Our Daily Bread 517: Ali Murray ‘Wilderness Of Life’
May 11, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW/GRAHAM DOMAIN
Ali Murray ‘Wilderness of Life’
(Dead Forest Records)
Wilderness Of Life is the new album by Ali Murray, out now via Dead Forest Records. It is an album of Dark Intense Folk Pop with intermittent Shoegaze guitars. The songs are full of imagery, nature reimagined as pain, the loneliness of the Cosmos painted in sound on a skyscraper guitar.
His voice lies somewhere between Tom McCrae and Simone Felice with nods to Elliot Smith. The songs are dark hymns to loneliness, heartbreak, and emotional turmoil, with enduring hope in the face of adversity.
Songs such as ‘Wilderness of Life’ and ‘Rainbox’ point the way forward – the words brought to life with intense effect laden guitars akin to Slowdive or Big Flower. In this setting he could become a cult hero, a modern-day Elliot Smith painting his pain not just with words but also with emotion as sound. One to watch!
Our Daily Bread 516: SAULT ‘Air’
May 9, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW: Andrew C. Kidd
SAULT ‘AIR’
The summit has been reached. The artist is left poised precipitously on a creative aiguille. There is no higher peak. There is no ground left to conquer. Only true sky-reachers seek higher heights. I have no doubts that SAULT, aka Dean Josiah Cover, was pointedly tiptoed in such a place prior to writing AIR.
Reality is operatic. Cyclical pulsing strings belly staccatoed and libretto-less choral notes. They oscillate beautifully. The scale is pentatonic and it floats. The string section gallops. I am reminded of Phillips Glass’s Akhenaten. This is theological Richter.
On Air I am nonchalantly oaring my sky-canoe through wisps of clouds and the dreamy blue. Its jazz strings provide buoyancy. The slow ride rushes glisten as I traverse hazy white into breezy clearings. The mono mezzo-soprano is heat-haze. The sun-glittering percussion touches the tips of waves of the old world below. The piano – a familiar friend – is a subtle hand that lets me go. My canoe slips away into the polychromatic, undulating on brassy ascents and descents
Harpy Heart is all pizzicato. The opening melody is the foundation of somewhere where we lived long ago. The glockenspiels are the brickwork of houses. The ascending brass are the hearth fires of stone. There are Gerschwin crescendos: we climb the stairs of this dwelling by way of the feather-light chorus. The house is eventually made roofless by the vocals that simply spill out to kite around the playful strings. The ascent begins.
The long synths of Solar hold and hold and undertow the cycling chorus. The horns are thrust bursts. The wind section is heraldic. Glockenspiels glint and shimmer and pulse. Chords are stacked fifths; their forward motion could move moons. The brass provides volume and strength. Future rhodes, theremin magicry and analogue pads lead into a grandstand choral finish. This is Alexander Courage conquering deep space in the ‘60s.
Time Is Precious is Bowie-falling-back-to-earth melody. Think cosmic kaleidoscopes. Think starry sequins. The brass is Aaron Copland: pioneer-spirited, triumphant, enduring. The neo-soul vocals – casual reminiscence of previous SAULT – make an appearance at the mid-point of this piece. They sing of the most elusive and untradeable of currencies: time.
On June 55 I am peering into the novel, the fantastical, the new worldly, the shimmering brilliance of a future time. I am at home. Advancing brass and reverse-tape sequences disorient me. Quietude follows. Warmer, fuller, sun-laden horns melt into rhythmic trombones and deep sprechgesang melody. It is a sort of gentler David Shire, with a choir and zithers.
Luos Higher is a sonic smoke signal. I enter somewhere akin to Andreas Vollenweider’s Caverna Magica. A thumping, all-tribe dance ensues: feet tread to an interplay of pizzicatos. The synergy is Crosby, Stills and Nash, except they are playing erhus, guzhengs and sanxians. It is communicating something that I cannot comprehend yet. I am on a higher plane. I am left truly at peace.
Back on the aiguille. AIR places its listener on a mountaintop observatory. The lens is a long one. It telescopes towards new sounds. It is mesmeric. It is circuitous. It never meets in the middle. Through its prism I eye optimism. Through this lens I can celebrate future times.
Dominic Valvona’s Roundup
The Shorts (videos, tracks, singles)
Stephanie Santiago ‘Activa Tu Cuerpo’
(Movimientos Records)
Soulfully lucid with a tinge of jazzy R&B and a reverberation of Cumbia, the London-born ‘Colombianx’ burgeoning sensation Stephanie Santiago entrances with another vision of her Latin roots. Growing up as the daughter of Colombian musician parents – her father an accordionist, her mother a singer –, in a home filled with the joyous, sauntering music of South America, Stephanie embraced the ancestral vibes but lent them an expanded eclectic mix of sounds: from soul to jazz, reggaeton and even punk.
Via the Latin contemporary Movimientos Records label, Stephanie continues to find her place, sense of community in the bustled melting pot of London. From the Alma Carnavalera EP, and most recent single, the Monolith Cocktail is spreading the good word and happy to share the funk-dripped bass and dreamy rich ‘Activa Tu Cuerpo’.
Celestial North ‘When The Gods Dance’
A magical, softened driving gallop over Celtic folklore and hillsides, the diaphanous voiced Celestial North dreams big, dancing with the gods, on her new enchanted and cinematic swelled gauzy single. From our side of the border here in Scotland, but based in the splendor of the Lake District, the soloist counters turbulence and drama with atavistic veils from a mythology to create a whole new entrancing fantasy.
Orryx ‘Ifera’
(ZamZam Records)
The titular evocation from the Bristol-based artist Christelle Atenstaedt’s new EP, ‘Ifera’ sounds like it’s been woven from the ether. As a repeated chime rings out suffused atmospherics envelope a yearned vocal. Materializing from the vapours, a trance-y beat finds a sort of traction and drive. Under the Lovecraftian guise of Orryx, esoteric and Byzantine stirrings draw the listener into a slowly powerful world of gothic-pop and electronica.
Christelle combines ethereal vocal loops with a selection of hardware synths, samplers and effects pedals on the EP’s quartet of original tracks – the fifth being a remix from dark wave techno duo Fever 103°. Delve in, and succumb to the mantric powers of this hypnotic artist.
ALBUMS/EPs
Black Mango ‘Quicksand’
(Gusstaff Records)
Transforming Mali’s world-renowned signature blues sound – from the city streets, back lanes of the Bamako capital to Tuareg roaming desert regions – the visionary producer Philippe Sanmiguel has been instrumental in fusing that sound with rock music, atmospheric mirages and electronics.
Based in the capital for the last sixteen years, Philippe has amassed an enviable roll call of productions for such icons and talents as Samba Touré, Anansay Cissé, Tartit and Mariam Koné. During that time he’s enjoyed a creative partnership with the Glitterbeat Records label and its founding partner Chris Eckman. Alongside his foil Hugo Race (who appears on this album), Eckman’s Dirtmusic band was drawn to Mali a decade ago, recording sessions for both the Troubles and Lion City albums whilst in Bamako with Philippe.
An integral part of the scene then, I’m guessing it didn’t take much persuading to get most of those artists to appear on his new showcase, Quicksand.
Under the Black Mango alias, Philippe opens up his own compositions to the great and good of Mali, and admirers alike. Produced over several years in various recording sessions, each collaborator has been given “free range”. The results of which are equally as searching as they are dreamy: even hallucinogenic. The opening heat bending, dub-y ‘Bakeina’s Dream’ straddles both; melting in a desert setting as the earthy soulful vocals of Bocar Sana Coulibaly drift through from some mirage oasis. Bocar, a member alongside Ali Traoré (both also nephews of the late esteemed Ali Farke Touré) of Espoirs de Niafunké, makes a second appearance later on, joining the brilliant guitarist and artist Anansy Cissé on the meandered, spoke-plucked and gauzy ‘The First Stone’.
Pretty much one of the most popular and gifted guitarists to emerge from Mali, Samba Touré adds a sustained flange of bended notes and expressive lines to the Phantom Band meets Belgium alt-rock ‘Are U Satisfied’ – Philippe’s voice on this one almost channels Michael Karoli of Can’s languid lyrical, questioning malaise. Samba plays some nice electric-blues and semi-classical tones in harmony with the mandolin and harp-like airy spirals of the ngoni on the infinity ether R&B flavoured ‘Mad Girl’. Offering up the R&B, the soul on that same track is the celebrated Malian songstress, music teacher and Les Amazons d’Afrique super group member Mariam Koné. Mariam can also be found lending a searching cosmic gospel vocal on the Flyodian, astral and progressive tumultuous ‘Minamba’.
From Samba’s regular band setup the ngoni and tama (a hour-glass shaped talking drum, the pitch of which can be tuned mirror the human voice) maestro Djime Sissoko gets to let loose on the percussive heavy, spacey ‘Bankoni’. With buoyant drums, bottle taps, ricochets and buzzes this scrapped and scuttled finale marks a mysteriously veiled ending to a Mali traversing psychogeography of both magic and the all too real consequences of the violence that’s plagued, and continues to plague, the country and its borders.
Talking of those fraught, violent themes, the already mentioned Hugo Race moodily channels his Dirt Music calling on the bleeding ‘Heaven Sands’. Part swamp gator blues, part outback Mick Harvey, Hugo leads us across a much troubled, metaphorical landscape towards better days. Though Philippe’s dub-y, Terry Hall-like ‘Quicksand Blues’ has far more ominous, political references to a desert storm of terrorism, immigration and blood-soaked sand dunes. ‘Ghost Sand’ meanwhile is just that, an instrumental passage of haunted lingers, traces of those both missing or forced to abandon the deserts of Mali for the cities; out of displacement, conflict or poverty.
There’s a far greater talent pool involved on this album, which transcends Mali’s extraordinary legacy as arguably one of the true homes of the blues and rock genres. Quicksand marks a sagacious yet experimental achievement for the producer-musician and artist in his own right. A showcase for his own talents, his friends and for the country itself; roots music taken to another level and given a contemporary lift.
Further Reading::
Private Agenda ‘A Mannequin’
(Lo Recordings)
A sophisticated mood board of veiled, gauzy electronica with hints of real tinkered piano, A Mannequin is the second studio album from Berlin/London portal Private Agenda: the languorous sonic partnership of Sean Phillips and Martin Aggrowe.
Conceptually using each song and shorter breather, pause, to reflect particular character traits, and in doing so, asking certain questions about the ‘dichotomies’ that define us, this duo play around with a soundboard of synth-pop, nu-soul, ambient, downtempo, new age, chillwave, new wave, AOR gold and house music.
A fantasy with spells of starry, shimmery tinkled magic and more hazy, vaporous plaintiveness, this mostly dreamy, relaxed album glides or drifts through twelve degrees of being; starting with the ambient turn, the Air-like mirage ‘Irresistible’. I haven’t made my mind up if this is about holding a mirror up to narcissistic self-love or a complete 360 degrees turn, and in fact dreamily cooing for ore of it.
‘Neo-Nostalgia’ not just a track in itself, could be a perfect description for the whole record, with its constant lingering traces, the essence of 80s songwriter and synth pop, electronica, disco and yacht rock. The duelist ‘Gemini’ seems to lushly brood through Tokyo 80s glowing new wave, the Balearic new age, and yet also fit within the perimeters of the music of the cult Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter Ned Dohney.
There’s a change in musical mood, instrumentation by the fourth lovelorn song, ‘Touching’, which features an eloquent spell of classical light piano. It returns later on with just a hint of distant birdsong and a synthesized pre-set on the interlude-like ‘Purity’.
Elsewhere those floated ethereal vocals – which are never pushed, never sang in anger or even loudly – are wrapped in relaxed funk, castaway tropical percussion, neon-lit drama, opulent gauze and airy filters. With nothing strained, no real tensions, the music glides through a swirl of pre-Miami Vice Jan Hammer, Vangelis, Groove Armada, Spaceface, and on the finale, ‘Substance’, an exotic laidback pan-pipe hint of South American trance: As they’ve coined it, a ‘musical hyper-realism’.
Despite that laidback, even disarming if saddened at times production, the personality is seriously mined to create a fantasy come lyrical expression of who we truly are. A voyage of self-discovery you could say.
Saturno 2000: La Rebajada de Los Sonideros 1962 – 1983
(Analog Africa)
Once more landing on South and Central American shores Analog Africa airways celebrates the obscure ‘Rebajada’ phenomenon with what must be the only, if not first, compilation of its kind dedicated to that trippy, slowed-down form. Originally asked by Analog’s founder Samy Ben Redjeb back in 2010 to come up with an idea for a collection, noted DJ expert Eamon Ore-Giron (stage name DJ Lengua) offered up the Rebajada Mota Mix, which as a real slow-burner took time to reveal its magic. And so more then a decade on, this proposal now sees the light of day on a dedicated 15 track survey, taking in a twenty-one year period from ’62 to ’81.
First though, a little background. In a nutshell, ‘Rebajada’ is a well-coined name that literally translates as ‘to reduce, or to lower’, in this case slowing down the continent’s famous Cumbia and, to a lesser extent, Porro rhythms. Cumbia, a catch-all for a Latin American amalgamation of rhythms and folk dances drawn from the indigenous, enslaved African community and Spanish colonial cultures, and Porro, a style originally seeded in the Caribbean facing region of Colombia that evolved into a ballroom dance played by brass heavy bands and orchestras, are both simmered down with the speed and much of the gallop taken out so as to produce sometimes crazy but often sauntering, more relaxed dances. It’s a sound that allows the listener to drink it all in.
Brought to Mexico by ‘the sonidero’ (sound-system operators as they were known), tunes from Peru and Ecuador were by accident or luck transformed into a new style that sent the audience wild. Two cities and groups of people lay claim to initiating it though. In one corner the catalyst Pereas and Ortegas brothers, who travelled across Latin America crate digging before returning home to Mexico City. They sold their wares, finds to various sound-systems on the hunt for something new and fresh to blow away the competition. A number of which, in trying to match the beats of each region with that of Mexico City’s own styles began experimenting. One such maverick, Marco Antonio Cedilio of the Sonido Imperial fame, created a ‘revolutionary’ pitching system that could slow records down. In the opposing corner, the northern Mexican city of Monterrey and Sonidero Gabriel Dueñez, who by happenstance set in motion a chain of events that would see the city, lay claim to inventing the ‘Rebajada’ style. By escaping electrocution at the hands of a short circuit spark that nearly set his turntable on fire, the revolutions were slurred and slowed down by the damage, playing Cumbia at much reduced bpm and so creating this new rhythm and dance sensation. Another well-known sonidera, Joyce Musicolor, as mediator puts it best: “Rebajada, and the equipment to perform it, is from here [Mexico City] but it was Monterrey that popularized it.”
Contentious to this day, no matter what the truth, a new sound was born that grew and grew, yet remains relatively unknown outside Latin America. Here then is a survey of that scene, with a majority of the songs sounding unlike the originals; notable exceptions being the few classics composed by Polibio Mayorga, or rather the Ecuadorian Junior Y Su Equipo, and the Mexican Los Dinners group’s scrappy, tinny shuffled percussive and giddy-horse canter, bounding drum saunter ‘Sampuesana’.
Although we’ve heard a lot about Mexico, the lion’s share of choice selections are drawn from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. Well, there’s actually only one apiece from both Venezuela and Colombia; the tremolo quivered Western themed reverberation of Duane Eddy, if produced by Joe Meek, ‘Infinito’ by Hugo Blanco Y Su Arpa Viajera, and the rattle-y percussive chapel squeeze-box, organ stuttered ‘La Danza Del Mono’ by Lucho Gavilanes.
Obviously when taken down a notch of two in the speed stakes it produces some funny as well as odd subgenres, and with the elements of low rent tech makes some tracks sound like 8-bit zappy and warbled versions of Andean pipe music. In that category you can include the oscillating ghost-synth like filtered Ecuadorian Junior Y Su Equipo group’s ‘La Borrachita’ and their second contribution, the googly, high-pitched and fluted ‘Bien Bailadito’.
From Peru, Los Santos’ cosmic futuro entitled ‘Saturno 2000’ (borrowed for this compilation’s title) sounds like a slowed fusion of Porro and Highlife with its raised and suffused blasted horns, galloped hand drums and distinct tropical Latin lilt. Monolith Cocktail followers and Analog Africa aficionados will recognize one name from the list, the Peruvian cat Manzanita. A compilation of his influential music was released only last summer by the label. Here, in a very different guise is his bottle-rolling duet of the slurred ‘Paga La Cuenta Sinverguenza’, and, with Su Conjunto, the more strung-out gangly guitar wondering ‘El Jardinero’.
Back to where it all got so peculiar and relaxed, the Mexican outfit Conjunto Tipico Contreras turn in a shunted, scrappy and concertinaed vision of a epic exotic film score from the MGM studio heydays; a record that has both a mix of the Mayan jungles and fertile crescent. The beat is destined, if not already, to be sampled.
Could Rebajada be the sound of this summer? It’s certainly a contender, just because it’s often so strange and hypnotising. You kind of hear the process, the slowness, yet it works as a sauntering, relaxed yet somehow still busy tropical shuffle. Having constantly documented all the best African nuggets, Samy and his partner on this compilation, Eamon, have put together an essential guide to a Latin American treasure trove.
Ethan Woods ‘Burnout’
(Whatever’s Clever Records)
From out of the rustic idylls of Western North Carolina emerges a cabin essence songbook; a disarming pastoral lilted and psychedelic melt of connectedness, and yet, also yearning heartache. Ethan Woods and friends absorbed the meandered thoughts that take shape when disconnected from the newsfeed roll of social media and bustle of the city, out on a summer balm encased porch, and under a wooded canopy.
First conceived back in Brooklyn between 2015 and 2017, Woods fine-tuned his collection of dreamy, mesmerizing songs when he moved to Asheville, North Carolina a year later. Created in-situ at the foothills of the Appalachians, but brushed-up upon returning to Brooklyn once more with added parts recorded at the now defunct Fort Briscoe during the pandemic, the fruits of Woods and his sympathetic ensemble is let loose just in time for the summer of 22.
From beginning to end Burnout unfolds over the course of a day, following the sundial’s shadow until nightfall drops. That’s when the nocturnal soundscape collage, performed in part by the electronic experimentalist Aaron Smith, opens up a whole new evocation of nighttime camouflaged hoots, insect chatter and an Americana ether of obscured sounds.
Apart from Aaron there’s contributions from Woods partner Lauren Gerndt, percussionist Matt Evans, Trevor Wilson, Sarah Goldfeather, Finn Shanahan, Karl Larson, Jude Shimer and Alvin the rooster. Yes that’s correct, a credit goes to the rooster, who sets the alarm and atmosphere. No contribution is too small: from Gerndt’s read out one-liner about teddy bears to helping in the development of the arrangements themselves.
In the press notes, as an ample description, we’re told to think Alan Lomax recording a super group of Sufjan Stevens and The Books. I’d suggest led by David Byrne with Paul McCartney, Animal Collective, Galaxie 500, Ladybug Transistor and Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah vibes. In all, a sort of ebb and flow of psych, troubadour, soft rock and enervated dirt music country.
Characters from childhood, like ‘Mrs. Moo’, are accorded a lo fi swim of the sentimental and playful, with humble spells of honesty. Never quite straight up, always melting in with the arable outdoors on waves and oscillations of marching drumbeats, cymbal splashes, distant snozzles, tinkled piano and lax acoustic guitar. Music finds form and a rhythm; an either melancholic or romantic emotive tune in untroubled and unguarded song forms. Most of which bleed into each other, almost like a continuous recording.
Woods pastoral retreat proves a most magical, heart rendering, if sometimes pining, place to spend an hour or two. I’m really impressed by this slow-burning trip that drops The Books off for the weekend in a log cabin for a soliloquy session of candid therapy.
Misha Sultan ‘Roots’
Gustavo Yashimura ‘Living Legend Of The Ayacucho Guitar’
(Both Hive Minds Records) 6th May 2022
Nearing the label’s fifth anniversary (see my future purview celebration later this year) with no signs of flagging, Hive Mind Records are stepping up with two releases on the same day. Both cassette and digital albums couldn’t be more different too; with organic and global electronica from the Russian artist Misha Sultan and Peruvian Andes guitar evocations, flourishes from the Ayacucho-imbued maestro Gustavo Yashimura.
It shouldn’t really be that surprising, the eclectic richness of this dual release, as the label has previously traversed an electric Atlas Mountains, celebrated the colourful rituals of Gnawa music, and stopped over in Java, Highlife Western Africa and tripped out with the Acid mothers and Reynols.
The first of these showcases brings together the work of the multi-instrumentalist Misha Sultan, collecting pieces from 2015 to 2022. Hailing from the heart of Siberia, and industrious city of Novosibirsk, Misha was forced to leave his homeland.
The so-called ‘Chicago of Siberia’, on the banks of the Ob River, a crossing point of the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway and historically an important flashpoint of the civil war, informs, inspires some of the recordings. A geographical behemoth that sits between the Ural Mountains and Northern Asia, touching the Pacific Ocean in the East, Siberia isn’t just the exiled, infamous hardened remote atelier of literature, art and politics but a beautifully diverse landscape; the Eurasian melting pot as it were. Mirroring that diversity, Misha’s music travels to the Congo, Bali and Arabia whilst absorbing bits of kosmische, ambient, trance, washed-out psych, 90s chill-out, breakbeat and dub.
Real instruments, such as bubbled and shuttled mallets, flighty and dreamy flute and bamboo and metal percussion melt into synthesised waves, rays and atmospherics; some of which, on the odd track, are provided by the mysterious Mårble and Dyad. ‘Ant Invasion’ sets the tone, the scene, with a peaceable-like meadow field recording of hedgerow birds and tranquil washes of Mythos and Andrew Wasylyk. A shuffle of hand drums kick in and vague Ash Ra Tempel prompts take us towards more far eastern fringes. ‘Sand Ashram’ wobbles and bobs to Richard H. Kirk’s red sands invocations, Warp Records early Artificial Intelligence series, Banco de Gaia and the chill-out vibes of Liquid and William Orbit. ‘Why Are We Here?’ meanwhile could be either set in an Finis Africae vision of the Amazon, or indeed, Western Africa, whilst the railway station inspired ‘Beloostrov’ offers a fluted and drifting piano daydream aboard a train bound for the Finnish border. ‘Slow Flow’ with its shooting stars and whistles floats into spacey dub Orb territory, and the banjo-like radiance of ‘Bubbles’ moves from Indonesian evocations to Japan; well, something like that.
The final two tracks journey to the Congo and Bali; with the latter settling into a meditative mood amongst the New Year celebrations of the Balinese day of Silence.
Misha sonically travels the world, bringing together interesting references, emotions and atmospheres. He remains however rooted, connected to that Siberian topography and mood.
The second showcase of the Hive Mind set this month assembles a collection of adroit but also intensely skillful acoustic guitar music by the rather obscure champion of the Ayacucho Peru culture, Gustavo Yashimura.
Picking up the guitar in 1987, Gustavo travelled onto Uruguay to study, later on journeying to Japan where he played a classical style. He’d return home however in 2004 (still eager to learn and study) and would later take up the Andean style of guitar with the onus on the proud Ayacucho region of Peru. His teacher during that period was the 80-year-old veteran Don Alberto Juscamaita Gastelú, known famously as just Rahtako. It seems Gustavo learned much; straddling both the classics and more frantic modern styles.
In trying to reclaim the pre-colonial Spanish Ayacucho folklore and culture, these nimble and busy performances incorporate an age-old yearn.
A number of tracks (‘Dandé Te Fuistes Paloma’ and ‘Negra Del Alma’ being two of them) feature a heartening, aching female vocal: not quite Fado, but certainly on the lamentable side. Beautifully sung, expressive, they prove my particular highlights on this compilation.
Gaucho western horizons, ancient symbols on the plains, romantic flourished and dalliances stream forth from an incredibly fluid style; a mix of Spanish and the indigenous. Dainty, sizzling, blurry at times, Gustavo’s skills prove magical. Well worth adding to an eclectic collection. Better still buy both albums.
Ghost Power ‘S-T’
(Duophonic Super 45s)
Two of the Duophonic Super 45s mail order label’s roster combine forces this month for a cult sounds coalesce of library music, soundtracks, psych and trip-hop. Serial offender in all things cultish, the kosmische universe and beyond, Stereolab’s Timothy Gane bounces nostalgic trips off his foil, Dymaxion instigator Jeremy Novak, under the newly minted Ghost Power guise.
Imbued by all that’s gone before them, recorded between sessions in both Berlin and New York (and remotely), the duo evoke a cosmology of cool and obscure mavericks on an album of fantasy (see the reference to Joseph Delaney’s witch assassin ‘Grimalkin’) and kitsch.
Matmos on a bum ride bubbles up inside a lava lamp with Bruno Spoerri and Arto Lindsay on the opening ‘Asteroid Witch’, whilst ‘Panic In The Isles Of Splendor’ could be the sort of obscurity dug up by the Finders Keepers label: that and a nocturnal insect rhythm of Alex Puddu and timpani soundtrack rousing piece of nonsense.
A transmogrification of an enviable record collection, in which Giallo schlock shares space on the shelves with space-disco-trance, 60s backbeats and Nino Nardini scores. Ghost power is a very knowing experiment in art for art’s sake; a knowledgeable take on library and cult sounds, with a few contemporary surprises.
Exterior ‘Umbilical Digital’
(Hobbes Music)
Without losing touch with rhythm and melody, the latest album from Edinburgh producer Doug MacDonald (under the guise of Exterior) is an experiment in texture, club sonics and live-sounding instrumentation. A largely percussive tapping, drum-skidding and bouncing affair, Umbilical Digital channels some quite eclectic tastes, with an array of both bpms and styles; from ambient scores to coarse abrasive guitar techno fusions.
The titular track, and opener, is a sophisticated metallic chrome propulsion of Basic Channel, Euro-trance and heightened warbles of something almost quivery and spooked. Yet by the second track, ‘Menu Diving Olympics’, the filters are subdued and more cosmic, the bass deeper, the beats like rattled ricochets, and the direction progressive. ‘Orthodox Dreams’ seems to have been partially lifted from the 90s: a bit of Sabers Of Paradise, a little Future Sound Of London. Yet it knocks and shakes, zaps and reverberates, to a contemporary mix of electronics.
The bottle, metal and tin rhythm tapping and pneumatic alarm clock bell chimed ‘Populist’ has a funky techno bent; reminding me of Psycho & Plastic and International Pony. ‘The Unbearable Shiteness Of Indie’ is less a polemic on guitar bands – MacDonald himself wielding one on this album; all feedback whines and caustic contouring – and more a floated, tunneled and slightly tropical merger between Sven Vath and Andy Weatherall.
The acid effects are subtly turned on for the trance-y geometric and soft thumped ‘Adoption’, and the Aphex Twin is sent down a flume on the slower beat-crunched, reversal tubular, robotic-stuttered ‘Tyranny Of Choice’. Carrying a certain weight, the finale, ‘Load Bearing’, goes all ambient and mysterious; a sort of soundtrack evocation of smoke forming on an otherworldly lake scene: creeping, sad with haunted, apparitional voices. As a last chill, it could be a lost Brian Reitzell score.
Synthesised music with a human touch, this album loses none of its experimental luster; still honed for the dancefloor as well as the head, whilst turning steel into something far more melodious. This is techno, electronica with a heart and purpose.
The Staple Jr. Singers ‘When Do We Get Paid’
(Luka Bop) 6th May 2022
Revived five decades after its original, localized released in 1975, the good folk at Luka Bop make good on their incredible, enlightening compilation of obscured gospel and soul, The Time For Peace Is Now, with a dedicated reissue of The Staple Jr. Singers rarity When Do We Get Paid.
Pressed by that extremely young family unit themselves and sold at shows and on their neighbors front lawns, this rarefied showcase is finally getting an international release, prompting a number of live dates for the trio: their first in forty years!
From the banks of the Tombigbee River, honed in the family’s hometown of Aberdeen, Monroe County, the salvation searching, baptismal liturgy of Southern gospel gets an injection of conscious political soul, R&B, funk and delta blues. From the name you may have assumed that this trio were scions, the offspring perhaps of the divine stylers the Staple Singers. Without doubt a chip off the old block, the group’s moniker is purely used as homage in honour of their idols. Far younger, the Brown family of beautified and expressive soulful vocalists Annie and A.R.C. and guitarist Edward were in their teens when they recorded this, their sole, album in ’75. Yet despite being so young, the travails of the civil rights movement, social issues of the day, run throughout the trio’s equally earthy and heavenly soul music.
This was a sound touched by the afflatus yet grounded in the wake of Southern desegregation, unrest, the Vietnam War…the list goes on. So whilst Annie soars in full baby Staples mode, and with a vibe of Eula Cooper and Shirley Ann Lee about her, there’s plenty of attitude and sass to go around. Gospel music remains central however, with plenty of standard Bible belt exultations, paeans and passionate plaints. Some of which, no matter how familiar, seem to have some pretty unique and idiosyncratic rearrangement going on. Bolstered on the original recordings by bassist Ronnel Brown and Drummer Corl Walker, we’re treated to s Stax-like revue of reverence, the venerable and just down-country soulful funk. Echoes of Sam Cooke, Lulu Collins, Crusade Records, Chairman Of The Board and Nolan Porter follow humbled sermons on the soul train to Galilee. An electrifying songbook, When Do We Get Paid proves that this family trio possessed a raw talent, and could hold their own in a field packed with such incredible voices. It also proves there’s still much to learn and hear from that era of Southern soul and gospel. Great job Luka Bop.
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.
COLLABORATION
WORDS: Monica Mazzoli
Over the last few years the Monolith Cocktail has been sharing a post each month with the leading Italian culture/music site Kalporz. This month Monica Mazzoli scouts out the sounds of the burgeoning artist, Leoni Leoni.
Bongo Joe Records of Geneva is one of those independent record labels (also a record shop) to always keep an eye on. In June 2022 a new release arrives that promises to be interesting and will make Leoni Leoni , musician, singer and producer from Bern better known to a wider audience: on vinyl and CD a collection dedicated to the Swiss underground artist who in recent years, between 2019 and 2021, produced a series of homemade cassettes: SUPER SLOW, EASY SLEEP, Yellow and Why, Drum Problems. The Bongo Joe compilation collects some of the songs already published on these cassettes where Leoni Leoni experiments with the deconstructed pop song form as if it were the memory, the dream of something else.
To discover.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Roundup
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are currently out there)
Pussy Riot And Slayyyter ‘Hate Fuck’
(Neon Gold Records)
This is quite wonderful. A fine blast of smart phone pop that is dark, dirty, sleazy and dangerous. Why can’t all modern pop be this rewarding. I know, because of the title it is not going to be played on daytime radio, which is indeed a shame as that is where it deserves to be as all great pop music deserves.
Boycalledcrow ‘Wizards Castle’
(Waxing Crescent Records) 6th May
I nearly didn’t bother reviewing this because I always spell Wizard wrong, and it really annoys me. But I’m glad I did, and overcame my laziness of fixing my bad grammar, for this album is an enjoyable foray into a land where squelchy synths and atmospheric gentle frenzy collide to supply us with a magical sea of splendour.
This darn rooting touting adventure of an album set me thinking where on earth is my copy of Joe Meeks I Hear A New World album. And in fact did I own a copy, or was the copy my son’s, Dan, who now has left home and taken Joe’s Jewel of 60s sci-fi magic with him. Anyway, I digress: see how an album of total instrumental brilliance can set one’s mind racing and heart a pounding, as boycalledcrow really has managed to succeed in capturing the same magic Joe Meek captured with his masterpiece.
This album is a thought rewarding jewel that glistens and dips and swoons taking in electronica and experimental instrumental pop and ambient, and leading it into a direction that few can as the Wizards Castle is a magical spell-inducing treat.
Amoeba Teen ‘S-T’ Out Now
The Walker Brigade ‘If Only’ 27th May 2022
(Big Stir Records)
Big Star (the first two albums), The Beatles, Jelly Fish, Squeeze, Wings, Fountains Of Wayne, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, The Cars, Sweet, The Raspberries and Blondie. If you like these bands there is more than a good chance you will enjoy this.
Another album of tuneful songs about love lost and found, with melody and crunchy guitars and guitar solos and “ba ba ba” backing vocals in all the right places. Yes, everything is in the right place and if you enjoy albums of everything being in the right place and well written and tuneful, then this album is for you.
The sun is in the sky so maybe it is the right time to be listening to an album of summery sounding LA guitar pop rock, new wave, songs that evoke memories of X and for some reason a punk-y Fleetwood Mac: which is surely not a bad thing, is it. For music is a stunning thing, a mystery of intense contradictions. One can lose themselves in the heartbreak of an overly aggressive guitar chord played with the ferocity of a diced ferret whilst reading about the face of a phoney cavalier.
Yes music can cause ones mind to go into overdrive as the melody kicks about with your few remaining brain cells. And this album does just that: one minute you are sat in your hometown, a dying slum of a place filled with fond memories and streets now patrolled by ferule youths on bikes way too small for their wiry ill-informed bodies, and the next you are taken away to a smoke-filled room full of heaving bodies all jumping together in unison to a band willing to sell its soul for the elusive hit single. The Walker Brigade is that band; a band that takes the riffs of the Stooges and covers them in a sunny delight and the hopscotch beat of a willing slave to the rhythm. This is a band that makes you want to venture out and taste the live action of rock ‘n’ roll again. A band that will never reinvent the wheel, but the wheel does not need reinventing, and neither does the Walker Brigade for they are fine as they are.
Bithammer ‘Minimum Style, Maximum Effort!’
(That’s Entertainment/Apollon Record)
Lo-fi garage rock when done well is so life affirming. And that describes this wonderful album: life affirming.
Recorded on a smart phone with a cheap drum machine, distorted garage rock guitar riffs explode and swirl like a long-lost treasure chest of forgotten garage psych gems. The version of The Seeds ‘Pushing too Hard’ is one such gem; a song that has been covered many times but has it ever been covered with such vigour, throwing in “you really got me” riffs and Crystal Ship organ tomfoolery.
Minimum Style, Maximum Effort! is an album of lo-fi rock ‘n’ roll abandon, and we all need a bit of that in our lives. An enjoyable blast.
Ralph Of London ‘Yellow Sky Highway’
Ralph Of London’s debut EP is an enjoyable 5 track of pop alternative guitar pop, if you like, with melodies and everything else you would expect to hear on an EP of pop. But it does have some rather attractive 80s sounding keyboards on the second track ‘White Bred Blues’, which are fairly nifty – which is probably an underused descriptive word in music reviews, one that would not probably be used in The Wire or another respected stroked chin of a mag/blog. I’m not saying that the Monolith Cocktail is not for the well educated; for we are jack-of-all-trades and masters of most. But once again I go off track.
Ralph Of London’s EP is a very entertaining one, at times reminding me of both the Charlatans and The Bluetones, but without at all reminding me of either. Maybe it is the inoffensiveness of the music that makes me think that, but pop should not offend it should put its arm around you and befriend, which this lovely EP certainly does.
Cryptic Commands ‘Long Distance Call’
(Numavi Records)
With 90s alt/indie rock sound currently the flavour of the day, with the over hyped Wet Leg, I can see Cryptic Commands doing very well with their catchy take. Are they the new Breeders, the new Beatles I wonder?
Long Distance Call is a 10-track album of well written and performed indie rock; no more or no less at times reminding me of the aforementioned Breeders, even reminding me of Placebo on ‘Devil’ and ‘Elemental’. But I won’t hold that against them, as on the whole this album is an enjoyable listen and ‘Eyes Like Teeth’, apart from being a great title, is a long summery breeze of a track all “Old Friends” guitar chords and bewitchery.
Salem Trials ‘Love Joan Jett’ & ‘Vegaland’
(Former Self-Released, the latter, Metal Postcard Records)
Another week another album from Salam Trials, this time only available on a pay what you want basis from their Bandcamp. And do you know what, this is supreme rock ‘n’ roll. Its as dark and dirty as anything you will hear this year: maybe as both members where suffering from the effects of Covid when it was being recorded.
As ever channelling the spirit of the Fall Gang Of Four and your local down and out after drinking 4 litres of white lightning cider straight from the plastic bottle, they have the knack of knocking out off-kilter melodies that only true rock ‘n’ roll lovers can, and weaving them into an accident in progress. There are so many moments of pure magic and madness on this album, ‘Skin In The Game’ being a favourite, coming across like Southern Death Cult with stomach-aches. As I have said an album of magic and madness from one of the five most important bands in the underground at the moment, leaving all the other bands with not having a Wet Leg to stand on. Pure guitar genius.
The second album in a week from the Salem Trials, this one not self-released but on the best record label of last year, Metal Postcard Records: and the way it is going, the best record label of this one as well. The second album in a week: just how much madness can this man take in a week! Well, actually, I can take as much as the wonderful Salem Trials can offer. I could live in the crazy musical world of Russ and Andy. They never disappoint.
It’s a world where Captain Beefheart is the minister of culture, and breakfast adverts show Mark e Smith eating Tom Waits for breakfast. Yes, this is the crazy world of the Salem Trials; this is where Keith Richard joins the Fall for a jam and the streets of New York circa 1979 are rained on by the poetry of a psychedelicized Bob Dylan after watching reruns of the Banana Splits.
Yes, this is the strange angular sounding world of the Salem Trials; a world in years to come BBC4 will have a documentary about, on which John Robb will appear claiming to have discovered them inside his towel whilst washing his hair in Blackpool.
Adam Walton ‘Afal’
(The Immediate)
I recently reviewed Adams Cloudburst EP and said any fans of Elliot Smith or Paul McCartney circa acoustic White Album days should give it a listen. Well, after hearing the album that still stands.
A full album of beautifully melancholy acoustic musings is a fine way to spend 40 minutes or so. This is a gentle refined album, an aural equivalent of picking flowers on a summer’s day and slowly watching them slowly die. As this album has an underlying layer of sad melancholy and an underlying layer of anti swagger. Afal is one of those albums that captures the magic of those great forgotten about psych folk albums from the late 60s early 70s that ooze peace and love. An album that captures images of faded lost innocence a snapshot of the beauty in sadness.
Sophie Sleigh-Johnson ‘Nuncio Ref!’
(Crow Verses Crow) 6th May 2022
The sound of being a naughty child in the 70s, sent to bed in the early evening after receiving a spanking from your angry dad for shooting piss from your water pistol at passing neighbours and strangers. And as you lie there with moist eyes and a throbbing backside you lose yourself in the collective sound of life in a terrace street in Northern England.
The sound of your neighbours chatting over the back yard walls. The passing cars with the sounds of summer blaring from the radio. Your dad sipping tea whilst channel hopping on TV: of the three available channels. Your mum baking with the radio on, half listening to the Radio 4 play, half listening to your younger sister chat about her day at school, all the time whilst telling your dad he is not a bad lad just a little misguided. The football beats out a rhythm on the wall out front, and how you wish you where adding to that beat instead of listening to the soundtrack of your pre teen years acted out in living black and white. The crackle of radio Luxembourg turned low under the covers. The discovery of life, love and family. The etched heartache and the memories this beautiful work of art emits, and what you would give to return to those days for just an hour. Memories of a real kitchen sink drama unfolding on a D90 tape.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and his cult dysfunctional family band The Bordellos currently have a ramshackle bets of compilation out on Metal Postcard Records: I Hate Pink Floyd Without Syd Barrett.
The Monthly Playlist: April 2022: SAULT, Nduduzon Makhathini, Lyrics Born, Ed Scissor…
April 28, 2022
PLAYLIST SPECIAL
The sounds that have piqued the team’s interest, filled their hearts, fucked with their heads, or just sent sauntering towards escapism, the Monthly playlist gathers together all the music we’ve featured over the last month. We’ve also picked some of those tracks that managed to evade us and some we just didn’t get the time or room to exalt.
Our eclectic as usual mix starts in Tel Aviv with the Şatellites and moves across continents to take in Rwanda’s The Good Ones, Sao Tomé and Principe’s vintage África Negra, the Georgian choir Iberi, and one of Scandinavia’s principle jazz ensembles, OK:KO.
There’s plenty of more, with a freshly produced diaphanous, slow knocking beat gauzy treatment of the burgeoning pop enchantress and dystopian muse Circe’s ‘Mess With Your Head’ – now transformed into ‘It’s All Over’ under the Secret World Orchestra guise -, and a rafter of choice hip-hop cuts from Billy Woods, Dabbla, Lyrics Born and Lunar C with Jehst. Pop, jazz, electronic, dreamwave, psychedelic and post-punk are all represented. And there’s even a track from our very own Brian Shea and his cult dysfunctional family band The Bordellos.
The Monolith Cocktail team, corralled into action by me, Dominic Valvona, currently includes Matt Oliver, Brain ‘Bordello’ Shea, Graham Domain and Mikey MacDonald.
Those Tracks In Full Are:{
Şatellites ‘Zuhtu (Live)’
Melody’s Echo Chamber ‘Personal Message’
IKE (Ft. Sera Kalo) ‘What Then’
Dana Gavanski ‘Indigo Highway’ Crystal Eyes ‘Wishes’
Pete Rock ‘Brother On The Run’
Steve Monite ‘Only You’
África Negra ‘Vence Vitoria’
Samora Pinderhughes ‘Holding Cell’
Izzi Sleep & Rat Motel ‘Good Going Down’
Mercvrial ‘Look Inside’
The Bordellos ‘I Hate Pink Floyd Without Syd Barrett’
Peace De Résistance ‘Boston Dynamics’
The Legless Crabs ‘Boo Hoo Hoo’
Otoboke Beaver ‘YAKITORI’
Papercuts ‘Palm Sunday’
Kloot Per W ‘Le Pays’
Nicole Faux Naiv ‘Moon Really’
Liz Davinci ‘Daisy’
Julia Holter, Harper Simon & Meditations On Crime ‘Heloise’
Amine Mesnaoui & Labelle ‘Bleu Noir’ Billy Woods ‘Wharves’
Professor Elemental ‘Inn At The End Of Time (Remix)’
Dabbla ‘Alec Baldwin’
Nelson Dialect & Mr. Slipz ‘Association’
SAULT ‘June 55’
Nduduzo Makhathini ‘Amathongo’
Rob Cave & Small Professor ‘Respect Wildlife’
Lyrics Born (Ft. Rakaa Iriscience, Shing02, Bohan Phoenix, Cutso) ‘Anti (Remix)’
Kino & Sadistik ‘The Earth Was Empty’
Aethiopes (Ft. El-P, Breeze Brewin) ‘Heavy Winter’
Laddio Bolocko ‘Nurser’
Novelistme ‘Never’
Astrel K ‘Maybe It All Comes At Once’
David J ‘(I Don’t Want To Destroy) Our Beautiful Thing’
Jörg Thomasius ‘Okoschadel’
Ed Scissor ‘Dad’
Violet Nox ‘Eris’
Moscoman ‘Dalmar Is Back And It’s Final’
Grandamme, Claudia Kane & Bastien Keb ‘Nirvana’
FloFilz (Ft. Dal) ‘Levada’
Chairman Maf ‘Gammon Island’
Moon Mullins ‘Welcome To Tilden’
IBERI ‘Arkhalalo’
Papé Nziengui ‘Gho Boka Nzambé’
The Good Ones ‘Happiness Is When We Are Together’
OK:KO ‘Vanhatie’
Ubunye ‘Our Time’
Shrimpnose & BLOOD $MOKE BODY ‘Beyond The Villian’
Justo The MC & Remulak ‘Knockturnal’
Lunar C (Ft. Jehst) ‘Any Given Wednesday’
Qrauer ‘The Mess’ Circe/Secret World Orchestra ‘It’s All Over’
Brianwaltzera ‘tracing Rays [reality glo]’
Kota Motomura (Ft. Akichi) ‘Flower’
REVIEWS ROUNDUP: Graham Domain
Roger Eno ‘The Turning Year’
(Deustsche Grammophon) 22nd April 2022
Walking down rain sodden streets, the lights from car headlights and shop windows reflected in the wet pavements and puddle-strewn roads. Shops closing early, café’s empty and being cleaned. A sepia world of sadness over-shot with colour, hope, a need, a craving for love and an end to this all-pervading sense of loneliness.
The Turning Year inhabits this world of rain, loneliness, hope, longing, forever searching. Always the sense of arriving too late, shops closing, opportunities missed, soaked to the skin but still looking to the stars – forever chasing the elusive shadow that is love. Glimpsed for a fleeting heartbeat. A dream, of hope. To love is to live. Love is the beginning, the awakening. Happiness and heartache, sadness and ecstasy, purpose and despair, confusion and belief, danger and grace.
The Turning Year is music of beauty, simplicity, sadness with underlying hope. At its best it is melodic or mysterious piano underscored by beautiful string orchestration. It engages the mind, the body, the emotions. It is music to treasure.
Highlights: ‘The Turning Year’, ‘A Place We Once Walked’, ‘On the Horizon’, ‘Low Cloud Dark Skies’.
Dana Gavanski ‘When It Comes’
(Flemish Eye/North America, Full Time Hobby/UK) 29th April 2022
When it Comes is the wonderful second album by Canadian/Serbian singer songwriter Dana Gavanski. It is an album of strange melodic songs that don’t quite make sense in a literal way but imprint themselves on the mind of the listener, stirring emotions, attaching themselves to the psyche and staying there like half-remembered memories of past lives.
The songs exist in dream dimensions where images are thrown up in random succession, touching emotions at an elemental level, like ancestral knowledge or the wonders of the natural world – the untamed ocean, stunning mountain sunsets, summer meadow’s humming with bees and wild flying insects.
The album begins with ‘I Kiss The Night’ a strange intriguing song that engenders feelings of isolation, loneliness: abandonment even. The protagonist just about holding things together, dissecting and controlling her emotions – “I built a fortress in my mind– take apart the thoughts – leave the furthest far behind.” But is her dream lover all in her mind as she imagines “milk white words of love falling on (her) sleepy head” and pictures “the faces that were never there” leading to the sad refrain of “I needed you to help me – but every night… it’s just the moon that I see”.
In ‘Bend Away And Fall’ the singer focuses in on her feelings as they change “bend away and fall” and considers that the love she is now experiencing is “slower, scented, experience altering!” The words are impressionistic, non-specific and primordial, painting emotive colour over metal black memory.
Dana Gavanski possesses a voice that is light, tender but somehow emotionally detached with a tone and phrasing similar to Cate Le Bon. But, while Cate Le Bon writes intelligent absurdist lyrics that cut to the chase, Dana Gavanski’s lyrics are more abstract and non-linear, reflecting feelings that cannot easily be expressed in words.
Perhaps the most commercial song is ‘Letting Go’ a simple song about reaching a point where a person is able to let go of emotions from past relationships and move on: “I thought I saw my solitude end it’s hour of grieving.” The singer unconsciously seeking love again, “it happens every time I find a hole, just to fill it.” She is finally ready emotionally to re-take the plunge, her confidence re-charged she is feeling good once more: ‘The Sun’s so hot, I heat up again”…
‘The Day Unfolds‘… begins with a crawling crab of a rhythm walking sideways and sounding not unlike Wire circa Chairs Missing. Again, the words are abstract and open to interpretation with “snow falling bright, shapes in plight”, but may be about losing your own sense of self in a bad relationship…”Control, a bending knife you will shine… I’m losing my way, down the avenue… I found my soul undone… I know fallen one your time will come.”
Meantime, the song ‘Lisa’ reminds me of Weyes Blood but plays like a Scott Walker suburban drama of loneliness, longing, desperation, and unrequited love. The protagonist pleading “Please Sir have you noticed me… I watch you roam the streets a frown sketched on your face, chasing after days that melt behind… crowds form early on, dogs and families and city siren songs, I wait until they’re gone to show my face… Something like this I have never felt… a belly full of tremors… and what I can offer you?”
The album ends with the hymnal ‘Knowing to Trust’, which comes across like Beach House covering Mazzy Star. Again the abstract lyrics breath life and strangeness into the song… “Face on, am I howling too loud, does my worry crowd your view?”
Although I have tried to interpret some of the songs on the album, it is often not the words she sings but the feelings the songs stir. The songs and the album are the musical equivalent of Penda’s Fen, you can’t elicit why it’s great but it leaves an emotive lasting impression.
Dana Gavanski has created a wonderful album, mysterious, beguiling, intriguing, full of wonders to be uncovered with each listen. The music that underpins the songs is sparse, minimal but warm, played on strummed guitar, piano, electric keyboards, synth, organ and drum-machine. Vocally Dana Gavanski falls somewhere in-between Cate Le Bon and Weyes Blood. Creatively, she perhaps falls closer to Nico or Aldous Harding with her oblique, abstract words conjuring up scenarios of emotion by the juxtaposition of images and lyrical ambience.
Key Tracks: ‘I Kiss The Night’, ‘Letting Go’, ‘The Day Unfolds’, ‘Knowing to Trust’.
Ignacio Simon ‘Old Friends’
Old Friends is the beautiful new album by Ignacio Simon (a composer, musician and artist, Spanish but based in England). Seven years in the making, it is the attention to detail and beautiful understatement, that makes this such a compelling listen. The space as important as the notes played.
The album begins with the whispered sigh of a song that is ‘Don’t be Long’. As the song progresses, minimal guitar gives way to silence, cello and a choir of mermaids singing on a distant shore. Sounding like it was arranged by Scott Walker circa Tilt, it is a thing of beauty, hope mixed with sadness.
The following mood piece ‘Victor’ begins with dissonance and single piano chords with ten seconds of silence, repeated, before cello, double bass and more dissonance make their own small marks on the canvas. Just when you think it has ended, mumbles of words come in creating an ambience of regret and longing from a jumble of memory and half remembered dream. More an expression of feeling than a song, the words are oblique and the message non-linear, understood more on a primordial, emotional, unconscious level.
‘Being Here’ follows like a disturbing nightmare with its discordant clangs, ghostly murmurs and sighs, suggesting suspense, dread, a stalking evil, dark rooms of terror, confinement and lunacy!
By way of contrast ‘Old Friends’ sighs in with soft brushed drums, double bass, understated guitar and ripples of orchestra, sounding majestic, like David Sylvian at his most heart breaking. The vocals, like “gentle drones inside our heads”, have echoes of Mark Hollis, Bill Callahan and Rufus Wainwright. This is perhaps the standout track on the album with its minimal soft jazz beauty and uplifting sadness.
The night terror interlude of ‘Being There’ begins with a crescendo stab of orchestral menace and a choir of distant full moon madness – like howling lost souls heard from far, far, away. Soon gone, it is replaced by the serene magic of…
‘The Magician’, a mystic hymn to nature and the continual cycle of life – birth, death, decline and renewal. Minor key piano chords underpin feelings of detachment and isolation as the words seep out … “We won’t touch, we won’t exchange a word…” Echoes of the Pop Group’s ‘The Savage Sea’ can be heard in the abstraction and widescreen sonic wastelands as he sings, “When will the sun come up?” The song fading into raptures of delirium, drowning in a sea of sirens… lost beneath the waves, but overtaken by calm… soon to be “long, long, gone.”
You won’t find a more beautiful record this year, full of uplifting sadness and hope. It is already my album of the year 2022! You can download it or buy the CD version on Bandcamp. Have a listen to this great record, particularly if you like Mark Hollis, Talk Talk, David Sylvian, Scott Walker, and Graham Domain. This wonderful record is deserving of a much wider audience.
Bambara ‘Love On My Mind’
Bambara hail from Athens, Georgia, but have all the street punk attitude of the dark side of New York, where they now reside. Like one of the street gangs from the film The Warriors they possess a cool menace and visceral charm.
Musically they are a strange mixture of The Birthday Party, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Lou Reed, New Model Army, Swans, The Telescopes and The Modern Lovers. Big guitars, driving bass, machine-like drumming give them an 80’s Goth vibe but with a low-life reality and fighting spirit.
Reid Bateh sounds like a young Nick Cave, full of energy and bite but with a drawling vocal more akin to Lou Reed on speed, cranked really high!
The new six song EP has energy in abundance, great literate songs full of imagery and fire, the shadow of death close by. A band set to burn bright live fast and die in a blaze of glory! See them on tour this spring before they’re gone!
Our Daily Bread 513: Lyrics Born ‘Mobile Homies Season 1’
April 24, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW/Matt Oliver
Lyrics Born ‘Mobile Homies Season 1’
(Mobile Home Recordings)
Despite the title sounding something like a caravanning show found on Channel 5, Mobile Homies from Bay Area veteran Lyrics Born makes the most of lockdown restrictions as a collaborative collection fleshing out LB’s purpose-made podcast of the same name. Much more than just a make-do stopgap, it salutes the long established Lyrics Born mantra of performance being all about entertainment and extravaganza. No variant will hold him back, manoeuvring the live show experience as a soul/R&B spectacular where you can imagine a stage filled with backing singers and musicians, spotlights and catwalks, and the promise of good, clean fun or your money back; all the while looking more and more the sharp suited fly guy to rank him alongside the likes of Bruno Mars, Andre3000 and Anderson .Paak.
Born has long held one of the most serious flows in the game, cultivating singsong flamboyance (“my shows are like a party for a bachelorette”) as a people’s champ with unquestionable underground-educated skills and a voice once sold as “like sandpaper dipped in maple syrup”. Here, his lowness (for want of a better description) into the mic is less a Chali 2na-style baritone (the stiffer delivery on ‘Misfits’ aside), but a rat-a-tat amplified whisper, an almost monotone, always chill, malleable flow from the deepest vocal chord that allows him to be cyborg-like, possessed by playing games with syllables. Contrarily, it also enables the persona of a dead-eyed charmer sans ego or sleaze, his silver-tongued devilry akin to the Fonz clicking his fingers.
Amongst the lovey-dovey expressions where heartthrob-served butter wouldn’t melt – back and forthing with himself on the Netflix & Chill-ready ‘Everyday Love’ with Prince Paul providing perky foreplay on production; cutting in on the super polished, Con Brio-lead performances of ‘Sundown’ and ‘Mistakes’ causing ‘Hey Ya’! levels of hysteria, possibly involving underwear removal – is the seething racism exposé of ‘Anti’. A tensely humid, low rider ball of high pressure agitation, brought to the fore from behind the pandemic smokescreen and pierced by Cutso’s wheezing siren infuriating like a fly out of swatting reach, it packs a chorus that intelligently dares you to holler back from the front row. Crucially in the face of such provocation, LB’s flow, taking his cue from Dr Dre’s ‘The Watcher’, is masterful in never losing its cool, its points further rammed home by Shing02, Bohan Phoenix and Dilated Peoples’ Rakaa on the remix.
In terms of routine it’s almost like LB asking for the house lights to be turned on and the band to hold fire, with the final track remix providing the encore so you definitely won’t forget the message; the savagery of this uncensored PSA under a blood red spotlight a showstopper without stopping the show dead. While not quite a case of the show must go on, ‘This Song’s Delicious’ with Sitcom Dad and Dan the Automator arrives from the Paul Barman school of jaunty verbosity doing chucklesome show-n-prove, developed from Netflix band Hello Peril from the film Always Be My Maybe. ‘Desperada’ takes the feeling of sand between your toes into the club, and ‘My City’, displaying wistful hometown pride with enough matriarchal room for interpretation, poignantly features his late Soulsides comrade and Blackalicious lifer Gift of Gab.
Enter another pertinent state-of-the-world address, this one packed with Instagram filters fiending for those thumbs ups. Over a nifty first generation grime production that Ghetts, Kano or Taz would have rinsed, ‘Enough About Me’ gets trending to the tune of crowds showing pixellated appreciation while literally keeping the action at arm’s length. Guests The Grouch and Eligh attempt to differentiate between projected and actual reality; LB does the opposite, going into overdrive like a big bucks hype machine (“I don’t want privacy, I want all y’all to see/selfie-selfie-selfie, I’m my own paparazzi”)and knowing the only way to avoid fading into obscurity is to dive in twice as hard.
While the zoom call intermissions with his collaborators quickly become skippable, the sound is so rich and accomplished (as standard), with impressive divergence, that even if the album wasn’t completely conceived over Microsoft Teams, it’s a great demonstration of how Lyrics Born can play second fiddle before stealing the show, and solidifying his claim as a great entertainer still remaining underrated.
Premiere: (Track) Luke Mawdsley ‘Higher Plains Suffering’
April 21, 2022
Track Premiere/Album Preview: Dominic Valvona
Luke Mawdsley ‘Higher Plains Suffering’
Taken from the upcoming album Luke Two, released on the 29th April by Spine Records
Emerging from a turbulent period of cathartic anxiety, reflection, the Merseyside artist Luke Mawdsley sets his voice free from the “verbasier” programmed-like demons-in-the-head vocal effects of his previous solo album, Vulgar Displays Of Affection, to wander an esoteric and seedy, bloody lyrical vision of the high plains.
Whilst Luke mark one was a masked, warped version; a seething, predatory slurring spoken word mise en scene caught in a miasma of pain, Luke Two lifts the veil a little on a most lurid, sleazy and tortured form of abyss circling sonnets.
It’s a strange, idiosyncratic counterbalance of alien Morricone vibrato and ethereal cooed Western scores and heart of darkness, post-punk guitar wielding and supernatural palpitations that envelops, sustains, Luke’s ‘carnal journeys and poetic excesses’.
Edging into ‘Rosa Mundi’ John Balance and Rosa McDowell territory, Luke’s both shadowed and encircled by the apparition and siren lulls, harmonies of the diaphanous Rachel Nicholas and Gabriella Rose King. Rachel makes an appearance on today’s premiere, Higher Plains Suffering; a surprisingly melodious transmogrification of Alan Vega, Charlie Megira, and Crime And The City Solution (both the Berlin skulk and Western reinvention periods), and the lurid dark comedic descriptive wonderings of Alan Moore, Pompey Jonathan Meades and Scott Walker: “You could do worse then to wear my brains home, in your bonnet”.
In an alternate dimension, Blood Meridian meets the spacey-reverb indulgences of, as the label Spine Records press notes put it, ‘a shattered libidinal economy’. Rachel’s vapoured tones against Luke’s on this drifter’s meander across mirage terrain sound almost Cohen-like.
Taken from an incredibly lucid, often far more melodic and beautiful then you’d assume, album of incipient stirrings, one person’s purgatory is another’s unconstrained creative paradise. Hallucinatory echoes of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s dream-realism symbolic El Topo share room with otherworldly portals and the all-too real depressive, bleak traps of a run-down, unloved English seaside town. Projecting across a both plaintive and eerie Western panorama, the signature twang and expansive evocations of Morricone, as channeled by the Bad Seeds, Simon Bonney and Hellenica, seem to offer some tenderness to the butcher’s bone and gristle, the blood-in-piss confessionals; the menace and heavier toll of Brian Reitzell and Jóhann Jóhannson’s scores.
The “house of aggressive tailors” scene set ‘Pomegranate Seeds In A Matchbox’ has the cylindrical, grinding machine presence of Liars, or better still, Aaron Hemphill’s Nonpareil, yet also a hint of David Slyvain. Despite what may have come to pass, the search for identity in a hostile, divisive climate, where everyone lives life through the prism of a screen, Luke surpasses the brilliance, morbid curiosity of Vulgar Displays Of Affection with something that approaches a true self: well, at the very least with one layer of morose and demon effects removed.
There’s, as I’ve already mentioned, an esoteric atmosphere. But not in the sense of the gothic, nor true horror: even if the album includes quite suggestive titles, ‘A Butchers Tide’ and ‘Trauma Control’. Because ringing out like a cry, or astral plain observational deck expression from Manuel Göttsching’s guitar are scenic levitations and pleasant twists. The instrumental ‘Citrus Mirror’ brings a sort of levity, a beauty like the desert rose. Shovels dragged across concrete, crushed confidence and useless augurs may say otherwise I know, but there’s something deeply dreamy about this whole album.
Seething tensions and dissonance are pulled into entirely unique realms of realisation, pathos and deranged sexual provocations. Luke Two could just be Mawdsley’s best statement, piece of work yet.
Our Daily Bread 512: Brainwaltzera ‘ITSAME’
April 19, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW/Mikey McDonald
Joining the auspicious Monolith Cocktail pool of contributors this month, Glasgow local Mikey McDonald makes his debut as a music-writer, with a review of the recent Brainwaltzera album, ITSAME.
Mikey’s CV is very unique, eclectic. A resident of Glasgow, Mikey can normally be spotted running the streets of the city as long distance running enthusiast. A former full time poker player, Mikey is searching for new career opportunities, including sports rehabilitation. He’s previously been posting chat, games outcomes, strategy on the poker related rantings of a 6max SNG blog, and his musical tastes, recommendations can be found on Last FM.
Brainwaltzera ‘ITSAME’
Brainwaltzera (one can simply translate to ‘braindance era’) makes a return with his sophomore album titled ITSAME. The album comprises 17 tracks and marks the first full length from this anonymous producer in almost half a decade.
On the opener/self-titled track the man himself samples his own kids saying “ITSAME” and from the get-go it’s obvious this is going to be a very personal affair. ‘morning narcomnastics’ (gymnastics + narcotics?) is a nostalgic trip and a real triumph. This track exhibits scissor snips and bleeps that come in and out of the mix, which could quite easily have been sampled from a household appliance. These sounds in isolation may not be pleasant to listen to but fuse them together and you have a rather delicious sounding melody.
‘Reptikon 7’ hits hard and would fucking slap in a 90s underground rave. On this track the artist plays an e-cigarette as a bass – talk about next level ingenuity. The track breaks down around the midsection and really allows the static of that e-cig to flourish. Ask yourself how many musicians out there are playing an e-cigarette as a bass. I thought so… The latter half presents muffled vocal cries à la Future Sound Of London, and drive the track forward to an exquisite finish.
Meanwhile, ‘a star is bored’ could have been called ‘a star is born’ and is laced with unintelligible yet breathtaking samples and lush synths. Placing this track straight after the bold and menacing ‘Reptikon 7’ feels intentional and creates contrast in a big way.
Moments of respite are offered in the form of acoustic driven ‘PROVE UR NOT A ROBOT [SKIP]’ and ‘PROVE UR NOT A ROWBOAT [SKIPPER]’ and unfortunately (or fortunately) I didn’t skip either of these tracks failing to prove I’m neither a robot nor a rowboat. No regrets. ‘evening narcomnastics’ lives up to the expectations set by its sister track and features stunning electric guitars that are akin to whale calls.
Elsewhere, ‘F1 Halo’ is a moment the Sandison brothers would be proud of and offers some time to reflect before the album comes through with a big finish. ‘consent’ rather unsurprisingly contains samples of a male & female agreeing with each other and is another delight which provides plenty of warmth and feel-good before things turn frantic.
The foreboding ‘ad interim’ kicks off sounding like the end of the world and is peppered with video game like sound effects before we’re hit by a swarm of bugs in what sounds like a full scale attack, dare I even say alien invasion. Only the brave soldier on. Ominous atmospheres continue on the equally formidable ‘medal headz [G.B.D.F]’ which is likely a reference to the drum and bass music label ‘Metalheadz’ established in the mid 1990s, and this track also includes the ‘ITSAME’ samples from the opener but here they’re more distorted, more haunting.
Penultimate track ‘brothers [drop mic]’ is a playful number and could be a nod to Scottish legends and pioneers Boards of Canada. In this track the sampling and manipulation of children’s voices evokes feelings of nostalgia and takes the listener on a trip down memory lane. At this point of the album you could be forgiven for standing up and applauding but we’re not done yet. Closer ‘No fair’ confronts loss and delivers a gut-wrenching bassline and eerie samples of a French woman speaking. It fucks me up every time I hear it yet still I go back for more. In summary, the album is packed with nuances and little intricacies – so much so your ears are likely to detect something new with each listen as cliché as that may be to say. There’s so much detail you can practically hear the artist think through each track as the album unfolds. Now, one thing up for debate is the various ways in which to pronounce this ambiguous album title – ‘EATS-AH-MEH’, ‘IT SAME’ or ‘ITS-A-ME’ like ‘ITS-A-ME, MARIO!’ – perhaps down to the listener’s own interpretation. One thing not up for debate…ITSAMASTERPIECE
Review written by Mikey McDonald
Monolith Cocktail Blog 