Playlist 27.08.23

Sometimes it's really hard to work out the right flow for the tracks I have on hand. There's a stackload of great stuff tonight, but it has to flit back and forth between all sorts of genres because that's just how it is. Still, as always a celebration of amazing music! LISTEN AGAIN and just go with the flow. Stream on demand from FBi, podcast here. Michael Ackroyd - Vice Grip [Michael Ackroyd]<br /> Here's the second single this year from Sydney musician Michael Ackroyd, following a few years after his first released track that I know of. A straightforward end-of-relationship song? Well, perhaps, but the melding of emotive songcraft and crunchy post-dubstep beats makes for something special. Animal Hospital - Fuselage [Sipsman/Bandcamp]<br /> If you've been listening this year, you'll have heard me play two excellent standalone singles from Animal Hospital, the project of Kevin Micka that released three albums from 2005-2009, including the incredible Memory. Micka's music combines (mostly instrumental) indie rock, postrock, doom and experimental electronics, and each release tends to have one or two mammoth tracks of 15 to 20 minutes that gradually develop into surging noise. After a smattering of singles and other oddities in the intervening years, Animal Hospital returned in 2020 with Fatigue. Now he's back again with an album coming from the Sipsman label, four tracks ranging from 16 minutes. The first single clocks in at a mere 6 minutes, but it's still got that epic/minimalist postrock vibe. A real pleasure. jaimie branch - take over the world [International Anthem/Bandcamp]<br /> jaimie branch - world war ((reprise)) [International Anthem/Bandcamp]<br /> The sudden death of Chicago/New York trumpeter jaimie branch last year, aged only 39, resonated around the world. She played with many of the Chicago and New York jazz scene's greats, and from 2017 released a series of inspired, passionate albums (each titled "Fly or Die" in some variation). Her music with her band is clearly jazz, but also draws from her half-Columbian roots, and is infused with a punk energy and DIY ethos throughout. The second album featured the magical "prayer for amerikkka pt. 1 & 2", with the ecstatically shouted refrain, "We got a bunch of wide-eyed racists!" Her posthumous third album in the series (discounting the brilliant double live album) is titled Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)), a concoction of poetic language use and idiosyncratic punctuation that would make Godspeed You! Black Emperor proud, and indeed her politics is similarly radical, with the ecstatically chanted "We're gonna gonna gonna take over the world, and give it give it back back back back to the la-la-la-land", on a song that starts punkfunkjazz and