Playlist 26.07.26

Experimental song, weird beats getting into everything, glitchy sound-art from unexpected quarters, a processed field recording journey & more tonight!

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Neptune – Enter H— [Sleeping Giant Glossolalia/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
It’s been a while since the last album from Boston experimental band Neptune – although two abstract tracks came out on a lathe-cut 7″ a couple of years ago. Listening through their Bandcamp archives, it’s plain to see that the one constant is that you don’t know what to expect, but it’ll probably be industrial in the sense of machinic (which may not be a word, but I mean “of machines”), often murky, sometimes grotesque. All main members are inventors of one sort or another – and whether electronic, electric or “acoustic”, most of the sounds are to some degree handmade. Jason Sanford, singer and instrumentalist, is also a member of Thalia Zedek‘s trio E. But mainly what we get from Neptune, on their excellent new album Play Some Music, is weird sound, and junk rhythms. Who needs melody anyway? I mean, it’s nice sometimes, but this works too.

Saul Williams – Mazahua [Big Dada/Bandcamp]
The king of conscious rap, president of experimental collaboration, the poetic philosopher of politics, Saul Williams is back with a new album this year, Leap Life. Out on August 28th on Big Dada no less, the Ninja Tune subsidiary that in 1998 released his mind-blowing debut EP Elohim (1972) (“Like kyah kyah kyah, sha klak-klak, get me the FUCK off this track!“). “Mazahua” demonstrates Williams’ mastery of poetic music – spoken word that morphs subtly into melody, and production that goes from string pads through a kind of ’80s electro to a beautiful field recording bed for the outro. It’s epic.

iiisa – aún siento la sombra [Leaving Records/Bandcamp]
Here at Utility Fog we stan Brooklyn-based Costa Rican artist isabel crespo pardo, in all their musical formations. In 2024 we were privileged to hear their vision from two different trios: sinonó melds Latin American folk song with free improvisation, combining crespo pardo’s voice with cello (Lester St. Louis) and double bass (Henry Fraser); tilt finds crespo pardo joined by trombonist Kalia Vandever and double bassist Carmen Quill, with all three singing. These two ensembles conjured remarkable music from voice and low-register instruments. And last year came the debut full-length from crespo pardo’s quartet toso toso, a more electronic ensemble with piano, drums and guitar – yes, no bass. Now in 2026 we’re getting to hear from crespo pardo’s solo project iiisa, with the album tanto te he querido (“I have loved you so much”). The bed of these songs is made from field recordings and fragments of their earlier work, the songs emerging through a version of the improvisation behind much of their group work. On the first single “aún siento la sombra” (“I can still feel the shadow”), bits of field recordings – voices and percussion – are looped and chopped, with arrhythmic percussion providing an unreliable backing behind iiisa’s voice, then some stentorian distorted chords riff atonally, soon giving way to a different field recording, chaotic with shouted voices and percussion. It’s disorienting, but clearly intentionally constructed, an abstract composition that I’m keen to hear in the context of the rest of the album.

Trusselina – Gastro [JOLT MUSIC/Bandcamp]
The debut studio release from Philadelphia duo Trusselina, made up of Hayden McGarvey and Mikeala Oppenheimer, is yet more proof that it’s the mid-2000s all over again (I’m thinking particularly of the indietronica of ear). Heck, this could almost have come out from Bubble Core in the late 1990s. The two tracks are pretty different – one with energetic live drums and strummy indie guitars, super catchy; the other a soundscape with spoken word. It’s like when postrock was interesting, when indie and electronic music collided messily with little regard for familiar structures or commericality. Love it.

Tom Foden – {…i…w i s h…} [self-released/Bandcamp/Subvert]
Tom Foden – {…f e a r…o f…} [self-released/Bandcamp/Subvert]
From across the pond in Aotearoa – Lower Hut, Wellington, to be precise – comes the debut album from Tom Foden, live sound producer and studio sound engineer. It’s called Release, or in the album’s typography, {…r e l e a s e…}, and in a way it’s about Foden’s journey to founding his studio and releasing his own music, as well as starting a family and those kinds of big changes – about letting go of the protections that can actually be constricting. The album’s a whole mix of stuff, from ambient to field recordings, including pretty piano from Victoria Ferguson, to heavy beats & bass. It certainly succeeds as a statement of artistic intent, putting Tom Foden on my radar.

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha – Field@135 [Crónica/Bandcamp]
To some, Portuguese sound-artist and producer Jonathan Uliel Saldanha might be better known as the HHY part of HHY & the Kampala Unit, a project with Ugandan musicians released on the legendary Nyege Nyege Tapes. Here we hear him actually remixing long-running Portugese computer music duo @c aka Miguel Carvalhais & Pedro Tudela, who together founded the essential, ground-breaking label Crónica in 2003. This is the fourth in a series of releases stemming from @c’s 30×N project with new media artist Visiophone – you can see some of the visual elements here. There are two remixes on this EP, the other being from AGF. Hers is beautifully crunchy and abstract, and Uliel Saldanha’s is a head-nodding lopsided percussive beat.

Karnage – Depth Charge (ft. Rakjay) [Deep Dark & Dangerous/Bandcamp]
OK here we got Japanese dubstep/140 producer Karnage with 2 tracks on Deep Dark & Dangerous, the label run by NZ dubstep lifers Truth. Both tracks are true to the label’s name, but Rakjay is liable to bring fire, and “Depth Charge” really is something else, heavy duty and stripped back at the same time.

Hella – We Left Everything On The Dancefloor [YUKU/Bandcamp]
No, not that Hella. UK DJ, producer, vocalist Hella debus on YUKU with five tracks of UK bass music that incorporate community & space into the recordings. We Left Everything On The Dancefloor is a beautiful ode to club culture at its best.

Nebraska presents: Dubl Drat – Olive (Dubl Drat Dub) [Delusions of Grandeur/Bandcamp]
Alistair Gibbs made a name in deep house as Nebraska, with a sensibility that took in jazz and hip-hop. He’s now in the midst of retiring Nebraska for a new identity: Dubl Drat. It’s not that the deep house and disco aren’t still there, but Dubl Drat is able to recontextualise them as only dub can do. His “Dubl Drat Dub” of “Olive” is a hypnotic piece with a quasi breakbeat, wafting tabla and blissful melodic fragments that never shifts from its one chord. Lovely.

Petrels – Speenhamland [Denovali/Bandcamp]
Have I told this story before? Of course I have. So, back in 2008 Oliver Barrett released his first album as Bleeding Heart Narrative – All That Was Missing We Never Had In The World (ignore the Bandcamp date), released initially on a boutique UK label/publisher called Tartaruga. In a year of amazing discoveries, that debut album rode high above most, combining Godspeed-like postrock (Barrett is a cellist like me), chaotic noise, glitched cut-ups and lots of emotion. Bleeding Heart Narrative lasted a while, becoming a real band, but Oliver also launched Petrels as the renewed focus for solo music – itself somewhere between postrock, electronic music and indie songwriter stuff. He’s also released quite avant-garde solo cello stuff under his own name, and nowadays you can find a variety of different music, from both the Petrels Bandcamp and Floating Limb Bandcamp. I should also note that he’s a beautiful illustrator too. But this text is all in the interests of being overjoyed to find that Oliver’s Petrels, after I think about 7 years, now has a new album on the way – in fact two, as Infangthief is set to be followed by Outfangthief later this year. Released, as much of his Petrels stuff, on German powerhouse Denovali, it’s got all the energy, maximalism and experimentalism that this project represents.

datewithdeath – Thickets 2 (Shay. Remix) [Frolic Press/Bandcamp]
Travis Johnson’s datewithdeath continues releasing music at a steady rate, now on his Frolic Press – a label that’s also a publisher of weird fiction and the like. Here a recent track of his is reworked by Shay. with eerie bell-like tones that subside into atmospheric techno beats, rolling, bubbling tones and acid blurps.

DJ Sprinter – Zero Tin [Unreleased, direct from artist]
Norwegian breakbeat/bass producer DJ Sprinter has risen high in only a few years, courtesy of needle-sharp beats and precision-tooled grooves. Those who follow him on Bandcamp will note that he occasionally sends out a communiqué offering unreleased tracks if you DM him on Instagram. And thence cometh this great minimalist piece with a spare kick/hi-hat/snare beat out of which breakbeats sometimes scatter, along with choppy vocal samples and occasional other sounds.

Djrum – I Wander (II) [Houndstooth/Bandcamp]
Felix Manuel aka Djrum is one of the geniuses of the current age, adept at beats at any BPM, switching easily between techno, dubstep, jungle & beyond, but also inserting beautiful quasi-classical piano & cello passages, flutes with weird tunings, etc. Forthcoming EP I Wander is really one 15:44 track, but split into 6 parts reflecting its restless evolution throughout. So look, it’s Djrum, it’s genius, what else can I say?

Silvan Strauss – ALL BOSSES [Kabul Fire Records/Bandcamp]
Here’s a single from the forthcoming album Sprinting from Hamburg-based drummer & producer Silvan Strauss. The album was borne out of his love for the frenetic rhythms of footwork, translating the drum machines into live drumkit. Various guests from the jazz, global and club music scenes appear on some tracks, but mostly it’s his solo response to those beats, and it doesn’t sound quite like anything else you’ve heard.

Foodman – Hard Reclining [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
Speaking of footwork, there’s not a lot of it on the new album from Japanese experimental footwork iconoclast Foodman. HIKARIGASASHIKOMU is based around often grotesquely manipulated samples of his own voice, singing Japanese schoolyard rhymes as well as random thoughts. Sometimes the voice is just about the only element, sometimes it’s supported by beats that draw inspiration for global bass genres treated in Foodman’s unique fashion. It’s frankly demented.

hackedepicciotto – Zeitenwende [Mute/Bandcamp]
The real-life partnership of violinist/singer/electronic producer Danielle de Picciotto and Alexander Hacke (of industrial pioneers Einstüzende Neubauten) has produced a lot of uncategorizable music over some years now, particularly as they were travelling the world together, of no fixed abode for a while. This album was recorded during/after two milestones: the couple have now established a fixed home in the outskirts of Berlin; and Hacke decided a little while ago to leave Neubauten. The album was written entirely in German – Picciotto, while born in the US, started living in Berlin in 1987; Lichtung means “clearing”, a node to their less-urban surrounds, and my choice tonight, “Zeitenwende”, means “a turning point”.

Kassel Jaeger – a shell, a bell, a spell (from Sub Re) [Shelter Press/Bandcamp]
Wonderful sound-art/electro-acoustic/drone from François Bonnet, director since 2018 of the Ina GRM (one of the birthplaces of musique concrète and electro-acoustic music). As Kassel Jaeger, he’s worked in the drone/glitch/noise space, collaborating with the likes of Jim O’Rourke, Giuseppe Ielasi, Oren Ambarchi et al, and was deeply connected with the (Editions) Mego label before Peter Rehberg’s tragic death. The latter – this connection between the noise/breakcore roots of Mego’s irreverent glitch music and Ina GRM’s pinnacle of the academy – was a surprising connection when the “Kassel Jaeger” pseudonym was revealed, but Bonnet inaugurated the Portraits GRM series with Mego, bringing the new(er) generation of experimental artists into the institute to create commissioned works. That series is now co-run with Ina GRM by Félicia Atkinson’s Shelter Press, who also now manage Editions Mego in the wake of Rehberg’s passing, and Shelter Press have also released Bonnet/Jaeger’s extraordinary new work Sub Re. Spread over two sides, the parts or movements are actually divided into named segments, but on the physical releases the divisions aren’t specifically indicated, so it’s interesting to have “a shell, a bell, a spell” (from Part I) presented as an official excerpt. It’s unusually descriptive, as you can certainly hear the bells, and dare I say it’s quite spellbinding. The 20+ minutes of each part give ample room to hear Bonnet’s masterful sonic transformations. You’ll hear more detail every time you listen.

Pentu – Milk Like [Salmon Universe/Bandcamp]
After a notable release on Slovakia’s mappa and with releases scattered around the internet from the last 10 years, London guitarist/producer Pentu now ends up on Salmon Universe, the label run by London’s JQ and Sydney’s (London-resident) Richard Pike. In keeping with Salmon Universe’s remit, this is kind-of ambient music, with suitable amounts of dread, glitched beats and the blackened doom of the sort that also bled into on that mappa album (And I Saw My Devil And I Saw My Deep Blue Sea) 2 years ago. These emotions are driven by the familiar contemporary malaise: overstimulation from the digital ecosystem, simultaneously with deep mourning for our global ecosystem, alongside queer trauma. This is felt quite viscerally, but despite that the guitar textures and blurts of error-strewn noise are quite lovely.

CxBxT – Shakou Version 2 (Shojiro Nakaoka) [Constructive/Bandcamp]
Late last year, a rather wonderful album came & went with less fanfare than I felt it deserved – and indeed I myself played it in an episode which I was unable to put time into writing reviews for, so I hereby apologise from my small part in this travesty (but hey, I did play it!) The trio CxBxT combines composer/musician/producer Adrian Corker & percussionist George Barton with the voice, instruments and electronics of Japanese glitch-pop pioneer Tujiko Noriko. Corker & Barton both work at the periphery of classical & experimental music, and while there’s an ambient seam that cuts across all three musicians’ music, the tracks on .After had more beats (of a sort) than I’ve heard in Noriko’s music for some time. .After Again hands those tracks out to a selection of artist in a similar netherworld of musical styles, including YPY of Japanese percussion wonders goat, ambient-not-ambient composer Tashi Wada and more; Shojiro Nakaoka creates complex generative electronica, represented by two versions of “Shakou” that are part of a digital art collection available – after all these years – as NFTs!?

Punch Brothers – June Apple (poisoned) [Nonesuch/Bandcamp]
Hey, so the Punch Brothers? The alt-bluegrass band of avant-folk compositions, crazy cover versions and mind-boggling musicianship, helmed by Macarther Genius Grant-winning mandolin player & singer Chris Thile, are no longer just Brothers. Their original violinist Gabe Wilcher departed, and they admirably welcomed brilliant folk musician Brittany Haas to join in his place. The first album of this lineup marks this configuration quite charmingly, I feel, by removing any suggestion of a “frontman” too, being as it is The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers – an album of instrumentals. These wonderful tunes showcase a group of five impeccable string players – mandolin, violin, banjo, acoustic guitar and double bass – still firmly taking bluegrass & Americana into new waters, adapting some traditional tunes as they go. In fact, “June Apple (poisoned)” is one such tune, but with discordant/concordant bowed strings and different percussive approaches on all instruments, it’s about as far from traditional music as you can get with these traditional instruments. Please may I recommend exploring their YouTube channel where you can see the live-in-studio performance of this track and so much more – like OMG this Sufjan Stevens cover together with folk duo Watchhouse.

Andrew Tuttle & Darren Cross – Is This Too? [Room40/Bandcamp]
What a weird and totally logical team-up this is! Andrew Tuttle has taken his granular-processed banjo cut-up techniques into impressive waters over a similar time-span to my own solo efforts – including a stunning posthumous collaboration with folk guitar legend Michael Chapman a couple of years back. For a lot of us, Darren Cross came into our lives as part of the backpack-touting indie rock-meets-electronic larrikins Gerling, but since 2019 Darren has had a turn making fingerstyle guitar & ambient washes as D.C. Cross. And thus we get a dreamy amalgam of these two oft-electronically-inclined acoustic instrumentalists. It’s released on Room40‘s Someone Good imprint on October 2nd, and I need to congratulate them on titling the album AT/DC 😎

Alan Sparhawk – Temple Towers [Across The Horizon/Bandcamp]
Ever since the tragic death of his wife Mimi Parker, Alan Sparhawk has taken his music in various tangential directions from their glorious partnership as Low. This piece of blissful guitar ambience comes from the Across The Horizon series curated by Bob Holmes with Northern Spy Records, dedicated, essentially, to a form of ambient country/folk music – an appropriate segue from our friends AT/DC above. Across The Horizon releases music in sub-curated batches of 3 tracks; Sparhawk’s track comes from Vol. 2 Drop 5, for which he also acted as curator, bringing in tracks from Kenneth Gregory and Liz Draper.

Kate Carr – Celebrating a squeaky transport barrier [Persistence of Sound/Bandcamp]
Kate Carr – Walking through Soho with tourists and delivery guys [Persistence of Sound/Bandcamp]
Australian sound-artist & field-recordist Kate Carr released a stunning album a couple of years ago called Midsummer, London, which tracked a trip across her adopted hometown in the height of summer, replete with whimsical titles describing the field recordings which she expertly manipulates into incredibly musical forms. She has now released its sequel, again on UK label Persistence of Sound, called Vertical London (New Year’s Day), a piece of audio archaeology as well as a personal chronicle once again, of this selfsame city, from the depths of the London Underground to the top of the (rather divisive) Shard. For all the jokey (adorable) track titles, this is once again a serious work of art, full of real beauty, demonstrative of Kate Carr’s mastery of her practice.

Automating – 38°31’09.1″S 145°12’22.9″E (Bashinin Again) [Automating Bandcamp]
Naarm/Melbourne musician, sound-artist & noisenik Sasha Margolis has released this year two triumphant releases – an album & and EP – that are on some level collaborations with legendary noise artist The Hafler Trio aka Andrew McKenzie. On the album, Set, The Hafler Trio is credited with “manipulation, intervention & commentation”, while the EP claimed “plumbing” by The Hafler Trio. Either way, Margolis’ already engrossing industrial-leaning synth work is here taken stratospheric – it’s an album to immerse yourself in. On the track tonight (a location which turns out to be Hutchinson Beach on Phillip Island, south-east of Melbourne), Margolis is also joined by writer & multimedia artist Helen Addison-Smith, making murky rhythmic aural mystery.

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