Let me take you on a trip(1)… from lo-fi hip-hop to mutant jungle, dub techno to generative IDM, mushed free jazz to mutant harps and other acoustic instruments… It’s just another week in the Utility Fog office. (there is no office)
(1)Credit: Depeche Mode
John Glacier – Home [Young/Bandcamp]
John Glacier – Don’t Cover Me [Young/Bandcamp]
Following an early album in 2021 called SHILOH: Lost For Words, London rapper/singer John Glacier restarted her career last year with two brilliant EPS on Young, Like A Ribbon and Duppy Gun. Along with Angel’s Trumpet, the three titles represent the three sections of her new album, although at least on digital the tracks don’t quite match up. In any case, we’re talking lo-fi hip-hop with low-key vocals, in the Tirzah/Coby Sey mould, albeit I think a different hip-hop tradition. Executive producer – and producer of many of the tracks – is Kwes Darko, who used to be Blue Daisy, with his own particular take on UK r’n’b as well as post-dubstep stylings, but here John Glacier’s own style of post-punk aesthetics really emphasises how quietly innovative and fresh this is.
R. Rebeiro – PE_3 [R. Rebeiro Bandcamp]
Rohan Rebeiro is drummer in much-loved & respected Naarm/Melbourne postpunk/postrock outfit My Disco, and has a longstanding electronic/industrial techno project as R. Rebeiro – at least I think it’s been around a bit for live performances, and last year birthed the album Unrendered Language, which I need to catch up on stat! Meanwhile, the Public Eye EP brings us four raw beats made for club performances around Naarm, somewhere between techno, dub and drum’n’bass.
Colline – Algarade (Nouveau Monica Remix) [Dionysian Mysteries/Bandcamp]
Lucas Desmottes is Nouveau Monica, a French producer much enamoured of UK club music. Here he’s remixing the new single for fellow Frenchman Colline, taking the techno original into jungle/drum’n’bass waters on a new single for San Francisco label Dionysian Mysteries.
Dacamera – Dalian Image [Pinecone Moonshine/Bandcamp]
From a split with the excellent London drum’n’bass & drumfunk producer Opius, Houston producer Dacamera brings jazz inflections and drum’n’bass darkness to his nimble beats, suitably complex and drum-oriented for Nic TVG’s Pinecone Moonshine label. Both producers are at the top of their game, so it’s an essential release IMHO.
Wraz & Motus – Spliff [Wraz Bandcamp]
I know Montréal producer Wraz primarily as a dubstep producer, and Motus, who appears here with vocal contributions, is also associated with dubstep. But on Wagwan/Spliff, Wraz is applying his snarling bass weight to something more like drum’n’bass. Of course the dub pressure is very much there – spliff, anyone?
Noneless – Delicate Sin [Noneless Bandcamp]
The North Sydney/Kuringgai artist now known as Noneless previously released some pretty crazy breakcorey hybrid music as elfaether, and a couple of years ago returned to music production with their amazing album A Vow of Silence, released on anybody universe , the label run by Japanese IDM/breakcore latter-day legend Laxenanchaos. Now they have a new EP in the works, Delicate Sin, the title track to which is now out. It’s that combination of classical influences and splintered jungle breaks that
Paul Frick x TigJez x Chache – 90 Cents Dub feat. Matthias Engler [forthcoming from Paul Frick Bandcamp]
German electro-acoustic trio Brandt Brauer Frick tend to make minimal techno, cut through with acoustic instruments drawing from classical and jazz. Individually, Daniel Brandt has made a name for himself with film work and post-classical work, but Paul Frick‘s most attention-grabbing move a few years ago was joining Tangerine Dream, admittedly in a lineup that no longer contains any of the original krautrock/kosmische trailblazers. He releases collaborative singles occasionally, and there’s one coming out on March 7th called “90 Cents”, with vocals from TigJez and “viola percussion” from Charlotte Oelschlegel (credited as Chache). It’s melancholy but upbeat, and the dub pushes things further into the abstract but rhythmic, with additional percussion from Matthias Engler.
Matthew Ryals – etude no. 30 (take 2) [3OP/Bandcamp]
Matthew Ryals – etude no. 26 (take 7) [3OP/Bandcamp]
I first came across Brookyln’s Matthew Ryals when he released the brilliant free-jazz-tronica of Voltage Scores on the by-then Eora/Sydney-based Oxtail Recordings. Then in 2023 he began an undertaking that is now coming to its close: three EPs, each in three versions, consisting of generative works for modular synths, where the tracklist is the same on each volume, but they feature different takes. Like the first two volumes, the works on Generative Etudes Vol. 3.0 manage to extract some real emotional heft in amongst the burbling, chittering electronics. This is particularly notable on “etude no. 10 (take 8)”, but unfortunately at almost 9 minutes I wasn’t able to fit it in – so you’ll just have to go listen for yourself. This time round, the three EPs will also be available on one CD, which I would absolutely partake of if the postage from the US wasn’t twice the cost of the album itself.
Ai Yamamoto & Dan West – Gossamer [Audible Artefacts/Ai Yamamoto Bandcamp]
I generally think of the work of Naarm/Melbourne’s Ai Yamamoto as ambient, music made from field recordings or sounds about the house, with delicate electronics. Here she’s teamed up with Dan West, who is also a sound-artist but can also be found making beats of all sorts of varieties – and thus Microdoses, their first collaborative album, is one part delicate electro-acoustic sounds, and one part glitchy IDM beats. There are field recordings here, sometimes morphing into microbeats, and there are acoustic instruments comfortably cohabiting with synths. It’s a lovely album, from which I was pleased to play a preview tonight.
Benjamin Fulwood – Speedboat [Room40/Bandcamp]
A lockdown highlight for me was Ai Yamamoto’s Pan de Sonic – Iso released on Lawrence English’s Room40, in which she made an album out of the sounds of her home during Melbourne’s painfully long lockdown (including the purring of her cat). So that’s a nice segue into Benjamin Fulwood‘s new album The Stars Are Very Far Away From All Of This, released this week on Room40. The original recordings here are Fulwood’s saxophone and clarinet, recorded in late nights after office work in Tokyo – but after a bicycle accident, he was unable to play and turned to electronics to transform these unbridled improvisations into something new – densely layered reed instruments, sometimes gradually transformed into electronic noises. Even the free jazz drumming of Lav Kovač on “Speedboat” has to struggle to rise above the maelstrom, to thrilling effect.
Sarah Pagé & Patrick Graham – Tempest [Envision Records/Bandcamp]
Sarah Pagé & Patrick Graham – Burning [Envision Records/Bandcamp]
I’m very grateful to my mate Luke de Zilva, fellow FBi broadcaster with Surfacing, for introducing me to this remarkable album from two Canadian musicians: harpist Sarah Pagé & percussionist Patrick Graham. Under Pagé’s hands the harp takes on many unexpected qualities, although it’s supplemented with bass koto and sarangi (the latter a bowed south Asian string instrument). In addition to familiar percussion, Graham plays waterphone, hamon and – perhaps most obscurely – the electro-acoustic nano garden. All these sound sources are all very well, but the music – whether composed or improvised – is performed with great sensitivity, and the many electronic touches add to the elusive yet evocative nature of the album.
The title Littoral States refers to regions of bodies of water between the deepest depths and the very edge – the shifting shallows, where objects may be submerged or revealed, and nothing is static. None of this really conveys how lovely this partnership is though, so if you enjoyed the lengthy excerpts tonight, put your headphones on, close your eyes and immerse yourself.
Scott Gordon – Tilts I [Diagonal Records/Bandcamp]
A new release on Powell’s Diagonal Records is always going to be… not what you expect. And so it is with Metals from Scott Gordon aka SDGORDON aka Hiax, who sometime back was making uk garage-adjacent stuff as Loops Haunt. Haunted is what this album is, its two sides representing two different approaches to Gordon’s use of metals as sound sources. And yet, nothing here sounds like Einstürzende Neubauten – nothing is aggressive, in fact for a lot of the time it is not rhythmic at all. Gordon’s scrap metal bars resonate as they’re struck by little motorised hammers. In the first half (And Away I-III) this generates lovely numinous drones; in the second (Tilts I-IIII) the motors speed up and spit flickering rhythms, accompanied I think by some electronics. It’s hard to balance the desire to know more about how this is generated with the pure enjoyment of listening. I don’t think you need to know the sound source to enjoy this as abstract experimental music.
Nour Sokhon and Stefan Christoff – Every moment [Forthcoming on Ruptured Music]
I’ve been very lucky recently to be able to bring you previews of new music coming out on Beirut/Montréal label Ruptured Music. Here is a beautiful duo from Berlin-based Lebanese sound-artist & researcher Nour Sokhon and Montréal broadcaster, activist and musician Stefan Christoff. Christoff’s contemplative improvised piano lines are embedded in – and sometimes overwhelmed by – field recordings from Lebanon & Germany, and electronic noises. The album, titled Beyond All Borderlines, extends out of Sokhon’s broader ongoing research/performance project “And Who Are We Now?”. Through specific sounds and field recordings, it asks the listener to confront the questions “Why are you here?” and “Where are you from?”, questions which carry painful and sometimes sinister undercurrents for displaced people. But the piano always centres these works with a sense of humanism. A world without borders is a vision completely at odds with the inward-turned, outwardly aggressive fascism shouldering its way into our current age, and I for one am on board.
From the Mouth of the Sun – The Last Shepherd [Forthcoming on FTMOTS Bandcamp]
From the Mouth of the Sun – He Left Alone [Forthcoming on FTMOTS Bandcamp]
Both Aaron Martin and Dag Rosenqvist are notable music creators, making their own forms of minimalist folk, drone and experimental music (for many years, Dag was at the forefront of drone’s crossover with postrock as Jasper TX). Togther they have worked as From the Mouth of the Sun since 2012’s brilliant Woven Tide, with Martin’s melancholy cello and other acoustic instruments combined with guitar noise and electronic textures. And from the start their music was used in film, TV and in stage works. Tonight I’m able to bring you a couple of previews from the wonderful new FTMOTS album In Wind or Dust, released in a couple of weeks. This is an album adaptation of music the pair wrote for the dance work In Wind or Dust created by choreographer duo Danae & Dionysios of the Small Axe dance company, inspired by the life of Kawa Niangji, a Tibetan environmental activist and poet who died at age 26, drowned while attempting to dismantly an illegal fishing net in Qinghai Lake. FTMOTS’s music is at times delicate and intimate, at times monumental and distant. It feels like the perfect conduit for this story.
Stein Urheim – Speilstemt [Hubro/Bandcamp]
A couple of weeks ago I played a new song from Norwegian trio Building Instrument, a weird kind of electric folk featuring singer Mari Kvien Brunvoll. Brunvoll is a longtime collaborator with guitarist Stein Urheim, whose latest solo album Speilstillevariasjoner (literally “Mirror-style variations”) finds him playing multiple stringed instruments as well as various analogue & digital electronics, field recordings and percussion. On top of this is the distinctive live sampler performance of Ikue Mori, Sam Gendel on saxophone & electronics, Hans Kjorstad on violin and Siv Øyunn Kjenstad on drums and voice, resulting in yet another set of music that could somehow only come out of Norway (or perhaps Sweden), equal parts folk, jazz and avant-garde electronics. The Hubro label is the natural home for such hybrids, an ever-overflowing font of Norwegian creativity. Long may they prosper.
The Cloud Maker – The Godly River [The Cloud Maker Bandcamp]
I decided to slip in one more preview of the wonderful The Cloud Maker, a new project involving an international cast of brilliant women, convened by clarinettist, improviser and experimental musician Aviva Endean. Endean is a member of the remarkable project Hand to Earth with Yolgnu songman Daniel Wilfred, didgeridooist David Wilfred, trumpeter & sound-artist Peter Knight, and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim. Kim and Endean were involved in a residency in Banff (Canada), where they met Te Kahureremoa Taumata, a practitioner of Taonga Pūoro (a word that describes a suite of Māori musical instruments). Their fruitful musical collaboration began with the Māori moth goddess Raukatauri, whose story is the origin story of one of those taonga pūoro, the cocoon-shaped flute called Putorino. In the Adelaide Hills, the group expanded to include contemporary cellist Freya Schack-Arnott (who also plays a traditional Swedish multi-stringed instrument called the nyckelharpa which you can hear in her duo Runa Cara with Bonnie Stewart), and percussionist/sound-artist Maria Moles. So yes, it’s a project overflowing with talent & creativity. Each member contributes stories of goddesses from their own folkloric traditions, and The Cloud Maker‘s music is as varied as its members. “The Godly River” centres around pulsating chords and textural percussion, with a stunning vocal performance from Te Kahureremoa Taumata. Watch the beautiful video now.
Open to the Sea – Shallows of the Black Sea [Matteo Uggeri Bandcamp]
Matteo Uggeri – …for God [Matteo Uggeri Bandcamp]
Matteo Uggeri – Observing, Waiting for… [Matteo Uggeri Bandcamp]
And to finish tonight, we head to Italy, where we join Milan’s Matteo Uggeri and his many collaborative projects. The most prominent, and now quite long-lived, is with Venetian sound-artist Enrico Coniglio, which began with an album credited to the two called Open to the Sea, and which became the name of the project (it’s a “process”, not a band!), with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Saverio Rosi. Open to the Sea is itself a melting pot of regular guests such as cellist Andrea Serrapiglio and trumpeter Alessandro Sesana, along with various vocalists who float in & out of tracks which, much like the sea, ebb and flow. This isn’t drone, and it’s not quite postrock, nor folktronica. Even though it’s very much electronically constructed, it’s very organic-feeling music – even though the musicians’ contributions are generally asynchronous, and the final combinations built up by Uggeri along with the other musicians. In the 8 years since its founding, the project has released perhaps 5 albums (it depends how you count them), but they’ve also amassed a miscellany of other material, whether on limited-run 3″ CDs, or as bonus digital material from the very limited “puzzle” editions of their albums. Thus they have now collected all this semi-released material on the 2CD collection Watering Paper Flowers and Snakes, which ends up as a wonderful collection of evocative, hard-to-pin-down music that’s anything but a collection of second-rate off-cuts.
But when listening to this, I had to jump back to a release from last year, a rare solo album from Uggeri himself called Growth. You’ll see from the track titles that it deals with some very personal themes – relationships with the world and with family, fatherhood… The music is, surprisingly, performed live on each track. It’s not live instrumentation though – these are performances of short snippets of piano recordings (or even little orchestral & operatic samples) that are snipped & looped into undulating quasi-drones, and fed through degenerative effects and dub-techno-like delays and reverbs. Think William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas, Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto. It’s not quite any of those things, although they’re all in its DNA, and it captures the same beauty in dissolution. Highly recommended.