what to play out of 6 weeks’ new releases is a challenge, but there’s been a suite of great underground hip-hop that’s come out since the start of May. Following their landmark mixtape STRESSOR from 2023, Naarm rapper Teether & producer Kuya Neil have now released their debut album proper, YEARN IV (which I’ve just realised is a pun). I’m never sure why some releases are dubbed mixtapes, because all the elements were there 2 years ago – Teether’s laconic flow and Kuya Neil’s rave/bass-influenced beats. Teether did release his remarkable 5th solo album, It Must Be Strange to Not Have Lived last year, but there’s definitely a spark of genius between the two together.
I’d like to add that Guy Blackman & Ben O’Connor have released scads of great music across countless genres with Chapter Music over 3 decades, and it’s sad news that the label is kinda-sorta closing down (for new releases at least!), but also totally understandable.
BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Nerdie – Bankistan [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp]
Korean Australian producer/sound-artist Angus Alec Minhyuk Jin does incredible sound design for TV commercials, films and more, but as Nerdie his roots are in hip-hop. BAYANG (tha Bushranger), mind you, has roots in death metal, but on their collaborative album WAR WITH CHINA the pair address Australia’s cultural alienation, as they put it, riffing into punk as much as hip-hop. Good stuff.
Ho99o9 – Godflesh [Last Gang Records/Bandcamp]
Few are doing hardcore punk/metal meets hip-hop quite like Newark’s Ho99o9 (it’s pronounced “Horror”). I’m not sure you’d call this horrorcore, but it’s ho99o9core at least. A perfect melding of punk riffage you could pogo to and the finest beats & raps. Not much more to say. They’ve been around a lot longer than you’d expect, and their style hasn’t changed dramatically since 2017’s United States of Horror, but damnit they do seem to have perfected it. And yes, there’s industrial metal trappings (there’s no way that the title “Godflesh” doesn’t refer to JK Broadrick & G.C. Green’s iconoclastic duo), but there’s an emotional undercurrent which surfaces particularly with the brilliant Chelsea Wolfe‘s guest spot.
Agriculture – Bodhidharma [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
With The Flenser you know you’re going to expect dark, probably metal-adjacent music, and you know it’ll probably diverge from typical genre norms. Ecstatic black metal band Agriculture do indeed employ black metal’s tremolo guitars and blast beats to reach for altered states, but then the thunder gives way to a different kind of ecstasy at times – gorgeous harmonies and clean guitar? The last track on the album somehow combines it all together – blissful chugging blackgaze, and a fragile interlude of just voice and guitar. Channeling Zen Buddhism and social collapse alongside queer history & survival, The Spiritual Sound is easily among the albums of the year.
Postcards – Dust Bunnies [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
We’ve heard a lot of brilliant experimental music from Lebanon in recent years, a lot (although by no means all) of it courtesy of the Beirut-based Ruptured label (now partly run out of Montréal). Among the highest of highlights are the songs of Julia Sabra, both with Fadi Tabbal as Snakeskin, and solo. But Sabra’s first band was Postcards, an indie rock/shoegaze band that’s among Beirut’s longest-lived, going back to 2012 (all members are active in many other Lebanese acts). So we’re fortunate to have an actual new album from the band, produced though it was (as always, by Fadi Tabbal) under the very dark cloud of Israel’s regional aggression. This song – the first single – was an impassioned scream of everything that’s gone wrong with Lebanon.
Snakeskin – Ready [Ruptured/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
A surprise release months after that Postcards album – singer Julia Sabra and their longtime producer Fadi Tabbal dropped their third album We live in sand in October, co-released by Ruptured with Portland’s Beacon Sound. The album was unavoidably influenced by the troubles of Lebanon and the horrors of the genocide being conducted by Israel. It’s mournful and sometimes angry, the product of two exceptionally strong music-makers. When I saw them live in London in May, both musicians had tables entirely covered in electronic equipment, noisemakers and effects, Sabra singing while processing her voice (given the setup, it was nearly impossible to tell who was making any particular noises other than that). This album might not seem as experimental as that performance implied, but it’s hard-hitting and there’s nothing else quite like it.
Laurén Maria – Filled Up Smile [Warm Winters Ltd./Bandcamp]
I first heard Berlin-based Laurén Maria on a 12″ from Yu Miyashita‘s label The Collection Artaud, two tracks of deconstructed electronics with processed vocals hidden within. Her second album, You’re Beautiful, is a masterpiece of deconstruction, in which guitar-led songs jostle with glitch-noise and the subs and fractured beats of the club lurk around the edges. Whether it’s indie-emo songs, screamo tangents or abstracted electronics, Maria somehow makes it all hold together into a strangely affecting album. Also notable, her duo with Diamantista, LICITIR.
anrimeal – 11. Chapter III – Source and time [Lost Wisdom/demo records/anrimeal Bandcamp]
London-based Portuguese musician Ana Rita de Melo Alves has appeared on this show under her anrimeal alias a lot since I discovered her music via The Leaf Library‘s Objects Forever label. This year she released her second album, Half Fool Half Empty, an album arranged in two halves – one more playful, one more serious – although all of Alves’ work can be seen as a combination of those two creative impulses. Beautiful acoustic songwriting is digitally interrupted or corrupted, gorgeous layered vocals hang in frozen stasis, musical elements appear in the midst of a field recording. This album is accompanied by a book, explaining the odd track titles, which are a guide to the sections of the text they mirror.
Herbert & Momoko – More And More [Strut/Herbert Bandcamp/Momoko Gill Bandcamp]
Back in 2022, Matthew Herbert released a short album called Drum Solo in collaboration with Swiss drummer Julian Sartorius. It was intended to be the first in a series of “Album In A Day” releases, but also the first in a series of collaborations with different drummers. Last year, Herbert revived his Parts EP series with Part 9 which opened with “Fallen”, featuring drummer & vocalist Momoko Gill. Gill is clearly as perfect a foil for Herbert’s glitch-infused, jazz-influenced productions as Dani Siciliano or Róisín Murphy, and as well as her silky-smooth vocals and sinuous melodies her percussion and drumkit are central elements throughout – notably more prominent on the remake of the Part 9 song, “Fallen Again”. The album benefits from the restraint of both artists, often using sparing arrangements with just enough – a minimalist rhythm, shuffling sampled hi-hats, a bassline… Often the only other elements are Gill’s vocals, multi-tracked and sampled. Lovely stuff.
georg-i & Older Brother – To Be A Man [GRACE/Bandcamp]
Portugal-based MC Darius Rodrigues aka Older Brother has been working with London producer George Harris aka georg-i for ages. Now the duo have finally come out with the Warm Skin EP on Berlin-based DJ Katiusha‘s label GRACE. And these four tracks of trip-hop-inflected bass music do walk with grace, holding Older Brother’s lyrics about the state of the world, and – on this closing track – seeking a new, post-patriarchy definition of maleness.
Crimewave – 155/160BPM [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp] Crimewave – Haemoglobin [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp]
Manchester’s Crimewave makes a pretty unique mixture of UK bass & experimental electronic styles with shoegazey indie guitar music. Following a series of singles and EPs in 2023, he’s now hooked up with New York label Fool’s Gold Records and full album Scenes was released in November. It’s that perfect mix – everytime you think it’s all dance music (those BPM-shift interstitials), suddenly it’s jabbing postpunk guitars or shoegaze strums, and vice versa. Great work, very underrated.
gushes – CUT [PTP/Switch Hit Records/Bandcamp]
Trust PTP (aka Protect The Peace, fka Purple Tape Pedigree) to release one of the most bizarre & brilliant albums of the year (in conjunction with artist collective Switch Hit Records). Jennae Santos’ gushes presents an unrestrained amalgam of prog metal, psych rock, jazz & classical and electronic experimentation. But there’s more than just this: the album begins with voices talking in Tagalog, and influences from Indigenous Filipinx psychology and combat swirl around with land-sea ecologies, plant medicine and queer politics of decolonization… Delicious Collision is a fully-through-composed experimental rock opera, appropriately given Santos’ background (on top of everything else) in theatre, site-specific performance & dance.
Editrix – Another World [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]
Last year’s Viewfinder album by Wendy Eisenberg was one of my albums of the year, and their “In The Pines” will be up there in songs of the decade I daresay. A guitarist’s guitarist, Eisenberg is a master musician, also playing tenor banjo and working with electronics, and playing in ensembles ranging from jazz and free improv to, well, what we have here: just brilliant avant-garde punk. I’ve seen Editrix described as math rock, and OK maybe, but really it’s just great, knotty, melodic punk to me, with Eisenberg joined by a great rhythm section: Steve Cameron on bass and Josh Daniel on drums. Here Eisenberg builds melodies where the intervals are all bent out at angles, making it catchy as hell. The whole album’s perfect riffs, noise sections and top-of-the-lungs vocals. They’ve just signed to Joyful Noise Recordings, and this is absolutely a joyful noise.
Lucrecia Dalt – cosa rara (ft. David Sylvian) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
I’ve been following Lucrecia Dalt‘s music since she was The Sound of Lucrecia, making lovely indie music that only fainly hinted at the highly experimental electronics or Latin music that would come into her music in latter years. Her last album, 2022’s ¡Ay!, somehow combined her modular synth work with the music of her Colombian roots and incredible, counter-intuitive orchestrations – a masterpiece. On her new album A Danger To Ourselves, the connection to Latin America is still strong, but it feels like Dalt’s electronics take more of a leading role. There are violins and cello, saxophone and percussion throughout, with some bass and guitar on some tracks. And as well as Dalt’s now-partner David Sylvian, who co-produced the album, there are a few prominent South American guests including Mexican singer & sound-artist Camille Mandoki and the wonderful Juana Molina, whose loop-based, hypnotic songwriting was a favourite on Utility Fog since 2004, and it’s a treasure to hear her voice with Dalt’s here. The balance, if you could call it that, between the experimental and the “pop” elements on this album is thrilling. The first single “cosa rara” was another slice of Latin experimental pop, with the added spice of a spoken outro by the aforementioned David Sylvian, who also contributed “feedback guitar” and completed the final mix. The song, whose title translates as “strange thing”, is sultry and just a little menacing, and the single release is rounded out with a typically radical rework by Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and a “dopamine dub” remix by Chilean-German techno producer Mathias Aguayo.
Titanic – La dueña [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp]
Speaking of Guatemalan (Mexico-resident) cellist Mabe Fratti, she and her longtime collaborator Héctor Tosta de la Rosa (who records as I. la Católica) released their first album as Titanic in 2023. The project is an outlet for I. La Católica’s compositions and arrangements with Fratti’s distinctive, creative cello playing and her emotive voice comfortably at home. Vidrio is now followed by Hagen. There’s some absolutely gorgeous songwriting on here, mostly by I. La Católica, with some co-writes by Fratti, whose singing on all tracks is possibly her best ever. Of course she plays cello too, all over these tracks alongside I. la Católica’s instruments and the pair’s electronics. Hagen has a guest spot from Daniel Oneohtrix Point Never Lopatin on one track, and Lopatin collaborator Nathan Salon adds instrumentation and production on about half the album; the brilliant drummer (and yes, OPN compadre) Eli Keszler also appears. As expected, this is evocative, glistening, and not quite like anything else. I’m tempted to declare “La dueña” song of the year, and it has a suitably melodramatic video to accompany it.
Mikoo – Ties [Sofa Music/Bandcamp]
Norway’s Sofa Music is a consistent home to music that’s off the beaten path – jazz, sure, but not only, or hybridised with contemporary classical, folk and electronics. Mikoo is a case in point, a band led by their drummer Michaela Antalova, a Slovakian musician based in Oslo. The music is mostly written by Antalova, in collaboration with the band, a highly talented collection of musicians on keyboards, guitars & zither, bass and vocals. Singer Ina Sagstuen does often write her own vocal melodies, and mostly the lyrics, which on their gorgeous new album It Floats mostly revolve around concepts of inheritance, including inherited trauma as well as traditions behaviours. These are dark songs in intimate chamber setting, with the percussion never far from prominence. It could easily pass you by – you may not hear about it anywhere else – and I really recommend giving it a listen when you have some quiet time.
soccer Committee – Little Sorrow [Morc Records/Bandcamp/soccer Committee Bandcamp]
I have been a dedicated fan of Dutch singer-songwriter Mariska Baars for many years, via Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek – both working with him under her own name, and then in equally mysterious projects such as Piiptsjilling and FEAN with the Kleefstra brothers and others. Where Jan Kleefstra performs his poetry in Frisian, Baars sings either wordlessly or in English. Her work, as soccer Committee and in other groups, is characterised by an exquisite restraint, whereby if you’re listening you can’t help but be drawn into the patiently unfolding melodies and subtle but essential textures. Even without Machinefabriek’s sensitive deconstructions around the edges of their collaborative work, Baars seems to dismantle and rebuild the fabric of her songs so that they are as attenuated as possible while still holding together. In 2023 she released ❤️ /Lamb, her most confident and fully-realised album yet, and only 2 years later, she’s back on Morc Records with eye, which is equally gorgeous and tenuous.
I do want to point you to where I discovered Mariska Baars, with Machinefabriek on their incredible album Drawn, which birthed the Redrawn compilation of remixes and covers – an album I return to frequently.
So this Friday was the last Bandcamp Friday of the year, and even with that aside, it was a big release day for new music. It’s insane, but because of this I’m not doing best-of-2025 till next week. Here’s a whole slew of excellent new music across every genre imaginable.
READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able!
As we swiftly approach December, tonight is the second-last “new music” show of the year. There’s a lot of music coming out on December 5th! But then that’s it, the next 3 will be Best of 2025.
Keen listeners will be surprised that I’m mixing up the structure tonight. Really, it usually goes the way it goes due to thematic and tonal segues, and this time round, the jazz & ambient(ish) stuff just fitted best after our early songs, and the beats are the bulk of the second half.
READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able!
The Notwist – X-Ray
The Notwist – Magnificent Fall
Muyassar Kurdi – Child of the Sun (feat. Chris Williams)
Peter Knight – The Coiling of the Tide
Laura Jurd – Praying Mantis
Má Estrela – Top Suki Girl
BLACK HAUGE – Papiret (Radio Edit)
Dina Maccabee – Outbreak
Joni Void – Walker
Joni Void – Lighters
Samuele Strufaldi – Musica Invisibile
Mac Seldom – ILUVU
Om Unit – Lost Stories (Bok Bok Remix)
Om Unit – The Chase (Alter Echo & E3 Remix)
Ghost Dubs – Hope
Fatwires x Atsushi Izumi – Ga
UNTECHCIRCLE – Dying Light
UNTECHCIRCLE – not just chaos
Mattr – Tayl
CHEAHDX – Earthbound
dreadmaul – No Shade
Low End Activist – Hope III (Demdike Stare Stressed Version)
Tonight, one of the underground hip-hop albums of the year, some very unusual collaborations, two releases in the Frisian language of north Holland, solo drum kit, post-jazz, bass & breaks, human/AI collaboration and electro-acoustic sound-art verging into folktronica.
READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able!
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Dogeared (feat. Kapwani)
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Crisis Phone (feat. Pink Siifu)
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Longjohns (feat. Quelle Chris & Cleo Reed)
HAYWARDxDÄLEK – Asymmetric
YHWH Nailgun – Weaving (original by LEYA)
Zea & Drumband Hallelujah Makkum – in lichem fol beloften
Zea & Drumband Hallelujah Makkum – de Dea
Joana Guerra, Maria Do Mar, Romke Kleefstra, Jan Kleefstra – Al Dy Kleuren
Joana Guerra, Maria Do Mar, Romke Kleefstra, Jan Kleefstra – Kâlde Mage
Chloe Kim – Ratsnake
SML – Old Mytth
Snorkel – Flash Flood
Snorkel – Sirene
Endless Mow – wattle and daub
An Avrin – 4LYFE
noRecall – The Machine and its Master
Rutger Zuydervelt – House of Strength
Rutger Zuydervelt and Lucija Gregov – (Not) Not Three High
Rutger Zuydervelt and Lucija Gregov – Euphoria (outtake)
What a relentless year of new music… It’s getting that way every year mind you. The releases will run right through December and into January, mark my words…
Anyway, tonight we have the surprisingest song of the week (year?) from two very different pop icons, plus experimental song and electronics of all sorts, blending with classical, jazz, field recordings and more.
READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able!
Charli XCX – House (feat John Cale)
California Girls – Sorrowful Meat
Alto Aria – Porous Heart
Alto Aria – Fall Blossom
anrimeal – 11. Chapter III – Source and time
anrimeal – 5. Chapter I – SOFAR channel
Meredith Monk – Lullaby for Lise (performed by Katie Geissinger, Allison Sniffin)
Joachim Badenhorst – How To Hold
Maarja Nuut & Ruum – Kiik Tahab Kindaid
Romain Azzaro – Always Late
Mauri – Aquest Any Si
F¥eld Effct – Tst_009
Nadrisk – Cadere
Data General – End with Rests
Fracture & Neptune – Good Stuff
Los Pulpitos – Cubozoa
r hunter – Intra
r hunter – Perfect Mirror
Galina Juritz – Axolotl
STREIKTHROUGH – Bleed Tight
Earl Grey – Doss House
Jack Prest – Dawn
Jack Prest – Movement III
Stefan Schultze – Judson Techno
Stefan Schultze, boxn – CV RMX
Perila – Apocalypta’s Dream
upsammy – Ripple
Bernard Parmegiani – Sadiquement Votre II
Bernard Parmegiani – La Ville en Haut de la Colline II
Lia Kohl – Walking Home, Chicago
Lia Kohl – My Kitchen, Chicago
Lia Kohl – Train, Antwerp to Amsterdam
Lia Kohl – Basketball Court, feat. Macie Stewart
Music from North Africa, West Africa, South Asia, East Asia, South America, North America, Europe and Oceania tonight… which covers most continents. Antarctica needs to pick up their game.
READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able!
Noura Mint Seymali – Bidayett Lehjibb
Noura Mint Seymali – Lehjibb
Noura Mint Seymali – Moughadim Karr
Perera Elsewhere – Time Will Tell (feat. Andy S)
Perera Elsewhere – Just Wanna Live Some
Songforms of conventional and highly unconventional sorts tonight, taking in folk traditions from around the world, jazz, the outer limits of metal and more, plus strange twistings of clubforms, impressionist composition of the early 20th century, field recordings and more…
LISTEN AGAIN, unconventionally. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast right here.
Wendy Eisenberg – Take A Number
Wendy Eisenberg – Curious Bird
Margareth Kammerer – Gift
Margareth Kammerer – Amor
Espen Reinertsen – Til noens dype muskelvev
Espen Reinertsen – Skal jeg følge deg til havet
Marianna Sangita Angeletaki Røe & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra – Kori
Mayssa Jallad – Taamir (Bahriyyeh)
Radwan Ghazi Moumneh & Frédéric D. Oberland – Squeal Of Swine خنخنة خنازير
Maryam Saleh – Nedaa نداء
Taroug – Sirocco
Wraz. – Twist
Battery Operated – Stutter
Battery Operated – Casting Shadows
THUGWIDOW – IT DIDN’T NEED EXPLAINING
THUGWIDOW – pristine heart
CRZKNY – 009
deafkids – CICATRIZES
Lint – Balsam of Peru
Roman Rofalski – Ondine (radio edit 1)
OD – Arrival
sandscape – half closed eyes
Stine Janvin, Morten Joh – Leaving home – O Verden, Hav Da Gode Nat! (feat. Lucy Railton)
Stine Janvin, Morten Joh – Before the burial site – Jeg Raader Eder Alle
Quite a journey today, through genres, countries & continents, emotions and BPMs. This is how we do it in the house of Utility Fog.
Snakeskin – Lost Today
The Bunny Tylers – Let There Be Light
Akram Hajj – Day 2
SANAM – Aykathani Malakon (SAFA remix)
dälek – By the Time We Arrive in El Salvador
james K – N’Balmed (JASSS Purple Remix)
Antoine Ferris – shame’s coming ft. natacha kanga
ŽIVA – Hesitation
Esther – Critical
Ruby My Dear – Iterations
ZULI – Half Empty
ZULI – 44
Marco Simioni – Dot With Illumination (Delta Division Remix)
Dro Carey & Pinz – Hellish Plasma
Korsain – +55
Paperclip Minimiser – II A1
Commodo – Deep Harbour ft. Alfa Mist
Nicolas Remondino – boku ga (feat. Adele Altro)
Nicolas Remondino – hìeratico
KINACT – Cercle de Tambour Kinact
KINACT – Cercle de Tambour Kinact avec Manza et Ikembe
FRANTX – BARBIECUE
Andrea Giordano, Kalle Moberg, Jo David Meyer Lysne – D’antorn a lor
Zela Margossian Quintet – Repentance
Caroline Davis – She Know She Is Water
Penelope Trappes – Thou Art Mortal (Julia Holter Rework)
World is fukt. Music, not surprisingly, reflects that. But there’s joy and dancing and energy to be found here as well as anger and only a bit of sorrow. Dance a new world into being!
LISTEN AGAIN and enjoy something whyoncha. Stream on demand from fbi.radio or podcast here.
Oh and by the way, I DJed on Friday night (March 20th) at White Bay Power Station for Art After Dark / Sydney Bienalle, curated by Liquid Architecture. Mara Schwerdtfeger did a beautiful set, and we were graced by a performance from Tujiko Noriko as headliner. I recorded my first set, which opened the evening, a pretty wide-ranging mix that I’m sure you’ll like if you’re a follower of this show!
Youniss – TakeThat ft. Pink Siifu [VIERNULVIER/Bandcamp] Youniss – Gits Worse ft. Petite Noir [VIERNULVIER/Bandcamp]
Sometimes it’s good to become acquainted with the underground & cutting edge in odd corners of the world. I was lucky to perform at the brilliant dunk!festival last year with my band Black Aleph, a festival in Europe’s best-kept secret, the lovely northern-Belgium city of Ghent. Specifically, the festival occurs in a few theatres and venues around an arts centre / platform / community called VIERNULVIER (404), which itself has a phenomenally-curated boutique record label. It’s from this connection that I discovered Antwerp-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer & taxi driver Youniss Ahamad. In a fair world, Youniss would be as big as other genre-crossing punk/indie/hip-hop acts, or at least would have the critical recognition he deserves. In this dizzying world of non-stop (bad) news and constant interconnectedness (unless you’re under Iran’s internet blackout or myriad other less-advantaged or more-oppressed populaces), it’s hard for anything to cut through, but I wish that Good Effort! would do so. It’s loosely themed around gentrification, which as it always does is pushing the multicultural residents of the area of Antwerp where Youniss lives out of their homes and community centres. But it’s full of great songwriting, switching between post-punk, jazz and hip-hop on a dime. Youniss plays most of the instruments as well as singing & rapping, but he does also invite some top tier guests, including Belgian clarinettist Dienne, Congolese/South African singer Petite Noir, and underground rappers like Quelle Chris and Pink Siifu. Do yourself a favour and stick this in your ears asap.
Kim Gordon – No Hands [Matador/Bandcamp]
OK, we all know by now that Kim Gordon is the coolest, releasing now a series of albums (PLAY ME is her third since 2019) in collaboration with Justin Raisen, a producer comfortable in the pop world as well as the more leftfield. Gordon’s delivery has always been more drawled than sung, and her fragile voice somehow suits these simple, bass heavy grooves to a tee. I don’t have much more to say: her social commentary is compact because she knows the words to say. Her style is both now and then, because she’s always been the Kool Thing after all.
Grasps_ – Dream On [Grasps_ Bandcamp/Nina Protocol]
Christian Grasps_ might be known for his ambient & beat-based electronic productions, including credits with the likes of BAYANG (tha Bushranger), but you might also find him playing piano & singing, or on this new single, playing guitar and singing. There’s a nice bit of a surge in the middle that hints at mayhem that never quite arrives, but that’s by design. A touching little piece.
Travis Cook – unfinished symphony [Travis Cook Bandcamp]
It’s Travis Cook, on Kaurna land, still bringing a track per week to Bandcamp. Most of them are fragments, as unfinished as this one, but also fun, good production.
Laces – Doormen [NLV Records/Bandcamp]
Naarm musician Laces is touring UK & Europe with Ninjarachi, and has released his Oekno I EP to accompany them, released by Nina Las Vega’s NLV Records (also home to Ninjarachi). Laces shares with Ninjarachi meticulous electronic production, but this is far more abstract. It was presented to me as “ambient”, but that’s only half the story – there’s beautiful sound design, but also glitchy beats and glitched vox.
world’s end girlfriend & samayuzame – Sweet Suicide (Syndrome) [Virgin Babylon Records]
So, vocals aren’t usually a prominent part of the music of World’s End Girlfriend, the Japanese master of genre-mashing since the early ’00s. Not that they’re not present, but usually they’re serving the music, whether it’s bizarre electro-acoustic glitch, IDM, breakcore or more like psych-rock/postrock/breakbeat hybrids. Honestly World’s End Girlfriend has been one of Utility Fog’s biggest inspirations since the start, and his now long-lived label Virgin Babylon Records is consistently awesome whether it’s idoru-breakcore, glitch-punk or spoken word. Now, on the 3-track Helix of Frequency, Phenomenon of Love and Void EP he presents three songs with three guest vocalists. This is J-pop WEG style, glitchy, still somehow three genres in one track, and all very lovely.
Uriel’s Bath – Beautiful Hats [Hobbies Galore /Bandcamp]
The 1990s are big at the moment, and much though jungle is my #1 love, there’s something heartwarming about the kind of ambient techno that developed around the start of the decade, and hearing it echoed nowadays is a weird trip. The self-titled EP by Naarm duo Uriel’s Bath is just such a trip, made by Julia McFarlane and Thomas Kernot, a slightly abstracted continuation of the trip-hop-exotica of 2024’s Whoopee as J.MacFarlane’s Reality Guest (released in the UK by Glasgow indie label Night School). Melodic, electronic, mostly ambient with occasional beats. Sweet as.
The Leaf Library – The Reader’s Lamp [Fika Recordings/Bandcamp]
Listeners to this show will be aware of The Leaf Library, the London band/collective who make melodic, hypnotic dream-pop/space-rock, with side projects in all sorts of twistings of sound-art, electronica, noise, and folk. Their new album After The Rain, Strange Seeds is released by Fika Recordings, who released one such side project – the strange chamber folk of Mirrored Daughters – last year. While The Leaf Library’s last release was last year’s remix album Flowers at the Border (released on their own excellent label Objects Forever), this new album eschews studio trickery by and large, and is made up of more song-like structures than may be expected. There are also sumptuous strings on a number of tracks, including this one. Some of the best krautrock-indiepop you’ll find at the moment.
Xylitol – Bowed Clusters (with The Leaf Library) [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Xylitol – Sudwestwind [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Catherine Backhouse debuted on Planet µ under her Xylitol alias in 2024 with the frantic drill’n’bass of Anemones, very much in the vein of the Planet µ output from the ’00s, as much as the jungle and hardcore she was immersed in in her youth. As DJ Bunnyhausen she was resident DJ at a krautrock club night called Kosmische, and is also a specialist in electronic music & pop from the former Yugoslavia. Her follow-up album Blumenfantasie ups the ante with more sophisticated beats (still manic, don’t stress!) and influences from Sarajevo-born synthmeister Miaux as well as early industrial and yes, krautrock. And Planet µ feels like the perfect home for it – I hear a lot of label boss Mike Paradinas’ µ-Ziq in these tunes, no doubt because Mike was listening to a similar assortment of electronic pioneers as much as his own music directly influencing Backhouse.
Oh, and the abovementioned krautrock-influenced space-rockers The Leaf Library feature here – the brilliant “Bowed Clusters” is actually a remix of them which Matt from The Leaf Library gave me a listen to last year, and I’ve been wanting to play it to you ever since. I expected it to be on their Flowers at the Border remix album, but it’s awesome to hear it among the other genre-melted junglisms here.
Rutger Zuydervelt – Gas [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
I’ve also been waiting to play something from the pair of releases just out from Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek). A lot of Rutger’s music, particularly released under his own name, is created for dance, theatre and sometimes TV work. His latest is a wonderful thing called Bodies of Water (music for a performance by Iván Pérez / Dance Theatre Heidelberg). The water theme is a great creative catalyst, especially as the work itself deals with the three main states of H2O – solid (ice), liquid (water) and gas (steam, but also water in suspension in air). As well as the soundtrack, there’s an outtakes EP Fog/Drops that highlights water as a power of nature – two 20-minute pieces that mix drone & sound-art with pulsating rhythm. Forces of nature also propel the music on the main album, with thundering sub-bass, sheets of white noise and, well, the drum machines and acidic synth that drive “Gas”. Out of an extremely prolific career of high quality, Rutger is doing some of his best work right now, and I highly recommend this duo of releases whether you need a starting point or a place to catch up.
hoyah חיה – talmuds (feat. Derya Yıldırım) [BRUK/Bandcamp] hoyah חיה – sol [BRUK/Bandcamp]
Berlin-based musician Shmuel Hatchwell makes dope lo-fi hip-hop as Ehye אֶהְיֶה, and debuted his hoyah incarnation with the disorienting glitched sax samples of Set + Setting on Low End Activist’s BRUK label in 2024. Last year he released the 2-track single 808s n Trance Gates along with a website that interrogated the political circumstances in which he – an observant Jew who happens to be openly anti-Zionist in a time of genocide – found his original choice of artwork censored because it appropriated antisemitic imagery from the early-20th century. In the intervening time, not only has Germany’s suppression of speech about Palestine gotten worse, we in Australia – as well as activists in the UK, France, the US and elsewhere – have experienced an escalation in the suppression of speech critical of Israel, even when coming from Jews like Hatchwell or myself. Last year’s single appears on hoyah’s remarkable new album Can I Get A Chayah?, its flickering samples of Eastern European and Middle Eastern Jewish musics standing as a template for Hatchwell’s deep reimagining of Jewish music, religious practice and oft-warped history throughout the album. Here, the structures of hip-hop, UK club music and experimental electronic production are the conduit for the wide range of diasporic Jewish music fed into the stuttering shutters of Hatchwell’s sampler. The voice of the late David Berman of Silver Jews appears on the second track, a poignant mantra of doubt repeating “Adonai, I don’t know, I don’t know, Adonai” (“Adonai” roughly means “Lord”). Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım meanwhile reminds us of the long traditions of Jewish practice in the SWANA region. Works like this are an important part of imagining and bringing into being a strong panoply of Jewish identities that reject the fascistic, ahistorical tether to an apartheid, genocidal state that’s pushed by Israel and its erstwhile allies across the world.
datewithdeath – (aar) [Poverty Electronics]
While Travis D Johnson‘s music as datewithdeath has not come to an end, his Poverty Electronics label has closed up shop with two releases at the beginning of this year: the excellent remix/collaboration collection Culotte Sine and datewithdeath’s Apple Tree Brightness, a shining collection of glitchy electro-acoustics, abrasive drones and messed-up beats. Following a debilitating illness, Johnson – writer & folklorist as well as composer, improviser & producer – is concentrating on his boutique publishing house Frolic Press, which happens to come with an accompanying musical outlet, Frolic Press Recordings. Follow there for new noise & beauty, and like me you can catch up on Poverty Electronics on Bandcamp.
Skee Mask – Greensleeve Attack [Skee Mask/SCNTST Bandcamp]
The alphabetical compilations of unreleased Skee Mask music on the German producer’s Bandcamp have reached F – that’s almost 6 hours of music of 6 albums of 11 tracks each. While obviously unmastered, the music here often rivals the material often released on Ilian Tape, and offers an enjoyable, illuminating look into the musical practice of one of the most versatile producers of the last decade, across warbling ambient, IDM-tinged techno and soft-focus jungle.
Rob Clouth – Gummy Clusters [Mesh/Bandcamp]
No artist could be more suited to Max Cooper‘s Mesh label than Rob Clouth, so synchronised with Cooper’s are Clouth’s musical aesthetics and interests in the intersection between science and music (the two collaborated on an EP last year). Clouth’s second EP on Mesh for 2026 is Cicada – the sometimes deafening chittering sound of these insects is familiar to anyone living in Australia, but the cicada shimmer in the title track is quickly overtaken by 4/4 kicks. “Gummy Clusters”, on the other hand, is yummy syncopation and chopped vocal samples.
Untold – It’s Not My Fault but It Is My Problem [Hemlock Recordings/Bandcamp]
Jack Dunning founded Hemlock Recordings in 2008, following his debut 12″ on Hessle Audio as Untold. From the start his approach to dubstep was married with the 4/4 kicks of tech-house and the fidgetiness of electro; I appreciated it more than liked it, but Dunning has a keen musical sensibility and Untold never stayed still. So it’s nice to find him returning to his own label with HEK036 (catalogue number as title hey), out on April 10th. “It’s Not My Fault but It Is My Problem” wants to thump in 4/4 but trips over itself, syncopating into dancehall patterns while the synths snarl in cyberpunk. Just the kind of odd stuff you’d expect from Untold.
Whisker Floater – Overshoe 3 [Whisker Floater Bandcamp] Scattered Order – Daisy and Lucy [Red Raw Bandcamp]
Nick Shimmin for many years hosted experimental music performances at The People’s Republic of Camperdown, and a year or two ago moved the republic to a converted church in Earlwood dubbed The Red House. The venue itself, beautifully setup with impeccable sound provided by Matt McGuigan, has run into licensing problems (which they are working on!), but many performances there have been recorded, giving one a kind of a chance at re-living the experience (and hearing some unique music). Sydney postpunk/post-industrial/experimental electronic legends Scattered Order performed there at least a couple of times, including a memorable tribute to founding member Michael Tee, who sadly passed away in 2024. Co-founder Mitch Jones and longtime fellow traveller Shane Fahey (a continuing member of SO since their 2009 reformation) made Continue in 2025, using material from Tee, and when they came to launch it at the Red House, they invited Sydney experimental mainstay Matthew Syres to join on treated guitar. That performance is documented on SO CONTINUES at the Red House. Fahey also collaborates with Mitch Jones’ wife Drusilla Johnson-Jones, a wonderful visual and musical artist who was also a member of SO for many years, under the cheeky name Whisker Floater, making complex, internally-interactive, beautifully weird electronic music.
more eaze – sentence structure in the country [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
When Mari Maurice Rubio first came up on my radar as more eaze, she was making luscious, glitchy electronic music on a compilation from Lillerne Tapes. Her 2018 album Conveyance took a similar approach – samples of classical & other music smeared & glitched into abstracted brushes of audio-painting. But Rubio is a great violinist and a brilliant string arranger, a great improviser and a great producer – for example, she co-produced the new album of her partner, the genius Wendy Eisenberg, and her string arrangements help make Eisenberg’s songs even more gorgeous. But a few weeks before Eisenberg’s album is released, Rubio’s own latest solo album is out on Thrill Jockey, which by the way is the perfect home for it. In their different ways, both albums are homages to what the two have found as a couple, although their duo whait is going to give us more of a picture of what they can do when neither is leading (Sydney’s Andrew Khedoori is giving them a place to explore this as part of his Residence label/project). So sentence structure in the country is a very more eaze kind of thing, and when Eisenberg appears (on electric guitar here on the title track), it’s in service to that vision – as with the other guests, including Alice Gerlach aka alice does computer music. What a “more eaze kind of thing” is is everything all at once – folk & country-infused acoustic arrangements, harsh glitch-edits, vocoded vocals, lilting melodies. It makes as much and as little sense as the words “sentence structure in the country” do, and that’s great – who needs music to make sense? Not me.
Jessica Roch – Par [Across The Horizon/Bandcamp]
US label Northern Spy has for a few years now run an interesting program called Across The Horizon, co-founded with musician & podcaster Bob Holmes (SUSS, Ambient Country Podcast). Each year when the series is running, 8 musicians curate a wedge of new music, each of them commissioning 2 other artists along with themselves. So each release features three new tracks, which fit broadly into merged genres such as Holmes’ “ambient country”, as well as perhaps ambient classical, ambient folk, ambient jazz… Each new drop is initially subscriber-only, so the latest now-public selection was curated by LA musician & artist Cynthia Bernard aka marine eyes. Alongside her own work is the underwater exotica of Lauren Helene Green and a piece from London musician Jessica Roch, whose track initially sounds like a familiar kind of piano-ambient (albeit beginning in reverse), but almost immediately the simple piano refrain blossoms outward with electronic filligree, and multi-tracked violins hint at expanded harmonisations. In between phrases, the piano glitches and stutters, and warps with tape delay. The piece’s juxtaposition of hesitancy and romanticism, acoustic instruments and electronics, instinctively expresses the jostle of emotions as-yet unprocessed in the hours after Roche’s father’s funeral. It’s deeply touching.
Electro-acoustic sound-manipulation rubs shoulders with extended techniques on acoustic instruments, while influences from ’80s industrial, ’70s krautrock, ’00s folktronica and ’90s dub techno can be found alongside indie rock, breakbeat, and good ol’ classic freeform noise. It’s Sunday. It’s Utility Fog.
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Bibi Club – A Different Light [Secret City Records/Bandcamp] Bibi Club – Le Styx [Secret City Records/Bandcamp]
The Montréal duo of Adèle Trottier-Rivard and Nicolas Basque are Bibi Club, a name which presumably makes more sense to French speakers, but their songs are split fairly evenly between French & English. Their quirky indie pop, part jangly guitars and part electronic, owes something to the British-French band Stereolab (who they covered last year), as well as Francophone indie music that often gets tagged with “chanson”, the French word for “song”. From their lovely third album Amaro, I started tonight with a driving piece of postpunk that clearly shows their debt to Blonde Redhead, which segues into an instrumental that loops part of the krautrocky groove and introduces hovering drones and sampled operatic voices. This might just be the emotional avant-garde indie rock you’ve been looking for.
The Notwist – The Turning [Morr Music/Bandcamp]
In 2001, German band The Notwist, having begun as hardcore punks and transitioned through emo to some kind of indie rock, released their breakthrough album Neon Golden – a significant date only in that a couple of years later was when I started Utility Fog on the newly-official FBi Radio. Arguably with their 1998 album Shrink, The Notwist were well on the way to their hybrid genre that we perhaps briefly called “indietronica”, with influences from IDM, drum’n’bass and techno as well as krautrock combined with indie rock. Meanwhile, Thomas Morr founded his Morr Music label in 1999, which quickly became a home to a similar clade of indie/IDM, shoegaze-tronic bands – many of which involved members of The Notwist, particularly brothers Micha and Markus Acher. It wasn’t actually until 2020 that The Notwist themselves signed to Morr Music, but it’s always seemed their spiritual home. The band’s new album News from Planet Zombie is perhaps their most “rock” album for some time, intentionally splitting from their studio-mediated workflows by bringing the whole band together to write & perform these songs in person. 10 years ago Superheroes, Ghostvillains + Stuff documented The Notwist’s live setup at the time, with modular synths & other electronics prominent alongside the (kraut)rock instruments; here the electronics are less prominent but clearly an integral part of whatever The Notwist does; but it’s the undeniable, distinctive songwriting that can’t help but shine through.
Daniel Jumpertz – I Would Never Do That To You [Feral Media/Bandcamp]
In the early days of Utility Fog/FBi, Danny Jumpertz was a strong supporter of Utility Fog, and the indietronica, folktronica and postrock sides of the playlists were reflected in the sorts of music he released on his Feral Media label. For a while now the in-the-family indie rock band Clairaudience has been his main musical outlet, but he’s now begun releasing a cache of solo songs, I believe once a month, starting with the stirring “Everything Is Lost” and now followed by the pretty krautrocky “I Would Never Do That To You“. From Jumpertz’ time in NYC, producer Abe Seiferth contributes “wig-out Moog mayhem”, which you’ll recognize as soon as you listen to the song! Looking forward to more in coming months.
Praed – Assarab السراب [Ruptured Records/Bandcamp/Annihaya Records/Bandcamp]
Now 20 years old, Praed is the combination of two Lebanese musicians, clarinettist/composer/more Paed Conca (part-Switzerland-based) and bassist/sound-artist/more Raed Yassin (part Berlin-based). The music – sometimes billed as “PRAED Orchestra” with friends from the MENA/SWANA region and Europe – draws from Egyptian street music (Shaabi, now mutating into Mahraganat) and the traditional Sufi spiritual/trance music Mulid, both in their ways based around hypnotic, repetitive beats. It’s always psychedelic, swirling, extremely rhythmic, a free jazz of Lebanese & Egyptian music. While new album Al Wahem الوهم is back in duo formation, they are still joined by many talented Beirut musicians (the album was recorded at Tunefork Studios in Beirut). As always this music is full of joy and yearning, and neverending forward motion.
Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – Living Emojis [Dekmantel/Bandcamp] Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – Easing The Hearts [Dekmantel/Bandcamp]
In 2020, French beatmaker Simo Cell and Egyptian singer, poet, trumpeter, composer & more Abdullah Miniawy teamed up for a frankly game-changing mini-album, Kill Me Or Negotiate. Simo’s music is equal parts UK bass, US bass and French club, transforming the Arabic vocals and jazz-trained trumpet of Miniawy, who had collaborated extensively with the post-dubstep kraut-tronic band Carl Gari (not to mention his own laptop experiments, no longer available online). The pair are not afraid to abstract Miniawy’s lyrics into cut-up samples, nor are they afraid to let him fly with gorgeous melodicism. Their second outing together is the brilliant album Dying Is The Internet, whose title couldn’t be more apposite really – it feels like it’s bringing the world down with it, and while you probably couldn’t blame Netanyahu on the internet, surely Trumpianism is as much a product of what the internet’s become as, well, all the other shit. There’s real humanity in these tracks, as well as futuristic technology; high drama and low grooves. If the internet’s dying, let this be the future.
Damos Room – Molars [Limbo Tapes/Bandcamp]
I’m not sure who Damos is or what’s in their Room, but signs point to it being three guys: Luke Miles, Nicholas Elson & Huw Oleskar. I’ve just found out (because they told me, nothing underhand) that Huw Oleskar is also known as Elijah Minnelli, responsible for some of the most interesting and lovely dub-folk hybrids in recent times, ostensibly under the auspices of Breadminster County Council. As for Damos Room, you can find a series of fantastic, weirdly-shaped releases on their Bandcamp, including a mixtape of two bizarre 40-minute radio pieces, some quasi-singles of abstracted dub/spoken-word/electronics, and the experimental electronics of their collaboration with rapper LYAM, which I played on this show a few years back. The band finally have an album coming, and Walk With The Militia… is not that album. It’s a mixtape, entirely in keeping with the mystery what all this is about. It collects a whole lot of weird shit, but it’s all dub-based experimental electronics, with Minnelli’s distinctive spoken word & low-key singing, odd radio interludes and noise bits and so on. It’s really fantastic. No doubt All Shall Go, the real album, will be well worth bending your ear to when it comes out in only a few weeks!
New Age Doom featuring H.R. – We’re All the Same [We Are Busy Bodies/Bandcamp]
Having previously collaborated with Lee “Scratch” Perry, Canadian collective New Age Doom know a thing or two about combining freeform psychdedelic noise with dub. Their latest collaborator H.R. co-founded Bad Brains, some of the earliest hardcore punks who combined rasta philosophy and reggae with their punk music. It appears that for all the peace-and-love preaching, H.R.’s fundamentalist religious outlook inherits the homophobia rampant in Rastafarianism, but that’s not apparent in these songs, thankfully. This is swirling dub with some excellent electric violin from Alina Petrova.
DJ Sprinter – Floaterr [unreleased]
Oslo’s DJ Sprinter has popped up in the last year and a bit as an absolutey top-tier producer of bass-heavy breakbeat. You can find a whole lot on his Bandcamp, but the other day he invited followers to message him on Instagram for some unreleased cuts, so I did, and I’ve brought you one tonight. Just as great as the plethora of stuff he’s already put out there, irresistible grooves.
Rotate – Hot Glue [YUKU/Bandcamp]
UK producer Rotate is also known as RWB, making dubsteppy, garagey cuts galore. Not sure what warrants being a Rotate track rather than RWB, but the more serious, full releases, especially for other labels, seem to be under Rotate. This is still absolutely bass music, wobbly and spacey, with just enough of that experimental edge to be very comfortable in the YUKU yuniverse.
Teerath Majumder – Dust [Infrequent Seams/Bandcamp]
Bangladeshi artist Teerath Majumder, based in Chicago, creates interdisciplinary art & music that explores the interaction between audience and artist/composer through technology, as well as producing music & sound-design in collaboration with other artists, directors & musicians. His new album Dust To Dust, however, is an entirely solo work, from the music & production to mastering & artwork. Here there are flittery synths, Bangladeshi samples at times, and when there are beats they skitter and thump. This album may have come from Majumder’s contemplation of death, but it’s teeming with life.
MATA – Adolf Hippy [CÆR (Chiærichetti Æditori Recordings)/Bandcamp] MATA – Compro Oro Et Laboro [CÆR (Chiærichetti Æditori Recordings)/Bandcamp]
Where did this even come from? Well… Italy. Italy is where the trio named MATA come from, making industrial/noise/glitch which could almost look like a typical rock band – guitar/vocals, bass, drums – if you ignore the electronics through everything. This is the kind of music where anything can happen, often grating, often strangely catchy? The label CÆR is the musical arm of Chiærichetti Æditori Recordings who also publish an underground comix anthology called LEGIONE, and I look forward to reading some when the package finally reaches Australia.
Noémi Büchi – dislocated bodies (feat. Anushka Chkheidze) [-OUS/Bandcamp]
With last year’s excellent Liquid Bones EP, Swiss/French composer Noémi Büchi shifted from dense electronic orchestrations to a somewhat lighter touch, with rhythm more to the forefront. Her new album Exuvie is body music made of deceptively simple parts that are bent and shuffled into unexpected shapes. It’s great, not least on this track, a collaboration with Georgian composer & producer Anushka Chkheidze.
Roman Rofalski – Monday [Oscillations/Bandcamp]
German musician Roman Rofalski is a classically-trained pianist and a jazz musician, releasing recordings of contemporary composers as well as jazz piano trios. He’s also interested in extending these forms into electronic realms, and we’ve heard him on this show as one half of electro-acoustic duo Saving Kaiser. In 2024, we heard him deconstructing his piano on the album Fractal, released by London-based Oscillations Music. He’s now followed that up with Awaiting PM, combining the inside & out of a new grand piano with distorted Akai MPC 2000 beats. There’s a sense of tension and expectation to these tracks, which were recorded while awaiting the birth of his son. It’s excellent stuff, and I’m glad to note that he’s got another release coming hot on its heels, which you’ll hear here in a couple of weeks.
Autistici & datewithdeath – Grusch’s Biologics [Audiobulb/Bandcamp]
Sheffield-based sound-artist David Newman has run the Audiobulb label since the netlabel days of the early 2000s, and for a similar length of time he’s made exploratory sounds as Autistici of a similar aesthetic to the label – post-IDM beats, glitchy sound processing, an electro-acoustic approach to found sounds, field recordings and instrumentation. Artistic collaboration has been a big part of what Newman’s done as Autistici and Volume Objects – the 2010 remix album Resonating Wires was a favourite release back then, but even his “solo” releases have often featured guests. Last year, two of three “familiarity” EPs came out from Autistici on Audiobulb – Familiarity Folded and Familiarity Enfolded, both of which featured simpatico either artists remixing Autistici or working with him, creating meticulous sound-art, sometimes with beats, usually mixing acoustic sounds with electronic approaches. Those two releases have limited CD editions; the third, out now, is Familiarity Unfolded, which can be found on vinyl as well. One of the best collaborations is with St. Augustine, Florida musician & writer Travis Johnson, who worked for many years under the alias datewithdeath, as well as running the Poverty Electronics label. Following an illness, datewithdeath has been retired – although not without clearing the cupboards with some stunning collections, including the collaboration/remix album Culotte Sine and the posthumous (so to speak) album Apple Tree Brightness. Johnson can now be found prioritising writing with Frolic Press, but there’s still a musical arm – Frolic Press Recordings that will feature his & others’ work – forthcoming is a novella from Aidan Baker of Nadja, with an accompanying solo album out for pre-order now. In any case, the glitchy & detailed “Grusch’s Biologics” is one of my favourite tracks from Autistici’s trio of releases.
Bruce Russell – The Letter [Marhaug Forlag/Bandcamp] Lasse Marhaug – Turntable Oil Blues [Marhaug Forlag/Bandcamp]
This one’s a huuuge deal in the noise world, or at least to me it is. Bruce Russell is a member of New Zealand’s iconic experimental rock trio TheDead C, a highly influential band across indie, shoegaze and noise. Lasse Marhaug is a giant of the noise scene, and also a producer of many surprising Norwegian & other artists including Korean jazz/experimental cellist Okkyung Lee, Jenny Hval and Kelly Lee Owens. As befits the noise scene, both are very intuitive workers with sound, and that’s where part of the joy of this release comes from. It’s actually their second collaboration, but Re-Make Re-Model came out of the idea of remixing each other, and thus is released as a 2CD set, each credited to the artist who completed the work (the remixer). It also comes in a beautiful open-spine hardcover book published by Marhaug (whose Marhaug Forlag also publishes the Personal Best magazine of noise music – the 2011 first issue of which included a feature on Bruce Russell), with photos & essays by both musicians about their relationship and their musical practice, and fascinating, detailed descriptions of how each track was made. Thus: Bruce Russell’s “The Letter” is based on Marhaug’s 2005 work Carnival of Souls, which is a soundtrack to a short film called The Letter. Russell chopped out tasty bits of the original, which he re-pitched, pushed the right & left channels out of sync & further tampered with. The results are deeply sinister. On Marhaug’s “Turntable Oil Blues”, he’s messing with Russell’s “Nigerian Delta Oil Well Blues”, a short track from his 21st Century Field Hollers And Prison Songs LP. The funny thing is, the ascending & descending slides aren’t a turntable slowing down & speeding up – they’re in Russell’s track. This is as directly a remix as it is a destruction of the original work, progressively distorting the original (played at the wrong speed) over a number of run-throughs. Ultimately noise is doing whatever the fuck you want with sound, and finding some artistry in it, and these two are past masters of the art of noise.
Nabelóse – Niriides [Trost/Bandcamp]
Pianist Ingrid Schmoliner and French horn player Elena Kakaliagou have played together for about a decade, making music that sits somewhere between contemporary composition and free jazz. Both also contribute voice to their Nabelóse project, including layers of spoken work, and – with prepared piano and horn that produces breathy wind as often as warm, slow melodies – their third album HAAR is a thing of mysterious beauty. Their previous albums – 2017’s Nabelóse and 2022’s OMOKENTRO – feature more singing that draws from their respective folk musics (Schmoliner is also a yodeler), but share this album’s patience and sonic exploration.
Rosenau & Sanborn – Harm [Psychic Hotline/Bandcamp] Chris Rosenau of Collections of Colonies of Bees and Volcano Choir, and Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso have been friends for a long time, and made their first EP under their surnames back in 2019. The sequel (what Americans would call a “sophomore” effort) shares with the first a love of folky guitar, studio electronics and incidental found-sound. To me this is bliss, as it recalls the laptop folk of The Books and other airy, homespun folktronica of the early ’00s. Absolutely a little gem, do not miss.
Booker Stardrum – Inside Sounds [WeJazz/Bandcamp]
New York percussionist & composer Booker Stardrum is a member of Los Angeles (post-)jazz supergroup SML, and music runs in his family – his surname is adopted from the names of his parents, both avant-garde musicians themselves: flautist Stefani Starin and microtonal composer & instrument maker Dean Drummond. So Close-up On The Outside might be expected to be an avant-garde release, and in some ways it is, but in a very friendly, warm manner. Many friends from SML and the broader scene appear as guests on these compositions, but they flit in & out around careful edits; the main focus is on pitched and un-pitched wooden percussion, and glinting loops. There’s a low-key, positive outlook to the album which is uncommon and welcome.
Richard Pike – I. “What Happened” [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
Sydney’s Richard Pike, alum of PVT, is now based in London. He can be found in various ensembles, including with Joe Quirke, with whom he co-runs the Salmon Universe label, and under his own name has been making ambient-techno-hybrid-orchestral soundtracks for TV. Outside of that, he’s released solo music under the alias DEEP LEARNING on Oxtail Recordings, based around subtly rhythmic glitchy loops, but now returns to his own name for album that mixes late-night piano and glitchy dub-techno. It’s not surprising to discover that the creation of this music was directly triggered by the death of Ryuichi Sakamoto, but the music takes darker paths than the Japanese master. The full album’s out later in May, but the singles so far are rich & murky.
An experimental focus tonight, with a lot of contemporary jazz that slides into electronic experimentalism, contemporary classical and almost-pop songwriting. There are a few beats of the very leftfield sort, and some abstractly beautiful sound-art. I’m premiering two tracks from saxophonist & sound-artist Caroline Davis from her incredible album Fallows, which is out on Ropeadope on March 27th.
LISTEN AGAIN & you might blow your mind. Stream on demand @ fbi.radio, podcast here.
Kee Avil – un
Marianna Sangita Angeletaki Røe & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra – Trouble
Karoline Wallace – Klokkestein
David/David – sedem
Taroug – Najet
Azimuth Compass – Anti-social Climbers
vic bang – Curva
POD & Edward Richards – Temporal Loop Transcendance
GLOK/Timothy Clerkin – Nothing Ever Reprise (Xylitol Remix)
Nondi_ – Rejection Lily
Nondi_ – Leaded Pipe
Nondi_ – Leather Guitar
Ben Vince – Sentient Kinetics
Caroline Davis – Flower Sway
Caroline Davis – Mars
Loom & Thread – Spheres
Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske – Intuition, Nimbus
Machinefabriek – Stemcassette
Machinefabriek – Cirkel 2
Amuleto – Fumo Ogni Cosa, Vento Che Ha Fame
Toninato & Thiessen – Hot blood flow
Helena – Hera
Elisabeth Klinck & Nils Vermeulen – Cocoon
Tension between live performance and studio editing, acoustic music & electronic, folk styles and modern tonight – all very Utility Fog, just how we love it.
LISTEN AGAIN to soak in the vibes. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast right here.
Momoko Gill – When Palestine Is Free
Momoko Gill – Test A Small Area
Tanya Tagaq – Fuck War
Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – Pixelated
Dro Carey – Tawny Track
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – prjct16 [140.61 D#m]
FUCK!LACRÈME – Welcome To My Crib
Pugilist – waveform 19
Red Sky – Today’s Lament
Geode – Heron
yunis – Kutla
Fox & Chimpo – Mash Work
Gooooose – Relay
Placid Angles – We Cry With You
Arthur Clees – IDA_23
Arthur Clees – Oh, What a Mess We’ve Done
Puscha – (In)a(de)quatic
Puscha – Sycophantasm
Charles Amirkhanian – II – In Praise Of The Venerable Piano Roll
Charles Amirkhanian – V – Hopper Popper
Rosenau & Sanborn – Walrus
Bushranger – Under a Blue Moon
Runa Cara – Little Girl
Runa Cara – Freja Gudine
Claire Edwardes & Missy Mazzoli – Orizzonte
Passepartout Duo – From Trondheim