Beautiful songs and churning glitchscapes, accelerated hyperpercussion and sparse bass drops… A night of contrasts.
Herbert & Momoko – Calm Water [Strut/Herbert Bandcamp/Momoko Gill Bandcamp]
Herbert & Momoko – More And More [Strut/Herbert Bandcamp/Momoko Gill Bandcamp]
Back in 2022, Matthew Herbert released a short album called Drum Solo in collaboration with Swiss drummer Julian Sartorius. It was intended to be the first in a series of “Album In A Day” releases, but also the first in a series of collaborations with different drummers. Last year, Herbert revived his Parts EP series with Part 9 which opened with “Fallen”, featuring drummer & vocalist Momoko Gill. Gill is clearly as perfect a foil for Herbert’s glitch-infused, jazz-influenced productions as Dani Siciliano or Róisín Murphy, and as well as her silky-smooth vocals and sinuous melodies her percussion and drumkit are central elements throughout – notably more prominent on the remake of the Part 9 song, “Fallen Again”. The album benefits from the restraint of both artists, often using sparing arrangements with just enough – a minimalist rhythm, shuffling sampled hi-hats, a bassline… Often the only other elements are Gill’s vocals, multi-tracked and sampled. Lovely stuff.
Tortoise – Oganesson (Saul Williams Remix) [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Well, Tortoise are of course among the originators of postrock, a genre signifier which in the early days meant many different things. Let’s not rehash that history right here, but jazz has always been part of Tortoise’s makeup as much as instrumental rock and studio trickery (not to mention the hardcore punk origins of various of their members), so it’s lovely finding their comeback record being released by Chicago’s most forward-thinking jazz label, International Anthem. The album’s actually a co-release with the venerable Nonesuch Records, but before the album lands, International Anthem have furnished the first single Oganesson with a suite of remixes. From the outset, it’s pure Tortoise – skittery breakbeats from John McEntire with jazzy chords (some playing backwards) and a bouncy bassline, all in 7/8. It’s interesting that of the remixes, Heba Kadry, Broken Social Scene and Makaya McCraven all straighten it out into some more like 4/4 – each in very different ways mind you! The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney keeps the 7/8 meter and somehow turns it into driving kinda-dance music anyway. And the mighty Saul Williams keeps it in 7/8, for half the song with little more than that backmasked keyboard line, laying his trademark super-conscious poetry over the top – and then halfway through the drums enter. It’s pretty powerful stuff from a master of his craft.
Melt – Dawn Chorus feat. Reuben Ingall [Melt Bandcamp]
Canberra’s Melt aka Jordan Rodger explores the intersection of free jazz, krautrock, ambient and postrock, in varying combinations. For his new album Warbling he began by recording a series of guitar improvisations, each in just one take, and multitracked various instruments over them to end up with tracks that sound like full band takes or abstract ambience or other stuff… But on a few tracks he invited some local guests, so “Dawn Chorus” (in keeping with the “Warbling” bird theme) features the unassumingly (some might say unfairly) brilliant Reuben Ingall adding warbling tape manipulation and low-key vocals.
Nitrada – Il Romanticismo Dell’apocalisse [2nd rec/Bandcamp]
In the early days of Utility Fog, I was receiving promos from all round the world, and I’m pretty sure some came from Hamburg label 2nd rec. Among other artists they released a run of great stuff from Italian postrock/indie/experimental band Giardini di Mirò (for the headz, there’s a Hood remix in there, but seriously Giardini are a top tier band). But 2nd rec also released lovely electronic & indietronic material from Nitrada, aka Christophe Stoll, co-founder of the label. Now in 2025, some 20 years after the label ceased operations, they’re back, and their first new release is Nitrada’s Everything That Is Not Counted Will Be Lost. It’s emotive electronic music mixed with indie rock, krautrock and even industrial elements, and all in all I’m really glad to have them back.
Oï les Ox – Cinéma du Look (Jan Jelinek remix 1) [Construtive/Bandcamp]
British composer & sound-artist Adrian Corker setup the SN Variations to showcase contemporary composition and classical-related experimental music. Construtive was formed a while later, probably as a way of releasing a broader range of music – such as French experimental songwriter & composer Aude Van Wyller aka Oï les Ox, whose second album AI les Axes came out on the label last year. Now they’ve commissioned glitch/minimal electronic maestro Jan Jelinek to remix one of the tracks from the album. He turns an already experimental song into a submerged cathedral, with sunken beats and wavering vocals – a beautiful effect.
Mizmor – Mnemonic – III [Profound Lore/Bandcamp]
Mizmor – Mnemonic – I [Profound Lore/Bandcamp]
Liam Neighbors, usually credited as A.L.N., makes what he calls “wholly doomed black metal”. There are two puns here: there is a subgenre more generally termed “blackened doom” combining elements of black metal and doom metal, but as well as the inversion, the word “wholly” is a homophone of “holy”, and Mizmor’s name means something like “psalm” when translated from the Hebrew מזמור. Mizmor is a project that Neighbors developed in the process of losing his Christian faith, and he describes the earliest recordings of the project as “hymns”. For this new album he reached back not only to these, but to very lo-fi recordings as The Zarconiac when he was a teenager, homing in on the “lamentful melodies”, and then radically transforming them into drones and echoing soundscapes. Mnemonic: Ambient Mosaic is quite a beautiful album, with deep emotion and a lot more to musically latch on to than simple time-stretched drone transformations. Highly recommended.
Jack Prest – Dawn [Forthcoming on Jack Prest Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney composer & sound engineer Jack Prest performed his ambitious interdisciplinary work The Risk of Hyperbole at Phoenix Central Park in 2022 along with musicians largely drawn from Ensemble Offspring, merging electronic music, classical and improv with dance and visual art. Since then he’s put together two albums on music extrapolated from that initial work: The Risk of Hyperbole – Vol.1 – Sound in 2022 and 2023’s The Risk of Hyperbole – Vol.2 – Object. Both albums came out of recordings with the musicians from the project, including improvisations, composed passages and many electronic elements. Now Movement: The Risk Of Hyperbole Vol.3 is coming, with a couple of tracks now on the streaming services. With more of the classical/experimental/electronic approach, it’s going to be compelling listening.
Jeremy Segal – Scriptspeak II [Forthcoming on Jeremy Segal Bandcamp]
Boorloo/Perth field recordist, electronic producer & musician Jeremy Segal has previously appeared on this show with transformed field recordings and environment-like minimal techno and ambient. Now in Berlin studying for a Master of Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, he’s continuing to put music up on his Bandcamp, and coming in a week or so is Lunge for an Exit, an EP of rhythmic glitchy, granular cut-ups. It’s inspired by a description of hardcore band Negative Approach’s music, accelerated to the point that resembled a “desperate lunge for an exit”. The music is of course a world away from hardcore punk, but Segal chops his samples (on “Scriptspeak II” based on spoken phonemes) into fast-chopped rhythms where the negative space accentuates the syncopations. Follow Jeremy on Bandcamp to get notified when this releases (I mean, check out his other stuff while you’re there too…)
Lyra Pramuk – Crimson [7K/pop.soil/Bandcamp]
Lyra Pramuk – Oracle [7K/pop.soil/Bandcamp]
On her debut solo album Fountain, operatically & classically-trained composer & producer Lyra Pramuk focused entirely on her voice – whether her own range of expression, extended techniques, or all manner of processing and sampling. The electronic aspect was heightened on the massive remix/collaboration double album Delta that she released in 2021. It’s been a few years again, but now Pramuk is starting a new label, pop.soil, in conjunction with 7K (!K7‘s classicall/ambient imprint that they’re back-referencing as 7Klassik). The label debuted with a wonderful standalone single called “Vega“, and now a full album, Hymnal has followed. The album once again focuses on the voice, layered, sampled, chopped and reamplified, but they are underpinned and complemented by rich strings from Sonar Quartett and additional double bass. Pramuk’s classical training melds with her embedding in Berlin techno to form a work that really is symphonic in feel, transformative and powerful. Pramuk suggests that these hymns don’t need a connection to formal religion, and coupled with Mizmor’s transformed hymns above, I’d say that’s clearly proven. (Anyway, the composer of the greatest classical requiem, Gabriel Fauré was not a believer.)
Julien Mier – Soil [Lapsus/Bandcamp]
On his first album for Barcelona’s Lapsus, Eora/Sydney-based Dutch musician Julien Mier has chosen to use his birth name rather than Santpoort. Gradually is a highly personal album in three parts, each representing a part of Julien’s background: his French heritage, Dutch upbringing and his life now in Australia. “Soil” is firmly in the Australian setting, with an opening field recording/drone silenced by a hard-chopped glitchy rhythmic which is dark until the twinkling keyboards enter. Gradually Mier raises the energy with an almost synth-pop melody and more beats, before a long elegiac fade-out with sampled strings, burbling water and a granulated drone.
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – everyth1ng 1n l1fe (feat. K_anti) [Infinite Machine/Bandcamp]
The May 2025 issue of The Wire featured 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. His new album, SSAC42 is now out through Mexican label Infinite Machine, and hoo-boy those beats are insane. There’s a kind of breakcore in here, kind-of footwork and jungle, but mostly it’s percussive sounds programmed into jabbering rhythms, possibly interacting with some bass elements, or not. A few of the tracks bring in K_anti‘s voice to float over the chaos. And finally on the last track “Blue Box Recovery” there are tablas and Indian voices (over plunging sub-bass), giving at least a nod to Nilotpal Das’ home.
Hoavi – Predicate [Gost Zvuk/Bandcamp]
OL – 2024-02-23 M [Gost Zvuk/Bandcamp]
Russian label ГОСТ ЗВУК / Gost Zvuk started in house & techno but quickly branched out into experimental forms of electronic music and further afield. In 2022 they released a compilation called STOP THE WAR! which I assumed meant a positive relationship towards Ukraine. But on further reading I’ve found that they’re accused of visiting Crimea, which had been (illegally) annexed by Russia (from Ukraine) in 2014. But that Gost Zvuk event happened in 2021, before they released the STOP THE WAR! compilation? Hoavi‘s track here is in keeping with his incredible skittery not-quite-jungle techno, and OL provides some warped ambient dub, in amongst more high quality music. But if you’re loath to support Russia, however obliquely, let’s listen to some Ukrainian music instead.
Low End Activist – Wave 01 [Best Intentions/Bandcamp]
Last year Kasra of drum’n’bass mainstays Critical Music formed a new label Best Intentions with the aim of branching out from d’n’b. Even though Tim Reaper has recently explored non-jungle styles, his EP inaugurating the label was pure junglism. On the other hand, drum’n’bass prodigy gyrofield used her release on the label to explore slower BPMs in bass, techno and IDM (much like we heard last week). Now the third EP on Best Intentions has appeared, from UK bass legend Low End Activist. Superwave‘s four tracks inhabit a ultra-tight, sparse environment of deep sub bass pings and sci-fi synths, too bare to be dubstep or garage, but still clearly in the UK bass music space. It’s pretty incredible.
Bushranger – The Billabong Speaks [Unexplained Sounds Group]
Raffaele Pezzella’s Unexplained Sounds Group is a label (or group of labels) focused largely on industrial and ambient music, but also dedicated, in its Sound Mapping series, to bringing exploratory, experimental music to light from across the globe. It’s quite strange finding our continent in the spotlight with Anthology Of Experimental Music From Australia, and it’s certainly a particular angle on our fragmented scene (which Pezzella is quick to acknowledge), but there’s some top class stuff here including Alexandra Spence, Wytchings, Amby Downs and Automating, to name a few. So field recordings and drones and clanking industrial soundscapes dominate, but in many different iterations. I’ve chosen to include an Eora mainstay, Eli Murray, who’s best known as Gentleforce but also helps present jungle, drum’n’bass and dubstep nights in Sydney, something he did in his youth on the northern beaches too. In March last year he unveiled another project, Bushranger, via the album Gully Music, which blurred and blended the sounds of the Australian environment with electronics, somehow fashioning lo-fi techno and noise from his field recordings of the land & water and the creatures therein. “The Billabong Speaks” continues on this path, murky and mulchy as it is.
Brady Cohan – Untitled 1 [theme for a film] [Brady Cohan Bandcamp]
LA-based composer & guitarist Brady Cohan‘s latest album Wash had its beginnings in some ideas for a sci-fi soundtrack based on a script he was sent in which deceased loved ones can be downloaded into humanoid robots. There’s an emotive thread here of how people deal with grief, but it’s also tied up in this idea of the human/machine interface, so the music here (for a film that was never in fact made) features classical string players (especially Noah Hoffeld on cello) cut up and collaged with tape loops and modular synths. It’s fair to say that Cohan achieves his goal of obfuscating the edges of the human performances and artificial elements. Beautiful stuff.
Sary Moussa – A Storm, a Gift [Other People/Bandcamp]
Wind, Again – the new album from Beirut musician Sary Moussa and his second on Nicolas Jaar‘s Other People – is vastly different from his earlier work, blooming out into jazz and classical waters, winding its way through improvisations and generative electronics to some revelatory sounds. Moussa, who is now part-based in France, recorded this album at Tunefork Studios in Beirut with many familiar names from the Lebanese scene – Julia Sabra of Snakeskin and Postcards providing piano and Hammond organ, Fadi Tabbal of Snakeskin on guitar, Postcards drummer Pascal Semerdjian, clarinet from Paed Conca of Praed & more, and buzuk from Abed Kobeissi, who’s worked with the likes of Oiseaux-Tempête. There’s a sad kind of nostalgia haunting these pieces, both offset and enhanced by the electronic interventions. You know it’ll be brilliant.
Farah Kaddour & Marwan Tohme – Tajmid Ejbari [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Staying with Beirut a little more, the latest album on Ruptured comes from Arabic folk & classical specialist Farah Kaddour on buzuk and Postcards‘ Marwan Tohme on guitar & electronics. If you remember SANAM, the Lebanese band being released soon on Constellation, both musicians are members of that outfit – but while SANAM is experimental, angular rock music, the music on the duo’s album Ghazel is a much more gentle affair, Kaddour leading with Arabic folk style melodies and motifs, and Tohme sometimes following on guitar, sometimes adding electronic textures & drones. It’s beautiful & understated.
super inter – tape current [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Hannah Silva – Snake Jar [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]
Here are two quite different tracks from a Cassette Album (so titled) of eight interpretations of tape scores prepared by Salomé Voegelin. This follows an earlier “scores compilation” of Voegelin’s from 2022, also on Flaming Pines, called Paint your lips while singing your favourite pop song. The earlier compilation used “text scores” presented to each artist, and her new one is about tape, in all its forms. Of course, the interpretations range widely, presumably selected in conjunction with Flaming Pines’ Kate Carr. Berlin-based Ukrainian artist super inter progressively granulates a recording of bells ringing, while UK poet Hannah Silva chops up her own syllables both with her mouth and with electronics, and finally into distorted feedback. Each of the pieces here is evocative and strange.
Jacaszek – Far and Beside [Touch/Bandcamp]
Polish musician Michał Jacaszek‘s earliest works I can find are some odd electro-acoustic Polish jazz/pop songs released in 2005 (you can hear them here). But his career really starts in 2008 with the first album under just his surname, Treny. One of the earliest releases on Erik K Skodvin’s Miasmah label, it fits well into that label’s aesthetic – dark, electro-acoustic music combining classical string parts and restrained beats. And that’s pretty much how it’s continued, with Jacaszek working his electronics in with classical musicians. New album Idylla is his third for the venerable Touch label, following 2014’s Catalogue des Arbres (“tree catalogue”) with modern music ensemble Kwartludium and 2024’s Gardenia, which is based around field recordings from the South African savanna. For Idylla, Jacaszek took field recordings and converted them to MIDI, taking advantage of accidental melodies that would be found. These then formed the basis of scores that were performed by classical musicians and the 441Hz Choir. This is patient, otherworldy music. Sometimes the live performances and instruments dominate, at other times they’re heavily processed or swamped in electronics, but it’s never heavy. There’s lots of silence. It’s still basically a form of the “acoustic doom” that Skodvin’s Miasmah label has continued to champion. Anyway, this is a first class album.
Trondheim Voices & Asle Karstad – Angel Farewell [MNJ Records]
The Norwegian all-female choir Trondheim Voices have collaborated with sound-designer Asle Karstad since at least 2017. The choir have individual effects units, designed by Asle Karstad and Arnvid Lau Karstad, that they carry with them that let them process and loop their own voices. Their music is largely improvised, but they have such a close sense of each other’s voices that it hangs together like a choir. Their latest album is a soundtrack to the movie Sobre las Olas by Mexican-Spanish director Horacio Alcalá. Over five years, the soundtrack was developed by the choir in studio sessions, organically creating a soundtrack to the film’s themes and characters. The scenes of the film were built around the sounds. Of course the music stands on its own, and is enveloping and evocative.
Jane Sheldon – o you tender ones [Ba Da Bing/Bandcamp]
Australian-American soprano & composer Jane Sheldon has a long connection with Utility Fog. Her first band Gauche released their first EP in 2003, the same year fbi.radio and this show began. They embodied a genre-resistent strain of music-making that this show was about from the beginning, with a classically-trained vocalist, a drummer who imitated sampled breabeats (and went on to develop the amazing AirSticks), and members who went on to form Hermitude, The Tango Saloon and more. Jane is a superb vocalist, and a great interpreter of contemporary composition, but she also holds a PhD in Music Composition herself. In 2022 she released her first solo album in 20 years – like, really solo: i am a tree, i am a mouth is composed by herself, sung in multitracks by herself, with only gorgeously elongated gong sounds as droned accompaniment. It’s an extraordinary album, and notably there’s one non-Jane Sheldon element, which is that the lyrics are all drawn from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke – specifically, his Book of Hours. The Ba Da Bing label paid attention immediately, and now release her follow-up, flowermuscle. This time her compositions and singing are aided by legendary Australian sound engineer/sound designer Bob Scott, opening up into a very different sound-world from i am a tree‘s impossible soft vocals in each ear. Once again the lyrics are drawn from Rilke’s sensuous poetry (you can find English translations here), and rather than inward-facing, they place us within the vastness of creation – Sheldon suggests the “feeling that you’re in erotic resonance with everything else in nature”. You need to hear that.