Monolith Cocktail Blog

A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)

Ëda Diaz ‘Suave Bruta’
(Airfono) 2^nd February 2024

A rarefied artist who manages to merge dream-realism with both the traditional and contemporary, Ëda Diaz occupies multiple realms of geography to produce sublime and club-lite Latin-European R&B pop music. 

Between spheres of influence, her French-Colombian heritage is bonded across an exotic soundboard of effects, precise cut electronica, and transformed repurposed old dances and song; the latter of which includes an electrified form of currulao, ‘wonky’ Colombian salsa, bolero, bullerengue, vallenato and ‘dembow’. Most of these styles can be found in Caribbean-Colombia, the roots traced back to Africa and Europe. Currulao, for example, is a fusion of both continents, played by a quartet of musicians to the 6/8 rhythms of the narrow and tall cununo drum, shakers and marimba. By comparison, dembow is a curious one, originating, or rather traced back to the dancehall offshoot of ‘riddim’ it has become synonymous as a Dominican Island phenomenon. Specifically, the opening ‘Nenita’ (“little girl”) is a modern transformation of bullerengue, which is usually the preserved-sung song of elderly women, accompanied by the drum. In this time, Diaz finds a unique angle, viewpoint, across a piano wire dance and bobbing-to-quickening gabbled drum beat of handclaps, clean production and dreamy future pop R&B –reminding me of M.I.A., but also Xenia Rubinos’ Una Rosa album.

As you will hear, the multitalented artist can not only sing beautifully but also play an accentuated, bounding and walking double-bass perfectly, and tinkle the ivories too – a deft, subtle permutation of bulb-like notes, Afro-Latin vibes and more atonal sound effects textures can be heard adding a little extra something to the mood and feel. Diaz started out with classical leanings before moving to the double bass, entwining that instrument with her forgiving, placeable but captivating vocals. But soon enough she married the two with an embrace of the Colombian and South American sounds she heard at her relatives back in Medellin. The title of this, her debut, album is borrowed from one such star of the Colombian salsa and tropical music scene, Joe Arroyo’s popular ‘Suave Bruta’, or “super brute”. Feeding even further into that past scene and heritage, concertinaed accordion samples from Rafael Escalona’s vallenato-styled (Colombian “born in the valley” translated folk music with Caribbean roots) ‘La Casa En El Aire’ can be heard melding effortlessly with a modern production on the Creole flavoured, tin-scrappy shuffled and Amazonian danced ‘Tiemblas’ (“you tremble”). And the sauntered sound of the Colombian legend Lucho Bermudezi’s ‘Fiesta Negritos’ can be felt on the wistful, tight woody-sounding percussive and bandy Cuban-like ‘Sábana y Banano’ (“savanna and banana”).     

Back and forth across generations and cities, influences gel seamlessly. Yet invigorate, enrich and entice with something fresh and alluring. For example, hallucinatory dream-realism-lit inspirations influence the Francophone plonked and chamber-esque oasis found on ‘Déjà-Vu’, which includes an exotic wilderness of mirages and non-musical sounds from the lush environment – there’s a lot of these non-musical elements on the album, from sounds record in a hair salon to the buzzing interference of a fly.

Diaz’s production foil since 2017, Anthony Winzenrieth, needs congratulating on a first rate job; lean and sophisticated, but exciting and colourful, he’s managed to compliment all of her talents with an impressive host of effects and programming highlights – imagine CONTENTO meets Diplo and Coco Marie; from dancefloor to exotic magic pop and serenade. Already one of the best albums of 2024, I absolutely love this spellbinding, vulnerable and playful Latin-Euro vision.   

Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer ‘The Closest Thing To Silence’
(International Anthem) 2^nd February 2024

The Parisian-born electronic composer and saxophonist Ariel Kalma is once more bathing in the light, enjoying attention in recent years, and rejuvenating with a contemporary source of collaborative partners and facilitators of his six-decades legacy of sonic, textural, atonal and musical exploration.

And what a varied legacy it is too; starting out with the recorder and sax before going on to study computer science, which is when he crossed paths with the crooner-balladeer Salvatore Adamo, joining his touring band on the brass instrument that would become part of his signature sound. From there, expanding horizons further, he met and played with the bossa nova guitarist Baden Powell, in the late 1960s and early 70s. More leftfield recordings followed, with innovative experimental tape pieces that featured musical instruments (including a church organ alongside poetry and found sounds. By ’74 the increasingly worldly curious Kalma was bound for India on a one-way ticket. That field trip, in every meaning of the word, involved a full absorption of the country’s culture, music (especially those brassy resonances and drones), spiritualism and meditative practices. On his eventual return home to Europe, he merged these influences and finds with his own compositions and interest in the American minimalist movement of such luminaries as Reich, La Monte Young, Cage and Riley – particularly, I’d suggest, the New York Hypnotic School.

Kalma released his first album, Les Temps des Moissons, a little later whilst working at the famous French Musique concrete composer Pierre Henry’s GRM studio in Paris. Fifty years later and snippets of recording ideas and audio notes from that same period can be heard swimming around and interlaced like mirages with the new improvisations of his collaborative foils, ‘synthesist’ Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer. Between those two points there’s at least thirty-six plus albums logged in the Kalma archive; some extremely limited and obscure; released on cassette tape alone in some cases, and covering the new age, avant-garde, collage-edited, non-musical, electro-acoustic, environmental, cosmic and fourth world (possible musics) amorphous border crossings of Jon Hassell.

With a breadth as deep as that catalogue it’s no wonder he was invited to partake in a cooperative session for BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction show. Kalma himself (quickly we’re told) suggested his partners in this performance opportunity; never personally meeting them but perhaps finding common sonic ground with Chiu and Honer’s Åland Islands archipelago inspired/imbued recordings for this same label (International Anthem) – the title of which, The Closet Thing To Silence, is borrowed from a Kalma quote that appeared on a documentary that was packaged with the 2014 An Evolutionary Music compendium-style retrospective, released by RVNG Intl. It’s hardly surprising to find that Chiu has cited Kalam as an influence on his own work, and that of his partnership with Honer (that duo project birthed on IA as well), and so the response was just as quick, to accept working with such an icon of the form.

In communal synchronicity that initial experimental performance session expanded into an album; both spheres converging in a work of light and shadows; the ushering in of rich sound waves, modular rippled oscillations and the equinox. Extended to encompass suffused, sometimes diaphanous and wispy essences of place, time and mood, the eleven passages, suites and collages are as organic sounding as they are synthesized. Across the ages, with no clear boundaries as such, there’s a trace of Schulze, later period Tangerine Dream, Haruomi Hosone, Moebius (especially on the more bubbled, playful ‘Dizzy Ditty’), the minimalist school, Bex Burch, Emerald Webb and Sarah Davachi in the air and on the wind. Kalma’s saxophone, through pursed and more open-mouthed breathes, adds another dimension to the pastoral and neo-folk and classical attuned and held lines of Honer’s empirical viola bows. It sounds like a cyclonic mixture of John Zorn, the Pharoah, Peter Brotzmann and Andy Haas – actually, on the near Afro-jazz light new ager ‘A Treasure Chest’ there’s a hint of a more subdued Peter King.

In signature form, we can also hear hints, traces of mystical Tibet, Arabia and India, but the cosmos as well; an orbiting of heavenly objects and the arppegiator language of retro-futurist visitations. Within those vibrations, contours and drones, harmony is sought and a balance between evocation and the meditative found: an attempt to reach the title’s analogy no less. Coming full circle, those old recycled instructions and prompts now appear more like hallucinatory connections to a burgeoning, freshly investigated period in musical sonic theory. Played alongside the contemporary improvised vision of his two foils, Kalma’s ideas reinvigorate and conjure up new horizons. Proving complimentary bedfellows, Chiu and Honer bring much to this partnership of equals; transcending with a subtle fizziness and subscribing to a sagacious yet fresh sounding soundscape.

Nino Gvilia ‘EP Number 1: Nicole’ (Released 12^th January 2024)
‘EP Number 2: Overwhelmed By The Unexplained’ (8^th March 2024)
(Hive Mind Records)

An inspired part of the world, both in antiquity and the now, the roots of Poti in Georgia go back twenty-six centuries; connecting right back to the ancient Greek colony of Phasis – featured in the tales of The Argonauts and the quest for the golden fleece. The city sits as a trading and strategic ‘outlet’, or ‘mouth’, to the Black Sea. It’s also home to the imaginative diaphanous figurehead of Nino Gvilia, the latest worldly wondrous edition to the Hive Mind Records roster. I say imaginary, or rather the label itself does, as Nino appears to be the translucent creation of one Giulia Deval; a character who woos, lulls and beautifully reflects on the themes of ecology and the place of the songwriter in such trying times of geopolitical tumult and crisis.

The songwriter, vocalist, toy guitar/harmonium player and field-recordings composer is joined in this worthy artful cause by a choir of beatific voices, the multitasking foils of Zevi Bordovach and Pietro Caramelli, and by the chamber pop and tapestry renaissance strings of Giulia Pecora (violin) and Clarissa Marino (cello). Across a moiety of EPs, released in a staggered fashion, this ensemble gravitate towards the waters in an entrancing manner; beginning with the seraph-like ethereal biosphere of ‘Nicole’ – it must be pointed out that both EPs seem to be divided, title wise, into the female and male, with Overwhelmed By The Unexplained headed with the popular Scandinavian boy’s name, ‘Anders’. Bathed in the veiled refracted light of aquatic harmonium, subdued percussion, and melodious accentuate piano, the tender choral-voiced opener sounds like an underwater Joanna Newsome or Judee Sill sprite in moving, if leftfield, poetry. The subject of this song seems a most mysterious, wanton presence.

Later, on that second EP, the first directly referenced song title to Deval’s home is made on the strangely plucked, like raindrops on a wooden jetty, ‘Rain On Pallastomi’. Named after a lake outside the city – an archeologically important site that’s given up evidence of the ancient Georgians (known as the Colchis) – this obvious beauty spot of inspiration proves beguiling and dreamily stirring; recalling June McDoom or Natalie Ross Lebracht in a bellowed, concertinaed scenic trance.  

Both atmospheric songbook EPs feature a cleverly arranged mixed chorus of venerable, timeless and round voices; at one point, performed in the poetic form of the atavistic ‘quatrain’, a complete encapsulated stanza poem, consisting of four lines and often featuring alternate rhymes – made famous by not only Nostradamus in prophetic form, but also by such seers as Blake, Burns and Thomas Grey. And within the subtle breathing and gauzy spells there are more empirical captured field recordings of nature’s song, of children at play and the environment, alongside talking head experts on ecological sciences – the inter-connective world of bacteria. on the repeated ‘Dirty Is Just What Has Boundaries’ mantra, shown to be integral to humanities survival on Earth. Sounding like a cross between the Celtic, Medieval and folk communal, this interlayered choral circle frees up the subject matter (meta) with a mystical atonal and wire-y stroked vision of arcadia.  

Creating a musical, lyrical eco system of their own, soundtracked by folk, minimalism, the hallucinatory and pastoral – with only the final vaporous misty esoteric second EP’s titular track changing from cuckoo-like voiced loops and sympathetic strings to disturbing futuristic daemonic augur –, the Nino Gvilia encompassed guise ebbs and flows with the movement of the replenishing waters, the lakeside and mill turning scenes of the surroundings, to produce a disarming hymn. Idiosyncratic in beauty, I’d recommend this diaphanous (there’s that word again, which even appears as track title in its own congruous right) accomplished mini-opus to those with a penchant for Hatis Noit, Seaming To, Tia Blake and Roberto Musci. Hive Mind Records have unassumingly set the bar high with this latest edition to their stable; a more placeable and visceral release you’d be hard to find in 2024.

A WE JAZZ DOUBLE-BILL

Anni Kiviniemi Trio ‘Eir’ 12^th January 2024

Divr ‘Is This Water’ 2^nd February 2024

The We Jazz label starts off the year, not with a loud fanfare, but with an assured and intimate double-bill of debut releases; one from the US-based Finnish pianist Anni Kiviniemi and her trio of double-bassist Eero Tikkanen and drummer Hans Hulbaekomo, and the other, from the Swiss Divr trio (more from them later). 

Featuring heavily in our end of year lists the Helsinki label, magazine, store and festival hub is among the best jazz labels in the world right now; showcasing, as it does, an enviable roster of Scandinavian talent – its only rival on the continent being the ACT Music stable of world-leading jazz maestros.

Launching the new year schedule, they’ve chosen to open with the adroit original musicianship of Kiviniemi and her bassist/drummer foils, who tiptoe, meander and playfully walk a less travelled road; artfully, moodily, and on occasion, introspectively counterpointing the classical with a freer, looser style of jazz performance.

Although the original compositions were written under certain pre-conditional limitations, once they emerged from the pen, anything goes. A free rein is given in the spirit of improvised democracy – the bandleader-pianist measures this at 95% in the studio, 99% when on stage. This methodology throws up some surprising intense and off-kilter results; a transformed and transcribed form of harpsichord or celeste vision of Schubert at a Georgian dinner party on the textured, descriptive ‘Choral’, and a touch of Marty Isenberg’s Wes Anderson inspired leftfield interpretations on the kooky ‘Judy’. The latter name part of a personal inquiry, love for and ruminations of those held dear and close; the most personal of which, is the album’s Eir title, the name of Kiviniemi’s daughter: born after the recordings but before the album’s release.   

Imbued with that closeness, bond, the music is certainly felt. And yet the mood can be transporting; away from Europe to French North Africa ala Tangiers Duke Ellington, and South Africa, ala Abdullah Ibrahim. The art however, is in the way each musician reads the others, and how they respond; creating tumults, fairytales, the blues, mystery and the serenaded from the merest prompt. Kiviniemi’s piano is as classically-tuned as it is able to flourish within the free-form, spiritual and old time idioms of jazz; an incredible constant movement that’s simultaneously capable of catching the listener off-guard with a sharpened, near off-key note or two and alternative scales whilst staying playful and melodious throughout.  The in-demand bassist Tikkanen reminded me in part of Thomas Bramerie, his double-bass perception of timing and movement almost impeccable, but freed up and loosening. Meanwhile, Hulbaekmo (a member of fellow We Jazz label mate Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra, whose Family album made our choice albums of the year in 2023) can nearly explode like Elvin Jones in between deft tumbles; roll snaps and more percussive bouts of artistry. Encompassing many styles, dalliances and fandangos the trio repurposes classical and jazz influences to write a unique account of personalized feelings, expressions, themes and musicianship. More importantly, this is a trio that gels and sounds telepathic in their interactions. A great way to kick-off the 2024 calendar.  

The second album in this We Jazz label double-bill is the Swiss trio Divr’s first release on the Helsinki platform. It also features, just like Anni Kiviniemi’s set-up, the piano in a prominent if unburdened and freely moving role. Based between Zurich and Basel, keys player Philipp Eden, drummer Jonas Ruther and (double) bassist Raphael Walser pool their talents for a reshaping of water in its many forms; from splashes of resonating cymbals to a piano tumult of disturbed choppy waves and the ebbing tides of calmer meditative waters.

Although this is indeed a jazz record, the original compositions and choices of covers extends beyond into trip-hop and the downbeat breaks territory of artists like Ju$ufa and J Dilla – the latter not so surprising as I referenced the late icon on label mate Otis Sandsjo’s two Y-OTIS albums, which featured Dan Nicholls the post-producer of this trio’s debut. You can add touches of Jesse Futerman and the Protico Quartet to that sound too, albeit mostly kept simmered and attuned to the very movements in the air and from off the myriad of watery inspirations. The difference here though is in choosing to, and proving a most congruous to the overall sound and feel of Is This Water, cover music from both Radiohead and Broadcast; the former, translating the In Rainbows low, moody and slowly stirring ‘All I Need’ into a languid and dreamy turn dramatic tighter rolling crescendo, and the latter, a beautifully articulated, dreamt and longed contemplative version of the cinematic but understated beautiful ‘Echo’s Answer’. Both originals are themselves complimentary in the first place, but retuned by the Divr trio they became part of a deeper if often translucent almost gauzy fabric.

It’s a style of musical performance played in, what the trio call, a ‘multi-directional time’; a flow that is based on largely acoustic improvisation and loops. Yet they emphasis that doesn’t mean their music is repetitive, those waves and loops instead subtly changing each time round, the cyclonic aspect so subtle and reverberating as to go almost unnoticed. Instead at times it all sounds near formless: in a good way. The vibrations and quivers evoking atmospheres and presence; especially the finale, ‘A Glass Is No Glass Is A Glass’, which like its name suggests is glassy in substance, but also near spooked and esoteric; certainly mysterious with its constant crispy white noise background, odd jarred glass bulb notes and brushy drag of sticks across drum skins. There’s also the sound of European voices in the background, filtering in from the park or the woods.

There’s a soft but nice span of moods and music, with touches of Francis Bebey and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble on the tine plucked-like ‘42’, and a feel of Mingus and McCoy Tyner on the slightly skipped, darting and choppy ‘Supreme Sweetness’ – Divr riff on the highly influential American songbook trio of Gus Arnheim, Charles N. Daniels and Harry Tobias’ gold standard from another age.

In a meditative, thoughtful mood throughout, the Pali language ‘Upeksha’ – a spiritual virtue of equanimity, even-mindedness and non-attachment to the fluctuations of worldly fortune – takes things that little further; the drums almost whispered and tinkled, the watery piano notes hypnotic, as if materializing from out of thin air.  As fortunes and temperaments change with the ebbing tides, the trio dance and explore in an amorphous fashion across unburdened soundscapes and movements with an improvised musical dialect and flow. Is The Water is an idiosyncratic debut from a leftfield jazz troupe; an ideal signing for the leading Northern European We Jazz label: fast becoming a stamp of authority in that field of music.   

Walter Kemp 3 ‘Black Whole Live’
26^th January 2024

The highly acclaimed bandleader-pianist and teacher Walter Kemp lays down a near perfect set with his new Black Whole Live album. Taking melody and recognized tunes on a ride, Kemp and his foils turn earthly and city-hive incubated compositions and autumnal romantic serenades into the cosmic stratosphere and beyond. Freeform, conscious jazz is effortlessly entwined with the classical, the avant-garde, funky, the blues and sci-fi as Kemp and his dynamic quartet stretch themselves to the limits.

It sounds like a lifetime of experience and influences are drawn upon, with Kemp’s formative years of studying classical and gospel (inspired by his father’s own career as a composer-performer in those fields), and the pull towards jazz, used as the jump-off points.

From the atonal to sharply jarring, and the tuneful to experimental, his piano, Rhodes and Viscount organ (named after the UK maker, this instrument is voiced to sound like an English pipe organ) skills are both stirring and tumultuous in equal measures: a touch of Monk here, Ahmed Jamal and Jimmy McGriff there. Held suffusions of gospel can be found alongside La Monte Young experimentation, and both dramatic and accentuate flourishes. But it’s Allan Mednard’s Billy Cobham-like tight incipient tumbles, rolls and percussive soloing that gets the whole live performance in motion; carrying over into the first mini opus, ‘Novum’ (the Latin for “new thing”, and brought into the lexicon by the sci-fi scholar Darko Suvin and his peers to describe the ‘scientifically’ plausible innovations used in that genre’s narratives). In nine or so minutes the ensemble cover a multitude of bases, from jazz-fusion to the wild violin off-the-scale elbow frantic’s of Tony Conrad, Michael Urbaniak and Jason Kao Hwang (courtesy of the Grammy Award-winning violinist Scott Tixier).

Another band member, Brent Birckhead, offers whistled and bird-like floating exhales and squeezes of woodwind to that simultaneously concentrated and free workout. Rishan Odel meanwhile, is switching between thick-stringed taut and more loosened double-bass runs and a little slap electric bass funk – Odel and the rest of the group going as far as to evoke a grooving Herbie Hancock and Weather Report jamming with The Time, on the soul-jazz flexed ‘Don’t Step In It’.

There’s certainly a lot going on at any one time, and yet you can hear every note, every phrase, chord, triplet and riff: even in the more chaotic maelstroms. From melodious parts of Duke Ellington, Count Bassie and Blue Note to the flare-ups of ECM, the Pharoah, Marius Neset and Devin Gray and the more out-there echoes of Steve Swell & Andrew Cyrille’s partnership, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Walter Semtek, the musicality, feel and direction of travel is deep and wide-ranging. Kemp and his ensemble are nothing short of accomplished, performing not only a highly recommended live but essential jazz album. Already, in my humble opinion, one of the year’s standard bearers and highlights: it will take some beating. Expect to see this album in my end of year’s list.

Nehan ‘An Evening With Nehan’
(Drag City) 26^th January 2024

Something unique, process and methodology wise, from the Japanese improvisational underground with the Nehan quintet’s ‘brain waves’ initiated performance. Literally powered, or directed, by a willing “testee” and their emitted 9hz brain waves, extemporized vibes are set in motion for a set of serialism peregrinations performed by an ensemble that includes members of wound-down and still active projects: from the band leader’s own Ghost and Batoh groups to Acid Mothers Temple acolytes and members of The Silence and Espvall.

Instigated by Masaki Batoh, an acupuncturist (of all things), musician and designer of the machine apparatus behind this experiment, the Nehan guise is an amorphous vehicle brought into existence from a relaxed but alert state of consciousness. Tapping into the new age, the scientific and meditative, the generated sonic data channeled results are simultaneously far out, avant-garde and progressive.

This particular release was originally recorded from a live evening performance at Tokyo’s Guk Sound in August of 2022; divided here into Nehan and Ocean sides. The volunteer brain pulse oscillator subject isn’t named, but the set-up on this chosen night included the willing Futoshi Okano, Haruo Kondo and Junzo Tateiwa; between them, navigating an instrumental apparatus of gongs, timpani, tablas, drums, percussion, crumhorn (a Renaissance-period double-reed instrument from Swabia), bagpipes, mellotron and sound effects.

From pulsations emerges two undefined events; with vague references to Shinto, India, Tibet and the ether, yet far from ceremonial or religious. A chthonian mysticism of guirro-like stretches, ratcheted bows, burnished resonated struck gongs, spoke rattled percussion, piercing reeds, bounded timpani rolls and a mix of Fortean and Zodiak Club Berlin radio dial craziness. Side one draws us into an otherworldly realm of Toshiro Mayuzumi & Makoto Moroi, Popol Vuh amd Walter Smetak invocations. But then, almost out of nowhere, a rhythm, synchronization is found and explosion of Embryo and Acid Mothers freakouts kick in. This all simmers down into a stripped down Sergius Golowin like traversing.

The flip side, ‘Ocean’, reminded me of Yamash’ta & The Horizon; a little too of Terry Riley & Don Cherry’s Koln partnership, His Name Is Alive and, when the generators start to mimic a steam-like train chugged and speaker rotating movements, Bowie’s Station To Station meets Fripp & Eno’s No Pussyfooting. The elements of thunderous rumbles and warped board shakes of a leviathan looming above are contrasted with a virtual South Seas oasis of birds-of-paradise. Intermittent scribbled and wiry broadcasts and discordant white noise tune into some esoteric visitation from the cerebral hypnotic state; brain waves that leap between the picturesque to near jarring. An interesting process provokes open-ended sonic results on this new age curious project. Lovers of the Japanese underground will be queuing around the block.  

Brion Gysin ‘Junk’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 26^th January 2024

The late outstanding contributor to the arts may have his name on the album but Junk is the second album taken from the Ramuntcho Matta vaults by the reissue vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS.  Following on from last year’s self-titled Ramuntcho Matta LP, the Brion Gysin headed habit-kicking Junk is another feather in the cap of this well-connected creative nomad, who produced it and helped shape this collaborative work of avant-garde funk, no wave and refashioned beat poetry. And so once more the label hones in on one of his most esteemed collaborations.

The younger sibling to and scion of the Matta artist brood – his father, the Chilean-born Roberto, a key if not always congruous member of the Surrealist movement with his ‘psychological morphologies’ or alien ‘inscapes’ coined subconscious manifestations, and brother, Gordon Matta-Clark, the ‘anarchitecture’ pioneer of such concepts as the ‘split’ house and various art performances – Ramuntcho quickly made a name for himself in the same creative fields of influence; in part by his formative years as an aide to the celebrated polymath Gysin: poet, writer, calligraphic abstract artist, excommunicated Surrealist, Tangier restaurateur, inventor of the ‘dream machine’ and progenitor of the famous cut-up writing techniques favoured by such luminaries and acolytes as Bowie. In a world of crossovers, inter-connectivity, Gysin also famously knocked about with William Burroughs, sharing his discovery of that same cut-up technique with the Naked Lunch author during their time at the infamous Beat Hotel in Paris.

A titan of the alternative arts world, it’s no wonder that the British-born, but of Canadian heritage, Gysin opened doors for his aide; living at this time in the mid 1970s and working with Ramuntcho in New York – talking of those wild links, Ramuntcho shared a flat with scenesters Nana Vasconcelos and Arto Lindsay, in the same building as the Talking Heads’ Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. Although tragedy would strike with the death of Ramuntcho’s brother and conceptual art icon Gordon in the late 70s, the burgeoning producer would stay on in New York, falling in with the Mudd Club, CBGB and Danceteria in-crowd; taking note of the evolving polygenesis movements of early hip-hop, post-punk, electronica, no wave funk and more worldly sounds (from Soweto to the outback, Caribbean and Hispaniola). But it all came together, or rather this particular project did – dusted off, remastered and given a deserving vinyl reissue by WEWANTSOUNDS – in the French capital.

With the CV –notably recording Don Cherry’s 1983 ‘Kick’, the opening track on Junk, as asingle for the boutique French label Mosquito – and network expanding ever further with a move to Paris, there would be performances with the Senegalese group Xalam and the Arabic rock group Carte de Séjour, with Rachid Taha. A residency in Lyon led to a meeting with the Algerian-born French avant-garde choreographer Régine Chopinot, who had taught dance at the city’s Croix-Rousse before forming her own experimental multimedia company. Chopinot invited Ramuntcho to compose the soundtrack to her upcoming Via show – the costume designer of which was a young aspiring Jean-Paul Gaultier. Resulting in the, already mentioned, self-titled 1985 released production, which was produced between Ramuntcho’s home and the Studio d’Auteuil in Paris, tracks were recorded with a couple of the same musicians that appeared on Junk: most notably, the Stinky Toys and Elli & Jacno duo’s Elli Medeiros on guest vocals, and Suicide Romeo’s Frederic Cousseau (better known as Fred Goddard) on drums. They were joined on the Gysin trip by Xalam’s Abdoulaye Prosper Niang on hand drums, the Modern Guy group’s Yann Le Ker on bass, and guests Caroline Loeb (the French actress, radio host, singer and director), Lizzy Mercier (hot property French new wave pop star) and of course, leading the way and literally kicking off the LP, Don Cherry.

Essentially putting cool-as-fuck, happening music to Gysin’s late 1950s famous habit-kicking beat poetics, the Junk LP is a both grizzled and bouncing street level and discothèque mantra on addictions. Hardly surprising with the track records of Gysin and Cherry: two better foils you couldn’t meet in that regard. Preempting, or prophesying, his own death just a couple of years later after setting up in the studio to make this LP (the notes say that Ramuntcha put this together over a time period between 1980 and ‘84, with the LP’s release in ‘85), the hacking coughed skull and crossbones warning of ‘Stop Smoking’ makes a real Ludus, Altered Images and Bush Tetras post-punk jangle funk out of Gysin’s fateful nicotine addiction. Already surviving the trauma of colon cancer in the 70s – the surgery and treatment so savage that he nearly committed suicide -, Gysin would tragically contract lung cancer in the 80s, succumbing to the disease in ‘86. With the featured French chic chorus of Elli Medeiros – “Isn’t the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carry you off in” -, cigarette brands enter the lucid chat like alluring sponsors of death to a new wave saunter and rolled hand drums loose funeral dance.

For his part, Cherry, sounding not too dissimilar to 80s period Miles, tickles and cycles languid cornet riffs and swirls to a mix of Afro-jazz, downtown funk and go-go: like Gil Scott-Heron on a Keith Herring scribbled walled skid row, strutting in a bandy fashion to a boom box of Maximum Joy, Talking Heads, Liquid Liquid, early Hip-Hop and Parisian aloofness. Many will probably know this one off-by-heart, may even have spotted the much-sampled licks. As part of this new package – only ever re-released I think on CD in 1991 -, there’s two previously unreleased 7” vinyl versions of the opener; an ‘alternative’ more contained beat rolled and buoyant version and an ‘instrumental’.  

The tile-track is unsurprising another one of those rough repeated vocal prompts to, well…kick the habit. The music has a very Afro-Caribbean bent to it; Island life, with the subtle sounds of glasses chinking; perhaps a beachside getaway, only you’ve pitched up in Jamaica with all its own enticing addictions. Old style ringing alarm clocks, used as a sort of percussion, sound alerts as a near polyrhythm Postcard Records era guitar riff plucks away.    

A voice of a generation, Gysin’s part in the beat movement is given an energetic, bandy and bendy, funky and world musical sound; a collage of all those various NYC and Paris influences, art and attitude. Liner notes author Jason Weiss had a lovely, and brilliant expression for that voice and poetry style: “Permutation poems […] like etudes for expressivity”. On the R&B bent funky-disco street jive ‘Sham Pain’, he sounds almost in a lucid despondent stupor, but like he’s having some bawdry playful fun on the later CAN period, maybe a touch of Dunkelziffer, swinging on the concrete jungle vines hooted and whistled ‘Baboon’. Gysin is later flanked by the French chanteuses of cool – Lizzy Descloux and Caroline Loeb – on the new wave sassy victory, “fun, fun, fun”, bravado ‘V.V.V’. This reminded me of both 80s period Marianne Faithful, coquettish Jane Birkin of the same period, and Annie Anxiety.

As a crossover with Ramuntcha’s own self-titled LP, as an additional bonus of a kind, there’s a previously unreleased version of the Congo-esque twine twirled and turning overruminated ‘All Those Years’. This version is more tines turning, more acoustic and intimate, and a nice way to bring closure to an ill-fated artist’s song.  

Continuing to draw the spotlight on the work and productions of Ramuntcha Matta, WEWANTSOUNDS have revived a cult encapsulation of that early, polygenesis 80s music scene in Paris; bringing attention to two truly funky, cool and worldly cats in the process. Junk sounds as fresh now as it must have done back in ’85; uncannily, fitting in with the contemporary music scene. Which is why I’m perplexed that Ramuntcha is a name that seems to be missing from the current lexicon of influences, as integral as Art Lindsey and his crowd to the development and widening of the musical language. This LP package, just like the previous Ramuntcha Matta S-T LP, should right that.

Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world 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. 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 buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.