REVIEWS ROUNDUP
GRAHAM DOMAIN
Here are reviews of some great singles, EP’s and Albums that have recently been released by Brona McVittie, Panjoma, Jose Medele and Hari Sima. Have a listen; you won’t be disappointed.
Brona McVittie ‘The Woman in The Moon’ (Single)
(Company Of Corkbots)
This is a fine song and the Title Track from her forthcoming third album (out in October 2022). It is essentially Autumnal Celtic Folk with a jazz and spooked electronica edge. Double bass, harp and understated jazz drums underpin the song mixed with sparse electronica giving it an eerie off kilter Autumnal feel, like the changing of the seasons as the days get shorter and night falls too soon.
Panjoma ‘Sun and Moon’ (Extended Play)
On first listen, the lead track ‘Sun and Moon’ sounds almost like a psychedelic 60s keyboard band with phased female vocals. Initially the song seems limited by the drum machine and seems to cry out for a real drummer and maybe a full a band to make it more organic and give it greater feel, especially on the semi-improvised instrumental parts! However, after a good-few listens, it begins to sound fantastic as it is, like something from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – a crazy space age dance for Gerry Anderson Puppets, Robbie the Robot and Zooney from Fireball XL5! F.A.B!
The song ‘Free’ is almost summery in its groove but is held back by the overly loud keyboards that make it sound almost like a stuck record. It may be that the artist intended the song to be ‘challenging’ but it soon becomes annoying to listen to, for the reasons given.
‘Like Thunder’ is the most melodic song on the EP with its saxophone refrain creating a late-night ambience and an air of neon-lit excitement.
Overall, the EP contains some good songs (The Yin) balanced by (The Yang) the more challenging material. I suspect this is intentional – one to watch!
Jose Medeles ‘Railroad, Cadences and Melancholic Anthems’ (Album)
Perhaps best known for his time as drummer with The Breeders, Jose Medeles has recorded this album as ‘a drummer’s tribute to the music of John Fahey’.
The album features some fine guitar playing from the likes of Marisa Anderson, Chris Funk and M Ward giving it a laid-back melancholic feel in keeping with the sparse melodic Americana of the songs. The six songs are things of slow tumbleweed beauty that stretch across the wide-open plains and dusty roads of America’s backwoods like ghosts, half glimpsed in the shimmering heat of the day.
Standout Tracks: ‘Voice of the Turtle’, ‘Mid the Snow’ and ‘Ice’.
Hari Sima ‘Solo en Occidente’ (Album)
(Objetos Perdidos)
This is the second album release by Hari Sima. The eight pieces of Ambient music are a mixture of cold technology, human sadness, mystery and musical travelogue of the mind.
The first track ‘Fontanar’ begins with distant synthetic sound, like alien field recordings, that create a feeling of being alone by the sea on an alien planet. The slowly creeping sequencers build harmony while creating feelings of isolation – a desert of dream, a paradise of unease. All is not as it seems.
‘Del Barranco al Rio’ meanwhile, develops from cold sequencer repetition, gradually becoming infused with melancholic clouds of melody – like music created by a cyborg Arvo Part – sadness at the heart of a technological wilderness.
‘Sumatra’ enlists Indian table drums to create a Middle Eastern vibe that slowly evolves into a downbeat spy or espionage film theme.
‘Petricor’ continues the Middle Eastern vibe with synthetic drones creating mystery and tension.
‘Cuando Sonaban las Caracolas’ uses drones, synths and echo to create a feeling of foreboding – like walking into a dark alleyway on a short cut home and suddenly regretting it!
‘Envuelto en Celulosa’ uses a sequencer to create a vaguely Japanese melody that mixes in burbling synth sound and synthetic wind to create the feeling of journeying in a distant land.
‘Dessaraigo’ similarly uses a sequencer and computer-babble noise to create an almost African musical travelogue.
‘En la Azud’ uses African type drums and a sequencer to create the feeling of voyaging deep into a tropical forest.
Whilst the album could easily be used to soundtrack a documentary or film, it can also be enjoyed as background Ambience. It is available now on the Valencia based label Objetos Perdidos as a limited-edition vinyl or digital download.
ALBUM REVIEW
ANDREW C. KIDD
Aftab Darvishi ‘A Thousand Butterflies’
(30M Records)
The Hamburger label 30M Records is an intercontinental phonograph. Its pivot hinge moves a funnelled horn to bring sounds of Iran out of Iran to the world. They have a tender reverence for tradition. The 30M name is a cryptic derived from a 12th century mystic poem. In the poem, 30 birds (Persian, sī murğ) flock to find their king, discovering not only that there is no king, but that their winged efforts had in fact made them kings. The label also embraces modern Iran where analogue-altered sorna flutes and kamancheh (spike fiddle) play koron (quarter tones). Having briefly explored some of their back catalogue, I am keen to return to explore more of Iran’s sounds, and the techniques employed. For example, how can I identify a dastgāh, and what melody makes a particular gusheh?
My present focus today is not on the modal system classifications that define Iranian classical music, but on Aftab Darvishi and her ‘portrait album’ titled A Thousand Butterflies. The composer has an impressive curriculum vitae. Her compositions include commissioned work for ’50 For The Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire’ and a reimagining of Puccini’s opera Turandot titled ‘Turan Dokht’. A Thousand Butterflies marks more than a decade of her writing. The album opens with longbowing on ‘Sahar’, which Darvishi describes as the dawn chorus of Kermanshah, an ancient city in western Iran. When I listen to this, I envisage an orange-brimmed skysill contrasting the deep cerulean and royal blues of the Tekiye Moaven Al Molk. I see night lifting from the trees in the Taq Bostan. The cellos wind-dance and build and hearten until everything is suddenly revealed in luminous glory: the sun has strewn her rays across this lasting land. The tone changes on ‘Hidden Dream’, the only live track on the album. The soft reeds of a quartet of saxophones build upon the feeling of newness that ‘Sahar’ imbued. The soothing vibrato permeates warmth. The piece ends with murmurings that descend into quietude, then silence.
Narration is important in Darvishi’s work. The title track of this album has been written to include three movements, each one representing immigration. The movements are not discrete but share the same instrumentation: piano and clarinet. There is a feeling of bewilderment on the first movement. It feels ruminant. There are few stops, and as such, there is little air. The piano is heavy. Its bass notes are occasionally echoed higher in the octave. The clarinet and piano slowly peeter away as if gazing together into a new distance. The clarinet is lighter in the second movement. There is longing here, possibly for home that is no longer home. The sound is delicate. In contrast to the airtightness of the first movement, Darvishi provides space for the listener to breathe. The clarinet plays a gentle melody throughout and acts as an anchor (this represents hope to me). The third movement is brighter. The pianist uses a broader range of the scale. The clarinet flutters and changes rhythm. At points it almost cries out in reedy catharsis. The piece has now become butterfly-like. Its wings are the transparency of sound. It is sky-bound.
On her website Darvishi describes the album as evoking “a life that has crossed continents”. This is reflected in the distinctiveness of each piece. An interesting observation is the sequential lengthening of each track. ‘Sahar’ clocks in at just over six minutes and ‘Plutone’ concludes at nearly fifteen minutes. I think the lengthening of each track immerses the listener deeper in Darvishi’s aural landscapes, the most complex of which is ‘Forgetfulness’. This is almost entirely devoid of narrative and opens with a musical oxymoron of tremolo and legato, where trepidation is met with calmness. The strings are played sul ponticello (high near the bridge). They are hoarse. The reeds are hushed. The stringed instrumentalists and flautists dance around atonality and lyricalism. I think I can hear augmented seconds and chromaticism, typical of Iranian classical music. I have read that the music of Iran typically makes little use of harmony with solo performances having a position of prominence. There are elements of this on ‘Forgetfulness’ (the strings take the lead at points). This is also evident on the album’s title track where the clarinet stars.
In musical composition, the true skill is the appreciation of balance and an understanding that individual parts construct the whole. I cannot think of a better example of Darvishi’s mastering of these principles than in her final piece, ‘Plutone’. I have listened to this countless times. Its name immediately conjures thoughts of the dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. We are somewhere faraway here. The breathy reeds and droning bells kindle a cosmogonical spirit. The tones are crystallophonic. They are glassy and enduring. They morph to become dial-like, as if they are trying to communicate with one another. The violas and cellos lift us from the blackness of these droning inklings. They strings open but stop short of an adagio. The bells continue to build and shape to become something altogether greater, reaching out for higher frequencies. A quiet piano motif is played in fifths. The bass clef rumbles. The piece eventually becomes a giant orb that is filled with resonating eddies and beautifully balanced instruments that crest and fall together. ‘Plutone’ is quite simply a masterpiece in ambient electronica. I think its success lies in its measure. Measure in time, and tone. Measure in each of its movements. Darvishi maximises the synergy of her instruments so that they ripple to become swells and torrents that wrest emotions from the listener. I can tell you that this piece has drawn me inside out and laid me bare.
Our Daily Bread 529: Live At WOMAD 1982
July 20, 2022
ALBUM COMPILATION REVIEW
Dominic Valvona
Various ‘Live At WOMAD 1982’
(Real World Records) 29th July 2022
Chief among those promoting (what has become a problematic term in itself) “world music”, the WOMAD festival and organization took a punt forty years ago in treating those artists considered outside the rather myopic scope of Westernized music with equal validity and respect. Even now, as we like to believe our tastes are so much more eclectic, festivals struggle with giving parity to the stars of Africa, South America, and Asia. Glastonbury, that so called totem, consigns (for the most part) world music to its own stage and fringe.
These days of course all festivals need to balance commercial concerns with the creative. It’s a business after all, and anyone setting up such an enterprise has a litany of historical financial failures to jolt them from taking gambles on lineups: the extraordinary naïve but possibly musically, as well as diverse, benchmark being both Woodstock and the 1970 Isle Of Wight festivals, but in more recent times, the failure of many so-called boutique mini-festivals.
It does however seem that WOMAD remains the “allowable” alternative; although even they had to include some stellar pop, rock bands and artists on the bill at the inaugural event in 1982: The likes of a rising Simple Minds and the blossoming Echo And The Bunnymen, albeit with the sonorous galloping and clattering drum beat of WOMAD stars and stalwarts, the Drummers Of Burundi – appearing under the elevated Royal Burundi Drummers name in this case.
What could have seemed a vanity project for its main instigator Peter Gabriel became a mainstay of the international music festival circuit. That very first event, now celebrating its fortieth anniversary, was almost the last.
Creatively and collaboration wise an incredible success, WOMAD was an unmitigated financial disaster for Gabriel and his partners. Facing bankruptcy, personal physical violence, the former Genesis star turned soloist and producer, label boss was thankfully able to pay off the accrued debts when his former prog-rock band mates offered to play a benefit concert. With the sagacious advice of Harold and Barbara Pendleton, who’d created the relatively successful Reading Jazz And Blues Festival, and others the WOMAD ideal was saved from collapse and a minor footnote in Rock’s Back Pages.
Arguably still one of the only avenues for world music, the WOMAD festival is one of the most cherished if not important events of its kind anywhere. But those early days in the idea incubator of Gabriel’s mind, it seemed pure madness to even conceive of such a thing. Being called mad or crazy was part of the course for Gabriel however, who not only saw it as a challenge but adopted such derisory language in his various projects: Syco being another one. And so “MAD” became part of the festival signature, appellation, though it also, when put together with the “WO” bit made up the World Of Music Arts Dance acronym. Corralled into this mad project, the young collective of post-punk tastemakers that made up The Bristol Recorder went from interviewing Gabriel for one of their magazines (with accompanying vinyl) to taking on the day-to-day running of what would be the first grand-scale festival of its kind dedicated to world music and its ilk. What might have surprised, or set a spark for Gabriel was the zine team’s mutual interest in eclectic music; a love for the Gamelan music of Bali and Java especially. They would also be pretty useful at sniffing out the talent and bringing attention to new sounds, new fusions, many of which featured in the very first WOMAD lineup.
A benefit concert helped to ease WOMAD out of a financial blackout, and in the very beginning too, when announced to the press from a farmhouse north of Bath, Gabriel would have to release a charity album to help fund it. Music And Rhythm, as it was called, featured a rafter of the acts that appeared in 1982. In conjuring up the spirit of WOMAD, the Burundi Drummers would beat out a thunderous performance on the front lawn – so thunderous in fact that the local farmers were worried that it would upset the livestock grazing in this idyllic valley retreat. Overcoming such protests, a lack of support and any sponsors the tribal drummers and an international cast from over twenty countries appeared at the Royal Bath and West Showground near Shepton Mallet in Somerset in the July of 1982.
Now forty years later in the act of both preservation and celebration, Real World Records have retrieved and restored (including bonus material) nineteen live tracks from that event; many of which have never been heard before. Original programme notes, with even the times of performances, have also been included in this snapshot of not just WOMAD’s foundations but a changing post-punk scene; an age of fusions, collaborations and the increasing influence of world music on the Western cannon.
I could regale countless artists just before and after this event that would work with those from South Africa to Timbuktu; from Hispaniola to Southeastern Asia. But here were ensembles with atavistic and more contemporary heritages mixing it and existing on equal terms with rock bands in the West. As Gabriel would put it: “Our dream was not to sprinkle world music around a rock festival, but to prove that these great artists could be headliners in their own right.”
Ian McCulloch and his Bunnymen, riding high at the time in the indie scene and obviously a draw, appeared with the (already mentioned) Royal Burundi Drummers in one such meeting of alien cultures. A stirring emergence from the Gothic mists vision of ‘Zimbo’ is taken up a level of the exotic and moody by a deep lumbering of beaten drums; a union of Joy Division pain and authentic African tribal rhythms.
The familiar Drummers Of Burundi, who’s ranks could swell to thirty plus members but appeared in a reduced, but no less impactful, form at WOMAD, have their incredible floor-shaking front lawn performance ‘Kama K’iwacu’ included on this compilation. Due to the physicality of their performances these rousing bombastic drum initiations, rituals could only be played in short sets, and so during that three-day festival they appeared at least four times, across multiple stages.
In a similar mode, passed on through generations, compilation openers The Musicians Of The Nile brought an Upper Nile touch of the ancients to proceedings. The gypsy descendants from the age of the Pharaohs are represented by a mystical, mizmar-drone sandy embankment peregrination entitled ‘Taksim Arghul’ (which both by its name and sound has a real Turkish feel to it) and shorter, quickening tabla rhythmic sunrise introduction called ‘Tabla Iqae’.
Staying in Africa, highlife doyen Prince Nico Mbarga, appearing with the actually London-based The Ivory Coasters, shines with a sun brilliance and life-affirming rendition of ‘Wayo In-Law’ – a bonus track and really worthy of inclusion; among my favourite turns on the whole album. The Cameroon-Nigerian star is famous for releasing one of the continent’s best-selling records of all time, ‘Sweet Mother’, and famously appeared with various versions of the Rocafil Jazz troupe. If you love the lilted South African leaning sounds of King Sunny Ade, then you’re in for a treat.
Travelling eastwards, the Chinese (though there’s no information to hand on the provenance of this group) Tian Jin Music And Dance Ensemble provided a peaceable Zen moment of blossom tree beautification, fluted and dulcet mallet atmospherics on the forked and bowed ‘Raindrops Pattering On Banana Leaves’. Representing the Gamelan sound, the twenty-five strong Sasono Mulyo ensemble of Javanese and Balinese musicians and dancers magnificently set out on a two-speed voyage of discovery.
Circumnavigating the Pacific, and to the Hispaniola and Americas, the Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, Colombian and Dominican Republic troupe of NYC salsa stalwarts, Salsa de Hoy (notably playing with such luminaries as Oscar Hernandez and Tito Puenta) give a suitable Latin buzz of sauntering and horn paraded fun to the festival with their signature barroom jazz signature.
Showcasing a burgeoning world music infused spirit of diversity in the UK, as the transference from punk to post-punk was now complete, there’s a great, if looser and more dubby rendition of The Beat’s two-tone single ‘Mirror In The Bathroom’ and a Mardi Gras, via Manu Dibango, and ska version of Pig Bag’s self-titled anthem. Evolving out of The Pop Group, picking up on the way a burgeoning Neneh Cherry and the Antiguan-British dub bassist/guitarist Jean Oliver, the eclectic Rip Rig & Panic serve up a sassy and pumped-up smorgasbord of Liquid Liquid no wave, neo-soul, Pablo dub and bleated, trilled lurching saxophone with ‘You’re My Kind Of Climate’. Previously of both groups, the pianist Mark Springer appears in his solo guise playing an electric-piano like flange-effected soulful, spiritual hymn ‘Key Release’ – actually, it has more than a semblance of Bill Withers too.
Despite the name Ekome were a Bristol dance and music company formed in the aftermath of a Ghanaian steel and skin-drumming workshop. Members appeared twice at WOMAD, rattling away to call and response trills and an Afro-Brazilian carnival feel on ‘Gahu’, and also in accompanying Gabriel on the Scottish-piped yearned cry of universal suffrage and apartheid anthem ‘Biko’ – a cry of lament for the late leading South African activist that has an air of both Marillion and Mission To Burma about it. Gabriel’s plaint proved a worthy and indeed poignant reminder of the festival’s platform in not only sharing the global community’s music but in shining a light on global issues, the crimes of world leaders, and in this case, the apartheid movement. This stirred rendition did a lot to raise the profile of detention deaths in South Africa, paying special homage to one of the leading activists of that struggle in the 70s, Steve Biko, who died in police custody five years previous to this event.
Gabriel, as much for his formative years steering Genesis as for his subsequent solo endeavours and collaborations, was of course one of the festival’s main attractions. And so he appears twice on this live collection; once with the already mentioned ‘Biko’ tribute and before that with a bittersweet irony, over a hammer and tongs electronic production, performing a pop-fusion version of ‘I Have The Touch’ – taken from his then current self-tilted album and a single in its own right.
From a similar orbit, Robert Fripp (at the time reforming King Crimson) offered up as almost Eno-esque, late Tangerine Dream classical-strained electronic suite; an ambient stirred anthem that gave a certain gravitas to the festival, named in its honour, ‘WOMAD II’. Fripp’s solo recitals were self-confessed challenges to the audience, needing certain conditions, and restricted to smaller crowds of 150, and so hence the maverick’s higher number of performances across the three-day event.
Fellow former idiosyncratic prog-rocker Peter Hammill, of Van Der Graf Generator fame, is captured with a new age Cope and Gong-like version of the almost theatrical, giddy ‘A Ritual Mask’ – the opening meandered and building maelstrom from his twelve album, Loops And Reels.
No festival of its nature could be complete without the Irish, and the famous Dublin institution The Chieftains. Proving a popular choice, the Irish-Gaelic troupe (almost together for twenty years by this point), fiddle and clap a merry Celtic jigged version of the hoedown country standard ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’ – the Emerald Isle goes West to Arkansas.
Still, just about in their infancy and most interesting period, a pre-arena anthem-hitting Simple Minds stand out as a usual choice. Their current at the time ‘Promised You A Miracle’ 12” is performed with professional clarity and vigor; a decent enough live version of the original anyway, sounding a bit in places like ABC.
Taken as a whole this run-through of the inaugural WOMAD holds-up as a pretty unique, open and international experiment. Astonishing to think that despite barriers coming down, and with a supposedly easier than ever access to every music scene in every corner of the world, WOMAD remains the only real prominent and long-running celebration and showcase for such worldly wonders in the UK. That year, 1982, sounds pretty vibrant even now by recent standards. And this live album proves Gabriel and associates were right in fighting to keep it alive, no matter the cost, sniping and criticism that came their way. Not just a worthy album, but a global, polygenesis power house of sounds and energy that’s well worth the admission price. Live albums don’t come much more eclectic. Here’s to the next forty years.
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 528: Dreamworld Or: The Fabulous Life Of Dan Treacy And His Band The Television Personalities.
July 18, 2022
GUEST POST/BOOK REVIEW
Rick ACV.
Vukovar helmsman and burgeoning fiction writer Rick ACV has joined the Monolith Cocktail pool of collaborators this month with his review of a new upcoming alternative bio of the idiosyncratic Dan Treacy. Next month sees the blog serialise Rick’s latest book, Astral Deaths/Astral Lights, after previously featuring his last surreal esoteric tome The Great Immurement.
‘Dreamworld Or: the fabulous life of Dan Treacy and his band The Television Personalities’ by Benjamin Berton (Ventil Verlag) 29th July 2022
To start at the end and then to end at the start – The life of Daniel Treacy of The Television Personalities is, nor was, a fabulous one, except seemingly near the start of it. Though his life is not yet over, Daniel’s story very nearly is. The last passage of ‘Dreamworld’ deals with this truth indelicately and head-on but transformed; made poignant & bittersweet in a mono-no-aware fashion through surreal storytelling rather than recounting of actual events. This is a common mode throughout Dreamworld and works all the better for it. Fans of the TVPs are not oblivious to their obscurity and the lack of documented history, not to mention Treacy’s constant disappearances (homelessness, prison time etc.) and lack of public ‘limelight’ since the mid-90s. To therefore have written Dreamworld as a straightforward biography would have been dull. Dull and incredibly short.
Instead, Benjamin Berton mixes cold-light-of-the-day fact with fiction. Or a bending of fact. The lines are blurred, it is sometimes clumsily done (perhaps due to the translation) but even then it still provides an interesting take on what, to those unaware of Treacy & TVPs, could be an unremarkable story – musician starts band, band doesn’t quite make it big, man has drug problems, drug problems cause life problems et sic. To further this strange take on a biography, along with the surreal passages, Berton invents his own dialogue between the pro/antagonists when recounting ‘real’ times and tales from Treacy’s past, and this is all done in present tense. What happens, then, is the reader is transported through little time warps to actually be THERE and THEN and experience it all first hand but through a haze. Like remote viewing. At times, it is extraordinarily visceral.
The aforementioned surreal passages will not be spoiled here. They may sometimes be clumsy & the humour within somewhat strange and stilted, yes, but they are clever & cutting, and deeply touching. Much like the music of Dan Treacy and The Television Personalities himself and themselves. Watch out for Geoffrey Ingram. Dreamworld jumps backwards and forwards through different times, from different angles (much like Mr Ingram’s archival footage…), which keeps the book jittery and from ever losing steam. All of this adds up to a book that should be sought out even by people who have never heard of its subject matter.
A lot is made of the ‘spirituality’ of Treacy’s music throughout and his own personal approach to life. I would suggest more esoteric & metaphysical. What endeared this book to me more was the strange ‘psychic’ links I encountered while reading. Whether it be people I actually know, similar experiences or topics that I had been discussing with other people that very day, the pages constantly vomited up coincidences, right from the off with Jimmy Page, Satanism and a certain place and a certain reaction. It would be foolish to recommend the book based on something as personal, but it is perhaps the strange style in which it is written that allows for this sort of reaction. I finished reading this on Syd Barrett’s birthday. Fans of Treacy will recognize the relevance.
Although the book seems well researched and v v v informed – sometimes even poetic in its recalling of facts – there are some inconsistencies so cannot be relied upon totally as a factual history. (For example – there is a section about a band and a singer I know personally that is so bitter about them and so insulting and which I know most of the account to be untrue.) There are a lot of pictures and posters and photos in Dreamworld, which gives a great visual history. However, just because it isn’t a totally factually accurate history it does not mean it isn’t the truth. The Truth about someone is how they appear to other people, is the mythos around them, is the aura they give off, is something deeper than what day something happened or what words escaped their lips. The Truth is so much more important than The Fact. It is so much more entertaining, too. Invest yourself fully into Treacy & Berton’s Dreamworld for an Astral adventure.
PLAYLIST SPECIAL
Dominic Valvona
An imaginary radio show if you like, a taste also of my DJ sets, the Monolith Cocktail Social is a playlist selection that spans genres and eras to create the most eclectic of soundtracks. Each month I compile a mixed bag of anniversary celebrating albums (this month being 50 years since the release of Amon Düül II’s seminal acid-rock communions with Yeti, Wolf City, Curtis Mayfield’s equally seminal soul triumph soundtrack Superfly, T-Rex’s big-hitter The Slider, and the more obscure self-titled album of brown-eyed soul and singer-songwriter woes from the mellow New York artists Alzo), newish tracks (this month that includes Wu-Lu, Horsegirl, Cities Aviv, Eerie Wanda, Basia Bulet and Robert Stillman) and music from the last six, seven decades (that includes The Wolfgang Press, Delaney Bramlett, Readykill, 5 Revolutions, Lew Lewis, Sergius Golowin and many more). Expect to anything and everything.
That track list in full—–
5 Revolutions ‘Greetings’
Deeper ‘Willing’
Horsegirl ‘Anti-Glory’
Free Loan Investments ‘BBC’
The Wolfgang Press ‘Shut The Door’
Bill Jerpe ‘Behind The Times’
Delaney Bramlett ‘What Am I Doin’ (In A Place Like This)’
Spontaneous Overthrow ‘All About Money’
Crimewave ‘Disposable’
Krack Free Media ‘Let The Band Play’
Cities Aviv ‘BLACK PLEASURE’
Wu-Lu ‘South’
Readykill ‘Watching The World Going Down’
Thirsty Moon ‘Speak For Yourself’
Curtis Mayfield ‘Little Child Runnin’ Wild’
Patrick Gauthier ‘The Good Book’
Wax Machine ‘Canto De Lemanjá’
Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab ‘Ramadan’
Amon Düül II ‘Sleepwalker’s Timeless Bridge’
Pugh Rogefeldt ‘Haru Sett Mej Va…’
Misha Panfilov Sound Combo ‘Way Higher’
Chris Corsano/Bill Orcutt ‘The Secret Engine Of History’
Idassane Wallet Mohamed ‘Aylana’
Susanna w/Delphine Dora ‘Le Possédé’
Basia Bulet ‘The Garden (The Garden Version)’
Azalia Snail ‘You Belong To Me’
Eerie Wanda ‘Sail To The Silver Sun’
T. Rex ‘Ballrooms Of Mars’
Grave Flowers Bongo Band ‘Squeaky Wheel Oil Can’
Lew Lewis ‘Wait’
Os Mundi ‘Gloria’
Daevid Allen & Kramer ‘Thinking Thoughts’
Shoes ‘Tomorrow Night’
Alzo ‘Without You Girl’
The Ladybug Transistor ‘Windy’
Ben Marc w/Joshua Idehen ‘Dark Clouds’
Robert Stillman ‘Cherry Ocean’
Sergius Golowin ‘Die weiβe Alm’
ALBUM REVIEW
MATT OLIVER
The Difference Machine ‘Unmasking The Spirit Fakers’
(Full Plate) – Out Now
“Criticise me from a safe place, when you never had the courage to keep up the same pace”
Unmasking the Spirit Fakers sounds righteously, overzealously put through an 80s keep-it-real mouthpiece, though its sourcing from a Harry Houdini essay does complement Chuck D’s pronouncement of ‘no more music by the suckers’ perfectly. Fundamentally it goes for a hip-hop trope old as time itself and still one of 2022’s causes for concern – separating the authentic from the phony.
Their description as a ‘psychedelic hip-hop group from Atlanta’ doesn’t do The Difference Machine much of a service. These underdogs hide in plain sight: though the opening and closing tracks evoke burnt out rock star imagery in the last throes of the limelight (or another Public Enemy reference, ‘Do You Wanna Go Our Way???’), The Difference Machine’s reshaping of long-haired prog rockisms, is more about achieving the optimum volume to get foundations crumbling (first thought of comparison – Flatbush Zombies). For psychedelic, read a vivid shock to the senses, playing out a bad trip, Strawberry Fields becoming killing fields. On one hand you’re prompted to “take a step inside the mind of man with no time to lose” – the reality is when you’re told to “get behind the wheel and drive with no fucking fear”.
Drum welts and gut-punching synths introduce ‘Atlantis’ and producer Doctor Conspiracy, with the bit immediately between the teeth of emcee Day Tripper. Positioning himself in the eye of the storm as smoke bringer #1 (“never thought that black cloud would hover over me”), the prevalent, what’s-the-worst-that-could-happen mentality has evolved from the band’s first albums The Psychedelic Sound of The Difference Machine and The 4th Side of the Eternal Triangle, both of which made more of a jangly, moptop sound delivering Edan-feedbacked zingers. Those faking the spirit behind the peace signs have obviously tipped The Machine over the edge, DT grinding magical mystery tours to a halt (okay, the ghostly melodies of ‘Flat Circles’ appear to put the Ark of the Covenant up for grabs), by spitting with kerbside, high stakes amplification, armed with jagged book smarts, and numbness as an essential power-up. A distrust viewing everything and nothing as real, reaches the conclusion that it’s best to “fuck a half full-half empty, fill the whole cup”.
Four tracks in and DT is playing the last action hero in sweat-stained vest, brushing off chunks of shrapnel. Sure ‘Car Key’ lies on a bed of sitars and flower power, but Day Tripper’s savage stick-up shtick – “this your last chance before these bullets tap dance across your face like scatman” – is not for dressing in tie-dye. Humble enough to reveal “it all came to me one day rapping in the shower” before Denmark Vessey jumps in, DT shows his hustler’s mentality matches the next man on ‘Huckleberry Finn Day’ (“I sacrifice comfort for wonder, I sacrifice slumber for numbers”); and, like all defender of the universe appointments, a sliver of vulnerability is seen seeping under the armour.
Whereas ‘Repeater’, an epic, can’t stop-won’t stop rumble with Sa-Roc guesting (“got a cheat code embedded within me that’s infinite”) arms the charges into combat, the scuzzy ‘It Ain’t’ is where all thoughts tangle into a fiery stream of consciousness, caught wondering whether not giving a fuck is actually the safest option. The Quelle Chris-starring ‘Re Up’ is a rare simmer down, though still with nagging thoughts persisting as to riding the risk-reward seesaw. Perhaps the album’s crystallising moment is when on ‘Pulling Capers’, featuring a fed-up-as-he-gets (which never sounds quite right) Homeboy Sandman, DT nutshells his higher calling -“I ain’t ask to be a rapper, rap asked me with a dagger to my throat”.
After 38 minutes of pressure, the engaging cult of the Machine continues. It’s an interesting dynamic, of DT blazing out on his own with Doctor Conspiracy’s production acting like a Foley stage. Without really sounding like a traditional DJ-MC combo, it’s to Conspiracy’s credit that DT (dare it be said, at times channelling the new king of Glasto) sounds like he’s the figurehead for a whole squad of Max Mad musicians, rather than an MPC twisted inside out. Also marking a slightly more hard-nosed departure for Full Plate (whose entertaining acts Dillon, Batsauce and Paten Locke always do well on these pages), The Difference Machine rock cores with their unrest soundtracking the here and now – the days of the sucker are numbered.
AUTHOR MATT OLIVER: Sometime Clash site contributor, dance, electronic and hip-hop expert Matt has been offering up his wisdom and recommendations on the best rap cuts for the Monolith Cocktail for the last six years. You can find out more about his extensive writing portfolio and professional practice here.
Our Daily Bread 526: Jill Richards/Kevin Volans ‘Etudes’
July 11, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW
Andrew C. Kidd
Jill Richards/Kevin Volans ‘Études’
(Diatribe Records)
Kevin Volans is probably most famous for the 1984 Kronos reworking of White Man Sleeps. His beginnings in South Africa to the Neue Einfacheit (in English, New Simplicity) of West Germany with the theorist Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose seminal sine-waves and soundscapes shaped the landscape we understand in electronic music today, are well-documented. The Man With Footsoles of Wind, an opera about the enterprise of the influential poet Arthur Rimbaud in Ethiopia, remains very much on my ‘listening wishlist’. Volans is obviously a musicologist. He is undoubtedly a modernist. This is 2022. He has offered us Études, a collection of his own previously unreleased solo piano works performed by Jill Richards and a second-half where he performs Liszt. The listener has been invited into “a sound world” with “extremely complex and challenging arrangements”. There is also an allusion to twenty fingers playing, rather than ten. These are just some of the insights that accompany the liner notes. My following review reflects the two halves of this collection.
Jill Richards plays Kevin Volans
An étude is a short piece of music that demonstrates skill. The skill is in the composition as well as the performance. Jill Richards, an accomplished pianist and long-standing collaborator of Volans, opens with the Second Étude. It is a rift of split chords and dissociated notation. There are mirroring moments: chords that delve inwards, returning later at varying degrees, but never selfsame. The piece is steady but not stately. It is measured, and open. Throughout this first half, this openness, or rather, these open spaces, are particularly evident on the Seventh Étude where the musical interstices are left unfilled. He also offers more fleeting movements such as the brushed-stabs that flee as harmonic echoes on the Fourth Étude and the alarm-like opening to the First Étude. The latter piece has a walk-around dance motif which toes lightly over the weighty bass clef. Volans opts to juxtapose the tempos of his works on Études. He presses for accelerando whilst raising the reins of decelerando. The icy and pointed Third Étude marks a sudden departure from the glacial kinesia of the Second Étude. The notes of the former rise and fall. Nothing is sequential. There is rhythmic abandonment, best evidenced by the First Étude. The Sixth Étude is an example of anti-meter. It quietly stirs. The Seventh Étude is periodic and concludes by disintegrating completely.
Kevin Volans plays Franz Liszt
From the glissandos that flitter away like rippling caustics of light through water on Fountains Of The Villa D’este to the sweeping whorl of Transcendental Étude No 11 Harmonies Du Soir, Volans captures the beauty and rhythmic complexity of Lizst. On Cypresses Of The Villa D’este, a padding crescendo presses and stresses and accentuates. Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s Liebestod (from the German, liebe, love, and tod, death) was originally the concluding act to Wagner’s operatic drama, Tristan und Isolde. The famous five-note motif is delicately played by Volans. The lovers are beside one another. The piano slowly grows, the tremolandi becomes stronger, the accelerando pulses, the appassionato intensifies. There is quiet transfiguration in its concluding major key. Here Isolde is weeping over the dead Tristan. The calando that Volans plays out continues to emanate away into the lull and loft of her tears that river and mouth and basin. The theme is solemn, yet the piano notes wave and glint away like sun-glitter. The listener is carried outwards to drift on this sonorous and sonic sea. My water metaphor was inspired by the libretto from Tristan: “ertrinken, versinken, – unbewusst, – höchste Lust!” (in English, “to drown, to founder – unconscious – utmost bliss!”).
I consider Études to be a diptych. Volans showcases his pianistic skill and appreciation of the transformative romanticism of Liszt. There is catharsis in the atonality and arrhythmia of his preceding compositions that blow open like air. In the interstitial spaces of each half, he beckons the listener into darkness, yet ultimately bathes us in light.
Dominic Valvona’s ALBUM Reviews Roundup
Various ‘Pierre Barouh And The Saravah Sound: Jazz, Samba And Other Hallucinatory Grooves’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 22nd July 2022
The story of Saravah Records in sixteen showcase tracks, this latest well-planned compilation from the vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS (more or less a regular in this column over the past few years), in conjunction with the label’s guardian/historian Benjamin Barouh, builds a tale of cinematic, progressive, jazz accompanied escapism and exploration.
A haven for the founder Pierre Barouh’s love of Latin American and African grooves, the Parisian imprint, which triggered of a fecund of inspired, imbued or tempted jazz-rich artists, enjoyed a ten-year period in the sun; releasing records from a myriad of cult genuine one-offs, never to be repeated team-ups and journeymen and women between the mid 60s and 70s.
A fair share of that roster arrived from the stage and screen. Pierre, via his more musical talents, not only contributed lyrics and singing to Francis Lai’s score but also starred in Claude Lelouch’s feted A Man And A Woman. From this connection he was able to rub shoulders with a host of hot French new talent, including the legendary Brigitte Fontaine, Jacques Higelin and Béatrice Arnac. Fontaine, who’s been performing and making radical music for near on eighty years, has pretty much, occupied every square inch of the avant-garde. A novelist, poet, musician and of course actress polymath, she infamously performed and recorded with her equally renowned partner, the Berber-descended singer, multi-instrumentalist, comedian and composer Areski Belkacem.
Fontaine appears twice on this vinyl compilation, whilst Areski just the once. Of her two cuts there’s the inclusion of ‘Comme À La Radio’, taken from the eponymously entitled ’69 LP she recorded for Saravah. It features, unbelievably, the freeform jazz envelope-pushers The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, who appear to have hung around long enough to become an unofficial house-band, providing a barely contained avant-garde explosion to at least three of the artists on this collection. They traverse an organic Don Cherry mood; a simmered woodwind and soothed Afrocentric be-bop meander to Fontaine’s arty chanson cooed and spoken word vocals.
Completely in a different vogue, Fontaine’s ‘Cet Enfant Que Je Távais’ duet with the French pop-actor star turn radical activist Jacques Higelin, is a romantically serenaded affair-of-the-heart. Quite dreamy, without a care in the world, almost sympathetic, it does however show signs of ore existential aloofness. Higelin precedes this inclusion with the more jazzy, eastern psych limbering ‘Je Jovais Le Piano’. Hawk and untethered sax meets a semblance of the exotic and a R&B like flavour of guitar on this both sung and expressively descriptive cut from his hippie days. (Nothing to do with the album or choice of his tracks, but as a trivial bonus it was Higelin’s French-Vietnamese girlfriend, Kuelan Nguyen, who was chatted up by Iggy Pop – she brushed him off of course. This in turn inspired David Bowie’s own, if geographically wrong-footed, ‘China Girl’.) A big star with a legacy to prove it, Higelin’s music for Saravah proved experimental and beautifully executed.
Back to those other Art Ensemble-backed inclusions I mentioned a paragraph or two back. The compilation opener ‘Mystifying Mama’ finds the exploratory jazz doyens polishing off Muscle Shoals R&B with some Chicago soul-jazz. The ‘mysterious’ Marva Broome fronts this clavichord rich blast of horn-heralded funk. Later on they back the French-African actor Alfred Panou (notably in Jean-Luc Goddard’s ensemble) on his jungle-beat polemic freestyle rumble ‘Je Suis Un Sauvage’. Literally rolling in from the pub on a promise, with the Chicago troupe already set-up from a previous recording, Panou struts and trills his grievances to an elephant bellow of brass and swaying West African grooves. Fellow African traveller, the Gabonese artist Pierre Akendenge, released two albums for the label in the 70s. Arriving at the end of Saravah’s tenure, a cut from his ’76 LP Africa Obota appears now on this four-sided vinyl revue. ‘Orema Ka Ka Ka’ is an Afro-Cuban, with a South African and Congo lilt, fusion of spiritual warm 70s soul; a delightful, almost swaddled oasis of relaxed roots that represents another side to the Saravah Records story.
Back in the jazz mode there’s a number of tracks from the Paris label’s Piano Puzzle series of collaborations. Those with impressive, lengthy CVs need only apply, for this series featured such players as the keyboardist maestro Maurice Vander, who worked with such luminaries as Django Reinhardt and Chet Baker, and appeared in many sessions for the Fontana label. Here we’re treated to his folksy reminisce ‘Siciliene’, a subtle yearn for a picturesque if travailed slice of Southern Italy. We also have, from that same series, the French be-bop pianist – impressively playing with Miles Davis and Lester Young – René Urtregar and his real cool Stax-like rolling ‘Tchac Poum Poum’, plus the pianist/organist and sideman to such notables as Dexter Gordon, Yusef Lateef and Manu Dibango, Georges Arvanitas, whose Coltrane-inspired, Savoy Jazz licked ‘Tane’s Call’ gets picked up for the compilation.
Aside from the jazz, briefly mentioned in the opening paragraph, another main driver of Pierre’s label was Latin America: especially Brazil. So taken with that exotic beauty, visiting in the late 50s, Pierre would return to Paris with his foil in such enterprises Baden Powell and record a version of the ‘Samba de Bêncão’ standard, renaming it ‘Samba Saravah’. He’d later make a special Rio music documentary with Powell, Maria Bethania, Paulinho da Viola and Pixinguinha. Although it doesn’t appear on this compilation, from that same Samba session in the mid 60s, this collection’s farewell ends on the rather less exotic and Latin storyteller romantic yearn ‘Saudade (Un Manque Habité)’. Still, more in the groove as it were, there is the inclusion of Michel Roques’ active samba swanning and tropicalia “soufflé” ‘Monsieur Chimpanzé’, which positively sails into the Rio harbor, blown by the increasingly hot-aired excitements of the vocalist and rattled percussion. Roques’ CV, in case you were wondering, includes a saxophone-fronted trio, a period on Fontana and one LP, Saravah Chorus, for (as the title would obviously indicate) Pierre’s label.
The reminder of this spread falls with the already mentioned fields of influence, genres; although the French actress, singer and composer Béatrice Arnac, with the jazzy cocktail come dramatically staged if lucid ‘Le Bruit Et Le Bruit’ slips into French Ye-Ye and new wave French cinema.
I’m pleased to be introduced to the likes of the relatively obscure Baroque Jazz Trio, E.D.F. and Cohelmee Ensemble; all three of which I will be trying to uncover and find out more about. But as an encapsulation of a period in independent French label history, this entire compilation is an illuminating, often dynamic, and always curious hotbed of actors, mavericks and jazz aficionados coming together to create an astonishing musical catalogue.
Various ‘Spirit of France’
(Spiritmuse Records) 8th July 2022
Another wisely considered release from the Spiritmuse jazz label, Spirit of France announces a new anthology style series of previously obscure ethnographical jazz peregrinations from a period of world music and new age exploration in the 70s and 80s.
Deliberating deeply on their catalogue the label in recent years has acted as a kind of promoter/custodian of the incredible healing prowess of Chicago jazz legend Kahil El’ Zabar (in his many set-ups) and also released spiritual imbued albums from David Ornate Cherry, Abdullah Sami and Mark de Clive Lowe and The Cosmic Vibrations. It’s at this point that I must declare I provided the liner notes to Kahil and his Quartet’s most recent album, A Time For Healing; going from fan to paid-up commission. But I’m donning my non-partisan critic’s hat for this latest compilation of rare experiments from the fringes of jazz, folk and psych.
Chosen by the label’s own Mark Gallagher and Theo Ioannou with the help of French crate-digger Tom Val, the inaugural collection’s standout inclusion is that of late genius Jef Gilson. Still, even after producing a litany of French greats and arguably the country’s leading explorative jazz guide, very much under-valued, Gilson somehow remains a cult figure. The Jazzman label went to great lengths to remedy that, with umpteen reissues, collections of his work. From furors into Malagasy culture to the concrete and freeform, Gilson’s legacy is both extraordinary and varied. Appearing on one such anthology showcase from years back, the changing compressed sulk and exotic swinging ‘Love Always’ now graces this compilation. Notable for featuring, amongst others, Byard ‘Dogtown’ Lancaster this concentrated lengthy flex moodily plows through Latin-American Bernstein, African facemask cubism and drunken motioned rolls.
A strong theme, suffusion of India and its neighbours’ runs throughout a number of other selected tracks; most obviously on the rather rare Adjenas Sidhar Khan’s album finale, ‘Mahabaratha Kali’ (taken from his Musique D’Adjenas LP that just scrapes into the 70s), but also with music by hurdy-gurdy man Rémy Couvez, the versatile Sylvain Kassap and short-lived Pân-Râ. The first of that quartet of artists casts a mini-meditative opus of brassy sitar, buoyant tablas and mantric “ahhhs”, but increasingly turns towards both hypnotising ritual and the psychedelic. “Vielle” maestro Couvez opens this collection with a ‘travel dream’ fluted aria churned transcendental traverse, in the fashion of Ariel Karma’s ‘Almora Sunrise’. From the more prolific Kassap and his 1983 LP Musiques Pour La Tortue Magique, with both the noted Jean-Michel Ponty and Pablo Cueco, there’s the Finis Africae, Jon Hassell and Eno-esque spiritual Southeast Asian jazz yin epic ‘Le Dessous Des Barges’ (“below the banks”).And, lastly, the Pân-Râ duo of Hungarian musician “Chobo” Casba Koncz and guitarist Michel Poiteau furnish the anthology with the acid-psych Eastern stirred and diaphanous apparitional voiced fantasy ‘Lorely’ – taken from the 1978 LP Music From Atlantis.
To Arabia, the Middle East, the Aegean where sun worshipping and vernal equinox performances see the most obscure Dynamo evoke Agitation Free and a more congruous Soft Machine on a progressive jazz fusion in Arabia’s honour, and the guitarist/keyboardist André Fertier (under his Clivage group title) softly patters the spindly gilded strings and dulcimer-esque hammers on the krautrock-prog-jazz ‘Moving Waves’ – a touch of Lloyd Clifton Miller, Amon Düüi II and Embryo.
Outside the areas of the mentioned geographical musicology, L’ Empire des Sons chosen track could be classed in the “primitive” mode; the octet’s ‘Quand Nos Pères Étaient Des Poissons’ a sort of jug poured Don Cherry-esque stripped and dusted reedy blown and bowed African invocation. The sibling and married conjunction of Parisian “musical revolutionaries”, as Finders Keepers called them (that crate-diggers label issuing a collection of their avant-garde futurism back in 2018), Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschot conjure up ambiguous Min Bul-like elasticated music that has a vague semblance of Japan (the country not the brooding synth doyens).
Something very different indeed, cult favourite, the French-speaking Swiss singer-songwriter Catherine Derain talks, taunts, goads and wraps the listener around her finger on the dizzy avant-garde chanson and pop aloof ‘Les Crocodiles’. Of course certain arty cliques have already been evangelizing such outsider artists for a while, but I can’t say I’ve ever come across Derain in all my years of eclectic digging. So thank you for the Spiritmuse and Mr. Val.
You’d expect this to be a far more challenging, out-there compilation considering the inclusion of outsider artists, mavericks, yet the Spirit Of France is actually quite a transcendental, worldly collection of musical journeys, rituals and performances that take in jazz, pysch, prog and ethno-folk. You can hear just some of the seeds that were sown for future fusions, seamless border crossings. But rather than a note from history, an education this new anthology is filled with some cracking great music, very much alive. I look forward to hearing more of this series.
Nwando Ebizie ‘The Swan’
(Accidental Records) 22nd July 2022
After a number of feted singles from the Afro-futurist polymath Nwando Ebizie in 2021 a much-anticipated debut album extension of the British-Nigerian artist’s rich, lucid and multi-disciplinary cosmology is about to drop. The Swan arrives just in time for her invited curated The Black Fabulous weekender at the Southbank Centre this summer; part of a larger multi-event celebration of black arts and popular culture under The Black Fantastic season banner.
Scaled-up with room to fully develop a part dreamy, part yelped trauma of life experiences, the heavily-loaded Swan entitled journey seems to merge and weave Hellenic/Western deities with those of Africa and the Hispaniola. From out of the mouths of the black diaspora, largely uprooted and forced to comply with the rules of their colonial masters, Ebizie reclaims a fertile heritage to create an alternative pathway, life force and platform to unravel suppression and stigma.
Just one of the many rhythmic threads that runs throughout this highly percussive album, the latest single to be taken from The Swan, the Greek mythological woe that is ‘Myrrha’, features the Haitian Vodou Yanvalouu dance beat. Originally from the rich musical melting pot of Benin, this rhythmic supplication was performed as a welcoming ritual for the ancestors, with dancers working themselves into a trance. Any mention of Vodou and we’re into the dark arts stereotypes, but this atavistic rites, belief system grew into a resistance movement against slavery. Only in more recent times, even post-colonial, has this system and musical form escaped the chains of censorship, degradation and ignorance, with various artists drawn to its appeal, and various revitalisations. In this form, on this plaintive song of sufferance and metamorphosis (the fated poor Myrrha, mother of Adonis, turned into a tree for her incestuous relationship with her own father I believe), Ebizie channels it alongside contemporary soulful and even no wave sounds, dynamics.
Pumped, hollered when needs be, the album is a mostly fluid parade of Mardi Gras, modern Afro-beats, Afro-jazz (touch of Manu Dibango and some spiritual gazing from synth, saxophonist and co-producer Hugh Jones), post-punk and the bombarded beat production and excitement of M.I.A. and Santigold. Lamentable but diaphanous pains and yearns build up to shorter bursts of syllable whooping and near hyperventilating displays of expressive empowerment across a highly percussive balance of African elementals, spirits and the march of contemporary sonic forces. And that means an amorphous blurring of sources, as Lagos mixes it up with New Orleans, a black diaspora London with Port-Au-Prince.
Dreamy, hallucinogenic and magical yet feverish with protestation, Ebizie conjures up an equally bombastic and longing, quitter cosmology of her own making. Those waiting with bated breath for such a rich, stimulating tapestry won’t be disappointed. The Swan is a most deeply felt and multifaceted debut.
Healing Force Project ‘Drifted Entities (Vol. 1)’
(Beat Machine Records)
Sent out reverberating into an infinite expanse, the spiritual contorted raps and strains of Albert Ayler’s Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe source material, the echoed dub washes of the On-U-Sound label and elements of Basic Channel, Luke Vibert, The Mosquitoes, Plug and Gescom drift towards the cosmos.
A continuously resonating ‘spiritual music mission’ the ghostly freefalling influences of jazz, dub, trip-hop, jungle, breakbeat and the strung-out move in layered circles that build-up an echo chamber of the otherworldly, space and at times the supernatural.
A decade in with the Healing Force Project moniker, Italian musician/producer Antonio Marini creates a universal soundtrack of ‘drifted entities’ that evoke transformed, stripped and lingered traces of both circular-breathing reeds, rim-shot and ricocheting drums, amorphous Eastern oboes and rumbling bass lines.
The vague sound of 80s soundtrack Miles Davis, Irreversible Entanglements and Black Dog circulate with short stubs and stunts of gospel style organ (threatening to open up the valves but falling short), wanes and a Lynchian atmosphere of the hallowed and esoteric gumshoe noir on the opening ‘Tiny Germs’ universal microcosm. Pulled By Magnets, Massive Attack and removed Jon Hassell prowl and linger on ‘Upbeat Damage’, whilst ‘Everything Is Frequency’ tunnels towards a hallucinogenic and skittle-skidded state.
There’s a jungle, or drum and bass beat on the shattering kosmische splash ‘Double Orbit’ and hinge-like trumpet gasped jazzy ‘Diorama Obscura’. When it comes it adds a new intensity and drive to the dissipation of resonated drifts – think Wagon Christ, or even Squarepusher meeting Binker And Moses in space. The ashes of a sonic harvest are scattered on the solar winds, those drifting entities set to resonate in a spooked and venerable cosmos well after the needle is lifted from the record, or curser comes down on a digital stop icon.
Toni Tubna w/ the Stockholm Tuba Sect ‘When The Magic Went Wrong’
(Gare du Nord) 29th July 2022
Another pseudonym for the Kentish and London estuary maverick Ian Button – he of the Gare du Nord label, session musician, producer and bandleader of Papernut Cambridge –, the fantasied anagram Toni Tubna guise is just the latest vehicle for his quintessentially English storytelling style of nostalgia.
Going the whole hog, Button has put together a multimedia package of songs, illustrations and, most importantly – the catalyst for this whole wheeze –, a book of short anecdotes from the life of a hapless, but spawny at times, cabaret magician on the English seaside circuit.
As with so many of his musical furors, the scent of nostalgia is heavy but fragrant. I don’t think it would be a criticism to suggest the puns, gags and wordplay resonates with those of a certain age – that includes me by the way. And so from the music hall to soft 70s rock, and from boarding house skits to saucy picture postcard humour the life of the likable, if always by the seat-of-his-pants, Toni Tubna regales his misadventures across ten mini-chapters.
What started as a correspondence between his band mates from another project entirely (The Catenary Wires) developed, riffing originally on a long-running joke/myth that some when in the fogs of time Button had worked as a magician.
Now not only drawing in a myriad of brass and string players under the factitious Stockholm Tuba Sect moniker, but also the talents of Fay Hallem (contributing illustrations) and art historian, writing, lyricist collaborator Scott Thomas Buckle, the whole throwback ballooned into a sort of knockabout autobiography of a life un-lived, but conjured up as mere amusement.
In a nutshell, each story, episode on the road to rack-and-ruin, with short bursts of the big time just out of his grasp, corresponds to one of the album’s songs. But in the true spirit of such concepted works we have a bookended intro and sort of curtain call finale reprise revue.
Our bearings, musical journey is mapped out on the opening ‘When The Magic Went Wrong’, a sort of continuation of Button’s 70s imbued Papernut house band with shades of a oompah brass band accompanied Mott The Hopple and David Essex. It also includes the first reveal of a lamented and repeated magical “disappearing” metaphor. The first actual gag, set-up is with ‘The Mayor Of Bridlington, whichintroduces us to a character straight out of a Carry On film, to the woozy dreamy longing tones of a enervated Beach Boys, Bad Finger and Bread – the long and short of it is a convoluted trapdoor joke that backfires on a jealous husband.
A “new assistant” serves as a sort of tug-of-love tale of woe, set to the strains of a faux-Tango and softened, concertinaed mirage of the Parisian Left Bank – the aromatic signatures of the amorous Dolores Mondo. A, rightly so, creepy vessel, ‘The Dummy’ tells the tale of Tubna’s fall from grace, suspended by the Magic Circle and forced to take a punt at ventriloquism: of which he’s utterly useless. A chance meeting with Barry – sound engineer to the Shaman (just credible and devoid of status as ring with the truth) and Howard Jones – and we’re suddenly thrust into the world of mediums before a major falling out that brings the house down. The music is part Alex Harvey, part The Kinks.
In a change from the Button-led songs of the first half of this album, the cursed ‘Talismano’ figurines story features a poetic, supernatural and creepy narration from Angela Loughran; unaccompanied except for an esoteric wind and dramatic touch of organ.
It’s artistic allusions that inspire both the Jeff Lynn, if he was into Britpop, ‘The Triennial’ and more wistful ‘The Painting’. The latter provides the cover illustration diorama of a lifted curse and the overall mists of time atmosphere for this book of British humoured yesteryear fun and mystery.
In what could be an episode straight out of Matt Berry’s Toast Of London there’s a shrinking “clash of minds” dual of egos with Tubna’s smug arch-nemesis Barrington Small that proves to be one of the album’s most mesmerist draws.
The Idle Race and Bonzos share the stage with Squeeze and Cockney Rebel on these magical shaggy dog tales made for a generation or two brought up on the idiosyncratic humour of an underwhelming cabaret act, episodes of Paul Daniel’s Magic Show and TV shows in the 80s (Bergerac for one). Fondly remembered, nostalgic pleasures prove fertile ground for vaguely reminiscent tunes and conceptual work of fun.
Anelli Beauchamp Cauduro ‘Sometimes Someone Watches’
(CÆR)
Conjuring up all manner of occult and otherworldly mystery, the collaborative trio of Michele Anelli, Paul Beauchamp and Andrea Cauduro drag open the doors and portals to disturbing sonic voyeuristic realms.
Their latest series of improvised esoteric-laced, alien, often chthonian soundtracks for the Turin-based label of such curiosities, CÆR (a ‘dark psych branch’ of the underground zine collective Chierichetti Æditore) uses atonal guitar sculpting, field recordings, various textures and a surprisingly melodic sensibility that rises out of the motor and propeller generated industrial and cavernous atmospherics: those touches of the melodic not so much a reprieve from the unhurried hum and crackled drones as brief touch of humanity.
‘The last time the door was open’, as the first track is entitled, the mood was ominous and the soundtrack a mix of Jóhann Jóhannsson horror, kosmische music for the damned, distant bit-crushed quells and haunted cowboy tremolo; all of it channeled through the Fortean Times paranormal radio set. A bended spooked transmogrification of a lunar Western, dissonant swells emerge alongside echoes of Popol Vuh’s seagull-like twangs.
‘One Dwells There Within Who Talks To The Morning Mists’ sounds like a sagacious line from some mystic but once again lurks in the occult. Early Popol Vuh (them again), Kluster, Lucrecia Dalt and the avant-garde can be detected on this cosmic hell of slow-burning centrifugal magnetic forces, deep bassy drones, early analogue and dark material manifestations.
‘A Sort Of Foreknowledge Of The Coming Series Of Events’ unfolds unrushed across a shadowy expanse in which planetary leviathans loom large. Like something from the 1970s crackling, brewing and rippling to early hints of Cluster (both albums I and II) and the Tangerine Dream, there’s a certain awe, a sense of those both unearthly and supernatural bodies in movement.
If you are already well versed with such occult experiments, maybe a Crow Versus Crow label regular, then both this label and trio collaboration are worth the immersive dread and time to devour.
The Dark Jazz Project ‘ST’
(Irregular Frequencies) 15th July 2022
A new regeneration is on the cards as the art-house electronic music maverick Andrew Spackman hangs up his longest running alias, the SAD MAN, and dons the ominous mantle of The Dark Jazz Project.
From the Duchampian-favoured Nimzo-Indian chess move moniker of a decade ago, and through various other guises including his own name, Andrew has been on a fidgety, restless progressive momentum; eking out a idiosyncratic pathway in the electronic music spectrum in the process. Pretty much obscure to the point that only the Monolith Cocktail would dare shout about this one-off talent, he’s come along way, and gained encouraging reviews and praise from an ever-larger cable of clique-y named publications and blogs: although only our opinion counts!
The SAD MAN has proven to be Andrew’s most prolific guise yet, with countless spasmodic, bewildering and madly engineered outpourings of techno and all its sub genre releases; culminating in that appellations most ambitious swan song, the Sad Stories multimedia collaboration with a number of music critics and fellow artists – though kindly asked to take part last year, time, personal crisis got in the way and I’m now pretty disappointed with myself for not contributing.
At the same time Andrew’s branched out both musically and art wise with moves into soundtracks and performances (see for example his score for Menilmontant).
A very busy man, but not too busy to once more reinvent himself with another project, in another form, along comes a taster of what’s to come. The inaugural preview release-style showcase of The Dark Jazz Project is a three-track affair of moody jarred spikes and alien landscapes. Like a moon-guided abstract fear; a ghostly voyage aboard a Kubrickian, Lovecraftian and Tarkovskyian space freighter this new vision scopes lunar caverns and the deep cosmos.
Plaintive and evocative strings stir up semi-classical filmic scores before galvanized ripples, shredded metallic components, gargled, burbled bestial signs of the Other emerge to conjure up all manner of galactic mystery, the paranormal and flippery. Detuned stars bend as bass-y dark matter merges with a Mogadon Jeff Mills and Phylps; a miserable Tangerine Dream out on the precipice. And that all happens within the perimeters of the first suite ‘The Forest’.
The second cosmic friction, ‘Eyes In The Trees’ features vague traces of hardcore and drum & bass; leaping into spasmodic action before summing up a sort of foreboding 2001: A Space Odyssey style symphony.
The “jazz” part of the name – albeit a transmogrified “jazzcore” and very removed version of John Zorn and his ilk – doesn’t really kick in until the final third section of ‘Fire Dance’: the EP’s finale as it were. A staccato breakbeat drum drills and twitches; rolls and bombards like a Wagon Christ (almighty) turn inside an epileptic triggering video arcade machine from the early 80s. It gets there however after first navigating passages of Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence series, Autechre and Shepard Stevenson (yeah, there’s an obscure one for you).
More dark arts sci-fi cinema with bursts of generated techno and breaks than avant-garde noise jazz, Andrew’s latest incarnation is a welcome development. Wiser and without any limitations he’s, dare I say, taken his feet off the hadron collider accelerator for explorations with more depth and gravity.
A full album has been promised for later this year. Expect to see a review in a future revue.
Delmore FX ‘Scompaio’
(Das Andere Selbst, Communion, Artetetra) 7th July 2022
Across three labels of various experimental peculiarities no less, the founder of one of those imprints (the limited tape numbered Das Andere Selbst) Elia Buletti unveils a unique, lopsided treatment of electroacoustic ethno-music. Under the Delmore FX alias the poet/artist creates a whole new avant-garde vision of West African music: at times almost in the realms of musique concète.
The jug-poured and twanged tines sounds of the kalimba and mbira, and bobbled woody bounce of the gourd-resonated balafon xylophone are transformed into a serial mirages, bended and beaded percussive suites. Carrying an essence of those original forms and evoking the West African scenery, the Scompaio album (a title that translates into the very existential “I disappear”) gives a tangible, thick and heavy metallic texture and more concertinaed lunar effect to the source instrumental patterns and rhythms. At times this amounts to (dripping) tap dances in the sink to the twitters and data roving calculus of a computer language.
Percussive bubbled bulbs, wind chimes stirrings, twinkles, tinkles and chinks both flow and get caught in gamelan-like garbles as trippy effects distort parped and skewered rhythms; that is until ‘Sailor’s Delight’ arrives with a beat that gets going in an elliptical fashion – like a ritual, seasick Aphex Twin and Prefuse 73.
Almost cartoonish in places with wild and more fun runs and dribbles, below the surface there’s a highly sophisticated skill in these layered, re-contextualized pieces that reconfigure, play with ethno musical sources. In the process a whole strange new sonic world of avant-garde experimentation, primitivism electronica and library music is opened up.
Runningonair ‘B.A.U.’
8th July 2022
With a semi-nostalgic arc of synthesized evocations, the four-decade spanning electronic composer Joe Evans traverses and electro glides through an array of tutorial sessions turn grand explorations, and perimeter-set exercises in minimal apparatus use.
By day, stuck in the monotony of an IT call centre, by night, both navel and stargazing; daring to dream of quantum leaps and the faraway prospects of travelling to the stars, Evans lets his imagination project across nine varied suites of mood music.
Under the Runningonair umbrella – a moniker that includes a label and Youtube channel of technical music lessons, music videos and Vlogs – a choice line-up of sound modules, software and synths is used to score and explore such themes as futurology, climate change and the human condition. B.A.U., which I take it is the acronym for “business as usual”, begins with one such crisis. ‘If Not Now’, with shades of Orbital, Vangelis and Jarre, moves from new age trance to melodious techno; ending up above the clouds with climbing harmonic notes that avoid, we’re told in the accompanying notes, the standard chords. With a heavy use of the ‘Air hybrid 3 synth’ this verbalized protestation has the climate emergency in its sights. An artificial female voice posits the rhetorical line on that one, but also appears later on the dreamy piano tinkled, airy and spacey swooned ‘As Far As You Can’. This is actually built-on a remix Evans made of a track by the artist Suborno; a transformation of that original project cast into an entirely different direction.
Out into the cosmos, the celestial-toned, aerial bending trance and techno ‘Lunar Lander’ features both adult and child-like promises of intergalactic progress. Mind you, after reading Michio Kaku’s wondrous The Future Of Humanity it looks like our poor enfeebled current forms won’t make the interstellar travel that’s needed, nor stand up to the conditions on those future planets we colonize – In all likelihood our consciousness will have to be uploaded to some distant avatar, purposely built on those distant stars by robots.
Elsewhere Evans is inspired by the classic synthwave catalyst score for the cult Hotline Miami computer game; tuning into the original game’s Russian mafia antagonists whilst alluding to some environmental disaster with an almost clandestine piece of broody EDM and dreamwave.
Whilst ‘showcasing’ the CZ1 synth, Evans musters up a quirks and quarks lunar spell of Vangelis (again) space hymn, X-Files paranormal activity and the original Air on the coded password-like ‘CeZ1um’. But the multiuse QY10 sound module and Alesis Microverb exercise of ‘Q4’ moves in a more cinematic mode of retro-futurism. In fact this whole album sent me back to a late 80s and early 90s period of electronic experiment – in a good way I might add. I found myself easing back, drifting but immersed on wave after wave of melodious, vapoured and synthesised EDM, techno, trance and electronic-classicism. Beyond just application, Evans transports us with his digital and analogue skills to new worlds.
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.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Roundup Of What’s What
SINGLES/TRACKS
Gillian Stone ‘Amends’
This is a beautiful and moving single; a ballad of lost horizons and forgotten hopes, the folk bewitchery that indeed bewitches a long float down an aural river of despondency and regret but offers brief glimpses of the nature of life in all its ugly beautiful full-frontal explosion of sex love and lust. A song that tickles the chin of death until it smiles and bares its rotting teeth. A true example of the art and magic of music.
Hal Cannon ‘Thirty-Six Miles’
(Okehdokee Records)
Thirty-Six Miles is a beautifully written song taking in the magic and pure nostalgia of all the old country music, just like my dad use to play as I was growing up. A song that takes in the simplicity and wonder of discovery and peace; a song that demonstrates the purity and power of the simply written poetically inspired word framed by a lone picked banjo and tinkling piano. Truly beautiful.
The Legless Crabs ‘I Wanna Be A Cult Musician’
(Metal Postcard Records)
I cannot have a round up without an offering from the wonderful Metal Postcard Records, and this month’s chosen track is the new single by the Legless Crabs. A couple of minutes of adrenalin pulsating weirdness with a guitar solo that one should write home about, and I am renowned for my distrust of the guitar solos, but when one happens to sound like it is disgusted with itself for being a guitar solo – if it is in fact one, it could well be a heavily distorted keyboard – it is indeed a thing of rock ‘n’ roll legend and off kilter brilliance, a bit like the Legless Crabs themselves: off kilter brilliance.
Beija Flo ‘Waiting For The Sun’
I like a little deranged angst in pop music. Sometimes it is a good thing, and I enjoyed this little angst-ridden pop song of heartbreak and want a great deal; plus the video has the added attraction of a dead clown, who does not like a dead clown, especially on a nice sunny day, which it is today as I type this. An ideal way to start a review session: the sun an egg roll and a dead clown lying on the pavement dead whilst the songstress emotes anger and heartache. If only all pop music could be as entertaining.
ALBUMS/EPS
A.D Luck ‘WORMWOOD’
(Submarine Broadcasting Co.)
Exploration into the unusual psych of adventure is the perfect description of yet another off-kilter release from Submarine Broadcasting Company.
A.D LUCK has offered us here a captivating delve into the land of experimental electronica but with a pop edge, which at times reminds me of The Art Of Noise but without the annoyance. And I can imagine many an alternative radio show featuring a number of tracks from this fine album, and can well see it being all over the wonderful Dandelion radio station. For this is pop music Jim, just not how we know it.
It has melody, humour, romance and sex, or am I just a little strange? Whether I am or not there is no denying that to these ears the track ‘NICFITNIC’ is pure cartoon addiction pop brilliance, so much so I have just spent the past thirty minutes listening to this strange beguiling number over and over again. THIS IS PURE POP FOR NOW AND AGAIN PEOPLE.
The Doomed Bird of Providence ‘A Flight Across Arnhem Land’
(10 To 1 Records)
If you can imagine the Wicker Man set in the Australian outback instead of the Scottish Isles, than this could well be its soundtrack. For this album of 16 slightly gothic sounding folksongs has an eerie and wonderfully disturbed texture, the songs being vocal driven pieces using text from Australian Newspapers from the 1920/30s.
The songs start to merge into each other, and you start to think have I not already heard this one, which only adds to the strangeness and unsettling nature of the album. To my mind only a good thing and it is lovely to come across something a bit different and a band that isn’t a Woolworths Beatles/Byrds/Nirvana. This is an album for those who want to dip into something a little bit unusual.
The Meltdown ‘Its A Long Road’
(Hopestreet Recordings) 29th July 2022
This is a very mature sounding album; one that is very well produced and has the old sixties country soul vibe about it, which is to be honest something I normally avoid like the plague as I normally put on immature badly produced pop for my listening pleasure, and if I am in a soulful mood I will put on some 60s/70s soul, when soul to my ears was at its finest, and I think The Meltdown will completely agree with that statement as they have just produced an album filled to the brim, brimming in fact, with the inspiration from 60s country soul.
You hear the Stax horns and blue eyed soul melodrama which when done badly and uninspired can be as exciting as watching paint dry, and not even your own paint but someone else’s, maybe a neighbour’s or a recently renovated public house that has lost all its old charm and is now frequented by people in white shirts and short skirts who support Liverpool or Man U or whatever team at the moment is doing well. But Meltdown avoid that by sounding like a pub that has been given a new coat of paint but has managed to keep the charm and authenticity of the original, and of what the people found so appealing in the first place, so will attract new customers but keep the old regulars perfectly happy. So not all 60s inspired soul bands have to sound like The Commitments, it can sound like The Meltdown, and thank Little Richards 60s soul recording pants for that.
The Burning Hell ‘Garbage Island’
Garbage Island is an enjoyable romp of poptastic glee taking in the influences of Lou Reed, They Might Be Giants, XTC, early Costello, The Modern Lovers and even Steely Dan and mashing it into a stew of musical hits. There is certainly something enjoyable losing yourself in the wash of the many lyrics and fine pop melodies.
It’s nice to come across a band that isn’t scared to be intellectual and witty. I come across far too many bands that write the trite and the obvious; who use one word when ten is obviously better. I call it the Oasis syndrome. The Burning Hell I am happy to announce have not succumb to the syndrome and are happy to paint beautiful pictures of a not too beautiful world promoting the joys of the magical different pop song.
Monolith Cocktail Monthly Playlist For June 2022: Santigold, Dungen, Pan Amsterdam, Luh’ra…
June 29, 2022
Choice Music From The Last Month
Curated By Dominic Valvona
June tunes from the Monolith Cocktail team of Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brain ‘Bordello’ Shea, Andrew C. Kidd and Mikey McDonald.
TRACK LIST IN FULL:::
Party Dozen Ft. Nick Cave ‘Macca The Mutt’
Vukovar ‘Place To Rest’
Santigold ‘High Priestess’
Marina Herlop ‘Shaolin Mantis’
Flying Moon In Space ‘The Day The Sun Was Made’
Sinead O Brien ‘Salt’
cumgirl8 ‘Dumb Bitch’
Legless Trials ‘Dirt Bike’
Taraka ‘Reverence’
Magon ‘A Night In Bethlehem’
Oliver Rocabois ‘Watch The Seasons Come And Go’
Wolf Vanwymeersch ‘Friendly Is Better’
Dungen ‘Nattens Sista Strimma Ljus’
Pan Amsterdam & Damu The Fudgemunk ‘Duck Wok’
Les Amazones d’Afrique ‘Sisters’
Eman El Bahr Darweesh ‘El Arwam’
Wau Wau Collectif ‘Yellow-Casqued Hornbill’
La Chinaca ‘Juegos Malosos’
Luh’ra Ft. AndyMkosi ‘Give It All’
Bishop Nehru ‘Heroin Addiction’
El Gant/Ras Kass/Marco Polo ‘Pageants’
J Rocc Ft. The Koreatown Oddity ‘The Changing World’
The Book Thieves Ft. Upfront MCs ‘Human Beings’
L’Orchestre Massako ‘Gnekelhe Mohi’
The Koreatown Oddity ‘Top Of The Heap (Demo)’
Revelators Sound System ‘George The Revelator’
Kibrom Birhane ‘Digis’
Nduduzo Makhatini ‘Amathongo’
Rico James Ft. Ardamus and The Truth ‘Stay Away From The Dum Dums’
Cappo/Doctor Zygote/Jazz T ‘I Go Off’
Tanya Morgan Ft. Jack Davey ‘A Whole Mood (King Most Remix)’
CRIMEAPPLE/Buck Dudley ‘Entenmann’s’
The Book Thieves ‘Sarah’
Masai Bey ‘Ego Power’
Krohme Ft. Sleep Sinatra/Chino XL/Lord Goat ‘Cursed Earth’
Dirty Dike ‘Just Dreamin’’
Ghost Horse ‘Idea’
Loris Cericola ‘Message From Beyond’
Xqui ‘Narrator’
Flavia Massimo ‘Chromosome XX’
Celestial North ‘The Nature Of Light’
Oog Bogo ‘New State’
Paul Leary ‘Indians Storm The Government’
Farmer ‘The Call’
Trance Farmers ‘Dusty Tesla’
Rich Ruth ‘Desensitization And Reprocessing’
Tasha Smith Godinez ‘My Soul Floats On The Sea: Floating On The Sea’
Jacek and Ewa Doroszenko ‘Synthetic Nap’
Team Play ‘Hold Me In Your Arms (Hate And Terror)’
Claude ‘Twenty Something’
Angel Olsen ‘Through The Fires’
The Mining Co. ‘Astral Investigation’
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