Well! Tonight is my last show for 6 weeks. I’ll be travelling in the UK & Europe, mostly touring with Black Aleph but with a bit of holiday time too.
While I’m away, each Sunday will be covered by excellent talented folks, in order: Holly Conner, Béla Hadju, Giulio Caleffi, Zoe Jungist, Lilly Grainger and Sophie Gordon & Krishtie Mofazzal.
Because I’m away, this has been taking me forever, so apologies for the wait – here it is now!
While you’re here, LISTEN BACK also to the shows from my excellent colleagues.
SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 1 [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
SUMAC & Moor Mother – Hard Truth [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Last year, alongside their remarkable, heavy-as-fuck album The Healer was released, sludgey hardcore supergroup SUMAC released an EP called The Keeper’s Tongue with two remixes: recent Wire Magazine cover star, Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon, and the brilliant avant-garde hip-hop/free jazz genius Moor Mother. And what a combo the latter was! SUMAC leader Aaron Turner was singer & guitarist with two of my favourite post-metal bands, ISIS and Old Man Gloom (the latter not in past tense), but SUMAC feels like his purest vision, engineered with precision along with the rhythm section of Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook of hardcore legends Botch and post-metal legends Russian Circles. Turner also ran the greatest metal/experimental label in the world, Hydra Head, and now has a smaller – impeccably curated – operation with his wife Faith Coloccia called SIGE. After the incendiary impact of that Moor Mother remix, it still came as a surprise to discover that this full album collab was just around the corner. The Film is one large work split into tracks, with as much (disquieting) quiet as crashing noise. And who but Moor Mother could compete with Aaron Turner’s roar? Poetic and deeply political, scathing about colonialism and capitalism, it’s incredibly powerful.
Violeta García & Hora Lunga – i think i just died a lil bit [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Violeta García & Hora Lunga – There’s Still Fun Stuff To Do [-OUS/Bandcamp]
Out from Swiss label -OUS is the debut duo album of Argentinian cellist Violeta García & Swiss musician Hora Lunga, I’ll wait for you in the car park. Their shared background in composition, improvisation and sonic experimentation led to this transformative music, in which clattering rhythms and distorted noise drones can come from the cello, electronics or field recordings. The album & track titles suggest a prosaic, distanced affect which is probably intentional, and the production does aim to undermine the performances – but if you’re here then you’re probably like me in loving deconstructed sounds, so this should be right up your alley.
Civilistjävel! x Mayssa Jallad – Holiday Inn (January to March) (Version) [Six of Swords/Ruptured/Six of Swords Bandcamp/Ruptured Bandcamp]
A couple of years ago, Beirut label Ruptured put out an amazing album by Lebanese singer/songwriter and researcher Mayssa Jallad called Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels. In touching experimental songs, Jallad chronicled the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, in which Christian Nationalists and pro-Palestinian leftists fought a violent battle amongst the high-rise hotels in Beirut, leading to the Green Line dividing the city, a rift that lasted for 15 years. The stunning album was picked up by burgeoning Bristol label Six of Swords, and given a co-released vinyl edition later in the year. Now the two labels are co-releasing a radical reworking of the material by Swedish producer Civilistjävel! (aka Tomas Bodén), into spectral pieces of dub techno and withered ambient. While the first single is out now, you can hear another collaboration between the artists on Civilistjävel!’s album Brödföda from last year.
Joy Moughanni – The Voice I’ve Yet To Understand [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Ruptured also released two new albums on Friday. From Joy Moughanni, a sound engineer involved in Tunefork Studios in Beirut, comes a beautiful album of granular & taoe processed piano recordings made between 1975 & 1985 by Georges Tarazi, along with archival radio recordings which bring the music into conversation with Lebanon’s many upheavals, and adds layers of emotion to the historical audio. A Separation From Habit might be more deeply wrenching if you understand Arabic and know the last 50 years of Lebanese history, but it packs a punch regardless.
Claudia Khachan & Ziad Moukarzel – Gone beginnings [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Claudia Khachan & Ziad Moukarzel – Spitfire 67 [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
The second Ruptured release this week is from Beirut artists Claudia Khachan and Ziad Moukarzel. It mostly came together when Moukarzel (part of the Beirut Synth Center) was travelling while Khachan remained in Lebanon, so Khachan’s vocals float untethered over a morass of Moukarzel’s electronics (as well as Khachan’s guitar & organ). And while the glitchy textures share an aesthetic with Joy Moughann’s release, partway through the last track a jittery drum break coughs into motion as if we’ve suddenly found ourselves at a rave… and then it peters out again.
Both these releases are strangely hypnotic, and handily demonstrate why I’m such a fan of the Ruptured label.
Raf Reza – Cry Of The Baul [Telephone Explosion/Bandcamp]
Toronto-based producer Raf Reza has released his debut full-length album Ekbar, which showcases his Bangladeshi heritage mixed in with music influenced by soundsystem culture – dub through to jungle. South Asian musicians have been central to bass music scenes in the UK, so it’s nice seeing a Canadian artist picking up on this too. Reza wanders through various bass music styles, but the dub aesthetic is never far away.
Moa Pillar – Ballroom [ПИР/Bandcamp]
Once Moscow-based, Fedor Pereverzev aka Moa Pillar now lives in London – for reasons that should be obvious (“FUCK THE WAR” reads the description on the Bandcamp of his label ПИР / Peer). His music is a mix of spacious ambient and high-intensity club sounds. There’s a somewhat anxious sense of motion, as Pereverzev’s constant movement – movement away, if not towards a known destination – took him to a small space in East London.
Eter Dex – deadn ess nouns [Hundebiss Records/Bandcamp]
Somehow Italian label Hundebiss Records has a knack for finding unusual music with a strange relationship to club styles. This includes artists from across the Mediterranean in Egypt, like Abdullah Miniawy and Assyouti, but has also included Hype Williams and Aaron Dilloway in the past. Eter Dex (or sometimes Eternal Index) is a fellow Italian making strange translations of percussive techno. On the opening track “deadn ess nouns” the beats cycle around pitch-shifted, processed words from Australian poet & experimental musician Amanda Stewart (co-founder of groundbreaking sound-art/poetry/free improv group Machine For Making Sense). I think it may be this piece, although it’s rendered (more) unintelligible.
Skee Mask – LCC Rotation [Ilian Tape/Bandcamp]
The Munich producer known as Skee Mask has a distinct style of sound production that’s his own whether he’s making techno, downtempo beats or jungle-influenced tunes. His releases, usually on the also Munich-based Ilian Tape, can be relied upon for airy production, acid squiggles, ambient interludes and funky beats of all sorts, and his breakbeat technique is first class, as heard on this track from his new EP Stressmanagement.
Djrum – Let Me [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Felix Manuel aka Djrum is also a reliable producer, although what he can be relied upon for is surprise: constantly changing things up, from jazzy/classical piano, cello and wind instruments to techno, jungle, dancehall, dubstep and anything in between. While Under Tangled Silence represents a kind of renewal for Manuel (not least because the first version of the album was lost in a hard drive crash), it’s really got all the elements established on his early 12″s and previous brilliant album Portrait With Firewood. With Djrum “more of the same” is the highest of praise – and nothing is ever quite the same with him.
Lila Tirando a Violeta – Retumba en tu Piel [Unguarded/Bandcamp]
The latest album from Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta comes via Berlin label Unguarded. Apparently Dream of Snakes comes from a recurring dream of Lila’s, literally about snakes, somehow mixed in with her experiences moving from the Netherlands to Ireland, which despite the subject matter was strangely comforting. I’m not sure if the same can be said of the album, which continues the producer’s work in post-industrial, post-IDM bass music, mashing up Latin rhythms with the breakbeats and drum machines, with irruptions of vocals within synthscapes and sample collages. It’s the futuristic music of the present.
Andrey Kiritchenko – Movement II [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
It’s lovely to hear so much new music from Ukrainian electronic icon Andrey Kiritchenko at the moment, who’s worked across IDM, glitch and forms of experimental electronic pop for over 20 years (around as long as Utility Fog’s been on-air in fact!) In contrast with the dancefloor-aimed breakbeats & bass on the Rust Trust EP coming from POLAAR in June, Ultra Marshes is a project tailor-made for Flaming Pines, the label run by Aussie ex-pat out of London, where Kiritchenko is also currently based. Its four movements and prologue are a celebration of the Hackney Marshes, a piece of public parkland in east London, so even though it’s resolutely electronic music, it’s deep connected to a sense of place – and it warmly pays tribute to a place that welcomes people of all stripes. The pulsating electronics and shifting harmonies are gorgeously enveloping and I could listen to them for hours.
Anysia Kym & Loraine James – shy (interlude) [10K/Bandcamp]
Here the very versatile London producer Loraine James, best known for her IDM-influenced dance music, extends on some of the more pop/r’n’b elements of her solo work with a short EP in collaboration with NYC vocalist, drummer and beat-maker Anysia Kym. These hazy, hazy songs are really short vignettes in glitchy style – the shortest’s under a minute, and only one tops 3 minutes – which bears the hallmarks of both artists in every bar. Clandestine indeed.
Nazar – War Game [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
When Nazar first burst upon the electronic music scene, his music was reflective of the violent reality of his home country Andorra over 27 years of government repression and civil war, “weaponising” the sounds of conflict within the music he dubbed “rough kuduro”. On his second album Guerrilla he directly addressed the conflict through his family’s experience, including his father who was a Rebel General. Five years later comes Demilitarize, both the name and the delay imply the intervening events, in which Nazar was significantly weakened from a bout of Covid that allowed latent tuberculosis to overcome his body. The previous violence here is lost in a haze, with dreamy vocals hidden in undefined textures, the beats also often nearly lost. It’s an audacious change, beautifully done.
Jerome Blazé – Living Room (with Zion Garcia) [Jerome Blazé Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney musician Jerome Blazé is engaged with music across multiple dimensions: as a producer, live keyboardist, songwriter and academic. Last year’s Living Room album was a home-recorded album combining influences from soul, neo-classical and dance music. The album put collaboration up-front, with instrumental and vocal collaborators from across the Sydney music scene as well as songwriting collaborations and a fully-credited list of sampled artists (and birds!) taking in local friends and international influences like BADBADNOTGOOD, Punch Brothers, Al Green and more. The album’s being given a vinyl deluxe edition this year, expanded through reworkings of each track (which he seems to be doing in reverse order) that open up his music to deeper collaborations. So here’s an adaptation of the title track featuring the versatile Zion Garcia.
Passepartout Duo – From Belgrade [Passepartout Duo Bandcamp]
The peripatetic pair of musician/inventors Passepartout Duo have been based in Sydney for the past few months (Parramatta to be precise), and are releasing a 12-track, year-long album called Pieces From Places with each track showcasing one location of their ever-continuing global residencies. “From Belgrade” comes across almost like Tortoise-style postrock, with its shuffling 12/8 groove and sparing amounts of slowly-drawn-out melody.
Stefan Goldmann – Builders [Macro/Bandcamp]
Berlin’s Stefan Goldmann co-founded the excellent Macro label, and is well-known for his techno productions and his association with Berghain and its Panorama Bar, although meanwhile his electronic productions have gotten ever-more experimental, stretching into unorthodox harmonic systems and exotic mathematical rhythm science. His Dad Friedrich Goldmann was a renowned composer & conductor, and Goldmann also has a thread of mostly-beatless avant-garde live performances – site-specific works, the latest of which was made for Istanbul’s Borusan Müzik Evi. This music was sparked from Goldmann’s fellowship at Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul, and flows through a variety of evolving textures, including the pulsating synth blurts of “Builders”.
Ava Rabiat – The End [FUU/Bandcamp]
FUU is a label/collective of visual & audio artists in Berlin including Ah! Kosmos, Büşra Kayıkçı & Hara Alonso – three women who’ve featured on this show relatively recently. To them is now added Ava Rabiat, who sings and speak-sings in her native Polish. On Elektro Erotyk she creates mysterious, minimalist, glitchy post-cabaret numbers, distorted and stretched though they may be.
Siavash Amini – Stilla [Room40/Bandcamp]
Coming on July 11th is a new album from brilliant Iranian sound-artist Siavash Amini, returning once more to Meanjin/Brisbane’s Room40. On Caligo he’s in dialogue with some old, mysterious piano recordings from Iran – Amini doesn’t give us much more info about these recordings, but they’re fed into some pretty intense processing. At times the piano source is obvious, at other times it’s distorted and twisted into new, anguished forms. There’s an emotional depth to Amini’s work which makes it compulsive/compulsory listening.
Gregory Paul Mineeff – Acceptance [Cosmic Leaf/Bandcamp]
On his latest album, Exhumed, Wollongong-based artist Gregory Paul Mineeff uses his substantial sound & composition skills towards an ambient music with some anxious emotions around the edges – at least until “Acceptance”, which closes the album and this show with some comforting felted piano.
Listen again — ~206MB
Playlist 20.04.25Posted by Peter on Sunday, 20th of April, 2025 [Edit]Comments Offon Playlist 20.04.25
Singles & tracks from forthcoming albums and new releases from hip-hop to doom, postrock to experimental electronic, breakbeat to techno, post-classical to post-jazz.
LISTEN AGAIN, stick it in your pipe and smoke it. You can stream it on demand on fbi.radio, or podcast here.
The Asthmatix – 10,000 FACES [MXD APE]
The Asthmatix – Mum Beez Tax Zombie Jackets [MXD APE]
Eora/Sydney trio The Asthmatix have been around for quite some time now, but with members based outside the country, it’s seemingly taken a long time to get their debut album Abacus Earthling out the door. Violinist Daniel Weltlinger is based in Berlin, playing with the best gypsy and klezmer musicians in Europe, while DJ/producer Micke Morphingaz was based in Sweden for a while. Keyboardist Daniel Pliner plays latin jazz, contemporary jazz, live experimental electronic and more. As The Asthmatix, the three are dedicated to having a fun time mixing traditional Jewish music with classic hip-hop beats and sampling, and I’m glad they’ve got this album out. You can buy it as a Digital Video Keyring.
Divide and Dissolve – Loneliness [Bella Union/Bandcamp]
Divide and Dissolve – Disintegrate [Bella Union/Bandcamp]
Somewhere around recording their last album, Divide and Dissolve‘s drummer Sylvie Nehill left the band, leaving it as the solo project of Takiaya Reed. In no way has her vision changed, but Insatiable sometimes lets Reed’s klezmer/gypsy-like saxophone melodies stretch into entire songs, without losing any of the heavy doom riffage – and she even sings on one track. Reed’s is a project fundamentally opposed to colonialism and white supremacy, and couldn’t be more relevant to the world today.
Quade – See Unit [AD 93/Bandcamp]
There’s a special strain of English indie music that’s deeply attached to a sense of place, and the *ahem* Cycle of Days & Seasons – the wonderful Hood being a prime example, and their descendents such as epic45. Quade don’t quite approach this in the same way as Hood, but I do feel there’s a kinship there. Quade meld postpunk rawness with more lyrical, melodic tendencies in the vocals and from the violin. If anything, on “See Unit” the predecessor is the proto-postrock of Bark Psychosis, and that’s a great achievement.
Ināra Quartet – A Blue Room [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]
The gorgeous sounds on the four tracks of Ināra Quartet‘s debut release feel comfortably, beautifully Swedish to me, probably because I was brought up on the jazz/folk/postrock of Tape. For their part, as much as Ināra Quartet draw from Swedish & Scandinavian folk traditions and jazz, they are also influenced by the harmonies and rhythms of traditional Bulgarian music, minimalist composers, Sufi poets and more. Nevertheless, the jazz-trained percussion of Mischa Grind help place the music along a certain seam of postrock that goes through Tape back to Tortoise, along with two Agnas brothers – Mauritz on double bass & cello, and Kasper on guitar – and Johan Graden on synths and harmonium. A couple of years ago Graden made an incredible album with minimalist composer Ellen Arkbro called I get along without you very well, understated jazz songs with Arkbro singing and Graden on piano & keyboards, with gorgeous arrangements for mostly bass instruments. The sensitivity from that work bleeds over into the pieces here. I’m very excited to find out what’s next.
Matmos – Changing States [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
If you’re one of the lucky few who got to see Matmos performing at Phoenix Central Park in August last year, you would have seen the pair duo sampling not just from destroyed Bread records but from metallic objects of all kinds – cymbals, ball bearings, pots & pans (as I recall). I’m lucky to have seen Matmos quite a lot, and from as far back as 1999 (when I saw them twice, in Edinburgh and then in New York), their performances have always been based around live sampling and a good quantity of humour. But both Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt are also deeply thoughtful individuals and excellent musicians, and that performance was bewitching as much as it was hilarious. They are also a couple, and they celebrated their 25th anniversary with the Plastic Anniversary. In 2025, that would make them 31, but it’s not a stretch to imagine that Metallic Life Review was conceived and created around their 30th anniversary. Like the plastics of that earlier album, this one is built around the sounds of metallic objects, extending into the pedal steel of the sadly recently-departed Susan Alcorn, among other guests. They are well aware of the genre connotations of “metal”, as much as they are of the accuracy-or-not of their music as musique concrète, found-sound or field recordings, but something I always note with pleasure is that they can’t but help express their musical roots in ’90s experimental electronica – as much as the proto-folktronica, postrock and Americana found on the beloved 1999 EP The West and 2003 album The Civil War. When you’ve been together for 30 years, as life partners and creative partners, certain themes would tend to repeat while others would be turned away. So raise a stainless steel tumbler to one of music’s greatest couples, and go and “pre-save” or pre-order Metallic Life Review.
even – The Shades [Electroménager/Bandcamp]
French label Electroménager announce the upcoming self-titled debut from experimental duo even, made up of Greek mutant bass music explorer Jay Glass Dubs and France-based harpist Sissi Rada (real name Sissi Makropoulou). And yup, this first single has it all – a postpunk sensibility with exploding dub echoes and rolling harp-eggios. Just great.
A.Fruit – I’m so Bored [A.Fruit Bandcamp]
I’m convinced Anna A.Fruit is one of the most exciting newer talents in bass/club music at the moment. Her fusion of footwork, jungle and other bass music is coupled with first class sound design and lots of experimental touches. I’m so Bored is 160bpm footwork-jungle and a little bit of a hyperpop twist.
Lila Tirando a Violeta – Rest & Relaxation [Unguarded/Bandcamp]
Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta is masterful at bass, breaks and percussive beats – and she’s very much in the “deconstructed club” camp. Having based herself in the Netherlands for a while, she relocated to Ireland where she fell in love with the countryside there – and no doubt found comparisons with her original homeland. There are many collaborations as usual, including Irish experimental producer Lighght, but I seem to have gravitated to her solo pieces, full of beats & breaks thrown around with glee, fragments of vocals and manipulated field recordings.
Gesture – Free Lunch [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Rizio – Nexus [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Czech label YUKU pumps out releases at a rate of knots – generally more than one a week – and they’re often showcasing pretty new talent doing creative & experimental stuff with all sorts of bass music. Following a call-out to listeners to submit their own music, YUKU this week released not one, but TWO compilations of “Fresh Faces” – here’s Part I and Part II. To my ears, the first is the stronger, but there’s valuable stuff on both. Tonight, from Part I we heard London’s Gesture with 130bpm bass & junglism, and from Part II, Finland’s Rizio with a medium-paced percussive techno roller.
Ryoji Ikeda – data.matrix (Crosstalk Edit) [No longer available]
Late last year Brazilian producer Crosstalk put up on his Bandcamp an album of edits, mostly of pop stuff. But a couple of weeks ago, a blink-and-you-missed edit appeared of a Ryoji Ikeda track from his 2005 album dataplex. The original has the typical Ryoji Ikeda tics that you’ll recognize from his audiovisual installations and albums – high-pitched beeps, clicky beats that are utterly austere while somehow preserving some of their roots in jungle and IDM. Crosstalk slows it down to the 140bpm range, complete with wub-wub bass and uk garage beats – and the orchestral sample Ikeda so artfully deploys in the middle. But either someone from Ikeda’s team or elsewhere asked him to take it down, or Crosstalk decided to, so. You can hear it here until… well, ssh!
Bokonon – Cavern [Hypercell/Bandcamp]
After a lovely bit of junglified techno on Rooms Inc, the Vonnegut-inspired Bokonon has released the Writhe on his own Hypercell Records. It’s four slabs of techno in various styles, from acid to percussive bass techno with wasps… But “Driven By Wasps” is almost 11 minutes long, and I do like the water droplets and dub chords of “Cavern”.
Rust – Kharif [Thawra Records/Bandcamp]
Based in Prague, Lebanese-Syrian duo Rust create what they call “electro-tarab”, blending contemporary electronic dance music with traditional Arab music. Petra Hawi sings in Lebanese, and for this project, Rust collaborated with Lebanese poet Jana Salloum; Hany Manja is an electronic producer and also performs on oud, one of the traditional instruments that accompanies the voice in tarab music. I love the mad glitching synth loops in “Kharif”, but Rust succeed also in retaining their music’s traditional roots through the noise and thunder.
Simon Henocq – CONCOURSE A [Carton Records/Bandcamp]
French record label Carton Records gregariously supports artists across just about all genres, and many of their releases have the genre-free je ne sais quoi of Simon Henocq‘s We Use Cookies. Henocq is a sound-artist, producer and self-taught musician who also convenes French collective COAX, a gathering-together of musicians of all genres along with dancers, visual artists and more. I would loosely define Henocq’s album as noise, but it coalesces into a kind of industrial techno often. At other times you’ll get a fizzling, crackling tone that slowly grows into a snarling miasma. Quite exhilarating.
Ursula Sereghy – Wet and Innocent [Mondoj/Bandcamp]
Ursula Sereghy – Magic User [Mondoj/Bandcamp]
Following her excellent debut OK Box in 2021, Czech musician Ursula Sereghy has released her follow-up, Cordial, on the Polish label Mondoj. It’s not exactly IDM, it’s not pop enough for hyperpop, it’s not club enough to even be deconstructed club… and it strays quite far from ambient, in my opinion. The sampled droplets of vocals create uncanny melodies over glitched shuffles and fragmented General MIDI chamber orchestrations. Odd music for odd times.
Tlön – Huxley [Jazzland/Bandcamp]
By now I’ve well and truly emphasised my love of English/Norwegian duo BirdWorld, a genreless exploration of percussion, cello, found sounds and more. BirdWorld’s very recent album Nurture featured a guest appearance from Norwegian violinist Sara Övinge, and thus I found out about her duo Tlön with BirdWorld’s cellist Gregor Riddell. And, perhaps not coincidentally, mere weeks after Nurture, Tlön’s debut album Reality has arrived! It’s released via Norwegian label Jazzland, a label whose name is perhaps misleading even though “jazz” is broadly at its core. And Tlön, like BirdWorld, draws on its members’ classical backgrounds and their talents as improvisers and composers, as well as following BirdWorld in their concrète approach to sound. While Bokonon above is named from Kurt Vonnegut, Tlön of course take their name from Jorge Luis Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius“, one of his reality-warping, inter/intra-textual wonders – and thus the music here twists and turns in surreal ways, so you thought you were listening to classical cadences but your attention strayed for a minute and now it’s heaving electronic drone? The musicianship is first class, and the surreal mix of found-sound, spoken word and warm strings often uncovers real beauty.
Drank – Min [Trost/Bandcamp]
Austrian label Trost is the home of noise-leaning free jazz bods like sax manglers Peter Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson, but also for instance Christof Kurzmann, who flits easily between glitch, indietronica and avant-garde spheres – and indeed they’re also the label that released the two Keiji Haino + Sumac albums, a somewhat different beast from Sumac’s Moor Mother collab we started the show with. But past avant-gardism, Trost releases can seemingly go anywhere, and the two releases here are a case in point.
Drank is the duo of two key members of Austria’s improv/experimental scene: Ingrid Schmoliner on prepared piano and Alexander Kranabetter on trumpet & electronics. Each of the four tracks on their debut album Breath in Definition is a constellation of sound. Schmoliner draws an amazing array of sounds from her piano preparations, very conscious of the psycho-acoustic effects of dense walls of sound, while Kranabetter’s electronics mutate his trumpet into unrecognizable forms. Although I love the second track – so much so that I played its entire 11 minutes and 35 seconds – the last 2 tracks are notable for renowned percussionist & electronic experimentalist Lukas Koenig‘s marimba & electronics, followed by Anja Plaschg aka Soap&Skin‘s breathy vocals on the last track.
Paul Wallfisch & Dana Schechter – Wolfram Lotz Watches a Western Spy Movie and Decides to go Shopping for a Lowrider [Trost/Bandcamp]
Meanwhile, The Heart of a Whale is a very different thing. It’s a meeting of two musicians’ quite different styles – the crumbling cabaret of Little Annie collaborator Paul Wallfisch and the growling guitar noise of Dana Schechter (Swans member and the force behind the “cinematic noise” band/solo act Insect Ark). Still, there are deep connections here – both musicians are interested in soundtrack & multi-mode performance. And indeed the Weimar cabaret style is deeply ingrained in the work of no lesser industrial/noise don than Blixa Bargeld. The Heart of a Whale is a soundtrack of sorts, for a performance by the Vienna Volkstheater of the exploratory, satirical work “Die Politiker” by contemporary German poet & playwright Wolfram Lotz. In keeping with the experimental but incisive work they’re soundtracking, Wallfisch & Schechter roam far with their music, inserting slabs of distortion in amongst the Tom Waitsian pump organ, piano et al. I feel like if any of these references resonate with you, you’re in for a treat!
Luke Abbott, Lotte Betts-Dean, Jack Wylie – Endless Joy [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
With our own Laurence Pike, UK keyboardist Luke Abbott and saxophonist Jack Wylie make up the psychedelic electronic jazz group Szun Waves. In late May comes a new project from Abbott and Wylie, joined by Melbourne-born mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean. Endless Joy will be released on Salmon Universe, the label Laurence’s brother Richard Pike runs out of London with Joe “JQ” Quirke. As the album’s title track and first single shows, Betts-Dean is by no means singing in full-throttle operatic mode, layering her voice through electronic processing, with prepared piano and further electronics from the other two members. As you’ll hear when the full album comes out, no single track captures the whole of this album. It’ll be launched in London when I’m playing up the road at Portals Festival – actually the following day, so I’m hoping to go along, but I won’t be on-air again until a few weeks later, so stick this in your wishlist or whatever!
Listen again — ~207MB
Playlist 13.04.25Posted by Peter on Sunday, 13th of April, 2025 [Edit]Comments Offon Playlist 13.04.25
Strange conglomerations of fluttery acoustic sounds, skittery electronic beats, seemingly-clashing cultural milieus…
LISTEN AGAIN if you dare! Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here.
Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowning. God’s Black Tears. ft. The Lil Black Oxen Émile Joseph Weeks, Nicolas Ratany [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]
Tariq Ravelomanana is not your usual hip-hop producer. A longtime fan of experimental music, he blends any and all styles into his Infinity Knives project. This combined with Brian Ennals‘ unbridled political & personal raps makes for an unconstrained body of work akin to clipping., even if the artistic connection is tenuous. However, the stunning vocals from the male gospel choir “The Lil Black Oxen” on their new album’s title(ish) track does put my mind to “Long Way Away“. But Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals’ ambitions here are different, both musically and lyrically, taking in acoustic guitars and metal riffs, anti-colonial politics and mental health. And it’s an album worthy of its ambition – dive in!
SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 4 [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Last year, alongside their remarkable, heavy-as-fuck album The Healer was released, sludgey hardcore supergroup SUMAC released an EP called The Keeper’s Tongue with two remixes: recent Wire Magazine cover star, Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon, and the brilliant avant-garde hip-hop/free jazz genius Moor Mother. And what a combo the latter was! SUMAC leader Aaron Turner was singer & guitarist with two of my favourite post-metal bands, ISIS and Old Man Gloom (the latter not in past tense), but SUMAC feels like his purest vision, engineered with precision along with the rhythm section of Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook of hardcore legends Botch and post-metal legends Russian Circles. Turner also ran the greatest metal/experimental label in the world, Hydra Head, and now has a smaller – impeccably curated – operation with his wife Faith Coloccia called SIGE. After the incendiary impact of that Moor Mother remix, it still came as a surprise to discover that this full album collab was just around the corner. The Film is one large work split into tracks, with as much (disquieting) quiet as crashing noise. And who but Moor Mother could compete with Aaron Turner’s roar?
Katarina Gryvul – ZOVSIM NISKIL’KY [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
There’s classical music and folk mixed up in the avant-garde electronics and vocals of Ukrainian composer Katarina Gryvul‘s new album. SPOMYN is released on the great Subtext Recordings, fitting in with the likes of Pyur or even Sara Persico. Gryvul multi-tracks her vocals for that full Balkan-like women’s choir effect, albeit with constantly evolving effects on the vocals and bursts of electronic noise. The result is a melancholy, but also at times degraded and sinister sound.
Kuunatic – Disembodied Ternion [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Wheels of Ömon, the second album from Japanese all-female psych rock trio Kuunatic, continues from where their first left off. Stentorian riffs and group vocals, and then echoes of traditional Japanese music…. Drummer Yuko Araki is a brilliant musician across many genres & instruments – she released a stunning noise/industrial album on Room40 in 2023. Bassist Shoko Yoshida previously made beautiful acid folk in the fragile DIY Japanese tradition while keyboardist Fumie Kikuchi is also a vinyl DJ. Just calling this acid rock is highly misleading – there’s so much to sink your teeth into, I think maybe even moreso on this second album.
Maurice Louca – El Taalab الثعلب [Simsara Records/Bandcamp]
Egyptian musician Maurice Louca is a bit of a polymath. The earliest recordings I’ve heard are experimental electronic, and he’s lent production to many artists, but he’s also a member of psych rock/free jazz group The Dwarfs of East Agouza, and Egyptian/Lebanese/Turkish experimental rock/jazz supergroup Karkhana among others. And Louca’s solo music has moved into similar territory, losing most of the electronic elements in the last couple of albums. On May 30th comes Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي, an album full of dancing rhythms, albeit acoustic. On the first single, violins and double bass chase synths and percussion around with chiming electric guitar somewhere in the mix, the repetitive folky phrases only opening up into beautiful diminished harmonies and lyrical melody just before the 3 minute mark.
While you’re here, I have to point you to the stunning Arabic indietronica album Lekhfa الإخفاء Louca made in 2017 with Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh and Palestinian singer & multi-instrumentalist Tamer Abu Ghazaleh.
Violeta García & Hora Lunga – i think i just died a lil bit [-OUS/Bandcamp]
On the 25th of April, Swiss label -OUS is releasing the debut duo album of Argentinian cellist Violeta García & Swiss musician Hora Lunga. Their shared background in composition, improvisation and sonic experimentation led to this transformative music, in which clattering rhythms and distorted noise drones can come from the cello, electronics or field recordings. I’m still digging into this, and finding more at every turn.
Laurent Pernice – ProvidenZad (ft. Alain Damasio) [Le label beige]
Laurent Pernice – Il y a les ombres (ft. Héloïse Brézillon) [Le label beige]
“There are shadows” is the new album from Laurent Pernice – Il y a les ombres in the original French – and as much as it’s about the darkness of shadows, it’s about the shadowy future that lies ahead. Pernice draws on his background in sample-based industrial music in the 1980s, incorporating many live instruments and many guests (his mate Jacques Barbéri plays “genetically modified sax”). But the future history aspect is enhanced on more than half the tracks with guest vocalists reading their own poetic works, including author Alain Damasio (well-known in the francophone world), Black Sifichi, experimental pop producer Judith Juillerat, and young poet, performer and sci-fi writer Héloïse Brézillon. It’s sumptuous and rich music, as is typical of Pernice – recommended even you don’t know any French.
Julien Mier – Scrap (ft. Daisuke Tanabe) [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
Sydney-based electronic producer Julien Mier – also known as Santpoort – has a new album under his own name coming out from the excellent Barcelona label Lapsus. Gradually sees Mier reflecting on not just being Dutch in Australia, but having a French background as well – I’m always jealously admiring of multi-lingual people! – and the album is structured around those three backgrounds. The first single features Japanese producer Daisuke Tanabe, whose own love of jungle breakbeats and sound design is echoed across this new work of Mier’s. It’s gonna be a doozy!
Briain – Only When You Look At It [Art-E-Fax/Bandcamp]
Barry O’Brien works as a sound engineer at Berlin clubs Ohm and Tresor, so you’d think he’d be making thudding techno, but his album Cognitive Dissonance leans more towards acid, electro, breakbeat and IDM. Released on breaks-centred Berlin label Art-E-Fax, it’s the kind of br(i)aindance that would’ve haunted the Rephlex label way back when, and wouldn’t be out of place on CPU Records. Always lovely to hear this kind of melodic electronica.
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – supermatr1x [Bios Contrast Bandcamp]
The current issue of The Wire has an interview with Kolkata-based electronic producer Nilotpal Das, who is variously named as Bios Contrast, under his own name, as DJ Nilo… and frequently as “Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das“. He makes super-complex beats with dense sound design, which he’s dubbed brahmancore. The album SSAC42 is on its way, and “supermatr1x“, which popped up on his Bandcamp at the end of last year, is slated to appear on it.
Flower B – Big shitty life [Big Science/Bandcamp]
Lyon-based DJ & producer Flower B has just released his debut album on Lyon label Big Science, entitled Locked In. The French underground electronic music scene has always been strong, with a love of hardcore and breakcore as much as UK & US bass music (not to ignore the big club stuff which revolves around house, electro & disco music I guess). On this release, Flower B is definitely making heavy bass music with equal influences from industrial techno and ghetto house.
Hmr – Chronos [Straight Up Breakbeat/Bandcamp]
OK well here’s some proper drum’n’bass, from Finland’s Straight Up Breakbeat, and Hmr is a Finnish producer featured on the label’s Zero Five EP. All four tracks are well-produced jungle & d’n’b tracks. Hmr’s “Chronos” is decidedly Photek-like in its precision minimalism.
Hedchef – Inertia of the Real [YUKU/Bandcamp]
Out via Prague powerhouse YUKU is new EP Only Time Will Tell from Naarm/Melbourne’s Hedchef. Hedchef expresses his impatience with the ’90s/’00s sounds that are around at the moment, and I can see where he’s coming from, despite loving the way jungle, trip-hop and even folktronica are reincorporated into modern bass music & experimental approaches. In any case, on this EP we do hear precision rhythms in alien forms, held down by a solid low-end. Highly suited to their home on YUKU.
Obelisk – fakemink – LV Sandals (Obelisk remix) [Obelisk Bandcamp]
A couple of weeks back, FBi’s own Ryan O’Rourke – presenter of Mithril late on Thursday nights – released a couple of sneaky edits on his Bandcamp. The original LV Sandals, by EsDeeKid, fakemink & Rico Ace goes hard enough, but Obelisk beefs it up into industrial proportions.
Clay Teeth – Chapel Fire [Natural Sciences]
I’ve known Greg Stone since quite early days in FBi’s history, as lead singer of Sydney indietronic/postrockers Underlapper, and – full disclosure – our trio Haunts will finally be releasing something in the coming months. But a little while back, Greg was inspired by the tribal drum’n’bass championed by Samurai Music to try his hand at producing dark d’n’b himself, and he quickly became highly adept at it. This track is released on Manchester label Natural Science‘s eclectic, noisy compilation Flesh Renewed, but it will also feature on the upcoming album. Contra to what I’ve just said, this is more like techno than d’n’b.
Mitch Elliott – No Dream [Garden Seat/Bandcamp]
Originally from Newcastle, Mitch Elliott is now based in Eora/Sydney, where he makes noise music and experimental sounds. His latest release is out on Naarm’s Garden Seat, and was recorded live in Indonesia last year. It’s music that’s based around feedback and distortion, so no surprise that the recordings themselves are beset with “foul distortions”, as described by Elliott. But there’s a purity to distortion which can itself be penetrating, although soon enough the echoing bass tones in “No Dream” are ridden over with a squalling feedback melody.
Kettel – Conrector [Kettel Bandcamp]
The music of Dutch musician Reimer Eising comes from a different direction – since the early ’00s Kettel‘s always been an IDM & ambient project, with some neo-classical elements a few years in. But tonight’s track makes use of pulsating echoes that, well, echo Mitch Elliott’s. It’s one of the darker tracks on Kettel’s new album Dubio. Like his 2013 album ibb & obb, this is a video game soundtrack, for a game that combines puzzle solving with parkour. Never less than melodic, Kettel’s music here has a lush, nostalgic feel that eschews the precision of programmed music, and is more human for it.
Will Parker – Devine Blink [Difficult Art And Music/Bandcamp]
Red Lake, Black Mine, the new album by UK composer & audio-visual artist Will Parker, might initially sound like minimal glitch, but it was born out of walks around the post-industrial landscape of inland Cornwall, land that’s been transformed by mining, and poisoned by its toxic outlets. The work exists as an album – digital and on CD – and a performed version, but also an art book that doubles as graphic scores. The combination of concrète sounds, electronics and digital editing is quite ingenious and the mix is incredibly spacious. It’s a visceral listen.
Theresa Wong – Light in the Grotto [ROOM40/Bandcamp]
I’ve known of American cellist Theresa Wong for a long while, as a collaborator with Carla Kihlstedt (including a duo album on Tzadik), a collaborator with minimalist composer/instrument maker Ellen Fullman, and more. Her new album for ROOM40, Journey to the Cave of Guanyin, is a beautiful collection of pieces for solo cello – sometimes just the single instrument, sometimes multi-tracked – that are created to evoke a sense of peace and mental focus. Guanyin is a Chinese deity embodying infinite compassion, and these pieces are prayer-like in their minimalist repetition. The cello is down-tuned substantially from the typical A 440, and – when the instrument isn’t producing fluttery almost-percussive ricochets – the harmonies are in just intonation, which tunes the intervals to the harmonic series based on a particular fundamental, so that chords other than the tonic sound eerily “out of tune” to our ears, accustomed to equal temperament. Wong has put a lot of thought into these pieces, using technique honed over many years of composing, improvising and studying. The result is something bewitching and strange.
Matthias Kaiser & Reinhold Friedl – lamento [Tonkunst Manufactur/Bandcamp]
Acoustic instruments are fractured and transformed on the album ololuge from two German experimental musicians, violinist Matthias Kaiser and pianist Reinhold Friedl. Friedl directs the new music ensemble zeitkratzer, known for interpretations of early Kraftwerk, and work with Terre Thaemlitz, Keiji Haino and power electronics terrorists Whitehouse – generally all done acoustically. “Ololuge” is a word from ancient Greek meaning “ululation” – wailing, trilling… There are similar words in many languages. So from this concept, Kaiser and Friedl draw out unconventional sounds from both instruments, with prepared piano and harmonics, glissandi and extended techniques on the violin. Despite the distinct avant-garde nature of the work, the music is highly expressive – suitably for the subject matter – and “lamento” is a particularly emotive piece.
Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila – Le Système Déraille [Pingipung/Bandcamp]
The first collaborative album between French mechanical instrument maker Pierre Bastien and fourth world electronic producer & composer Michel Banabila was a strange affair, lovely but perhaps a bit tentative. On their follow-up, Nuits Sans Nuit, it feels like they’ve found a singular voice together. First single “Le Système Déraille” has unconventionally-tuned ocarinas(?), muted trumpet, what sounds like a vinyl runout groove, and electronically stretched piano chords. The little melodies could be mechanically produced, but sound gradually more like they’re electronically sequenced. Looking forward to hearing the rest!
Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson – Bone Bells [Pyroclastic Records/Bandcamp]
Two incredibly accomplished improvisers and performers of contemporary jazz and contemporary classical music getting together is quite something, and these two women are easily at the top of their game, Sylvie Courvoisier on piano and Mary Halvorson on electric guitar. For some reason electric guitar and acoustic piano seem like an ill-fitting combination to me, but Courvoisier & Halvorson prove it to be as natural as anything. This is their third collaboration, so I blame myself for not discovering the duo earlier. Courvoisier has played with many of those in the “Downtown NY” jazz scene, including her husband, also-legendary jazz violinist and John Zorn mainstay Mark Feldman, and his frequent partner-in-strings (and hero to me), cellist Erik Friedlander. Halvorson, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, is known as an innovator, technically explosive and incredibly sensitive, and has a characteristic way with the whammy bar – except remarkably it’s not: the pitch-bending effects are from swivelling the delay time (using an expression pedal) on a Line 6 DL4 delay unit! So, suffice to say this was always going to be mind-bending, beautiful and riotous – as it indeed is. Even if you’re a jazz aficionado, you should give this a go.
Alex Zethson & Johan Jutterström – If I (Tålamod) [thanatosis/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 If I Could / If I is a mixture of cleverly-chosen covers and beautiful originals by Jutterström. A few weeks ago I played their cover of John Lurie’s “It could have been very very beautiful” – and, in fact, it was! And they cover “It couldn’t happen here” from the Pet Shop Boys’ brilliant second album, in lovely wistful fashion. But Jutterström’s original compositions really are gorgeous, and the playing of the two musicians is exquisitely restrained (I try not to use “exquisite” too often, so please take it as the chef’s kiss that it needs to be).