Playlist 08.12.24

Utility Fog

Last new music of the year! I mean, not the last new music to come out this year, but for me it is, as the next 3 shows will be my best-of round-up of 2024!
There are a few mega compilations this week, some crazy beats, beautiful songs, granulated textures…

LISTEN AGAIN before it’s too late! (It’s never too late). Stream on demand via fbi.radio, podcast here.

Devendra Banhart + Blake Mills + Beverly Glenn-Copeland – You Don’t Know Me [Red Hot/Bandcamp]
Jlin + Moor Mother – We’ve Been Through So Much (Grief) [Red Hot/Bandcamp]
The Red Hot organisation continue their mission, which started as a way of raising money and awareness about AIDS, with a huge compilation called TRA​И​Ƨ​A. It’s a project which began in 2021, but it couldn’t come at a more suitable time, when the trans hate which has characterised British politics for some time became a major part of the far-right platform which brought Donald Trump to power again. It’s a scary and dangerous time to be transexual or non-binary. On this compilation, over 100 artist have contributed songs, many in collaboration (there are only 46 tracks, although André 3000’s is over 26 minutes long and boasts the adorable title “Something Is Happening And I May Not Fully Understand But I’m Happy To Stand For The Understanding (Awakening)”). Although it’s weighted towards song, of some sort or other, many of these songs find experimental artists (claire rousay, Rachika Nayar) working with singers. There are many trans artists here, and many allies. The brave and groundbreaking Beverly Glenn-Copeland appears on three songs, and I love the sweetness and oddness of his song with Devendra Banhart and Blake Mills. At the other end of the/a(?) spectrum, Jlin proves herself, if more proof were needed, to be one of the most versatile talents to come – technically – out of the footwork world, with heaving classical-meets-electronic orchestrations accompanying Moor Mother at her most contemplative.

Jack Colwell – Don’t Cry Those Tears (Fennesz Remake) [Jack Colwell Bandcamp]
Fennesz – Personare [Touch/Bandcamp]
Every few years, Fennesz releases another new album, and I wonder how far it will stray from the guitar-strum tonalities he settled on sometime around Endless Summer. Through Venice (which was given an expanded 20th anniversary re-issue this year), then Black Sea, by the time Seven Stars came around it was starting to feel like he had nothing much new to say. But every time a new album appears, I find something of interest to draw me in – even if he’s somehow gone from the abrasive iconoclasm of the Instrument EP and Hotel Paral.lel album to something resembling warm, fuzzy easy listening.
Anyway, the release of Mosaic reminded me of the highly loved, greatly mourned Jack Colwell, who passed away this year, and who managed, with great joy, to secure a Fennesz remix for one of his songs back in 2016.

Bana Haffar – Echoes Sketch [Tunefork Studios/Bandcamp]
Sandy Chamoun – Hawaltou حاولت [Tunefork Studios/Bandcamp]
I’ve written in these pages already about the work that Tunefork Studios and their friends at the Beirut Synth Center have been doing materially helping displaced families whose homes were destroyed or who had to flee the attacks on southern Lebanon (and parts of Beirut itself) by Israel. Despite a ceasefire being declared, Israel hasn’t really stopped – and ghastly though it might be, Lebanon and Syria have provided convenient distractions from the continued ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and what Amnesty International has now declared to be a genocide.
Well, Tunefork and Beirut Synth Center’s fundraising is now supported by a phenomenal compilation they put together of 41 tracks (almost all exclusive) from Lebanese artists, called Land 01, which I urge you to check out. It features all the Lebanese artists I’ve played recently on this show – Yara Asmar, Julia Sabra, Fadi Tabbal, Mayssa Jallad, Anthony Sahyoun and Jad Atoui who we heard only last week with Sandy Chamoun – and also Julia Holter, who is 1/4 Lebanese. Many other notable Lebanese experimental artists are here too. I had to play the granular fizz of Bana Haffar‘s “Echoes Sketch”, gelling so nicely with Fennesz. And Sandy Chamoun‘s track has all the industrial distortion and vocal passion of her trio work with Ghadr released last week. It’s a beauty.

Seefeel – Tail Trails [Warp/Bandcamp]
A little early Xmas present for idm-postrock fans. Seefeel‘s first release in 13 years, Everything Squared, came out earlier this year – a lovely selection of dubby, skeletal grooves and glitched vocal samples. And now, unannounced, here’s a second release, Squared Roots. This one has a CD release available only from the label. To my mind, it’s better than its predecessor: just great bass-laden grooves and the classic Seefeel sound. So, looked at from some angles, it’s been a good year actually.

Rayen Minor – Pewarah [Pasamoan/Bandcamp]
ACA – Bebo [Pasamoan/Bandcamp]
Indonesia is home to plenty of amazing experimental music – in the electronic space I can think of Melati ESP, Nova Ruth, Gabber Modus Operandi and many others, but it’s still great to discover a whole cohort of new artists doing weird shit. Pasamoan Art Initiated is a platform for noise & experimental musicians in Sumatra (Indonesia’s largest island and one the largest islands in the world). Penggiat Bunyi “Barisan II” is, unsurprisingly, their second compilation of the year documenting sound-art from the region, and all 9 tracks are excellent. Rayen Minor‘s “Pewarah” is a glitchy composition that tries to convey the inexpressible love for one’s mother. And ACA‘s breakcoreish track processes Indonesian voices and field recordings loosely based on the now-rarely practiced West Sumatran death ritual called Ratok Paninggahan.

LOIF – Grottos [General Merchant/Bandcamp]
Different Shades – Asmara [General Merchant/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney crew General Merchant see out the year with the fantastic compilation Metal Form Suite. Celebrating artists connected with the DIY party scene, it features ambient techno, refracted jungle, downtempo and much of that forest-floor murky jungle-techno championed by gi in her music and on her World of Knots comp a couple of months ago. Naarm’s LOIF takes us back to early-to-mid ’90s FSOL territory, sumptuous synths, gurgles and breakbeats. And Malaysia-via-Naarm DJ Different Shades (now London-based) brings reverberant ambient jungle that exemplifies an utterly “now” hybrid scene.

Dungen – Vad Är Du För En [Future Retro]
OK, this is a straaaaange one. Strange and so cool. Dungen‘s a name you may/ought to know, just not in this context. Gustav Ejstes is the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist behind the beloved Swedish psych-rock band of that name, and although it’s a shape-changing act, it’s never been about programmed beats and electronic constructions. One day in 2017, Ejstes discovered some jungle records at a hallowed dance record store in Stockholm, and went from there to obsessing over ’90s rave tapes. He began making tracks himself, with a modded MPC 3000 (classic sampler for beatmakers), but then by luck Tim Reaper and Finnish d’n’b legend DJ Sofa were in Stockholm and heard him DJing – without knowing his background in psych rock! And thus we have ended up with Tim Reaper releasing Otis, a 5-track jungle EP from Dungen, on his Future Retro label. It’s melodic in the way of the early jungle-influenced IDM (µ-Ziq, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and the like), but with a proper ‘ardcore and jungle thing going. Fun as heck.

µ-Ziq – Approaching Lifetime [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Speaking of… Mike Paradinas’ µ-Ziq album from earlier this year, Grush, was a brilliant successor to his 2022 material that looked back at his jungle-influenced period of 25 years earlier. Vinyl copies sold by the label direct came with a bonus cassette, but for the rest of us, Mike P has briefly(?) made Extra Grush available as a download. It’s more of the same really – excellent melodic IDM, some of which is jungle-fuelled, some of which is slower breakbeats and other stuff. Just unmissable – and don’t forget to download the FLACs in case Mike carries through on his promise to take it down again!

UFO! – WORTH IT [Joog Music/Bandcamp]
Edwin Garro aka UFO! really does go back to the early days of jungle & drum’n’bass in the Bay Area around San Francisco, and he’s been releasing stuff on a variety of labels in a variety of d’n’b & jungle styles ever since. Oakland label Joog Music just released two short & sharp tracks on the The Fever Block EP, which are slower even than early ’90s jungle, but still on a jungle wavelength somehow. Both tracks are very enjoyable, but you should also check the “ambient dub versions” on UFO!’s own Bandcamp.

King Softy – C-Dial [Electroménager/Bandcamp]
Amos Turner, co-founder of Glasgow’s INDEX:Records, is based in Berlin, but apparently is originally from New Zealand? BIGGUPS. Anyhow, as King Softy he makes music that’s self-aware and embedded in today’s underground club & post-vaporwave massive, but has distinct roots in ’90s trip-hop. Paris label Electroménager (“household appliances”) have released his first full-length album Scanner’s Plateau, full of wonky trip-hop & squelchily-aliased beats that hides its most unhinged moments in the middle. “Altitude Sick” inserts brilliantly out-of-place vocal stabs within its rolling, swung beats, while “C-Dial” has a pulsating bassline and abandoned shopping mall acoustics until the skittery d’n’b-techno beats emerge. It’s cyberpunk-as-fuck, in the sense of an ancient future now eerily prescient…

Laura MacFarlane – Echolalia (Dreamrave Breakdown Mix by Gurnin Spacecase) [Laura MacFarlane Bandcamp]
Here’s a crazy remix of a solo track by Laura MacFarlane, of Naarm/Melbourne postrock/indie legends ninetynine and riot grrrl originals Sleater-Kinney. My friend Andrew has lived in Stockholm for a while now, and before that London, but is originally from Naarm, and as a dedicated indie music fan has gotten to know various members of the scene including Laura. He’d been working for a while on a remix of MacFarlane’s lovely “Echolalia” from her 2021 album ViViD, and just as he was finishing it, along came the hit em phenomenon. So along with his glitchy “Wilderness of Mirrors” remix, he’s made this 5/4 breakcore “Dreamrave Breakdown” under the Gurnin Spacecase alias. Both are available from Laura MacFarlane’s Bandcamp.

STREIKTHROUGH – Hometown [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Czech experimental bass music label YUKU brings the goods as per usual, here debuting Switzerland-based duo STREIKTHROUGH. One half is Julia Häller aka Chewlie, who’s been released a couple of times by YUKU and also had an album last year on Low End Activist’s BRUK label. But STREIKTHROUGH is distinctive because of the poetry of Häller’s partner Ulaş Ekim Toprak, who evokes uncomfortable realities alongside the crunching, syncopated, bass-heavy music.

Blawan – Done Eclipse [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
Nobody’s doing bass music or techno quite like Blawan at the moment (and not just techno – earlier this year he put out the second Persher release of weird grindcore with Pariah). The Berlin-based Bristolian emitted some very fucked-up, dark club deconstructions last year on Dismantled Into Juice, but BouQ takes things a bit closer to the club again, a la 2021’s incredible Woke Up Right Handed. Deliciously off-centre.

Kassie Krut – Hooh Beat [Fire Talk/Bandcamp]
Formed after the break-up of Philadelphia math-rock band Palm, Kassie Krut morph math’s rhythmic drive into electro-noise-rock, with drum’n’bass-influenced beats that merge live playing with sampled choppery, chucking in street sounds, feedback and hefty bass with catchy pop hooks. It’s wild that this is released at the start of December, although tracks have been trickled out for the last few months. Noise-pop is a genre Fire Talk‘s got down pat, and Kassie Krut are a welcome addition.

T3AL – Weightless (Om Unit‘s Sunrise Dub) [Spiritual World]
Earlier this year, sisters Ashleigh & Melissa Ball released their debut EP as T3AL, Bluish Green, on Toronto label Spiritual World. It was an un-pigeonholeable amalgam (typical of these postmodern times), hinting at trip-hop’s soul-meets-dub, but leaning ambient, and with flutes. Well, in January the Bluish Green Remixes will drop on vinyl, sporting among others, not one but TWO Om Unit remixes. His “Sunrise Dub” is a lovely piece of sunny (yes) dub techno.

Dina Maccabee – See Feel Hear [Dina Maccabee Bandcamp]
A new song from Dina Maccabee is always a snap to attention for me. I saw her performing in Julia Holter’s band years ago, playing violin and viola through looping & processing as well as singing. In 2017 she released a beautiful viola & vocal album, The World is in the Work, full of songs which can be simultaneously gentle and challenging, real comfort food for me. The Sharpening Machine followed in 2019, with a large ensemble and more electronic elements, but since then she has been working on stage productions and with other groups. And here at the tail end of 2024 comes one song, unannounced, with plucked viola, multi-tracked vocals and various other instrumentation, a lovely song that swells and ebbs with blissful melody.

Nika Mo – Panicle [Nika Mo Bandcamp]
Annika Moses is a composer, sound-artist and singer-songwriter based on Whadjuk Noongar land in Boorloo/Perth. Nika Mo is one of her artist names, for freak-folk that can be all-acoustic and can be highly chopped & processed, but is still basically song-based stuff. “Panicle” is a strummy campsite song accompanied by a metronome, simple voice & acoustic guitar punctuated with efflorescences of wordless vocal swells.

Peter Broderick – Laser Beam [Erased Tapes/Bandcamp]
The title track of Peter Broderick‘s new 2-track single Mimi was written in tribute to his grandmother Mimi, and played at her memorial. It was around the same time that the beloved Mimi Parker of Low tragically succumbed to ovarian cancer. So as a b-side Peter recorded the beautiful “Laser Beam” from Low’s legendary 2001 album Things We Lost in the Fire, accompanying himself on guitar and violin, with his sister Heather bringing vocal harmonies to rival those of Parker and her husband Alan Sparhawk. Fragile and captivating.

Colourfields – goodolground [Colourfields Bandcamp]
Last week I played the single “outrunnr” from Eora/Sydney’s Colourfields, and now the whole CFEP is out. Novak Manojlovic’s background is in jazz, and George Sheridan is usually found behind the mixing desk, but here the pair are dismantling electro-pop songs into ambient-jazz-postrock textural things. This song ends the EP in a particularly dissolved fashion, but the whole release is pleasingly slippery and indistinct – in a good way – even with the driving beats of Godtet/Hekka drummer Tully Ryan.

Ava Rasti – Embrace The Abyss [130701/Bandcamp]
Getting increasingly dreamlike, here’s a piece from the wonderful new album The River by Iranian sound-artist Ava Rasti, whose previous album Ginestra came out last year on Kate Carr’s Flaming Pines. Like that album, The River (released on FatCat’s 130701 imprint) was conceptualised during an artist reisdency at Fabrica in Italy, and like that album it concerns memory and history. Rasti’s broad background takes in classical piano and composition, as well as bass guitar in an all-girl punk band (in Tehran!), and Ginestra at times took an extreme approach to deconstructing the classical samples at its core. Here, Rasti finds herself on the banks of the Piave River, which was the site of major battles in the First World War, and the Napoleonic Wars a century earlier. So on “Embrace The Abyss”, the spectral string loops hide (or struggle to hide) the clatter and commotion of improvised percussion – an effective juxtaposition that evokes an uneasy disquiet.

Aphir – RILIAN [Provenance/Bandcamp]
And finally tonight, 2024’s been a quiet year for Naarm’s Becky Whitton, at least in her solo Aphir guise. Whitton has been hard at work mixing and mastering a raft of pop, rock and experimental releases, while further finessing her ambient looping vocal processing. So to cap off the year, she’s put out a pair of those works, RILIAN/catechism, which were recently part of a project at Naarm’s MPavillion called Expiry D8. On “RILIAN”, hissing noises rustle and echo around Whitton’s multi-tracked voice, which crescendoes, pulsates, and withdraws again. Looking forward to more Aphir next year.

Listen again — ~209MB