Lots of vocals tonight, as spoken word, as songs, as cut-up textures… As usual we’re already at a point where there’s waaaay too much music out there. But hey, that means that everything here is rolled gold.
Sopa Boba – That Sweet Moment [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp]
This is pretty stunning, IMHO. New Belgian/Dutch ensemble Sopa Boba blend spoken word, noise electronics and classical strings. Key members are Pavel Tchikov aka Ogives and G.W. Sok, ex-vocalist with The Ex and frequent vocalist with Oiseaux-Tempête. The album That Moment adapts a text of that name by Moldavian writer Nicoleta Esinencu (she’s been referred to as the “angry voice of Moldova”), with dramaturgy by Jean Vangebeergen, and the words are magically presented by G.W. Sok, as naturally as if they were his. It’s a cutting text that satirises late-stage capitalism, with its starting point the apparently true news item in which a Moldovian father cut off his son’s finger with an axe for stealing a bit of money from his wallet. As well as being responsible for the electronics (with some additions from Stéphane Diskus), Tchikov composed the string parts which act as a an emotive counterpoint to Sok’s laconic & sardonic delivery. I think it’s this whole combination which makes the work so striking for me, as this kind of hybrid genre-erasing is what Utility Fog has always been about.
Enxin/Onyx – Flare and Coil [Other People/Bandcamp]
The highly anticipated album from Hiro Kone (aka Nicky Mao) and Tot Onyx (aka Tommi Tokyo) is here, courtesy of Nicolas Jaar’s Other People. Enxin/Onyx, as they go by, did release an EP called Dorothy in 2022 with two of the tracks here, but In Rupture brings seven tracks to vinyl. Tokyo’s abrasive electronics and punkish vocals are present from her solo work as Tot Onyx and her previous duo group A, and in amongst the more freeform industrial electronics are the bass-heavy techno sounds familiar from Hiro Kone’s earlier work. The thrilling energy of their live performances comes through on every track.
Noémi Büchi – Disappointing the Desire to Last [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Noémi Büchi – Fair Enough feat. Joséphine de Weck [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Swiss/French composer Noémi Büchi‘s debut album Matter translated classical orchestrations into contemporary electronics in an original and compelling way. Last year’s Does It Still Matter reframed the former title as a question about artistic pursuit in the face of an increasingly threatened world. New EP Liquid Bones brings her artistic practice back to a more personal level, with a lighter touch that pulls the compositions into more rhythmic and melodic shapes. If this personalised approach has a voice, though, it’s that of Belgian actress and writer Joséphine De Weck, who has also been the “face” of Büchi’s recent live shows. On the one vocal track, de Weck’s voice is treated as another texture, looping back on itself, splintered into sibilants. Liquid bones indeed.
The Young Mothers – Lijm [Sonic Transmission Records/Bandcamp]
In 2009, Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten found himself in Austin, TX, amongst a highly diverse scene which took in experimentation in rock, hip-hop and electronic music. There he formed The Young Mothers with a group of local musicians who shared his interest in mixing all these styles together – along with jazz, of course. Better If You Let It is the third album from this group in just over 10 years, and follows Flaten’s return to Norway. The album amply demonstrates the way the players shift genres – on “Lijm”, trumpeter Jawwaad Taylor begins by rapping over a drum machine beat, which invisibly but instantly morphs into a full jazz arrangement about a minute in. Somehow in the last few minutes we find ourselves nonchalantly back in electronic territory. John Zorn’s Naked City used sharp genre turns to punkishly induce whiplash; when The Young Mothers shift genres it’s a way of welcoming all sorts into the camp. Nice.
DIIV – Brown Paper Bag (upsammy Remix) [Fantasy Records/Bandcamp]
Dutch electronic producer Thessa Torsing aka upsammy is known for intricate ambient productions – there might be skittery beats but they’re just part of the general scenery. It’s interesting hearing her here remixing jangly indie rock band DIIV, who sound like they could easily come from the mid-’90s. And upsammy’s version is somewhat trip-hoppy, with reversed vocals, drum machines and blurpy acid squiggles – although I’m thinking more like Styrofoam or Dntel’s indietronica from the mid-’00s. Lovely stuff anyway.
Mount Kimbie – The Trail (Astrid Sonne Remix) [Warp/Bandcamp]
And here’s another surprise – Danish experimentalist Astrid Sonne remixing Mount Kimbie. She takes “The Trail”, which is a kind of indie rock song with beats, and totally transforms it with glitchy sampled pads and a wholly new vocal, a slice of Danish posh isolation.
Jules Reidy – Satellite [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Jules Reidy – Search Light [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
When Jules Reidy moved from Australia to Berlin over a decade ago, they started making music on 12-string acoustic guitar and electric guitar that made use of strange tunings, dense thickets of strumming, aleatoric improvisation and noise. In 2019 they released the incredible 12″ In Real Life on Black Truffle (the label run by another Australian guitar innovator, Oren Ambarchi), and the two 20-minute sides introduced vocoded vocals and other electronics along with the guitar thrums. Albums followed on Editions Mego and Shelter Press among others, but Ghost/Spirit, released on the venerable Thrill Jockey, represents a more concerted turn towards song, albeit glistening and shivering with those guitar strings in just intonation. Its two halves represent the transformative period of the album’s creation – a self-described dissolution of self and a reconstruction that brought with it a new sense of personal identity and a mystical understanding of their place in the universe. The interconnected self is represented by the presence throughout of samples from musical compadres: bassist Andreas Dzialocha, cellist Judith Hamann, percussionist Morten Joh, drummer Sara Neidorf and trombonist Weston Olencki.
Joni Void – Cloud Level (with Ytamo) [Constellation Records/Bandcamp]
T. Gowdy – Blest Age! [Constellation Records/Bandcamp]
Montréal’s Constellation Records is of course famous as the home of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A/Thee Silver Mt. Zion and a host of other legendary Canadian postrock bands, and their spiritual home the Hotel2Tango is a 24-track analogue studio – so for many years I felt sure that the label’s aesthetic was incompatible with the digital realm of cut-ups and glitches. That said, Do Make Say Think were incorporating digital edits and weird studio shit fairly early on. In any case, in the last decade the label has signed the likes of minimal glitch-techno producer Automatisme, and a few years ago we received the flickering ambience of T. Gowdy and the gorgeously obtuse cut-up haunted trip-hop of Joni Void. These two both have albums due on March 14th, and the second singles are things of beauty. Joni Void has again enlisted friends from Japan and elsewhere, here with Ytamo floating above twitching electronic haze and loping beats, while T. Gowdy’s flickery micro-edits here underpin wordless vocals reaching back to Medieval choral music.
Psymon Spine – Be the Worm (Disq Remix) [Northern Spy Records/Bandcamp]
Oh and now we’re back to remixed indie music. The chaotic remix of NYC psych/postpunks Psymon Spine here, going from electro to manic drum’n’bass and hardcore, trancey ambient and back again, is not by some deconstructed club producer – it’s from postpunk/indie rockers Disq, havin’ a fuckin’ ball in the studio, and it shows. Heaps fun.
Impérieux – Deliro [Macro/Bandcamp]
Berlin label Macro is home to Stefan Goldmann, whose music bends between dancefloor techno and highly conceptual work. He co-runs the label with DJ Finn Johannsen and their curation goes far afield to glitched jazz and even works of Goldmann’s composer father Friedrich Goldmann. But there’s techno as well, and Impérieux very much fits the bill – both in the dancefloor connection and the experimentalism. Alper Durmush is from Kırcaali, a Bulgarian city with a history tied up with Turkey and Greece. Bulgaria’s the connection – Goldmann is part-Bulgarian, and Impérieux has recorded for Sofia Records, the label of Bulgarian techno legend KiNK. Of course this is Macro records, so the techno here is never straight-laced. And of course I like it with breakbeats and syncopated bass hits. There’s lots going on here, and lots of nice breakbeat manipulation too.
celine arnauld – {data ∩ control} [Polygon Network/Bandcamp]
Well, speaking of beat manipulation, a few weeks back we heard from Spanish producer Pablo Miranda under the DJ Don’t Sleep alias with his incredible haunted rave album Digital Subscriber on Stolen Groove. But his stuff under the Celine Arnauld very much references rave tropes as well as IDM and glitch, and his data control v1 really pushes the bleeps & breaks into experimental territory. Each track, with titles referencing functional mathematics and set theory, comes out of little experiments in Ableton & Max for Live, each of which was then resampled and cut up into glitchy, alien dance music. Released on the experimental electronic label Polygon Network, based in Bilbao, in northern Spain.
Hence Therefore – Elite Panic [All Centre/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney’s Hence Therefore has settled into the non-pattern of just releasing music every so often, but when he does it’s worth immediate attention. His latest two-tracker Elite Panic is his second on the excellent UK left-of-centre dance label All Centre, with two tracks of snappy, fidgety 170bpm beats, somewhere between footwork and jungle-techno.
Aroma Nice – Trublz [Rua Sound]
After an album and EPs on his mate Earl Grey‘s Hyperchamber Music some years back, UK junglist Luke Fashoni aka Aroma Nice released a couple of brilliant EPs on YUKU in the last couple of years. The pair are also Monlogue, whose second EP came out on Irish label Rua Sound – and now the same label has brought Aroma Nice into the fold with new EP His Rotting Tongue. Fashoni is one of the best beat manglers in the game at the moment, and he has a great ear for basslines and samples, and a great sense of pacing. Wicked.
Rutger Zuydervelt – Credits [Machinefabriek Bandcamp]
In 2016, Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefbabriek) released his score for the video game Astroneer – actually a second part came out the following year. Now comes his follow-up, a soundtrack to Microtopia, which has pretty gorgeous graphics. Rutger’s music is mostly more towards the sound-art and ambient – this is not an action game! – but the credits theme is punctuated by crashing bass pulses. Lovely.
Constantine Skourlis – Collapse (Tilman Robinson Remix) [Bedouin Records/Bandcamp]
Bedouin Records – now based in Japan – has only put out a few releases in the last year or two, but there has been a bit of activity from Greek composer & sound-artist Constantine Skourlis, including a big sound-work last year called Dawn Eternal. His major work Eternal Recurrence came out in 2020, and now its opening track has received a potent remix from Tilman Robinson, Perth composer & producer based in Naarm/Melbourne. The themes of environmental & political collapse are close to Tilman’s heart as well, so this is apocalyptic, resonant stuff.
Markus Sollid – Spirit Cable Error [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp]
Eastern Nurseries is one of those Portuguese (in their case, part-Portuguese) labels putting out consistently interesting stuff of indeterminate genre. Copenhagen’s Markus Sollid here presents two short tracks – both under 5 minutes – which seem to last much longer. You could describe it as drone, but that gives the lie to the fact that they’re quite rhythmic in their way, with lots of gurgling, shuddering granular disintegration. I’ve ended up listening to these multiple times as they’re evocative and full of detail.
VIRUS2020 ( فيروس ٢٠٢٠ ) – A FROG فيروس٢٠٢٠ ـ ممكن في رأسي ضفدع [Unexplained Sounds]
VIRUS2020 ( فيروس ٢٠٢٠ ) – فيروس٢٠٢٠ ـ تلاقين [Unexplained Sounds]
Tunisian musician & producer Rami Harrabi aka VIRUS2020 ( فيروس ٢٠٢٠ ) released his debut non-self-released album in 2023 on Unexplained Sounds, the experimental international label run by Raffaele Pezzella. Khushue was a mixture of performance and sampling of North African & Middle Eastern instrumentation, processed into strange forms of industrial drone. With the sequel A FROG A GUN AND A SAD MAN فيروس٢٠٢٠ ـ الضفدع ، المسدس و الرجل الحزين, the samples limp and warble in reverberant space, cut in uneven ways, slowed down and stretched out like chopped & screwed hip-hop shorn of beats. It’s a haunting lugubriousness that sometimes twists into noise, an album to sink into and let it work its magic.
Demdike Stare and Kristen Pilon – A Grave Fall (January) [DDS]
Demdike Stare and Kristen Pilon – Was He Good – The Bunny Business [DDS]
You rarely get the same thing twice with Demdike Stare, whose earlier works were haunted by strains of arcane English folk and psychedelia, but who have deep links to UK bass music as well. Their latest release, To Cut and Shoot is drawn from sound material created by US filmmaker & musician Kristen Pilon for an experimental film of the same name, chopping & screwing her piano, strings and voice into something broken & namelessly evocative, at times noisy and rhythmic in an almost clubby way, but mostly set adrift in warp and glitch. As might be obvious, this maps quite specifically on to Utility Fog’s central concerns, and, helpfully, it’s really really good.
Alister Spence Trio – Moment Between [Alister Spence Bandcamp]
It’s been a while since we heard from Alister Spence Trio as a trio. In 2020 the trio teamed up with Ed Kuepper for the excellent Asteroid Ekosystem, which was followed with the equally great live album in 2023. But a pure trio album hasn’t been heard since 2017’s Not everything but enough. Although they’re led by Alister on the piano and sampler, the three members are all essential: The Necks’ Lloyd Swanton is a sensitive & creative bass player, who also comfortably plays his role in the rhythm section with Toby Hall, and both have been essential members of the Sydney jazz scene for decades. In my opinion, the Alister Spence Trio is a key part of this country’s jazz landscape.
Alex Zethson & Johan Jutterström – It could have been very very beautiful (Live at Liljevalchs) [thanatosis/Alex Zethson Bandcamp]
Stockholm musicians Alex Zethson (piano) & Johan Jutterström (saxophone) have known each other since they were teens. Now Zethson runs the Thanatosis label, releasing jazz and free improv and sometimes drone/noise, and also collaborates widely. Zethson & Jutterström’s duo album It could / If I is out in April, but it’s preceded by a little 7″ featuring two of the tracks. When I played this on air I’d mistakenly read the credits wrongly; “It could have been very very beautiful” is actually a cover of a song by John Lurie of The Lounge Lizards (click the link to listen). It’s actually highly abstracted from the original’s late-night noir, but it’s got its own beautifully wistful thing going.
Tim Hecker – Monotone 3 [kranky/Bandcamp]
Wonderful to have a new Tim Hecker album out, and even though this one collects Shards of music originally made for film & TV projects, it’s got all the hallmarks of Tim Hecker’s musical talent. Granular & glitchy, droney but full of acoustic samples as well, it’s a beauty. “Monotone 3” has bass clarinet arpeggiating throughout from Victor Alibert.