Reviews: Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Little Albert ‘Why’
(Metal Postcard) 26th January 2019
I approach this release with a little trepidation for a few reasons; firstly it is an LP of Hip Hop from Hong Kong. something I can honestly say I have not really listened a great deal to, secondly it is released on Metal Postcard Records a label I myself released my solo LP on. But the main reason being the opening track is a cover of ‘Gucci Gang’ by Lil Pump, one of the more annoying tracks from last year. But Little Albert has transformed this track from an irritating piece of rap fluff into a slightly sinister dark chant, all amusement arcade beats and switchblade kisses.
The next two tracks continue with the sinister uneasy vibe, ‘Shadows’ being backed with a machine gun beat and ‘Vege Milkshake’ a slower hypnotic keyboard riff. Track four, ‘Asking Why’, wraps itself in an urgency that builds and builds and slowly starts to irritate in a good way: like the person you love poking you in the chest with a wilting dandelion stem.
‘Compulsive Peeping’ apart from having a great song title is maybe my favorite song on the LP; a much more relaxed and laid back affair if I could understand what the lyrics were it would be the perfect Hip Hop track, sparse and dangerous like all the best Hip Hop tracks are.
‘ADHD’ is probably the most attractive in the musical commercial sense. A song one could hear on the radio any day of the week, that’s if radio stations played Hip Hop from Hong Kong. ‘Asthma’ is all clickbait drum beats and harmony glass smiles, whilst the LP finale is a wonderful piece of experimental Hip Hop psychedelia called ‘Repeating’ and alongside ‘Compulsive Peeping’ is the standout track on, what is, a very enjoyable album.
Living Hour ‘Softer Faces’
(Kanine Records) 1st March 2019
Now then, there are loads of bands at the moment who currently sound like this, Dream pop, Shoegaze, New Psych or whatever you want to call it. I myself do not see this as a bad thing if it is the type of music you want to play or the type of music you enjoy listening to, fill your boots. I on the whole very rarely venture into Dreampoppery but on the whole I really enjoyed this LP. It has a dark sweetness about it like a candy floss Red House Painters. There is a pureness in the vocals: ‘No Past’ is quite a beautiful track and the layers of vocals and the church like organ of the final song ‘Most’ are highlights.
As I have already said there are plenty of bands currently making this kind of dream art but Living Hour do it better than most, so I’d recommend Softer Faces to anyone who enjoys a touch of the ‘ethereal’ in their pop life.
Amanita ‘Sol y Sombra’
(Pharaway Sounds) 14th February 2019
This is a vacuum bag filled with sex, alcohol and happiness that you have smuggled into your mother in laws home and opened when she has decided to go to bed. It is the soundtrack to the end of the working week, the joyfulness that can be found knowing that for the next 48 hours all you have worry about is managing to stay awake and enjoy the ongoing non stop party.
Funk, jazz, salsa and the lost faraway memories of how sex and yearning would have been portrayed inside a cocktail shaker on a cruise ship in a TV movie set in the 60’s/early 70’s. In fact this is he extended cocktail hour that will last as long as this LP.
This is the music Frank Zappa would have insisted to be played whilst his tuxedo was pressed and ironed before wearing and playing the Royal Albert Hall in 1968. It is the sound of a much better life that you will never have…it is pure suntanned sequined joy. If only I could be that unbuttoned shirt on this hairy chest rhapsody I would live and die a happy man.
Lite Storm ‘Warning’
(Out-Sider) 14th February 2019
This reissue was originally released in 1972 but was recorded in 1968 and could not have been recorded any other time. A typical wonderful post psychedelic rock release, all hip shaking mamas, pass me the drugs, and get down and boogie.
At times reminiscent of The Big Brother Holding Company, especially on the out there cover of the standard ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ – I wonder what Jo Stafford would have thought of it? The LP is a must have just for this demented version; it’s a song to base a whole career on, in fact The Coral probably have.
Litestorm it seems eventually gave up music and started a hippy commune and after hearing this LP I am not too surprised. Hopefully they still perform at the commune. If so, what a joyful occasion it must be: simple lyrics calling either for peace, party love and sex, or all of the above, sang by a lead vocalist who reminds me of the great Sky Saxon at his, shall we say, enthusiastic best. I wonder if he wears a headband it sounds like he does.
This is certainly a LP for all fans of late 60s rock n roll or people who just want to own the craziest version of ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ ever recorded.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team in January 2019. The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. Each month we pile a deluge of new releases on his virtual desk to see what sticks.
Our Daily Bread 297: Dub Colossus ‘Dr. Strangedub (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Dub The Bomb)’
January 28, 2019
Album Review: Dominic Valvona
Dub Colossus ‘Dr. Strangedub (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Dub The Bomb)’
(Echomaster) 20th January 2019
Galvanized by political turmoil and the shambolic progress of Brexit, polygenesis visionary Nick Dubulah revives two of his most successful world music troupes, Dub Colossus and Transglobal Underground, in the pivotal year of Britain’s exit from the European Union. Spending the last few years watching from the sidelines, convalescing from cancer treatment and an operation, Nick’s not only in good health but raring to go with a schedule of live performances and records.
For the first time since 1996 he will be appearing once more with a full Transglobal line-up; bringing back the international traversing group he formed in 1990, leaving seven years later to start-up the congruous Temple Of Sound, but dedicated since the mid noughties to the amorphous soundsystem echoing Dub Colossus. Both groups found favour in the world music and electronic scenes: the Transglobal famously featuring the alluring exotic tones of Natacha Atlas, and the Colossus rotating a singing circle of various toasters and East African sirens.
Off the back of this shared new album of originals and remixed versions of tracks from the 2014 championed Colossus LP, Addis To Omega (his first album for the Echomaster label; one of a trio of albums released under this moniker), Nick will bring together a stellar cast of vocalists and instrumentalists, as he takes both bands out on the road in 2019.
With barely controlled indignation and countless allusions, references in song titles and lyrics alike, Nick and his guests make it obvious which divisive side of the Brexit fence they stand. Framing Kubrick’s satirical dark comedy, with its all too serious consequences of mutual assured nuclear destruction, with the UK’s referendum decision to leave the EU, the pun-tastic Dr. Strangedub (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Dub The Bomb) takes aim at all the main players in this debacle. Sounding like an exasperated schoolmistress taking charge of an unruly brattish battle-bus of immature public school boy politicians, one of the many guests on this album, the burlesque star Immodesty Blaise, contemptuously brings into line Boris and Farage on a magical mystery coach tour over a cliff edge ‘Tainted Dub’ (the ‘Brexitbus Mix’ no less). PJ Higgins meanwhile, accompanied by the evocative pining hues of the deft Polish mandolin player Bolesław Usarzewski, gives David Cameron a deserved kicking on ‘Family Man Dub’.
Though Brexit preys on the mind, the album is also inspired by the exotic; both wandering and dreamily vaporous, roaming the Patagonia and African landscapes. A mirage of the first is imagined on the Lee Scratch Perry at languid ease, love song ‘Whole Lotta Dub’ (about as far removed from the Nordic demi-rock-god cock-swinging Led Zep version that you can get), and the latter, is evoked by the reggae moonwalk, Orb meets Kubrick, title track, which pays a special paean to the featured vocalist Sintayehu Zenebe Ethiopian homeland.
Other guests and musical soirees include Nick’s foil on the brilliant 2015 ‘post-Troika Hellenic Trance music’ project Xaos, Ahetas, playing subtle pace-y drone microtonal keyboards on the metallic searing ‘A World Without Dub’; the evocative throat singing of YAT KHA vocalist Tuvan Albert Kuvezin on the Mongolian cosmic plains ‘clubdub mix’ of an Addis To Omega track, ‘A Voice Has Power’; and a sauntering touch of Cuba, on another Addis treatment, ‘A Spy In The House Of Dub’.
Drenched in a dubtasim of effects, with voices and instruments and sounds resonating and reverbing incessantly, Dub Colossus ratchet-up their raison d’être; taking the form on both an earthly and cosmological circumnavigation; drifting and wafting, blending and crisscrossing musical borders with ease. Nick announces his return with an expansive dub showcase that reunites old friends and introduces new; a return at a most important time; a voice of protest and alarm that hopes (probably in vain) to stop a calamity.
Words: Dominic Valvona
Rapture & Verse: January 2019: Andy Cooper, Brothers Of The Stone, MysDiggi, Baileys Brown, IMS & Joey Menza…
January 24, 2019
Hip-Hop Review – Matt Oliver
An overdue happy new year from Rapture & Verse – it’s safe to say that once our back was turned for Christmas duty, all the while resisting a trip to Soulja Boy’s house of electronic bargains, the UK dropped an absolute glut of Yuletide goodness. Into the singles first, and it’s heads down hoods up for Baileys Brown’s ‘Horses Mouth’, a gloomy, watery gift for Datkid and Jinxsta JX to stare down in waiting for vengeance to take shape. Should you keep spending most of your life listening to Old Paradice, you’re doing well – Confucius MC and Morriarchi make ‘The Last Resort’ a nice six-track resting place for ears, while a wary eye keeps watch to keep it all business. The ‘2018 Switch Up’ by Benjicong sets a stall out for the new year by niftily weaving in out of Charles Edison’s crystalline stepper, without spilling a drop of the pint his delivery orders.
Jaroo will bruise a few good men when in cahoots with Aver, the six-track ‘Inner Process’ ensuring none shall pass until an epiphany with Tony Skank and Benny Diction lightens the load. A top notch quintet of remixes from Evil Ed includes the geeing up of Ric Branson, and going in to give extra legs to Triple Darkness and Tesla’s Ghost. ‘Heavy Baggage’ has beats and rhymes academics Gee Bag and Downstroke answering the question as to who’s gonna take the weight, a flavourful four tracks to hoist onto your shoulder via ghettoblaster so the whole street knows. Drums to dislocate jugulars already feeling the gust of one-way verbal traffic, IMS and Joey Menza are less about being woke and all about ‘The Wake’: no naps allowed.
Albums
A collaboration that nearly fell through the cracks, Cappo and Cyrus Malachi embodying ‘Postmodernism’ rise from classified coordinates to torch the whole underground radius. A contrast of lyrical imperiousness, to productions from Evil Ed, Chemo, DJ Drinks, Mr Brown and Wytfang that manage to be both modest and a seething reflection of its orators, this is rap combat carried out by chess grandmasters. Exceptional underground hip-hop.
Few fucks are given by Black Josh, running wild towards a smoke-damaged throne stained by cold sweat, doing so by the light of a blood moon, and reminding those who think it’s grim up North that they really have no idea. Then settling into something approaching a more contented train of thought about halfway through where angles start to blur, ‘Yung Sweg Lawd’ stays fluid in intimidation.
Continuing to live a life of diamonds and fun, Juga-Naut’s ‘Bon Vivant’ is always freshly dipped, full of ear-catching pearls of wisdom in his own version of La Vida Loca. Always with the goods to back up the flash, you get gourmet Notts know-how and a tightening game face as the album progresses. Unconvinced? “I dare you to keep up with the wave”. Let MysDiggi entertain you as he scales the ‘Tip of Da Mysberg’ for a third time, a wordsmith whose batteries will never run out, able to pants emcees before they realise their career is around their ankles. Witty and wily as ever, and easygoing even at his most spiteful, a firm UK favourite has your full attention for 18 tracks.
Hey babe, take a walk on the mild side with Lee Scott’s ‘Lou Reed 2000’, a more reticent outing than you may expect, but still inimitably sweating the small stuff. The curtains are drawn back and the sunglasses are off, but Scott as undisputed bard of the bedsit is still “in a league of me own, losing to me self”, when not announcing “compared to me, the speed of light is slow”. You could argue there’s nowt slower than an ‘Acrylic Snail’, but Dirty Dike is a whirlwind with scant regard for the destructive trail he ploughs. Once his mollusc is in motion there’s no point arguing the toss – no holds barred, and painting some pretty repugnant pictures without ever missing a stroke. An endangered species who can flip the script and look into the depths of his soul when not – or peaking at – being “dumb, numb and comfortably ill”.
Proven shit-stirrers BVA and Leaf Dog ‘Return to Stoney Island’ as the Brothers of the Stone, riling front rows as Illinformed dresses soul in steel toecaps and initiates old fashioned bar brawls. You can’t spell boisterous without BoTS, with MoP and Inspectah Deck nailing their colours to the mast so the album crashes through its destination. For all the stink that’s kicked up, a marksman’s precision underlines everything they do – not the only bros to spark recent conversation.
For as long as the world prices up handcarts and one-way tickets to hell, Big Toast’s megaphone will always be in play. Cranked up by 184 on the boards, yet wise enough not to get in Panini Grande’s way, ‘Prolefeed’ maintains the “you are not special” manifesto, passionate defence and cold fact meeting unconcealed incredulity. Like a red cap to a bull, all Hooray Henrys best button their lip or get their ballot box punted down the river.
Boom time for the B-boy union once Chrome winds up and laces a ‘Dopamine Hit’, headlined by the super sprint ‘Shockwave’ with Andy Cooper. Perpetual motion never dwelling on just the nostalgic, Chrome’s dope dealership knows what’s really real, giving the party some perspective amongst the jump-ups. Triumphantly flicking V signs, Damu the Fudgemunk casts ‘Victorious Visions’ of upbeat instrumental boom-bap that checks itself, and a feelgood factor that doesn’t get cosy. Remoulded from his prior ‘Dreams and Vibrations’ project, the purist hallmarks and soul core are what make the visions loud and clear, while ‘Back in the Trenches’ does rugged with the best of ‘em. Beats to set your body clock by. Depending on how hard your hormones are raging, The Doppelgangaz’ latest ‘Beats for Brothels’ appointment has got you covered, all of their instrumentals marked with a certain strut as they move from room to room, from hard thrusts to smooth touches. ‘Volume 4’ is money well spent. Klim Beats provides the soundtrack to a B-boy retreat providing relaxation and pleasant aromas on ‘Crystals’, beginning with mystical orientation before letting breaks simply do their thing so listeners can you use their own imagination.
Full moon scientist Yugen Blakrok is on a relentless grind to the summit on ‘Anima Mysterium’, prophecies and riddles raining down like an RPG sherpa, where you best take the right path or else. Her totem-like standing as the elements rage around her, sounds like she’s memorized every single scripture the universe has to offer. In an apocalyptic world telling you to believe everything and nothing, producer Kanif the Jhatmaster drives on as a similarly irresistible force.
Street cinema to have ‘em hiding in the aisles, the dark arts of ‘A Piece of the Action’/’Motion Picture’ from FLU, ETO and RGZ keeps the situation critical, capitalising on wild west slinging against modern mobster rules. The provision of balance from Blockhead comes with the offer of ‘Free Sweatpants’. Some fine deep space, backpack readies for Homeboy Sandman, Marq Spekt and Armand Hammer, mix in with instrumentals vaulting you out your seat before returning to sender. Aesop Rock uniting with TOBACCO for ‘Malibu Ken’ builds an instant reputation of being a raw synthed, Rubik’s cube of rhymes , yet both happen upon a sharp splinter of hip-hop pitching to the left, but not way out left. Rock’s visual skill and enthusiasm and TOBACCO’s electro neons jumping with VHS flicker and musical 8-bit strain, create a spacious, well paced, Technicolor bounce, easing any trepidation.
Our Daily Bread 296: Telescopes ‘Exploding Head Syndrome’, Kungens Män ‘Chef’, The Paris Street Rebels ‘I Don’t Want To Die Young’
January 23, 2019
Reviews Collection – Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
The Telescopes ‘Exploding Head Syndrome’
(Tapete Records) 1st February 2019
There is no place like drone, well not at least if you are a member of The Telescopes: Just over thirty minutes of top class dronery, not something I normally spend my Friday evenings listening to but as they say a change is as good as a rest.
I was to be honest not expecting to like this as a lot of people I know who like the Telescopes get on my tits, you know the type, the kind who think The Brian Jonestown Massacre are the second coming. But this is very enjoyable. And I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the Telescopes: I loved the LP they released on Creation, one of the best five albums that much over rated label released.
This is in fact a very fine pop LP, it has melodies, it has textured whispered vocals, it has tunes that remind me of both Syd’s Pink Floyd and The Velvet Underground – if only the last Jesus And Mary Chain LP was as good as this I might have played it more than the one and a half times that I did.
If this LP were a debut album by some young new psychsters they would be being raved about and hailed to the rafters as the second coming, the next new big thing. I hope the same platitudes are heaved onto this wonderful LP by this wonderful band, as it really has taken me by surprise how much I love it and I feel guilty in not expecting to like it. For that The Telescopes I offer my humble apologies you have indeed blown my head. A fine LP.
Kungens Män ‘Chef’
(Riot Season Records) February 15th 2019
Kungens Män hail from Stockholm, Sweden and have been around as a musical unit since 2012 so the press release tells me, which is a very good thing as I had never heard of them before.
This to be honest is not the type of music I normally sit at home and devour but this is in fact very good indeed. An LP of four long improvised instrumental tracks, the first track ‘Fyrkantig Böjelse’ is a fine eleven minute piece of sonic jazz rock – imagine late 60’s Santana, The Velvets and Sonic Youth jamming over the drum beat of Jaki Liebezeit from Can: and yes it is as good as it sounds.
The second track ‘Öppen För Stängda Dörrar’ at just over the eight minute mark, being the shortest track on the LP, takes us on a gentler ride. More synth dominated, I can imagine it being used in one of those wonderful
80’s horror movies, as it has a John Carpenter feel to it, and again is a quite stunning piece of music. ‘Män Med Medel’ follows this; a ten-minute plus track of fuzzed up psych rock, the kind of track you can imagine
soundtracking Julian Cope dressed in leather simulating having sex with the floor to. The final track ‘Eftertanke Blanka Krankheit’ takes us back to the underground, the Velvet Underground, and could well be my favourite of the four; the three guitars intertwine beautifully as the bass and drums keep a hypnotic slow groove of a beat.
All Hawkwind fans need hear this, or even better, own it. So fantastic in fact that if I grew wings and could fly I would have this track playing on my mp3 player as I dive-bombed the less worthy below.
This really is a hell of an album and I would recommend it to all space rock aficionados.
The Paris Street Rebels ‘I Don’t Want To Die Young/ Freakshow’ double A-Side
February 15th 2019
The press release says for fans of the Libertines and the Clash, well I like the Libertines and The Clash and I like the Paris Street Rebels. They may not be the most original soundings of bands – they remind me of the early Manic Street Preachers: even the names are similar.
What I like is that they’re four young men who have taken the glamour of T Rex and injected themselves with the early workings of the Subway Sect and The Clash, picked up their guitars and decided to try and change things through the power of rock n roll. Whether they succeed or not really does not matter, at least they are trying, which is more that can be said of ninety per cent of the current crop of young guitar bands, all they want is to get played on daytime BBC 6 Music and play in front of the middle class festival goers who will stand and wave inflatable fruit and farm animals at them. I of course could be wrong, The Paris Street Rebels might want the same and in fact they certainly could achieve this hell on earth as the songs are commercial enough on I Don’t Want To Die Young – there is even a beautiful Byrds like chiming guitar riff -, but I believe they also have fully functioning brains and are not afraid to use them, which in this day and age is a rarity.
I say ones to watch. And I wish them all the luck in the world.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea is the patriarchal leader of the mighty St. Helens cult underground favourites The Bordellos. We throw a slew of releases at him each week and see what sticks.
Review & Recommendations Roundup – Dominic Valvona
Kicking off 2019 this inaugural edition of Dominic Valvona’s eclectic roundup of new releases includes the new, and only second solo, autobiographical framed album from art/sex/music icon Cosey Fanni Tutti; the dual-album celebration of Germany’s Station 17 collective (originally formed as a musical therapeutic experiment between a Hamburg group of mentally handicapped residents and musicians), marking thirty years of experimental sonic sculpting and collaboration; the dazed jingle-jangle shoegaze from the London outfit Deep Cut – releasing their first album for the Gare du Nord label –, a new album from Tim Presley’s White Fence of soft psychedelic, new wave, fragile troubadour and yearning off-kilter analogue electronic bulletins; a single-type release of bewitching romantic morose from the Uruguay duo Clovvder and a real bona-fide 7” slice of vinyl from legendary English psychedelic luminary Twink and the Gare du Nord label’s unofficial house band all-stars, Papernut Cambridge and Picturebox.
Chasing up releases from the fag-end of 2018 I also take a look at the repackage appraisal of the rare and much sought-after 1978 Celtic-folk album from Flibbertigibbet, Whistling Jigs To The Moon, and a collection of previously unreleased recordings from the obscure 60s/70s, genre spanning Paraguay duo JODI, plus delve into the mind of the music composer artist Garrett N., who follows up (tens year later) on his debut album with an ambitious progressive suite of high quality-produced hard rock, funk, sound collage, Hip-Hop, psych and astral synth, Let’s Get Surreal.
Albums
Cosey Fanni Tutti ‘Tutti’
(Conspiracy International) 8th February 2019
After five decades at the cutting edge of subversive performance, conceptual art, and with pushing the envelope of cerebral industrial electronic music there’s no sign of stopping the grand dame icon of the leftfield Cosey Fanni Tutti from continuing to deconstruct and contextualise the limits of the sonic abyss.
Even in recent framed ‘autobiographical’ years, Cosey could hardly be accused of languishing on past glories; the results of a pinnacle year in retrospection revitalized and worked to produce this, Cosey’s only solo album since 1982’s Time To Tell. It could be said that the controversially open artist’s – who has all but laid herself bare physically and sexually in the pursuit of pushing the boundaries of morality, taste and censorship – practice is wholly autobiographical; Tutti being no different in that respect.
Originally created as a soundtrack for the Harmonic Coumaction film as part of a wider COUM Transmissions retrospect (the Dadaist, and to an extent, Fluxus inspired enfant terror group of which Cosey, alongside Throbbing Gristle’s Genesis P-Orridge, co-founded in 1969) that opened the Hull, UK City of Culture celebrations in 2017, the caustic but often vaporous diaphanous eight soundscapes that make-up this latest album can be read as a continuum of Cosey’s biography (published in the same year) and on-going assessment.
Untethered to any particular place or time, spanning the decades to inform both present and future, Tutti is meant to be both an extension yet ‘stand alone document’. Transformed, manipulated and re-processed in the ‘now’, the various abstract perspectives and past incarnations are presented as a sophisticated soundtrack of mostly serialism shifting moods and evocations.
Nuanced and subtle, Cosey refines a legacy that includes Throbbing Gristle and various Chris Carter partnerships to produce a minimalist Techno with ominous otherworldly atmospherics, wafting esoteric style jazz pines and both inner and outer minded cosmological elemental style conceptual album. The title-track itself layers lingering mysterious exotic lingers of jazzy saxophone over distant pounded kinetic beats, cutting tetchy subdued mechanics and suffused drones that touch upon that sonic legacy.
Elsewhere on this series of suites pattering beats cloak alien avian squawks on the wilderness of ‘Drone’; hollow winds blow through metallic rotations on the wizened alluded ‘Sophic Ripple’; Cosey’s veiled apparition lulls drift amorphously in liquid reverberations on ‘Heily’; and leviathans pass over a bending Tangerine Dream like expanse on ‘En’.
Those more familiar with Cosey’s history might recognize title references, sonic prompts, and the use of atavistic arcane spiritual language (the album’s cascading crystalized mirror, ‘Orenda’, using and channeling the Iroquois group of Native American tribes’ name for the spiritual power inherent in people and their environment; the force behind divination, prophecy and soothsaying, amongst others), yet Tutti is a deconstructive breakdown of that same past, built back-up and put together to offer a new dialogue and visage going forward.
Not so much a revelation as ‘continuum’, Cosey’s first solo album in over thirty-six years is a clever atmospherically mysterious and sagacious soundtrack that transmogrifies a lifetime of ‘art, sex and music’ into a most recondite purview of effective electronica.
Station 17 ‘Werkschau’ & ‘Ausblick’
(Bureau B) 1st February 2019
Growing and developing way beyond the initial perimeters of a social experiment between the mentally handicapped residents of a Hamburg community and the independent musician Kai Boysen, Station 17 (as they would become known) has made a sizable and influential mark on the German music scene. From humble beginnings as a stimuli therapeutic project in 1989, the always evolving collaborative group has blossomed into an internationally acclaimed touring band, released over ten albums of eclectic experimentation and worked with an enviable cast of cross-generational artists: from members of the old guard such as Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream and Neu! to more contemporary Techno and electronic artists as DJ Koze, Datashock and Kurt ‘the Pyrolator’ Dahlke.
Spontaneous throughout, the constantly-changing lineup behind Station 17 effortlessly merge and rework Krautrock, Kosmische, Pop, Post-Punk and Techno music into something unique and, above all, democratized: the varying disabilities of the collective’s cast inevitably feed into the process, yet offer no barrier to creativity.
Celebrating thirty years of such experimental and inspired music exploration and performance, on the 1st of February Station 17 will both pause to take stock of the back catalogue, with the retrospective collection Werkschau, whilst looking forward to new sonic horizons, with the release of their eleventh LP proper, Ausblick – a companion piece to last year’s Blick (which made our albums of the year features). The first of these albums – sporting a homage to Can’s Landed album cover art – Werkschau crisscrosses the group’s cannon; from the 1990 self-titled debut album right up to the already mentioned 2018 triumph, Blick.
Certain albums gravitated towards the trends and zeitgeist of the times, but tracks, often a decade or more apart, sit together well with no discernable difference in quality or production. The first trio of tracks for instance, stretch across three decades; moving between the panted, mooning and gasped vocal free-form post-punk of ‘Feeger’, from the Debut LP, to the industrial drum’n’bass, Kraftwerkian meets NIN ‘Budemeister’, taken from the 2006 LP Mikroproffer, and the shimmery bossa electro-pop of ‘Techno Museum 2’, taken from the 1997 LP, Bravo. Elsewhere there are shades of limbering DFA Records-sign-Populare Mechanik, on the 2011 Fieber album track ‘Uh-Uh-Uh’; Bowie oozing over the Art Of Noise on, what could be homage to the Hamburg district and city’s infamous pirate insignia football club, ‘St. Pauli Der Hat Heute Geburts Tag’; and the luminous lunar bound’s of Can’s ‘Dizzy Dizzy’ can be heard permeating another 2011 track, ‘Zuckermalone’.
Guest appearances/collaborations being Station 17’s forte this retrospective includes an abundance of them; including the gangly-Hip-Hop Fetter Brot match-up ‘Ohne Regen Kein Regenbogen’ and the slick sonar reverberated Yellow Magic Orchestra hued, Michael Rothar travelling ‘Bogie Bogie Báka’. (Both tracks of which are taken from the collaborative dedicated 2008 album, Goldstein Variation). It also neatly ties-in with the group’s upcoming album rather well, featuring as it does Station 17’s bridging collaboration with Andreas Spechtl of Ja, Panik! fame, ‘Dinge’, taken from the last album Blick: The upcoming Ausblick conceived in the PR spill as that record’s congruous twin. A companion piece, it shares more or less the very same lineup of guests, featuring once more the mischievous faUSt instigators Zappi and Jean-Hervé, new wave pop appropriator Andreas Dorau, the power-up Düsseldorf and Berlin straddling duo of one-time Ashra and Klaus Schulze drummer Harald Grosskopf and former Kraftwerk, Neu! and Pissoff journeyman Eberhard Kranemann, Tangerine Dream convert Ulrich Schnauss, contemporary electronic artist Schneider TM and of course, Spechtl.
Though this time around tracks seem to be far more expansive on the whole, loose and cosmic, especially the Pyrolator team-up ‘Geisterstunde, Baby’, which bounds and bends to a craning Jah Wobble-esque elasticity, and the Soon Over Babaluma galactic dusting ‘Un Astronaut’, which features both Schneider and old Krautrock hand, founder of GAM and echo guitar pioneer, Günter Schickert.
Wafting aromas of Eastern mystery, free-form jazz and liquid serialism permeate this album as Techno meets with Industrial, post-punk funk and My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts era bass lines; resulting in one of Station 17’s most sophisticated, mature and thoughtful albums yet. A Teutonic odyssey, Ausblick’s enviable guest list certainly helps, yet it is the enthusiasm and spirit of the collective’s ‘wohngruppe’ that enrich and offer a distinct perspective.
Not resting on their laurels, Station 17 simultaneously looks back whilst cosmically being propelled forward, releasing both their new and retrospective albums on the same day. Thirty years in, those humble origins far exceeding expectations, Station 17 continue to produce the goods.
White Fence ‘I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk’
(Drag City) January 25th 2019
The unassuming maverick artist Tim Presley paints outside the lines; his idiosyncratic applied coloring-in like a double vision of kaleidoscopic floating blurriness. Deeply felt yet softened and often languid in practice, Presley’s off-kilter musings blend lo fi psychedelia with quirky troubadour sadness, jilting punk, library music, and early analogue synthesized music, and on this latest album of sweetened, hazy malady, the Kosmische, to create the most dreamy of soft bulletins.
Wise in his choice of associations, Presley has in recent years formed a fruitful bond with fellow American maverick Ty Segall – their latest collaboration, Joy, was released back in the summer of 2018 -, and Welsh artist Cate Le Bon – pairing up to form the odd lolloping DRINKS. It was whilst bunking down at Le Bon’s grotto in the Lake District in the winter that he wrote the songbook that would eventually become I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk; the admittedly rudimental skilled Presley, sat crafting ideas on Le Bon’s piano whilst she was out adding another string to her already stretched polymath bow, designing wooden furniture at night school.
Once back in the States, imbued even further by his recent move from L.A. to San Francisco, Presley called upon fellow lo fi graduate and face of Lazy Magnet, Jeremy Harris, to help mold and transform his halcyon transatlantic sketches. Harris is credited as the all-round talent that learnt and then, more or less, played and recorded this curious collection in the San Fran located studio of former Bees founder and producer, Paul Butler.
Amorphously wafting between the bucolic and tragic psychedelic whimsy of England, the Warm Jets era of Eno, the fragility lament of Nilsson and the cerebral lurch of The Swell Maps, Richard Hell and David Byrne, Presley’s bendy vulnerabilities sound understated and lo fi but dream big. The title-track, with postmodernist élan, embodies this spirit perfectly; merging the magical if unsure twinkle of Willy Wonka with Pete Dello, Syd Barrett and a slacker Ray Davis. Suffused venerable organs, monastery-like intonations, and the lightest of washes all sit well with the gangly disjointed lolloping guitars and the woozy drug-induced new wave rock’n’roll longing of such tragic mavericks as Johnny Thunders, who Presley dreamt appeared before him, from beyond the grave, with a message of encouragement: “To be honest and simple”. Opening up to a point, Presley’s sighed, understated vocals deliver lyrics swaddled in psychedelic analogy and lazed daydreaming resignation.
Closing the album, the final two-part suite of Ham Reductions, is an experiment in perpetual arpeggiator analogue-electronics. Split in to ‘A: Morning’ and ‘B: Street & Inside Mind’ bookends, these pleasant retro-futurist never-ending instrumentals both evoke the familiarity of Cluster and Eno. Reconfiguring a binary computerized language, each piece is probed and piqued by glistened but more caustic harsher interruptions flows and the sound of the traffic: The inner workings of Presley’s mind transduced into calculating, ruminative passages from another era.
Tethering a multitude of ideas and influences to something more concrete and solid can’t have been easy, but I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk captures those blurred reimaging’s within the amorphous boundaries of a successful off-kilter album of dreamy magnificence and wonky indulgences.
Flibbertigibbet ‘Whistling Jigs To The Moon’
(Sommer) December 5th 2019
JODI ‘My Espontáneo’
(Out-Sider Music) December 5th 2019
Feeding an insatiable hunger for obscure (sometimes for good reason) missives and forgotten links in the chain of music history, the Spanish Guerssen hub of multifaceted labels dishes up an abundance of rarities from around the world, and across time. Two such rare finds have piqued my interest this month, the first from the Paraguay duo JODI, and second, a reissue of the fleeting Celtic lunar imbued Flibbertigibbet album, Whistling Jigs To The Moon.
Faithful to the name, the Out-Sider Music imprint digs out a hotchpotch of previously unreleased recordings from the Wenger brothers, Joem and Dirk. Gathered together under the Pop Espontáneo title – a title that only goes so far in describing the duo’s highly diverse styles and influences – this compilation captures the brother’s at their most experimental, as they graduated from the schoolmates band The Rabbits to the sibling duo JODI and later still, after signing a contract with EMI-Argentina, IODI.
Isolated to a degree in their Paraguay homeland, cut-off to an extent from their peers, an unburdened and unpressured JODI relentlessly recorded an abundance of genre-bending songs and instrumentals at their 8-track studio in Asunción. The results of which, in the main, were self-financed and released in very small numbers privately.
Early adepts of the Moog, which they use with a cosmic relish throughout the majority of these recordings, the Wenger’s could be said to have been innovators in South American psychedelic boogie and space-age disco rock. Aggrandizing the brothers further, the PR spill and accompanying linear notes hold them up as pioneers; diy and lo fi doyens whose sound was ahead of its time. To be fair, at times you think you’re hearing the kernel of Ariel Pink or R Stevie Moore, but far from humble beginnings, the Wenger’s certainly had the cash to spill, owning as they did a state-of-the-art studio, a mellotron, moog and clavinet, which were hardly cheap or even easy to come by at the time of their late 60s and early 70s flowering.
If you’ve already heard Out-Sider’s repackage of the duo’s 1971 album, Pops de Vanguardia – possibly, as claimed, the first lo fi diy garage-psych album to be produced on the continent – you’ll be familiar with their method of blending Santana-like Latin rock with clavinet croaking heavenly funk and psychedelic garage to produce melodious pop. Digging deeper into the archives and stockroom, their ‘sound-alikes’ collection unearths such hidden gems as ‘Change Your Mind About Me’, which pitches soft American 70s rock with phaser-guitar and tropical percussion; the Steppenwolf-in-leather bastardized Beatles riff at the discotheque Glam-rocking, ‘Take Me Higher’; the Brian Auger rock’n’roll meets psych sermon, ‘Sunburst Of Bees’; and The Monkees harmonize over The Smoke, ‘I Will Wait For You’. But you’re bound to hear smatterings of Bolan, Mick Ronson, Sensations Fix, Amen Corner and The Kinks on this crisscrossing compilation.
Technically proficient they use all kinds of tricks, effects and overlays to skewer their visionary rock music pop. And if this kind of thing interests you, then you’ll be pleased to hear that the booklet describes all these various methods and the instruments used in great detail – guitar wise, the brothers showed a penchant for the Fender Jaguar and Jazz bass. Unfortunately enervated by the pressures of recording for a major label, the German-Paraguay brothers were forced to record more commercially viable hits. And so these recordings are only seeing the light of day forty odd years later, after the JODI heydays of the mid 70s.
This is a worthy collection and obscure curiosity that could lead to revival of forgotten treats from 60s/70s Paraguay; the sons and daughters of the German diaspora that ended up there, sharing an unconscious link to similar pioneering musical innovations back in the Krautrock homeland.
In a different direction entirely, the Sommer imprint revival of the critically well-received but commercially poor Whistling Jigs To The Moon album by Flibbertigibbet looks to place the Celtic-South African troupe in the upper echelons of prog and psych-folk greats.
Formed after the break-up of the earlier cult Irish group Mellow Candle by band members Alison O’Donnell and David Williams, after an unsuccessful 1972 album release for the Deream label – Swaddling Songs despite the attention and band’s reputation, failing to revive the Candle’s fortunes -, the prevailing Flibbertigibbet was born in the immigrant and local communal houses and clubs of the South African folk scene. Leaving the Emerald Isle after that Candle’s light went out for good, O’Donnell and Williams hooked-up in South Africa with ex-pats Barrie Glenn and Jo Dudding to form the earnest, romantically lamentable band of well-travail(ed) musicians.
From initial live performances in a homely community, the obviously gifted and talented group of like-minded folk lovers were soon patronized; their admirer and facilitator, Prof. David Marks soon offering them the help to record and release, what would be, their debut LP. Expanding the ranks further with classical first violinist Francesco Cignoli, jazz bassist Dennis Lalouette, string-bassist Nippy Cripwell, flutist Colin Shapiro and fiddle player Dave Lambert, they recorded an attentive songbook of beautifully lulled traditional folk sagas.
Taking old Irish standards, but also weaving their own deft tapestries, they dance jigs in drunken stupor to the moon cycles and swoon like the French Lieutenant’s Woman, waiting on the smugglers cove for loved-ones to return. They do this with the most understated of lilting charm, evoking the subtlest hues of Fairport Convention prog and the softest of psychedelic rock influences.
The stalwarts of bucolic and coastal folk are all present and correct – from English Oak and seafaring analogies to the protestations of the oppressed working classes -, as Flibbertigibbet travel back and forth across timelines. Special mention must go to O’Donnell’s voice, which is diaphanous and longing, channeling Sandy Denny, Linda Ronstadt and The Poppy Family as she woos and sighs over both the perfectly administered acoustic and electrified backing – itself a mix of the Trees, American country-folk rock, Fotheringay and Fleetwood Mac, but also a faithful interpretation of far older, more bodhran frame drum led, traditional forms too.
Saved hopefully from obscurity and the clutches of record-dealers – the original 1978 album fetching a pretty price online, if you can indeed find a copy – this repackaged appraisal of a folk rarity should be well-received by the folk and head music communities. Beautifully crafted storytelling from a band with much to offer, Whistling Jigs To The Moon is an enjoyable and stirring treat for the soul.
Deep Cut ‘Different Planet’
(Gare du Nord) January 25th 2019
As if Ian Button isn’t busy enough already juggling a multitude of projects, he’s not only the drummer in the London-based Deep Cut band but also facilitating the release of their third LP, Different Planet, through his very own Kentish cottage industry imprint, Gare du Nord (a good time to mention that labels impressive showing in our albums of the year list).
Formed around the dreampop shoegazing indie pop songwriting of the group’s founder, Mat Flint, and Emma Bailey, Deep Cut could be said to appeal to the Gare du Nord label’s penchant for nostalgia. Squeezing plenty of mileage out of The Byrds (8 Miles of it in fact on the track ‘Washed Up’), Lush, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus And Mary Chain, Throwing Muses and Ride, they inhabit another decade – though considering how bloody popular the 80s and Britpop eras both are, they’ve probably hit upon a winning formula.
In a spirograph haze of jingle-jangle paisley hued fuzz, drifting lingering cooing vocals and attitude power pop, the former Revolver frontman and Death In Vegas bassist Mat adds shades of his previous bands sound to the make-up; pitching up with trip-hop indie beats on the baggy-candour ‘Spiraling’, and switching on the Fujiya And Miyagi version of the motorik, on the early pulsing Sheffield electronic ‘Alarm Button’.
Playing with that lush signature of cracking indie pop, Emma (shadowed on backing vocals and harmony throughout by Mat) can at any one time channel Tanya Donelly, Sonya Madan and Miki Berenyi simultaneously. Though as breezy and shrouded in vapours as it is, Emma has a certain swagger and attitude that manages to pierce the daze.
The backing meanwhile shifts between all those already mentioned reference points, but can also throw up a few surprises, especially with vague passing influences such as Cabaret Voltaire, Ringo Deathstarr, Teenage Fanclub, Altered images and the Happy Mondays all swirling around.
A decent sound with plenty of variation, subtitles and energy, Deep Cut refine and breathe life back into the yearning shoegaze and Britpop of another era. With conviction, well-crafted songwriting and a captivating lead singer, they manage to stand apart from their influences just enough to avoid cliché and a reliance on the nostalgic.
Garrett N. ‘Let’s Get Surreal’
Channeled into an eclectically blended opus of a showcase, in a sense a purview of Garrett’s tenure as a composer and sound designer creating incidental music and soundtracks for a litany of American networks, the pun-tended riff entitled Let’s Get Surreal runs through the full gamut of its creator’s skillset and tastes. In the decade since his first and only other album thus far, Instrumentals And Oddities, there’s been a hell of a lot water-under-the-bridge, and Garrett’s album at times seems like one out-of-sync with its time: Leitmotifs and themes, including a growing cacophony of multiple George Bush Juniors reading out his infamous address to a nation speech on the eve of the second Gulf War (overlapping and twisted until the word “terrorism” echoes like a broken mantra), are evoked on the WMD condemnation, undulated by a Kubrickian menacing drone, ‘Saddam/Espace’ – just one example of a subject overtaken by a catalogue of equally destructive and important events; the incessant hunger for stimulation, reaction and validation of 24-hour news feeds quickly replacing world events at such a rate as to make anything longer than a few years back seem ancient history.
The sound quality indicates a talent for production: Garrett N. is attempting to bring hi-fidelity and a verve of polish back to music production; arguably a lost art in so many ways, especially in an era when availability and convenience is valued above audio quality, and when music is accessed, predominantly, through compressed digital streaming platforms on smartphones. If nothing else, Let’s Get Surreal sounds good in its bombast; loud when it needs to be, clean and crisp when more thoughtfully meditative and ambient. It makes a refreshing change to hear it.
The music itself is epically framed, following a concept that errs towards progressive rock and beats opera; there’s even an ‘Overture’ to kick things off, part of a triple suite of tracks that (surreal indeed) morphs Michael Caine’s anecdotes about gay slurs and allusions to a changing musical landscape of 70s Floyd, ethereal synth work, hues of heavy Muse prog guitar gestures, brighter shades of MGMT and psychedelic pop and Todd Rundgren. Continuous with recurring hooks, bridges and fades connecting each track on this hour plus filmic soundtrack, Let’s Get Surreal blends lofty noodling with longing composure as it confidently zaps and fuses the cosmic with Hip-Hop instrumentalism, library music with 80s flange rock, 8-bit robotics with conga funk, and low-riding RNB with the psychedelic.
A curious album from an obviously talented music producer and musician, this ambitious suite does seem like a home-studio project from a bedroom maverick, dressed-up as a resume, yet remains an impressive expansive astral oddity of constantly progressive and twisting musical tastes: An album where nothing, quite literally, is spared!
Singles
Twink ‘Brand New Morning/ Dream Turn into Rainbows’
(Gare du Nord) February 1st 2019
A match made in halcyon nostalgic haven, quintessential English psychedelic journeyman Twink (the nom de plume of former Pretty Things, Pink Fairies, Tomorrow, and the fleeting Stars instigator, Mohammed Abdullah John Adler) breaks bread with Ian Button’s Gare du Nord label’s unofficial house bands, Papernut Cambridge and Picturebox, on his latest bucolic single.
Taking a while to materialize on wax, the Gare du Nord lineup of Button, Robert Rotifer, David Woolf and Robert Halcrow first worked with Twink back in 2017; backing one of the doyens of early psych for a series of ‘rare’ shows, which included a guest slot at Kaleidoscope’s 50th anniversary Tangerine Dream jamboree.
Essentially Twink’s spotlight, the (traditional) A-side, ‘Brand New Morning’, was co-written with Picturebox main man Halcrow. A genital kind of vicarage Baroque-chimed harpsichord period Syd Barrett dream capsule from psychedelic rock’s back pages, this earnest Village Green enchanted ditty breaths in the optimism of a sunny-side-up kind of day. The more interesting companion B-side, ‘Dreams Turn Into Rainbows’, is a flute-y and mellotron dreamy romantic yearned number. Building from folky psychedelics echoes into a diaphanous Moody Blues fantasy, Twink’s repeated sentiment of, “I still dream about you/ But dreams they turn into rainbows”, is carried on the currents and vapours of his backing troupe’s melodious lush lingers.
Ever expanding the catalogue of nostalgic and halcyon age signings, Ian Button’s label dissects the past but lives in the present, whether it’s the 60s, 70s or even 80s (see the label’s Deepcut LP, which also features in this roundup): The metaphors and analogies proving timeless, even if the music isn’t. Twink is an obvious fit and addition to a label so endeared with England’s less celebrated mavericks.
By the time this review reaches you, the limited-to-200-copies vinyl single should be available via the shared Twink Bandcamp page. A digital copy for streamers is also being made available.
Clovvder ‘Traits’
November 13th 2018
Invoked during an ‘astral winter by the seas’ of the Uruguay port city they call home, Montevideo, the Gothic atmospheric conjurers Clovvder and their most recent couplet of eerie and poetically forlorn bewitching drones (Traits) merges the ominous with the ritualistic diaphanous surrealism to unsettling, spiritualist effect.
Channeling the unconventional morality of the celebrated surrealist Uruguayan-born French writer/poet Isidore Lucien Ducasse’s Les Chants de Maldoror, ‘old gods’, magik and hermetic beliefs, the duo’s Tanky and CO3RA personal peer dramatically into the void as they navigate the aloof philosophical quandaries of existence and self: The second of the two tracks, ‘Solipsismo’ can be translated as both ‘alone’ and ‘self’, a prompt in this case to the eternal downer that the ‘self is all that exists’.
Tar black waters, swirls of minimal dark majesty, resignation, and wispy apparitions posing descriptive esoteric longing lyricism (“Black abysses, swirling/I felt born in me”) materialize in waves across both of Traits haunted soundtrack evocations. A sad melancholic beauty and glints of escapism however lift the mood of the drowning-in-the-River-Styx vibe.
Relatively obscure, with only a handful of singles online, Clovvder may well dissipate back into the ether that they appeared from; their non-linear visions and dark arts sorcery poetic minimalism (imbued in part by the genius experimental cinema of Russia’s exalted Andrei Tarkovsky: Scenes from his loose amorphous interconnected autobiographical movie The Mirror are used to accompany ‘Hydrophila’) demand total absorption and the time to take hold.
Difficult to place; neither electronica, field recordings, drones or that dismissive ‘Witch’ prefix trend, Traits is closer to the perimeters of occult soundtrack magic realism poetry and despondent esoteric romanticism.
Words – Dominic Valvona
Our Daily Bread 295: Ustad Saami ‘God Is Not A Terrorist’
January 17, 2019
Album Review: Dominic Valvona
Ustad Saami ‘God Is Not A Terrorist’
(Glitterbeat Records) January 18th 2019
No-one quite sums up the dangerous lunacy of field recording in the world’s most hostile, often deadly, environments better than the Grammy award-winning producer, author and (very handy as it goes) violence prevention expert Ian Brennan. Self-deprecating with it, and candid, Brennan’s linear notes capture the cultures and locations of his many in-situ raw recording sessions with a stimulating honesty.
Probably appearing more than any other producer on this blog, including an interview, Brennan’s prolific career is as long as it is varied. Choosing an international cast (some more obscure and hidden than others; some more poignant and tragic too) drawn from forgotten, even, shunned communities. Whether it’s capturing the roadside roasted mouse sellers turn rustic otherworldly bluesmen Malawi Mouse Boys, or members of the persecuted Albino community in Tanzania, Brennan’s raison de terre still stands: “My concern is not cultural authenticity, but emotional truth and uncloying performances. Purity without baggage!”
And so, letting his subject naturally perform in the purest of settings – usually outside the confines of a modern equipped studio -, he travels to the remotest, hostile of places. Among his most enduring partnerships, the continuing relationship with Glitterbeat Records has taken him to quite a few of the most dangerous hotspots; especially for the Hidden Music series of albums. Previous editions of this series have found Brennan braving Rwanda, Cambodia and Vietnam. But the most foolhardy yet, and subject of Volume 5 of this healing music survey collection, takes him to Pakistan.
As he reminds us, “In the land where Osama Bin Laden last hid”, a “state so feared that the US government does not allow its staff to stay in hotels anywhere in the entire country”, Pakistan is a highly volatile, military heavy state: The most worrying concern being that they’re a nuclear state. If further proof was needed of the trigger-finger tensions, Brennan sets the vivid scene further: “Driving in from the airport I noticed a man cleaning what I thought was a musical instrument, but then realized was a machine gun. Weaponry is another visual motif throughout the city. En route, we passed celebrity-soldier sponsor billboards for house paint. Here, army officers carry a similar hollow cache to reality stars in America.”
Despite the evident dangers, he’s here to record for posterity the mesmerizing atavistic voice of the country’s much-revered classical singer, Ustad Saami, whose specialized Surti microtonal and multilingual expressions, accompanied by dipping buoyant tabla and long-drawn out harmonium drones, may very well die out when he does. Despite the somewhat provocative title, the beauty, serenity and sincerity of Saami’s music seems far from controversial. Yet to the more extremist sections of the Islamic faith, his spiritual yearnings represent a rebellious, defaming voice, an individual breaking with the hardline insistence of a myopic form of worship. For Saami’s blended form of Farsi, Sanskrit, Hindi, the ancient and dead language of Vedic, ‘gibberish’, Arabic and Urdu predates Islam. As the spread of a dogmatic Islam spreads across the globe, and as we’ve seen in Mali, a distrust but violently imposed break from anything outside the doctrine and history of Islam has seen the ritual burning of instruments and ban of most musical forms.
Photo credit: Marilena Delli
With all this in mind, the task of recording, in what was an energy-sapping all-night session – though the spritely vigorous 75 year-old maestro proved he could play all night, even into the next morning without a break, his companions were knackered – such afflatus magical music seems (to put it mildly) daunting.
Almost in a trance, the impressive Hindustani Khayál classical 49-note scale system Saami uses (deriving from the Arabic for ‘imagination’, this style was originally conceived by, we’re told, a mixed race royal whose lifelong endeavor was to make peace with duality through art) can hypnotize and draw the listener in. Though it sounds far from intense, it takes some concentration and endurance to play uninterrupted – at least two of the tracks on this collection run over the ten-minute mark. A predecessor to an even older form called Qawwal, Khayál it seems is more about feeling and atmosphere, the lyrics of the call-and-response performances almost incidental.
Sharing this divine music with the world before it disappears – the inevitability of a tradition only ever passed down possessively between family members -, the God Is Not A Terrorist sessions connect with a thousand and more years of encapsulating praise. Simultaneously uttering earthy deep longings and soaring tribute to a higher plain, Saami and his troupe pay amorphous service to the holy on ‘God Is’; “Om” and in phlegm voiced dedication ponderously elevate with a paean to romance on ‘My Beloved Is On The Way’; woo and yearn in the dusk of ‘Twilight’; and in a swirl of bellowed harmonium, lull entranced on the transportive ‘Longing’.
An incredible recording, thankfully in the hands (more hands-off) of an accomplished producer, Saami Ustad’s endangered music is safely shared to a global audience. As preservation goes, this latest volume in a much accomplished and surprising series of ethnomusicology is a mesmeric study in keeping a form alive in the face of persecution and fate.
Words: Dominic Valvona
Our Daily bread 294: La Rappresentante di Lista ‘Go Go Diva’
January 15, 2019
Album Review – Gianluigi Marsibilio
La Rappresentante di Lista ‘Go Go Diva’
(Woodworm) December 14th 2019
In these years when music and art are more and more volatile, liquid, passing through Spotify and other media, La Rappresentante di Lista has made a bold album that touches you, crumples and turns on the incredible search for sounds, combined with the use of much necessary themes.
Go Go Diva is an album that draws from the perspective of a woman beyond the #MeToo movement; Go Go Diva is a disc-woman who speaks to the multitudes, with a disarming graciousness.
Some pieces of the album are really more courageous and necessary than the thousand articles published in the New York Times. The sound atmospheres are always sought after and, even on disc, theatrical, scenically beautiful and satisfying. The listener is transported to a land of irrational alienation, where every brilliant preconception is mixed up and merged.
La Rappresentante di Lista therefore does something very rare for a contemporary artist, it makes us think: the album leads us on a journey, free from any ideology but which narrates the being, the essence.
The path of the album follows, in some passages, the work in poetry of Ursula Andkjær Olsen. In one of the passages from her collection, released in 2018, entitled Third-Millennium Heart, the author says: “The heart could be a castle, for instance. You can jump from level to level very fast. The architectural words are very important in naming the body”. The heart of the album is like a multi-layered castle made of architectures of words and bodies. It is a good way to represent the intentions and sounds of Go Go Diva, which is an architectural album, to be admired in detail and as a whole.
The record lives and dies in every piece. Go Go Diva has a variety of shapes, an incredible number of cartridges to shoot.
From ‘Questo Corpo’ to ‘Glória’ the sound vocabulary is absolutely heterogeneous and feeds a bit of all tastes, but above all shows how over the years this project is growing under the search for a complete and deep eclecticism. Each song is able to shoot the cards, for example ‘Poveri Noi’ comes as a storm in the track list and just this jolt in the atmosphere of every theme touched upon, from pregnancy to being a young woman, a new depth.
The potential of this album will be expressed in a live certainly suitable for strong entities: where thoughts, feelings and noises can be mixed into a single body.
Go Go Diva is a scream, an immersion, a promise, a hope to be grasped.
Words – Gianluigi Marsibilio
Album Reviews – Brian Bordello
Welcome our 2019 signing, Brian Bordello, to the Monolith Cocktail fold. The self-depreciating maverick patriarch of the dysfunctional cult lo fi Bordellos will henceforth be, in his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases for us. Here’s his inaugural couplet review of upcoming albums by Cleaning Women and Eerie Wanda.
Eerie Wanda ‘Pet Town’
January 25th 2019
The lost sounds of childhood summers, the finger clicking bliss of a Joe Meek hit, the beauty of the lost rainbow in an angels wish, this LP by Eerie Wanda makes me recall all this.
Pet Town is a fine album indeed at times it gives me the same feelings of joy I have when playing The Beach Boys much-underrated classic Friends; songs wrapped up in the power of the pureness in being alone.
This is simple in its beauty and the beauty is its simpleness, the vinyl etchings of acoustic nights wrapped in your ex’s arms soundtracked by a lovingly compiled mixtape of the Marine Girls and Holly Golightly’s softer moments.
This LP is one of pure delight, a lo-fi lovers dream date, a shy boys aural pin up, this is what you imagine the sound of the girl you wanted but was never confidant enough to ask out whispering I want you in your ear.
The sparseness of the backing, the wonderful percussion sound gives the whole affair a cocoon of warmness. There are so many things to love, like the way the song ‘Sleepy Eyes’ starts with the same guitar chords as Elvis Presley’s
‘Jailhouse Rock’ and finishes with a psychedelic organ solo, and the handclaps on the ‘Hands Of The Devil’ are rockabilly percussion par excellence.
Summing up, this is an LP to wrap around you to keep you warm in the coming winter months and the LP to play as you walk in the summer sun remembering how happy sad life can be. A stunner.
Cleaning Women ‘Intersubjectivity’
(Svart Records) 15th February 2019
I can honestly say I’ve never heard of the Cleaning Women before; a band from Helsinki who make their instruments from cleaning implements, or so they say, and who am I not to believe them it would explain why this music is so shiny and refreshing to listen to.
This LP brings back memories of growing up in the North West of England listening to the strange pop post punk sounds of the mid 80s; bands that were not scared to try something different and at the same time not afraid to make music with melody, style and beauty. And this LP has all those things in abundance.
Intersubjectivity is truly a thing of great beauty. It’s not often that you hear an album that reminds you of the 80s pop gods Aha and Can at the same time; an LP that makes you want to go back and revisit your love for the mighty Laibach whilst wishing I still had the energy to frug wildly to the captivating post punk of ‘We Work It Out’, or, to wrap myself in a sleeping bag and pogo to the funky Captain Beefheart meets Julian Cope of ‘Living On The Streets’.
This is my first review of 2019 and if all the music I write about is as exciting as this what a year it will be, or this could be a great one off and everything in comparison will be a crushing disappointment, a warning for you 2019 the standard has been set high…
Words: Brian Bordello
Album Review / Dominic Valvona
Deerhunter ‘Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?’
(4AD) January 18th 2019
Loaded with despondent query and concept-fueled reference points (both in the literature and geographical senses), Deerhunter’s latest nuanced road trip across a ruined divided landscape poses many open-ended and visceral questions: And doesn’t exactly answer them.
As the current instability (take your pick: Brexit, Trump, Putin, rise of right wing populism in Europe and South America…. the list goes on and on) across the globe keeps Bradford Cox awake at night, the frontman’s pen scribbles away at a fair old rate in anxious irritation at the imposing chaos, on the band’s latest album for 4AD: The songwriting, it must be said, more honed and (daresay) melodically accessible than ever.
Making sense of the miasma, sending back woozy postcards from the languid ‘slipstream’ and hazily cooing eulogies to a constant theme of loss and a poisoning of the well of human kindness, Deerhunter repeatedly yearn like they did on their previous cerebral triumph, Fading Frontier, about the fading away of everything they hold dear. That album mined a similar discourse of disappearing humility, and musically captured, with an equally assuage tactile brilliance, the prevailing mood of the times through a steady daze of synthesized and melodious jingle-jangly troubadour indie pop.
Though proclaiming that ‘nostalgia is toxic’ in the sub-headed description of the surprisingly Bolan glam hued, cynical ‘Futurism’, Deerhunter’s penchant for reinvention never truly breaks free from the shackles of the past. Woozy elements abound of Bowie and Eno’s partnership on Low and Heroes, a languid John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band, the Tubeway Army and, weirdly, a more credible Starsailor. Aiming to circumnavigate familiarity and a link to rock’s back pages, they discard separate amplifier setups to plug directly into the mixing desk. The results of which, played out over a flattish drumming backbeat, airy vaporous synthesizer sculpting build-ups, nuzzled suffused saxophone, bobbing undulated marimba, gentle romantic piano flourishes and pizzicato strings, often subdues the guitar sound entirely, which is light on lead but heavy on the acoustic rhythm.
Adding an aura of lilted and dreamy idiosyncrasy, cult Welsh experimentalist Cate Le Bon makes up part of the extended production and guest appearance crew. Lining up alongside long-term Deerhunter producer Ben H. Allen III, plus Ben Etter and the band themselves, Cate’s qualitative musical eccentricities add some sparkle and strange off-kilter ethereal wooing to the overall sound. You can hear her subtle Baroque harpsichord playing on the album’s first single, ‘Death In Midsummer’ – a slow unfurled highlight that despite its melodious warm quality sets out on an elegiac walkabout, inspired in part by a macabre photograph from the Russian Revolution -, and sad aerial harmony on the somber Heroes LP imbued ‘Tarnung’ – subtitled notes allude to a ‘walk through Europe in the rain’.
Not only produced by a number of collaborators, the tracks themselves were recorded in a number of inspired, prompted towns throughout the southern hemisphere of the USA; from Cox’s attic in Atlanta to the Seahorse Sound Studio in L.A. and a couple of locations in Texas. Among these, the poignant Marfa, Texas setting of the fated last film performance of James Dean, Giant. That last summer of 1955, before Dean tragically crashed his somewhat untamable sports car just months later in September of that same year, is played out in the tropical marimba and heavenly allured synthesized buoyant ‘Plains’. As with most of the songs on this album, the bubbly but languid swoozy swansong to Dean draws vague analogies to the fate of change. Cox doesn’t so much implore us to break from the past and fondness for what may have never existed, as gently and with tactile restraint, offers direction: swooning at one point to follow him through “the golden void”.
However, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is an elegy of remembrance to those that have been left behind in the pursuit of progress too. Cox even chooses to swim against the tide of these ennui attention-span self-absorbed times by penning and playing more cerebral, nuanced and subtly experimental music in the face of instant gratification and validation – the ‘eternally jetlagged’ visage of the Tron and Blade Runner-esque, glistening ‘Détournement’, is an uneasy strange hallucinatory vision of that future-present symbiosis.
Billed, in part, as an unpredictable sci-fi album about the present, WHEAD? offers a sensibility and melodious weary, clipped amorphous survey of a disappearing humanity, on the verge of a Cormac McCarthy dystopia. Yet it sounds, mostly, brilliant, personal and at times languidly beautiful.
Dominic Valvona (founder/editor/chief instigator of the Monolith Cocktail)
Our Daily Bread 291: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba ‘Miri’
January 7, 2019
Album Review/Dominic Valvona
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba ‘Miri’
(Outhere Records) 25th January 2019
The courtly sound of the Mali Empire from the 13th century, accompanying the griot tradition of storytelling for an age, the (usually) dried-animal skin wrapped, canoe-shaped ngoni lute has been electrifyingly revitalized in recent years thanks in part to the virtuoso dexterity and energy of one of its leading practitioners, Malian legend, Bassekou Kouyate.
Since making his debut just over a decade ago, Bassekou has quickly built up an enviable reputation both in Mali and internationally; arguably, through his myriad of collaborations, helping to share the versatile range of emotions and rhythms that emanate from the ngoni to a worldwide audience; inspiring, even, a new generation to pick this atavistic instrument up.
The ngoni (which more or less, when translated from the Bambara language of Western Africa, means lute) is notable for both its rapid blurry rhythms and spindled, articulated picking. On previous albums Bassekou has pushed the ngoni to its limits. Following up the more electrified 2015 LP, Ba Power (which made our albums of the year feature), with a fifth album of innovative paeans, hymns, protestations and calls for peace, Bassekou takes a more reflective pause for thought on Miri; gazing out across his crisis-ridden homeland, contemplating on how the fragmented landscape and people can be brought back together for the common good.
Backed as always by the family band that features his wife, the soulful and beautifully voiced ‘nightingale of the north’, Amy Secko, and his son, Madou Kouyate, on bass ngoni, but also now including his niece Kankou (making a special guest appearance on vocals), the Bamana entitled encapsulation of ‘dream’, or ‘contemplation’, Miri record touches base with Bassekou’s roots: Reconnecting, we’re told, with his Sega Blues solo debut of a decade before.
Though the Islamist insurgency that initially boosted – but soon hijacked – Mali’s indigenous Tuareg nomads decades-long fight for an independent state within the country’s Northern Eastern borders has been largely subdued, terrorist style attacks, corruption and adverse effects of climate change have conspired to keep Mali in a constant flux of turmoil. Bassekou in somber mood peaceably reacts to all these events; using Mali’s geography and history to either warn, condemn or preach forgiveness and unity.
The title-track itself, with its cycle of jazzy ngoni grooves and subtle percussive strikes, plaintively draws the listener’s gaze to the increasingly parched Niger River that runs alongside Bassekou’s remote village hometown of Garama, in the south of Mali. The consequences of this lifeline and essential water supply drying up are disastrous. Further tensions are referred to on the reedy-sounding cantering call for peaceful resolution, ‘Tabital Pulaaku’. Featuring the conciliatory humble tones of fellow Malian, guitarist/singer and a former disciple of the revered Ali Farka Touré, Afel Bocoum, this beautifully articulated song implores the wandering cattle herder Fula nomad community and local cultivators to stop the in-fighting and settle disputes amicably – a fractious state of hostility that has led to many deaths between the two groups.
Elsewhere on the album, Mali’s ancient past is used as an analogy for the jealousy, corruption and worst excesses of individual greed, currently crippling the country. The Abdoulaye Diabaté – born into the griot tradition – sagaciously lends his vocals to Bassekou’s experimental bottleneck slide ngoni techniques buoyant ‘Wele ni’; Diabaté weaving a parable from the Segou Koro royal court of the Bamana Kings, drawing parallels between the tale of a king whose self aggrandizement and position of power has separated him from both his people and reality, and the current Mali government.
Renowned as much for his collaborations and guest stars on previous records, Bassekou has crossed instruments with such luminaries as Taj Mahal and Samba Touré in the past. Miri is no exception, featuring as it does Malian sensation (and member of the Bamada West African supergroup) Habib Koité on the staccato Arabia to Mali desert traversing, hoofed percussion backed ‘Deli’, and the traditional instruments fused with rap Cuban troupe, Madera Limpia, on the Hispaniola jostling, lively ‘Wele Cuba’. This pool of talented guest spots also boasts the deft skills of Morocco classical and jazz multi instrumentalist Majid Bekkar – ascending and descending with lilt scenic accents a suitably diaphanous plucked mood on ‘Kanougon’ – and Snarky Puppy and Bokanté helmsman, motivator, Michael League. All of who congruously and skillfully accentuate the Bassekou family sound or bolster its energy further.
Concentrating the mind, the events and turmoil of a divided Mali inspire Bassekou to hold those most dearest even nearer (from family to friends) and pay tribute to those that have passed on (including an air-y beatitude to his mother on the album’s finale, ‘Yakare’). All the while attempting to heal the rifts through the soulfully adroit and fire-y ngoni music of the past and present.
A visceral picture of a land in crisis, yet one that has hope for a united Mali, Miri is a sublime connective and rallying collection of compelling and thrilling performances and songs (Sacko especially on fine form delivering the most tender and rich vocals throughout); another essential album from the ngoni master.
Note: Glasgow friends can catch Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba performing this album and tracks from the back catalogue live at the internationally renowned Celtic Connections festival in the city this month; playing the Old Fruitmarket on Friday 25th January. Details…
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