Monolith Cocktail Blog

Dominic Valvona’s essential reviews roundup

Interesting releases from across the world and music spectrums; Tickling Our Fancy is the most eclectic of reviews roundups. With no themes, demarcations of any kind, or reasoning other than providing a balanced platform for the intriguing, the great and at times, most odd releases, I bring you this month’s latest selection.

We have the ninth, and apparently most ‘honest’ personal album yet from the renowned soundtrack composer Bob Holroyd, The Cage; a pair of releases from Ian Button’s inimitable Gare du Nord label: the ‘musical gift to a friend’s son’ EP of charming alt-American and pop from the Lille-based Life Pass Filter, Joseph, and Jack Hayter’s most brilliant psycho geographical folk survey of London’s Abbey Wood; the fiery and petulant art school Swiss/Canadian duo Peter Kernel’s third, and most impressive, album The Size Of The Night; the tenth album from the German experimental group Station 17, Blick, which features the cream of Germany’s experimental electronic and avant-garde including members of Tangerine Dream and faUSt; Die Wilde Jagd’s second album of adroit industrial and organic electronica, Uhrwald Orange; and the latest magical, Kosmische and psychedelic cult sounds songbook from David Thayer and friends Little Tornadoes project, Apocalypse!.

Jack Hayter   ‘Abbey Wood’   Gare du Nord,  23^rd March 2018

Bringing light, or at least opening up a psycho-geographical narrative dedicated to the very edges of a largely ignored London postcode – so far out on the South Eastern outskirts as to be part of Kent –, an earnest Jack Hayter composes a yearning lament to Abbey Wood on what is his first solo album in fifteen years.

This doesn’t mean that our Jack has been indolent or on a respite; the former Hefner band member who also helped found Dollboy and the South London group Sponge Finger, has during that period been working with fellow Hefnerian Darren Hayman as well as Oliver Cherer, Ralegh Long and the Gare du Nord label’s house band turn supergroup, Papernut Cambridge. Many of those artists, including the Gare du Nord team leader Ian Button – in the capacity of host for this album, and as a drummer on the graceful, lilted and warbled guitar duet with Suzanne Rhatigan, Bigger Than The Storm – contribute to this earthy rustic minor opus; with the equally gifted storyteller Cherer – his last album, The Myth Of Violet Meek appeared in our 2017 ‘choice albums’ features – adding a omnivorous like range of instruments (piano, horns), tools (saw) and his voice throughout the Foley like atmospheres and moods; Long tinkling the ivory on the swirling fairground blues The Strangers Fair; and Riz Maslen provides ‘ethereal’ and eerie sorrowful lulling accompaniment to a quartet of songs in the first half of this album.

Talk about slumming it; living for his art, Hayter’s literature, and pun and landmark panoply was created in the most unconducive to creativity and safety environmental of a derelict Children’s home in Abbey Wood. With no utilities plumbed or wired in, Hayter took showers under a hose, cooked on a camping stove and slept on a bed made from warehouse pallets. For security he kept a very big stick handy. ‘Cold but free’, a self-imposed lifestyle, he was at least qualified to regale tales of isolation and hardship; experiencing the daily grind of survival on one of the capital’s unloved outposts; from the shitty end of life’s (other) big stick.

Featuring long forgotten laments and forlorn vignettes, two of the most vivid and haunting being the bookended tragedy of the Arandora Star; Hayter laying cooing elegiac wreaths to those unfortunate souls aboard the WWII requisitioned Blue Star Line passenger ship who died in the Atlantic Ocean, sunk by a German U-boat on July 2^nd 1940, whilst travelling to Canada with hundreds of interned German and Italian citizens. The first part, written with Trudie Willingham, is a much-desired remembrance service to the unmarked watery grave, whilst the album’s final swansong is an Italian language translated and narrated eulogy, featuring the voice of Slyvia De.

Just as poignant is the equally haunting and sad But I Didn’t Know Frankie, a softly spoken word tale of woe, with a choral-like ghostly accompaniment, about the aforementioned stranger: sleeping rough, the circumstances of misfortune unknown but death on a fateful frozen night – unable to gain access to a warm sanctuary inside the Abbey Wood’s sub station – immortalized by Hayter; the exact spot marked out in a sympathetic but matter-of-fact tone: “They say he died right here, frozen solid underneath this window.”

Connected in some way to the Abbey Wood diaspora or its position as a gateway to the world via fateful songs that draw in the one-time gold rush phenomenon outpost of the British Empire, Bendigo in Victoria, Australia (on the Mick Harvey with a pinch of Dire Straits I Sent My Love To Bendigo), and the stoic symbol of a solitary Mulberry Tree that attracts a beautifully resigned woven historiography, which via the arrival of a curious Chinese girl name checks the silk trade – or lack of one – but turns into a malady about Abbey Wood’s melancholic scenery.  Playing on local haunts, such as John Cleland’s infamous 18^th century Fanny Hill heroine/survivor turn pub name, on the disjointed Georgian Fanny On The Hill, Hayter can transport the listener back to the age of Thackeray – to a bawdry alehouse, a resigned diorama of highway men forced into brigandry and misbehavior – as easily as draw upon the present for inspired re-readings of abuse, tragedy and grief.

Abbey Wood deftly played with twangs of bucolic and Baroque folk, blues, synthesized atmospherics, Americana and reverent chamber music, is a multilayered songbook; a lived-in musical novel, rich with references, landmarks and peopled by those who left an indelible, if at times fleeting, mark upon this much forgotten or passed over postcode: their ghosts, no matter how small the part they played in its story, never inconsequential; remembered and written about with a certain gravitas by Hayter, who creates the most accomplished and brilliant of testaments.

Station 17   ‘Blick’   Bureau B,  9^th March 2018

With near enough thirty years of experience behind them and a changeable lineup of both musicians with and without various disabilities, the Station 17 collective once more shift their focus and sound; moving away from the all-out pop of the last album Alles Für Alle for a more improvised travail through the Krautrock, Kosmische and experimental electronica cannon.

Leaving the city, retreating to a point from the ‘modern world’, the Hamburg group spent a few weeks in the ‘summery seclusion’ of a coastal idyll, recording their tenth album at the Watt’n Sound Studio, near to the North Sea coastline. Free of predetermined structures, lyrics and ideas they enjoyed an improvised freedom; inviting a host of German musical royalty to take part in what is a collaborative recording experience – something they’ve done in the past, having worked with icons such as Michael Rothar and the late Holger Czukay. And so each of the album’s none tracks features the signatures of its guests: The writhing prehistoric Krautrock-jazzy Le Coeur Léger, Le Sentiment D’un Travail Bien Fait for example features the guiding avant-garde, ‘musique concrète’ presence of drum and bass partnership of Jean-Hervé Péron (the French title track I dare say his idea) and Zappi Diermaier; key founders of the reverent agent provocateurs Faust, who in recent decades have broken away to form their own iteration of the group under the faUSt banner. And, though only as part of its most modern regeneration, Tangerine Dream’s Ulrich Schnauss appears to gaze through a progressive Kosmische tinged explored ‘astronomical telescope’ on the album’s heaven’s gate opening finale.

Bringing out their very own homage to Germany’s golden age of analogue synth and motorik, journeymen and label mates Eberhard Kranemann (a founding member no less of early Kraftwerk and Neu!) and Harald Grosskopf (drummed on a number of Klaus Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel albums) have a ‘blast’ on the post-punk mooning Ein Knall; running through the full Klaus Dinger catalogue, from Neu! to Japandorf.

From another generation, Dirk Dresselhaus, aka Schneider TM, appears both as an engineer, capturing these sessions and crafting them into a coherent album, and as a collaborator on the kooky bossa nova preset Die Uhr Spricht. Andreas Spechtl of Ja, Panik! infamy appears alongside Station 17 singer Siyavash Gharibi on the poppier, Der Plan-esque Dinge, and another Andreas, Andreas Dorau, joins the same upbeat, marimba like candour on what we’re told is an “enduring appraisal of post-capitalist perversion”, Schaust Du, whilst Datashock travel through the primordial soup into another dimension on the Acid Mothers-hitch-a-ride-aboard-the-Cosmic Jokers-spaceship Zauberpudding.

Turning the dial on an imaginary radio station, attuned to all the highlights from Germany’s most experimental if rhythmic decades, Blick confidently absorbs the influences and inspirations of its multitude of guests to produce social commentary and reflect on the here and now. A sort of Bureau B label all-stars – the German label rapidly, more or less, signing up everyone of note from the last five decades; a home to most of the country’s experimental electronic music and Krautrock pioneers – this latest album from Station 17 uses its pool of talent and resources well, balancing the edgy with a melodic, motoring, cruising sensibility.

Peter Kernel   ‘The Size Of The Night’   On The Camper Records,  9^th March 2018

Visually composed (except for the differing skateboard graphic style track listings) with one half of this Swiss/Canadian duo, Barbara Lehnhoff’s elegant, almost stately, childhood dog Arrow gazing out with a certain ruminating calm on the album cover, the music that lies within this sleeve is anything but.

Not surprising for a duo that originally met whilst attending the visual communications school in Switzerland, the already mentioned Canadian Lehnhoff choosing film whilst her foil, Swiss native, Aris Bassetti chose graphic design, both collide in bringing their own baggage and ideas together for an explosive art school sound.

Formed in 2006 under the figurehead moniker of Peter Kernel – an ambiguous character they funnel all their musical protestations and fantasies into – but only now releasing, on their very own imprint, a third album, it seems the duo aren’t so much succumbing to procrastination as taking their time and waiting for the right moment to launch a barrage of musical discourse. The previous album, the darkly resigned entitled White Death & Black Heart, was launched off the back of a UK/European tour supporting the most brilliant Wolf Parade in 2008 (I vividly remember attending the Brighton leg of this same tour); it was the band’s Spencer Krug who invited them to open for the acclaimed Canadian indie band.

Playing over 600 gigs, from diverse spots at the Montreux Jazz Festival and Milan Fashion Week, Peter Kernel have in recent years been nominated for awards at the Swiss Music Grand Prix and Swiss Live Talent for their dynamic live performances. Congruous to their artistic disciplines they also scored the music for Swiss-Peruvian director Klaudia Reynicke’s Il Nido film, and rearranged their own back catalogue for piano, harp, cello, harmonium and viola under the auspicious of the orchestral project, Peter Kernel & The Wicked Orchestra.

Hardly light of material in these anxious ‘hashtag’ prefixed times; the duo’s latest album title philosophically channels the complex duality of human behavior. Under the cover of the ‘night’ they posture such enquiring questions as, “What is the size of the night?”, and, “How can we measure the night?”. To them, the night acts as cipher, a totem for its ominous fears and obvious darkness, but also its mystery and allure.

The cloak of darkness is however lifted, as both Lehnhoff and Bassetti try to find a balance and acceptance that they can simultaneously be both “sensitive” and “assholes!”. Expressing “this new consciousness” between bouts of light and shade post-punk, grunge, doom and the psychedelic, they throw themselves into and hurtle with a controlled energy, into the night.

This is an album filled with musical surprises, spiraling as the duo does through petulant yelped Katie White (of The Ting Tings fame) fronted Royal Trux lovelorn spite (There’s Nothing Like You), marauding Raincoats dub-y bass verses breakbeat drums lumbering coquettish sarcasm (Pretty Perfect) and what sounds like transmogrified Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra western style chanson duets (The Fatigue Of Passing The Night); all of which is a positive in my view. At their most esoteric they channel the Black Angels channeling The Beatles on the book of the dead kick Drift to Death, and oozing with dark exotic distaste (flipping between English and Italian), they venture towards the Middle East or Byzantine on Men Of Women.

Most of the themes that are currently keeping the Twittersphere active are covered, though more in the manner of sympathetic deciphered enquiry and at times, metaphorical nagging doubt; or as with the sloganize looping shout out The Shape Of Your Face In Space, a host of “isms” is spewed forth, like an exercise in expelling fear.

Never a cacophony, always in control, The Size Of The Night finds the duo at their apex; a good balance of dynamics and rhetoric that stretches post-punk to the max.

Bob Holroyd  ‘The Cage’  HTML,  9^th March 2018

Composing some of the most intimate and personable of cinematic music for an impressive number of movies and mainstream TV shows over the last two decades – from The Sopranos to Panorama; The Dark Knight to Coast – Bob Holroyd’s sophisticated peregrinations have embraced ambient, minimalism, world music, classical and jazz to create a diverse body of work: Whether its the use of the percussive sounds he picked up on his travels throughout Africa and Asia for the club sound of African Drug, or in highlighting the plight of the Kalahari Bushmen through the collaborative Sanscapes project, Holroyd crosses cultural boundaries in his quest to produce interesting, engaging musical narratives and thoughtful soundtracks. The likes of which Coldcut, Four Tet, Nitin Sawhney and Steve Roach have felt compelled to remix over the years.

With what could be his most ‘personal’, intimate and honest album yet, Holroyd cites work in therapy and an exploration of the complex emotions that make up “every moment of our lives” as inspiration. The metaphorical ‘cage’ of his ninth album title references a (to a point) self-imposed barrier; one created subconsciously to guard against “negative emotions”; a safeguard that “ultimately made” Holroyd “unapproachable to others” and even himself. Instead of trying to escape that cage, he enlarges its dimensions, widening the bars to accommodate all emotions, all feelings, experiences and people: “If EVERYTHING is in the Cage then I am more free then if I were keeping all influences out.” This sudden epiphany results in Holroyd’s “liberating” new approach to recording; lifting the constraints of the past in favour of a more organic process of just recording what feels right on the day.

Despite the turmoil and complexity of whatever lies beneath those subconscious thoughts, the twelve ambient suites on this album are mostly contemplative and peacefully ruminative, subtle in creating what are, spaces to think. Prompting track titles offer an emotive starting point or describe a relevant response to the ambient woven textures that follow. Inner Mind Sigh sounds like just that; a slow pause, in-take of breath and dissipated exhale of cerebral reflection set to a trickling neo-classical purposeful piano and throb of neurons. Falling Together with its gossamer David Sylvain vibes and refraction like Jah Wobble bass notes tumbles deftly through the movement of the droplet falling piano; and, no surprises, Into The Light, which could be a missing Mogwai score, finds a passage out of the dimmer gauze of the subterranean into (you guessed it) the light!

Manipulating the many tools and instruments at his disposal, and those of his contributors, Holroyd reverses, shapes and bends the subtle guitar, piano, cello and minimal synthesized textures into open space. Notes and plucked reverberations often hang or float in a mix of Eno-esque traverses and more mechanically turned interplays between kinetic elements. The rare occasions when a rhythm is struck up, such as the Four Tet like Woven, the movement is kept sparse and controlled, despite the roaming wavering intentions.

Looking inwards to expand outwards, Holroyd encapsulates a myriad of cerebral elements and processes into a soundtrack of deep, tender and measured reflections; a slow release of composure that longs to escape like a gauze-y mist from The Cage.

Little Tornadoes   ‘Apocalypse!’   River Jones Music,  9^th March 2018

More or less making music of one kind or another, under a host of names, over the past thirty years, David Thayer’s most recent project, Little Tornadoes, channels cult sounds, Kosmische, psych, counter-culture country, post-rock, 70s pastiche French chanson and even acid-jazz to dreamily muse over the end times.

Born in the States, Thayer began making music in his native San Jose on the cusp of the 90s, before making his way towards San Francisco during that decade, setting up a bi-weekly event, inviting the cream of the techno movement to play at the Bahia Cabana Club. A change of international scenery, the eclectic collector and absorber of various music scenes made a move to Europe as the new millennium dawned; finding a hub for his sonic and political activities in Zurich. From the squat scene performances as the Xeno Volcano in Switzerland and Germany, revitalizing the infamous and original fountain of Dadaism, the Cabaret Voltaire (alongside Mark Divo), taking over the running of the Sue Ellen Bar in Zurich, and in setting up the Iniciativa project to recuperate the contaminated waters of the Bogota River in Colombia, Thayer’s interests are far reaching and varied.

His second album as the Little Tornadoes, like most of what he does, involves a myriad of contributors, including long-term collaborator and foil Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab fame – who of course, Thayer has worked with on numerous occasions in the past and when the group were still active – on bass line duties and backing vocals. Keeping up the Kosmische and psychedelic vibe are guest spots from a trio of drummers, Holden/Astrobal member Emmanuel Mario, Tortoise’s John Herndon, and Hans Hansen as well as some more bass guitar from Amin Khatir, guitar from Joel Raif and vocals from both Caroline Sallee and Giorgio Tuma.

Leaning heavily towards that Stereolab sparkle and pop lilt, and also lightly underpinned with a melodious country drift, Thayer’s Apocalyptic entitled vision gently meanders through a relaxed if ominous on occasions songbook of Super Furry Animals psychedelic sunshine, languid Raincoats dub gait post-punk, subconscious Andean shoegaze and Altered Images fronted by Cate Le Bon indie pop. Setting up a range of scenes, Thayer and friends muse like broody French noir characters acting out a resigned affair over coffee and Gauloise on Cherie La Mouche; take a languorous space walk on Ursa Major; drift off on a sun lounger beside the Sea of Tranquility on Water Song; and return to Thayer’s desert origins on the drunken piano and country breakdown, Texas.

There’s plenty of well-crafted songs on this album; most of which are short in duration and so devoid, thankfully, of indulgence and extended experimental tedium. Each idea breezes in, no matter how troubled or serious the lyrical themes, travelling between its various inspirations and musical collages with a light touch. Apocalypse! is a candy-coloured psychedelic, cosmic and country trip; sighing over the anxieties and stresses of what could be the end times.

Life Pass Filter  ‘Joseph EP’  Gare du Nord,  Available now

Unsurprisingly for a label with such a romantically gestured affinity for the city of Paris’ most famous railway station – a label based in the English county of Kent, where the Eurostar hurtles through, passing on its way between London and the Continent before hitting the Channel Tunnel – would at some point add a bona fide French act to their growing roster. The curious Lille-based collaboration between composer/sound designer Antoine Boucherikha and graphic designer Anne Hélou, under the moniker of Life Pass Filter, have marked their inaugural debut for Ian Button’s Gare du Nord label with a succinct EP of endearing advice and comfort; a present to Joseph Chevalier-Poher, the first-born among the duo’s inner circle of closet friends.

A celebration but also a document that records the change when young adults suddenly become parents and proper grown-ups with responsibilities, the Joseph EP is a melodious encapsulation of the ‘sweetness of childhood’ and a peaceable message to the “adult this boy will one day grow up to be”.

Consciously hinting at 60s and modern pop, you could be mistaken for believing this was an American artist at work; the scent of France all but obscured by their penchant for a stateside sound. To a mostly lilting acoustic accompaniment, Boucherikha sings a vibrato effect song of assurance, welcoming the “little man” into the world on the slightly tropical wistful opener, and offers the sweet adage that there’s “no place like home” on the repeating, twanged pedal-looping song of the same title. There’s a psychedelic gauze-y feel to Morning Lights, which sounds like a soothing Flaming Lips playing at the crèche. And the finale, Lullaby, sends the little guy off to up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire; a dreamland where Beck gentle coos and plucks away in quivered bliss.

Short but sweet, this intimate celebration has a curious undertone of seriousness too, a present of knowing and depth that makes this EP anything but saccharine playtime treat. Young Joseph should feel honoured and blessed that someone is bothered to save this moment for posterity; a testament to hope, sagacious wisdom and childhood.

Die Wilde Jagd  ‘Uhrwald Orange’   Bureau B,  6^th April 2018

Fashioning a mysterious ‘Clockwood Orange’ world of Gothic and ominous dreamscapes, inspired by and named, in part, after the studio it was produced in, and by both the 17^th century menagerie paintings of the Flemish artist Frans Snyder and the collected devotional Medieval period songs of the Llibre Vermell De Montserrat artifact, Die Wilde Jagd’s Sebastian Lee Philipp takes us on an eerie, cosmic and slinking travail through a throbbing sophisticated earthy electronic soundtrack. His musical partner on the group’s adroit debut self-titled experiment, producer Ralf Beck, is excused from the follow-up but lends out his extensive racks of vintage analogue synthesizers to Philipp, who transforms and obscures their banks of sounds into ghostly permutations, shadowy creatures and lurking, dancing and honking sonorous cries from a murky wilderness.

Building each track up gradually, with over half the album’s tracks running over ten minutes in length, these soundscapes and semi-organic, semi-industrial pulsing dance tracks twist and contort, with elements rotating from the background to foreground. Live sounding drums and limbering My Life In The Bush of Ghosts style bass lines move it all forward, with tracks such as the clip clopping hoofed bestial, industrial laced pop 2000 Elefanten heading towards a strange amalgamation of Depeche Mode and DAF; especially when there’s stoic Teutonic soul-in-the-machine vocals and sleek techno pulses flashing.

Merging post-punk, Kosmische, dance music and darker evocations of the clandestine and sinister together, Philipp conjures up arcane and futuristic, esoteric and Eastern mystical visions; from the balalaika echoed, prowling Popol Vuh venerable soundtrack of Kreuzgang (translates as Cloister), which could as easily be set in Tibet as the Medieval Lutheran Benelux, to the Velvet Underground and Nico ponder tribal cult witchery, Ginsterblut (Broom Blood).

Die Wilde Jagd’s progressive sound is tight, rhythmic and cleverly put together. Uhrwald Orange is a classy imagined score, balancing cool, gleaming and aloof German electronica with menacing, nocturnal earthiness, yet also reaching for the celestial. One minute imbued with hints of Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Eno, Cluster, and Faust, the next slinking on to the Tresor club or Basic Channel dancefloor. In short: a most impressive album.