Author Archives: Peter Hollo

Black Aleph – Precession (Live Video)

As we gear up to release our album Apsides, Black Aleph (my ritualistic doom band with Lachlan R. Dale and Timothy Johannessen) have released a live video of one of the album tracks, "Precession". The album's theme is orbital mechanics, and the constant circular motion of the video brings that to life even more.

Black Aleph – Apsides coming soon

So I'm in another band. Black Aleph is, as always, an unusual lineup, with my dear friend Lachlan R. Dale on guitar with myriad effects pedals and two amps, and Timothy Johannessen playing the Persian frame drum called the daf. And me on cello through a bunch of effects pedals and one bass amp.

It's a heavy sound, likened to doom or drone metal, with some influences from our love of Persian and Central Asian music, and a lot from post-metal, doom and more.
We're proud of the debut album Apsides, which is up for pre-order now, released on October 11th, and the first single is streaming now.
I'll post again when our live video of "Precession" is released. It's very very Nice!

New DJ mix – best of 2023


My usual end-of-year wrap for Utility Fog is to do two or three shows. It's settled on three lately: one show for "vocal" music ("songs", so to speak), one for sound-art and experimental stuff, and one for "beats" ("dance music", if you will).
And I've put the third one together as a DJ mix the last couple of years.

I'm pretty happy with this year's! All beatmixed, harmonically mixed, layered… tempos from house/techno through dubstep/140 to 160 to jungle, d'n'b & even a bit of breakcore.
You'll dig it!

Stream on demand from the FBi website, where I've tagged up the timestamps as close as possible.
If you wanna listen from the comfort of your own listening-device, here's a sneaky download.

20 years of Utility Fog!

Not raven news, but me news.
I started my radio show Utility Fog on Sydney's new community radio station FBi in August 2003. The station turned 20 last week, which makes Utility Fog 20 years old too.

The earliest solo electronic works of mine date way back to 1997, but raven as cello & electronics has not existed as long as UFog has. All the music I've consumed and proselytized on UFog, and all the musical connections I've made, have fed directly into the music I create, whether on cello or laptop, solo or with Tangents, FourPlay, Black Aleph, Haunts etc.

On Sunday just gone I tried to cram those 20 years into 2hrs of radio. I wrote an essay on the playlist too, which can be found here (the standalone Utility Fog blog) and here at FBi's website, and you can listen back at both links too.

DJ mix for Absorb

Hey, here's a DJ mix I did for Kavil @ Absorb, a Naarm-based internet radio show, label, event and more – check the show out on Skylab Radio, check the brilliant first compilation out on Bandcamp. Huge thanks to Kavil for inviting me!

The mix is called state of my head right now. It's a a "heady" mix of head-nodding beats, sound-art, varieties of experimental song, jungle, noise and more.

Kavil / Absorb · E11 – Peter Hollo: State Of My Head Right Now

If you want to listen to this on your preferred device, hit me up for a high-quality download.
Credits:

Made on a Pioneer DDJ-1000 with rekordbox on 30/01/2023
Track times are when the track first drops – tracks are heavily overlaid, and some are only heard mixed through another track.

[00:00] amorphous androgynous – swab
[02:05] An Avrin – Clodhopper
[04:06] Blawan – Blika
[05:34] Tristan Arp – Oddkin
[07:13] Lila Tirando a Violeta & Nicola Cruz – Cuerpo que Flota
[09:45] Atrice – Invertebrate
[10:59] مريم صالح, تامر أبو غزالة, موريس لوقا = maryam saleh, tamer abu ghazaleh, maurice louca – الشهوة والصور = el shahwa wel soarr
[13:14] Lia Kohl – Moon Bean
[14:57] luigi archetti / bo wiget – stück 17
[19:11] Ellen Arkbro & Johan Graden – Other side
[19:32] Lea Bertucci – Brass (II)
[23:10] Neinzer – Cause Pan Tact Insoluble
[26:22] Sijya – Another Thing
[28:36] Putrika – Monologue
[32:24] dgoHn – Ninnyhammer (Djrum Remix)
[35:32] dgoHn – Invisible Sandwich
[36:00] Wordcolour – Babble
[38:00] Olivier Alary & Johannes Malfatti – I Can't Even See Myself
[40:56] Fatak, Romance Relic, Tettix Hexer – To The Beauty Of Being
[45:25] Burning Star Core – Beauty Hunter
[46:40] Sightless Pit – Calcified Glass (feat YoshimiO & Gangsta Boo)
[48:32] Beatrice Dillon – Workaround Two
[52:47] YATTA – Fully Lost, Fully Found
[56:04] raven – Tivoli cottage, night-time

Cover image is a painting by Max Ernst. It's called "Young Man, Troubled by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly" which I think is as awesome as the artwork itself.

Limited vinyl edition!

A little while ago, someone approached me via Bandcamp to ask if I was interested in having a limited vinyl edition of my EP in a cold cottage, in the dirt, in outer space – a collection of archival tunes that I released for one of the earliest Bandcamp Fridays in 2020. After some convincing that this was a genuine thing, I decided to join in, and now this beautiful object is a reality!

So huge thanks to JR from Dead Currencies, a new boutique label from Nashville, Tennessee, for including this EP in their first batch of releases. You can order it from the Dead Currencies website or from Bandcamp above.
It's limited to 25 lathe-cut transparent vinyl copies, so you might want to get in quick! Comes with lots of goodies and looks gorgeous.

New thing

I'm playing a secret little gig this Sunday, and while practising I recorded this improv, which starts off almost pretty and gets more demented as it goes.
Mostly cello through Fishman pickup through Line 6 DL4 pedal, but there's some stereo Ableton Echo biz in there at times.
This is an accurate depiction of some of what I do live, although the live laptop processing tends to be more prominent a lot of the time.

raven · against it

Two naïve playthroughs

I've been working on a deep connection between my electronic processing and live performances; something that's happening in conjunction with my work with Tangents as well as solo.
Part of this is building up some sets of effects chains in Ableton that I can control live, through foot and hand controllers, but often these are triggered on and then only manipulated at times – not quite what Keith Fullerton Whitman called "Playthroughs", and not particularly revolutionary in itself, but close enough, and a statement of intent.

It's taking some time for this stuff to settle, and there are pieces I've been tossing around in live sets for some time now which are slowly coalescing (each performance being an improvisation through a set of known effects patches).
Last year during lockdown I was asked by Michel Banabila to contribute a work at short notice for a compilation raising funds for Yemen, a country that's continually suffering horribly from civil war but somehow doesn't get enough international attention. I sat myself down and quickly recorded two "naïve playthroughs" to my laptop's drive, forcing myself to stop editorialising, not worry about out of tune notes here and there, and let something happen. Both tracks are imperfect, but honest and full of yearning, and maybe the line between deliberate glitches and imperfections, and between aching slides and misplaced fingers is hard to find!

Michel kindly took the first track for his compilation, which he titled To Yemen With Love الى اليمن بكل الحب:

Then this year I was asked by Mike Nigro to contribute a track to a compilation he was putting together of experimental Australian artists, having come to Australia from the US only around 2 years ago. He's collected a phenomenal selection of local artists, and I'm honoured to be part of it. I have been stupidly busy but realised I had the twin of the other naïve playthrough, and Mike has included it on Undercurrents:

You can also hear some of the live processing ideas I've been working on lately in this recent video of Tangents, recorded at the phenomenal Phoenix Central Park in June, just before everything stopped (again).

Rutger Zuydervelt / Machinefabriek collaboration

In 2019 Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek, contacted me to ask if I would be interested in recording some cello for a film soundtrack he was preparing.
I'm a big fan of Rutger's work and got to work recording a series of ideas based on a concept Rutger had in mind, inspired by Joke Olthaar’s ideas about her film and what its music could embody.
These recordings were re-edited and combined with Rutger’s electronics, into a half hour piece that served as a proposed base for the movie’s soundtrack. Compared to the first track on this album, BERG (score sketch) is a much more dynamic and (relatively) dramatic affair. Further in the working process of the film, it was decided that the music needed another direction – a more minimal approach was needed, an approach that was more about adding texture and very subtle colour, and blending seamlessly with Hugo Dijkstal’s mix of nature sounds. Luckily, the piece I did with Rutger is preserved here on this album, because as a listening experience it’s a very welcome inclusion to this album.

The CD itself contains an edit of the final score, but I've got my collaboration digitally on my Bandcampm where I also have a limited number of CDs for sale for Australian listeners.

Find out more about the film BERG here.
Richard Allen at A Closer Listen reviewed the album. "The cello conveys its own narrative of struggle, leaving the ending wide open: surrender or survival, failure or success. Hollo bestows an additional layer of nobility on the hikers as they set out on the grand adventure. But the cello also communicates melancholy, as may be felt when one encounters the vastness of a great terrain and reassesses one’s own importance."

raven remixes No Names!

A few years ago my dear frenemies Stephen & Michael formed a band, based around shouting a lot, hammering away at guitar & bass, and adding amps and drums on computer. No Names are fucking great, and as I share with them a near-worshipful admiration of all things JK Broadrick, the Godflesh vibes are close to my heart.
So when – for the second time, mind you – they invited me to remix them, I couldn't say no. When I asked them for the lyrics, they were a little shocked – but it forced me to carry through the idea I'd had.
The raven "re-fake" of their excellent song "Fake Faith" is a near-complete rebuild of their preacher- (and dare I say politician)-baiting song, in which the industrial metal riffs and martial drums are replaced with pitched-down (and up) piano, mangled cello, programmed beats and chopped breakbeats, and – yes – my own vocals.
I'm really fucking proud of this song. Massive thanks to Stephen Owen & Michael Ritchie for getting me to do this, and supplying an inspiring original for me to destroy.
Stream & purchase it now, along with the great originals and a bunch of other great remixes. I'm track 5.