Playlist 03.11.24

Utility Fog

Crazy mix of stuff tonight, music that somehow has beats when you wouldn’t expect it, that has no beats when you might expect it, that’s entirely acoustic when you’d think it was processed & edited…

LISTEN AGAIN via the FBi website, or podcast here for the distraction you need.

GAISTER – Source [AD 93/Bandcamp]
GAISTER – Conscious Concentration [AD 93/Bandcamp]
Another week, another astonishing, unexpected release from AD 93. GAISTER is a new trio made up of opera-trained Italo-Australian soprano Olivia Salvadori, drummer Akihide Monna of Bo Ningen and experimental post-r’n’b/grime/everything vocalist Coby Sey. And that hardly gives a hint of what’s found within this self-titled album: all manner of vocal emanations, poetic and rhythmic, operatic and murmured; explosive percussion, krautrocky grooves, slow-crescendoing drones; abstract poetry in three different languages… Music that takes you unawares: the best kind of music.

SPIRIT RADIO – RADIANT [Editions Vaché/Bandcamp]
Tamalyn Miller – These Flowers [Tamalyn Miller Bandcamp]
SPIRIT RADIO – DRUUM [Editions Vaché/Bandcamp]
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. A couple of months ago, Miller released a solo album – Ghost Pipe – which is also produced by Spera, but finds her playing an array of handmade and non-handmade instruments, found objects (“bird wing”, “deer bones”, “five-dollar dulcimer” etc) as well. There’s a psychedelic folk underpinning, but filtered through a deeply considered sound-art sensibility, sound as storytelling, sound design as discombobulation… On SPIRIT RADIO’s Distract’d by a Kaleidoscope Salesman, deconstructed sounds crawl and creep around the stereo field, somehow just about coalescing into songs – “RADIANT” in particular is a blissful pop song from another dimension. Engrossingly strange.

DIEMAJIN – MOSHI-MOSHI [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp]
DIEMAJIN – MIZ-KICAZ-IWAZ [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp]
You don’t expect anything straightforward from Berlin-based producer DJ DIE SOON (Daisuke Imamura) and Tokyo-based vocalist MA: Imamura’s last release for Jordanian label Drowned By Locals found him creating distorted, fucked-up beats for Tunisian rapper Cheb Terro, who sadly passed away just as the project concluded. MA caught my ear early last year combined with the intricate & bizarre glitch-idm of Polish duo IFS on their IFSMA; on a previous album (Shinkai) he worked with minimalist Italian sound-artist Nicola Ratti. With DIEMAJIN, the duo occasionally venture into some kind of industrial hip-hop, but you’re more likely to hear MA declaiming through horror-movie reverb, DIE SOON generating subspace pings or overdriven bass throbs. This degraded, uncompromising music fits in perfectly with DBL’s aesthetic, summed up in their Bandcamp bio as “The raw, unprocessed voice of the barbarians, bandits, marginalized, homeless, and savages, but the delicate at heart”.

Saba Alizadeh – Temple of Hope [30M Records/Bandcamp]
Iranian musician Saba Alizadeh is a master of the kamancheh, a Persian stringed instrument. But his works on Berlin label Karlrecords (Scattered Memories) and Hamburg-based 30M Records (2021’s I May Never See You Again) bring the music and his instrument into a contemporary setting, with stunning sound design – electronics, drones and at times beats. On January 17th next year, 30M will release Temple Of Hope – an audacious theme in extremely dark times. He takes inspiration from the “Woman Life Freedom” movement, incorporating field recordings of crowds and historical radio broadcasts alongside his beautiful instrument, and these human elements are made both alien and more poignant through electronic processing, even alongside bursts of no-input mixer noise. One of the most-antipicated albums of 2025, already!

Colin Stetson – Deceit [Milan Records]
Colin Stetson – Hey! Are you trying to escape?! [Milan Records]
Two soundtracks from virtuoso saxophonist Colin Stetson have recently come out, in the horror genre that Stetson has become synonymous with. Hold Your Breath is a psychological horror movie, and Uzumaki is an anime series based on the cult manga by Junji Ito. Both feature Stetson’s multiphonics, recorded so closely that it sounds like industrial electronics, complete with clicking beats and distorted low-end surges. There does seem to be some multi-tracking too, but only where necessary. They’re both released on Milan Records, the long-established soundtrack label, and the former seems digital-only, but Uzumaki has a handsome vinyl edition too. Soundtrack cues though they are, much the material on these releases is as exciting as Stetson’s studio albums, so don’t skip them!

Atsushi Izumi – Refractive Index [OPAL/Bandcamp]
While his last album, Schismogenesis, was released this May on the venerable Ohm Resistance, I first discovered Atsushi Izumi with his amazing Houzan Archives album on OPAL (formerly Opal Tapes) a couple of years back. It came as no surprise that he’d previously made snarly, techy d’n’b as Anode, but under his own name he branches out into industrial dub, bass-heavy techno and plenty of mind-boggling syncopation, if not actual drum’n’bass. His second album of 2024, Observable, is back on OPAL, offering crushing industrial techno with boomning, shuddering bass and clattering beats. Submit.

Monologue – 015244 Drama Phone [Rua Sound]
Jungle/drum’n’bass producers Earl Grey (Jim Ehlinger) and Aroma Nice (Luke Fashoni) have appeared together or collaborated for a long time, but I didn’t realise that their duo project Monologue has been going for over 10 years. On Earl Grey’s Hyperchamber Music, they released a two-track single in 2013. Nine years later their first EP proper came out on YUKU, and you can hear the YUKU experimental bass fingerprints on this more recent music. Keano Traxx follows now, on Irish label Rua Sound, with heaps of rhythmic invention and syncopating breaks, whether it’s accompanying bounding acid basslines or dubwise head-nodders. Great stuff as always.

Christoph de Babalon – Total Deceit [Sneaker Social Club/Bandcamp]
A sneak peek at the second track from Christoph de Babalon‘s new EP coming on the mighty Sneaker Social Club on November 22nd. The No Favours is vintage Christoph de Babalon, who originated in the proto-breakcore of DHR aka Digital Hardcore Records, Berlin’s early response to hearing hardcore techno and jungle from the UK in the mid-’90s. So, as the label perhaps over-emphasises, de Babalon’s music is never straightforward dancefloor music, whether jungle or breakcore, or sometimes slower-tempo breaks (his real name’s Jan-Christoph Wolter, so it’s a bit weird referring to his nom de plume by surname). There are always dark undertones, uneasy ambient interludes, tape-degraded movie soundtrack vibes… Regardless, it’s nice hearing him on one of the foremost hardcore/jungle labels around, and it’s heavy and full of brilliant drum programming.

Simo Cell – Jesus Suave [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
Wordcolour – Weightless [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
The Lapsus label has been run by Albert Salinas Claret out of Barcelona for 20 years now, and is celebrating with the superlative compilation Vint (which is Catalan for “twenty”). It’s a stacked line-up, with the likes of µ-Ziq, Plaid, Kettel and others from the IDM world, as well as new age synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani and many others. Tonight I played a great near-d’n’b piece from the excellent French beatmaker Simo Cell, and a typically revolutionary piece of jungle/new-age invention from the brilliant Wordcolour.

MJ Noble – Pay The Price (ft. Chemistry MC) [Doom Trip Records/Bandcamp]
Sticking with jungle, I love how LA singer/producer/musician MJ Noble merges drum’n’bass & jungle with her brand of dreampop. Her latest single follows two Halloween-themed cover songs which you should check out too, but here she enlists LA drum’n’bass MC Chemistry MC to push up the pressure.

Riddla – Be Like [DRMTRK/Bandcamp]
Bridging the gap between contemporary African music and grime is Riddla, a musician of Ghanaian descent born in Germany and now based in Nottingham. He’s been working with various South African musicians on his productions. On the latest single “Trumpets” it’s Zulu “mother of Afrorave” Toya Delazy but, great through that track is, I really like Riddla’s own vocals on the b-side “Be Like”.

Serengeti & Jenny Lewis – WTCH [serengetiraps Bandcamp]
Chicago’s Serengeti is not, I guess, Tanzanian, but he (real name David Cohn) is both black and Jewish. His Kenny Dennis character, a middle-aged schlub, is a masterpiece of deadpan comedy, but I’m always somewhat relieved when it’s Geti himself on the mic. At some point lately he’s started collaborating with ex-Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis – perhaps surprising, but he’s also worked a lot with Sufjan Stevens after all! “WTCH” comes all sultry trip-hop with Geti’s murmured raps, and the chopped & looped sounds of Lewis’s voice and guitar. We deserve more than a track snuck out here & there – and there’s now a WTCH “Bonus Track Edition” with their other collabs, with vinyl on its way.

The Future Sound of London – Leafy Suburbs [FSOLdigital Bandcamp]
Here’s a band I’ve been a fan of for decades. I don’t seem to have played The Future Sound of London a lot over the last few years, and maybe what sounded truly “futuristic” in the early-to-mid ’90s is now somewhat more “of its time”, but they started as heroes of rave and acid, and their slightly IDM-ish, breakbeat rave beats are kind of suited to the current times. They’re also masters of mixing their electronics with multifarious samples: the opening track of their new Captures EP (which seems to be preceding an Environments 8 album coming early next year) layers choral vocals in a vaguely disquieting way until the acid synths come in. “Leafy Suburbs” sets peaceful guitars against fidgety beats.

Lechuga Zafiro – Agua de Vidrio [TraTraTrax/Bandcamp]
It’s likely you won’t hear anything quite like Lechuga Zafiro‘s Desde los o​í​dos de un sapo this week. The Uruguayan producer’s album translates as “From the ears of a toad”, and this is amphibious music from South America. Zafiro creatively samples from across the animal, vegetable and mineral realms, and creates rhythms and melodies from them – rhythms of latin music and club music, splashing and squishing, clopping and clunking. Pretty amazing stuff.

Red Snapper ft. David Harrow – Hold My Hand Up [Lo Recordings/Bandcamp]
David Harrow was a key member of the On-U Sound System in the ’80s and ’90s, alongside Adrian Sherwood & co, but his musical interests & talents are broad – from his drum’n’bass as James Hardway to his early postpunk/new wave beginnings with Anne Clark, rave/techno with Andrew Weatherall as Bloodsugar, and of course, dub with Jah Wobble as well as On-U Sound. He recently put out a lovely single (with many remixes) with the gravel-voiced chanteuse Little Annie (a reunion decades after her involvement with On-U Sound), and here he is collaborating with UK trip-hop/jazz fusionists Red Snapper. While we’re here, enjoy this Red Snapper classic remixed by Weatherall’s Sabres of Paradise in the mid-’90s… Anyway, the first cab off the rank from this collaborative EP is very much dubwise music, with a flowing drum rhythm, liquid bassline and melodica melody, but the vocal and the switch-up with the drums in the middle leans more into a psychedelic indie rock vibe. It all feels totally natural, and it could easily be from anytime in the ’90s or early ’00s.

Luke Wyland – Pitch & Bowed [Balmat/Bandcamp]
So, in re Lapsus above, Balmat is a label co-run by Lapsus’ Albert Salinas Claret with the great music writer Philip Sherburne (whose Substack Futurism Restated is highly recommended). Its focus tends to be less beat-oriented than Lapsus, and more experimental. In any case, I’m really pleased that they’ve gotten Luke Wyland to put out an album with them. I loved his avant-pop/indie/electronic band AU many years back, and then his solo album as LWW released by The Leaf Label in 2018. More recently, he formed the duo Methods Body with drummer John Niekrasz, which I highly recommend. And now, a proper solo album under his own name, Kuma Cove. Like most of his work, this is electro-acoustic music: piano cradled in – and dissolving in – billowing clouds of granular processing, or caught in sonic amber, around which stumbling percussion and nebulous vocals might wash. It’s named after a real place in Oregon (Wyland is from Portland, OR) and it does feel like a cove: enveloping, somehow comforting. It’s all performed live through Ableton patches he’s been perfecting for years. It’s so lovely.

Santpoort – Marine Snow [College Music Records/Bandcamp]
Dutch musician, now based here in Eora/Sydney, Julien Mier, makes music that could be called electro-acoustic, or sometimes folktronic. I knew him from before he came here as someone on the outskirts of IDM, but now he makes very pretty stuff with a mixture of live instruments and electronics, and field recordings. This particular track comes from a compilation from College Music Records called PhonoSynthesis, so… electro-organic? The compilation also features Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Prefuse 73 and more.

Beatrice Dillon – Seven Reorganisations I (live) [Hi (Beatrice Dillon)]
The 2020 album Workaround by Beatrice Dillon is one of those perfect works that we have the rare privilege of encountering now and then. That album was based around rhythm – a set of 10 tracks at 150bpm, in a kind of spacious minimal house fashion, with acoustic instruments (and some electronics) from her and many guests. Seven Reorganisations is a very different affair. Although it was commissioned by arch-minimal-beatmaker Mark Fell, it’s a pair compositions for Explore Ensemble, made up of piano, bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, viola and cello. Very interestingly, two versions of each piece are provided: one pair recorded in a studio, with close-mic’d instruments subtly edited by Dillon, and one pair performed live. In contrast to Workaround‘s rhythmic focus, the focus here is on tone and timbre, microtuned oscillations and space. It’s not at all clear that there’s any electronic intervention in the studio recordings, which are composed with a certain amount of choice for the performers. But for me, the live recordings resonate and ring out more warmly.

Cedie Janson – the river (a doorway) [Cedie Janson Bandcamp]
Well look, I only played Cedie a couple of weeks ago, so here’s an adapted version of what I said then:
A decade ago or more, a great experimental rock band from Brisbane called Naked Maja put out a few cool releases. Sometime later, the band’s Cedie Janson started sending me his solo music, mostly electronic music, some skittery beats. His music has evolved in various directions since then – he’s now based in LA, and has been working on film soundtracks as well – and so we come to his 2024 output. For the ambient lovers, I recommend the EP stitched together with magnetic tape, made of grainy, wobbly tape loops. Following that, the lovers single preceded the album the river, which is out now. The tape loop EP isn’t exactly a red herring: the album is more song-oriented, but also very soundscapey, with murmured spoken words as much as soft singing, and if there are some sparse beats there are also washes of wind-like drones. It would be blissful but it’s also slightly disquieting – just the right mix!

IKSRE – Tall Roads (Shelf Nunny Remix) [Hush Hush Records/Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne’s Phoebe Dubar is a violist and singer, and as IKSRE she’s spent the last 5 years quietly building a following for her ambient vocal layering with viola, electronics, field recordings and subtle beats. So she’s now celebrating her album Unfurl from 2019 with a reissue along with remixes, Unfurl/Refurl. It’s released by the Seattle ambient(ish) label Hush Hush Records, so as well as Aussies like Zoltan Fecso, there are remixes from Seattle artists and other North Americans. Shelf Nunny, from Seattle, reshapes swirling grains of Dubar’s vocals with piano and bass, crescendoing grandly and then bubbling away again.

Bonniesongs – Halloween Birthday [Bonniesongs Bandcamp]
And since it just turned November (and ignoring, for now, the real horrors that descended upon the world a couple of days into the month), the wonderful Bonniesongs aka Bonnie Stewart – drummer, improviser, guitarist and singer-songwriter – has released the first track from new recordings that should appear as a new album early in 2025. She loves a bit of a horror-movie-inspired character study, and this one’s a sweet (and ever so slightly creepy) song about a friend of hers whose birthday is on Halloween.

Listen again — ~207MB