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, and the first single is distinctive for Peligo’s much deeper-voiced delivery and its quiet/loud dynamics.

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 Hin