Utility Fog

Mid-January, we’re very much on the way with 2026’s new music, but I’ve got a few 2025 catch-ups in here too. I’ll be away in Japan the next two weeks, and Holly Conner on the 25th and Lachlan Stevens on the 1st of Feb will be your excellent hosts. Puma Blue – Hush Pebble Seven – Strangers Alev Lenz – Domestisizer (on F) Alev Lenz – Mother Tongue (on B) Kee Avil – itch Mi3raj معراج – Medley ميدلى Dééfait – Molokh ∞ Zu – Pleroma Zone Null – There will be poems (condensed) Richard Francis – Phase effect on wet road Damian Valles – Pt.4 Pita – 4 Luís Fernandes + Pierce Warnecke – Culatra II (excerpt) Travis Cook – 9am Atte Elias Kantonen – EEEE Atte Elias Kantonen – Aluhart Leif – Yes No Joanna – Gardeners World – ddwy Remix DJ Punx – Gas ugne&maria – a tidal pull ugne&maria – slip False Aralia – Borgesian Term 04 Erdfisch – Honig

Welcome to the first new music show of 2026 – and thanks to Giulio aka Parcae for his great selections last week! We have a certain amount of catchup from last year, but we also have a surprisingly large amount of new music already, either released this week or last, or forthcoming. LISTEN AGAIN in a new year. Stream on demand from fbi.radio or podcast here. hidden_attachment – sorry this was just something i had to do [ky/hidden_attachment Bandcamp] hidden_attachment – in moncton i spent all my money on pinball and beer [ky/hidden_attachment Bandcamp] In November I played a track from Ky Brooks, the Montreal artist who recorded an album in 2023 called Power Is The Pharmacy for Constellation under the name Ky. They appear under various aliases, the most current of which is hidden_attachment, and they were previously known for making noise-punk with Lungbutter and freeform experimental stuff with Nag, among many others. The new hidden_attachment release is an EP described as “a tiny horrible opera”, which seems misleading – horrible is a matter of opinion, “opera” perhaps less so, but this is a small epic of practically ever genre other than opera. Jangling indie rock, electro-pop, bedroom drum’n’bass, bedroom punk, experimental ambient pop… ish. It’s weird & fun! Silvia Tarozzi – Lucciole [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp] Silvia Tarozzi – Le ossessioni [Unseen Worlds/Bandcamp] When US label Unseen Worlds introduced us to Italian violinist/singer/composer and more Silvia Tarozzi, it was her first album Mi specchio e rifletto, an album that reflects her broad musical experience, from working with groundbreaking minimalist electronic composer Eliane Radigue to contemporary music with Ensemble Dedalus, to the folk music of her local region, improvisation, and playful studio experimentation. There was more than a hint of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Then in 2022, Tarozzi released another extraordinary work, Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore (“Songs of war, work and love”), with the cellist Deborah Walker, presenting a collection of music inspired by folk songs from rural Emilia which came from working class women involved with the partisan resistance in World War II, including songs sung by choirs of female rice field workers – music that the pair had grown up with. In April 2025, some of us were incredibly lucky, in Sydney and I think Melbourne, to witness Tarozzi & Walker performing these songs together, with just their instruments and voices – one of those occasions when musicianship seems like magic. So there’s a lot of anticipation with this new solo album from Tarozzi – or there would be, except that Lucciole appeared seemingly out of nowhere, available digitally on Bandcamp on December 12th. We’ll have to wait for April this year for the LP and CD, but the whole album’s there if you’re willing to stump up $10USD. Once again this is a wonderful tapestry of an album, with brass ensemble arrangements that set it somewhere between classical & folk music, along with synths, field recordings and turntables bringing modern twists. Her voice is lovely and some of the songwriting evokes the baroque pop of Sufjan Stevens in the best way. Winged Wheel – I See Poseurs Every Day [12XU/Bandcamp] Winged Wheel – Speed Table [12XU/Bandcamp] A US experimental rock supergroup, Winged Wheel began as a filesharing process between various musicians including violist Whitney Johnson aka Matchess, resulting in the 2022 debut album No Island. But for their new album Desert So Green, the band (expanded further to include, among others, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley) had toured extensively, and headed into the studio together. The result is an album with psych-kraut-rock intensity and rhythmic drive, blurts of postpunk harshness, shards of viola, and vocals at times. It’s a real surprise, and really worth digging into. Èlg & la Chimie – La ville cachée [Murailles Music/Bandcamp] I don’t speak much French, not well anyway, but there’s just scads of great music from France – and francophone artists from Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, not to mention other former colonies – and you know I’m happy to play music in any languages as much as instrumental music. But understanding the pure breadth of francophone music is still challenging, so I’m happy when French artists fall into my lap. The entity known as Èlg is Laurent Gérard, and he’s been involved in experimental rock, sound-stuff, weird electronic etc for a good couple of decades. La chimie (chemistry) was a project of his in 2013, made up of weird electronics and loops – but now it’s also his band, in which he plays amplified guitalele (ukulele/guitar hybrid) and keyboards, with Marie Nachury on bass, electroncis and percussion, and Johann Mazé on drums and drum triggers. All three also sing, and they make a righteous noise, sometimes starting off as normal-sounding songs until something super-weird happens; in particular, often magnificent grooves on booming, clattering drum kit, and thumping bass. No two tracks are anything like each other, but there’s a through-line of unchained inspiration. Truly something else. JJJJJerome Ellis – Evensong, part 3 (for and after Jessica Valoris) [Shelter Press/Bandcamp] This wonderful album came out in November, but I didn’t properly get to it until too late to include it last year. JJJJJerome Ellis is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, academic, cross-media artist and more; they are of Grenadian-Jamaican-American heritage, and they’re a disabled person with a stutter – something that they’ve ingrained in their practice, including in the spelling of their first name. This album, Vesper Sparrow, draws from Black American and Caribbean culture as well as pop and experimental music, while being placed primarily in a composed jazz context. Most of the tracks are written for, and sometimes feature, fellow artists, poets and theorists. Alongside granular processing and sampling, Ellis’s stutter features and becomes a structural part of the music – but whatever the theoretical basis, this is beautiful and incredibly creative music. Toni Geitani – Ya Sah [Toni Geitani Bandcamp] Toni Geitani – Wasla [Toni Geitani Bandcamp] Originally trained in filmmaking, Lebanese musician Toni Geitani has since gained a Masters in live electronics in Amsterdam, where he is based now. His Masters thesis is titled “Sampling as a Political Medium”, which sounds fascinating. In his music, he melds Arabic vocals with classical instrumentation and experimental electronic production – the three preview tracks from his forthcoming album Wahj are stunning. “Wahj” (وهج) means “radiance”, and Geitani invites us to look through the collapse we see around, and seek that light. Obelisk – Salty Lemon Air [Geometric Corruption/Bandcamp] FBi’s own Ryan O’Rourke, presenter of Mithril for all things heavy & experimental, also makes music as Obelisk. It’s heavy and experimental for sure, but very electronic, very deconstructed club with aspects of breakcore, groaning distorted bass, trance keyboards and glitch. Obviously it’s awesome. Kloke – Silk [Subtle Audio/Bandcamp] Huuuuge jungle/drumfunk/drum’n’bass compilation incoming! Limerick, Ireland label Subtle Audio put out a series of great 2 or 3CD compilations in the mid-’00s with early drumfunk and jungle-inclined drum’n’bass – at the time it felt like the best source of really great beat production around. Many years later, here’s another 3CD set: Our Atmosphere has 2CDs of original tracks and tracks taken from label releases in a broadly “atmospheric” jungle, drumfunk and drum’n’bass, with a huge list of great producers, plus a DJ mix from label head Code on the 3rd disc. Oh – and the CDs arrived in the mail just as we hit the new year, but the digital version (without the 3rd disc) won’t be available until Feb 6th, so this is a sorta-kinda exclusive of Naarm’s own Kloke, one of many highlights here. Aftawerks & Earl Grey – Swingfunc Jungle [Earl Grey Bandcamp] Nathan Firman aka Aftawerks has been plying his trade in funky acid, IDM & jungle for over a decade, and Jim Earl Grey released an EP of his on his Hyperchamber Music label way back in 2013. I’m a pretty big fan of Earl Grey (in fact I first heard his stuff on those Subtle Audio comps back in the day!) and this collaboration between the two is just mad shit in the best way. Homemade Weapons – Leviathan (HW Remix) [Weaponist/Bandcamp] Seattle’s Homemade Weapons has his own particular take on the minimal/tribal drum’n’bass championed by Samurai Records, and as well as releasing on that label (and others) he runs his own label, Weaponist. The latest label release is the Bumura EP from the artist himself, with two new tracks and two remixes he’s made of tracks that were originally collabs – tonight’s cut was originally made with Sacramento’s Red Army. I do appreciate the way that elements of jungle are dropped into the very minimal d’n’b feel. BMA – Middle Age REFLEKT [Industrial Coast/Bandcamp] Moa Pillar – Fight Them Back [Industrial Coast/Bandcamp] The Industrial Coast label is based in Middlesborough, about an hour’s drive south of Newcastle, so fairly grim-up-north territory (I actually lovely Newcastle when I played there last year). The label is pretty dedicated to the cassette as a format, and generally most of the music on Bandcamp is unavailable digitally without the physical objects (set at £999) – but they do do retrospective compilations, and open up other releases briefly at times. So Deconstructed Reconstructed Retrospective is a double-compilation, in that it collects tracks from the labels Deconstructed/Reconstructed series of compilations in which industrial & experimental artists cover or remix artists such as Crass or music related to movements like anarcho-punk or Rock Against Racism. With 50 tracks, it covers plenty of ground. Sometimes you can immediately tell who the subject is, sometimes you have to try and look it up, and artists appear under various guises t

Heya, so here we are, the end of 2025. Good riddance I say. As is traditional, this is a DJ mix – almost 2 hrs, with a bit of speaking at the front. It’s pretty strange, this one, although there’s a lot of dance music. There’s also a lot of detours and oddities, but that’s what UFog is about, so I hope you enjoy! You can stream on demand from fbi.radio, or you can listen right here: Perera Elsewhere, Andy S – Fuck Le System [Friends of Friends/Bandcamp] I loved Sasha Perera aka Perera Elsewhere‘s 2022 album Home, an album of “doom-folk”, but actually experimental electronic pop songs. The following year she put out an album of remixes with some excellent contributors, and now there’s finally another album, Just Wanna Live Some. Her musical net is cast wide, mixing UK soundsystem culture in with music from different parts of Africa, Indonesia and Europe (she’s based in Berlin). The first double single features two tracks with Ivorian MC Andy S, rapping (mostly) in French over infectious beats. Harry The Nightgown – Bell Boy [Leaving Records/Bandcamp] A band that call themselves Harry The Nightgown are just gonna be an art pop kind of affair, right? For their debut album the LA band were engineer/producer Spencer Hartling aka tp Dutchkiss and sound engineer/singer/guitarist/etc Sami Perez, but they are now joined by Luke Macdonald, who tours with one of Perez’ bands, Cherry Glazerr. There’s no way of telling who played or programmed what, but the first single from Ugh (an album with a title for the times if ever there was one) is complex & melodic, skippy junglist beats with a sped-up funk bassline and lopsided maybe-sample, skittering into groovy synth chords that could come from an early James Blake track. It’s glitchy, catchy and super-cool. N-Type & Kromestar – Don’t Be Afraid ft. Sgt Pokes & Breezy Lee [Wheel & Deal Records/Bandcamp] I don’t play a lot of dubstep on the show these days, simply because it doesn’t always fit in, and the same goes for grime “as such”, although I love those genres. So unfortunately this lovely song that melds trip-hoppy r’n’b vocals, grime and dubstep, wasn’t played during the year – but here it fits nicely in this space between electronic pop and dub. Both N-Type & Kromestar go back to the early days of dubstep, and the voice of Sgt Pokes has been heard at many a dubstep night. Breezy Lee also has been associated with the UK bass scene for a while, as well as jazz & cabaret, and she brings just the right amount of soulfulness to this tune. Modeselektor featuring Paul St. Hilaire – Movement [!K7 Records/Bandcamp] We’ll get back to Paul St. Hilaire in a minute, but I have to confess I’ve always had a soft spot for Modeselektor. They are essentially a Berlin take on bass music and techno, and through their long career have often found great collaborators to join them on their albums and mixes. It’s nice to see them doing what’s surprisingly their first DJ-Kicks mix, inserting a good quantity of experimental stuff, and of course there are some exclusive tracks. “Movement” is a thudding, bouncy piece of bass techno, and the echoing voice of Paul St. Hilaire (fka Tikiman) provides great atmosphere to what’s really a skeletal track (which is all it needs to be). Kvedarkvintetten – Brest [Heilo Records/Bandcamp] Tagal is the latest album from Norwegian vocal quintet Kvedarkvintetten, featuring music composed by Jorun Marie Rypdal Kvernberg. The title translates as “to keep silent” or “mute” or “wordless”, so these songs feature almost no text. The quintet’s previous work was primarily based around their interpretations of the traditional vocal music of the Hallingdal region of Norway, so even though Kvernberg provided musically notated scores, the group brought their own interpretation. This is highly melodic music, performed with dedication and emotion. 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. Paul St. Hilaire & Gavsborg – Confidential [Kynant Records/Bandcamp] Until about 2003, the Jamaican vocalist Paul St. Hilaire was known as Tikiman, under which name he collaborated with many experimental electronic musicians including The Bug and Tarwater, but most famously Berlin techno heads Mark Ernestus & Moritz Von Oswald of dub-techno labels/projects Basic Channel, Chain Reaction and Burial Mix, particularly under their Rhythm & Sound alias. These releases were ground zero for minimal techno and dub techno, quite unlike anything else heard at the time. While many 12″s featured Tikiman on vocals, there were others, and eight tracks with eight different vocalists were collected on Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists. So that’s the starting point for Paul St. Hilarie – w/ The Producers – nine tracks here, with ten producers from the dub & techno worlds, channeling (by and large) the Basic Channel template. It’s really an excellent album, but among the highlights was the track from Jamaican producer Gavsborg, of the experimental crew Equinoxx, whose track is utterly stripped back. Also notable: Eora/Sydney DJ & producer Cousin (aka FBi’s Jackson Fester), who keeps things beautifully smooth and minimal, supporting St. Hilaire’s repeated phrase “Back Inna Business”. gyrofield – Vegetation Grows Thick [Kapsela/Bandcamp] If you know the music of now-Utrecht-based Hong Kong producer Kiana Li as gyrofield, you’d know her as an insanely talented jungle & drum’n’bass producer, whose earliest Bandcamp tracks are from when she was 15. A scant few years later she was being released on labels like Critical Music and Metalheadz. But with that head start, it’s not too surprising that since the age of about 21 she’se been branching out from drum’n’bass into mutated forms of other genres – and given that, Objekt‘s new label Kapsela is a good place to be stretching forms. Each of the four tracks on Suspension of Belief is a different kind of weirdness. Opener “Vegetation Grows Thick” juggles backmasked vocals with pulsating bleeps and skittery hi-hats before the thumping kick drums enter. Sebaas – No Plastic [unreleased on Sebaas.Waveform Bandcamp] Amsterdam-based producer Sebaas has a couple of releases under his belt, which he describes as “multifaceted floor-groove”. Seems about right – percussive bass music, whether techno or on a more 140 tilt. “No Plastic” is based around a sample of Spanish singer Nathy Peluso rapping “I’m a nasty girl, fantastic / este culo es natural o no plastic” (found here), switching up the minimalist reggaeton for high-energy bass-heavy breaks. I received a promo of this and it doesn’t seem to have ever come out – perhaps copyright issues. Mac Seldom – ILUVU [Hotflush Recordings/Bandcamp] Hotflush Recordings was founded by Paul Rose aka Scuba in 2003, at the very cusp of dubstep’s advent, but it always featured pre-dubstep sounds like UK garage, and increasingly the dub techno that Rose as Scuba was hybridizing into his own dubstep. Gradually the label has turned its focus more to techno & other 4/4 genres, but I still follow for the gems. Newcastle Upon Tyne producer Mac Seldom spent years making music for film in Berlin, but Dance W/ Me collects three tracks of pristine uk garage/bass house stuff with heaps of bounce and syncopation. Kalabash – Major ft. Jelani Blackman (Radio Edit) [Tropopause Records/Bandcamp] UK singer and rapper Jelani Blackman brings out the grime in this new track from London-based collective Kalabash, who planned to release their Decompression Tapes Vol. 1 in 2025, but it hasn’t eventuated. In any case, Blackman’s lyrical prowess is on show here, over a high-paced beat and production that seems to draw from all over. Also noting that their 2-track single from earlier in March showcases two other sides: “Decompress” is tough jungle-techno with a cinematic interlude, while “Concrete” is a tense 4/4 number. Muskila – JAH NAM (INTRO) [YUKU/Bandcamp] Bass music here, YUKU-style, from Muskila, who was born in Copenhagen with North-Kurdistani roots. The percussive backbone to all the rhythms here, and Muskila connects with Nigerian rapper Aunty Rayzor, and remixers from Cairo (Hassan Abou Alam) and Jordan (Toumba). Low-slung and minimalist, these tracks have a strong sense of style. Vier – VAI PULANDO [Machinedrum Bandcamp] Some kind of dance music supergroup here… Travis “Machinedrum” Stewart here teams up with Thijs “Thys” de Vlieger of Noisia, Dutch producer/academic Salvador Breed and Portuguese DJ/producer Miguel “Holly” Oliveira. This is intensely soudn-designy bass music, but also very ravey and dancefloor-friendly. Two of the quartet are Dutch, so they named the group “Vier” (four). “Vai Pulando” is Brazilian Portuguese on the other hand, and means “Keep Jumping”. I concur. Pushlock – Scarecrow [XCPT/Bandcamp] Over to Italy now with the XCPT label, which last year released an excellent album from Naarm/Melbourne’s Barking. Here’s adventurous Italian bass music producer Pushlock with his third album on XCPT, Stuck in a Cell. It’s a good example of how bass music styles are mixed’n’matched by a lot of producers these days – jungle breaks slipping in & out of the mix, with a general dubstep feel. It’s not slow-fast either, but rather uses signifiers from multiple bass music styles. If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, you’ll know that’s exactly how I like it. Sacred Lodge – Wa Wa Ke Wa Wa Yi (Feat. Sara Persico) [Avon Terror Corps] Out through Br

Tonight it’s Part 2 of Utility Fog’s best of 2025, which encompasses all the music that’s not vocal-driven or beats-driven. So there’s contemporary jazz, abstract sound-art, glitch electronics, glitchy postrock, field recording, tape manipulation and more. There’s even voice at times. LISTEN AGAIN and sound your art – stream on demand at fbi.radio, or podcast here. Laura Jurd – Praying Mantis [New Soil/Bandcamp] There has, I think, been more “jazz” on Utility Fog this year than in previous years – but there’s always been some, often in a faux genre of “post-jazz” that I’ve used to lump together glitchy hybrid-jazz with electronics. But in general jazz is a living genre that can’t help but draw from everything from punk & metal to electronica and folk. One of the jazz highlights this year was the new solo album from UK trumpeter Laura Jurd, who had stepped away from music to tend to her family, but returns here in astonishing form. Jurd’s Mercury-nominated band Dinosaur embodied the “fusion” aspect of whatever post-jazz wants to be, using synths along with a spiky rhythm section that funks out where necessary. On Jurd’s Rites & Revelations, the folk aspects (also present in Dinosaur) are often to the fore, and that’s all kinds of folk including Scottish and English, but also Eastern European and Western Asian to my ears. And as well as Jurd’s usual drummer Corrie Dick and contemporary UK jazz mainstay Ruth Goller on bass, the band features accordianist Martin Green and violinist/violist Ultan O’Brien. It’s an album unlike any other, drawing deeply on the past while pointing in new directions. Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin – Panj [Drag City/Bandcamp] Ghosted III is the third album from the trio of iconoclastic Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi with the Swedish rhythm section of the incredible Fire! – bassist Johan Berthling & drummer Andreas Werliin. It’s still driven by the wonderful cyclic basslines and rhythms of Berthling & Werliin, but on this album it opens up its scope from those patient cycles. It’s still deeply embedded in these artists’ oeuvres: the krautrockain period of Ambarchi’s that started with “Knots”, the centrepiece of 2012’s Audience of One, and similarly the hypnotic sound of Berthling & Werliin’s groundbreaking earlier band Tape (one album on Bandcamp) as well as the freer Fire! and Fire! Orchestra. Opener “Yek” (the titles are the numbers 1-6 in Persian) has chiming post-postpunk guitars over a skipping bassline and drums, and it’s followed by the starker “Do”, which could be a long-lost Tape track. But there’s still minimalist blues like “Panj”, on which Ambarchi’s guitar sounds like a droning organ. These musicians’ careers have intersected multiple times in their swerving trajectories. Long may they reign in this trio formation! TL;DR – Cumulus (edit) [Earshift Music/Bandcamp] Following his tenure as leader of the Australian Art Orchestra, Naarm trumpeter/composer/producer Peter Knight hasn’t stopped to rest. The wonderful Hand To Earth was formed as a project of the AAO but continues as its own thing. TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) is a new quartet with three younger musicians in the Naarm jazz scene. Brilliant bassist Helen Svoboda is here playing basslines but also showcasing her melodic bowed harmonics and her voice; guitarist Theo Carbo, like Peter Knight, contributes electronics as well as his instrument; and Peter’s son Quinn Knight brings 15 years of experience improvising with his dad to the fore. This is dreamy music, ambient-dub-jazz – and the internet-jokey name aside, the cloud titles are perfect for these floating, soulful pieces. Alister Spence Trio – The Gathering [Alister Spence Bandcamp] Alister Spence – Interior Signal [Room40/Bandcamp] Sydney pianist Alister Spence is a key part of this city’s jazz and improv scene, and his trio with Lloyd Swanton of The Necks and drummer Toby Hall is a unique, evocative partnership (all three were also part of Sandy Evans & Tony Gorman’s legendary Clarion Fracture Zone). In Februrary this year, the trio released their latest album of melodic, energetic jazz, Gather. But Alister’s creativity takes him in all directions, and his Within Without album is perfectly conceived for the Room40 label. Here, his creative impulse swoops away from the piano, and often away from the keys altogether, diving inside the beloved, chiming, throbbing heart of the Fender Rhodes (an instrument Spence has very much made his own too, over decades of playing). Prepared piano is now a well-established way to draw new sounds from the piano, and highlight its inner workings; so here’s Alister Spence’s prepared Rhodes. His suite of effects is never far away, but mostly we’re hearing the insides of the instrument, tapping and buzzing and yes, chiming. It’s hard to make the Rhodes not beautiful, and its inherent warmth is not denied or countered even in the most abstract pieces here. Delicious. Alexandra Spence – The Spring [Students of Decay/Bandcamp] Staying in the experimental space, we join Alexandra Spence, a brilliant sound-artist who works with field recordings and found objects to tell a story about place and memory – and who happens to be the daughter of Alister Spence. Her last two albums (from 2022) arose from a fascination with oceans and waterways; the scope is wider here, from mountains to backyards, but the ecological and geological also interact here with the personal. As well as recordings of places and non-musical objects, Spence (a clarinettist) here uses sounds from Serge Modular synths and a custom-built lyre, and even the voice and instrumentation of French composer & musician Delphine Dora. Spence is a master at combining disparate sounds – when performing live she uses contact mics and found objects which meld with pre-recorded field recordings and other in-the-box sounds in a way that can only be described as alchemical. Kate Carr – spring back and creak [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp] OK but if we’re talking about field recordings and found sound and music, Kate Carr (originally from here but London-based for ages) is a master of the art, and tirelessly promoting others through her Flaming Pines label. Rubber Band Music is a particular sound experiment, using homemade devices of wood, metal and rubber bands. So we’ve got sproings and buzzes and wobbles, slowed down, filtered, rebuilt. Abstract yet physical. Ipek Gorgun – Edgelord [Touch/Bandcamp] Turkish composer/sound-artist/musician Ipek Gorgun released her last solo album Ecce Homo seven years ago. In the meantime she’s had works performed in prestigious venues, but has also been through multiple traumas – electrocution, cancer treatment, anaphylaxis… So her remarkable new album Earthbound is an act of defiance as well as an act of surrender. The darkness of these years is audible here, but so is an earthy sense of liveliness and humour. There is endless detail in each of these soundworks, but some do stand out, especially those incredible swooping glissandi in “Edgelord”. dogs versus shadows – Ghost Artery Part 1 (radio edit) [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp] Nottingham artist dogs versus shadows appears on Kate Carr’s brilliant label Flaming Pines with a kind of narrative about the River Trent, that winds through Nottingham and has been subjected to various forms of degradation through human activity. This highly polluted river has dangers lurking beneath its surface, and dogs versus shadows dredges these up with the use of “field recordings, tape loops, dying vocals from broken dictaphones and snatches of shortwave radio”. The two full tracks are a little under 15 minutes each, and each is an engrossing quasi-narrative of watery field recordings and seemingly unrelated sounds – chopped up snippets of speech, electronic pulsations and almost-rhythms. It’s fascinating and you’ll probably want to go back and listen again when it’s over. António Feiteira – Ghost Hiss, Resonant Hip [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, played here: a contemplative, crackling glitchscape. The middle track “Synthesized Chronos Turned Organless Aion” retains some of the glitch textures, but foregrounds Feiteira’s drumming. A really great EP. A little later in the year, Feiteira released a self-titled album with Francisco Pedro Oliveira as Amuleto Apotropaico, on another Portuguese label, Perf. Fascinating stuff, including an appearance from cellist Ricardo Jacinto, also recommended. 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, co-released by the great French label Carton Records and Italian Torto Editions. 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 it certainly received from me this year. BirdWorld – Opposite Hinges (feat. Sara Övinge) [Dugnad rec/BirdWorld Bandcamp] When I discovered BirdWorld in 2018, it was love at first sight – a cello and percussion duo? And yet so much more? Cellist Gregor Riddell and percussionist Adam Teixeira are both virtuosos at their chosen instruments, but in the mysterious albums of BirdWorld – their debut UNDA and now the follow-up NURTURE – you’ll find Teixeira playing kalimbas (thumb piano) and other

It’s December, with 3 Sundays left of the year, so that’s Best of 2025 Parts 1, 2, and 3! Tonight it’s “songs” – well, that includes raps. I’ve had to leave SO much out, y’all! As usual, the amount of music being released only goes up, and it’s not like the years are getting longer… As always, you can LISTEN AGAIN on stream-on-demand at fbi.radio, or podcast right here. clipping. – Night of Heaven (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp] So yeah, back in March, clipping. released one of the albums of the year… or did they? If so, then what’s this? Why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months ago in various physical formats… Annnyway, an album more fitting for the digital age could not exist – this is clipping. doing cyberpunk, employing Daveed Diggs’ incredible wordsmithery and Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson’s backgrounds in noise, breakcore, soundtracking and more to bring to life the genre that’s both decades out of style and horrifically descriptive of our current-day dystopia. So, finally we have the “pt. 1” to the original release’s “Mirrorshades pt. 2” (the deadly Molly Millions in William Gibson’s cyberpunk ur-text Neuromancer “wears” mirrored sunglasses – except they’re permanently sealed into her skin; a couple of years later Bruce Sterling edited a definitive anthology of early cyberpunk titled Mirrorshades). Needless to say, following their previous concept albums on afrofuturist space opera and horror & blaxploitation, clipping. nail the cyberpunk genre here, both in terms of “style” and intertextuality. But anyway, not only is “Mirrorshades pt. 1” a certifiable banger, but on “Night of Heaven” clipping. collaborate again with the astonishingly-voiced Sharon Udoh aka Counterfeit Madison, with cuts provided by Kid Koala. My CD player aches with jealousy. Note: clipping. did a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert late in the year, with electro-mechanical percussion, harmonium and the aforementioned Sharon Udoh on piano and vocals, and while every rendition is a highlight, this song is the second-last, and Kid Koala hops up on the turntable! Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Dogeared (feat. Kapwani) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp] It’s been a huge year for Backwoodz Studioz, and a few others of their releases appear tonight, but here’s the second full-length album from Studioz boss billy woods and E L U C I  D‘s Armand Hammer working exclusively with The Alchemist. Like Haram, their first collaboration, Mercy benefits from The Alchemist’s commercial experience, but the producer perfectly mindmelds with Backwoodz’ aesthetic, with bizzaro samples that are by turns wonky and sinister – but whatever the loop is that “Dogeared” is built around, it’s the most earwormy sample of the year, and Kapwani brings beautifully melodic vocal layers along with it. In his verse, a woman asks woods, “What’s the role of a poet in times like these?”, and while he’s still grappling with it by the end of the song, it’s not unfair to say that it’s this very grappling that’s their added value – as well, I’d like to suggest, as their pure artistic worth. billy woods – Waterproof Mascara [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp] The most notable hip-hop release of the year – albeit with much competition – must be Golliwog, the intense new album from billy woods. The sinister imagery of the deeply racist ragdoll character that gives the album its name is a pointer to what’s inside. It’s a kind of take on horrorcore from a Black perspective, and as usual it’s got brilliantly murky production with weird interludes and great guests on beats, instruments and verses, sparsely but smartly used. The murky production from Preservation on “Waterproof Mascara” underlines a truly disturbing autobiographical story from Woods. SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 1 [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. doseone & Steel Tipped Dove – Restaurant Not [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp] It’s been so lovely reading the background of this album. Adam Drucker aka doseone was one of the founding forces behind alt. hip-hop or whatever you want to call it in the last 1990s and early ’00s, founding with various other hip-hop outliers the Anticon collective and label (it took me ages to realise that the name referenced their “ant icon” logo). He’s played a part in a lot of the music that was this here radio show’s bread & butter for many years, including collabs with indietronic/postrock bods like Hood and The Notwist – and the album Circle that he made with Boom Bip way back in 2000 was massively influential. In 2018, beloved fellow Anticon founder Alias passed away from a sudden heart attack, and Anticon slowly fizzled out. So yeah, years later dose started hearing the output of billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz – specifically I believe a ShrapKnel album – and felt the creative spark that he’d been missing in grief and isolation. He hooked up with frequent Backwoodz producer Steel Tipped Dove, and they quickly created a whole body of new work. Some of the anything-goes abandon of Jel & Odd Nosdam’s early Anticon productions can really be heard here (and, I’d suggest, across the Backwoodz catalogue), and Dose spits out his poetic, circumspect lyrics with all the energy of the best of Themselves, Subtle and the rest. It’s nice to see Andrew Broder aka Fog – a frequent Anticon collaborator and lately a brilliant producer – adding turntable to all tracks, and there are notable features across the album from hip-hop legends like Mykah 9 and Antipop Consortium’s M.Sayyid, Open Mike Eagle, and Backwoodz’ own billy woods. The second track here, “Restaurant Not” has a deconstructed Anticon-style beat that upturns dose’s vocals perfectly – and it also has a fun, colourful video. Haykal, Julmud, Acamol | هيكل، جلمود، أكامول – A’saab أعصاب [Bilna’es/Bandcamp] Cross-media artistic duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Ramme formed the record label & publishing platform Bilna’es along with producer Muqata’a as a space for artistic expression & criticism in Palestine & beyond. Along with the amazing productions of Muqata’a, a highlight was the 2022 solo album from Julmud, Tuqoos | طُقُوس. Now Julmud teams up with label founder Abbas, the latter under the name Acamol (Arabic for Panadol/paracetamol), along with Palestinian rapper Haykal on a new album Kam Min Janneh | كم من جنّة (How Many Heavens). The beats, produced by Julmud & Acamol separately & together, present a glitched version hip-hop drawn from the music & percussion of the MENA region, while Julmud & Haykal swap verses evoking the life of dispossession under occupation, colonization & genocide. It bears mentioning that while the killing continues in Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire, settlers continue to violently disrupt the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity – destroying property, beating and killing people and blocking access to their own land. In that context, this is a powerful work of resistance and solidarity (and some injections of humour). As I’m writing this late, you can read Emad Al Hatu’s excellent article on fbi.radio, as this was made album of the week at the beginning of November. Nadah El Shazly = ندى الشاذلي – Kaabi Aali [One Little Independent/Bandcamp] In July 2018, The Wire put Nadah El Shazly on the cover as part of an in-depth look at the underground music scene in Cairo & Egypt – a couple of months after featuring a fantastic playlist from El Shazly of experimental Egyptian music. I already knew a few of the players in the diverse, experimental and creative Egyptian music scene, but her playlist and then interview were the introduction to many more, and showed what an important figure El Shazly herself was in that scene. She’s now Montréal-based, and her beautiful 2024 soundtrack The Damned Don’t Cry was recorded at the legendary Hotel2Tango studio mentioned above, with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh on the mixing desk, and Canadian musicians like the brilliant harpist Sarah Pagé contributing essential performances. Laini Tani, El Shazly’s second album outside of soundtracks & collaborations (many, many collaborations), was also recorded with Moumneh at Hotel2Tango, with one of Cairo’s most creative electronic musicians, 3Phaz, on co-production duties. It’s honestly a quite incredible album, one I have returned to as best I can against the weekly/daily onslaught of new music. It’s a re-setting of trip-hop into Arabic musical traditions, experimental pop of the highest order. SANAM – Sayl Damei – سيل دمعي [Con

So this Friday was the last Bandcamp Friday of the year, and even with that aside, it was a big release day for new music. It’s insane, but because of this I’m not doing best-of-2025 till next week. Here’s a whole slew of excellent new music across every genre imaginable. READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able! Water From Your Eyes – Born 4 Alev Lenz – Ivory Tower (on D) HAYWARDxDÄLEK – Antiphony HAYWARDxDÄLEK – Breathe Slow Bomb A Lil Joy – Everything U R Doing Bomb A Lil Joy – Saigon Too Blarke Bayer – The Prophet’s Paradise SUMAC and Moor Mother – SCENE 1 (Shapednoise Remix) Obelisk – Sanctuary Hitori Tori – Eurofling Indicator – Malopropist Heavyweight – Straight Outta London VIP Ruffkutt – Your Time Abstract Drumz – Alone (2025 Remaster) Noémi Büchi – I was almost there Luz González – Drawing Dinosaurs (Where can I hide my anger?) Jad Atoui & Jawad Nawfal – The Celesta Incident NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST – Der Sputz der Tagropronisten NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST – Keine Nichtmusik Drei Géraldine Eguiluz & Michel F Côté – Territoires perdus #2 Géraldine Eguiluz & Michel F Côté – Territoires perdus #3 hidden_attachment (ky) – Cartoon Land (Memory/161 to Wilderton remix) Freda D’Souza – I’ve missed the rain Emily Wittbrodt – Lied Otto Lindholm – Lessizty Connor D’Netto – interlude/nails Laura Altman – A Call to Water Listen again — ~217MB

As we swiftly approach December, tonight is the second-last “new music” show of the year. There’s a lot of music coming out on December 5th! But then that’s it, the next 3 will be Best of 2025. Keen listeners will be surprised that I’m mixing up the structure tonight. Really, it usually goes the way it goes due to thematic and tonal segues, and this time round, the jazz & ambient(ish) stuff just fitted best after our early songs, and the beats are the bulk of the second half. READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able! The Notwist – X-Ray The Notwist – Magnificent Fall Muyassar Kurdi – Child of the Sun (feat. Chris Williams) Peter Knight – The Coiling of the Tide Laura Jurd – Praying Mantis Má Estrela – Top Suki Girl BLACK HAUGE – Papiret (Radio Edit) Dina Maccabee – Outbreak Joni Void – Walker Joni Void – Lighters Samuele Strufaldi – Musica Invisibile Mac Seldom – ILUVU Om Unit – Lost Stories (Bok Bok Remix) Om Unit – The Chase (Alter Echo & E3 Remix) Ghost Dubs – Hope Fatwires x Atsushi Izumi – Ga UNTECHCIRCLE – Dying Light UNTECHCIRCLE – not just chaos Mattr – Tayl CHEAHDX – Earthbound dreadmaul – No Shade Low End Activist – Hope III (Demdike Stare Stressed Version) Listen again — ~224MB

Tonight, one of the underground hip-hop albums of the year, some very unusual collaborations, two releases in the Frisian language of north Holland, solo drum kit, post-jazz, bass & breaks, human/AI collaboration and electro-acoustic sound-art verging into folktronica. READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able! Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Dogeared (feat. Kapwani) Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Crisis Phone (feat. Pink Siifu) Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Longjohns (feat. Quelle Chris & Cleo Reed) HAYWARDxDÄLEK – Asymmetric YHWH Nailgun – Weaving (original by LEYA) Zea & Drumband Hallelujah Makkum – in lichem fol beloften Zea & Drumband Hallelujah Makkum – de Dea Joana Guerra, Maria Do Mar, Romke Kleefstra, Jan Kleefstra – Al Dy Kleuren Joana Guerra, Maria Do Mar, Romke Kleefstra, Jan Kleefstra – Kâlde Mage Chloe Kim – Ratsnake SML – Old Mytth Snorkel – Flash Flood Snorkel – Sirene Endless Mow – wattle and daub An Avrin – 4LYFE noRecall – The Machine and its Master Lakker – Hood Kassian – Ghost Dub Bad Ambulance – Zero Olivier Alary – Imagined Presence (preview clip 4) Rutger Zuydervelt – House of Strength Rutger Zuydervelt and Lucija Gregov – (Not) Not Three High Rutger Zuydervelt and Lucija Gregov – Euphoria (outtake) Listen again — ~222MB

What a relentless year of new music… It’s getting that way every year mind you. The releases will run right through December and into January, mark my words… Anyway, tonight we have the surprisingest song of the week (year?) from two very different pop icons, plus experimental song and electronics of all sorts, blending with classical, jazz, field recordings and more. READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able! Charli XCX – House (feat John Cale) California Girls – Sorrowful Meat Alto Aria – Porous Heart Alto Aria – Fall Blossom anrimeal – 11. Chapter III – Source and time anrimeal – 5. Chapter I – SOFAR channel Meredith Monk – Lullaby for Lise (performed by Katie Geissinger, Allison Sniffin) Joachim Badenhorst – How To Hold Maarja Nuut & Ruum – Kiik Tahab Kindaid Romain Azzaro – Always Late Mauri – Aquest Any Si F¥eld Effct – Tst_009 Nadrisk – Cadere Data General – End with Rests Fracture & Neptune – Good Stuff Los Pulpitos – Cubozoa r hunter – Intra r hunter – Perfect Mirror Galina Juritz – Axolotl STREIKTHROUGH – Bleed Tight Earl Grey – Doss House Jack Prest – Dawn Jack Prest – Movement III Stefan Schultze – Judson Techno Stefan Schultze, boxn – CV RMX Perila – Apocalypta’s Dream upsammy – Ripple Bernard Parmegiani – Sadiquement Votre II Bernard Parmegiani – La Ville en Haut de la Colline II Lia Kohl – Walking Home, Chicago Lia Kohl – My Kitchen, Chicago Lia Kohl – Train, Antwerp to Amsterdam Lia Kohl – Basketball Court, feat. Macie Stewart Listen again — ~221MB

Music from North Africa, West Africa, South Asia, East Asia, South America, North America, Europe and Oceania tonight… which covers most continents. Antarctica needs to pick up their game. READER’S NOTE: as I’m so far behind with my write-ups, I’m concentrating on the Best of 2025 posts, and will try to return to these for full text as soon as I’m able! Noura Mint Seymali – Bidayett Lehjibb Noura Mint Seymali – Lehjibb Noura Mint Seymali – Moughadim Karr Perera Elsewhere – Time Will Tell (feat. Andy S) Perera Elsewhere – Just Wanna Live Some Low End Activist x Tia Talks – Fake Idols Mala x Magugu – MILITANT DON AICHER – Constriction (andereBaustelle Version) AICHER – Possessions Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – FACADE06032020 Low End Activist – U Kno Low End Activist – Colin’s Golf Clark – 18EDO Bailiff Clark – Globecore Flats ZOiD – Day Eight (μ-Ziq Remix) ZOiD – Day Eight Nikki Nair, Foodman – Sorry I Lost My Glasses In The Public Bathhouse 銭湯でメガネを無くしてごめん Tawdry Otter – Alma, The River Flows Crimewave – 145/155BPM Crimewave – Misdemeanour Crimewave – 155/160BPM Crimewave – Haemoglobin toso toso – cLAcLAcLA Juana Molina – la paradoja CxBxT – Hoshi o Atsumete Starlight Assembly – Friction Starlight Assembly – Wait for the Word The Church – Sacred Echoes (Part Two) recur – hieroglyph Mark Harwood – Ein Gehirn Musik Mark Harwood – Welt Ov Pain – Kikorangi Listen again — ~222MB

Somehow it’s the second-last month of the year? And yet, this year has lasted about 3 years so far, so it’s not too surprising? We do have a surprise new album from Aesop Rock, new weirdpop of various sorts, trip-hop vibes, Halloween spookiness, sadcore/hardcore crossover, industrial sad-hop, experimental electronics both beat-wise and not, some jungle and some blissful ambient pop to take us out. It’s Sunday. LISTEN AGAIN & re-live the ancient future – stream on demand at fbi.radio, or podcast here. Aesop Rock – Sherbert [Rhymesayers Entertainment/Bandcamp] Aesop Rock – Crystals and Herbs [Rhymesayers Entertainment/Bandcamp] Crazy… after releasing another in his great run of self-produced, somewhat-themed albums in May this year (Black Hole Superette), America’s most vocabularian rapper returns with a second album for 2025! I Heard It’s A Mess There Too commiserates us all for the state of the world, giving us a head-noddy stripped-down funk and words of wisdom. Just pure pleasure. Yunzero – B1 [Best Effort/Bandcamp] One of Aus’s most creative producers, Jim Sellars as Yunzero builds tracks out of dusty YouTube samples and a sharp sense of rhythm and the surreal. While his latest release is a collection of edits (vol. 1), they’re very much twisted in the Yunzero way. This one’s a harder take on the Ying Tang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song)“. ŽIVA – Unrest [ŽIVA Bandcamp] Croatian musician Lucija Ivšić has been based in Naarm/Melbourne for a while now, and having fronted the postpunk band Punčke in Croatia, she now makes music as ŽIVA with clear roots in new wave and ’80s electronic pop but also contemporary electronica & techno. The Friday after this show aired, ŽIVA played at the Vanguard here in Sydney, and I’m really glad she released this song ahead of it. It’s about dealing with OCD, fighting with your own brain… Gotta say I can identify with burnout right now, as I think a lot of us neurodivergent folk can. celosiafields – Newletter ft. Raj Mahal [self-released – stream here & elsewhere] Balram Veeragoo Naidu is a composer, filmmaker, producer & programmer working on Gadigal land, and going by celosiafields for his artistic work. He’s gradually releasing an album called Newletter, much of it with post-classical piano and synth work, and with some amazing videos – I particularly like this one from a couple of years ago. The title track of the album starts with soundtrack-like piano, but halfway through a minimalist beat builds up, over which Eora-based rapper Raj Mahal adds some verses. Great crossover stuff. Jerome Blazé – You Can Find Us Out Your Way [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. This year, Jerome released the album on vinyl, and accompanying it, has been expanding the album with alternate reworkings of each track – in reverse order! However, in late October he put out this new single, “You Can Find Us Out Your Way“, a piece of classic indie-pop replete with a classical sample (from Australian composer Alex Turley) that sweetly echoes The Verve’s illicit Rolling Stones sample on “Bitter Sweet Symphony”. It’s a really great song, and to cement the connection, there’s a video of Jerome & friends on the Sydney Harbour Bridge that echoes The Verve’s classic video. Honestly so great, got to give it way more views. Penelope Trappes – Bleed [One Little Independent/Bandcamp] Well, last November was when we first heard a single from Brighton-based Australian musician Penelope Trappes‘ album A Requiem, her first on One Little Independent. I played a bunch of singles, ranging from drone works with scratchy cello to choral fragments and deep bass booms. The album is kind-of songwriting turned inside-out, and it’s an album worth listening through from start to finish, a ceremony eulogising parts of herself that she’d long suppressed. However, a year after that first single, here Penelope offers us her second album of the year, suitably following A Requiem with Æternum. This is very much a companion album, and the material here is as strong and moving as the “main” album. I had the pleasure & privilege of playing cello with Penelope at a performance at Lazy Thinking earlier this year – and while we’ve known each other for quite a while, it was the first time we’d met in person. I can only hope she’ll be back at a venue of the size that reflects her stature. (All love to Lazy Thinking though, one of the best things about this here city!) Bird Battles – Overgrown [Sleep In The Fire Records] Earlier this year I was pleased to play the incredible debut “Bird Battles” from the duo of the same name – in fact there I am quoted on the Bandcamp page! I expressed hope that more was to come, and here’s the album! Bird Battles features the voice and other sounds of London-based Scottish musician Euan Millar-McMeeken, better known as glacis and also one half of Graveyard Tapes with Matthew Collings and of Civic Hall with Craig Tattersall. Here he’s working with visual and sound-artist Jesse Narens, whose love of birds is all over his visual art and audio work. This is by turns fragile and intense, noisy and delicate. Some of Euan’s best work, and lately he’s been on a high. Hilary Woods – Taper [Sacred Bones Records/Bandcamp] One of a number of Halloween releases that came out this week is Night CRIÚ, the new album from Irish experimental musician & songwriter Hilary Woods. After a career in indie rock, she took a break and came back with a unique form of dark, experimental songwriting – part folk, part drone, part soundtrack. In fact, her last album was dramatic instrumental drone music, so it’s notable that Night CRIÚ sees her return to vocal music. The second word in its title, “criú”, does seem to be Irish for “crew”. These are gothic tales inspired, like the music, by a wide range of art and contemporary experience, and the evocative production makes it hard to always make out the lyrics – there’s a lot of Hope Sandoval mixed in with strummed guitar, sparse drumkit, soaring strings and arrangements for brass band and children’s choir. Laura Moody – The Witch [Laura Moody Bandcamp] Years ago, when I discovered the Nonclassical label, it was their very first release, the first string quartet by Gabriel Prokofiev, along with some remixes, and it was performed by The Elysian Quartet. Tragically the quartet doesn’t exist as such anymore, although The Elysian Collective does in its place, and Laura Moody remains their cellist. Now, 11 years after her first solo album, Laura has dropped a small EP that’s perfect for Halloween, called Haunted – three tracks for cello & voice, originally commissioned for a performance called “Deep Night, Dark Night” at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. They sit somewhere between classical and gothic folk, dramatic and creepy. The lyrics to “The Witch” come from Mary Elizabeth Coleridge. Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – The Magic of the World [Computer Students™/The Flenser/Bandcamp] Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – Fission/Fusion [Computer Students™/The Flenser/Bandcamp] Oklahoma is surprisingly rich with heavy and raucous bands, but the band that’s made it to the top of the pile, so to speak, are Chat Pile (named after the piles of chat, or toxic waste from lead-zinc mining), who combine sludge and hardcore with highly-strung noise rock and postpunk. They are apparently big fans of Hayden Pedigo, a man who embraces contradiction – or at least, is a lot of things all at once: a model, a politician (having run for mayor in his hometown of Amarillo, successfully exposing corporate corruption, if not actually winning) and a fingerpicking guitarist who embodies the avant-garde elements that were there since John Fahey at least. Chat Pile themselves always match their songs with experimental material and strange off-genre detours. Nevertheless, the combination of these artists is utterly unexpected and highly fruitful, bringing out melodic singing from Chat Pile’s Raygun Busch, and lurching between fingerstyle guitar, sludge rock, proggish metal and punkish yowls, with tape loops and field recordings finding their way in & out of the mix. It’s legitimately excellent. Richie Culver – Curse [Fixed Abode/Supernature/Bandcamp] Richie Culver – I Loved You [Fixed Abode/Supernature/Bandcamp] With releases via various labels across the noise & electronic spectrum, British conceptual artist (visual, film, poetry & music) Richie Culver‘s new album I Trust Pain comes to us via Rainy Miller‘s Fixed Abode imprint and Supernature. As is standard with Culver, it’s noisy and anguished stuff, with a kind of Southern bass music vibe to it. Ship Sket – Casting Call (ft. S280F) [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Ship Sket – Mimikyu [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. Following a number of singles, InitiatriX is out now. Comprehensively mutated bass music, electro-acoustic manipulation, distorted classical samples, and multiple guest spots including the mysterious S280F (who visited our shores for Soft Centre earlier this year). Weirdest shit. December – Stonemilker [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp] French producer Tomas Lefebvre has been making music as December for over a decade, a combination of weirdly-shaped textures and beats. In contrast to the heavier beats of some of his earlier work, his new album I

All over the place tonight, whether folktronica, percussive experimentalism, minimal dub techno, various drum’n’bass & jungle mutations, proto-postrock, or eerie sound-art… LISTEN AGAIN on fbi.radio’s stream on demand, or podcast right here. tunng – Anoraks [Full Time Hobby/Bandcamp] Look, do you need to hear the story again? OK, gather round little ones. In 2004 I was lucky enough to go to Sónar in Barcelona with a press pass courtesy of Cyclic Defrost. Among the memories and goodies I brought back was a promo CD of some sort that featured an incredible track on it, which happened to be the first single by Tunng, “Tale From Black”. I found shortly after that this was released on a lathe-cut 7″ by the excellent little indie label Static Caravan. I was obsessed, and played this and its b-side, and then the second single, to death. And this is where I get confused, because 2025 is the 20th anniversary of their debut album Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, but Geoff from Static Caravan kindly sent me the album early, so I was already playing tracks off it from October 2024. “Folktronica” was a genre name already bandied about for the likes of Four Tet, Manitoba (pre-Caribou) and Minotaur Shock, all of whom used acoustic guitar and other acoustic samples in a cut-up, glitchy hip-hop fashion. This was a different version, songs with an arcane, pagan British folk feel courtesy of singer Sam Genders, and glitchy production from Mike Lindsay which referenced club sounds but never leaned too much on beats. I’m still super fond of that album and its follow-up, but Genders left after the third album and I didn’t warm so much to the following couple of albums. Then after a 5-year break, Genders was back with the band for Songs You Make At Night in 2018, and 2020’s concept album Tunng Presents…DEAD CLUB. More than four years later, they released Love You All Over Again early this year, an album that’s unabashedly nostalgic, looking back 20 years to that debut – folky and glitchy, sweet and catchy. And now, to see the year out, here’s a non-album single – bless them for not doing some kind of revised “deluxe” version of the album. This one’s interlocking acoustic guitars, and samples of a cute (children’s?) story in a cute English accent. It’s a song about nostalgia and memory, and sits *just* on this side of cloying. Majken – Re-entering [sing a song fighter] Swedish singer-songwriter Majken grew up in a Pentecostal household where music was ever-present. And while she now believes that “politicized religion is the most dangerous thing in the world”, those musical roots are still heard in the blissful harmonies in her songs – her new album is called Korus after all. The record is mostly performed by herself, on guitar, piano, synths and samples, and a harp recorded in a Malmö concert hall. The contradictions between choral arrangements and Majken’s non-belief, between gentle indie-folk and electronics, bring a tension to the work which enhances the beauty of Majken’s voice and songwriting. Lawrence English + Stephen Vitiello – with Brendan (Single Edit) [American Dreams Records/Bandcamp] American Dreams Records, who brought us Lawrence English‘s astonishing collaboration with Lea Bertucci a couple of years ago, are now gearing up to release Lawrence’s third album with the great sound-artist Stephen Vitiello – appropriately titled Trinity. That’s not just because it’s their third, but also because on each track the duo is completed by a third musician – and here it’s Brendan Canty, drummer from legendary post-hardcore/straight-edge punk band Fugazi and these days the jazz/punk project The Messthetics. Vitiello has by now made a few releases with Canty, including this great EP and this album with avant-garde violinist Hahn Rowe. So bringing Canty in for this “with” project was an obvious choice, and it’s wonderful to hear the sound-art textures with Canty’s beats. Will Glaser – Theft [Not Applicable/Bandcamp] London-based drummer Will Glaser is very busy in the London jazz & experimental scene, appearing on records or live with the likes of Yazz Ahmed, Kit Downs, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, James Allsopp, Alex Bonney and more. Prior to this release, the only solo works Glaser has released are the all-drums Some Drum Sounds and the mostly-drums Some Drum & Other Sounds (both of which are excellent mind you). However, on October 24th comes his first major solo work as auteur, the name of which is hard to even fit into a sentence: Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is about as sci-fi as you can get, imagining a musical artefact from sometime in the late 21st century, after the oncoming climate collapse. Glaser’s drums/percussion and electronics are accompanied here by brilliant musicians including Ruth Goller, Agathe Max, Tara Cunningham, James Allsopp and Alex Bonney (I’m mostly listing people whose work I know). The album claims influences as wide as Harry Partch, Tom Waits, the aforementioned Justin K Broadrick among others, and there’s no dearth of electronics there too (appropriately for the avant-garde Not Applicable label, co-run by both members of Icarus among others). It’s honestly a really great album, and all those influences are justified. Strongly recommend giving it a listen. JQ & Richard Pike – Free [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp] Joe Quirke (JQ) & Richard Pike (originally from Sydney, now London-based) run the experimental/ambient label Salmon Universe together and have played together for years as part of the ambient-jazz trio Forgiveness, but new album Tessera is their first duo recording together. These are granular dubscapes, sometimes ambient sound-design and sometimes verging into Basic Channel-style dub techno. Here we’ve got some sparse, crunchy beats and bass pings on one of the more upbeat pieces. Very deep, very tasty. Paul St. Hilaire & Gavsborg – Confidential [Kynant Records/Bandcamp] Paul St. Hilaire & Cousin – Back Inna Business [Kynant Records/Bandcamp] Until about 2003, the Jamaican vocalist Paul St. Hilaire was known as Tikiman, under which name he collaborated with many experimental electronic musicians including The Bug and Tarwater, but most famously Berlin techno heads Mark Ernestus & Moritz Von Oswald of dub-techno labels/projects Basic Channel, Chain Reaction and Burial Mix, particularly under their Rhythm & Sound alias. These releases were ground zero for minimal techno and dub techno, quite unlike anything else heard at the time. While many 12″s featured Tikiman on vocals, there were others, and eight tracks with eight different vocalists were collected on Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists. So that’s the starting point for Paul St. Hilarie – w/ The Producers – nine tracks here, with ten producers from the dub & techno worlds, channeling (by and large) the Basic Channel template. It’s really an excellent album, but here are two highlights: first from Jamaican producer Gavsborg, of the experimental crew Equinoxx, whose track is utterly stripped back; and then Eora/Sydney DJ & producer Cousin (aka FBi’s Jackson Fester), who keeps things beautifully smooth and minimal, supporting St. Hilaire’s repeated phrase “Back Inna Business”. Carrier – Carbon Works [Modern Love/Boomkat] So Guy Brewer has been creating incredible post-d’n’b enigmas as Carrier for some years now, following a successful career making stripped-down techno as Shifted. Indeed, early on he was a member of drum’n’bass act Commix, and when he shifted to the Carrier alias, the minimal drum’n’bass influence has been palpable despite the beats never quite reaching the complexity of obvious syncopation of drum’n’bass. It’s an interesting balancing act, one that I think a newer generation of producers is working on very creatively, but in the context of the previous two tracks I think it’s also interesting how the Photek vibes are balanced by a kind of murky Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound atmos, and it makes me wonder where the Carrier name is a reference to this Rhythm & Sound EP (actually it definitely is – here’s the track). Now Carrier lands on the Boomkat-operated Modern Love, with the full album Rhythm Immortal (following a single earlier this year, The Fan Dance, featuring the aforementioned Gavsborg). Amd those Rhythm & Sound influences are as plain as can be, as are the whisps of drum’n’bass, like a shape made of smoke dissipating into the air. ealing – Down the Rabbithole [General Merchant/Bandcamp] OK so now we’re moving into more explicit jungle/drum’n’bass references with Eora/Sydney-by-way-of-Taipei producer ealing. Like the equally hyper-detailed kisseswhipthevision from last year, Revelry is a Gateway to the Valley Above the World comes with a story describing a future history… The text perfectly suits the futuristic sounds, which for the first 3 tracks are a particular bass music hybrid of minimal d’n’b. On the last 2 tracks, the operatic vocals of Enryka blend the ancient future into the mix. Pushlock – Oblique Strategy [XCPT/Bandcamp] Over to Italy now with the XCPT label, which last year released an excellent album from Naarm/Melbourne’s Barking. Here’s adventurous Italian bass music producer Pushlock with his third album on XCPT, Stuck in a Cell. It’s a good example of how bass music styles are mixed’n’matched by a lot of producers these days – jungle breaks slipping in & out of the mix, with a general dubstep feel. It’s not slow-fast either, but rather uses signifiers from multiple bass music styles. If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, you’ll know that’s exactly how I like it. The Untouchables – Rude Enforcer [Samurai Music/Bandcamp] The Samurai Music sound is representative of a particular thread of drum’n’bass that emphasises deep repetition and tribal percussion over typical breaks – although they can swarm upwards at times. Belgian husband-and-wife duo The Untouchables have their own expression of that sound, very much in touch with the dub i

Experimental songforms, percussion, breakbeats, prepared piano, sound-art… LISTEN AGAIN to the art of sound… stream on demand at fbi.radio or podcast here. Not Drowning, Waving – Amaravot [Not Drowning, Waving Bandcamp] We’re starting with an Australian band who were really decades ahead of the ball with ambient pop, melding field recordings and live tapes with creative studio techniques, acoustic instrumentation, effects and electronics. Because of David Bridie‘s soft voice and slice-of-life lyrics, I feel Not Drowning, Waving were seen as less revolutionary than they really were – and yet when David released solo albums that emphasised songwriting over sonic creativity, the music media predictably celebrated his “maturity” and suchlike nonsense. I love David’s solo work, and the often-twee but always lovely work of the post-NDW acoustic ensemble My Friend The Chocolate Cake, but Not Drowning, Waving nevertheless hold a special significance. For many, their career higlight was the groundbreaking album Tabaran, much of which was recorded with musicians in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea including the remarkable vocalist Telek (now Sir George Telek MBE!). Their travels to PNG triggered the band’s strong sense of social justice, and they became tireless promoters of West Papuan independence. The song “Blackwater“, about the brutal suppression of independence for West Papua, is haunting and still as relevant today. Fast forward to now, and David Bridie & George Telek have been friends for more than half their lives. A concert performing Tabaran was put together early last year, celebrating 50 years of Papua New Guinean independence, and the band (including Telek) enjoyed being together so much that they created a whole album’s worth of new material. My dirty secret is that, despite the stunning highlights like “Blackwater”, I always preferred the albums before (Cold and the Crackle and Claim) and after it (Circus) in their catalogue because I wasn’t so into the Papuan stringband music. However, whether I’ve mellowed over the years (lol, lmao) or whatever it is, this new album feels wonderful from start to finish, and Telek is an integral member. What an achivement! I have no idea how it sounds to those who didn’t, to some extent, experience the band while they previously existed, but I hope they have an enduring legacy. On Diamond – It’s Me Calling [Eastmint Records/Bandcamp] Naarm/Melbourne’s On Diamond are the perfect example of indie pop done experimental. Frontwoman Lisa Salvo writes beautiful, touching songs that have slippery chord changes and deeply unusual arrangements created together by the band. Previous members, often involved in the more experimental end of Naarm’s music scene include the brilliant drummer/composer Maria Moles, drummer Joe Talia (who recorded & mixed the album), and guitarist/vocalist Hannah Cameron (who contributes backing vocals along with Aarti Jadu and others). Along with Salvo’s vocals, Jules Pascoe on bass, Myka Wallace on drums and Scott McConnachie on synths and those frequently demented guitar solos, the band itself now features the glittering harp of Genevieve Fry and the percussion of Australian legend Duré Dara, born in Malaysia to an Indian background, a celebrated restaurateur with Order of Austrlaia Medal as well as jazz musician and improvisor. That’s a loaded band, put in service of Salvo’s aforementioned songs, which take strange, sidelong looks at matters of grief, longing and the passing of time. In a better world we’d be hearing these songs on rotation all day, but you – yes you – have the power to fix that, in the palm of your hand. gushes – Game One [PTP/Switch Hit Records/Bandcamp] gushes – CUT [PTP/Switch Hit Records/Bandcamp] Trust PTP (aka Protect The Peace, fka Purple Tape Pedigree) to release one of the most bizarre & brilliant albums of the year (in conjunction with artist collective Switch Hit Records). Jennae Santos’ gushes presents an unrestrained amalgam of prog metal, psych rock, jazz & classical and electronic experimentation. But there’s more than just this: the album begins with voices talking in Tagalog, and influences from Indigenous Filipinx psychology and combat swirl around with land-sea ecologies, plant medicine and queer politics of decolonization… Delicious Collision is a fully-through-composed experimental rock opera, appropriately given Santos’ background (on top of everything else) in theatre, site-specific performance & dance. Agriculture – The Reply [The Flenser/Bandcamp] With The Flenser you know you’re going to expect dark, probably metal-adjacent music, and you know it’ll probably diverge from typical genre norms. Ecstatic black metal band Agriculture do indeed employ black metal’s tremolo guitars and blast beats to reach for altered states, but then the thunder gives way to a different kind of ecstasy at times – gorgeous harmonies and clean guitar? The last track on the album somehow combines it all together – blissful chugging blackgaze, and a fragile interlude of just voice and guitar. Channeling Zen Buddhism and social collapse alongside queer history & survival, The Spiritual Sound is easily among the albums of the year. sunn O))) – Raise the Chalice [Sub Pop/Bandcamp] So yeah, the southern lords of drone metal, sunn O))), have signed to Sub Pop, the little label that could. That’s the Sub Pop that was the centre of the Seattle sound, from Mudhoney & early Soundgarden to Nirvana – in fact Nevermind‘s profits, after their contract was bought out by Geffen, were what brought them back from early ’90s financial difficulties, and their (excellent) debut Bleach, which remained a Sub Pop release, was enough to keep the label chugging along for ages. The label pretty quickly expanded out of Seattle/grunge into all sorts of other areas, as diverse as Fleet Foxes, The Postal Service, and the greatest, Clipping. Still, the stentorian, rumbling noise of sunn O))) is an interesting step sideways, hopefully a great move for both parties. Their first EP for Sub Pop follows a 7″ (yes, two tracks under 6 minutes each!) back in 2023 for the Sub Pop Singles Club, but one side of this 12″ is the 14-minute “Eternity’s Pillars”, while the flip has 2 tracks each around 8 minutes – still pretty contained. The band for these tracks is the back-to-basics core duo of Greg “The Lord” Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, and the crushingly slow unison guitar/bass is by and large the totality of the sound, but I do love the disconcerting high-pitched flicker that rises through the last part of “Raise the Chalice”. Susannah Stark – Minor Gestures [Night School Records/Bandcamp/STROOM.tv/Bandcamp] When Utility Fog started back in 2003, folktronica was a genre of which I was very fond – but it was already pretty hazy as to what it was. Slightly glitchy hip-hop sampling acoustic instruments like Four Tet was what I thought, I guess, although when Tunng came on the scene literally later that year, it held a lot of similarity without quite being the same. And meanwhile The Books were doing studio-mediated music with acoustic instruments that somehow was something else entirely, despite arguably fitting the mould. So I love that in the years since, there have been untold different approaches to “folk” + “electronics”. On her new album Minor Gestures, Scottish musician Susannah Stark takes her Gaelic (Gàidhlig) folk music in experimental directions, which might involve drone passages on harmonium or modular synth, interpolated field recordings, or sample-based programming. The production touches only serve to heighten the sense of an arcane, otherworldly setting, as if being performed just out of sight or transmitted from a past-future. It’s quite a remarkable album. Haykal, Julmud, Acamol | هيكل، جلمود، أكامول – A’saab أعصاب [Bilna’es/Bandcamp] Cross-media artistic duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Ramme formed the record label & publishing platform Bilna’es along with producer Muqata’a as a space for artistic expression & criticism in Palestine & beyond. Along with the amazing productions of Muqata’a, a highlight was the 2022 solo album from Julmud, Tuqoos | طُقُوس. Now Julmud teams up with label founder Abbas, the latter under the name Acamol (Arabic for Panadol/paracetamol), along with Palestinian rapper Haykal on a new album Kam Min Janneh | كم من جنّة (How Many Heavens). The beats, produced by Julmud & Acamol separately & together, present a glitched version hip-hop drawn from the music & percussion of the MENA region, while Julmud & Haykal swap verses evoking the life of dispossession under occupation, colonization & genocide. It bears mentioning that while the killing continues in Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire, settlers continue to violently disrupt the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity – destroying property, beating and killing people and blocking access to their own land. In that context, this is a powerful work of resistance and solidarity (and some injections of humour). As I’m writing this late, you can read Emad Al Hatu’s excellent article on fbi.radio, as this was made album of the week at the beginning of November. Mohammad Reza Mortazavi – Zendegi [Latency/Bandcamp] Mohammad Reza Mortazavi – Silent [Latency/Bandcamp] French label Latency have no interest in following any kind of expectations – they’ll flip from chamber jazz to minimal techno to post-classical to percussive bass. In 2019 they released the album Ritme Jaavdanegi by Berlin-based, Iran-born percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, and now Mortazavi is back on Latency with his new album Nexus. The previous album showcased Mortazavi’s incredibly detailed and complex rhythms on traditional Persian instruments – the tombak and daf. On Nexus, Mortazavi’s playing is just as accomplished, but he extends the percussion with electronic effects and his own voice. The music is full of an otherworldly sensation, of suspension in time and place. There’s an incredible 25-minute remix by

Huge thanks to Holly Conner for her great curation last week while I was playing at Essence Festival in Canberra. Tonight we’ve got mutant pop and folk, mutant bass, mutant classical and ambient… and beautiful slippages between genres. LISTEN AGAIN & mutate with me. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here. Cerys Hafana – Angel [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp] There’s not much new music in the world being sung in Welsh. An exponent of the Welsh triple harp, Cerys Hafana has now released three albums of adventurous songs with their instrument, sung in Welsh. Not one seemingly to ever sit still, they also released a remarkable album of solo piano works, Difrisg, earlier this year, but now Angel has found its place on the reliably great Glitterbeat label, giving Hafana a much broader audience. If there’s a distinct folk backbone to their songs, and hints at classical composition, Hafana is no traditionalist, preparing the harp with blu-tak to dampen the sound, and creating compositions that draw on minimalism, jazz and avant-garde harmonies and structures (on the album Hafana is joined by double bass, alto sax and drums on some tracks), and other nearby folk traditions. These are evocative songs, sung beautifully in a language quite alien to most of us, with uncommon arrangements. Aphir – Messengers [Aphir Bandcamp] Well, it’s been a minute since Becki Whitton released an Aphir album of her experimental electronic pop songs. She’s been building a practice of semi-improvised “choral drone” works with live vocal looping and processing, and it’s great – there’s a choral drone remix of this new single in fact. But there’s a new Aphir pop album coming in the new year! The first single sounds like it might be one of those choral pieces, a simple prayer-like melody… until it gets wild, industrial beats and shrieking synths. Rad rad rad. Snakeskin – Ready [Ruptured/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp] Earlier this year, Beirut indie band Postcards released their fourth (or is it fifth?) album via key Lebanese label Ruptured. Postcards singer Julia Sabra and their longtime producer Fadi Tabbal have just come through with their third album We live in sand, co-released by Ruptured with Portland’s Beacon Sound. The album is unavoidably influenced by the troubles of Lebanon and the horrors of the genocide being conducted by Israel. It’s mournful and sometimes angry, the product of two exceptionally strong music-makers. When I saw them live in London in May, both musicians had tables entirely covered in electronic equipment, noisemakers and effects, Sabra singing while processing her voice (given the setup, it was nearly impossible to tell who was making any particular noises other than that). This album might not seem as experimental as that performance implied, but it’s hard-hitting and there’s nothing else quite like it. Sijya – Safe [One Little Independent Records/Bandcamp] New Delhi visual designer and audiovisual artist Sijya released her debut EP Young Hate on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records in 2022. Beautifully minimalist electronic pop songs, with glitching textures and slow-moving beats that harkened back to trip-hop, it’s one of my favourite debuts of recent years. So it’s great seeing her signed to One Little Independent Records for her follow-up. It’s another collection of six songs, leaning ambient until they don’t – see the distortion that wells up with the vocals on “Rust”. “Safe” is a musical sequel to “Another Thing”, one of the highlights of her debut, processional beats and minimalist-yet-emotive vocals. A talent to watch. feeo – Win! [AD93/Bandcamp] So sometime last year The Wire published a lovely story about how experimental vocalist and producer Theodora Laird and bassist/improviser Caius Williams got together – as a couple, as well as a duo, putting together a wonderful exploratory album together. Now we get to hear Laird under her guise as feeo, with a solo album on AD93. Goodness is adorned with a beautiful overexposed black & white photo of a crowd, presumably an audience at a gig, with the stage off to the left shining a bright light on the people. Some are transfixed, some are looking the other way, and one woman stares right into the camera. This strange mix of solitude and connection, of light and dark, is what powers this album too. It’s mostly just Theodora Laird solo, but Caius Williams contributes different instruments on a few tracks, Theo Guttenplan plays drums on one track, and her Dad, actor Trevor Laird, reads his own poetry (I think) on Days pts 1 & 2. Those two tracks are a case in point: Trevor Laird’s voice is nearly buried under droning and then pulsing sub-bass, until he finally appears half-way through part 2. It’s a small vignette, odd in the British way, made sinister by its surrounds. But then the majority of songs are similarly subdued, nearly-there things, with minimal avant-garde electronics accompanying Laird’s beautifully subtle, exquisitely controlled voice. From their distinctly weird parts, Laird constructs post-r’n’b songs of quiet power. Even when accompanied by Williams’ guitars, Laird inserts nebulous synth drones. These songs constantly undermine themselves, but they’re too good to stay under. My goodness. IFS meets AGF – Limits [outlines] Well, so far it seems like Polish duo IFS will only “meet” all-caps artists (I know, this is soon to change). Following their second brilliant collab with Japanese rapper MA, here they are with the poemproducer herself, AGF, who’s right at home with the duo’s IDM-influenced bass-ambient. There’s very little in the way of experimental footwork, the outlines label’s bread-and-butter; rather these are spooky, playful, avant-garde soundscapes, using beats sparingly, a perfect foil to Antye Greie-Ripatti’s equally sparing, equally oblique storytelling. The album’s title, East-West Logistics, might sound like European transport solutions, but it actually has something to say about making this sort of music in Eastern Bloc countries, places where little of the so-called “Western world”‘s cultural production reached behind the Iron Curtain until the 1990s. This is deep stuff, sonic excavation through the rubble of time, so put on your headlamp and let’s go! Sluta Leta – First Order [Cheap Records/Bandcamp] The background of Sluta Leta has always had the feel of a tall story. It’s hard to believe that their earliest releases (here’s a 1998 EP) were by a group of unknown Swedes, shepherded into production by Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper of early Mego label-affiliated glitch pioneers General Magic (whose 1997 album Frantz is one of my favourites of the early glitch shit). They were often joined by fellow Viennese electro-head Gerhard Potuznik, and as well as Mego were associated with another experimental Viennese label, Cheap Records. General Magic have re-formed recently, putting out some cheeky and odd records, so why not bring back Sluta Leta? In fact Sluta Leta released an album 5 years ago via farmersmanual (also fellow glitch etc etc), and now Cheap Records have revived themselves for Sluta Leta’s Drift Dekoder album. While General Magic’s music would be constructed around weird noises and broken samples, Sluta Leta has always been more about the funk – electro-funk – and cheesy hip-hop stylings; fun but still weird, right? Case in point, from way back in 1995. This album does nothing to change that image, to be honest, and it’s cool, sure. I did really enjoy the spoken word here, which is actually a reading of a forum comment by Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the ubiquitous Linux operating system, giving a comprehensive dressing-down to some right-wing, er, “moron of the first order”. Human Error Club & Kenny Segal – Night Time ft. E L U C I D [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp] Brooklyn hip-hop label Backwoodz Studioz, run by billy woods, has long supported producer-led albums as much as rappers. This is a bit different, though. Here LA legend Kenny Segal, who’s made two stunning albums with billy woods and recently a brilliant one with K-the-I???, has teamed up with the very unusual jazz trio Human Error Club, also from LA, for the strangest house party. A drummer & two keyboardists, Human Error Club already bring a kind of hip-hop sensibility to their music with electro keys, MPC beats as well as drumkit, floating Rhodes and funky electric piano… And here their studio jams are cut up in Segal’s inimitable style, preserving the live feel, un-quantized, full of very human errors (they’re not errors, don’t put in the post that I said errors). And yr Backwoodz crew are here in force, on a third of the tracks anyway – K-the-I???, Quelle Chris & Cavalier, Moor Mother & billy woods, and woods’ Armand Hammer partner E L U C I D, who rides the acid funk with lackadaisical ease. Ship Sket – Mimikyu [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. InitiatriX is out on October 31st, with a number of singles preceding it. Comprehensively mutated bass music, electro-acoustic manipulation… feels like this will be a helluva thing. Blawan – WTF [XL Recordings/Bandcamp] Blawan – Style Teef [XL Recordings/Bandcamp] In the last few years, Jamie Roberts aka Blawan has released some of the most forward-thinking, fucked-up bass music around. From 2021’s Woke Up Right Handed, the bass rumbles and throbs, the beats syncopate and shuffle but hit haaaard. In 2023, Dismantled Into Juice went considerably left-field, with a couple of tracks featuring vocals from Monstera Black. And if last year’s BouQ veered back towards the dancefloor, it’s no less experimental for that. Notably in the meantime he also paired up with longtime collaborator Arthur Cayzer aka Pariah for two albums of industrial grindcore & noise rock (with hints of bass music) as Persher. This all now culminates with the full-length albu

Arabic trip-hop? Nordic jazz-inflected indie pop? Minimal drum’n’bass? Bees? Whatever you’re looking for, we’ve got it. LISTEN AGAIN, with a vengeance! Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here! Yasmine Hamdan – Vows سبع صنايع [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp] Yasmine Hamdan – Daya3 ضياع [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp] While I’ve featured quite a bit of Lebanese music on this show, it’s leaned towards the experimental. Yasmine Hamdan‘s career goes back to the late ’90s with indie/trip-hop band Soapkills, all three of whose independent albums have been re-released by Belgian powerhouse Crammed Discs, whose catalogue covers postpunk and experimental music as well as “world music” from all over the planet. Hamdan released two previous solo albums with Crammed, and after a few singles (of which I’ve played a couple), her third album I remember, I forget is out now. It’s no surprise that this is album deeply affected by what’s happened to Beirut and Lebanon over the last few years, including the horrific port explosion in 2020, the intensifying of its economic collapse as well as continuing incursions by Israel. It’s actually a bittersweet album as Hamdan, who is based in Paris, has great affection for her birthplace of Beirut. It’s a beautiful, compulsively listenable collection of songs that easily fuses Arabic pop and trip-hop. Snakeskin – Blindsided [Ruptured/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp] Earlier this year, Beirut indie band Postcards released their fourth (or is it fifth?) album via key Lebanese label Ruptured. Postcards singer Julia Sabra and their longtime producer Fadi Tabbal have just come through with their third album We live in sand, co-released by Ruptured with Portland’s Beacon Sound. This album, too, is unavoidably influenced by the troubles of Lebanon and the horrors of the genocide being conducted by Israel. It’s mournful and sometimes angry, the product of two exceptionally strong music-makers. When I saw them live in London in May, both musicians had tables entirely covered in electronic equipment, noisemakers and effects, Sabra singing while processing her voice (given the setup, it was nearly impossible to tell who was making any particular noises other than that). This album might not seem as experimental as that performance implied, but it’s hard-hitting and there’s nothing else quite like it. Majken – Mister Kristus [sing a song fighter] Swedish singer-songwriter Majken grew up in a Pentecostal household where music was ever-present. And while she now believes that “politicized religion is the most dangerous thing in the world”, those musical roots are still heard in the blissful harmonies in her songs – her new album is called Korus after all. Religion is directly addressed in this song, of course. The record, released on October 24th, is mostly performed by herself, on guitar, piano, synths and samples, and a harp recorded in a Malmö concert hall. The contradictions between choral arrangements and Majken’s non-belief, between gentle indie-folk and electronics, bring a tension to the work which enhances the beauty of Majken’s voice and songwriting. Mikoo – Ties [Sofa Music/Bandcamp] Mikoo – Blues [Sofa Music/Bandcamp] Norway’s Sofa Music is a consistent home to music that’s off the beaten path – jazz, sure, but not only, or hybridised with contemporary classical, folk and electronics. Mikoo is a case in point, a band led by their drummer Michaela Antalova, a Slovakian musician based in Oslo. The music is mostly written by Antalova, in collaboration with the band, a highly talented collection of musicians on keyboards, guitars & zither, bass and vocals. Singer Ina Sagstuen does often write her own vocal melodies, and mostly the lyrics, which on their gorgeous new album It Floats mostly revolve around concepts of inheritance, including inherited trauma as well as traditions behaviours. These are dark songs in intimate chamber setting, with the percussion never far from prominence. It could easily pass you by – you may not hear about it anywhere else – and I really recommend giving it a listen when you have some quiet time. The Leaf Library – The Long Dead King (Mücha remix) [Objects Forever] When, as mentioned above, I saw Snakeskin playing in London, they were actually supporting spacerock/indietronic band The Leaf Library – two UFog faves on one night! When chatting with Matt from the band, he let me know they had a remix album on its way, and here it is: Flowers at the Border, released on their own label Objects Forever. The full album’s out on October 24th (and as I’m writing this late, it’s already happened!), with reworkings of past TLL songs by various fellow travellers, pretty much in keeping with the band’s gregarious approach which takes in spacerock/krautrock and electronic influences. Here’s some lovely looping electro from London’s Amanda Butterworth aka Mücha, whose interest in yoga and the philosophy of body-in-the-world influences her deep electronic productions. Crimewave – Semaphore [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp (single)/Bandcamp (album)] Manchester’s Crimewave makes a pretty unique mixture of UK bass & experimental electronic styles with shoegazey indie guitar music. He now finds himself of New York label Fool’s Gold Records with new single “Semaphore“. His second new single, this was a pretty sure indicator of an album on its way, and now Scenes has been announced! This track leans more on the electronic side, with ethereal voices and a twitchy, loping beat. Bomb A Lil Joy – Unpaid Attorney [Translation Loss/Bandcam] OK so, right out of leftfield comes this… Just nonchalantly dropping a new band name, Bomb A Lil Joy is actually a kind of weird heavy music supergroup. Christian McKenna, on whose Translation Loss label this album will be released, released a few albums as End Christian/Xtian and with various psychedelic rock bands, and while Translation Loss Records are mostly a metal zone, his C Trip A is a weird hip-hop project with rapper Anthony Adams, and Pynuka is electronic pop/trip-hop with singer Anda Szilagyi and the great, versatile Justin K Broadrick. Here McKenna is working with the legendary vocalist Eugene S Robinson of terrifying experimental rock band Oxbow. Robinson’s presence brings a poetic, chaotic and sinister note to these pieces, aided by frellow travellers like JK Broadrick, Kevin Hufnagel and others. Very interested to hear the rest of this! BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Nerdie – Ridgy [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp] Korean Australian producer/sound-artist Angus Alec Minhyuk Jin does incredible sound design for TV commercials, films and more, but as Nerdie his roots are in hip-hop. BAYANG (tha Bushranger), mind you, has roots in death metal, but on their collaborative album WAR WITH CHINA the pair address Australia’s cultural alienation, as they put it, riffing into punk as much as hip-hop. Good stuff. Will Glaser – Bees [Not Applicable/Bandcamp] London-based drummer Will Glaser is very busy in the London jazz & experimental scene, appearing on records or live with the likes of Yazz Ahmed, Kit Downs, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, James Allsopp, Alex Bonney and more. Prior to this release, the only solo works Glaser has released are the all-drums Some Drum Sounds and the mostly-drums Some Drum & Other Sounds (both of which are excellent mind you). However, on October 24th comes his first major solo work as auteur, the name of which is hard to even fit into a sentence: Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is about as sci-fi as you can get, imagining a musical artefact from sometime in the late 21st century, after the oncoming climate collapse. Glaser’s drums/percussion and electronics are accompanied here by brilliant musicians including Ruth Goller, Agathe Max, Tara Cunningham, James Allsopp and Alex Bonney (I’m mostly listing people whose work I know). The album claims influences as wide as Harry Partch, Tom Waits, the aforementioned Justin K Broadrick among others, and there’s no dearth of electronics there too (appropriately for the avant-garde Not Applicable label, co-run by both members of Icarus among others). It’s super weird and great – the titular Bees of this track most certainly make an appearance! Wottakku – Moonlanding [Ornament170] Russian drum’n’bass producer Hoji has made some substantial releases via Berlin-based Samurai Music, home of a tribal, minimalist form of drum’n’bass. He’s recently started his own label Ornament170, which seems to be on a similar tip, and very well-curated thus far. It’s not at all clear who Wottakku is – there’s some suggestion this isn’t their first release, but I can’t find any info… It is, in any case, four tracks of super dark, super stripped down d’n’b beats with outbursts of intensely-chopped jungle breaks. Pretty special. Rutger Zuydervelt – Fragment 16 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp] Rutger Zuydervelt – Fragment 40 [Machinefabriek Bandcamp] When I first started playing Machinefabriek on this show, I’d discovered his longform drone works and then his remarkable sound-art, pieces of electro-acoustic music put together in mysterious ways… It was music that immediately stood apart. Over many years Rutger Zuydervelt has honed his craft, working with talented musicians, improvisers, classical musicians and more – but recently he’s also become interested in working in the box, so to speak, on purely electronic music. He’s also over some years been involved with soundtrack writing for theatre and dance, as well as TV, and now has been creating musical cues for the VPRO (Dutch public broadcaster) show Frontlinie, 30-minute in-depth journalistic pieces by acclaimed journalist Bram Vermeulen. Zuydervelt goes into a bit more detail about his process in this Substack post, but it’s almost all created with MIDI instruments in Logic Pro. Clearly the alliterative possibilities were too much to resist, so he’s now dropped a selection of cues as Fifty Favorite Frontlinie Fragments – short pieces evocative e

Like what you hear me play every week? Support fbi.radio, without which not just you & I but Sydney’s music as a whole would be incalculably poorer. LISTEN AGAIN and feel the warm thrill of love… Stream on demand on the FBi website, podcast here! BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Nerdie – Bankistan [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp] Korean Australian producer/sound-artist Angus Alec Minhyuk Jin does incredible sound design for TV commercials, films and more, but as Nerdie his roots are in hip-hop. BAYANG (tha Bushranger), mind you, has roots in death metal, but on their collaborative album WAR WITH CHINA the pair address Australia’s cultural alienation, as they put it, riffing into punk as much as hip-hop. Good stuff. Ho99o9 – Godflesh [Last Gang Records/Bandcamp] Ho99o9 – Immortal feat. Chelsea Wolfe [Last Gang Records/Bandcamp] Few are doing hardcore punk/metal meets hip-hop quite like Newark’s Ho99o9 (it’s pronounced “Horror”). I’m not sure you’d call this horrorcore, but it’s ho99o9core at least. A perfect melding of punk riffage you could pogo to and the finest beats & raps. Not much more to say. They’ve been around a lot longer than you’d expect, and their style hasn’t changed dramatically since 2017’s United States of Horror, but damnit they do seem to have perfected it. And yes, there’s industrial metal trappings (there’s no way that the title “Godflesh” doesn’t refer to JK Broadrick & G.C. Green’s iconoclastic duo), but there’s an emotional undercurrent which surfaces particularly with the brilliant Chelsea Wolfe‘s guest spot. clipping. – Night of Heaven (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp] So yeah, back in March, clipping. released one of the albums of the year… or did they? If so, then what’s this? Why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months ago in various physical formats… Annnyway, an album more fitting for the digital age could not exist – this is clipping. doing cyberpunk, employing Daveed Diggs’ incredible wordsmithery and Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson’s backgrounds in noise, breakcore, soundtracking and more to bring to life the genre that’s both decades out of style and horrifically descriptive of our current-day dystopia. So, finally we have the “pt. 1” to the original release’s “Mirrorshades pt. 2” (the deadly Molly Millions in William Gibson’s cyberpunk ur-text Neuromancer “wears” mirrored sunglasses – except they’re permanently sealed into her skin; a couple of years later Bruce Sterling edited a definitive anthology of early cyberpunk titled Mirrorshades). Needless to say, following their previous concept albums on afrofuturist space opera and horror & blaxploitation, clipping. nail the cyberpunk genre here, both in terms of “style” and intertextuality. But anyway, not only is “Mirrorshades pt. 1” a certifiable banger, but on “Night of Heaven” clipping. collaborate again with the astonishingly-voiced Counterfeit Madison, with cuts provided by Kid Koala. My CD player aches with jealousy. toso toso – lluvia de meteoritos [Leaving Records/Bandcamp] Last year we were privileged to receive two albums from two quite different ensembles led by Brooklyn artist isabel crespo pardo, both trios: sinonó melds Latin American folk song with free improvisation, combining crespo pardo’s voice with cello (Lester St. Louis) and double bass (Henry Fraser); tilt finds crespo pardo joined by trombonist Kalia Vandever and double bassist Carmen Quill, with all three singing. These two ensembles conjured remarkable music from voice and low-register instruments. Now in November comes the debut album from crespo pardo’s quartet toso toso, following two singles from last year. Here the palette is expanded, in size and breadth and genre, much more electronic and paradoxically a little more conventional – at the core it’s piano/drums/guitar. Wait, guitar? Yes, in contrast to those other two groups, there’s no bass here at all. This is very different music from those other two ensembles, yet the voice of isabel crespo pardo instantly ties it to their other work. Here, the scope is as wide as musical palette – this single is a “meteor shower” after all, with a loping rhythm on the drumkit, sweeping synths and isa crespo pardo’s voice soaring over it all. SANAM – Hadikat Al Ams – حديقة الأمس [Constellation/Bandcamp] SANAM – Sayl Damei – سيل دمعي [Constellation/Bandcamp] I was instantly hooked when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background; this second album is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop. There really are many different directions taken here, from trip-hop like pieces with auto-tuned vocals to punky numbers with jagged guitars – I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it. JASSS – It’s A Hole feat. james K and Alias Error [AWOS/Bandcamp] Four years after her previous album A World Of Service, released on Berghain’s in-house label Ostgut Ton, Berlin-based Spanish producer JASSS has released her third album Eager Buyers, this time coming via AWOS, her new platform for releases, events and broadcasts. The album’s a meditation on the current age of late-stage capitalism, melding ’80s postpunk & goth aesthetics with ’90s trip-hop and jungle, noise and current-day production. JASSS’s own vocals are featured alongside some guests, including recent AD 93 artist james K and Berlin-based DJ/singer/producer Alias Error. Shugorei – Cat Dragon [4000 Records/Bandcamp] Shugorei – Water Music [4000 Records/Bandcamp] Meanjin/Brisbane duo Shugorei finally release their album Memories of Magic—魔法の記憶—Mahō no Kioku after a brilliant series of singles, starting last year with the ’80s-pop-meets-hyperpop of “Roboto”, moving through contemplative electro-acoustics with Mindy Meng Wang 王萌, and gorgeous post-classical pop with Shêm Allen‘s voice & renowned classical guitarist Karin Schaupp. With frequent guests on cello & violin as well, this album conmfortably straddles the worlds of classical, traditional Japanese and electronica, throwing in breakbeats and field recordings, live percussion and glitchy production. Seriously so great, don’t miss it! bonnie cooth – out of my mind [cooth interactive studios] bonnie cooth – roly poly [cooth interactive studios] With a spooneristic pseudonym only fans of Fawlty Towers will likely appreciate, the duo of electronic artists who make up bonnie cooth make music that’s part ’90s IDM throwback and part lo-fi hyperpop & ’20s breakcore revival. Their second album is, of course, titled bonnie twooth and like the first, it comes with the conceit that it’s actually a late ’90s (I’m guessing) or early ’00s video game. So yeah, nice melody electronica vibes, not quite chiptune, not quite breakcore, and occasional computer songs. Good stuff! Microcorps – Folded [ALTER/Bandcamp] Seeing the evolution of Alexander Tucker from psych-folk troubador into (still psychedelic) experimental rock and through to the experimental beats he’s making as Microcorps has been extremely gratifying. Tucker brings great musicality to whatever he’s doing, and still plays strings (sometimes homemade, sometimes cello) and includes his voice (often manipulated). New album CLEAR VORTEX CHAMBER might just be the best electronic music he’s made, with help from the likes of industrial techno pioneer Regis, the great Justin K Broadrick, Japanese punk/experimental legend Phew, experimental songwriter Karl D’Silva and experimental singer/sound-artist Elvin Brandhi. This is heavy beats with granular processing on strings and voice, at once high-tech and primitivist. Ecko Bazz – VAWO MPITEWO [Hakuna Kulala/Bandcamp] Back on Hakuna Kulala 3 years after the incredible Mmaso, which was mostly produced by MC Yallah collaborator Debmaster, Ugandan MC Ecko Bazz here presents a 3-track EP, Nsiga Ensigo, with beats by Italians STILL and Talpah keeping it bass-heavy and pumping. Hard-hitting, even if you don’t understand the Lugandan lyrics. ltfll – Maelstrom [irsh/Bandcamp] I first heard the beats of Alexandria-based producer ltfll (aka George Farid) on the two compilations from Cairo’s irsh label, started by ZULI and Rama to support Cairo & Egypt’s underground electronic scene. After a couple of year’s break, irsh is back with ltfll’s new EP Nested Skins, in which Farid takes the rhythms and grooves of Egypt and its surrounds and embeds them in crunchy, idm-influenced techno. You won’t find anything else quite like it. Muskila – 68 [YUKU/Bandcamp] Bass music here, YUKU-style, from Muskila, who was born in Copenhagen with North-Kurdistani roots. The percussive backbone to all the rhythms here, and Muskila connects with Nigerian rapper Aunty Rayzor, and remixers from Cairo (Hassan Abou Alam) and Jordan (Toumba). Low-slung and minimalist, these tracks have a strong sense of style. enduser – Movement [enduser Bandcamp] In the early years of the show, Lynn Standafer’s enduser was a key artist, making m

It’s the time of experimental pop at the moment – for very stretched interpretations of pop, perhaps. So we have many weird-ass songs tonight. Also some storming beats and some messed-up beats, some gorgeous acoustic sounds and some pretty messed-up acoustic sounds. It’s Utility Fog. It’s another week. It’s Sunday. LISTEN AGAIN – stream on demand @ fbi.radio or podcast here. ROMÆO – Wariness [ROMÆO Bandcamp] After a couple of excellent singles, the new EP from Eora/Sydney singer/producer ROMÆO is finally out. Eternal Recurrence has a recurring theme of Stoicism – amor fait is loving, or accepting, one’s fate – seen through an ended relationship and more general ennui. “Wariness” comes directly before the closer, “Something New”, and describes the feeling of having to unearth long-unused abilities when there’s a need for change… Majken – High up on a Mountain [sing a song fighter] Swedish singer-songwriter Majken grew up in a Pentecostal household where music was ever-present. And while she now believes that “politicized religion is the most dangerous thing in the world”, those musical roots are still heard in the blissful harmonies in her songs – her new album is called Korus after all. The record, released on October 24th, is mostly performed by herself, on guitar, piano, synths and samples, and a harp recorded in a Malmö concert hall. The contradictions between choral arrangements and Majken’s non-belief, between gentle indie-folk and electronics, bring a tension to the work which enhances the beauty of Majken’s voice and songwriting. R/A/D – Red [Prohibited Records/Bandcamp] R/A/D – Mauve [Prohibited Records/Bandcamp] French-American vocalist Brisa Roché heard French guitarist and Prohibited Records founder Nicolas Laureau in one of his bands and was moved to get in touch – and everyone knows when two musicians meet, another band is formed. R/A/D pairs voice and guitar as spoken word and drone, until melodies are heard from the voice, and the guitar becomes more structured, or more electronic-sounding. Pretty rad indeed. Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Inuti-I [Planet µ/Bandcamp] When I went to the Planet µ 30th gig in London (and I apologise for constantly bringing it up), I got to see experimental electronic mastermind Rian Treanor performing some new material with experimental vocalist Cara Tolmie. It was really special, but it does help, I think, to be able to experience these works at home or on headphones. It’s a super varied album – from extended vocal techniques from Tolmie to spoken word and even singing(?), with Treanor slipping between post-rave deconstructions, glitched ambient and the more cerebral, academic or avant-garde, all of which connects and differentiates him from his father Mark Fell (Treanor absolutely has his own aesthetic and is extremely talented at whatever genres he sets his sights on). A few weeks ago I mentioned with regard to the wonderful album closer “Endless Not” that t’s hard not to be reminded of Big Hard Excellent Fish’s 1990 broadside “Imperfect List“. That’s true, and it’s high praise, but as I’ve said here, that’s only one aspect of the whole, so here’s a track with demented beats and Tolmie speaking, stuttering, singing in full flight. This is an amazing album – don’t be turned away by the experimentalism or spoken word! Ship Sket – Vendetta’s Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne) [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. InitiatriX is out on October 31st, with three tracks already available including the single “Vendetta’s Theme” with vocals from UK multimedia artist Charlie Osborne just about audible through the chaotic mix. Feels like this will be a helluva thing. IFS meets MA – Kamen [guides (outlines)/Bandcamp] IFS meets MA – Kiloqh [guides (outlines)/Bandcamp] The combination of Polish experimental electronic duo IFS and Japanese experimental rapper MA on the album REIFSMA was a surprising highlight of 2023. MA is an experimental rapper whose delivery conveys a lot even for those of us who don’t speak Japanese – from last year, see his collaboration with DJ DIE SOON, DIEMAJIN. And the footwork tempo of most tracks seemed to suit his flow. Late last year, outlines released REIFSMA Remixed, with adventurous – mostly footwork – producers from round the world reworking that first collaboration, but now comes a slightly different collaborative project. Billed as IFS meets MA, this is planned to be followed by other “IFS meets…” works, which I’m absolutely here for. Meanwhile though, MA is an amazing rapper & vocalist, over some quite abstract electronics here and some varied beats. Kirin McElwain – Youth [AKP Recordings/Bandcamp] If you know me at all, you know I’m a cellist and I collect adventurous cellists (not physically, at least not often) of all stripes. Brooklyn-based cellist Kirin McElwain is releasing her debut solo album Youth on October 10th. First single “Closer” demonstrates not just her cello but the cello-like halldorophone, a hybrid acoustic/electronic instrument created by Halldor Úlfarsson that has also been used by Hildur Guðnadóttir and Turkish musician Başak Günak among others. The halldorophone produces feedback through sympathetic strings and resonances, and these otherworldly drones are augmented with further electronics by McElwain throughout the album. The title track here starts with a few notes on the cello, which are joined by some plucked cello-bass, but by halfway through there’s an insistent synth pulse pushing through McElwain’s repeated vocal refrains. Lovely stuff. Friend of a Friend – beautiful ppl (Armaan Sabharwal Remix) [Earth Libraries/Eventually on Bandcamp?] Here’s something really interesting. Chicago duo Friend of a Friend are an indie rock band with a strong electronic backbone, whose recent single “beautiful ppl” combines melodic keyboards with upbeat drums that hint at drum’n’bass, and a vocal melody from singer Claire Molek that hints at Jason Savsani’s Indian heritage. Now the band have handed the song over to rising Indian pop/fusion star Armaan Sabharwal, who interjects his own vocals on top of and in between Molek’s lines, and intensifies both the drum’n’bass and Indian elements. It’s brilliant – while it’s not yet up on Bandcamp (and I’m writing this a couple of weeks late), you can hear it here and elsewhere on streaming services. Fracture & Tim Reaper – Dancing Toms [Astrophonica/Bandcamp/Future Retro/Bandcamp] Two generations, two undisputed greats of the current jungle/drum’n’bass scene, 3 years to complete these 4 tracks. Co-released on Fracture’s Astrophonica and Tim Reaper’s Future Retro, this would have to be of the highest quality or something’s very wrong with the universe. I mean… something really is wrong with the world, but let’s be absolutely clear: this is fucking class, right through its four tracks. Crisp beats that skitter & flip & judder to a halt, basslines that go from one-note specials to bouncing melodies in their own right, and plenty going on in the mid-range too when it’s needed. A must for junglists everywhere. Sheba Q – Asterix (Dub One Remix) [Over/Shadow/Bandcamp] Jungle DJ & vocalist Sheba Q comes out with her own solo EP on 2 Bad Mice‘s Over/Shadow label. The original of “Asterix” was co-produced with Newcastle junglist Nectax, and it’s got a blissful, nostalgic feel. But on the flip, Dub One drops us into darkstyle rave hell, mid-’90s style. All three tracks are quality. Travis Cook – cradle [Travis Cook Bandcamp] So our Travis – or technically Adelaide’s Travis Cook – is planning to release a track a week on his Bandcamp for a year. Travis was one half of Collarbones with our (Sydney’s) Marcus Whale, so yeah, he has the production chops and ear for weird pop down pat. “Cradle” is kind of in that almost-drum’n’bass realm. If it didn’t cut off just after 2 minutes it’d be even better :) Katharina Ernst – x_10 [Extrametric Records/Bandcamp] It’s been 7 years since Berlin-based drummer & artist Katharina Ernst released her debut album Extrametric. Extrametric II takes off where the debut ended (literally, in the sense that the numbering continues after the debut’s closing track “x_07”). While Extrametric did have electronics and melodic elements, it felt like it could have been performed live (albeit in some mind-bending way). The intense works found on the second album feature Ernst’s voice, spoken and sung and warbled, with amplified percussion and synths making it more of studio-constructed, multi-tracked affair, but there are powerful percussive performances at heart of most of the compositions. Combining noise and industrial with a very German detached artiness, this is highly compelling work, and you shouldn’t let it pass you by. Ujif_notfound – Catch The Gifts [I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free/Bandcamp] Ujif_notfound – Coda Misto [I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free/Bandcamp] Georgiy Potopalskiy is well-known in his home country of Ukraine not just for his experimental electronic project Ujif_notfound but as a composer of electro-acoustic operas and as a multimedia artist. I discovered him in 2019 via a huge conceptual collection of music on USB Card on the now sadly-defunct Ukrainian label Kvitnu. Both artists behind that label now run Prostir and child label I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free, whose name is self-explanatory for a Ukrainian label. The third album from Ujif_notfound on ISSUMLIF is Postulate, which detours into intensely distorted guitars and crunching beats, depicting the constant terror of wartime living. Among the heavy-duty noisetronics there are occasional bouts of uneasy calm. Powerful to listen to in context. Einmal Immer – Darkred [Playdate Records/Bandcamp] Bergen’s Playdate Records here release a project combining three great musicians from across Norway’s music worlds. Einmal Imme

Experimental song reaching out from all quarters tonight, in extremely different ways. A surprising South & Central American focus. We also have some experimental beats, some classical and jazz hybrids, and some sound-art. LISTEN AGAIN and sing yourself awake… Stream on demand @ fbi.radio, podcast here. SANAM – Habibon – حبيبٌ [Constellation/Bandcamp] I was instantly hooked when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background; this second album is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop; Chamoun’s auto-tuned vocals, the cascading keyboards, soft-but-motorik percussion and floating guitars take this in a very different direction from the first single. I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it. Crimewave – White Label [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp] Manchester’s Crimewave makes a pretty unique mixture of UK bass & experimental electronic styles with shoegazey indie guitar music. He now finds himself of New York label Fool’s Gold Records with new single “White Label“. It’s short & sweet and definitely hits those old-new vibes, kinda ’90s rock-gone-electric with near-d’n’b rhythms and jittery synths. Don’t leave us waiting so long this time, Crimewave! plus44Kaligula – Home [plus44Kaligula Bandcamp] Cally Statham, who performs as plus44Kaligula, hails from England’s north and makes the kind of pop music that lives somewhere between performance art and pop, in the experimental traditions of English pop songwriters like Kate Bush, David Bowie, Annie Lennox et al. There’s a political consciousness to the three songs on this short EP, hidden behind a sardonic, satirical image. And there’s an electronic backbone that takes it out of vaudevillian cabaret into something un-pin-downably modern. Lucrecia Dalt – the common reader (feat. Juana Molina) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp] Lucrecia Dalt – stelliformia [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp] I’ve been following Lucrecia Dalt‘s music since she was The Sound of Lucrecia, making lovely indie music that only fainly hinted at the highly experimental electronics or Latin music that would come into her music in latter years. Her last album, 2022’s ¡Ay!, somehow combined her modular synth work with the music of her Colombian roots and incredible, counter-intuitive orchestrations – a masterpiece. On her new album A Danger To Ourselves, the connection to Latin America is still strong, but it feels like Dalt’s electronics take more of a leading role. There are violins and cello, saxophone and percussion throughout, with some bass and guitar on some tracks. And as well as Dalt’s now-partner David Sylvian, who co-produced the album, there are a few prominent South American guests including Mexican singer & sound-artist Camille Mandoki and the wonderful Juana Molina, whose loop-based, hypnotic songwriting was a favourite on Utility Fog since 2004, and it’s a treasure to hear her voice with Dalt’s here. The balance, if you could call it that, between the experimental and the “pop” elements on this album is thrilling. Titanic – La dueña [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp] Titanic – Gallina degollada [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp] Guatemalan (Mexico-resident) cellist Mabe Fratti and longtime collaborator Héctor Tosta de la Rosa (who records as I. la Católica) released their first album as Titanic in 2023. The project is an outlet for I. La Católica’s compositions and arrangements with Fratti’s distinctive, creative cello playing and her emotive voice comfortably at home. Vidrio is now followed by Hagen. There’s some absolutely gorgeous songwriting on here, mostly by I. La Católica, with some co-writes by Fratti, whose singing on all tracks is possibly her best ever. Of course she plays cello too, all over these tracks alongside I. la Católica’s instruments and the pair’s electronics. Hagen has a guest spot from Daniel Oneohtrix Point Never Lopatin on one track, and Lopatin collaborator Nathan Salon adds instrumentation and production on about half the album; the brilliant drummer (and yes, OPN compadre) Eli Keszler also appears. As expected, this is evocative, glistening, and not quite like anything else. Shapednoise – Repeater (feat. Armand Hammer) [Weight Looming] When the last Shapednoise album came out, I pointed out that Nino Pedone has one foot in the noise realm, with releases on Prurient’s Hospital Productions among others, and one foot in the bass world, collaborating with Mumdance & Logos on the cyberpunk project The Sprawl. That was Absurd Matter, an ambitious set with many guest vocals, set to massively overdriven beats & bass, and electronic walls of noise (and sometimes melody). Out on September 17th, Absurd Matter 2 is the sequel you’d expect, with both Armand Hammer and Moor Mother returning as guests. And Armand Hammer are easily able to rap over the collapsing structures here – apocalyptic visions. Ziúr – Though The Trees feat. Iceboy Violet [Kuboraum Editions/Bandcamp] Based in Berlin, Ziúr has been taking her own path through club music and pop, punk and glitchy experimentation for about a decade, with releases on PAN and Planet µ among others. Her new album Home, released through Berlin’s Kuboraum Editions, reflects on what it means to be “home”, in both geographical and personal terms. This is Ziúr’s least dancefloor-oriented album, leaning more into a kind of cabaret-pop as explored by plus44Kaligula earlier tonight. But it’s also her most personal, featuring Ziúr singing in English and also for the first time in German. The guests helping her along here, who include Elvin Brandhi, Sara Persico, cellist/sound-artist Martina Bertoni, doom metal/electronic producer James Ó Ceallaigh and UK rapper/producer Iceboy Violet, make it clear that a found/chosen community is home too. Sacred Lodge – A Bo Biboa [Avon Terror Corps] Out through Bristol collective Avon Terror Corps is the second album from Paris-based Matthieu Ruben N’Dongo, under the alias Sacred Lodge. Ambam comes out of his ethno-musicological studies into the Fang people of Central Africa, from whom he’s descended via his father. On top of his dubstep-influenced beats, his own voice is central: he “uses the scream as a vocal act of liberation in the face of oppression”, joined on a few tracks by guests, including Sara Persico who we heard a few weeks ago, and Cairo-based producer El Kontessa. Elements from Equatorial Guinea, horrorcore rap and bass music come together powerfully on this album – just as exciting as the African metal/bass music fusion of Lord Spikeheart. electroneya, MARTINA, TNSXORDS – (NO WAY OUT!) !مفيش مفر [raghoul/Bandcamp] From Moroccan bass label raghoul here’s a three track EP, (SAFETY HAZARD) مخاطر السلامة, from Egyptian producers/DJs electroneya and MARTINA (Martina Ashraf), who each contribute one track and then collaborate together with London-based TNSXORDS. These tracks express claustrophobia and repression through deconstructed, percussive bass music. Lila Tirando a Violeta, sideproject – Ostrich/Ñandú [Unguarded/Bandcamp] An unexpected single-track collaboration, “Ostrich/Ñandú” is just what you’d expect to get when crossing Icelandic IDM duo(?) sideproject and Ireland-based Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta – percussion-soaked frenetic beats, with even the backing tracks mostly jittering along in rhythm. Nobody here’s burying their head in the sand. Brandon Juhans – The Saw I Saw [Relaxin Records/Bandcamp] Brandon Juhans – Gardenia [Relaxin Records/Bandcamp] And scant relaxin’ here despite Relaxin Records‘ name. They’re the home for North Carolina producer Brandon Juhans‘ latest album, Recycler which, true to its name, repurposes sounds from Juhans’ past music under his own name and previously as Hanz, much in the way that his own music freely samples from any kind of music and dices it up into material for his sui generis productions. When he gets going, Juhans’ music sounds like hip-hop trying to be jungle, or jungle turned inside out. It’s a disorienting approach in the most pleasing way. Blawan – NOS [XL Recordings/Bandcamp] In the last few years, Jamie Roberts aka Blawan has released some of the most forward-thinking, fucked-up bass music around. From 2021’s Woke Up Right Handed, the bass rumbles and throbs, the beats syncopate and shuffle but hit haaaard. In 2023, Dismantled Into Juice went considerably left-field, with a couple of tracks featuring vocals from Monstera Black. And if last year’s BouQ veered back towards the dancefloor, it’s no less experimental for that. Notably in the meantime he also paired up with longtime collaborator Arthur Cayzer aka Pariah for two albums of industrial grindcore & noise rock (with hints of bass music) as Persher. This all culminates in October with the full-length album SickElixir, of which only one of its 14 tracks has a title announced. “NOS” has the high-tech sound design of those recent releases, along with a chugging rhythm that suggests this album will be essential from start to finish. POD & Edward Richards – Polar Phase [Kinetic Vision] As POD, the Naarm/Melbourne producer also known as JXTPS and Wu Kush has tended to focus more on bass music, from dubs

Tonight we’re showcasing quite a lot of genre-bending songcraft, with metal, hardcore punk, electro-pop, hyperpop, Afro-Caribbean, post-folk and other tendencies melting together. We’ve also got percussive workouts, minimal techno, maximal jungle, unclassifiable rhythmic noise and glitched ambient piano in there somewhere. LISTEN AGAIN a bend your own genres. Stream on demand over at fbi.radio, podcast here. Rún – Your Death My Body [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp] Rún – Terror Moon [Rocket Recordings/Bandcamp] The Irish word that gives the uncategorizable trio Rún its name can mean “secret, mystery, or love, or perhaps some elusive combination of the three”. The sense here of multiple possibilities and elusive meanings is not a bad metaphor for the band and their debut, self-titled album. Each member comes from distinct backgrounds: singer Tara Baoth Mooney has worked as a voice actor and experimental filmmaker, and has experience with folk and choral music traditions; Diarmuid MacDiarmada has been collaborating with industrial/sound collage pioneers Nurse With Wind and has performed with/arranged/produced musicians across folk, ambient, metal and elsewhere – and his brother Cormac is a member of drone-folk pioneers Lankum; and Rian Trench is a sound engineer and member of psych/jazz-tinged electronica duo Solar Bears, whose earliest releases were on Planet µ. But this album is released on Rocket Recordings, known for prog, postrock & metal’s outer limits as much as anything else, and the folk & electronics here do feel mediated through a kind of psychedelic rock and doom miasma. Yet, the most melodic parts are very beautiful. There’s so much to this album that I don’t think I’ve had time yet to fully appreciate it, but I know it’s going to be up there with the best this year. Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – Radioactive Dreams [Computer Students™/The Flenser/Bandcamp] Oklahoma is surprisingly rich with heavy and raucous bands, but the band that’s made it to the top of the pile, so to speak, are Chat Pile (named after the piles of chat, or toxic waste from lead-zinc mining), who combine sludge and hardcore with highly-strung noise rock and postpunk. They are apparently big fans of Hayden Pedigo, a man who embraces contradiction – or at least, is a lot of things all at once: a model, a politician (having run for mayor in his hometown of Amarillo, successfully exposing corporate corruption, if not actually winning) and a fingerpicking guitarist who embodies the avant-garde elements that were there since John Fahey at least. Chat Pile themselves always match their songs with experimental material and strange off-genre detours. So this is going to be an interesting & unpredictable album to say the least, with Chat Pile members singing clean vocals the perfectly match the dark folk undertones. Wreck and Reference – All That I Want [The Flenser/Bandcamp] Wreck and Reference – Dogtracking [The Flenser/Bandcamp] Also released via The Flenser are the emo/black/post-metal/electronic/noise originals Wreck and Reference, who we haven’t heard from since 2019’s occasionally-noisy, incredible Absolute Still Life – except for one spot-on Deftones cover. The duo are made up of drummer/noise musician Ignat Frege (aka Hand Model) and singer/multi-instrumentalist Felix Skinner. Here, again, their sound is predominately electronic, yet it can switch from minimal into screamo and back if it needs to. It’s all anxiety and only a little catharsis, and it doesn’t really manage to obey its own directive to Stay Calm. Darian Donovan Thomas – OhNo [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp] Darian Donovan Thomas – Flourescents [New Amsterdam Records/Bandcamp] Last year, American violinist, composer and multimedia artist Darian Donovan Thomas released his debut album A Room With Many Doors: Night, which drew on equal parts melodic classical arrangements and hyperpop songwriting & production. The album title clearly heralded a series, and thus here’s A Room With Many Doors: Day. Inside you’ll find looped, glitching violin, experimental pop, gently-autotuned vocals, drum machines and splashes processed violin. As I’ve said regarding the earlier singles, it’s perfectly-executed neo-classical hyperpop, and highly recommended. ROMÆO – Something New [ROMÆO Bandcamp] Something (else) new from Eora/Sydney’s ROMÆO, second track from her forthcoming EP. Starting with her voice low, this song quickly jumps into Four Tet-like house with bouncy, clicky percussion, as the narrator tries to make the most of daily tedium. Del4raa – Tehran [Apranik Records/Bandcamp] The Apranik Records label was setup by Iranian DJs Nesa Azadikhah and AIDA to embody the #womenlifefreedom movement, promoting the work of Iranian women. Delara Toyuri aka Del4raa is one half of Iranian techno duo Antechamber with Doci, and now releases her debut solo EP Zhian on Apranik. The EP is a musical chronicle of her experiences leaving her home in Iran to live in exile in France – the trajectory of grief to strength & resilience, and how “remembrance becomes resistance”. It begins beatless, moving through dense electronic textures until the beats finally arrive. There continues to be an incredible wealth of electronic music coming out of Iran. Obeka – Pressure ft. Entrañas [YUKU/Bandcamp] Manchester-based producer Obeka draws substantially on his Afro-Caribbean roots, moving from Bermuda to the UK as the country’s history of colonialism and class divides has brought itself fully into the open. His heavy bass music is showcased on his forthcoming album A World No More, drawing from gqom, kuduro, batida, dancehall and Afrobeat, but the album also features his own voice for the first time, heard on the first single which also features Ecuadorian producer Entrañas. It’s powerful work, auguring a brilliant album in late October. Valentina Magaletti & YPY – One Hour Visa [AD 93/Bandcamp] Valentina Magaletti & YPY – Her Own Reflection [AD 93/Bandcamp] Koshiro Hino, aka YPY, is leader of the percussion-centric math rock band goat (jp) (so named to differentiate them from the Swedish prog/psych/whatever group Goat…) The Japanese goat wield percussion and electronics with mathematical precision, and that’s present here too in YPY’s collaboration with the ubiquitous, brilliant drummer/percussionist Valentina Magaletti. Obviously rhythm is at the centre of the duo’s work, and there’s a magical confusion of where the live drums end and the electronic interventions begin – sometimes you hear reversed percussion hits and splatters that make it obvious, but they’re beautifully integrated into the live playing. Honestly it’s kinda crazy genius, I don’t know how these two musicians play so tightly and yet loosely. L own – Reincarnation [Western Lore/Bandcamp] Out on Western Lore, the jungle label run by Alex Eveson/Dead Man’s Chest are the incredbily evocative sounds of Russian producer L own. Daybreak Survivors Pt.1 is the first half of an album from the producer, who builds his jungle and breakbeat techno beats into cinematic works that recontextualise the nostalgic feel of the rave beats into a different kind of nostalgia. DJ Breathing Exercise – Homicide [DJ Breathing Exercise Bandcamp] London’s DJ Breathing Exercise usually makes electro & breakbeat, UK garage and the like. His just-released Same Thing Remixes enlist hardcore techno specialist DJ Persuasion and Bristol’s elusive Ghost Phone on the remix, as well as Noah Tucker of Ulterior Motives Records. But the most break-fuelled jungle tune on here is a DJ Breathing Exercise original. Absolute classic. Mineral – Shaolin [Metalheadz/Bandcamp] Helsinki d’n’b producer Mineral is no stranger to Metalheadz, but his latest EP Kage No Michi is a cut above. Dark atmospherics, razor sharp beats melding jungle with drum’n’bass… Superb. Klahrk – Sent Spinning [Different Circles/Bandcamp] Back in 2014(!), UK bass producers Mumdance and Logos founded the Different Circles label, with their first 12″, Weightless Vol. 1 also coining a new genre. “Weightless” is a vibe, but it’s one you can clearly recognize, combining grime and sound-art, somehow inverting bass music… Now there’s a new label compilation, Ping Volume One, which brings with it a new genre again. What’s Ping? You’ll know it when you hear it, but it’s the focal point that can be found in Weightless music where a single percussion hit (or synth ping) – not a kick drum – embodies the music’s rhythmic centre. This seems to me to extend from the real innovation of dubstep and grime, which turned the assumptions of jungle-drum’n’bass-uk garage on their head: rather than the beats impelling the music forward, garlanded by the basslines, it was the bass itself that held the rhythmic impetus. The beats were often able to syncopate and rubato out of their expected subdivisions – so theoretically, here those errant beats take centre-stage. The tracks on this compilation are pretty varied around UK bass styles; here trickster Klahrk sits the ping on the upbeat (the fourth beat of a 4/4 bar), surrounding it in frenetic bass-heavy electronic percussion which is kind of like jungle turned on its head. Scott Gordon – SKIM 3 [Superpang/Bandcamp] In a scant 5 years, Rome-based label Superpang has made itself an essential portal into experimental music worldwide, whether digital sound-art, avant-garde classical, free noise or, I dunno, anything! For some reason I find myself out of sync with Scott Gordon, aka SDGORDON aka Hiax, who I used to follow when he was making something like uk garage as Loops Haunt. Earlier this year he released an incredible album called Metals on Diagonal Records – not heavy metal, but electro-acoustic music made from metal bars hit mechanically with beaters, creating sounds which were predominantly not rhythmical! On the other hand, SKIM, his new release on Superpang, takes as its source material various power tools and miscellaneous debris (full list is on the Bandcamp page) which are processed through

Experimental pop hybrids, underground hip-hop, hip-hop-jazz hybrids, free jazz, free rock, dub, dub techno and industrial techno, experimental electronics of all sorts, North African electronic mutations, grinding drone, ambient-jazz Yolŋu, Norwegian folk-jazz… LISTEN AGAIN to some really good shit. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Water From Your Eyes – Spaceship [Matador Records/Bandcamp] The follow-up to Water From Your Eyes‘ breakthrough album Everyone’s Crushed is maybe their most “pop”, but still decidedly odd & experimental. It’s A Beautiful Place features three short interludes under 1 minute and one slightly longer at 1:29, and then a bunch of songs that are influenced by grunge and earlier indie rock (hello The Pixies), but with Nate Amos’s many quirks of electronic production, and Rachel Brown’s always-laconic delivery. It’s great. John Cale – 1000 Years [Domino] Having just released two new albums in 2 years – Mercy in 2023, POPtical Illusion in 2024 – the now-83 year old John Cale has now released the outtakes & remixes album MIXology (Volume 1), because one volume is never enough. If anything, it feels like an even stronger & more interesting collection than those albums, but maybe that’s just because it’s the one I’ve listened to most recently. There’s a brilliant song driven by a perfect drumbreak from the late Tony Allen, and there’s the murky, almost trip-hoppy feel of “1000 Years”. Don’t mistake this for an aside: it’s the real deal, just the latest album from a musical legend whose influence stretches from the pre-punk Velvet Underground through avant-garde minimalism to orchestral pop, adversarial but brilliant work with Brian Eno, production on The Stooges as well as Nico’s astonishing three albums The Marble Index, Desertshore and The End…, epochal cover versions (“Heartbreak Hotel“, “Hallelujah“) and honestly so much more. He played with his band at Unsound in Adelaide in July and there were some transcendent moments (much though I missed hearing, well, just about any of the songs I’d hoped for, except for “Heartbreak Hotel”). Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Nom De Guerre (feat. Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp] Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Shadowstep [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp] In 2022 billy woods released the incredible Aethiopes album, fully produced by Preservation. One of the guests was Gabe ‘Nandez and it was there that the seeds of this full-album collaboration were sown. The darkness of Preservation’s productions suit ‘Nandez’ searching lyrics, but also notable was the fact that both are French speakers: it’s ‘Nandez’ first language, via his Haitian side, and Preservation is half French. So apart from the album title Sortilège being French, some of the movie samples that always litter Backwoodz Studioz releases are here heard in French, and ‘Nandez swaps lines with his frequent collaborator Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko, switching between English & French without breaking the flow. The range of sounds Preservation uses is wild, from weird proggy synth drones to piano jabs, beats that boom and bap and shuffle and slap. It’s a journey, it’s a trip. Makaya McCraven – Technology (featuring Theon Cross & Ben LaMar Gay) [International Anthem/Bandcamp] Chicago drummer Makaya McCraven has released a series of albums and mixtapes now on International Anthem, generally taking full performances with jazz musicians from around the world and ripping them apart and recontextualising them in a way that’s influenced by hip-hop but still mostly done with a jazz sensibility. He’s just announced a collection of four EPs, all to be released simultaneously, which will also be available as a 2CD and 2LP set titled Off The Record. The idea behind the four EPs is that each is built from a particular performance or session. There are four singles out now – one from each EP – and the comparatively electronic track I chose is from Techno Logic (featuring Theon Cross & Ben LaMar Gay), the only one directly listing the collaborators in the title. Theon Cross is credited to tuba and electronics, while we find Ben LaMar Gay on cornet, voice, percussion, synths, electronics and diddley bow! And in the post-production McCraven adds more keys & synths as well as vibraphone and other percussion – so the electronic sound (“Techno Logic” after all) is baked in, and perhaps no surprise this is the one I leant towards for tonight. You know all four of these EPs are going to be rad though. Endlings w/ VNM – if all silence orders me [Whited Sepulchre Records/Bandcamp] I’ve never been a big fan of Deerhoof somehow, but I admire what they do (e.g. recently pulling out of Spotify), and guitarist John Dieterich does lots of cool stuff, e.g. this duo with Mary Halvorson. Endlings is another duo, with the brilliant Raven Chacon, who works across noise music and composition – his astonishing Voiceless Mass won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2022, and he’s released music on Faith Coloccia & Aaron Turner’s SIGE Records and remixed Turner’s band SUMAC last year alongside Moor Mother, among many other achievements. Their first two releases are fucking phenomenal noise/electro-acoustic/experimental whatnot – they’re on their Bandcamp. What’s this though? Parallels 03 is an album, made with longtime collaborators from the Vancouver New Music Circle. It’s also a website with a trippy matryoshka text which you should click around and you might learn something. I did. And yeah, it’s New Music, it’s free improv, it’s noise, it’s electro-acoustic weirdness. Anna Högberg Attack – Hematopoesi [Radio Edit] [fönstret/Bandcamp] There’s something in the water in Sweden that seems to help grow monstrous saxophonists. But comparisons are odious and the massive sound of Anna Högberg Attack is all its own – and all the vision of the brilliant Swedish saxophonist, bandleader and composer Anna Högberg, here leading a version of her “Attack” that’s a double sextet! Alongside her alto sax is tenor sax, trumpet, trombone & tuba, turntables from renowned Viennese experimental musician Dieb13, piano from Thanatosis label boss Alex Zethson, guitar from Finn Loxbo and double bass from Gus Loxbo (both of whom also play saw), and two drummers. The sound is immense, at times sounding like heavy rock riffage, at times the multi-soloing of free jazz, but utterly under control, beautifully structured (Högberg wrote it for her late father, so as heavy as it is, it’s full of love). This excerpt is awesome, but you need to hear it in context too – the first side spans nearly 18 minutes, the second over 15 minutes. fönstret is the label of edition festival, an experimental/free improv/jazz festival run in Stockholm by ex-pat Aussie John Chantler, who also released the massive 5CD set of free jazz quartet أحمد [Ahmed], recorded at the 2022 festival. Phenomenal World – bliberdublub [Rock Is Hell Records/Bandcamp] All three members of the experimental trio Phenomenal World have been active in the Viennese experimental music scene(s) for decades – they no doubt have connections with Dieb13, who played with Anna Högberg Attack above. Michael Fischer here plays “feedback saxophone”, an instrument he invented 2½ decades ago, which uses acoustic phenomena to generate feedback (not through amplification); he’s able to create percussive and otherworldly sounds which only sometimes sound like sax. Philipp Quehenberger and Didi Kern (aka Ddkern) have worked together for years, and both have had some involvement with the glitch/experimental electronic pioneers (Editions) Mego. Here Quehenberger plays synthesizer, DDkern plays drums, and they act as rhythm section and give the album foundation in electronic music, techno, krautrock etc. Whether you hear this as avant-garde or not, this fits well into the lineage of Austrian/German postrock/electronic, from Radian to Kammerflimmer Kollektief, To Rococo Rot to Trapist. Adrian Sherwood – The Well Is Poisoned (Dub) [On-U Sound/Bandcamp] Introducing Adrian Sherwood in the notes of this playlist would be a fool’s errand, and probably superfluous anyway, but suffice to say that Sherwood, sometimes credited as Crocodile, or Adrian Maxwell, pioneered dub production in the UK from the late 1970s, meaning he was able to work with the best first & second-wave Jamaican musicians, learning mixing and production from the ground up. And while he absolutely brings real authenticity and respect for the originators – having worked extensively with the likes of Lee Scratch Perry and The Roots Radics’ Style Scott – he also brought dub production into avant-garde territories (e.g. early African Dub Charge, Little Annie Anxiety), was involved in the cross-pollination of punk & reggae (with The Slits and with The Slits’ Ari Up in The New Age Steppers), melding dub with industrial and funk with TACK>>HEAD and more. I’m particularly partial to the blending of UK club & electro with dub & reggae on The Emotional Hooligan, credited to Gary Clail & On-U Sound System. OK, that’s our little history lesson. The Collapse of Everything is Sherwood’s first solo album (not a collaboration or compilation) since 2012’s Survival & Resistence and only his fourth ever, by my counting. And the thing is – the thing is, often great producers and mixers are really great at that stuff far more than songwriting and composition. Of course Sherwood draws on many friends, from Tackhead/Dub Syndicate colleagues Doug Wimbish & the late Keith LeBlanc to the likes of Brian Eno and Gaudi, and the musicianship is impeccable. But there’s something too polite about this – vaguely Eastern European/West Asian scales, reggae off-beats, nice melodies, and awfully tasteful dub production. I mean, it’s lovely and special in its way, but given the range of groundbreaking work Sherwood’s done, I wish it had more edge. Anyway, this one I played is a nice’un. Travis Cook – Australian brainrot [Travis Cook Bandcamp] I love how Travis Cook just casua