Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part One: A – L
December 10, 2024
Welcome to part one of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists.
Picked by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Despite the tumult of problems that face artists and bands in the music industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, the worrying trend of venue closures, the ever-encroaching domination of streaming against physical sales and exposure, and the onslaught of AI, people just can’t quit making music. And that’s all without listing the political, social and economic woes that continue to make life unbearable for most of us; the scandalous forces of austerity/cost-of-living crisis and post-Covid hangover threatening to constantly drag us under. We, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys, the music makers, do in the face of such intense stresses.
In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so (as I say every year) instead of those silly, factious and plain dumb numerical charts that our peers and rivals insist on continuing to print – how can you really suggest one album deserves their place above or below another; why does one entry get the 23rd spot and another the 22nd; unless it is a vote count, and even then, does it really come down to a popularity contest? –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic and democratic alphabetical order – something we (more or less) started in the first place.
The lists are broken up this year into two parts, A-L, and M-Z, and include those albums we’ve reviewed or featured on the site in some capacity, plus a smattering of those we just didn’t get the time to include. All entries are displayed thus: Artist (in alphabetical order) then the album title, label, who it was chosen by and a review link, if there is one. We also included quotes and summaries underneath.
Before we precede, we’d like to thank the following contributors to the site this year: Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Matt Oliver, Graham Domain, Mikey McDonald and Andrew C. Kidd, plus our Italian friends at Kalporz. Also, our gratitude and love for all our supporters during the year, and to those that have donated to https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail We really can’t have continued without it.
A_
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Retro Porter’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Review
“The sound of John Lane’s most prolific and artistically successful alias, A Journey Of Giraffes (no stranger to the blog, and often featured in our choice end of year features) is given almost unlimited time and space to unfurl on the ambitious opus-spanning Retro Porter album of ambient empirical suites.
An expansion upon Lane’s previous work – especially last year’s choice album entry, Empress Nouveau – each evolving sensory piece allows all the Baltimore composer’s signatures, motifs and serialism-like enquires to recollect memories of places and scenes, of the abstract, over the course of what sounds like a whole day.
Mirages, imaging’s, the sound of birds in the iron lattice gardens of an ostentatious arcade percent as described in late 19th century novella’s, sonorous pitches, the softened sound of a taiko drum at the Kabuki theatre, various hinges, dulcimer-like strokes all evaporate then solidify to create an ambient opus; a lifetimes work coalesced into one expansive, layered work of soundscape art and abstraction. Lane has allowed his mind to wander and explore organic and cerebral long form ideas like never before to produce, perhaps, his most accomplished unrestricted work yet.” DV
Annarella and Django ‘Jouer’ (We Are Busy Bodies/Sing A Song Fighter)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Born from the Senegalese imbued and inspired hub built around Sweden’s Wau Wau Collectif, another cross-cultural project that embraces that West African nation’s (and its neighbours) rich musical heritage. Fusing the roots, landscape and themes of Senegal with those of Europe, the partnership of Swedish flutist Annarella and the Malian born ngoni master Django absorbs the very atmosphere of that westernmost African republic, transposing and transforming age old traditions with a hybrid of contemporary musical effects and influences and guest list of diverse musicians and voices.
Django’s home environment and the outlier around it seeps into and materializes like a dreamy haze across all the album’s tracks, as evocations of the classical, of jazz and the blues mixes with the local stew of diverse languages. Tracks like ‘Degrees of Freedom’ are more mystical sounding, near cosmic, as the band saunter like gauze under the moon and across the desert’s sandy tides. Jouer, which translates from the French into “play”, is just that, a lovely stirring union of the playful that seamlessly entwines the two musician’s respective practices with sympathy, respect and the earthly concerns of our endangered societies and world. Hopefully this collaboration will continue and grow over the years; there’s not been a better one since Catrin Finch teamed up with Seckou Keita.” DV
Fran Ashcroft ‘Songs That Never Were’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“There is a uniqueness about this album; a trueness and soul you do not come across often much in these days of music to be played on phones. These are songs that could have been written anytime over the last 50 or so years, with some quite beautiful melodies and great lyrics; songs made for and by a music lover…already one on my end of the year best list.” BBS
B__
Donald Beaman ‘Fog On Mirror Glass’ (Royal Oakie)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The play and course of light, the recurring “phantom” and a beautiful subdued, nigh on elegiac poetry conjures up a simultaneous union of the beatific and longing on the latest solo effort from Donald Beaman.
Like a drifter’s songbook of subtle, intimate and home-recorded wanderings, metaphors and the like for yearned and plaintive romantic loss, fondness, the passing/measuring of time, and the urge to find comfort and solace, Fog On Mirror Glass uses memories of the weather, the way the light touched or dimmed at a given moment in time, and the smallest of witnessed movements/touches to evoke the right atmosphere of gossamer and sparsity.
In all, a most impressive and understated songbook of honest quality and performance, themed largely around the way light falls upon any given metaphor, analogy, phrase, description and texture. Unadorned, the feelings are left to pull and draw the listener into a most intimate world. Each play reveals more, as the album really begins to grow on you. A fine record indeed.” DV
Beauty Stab ‘Guide/Frisk’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“After a five plus year wait, we have the debut, and who knows, only album from the one time much tipped for big things Beauty Stab. An album filled with sex sleaze and glamour but with a healthy or unhealthy dose of darkness.
The sound and feel of eighties chart land I think has a big influence on Beauty Stab. They do share a name with ABC’s second album after all, and I can almost hear Martin Fry emote over the bass heavy synth pop funk of “Manic”.
“GUIDE/FRISK” is a wonderful and inventive crafted album that celebrates the joy and darkness and power that great pop music can bring to your life and really deserves to be heard by all.” BBS
Black Artist Group ‘For Peace And Liberty, In Paris December 1972’ (WEWANTSOUNDS)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Saved from obscurity and jazz lore, the previously believed “long-lost” recordings of the Black Artist Group’s radical free, avant-garde, spiritual and Afro jazz (with a side order hustle of funk) performance in Paris has been thankfully unearthed, dusted off and remastered in a project partnership between the band and the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel. Facilitating this operation are the reissue revivalist vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS – regularly featured in my review columns over the years -, who’ve invited various connoisseur experts to provide liner notes, essays and photographic images to this package.
At times we’re talking Coltrane and Sun Ra, and at other times Roscoe Mitchell, Carlos Garnett and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. You can also pick up some Chick, a touch of Cymande, of Art Blakey, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton. But to be specific, if you dig Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s ‘Safari’, Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’ and Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society then you’ll really need to part with the cash and have this on your shelf asap: not before blasting it out from your turntable.” DV
Black Diamond ‘Furniture Of The Mind Rearranging’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transported back in time, and then propelled forward into the now via Chicago’s musical legacy, its rich heritage of innovators and scope in the world of jazz, Artie Black and Hunter Diamond’s dual saxophone and woodwind focused vehicle can trace a line from the Windy City’s smokestack bluesy outlines of the 50s through the icons Sun Ra, Roscoe Mitchell, Eddie Johnson, Lester Bowie, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Anthony Braxton and the hothouse of undeniable influence and talent, the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians.
Across an ambitious double-album spread of both quartet and duo mode formations, those Black Diamonds don’t so much shine as smoulder and fizzle to a smoky and simmering resonance and metropolis backdrop encroached by wild jungles and fertile growth.” DV
Bloom De Wilde ‘The Circular Being’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the muse and the music of Bloom de Wilde. It has a tender all-consuming innocence and hope that calmly plays Rock Paper Scissors with a wistful sadness and melancholy.
Bloom writes songs that offer hope against all the odds; songs that embrace the eccentrics and outsiders, all the underdogs in life. Maybe that is why I feel a connection to her music and at times find myself totally engrossed with her beautiful tapestry of pop, jazz, folk and psychedelia, which she has woven with great love and skill to make great art.
Bloom is a fine songwriter, which may sometimes be overlooked due to the wonderful eccentricities of her personality and is a quite an accomplished and original lyricist, as this fascinating eleven song album of love, hope and magic shows.” BBS
The Bordellos ‘Nobody’s Listening’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by DV/Review by Graham Domain
“This is another perfect ‘slice of life’ album from The Bordellos. If all they had was a pair of spoons and a cassette-recorder, they would still be driven to record these hazy snapshots of life, in the same way that L S Lowry splashed his canvas with the daily drudgery and drama of the northern working-class. Was anyone paying attention to Mr Lowry at the time? No! But today there are hotels, theatres and tree-lined streets named after him. (Even Bowie was one to acknowledge the match-stalk painters genius titling his best album Low)!” Graham Domain
boycalledcrow ‘Kullau (Mortality Tables)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A musical atmospheric hallucination and psychedelic dream-realism of a roadmap, the latest transduced-style album from Carl M Knott (aka a boycalledcrow) takes his recollections, memory card filled photo albums, samples and experiences of travelling through Northern India between 2005 and 2006 and turns them into near avant-garde transported passages of outsider art music.
Place names (that album title refers to the village, an ancient kingdom, of ‘Kullu’, which sits in the ‘snow-laden mountain’ province of Himachel Pradesh in the Western Himalayas), Buddhist self-transformation methods (the extremely tough self-observation process of “non-reaction” for the body and mind known as “Vipassana”), Hindu and Jainism yogis (the “Sadhu”, a religious ascetic, mendicant or any kind of holy person who has renounced the worldly life, choosing instead to dedicate themselves to achieving “moksha” – liberation – through meditation and the contemplation of God) and language (the localised distinctive Kullu dialect and syntax of “Kanashi”, currently under threat) are all used as vague reference points, markers in this hallucinatory grand tour.” DV
Brevity ‘Home Is Where Your Dog Is’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The wonderfully named “Home Is Where your Dog Is” is the unreleased album, plus some demo recordings, by late the 60’s early 70’s Chicago rock band Brevity, a band who never actually got to release anything at the time but had interest and encouragement from both Island Records and Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight Records. Truth be told, released here for the first time by Think Like A Key Records, it is indeed a bit of a lost and now found musical treasure.
“Home Is Where Your Dog Is” is one of those rare lost albums that actually deserves to be labelled a lost classic, and the added demos actually have an indie/post punk feel to them that reminded me strangely of very early Pulp in their more acoustic like days. Yes, one of my favourite albums I have had the pleasure to listen to this year: a true Gem of an album.” BBS
Charlie Butler ‘Wild Fictions’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“The music is all that you hoped it would be, for music without hope is hopeless and this is anything but that; it is the cream cake among lesser mortals.” BBS”
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Chris Corsano ‘The Key (Became the Important Thing [and Then Just Faded Away])’
(Drag City) – Chosen by DV
The prolific free-jazz, avant-garde and avant-hard drumming innovator Chris Corsano can be found as an instigator or willing foil across a multitude of experimental collaborations (recently on the MC appearing alongside Nels Cline, Darin Gray and Glenn Kotche as part of the We Jazz signed-off Saccata Quartet) but his soloist works are just as numerous and far reaching/influential. I lost count of appearances and album releases in 2024, but this constant rhythmic and non-rhythmic progressing album is my favourite, taken from back in June.
Literally letting rip with an apparatus of recognisable and often non-musical implements, Corsano fuses a noise and splash of ripping and tearing sounds with no wave Kraut-punk (think CAN, Faust), West African drumming, alternative jazz and jazz-prog-rock. Untethered, clever, and anarchistic in equal measures. DV
Alison Cotton ‘Engelchen’ (Rocket Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“In the wake of the barbaric terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, and the ensuing destructive retaliation/ obliteration of Gaza by Israel since, there seems little room – let alone nuance and balance – on the debate; battle lines have been drawn and divisions sowed. And so, this inspired tale of ‘derring-do’ (originally performed live at the Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland) performance suite from the Sunderland composer Alison Cotton is a most timely reminder of dark history, but also of altruistic acts of kindness.
Scoring the story of the innocuous Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, and their incredibly brave rescue attempts to save the lives of twenty-nine Jews from occupied Europe during the build-up and eventual outbreak of WWII, Cotton ties in the modern plight of refugees escaping similar persecutions.
Less a morbid, dark soundtrack to the evils of the Nazi regime and Holocaust, Cotton instead conveys the enormity and the danger of the Cook’s enterprise through slow tidal movements, tones, intonations and changes in the atmosphere. Throughout it all a prevailing presence and emotional pull can be felt: The mood music of grief, the plaintive and sorrowful cumulating in a beautifully played series of arrangements and suites that are as sombre as they are beautiful and moving – reminding me in parts of Alex Stolze, Anne Müller, Simon McCorry and Aftab Darvishi.” DV
D____
Ëda Diaz ‘Suave Bruta’ (Airfono)
Chosen by DV/ Review
“A rarefied artist who manages to merge dream-realism with both the traditional and contemporary, Ëda Diaz occupies multiple realms of geography to produce sublime and club-lite Latin-European R&B pop music. Between spheres of influence, her French-Colombian heritage is bonded across an exotic soundboard of effects, precise cut electronica, and transformed repurposed old dances and song; the latter of which includes an electrified form of currulao, ‘wonky’ Colombian salsa, bolero, bullerengue, vallenato and ‘dembow’. I absolutely love this spellbinding, vulnerable and playful Latin-Euro vision.” DV
E_____
Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit’ (Spiritmuse Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Originally hot-housed in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (the mid-1960s nonprofit organization instigated by Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall and Phil Cohran in Chicago, which El’Zabar himself once chaired) incubator, El’Zabar’s percussive, drumming rhythms for the mind, body and soul channelled the windy city’s rich musical lineage of jazz, blues, R&B, soul, Godspell and what would become house and dance music.
Following on from last year’s Spirit Gather tribute to Don Cherry (which featured the worldly jazz icon’s eldest son David Ornette Cherry shortly before his death) this latest conscious and spiritual work channels that rich legacy whilst worshipping at the altar of those icons, progenitors and idols that came before; namely, in this instance, Miles Davis, Eugene McDaniels and McCoy Tyner.
El’Zabar’s once more heals, opens minds and elevates with another rhythmic dance of native tongues and groove spiritualism. The ancient roots of that infectious groove and the urgency of our modern times are bonded together to look back on a legacy that deserves celebrating. After fifty years of quality jazz exploration and collaboration, El’Zabar proves that there is still much to communicate and share as he and the EHE recast classics and original standards from the back catalogue.” DV
Empty House ‘Bluestone’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The megalithic period “cromlech” (frequently interchanged with and referred to a “dolmen” too) construction of large stone blocks that stands within the borders of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in the village of Pentre Ifan, acts as a gateway to the imagination for the Blackpool-based musician Fred Laird, who goes under the moniker of Empty House.
Avalon mists descend across a communication with the landscape, whilst shriven archaic reenactments stir-up the hallucinatory and esoteric. Old vacuums of air blow through the spaces in between the stones as a haunted geology shrieks, howls, mourns and swirls. And a wispy passage of monastery choral voices carries on the wind as children giggle and the neolithic generator revs up vibrations and pulses from the afterlife. The Incredible String Band makes merry with Julian Cope; Steve Hillage joins Ash Ra Tempel; and Affenstunde period Popol Vuh invokes ghostly parallel histories with Xqui and Quimper on a tour of Ley lines. Atmospheres and scenes from a long history of settlement, of the spiritual, envelope the listener on a most subtle but rich field recording trip.” DV
Peter Evans ‘Extra’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A meeting of avant-garde minds to savour, the union of Peter Evans with Koma Saxo and Post Koma instigator and bassist Petter Eldh and New York downtown experimental rock and jazz drummer pioneer Jim Black is every bit as dynamic, explosive, torqued, moody, challenging and exciting as you’d imagine.
A crossroads of separate entangled influences and backgrounds, legacies, with all three practitioners in this Evans-fronted project and their CVs stretching back a few decades, the avant-garde rubs up against the blues, hard bop, atmospheric set scores, hip-hop style breaks, the electronic and classical. By using both the piccolo and flugelhorn on this album, some passages sound like Wynton Marsalis playing over Mozart, or Alison Balsom lending classical airs to an Alfa Mist production.
One of the best jazz albums you’ll hear all year, with a spot saved for the choice albums of the year lists, Extras is a thoroughly inventive and exciting dynamism of contemporary luminaries at the height of their skills and knowledge.” DV
F______
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly ‘MESTIZX’ (International Anthem X Nonesuch)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transformed and remoulded for a more progressive age the “MESTIZX” title of this partnership’s debut album takes the Spanish term for “mixed person” (namely, a union between those indigenous people in the Latin conquered territories of South America and the Spanish) away from its colonial roots and repurposes it on an album of dream realism duality.
With the multimedia performer and singer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti’s Bolivian and the jazz drummer Frank Rosaly’s Puerto Rican heritages, the pre-colonial history of South America is woven into a contemporary revision of magic, organic forms and ritual rhythms mixed with elements and a suffusion of Chicago post-rock, post-jazz and alternative Latin leftfield pop.
There’s much to admire in this world of the untamed and wild, with new perspectives, mixed histories and the largely melodious reverberations of the lost exercising a new language of ownership. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly perfect and expand their organic explorations, bewitching messages and oracles on an intriguing, moving and dreamily trippy debut album.” DV
G_______
Michal Gutman ‘Never Coming Home’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Never Coming Home” is a darkly beautiful album; an album of twisted musical discovery, with songs worthy to fall from the lips and the pen of the great Dory Previn; songs that pull you into a strange and beguiling solitude place, where you only have memories and fears and regrets for company. Musically stark and bewitching like an unused broken fairground ride: a bass guitar has never sounded so much like the faded remnants of an old lover’s final kiss. “Never Coming Home” is quite simply stunning.” BBS
Nino Gvilia ‘EP Number 1: Nicole’ & ‘EP Number 2: Overwhelmed By The Unexplained’ (Hive Mind Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Creating a musical, lyrical eco system of their own, soundtracked by folk, minimalism, the hallucinatory and pastoral – with only the final vaporous misty esoteric second EP’s titular track changing from cuckoo-like voiced loops and sympathetic strings to disturbing futuristic daemonic augur –, the Nino Gvilia encompassed guise ebbs and flows with the movement of the replenishing waters, the lakeside and mill turning scenes of the surroundings, to produce a disarming hymn. Idiosyncratic in beauty, I’d recommend this diaphanous accomplished mini opus to those with a penchant for Hatis Noit, Seaming To, Tia Blake and Roberto Musci.”
H________
Hackedepicciotto ‘The Best Of Hackedepicciotto (Live In Napoli)’ (Mute)
Chosen by DV/Review
“As a duo in recent years, Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto under the twinned Hackedepicciotto moniker, have channelled their diverse experiences as members/instigators of such groups as Einstürzende Neubauten, Crime And The City Solution and the Space Cowboys, into a signature sound that embraces the cabaret and soundtrack gravitas of post-punk, post-industrial, electronica, the esoteric, weird folk and twisted fairytale: which they themselves have described as “symphonic drone”.
Their fifth album, the partial sonic and lyrical autobiography, part photo album scrap book dedication, Keepsakes, was released last year. As with most of their catalogue, the duo’s albums are either recorded in a stirring, inspiring location, or in a different country. The most recent being no exception, recorded as it was at Napoli’s legendary Auditorium Novecento using the famous venue’s stock of various instruments. That album now forms the focal or centre point for this live release of choice bell tolled maladies and drone sonnets from the duo’s back catalogue. Performed over two nights, they’ve chosen to return to the Auditorium Novecento setting that made Keepsakes such an atmospherically rich and momentous, dramatic record. And so, they perform a quartet of songs from that most recent album alongside picks from the Menetekel (2017), The Current (2020), The Silver Threshold (2021) and Perseverantia (2023) albums. And it proves a winning formula as the perfect showcase, and a more unique approach to performing the “best of” their back catalogue.” DV
Christopher Haddow ‘An Unexpected Great Leap’ (Erol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A comfort blanket bookended by the reassuring signs of life via the sounds of an ultrasound, Christopher Haddow’s first steps out as a solo artist (flanked on either side by the contributions of Josh Longton on double-bass and Jamie Bolland on piano) capture the abstract feelings of parenthood. An Unexpected Great Leap is in fact, partially, an ambient tool to send both Christopher and his artist wife Athene Grieg’s son Louie off to sleep.
You may know Christopher as the former lead guitarist of Paper Planes and as a member of Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gates, but under his own name and with a different, more personal, direction he’s beautifully, imaginatively and conceptually complimented his wife’s visual feels of parenthood with a searching and settling album of ambient Americana and womb music.” DV
Sahra Halgan ‘Hiddo Dhawr’ (Danaya)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Few artists from the disputed region of Somaliland could qualify better than the singer, freedom fighter and activist Shara Halgan to represent their country’s musical legacy. As an unofficial cultural ambassador and symbol for female empowerment Halgan’s journey is an inspiring one: Forced out of her homeland during a destructive civil war – in which she played a part in nursing and “comforting” fighters from Somaliland’s secession movement, sometimes alleviating suffering through song –, Halgan had to flee abroad to “survive” hardships and dislocation in France, but eventually, a decade after the overthrow of Siad Barre’s ruling military junta, returned home to motivate and promote proud in Somaliland’s cultural heritage.
It was during her time in France, removed from her roots and homesick, that Halgan would meet the musicians that went on to form her studio and touring band: step forward percussionist and founder of the French-Malian group BKO Quintet, Aymeric Krol, and the guitarist and member of the Swiss ensemble Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp and L’etrangleuse, Maël Salètes. Both appear on the latest, and third Halgan album, alongside newest recruit Régis Monte, who adds “vintage organ” and “proto-electronic embellishments” to the heady and fuzzed mix.
Enriched soul music with an edge and buzz, Halgan and her troupe strike a balance between the heartfelt and empowered on electrifying album; that focal voice sounding so fresh and young yet wise and experienced, able to encapsulate a whole culture whilst moving forward.” DV
Herandu ‘Ocher Red’ (Hive Mind Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Trance is spun with bass noodling, Ethio-jazz, post-punk funk, Moroccan and Arabian cassette culture, retro space age keys, no wave dance music and the Aphex Twin to create an interesting explorative zap, skip, playful, mysterious and dreamy vision that mirrors the Gavrilov brothers feelings of their native landscape, and the episodes of life, the shaping of their creativity, born in that Siberian setting.” DV
Herald ‘Linear B’ (Errol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“If mid-70s Eno working his magic with Merriweather Post Pavilion sounds like a match anointed in heaven then Lawrence Worthington’s ridiculously long-delayed debut album is going to send you into a woozy alt-pop state of bliss. The latter partner in that ideal fantasy of influences is hardly surprising, with the Animal Collective’s “infrequent” co-founding member Josh Dibb (aka Deakin) playing the part of co-producing foil and soundboard. And although the eventual Linear B album was first conceived twenty plus years ago, when the Animal Collective and Panda Bear and a menagerie of congruous bands were building an alternative-psych-pop scene – the darlings (quite rightly) of Pitchfork and the burgeoning MySpace culture -, and when the musical palette of sounds is produced on cheap 90s Casio and Yamaha equipment, Worthington’s Herald nom de plume still resonates and feels refreshingly dreamily idiosyncratic.
The results set a personal psychedelic language of feels and character-dotted whimsy to a maverick alt-synth-pop production: imagine Syd Barrett, K. Leimar and Edward Penfold backed by a Factory Records White Fence or Panda Bear. Unassumingly lo fi yet symphonic, you can hear hints of neo-romantics, colder synth spells, the post-punk, the Bureau B label’s cult German new wave and post-krautrock offerings, John Cale and a very removed vision of The Beach Boys.” DV
Holy Matter ‘Beauty Looking Back’
Chosen by DV/Review
“Bathed in a new diaphanous light, Leanna Kaiser steps away from her ambient shrouded Frances With Wolves duo (albeit with an embraced cast of familiar faces and musicians) to take up the soloist guise of Holy Matter.
Following up on a tapestry of enchanted and dreamy singles, woven from gossamer threads of fairytale and fantasy, the musician, songwriter and filmmaker now unfurls an entire beautiful album of nostalgic imbued troubadour-folk, softened psychedelia and country woes, sad lilted resignation, solace, reflection and pathos.
Gazing both lamentably and in sighed resignation from metaphorical fairytale towers and vantage points emphasised by poetic weather patterns, Kaiser gently exudes a longing sense of wistful pulchritude. The past is always near, inescapable and worn like a comfort blanket; moulded to Kaiser’s desires, sorrows, reflections and duality. Holy Matter proves an interesting alluring and enchanting creative progression for Kaiser, her debut solo a refreshing take on the familiar and the tropes of time. “ DV
Hungrytown ‘Circus For Sale’ (Big Stir Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is the fourth album from Hungrytown, but the first I have had the pleasure of hearing, and indeed it is a pleasure as psych folk with more than a hint of baroque pop is right up my street. There is a beauty and calmness to it that one can lose themself in and ignore and forget briefly the day-to-day turmoil that surrounds them. Vocalist Rebbecca Hall is blessed with a magically sweet innocent voice that floats and weaves its way through the musical sea of melodious tranquillity that wraps itself around the listener: pure bliss.” BBS
K___________
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw ‘As Those Gone Before’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for weird, strange folk music, I put it down to watching too much Bagpuss and The Clangers as a toddler: wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child. So, this fine album of weird, strange folk songs is right down my summer pathway stroll of mischievous delight.
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw go from the childlike tales of the sinister folk whimsy “Christopher Tadpole” to the dark and cold clawing of “Mole Man“; if you wondered what story time at the nursery school on summer isle might sound like, these gems will answer your wonderings. “The Four Trains That Killed Me” and “Last Of The Little Lost Lambs” are both wonderfully John Cale like in the darkness and utter beauty as much as “Accused Isle” is like listening to a slightly deranged Pam Ayres on the old Radio Luxembourg via an old transister radio under the bed clothes in the darkest of nights [wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child]. “As Those Gone Before” is a true magical gem of off-kilter folk whimsy, an album of true eccentric magnificence.” BBS
L____________
The Legless Crabs ‘No Condoms, Just Satan’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The sound of rock ‘n’ roll future and past collide in this nineteen-track beauty of anger and attitude: songs that deal with the strangeness of living in this world today.
From the Cramps like “I Catfished My Brother” and the sonic escapades of “Rope Bunny”, to the heaviness and sludge-rock dark humour of “Shark Lover” this is an album that should be all over alternative radio, and once again, has to compete with far less talented and easier and blander beige alternative rock.” BBS
Letters from Mouse ‘Clota’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Graham Domain
“In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Clota was patron of the River Clyde and brought purity to the natural landscape. The album pieces reflect the beauty of nature and how nature evolves and changes, both with the day and with the changing of the seasons.
Altogether it’s a beautiful album that deserves to be heard by many. It is also a great ambient album for meditation or creative work such as painting. Wonderful.” GD
LINA_ ‘Fado Camões’ (Galileo Music)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Back this time with the British producer and musician Justin Adams and a small ensemble, LINA_ takes on the classical 16th century poetics of Portugal’s most famous literary son, Luís Vaz de Camões.
Musically tender, accentuated and like a fog, mist at times, even vapour of the mere essence of a score, there’s echoes of old Spain, the Balearics, North Africa, the Middle East but also Turkey and the Hellenic. LINA_ is a leading light, pushing the boundaries without losing the soul, truth and appeal of the music she adopts and transforms. Fado Camões is another artistic triumph.” DV
The Loved Drones ‘Live at Atelier Rock HUY’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Loved Drones have a power and an all-round likability and uniqueness that all the great bands have. They are a band who plough their own furrow through live casting off tangent animal shapes at the sun, raising two fingers to the lack of talent and originality that currently is forced upon us by the mainstream radio and press. The Loved Drones are quite wonderful.
“The Hindenburg Omen” is a instrumental that a blockbuster film should be made just so it can be included on the soundtrack, and “Humans Can’t Compete” once again is brimming with a Cope-like magnificence. These eight live tracks show what a great band we have in our mists and really should be heard and appreciated by all of us music lovers who love mind bending space hopping cosmic musical delights.” BBS
A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
(Photo : Zara Saraon @zarasaraon)
Luce Mawdsley ‘Northwest & Nebulous’
(Pure O Records) 29th March 2024
Over several years now the former Mugstar guitarist Luce Mawdsley has progressively shorn the more predatory slurred spoken-word mise-en-scenes and lurid, sleazy torturous self-harm from their music; gradually removing the “verbasier” programmed-like demonic effects from their voice and freeing themselves from a circled abyss of sonnets.
During that time Luce has also gravitated ever nearer towards a self-described “queer” vision of the Western soundtrack. This can be especially felt and heard on the last solo album to be featured and premiered on the Monolith Cocktail, Vulgar Displays Of Affection, which showed the Liverpool-based artist/musician moseying to a removed, transported alternative version of this Western re-imaging: a culminated merger of Morricone, Blood Meridian, Crime And The City Solution, El Topo and Hellenica.
Now onto their sixth studio album proper, Luce not only fully embraces that Americana influence but also now joins it with echoes of the English pastoral tradition and chamber music.
Another alternative score, and another progressive step in Luce’s well-being and journey of self-discovery and identity, all traces of their voice have been erased to escape an unhealthy cycle of unhappiness. In penning those disturbed and candid poetics and morbid descriptions, Luce wasn’t released from their torment, but instead locked into a spiral of reinforced misery. Breaking free from that process, Luce has found sanctum with their latest journey-like score, Northwest & Nebulous – the first to be released on Luce’s own label imprint, Pure O Records. Through a “non-human lens” the often amorphous, sometimes ambiguous, landscapes of this new record seem to let nature take its course: wherever it may lead.
Under the auspices of a Grade II listed Scandinavian church in Liverpool, and with chamber pairing of Nicholas Branton on clarinets and Rachel Nicholas on viola (making another appearance after adding something of the ethereal to the Vulgar Displays Of Affection album) at Luce’s side, a magical bucolic spell is unlocked. The music and atmospheres are mysterious in part, yet more natural and placeable, invoking landscapes, lakesides, and woodlands simultaneously quintessentially English and yet also American – think the Catskills, the Appalachians, and the Deep South. Within that tapestry the wildlife is mimicked with pecking and swanned charm – on the cockerel evoked ‘Roosting’, you could imagine a Jemima Puddle-duck like character waddling across the barnyard, albeit to a reimagined vision of bluegrass music composed by Vaughan Williams.
An holistic record that rescores the English scenery and places held near for Luce, the unfolding stages are both beautifully conveyed and hallucinatory in equal measure; a retold fairytale without any prompts, and without a human cast; a window in on the enchantments but also non-hierarchical, non-binary and free nature of the wilds and geography: a metaphor for Luce’s struggles to find an identity that feels natural, safe and unburdened.
One part classical, one part Americana, and one part folksy (a touch of the Celtic too) there’s still a very modern twist to what we may identify as the familiar: imagine Prokofiev on an acid trip, or Ry Cooder (all the melted, bendy, twanged, picked, tremolo guitar work down to Luce, who also provides the organ and percussion) in an English pasture laying down breadcrumbs for Hampshire & Foat. And then again, there are echoes of the occult, a little Wicca, and the occasional wilder sound of the clarinet harking like Anthony Braxton. The Moody Blues, Between, Jade Warrior, Federico Balducci, Andrew Wasylyk all appear on the horizon of this earthly paradise and portal. Luce might just have found their sanctuary amongst the unencumbered undergrowth; beside the refracted light inspired lakes, the gentle versants, and valleys of Northern England. Luce’s imagination is certainly in a better place, the organic nature of their music proving creatively successful in counterbalancing two great and much inspired landscapes together to produce something very beautiful and magical.
Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille ‘Embracing The Unknown’ (Mahakala Music) 29th March 2024
A true “cross-generational” (with two of the participants born in the 1930s) coming together of avant-garde, freeform and hard bop talent, the ensemble quartet of Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille “embrace” experiment. You could call it an extemporized gathering, with no prior arrangements and not much in the way of dialogue. And you called also say it was an intentional sounding collaboration, taking in, as it does, the Brazilian roots of the tenor saxophonist Perelman and the American roots (from Arkansas to Memphis, Philly and New York) of stritch (a large straight sax or alto sax without the curved bell) and saxello (a unique soprano sax with a curved bell and neck that lets out a distinctive sound) player Fowler, bass, saw and percussionist Workman and fellow percussionist Cyrille.
Released on Fowler’s own imprint, this circle of acclaimed and proficient artists/musicians brings a wealth of experience to the studio, performance space. Workman’s CV alone is incredible, knocking around with such gods of the form as Coltrane, Blakey and Monk, whilst drummer Cyrille had a long-standing association with the free jazz pianist-poet luminary Cecil Taylor. For their parts, Perelman has a prolific catalogue of albums stretching back to his debut in 1989 (moving from his native Sao Paulo that same year to New York), whilst the multi-instrumentalist Fowler has played on and produced everything from soul to R&B and jazz recordings.
From the titles alone this pooling of experiences, from across 70 plus odd years, Embracing The Unknown takes an undefined freeform journey of the mind; the references to “self” to “reflection” and “introspection” obvious, prompted and described, in a fashion, by the tones, pitches, entanglements, wails, strains and blasts of intensity. An expulsion of expressive query, and maybe a lighthearted leap from the psychiatrist’s couch the self-exploration of the mind and soul combine to evoke shades of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Marshall Allen, Pharoah Sanders, John Zorn, Barney Wilen, Roscoe Mitchell and Sam Rivers. The inner self is landscaped with the skylines of New York, but a semblance also of a transported South America and New Orleans in the untethered mix.
The various saxophones often resemble a gaggle of geese, or squeak, shrill, squawk, and squeal to the rafters. Hysterics of a kind are met with the giddy and more soul-searching passages. And then you get almost apparition-style spells: more playful than scary. Those horns can pierce but also serenade wistfully, as they do on the measured and near soliloquy sonnet, and Coltrane-light ‘Self-Reflection’. The percussive elements and drums can also be varied, with more springy “boings”, metal and tin cup scuttles and rattles, and the dusting, sieving of drum skins. Those same drums break out at times into a pattern of a kind; sometimes in an almost freeform swing fashion and at others, almost hitting hard bop. It’s hard to describe or even get across what I mean, but certainly the finale, ‘Self-Contemplation’, has the spindled and tinny semblance of something approaching Latin America.
Making the abstract seem even more so, yet somehow conveying mood, emotions and self-expression, this descriptive and totally improvisational master class in free-thought-jazz somehow captures the internal struggles and reflections of the mind during an age of high anxiety, rage, divisiveness and unease.
Arushi Jain ‘Delight’
(Leaving Records) 29th March 2024
Rejuvenation, reinvention and reenergized, the melodious form of the Ragga Bageshri is adopted by the polymath artist, musician, composer, vocalist, engineer and ‘modular synthesist’ Arushi Jain on the follow up to 2021’s well-received Under A Lilac Sky album. Undergoing various changes, imbued with, and surrounded by, the wildlife, light, and art of an empty house on the seaside, that original romantic Indian ragga of longing conveyed the feelings of a lover waiting to reunite with their beloved, but Jain now replaces that devotional love with invocations of “delight”: or as Jain puts it, “…to instill belief in the ever-present nature of delight…assert[ing] the need to actively seek it when not readily found.”
Jain also transduces and transforms the arrangement and the essence of that tradition into something very futuristic, artful, and ethereal sounding; the main sound, sonic and instrument being that incredible voice, which can be as sonorous as it can be vaporous. Across nine highly atmospheric tracks of the astral, celestial, ebbing, beatific and technological, that voice is built upon with layers of tonal lulls and coos or, in stark but reverberated contrast, sings to the heavens, the higher learning. Yet there are also assonant utterings that call to the “void”; propelled forward on a Basic Channel, Jeff Mills-esque chopper-like minimalist techno beat. At times those effected vocals and wafted harmonies are morphed into synthesized waves and lines (at one point almost monastic), and at other times are left to convey the sentiments of the theme – the quasi-remix like ‘You Are Irresistible’ being the clearest example; a mix of club, modern warbled R&B and hypnotizing cosmic dream spells.
Underneath, undulating or attentively in unison with that magical voice there’s a sophisticated envelope of light-giving arpeggiator and algorithms, and the distilled, transparent, and warping. The environment is itself, as I mentioned earlier, transduced into an artificial metallic menagerie, with the sun’s rays and beams gently radiating and penetrating the dreamy new age and trance-y ambience. Notes fall, cascade, and drop like crystalloid bulbs, whilst a synthesized symphonic orchestra pipes up with a whistled and fluty spring and bounce. I can hear a semblance of marimba, or something very much like it bobbling about on ‘Our Teaching Tongues’, which also features a building chopper, rotor-bladed circulation of minimalist electronic. And there seems to be some sort of mizzle-like seepage of a horn too in places.
Every element is put together wonderfully as a softened balance is sort between the soaring and suffused, insularly reflected and the amorphously never-ending. And through it all “delight” is sort out, courted, embraced and enraptured in a futuristic retelling of sagacious Indian arts, wills and universal feels; producing an extraordinary and diaphanous biosphere.
Ill Considered ‘Precipice’
(New Soil) 22nd March 2024
Despite the hurry to lay down this stripped-down improvised vision of the jazz ensemble – recorded in a day, with no overdubs; mixed the following day –, the refreshed Ill Considered trio exercise a new verve and itch to reassemble, recreate and reignite without sounding in a rush. Back to a core triumvirate lineup of Idris Rahman on saxophone, Liran Donin on bass and Emre Ramazanoglu on drums, the very much lauded UK jazz collective set a new course free of augmentation and effects; an invocation of the great trios of jazz’s golden age through a modern lens, with all the history and development that comes with it.
Away from the dramatics of the album’s “precipice” title, this is a group in flux, reconnecting perhaps with the basics in an act of renewal (a lot the “re” going on I know); starting over you could say, but nothing so year zero as that. The dynamics and interactions of which are balanced: the wild with a certain tightness, and an abstractedness and playfulness that never quite breaks out into the freeform. Whilst Rahman’s saxophone penetrates and shrills, sometimes bristles and trills more fervently, you can always recognize it – a more melodic hybrid of Sam Rivers, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and Alex Roth. His foils on drums and bass seem pretty anchored as they lay down the various rhythms and feels. Donin seems to cross post-punk, no wave (there’s a particular Liquid Liquid spin on the Arthur Russell goes downtown ‘Linus With The Sick Burn’) and, of course, jazz bass lines, repeated prods, probes and elasticated wobbles, whilst Ramazanglu plays with breakbeats, drills, rattled spidery sticks and more percussive sounding scuttles.
Whether the titles came later, or were used as prompts, reference points, they do go some way in describing the performances: to a point. Name checking mythology, repair and the natural world, improvisations like ‘Vespa Crabro’, as in the European hornet, does have a real spikey buzz and sting to it; the bass like a rubber band being pulled and twanged in a busy manner, whilst the sax honks and cuts right through like the angry said wasp darting from one direction to the next. The fire ants, ‘Solenopsis’, that lend their name to the ninth improvisation on this album evoke West Africa; a desert farm setting in which the drums seem to work off the metals, the cattle bells and water troughs as the sax pecks bird-like, or flits about on the dry earth. ‘Kintsugi’ feeds into the thinking behind this slimmed-down chapter of the group; referencing as it does the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with slow-drying ‘urushiol’ based lacquers, dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The philosophy of which is that you treat breakage and repair as part of that objects history, rather than try to disguise it. Sound wise, the trio seems to touch on splayed Afro-rhythms and hip-hop, as the bass bounces in the spaces and skips, and the sax reverberates and drifts. ‘Katabatic’ on the other hand, takes a chthonian journey into Greek myth with a tunneled sax circulating in an underworld atmosphere of mysterious probes and J Dilla breaks.
Ill Considered in trio form is neither reductive nor compromised, managing instead to transform and amplify the basics into a concentration of promising new material. Laid down in the moment, feeding off of each other’s energy but sense of control and direction too, they open up their horizons with a riff on the jazz trio idiom.
Alison Cotton ‘Engelchen’
(Rocket Recordings)
In the wake of the barbaric terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, and the ensuing destructive retaliation/ obliteration of Gaza by Israel since, there seems little room – let alone nuance and balance – on the debate; battle lines have been drawn and divisions sowed. And so this inspired tale of ‘derring-do’ (originally performed live at the Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland) performance suite from the Sunderland composer Alison Cotton is a most timely reminder of dark history, but also of altruistic acts of kindness.
Scoring the story of the innocuous Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, and their incredibly brave rescue attempts to save the lives of twenty-nine Jews from occupied Europe during the build-up and eventual outbreak of WWII, Cotton ties in the modern plight of refugees escaping similar persecutions: the album’s reprised neo-classical pained and suffered leitmotif, and a capella style stirring voices, are used on the finale, ‘Engelchen Now’, to draw attention to a female Kurdish “teacher/activist”, making a similar passage and aided by similar “angels” over eight years later.
Originally from Cotton’s hometown, the Cook sisters moved on to London, with jobs in the civil services, and remained largely innocuous until their obsession for opera took them to Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. In an age when international travel was still very much the preserve and enjoyment of the upper echelons of society, the sisters managed to visit many of the famous opera houses on both the continent and across the Atlantic. Over the course of many years they built up friendships with such well-known and respected figures as the Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss and his wife, the Romanian opera singer Viorica Ursuleac, whilst also hobnobbing with such stars of the form like Rosa Ponselle and Ezio Pinza. Through sending boutiques to dressing rooms, requesting autographs and photographs with the stars, the Cook sisters would build up a network that would prove vital in saving Jews from the Nazi purge.
Almost like characters from an Ealing Comedy or Hitchcock movie, the sisters surface naivety and eccentricity proved a good cover; the sisters managing to bluff their way past SS guards on a few occasions, and remain undetected even when smuggling through those escapees furs and jewelry. Unflattering, but both sisters were described as being “plain” and “gawky”, their clothes made from magazine patterns by Ida. And so they were often dismissed: under the radar as it were. They used this to their advantage, and in so doing saved many lives in what was a most dangerous climate.
For their kind acts they were anointed as “Engelchens” (“angels”), and given the honorific title of Righteous Among the Nations: a title used by ‘Israel to describe all of the non-Jews who, for purely altruistic reasons, risked their lives in order to save Jews from being exterminated by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.’
Despite this, the Cook sisters’ exploits have remained relatively obscure: although Ida did pen a memoir, We Followed Our Stars, in the 1950s (reprinted as Safe Passage in 2008), and there is a possible film adaptation in the works. (Ida incidentally wasn’t the only writer, sibling Louise, going under the pen name of Mary Burchell, had a sideline in writing romances for Mills & Boon). Through their connection with Cotton’s Sunderland hometown, that story is now picked-up and relived: reimagined through the use of strings and voice by a dedicated composer.
Less a morbid, dark soundtrack to the evils of the Nazi regime and Holocaust, Cotton instead conveys the enormity and the danger of the Cook’s enterprise through slow tidal movements, tones, intonations and changes in the atmosphere. Throughout it all a prevailing presence and emotional pull can be felt: The mood music of grief, the plaintive and sorrowful cumulating in a beautifully played series of arrangements and suites that are as somber as they are beautiful and moving – reminding me in parts of Alex Stolze, Anne Müller, Simon McCorry and Aftab Darvishi.
Both wordless Hebrew hymnal lulls and sung poetics hold and swim in the haunted ripples of time, as the story unfolds in bellowed and concertinaed breaths and to the bowed strains of strings. There are subtle drums too on occasion, either brushed and sieved, or marching like a softened military drill – prompting that danger I mentioned, militaristic Germany, the warning of a firing squad and peril.
Some movements have a squeezebox, almost folk and near Celtic, saltiness that evokes the sea; none more so than the album’s first single, ‘The Letter Burning’. Pulled, drawn from obfuscation, the correspondence that was burned by Louise from that time, are ruminated upon to the strike of the gong and an organ-like (could be a harmonium) tide of simultaneously haunting and dreamy a capella remembrance and woe. Sung references are made to those “saved”, and the location where news of their plight was first discussed. Whilst the intentions behind the erasure of these letters are unknown, Cotton interprets Louise’s actions as a gesture of remorse at all those poor souls the sisters couldn’t save: literally haunted by the thought of their fates. Perhaps it was an attempt at moving on with their lives, to not dwell on such tragedy, and instead look to more hopeful times. The world was moving on, quickly forgetting, even aiding and abetting many former Nazis. After the anger and some justice, initial worldwide broadcasted trials soon vanished from the public psyche. Many perpetrators, facilitators of that regime were soon forgotten.
In the wake of another tumultuous, scary period of anti-Semitism, but in a more general manner, with hostility at an all time high towards to the refugee community, it is such stories and projects as Cotton’s Engelchen that remind us of the cost of our loss of humility and humanity. With so many layers to the Cook sisters’ story (let alone the obvious there’s a strong feminist angle to raise) and connotations for our own time, this score, soundtrack, performance comes full circle: the fates of 1930s/40s Jews in Germany tied to those of Kurds and other persecuted ethnic groups in the 21st century.
Andrew Heath And Mi Cosa de Resistence ‘Café Tristesse’
(Audiobulb) 16th March 2024
Composer of “lower case” minimalism Andrew Heath and his willing foil on this collaboration, the Argentinian ambient composer Fernando Perales (under the guises of his Mi Cosa de Resistence alias), slow down time to convey abstract disquiet and a sense of the plaintive on their first proper album together – the pair previously worked together on A Speechless Body, but this is their first actual fully shared collaborative immersion. For the title translates from the French as “a state of melancholy sadness”; an encapsulation of a mood made famous and iconic by the lauded surrealist and poet Paul Éluard who in turn inspired his French compatriot Françoise Sagan to pen the 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse, which went on to spawn a movie adaptation. Obviously the “café” part if that album title needs less explanation or inquiry, evoking as it does the legacy of ruminating whilst measuring the passage of time sipping on a cappuccino or knocking back espressos: The café as centre of every movement worth mentioning in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in Europe where this sort of almost resigned and wistful contemplation.
Having built up quite the reputations and CVs (Heath no stranger to this blog, with his last solo album, Scapa Flow making our “choice albums of 2023” lists) both participants bring much adroit subtlety to this dreamy drifting traverse of feelings that cannot be described so much in words or song. Perales’ main job seems to be in picking out the right atmospheric guitar notes, the right motifs and bended mirages, which in turn either linger or float over Heaths vapours, ambient scapes and wafts. Across strange refractive sun-lit Western vistas, near ethereal visions and rain swept European boulevards, those synthesized and tremulous, gently plucked and pinged instruments – a signature presence too of Heath’s translucent and more dulled piano is also in attendance – somehow manifest images of the French waiter taking his break in-between services, taking a drag perhaps on a cigarette to unwind from the tensions, stresses as he or she watches the comings and goings on the street outside: Time seems to be suspended during these moments of contemplation.
And yet there are moments that, to me, suggest an almost Vangelis-style Blade Runner kind of pathos (especially the ambient vision ‘The Absentee’). There’s certainly the air of mystery suffused throughout this album of musical novellas. If the guitar work of Fererico Balducci and Myles Cochran enthuse merging perfectly with invocations of Eno, John Laneand Roedelius enthuse you then this perfectly matched collaborative affair of the heart and cerebral feels will very much impress.
NAH ‘Totally Recalled’
(Viernulvier Records) 15th March 2024
Not so much disjointed or a clattering collision but more an “overlapping” controlled chaos of influences, sounds and beats, the drummer, producer and visual artist NAH rebuilds and shuttles a polygenesis set of rhythms into a noisy assemblage of broken beats, cosmic effects, repurposed House and Rave music, removed jazz, hip-hop, d’n’b and Techno.
Releasing this latest experiment, propelled from an effects pedal embellished drum kit, on the Ghent, Belgium art center of Viernulvier’s label (Use Knife, Youniss and Hieroglyphic Being), NAH’s sonic immersion is, when seen in the live environment, complimented with visuals. But I wouldn’t call this a art project as such, more an experiment in combining the chaos, constant generated overflow of information in a world in which technology encroaches ever more upon our understanding of being human: tying in with NAH’s balancing of the acoustic and synthetic.
This latest album “serves headphones submersion” but is better “witnessed live in all its decibel meter breaking glory.” It’s certainly full of noise and constantly on the move, shuttling, galloping and barreling around, or in pneumatic fashion, drilling those beats into the conscious. A jumbled cacophony at times of J Dilla, People Like Us, Plug, Wagon Christ, Bugz In The Attic and Cities Aviv (who is just one of many artists NAH has collaborated with over the years, since his debut in 2011) with transmogrified and more clearer vocal samples (many of which seem to have been borrowed off soul and R&B records), Totally Recalled is like an inner rolodex of logged breaks and snippets pulled together to create “alternative” movement of musical ideas, dynamisms. And so you might hear an alternative version of Tony Allen drumming on R&S Records in the 90s, or, Kosmische-like star gate synthesized space takeoffs as envisioned by Tomat. Some tracks seem to discombobulate hip-hip, d’n’b and hardcore Techno in one go; clattering together in the same space without sounding a mess, but somehow making perfect sense – imagine Madlib working with Jeff Mills. There’s even, what sounds like, a beat made out of a typewriter at one point.
Looped, remodelled, recharged and rebuilt, NAH’s methodology and processes continue to wrong-foot and drum up invigorating or overloaded rhythmic, percussive accelerations into immersive and exciting uncertainty.
Various ‘Africamore – The Afrofunk Side Of Italy (1973-1978)’
(Four Flies Records) 22nd March 2024
Shedding ever more light on Italian curiosities of a certain vintage and status, the Four Flies Records label digs out of the vaults another selection of cult finds; building on a rich archive catalogue of Italian film composers, personalities with a compilation of African and Afro-Caribbean inspired nuggets from a mixed bag of mavericks, entertainers, obscure bands and producers.
Covering a five-year period and the advent of the disco era, this showcase explores the Italian music industry’s fascination and adoption of African music and sounds in the 1970s, from the most sampled and covered African track of all time, the Cameroon saxophonist Manu Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’ – covered in this instance by African Revival (whoever the hell that was), who take it via the grasslands into Peter King and Fred Wesley territories -, to the imported vodun spells of Hispaniola – the Italian-Eritrean singer, entertainer, impresario and record producer Silvana Savorelli (who went under both the Tanya and, in this instance, the Lara Saint Paul aliases) works her kitsch magic on ‘The Voodoo Lady’; the sort of fake swamp mist effected Afro-Caribbean tropical lilt, with chuffing woodwind, that you might expect to hear in an episode of Miami Vice (and to think Savorelli was once produced by Quincy Jones, and this particular track, featured on her winning, commercially successful 1977 LP Saffo Music, amazingly enough featured The Pointer Sisters on backing vocals).
Prompted and influenced by what was developing across the Atlantic in the States, with the already mentioned Dibango classic picked up by such impresario DJs on the New York scene as Dave Mancuso (mentioned in the liner notes to this compilation) Italy gratefully received the Afro-funk, Afro-beat and Afro-Latin sounds. The infectious groove that would propel a boom in nightclubs, these sounds, tribal rhythms were both fired up and exploited in equal measures; although the Italian husband and wife duo behind Chrisma (made up from the couple’s names of Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser; later on in the new wave era renamed Krisma) has the legendry Ghanaian-British Afro-Funk band Osibisa providing the rhythm section on their delicious, tropically-lilted, semi-Gainsbourg mating dance, ‘Amore’ (produced, extraordinarily, by Nico Papathanassiou and his more famous sibling Vangelis), and the Jamaican actress, model, presenter, singer and, of all things, aphrodisiac cook book author Beryl Cunningham fronts the hand drum heavy, ocean side view cabaret ‘Why O’ – Beryl, who famously starred in the Italian erotic Le Salamandre drama before shooting to semi-fame in such films as The Weekend Murderers and The Black Decameron, sounds like a cross between Marva Broome and Miriam Makeba.
Expanding on that international field, there’s even room on this collection for the Indian percussionist Ramasandiran Somusundara, who offers up his “bean smuggling” single from 1973. A member at one time or other with Bambibanda E Melodie, Maya and New Trolls Atomic System (is that even real?!), his musicality in this regard seems to combine bush whacker rituals with Black Level on a classic Italo-funk record.
Returning to the Euro fold, Luca D’Ammonio mixes NYC Latin soul with Joe Baatan and Cymande on his white boogaloo mover ‘Oh Caron’, whilst the film composer (The Bronx Warrior, Our Man In Bagdad, The House By The Cemetery) Walter Rizzati rustles up a quasi streets of San Fran action thriller score on ‘L’unica Chance’: a paler shade of Black sounds, with a soft scuzz on the whacker guitar, some chuffing Jeremy Steig flute, and a touch of cool jazzy-funk organ and claves (the sort of music lapped up by Sven Wunders and Greg Foat at one time).
The strange pairing of The Real McCoys and Italian composer, arranger and TV personality Augusto Martelli (famous for his Il Dio Serpente theme, which topped the charts and set his career in motion) come up with the collection’s most unusual track, ‘Calories’, which seems to marry Nino Ferrer and the new wave in a limbo of libido thrusts and alluring promises of coquettish sexual desires. Covering everything from Saravah Records to the Jorge Autuori Trio, Idris Muhammad, Drummers of Burundi, Mongo Santamaria, Paulo Ferrarai, Bruno Nichols and the disco era, this compilation of cultish singles and album tracks is more Dr. No than Shaft In Africa – I’m almost detecting Iron Butterfly’s most famous riff on the more flowery, slick but wild ‘Africa Sound’ track by the duo of Jean Paul and Angelique, who were a woodwind/strings and guitar combo of note, originally making records together under the Elio & Angelique moniker. But then I’m being too harsh, as there are some right stonkers and infectious dancefloor fillers amongst the kitsch and enervated Afro influences. And many better known tracks and composers (see Albert “Weyman” Verrecchia) already finding an audience in the crate digger and vinyl aficionado communities. But if you thought you’d heard it all on the Italian music front, then Africamore will give succour to new discoveries, and fill in some of the history.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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