Utility Fog

Mid-January, we’re very much on the way with 2026’s new music, but I’ve got a few 2025 catch-ups in here too.

I’ll be away in Japan the next two weeks, and Holly Conner on the 25th and Lachlan Stevens on the 1st of Feb will be your excellent hosts.

Puma Blue – Hush

Pebble Seven – Strangers

Alev Lenz – Domestisizer (on F)

Alev Lenz – Mother Tongue (on B)

Kee Avil – itch

Mi3raj معراج – Medley ميدلى

Dééfait – Molokh ∞

Zu – Pleroma

Zone Null – There will be poems (condensed)

Richard Francis – Phase effect on wet road

Damian Valles – Pt.4

Pita – 4

Luís Fernandes + Pierce Warnecke – Culatra II (excerpt)

Travis Cook – 9am

Atte Elias Kantonen – EEEE

Atte Elias Kantonen – Aluhart

Leif – Yes No

Joanna – Gardeners World – ddwy Remix

DJ Punx – Gas

ugne&maria – a tidal pull

ugne&maria – slip

False Aralia – Borgesian Term 04

Erdfisch – Honig

Welcome to the first new music show of 2026 – and thanks to Giulio aka Parcae for his great selections last week!

We have a certain amount of catchup from last year, but we also have a surprisingly large amount of new music already, either released this week or last, or forthcoming.

hidden_attachment – sorry this was just something i had to do

hidden_attachment – in moncton i spent all my money on pinball and beer

Silvia Tarozzi – Lucciole

Silvia Tarozzi – Le ossessioni

Winged Wheel – I See Poseurs Every Day

Winged Wheel – Speed Table

Èlg & la Chimie – La ville cachée

JJJJJerome Ellis – Evensong, part 3 (for and after Jessica Valoris)

Toni Geitani – Ya Sah

Toni Geitani – Wasla

Obelisk – Salty Lemon Air

Kloke – Silk

Aftawerks & Earl Grey – Swingfunc Jungle

Homemade Weapons – Leviathan (HW Remix)

BMA – Middle Age REFLEKT

Moa Pillar – Fight Them Back

Travis Cook – fight_clown

John Wall – Iconvt

Low Flung – Niksen

SAWT – Phase Collapse

T. Gowdy – 00L00

Filippo Ansaldi & Simone Sims Longo – +1

Filippo Ansaldi & Simone Sims Longo – Illusione

Dual Dialect – Conglomerate III – Meme-leak Mosaic

Aroma – After The Rain

Heya, so here we are, the end of 2025. Good riddance I say.

As is traditional, this is a DJ mix – almost 2 hrs, with a bit of speaking at the front. It’s pretty strange, this one, although there’s a lot of dance music. There’s also a lot of detours and oddities, but that’s what UFog is about, so I hope you enjoy!

You can stream on demand from fbi.radio, or you can listen right here:

Perera Elsewhere, Andy S – Fuck Le System [Friends of Friends/Bandcamp]

I loved Sasha Perera aka Perera Elsewhere‘s 2022 album Home, an album of “doom-folk”, but actually experimental electronic pop songs. The following year she put out an album of remixes with some excellent contributors, and now there’s finally another album, Just Wanna Live Some. Her musical net is cast wide, mixing UK soundsystem culture in with music from different parts of Africa, Indonesia and Europe (she’s based in Berlin). The first double single features two tracks with Ivorian MC Andy S, rapping (mostly) in French over infectious beats.

Harry The Nightgown – Bell Boy [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]

A band that call themselves Harry The Nightgown are just gonna be an art pop kind of affair, right? For their debut album the LA band were engineer/producer Spencer Hartling aka tp Dutchkiss and sound engineer/singer/guitarist/etc Sami Perez, but they are now joined by Luke Macdonald, who tours with one of Perez’ bands, Cherry Glazerr. There’s no way of telling who played or programmed what, but the first single from Ugh (an album with a title for the times if ever there was one) is complex & melodic, skippy junglist beats with a sped-up funk bassline and lopsided maybe-sample, skittering into groovy synth chords that could come from an early James Blake track. It’s glitchy, catchy and super-cool.

N-Type & Kromestar – Don’t Be Afraid ft. Sgt Pokes & Breezy Lee [Wheel & Deal Records/Bandcamp]

I don’t play a lot of dubstep on the show these days, simply because it doesn’t always fit in, and the same goes for grime “as such”, although I love those genres. So unfortunately this lovely song that melds trip-hoppy r’n’b vocals, grime and dubstep, wasn’t played during the year – but here it fits nicely in this space between electronic pop and dub. Both N-Type & Kromestar go back to the early days of dubstep, and the voice of Sgt Pokes has been heard at many a dubstep night. Breezy Lee also has been associated with the UK bass scene for a while, as well as jazz & cabaret, and she brings just the right amount of soulfulness to this tune.

Modeselektor featuring Paul St. Hilaire – Movement [!K7 Records/Bandcamp]

We’ll get back to Paul St. Hilaire in a minute, but I have to confess I’ve always had a soft spot for Modeselektor. They are essentially a Berlin take on bass music and techno, and through their long career have often found great collaborators to join them on their albums and mixes. It’s nice to see them doing what’s surprisingly their first DJ-Kicks mix, inserting a good quantity of experimental stuff, and of course there are some exclusive tracks. “Movement” is a thudding, bouncy piece of bass techno, and the echoing voice of Paul St. Hilaire (fka Tikiman) provides great atmosphere to what’s really a skeletal track (which is all it needs to be).

Kvedarkvintetten – Brest [Heilo Records/Bandcamp]

Tagal is the latest album from Norwegian vocal quintet Kvedarkvintetten, featuring music composed by Jorun Marie Rypdal Kvernberg. The title translates as “to keep silent” or “mute” or “wordless”, so these songs feature almost no text. The quintet’s previous work was primarily based around their interpretations of the traditional vocal music of the Hallingdal region of Norway, so even though Kvernberg provided musically notated scores, the group brought their own interpretation. This is highly melodic music, performed with dedication and emotion.

Simon Henocq – CONCOURSE A [Carton Records/Bandcamp]

French record label Carton Records gregariously supports artists across just about all genres, and many of their releases have the genre-free je ne sais quoi of Simon Henocq‘s We Use Cookies. Henocq is a sound-artist, producer and self-taught musician who also convenes French collective COAX, a gathering-together of musicians of all genres along with dancers, visual artists and more. I would loosely define Henocq’s album as noise, but it coalesces into a kind of industrial techno often. At other times you’ll get a fizzling, crackling tone that slowly grows into a snarling miasma.

Paul St. Hilaire & Gavsborg – Confidential [Kynant Records/Bandcamp]

Until about 2003, the Jamaican vocalist Paul St. Hilaire was known as Tikiman, under which name he collaborated with many experimental electronic musicians including The Bug and Tarwater, but most famously Berlin techno heads Mark Ernestus & Moritz Von Oswald of dub-techno labels/projects Basic Channel, Chain Reaction and Burial Mix, particularly under their Rhythm & Sound alias. These releases were ground zero for minimal techno and dub techno, quite unlike anything else heard at the time. While many 12″s featured Tikiman on vocals, there were others, and eight tracks with eight different vocalists were collected on Rhythm & Sound w/ The Artists. So that’s the starting point for Paul St. Hilarie – w/ The Producers – nine tracks here, with ten producers from the dub & techno worlds, channeling (by and large) the Basic Channel template. It’s really an excellent album, but among the highlights was the track from Jamaican producer Gavsborg, of the experimental crew Equinoxx, whose track is utterly stripped back. Also notable: Eora/Sydney DJ & producer Cousin (aka FBi’s Jackson Fester), who keeps things beautifully smooth and minimal, supporting St. Hilaire’s repeated phrase “Back Inna Business”.

gyrofield – Vegetation Grows Thick [Kapsela/Bandcamp]

If you know the music of now-Utrecht-based Hong Kong producer Kiana Li as gyrofield, you’d know her as an insanely talented jungle & drum’n’bass producer, whose earliest Bandcamp tracks are from when she was 15. A scant few years later she was being released on labels like Critical Music and Metalheadz. But with that head start, it’s not too surprising that since the age of about 21 she’se been branching out from drum’n’bass into mutated forms of other genres – and given that, Objekt‘s new label Kapsela is a good place to be stretching forms. Each of the four tracks on Suspension of Belief is a different kind of weirdness. Opener “Vegetation Grows Thick” juggles backmasked vocals with pulsating bleeps and skittery hi-hats before the thumping kick drums enter.

Sebaas – No Plastic [unreleased on Sebaas.Waveform Bandcamp]

Amsterdam-based producer Sebaas has a couple of releases under his belt, which he describes as “multifaceted floor-groove”. Seems about right – percussive bass music, whether techno or on a more 140 tilt. “No Plastic” is based around a sample of Spanish singer Nathy Peluso rapping “I’m a nasty girl, fantastic / este culo es natural o no plastic” (found here), switching up the minimalist reggaeton for high-energy bass-heavy breaks. I received a promo of this and it doesn’t seem to have ever come out – perhaps copyright issues.

Mac Seldom – ILUVU [Hotflush Recordings/Bandcamp]

Hotflush Recordings was founded by Paul Rose aka Scuba in 2003, at the very cusp of dubstep’s advent, but it always featured pre-dubstep sounds like UK garage, and increasingly the dub techno that Rose as Scuba was hybridizing into his own dubstep. Gradually the label has turned its focus more to techno & other 4/4 genres, but I still follow for the gems. Newcastle Upon Tyne producer Mac Seldom spent years making music for film in Berlin, but Dance W/ Me collects three tracks of pristine uk garage/bass house stuff with heaps of bounce and syncopation.

Kalabash – Major ft. Jelani Blackman (Radio Edit) [Tropopause Records/Bandcamp]

UK singer and rapper Jelani Blackman brings out the grime in this new track from London-based collective Kalabash, who planned to release their Decompression Tapes Vol. 1 in 2025, but it hasn’t eventuated. In any case, Blackman’s lyrical prowess is on show here, over a high-paced beat and production that seems to draw from all over. Also noting that their 2-track single from earlier in March showcases two other sides: “Decompress” is tough jungle-techno with a cinematic interlude, while “Concrete” is a tense 4/4 number.

Muskila – JAH NAM (INTRO) [YUKU/Bandcamp]

Bass music here, YUKU-style, from Muskila, who was born in Copenhagen with North-Kurdistani roots. The percussive backbone to all the rhythms here, and Muskila connects with Nigerian rapper Aunty Rayzor, and remixers from Cairo (Hassan Abou Alam) and Jordan (Toumba). Low-slung and minimalist, these tracks have a strong sense of style.

Vier – VAI PULANDO [Machinedrum Bandcamp]

Some kind of dance music supergroup here… Travis “Machinedrum” Stewart here teams up with Thijs “Thys” de Vlieger of Noisia, Dutch producer/academic Salvador Breed and Portuguese DJ/producer Miguel “Holly” Oliveira. This is intensely soudn-designy bass music, but also very ravey and dancefloor-friendly. Two of the quartet are Dutch, so they named the group “Vier” (four). “Vai Pulando” is Brazilian Portuguese on the other hand, and means “Keep Jumping”. I concur.

Pushlock – Scarecrow [XCPT/Bandcamp]

Over to Italy now with the XCPT label, which last year released an excellent album from Naarm/Melbourne’s Barking. Here’s adventurous Italian bass music producer Pushlock with his third album on XCPT, Stuck in a Cell. It’s a good example of how bass music styles are mixed’n’matched by a lot of producers these days – jungle breaks slipping in & out of the mix, with a general dubstep feel. It’s not slow-fast either, but rather uses signifiers from multiple bass music styles. If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, you’ll know that’s exactly how I like it.

Sacred Lodge – Wa Wa Ke Wa Wa Yi (Feat. Sara Persico) [Avon Terror Corps]

Out through Bristol collective Avon Terror Corps is the second album from Paris-based Matthieu Ruben N’Dongo, under the alias Sacred Lodge. Ambam comes out of his ethno-musicological studies into the Fang people of Central Africa, from whom he’s descended via his father. On top of his dubstep-influenced beats, his own voice is central: he “uses the scream as a vocal act of liberation in the face of oppression”, joined on a few tracks by guests, including Sara Persico and Cairo-based producer El Kontessa. Elements from Equatorial Guinea, horrorcore rap and bass music come together powerfully on this album – just as exciting as the African metal/bass music fusion of Lord Spikeheart. On this track, Sara Persico adds distorted yelps and auto-tuned interjections. Intense(ly good).

Shugorei – Water Music [4000 Records/Bandcamp]

In September Meanjin/Brisbane duo Shugorei finally released their album Memories of Magic—魔法の記憶—Mahō no Kioku after a brilliant series of singles, starting in late 2024 with the ’80s-pop-meets-hyperpop of “Roboto”, moving through contemplative electro-acoustics with Mindy Meng Wang 王萌, and gorgeous post-classical pop with Shêm Allen‘s voice & renowned classical guitarist Karin Schaupp. With frequent guests on cello & violin as well, this album conmfortably straddles the worlds of classical, traditional Japanese and electronica, throwing in breakbeats and field recordings, live percussion and glitchy production. Seriously so great, don’t miss it!

Matmos – Changing States [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]

If you’re one of the lucky few who got to see Matmos performing at Phoenix Central Park in August 2024, you would have seen the pair duo sampling not just from destroyed Bread records but from metallic objects of all kinds – cymbals, ball bearings, pots & pans (as I recall). I’m lucky to have seen Matmos quite a lot, and from as far back as 1999 (when I saw them twice, in Edinburgh and then in New York), their performances have always been based around live sampling and a good quantity of humour. But both Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt are also deeply thoughtful individuals and excellent musicians, and that performance was bewitching as much as it was hilarious. They are also a couple, and they celebrated their 25th anniversary with the Plastic Anniversary. In 2025, that would make them 31, but it’s not a stretch to imagine that Metallic Life Review was conceived and created around their 30th anniversary. Like the plastics of that earlier album, this one is built around the sounds of metallic objects, extending into the pedal steel of the sadly recently-departed Susan Alcorn, among other guests. They are well aware of the genre connotations of “metal”, as much as they are of the accuracy-or-not of their music as musique concrète, found-sound or field recordings, but something I always note with pleasure is that they can’t but help express their musical roots in ’90s experimental electronica – as much as the proto-folktronica, postrock and Americana found on the beloved 1999 EP The West and 2003 album The Civil War. When you’ve been together for 30 years, as life partners and creative partners, certain themes would tend to repeat while others would be turned away. So raise a stainless steel tumbler to one of music’s greatest couples, and enjoy listening to Metallic Life Review.

Sicaria – Rhassoul [Tectonic Recordings/Bandcamp]

When Rob Ellis, aka (DJ) Pinch, founded Tectonic Recordings in 2005, he cemented Bristol as the second home of dubstep after South London. As well as release some of the most classic early dubstep tunes, Tectonic released a series of iconic compilations, beginning with Tectonic Plates Vol. 1 in 2006. More than anything, it’s the callback to these great compilations that made me excited to discover that Pinch is revitalising the label with the 2CD (and 6 vinyl boxset) Tectonic Sound. The label boss opens the proceedings with the album’s title track, which shudders between OG dubstep minimalism and vocal snaps & busy percussion. Across the compilation there’s a whole spectrum of 140bpm, from the rolling percussive house (yet still dubstep) on dubstep mainstay V.I.V.E.K‘s “Gone W3st” to the percussive dubstep heard here from London-based Moroccan DJ Sicaria, a rising bass music star. Elsewhere there’s eerie electro-acoustic minimalism from Flora Yin Wong (which also manages to still be dubstep), the distorted crunch of dubstep legend Distance, and the methodical dubstep-dub from Bristol legend Rob Smith aka RSD. If you have any interest in 140bpm bass music, this is essential listening.

The Bug – Bury Dem (ft Logan) [Relapse Records/Bandcamp]

The Bug – Buried Dub [Relapse Records/Bandcamp]

When Kevin Martin aka The Bug put out his series of five Machine EPs from late 2023 into 2024, they were rough & ready scuzzy dub/dubstep tools for testing the intensity of his Pressure soundsystem. But a riddim’s always in search of a deejay, so he’s enlisted Logan and Magugu to flip them into vocal tunes. Thus “Buried (Your Life Is Short)” becomes “Bury Dem (ft. Logan)” and “Drop (Machine Sex)” is “Deep in a Mud (ft. Magugu)”… But then Martin can’t help but re-dub these, so we get “Buried Dub”, which is considerably different from the original “Buried”, and you can hear fragments of Logan’s voice echoing through the machines.

clipping. – Change the Channel [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]

A new clipping. album is always an event. Daveed Diggs may be very busy with his acting career, but he’s a serious rapper and lyricist and clearly dedicated to this very weird band. Weird because the two musicians who complete the trio are both noise artists, William Hutson tending to the more cerebral, and Jonathan Snipes also well-known for his irreverant hardcore/rave shenanigans with Captain Ahab back in the day. clipping.’s music absolutely works as hip-hop, and Diggs is a masterful rapper; but they also draw on avant-garde contemporary composition, glitch, noise and – absolutely – jungle & rave. This all goes to show that a concept album on cyberpunk suits them just as well as their two horrorcore tributes, and their space opera before – all masterpieces.

Dead Channel Sky is named for the first sentence of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, an ur-text of cyberpunk: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” – which in 1984 of course meant a staticky grey, later on could mean blue, and now probably just prompts confused looks from the post-Gen Z generation. I haven’t listened closely enough to the lyrics yet, but it seems less of a through-narrative than Splendor & Misery, but as a series of snapshots it depicts the way that we are careening head-on into a not-unfamiliar form of the grimy, ultra-capitalist dystopias depicted in cyberpunk since the mid-1980s. That the music mixes jungle and industrial, while glitches and other sonic manipulation echo the various discarded technologies that inspired the genre, goes to show that clipping. are the band to do this right.

And yet… why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because as of September, Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months earlier in various physical formats… and one of the best tracks is “Night of Heaven”, featuring both the brilliant Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala, and yeah it’s not on my CD 😢 (I played it in my Best of 2025 Part 1). But I should note: clipping. did a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert late in the year, with electro-mechanical percussion, harmonium and Sharon Udoh (the aforementioned Counterfeit Madison) on piano and vocals, and while every rendition is a highlight, “Night of Heaven” is the second-last track, and Kid Koala hops up on the turntable too!

A.Fruit – What Is This [A.Fruit Bandcamp]

It hasn’t been the biggest year for releases from the ubiquitous, mega-talented Anna Fruit, but there have been tracks here and there, and in January the Somnambulism EP. She’s a great producer (you can get production tips on her Patreon) and is a master at creating experimental bass music that draws from jungle, footwork, dubstep, techno and more, often in the same track. This is a hypnotic piece of pulsing techno at the edge of your subconscious.

ltfll – Nested Skins [irsh/Bandcamp]

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Cairo label irsh, the label founded by DJ Rama and genius producer ZULI in 2020. They released two compilations of rad experimental electronic music from Egypt, did you mean: irish and did you mean: irish vol. 2, and George Farid’s ltfll (that’s a lower-case L at the start) appeared on both. With nested skins, his new EP released on irsh this year, Farid makes intricate bass music with rhythms from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, experimental but firmly aimed at the dancefloor.

Lila Tirando a Violeta, sideproject – Ostrich/Ñandú [Unguarded/Bandcamp]

The 2025 album from Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta came via Berlin label Unguarded. Apparently Dream of Snakes comes from a recurring dream of Lila’s, literally about snakes, somehow mixed in with her experiences moving from the Netherlands to Ireland, which despite the subject matter was strangely comforting. I’m not sure if the same can be said of the album, which continues the producer’s work in post-industrial, post-IDM bass music, mashing up Latin rhythms with the breakbeats and drum machines, with irruptions of vocals within synthscapes and sample collages. One of a few collaborations on the album, Ostrich/Ñandú is just what you’d expect to get when crossing Icelandic IDM collective sideproject and Ireland-based Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta – percussion-soaked frenetic beats, with even the backing tracks mostly jittering along in rhythm. It’s the futuristic music of the present.

Mantra – Ruffhouse [Ilian Tape/Bandcamp]

Indi Khera aka DJ Mantra is a dedicated and influential drum’n’bass & jungle DJ, who co-founded Rupture London with her partner Double O in 2006 as a club night for d’n’b, jungle & breakbeat vibes, and six years later founded the RuptureLDN label with the same ethos. In the last few years, she’s finally started releasing her own productions, with all the rhythmic & tonal smarts you’d expect. Here she is for the second time on Munich’s Ilian Tape, with four tracks running from breaky dub-house to dubby garage, dubstep-techno like this track and kind of dreamy jungle-techno.

Ancestral Voices – Annwn [Samurai Music/Bandcamp]

Liam Blackburn made bass music for years as Indigo, and with Joe McBride aka Synkro formed the precision-tooled experimental bass machine Akkord. Ancestral Voices was his project to move away from typical drum’n’bass/dubstep forms into ambient and percussive music influenced by ancient Celtic culture. One of my favourite Indigo EPs, Storm came out on Samurai Music some 12 years ago, so it’s nice having Ancestral Voices back on the label with Nemeton, his most drum’n’bass-coded release in a long time. It’s still epic and deep and not always focused on the beats. The beats are often percussion-oriented rather than breakbeat-oriented, and it won’t all work on the dancefloor, but in fact it’s kind of thrilling hearing music so cinematic and different that’s nevertheless deeply informed by drum’n’bass.

Pol100 – Pastel Clouds [YUKU/Bandcamp]

Italian producer Pol100 had a great 2-track EP earlier this year on Turin label early reflex mutating jungle and techno into strange new shapes, between drumfunk and electro. However, this track comes from the FIFTH of FIVE compilations put out by the ever-energetic Prague-based bass label YUKU celebrating, as they say, Five Years in the Wild. The label is both prodigious and high quality, always worth a watch – or you can subscribe on Bandcamp for about 250 CZK a month, which at $18 is admittedly a commitment.

Kendu Bari – Main [Who’s Susan/Bandcamp]

When Amsterdam-based drum’n’bass producer Sam Young switched to using Kendu Bari for his productions, it was part of widening his focus to all forms of bass music, something that also underpins his label Sann Odea. All four tracks on his new EP Drink For Your Machine are dominated by bass, combining dubstep’s throb with techno and breakbeat, and on this track jungle influences.

Igorrr – ADHD [Metal Blade Records/Bandcamp]

Gautier Serre has been mashing up genres for his whole career. His albums – with Whourkr and as Igorrr – have alternately been released on breakcore/idm labels like Ad Noiseam (RIP) and metal labels like Crucial Blast and Metal Blade Records – but along with the breakcore/drill’n’bass/glitch and the death metal there’s been a hilarious operatic aspect to Igorrr. Not surprising that Igorrr and the recently-featured Ruby My Dear made an EP together about 11 years ago. So, the new Igorrr album, more explicitly a full-band affair, is at first glance more of a metal/opera thing. But it’s called Amen, and yes, there are outbursts of crazy breakcore drum programming and surreal… er, well, everything’s kinda surreal? It’s an Igorrr album. So fun.

Overcast – Wolfe [IR77/Bandcamp]

Mark Newlands is a key person in Australia’s hardcore scene, as founder of the highly influential Bloody Fist label and one third of Nasenbluten, and he’s also an accomplished turntablist as Mark N. It’s been yonks since he’s released anything under his jungle/hardcore alias Overcast, so here’s one side of his new 12″ on IR77 / Iridium. Eagle-eared listeners will note that the classical sample is from Arvo Pärt’s Fratres.

Sun People – Herbie’s Delay [All Things Records]

Austrian producer Sun People has released some creative and hard-hitting jungle & drum’n’bass that hybridizes with footwork and techno. His All Things Records provides an avenue for music of all kinds, so his new LP Look Within isn’t tied to any tempo – faster or slower than 160bpm, with a few beautifully-produced beatless tracks too. But as with “Herbie’s Delay”, there’s still some creative, syncopated jungle/d’n’b to be found too.

Will Glaser – Bees [Not Applicable/Bandcamp]

London-based drummer Will Glaser is very busy in the London jazz & experimental scene, appearing on records or live with the likes of Yazz Ahmed, Kit Downs, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, James Allsopp, Alex Bonney and more. Prior to this release, the only solo works Glaser has released are the all-drums Some Drum Sounds and the mostly-drums Some Drum & Other Sounds (both of which are excellent mind you). However, on October 24th his first major solo work as auteur was released, the name of which is hard to even fit into a sentence: Music Of The Terrazoku: Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future is about as sci-fi as you can get, imagining a musical artefact from sometime in the late 21st century, after the oncoming climate collapse. Glaser’s drums/percussion and electronics are accompanied here by brilliant musicians including Ruth Goller, Agathe Max, Tara Cunningham, James Allsopp and Alex Bonney (I’m mostly listing people whose work I know). The album claims influences as wide as Harry Partch, Tom Waits, and even Justin K Broadrick among others, and there’s no dearth of electronics there too (appropriately for the avant-garde Not Applicable label, co-run by both members of Icarus among others). It’s super weird and great – the titular Bees of this track most certainly make an appearance!

Carrier – The Fan Dance (feat Gavsborg) [Modern Love/Boomkat]

So Guy Brewer has been creating incredible post-d’n’b enigmas as Carrier for some years now, following a successful career making stripped-down techno as Shifted. Indeed, early on he was a member of drum’n’bass act Commix, and when he shifted to the Carrier alias, the minimal drum’n’bass influence has been palpable despite the beats never quite reaching the complexity of obvious syncopation of drum’n’bass. It’s an interesting balancing act, one that I think a newer generation of producers is working on very creatively, but I think it’s also interesting how the Photek vibes are balanced by a kind of murky Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound atmos. In fact, the Carrier name is a reference to this Rhythm & Sound EP (here’s the track). Carrier released the brilliant full album Rhythm Immortal this year on the Boomkat-operated Modern Love, but the album was preceded by this slab of half-time d’n’b, with skittery beats flickering over the bassline while contemporary Jamaican legend Gavsborg (of Equinoxxx et al, heard earlier on production duties) informs us not unconvincingly of his sexiness.

Mark Van Hoen – I’ve Got To See The Light (Featuring George ‘Tony’ Subratie) [Mark Van Hoen Bandcamp]

In June Mark Van Hoen dropped his second album in 2 years, The Eternal Present – and shortly after, he was back with a new EP, Only Me. The title track is from the album, but the rest are additions. I’m gonna recycle what I said about the new album, mostly:

Sometime around 1997 maybe, or 1998, I was introduced (by Seb Chan, no doubt) to the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments by Locust, the sometimes-used pseudonym of Mark Van Hoen. I guess I would’ve known some of Seefeel‘s work already, so I knew Van Hoen had been part of the lineup early on, and some of the vocal samples on that album were from their singer Sarah Peacock. But the massively overdriven beats, which stopped and started and shuddered with fragments of female voice and very sparse electronics, were enough to blow my tiny mind – not to mention the weird world-beat and disquieting ambient found elsewhere on the album. It’s still an album I happily go back to anytime I get an excuse. For some time (at least 6 years, maybe more) Van Hoen has had a subscription available on Bandcamp with heaps of exclusive music, some of which leaks out as Bandcamp-only releases (and then slips back behind the wall), including really early experiments, live performances, and essentially demos of tracks that later appear on “proper” releases, like the two recent ones on Dell’Orso label: The Eternal Present and last year’s Plan For A Miracle (and for folks like me there’s now a double CD collecting both albums).

Van Hoen has an interesting background, born in Croydon to African-Jamaican and Punjabi Indian parents. These influences are mostly indirect on his own music, but this new EP has a lovely remix-cum-cover of a 1970s reggae/dub single by the late George ‘Tony’ Subratie.

Julien Mier – Ciel [Lapsus/Bandcamp]

On his first album for Barcelona’s Lapsus, Eora/Sydney-based Dutch musician Julien Mier has chosen to use his birth name rather than Santpoort. Gradually is a highly personal album in three parts, each representing a part of Julien’s background: his French heritage, Dutch upbringing and his life now in Australia. “Ciel” is of course in the French section (it means “sky”), and it never fails to make me smile – it’s a sunny track with glitchy loops heading into a funky halftime feel with jazzy keys that have a lovely nostalgic feel, and gradually the beats turn into jungly IDM before slipping back into halftime and ending with a percussive breakdown. This is a lovely album, deeply thought-out, as forward-thinking as it is backwards-looking. Massive recommendation.

Joaquín Cornejo – Garúa [YUKU/Bandcamp]

Cap I Cua from Ecuadorian producer Joaquín Cornejo is one of the prettiest releases YUKU have ever released. It doesn’t eschew complex beats at all, but they’re there more as hints at jittery IDM and footwork, with very little sub bass. It’s beautiful from top to bottom, and when you settle in, the rhythmic elements dance around you, like the skittering hi-hats in “Garúa”.

Earl Grey – Doss House [YUKU/Bandcamp]

As mentioned above, YUKU turned five this year and released five compilation albums of exclusive tracks from label-related artists. Here longtime junglist hero Earl Grey takes us into the opium-drenched haze of a “Doss House”, with no beats except the creepy sound of a phone ringing unanswered, while sub bass pulses throb, discordant drones float and pink noise bubbles up. Perfect mid-mix malaise.

bonnie cooth – out of my mind [cooth interactive studios]

With a spooneristic pseudonym only fans of Fawlty Towers will likely appreciate, the duo of electronic artists who make up bonnie cooth make music that’s part ’90s IDM throwback and part lo-fi hyperpop & ’20s breakcore revival. Their second album is, of course, titled bonnie twooth and like the first, it comes with the conceit that it’s actually a late ’90s (I’m guessing) or early ’00s video game. So yeah, nice melodic electronica vibes, not quite chiptune, not quite breakcore, and occasional computer songs. I think I might be the only person to adore this song, but I do, from the enthusiastic vocals to the slippery tempo changes and the joyous melodic breakcore. Dig.

Max Cooper – My Choices Are Not My Own feat. Tawiah, May Kaspar [Mesh/Bandcamp]

Good ol’ Max Cooper‘s a bit of an oddity to me. There’s a significant proportion of his stuff that I always love, because he’s definitely into his IDM, drum’n’bass and the like. It’s just that he still has this commercial sheen that I can’t quite figure – I don’t think his music’s commercial? I think I just don’t quite know where to place him. Anyway, happy he continues to release stuff – this year brought the reliably eclectic On Being album, which was a kind of collaboration, in which Cooper encouraged his online community to respond to the question “What do you want to express, which you feel you cannot in everyday life?” The responses were surprisingly moving; the words sung by Tawiah on “My Choices Are Not My Own” were written by contributor May Kaspar, which is why she doesn’t otherwise have an online presence I can find. Later on Cooper brought us a remix album with some excellent junglist, technoid and bassy takes on some of those tracks.

EYDN – Gold (feat. Rainy Miller) [Fixed Abode/Bandcamp]

In September, the now-Belgium-based duo EYDN, made up of Emma van Os (Bobbie Orkid) and Thomas Parigi (Tumy), released their debut EP As Can Be via Rainy Miller‘s Fixed Abode & SUPERNATURE. The first single “Gold” was adorned with extra vocals from Miller, with a breakbeat and fizzly hi-hats dropping in and out around an acoustic guitar loop. It’s a swirly piece showing that contemporary trip-hop is finding its own sound – and fits beautifully into more jungle/d’n’b sounds.

Chewlie – Wallflower [YUKU/Bandcamp]

Back to YUKU, and in fact back to 5 Years in the Wild V, we join Swiss producer Julia Häller aka Chewlie for a piece of IDM-infused bass chaos, with acidic bass gestures and beats that slowly build up out of drum machine patterns and crashing jungle breaks. It’s pretty unhinged.

enduser – Movement [enduser Bandcamp]

In the early years of the show, Lynn Standafer’s enduser was a key artist, making musically sensitive, dark drum’n’bass, jungle and breakcore, frequently with well-judged use of indie rock and pop samples (check it: This Mortal Coil, Björk, Lamb, Lush, Tasmin Archer) as well as tuff hip-hop and ragga samples (if you can identify the sample used both here and here I won’t be the only one grateful!) Standafer’s still at it, more on the d’n’b side perhaps than breakcore, and “Movement” is a highlight from 2025, with yearning synth pads and crisp drums.

Abstract Drumz – Alone (2025 Remaster) [Abstract Drumz Bandcamp]

Adrian Walmsley aka Abstract Drumz is perhaps Wales’ greatest purveyor of modern jungle, and he’s not un-prolific, but some tunes still end up on the cutting-room floor. This year he popped out two EPs collecting tracks that have been sitting on his SoundCloud for years. Both are great, but Unreleased Drumz Pt 2 featured a track called “Alone” that has personal relevance to him, coming out of a difficult period that he doesn’t want to revisit. But it’s well-loved and you can see why – it’s a sensitive reworking of Dinah Washington’s beautiful song “This Bitter Earth” (actually written by Clyde Otis) which some of us will know from Venetian Snares’ Moonglow EP. Walmsley completely resets the vocal with a heart-pulling synth string arrangement – hugely imperssive.

Wrecked Lightship – Delinquent Spirits [Peak Oil/Bandcamp]

Adam Winchester and Laurie “Appleblim” Osborne debuted their haunted future as Wrecked Lightship in 2022 with the Drowned Aquarium album, where the wreckage – of raves past & future – seemed distinctly underwater. New album Drained Strands – their second for Peak Oil – is their best yet, with dubbed-out, deconstructed jungle/drum’n’bass/dubstep taking you into outer space.

Sheba Q – Asterix (Dub One Remix) [Over/Shadow/Bandcamp]

Jungle DJ & vocalist Sheba Q comes out with her own solo EP on 2 Bad Mice‘s Over/Shadow label. The original of “Asterix” was co-produced with Newcastle junglist Nectax, and it’s got a blissful, nostalgic feel. But on the flip, Dub One drops us into darkstyle rave hell, mid-’90s style, with possibly the drop of the year. All three tracks are quality.

Hello Psychaleppo – Al Wa6an | الوطن [Fake Lines/Bandcamp]

The first release from non-profit label Fake Lines has launched itself with a mega compilation – 36 tracks over 3 vinyl LPs – called Fake Lines: Sono Levant (the fake lines are countries’ borders drawn up by colonial powers as a way of instilling regional instability). It’s packed to the brim with excellent music, gregarious with genre – it may lean towards electronic music but there’s folk, hip-hop and rock of a sort. There’s an emphasis on Levant artists, but the tracklist also reaches further afield to other MENA countries and more. Montreal-based Syrian DJ Hello Psychaleppo contributes some stuttering samples and bass heft, but I do recommend checking out this very varied compilation.

Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – ap0calypse 42 [Infinite Machine/Bandcamp]

The May 2025 issue of The Wire featured an interview with Kolkata-based electronic producer Nilotpal Das, who is variously named as Bios Contrast, under his own name, as DJ Nilo… and frequently as “Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das“. He makes super-complex beats with dense sound design, which he’s dubbed brahmancore. In 2025 he released his album SSAC42 through Mexican label Infinite Machine, and hoo-boy those beats are insane. There’s a kind of breakcore in here, kind-of footwork and jungle, but mostly it’s percussive sounds programmed into jabbering rhythms, possibly interacting with some bass elements, or not. Mind you, there’s plenty of older and newer stuff on his Bios Contrast and Brahmancore Bandcamps.

Bleakcore / Ester – Sermon [Khnum Crew]

From Adelaide, on the stolen land of the Kaurna, comes the classical/breakcore-melding sound of Ester – previously/also known as Bleakcore, unleashing an updated sound under this new moniker. With Ester, he’s combining the gabber-speed breakcore madness with a mixture of high-quality string & piano samples and some live violin. It might initially seem like random splattercore, but on many tracks you can hear how the beats are in conversation with the piano melodies. He released the Augmented Torment EP via Brazil’s Khnum Crew, and also the To Bask in the Absense of Silence release with Eora’s 200+.

The Young Gods – Tu en ami de temps [Two Gentlemen]

Swiss industrial band The Young Gods formed in the mid-1980s (they are named after the Swans’ second EP, which gave its name to their label too) with the idea of playing only electronics. They had massive guitar riffs, but they were all made up of guitar samples “performed” on sampler. Then they discovered how great live drums sound like alongside drum machines and synths, and that’s been the basis of their sound ever since – although to be fair, they’ve evolved a lot. I like the glitchy production to this track, pushing it firmly into Utility Fog’s universe, and I like that it’s sung in French (for some reason I often forget that French is one of the official languages of Switzerland).

Hence Therefore – Elite Panic [All Centre/Bandcamp]

Eora/Sydney’s Hence Therefore has settled into the non-pattern of just releasing music every so often, but when he does it’s worth immediate attention. His one release in 2025 was the two-tracker Elite Panic, his second on the excellent UK left-of-centre dance label All Centre, with two tracks of snappy, fidgety 170bpm beats, somewhere between footwork and jungle-techno.

Tutu Ta – Papillon Riddim (Ft. Feral Is Kinky) [Tutu Ta Bandcamp]

Tutu Ta is a UK producer otherwise known as “Nomad the Shadow Dancer”, and nothing more identifying as far as I know. His(?) music is often dub or dubstep/grime/jungle based, but just as much can float towards some kind of arcane folk or postpunk jazz thing. An 8-track album, Pepper, was one of his 2025 releases, from which we heard this quasi-grime post-dancehall track featuring English ragga toaster Feral Is Kinky aka Caron Liza Geary.

Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri – I Felt I Deserved More than That [Fluid Audio/Facture Bandcamp]

So pleased to be including something from the second collaboration between these two Italian musicians: the prolific Matteo Uggeri is an inveterate collaborator, and his projects like Open To the Sea create music that sits between classical, folk, ambient and electro-acoustic; Giulio Aldinucci is a master at creating moving drone music from choral samples. Moreso than their previous album together, The Promise of a Threat blends their two styles, creating something exquisitely new. Uggeri isn’t averse to using beats, so we find a dulled but noticeable slow rhythmic cycle to these electro-acoustic pieces, with Aldinucci’s ghostly choirs floating in the ether. This really is one of the loveliest drone/sound-art albums I’ve heard recently, and I’m particuarly pleased to feature it in the depths of this dance mix.

Stefan Schultze, boxn – CV RMX [Stefan Schultze Bandcamp]

German composer & pianist Stefan Schultze has a background in jazz, having studied in Cologne and New York, but his interests extend from improvised jazz into extended techniques – prepared piano, microtonality, AI tools and gestural interfaces to control electronics alongside acoustic instrumentation. In November he released a quartet of works based around piano: Tides features prepared piano and un-prepared piano improvisations, welcoming unexpected moments and making use of silence as a musical gesture. Black MIDI Ballet on the other hand is one 16-minute composition for human-played piano alongside an electronically-controlled one, channelling Conlon Nancarrow & others’ handmade player piano reels to create clusters and sweeps impossible for a human to play. And then Glitch God (Come Hither) pulls in everything from Schultze’s years of research, including preparations, automated pianos, microtonality and of course samples and digital edits. The electronic intensity there is finally brought into a new context with the help of Switzerland-based producer boxn, remixing material from Schultze’s 2018 album System Tribe – glitched samples edited into frenetic rhythmic patterns, beatless IDM/jungle/footwork. Exhilarating.

Ship Sket – Vendetta’s Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne) [Planet µ/Bandcamp]

Josh Griffiths aka Ship Sket is newly arrived to the Planet µ label with a banger of an album summarising the Planet µ sound with references to contemporary bass music & pop through distortion and glitch. InitiatriX was released in October, with one single being “Vendetta’s Theme”, with vocals from UK multimedia artist Charlie Osborne just about audible through the chaotic mix. Throughout there are classical samples, odd time signatures, and a kitchen sink’s worth of genres referenced and swiped away.

Hyperfocus – Sentinel [Machinist Music/Bandcamp]

For his fifth release (in two years!) on Canadian drum’n’bass master John Rolodex‘s Machinist Music label, Hyperfocus brings beats precision-tooled in the Machinist Music labs with evocative atmospheres and restless basslines. This is where the jungle revival bleeds back into the d’n’b mainstream, and I’m here for it.

Chris Inperspective feat. Charlotte Koolhaas – Pictures (OK Well) [The Jah Rich Project]

Leon Mar – Unity Dub [The Jah Rich Project]

The Jah Rich Project is a gathering of drum’n’bass and jungle producers to raise some money for JahRich, admin of the Jungletrain forums, who’s battling cancer. There’s a good array of contemporary productions, with a few standout highlights. Chris Inperspective samples the voice of Charlotte Koolhaas to build a loping rhythm that’s clearly drum’n’bass without referencing any typical breaks. Also notable is Leon Mar, the not-quite-real name (he’s Noel Ram) of the producer behind the storied darkcore alias Arcon 2.

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowning. God’s Black Tears. ft. The Lil Black Oxen Émile Joseph Weeks, Nicolas Ratany [Phantom Limb/Bandcamp]

Tariq Ravelomanana is not your usual hip-hop producer. A longtime fan of experimental music, he blends any and all styles into his Infinity Knives project. This combined with Brian Ennals‘ unbridled political & personal raps makes for an unconstrained body of work akin to clipping., even if the artistic connection is tenuous. The stunning vocals from the male gospel choir “The Lil Black Oxen” on their new album’s title(ish) track do put my mind to clipping.’s “Long Way Away“. But Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals’ ambitions here are different, both musically and lyrically, taking in acoustic guitars and metal riffs, anti-colonial politics and mental health. And it’s an album worthy of its ambition – dive in!

Insignio – Everytime (A.Fruit remix) [Yanked Beats/Bandcamp]

Afonso Silva aka Insignio is one third of Portuguese label Yanked Beats, and his new album Lost keen is jungle/d’n’b with a marked footwork influence that doesn’t always rely on breakbeats. The excellent A.Fruit remix came out as a single at the very end of last year, but it’s also on the album.

Ruby My Dear – Grosse Hyène [PRSPCT/PRSPCT Bandcamp/Ruby My Dear Bandcamp]

Julien Chastagnol named his breakcore/idm project Ruby My Dear after a Thelonious Monk tune, and Monk is one of the many jazz artists he’s sampled over the years, as well as scads of classical music. For his new album he’s gone to the beach for a jam… Confiture à la plage is classic Ruby My Dear, a demented confusion of joy and lightness, creeping horror and discombobulation. But really, it’s a delight, with sunset beach strums making left turns into 7/8 breakcore, and classic Satie turned into IDM – yes “gross hyène” (big hyena) is a pun on “Gnossienne“.

Kuntari – Kerak Terusi [99CHANTS/Bandcamp]

Indonesian duo Kuntari refer to their genre as primal-core, and you can hear them tapping into deep seams on their new album Mutu Beton, released on David August‘s never-predictable 99CHANTS label. Originally Kuntari was the solo project of Tesla Manaf, whose musical career began in classical music, broadened into jazz and then electronic music, but he’s now swivelled back to acoustic instruments, from the length and breadth of Indonesia and further afield. In Kuntari he’s now joined by percussionist Rio Abror, and together they reference but dismantle Javanese gamelan. You can hear saron and various other metallophones, xylophones, glockenspiels and marimas, plus wind instruments like the cornet and hulusi, and rhythmic percussion like the thumping Rebanam – but they’re as interested in Indonesia’s storied metal scene or twisting trance rituals into technoid pulses. And it never doesn’t sound like Indonesian music, which is a joy.

Rutger Zuydervelt – House of Strength [DRONARIVM Derde Series/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]

House of Strength is the fourth collaboration between Dutch composer/sound-artist Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) and Netherlands-based dancer & choreographer Roshanak Morrowatian. On this stunning album, released through the Netherlands-based Russian ambient label-in-exile DRONARIVM, Zuydervelt underlines the ritualistic qualities of the work with slow-burning pieces using Iranian percussion alongside sounds from the club and glitchy production.

This year Rutger also released the latest of his compositions for circus/dance duo Marta & Kim, entitled FLUX, a collaboration with cellist Lucija Gregov replete with extended cello techniques, drones and melodies. Also wonderful. In any case, I’m glad once again to sneak some Machinefabriek into my dance mixes.

Los Pulpitos – Cubozoa [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]

Berlin duo Los Pulpitos released their new EP Octopean Union on Belgian mainstay Crammed Discs, mostly bouncy electro but with this track, “Cubozoa”, which is skittery almost-jungle redolent of the 1990s.

POD & Tamen – Dolphin [Echo Chamber Sound]

In May, Naarm/Melbourne-based jungle/dub/bass label Echo Chamber Sound released the three-track Lek EP from Eora/Sydney producer POD and Naarm’s Tamen. POD broadly makes techno, and Tamen is best known for his jungle productions, including many collabs with Pugilist on many great labels. Breaks are thrown around in unconventional ways, with some dub techno influences, but “Dolphin” is probably the most straight-up jungle track.

Noneless – Apocalypse [Noneless Bandcamp]

Late in 2023, I was stunned to hear a brilliant breakcore album with classical overtones from a local artist, released on the rather exclusive ☯ anybody universe ☯ label run by Japanese IDM/breakcore artist Laxenanchaos. Noneless had previously been known as elfaether, but their return with A Vow of Silence debuted this new alias. Originally from Eora/Sydney, they’re currently based in Oxford, UK, whence they have gifted us this new EP, Delicate Sin, mixing mournful piano samples and their violin with intensely mashed breakcore beats. Just like the doctor ordered. (It’s me. I’m the doctor. I order you to listen to this.)

Djrum – Three Foxes Chasing Each Other [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]

Felix Manuel aka Djrum is also a reliable producer, although what he can be relied upon for is surprise: constantly changing things up, from jazzy/classical piano, cello and wind instruments to techno, jungle, dancehall, dubstep and anything in between. While Under Tangled Silence represents a kind of renewal for Manuel (not least because the first version of the album was lost in a hard drive crash), it’s really got all the elements established on his early 12″s and previous brilliant album Portrait With Firewood. With Djrum “more of the same” is the highest of praise – and nothing is ever quite the same with him. This one is one of those rhythmic-illusion pieces where the beats are constantly shifting around, from drum’n’bass and footwork to techno. Even the melodic sounds are bells or steel drums. It does indeed convey the energy of “Three Foxes Chasing Each Other”.

r hunter – Intra [Absorb/Bandcamp]

New music doesn’t come often from Naarm’s r hunter aka Asher Elazary, and when it does it’s an event. In November Absorb released his latest album Yield and it’s what you’d expect if you know r hunter – abstract beats to cry over? Following Djrum above, you’ll similarly find bustling rhythms that you can’t quite pin down, and absolutely intense sound design. Pretty inexplicable, better listen again & again.

Blawan – Creature Brigade [XL Recordings/Bandcamp]

In the last few years, Jamie Roberts aka Blawan has released some of the most forward-thinking, fucked-up bass music around. From 2021’s Woke Up Right Handed, the bass rumbles and throbs, and the beats syncopate and shuffle but hit haaaard. In 2023, Dismantled Into Juice went considerably left-field, with a couple of tracks featuring vocals from Monstera Black. And if last year’s BouQ veered back towards the dancefloor, it’s no less experimental for that. Notably in the meantime he also paired up with longtime collaborator Arthur Cayzer aka Pariah for two albums of industrial grindcore & noise rock (with hints of bass music) as Persher. This all now culminates with the full-length album SickElixir, which is seriously messed-up bass music, sick to the core. Club music for fucked-up times.

Eli Keszler – Speak For Me (Eli Keszler Version) [LUCKYME®/Bandcamp]

The remarkable new self-titled album from Eli Keszler was released on the 2nd of May, the day I left for 6 weeks in UK & Europe, and it got lost in the flood of… stuff… It’s a wonder, even among Keszler’s many brilliant releases, and eventually I played something off it. Keszler’s earliest material used his skills at fast-paced, complex percussion to experimental ends, but he’s also a longtime collaborator with Oneohtrix Point Never and Laurel Halo, among others. His 2018 album Stadium, released by Shelter Press, heralded a change in focus along with a move to Manhattan. Here, the skittery beats resembled IDM and jungle, and came along with electronic textures and small melodies. This has continued to be Keszler’s modus operandi, but with LUCKYME® as his more recent home, more pop elements have crept in, evoking trip-hop and noir jazz, with various guest vocalists but I think also Keszler’s own voice. On December 10th, the four-track Eli Keszler Remixes was released – too late for me to play before this best-of show, but that gives me the perfect opportunity… All the reworks are top tier, especially Tim Hecker’s, but Keszler’s own beefs up the beats and the weirdness on “Speak For Me”. Brilliant.

Phillip Golub – Loop 7 [greyfade/Bandcamp]

New York pianist & composer Phillip Golub released his Loop 7 early this year, extending his interesting “loops”, repetitive pieces for piano which don’t engage technology but rather ask the listener to hear the inconsistencies that come from a performer’s interpretation. Already then I knew I’d want to slip it into a DJ mix. On 2022’s Filters you can hear how these pieces are informed by Eric Satie’s Vexations as much as John Cage’s musical theory, and Philip Sherburne is right (in his review-comment) that Federico Mompou’s Música Callada feels present in the work too. Well, Loop 7, released via Joseph Branciforte’s greyfade label, is an extended take on this in the sense that it’s 28 minutes long, but also in that it explodes this idea into a group format, the piano augmented with subtle electric guitar, vibraphone, and electronics. But it’s also… extended inwards, so to speak – and this is where it gains both its uneasiness and its otherworldly beauty, because the “piano” here is a pair of Yamaha Disklaviers – physical pianos that can be electronically controlled – that are tuned in a 22-note per octave system. This lends the cycling chords a deeply weird out-of-tuneness, and allows the harmonies to shift downwards in ways that our ears – attuned to Western equal temperament – can perceive but can’t quite pin down. Helpfully there’s a gorgeously shimmery octave-like gesture at the beginning of the loop, allowing us to feel like we’ve arrived back home each time the harmonies descent far enough to shift back in place (it’s constructed a bit like a Shepard Tone so that the lower notes slowly disappear and higher notes are added back, giving the listener the impression that it’s in a never-ending descent while strangely remaining static). The ideas behind this might be fascinating, but the music works because Golub’s sense of how to harmonise in this tuning scheme is so sensitive, and the additional instruments add an almost imperceptible timbral tingle to the sound. It’s a real trip.

T3AL – Weightless (Om Unit‘s Sunrise Dub) [Spiritual World]

In 2024, sisters Ashleigh & Melissa Ball released their debut EP as T3AL, Bluish Green, on Toronto label Spiritual World. It was an un-pigeonholeable amalgam (typical of these postmodern times), hinting at trip-hop’s soul-meets-dub, but leaning ambient, and with flutes. This is a little cheat as the remix itself came out in December last year, but in January 2025 the Bluish Green Remixes was released on vinyl, sporting among others, not one but TWO Om Unit remixes. His “Sunrise Dub” is a lovely piece of sunny (yes) dub techno.

Listen again — ~234MB

Tonight it’s Part 2 of Utility Fog’s best of 2025, which encompasses all the music that’s not vocal-driven or beats-driven. So there’s contemporary jazz, abstract sound-art, glitch electronics, glitchy postrock, field recording, tape manipulation and more. There’s even voice at times.

LISTEN AGAIN and sound your art – stream on demand at fbi.radio, or podcast here.

Laura Jurd – Praying Mantis [New Soil/Bandcamp]

There has, I think, been more “jazz” on Utility Fog this year than in previous years – but there’s always been some, often in a faux genre of “post-jazz” that I’ve used to lump together glitchy hybrid-jazz with electronics. But in general jazz is a living genre that can’t help but draw from everything from punk & metal to electronica and folk. One of the jazz highlights this year was the new solo album from UK trumpeter Laura Jurd, who had stepped away from music to tend to her family, but returns here in astonishing form. Jurd’s Mercury-nominated band Dinosaur embodied the “fusion” aspect of whatever post-jazz wants to be, using synths along with a spiky rhythm section that funks out where necessary. On Jurd’s Rites & Revelations, the folk aspects (also present in Dinosaur) are often to the fore, and that’s all kinds of folk including Scottish and English, but also Eastern European and Western Asian to my ears. And as well as Jurd’s usual drummer Corrie Dick and contemporary UK jazz mainstay Ruth Goller on bass, the band features accordianist Martin Green and violinist/violist Ultan O’Brien. It’s an album unlike any other, drawing deeply on the past while pointing in new directions.

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin – Panj [Drag City/Bandcamp]

Ghosted III is the third album from the trio of iconoclastic Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi with the Swedish rhythm section of the incredible Fire! – bassist Johan Berthling & drummer Andreas Werliin. It’s still driven by the wonderful cyclic basslines and rhythms of Berthling & Werliin, but on this album it opens up its scope from those patient cycles. It’s still deeply embedded in these artists’ oeuvres: the krautrockain period of Ambarchi’s that started with “Knots”, the centrepiece of 2012’s Audience of One, and similarly the hypnotic sound of Berthling & Werliin’s groundbreaking earlier band Tape (one album on Bandcamp) as well as the freer Fire! and Fire! Orchestra. Opener “Yek” (the titles are the numbers 1-6 in Persian) has chiming post-postpunk guitars over a skipping bassline and drums, and it’s followed by the starker “Do”, which could be a long-lost Tape track. But there’s still minimalist blues like “Panj”, on which Ambarchi’s guitar sounds like a droning organ. These musicians’ careers have intersected multiple times in their swerving trajectories. Long may they reign in this trio formation!

TL;DR – Cumulus (edit) [Earshift Music/Bandcamp]

Following his tenure as leader of the Australian Art Orchestra, Naarm trumpeter/composer/producer Peter Knight hasn’t stopped to rest. The wonderful Hand To Earth was formed as a project of the AAO but continues as its own thing. TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) is a new quartet with three younger musicians in the Naarm jazz scene. Brilliant bassist Helen Svoboda is here playing basslines but also showcasing her melodic bowed harmonics and her voice; guitarist Theo Carbo, like Peter Knight, contributes electronics as well as his instrument; and Peter’s son Quinn Knight brings 15 years of experience improvising with his dad to the fore. This is dreamy music, ambient-dub-jazz – and the internet-jokey name aside, the cloud titles are perfect for these floating, soulful pieces.

Alister Spence Trio – The Gathering [Alister Spence Bandcamp]

Alister Spence – Interior Signal [Room40/Bandcamp]

Sydney pianist Alister Spence is a key part of this city’s jazz and improv scene, and his trio with Lloyd Swanton of The Necks and drummer Toby Hall is a unique, evocative partnership (all three were also part of Sandy Evans & Tony Gorman’s legendary Clarion Fracture Zone). In Februrary this year, the trio released their latest album of melodic, energetic jazz, Gather. But Alister’s creativity takes him in all directions, and his Within Without album is perfectly conceived for the Room40 label. Here, his creative impulse swoops away from the piano, and often away from the keys altogether, diving inside the beloved, chiming, throbbing heart of the Fender Rhodes (an instrument Spence has very much made his own too, over decades of playing). Prepared piano is now a well-established way to draw new sounds from the piano, and highlight its inner workings; so here’s Alister Spence’s prepared Rhodes. His suite of effects is never far away, but mostly we’re hearing the insides of the instrument, tapping and buzzing and yes, chiming. It’s hard to make the Rhodes not beautiful, and its inherent warmth is not denied or countered even in the most abstract pieces here. Delicious.

Alexandra Spence – The Spring [Students of Decay/Bandcamp]

Staying in the experimental space, we join Alexandra Spence, a brilliant sound-artist who works with field recordings and found objects to tell a story about place and memory – and who happens to be the daughter of Alister Spence. Her last two albums (from 2022) arose from a fascination with oceans and waterways; the scope is wider here, from mountains to backyards, but the ecological and geological also interact here with the personal. As well as recordings of places and non-musical objects, Spence (a clarinettist) here uses sounds from Serge Modular synths and a custom-built lyre, and even the voice and instrumentation of French composer & musician Delphine Dora. Spence is a master at combining disparate sounds – when performing live she uses contact mics and found objects which meld with pre-recorded field recordings and other in-the-box sounds in a way that can only be described as alchemical.

Kate Carr – spring back and creak [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]

OK but if we’re talking about field recordings and found sound and music, Kate Carr (originally from here but London-based for ages) is a master of the art, and tirelessly promoting others through her Flaming Pines label. Rubber Band Music is a particular sound experiment, using homemade devices of wood, metal and rubber bands. So we’ve got sproings and buzzes and wobbles, slowed down, filtered, rebuilt. Abstract yet physical.

Ipek Gorgun – Edgelord [Touch/Bandcamp]

Turkish composer/sound-artist/musician Ipek Gorgun released her last solo album Ecce Homo seven years ago. In the meantime she’s had works performed in prestigious venues, but has also been through multiple traumas – electrocution, cancer treatment, anaphylaxis… So her remarkable new album Earthbound is an act of defiance as well as an act of surrender. The darkness of these years is audible here, but so is an earthy sense of liveliness and humour. There is endless detail in each of these soundworks, but some do stand out, especially those incredible swooping glissandi in “Edgelord”.

dogs versus shadows – Ghost Artery Part 1 (radio edit) [Flaming Pines/Bandcamp]

Nottingham artist dogs versus shadows appears on Kate Carr’s brilliant label Flaming Pines with a kind of narrative about the River Trent, that winds through Nottingham and has been subjected to various forms of degradation through human activity. This highly polluted river has dangers lurking beneath its surface, and dogs versus shadows dredges these up with the use of “field recordings, tape loops, dying vocals from broken dictaphones and snatches of shortwave radio”. The two full tracks are a little under 15 minutes each, and each is an engrossing quasi-narrative of watery field recordings and seemingly unrelated sounds – chopped up snippets of speech, electronic pulsations and almost-rhythms. It’s fascinating and you’ll probably want to go back and listen again when it’s over.

António Feiteira – Ghost Hiss, Resonant Hip [Eastern Nurseries/Bandcamp]

Eastern Nurseries is one of a number of Portuguese labels that reliably turns up surprising new sounds from unfamiliar artists. So here’s a brilliant debut EP from Porto-based percussionist and sound-artist António Feiteira, titled Performing the Heimlich on an Ouroboros. I love the first track, played here: a contemplative, crackling glitchscape. The middle track “Synthesized Chronos Turned Organless Aion” retains some of the glitch textures, but foregrounds Feiteira’s drumming. A really great EP.

A little later in the year, Feiteira released a self-titled album with Francisco Pedro Oliveira as Amuleto Apotropaico, on another Portuguese label, Perf. Fascinating stuff, including an appearance from cellist Ricardo Jacinto, also recommended.

She’s Analog – danse macabre [Carton Records/Carton Bandcamp/Torto Editions/Bandcamp/She’s Analog Bandcamp]

The second album from Italian trio She’s Analog is a compelling mix of (post-)jazz, postrock, electroacoustic music and more, co-released by the great French label Carton Records and Italian Torto Editions. At times they can sound like a minimalist jazz piano trio, at other times like a motorik, minimalist postpunk band. It’s clearly put together from partly improvised elements, but there’s also careful composition here, drawing different moments from the album together, with electronic elements also pointing to the way this music was crafted in the studio. But there’s also a real melodic sense that draws you in for repeat listens, which it certainly received from me this year.

BirdWorld – Opposite Hinges (feat. Sara Övinge) [Dugnad rec/BirdWorld 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 are both virtuosos at their chosen instruments, but in the mysterious albums of BirdWorld – their debut UNDA and now the follow-up NURTURE – you’ll find Teixeira playing kalimbas (thumb piano) and other tuned percussion, or synths, while Riddell adds guitars, piano, and even vocals. Field recordings and rhythmic jazz/almost-postrock coexist with an impeccable solo cello piece, throwing plucked and bowed notes around like a seasoned juggler, while at times guests join – like Swedish violinist Sara Övinge, who’s comfortable in classical or jazz contexts, and has a duo with Riddell called Tlön, who also released an album this year on legendary Norwegian label Jazzland. The gregarious nature of these recordings, and the willingness to go in unexpected directions mid-stride, reminds me of The Books or Lucky Dragons, groups who first turned me on to the possibility of just dispelling all preconceptions, and not making music for instant gratification or consumption. More power to them! Don’t let this one slip by.

Dorothy Carlos – My Buddy (Miss You In Ear World) [29 Speedway/Bandcamp]

NYC experimental label 29 Speedway here brings us an amazing little release from NYC/Chicago cellist & sound-artist Dorothy Carlos. These pieces – most around 3 minutes long but as short as 30 seconds and as long as 7 minutes – are described as “sound collages”. Her voice and her cello are caught up in glitching granulations, but it’s done so artfully that somehow the melody sneaks through the cracks. “Always” is cracked & collaged from chopped samples of non-verbal vocal tics and breaths. This is, of course, Utility Fog’s bread & butter, and I’m so glad to hear people (especially cellists!) doing this now.

Erik Friedlander – The Tree of Knowledge [Skipstone – Erik Friedlander Bandcamp]

New York cellist Erik Friedlander has been a stalwart of the Downtown scene for decades – playing with John Zorn, and with jazz and avant-garde ensembles of all sorts. He’s also a great bandleader and composer himself, and makes highly varied music as a solo musician – it’s easy for me to forget that he’s not just a brilliantly adept improvising cellist. I remember coming across an ambient electronic work of his in the early days of internet compilations, and in the COVID days he was putting a track up a month on his Bandcamp. So that brings us to Origami, a new album he released in October which made it to Australia in a box for me just in time for these best-of shows. For this album, Friedlander took the stems from his 2024 project Floating City, with his cello joined by Sara Serpa’s voice, Wendy Eisenberg’s guitar and Mark Helias’s bass, and completely deconstructed them. This is remixing as transformation, and the result are glitchy electro-acoustic pieces that hint at their jazz origins but fit beautifully with the sort of stuff Utility Fog usually loves.

The Cloud Maker – Selkie Shimmer [The Cloud Maker Bandcamp]

Finally the wonderful The Cloud Maker is out. The project involves an international cast of brilliant women, convened by clarinettist, improviser and experimental musician Aviva Endean. Endean is a member of the remarkable project Hand to Earth (see later tonight) with Yolgnu songman Daniel Wilfred, didgeridooist David Wilfred, trumpeter & sound-artist Peter Knight, and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim. When Kim and Endean took part in a residency in Banff (Canada), they met Te Kahureremoa Taumata, a practitioner of Taonga Pūoro (a word that describes a suite of Māori musical instruments). Their fruitful musical collaboration began with the Māori moth goddess Raukatauri, whose story is the origin story of one of those taonga pūoro, the cocoon-shaped flute called Putorino. In the Adelaide Hills, the group expanded to include percussionist/sound-artist Maria Moles and contemporary cellist Freya Schack-Arnott (who also plays a traditional Swedish multi-stringed instrument called the nyckelharpa which you can hear in her duo Runa Cara with Bonnie Stewart). So yes, it’s a project overflowing with talent & creativity. Each member contributes stories of goddesses from their own folkloric traditions, and The Cloud Maker‘s music is as varied as its members. Tonight’s piece continues our cello theme with Freya’s fluttering, scraping cello as the focus.

Lia Kohl – Train, Antwerp to Amsterdam [Dauw/Bandcamp]

Chicago cellist Lia Kohl is a frequent visitor to these playlists, making beautifully odd pieces with not just extended cello techniques but radios, synths and field recordings. Released on Belgian ambient/experimental mainstay Dauw, her 2025 album Various Small Whistles and a Song is ultra-conceptual even for Kohl, made up of sixteen 1-minute tracks, each collaging and cataloguing ordinary places and events, with additional field recordings from friends such as Macie Stewart, Patrick Shiroishi, claire rousay and others. It’s a delight.

Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart – Stone Piece I [International Anthem/Bandcamp]

Lia Kohl is a seasoned collaborator as well as a solo musician, and here we find her with two other brilliant Chicago-based string players: Whitney Johnson on viola and Macie Stewart on violin. All three women also sing. On BODY SOUND [STONE PIECE], released by Chicago (post-?)jazz label International Anthem, they perform two versions of “Stone Piece”, based around improvised melodies & drones. That’s lovely enough, but the key here is that each musician also feeds their sounds into a tape machine (one of five!) where they’re grainily pitched down and stretched out. It’s really worth watching this gorgeous transformation happen in realtime in this video.

Saba Alizadeh – Women of fire (feat. Sanam Maroufkhani) [30M Records/Bandcamp]

Iranian musician Saba Alizadeh is a master of the kamancheh, a Persian stringed instrument. But his works on Berlin label Karlrecords (Scattered Memories) and Hamburg-based 30M Records (2021’s I May Never See You Again) bring the music and his instrument into a contemporary setting, with stunning sound design – electronics, drones and at times beats. His new album Temple Of Hope carries an audacious theme in extremely dark times. He takes inspiration from the “Woman Life Freedom” movement, incorporating field recordings of crowds and historical radio broadcasts alongside his beautiful instrument, and these human elements are made both alien and more poignant through electronic processing, even alongside bursts of no-input mixer noise. Among his collaborators is the Amsterdam-based Iranian musician Sanam Maroufkhani, whose multilayered vocals are juxtaposed with stuttering digital percussion. The second track here features a moving kamancheh performance gradually swamped by a looped field recording of a protest about water shortages in the Iranian city of Susangerd, in an area now called “Dasht-e-Azadegan”, roughly translating as “Plain of the free”. Alizadeh has created a stunning album rooted in Persian music and recent history, asking us to find hope in times of horror.

Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe – Assembling Air [Warm Winters, Ltd./Bandcamp]

From Adam Badí Donoval‘s perfectly-curated Warm Winters, Ltd. comes an album of beautiful, uncanny vocal simulacra, working together in a strange kind of plainsong, hinting at Medieval music as recalled by malfunctioning robots. Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe both make exploratory sound-art: Wennborg is interested in the exchange involved with listening and “sounding”, and makes art from the digital transformation of the sound of people together; Duncombe’s work transforms her voice and others, glitching and reassembling the sound, pushing them into the surreal or irreal. Accordingly, this is a haunted album, in which the artificial voices never quite succeed in voicing complete melodies, instead looping and stuttering, pitched outside their intended registers, mournfully ironising the title, Joy, Oh I Missed You. The results are queasily beautiful.

Bernard Parmegiani – La Ville en Haut de la Colline II [Transversales Disques/Bandcamp]

You might think it strange that the iconoclastic French electro-acoustic/musique concrète composer Bernard Parmegiani is still releasing new music 12 years after his death, and you’d be right. But aside from the L’Œuvre Musicale en 12 CD boxset, and the updated COMPLETE WORKS released on his Bandcamp (both via Ina GRM), the Transversales Disques label has been mining his personal archives for works created for TV & film. This year Mémoire Magnétique, vol. 3 (1967-1971) was released, and there’s certainly some freaky shit on there. It’s always weird to work out that this pioneering work was going on at the same time that rock musicians were experimenting in the studio, and King Tubby & co were revolutionising the use of effects & mixing techniques. Nevertheless, the work going on in “the academy” was very fruitful and still echoes through today, and weird vignettes like those on these Mémoire Magnétique compilations can be as mind-boggling as the major works.

Machinefabriek – Verpulver [Champion Version/Machinefabriek Bandcamp]

Rutger Zuydervelt’s music is increasingly being released under his own name rather than Machinefabriek, but he remains a stalwart on Utility Fog, whether for his works for dance, for TV and games, or sound-art works for their own sakes. The UK label Champion Version has released Machinefabriek before, and early this year put out a 7″ with two short tracks, under 3½ minutes, entitled “Verpulver” (pulverize) and “Pulver” (powder). Those words nicely describe the sound of granular synthesis, and both these tracks are fairly sparse pieces with percussive elements broken down among drones and distortion.

Lea Bertucci – In This Time [Cibachrome Editions]

It should be well-known and universally acknowledged now that Lea Bertucci is one of the best sound-artist/composers of the last decade and a half. Whether site-specific works exploring & exploiting – for instance – the resonance of a hollow bridge in Köln (2020’s Acoustic Shadows), myriad works live-processing her own saxophone and other instruments, or her work with reel-to-reel tape machines, she’s a master of her craft. Recent times have seen a number of incredible collaborations from Bertucci: in 2022, she operated tapes & electronics around Robbie Lee‘s baroque & medieval instruments on Winds Bells Falls, while on Murmurations, her tapes were as prominent, but she also brought various wind instruments and her voice to the table next to Ben Vida‘s synths & voice. And on her tectonic collaboration in 2023 with Brisbane’s own Lawrence English cello, viola and lap steel guitar emerge as well. Earlier this year Lawrence’s ROOM40 released an astounding work of Bertucci together with another masterful sound-artist, Olivia Block. So needless to say her new album The Oracle is a tour de force, engaging her many instruments, field recordings and, importantly, her own voice, all filtered through tape manipulation and digital processing (unless it’s all tape!) Only on the last track are percussionists from the Wesleyan University Taiko Ensemble enlisted for a booming – yet obscured – finale. Of course, it’s not just technially interesting or impressive (although it is those things) – it’s also music that will draw you in and move you, despite the vocals being twisted into non-textual shapes. I promised it would be high in my top albums of 2025, and here it is.

Giuseppe Ielasi – 11 (from an insistence on material vol. 2) [Senufo Editions Bandcamp]

In March this year, Italian sound-artist/producer/guitarist/etc Giuseppe Ielasi released an insistence on material vol. 1, and followed it up in September with an insistence on material vol. 2. Past series of Ielasi’s have involved mechanical machines butting their heads on paper hooked up to contact mics, or music made from run-out grooves of vinyl records, or blurry guitar loops – just about anything really, including minimal beats from strange sources. So “an insistence on material” could be an insistence on physical sound sources… or it could just be, you know, putting out material of some sort? On both volumes, these numbered tracks are vintage Ielasi – strangely cut, warbling tape (or vinyl?) loops, anonymous sputtering anti-rhythms… Wonderful.

Demdike Stare and Kristen Pilon – A Grave Fall (January) [DDS]

You rarely get the same thing twice with Demdike Stare, whose earlier works were haunted by strains of arcane English folk and psychedelia, but who have deep links to UK bass music as well. Their latest release, To Cut and Shoot is drawn from sound material created by US filmmaker & musician Kristen Pilon for an experimental film of the same name, chopping & screwing her piano, strings and voice into something broken & namelessly evocative, at times noisy and rhythmic in an almost clubby way, but mostly set adrift in warp and glitch. As might be obvious, this maps quite specifically on to Utility Fog’s central concerns, and, helpfully, it’s really really good.

Cherrystones x Demdike Stare – Where Evil Grows [DDS]

Available from Boomkat, who I’m pretty sure handle all of Demdike Stare‘s DDS imprint, here’s a pretty incredible piece of dark ambient, post-industrial, chopped & screwed bad-trip-hop… Cherrystones is a UK DJ & producer with a similar aesthetic to Demdike Stare – hauntological looting of the arcane past, and recontextualising into strange contexts. So from this collaboration we get crunchy, overdriven beats, vinyl-manipulated voices, tape-destroyed noise loops, all fed through dub delays. It’s supremely fucked-up and one of my favourite things I heard this year.

General Magic – Elfer [Editions Mego/Bandcamp]

Andreas Pieper & Ramon Bauer were there at the very beginning of the MEGO label, which swiftly became the centre of the “glitch” movement of experimental sound coming out of Vienna and further around Europe – from which Christian Fennesz also arose. The two formed General Magic, and with Peter Rehberg aka Pita released some formative material that’s collected as Fridge Trax Plus, made out of the buzzes and throbs of an old fridge. More generally they were interested in mistakes and malfunctions – or at least things that sounded like that. Awkwardly cut (or rather, carefully cut) samples that stuttered and clicked due to sharp digital discontinuities, and a love of overdriven noise via digital clipping; this was the native experimental music of the digital era, exemplified on their debut album Frantz, a longtime favourite of mine. It’s no surprise that these days this is both the sound of retro-kitsch and also futuristic sound-art (just with much, much more sophisticated & readily available tools).

So anyway, as you may know, the label disbanded a few years later, and Rehberg restarted it as Editions Mego, run with great enthusiasm by the man basically on his own. And tragically, decades later and just a few years ago, Rehberg passed away. So the label and its offshoots are now run by various artists connected with Mego, releasing music that was already slated to come out, along with other related material. I hope this latest batch isn’t the end: There’s a new LP – technically one 45-minute track – out now from Peter Rehberg under his own name called Liminal States, a long evolving drone work. Annnnd there’s this! Bosko follows Nein Aber Ja from 2023 as a new renaissance of Pieper & Bauer’s General Magic, and it’s an incredibly strong work. No doubt fans of Hausu Mountain releases would immediately peg it as not quite from the current era, but there’s a jump-cut everything-piled-in-together thing going on that’s in common with Hausu, who I’m sure in turn are influenced by the Mego scene. So here we have harsh noise drones, chopped riffs, what must be an AI voice attempting to sing in one or two tracks, and speedy piano samples juxtaposed with crunching hardcore beats. Joyful noise, done as it should be.

Also notable: Pieper & Bauer’s (even more) cheeky alias Sluta Leta released Drift Dekoder later this year, weird electro-funk with help from frequent collaborator Gerhard Potuznik on a few tracks.

Nate Scheible – 02 [Nate Scheible Bandcamp]

It’s a sign of how overloaded I am (we all are) with new music that I was convinced I’d played experimental sound-artist Nate Scheible before, but it seems I never managed to fit something in. Criminal! Last year’s or valleys and is a phenomenal work that’s adjacent to noise, free jazz, electro-acoustic & musique concrète – stuff I’m increasingly lumping into “sound-art” because labels are reductive anyway. For all this abstraction, though, Scheible brings forth a lot of emotion, and none more so than on his latest album then, inaudibly. As he describes, he is usually reluctant to anchor his music to a narrative or non-musical events – something I closely identify with – but this recording is imprinted with the death of his mother. Various musicians play acoustic instruments, including John Dierker‘s bass clarinet on this track, and, touchingly, the fragmented voice of Scheible’s mother Kat.

NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST – Keine Nichtmusik Drei [Cellule 75]

Hamburg musician Marc Richter is perhaps best known as Black To Comm, but has also appeared as Jehm Circs and Mouchoir Étanche (*ahem* “waterproof handkerchief”) and indeed under his given name. Under any of these aliases the music is hallucinatory, surreal collage work, taking in drone, krautrock, queasy soundtrack works and even something approaching woozy hip-hop at times. A number of Black To Comm albums have come out through Thrill Jockey, all brilliant (I cannot recommend Seven Horses For Seven Kings highly enough), but he is also spread around his own labels Dekorder and Cellule 75 – yeah, it’s a lot.

OK, so what do we have here? NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST (“new German art”) seems primarily to have been an art project, producing exceedingly strange artworks of grotesque quasi-humans and brightly coloured objects, clearly generated through AI prompting that preserves this specific aesthetic. So releasing this album, Keine Nichtmusik, under the NEUE DEUTSCHE KUNST name suggests an extension of this artistic practice (the album title, a play on “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik“, means “No non-music”). The album is described as “Music for the films of the artists’ group Neue Deutsche Kunst” and you can see some of those filmworks on Vimeo. They’re short scenes cut together, with a strong aesthetic but the visible artefacts of AI generated video. So, the music? It’s vintage Black To Comm basically, bizarre collages of German song and avant-garde classical (yet Baroque feeling) composition – but the Bandcamp credits it as “Recorded by noone 2024-2025 / 🍄 100% Menschenfrei” (human-free). I’m not so sure – even if it was trained on Richter’s own work, the clarity of the sound, the voices and the audio effects feel to me like there’s a human’s work in there, albeit an impish human. Perhaps some AI-generated audio then collaged by Mr Richter? I’m intrigued.

Géraldine Eguiluz & Michel F Côté – Territoires perdus #2 [Ambiances Magnétiques/Bandcamp]

Fascinating faux-ethnomusicology, or self-ethnomusicology here from two prolific avant-garde francophone musicians. Géraldine Eguiluz is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist & researcher born in Mexico, brought up in Bogotá, Lisbon and Paris, and now based partly in Mexico and partly in Montréal. And Montréaler Michel F Côté as been associated with the Ambiances Magnétiques label since the 1980s and now runs another label, Sono Sordo. He’s a drummer & percussionist making various types of avant-jazz, strange lo-fi pop and variants of beautiful sound-art. This particular collaboration is named hORs TempS (out of time, or timeless), hinting at its provenance: Eguiluz uncovered cassette recordings she’d made in the early 1990s in Paris, which she re-sampled and collaged into new forms and then sent to Côté for him to respond to, and between them they deconstructed & reconstructed the music. The result is simultaneously genreless and pan-genre, an exoticised adaptation of found-sounds that are not anonymised ethnomusicological field recordings but rather the innocently all-encompassing music of a highly talented young artist. There are a few different threads throughout the recording, of which the “Territoires perdus” are tributes to resistence by indigenous communities.

Christophe Bailleau – Reaagall vst VIP hall owl [Mahorka/Bandcamp]

Belgium-based French musician and sound-artist Christophe Bailleau is an inveterate collaborator – his Covid album Shooting Stars Can Last was credited to “Christophe Bailleau and Friends”, and was a superb, genre-crossing amalgam featuring artist from across the Francophone world. His latest album, Insight and Vision, on the other hand, is a much more solo affair, the third in a trilogy of albums that he says are about “creativity in the face of autistic disorders”. CHUVA ORBITAL : Armadillo Time and Vertical Moon Phase Charm both came out in 2023, and feature a similar range of guests to this new one, with some instrumentation and writing collaboration – and Criele Antennaa O’Farrell is credited with “motivation”, which I can attest to being a hugely valuable contribution. While Bailleau’s work goes back to techno productions in the 1990s, the music here is very modern-sounding, with weirdly glitched and sequenced General MIDI sound pallettes rubbing up against processed acoustic instruments, jump-cuts and shiny hyper-dissonance. Well worth looking into all three, whether you count yourself as neuro-divergent or not.

Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, Hahn Rowe – Rhythmic Rhodes [Balmat/Bandcamp]

At the beginning of 2023, Stephen Vitiello – one of the foremost sound-artists of the past few decades – released a surprising EP/mini-album on his Bandcamp: a collaboration with Fugazi/Messthetics drummer Brendan Canty. Not, of course straight-edge punk or punk of any variety, it was a truly lovely piece of experimental post-rock, and I highly recommend giving it a listen. Then later that year came a 17-minute track titled “First“, released on the sadly now defunct Longform Editions, in which the duo were joined by widely-collaborative violinist & multi-instrumentalist Hahn Rowe. Well, a title like that is clearly leading somewhere, and now we have their Second release, out via the Balmat label run by Barcelona-based music critic Philip Sherburne and Lapsus‘ Albert Salinas. These are versatile musicians jamming out iteratively in various studios, with all the musicians playing multiple roles. There are atmospheric loops & textures, but the backbone is Canty’s muscular grooves, while melodies snake through from all three (as well as a couple of guest spots). It has the exploratory nature of early postrock and its antecedents, but crafted by three musicians with decades of experience behind them. A beauty.

Lawrence English + Stephen Vitiello – with Chris (Single Edit) [American Dreams Records/Bandcamp]

American Dreams Records, who brought us Lawrence English‘s astonishing collaboration with Lea Bertucci a couple of years ago, now bring us Lawrence’s third album with the abovementioned Stephen Vitiello – appropriately titled Trinity. That’s not just because it’s their third, but also because on each track the duo is completed by a third musician – on this one, it’s the master Chris Abrahams, pianist in The Necks of course, and much more. This is wonderfully ChrisAbrahamsian.

(The Necks, of course, put out a stunning 3CD album this year, Disquiet, but ultimately I wasn’t able to excerpt even the shortest track, at 26 minutes. You know it’s amazing, it’s The Necks.)

Hand To Earth – Ŋurru Wäŋa Part II [Room40/Bandcamp]

When members of the Australian Art Orchestra collaborated with Yolŋu songmen Daniel and David Wilfred on the extraordinary album Hand to Earth in 2021, it must have already been clear this was a really special project. With trumpeter Peter Knight (who was AAO’s Artistic Director at the time), clarinettist (among other wind instruments) Aviva Endean and Korean-Australian vocalist Sunny Kim, the Wilfreds weave songlines, yidaki (didgeridoo) and bilma (clapstick) around sensitive sonic experimentation, with all three other members processing their sounds. On this third Hand To Earth album, their second on Room40, label boss Lawrence English also contributes sounds, and Peter Knight’s son Quinn contributes percussion (acoustic and electronic) on our selection tonight, “Ŋurru Wäŋa Part II”. In an echo of the millennia-spanning songlines, the group bend time, sculpting the songs in an iterative process following the original voice, yidaki and bilma recordings. There’s so much depth to this music, an evocation of our environment and the varied cultural backgrounds that find their home on this continent.

Pierre Bastien & Michel Banabila – Closing Time: The Party Is Over [Pingipung/Bandcamp]

The first collaborative album between French mechanical instrument maker Pierre Bastien and fourth world electronic producer & composer Michel Banabila was a strange affair, lovely but perhaps a bit tentative. On their follow-up, Nuits Sans Nuit, it feels like they’ve found a singular voice together. Both musicians are multi-instrumentalists interested in taking traditional instruments into weird, uncanny places, and on tonight’s selection (which doesn’t close their album!), a very European chamber melody winds its way to our ears through an open doorway somewhere just out of view…

Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie – Endless Not [Planet µ/Bandcamp]

When I went to the Planet µ 30th gig in London (and I apologise for constantly bringing it up), I got to see experimental electronic mastermind Rian Treanor performing some new material with experimental vocalist Cara Tolmie. It was really special, but it does help, I think, to be able to experience these works at home or on headphones. The album is very varied – from extended vocal techniques from Tolmie to spoken word and even singing(?), with Treanor slipping between post-rave deconstructions, glitched ambient and the more cerebral, academic or avant-garde, all of which connects and differentiates him from his father Mark Fell (Treanor absolutely has his own aesthetic and is extremely talented at whatever genres he sets his sights on). To my mind, the closing track, “Endless Not”, is a huge drawcard, with Treanor’s spooky synth pulses and Tolmie’s dispassionate listing of “Not” things. It’s hard not to be reminded of Big Hard Excellent Fish’s 1990 broadside “Imperfect List“.

Listen again — ~221MB

It’s December, with 3 Sundays left of the year, so that’s Best of 2025 Parts 1, 2, and 3! Tonight it’s “songs” – well, that includes raps. I’ve had to leave SO much out, y’all! As usual, the amount of music being released only goes up, and it’s not like the years are getting longer…

As always, you can LISTEN AGAIN on stream-on-demand at fbi.radio, or podcast right here.

clipping. – Night of Heaven (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]

So yeah, back in March, clipping. released one of the albums of the year… or did they? If so, then what’s this? Why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months ago in various physical formats… Annnyway, an album more fitting for the digital age could not exist – this is clipping. doing cyberpunk, employing Daveed Diggs’ incredible wordsmithery and Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson’s backgrounds in noise, breakcore, soundtracking and more to bring to life the genre that’s both decades out of style and horrifically descriptive of our current-day dystopia. So, finally we have the “pt. 1” to the original release’s “Mirrorshades pt. 2” (the deadly Molly Millions in William Gibson’s cyberpunk ur-text Neuromancer “wears” mirrored sunglasses – except they’re permanently sealed into her skin; a couple of years later Bruce Sterling edited a definitive anthology of early cyberpunk titled Mirrorshades). Needless to say, following their previous concept albums on afrofuturist space opera and horror & blaxploitation, clipping. nail the cyberpunk genre here, both in terms of “style” and intertextuality. But anyway, not only is “Mirrorshades pt. 1” a certifiable banger, but on “Night of Heaven” clipping. collaborate again with the astonishingly-voiced Sharon Udoh aka Counterfeit Madison, with cuts provided by Kid Koala. My CD player aches with jealousy.

Note: clipping. did a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert late in the year, with electro-mechanical percussion, harmonium and the aforementioned Sharon Udoh on piano and vocals, and while every rendition is a highlight, this song is the second-last, and Kid Koala hops up on the turntable!

Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Dogeared (feat. Kapwani) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]

It’s been a huge year for Backwoodz Studioz, and a few others of their releases appear tonight, but here’s the second full-length album from Studioz boss billy woods and E L U C I D‘s Armand Hammer working exclusively with The Alchemist. Like Haram, their first collaboration, Mercy benefits from The Alchemist’s commercial experience, but the producer perfectly mindmelds with Backwoodz’ aesthetic, with bizzaro samples that are by turns wonky and sinister – but whatever the loop is that “Dogeared” is built around, it’s the most earwormy sample of the year, and Kapwani brings beautifully melodic vocal layers along with it. In his verse, a woman asks woods, “What’s the role of a poet in times like these?”, and while he’s still grappling with it by the end of the song, it’s not unfair to say that it’s this very grappling that’s their added value – as well, I’d like to suggest, as their pure artistic worth.

billy woods – Waterproof Mascara [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]

The most notable hip-hop release of the year – albeit with much competition – must be Golliwog, the intense new album from billy woods. The sinister imagery of the deeply racist ragdoll character that gives the album its name is a pointer to what’s inside. It’s a kind of take on horrorcore from a Black perspective, and as usual it’s got brilliantly murky production with weird interludes and great guests on beats, instruments and verses, sparsely but smartly used. The murky production from Preservation on “Waterproof Mascara” underlines a truly disturbing autobiographical story from Woods.

SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 1 [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]

Last year, alongside their remarkable, heavy-as-fuck album The Healer was released, sludgey hardcore supergroup SUMAC released an EP called The Keeper’s Tongue with two remixes: recent Wire Magazine cover star, Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon, and the brilliant avant-garde hip-hop/free jazz genius Moor Mother. And what a combo the latter was! SUMAC leader Aaron Turner was singer & guitarist with two of my favourite post-metal bands, ISIS and Old Man Gloom (the latter not in past tense), but SUMAC feels like his purest vision, engineered with precision along with the rhythm section of Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook of hardcore legends Botch and post-metal legends Russian Circles. Turner also ran the greatest metal/experimental label in the world, Hydra Head, and now has a smaller – impeccably curated – operation with his wife Faith Coloccia called SIGE. After the incendiary impact of that Moor Mother remix, it still came as a surprise to discover that this full album collab was just around the corner. The Film is one large work split into tracks, with as much (disquieting) quiet as crashing noise. And who but Moor Mother could compete with Aaron Turner’s roar? Poetic and deeply political, scathing about colonialism and capitalism, it’s incredibly powerful.

doseone & Steel Tipped Dove – Restaurant Not [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]

It’s been so lovely reading the background of this album. Adam Drucker aka doseone was one of the founding forces behind alt. hip-hop or whatever you want to call it in the last 1990s and early ’00s, founding with various other hip-hop outliers the Anticon collective and label (it took me ages to realise that the name referenced their “ant icon” logo). He’s played a part in a lot of the music that was this here radio show’s bread & butter for many years, including collabs with indietronic/postrock bods like Hood and The Notwist – and the album Circle that he made with Boom Bip way back in 2000 was massively influential. In 2018, beloved fellow Anticon founder Alias passed away from a sudden heart attack, and Anticon slowly fizzled out. So yeah, years later dose started hearing the output of billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz – specifically I believe a ShrapKnel album – and felt the creative spark that he’d been missing in grief and isolation. He hooked up with frequent Backwoodz producer Steel Tipped Dove, and they quickly created a whole body of new work. Some of the anything-goes abandon of Jel & Odd Nosdam’s early Anticon productions can really be heard here (and, I’d suggest, across the Backwoodz catalogue), and Dose spits out his poetic, circumspect lyrics with all the energy of the best of Themselves, Subtle and the rest. It’s nice to see Andrew Broder aka Fog – a frequent Anticon collaborator and lately a brilliant producer – adding turntable to all tracks, and there are notable features across the album from hip-hop legends like Mykah 9 and Antipop Consortium’s M.Sayyid, Open Mike Eagle, and Backwoodz’ own billy woods.

The second track here, “Restaurant Not” has a deconstructed Anticon-style beat that upturns dose’s vocals perfectly – and it also has a fun, colourful video.

Haykal, Julmud, Acamol | هيكل، جلمود، أكامول – A’saab أعصاب [Bilna’es/Bandcamp]

Cross-media artistic duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Ramme formed the record label & publishing platform Bilna’es along with producer Muqata’a as a space for artistic expression & criticism in Palestine & beyond. Along with the amazing productions of Muqata’a, a highlight was the 2022 solo album from Julmud, Tuqoos | طُقُوس. Now Julmud teams up with label founder Abbas, the latter under the name Acamol (Arabic for Panadol/paracetamol), along with Palestinian rapper Haykal on a new album Kam Min Janneh | كم من جنّة (How Many Heavens). The beats, produced by Julmud & Acamol separately & together, present a glitched version hip-hop drawn from the music & percussion of the MENA region, while Julmud & Haykal swap verses evoking the life of dispossession under occupation, colonization & genocide. It bears mentioning that while the killing continues in Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire, settlers continue to violently disrupt the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity – destroying property, beating and killing people and blocking access to their own land. In that context, this is a powerful work of resistance and solidarity (and some injections of humour). As I’m writing this late, you can read Emad Al Hatu’s excellent article on fbi.radio, as this was made album of the week at the beginning of November.

Nadah El Shazly = ندى الشاذلي – Kaabi Aali [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]

In July 2018, The Wire put Nadah El Shazly on the cover as part of an in-depth look at the underground music scene in Cairo & Egypt – a couple of months after featuring a fantastic playlist from El Shazly of experimental Egyptian music. I already knew a few of the players in the diverse, experimental and creative Egyptian music scene, but her playlist and then interview were the introduction to many more, and showed what an important figure El Shazly herself was in that scene. She’s now Montréal-based, and her beautiful 2024 soundtrack The Damned Don’t Cry was recorded at the legendary Hotel2Tango studio mentioned above, with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh on the mixing desk, and Canadian musicians like the brilliant harpist Sarah Pagé contributing essential performances. Laini Tani, El Shazly’s second album outside of soundtracks & collaborations (many, many collaborations), was also recorded with Moumneh at Hotel2Tango, with one of Cairo’s most creative electronic musicians, 3Phaz, on co-production duties. It’s honestly a quite incredible album, one I have returned to as best I can against the weekly/daily onslaught of new music. It’s a re-setting of trip-hop into Arabic musical traditions, experimental pop of the highest order.

SANAM – Sayl Damei – سيل دمعي [Constellation/Bandcamp]

I was instantly hooked when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background; this second album is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop. There really are many different directions taken here, from trip-hop like pieces with auto-tuned vocals to punky numbers with jagged guitars – I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it.

Yasmine Hamdan – Vows سبع صنايع [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]

While I’ve featured quite a bit of Lebanese music on this show, it’s leaned towards the experimental. Yasmine Hamdan‘s career goes back to the late ’90s with indie/trip-hop band Soapkills, all three of whose independent albums have been re-released by Belgian powerhouse Crammed Discs, whose catalogue covers postpunk and experimental music as well as “world music” from all over the planet. Hamdan released two previous solo albums with Crammed, and after a few singles (of which I’ve played a couple), her third album I remember, I forget is out now. It’s no surprise that this is album deeply affected by what’s happened to Beirut and Lebanon over the last few years, including the horrific port explosion in 2020, the intensifying of its economic collapse as well as continuing incursions by Israel. It’s actually a bittersweet album as Hamdan, who is based in Paris, has great affection for her birthplace of Beirut. It’s a beautiful, compulsively listenable collection of songs that easily fuses Arabic pop and trip-hop.

Aesop Rock – The Red Phone [Rhymesayers Entertainment/Bandcamp]

There’s none more genius than Aesop Rock in the hip-hop world, with vocabulary to spare, and quite honestly the most comforting tone of voice. Going back a few albums now, Aes has been producing all his beats himself, and they’re just so good. Whether the subject matter’s a climate apocalypse or the horrors of late-stage capitalism or the horrors of getting older, Aes has elliptical lyrics delivered with perfect flow. Incredibly, after this great concept album, Aes released a second full album in October, I Heard It’s A Mess There Too, stripping the beats down to the basics and rhyming commiseratively about this fucked-up world – a world that’s nevertheless better for having Aesop Rock in it.

Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Nom De Guerre (feat. Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]

In 2022 billy woods released the incredible Aethiopes album, fully produced by Preservation. One of the guests was Gabe ‘Nandez and it was there that the seeds of this full-album collaboration were sown. The darkness of Preservation’s productions suit ‘Nandez’ searching lyrics, but also notable was the fact that both are French speakers: it’s ‘Nandez’ first language, via his Haitian side, and Preservation is half French. So apart from the album title Sortilège being French, some of the movie samples that always litter Backwoodz Studioz releases are here heard in French, and ‘Nandez swaps lines with his frequent collaborator Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko, switching between English & French without breaking the flow. The range of sounds Preservation uses is wild, from weird proggy synth drones to piano jabs, beats that boom and bap and shuffle and slap. It’s a journey, it’s a trip.

aya – the names of Faggot Chav boys [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]

No longer requiring “fka LOFT”, aya brings us her second album on Hyperdub, but it’s still as full of angst as im hole was, just in different ways. Here, aya is concerned with addiction, as it often is, indelibly twisted around trauma. The themes are carried by her always sardonic vocal delivery (this time round there are no other guests, except James Ginzburg of emptyset/Subtext Recordings helped out with the mixing), and to be clear, the music can be really claustrophobic and discomfiting. Or it can be cathartic. It’s also funny that aya tends to keep the more straight drum’n’bass or other dancefloor styles off her full albums – which makes sense as they’re more conceptual affairs, imagined as a full-length work, and showcasing her incredible talent & skills. Prettttty damn impressive.

I want to note that I got to see aya twice this year – launching the album in London at Ormside Projects in May, and then at Unsound Adelaide in July. Both were utterly energetic, calculatedly chaotic performances, hilarious and brilliant. The album topped many best-of lists this year, and deservedly, but even so, those performances were hard to beat.

Rainy Miller – Chrome, Hallowed be. [Supernature/Bandcamp]

A clear highlight of the first half of 2025, Joseph, What Have You Done? is the brilliant new album from Rainy Miller, collaborator with the likes of Blackhaine, Space Afrika and Richie Culver. Like these collaborators, Miller’s art focuses on the drab oppressiveness of life in England’s north, and the sociopolitical realities – which Miller or his protagonist does his best to resist – of class and culture. It’s done through the lens of broken-down drill, grime and jungle as well as desolate ambient. That all these elements pull together into something devastating and beautiful is a huge achievement. On this album Miller has overcome any Predetermined Definitions and more than realised his potential.

California Girls – Sorrowful Meat [Blue Void]

Eora/Sydney’s California Girls is the work of Angus McGrath, a multifarious musician who’s also Gus McGrath of fbi.radio mainstays Sleepless in Sydney with longtime musical collaborator/flatmate/etc Marcus Whale. With California Girls’ third album Wheel of Ashes, Gus has created a work of glitchy club-infused industrial pop with fractious shouty vocals that fight back against the anxiety of modern life.

Teether & Kuya Neil – SCRATCH THE FLEA POINT (FT NERDIE) [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]

Working out what to play out of 6 weeks’ new releases is a challenge, but there’s been a suite of great underground hip-hop that’s come out since the start of May. Following their landmark mixtape STRESSOR from 2023, Naarm rapper Teether & producer Kuya Neil have now released their debut album proper, YEARN IV (which I’ve just realised is a pun). I’m never sure why some releases are dubbed mixtapes, because all the elements were there 2 years ago – Teether’s laconic flow and Kuya Neil’s rave/bass-influenced beats. Teether did release his remarkable 5th solo album, It Must Be Strange to Not Have Lived last year, but there’s definitely a spark of genius between the two together.

I’d like to add that Guy Blackman & Ben O’Connor have released scads of great music across countless genres with Chapter Music over 3 decades, and it’s sad news that the label is kinda-sorta closing down (for new releases at least!), but also totally understandable.

BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Nerdie – Bankistan [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp]

Korean Australian producer/sound-artist Angus Alec Minhyuk Jin does incredible sound design for TV commercials, films and more, but as Nerdie his roots are in hip-hop. BAYANG (tha Bushranger), mind you, has roots in death metal, but on their collaborative album WAR WITH CHINA the pair address Australia’s cultural alienation, as they put it, riffing into punk as much as hip-hop. Good stuff.

Ho99o9 – Godflesh [Last Gang Records/Bandcamp]

Few are doing hardcore punk/metal meets hip-hop quite like Newark’s Ho99o9 (it’s pronounced “Horror”). I’m not sure you’d call this horrorcore, but it’s ho99o9core at least. A perfect melding of punk riffage you could pogo to and the finest beats & raps. Not much more to say. They’ve been around a lot longer than you’d expect, and their style hasn’t changed dramatically since 2017’s United States of Horror, but damnit they do seem to have perfected it. And yes, there’s industrial metal trappings (there’s no way that the title “Godflesh” doesn’t refer to JK Broadrick & G.C. Green’s iconoclastic duo), but there’s an emotional undercurrent which surfaces particularly with the brilliant Chelsea Wolfe‘s guest spot.

Agriculture – Bodhidharma [The Flenser/Bandcamp]

With The Flenser you know you’re going to expect dark, probably metal-adjacent music, and you know it’ll probably diverge from typical genre norms. Ecstatic black metal band Agriculture do indeed employ black metal’s tremolo guitars and blast beats to reach for altered states, but then the thunder gives way to a different kind of ecstasy at times – gorgeous harmonies and clean guitar? The last track on the album somehow combines it all together – blissful chugging blackgaze, and a fragile interlude of just voice and guitar. Channeling Zen Buddhism and social collapse alongside queer history & survival, The Spiritual Sound is easily among the albums of the year.

Postcards – Dust Bunnies [Ruptured/Bandcamp]

We’ve heard a lot of brilliant experimental music from Lebanon in recent years, a lot (although by no means all) of it courtesy of the Beirut-based Ruptured label (now partly run out of Montréal). Among the highest of highlights are the songs of Julia Sabra, both with Fadi Tabbal as Snakeskin, and solo. But Sabra’s first band was Postcards, an indie rock/shoegaze band that’s among Beirut’s longest-lived, going back to 2012 (all members are active in many other Lebanese acts). So we’re fortunate to have an actual new album from the band, produced though it was (as always, by Fadi Tabbal) under the very dark cloud of Israel’s regional aggression. This song – the first single – was an impassioned scream of everything that’s gone wrong with Lebanon.

Snakeskin – Ready [Ruptured/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]

A surprise release months after that Postcards album – singer Julia Sabra and their longtime producer Fadi Tabbal dropped their third album We live in sand in October, co-released by Ruptured with Portland’s Beacon Sound. The album was unavoidably influenced by the troubles of Lebanon and the horrors of the genocide being conducted by Israel. It’s mournful and sometimes angry, the product of two exceptionally strong music-makers. When I saw them live in London in May, both musicians had tables entirely covered in electronic equipment, noisemakers and effects, Sabra singing while processing her voice (given the setup, it was nearly impossible to tell who was making any particular noises other than that). This album might not seem as experimental as that performance implied, but it’s hard-hitting and there’s nothing else quite like it.

Laurén Maria – Filled Up Smile [Warm Winters Ltd./Bandcamp]

I first heard Berlin-based Laurén Maria on a 12″ from Yu Miyashita‘s label The Collection Artaud, two tracks of deconstructed electronics with processed vocals hidden within. Her second album, You’re Beautiful, is a masterpiece of deconstruction, in which guitar-led songs jostle with glitch-noise and the subs and fractured beats of the club lurk around the edges. Whether it’s indie-emo songs, screamo tangents or abstracted electronics, Maria somehow makes it all hold together into a strangely affecting album. Also notable, her duo with Diamantista, LICITIR.

anrimeal – 11. Chapter III – Source and time [Lost Wisdom/demo records/anrimeal Bandcamp]

London-based Portuguese musician Ana Rita de Melo Alves has appeared on this show under her anrimeal alias a lot since I discovered her music via The Leaf Library‘s Objects Forever label. This year she released her second album, Half Fool Half Empty, an album arranged in two halves – one more playful, one more serious – although all of Alves’ work can be seen as a combination of those two creative impulses. Beautiful acoustic songwriting is digitally interrupted or corrupted, gorgeous layered vocals hang in frozen stasis, musical elements appear in the midst of a field recording. This album is accompanied by a book, explaining the odd track titles, which are a guide to the sections of the text they mirror.

Herbert & Momoko – More And More [Strut/Herbert Bandcamp/Momoko Gill Bandcamp]

Back in 2022, Matthew Herbert released a short album called Drum Solo in collaboration with Swiss drummer Julian Sartorius. It was intended to be the first in a series of “Album In A Day” releases, but also the first in a series of collaborations with different drummers. Last year, Herbert revived his Parts EP series with Part 9 which opened with “Fallen”, featuring drummer & vocalist Momoko Gill. Gill is clearly as perfect a foil for Herbert’s glitch-infused, jazz-influenced productions as Dani Siciliano or Róisín Murphy, and as well as her silky-smooth vocals and sinuous melodies her percussion and drumkit are central elements throughout – notably more prominent on the remake of the Part 9 song, “Fallen Again”. The album benefits from the restraint of both artists, often using sparing arrangements with just enough – a minimalist rhythm, shuffling sampled hi-hats, a bassline… Often the only other elements are Gill’s vocals, multi-tracked and sampled. Lovely stuff.

georg-i & Older Brother – To Be A Man [GRACE/Bandcamp]

Portugal-based MC Darius Rodrigues aka Older Brother has been working with London producer George Harris aka georg-i for ages. Now the duo have finally come out with the Warm Skin EP on Berlin-based DJ Katiusha‘s label GRACE. And these four tracks of trip-hop-inflected bass music do walk with grace, holding Older Brother’s lyrics about the state of the world, and – on this closing track – seeking a new, post-patriarchy definition of maleness.

Crimewave – 155/160BPM [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp]

Crimewave – Haemoglobin [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp]

Manchester’s Crimewave makes a pretty unique mixture of UK bass & experimental electronic styles with shoegazey indie guitar music. Following a series of singles and EPs in 2023, he’s now hooked up with New York label Fool’s Gold Records and full album Scenes was released in November. It’s that perfect mix – everytime you think it’s all dance music (those BPM-shift interstitials), suddenly it’s jabbing postpunk guitars or shoegaze strums, and vice versa. Great work, very underrated.

gushes – CUT [PTP/Switch Hit Records/Bandcamp]

Trust PTP (aka Protect The Peace, fka Purple Tape Pedigree) to release one of the most bizarre & brilliant albums of the year (in conjunction with artist collective Switch Hit Records). Jennae Santos’ gushes presents an unrestrained amalgam of prog metal, psych rock, jazz & classical and electronic experimentation. But there’s more than just this: the album begins with voices talking in Tagalog, and influences from Indigenous Filipinx psychology and combat swirl around with land-sea ecologies, plant medicine and queer politics of decolonization… Delicious Collision is a fully-through-composed experimental rock opera, appropriately given Santos’ background (on top of everything else) in theatre, site-specific performance & dance.

Editrix – Another World [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]

Last year’s Viewfinder album by Wendy Eisenberg was one of my albums of the year, and their “In The Pines” will be up there in songs of the decade I daresay. A guitarist’s guitarist, Eisenberg is a master musician, also playing tenor banjo and working with electronics, and playing in ensembles ranging from jazz and free improv to, well, what we have here: just brilliant avant-garde punk. I’ve seen Editrix described as math rock, and OK maybe, but really it’s just great, knotty, melodic punk to me, with Eisenberg joined by a great rhythm section: Steve Cameron on bass and Josh Daniel on drums. Here Eisenberg builds melodies where the intervals are all bent out at angles, making it catchy as hell. The whole album’s perfect riffs, noise sections and top-of-the-lungs vocals. They’ve just signed to Joyful Noise Recordings, and this is absolutely a joyful noise.

Lucrecia Dalt – cosa rara (ft. David Sylvian) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]

I’ve been following Lucrecia Dalt‘s music since she was The Sound of Lucrecia, making lovely indie music that only fainly hinted at the highly experimental electronics or Latin music that would come into her music in latter years. Her last album, 2022’s ¡Ay!, somehow combined her modular synth work with the music of her Colombian roots and incredible, counter-intuitive orchestrations – a masterpiece. On her new album A Danger To Ourselves, the connection to Latin America is still strong, but it feels like Dalt’s electronics take more of a leading role. There are violins and cello, saxophone and percussion throughout, with some bass and guitar on some tracks. And as well as Dalt’s now-partner David Sylvian, who co-produced the album, there are a few prominent South American guests including Mexican singer & sound-artist Camille Mandoki and the wonderful Juana Molina, whose loop-based, hypnotic songwriting was a favourite on Utility Fog since 2004, and it’s a treasure to hear her voice with Dalt’s here. The balance, if you could call it that, between the experimental and the “pop” elements on this album is thrilling. The first single “cosa rara” was another slice of Latin experimental pop, with the added spice of a spoken outro by the aforementioned David Sylvian, who also contributed “feedback guitar” and completed the final mix. The song, whose title translates as “strange thing”, is sultry and just a little menacing, and the single release is rounded out with a typically radical rework by Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and a “dopamine dub” remix by Chilean-German techno producer Mathias Aguayo.

Titanic – La dueña [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp]

Speaking of Guatemalan (Mexico-resident) cellist Mabe Fratti, she and her longtime collaborator Héctor Tosta de la Rosa (who records as I. la Católica) released their first album as Titanic in 2023. The project is an outlet for I. La Católica’s compositions and arrangements with Fratti’s distinctive, creative cello playing and her emotive voice comfortably at home. Vidrio is now followed by Hagen. There’s some absolutely gorgeous songwriting on here, mostly by I. La Católica, with some co-writes by Fratti, whose singing on all tracks is possibly her best ever. Of course she plays cello too, all over these tracks alongside I. la Católica’s instruments and the pair’s electronics. Hagen has a guest spot from Daniel Oneohtrix Point Never Lopatin on one track, and Lopatin collaborator Nathan Salon adds instrumentation and production on about half the album; the brilliant drummer (and yes, OPN compadre) Eli Keszler also appears. As expected, this is evocative, glistening, and not quite like anything else. I’m tempted to declare “La dueña” song of the year, and it has a suitably melodramatic video to accompany it.

Mikoo – Ties [Sofa Music/Bandcamp]

Norway’s Sofa Music is a consistent home to music that’s off the beaten path – jazz, sure, but not only, or hybridised with contemporary classical, folk and electronics. Mikoo is a case in point, a band led by their drummer Michaela Antalova, a Slovakian musician based in Oslo. The music is mostly written by Antalova, in collaboration with the band, a highly talented collection of musicians on keyboards, guitars & zither, bass and vocals. Singer Ina Sagstuen does often write her own vocal melodies, and mostly the lyrics, which on their gorgeous new album It Floats mostly revolve around concepts of inheritance, including inherited trauma as well as traditions behaviours. These are dark songs in intimate chamber setting, with the percussion never far from prominence. It could easily pass you by – you may not hear about it anywhere else – and I really recommend giving it a listen when you have some quiet time.

soccer Committee – Little Sorrow [Morc Records/Bandcamp/soccer Committee Bandcamp]

I have been a dedicated fan of Dutch singer-songwriter Mariska Baars for many years, via Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek – both working with him under her own name, and then in equally mysterious projects such as Piiptsjilling and FEAN with the Kleefstra brothers and others. Where Jan Kleefstra performs his poetry in Frisian, Baars sings either wordlessly or in English. Her work, as soccer Committee and in other groups, is characterised by an exquisite restraint, whereby if you’re listening you can’t help but be drawn into the patiently unfolding melodies and subtle but essential textures. Even without Machinefabriek’s sensitive deconstructions around the edges of their collaborative work, Baars seems to dismantle and rebuild the fabric of her songs so that they are as attenuated as possible while still holding together. In 2023 she released ❤️ /Lamb, her most confident and fully-realised album yet, and only 2 years later, she’s back on Morc Records with eye, which is equally gorgeous and tenuous.

I do want to point you to where I discovered Mariska Baars, with Machinefabriek on their incredible album Drawn, which birthed the Redrawn compilation of remixes and covers – an album I return to frequently.

Listen again — ~221MB