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Playlist 14.06.26
Songs heavy & dark, glitchy & light, raps in English & Turkish, beats bassy & percussive, jazz upbeat & minimal… It’s Utility Fog!
LISTEN AGAIN, you might have missed something the first time? Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
YHWH Nailgun – Burns [AD93/Bandcamp]
YHWH Nailgun – Innocent Sigh [AD93/Bandcamp]
The super-intense sound of YHWH Nailgun is hard to pin down – they get described as a band where each member is playing a different genre. There’s something of hardcore punk, some kind of prog tendencies, drumming that’s like live jungle, but hints of 80s new romantic somehow? So what do you do if you’ve got so many ideas? Distill them down into an 11-minute album apparently! Magazine presents 10 songs in 11 minutes, and while none is quite Napalm Death’s “You Suffer” (but why?), the title track is only 35 second long. And while one in particular sounds like it cuts off just as it’s beginning, others manage to make a complete statement in only 1:20. I’m not sure this release will change people’s minds in either direction, but for my money YHWH Nailgun are doing something genuinely interesting & new.
Big|Brave – verdure [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Big|Brave – holding tongue [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Montréal’s Big|Brave haven’t ever really sat still in terms of musical genre, once being lumped in with metal, clearly owing much to the postrock of their hometown, and last year making an abstract, vocal-less album called OST (that preceded the movie that it may be a sountrack to). On the metal side, mind you, they made an incredible album with the body that somehow sounded most like… folk-rock? In any case, for the stunning in grief or hope, the vocals & instruments of Robin Wattie and Matt Ball, combined with the bass of MY DISCO‘s Liam Andrews and electronics of Machines With Magnets‘ Seth Manchester, have resulted in the heaviest work yet from the band, leaning deeply into controlled distortion. Wattie’s voice holds the grief as expressively as ever, while some of the hope may be expressed in the pulsating instrumental “holding tongue”. Proving once again that Big|Brave are one of the most vital bands currently in existence.
Tujiko Noriko – Only on Love [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Back in March I was fortunate to be invited to DJ at White Bay Power Station for a Liquid Architecture event headlined by the brilliant Japanese glitch/ambient-pop pioneer, Tujiko Noriko. Since 2001, Noriko has made fragile, experimental pop songs and ambient compositions that sit comfortably in the glitch world that was to a large extent originated by the Viennese label Mego who picked up her debut album. In the intervening 2½ decades, Noriko has made music with acoustic improvisers, beatmakers, sound-artists, and of course put out lots more of her own stuff, including more song-based music, soundtracks, more ambient-leaning works. While her latest full album for (Editions) Mego, 2013’s Crépuscule I & II was very much on the ambient soundtrackerly vibe, Noriko also released last year an incredible debut of a trio with Adrian Corker and George Barton that they’ve named CxBxT, whose album .After is songs & beats, if no less experimental for it. So PON, Noriko’s latest album and a long time coming, sits somewhere between those poles – ambient pop, I guess. Quite romantic, Japanesely twinkly, with strange mood-shifts & disembodied voices ensuring you don’t get too complacent.
Mariam Wallentin & Vestnorsk Jazzensemble – Blanket Dance [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Mariam Wallentin is one of the most extraordinary singers of our age – known for her postrock/pop/experimental duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums with her husband, drummer Andreas Werliin, and for her immense, emotive vocals with Fire! Orchestra, the Nordic free jazz big band centred around the Swedish trio Fire! formed by Werliin along with bassist Johan Berthling and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. Wallentin also has a solo project as Mariam The Believer which is perhaps more pop but still involves many experimental/jazz musicians. Here she is working with the Vestnorsk Jazzensemble, a jazz ensemble based in Bergen in the west of Norway, who commissioned an earlier collaboration with Wallentin reworking her older material. But new album Spring Flood, now released on key Norwegian label Hubro, is all new material, and it’s a bit of a wonder – of course it is, considering the calbire of the musicians and Wallentin’s genius at beautiful songwriting that sites well with contemporary & free jazz. With ideas originating from Wallentin’s stay on Basel, on the banks of the Rhine, which were then developed collaboratively with the ensemble, the arrangements go from abstract sound-environments to intimate jazz to rhythmic big band to heavy rock. Quite something!
Laura Misch – Kairos [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
Annoyingly, London saxophonist, singer & sound-artist Laura Misch is often described as “Tom Misch‘s sister”, an artist of some fame who I’d only glancingly heard of. Maybe it’s helpful for some, but it seems particularly intrusive with female artists (then again, it’s also ironic as Tom Misch dropped out of public life for a while as he was troubled by his own fame). On Lithic, Laura Misch has created an album worthy of the elemental forces that inspired it – particularly water patiently eroding stone away to produce rock formations, caves, cliffs and pools. Misch took her saxophone and field recording equipment out to those places on the edge of land & sea and allowed the primal energies of the natural world to imprint themselves on her music. Pusating waves of synths, layers of saxophone and her cool, smooth voice combine into unusual songs that sometimes venture towards chill-out dancefloors, sometimes jazz that dissolves into field recordings. Beautiful.
Love Is Yes – Motionless [Kit Records/Bandcamp]
Dutch duo Love Is Yes make a kind of lo-fi indie pop music that’s sometimes so minimalist it’s barely there. Guitar, keyboards and voice might seemingly be the main building blocks, but stuttering glitches take over from melodies, and songs only deign to begin halfway through gentle collages of sound. Ghosts and More Ghosts is a disarmingly appropriate name for their second album, and disarming is an appropriate description for the music too.
ear – Threads [A24 Music/Bandcamp]
ear – F [A24 Music/Bandcamp]
If Love Is Yes are nodding at the most minimal of the postrock-meets-indietronica of Utility Fog’s early years, the surprising sensation that is US duo ear can’t help but recall the halcyon days of weirdo laptop-folk & laptop indie-pop of The Books, Lucky Dragons and the like – Utility Fog’s bread-and-butter in those early-to-mid-oughts. Members Yaelle Avtan & Jonah Paz met studying fine arts at Bard College in New York – not surprising, as art school has given rise to many pioneering experimental musicians. Songs sound throwaway but burrow into your ears, break into breakcore or get stuck in glitches. So anyway, it’s no surprise that I’m into ear’s new album Rumspringa and last year’s The Most Dear and The Future; what’s more puzzling is why so many young people are now (although the new one is released by A24 Music, music arm of the indie film studio). Is it… cool to be weird? (Yes)
Alif Hilal – Reality (Lyra’s Dhikr al-Qayyum Rework) [7K/Bandcamp]
The artist previously known as Lyra Pramuk is now going by Alif Hilal, a name reflecting of her new faith in Islam. Her work has always had a devotional aspect, rooted in voice, with electronically-mediated chorals and, on last year’s Hymnal (see?), beautiful string arrangements cut up & processed along with the vocals. Just as Hilal is announcing her new name, she releases Hymnal (Resung), a selection of remixes featuring the brilliant Djrum, Verraco, Laurel Halo & John Tejada and more. But her own remix also pulls last year’s songs into a territory at once more abstract and more rhythmic than the originals. A great collection all in all.
Wu-Lu & POiSON ANNA – West Window [Warp Records/Wu-Lu Bandcamp/POiSON ANNA Bandcamp]
Wu-Lu‘s 2022 album Loggerhead was one of the more notable debuts on Warp Records in recent years, combining UK hip-hop with indie rock/punk and detours via breakcore and dub. Now on Bakerz Dozen (a short album that’s definitely not 13 tracks long), Wu-Lu teams up with a similarly genre-agnostic artist, POiSON ANNA, for a tour through unpredictability. And yes, again there’ll be jungle beats morphed into rock guitars, r’n’b & trip-hop side-by-side with noise. Recommended.
Jesse Draxler – Ctrl Alt Del ft. HOLLY & Ho99o9 [RIP ID]
LA-based visual artist, filmmaker & musician Jesse Draxler has released the first single from his upcoming album/project Tongue of Angels, featuring hip-hop/punk/metal duo Ho99o9 and beatmaker HOLLY. It sounds a lot like Ho99o9 (pronounced “horror”), which is a very good thing. I’m not clear on what Draxler’s contribution musically is, but you can see him painting to the track on the video here.
X.A.Cute – Paradox feat. Ethnique Punch [X.A.Cute Bandcamp]
German electronic trio X.A.Cute make experimental hip-hop with samplers, synths and turntables, collaborating widely with rappers & other musicians. Their latest EP Paradox features two tracks with Turkish rapper Ethnique Punch, who we’ve heard quite a lot with Istanbul producer Grup Ses, including a whole album together in 2019 and an appearance last year as well. His hard-hitting vocals adorn two tracks driven by drum machines and percussion, each of which is given a remix and a dub as well.
Carl Gari – Disco Lights feat. Sensational [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
Carl Gari – Wünschelrute [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
Most of us know German band Carl Gari from their incredibly strong albums made with Egyptian singer/trumpeter/poet/composer Abdullah Miniawy, on AD93 and Amphibian Records. Between those two releases, the band & singer released a live album on Molten Moods, and it’s to that label that Carl Gari now return for their self-titled album. There’s a lot of moody bass music here, filtered through jungle, krautrocky techno and more, with some excellent vocal collaborations including the great UK singer/rapper/musician Coby Sey, Munich singer/producer Polygonia, hip-hop experimentalist Will Brooks of dälek, and experimental rap pioneer Sensational.
Rotgland – Skux (ft. Cherry Rype) [Rotgland Bandcamp]
Once upon a time, a man called Andrew Maxam had a popular show on fbi.radio called Liquid Electric, and he also made electronic music under the name Loopsnake. These days he is living in Dubai, and found himself wanting to rewind to his earliest days of music production, when he’d been making dubstep & related bass genres; thus was Rotgland born, and the first two tracks are available now. “Skux”‘s bass snarls and jittery beats are enhanced by a sample from Eora/Sydney alt-pop singer Cherry Rype.
Low End Activist – Ultramarine [XCPT/Bandcamp]
UK bass music shapeshifter, social history chronicler, and boss of Sneaker Sound System, BRUK and other labels, Low End Activist here appears on the very on-point Italian bass label XCPT with JH Versions. The neon-soaked jazz samples smeared through the productions give a clue to who JH is here, although you couldn’t clearly identify specific Jon Hassell tracks (maybe a superfan could). This is vintage LEA: sparse reworkings of tropes from jungle, drum’n’bass & other bass genres, eschewing “jazzy jungle” for a darker Photek vibe.
Rutger Zuydervelt – Not Good Enough [Gusstaff Records/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Dutch sound-artist Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek has by now made a number of soundtracks for the Netherlands-based Iranian coreographer Roshanak Morrowatian. Alphabets of the Flesh is an EP, released on 10″ vinyl via Polish label Gusstaff Records. The percussion-led last track is a particular highlight, but there’s beautiful electro-acoustic sound manipulation throughout.
Rosa Brunello – Line Unbroken [Domanda Music/Bandcamp]
Speaking of percussion, the new album from Italian bassist Rosa Brunello, We Are Surging Waters, mixes jazz with a love of SWANA musics and quite a lot of electronics. I love how “Line Unbroken” begins with Brunello’s bass, but immediately the horns say “Hi!” and then it’s all about the percussion. And at the 3 minute mark dub echoes briefly swamp the horns and the percussions switches to full drumkit. There’s lots more fun to found throughout the album.
Alexander Noice – Third Corso [Orenda Records/Bandcamp]
Here’s an electro-acoustic tour de force from LA-based composer & guitarist Alexander Noice, which takes in jazz. art rock & contemporary composition, but all very electronically-mediated. Noice’s guitar, keyboards & piano and voice, joined by saxophones on a number of tracks, pulse & flicker through exuberant ostinati – mechanised arpeggios and scales – while sometimes drum machines hammer along with them, and garbled vocal samples interject. In amongst all the programming are sweeping melodic interludes, but even there the sampler’s voice is strong, chopping and re-triggering sounds, and thumping 808 bass & scintillating keyboards are never far away. A joyous wonderland.
Berndt / Schmidt – The Sound of Glink [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos, is quite prolific outside of the beloved duo, with a varied solo career as The Soft Pink Truth as well as various collaborations. It’s less common to hear solo or other non-Matmos music from Drew’s partner Martin M.C. Schmidt, so the new album Cloud Machines, which finds Schmidt working with Baltimore experimental mainstay John Berndt, should make us sit up and listen. The humour and weirdness of Matmos is very much present, but its exploratory sound takes in Krautrock studio experimentation, postpunk out-rock and any other leftfield musical non-traditions.
Driftwood – Restless Earth [Room40/Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne clarinettist Aviva Endean and guitarist Nick Ashwood formed Driftwood around a pair of reed organs microtonally tuned in just intonation, with Ashwood’s guitar tuned to match the very otherworldly tones. On their second album Maps, electronics subtly emphasise bass frequencies and process the organ drones while Endean’s clarinet soars over them. Ashwood’s guitar itself sounds deeply (beautifully) odd, in its unfamiliar tuning, and the repeating figures create a hallucinatory, blurred effect. Eerily beauitful.
Microfiche – Cascades [Earshift Music/Bandcamp]
One of Eora/Sydney’s best jazz bands, Microfiche, have released now their third album With Time. The album marks 10 years together as a band, and bids farewell to pianist/keyboardist Novak Manojlovic – replaced live now by the brilliant guitarist Hilary Geddes, although Novak still plays on the album, along with clarinettist/violist Phillippa Murphy-Haste, bassist Max Alduca, trumpeter Nick Calligeros, saxophonist Sam Gill (recently awarded the 2025 Freedman Jazz Fellowship) and drummer Holly Conner (who you’ve heard filling in on this show on a number of occasions). All of them are interested in music across genre, all are composers and improvisers and producers one way or other. It’s a really special album, showcasing each musician’s talents as well as their hard-earned skill improvising & composing as a group. “Cascades” is a great example – written by bassist Alduca with the group, it slowly seeps out of mysterious electronic tones, with a melody played unison on all wind instruments, somehow remaining tentative, until Manojlovic’s aleatoric piano scatters notes hither & thither, and kick & snare start a halting beat. It becomes clear that the bass isn’t absent, but rather is providing those spectral tones, slowly emerging into shuddering substantiality. Superb.
Clay Teeth – How Can I Help U? [Bush Meditation/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Greg Stone is a longtime friend of the show, starting off in postrock/alt-hip-hop/indietronic band Underlapper, who were played endlessly in the mid-2000s to early 2010s. Sometime around the end of Underlapper, Greg & Matt from the band formed a trio with me called Haunts, which incidentally will be releasing our debut album later this year. But it’s been a long time for Greg to journey towards making music solo, and I’ve been excited by Clay Teeth ever since I heard the first demos. The thing is, the Clay Teeth demos – and at least one as-yet unreleased album – were all based around the tribal, minimalist drum’n’bass championed by the Samurai label, so this album is a weird introduction to the project! Weird, but truly gorgeous: The Fading Light pivots the techno element of that drum’n’bass stuff into ambient techno, and the darkness is softly illuminated. These 6 tracks, which captivated Eli Murray aka Gentleforce, suit his Bush Meditation label to a tee – they’re meditations on existence in the twilight. You need this.
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By Peter HolloSongs heavy & dark, glitchy & light, raps in English & Turkish, beats bassy & percussive, jazz upbeat & minimal… It’s Utility Fog!
LISTEN AGAIN, you might have missed something the first time? Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here.
YHWH Nailgun – Burns [AD93/Bandcamp]
YHWH Nailgun – Innocent Sigh [AD93/Bandcamp]
The super-intense sound of YHWH Nailgun is hard to pin down – they get described as a band where each member is playing a different genre. There’s something of hardcore punk, some kind of prog tendencies, drumming that’s like live jungle, but hints of 80s new romantic somehow? So what do you do if you’ve got so many ideas? Distill them down into an 11-minute album apparently! Magazine presents 10 songs in 11 minutes, and while none is quite Napalm Death’s “You Suffer” (but why?), the title track is only 35 second long. And while one in particular sounds like it cuts off just as it’s beginning, others manage to make a complete statement in only 1:20. I’m not sure this release will change people’s minds in either direction, but for my money YHWH Nailgun are doing something genuinely interesting & new.
Big|Brave – verdure [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Big|Brave – holding tongue [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Montréal’s Big|Brave haven’t ever really sat still in terms of musical genre, once being lumped in with metal, clearly owing much to the postrock of their hometown, and last year making an abstract, vocal-less album called OST (that preceded the movie that it may be a sountrack to). On the metal side, mind you, they made an incredible album with the body that somehow sounded most like… folk-rock? In any case, for the stunning in grief or hope, the vocals & instruments of Robin Wattie and Matt Ball, combined with the bass of MY DISCO‘s Liam Andrews and electronics of Machines With Magnets‘ Seth Manchester, have resulted in the heaviest work yet from the band, leaning deeply into controlled distortion. Wattie’s voice holds the grief as expressively as ever, while some of the hope may be expressed in the pulsating instrumental “holding tongue”. Proving once again that Big|Brave are one of the most vital bands currently in existence.
Tujiko Noriko – Only on Love [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Back in March I was fortunate to be invited to DJ at White Bay Power Station for a Liquid Architecture event headlined by the brilliant Japanese glitch/ambient-pop pioneer, Tujiko Noriko. Since 2001, Noriko has made fragile, experimental pop songs and ambient compositions that sit comfortably in the glitch world that was to a large extent originated by the Viennese label Mego who picked up her debut album. In the intervening 2½ decades, Noriko has made music with acoustic improvisers, beatmakers, sound-artists, and of course put out lots more of her own stuff, including more song-based music, soundtracks, more ambient-leaning works. While her latest full album for (Editions) Mego, 2013’s Crépuscule I & II was very much on the ambient soundtrackerly vibe, Noriko also released last year an incredible debut of a trio with Adrian Corker and George Barton that they’ve named CxBxT, whose album .After is songs & beats, if no less experimental for it. So PON, Noriko’s latest album and a long time coming, sits somewhere between those poles – ambient pop, I guess. Quite romantic, Japanesely twinkly, with strange mood-shifts & disembodied voices ensuring you don’t get too complacent.
Mariam Wallentin & Vestnorsk Jazzensemble – Blanket Dance [Hubro/Bandcamp]
Mariam Wallentin is one of the most extraordinary singers of our age – known for her postrock/pop/experimental duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums with her husband, drummer Andreas Werliin, and for her immense, emotive vocals with Fire! Orchestra, the Nordic free jazz big band centred around the Swedish trio Fire! formed by Werliin along with bassist Johan Berthling and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. Wallentin also has a solo project as Mariam The Believer which is perhaps more pop but still involves many experimental/jazz musicians. Here she is working with the Vestnorsk Jazzensemble, a jazz ensemble based in Bergen in the west of Norway, who commissioned an earlier collaboration with Wallentin reworking her older material. But new album Spring Flood, now released on key Norwegian label Hubro, is all new material, and it’s a bit of a wonder – of course it is, considering the calbire of the musicians and Wallentin’s genius at beautiful songwriting that sites well with contemporary & free jazz. With ideas originating from Wallentin’s stay on Basel, on the banks of the Rhine, which were then developed collaboratively with the ensemble, the arrangements go from abstract sound-environments to intimate jazz to rhythmic big band to heavy rock. Quite something!
Laura Misch – Kairos [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
Annoyingly, London saxophonist, singer & sound-artist Laura Misch is often described as “Tom Misch‘s sister”, an artist of some fame who I’d only glancingly heard of. Maybe it’s helpful for some, but it seems particularly intrusive with female artists (then again, it’s also ironic as Tom Misch dropped out of public life for a while as he was troubled by his own fame). On Lithic, Laura Misch has created an album worthy of the elemental forces that inspired it – particularly water patiently eroding stone away to produce rock formations, caves, cliffs and pools. Misch took her saxophone and field recording equipment out to those places on the edge of land & sea and allowed the primal energies of the natural world to imprint themselves on her music. Pusating waves of synths, layers of saxophone and her cool, smooth voice combine into unusual songs that sometimes venture towards chill-out dancefloors, sometimes jazz that dissolves into field recordings. Beautiful.
Love Is Yes – Motionless [Kit Records/Bandcamp]
Dutch duo Love Is Yes make a kind of lo-fi indie pop music that’s sometimes so minimalist it’s barely there. Guitar, keyboards and voice might seemingly be the main building blocks, but stuttering glitches take over from melodies, and songs only deign to begin halfway through gentle collages of sound. Ghosts and More Ghosts is a disarmingly appropriate name for their second album, and disarming is an appropriate description for the music too.
ear – Threads [A24 Music/Bandcamp]
ear – F [A24 Music/Bandcamp]
If Love Is Yes are nodding at the most minimal of the postrock-meets-indietronica of Utility Fog’s early years, the surprising sensation that is US duo ear can’t help but recall the halcyon days of weirdo laptop-folk & laptop indie-pop of The Books, Lucky Dragons and the like – Utility Fog’s bread-and-butter in those early-to-mid-oughts. Members Yaelle Avtan & Jonah Paz met studying fine arts at Bard College in New York – not surprising, as art school has given rise to many pioneering experimental musicians. Songs sound throwaway but burrow into your ears, break into breakcore or get stuck in glitches. So anyway, it’s no surprise that I’m into ear’s new album Rumspringa and last year’s The Most Dear and The Future; what’s more puzzling is why so many young people are now (although the new one is released by A24 Music, music arm of the indie film studio). Is it… cool to be weird? (Yes)
Alif Hilal – Reality (Lyra’s Dhikr al-Qayyum Rework) [7K/Bandcamp]
The artist previously known as Lyra Pramuk is now going by Alif Hilal, a name reflecting of her new faith in Islam. Her work has always had a devotional aspect, rooted in voice, with electronically-mediated chorals and, on last year’s Hymnal (see?), beautiful string arrangements cut up & processed along with the vocals. Just as Hilal is announcing her new name, she releases Hymnal (Resung), a selection of remixes featuring the brilliant Djrum, Verraco, Laurel Halo & John Tejada and more. But her own remix also pulls last year’s songs into a territory at once more abstract and more rhythmic than the originals. A great collection all in all.
Wu-Lu & POiSON ANNA – West Window [Warp Records/Wu-Lu Bandcamp/POiSON ANNA Bandcamp]
Wu-Lu‘s 2022 album Loggerhead was one of the more notable debuts on Warp Records in recent years, combining UK hip-hop with indie rock/punk and detours via breakcore and dub. Now on Bakerz Dozen (a short album that’s definitely not 13 tracks long), Wu-Lu teams up with a similarly genre-agnostic artist, POiSON ANNA, for a tour through unpredictability. And yes, again there’ll be jungle beats morphed into rock guitars, r’n’b & trip-hop side-by-side with noise. Recommended.
Jesse Draxler – Ctrl Alt Del ft. HOLLY & Ho99o9 [RIP ID]
LA-based visual artist, filmmaker & musician Jesse Draxler has released the first single from his upcoming album/project Tongue of Angels, featuring hip-hop/punk/metal duo Ho99o9 and beatmaker HOLLY. It sounds a lot like Ho99o9 (pronounced “horror”), which is a very good thing. I’m not clear on what Draxler’s contribution musically is, but you can see him painting to the track on the video here.
X.A.Cute – Paradox feat. Ethnique Punch [X.A.Cute Bandcamp]
German electronic trio X.A.Cute make experimental hip-hop with samplers, synths and turntables, collaborating widely with rappers & other musicians. Their latest EP Paradox features two tracks with Turkish rapper Ethnique Punch, who we’ve heard quite a lot with Istanbul producer Grup Ses, including a whole album together in 2019 and an appearance last year as well. His hard-hitting vocals adorn two tracks driven by drum machines and percussion, each of which is given a remix and a dub as well.
Carl Gari – Disco Lights feat. Sensational [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
Carl Gari – Wünschelrute [Molten Moods/Bandcamp]
Most of us know German band Carl Gari from their incredibly strong albums made with Egyptian singer/trumpeter/poet/composer Abdullah Miniawy, on AD93 and Amphibian Records. Between those two releases, the band & singer released a live album on Molten Moods, and it’s to that label that Carl Gari now return for their self-titled album. There’s a lot of moody bass music here, filtered through jungle, krautrocky techno and more, with some excellent vocal collaborations including the great UK singer/rapper/musician Coby Sey, Munich singer/producer Polygonia, hip-hop experimentalist Will Brooks of dälek, and experimental rap pioneer Sensational.
Rotgland – Skux (ft. Cherry Rype) [Rotgland Bandcamp]
Once upon a time, a man called Andrew Maxam had a popular show on fbi.radio called Liquid Electric, and he also made electronic music under the name Loopsnake. These days he is living in Dubai, and found himself wanting to rewind to his earliest days of music production, when he’d been making dubstep & related bass genres; thus was Rotgland born, and the first two tracks are available now. “Skux”‘s bass snarls and jittery beats are enhanced by a sample from Eora/Sydney alt-pop singer Cherry Rype.
Low End Activist – Ultramarine [XCPT/Bandcamp]
UK bass music shapeshifter, social history chronicler, and boss of Sneaker Sound System, BRUK and other labels, Low End Activist here appears on the very on-point Italian bass label XCPT with JH Versions. The neon-soaked jazz samples smeared through the productions give a clue to who JH is here, although you couldn’t clearly identify specific Jon Hassell tracks (maybe a superfan could). This is vintage LEA: sparse reworkings of tropes from jungle, drum’n’bass & other bass genres, eschewing “jazzy jungle” for a darker Photek vibe.
Rutger Zuydervelt – Not Good Enough [Gusstaff Records/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
Dutch sound-artist Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek has by now made a number of soundtracks for the Netherlands-based Iranian coreographer Roshanak Morrowatian. Alphabets of the Flesh is an EP, released on 10″ vinyl via Polish label Gusstaff Records. The percussion-led last track is a particular highlight, but there’s beautiful electro-acoustic sound manipulation throughout.
Rosa Brunello – Line Unbroken [Domanda Music/Bandcamp]
Speaking of percussion, the new album from Italian bassist Rosa Brunello, We Are Surging Waters, mixes jazz with a love of SWANA musics and quite a lot of electronics. I love how “Line Unbroken” begins with Brunello’s bass, but immediately the horns say “Hi!” and then it’s all about the percussion. And at the 3 minute mark dub echoes briefly swamp the horns and the percussions switches to full drumkit. There’s lots more fun to found throughout the album.
Alexander Noice – Third Corso [Orenda Records/Bandcamp]
Here’s an electro-acoustic tour de force from LA-based composer & guitarist Alexander Noice, which takes in jazz. art rock & contemporary composition, but all very electronically-mediated. Noice’s guitar, keyboards & piano and voice, joined by saxophones on a number of tracks, pulse & flicker through exuberant ostinati – mechanised arpeggios and scales – while sometimes drum machines hammer along with them, and garbled vocal samples interject. In amongst all the programming are sweeping melodic interludes, but even there the sampler’s voice is strong, chopping and re-triggering sounds, and thumping 808 bass & scintillating keyboards are never far away. A joyous wonderland.
Berndt / Schmidt – The Sound of Glink [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos, is quite prolific outside of the beloved duo, with a varied solo career as The Soft Pink Truth as well as various collaborations. It’s less common to hear solo or other non-Matmos music from Drew’s partner Martin M.C. Schmidt, so the new album Cloud Machines, which finds Schmidt working with Baltimore experimental mainstay John Berndt, should make us sit up and listen. The humour and weirdness of Matmos is very much present, but its exploratory sound takes in Krautrock studio experimentation, postpunk out-rock and any other leftfield musical non-traditions.
Driftwood – Restless Earth [Room40/Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne clarinettist Aviva Endean and guitarist Nick Ashwood formed Driftwood around a pair of reed organs microtonally tuned in just intonation, with Ashwood’s guitar tuned to match the very otherworldly tones. On their second album Maps, electronics subtly emphasise bass frequencies and process the organ drones while Endean’s clarinet soars over them. Ashwood’s guitar itself sounds deeply (beautifully) odd, in its unfamiliar tuning, and the repeating figures create a hallucinatory, blurred effect. Eerily beauitful.
Microfiche – Cascades [Earshift Music/Bandcamp]
One of Eora/Sydney’s best jazz bands, Microfiche, have released now their third album With Time. The album marks 10 years together as a band, and bids farewell to pianist/keyboardist Novak Manojlovic – replaced live now by the brilliant guitarist Hilary Geddes, although Novak still plays on the album, along with clarinettist/violist Phillippa Murphy-Haste, bassist Max Alduca, trumpeter Nick Calligeros, saxophonist Sam Gill (recently awarded the 2025 Freedman Jazz Fellowship) and drummer Holly Conner (who you’ve heard filling in on this show on a number of occasions). All of them are interested in music across genre, all are composers and improvisers and producers one way or other. It’s a really special album, showcasing each musician’s talents as well as their hard-earned skill improvising & composing as a group. “Cascades” is a great example – written by bassist Alduca with the group, it slowly seeps out of mysterious electronic tones, with a melody played unison on all wind instruments, somehow remaining tentative, until Manojlovic’s aleatoric piano scatters notes hither & thither, and kick & snare start a halting beat. It becomes clear that the bass isn’t absent, but rather is providing those spectral tones, slowly emerging into shuddering substantiality. Superb.
Clay Teeth – How Can I Help U? [Bush Meditation/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Greg Stone is a longtime friend of the show, starting off in postrock/alt-hip-hop/indietronic band Underlapper, who were played endlessly in the mid-2000s to early 2010s. Sometime around the end of Underlapper, Greg & Matt from the band formed a trio with me called Haunts, which incidentally will be releasing our debut album later this year. But it’s been a long time for Greg to journey towards making music solo, and I’ve been excited by Clay Teeth ever since I heard the first demos. The thing is, the Clay Teeth demos – and at least one as-yet unreleased album – were all based around the tribal, minimalist drum’n’bass championed by the Samurai label, so this album is a weird introduction to the project! Weird, but truly gorgeous: The Fading Light pivots the techno element of that drum’n’bass stuff into ambient techno, and the darkness is softly illuminated. These 6 tracks, which captivated Eli Murray aka Gentleforce, suit his Bush Meditation label to a tee – they’re meditations on existence in the twilight. You need this.
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