Monolith Cocktail Blog

Exchange recommendations from our Italian penpals at Kalporz
Authored by Paolo Bardelli 

Credit: Aron Lindhagen

Continuing our successful collaboration with the leading Italian music publication Kalporz , the Monolith Cocktail shares reviews, interviews and other bits from our respective sites each month. Keep an eye out for future ‘synergy’ between our two great houses as we exchange posts during 2023 and beyond. This month, from the site’s Thanks 4 All The Fish! series of recommendation reviews, a quartet of recent finds, brought to us from Paolo Bardelli.

This month we dedicate ourselves to a ThanksForAllTheFish! composed of albums that would have deserved individual reviews, because all of them are beautiful and some are truly impressive, but – you know – we are immersed in a fast-paced world and sometimes we have to adapt. To facilitate the choice we put them in order, from the best (Death And Vanilla) to the least of the four (Gnoomes), which is still a great album.

DEATH AND VANILLA, “Fliker” (Fire Records, 2023)

Death And Vanilla have put all their care and psychedelic imagination into this their “Fliker” after more than a decade of records (this should be the sixth, if we are not mistaken in mathematics, but in any case there are further ep’s on their bandcamp as well): these are delicate psychic digressions seasoned with a distinct and elegant pop in which the cerebrality and dimension of dreams (as in the beautiful “Baby Snakes”, a modern “Riders on the Storm”) is tempered in some passages by a physicality drier (“Find Another Illusion”) that the band refers, as a suggestion, “to the first Cure”.

The trio hails from Malmoè, Sweden, and is made up of musicians Marleen Nilsson, Anders Hansson and Magnus Bodin who play with vintage instrumentation, “to emulate the textures and magical sounds of soundtracks and library music, German krautrock and yèyè French pop from the 60s and 70s”.

Fantastic record in my opinion, which will probably be in my year-end rankings.

Album info: https://www.firerecords.com/product/death-and-vanilla-flicker/

TREES SPEAK, “Mind Maze” (Soul Jazz Records, 2023)

Another spectacular disc is this fifth by Trees Speak, a duo from Tucson (Arizona), composed of Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz who combine a very strong instrumental taste with a thousand influences and an absolute basic enjoyment. The press notes exaggerate a bit but begin to give coordinates: “Trees Speak is music as a cosmological translation, borrowing from Can and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew era practice of the studio as a composition tool, in which long improvisations they merge into indelible flights of fancy with razor blade-assisted tape edits. Trees Speak operates between the subconscious and the unconscious, the radiant and the eclipse, the micro and the macro”.

Certainly German krautrock has something to do with it, just as the duo draws from the soundtracks of the 60s and from a certain free and unconstrained psychedelic rock with the cosmos as its destination: the Arizona desert as a universe to land on.

Personally, I have two songs that I wrote down with a handkerchief: “Syndrome” gives me the same anguish as Massive Attack, while “Sospetto” has the influence of the Italian soundtracks of the 70s and, as evident from the title, of Air’s “The Virgin Suicides”: only if you listen to it.

This album is also amazing.

WITCH, “Zango” (Desert Daze Sound, 2023)

A story à la Rodriguez: between 1972 and ’77 the Witch, a band from Zambia, made five albums that were only released in Zambia. In 2010, reissues appeared in Europe and the United States: the Witch’s African rock-fuzz mix was liked so much that fans supported the tours of a new band that Jagari Chanda – the only survivor, now 71 – assembled six years ago, composed mainly of young European musicians.
Last week the Witch’s first album after four decades was released and Jacco Gardner both plays on it and produced it, a Dutch musician whom I love and about whom I was complaining via social media with my contacts about the long record absence only a few days ago (he had been spotted in Portugal in 2018 with “Somnium“). And yet here it is: he joined and produced the album of this historic band from Zambia and the result is amazing. The group’s African imprint explodes into a fuzz-based rock that is, to say the least, ultra-addictive. Leader Jagari Chanda was joined by new traveling companions Patrick Mwondela, Nico Mauskoviç, Charlie Garmendia, JJ Whitefield and Stefan Lilov.

A story and a record not to be missed.

GNOOMES, “Ax Ox” (Rocket Recordings, 2023)

Who’s Afraid of Russian Psychedelia? The war has erected barricades that music does not have, so here we are to recommend this fourth full-length from the band that comes from Perm who, after 3 albums characterised by the “exclamation point” (“MU!” of 2019, “Tschak! ” of 2017 and “Ngan!” of 2015), removes it from the title as if to normalise a proposal that is not normal . First of all, for the first time the quartet sings in their native language, Russian, and – since the beginning of the conflict with Ukraine – two of the members have fled Russia, which makes us understand the political approach of the band beyond a choice, that of using Russian this time, which would seem rather nationalist.

Musically, “Ax Ox” pushes a kraut direction elevated at times by techno beats (“Loops”) or garage-dark intuitions (“The Neighbor”), or diminished in porthole sensations à la Boards Of Canada (“Mirrors”).

Less recommended than the three albums above, but still out of the usual coordinates.

AUTHOR: Paul Bardelli