Utility Fog

Peter Hollo
  • 5.0 (6)
  • MUSIC COMMENTARY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Peter Hollo curates each episode around a narrative of genre-plasticity, deep-diving into artist histories, side projects and influences. Challenging sounds are contextualised within musical movements, surprising connections are uncovered, unfairly overlooked works are revisited. Come on a journey through music in all its ugly beauty.

  1. 4 DAYS AGO

    Playlist 03.05.26

    Lovely songs and weiiird songs, vocal manipulation, lots of variants of jungle/drum’n’bass/IDM, processed guitars, prepared piano, avant-garde flute. LISTEN AGAIN to the avant-garde of the avant-garde. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Jesca Hoop – Playground Jesca Hoop – Signal To Noise Helen Svoboda – Void Of Space Buffalo Daughter – Harm No More sandscape – nisa neon light ELUCID & Sebb Bash – First Light (feat. MATTIE) Seefeel – AM Flares plunderphonics – tooBillies – naked origin vocals Stephen Vitiello and Edwin Torres – Easy with tle Dogs Versus Shadows & Nicholas Langley – Slapdash And Bouldered Dogs Versus Shadows & Nicholas Langley – One Magic Camera gi – stemmed gi – spel Steve Flato x Yapping Portal x datewithdeath x Carl Kruger – Drum Machine Fell Into The Bath (Again) Low End Activist – Indigo HLZ – Oracles dan le sac – Monark Bass Mantra – Unit 4-5 Ah! Kosmos & Hainbach – Shelter Lasus – Street Lasus – Undo Alister Spence – Rain Phase Alister Spence – Searchlight Juli Deák – Brisk Juli Deák – Contact Listen again — ~219MB

    2 hr

  2. 26 APR

    Playlist 26.04.26

    Jungle turning up in the darndest places tonight, as is… saxophone? Jazz stretched to its limits, and electronica during wartime… LISTEN AGAIN in the darndest places – stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Butthole Surfers – Imbuya Picastro – Fell The Family Tree Carl Gari – Swim feat. Polygonia james K – On God (Roza Terenzi Remix) Lyra Pramuk – Ending (Djrum Endless Rework) dgoHn – I Couldn’t Remember So I Made Something Up SPECIAL REQUEST – Uncanny Valley (gyrofield remix) los pulpitos – ii ii ii los pulpitos – Archipelago Appleblim – Thunderstorm Rob Smith – Revolve (feat Tony Wrafter) Ital Tek – Kill Switch Jensen Interceptor – Flux Entrance Rodja – Ajam (Version) Paperclip Minimiser – TT A1 Ptastvo – Bowls With Souls Bobby Ingham – Easy Mush Bobby Ingham – I Feel So Good I Swear I Could Fly Berndt / Schmidt – Gecko Lazzaro Harrington, Jaffe, Shiroishi – FRACTAL HASH Adam Schatz – A Voice Screaming All Aboard Purelink & Rainy Miller – Barrons Hotel (I, To, Thee.) Listen again — ~222MB

    2 hr

  3. 19 APR

    Playlist 19.04.26

    We got songs of all sorts tonight and non-songs for most sorts too. Take your pick! Abigail Snail – Good Grief Abigail Snail – Attach Bayonets Jungstötter – Overturn Massive Attack x Tom Waits – Boots on the Ground Loraine James – Flatline ft. Miho Hatori Naavikaran & Simo Soo – For You Page deafkids – REFLEXO james K – Doom Bikini (Hesaitix Remix) Zoë Mc Pherson – Bang Bang (Nziria remix) Zoë Mc Pherson – Ambient Snake (Yushh remix) ARTISOMA – Boraq OD Bongo – crystallinoron Haydn Douet Lukies – Amolador Tristan Arp – Forking Paths Yunzero – Cool Skunk Hora Lunga – Hearing through the Wall ft. Junge Eko Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin – ⊐ Jonas Cambien – Tre – RADIO EDIT Microfiche – Number 7 Mariam Wallentin & Vestnorsk Jazzensemble – Basel Claire Dickson – Waterfeel Freda D’Souza – unravel (when ya comin back?) Listen again — ~214MB

    2 hr

  4. 12 APR

    Playlist 12.04.26

    While the new world struggles to be born, people all round this dying old world cannot help but keep making music. Too many, frankly. Please stop. Anyway, I cannot help but keep playing you all this incredible music, postpunkindustrialdubjunglegamelanglitchjazzfolkclassical, as those in the know call it *taps nose* LISTEN AGAIN to the music of the spheres. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Laeter – Isolate Laeter – Leibowitz Damos Room – All Shall Go Damos Room – Gullet (Dirty Protest) Carl Gari – Pick’n’Peel Fez The Kid & BRUK – Original Secret A.Fruit – I Left You A.Fruit – Choice upsammy & Valentina Magaletti – Superimposed upsammy & Valentina Magaletti – It Comes To An End Hoavi – Song of the Forgotten Hoavi – Colossus Foote/Dickow – Underwater Welder Richard Pike – III. “August” Laurence Pike – Guardians of Memory David Norland – E-Car Soul reNYX Carl Stone & Asuna – Ulna As Ancestor Loom & Thread – Spheres Christian Wallumrød Ensemble – Not new to tokesmo – 02.02 tokesmo – 01 Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart – paper folding | disappearing Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart – laundry | blood Hara Alonso – A Second is a Choir (feat. Lia Kohl) Daniel O’Toole – Breathing Colour Euan Alexander Millar-McMeeken – Nothing Moves In Me Listen again — ~217MB

    2 hr

  5. 5 APR

    Playlist 05.04.26

    Songforms of conventional and highly unconventional sorts tonight, taking in folk traditions from around the world, jazz, the outer limits of metal and more, plus strange twistings of clubforms, impressionist composition of the early 20th century, field recordings and more… LISTEN AGAIN, unconventionally. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast right here. Wendy Eisenberg – Take A Number [Joyful Noise/Bandcamp] Wendy Eisenberg – Curious Bird [Joyful Noise/Bandcamp] We’ve heard from brilliant guitarist, sometime banjoist, songwriter, improviser & composer Wendy Eisenberg in many contexts in the last couple of years: there’s the amazing postpunk/art-rock trio Editrix, Bill Orcutt’s Guitar Quartet, their avant-garde songwriting collaboration with Caroline Davis, and most recently their appearance on their now-partner Mari More Eaze Rubio’s brilliant solo album sentence structure in the country. But the highlight for me remains Eisenberg’s breathtaking final track, “In The Pines”, from their 2024 album Viewfinder. So for all their jazz guitar chops and restless experimentation, I’m already primed to love Eisenberg’s most pure songwriting on this album. There’s definitely a statement in self-titling a mid-career album, and Wendy Eisenberg presents as a straightforward album of songwriterly storytelling, deeply grounded in their newfound love with Mari Rubio. There’s definitely more than a little country in these songs, as well as folk-revivalist styles from Britain, Appalachia etc, but whatever genre, Wendy’s particular melodic sensibility comes through. Supporting this, however, are the utterly essential, sumptuous string arrangements from Mari Rubio, who also co-produced the album with Eisenberg and added pedal steel and synths. With longtime bandmates Trevor Dunn on bass (known for Mr Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, many John Zorn-related lineups etc) and Ryan Sawyer on drums (of too many collaborations including a time in At The Drive-In and long-ago UFog faves Stars Like Fleas), there’s a homely feel to these songs, songs which contemplate identity, life’s trajectory, past trauma and coming into a hard-won happiness. Margareth Kammerer – Gift [Ftarri/Bandcamp] Margareth Kammerer – Amor [Ftarri/Bandcamp] Weirdly, when I did my DJ set for Art After Hours/Liquid Architecture/Sydney Biennale in March (stream it here) I decided to play a track by Berlin-based Italian singer & composer Margareth Kammerer, and only a day or two later I discovered that she’d just released a new album, The Garden. I’ve been a fan of hers since, I would say, the mid 2000s, when she released the extraordinary album To Be an Animal of Real Flesh, full of odd, experimental songs. Following a few years later came two wonderful, mysterious albums with The Magic I.D., a quartet with Christof Kurzmann on electronics and vocals next to her own guitar & vocals, and the two clarinettists, Kai Fagaschinski & Michael Thieke, who also play bewitching, alien music as The International Nothing. So it’s reasonable to say she’s been deconstructing and re-examining songform for some decades by now. Released by Japanese label Ftarri (also a tiny experimental music venue & store in Tokyo), The Garden is of a piece with her earlier albums – the last of which came out a mere 12 years ago… Her oddly beautiful songs are supported by many important fellow travellers including our own Chris Abrahams of The Necks etc, double-bassist/electronicist Werner Dafeldecker, experimental musician Valerio Tricoli and experimental cellist Bo Wiget. I remain in awe. Espen Reinertsen – Til noens dype muskelvev [SusannaSonata/Bandcamp] Espen Reinertsen – Skal jeg følge deg til havet [SusannaSonata/Bandcamp] What astonishing beauty to stumble upon without warning! Espen Reinertsen is a name I’ve known for a while, as his saxophone and woodwinds – or his mixing skills – are credited on many a Norwegian release, including those from Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Erik Honoré, Kim Myhr, Jenny Hval and Christian Wallumrød Ensemble. But these are his own songs, with sparse live drums and drum machines, sparse keyboards and gorgeous woodwind & trumpet arrangements which frequently shift into unexpected voicings and harmonies. You’ll hear a lot of Radiohead here – albeit more jazz-informed – but it’s also one of those rare cases when the post-rock-as-in-Talk-Talk tag is completely justified. Reinertsen’s melodies are simple until they spin off into some harmonically distant galaxy, and his layers of woodwinds are delicately emotive, merging invisibly with synthesizers just as Erik Nylander’s acoustic drums somehow have the precision of drum machines and also the sparkle of jazz drums. What a blessing. Marianna Sangita Angeletaki Røe & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra – Kori [Puritone/Bandcamp] So, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra are a collective with a varying lineup of Norwegian improvising musicians, who enlist different musicians to collaborate with them, with reliably extraordinary results. On this album, they work with Greek-Norwegian singer & composer Marianna Sangita Angeletaki Røe, who has titled the album ΣΠΙΤΙ (SPITI), which is Greek for “Home”. Marianna Sangita explores her own search for belonging, caught between two very different places, and she sings in four different languages: Norwegian, Greek, English, and Sámi, the latter being a people indigenous to the Sápmi region across northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and part of Russia. The music, too, draws from many different traditions, with Greece’s proximity to the area Europeans call the “Middle East” evident in its traditional musical forms, and the combined vocals of Sangita, Ina Sagstuen and Sissel Vera Pettersen (and other musicians at times) evoking Eastern European musics as much as Nordic. The musicianship is uniformly brilliant, the songs sparkling, moving, joyful. Highly recommended. Mayssa Jallad – Taamir (Bahriyyeh) [Ruptured Records/Bandcamp] A few years back, Beirut label Ruptured put out an amazing album by Lebanese singer/songwriter and researcher Mayssa Jallad called Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels. In touching experimental songs, Jallad chronicled the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, in which Christian Nationalists and pro-Palestinian leftists fought a violent battle amongst the high-rise hotels in Beirut, leading to the Green Line dividing the city, a rift that lasted for 15 years. Since then the album has been remixed in spectral dub fashion by Civilistjävel!, and in 2024 Mayssa created a stunning piece about a Palestinian woman displaced from her village in the Nakba. That single was created out of an instrumental track by Tunefork Studios & Ruptured Records’ Fadi Tabbal, and her new song “Taamir (Bahriyyeh)” is a musical collaboration with Tabbal, featuring drums from Postcards & SANAM‘s Pascal Semerdjian. Jallad is an urban researcher as well as a musician, and urban history is the basis of all these works. This song is about the Taamir social housing project, built in the wake of a destructive earthquake in 1956. By the time the project started, the Ain el Helwe refugee camp had already existed for 8 years, and the juxtaposition of Palestinian refugees, unfortunates who lost their homes in the earthquake, and those more fortunate, is explored by Jallad in this moving, experimental piece, with rumbling, clattering drones and field recordings surrounding Jallad’s voice. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh & Frédéric D. Oberland – Squeal Of Swine خنخنة خنازير [Constellation/Bandcamp] Montreal’s storied Constellation label here brings together a Canadian and French artist for their first duo work. Radwan Ghazi Moumneh has been deeply involved in the Montreal postrock & experimental music in Quebec for over 2 decades, and he’s the co-owner of the mighty Hotel2Tango, originally a performance & artists’ space co-run by members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, but his main musical outlet has been Jerusalem In My Heart, begun as an audiovisual project with Erin Weisgerber, with Moumneh’s stunning melismatic vocals fed through granular processing to create a contemporary Arabic music ahead of its time in the mid-2010s. Frédéric D. Oberland is a key figure in Paris’s psych & avant-rock scenes, although he also began making films on Super8 & video. Among many bands & collaborations, he leads the incredible Oiseaux-Tempête, a collective whose music draws on psych, krautrock, postpunk and electronic music, with many collaborators and a deep connection to SWANA artists. Moumneh & Oberland had worked together via Oiseaux-Tempête and other projects, but had long intended to collaborate as a duo. Some works were started at Hotel2Tango in 2023, but as Moumneh puts it, since the genocide began he’d experienced sever writer’s block, so he took himself off to Paris in 2024 to complete the work. Four of the seven tracks do feature Moumneh’s voice, but here it’s Oberland taking more of a driver’s seat. Nevertheless, as well as Moumneh’s pain-filled voice Moumneh plays both buzuk and rababa, and there’s daf in the mix along with lots of electronic drones, drum machines and Oberland’s sax and clarineau. This is immersive music of great emotion. Maryam Saleh – Nedaa نداء [Simsara Records/Bandcamp] I first heard Egyptian singer Maryam Saleh as part of the magnificent trio release Lekhfa back in 2017. There, Saleh’s voice combined with the voice and instruments of Palestinian-Egyptian musician Tamer Abu Ghazaleh and the production wizardry and music of Maurice Louca – a masterpiece of Arabic indie music. As far as I can see, her new album, coming some 9 years later, is her first since that collaboration. Produced by Maurice Louca, it also features multiple instruments and creative mentoring from Paris-based Palestinian musician Kamilya Jubra

    2 hr

  6. 29 MAR

    Playlist 29.03.26

    Quite a journey today, through genres, countries & continents, emotions and BPMs. This is how we do it in the house of Utility Fog. LISTEN AGAIN & travel with me. Stream on demand at fbi.radio, podcast here. Snakeskin – Lost Today [Tunefork Studios/Bandcamp] The Bunny Tylers – Let There Be Light [Tunefork Studios/Bandcamp] Akram Hajj – Day 2 [Tunefork Studios/Bandcamp] SANAM – Aykathani Malakon (SAFA remix) [Tunefork Studios/Bandcamp] While the US & Israel’s misdirected, pointless, intensely damaging war on Iran continues, Israel has taken the opportunity to advance into southern Lebanon – very much not for the first time, but driven by the far right’s power in government and the impunity of the IDF & settlers’ accelerating ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, this is now becoming a territorial takeover. “Greater Israel” was once just a gross fantasy of the worst elements of the Zionist right, but now they’re grabbing their chance to enact it in reality. Under the pretext of disarming Hezbollah, Israel is flattening areas of Lebanon including neighbourhoods in Beirut, and as a result there are more than 1 million displaced people in Lebanon. Over. One. Million. Beirut, as you may have noted from these playlists over the last few years, has an unreasonably rich experimental music scene, and Tunefork Studios has been a hub for musicians ranging from postpunk & shoegaze bands to noise, chaotic industrial rock and electronica. The studio was founded by the ever-present producer Fadi Tabbal, who’s also one half of Snakeskin with Julia Sabra and one half of The Bunny Tylers with Charbel Haber, and associated musicians manage (Sabra) & work there. In December 2024, Tunefork released a big compilation of amazing Lebanese music called Land 01 – A Compilation for the Displaced in Lebanon, materially supporting people with living spaces & more. The current situation has severely deepened this humanitarian crisis, and fortunately Tunefork had not one but TWO compilations of music by Lebanese musicians ready to go. Like 01, all tracks are exclusive to the compilations, totalling 58 new tracks. If you don’t already have the first, you can purchase all three at once for a discount, but however you choose, you’ll know that you’re helping raise money for Beit Aam, a community space in Beirut that’s providing housing and food for displaced people. The tracklists are extremely varied, from a touching piece by Snakeskin to the post-industrial lurch of The Bunny Tylers, the swirling noise of Akram Hajj and an unreleased remix of Beirut supergroup SANAM (now signed to Constellation) by London-based sound-artist and researcher Mhamad SAFA, and so much more. dälek – By the Time We Arrive in El Salvador [Ipecac Recordings/Bandcamp] Last year, Will Brooks, also known as MC Dälek of the eponymous noise-hop outfit dälek, collaborated with the legendary postpunk/art-rock drummer/composer/singer Charles Hayward, a project dubbed HAYWARDxDÄLEK. It was one of those things which seems completely out of leftfield, but works surprisingly well. It was also charmingly odd that it was released on renowned metal label Relapse Records, but Relapse has of late also supported Kevin Martin & JK Broadrick’s Techno Animal remasters and their newer project Zonal… And more to the point, dälek in their first incarnation (with producer Alap Momin aka The Oktopus) and their 2016 reformation (now with longtime fellow traveller Mike Mare aka Destructo Swarmbots) have always been metal-adjacent, their boom-baps and Brooks’ conscious, politically-informed raps generally supported with shoegaze-noise-drone that references the Bomb Squad’s innovations with Public Enemy but also the washed-out intensity of My Bloody Valentine. New album Brilliance of a Fallen Moon follows their other recent albums on Mike Patton’s Ipecac Recordings with claustrophobic environments, noise textures and social commentary. “By the Time We Arrive in El Salvador” flips Public Enemy’s masterpiece “By The Time I Get To Arizona“, itself a riff on Jimmy Webb’s “By The Time I Get Phoenix“, to reference the appalling deportation by the Trump regime of mostly Venezuelans – many American citizens – to the notorious high-security CECOT prison in El Salvador. Brooks’ lyrics poetically circle his subject matter, often buried in the mix, part of the cyberpunkish malaise. james K – N’Balmed (JASSS Purple Remix) [AD93/Bandcamp] Following her vaporwave-trip-hop album Friend from last year, james K now reaches out for some heavy-duty Friends to remix the album. Spanish producer JASSS, whose Eager Buyers album last year featured james K on one of its best tracks, takes “N’Balmed” into something equally ’90s-influenced but on a more head-noddin’ electro-pop tip. There’s a plethora of interesting artists involved here, and I look forward to further offerings. Antoine Ferris – shame’s coming ft. natacha kanga [Carton Records/Bandcamp] I have the honour of having “discovered” French bassist Antoine Ferris before he was cool – where cool = released by the might Carton Records (that’s really cool!) A friend alerted me to the soundtrack to this beautiful black & white video which, as I described it 3 years ago, captures something of the joy of early Fennesz & Mego glitch-works for me, but it’s entirely made from electric bass – stuttery edits and pitch-shifts, and occasional outbursts of skronky distortion. That track, “Hount Orbe”, has been included on Ferris’ debut solo album [KAAARST], fitting in very well with the even noisier processed sounds, industrial-seeming beats and shocks of occasional beauty here. I’m looking forward to playing you more from this album, but the first single somehow drags the abstract bass destruction into hip-hop territory, made only more sinister by the guest rapping from Natacha Kanga. ŽIVA – Hesitation [ŽIVA Bandcamp] Croatian singer/producer Lucija Ivsic moved to Naarm/Melbourne a couple of years ago, leaving her postpunk band Punčke and started her solo project ŽIVA, an outlet for industrial-tinged experimental electronic pop, to which she brings a Slavic darkness and lots of energy. Her second album ŽIIVA (which is easy to misread if you forget it’s album “II”) exorcises mental health demons on underground dancefloors. There’s nothing quite like it around at the moment. Esther – Critical [YUKU/Bandcamp] On the Leese and Chewlie Invite 002 EP, Prague label YUKU brings us another selection of experimental bass productions by women, selected by Belgium’s Leslie Deboeur (Leese) and Swiss producer Julie Häller (Chewlie). Toulouse DJ Esther brings a techno thump with deep subs and jittery rhythms around the edges. Ruby My Dear – Iterations [Analogical Force] Named for a Thelonious Monk tune, Julien Chastagnol’s Ruby My Dear has always brought classical compositions and jazz melodies to his super-intricate breakcore & idm productions. While you may not find specific instances of jazz or classical here, there’s a melodic nature to whatever the producer does, as well as blasts of intense break-choppery. Like Antoine Ferris and Esther, Chastagnol hails from the Toulouse region, and when not DJing or beatmaking, since 2000 he’s run the family winery, Mas Levigné. ZULI – Half Empty [irsh/Bandcamp] ZULI – 44 [irsh/Bandcamp] Cairo master ZULI is back on the irsh label that he founded with Rama in pandemic times. Naming the release The Screaming Abdabs gives more than a hint at the nervous energy found within, which takes another sharp turn into industrial strength saturation while bringing back something of the high-tech beats that made ZULI stand out when he debuted 10 years ago. Basslines boom, drums crunch and screetch, and even the domestic samples that make up “44” clatter in fury, punctuated by stomach-rattling subs. Unconventional dancefloors rejoice! Marco Simioni – Dot With Illumination (Delta Division Remix) [Detroit Underground/Bandcamp] London-based Italian producer Marco Simioni returns to Detroit Underground with JOMO, an extended remix album (23 tracks!) of reworks of his 2023 album FOMO. “Joy Of Missing Out”? Here Simionio steps back from the production booth, handing his acid & breakbeat-fuelled IDM tunes to a bunch of friends from around the world. The rave deconstructions and ambient electronics here mirror the album’s range, with blurting acid and melodic post-trance rubbing up against drum’n’bass and jungle mutations like Delta Division‘s remix. Dro Carey & Pinz – Hellish Plasma [Braincamp rec./Bandcamp] Eora/Sydney electro/experimental mastermind Dro Carey returned after 4 years with the VT2 EP last year, and has now droppped a big album, Denim Iron, via his Braincamp rec., which releases his productions in various incarnations, including the disco-house and techno of Tuff Sherm, the twisted avant-gardism of PMM and the dance compositions he’s made under his own name. But Dro Carey is what Eugene Ward is best known as, and the album starts off with tuff drum machines and dense synths, and mostly stays there except a few more spacious tracks. The collab with Eora DJ Andy Lowe aka Pinz – heralding a full collaborative release later this year – is apocalyptic basslines, syncopated beats and sinister vocal snippets. Korsain – +55 [Infernal Sounds/Bandcamp] On the +55 EP Brazillian beatmaker Korsain drops three tracks on Stoke-on-Trent dubstep/140bpm label Infernal Sounds. +55 is Brazil’s calling code, emphasising the influence of Korsain’s home on these tunes, and while guest MC Rakjay is based in the UK, he slips invisibly between Spanish and English. Only the third track approximates dubstep, but the standout title track takes the tempo and sparse-not-sparse attitude of early dubstep with percussion reduced to pounding kicks and rimshots, occasional toms and slices of

    2 hr

  7. 22 MAR

    Playlist 22.03.26

    World is fukt. Music, not surprisingly, reflects that. But there’s joy and dancing and energy to be found here as well as anger and only a bit of sorrow. Dance a new world into being! LISTEN AGAIN and enjoy something whyoncha. Stream on demand from fbi.radio or podcast here. Oh and by the way, I DJed on Friday night (March 20th) at White Bay Power Station for Art After Dark / Sydney Bienalle, curated by Liquid Architecture. Mara Schwerdtfeger did a beautiful set, and we were graced by a performance from Tujiko Noriko as headliner. I recorded my first set, which opened the evening, a pretty wide-ranging mix that I’m sure you’ll like if you’re a follower of this show! raven · "Omphalo Centric Mixture", live @ White Bay Power Station for Liquid Architecture   Youniss – TakeThat ft. Pink Siifu [VIERNULVIER/Bandcamp] Youniss – Gits Worse ft. Petite Noir [VIERNULVIER/Bandcamp] Sometimes it’s good to become acquainted with the underground & cutting edge in odd corners of the world. I was lucky to perform at the brilliant dunk!festival last year with my band Black Aleph, a festival in Europe’s best-kept secret, the lovely northern-Belgium city of Ghent. Specifically, the festival occurs in a few theatres and venues around an arts centre / platform / community called VIERNULVIER (404), which itself has a phenomenally-curated boutique record label. It’s from this connection that I discovered Antwerp-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer & taxi driver Youniss Ahamad. In a fair world, Youniss would be as big as other genre-crossing punk/indie/hip-hop acts, or at least would have the critical recognition he deserves. In this dizzying world of non-stop (bad) news and constant interconnectedness (unless you’re under Iran’s internet blackout or myriad other less-advantaged or more-oppressed populaces), it’s hard for anything to cut through, but I wish that Good Effort! would do so. It’s loosely themed around gentrification, which as it always does is pushing the multicultural residents of the area of Antwerp where Youniss lives out of their homes and community centres. But it’s full of great songwriting, switching between post-punk, jazz and hip-hop on a dime. Youniss plays most of the instruments as well as singing & rapping, but he does also invite some top tier guests, including Belgian clarinettist Dienne, Congolese/South African singer Petite Noir, and underground rappers like Quelle Chris and Pink Siifu. Do yourself a favour and stick this in your ears asap. Kim Gordon – No Hands [Matador/Bandcamp] OK, we all know by now that Kim Gordon is the coolest, releasing now a series of albums (PLAY ME is her third since 2019) in collaboration with Justin Raisen, a producer comfortable in the pop world as well as the more leftfield. Gordon’s delivery has always been more drawled than sung, and her fragile voice somehow suits these simple, bass heavy grooves to a tee. I don’t have much more to say: her social commentary is compact because she knows the words to say. Her style is both now and then, because she’s always been the Kool Thing after all. BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Kuya Neil – Copy + Paste [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp] BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Kuya Neil – Luzon Bleeding Heart (ft. Sevy) [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp] You know this will be the shit, with Eora’s BAYANG mixing together his love of punk/metal with underground hip-hop, and Naarm’s Kuya Neil as usual throwing plenty of experimental club sounds from all over – bits of jungle, uk bass, baile funk, anything. Another CONTENT.NET.AU affiliate, Sevy, lends a verse to “Luzon Beating Heart”. Grasps_ – Dream On [Grasps_ Bandcamp/Nina Protocol] Christian Grasps_ might be known for his ambient & beat-based electronic productions, including credits with the likes of BAYANG (tha Bushranger), but you might also find him playing piano & singing, or on this new single, playing guitar and singing. There’s a nice bit of a surge in the middle that hints at mayhem that never quite arrives, but that’s by design. A touching little piece. Travis Cook – unfinished symphony [Travis Cook Bandcamp] It’s Travis Cook, on Kaurna land, still bringing a track per week to Bandcamp. Most of them are fragments, as unfinished as this one, but also fun, good production. Laces – Doormen [NLV Records/Bandcamp] Naarm musician Laces is touring UK & Europe with Ninjarachi, and has released his Oekno I EP to accompany them, released by Nina Las Vega’s NLV Records (also home to Ninjarachi). Laces shares with Ninjarachi meticulous electronic production, but this is far more abstract. It was presented to me as “ambient”, but that’s only half the story – there’s beautiful sound design, but also glitchy beats and glitched vox. world’s end girlfriend & samayuzame – Sweet Suicide (Syndrome) [Virgin Babylon Records] So, vocals aren’t usually a prominent part of the music of World’s End Girlfriend, the Japanese master of genre-mashing since the early ’00s. Not that they’re not present, but usually they’re serving the music, whether it’s bizarre electro-acoustic glitch, IDM, breakcore or more like psych-rock/postrock/breakbeat hybrids. Honestly World’s End Girlfriend has been one of Utility Fog’s biggest inspirations since the start, and his now long-lived label Virgin Babylon Records is consistently awesome whether it’s idoru-breakcore, glitch-punk or spoken word. Now, on the 3-track Helix of Frequency, Phenomenon of Love and Void EP he presents three songs with three guest vocalists. This is J-pop WEG style, glitchy, still somehow three genres in one track, and all very lovely. Uriel’s Bath – Beautiful Hats [Hobbies Galore /Bandcamp] The 1990s are big at the moment, and much though jungle is my #1 love, there’s something heartwarming about the kind of ambient techno that developed around the start of the decade, and hearing it echoed nowadays is a weird trip. The self-titled EP by Naarm duo Uriel’s Bath is just such a trip, made by Julia McFarlane and Thomas Kernot, a slightly abstracted continuation of the trip-hop-exotica of 2024’s Whoopee as J.MacFarlane’s Reality Guest (released in the UK by Glasgow indie label Night School). Melodic, electronic, mostly ambient with occasional beats. Sweet as. The Leaf Library – The Reader’s Lamp [Fika Recordings/Bandcamp] Listeners to this show will be aware of The Leaf Library, the London band/collective who make melodic, hypnotic dream-pop/space-rock, with side projects in all sorts of twistings of sound-art, electronica, noise, and folk. Their new album After The Rain, Strange Seeds is released by Fika Recordings, who released one such side project – the strange chamber folk of Mirrored Daughters – last year. While The Leaf Library’s last release was last year’s remix album Flowers at the Border (released on their own excellent label Objects Forever), this new album eschews studio trickery by and large, and is made up of more song-like structures than may be expected. There are also sumptuous strings on a number of tracks, including this one. Some of the best krautrock-indiepop you’ll find at the moment. Xylitol – Bowed Clusters (with The Leaf Library) [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Xylitol – Sudwestwind [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Catherine Backhouse debuted on Planet µ under her Xylitol alias in 2024 with the frantic drill’n’bass of Anemones, very much in the vein of the Planet µ output from the ’00s, as much as the jungle and hardcore she was immersed in in her youth. As DJ Bunnyhausen she was resident DJ at a krautrock club night called Kosmische, and is also a specialist in electronic music & pop from the former Yugoslavia. Her follow-up album Blumenfantasie ups the ante with more sophisticated beats (still manic, don’t stress!) and influences from Sarajevo-born synthmeister Miaux as well as early industrial and yes, krautrock. And Planet µ feels like the perfect home for it – I hear a lot of label boss Mike Paradinas’ µ-Ziq in these tunes, no doubt because Mike was listening to a similar assortment of electronic pioneers as much as his own music directly influencing Backhouse. Oh, and the abovementioned krautrock-influenced space-rockers The Leaf Library feature here – the brilliant “Bowed Clusters” is actually a remix of them which Matt from The Leaf Library gave me a listen to last year, and I’ve been wanting to play it to you ever since. I expected it to be on their Flowers at the Border remix album, but it’s awesome to hear it among the other genre-melted junglisms here. Rutger Zuydervelt – Gas [Machinefabriek Bandcamp] I’ve also been waiting to play something from the pair of releases just out from Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek). A lot of Rutger’s music, particularly released under his own name, is created for dance, theatre and sometimes TV work. His latest is a wonderful thing called Bodies of Water (music for a performance by Iván Pérez / Dance Theatre Heidelberg). The water theme is a great creative catalyst, especially as the work itself deals with the three main states of H2O – solid (ice), liquid (water) and gas (steam, but also water in suspension in air). As well as the soundtrack, there’s an outtakes EP Fog/Drops that highlights water as a power of nature – two 20-minute pieces that mix drone & sound-art with pulsating rhythm. Forces of nature also propel the music on the main album, with thundering sub-bass, sheets of white noise and, well, the drum machines and acidic synth that drive “Gas”. Out of an extremely prolific career of high quality, Rutger is doing some of his best work right now, and I highly recommend this duo of releases whether you need a starting point or a place to catch up. hoyah חיה – talmuds (feat. Derya Yıldırım) [BRUK/Bandcamp] hoyah חיה – sol [BRUK/Bandcamp] Berlin-based musician Shmuel Hatchwell makes dope lo-fi

    2 hr

  8. 15 MAR

    Playlist 15.03.26

    Electro-acoustic sound-manipulation rubs shoulders with extended techniques on acoustic instruments, while influences from ’80s industrial, ’70s krautrock, ’00s folktronica and ’90s dub techno can be found alongside indie rock, breakbeat, and good ol’ classic freeform noise. It’s Sunday. It’s Utility Fog. LISTEN AGAIN to good ol’ classic freeform ‘fog. Stream on demand at fbi.radio, podcast here. Bibi Club – A Different Light [Secret City Records/Bandcamp] Bibi Club – Le Styx [Secret City Records/Bandcamp] The Montréal duo of Adèle Trottier-Rivard and Nicolas Basque are Bibi Club, a name which presumably makes more sense to French speakers, but their songs are split fairly evenly between French & English. Their quirky indie pop, part jangly guitars and part electronic, owes something to the British-French band Stereolab (who they covered last year), as well as Francophone indie music that often gets tagged with “chanson”, the French word for “song”. From their lovely third album Amaro, I started tonight with a driving piece of postpunk that clearly shows their debt to Blonde Redhead, which segues into an instrumental that loops part of the krautrocky groove and introduces hovering drones and sampled operatic voices. This might just be the emotional avant-garde indie rock you’ve been looking for. The Notwist – The Turning [Morr Music/Bandcamp] In 2001, German band The Notwist, having begun as hardcore punks and transitioned through emo to some kind of indie rock, released their breakthrough album Neon Golden – a significant date only in that a couple of years later was when I started Utility Fog on the newly-official FBi Radio. Arguably with their 1998 album Shrink, The Notwist were well on the way to their hybrid genre that we perhaps briefly called “indietronica”, with influences from IDM, drum’n’bass and techno as well as krautrock combined with indie rock. Meanwhile, Thomas Morr founded his Morr Music label in 1999, which quickly became a home to a similar clade of indie/IDM, shoegaze-tronic bands – many of which involved members of The Notwist, particularly brothers Micha and Markus Acher. It wasn’t actually until 2020 that The Notwist themselves signed to Morr Music, but it’s always seemed their spiritual home. The band’s new album News from Planet Zombie is perhaps their most “rock” album for some time, intentionally splitting from their studio-mediated workflows by bringing the whole band together to write & perform these songs in person. 10 years ago Superheroes, Ghostvillains + Stuff documented The Notwist’s live setup at the time, with modular synths & other electronics prominent alongside the (k***t)rock instruments; here the electronics are less prominent but clearly an integral part of whatever The Notwist does; but it’s the undeniable, distinctive songwriting that can’t help but shine through. Daniel Jumpertz – I Would Never Do That To You [Feral Media/Bandcamp] In the early days of Utility Fog/FBi, Danny Jumpertz was a strong supporter of Utility Fog, and the indietronica, folktronica and postrock sides of the playlists were reflected in the sorts of music he released on his Feral Media label. For a while now the in-the-family indie rock band Clairaudience has been his main musical outlet, but he’s now begun releasing a cache of solo songs, I believe once a month, starting with the stirring “Everything Is Lost” and now followed by the pretty krautrocky “I Would Never Do That To You“. From Jumpertz’ time in NYC, producer Abe Seiferth contributes “wig-out Moog mayhem”, which you’ll recognize as soon as you listen to the song! Looking forward to more in coming months. Praed – Assarab السراب [Ruptured Records/Bandcamp/Annihaya Records/Bandcamp] Now 20 years old, Praed is the combination of two Lebanese musicians, clarinettist/composer/more Paed Conca (part-Switzerland-based) and bassist/sound-artist/more Raed Yassin (part Berlin-based). The music – sometimes billed as “PRAED Orchestra” with friends from the MENA/SWANA region and Europe – draws from Egyptian street music (Shaabi, now mutating into Mahraganat) and the traditional Sufi spiritual/trance music Mulid, both in their ways based around hypnotic, repetitive beats. It’s always psychedelic, swirling, extremely rhythmic, a free jazz of Lebanese & Egyptian music. While new album Al Wahem الوهم is back in duo formation, they are still joined by many talented Beirut musicians (the album was recorded at Tunefork Studios in Beirut). As always this music is full of joy and yearning, and neverending forward motion. Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – Living Emojis [Dekmantel/Bandcamp] Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – Easing The Hearts [Dekmantel/Bandcamp] In 2020, French beatmaker Simo Cell and Egyptian singer, poet, trumpeter, composer & more Abdullah Miniawy teamed up for a frankly game-changing mini-album, Kill Me Or Negotiate. Simo’s music is equal parts UK bass, US bass and French club, transforming the Arabic vocals and jazz-trained trumpet of Miniawy, who had collaborated extensively with the post-dubstep k***t-tronic band Carl Gari (not to mention his own laptop experiments, no longer available online). The pair are not afraid to abstract Miniawy’s lyrics into cut-up samples, nor are they afraid to let him fly with gorgeous melodicism. Their second outing together is the brilliant album Dying Is The Internet, whose title couldn’t be more apposite really – it feels like it’s bringing the world down with it, and while you probably couldn’t blame Netanyahu on the internet, surely Trumpianism is as much a product of what the internet’s become as, well, all the other shit. There’s real humanity in these tracks, as well as futuristic technology; high drama and low grooves. If the internet’s dying, let this be the future. Damos Room – Molars [Limbo Tapes/Bandcamp] I’m not sure who Damos is or what’s in their Room, but signs point to it being three guys: Luke Miles, Nicholas Elson & Huw Oleskar. I’ve just found out (because they told me, nothing underhand) that Huw Oleskar is also known as Elijah Minnelli, responsible for some of the most interesting and lovely dub-folk hybrids in recent times, ostensibly under the auspices of Breadminster County Council. As for Damos Room, you can find a series of fantastic, weirdly-shaped releases on their Bandcamp, including a mixtape of two bizarre 40-minute radio pieces, some quasi-singles of abstracted dub/spoken-word/electronics, and the experimental electronics of their collaboration with rapper LYAM, which I played on this show a few years back. The band finally have an album coming, and Walk With The Militia… is not that album. It’s a mixtape, entirely in keeping with the mystery what all this is about. It collects a whole lot of weird shit, but it’s all dub-based experimental electronics, with Minnelli’s distinctive spoken word & low-key singing, odd radio interludes and noise bits and so on. It’s really fantastic. No doubt All Shall Go, the real album, will be well worth bending your ear to when it comes out in only a few weeks! New Age Doom featuring H.R. – We’re All the Same [We Are Busy Bodies/Bandcamp] Having previously collaborated with Lee “Scratch” Perry, Canadian collective New Age Doom know a thing or two about combining freeform psychdedelic noise with dub. Their latest collaborator H.R. co-founded Bad Brains, some of the earliest hardcore punks who combined rasta philosophy and reggae with their punk music. It appears that for all the peace-and-love preaching, H.R.’s fundamentalist religious outlook inherits the homophobia rampant in Rastafarianism, but that’s not apparent in these songs, thankfully. This is swirling dub with some excellent electric violin from Alina Petrova. DJ Sprinter – Floaterr [unreleased] Oslo’s DJ Sprinter has popped up in the last year and a bit as an absolutey top-tier producer of bass-heavy breakbeat. You can find a whole lot on his Bandcamp, but the other day he invited followers to message him on Instagram for some unreleased cuts, so I did, and I’ve brought you one tonight. Just as great as the plethora of stuff he’s already put out there, irresistible grooves. Rotate – Hot Glue [YUKU/Bandcamp] UK producer Rotate is also known as RWB, making dubsteppy, garagey cuts galore. Not sure what warrants being a Rotate track rather than RWB, but the more serious, full releases, especially for other labels, seem to be under Rotate. This is still absolutely bass music, wobbly and spacey, with just enough of that experimental edge to be very comfortable in the YUKU yuniverse. Teerath Majumder – Dust [Infrequent Seams/Bandcamp] Bangladeshi artist Teerath Majumder, based in Chicago, creates interdisciplinary art & music that explores the interaction between audience and artist/composer through technology, as well as producing music & sound-design in collaboration with other artists, directors & musicians. His new album Dust To Dust, however, is an entirely solo work, from the music & production to mastering & artwork. Here there are flittery synths, Bangladeshi samples at times, and when there are beats they skitter and thump. This album may have come from Majumder’s contemplation of death, but it’s teeming with life. MATA – Adolf Hippy [CÆR (Chiærichetti Æditori Recordings)/Bandcamp] MATA – Compro Oro Et Laboro [CÆR (Chiærichetti Æditori Recordings)/Bandcamp] Where did this even come from? Well… Italy. Italy is where the trio named MATA come from, making industrial/noise/glitch which could almost look like a typical rock band – guitar/vocals, bass, drums – if you ignore the electronics through everything. This is the kind of music where anything can happen, often grating, often strangely catchy? The label CÆR is the musical arm of Chiærichetti Æditori Recordings who

    2 hr
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Peter Hollo curates each episode around a narrative of genre-plasticity, deep-diving into artist histories, side projects and influences. Challenging sounds are contextualised within musical movements, surprising connections are uncovered, unfairly overlooked works are revisited. Come on a journey through music in all its ugly beauty.

Information

  • Creator
    Peter Hollo
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    51
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Utility Fog

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