Playlist 01.09.24

Utility Fog

A few important albums came out this week, so we're doing that Utility Fog thing of multiple tracks from the same artist/release. And it's allll great. Of course.

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Kim Gordon x Model Home - razzamatazz [Matador/Bandcamp]
Less than six months after her album The Collective came out, Kim Gordon's back with a new single that's just as crunchy and weird as the last 2 albums. This time it's a collaboration with weird rap duo Model Home, whose collab with Wolf Eyes from last year is excellent too. Gordon's speak-singing fits well with Model Home's rapping.

Patio - Inheritance (Mandy, Indiana Remix) [Fire Talk]
One of my favourite bands of last year, Manchester's Mandy, Indiana, here deliver a beefed up, noisier version of the song "Inheritance" from their label-mates Patio. The New York band use the tag "pastel post-punk" on their Bandcamp, although equally they fit well into the '80s/'90s all-female indie rock space. The original song is from their second album Collection, which comes recommended if you're into that kind of stuff (think Throwing Muses, The Breeders etc).

Seefeel - Multifolds [Warp Records/Bandcamp]
Seefeel - Lose The Minus [Warp Records/Bandcamp]
Coming a mere 13 years after their last release, which itself came some 14 years after their first run, Everything Squared is immediately utterly Seefeel. The "band" is now pared down to Mark Clifford's production, with mailed-in vocal samples from Sarah Peacock, who's now based in Berlin. It's really just an EP, but an absolute pleasure to have them back anyway, with pulsing fragments of vocals, dubwise bass and micro-melodies. As I said a few weeks ago, they've always had a temporally displaced sound - constructed entirely through digital technology but somehow analogue, even organic sounding. They could just give us... more?

Christopher Chaplin - The Feathered Girl [Fabrique Records/Bandcamp]
British composer Christopher Chaplin's music works contemporary classical elements into experimental, post-industrial and krautrock-influenced spaces. His latest EP Door 1 Door 2 is out later this month, exploring how myths are part of collective memory, with spoken word by Carmen Alt-Chaplin.

Chelsea Wolfe - Dusk (Ash Koosha Remix) [Loma Vista/Bandcamp]
Chelsea Wolfe - Whispers In The Echo Chamber (Forest Swords Remix) [Loma Vista/Bandcamp]
The latest album from Chelsea Wolfe, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, found her in her most electronic setting yet, albeit still with her usual gothic metal vibes. Six months later comes the Undone EP, with remixes from the likes of ††† (Crosses), Justin K Broadrick, Full of Hell and Boy Harsher, to give you an idea of the breadth. But tonight I played a glitchy take by Ash Koosha and a deconstruction by Forest Swords, both of which play with slow-fast beats.

Flower Storm - World's Creator Is My Ally (Aceed Mix) [Flower Storm Bandcamp]
Disapora Iranians (like Ash Koosha above) Sepehr (NYC) and Kasra Vaseghi (London) formed Flower Storm in 2023 with the aim of recontextualising the sounds of their culture with the club styles they love. Together they created a huge sound library with traditional Persian percussion and string instruments, sampled vocals and more, which they cast into techno, house, drum'n'bass and so on. Do O Nim collects three mutated versions of tracks from their first 2 EPs, with the "Aceed Mix" here taking "World's Creator Is My Ally" into skittery junglish acid.

gyrofield - Lagrange [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]
With previous releases on drum'n'bass labels like Critical Music and Metalheadz as well as more experimental works, Bristol-based Hong Kong producer gyrofield lands on XL Recordings with a bang with their four-tracker These Heavens. It's drum'n'bass with ambient and hyper-pop influences, continuing pushing the trajectory of d'n'b into uncharted waters.

Reeko - Urmah 2 [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]
The most unexpected forays into drum'n'bass/170bpm in the last 2 years have come from longtime techno mainstay Reeko, aka Architectural, aka Spanish producer Juan Rico. The Berlin-based Samurai Music has already been exploring the space where minimal drum'n'bass meets techno, and perhaps for that reason Rico sent them a demo which became his first EP for the label, Confront the Serpent, last year. This was followed by Tomorrow Doesn't Exist earlier this year, and now the incredible six-track mini-album Urmah. There's a lot of dub techno in these head-nodding tunes, but also explosive percussion and breaks. It really is a hybrid style like no other, dazzling at its best.

Tigran Hamasyan - The saviour is condemned [naïve/Project website]
Tigran Hamasyan - The curse (blood of an innocent is spilled) [naïve/Project website]
Tigran Hamasyan - Postlude after seven winters [naïve/Project website]
The new album from Armenian jazz piano virtuoso Tigran Hamasyan is a whole project, featuring the stunning artwork of Khoren Matevosyan. Yes, it's a double album (double CD and somehow fitting on 2 vinyl records), but it's also an online video game and multimedia stage production and film. Titled The Bird of a Thousand Voices, it reworks an old Armenian legend called Hazaran Blbul, and so the album follows the story from start to completion. Musically it's everything Tigran always offers - insane time signatures, bewitching melodies, those gorgeous Armenian harmonies, incredible piano playing and incredible supporting musicians on drums, bass, violin and vocals, with heavy metal and electronic influences. I played a couple of energetic early tracks plus the beautiful coda.

Laurie Anderson - This Modern World [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - To Circle the World [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - I See Something Shining (feat. ANOHNI) [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Take-off [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Aloft (feat. ANOHNI) [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Road to Mandalay [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Laurie Anderson - Lucky Dime [Nonesuch Records/Bandcamp]
Only four years after Landfall, her album with Kronos Quartet about the the flooding of New York City by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Laurie Anderson returns with another concept album. Amelia follows the doomed last flight of the pioneering airplane pilot Amelia Earhart, whose plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean three-quarters of the way through her attempt at circumnavigating the globe. It's taken 25 years to be completed in this final form, performed by Anderson in her speak-singing style, playing violin & viola and some electronics, while ANOHNI takes care of the more melodic singing, with a band featuring Marc Ribot and Kenny Wollessen, plus Rob Moose, Nadia Sirota and Gabriel Cabezas' Trimbach Trio on strings and the Filharmonie Brno on orchestral duties. Despite this loaded crew, it's a surprisingly low-key, un-showy album, with passages depicting the peaceful monotony of Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan's travel. The sound of the motor, and its imitation by sliding strings, returns throughout the piece, which is bookended by the words "It was the sound of the motor I remember the most". It's a masterful work, at times joyous, often soothing, and more than a little haunting.

Lia Kohl - Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren [Moon Glyph/Bandcamp]
Lia Kohl - Tennis Court Light, Snow [Moon Glyph/Bandcamp]
Chicago cellist and sound-artist Lia Kohl has built up a gorgeous catalogue of odd, inquisitive and considered sound works over a very short period of time, with releases on Skeletons' Shinkoyo, Longform Editions and American Dreams. Her new album Normal Sounds is released by the adventurous Portland (Oregon) tape/vinyl label Moon Glyph, and the album title is a nice description of Kohl's practice (as are the track titles). As well as field recordings and the sounds of "normal" human activity, Kohl likes to incorporate the randomness of a radio scrolling through frequencies and settling on whatever happens to be on the airwaves. And of course there's her cello, which along with electronics can slip into the mix and transform everything. It's not always clear even from the titles what we're hearing ("Tornado Siren"?) but Kohl is second to none in melding these real-world "normal sounds" with her layered, processed instrument and synths. Another beautiful work from a unique artist.

Daniela Huerta - Fondo [Elevator Bath/Bandcamp]
Daniela Huerta - Seqvana [Elevator Bath/Bandcamp]
Long-lived Texas label Elevator Bath encompasses musique concrète, electroacoustic sound-art, noise and drone... at least. Label boss Colin Andrew Sheffield has kindly shared the debut solo album from Berlin-based Mexican artist Daniela Huerta, which comes out in late October. Huerta is one half of Huerta Ensamble with Concepción Huerta (I think no relation!) and DJs as Baby Vulture at venues like Berghain and CTM. Soplo bears some aural indicators of contemporary experimental electronic, but draws as much from musique concrète and electroacoustic music. The album opens with the dripping and flowing water of "Seqvana", which is combined with muted, pinging synth tones and clanging sounds. There's always a clear sense of space. Water sounds percolate through the whole album, joined with blurred voice, trembling organs, reverberating choirs and more. So when we reach "Fondo", the album's seventh track, it's a surprise to hear an almost march-like two-note bassline underscoring lurching synth horns (and bubbling water). Halfway through the bassline disappears and the synth tones are engulfed in increasingly resonating pink noise. Soplo is an artful album of sonic illusions, concrète music as it was always intended.

Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman - At Seventy-Three Miles [Basin Rock/Bandcamp]
Michael Chapman - Untitled #7 [Basin Rock/Bandcamp]
Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman - A Third Revision (Or Evolution) [Basin Rock/Bandcamp]
British guitarist and singer-songwriter Michael Chapman worked across many genres up until he passed away in 2021 aged 80. His latter-day following was confirmed in the Tompkins Square-issued compilation Oh Michael, Look What You've Done: Friends Play Michael Chapman, featuring Lucinda Williams, Meg Baird and Thurston Moore among others. One Australian fan was Brisbane's Andrew Tuttle, who's made a career around electronically-mediated banjo and acoustic guitar-picking soundscapes. By luck, Chapman's partner Andru had been enjoying Tuttle's album on Basin Rock, Fleeting Adventure, in the years after Chapman's passing, and so Andrew Tuttle has had the privilege of expanding on and reworking the unfinished final instrumental recordings of Chapman. The album Another Tide, Another Fish is out through Basin Rock and features the original recordings on a second disc, allowing us to hear just how sensitively Andrew has transformed the original works. Each of Tuttle's track titles contains numbers that allow us to reference them to the originals, so I played "Untitled #7" after Tuttle's "At Seventy-Three Miles". Chapman already takes his beautifully assured fingerpicked guitar into spacey electronic waters, and Tuttle dives deep into the currents with granular processing, timestretching and other techniques, as well as adding his own banjo. A pretty remarkable project altogether.

Loop Year - Heel Turn [Loop Year Bandcamp]
Tim Koch this week alerted me to Loop Year, a new ambient/IDM project from Adelaide's Cailan Burns, who was one half of seminal Aussie electronic experimentalists Pretty Boy Crossover with Jason Sweeney. Sweeney appears here on "Bass guitar noodles", which Tim suggested makes this an ersatz Pretty Boy Crossover revival, and Tim added cymbal splashing and mixing know-how. It's lovely electronic (g)loopiness as per the original PBXO.

Connor D'Netto - Witness [Room40/Bandcamp]
Last week when I played some material from the brilliant duo release Material from Connor D'Netto x Yvette Ofa Agapow, I mentioned that a composition of D'Netto's was caught up in a controversy recently. Pianist Jayson Gillham has been performing a series of concerts with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and at a recent MSO concert, as an encore he performed D'Netto's composition "Witness". The piece is dedicated to the journalists of Gaza, although the work more generally refers to the idea of recasting doom-scrolling as "bearing witness" to the horrific images we are seeing not only from Gaza, but "from Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, the riots in Bangladesh, school shootings in the USA, and closer to home the treatment of First Nations People in incarceration". When Gilham performed the piece a couple of weeks ago he drew the audience's attention to the appalling number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza (a number already far too high before October 7th). In response, the MSO management (it's not clear who) immediately cancelled the remaining performances by the orchestra. There was widespread outrage, and a campaign by my union, MEAA, who represent both Australian journalists and Australian musicians, called for the decision to be reversed. Surprisingly, this did happen - the MSO claimed "a mistake" was made, and now there will be an independent review into the orchestra's decision-making, led by Peter Garrett(!) Nevertheless, this speaks to the horrendous censorious situation in the arts and beyond, worldwide, when it comes to any speech sympathetic to Palestinians. So it's pleasing to find D'Netto's touching piece - performed by Gillham - now available via Room40, with all proceeds to be donated to PARA - Palestine Australia Relief and Action.

Saoirse Prince - Earthy flavours envelop my tongue and slide down my throat [Saoirse Prince Bandcamp]
We finish tonight with another piece of delicate piano music, from new Sydney artist Saoirse Prince, whose debut album Late Winter is her personal take on the "neoclassical" piano genre, drawing pleasingly from the likes of Sophie Hutchings as much as any of the big international names. I'm particularly attracted to the pieces that complicate the piano sound with electronics, such as the persistent delay throughout this track, mushrooming into distortion before petering out.

Listen again — ~201MB