Tonight we've got weird song and spoken stuff, mutant variants of jungle and bass music, glitched samples, barely-there singer-songwriterliness and more! It's Utility Fog!
Thanks to Bindi Mutiara for filling in last weekend!
Teether – GHOSTS SURROUND THE CASTLE [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp]
What happens when hard yakka just isn't hard enough? HARDER YAKKA, according to Australia's most laconic underground rapper, Teether. This particular album is named in ultra-Aussie fashion because our guy recorded it while in London. Despite his awesome collabs with Kuya Neil, Teether is a great producer himself – just check the guitar loops, buried beats and heavy bass on this track, with subtle dub effects on the voice. Brilliant.
Dry Cleaning – Grass [4AD/Bandcamp]
I guess we're stuck with the insta-Deluxe Editions now, so 6 months after Dry Cleaning's Secret Love, here's the "Deluxe Edition", which has 3 new tracks tacked on that should've just been an EP. The new tracks are fucking great though – "Grass" mopes along with Florence Shaw's spoken words, until she actually sings for half of the song.
Show Me The Body – No God [Loma Vista/Bandcamp]
For me, the strongest aspect of NYC hardcore band Show Me The Body has been their off-piste collaborations – the incredibly stacked Corpus I with hip-hop, r'n'b & electronic producers, singers & rappers, and the Corpus II EPs I & II. But that's not to say that their standard fare is standard fare either, with vocalist Julian Cashwan-Pratt playing electrified banjo as the lead instrument, and on their latest album they've collaborated with Gio Escobar's avant-garde collective Standing on the Corner, bringing in horn arrangements in between blasts of punk. Alone Together brings out a certain contradiction of our times, but emphasises that, for all the aggression, they are about love. And it's also notable that the bandmembers are all Jewish and all pro-Palestinian (they had "Anti-Zionist Jewish Pride" t-shirts at gigs & online for a while, wish I'd gotten hold of one!), and the all-too-familiar hatred coming from within our Jewish community was part of what inspired "Alone Together". Solidarity, my mates!
Brian Ennals & Blockhead – Roll Call [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
Last year I was playing Baltimore rapper Brian Ennals via his frankly astonishing opus in collaboration with Infinity Knives: A City Drowned in God's Black Tears, mixing hip-hop with guitars' acoustic strums & electric riffs, and a male gospel choir. Meanwhile NYC producer Blockhead is known – apart from the endless memes on his Instagram – for his extensive production work with Aesop Rock and more recently billy woods, two genius figures in rap – plus scads of solo work. Ennals more than easily stands in those shoes on *ahem* Boatshoes, whether it's jazz licks, synths or who knows what else Blockhead throws in the boat. First class album from top to bottom.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Level 5 [p(doom) records/Bandcamp eventually]
By now, Aussie psych band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard can be expected to do something weird & different whenever they release something new. Their upcoming album Alien Metal is much more alien than metal, made entirely on modular synths, under the influence of rave music. And yes, complete with demented video, first single "Level 5" is breakbeat-driven EDM-pop using the Phrygian dominant scale (pretty common in metal). Super fun.
Yunze Ou – pattrn 87 [Yunze Ou Bandcamp]
Spanish artist Yunze Ou is ostensibly an anonymous producer hailing from Montaña Palentina in the north of Spain. The project works in the 170BPM realm of drum'n'bass, halftime and dub techno. A recent excellent split 7" on Short Cuts Vinyl credits both tracks to Pablo Miranda Caballero, suggesting that Yunze Ou is another alias of the Seville artist releasing experimental electronics as Celine Arnauld and jungle/hardcore-influenced stuff as DJ Don't Sleep. Yunzo Ou has been making series of EPs, Meta Patterns, to be followed now by Meta Data, but from the IIIrd of the Meta Patterns we heard something heavily drum'n'bassy, complex rhythms reminiscent of Arcon 2 and Dom & Roland – while the previous track was more on a current day Samurai tip. Complex beats and great sound design.
Nia Archives – Danger [Hijinxx/Island Records]
UK producer, DJ & singer Nia Archives follows her debut album Silence is Loud, released in 2024, with a more varied take on pop with jungle beats – on emotional junglist there are indie rock guitars and even tracks that don't sound like they have breakbeats, at least until they do. But Nia Archives doesn't need to prove her junglist cred – as well as her DJ sets, her UP YA ARCHIVES has released some brilliant "new gen junglism" over the last couple of years. And on her second album it's new gen jungle-pop with feeling.
Basic Rhythm & NyNy – Mek Style [Musique Nocturne/Bandcamp]
Basic Rhythm – Collapse [Musique Nocturne/Bandcamp]
Catching up here. Anthoney Hart aka Basic Rhythm released the fantastic grime-meets-techno album 8 Bar Techno on Sneaker Social Club in June, but he'd already released whole nother album on his own Musique Nocturne in May. This one has more of the mutant drum'n'bass that he arguably specialises in, often rhythmically regimented & hybridised. Like on the Sneaker Social Club album there's some collabs, mostly with other drum'n'bass/jungle producers, but vocalist NyNy also makes an appearance, on a track that's like a stripped-down dancehall trying to push into jungle. Those shrieking synths and the plunging bassline on "Collapse" are really something though.
re:ni – SULA [re:lax/Bandcamp]
Back on her own re:lax label (co-run with laksa, see?) after a visit to Timedance is Lauren Bush aka re:lax with a couple of percussive, dubby bass tunes aimed straight at the dancefloor.
Gloorp – Ice Bath ft. Chasia [Jolt Music/Bandcamp]
Philadelphia's Garrett Burke is a talented drummer and sound-engineer/producer whose Gloorp project recalls melodic IDM with fidgety beats influenced as much by footwork as jungle and UK garage. It's tightly rhythmic, and as far as I know, mostly played live on drum triggers. Rad.
Leo – Cicada Burnt [Peak Oil/Bandcamp]
After making his name on Manchester's YOUTH and Shotta Tapes, Leo now lands on the magnificent Peak Oil with Cicada Burnt, an EP that deftly crosses over between UK bass music and the twitchy dub techno oft associated with Peak Oil. There's upbeat electro-bass here, but couched in spatious delayscapes, with tracks that bide their time before unleashing.
Christophe Bailleau O'Farrell – Gravemaster [Lotophagus Records/Bandcamp]
Christophe Bailleau O'Farrell – FUSION [Mahorka/Bandcamp]
Swiss-French producer & musician Christophe Bailleau O'Farrell (formerly known only by the first two names) has been quite prolific of late, with a series of albums inspired by neurodivergence, and now there's a pair of albums that are kind of two sides of a coin: Romantic, Visceral, on Bulgarian label Mahorka, is a search for beauty in a ruined world, acoustic instruments combined with General Midi and glitchy electronics; its evil twin Mind Is That Sky My Goth appeared on French label Lotophagus Records, and takes refuge in darkness. You could say they're not that different, but there's more aggressive, glitched beats & noise on the evil one!
BirdWorld – Opposite Hinges (Qasim Naqvi Remix) [Dugnad rec/Bandcamp]
When I discovered BirdWorld in 2018, it was love at first sight – a cello and percussion duo? And yet so much more! Cellist Gregor Riddell and percussionist Adam Teixeira's second album NURTURE came out last year, fulfilling the debut's promise: field recordings rub up against composed pieces and improvisations, many acoustic instruments co-exist with electronics. Their first album did birth a set of remixes, and here's one from the follow-up, a track originally featuring violinist Sara Övinge, beautifully reworked here by Dawn of Midi drummer & modular synthesist Qasim Naqvi.
Joni Void – Kidder [Joni Void Bandcamp]
Loud Life – Caution Tape [Joni Void Bandcamp]
Jean Cousin has released a few albums on Montréal's storied Constellation Records as Joni Void, his best-known moniker, but he's also been known as Jean Néant, ages ago as johnny_ripper, and lots more, quite honestly (a lot of it on Bandcamp). Loud Life is relatively recent, kind of lo-fi sampladelic hip-hop, and the third release In Third Person, came out in May. At the start of July came LAGZ, a sequel to last November's BLAZ, both of which are constructed from meticulously-catalogued loops & samples (see the Bandcamp pages) of friends & inspirations of the artist. It's great lo-fi, sometimes glitchy, head-noddy stuff.
BOOBS OF DOOM – U. LEMONDRONE BEHEMOTH VERSION [BOOBS OF DOOM Bandcamp]
I've been a fan of Scottish, er, doom duo BOOBS OF DOOM for ages, but have somehow failed to play them up until now – a huge error. They're quite prolific, although they've slowed down a little of late, but SURVIVAL HORROR is their 34th album, at least of the numbered ones, since 2014. Doom is a wide-ranging concept, but there's some sense of doom metal in here, along with industrial dub sounds, hip-hop and/or trip-hop, postrock and experimental electronics. At the time of broadcast, SURVIVAL HORROR was in pre-order, which requires a nominal fee, but everything is otherwise pay-what-you-can. And prolific and generous as they are, everything is of high quality. EMBRACE THE DOOM!
Ava Rabiat – Szał Wirtualnych Ciał [FUU/Bandcamp]
Ava Rabiat – Geistr [FUU/Bandcamp]
Polish sound-artist, singer & composer Ava Rabiat released her debut, Elektro Erotyk on Berlin-based label/platform/collective FUU just last year. The label is home also to artists like Ah! Kosmos aka Başak Günak, Büşra Kayıkçı and Hara Alonso, and Rabiat is very much at home with these electro-acoustic women. Szał Wirtualnych Ciał continues her interest in emotive, but highly technologically degraded songs, songs which mess with text in both Polish and English. The album's title translates as "Frenzy of Virtual Bodies", a phrase that smears the physical and organic into the digital and artificial, and the music does so too.
Bill Seaman Reconstructs Spirit Radio – THE FORMLESS {RE} [Spirit Radio Bandcamp]
In 2024, New York sound-artists/musicians Stephen Spera and Tamalyn Miller released a psychedelic, deeply weird masterwork called Distract'd by a Kaleidoscope Salesman, folding various folk precursors into a mélange of olde-world samples, electronic textures and rhythms. Later that year, Spera's friend & collaborator Bill Seaman – a noted writer, thinker & multidisciplinary artist – sent the artists an entirely unexpected reworking of the entire album using digital & maybe analogue cut-ups, loops and processing. Notably, Seaman spent some time in Australia in the 1990s, before returning to the US. Here he's created a beautiful, uncanny companion album to Spirit Radio's original.
Frances Chang – Auratones of Desire [RVNG Intl/Bandcamp]
I love a straaaange pop song, and Frances Chang's new single is very much that, combining fake MIDI strings with real strings, blissful vocal delivery with basic drum machine beats, and a fairly impenetrable title ("Auratones" are some kind of monitoring speaker?) that's literally the first line of the song. been thinking bout confession – all lower-case, not even an apostrophe before "bout" – is out on the great RVNG Intl in a few weeks, promising a high level of quirk and an equally high level of musicianship.
Hana Stretton – As It Was Before This [Lima Limo Records/Inpartmaint/P.W. Elverum & Sun/brierfield flood press/Hana Stretton Bandcamp]
Occasionally you encounter something so extraordinary, sui generis and simultaneously self-effacing that you have to step back for a moment and wonder if it really exists. Unfortunately due to scheduling issues it wasn't Australian musician Hana Stretton's beautiful first album that did this for me (I've now corrected this, and recommend you also check out Soon soon), but the wonders of tiarn are not easily escaped once they snare you. One person who immediately recognized the genius of Hana Stretton was Phil Elverum of Microphones/Mount Eerie, who swiftly provided Soon a home on his label which otherwise is purely a home for his own eclectic outputs. As you can see from this track's credits above, Stretton's new album is co-released by a merry band of labels across Europe & UK, Japan, the US and Australia. Stretton is based in Victoria, and recorded this album predominantly in a cottage by the sea, using her surroundings as sound sources. So delicate folky songs, mostly with piano or acoustic guitar, surface from field recordings, or appear as field recordings, the air and movement of people in a room being essential to the compositions. Importantly, when they do surface, these are beautiful songs, so gentle that it takes a moment to realise you've been flattened by the gorgeous harmonies, which sometimes feature her local Forest Creek Folk Choir or additional string players, but mostly are entirely the work of Hana Stretton. A marvel.
Jem Finer & John Matthias – Baroque Blues [Touch/Bandcamp]
John Matthias is a multi-talented man. As well as being a violinist and singer, composer & producer, he holds a PhD in theoretical physics. Over the last 3 or so decades he's worked with Matthew Herbert and Coldcut, releasing music on both of their labels (oh and also Radiohead), and made some beautiful electro-acoustic albums with composer & sound-artist Jay Auborn. The forthcoming album Almost Starlight is not an outlet for his lovely songwriting – rather, it's a work of ancient modernism, of folk re-tooled, collaborating with hurdy-gurdy master Jem Finer. The hurdy-gurdy, if you don't know, is a bizarre mechanical instrument that vibrates strings with a rosin-covered ribbon or wheel in place of a bow, allowing harmonies from multiple strings, and with its droney sound it's a bit like a string version of a bagpipe. Its sound can't help but evoke folk music, even when used in avant-garde contexts, and here Finer's hurdy-gurdy and Matthias' fiddle are often joined by the aforementioned Jay Auborn on cello & percussion, who also provides clever post-production without this turning into out-and-out folktronica. The album's out on September 4th.
Mara – Loosening My Grip feat. Abby Sundborn [Pure Space/Bandcamp]
fbi.radio broadcaster, curator, violist, composer, sound-artist Mara Schwerdtfeger returns to the also-fbi-affiliated Pure Space with a two track release. The first was a flute-based meditation, with contributions from Naarm-based Benjamin Woods. It's now complemented by a track featuring cello from the also-Naarm-based Abby Sundborn. Mara multi-tracks her viola and Sundborn's cello in pulses that wind through some beautiful harmonic progressions with fragmented melodies which are augmented with splashes of synths. Slowly the sounds dissipate with the help of a recorded yoga chant. Lovely.
Marlēné Claudine Radice – Come Out To Play [Eternal Music Projects/Bandcamp]
Canberran composer Marlēné Claudine Radice writes notated chamber music, but they're also an improviser, sound-artist, noise musician. Their new EP Come Out To Play is an exorcism of sorts, a collection of works derived from improvisations following the experience of domestic violence. On the title track, voices bubble up out of hissing silence, finally crashing into raucous noise, but that noise then succumbs to a somewhat atonal drone of clarinets (which were first heard in the Introduction), through which the vocal drones arise triumphant. In fact those voices continue through the following track, which also sports the sampled voice of Werner Herzog describing a natural environment seemingly riven by violence and suffering. It's a little disturbing, but the music itself doesn't wallow in misery. It's a striking work.
Jad Atoui – Haptic Drift [Ruptured Music/Bandcamp]
Beirut-based producer/sound-artist Jad Atoui was one of the first artists I discovered on broadening my knowledge of the Lebanese experimental scene – I played his remix of Senyawa on the Ruptured/Annihaya back in 2021. Despite the electronic nature of his music, he spent considerable time embedded in the New York Downtown scene, learning about improv as well as creating installation works, many of which you can read about and view on his website. Nevertheless, I've played Atoui mostly in collaboration with others, so it's nice that he has a new solo album, It Will Take Forever, out now. Even nicer is that Atoui was the subject of a quite substantial feature in this month's edition of The Wire, a well-deserved recognition of a unique and multi-layered artist. And it's really a joy discovering how much of the spirit of rave is buried in these apparent drone/noise/sound-art pieces. Wonderful, wobbling, swooping subs, fluttering synth pads, rhythms sent through the blender. You can't dance to this (well I mean, don't let me stop you), but you ought to play these tunes loud in a space with a big sub-woofer, and let it wash over you. A good pair of headphones will do, but then your body won't be rumbling along with the low frequencies.
Oh, it's also nice to see my previous comments on the first single quoted on the Bandcamp page, lol. I was right – it is a brilliant album.
Pat Frontage – Fog and Dark [DataDoor/Bandcamp]
Who is this Patrick, er Pat Frontage fellow destroying guitars into drone & shoegaze on yonder Bandcamp? Fear not, young fellow, it is Adelaide's finest recovering IDM pioneer, Tim Koch, whose rock credentials stretch through many band lineups, and whose shoegaze connection couldn't be more impeccable, via his Isolated Gate project with Ian Masters, singer in Pale Saints in the '90s. There's a lot going on in these tracks, but that key quality of shoegaze is there in spades – that is, dense noise but blissful. In the latter part of the album, some clear guitar guitar arises from the murk, and the final track wraps it up in a bow, beginning with a distorted miasma that coalesces into beautiful harmonic progressions performed through digital fizz and delays. Behind that pat frontage is a serious collection of seriously engrossing, enveloping noise & beauty.