Welcome to the first new music show of 2026 – and thanks to Giulio aka Parcae for his great selections last week!
We have a certain amount of catchup from last year, but we also have a surprisingly large amount of new music already, either released this week or last, or forthcoming.
LISTEN AGAIN in a new year. Stream on demand from fbi.radio or podcast here.
hidden_attachment – sorry this was just something i had to do [ky/hidden_attachment Bandcamp]
hidden_attachment – in moncton i spent all my money on pinball and beer [ky/hidden_attachment Bandcamp]
In November I played a track from Ky Brooks, the Montreal artist who recorded an album in 2023 called Power Is The Pharmacy for Constellation under the name Ky. They appear under various aliases, the most current of which is hidden_attachment, and they were previously known for making noise-punk with Lungbutter and freeform experimental stuff with Nag, among many others. The new hidden_attachment release is an EP described as “a tiny horrible opera”, which seems misleading – horrible is a matter of opinion, “opera” perhaps less so, but this is a small epic of practically ever genre other than opera. Jangling indie rock, electro-pop, bedroom drum’n’bass, bedroom punk, experimental ambient pop… ish. It’s weird & fun!
Silvia Tarozzi – Lucciole [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
Silvia Tarozzi – Le ossessioni [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp]
When US label Unseen Worlds introduced us to Italian violinist/singer/composer and more Silvia Tarozzi, it was her first album Mi specchio e rifletto, an album that reflects her broad musical experience, from working with groundbreaking minimalist electronic composer Eliane Radigue to contemporary music with Ensemble Dedalus, to the folk music of her local region, improvisation, and playful studio experimentation. There was more than a hint of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Then in 2022, Tarozzi released another extraordinary work, Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore (“Songs of war, work and love”), with the cellist Deborah Walker, presenting a collection of music inspired by folk songs from rural Emilia which came from working class women involved with the partisan resistance in World War II, including songs sung by choirs of female rice field workers – music that the pair had grown up with. In April 2025, some of us were incredibly lucky, in Sydney and I think Melbourne, to witness Tarozzi & Walker performing these songs together, with just their instruments and voices – one of those occasions when musicianship seems like magic. So there’s a lot of anticipation with this new solo album from Tarozzi – or there would be, except that Lucciole appeared seemingly out of nowhere, available digitally on Bandcamp on December 12th. We’ll have to wait for April this year for the LP and CD, but the whole album’s there if you’re willing to stump up $10USD. Once again this is a wonderful tapestry of an album, with brass ensemble arrangements that set it somewhere between classical & folk music, along with synths, field recordings and turntables bringing modern twists. Her voice is lovely and some of the songwriting evokes the baroque pop of Sufjan Stevens in the best way.
Winged Wheel – I See Poseurs Every Day [12XU/Bandcamp]
Winged Wheel – Speed Table [12XU/Bandcamp]
A US experimental rock supergroup, Winged Wheel began as a filesharing process between various musicians including violist Whitney Johnson aka Matchess, resulting in the 2022 debut album No Island. But for their new album Desert So Green, the band (expanded further to include, among others, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley) had toured extensively, and headed into the studio together. The result is an album with psych-kraut-rock intensity and rhythmic drive, blurts of postpunk harshness, shards of viola, and vocals at times. It’s a real surprise, and really worth digging into.
Èlg & la Chimie – La ville cachée [Murailles Music/Bandcamp]
I don’t speak much French, not well anyway, but there’s just scads of great music from France – and francophone artists from Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, not to mention other former colonies – and you know I’m happy to play music in any languages as much as instrumental music. But understanding the pure breadth of francophone music is still challenging, so I’m happy when French artists fall into my lap. The entity known as Èlg is Laurent Gérard, and he’s been involved in experimental rock, sound-stuff, weird electronic etc for a good couple of decades. La chimie (chemistry) was a project of his in 2013, made up of weird electronics and loops – but now it’s also his band, in which he plays amplified guitalele (ukulele/guitar hybrid) and keyboards, with Marie Nachury on bass, electroncis and percussion, and Johann Mazé on drums and drum triggers. All three also sing, and they make a righteous noise, sometimes starting off as normal-sounding songs until something super-weird happens; in particular, often magnificent grooves on booming, clattering drum kit, and thumping bass. No two tracks are anything like each other, but there’s a through-line of unchained inspiration. Truly something else.
JJJJJerome Ellis – Evensong, part 3 (for and after Jessica Valoris) [Shelter Press/Bandcamp]
This wonderful album came out in November, but I didn’t properly get to it until too late to include it last year. JJJJJerome Ellis is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, academic, cross-media artist and more; they are of Grenadian-Jamaican-American heritage, and they’re a disabled person with a stutter – something that they’ve ingrained in their practice, including in the spelling of their first name. This album, Vesper Sparrow, draws from Black American and Caribbean culture as well as pop and experimental music, while being placed primarily in a composed jazz context. Most of the tracks are written for, and sometimes feature, fellow artists, poets and theorists. Alongside granular processing and sampling, Ellis’s stutter features and becomes a structural part of the music – but whatever the theoretical basis, this is beautiful and incredibly creative music.
Toni Geitani – Ya Sah [Toni Geitani Bandcamp]
Toni Geitani – Wasla [Toni Geitani Bandcamp]
Originally trained in filmmaking, Lebanese musician Toni Geitani has since gained a Masters in live electronics in Amsterdam, where he is based now. His Masters thesis is titled “Sampling as a Political Medium”, which sounds fascinating. In his music, he melds Arabic vocals with classical instrumentation and experimental electronic production – the three preview tracks from his forthcoming album Wahj are stunning. “Wahj” (وهج) means “radiance”, and Geitani invites us to look through the collapse we see around, and seek that light.
Obelisk – Salty Lemon Air [Geometric Corruption/Bandcamp]
FBi’s own Ryan O’Rourke, presenter of Mithril for all things heavy & experimental, also makes music as Obelisk. It’s heavy and experimental for sure, but very electronic, very deconstructed club with aspects of breakcore, groaning distorted bass, trance keyboards and glitch. Obviously it’s awesome.
Kloke – Silk [Subtle Audio/Bandcamp]
Huuuuge jungle/drumfunk/drum’n’bass compilation incoming! Limerick, Ireland label Subtle Audio put out a series of great 2 or 3CD compilations in the mid-’00s with early drumfunk and jungle-inclined drum’n’bass – at the time it felt like the best source of really great beat production around. Many years later, here’s another 3CD set: Our Atmosphere has 2CDs of original tracks and tracks taken from label releases in a broadly “atmospheric” jungle, drumfunk and drum’n’bass, with a huge list of great producers, plus a DJ mix from label head Code on the 3rd disc. Oh – and the CDs arrived in the mail just as we hit the new year, but the digital version (without the 3rd disc) won’t be available until Feb 6th, so this is a sorta-kinda exclusive of Naarm’s own Kloke, one of many highlights here.
Aftawerks & Earl Grey – Swingfunc Jungle [Earl Grey Bandcamp]
Nathan Firman aka Aftawerks has been plying his trade in funky acid, IDM & jungle for over a decade, and Jim Earl Grey released an EP of his on his Hyperchamber Music label way back in 2013. I’m a pretty big fan of Earl Grey (in fact I first heard his stuff on those Subtle Audio comps back in the day!) and this collaboration between the two is just mad shit in the best way.
Homemade Weapons – Leviathan (HW Remix) [Weaponist/Bandcamp]
Seattle’s Homemade Weapons has his own particular take on the minimal/tribal drum’n’bass championed by Samurai Records, and as well as releasing on that label (and others) he runs his own label, Weaponist. The latest label release is the Bumura EP from the artist himself, with two new tracks and two remixes he’s made of tracks that were originally collabs – tonight’s cut was originally made with Sacramento’s Red Army. I do appreciate the way that elements of jungle are dropped into the very minimal d’n’b feel.
BMA – Middle Age REFLEKT [Industrial Coast/Bandcamp]
Moa Pillar – Fight Them Back [Industrial Coast/Bandcamp]
The Industrial Coast label is based in Middlesborough, about an hour’s drive south of Newcastle, so fairly grim-up-north territory (I actually lovely Newcastle when I played there last year). The label is pretty dedicated to the cassette as a format, and generally most of the music on Bandcamp is unavailable digitally without the physical objects (set at £999) – but they do do retrospective compilations, and open up other releases briefly at times. So Deconstructed Reconstructed Retrospective is a double-compilation, in that it collects tracks from the labels Deconstructed/Reconstructed series of compilations in which industrial & experimental artists cover or remix artists such as Crass or music related to movements like anarcho-punk or Rock Against Racism. With 50 tracks, it covers plenty of ground. Sometimes you can immediately tell who the subject is, sometimes you have to try and look it up, and artists appear under various guises too – such as Iceman Junglist Kru (lo-fi industrial junglism), half of whom is also Stonecirclesampler (arcane ambient weirdness) aka Liquid DnB-like Ambient Grime 2… Unfortunately it’s long enough after it went up that it’s now priced at £999, but you can still stream the tracks. Tonight, US drum’n’bass producer BMA takes on hardcore punk originals Minor Threat, while London-based Russian deconstructed trance guy Moa Pillar does a tribute to Linton Kwesi Johnson.
Travis Cook – fight_clown [Travis Cook Bandcamp]
Adelaide’s Travis Cook, ex-Collarbones, continues releasing a track a week on his Bandcamp. This one’s all stuttery vocal samples and a smattering of beats.
John Wall – Iconvt [John Wall Bandcamp]
The ineffable John Wall stands somewhere between glitch & computer music, musique concrète, plunderphonics, and free jazz. Astonishingly, he didn’t start making music until he was 40 (in 1990). He’s worked with the cream of UK free jazz, and I’ve also featured a fair bit of his work with spoken word poet Alex Rodgers – here’s an example. He recently revisited his 1999 Constructions I-IV, which combined samples from live improvisers with samples of modern classical compositions, in order to remove the deliberate glitch-sound, which he now finds ugly (although I’m not the only one who likes that sound!) But now he’s put a single new track called “Iconvt“, which sounds like a command-line tool (iconv in Linux is a command that converts a string to a different character encoding). The source sounds here are not obviously revealed – it sounds mostly electronic; there are some fairly inscrutable quotes in the description, plus a reference to fellow avant-gardist Sunik Kim. But the music is some of the least-inscrutable stuff Wall has done, with rumbling bass, quite a bit of melody, and a fair bit of glitch, all things considered!
Low Flung – Niksen [Low Flung Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Danny Wild has been Low Flung for a long while now, and tends to lean more ambient than beat-driven. On his last release from 2025, Type-D we find him in a contemplative mood, but also in a dub techno mode – the first track has a super slow tempo with percussive chatter around the edges, but the other two tracks are faster but no less dubby.
SAWT – Phase Collapse [Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
T. Gowdy – 00L00 [Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
Excellent Portland, Oregon label Beacon Sound enlists many brilliant friends to contribute to their important new compilation Gaza is the Moral Compass, benefiting on-the-ground mutual aid groups in Gaza. The organisers point out that Israel has violated the so-called ceasefire hundreds of times; Israel’s fascist government is joined by Donald Trumps’ fascist governmnent in trying to remake the Middle East while Australia’s Labor governments are falling over themselves to protect the interests of a foreign state, at least partially in the name of “Jewish safety” which as a Jew I categorically reject. Cultural practice is not neutral, the organisers remind us, and that includes what art/music/culture you consume and how you do so. So here we have many artists associated with the Constellation label, artists originally from Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, and indeed Japan – the quality is incredibly high throughout, and all the music is exclusive to the comp (for now). SAWT is Kamel Badarneh, based in Brussels, whose contribution is a nice piece of throbbing techno, while Constellation’s T. Gowdy does his shimmering sample-shifting thing but with an Arabic-sounding sound source.
Filippo Ansaldi & Simone Sims Longo – +1 [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
Filippo Ansaldi & Simone Sims Longo – Illusione [Umor Rex/Bandcamp]
A few years ago, Italian musician Simone Sims Longo released a brilliant electro-acoustic album called Paesaggi integrati (integrated landscapes) on the great Dutch label Esc.rec – still one of my favourites on the label. There, he processed the sounds of various acoustic instruments; on Solo Suono, Sims Longo is working with saxophonist Filippo Ansaldi, and it’s his instrument that he’s processing. At times we’re hearing the saxophone solo, or multi-tracking into beautiful chordal movement; elsewhere the instrument is splintered and looped. The saxophone is an instrument uniquely suited to experimental approaches, and Ansaldi and Sims Longo here go deep into some of its sonic possibilities.
Dual Dialect – Conglomerate III – Meme-leak Mosaic [4000 Records/Bandcamp]
Speaking of sax, Meanjin/Brisbane’s Dual Dialect feature Andrew Garton of Ghostwoods on “mutant saxophone” alongside Andrew Foley of Grids/Units/Planes, YEARNS etc, creating disintegrated beats and abstract pads according to their very accurate Instagram bio. But there’s some surprisingly blissful stuff here too – a kind of jazz fusion that hints at downtempo stuff from the ’90s, Jon Hassell’s fourth world work in the ’80s, and post-’00s glitchy electronics. Recommended.
Aroma – After The Rain [Urban Trout Records/Bandcamp]
And we finish tonight with a collaboration by an artist whose debut album with Eora/Sydney jazz piano quartet Aronas was a defining work for the early days of Utility Fog (you can stream Culture Tunnels on SoundCloud and elsewhere). Pianist & composer Aron Ottignon had moved to Sydney from New Zealand (his brother Matt still plays around this city in many ensembles), and the group embodied the post-jazz feel, at least on record, that sat perfectly with the UFog sound. Aron soon decamped to the UK & Europe, embedding traditional musics from around the world into his art (Aronas’ album Culture Tunnels was influenced by South Pacific rhythms). Now the Aroma project sees Aron playing the Osmose “expressive synth” alongside singer, sound-artist, label head & Afro-futurist Nina Kahle. This song, recorded in Senegal, is their take on the beautiful John Coltrane tune “After The Rain”, using the multiple gestures the Osmose adds to each individual key of the piano keyboard, with Kahle’s vocals and field recordings ebbing and flowing.