Dominic Valvona’s Eclectic Reviews Roundup (Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available to buy now).
The Holy Family ‘Go Zero’
(Rocket Recordings) 21st July 2023
A convergence of the chthonian, Fortean, symbolist, magical and Biblical under the murky multilayered literary canopy of Brian Catling’s atavistic Vorrh forest, the newest work of hermetic density from The Holy Family feeds on the late creative polymath’s epic surreal-fantasy and on the “hypothetical” time repression theory of the group’s founding member, David Jason Smith.
The album title, Go Zero, was coined as a mantra; an incantation and leitmotif for Smith’s philosophical propound idea that “we are [all] continually moving forward into our past until we arrive at our birth-creation – the Tree Of Knowledge…or “Going Zero””. This idea is writ large across a monolithic three-part suite dedication. Although unmistakably part of the same dark materials, the family set in motion a different kind of supernatural manifestation and afflatus alchemy with this mini opus. It begins with tribal, tubular-paddled beats and vaporous voices before building into the helter-skelter of the double drumming (Smith in unison with the newest recruit Joe Lazarus, who takes on more of the rhythm and lumbered drumming duties – Smith handing over to concentrate on vocals and synth) centrepiece, ‘Part II’. Locked-in to an intense behemoth, Tago Mago period Can are thrown into a brilliant psychedelic-prog-free-jazz-post-punk hadron collider of The Sunns, Black Angels, Rema-Rema, Atomic Rooster, Hawkwind and whomping post-Bitches Brew Miles Davis. The grinded bass line reminds me of Liquid Liquid and Killing Joke. The final part ends on a oscillating, airy bed of more peaceable, dreamy and starry occult yearning and sighing; a misty conclusion of a kind to that return-to-the-Kabbalah-like-birth theorem.
The first half, or five tracks, of the album feature at least two pieces based on characters (recognized by those who’ve managed to unravel the heavy symbolist, surreal and often almost impenetrable prose of the author) from the late British author and artist Brian Catling’s The Vorrh trilogy. Evangelized by the equally heralded Alan Moore as “a Phosphorescent masterpiece”, and the first great literary work of its kind in the 21st century (the magik imbued comic book titan turn novelist it must be stated, did write the forward for that same series), the alternative, colonialist, time-travelled series of books mixes facts and fiction, both real and imaginary people in a fantastical phantom world built around a sentient African forest, older than mankind and said to hold all knowledge. The forest is inspired itself by Raymond Roussel’s Impressions Of Africa, and that French writer makes an appearance as part of an expansive cast. The main protagonists include a hunter and his Cyclops sidekick, who attempt to penetrate (in every sense of that word and its various connotations) the off-limits dense magical forest.
Just as Catling saw no demarcated boundaries, lines in his writing and artistic practices, The Vorrh trilogy reflects an amorphous breakdown of barriers, liberties, language, prose and storytelling. Personally I’ve never read it: any of it. But the Family coven has used the voyeuristic sounding Watcher and creepy Chalky’s Eyes references. The former, a stained glass window light permitted and anointed pause in the doom-laden eeriness, the latter, a bad juju swirled apparitional voiced and jangled cart driven journey under occult pastoral skies.
Away from those inspirations, ‘Crawling Out’ summons forth the spirit world from a throb of Swans, John Carpenter and Mandy scoring Jóhann Jóhannsson evocations: it must be said that David’s voice is in ghostly form once more, mysterious and wispy and anything but “holy”. The track that follows, ‘Bad Travelling’, is more like a Satanic Royal Trux sharing the Ouija board with early Gary Numan and White Ring. ‘Hell Born Babel’, as the title makes quite clear, turns up the daemonic factor by ten. A Biblical scowl and squall of heavy meta(l) rock drums, doom and dark prog influences acts with evil intentions. Destruction, the toppling of totems, is unleashed in a cathexis pain of noise and chaos.
A phantasmagoria of occult manifestations, conjured or drawn from out the old soil, from out of the ether, The Holy Family’s Go Zero album offers darkness with glimmers of light. The Holy of their name, taken from the controversial Angela Carter narrated documentary on Christ’s depiction in the Western art cannon, not so forgiving and Christian, but an open vassal for confronting and exploring the divine and ungodly. Guidance there is none, as the band unnerve, rush, grind or prowl across a mystical dreaded mind fuck of a world that mirrors our own mortal chaotic, ungovernable hell hole. In short, it’s a great dense trip with dramatic voodoo and accelerated velocity.
Various ‘Coco María Presents Club Coco ¡AHORA! The Latin Sound Of Now’
(Bongo Joe)
Sauntering into the summer with a second volume showcase of Latin flavours, the international DJ, crate digger, radio and soon-to-be online TV show host Coco María curates a lively, sometimes daft, party playlist of contemporary artists and groups transforming the sounds of Central And South America. Whilst the inaugural compilation – triggered in part by the Mexican-born worldly traveller’s burgeoning, if “discreet”, online radio show for Berlin’s Cashmere Radio and later, her takeover of Worldwide FM’s breakfast show, renamed the Breakfast Coco Club – honed in on the highly popular, and far-reaching, sounds of the versatile Cumbia and other such Latin-American styles, the second installment is framed as an alternative take on those original forms by a new generation.
Through innovation, transmogrification in some cases, and on occasion with eccentric playfulness, everyone on this compilation is taking those yesteryear inspirations forward, or on a wonky trajectory. However, that Latin sound, rhythm and infectious call to sway, swing and even hula, remains unmistakable.
With a truly international cast, our host María has found acts and individuals both scattered across Colombia, Peru and Venezuela and in Europe, as she facilitates the “Latin Sound Of Now”. As if to illustrate that music’s reach, and a unique take, the compilation begins with a swimmingly, dreamy spell of John Baker and Martin Denny-like near Polynesian vibes from the Israeli producer Raz Olsher, who evokes a mirage of Cumbia and gently scrapped and tinkled percussion in the waiting hours, on ‘Pacific Dreams’. This is bookended with Olsher’s light dance of Afro-Latin instruments (sounds like a Balafon, but I could be wrong) ‘Vamonos Cocos’.
After setting the scene, in the hours between the band setting up, relaxing with a beer at the bar, the tempos accelerated with the arrival of Colombia’s excitable proxy supergroup Los Pirañas. Well versed players from the Meridian Brothers, Chúpame el Dedo, Frente Cumbiero and Ondatropica Romperya fraternity congregate under the Bogota retro-futurist flag to unleash a signature warbled and fun, shaken and pots and pans rattled conga that evokes the Day of the Dead, the carnival, mambo and Joe Meek on that trio’s lively ‘Puerta del Sol’ kitsch quiver.
María, not content with a long list of creative outlets, can be heard singing on the next featured tune, ‘Sacudete’, by the Rotterdam-based of Venezuelan distraction combo Lola’s Dice. With a swirl of wispy allurement, María entices the listener to enter the hypnotic, trippy world of spooky synths and hazy sumptuous mystery.
Moving southwest of the Netherlands and into France, The Guess What duo have a personal connection to the selector; having encouraged and helped María to move from “tunesmith” to DJ. In kind, they get to share two doses of eccentric tomfoolery and knowing cult shenanigans. ‘Children’s Favourite’, as the title suggests, is a quirky squelch and warbled acid twist of Cumbia set to the background of kids playing in the background, and ‘Stickle Brick’ is a modular-sounding zap of breaks, Space, early Jan Hammer, Bernard Estardy and Ray Cathode, sunning it on the South American Pacific coastline.
One name that immediately leaps out at you, from the running order, is that of the notable Acid Coco siblings of Paulo and Andrea Olarte Toro, who have been electrifying and fusing Colombian music for more than two decades. Bridging eras and legacies, their Latintronica blueprint can be heard next to the holiday fun vibes, modern R&B and finger dancing synth pads on the swaying ‘Seguimos Sonriendo’.
But discoveries for me include the flange and chorus effects guitar accompanied, soulful, dream pop mixed with Iberian longing ‘Las Mijas’ by the Ronca duo, and Iko Chérie’s muffled and gauzy Pacific Island paradise of Finis Africae and Jon Hassell-esque vapours ‘Lepidopetra’. The latter, under the alter ego of the multifaceted French artist Marie Merlot, filters the Latin essence and a sort of Casio Bossa preset with surrealist and diaphanous veils of exotica. The former, I could imagine being performed with both accentuate plaint and vigor on stools by the duo, who seem to have conjured up a lovely piece of pop and neo-soul.
Another notable pick from the track list is that of the “mysterious” Peruvian producer known as Dip In The Dub. A keen listener we’re told of María’s show, this anonymous maverick without a single release to their name, reached out. And now, they’ve managed to appear on the Coco party line, putting forward an Arabian airways vision of the Cumbia sound with ‘La Cumbia Del Sufi Que No Sabía Bailer’. Tuareg rock is merged effortlessly with the Acid Arab, Omar Souleyman, the mizzle of North African Sufism and the sounds of Afro-Brazil and Colombia to create a real global fusion.
However, María digs out a popular set finisher from the 80s to more or less close on, pulling out Ronald Snijder’s 1985 hit ‘Off The Groove’. Hailing from the smallest sovereign state in all of South America, the former Dutch colony of Suriname, Snijder, and his trademark excitable flute skills, mixes his heritage with a melting pot of funk and disco on a smooth 12” groove of 80s tropical flavourings. Prince, Trouble Funk, Sly & Robbie and Stevie Wonder roll into one chuffed and rasped fluted boogie of slick and relaxed Latin-light perfection.
Coco María’s tastes prove inviting and also fun throughout this changeable saunter of transformations and hotfooted dance floor allurements. Within what is arguably a blurred definition of the genre, both regular followers and new listeners alike will find a scintillating array of artists and acolytes carrying the torch for an infectious groove into the 21st century and beyond. The Latin Sound Of Now is an encouraging expansion of María’s original compilation, a spotlight on the developments of a scene full of new discoveries. Horizons will be opened.
African Head Charge ‘A Trip To Bolgatanga’
(On-U Sound)
Dub-centric rhythm providers African Head Charge enter the sonic fray once more after a twelve-year hiatus. The four-decade spanning project, once arguably a driving force behind such eclectic, electric Jamaican and African peregrinations, is back with a simultaneously familiar yet evolving sound that’s inspired and imbued by the project’s co-founder steward Bonjo Tyabinghi and his Ghanaian oasis home for all those years, Bolgatanga.
Lying in the Red Volta River Valley in the east of the country, this melting pot of Ghanaian communities is an ideal junction of sounds; mostly the individual and almost unique in variation talking and rhythmic drums of the West African tribes that migrated to this southern terminus point on the ancient Trans-Saharan trade route. Initially bringing his Rasta Jamaican heritage to this basement conceived experiment – originally, alongside On-U Sound label instigator and foil Adrian Sherwood, recording in the basement of a studio in London’s China Town during the “dead” unwanted and cheap hours -, Bonjo now plugs into the creatively happy surroundings of his family-orientated Ghana home.
Adding to the herbalist dub, reggae, raga, electronica, bass culture ingredients there’s spells of kolo lute and exuberant “mah” and “bah” earthy vocal expressions: courtesy of the Ghanaian klaxon-sounding King Ayisoba. On his own records the King performs a guttural and howled vision of hiplife; a Ghanaian style of music that mixes rap and electric beats with more traditional rhythms. You can hear his scratchy, bandy two-string lute elastics and bawls on the album’s Lee Scratch Perry-esque, wah-wah phaser(ed) and excitable opening ‘A Bad Attitude’. The wise and consolable mantra of which is to take time to mend a negative, quarrelsome mindset: “A Bad attitude is like a flat tyre/You can’t go anywhere until you change it.” The self-anointed royal is back on the fluty-whistled, Upsetters-esque (ala Super Ape), light-footed, bounced hand-drumming ‘Never Regret A Day’; a call that’s as boastful sounding as it is vocal in “seizing the day”.
Ayisoba is not the only guest on this African-infused journey. On an album of abundant drumming, AHC stalwart Perry Melius makes a welcome return to the field (his drummer contributor stretching right back to the 90s), and a turn or two from the Ghetto Priest. On both drowsy fanfares and yearn wafted serenade (think Orlando Julius) horn duties, Paul Booth, Richard Roswell and David Fullwood add to the general languid, trippy mood. On the soft-gauzy, Adamski boards Banca di Gaia’s world trance express, ‘Accra Electronica’, it sounds like the reeds ensemble have picked up a clarinet or oboe, whilst a cornet trumpet nestles a suitable laidback line. But it’s blowpipes and snake-charmer oboe on the following jungle exotic soundscape, ‘Push Me Pull You’.
Actually there’s far too many guests, players to list, but in the mix there’s strings, organ and a wealth of percussion being remolded, warped and ricocheted by Sherwood; an effects menagerie of wildlife, Augustus Pablo, Ammar 808, Future Sound of London, Jah Wobble, Transglobal Underground cosmic and reverberating dub from the On-U Sound founder and AHC co-conspirator. A twelve-year break without diminishing the vibrancy, AHC’s trip to Bolgatanga and Ghana has been rewarding and sonically expanding: An exploration with righteous cause that cements the project’s legacy.
Mokoomba ‘Tusona – Tracings In The Sand’
(Outhere)
It’s taken a while, what with an exhaustive tour schedule and the pandemic that engulfed and shut down the entire globe (near enough), but the Zimbabwe group Mokoomba have followed up on their 2017 album Luyando with another warm blast of sincere heartfelt celebration and disarming grief.
As a bridge to that previous album they’ve included a trio of reworked, or “remix”, versions of Luyando songs as part of the Tusona songbook. The “personal lament”, felt even back then, at leaving their inspired Victoria Falls and Zambezi River home to go on tour ‘Kulindiswe’ was originally acoustic, but is now given an uplift of hand drums, clip-clop gallop percussion, cheery horns, a smoothly upturned bass accompaniment and an Afro-jazz like kick. Meanwhile the original hunting song ‘Njawane’ has been completely rerecorded, sounding rock-like and bluesy to start with, before taking on a more commercial Zimbabwe pop sound. Both tracks, as well as the bobbled and balafon sounded Mukanda initiation (a bush camp for boys from the Luvale and Chokwe cultures to learn their heritage whilst transitioning into adulthood) and Makishi masquerade inspired ‘Kumukando’, feel totally congruous, in keeping with this new album’s overall direction and sound.
Whilst Luyando cemented the group’s ethnicity, their story, hopes and fears, Tusona emerges from the fallout of the Covid pandemic with personal songs of loss, love and the anguish, anxieties and sadness at being away from home. The music continues to draw from a fusion of traditional styles, soukous, salsa, township rock, soul and more contemporary street dance movements; at any one time evoking the music of Adewale Ayuba, Andy Brown & The Storm, Oliver Mtukudzi, Masekela and The Green Arrows.
There’s now an additional brilliance of bright softened rising and heralding Highlife horns too, courtesy of the Ghana octet Santrofi, plus experiments with plaint-delivered aching commercialized R&B, dance music and what sounds like emotionally weeping harp. Almost verging on Euro-dance music of the heartbreaking ballad kind, ‘Marina’ features the pained, suffering voice of the Zimbabwe House music artist Ulethu. Too saccharine for me, and the sentiments are indeed worthy (the pandemic likened to a flood, a pestilence unleashed on the world), but its probably the weakest song on the entire album.
Recent singles ‘Makisi’ and ‘Nzara Hapana’ are by contrast two of the album’s brightest and infectious tunes. The former, a “huge feast” ceremony and masked dance that brings together the entire Luvale community is unmistakably South African (Masekela and upbeat Township buzz), but also transports me to South America with its relaxed salsa rhythms and Cuba style piano. Despite the context – a man writes a letter of loving reassurance to his wife, letting her know that he will always provide, going as far as to write a will so she is taken care of -, the second of those singles is a soft-blessed romantic and busy signature of Highlife and South African influences.
Solar-rock fanfares to abundant harvests, extracts of Ladysmith Black Mambazo-like soothed harmonies and harp-tinged electronic undercurrents that plaintively build a picture of eulogy, Tusona is an album of equal grief as it is paean and homage: homage to the band’s Tonga and Luvale roots and the rituals, gatherings, initiations and practices that made them. But then, with a host of guests from both inside and outside Zimbabwe in tow, this is also an album that embraces a wide range of traditions, voices and sounds from the African continent. Their gift however is that they can turn hardship, the continuing crisis of Mugabe’s ruinous reign, and songs of loss into those of perseverance with an infectious horn glazed production that blazes brightly.
Celestial North ‘Otherworld’
Whilst focusing on the here and now, the diaphanous Scottish-born artist Celestial North channels an imaginative past of atavistic harmony and balance. As she wanders through the veils and mists of menhir and sacred stone marked landscapes on a mission to enchant, the wispy ethereal voiced siren offers disarming songs of empowerment, pagan alternative lifestyles and solutions to the “modern apocalypse” we call living in the 21st century: a time of high anxiety, detachment, divisiveness and catastrophe.
Already coined by the artist as “pagan euphoria”, North seems to regress through past lives to an age before the Hellenic, and later on, Christian civilizations had taken hold over the old Britons and forbearers in the Celtic North and West. It’s as if the Bronze Age is suddenly sent hurtling in to the modern world.
Although, as I’ve already written about the graceful magic and dreaminess of the ambrosian homoeopathically, idyllic retreat imbued ‘Yarrow’, you can well imagine this Edinburgh fairy of folktronica and Gaelic wafted dreampop walking straight out of a Pre-Raphaelite diorama; or, inhabiting the same space as the Bloomsbury Group: bohemian in one sense, and child of nature in the other.
Relocating in recent years to the equally rural ideal of Cumbria, and the town of Kendal, the drifting spirit has befriended that county’s Sea Power natives; with the band’s “Woody” named as the producer of this Otherworld vision. There’s just a very mild influence of that band’s sound to be found on this album however; the building bassline and incipient stirrings on the half-narrated, poetic nature cosmology ‘Are You Free’, which has the Sea Power sense of mild anthemic epiphany. As a statement that outdoor theatre of “gypsy” freedoms and a celestial-lit wilderness – in which a camp side tent is turned into the temenos to a woodland temple -, is a beautifully conveyed paean to North’s upbringing and wholesale embrace of nature’s ways.
Within the alchemy of ages, the wispy, and even often just an essence of cooed, lofted apparitional and seraph vocals, you can hear stirrings of Clannad alongside forward driven tribal ritualistic drums and dance beats: some Euro-dance, others closer to techno. This often sounds like a merger of Dolores O’ Riordan, Circe, Grimes, Rules and Kate Bush. Sharing bloodlines with one-time conquest invaders, The Vikings, the riled titans rousing ‘Olympic Skies’ reminded me of Lykke Lei. Whilst the almost Macbethian, hermetic ‘The Stitch’ reminded me of the Monolith Cocktail’s very own collaborator and artist, the Icelandic-Canadian Gillian Stone. You can hear some of that Scandi-synth influence on the atmospheric, legato piano spell ‘When The God’s Dance’.
Surprisingly, although musically and performance wise quite at one with the album’s sound, there’s a cover of R.E.M.’s beautifully yearned ‘Nightswimming’. Originally appearing on a God Is In The TV (of which I’m a former alumnus) charity album last year, North’s take maintains much of the feels, sentiment, but offers a bewitching chamber-pop vision of a pagan Chromatics, and a plonk of the classical as a soft splash of cymbals crash and roll away.
Deeply felt, a reaction to the unstoppable progress of an encroachment of forces beyond any of our control, and the endless vacuous nature of an on-screen life spent craving constant validation, Celestial North finds sanctuary in the “otherworld” of her creation. Rousing messages of comfort sit with lightly administered reinforced messages against the god-like veneration of those undeserving of such praise and status. I’m sure there’s metaphors, analogies abound, a yearn for acceptance and a righteous crusade, but the translucent swept and cooed voice makes it all seem so vaporously misty and sweetly light. Who could forgive North for escaping the miasma and suffocation for dream worlds and pagan, Wiccan and old ideals: even if they never existed. An enriching and confidently striding album debut that will, or should, propel her into the spotlight.
Jonny Wickham ‘Terra Bora’
(Fresh Sound Records)
Like most of us forced to readapt during the Covid lockdowns, the London-based composer and bassist Jonny Wickham turned to the Japanese world view of ‘wabi-sabi’, refocusing his efforts on a Afro-Brazilian inspired and imbued project as a creative outlet in a time of uncertainty.
That Japanese form, way of thinking is an artistic sensitivity as much as ephemeral feeling of beauty that celebrates the passage of time and its sublime damages. As the author Taro Gold puts it: “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect”. And so just accept and embrace it.
With that acceptance, a sense of “balance and intent” is found and a framework, a process by which Wickham can create with unburdened joy and playfulness. His debut album as bandleader is indeed a floated and lucid Afro-Latin fusion of South American rhythms that both melt and shimmer like mirages, or, work up a sweat to the rattled sounds of Samba and carnival repinique and tamborim drums.
With a CV that includes appearances with Caravela, Waaju, Samba Azul, The London Jazz Orchestra and Juanita Euka, Wickham speaks a polyglot musical language. And on Terra Bora, which translates as “good earth” (the name also of a fine Portuguese wine), a merger of Latin-jazz, Afro-Brazilian, Tropicália, neo-soul and blues music effortlessly flows together. It’s as if Quarteto Nova Bossa, Bei Mir Bist Du Shön Ramset Lewis, Cal Tjader, Teotima and Gilberto Gil were altogether in one studio; sauntering and in procession, absorbing all Rio’s delights, or languidly following the curved snaking roads that cling to the impressive valley heights above the city.
Drawing on a wealth of rhythms, patterns and dance forms, and with an impressive ensemble of musicians (from Waaju band mate Ben Brown on the drum kit to Jeremy Shaverin on an array of Brazilian percussive instruments, including the “reappropriated” frying pan frigideira and carnival drums), Wickham lays down a set of the shaking, reflective, mused and more loose. Recent single, ‘Space And Time’, is a fine example of this craft and the ease in which multiple styles come together for a harmonious hybrid. Perhaps one of the most modern-sounding tunes on the album, the cosmic-luminous ‘Space And Time’ uses a mix of African-originated dances used in both the Capoeira martial art and the Candomblé religion: the former, Maculelê, is performed in a circle (called a “roda”) using sticks or machetes, the latter, Ijexa and Maracato rhythms, are used in the ceremonies, processions of a religion that fuses the worship of African spirits and gods with the saints of Catholicism. Those lively traditions are then augmented with Stevie Wonder 70s clavichord, the spiritual and the contemporary relaxed feel of On The Corner records and neo-soul/R&B. The last of those styles especially when the relaxed contour floating voice of Irinin Arabatzi lightly levitates over the music; the multilingual international singer sounding like both Erykah Badu and Céu orbiting the Sun-Ra cosmos.
Arabatzi’s Greek heritage, stays in Brussels and eventual move to London give’s her voice a distinct lilt and range; positively meandering through the sun-ray-burnished and bleached pastel twists and turns of the Brazilian backdrop to poetic memories, ‘Mono No Aware’; and bluesy on the “nostalgic” serenaded and swooned jazzy cabaret, resigned forgiving love affair, ‘Neon Muse’. But that voice is almost perky and soaring, in a sort of jazzy doo-wop 60s way, on the Sunny King Adé meets soul revue Latin themed ‘Millennium Seagull’.
It sounds like that Japanese philosophy paid off, as Terra Bora is an exceptional fusion of cultures that gel together to create a special, intimate and loose, languorous vision, expansion of the Afro-Brazilian sound – a movement that is itself an amalgamation of abundant African and native South American music, ceremony, dances, religion and even martial arts. Jonny Wickham has a masterful, but subtle and light touch as bandleader on bass and a number of shaking, rattling and scrapped instruments. Each track is a dance of the romantic, the unrequited and descriptive that sets an imaginable Latin-American scene, perfect for the summer months ahead. Latin-jazz has seldom sounded so fresh and lucid.
Ziúr ‘Eyeroll’
(Hakuna Kulala) 28th July 2023
The experimental producer/musician Ziúr whips and pummels a cast of interdisciplinary collaborators into a vociferating, mewling and energetic release of pent-up rage, anxieties and stresses on the new caustic-abrasive album, Eyeroll.
Out the other side of one pandemic and into the unfolding gloom of a cost-of-living crisis and war in Europe, the omens remain pretty bleak. In such dystopian times who better to have in your orbit than one half of the transmogrifying, compressed and distorting industrial-scarred noise makers Emptyset, the artist/musician/composer James Ginzburg. The corrosive, warped serial techno elements (just one part of the album’s make up) do actually remind me of Ginzburg and his foil Paul Paurgas’ force-field of dread: that and the industrial psychodramas and eeriness of Petrolio. Those futuristic-nihilist traits can be found with the dark sustained drones he provides on the tellingly entitled, ‘If The City Burns I Will Not Run’; a future shock from projected ruins that also features the recurring Middle East And North African-imbued “expressionist”, “chanter” (among other such attributes, an actor and composer too) Abdullah Miniawy, who’s unrelenting Arabic commentary is gradually distorted into the alien and demonic. Ginzburg also strikes a hallucinating lamentable freedom chord or two on the piano, for the other Miniawy-voiced, oil drum bounding, Middle Eastern toned ‘Malikan’.
The Egyptian creative polymath also plays the trumpet on both this unhinged exuberance of distress and tribal strung-out jazz and other tracks. It’s a reedy raspberry turn sour coarse drift and touch of Irreversible Entanglements on the former, but a rasped mizzle on the Iceboy Violet exasperated turn ‘Move On’, and blown in cycles like sirocco winds, bleated and screeched on the deranged ‘Nontrivial Differential’. The middle track of that trio invites the Manchester leftfield hip-hop inspired artist Iceboy to uncomfortably meander with disarming mental fatigue over a semi-Walter Smetek and Lamplighter squeezed cables production by Ziúr. The other is one of three tracks to feature the Welsh experimental noise artist Elvin Brandhi, who’s improvisational lyrics are often delivered in piques of hysterics and yelps, or, stretched out like a throaty human guiro.
Over cracked vodou histrionics, serial ethno drums and bashes of the Putan Club, Einstürzende Neubauten and Fofoulah, Brandhi stubs out a health warning pack of “shitty cigarettes” in a wail and flaying peppered manner of Poly Styrene and Nwando Ebizie. The mantra is that “patience is gold”, on another Brandhi spotlight, ‘Cut Cut Quote’; a winding, often violently yelled chaos of wrecked Afro-Haitian and scaffold beats.
That just leaves the interdisciplinary of interdisciplinary artists, Juliana Huxtable (writer, performer, DJ, Shock Value club instigator and model) who, “unburdened by the microscopic”, adds a dripping seduction of outsider poetics to an undulated lamented chant and buzz. Against a soundboard of Tricky, Rema-Rema, Cities Aviv, Rip Rig & Panic and Dog Faced Hermans there’s the odd (in a good way) left-of-even-leftfield turns like the bendy pedal steel mirage ‘Lacrymaturity’. Echoes of Charlie Megira melt into the trippy fabric of this harmonic-twanged cosmic cowboy finale. Ziúr’s sonic language overall is ambitious in dredging the debris of our ruinous mentally-fucked landscape; reconstructing from the carnage a more inclusive, impassioned if drilled and scratched queer vision of primal-industrial-tribal-techno-funneled and boundless malaise. Very exciting if dark and morose in places, Eyeroll is an incredible listening experience filled with energetic, but also dreaded rhythms, soundscapes and actionist provocation that takes techno music in new directions.
Fat Frances ‘Oyster’
Disillusioned despondency and a touch of the roguish are filtered through softened hues of idiosyncratic lo fi beauty, as Fat Frances’ hardened, worn-down posterior reveals a heart-wrenching drip-drip pouring of poetic insecurity, dealt and languorous resignation.
Yet despite the wretchedness of the world, the austerity and the lawlessness and directionless malaise of our times, there’s a melodious magic to be found in this rough diamond’s (excuse the cliché) Northern lament. It’s as if Frances has somehow brought an air of Bonnie & Clyde folklore, or an enervated and far less violent Badlands to a West Yorkshire pastoral landscape. The curtain call, ‘Some Kid’, is a sentimental but rebellious tale of escape that’s accompanied by just an echoed, ballad-troubadour lush piano. Romantic allusions, that age old trope of running away with your partner in crime, disarmingly lets on to those roughish qualities I mentioned; a diamond ring, we can only guess, taken involuntary from the “some kid” of the title.
Frances hometown of Todmorden is twinned with the Appalachians in one way, but then distilled with mirage gauzes of Syd Barrett in another. He sounds positively Dylan-esque with a hint of Edward Penfold and Mike Gale on the tender, renewed yet broken and dour ‘Everything’: “Sometimes, days are just for getting through”.
An “oyster” emerges from the grit on the wistful Verve meets Steve Mason short, but an unassuming anthem in it’s own right, ‘No Consequences’; a moving if pissed-off and despondent call to live without “fault”, “forgiveness”. This is reprised on the Billy Bragg-like electric guitar spiked and buzzy ‘No Allegiance’; a bendy tremolo of Charlie Mergira turns into an anti-authoritarian folk tune of the wounded and anarchistic. And yet, again, it’s another sad declaration of the worn-down.
I hate to even mention him, but there is a slight hint of Jake Bugg; albeit the music is far more lush, melodic and interesting; less parochial even if the dialect and language is unmistakably Yorkshire in providence. Mind you, there’s some real surprises musically; a dreamy mirage of epic45 on the nature trail and parish reverent ‘The Worm In The Wood’; Talk Talk piano vibes and a semblance of 80s new wave and Robyn Hitchcock on the gauzy hex in the dales ‘Witches’ Mark’; and what sounds like an alternative 70s, not quite glam, ballad mix with touches of Corey Hanson and The Beatles, astonishing heartbreaker ‘Horses’: grander without losing that lo fi spirit, it’s one of the album’s most affecting and realized songs.
Piped church organ permeates the haze of a roughened but heartfelt drained tapestry of incredibly candid soul-searching. Travails of every kind are disarmed with a summery feel. Oyster has quickly become one of my favourite albums of 2023 – the balmy washes and heartache wistfulness drift of ‘Billy’, a worthy earnest but sublime song, being just one highlight. It should if life was fair, bring attention and plaudits to this artist, but I won’t hold my breath. If it counts for anything, I really appreciated it. Thanks to a certain Monolith Cocktail collaborator and Vukovar stalwart, this record made its way along the proverbial word-of-mouth network to me: and I’m grateful for that. Let’s hope I can in turn persuade you all to take a look at this hidden gem.
Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully ‘I Hope They Let Us Hunt Like Men In The Next Life’ (Difficult Art And Music)
Between the blurred overspill of the academic, studied and explorative arts the composer, performance artist and PhD accredited researcher Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully facilitates a site-specific (of a kind) imbued score of, barely musical, multimedia psychogoegraphy.
Originally performed at the Fort Process Festival in 2020, and now released in its improvised form by the experimental boutique label of note, Difficult Art And Music (rarely has a name been more appropriate), the two-part title track piece is a sort of translation of the Lewes composer’s graphic score of the squiggles, shapes and mapped free movements of a group of dancers, led through the scrublands and wilderness of an Italian landscape. Created during a residency at a repurposed candy factory, the surrounding environment offered not only the picturesque and a sense of mystery but danger too. For bordering this location are hunting grounds, where stepping over the line in the wrong place at the wrong time could potentially end up in a stray bullet or two hitting the curious bystander, walker and explorer.
Once marked that score was handed over to a group of musicians, which included Hignell-Tully (on synth and piano) and the violinists Kev Nickells and John Guzek, to interpret. I say musicians; the preface language used is “community”, with the “values” and “relations” of each mark and piece of text to be “assigned by mutual agreement among” that communal group. However, this is a “fixed score”, with each mark being an instruction rather than “gestural” stroke for “pitch, time and density”.
The results stir up a dance through the thorny brushed bushes, the winding and off-track pathways of a simultaneously ominous, wild and alien topography. Scratchy nailed and stretched fingers scrape and tear across both the violin’s strings and its wooden resonated body, whilst generated fields hum from the friction. A sheep-like “baa” and bleating can be heard as the atmosphere evokes distress and sharpened claws. And yet there’s also a semblance of Eastern European fiddled malady and a hint of the classical, even folkloric. As part one of this moiety continues – though not in a linear or progressive sense – the hovering sounds of lunar oscillations and ghostly warbles point to some sort of UFO or supernatural visitation. Something looms, hangs in the air like a mysterious presence; evidence of past events, lives and the history of this chosen site and surrounding areas; the danger too of a hunting ground soaked in bloody violence and trauma. Nickells and Guzek transform their double-act of abstract evocations with heightened plucks, weeping melody and various piercing stresses and pulls. The action, if you can call it that, slides, encircles and drags; yet it can also feel springy and light.
Part 2 is an expansion of the main body, but those moon-bendy, library music synth parts are more prominent and wobbly. And we can detect some kind of thumb cymbals percussive, and shaking instruments amongst passages of rustling, the fizzled and frazzled, and dissonance noise.
A third piece, ‘Percussive Piano As A Process Of Line Making’, offers another window in on the explorative research-like compositional methods of Hignell-Tully’s practice. An “early iteration of the composer’s line making score”, released at a later date under the ‘Lines’ and ‘Weaves’ titles via the Hallow Ground Records label, this solo piece fluctuates between spaces of breathed-like resonating chords and the more chaotic and struck. Taciturn with both a lightened and heavier-handed touch, the melodic and jarring, the almost off-key, follow the same direction. Submerged under some watery-like effect, singular notes and chords play like lapping tides on an experiment that can sound like a mix of Ligeti, Cage and Cale.
From factory and hunting grounds to the invisible crash and splash of an upright piano, all three pieces disturb, invoke or suggest an array of reactions to both a psychogeography and liminal process. Study and improvisation blur the lines with sound art and compositional exploration that pushes our understanding of the form.
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.
Our Daily Bread 582: Zohastre ‘ABRACADABRA’
July 6, 2023
ALBUM REVIEW/DOMINIC VALVONA
Zohastre ‘ABRACADABRA’
(ZamZam)
Spinning and dancing around the phosphor glowing fire whilst invoking a polygenesis array of pagan, hermetic and galactic deities, the French-Italian combo cast magical spells of progressive, psychedelic, noise, primitivism, electronica and cosmic krautrock on their conjuring sonic Wurlitzer.
Reworking references from each of the duos respective countries into a dizzy and often accelerated kaleidoscope of acid-trip occult ritual and more moody, near eerie, mystical uncertainty, Héloise Thibault and Olmo Guadagnoli combine an electronic soundboard with drums as they hurtle, collide and work a frenzy around the maypole.
Whether it’s a reference to the Herbert cosmology that is Dune, the opening peregrination is anything but Eno-esque or dramatic score-like, but takes in the Silver Apples and esoteric fairground jig on its way to an increasingly thrashed squiggle of lasers. Talking of the sci-fi epic, it’s Bernard Szajner’s alternative Visions Of Dune modular score that’s evoked, alongside John Carpenter, Goblin, Emptyset and Higamos Hogamos on the darker, alien ‘Spleen’: Not so much venting that said metaphor as racing between tempos with paranormal intergalactic menace.
With a title that Southern Italians will recognize, the spider-bite induced “Tarantella” family of Calabria, Puglia and Campania folk dances is the springboard for the duos hallucinating blend of time-travelling fuckery. An etymology rabbit hole, “Tarantella” is more or less a direct translation of that venomous creepy-crawler, found in Italy’s deeper southern realms; it’s bite said to cause a hysterical condition known as “Tarantism”, which in turn has been used to describe one of the more frenzied dance styles within that folk tradition. It’s usually performed to a more “accelerated” tempo with tambourines. Here, in this form, a mirror-y swirl of some enervated washed-out by time old folklore is retuned through a Fortean generator of apparitions, Faust-like and marching drums, spidery tentacles bleached out on the furnace heat intense clay walls of a Calabria hamlet.
Familiar to French children since the 1950s onwards, the Ronder Et Chanson series of standard nursery rhymes and such is borrowed for the album’s worked-up and wound-up finale. Old-time music with a pleasant melodious nature is sucked into the Zohastre vacuum of drilled, pummeled and dial-twiddling, needle-sticking speed shifts.
Also on their radar, “the ugly one” ‘El Tuco’ seems to allude to Eli Wallach’s sly despicable character in the iconic Spaghetti Western, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – although it’s also the name of a mountain summit in Peru. With no obvious sonic connections to this conflicted mercenary, or even the Western genre, Morricone, the music and vibe is a noisy squall of UNKLE and Holy Fuck caught-up in a mayhem of splashing cymbals, knocking drums and drones.
For those seeking to discover some lost tribe of extraterrestrial worshipping acolytes with a penchant for Zacht Automaat, Sunburned Hand Of Man and the Soft Machine then ZamZam Records have you covered with an occult and tripping invitation too good to be missed.
Our Daily Bread 581: Colin Dyer ’47ram Negativ65′
July 4, 2023
ALBUM REVIEW BY ANDREW C. KIDD
Colin Dyer ’47ram Negativ65′
(Schematic Music Company)
Colin Dyer’s music is multidimensional. In 2020, he released the cryptic Cypher (the tracks are written in Morse code) – imagine an Iannis Xenakis composition tapped slowly through a war-time telegraph. Then there is the inexplicably meditative Vector Caliente, released in 2022. His 30-track The Cyberneticist, published in the same year, is finely crafted musical fantascience. Listen to tracks such as rest Tybie technic which imbue the sonic strangeness of earliest Ross 154 on the Eevo Lute Muzique label, and the twenty-six track – Bettie recti synch 2 – which is like a condensed Knowledge Through Science by Richard H. Kirk. His latest release on the Schematic Music Company label is titled 47ram Negativ65.
Zap! The zither-like boings and laser effects on the opening track Ph6Fenix scan across the listener’s aural frequencies, splitting all in its atonal path. This is cold futurism. The hit-hat deconstruction is clever. The reverberating two-key melody is eventually hauled back from the ashes as its title perhaps alludes to. It is not entirely dissonant; the otherworldly vacillating synthesiser melody on Ph6Fenix imbues a calm neutrality, serving to soften the sound. The rhythm is coppery – it is slowly oxidised by the vocals. damb loop is scalene, a triangle with unequal measure. The steely synthesisers scythe away until their breakdown in the final third. The track tailspins around in dysrhythmic chaos until Dyer eventually resuscitates the original melody – perhaps he could have progressed the sound a little further at this point? Either way, damb loop is zoopraxiscopic: a one-reeler.
Various intelligent dance music artists are referenced in the accompanying press release: Autechre, Dopplereffekt, Unit Moebius / Bunker Records, et cetera. probability acid is the closest that Dyer comes to the experimental idiosyncrasies of these stalwarts. Ultimately, he achieves a Yevgeny Zamyatin-like dystopia: glassy, repetitive – numeric. “Every billionaire on this planet is a parasiiiiite”, announces the vocalist on 7061726173697465. From the politically rouge origins to the militaristic two-set rhythm, it is a metaphor for the hard-knuckled fist of authoritarianism. Unlike the other tracks, its sound is contained. It does not expand exponentially; rather, it remains quietly amelodic, and brutal. Dyer is no stranger to Morse code (remember Cypher) – the Morse code translation of 6opC68ance is -…. — .–. -.-. -…. —.. .- -. -.-. . Multiple frequencies are sent out like this in quick-fire volleys to disorientate the listener.
Dyer’s scholastic achievement on 47ram Negativ65 is his effective use of xenharmonic scales: the claustrophobic pitching heightens the overarching theme of oppression. In equal measure are the moments of sonic elevation akin to the hyper-intelligence of a Poul Anderson novel. Admittedly, it does border on being unchanging at times, but so be it given its inaesthetic dystopian theme. If there is any respite from the dissonance and microtonality, it is listening to Dyer’s dexterity in compositional form.
Monthly Playlist: June 2023: Valia Calda, Killer Mike, Sparks, Kool Keith, Luzmila Carpio…
June 29, 2023
THE JUNE SELECTION: 50 plus tracks from the artists/bands we championed, rated and loved during the last thirty days. This is the eclectic, global and influential Monolith Cocktail Monthly Playlist, with music chosen from all the releases we covered in June plus those we didn’t have room for at that time. Selectors include Dominic Valvona (who curated this expansive playlist), Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Andrew C. Kidd and Graham Domain.
___TRACKLIST___
Valia Calda ‘Stalker’
La Jungle ‘La Compagnie de la Chanson’
Ramuntcho Matta ‘Hukai’
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ‘Nation Rising’
Killer Mike Ft. Jagged Edge ‘SUMMER’
Royalz Ft. THE HIDDEN CHARACTER ‘God In Da Ghetto’
Professor Elemental ‘Ready Or Not’
DJ Mk & Sonnyjim ‘WORTH THE RISK’
Revival Season ‘Chop’
Vieira and The Silvers ‘The Judge’
Trees Speak ‘Radiation’
Cat Box Room Bois ‘California Stars’
ANGHARAD ‘Postpartum’
Outer Limit Lotus ‘Let The Night Ride You’
The Kingfishers ‘Lapwings’
Sedona ‘Domino’
Katie Von Schleicher Ft. Lady Lamb ‘Elixir’
Mari Kalkun ‘Munamae Loomine (The Creation Of Munamagi|)’
Sparks ‘Not That Well Defined’
Bob Dylan ‘Queen Jane Approximately’
Maija Sofia ‘Four Winters’
Mike Cooper Ft. Viv Corringham ‘A Lemon Fell’
Dirty Dike Ft. Jam Baxter ‘The Places We’ve Been In’
The Chives ‘Your Mom’s A Bitch’
Lunch Money Life ‘The God Phone II’
Martha Skye Murphy ‘Dogs’
Sacrobosco ‘Pearl’
CODED ‘Binary Beautiful (Sunshine Variation)’
Baldruin ‘Zuruckgelassen’
Lauren Bousfield Ft. Ada Rock ‘Hazer’
Ital Tek ‘The Mirror’
Joe Woodham ‘Spring Tides’
WITCH ‘Streets Of Lusaka’
Celestial North ‘Otherworld’
Psyche ‘Kuma’
Omar Ahmad ‘Cygnet Song’
Luzmila Carpio ‘Inti Watana – El Retorno del Sol’
Ricardo Dias Gomes ‘Invernao Astral’
Andrew Heath ‘Fold’
Granny Smith ‘Egypt’
Spindle Ensemble & Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan ‘Lucid Living – Live’
Pawz One & Preed One ‘Revenge Of Silky Johnson’
ILL BILL, Non Phixion, La Coka Nostra, Kool G. Rap, Vinnie Paz ‘Root For The Villain’
Syrup Ft. Twit One, C. Tappin & Turt ‘Timing Perfect’
John Coltrane Ft. Eric Dolphy ‘Impressions – Live’
Vermin the Villain & ELAM ZULA ‘POWER OF TWO’
King Kashmere & Alecs Delarge Ft. HPBLK, Ash The Author & Booda French ‘Astro Children’
Lukah ‘First Copy’
Kool Keith ‘First Copy’
Stik Figa & The Expert ‘Slo Pokes’
S. Kalibre Ft. Scoob Rock, Slap Up Mill, Jabba The Kut ‘Murda Sound Bwoy’
Verbz, Nelson Dialect & Mr. Slipz ‘Beside Me’
Dillion & Diamond D ‘Uncut Gems’
The cult leader of the mighty Bordellos rages, swoons and…over a haul of new and recent singles and albums for the Monolith Cocktail
___SINGLES___
Angharad ‘Postpartum’
(Libertino Records)
Oh my lord I love this. I love listening to angry and pissed off Welsh women: maybe that’s why I have been married to one for 30 years. Typing that line has now made me wonder, ‘is my wife pissed off because she has been married to me for thirty years’…surely not, for I am a catch. But I digress. ‘Postpartum’ is a wonderful surge of aggression, an outpouring of pure primal scream emotion but with tinges of dark humour and real life. Art core PJ Harvey with a touch of John Cale at his finest. A beast of a track.
Nora Kelly Band ‘Roswell’
(Mint Records)
The Nora Kelly Band single ‘Roswell’ sweeps us up and gently wraps us in a candyfloss haze of country magic, with a song that aims for the stars and goes far beyond, gently rocking us to a place of seduction and dreams; a gentle place that erupts in a fountain of space cadet wonder and magic. A love song full of quirks and deep yearning. A love song that can make the heart flutter and your eyes water. A special talent indeed. From a forthcoming album Rodeo Clown; an album I will be adding to my collection no doubt.
Lauren Bousfield feat. Ada Rook ‘Hazer’
(Orange Milk Records)
The sound of smart phone pop eating itself, ever wondered what it sounds like? Well give this a listen.
M. Ward Feat. Scott McMicken ‘New Kerrang’
I saw the title and was overcome with a wave of nostalgia with memories of my then 14-year-old daughter texting me asking me every Tuesday if could I pick up the new copy of Kerrang Magazine. But “New Kerrang” is not actually about my then 14-year-old daughter texting me at work (which let’s be honest is not surprising), but it is a rather nifty little pop song that does take me back, but back to the days of late 60s Kinks when they offered flower like gems of pop perfection plastered in irony and heart pulling tugs of pure melancholy and nostalgia, and “New Kerrang” is blessed with the same magic.
Katie Von Schleicher (Ft. Lady Lamb) ‘Elixir’
(Sipsman)
I really like this single, it has a lovely slinkiness about it; a well-written guitar pop song filled with humour and intelligence and a laidback bewitching melody. And I also love the electric guitar, which has a touch of the Marc Bolan’s about it, which believe me is always a feather in the cap, or in this case a feathered boa around the neck. A lovely gem of a song.
Sedona ‘Domino’
I do love pop pop pop music (oh dear an attack of the M’s) and Sedona is indeed all “pop pop pop music”, in the good old fashioned 80s Madonna, Jane Wiedlin (of Rush Hour fame) was a great single way. Yes, Sedona has all it takes to succeed in this cutthroat business. She has all the qualities: the looks, the voice, the song, and has a carefree soulful pop sound that a lot of modern smart phone pop fails at. Sedona is one to watch trust me: have I been wrong before…well, yes many times. But this one is a banker.
Ex Norwegian ‘Real Bad Bunny’
A new single from Ex Norwegian is a wonderful thing in the way great pop music is a wonderful thing, because the new single by Ex Norwegian is great new pop music; the kind of song the radio should be playing on sunny days, and “Real Bad Bunny” really burrows into your head (see what I did there). Great melody, great lyrics, great attitude, just great wonderful pop music, and it’s not even the highlight of the three tracks on this EP. That is track three, “Talk Dirty”, which is all Pete Townsend 60s power chords and late seventies power pop/new wave arrogance and attitude. A wonderful release.
____EPS/ALBUMS___
John Dowler’s Vanity Project ‘Jukebox Amnesia’
(Half A Cow Records)
This is a fun listen, an EP of four covers by the John Dowlers Vanity Project; all four being very fine and wonderful songs, so you would have to be pretty untalented indeed not to make a EP of pure pop frenzy and fun out of them. It kicks off with a masterful version of The Masters Apprentice “War Or Hands Of Time” – I do like a bit of freakbeat it must be said – followed up with a version of the much covered but always fun to listen to “Psychotic Reaction”, which is a bit of a good idea, and then to the garage soul of Them‘s “Could You Would You”, and to finish with a bit of Jethro Tull; adding a bit of prog to the proceedings: well why not. A Vanity project that is indeed fun to listen to (for a change).
The Chives ‘S-T’
(Metal Postcard Records)
If shambolic rock ‘n’ roll is your thing, here is the album for you. A sublime car crash of The Rolling Stones, The Strokes and the great-lost American band 20TH Century Princess all wrapped in a not so neat parcel, but with melodies galore and not giving a damn attitude. It even has probably the third finest version of ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ you are ever likely to hear: For those who care the two better versions are the Carol King Demo version, followed by the Monkees classic, and not that far behind it this gem of a version. Rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be fun slightly dangerous and sexy and The Chives debut ticks all the boxes; the box being filled full of post-punk speed fuelled frogs.
Our Daily Bread 579: Ital Tek ‘Timeproof’
June 22, 2023
ALBUM REVIEW/ANDREW C. KIDD
Ital Tek ‘Timeproof’
Timeproof is a soundtrack of our time: sobering; fierce – Hitchcockian. It is the seventh album of Alan Myson, better known as Ital Tek. Early Ital Tek was different. Cyclical (2008) was under-appreciated and served as a fine example of expansionist dubstep. Midnight Colour (2010) was two-/dubstep heavy with a blurrier focus on bass; it crossed the melodic line into intelligent dance music. Nebula Dance (2012) was pure footwork at a time when his label (Planet Mu) were dropping their hugely influential Bangs and Works Volumes. He took an abstract view of drum n’ bass on his sub-half hour mini-album Control (2013): the amen break was observed through broken glass. It was maddeningly chaotic. Conversely, the rhythmless Zero was the highlight on that release – shattering mellow synth and choral notes were released like steam from a venting fumarole*. Ital Tek’s sound changed dramatically thereafter. In Hollowed (2014) he actually entered the fumarole. He continues to inhabit this lightless space. His explorations have taken him through the metamorphic mantles, onwards to the metallic core. I recently revisited some of his previous extended plays. Dissonance featured heavily on Seraph (2020): an example of this is the opening chords on Granite & Glass. The choppy snare drums on the title track recalled his dubstep origins; its back-lit harpsichords ripped the whole sound open. Throughout Seraph I had visions of water. It was as if I was listening to something immensely epic that had been fully submersed. The melancholic Hazed cascaded like a waterfall: I watched its waters pile over a precipice in real-time – in my mind, the water reversed back upwards. After on The Speed of Darkness EP (2017) had brought me to a similarly restful space.
In stark contrast, Timeproof seeks to discompose. Ultimately, it is an aural observation on that great unknowable construct: time. The glass-seated chair that sits in the centre of the accompanying album art is hallucinatory. The chrome finish reflects inwards rather than outwards. Time is clearly considered to be recondite here, and surrealist (like the accompanying art). To the music! Granular subterranean tones flow beneath Phantom Pain. Ital Tek has opted for a different drum programme from what I can discern: early Skull Disco label meets the machinations of The Bug meets even earlier John Carpenter. It is as mettlesome as anticipated; son futur, musical noir played through voltage-controlled filters and a sustained envelope. The synth-glory that sonically needles its why into one’s ears was there in 2016 when he released his Beyond Sight EP; specifically, the final piece, Until The End Of Time. The opposing mellow hues split across a sunrise on Staggered. The two-keyed notes ascend before being called back in semi-tonic descent. It is monastic and fleeting – catharsis after the opening assault. Heart String is suspenseful with a locomotive-like opening as the chords are played through pulsing low-rpm drums. It beckons a deeper sub-melody that is improvised (rather oddly, I am reminded of Keith Hopwood and Malcolm Rowe’s score to the 1989 film adaptation of The BFG here, particularly the dissonant dreamcatcher sequences). It ends in an ascending tremolo to anti-climax. Darking proceeds and is empirical. Its movements blindside the listener. The synthesiser melody almost tears through the headphones to reveal a mathematical harpsichord melody is akin to ‘future baroque’. This Bach-like and cyclically-variable approach is evident on the hymnal Open Heart on his Outland LP as it switches to a quasi-organ sound around its midpoint. There are elements of Underworld and Jon Hopkins here (particularly the waltzing treble kick that staccato into an off-beat which is a signature of the latter artist). Ital Tek has been here before: listen to Time Burns Heavy on his Dream Boundary EP (2020). Similarly, on this LP, counterpoint synthesiser melodies play out on One Eye Open and Zero Point. As its title suggests: Darking is to be listened to underground. Hear, hear! to Ital Tek the fatalistic.
Zero Point is another good example of Ital Tek’s mastering of suspense: off-cut synths and synth waves pulse and swell; distorted sawing gnaws away to eventually overwhelm; a clever cut reveals a lithe, two-tone sub-melody. The rhythm section muscles-in as an early double-kick, part-syncopated and cyclical 4-4. Fourth dimensional bells are dissonant – they jangle, elevating the piece. The sub-bass is given momentary reprieve to breath. The latter has become a signature of Ital Tek: musical deconstruction in an act of self-interrogation followed by a systematic reworking that leads to reimagined drops or a cleverly concealed false summit as is the case on Zero Point. The tracks Endless and Oblivion Theme on his remarkable Outland long play (2020) also embody this metaphor of compositional disintegration.
Timeproof offers moments akin to a dystopian mass for modern times. Listen to the modular sequences that cascade on the The Mirror. Synth-swords are sharpened. Its beat is hi-hat-less grunge – trap for the modern era. Peremptory and leaden, the kick drum batters at the walls. On Cold Motion Ital Tek sustains the notes like the ambient-noire of Vangelis. It would suit the slow-shot of a Tarkovsky film: think the railroad sequence on Stalker (1979), or the Earth scene from Solaris (1972). The aesthetic is cataclysmal: slow-build; bittersweet melodia; major and minor progressions. The album becomes canonical at the juncture of its final two tracks: The Next Time You Die and the title track. The former opens with arresting vocals sung in strange triads. The melody is inconsistent and broken. The synths offset this, but only a little. It is a chorus of the two worlds that Ital Tek inhabits. The motif played on the organ at 2-minutes 34-seconds is progressed slightly until we are guided into the crypt. It is stony and marbled and mottled, yet in the same breathe, life-giving. The final (and title) track opens with low-frequency strings in a similar mode to the double basses that build upon the Aeolian scale of the opening movement of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, Op. 36. The organ-like movement from the preceding track reappears; except, this time, it is held longer. The keys are pressed harder. They sustain and are sustained until they cannot sustain any more. The cacophony of sounds are pained. It grimaces at you, and eventually, a sardonic smile appears. The body of sound is then laid to rest. I think of many things when listening to this album. The sound is cathedralic. At points, it is cinematic. Ultimately, my thoughts rest on a chrysalis. From its ominous opening to hymnal finish, Timeproof grows inside a cocoon of polyrhythm and sub-melody until its wings eventually open to close, making a final and magnific opening in conquering glory.
*a fumarole is an opening in the Earth’s crust through which steam and gases are released
ANDREW C. KIDD
New Music on our radar, archive spots and now home to the Monolith Cocktail “cross-generational/cross-genre” Social Playlist – Words/Put Together By Dominic Valvona
A new thread, feed for 2023, the Digest pulls together tracks, videos and snippets of new music plus significant archival material and anniversary celebrating albums or artists -sometimes the odd obituary to those we lost on the way. From now on in the Digest will also be home to the regular Social Playlist. This is our imaginary radio show; an eclectic playlist of anniversary celebrating albums, a smattering of recent(ish) tunes and the music I’ve loved or owned from across the decades.
June’s edition features something old but new (if that makes sense), with an unearthed, “never heard before”, teaser of Coltrane and Dolphy at the Village Gate residency in the summer of ’61 – believe me when I say this is unbelievable. Plus new, new music from Celestial North, Omar Ahmad, Granny Smith and Hackedepicciotto. And in the Archives there’s the 50th anniversary of the Dusseldorf organic futurists, Neu! and their second, matter-of-factly entitled, album, 2.
NEW MUSIC IN BRIEF
John Coltrane Ft. Eric Dolphy ‘Impressions’
(Taken from EVENINGS AT THE VILLAGE GATE: JOHN COLTRANE WITH ERIC DOLPHY, released by Impulse! July 14th)
Staggering to think how many other lost recordings remain hidden, overlooked in the vast archives of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I mean, imagine this incredible, exciting, evolution in jazz performance laying dormant forever, never to be heard again. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Titan of the form John Coltrane and his celebrated quintet rip it up on this salvaged tape of performance gold from the summer of ’61 residency at the iconic Village Gate in Greenwich Village. Flanked and imbued by the powers of such luminaries as McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, Elvin Jones and Eric Dolphy, but an ever evolving cast of players, there was a trailblazing comet of talent igniting the jazz scene that glorious summer. The upcoming album will feature eighty minutes of never-before-heard music; offering a glimpse into a powerful musical partnership that ended much too soon – Dolphy sadly passed away three years later and this recording is the only live recording of their legendary Village Gate performances. In addition to some well-known Coltrane material (‘My Favorite Things’, and ‘Greensleeves‘), there is a breathtaking feature for Dolphy’s bass clarinet on ‘When Lights Are Low‘ and the only known non-studio recording of Coltrane’s composition ‘Africa‘ that includes bassist Art Davis. Another Dolphy communion, and Coltrane number, ‘Impressions‘, has been dropped as a teaser in the run-up to the official release, on the 14th July 2023. Enjoy the magic wail, bawl, spiralling tumult and energy of this phenomenal exchange between the deities, as they really tease out the best in each other: the quality of the recoding is outstanding too. Could it be, one of the best albums of 2023 will be a recording from 1961! Yes is the short answer.
Omar Ahmad ‘Cygnet Song’
(Single taken from the Inheritance album, released by AKP Recordings on 7th July)
The second single to be shared in the run-up to the attentive Palestinian-American composer/producer/DJ/sound artist Omar Ahmad‘s solo debut turn Inheritance, a peaceable calm of reverberated pattering rain and gentle, trickled contemplative acoustic guitar disarms deeper feelings of loss and the distant sirens of the emergency services blaring in the backdrop. ‘Cygnet Song’ is, as that title suggest, a swanned, slightly somber, enchantment of the ugly duck syndrome – a subject that is close to the artist’s heart; feeling for so long like that proverbial fledgling ignored, isolated, but eventually finding an inner beauty and self-realisation. Revisiting childhood once more, “lamenting the time lost” worrying about peer groups and the actions of others, Ahmad now turns over a descriptive guitar melody and picked sorrow under, what sounds like, a waterfall. Fragility finds a musical partner in playfulness on a loose stringed trickle of warmth.
Celestial North ‘Otherworld’
(Taken from the Otherworld album, released 7th July)
About as “pagan euphoria” as it gets, the Scottish-born siren and child of nature’s hermetic powers, Celestial North is once more dreamily occupying the twin planes of ethereal pop and apparitional electronica on her newest single, and teaser for the upcoming album of the same name, ‘Otherworld’.
The, now, Kendal relocated artist describes this latest vapour trail across menhir marked Ley Lines and dales as, “A rabble-rousing pick-me-up on days when life feels a bit much, a reminder that it will all be ok and that we are never truly alone in this world. Providing the beat and movement of life for us all to shake it off together.” And with a countenance and gauzy wisp voice that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Pre-Raphaelite diorama canvas, nor on some object beautifully crafted by the Celts, worlds and epochs are brought together in a techno-Avalon spell of Circe, Grimes and Rules. From the magic of Cumbria, where Sea Power (formerly “British” until the namedrop protestation in recent post-Brexit years) also hail (although, as I myself did bump into them from time to time, they are also and were a part of the Brighton scene for some considerable time; originally moving from Cumbria down to the Southern seaside belle of a city), and whose band member “woody” has produced the album, stirs something quite diaphanous and yet powerful. The omens pray good for the album, which drops in less than a month’s time.
Granny Smith ‘Egypt’
I seldom come across such perfect musical and visual alignments, but the latest and “greatest” (I’m told) step in the Toronto-born artist Jason Bhattacharya‘s journey is an incredible piece of artistry. Inspired by the painter grandparents he never got to meet, and using super8 film stills and photographs as prompts of remembrance and self-discovery, Bhattacharya’s slowly-released adroit applied washes of layered solo/acoustic/wah guitar, bass, piano, bongos and percussion are lent a constantly changing imagery both busily sketched and illusionary by Dan Trapper. Rushes of more arid landscapes change into sequences of lusher, meadow riversides and an evolving turn of flickery buildings, including a pyramid, through a combination of stopmotion animation and AI image generator software called Stable Diffusion.
Both beautifully etched and yet in a constant flux of memories and thought, Bhattacharya, appearing under his Granny Smith alias, creates something simultaneously timeless yet in the now; his deeply felt yet translucent quality composition suggesting an ambiguous psychogeography of the titular “Egypt”, but also the Levant and India – towards the end of this near entranced track, the guitar starts to sound almost like a sitar. Imaginative footsteps through a personal history are fully realised with a perfect symmetry of music and video art.
Hackedepicciotto ‘Schwarze Milch’
(Taken from the upcoming Keepsakes album, released by Mute on the 28th July 2023)
Entwined in a symbiotic marriage of creative ideas and sonic invention, the husband and wife team of Alexander Hacke and Love Parade co-founder Danielle de Picciotto have between them a notable worthy CV of explorations to channel in their own musical adventures together. Apart, Alexander has been a stalwart foil in Einstürzende Neubauten, whilst his wife, is and has been part of the Crime And The City Solution troupe. Together they’ve both appeared in the Ministry Of Wolves alternative nursery rhymes and fairytales project with Paul Wallfisch and Mick Harvey.
For the same label, Mute, the travailed and sagacious coupling have ventured out on the universal highway of cerebral experiment. Their last album, The Silver Threshold, made our choice albums of 2021 roundup; a universal, lockdown yearn of the Biblical kind. Choosing to embrace an old cliche, their latest album, Keepsakes, is billed as their most personal yet, with each track dedicated to a friend. But the recording environment also plays its part; this time in the form of the famous Auditorium Novecento in Napoli. With the likes of Enrico Caruso and his peers gliding through its doors, and a vast array of instruments to play with, including Ennio Morricone’s celeste, the sound has been expanded like never before.
From that upcoming album (released on the 28th July; a review forthcoming from us next month by the way) we share the surreal Weimar cabaret jazz brushed, hurdy gurdy winded ‘Schwarze Milch’. I can only decipher that this is a reference to the German-Mongolian film drama, which in English translates as “Black Milk”, directed and starring the German-Mongolian Uisenma Burchu, who plays the part of one of the film’s leading sisters character from two cultures, Wessi. Described by the Hollywood Reporter as a “sexually liberated drama of the Steppes”, it tells the story of two sisters reuniting after decades; Wessi’s character having left Mongolia for West Germany (in real life the director/actress’ family actually did move from that homeland to East Germany right before reunification) now makes a less than successful return home. I could have misread this entirely though, and the song may have sod all to do with it.
Back to the song itself, which is shared in narrated weirdness by the couple, who also don various animal mask (both pagan and odd) as they pick up each different instrument on this tubular, sifted, droning and smoked, snozzled sax rich languid look into an alternative world. A stage theatrical. A circus. A variety show complete with a ventriloquist dummy, childlike playfulness and yet something almost disturbing and mysterious, its Brecht meets Thomas Traux and the Bad Seeds in a basement magic show. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the album.
ARCHIVES/ANNIVERSARY
Neu! 2 Reaches Its 50th Anniversary This Year
Following the extolled reception and success of their stark, but incipient strident motorik debut, the Dusseldorf organic futurists hit the road for a tour. With former Kraftwerker Eberhard Krahnemann taking on bass duties, Neu! performed a number of concerts before being pressured to get back into the studio. Both Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger became slightly uneasy, it seems the much applauded Neu! desideratum blueprint resonated so well with both critics and fans that the duo became spooked – Rother would of course jump ship and join the recently formed Harmonia, but make an eventual return back into the arms of his musical partner, after much hand-wringing, for the Neu! 75 reunion. Things were made even worse when recording for the follow-up album actually began. After only laying down the inaugural vista spread of ‘Für Immer’, they were promptly told by the Brain record label that the budget had run out, there was no more money in the coffers.
A few months previously Neu! had made a single as a stop gap between LPs, though the label was dead set against it, out of commercial concerns. The double A-side of ‘Neuschnee/Super’ featured those marked references from their first album, but also came equipped with harder and more broodier proto-punk snarls and growls. Appearing on Neu! 2 alongside ‘Für Immer’ to make up for the startling gap now left after funds ceased, these tracks still only amounted to a running time of 18-minutes. Whether it was the production wizard of Krautrock’s idea or Dinger and Rother’s, it was decided that the recorded tracks should be cut up and pasted to make up a strange D.I.Y collage type fashioned suite. Only this merely equated to Dinger speeding and slowing down ‘Neuschnee’ and ‘Super’ on a record player, then re-recording them, or just holding his thumb down on the reel-to-reel machine and recording it; an idea that must have been hoisted up the flagpole and saluted by all concerned. The result was quite frankly weird, but not in a good way. In fact it sounds for the most part like a tomfoolery exercise in taking the piss: a fuck you to the label. Dispersed amongst the key tracks and ludicrous speed variant nonsense are a number of experimental atmospheric pieces and doomly staggered vignettes, which allude to esoteric imagined landscapes and scary extremes of mental cacophony.
Once again the Neu! branded moniker was brandished like a washing powder product. A spray can 2 marks the only difference from their last affair, whilst inside scrawled track names and info shadowed by photo booth passport photos, are crossed out and re-written.
‘Neu! 2’ lacks the calming vision of their famously lauded original ‘Neu!’ soundtrack. Full of miscalculated slip-ups, pressured ideas and short-change experiments, this miss-fire companion still radiates with some heightened moments of hymn like joy and traversing triumphs. Both ‘Für Immer’ and ‘Neuschnee’ build on the foundations of ‘Hallogallo’; adding richer textures and searing layers to the motif. ‘Super’ and ‘lila Engel’ meanwhile rough it out with Faust and metal; giving the duo an escape route towards darker musical pleasures. Short change accusations hinder this album to a degree. Rother famously took to the woods with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius to join their Harmonia project, after this album was released. Dinger meanwhile, began working on the La Dusseldorf imprint with both his brother Thomas and Plank’s tape operator, Hans Lampe, though their first offering wasn’t released until 1975. After a brief hiatus, both men made-up their differences – Rother and Dinger clashed often over direction and whether they should play live or not – and returned for the reunion ‘Neu! 75’ record in 1974, and later in the 80s for what would be the last hurrah of ‘Neu! 4’, an album Rother fell out over with his sparring partner.
But What Does It Sound Like?
Anticipation steadily builds as the very first stirrings of the Neu! signature, pulsing, motorik drill, incipiently fades into view. Prolonged laconic pronounced drums work their magic as Rother’s suffused guitar strains delicately kiss the flange coated textures of sound; produced from a mixture of Japanese banjo, fiddle, piano and various electronic devices. ‘Für Immer’ means “forever”, which this richly striding companion piece to the hallowed ‘Hallogallo’ certainly tries to achieve. Heavier interjections are implemented as though we were becoming dazed from the hypnotic, suffused, snarling jam of pulchritude. Echo-chamber shakes and vortex warping effects twist the percussion and pliable guitar mantras through a quantum leap, before emerging from a inter-dimensional mind bender back into the main groove all over again. Those recurrent waterside motifs continue, as lapping waves crash against the river bank, ‘Für Immer’ is caught in the tide and is beckoned beneath the waters to make way for the next section of ‘Neu! 2’. Isolation tank suffocated drums wallow in oscillating cycles of space-rock; ‘Spitzenqualität’ is coated in reverb and, yet more flange, as it manipulates timings with both distorted scathing guitar and laboured drumming: a desolate plains search and slow methodical pause of a tune.
Neu! tunes seldom end, they just tend to fizzle out or evaporate. With that in mind, ‘Gedenkminute’ takes over from its preceding triggered outro, wafting in on the last remaining resonating pools of sound. This short interlude drags us through some Edgar Allen Poe descriptive rich graveyard, the wind blowing menacingly as a haunted Germanic girls voice communicates to us from the other side. Thank the lord for the battering ram metal psych barrage of ‘Lila Engel’ (“Lilac Angel”) – surely a joke, this doomed warning of a tome is far from angelic or seraph. Sounding like the godfather to both the Southern Lord franchise of biblical droning rock, and to industrial punk. Dinger’s no-fucking-nonsense power tool drums compete with Rother’s revving, ringing-out licks, over a three-tier build-up. Each level increases in volume and savageness: yeah you never knew they could mix it with those barbarians of the wild frontier, Faust.
A collage of trickery and ameliorate masking awaits on side two, Neu! stretching the boundaries of what a band can get away with. Coming up short on material, they manipulatively assuage their own tracks starting with ‘Neuschnee’, which is introduced at 78 rpm. Dinger and Rother actually record the original single version sped-up – you even hear the hiss and crackles of the vinyl. Ridiculous high-pitched sounds give it a comedic Egyptian mystical garb, as the stylus jumps when it hits any scratches. ‘Super 16’ follows the same premise, only at 16 rpm. Slow over-aching momentum of a tune, this sounds like another doom inspired hellish crawl through the pits of Hades. – imagine Richard James remixing Boris and naming it ‘Satanic Moonscape’.
At last the authentic ‘Neuschnee’ is given an airing at the right speed. Thumb-plucked instruments ease in another classy Neu! motoring opus. Rother’s guitar now weeps and sings a glorious bewailing paean, whilst Dinger taps out some kind of secret code, hitting a cycle of drumrolls, and ending each run with a customary exclamation mark cymbal crash. ‘Casseto’ is a short vignette of caustic and harrying heaviness. The banging evil soundclash transcends nightmarish, repeating scariness. Back to the fatuous with ‘Super 78’, as now we are introduced to the crazily speeding variant of this key track, plucked from their original single. Once again a manic wheeze of squeezed demonic acid-mice, and galloping nonsensical bewilderment; fucked with and played to a skeptical audience – file under eccentric diversion tatic.
‘Hallo Excentrico!’ features half the title of their most famed and applauded track, but that’s where the similarities end. Dinger once more pisses about with the tape machine, his cohorts chattering away in the corner blissfully oblivious to the recording process. But it all gets swept up by the Teutonic brain food of ‘Super’, which pitches the signature whacker-whacker chops of Rother with a Stooges motor city Nuremburg stomp. A sublime smiling primal-scream and unscripted series of chants roll around in the background – signs of the Dinger archetype La Dusseldorf sound is woven here. ‘Neu! 2’ opens up the duo’s musical horizons, at times for the better, and at other times, its highly debatable. A harder and climatic dark side is implemented with their meditative explorations containing more layers and development of sound. Of the eleven-tracks, at least a third can be taken with a pinch of salt. Whether they generally believed that or this pokery would open up revelations or set off new discoveries remains iffy. The fact they’d been left in the shit with no money to finish recording may explain things. Still their second tome offers ethereal and inspired anthems, which in my view, are more influential then their debut.
The Social Playlist #77
Anniversary Albums And Deaths Marked Alongside An Eclectic Mix Of Cross-Generational Music, Newish Tunes And A Few Surprises.
Repeating myself, but if this is your first time here, first of all, welcome, and secondly here’s the lowdown on what the Social is:
Just give me two hours of your precious time to expose you to some of the most magical, incredible, eclectic, and freakish music that’s somehow been missed, or not even picked up on the radar. For the Social is my uninterrupted radio show flow of carefully curated music; marking anniversary albums and, sadly, deaths, but also sharing my own favourite discoveries over the decades and a number of new(ish) tracks missed or left out of the blog’s Monthly playlists.
First off, couldn’t resist paying a little tribute to the late Barry Newman, who famously played the counterculture idol, disillusioned ex-cop and racing driver Kowalski, cranked on speed, star of the iconic drive through the heart of a Vietnam-fucked America Vanishing Point – musically, and all that goes with it, utterly stolen hook line and sinker by Primal Scream. I’ve chosen the main soul busting theme from a original soundtrack that plays like a radio station. And, what sort of lowlife piece of shit would I be if I didn’t pay homage to the Acid Queen of rawkish soul, R&B and rock, Tina Turner. A smattering from golden period Tina awaits.
Anniversary wise, there’s 50th celebrations this month of albums by Donny Hathaway (Extension Of A Man), Arthea Franklin (Hey Now Hey) and Roger McGuinn (Self-Titled), and 30th salutations from the Intelligent Hoodlum (Self-Titled) and Manic Street Preachers (Gold Against The Soul).
Added to that list is music, recent and old, from New Air, Szun Waves, Zacht Automaat, Bob Dylan, Kassi Valazza, The Shivvers, Bloodrock, Ezy Minus and many more…
_________TRACKLIST__________
Jimmy Bowen ‘Super Soul Theme’
Amiri Baraka ‘Kutoa Umoja’
Ike & Tina Turner ‘Such A Fool For You’
Aretha Franklin ‘Hey Now Hey (The Other Side Of The Sky)’
Donny Hathaway ‘The Slums’
Intelligent Hoodlum ‘Black And Proud’
Lynx 196.9 ‘No Apologies’
Ike & Tina Turner ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’
Rick Asikpo ‘Ebun Oluwa’
Pixinguinha ‘Pula Sapo’
MUF ‘Wrong Age’
New Air Ft. Cassandra Wilson ‘Achtud El Buod (Childern’s Song)’
Flow Trio – Joe Mcphee ‘Incandescence’
Szun Waves ‘In The Moon House’
Double Happys ‘Needles And Plastic’
Manic Street Preachers ‘Roses In The Hospital’
Roger McGuinn ‘My New Woman’
Kassi Valazza ‘Room In The City’
Bob Dylan ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’
Oracle Sisters ‘Lunch And Jazz Chords’
Hadley Caliman ‘Old Devil Moon’
James Henry & The Olmpics ‘Sticky’
Sandro Brugnolini ‘Amo Me (Vocal Version)’
Ike & Tina Turner ‘Bold Soul Sister’
The Shivvers ‘Hey Deanie’
Okan Dincer ‘Mutlu Ol’
BroselMaschine ‘The Old Man’s Song’
Bloodrock ‘Don’t Eat The Children’
Kraan ‘Prima Klima – Live At Porta Westfalica 1975’
Carlo Rustichelli ‘Missione Bionde Platino’
Ezy Minus ‘Nuvole Che Passano’
Zacht Automaat ‘Bite The Invisible Hand’
God I hate the hard sell, but Kowalski’s spirit says be cool and support the Monolith Cocktail. Life is hard but it goes much smoother with the help of a good friend and recommender of taste like my good self. If my departure, and that of the greater MC team, leaves a sad big hole in your lives, or the contemplation of this site’s death leaves you unable to sleep at night, you can always donate to our Ko-Fi micro-donation platform here. Thank you in advance. But hey, no worries if you can’t, we are all struggling in one way or another.
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
The Perusal #44: Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkesta, Matt Donovan, Baldruin, Spindle Ensemble, Marty Isenberg…
June 13, 2023
Dominic Valvona’s Eclectic Reviews Spot (Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available to buy now)
Photo Credit: Mark Weber
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ‘60’
(The Village) 14th June 2023
Serving the South Central L.A. Black community from within for six decades (and counting), the late Horace Tapscott and his preservation Arkestra ensemble captured and reflected the social and racial injustices of that oppressed community with a righteous politically conscious and radical jazz style blueprint; a documentation, but also self-reliant stand against the state’s brutality and economic suppression.
Two decades on from his passing and Tapscott’s vision has been handed down to a new generation; led in the new century by Mekala Session, scion of Arkestra stalwart alto Michael Session. More or less each incarnation, from a sixty year timeframe (hence that album title) is represented on this new celebratory collection; released by the ensemble’s own label imprint, The Village.
For a platform that continuously swelled its ranks with untold talent from the American West Coast and beyond (oft member, the trombonist and Tribe hub co-founder, Phil Ranelin is synonymous as a mainstay of the Detroit scene for example), and fermented connections culturally throughout the country, inspiring many, the Pan African Arkestra’s recordings on wax are few and far between. Most of the performances on this compilation journey through the years were collated from home-recordings; many of which have previously never been aired before. And the majority of those come from taped concerts in the L.A. arena, the exception being a summer of ’95 performance at the Moers Festival in Germany, during a period of “regrouping”. Some, believed missing, have been literally unearthed from the Ark’s archive; with even the lineup roll call having to be cross-referenced at times: and still not a 100% sure even then.
The Pan African Arkestra exists as a live entity; whether that was playing each weekend in the formative years at the South Park bandstand or, in the line of hostile LAPD fire as they played on a flatbed truck parked right in the middle of the street during the ’65 Watts riots (or “revolt” as its framed from the frustrated, put-upon Black community suffering inequality, little or no representation). In chronological order, the 60 album encapsulates each transformation of the troupe, beginning with the fifteen-minute long tribute to the ‘heart of the Tapscott family’ Pearline Fisher, or Gram Pearl “to those who loved her”. A grand matriarch, at the very centre of the family home, watching all the goings ons, including the band members arriving up the drive for rehearsals in the garage, Gram Pearl’s name was immortalised on the 1961 home recorded ‘The Golden Pearl’. Reverence shines through this early performance that seems to bridge the late 50s jazz of Gillespie, Ellington, Coltrane and the Savoy label with the coming age of the 60s Black consciousness and spiritual enlightenment. A “likely configuration” of Tapscott on a loose Oscar Peterson flow of barrel and saloon piano, Arthur Blythe and either Jimmy Woods or Guido Sinclair doubling up on saxophone, Lester Robertson on fluttered trombone, David Bryant on spoke-like and brushed double-bass and Bill Madison on swing-time and brushed drums mark one of the first lineups of the burgeoning Arkestra. As it turned out, pianist and conductor Tapscott was right to jump off Lionel Hampton’s Big Band tour bus that year; walking all the way back home, pissed but motivated to grow something new.
In the “pressure cooker” tumult of South Central L.A. a close-knit handful of artists gravitated to the beacon; at first going under the UGMA (Underground Musicians Association) abbreviation, this initial lineup included (amongst many others) the vocalist Linda Hill, drummer Donald Dean and the already noted bassist Bryant (who’ll crop up quite a lot during the course of this ensemble’s history) and saxophonist Woods. Many would appear on that compilation opener.
Although not until much later, the obvious influence/inspiration of Saturn’s cultural ambassador in Earth, Sun Ra, most be noted. Tapscott himself, easily an acolyte of that cosmic spirit, pointed out the differences between the two Arkestras; the original envisioned as an ark travelling through space, the other, a “cultural safe house for music” down here on terra firma. Whilst Sun Ra looked to the stars for an escape to some colour-blind society on a distant world, Tapscott’s troupe wanted to be amongst the people: screw the space race.
That blossoming unit found itself under FBI surveillance as a new decade beckoned; much of that paranoia down to the ensemble’s support for the Black Panthers. From the cusp of that decade, the 70s, there’s a recording of the Ark at Widney High School. With a far wider, expanded lineup and the Sarah Vaughan like commanding, but also dreamy, freely moving vocals of Hill and, so it seems, only a recurring Tapscott and Robertson, a lot of new faces appear on the fluctuating ‘Little A’s Chant’. A loose intoxication, a tamed wilderness permeates a mixture of The Lightman Plus One’s Cold Bair, Tyrone Washington’s Roots and the influence of Philip Cohran.
Photo Credit: Mark Weber
With the war paint on, entering the over-commodified decade of the 80s, the Ark, once more changing the roll call, fashion a piano heavy kaftan wearing fire out of Somaya “Peaches” Hasson’s ‘Nation Rising’. Turning in a Last Poets and Leon Thomas vocal performance, Juan Grey (aka Jujigwa) is a man in a hurry: he’s got “work to do”, “rising a nation”. Whistling and swinging down a boardwalk paved Nile on a Yusef Lateef and Pharaoh Sanders vibe, we got a double-front of both willowy flutes (Adele Sebastian and Dadisi Komolafa to thank for that) and altoists (Sabir Mateen delivering a honked and dynamic solo, with Gary Biar as foil), and the rattled congas of Moises Obligacion alongside the mini crescendo spiraling drums of Billy Hinton. Phew!
Forward again, and to the backdrop of an L.A. in flames, sparked by the Rodney King miscarriage of justice, the Ark are to be found on one of their rare trips to Europe; playing a concert at the Moers Festival in the summer of ’95. Regrouping with the help of a returning Jesses Sharps on soprano sax, Tapscott shares piano duties with Nate Morgan and a whole lot of brass on ‘The Ballad Of Deadwood Dick’. I will however name check Arthur Blythe on alto sax and recent converts Michael Session (on tenor), Charles Owens (also on tenor), Fundi Legohn (French horn), William Roper (tuba), Steve Smith (trumpet) and Thorman Green (trombone). An integral founding brother of the Ark, the already mentioned David Bryant is back on double bass, but sharing his duties with fellow bassist Roberto Miranda, whilst doubling up on the drums is the shared union of Fritz Wise and Sonship Theus. All together they conjure up another Egyptian tapestry whilst huffing and in bird-like illusion build up a brass heavy swing and sway. A galloping percussive rhythm (coconuts denoting a hoof-like fast trot) creates a travelling caravan vibe, as the melody, swells and punctuations evoke Skies Of America Ornate and touch of Bernstein.
The new century, a decade on from the death of their mentor and founder Tapscott, and the troupe is under a new steward and embracing another in-take of rightful minded jazz players. From a 2009 recording at the Jazz Bakery (pastries and bread with jazz, what’s not to like), with only a familiar Wise on drums (joined by Bill Madison), Sharp on soprano, Legohn on French horn and Smith on trumpet, we hear a Philip Cohran type spiritual and political fanfare for “justice”. L.A. notable Dwight Trible (recently giving divine voice to Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble) is on expressive conscious-unloaded and right-on vocal duties, and the already mentioned Detroit icon Phil Ranelin can be heard on characteristic trombone. A riled and ached, seething indignation with shades of Sun Ra and the Pharaoh, ‘Justice’ is as free as it is fueled by rightful grievances.
The most recent performance, a decade later, is the Zebulon (in L.A. again) convert vision of ‘Dem Folks’. It’s conducted this time by another convert, the Egyptian-American-Muslim trombonist Zehkeraya El-Magharbel, who turns out to be a sound fit. The cast is further expanded with a quartet of spiritual rousing and more Gyrgory Ligeti otherworldly choral vocalists (Aankah Neel, Tamina Johnson-Lawson, Qur’an Shaheed and Maia, who’s also on flute), oboes, bass clarinets, a good showing of horns, and this time out, the keyboard skills of Brian Hargrove. A real fusion of dynamic parts, it begins with a virtuoso drilled, pummeled, slow to fast, percussive and drum introduction of rolls and cymbal hissing shimmers (ala Billy Cobham), before, at first, hitting a dissonance of wild drum mimicked voices. A soul-jazz groove finally lands after going through various changes, from fluted Lateef to echoes of Prince Lasha’s Search For Tomorrow communion with Herbie Hancock and a tumult of incantation and oscillated vocals. An untethered swell of orchestral jazz in the anointed light of Sun Ra and the wisdom of the ancients, ‘Dem Folks’ is the earthly community taken to anthemic highs. What a fitting, electrifying performance to mark the Pan Afrikan Arkestra’s newest incarnation; twenty years on from its pioneer’s death, the baton passed on and, as it obviously proves, is still in safe hands. The future is indeed bright for this long-running ensemble.
The 60 album proves an important preservation of a self-reliant social activist institution, integral to the community in which it serves, teaches and rises up. A great encapsulation of that story, musical journey and the changes it has gone through, this will both excite the Ark’s fans and newcomers to the cause.
Spindle Ensemble & Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan ‘Live In Toronto’
(Hidden Notes)
A congruous union of modern classical music and gamelan, Bristol’s Spindle Ensemble quartet and the Toronto Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan octet transport the listener to a blossomed, lush and evocative West Java landscape on their EP of both live and recorded studio performances.
In what proves to be an intuitive collaboration – the results of a chance meeting between the Spindle’s Harriet Riley and Evergreen’s Christopher Hull whilst both studying gamelan in Bali -, both partners respect and accentuate the qualities of their chosen forms and inspirations as they meld and weave together instruments from the West and Indonesian East. A balance is struck between contemporary explorations, probes and the timeless across three tracks. The gamelan ‘degung’ family of metallophones and bamboo instruments dance and bob along to and twinkle alongside the Spindle’s harp brushes, bulb-like note dripping marimba and vibraphone, sympathetic-bowed cello and violins, and deft subtle spells and waves of piano.
Written by the Spindle’s composer-pianist and harpist Daniel Inzani, the opening patter cascade of mallet notes and tinkles ‘Lucid Living’, was recorded at the Evergreen’s rehearsal space in downtown Toronto. A light enchanted dance of plucked and picked strings across lily pads, with an air of the willowed fluted pastoral, there’s an almost romantic but simultaneous closed-eyes, deep in thought moodiness to this first performance of adroit musicianship.
Also penned by a Spindle member, Harriet Riley’s mythological-loaded ‘Orpheus’ is part of the two group’s live performance at the city’s 918 Bathurst Street Centre For Culture, Arts, Media And Education – it must be noted at this point that the Bristol quartet travelled to the Evergreen’s backyard to foster this project, spending weeks rehearsing the repertoire before that inaugural live date. Barefoot in jungle temples, the Hellenic bard-poet (an Argonaut and famed survivor of Hade’s underworld) is planted down in the Indonesian exotic; wandering across an uninterrupted proscenium score of various Southeast Asian flavours. All the while accompanied by a soundtrack of pressing repeated chords, metallic chimes and drones, the arched and bowed. At times it’s a rasped mizzle, at others, a slow-paced rhythmic joy or flight that feels almost improvised if not free to fellow its natural path.
The final performance, ‘Open Fifths Gardens’, was composed by the Evergreen’s Andrew Timar and is another exotic allurement of the East. It suggested the dusk hour to me, and evoked the strings of Simon McCorry and Anne Müller: that push of classical instruments made to sound more contemporary and alive if abstract; not just read off the classical cannon score sheet but swelling up with a less guided, personal feel for the time, space and direction of travel in that moment.
In short: the gamelan sound is opened up further and spread wider into the arena of contemporary chamber and symphonic classical music, to conjure up an atmospheric kind of melodious and stirring theatre.
Matt Donovan ‘Sleep Until The Storm Ends’
Marking three in a row of annual Spring-time delivered albums, the drummer-percussionist turn multi-instrumentalist solo artist Matt Donovan opens up his personal universe to the world. In the face of political, social discourse and ruin, lawlessness, loss and anxiety Donovan captures the evocative moments and scenes we all often take for granted; turning nighttime walks, the memories of loved ones into something musically and sonically lasting. A time is saved for posterity even if its just for Donovan and no one else; a kind of musical photo album that represents the sentiments, therapeutic stages of a period in his life.
And yet, with such universal tragedy and dislocation, there’s always hope; the music, even when the subject matter chimes with the God awful state of affairs currently destroying the country, remain loving and kind. Those of you who seeked out the (hopefully through my recommendations) previous Habit Formation (’22) and Underwater Swimming (’21) albums will find that Sleep Until The Storm Ends shares a familiar palette of kosmische/krautrock, alt 80s and 90s and post-punk influences. And yet it feels somehow different; mature and comfortable in its skin but exploring all the while.
With propulsive-motored stints in Eat Lights Become Lights, and as a foil to Nigel Bryant in the psych-krautrock-progressive-industrial Untied Knot duo, it’s hardly surprising to hear those Germanic influences permeating this newest album: A spot of the Dingers (Klaus and Thomas) here and a bit of Michael Rother and Manuel Göttsching guitar there. On some of the more reflective tracks like ‘A Sky Full Of Hope’ and ‘Night Walking’ its Tangerine Dream and company, albeit the latter has more than a touch of soundtrack Vangelis about it too, merged with pop, jazz and 80s indie influences. Although not German, just mere cousins on the astral plane, a few of these tracks reminded me of both Syrinx and Ariel Kalma’s new age, spiritual panoramic awakenings.
This is only half the story, as Donovan also effortlessly seems to weave The Field Mice’s ‘…letting go’ with Karl Hyde, Mick Harvey (especially on the few occasions he sings), the Durruti Column, Spaceman 3 and Eno (Another Green World era on the light-effected environmental plaint ‘The Crying Earth’). In practice this results in a sort of bell-tinkled and recalled leitmotif signature unfolding of Donovan’s moods and ruminations: goodbyes too. Sometimes its dreamy and other times near cosmic with climbing scales and Fripp-like sustain and flange-fanned guitar work, synth waves and heartfelt vibrations.
Barefoot Contessa daydreams sit well with clavichord buzz splintered boogies on yet another enriching and rewarding album that slowly unfurls its understated balm of warmth and also protestation gradually over repeated plays. On the fringes certainly, a true independent diy artist, Matt Donovan is far too good to stay under the radar. Do yourselves a favour, grab a copy on bandcamp now.
Baldruin ‘Relikte aus der Zukunfti’
(Buh Records) 19th June 2023
Lying somewhere between the Reformation, hermetic, supernatural and mysterious Far East, the German electronic musician-producer Johannes Schebler simultaneously occupies a liminal past and as yet unsure future on his latest journey, Relikte aus der Zukunfti.
Just as Roedelius, Moebuis and Schnitzler’s first recorded experiments, under the Kluster title, found a home on the synonymous German church organ music label Schwann, so congruous were those early kosmische innovators “hymnal qualities” and, if removed, links to the country’s rich venerated history of religious music, Schebler’s own small Bavarian village rectory upbringing can be heard permeating this fourteen-track traverse and score.
The chime and ring of Lutheran, but also Oldfield’s tubular, bells can be heard across a both holy and unholy atmosphere of cult Italian horror, prog-rock, krautrock, new age and vague Ethnographic absorptions. The paranormal and monastic; the chthonian and Oriental are constantly drawn upon to manifest a fog of uncertainty and intrigue; occasionally delivering heightened dramatics and the chills as the music evokes hints of Goblin, Fabio Frizzi and the presence of some ungodly force.
It begins however, with the blown, sax fluted and veiled ‘Under The Counter’ soundscape, which sounds more like a gauzy apparition of Sam Rivers or Colin Stetson in a Frederic D. Oberland expanse. ‘Ride On The Silver Lizard’ meanwhile, sounds like a brassy sitar transcendental mythology of Steve Hackett, Eroc and Srgius Golowin, and the airy ebbed ‘Predestined’ captures Finis Africae and Vangelis in a cloud vapour loop. The timpani-rumbled ‘Confused’ on the other hand could be a lost Sakamoto score; the late Japanese icon entering the underworld.
Stretching the imagination whilst hinting at various mystical lands, you can detect the more experimental, serial and less musical adventurous work of Širom and Walter Smetek existing in the same space as Popol Vuh, Alejandro Jodorowsky and the melodically afflatus. You’re never quite sure where you are exactly though: nor in what time period. The ground beneath your feet is translucent, or, like an ever-changing shimmer and shiver of evaporated atmospheres. This is a knowing album that taps into its influences and church music groundings to offer a balance between the spiritual and disturbing.
Ramuntcho Matta ‘S/T’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 16th June 2023
A sound production of contrasts; a collage of time spent in both New York City and Paris, where the graffiti’d downtown meets fourth world music explorations, Ramuntcho Matta’s absorption of those two cultural hives is a no wave and exotic theatre of diverse influences.
The younger sibling to and scion of the Matta arts 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 was a well-connected creative nomad who chose to plow his own furrow in the field of experimental music. He started out in this regard, in the company of such polymath avant-garde luminaries as Brion Gysin, Don Cherry and Laurie Anderson. The latter opened doors to everything New York had to offer in the late 70s and early 80s. Ramuntcho also shared a flat with scenesters Nana Vasconcelos and Arto Lindsay: living in the same building as the Talking Heads’ Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth no less. Although tragedy would strike with the death of his brother and conceptual art icon Gordon in the late 70s, the burgeoning producer would stay on, 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 Paris. With the CV –notably recording Don Cherry’s 1983 ‘Kick’ single for the boutique French label Mosquito, the original imprint for this self-titled album – and network expanding ever further, 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.
Without seeing the actual production it’s difficult to gauge if the music was successful, complimentary or not. However, removed from that dance theatre setting the album works as a window in on a particular rich cultural exchange of ideas, sonics, sketches and soundscapes.
This ’85 released production was produced between Ramuntcho’s home and the Studio d’Auteuil in Paris; the former, a more solitary space for the album’s soundscapes and more ambient-minded pieces, the latter, a more rambunctious shared environment where all the album’s bandy and shunted no wave funk and Island life Grace Jones-esque tracks were recorded with the Stinky Toys and Elli & Jacno duo’s Elli Medeiros (on vocals), the Uruguayan percussionist Negrito Trasante, Suicide Romeo’s Frederic Cousseau (better known as Fred Goddard) on drums and Polo Lambardo on konks. That list may be extended depending on what information you read, although the WWS label and linear notes writer Jacques Denis have managed to pull together the fullest picture yet of a record hampered by misspelled band members and even a missing track listing. According to those same notes, Ramuntcho didn’t feel that the label had pushed the project or even promote it very well; hence why it disappeared: a find for crate diggers decades later.
A dance fusion of influences and ideas, this counterpoint of diverse elements opens on a gentler, almost mulling day dreamy guitar amble with the light-jazz touched ‘Gesti’. Like Marc Ribot on Iberian shores, there are a couple of these soloist moodscape pieces (see the more classical-tinged and loosened ‘Irimi Nage’). A second strand to this record’s sphere of influence is the didgeridoo sounding passages of Jon Hassell inspired sound cartography; as found on the outback resonated, barked fretboard experimental, water carrier poured ‘Avatar’, and mbira tine, funnel blowing, freight train honked primitive dance music spot ‘Zoique 3’.
The action sprawls across both the NYC and Paris underground on tracks like the shunting cut-up and counterbalance of discombobulated Art Of Noise and a repeated sweeter voiced spell of African or French-Polynesian Island song, on the ‘Sassam Kitaki’ switch. Most surprising is the fluid, bandy amalgamated hip 80s shining ‘Hukai’, which merges Casino Music with Orange Juice, Grace Jones, Lounge Lizards, Talking Heads and the sunny township polyrhythms of South Africa. ‘All Those Years’ in contrast, sounds like Saw Delight era Can rubbing shoulders with a reflectively blue XTC.
Also, in addition to shades of Dunkelziffer, Populaire Mechanik, Don Cherry (of course), Annie Anxiety and the Pop Group, there’s an exotic fauna and animalistic soundscape of French-Arabia, Africa and the Americas, to be found suffused amongst the electrified disjointed and vibrated no wave funky free-play.
I must confess, this album totally passed me by. I wasn’t even aware of it. Although only briefly, I even studied both Roberto and Gordon Matta when I was an art student, but had no idea there was another equally talented member of the clan. Hearing it now makes sense, so much of its makeup integral and over-used in the last two decades as the 80s becomes this generations’ 60s. There are some great eclectic hybrids and even no wave dance tunes to be found. Everything gels perfectly on this evolving, changing production; from the bendy to frazzled; atmospheric to off-kiltered. Ramuntcho’s theatre dance soundtrack is a complimentary bedfellow to Sakamoto’s computer disc experiments of the same(ish) period, released a while back on the WWS label. A great revived lost fusion from the avant-garde funk and no wave cannon.
Marty Isenberg ‘The Way I Feel Inside’
7th July 2023
It’s a name synonymous with whimsy poignancy, a signature frame and colour palette, but what the American filmmaker Wes Anderson and his perfectly constructed diorama movies are equally famous for is their carefully curated soundtracks. The scores of which have led to, in some cases, a revival of fortune for the said artists and bands that pepper such iconic films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom and so on.
The unassuming Anderson has become such a cult figure himself that, in kind, a number of artists have penned homages or name checked his films or idiosyncratic view of the world. Arguably there is a certain hip, generation X selective and knowing calculation to those mixtape-like soundtracks that get used as prompts for poignancy, emotional states and the almost impossible to quantify with just actions or dialogue.
Not quite the homage in itself, the debut album from the NYC bassist and composer Marty Isenberg (stepping out under his own name for the first time) entwines the feelings of his own formative years with Anderson’s filmography: or rather, the music from those beautifully crafted stories of outsider isolation and pain. You could call it a covers album of a sort; an eight-song selection of reinterpretations would be better though. And yet, despite keeping some of the signature melodies, all of the original lyrics, Isenberg extends, menders and sets familiar emoted pulls in a different environment with a rich jazz transformation.
You’ll have to excuse my ignorance and a lack of info on who is joining Isenberg on this album: there’s electric guitar, drums, some sax and cornet, and a beautifully voiced singer with shades of Norah Jones and Esperanza Spalding. I’m going to suggest that members of Isenberg’s Like Minds Trio with Alicyn Yaffee and Eric Reeves could be involved. It would make perfect sense; the music does at least sound congruous.
Proving the most popular choices, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic dominant. From the former there’s a faithful harpsichord spindled version of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Stephanie Says’ that subtly transforms that Stones-like psychedelic old England vibe into a smooth 70s jazz light theme tune, with sections of swing and simmered feels. Velvet third wheel and oft collaborative partner, Nico has her pleasant of Lutheran melancholic song of regret and remembrance. ‘These Days’, lightened and taken back to Jackson Browne’s more lifted, sweetened origins. A Muscle Shoals electric piano (or Hammond) hovers as the vocals acquire more of a lilting and near scat-jazzy vocal arrangement that sounds almost Bacharach(ian).
Another Tenenbaums favourite, Eliot Smith’s ‘Needle In The Hay’ is given a jazzy touch. Isenberg opens with incipient bass bends, scales and nimble introspective picks as a less adolescent moody, despondent vocal points towards both Spalding and Tori Amos. The feels all there: the indie singer-songwriter dourness. Yet it’s given an off-script treatment of drama counterbalanced by the meandered.
Nick Drake’s achingly beautiful ‘Cello Song’, with all its connotations and personal tragedy, is a journey in itself of the wept and sympathetic. Sailing close to Beggars Banquet Stones, and the jazz of Mingus and Bobby Jackson at other times, a “cruel world” of sensitivity is softly expanded upon. That vocal is almost airy, if still carrying a beguiled plaintive tone.
My personal favourite (alongside Rushmore), The Life Aquatic offers up a double helping of Bowie covers and a Lennon/McCartney-like Zombies hymn. In what is a kind of meta exercise, the film’s Belafonte crew member and famous Brazilian musician Seu Jorge originally played around with a songbook of acoustic Bowie numbers; all of which are smattered throughout the Cousteau parody come homage. One of them, ‘Rebel Rebel’, is covered here; attuned more to Jorge’s Latin-sauntered origins than the glam-stomp actionist anthem of Diamond Dogs. In this version the song is played in the background of Peter Sellers’ The Party, or winding out of an early 60s jazz lounge. It’s both very twinkly and Tropicana light. ‘Life On Mars’ however, is faithful in part (tune wise anyway), yet takes the original crooner-vibe towards a mix of colliery band style horns and Stevie Wonder soul-jazz. The drama, edges are rounded but the overriding lament and emotional draw remain in tact. The pleasing ‘The Way I Feel Inside’ from a ‘65 Zombies is handled with a sweetness and enchantment that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Anderson film itself.
I’m totally unfamiliar with the band Steady Holiday, whose ‘So Long’ is playfully sent back to a dancehall era that weaves together echoes of WWII, the 50s and Dixie Jazz for a wistful, cornet nestled smooch.
Isenberg with subtlety and charm offers some surprising renditions. But what’s most surprising is that the bassist doesn’t grandstand, hog the spotlight with his double-bass instrument of choice; nor is this especially a bass-heavy showcase, but an adroit, attentive but ready to leap at a moment’s notice into action playing style that bends and lends itself to a variety of styles. There’s heartfelt connections balanced with a certain magic and even playfulness, a sharing of the artist’s tastes, record collection and personal aspirations; the main one being the loss of his father at a young age: old enough however to have been inspired by his dad’s own musical tastes, loves and collection of instruments. Finding a special affinity perhaps with Anderson’s many protagonists (there is a leitmotif of characters with only one parent in his films), that early loss led to Isenberg’s journey in musical study: from initially learning by feel and intuition, to majoring at the New School for Jazz And Contemporary Music in jazz performance. A beautiful and off-kilter, sometimes whimsical, songbook is transformed with a jazzy touch of personality.
Joe Woodham ‘Worldwide Weather’
(None More Records) 16th June 2023
Noting the changing tides and climate on warm suffused currents of looping guitar, field recordings and kosmische, post-rock and dream progressive styled languorous inspirations, Jouis band member Joe Woodham sonically and melodically charts various lunar-cycle driven weather fronts and metrological phenomena on his first solo album for the None More Records label.
Unburdened by climate change Cassandras’ and apocalyptic predictions, Woodham almost finds a certain comfort – even when yearning – in tracing and capturing the ebb and flow, the awe and beauty of the oceans as they are pulled by the moon’s cyclonic forces.
As an aside, and for trivia fans, album track ‘Neap Gloom’ (anything but as, well, gloomy as that title suggests; rather it’s a more airy and wafted proposition, with rain patters that sound rather nice) is a reference to the tide just after the first or third quarters of the moon: when there is the least difference between high and low waters.
The process of making this album itself comes from enjoyment, not dark clouds of angst or anxiety. The initial experiments were produced in fact on Woodham’s daughter’s Casio keyboard, which in turn was linked to a loop pedal. There’s more to it than that of course, but the intention was one of play and improvisation; later manipulated and layered with the clipped hiss, gates and crackled atmospherics of Matthew David, the suffused bird songs and whistles of Ernest Hood, and crashing surf and spray of the waves crashing against the shoreline.
The enormity is certainly present, but most of the peregrinations and moods slip and wash between the swimmingly and warmly drifting. It could be what sounds like a melodica on tracks like the gamelan malleted bells and concertinaed Parisian wafted ‘Gameplan B’ (no idea about that title, other than this could be a riff on the climate emergency brigades, “there is no planet B”, mantra), and squeezed mellowed, nicely wavy and dreamy (anything but) ‘Overcast’ that makes me think of Alex Paterson’s brand of mirage-dub. And, as referenced by Woodham himself in his accompanying quotes as the listening material when making this record, there’s an enervated whiff of Frances Bebey about the latter track, alongside hints of Jah Wobble and Odd Nosedam.
Amongst the variations of Manuel Göttsching, Michael Rother, Land Observation and Orange Crate Art guitar accents, lines, curves and cycles and sweeping weather fronts, the magical ‘Spring Tides’ builds from a Laraaji-like heavenly introduction into a slow forward momentum of beautiful slowcore and shoegaze (reminding me actually a little of The Besnard Lakes). Woodham actually sings on the psychedelic English folk-pastoral ‘Longshore Drift’ observation; sounding a little like James Yorkston in hymnal echoed benevolence.
Woodham effectively layers the counterflows and melodies of nature and the directions of tidal travel. There are some lovely moments on this album, some spots of reflection, as Woodham makes a case for just letting the music take you in its lunar drawn grasp. A really effective debut for the label.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years this blog has featured and supported music, musicians and labels both I and my team of collaborators 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 and love for. 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.
A RUN-THROUGH OF RECENT ALBUM RELEASES/ GRAHAM DOMAIN
OUTER LIMIT LOTUS ‘Dazzling Darkness’
(Sheep Chase Records) (Digital Download)
This is the dark new album from Norwegian post-punk band Outer Limit Lotus whose influences include Bauhaus and Christian Death. ‘Let the Night Ride You Home’ sounds like a Cure song played by Bauhaus – all spikey goth guitars, cobwebs and dark baritone with a screaming sax solo akin to the Pop Group. ‘Again Like Yesterday’ is reminiscent of Bauhaus and 80’s bands like the Sisters of Mercy. Meanwhile, ‘The Beach’ sounds like a song that could complete the soundtrack to any teen vampire flick. If you like your music dark, goth, with the sound of 1980’s alternative, then this is for you!
BOOM PAM ‘Royal’
(Batov Records) (Vinyl/Download Album)
The Tel Aviv band produce another album of disco surf spaghetti western instrumental mish-mash music that would be great played at Butlins whilst waiting for the next terrible act. If it was an album recorded in the 1970’s it would perhaps be a much sort after holy grail of cheese fest! I kind of like it for lots of non-musical reasons! Terribly good!
THE KINGFISHERS ‘Reflections In a Silver Sound’
(Last Night From Glasgow) (Vinyl/Download Album)
The Kingfishers formed in 1982 and split a year later after playing gigs with Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout, their album unfinished. 40 years later their debut album is now available and what a great album it is. It is an album of melodic memorable pop songs that owes much to the sixties in its beat group sound that lies somewhere between the Searchers, the LA’s and Aztec Camera. A lost classic? Perhaps!
SACROBOSCO ‘IVXVI’
(Travarobato) (Digital Download Album)
An arresting album of electronic music from Italian producer Giacomo Giunchedi. The album is sprinkled with samples from some of the greats of Spiritual Jazz including Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. The single ‘Faint’ begins with a looped female choir that is hypnotic to listen to and reminds me of Julianna Barwick while the music has echoes of The Cinematic Orchestra and DJ Shadow. ‘Hashimoto’ meanwhile sounds like a Japanese Garden grown by AI and is disturbing in its repetition. An interesting album of cool ambience that will appeal to many but won’t be to everyone’s taste!
Psyché ‘Self Titles Debut Album’
(Four Flies Records) (Digital Download Album)
This is a brilliant album of funky Mediterranean psychedelic instrumentals that sits somewhere between Khruangbin and the Barry Gray Orchestra! Every track is a Gem! Wonderful!
ELEVEN MAGPIES ‘Two for Joy’
(Cuculi Records) (Bandcamp – CD / Digital Download)
This is the second album from Bristol based Folk Instrumental Quartet Eleven Magpies. The album consists of thirteen instrumental pieces that could easily fit into any documentary or film about the countryside or farming. The music is also interesting enough to be listened to without visuals with its calm rustic feel and hints of traditional Gaelic music.
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