NEW MUSIC REVIEWS
Words: Dominic Valvona
Tickling Our Fancy 047: Ah! Kosmos, Armellodie Records, La Mambanegra, Mokoomba, Omar Rahbany, Taos Humm, and Charles Vaughn.
Welcome to another edition of Dominic Valvona’s, most eclectic, review roundup of new releases. #47 includes a lively and sizzling revitalization of the Salsa music and dance style by Colombia’s La Mambanegra; an ambitious global-stamped passport of world music peregrinations, suites and songs from the Lebanese polymath Omar Rahbany; a Tonga ancestry soundtrack to love, loss and displacement from Zimbabwe’s breezy and playful lilting Mokoomba; the debut kaleidoscope misadventures of Taos Humm; a two-track EP of sophisticated electronic and cerebral synth pop from Ah! Kosmos, and psychogeography style ruminations on the omnipresence of pylons from Charles Vaughn. Plus, Glasgow’s Armellodie Records celebrate their tenth anniversary with a special celebratory showcase compilation of indie and quirky pop.
Omar Rahbany ‘Passport’
Released 10th March 2017
Talk about ambitious. The grandiose debut, part Middle Eastern rhapsody, part global symphony, from the Lebanese musical polymath Omar Rahbany, boasts a cast of 180 musicians and performers, from twelve different nationalities; all pulling together to produce an hour-long lyrical odyssey.
Taking the Beirut-born Rahbany three years to finish, his well-stamped Passport is inspired by a whirlwind of ideas and mediums. Broadening his “total work of art” conceptions to include film and choreography, projecting a mix of evocative instrumentals and vocal suites across a wide-screen vista, his “borderless” experiments are sophisticated, multi-layered and sweeping; often amorphously dropping from the classical into jazz-fusion.
The action and the themes, however, are deeply rooted, growing from a city that’s seen thousands of years of turmoil. Beirut, and the Lebanon, has been both scarred and enriched by countless civilizations, and as a result, the city is a patchwork of languages and religions, all sharing a history no one can agree on, or as the press statement puts it, Lebanon is “a nation that undertakes a constant struggle to find its ‘absolute identity’.” Imbued with a rich heritage that goes back at least two generations – his grandfather, Mansour, and great uncle, Assi, wowed the country with their distinct innovative compositions as the Rahbany Brothers; and his father is a playwright composer/lyricist and mother a famed professional dancer – Omer Rahbany’s opus is unmistakably steeped in the psychogeography of his native land.
Passport begins with a heralded Overture suite, which glides majestically through trilling flutes, accordion, piano and softened timpani, interpreting seasons as it goes and gradually building to a tumultuous crescendo. The Kiev City Symphony, conducted by Volodymyr Sirenko, adds a momentous grandeur of classicism and Bernstein to the Lebanese panorama. This full gamut of emotions score is followed by the heart aching Arabian lamented musical-esque, Umbrella Woman, which features the French Chanson like beautiful spiraling vocal performance of Ghada Nehme, and again, a grandiose orchestra accompaniment. Keeping a semblance of the sinfonietta, but also talking a cue from Amandia period Miles Davis, Rahbany and his extensive cast of players create an askewer avant-garde jazz, reggae and rock music soundtrack to the Biblical referenced vanity project, the tower of Babel, on the constantly evolving and changing Programmusik: Babel. A suitable cacophony is enacted to what was a legendary tower, built to reach the heavens and channel all communications under one universal language; TV and radio transmissions crackle alongside rocket bombardments and speeches to make the point.
Waltzes, rituals, the Tango, Byzantium, allusions to astral-travelling and spiritual peace are played on a mix of both traditional Western and Eastern instruments, including the bezok, rezok and oud. They articulate a wide spectrum of landscapes, from the deserts of North Africa to the reaches of outer space.
A soundtrack to an, as yet, unmade global spanning movie, Passport drifts from Lebanese theatre to jazz and the classical on what is an enthralling and ambitious whirlwind of a modern world music symphony.
https://soundcloud.com/omarrahbany/07-mouwachahat
La Mambanegra ‘El Callegüeso y su Mala Maña’
Released by Movimientos Records, 3rd March 2017
Nothing short of reinventing Salsa, the “machine-drilled nine-piece orchestra” from Colombia, La Mambanegra, promises an indecorous rebirth of the liveliest of Latin America’s music and dance styles. Injecting street smarts and a venomous dose of sass to a genre that has lost its luster in recent times, Jacobo Velez in his role as bandleader takes liberal pinches of inspiration from Salsa’s most vibrant and dynamic old guard and adds a eclectic mix of Nuyorican funk, soul, hip-hop and ragamuffin.
Translating as “The Black Mamba”, the La Mambanegra name and concept is embellished with Colombian mysticism and legend, loosely based on fact and fiction. Charting the story of an anonymous “hero” from the Barrio Obrero neighborhood in Cali (Colombia’s third largest city) and his “fantastic” adventures via La Habana, as he makes a journey to New York. Inspired by Velez’s own great grandfather, the musician Thomas Renteria (known to many as El Callegüeso Antigua), and his misadventures on a perilous voyage to the “Big Apple”, El Callegüeso y su Mala Maña celebrates as much as it focuses on Colombia’s tumultuous history; from the country’s own internal flight of people from the worst-hit areas of fighting between the government and FARC forces (though negotiations for an end to this fifty-year conflict are reaching, what looks like, a peaceful resolution), to cities such as Cali, and the migration to more stable states across the region and further afield, especially to the already mentioned New York. Renteria escaped drowning, thrown overboard on his intrepid voyage. Thankfully he made land; washed-up and stranded in Cuba, his stay proved to have been a productive one as he soon made friends with the famed Chano Pozo, who gave him, as legend has it, a “magical flute” from Africa. This infamous flute made that eventual journey to the USA, and was passed on to Velez, who uses it now as the source of his band name.
Migrating protagonists and snake spirited flutes aside, Velez and his troupe’s self-styled “break Salsa” transformation shoves Salsa towards its original revolutionary and communal dynamism. Sizzling with a wealth of Colombian talent, the La Mambanegra hub expands its ranks to include guest spots from Latin America’s finest. Dutch trumpeter, and Colombian-resident, Maite Hantele appears with the Colombian percussionist Denilson Ibargüen on the sultry, brightened horns, Fania-style trip to Africa via Miami opener, Pure Potenkem, and jazz great, Eddy Martinez can be heard on the more lilting, serenaded, lyrical tongue-twisting, Contare Para Vos. They sweep, but mostly saunter, through a grandiose mix of Kid Frost meet DJ Muggs Latino funking rap (La Compostura and Barrio Caliente, which features a lingering candour of The Pazant Brothers A Gritty Nitty); Albert Ayler jamming with Lalo Schifrin to create a Havana-style Salsa and jazz hybrid (Me Parece Perfecto); and Henri-Pierre Noel Haitian disco converges with South American cabaret (La Kokinbomba).
La Mambanegra’s uncoiled snake spirit spits out a fiery fusion, straddling the old and new guards and adding some 21st century grunt and excitement to a Salsa rebirth. One of many great groups from Colombia enlivened and confident of their vigorous cross-border influences, this multi-limbed orchestra steps up with an invigorated Latin celebration and revival.
Mokoomba ‘Luyando’
Released by Outhere Records, March 10th 2017
The next stop on our global music review is Zimbabwe; home to the energetic Mokoomba. Imbued by the awe-inspiring, life-giving forces of the Victoria Falls and Zambezi River scenery that nurtures the region, the group pay homage, not just with their name, which translates and encapsulates a “deep respect for the river”, but in their lyrics too. Most notably on the opening pan-flute lilting, nylon-string plucked guitar swooning Mokole, which literally translates as “water” in the Ndebele tongue, and pays tribute to the beauty and importance of those impressive and immensely powerful Falls.
Though they use a mix of languages on their latest, self-produced, album Luyando, it is the ethnicity of the Tonga that proves to be the integral ingredient to the Mokoomba sound and subject matters. One of Zimbabwe and the neighboring Zambia’s smallest ethnic groups, the Tonga’s ancestry goes back an age, yet in the second half of the twentieth century they were unceremoniously uprooted from their homes to make way for the Kariba dam. No repatriations were ever made, and fifty odd years later, many are still waiting to be connected to electricity. Their plight forms the backbone of the atavistic meets organically building, call and response, breakbeat Kambowa track. An articulation of pain, loss and longing, this traditional drum and group vocal performance begins as a glimpse into history but soon grows rhythmically, hurtling down the railway track towards a joyful funk.
The balance between tradition and the contemporary continues throughout the album. Growing up in the Chinotimba Township, the group learnt to blend their roots with the rhythms of Zimrock, soukous, ska and salsa. Moving closer towards those roots, Mokoomba have changed direction slightly from their debut in 2012, Rising Tide, which was a more switched-on rocking affair. Luyando is in comparison, more raw and stripped; a mostly acoustic performance that leans towards the local sounds of the region on what the bio declares, “is a quest for the wisdom of tradition and history as well as insight and solace amid contemporary crisis.”
Of course, no conversation, commentary and review on Zimbabwe can continue for long without mentioning the omnipresent Mugabe. Completely impervious to his own people and the neighboring borders and greater international communities; splitting his fiefdom into fierce rivalries whilst the country grinds to a slow collapse, Robert Mugabe has unsurprisingly few admirers within the arts and music world. Yet far from rattling the rafters and bawling in protest, Makoomba meander peaceably through their Tonga heritage, making a connection with the rituals and ceremonies that shaped them: looking back to go forward in a sense. The title track for instance, “mother’s love”, alludes to the Makishi masquerade and joyous graduation ceremony called Chilende; an initiation for boys between the ages of eight and twelve, who leave their village homes and live for one to three months at a bush camp. The song itself is a soothing sweet paean, punctuated by various hooting, animal-like, noises. And the moving, dusty earthy soulful Kumukanda is built around another Tonga initiation ceremony, on the band experienced in their teens.
Raw and emotional raspy; plucking and picking; shuffling and winding; Mokoomba channel their ancestral roots through an often lulled and playful, though at times more intense, spiritually harmonious blend of local and cross border rhythms. The voice of protest and the quest to find an answer to all the turmoil has seldom sounded so breezy and sweetened.
Taos Humm ‘Flute Of The Noodle Bender’
Released by Stolen Body Records/ Howling Owl Records, 17th March 2017
The burgeoning Bristol label, Stolen Body Records, has carved a certain niche for itself delivering some of the best garage band and psychedelic releases of late; somehow squeezing something fresh and inventive out of genres that, lets face it, have been flogged to death.
Among their rich roster, and a constant surprise, is the Isle of Wight émigré abound in Bristol, Edward Penfold, whose debut languid beyond-the-calico-wall psychedelic solo LP, Caulkhead, made our choice albums of 2016. Another year, another set-up and this time a congruous shared release with Howling Owl Records sees Penfold joined by fellow psych initiates Joe Paradisos and Matt Robbins, under the Taos Humm banner.
The trio’s debut, Flute Of The Noodle Bender, might imply some kind of allusion to psychedelia’s golden age, but there’s more of a post-punk, cacophonous feel to this twisted kaleidoscope of haunted somnolence and erratic, jerking, razor-cutting guitar hysteria: and indeed noodling. Though vocally – when there are lyrics, narration and voiced utterances to be found – the reverberations of Kevin Ayers, Syd Barrett and gramophone, calling from a bygone bucolic age, Tiny Tim permeate Taos Humm sound musically like a lax clash of Postcard Record label releases from the early 80s – on the discordant strangulated guitar vortex Hi Hats Are For Post Punk Heroes – and a Galapagos islands Fiery Furnaces – on the alternating attack/ sustain amorphous Velociraptortoise.
Despite the spikiness, intense tremolo quivers and the tortuous Gothic schlock horror screaming and screeching guitar mooning of BB, there’s a semblance of melting psychedelia, shoegaze and pondering post-rock lingering in between the erraticism and urgency. This kool-aid inebriated state can be heard on the wafting, mirage melodious Meek, and the lulling South Seas peregrination Tapestar, which has the group perform a suitable drifting, lush, instrumental and hushed cooing workout over the top of a recorded loop, played off what sounds like (as the title would imply) a tape recorder, from John Barry’s You Only Live Twice soundtrack.
Flute Of The Noodle Bender is full of ideas, both maniacal and languorously vague. Psychedelia, lo fi, shoegaze, post this past that all merge into a mix of wig out adventures and off-kilter velocity that’s way beyond the imaginations of most bands.
Various Artists ‘Armellodie Is 10’
Released by Armellodie Records, 10th March 2017
Self-deprecating. Mocking their status as a relatively obscure record label – as demonstrated by the cover art, which features a blasé Daft Punk, as though beamed down from another planet, loftily show their ignorance to a Glaswegian record shop assistant – the thankless task duo behind Glasgow’s Armellodie Records, Al Nero and Scott Maple, celebrate their tenth anniversary.
A beacon for countless mavericks and eccentrics, Armellodie has – despite alluding universal recognition from silly robotic-helmeted French electronic music stars – released a steady flow of exciting, interesting and melodically diaphanous indie and quirky pop records over the last ten years. Encapsulating, what is and has been, a varied roster Armellodie Is 10 documents the label’s output; picking out twenty tracks.
Featured on the Monolith Cocktail a while back, the collection’s opening artist, the idiosyncratic Yip Man, offers an skewered rhythmic gait version of Squeeze on the inventive pop ditty Barnburner. Also previously receiving our seal of approval, the lush anthemic indie stargazers, The Hazey Janes, are represented by their magnificent Manics-esque emotional rollercoaster The Fathom Line.
Elsewhere, Appletop make US college radio alt-rock sound somehow inimitably Scottish on Burning Land; the rambunctious Super Adventure Club turn in a distressed math rock stormer with Pick Up Sticks; and Conor Mason hands-in the lingering, charming country pick-up Words.
Immensely proud of their roots, referencing through band names and song titles Scotland’s tumultuous but proud history: For instance, The Scottish Enlightenment, which proves to be a great band moniker. However, The Douglas Firs (another cracking name), with all the sincerity in the world, pay a sort of homage to that cult favorite, Highlander – we’ll forget about the loose historical inaccuracies, it is a fantasy after all. The Quickening, which proves to be a folky peregrination around the campfires – pondering between sweetness and ambient experimentation –, takes its title from the, shoddy and usually over-egged pyrotechnic blast onscreen, duel to the death by decapitation of the film and TV franchises’ “immortals”. The song itself sounds serious enough and quite beautiful.
Not that any validation is needed, Armellodie Is 10 is a most brilliant showcase and anniversary celebration from a label that has remained constant. This is a label that thoroughly deserves championing. Here’s to the next anniversary in 2027.
Ah! Kosmos ‘Together We Collide’
Featured for the first time on the Monolith Cocktail in 2013, the Istanbul-born sound designer and electronic music composer Basak Günak was just starting out on a fruitful career, releasing the alien subterranean debut EP, Flesh. Under the cosmological guise of Ah! Kosmos, Günak has, we’re happy to say, gone on to reach international acclaim.
Relocating to Berlin a while back, Günak has composed numerous sound-art pieces and soundtracks for installations, site-specific work, short films and plays, and has also garnered favorable reviews for her experimental electronic and dance music performances. Her latest release, Together We Collide, is a two-track EP; the first track of which, From The Land Below, features the rich polygenesis soulful vocals of Warp label signed artist LAFAWNDAH. Clattering-stick percussion, taut delay, nuanced swaddling horns and a number of synchronized rhythms, both Techno and futuristic jazz leaning, form a sophisticated soundtrack for the undulating vocals. Moody in the manner of Massive Attack, this mythological, spiritual trip starts to click after repeated plays, and sounds more and more melodies each time.
Keeping From The Land Below company is the Tricky-swooning-to-the-moon-above-Eastern-skies, winding and pondering, Silent Safe. Awaiting the listener is a wilderness with symbolic spellbinding ritual yearning, cooing lyricism and tribal trip-hop beats, verging on leftfield synth pop.
Highly sophisticated, nuanced and dare say, cerebral, Günak continues to produce a deep thoughtful mix of electronic and melodic poetics, this latest EP another brilliant example of her growing reputation as an inventive composer and artist.
Charles Vaughan ‘Pylon Reveries’
Released by Wayside & Woodland Recordings, 24th March 2017
Despite being vividly warned-off, like many of us kids in the 1980s, exposed to TV public health and warning announcements films from playing anywhere near pylons (for obvious reasons). Charles Vaughan is fascinated with these metal leviathans. Collected from a decade’s worth of filled-up hard drives and miscellaneous tapes, his fourth soundscape come psychogeography soundtrack is suffused with the pylons constant throbbing and charged omnipresence.
Attempting in a conceptual sonic manner to escape the overburdened mind, plugged into the overbearing data avalanche of an increasing impossible to break free from technologically connected world, Vaughan shows that even in the middle of an isolated field/meadow it’s near impossible to find a sense of disconnection: the hum, pulse and crackle of technology always close at hand; symbolized by the proliferation of pylons, straddling the landscape.
Handled with subtlety, the fizzled droning undulations of these looming “sentinels” move slowly and sonorously; often in trepidation and constantly unsettling. From shorter, passing vignettes and ruminations to longer, drawn-out ambient pieces, Pylon Reveries fluctuates between Ambient Works era Aphex Twin and Kosmische pioneer Asmus Tietchens, and on the transmogrified harpsichord-like arpeggiator, neo-classical, Revery, Thomas Dinger and Hans-Joachim Roedelius.
There’s a certain wonder and reflection on these “totems”, but also a sense of nostalgia too, one borne out of an interest for the type of dystopia themed TV shows of the late 70s and 80s. Vaughan after all takes his name from a character in the British lo fi drama, Survivors; the synopsis of which has a virus wipe out 98% (very specific!) of the world’s population. Vaughan emerges in the aftermath of this catastrophe with a band of “survivors” to a desolate wilderness. Tasked with collecting information and exploring he hopes to rebuild society from the ground up. Here he is then, reimagined, documenting and creating a reification of the infrastructure that encroaches upon the land and our lives: Is technology freeing us or slowly binding us to a new reliance?
Increasingly uncomfortable with the fears of an ever-connected society, one that is moving towards a fully integrated technology, Vaughan has a myriad of feelings and meditations to represent through sound, but it is an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty, which dominates and prevails.
Our Daily Bread 239: Conrad Schnitzler/Pole ‘Con-Struct’
March 6, 2017
LP REVIEW
Words: Ayfer Simms
Conrad Schnitzler / Pole ‘Con-Struct’
Released by Bureau B, 24th March 2017
This music is described as avant-garde because on the surface the notes appear to be unwelcoming, obscure and almost shuddery, like a sort of peering into a black hole, with simply no place to grip. However the feeling quickly changes as the story emerges skillfully, then, it is like watching a scene shot thirty thousand years ago. The late Conrad Schnitzler, didn’t describe the future, he forged his music drawing from the depth of consciousness, not just the individual’s, but from humankind’s waking one.
Do you hear the sound of the flint, taping on a rock, mechanically and continuously, for centuries?
Sounds of the album are drawn from the past, from our very own flesh as death looms on us, as it did on our ancestors. The future is behind us, within us, the tracks construct the stages of history in their most subtle aspects. On this beautiful album, time is dismantled, space, gravity, dimensions appear like a flash, a glimmer in the most savage and dreary landscape, portraying the different periods of man who despite his insipidity, has gathered, prudently at first, under thorny elements and emerged strong against the deep, coarse and indifferent nature. And now can you hear how a simple combination of synths-effects renders the strength of ancients? That natural longing for war in the thick of our heart as we hunt, gather and hunt. Hunt until our own blossoming death?
Conrad’s frictionless world is the past disguised in the future. To break the code of the album, it’s best listened to loud and near the ears. The tracks will then unlock and tap straight into your bloodstream.
https://soundcloud.com/bureau-1/conrad-schnitzler-pole-con-struct-snippets
LABEL LAUNCH/SINGLE
Words: Dominic Valvona
Jono Podmore & Swantje Lichtenstein ‘Miss Slipper/Lewes’
Released on Psychomat, 6th March 2017
Responsible for a stream of experimental electronic projects, both on the cutting edge of technology and vanguard of a return to the roots of analogue, and a member of the manifesto guided metamono trio, Jono Podmore has cranked-up the generator, punched in new coordinates and blown the dust off the dials to relaunch his influential 90s label, Psychomat.
Renowned for his cerebral collaborations with a number of luminaries from across the electronic music spectrum, but famously for his work with both Can’s Irmin Schmidt (together as the Kumo and Irmin Schmidt duo) and the late Jaki Liebezeit (Cyclopean), Jono’s inaugural label comeback pairs him with the Düsseldorf-based sound writer/performance artist Swantje Lichtenstein.
A conceptual meeting of minds, the duo’s upcoming Michaela Eichwald cover art adorned 7”, which is billed as an actual “work of art” in its own right, features two serialism performance-manipulations recorded at Jono’s on the day of the funeral of his friend, the publisher Felix Hiner, in 2014.
The first of these, Miss Slipper, is of all things, riffing off a piece of writing by Jono’s daughter. A spontaneous freewheeling interpretation of an innocent description of a school art teacher is pushed towards the alien by ring modulations and filter trickery. Obscured and transmogrified into something almost sinister, even daemonic, Swantje’s voice shifts between squelched and metallic strange tongues.
Lingering in the same atmosphere, beyond the stratospheric, the idyllic pastoral East Sussex town of Lewes slips into a parallel dimension of weirdness; the metamono sat-nav tuning into a beacon communal with unknown entities, somewhere yonder in the ether. Based on a set of directions given to the group for a gig in Lewes, this extemporized art-piece glitches, buzzes and chants its amorphous script until it becomes directionless; untethered on wave after wave of tubular ringing, echoed and chromed effects; disappearing into the torn fabrics of space.
Miss Slipper/Lewes is every bit as conceptual and experimental as you’d expect, and lays down the start of, what I hope, will be a fruitful union of art and sound work. We may not have to wait long though for the next installment, as a series of remixes from Pete Hope, Hairy Kipper, Inky Blackness, Bastard Status, Jono in his Kumo guise, and Professor Michael Ball (a colleague of Jono’s and a professor of electronic composition), will be released in the coming weeks and months.
Rapture & Verse: February 2017:
February 23, 2017
HIP-HOP ROUNDUP
Words: Matt Oliver
Singles/EPs
Having had all our ideas for a witty intro brainwashed by the off-piste pizzazz of Strange U’s ‘#LP4080’, (you don’t wanna know about a Biggie/Faith Evans duets album anyway), lead space cadet Kashmere has also been dabbling in backstreet voodoo with Bambooman on the ‘Supergod’ EP. Verbally out of shape as usual, a wee drop of alchemy sprinkled over stripped backdrops goes a long way. Dabbla, in his usual style sounding like he’s dashing in and out of rush hour traffic, shows off how good his ‘Cardio’ is, and Joker Starr does whatever he can to bring doom without the cartoon to ‘Spy Da Man’. Dream McLean and The Last Skeptik know the value of the basics: the ‘Cheese on Brown Bread’ EP is four tracks, not needing any extra garnish, just cunningly sharp words pricking simple neck chops. Back in the old routine, DJ Format and Abdominal ready a new album with a pair of funky head hunters: industry tell-tale ‘Behind the Scenes’, and 100mph throwdown ‘Diamond Hammer’.
Instrumentals to both ease and expand minds from IMAKEMADBEATS on the seven-starred ‘Better Left Unsaid’, include a remoulding of 10CC and views of hip-hop from afar. Attempting to stay Gd up while keeping to a righteous path, Obi J reps ‘Red City’ with reflection and retaliation. The non-stop hustle of Avarice, bending jazz under his control into a hard-as-nails enforcement of ferocious rhymes, makes ‘Words and Sounds’ anything but simplistic, where the only greed is to go all out. Six tracks that stand up to be counted.
Raekwon beat down ‘This is What It Comes Too’ is a timely reminder to respect the gods, well set up by Xtreme’s subtle flip of a hip-hop fundamental that lets the Chef build and destroy. On ‘The Art of Rock Climbing’, Boldy James welcomes you to the total gangsta experience. Whether in the thick of it or just lounging in the aftermath, the DJ Butter-assisted EP runs rewindable rackets out of Detroit. Wallowing ‘In the Mud’, deM atlaS questions everything and nurses a life hangover in the process, and Vince Staples wilds out, plain and simple, on ‘BagBak’. Passport Rav and Asi Frio will measure you for concrete shoes ahead of a trip to the ‘Shark Tank’ in a callous mob style, while on ‘Help’, the all out 16s of Your Old Droog, Wiki and Edan leap from building to building while the world implodes under a prog rock plume and Rob Base is the last voice of reason. Not a track found pussy footing.
Getting sunshine to glance round the corner, Chris Read & Pugs Atomz air it out over ‘Chocolate Milk’, neo-soul with the bonus of a great hook. ‘Black Nite’ goes deeper and slinkier, with two twizzly remixes from Myke Forte. Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s timeless ‘They Reminisce Over You’ makes its 7” debut and enhances its legend that little bit more.
Albums
‘The Building’, a towering B-boy document from honourable humanitarians Mazzi and SOUL Purpose, gives familiar samples new life and piles high banks of bricks and mortar beats and rhymes you can always back to do the business. No punches pulled, see it hanging around year bests in 10 months time. Sucker puncher M Dot gets into it with the ‘Ego and The Enemy’, a spokesman for pessimists arguing reality where there’s no such thing as hard luck stories or second chances. Impressive assists from Hi-Tek, Method Man, Camp Lo, Marco Polo, Large Professor and Marley Marl (craftily flipping of all people, Ms Dynamite) help the Boston brawler grab the game by the scruff of the neck and pop vertebrae like bubblegum.
A heavy dose of Oh No & Tristate cuts class A dope for ‘3 Dimensional Prescriptions’; following the Gangrene cookbook, a dangerous connection casting their own shadow and treating willowy funk and soul like a cross-border haul, it’s an album that sounds equal parts elite and illicit, glamour and gall. Get fixed up. Great all round game from LiKWUiD, with 2 Hungry Bros feeding the machine on the boards, makes ‘Fay Grim’ a storybook full of sass, stress, strike outs and scholarly knowledge that shows fairytales for what they are. An album not rhyming for the sake of riddling. Dope KNife’s ‘NineteenEightyFour’ is an absolute battering ram of four wheel drive blasting through the boggiest of boom bap. Describing the savagery as “the movie Taxi Driver in rap form” is no joke, and Big Brother would think twice about listening in.
A clutch of autobiographical styles from the UK now: the composure of Loyle Carner’s low-key ‘Yesterday’s Gone’, even when the odds of the day to day aren’t always even, creates a new and relatable street bard elect. The decidedly more unrepentant Devlin and the ferocity of ‘The Devil’s In’ is perfect synching second time around after the overproduction that strangled his debut; and Big Heath reminding not to take home comforts and hard work for granted on ‘Smells of Beef’ gets the essentials all in order. Less introspective and just balls out slimy, Stinkin Slumrock & Morriarchi’s ‘Morrstinkin’ parades a doomed brand of swaggering sewer rat rap, hinting what once was polished and optimistic is now ripe for red light zones and no man’s land.
Quelle Chris’ ‘Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often’ catches itself in ups, downs (either going in hard or trying to function) and managing the in betweens. Therefore it never sits still both lyrically and stylistically, with wit and reflection both sharp and slowly revealing itself. Worth taking time with. A similarly individual look at the human condition is Stik Figa’s ‘Central Standard Time’, making the verbally dense levitate – “I got some idioms for idiots if anybody interested” – and displaying appealing introspection and emotional intelligence that’s just the right volume of far out. More of a catharsis is ‘Rap Album Two’, Jonwayne’s return that makes personal struggle both poignant and unapologetic for showing its hand. Suitably muted but speaking strongly and openly, in hushed tones without looking for sympathy, watch its humble humanity become the choice of the open eared this year.
When you can’t see the angles no more, you in trouble. Alternatively, when Corners come into view, fresh UK hip-hop will get you going. Beit Nun, Benny Diction and Deeflux pass the mic like a Sunday morning game of frisbee, and the casualness of their goodness taking the sting out of everyday slogging is pretty devastating. Eight-track ear swim ‘Tape Echo – Gold Floppies’ has dynamic duo Torb The Roach and Floppy McSpace sedating speakers in some unknown realm. Instrumentals grab armfuls of samples and cook them in slowly boiled delirium to create a thick beat stew. The broth of Batsauce for the ‘Clean Plate’ series is also a heavy ladle using battered wax as a serving suggestion; apple-bobbing funk, hot pockets of flavour, and samples strewn to make some kind of sense. Chrome’s ‘The Remix’ funky-freshens a bunch of Britcore classics, golden age staples, and queues Kanye, Edan, Ty, Savvy and De La Soul for a session in his win-win, no fee surgery.
Mixtapes
Currently giving Midas tips on how to win, Paul White goes through his psychedelic wax satchel and like a hypnotist, comes up with ‘Everything You’ve Forgotten’, a free mix of past/present/future beats marbling into one. Fighting the power with a comprehensive manifesto , Lushlife’s ‘My Idols are Dead + My Enemies are in Power’ is unequivocal in its activism, a rolling funk fire to get hearts racing and fists clenched at once. Ain’t nothing sweet about the tongue lashing ‘Pick & Mix Experience’ of Ramson Badbonez and Jazz T, a half hour of hard nuts to crack teeth and heat that’s off the Scoville scale.
Feet to the floor with A7PHA and Paul White & Danny Brown, and street takes from HPPYPPL and Gatecrasherz.
Our Daily Bread 237: Tamikrest ‘Kidal’
February 21, 2017
ALBUM REVIEW
Words: Dominic Valvona
Tamikrest ‘Kidal’
Released by Glitterbeat Records, 1 7th March 2017
It’s been five years since Mali was last thrust into the world’s media spotlight; the Nomadic Tuareg’s age-old cause to gain control of an autonomous region in the country’s northwest border was abruptly hijacked by a less than sympathetic, franchise of Al-Qaeda. Declaring an independent state, known as the Azawad, in 2012, the Tuaregs were soon compromised by their miscreant partners; their ambitions reaching far further with an insurgency that threatened to destabilize the entire country. In their wake these extremists reduced many historical and revered sites to dust, and imposed the harshest forms of Islamist rule wherever they went: much to the distress of the Tuaregs.
Though it was more or less all-over within a year, the Mali government was forced to seek military assistance from the former colonial overlords, France, who rapidly quashed the insurgency and uprising, restoring, a sort of, peace to the region. An uneasy calm continues, albeit with a haphazard terrorist campaign (more recently in 2015, with an attack on a hotel in the Mali capital, Bamako) replacing the Islamists previous emboldened charge across the country, and a spiritually restless Tuareg population, trapped between a hostile government and the encroaching threat posed by global corporations eager to commodify their desert home.
Still without a homeland, though liberated from their draconian partners, the Tuareg are once again left, as wanderers in their own lands, the unofficial guardians and custodians of the Saharan wilderness. For now only a dream, best realized and protested through music, the rock’n’roll Bedouins Tamikrest emerge once more from the barren landscape with a message of “power and resistance”, on their fourth, equally entrancing, album Kidal. Paying homage to the strategically and spiritually important cultural trading town of the title, the highly-acclaimed (and rightly so) Tamikrest exude both the sadness and suffering of the dispossessed people who cling to the southwestern Saharan hub that is Kidal: a town which has seen its fair share of fighting, fought over, conquered and reconquered over time, it remains a symbolic home to the Tuareg. This is after all the town that nurtured them and where it all began.
Preserving an increasingly endangered ancestral culture and language, Tamikrest’s cause cannot be separated from their music. Yet, rather than protest with bombast or angry rhetoric, they articulate their woes with a poetic, lyrically sauntering cadence. Oasmane Ag Mosa’s earthy lead vocals resonate deeply, even if his timbre maintains a stoic dignified pitch. Backed by Aghaly Ag Mohamedine and Cheick Ag Tiglia on backing and duets, a lulling sweetness transcends, which on occasions adds a certain romanticism to the impassioned struggle. Swaying effortlessly between the meandering and up-tempo, the accentuated dynamics of Mosa and Paul Salvagnac’s entwined, untethered and contoured guitar work, Mohamedine’s “gatherer” Djembe rope-tuned goblet drumming, Nicolas Grupp’s askew backbeats and Tiglia’s smooth, free-roaming bass lines transport the listener to the mystical topography of the desert. Tamikrest’s mirage-style emerges into focus on the opening shimmering camel-procession Mawarnih Tartit, before traversing the vast plains with a drifting echo of Afro funk on Wainan Adobat. But perhaps one of the group’s most off-kilter, dizzying, entranced spells yet is the twilight hour twanged, giddy War Toyed, which has an almost dislocated rhythm. And definitely among their most reflective explorations, Atwitas features Salvagnac’s sublime, mournful and pining slide-guitar work; redolent of Ry Cooder’s own parallel American desert blues evocations.
Written in the desert but recorded in the urban capital of Bamako, Kidal was produced by Mark Mulholland (his last production, the Tony Allen and Haiti ensemble collaboration, AHEO, made our top albums of 2016 features), and mixed by Grammy award winner David Odlum. As a result, the album subtly embraces a wider musical palette, with hints of country and folk on the haunting Tanaka, and, what sounds at times like a strange Malian XTC on the plaintive cry for freedom War Tila Eridaran. And so it has already been noted that western artists, such as Hendrix and even Pink Floyd have had an influence on many African bands. A mutual exchange of course, the home of blues taking a little something back from the West. There’s still no mistaking that inherent African desert sound and passion, even if Kidal reaches out beyond the barren reaches of Mali’s borders for an ever expansive and diversified sound.
Assiduous, confident and articulate, the musicianship shows not so much a progression as a balance between the meditative and rock’n’roll spirit of the Tuareg musical resistance. Tamikrest are as brilliant as ever musically, and Kidal is, despite its plaintive and lamentable subject woes, a beacon of hope in an ever-darkening world of uncertainty.
Tickling Our Fancy 046: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Nightjar…
February 14, 2017
NEW MUSIC REVIEWS
Words: Dominic Valvona
Tickling Our Fancy 046: Srdjan Beronja, Nick Blackos, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Irk Yste, IRL Remixes, The Nightjar and Baluji Shrivastav.
In this edition of Tickling Our Fancy, Alec Ounsworth, under his famous Clap Your Hands Say Yeah moniker, returns with a brilliant new “cathartic” purging of an album, The Tourist; the inconspicuous but effective in spreading ever more eclectic world music sounds to a wider audience, Independent Records Ltd label, celebrates its first fifteen years in the business with an album of transmogrified remixes, entitled Terraforming In Analogue Space; ARC Music release two Indian music inspired albums, with a Best Of the legendary Baluji Shrivastav (who made London his home in the early 80s) and a new travelogue that straddles not only India, but also the Balkans and the Middle East, from the erudite Serbian multi instrumentalist Srdjan Beronja; The Nightjar unfurl their accentuated and stark contemplated post-folk debut, Objects; plus the inaugural release for the German label, GiveUsYourGOLD, from the Weimar Techno duo Irk Yste, and a new album of Nick Blackos hip-hop instrumentals from the burgeoning ONV blueprint.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ‘The Tourist’
Released 24th February 2017
Inimitably jump-starting a cerebral indie-pop scene in the mid noughties with his unique off-kilter melodies and quivered, yodeled vocals, the fiercely independent, Alec Ounsworth created major ripples with his nom de plume, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-released debut in 2005.
Every critics nightmare in the labored name department, and so abbreviated to save precious time (oh pity us poor feckless critic darlings!), CYHSY was instrumental in influencing and inspiring a rafter of artists and bands. Ounsworth’s peers have evidently caught up, and his fifth album, The Tourist, reflects this; suffused as it is with familiar echoes of The Parenthetical Girls, Les Savy Fav, Elliot Smith, the Arcade Fire, and on the askew r’n’b lite, A Chance To Cure, Chk Chk Chk.
One man’s vision, orchestrated in a solitary fashion, Ounsworth is self-confessedly “stubborn” when it comes to recording. However, though he writes and arranges everything he’s joined in the studio by a bassist and drummer, who offer a bright, expanded “band feel” to the material. These recordings were further embellished with additional back-up vocals, keyboards, guitars and percussion, tidied up by engineer Nick Krill and eventually mixed (and egged-on) by CYHSY “anchor” Dave Friedman – who previously worked of course on the Some Loud Thunder and Only Run albums. The results of this process are magnificent; the anxiety-ridden, rich challenging themes channeled through an airy and often breezy big sound.
Ounsworth stumbles and ponders through a “post factual” strewn world of challenging emotions trying, to make sense of it all. At times the album title could even be said to act as a metaphor for the artist’s own estranged and removed soul-searching: a tourist in his own country. As lyrically adroit as ever, he carefully crams in as many associated references and wordplays as he can, squeezing a lot out of every phrase and expression in a characteristic style that leans towards a more cheery disposed Thom Yorke. Despite some sad and profound pathos heavy lyricism, Ounsworth’s “purging” of thoughts is meant to be a cathartic experience. The anxieties of our times can’t help but leak from every other line, yet The Tourist is a fairly warm, jangly surprise package of lolloping and anthemic songs. Building and soaring to an emotive brightened crescendo of sweetness and yearning on The Vanity Of Trying; contorting and bending guitar textures in a Robert Fripp fashion on the psych-pop gnarled Down (Is Where I Want To Be); and, up close and personal (every breathe audible) to the mic, driving through an 80s nocturnal rock ballad on Better Off, the inimitable Ounsworth careers through a full gamut of moods and chaos in the most natural and energetically purposeful way.
Clocking in at well under the forty minute mark (bands and artists take note) The Tourist is an unlabored, near-perfect melodious album. It says all it needs to and more; free of indulgence, and despite its bombast, sophisticated suffused layering is incredibly lean and brisk. A most enjoyable if poignant experience, this album already sets the benchmark in 2017, and is without doubt one of CYHSY’s best.
Various ‘Terraforming In Analogue Space – IRL Remixes 2000 – 2015’
Released by IRL, 24th February 2017
Celebrating fifteen years (the first that is) of “global music” transmogrification – transforming what are in many cases the most raw and basic of field recordings into stunning peregrinations and flights of internationally amorphous fantasy – Independent Records Ltd. have chosen label stalwart Nick “Dubulah” Page to curate a 100th release special of remixes, that once again, in-keeping with their “raison d’être”, offers an alternative sonic vision of choice tracks from the back catalogue.
Regular Monolith Cocktail followers may recall my review of Page’s Xaos mythical Hellenistic soundscape collaboration with Ahetas Jimi and a group of traditional musicians, which made the blog’s choice albums of 2015 feature. The multi-instrumentalist, producer and writer may also be familiar to readers for his work with Transglobal Underground and Dub Colossus. All three of which appear in one form or another on this reinvigorated album: that reimagined Greek tragedy Xaos, for instance, is represented with a David Sylvian flittering, and quickened rhythm and beats swaddled TJ Rehmi mix of Pindos Full Moon, and a subtle bounding timpani, 80s synth-horror soundtrack style treatment, by Stereo Mike, of the esoteric Byzantine evocation Processional – one part atavistic Biblical Aphrodite’s Child, the other, John Carpenter in the “fog”.
But before we venture any further, a little background is needed. The illusive IRL – not one to herald and pontificate loudly – have remained a highly influential purveyor of music from across the most wild, isolated and wondrous corners of the world, even if they remain on the peripherals; relatively obscure. Originally formed by a trio of artist/band managers, whose eclectic CV included managing at one time or another, Sinead O’Connor, Beth Orton, Rialto, Jah Wobble and The Wonder Stuff, IRL’s remit was to remain inconspicuous. Key figures in this enterprise, the guitarist and in recent years, member of Robert Plant’s Sensational Space Shifters, Justin Adams, and field recording specialist extraordinaire and general polymath of distinction, Ian Brennan, have brought the goods, or at least help shape them. And it’s no surprise that they feature heavily, with both their own productions and songs receiving the remix treatment, but also appearing in their original form on a second CD. Brennan, who I interviewed for the blog last year, memorably introduced the sublime ragged and dusty gospel-influenced Malawi Mouse Boys to the label. The rodent kebab sellers and, as it turns out, gifted musicians/singers from one of the poorest of poor hamlets are given a galloping dubstep-lite flitter by The Dhol Foundation on the village serenaded and lolloping, Ndinasangalala (I Was Happy), and acquire a Teutonic electro affects package of drum pad lasers, modulating contoured synth and handclap percussion (remolded from the joyous clapping on the original) on Dalek Romeo’s horizon floating mix of Manja (Clap Your Hands). Other choice Brennan productions, reconfigured and taken off-course, include the Lunar Drive mix of General Paolino’s Congratulations South Sudan, which shifts between two-step accelerated shuffling and half-time dreamy lilting soul, and the Penguin Café Orchestra’s, as ever, lush and subtle scenic mix of Acholi Machon’s Convoy.
Making the most appearances however, the already mentioned Justin Adams appears in many guises, both as a solo artist and as a collaborator and producer. His own lo fi Desert Road trip is underlain with a percussive cycle of tight-delayed electronic snare and soft prodding synthesized bass by Dub Colossus, but keeps its original mirage-shimmering candor. There’s also a lunar whistling and quivering Radar Station mix of Adams’, with Juldeh Camera’s Ngamen, and a trio of, mostly subtle transformations of the French chanson group Lo’Jo, who Adams produced. Heavily intoxicated by North African musical influences, Lo’Jo in fact took Adams on his first trip to Mali, which as a result, led to them both producing the sublime Tuareg desert blues group Tinariwen’s legendary 2001 release, The Radio Tisdas Sessions.
Complementing Lo’Jo’s Arab-Franco signatures further, as if in some kind of dreamscape, Bernard O’Neill (comrade-in-arms of Page in Dub Colossus and other incarnations), appearing here under the Syriana banner, accentuates the jazzy seductive, liaison-amongst-the-Tunisian-sand-dunes, mood with a Holger Czukay-like evocation on the group’s Sur Des Carnet Nus. A Boyscout mix of their languid Yalaki reimagines them as Moloko, whilst album closer, Carnet US Vatican Radio, also mixed by O’Neill, lets the concertinaed, yearning lived-in French vocals and atmospheric crackles dissipate into the ether.
Broadening musical horizons, if politically and societally it seems many are retreating towards nationalistic introspection, IRL have released some superb albums. It was through the label’s 2003 Festival In The Desert LP that I first heard the mesmerizing Saharan transcendental blues of Tinariwen. And the “terraforming in analogue space” album opens with a suitably suffused desert contoured and Kraftwerk-like kinetic beats driven peregrination of their entrancing Oualahila by the world music and electronica fusion doyens Transglobal Underground.
Taking the LP title literally, “terraforming” describes the process of making a planet habitable for us humans, changing the atmosphere and life-giving properties to that of Earths. In this instance, IRL allow others to reshape their back catalogue in an attempt to introduce the listener to inhabit an ever richer and eclectic space. Despite drifting untethered into the galaxy, at times sounding almost alien, this remix appraisal seeks to bring the global community together in the spirit of human commonality.
The Nightjar ‘Objects’
Released 17th March 2017
To the group’s credit, The Nightjar’s accentuated and stark contemplations on the human condition and the constructs that give meaning to reality itself, including the inevitable specter of death, couldn’t have sounded more peaceable and full of grace. Such heavy themes as these, inspired in part by both Eastern philosophy and the Catholic afflatus metaphysical quandaries, posed by the late venerable French composer Olivier Messiaen, usually promise a hard slog and grueling experience for the listener. Yet, despite the raw directness of this Bristol ensemble’s naturalistic, poised, songbook of “hope, loss and disaster”, every performance is beautifully and dreamily executed.
Referring to their debut album, Objects, as a collection of “songs for the end of time”, “concerned with transformation, transience and impermanence”, The Nightjar articulates the fleeting and sings of a time when nature reclaims the encroaching man-made landscape. Describing their particular style as “lo fi post-folk”, they do push and experiment with the folk genre, though the choice of themes, and even with the inclusion of the re-arranged traditional songs Hangman and Dle Yaman, summon up the atavistic. For instance, the age-old standard, Hangman, is a scion of over hundreds of variations on the same central trope; an unknown fated protagonist waits, hoping that out of a litany of visitors, from family members to lovers, someone will arrive in time with the right coinage bribe to free them from the hangman’s noose. The Nightjar hauntingly resurrect this morbid tale with a suitable lamentable vocal, paused, sighing electric guitar and a harrowed bowed drone. Albeit from what I can gather with little information, Dle Yaman is another standard, this time a plaintive Armenian ode, an exclamation of mourning, which the group furnishes with a divine sacrosanct ascendency.
Exploring the void, submerged under a amorphous gauze of diaphanous and ether atmospherics, The Nightjar recorded their album in rural Portugal on the most basic of equipment. Informed by such “interesting” locations as a dilapidated bar in the Old Town of Sertã, and the distressed run-down piano that came with it, they fluctuate between (what sounds like) a gramophone scratched transmission, from the great beyond, and a clearer, more evocative and resonated style or recording. The backing is mostly subtle and attentive: the electric and acoustic guitars erudite and drums attentive throughout, ascending, descending in the ebb and flow of the building drama. But most striking is the vocal work of Mo Kirby, who perfectly articulates the mood with a measured performance of sorrow, yearning, tumultuous lament and the ethereal.
Finding a passage through an allegorical “wardrobe” into an earnest, toiled world of cockleshell dredger inhabited coastal shorelines and riverbeds; swallowed whole by the soil into the psychogeography, The Nightjar waft through centuries of despair and meaning to map out an auger of unease about our future.
Baluji Shrivastav ‘Best Of…’
Srdjan Beronja ‘Sounds Of The East: Music From The Balkans, India And The Middle East’
Both released by ARC Music, 24th February 2017
Photo credit to Simon Richardson
Capping off last year’s 40th anniversary celebrations with a top three placing in the highly regarded Womex “top 20 labels” awards, the industrious world music label ARC Music starts the new year as they mean to go on, with a duo of congruous Eastern imbued musical travelogues from Baluji Shrivastav and Srdjan Beronja. The first of which is a “best of” collection and timely appreciation of the revered Indian music virtuoso – who was recently honoured with an OBE -, the second, is a collection of field recordings taken from a geographical triangle of India, the Balkans and the Middle East. Both albums overlap; Shrivastav’s polygenesis array of ragas and concepts chiming with Beronja’s own sitar and Indian redolent cornucopia of recordings. And coming as they do from different starting points and cultures, compliment each other well.
Highly qualified, gaining a degree for his vocal studies from the University of Lucknow, and a BA for tablas and an MA for sitar from the Allahabad University, respectfully, multi-instrumentalist composer Baluji Shrivastav has journeyed a well-travail(ed) road to reach his richly deserved status as one of India’s most cherished exports. Musically championed of course on this collection, he’s equally respected for his fervent campaigning as a cofounder, alongside his wife, the composer and songwriter Linda Shanson, of the London-based Baluji Music Foundation. Shrivastav, who was blinded at only eight months from glaucoma, and Shanson’s foundation has and continues to help further the cause of the blind and visually impaired, as well as disabled in music. Whilst this impairment hasn’t held the gifted and tactile musician back – if anything, inspiring experimentation and an alternative, sometimes original, way of doing things – it has obviously shaped him.
A positive extension of his foundation is the Inner Vision Orchestra; steered and directed by Shrivastav, the 14-piece ensemble is a melting pot of cultures, with members from the Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Japan, and Nigeria. This troupe can be heard on both the exotic Persian love yearned Chashma Sia Dari (sung in the Dari dialect, a spoken form of Persian used in Afghanistan), and the swimmingly reedy ensemble-vocal piece, Diggy Diggy Diggy Ya Rababa.
Photo credit to Simon Richardson
Making London his home in the early 80s, Shrivastav’s humble journey from the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to the streets of the England capital informs most of the material. Taken from his recording career over this four-decade period, some tracks make more obvious allusions to this than others. One of the earliest, Fruit from 1982, is a lilting sitar version of the Linda Shanovitch written South American-bound love tryst. Languid Cuban flavours and sauntering sway work well with the Indian instrumentation, in what is a fusion of styles we seldom hear. Reflecting, in a more grandiose manner, his attentive first steps in, and embrace of, London, there’s the instrumental trilogy of Discovering London & Friendship, Walking Through The Streets and Mixing With The Crowd And Spirit Of Joy. All of which tie together Shrivastav’s experiences, mixing classical British pomp and circumstance with the exotic reverberations of India across three various mood soundtracks. The rest of this collection mixes more traditional adaptations with contemporary arrangements; devotional standards such as the melodious Raag Shobhavari, and the spritely, full of life, Indian dance, Nartaki.
As highly complex and intricate as you’d expect, with countless forms, scales and “ascending’, “descending” notes of praise, adulation and contemplation, as well as guest appearances from not only Inner Vision but also the Egyptian master tabla player Hossam Ramzy, Andy Sheppard and Guy Baker, all these performances remain organic and fluid – there is a detailed inventory and backstory booklet however for those who wish to dip further into the finer details.
Though he’s worked with a dizzying cast of eclectic performers including tabla legends Anindo Chatterji and Ustad Fayaz Khan, and artists as diverse as Massive Attack and Stevie Wonder over the years, Baluji Shrivastav is now enjoying a welcome appraisal: On top of that OBE he received in the Queen’s birthday honours list last year, a GG2 Leadership Award for Achievement Through Adversity, there’s also a new documentary about the Inner Vision Orchestra, Colours Of Sound, from the director Marie-Cécile Embleton, and now this highly enjoyable survey compilation. An introduction and retrospective, this Best Of album will endear the listener to the prowess and multifaceted evocations of the sitar and its accompanying Indian instrumentation.
Imbued with a similar Indian sound palette, though one that has amorphously blended it with those of the Middle East and the Balkans, Serbian composer Srdjan Beronja takes the familiar buzz of the sitar and highly deft, rapid tapping rhythms of the tabla and merges them with a host of instruments from ancient Persia and North Africa on his latest album, Sounds Of The East. Drifting across a geographical triangle of influence, the ethnomusicologist travels between all three corners of his sonic map, recording both traditional and original field recordings and improvised performances. It is in short, a veritable odyssey of discoveries; moving seamlessly through the exotic landscape, capturing many unusual and surprising sounds.
Following on “effortlessly” from his previous 2015 album, Sounds Of Varanasi – the Indian holy town of the title appears again on this collection -, Beronja, again, spends most of his time in India. Recordings vary in length and drama; from the menagerie “morning chorus” of wild twirling, hooting and convoluted birdlife, found on the heat-sapping Alapana – recorded in Kerala – to the gunpowder explosion firework snapshot of the famous Diwali Festival Of Light, on Visphot – meant as a poignant reflection on the damage that this bombastic firework display inflicts on the environment. There’s also more performance-based instrumentals, including the improvised, joyful, Raag Jog Dhun, which partners Beronja on the tabla-like darabuka drum with maestro violinist Pt Sukhdev Prasad Misha (a revered ambassador of Hindustani classical music no less), and the more groovy but reflective, Raga Sitar-Daf Kirvani, which sees Beronja play the Persian frame “daf” drum and the notable Pt Dhruv Nath Mishra sit in on the sitar.
Leaving behind the scenery but not the music, those Indian sounds lingering on as Beronja journeys to the Middle East and the Balkans. The strangest recording, Nora Of Hama, captures the weird buzzsaw and motorbike revving sounds of a wooden water wheel in the Syrian town of the title. Disturbing, almost ominous, the scraping and creaking mechanics offer a surreal window into age-old apparatus; still in use; still providing an essential resource. In a similar landscape of musical influence, the Serbian composer invites the Sarajevo born oud player and multi-instrumentalist Marina Tošić to join him on the “open air” improvised liturgy, Maqam Bayati Oud Taqsim. Tošić also appears, playing the pan flute, on the live in concert recorded, Shepherd’s Love Song. Two musical spheres and traditions, one from (again) India, the other, the Balkans, entwine on this sad tale of the lonely shepherd pining on the hillside in wistful lament because of a former lover’s unreciprocated love. Another “virtuoso” (just one of the many) oud player, but also more than handy on the zither-like qanun, Stefan Sablić plucks away dreamily on the ethereal album closer lullaby, Maqam Ajam Qanun Taqsim.
As with many ARC Music releases, in depth notes can be found in the accompanying album booklet. Not that you need an extensive knowledge, and with so many different influences and ways of interpreting meaning from the highly sophisticated, centuries old traditions of specific scales, it’s better to let the music breathe unburdened. Of course it’s all interesting and informative, but it also shows the cross-pollination process and intricate blending of styles that makes this music so universally connected. Sounds Of The East is an intriguing, often surprising, musical travelogue; one that reminds us just how erroneous those musical borders really are, as Beronja finds the sounds that bind us.
Nick Blackos & LOA ‘No Reason’
Released by ONV, available now
Dropping releases surreptitiously without any fanfares or grandstanding, the burgeoning London-based hip-hop (and all it’s many congruous bedfellows) label ONV has in the last week, shinnied an eight-track instrumental showcase up the flagpole in the hope someone will salute it. Entitled No Reason of course, this latest collection of transmogrified 808 beats, tight kinetic drums, tetchy glitches, and warped languid samples is every bit as in line with the label’s signature subterranean and gritty London-soundscape style as previous EPs, LPs and odd tracks.
No Reason travails a strewn, strung-out sonic landscape, littered with cryptic chemicals (T88), vortex obscured utterances, speech and lulling voices (Four Horsemen, Get Away), languid vapours of dubstep and grime (Grotti), and the slow ticking away of time (Tranceforma). Lo fi and off most radars, ONV’s principle Nick Blackos, and the mysterious LOA, have produced another curious, underground and leftfield hip-hop album.
Irk Yste ‘Wumpe/Stroppe’
Released by GiveUsYourGOLD, 3rd February 2017
The first release of the year from our friends at GiveUsYourGOLD – the artist-run Berlin label founded a few years ago by Alexandre Decoupigny and Thomas Tichai, of Psycho & Plastic fame -, the cool aloof Irk Yste debut is a sophisticated three-track techno transmission from the historically and culturally important eastern German town of Weimar.
Since bonding in the sandbox of their playschool in ’84, the Irk Yste’s Christoph and Benjamin (no surnames given) have shared a penchant for music, especially acid techno. Introduced to the style whilst in Denmark during the dawn of the noughties, the musical partnership toured the (as the bio describes it) “flattest of kingdoms” to ride on that inimitable acid wave. Via a number of projects, including The Zonnhaider’s Club and Norsal Flow, and a sojourn studying electroacoustics at the SeaM institute, in the city they now call home, the Weimar duo now release their inaugural explorations under their latest darkly melodic techno incarnation.
Informed by an “iterative” process of building sonic structure and harmony before dismantling and starting anew, the three-track Wumpe/Stroppe suite is a sophisticated, suffused mix of minimal techno, house and, even, jazz. The opening machine-age with soul, Wumpe, starts with a nauanced chain reaction of R&S and Basic Channel flavoured kinetic beats and a sonorous bass drum, but gradually builds to an ascendant, cinematic melody finish. From a similar mould but hinting towards a more lilting nocturnal escape, Stroppe is a metallic glistening slow ride into an unsure future scape. More a vignette, the final track, Pumps, fades in on a stirring pronounced synthesizer drone wave, before a serial accompaniment of warping, wobbling robotic and dial-up sounds interweave with the minimalist stripped-down techno foundations.
An impressive glimpse inside the machine, GiveUsYourGOLD promise that there’s more to come from their latest signing. Stay tuned for further techno explorations in the future-now.
Playlist: The Monolith Cocktail Social #27
February 10, 2017
PLAYLIST
Compiled by Dominic Valvona
Continuing in 2017 with the first of, we hope, many Monolith Cocktail Socials, Dominic Valvona presents another eclectic playlist. In case you don’t know the drill, previously only ever shared via our Facebook profile and on Spotify, our regular Monolith Cocktail Social playlists will also be posted here on the blog itself. With no themes or demarcated reasoning we pick songs from across a wide spectrum of genres, and from all eras. #27 includes thoughtful post-country evocations from Bruce Langhorne; southern-drawled, Steppenwolf-esque, roadtrip musings from Circuit Rider; a rebooted live version (with friends) of I Have Known Love by Silver Apples; diaphanous soulful rays of Africa from post-punk outfit Family Fodder; a Malian jazz odyssey from Le Mystere Jazz de Tombouctou; desert rock yearnings from Mdou Moctar; exquisite balladry from Drakkar Nowhere; the sweetest of soul takes from the felonious The Edge Of Daybreak; and 23 other equally evocative, stirring, foot-shuffling and sublime tracks from across the decades.
Bruce Langhorne ‘Opening’
Circuit Rider ‘Forever Angels Proud’
Trance Farmers ‘She’s Made Of Rainbows’
Mistress Mary ‘Dance Little Girl’
Elyse Weinberg ‘Your Place Or Mine’
Sensations Fix ‘Grow On You’
Silver Apples ‘I Have Known Love’
Family Fodder/Vic Corringham ‘Walls Of Ice’
Diane Coffee ‘Never Lonely’
Black Peaches ‘Chops On Tchoupitoulas’
Le Mystère Jazz de Tombouctou ‘Leli’
Khiyo ‘Amar Protibaader Bhasha’
T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo ‘Finlin Ho’
Mdou Moctar ‘Iblis Amghar’
Black Hippies ‘Love’
The Beach Boys ‘Here She Comes’
Dr. Lonnie Smith/George Benson/Ron Carter/Joe Lovano ‘Apex’
Mongo Santamaria ‘In The Mood’
Volta Jazz ‘Air Volta’
The Frightnrs ‘Trouble In Here’
The Olympians ‘Sirens Of Jupiter’
King Tubby ‘King Tubby’s Special’
SOMA ‘Deepa’
Moloch ‘Dance Chaney Dance’
Takeshi Terauchi (Blue Jeans) ‘Tsugaru Jongarabushi’
Los York’s ‘Facil Baby’
The Critters ‘Blow My Mind’
Pierre Cavalli ‘Cacador’
The Edge Of Daybreak ‘Your Destiny’
Roy Wood ‘Songs Of Praise’
Drakkar Nowhere ‘Any Way’
Our Daily Bread 236: Retoryka ‘The Enhanced Techniques EPs’
February 7, 2017
REVIEW
Words: Ayfer Simms
Retoryka ‘Enhanced Techniques I.’ & ‘Enhanced Techniques II. EPs’
Released by Everyday Life Recordings, 20th January 2017
Retoryka hooks its amplifiers somewhere in the horizon, to let their sound blow with the four winds, standing perfectly tranquil amid the chaos and commotion they create with their instruments: there’s a party under a shade.
Dazed, rapturous and noisy, underground and yet classy, peaceful even, the melodic vintage compositions of the band are like masses of energy breaking down in brief fluttering lethal notes, all mingling together in a distorted tireless ensemble.
The tunes under that shade give the spotlights to well-approved guitar swirls, whilst turmoil prevails in the tiny details of all the tracks. Retoryka seems to go loose, walking gleefully along a greasy and messy road full of complexity because different styles collide and merge, the same way they would on a newly forming galaxy. At first we feel off balanced and then the cohesion miraculously appears.
Our feet are dangling from a truck; we are dizzy while the music plays. The instruments’ cords slowly become our umbilical sweaty bond that provides us with nourishment and an ear-splitting nursery rhythm to our nights.
These are destructive younglings, in search, of the perfect shriek, with sprouting shy impressions in the first EP and calmer ripened attitude in the second. In contrast the vocals are soft and endearing, welcoming, like the soft touch of a wobbly titan.
The notes and the guitar may show some rebellious arching but the listen is all around light, with agreeable melodies and “safe” spurts of the instruments.
Exclusive: Sankofa share their latest video, ‘Into The Wild’
February 3, 2017
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO
Words: Dominic Valvona
Intoxicatingly beckoned by their satanic majesties into the subterranean, the bewitching new single from the reputable morbidly curious Liverpool band Sankofa, Into The Wild, is a sassy, knowing two-geared esoteric augur. Following hot on the heels of their last, and equally daemonic psych single, All The While, ahead of the band’s debut album (released later this year), this entrancing incandescent liquid lightshow video adorned doom-monger shifts from a malady of Crime And The City Solution style tremolo twanged gothic country, The Doors and The Creeps, to a final unyielding, heavy rock guitar crescendo. In case you missed the subtle hints and miasma, both sonically and lyrically, the cover art can’t help but give you nightmares, alluding as it does to very real metaphors of puritanical regimes and their witch-hunts.
Into The Wild will be released by the, burgeoning, independent Glasgow-based In Black Records label (home to Acting Strange and Mark McGowan) on the 3rd March 2017; for now, you can catch our exclusive taster video.
Our Daily Bread 234: Strange U ‘#LP4080’
February 1, 2017
ALBUM REVIEW
Words: Matt Oliver
Strange U ‘#LP4080’
Released by High Focus, 10th February 2017
“I worship the Sega God with the blue fur; my mother’s Lara Lor-Van, my father’s Lex Luther”.
Though the chrome may not be shiny and the cylinders can’t help but misfire, High Focus’ ownership of 2016 (summarised here) is safe in the hands of Strange U’s voodoo children for the New Year. Venerable UK hip-hop rogues Kashmere (The Iguana Man, Lord Rao), and Dr Zygote (The Maghreban), theorise conspiracies through comic book schlock writing its own legend. A classic hip-hop one-two manning long established loose cannons, #LP4080 has a deftness that allows it to be daft, transplanting MF Doom and Kool Keith through zodiac mind warps and Vulcan death grips.
Kashmere’s telling of stranger than fiction tales, sex drugs and rock & roll laced with wild one-liners that’ll either gob smack you or smack you in the gob, joyrides Zygote’s primitive vision of the future made to the specification of a mint condition Dalek (intermission Taurus makes a public service announcement of a space colony being unveiled by the year 2000). Black hole-sized beats, decommissioned Casios, arcade consoles that have long flashed ‘game over’, and electro downloaded over dial-up internet, create the perfect simulation of space’s loaded vastness, always one false move away from catastrophic consequences. If the ship’s going down, Strange U are gonna fly it their way, accentuating High Focus’ cast of many characters that would fill a sticker book.
How you feel the Gs is down to tracks like Bullet Proof Mustache: trying to achieve a body count of the 80s silver screen megastars it references, acting the fool and plotting nonsensical courses is Strange U’s smartest move, particularly with Lee Scott boarding the same vessel like Dave Lister. The unexpected self-deprecation Waste of Space shows that guardians of the galaxy have to start somewhere, without exactly speaking up for the little guy, and Mumm Ra, stepping up the supreme Veronica RIP from Kashmere’s In the Hour of Chaos, plays Russian Roulette with a female species, Zygote taking the narrative on the run with doomed boom-bap.
The emcee’s power up has also sharpened his social awareness. Despite long peddling the world’s end, reality means tragedy must accompany comedy, showing that #4080 is still the devil’s number. On Mr Kill, the star strider inaugurates himself as Alan B’stard (“this is not Jeremy Corbyn in a tie-dye vest…the type of sub-human you would love to own the country”), and with the graphic Armageddon of Eden’s Husk – the guesting Jehst rhyming like a correspondent live at the scene – the outlandish predicament sounds like what boffins have been predicting for years, plastered across the front page of your favourite red top.
For all the anecdotal complexity, the sandpapered English is virtually always plain, call and response choruses leaping into the front row in carrying on the good work of Power Cosmic’s Bang! Splat!. The appeal of Strange U’s odyssey is simple respect of the basics in beats and rhymes, no matter how far bent to the left. Syllables set to stun in the middle of an Asteroids field, it’s a first class bizarre ride to and from the far side.
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