Playlist 24.11.24

Utility Fog

We’re getting towards the end of the year and the new releases are refusing to let up. I take this as a personal affront.

LISTEN AGAIN and get angry along with me at how much great music there is! Stream on demand with FBi, podcast here.

Julián Mayorga – No te comas las blaquísimas mofetas [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Julián Mayorga – La venganza de las wawas panches [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Sometimes you just come across something so insane and new that it’s somehow recognizable, as if it somehow had to exist. Hamburg-based label Glitterbeat has form, finding fantastic music from across the globe – but that said, Julián Mayorga is pretty famous in Colombia, for his surreal, madcap humour & satire as much as for his madcap music. Attempting to translate the song titles does mostly result in contextless nonsense-poetry, which is kind of fun, but it’s the music that draws you in – mutated, updated cumbia and other Latin American styles, sharpened with the vinegar of discordant harmonies, sprinkled with weird electronics, delivered into your head with Mayorga’s flamboyant vocal style. And just incredibly fun.

Safety Trance – On 1 (feat. Dorian Electra) [Boysnoize Records/Bandcamp]
It wasn’t until putting the show together that I realisd that Safety Trance is not just a Venezuelan electronic producer: Luis Garbàn is Cardopusher, whose breakcore productions were all over Utility Fog’s first 6 or 7 years. Once upon a time this JoJo-samplin’ slab of overdriven amens and ragga samples was my favourite breakcore track, even. And then he did some dubstep and then moved on to shinier, less aggressive dancefloor stuff as far as I know. And here, now, emerges Cardo as Safety Trance, making a kind of industrial reggaeton. He collaborated with Arca on the first Safety Trance EP Noches de Terror, and the Lágrimas album later that year added Iceboy Violet and Brodinski as collaborators among others. Again with Boysnoize Records he’s now released “On 1” with another gender-fluid collaborator, Dorian Electra. It’s an ultra-stripped down 3-note melody, with hints of amen breaks scattered hither & thither, but nevertheless it has the most mass appeal of anything I’ve heard from Garbàn yet.

Blawan – Fires [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
After some pretty dark stuff on his last 2 EPs, Blawan returns with the first single from new EP BouQ, which is noticeably brighter, with female vocal samples and splashes of purple through the bass riddims. Always quality.

Ulrich Troyer – VAJOLET feat. Lukas Lauermann, Wolfgang Pfistermüller & Flip Philipp [4Bit Productions]
Ulrich Troyer – LAGO DI GARDA feat. Roger Robinson [4Bit Productions]
Throughout the 2nd half of this year, Austrian glitch/dub producer Ulrich Troyer has been dropping a series of 7″s in advance of this new album, Transit Tribe. So we’ve already heard a few of the lovely dubwise pieces, 4some exclusive b-sides, but here’s the full album, chock full of collaborators including Burkina Fasoan masters Mamadou Diabate & Hamidou Koita, clarinettist Susanna Gartmayer and many others. On our first track we hear from some classical musicians: cellist Lukas Lauermann, trombonist Wolfgang Pfistermüller & percussionist Flip Philipp – it’s an interesting choice for the first track, and introduces the album with a bit of analogue, acoustic warmth. Further along we have a beautiful appearance from British-Jamaican poet Roger Robinson, known for his work in King Midas Sound with Kevin Martin, among many other accomplishments.

Atsushi Izumi & Fatwires – Akagane [Holotone/Bandcamp]
Look, I wrote something about this release last week when it wasn’t out yet, and everything still applies: Released on gregarious Italian label Holotone is the first EP from an enticing new duo. Japanese industrial dub/techno producer Atsushi Izumi‘s latest solo album Schismogenesis came out in May on Ohm Resistance. Fatwires is the dub/bass sound project of bass polymath John Eckhardt, as accomplished with contemporary classical double bass as he is with dub or other genres. They promise a heavy, noisy album next year, but the KISEN KONGOU EP leans into the heavy dub favoured by Izumi, not far off from the sound of The Bug.

Full of Hell and Andrew Nolan – Gradual Timeslip feat. Taichi Nagura [Closed Casket Activities/Bandcamp]
US Grindcore band Full of Hell are not content staying in their lane, although grindcore isn’t a genre that tends to be populated with rule-followers. Full of Hell have many collaborations under their belt: one with Merzbow, two stunners with The Body that bend into postrock and electronics, more doom with Primitive Man, and surprising beauty late last year with shoegazers Nothing. Here they call in UK noise/industrial/punk maestro Andrew Nolan, whose sound is more congruent with Full of Hell than some of these others, and the album is by and large an assault on the senses. But it’s not relentless, with Justin K Broadrick bringing a distinctive Godflesh feel to one track, and Taichi Nagura of Japanese noise act Endon adding vocal pain in the background of the pummeling drums and noises on tonight’s selection.

YHWH Nailgun – Penetrator [AD 93/Bandcamp]
AD 93 are really not content to stay in one place – and long may they continue! There’s still some of that experimental but club-ready electronic music, but here’s another one coming out of leftfield, a single from NYC punks YHWH Nailgun. Is “punk” right? Well, it’s part of the story (and I note that “leftfield” is one of the other tags on the Bandcamp page). The shouty vox come with a jagged accompaniment with guitar riffs and shards of synth work, while the drums careen through drum’n’bass-inspired rhythms. Keen to hear what they throw at us next.

PainKiller – Samsara II [Tzadik]
In unexpected news, there’s something new from PainKiller, the all-star trio of John Zorn on screaming sax, Bill Laswell on bass and Mick Harris on drums. Zorn was long an enfant-terrible of the Downtown New York scene, with his band Naked City doing a kind of Burroughs-ian cut-up thing switching from punk to jazz to film music to who knows what else in careening left-hand turns – and he remains highly influential in jazz, improv and modern Jewish music with his Tzadik label (and before Tzadik he ran the Avant label partially out of Japan). Laswell is a legendary bass player and producer across many genres including dub, jazz, drum’n’bass, funk, ambient, global music and just about anything else. And Mick Harris was the second(?) drummer in Napalm Death, somewhat crossing over with Justin K Broadrick, popularised the d-beat and apparently coined the genre name “grindcore”, before going on to make industrial dub (genuinely proto-dubstep) with/as Scorn, and continuing nowadays to make dubwise beats in various genres. So… PainKiller was initially a free-jazz-noise-punk kind of thing, but with these three as the creatives, it spun off into terrifying ambient dub quarters and more. The return of the band is very much technologically-mediated: the three recorded their parts in their own studios, and Harris’s drums are electronic beats now, with electronics from Harris and maybe Laswell as well. It’s no less energetic, abrasive and hardcore than 30+ years ago though!
Laswell has sadly been very sick for some time, battling various health issues, and being in America, this has been draining his finances so that he’s been at risk of losing his Orange Studios in New Jersey. There’s a GoFundMe which has raised over $100k, but you could do worse than grab some of his massive back catalogue on Bandcamp. (The Quietus gives a very small sliver of insight into some of the material here – recommended!)

Glass Fountain – Forget It [watch on YouTube]
If you don’t recognize Glass Fountain, the Naarm/Melbourne duo used to be called Glass House Mountain. Maybe you remember this excellent & clever video for “Perception” recorded during Covid with the two members mostly separate outside… Their new track was recorded live at Bakehouse Studios in Richmond, and comes with a great video too. The combo of James O’Brien on bass guitar & synths and Benjamin Graham on drums here goes as close to the club as ever, with electronic beats mixed with the drums. There’s a sense of the time when Four Tet went from hip-hop influenced folktronica into house & techno (where he’s pretty much remained), and it’s great seeing the guys doing this completely live.

Simon Öggl – Departure [col legno/Bandcamp]
Simon Öggl – Hibernation [col legno/Bandcamp]
This debut album from Austrian composer Simon Öggl belies a wide-ranging history in various formats: as 1/4 of live electronic band Drathaus, he’s making weird electronic art-pop; he also makes experimental electronic music as {ø_ø} (pronounced Brackethead), and previously made drum’n’bass as Hidden Aspect. So his first released work (from what I can see) as a composer – released on the forward-thinking Austrian classical label col legno – rather slyly blends electronic music with classical, and electronic production with acoustic performance. There’s an ensemble here made up of flute, clarinet, cello, trumpet, trombone and electric guitar, along with soprano Clara Hamberger and countertenor Aleksandar Jovanovic, while Öggl himself plays keyboards and percussion – but you’ll find your perspective shifted as electronics take over from the classical instruments and at times glitchy rhythms lead to passages of drum’n’bass or techno. It’s all very well to dream of this kind of hybridisation, but Öggl has the composing and production chops to pull this off very effectively, so much so that you’ll want to skip back and listen again when you suddenly realise you’re not quite listening to what you thought you were…

Laurence Pike – Orpheus In The Underworld (Live) [The Leaf Label/Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney’s own Laurence Pike transplanted his percussion and electronics into the classical world earlier this year with his album The Undreamt-of Centre adding a full choir to his arsenal. The album was launched with a couple of gigs here in Sydney, and a live recording of one of the performances at Phoenix Central Park is forthcoming. There’s a wonderful feeling of space in the live rendering of “Orpheus in the Underworld”, Pike’s drums ringing out and the choir perfectly balanced. Look out for a new work in a similar vein from Pike, with live dancing and archival film, during Sydney Festival in January.

Pelican Daughters – Dinmango [se Dessaisir Publishing]
Most of us know Andy Rantzen as one half of rave legends Itch-E & Scratch-E with the storied Paul Mac. But, among many other projects, from the mid-’80s Andy had been making strange music with Justin Brandis, originally as Knapp and then Pelican Daughters. Some of their earlier work has been more recently rediscovered/recovered, but It’s time my friend… is a new album, albeit featuring unreleased music from the original era (to my ears). This has a definite feel of postpunk & dub, with some weird ’80s studio experimentation. Enticingly, the CD edition that’s out soon will feature further archival material not found on the digital release.

Lasse Marhaug – Plates [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Lasse Marhaug – Good Days Quiet [Smalltown Supersound/Bandcamp]
Norwegian musician Lasse Marhaug has been an important figure in the noise scene for a few decades, but more broadly has been producing work for a huge range of artists including Norwegian indie & experimental pop types like Jenny Hval and Korean-American jazz/improv/noise cellist Okkyung Lee. Being in noise and free music means scads of collaborations too, always worth checking out, but his comparatively rarer solo work is guaranteed quality. 2022’s Context found him on Smalltown Supersound, a label he’s worked with for decades, and to whom he returns now with Provoke. These two are really of a piece, even thought Provoke is deeply affected by the, er, context of Marhaug’s moving back to the Arctic north where he grew up. Certainly this is cold, windswept music. Both albums have more structure than you might find with power electronics or psychedelic noise: this is minimalist, crunchy, sometimes rhythmical music, with sub-bass pings through slow crescendos, groaning distortions but also harmonious passages. Beautiful, and sometimes exhilarating.

Mike Shiflet – Ask Three Times [Mike Shiflet Bandcamp]
Since at least the beginning of the 2000s, Mike Shiflet has also been a mainstay of various noise scenes, including working with C Spencer Yeh‘s much-missed Burning Star Core (Shiflet is a “presence” on “Come Back Through Me” for instance, and appears on the brilliant Operator Dead, Post Abandoned among others). In April this year, Shiflet released two sets of albums of 24 hours each(!), and you should definitely check out Tetracosa Ensemble Volumes 1-4 and Volumes 5-8, for which Shiflet invited dozens of musicians from across the noise, experimental electronic, contemporary classical, improv etc worlds to contribute sounds that he has chopped, edited, and processed into two 12-hour albums (broken into segments of between 9 and 25 minutes). It’s insane, but free to download and full of wonderful gnarly sound.
Anyway, just now Shiflet has released something entirely different. Lisa 2, v. 1.0 (Original Soundtrack) is a soundtrack to a science fiction novel about the horrors of artificial intelligence – well, kinda. It dramatises the anxieties of the current age. Shiflet’s music is creepy and degraded, but also strangely accessible, as with the abandoned-town-fair piano floating through “Ask Three Times”.

Paper Trio – Guttenberg Blues [Time Span Records]
Paper Trio – Litho [Time Span Records]
Here’s an amazing improvising trio calling themselves Paper Trio. They formed when saxophonist/flautist Thomas Agergraad was asked to perform at a Paper Museum/Gallery in the countryside of Denmark, at an event where the extraordinary vocal improviser Randi Pontoppidan and legendary bassist Greg Cohen were also appearing. Pontoppidan improvises with her rich voice and huge range, but also incorporates electronics into her practice. Greg Cohen has worked extensively with John Zorn, but also with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and countless others. I don’t know Agergraad but he’s got 30 years of experience in the Danish jazz scene. The music here is all improvised, and even if you’re not totally into jazz, the textural aspects and the brilliant musicianship make for something beautiful and unique.

Helvetica Noise – Instructions For Frowning [Helvetica Noise Bandcamp]
Speaking of textural, Eora/Sydney trio Helvetica Noise combine spoken poetry, piano & synths, and noise into something all their own. They’re releasing an ambitious series of 6 EPs, starting with Lost in the Dust Factory, from which I’ve previously played the evocative climate change epic “How To Listen To Storms”. Now the full EP is out, from which we heard the touching “Instructions For Frowning”.

Alex Jasprizza – Ripple [Alex Jasprizza Bandcamp]
Eora/Sydney saxophonist Alex Jasprizza has for the last few years been honing his craft of electro-acoustic improvisations with the sounds of nature. On “Ripple”, field recordings blend with rippling sax cadences that disappear into fizzling reverb.

Driftwood – Towards The Colour Of The Sky [Room40/Bandcamp]
Driftwood – A Light Filled Room [Room40/Bandcamp]
Out now on Room40 is the self-titled album from Driftwood, a new duo of Naarm/Melbourne musician Aviva Endean and nipaluna/Tasmania’s Nick Ashwood. Both have circled around the free improv scenes involving the likes of Splinter Orchestra and Australian Art Orchestra for some years, but only came together as musicians with this project. This is a very intimate album of music based around acoustic instruments – in particular reed organs tuned in just intonation, along with Aviva’s clarinets and Nick’s acoustic guitar. It’s uncanny music because of the tunings, but it’s also striking what a natural musical pairing the two musicians are.

Broken Chip – Auroras [Home Normal]
Blue Mountains producer Martyn Palmer has been plying his trade for at least 15 years now, making rather gorgeous textural, loop-based ambient music as Broken Chip on a multitude of labels (and for a while also making wonky MPC beats as Option Command). I can’t express how pleased I am that Ian Hawgood and co at beloved ambient label Home Normal have taken to Broken Chip with a vengeance. Marty’s been patiently pushing out lovely works on his own Bandcamp, particularly over the last year or so, but among all that, A Distant Blur does seem like some of the most compelling, and just plain gorgeous stuff he’s produced. Highly recommended.

Pefkin – The Rescoring [Nite Hive/Bandcamp]
Gayle Brogan is a violinist & singer from Scotland who has, since the 1990s, played in and with various indie rock and folk-oriented groups, as well as noise/psych-type mysteries. Her solo work as Pefkin goes back around two decades, and I remember her Zugunruhe CDR released on the Sound & Fury label run by the late, beloved Adam D Mills. Penelope Trappes is one of her many fans, and has released new album The Rescoring on her Nite Hive label. This is experimental but absolutely sumptuous music, especially the title track’s fluttering violin and multi-tracked vocals.

Listen again — ~203MB