It’s the time of experimental pop at the moment – for very stretched interpretations of pop, perhaps. So we have many weird-ass songs tonight. Also some storming beats and some messed-up beats, some gorgeous acoustic sounds and some pretty messed-up acoustic sounds. It’s Utility Fog. It’s another week. It’s Sunday.
ROMÆO – Wariness [ROMÆO Bandcamp]
After a couple of excellent singles, the new EP from Eora/Sydney singer/producer ROMÆO is finally out. Eternal Recurrence has a recurring theme of Stoicism – amor fait is loving, or accepting, one’s fate – seen through an ended relationship and more general ennui. “Wariness” comes directly before the closer, “Something New”, and describes the feeling of having to unearth long-unused abilities when there’s a need for change…
Majken – High up on a Mountain [sing a song fighter]
Swedish singer-songwriter Majken grew up in a Pentecostal household where music was ever-present. And while she now believes that “politicized religion is the most dangerous thing in the world”, those musical roots are still heard in the blissful harmonies in her songs – her new album is called Korus after all. The record, released on October 24th, is mostly performed by herself, on guitar, piano, synths and samples, and a harp recorded in a Malmö concert hall. The contradictions between choral arrangements and Majken’s non-belief, between gentle indie-folk and electronics, bring a tension to the work which enhances the beauty of Majken’s voice and songwriting.
R/A/D – Red [Prohibited Records/Bandcamp]
R/A/D – Mauve [Prohibited Records/Bandcamp]
French-American vocalist Brisa Roché heard French guitarist and Prohibited Records founder Nicolas Laureau in one of his bands and was moved to get in touch – and everyone knows when two musicians meet, another band is formed. R/A/D pairs voice and guitar as spoken word and drone, until melodies are heard from the voice, and the guitar becomes more structured, or more electronic-sounding. Pretty rad indeed.
Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Inuti-I [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
When I went to the Planet µ 30th gig in London (and I apologise for constantly bringing it up), I got to see experimental electronic mastermind Rian Treanor performing some new material with experimental vocalist Cara Tolmie. It was really special, but it does help, I think, to be able to experience these works at home or on headphones. It’s a super varied album – from extended vocal techniques from Tolmie to spoken word and even singing(?), with Treanor slipping between post-rave deconstructions, glitched ambient and the more cerebral, academic or avant-garde, all of which connects and differentiates him from his father Mark Fell (Treanor absolutely has his own aesthetic and is extremely talented at whatever genres he sets his sights on). A few weeks ago I mentioned with regard to the wonderful album closer “Endless Not” that t’s hard not to be reminded of Big Hard Excellent Fish’s 1990 broadside “Imperfect List“. That’s true, and it’s high praise, but as I’ve said here, that’s only one aspect of the whole, so here’s a track with demented beats and Tolmie speaking, stuttering, singing in full flight. This is an amazing album – don’t be turned away by the experimentalism or spoken word!
Ship Sket – Vendetta’s Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]
Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. InitiatriX is out on October 31st, with three tracks already available including the single “Vendetta’s Theme” with vocals from UK multimedia artist Charlie Osborne just about audible through the chaotic mix. Feels like this will be a helluva thing.
IFS meets MA – Kamen [guides (outlines)/Bandcamp]
IFS meets MA – Kiloqh [guides (outlines)/Bandcamp]
The combination of Polish experimental electronic duo IFS and Japanese experimental rapper MA on the album REIFSMA was a surprising highlight of 2023. MA is an experimental rapper whose delivery conveys a lot even for those of us who don’t speak Japanese – from last year, see his collaboration with DJ DIE SOON, DIEMAJIN. And the footwork tempo of most tracks seemed to suit his flow. Late last year, outlines released REIFSMA Remixed, with adventurous – mostly footwork – producers from round the world reworking that first collaboration, but now comes a slightly different collaborative project. Billed as IFS meets MA, this is planned to be followed by other “IFS meets…” works, which I’m absolutely here for. Meanwhile though, MA is an amazing rapper & vocalist, over some quite abstract electronics here and some varied beats.
Kirin McElwain – Youth [AKP Recordings/Bandcamp]
If you know me at all, you know I’m a cellist and I collect adventurous cellists (not physically, at least not often) of all stripes. Brooklyn-based cellist Kirin McElwain is releasing her debut solo album Youth on October 10th. First single “Closer” demonstrates not just her cello but the cello-like halldorophone, a hybrid acoustic/electronic instrument created by Halldor Úlfarsson that has also been used by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Turkish musician Başak Günak among others. The halldorophone produces feedback through sympathetic strings and resonances, and these otherworldly drones are augmented with further electronics by McElwain throughout the album. The title track here starts with a few notes on the cello, which are joined by some plucked cello-bass, but by halfway through there’s an insistent synth pulse pushing through McElwain’s repeated vocal refrains. Lovely stuff.
Friend of a Friend – beautiful ppl (Armaan Sabharwal Remix) [Earth Libraries/Eventually on Bandcamp?]
Here’s something really interesting. Chicago duo Friend of a Friend are an indie rock band with a strong electronic backbone, whose recent single “beautiful ppl” combines melodic keyboards with upbeat drums that hint at drum’n’bass, and a vocal melody from singer Claire Molek that hints at Jason Savsani’s Indian heritage. Now the band have handed the song over to rising Indian pop/fusion star Armaan Sabharwal, who interjects his own vocals on top of and in between Molek’s lines, and intensifies both the drum’n’bass and Indian elements. It’s brilliant – while it’s not yet up on Bandcamp (and I’m writing this a couple of weeks late), you can hear it here and elsewhere on streaming services.
Fracture & Tim Reaper – Dancing Toms [Astrophonica/Bandcamp/Future Retro/Bandcamp]
Two generations, two undisputed greats of the current jungle/drum’n’bass scene, 3 years to complete these 4 tracks. Co-released on Fracture’s Astrophonica and Tim Reaper’s Future Retro, this would have to be of the highest quality or something’s very wrong with the universe. I mean… something really is wrong with the world, but let’s be absolutely clear: this is fucking class, right through its four tracks. Crisp beats that skitter & flip & judder to a halt, basslines that go from one-note specials to bouncing melodies in their own right, and plenty going on in the mid-range too when it’s needed. A must for junglists everywhere.
Sheba Q – Asterix (Dub One Remix) [Over/Shadow/Bandcamp]
Jungle DJ & vocalist Sheba Q comes out with her own solo EP on 2 Bad Mice‘s Over/Shadow label. The original of “Asterix” was co-produced with Newcastle junglist Nectax, and it’s got a blissful, nostalgic feel. But on the flip, Dub One drops us into darkstyle rave hell, mid-’90s style. All three tracks are quality.
Travis Cook – cradle [Travis Cook Bandcamp]
So our Travis – or technically Adelaide’s Travis Cook – is planning to release a track a week on his Bandcamp for a year. Travis was one half of Collarbones with our (Sydney’s) Marcus Whale, so yeah, he has the production chops and ear for weird pop down pat. “Cradle” is kind of in that almost-drum’n’bass realm. If it didn’t cut off just after 2 minutes it’d be even better :)
Katharina Ernst – x_10 [Extrametric Records/Bandcamp]
It’s been 7 years since Berlin-based drummer & artist Katharina Ernst released her debut album Extrametric. Extrametric II takes off where the debut ended (literally, in the sense that the numbering continues after the debut’s closing track “x_07”). While Extrametric did have electronics and melodic elements, it felt like it could have been performed live (albeit in some mind-bending way). The intense works found on the second album feature Ernst’s voice, spoken and sung and warbled, with amplified percussion and synths making it more of studio-constructed, multi-tracked affair, but there are powerful percussive performances at heart of most of the compositions. Combining noise and industrial with a very German detached artiness, this is highly compelling work, and you shouldn’t let it pass you by.
Ujif_notfound – Catch The Gifts [I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free/Bandcamp]
Ujif_notfound – Coda Misto [I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free/Bandcamp]
Georgiy Potopalskiy is well-known in his home country of Ukraine not just for his experimental electronic project Ujif_notfound but as a composer of electro-acoustic operas and as a multimedia artist. I discovered him in 2019 via a huge conceptual collection of music on USB Card on the now sadly-defunct Ukrainian label Kvitnu. Both artists behind that label now run Prostir and child label I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free, whose name is self-explanatory for a Ukrainian label. The third album from Ujif_notfound on ISSUMLIF is Postulate, which detours into intensely distorted guitars and crunching beats, depicting the constant terror of wartime living. Among the heavy-duty noisetronics there are occasional bouts of uneasy calm. Powerful to listen to in context.
Einmal Immer – Darkred [Playdate Records/Bandcamp]
Bergen’s Playdate Records here release a project combining three great musicians from across Norway’s music worlds. Einmal Immer features Espen Sommer Eide of pioneering electro-acousticfolktronic band Alog, Stephan Meidell of jazz/postrock band Cakewalk among many others, and Øyvind Hegg-Lunde of avant-garde electronic folk/jazz/pop group Building Instrument and many others. Live instruments (Meidell’s baritone guitar and Hegg-Lunde’s drums) combine with Espen Sommer Eide’s modular synth and all sorts of studio trickery from both him and Meidell. It’s impossible to peg it down to krautrock, postrock, very experimental electronic music or… jazz? In this way, it’s perfect Utility Fog music, and I love them for it.
André Vida – Changing Lockets [André Vida Bandcamp]
Berlin-based saxophonist and experimental musician André Vida writes about how as a kid he used the saxophone as a kind of way to hide from social interactions, and breathing (and “speaking”) through the saxophone became his norm. Four decades later, he was starting to feel caught in the same musical gestures, the same ways of modulating the column of air through the sax’s body. Thus, on his new album Breathless he’s removed the mouthpiece and close-mic’d the instrument, amplifying the sounds produced by holding and percussively tapping the keys. The aural similarity with glitched sound processing, the way the very percussive rhythms modulate the hidden melodies in the resonances, is remarkable. While many wind instrumentalists will have experimented with this “breathless” slap-style playing, Vida has gone deep and built up a new language here.
Poor Isa + Evan Parker/Ingar Zach – Ply [Aspen Edities/Bandcamp]
Ruben Machtelinckx is one the core artists connected withg genre-defying Belgian label Aspen Edities. A keen collaborator, he can be found in ensembles with folk, jazz, postrock and electronic leanings, often all together. The Poor Isa duo features Machtelinckx and percussionist Frederik Leroux both playing banjo and woodblocks, making a strangely deconstructed version of traditional folk, classical or jazz forms. Their new album (simply titled after the participants) finds them collaborating with two more adventurous musicians: British free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach. This is a natural extension of Poor Isa’s musical aesthetic: Parker plays both with restraint and comes unchained, at times echoing the breathless wind-percussion of the aforementioned André Vida, while Zach slips inside the woodblocks and extended techniques with resonances that are textural as much as rhythmical. The best kind of acoustic experimentation, exploratory and beautiful.
Giuseppe Ielasi – 02 [Senufo Editions Bandcamp]
Giuseppe Ielasi – 05 [Senufo Editions Bandcamp]
Italian sound-artist/producer/guitarist/etc Giuseppe Ielasi has now released the sequel to an insistence on material vol. 1, and yep, it’s an insistence on material vol. 2. Past series of Ielasi’s have involved mechanical machines butting their heads on paper hooked up to contact mics, or music made from run-out grooves of vinyl records, or blurry guitar loops – just about anything really, including minimal beats (from strange sources). So “an insistence on material” could be an insistence on physical sound sources… or it could just be, you know, putting out material of some sort? Like the first volume, these numbered tracks are vintage Ielasi – strangely cut, warbling tape (or vinyl?) loops, anonymous sputtering anti-rhythms… Wonderful.
Lovers – Dancing In The Dark [Thanatosis/Bandcamp]
Out now on Alex Zethson‘s Thanatosis is the debut from Lovers, the duo of vocalist Linda Oláh and guitarist Giani Caserotto. But “voice and guitar” this ain’t: the music here inhabits a glitched, transformed space of electro-acoustic experimentation – although the duo have modelled Lettres d’amour on the tradition of love serenades, performed by troubadors accompanying themselves on lutes. If so, this is the past seen through a crack’d mirror.
Susannah Stark – Trì stiùirichean [Night School Records/Bandcamp/STROOM.tv/Bandcamp]
When Utility Fog started back in 2003, folktronica was a genre of which I was very fond – but it was already pretty hazy as to what it was. Slightly glitchy hip-hop sampling acoustic instruments like Four Tet was what I thought, I guess, although when Tunng came on the scene literally later that year, it held a lot of similarity without quite being the same. And meanwhile The Books were doing studio-mediated music with acoustic instruments that somehow was something else entirely, despite arguably fitting the mould. So I love that in the years since, there have been untold different approaches to “folk” + “electronics”. On her forthcoming album Minor Gestures, Scottish musician Susannah Stark takes her Gaelic (Gàidhlig) folk music in experimental directions, which might involve drone passages on harmonium or modular synth, interpolated field recordings, or sample-based programming. The production touches only serve to heighten the sense of an arcane, otherworldly setting, as if being performed just out of sight or transmitted from a past-future. It’s quite a remarkable album.
Alban Schelbert – Vanity [Präsens Editionen/Bandcamp]
Zurich-based composer Alban Schelbert appears for the second time on the adventurous Swiss label Präsens Editionen, with two pieces from a score he made for a solo dance performance by Thibault Lac. We’re often talking these days about post- or contemporary classical music blurring into experimental electronic production, but rarely do we have compositions as fully-realised and orchestrated as these, yet interspersed with yawing sub-bass and other electronic production techniques. With a total playing time of less than 7 minutes, this is just a little taster, but a very tasty one at that.
Patrick Shiroishi – …what does anyone want but to feel a little more free (feat. Aaron Turner & Faith Coloccia) [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
The prolific Japanese-American musician Patrick Shiroishi has been mostly known to me as a saxophonist – see his incredible solo album Hidemi from 2021 – and working across jazz & improv to noise & punk. But he’s credited nowadays as multi-instrumentalist and composer, as indeed he is. So his latest album Forgetting is Violent may not be as heavy on multi-tracked saxophone as his previous, but it shares with them the thematic background: racism & discrimination, particularly the experience of Japanese people in the USA. During World War II, Japanese Americans – Shiroishi’s grandfather among them – were imprisoned in what were effectively concentration camps because Japan was the “enemy”. On this new album, Shiroishi is joined by many additional musicians, mostly drawn from the metal & punk scene, including Chinese musician otay::onii aka Lane Shi Otayonii of Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Savages’ Gemma Thompson and BIG|BRAVE’s Mathieu Ball. Tonight we heard an incredible track with both SUMAC/Old Man Gloom/ISIS‘s Aaron Turner and his wife Faith Coloccia of Mamiffer and Mára. Powerful stuff.
Gregory Paul Mineeff – 1a. That peace we seek [Off/Bandcamp]
Gregory Paul Mineeff – Two Trunkless legs of stone [Off/Bandcamp]
I’ve been playing Wollongong musician Gregory Paul Mineeff‘s music on Utility Fog for ages. I admire his combination of contemplative piano with synths and tape effects, and I’ve been pleased to hear his progression into other forms, bringing guitars in more recently, and on this new album, vocals for the first time. Greg has spread out from Greek label Cosmic Leaf lately, to be found on UK ambient label whitelabrecs, and now Belgian label Off. The album takes inspiration from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem Ozymandias, which describes a grandiose power from the deep past, now collapsed and buried in sand. Among the ambient soundscapes, Mineeff’s honest-to-goodness song “Two Trunkless legs of stone” is very evocative, a direction I can’t help hoping we’ll get more glimpses of in the future.