Playlist 17.11.24

Utility Fog

If you’re looking for avant-pop, avant-Egyptian, sound-art, beat tapes, Iranian electronic, industrial bass, dubstep, idm, jungle, hit em, breakcore, drone, contemporary classical, electro-acoustic or just good ol’-fashioned postfolkrocktronica, you’ve come to the right place!

LISTEN AGAIN and get your bearings. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.

Maud The Moth – Siphonophores (single edit) [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, her forthcoming solo album The Distaff is out in February next year, and is announced with a superb first single and a gorgeous underwater video. “Siphonophores” is a dramatic, emotive song featuring Amaya’s high voice and patient piano patterns, bass drum and sweeping cymbal rolls, until distorted synths scream in the first bridge. 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).

Penelope Trappes – Sleep [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
Also out next year (not until April) is A Requiem, the first album on One Little Independent from the UK-based Australian musician Penelope Trappes, whos Penelope trilogy made a big impression between 2017 and 2021. In some ways Trappes upends songwriting, her voice existing in wispy, treacherous ambience. If the first single “Sleep” is anything to go by, the songs on this album are even more restrained, with barely anything except some scraped cello notes and threads of sound at the edge of hearing, until we hear the few stentorian chords that stand in place of a chorus. Watch the incredible video and you’ll understand the song’s evocation of sleep paralysis in the person of the “sleep hag”.

Abdullah Miniawy – Fall down wiseman يسقط الرأي الحكيم (Awrah) ﴾عورة﴿ [Hundebiss/Bandcamp]
Abdullah Miniawy – Jayhano Al Kawahi جيهن الكوهِ [Hundebiss/Bandcamp]
Egyptian vocalist, poet, trumpeter and producer Abdullah Miniawy has been responsible for a remarkable range of music for some years: the kraut-dub of his work with German trio Carl Gari; the mutant bass music with trumpet & vocals with French producer Simo Cell; the cross-cultural experimental work with Copenhagen-based DJ Hvad; and the brilliant sax-trumpet-cello jazz with Miniawy’s spoken & sung poetry in Le Cri Du Caire. But new album NigmaEnigma أ​ن​ي​ج​م ا​ل​ن​َ​ج​م is an entirely solo affair: other than some electronic experiments and poetry self-released a while ago, this is Miniawy’s first solo album. It’s very much centred around his voice, often singing melodies bare of any musical accompaniment – with field recordings, amelodic electronic textures and vocal processing. Some tracks are made of murmered spoken word with fragments of melody; at other times there are rhythmic proto-industrial scrapes and clunks. This is very avant-garde stuff, but also deeply moving, even for those of us who don’t understand Arabic.

Taylor Deupree – The Anthology of Fragments [Nettwerk/Bandcamp]
The Ash EP from Taylor Deupree, now out in full, is the third in a series following Eev and Aer, released on the Canadian indie label Nettwerk. There’s so much depth to Deupree’s music, fine control over sonic detail – not surprising as he’s a highly respected mastering engineer. The ideas of “Ash” and “fragments” seem apposite here, a sooty residue revealing the shape of sounds now gone.

Church Andrews & Matt Davies – Aquilia [Health/Bandcamp]
As usual, the best way to appreciate the alchemy of Church Andrews & Matt Davies is to watch them perform this stuff live: the cut-down drumkit of Matt Davies somehow feeding into the minimal modular synth to create very organic electronic beats. Their latest EP Aquilia also features two more tasty tracks available only on the vinyl.

Unknown Artist – أنا لحبيبي (I am for my lover) [Metro Beirut Records/Bandcamp]
Unknown Artist – علينا نغير (We have to change) [Metro Beirut Records/Bandcamp]
Beats From The Levant – A Tape For Support is exactly what it says – a beat tape made by various unnamed artists from the Levant. Proceeds are split 50/50 between various relief efforts in Lebanon, and Medical Aid for Palestinians. There are plenty of head-nodding beats here sampling from usual hip-hop fare, but the most interesting tracks use samples of Arabic music, chopping them into beats for the heads.

Rojin Sharafi – Kavire Queer [PTP/Bandcamp]
Out of an incredibly rich peer group, Rojin Sharafi has consistently been one of the most notable – and uncompromising – young artists from Iran (whether in the country or the diaspora) in the 5 years since her debut on Ata “Sote” Ebtekar’s Zabte Sote in 2021. Admirably, Sharafi has never stuck to just one thing. She will make challenging pieces of noisy abstract electronics, but then haul us back in with almost-danceable beats, or on 2021’s KARIZ, electro-acoustic pieces featuring santour and prepared piano. O.O.Orifice follows three years later on the mighty PTP, but at the end of last year we heard a wonderful new trio, HUUUM, featuring Sharafi’s electronics with the vocals of Omid Darvish and Astrid Wiesinger‘s saxophone. Her new solo album, though, is possibly her best yet, again jumbling up noisy electronics, experimental beats and microtonal instruments – as well as Sharafi’s spoken word, which was a revelation on her incredible collaboration with Kœnig, ج​ن​گ​، خ​و​د​ِ ح​ق​ی​ق​ت ا​س​ت​‎ (war is the unveiling of the truth). Essential.

Atsushi Izumi & Fatwires – Ga [Holotone/Bandcamp]
Here’s the first track from a new duo collaboration on gregarious Italian label Holotone. Japanese industrial dub/techno producer Atsushi Izumi‘s latest solo album Schismogenesis came out in May on Ohm Resistance. Fatwires is the dub/bass sound project of bass polymath John Eckhardt, as accomplished with contemporary classical double bass as he is with dub or other genres. They promise a heavy, noisy album next year, but the KISEN KONGOU EP leans into the heavy dub favoured by Izumi, not far off from the sound of The Bug. Prepare your bassbins!

Delta – Doorstop [99cts/Bandcamp]
There’s still room for ye olde skool dubstep though, here coming from Birmingham producer Delta, with syncopated, hammering beats that veer between grime and dubstep, and plenty of wub-wubs.

Mattr – Field [Mattr Bandcamp]
I’ve been waiting for a while to play this single from Birmingham’s Mattr (now London-based). He’s had a great run of slickly-produced IDM gear, and “Field” does not disappoint on those stakes, with skittery drill’n’bass beats and lovely melodic synths.

Shadow Club – Phaedra 2 (Midnight Dubs Remix) [Echo Chamber Sound]
New Zealand producer RQ is releasing 3 EPs on the Naarm/Melbourne label Echo Chamber Sound under the name Shadow Club. It’s very accomplished jungle-inclined drum’n’bass. Here’s a remix from fellow Aotearoan Midnight Dubs.

EPROM – Thank You, Dream Girl [Tabula Rasa Records/Bandcamp]
EPROM – The Search [Tabula Rasa Records/Bandcamp]
Gaszia – Big Hit [Tabula Rasa Records/Bandcamp]
One of the less interesting things about Thank You, Dream Girl. is that this compilation and the semi-joke genre “hit em” were inspired by a tweet from Drew Daniel, back in July, when the platform was already in an Elon Musk-triggered death spiral. And now, just in time for the promised compilation to come out, having done the job Musk required of it and helped elect a fascist government, X is being abandoned by most right-thinking individuals (come join me and Drew on Bluesky!) Anyway, if you didn’t already know, Drew, aka The Soft Pink Truth and one half of Matmos, tweeted:

had a dream I was at a rave talking to a girl and she told me about a genre called “hit em” that is in 5/4 time at 212 bpm with super crunched out sounds thank you dream girl

and it immediately went viral and inspired a wide range of people to try their hand at this breakcore-adjacent genre. One such person early on was EPROM, who not only dramatises the tweet at the beginning of this compilation, but contributes one of the best tracks. Not long afterwards, Travis Stewart aka Machinedrum suggested a compilation of hit em tracks, although a bunch of my friends and acquaintances actually beat them to the punch. Nevertheless, some four months later, the promised compilation is sweet and nicely varied. After EPROM, I decided to play one of the less beat-focused tracks, from Salt Lake City-based Gaszia. Also note the rad Robert Beatty art.

Ghostmemory – Aeroquarium (feat. lunar polygon) [Tabula Rasa Records/Bandcamp]
Ghostmemory – infoSuperhighway [Tabula Rasa Records/Bandcamp]
The hit em comp is released by Tabula Rasa Records, a San Francisco-based “not a record label” who, earlier this year, released an eclectic tribute to rave from Ghostmemory, which I discovered courtesy of… Bleep maybe? From my two selections you may assume Revolution 352 is all about jungle & breakcore, but listen through and you’ll find trance, techno, downtempo and ambient here too. Incredibly well-produced, get amongst it.

clutrrglych – alibaba brainchip implosion [Retrac Recordings/Bandcamp]
Fawn Soto – Fern Gone One Crazy [Retrac Recordings/Bandcamp]
Last week when I played some brilliant new material from Caybee Calabash, I noted that he’s one half of bagel fanclub, and River Everett, the other half, runs the wild & wooly Retrac Recordings label (other than sounding cool, the label’s name is River’s deadname backwards). For the occasion of Retrac’s 5th birthday, they have released RETRAC 5ELEK, a 25-track double vinyl compilation. One LP represents the label’s breakcore inclinations, and the other their “more surreal, dream-like, hypnagogic works”, as the label describes them. Both halves are excellent, and if this kind of relentless music sometimes gets too much, you’ll likely find the next track takes a sharp left turn into something at least a little bit different…
As we find, in this current age, an embarrassment of riches in dancefloor-oriented jungle, the exaggerated speed of breakcore, and its relative disinterest in halftime basslines, can might seem to be missing the point. But its existence right now also suggests that it’s quite content to be its own thing, keeping counsel with variants of noise as well as melodic IDM. Really, this compilation is super fun, and you probably need a bit of that right now.

Daniel O’Toole – Five [Cascade Rumble Records]
Naarm/Melbourne artist Daniel O’Toole works across multiple disciplines, including painting, video art, installations and more. He was previously known as Ears/Captain Earwax. The sound of flowers is a collection of tracks that could be loosely branded as ambient, with soft-focus melodic synths and warbling pads that, at times, collapse in on themselves. What’s fascinating is that this live performance was generated by an instrument O’Toole designed called the “Particle plate”, and once you have the image of riceand pingpong balls dropping on to a metal place, you really can hear the way the physical triggers interact with the music. Check it out in action here. Pretty mind-bending.

Madeleine Cocolas x Vintage Credenza – Rather Cold [4000 Records/Bandcamp]
Jumping up to Meanjin/Brisbane now for another unique idea. Vintage Credenza is John Russell, the man behind the very gregarious 4000 Records. The new project inaugurated with the Drone Prompts I EP finds him reclaiming the idea of the “prompt” from AI’s facsimile of creativity. He provided a selection of fellow Meanjin artists with a specially-chosen drone fragment and asked them to create something from it. The debut EP really goes the gamut, including Tidsguiden’s vocal samples and manic beats, YEARNS’ synth maximalism and Spirit Lights’ drone crescendo, but of course Madeleine Cocolas works her subtle magic on the source, with piano almost drowning in white noise, and other hinted orchestrations all struggling through the snowstorm of drone – “Rather Cold” indeed.

Maja Osojnik & Black Page Orchestra – Doorways #09 (01) [col legno/Mamka Bandcamp]
Maja Osojnik & Maiken Beer – Blende #01 (04) [col legno/Mamka Bandcamp]
It’s interesting to see how typically-“classical” art like musique concrète and acousmatic music is expressed in this age of mass access to electronic production. Some cleaves closely to “composed” music, including the way that the electronics are used; others happily draw from the contemporary sounds of glitch, noise and post-club music, as well as free jazz and other “non-classical” genres.
Here we have excerpts from two works by Vienna-based, Slovenian-born composer Maja Osojnik, who has worked between contemporary and early music, jazz and free improv; sound-art and the experimental rock of Broken.Heart.Collector. This album finds her working with Black Page Orchestra, who specialise in the more unorthodox end of contemporary composed (and improvised) music. Doorways #09 asks the orchestra to enter into a minimalist sound-world, cryptically derived from field recordings inside a forest. From the field recordings, Osojnik constructed a score that instructs the performers what to play, but gives them the scope to decide for how long, and when to change. On top of this performance there’s the electronic editing, which adds a further layer to the questions of performance and mimicry – interpretation of composed instructions, restructured by the composer herself.
In Blende #01, Black Page Orchestra cellist Maiken Beer interprets a piece by Osojnik addressing the duality of “eternal love” and “the inability to receive love”. The cello is joined by samples of voice, recorders and flutes, contributing contrasting tones to the stringed instrument. The electronics are less obvious here… except when they’re not.

Andrea Belfi & Jules Reidy – dessus [Marionette/Bandcamp]
Two brilliant Berlin-based musicians from elsewhere: Jules Reidy is an Australian guitarist who’s been based in Berlin for some time now, and specialises in just-intonation-tuned guitars, giving a sparkling and eerie sound to which Reidy adds effects and increasingly also vocoded vocals. Andrea Belfi, originally from Verona, is a drummer and electronic musician who’s played with the likes of Thom Yorke and Carla Bozulich among many, many others, who released an amazing electro-acoustic solo album through Room40 some 12 years ago (and many more before & after). This is an unexpected dream collaboration between two instinctive, thoughtful composers who are masters of their craft. On the A-side the pair begin refined and reserved, with minimalist patterns on guitar and sparse percussion, slowly getting more complex on the longer piece. On the flip, Reidy’s guitars ring out and are captured by electronics which fling them into higher octaves or scatter them, while Belfi’s drums hold things down more solidly. Experimental though this is, it’s very welcoming music.

civic hall – III (Edit) [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
Craig Tattersall is dear to many from his time with Hood and The Remote Viewer, and he’s long been a purveyor of minimalist, disintegrating electronics and electro-acoustics. Euan Millar-Mcmeeken led Scottish indie band The Kays Lavelle in the ’00s up to 2010, and has collaborated with Matthew Collings as Graveyard Tapes among many others, as well as making solo music as Glacis – and he released a stunning album with glitched piano and vocals last year under his own name. So a collaborative work between these two was always going to be special. The two musicians’ imprints are found in differing degrees throughout – on some tracks the piano is lost in a fog of tape degradation, and vocals whisper from another room through static and synths; elsewhere, McMeeken sings melancholy songs with piano front & centre. It’s a touching, elusive work.

Listen again — ~208MB