Utility Fog

By Peter Hollo

Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms.... more

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August 17, 2025 Playlist 17.08.25
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.
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – Cracked [Bios Contrast Bandcamp]
Only a month and a half after his SSAC42 album came out on Mexico’s Infinite Machine, Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das is back with the controlled chaos of “Cracked”, with jittery beats never wanting to rest.
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.
Braille x Pleaxure – Mirror Boys [Hotflush Recordings/Bandcamp]
Whirling breakbeat’n’bass from New York’s Praveen Sharma aka Braille and Baltimore’s Grant Wheeler aka Pleaxure, released on Paul Rose aka Scuba’s Hotflush Recordings. The pulsing synths and skittery beats here recall nothing less than the self-titled album from Sepalcure, Praveen’s collaboration with Machinedrum.
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.
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August 10, 2025 Playlist 10.08.25
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.
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August 03, 2025 Playlist 03.08.25
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.
LISTEN AGAIN to these sounds specially collected for your pleasure. Stream on demand on fbi.radio, podcast here.
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 the last few years, 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 worked extensively 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.
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July 27, 2025 Playlist 27.07.25
Uncanny simulacra abound through the music tonight. What is real?
LISTEN AGAIN and just add to the confusion. Stream on demand via fbi.radio, podcast here.
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 early work as Hrvatski 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.
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July 20, 2025 Playlist 20.07.25
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.
Alienationist – Ghosts in the Grid [Alienationist Bandcamp]
Your Data Is Funnier Than You: Fragments is the new EP from Berlin-based producer Alienationist, following on from May’s Your Data Is Funnier Than You: Echoes. On both you’ll find agitated, mashed jungle breaks nestling with electro drum machines, and unsettled ambient sound design, evoking the contradictions of our hyper-connected present.
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.
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July 13, 2025 Playlist 13.07.25
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 jungle archive collections 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 worked extensively 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.
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July 06, 2025 Playlist 06.07.25
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.
Charbel Haber, Nicolás Jaar and Sary Moussa – Part 2 [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Speaking of Ruptured, here’s their latest release, an absolute stunner from three great musicians: Lebanese guitarist Charbel Haber, Chilean-American musician Nicolás Jaar playing bass clarinet, and electronic musician/composer Sary Moussa. Just last week we heard Sary Moussa’s latest album Wind, Again, released on Nicolás Jaar’s Other People label. This album, titled Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day, was recorded live at Tunefork Studios in Beirut, while Israel was bombarding the country. Haber & Jaar improvised together, while Moussa was processing a live feed from both instruments. It’s otherworldly, beautiful, occasionally harrowing… compulsory listening.
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.
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June 29, 2025 Playlist 29.06.25
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.
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June 22, 2025 Playlist 22.06.25
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!
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June 15, 2025 Playlist 15.06.25
He’s baaaack!
OMG. That was 6 weeks. A very full 6 weeks. So much to play you, so much to talk about.
But I wanna extend HUUUUGE thanks to the seven beautiful people who filled in while I was away, putting so much effort & care into their curation. Holly Conner on May the 4th, Béla Hajdu on May the 11th, Zoe Jungist on May the 18th, Giulio Caleffi on May the 25th, Sophie Gordon & Krishtie Mofazzal‘s incredible Planet µ 30th special on June the 1st, and finally Lilly Grainger doing a marathon on June the 8th with her own M5 following. Every one of those episodes was brilliant radio – please do check them all out.
And LISTEN AGAIN to tonight’s show too, stream on demand from FBi or podcast here.
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.
Wrecked Lightship – Delinquent Spirits [Peak Oil/Bandcamp]
Adam Winchester and Laurie Appleblim Osborne debuted their haunted future as Wrecked Lightship in 2022 with the Drowned Aquarium album, where the wreckage – of raves past & future – seemed distinctly underwater. New album Drained Strands – their second for Peak Oil – is their best yet, with dubbed-out, deconstructed jungle/drum’n’bass/dubstep taking you into outer space.
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…
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