Experimental maneuvres in pop, hip-hop, jazz, rock and electronics, percussive approaches to musique concrète as well as jazz-rock-tronica, vinyl manipulations with dark electronics, spoken word, field recordings, ambient installation work and post-classical piano.
Marcus Whale – Eye [Blue Void/Bandcamp]
Two Eora/Sydney ledges bundled into one split single… Grasps and Marcus Whale have put together a four-track release on which both artists created one song and then one ambient version. And not only that, they’ve done a CD version (split CDs always seemed odd, but they’re still beautiful CDs so hey…) I wanted to play Grasps’ ambient version, but I just couldn’t find the space… so suffice to say all four tracks are great. Here we have Utility Fog mainstay Marcus Whale with a typically catchy piece of experimental electronic pop, complete with jungle breaks. Thematically, it could easily have come off last year’s Ecstasy album.
Lessons In Time – Deuteronomy 1:8 [4-4-2 Music/Bandcamp]
Due to families and life, it’s been a while since we’ve heard much from the Telafonica family, a Sydney indietronic band with various offshoots of different members, generally released through 4-4-2 Music, the label run by Telafonica’s Adrian Elmer. One of my favourites was always the weird & passionate music of Blake Wassell under the name Lessons In Time. And here, more than a decade since his last release, is a new EP from Lessons In Time. Each track is named after some bible verses, and central to Moses and a Lowrey is the Lowrey organ. But Blake’s got everything severely limited past the distortion point, crashing into hard edits and generally creating chaos that’s offset by the fact that he writes lovely melodies that Sufjan Stevens would be proud of. Great to have him back.
Anne-James Chaton, Andy Moor & Yannis Kyriakides – Pas De Danse [Unsounds/Bandcamp]
This Handmade series of singles from the Unsounds label represents in some ways the core of the label – although Unsounds encompasses everything from modern composition to experimetnal postpunk to glitchy pop. Along with graphic designer Isabelle Vigier, the label was founded by two of the players here: Netherlands-based Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides and Scottish guitarist Andy Moor, who’s played for decades in the Dutch anarcho-punk band The Ex. They’ve made a bunch of albums together, with Moor’s instinctual command of angular guitar phrasing and Kyriakides’ electronics producing unexpected (and brilliant) results. Moor has also collaborated with French avant-garde writer and artist Anne-James Chaton for ages, and their duo recordings follow a similar pattern to these tracks – motorik rhythms looped on guitar, and Chaton’s oblique spoken word poetry slotting in over it. Playing with minimalist rhythms is familiar for Chaton as he’s also worked with Alva Noto; on this series, Kyriakides joins in with additional electronics. Art-punk for (very experimental) dancefloors?
doseone & Height Keech – Wood Teeth [doseone Bandcamp]
Following his brilliant album All Portrait, No Chorus with Steel Tipped Dove earlier this year, veteran alt.hip-hop mouth doseone has dived right back into the swing of things. Here’s a new EP produced entirely by Baltimore beatmaker Height Keech, which is laser-focused on the current moment – it was written and recorded in June 2025. And of course it’s about the descent of the USA into fascism, basically. What a time to be alive.
Kae Tempest – Diagnoses [Island Records]
The journey to being Kae Tempest has been a big & daunting one. Lauded as one of the best writers in the rap world since their extraordinary 2014 album Everybody Down, they were painfully confronted with their presentation as a cis woman with long curls. In 2020 Tempest came out as trans, using they/them pronouns, and the 2022 album The Line Is A Curve is very much about that transformation, but now Self Titled brings further transformation, as Tempest has now had top surgery and is taking testosterone. You can hear that in his voice on some of these tracks. I love the album title: self-titled albums often denote a turning point for an artist, but naming the album “Self Titled” comments nicely on an artist who’s found his true self. There’s a confidence in the delivery and the lyrics here which supports that. Everybody Down featured beautiful vignettes about different people in an apartment building; now the artist it the subject of the art. “Diagnoses” comments on the explosion of diagnoses of neurodivergence, dysphoria, anxiety, and so on, “But it’s the world that’s sick, baby, we’re alright”. Yeah that about sums it up.
John Glacier – Fly With Me [Young/Bandcamp]
Despite living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, the poet & rapper known as John Glacier has been constantly on the rise for a few years – working as a model as well as an experimental musician. Her album Like A Ribbon – collecting three EPs from last year and this year – came out in February, and she’s already put a new single out. “Fly With Me” was made again with Kwes Darko, with Glacier’s low-key delivery over what initially sounds like Darth Vader’s theme in hip-hop form. “I’m a sight to see, not a sight for sore eyes…”
She’s Analog – narrow pass [Carton Records/Carton Bandcamp/Torto Editions/Bandcamp/She’s Analog Bandcamp]
She’s Analog – danse macabre [Carton Records/Carton Bandcamp/Torto Editions/Bandcamp/She’s Analog Bandcamp]
The second album from Italian trio She’s Analog is a compelling mix of (post-)jazz, postrock, electroacoustic music and more. At times they can sound like a minimalist jazz piano trio, at other times like a motorik, minimalist postpunk band. It’s clearly put together from partly improvised elements, but there’s also careful composition here, drawing different moments from the album together, with electronic elements also pointing to the way this music was crafted in the studio. But there’s also a real melodic sense that draws you in for repeat listens, which I’ve been enjoying this week.
Tim Barnes – Just A Suggestion (feat. Joshua Abrams and David Daniell) [Drag City/Bandcamp]
US percussionist Tim Barnes has appeared with a host of musicians from the rock, jazz and experimental scenes over a few decades. The list is long, and includes Jim O’Rourke and two bands he’s had a hand in, Wilco and Sonic Youth, as well as Stereolab, Faust and Alan Licht to give you an idea of the breadth. Sadly, a few years ago Barnes revealed that he was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s, making it hard to communicate verbally. It’s an awful disease for the sufferer’s loved ones too. So Ken Brown, aka Tortoise founding member Bundy K Brown, decided to organise a benefit release for Barnes and his family. So many of his friends & colleagues joined in that it’s turned into two albums, Noumena and Lost Words, with members of the aforementioned bands, John Dieterich of Deerhoof, our own Oren Ambarchi and many more. This track seemed to fit in with the percussion around it tonight, with contributions from experimental musicians Joshua Abrams and David Daniell.
Andrea Taeggi – Clothespins II (function) [Andrea Taeggi Bandcamp]
Andrea Taeggi – Micro [Andrea Taeggi Bandcamp]
I’ve followed the work of Berlin-based sound-artist and musician Andrea Taeggi since the early releases of his duo Lumisokea with cellist and sound-artist Koenraad Ecker. Lumisokea made a wonderful strain of experimental electronic/industrial bass music mixed with the “acoustic doom” sound of the Miasmah label, making them a perfect fit for the Opal Tapes, and it was Opal Tapes that also released Taeggi’s first solo album AUM, under the Gondwana alias. He later made the bass music connection explicit with his 5HT2 project, but his first instrument was piano, and now it finds its way into his music in a very… deconstructed fashion. He’s used the piano in this way on a couple of earlier releases, but on Chaoticism you can do at home, it’s explored systematically, and in depth. As well as sounds from a prepared piano at EMS Stockholm, Taeggi uses preparations on his upright piano (it’s generally easier to place objects on top of the strings of a grand piano). There are percussive sounds here, I think generated from the body of the piano, but as you can hear, the sounds are thoroughly rearranged: Taeggi chopped up the recordings according to the type and source of sounds, and then constructed tracks from them – largely in two contrasting ways. The “fluid” approach allows for longer samples, which are stretched and processed but give the listener an idea of the physicality of their origins. Meanwhile the “functional” tracks use smaller samples as rhythmic elements, pushing them closer to the techno, IDM & bass music side of his work. I love those rhythmic tracks, but there’s a lot of fascination to be had from the fluid tracks (and a few that are unlabelled). Please take the opportunity to explore the artist’s earlier work, including Lumisokea, whose last album was in 2016 (the bulk of their catalogue is on their Bandcamp).
António Feiteira – Synthesized Chronos Turned Organless Aion [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp]
Eastern Nurseries is one of a number of Portuguese labels that reliably turns up surprising new sounds from unfamiliar artists. So here’s a brilliant debut EP from Porto-based percussionist and sound-artist António Feiteira, titled Performing the Heimlich on an Ouroboros. I love the first track, a contemplative, crackling glitchscape, but because we’re on a percussion tip tonight, I’ve chosen the middle track, which retains some of the glitch textures, but foregrounds Feiteira’s drumming. A really great EP.
Orchestroll – P3 [Éditions Appærent/Bandcamp]
Montréal duo Orchestroll already released an album this year, the “scorched new-age” of Corrosiv. They’ve followed it up now with Big P, an altogether darker affair. Or is it? “P1” is ascending synth arpeggios which get wilder and more distorted; “P2” is synth drones and horror movie folio. So… yeah. Anyway, “P3” is dark ambient drones and crazily accelerated breakcore beats, like a lost Christoph De Babalon track. Check this album, pretty sure you’ll dig it!
Chris Inperspective feat. Charlotte Koolhaas – Pictures (OK Well) [The Jah Rich Project]
Leon Mar – Unity Dub [The Jah Rich Project]
The Jah Rich Project is a gathering of drum’n’bass and jungle producers to raise some money for JahRich, admin of the Jungletrain forums, who’s battling cancer. There’s a good array of contemporary productions, with a few standout highlights. Chris Inperspective samples the voice of Charlotte Koolhaas to build a loping rhythm that’s clearly drum’n’bass without referencing any typical breaks. Leon Mar is the not-quite-real name of the producer behind the storied darkcore alias Arcon 2. His real name is Noel Ram, but generally credited with the reversed name, and his Leon Mar work is generally lighter and jazzier. That’s kind of the case here, but it’s pretty fierce all the same.
NPLGNN – Dubwise Paranza [NPLGNN Bandcamp]
Italian beatmaker NPLGNN is back with another 12″, Novena / Dubwise Paranza, exploring more of the territory that the Naples producer has staked out for a few years. Both tracks have a resemblance to dancehall as well as contemporary bass music and percussive techno, with an industrial edge. There’s plenty more to discover on his Bandcamp.
tedzi تدزي – Goomi [mnjm/Bandcamp]
Coming soon on Berlin label mnjm is the Mn Dehab album from Berlin-based producer Teddy Tawil aka tedzi تدزي. First single “Goomi” is a frenetic piece of almost-jungle/IDM. Tedzi leans towards the abrasive, but there are nods to his Lebanese background in one or two tracks – I’ll be featuring more when the EP’s out.
Cherrystones x Demdike Stare – Where Evil Grows [DDS]
Available from Boomkat, who I’m pretty sure handle all of Demdike Stare‘s DDS imprint, here’s a pretty incredible piece of dark ambient, post-industrial, chopped & screwed bad-trip-hop… Cherrystones is a UK DJ & producer with a similar aesthetic to Demdike Stare – hauntological looting of the arcane past, and recontextualising into strange contexts. So from this collaboration we get crunchy, overdriven beats, vinyl-manipulated voices, tape-destroyed noise loops, all fed through dub delays. It’s supremely fucked-up and one of my favourite things I’ve heard lately.
Nour Sokhon – Here birds come close [via The Wire Tapper 68/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year, Berlin-based Lebanese interdisciplinary artist Nour Sokhon released an album on Ruptured with Montréal musician and activist Stefan Christoff called Beyond All Borderlines in which Christoff’s piano lines stood alongside Sokhon’s electronics and field recordings from Lebanon and Berlin. The music here was actually released earlier – in October last year on Sokhon’s album Beirut Birds, but “Here birds come close” appeared on The Wire Tapper 68, included for subscribers with the The Wire’s August 2025 issue. The album is a “sonic memory capsule” that branches out from interviews Sokhon conducted with Lebanese people inside and outside the country, with multiple instruments and treatments added that respond to the experiences of migration – hopeful or traumatic. Lovely, and thought-provoking.
Charbel Haber, Nicolás Jaar and Sary Moussa – Part 2 [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
Speaking of Ruptured, here’s their latest release, an absolute stunner from three great musicians: Lebanese guitarist Charbel Haber, Chilean-American musician Nicolás Jaar playing bass clarinet, and electronic musician/composer Sary Moussa. Just last week we heard Sary Moussa’s latest album Wind, Again, released on Nicolás Jaar’s Other People label. This album, titled Crashing waves dance to the rhythm set by the broadcast journalist revealing the tragedies of the day, was recorded live at Tunefork Studios in Beirut, while Israel was bombarding the country. Haber & Jaar improvised together, while Moussa was processing a live feed from both instruments. It’s otherworldly, beautiful, occasionally harrowing… compulsory listening.
Michel Banabila – Through Global Frequency – Aunt Nadira [Tapu Records/Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila – Through Global Frequency – Philisiwe Twijnstra [Tapu Records/Bandcamp]
Dutch musician Michel Banabila appears often in these playlists. Releasing music since 1983 (a fabulous, forward-thinking album), Michel has amassed a large discography, with many collaborations – including a series of albums with Machinefabriek. Through Global Frequency is a project that’s been brewing for some time. It began as a poem, composed from the titles of recordings from his discography, with an original ambient track to go with it. But then he began asking friends and family to read the text in their own languages, culminating in this album with 10 languages – each with their own backing music – plus the initial mix. I was chatting with Michel while he was putting it together, and he asked if I could send him some cello, so I sent a few minutes of melodies and strums, and you can hear them alongside the voice of Maryana Golovchenko reading the poem in Ukrainian (this is not inappropriate as my mother’s family were Jews living in Odesa at the start of the 20th century).
Tonight I’ve played Michel’s own Aunt Nadira from Yemen, reading in Arabic, and then Philisiwe Twijnstra, a South African author & playwright based in Durban, reading in isiZulu. All the tracks have their own attraction – the voices, the sound of their languages, the music Michel has composed.
Andy Cartwright – There Was Never Any Doubt [Whitelabrecs/Bandcamp]
UK musician Andy Cartwright (now based in France) came to my attention under the Seabuckthorn alias, with albums on Lost Tribe Sound among other labels, with stunning fingerpicking guitar works mixed with bowed guitars, slide, and shoegazey electric guitar textures. Not one to sit still, the Seabuckthorn material kept mutating, and eventually he started using his own name for albums that mostly eschewed guitar for electronics, samples, field recordings. The glitchy soundscapes on Yonder are enveloping and have the feeling of being both static and ever-changing. This kind of music made by an accomplished musician takes it to another level.
Otto Reitano – SH04 [Otto Reitano]
The two new singles from Eora/Sydney sound-artist and musician Otto Reitano were originally written for a 32-channel audiovisual installation in the Muru Giligu tunnel at the new Martin Place Metro Station. They’ve been adapted for general listening in stereo, with some added vocals and guitar from Steve Shanahan. It’s lovely ambient music and I’m keen to hear it in place – Otto says it should be returning to the tunnel sometime in August.
Aries Mond – Hittes [Whitelabrecs/Bandcamp]
The Andy Carwright album above came out in March, but I only got hold of it when I ordered a bunch of things from Whitelabrecs, including this recent album from French post-classical/electronic/glitch artist Aries Mond, who I’d first discovered on the eilean rec and IIKKI labels run by Mathias van Eecloo. His new album Edge Angles is pieced together from piano lines played in fleeting moments between other jobs, so it has a looser feel than his previous work, but it still has the slight edge (so to speak) that sets it apart from some of the other “modern classical” piano music around.