In review: a world of sonic discoveries. Dominic Valvona
30 Door Key ‘Strangely Familiar’
(Disaster By Choice) 31st October 2026
The witching hour may have passed, but Alessio Bosco’s latest hauntology under the literary and filmic guise of 30 Door Key isn’t just for Halloween.
Though really, more or less, a completely redrawn sonic map of psychic energy, Fortean transistor hallucinations, apparitions and supernatural library music scenes, this latest album is billed as a strange bedfellow and companion to last year’s A Warning To The Curious album. The original formulation evolved, as Bosco welcomed in a host of both established and burgeoning Italian artists to either collaborate, remix or transform some of the original material and ideas; a kind of extension of the Sicilian electronic artist’s paranormal and esoteric sonic palette, developed by a company of foils, taken into various complimentary and more electronic spheres. Strangely Familiar is just that: we recognise but we are also aware that there’s something peculiarly different going on.
That name by the way, 30 Door Key, is a reference, I believe, to the film adaptation of Witold Gumbrowicz’s 1937 book Ferdydurke, put onto screen by the Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski in 1991. In short, this cult story and film’s young protagonist faces a conflict between acting his age at the onset of WWII in his Warsaw home, or of regressing and relapsing back into childhood as an escape from it. The all too real horror of facing or avoiding the tragedy of war being just one layer threaded into these atmospheric fantasies and occultist peregrinations: some of which feature spoken narratives of a kind.
It would be a lot easier to approach this work as a new vision/invocation, starting with the opening ‘30 Door Ident, 30 Door Key’ transformation attributed to Ghostronica – I’m not sure if this is an artist or genre in its own right. Bulb-like bottled notes alight a 70s vague soundtrack, half Carpenter, half Gallo, as queer supernatural sounds pop out of paranormal analogue apparatus. ‘Folklore Impressionist – A Place Nobody Knows’ is as its title suggest, an impression of Amicus film studio folksy horror, whilst the Richard Sala ‘Deadly Anxiety Mix’ of ‘Testcard, Le Forbici Di Manitu’ (a reference I think to the Reggio Emilia experimental art-rock collective) sounds like Julian Cope in horror science matinee radio mode to the sound of John Foxx and the theremin quivers of spectres.
Some tracks reminded me of The Books trapped in the Hammer House Of Horrors, or pastoral mirages of Tigon scores. And then the Italian singer and producer Fabrizio Tavernelli’s ‘exploration’ of ‘Monolith In Bowler’ features vague ethnographic sounds collected from a spooked Arabia, bounded timpani and mizzles and horns: it also reminded me in part of Sum of R. Fellow Italian electronic producer and artist Flippo Diana turns ‘Getting Out A Gutter’ into a Chicago House mix for birds to nest; it begins however with the gibberish broken-up transmissions from the radio tunned ether. In collaborative mode, the American writer Justin Hopper regales a psychogeography of pastoral scenery connected to myth on the Tudor folk track ‘Skeleton Down’; the author narrates poetically and mysteriously enveloped by the magic of nature like a cross between Dr. Martin Shaw and Robert Jeffers.
The whole oeuvre reminded me of Roudi Vagou & Lauten der Seela’s work together, of Teisco’s Tuscan Castle and Country Seat, that and all those quintessential English library music aficionados like the Belbury Poly and The Advisory Circle, the cult KPM label, and various other old VHS and audio tape manipulators working in the field of hauntology. There’s some interesting immersive experiences, invoked rituals, occult disturbances and supernatural mystique to keep you both entertained and on the edge of your seat.
Anna Butterss, John Raymond, Ben Lumsdaine ‘Beginningless’
(Northern Spy) 13th November 2026
Collaborating over the years, running across each other’s creative tracks since all inhabiting, roughly around the same time, the same musical spaces in Bloomington, Indiana, the accumulative experienced individuals of Anna Butterss, John Raymond, Ben Lumsdaine pull together on their debut incipient Beginningless triumvirate project.
As the back story goes, bass player Butterss and drummer Lumsdaine originally met as students in 2010 at Indiana University in the city of Bloomington. Butterss left and moved to Los Angeles, whilst lauded trumpet player Raymond moved to Bloomington in 2017 to begin teaching at the university where he and Lumsdaine developed their own musical rapport through the weekly jazz series Call & Response: originally founded as a space for improvisation and visiting musicians by Lumsdaine. Raymond inherited the series when Lumsdaine, like Butterss, decided to also move out West to Los Angeles, in 2019. However, both Butterss and Lumdaine returned to the city together in 2024, where they took up this debut recorded project with Raymond.
Butterss is much in-demand for not only heading their own projects but collaborating and improvising with such notable names as Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven, Phoebe Bridges and Jason Isbell. The Australian-born artist is a member of the evolving Small Medium Large super-quintet and has also toured as a member of Flea’s Honora Band. As International Anthem’s (pretty much) in-house sound mixer, the in-demand drummer and multi-instrumentalist Lumsdaine also appeared on Butterss’s incredible Mighty Vertebrate album back in 2024 – one of our albums of the year. Other credits include a decades-worth of experiences as a band member and improvisor, working with such luminaries and established artists as Jeff Parker, Walter Smith III and Sylvon Esso. Raymond has been aggrandised the “voice of a generation” label. He certainly has the CV and experience to back it up, with nine albums under the belt as a leader, collaborations with S. Carey of Bon Ivor fame, credits as sideman or the featured artist on over thirty other recordings: four Grammy-award nominated albums no less included. Plus, as I’ve already mentioned, he’s also a well-respected teacher in the field, with a “prestigious” role at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
The pool of talent and experiences act as a foundation for this most intuitive, improvised and felt album. Whittled down from 400 minutes, with scant interference production wise – little in the overdubs department and presented “almost entirely” as it was played out in the studio -, this inaugural and self-contained collaboration seems to amorphously grow out of the extemporised and the trio’s former wealth of experiences.
A sort of jazz album from the Fourth World sphere of Fearless Jon Hassell (and his peers) that also scowls and prowls to hip-hop, drum and bass, post-punk and a removed form of soul and funk, there’s a melodic quality and a groove (of a kind) to be found amongst the mystique, the nocturnal skyline bluesy and post-industrial decayed scenery of a plaintive, bewildered or smoggy hidden city. Certainly, out there, with Raymond’s trumpet and flugelhorn both inhabiting Hassell and Cherry’s spirits, the movements seems to be as resonated as it does buoyant and bouncing across influences as diverse as Tomega, the Chicago Underground, Isotope 217, J Dilla, Four Tet and Tony Allen. As drumming and acoustic bass foils Lumsdaine and Butterss create a great foundation, whilst also leading through passages, often with the additional effects of the crinkled and vibrated.
From the hurrying rush of break beats to the more slumbered and the slowed, the range of ideas stay in that nocturnal film, yet tracks like ‘Faced Round’ sound like Ill Communication era Beastie Boys (when they experiment as a band) crossing the Fourth World threshold with Funkadelic and YAS-KAZ. This goes on a lot to be fair, sideways excursions and invocations of music outside the jazz spectrum, and a darkness or at least shadowy mysterious from the disused factory and wastelands reverberated into an electro-acoustic energy. But the trio are also it seems, in real time, feeling out the possibilities: surprising themselves when they lock into something resembling a tune or even a sort of loose instrumental song: then it gets really interesting and even leftfield groovy. There’s attentiveness alongside the controlled chaos and the resonating rhythms, with Butterss’s bass really low and seamless, yet every stretch and twist of the instrument is audible and used as part of the fabric. Actually, the trumpet is similar, from long sustains to hovers and near breathless drifts across the horizons that are conjured up out of seemingly nowhere.
Just as you’d expect, an interesting inventive use of all three musicians’ experimental reaches; a one-off or not, it paves the way I’d hope for more in the future: if stars align and all that. Promising then.
Heckle Chamber ‘Heckle Chamber EP’
(Slowfoot Records) 6th November 2026
Heckle by name, heckle by nature…the inaugural EP release (an album promised to arrive shortly) from the riled-up and volatile union of improvising agitators Jem Doulton, Roberto Sassi and Alex Ward is a hectoring and unloading experiment in letting it all out: therapeutic I’d imagine, kicking against the pricks and releasing the bile with such indignant malice and fun.
Yes, I said fun: and mean it. For even in the most doom-laden introspective parts this trio seem to be having plenty of it as they exercise demons and expel the rot. In truth: three guys fucking about with a large canvas of influences whilst drawing upon their own experiences, their collaborations and contributions to an enviable cast of avant-garde, experimental and no wave luminaires and bedfellows. And across all three tracks you’ll hear evocations of the trio’s past turns – either as foils, as chief instigators or as band members on recordings and on tours.
The dual guitars of the Italian-in-London Sassi and Ward in partnership with the drums and Doulton wrangle up everything from Bill Orcutt to Glenn Branca (who’s Orchestra project has featured Sassi), Fennesz and Sonic Youth (Doulton is the drummer for The Thurston Moore Group). Simultaneously repulsing as much as consuming hardcore, metal, heavy rock, poly-rock and malevolent gloom, this heckling trio manage to sound dangerous without breaking anything. There’s a balance, even muso articulation and control to the menace and rollicking hysterics. Nothing strives towards a complete cacophony of noise and violence. Its Black Flag meets Suicidal Tendencies with expert musical control. Or, around the Pere U(bend) with Black Hole Sun California hardcore precision and The Birthday Party. Incidentally, Ward has been playing with the surviving members of Pere Ubu since 2021 and is helping complete the seminal group’s final album.
It’s surprising and yet unsurprising that there isn’t more of the no wave signature on this debut EP from the trio, but then again, they seem to be having a lark fucking about with the rock vernacular, its punctuations and more drudgery mopes; perhaps attempting something different to their normally unnormal experiments and contributions. Hardcore it is then, with a nice twist and even sensibility; albeit Ward’s voice ranges between punky malevolence and the hysterical and raging, and the track titles seem to reference an ambiguous zoo of anthropomorphism.
I look forward to hearing what the trio can do on a larger scale with that promised album, and whether they stick to that signature rock transmogrification.
i4M2 ‘Swiss Banking Secrecy Laws’
6th November 2026
Using both the language and speak of finance and business, the dull innocuous surroundings of the office whilst suggesting the clandestine smoke and mirrors of international banking and its most opportune epicentre of obfuscation, the anonymous Oxfordshire-based electronic musician, guitarist and producer behind this coded i4M2 disguise builds up a beat bounding and dissonance of rhythmic dance music soundtrack with which to both indulge and escape from.
The third album into this more danceable experiment – the artist is also responsible for the overbearing landscape slabbed fizzled fissures and currents of the he didnt project -, Swiss Banking Secrecy Laws is a kinetic stimulation of techno, techno-dub, breakbeats, trip-hop, trance, and more; combing evocations of everything from the 80s to the 90s and the contemporary in the process.
From the very low registered dubby bass vibrations of the opener ‘Forward Motion Uh Huh’ to the acid burbled sequences of ‘Public Dissonance’ and the Arabic-like minaret lulled voice hovers of ‘Some Dim But Dim Sum’ you can expect to hear everything from Cabaret Voltaire to Black Dog and Natacha Atlas in the omens of electrified mystique and unfolding dramas.
The fizzled and febrile mix with components and wires across a sort of sci-fi soundtrack of the ominous and vapoured. Each track is different in this regard, with some leaning more towards the techno of early Warp and others towards the Two Lone Swordsman, Death In Vegas and the Chemical Brothers. And then you get passages that open out into cathedral atmospherics (‘AA Drone’) or invoke some sort of dramatic VHS sci-fi forbode (‘Permission’). Mostly, this album seems to be rhythmic and set for an unconventional dancefloor of acid techno wobbles, slabbed beats, breaks, machine code, twang effected and reversed electric guitar and bass, and filters.
No track outstays its welcome, with the next arriving pretty quickly on the tails of the next; a fluctuation on speed and rhythm on each, and yet it plays almost like a set or a filmic soundtrack. If you like retro intelligent techno and the beat providers of a previous age reenvisaged by Burial, Lukid and Oberman Knocks than this album is definitely an essential purchase. And if you’re looking for an album that doesn’t so much lecture but offer sonic discourse and mystery about the current age of dislocation, mundanity and technological encroachment, then this is for you.
JAWWAAD ‘Myth & Logic’
(Sonic Transmissions/Sound Mind Body Lab) 13th October 2026
Polemics balanced by introspection and the healing balms of soulful jazz and R&B, Young Mothers co-founder and Shape Of Broad Minds founding member JAWWAAD conjures up a cosmology of poetry, anguish, reliance, pleas from the heart, recovery and barely contained rage on the upcoming Myth & Logic album. In the making since the global shutdown epoch of the Covid pandemic, when minds were concentrated and the time was forced upon us to dig deep into our own souls and sanity (how things change, at the time many of us, me included, thought it would never end and this pandemic restrictive age was here for good), the sound artist, trumpet player and emcee developed a work of escapism, yet one that more than faced up to the challenges of the 2020s. As it happens, JAWWAAD was just returning home after spending time in Bogota, in Colombia when all this kicked off, describing it as overwhelming, and necessitating the urge to look inward for a “moment of clarity and spiritual growth”.
Moved to write, to sing, rap and play, JAWWAAD weaves a unique narrative that takes aim and reels off jazzy-hip-hop inspired shots at institutions and political targets whilst moving through and coping with the physical chronic pains of sickle cell anaemia – believe me I feel your pain, having diced with death myself this year after my kidneys packed in, a stroke from out of the blue, and my own daily battles with chronic muscle spasms and nerve pains. To have the energy to perform and write an album is no mean feat to even the unhampered, let alone those going through such illnesses. So, respect is due from the get-go. You can add a third dimension, as it were, with JAWWAAD’s exploration of sculptor: not just in sculpting sound but in the physical artform. The artwork for this very album is taken from Myth & Logic: The Geometry Of Sound, one link in a three-part series currently displayed at Acres Homer Neighbourhood library in Houston. Conceived, we’re informed by its creator, as a “sound emitting sculpture tied to a Creative Capital grant proposal that I was awarded in 2020.” The piece explores “how sound and frequency appear in a third or fourth density.” This applies a further layer to our artist’s thinking, their processes and objectives with textual and material concerns and by the use of sonic diffusions and the spread, thinking of how waveforms travel on this trek.
Almost produced on a sort of studio tour, with stopovers moving out from South Carolina to Houston and then to the Øra Studio in Trondheim, Norway, each environment was imbued by that location’s hive of budding musicians and artists, all bringing their very own contributions to an already eclectic sound palette – on the CV of note is JAWWAAD’s collaborations with the late iron masked MF DOOM and Carrie Mae. This also means that the cast is numerous, with a mix of players and additional vocalists on each track. Young Mothers foil Ingebrigt Håker Flaten pops up on bass duties alongside (and I’m guessing this was recorded on the Trondhiem leg of the journey) the Scandinavian troupe of Peder Overik Stuberg on guitar, Emil Bø on trombone, and Hans Hulbækmo on drums and percussion, on the Kam Franklin soaring vocal turn ‘War Strategies’. A fusion in its own right of Javanese metallic percussion and African drums, plucking tines, R&B and New Orleans spiritual vibes, the track moves like a procession of sorts through a Southern twinned with African savannah blues. The rap however, with its advocacy and controlled dissatisfactions, brings a contemporary relevance to the mood and the near languid jazz wistful tempo.
Some artists will appear with each other smattered throughout whilst others, appear less often. The ‘Toxic’ entitled opener features the multifaceted muso and composer Khari Lucas, under the Contour guise, on bass and vocals; the Houston-based singer-songwriter, pianist, composer Willis Branden, under The Biggest Brandon alias; and the New York tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis alongside their host on a soulfully jazzy joint and rap that recalls Gil Scott Heron (no “whitey on the moon”, but does mention billionaire rocket builders leaving us poorer less fortunate folk back on Earth to deal with the suffocation and destruction of our planet as they head off to the Moon or Mars), Donny McCaslin, Art Bleek’s Art Supplies album and for some reason, the 90s rap outfit Black Moon.
Jazz of a vintage class rubs shoulders with more off breaks, passages of controlled tumult, the noirish and Afrofuturism. Though JADWAAD constantly moves effortlessly between ideas and inspirations, with a certain signature, yet a change in direction on nearly every track. ‘Cowardice’ for instance could be a chip off the old John Legend, matched with a more desperate for change and pained rap. The horns are smoky and of that reputable Blue Note vintage; sympathetic and longed in contrast to the talk of holocausts and anguish. The soul of Sun-Ra can be detected on the closer, ‘Silver And Gold’, before the electric guitar is brought in for something more rocking and pained, and the horns rasp and bugle like elephants’ trunks being raised because they’ve been startled – the last one another configuration of the Norwegian set. I was picking up hints of the Freestyle Followship, Digable Planets and The Difference Machine hip-hop wise, the bulb shaped notes of Roy Ayers and the Jan Hammer Group fusion wise, and the guitar work of Fred Frith jazz wise.
But for a punchy shortened encapsulation: Try Afrikan Sciences meets Art Bleek in a soulful tumult of activism, resilience and cosmic escapist perseverance.
Dan Rosenboom, Tim Lefebvre & Caleb Dolister ‘high.low’
(Orenda Records) 6th November 2026
Although criss-crossing paths within the L.A. scene (which is where all three foils now reside) over the years, this extemporised, recorded in sequential order, performance marks Dan Rosenboom, Tim Lefebvre and Caleb Dolister’s debut together as a trio.
Drawing upon an enviable CV and depth of experiences, this triumvirate of foils have covered everything from jazz (in its many forms) to metal, the classical and Balkan imbued folk. First up, Dan Rosenboom, who alone could fill up this post with his credentials and activities. The trumpet player and producer, but also instigator and cultivator of untold groups and associations, is highly prolific, releasing more the thirty albums as both a soloist or bandleader and supporting around sixty different artists across 120 plus releases through his own Orenda Records label – the facilitator of this trio’s debut. Part of the Hollywood studio musician community, apt at providing his musical skills to untold numbers of films and TV shows, he’s also covered everything from the progressive to avant-garde, metal and experimental rock.
Popping up sporadically on this site over the years, I’ve written about bassist supremo and innovator Tim Lefebvre and his contributions to Julian and Roman Wasserfuhr’s Landed In Brooklyn album, his guest appearance on JZ Replacement’s Disrespectful album, and of course, and much more widely known, his part in playing foil to Donny McCaslin as Bowie’s collaborating backing band on Blackstar – the final curtain call and testament. Added to that, Lefebvre has appeared on over 700 recordings, and is currently the bassist for the acclaimed Michael Wollny Trio, Italian pop star Tiziano Ferro and the “unhinged” eclectic Whose Hat Is This?
Completing the lineup, Caleb Dolister is primarily a drummer of versatile expertise but can probably play a number of other instruments alongside his composing, audio engineering and producer roles. Returning to his California birthplace after musical excursions via Nevada and New York City, Dolister’s played in or been a central cog of The Kandinsky Effect, Dr MiNT and Rosenboom’s large ensemble project Coordinates, plus Analog Dreams and prefixed his own name to the Warren Walker duo.
In the improvised spirit of spontaneity, the trio have pooled their talents to both strike out and traverse, skulk and leap about in mysteriously shadowed landscapes of dark and freeform jazz, post-hardcore and cosmic mirages. Incipiently, with a clang of harmonics, gangly post-punk bass guitar string resonance and oscillations, this sequentially recorded journey opens with the near Arabian mystical Krautrockish and Don Cherry-esque trumpeted ‘high.1a’, and almost without interruption bleeds into passages of metal-jazz, fusion and sci-fi.
There’s so much going on at any one time – except when the trio calm the tempo and direction of travel down – that each track cans simultaneously invoke a multitude of influences and expressive themes. ‘high.1c’ for example, is really heavy and yet illusionary; there’s a maelstrom of reference points, from Funkadelic duking it out with late King Crimson, or Jacek Mazurkiewi caught at a Last Exit gig.
The bass is itself used in both familiar and very unfamiliar roles, from metallic post-punk growls and rumbles to echoes of Jah Wobble, and a removed version of funk as performed in Bowie’s Blackstar cosmos. On the finale, ‘low.2e’, it sounds more like a Neville Brothers or Curtis Mayfield bassline. It can be running after scales and runs that seem to accelerate, but also be colder, thumped and lunar-esque. Drums wise, this is every bit as experimental and diverse, offering rhythms and breaks and rolls, but also tapping around the kit, or using it like a metal lattice of percussive hits, punctuations, scuttles and atmosphere building. I think there’s spots of hand drums too in that improvised laboratory; maybe conjuring up visions of the Middle East, of Turkey and further afield, perhaps even Tibet. Between more burning heralds, the scope of Zorn, Cherry and Davis, Rosenboom’s trumpet surveys the horizons, squeals through effects shadowing and pitch shifts, and blows sustained melodics. This can often be either really attentive or really wild; rising and falling in a dramatic fashion; sketched and more solid or in friction with the atmospherics and undulations of resonance and reverb.
From flexes of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers L.A. to Weather Report, post Bitches Brew Davis, Krolestwo, Krononaut and metal machine music Sun Ra, high.low, likes it title, offers both sides of light and shade, or the heavy and more atonal and ambient-esque. Post-everything, and yet full of markers that any eclectic music seeker will recognise, the trio’s inaugural recording is an amorphous concentration of the sci-fi, the darkness, the brooding, the experimentation, and surprising.
SAD MAN ‘ART 2’
(Cruel Nature Records) 30th October 2026
Once again as if in a permanent flux between sonic transformations and guises, the singular maverick electronic and art-house boffin Andrew Spackman is back under his most prolific (I believe) and longest running SAD MAN alias. Oscillating and bounding back and forth, Spackman has previously taken on the mantle of the Duchampian inspired Chess move, the Nimzo Indian, Cars From The Future and the jazzcore experimental The Dark Jazz Project. That’s all without referring to his artistic pursuits and creative job roles as an artist, illustrator, and designer, not to mention his growing expertise as soundtrack composer, producing a (re)score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari a few years back. There’s also been a track contribution to Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records release, Antechamber Music 2, a NFTs collaboration with Holly Herndon, using Holly+, Herndon’s AI digital voice project, and remixes for Dorcha, Matters Band, Stealing Sheep, Lumpen Nobleman, Gemma Cullingford, Alex H Duncan, Scissorgun, The High Llamas and Vula Veil. Phew!
Well, that’s the resume out of the way, with the focus now on the follow up to 2025’s Cruel Nature release ART – a title that covers all suggestions, all bases. Coming in at perhaps release number one million (I joke, but Spackman has been so prolific over the last decade or more, releasing literally hundreds of pieces of music and untold albums), ART 2 continues to counter bombarded coarse beats and a vortex of metallic pins with the easing passages of the near reverent and vaporous.
With nothing title wise to suggest the source of inspiration, reference points or subject matter, Spackman uses a sort of Aphex Twin-esque code of non-descript reductionist numbers, all prefixed with, again, the less than descriptive title of “noise”. Almost like experimental batches pulled from a larger science experiment, and yet each track seems to exist on its own; often fluctuating during its course, changing up or down from where it originally started out.
‘noise 19d’ (is the “d” a reference to decibels?) for example comes on all Tresor and needle splayed sharpened early 90s techno, then with the introduction of flat beaten real played drums and thrashing electric guitar the track takes on a sort of hardcore dimension. And yet I’m hearing, albeit quite transmogrified, Basement Jaxx’s ‘Where’s Your Head At’ in all that density. The action eventually calms down to evoke what can only be described as a laser disc fantasy video game score of the 80s mixed with the dreamwave. Elements of Justice and the Ed Banger stable alongside Mo Wax crop up on the prickly sharp sputnik haywire hip-hop oddity ‘noise d’, whilst ‘noise 3d’ sounds like a volcanic collapsing in a crush of dissonance. There’s also moments that I can only describe as Kosmische, like the hints of Cluster on the metallic spoken, semi-classical documentary score ‘noise 13’, and Kraftwerk on the rhythmic and giant footstep industrial ‘Noise 2’.
I’m however immersed in a strange world of sci-fi; a soundtrack to a techno and coarse distorted alien universe, often spooked by supernatural forces and presence of a hidden Levithan. For heaven’s sake, can’t some filmmaker give Spackman a call, as his skills could make the blandest of sci-fi epics and horrors disturbing, agitated and exciting. ART 2 continues to support Spackman’s rise as the interesting mad boffin of electronic music; further evolving and always developing, taking on new sounds and constantly probing like a contemporary artist out on the fringes.
Giuliano Sorgini ‘Savana Selvaggia’
(Four Flies Records) 30th October 2026
Missing from the Roman columned pantheon of Italian cult composers, the Rome born composer and multi-instrumentalist of over a 1000 plus recorded tracks, Giuliano Sorgini is once again the focus of the Four Flies Record platform’s attempts to correct this slight. Although fusing and traversing everything from the classical to jazz, psych, funk, disco, electronica, beat groups music, and prog, a cult favourite of the horror and exploitation score communities – namely for scoring The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue -, and known for his notable collaborations with long-time friend Alessandro Alessandroni, Sorgini’s name remains relatively obscure.
Born in the mythologically created city just before war broke out in the late 1930s, Sorgini only just passed away last year. His legacy has been overshadowed by his more famous and celebrated peers. But this label has already tried to rectify that missive, namely years ago with a revival of the Africa Obscura LP. Eight years later, and it seems still needing that boost to the legacy and place on that pantheon, Four Flies has just put out a repackaged and remastered suite of Sorgini’s further adventures on the African continent – one that left, we’re told, a deep mark upon the composer.
Made up of previously unreleased music produced for various TV documentaries in the mid 70s, Savana Selvaggia is, it’s suggested by the label, borne in part from sessions for one of Sorgini’s most iconic and notable LPs, Zoo Folle. Perhaps in part, it accounts for the menagerie of colourful yipping, yapping, vibrato trilling and wing beaten mating ritual sounds that suffuse many of the tracks on Savana Selvaggia, helping to visualise an atmospheric savannah grassland teeming with wildlife that’s alive and about to leap out of the speakers at you.
A safari of ethnological sources fed through the imagination of someone who’s adapt at turning the ceremonial dancing sounds of the tumba drum into something even more exotic and mysterious; layering up various rhythms across the Serengeti and Arabian Africa with modulated and fluted Moog melodics, lounge-jazz and more holy, missionary church nave keys that almost touch upon the Kosmsiche. Some tracks shout crate digger sample and break beat – ‘Caccia Tropicale’ (or “Tropical Hunting”) could have easily made The Jungle Brothers Done By The Forces Of Nature LP – whilst others would appeal to the likes of European library music aficionados like Greg Foat – the near playful nature shoot of ‘Zebre’ for sure. ‘Arabian Safari’ by contrast, seems to straddle both vague romantic sand dune traverse of Egyptian music with an Ethio-jazz lilt, and ‘Alba Sulla Savana’ (“Dawn Over The Savannah”) matches old pal Alessandro Alessandroni with “Blue” Gene Tyranny.
Shuttled, rattled and even Afro-Latin flavoured hand drums meet acid-jazz, a bit of Afro-funk, the tribal and the cult European library scene on an album of Italian ethnographic scores. Hopefully it will encourage a deep dive into Sorgini’s extensive catalogue, and maybe make it onto a few hip-hop tracks – one of the best marks of respect.
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need to survive:
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Halloween 2025: The Hell’s Bells Playlist
October 27, 2025
Fiendish sounds and fever dreams, the devil’s music selection this year is, as ever, a twisted tale of soundtracks, freakish and macabre passages, harrowed indie, horrorcore rap, the theatrical, esoteric post-punk and rock ‘n’ roll jukebox mischief. The selection this year devilishly devised by Dominic Valvona.
Pulp ‘The Mark of the Devil’
My Solid Ground ‘The Executioner’
The Wytches ‘Coffin Nails’
The Awkward Silences ‘Haunted by my own ghost’
Byron Lee & The Dragonaires ‘Frankenstein’
Naked City ‘Graveyard Shift (Live in Quebec 1988)’
itsokaylove & Black Wick ‘The Grim Denial’
Casper Ghostly & Uncommon Nasa ‘Floor Thirteen’
Lords Of The Underground ‘Psycho’
Fatboi Sharif, Driveby & Lungs ‘Basquiat Painted Transylvania’
itchy-O ‘Entangled|Unbinding – JG Thirlwell Remix’
The Northern Lighthouse Board ‘Ancient Sorceries’
Ruth White ‘The Litanies of Satan’
Nick Kuepfer ‘Vampyro’
Thomas Truax ‘The Cannibals Have Captured Our Nicole Kidman (Sebastian Reynolds Remix)’
The Eurosuite ‘Reflection Monster’
Kitchen Cynics ‘Phosphorus Tenement’
Lalo Schifrin ‘A Pact with Satan’
Pere Ubu ‘Satan’s Hamster’
Sonic Youth ‘Satan Is Boring’
30 Door Key ‘Cavern Of The Seasons Gone By’
Tetsuo ii ‘The Howling’
The Pretty Things ‘Death’
Mint Tattoo ‘Mark Of The Beast’
Librarians With Hickeys ‘Ghoul You Want’
The Legless Crabs ‘Sleep Sweet Satan’
Candice Gordon ‘Cannibal Love’
So Beast ‘Beastride’
Society of the Silver Cross ‘Mourning the Night’
A smattering of previous Halloween playlists and posts:
From 2012: Selection of Youtube videos and tunes.
The Perusal #63: Damon Locks, Robert Farrugia, Emily Mikesell & Kate Campbell Strauss, wjerstean…
January 13, 2025
A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Damon Locks ‘List Of Demands’
(International Anthem) 31st January 2025
Connections, nodes and interplay. Someone should attempt to chart the family tree of influences that orbit and run through the International Anthem label hub, both those Chicago-natives and those drawn to the city from across America. Because in the grand tradition of Chicago beacons of influence, exploration and complex theory – from Chess to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the city’s post-everything, polygenesis, Tortoise led scene of the 1990s – that label platform has pulled in a some of the scene’s most inventive and critically hailed artists and musicians over the last five years. A convoluted history for sure, created organically and creatively, and of which all its players freely move between projects and collaborations, with some artists popping up prolifically in the role of unscripted, unofficial house band members.
And so, to Damon Locks who’s enviable resume reaches every corner of Chicago’s hot-housed underground. The visual artist, educator, musician, DJ, vocalist and, in this instance, leading poetic soloist’s CV goes back to the late 1980s as co-founder and de facto leader of the post-hardcore-punk quartet Trenchmouth. Fast-forward through the years, and Locks joins forces with one of the city’s leading luminaries of conceptualised, experimental jazz Rob Mazurek, as the vocalist for the cornetist, visual artist’s Exploding Star Orchestra. The highly prolific Mazurek will be familiar to those lucky souls that, like me, have raved about and absorbed the sounds of the various Chicago Underground formations and the more obscure (but my favourite) Sao Paulo Underground.
Locks will be familiar to many in recent times for the much-championed Black Monument Ensemble, a collaborative liberation that can now be felt to some degree on his “first foray into creating an entire album based off of his poetry and texts” billed List Of Demands. Essentially an orated, spoken and poetical reading of our end times, the aftermath of BAME and affiliated protests, the inaugural Locks named list is a hip-hop album without a rap in sight.
Poetic righteous threads of consciousness and more focussed statements of indignity and protestation fade in and out to a collage of samples snatched from street protests and podiums and the archives of activism, social consciousness and theory, put together in the style of Madlib or MF Doom, or even RZA at times.
But let’s dig a little deeper, for there’s a lot to take in, a diverse range of multilayered influences to connect with.
Imbued by a litany of voices, speakers and musicians, from Fred Morton to Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Michael Smith, Linton Kwasi Johnson, Ruby Dee and Sun Ra, Locks both quantifies and lets loose a untethered reading of the situation facing those battling the ungovernable forces of decay, the autocratic and prejudicial. But the initial spark for this concept was lit when Locks was approached to “present” a new sound piece for an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Encouraged afterwards by Alex Inglizian of the Experimental Sounds Studio to expand further upon this piece (Inglizian offered his services free as an engineer on the resulting sessions), Locks set to work on a much bigger, more encompassing work, taking in his work educating aspirational incarcerated artists through the Statesville Correctional Centre and the Prison and Neighbourhood Arts/Education Project. Sometime last year, Locks’ class compiled a document of aspirational demands and beliefs. And at the end of the album’s title-track, he repeats those demands as “Beauty, form, destiny, love, time, future and light” to a collage of podium delivered unifying and resistance firing speeches, singing voices of endurance and quasi-Egyptian/North African shaken rhythms.
Joined in his endeavours by that International Anthem family and its close relatives of the form, there’s contributions from Ben LaMar Gay on cornet, Macie Stewart on violin, poet Krista Franklin and turntablist manipulator and drummer Ralph Darden (who also appears under the DJ Major Taylor moniker). The first two last appeared on this site through their contributions to Bex Burch’s There Is Only Love And Fear album, back in 2023. Here, Ben evokes a soft rendered feel of Miles Davies sketches and rich, sympathetic twills across the cinematic dramatic voiced supernatural samples, bluesy sentiment and hidden landscaped descriptive hues of environmental distress and darkly veiled analogy of ‘Holding The Dawn In Place (Beyond Pt. 2)’, and employs the use of a hallucinatory concertinaed melodica on the vague Thai-like sampled and El Michels affair-like pique of anxious, architecturally closed-in apocalyptic poetic distress and summary of the validation cult and tech giants garbage-feeding machines ‘Click’. Meanwhile, Macie’s empathetic sustained, hovering and warbled violin can be heard – like a mix of both Tony Conrad, John Cale and Michel Urbaniak – on the Hayes-like, requiem of voices snatched, cinematic turn hysteria screams of voices, whammy bar guitar and reversals ‘Distance’, and the Madlib & MF Doom skit soulful looping cosmic collapsing ‘Isn’t It Beautiful’. Krista, sounding a little like a cross between Tenesha The Wordsmith and Sarah Fabio Webster, offers a guiding light and the healing balm solution spirituals on the water replenishing, metaphorical seed planted dreamy ‘High Priestess’ – every now and then, from the parallel reality, a passage and stirring of activism, a squeal and churn of the upheaval brings us back into the world of hostile policing – , and Ralph drums a slow tumbled, near gravitational held break on the already mentioned ‘Isn’t It Beautiful’, and itches, scratches and slips and cuts the vinyl on his turntables for The Project Polaroid meets Afrikan Sciences “fiercely explosive” ‘Meteors Of Fear’.
But this album is all about the words, the judgements, the poetry and call of swooned, soothed, irate, actionist samples clutched from an exhaustible source of political movements, resistance groups, street protests, the disaffected and disenfranchised. And Locks seems to channel a sagacious yet youthfully fearless reaction to the world around him with a spoken narration, unfurling of thoughts that’s one part Sun Ra, one part Brother Ah, one part Last Poets, one part Fred Moten and one part Carl Hancock Rux. Put together with a sound that could be Adrian Younge or Cities Aviv mixing up The John Betsch Society, Lamplighter, Lynx 196.9, Doug Hammond, Flying Lotus and Curtis Mayfield, it all makes for an impressive collage of demands and requirements hewn from the desperate forbode of a society kettled and hemmed in, distracted by the manna of a never-ending feed of content fixes. Locks poetically blasts the weapons of authority, the constant wearing down and stresses with a despondent but still fighting delivery of soul, hip-hop and post-jazz. A lot of people are going to be very happy that this inaugural project stands up, and that the quality is erudite as well as chaotically appealing, disturbed and agitated.
Robert Farrugia ‘Natura Maltija’
(Phantom Limb/Kewn Records) 17th January 2025
Situated on the shallow shelf formed from the high points of a land bridge between its larger northern neighbour of Sicily and the North African continent, the Malta archipelago benefits from a diversity of fauna, flora and nature. Its position and geological formation at the centre of the Mediterranean is a godsend for a biosphere of beauty and diaphanous species, from octopus and turtles to birds and a rare weasel – the “Bellottra”, one of the smallest carnivores on the planet, is so beloved by the local population that they depicted this rarefied mammal on its coinage.
There’s over 1000 species in fact, with a 130 of that number being endemic to the islands themselves. Unfortunately, due to the loss of habitat, the spread of invasive species and human intervention, many are on the endangered list. And as is the case everywhere, a general lack of education about the environment and biosphere has led to a further disconnection, and a concerning ignorance of the growing dangers. Whilst vital to the economy, Malta has also seen a massive increase in tourism over the decades; the numbers swelling in recent years, often outnumbering the local population by three-to-one, and some years as much as five-to-one.
Addressing the plight and ongoing struggle to accommodate these problems, plus the spectre of climate change and its effects, producer and director Saviour Bonnici has created an inspiring and actionist documentary series, Natura Maltija, or “Maltese Nature”. Combating the gap in the education system, Bonnici has captured the beautified, near sacred and yet also plaintive fears and majesty of marine and land life in and around this famous archipelago, with the tone pitched between the “wistful” and “celebratory”. Echoing those same emotions and capturing a real gravity but intimacy too, ambient/neoclassical/IDM artist and composer Robert Farrugia has been tasked with using his signature processes and balance of real acoustic instruments and subtle, attuned and voice-like electronic apparatus to score the perfect soundtrack for this series.
Lovingly in awe and sanctity yet composing a both magical and playful score, Farrugia corresponds each subject with a suitable suite of floated serenity, refracted light patterns on the shallow seabed and near soft choral and pastoral hinted organ-like gravity. As naturalistic and organic as possible, each theme is either explored, marvelled or accentuated with a venerable subtlety that draws out both a beauty and sadness. The (sort of) long-nosed tiny shrew-like “Bugeddum” of Malta has its furry movements transformed into a beautifully gleamed and shake of twinkled classical Prokofiev-like percussion and glockenspiel, and the “Bufula” bird is articulated by a both pastoral and electronic attentive air of concert hall classicism and a synthesis of waveforms. The “Gamiem”, which I think is another bird, is represented by a dappled light play of spherical bulb-like notes and tinkles and a glimmer of Jarre, Boards of Canada and Röyksopp.
Below the waves, submersed in an underwater kingdom of dreaminess and subtle ethereal voice-like hymnals, the rare freshwater “Qabru” crab is accorded a respectful plaint of lower-case piano notes, suspended floating atmospheres and spiralled pitch shift reversals. The “Qarnita”, or octopus, features what sounds like rattled and chinking bottles that somehow ape tentacle movements, whilst an enveloped serenity offers something near holy and yet alien.
The score is pretty incredible, a near perfect ambient evocation of nature in its habitat. Simultaneously familiar and yet offering an alternative vibe, cleanliness and enchantment that sets this biosphere in a sensory light, Natura Maltija sounds at times like Brian Wilson (at its most playfully twinkled and chimed), Cage, Tangerine Dream, Harold Budd and Andrew Heath composing a soundtrack for Jacque Cousteau in the bejewelled clear seas and on the drought-immune planted lands of a Mediterranean oasis. Hopefully it educates as much as it inspires, and immerses the listener, for this is already one of the best albums I’ve heard in 2025.
wjerstean ‘Raspad’
(NEN Records)
You’d be forgiven for the lack of attention paid to the former Armenian majority mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and its fight to remain autonomous in the face of conflict. Located in the southern Caucasus, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but governed by the Republic of Artsakh for years, and secured by Russia, Nagorno-Karabakh was originally established in 1923 by the Soviet Union.
Subsequent events led to fighting between both Armenia and Azerbaijan, escalated by the regional legislature’s resolution in 1988 to join the Republic of Armenia. Old rivalries and disputes were bought to the surface and violence soon ensued, including ethnic cleansing atrocities. In 1994 Russia secured a ceasefire after six years of conflict.
Fast forward to 2023, and with the Ukraine invasion in full bloody flow, the Middle East at war, an emboldened Azerbaijan (enabled really by Russia) made a lightning offensive move, occupying Nagorno-Karabakh and forcing out roughly half of the two hundred thousand majority population of Armenians – many fleeing to the mother country. Officially dissolved, Azerbaijan has begun a diplomatic process of normalization, despite claims of ethnic cleansing and violence.
Already suffering, perhaps, the first genocide of the last century, when forcibly marched, starved, massacred and deported from their lands by the Ottoman Empire during WWI, the Armenian people are unfortunately no strangers to trauma. You only need to see the physiological damage, the sunken lament of the subjects in some of Arshile Gorky’s paintings to register that grief and loss. In the aftermath, the Allied Powers recognized Armenia as a sovereign republic yet did nothing to aid it or stop its portioning by both Turkey and Russia.
Armenia would fight again when the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 80s and early 90s, and once more declare independence. And although life hasn’t been easy (see the anti-government protests of 2018, billed as the Armenian Revolution), Armenia’s adopted market economy has led to improvement and cordial relationships with many of its neighbours, including Georgia, but also the EU and the Arab League.
Tracing its history as far back as the Iron Age, with the traces of early civilization in the area dating to 4000BC, Armenia has survived various changes yet remained an identifiable independent state: even when gobbled up, strongarmed or forced into other empires and kingdoms. The first (I’m assured) state in the world to adopt Christianity as the national religion, retained now for 1700 years, Armenia’s arcane practices manifest on the debut cassette album from wjerstean, a solo artist living in the country since 2022. The guise of one Lisa Viktorova, this project mystically, harrowingly and esoterically channels the country’s atavistic psychogeography, its pains and peoples’ trauma to say, both obliquely and head on, something about the mental anguish, stresses and fatigue of the modern world. None more so than the millennial despondent Prozac Nation visit to the pharmacy ‘to take away’, a subdued but haunting Oriental-like accompanied indolent drawl of medicated grievances and pains.
Somewhere between darkwave pop, the post-industrial, the bleak awakening hours, the avant-garde, the religious and unearthly the Raspod album features an estranged commentary, yearn, resignation and lucid poetic decry delivered in both a recognisable and more amorphous language of utterances, swoons, wisps, and phonemes (the smallest unit of sound in a language that distinguishes one word from another). Some in English, others in a both a sullen and elusively shrouded and bloodied or fairytale manner, the songs are enveloped in a mysterious dreaminess that draws upon the esoteric, hermetic, apostolic and atavistic. And as an historical bridge for centuries before between the Roman, then Byzantium empires, and the Persian empire and tribes of the Steppes, the alchemy is eclectic in depth with traditional sounds woven into a mood music of dark materials, frayed eerie classicism, shadowed synthesized electronics and hidden sourced mechanisms, rachets, stretches, creaks and tools.
This is a chilling, though on occasion melodically stirring, fusion of Lusine Zakarian, Apokrifina Realnost, Coil, the Gazelle Twin, Psychic TV and Luis Pestana. There’s an almost courtly phantasm cover version too of 4AD goth signing Clan of Xymox’s slighted, spiteful and bloody ‘Creature’ from ’99 that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Leisure FM release.
Pulled through the mirror backwards into a world of pain and historical/generational trauma, Viktorova both plays on and navigates the harrowing darkness victims old and new, of Armenia’s past and future destination and survival in face of such despairing upheaval and autocratic barbarity. An uncompromising debut of subterranean exhaustion and attuned degrees of experimental weathering, loss and illusion.
Emily Mikesell & Kate Campbell Strauss ‘Give Way’
(Ears & Eyes Records) 24th January 2025
Naturally drawn together through their shared love for subtlety over displays of jazz virtuosity and indulgence, the New Orleans based duo of trumpeter, composer, arranger and activist Emily Mikesell and saxophonist, composer and educator Kate Campbell Strauss have produced a debut album that very much breathes in the now but harks back to a far more thoughtful, ruminated age of the emotionally charged and tender.
Early mild weathered strolls in the evening, castle shaped clouds, the calm paused reflections captured during the bustle, all are just some of the prompts and feels beautifully and organically articulated on these supple, giving and brassy suffused duets.
With the imbued spirit of Miles Davis and Gil Evans Sketches Of Spain (minus the castanets), Kenny Dorham, Chet Baker, Steve Lacy and Dexter Gordon flowing throughout, this brass double-act serenade, steadily climb and dance to a jazz sound swaddled in the blues, the seasonal classics, the romantic and the sentimental.
The opening number, ‘Cloud Castles’ eases the listener into this erudite and sweetly laced performance with echoes of Lester Young and what can only be described as a meeting of Chico Hamilton and Lalo Schifrin relocating a subdued soundtrack to the docks of New Orleans. It’s always a balance of the familiar and discovered, as the subtleties develop and place the action or emotion in a slightly more intriguing place, one minute drifting into a 60s film score or an episode of Colombo, the next, slowly rising and then relaxing to a sort of reggae-like signature whilst recalling The Godfather soundtrack! (check out ‘Recipe’ and tell me I’m wrong).
Mikesell and Strauss seem to place each reedy sustained and lingering exhale, deep bassy tone and shorter swanned and sharper circles perfectly; neither cutting in nor interrupting each other’s performances. Every note is audible, every feeling felt on an album of timeless quality and relenting ease. Forgiving with moments of happiness but introspection and the blues, Give Way is an exceptional jazz album from a pair of musicians that know their art and craft inside out. And for once, subtlety wins out against extremes, as these six tracks form a complete picture of beautifully emoted perfection.
30 Door Key ‘A Warning To The Curious’
(Subexotic) 31st January 2025
In a retro knowing Fortean-Ballard-Wiccan-Thelema-Chthonian-cult atmosphere of abundant references the Palermo (oh how I wish to return to one of my favourite cities one day soon) electronic artist Alessio Bosco invokes an oddball, quirky and ominous prowling soundtrack of simultaneous dystopian futurism and past visitations from the spirit world on his new album A Warning To The Curious.
Where to begin in unravelling this vinyl-issued spread. Well, we can start with that title, borrowed from the genius crafter of idiosyncratic English ghost stories M.R. James’ famous tale of an antiquarian and archologist protagonist named Paxton who happens across one of the legendary three crowns of the East Anglia kingdom one day, whilst holidaying in the idyll of Seaburgh – meant, we’re told to be a “thinly disguised” version of Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Unfortunately for Paxton his curiosity gets the better of him, as in retrieving this trophy from the psychogeographic soil of a realm destined to one day be brought back into being as a sole defence against invasion, he invokes the crown’s supernatural guardian, who then precedes to hound and stalk him to a “woeful” death.
The nom de plume of 30 Door Key is a reference, I believe, to the film adaptation of Witold Gumbrowicz’s 1937 book Ferdydurke, put onto screen by the Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski in 1991. In short, this cult story and film’s young protagonist faces a conflict between acting his age at the onset of WWII in his Warsaw home, or of regressing and relapsing back into childhood as an escape.
Both references are entwinned and bolstered by a whole list from the artist himself, who name checks an exhaustible roll call of literary, musical and filmic inspirations: some obvious, others, a bit of a surprise. And so, you can expect to anything from Broadcast and Belbury Poly to Sidney Sager, from a removed version of Kraftwerk to Harmonia and early Human League. Cult library music is woven into evocations of Boards of Canada, John Carpenter, Vangelis, Richard H. Kirk, Adolf Wertemann, Andre Tschaskowski, Gene Moore, Andy Votel, Caravan of Anti-Matter, Trans Am and Thomas Dinger across nineteen varied tracks of science fiction and fact, kosmische technological wonder, children’s 80s fantasy soundtracks, Italian horror scores, paranormal activities, spells and dreams states.
Being an enthusiast, historically and culturally, of Bosco’s Sicilian home, I was drawn immediately to the title inclusion of the stunning coastal perched Norman cathedral town of Cefalù – about an hour’s train ride east of Palermo on the island’s northern coastline. The “Lucifer of Cefalù” is, I’m pretty sure, a reference to occultist icon Aleister Crowley’s who set up a Thelema temple in one of the town’s lesser, more inconspicuous villas with his “scarlet woman” acolyte Leah Hirsig. Long after its demise and return to shambling unkempt beacon for generations of occultist fiends, groupies and the like, Kenneth Anger uncovered several of its dusty covered murals, which he filmed to make up his infamous, now lost, Thelema Abbey film in the mid 1950s. If walls could talk – so Anger hoped -, the exploits within this modest pile have inspired numerous anecdotes, literary scenarios and scandal. Musically in the now, this inspiration is given an odd Stereolab-like acidy bounce and blip score that’s more library music sci-fi than Sodom and Gomorrah (or as in the case of Crowley and his disciples, more like sodemy and gonorrhoea) and Satanic invocations.
With the Fortean transmitter channelling everything from Hitchcock, Ken Russell phantasm and The Legacy to the music of the Amicus and Tigon film studios, pastoral hallucinations and veiled break beats, Boscoe summons up a BBC workshop of quirky magik, Lovecraftian atavistic shadows, suspense and whispered apparitional calls and dialogue from the supernatural archives. If you dug last year’s Night Blooming Flowers album collaboration between Drew Mulhollandand Garden Gate on the same label, then you will lap this curio up, which comes out on suitably ghoulish transparent green vinyl (of course!).
Trinka ‘S-T EP’
(Agogo Records) 24th January 2025
The debut six-track EP from the newly coalesced trio of Brazilian singer and synthesist Dandara Modesto, Portuguese writer, producer and guitarist João Pires and Brazilian percussionist Juninho Ibituruna is a beautifully soulful mirage of Lusophone language and cultural Afro-Brazilian influences: a dream-realism, sometimes lilted plead from a both familiar and contemporary transformed Latin-America.
Under the Trinka banner, well-versed and experienced through several projects over the years, the trio saunter and march (in the most forgiving, lucid of ways) to a different drum beat and atmosphere, as they channel the magically beautiful and trilling like a songbird-of-paradise vocalist Modesto’s Candomblé practice with a flowing and sometimes shuffled collage of recognisable elements from Brazil’s rich musical heritage. Candomblé for the uninitiated, harks back to the 19th century religion that developed in Brazil from the enslaved masses that were transported from West and Central Africa. On foreign soil the gods of the Yoruba, Bantu and Gbe come up against Roman Catholicism in a hybrid worship that venerates a whole host of “orixas” “inkice” and “vodun” spirits that serve a single all-powerful entity. The name of this religion translates as “dance in honour of the gods” and comes with its very own fusion of sounds and rhythms; and counts as just one aspect of this inaugural union of attentive, sentimental and spiritually giving souls
In this age, this landscape, Briela Oieda, Raz Olsher and Gabriele Viegas commune with Maria Toleda, LA LOM and the post-bossa triumvirate of Nana Vasconcelos, Mauricio Maestro and Joyce Moreno in a captivating dream of reimagined Afrocubism, Fado, Latin-jazz, folk and subtle synthesized effects.
Raising an emotionally diaphanous glass to yearning sentiments of spiritual recovery and healing, or in a dance through the exotic lush forests of Brazil, the trio are aided by a host of friends and like-minded artists, with Bianca Godoy, Jazzanova’s Stefan Merse Ulrich and Paul Kleber all pitching in throughout to further expand this lyrical, magical and stirring musical palette.
Soulful music for a world on the precipice of hate-filled autocratic destruction, the Trinka EP is a delightful and forgiving ray of beautified Lusophonic longing and movement. The future looks pretty promising for this trio; the sound exquisitely hankering for describing a loss of magic and spiritualism that can’t be ignored.
Memory Scale ‘Chapter Five’
(Audiobulb Records) 18th January 2024
A sensory appeal of time, place, geometry and the spherical orbits of the cosmos permeate this latest sophisticated offering from the Bordeaux residing artist Memory Scale, otherwise known as the guise of one Arnaud Castagné. Measured complexities are suffused with a rich and subtle palette of IDM, Kosmische, electronic and most notably ambient inspirations; channelling at any one-time echoes of Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Boards of Canada, Eno, Seefeel, Speedy J, Ash Ra, Jarre and Peter Michael Hamel as the synthesized merges seamlessly with elements of effected guitar and the stained glass lit sounds of an organ and the lightened bulb noted Rhodes.
But even within that scope of influences, I can hear something approaching a more sedate paced track “#7” from the Aphex Twins’ Ambient Works Vol.2 on the windy synth breathing and atmospheric lead-in ‘Causes & Effects’, the kind of synth bass you’d hear on an 80s cult samurai soundtrack and the supernatural retro feels of Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein on the crisp crackled surface sounded and deep ‘A Late Reading’, and a both playful atom spirograph and roulette wheeled movement of 90s Warp roster mavericks on the obscured transmission ‘Epicycloid’. Altogether a quality of depth, feelings and softly prompted suggestions of various attuned and attentive musical instruments, of ruminating thought processes, and the historical instruments that measured celestial bodies of our universe.
From the crystalized to the translucent the fantastical and moody, many bases are covered on a work that would suit a soundtrack of recalled and oblique memories.
As that title denotes, this is the fifth album, and third for the unassuming Audiobulb Records label, and it’s a classy, cerebral but emotionally drawn experience that borders on the filmic, the magical, more reflective and near haunted. A truly immersive experience.
ZD Grafters ‘Three Little Birds’
Digitally released last November/Vinyl arriving sometime this February 2025
The decaying edifice of dead birds found in the hearth is transmogrified into a distortion of death, pestilence, mortality and contorted, hurtled and unwieldly post-punk-no-wave-freeform-jazz-skonk-doom-metal by the ZD Grafters trio on their most recent album. Released at the tail end of 2024, it just missed out on my last Perusal (December) column. And so, I’m making up for it now by including it in my inaugural Perusal roundup of 2025, but also because a vinyl version is set to be released in February – which you can pre-order now on the featured Bandcamp page.
The family unit of busy drummer Zac and fuzz-filtered throbbing growly bassist Dave Kavanagh are joined in this chthonian, morbid curio enactment of stresses, sickness and dark meta(l) by skeletal bird contorted invoked saxophonist Riddel Thomas, who seems to be channelling some blurted and heralding, death rattling hybrid of Mats Gustafsson, Marshall Allen, Larry Ochs and Gunter Hampel across a miasma of both menace, dirtiness and soot. And yet, whilst that trebly growled, throbbed and lo fi filtered bass – sounding like its being played in another room or even in mono, or just heard through the studio headphones – and bashed, smashed, splashing and in constant movement drums express dark energy, stirrings of the ungodly, and evoke the Black Horse of the Apocalypse, the trio basically sound like they had fun stoking the engines of doom.
I can’t improve on the Kavanagh’s self-coined “parole jazz” label – there’s a real sinister, prowling stalking vibe of expelled no-good forces at work that is perfectly summed up by it -, but can offer some markers: imagine Andy Haas duelling with Glenn Branca in an avian graveyard, or, Melt Yourself Down lashing out at Laddio Bolocko, or even, Last Exit joining up with Death From Above 1979 and Zu to dissect, poke at and read the bones of those crows trapped and rotting away in the Kavanagh family fireside.
Heavy in the best possible way, Three Little Birds is a wailing and physically demanding riotous and freeform expulsion of primordial dark, confrontational and bugled no-jazz that evokes a world of its own making.
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