Robin The Fog

Hello You. It’s been a few months since I last posted here, but that’s certainly not for want of incident. It’s been a hectic autumn at Fog Towers, mostly full of the gladness that comes from catching up with old comrades and attending live shows, even playing a couple for the first time in what feels like an eternity! But there have been some sad moments too, of course. Life is still so rotten for so many, but hearing live music and seeing friends again has certainly made the last few months a lot more bearable.

I’ve now moved the Howlround tape ensemble into a new studio space and am currently busying myself there with various recording projects, including new Howlround material, a commission to provide a soundtrack for an 18th Century ruin and another secret video project, of which more will hopefully be revealed anon. Plus Resonance FM’s Fog Cast continues to gently disrupt the London Airwaves every Wednesday evening at 11pm and I’ve been thrilled by the quality of new material that keeps turning up on the show’s doormat, both literally and metaphorically.

Speaking of new releases, Happy Birthday to Buried Treasure! The Home Counties’ finest imprint for Groovy Brutalism, New-Town Psyche, Dirty Electronics and assorted Library Goodness is celebrating eight years in the game with this magnificent 20-track compilation, featuring tracks from hellishly rare lockdown lathes, recent albums & forthcoming releases. Includes two blink-and-you-missed-them tracks by Howlround alongside aural delights from Revbjelde, Drew Mulholland, vert:x, Philippe Petit, Tongues Of Fire, Wolfen, Zyklus, Neil Sparkes, Ubiquitous Meh!, Aum Taeppers, Siedler + Haig Fras. All this and absolutely beautiful artwork by Gerry Carnelly. A feast for the ears and eyes!

“Remarkably eclectic array of out-there music from this most excellent of British labels – a taste making pick of underground gems. Unmissable” CARL GRIFFIN / ELECTRONIC SOUND

Thanks also to everyone who came down to the launch party, braving howling winds and rain to take in Howlround’s first live show in almost two years, alongside Dolly Dolly, Revbjelde/Zyklus and more. Apologies to anyone in the front row who had their fillings rattled – I got a bit carried away with the bass! Almost certainly the best thing that has EVER happened in Bracknell, if I may be so bold. To celebrate here is Dolly Dolly modelling a new pose he has just perfected outside Bracknell train station. Do you remember that single we once released together that got us branded members of the ‘Clueless London Liberal Elite’? Not bad for two guys based in Reading and Penge respectively!

Still buzzing after playing at Levitation up in Whitby last month. It was an absolute joy to hang out with so many friends and associates again and to share the stage with my fellow Obsolescents Strictly Kev and Chris Weaver (our first gig in five years and only our second gig ever)! It was also the debut performance of Kev’s latest creation, a four-armed turntable that he designed and manufactured himself and was the cause of much excitement. Now we can offer our audiences TWO types of loop for their money!

After everyone being cooped up for so long, it felt like a real re-gathering of the tribe. My one regret is that we couldn’t make it up earlier and enjoy both days. Thanks to Castles In Space chief strategist Colin for masterminding the whole affair – and for taking what might be the single greatest band photo ever! I should also thank everyone in the audience who unwittingly stepped in to become ‘human tape spools’ at short notice and to Polypores who described the resulting mish-mash of tape loops and locked grooves as ‘a spooky racket’. Pretty sure that I want that as my epitaph!

“Last night I briefly became a human tape spool for the other worldly sounds of The New Obsolecents at the @CastlesInSpace #LevitationWhitby music festival. Just one personal highlight of many this weekend!“ -Jerseyraindog

It’s certainly true that our performance was rather at odds with the deep space drone of our album, but it’s good to keep your audience guessing, right? Not to mention ourselves – the whole thing was like a three-man plate-spinning party! Still, the machines seemed to enjoy themselves, despite some initial grumpiness after such a long period of enforced hibernation:

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“New Obsolescents (@djfood and @RobinTheFog) ripping a hole on the space time continuum with tape loops and manipulated vinyl. Trippy, engulfing soundscapes at #LevitationWhitby” – James Thornhill

Speaking of long periods of waiting around, the second pressing of The New Obsolescents’ debut LP finally arrived after months of delays and then swiftly departed again – another lightning fast sell-out! Apologies to anyone who missed out a second time. The plan now is very much to crack on with a follow-up, though with vinyl waiting lists as long as they currently are, who knows when that will be?!

One new release that IS still available at the time of writing is Destroy All Monsters, a collaboration between my partner-in-Howling Ken Hollings and ace sound designer and synth tinkerer Simon James, out now on The Tapeworm. Originally recorded in 2001 using extracts from Ken’s book of the same name, this is the first time these recordings have been made commercially available and given the limited and highly covetable nature of Tapeworm releases, I’d say dive in sharp-ish. Howlround’s Worm Food Delivery from earlier this year certainly didn’t hang around for long!

Plans are currently afoot to finish off the debut album by The Howling in early 2022. There’s certainly some exciting material in waiting, it’s just a case of wrestling it into shape. Here’s a photo of us last week during a recording session in Streatham Wimpy, where we managed to both 1) lay down the bones of a brand new piece and 2) not get thrown out. Fans of flying motorcycles and men in golden spandex are advised to keep loins girded. Just FYI.

In other news I’ve sadly left my lovely team at London Metropolitan Archives and my cosy (ie. windowless) studio after three years and thousands of recordings working on the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project. It’s been an amazing time and I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of people to work with. But all is not lost, however, as in the next couple of weeks I shall be taking up a new position at the British Library Sound Archive, where I’m reliably informed I shall be working on preserving a very large collection featuring recordings of people shouting. Doesn’t that sound like a homecoming?!

I might be leaving the studio behind, but I’m taking a lot of fantastic memories with me. One of the happiest was the day Ian Rawes of the London Sound Survey came to drop off his entire archive of recordings, having donated the whole collection to LMA for preservation. A sound recordist, a gifted raconteur and a lovely man to boot, time spent in his company was always the greatest pleasure. Chatting at the time with UOSH project volunteer and fellow sound recordist Paul Skinner for our London’s Sound Archive blog, the two talked field recordings, the changing nature of the city soundscape and the recent release of the London Sound Survey album Thames and it was a privilege to listen in.

As many of you will undoubtedly have heard, Ian sadly passed away a few weeks back, peacefully after a short illness. Along with Helen and Stephan from Sound Fjord, I was able to visit him in his final weeks and we found him still fascinated with the world around him and in possession of a sharp mind and sharper ears, even as his body was failing him. While unable to speak, he was still able to tell us that he knew his time was coming and he wasn’t scared, a characteristically kind gesture which brought great comfort. His funeral a few weeks later featured the distinctively alien wail of the ‘Coryton Refinery Siren’ as the meditative music and ended with Joy Division’s ‘Disorder’, which felt entirely right and proper! The Coryton Refinery siren played once again across the Resonance FM airwaves that week in a special tribute edition of Fog Cast, comprising recordings from both Thames and its 2013 predecessor These Are The Good Times. What other radio station would play a seven minute field recording from a ‘Wall Of Death’ stunt show?!

You can still find his interview with Paul here and Tony Herrington’s obituary over on The Wire’s website offers welcome further insight into a remarkable life, well-lived and well-loved (and no, I hadn’t previously been aware of his anarchist day as Ian Slaughter or the time spent running Glaswegian club Sex Beat!). But perhaps we should leave the last word to the man himself – here is Ian talking about some of his favourite sound recordings on a piece I recorded for BBC World Service back in 2016, displaying the characteristic warmth and enthusiasm that endeared him to so many.

So many will miss that voice – I still can’t listen to the final minute. But his work will live on, through the London Metropolitan Archives and the efforts of his closest friends such as Iain Chambers, whose Persistence Of Sound label issued Thames back in 2019 and has pledged to bring Ian’s final unfinished project to fruition – I believe there are plans for a new album and more in 2022. How fitting that someone who believed so much in the importance of preserving lost voices will now himself be shown such care.

Hello you. Thought you might like to see the latest post on the London’s Sound Heritage blog that I’ve written in collaboration with the artist and curator Kirsty Kerr. It pertains to a serendipitous encounter with an small and unassuming spool of tape I chanced upon while working in my capacity as an Audio Preservation Engineer for the nationwide Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project. Originally a simple recording of a handbell performance stretched across two mono sides of a tape, I discovered that playing it back on a modern two-track reel to reel machine would cause both sides to play simultaneously, inadvertently revealing work of gently undulating ambient bliss not too far from the works of Terry Reilly or Brian Eno in the process. You can read more about the creation of this new work and our efforts to digitise the audio collection of Britain’s oldest manufacturer by clicking below:

Or if you’re in something of a hurry, you can just listen to the recording below. The Foundry owners themselves have heard it and given their blessing and the general consensus of the feedback received elsewhere so far has been that it really should be at least half an hour longer! Surely be the most glorious piece of tintinnabulation your ears will encounter today?:

It’s also undoubtedly the finest example of a ‘Treble Bob 16 In’ that you’ll hear all week and will hopefully be now be heard far and wide to the delight of campanologists everywhere. Why not share it with that special bell-ringer in your life? Then head back to LondonsSoundHeritage.wordpress.com to read of some of our other adventures in audio heritage. It’s been an incredible trip!

Hello you. It is my absolutely pleasure to announce that I’m appearing as ‘special guest’ on the latest episode of the Cosmic Tape Music Club Podcast with my awesome new friends The Galaxy Electric!

Better known as Jacqueline and Augustus, the US-based duo combine an obsession with early experimental music with a bit of a knack for creating swirly psychedelic electronic space age synth pop of their own; with album titles such as Music For Teleportation and Everything Is Light And Sound offering big clues as to the kind of sonic magic they trade in. They’re also absolutely delightful company!

Over the course of an hour we talk tape loops, accidents and errors, growing up with weird sounds, Radiophonics and the Delia movie, Mystery Science Theatre, David Hasselhoff… It’s get PRETTY nerdy, as you can well. imagine. This is the video interview, but to be honest you’d be doing me a favour by listening to the audio version instead which can be found here. It’s exactly the same content, but without my blurry silhouetted head and endless gesticulating hands that suddenly seem absolutely massive for some reason. Perhaps it’s a perspective thing? Whichever medium you go for, if nerding out about electronic music is your thing, then this series will be very much in your wheelhouse. Dive right in and then go nab yourself some Galaxy Electric vinyl or perhaps one of their highly covetable mugs that would be so perfect for a cup of British tea.

And then just to completely maximise my exposure this month, I’m also chuffed to bits to have a double page spread in this month’s edition of The Wire, discussing the wonderful world of contemporary artists that use tape as a key part of their creative practice, in support of the legendary Aaron Dilloway – a tape loop tinkerer of much repute himself, of course.

Obviously any piece on contemporary explorers in tape can’t really begin without William Basinski, with whom I was lucky enough to go on tour back in 2015 (seems like a very long time ago now, doesn’t it?) and the wonderful Beatriz Ferreyra. But the real joy was discovering so much new music while writing it, such as the work of Australia’s Alexandra Spence and Marsha Fisher from the US. I received quite a few pointers from members of a Facebook group that I’ve subsequently been ejected from (long story), but two of those members were Jacqueline and Augustus, so really my short tenure on those pages proved to be quite fruitful. My only regret was not being able to include George Raynor-Law’s superb Cantonese Tapework, a copy of which was handed to me at the IKLECTIK Experimental Music Fair and that I’ve been blasting ever since. If only I’d come across it a couple of weeks earlier!

IKLECTIKA was incredible, of course, just like we all predicted. So lovely to make new friends, bump into old ones and pick up a bunch of exciting new releases from adventurous new labels. Combine it with the previous weekend’s performances by Tasos Stamou and Left Hand Cuts Off The Right at Cafe Oto and things almost move into the realm of feeling normal again. Fingers crossed it continues. All this weird music is so much more fun when we can all share it together, right?

Absolutely delighted to be returning to one of my very, very favourite places this weekend, Iklectik in Old Paradise Yard, Lambeth, who are celebrating their seventh birthday and the return of live music by throwing a mammoth Experimental Music Fair. It’s a huge programme of pioneering experimental labels, publishers and magazines to take part in a 2-day event full of talks, interviews, panel discussions, live acts and DJ sets. I’ll be there both days running the Touch stall and hawking a few rarities and bargains, so why not stop by and say hello? Further details can be found by clicking on the image above, but here are a few extra details of what’s in store, just to tantalise you further:

GUESTS:
Aloes books / Brachliegen Tapes / Café Oto / CHAMPION VERSION / Chinabot / CLOT Magazine / Colliding Lines / Earshots Recordings / La Plaque Tournante / Flaming Pines / Fractal Meat / Goldsmiths Press / isolarii/ Linear Obsessional / Nonclassical / Paradigm Discs / Psyché Tropes / Repeater Books / Salmon Universe / Sig’il Records / StudioC+ / The Word Bookshop / The Wire / Touch / Weight of Wax / Virtual Ground
more TBA…

PROGRAMME:

DAY 1 – Saturday 17th of July
NONCLASSICAL – DJ Set
CLOTmag Talk – Hybrid Spaces (guests TBA)
Graham Dunning – DJ Set [Fractal Meat]
A’Bear – Live Performance
Jon Wozencroft – Timescale: Sound Seminar [Touch]

DAY 2 – Sunday 18th of July
Deep Learning: Richard Pike & Joe Quirke – DJ Set [Salmon Universe]
Psyché Tropes – DJ Set
The Future of Record Labels – Panel aDiscussion (guests TBA)
o.utlier – DJ Set

A very special edition of Fog Cast this week as the controls of Resonance FM’s finest slice of Isolationist Deep Listening are handed over to Scottish artist, first-generation Hauntologist, ‘Godfather of Psychogeography’, academic and researcher Drew Mulholland. It’s a highly charged brew containing a broad sweep of the extensive back catalogue from the man who first entered many of our orbits as the shadowy figure behind Mount Vernon Arts Lab. That back catalogue includes tape loops, field recordings, haunted electronics, ghostly perambulations, private dreams, public nightmares… you get the idea.

‘Finding strange connections that lurk in the unconscious has become an obsession for Mulholland.. It certainly sums up the strange connections and coincidences that give Mulholland’s work such resonance. Whether it’s bloody battlefields or icons of psychedelia, the ghosts are out there. You just have to listen‘ The Guardian

If all this isolationist intrigue has left you hungry for more, then a small section of Drew’s deep dark discography can be found at his Bandcamp page, so why not do the right thing and bung a few quid his way? You can also show your support by supporting him on Patreon by clicking right here.

Thanks for taking us on such a trip, Drew! Now any chance of a new LP that doesn’t sell out before I can get my my grubby mitts on it?!

WHAT IS MSCTY? from MSCTY on Vimeo.

Absolutely delighted to have been asked to soundtrack the new MSCTY new promotional video, directed by Tim Iloobia and commissioned to promote the work of Nick Luscombe’s multi-limbed agency exploring the interplay between sound, space and architecture across the globe. I believe he’s thrilled to bits with the results – as am I!

Regular followers to these irregular tape loop updates may recall that I made a contribution to MSCTY’s project exploring various locations around The Barbican complex a couple of years ago, along with several other artists including Emma-Kate Matthews and the sadly departed Kassia Flux. All of those tracks can be found here – or indeed by visiting the actual locations themselves if you happen to be into geo-caching?!

I do hope that I’ll be working with Cinema Iloobia again before long. In the meantime, Tim’s website and an impressive catalogue of work can be found here. I think this one might just be my favourite:

In other news redoubtable artist, producer and fellow New Obsolescent Strictly Kev aka DJ Food has released a vinyl edition of the Celestial Mechanic LP Citizen Void produced last year as an accompaniment to Rian Hughes‘ book, ‘XX – a novel, graphic’.  Tasked by Rian with creating the actual music for a fictitious album review featured in the book, DJ Food and Saron Hughes have produced a soundtrack worthy of champions – and there’s even a handful of appearances by my Foggy self here and there on tape loop action! Available to order now as a lavishly packaged LP + 7″ on yellow vinyl with original artwork, inner sleeves and art print. It’s a thing of beauty!

In Obsolescent news, the re-press is coming along nicely and from the shots I’ve seen the new sleeves are looking magnificent. In the meantime, Kev rustled up this rather spiffy quartet of limited edition pin badges to hand out to friends, trusted advisors and other members of the wider ‘strange sounds circle’. For my own part I announced online that anyone was welcome to a badge but they had to come and find me in person – an antidote of sorts for so many months of isolation. I’m very happy to say they disappeared quite quickly – apologies to anyone who missed out, but I think more badges may soon be on the way…

Speaking of random bits of fashionable merchandise, check out these Unlocking Our Sound Heritage face masks, here modelled by my esteemed colleague and Psyché Tropes label boss Steven McInerney. I’m not actually sure how you go about getting one of these, but if you happen to be passing through Farringdon I might be able to smuggle one or two out.

Sadly, my role in the UOSH project is entering it’s final few months, but what an amazing journey it’s been! Thousands of tapes, sounds, stories and memories safely stored for future generations – and I consider myself hugely privileged to have been the hands they’ve all passed through. Guess it will soon be time to start planning for the next adventure.

Happy #TapeBoxTuesday! As part of @BLSoundHeritage's #SaveOurSounds project, we treat all our tapes at LMA with equal respect, big or small. But some of the tiny ones are just adorable! Which is YOUR favourite? pic.twitter.com/nGow8Z8UDQ

— LdnMetArchives (@LdnMetArchives) May 4, 2021

While isolation is now hopefully coming to a close, my weekly Resonance FM show Fog Cast continues to gently and soothingly pulse on. Here’s a recent personal favourite, put together to celebrate the release of the superb new documentary Sisters With Transistors. Have a listen and then go and check out the film for yourself if you haven’t already done so – it’s a triumph!

And finally, this very amusing and very well-observed piece of satire has been making me laugh all week. I have just a few suspicions as to the hands that might be involved as well!

Hello you. Time to softly and ethereally blow out the single candle on the cake marking Fog Cast’s first birthday. It was exactly one a year ago last week that Resonance FM’s series of deep listening soundtracks designed for isolated listening kicked off. And I’ve been celebrating the run-up to this anniversary with a month of very special guest-curated episodes by some of my favourite artists and selectors. First up was a Persistence of Sound Special, put together by label head Iain Chambers and featuring tracks from all five releases to date, including the newly released split LP from Beatriz Ferreyra and Natasha  Barrett – a most worthy addition to the canon.

Speaking of worthy canons, the following week saw raxil 4 take the reigns. Better known as multidisciplinary sound artist Andrew Page, it features 21 extracts from his remarkable and extensive back catalogue, the first 400 releases of which now reside within the British Library Sound Archive. raxil4 specialises in analogue electronic dronescapes, acoustic audio phenomenon and installation, and he has performed live all over Europe, in caves, churches, crypts, prison cells, psychiatric hospitals and water towers. I have shared stages with this man on numerous occasions and I can confirm that 400 albums of this sort of thing isn’t nearly enough! 

Deep listening of a more abrasive nature occurred came next with the arrival of ‘Spirit Level’, an exclusive new work, by venoztks, who has commented simply “all is found, everything is lost”.  Their recent release How It’s Not Meant To Be on the ever-dependable Tapeworm label is also very worthy of your time. 

Which brings us to the final episode in this special birthday month, a beautiful selection from a shadowy individual known only as tpwiikatj. Check out that tracklisting – perhaps one of the finest editions yet!

It’s been a terrible year for pretty much everyone, but these 42 programmes (43 by the time you read this) have been tremendous fun to work on and I hope they’ve provided some listening pleasure and perhaps even some respite from, as someone adroitly put it to me recently, ‘all the NOW that’s going on’. With luck the next 42 programmes will be produced in an atmosphere of slightly less awfulness. We shall see. But in the meantime, don’t forget that Fog Cast continues to go out every Wednesday night, 23:00BST on Resonance 104.4FM and that all previous editions can be streamed here. I’m always on the hunt for new artists to feature and new sounds to play, so do get in touch through the usual channels if you’d like me to bend my ears in your direction. The only rule remains ‘no beats’ (although ‘pulses’ are often encouraged), but even this is starting to feel a little dogmatic!  

In other news, thanks very much indeed to Electronic Sound Magazine, not only for giving The New Obsolescents’ LP such a glowing review, but also for allowing me to wax lyrical (no pun intended) in their regular ‘First, Last And Always’ column, which makes for another item to be ticked off my life bucket-list! Also includes all the usual goodness, including cover star Hannah Peel, so make haste to the newsagents! Or order online here.

Hope you’re all well and jolly and managed to have an enjoyable Easter. I kept myself busy, as you can see, working on tracks for a purported eighth LP that should hopefully surface later in the year. A trusted advisor recently declared that one of the new works sounds ‘like John Inman getting his knackers caught in a cash register’, which I’ve decided to take as a compliment and develop further. I mean, who else is working in those kinds of area at the moment? Nobody, that’s who! Not even Hannah Peel!!

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Presenting The Superceded Sounds Of The New Obsolescents, a brand new deep space travelogue from the collective minds of DJ Food, Robin The Fog and Chris Weaver. Improvised live at the Museum Of London in 2016, it’s now heading off into the uncharted territories of 2021. Released last week by Castles In Space on limited edition moonrock coloured vinyl in one of five magnificent hand-cut foil sleeves designed by our very own Strictly Kev, all 300 copies sold out in an unprecedented 25 minutes! Fortunately the digital is still available here. It’s just as trippy and far more portable!

This album began life four years ago when the trio were tasked by Jonny Trunk with providing an all-night immersive soundtrack for the mammoth ‘Museum Of Last Parties’ extravaganza in the Museum of London’s Torch Room. Setting up their vintage reel to reel tape machines, turntables and various FX units in the very shadow of the torch that became the icon of the 2012 Olympics, the trio set about creating a soundtrack worthy of champions. It was quite the occasion!

Strange new worlds conjured from obsolete media, a vision of the future constructed completely live using nothing but vintage analogue technology and a sense of adventure. With a constant stream of revellers stopping by to lounge on moon-shaped cushions and enjoy this interstellar soundtrack being woven right before their ears, the trio amassed almost four hours of improvised oddities over the course of that evening. It wasn’t until the spring of 2020 when they suddenly found themselves at home with all plans cancelled and a LOT of spare time that the tapes were resurrected and the album started to take shape.

Now almost five years later, our cosmic drone power trio hhave finally brought home the trophy. The album has already been described by Ghost Box’s Jim Jupp as ‘Perfect Snow Music’ and it’s certainly the fastest selling LP I’ve been involved with! Profuse apologies to all the people who missed out – and I know you were legion – but the fact that this was among the very last stocks of the etched silver foil used for the hand-cut sleeves means that a second pressing is pretty much out of the question. However, The New Obsolescents shall return. Nobody can quite work out how yet, but plans are being made…

WATCH THIS DEEP SPACE!

Hello you. Time for one last look over our collective shoulder as we stand on the threshold of another trip round the sun. I’ve prepared my now-traditional Best Of Year Mixtape and it’s my longest one yet, edging towards five hours and packed to the rafters with as much awesome music from 2020 as I could possibly cram in. Of course it arrives with the usual caveat that I could have almost certainly created a couple more mixtapes of equal length from tracks that didn’t make it – really I should start just marketing these things as ‘Best Stuff I Actually Managed To Get My Hands On This Year’. Still, it’s been online for a few days now, apparently long enough for it to nab the coveted 7th place in the Global Experimental Chart (I’m guessing Covid-restrictions will mean the cancellation of any kind of Awards Dinner); though I must confess I’ve been a little slack in posting it here because embedding Mixcloud onto WordPress never ceases to be a kerfuffle. I always end up with a vast expanse of white empty space directly below the link, which no amount of clever coding can seem to get rid of…

…See what I mean? Thoroughly tiresome. Although perhaps imbibing this mixtape over the course of several hours while staring into a white void will create an agreeable way of passing the time during Lockdown 4 or whatever the hell we’re up to now. The tracklisting should be readily accessible to all on the Mixcloud page itself, but as I’ve had a number of queries about this already, I can only assume the site is playing silly-buggers with that as well – if in doubt get in touch and I’ll point you in the right direction. Minor layout issues aside, you certainly can’t fault the musical content, a whopping 63 tracks which includes shimmering ambience, agit-electro, pounding techno, super wyrd folk and a suitably apocalyptic howl of anguish from my favourite new musical discovery of the year, Kenyan Grindcore duo Duma.

In a year so full of tension, the cathartic blastbeat rush of their self titled debut on Nyege Nyege Tapes felt like a revelation. All the stranger then that it shares the runner-up spot in my 2020 top three with practically its polar opposite: Puzzlewood was the long (very long!) awaited second album from Plone on Ghostbox, arriving right at the start of lockdown like a pastel-shaded rainbow illuminating a rapidly darkening world – and providing the perfect soundtrack for a government-endorsed sunshine break during a Spring suddenly rendered eerily bucolic. Two sharply contrasting albums from very different corners of the world – but I couldn’t possibly choose between them!

2020 was indeed a fantastic year for music, quite possibly because for much of it there wasn’t much else anyone could do but sit in the studio and muck around (and as an aside I must briefly salute the powers behind the #BandcampFridays, which have surely done more to support struggling independent artists during the pandemic than your average Record Store Day or corporate streaming platform). But curiously the album that encapsulated this cursed year for me above and beyond any other had already emerged kicking and screaming into the world back in February, a full month ahead of lockdown when it seemed the only things we needed to worry about here in the UK was the ruinous fallout from Brexit, the onset of catastrophic climate change and an increasingly unhinged right-wing government. Gosh, it seems a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? 

Rakka by Vladislav Delay felt almost precision-engineered for 2020, its relentless, pummelling drums, howling synths and blasts of visceral noise the perfect soundtrack to fear, confusion and exhaustion, mixed with ever-increasing rage at the ineptitude of various governments. I’ve never believed the old adage that the darkest times produce the sweetest tunes and for this reason and more I’ll wager this equally thrilling and terrifying album has plenty of mileage in it yet. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? YES! 

Must also put in a word for the top three albums that I feel were rather slept on this year: another blast of ferocious electro in the shape of Fruit Body by Franziska Lantz, the sublime wok-tone-drone experiments of Agitations: Post Electronic Sounds by Oscillatorial Binnage on Sub Rosa and Inwards Opened The Floor, a thick stew of freaky magnificence from ‘British-Israeli Krautfolk Collective’ Staraya Derevyna. Three very different records, yet each somehow perfectly encapsulated by their respective choices of artwork:

Let’s hope 2021 brings us just as much extraordinary music in slightly more ordinary circumstances. As for myself, I have a couple of irons in the fire, including the newly-mastered next album from Howlround and hopefully an EP or two along the way. And I’m also very excited to announce the imminent arrival of another little project started during lockdown, the debut LP by The New Obsolescents on Castles In Space, featuring two of my closest cosmic kin, Strictly Kev aka DJ Food and Oscillatorial Binnage backbone and longtime Howlround ally Chris Weaver. Based on a long-form, improvised performance a few years back in the shadow of the 2012 Olympic Torch at the Museum of London (were you there?), 2020 finally gave us some free time to dust off the tapes and knock them about a bit.

One of the newly reworked tracks surfaced last year on Castles In Space’s remarkable Isolation Tapes compilation that has rightly just been awarded Electronic Sound’s Compilation of the Year, but everything else is brand new and exclusive. A feast for the ears – and for the eyes too, thanks to Kev’s meticulous work sourcing and assembling the sleeves. Can’t wait to share this one with the world!

Fog Cast also returns to the Resonance 104.4FM airwaves Wednesday 13th January at 23:00GMT, with a special episode dedicated to a clutch of releases from the Linear Obsessional label. I’m always on the lookout for new music/soundscapes/weirdness to feature on the show, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with isolationist/deep listening recommendations to warm the ears of our lockdown listeners! All previous shows can be found on my Mixcloud page.

Other than that, wishing you all a very happy and healthy 2021. Unless of course you’re Boris Johnson, in which case I hope you get pulled apart by horses…