Monolith Cocktail Blog

Gillian Stone Reviews A Trio Of Recent Releases.

Ruxpin & Stafrænn Hákon ‘Meet Me In Forever’
(Sound In Silence) Available Now

Ruxpin and Stafrænn Hákon’s Meet Me In Forever (Sound In Silence) is imbued with chillness but also encourages bodily movement. This is the first collaborative effort from the Icelandic artists, who have been separately releasing music for over twenty years. Previously creating in somewhat disparate sonic worlds, Ruxpin’s melodic IDM and Stafrænn Hákon’s atmospheric post-rock collide in Meet Me In Forever.

With elements of melancholic nostalgia and an ambient retro-vibe overall, the album is reminiscent of turn of the millennia Boards of Canada with more sophisticated, modern production. This genre blending is clear off the top of the record in the first track “Flawless Delivery” with it’s clear yet warbling post-rock guitar tones, percussive breath sounds, and swirling synths. There are electroacoustic elements throughout the record, such as in the meditative third track, “Odesa”, and in the field recordings that accompany “Offshore” and “Reunited (If It’s What You Want)”. The latter, penultimate track, is perhaps the strongest on the record. Sparse vocals by Olena Simon soar over a Múm-esque soundscape, ending with a field recording of barking dogs and human laughter.

Overall, Meet Me In Forever retains a special quality of being a record you could both sleep to and dance to simultaneously.

Anemic Cinema ‘Iconoclasts’
(Ramble Records) Available Now

Iconoclasts, released via the independent Melbourne-based label Ramble Records, is “Avant-jazz-metal collective” Anemic Cinema’s newest offering. Undoubtedly a jazz record at its core, the album from the Belgium-based group is also so much more. Opening with the considerable energy of “Oneirophrenia” (meaning: state caused by sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, or drugs that is hallucinatory and dream-like), the song introduces a heaviness along with alluding to influences from Zappa and Ornette Coleman. “Iconoclasts, Pt 1”, “Iconoclasts, Pt 2”, and “Iconoclasts, Pt 3”, three movements with a nod to prog in their naming convention, then take the listener on a vast and stunning timbral journey.

The intro of “Pt 1” hails to classical Modernism, while composer Artan Buleshkaj enhances the space with beautiful, reverb-y suss chords on baritone guitar. Things get far more metal in “Pt 2”, with the juxtaposition of horns and distorted guitar enhancing the angular aesthetic of the movement. It ends with Steven Delannoye’s solo bass-clarinet, which then evolves into a tritone driven bass clarinet riff that grounds “Iconoclasts, Pt 3”. For “Business in the Front, Party in the Back”, Delannoye’s tenor sax and Rob Banken’s alto sax trade solos over Buleshkaj’s fuzzed-out guitar. Halfway through, the track completely changes speed into more traditional jazz guitar, with the hollow body sound of Jim Hall, before the fuzzed-out guitar comes back in for a modified head that takes out the tune.

The album then moves into a fucked up little interlude, “In Sillico”, with wild, sliding guitar and fantastic drum work by Matthias de Waele. “Tessellate” trades a headbanger feel with total chaos, while “108” takes out the record with the softened timbres of acoustic steel sting guitar and soloing clarinet.

Iconoclasts is a singular experimental triumph that takes the listener on an epically diverse sonic journey.

Philip Selway ‘Strange Dance’
(Bella Union) Available Now

At the heart of Philip Selway’s Strange Dance, his third solo album released via Bella Union, is the orchestral piano ballad. It’s how the album begins (“Little Things”) and ends (“There’ll Be Better Days”), and where it returns to throughout (“The Other Side”, “The Heart Of It All”). Yet in between, there is also so much else going on.

Lyrically, the album is profoundly sad, but ends with the trepidatious hope of “There’ll Be Better Days”. There are tidbits of Radiohead’s influence – the occasional Thom Yorke chord progression and Jonny Greenwood string arrangement – but otherwise it stands apart.

Between Marta Salogni’s production and Selway’s vocals, the lush sonic environment is reminiscent of Peter Gabriel in his prime. And Strange Dance does stray from the piano ballad: “Picking Up Pieces” with its driving, 90s feel and “Make It Go Away” with its acoustic guitar and percussion that could be from a 80s Paul Simon record.

Favorites on the album include “What Keeps You Awake At Night”, which includes beautiful Steve Reich-esque glockenspiel, the unorthodox percussion timbres and high, sustained strings of title track “Strange Dance”, and “Salt Air” with its droning synth, distorted vocals, and sparsely swooping orchestral parts.

Throughout the record are the incredible percussion parts of Valentina Magaletti, who played in lieu of Selway as the Radiohead drummer felt he was “not in the right mindset” to contribute drums.

Strange Dance is a thing of luxuriant, sorrowful beauty that further establishes Selway as composer in his own right.

Joining the team earlier this year, Gillian Stone is a multi-instrumentalist and interdisciplinary artist originally from the Pacific Northwest and based in Toronto, Canada. Through her eponymous vocally-driven post-rock/drone folk solo project, she has released two singles, “Bridges” and “Shelf”, and her debut EP, Spirit Photographs. Stone holds a BFA in Jazz Studies from Vancouver Island University and an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto. Drawing from her eclectic taste, she has worked with Michael Peter Olsen (Zoon, The Hidden Cameras), Timothy Condon and Brad Davis (Fresh Snow, Picastro), The Fern Tips (Beams) Völur (Blood Ceremony), NEXUS (Steve Reich), and visual artist Althea Thauberger.