Pop, hip-hop & folk music turned inside-out this week, jungle & bass music mixed with live percussion, doomy dub, dubby jazz, glitchy everything. It’s Utility Fog. LISTEN AGAIN and turn inside-out with me. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Aphir – Ctrl (feat. Max Lawrence) [Bird’s Robe Records/Bandcamp] Naarm’s Becki Whitton is a busy mixing & mastering engineer these days, which is rad, as well as being the driving force behind the Wettest 100 celebration of left-field Australian music, and much more. As Aphir she’s also queen of ambient vocal-processed improvised marathons, streamed on Twitch and Instagram, the sort of stuff showcased on her 2023 album The Halo Is Shapeless. But it’s her songwriterly experimental electronic pop that brought her forth a bit over a decade ago, and let us rejoice, for to that she returns now with her much-awaited album Avarena – which I first heard last year, and which is finally seeing the light of day, including colourful vinyl editions, on October 9th. Here’s the last (I think) single off that album, featuring Berlin-based Aussie Max Lawrence lending their vocals to a song that highlights all the Aphirness: wall of noise giving way to processed voice, rinse & repeat, ending with crunchy beat, distorted drone and an almost-choral vocal arrangement. Come join Becki in the clouds. Sijya – Turbine [One Little Independent/Bandcamp] How nice to have New Delhi’s Sijya Gupta back with a new single. Following her 2022 debut, Young Hate, on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records, Sijya signed to the fabled One Little Independent Records and released the Leather & Brass EP last year. Here her soft voice is swaddled in synth pads, a sparse electro-acoustic beat and rumbling bass. Hana Stretton – Right Whale [Lima Limo Records/Inpartmaint/P.W. Elverum & Sun/brierfield flood press/Hana Stretton Bandcamp] Hana Stretton – Salt [Lima Limo Records/Inpartmaint/P.W. Elverum & Sun/brierfield flood press/Hana Stretton Bandcamp] Occasionally you encounter something so extraordinary, sui generis and simultaneously self-effacing that you have to step back for a moment and wonder if it really exists. Unfortunately due to scheduling issues it wasn’t Australian musician Hana Stretton‘s beautiful first album that did this for me (I’ve now corrected this, and recommend you also check out Soon soon), but the wonders of its follow-up tiarn are not easily escaped once they snare you. One person who immediately recognized the genius of Hana Stretton was Phil Elverum of Microphones/Mount Eerie, who swiftly provided Soon a home on his label which otherwise is purely a home for his own eclectic outputs. As you can see from this track’s credits above, Stretton’s new album is co-released by a merry band of labels across Europe & UK, Japan, the US and Australia. Stretton is based in Victoria, and recorded this album predominantly in a cottage by the sea, using her surroundings as sound sources. So delicate folky songs, mostly with piano or acoustic guitar, surface from field recordings, or appear as field recordings, the air and movement of people in a room being essential to the compositions. Importantly, when they do surface, these are beautiful songs, so gentle that it takes a moment to realise you’ve been flattened by the gorgeous harmonies, which sometimes feature her local Forest Creek Folk Choir or additional string players, but mostly are entirely the work of Hana Stretton. A marvel. Betty Hammerschlag – Hot Snow [Drowned By Locals/Bandcamp] The lo-fi beauty of Betty Hammerschlag‘s forthcoming album Psycho Summer has been overshadowed by the revelation that Betty – purportedly a young Gen-Z woman – is in fact middle-aged gent Tilman Hornig. The internet seemed split between those insisting it had been obvious all along (different stand-ins hired for public events etc) and those who were most definitely fooled – including the label who released the rather on-the-nose fake girl (yep!) tape last year. Honestly, haven’t we been through all this before multiple times, how men – middle-aged cis white men – using female names & identities is damaging? Protestation that it’s all in good fun and it was “obviously” always an art project or whatever rings hollow frankly, so I won’t be playing any more Betty Hammerschlag and it’s a shame the generally great Jordanian label Drowned By Locals were in on the joke/ruse too. Maarja Nuut – ma näen sind ikka veel [Maarja Nuut Bandcamp] Anyway, in better news, Estonian violinist, singer & producer Maarja Nuut is back! This is a song that dates back to just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its pulsing bassline & glitchy sampled vocal bed hold host for a yearning vocal line but soon that too disappears into a fog of synth melodies, before returning for the final third of the song. So beautiful – I can only hope there’s more newness to come. Crimewave – Instrumentals (Kassie Krut Remix) [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp] OK, you know I’m a fan of Manchester’s indie-electronic artist Crimewave, and have been since his first EPs in 2023. After a little pause, he signed with Brooklyn indie dance label Fool’s Gold Records, and the excellent Scenes album came out last year. Crimewaves’ music is kind of like a remix already, blending aspects of bass & breakbeat music with bedroom beats, indie & shoegaze, but the EP Scenes (The Remixes) (forthcoming as of this show’s broadcast) brings in 5 like-minded artists to give their takes. New Yorkers Kassie Krut would be a no-brainer, with their own mix of punchy postpunk and breakbeat, and their adaptation is a perfect melding of their aesthetic and Crimewave’s. BRACT & BAYANG (tha Bushranger) – BURN CITY LINKUP (Elina Junglizm) [BAYANG (Tha Bushranger) Bandcamp] BRACT & BAYANG (tha Bushranger) – REDBRICKGOTHIK (Grasps Rework) [BAYANG (Tha Bushranger) Bandcamp] Eora/Sydney industrial/noise band BRACT renamed themselves after some heavy releases as Coward Punch, so when they collaborated with shapeshifting rapper BAYANG (tha Bushranger) on 2023’s REDBRICKGOTHIK album, I initially didn’t make the connection. BAYANG, aka Harry Baughan, has prior involvement in heavy music as part of the now-dormant Indigenous black metallers Dispossessed, and his flow finds ways into the sludgey, bludgeoning sound of BRACT, making it sound totally natural as an accompaniment of his rapping. Well, there was a remix album originally released in a very limited USB form, and now it’s been unleashed on Bandcamp. Heaviness and less heaviness, total reworkings, and a good amount of junglism (everyone’s fave Tim Reaper is on there!), with local heroes like Marcus Whale, California Girls, Katie Dey and more. Sydney breakcore/jungle producer Elina junglist brings fire, and another local hero, Grasps, amps up the industrial pressure. Dev/Null – Space Rush [Hooversound] Boston producer Pete Cassin started producing breakcore as Dev/Null in the early 2000s. As the jungle revival started gathering steam in the last decade or so, he’s tamed the breakcore tendencies to some degree, successfully converting into a key artist in the hardcore/jungle scene. Drum Damage pairs him appropriately with Hooversound, a label that’s always emphasised the hardcore techno origins of jungle music. DNGDNGDNG & Prisma – Legamo [YUKU/Bandcamp] Peru’s DNGDNGDNG aka Dengue Dengue Dengue have brought the sounds of cumbia and other Central & South American dance forms to bass & club genres for some time. They’ve also collaborated with Argeninian producer Prisma a few times, with their latest, Abisal, now out via YUKU. Percussive bass music, very very nice. HIIIT + 33EMYBW – The Disorientation of Dagobert [Maloca Records/Bandcamp] HIIIT are a versatile ensemble, formerly known as Slagwerk Den Haag (I first heard them in Lunch Music, a brilliantly weird collaboration with Netherlands-based composer Yannis Kyriakides). Renaming themselves after many decades to indicate that they’re no longer just a percussion ensemble, HIIIT have been producing a number of collaborations with an excellent selection of forward-thinking electronic artists. SIIIX, Vol.3 follows Vol.2 with Rrose, Uwalmassa, Zoë Mc Pherson, Ale Hop, 3Phaz and Grischa Lichtenberger, and Vol.1 before it with percussion hero Valentina Magaletti, Hihats in Trees, Azu Tiwaline, Julian Sartorius, upsammy and Krampfthaft. Once again here there’s a mix of cutting-edge experimentalists and (only slightly) less-known names, with the great Chinese electronic producer 33EMYBW alongside Lemna, Jung An Tagen, Slikback, Konduku and Toumba. The 33EMYBW track is a dizzying 4 minutes of strange digital clangs and chattering post-footwork/post-jungle percussion programming. Incredible stuff, now spread across 3 volumes, get into it! Mats Gustafsson and Kimmo Pohjonen – Magna [Trost/Bandcamp] Mats Gustafsson and Kimmo Pohjonen – Ice Heaven [Trost/Bandcamp] Two Nordic greats join forces here for the first time. Mats Gustafsson is a sax player with an enormous sound, blasting his way through swamp-garage-jazz-rock in The Thing (notable among other things for an extraordinary album with Neneh Cherry) and ritualistic free jazz with Fire! and its big band Fire! Orchestra. Meanwhile, Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen has taken his instrument to classical stages, while also extending it with contact mics, wiring and pedals. I first came across him in a collaboration with Kronos Quartet, and I’m aware of his folk & jazz sides, but certainly he’s renowned within experimental music himself – yet, I never thought of these two crossing paths. What they’ve created on the amusingly-titled Two Balls Are Enough is not quite like what you’d expect from either on their own. Pohjonen uses his accordion to create almost glitch-rhythms at times, and breaths and hisses; Gustafsson brings the electronic noise-m
