Monolith Cocktail Blog

A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries in alphabetical order.

F. Ampism ‘The Vertical Luminous’
(Hive Mind) 5^th December 2025

A curious and, as the title suggest, luminous biomorphic world of inner and outer bodied molecules, particles and matter, the Brighton-based F. Ampism cuts a most wonderfully playful, curious and intriguing album for the always enlightening and brilliantly experimental label Hive Mind this month.

Ampism (that’s Paul Wilson when uncloaked from their sonic pseudonym) delights in making atoms speak, communicate, sing, gargle, mewl and murmur in a world of floated forms and running, pouring waters. Of an organic nature, sounds both recognisable and not connect with the electronic to create hallucinogenic, near cosmic and twinkled aspects of both cerebral and microscopic observations. And within that sphere there’s a host of fluctuations: ‘Worm Moon’ a near silken spun and spindled delicate vague evocation of Japanese theatre and ambient jazz, whilst the serial rhythms and beats, the suspended alien forms and cup pours of ‘Lunar Mansions’ could be a union between Mira Calix and Carmen Jaci. Such is the gentleness and dreaminess of this amorphous fourth world and bubbling and burbling chemistry that even the synth possessed ‘Midi Evil’ whirls and discombobulates disarmingly and harmlessly. ‘The Severed Head Is Smiling’ is also hardly sinister, caught in a magic-realism of mirrors, hallowed tubular dimensions and the sounds of the bird house. 

Lovingly produced, full of that luminosity and replenished liquid growth, the album evokes feelings of happiness, rumination, the inquisitive and of near alien visitations. Less studied and technical, and more an enjoyable life form of music and sounds that proves a most enjoyable and mostly beautiful experience.

Aus ‘Eau’
(Flau) 6^th December 2025

Finely balanced, Japan’s national instrument, the koto, is disarmingly and organically taken from its courtly origins and placed in more intimate, attuned settings. With his adroit koto foil Eden Okuno, the Tokyo composer and producer Yasuhiko Fukuzono creates a both fragrant and descriptive subtle album of ambient music, minimalist and environmental electronica; unmistakably Japanese, with threads and traces of the neo-classical and Hogaku music traditions and even further back, and yet almost in the spheres of Fourth World experimentation and the futuristic.

Under the Aus alias, Fukuzono produces a new project that centres around the fine, delicate and spindled use of the half-tube zither koto. Said to be an “ancestor” of the Chinese guzheng, brought over to Japan during either the 7^th or 8^th century, it’s thirteen or seventeen-stringed forms, strung over movable bridges, are plucked by the fingerpicks on the player’s right hand. Depending on the piece the instrument can be tunned differently, and sometimes, the seventeen-string version, when used in an ensemble, takes on the duties of the bass. It has an instantly recognisable sound; the accompaniment to rumination and contemplation within the bamboo waterfall replenished gardens of Japan; the uncurling flowery weavings and the calligraphy-like strokes of the brush.

Here, Okuno’s keen playing skills dazzle with subtle aplomb, description and a cascade of repeating rhythms as an electronic bed of surfaces and effects are placed underneath or used like an envelope. There’s also an equally subtle use of the piano – the lower-case work of Andrew Heath, a touch of Roedelius and even Tim Story, but also Sakamoto, sprung to mind -, the suffused presence of various poured, ceremonial and dripped waters, and the chimes, the tinkles, jangles and rings of various percussive and wind chime features. Altogether it makes for a most beautifully felt work of sensibilities, the naturalistic and meditative and visceral scales. And within that sound you can hear the crafting and scraping of artistic tools, the atmospheres of the recording settings and spaces, and the near fuzzy hum of the tape.

Attentive to the surroundings, but also aware of pushing the use of the koto, saving it from its more ceremonial staidness and just so preparations, Fukuzono claims the instrument for his own purposes and experiments for something more modern and intimate. For those with a penchant for the music of Satomi Saeki, Jo Kondo, Laraaji – who has even recorded a track after the instrument -, Akira Ito, Masahiro Sugaya and the partnership of Francesco Messina and Raul Lovisoni. Flau continue to produce exquisite, thoughtful works of disarming skill.

Burning Books ‘Taller Than God’
(Ingrown Records) Released 17^th November 2025

One day someone will write the great study on music made during the Covid pandemic. A period that defined an era, no matter the cultural, geographical and political differences, by providing far too much time for all of us to think and reflect on the pointlessness of our existence: or was that just me? A shared consciousness of anxiety, stress and uncertainty prevailed, which hasn’t really abated: getting worse if anything. That day is not today, however. But, just one of the latest releases to pop up in my inbox this month from the highly prolific Ingrown Records imprint (if you ever want to disappear down the proverbial rabbit hole, to find new artists on the periphery then head over to the label’s bandcamp page for hours if not days of aural discoveries), Burning Books’ dramatically entitled Taller Than God album, was created during that momentous period. 

Despite the epic subject matters, the grappling with all life’s philosophical quandaries, much of the music produced from between 2019 to 2021 was usually quite understated. And even though there is a presence outside us, a looming leviathan to be found hovering and often bearing down over the sonic landscapes here, the production is itself a balance of isolated intimacy and the sonorous heaviness and awe of the gradual, glacial movements of time over that map. A personal attempt to make sense of the enormity without losing sight of the individual at the centre.

And so, the trials and travails, the feelings of mental anguish are all transduced into a stunning work of both ambience and weight, a merger of the haunted and the reflective, the deep and tingly. Enervated passages of past or found recordings, a dancing pirouetted dancer a top of an old music box, can be heard amongst the near Lynchian and prowling as memories pass through the veils and hues of the shadows cast upon the mountain sides and across the plains. Gleams and drones, ebbing waves contour and create various atmospheres, whilst the reverberating chings and fuzz of an electric guitar and bass articulate something more ominous and brooding. The electrification occasionally sounds more like a mirage, almost like the country ambience of Steve Gunn and Daniel Vickers on tracks like the humming tone, soft knocked ‘Mountains Move’. Within that scope, the fateful creep of ‘Death Is Forgetting’ sounds like a union between Mike Oldfield and John Carpenter. There are a few instances of this near supranatural feel and atmosphere to be found, alongside the mysterious deep sounds of a ship in the mist, the bowels letting out some esoteric ferryman’s call. Elsewhere there’s faint hints of Eno, A Lily and the heavy bowed evocations of Simon McCorry. And on the finale title-track a touch of Daniel Lanois amongst the glassy hues, drones, percussive crescendos and scale. Taller Than God ends on the reassurances of hope after immersing us all in a simultaneously personal and collective experience across a varied topography of emotions and reflections. An ‘ode to humanity’, no less, Burning Books has produced one of the very best and well-crafted, sophisticated but empirical albums of this genre in 2025.

Mauricio Fleury ‘Revoada’
(Altercat Records) 5^th December 2025

The last time I saw the well-travelled Brazilian musician Mauricio Fleury live was nearly a decade ago, when bandmates from the Bixiga 70 troupe he helped found led a carnival conga of audience members through the aisles of a seated venue as part of Celtic Connections – held each year in Glasgow, my adopted home of the last ten years. That night, and for a further seven or eight years, he was part of a collective that fused the language of Fela Kuti (which they spoke fluently) with a menagerie of Latin influences and the sound of Brazil’s inner-city bustle and hustles. And although it is a much celebrated and critically applauded group, Fleury’s CV is filled with more enviable collaborations, including a meeting and jam session with none other than Afrobeat rhythm provider and progenitor Tony Allen and the “blacktronica” and soulful house luminaries Ron Trent, Theo Parrish and Steve Spacek. This was back in 2007, but alongside his work with both the Brazilian jazz and bossa nova piano icon João Donato and tropicalia titan songstress Gal Costa, proved a catalyst for a migratory-like album of personal indulgences/stories, dramas and experiment.

Stepping out on the solo pathway, inspired as much by the places he’s lived and toured as by his crate-digging passions, the architecture, parks, its exotic bird life, and more urban environments of Brazil and further afield act as melodiously assured but pliable and warm map references. For Revoada is a personal album of worldly influences that springs forth from Brazil into Europe and the gateway to the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Eastern Africa. Starting out in ‘Kadıköy’, a district on the Asian shore of the Bosporus straddling city of Istanbul that overlooks the Sea of Marmara, Fleury reminisces on a hectic hunt for records by the cool Anatolian rock icons Barış Manço, Erkin Koray and Cem Karaca; in the city for a jazz festival back in 2017. This led to dreams of all those records he didn’t manage to find and this composition: the trip also led to Fleury, now living in Berlin, picking up the saz. The album’s opener takes a spice of Koray, a pinch of the backing from Selda Bağcan’s records and matches it with Altin Gun and a warm feeling of clavichord soul and Med grooves: It sounds like the Isley Brothers sunbathing in old Anatolia. There’s just enough electrified fuzz to make this an acid-soul number, as reimagined by Batov Records.

The first trip is followed by memories of home and the playground environment and its formative hangouts. ‘Banhando’ can be translated from Portuguese to mean “showered’ or “bathed”, but in this context is a reference to the nature park in the southeastern Brazilian city of São José dos Campos, where Fleury grew up. With a big rolling intro of bossa that quickly shimmies into a Latin-jazz sound with hints of Brubeck, Ramsey Lewis, Ayzymuth’s ‘Seems Like This’ and Greg Foat, there’s a sense of both breezily laid out memories and reminisces that capture the very feel of the place. The keys sound like bulbs of light. We next head to the city in which Bixiga 70 was formed, São Paulo, and the classic Riviera Bar, a place that obviously holds many memories for Fleury. ‘Tanto Faz’ is meant to be inspired in part by the sound of old TV soap – which it does – but reminded me in part of a Latin Americanised Lalo Schifrin and Michael LeGrand in the middle of a whistle and fluted diaphanous melody of feathered friends. 

Fleury himself plays a range of keyboards, analogue synths, the flute and guitar on this musical voyage, aided by longtime foils, a number of notable and exciting Brazilian artists and players, and good friends. On pliable, walking and flexible acoustic and electric basses is the renowned Latin Grammy Award winner, producer and guitarist Fabio Sá;on rolling, falling, splashed drums and dried bone rattled, Latin percussion is the versatile producer and music director Vitor Cabral; the vibraphone and effects of Beto Montag (on the album’s zappy, beamed and jazzy-funk retro-fitted finale ‘Briluz’); and as part of the tumultuous, thunder wrapped dramatic turn Andrés Vargas Pinedo whistled bird called woodwind and brass rich title track ensemble, the flute of Sintia Piccin, oboe of Julianna Gaona, bassoon and French horn of Richard Fermino and clarinet of María “Mange” Valencia. Sá was also asked to write the wind quintet of bird-like mimics on the exotic aviary inspired title-track. This is a composition of contrasts, beginning as it does with a more serious turbulence of wobble board-like thunder and stormy cymbals, both reflecting the themes of travails and more difficult times, and a second part that opens up with that bird call menagerie. Sá also wrote the album’s Eastern African, via the spiritual jazz route, detour, ‘Jimma’. Inspired and influenced by the Ethiopian Jazz luminary Mulatu Astatke, who he toured Brazil with a number of years back, Sá paid homage to the great multi-instrumentalist and arranger’s hometown with a composition of spontaneity; a camel ride like motion trail across the dunes, unseating and decamping to the Addis saloon for a loose Ethio-jazz jamboree around the piano. There are hints of not only Astatke, Hailu Mergia and Abdou EL Omari but The Sorcerers, Ndikhu Xaba and one of Fleury’s biggest influences and musical heroes, Sun Ra.

A most touching, reminiscing and delightful travelogue of places, dear memories, and evocations that shows off, in a disarming and harmoniously melodious and funky jazzy way, Fleury’s capabilities and skills as both a composer and musician. The solo route looks to be a delightful and pleasingly creative one on an album with much to offer, setting out various moods and journeys.

Hamouna Isewlan ‘Təlle Talyadt’
(Remote Records / Studio Mali) Released 28^th November 2025

Like many of the desert blues and rock luminaries before and after him, Hamouna Isewlan’s new album is suffused by the nomadic freewheeling and artisanal skills of the Berber ancestral Tuareg people; a loosely atavistic-connected confederacy (to put it into any kind of meaningful context) of diverse tribes that have traditionally roamed Sub-Saharan Africa since time immemorial. If further context and history was needed, this diverse society of various people, grouped together in an age that demanded a label, the term of ‘Tuareg’ is highly contested: arguably brought into the lexicon through the language of European Colonialism, though etymology traces the term back further through multiple sources. But many in the community would prefer we used the original ‘Kel Tamashek’. Isewlan’s rootsarein Mali, a country that he has been forced to leave to seek sanctuary in Algeria due to the unstable conditions; though as I write this, events are overtaking me as both the capital of Bamako and Mali itself are at risk of collapse and takeover by Jihadist groups.

Carved out of France’s greater Western African empire, demarcated without any sympathy for its diverse populations and history, Mali was cut more or less into two on its inception; the poorer north, one such seat of the Kel Tamashek, was more or less left to wither by the south and the government who considered its nomadic peoples backward, uncouth and because of their lighter skin colour, inferior. Though extremely complicated and far more nuanced than space allows here (I recommend reading Tim Marshall’s The Power of Geography: The Maps That Reveal the Future Of Our World for an analysis of the entire Sahel region and its many conflict over the decades), the Kel Tamashek began a decades long fight to create a self-governing autonomous state known as the Azawad. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing until more recent times, this struggle made worldwide headlines when it was hijacked spectacularly by more extremist Islamic insurgents. Worryingly gaining ground as a Trojan Horse within their nomadic allies’ fight for independence, the destructive Islamist horrified many when they took the ancient seat of West African learning and trade, Timbuktu, and preceded to demolish it like barbarians. Former Colonial masters France were forced to intervene, finally halting the insurgents progress before forcing all groups involved back to where they started: many of them back across the border. Far from ideal, the Islamist usurpers dissipated to a degree but then switched to sporadic acts of terrorism, carrying out smaller militia attacks in Mali’s capital. This was pre Covid of course and the situation has changed dramatically; the threat has intensified with many declaring Mali a state on the verge of a Jihadist takeover. Much of this has been down to the expulsion of France by a Malian junta, led by General Assimi Goita. But with their departure the junta was unable to secure the country or even the capital. They made an even greater mistake by hiring Russian mercenaries, who failed miserably to fight off the main jihadist insurgent group, Jamat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an affiliate of al-Qaeda. The capital of Bamako has been under direct threat and siege by the group who, as The Times reported last month, “paralysed the Malian economy with a fuel blockade that has prevented harvesting in several regions and forced the government to ration power, close schools and restrict civilian movement.” Anything can happen, including another coup within the Malian military itself: the omens are looking bleak; the outcome a possible state run by Jihadists: another Afghanistan in the making. It is undeniable that the country is suffering, with no-go zones across Mali, the threat of extreme violence and of imposed strict Islamic rule in those places controlled by the Jihadist groups. The original Kel Tamashek campaign and fight has been hijacked, its concerns, politics were always more localised but have now been engulfed by terror groups hellbent on a complete takeover of the entire Sahel region.

However, despite all this turmoil music is still being made, life is still going on in the country: as tough as they may be. In the face of such geopolitical upheaval and violence Isewlan chooses to embrace various topics of love: the yielding kind; the plaintive; the yearned; the desired; and the declared. A most touching but also yearning album that tends to the subjects of betrayal, universal and more intimate and personal love.

His new album, under this name (Isewlan in the Tamashek Tuareg language translates poetically as “the mountains of the desert”), is a songbook full of wanton reflections of both a love lost and gained, projected against the desert landscapes of his homeland. You can literally follow the pathways, the very contours, love lines and sloping dunes of Mali through his resonating electrified guitar work and the percussive and drummed rhythms and grooves of the band; many of the tracks moving in a camel or hoofed horsed motion across that iconic terrain.

An incredible player, starting out like so many of his peers and inspirations crafting a rudimental guitar from just tin cans and planks of wood (and still out blasting, outperforming those Western guitar gods with every luxury to hand), Isewlan’s career began to take off during the early noughties after making the leap from performing at weddings to recording with the band he co-founded in 2012, Aratan N’Akalle. Inspired in equal parts by Tinariwen, Ali Farka Touré, Aboubacar Traoré “Karkar”, Mark Knopfler, but most surprising, REM, the burgeoning lead artist now creates multiple evocative mirages and dreamy wanderings from a romantic travail of heartaches and more pleasing paeans to the pursuit of love and his muse.

Musically buoyant, changing from a rockified blues that Southern Americans would recognise (‘War hi toyyed’) to the signature sound of Tuareg desert rock (‘Iamna Iahla’) and a sort of rural form of reggae (‘Tənhay titt in’), the album is full of rich evocations and great flange and reverberated demonstrations of playing. I’m also hearing that Dire Straits influence on the pining resonating ‘Agg Adduniya’, and Vieux Farka Touré on the clopped motioned title-track.

This album, incidentally, has been released by the Bamako label and studio project Remote Records, but been brought to my attention by Paul Chandler, who has chronicled Mali’s music scene for a good couple of decades now. If you’ve been following us for a while, you may recall my piece on Chandler’s most excellent Every Song Has Its End: Sonic Dispatches From Traditional Mali survey (volume 2 of Glitterbeat Records’ Hidden Musics series), which went on to make our choice albums of that year’s list. So, thank you for introducing us to an artist keeping the traditions alive but also in the moment; Təlle Talyadt is an electrifying experience of lovelorn sentiment, rhythm and blues and groove.

Modern Silent Cinema ‘Surveillance Film (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)’
(Bad Channel Records) 1^st December 2025

A veritable flurry of activity this month from Cullen Gallagher’s long-running Modern Silent Cinema project, with both redux versions of archival soundtrack albums The Man Who Stopped and Stared at the Clouds (premiering on CD, vinyl and digital, we’re told, on the 15^th December) and Flesh Mother (released on vinyl and CD on the 29^th December) plus the new Surveillance Film soundtrack album. But for the purposes of this review, I’m going to focus on the latter, and Gallagher’s fifth collaborative original motion picture score for the Baltimore-based experimental filmmaker Matt Barry.

Plot wise, Barry’s latest docu-fiction movie interweaves the filmmaker’s own questions of intent with theoretical discussions about surveillance aesthetics and early cinema. On previous projects Gallagher reverberations, resonated shakes of the psychedelic, post-rock, krautrock, scuzz and fuzz have been led by the guitar and various atmospherics experiments; the themes ranging from the art of Duchamp, Man Ray and Marc Allégret and Winsor McCay’s famous Gertie On Tour animation. Here though, the sound is inspired or influenced in part by the scores of Ennio Morricone and his oft foil and Italian peer Alessandro Alessandro, but also by the use of the jaw or Jew’s harp in the former’s iconic Western soundtracks – played by Billy Strange. That instrument’s springy and spongy signature bounces and leaps like the march hare across many of the Latinised and Greek mythologically entitled instrumental tracks and vignettes/passages. That crucial instrument forms Riley-like patterns, boings and rebounds, as glass-like bulb, the bell jar notes and the crystal ring out or chime on the first few tracks.

Evocations of Walter Semtak and A Journey Of Giraffes sprung to mind on the first half of the album, that and the essence of those Italian composers working on Giallo soundtracks, Alain Goraguer, and on one of the quartet of mythological referenced Empusa (a one-footed shape-shifting female) tracks John Barry scoring Harry Palmer in an Hellenic setting. Later on, the mood reminded me of the submersible synth and electronic scores of Shepard Stevenson; especially on the plastic tube-y paddled and Fourth World-light ‘Medius’ – named I believe after one of Alexander the Great’s officers and friends, a native of Thessaly. But there’s many changes, from the near supernatural to distorted, the kinetic and library music-esque. It can give a near paranoia feeling, or at times something close to terrifying and ominous. And then again, there’s a sense of mystery, of myth and the ghostly amongst the loosened wires, detuned and both toy-like and spooked piano workings.

Gallagher expands his palette of instruments and ideas for a highly atmospheric score that stands alone and yet doesn’t proving overbearing or distract from the film it accompanies. Well worth the cinema ticket.

Andrew Spackman ‘The Marcus Neiman Cookie Recipe Hoax’
(Mortality Table Records) 12^th December 2025

I’ve estimated that Andrew Spackman under his various alias and appellations (from the forlorn SAD MAN to Duchampian Nimzo Indian, Cars From The Future and The Dark Jazz Project) has easily released over thirty albums in just over the last decade. From boffin produced apparatus to techno glitches, distortions and soundtracks, the idiosyncratic inventive trick noise maker has tried his hand at everything, including a number of conceptually minded multimedia projects and stories.

Uncloaked, under his own name, Spackman builds an impressive sonic and melodic world from one of the Internet’s earliest viral bullshit hoaxes. The Marcus Neiman Cookie Recipe, as it was known, fuelled a whole industry of such faked indignations; not the only such lie to run and run, many varied episodes followed in its wake. For one of the best summaries, the Dallas (the city in which this hoax takes part) Eater obliges:

‘A woman visited “Neiman-Marcus Cafe” in Dallas and ordered a dessert after her dinner — the Neiman Marcus cookie. The woman was so enthralled by the delicious cookie that she asked an employee at the cafe if she could have the recipe. When the employee declined, the woman asked to purchase the recipe, and was told that it would cost her “two-fifty.” When the woman received her VISA statement a month later, she’d been charged $285 — $10 each for two salads, $20 for a scarf, and $250 for the famous cookie recipe.’ The outrage however was in mishearing the original “two-fifty”, which in her mind meant $2.50, not $250. And so, both incensed and in pique of revenge, she posted the recipe online for free. It doesn’t matter, as the recipe and entire incident was hokum – although the company at the centre of this lie did decide, after receiving opprobrium and a flood of angry letters, to eventually create their own cookie -, but the actual ingredients and baking instructions were pretty run-of-the-mill: nothing special. Over time, and various iterations the story has changed and the recipe with it: replacing certain ingredients, adding maybe more to the mix.

As a metaphor/analogy on the spread of such “compelling lies” and hyperbole, Spackman has cooked up a fantasy of his own; running with the original tale, handing out the ingredients and building up and scaling up a concept-based album of electronica and vague horns that sweep, drift, herald and toot across a plane of the cerebral, distorted and melodious.

Working across various electronic spines, with passages that conjure up the dramatic and at other times dissonant, the album’s ten tracks vary between shorter and long form passages. Between tubular pipes and scores, it can sound simultaneously like a lost futuristic Vangelis soundtrack or Mike Dred and Richard James lost in the fourth world peregrinations of Hassell and Pekka Airaksinen. There’s much to unravel, as each track develops in its own way and forms a hallucinatory experience of the buzzing, bristled, shaved, blowing and screwy.

Amongst the effects, the electronically synthesized there’s wah-wah-wah, heraldry to jazz tones and airs of sax, Budd-like tinkles and iterations of piano and pipes. A mix of avant-garde, a Riley nightmare on occasions, the most removed wisps of jazz, the cosmic, the metallic and machined and vapored voices, The Marcus Neiman Cookie Recipe Hoax is like a meeting between Variát, Popol Vuh, Robert Musci, and the Warp and Artetetra labels. Both in and projected outside the machine, new sound, sonic and sometimes melodious feelings are fed into the abstract, into entropy, the alarming and liquid. Whilst the themes, the inspiration are concrete, this soundtrack (I would call it it) shutters, expands and atmospherically offers more. Spackman is on a roll, with already a successful SAD MAN enterprise earlier this year, and now this on top of other recent filmic and art-electronic projects. Check back in a week or two to see if it has made my choice albums of the year list.

West Virginia Snake Handlers Revival ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’
(Sublime Frequencies) Released 3^rd October 2025

Reminding in part of the kind of religious sermon broadcasts used to great effect on Eno And Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, but reverberated here, booming like a bluesman preacher half crazed by the effects of the poisonous serpents he wields and insists take’s a bite out of his arms to show a deadly, fateful commitment to faith, the performances and voices on this latest in-situ recording project by Ian Brennan (in cooperation and facilitated by Sublime Frequencies) is a revelatory reclamation of the original rock and roll and blues spirit. Or at least a more zealous form of the music used to accompany and rally literal interpretations (depending on sources, one that could be very skewed indeed) of lines from the Gospels of both Mark and Luke on healing and showing a strength of faith:

‘Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’ Luke 10:19

‘And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’ Mark 16:17 – 18 (Thanks to Wikipedia for these quotes)

In all his time navigating the most dangerous and difficult to reach peoples and places in the world, it took a trip closer to home, to the only remaining West Virginian community of snake handlers, to witness a truly alien experience. Nothing could prepare for what awaited Ian on that fateful day, setting up his usual stripped-down apparatus of recording equipment, placing mics so as not to interfere or distract from the performances around the alter and platform for both bloodletting and speaker-breaking screaming exaltations.

To put it in more context, loosened and set free from the archetypal studio, Ian’s ad hoc and haphazard mobile stages have in the past included the inside of a Malawi prison, Mali deserts, and the front porches and back rooms of Southeast Asia: one of which was on the direct flight path of the local airport. Even that is only a tiny amount of a near forty release back-catalogue recorded over just the last two decades. As regular followers will know, I’ve interviewed and featured a majority of those projects from the field-recordist, producer, writer and violence prevention expert. But I have to say, this is one of the most incredible and wild yet.

From his own notes and descriptions ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’ is linked to 2023’s Parchman Prison Prayer – Some Mississippi Sunday Morning album; back in the state penitentiary system, Ian recorded the songs of various prisoners inside the infamous maximum-security facility in the deep, deep South of America, finding a number of surprising performances of redemption and spiritual conversion. On the opposite bank geographically and spiritually speaking, showing certain divisions between the two forms and locations, the Appalachian side of this coin takes its lead from a controversial and dangerous (sometimes fatal) practice with its use of poisonous snakes. So dangerous in fact that at least a hundred prominent pastors have died over the last century, including founding father, the noted George West Hensley – an illiterate Prohibition era convicted moonshiner. Even if you survive, the omens are not great, with all medical intervention strictly forbidden. They do this to primarily test the faith, but also sometimes in the use of healing.

Excuse the pun, but a dying art, the practice as all but vanished from most parts of America; from 500 or more flocks in the 1970s to just a handful of dwindling pockets in the backwoods. As both a religion and way of life, scorned by Middle Class American, frowned upon by many as arcane, primitive and even backwards, the last surviving outposts of this rite stand now as a sort of twisted bastion against modernity and outsiders. The whole region has itself been decimated by globalisation and the move either overseas or away from its most prized industry of coal mining. Gutted out, as Ian would put it, this part of American is now infamous for its drug deaths: the highest per capita. 

You may of course have seen the church of snake handler’s phenomenon via the 2020 HBO documentary Alabama Snake, which hones in on the 1991 attempted murder of Darlene Summerford by her husband, snake handling pastor Glenn Summerford (investigative journalist Dennis Covington originally covered this in his Salvation on Sand Mountain book), or through the National Geographic Channel aired Snake Salvation series of 2013 (again, another fatal snake bite killed the show’s main focus, Jamie Coots), or even the Sundance Film nominee Them That Follow, starring current in vogue star of the screen Walton Goggins. If you haven’t, then you’re in for a crazy, wild ride; a vehement demonstration of faith set to both the rawest and most pastoral rock ‘n’ roll and blues accompaniment.

The whole thing is insane, a reclamation of rock ‘n’ roll from Satan. For this church and their forebears believe they actually created the musical form: On the same crossroads as Robert Johnson, but instead of selling one’s soul for it, they wrestled it back from the devil. Near riotous – and Ian’s own descriptions are strikingly vivid, crazy and backdropped by the ritual of blood being spilled liberally from the climatic snake bite wounds; though it seems no one died this time thankfully.

It’s akin to witnessing the first flash of danger/excitement of the original rock ‘n’ roll spirit: say, Jerry Lee Lewis smoking his keys, setting alight to the piano for the first time. A spectacle, stripped back to the essence of performance, scripture and evangelism, every speech is delivered in a weird Captain Beefheart style – could this indeed be where the great progenitor of psych and off-the-grid rock ‘n’ roll and blues got it from in the first place. All the energy, palpitations, heaving convulsions and sweat comes through in the recordings. You could be there, in amongst the congregation as the musicians in the flock belt out roots rock ‘n’ roll like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in communion with John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat. Though it could also as easily evoke the MC5, and on the scuffle bluesy boogie ‘Jesus Has To Be #1’ a trace of ‘It’s All Over Now” and Taj Mahal. The more scuzzed-up doomed Biblical prophecy of ‘Prepare For The Time Of Famine’ recalled, to my ears anyway, both Wreckless Eric and electric Muddy Waters. And yet there’s also more refined moments of gospel to be found amongst the possessed teachings; an amble along a less rocky road to the banks of the River Jordon and onto heaven – however, it takes until the very end to hear a lead female vocal, much in the style of June Carter.

The titles are worthy of investigation alone: I never thought I’d ever see “ADHD Meds & Starbucks” in the same sentence together, or the supposedly reassuring and testing fateful last words of “Don’t worry, it’s just a snake bite” – the sub-title in brackets, being a disapproving and rhetorical “what happened to this generation”.

White men (and women) sing the blues in a fevered frenzy of the expelled and exhalated. Foreign, estranged, to even most of their fellow Americans, this practice is given free rein to astound and surprise the listener. Without any hint of the preconceived and without prejudice, Ian shines a light in on a controversial isolated community in the grip of social and economic disillusion and disparity: you could call it a retreat from the mechanisms of the outside world that works against such communities. Ian is neither an interloper nor ethnomusicologist in his role; choosing instead to let us decide or form opinion to these highly dangerous and volatile sermons, the words spoken, and acts invoked. This project is nothing short of a revelation; a glimpse into Godly anointed rock ‘n’ roll of a very disturbing and often evocatively punkish kind.  

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For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail