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 <a href="https://monoskop.org