Playlist 01.12.24

Utility Fog

Look, the year’s coming to a close. What a fucking relief. Let it go, let it go. I mean, obviously 2025’s gonna be a lot worse, but maybe it can also be better in some ways? Let’s make it so.
On the other hand, there’s been so much great music, and it’s still coming! It just refuses to stop. Here, see…
(You can LISTEN AGAIN over at FBi’s website or podcast here)

Sandy Chamoun, Anthony Sahyoun, Jad Atoui – Taha Layl – طاح الليل [Ruptured Records/Bandcamp]
The last release for the year from Beirut’s Ruptured Records comes from three great experimental Lebanese artists, Sandy Chamoun, Anthony Sahyoun and Jad Atoui. Sandy Chamoun has released some incredible experimental electronic pop stuff, and also leads the postpunk/psych/Arabic free-jazz group SAMAN. Anthony Sahyoun and Jad Atoui both make experimental electro-acoustic music, and have recorded together as NP. The title of their album, Ghadr – غ​د​ر, means approximately “Treachery”, and is clearly affected by the destruction and terrorisation of Gaza that was occurring during its making. Now Israel has turned its attention on Lebanon (again), faux-ceasefire notwithstanding: Sandy Chamoun’s family home in southern Lebanon was destroyed yesterday, I believe. So the all-encompassing noise, from guitars and electronics, is easily understandable here, but the beauty of Chamoun’s Arabic vocals exquisitely offsets these sounds even if we don’t understand the lyrics. There are deep and wide references here, including a quote from an Instagram post by Yousef al-Domouky about the genocide in Gaza, poetry from Paul Chaoul, and on the opening track, a traditional Bedouin folk song. It’s stunning work from start to finish.

Ruth Goller – Often they came to visit, even just to see how she was (M1) [Ruth Goller Bandcamp/International Anthem/International Anthem Bandcamp]
Ruth Goller – Below my skin [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
Ruth Goller – How to be free from it [International Anthem/Bandcamp]
I’ve been a little bit obsessed with the uncanny style of UK-based Italian bassist Ruth Goller over the last few weeks. Goller has been playing with some of the most cutting-edge jazz & improv musicians in the UK, as a bass player – but in her solo work she writes these incredible angular melodies with strange intervals and harmonies, and she performs them on her electric bass, shadowed with her voice intoning nonsense syllables. And it’s spine-tingling.
So, Goller’s solo album Skylla was originally released in 2021 in a CD edition, and a 2nd edition, both of which are now rare as hens’ teeth. BUT the mighty International Anthem, cutting-edge Chicago jazz label, has just re-released it in handsome vinyl editions. Earlier this year, the label released her follow-up, Skyllumina. This album follows Skylla closely, with those bass+vox melodies still featuring, but while Skylla was almost entirely Goller solo, Skyllumina features different collaborators on each track – all of whom are drummers or percussionists (other than Lauren Kinsella singing on one track). This gives the album a sizeable range, from the nimble jazz/postrock skitter of Tom Skinner on “Below my skin” (you’ll know him from The Smile, or Sons of Kemet, but do check out his own solo album on International Anthem!) to the quasi-death-metal onslaught of Emanuele Maniscalo on “How to be free from it”. Notable also is fellow British jazz-fusionist (and International Anthem artist) Bex Burch, playing two types of African thumb piano on “She was my own she was myself”.

Rikuto Fujimoto – Mebuki (Prelude) [130701/Bandcamp]
Rikuto Fujimoto – Intersection 1 [130701/Bandcamp]
Well, speaking of singing doubled melodies, here’s another late-entry standout for 2024, the debut album of Kyoto-born, Tokyo-based pianist and composer Rikuto Fujimoto, released by the ever-reliable 130701. With such a glut of mediocre post-Nils/post-Ólafur “piano classical” out there, aimed squarely at Spotify playlists, it’s always great to hear people doing something different in that space. Not only is Fujimoto completing a composition degree, he takes his pieces in unusual harmonic directions, and his high, androgynous voice is electrically attractive on these pieces. The album is about memory, and the pieces were performed without sheet music. With his vocalisations (which are, like Ruth Goller’s, wordless, or at least languageless), this decision gives the recordings a very intimate feel – you should invite yourself in.

Passepartout Duo – Imitates a Penguin [Passepartout Duo Bandcamp]
Nicoletta Favari & Christopher Salvito take their Passepartout Duo around the world almost constantly, going from residency to residency, and as well as creating dependably lovely music, they create musical instruments, or interfaces. For instance, check out this prototype looper/sampler instrument they demo’d on Instagram recently. Their new album Argot is literally about the interface & relationship between human performance and technology. The duo themselves tend to play piano and tuned percussion as well as synthesizers; here they add strings on some tracks, but the live instruments are often following scores generated by a Serge modular system – infamously complex and hard to control. So you hear piano melodies jumping around strange intervals in strange timings. It’s uncanny music, quite beautiful and rather alien.

Penelope Trappes – Platinum [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
I believe I’m able to declare this to be a world premiere of the second single from Penelope Trappes‘ forthcoming album A Requiem, her first on One Little Independent, home of Björk, Glasser and many others. Penelope’s art is truly unique, precariously tethered to song but with the art of sound at its centre, the evocation of a feeling or state of being… Just like the chilling first single, “Sleep”, “Platinum” comes with an intense video. This one’s about inner strength – how to find strength in what we know are really difficult times. And there’s more beautiful, scratchy cello here too, courtesy of Maddie Cutter.

BZDB – Water [AD 93/Bandcamp]
BZDB – Stockwell [AD 93/Bandcamp]
It’s just about time that I stop commenting on how AD 93, Nic Tasker’s label previously known as Whities, has moved far beyond the leftfield dance music that was once their core material. Out now is the excellent debut album from BZDB, a collaboration between London/Marseilles-based poet Belinda Zhawi aka MA.MOYO and multidisciplinary artist Duncan Bellamy, best known as a founding member of jazz/classical/electronic crossover band Portico Quartet. The elliptically titled album Jump Ship, Sit Lean, Be Still, Stand Tall very much suits their “sonic poetry” tag, whether it’s plaintive strings, soft piano or plunging electro-dub beats that support and undercut the spoken words.

David August – VĪS (Cinna Peyghamy Reinterpretation) [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]
David August – VĪS (Marina Herlop Reinterpretation) [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year, Italian-German composer/producer/DJ David August released a wonderful EP entitled Workouts, with four percussive, buoyant techno cuts. But his last full album, last year’s VĪS, was quite a different affair, a deeply considered work drawing from Middle Eastern philosophy, combining sound-art and composition – and occasional beats. That album has now been “reinterpreted” by 13 artists, and it’s an excellent line-up, including Aho Ssan, Ulla, Valentina Magaletti, claire rousay and many others. French-Iranian percussionist Cinna Peyghamy is a standout, layering elements from the album with his brilliant percussion. And the very versatile Marina Herlop manages to include classical piano, her own vocals, and manic drill’n’bass programming in her cut.

Cleo AD – Charge Init (feat. Pharu) [YUKU]
Cleo AD – Let You [YUKU]
Here’s YUKU digging up brilliant young artists who you may not find anywhere else. Cleo AD is Sebastian G from Leipzig, who’s been involved with the bass scene for a while, and brings elements of grime and low-slung hip-hop with that deconstructed club vibe, and beats that run from sub-140 to jungle and breakcore. Crazy stuff.

Morwell – This Word, Life (remix) [Spiritual Transmissions/Morwell Bandcamp]
Morwell – Let Us Make (remix) [Spiritual Transmissions/Morwell Bandcamp]
Earlier this year Max Morwell launched his own Spiritual Transmissions label with the album Into the Light, extending his production out from breakbeat-oriented rave into shoegaze, psychedelia, and hints of free jazz and IDM, with many freaky psychedelic voice samples. Just in time for the end of the year, he’s releasing the companion Into the Light Remixes, emphasising the early Orb influences and enticing these tracks back towards the club. So good!

James Adrian Brown – Without A Trace [James Adrian Brown Bandcamp]
Following a successful career as a rock guitarist in Leeds rock band Pulled Apart By Horses, James Adrian Brown has for the last few years been crafting a new space for himself in instrumental electronic music. Earlier this year was the melodic Terra Incognita, but now he’s folding more beats into his music on Without A Trace. The EP also comes with a nice mid-tempo jungle/hardcore version from Leigh D Oliver‘s Faux Soul, usually known more for house & techno sounds.

Belief Defect – Apprehension Engine [raster/Bandcamp]
Desire and Discontent is the second album from Belief Defect, the duo of Moe Espinosa aka Drumcell and Mexico’s Luis Flores. A crunchy, rumbling, energetic fusion of industrial, techno and idm, this is a dark reflection of our current times.

LTO – Gwddw [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Finally the new LTO EP, The Return, is out! One of the members of the mysterious (post-)dubstep crew Old Apparatus, active from around 2010-2013, LTO continues to preserve the mystery – as far as I know, his real name’s not widely known, but he’s from Bristol. After a handful of fairly underground solo releases, LTO released two very soundtracky albums for the fairly wide-ranging, postrock/post-classical leaning European label Denovali. They’re both lovely (check Déja Rêvé and Daear), but only preserve hints of dubsteppy bass. So it’s cool to hear the range of stuff on this EP, definitely leaning back into the bass biz, but also world music and those cinematic influences. An album called Carapace is coming next year – looking forward to it!

Murcof – Tomorrow Part. II [InFiné/Bandcamp]
From the early ’00s, Mexican musician Fernando Corona aka Murcof was a distinctive voice in minimalist techno, often drawing classical samples into his loops, sketching techno’s rhythms with clicks and glitches, underpinning it with sub-bass. He began a decade or more earlier with rock, prog and ambient electronic musics, and as he entered his 50s, he looked back at 1980s synths as an inspiration. Twin Color (vol. I) doesn’t exactly sound like ’80s music, but its take on dancefloor music is less interested in the micro-level, providing cinematic scope and warm nostalgia.

Mayari – Light 2.0 [Mayari Bandcamp]
Mayari – Heal Me [Mayari Bandcamp]
Naarm musician Alison Adriano’s Mayari brings a form of pulsing techno that leaves room for experimental sound and ambient passages, as well as beguiling hints of pop with her own voice. The buzzing noise drones and synth warbles on “Heal Me” keep the choral and melodic voices in check, while “Light 2.0” brings flutes along with the voice to her Four Tet-like upbeat rhythms. The blissful and down-to-earth elements exist in harmony. An exciting talent.

Shugorei – Roboto [4000 Records/Bandcamp]
Let us travel now to Meanjin/Brisbane, where we find the ever-adventurous Shugorei branching out in an unexpected direction. Nozomi Omote draws on her Japanese heritage with a song about a dreamer and a robot that’s hyperpop, but make it ’80s pop – and then halfway through Thomas Green’s day-glo synths are joined by Dan Curro, usually a cellist, playing intense, euphoric slap bass. Wait, I’m being told this is meant to be ’90s electro-pop, but… OK, somewhere in between, yet uncannily now-coded. If the whole album’s like this, we’re in for a treat.

Colourfields – outrunnr [Colourfields Bandcamp]
Now back here in Gadigal country, we find a resurrected project from Microfiche keyboardist Novak Manojlovic and sound engineer George Sheridan. Colourfields‘ 2018 album Body Objects was a colourful mix of electronica, jazz and instrumental r’n’b. On “outrunnr”, the first track from their CFEP out December 10th, the electro-pop hiding in plain sight on that album comes to the fore, with a track that hasn’t entirely lost the jazz roots, but lets the jazz drums pull it more in a postrock or indietronic direction. It’s a very fine piece, and you’ll be able to hear the whole EP in no time.

Matthew Herbert – The Horse Is Not Quiet (aus UMA Remix) [Accidental Records/Bandcamp]
The penchant lately for special editions / deluxe editions that come out hot on the tails of new albums is kinda odd – obviously it comes from the Spotify era, where you can easily update your published version of an album. But releasing brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not so soon, on physical formats? Um… OK.
Anyway, Matthew Herbert released The Horse, his album literally made of a horse (and an orchestra), in May last year, so the special edition is by no means an exercise in indecisiveness. The connection I’m drawing is more that Accidental Records decided to rename the original album as The Horse Special Edition, such that the old album on Bandcamp redirects to the new, and the original physical editions remain attached. The special edition contains a few new horse tracks, plus a bunch of really great remixes, ranging from recent collaborator Momoko Gill‘s electro-pop rendition to Richard Skelton‘s electro-acoustic orchestrations and Robag Wruhme‘s typically stylish and hypnotic minimal techno/microhouse. Robag’s mix was released a year ago, but the way I found out about this re-edition was via Yasuhiko Fukuzono aka aus, a beautiful Japanese producer of IDM, folktronica and ambient music, who’s here with two different remixes. The “UMA Remix” of “The Horse Is Quiet” (except it’s “The Horse Is Not Quiet”) is a kind of footwork-folktronica thing of skittery beauty, with gorgeous string lines joining in the last quarter. On the other hand his “aus Reprise”, dubbed “The Horse Is Quiet Cause Sleep”, is a gorgeous layered thing that slips between minimal electronica and post-classical, all the while hosting clattery field recordings from the original horse bones.

Jules Reidy – Every Day There’s a Sunrise [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Australian guitarist Jules Reidy has created a genre all their own from the eerie resonances of the alternate tunings they use, on acoustic and electric guitar played in ways that seem to draw from folk fingerpicking and Indian ragas, while their voice is equally eerily autotuned into alienness. But Ghost/Spirit, Reidy’s 2025 album coming out on Thrill Jockey, is a transformative album for Reidy, which not only acknowledges their transgender identity, but also heralds a rediscovery of mysticism in the wake of a relationship’s end, so the positive outlook on “Every Day There’s a Sunrise” comes from a turning-outward, finding love in a universal context rather than interpersonal. This one song’s one part of a whole work though, which will arrive in full on February 21st next year.

Winter Family – On Beautiful Days [Sub Rosa/Bandcamp/Murailles Music/Bandcamp]
On Beautiful Days is the fourth album from French-Israeli duo Winter Family, which came out in September via Murailles Music and Sub Rosa. The multi-disciplinary duo, made up of Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine as well as their daughter Saralei, work in documentary theatre as well as what they call “weird wave” or “funeral pop”. They combine elements of chanson with lo-fi postpunk synth, with Rosenthal’s spoken or chanted poetry telling stories of life in Israel/Palestine and France, of women, of conspiracy theories, of capitalism and colonialism, of the “blindness and violence of Israeli society and the indoctrination of its population”, and of the occupation of Palestine. The title track of their new album is sung in French, Hebrew and English, about looking elsewhere from here.
Now please watch this beautiful and heartbreaking video for their track “Gaza”, from back in 2017. The lyrics are in the description.

Listen again — ~209MB