Playlist 03.09.23 - 20 Years of Utility Fog!

Incomprehensibly, Utility Fog has been on-air for 20 years as of this week! That means, of course, that FBi Radio has survived 20 years - something to celebrate. The station has had an undeniably massive impact on Sydney's music scene, brought fourth musical careers, provided a focal point for music obsessives all over Sydney & surrounds. I'm proud to have been part of it, and on this show I'll be celebrating music & artists who've been of significance to this show over this period. In just 2 hours I'm trying to give representation to 2 decades' worth of artistic output - and for perhaps half that time the show itself was 3 hours long! (Sheesh, don't remind me...) So forgive me for all the fades & edits and talking over music that I've done in order to tell this story.<br /> And please forgive this very self-indulgent write-up. Hopefully it's fun & interesting! LISTEN AGAIN to 20 years in 2 hours... Stream on demand via FBi, podcast here! the books - the lemon of pink [Tomlab/Temporary Residence/Bandcamp]<br /> I heard the first album from The Books right about when it came out, as I'd already come across Nick Zammuto in the old email list days. Weird laptop music with cello (Paul De Jong) - that was always going to be right up my street! When their second album the lemon of pink was announced, I knew I was going to be starting Utility Fog later that year, so I wrote to Tom at Tomlab and asked for a CD promo. It's probably accurate to say this was the first promo I ever got for UFog, at least by request - and what a top tier legendary piece of work too. This is where The Books came into their own. Beautiful folksy, quirky cello playing, impeccably chaotic digital edits, acoustic guitar, and somehow singing as well. Oh, and those unplaceable spoken word samples, often found on tapes in thrift stores by both members. What is it? Laptop folk? Neo-classical? No, it's just The Books. Sadly, after their fourth album, the pair had a falling out and that was that. In any case, the un-pin-downable nature of The Books' music is a perfect encapsulation of what I wanted to do with Utility Fog - music that sits uneasily in musical norms, not just of genre but even of "songwriting"; composition vs improvisation, acoustic vs digital, noisy vs beautiful. Let's problematise all the binaries!!! tunng - mother's daughter [Static Caravan & many reissues/Bandcamp]<br /> Just want to note here that these selections are not going chronologically. I've sequenced the music much like a normal Utility Fog - a musical journey.<br /> Still, The Books' "laptop folk" fitted a strain of music that UFog favoured from the start, call it folktronica. And when I discovered Tunng in 2004, they immediately resonated. Here were songs that sounded like they came from an arcane English past, but filtered through contemporary electronics. I got hold of Tunng's first two lathe-cut 7" singles and played those to death even before the debut album mother's daughter and other songs came along later that year. They caught the ear of Danny Jumpertz while listening to the show, who promptly licensed the album for Australia on his Feral Media label (a label that