As we approach the end of the year, breathing a sigh of relief, I’m playing the best music of 2024, in three parts: Last week I tried to fit as many of the best vocal-based pieces as I could into 2 hours. Next week will be a DJ mix of the best music with beats (and maybe some other oddities scattered within). But this is week is the rest – instrumental, or primarily instrumental, music both acoustic and electronic, composed and improvised, a few beats but not dancefloor-oriented. I think you’ll love this.
I’d also like to mention that while we may just be happily waiting for Christmas (if we celebrate) and New Year’s, and our lovely break, we all know that many people are not free to experience such pleasures – the people of Gaza are still under bombardment, dying daily, starving in northern Gaza. People in the West Bank are losing their homes – and lives – daily. People in Lebanon have been rendered homeless and lost lives too. Over at Cyclic Defrost those of us involved contributed to a big best-of-the-year post, and my contribution was a collection of all the Palestine and Lebanon fundraising/awareness-raising compilations that I’d found and played through the year. I’ve republished it here with all the usual links, should you wish to put some end-of-year money towards helping people in need.
Seefeel – Sky Hooks [Warp Records/Bandcamp]
Back in 2010 & 2011, shoegaze/electronic pioneers Seefeel released a new EP & album after some 14 years’ absence. In August, the core of Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock put out a new album (albeit only 6 tracks), with the familiar sampled & looped vocals of Peacock pulsing through through dubwise electronics. They’ve always had a temporally displaced sound – constructed entirely through digital technology but somehow analogue, even organic sounding. AND following Everything Squared, the band slipped out unnanounced a second album, Squared Roots, at the beginning of December. 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 – although admittedly the selection tonight is a highlight from the first.
Tigran Hamasyan – Only the one who brought the Bird can make it sing [naïve]
I was so excited to discover in July that Armenian jazz piano virtuoso Tigran Hamasyan had a new album coming this year, and I managed to snare a preview copy so I played a few tracks between then and the release. Previous albums showcased not just his playing, but his beautiful, complex compositions that draw a lot from the scale patterns and harmonies of Armenian folk music. Hamasyan has also worked with Serj Tankian of the Armenian-American nu-metal band System of a Down – and at times the complex jazz time signatures on his releases can veer into math rock. In any case, after many albums released on Nonesuch, Hamasyan has now joined eclectic French imprint naïve for the album The Bird of a Thousand Voices, which is in fact a multimedia project reworking an old Armenian legend (Hazaran Blbul) into a stage play, films, installations, the album and also an online video game featuring music from the album and the stunning artwork of Khoren Matevosyan. Over 24 tracks, the album covers a lot of ground: there’s insane time signatures, bewitching melodies, those gorgeous Armenian harmonies, incredible piano playing and incredible supporting musicians on drums, bass, violin and vocals, with heavy metal and even hyperkinetic electronica that echoes the jungle influence on video game soundtracks. Genius.
Simon Öggl – Departure [col legno/Bandcamp]
This debut album from Austrian composer Simon Öggl belies a wide-ranging history in various formats: as 1/4 of live electronic band Drathaus, he’s making weird electronic art-pop; he also makes experimental electronic music as {ø_ø} (pronounced Brackethead), and he previously made drum’n’bass as Hidden Aspect. So his first released work (from what I can see) as a composer – released on the forward-thinking Austrian classical label col legno – rather slyly blends electronic music with classical, and electronic production with acoustic performance. There’s an ensemble here made up of flute, clarinet, cello, trumpet, trombone and electric guitar, along with soprano Clara Hamberger and countertenor Aleksandar Jovanovic, while Öggl himself plays keyboards and percussion – but you’ll find your perspective shifted as electronics take over from the classical instruments and at times glitchy rhythms lead to passages of drum’n’bass or techno. It’s all very well to dream of this kind of hybridisation, but Öggl has the composing and production chops to pull this off very effectively, so much so that you’ll want to skip back and listen again when you suddenly realise you’re not quite listening to what you thought you were…
divr – Echo’s Answer [We Jazz Records]
Now over to Switzerland (via the Finnish label We Jazz), the new album from Swiss jazz piano trio divr, Is This Water, is a thing of beauty and wonder. They range from delicate beauty to post-bop intensity at times, incorporating snippets of field recordings and sound manipulation courtesy of Dan Nicholls which give the music an other-worldly uncanniness. There are three covers out of nine tracks: a jazz standard, Radiohead’s “All I Need”, and a gorgeous rendition of the lovely “Echo’s Answer” by Broadcast. This is complex and deep music that’s still rewarding for all.
John Kameel Farah & Nick Fraser – Waltz [Nick Fraser Bandcamp]
I discovered Toronto pianist, jazz composer, electronic musician John Kameel Farah way back in 2010, somehow via a breakcore/idm link – the album Unfolding, a mix of brilliant jazz piano, electronic processing and Squarepusher-style beats, was released by the Canadian breakcore label Dross:tik. It’s been 15 years since that album came out, and here’s Farah working with the Toronto drummer Nick Fraser, key player in the Toronto jazz/improv scene. Fraser reached out to Farah specifically for this project, which is rooted in improvisation. From an initial set of studio improvisations, Farah worked on the recordings – with Fraser’s guidance – with all sorts of electronic interventions. The result is very different from that earlier Farah album, but carries the spirit of technically proficient jazz, with an emotive/emotional core, and advanced electronics/rhythms – as well as Arabic influences in homage to Farah’s Palestinian heritage. You don’t need to be a jazz head at all to enjoy this though! And this kind of interaction between improvisation and electronic post-production is central to this show’s mission – especially when it’s done as beautifully as it is here.
Rikuto Fujimoto – Mebuki (Prelude) [130701/Bandcamp]
Here’s another late-entry standout for 2024, the debut album of Kyoto-born, Tokyo-based pianist and composer Rikuto Fujimoto, released by the ever-reliable 130701. With such a glut of mediocre post-Nils/post-Ólafur “piano classical” out there, aimed squarely at Spotify playlists, it’s always great to hear people doing something different in that space. Not only is Fujimoto completing a composition degree, he takes his pieces in unusual harmonic directions, and his high, androgynous voice is electrically attractive on these pieces. The album is about memory, and the pieces were performed without sheet music. With his vocalisations (which are wordless, or at least languageless), this decision gives the recordings a very intimate feel – you should invite yourself in.
Büşra Kayıkçı – The Middle of Nowhere (Jaar Rework) [Nicolas Jaar Bandcamp]
Turkish pianist Büşra Kayıkçı released her album Places on Warner Classics late in 2023, after some early studies on her Bandcamp and a post-classical/electronic duo release last year with Ah! Kosmos (aka Başak Günak, see below) called Bluets. Here we find a sensitive reworking of the opening & closing tracks of Places by Nicolas Jaar, released on his Bandcamp, and I’m so pleased he did because now I’ve been introduced to Kayıkçı’s gorgeous compositions, which remind me a little of the harmonic modes found in Tigran Hamasyan’s work (see above). Her playing is delicate, and aside from Jaar’s remix, her own music benefits from her sound design too, which is inspired in part by her qualifications in architecture.
Roman Rofalski – Perpetuum [Oscillations/Bandcamp]
German musician Roman Rofalski is a classically-trained pianist and a jazz musician, releasing recordings of contemporary composers as well as jazz piano trios. He’s also interested in extending these forms into electronic realms, and we’ve heard him on this show as one half of electro-acoustic duo Saving Kaiser. For London-based Oscillations Music, he’s deconstructing his piano on new album Fractal. Starting with beautifully-recorded prepared piano, he’s ripped apart the sounds, so that complete melodic gestures slide in between heavy drones based on single piano notes, or heavy sub-bass lines. There’s live drums (also heavily edited) from Felix Schlarmann on opening track “Perpetuum”, but there’s also a rhythmic groove to a lot of the other tracks. You’ll hear contemporary experimental techno, glitch from the late ’90s, the post-jazz of the mid-’00s and more in these tracks which strike a satisfying balance between catchy and challenging.
Matthew Bourne – précipice / précis [Leaf/Bandcamp]
English pianist & composer Matthew Bourne was featured in May on this show with electronic duo Nightports, performing electronically-manipulated improvisations on the very rare keyboard instrument the Dulcitone. That instrument appears on his new album this is not for you. (full stop included), but it’s mostly a soft piano affair. More surprisingly, and gorgeously, Bourne picks up the cello at times, like in the second half of tonight’s selection, bringing a muted yearning to a meditative piece. This album demands listening in a place of calm & quiet, and if you make the space for it, you’ll find yourself deeply moved.
Erik Griswold, Chloe Kim 김예지, Helen Svoboda – Tremble part 2 [Earshift/Bandcamp]
Anatomical Heart is a wonderful acoustic project formed of three artists from the three major cities on Australia’s east coast: Helen Svoboda from Naarm/Melbourne, brilliant Korean-Australian drummer Chloe Kim 김예지 representing Eora/Sydney, and the restlessly creative prepared piano master Erik Griswold from Meanjin/Brisbane. The album was recorded during a residency at Harrigans Lane in rural southern Queensland. This very organic music encompasses many styles, from jazz romps to percussive and rhythmic studies to free, rippling melody. Each musician is incredibly versatile and highly sensitive, and hopefully there’ll be much more from this intuitive formation.
I also need to mention Chloe Kim’s Music For Six Double Bassists, which features Svoboda along with five our bassists, released on bassist Jacques Emery‘s People Sound. The album is full of body-pulling basslines the equal of Johan Berthling’s work in Fire! and elsewhere – high praise! – while also capitalising on the instrument’s expressiveness, including Helen Svoboda’s patented floating stopped harmonics. There’s also a secret pleasure in hearing all those slaps of finger and string on the instruments’ fingerboards. Glorious – don’t miss it.
Ex-Easter Island Head – Magnetic Language [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp]
Although there was no hint on Bandcamp until recently, and I don’t think it was announced originally, Rocket Recordings did release a limited CD version of UK quartet Ex-Easter Island Head‘s Norther – so while I criminally missed when it came out earlier in the year, I did finally get to it in August. The band are a quartet now thanks to longtime collaborator & sound engineer Andrew PM Hunt, who also released an album as Dialect on RVNG Intl this year. Each track takes a different approach to sound, with the band’s experimental guitar techniques never far away. Throughout, there are gorgeous scintillations of guitar harmonics, weird pitch slides, guitar strings played as percussion… as well as bass and drums, an aeolian harp (played by the wind), and on this track, sampled syllables of their own voices replayed through guitar pickups and rebuilt into a perfect encapsulation of post-folk-rock-tronica. Gorgeous.
Innode – Air Liquide [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]
Now to Austria, where Editions Mego was based, under the loving leadership of Peter Rehberg until his untimely death in 2021. Innode are a trio that certainly reside in the radius of Mego’s influence: glitchy textures joined with postrock/krautrock momentum with synths rather than rock instruments. On drums is the great Steven Hess, a central member not only of black metal/drone/noise band Locrian but also minimalist electro-acoustic trio Haptic (both of which also had excellent releases in 2024!). Stefan Németh is best known as a member of the wonderful Radian whose music is probably the closest to what we find herein. And finally Bernhard Breuer is a member of live techno band Elektro Guzzi and various rock and improv outfits. I really loved Innode’s second album Syn, which came out on Editions Mego in 2021, and grain is similarly inclined, based around rhythms both glitchy and organic, created by layering different takes from the musicians on drums, percussion and electronics, and all held together with judicious synth work. If you like the postrock of Tortoise and their ilk, or moreso the European style from Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Radian, Trapist and so on, this should scratch that itch very comfortably.
Elsa Hewitt – Kazimi [Elsa Hewitt Bandcamp]
British producer Elsa Hewitt inhabits an idiosyncratic space that blurs songwriting with ambient soundscapes, guitars and vocals with electronics. Her new album Dominant Heartstrings, due in January 2025, leans mostly away from “songs”, using the voice and guitars texturally. Each single so far features a lovely b-side, and for “Griselda” that’s “Kazimi”, made of stuttery instrumental loops with clickity almost-beats. Much folktronic bliss.
Flock – Meet Your Shadow [Strut/Bandcamp]
Here’s some forward-thinking jazz from the UK. Flock is a supergroup of sorts, including among others composer, percussionist and instrument-maker Bex Burch (whose solo album came out on International Anthem last year), and Sarathy Korwar, whose solo albums have fused jazz and Indian music with political urgency. They’re joined by reeds/woodwinds player Tamar Osborn and two keyboardists: Danalogue and Al Macsween. Electronic music, minimalist composition, krautrock, Afrobeat and more inform the music on their second album Flock II, and one can’t help thinking it would rock live.
Harrison Rae – I Burnt the Butter Again [Midheaven/Bandcamp]
Here’s a rare new EP from Sydney experimentalist Harrison Rae, sometimes known as Beau Ambien or Henri O. R. Asar, and also founder of the Club Moss label, releasing the likes of mara and Bluetung (now Glen Rey.). Harrison’s music runs the gamut from ambient to jungle, and on this EP there’s ambient keyboard odysseys, and there’s some kind of shoegazey trip-hop and there’s crunching beats (the much-sampled break from Led Zep’s “When The Levee Breaks” gets a workout) – all demanding repeated listens.
Koichi Shimizu – Imprint [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Unknowingly, when I previewed and immediately grabbed the new album Imprint from Koichi Shimizu, I’d first heard the artist 25 years ago. As just Koichi, Shimizu released a split 12″ on legendary (if very obscure) UK IDM label Worm Interface (sadly the label’s releases have never been available digitally, except perhaps from individual artists). The breadth of Shimizu’s musical taste and talents was formed during two stints living in Thailand as well as in Japan and elsewhere, and he’s quite well-known for the music & sound work he’s done for/with Thai independent film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He’s also collaborated with the brilliant, shapeshifting Singaporean band The Observatory, another connection I’d failed to make immediately – seriously, Demon State is an incredible mix of industrial, experimental electronics and noise side by side with postrock, gamelan and who knows what else. In comparison, Shimizu’s new solo album Imprint is not nearly so intense, but there are clear industrial techno undertones along with beautiful glitchy ambient composition and cinematic scope. I’ve been returning to this album quite a bit because there’s enough detail and left turns that you know it’ll retain its pleasures repeatedly.
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. Also this year, 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. 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.
Associated Sine Tone Services – 000900 [Flag Day Recordings/Bandcamp]
Montréal sound-artist Jeremy Young awoke from a dream one night in which he was on a darkened stage with Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek and fellow Montréaler Nicolas Bernier, all dressed in lab coats, performing with sine wave oscillators. He immediately prepared a set of oscillator loops and sent it to the other two, who were game to turn this dream into reality. Despite the name Associated Sine Tone Services, and the library music-esque cover art, the music is neither academic nor anodyne, the three participants preferring to lean into melody and even rhythm at times. The sine wave oscillators are particularly effective when detuned, so there are some gorgeously woozy and eerie passages. There’s a strange beauty here, from three sensitive sculptors of sound.
Banabila & Machinefabriek – A Giant Misstep [Banabila Bandcamp]
Since their self-titled debut 12 years ago, experienced Dutch musicians & sound-artists Michel Banabila and the aforementioned Rutger Zuydervelt have had a fruitful partnership, clearly complementing each other. Banabila has four decades of experience working with all manner of instruments along with tape and electronics, while for at least 2 decades Zuydervelt has amassed a huge collection of works from sound-art and drone to soundtracks and many musical collaborations. A Looming Presence finds them working with more beats than usual, something Banabila is no stranger too, and which has crept into Zuydervelt’s work more of late. But the rhythms weave around earthy textures, field recordings, drones, or even voice and viola. This “playful yet dark soundtrack for a crumbling world” is in fact rather comforting, compulsive listening.
Lint – Curb Cloud [Lint Bandcamp]
Mitch Jones is a founding member of Sydney industrial/electronic originators Scattered Order, and his wife Dru Jones has been involved either making brilliant art or with noisemaking too since the early ’80s. Despite this, it’s only for the last 5 years or so that the two have released music together in duo form, as Lint. Mitch solo is the little hand of the faithful, and Dru is Skipism. Together they weave the artistic, sample-collage of Dru’s iPad-mediated work with Mitch’s further sample deconstruction and strangely contemporary beats – but I feel like Mirror of your own hopes sees the duo finding its own character more than ever before, something quite freeform, almost sinister at times, but also quite humorous.
Mara – Three Minutes of the River [Pure Space/Bandcamp]
A new full-length from Sydney sound-artist (and occasional Utility Fog fill-in host) Mara Schwedtfeger is always welcome, and this one comes from the Home Listening series from Pure Space, the usually-club-focused label from ex-FBi DJ Andy Garvey. Mara’s practice brings in recordings from travels – field recordings and found sound, but also recordings of her own performances repurposed for these works. Her viola appears on some tracks, but here it’s studio-recorded guitar, along with field recordings from the river near the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, and audio notes made by Mara. The more closely you listen, the more rewarding this album is.
Başak Günak – Wings [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Turkish musician and sound-artist Başak Günak is best known for her electronic productions and collaborations under the alias Ah! Kosmos, but here branches out under her own name for the incredible Rewilding album on the impeccably curated Subtext Recordings. This is very much an electroacoustic work in which electronics interact with and manipulate sounds of instruments including the halldorophone, organ, piano and bass clarinet, as well as some vocals and site recordings of installations. In amongst this, Günak works in deconstructed Anatolian folk-song, and personal sounds (whispers and murmurs), developing her theme of (auto-)rewilding in various ways, not always as you’d expect: so the more grounded acoustic performances are set free via electronics, and her own installation work and compositions are transformed too. Music to get lost in.
Nyokabi Kariũki – Item no. ______ [OFNOT/KMRU Bandcamp]
In 2022, Kenyan sound-artist Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU released the album Temporary Stored, which found him in dialogue with audio found in the Sound Archive of Royal Museum of Central Africa, based in Belgium. As well as actual objects (and people) stolen from Africa, Western countries have taken sounds and music and treated them as copyrighted property. So in creating these gorgeous sound works, KMRU has performed a kind of act of “repatriation”. Those tracks are now re-released on a 2LP set on KMRU’s label OFNOT, augmented by further reworkings by other African sound-artists. Temporary Stored II is a remarkable, thought-provoking work, and each artist takes a personal approach. Kenyan sound-artist Nyokabi Kariũki emphasises the way the recordings are decontextualised as mere numbered library records, while slowly weaving in haunting synth chords.
Laura Cannell – A Feather on the Breath [Brawl Records]
The latest album from the indefatigable British multi-instrumentalist Laura Cannell was inserted in between episodes of her monthly, yearlong “Lore” series of EPs. On The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined, Cannell applies her historically-informed part-improvised, part-composed chops to the music and life of 12th-century composer, scholar and nun Hildegard von Bingen. Performed on bass recorders and a 12-string knee harp, both at times played through a delay pedal, Cannell’s always-atemporal music creates a bridge to one of the few female creators and scholars whose works have, in some form, survived to the present. Inspiring as well as inspired, the music here is more Cannell than von Bingen, but a fitting tribute.
Lia Kohl – Car Alarm, Turn Signal (feat. Ka Baird) [Moon Glyph/Bandcamp]
Chicago cellist and sound-artist Lia Kohl has built up a gorgeous catalogue of odd, inquisitive and considered sound works over a very short period of time, with releases on Skeletons’ Shinkoyo, Longform Editions and American Dreams. Her new album Normal Sounds is released by the adventurous Portland (Oregon) tape/vinyl label Moon Glyph, and the album title is a nice description of Kohl’s practice (as are the track titles). As well as field recordings and the sounds of “normal” human activity, Kohl likes to incorporate the randomness of a radio scrolling through frequencies and settling on whatever happens to be on the airwaves. And of course there’s her cello, which along with electronics can slip into the mix and transform everything. It’s not always clear even from the titles what we’re hearing (“Tornado Siren”?) but Kohl is second to none in melding these real-world “normal sounds” with her layered, processed instrument and synths. On this track, Kohl also invited Ka Baird to add layered flute and little keyboard drones, adding an avant-garde new-age sensibility. Without noticing, we’re left with slowly-more-sparse cello plucks and slow layered bowing and then… the sound of a pedestrian crossing brings us back to the “normal sounds” (with some faint found-sound saxophone soloing from someone’s car radio). Another beautiful work from a unique artist.
I should also mention that Longform Editions’ last batch for this year featured a stunning 52-minute piece by The Nighttime Ensemble featuring Kohl on cello and her radios & objects, alongside guitar, piano, upright bass and drums/percussion. It’s incredibly restrained work that slowly teases out its emotional narrative of stillness, redolent of late Talk Talk and The Necks.
Selvedge – Arc [Selvedge Bandcamp]
The new album from Lawrence, Kansas musician Chance Dibben, who records as Selvedge, would have been a beautiful addition to the original Mego roster in the late ’90s or early ’00s. Dibben has been working on his lo-fi abstract sound since at least 2018, building up a large catalogue of drum machine experiments, drone and noise. It’s all quality stuff, by turns abrasive and lush. But I feel like new album HOLLER is a leap ahead. Crackly lo-fi loops, droney or rhythmic or clattery or chopped from some other musical source, are bathed in swarming, fluctuating noise. Something is always in motion, so that however abstract or abstracted the underling sounds are, there’s something for the ear to follow. If you listen to one noise album this week/month/year, make it this one. (I mean, don’t stop there, but start here!)