The Perusal #49: Ndox Électrique, Rave At Your Fictional Borders, Tara Clerkin Trio, Wax Machine, Pidgins…
November 8, 2023
A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Ndox Électrique ‘Tëdak Mame Coumba Lamba ak Mame Coumba Mbang’
(Bongo Joe Records)
Continuing to circumnavigate the depths of Africa, on a quest to connect with the purest origins of that continent’s atavistic rituals, the Mediterranean punk and avant-rock motivators Gianna Greco and François R. Cambuzat seize on the adorcist practices of Senegal’s Lebu people.
The successor to that partnership’s Ifriqiyya Electrique collaboration with the descendants of Hausa slaves (a project that produced two albums of exciting Sufi trance, spirit possession performance and technology), the next chapter, Ndox Électrique, radically transforms the Lebu’s N’doep ceremonies of spirit appeasement.
Living in the peninsula of Cap-Vert, at the western most point in Senegal, the Lebu community lives side-by-side with their ancestral spirits. And in these ritualistic female-dominated performances of entranced elevation, loud drums, dancing, sweat and blood, they are summoned forth through possession to help heal the world.
Sneering at any kind of classification (this is neither ethnographical research nor “postcard” world music), Greco and Cambuzat immerse themselves, working hand-in-hand with their Senegalese ensemble cast of megaphone wielding vocalists and musicians. It’s a world away, you’d think, from their post-industrial, Gothic post-punk backgrounds – when not on the African trail, both musicians join forces with that iconic deity of the underground N.Y. scene, Lydia Lunch, to form the raucous Putan Club. But they’ve found a lively connection, merging the clattering, bounding (almost like timpani at times) and shuttled drums and instruments, Muezzin-like calls, and more sacrosanct voices and song with chugged, churned, squalled, engine kick-starting and ripping post-rock, industrial guitars and tech.
The opening rattled, lumbering catharsis ‘Jamm Yé Matagu Yalla’ is an introduction to this hyper-hybrid; a mix of Vodoun, Marilyn Manson, Islamic Sufi song and shredding Sunn O))). Those authentic, in the field, trances enter the creeping dreaded world of the late Scott Walker, and the post-punk specter of Rema Rema and Itchy-O, in the raw and intensified drama of ‘Lëk Ndau Mbay’.
Even though the voices are yelled through a megaphone to be heard above the heightened din, they come across as quite harmonious: hymnal in some cases. Certainly creating an atmosphere of ancient spirit communion and deliverance in the face of oppression, it’s the crunch and grind, and supernatural machinery of their European partners that gives it all a moody chthonian edge; firing up evocations of Faust, Coil and NIN. Actually, the fluted and riled ‘Indi Mewmi’ reminded me of both early Adam And The Ants and African Head Charge.
Between worlds the Ndox Électrique transformation moulds spheres of history and sound, whilst creating a dramatic new form of communication and ritual. Summoning up answers to a sickening society, both groups of participants in this blurred boundary exchange rev-up the sedate scene with a blast of authentic regeneration and dynamism. One that is neither wholly African nor European. Dimensions are crossed; excitement and empowerment, guaranteed.
Assiko Golden Band De Grand Yoff ‘Magg Tekki’
(Sing A Song Fighter/Mississippi Records) 10th November 2023
The second stopover in Senegal this month (see above), couldn’t be more different. The Ndox Électrique collaboration raised adorcist spirits in a hybrid of ritualism and industrial post-grind, whereas the lively Assiko Golden Band De Grand Yoff either raise the roof off the capital’s nightspots, or, find naturalistic contemplation to the sound of a delicately, thoughtfully spindled kora.
Whilst sharing the same geography, the AGBDGY take their cues instead from Dakar’s dynamite music scene, but also embrace the rhythmic percussive language of Fela Kuti and Tony Allen, and the Afro-jazz and soul of such artists as Peter King and Manu Dibango too.
The moniker itself represents the group’s base of influence in the Grand Yoff commune d’arrondissment of the Senegal capital; widened out further to include the traditional rhythms that passed through the infamous, ‘House of Slaves’, Gorée Island – although its importance and legacy has been disputed amongst scholars and the like in recent years, this once independent colonized port outlier from Dakar was a departure site for transporting slaves to the Americas. Fought over by the British and French, it later became part of the greater Dakar region, and a tourist destination memorial to that evil trade.
The message throughout these spheres of geography is one of cooperation, based upon the Sufi teachings of the Mouride Brotherhood: a large school of the Sufi Order, prominently in Senegal and Gambia, the adherents of which are known as ‘Mourides’ – translated from the Arabic to mean ‘one who desires’. In the local Wolof language, culture of Senegal those students of the faith are called ‘Taalibé’.
Exciting and unifying that community for twenty years now, their infectious sound of cross-pattern, clattering and cascading drums, and call-and-response vocals has been picked up by the combined facilitating partnership of Sing A Song Fighter and Mississippi Records labels. Sing A Song Fighter’s founder, Karl Jonas Winqvist, came across the collective whilst creating his own Senegalese fusion, the Wau Wau Collectif, back in 2018. From that same Sufi spiritual cross-pollination of dub, cosmic sounds and Wolof traditions fueled project, the poet-vocalist mouthpiece Djiby Ly steps forward to rouse the AGBDGY’s chorus responses and cross-section of pitched voices. And although the fourteen-strong drumming circle is obviously rhythm focused, there’s also the addition of the beautifully lilting balafon, picked and plucked woven kora, both suffused and pecking horns, fluted wind instruments and a both Marseille and Creole concertinaed bellow and squeeze of accordion.
In action, they sound out a controlled raucous of rustling, shaking ancestral calls and conscious version of Afro-beat, Afro-jazz and Afro-soul; like Kuti sharing the stage with Laba Sosseh and Seckou Keita. As a counterbalance, a pause from the rolling and polyrhythmic drums, there are short interludes of time-outs in the community and under nature’s canopy of bird song: the sound of the breeze blowing through the trees overhead and all around, and of children playing in the background, as the kora speaks in communal contemplation.
At times they create a mysterious atmosphere of grasslands, and at other times, play a more serenaded song on the boulevards that lead down to the sea. On fire then, when in full swing, but able to weave a more intricate gentler sound too, the AGBDGY prove an exhilarating, dancing combo with much to share: the ancestral lineage leading back centuries, but lighting up the present. Thanks for both partners in bringing this album to a wider audience, and indeed my attention.
Tara Clerkin Trio ‘On The Turning Ground EP’
(World Of Echo)
The recordings, releases, may have been a little thin on the ground in the last couple of years; marking the time between this latest EP and the trio’s last, the In Spring EP. But in that space they’ve carried on the writing, and extensively toured both Europe and Japan, with the odd track escaping the creative incubator on the way.
Originally a much bigger, expanded prospect, built around Tara Clerkin, the Bristol unit shed five of its members to create a slimmed down trio. Flanking Tara in their diaphanous vaporous version of trip-hop, dub and gauzy kosmische are Patrick Benjamin and Sunny-Joe Paradiso. Together they have formed a beautifully conceived vision, bookended by a pair of amorphous instrumentals.
On The Turning Ground is a series of hallucinations and evaporations. But that’s not to call them translucent, as all five tracks have a real substance and emotional pull. The opening ‘Brigstow’ is a subtle incipient brush and sift of vapours, submerged bass, ghostly notes from Mark Hollis’ piano, a echo of Gallic-dub accordion, and lingering xylophone. Howie B’s Music For Babies, France, Širom, Embryo and Don Cherry’s Organic Society flow in on a reverberated drift.
The first of three vocal tracks, ‘World In Delay’ follows; another gauzy morphine of dub scatter drums trip-hop that features a lucid, meandered wistful quality: like Sade fronting Lamb, accompanied also by Sakamoto’s piano, and produced by Massive Attack in the late 80s.
On an EP that reminds me of my own middle age, and my formative years in the electronic early 90s, ‘Marble Walls’ is like a lost dream from XL Recordings or Deconstruction. Built around an Ibiza-esque acoustic guitar loop, Tara (I’m assuming) wafts a floated vocal to Portishead and Lemon Jelly vibes. The titular turning ground is built around another lovely acoustic loop, which falls in a gentle cascade throughout, like something from the Baroque era, or from classical Iberia. The beats are more like UNKLE. The feels, atmosphere and vapours like Lush collaborating with Seefeel and Freak Heat Waves.
The final instrumental track, ‘Once Around’, draws this EP to a close with an escapist ambient dream sequence of soundtrack Raul Refreé, waves, bellows, celeste and morphed distant chamber music. Coming full circle, the empirical gorgeousness of this final spacious wisp mirrors the opening ‘Brigstow’, on what is a transported, effortlessly sublime trip of reimagined 90s (some 80s too) influences. But there is something very refreshing, modern and confident in the making: refreshing too. I’m a convert anyway.
Pidgins ‘Refrains Of The Day, Volume 1’
10th November 2023
The dictionary describes Pidgin as a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often draws from several languages. Blowing all that open by drawing upon an amorphous palette of linguistic and worldly sources, the Pidgins duo of multi-instrumentalist Aaron With and drummer/percussionist Milo Tamez construct a removed musical dialect on the first volume of the Refrains Of The Day series (Volume 2 follows in 2024).
But it’s also an experiment in percussive rhythmic languages, using an eclectic assortment of instruments alongside insect chatter and bird-chirping moist rainforest field recordings. There’s some unusual apparatus indeed, used to emote a familiar yet otherworldly collage of environments: from the Laotian to the Chinese, Central American, African and alien. Much of this is down to the use of such unique instruments as the Cristal Baschet and glass harmonica: the former, made up of 56 chromatically tuned glass rods, which you rub with wet fingertips to illicit a ethereal sound, and the latter, uses series of glass bowls to produce tones by means of friction. Put with talking drums, the hurdy-gurdy and Chinese sheng, Maasai crosses paths with atavistic Mexican civilizations, Vodoun ceremony and emoted temple scenes in Xanadu.
It’s not surprising to find the duo referencing the fourth world and possible musics creations of Jon Hassell. But I’d also add Alice Coltrane, Desert Players Ornette Coleman, Ale Hop & Laura Robles and Walter Smetek to that pool of influences. When we hear a much effected, transformed voice, it’s either mysterious with longing and soulfulness, swimmingly quivered like Panda Bear, or, in the art experimentation form of Laurie Anderson using a Mogadon induced preset Speak And Spell.
New rituals, strange tongues and a obscure colloquialism emerge from drumming rhythms, whirly circled wind pipes, tines, metallic chimes and the morphed to produce an immersive world; one that’s simultaneously alien, naturalistic, primitive, supernatural, mystical, non-musical and complex. Nothing is quite how it seems in the pursuit of communicating a new multi-diverse sonic language; but that’s not to say it’s unsettling, just very interesting, as the direction of travel is not obvious. I look forward to hearing the next volume on this collaborative reinterpretation of language.
Rave At Your Fictional Borders ‘Potion Trigger EP’
With such an enviable CV of polygenesis creative outlets to his name, trick noisemaker and in-demand drummer Dave De Rose can be relied upon to guide himself and his collaborative partners towards ever-changing and open-ending musical horizons.
At the porous borders of cultural ambiguity, the latest communal project alludes to a ‘global awakening’: an expose of the ‘festering flaws in society’, and ‘the gradual realization that those in positions of power have forgotten their commitment to the people’ – if they ever did in the first place. Well amen to all that and more. Only, events seem to be running way ahead and out of control of governments and borders, with war on Europe’s door and in the Middle East.
But in turn, that nameless, unreferenced and untethered navigation of the current chaos is incredibly difficult to pin down. De Rose’s membership of Electric Jalaba, instigation of the Athens-London traversing Agile Experiments project and, most congruous, involvement with the doyen of Ethiopian music, Mulatu Astatke, are all drawn upon for a Rave At Your Fictional Borders. And as if the net hasn’t been cast widely enough already, De Rose is joined on this sonic adventure by Jon Scott (of GoGo Penguin note), Marius Mathiszik (Jan Matiz, I Work In Communications) and Henning Rohschürmann: you could say the melting pot has been truly stirred up.
Still rhythmic, even if the signatures are varied and at times like a drum kit engine slipping and spluttering in a staccato fashion, taking time to find traction and a groove, this quartet of performances has a certain drive and forward momentum. As vague as the provenance can be, with an amorphous bleed of the Atlas Mountains, Anatolia, the Hellenic, Balkans and East Africa, the opener (‘Fictional Border Crossings’) is brought in on a desolate mysterious temple wind, before building up the journey with an alchemy of silk Ethiopian mallet vibraphone, stylophone-like electric sparks, and sliding and shuffled prog-jazz drums. It sounds like a mirage.
Moving on, ‘Potion Trigger’ seems to merge CAN with Holy Fuck, Snapped Ankles and Richard H. Kirk; the rhythm a mix of dub, two-step, softened timpani and smashing splashes of cymbals. The mood becomes almost alien, the supernatural cries of incensed anger obscured but present as a fucked-up version of a air raid siren tries to wind up but dies out with a zip.
With a lolloped confident strut, echoed ricochet and rim shots, and hints of On-U Sound, Idris Ackamoor and Sly & Robbie, ‘New In Town’ ramps up the dub a notch, until a final phase of crystalized droplets cascade down on a cosmic plane. ‘Free At Last’, the jazz mantra of so many titles, locks into a nice intensity of Afrobeat, prog, electronica, jazz and breaks; like a moonbeam jam of Moses Boyd, Red Snapper and Battles. Not so much restless as always on the move, each track progresses along an unmade road: a map without borders or coordinates. Knowledge, experience and musicality come naturally, but it feels like these like-minded musicians were improvising, and just left in a room without preparation or communication to let go. There’s a knowing of course, and a concept that informs this EP, but this is an unconscious reaction to the present climate of fear, resignation and movement of people like no other.
Berke Can Özcan Ft. Arve Henriksen & Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘Twin Rocks’
(Omni Sound)
Sharing an evocative and near illusionary hiking trial with his musical foils, the highly prolific Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, and equally impressive and in demand baritone saxophonist, Jonah Parzen-Johnson, the Istanbul-born polymath Berke Can Özcan finds inspiration from a mystical, mysterious, historical and enriching environment. The ‘Twin Rocks’ of the title references one such stirring, and in this case personal, stumbled upon highlight from the Lycian Way; a long distance charted (and uncharted for that matter) walk that hugs the Southwestern coastline of modern day Turkey.
In atavistic times, this region would have been known as Lycia, a flourishing state/nationality on the edge of Anatolia during the 15th and 14th centuries BC; the architectural remnants of which can be seen carved into the reddish rocky landscape. Siding with the Persian Empire during its apex of power and trade, Lycia was eventually controlled in turn by Ancient Rome, the Byzantines, Selijuks and Ottomans.
With all that history underfoot and all around, the composer, musician and instrument maker Özcan and his two sparring partners, create magic and an air of mystique; amorphously blending sonic aromas that evoke the Mediterranean, Iberian, Middle East and Turkey. And yet, Henriksen’s rasp, mizzle and oboe-like trumpet additions on the vaporous shaping ‘Buried Palms Garden’ and dreamy, melting ‘Snake Behind The Valley’, reminded me of Sketches Of Spain Miles and Chet Baker. Parzen-Johnson’s saxophone meanwhile, has echoes of Andy Haas, Ben Vance and the Pharaoh on the Oriental dub hallucination ‘Hidden Village’, and reminded me of Idris Ackamoor on the drifted ‘Red Pine Bridge And The Crystal Clear Dead-End’.
When evaporating or wafting across the landscape, or gazing at the light as it sparkles off the calm tidal waves, the jazz seed effortlessly germinates into trip-hop, with slow breaks and those languid Portishead vapours
Suffused with a gentle form of jazz and almost trippy, near–psychedelic atmosphere of mirages, heat warped effects and reversals, this felt and transient journey also features Özcan’s almost hushed, translucent vocals. Alongside an array of brushed, sifted and rhythmically softly beaten drum apparatus (steel to what sounds like a frame drum), the affected warbles of wildlife, bobbled and tinkled vibraphone and purposeful, ruminated upon Sakamoto piano notes, symbolic proclamations of intention, redress and reassurance are made: the “I would never be the snake behind” line inspired by the pathway taken around those significant, chanced upon twin rocks. Sometimes this comes across vocally like Alex Stölze, and at other times, like a soulful, removed version of Jon Marsh from The Beloved.
Nothing feels real, despite the familiarity, as nature and terrain, the fauna and remaining traces of ancient civilisation combine to inspire a dream spell absorption of the Lycian Way. Twin Rocks is an effortless sounding travelogue of landmarks transformed into imaginative poetry, meditation, and self-discovery.
Sam Newsome & Jean-Michel Pilc ‘Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged’
Joining the ranks of the great jazz (although they go beyond that, into the blues, classical and avant-garde) duos, the partnership of experimental soprano saxophonist and composer Sam Newsome and pianist, composer and educator Jean-Michel Pilc left a critically acclaimed marker with 2017’s Magic Circle album. Before that, and ever since, both foils in that collaborative duet built up enviable reputations, notably with Newsome as a soloist, and Pilc with his trio.
Despite all that experience, their second album together is all about spontaneity. Devoid of planning, of ‘preconceived ideas’, the ‘unconsciousness’ of the album title is uncoupled and set free in a restless motion. The succinct, matter of fact philosophy behind the concept: ‘it works or it doesn’t’.
And so both in improvised and transformative modes they interpret well-worn standards and create new explorations; always with a view to showcasing their respective instruments and instinctive abilities as they react to each other’s assured experimentation. This translates into both recognizable sounds and playing, and those more envelope-pushing tests of abstracted recondite expression. In Newsome’s case, modified attachments turns his saxophone into a circular squeezed and vibrato reed version of a didgeridoo, or, the sound of a strained valve that needs oiling. For amongst shortened pecks, piccolo-like flights and fluted melodies there’s dry whistles, restless flutters, the gasped and hinge-like: in one moment Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, the next, more like Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton.
Pilc meanwhile, has a similar counterpoint of the semi-classical and avant-garde; using every part of his grand piano, from the inner spindled entangled guts to what sounds like a rhythmic taping of the lid. Obviously an adroit maestro, Pilc evokes a mix of Bill Evans, Cecil Taylor, Fabio Burgazzi (especially on the floated spellbound subconscious passage, ‘Bittersweet Euphoria Part 2’) and Stravinsky. And yet, the boundary testing instrumentation gels, feels descriptive and nearly always finds a connective melody of direction of travel.
Before I’d even read the track titles, listening without any reference points or info, I could detect a classy touch of Duke Ellington; a touch too of the Savoy label and even 1920s New York on the ship horn blown, Gershwin-esque tumble, mosey and slide, ‘Dancing Like No One’s Watching (But Everyone Is)’. That presence is made apparently obvious with the inclusion of the Duke’s signature, ‘Take The A Train’; the whistle and drive of a steam piston train rhythm all present and correct, but taken off the rails and into an untethered setting of swanned sax and hard bop punctuated runs. However, the old feel is undeniable. The duo also take a chance on the Duke’s ‘Solitude’; keeping the sentiments of fond remembrance and bitter loneliness, but finding much to play around with and reframe for an exploration of reflection.
Joining the old guard, there are also riffs on Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musical number, ‘All The Things You Are’, and Irving Berlin’s ‘How Deep Is The Ocean’. The former dances on tiptoes to the old magic of the 1950s romantic jazz, whilst the latter is a somber reading of the original: the didgeridoo effect and a rough edged bristled vibration, the sweeps of a hidden brush and shifting tides all pointing towards something ominous, even alien, below the surface.
Away form the standards of jazz transformations, there’s the Alice Coltrane trinkets and wind chimes tingled and glinted, inner piano workings turn dulcimer and fluted sax climbing ‘Sounds From My Morning Window’, and the avant-garde boogie piano and chaotic strained sax tempest stirred, ‘The Storm Before The Quiet’. There’s some real class mixed with the unburdened pouring through every second of this album’s fifteen pieces; a real sense of freedom on the move, with the destination uncharted, unsettled and in some small part, mysterious. But as a showcase, the ‘unplugged’ consciousness platform reinforces the reputations of Sam Newsome and Jean-Michel Pilc’s explorative mastership and ingenious collaboration.
Wax Machine ‘The Sky Unfurls: The Dance Goes On’
(Batov Records)
Finding a more mellow tone under the influence of replenishing waters, the Lau Ro led Wax Machine project’s latest album offers a hazy and diaphanous musical landscape of rumination, wistful contemplation and enquiry.
Born in São Vicente, but leaving at the age of eight to emigrate to Italy, before eventually relocating to Brighton, the South American imbued group leader channels his global travels into the Wax Machine melting pot: a borderless, amorphous mix of the psychedelic, jazz, tropicalia and folk. After finally affording the airfare, Ro returned to his Brazilian homeland this year, spending five weeks reconnecting with family and the landscape. This heritage trip was followed up with a further five weeks of travel in Europe; navigating the waterfalls of the Pyrenees and Alps regions. Those stunning awe-inspiring vistas obviously had an effect, and so whilst concentrating the mind, Ro was moved to musically convey the thematic philosophically soulful concepts of ‘one’s own nature’, the breakdown of an individual’s identity, and the processes of reconnection.
New age in self-discovery tropes, the results are disarming, sensory, lush and gauzy across nine tracks of pastoral, hippie psychedlia, Latin, Laurel Canyon folk, dreamy and vaguely spiritual jazz, and more hallucinating spells.
Aiding Ro on this, mostly, relaxed traverse are Ozzy Moysey (on double bass and percussion duties), Adam Campbell (piano and keyboards), Isobel Jones (flute and vocals) and Tomas Sapir (drums, percussion and synths, plus the Clannad-like and veiled choral voices of Marwyn Grace and Ella Russell. Altogether in harmonious union, they drift and waft across a fantasy-style vision; allured towards ocean mirages, rivers, and of course, waterfall paradises.
The tropicalia sound of Ro’s heritage is back, and so when used to its fullest effect on such tracks as the lucid ‘Glimmers’, emotes the influence of Astrud Gibert and Giberto Gil. It must be said, as beautifully dreamy as it is, with touches of Hawaiian guitar, this coastal attraction lyrically could be about a drowning suicide; the Sarah Cracknell-esque wispy vocals protagonist seeming to sleepwalk helplessly into the ocean’s embrace, under a spell. In a similar – near uneasy if not psychedelic supernatural – way, the fluted, vaporous Holydrug Couple and Soundcarriers-like ‘Sister’ feels like an Italian Giallo moment. And the inter-dimensional radio set mystery, ‘Transmission’, reminded me of Belbury Poly scanning ghostly visitations from distant worlds.
Elsewhere, there are evocations of A Psychedelic Guide To Monsterism Island, the South Seas and the Valley Of The Dolls, with the Donovan, Fairport Convention, Greg Foat, The West Coast Experimental Pop Band, Misha Panfilov, Mark Fry and a calmer Marconi Notaro.
The Sky Unfurls: The Dance Goes On is a gauzy tapestry, created with much love, care and freedom; a wistful, rewarding experience of familiarity matched with Brazilian influences to produce a lush backdrop for questioning feelings and for making emotional connections of belonging.
Leisure FM ‘Fables EP’
(Ifm) 15th November 2023
Occupying a liminal position between the weary and resignation on one hand, yet dreamily gazing through the chthonian gauze of both Lutheran and Eastern European morose and fatalistic fairytale and fables towards hope, the Leisure FM twins offer hallucinatory experiences and cathartic relief on their debut EP.
Although certainly Gothic and shadowy, Milena and Weronika Szymanek cast spells of dream-realism electronic pop and despondent futility in conveying the eternal struggles of the heart; a process that’s mentioned in the accompanying PR notes as akin to the punishing eternal labours of Sisyphus, doomed by the Greek god Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down, and thus begins the whole sorry task again in a perpetual loop. Don’t feel too sorry for old Sisyphus though, the mythical founder king of Ephrya (or Corinth as it became known) wasn’t exactly the most pleasant or rational of rulers; punished for cheating death twice, but his rule was strewn with murdered bodies and other self-serving crimes.
Undeniably, with the existential thrown into the alchemy of occultism, there’s a suffused moodiness and supernatural feel to the quartet of songs on this EP. But with a touch of Blake’s afflatus anointed, diaphanous magic, there’s moments of Seraph light too. Caught between worlds you could say – between angels and demons -, the twins set out to process past experiences and feelings. Lyrically, these stories, chapters are merely implied. On the opening malady, ‘Weather Warning’, an opened heart is laid bare with an esoteric language caught on the haunted winds, whilst the vocally subdued and stripped of joy titular-track references the loss of identity in a violent relationship – imagine the Au Pairs and Propaganda in the bewitching hour, bruised physically and mentally.
In a flange-fanned, reverberated world of their own making, Leisure FM come on like a meeting of Nico, Lomi MC, the Cocteau Twins, Lana Del Rey and the Banshees. The production – which also includes a nice sympathetic, saddened dramatic stirring of strings – is near on perfect in setting the mood (thanks in part to third wheel producer Charlie Allen) and conjuring up veiled confessionals of the heart. In the less exotic studio environment of Woolwich, South London, Leisure FM sleepwalk through an imaginative dream-pop fairytale of existential melancholy and sharing.
ZAHN ‘Adira’
(Crazysane Records) 24th November 2023
As much as I can imagine driving at a motorik pace along the European motorway systems, travelling in a bumper sticker covered motorhome, from one less than glamorous location to the next, the latest opus-expanded album from the German trio of ZAHN is a more heavy trip into a vortex spun wrangle of far out prowls, oscillations and growling loaded holidaying travails.
Heads partners Chris Breuer and Nic Stockman are joined by Muff Porter’s and the live setup Einstürzende Neubauten recruit, Felix Gebhard, across eleven extended journeys in krautrock, the kosmische, doom, heavy and post-rock, and psychedelia. This concentrated unit expands on a number of tracks to accommodate like-minded foils; Markus E. Lipka (of Eisenvates note) for example, lending plectrum slides, rung-out and revving electrified rock guitar to the Black Angels and The Holy Family esoteric spell, ‘Amaranth’. The crazy diamonds Floydian-turn-Western-turn-riled-rocker ‘Schmuck’ features Radare’s Jobst M. Feit on squalling and bended wanes guitar duties, whilst Joanna Gemma Auguri apparently adds accordion flourishes to the prowling, thrashing and ghostly smoked soundtrack, ‘Tabak’.
Germanic (naturally) in tone, the sound of Klaus Dinger, Sky Records analogue files and early Guru Guru (on the Mayan vapour cosmic mystique of Bavarian fairground meets UFO, ‘Yuccatan 3E’) can be picked up on this road trip. However, having said that, the opener (‘Zebra’) features thick-stringed bass ala Boris and Swans, and the synthesized melodies of OMD and early Gary Numan (Tubeway Army). ‘Apricot’ seems to marry kosmsiche with hip-hop breaks, before slipping into halftime hovers of Floyd (again). ‘Velour’ is like a hallucinatory brush with Jessamine, Goblin and Slift, and the finale, ‘Idylle’ has a translucent quality of fanning Eno-esque ambience and more supernatural SURVIVE vibes.
Eating plastic, or Clingfilm, wrapped sandwiches by the side of the autobahn on holiday may not sound very exotic or exciting, but ZAHN transforms the innocuous travels across the continent of their youth with a gristly, cosmic and moody locked-in travelogue soundtrack of epic proportions.
Koma Saxo ‘Post Koma’
(We Jazz) 10th November 2023
What comes next in this “post” (post-modern? post-Covid? post-truth? post-band itself?) era for Petter Eldh’s loose configuration of collaborators? Already pretty much using jazz as a springboard for a road less (well) traveled, the Swedish composer, producer and bassist led unit of Koma Saxo were always in a constant motion of evolution; sounding like a band remixing itself in real time, as they blurred the lines between ‘live instrumentation’ and ‘repurposed sampling’. In practice, this ‘holistic vision of jazz now and soon’ sounds like Max Andrzejewski’s Hütte, 3TM and Ill Considered being remixed by J Dilla, Kutiman and the Cut Chemist.
Holding on to jazz, in its many forms, evocations of Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, Leon Thomas, Marion Brown (ala Temps Fou), Duke Ellington, Jeremy Steig and Bobbi Humphrey can be heard morphing and reshaped into a breakbeat, drum ‘n’ bass and hip-hop production. This can turn out like the Healing Force Project repurposing swing, or, like an exotic, wavy Jimi Tenor and the El Michaels Affair breaking bread with Binker & Moses on a fantasy Nordic islet. One minute you’ll at the Mardi Gras, the next, walking the low-strung elastic splinters of a Charlie Mingus bassline.
A cross-generational reach of jazz history is taken in a wild, beat cutting and cyclonic direction by a quality unit that’s as familiar with the spiritual, be bop, conscious, Afro, blues and Savoy labeled genres as they’re with Mo Wax, DJ Shadow, Four Tet and the Guru. Post Koma is yet another lively, progressive album from a jazz project always in a state of change.
Sone Institute ‘The Narrow Gate And The Stone Clock’
(Mystery Bridge Records)
The biblical mixed with the alien, paranormal and industrial, Roman Bezdyk’s latest hidden sounds generated album is an obscured and mysterious control of the atmospheric and dramatic.
Following on from 2021’s After The Glitter Before The Decay landscape of specters, shapes and broadcasts from a post-industrial wasteland, The Narrow Gate And The Stone Clock scores the ‘altered states’ of Bezdyk’s ‘consciousness’; informed by the New Testament’s metaphor/analogy on choosing the right pathway (‘But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, And only a few find it’. – Matthew, or this one from Luke, ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter.’) and by the struck clock sounds of the church where he would meditate.
A road less obvious, the knocks on heaven’s gates, near ethereal female voices and subtle tones of Tangerine Dream’s cathedral analogue-synths and organ are enveloped by a creation story primordial sulphur of raining filaments, retro-space data calculations, Fortean radio set tunnings, Richard H. Kirk’s breathed condensation, the concrete, sound of scaffolding and Kriedler, Basic Channel and Autechre techno extractions. But within that description, there’s also a leitmotif of slot machine mechanisms, orbiting spheres, surface noise, metallic reverberations and scaly movements.
The presence of someone, or something from beyond this world is almost constantly present through this sub conscious journey from incipient creation to heavenly elevation. And so, although there’s plenty of near supernatural elements and acid rain Blade Runner moments, this synthesis of field recordings, mono synth, guitar, radio and FX improvisations also ascends to zither-like gilded stairs towards Laraaji, and the near meditative. But yes, this is a soundscape of great mystery; esoteric by design or not, like Gunter Westhoff and Bernard Szajner broadcasting from the ether as the mechanical church clock strikes and amorphous pathway is opened.
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.
The Perusal #42: Tobias Meinhart And Berlin People, Suki Sou, MultiTraction Orchestra, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Lunar Bird…
April 13, 2023
Dominic Valvona’s Reviews Column
MultiTraction Orchestra (Ft. Arve Henriksen) ‘Reactor One’
(Superpang) Available Now
A multiverse of musicians from troupes and bands that congruously intersect, the MultiTraction Orchestra draws in members from GoGo Penguin, Supersilent, Melt Yourself Down, Crash Ensemble, Sly & The Family Drone, Hen Ogledd and beyond. A stellar lineup you could rightfully claim, such talents as the multi-awarding winning saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and Alexander Technique teacher James Alsopp; the “Reductionist School” freeform harpist Rhodri Davis; gifted cellist Kate Ellis; bassist, vocalist, composer, environmentalist and Acoustic Ladyland instigator Ruth Galler; jazz drummer, Son Of Kemet, Jon Scott; and Krakow via London and Detroit composer, guitarist, producer and interdisciplinary collaborator Alex Roth are joined by the Norwegian trumpet star Arve Henrikson on this new project of remote syncopation.
The orchestra’s members, brought together by Roth, made this, their debut expanded work, across various distances; collaborating apart from each other from different locations: A fact that in no way impedes on the quality and harmony of direction; even in the most histrionic parts.
Reactor One may suggest some nuclear fusion, but this feels and sounds almost like an orchestrated gathering “reacting’ to and playing together in one space at one time. Across a set of six performances that ensemble stir the senses and picture a myriad of imaginative, mysterious environments and landscapes. Such eclectic communions unsurprisingly draw a mix of genres, from jazz to the classical, post-rock and soundtracks.
The opening soft and grainy rasped, snozzled saxophone gauzy ‘Reactor I’ has an air of John Cale and Simon McCorry adrift in a mizmar of India or Arabia: and yet, it also sounds rather esoteric and otherworldly. Suite ‘II’ has a sustained post-rock bed of scuzz guitar harmonics, drama and bluesy-droned horns, whilst ‘III’ features delicate rippling harped aria-like pitches and raspy, almost rusted, sax.
‘IV’ is a crepuscular piece of concentrated brow cello and wisped stirrings that build, eventually, into a cacophony of drum breaks and smashed rolls and cosmic articulations. The harps are back on suite ‘V’, but sound almost like the African kora. They’re joined by an elephant trumpeted sax, what sounds like Jed Kurzel’s intense carved-up bowed strings dramatics, and a synthesized sense of unease. The final piece in this moving, evocative odyssey sounds like Popol Vuh caught in metallic, whining hinge bracketed and bass-y resonance.
A serialism of intuitive tonal movements, the sense of an ambiguous geography, mood and time, the combined efforts of so many threads sounds anything but disjointed or disconnected. Instead, the MultiTraction Orchestra deliver a coherent, balanced drama of gravitas and mood music.
Suki Sou ‘Notes On Listening’
(Curious Music) Available Now
Gentle impressions in the modulated waves, ripples and drones, Suki Sou’s sophisticated analogue electronic pieces require a certain commitment.
Inviting a deeper listening experience, the intuitive self-taught composer and sound designer elicits subtle moods and evocations from a home studio apparatus of Moog, Arps and Buchla synths and MIDI controllers on the debut album, Notes On Listening.
Pitched somewhere between the nostalgic and electronic pioneered sounds of such luminaries as Suzanne Ciani, Sarah Davachi, Roedelius and Klaus Schulze and Library music, yet looking with opportunity towards the future, recollections of childhood out in the Far East are transported and fed into a symmetry of machine produced music and environmental, tactile humanism. There’s a soul within that multilayered network that works arppegiator, waveforms, algorithms and burbled and bobbed synthesized notes into genteel moving translations of abstract projections, feelings, places, even observed weather patterns.
Somewhere in the stratospheric ambient weightlessness of the ‘Kelvin-Helmholtz Clouds’ – the rare billowing wave pattern cloud phenomenon named after the professors of that title – and the moistened kosmische artificial splashes of ‘Velocity Of Water’, the distinctive memories of Sou’s journey from Macau to Berkshire, London and later, the Lake District, are transduced into ambient currents, melodies, languorous drifted spells, liquid flows and airy glides. It could be, as laid out in the notes, the reflections of listening to the Taiwanese pop star Teresa Tang in the rain at grandmother’s that is audible on ‘Petricher’. The outdoors is sealed off with the shut of a door or window in the studio on that one.
If JakoJako or the Warm Colours made an album with Metamono on Sky Records in the 1970s this could well be the result. Too minimal to be lush, yet beautifully, knowingly composed with room for serendipity, Notes On Listening brings warmth, and on the finale ‘Light Intervals’, a sort of pastoralist spiritualism to synthesised analogue electronica. Sou’s sources, influences make for an accomplished debut of subtly and purposeful ambience.
Lunar Bird ‘The Birthday Party’
(Supported by Help Musicians Do It Differently Fund 2022) 28th April 2023
Disarming malady and alienation with such vaporous gauzy diaphanous veils of dream wave, Lunar Bird with a myriad of fellow Italian artists and musicians weave vulnerability and fragility into the most purified of intoxicating pop songs.
Although making the move from their native home to take up residence in Cardiff a number of years back, founding members Roberta Musillami and Eliseo Di Malto evoke a Mediterranean and Adriatic light-giving feel of consumed holiday romance and of longing disconnection: the distance between lovers drawn apart.
Lingering in a lush synthesized haze, Lunar Bird (named after Joan Miró’s signature abstract bronze sculpture) once more ooze a subtle, sophisticated mirage of alternative European pop from the 80s with Beach House, Diva Dompe and Julia Holter. Although, rather surprisingly, the saddened, synth and piano-chimed, near psychedelic ‘Firestorm’ sounds like a collaboration between Kate Bush and The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper era), and the Giorgio Tuma and Riccardo Raho penned coastal Iberian, almost Latin-American percussive, twanged and fluted (courtesy of another guest, Marco Tuma) ‘Dreaming’ reminded me of the late Mandy; a touch too of a Hellenic Lee Hazelwood if you please.
From paradise to metaphorical plunges into the gauzy waters of the deep end, the group’s second album is one long extended languorous dream. The title-track opener both musically and lyrically glows. A slow release of Italo-electronica and strobe-lit soft aches, a near creeping buzz and hint of Numan-sampled Sugarbabes sits comfortably with breathless Beach House vibes.
Recent single-video ‘Creatures’ is a gilded, glistened and softly rippled enchantment, a call-to-arms of a kind for “misfits”, shone down on with certain radiance. The already mentioned Giorgio Tuma joins electro-siren Roberta in a translucent, almost hushed duet on the new wave ‘A Crow’. Another guest of many, Adriano Modica joins Roberta on the Abba-esque Eurovision grand opening ‘Driven By The Light’; Modica “learning to fly” over a blissful, heaven sent production.
Featured on the Monolith Cocktail a while back, another of the already released single-videos, ‘Venilia’ references the Roman deity of the winds and sea to an almost cinematic allurement that conceals a spell of restlessness in paradise.
The album’s bookended by another of those slowly released anthems, ‘Astronaut’. This time celestial fanned rays light up the ephemeral on a golden shimmer of 90s dream pop, as the intangible, the fleeting space dust and romantic allusions are captured and bottled for posterity.
Not so much dipping as submerged fully in that drowsy intoxicating dream vision, Lunar Bird entwine emotional pulls, anxieties with the most delicious, sumptuous of Southern European ethereal pop. The Birthday Party is a spellbinding songbook that subtly pushes the Italo-Welsh group into swimmingly new waters without losing the signature diaphanous bohemian sound we all love them for. There’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t be much bigger, well known and successful with potential hits like this.
Tobias Meinhart And Berlin People ‘Dark Horse (Live At The A-Trane, Berlin)
(Sunnyside Records) 28th April
With an ever-widening international flavor, the Bavaria-born, but Brooklyn-based, saxophonist, composer and bandleader Tobias Meinhart picks up and infuses his sound with echoes of the NYC skyline, Latin America and Europe on his new album with the Berlin People ensemble.
Inspired by the dynamics of that set-up’s world tour – out on the road after storming onto the scene with the eponymous acclaimed debut –, Meinhart’s second album showcases a concept-bound live sound with performances from a two week spot at Berlin’s leading jazz club the A-Trane during 2021 and 2022.
Playing every night over the course of that period, encouraged by a respectful but appreciative clapping audience, Meinhart and his accompanying quartet of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, pianist Ludwig Hornung, bassist Tom Berkmann and drummer Mathias Ruppnig shine both together and in the solo spotlight. And as that “dark horse” title suggests, each composition either finishes in a surprising way to where it started out or alludes to some hidden meaning. This might mean virtuoso skills in tandem with a mood, a groove and expressive breakout of dynamism.
With an air of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Dexter Gordon, Mark Tornes, Albert Ayler and more contemporary touches of European jazz throughout, there’s still room for the Afro-Brazilian style of BRBQ and Spanish flair of Chick Corea on the smooth Latin styled turn scenic dalliance and bustled park activity exchange, ‘Luna Park’, and the guitar work of Zappa and Nir Felder on the subtle Lalo Schifrin accented and tumultuous title-track. That same track has (like the later ‘Sonic River’) its very own introduction part; an almost clarinet-like solo saxophone lead-in of subtle rasped resonance and fluted flight.
Pining serenades softly build into flexed and bounced expressions of free jazz as drummed breakbeats suddenly evoke a splash of Buddy Rich when moving through a set of reflections, mirages and busier performances. Each instrument guided by as much deft skill as spontaneity, but with Meinhart switching between tenor and soprano fusing lighter spiraled climbs with shorter, more pecked or peppered toots.
You can hear that a real fluidity exists between each member of this troupe, as no matter the mood, the surprise, these live actions prove wholeheartedly rhythmic, melodic and above all top quality. Meinhart, as do his bandmates, reinforces an already glowing reputation as a leading light on the contemporary jazz scene with this essential album. This record captures them live on stage turning out both an explorative and classy kind of jazz dynamism; showcasing thought and action in perfect synchronicity.
Ale Hop & Laura Robles ‘Aqua Dulce’
(Buh Records) Available Now
Although both artist-researchers in this debut union grew up on the Peruvian coastline and popular beach area of Aqua Dulce near Lima, it wasn’t until years later and thousands of miles away in Berlin that they crossed paths and decided to work together. With a shared geography and musical interests Alejandro Cárdenas, under the guise of Ale Hop, and her foil Laura Robles liberate and transform the Afro-Peruvian heritage of their homeland from its colonial history: namely the Spanish Imperial Viceroyalty of Peru.
With a legacy of greedy conquest and genocide that wiped out the indigenous Incas, and the heinous uprooting of the people of Western and Central Africa, transported to the Americas including Peru, the local cultures and traditions managed to survive through subversion. One of the most important focal instruments (played here by Robles), the wooden cart-like cajón, was one such traditional percussive form with ties to Africa that was banned by the Spanish. The origins remain blurred but its thought to have originated in the ports of South America as a means to keep that drumming heritage, connection to home alive. Using the wooden packing cases that innocuously carried fruit and other goods, in a rudimental fashion, these boxes were adapted to be played whilst sitting on between the knees with hands, sticks, brushes or mallets. The basic shape remains, but is now no longer banished of course. Instead, it’s a mainstay of such Afro-Peruvian and Colonial-indigenous fusions as the two-bar figure Landó, the Zamacueca, the festive energetic improvised dance of Festejo, the Sande Las Diablos and the Alcatraz. The last of those being an erotic dance in which the man follows behind his tissue-decorated “posterior” female partner with a lit candle!
On this album the cajón’s quickening, stumbling or slowly lumbered rhythms go up against a radical reshaping of the coastal Peruvian environment, with natural evocations synthesized and made alien, otherworldly and futuristic. Improvisations later edited and with additional electronics and more obscured electric guitar, the African-Spanish-Amerindian dance of ‘Son De Las Diablos’ (which according to the late Peruvian “reciter and ethnomusicologist” Nicomedes Santa Cruz, may have no links at all with African rituals) is thrust into a sound world of non-musical wooden mechanized objects, synth purrs, poured primitivism and the atavistic.
A natural canopy of parrots, insect buzzing chatter; the creaks of and expansions of woodland and vines; and humidity are all turned into sci-fi with various effects, lunar bends and metallic fizzes/splashes/tears/ripples. One such scene, ‘El Fenómeno De La Niña’ sounds like Richard H. Kirk mooning in the exotic undergrowth.
Radio tunings and high-pitched whines and frequencies permeate a variation of rhythmic peregrinations and avant-garde sound experiments that build bridges with Peru’s incredible breathtaking landscapes and its ancient forms. Yet, can also evoke such alien and cosmic ideas too. In fact, Aqua Dulce doesn’t really sound much like anything else, except for the hints of Jon Hassell’s fourth world traverses on the brushed cajón, liquid poured title-track. And so both experienced artists/composers create a new dialogue; a sonic soundscape language as they reimagine a Peru unburdened and lifted from its colonial past.
Issei Herr ‘Distant Intervals’
(NNA Tapes)
Liminal in more ways than one, the Brooklyn cellist-composer Issei Herr’s debut album is both imbued and led by a number of transformations. From a change in musical direction to gender transition, a new life is articulated with an incredibly studied, moving work of suites, forms and memories that exist almost simultaneously in the past, present and future.
Classical groundings and that forms language (the “Aria”, “Elegy”, “Toccata” etc.) act as a base from which to explore various states of emotions, but also imagined possibilities. Reminding me in parts of fellow cellist and experimental artist Simon McCorry, Herr’s instrument of choice is similarly processed, overdubbed and improvised with – recorded, we’re told, in a bedroom closet of all places.
Distant Intervals begins with the recent couplet single of ‘Prelude (An Eternity Of Light)’ and ‘Aubade (The Farewell Is A Beginning)’. The former brings forth that yearned light to a stirring classical air, textured drones and a blown, dusted resonance of sophisticated sighs; the latter, a dawn serenade Aubade – a love song to the early morning made famous by John Donne no less – sounds almost like an English pastoralist yearn of majesty, sympathy and love. There’s a certain bass note on that same piece that seems to mark time itself. Both are class acts on an extended captivating album of deeply moving, inquisitive emotional pulls.
The ‘Aria’ on this album is quite different from the operatic allusions that this word would normally conjure; Herr both gracefully playing triplets of bowed notes and churning a kid of dance to the washed-out memories of a busy swimming pool scene. The eve-song ‘Serenata’ – in parenthesis, “To A Hidden Moon” – features a plucked, spring cello, saddening arcs, a certain feeling that borders on a cry, and what sounds like gentle mallets hitting the strings. ‘Fugato (Night’s Transfiguration)’ has a touch of Johann Johannsson and a choral-like quality of both awe and serenity in equal measure. Vocalist Maria BC offers a subtle Dead Can Dance ethereal swooned gravity to the album’s finale, ‘Aveu (The Beginning In A Farewell)’. More or less translating as “confession”, the Aveu here is used as a soothing vehicle for heartache and vulnerability, yet also gives off a real mystery too.
A parting from one stage to the next, Herr’s debut conveys, serenades and also offers more forlorn eulogies to past lives, woes as the pathway illuminates to a better future. This is a confident and quite accomplished work from the burgeoning composer and cellist that will stand the test of time.
James Howard ‘Peek-A-Boo’
(Faith & Industry) 14th April 2023
To a languid soundtrack of bendy, dreamy blue Hawaii (relocated to Margate), and Tales Of The Unexpected and Third Man waltzes performed in a spoiled ballroom that Strictly Come Dancing couldn’t even revive, James Howard once again wanders wistfully across a worn, battered, disconsolate post-Brexit landscape.
Appearing from out of the guises of both the Norfolk recorded, bleached onto parchment septic Isle folk of Thomas Nation (Battle Of The Grumbles), and the Blue House collaboration (Gobstopper), Howard’s newest songbook pulls from both, as a felt, if forlorn, picture of modern lawless Britain unfolds over a eleven-song cycle of idiosyncratic craft: Who else can evoke Roddy Frame, 70s Scott Walker, The Bluebells, Pink Floyd and Hansa studio saxophones all on the same album?
In the middle of an undeclared English Civil War of ideologies, divisions have never seemed so deep: beyond reconciliation. The puritanical demagogues on both sides seem to have drawn on that tumultuous period of our history. The bloodshed of that era left indelible scars on the country’s psyche; putting paid to revolution as a consequence. The film director Ben Wheatly tried, rather surreally, to encapsulate that same age in his 2013 film A Field In England. With all the events – including the roles of the hermetic, of science, religion and kingship versus a limited democracy – all unfolding in a field microcosm, England’s trauma bleed out into a both hallucinogenic and ominous nonsense of dream-realism. In one scene, the old lullaby of ‘Baloo, My Boy’ is sung across the desolation. A version of this ballad and Civil War curio is beautifully delivered by Howard as a wounded closer on Peek-A-Boo. Allegedly composed by the Bishop of Orkney’s daughter, Lady Anne Bothwell, after being “jilted” by the Earl of Mar’s son, Alexander Erskine (though to be fair he did have an excuse, having been killed on the field of battle), this is the lament of an abandoned mother and child. Repurposed rather nicely, this same song becomes a disarming, weepy swansong that makes perfect sense in the context of the album’s themes and mood.
Because somehow, Howard straddles multiple timelines with beautifully evoked ghosts of the Civil War and the Georgian with life in a contemporary setting. Nothing does this better than ‘County Lines’; matching the cross-border drug dealing crisis of the Home Counties and small towns with a languorous alt-pastoral and Scott Walker-esque country (I’m sure that’s a touch of steep pedal guitar) wane musical accompaniment that seems quite timeless. Again, there’s a melodious, lovely disarming quality that hides the pain, tragedy and sheer arrogant selfishness of those involved in the drug’s trade.
I’m not entirely sure what Howard is saying on the Pulp-ish ‘Family Values’ about the “nuclear family” set-up, and the paranoia of Cold War mutual assured nuclear destruction. As a Generation X(er) (just!), growing up in the 80s, it must have seemed a pretty daunting prospect, going toe-to-toe with the “Russkies”. Whilst When The Wind Blows and public information films on hiding under the stairs or an upturned table seemed terrifying, they also seems bonkers in hindsight. I’m not sure; in fact I lie, as I do know, not many of my peers seemed traumatized by it, or have lingering anxiety from that time. And as it turned out, so many of those aggrandized boastful military displays across Red Square included missiles made out of wood; the Soviet powers couldn’t even afford the fuel to power most of their arsenal. I’m wondering if Howard is trying to draw parallels with the present battle lines between much of the West (though allies are everywhere around the world) and Russia over their heinous invasion of Ukraine; that and a side line of disgust at the once accepted nuclear family unit set-up.
Augurs of a reckoning; the sullied state of a septic Isle; an English seaside Ennio Morricone; just some of the feels and atmospheres all listlessly and longingly channeled into a well-crafted songbook (complete with leveling-up asides/intervals). Howard shields the hurt to an extent with his soft stinging observations, aphorisms and melodramas on yet another fantastic album; one of my favourites of 2023 already.
Brìghde Chaimbeul ‘Carry Them With Us’
(tak:til/Glitterbeat) 14th April 2023
Squeezing new life into the obscure double-note droning Scottish small bagpipes, the Isle of Skye artist Brìghde Chaimbeul explores fertile new atmospheres on her second album, Carry Them With Us. Although borne out of long-held traditions, a bird themed mythology and Western Isles folklore, the piped and circular avian-like suffusions transform old arrangements and tales into something altogether different.
A familiar Celtic air is improvised with, transcribed to sound like a bedfellow of India, the Appalachians and the dream-realism folk of Chaimbeul’s tak:til label mates Širom. Already an award-winner (BBC Young Folk and Horizon prizes), the native Gaelic speaker expands horizons further on this newest work of mysticism and stirring scenic evocations by collaborating with the visionary saxophonist/artist/composer Colin Stetson.
Initially exchanging tweets, with an invitation from Stetson for Chaimbeul to record something for a documentary he was involved with, in kind the explorative American came over for a visit in the summer of last year. Writing and recording with his Scottish host, this sonic partnership ended up producing the “organic” foundations of this nine-track fusion of folk, the neoclassical, new age and fourth world-like peregrinations. Stetson appears on six of those tracks; although its difficult to know where one individual instrument, contribution ends and the other one starts, as both the small pipes and saxophone pretty much meld together in a mizzle or sustained bed of droned impressions. Saying that, ‘Uguviu (II)’ with its almost fiddled dance reminded me in part of Don Cherry, and has more obvious stirrings of new age jazz. It also reminded me a lot of Ariel Kalma. Together on the traditional sourced ‘Órgn An Eich Uisge: Song Of The Waterhorse’ they take what sounds like a Jacobean Highland battle drum arrangement towards the minimalistic borders of Cage and Riley, and the more spiraling vortex cosmos of Frédéric D. Oberland.
This inspired musical partnership proves highly successful envisioning an almost hermetic synthesis of influences and geography; the opening ‘Pilliú: The Call Of The Redshank’ and ‘Tha Fonn Gun Bhi Trom: I Am Disposed Of Mirth’ proving extraordinary, evocative riffs on bird-flight and the ancient lore of the land.
Uncoupled from Stetson, Chaimbeul channels both the Celtic and a whiff of India mountains on the fluty, turn near polka dance, ‘Banish The Giant Of Doubt & Despair’ – a tragic old tale of a drowned, once marauding, giant succumbing to his fate through the alluring siren song of the King’s daughter. We actually get to hear Chaimbeul’s effective apparitional-like voice, singing in the mother tongue on the beautiful misty vaporous finale, ‘Bonn Beinn Eadarra: The Haunting’. Another string to the proverbial bow you could say.
An evolution and a response to the traditions of the Western Isles, Chaimbeul’s drones, bellows and piped vapours conjure up a whole new folkloric magic that sonically reaches beyond Scotland’s borders. This is an album that connects different worlds and centuries on an impressive textural, tonal soundtrack of the recognisable and more abstract forms of Gaelic, minimalism and the new age.
Tuzeint ‘Raixes’
(Extra Soul Perception/Worldwide Records) 21st April 2023
Returning to his roots, Tuzeint opens up his heart on his Latin-soul flavoured debut.
Marking not only the first expansion by the community-collaborative Extra Soul Perception platform into the Spanish language, but this soloist release also finds, for the very first time, Tuzeint singing in his native Mexican-Spanish tongue too; aided by an ensemble of musicians playing a number of localized Central and South American instruments with links back to Iberia.
Channeling a CV that includes stints as the motivational force behind Mexico’s 90s hip-hop legends Control Machete, as a producer, and a remixer for M.I.A., Run The Jewels and Vampire Weekend, the thirty year old Monterrey-based artist weaves together a lilting, sauntering merger of Veracruz region stringed guitar work serenades, Afro-Brazilian percussion, r’n’b and sophisticated breakbeat soul.
Unmistakably Latin but with some subtle, interesting twists and whiffs of 80s new wave, some hip-hop production and a touch of the dreamy, near psychedelic, Raixes is like a tropical bleached romance between Earth period Vangelis, D’Angelo, Manduka, the Buena Vista Social Club, El Michal’s Affair and Les Sins. Accompanied by the plucked, flanged, delicately woven Baroque and folk of Xinto’s nylon-stringed, narrow-bodied Jorana Jarocha (almost a guitar but much smaller), Vico Diaz’s lower-pitched, almost double-bass-like, four-stringed Leona, Lucio de los Santos’ bird-y flute, Alan Fajardo’s shortened tooting and more suffused trumpet and a combined percussive and drummed effort from Jorge Jimenez, Andres Jamie, Orestes Gomez and multi-instrumentalist Enrique Toussaint, Tuzeint sings with a soul-love yearn and lulling relaxed flair.
To echoes of light jazz, tropical mirages, Gulfstream beachside troubadour reminisces and sumptuous soothed croons, burdens and desires are shared equally with romantic, languorous élan. As relaxed and inviting as this music is, the emotional draws are deep and affecting. But its nothing less than a delightful, soul bearing and enjoyable album; a neo-soul delight.
Les Abranis ‘Amazigh Freedom Rock 1973-1983’
(Bongo Joe Records) 28th April 2023
Making good on Bongo Joe’s 2018 45s series showcase of Les Abranis tracks, this expanded compilation follows the eclectic Algerian group’s adoption of garage, psych, disco, acid rock and synth-pop during a decade period of their existence.
Proudly marrying an atavistic Kabyle heritage to Western sounds, Les Abranis were born out of a diaspora and mass migration to France: Paris especially. The Berber Kabyle from Algeria’s Northern region and Atlas Mountains moved in great numbers to escape cultural persecution, civil war and economic strife. This ethnic group’s reach is far, with iconic stars of the screen, music and arts, politics and sports all fully embedded in popular French culture (Zinedine Zidane being one such superstar with those Kabyle roots).
However, politically, as Les Abranis promoted, this million-plus community seek autonomy, self-determination in Algeria: the name of which is used in the “freedom” barricade breaching title, the “Amazigh”. That freedom, found in Paris of the tumultuous counterculture late 60s, was not just political but musically important. It gave a greater scope to the band’s sound, as they opened up the traditional signature rhythms of home with a fusion of genres; sometimes to the consternation of their fellow Algerians, as one highlighted anecdote regales. Performing both this compilation’s opening high-pitched Doors and 60s garage beat grooving ‘Athedjaladde’ (which actually, as it progresses, also pulls in a guitar pedal wah of Isaac Hayes and touch of 60s Zappa) and the Habibi Funk like, suffused Doors (again) organ and handclapped spin ‘Ayetheri A L’ Afjare’ on national Algerian TV in 1973, as part of the more traditional Festival of Modern Algerian Song, they cause a certain furor and were near booted off stage: their hippie, loose liberal interpretation deemed too radical it seems.
Originally crossing paths in one-such Maghreb rich hip Paris neighbourhood in 1967, Shamy El Baz and Karim Abdenour conceived the idea of merging the Western styles they both loved with home. Bassist Madi Mehdi and drummer Samir Chabane would fill out that first proper lineup, playing a form of garage, psych and North African acid-rock. By the time they reached the 80s they’d not only changed personal – recruiting the Corsican jazz drummer and rhythm provider for fellow Kabyle superstar Idir, André “Dédé” Ceccarelli – but their style too; fully immersing themselves in synth pop. A chunk of the choice tracks on this collection actually come from the band’s 1983 album N1; the sound of which is slicker, smoother and enveloped in the decade’s vapoured production of disco, new wave, pop and soft rock. Songs like the female swooned and male vocal caroused ‘Therrza Rathwenza’, and the synthesized wind swept, Sly & Robbie era Grace jones slinked reggae groove ‘Avehri’ are two such examples of this shift. ‘El Guoum Agui’ sounds a bit 80s Paisley Prince, albeit with that exotic Algerian production. The cool Persian discotheque number ‘Akoudar’ is almost Chic-esque. But from a previous chapter in the band’s development, the organ-poked ‘Chenar la Blues’ sounds simultaneously like early Can, Canned Heat, the Stones and the Easybeats shimmying in a Berber dance.
There are some quite incredible progressive fusions and more than enough Parisian-Algerian nuggets to make this a vital addition to the collection. Kabyle culture rocks out in the Western arena.
Kiji Suedo ‘Hosek (EP)’
(Hobbes Music) Available Now
Following up on a well received album in December (Riot) for the Edinburgh electronic label Hobbes Music, Osaka artist Kiji Suedo heads lightly towards the dancefloor with an EP of “working it” House and Techno numeral-loaded tracks.
Jacked-up and softly pumped with various shimmered and melodious wave forms, acid-washes, knocked beats and hushed languid soulful vocal prompts/actions, Suedo offers up a deeper dance music listening experience.
It’s an early House meets Electronic Body Movement and sparse Harthouse/R&S Techno kind of vibe, with additional spells of untethered bulb-like jazzy organ notes, scrapping kinetic marbles and a near constant motion of rotating, sliding, switching and turning synthesized mechanisms.
Good calls have already been made: Moodyman and Herbert on the press sheet, and someone else gave a shout for Theo Parish. I would add to that equation some Basic Channel, Dave Clarke, Mike Dred and a hell of a lot of late 80s/early 90s sounds too. But in short, and without sounding to gauche, this is dance music for the mind, body and soul from an artist on the rise.
Puce Moment ‘Epic Ellipses’
(Sub Rosa) Available Now
From out of Nicolas Devos and Pénélope Michel’s Puce Moment sound research lab (a French located incubator, inspired, well so it sounds on occasion, by the famous Kosmische Zodiak Club frequented by Moebius, Roedelius and Schnitzler) emerges another self-styled “climatic-noise” soundtrack of slow building drama and gravitas.
Existing somewhere between the forms of peregrination and studious composition, the duo finds conclusions, just the right end points through intuition and experience. Working together now for 15 years, across the arenas of fiction, documentary and virtual reality, both foils on this sonic explorative journey can be said to have found that perfect syncopation.
Their fourth album together, Epic Ellipses evokes both the alien (the sci-fi meaning of the word) and the ambiguous. Over four long organic and synthesized atonal but yet melodious and motored tracks, off-world data, the sounds of strange oscillating and looming craft merge with vague percussive rhythms that could have been sourced from the South Seas, South America or Africa. Not so much ethnography as the balanced but untethered construction of new worlds, ritual is transduced into near-cinematic suspense, thriller and the mysterious.
“Allotropia” sets out from an echoed chasm of sine waves and static-rips in the fabric, before a siren’s ethereal voice materializes from industrial ominous atmospherics and internal, heartbeat rhythms. ‘Skyli’ has robotic-like calculus, fed digital data, cosmic undulations and a distant singular knocking beat. Gradually those knocks turn into a slow beat, as strange noises and the corridor to some distant constellation opens up and guides us onto some new plane. ‘Motor’ reminds me of Hamburg label Bureau B’s output – that tie to kosmische and German minimalist electronica perhaps. Although the lulled voice and vague elements of faraway lands eventually end up sounding quite dramatic: lost in the ether. An air of very early Cluster and Popol Vuh’s Affenstunde debut can be detected alongside Cosey Fanni Tutti under the quietened surface veils of the womb-like ‘Taifuu’. From vaporous mists, waves and ambience a filmic, immersive soundtrack builds; one that entices and organically forms visitations, memories, feelings of time and place: destination. Epic Ellipses is a quartet of moods, emotional draws that ends up inventing environments and score to mysterious surface and horizons.
Carla Boregas ‘Pena Ao Mar’
(iDEAL Recordings) Available Now
Featured last year on the Monolith Cocktail, congruously in electroacoustic jazz-primitivism union with fellow Brazilian explorative sound artist Maurício Takara on the Grande Massa D’Auga peregrination, Carla Boregas now drifts out an ambient, both non-musical and more melodic-hinted sonorous waves with her debut solo offering.
Although already making a name for herself, both in native Brazil and in Europe (currently based in Berlin) with the Rakto trio (with Paula Rebellato and again, Maurício Takara) and Fronte Violeta duo (with Anelena Toku), and as the founder of the experimental AUTA venue and Dama Da Noite label, Boregas now expands on a subtle minimalistic palette of tape play, sonic assemblage manipulations, field recordings and hidden instrument sources.
Conduced to roaming and following the played and synthesized air and wind flows, as we reflect on the tenuous, fragile and complex nature of existence, Pena Ao Mar (or “pity the sea”) envelopes the listener within an ambiguous veil of sci-fi, mysticism and wooded menagerie, and drones that evoke the hermetic and a distant vision of India.
The opening ‘Acôes em Paralelo’ (“actions in parallel”) manipulates, plays with what sounds like a reel-to-reel machine; a reversed, crackled and hum drone mix of the avant-garde tape culture of underground Spain and Italy, with touches of kosmiche. Those early resonations of German cosmic music (from Kluster to Tangerine Dream and Gunther Wüsthoff) and “sisters with transistors” luminaries such as Suzanne Ciani can be heard permeating the title-track’s fanning geometric rays and refractions; the otherworldly harmonium church music gauzy ‘Grafia do Invisível’ (“invisible spelling”); and the robotic calculating, alien bird tweeting and box-of-tricks vibrating ‘A Cidade dos Outros’ (“the city of others”). ‘Current 2 Ventos’ (“wind and currents”) seems to gravitate more towards tubular-like blown droned instrumentation (a kind of transmogrified version of a serialism styled wind quartet, and a Jodorowsky feel, whilst ‘Sopro’ (“breath”), with its night creatures forest atmospherics, spoken word experiments and spooked piano, errs towards hints of Lucrecia Dalt and Xqui.
Along varied vapours, currents, waves and wisps of air, Boregas transports the listener to both evaporated and more tangible (but only just) environments and moods; realms of reflection and mysterious spaces that attempt to capture the abstract feelings of being alive in a most vulnerable state.
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Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Our Daily Bread 395: Bróna McVittie ‘The Man In The Mountain’
September 1, 2020
Review/Dominic Valvona
Bróna McVittie ‘The Man In The Mountain’
(Company Of Corkbots) Album/2nd September 2020
The diaphanous voiced and ephemeral harpist Bróna McVittie once again beckons us into her imaginary gossamer world of alternative Celtic fables and mystery with a second album of poetic imbued brilliance. Following on from the much-admired trip-folk cinematic debut We Are Wildlife (which evidently made our choice albums of that year), the Northern Irish enchantress roams a similar gauzy landscape of lingering, lightly-touched evocations; a place in which giants fight over causeways and warrior suitors declare chaste love for the chieftain’s “flower of the hazel glade” daughter.
Though the cover interpretations of old have been “dialed back” for more original songs, the evergreen Man In The Mountain album is heavy with references and inspirational threads from such gifted luminaries as Siegfried Sassoon, Pablo Neruda, William Wordsworth and Henry Williamson. The music is pretty timeless too; a misty shrouded soundtrack based more on the hushed cadence of Bróna’s voice and the subtle trails and wafted semblance of instrumentation than rhythm or the traditional perimeters of folk music.
Yet there’s a modern touch to those both pining and woodland sprite entranced folklores with collaborations from both the electronic duo Isan and Nordic avant-garde composer Arve Henriksen. The former provides an understated ripple of incipient bobbing and skimming percussive Techno for, and co-arranges, the nuclear fusion updated vision of the Greek tragedy, ‘Falling For Icarus’, and the cantering Bert Jansch-breaks-bread-with-Curved Air swoon ‘Eileen Aroun’ – a peaceable, softly-plucked take on Carroll O’Daly’s 14th century declaration of love. Henriksen, for his part, helps entice Bróna towards the airy amorphous soundscape visions of Jon Hassell and Eno’s ‘fourth world’ ambient jazz traverses, Dingo era Miles Davis and a lulled Don Cherry on her transformation of Samuel Ferguson’s famous ballad, ‘The Lark In The Clean Air’.
Legendary Irish mythological figures, ill-fated sacrificial souls and even the “green man” are placed in less familiar settings: a sort of resonance from a banjo sounding instrument takes us away from the Emerald Isle towards the waning drift of Miles Cochran’s alternative Americana soundscapes. It’s a sound inspired as much by the Boards Of Canada as it is the Incredible String Band.
Despite being so softly sung, it’s Bróna’s vocals that seem to be the highlight; improving all the time; holding notes so breathlessly long and yearned, and almost raspingly, dreamily emerging from the ether of some ancient headland to lull pursed lip sonnets and tales.
Beautifully conceived and imaginative, Bróna McVittie and her subtle foils on this eloquent lush songbook push Celtic imbued folk gently towards electronica and experimental jazz. This is done with such ease and grace that those seeking the traditional will find little in the way of discourse or friction, or even anything approaching radicalism. The Man In The Mountain is rather a caressed, vaporuos doorway into an alternative musical tapestry of folk that isn’t afraid to expand into the synthesized and modern.
See also…
Bróna McVittie ‘The Green Man’ (Here)
‘We Are Wildlife’ Album Review (Here)
Monolith Cocktail Blog 