Released: 12/05/23
With the excellent Udge, the Melbourne-based experimental-electronics composer and improviser Francis Plagne has made his strongest artistic statement to date. Building on the foundations of 2019’s Rural Objects, the LP takes the form of two untitled side-long suites built from a series of home-recorded jams and miniatures, in which bristling passages of acoustic and electronic textures, and fragments of melody and rhythm, thread their way only to be broken and undermined by interventions into the tape onto which they were laid. The press release states that Udge is similar to John Oswald’s fascinating restitching of The Grateful Dead on his Grayfolded LP – and regarding the methods, enumerated above, I think that’s fair; but in terms of the result, Udge sounds to these ears like an admixture of the haunting fragility of Daniel Johnson and Josephine Foster, and the iterative serenity of Vincent Gallo’s all-timer When. It really is that good.