Our Daily Bread 447: BLK JKS ‘Abantu/Before Humans’
May 17, 2021
ALBUM FEATURE/REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
BLK JKS ‘Abantu/Before Humans’
(Glitterbeat Records) 21st May 2021
From the South African underground to meteoric international success, championed by an American hipster parade of luminaries (from Diplo through to TV On The Radio, The Mars Volta), the innovative soundclash that is BLK JKS have found that leap, and that keeping up the profile, takes its toll. They worked hard on the circuit for years in Johannesburg before hot-footing across the Atlantic to become some sort of exotic darlings of the hype industry: jamming with The Roots, photo opportunities with Pharrell, hanging with the late Lou Reed at SXSW.
Signing to another of those virtuous bastions of the hip market, Secretly Canadian in 2009, the quartet released a career defining and highly influential debut album: After Robots. A “channel-hopping” frenzied Internet collage of post-apocalyptic Afro-funk, rock, jazz, kwaito, folk, renegade dub and pysch this fired up statement attracted even more admirers to the fold, including (rather surprisingly) Dave Grohl, who not only rated it his favourite album of that year but would invite them to open for his Foo Fighters, five years later. By that time however the group had grown jaded and tired by the touring and other travails, and had returned back home to South Africa. Some members split to pursue other projects, whilst a core stayed and went back to performing on the underground scene of local festivals and nightclubs.
Fast-forward to 2018 and the group recorded a tribute to one of their fellow compatriots and mentors, the now sadly missed late genius, Hugh Masekela (‘revisioning’ his ‘The Boys Doin’ It’) and jammed with the Malian guitar legend (no stranger to this blog) Vieux Farka Touré and hip-hop innovator and Beastie Boys foil Money Mark – the results of which appear on this new album. This would be a year of reactivity, a restart of a kind, as the ruminants of the troupe invited in the young trumpet virtuoso Tebogo Seitei to complete a new incarnation of the quartet; fit once more to enter the studio and record that long overdue album.
Setting up in what was the orchestra pit in the Soweto Theatre, BLK JKS began a fatalistic recording session: fatalistic because their studio was burgled, ransacked, with the hard drives that the group had saved those recordings on stolen in the bargain. Despondent to say the least, they nevertheless decided to just go for it and record a 2.0 version in just three days; the results of which have finally now seen the light of day in 2021.
The travails and hard graft have produced something more earthy, mature and actually purposeful despite the drifts and amorphous cross-pollination of influences, ideas. Framed as a ‘prequel’ in fact to After Robots, Abantu/Before Humans time-travels between the atavistic, primal and the future. It’s a sonic and hauntingly soulful set world of ancestral trauma and deliverance; a mystical soundtrack to archeological dug-up pasts, proud civilizations and an African continent thousands of years before European colonization.
There’s a statement on the record cover that goes some way towards articulating this backdrop and source of inspiration: “A complete fully translated and transcribed Obsidian Rock Audio Anthology chronicling the ancient spiritual technologies and exploits of prehistoric, post-revolutionary afro bionics and sacred texts from The Great Book On Arcanum by Supernal 5th Dimension Bound 3rd Dynasty young Kushites from Azania.” From that we can make out references to secrets, mysteries and the Tarot (that’s the “Arcanum” bit), allusions to the sky, the heavens (“Supernal”), and mention of the ancient kingdom of Nubia that gained independence from Egypt under King Kashta in around 1050 B.C. (hence the “Kushites”). There’s also a reference to original name bequeathed upon the southern tip of Africa and beyond by such scholars as Pliny, “Azania”: championed in the 20th century by such groups as the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, and even touted as a possible name for independent South Sudan in the 21st century.
In the footprints of the forbearers, but even further back to “before humans”, there’s a dirt music feel of desert mirage blues, wafted jazzy trumpet serenades and punctuated plaints, and a sort of Adam Ant toms patter tribal beat of messenger drums all broadcasting across the plains, sand dunes and grasslands. This is an album that first begins with a sort of rustic hymnal blues harmony and tapping hand drums – which as the communion progresses slap quickly until blurring into a digital code -, yet soon limbers into a loose sunshine cohesion of Masekela trumpeted warmth, reggae and post-punk: imagine PiL, The Slits and Sly & Robbie sharing the air fare to South Africa.
It’s a spindled Middle Eastern and North African vibes, with hints of a Tinariwen and Afro-soul, on the almost romantic but slightly warning ‘Q(w)ira – Machine Learning Vol. 1’. Songs like this push towards the haunted description, which continues on the Kele Okereke fronts an Afrofuturist Specials ached and longing, elephant heralding trumpeted ‘Human Hearts’. Oddly, they turn an acoustic twangy B52s riff into a modern electro dancehall hymn on the deeply voiced narrated ‘Harare’.
They go on to spit a lot of “fuck you(s)” on the album’s most volatile, actionist grumble: ‘Yoyo! – The Mandela Effect/Black Aurora Cusps Druids Ascending’; also the album’s most obvious call-to-arms, but equally disdainful disappointment at a less than revolutionary zeal to take power and make the change.
On an almost seamless ride, with tracks more or less blending into each other, carrying over certain threads and rhythms from the previous track, Abantu warps and channels localised music dances, ska, Afro-jazz, and on the final strung-together codex like drift and sound collage, ‘Mmmao Wa Tseba-Nare/Indaba My Children’, hints of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pixies emerging from the ether. This track actually fades out; leaving a silent gap of anticipation before the Foley sounds of a pier and seaside scene are funnelled into a vortex finale: a return to something more human, communal. After such a hiatus – though let’s not be too harsh, the pandemic that ripped through South Africa accounts for at least 18 months of that time – it’s heartening to once more hear the BLK JKS’s distinct underground intuition of blending so many diverse sounds, ideas. Somehow idiosyncratically South African, but above all unique, this is a sound that time-travels between the mystical, haunted and spiritual; an eclectic fanfare of psychogeography, prayer and protestation, from a wizened band that limbers to a soundtrack of soulful punk, rock-reggae, South African musical styles and beyond. It’s Bad Brains meets Sun Ra and Funkadelic on a millennia historiography tour, from the soil upwards, of Africa.
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 446: Rezo ‘Travalog’
May 14, 2021
ALBUM REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
Rezo ‘Travalog’
17th May 2021
Few albums to emerge from these unprecedented pandemic-eclipsed times have yet managed to quite articulate the draining emotional fatigue of lockdown, yet also dares to hope for a bright release of humility in the slow emergence from it as the Irish duo of Colm O’Connell and Rory McDaid. For The Mitcheners band mates have accomplished something very special indeed on their debut album of gently unfurled travails and blissful sentiment; composing a warm, welcoming songbook unafraid of a beautiful melody, even when translating the restrictive and debilitating symptoms (and metaphors) of Covid-19.
Travalog is an album that travels well and far despite being created in isolation, a thousand or more miles apart, swings between American troubadour and country influences, the new wave (both British and German), folk, indie and what can only be described as Spanish acoustic guitar led electronica Ibiza: A mix in fact of both real instruments and the computerized, delivered with an analogue feel.
This seamless transition and balance between the softened, eloquent and hushed sung Sparklehorse and CSN&Y lit ‘Rezo’ and the Der Plan meets Moroder in Magaluf sunnier dispositional ‘Route 1’ is in part down to the musical partners lockdown separation; with O’Connell working from his home studio in Dublin and McDaid from his studio in Malaga – not to be disingenuous to Ireland and its temperate damp climate, but McDaid may have had the luck of the draw in that department.
Like musical chameleons on this virtual travelogue, they adopt a meander of Damon Albarn, Baxter Dury, Blue House and a sedated Warren Zevon when pining for a more “ordinary” life after the pandemic on the semi-wistful ‘Life During Lockdown’; Paul McCartney, XTC and Mark Hollis on the breathless themed ‘Loner’; and a nice hazy acid wash of New Order, Jason Pierce and Stereolab on the touching, and utterly gorgeous lulled tribute to Margate’s greatest but most abused export, Tracy Emin (‘Girl From Margate’): a seaside town backdrop yearn prompted by Alan Yentob’s candid TV interview come documentary on the YBA star’s infamous career; a projection that took her from Kent to global success. It’s possibly the album’s most heartbreaking ditty too; prescient in light of Emin’s near terminal cancer diagnosis in 2020, the chances of survival so slim that doctors didn’t believe she’d make it past Christmas. Fortunately now in remission, Emin has not only defied that diagnosis but will also make it to her new show at the Royal Academy this summer.
An album of poignancy (never laid on thickly mind) there’s even a lullaby-like, softly pitter-patter rhythmic song about O’Connell’s daughter Rosa to bring us all full circle, back to family and that joy of parenthood: a safe haven focus in the midst of a despairing, raging plague.
Travalog is almost like two albums in one; with a penchant for Joe Jackson bassline new wave, soft rock and transformed country sophistication on one hand, and something akin to the Beloved and soulful electro indie on the other. It works well, and suddenly changes the mood and direction when it makes that change, more or less, halfway through the album. A highly mature production with a certain analogue warmth, and yes a certain air of pleasant nostalgia, the duo’s debut musical map of life in extreme times is a real achievement; a triumph of great melody, feel, and above all songwriting. It would be a travesty if it didn’t make the best albums of the year: it will certainly be heading towards mine.
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 445: Best Of John Howard
May 12, 2021
ALBUM FEATURE/REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
John Howard ‘Best Of…’
(Kool Kat Musik/I Don’t Hear A Single) 14th May 2021
The musical career of John Howard (five decades and still counting) has hardly been plain sailing; with a majority of the songs he both wrote and recorded during his initial short-lived ascendance in the mid 1970s either shelved or sidelined. In fact, the bon vivant pianist, troubadour, former A&R man and now author’s musical output has arguably been more prolific, yielded better riches, in the last decade than it ever did when the young burgeoning star was on the cusp of success in 1974, after signing to CBS.
Hampered however by a myriad of setbacks and travails (both professionally and personally), the eyes-wide-open Lancashire gay lad in the big smoke found his recording career quickly stifled, even blocked by a thoroughly unsympathetic and often ruthless music industry after the commercial failure of his debut album, Kid In A Big World in 1975. Though gaining some critical acclaim at the time, the album’s singles failed to meet with the approval of the radio camarilla. The debut single from that starry-eyed but resigned to the usury of others thematic album, the grandeur sighed melodrama ‘Goodbye Suzie’, was deemed far too downbeat for the daytime audience needed to make it a hit. And to be fair, the fateful subject of this stage tragedy does end up dead. But what a way to go! Drowned to the soundtrack of a graceful and most lovely of slow building chorus maladies.
That single opens this, the first proper, wide-ranging ‘Best Of…’ compilation of Howard’s songbook to ever be released: ahead it seems of a new album, Single Return; as denoted by the Bacharach shares the piano stool with Brecht vision of the former Aztec Camera instigator Roddy Frame’s starry lower case universal yet personal anthem ‘Small World’. A bookended collection if you like, with the very first rudimental demos from a teenage Howard appearing alongside those from a future release.
Chronicled so far in two autobiographical volumes of memories, this survey’s track list mirrors Howard’s oft toing and froing between actual realized projects: of which there is many. There’s a lot of music on this 2XCD spanning celebration that never saw the light of day when it was recorded during the backend of the Glam epoch; a hell of a lot it subsequently picked up and redistributed across various low key compilation EPs and albums, released a decade or two (even three) later. There are a litany of reasons for this: the already mentioned lack of support, the interference of others, but also by a terrible, almost fatal, accident that threatened to cut his career short. Pursued by mad Russian sailor, a ‘bit of rough’, brought back to his shared accommodation by his colourful Filipino gay flat mates (relocating to London to escape the clutches of dictator Ferdinand Marcos), Howard would end up breaking both his back and his feet escaping this manic, intent on murder, when jumping from a window to escape. Recovery was convoluted, yet Howard did return to the bar stool, recording studio and pen thank god.
Under the Kid In A Big World trilogy umbrella a quick succession of albums were recorded in a two-year window of opportunity. Only the first of which, and the only that gives its name to this flurry of recordings, actually made it to the release stage. The album that announced Howard’s arrival is for obvious reasons well represented on this compilation. Dressed like Annie Hall era Diane Keaton shopping at Biba, Howard’s blossoming as a quality balladeer of semi-foppish stagey drama is both very much of its time. There’s the doleful, softly soothed if fearful and yearned Bernie and Elton melodrama title track, the Steve Harley accented and Bolan “lalala” marimba bobbing ‘Family Man’ (actually released as a single on the said sainted day for lovers), and attempt at Fitzgerald roaring twenties Hollywood glam, ‘Maybe Some Day In Miami’. Despite some of the over-production (mostly against Howard’s wishes) and schmaltz, there’s always something deeper and often autobiographical in many of these songs; an artistry that saves such pop cabaret hits from mediocrity.
During the CBS label years, Howard would record songs for both the Technicolour Biography and Can You Hear Me OK? albums. Both put on the indefinite backburner at the time, but appearing in smatterings at a later date, some of this material now appears here. The former is represented by the sorrowful CSN&Y-esque ‘Oh Dad (Look What You Done)’, the Elton fandango with Mick Ronson plaintive ‘Take Up Your Partners (Finale)’, and the sadly romantic, cerebral character arc mini opus title track (a touch of Robin Gibb and even Freddie Mercury on that one). The latter of those two albums is represented by the Lynsey de Paul disco swinger ‘I Got My Lady’, daytime TV weepy, fluty and theatrical album title track, and Gibb Brothers (them again) lawsuit sound-a-like ‘I Can Breathe Again’.
Going back before even this trilogy, and appearing thirty-odd years later on the cozily nostalgic entitled Front Room Fables EP, there’s a genuine rarity from a seventeen year-old Howard finding his soul and craft. From the sitting room, the grainy acoustic guitar driven home demo of ‘I’ll Feel What I Feel’ shows a strong penchant for the music of Donovan and Roy Harper, rather than the glitz of what was to come. That Harper reference isn’t so surprising, as an older Howard covered the erstwhile counter-culture English troubadour’s ‘Another Day’, which, as it goes is included on this compilation. Unless you know your Howard back catalogue inside-out, the next chunk of this collection’s curated track list gets confusing; taken as they are from other smaller, more concentrated samplers of Howard’s 70s and 80s output released in the 90s and much later still. The Hidden Beauty compilation from 2008 is a case in point: a collated survey of misplaced and rare recordings. There’s a strong showing from that album in particular with Howard channeling a heart aching Lennon on the romantic plaint demo from ’79, ‘Loving You’, and tenderly evoking shades of Love Affair, McCartney and unsurprisingly, considering it was produced by Eddie Pumer, Fairfield Parlour on ‘Smalltown Adventures’. Meanwhile the spindled, warm 60s sounding ‘Three Years’ (one of a few songs never before available until now on CD) finds Howard in Butch Cassidy Bacharach territory, and caught between Gilbert O’Sullivan and Sparks on the superhero caper ‘Comic Strip’.
From Howard’s litany of ill-advised and realized re-launches, there was an awful sci-fi concept that saw him don a pastiche of Midge Ure and Gary Numan mimicry in an attempt to buck the trends of the early 80s. Thankfully there isn’t much from that period, only some good ideas turned into over-ripe, over-produced schmaltz for the disco and pop age. If we leap forward, we arguably find some of Howard’s best work is relatively more recent. Though fed up enough to jack it in (to a point) and turn A&R man during the 80s and 90s, Howard still continued to tickle the ivory and carry on recording: from 1989, there’s the inclusion of Howard’s love letter of support to his husband, ‘Neil (You Can Depend On Me)’; another over-produced 80s glitter of daytime Pebble Mill soft pop rock that could have been a missing hit for Cliff Richard; produced strangely enough by Acker Bilk!
Into another decade completely Cole Porter shares the keyboard with Rufus Wainwright, whilst a melody that strongly suggests CSN&Y’s ‘Our House’ and a ’68 period Kinks, on the 2005 recorded ‘The Dilemma Of The Homosapien’. We actually hear a proper poetic tinseled lyrical homage to Rufus on this compilation; one of a few that also includes Howard’s Broadway sign off sigh to the glam fated Jobriath; putting music and sagacious voice to Robert Cochrane’s lyrics on the 2006 curtain call malady ‘Stardust Falling’.
In a freer age, able to cast off the burdens (mostly) and prejudices that went some way to curtailing his career in the 70s, Howard is almost a rejuvenated character these days. The expectations of fame are now long gone: Howard is pretty much free to record when and however he likes; untethered to fashions and the industry. But with age comes the impossible to avoid rumminations and reflections on the past, of which there is much to wade through on this compilation. Offerings include many dedications to mum and dad, and the growing pained ‘Injuries Sustained In Surviving’, taken from the most recent album, To The Left Of The Moon’s Reflection. Considering the topics and travails of that number, the accompaniment and cadence has an air of a hearty Dylan-esque chiming breeze to it. From the album previous to that one, Cut The Wire, there’s the no less reflective Friends era Beach Boys missing diaphanous ‘lifetime of love’ ballad, ‘Becoming’.
Added to those are an abundance of songs collated from another ten albums and EPs and missives; some show tunes here, an unfinished track saved for posterity there; a borrowed Anthony Reynolds penned dreamy malady next to both of them. Personally though, I’d have liked to have seen something from Howard’s extraordinary long form experimental songbook, Across The Door Sill; if not only because its damn brilliant and full of descriptive, almost filmic, lyrics, but also because it shows an entirely different side to this talented assiduous artist’s storytelling skills and poised musicality. Saying that, it would sound admittedly a little incongruous to the rest of the collection’s soundtrack. I would have also loved to see Howard’s fantastic cover version of ‘The Bewlay Brothers’, which I rate amongst his best performances. It wasn’t to be: maybe on the next compilation.
We do have however a brilliant, refreshing and upbeat live performance of Howard and the band that led to the creatively successful Night Mail album collaboration. Howard and ensemble are captured at the Servant Jazz Quarter playing a Mike Scott meets Ian Hunter-esque bouncy and warm version of ‘Deadly Nightshade’. Again, ever the professional, yet loosened up and enjoying the whole thing, Howard happily sits alongside a younger generation of admirers with nothing to prove, just unadulterated joy.
An exhaustive, far-ranging compilation the first official ‘Best Of…’ will attract diehards and those still unacquainted with Howard’s back and future catalogue alike. It makes for a flourishing, rich songbook of his stage, cabaret, AOR, pop, rock and glam infused timeless craft. This is a celebration as much as declaration of fandom to an artist in their fifth flush of youth; the first real pause in creating, to look back at both what is and what could have been. The auguries are good for that future, with Howard showing no signs of stopping: if someone is willing to hear it, Howard is willing to play it.
A History Of John Howard On The Monolith Cocktail:
To The Left Of The Moon’s Reflection Album
Cut The Wire Album
From The Morning Album
It’s Not All Over Yet Single
Across The Door Sill Album
Incidents Crowded With Life Autobiography
Illusions Of Happiness Autobiography Volume 2
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 Reviews Roundup
A stalwart contributor for years now, the cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. His most releases include the King Of No-Fi album, a collaborative derangement with the Texas miscreant Occult Character, Heart To Heart, and mostly recently the couplet of double-A side singles, ‘Shattered Pop Kiss/Sky Writing’ and ‘Daisy Master Race/Cultural Euthanasia‘. He’s also released, under the Idiot Blur Fanboy moniker, a stripped down classic album of resignation and Gallagher brothers’ polemics.
Each week we send a mountain of new releases to the self-depreciating maverick to see what sticks. In his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases, here Brian’s latest batch of recommendations.
SINGLES/TRACKS.
Dez Dare ‘Conspiracy, O’ Conspiracy’
17th May 2021
I like this. I like the scuzzy electric guitar; it reminds me of Sebadoh running after a bus after having a head on collision with a giant wasp. It has that “yes I am here to entertain and liven up the next two minutes of your life with a blistering piece of alt punk rock, and after that you can fuck off and paint your face with the remnants of your mothers old colostomy bag…see if I care” vibe.
bigflower ‘Wicked’
18th April 2021
‘Wicked’ is in fact a cover of the Chris Isaac classic ‘Wicked Game’, and the mighty bigflower covers the song with a sonic slowed atmospheric wall of audible blistering heat like a lone walk through a desert with only the midday sun and memories of the one you left behind. If I was mr bigflower I would be straight onto my music publisher and see if it can be pushed onto the soundtrack of some future moody Hollywood block buster directed by Wim Wenders: a song to be heard on the big screen. As wonderful as ever.
ALBUMS/EPS..
Holiday Ghosts ‘North Street Air’
(FatCat Records) 21st May 2021
The Holiday Ghosts had me from the off after the first few strums of the acoustic guitar. It’s obvious to me that they to have their creative juices stirred by the influence of the marvelous Ray Davies, the opening track ‘Mr Hereandi’ is pure late 60’s early 70’s Kinks, and even more so on the track ‘Bathing Suit, which slightly borrows the melody of the Kinks classic ‘Victoria’. And as the album plays on you begin to realise that the Holiday Ghosts have mastered this song writing lark and got it down to a fine art; they know that the only way to stand out from all the millions of guitar bands is to be better than the rest, and believe me the Holiday Ghosts are certainly better than most I get to hear.
You can hear and feel the influences they channel, their love of mid 60s to early 70s pop/rock, to produce music that matches those of their influences. ‘Makin a Fool’ will have John Sebastian yearning for the days when the Lovin’ Spoonful ruled the airwaves. And ‘Total Crisis’ is power poptastic, and ‘Told My Baby’ sunshine jangle gem. North Street Air is one of those wonderful albums that has the magic of the life affirming melody. Yes, this is the sound of a band on the top of their game; a truly joyful pop listen.
Salem Trials ‘A Difference Of Living’
(Metal Postcard) 3rd May 2021
Another new album from the excellent Salem Trials is always a thing to be cherished, and A Difference Of Living starts off where the last ended: guitars arguing with themselves, bass evoking sordidty of the top-notch variety, and Russ spinning yarns from the playground inhabited by rock ‘n’ roll deviants.
The Salem Trials are a rare breed of band as they sound like no one else but themselves. Sure you can hear their influences, The Fall, Magazine, Television and a whole host of other punk, pre punk and post punk bands but the two of them have a certain magic together and all the alums sound like albums not a collection of songs lumped together. They weave a bewitching musical spell that manages to draw you in and leaves you in a total state of relaxed nonchalant could not give a fuckery.
Satch Kerans ‘Snake Eyez’
Originally released 2016/reissued in 2021
Thank fuck for this album. I have been sitting here sifting my way through pure musical pap for the last hour or so sent by various PR companies, looking for something that might have some chance of moving me in some way, and then I remembered about this album that was sent to me for consideration over social media by Satch Kerans. And I’m so glad he did. This is an album originally released in 2016 but has been re-tweaked and reissued; Kerans hoping it may get the attention it didn’t the first time around.
It’s an album of well-written songs with melodies, heart, soul and humour recorded at home: blessed with that lovely lo-fi warmth. An album filled with simple drum machine, hand held percussion, twangy Fender guitar and song writing talent. At times it reminds me how a Wilco demo might sound and Satch’s voice does have the similar quality and timbre to that of Jeff Tweedy or especially Dennis Wilson on the Beach Boy’s like ‘Back Where We Started’.
Satch is blessed with a love of rock ‘n’ roll that radiates from this album, as he has soaked up his influences of Dylan, Springsteen, The Byrds, The Clash and an obvious love of 60s /70s pop melody. Hopefully Snake Eyez will get the attention it deserved the first time around.
Suzi Moon ‘Call The Shots’
(Pirates Press Records) 21st May 2021
What we have here is the debut EP from punk chanteuse Suzi Moon; three tracks of commercial punk rock ‘n’ roll pop, part Runaways, part Suzy Quattro songs that kick up a bit of a fuss about various things and then piss off again.
Guitars that go chugga chugga and such like; nothing original, nothing not hasn’t been heard millions times before, but that does not mean it is not enjoyable. I can imagine my daughter at the age of fifteen being quite taken with it and that is the point. I’m a man in his mid 50s and heard it all before, but there are plenty of kids out there who have not heard it before, and there are worse people to hear it for the first time from than Suzi Moon – especially on the opening track ‘I’m Not A Man’, which has a rather fetching nagging bass riff. A rather splendid three track commercial pop punk EP.
Draaier ‘The Town That Was Murdered’
(Submarine Broadcasting Co.) 12th April 2021
The subconscious merge into the timeless flight of toothless fancy, the long-forgotten call to arms by distorted cold grey makeshift steel bottomed tap shoed vagabonds, The Town That Was Murdered by Draaier is a wonderful sound collage of the to be awakened streets of a dying Northern industrial town, where once factories pumped smoke into the sky the factory now lies dormant and the skies are blue and clear but what a price to pay as unemployment leads to the closure of many of the Highstreet stores and are now boarded up and only used by the homeless to keep their worldly possessions in the cold concrete doorways. The empty bus rattles the discarded street porn and reeks of weed and the old woman hallucinates memories of fonder times when her husband was still alive and her children needed her. A tall skinny teenager sits by the graffitied walls of a stinking subway on a bike he outgrew years ago, smart phone in hand waiting for his man to drop the tiny bag of nightly hope. Cavernous synths and yearning drones drag the screaming images of dying town life all so clearly to life. This is not an album to escape to but an album that reminds you that you really need to escape; you really need to fight the invisible clawing arms wanting to drag you into the colourless drabness of existence in a town that survives on memories of happier days. The Town That Was Murdered is a decaying corpse of the streets and towns Lowry painted so lovingly and Draaier soundtracks their descent into hell.
Jude Cowan Montague and Bettina Schroeder ‘Versus’
(Wormhole World)
As ever I will be totally honest and tell you some of this album really gets on my tits: it irritates the hell out of me. But, I find that a really refreshing thing: at least it’s not boring me. And other parts of the album I find refreshing because it has humour, originality, and is wonderfully rewarding.
I suppose listening to this album is like being with the person you love; not in a romantic Hollywood kind of way but a real life in a long-term relationship way, in which you can love the person to bits but he/she does not half do your head in sometimes. And so goes this marvellous/irritating album of poetic artiness. There are times it brings a huge grin to your face and makes you warm inside, and other times you feel like saying, “just hush will you”. So I would love to thank Jude and Bettina for releasing this joyful/irritating album of real life with all its strange glorious foibles into my musical world.
tvfordogs
‘I Only Wanted To Make You Cry’(Gare Du Nord) 14th May 2021
I will be honest with you, I was not expecting to like this for some reason, but actually I really enjoyed it. This is an album of very well written melodious pop rock songs, at times reminding me of Todd Rundgren at his early 70s AOR best (especially on the title track ‘I Only Wanted To Make You Cry’), and is an album if marketed right could surf the wave in the rising love of Power Pop music that is ever so quietly becoming very popular (I could well imagine this being released via The Big Stir label).
Anyone with a love of Big Star and The Raspberries will be in seventh heaven with this on their CD player or anyone with Sugars Copper Blue in their collection could well be advised to get hold of this to keep it company. Yes, indeed this album is both rifftastic (‘Lead Boots’ especially) and has so many naggingly beautiful melodies that you could have sworn that you have heard before and even if you have, they are so damn catchy you do not mind hearing them again, especially when performed with such panache. I Only Wanted To Make You Cry is a fine listen.
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.
Premiere (Single): Crab Costume ‘Disaster’
May 10, 2021
Crab Costume ‘Disaster’
One half of the double-A-side single ‘Betterer/Disaster’ (Boo Boo Love Records) 14th Mat 2021
Cupid strikes a bum note on today’s premiere; offering not affections, love, but a cold shrug of incredulity. As the resigned soul singer, and one half of the Crab Costume collaboration, Asher Dust plaints: “Just found out that cupid’s a liar”.
A slice of trip-y electronic neo-soul, the second part of a split single from the transatlantic duo of Oxford-based Asher and the British-born, now based in NYC, producer, beat maker Mars Kestrel, ‘Disaster’ is a doleful sore account of broken down love: “What’s the point, this love is done”.
Sitting alongside the more neon R&B and down low bass wobbled ‘Betterer’, this moody piece of subtly placed beats, plucked vague exoticism and rock music resonance is a mix of Massive Attack, a winding TV On The Radio and Tricky; with vocals that swing between Lee Fields, Bobby Womack and Finley Quaye.
Both partners in this fruitful enterprise were previously members of the ‘legendary’ hip-hop outfit Big Speakers, so have form. On this idiosyncratic venture they interlace trip-hop, leftfield rap with soul, down beats, electronica and the sometimes psychedelic.
‘Betterer/Disaster’ is released through the duo’s own imprint, Boo Boo Records, on the 14th May 2021. You can now hear the latter premiere ahead of that date below:
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.
Premiere (Video): Field Kit ‘Don’t’
May 7, 2021
Field Kit ‘Don’t’
(Nonostar Records)
Cinematic electro-acoustic music with a small ‘c’, filled with gravitas and a hunger to stir the emotions, the Field Kit collective pairing of its central force and instigator, the Berlin-based composer-musician Hannah von Hübbenet, and her collaborative foil, the pianist-producer John Gürther, create mini filmic scenes and atmospheres together on the group’s eponymous debut album for Alex Stolze’s burgeoning imprint Nonostar.
Possibly the first album on the celebrated polymath’s label that doesn’t include Stolze’s magnetic tender collaborative skills (previous releases on the roster include the violinist, composer, songwriter and producer’s own solo work alongside his collaborative efforts with Anne Müller and Sebastian Reynolds on the Solo Collective, and with repeated foil Ben Osborn), Field Kit are nevertheless in a similar sort of neo-classical orbit to their label partner’s merger of strings imbued by centuries of swelling heartache and travail, voices and synthesised instrumentation effects.
Former students of both the Universität der Künst in Berlin and the Filmakademie Baden-Württemburg, violinist Hannah and pianist John now draw on that study for their inaugural adroitly blended album of ‘warm acoustic(s)’ and more ominous, incipient ‘cold mechanical’ movements and shadows: A sound that is described as ‘cyber-noir’.
Those cinematic qualities are in evidence throughout, with hints of Scott Walker’s late soundtrack work and also Johann Johansson’s on the almost bestial, caged and chained combative subterranean, hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raiser, ‘Human Behavior’. You can hear a touch of both Mica Levi and Jed Kurzel on the heightened mourned strings yearn ‘String Adrift’. There’s a sense that unforeseen forces are ready to emerge from the duo’s conjured atmospherics; perhaps something otherworldly or horrifying, or something from another age, coming out of the mists – I thought for some reason of a Viking longship on the solemn opening crackled piece ‘Distant Approach’. Haunted coos, the vibrating resonance of finger bowls and a semblance of a removed Orientalism meanwhile permeate the plucked, dust trickled ‘Counterfeit’, whilst ‘Motorized Piano’ opens up the instrument’s inner workings and the movement of time for an almost clandestine thriller – the slow release UNCLE like drums roll in to set the pace; a race across a metro platform.
The single track we’re concentrating on however, and premiering the video of ahead of the album’s release next month, is the ethereal but fragile finale ‘Don’t’. Affected sighs, and sometimes heart aching strings, lunar synth and a gauze of electro-pop plaint form a bed for the manipulated vulnerable repeated vocals on a filmic score that borders on both trip-hop and the classical. Go now and immerse yourselves in this magical diaphanous suite from the collective.
Field Kits debut album is due out on the 4th June 2021 through Nonostar Records. You can order it now through the label’s Bandcamp page. You can now buy and download the single ‘Don’t’ from today.
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.
ALBUM REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
Antonis Antoniou ‘Kkismettin’
(Ajabu! Records) 2nd April 2021
A divided city on a divided island, Cyprus governmental capital of Nicosia forms the scenery for the Greek-Cypriot musician Antonis Antoniou’s earthy rhythmic new album, Kkismettin.
Passing through the invading hands of every Mediterranean empire since at least 2000 B.C., the atavistic city of Nicosia has faced a convoluted history of communal fighting by its shared, but demarcated, population of Greek and Turkish-Cypriots; stirred up by both Greece and Turkey, competing to ideally unify the island state under the authority. The most recent custodian to add Cyprus to its empire was Britain in the 19th century. Cyprus however, after much hostility and violence, gained independent status in the 1960s: a situation that continues today, despite a failed Turkish invasion in the 70s.
The results of failed coups and invasion however led to a harsh carving up of the island into separate Greek and Turkish communities and areas. Nowhere more so than Nicosia, home to Antoniou: a separated cityscape that literally seeps into and is used as a foundation for the beat, rhythm and motion of this amorphous Cypriot, and beyond, imbued album. One of the most glaring images of those divided lines is with the lyric’s referenced concrete-filled barrels that Antoniou uses both as a metaphor and percussive beat making instrument on many of the toiled workers’ songs. As if these ‘green line’ demarcations aren’t bad enough and isolating, the recent pandemic lockdowns have created an increased, heightened sense of confinement and division between the uneasy communities Attempting to let his music and unifying lyricism ride over such barriers, Antoniou channels both sides of the ‘wall’ culturally and musically. An instigator of the Cypriot trios Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, he now draws on a lifetime of traditionally rearranged and more traversing experiments to create a soulfully rustic songbook of mother tongue sung lyrical “kismet”. But it’s “laughter rather than pain” that Antoniou wishes to convey and celebrate, despite the buffer zone travails. And on this magical, often bordering on psychedelic, album he navigates the hardship and earnestness to produce an exotic soundtrack.
With so many influences on tap, songs such as the opening thumbed weary call to bury “distorted” histories by politicians in the vain hope of dancing together under the stars ‘Liváin’ (or “incense”), share an essence of the Hellenic and Turkish (a more buzzed-up electrified BaBa ZuLa springs to mind) but also conjure up evocations of a post-punk Jah Wobble on bass. Later on the album’s only instrumental ‘Angáli’ (“embrace”) made me think of a relaxed Compass Point Allstars bubbling up a languid island life jam. Though as the track moves along there’s an interstellar birdcall and permeating oscillation that sends it towards an acid psych sound finale.
The most surprising image that popped up into my noggin however was of a Cypriot Funboy Three meets hushed mantra Dead Skeletons, on the increasingly hyperventilated voiced title-track. This is just one of many songs that also takes on a semblance of the esoteric; the spooked. Eerie but playful, haunted spirits quiver, hover and wobble across the album; the ghosts of previous generations making themselves heard, freely floating around the buffer zones. For this is an album of rich collective psychogeography, where ancestors from hidden cities and the neighbourhoods are invited to bring a divided landscape back together once more. Antoniou has created a communal struggle of poetic lyricism that’s both simultaneously steeped in histories, yet thoroughly of the present times: even on occasion otherworldly. Adroit sensibilities and rhythms and pulses, hushed and hymnal vocals and first-rate musicianship meet to articulate the sound of “kismet”: Destiny it seems sounds alive and evocative in this artist’s very capable hands.
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.
ALBUM REVIEW/PURVIEW/Dominic Valvona
Can ‘Live In Stuttgart 1975’
(Spoon/Mute) 28th May 2021
It’s 1975 and Cologne’s lauded cosmic couriers of omnivorous experimental rock Can are beamed into the living rooms of an unsuspecting late-shift British audience, tuned into whispering Bob Harris’s presented Old Gray Whistle Test. The hippie on flying saucer oscillating keyboards is wearing Barbarella’s chainmail, and the Teutonic mustachioed Asterix character on bass is dressed like a biker gang mime-artist sheriff, as the quartet conjures up both a mystifying and explosive tumult vision of ‘Vernal Equinox’: the Landed album’s peregrination epic sonic set piece.
For many this will have been the ‘moment’; their first “what the fuck’ exposure of a band already seven years into a career that generally remained underground, confined to the ‘heads’ until ’72 and the relative successes of both the Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi albums and the single ‘Spoon’ (which sold 300,000 copies after featuring as the signature theme for the popular German television thriller Das Messer).
It’s 1975 and a time of change, new horizons as it were, for Can. Signing only the year before for the hippie Svengali Richard Branson’s Virgin label, the first few months of ’75 were spent, in between touring, recording the group’s sixth studio album proper, Landed. Following in the lunar radiance of Soon Over Babaluma, Landed marked a number of alterations. For one thing they brought in Olaf Kubler, who’d fallen out big time with Amon Düül II’s John Weinzierl, to perform swaddled sultry and squawking prompt tenor saxophone (namely on the ‘Red Hot Indians’ album track) and asked their friend and author journalist Peter Gilmour to co-write the album’s opening track ‘Full Moon On The Highway’, and the more languid, sedate ‘Half Past One’.
The direction of that album is almost glam, Floydian and polished in contrast to earlier records. In part this was down to certain stipulations in the record contract, with an upgrade in recording apparatus that made it possible to use more multi-tracking and break the band’s cardinal rule of overdubs. Yet Landed, caught between rosy-lipped avant-garde Weimar hedonism and a strung-out, scuzzed Roxy Music, still had its share of incredible cosmic adventures: The already mentioned Alpha 77 vessel emitting ‘Vernal Equinox’ for one.
It’s 1975 and Can are still without a talisman vocalist figure, after losing the jazz beat lost poet Malcolm Mooney and mushroom haiku incanting Damo Suzuki (leaving after 1973’s Future Days opus). Can experimented amongst their ranks, usually pushing forward their gifted, transportive guitarist Michael Karoli to preen, issue lulled and breathless languid vocals.
In one of the most unlikely episodes from rock’s back pages Can are said to have trailed the idea of inviting the troubled American folk troubadour Tim Hardin to front them. He lasted all of two gig dates in the UK during the November of ’75. Though its rumoured he was never formerly asked, nor even realistically considered for the role, he managed performances at the Hatfield Poly and the Drury Lane Theatre before spectacularly falling out with his German partners: a bust-up that’s said to have involved Hardin throwing a TV set at a car window – look out! The fatalistic folkie was after all a former marine. With too much ‘Peking ‘O’ for his own good, Hardin would eventually succumb to his heroin addiction: taking an overdose five years later.
It’s 1975 and Can take to the stage in Stuttgart; never once believing that forty-six years later the fruits of that freeform jam would eventually form the contents of the record you now have in your hands (if you’re lucky); the first official sanctioned live Can album proper.
It’s now 2021 and Can custodians Spoon Records in conjunction with Mute are set to release later this month the most anticipated album in the group’s history since the mind bending Lost Tapes archives in 2012.
Live In Stuttgart 1975 is the inaugural release in a series of saved and reconditioned live albums; the source of which derived from bootlegs provided by Can nut Andrew Hall – just when you wait fifty odd years for one live album, along comes a whole series of them; though don’t expect anything to turn up from the band’s inaugural years in the late 60s.
It worked out rather fortuitous for Hall, as Can’s own attempts to record their live concerts were constantly fraught by technical fuck-ups: not just gremlins, but Gizmo pissing in the works. Rob Young, author of a recent sanctioned tome on the band and linear notes contributor on this record, informs us of a litany of such failed attempts: In ’72 at the legendary concert at Cologne’s Sporthalle a mobile recording unit outside the venue succumbed to fickle technical glitches, leaving only the poor sound quality of camera mics inside the arena to pick up the performance (quite poorly as it transpired), and in Edinburgh in ’73, whilst really making an effort to capture their first live album venture, the multi-track recordings had completely failed to pick up Karoli’s visionary prodigious guitar playing.
Run through a modern technical wringer as it were by the band’s only remaining founder member Irmin Schmidt, and producer/engineer René Tinner, that forty-six year old performance now sounds anything but an artifact; lifeless and dull. Scrubbed up well, in good shape, Can’s ’75 live peregrinations still echo a future that hasn’t arrived.
In five parts, Can riff, take to town set pieces that seem to make some connection to, and transform the Landed album material. There’s also glimpses in the more baggy, loosened quasi-reggae gait parts to what was to come: the group’s next album for Virgin, Flow Motion for one, but also ‘A Spectacle’ from the even later self-titled album of ’79. The Stuttgart recordings however pull you in with the incipient worldly intergalactic soul-funk opening jam, which travels light years from Schmidt’s crystalized Gallo cathedral rays to Persian exotic meanders and Cosmic Slop era Funkadelic jiggle and sway grooving guitar riffage. Within that theatre of amorphous influences you can pick up hints also of Landed’s ‘Red Hot Indians’ and the ethnography alchemist traverses of Saw Delight (another release on the Virgin slate). Funk chops, a sort of whomp like bass and Jaki Liebezeit’s chuffing steam locomotive metronome come barrage drum rolls, all builds towards one of Can’s famed (as Young calls it) ‘white drawf’ sonic meltdown moments, nicknamed ‘Godzillas’. It’s a stoned, gauzy vibe that’s similar to the bootlegged University Of Essex concert material.
The audience, who seem a pretty polite lot, clap in appreciation at this display of acid-rock and beyond, as Can now slip into a more sauntered groove vision reminisce of the ‘Future Days’ and ‘Bel Air’ moiety and the Landed tracks ‘Hunters And Collectors’ and ‘Half Past One’ (albeit via John Peel’s legendary sessions version). On this second interstellar syncopation voyage, Schmidt’s keyboards apparatus actually threatens to take off; oscillating like a UFO towards the Forbidden Planet.
The third venture offers up light dappled square waves and quivers and a more relaxed bluesy psych guitar meandering from Karoli (bordering on the Grateful Dead and even Quicksiliver Messenger Service) before building up towards an erratic polka turn cavalry charge of drums and primal heavy rock.
Stirrings of fellow cosmic explorers and compatriots Ash Ra Tempel mingle with Pink Floyd and Santana on the leviathan space craft circling fourth installment of this live thrill – that same spaceship sounds like it goes onto ditch into an entanglement of sonic distress.
Like a paranormal Fugs the finale part of this live vision drums up some esoteric spooks (walking across ghost house floorboards) and primal avant-garde boogying. It all begins with a sonorous foghorn, a rumble and strange but lovely cascaded waltz. Yet after various changes and noodling lands back in the crypt. The whole set is an example of relaxed intensity.
I’d proffer that this was a more loosened, sagacious Can at the height of their prowess; still inventive yet held and concentrated in exploring the ever-widening boundaries of experimental rock music and beyond. You can hear Can searching for that next leap into the unknown however; never quite breaking with the United Artists epoch, and in between the total embrace of the more languid, tropical wash and reggae of Flow Motion, and the worldly Saw Delight albums. Still, only four years away from packing in touring completely, the Stuttgart Live recordings are as close as any of us will ever have got to experience Can’s full-untethered force of Sci-Fi acid rock on stage. It just seems so crazy that we’ve had to wait so bloody long for it!
Can Archives At The Monolith Cocktail:
The Lost Tapes (here)
Monster Movie (here)
Soundtracks (here)
Tago Mago (here)
Ege Bamyasi (here)
Future Days (here)
Soon Over Babaluma (here)
Landed (here)
Saw Delight (here)
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.
Monthly Playlist Revue: April 2021: Racquel Jones, Flying Lotus, Special Interest, 3 South & Banana, DMX, Verses Bang…
April 30, 2021
PLAYLIST/Dominic Valvona/Matt Oliver/Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
All our choice tunes from the last month – and just a couple we missed from March thrown in. As eclectic as ever we have a mix of the brand new and recent reissues, plus a couple of well chosen tributes to fallen Hip-Hop stars, all chosen by me (Dominic Valvona), Matt Oliver (on the rap control) and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Tracks:
Khalab & M’berra Ensemble ‘The Western Guys’
Racquel Jones ‘Sacrilege’
TrueMendous & Masta Ace ‘Emmett Till’
Eboni Band ‘Sing A Happy Song (Shake It Down)’
Graham Costello’s Strata ‘Legion’
DMX ‘Who We Be’
Beans ‘Viragor’
Dope Knife ‘Inereyes’
Verses Bang ‘You Ain’t A Star’
IKLAN ‘Star Is Out’
Der Plan ‘Copy Copy Machine’
Special Interest ‘Disease’
The Bordellos ‘Cultural Euthanasia’
Caoilfhionn Rose ‘Hold Your Own’
The Polyphonic Spree ‘The Porpoise Song’
Kid Kin ft. Bobo ‘Control’
Lisa Gerrard & Jules Maxwell ‘Deshta (Forever)’
Matt Donovan ‘Lap Creature’
The Flying Chaucers ‘Down With The Creeps’
3 South & Banana ‘The Fool The World’
Adult Books ‘Innocence’
The Armoires ‘Paris 1919’
Nick Waterhouse ‘Place Names’
Comorian ‘Bandits Are Doing Bad Deeds’
Federico Balducci ‘Together In A Baron’s Ballon, Mov. I’
Minor Moon ‘Hey, Dark Ones’
Ollie Halsall ‘Back Against The Wall’
Nathan Francis ‘Minor Solution’
Amanda Whiting ‘Just Blue’
Koma Saxo ‘Euro Koma (Live)’
Violet Nox ‘Haumea’
Mark E Moon ‘The Falling’
IOKOI ‘SOS’
Orca, Attack! ‘Ethical Approval’
Bagaski ‘At Georgetown’
Federico Balducci & fourthousandblackbirds ‘Queen Of Mars’
LV, Joshua Idehen ‘Ancestors’
Sone Institute ‘Dazzling Darkness’
Mello Music Group (Murs, Georgia Anne Muldrow) ‘Turnt Garveyite’
Datkid & Skinzmann ‘The Lost Track’
Black Rob ‘Whoa!’
Murs/Humpty Hump/Shock G ‘Risky Business’
Bronze Nazareth & Recognize Ali ‘Street Gospel’
Flying Lotus ‘The Eyes Of Vengeance’
Vukovar ‘Psalm’
Kalporz X Monolith Cocktail: Minor Moon ‘Tethers’
April 29, 2021
Album Review/Words: Paolo Bardelli
Continuing with our collaboration with the leading Italian music publication Kalporz , the Monolith Cocktail shares reviews, interviews and other bits from our respective sites each month. Keep an eye out for future ‘synergy’ between our two great houses as we exchange posts.
This month Paolo Bardelli introduces us the music of Sam Cantor, aka Minor Moon.
Minor Moon ‘Tethers’
(Ruination Record Co./Whatever’s Clever, 2021)
Is Chicago still the centre of the world? There was a time when people wondered, and that was the time of Obama, who was based there: it seemed that the ferment united everything, from intellectuals to musicians. Sam Cantor from Chicago and his Minor Moon project, now in its third chapter, seems to be one of those who take the baton and ferry the city, or at least its sound, towards better times, in a quiet way. It is no longer the time to make waves: Minor Moon’s delicately psychedelic folk looks back to American rock but with grandmotherly care, that attention to substance which is typical of those who know what is important. But more than anything else she knows that it matters to have good songs to play with passion and protection.
Comparisons with better known names to show where this cosy Tethers is heading could be to compare it to an Iron & Wine with a few straws, or a Cass McCombs with fewer edges, but it would perhaps be ungenerous towards Sam Cantor who has reached a degree of autonomy that does not deserve to be “what he looks like”. Not least because it doesn’t sound like anyone but an idea that folk rock can still be done with grace and tradition that looks to the past to move forward.
If the songs were all like the opening ‘Ground’, a song that greets you like a friend would when you’re in trouble, or the cosmic folk tracks of ‘Under an Ocean of Holes’, we’d be talking about a near-masterpiece, but of course there’s a bit of everything: the pop of ‘Hey, Dark Ones’, the nocturnal ballad ‘Beyond The Light’, the deep States of ‘Was There Anything Else?’. All this is well amalgamated for the 36 minutes that are the time of an album from the past, the ones that used to be on the side of a C90.
But Minor Moon are just like a moon of the future, slyly looking at us with lunar times, not earthly ones.
71/100
(Paolo Bardelli)
Monolith Cocktail Blog 