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, putti