Dan Shea’s Lockdown Jukebox: Part Two
July 24, 2020
Selection/Horror-Lit/Dan Shea
The Monolith Cocktail is grateful to have coaxed a number of guest spot contributions from the impassioned and adroit musician/writer Dan Shea. Roped into his family’s lo fi cult music business, The Bordellos, from a young age, the candid but humble maverick has gone onto instigate the chthonian Vukovar (currently working through a trio of ‘greatest hits’ packages here) and, with one part of that ever-shambling post-punk troupe, musical foil Buddy Preston, the seedy bedsit synth romantics Beauty Stab (who’ve just this month released their second single ‘French Film Embrace’, here)
An exceptional talent (steady…this is becoming increasingly gushing) both in composing and songwriting, the multi-instrumentalist and singer is also a dab hand at writing. For his debut, Dan shared a grand personal ‘fangirl’ purview of major crush, the late Rowland S. Howard (which can be found here), on the eve of Mute Records appraisal style celebration reissue of his highly influential cult albums ‘Teenage Snuff Film’ and ‘Pop Crimes’. This was followed by an often difficult, unsettling, potted with dark comedy, read on Dan’s friend and foil Simon Morris (of the Ceramic Hobs infamy; the piece can be read here), who took his own life last year.
Now, from his lockdown quarantine, Dan furnishes us with his new series of ‘imaginary film screening jukebox’ selections come loose horror fictions. Part Two awaits….
Lemon Kittens – The Hospital Hurts The Girl
“Not all lives matter. Not the lives of the people who make people like us into people like us. Not at all”
4
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5
“Some fires have to be put out. No one cares for the sentience of the flame. I invite you closer, with that, to a darker fire.”
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5
“What’re you cunting on about you drunk cunt?”
Listening to music in the shower is a pointless exercise as the water drowns it out. Drinking in silence in the shower is pure desolation. Listening to music in the shower while drinking, baby, that’s where it’s at. O the cruelty of duty. Memory shards hath made me a glow ghost.
4
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1
I closely inspect the plughole. She’s not down there. Ronette, baby, how could we fall so far? Karl Blake’s stentorian voice washes over me as I drain the rest of this can of Perla. It seems she only appears in the drain when I’m blinking so I stop blinking. The water is hot, but not that hot. Not as hot as it was when
“Well, you know”
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A series of still images:
A small child falling down the stairs. The doll body photographed mid air.
A bird falling from the sky. The bird is photographed mid air.
A dignified old man, clasping his hands in front of him. His granddaughter is playing with a toy monkey.
An echo, maybe your echo.
John Cale – Taking Life In Your Hands
Gersten called. It was the strangest thing. I didn’t even need to switch my phone on to hear her speaking. When we last spoke I’d called her drunk out of my mind because I’d deluded myself that she’d committed suicide. She said she was worried about me and wanted to check I was okay. I reassured her that I wasn’t.
“Sampling is such an integral part of the process for many that sample clearance isn’t a worry unless you sell a million records anyway. Incidentally I am quite pissed and thinking about weird fetishes I have developed. Like attractive women coughing, dunno what that’s about. Gerst, I frequently imagine you in humiliating situations but ones where your beauty is fully showcased.”
Our favourite client called around as well. He wanted to check I was okay. I reassured him I wasn’t then I sucked his dick. I wish people would stop pitying me and checking on me.
‘magine et main line the scene – he’s pissed on supermarket spirits that he’s drinking out of a Pepsi bottle in the snow and you’re doing exactly the same. He’s sat outside a pub smoking the lonely remnants of a fag. And then i come along, also the lonely remnants of a fag.
The echo resounds, maybe even your own echo.
Gersten angel angelangelangelangel.
It’s at this point it becomes clear that there is either more than one narrator or that the narrator has lost his fucking mind.
A bird falling from the sky. The bird is photographed mid air. Fish are flopping gasping and rotting on the dried up riverbed. The dog kids have arrived. The grey pin prick holes are opening wider to close again when you look away. The moon stands still on the day I am finally calcified.
David Bowie – Subterraneans
Low is a great album about depression. It really captures that feeling perfectly. I read a section in a recent Bowie biography recently about him totally losing his shit when John Lennon died. Otherwise he came off as quite cold and calculating.
Low was finishing on the afternoon Gersten came into my life. I was sat, hungover, in my living room listening to Low when a mist descended upon me. Not a metaphorical mist either. The air was electric blue and sugar. My senses were not all that was fogged. As Subterraneans wound to a close, Bowie’s lonely sax honks amid the churning proto Coil electronics, there was a knock at the door.
I waded through the fog to the hack door. I had presumed it was someone who knew me, as it’s common knowledge I only really answer the front door to get a pizza. An attractive woman in her late 30s was stood there. G.
“Dan I need to hide out somewhere for a while. Things just aren’t making sense.”
She kissed me and I didn’t care that I didn’t know who she was but she somehow knew who I was. When a film noir beauty shows up, as soon as you’ve felt her up enough to be clear she’s not packing heat you let the dame in and pour her a drink.
The first time a client came around was a bit of a shock I’ll admit but I just busied myself in the living room. The first time a client asked me to join in was even more of a shock but now we work only as a pair. It’s cool. I get to live out my Dennis Cooper fantasies even as my late 20s takes me from twink to otter.
The broad certainly had a hold on me, a vice like grip on the verge of splitting my balls like an egg.
I envision us now. The party is over and I’m on the verge of disappearing into the couch. I’ve put Roy Orbison’s bizarre attempt at disco Laminar Flow on to gently encourage people to fuck in the off direction. Our mute TV shows only static. You step in front of me in your black velvet dress. I unzip it to find you have nothing on underneath. You climb into my lap, Gersten/Ronette/Naomi and this comes on.
Rowland S Howard – Dead Radio
I’ve always found pale skinny boys who look like they take too many drugs smoking to be a turn on. Now it turns out, thanks to you, I’m turned on by women doing it.
I was SCREAAAAAMING into a microphone between your legs as you dumped the ashes into a can of Red Stripe. We were both naked. This was streamed across the world and we both got ourselves off to the video after the fact.
This tension in glances, this French film embrace this lustful tarantella. I carve my initials into you with my tongue. You’re the most beautiful woman of my nightmares. Your voice is lullaby soft and ethereal chimes sound in your wake. I press my face between your thighs and whisper your name into the depths of you.
I refuse to watch this one disappear. I call her up, I’ve fallen off the wagon and I’m making no sense. I’ve not eaten for days because I’m conscious of people wondering who the fat guy she’s with is. Maybe he’s a community pet she looks after. Maybe the council make her drive him around.
I was having one of my nightmares about past abuse and I woke up sweating in her arms. She calmed me down until I closed my eyes and saw her ceiling spider crawling. He reopened the eyes and you said softly to him “Supplanter?”
Vukovar – Voices / Seers / Voices
One of my clients was Dan from Vukovar. Apparently his then girlfriend had paid for him to hook up with me and G, she was a stern faced American lady who sat and watched. Anabella her name was. What he lacked in confidence he made up for with a strange, hand flapping autistic charm.
One SNOWY CALM CRISP FUCK morning I awoke to find someone had dumped a fridge behind my house. IN THERE I FOUND A CASSETTE. I WILL TRANSCRIBE THE TRACK LIST FOR YOU WHEN I AM AT LIBERTY. AT PRESENT THAT DAME IS MONOPOLISING MY TIME LIKE CYNDI LAUPER.
Dan wouldn’t stop going on about this guy called Simon, stank of booze and insisted on us playing Rowland S Howard while this was all happening which suited me. Everything was amazing and cool to him, like he was American or something. He was strangely insistent on blowing me on the shower and he kept inspecting the plug hole as if I he could see her peeking out.
What gets me isn’t the lurid neon atrocity but the revelation of the lack revealed. Gemma Barker. I’m like Sotos but I fetishise the aggressor not the victim. My art will bleed into your world and you will question even traffic lights. Show me what you are and I’ll show you what I’ve already taken. Relax, baby. It’s done.
New Order – Dream Attack
I remember the first time I met Ronette. We’d been talking online for a long time and she flew over from Germany for us to both stay in an Air B’n’B (bed and breakfast) in Hulme. I wanted to go there but my passport had expired and I was skint. She looked a lot like Gersten come to think of it.
I was greeted at the door by a dishevelled Welsh man in a bathrobe called Ralph who gave me the key to the flat and we sat and had a cup of tea and bemoaned the fortunes of Blackburn Rovers. My mate Cam had a trial for them. Good guy, Cam. We met in a dream.
I was listening to Technique by New Order and then I got a text. “Sweetie I’m outside”. Me and Ronnie met for the first time with Dream Attack playing, and Ralph was there. We kissed like our lips were molten.
Part of the reason I love Dream Attack is that despite Bernard’s obvious lyrical shortcomings, “I can’t see the sense in you leaving” is such a great line. Such a practical Northern way of looking at it. “Do you have to go? It’s a bit pointless.”. I couldn’t see the sense in Ronnie going that time. Or when she went down the plug hole. That was really fucking weird.
Dan Shea
Our Daily Bread 388: Beauty Stab, The Legless Crabs, Peel Dream Magazine, The Waterboys…
July 23, 2020
REVIEWS/Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team in January 2019. The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, 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 recent releases include The Bordellos beautifully despondent pains-of-the-heart and mockery of clique “hipsters” ode to Liverpool, and the diatribe ‘Boris Johnson Massacre’. He has also released, under the Idiot Blur Fanboy moniker, a stripped down classic album of resignation and Gallagher brothers’ polemics. His next album, The King Of No-Fi is due out next month on Metal Postcard Records.
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.
Beauty Stab ‘French Film Embrace’
Single/12th July 2020
Oh lord this is bloody good. It’s perfect pop in its most perfect form. It gives me goosebumps. It has everything one wants in pop music. No wonder there is a buzz about this band that has not been heard of since…well, lord knows when.
This is worthy of The Associates at their heartbreaking best; a song that could and should if there was any justice in the world be all over the radio to brighten and enlighten, we the listening masses. Maybe too early in the year to say single of the year…but I will say it anyway…single of the year.
Related:
Beauty Stab Interview
Beauty Stab ‘O Edan’
The Waterboys ‘The Soul Singer’
(Cooking Vinyl) Single/Out Now
I have a bit of a soft spot for The Waterboys; I quite like how Mike Scott had the music world at his feet with the release of the This Is The Sea album, and was on the verge of U2 like success. It was his for the taking, but instead he locked himself away in Ireland and made two beautifully of kilter folk albums. That kind of career sabotage has to be applauded.
One of rock music’s more eccentric and lovable characters, and here we have a sonnet to another one of rock’s eccentrics the grumpily lovable Van Morrison. This is a fine sun filled pop song in a Radio 2 kind of way, the kind of song that will have you tapping your fingers on the steering wheel as you listen to the radio stuck in traffic. I wonder what Van thinks of it.
She’s A Fish ‘Downstream’
(Puffy Pastryd) Single
This is one for all you pop pickers out there with a taste for the mildly twisted, Shadow hungry psychedelic sounds bordering on the kind of off kilter post punk delights served up by the wonderful Swell Maps all those years ago; hastily scrubbed semi acoustics scratch out the nagging melody of pure austere glory. A little gem of a song.
Peel Dream Magazine ‘Moral Panics’
EP/3rd July 2020
I like this especially track two, the ridiculously titled ‘Verfremdungseffekt’, which comes on like early Julian Cope circa his first two solo albums, and early Belle and Sebastian. A mellow pop treat for sure, the Casio organ and fine melody gives one a splendid few minutes of pop bliss. The rest of the EP is fine garage pop psych tinged mellow shoegaze with lovely floating Casio like keyboards that are both soothing and enriching, giving you the warm feeling of being sponged down by the greatest hits of a sexy but enigmatic European.
Violent Vickie ‘The Blame’
Single/10th July 2020
I wonder if Violent Vickie has ever had her music described as splendid before. For that is what it is: splendid. It has a splendid lo-fi dark syntheses about it that can only be described as, well, splendid. It has a lovely dark crunchy guitar and vocals that can only be described as, splendid. The splendicity of this track is one I enjoyed a great deal and I was a bit concerned at first the press release mentions Joy Division, and normally that is a big turn off in a press release mentioning Joy Division, as every bugger who classes their music as Dark Synth always mentions Joy Division and this sounds nothing like Joy Division I’m pleased to report; there will be no mishaps hanging up her washing…thank the lord, as there is always room for splendid music in my life.
Astral Swans ‘Bird Songs’
Single/10th July 2020
Now I do like a good pop song stuffed with self-loathing and unhappiness but disguised with pop melody and sing-along ability, and this track has those qualities in abundance. It has the same feeling and in fact same beat as Smogs wonderful ‘Cold Blooded Old Times’. It is a song to sing to yourself while walking alone in the park, and we all need one of those in our life.
The Legless Crabs ‘One People One Mind One Death’
(Metal Postcard Records) Album/25th June 2020
The debut proper from the Texas Punk rockers The Legless Crabs is upon us, and what a fine LP it is too. Discordant guitar, ramshackle drums, echo laden vocals and off beat lyrics takes us to the strange world they inhabit. Pussy Galore, The Jesus And Mary Chain and The Shaggs are fine reference points, but placed into a glittering concrete music mixer to supply a musical house art all of its own making; a place where Roky Erickson would happily reside. The 13th Floor elevators are also brought to mind especially on my personal favourite, the wonderfully spaced out ‘Not The Good Kind’, which starts out as almost strange lounge punk and then erupts into waves of feedback, a track of pure wonder which perfectly fits on this album of pure wonders. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, one of the albums of the year.
Serialization: THE GREAT IMMUREMENT by Rick Clarke
July 22, 2020
Written by Rick Clarke/Illustrations by Andrzej Klimowski
Expanding the Monolith Cocktail’s remit to include more in the way of new literature and poetic musings of a kind, we are pleased to announce the serialization of burgeoning author and rallying beacon of the band Vukovar Rick Clarke’s new novel The Great Immurement. The first three chapters, kindly and perceptively illustrated by the much-respected Andrzej Klimowski, can be found below with an introduction from Monolith Cocktail contributor, budding author in his own right and Vukovar bandmate, Dan Shea.
INTRODUCTION UNDER NO DURESS
It’s not about our friendship or his influence on my own writing – not at all. What you are about to read is the process of years of reduction. It’s easy to vomit a stream of consciousness onto a blank page; far harder to chip the block away into something meaningful.
Rick has written something that, in my view, is beautifully emotive without ever being obvious. I feel he’s a great talent and I’m privileged to call him a friend and have the invitation to write this. Under no duress whatsoever. (Dan Shea)
THE GREAT IMMUREMENT
This is the first and last time there will be grounding in real-life, real-earth. All that flows forth from now is descension, are fever dreams; are misremembered and dismembered recollections of the disordered mind; are actual encounters of the im/possible death of The Great Immured. The six year span of this entrance into the Otherlands is where eternity ends, where the Abdication Of The Body begins.
Let me then create you.
This is the end. This is the start.
Let me then begin this eternal six years. Today is the oldest I will ever be again. I lock ourselves away, I construct no exit and I instruct a way out to those outside, those negligible energies. My name means first and last.
The walls are concrete, the doors are concrete, the windows are concrete. There was a concrete fantasy. I stare straight into the greyness.
There is no-thing here, no descriptions. All that is needed is no-thing; there should never be a need.
When we are immured, when we see it from the inside, we see that all light is absent and all light is present; this retinal pessimism dictates that there is nothing to see, but it’s all that we can see. And then all times are in the mind’s eye.
THE CONCRETE FANTASY
There’s a town. The town in which we lived, actually. At the moment it sickens this irrelevant little God with the halfway devotions to our own aesthetic ideals. It wants/wanted to be a brutalist wasteland, but is as yet, as is now, uncommitted. A place as a partial seizure.
The people are inbred (which is fine) and offer nothing except hedonism (which is fine) which we can get anywhere. We want something less, we want less than nothing.
Of this town, I am thine only saint; the Patron Saint Of The Archaic, and I need my own continuous monument.
We keep looking into the every-greying grey, my stare travels through eight interlocking circles. We decide it can’t be broken, and so, for now, it can’t.
I dream of razing the town in a similar circles, a radius of 13 miles in fact. And I want the garden to be perfectly flat concrete. A Concretopia. A blinding greyness.
In the V V V centre is a building. It’s an imposing concrete cube. There are no windows except one tiny one on each of the four faces. Every one of the four is near the top, right in the middle, so that I can look upon my Winter, my own purgatory. But we never will. There are mirrors in the windows, designed in a miracle way to only have a view as though I were looking from the outside. We only want to look upon my creation.
We hear us think of the inside, but we cut this from our mind. Some of us prefer an illusion, some of us prefer the mystery. Once the unknown becomes known, it can be the Death of Desire. I’d rather suffer from my love of all this because at least this malady has a melody, rather than the emptiness of content. Or maybe all these things all other ways around.
Dim the vision and stop the tape – and now it didn’t happen. The secrets of the secrets are still hidden.
THE VISIBLE MAN
Knock knock? You are all the guest we need.
Knock knock. Okay.
An invisible fist upon my invisible door.
I reach up and out of my invisible chair, turn to the invisible lamp and reluctantly switch it on.
The invisible rays strike my eyes, strike my face and light up my invisible room. It’s unforgivingly vast.
Nothing is real, we offhandedly tell myself. It’s easily forgotten.
My invisible window allows me to peer into the invisible unknown.
I can see the invisible man, flooded by his invisible coat and holding in his invisible hand, an invisible letter.
I take the invisible envelope which contains an invisible message, which should enthral me or at least catch my attention, but I find that it doesnt.
Not much does, not least invisible objects of invisible non-desire.
I sink back into my invisible chair.
In silence, I take up my invisible pen and so begin to scrawl across invisible paper a lackluster response.
Not quite invisible, but not far off. I smile – somewhat – into my invisible mirror and thank an invisible God that I may still see myself.
Author Rick Clarke/Illustrations by Andrzej Klimowski
Premiere: (Track) Luke Mawdsley ‘Misery Gland’
July 20, 2020
PREMIERE/REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
Luke Mawdsley ‘Misery Gland’ taken from the upcoming album Vulgar Displays Of Affection, released on 24th July 2020 through Maple Death Records.
For those of you with a morose curiosity you’ll find that Luke Mawdsley’s metaphorical river of consciousness runs deep with it. The former Mugstar guitarist circumnavigates the dark waters of trauma and anxiety on his second solo outing, but first for the caustic experimental Italian label Maple Death Records, Vulgar Displays Of Affection.
Billed as a “cathartic meticulous journey brimmed with emotion and failure”, Mawdsley’s spoken-word mise en scène dictation is masked with a warped and slurred daemonic vocal effect, both menacing and disdainfully as it splashes around in the mire of minimalist industrial electronica and the harrowing flagellations of Scott Walker. Plumbing the depths Mawdsley’s one part King Midas Sound, one part the more deranged examples of a “verbasier programmed” Bowie on the Outside album removed voice pours a lucid string of vivid depictions and despair into the listener’s ears. Today’s premiere track, taken from that upcoming album, is a case in point; the murky generator throbbing and wretched stained ‘Misery Gland’, a vision of Einstürzende Neubauten trading blows with Coil, seers with despondent spoken monotones and more speeded-up demon giggles.
The scene is set with sonorous rings, strung-out tremolo, hammerings and knocks, tight-delayed repetitive drum machine hi-hats, fizzles and a looming threat of synthesized atmospherics. It is a stench as much as a tonal soundtrack that reaps a malady of industrial noise, drifting esoteric blues and the Lynchian. An uncertain, anxious and often sinister creeping discourse on the themes of sexuality and disorientation, this haunted murky generated dungeon music draws from a well of disillusion.
The lyrics themselves either slither through the mulch of a mashed-up brain or almost predatory turn subjects into the lurid and dangerous. There are various play-on-words type track titles, from ‘Vauxhall (Cavalier) & I’ – a space-echoed car boot lubricated with a threatening musk – to ‘A Grudge Supreme’, and a chilling Ry Cooder blues fantasy built around the fictional parody of the Dr. Steve Brule hosted public access psycho-analysis spoof Check It Out! – the naïve Brule character played by John C. Reilly, expunges by happenstance horrifying details of his life story whilst discussing a range of topics. Sometimes despite the pain, distress and that creepiness, Mawdsley can offer a twisted sort of humour with the surreal images he conjures up. And the music does offer some lovely melodious waves, and even the glimmer of something less suffocating.
‘The River Takes It All’ declares the album’s finale; an increasingly distorted caustic and hostile wrangle of a climax with tortuous appeal, the waters of which threaten to engulf. A deeply revealing experience of the lurid, coarse, disturbing and vivid, Mawdsley’s immure vulgar displays rest wearily upon the shoulders. In this cursed time of uncertainty and vehement argument, the pained artist struggles through the miasma of indignity to create a drip-feed of chthonian distress.
Ahead of its release, we bring you the premiere of the album track ‘Misery Gland’.
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.
FEATURE/SELECTION/Dan Shea
The Monolith Cocktail is ecstatic and grateful to have coaxed a guest spot contribution from the impassioned and adroit musician/writer Dan Shea. Roped into his family’s lo fi cult music business, The Bordellos, from a young age, the candid but humble maverick has gone onto instigate the chthonian Vukovar (currently working through a trio of ‘greatest hits’ packages here) and, with one part of that ever-shambling post-punk troupe, musical foil Buddy Preston, the seedy bedsit synth romantics Beauty Stab (who’ve just this week released their second single ‘French Film Embrace’, here)
An exceptional talent (steady…this is becoming increasingly gushing) both in composing and songwriting, the multi-instrumentalist and singer is also a dab hand at writing. For his debut, Dan shared a grand personal ‘fangirl’ purview of major crush, the late Rowland S. Howard (which can be found here), on the eve of Mute Records appraisal style celebration reissue of his highly influential cult albums ‘Teenage Snuff Film’ and ‘Pop Crimes’. This was followed by an often difficult, unsettling, potted with dark comedy, read on Dan’s friend and foil Simon Morris (of the Ceramic Hobs infamy; the piece can be read here), who took his own life last year.
Now, from his lockdown quarantine, Dan furnishes us with the first of his ‘imaginary film screening jukebox’ selections come loose horror fictions.
Surrender – Suicide
A Kenneth Anger motorbike gang, gay greasers checking their hair in the switchblade reflection. Using semen as Brylcreem. The homecoming queen dumped like so many empty bottles and cans.
Vega as Vegas.
The backing vocals drift in from a malt shop that was burned down by some queer bashers pre Stonewall and no one flinched. In a world where high school sweethearts go to a drive in to sneakily and fumblingly attempt autoerotic asphyxiation together as they watch Jayne Mansfield crash in slow motion.
When Vega sings, “I surrender to you”, it could be sex or God or just the voices shrieking through the tinfoil mirror of our synapses but aren’t all those things the same? Lynch would play this behind beehived girls in tight red sweaters first lesbian tryst behind a doughnut shop ran by Anton LaVey and Ricki Lake.
Which Way To Turn – Bryan Ferry
One of weird uncle David’s mystery blondes in trouble smiles from a smashed picture frame, a Stepford femme fatale. All the memory I can dredge up is here. Artfully hung and shot drapes blow in a late summer breeze. A heatwave desire and hungover regret. Blood on your lips, lipstick oozing out of your wounds. The plastic rum cups Mike gave us in the bar are overturned.
“I can’t control my feelings if I tried” sung with all the hauteur this high society Frankenstein can muster. Ferry is often spoken about as some style icon, ignoring how goofy he has frequently looked. See the Manifesto red leather suit, the Top of the Pops Jealous Guy Alan Partridge outfit or his giant shirt in The High Road. For ages I thought something was lost when he became the figure he started out parodying yet yearning to be on the first Roxy albums but that’s a lazy cliché.
This period is one of straw etching your initials in coke on a mixing desk, high-class session musicians playing three notes then disappearing. Some of my favourite stuff he did. The powder lasts an hour but the regret lingers eternal.
Lou Reed – Coney Island Baby
Lana Del Rey – Blue Jeans
The personal connections are all but overwhelming here. I band these two together as Lynch used Lou on a soundtrack and Lana IS Dorothy Vallens and Frank Booth and Sandy and Jeffrey. She’s not just the mystery woman in trouble but the architect of your demise. Lou, he’s the man behind the curtain. Whispering these tracheotomy hymns through a straw, through a hole in your wall into your sleeping mind.
I’d put these back to back to dehydrate myself: Lou’s choked murmur of “I could give the whole thing up for you” will never not crumple me. Send this one out to Lou and Rachel, the romantic ideal of my nightmares.
Lydia Lunch – I Fell In Love With A Ghost
I should’ve learned the lesson from Pet Sematary and Vertigo. I’d done all I could but she came back wrong.
She didn’t reply to anything I said, other than as a series of strangled groans. I heard “yes” where I wanted to hear yes. The first time I caught her crawling spider like along my ceiling, mournfully unaware how she got there should’ve been the tip off. Or the way there was nothing behind her eyes. But even though she’d died and she was now just a beautiful empty vessel, she looked the same. I imagined her side of our conversation the way I did when she was still dead.
Then she was in the bath. This was progress. She was able to wash herself. I supervised, to keep her safe and because I wanted to. She kept turning the hot tap. The bath water was boiling, smoke was rising and she was crying out pathetically. Water spilling over the edge of the bath. The screams got louder. I tried to turn the hot tap off and she lunged forward and head butted me with a force that sent me unconscious SPRAWLED.
I came around in a pool of bloody water in time to watch the love of my life disappear down the plughole.
Cocteau Twins – Musette and Drums
Dylan and Patrick meet in a side street. The snow is still falling lightly, flakes landing on their black leather jackets. They embrace knowing this is truly the last time. The sound of traffic is all but overwhelming but there is not a car to be seen.
They kiss and blood oozes from Dylan’s lips. He turns, walks away and disappears entirely into thin air. He is dragged out of the sea by trawlers, his arms tied behind his back and his eyes pierced by emeralds: “natural causes”.
Smoke enshrouds us as we reach the clearing. I take your hand and we kiss. The world is ending, the tiny grey pinpricks in the sky are opening up. Remember when I first told you I saw them? Be quiet, the ice is melting.
Xiu Xiu – Botanica de Los Angeles
Gersten Hayward is turning tricks now and I want her for her mind as much as her body. That’s okay. I’m turning tricks as well. You get a discount for hiring us as a couple. If you look like a young David Lynch then I don’t charge.
Her love is free to me and as for the whoring it keeps us in whiskey and hash browns. We watch Mulholland Drive together. She freezes, but not at the scene in the diner. Something suddenly clicks in her.
“Dan?”
“Yes darling?”
“I’ve got the incredible feeling that I’m not real”
“Gersten I’ve been dreading this conversation. It is true that you are fictional. I am unsure if I am also fictional.”
“How did my mother birth a fiction?”
I show her the clip from The Return where she is cradling her ODing boyfriend and gently tell her that because he was never born he can never die. This is why I am largely anti natalist. Then a client comes by.
SSQ – Anonymous
The party is over and we watch the nightlife crop itself shorter still through a haze of smoke. A mute TV shows static, like pictures in the fire I just about make out the image of a screaming man watching an emaciated woman disappearing down a plughole. He is entirely naked and smearing his genitals with lipstick.
Thankfully you / she steps in my way. A cigarette dangles from your drunken lips. You don’t even smoke. You in that black velvet dress. You turn around and bid me to unzip it, smiling at me.
Then I wake up in their living room. Where I first heard this record. I thought it was a synth pop revivalist record. Something like the Chromatics where it’s so fetishistically close to that mid 80s sound you think it could only have been made in the last ten years. No. It’s actually from the mid 80s and prefaces her hi NRG records.
The girl is real but she wants nothing to do with me. She probably doesn’t even own a black velvet dress. Gersten hasn’t been returning my calls. Maybe I should try ringing her number.
Scott Walker – Jesse
It’s a shame Lynch and Walker never worked together as this always makes me think of Episode 8. The slow motion Jailhouse Rock chords make me imagine the earth opening itself up to weep. The Penderecki strings that have ran through Scott’s work since as early as Plastic Palace People or It’s Raining Today.
The 50s he dreams of never happened. They are an autistic reflection in a fish bowl. Elvis was weirder than anything you could ever dream up. We don’t deserve rock’n’roll.
I dreamt you were crawling through a tunnel looking for me. My stuck needle entreaties and iconoclast drag. I watch her crawl across the ceiling. I, your supplanter.
Now I’m day drunk on daydreams on a train and an Indian man is shaking me. “We’ve terminated mate. The train is over”. My psychic next of kin I’d know you in my sleep. I, Supplanter.
Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist #XLVII: Ennio Morricone, Art Decade, Voilaaa, Kahvas Jute…
July 15, 2020
PLAYLIST/Dominic Valvona
Welcome friends to another one of Dominic Valvona’s eclectic/generational spanning playlists; the Monolith Cocktail’s imaginary radio show. In practice this amounts to Dominic picking whatever he sees fit, including tributes to fallen idols and tracks from recent reissues. This month’s edition pays a small homage to the late Italian deity of soundtracks and composition, Ennio Morricone. Joining him in on this journey is Art Decade, Voilaaa, Kahvas Jute, Tono S., Pharoah Sanders, Electric Eels, Faris, VED, Abel Lima, The Staple Singers, Jerzy Milian and twenty-three other eclectic choice artists.
Listen how you choose, but each playlist is curated in a special order.
As usual, for those without Spotify (or boycotting it, pissed with it or whatever) you can find a smattering of videos from the set below the track list.
Track List:
Mike James Kirkland ‘What Have We Done’
Voilaaa ‘Manu ecoute ca…’
Pharaoh Sanders ‘Farrell Tune (live In Paris 1975)’
Tono S. & DJ Metys ‘Recept Na Uspech’
Lord Finesse with Sadat X and Large Professor ‘Actual Fatcs’
Weldon Irvine ‘Love Your Brother’
Ted Hawkins ‘Sweet Baby’
Tripsichord ‘The New World’
Kahvas Jute ‘Shes So Hard To Shake’
Country Weather ‘Boy Without A Home’
Orangutan ‘Chocolate Piano’
Jessamine ‘Inevitably’
Electric Eels ‘Sewercide’
Indianizer ‘Mazel Tov II’
Hypnotuba ‘Hubbubuzz’
Art Decade ‘Delta’
Ndikho Xaba ‘In Praise Of Women’
VED ‘Sture External’
Faris ‘Oulhawen Win Tidit’
Velvett Fogg ‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’
Group 1850 ‘Hunger’
Pisces ‘Oh Lord’
Yanti Bersaudara ‘Pohon Kenari’
DakhaBrakha ‘Vynnaya Ya’
Abel Lima ‘Aonte’
Ennio Morricone ‘Arianna’
Marva Josie ‘He Does It Better’
Gryphon ‘Mother Nature’s Son’
Robert Lester Folsom ‘Ginger’
Quiet World ‘Star’
Minami Deutsch ‘Sunrise, Sunset’
Uniting Of Opposites ‘Ancient Lights’
Jerzy Milian ‘Hausdrache’
Ennio Morricone ‘The Chase’
The Staple Singers ‘Washington We’re Watching you’
VIDEOS:
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 387: Gunther Wüsthoff ‘Total Digital’
July 13, 2020
ALBUM REVIEW/DOMINIC VALVONA
Gunther Wüsthoff ‘Total Digital’
(Bureau B) Album/10th July 2020
Attuned to the signals and broadcast traffic chatter of a very different kind when serving out his military service as a naval radio operator, the one-time Faust instigator and soloist Gunther Wüsthoff tapped into that formative training to search and tune-in to more imaginative and alien frequencies when set loose from the tumult of post-war Germany.
As the legend goes, Wüsthoff’s pathway towards sonic experimentation was laid out in art school, where he met future Faust comrades Rudolf Sosna and Jean-Hervé Peron. All three musical malcontents came together in the late 60s to from the band Nukleus. It was during this point that former leftist mouthpiece publication Konkret editor turn ad hoc record producer and scout for Polydor Records, Uwe Nettelbeck (through his filmmaker contact Helmut Costa) was introduced to the trio. Nettelbeck was handed the task by the label’s A&R honcho Kurt Enders, to find a German version of The Beatles, but also to tap into the burgeoning “Krautrock” scene that was emerging. What they got was something far more revolutionary and avant-garde: at their most confrontational and hostile they made Throbbing Gristle sound like The Beach Boys. As opposed to their compatriots Can, Faust excelled at breaking things.
The musical trio was merged with members of another Hamburg band, Campylognatus Citelli, whose ranks included Werner “Zappi” Diermaier, Hans-Joachim Irmler and Arnulf Meifert. Instead of a Teutonic Fab Four, Polydor were delivered an unruly fist full of industry dissonance and barracking noise. Wüsthoff for his part would play both synthesizer and the saxophone during his time with the often-fractious group; lasting through Faust’s most important and influential run of records during the first half of the 1970s (from the X-Ray iconic sleeved debut to the only album Wüsthoff would design the cover for, Faust IV).
Following his departure, Wüsthoff would take on roles at both Studio and Filmhaus Hamburg; but also take further studies in editing so that he could work freelance. Continuing his musical practice however, Wüsthoff’s sonic experiments became more and more informed by the aleatory.
Looking for imperfections and friction in the increasingly repetitive and slick production of the Western canon, he found that in explaining his theory to those accustomed to playing music in the doctrinal fashion, and against the intuitive grain of human instinct that the machine might be better placed to his musical methodology and motto: “Due to previous but also temporary excesses of mainstream consumption and the omnipresent, repetitive emissions of the western world’s music industry, devoid of contours and as slick as possible, we are faced with an indissoluble weariness. A criterion for music one can listen to today is, for me, that an element of friction is present: temporally, metrically, rhythmically, tonally or harmonically. Or that somewhere, something is somehow imperfect. Only then can music be truly alive.”[Gunther Wüsthoff 2005]
“Today I would add: Regardless of whether it is created by man or machine.”
And so, becoming a “music machinist”, Wüsthoff relinquished the idea of virtuosity for good, handing over a major part of the process to the machine. A compositional counterbalance between the synthesized and the human touch you could say: not “total digital” but getting there.
Collected in this retrospective compilation is a scattering of tracks from a twenty-year time span; from a trio of solar orbiting ‘TransNeptun’ suites to a number of more rhythmic erratic dashes and tubular metallic chimes. Tuning into planetary waves, the three-part (‘Anflung’, ‘Ankunft’ and ‘Begrüßung’) ‘TransNeptun’ traces the tones and contours of cosmic satellites with a sonic generator palette of lunar delay, arpeggiator, whining dialed squiggles and hums. Through this off world broadcast, Wüsthoff traverses the Kosmische, hints of Bernard Szajner, a dance of binary languages and ominous prowling shadowy dwarf planets.
In a different direction the avant-garde ‘Dragon Walking’ sounds like a convolution of Populäre Mechanik and Reich; with touches even of Eno’s off kilter Warm Jets. Going through numerous cycles, from post-punk to robotic ballet, instruments are introduced in stages: a real sounding drum kit, hand drums, marimba (I think) and pizzicato notes. ‘Alien Crosstalk’ is a strange one. Bagpipe type bellows and concertinaed sounds are integrated with fucked-up House music, out-of-time piano and titular’s “crosstalk” of obscured voices. Though far too sophisticated as to sound distorted or a mess, the elements all seem to fit together in the end. And even when erring towards the disturbing and dark, seems less chilling but mysterious.
Wüsthoff’s philosophical driver, the “transitory nature of life”, is evident in the fleeting presence of those random generated sonics and instruments, which pass through an evanescent process.
Perhaps Wüsthoff doesn’t enjoy the profile of some of his former Faust comrades, but if your only knowledge of his experiments were from that period then make time to explore the solo work. A good place to start will be with this handy compilation, from a label that seems to act as a hub for members from that group’s subsequent work.
Faust Faust, So Far, Faust Tapes’
Faust ‘j US t’
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.
Preview: Novel: Chapter 5 of ‘A Rumor In Üsküdar’
July 9, 2020
Novel Extract/Ayfer Simms
An integral part of the Monolith Cocktail team for the last six or more years, cosmopolitan writer Ayfer Simms has contributed countless music/film reviews (Ouzo Bazooka, Pale Honey, Gaye Su Akyol, Murder On The Orient Express, The Hateful Eight) and interviews (Sea + Air, The Magic Lantern) – and even appeared in the video of one of our featured artists (Blue Rose Code).
Taking time away from the blog to focus on her debut novel, A Rumor In Üsküdar, Ayfer has spent the last two years busily working away at a story that encompasses not only the personal (including the death of her father) but the wider psychogeography and geopolitics of her native home of Istanbul.
Born in the outlier pastoral regions of Paris to Turkish parents, Ayfer spent her formative years in France dreaming about following in the travelling footsteps of her great literature love, Agatha Christie. After studying for a degree in literature (writing music reviews on the side), Ayfer moved to Ireland for six years before travelling aboard the famous Trans Siberian railway and settling in Japan. Initially visiting her sister, Ayfer not only stayed indefinitely but also got married and had a daughter. Deciding to attempt a life in Turkey, where the family is originally from, they moved into Ayfer’s great-grandmother’s house in the Üsküdar district, on the Asian banks of the sprawling Istanbul metropolis.
A Rumor In Üsküdar is in many ways autobiographical – the inaugural chapter (which we previewed in March 2019) was inspired by the death of Ayfer’s father a few years back. A familiar setting is given a slightly dystopian mystique and ominous threat by Ayfer who reimagines the Üsküdar neighbourhood of that title being isolated and quarantined by the government, as they test out a piece of (propaganda orchestrated) news on the population.
That’s just the umbrella story; within that setting we have the main character confronted by the country where she originated from imprisoned but ready to face it all; hoping for a wind of change in the face of an ever-dictatorial regime. Escapism comes in the form of backpacking reminisces; Ayfer in this newest chapter, dreaming once more of a trip aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Translated into English from the original French and Turkish language versions, an extract from the Russian travail chapter Five awaits.
Part Five
I’ve never seen anyone run to the fences, passionate themselves about their stolen freedom. Curiosity and indolence prevail. I am limp; I have to admit it with shame. The invisible mace got it right, crushing our potentially rebellious mind. When I think of my state just a few months ago, of my strength then, I remain speechless.
One day when I was about to take the Marmaray, I had managed to avoid having my sports bag scanned. A policeman stopped me and asked me – very politely, after all, he seemed friendly – to back off and put my stuff on the treadmill. I resisted and at his insistence, my rage rose, without daring to completely disobey. As I quickly walked toward the machine, I ran into a large man – I didn’t see his head, just that huge body and his threatening hands swinging towards me – my shoe left my foot while the policeman calmed the man who wanted to stick one on me. Until I got my things back, I grumbled, blowing and mumbling like an old bag.
After I left the scene I trembled as if my guts had been emptied. I didn’t like myself very much at the time, angry as I was, but I remembered the importance of showing my dissatisfaction at these incessant controls. Men are subjected to several paper checks per day, unlike women who are left alone. So there you go, since then I haven’t gotten mad at anyone. At the sight of the armed soldiers, museums transformed into garrisons … I simply stopped reacting, I’ve simply gotten used to it, I fell silent, I’ve preferred my immediate comfort, my bubble. I knew I would get out of it if I wanted to. I’ve fled too much since, always, as soon as things gorged, I took my leave indeed. Leaving is my specialty. However, being forced to stay somewhere, to face it, I’ve always dreamed of it.
It was in Russia that I had this longing suddenly. That of staying put and facing up to things. Up to then, I would only look beyond my window. Dreaming of going far, of dragging my legs on dusty roads. High school history teacher: “My nephew who is your age (17 years old) has just left for Russia to take the Trans Siberian Railway”. I opened my eyes wide and my mouth just slightly, as if struck by lightning, then the idea immediately settled in a corner of my brain. 27 years later, with a friend I’ve embarked on the Trans-Siberian.
Then, it is in Ekaterinburg. 1600 kilometres from Moscow with more than a million inhabitants that I realized I envied those who can’t run away.
Perhaps it was a bit sad and macabre that I had these thoughts on the land where the last Tsar and his family were executed. However, I had not immediately thought of that. As soon as I set foot in the murky city amidst drunken people, I felt a physical void. Our host, Olga was living in a building among others in a housing estate riddled with graffiti. From her window, I had noticed that at almost 11 p.m., it was still as bright as the day. The apartment belonged to Olga’s mother. There was the photo of a soldier on the wall: he seemed absent. My friend was fiddling with her bag for a while. She was preparing to take a shower. Olga called us for dinner before she had the time and we settled at the table. The blue walls reminded me of my parents. I heard the tinkling of the spoons in the tea glasses. I had my shoulder pressed against Olga’s smooth wall, just like I did when I was little. Our kitchen when I was young amalgamated with Olga’s one. It is in Russia that I thought of it so deeply. When Olga put a dish of meat before me, I was already wondering why I excelled at fleeing.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Previous Chapter Extracts:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Reviews/Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Salem Trials ‘Do Something Dangerous’
(Metal Postcard Records) Album/5th July 2020
This is the label debut LP from one of the bands of 2020 – a fact I’ve previously mentioned in reviewing their first two singles, both of which are featured on this wonderful album; the Captain Beefheart meets the Buzzcocks ‘Head On Rong’ and whip frenzy Wire like pop gem ‘Pictures Of Skin’. The rest of the tracks are no slouches either; mining their influences from late 70s early 80s post punk but without just being a post punk photo fit band, the influences are there but they add their own unique twist adding a beautiful wash of pop melody and some simply stunning guitar playing – especially on the beautifully dark but life enhancing ‘No Light Escapes’.
Andy Goz is one of the most inspiring guitarists I’ve heard in a very long time and is obviously not just an extremely talented musician but must also have a great knowledge and understanding of what makes great rock n roll as the pre punk spirit of the Stooges, MC5 and The Pink Fairies are not just captured but hoisted on flag stands and waived as a taunting warning to all the other many less inspired guitar bands that there are new kids on the block and this simply fine album is the benchmark that they probably have not a hope in hell of reaching. A simply stunning debut.
Japanese Television ‘Bee Cage’
(Tip Top Recordings) Single ahead of a new EP, released 4th September 2020
I like this, it’s a short blast of wonky keyboard organ led heavy bass Sci-fi surf frenzy: Just what one wants to pickle an egg. Dick Dale goes for a moonwalk with Joe Meek whilst wondering what goodness lies beneath the waves of yesterday. Summer sweet sensation, a joyride for the bequiffed buffoon that lies deep within all men of a certain age. A Deeley Bopper of a single.
Various ‘A Picture Of Good Health Compilations’
(Wormhole World) Albums/Volumes 3.1 & 3.2 14th July 2020
What we have here is the latest comps from the experimental Wormhole World Records; two albums full of experimental genre hopping music with something for everyone; from the beautiful almost David Lynch soundtrack like Goodparley to the experimental mellow dance sounds of Gnaarf and DXII, to the crazy mad world of Toxic Chicken, to the poetic Crumpsall Riddle, and any fans collectors of 80s synth pop will be interested to find a new track by Blancmange – the beautiful synth instrumental ‘This Is The Moment I Have Been Waiting For’.
In all, this is a massive musical project and all tracks believe me are worthy of investigation: a great way to soundtrack a Sunday afternoon as I’ve discovered to my great pleasure.
There are in all thirty-nine tracks spread over two limited edition CDs 3.1 and 3.2 or two downloads from the Wormhole Bandcamp and is well worth a explore; and if you buy both CDs at the same time you save yourself a £1, so go and treat yourself.
Twisted Ankle ‘A Bag of Pasta’
(Breakfast Records) Single/19th June 2020
A bag of fall and Captain Beefheart discordance shaken up and let lose to breed and corrupt the inner workings of a Daily Mail readers fan club convention; a disconcerting eyelash flutter at the conventional tale of Siegfried and his lust for finding the ideal companion for apple bobbin. Yes a loose cannon of a single.
The Top Boost ‘Tell Me That Your Mine’
(You Are The Cosmos Records) Single/22nd June 2020
The sound of the Byrds going through their country phase is brought to mind with this fine blast of summer jangle. At the moment there seems to be a lot of jangle about and that cannot be a bad thing when it is performed with such style and panache. Two more tracks of 60s influenced guitar pop for you dear readers to soundtrack you sunning yourselves with.
Renaissance Grrl ‘Happy When I’m Sad’
Single/5th June 2020
This is a lovely sad well-performed song of melancholy by the 18-year-old Alannah Jackson. Alone with her guitar, nothing more nothing less, just a simple moment of purity, which should be cherished and held close; proving once again that keeping it simple is sometimes best especially when you are blessed with such a fine voice and songwriting talent.
The Icebergs ‘Add Vice’
(Imaginator Records) Album/17th July 2020
Beautifully strange is the only way to describe this marvelous album of pure poetic bliss. What grabs me from the off are the wonderful lyrics (an art form much ignored in the music biz today). Lyrical streams of them flowing weaving beautiful, frightening heart-breaking images throughout, bringing the early works of Patti Smith and PJ Harvey in a mellow mood to mind and musically reminding me of Nick Cave’s band of merry men the Bad Seeds rockabilly, folk, the Velvet’s guitar pop and the sounds of late Seventies no-wave, all merging to form a canvas for the poet Jane LeCroy to paint beautifully vivid pictures with her wonderful prose and wonderful voice.
bigflower ‘hunneh’
Single/27th June 2020
The Monolith Cocktail continue in their quest of promoting the under-the-radar beguiling guitar power of bigflower, who once again releases a beautiful sublime slab of free to download aural magic with this wondrous instrumental. When oh when will a record label get their act together and compile an album of the wonders bigflower is releasing on a monthly basis?
Spam Javelin ‘Fuck You/Cogged Off’
Single/20th June 2020
This is a double jab in the eye of pure punk rock old style; two tracks that both last around the 1 min 30 mark and come charging into your life, rattles a few of your remaining brain cells and then pisses off again: which all good punk rock songs should do. Both have rather marvelous guitar riffs especially ‘Cogged Off ‘, which has a wonderful Fall like guitar riff running throughout.
Beaulieu Porch ‘Vivit Sumus’
(Carmite Records) Album/7th June 2020
The lonely world of home-recorded psych can be a beautiful cathartic thing. It can be a thing filled with beauty, magic and soul, and the music of Beaulieu Porch has all three of those ingredients. Mid 70s Lennon and the wayward beauty of the Flaming Lips and the lost music of late 60s early 70s psych folk and Baroque pop collide in a thrilling mismatch of wanton musical adventure. Beaulieu Porch make such beautiful music it deserves to be heard by all instead of by the lucky few in the know; yes once again a musical underground musical maverick who deserves more is becoming quite a feature in these review round ups nowadays, so if you have not heard the music of Beaulieu Porch before do yourself a huge favour and give this fine album a listen; and if you have heard them no doubt this cd will already be in your collection. One of the undergrounds finest.
The Vapour Trails ‘Golden Sunshine’
(Futureman Records) Album/19th June 2020
Sometimes a bit of 60s inspired guitar jangle is what one needs in their life. And if you need that dose of sunshine in your life currently, one could do a lot worse than give this album a listen.
Hailing from Scotland The Vapour Trails are yet another band who wear their love of all things guitar very much on their sleeves: although I’m very sure The Teenage Fanclub influence is there it’s not as prominent as a lot of bands I have been sent music to review over the last 18 months. The opening track ‘Golden Sunshine’ had me thinking of the excellent and much underrated Spirea X [remember them] and a few tracks on this album have the early 90s guitar band feel of The La’s [especially on ‘Different Girl’] and the Cotton Mather; but that comes with them in turn having the same 60s influences (Beatles Byrds and such), and I’m sure the Shack’s masterpiece Waterpistol had more than a few airings in The Vapour Trails rehearsal space.
This is a fine album full of melody catchy guitar lines and is steeped in an obvious love and understanding of what makes great 60s inspired guitar music and what makes 60s inspired guitar music great.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team in January 2019. The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, 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 recent releases include The Bordellos beautifully despondent pains-of-the-heart and mockery of clique “hipsters” ode to Liverpool, and the diatribe ‘Boris Johnson Massacre’. He has 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
Tickling Our Fancy 088: Thiago Nassif, Mansur, The Lancashire Hustlers, JAF Trio, Otis Sandsjö…
July 2, 2020
REVIEWS SPECIAL/Dominic Valvona
From the very start of the Covid-19 epidemic I’ve emphasized the importance of supporting artists and bands. More than ever in an industry with ever diminishing returns for the majority, and with the ever increasingly domination of streaming taking over from sales, they need our financial help.
With that in mind, there are more than enough new and upcoming releases to get you salivating at the prospect of spending those dwindling funds in my July roundup. Travelling to and beyond both Earthly and Heavenly realms from the comfort of you own sofa, I take a look at the upcoming debut suite from Jason Kohnen’s newest adventure (in collaboration with Dimitry El-Demerdashi and Martina Hórvath), Mansur; a wanderers traverse of burnished ruins and temenos set to a cinematic, warping trip-hop soundtrack called Temples. Fresh out of Rio, Brazilian wonderkid Thiago Nassif releases another vibrant and sophisticated pop album of samba and bossa no wave. Melbourne artist Wu Cloud returns from his off-the-beaten-track Indonesian getaway with an atmospheric exotic ambient electronica suite of jungle sonics. Out of Helsinki, two Nordic jazz albums from the We Jazz label; the first, the Danish-Finn JAF Trio lay down their dynamic live sound on wax for the first time, and the experimental Gothenburg tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Otis Sandsjö produces another volume of deconstructive electronic-hip-hop-trip-hop-jazz. From the relatively untouched musical atoll of São Tomé & Principe, Bongo Joe reissue Pedro Lima’s 80s classic Maguidala. Closer to home, The Lancashire Hustlers offer another nostalgic songbook of quality psych pop and troubadour pastoral soul with their fifth album, Four Hands, Two Voices.
Thiago Nassif ‘Mente’
(Gearbox Records) Album/3rd July 2020
Feted no less by “no wave” off-kilter maverick and former Lounge Lizard Arto Lindsay, the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and producer Thiago Nassif has made a name for himself over the last decade for producing the most idiosyncratic tropical-flavoured pop music. Drawn to Nassif’s transformed visions of bossa nova and samba, Lindsay, who has a reputation for refreshing those genres and working with many of the forms star turns, has co-produced a number of albums for the Rio-based artist; including this latest neon afterglow, Mente.
Channeling some of the American all-rounder’s past productions, most notably his work with the legend Caetano Veloso and more contemporary Tom Zé, Nassif balances those balmy softened open-toed sandal sauntering rhythms with harder edged experimental no wave and synthesized tubular metallics. It’s a juxtaposition of atmospherics, of light and shade, of the organic and plastic, and even languages: Portuguese and English. In practice this sounds pretty brilliant; a liquid (a blancmange even) of often slinking, bubbling, uptown/downtown Beck, Eno & Cale, Prince, Ariel Pink and St. Vincent, picked up and flown to a retro-futuristic Brazilian beachfront nightclub. The opening no wave soul mirage ‘Soar Estranho’ (one of my tracks of the year) shows off this cultural mix; reimagining Lodger era Bowie flanked by James Chance and Lou Reed’s doo wop chorus of female backing singers perusing in a discotheque. In short: cool as fuck. But just as you get comfortable, a lurch and shriek of tumbled drums enters the fray: less a harsh jerk, more a delightful off-kilter excursion.
Yet despite those interesting excursions, jolts and hooks and the contemporary feel, the melodies prove often nostalgic: a dreamy electro-fashioned sheen envelopes those bossa and samba grooves and tango washes that headily send the listener back to the 70s and early 80s. Still, it’s a fascinating world that escapes Nassif’s mind; a place where vague Robert Fripp guitar traces wane against a sunbaked percussion of bottle rattling; off-center piano and elliptical grooves merge with Herbie Hancock funk; fanned phaser guitar comes of against skulking seedy Gauloise-puffing French sophisticated cool aloof; an alternative reality in which Eno remixes Caetano’s more showy popular samba romantics.
Very imaginative and experimental, Nassif pushes South American music into exciting directions with an album that oozes a coolness of liquid tropical no and new wave. Mente surfs a delicious ebb and flowing tide of quirky “plastique” pop: A leopard skin upholstered, neon lit sumptuous groove of the fuzzy, fizzling and sauntering.
Mansur ‘Temple’
(Denovali Records) Album/10th July
Venturing once more into amorphous mysterious musical territories, Jason Kohnen finds another outlet for his traversing invocations with the Arabic named Mansur. Worn by infamous caliphs, this popular Middle Eastern name translates as “the one who is victorious”. The caliphate ruled by those who wore it was as vast and multicultural as the array of evocations and geography found on Kohen’s latest mini-album, Temple.
Previous esoteric and panoramic soundtracks by Kohen, from The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation to The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, roamed a borderless realm of influences. With even less jazz on offer (though those previous two jazz affixed outfits always had a vague interpretation of the genre), the cinematic atmospherics of this newest incarnation, the Temple drifts, sweeps and swoons across a gauzy veiled expanse of ancient Persia, India, Arabia, South Eastern Europe and the Aegean. Much of this is down to the array of international instruments that both Kohnen and his collaborating foil Dimitry El-Demerdashi (ex-Phurpa fame) use to stirrup this mirage state of Dionysus acropolises and atavistic Sufi mysticism. Various two-string and more bowed instruments (such as the Chinese “erhu”, Iranian, Armenian and beyond “kemenche”, and Indian “dilruba”) rub up against reedy flutes (the Persian “ney” and Indian “bansuri”) and both staggered and slurred trip-hop beats, slithered synthesized effects.
Floating in and out of the album’s titular spell, vocalist Martina Hórvath appears like an ancestral spirit or forgotten deity dreamily cooing sweet evocations; part Hellenic, part Celtic. This and its “revisited” companion piece both reminded me of the experimental Greek duo Xaos; though the second ‘Temple’ altarpiece offers up crunchier giant’s footsteps like thuds, and casts supernatural shadows on the pillars.
Elsewhere on this well-travelled five-track adventure, the esoteric Balearic chill in the sun ‘Disciples’ takes the listener to Muslim Spain via the toiled troubles and lament of the East, and the five notes per octave scale ‘Pentatonic Ruins’ travels in slow-releases across both the Arabian deserts and foothills of Tibet. The album’s final magical escape ‘Leyenda’ (or “legend”) brings in a piano, bowls and the kemenche flute to evoke a kind of semblance of 1930s Cairo: A soundscape of intrigue, suspense, bazaars and Arabian music halls converge.
Wandering a proscenium of afflatus burnished ruins and temenos to a cinematic, warping trip-hop soundtrack, Kohnen finds another fruitful creative release for his mesmerizing mythology of mystical and spiritual sounds.
JAF Trio ‘S/T’ (3rd July 2020)
Otis Sandsjö ‘ Y-OTIS 2’ (24th July 2020)
(We Jazz) Albums
Constantly delivering some of the best in contemporary jazz over the years, the Helsinki label and festival platform We Jazz has regularly popped up on the site with its quality catalogue of, mostly, European talent. This month sees the Nordic facilitators release two albums of opposing styled experimentation.
Dropping just this week, the first of these deft workouts sees the lauded Danish-Finn live act JAF Trio of saxophonist Adele Sauros (of Superposition renown), bassist Joonas Tuuri (Bowman Trio) and drummer Emil Bülow lay down their dynamic buzz on wax for the first time. Formerly awarded the We Jazz “rising star” award in 2017 for their “loft style” conjunction of cool but busy American and European jazz frills, tumbles and stretches, the trio now capture that live spark in a studio setting.
With a faint air of nostalgia, or at least the influence of those hip cats Mingus and Wayne Shorter, and a lift of Be-Bop, the trio proves to be one classy act. Sauros blows and honks both a mean and snozzling (even clarinet like at times) sax over Tuuri’s double-bass bodywork tapping runs and bowed sloping and Bülow’s quickened drum spills and accentuated concentrations. Signature loftcore, the opening account of ‘Ninth Row Of The Fifth Floor’ is a showcase for clicked walking basslines, skipping breaks and schmoozing sax spontaneity.
Each track seems to start in one place but end up in another; liberally handing out solos and more stripped spots, both busy and more methodically studied, as they go. Whatever the mood, whether that’s more humming and whistled saxophone contemplation or counter d’n’b like rhythm erratics, the chemistry is playful but always probing. Loft space meets Pierrick Pédron on a contemporary breakbeat, the JAF Trio bounce ideas around in the studio to produce some top-drawer jazz.
Making good on his previous free-fall in motion Y-OTIS LP (which made our albums of the year), the second of We Jazz Records’ July releases finds the Berlin-based Swedish tenor sax and clarinet bandleader Otis Sandsjö once more pushing the boundaries of electronic jazz. Volume Two of this simultaneously flowing and fractured, stumbled jazz breakdown sees Otis deconstruct his group’s performances in real time. Like a remix before the originals even been finished, Otis enacts his ennui like wonder for changing the rhythm, groove and direction.
Backed by fellow label mates Petter Eldh (bass and synth) and Jonas Kullhammar (flute) of Koma Saxo fame, plus Dan Nicholls (keys and synth duties), Tilo Weber (drums), and with featured spots from Per “Texas” Johansson (flute), Lucy Railton (cello) and Ruhi Erdogan (trumpet), the native Gothenburg sonic explorer elliptically skips and trips through hints of J Dilla, Flying Lotus, Four Tet, John Wizard, Takashi Kokubo, 808 State and Bobbi Humphrey.
The jazz elements, which sound like a transmogrified electric Byrd, drift and waft in starts and stops. Otis sax hoots like a magical owl on the woodland fairytale turn Eddie Gale spiritual joint ‘Tremendoce’.
With two flute players in the ranks and Otis also on clarinet, there’s obviously a lot of wind being blown around; and again it’s mostly quite dreamy, organic and floating as it wraps around the constant breaks and lurch or dragging drum parts.
From the cosmic and celestial to earthy, the familiar is turned inside out on an album that mixes soul, hip-hop, d’n’b, trance, electronica and jazz together. Every bit as extraordinary and inventive as the previous volume, part two is a unique, re contextualized, pinball flipper driven rush that takes jazz forward. This is a really great trip of an album, as blissful as it is intense. Definitely in my choice picks of 2020; one of the best jazz albums you’ll hear all year.
The Lancashire Hustlers ‘Four Hands, Two Voices’
(Steep Hill) Album/12th June 2020
There’s nothing more reassuring and cozy than a new Lancashire Hustlers album. Bathed in a nostalgic glow of peaceable 60s and 70s harmonies and a lilted haze of the familiar, Brent Thorley and Ian Pakes always turn-out a disarming songbook of psychedelic and troubadour melodies worth savoring.
Following previous mini pop operas and a collection of songs based on the poems of Walter de la Mare, the Stockport duo reconvene for an album of self-discovery, raincloud love-lost misery, the philosophical and regretted: Not strictly a thematic album, more a concept of age-old tropes that continue to trouble the soul.
Musically combining the shared harmony of Turn Breaks with the idiosyncratic romantic psych pop of bands such as The Left Banke, they often stirrup a smorgasbord of congruous bands and artists. Four Hands, Two Voices is no exception, with surprise shades of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield on the pastoral soul opener ‘Top Gun (In Retirement)’, and a kind of Anthony Newly starring musical meets XTC on the more theatrical ‘Stuck In The Middle Of A Week’. Elsewhere amongst a repeating musical leitmotif of quasi-swami atmospheres (brassy resonating faux-sitar and finger-cymbal trinket charms), you will find dalliances with Bacharach (sharing a stage with George Harrison) on the lilting romantic waltz whimsy ‘It’s Too Early’, the voice of Glenn Tilbrook on the beautifully pining rained-off ‘The Flowers And The Reservoirs’, and Badfinger harmonizing with Dylan on the quivery, dreamy malady ‘Letters I Should’ve Written’.
Disarming what is a touching but poignant selection of both melancholy and lamentable reflection, the duo’s loving and comfortable, even smooth musical sheen makes the sadness and yearning parts more palatable.
Whether venturing into the mind to connect with an object of desire or sailing across the subconscious on an adventurous voyage into psychoanalysis, these northern hustlers are guaranteed to make the journey a most harmonious one. The duo’s fifth album is another lovely songbook of maverick encounters, pastoral soul and soft bulletins.
Wu Cloud ‘Pulsa Rimba’
(The Slow Music Movement) Album/18th June 2020
Under the sticking heat of a lush Indonesian jungle canopy and on the edge of golden idyllic Sumatran beaches, the free-rolling Melbourne artist Wu Cloud places the listener in a sumptuous soundtrack of resonating, delayed field recordings and subtle, distant lo fi rhythms on his debut longplayer for the Lisbon label The Slow Music Movement. An immersive sound experience, produced from a “rucksack studio”, Pulsa Rimba –which literally translates as the “pulse of the jungle” – is a insect chattering, monkey (or in this case, to use the old world appellation of the species, a “Monyet”) calling, bird hooting menagerie of local Indonesian wildlife and fauna; augmented by the most accentuating and intuitive of effects and enervated tricking and chiming of beats.
Almost carefree and meandering, Wu’s backpacker recordings take-in the exotics and dense jungle throbs of ‘Weh Island’ (an island off the northwest of Sumatra, often known by its biggest city and capital, Sabang) and the cross-traffic sounds of both nature and human encroachment in the Sumatran city of ‘Jambi’ (a busy port metropolis and greater province that lies close to the ruins of the ancient Srivijaya kingdom city of Muaro Jambi) on a gentle, unfolding ambient suite of the organic and synthesized.
From the hammock to bumpy bus rides, Wu captures in an ad hoc fashion a living moistened terrain. And those field recordings are left to drift and waft as a fine gossamer layer of undulated gamelan-esque rhythms, hand bell like softened chimes from the local bamboo tube apparatus known as a “angklung”, sloping refractions and water pouring percussion is added. Sometimes so hypnotic as to be somnolent, at other times mysterious and exotic enough to evoke some extraterrestrial activity (the lunar bound ‘Flying Lizard’), the jungle pulse is a mirage of kinetics, Eno and Cluster ambience and spacey-echoed remembrance of geography experienced.
Enchanting escapism, Wu Cloud’s atmospheric Indonesian jaunt is a conservation of sound; a contemplative wildlife sonic survey of what’s left of an untamed landscape.
Reissue
Pedro Lima ‘Maguidala’
(Bongo Joe) Album/17th July 2020
Seldom in the spotlight or given much attention, the African island nation of São Tomé & Principe remains relatively obscure: especially music wise.
A former Portuguese colony, whose African population were mostly enslaved souls shipped in from the continent’s interior and coastlines, this fertile island became famous for growing cocoa, sugar and coffee. Most heinously though, it soon became a transit post for the slave trade itself; its location off the coast of Gabon in the mid Atlantic offering an ideal cove for the transporting human cargo.
It would take over four hundred years but independence finally came in 1975. Though revolts against the colonial masters were a constant throughout its history, even as late as the 1950s when long-suffering Angolan contract workers rioted, enforced labour continued right up until political revolutionary groups such as the Movement For The Liberation of São Tomé & Principe overthrew the Caetano dictatorship. Democratic reforms would be slow but peacefully introduced in the 90s, and the island is now considered one of the most stable free nations in Africa.
An outspoken advocate of change, and star of this welcoming reissue, Pedro Lima was an activist and lauded recording artist who for his political stance was anointed by the islanders as “A voz de povo de São Tomé”: “the people’s voice of the island”. Not that you detect that revolutionary zeal in his most joyous, sun-scorched island life harmonies. Those sweetened but dynamic tones disarm any kind of anger or rage.
Remarkably, until recently, and through those discerning people at the Bongo Joe label/store, there hadn’t really been any musical survey of the São Tomé & Principe. Their Léve Léve compilation, which takes its title from the locals carefree “take it easy” attitude, was the first. Bongo Joe now hones in one of that compilation’s star turns with this reissue of what is considered as Lima’s best album, Maguidala – if nothing else, this reissue could save you a hefty sum, as the original is going for anywhere up to £350 on discogs.
Originally recorded in ’85 with his trusted band Os Leonenses, this both sauntering and scuffled four track highlight from the catalogue showcases an artist at his peak. Relaxed but also driven at times, Maguidala is a conjunction, as fertile as the soil, of influences from across not only the island but also African continent. Perhaps picked up when recording on the mainland in Angola for a number of labels, and further afield in Lisbon during the 80s for the IEFE imprint, Lima’s sound took in the famous Congolese rumba style of Soukous, the Dominican Merengue and local “Puxa” rhythms. The results are a most buoyant, harmonious dancing groove of scuttling percussion, beautifully lulled sweet voices, trickling, picked and streaked guitar and peaceable goodwill. The title-track and finale (‘Lionensi Sá Tindadji’) are both busy, more constantly, if softly, driven performances that skiffle and rattle along. Lima for the most part serenading, attempts to add a few shrills and “whompahs” on the latter.
‘Sãma Nanzalé’ seems more drifting; almost a beachcomber lullaby. Whilst ‘Cxi Compa Sã Cã Batéla’ skips, saunters and shuffles towards that Congolese rumba influence.
The laissez faire sound of an island hideaway, Lima’s Maguidala showcase is a perfect summer album; a piece of escapism we could all do with right now. Prompted in part by Lima’s death last year, Bongo Joe has revived a warranted classic and shone a light on a musical legacy. Stick it on and let the good time rumba and Créole harmonies wash over you.
Special word from me, founder and basically one-man operator behind the Monolith Cocktail.
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.
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