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Utility Fog

Utility Fog

Written by: Peter Hollo
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 Utility Fog teeters on the cusp between acoustic and electronic, organic and digital. Constantly changing and rearranging, this aural cloud of nanotech consumes genres and spits them out in new forms. Peter Hollo curates each episode around a narrative of genre-plasticity, deep-diving into artist histories, side projects and influences. Challenging sounds are contextualised within musical movements, surprising connections are uncovered, unfairly overlooked works are revisited. Come on a journey through music in all its ugly beauty. Music
Episodes
  • Playlist 28.12.25 – Best of 2025, Part 3!

    Playlist 28.12.25 – Best of 2025, Part 3!
    Dec 28 2025

    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!

    Perera Elsewhere – Fuck Le System (feat. Andy S)
    Harry The Nightgown – Bell Boy
    N-Type & Kromestar – Don’t Be Afraid ft. Sgt Pokes & Breezy Lee
    Modeselektor featuring Paul St. Hilaire – Movement
    Kvedarkvintetten – Brest
    Simon Henocq – CONCOURSE A
    Paul St. Hilaire & Gavsborg – Confidential
    gyrofield – Vegetation Grows Thick
    Sebaas – No Plastic
    Mac Seldom – ILUVU
    Kalabash – Major ft. Jelani Blackman (Radio Edit)
    Muskila – JAH NAM (INTRO)
    Vier – VAI PULANDO
    Pushlock – Scarecrow
    Sacred Lodge – Wa Wa Ke Wa Wa Yi (Feat. Sara Persico)
    Shugorei – Water Music
    Matmos – Changing States
    Sicaria – Rhassoul
    The Bug – Bury Dem (ft Logan)
    The Bug – Buried Dub
    clipping. – Change the Channel
    A.Fruit – What Is This
    ltfll – Nested Skins
    Lila Tirando a Violeta, Sideproject – Ostrich/Ñandú
    Mantra – Ruffhouse
    Ancestral Voices – Annwn
    Pol100 – Pastel Clouds
    Kendu Bari – Main
    Igorrr – ADHD
    Overcast – Wolfe
    Sun People – Herbie’s Delay
    Will Glaser – Bees
    Carrier – The Fan Dance (feat Gavsborg)
    Mark Van Hoen – I’ve Got To See The Light (Featuring George ‘Tony’ Subratie)
    Julien Mier – Ciel
    Joaquín Cornejo – Garúa
    Earl Grey – Doss House
    bonnie cooth – out of my mind
    Max Cooper – My Choices Are Not My Own feat. Tawiah
    EYDN – Gold (feat. Rainy Miller)
    Chewlie – Wallflower
    enduser – Movement
    Abstract Drumz – Alone (2025 Remaster)
    Wrecked Lightship – Delinquent Spirits
    Sheba Q – Asterix (Dub-One Remix)
    Hello Psychaleppo – Al Wa6an | الوطن
    Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – ap0calypse 42
    Bleakcore / Ester – Sermon
    The Young Gods – Tu en ami de temps
    Hence Therefore – Elite Panic
    Tutu Ta – Papillon Riddim (Ft. Feral Is Kinky)
    Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri – I Felt I Deserved More than That
    Stefan Schultze, boxn – CV RMX
    Ship Sket – Vendetta’s Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne)
    Hyperfocus – Sentinel
    Chris Inperspective feat. Charlotte Koolhaas – Pictures (OK Well)
    Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – A City Drowning. God’s Black Tears. ft. The Lil Black Oxen Émile Joseph Weeks, Nicolas Ratany
    Insignio – Everytime (A.Fruit remix)
    Ruby My Dear – Grosse Hyène
    Kuntari – Kerak Terusi
    Rutger Zuydervelt – House of Strength
    Los Pulpitos – Cubozoa
    Pod & Tamen – Dolphin
    Noneless – Apocalypse
    Djrum – Three Foxes Chasing Each Other
    r hunter – Intra
    Blawan – Creature Brigade
    Eli Keszler – Speak For Me (Eli Keszler Version)
    Phillip Golub – Loop 7
    T3AL – Weightless (Om Unit’s Sunrise Dub)
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    2 hrs
  • Playlist 21.12.25 – Best of 2025, Part 2!

    Playlist 21.12.25 – Best of 2025, Part 2!
    Dec 21 2025
    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 ...
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    2 hrs
  • Playlist 14.12.25 – Best of 2025, Part 1!

    Playlist 14.12.25 – Best of 2025, Part 1!
    Dec 14 2025
    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 ...
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    2 hrs
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