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Songs of anguish, songs of love, songs of joy, songs of sorrow… Industrial instruments, digital edits, tape degradation, electro-acoustic improvisation, processed field recordings, acoustic simplicity. Here we are. LISTEN AGAIN and sing your song. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Dis Fig – Arrival Dis Fig – The Snake You Built Blackhaine – Northside Needs Me Sijya – Rust (Ziúr Edit) Pegelia Gold – The Next Day Teether & Kuya Neil – time out Youniss – Worms (fake) Youniss – Window Shopper Joseph McGann – Un Desconocido feat. Poison Arrow Bow and Arrow – Gem Seb Brun, Ar Ker – Copper #1 J Kenzo – Glas-Tec Struktur – Grounding Roxanne Harris – harpy Cleo AD – Years Ahead Braille – Park Slug Odd Nosdam – Skateloops (Machete Mix) Odd Nosdam – August, 47 Contagious – Marbled Crayfish Contagious – Smithii Ants feat. Andrea Belfi Ronan Apcar – Break(ing)down – I. Ronan Apcar – The clouds are gathered for the final storm – III. Chorale BETHLEHEM بيت لحم [Lawrence Sammour, Sary Moussa & Abed Kobeissy] – Fasil II فَاصِل ٢ Tony Dupé – patience Listen again — ~220MB

Electronic pop, string songs, bass music of all sorts, shoegaze-jungle and shoegaze-grime? Footwork, more jungle, jungle-jazz, jazz-rap, postrock, minimalist electro-acoustic jazz, mysterious ambient… Murex – Puddle Murex – Mothers Bells Marina Herlop – Bliss Marina Herlop – Average Evil Borguefül – Rocher multiple Modeselektor – IWUDLYK feat. KABEAUSHÉ Tortoise – Night Gang (Carl Stone Remix} Petrels – The Hungry God they are gutting a body of water – a place where (feat. haloplus+, Full Body 2) they are gutting a body of water – happy as a favor (feat. Tony Bontana, Hooky) Mia Koden – A-killa Rift POD & Edward Richards – Nautilus featuring Miles Henry DJ Strawberry – Routine LOIF – Intermak CHEAHDX – Spider’s Webbu onemilliondollars – angel WRONGVST – PR219 DOPPELKUPPLUNG (Highway Mix) WRONGVST – BRAKECORE Skee Mask – Flip Djrum – To Do What To Do Anna Butterss, John Raymond, Ben Lumsdaine – Parallax Samuele Strufaldi, Tommaso Rosati – How to spice a shadow feat. Daygard Open to the Sea – A Love Letter Disguised into a Book List (Last Rain in Amsterdam) Laeter – You Can’t See Me Laeter – Raining Outside Minten&González – A Place Gone Astray Minten&González – It May Be a Destination IKSRE – forest stream IKSRE – the source Listen again — ~222MB

We’ve got experimental electronic pop, folk & jazz songs tonight, global variants on dub techniques, breakbeats, and some wonderful indietronic-postrock harkening back to halcyon days of the early ’00s or even ’90s. Aphir – Can’t Be Killed Aphir – Dear as Salt (feat. Zsa La Fine) Sandy Chamoun – INI iiisa – en voz alta Stefano Calderano & Giovanni Di Domenico – Una incredibile giornata Stefano Calderano & Giovanni Di Domenico – To tell a dream Trusselina – Trusselina Archimboldi Trusselina – Kiss your Momma doves flying Peel Dream Magazine – Seek and Destroy Peel Dream Magazine – Blind Faith Andrew Tuttle & Darren Cross – Astral Coffee YL Hooi – Running Around (83) (John T. Gast Remix) Blackhaine – Consumer Low End Activist meets Seekersinternational – Muzikon II Howie Lee – The Devil 魔鬼 Nadeem Din-Gabisi – Plane (prod. Morwell) Holy Tongue – I’ve stood in this room for a long time before Andrew Nolan – Padfoot DJ Sprinter – A2 Nikki Nair – Groundhogs Quiet Husband + Medlock – Delph Les Marquises – Vers des lueurs Charlotte Greve – Membranes Charlotte Greve – Olive Tree Baby Dee – So Bad Baby Dee – Whose Rough Hands Nanaco Sato – Love Trip Listen again — ~219MB

We’ve got some pretty noisy rock music tonight, pretty glitchy pop, many heavy beats, many granular drones & sounscapes, and one gorgeous acoustic song if you stay with it! Amiture Music – Idela (feat. Eliana Glass) Emma Ruth Rundle – Enough Gilla Band – At The Gallop Fontaines D.C. – Tongue Vanishing Twin – Hazama Andy Stott – Songbird feat. Elaine Howley (Radio Edit) Harry Klein – Fleeting Moments Shygirl – Alyse drumcorps – Sabotage Sectra – OBSOLETE SLIKBACK X KMRU – ITAKAW nondi_ – cool while it lasted flobama – Haunted Tape Earl Grey & Tudor Incupa – Kelela – On the Run (Earl Grey & Tudor Incupa Bootleg) BNNT & Radwan Ghazi Moumneh – Actual Stefan Goldmann – In Aggregate Timothy Fairless – Friction (No 4 AM Phone Call from Tokyo) Steve Bates – Swiss apartment layouts Steve Bates – Disaster loans Courant Zéro – Horizon n’arrete Borguefül – La maison des dieux Jules Reidy – Clerestory Windows V Linus + Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – And God Saw Faith Coloccia + Tashi Dorji – Fires Three Calum Builder – Is As Light Listen again — ~217MB

It’s a pretty strange one tonight. So much music came out on the 25th of September that I’ve had to take the scalpel to the shortlist quite ruthlessly – hopefully next week will bring along some of the rest! KiKu feat. Black Cracker – Leaping Bull (Chicago) KiKu feat. Blixa Bargeld – Suzhou [XX XY YX YY] Roger Clark Miller – Recipe for a Dream Roger Clark Miller – I Live In A Forest Cor de Lux – Long Face People Gordan – Mara Curly Castro – Cheese N Bread Riddum Curly Castro – Rinzler Wreck ft. ALASKA Olsvang​​èr – Tulpa Nine Djrum – Leave Me Alone Takuya Nakamura – Broken Jazz (ft. Tim Reaper) Mutantgreens – Amana Dom & Paradox – Reflect The Technique Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – This Machine Cocktail Party Effect – The Ebb Tutu Ta – Glass Roses r hunter – cowling gi – squint Kai Niggemann – We Move When They Move ErikM – Popol Vuh ErikM – Perfide chaleur Weston Popławski Knade Mazzoll – Anna’s Rope Jon Hassell – Broadway Boogie-Woogie Richard Skelton & Lawrence English – Sprites (Radio Edit) Raphael Loher – Figuren I Listen again — ~219MB

Tonight we have a weird array of approaches to song, approaches to folk music and jazz; we have dub techno and glitch-influenced beats, some post-dubstep bass music, and some sound-artiness and modular synthesis. LISTEN AGAIN to secure your spot. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Bulie Jordeaux – Melodrama Imogen Plunkett-Hamer – Want To Be Close Trusselina – The Club Ladr Ache – En Z. Sourdure – Pauvre cirque (avec Eloïse Decazes) Sourdure – Rauba Irina Shtreis – Dalaman Peter Knight & TL;DR – Impression I Actress – Live By You (feat. CASISDEAD) Actress – Withending Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto – Conversation 3 Støvfigur – heksesod Pépe – Ja Gu De Manami – Turning Point Saint Abdullah & Eomac – Eyes See What The Camera Cannot Feel Anna Butterss, John Raymond, Ben Lumsdaine – Beginningless Finn Loxbo – Tumlare Finn Loxbo – Bolles Sista Resa Tobia Poltronieri – Cascata Gallurese KMRU – osmol KMRU – foa Rita Revell – Dreaming-Praying Hall (Yan) Ben Carey – Supernumerary Functions Listen again — ~215MB

https://utilityfog.radio/mp3/UFog+20260913.mp3Voices in the ether tonight, manipulated, scuffed, scattered, and sometimes also strong and resolute. Weird-beat tumbling out of weird-hop and into sound-art, and some songs of true beauty along the way. LISTEN AGAIN and just be weird. Stream on demand via fbi.radio, podcast here. Telafonica – See Marina Herlop – Bliss Marla Kether – Run The Track ft. Reek0 Infinity Knives x Brian Ennals – AMDIA Locust – Shape of another (with Griff Spex and Olive Kimoto) Cyst – Keyhole Cyst – Knackered Sully – Flux Maqo – 26 AP Slow83 – Rattler offerings – DJ Screwface Ondness – Megadawn II Ondness – (muito pouco) Barbara Ellison – murdúchann – idir Violeta García & Hora Lunga – emotional baggage allowance Anushka Chkheidze + Robert Lippok – II Perverts In White Shirts – Truth slyn – Under the white curtain HMOT – Every Bottle Is A Flute Matilda Tjäder – The Supermarket Charlotte Greve – Lighter Blue June McDoom – Get Out Of My Life Carl Stone – Figli (Arr. Fischl) Bilal Nasser – Who We Used To Be Shovel Dance Collective – The Foxhunter’s Reel Jem Finer & John Matthias – Baroque Blues shroudings – lake without birds Listen again — ~217MB

Tonight on Utility Fog we have strange & less strange songs, pretty darn strange beats, strange sound-art and improv, and odd, fractured field recordings. LISTEN AGAIN if you’re strange enough! Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Saint Abdullah & Eomac – Cyphers Become Sifr (ft. Abbas Zahedi) Dos Santos – Bajos Recursos Ned Collette – Nothing Rare Chat Pile – October All the Time ealing, F8TLE33 – activ fractur Silvan Strauss – NICE FANGS Silvan Strauss – TUANA feat. Emre İşlemecioğlu ouella – ICED COFFEE ft. El Nashmy Vertigo – Inside Out (Unreleased 2026 Demo – enduser Remix) Christoph de Babalon – Opizath UFO! – WE GOT MORE GUYS ON THE LINE WITH DJ DUB PLATE” Static Structures – Ruff Kutt Loraine James – Oi! What U Tryna’ Be Commodo – Speedway Carrier – Scout Robag Wruhme – Olahni YL Hooi – Running Around (83) Carol Parkinson – Heavybeat Saeed Vahedi – Dağ Dağlar Klara Lewis – Drip Klara Lewis – City Francesca Gaza, Kugelförmigkeit Ensemble – Loop Piece / Veroertlichen Lynn Wright – Reunion Jannis Anastasakis and Peter Knight – Feather I Nonturn – Disrupt Listen again — ~217MB

Tonight’s sounds travel about as far as they ever have on Utility Fog, from the borderlands of Sudan & Kenya in the 1970s to the underground jazz clubs of Sydney, with experimental soul, hip-hop meeting industrial metal, folk-grime instrumentals, and blissful indie-folk-post-rock stuff. And a beloved Sydney indietronic collective resurfaces after 10 years’ gap. LISTEN AGAIN & resurface your soul. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast right here. L’Rain – rumors of light L’Rain – with time L’Rain – soulless cycle Julia Holter – The Laugh Is In The Eyes Telafonica – Waking Next To The Sleeping BRACT & BAYANG (tha Bushranger) – Sydney Swamp (Pemulwuy Paddles Along Gulay’yari) BRACT & BAYANG (tha Bushranger) – Branches Cascade Over its Sides and Gradually Break Down the Steel Hull Kwes Darko – Do you LXve Me Scattered Order – Looking back at me DJ Krush – Nervegrid DJ Krush – Warn Dem (feat. Riko Dan) Saul Williams – The Dagger (feat. Jimetta Rose & Jowee Omicil) Saul Williams – Controlled Is Not Controllable Enduser – Havoc (Version) Jaybee & Calculon – Vibes Time Social Sport – Life BIKE THIEF – DUSTY Artisoma x Muadeep – Elon Husk St Circul – hilly fields : a castle in the distance Chewing Glass Collective – Shattered Colours (Andrew Nolan Funeral Jungle Remix) Dumb Chamber – Le jardin Steve Bates – Lettre d’amour à Fly Pan Am Courant Zéro – Eroding Us unknown – Fila Flute Dance Believe – Earth Does Not Need Us Shearwater – The High Ranges Shearwater – You and Your Dog (feat. Laurie Anderson) Listen again — ~220MB

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

Some lovely dark electronics tonight in various contexts – pop/grime/hip-hop, jazz-funk-metal, folk influences, electro-acoustic techno, bass music galore, and also some live instruments somewhere in there. LISTEN AGAIN in the dark! Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Dis Fig – The Account ft. the wind between [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp] Felicia Chen aka Dis Fig‘s debut album Purge was released on PTP in 2019, merging her jazz- & opera-trained vocals with industrial & noise influences as well as electronic music. Then in 2020, her collaboration In Blue with The Bug brought her voice into a caustic miasmah of “narco-dancehall”, but it was the incredible Orchards of a Futile Heaven with serial collaborators the body that brought not just her vocals but her composition, musicianship & production to wider attention. That album also brought her to the attention of Thrill Jockey, longtime home of The Body, and thus her forthcoming album What To Make Of These Mortal Hands is being ushered into the world from that venerable label. All signs point to this being one of the albums of the year – her anguished but also highly versatile vocals, her melding of bass musics with industrial, classical, jazz and metal influences… Various colleagues appear on select tracks, including The Body’s Lee Buford and My Disco’s Liam Andrews, and on “The Account”, the wind between aka Eldon Somers lends spoken word/rapping. Kwes Darko – War in these sTreets [Black Acre/Bandcamp] UK producer/vocalist/musician Kwes Darko (now New York-based) made a bunch of 12″s & albums as Blue Daisy that circled the post-dubstep bass music styles of the late ’00s and 2010s, but easily veered into softer r’n’b or harder grunge or industrial stylings. For a long time now he’s been producing other artists (including e.g. John Glacier, Isaiah Hull), but 2026 has seen a new EP, a mixtape and now a short album (or is it a long EP?), A CancelXed Generation. In keeping with latter-day Blue Daisy, this is incredibly intense, saturated/clipped bass music with field recordings & newscasts along with Kwes’ heavily distorted voice. That’s to say: f*****g ace. Nueen – Turbocap Is Sure To Disintegrate [3XL/Bandcamp] Nueen – Impls (feat. RenzNiro) [3XL/Bandcamp] Argentinian-Spanish producer Nacho Pezzati aka Nueen released an incredible collaboration with UK vocalist Iceboy Violet in 2024 via Hyperdub. Swerved is his new album back on 3XL, a solo album but packed with guest spots from the likes of Space Afrika, Dawuna, Loraine James, Xzavier Stone and Manchester rapper RenzNiro. In keeping with the 3XL aesthetic, there’s a lot of vapoury sound design as much as decisive beats. An intriguing sonic environment. Nu Jazz – Who Do You Work For [Orange Milk/Bandcamp] What the f**k is this? Whatever you think Nu Jazz might sound like, you’re probably wrong. It’s not NOT jazz, but it’s also hardcore punk, weirdo ambient metal, twisted electronics… Un Jazz is about right. Whenever it threatens to be jazz, the howls of Dan Orlowski (also of (digital) hardcore punk duo Deli Girls) remind us we’re not in that kind of club anymore… Not that any particular genre lasts very long. Meaty basslines, fusion keyboards & guitars, nimble drumming, then it all switches up into doom riffage. Love it. Madelaine Vallin – Spruce (Song of Balance) [self-released digitally or as a package here] Based in Naarm, Madelaine Vallin is a psychotherapist who’s dug deep into her Nordic ancestry in relation both to her day job and also her music. Her JORDIC series integrates biofeedback recordings from trees, gathered in Sweden, with her songs, with layers of vocals and heavy percussion that invoke the majesty of those snow-covered forests. Marina Herlop – Vas volant ft Adri Goor [Marina Herlop Bandcamp] Next up is the second single from Catalan composer, pianist, singer & producer Marina Herlop‘s third album Dja Dja, her first to be self-released (distributed by Barcelona label Lapsus & !K7, so the gorgeous-looking vinyl & CDs should be readily available). This is absolutely in keeping with Herlop’s style, synthesizing Spanish folk and other traditional styles, classical composition and experimental electronica. The track features Adri Goor, a pianist & producer who Herlop describes as her “co-pilot” on this album. Hanna Tuulikki and Tommy Perman – Hear and Follow (Bechstein’s Bat) (Radio Edit) [Kin-Tu/Bandcamp] UK producer Tommy Perman here teams up with Finnish singer Hanna Tuulikki with a selection of songs – appropriately title Echo In The Dark which are based on recordings of different bat species. Incredibly the only sound-sources are bats’ echolocation calls and Tuulikki’s voice. The rhythms of those calls mutate into club-ready songs, with pitch-shifted versions providing basslines and pads, alongside more delicate pieces. Fascinating and fun. Sebaas x Nicoba – SMOKE TWO [Due on sebaas_waveform in late Sept] Here’s another early listen to something from Amsterdam’s Sebaas, this time collaborating with Nicoba, also from Amsterdam, on two slabs of heavy bass music and mutated vocals. Some of the best dancefloor-focused bass music coming out at the moment. How Du – C Gate [Pressure Dome] Metal Will Reign is Bristol producer How Du‘s debut on Pressure Dome, the label run by Yushh (a recent visitor to these shores). Here How Du pairs the very zeitgeisty dub techno with more jittery, soundsystemy bass music. You won’t hear any thrash though, despite the title. Conundrum – Thinking Emoji 2 [Fiesta Soundsystem Bandcamp] DJ Aimbot – track 41 [Fiesta Soundsystem Bandcamp] When is a compilation not a compilation? When it references postmodern literature perhaps. If on a Winter’s Night… a Junglist was released by Fiesta Soundsytem under the conceit that Fiesta is hosting a compilation of tunes from a “secretive enclave of hardcore junglists”, hailing from Tlön Uqbar – which just happens to be a fabled place chronicled by the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges in one of his faux-scholarly stories, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” in 1940. An author of a similarly post-modernist bent, Italo Calvino, lends the title to the album from his novel of nested meta-stories called “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller”. So yes, of course, all these artist are in fact Fiesta Soundsystem, whose fans are well aware that he is a jungle, breakcore & IDM freak of the highest order – and that’s what you get here, with intensely complex beat programming across a crazy range of moods and instrumentation. Pure genius, essential for the junglists among us. Opius – Isolated Space [Pinecone Moonshine/Bandcamp] Vinnie J. Smith’s output as Opius goes back to a series of drum’n’bass 12″s in 2004-2005, but he’s picked up steam a lot in the last 6-7 years, more on a drumfunk tip. Nic TVG’s Pinecone Moonshine is the spiritual home for drumfunk really, a subgenre of jungle & drum’n’bass that concentrates on complex, funky drumbreak edits that retain the spirit of live drums from jazz, funk & soul (and elsewhere). But Opius is not constrained by subgenre, so “Isolated Space” somehow encapsulates explosive jungle, dark drum’n’bass and clattering drumfunk all in one place. Accelera Deck – Stormslide [Accelera Deck Bandcamp] It’s still a bit disorienting that Chris Jeely’s shoegaze-IDM project Accelera Deck is back in operation. The main period was about 1998-2006, in which he released myriad EPs and albums on underground labels and built up a reputation for lo-fi experimental beats & textures. New track Stormslide comes, as much of his stuff, with a more dubbed-out version, but the track is very much jangly indie/shogaze/postpunk guitars and a rattling jungle drumbreak. I love the Version but it’s twice as long! Realm of Dusk – Endless Clutter, Infinite Joy [Blasted Gorse] Realm of Dusk – Astral Vomit [Blasted Gorse] A couple of years ago I was sad to play the last release from connect_icut, the long-running glitch/sound-art/experimental/postrock project from Samuel Macklin. A large amount of connect_icut’s music can be found on the CSAF Bandcamp. It turns out that Mars Maps Waterloo Moon was just the last connect_icut album, as Macklin has now come out with the first album (confusingly titled III) from his new project Realm of Dusk. The music here is deeply evocative, despite each of the 12 tracks clocking in at exactly 3 minutes. Fizzling glitch, deep sub pings, modulated beats, electro-acoustic loops. Lovely to have you back, Sam. Robbie Avenaim – Tell Me Everything (excerpt) [Heavy Machinery Records/Bandcamp] For a considerable number of years now, Naarm/Melbourne record label Heavy Machinery Records has been releasing music commissioned from artist to collaborate with Melbourne’s Federation Bells, a mechanical sculpture of upturned bells of various sizes located in Birrarung Marr, the park to the south-east of Federation Square , on the Yarra River. And who better than Robbie Avenaim to do so? Through the mid 1990s to mid 2000s, Robbie directed the seminal, incredibly important What Is Music? Festival with longtime collaborator Oren Ambarchi. Robbie’s own career has spanned early noise and punk through to free jazz & ambient, but his now well-established artistic practice for the last 20 years(!) is based around “SARPS” aka Semi-Automated Robotic Percussion System. So on Shine Caught Blue, his semi-automated robots interact with his own drums & percussion and the MIDI-programmed Federation Bells, creating something of predominantly incredible delicacy punctuated by concentrated intensity. Remarkable work. Kirk Barley – Sundry [Marionette/Bandcamp] Accidentally, I’m playing London musician & modular synthesist Kirk Barley next – a musician who’s often worked at the intersection of automation and percussion, with fr

Experimental song, weird beats getting into everything, glitchy sound-art from unexpected quarters, a processed field recording journey & more tonight! LISTEN AGAIN to a sonic journey. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here! Neptune – Enter H— [Sleeping Giant Glossolalia/Bandcamp/Bandcamp] It’s been a while since the last album from Boston experimental band Neptune – although two abstract tracks came out on a lathe-cut 7″ a couple of years ago. Listening through their Bandcamp archives, it’s plain to see that the one constant is that you don’t know what to expect, but it’ll probably be industrial in the sense of machinic (which may not be a word, but I mean “of machines”), often murky, sometimes grotesque. All main members are inventors of one sort or another – and whether electronic, electric or “acoustic”, most of the sounds are to some degree handmade. Jason Sanford, singer and instrumentalist, is also a member of Thalia Zedek‘s trio E. But mainly what we get from Neptune, on their excellent new album Play Some Music, is weird sound, and junk rhythms. Who needs melody anyway? I mean, it’s nice sometimes, but this works too. Saul Williams – Mazahua [Big Dada/Bandcamp] The king of conscious rap, president of experimental collaboration, the poetic philosopher of politics, Saul Williams is back with a new album this year, Leap Life. Out on August 28th on Big Dada no less, the Ninja Tune subsidiary that in 1998 released his mind-blowing debut EP Elohim (1972) (“Like kyah kyah kyah, sha klak-klak, get me the F**K off this track!“). “Mazahua” demonstrates Williams’ mastery of poetic music – spoken word that morphs subtly into melody, and production that goes from string pads through a kind of ’80s electro to a beautiful field recording bed for the outro. It’s epic. iiisa – aún siento la sombra [Leaving Records/Bandcamp] Here at Utility Fog we stan Brooklyn-based Costa Rican artist isabel crespo pardo, in all their musical formations. In 2024 we were privileged to hear their vision from two different trios: sinonó melds Latin American folk song with free improvisation, combining crespo pardo’s voice with cello (Lester St. Louis) and double bass (Henry Fraser); tilt finds crespo pardo joined by trombonist Kalia Vandever and double bassist Carmen Quill, with all three singing. These two ensembles conjured remarkable music from voice and low-register instruments. And last year came the debut full-length from crespo pardo’s quartet toso toso, a more electronic ensemble with piano, drums and guitar – yes, no bass. Now in 2026 we’re getting to hear from crespo pardo’s solo project iiisa, with the album tanto te he querido (“I have loved you so much”). The bed of these songs is made from field recordings and fragments of their earlier work, the songs emerging through a version of the improvisation behind much of their group work. On the first single “aún siento la sombra” (“I can still feel the shadow”), bits of field recordings – voices and percussion – are looped and chopped, with arrhythmic percussion providing an unreliable backing behind iiisa’s voice, then some stentorian distorted chords riff atonally, soon giving way to a different field recording, chaotic with shouted voices and percussion. It’s disorienting, but clearly intentionally constructed, an abstract composition that I’m keen to hear in the context of the rest of the album. Trusselina – Gastro [JOLT MUSIC/Bandcamp] The debut studio release from Philadelphia duo Trusselina, made up of Hayden McGarvey and Mikeala Oppenheimer, is yet more proof that it’s the mid-2000s all over again (I’m thinking particularly of the indietronica of ear). Heck, this could almost have come out from Bubble Core in the late 1990s. The two tracks are pretty different – one with energetic live drums and strummy indie guitars, super catchy; the other a soundscape with spoken word. It’s like when postrock was interesting, when indie and electronic music collided messily with little regard for familiar structures or commericality. Love it. Tom Foden – {…i…w i s h…} [self-released/Bandcamp/Subvert] Tom Foden – {…f e a r…o f…} [self-released/Bandcamp/Subvert] From across the pond in Aotearoa – Lower Hut, Wellington, to be precise – comes the debut album from Tom Foden, live sound producer and studio sound engineer. It’s called Release, or in the album’s typography, {…r e l e a s e…}, and in a way it’s about Foden’s journey to founding his studio and releasing his own music, as well as starting a family and those kinds of big changes – about letting go of the protections that can actually be constricting. The album’s a whole mix of stuff, from ambient to field recordings, including pretty piano from Victoria Ferguson, to heavy beats & bass. It certainly succeeds as a statement of artistic intent, putting Tom Foden on my radar. Jonathan Uliel Saldanha – Field@135 [Crónica/Bandcamp] To some, Portuguese sound-artist and producer Jonathan Uliel Saldanha might be better known as the HHY part of HHY & the Kampala Unit, a project with Ugandan musicians released on the legendary Nyege Nyege Tapes. Here we hear him actually remixing long-running Portugese computer music duo @c aka Miguel Carvalhais & Pedro Tudela, who together founded the essential, ground-breaking label Crónica in 2003. This is the fourth in a series of releases stemming from @c’s 30×N project with new media artist Visiophone – you can see some of the visual elements here. There are two remixes on this EP, the other being from AGF. Hers is beautifully crunchy and abstract, and Uliel Saldanha’s is a head-nodding lopsided percussive beat. Karnage – Depth Charge (ft. Rakjay) [Deep Dark & Dangerous/Bandcamp] OK here we got Japanese dubstep/140 producer Karnage with 2 tracks on Deep Dark & Dangerous, the label run by NZ dubstep lifers Truth. Both tracks are true to the label’s name, but Rakjay is liable to bring fire, and “Depth Charge” really is something else, heavy duty and stripped back at the same time. Hella – We Left Everything On The Dancefloor [YUKU/Bandcamp] No, not that Hella. UK DJ, producer, vocalist Hella debus on YUKU with five tracks of UK bass music that incorporate community & space into the recordings. We Left Everything On The Dancefloor is a beautiful ode to club culture at its best. Nebraska presents: Dubl Drat – Olive (Dubl Drat Dub) [Delusions of Grandeur/Bandcamp] Alistair Gibbs made a name in deep house as Nebraska, with a sensibility that took in jazz and hip-hop. He’s now in the midst of retiring Nebraska for a new identity: Dubl Drat. It’s not that the deep house and disco aren’t still there, but Dubl Drat is able to recontextualise them as only dub can do. His “Dubl Drat Dub” of “Olive” is a hypnotic piece with a quasi breakbeat, wafting tabla and blissful melodic fragments that never shifts from its one chord. Lovely. Petrels – Speenhamland [Denovali/Bandcamp] Have I told this story before? Of course I have. So, back in 2008 Oliver Barrett released his first album as Bleeding Heart Narrative – All That Was Missing We Never Had In The World (ignore the Bandcamp date), released initially on a boutique UK label/publisher called Tartaruga. In a year of amazing discoveries, that debut album rode high above most, combining Godspeed-like postrock (Barrett is a cellist like me), chaotic noise, glitched cut-ups and lots of emotion. Bleeding Heart Narrative lasted a while, becoming a real band, but Oliver also launched Petrels as the renewed focus for solo music – itself somewhere between postrock, electronic music and indie songwriter stuff. He’s also released quite avant-garde solo cello stuff under his own name, and nowadays you can find a variety of different music, from both the Petrels Bandcamp and Floating Limb Bandcamp. I should also note that he’s a beautiful illustrator too. But this text is all in the interests of being overjoyed to find that Oliver’s Petrels, after I think about 7 years, now has a new album on the way – in fact two, as Infangthief is set to be followed by Outfangthief later this year. Released, as much of his Petrels stuff, on German powerhouse Denovali, it’s got all the energy, maximalism and experimentalism that this project represents. datewithdeath – Thickets 2 (Shay. Remix) [Frolic Press/Bandcamp] Travis Johnson’s datewithdeath continues releasing music at a steady rate, now on his Frolic Press – a label that’s also a publisher of weird fiction and the like. Here a recent track of his is reworked by Shay. with eerie bell-like tones that subside into atmospheric techno beats, rolling, bubbling tones and acid blurps. DJ Sprinter – Zero Tin [Unreleased, direct from artist] Norwegian breakbeat/bass producer DJ Sprinter has risen high in only a few years, courtesy of needle-sharp beats and precision-tooled grooves. Those who follow him on Bandcamp will note that he occasionally sends out a communiqué offering unreleased tracks if you DM him on Instagram. And thence cometh this great minimalist piece with a spare kick/hi-hat/snare beat out of which breakbeats sometimes scatter, along with choppy vocal samples and occasional other sounds. Djrum – I Wander (II) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp] Felix Manuel aka Djrum is one of the geniuses of the current age, adept at beats at any BPM, switching easily between techno, dubstep, jungle & beyond, but also inserting beautiful quasi-classical piano & cello passages, flutes with weird tunings, etc. Forthcoming EP I Wander is really one 15:44 track, but split into 6 parts reflecting its restless evolution throughout. So look, it’s Djrum, it’s genius, what else can I say? Silvan Strauss – ALL BOSSES [Kabul Fire Records/Bandcamp] Here’s a single from the forthcoming album Sprinting from Hamburg-based drummer & pr

Tonight we’ve got weird song and spoken stuff, mutant variants of jungle and bass music, glitched samples, barely-there singer-songwriterliness and more! It’s Utility Fog! Thanks to Bindi Mutiara for filling in last weekend! LISTEN AGAIN and save yourself. Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. Teether – GHOSTS SURROUND THE CASTLE [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp] What happens when hard yakka just isn’t hard enough? HARDER YAKKA, according to Australia’s most laconic underground rapper, Teether. This particular album is named in ultra-Aussie fashion because our guy recorded it while in London. Despite his awesome collabs with Kuya Neil, Teether is a great producer himself – just check the guitar loops, buried beats and heavy bass on this track, with subtle dub effects on the voice. Brilliant. Dry Cleaning – Grass [4AD/Bandcamp] I guess we’re stuck with the insta-Deluxe Editions now, so 6 months after Dry Cleaning‘s Secret Love, here’s the “Deluxe Edition“, which has 3 new tracks tacked on that should’ve just been an EP. The new tracks are f*****g great though – “Grass” mopes along with Florence Shaw’s spoken words, until she actually sings for half of the song. Show Me The Body – No God [Loma Vista/Bandcamp] For me, the strongest aspect of NYC hardcore band Show Me The Body has been their off-piste collaborations – the incredibly stacked Corpus I with hip-hop, r’n’b & electronic producers, singers & rappers, and the Corpus II EPs I & II. But that’s not to say that their standard fare is standard fare either, with vocalist Julian Cashwan-Pratt playing electrified banjo as the lead instrument, and on their latest album they’ve collaborated with Gio Escobar’s avant-garde collective Standing on the Corner, bringing in horn arrangements in between blasts of punk. Alone Together brings out a certain contradiction of our times, but emphasises that, for all the aggression, they are about love. And it’s also notable that the bandmembers are all Jewish and all pro-Palestinian (they had “Anti-Zionist Jewish Pride” t-shirts at gigs & online for a while, wish I’d gotten hold of one!), and the all-too-familiar hatred coming from within our Jewish community was part of what inspired “Alone Together”. Solidarity, my mates! Brian Ennals & Blockhead – Roll Call [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp] Last year I was playing Baltimore rapper Brian Ennals via his frankly astonishing opus in collaboration with Infinity Knives: A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears, mixing hip-hop with guitars’ acoustic strums & electric riffs, and a male gospel choir. Meanwhile NYC producer Blockhead is known – apart from the endless memes on his Instagram – for his extensive production work with Aesop Rock and more recently billy woods, two genius figures in rap – plus scads of solo work. Ennals more than easily stands in those shoes on *ahem* Boatshoes, whether it’s jazz licks, synths or who knows what else Blockhead throws in the boat. First class album from top to bottom. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Level 5 [p(doom) records/Bandcamp eventually] By now, Aussie psych band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard can be expected to do something weird & different whenever they release something new. Their upcoming album Alien Metal is much more alien than metal, made entirely on modular synths, under the influence of rave music. And yes, complete with demented video, first single “Level 5” is breakbeat-driven EDM-pop using the Phrygian dominant scale (pretty common in metal). Super fun. Yunze Ou – pattrn 87 [Yunze Ou Bandcamp] Spanish artist Yunze Ou is ostensibly an anonymous producer hailing from Montaña Palentina in the north of Spain. The project works in the 170BPM realm of drum’n’bass, halftime and dub techno. A recent excellent split 7″ on Short Cuts Vinyl credits both tracks to Pablo Miranda Caballero, suggesting that Yunze Ou is another alias of the Seville artist releasing experimental electronics as Celine Arnauld and jungle/hardcore-influenced stuff as DJ Don’t Sleep. Yunzo Ou has been making series of EPs, Meta Patterns, to be followed now by Meta Data, but from the IIIrd of the Meta Patterns we heard something heavily drum’n’bassy, complex rhythms reminiscent of Arcon 2 and Dom & Roland – while the previous track was more on a current day Samurai tip. Complex beats and great sound design. Nia Archives – Danger [Hijinxx/Island Records] UK producer, DJ & singer Nia Archives follows her debut album Silence is Loud, released in 2024, with a more varied take on pop with jungle beats – on emotional junglist there are indie rock guitars and even tracks that don’t sound like they have breakbeats, at least until they do. But Nia Archives doesn’t need to prove her junglist cred – as well as her DJ sets, her UP YA ARCHIVES has released some brilliant “new gen junglism” over the last couple of years. And on her second album it’s new gen jungle-pop with feeling. Basic Rhythm & NyNy – Mek Style [Musique Nocturne/Bandcamp] Basic Rhythm – Collapse [Musique Nocturne/Bandcamp] Catching up here. Anthoney Hart aka Basic Rhythm released the fantastic grime-meets-techno album 8 Bar Techno on Sneaker Social Club in June, but he’d already released whole nother album on his own Musique Nocturne in May. This one has more of the mutant drum’n’bass that he arguably specialises in, often rhythmically regimented & hybridised. Like on the Sneaker Social Club album there’s some collabs, mostly with other drum’n’bass/jungle producers, but vocalist NyNy also makes an appearance, on a track that’s like a stripped-down dancehall trying to push into jungle. Those shrieking synths and the plunging bassline on “Collapse” are really something though. re:ni – SULA [re:lax/Bandcamp] Back on her own re:lax label (co-run with laksa, see?) after a visit to Timedance is Lauren Bush aka re:lax with a couple of percussive, dubby bass tunes aimed straight at the dancefloor. Gloorp – Ice Bath ft. Chasia [Jolt Music/Bandcamp] Philadelphia’s Garrett Burke is a talented drummer and sound-engineer/producer whose Gloorp project recalls melodic IDM with fidgety beats influenced as much by footwork as jungle and UK garage. It’s tightly rhythmic, and as far as I know, mostly played live on drum triggers. Rad. Leo – Cicada Burnt [Peak Oil/Bandcamp] After making his name on Manchester’s YOUTH and Shotta Tapes, Leo now lands on the magnificent Peak Oil with Cicada Burnt, an EP that deftly crosses over between UK bass music and the twitchy dub techno oft associated with Peak Oil. There’s upbeat electro-bass here, but couched in spatious delayscapes, with tracks that bide their time before unleashing. Christophe Bailleau O’Farrell – Gravemaster [Lotophagus Records/Bandcamp] Christophe Bailleau O’Farrell – FUSION [Mahorka/Bandcamp] Swiss-French producer & musician Christophe Bailleau O’Farrell (formerly known only by the first two names) has been quite prolific of late, with a series of albums inspired by neurodivergence, and now there’s a pair of albums that are kind of two sides of a coin: Romantic, Visceral, on Bulgarian label Mahorka, is a search for beauty in a ruined world, acoustic instruments combined with General Midi and glitchy electronics; its evil twin Mind Is That Sky My Goth appeared on French label Lotophagus Records, and takes refuge in darkness. You could say they’re not that different, but there’s more aggressive, glitched beats & noise on the evil one! BirdWorld – Opposite Hinges (Qasim Naqvi Remix) [Dugnad rec/Bandcamp] When I discovered BirdWorld in 2018, it was love at first sight – a cello and percussion duo? And yet so much more! Cellist Gregor Riddell and percussionist Adam Teixeira‘s second album NURTURE came out last year, fulfilling the debut’s promise: field recordings rub up against composed pieces and improvisations, many acoustic instruments co-exist with electronics. Their first album did birth a set of remixes, and here’s one from the follow-up, a track originally featuring violinist Sara Övinge, beautifully reworked here by Dawn of Midi drummer & modular synthesist Qasim Naqvi. Joni Void – Kidder [Joni Void Bandcamp] Loud Life – Caution Tape [Joni Void Bandcamp] Jean Cousin has released a few albums on Montréal’s storied Constellation Records as Joni Void, his best-known moniker, but he’s also been known as Jean Néant, ages ago as johnny_ripper, and lots more, quite honestly (a lot of it on Bandcamp). Loud Life is relatively recent, kind of lo-fi sampladelic hip-hop, and the third release In Third Person, came out in May. At the start of July came LAGZ, a sequel to last November’s BLAZ, both of which are constructed from meticulously-catalogued loops & samples (see the Bandcamp pages) of friends & inspirations of the artist. It’s great lo-fi, sometimes glitchy, head-noddy stuff. BOOBS OF DOOM – U. LEMONDRONE BEHEMOTH VERSION [BOOBS OF DOOM Bandcamp] I’ve been a fan of Scottish, er, doom duo BOOBS OF DOOM for ages, but have somehow failed to play them up until now – a huge error. They’re quite prolific, although they’ve slowed down a little of late, but SURVIVAL HORROR is their 34th album, at least of the numbered ones, since 2014. Doom is a wide-ranging concept, but there’s some sense of doom metal in here, along with industrial dub sounds, hip-hop and/or trip-hop, postrock and experimental electronics. At the time of broadcast, SURVIVAL HORROR was in pre-order, which requires a nominal fee, but everything is otherwise pay-what-you-can. And prolific and generous as they are, everything is of high quality. EMBRACE THE DOOM! Ava Rabiat – Szał Wirtualnych Ciał [FUU/Bandcamp] Ava Rabiat – Geistr [FUU/Bandcamp] Polish sound-artist, singer & composer Ava Rabiat released her debut, Elektro Erotyk on Berlin-based label/platform/collective F

Tonight it’s time for weird hip-hop, dark d’n’b trance-pop, mutant dancehall, Indonesian experimental folk, experimental Yolŋu, experimental indie, post-classical pop, krautrock-pop, mashups, junglism of all sorts, minimal drum’n’bass, minimal dub, sound-art, sound-art, sound-art… You know… It’s Utility Fog.. LISTEN AGAIN, to the art of sound… Stream on demand from fbi.radio, podcast here. doseone & Height Keech – Wont Work [doseone Bandcamp] doseone & Height Keech – Twisted (Featuring Brian Ennals) [doseone Bandcamp] Following his brilliant album All Portrait, No Chorus with Steel Tipped Dove earlier in 2025, veteran alt.hip-hop mouth doseone swung right back into the swing of things with an EP produced entirely by Baltimore beatmaker Height Keech. Wood Teeth was laser-focused on the current moment, and its sequel (Wood Teeth II, natch) takes the same position – once more it’s about the descent of the USA into fascism, and it’s as “scathing” as the copy says. Dose is putting out some of the best work of his career, and the madcap sound of Height Keech certainly doesn’t hinder him. Marcus Whale – Dark Room [Blue Void/Bandcamp] Out now, the latest album from Eora/Sydney luminary Marcus Whale, who’s been a fixture on this show since his early experimental work as Scissor Lock, when he was a mere teenager, and throughout the brilliant releases of his duo Collarbones and trio Black Vanilla (among many others). Nether is, by my count, his 5th solo album, the first being his incredible statement of intent 10 years ago, Inland Sea, and it follows 2024’s club-fuelled blissout Ecstasy with the comedown, albeit no less energetic. There’s those traces of trance’s lysergic dancefloor tranceformation, pummeling kicks and (as heard here) jungle-like drum programming, ultra-processed breaks and percussion, and of course Marcus’s voice multi-tracked and harmonised. Beautiful. Facta – SLoPE VIP (ft Warrior Queen & Killa P) [Wisdom Teeth/Bandcamp] UK bass producer & one half of the Wisdom Teeth label, Facta, put out a slab of UK post-dubstep bass styles, from funky house to breakbeat techno, on last year’s GULP. Now he’s re-tooled the breakbeat track “SLoPE” with vocals from two UK dancehall/grime legends, Warrior Queen & Killa P. Wicked! Naga Kirana – Lumba2 [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp] Amsterdam collective Naga Kirana make a super-fun form of Indonesian electronic folk-pop, with gamelan percussion instruments, drum machines & synths, and the voice Inda Duran ensuring it’s catchy as heck. Looking forward to more from them! Waakya – Fire Song [Hospital Hill courtesy of The Wire] First recorded listen to the new cross-cultural collaboration Waakya comes in the latest edition of Wire Magazine’s Wire Tapper. The band centres around Yolŋu songman Daniel Wilfred & yidaki (didgeridoo) virtuoso David Wilfred, who you may know from Hand to Earth. They’re joined by sound wizard & guitarist Matthew McGuigan of label/production house Hospital Hill, modular synth virtuoso Ben Carey (also of Sumn Conduit) and legendary experimental turntablist (and acclaimed cardiologist!) Martin Ng. That’s a recipe for something extraordinary, as you’ll hear from these first sounds. The way the Wilfreds’ traditional music melds with experimental textures is always magical, here emerging from varispeed record crackle, guitar harmonics and other unidentified sounds. Expect more soon. Kee Avil – delay [NNA Tapes/Bandcamp] So Montréal experimental musician Kee Avil, with a couple of albums under her belt on Constellation, has this year teamed up with NNA Tapes to release a progressive album over the whole year, called Vapor. There’s one track going up per month, and the latest is the saturated quasi-80s electro-pop of “delay”. Each track so far is excellent and weird. Marie Delprat – Dust in my veins [-OUS/Bandcamp] Swiss label -OUS has been consistently hitting goals for some years now, with glitched electronics, post-classical fusion weirdness and various unconventional takes on song-based music. All those things converge on the first single from classically-trained Marie Delprat‘s EP What remains after desire, a quietly creepy piece of drone-pop. Marina Herlop – Jaque [Marina Herlop Bandcamp] Keeping with post-classical fusion weirdness, we join Catalan composer, pianist, singer & producer Marina Herlop for her third album Dja Dja, her first to be self-released (distributed by Barcelona label Lapsus & !K7, so the gorgeous-looking vinyl & CDs should be readily available). First single “Jaque” has everything Herlop is known for: classical-sounding piano, layered ecstatic folk vocals, syncopated rhythms. Keep an eye out for this one! Vanishing Twin – Bring Me The Axe [Fire/Bandcamp] Currently a trio, Vanishing Twin have made experimental pop music now for 11 years. Singer Cathy Lucas moved to rural France a year or two ago, so making music with ubiquitous drummer Valentina Magaletti and bassist Susumu Mukai aka Zongamin (who together are V/Z) became primarily an asynchronous affair of swapping files remotely. The title Archives is a reference to file-sharing and collaging from disparate sources, rather than describing an album of rarities or best of – it’s all new material. The band has always taken indie pop into realms of the experimental, with strong krautrock & dub vibes, but these new tracks are particularly adventurous, sounding precisely like three musicians in different locations coming together for a chimera of folk, electronic pop, dub, glitched trip-hop and radiophonic post-classical abstraction. I’m pumped to hear the rest of this album. Heyes – carlos serone – “folder for heyes (unfinished tape beats)” [Heyes’ Edits] [R\ic/H Collective/Bandcamp] Heyes – Ang Watching ‘Pets on a Train’ on a Plane [R\ic/H Collective/Bandcamp] Lochie – aka Heyes – is quite close to this show, and has filled in for me earlier this year as well as having broadcast on other stations. As an artist, his output is quite varied, but one strand of his art is the transformation of pre-existing music as well as field recording. Lochie has formed the R\ic/H Collective with a group of like-minded musicians, writers & designers here in Eora, and first cab off the rank for the label arm is (here goes): rich; or, a mixtape of music about being “rich” and music not about being “rich”. The mixtape begins (and goes on) with a selection of Heyes Quickmixes of some familiar money-based pop songs, some mangled beyond recognition, some leaking their source material in odd ways, but slipped inside are some fellow travellers like carlos serone, whose lo-fi beats are edited by Heyes, and who also provided the liner notes. Intriguingly strange. Harrison Rae – Diss Track [Harrison Rae Bandcamp] From a notable Eora/Sydney gent now, Harrison Rae, who’s released electronic music as Beau Ambien and Henri O and is the convenor of Club Moss. His 2025 Mixtape is varied as a mixtape ought to be, from guitar tracks to murky electronics like “Diss Track”. Djrum – I Wander (IV) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp] Felix Manuel aka Djrum is one of the geniuses of the current age, adept at beats at any BPM, switching easily between techno, dubstep, jungle & beyond, but also inserting beautiful quasi-classical piano & cello passages, flutes with weird tunings, etc. Forthcoming EP I Wander is really one 15:44 track, but split into 6 parts reflecting its restless evolution throughout. I’m fortunate to have heard the whole thing already, and it’s as good as you’re expecting! Rydeen & SOVBLKPSSY – LESBIANISM [silkXS Bandcamp] Eora/Sydney duo Rydeen & SOVBLKPSSY follow up a 2-tracker from 2024 with their DONT TELL ANYONE EP, reflecting their influences across the bass & club spectrum, nodding at local sounds & history, thence building up from scratch a hardcore continuum of our own. In that vein, “LESBIANISM” is a Ry & Sov take on jungle, and a delight to hear. Plug – King Ring [De:tuned/Bandcamp] Once again Luke Vibert returns to his DAT archives to pull a full album’s worth of mid-’90s Plug material out for us to bathe in. When Vibert discovered jungle circa 1994, he was probably the one member of the IDM crew (Aphex Twin, µ-Ziq, Squarepusher et al) who really understood how it worked, as club music, in relation to hip-hop and ragga dancehall, and in terms of break juggling. I love those other guys, but Plug was the real shit. At the time, Vibert only released a series of EPs and the classic Drum’n’Bass for Papa album (you can find them all digitally at Bleep and elsewhere), apart from a smattering of compilation tracks. As well as wicked drum programming, they exhibited Vibert’s talent for perfectly-sourced samples and melodic basslines & lead parts, all of which counts just as much for his hip-hop productions and the acid the makes up most of his material lately. Part of this is his sense of humour, and the “Papa” of the album’s title is Vibert’s grandfather Frank Vibert, a keen amateur magician, and while the photos of Vibert in Orientalist magician getup seem to have dried up, the title Variety Magic keeps up the connection. It should be noted that the Plug style of jungle/drill’n’bass was specific to the technology Vibert was using at the time, and even the Amen Andrews stuff that came out in 2003 has a different feel because he wasn’t producing the tracks the same way. So both the 2012 album Back on Time (which does sport his granddad on the cover) and this new album are collections of tracks from the mid-to-late ’90s. It’s insane that an 11 track album of tunes this good was lurking on DATs somewhere for decades. Morwell – Trust (A.Fruit Remix) [Morwell Bandcamp] Max Morwell has for the last 7+ years been exploring the music of bass & breakbeats that soundtracked many a rave, and he recently worked on some

We have experimental songs tonight, underground hip-hop & grime, and quite a lot of jungle & drum’n’bass mixed up with more experimental electronics & noise, sound-art meets contemporary classical, music for Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan and Congo, and more! LISTEN AGAIN to find the hope in the world; stream on demand at fbi.radio, podcast here. Aphir – Photokeratitis [Bird’s Robe Records/Bandcamp] Naarm’s Becki Whitton is many things: having been a guiding force behind sort-of record label Provenance Collective and mastermind of alternative top 100 for leftfield Australian music, The Wettest 100, professionally she’s a talented sound engineer, mixing & mastering many local pop & indie legends; and of course above all she’s a wonderful songwriter, producer, singer & improviser under the name Aphir. It’s been some time since the last Aphir album of songs with beats & stuff – for some time she’s been creating incredible ambient choral works with live looping & processing, some of which was released on The Halo is Shapeless in 2023. That album was released on Art As Catharsis – a very eclectic label, but best known for postrock & metal. Now Aphir’s new album Avarena is coming in September, and another Eora/Sydney postrock powerhouse, Bird’s Robe Records, is releasing it. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing it already, and it’s full of the kind of experimental electronic pop songs we’ve come to expect from Becki Whitton. Brian Ennals & Blockhead – Let it Burn (like Usher) [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp] Last time I had the pleasure of playing Baltimore rapper Brian Ennals, it was as part of a frankly astonishing opus in collaboration with Infinity Knives last year called A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears, mixing hip-hop with guitars’ acoustic strums & electric riffs, and a male gospel choir. NYC producer Blockhead is known – apart from the endless memes on his Instagram – for his extensive production work with Aesop Rock and more recently billy woods, two genius figures in rap – plus scads of solo work. Ennals more than easily stands in those shoes on *ahem* Boatshoes, the first single of which takes in in jazz loops and weird synths, with often-melodic rapping from Ennals. Keep an eye on this album, due out on July 17th. Basic Rhythm & NyNy – Vibez [Sneaker Social Club/Bandcamp] Basic Rhythm – No Future [Sneaker Social Club/Bandcamp] Anthoney Hart’s Basic Rhythm is generally his take on drum’n’bass, albeit always a little off-centre, rhythms shifted in some way. But his latest for the great bass label Sneaker Social Club is titled 8 Bar Techno. So is it techno? Well… kinda? It definitely starts that way, the title track sporting gun reloads & shots accenting its 4/4 thump. It’s definitely bass music though, and half of it I would suggest is grime – a highlight is NyNy‘s collaboration, “Vibez”, with more of those gun cocks. And then “No Future” has the 4/4 pulse and techno tempo, and that syncopated bassline… With Eklipse the mix empties out for a dubstep/grime feel, and sword slices replacing the guns. Only when the album closes on “Ice Cold” do we get hints at drum’n’bass, and even then what it really is a kind of grime-techno-electro stomp. Excellent. Sourdure – Le Pebre (feat. Lisà Langlois) [Murailles Music/Bandcamp] Ernest Bergez, of experimental electronic duo Kaumwald and various bands in various genres, continues his Sourdure project this year with a new album, Outredore, coming in September. With Sourdure, arcane pagan themes are modernised with electronic processing and synths, with lyrics in the Auvergnat dialect of the regional French language Occitan – which is closer to Catalan than French, and was the traditional language of many troubadors in ages past. As much as it draws on the folk music of central France, there are Arabic melodies flowing through these songs, and electronic pulses and tones. The first single features additional vocals from Lisà Langlois of the band Bòsc and collective La Crue, based also in the Massif Central of France. Jesse Draxler – Traap Number 9 ft. Lord Spikeheart & Hybrid Intuition [RIP ID] LA-based visual artist, filmmaker & musician Jesse Draxler released the first single from his upcoming album/project Tongue of Angels a few weeks ago, featuring hardcore punk/hip-hop duo Ho99o9. Here’s the second one now, with two big names from the Kenyan underground: Martin Kanja aka Lord Spikeheart, who works with heavy electronics and was half of grindcore band Duma, and guitarist/producer/futurist Hybrid Intuition. Draxler is primarily a visual artist as far as I know, but whether this is his music or more curation, it’s good stuff! Artilect – Flames (Featuring Miss Ria) [Weaponist/Bandcamp] One of the most consistently exciting drum’n’bass/jungle producers of the last while is Dylan Blythin aka Artilect, who’s often been associated with the Samurai folks but has always tended to have a junglist’s sense of rhythmic complexity shot through the d’n’b cyberpunk battering ram. And that neon, rain-soaked darkness is present on Reptile, his latest EP on Homemade Weapons‘ Weaponist label – to my ears there’s a lot of Dom & Roland here (high praise). dgoHn – Waiting For [Planet µ/Bandcamp] Here are two tastes that sure go well together – the first release by drumfunk genius dgoHn (aka John Cunnane) on Planet µ! Tessares really is vintage dgoHn, with the melodic focus of label boss µ-Ziq – and dgoHn did have an album with Macc on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label (digital available here), so IDM isn’t exactly foreign to his style of drum’n’bass. But the beats are impeccable & inventive too, of course. Highly recommended. Mantra, Decibella & Tim Reaper – Force 32 [RuptureLDN/Bandcamp] Force 32 is the third collaboration between three huge forces for the jungle revival in the UK: (DJ) Mantra, who co-founded RuptureLDN with her husband Double O, as club nights and a label (who released this EP); Decibella, herself a busy jungle & drum’n’bass DJ, and Ed Alloh aka Tim Reaper, the hardest working guy in jungle, albeit now on a break from his collaborative releases on Future Retro London. The previous installments can be found on Tim Reaper’s label and on FABRICLIVE, and this may be the best of the lot – just really good jungle as it should be done. Shhau – Bedrock [SFX/Bandcamp] Fresh on Zoë Mc Pherson‘s SFX is an album from Armenian musician & bass music producer Shhau. This is music that moves comfortably between bass music genres and tribal, percussive techno – as such it would be perfectly suited to the YUKU label, but very much fits with Mc Pherson’s aesthetic too. I love the way this is a really solid drum’n’bass tune until it pummels its way into something more techno-y. Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – Iron Age Fantasies [Bios Contrast Bandcamp/Universal Broadcast] Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das, Seraphim, Susu Laroche, BROOD – Escape [Bios Contrast Bandcamp/Universal Broadcast] Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das is the usual way that Nilotpal Das refers to his music-making, although there are many more variations! He’s an incredibly prolific producer, with new tracks going up on Bandcamp more than weekly – and there’s Bios Contrast and Brahmancore at least to follow. These two tracks are from an honest-to-goodness album that’s even released in a limited CD edition from US distributor Universal Broadcast (with impossibly expensive shipping, natch). Sounds from the S.P.E.A.K.E.R System also extends Das’s love of collaboration, with a whole host of artist joining in. On the second track here we have vocals from French-Egyptian cross-media artist Susu Laroche, and additional production from Seraphim and BROOD. We’re talking crazy glitchy beats, sometimes edging into breakcore or speedcore territory. Brahmancore. KK NULL – Quantum Pulsation X_000005 [KK Null Bandcamp] Kazuyuki Kishino, usually known as KK NULL or Null, is one of the most recognized, long-lasting noise & experimental musicians in Japan. Since the early 1980s he’s made noise rock, hardcore punk and industrial, and collaborated with scads of artists from across the spectrum, but for decades as well he’s made mind-melting electronic music. Even if there are elements of dub, techno or other genres, his music remains sui generis. On his Bandcamp you’ll find a host of different series, albums grouped around particular concepts, this particular recent one being Quantum Pulsation X – and it’s not actually the tenth Quantum Pulsation, but rather an extended riff on an earlier work I guess. The complexity of rhythm and noise reflects the complexity of thought that Null puts into everything he does. A fascinating assault on the senses. Architectural – Psychedelic Dancefloor Visions [Delsin Records/Bandcamp] Better known as Reeko, Spain’s Juan Rico has made thumping minimal techno for many years, and in the last few years branched out into drum’n’bass and 170BPM beats, mainly for Samurai Music. His long-established Architectural alias turned up a couple of years back on R&S Records, and has continued as an outlet for the lighter stuff. Here we have some blissfully head-noddy deep techno. Kirk Barley – Ecstatic [Marionette/Bandcamp] We’ve heard Kirk Barley a lot on this show under his own name and as the Church Andrews half of Church Andrews & Matt Davies. In that pairing, Barley’s sinuous yet precise modular synthesis interacts with Davies’ complex (and precise!) drumming patterns, and it’s interesting hearing on forthcoming album Arc that Barley’s solo synth work retains a lot of that rhythmic quirkiness – although to be fair, Matt Davies appears on a number of tracks, including this one. The oddly-tuned synths and hard-to-pin-down rhythms make for a beautifully strange listening experience. dprk – Blutsuppe [Studio Fabri