THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.
___THE NEW___
Autistici ‘Familiarity Enfolded’
(Audiobulb) 2nd August 2025
The middle sequence in a series of transformations by the Sheffield-based electronic composer, Familiarity Enfolded follows on from the first link in a chain of collaborative immersions, Familiarity Folded – released in just the last week. In what could also be a collaborative showcase for the Audiobulb label too, a smattering of artists who’ve previously released material on the platform now bond and work with Autistici in redeveloping or evolving and remixing his compositions and ideas for a three-part project.
Finding common ambient space and minimalist approaches to visioning new soundscapes and movements, part two includes contributions from Tomo-Nakaguchi (an artist we’ve raved about on the site in the last few years, and made our choice albums of the year lists), A Dancing Beggar (who hasn’t appeared for a very long time on this site, but has made our choice albums lists in the past), Russ Young and OdNu (another artist who has appeared in our reviews sections in the last couple of years). The prospects look good already, with this quartet’s sphere of influences within the ambient and electronic realms both adroit and always worthy of attention.
First up both Autistici and Tomo-Nakaguchi match-up for an incipient majestic awe of both the natural and synthetic on the opening ‘Twilight Glow Of The Sky’. What could be the sound of filaments falling like pattering rain on a drum skin or piece of Tupperware can be heard amongst the moving glimmering light captured at such an inspiring moment in time and place.
The cove atmospheric ‘Caiplie’s Hermitage’ references the atavistic caves of the title, found between the Scottish towns of Anstruther and Crail on the coastal pathways of Fife. A Dancing Beggar is the foil this time around, playing on the hallowed ghosts and history of that mysterious cavern, which is believed to have been used as a place or sanctuary of worship for Christians in the 9th century AD. There’s constant wash or downpour of rain and presence of water elements that continue throughout this piece, and it could be that the artists are perhaps sheltering from it as they build up an abstract picture that’s one part natural and the other near sci-fi. The brassy resonating strings of a guitar are plucked, pulled and sprung as heavenly machines move around in the background. A Dancing Beggar joins both Autistici and OdNu on the finale; a twenty minute plus long form illusion inspired by the track title’s Arthurian referenced enchantress, sibling, shapeshifter and seducer Morgan Le Fay mirage, the ‘Fata Morgana’. A “superior mirage” in other words, this optical phenomenon and complex mirage creates distorted and sometimes fantastical images of distantly observed objects. You must have seen this when looking at to sea in particular conditions and seeing tankers or ships appearing to float above the waves. Sonic wise, this reminded me of Jeff Bird with its essence of piped or pumped pastoral sounds. But there’s also something hallucinogenic about it too. There’s a Mark Hollis solo style piano bit, something that sounds almost like a concertinaed ghostly echo of some shipwreck shanty plus the shimmers and shivers of magic.
That leaves the final track of the quartet, the ‘Dissolved in Light’ collaboration with Russ Young, who I must admit I’m unfamiliar with. It begins with the itchy rubbing chorus of crickets and sundown atmospherics. A veil of mist dissipates to reveal a most minimalist timelessness before Laraaji-like bowls are struck softly and the sound of tines and melodious ambient waves entwine. Andrew Heath evocative piano notes and falls meet an amorphous staccato engine as the track moves along its placeable journey to the sacred.
‘Relinquishing’ control, the concept behind this series has worked rather well; resulting in some magical, stirring and illusionary pieces of sophisticated and highly immersive ambient and lowkey electronica. A Dancing Beggar seems to be adding something of the bucolic and pastoral to the mix to give it a connection to the human and greenery, the nature and history. But all four collaborators prove congruous partners on this project. Part three, Familiarity Unfolded, will follow in due course, and it will be interesting to hear the results of another set of sonic and musical partners.
The Lancashire Hustlers ‘Here But Not Here’
(Steep Hill) 4th July 2025
Rolling with the punches meted out by life; tumbling forward into a new songbook; The Lancashire Hustlers seventh album rings true with disillusion, detachment, bewilderment and isolation. It’s a feeling that’s hard to articulate or relate, but that unease at the tides of time and the disenchanted shrugs of malady sound pretty warm, gentle and sellable.
With a MOR breeze of soul in their sails once more, the long-standing duo of guitarist and vocalist Brent Thorley and drummer and backing vocalist Ian Pakes take beat group, Baroque, psych and troubadour influences for a both funky and yearned trip across the Northern countryside and towns of their home. Transporting a hint of Muscle Shoals to Lancashire for an idiosyncratic English take on the music of the Isley Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, the duo (with an extended apparatus of instruments, which they both share) have a slight saunter and roll to their signature to their songwriting and playing. It’s the sound of The Beatles, of individual Lennon and McCartney on their solo work, of the Stones, of Ollie Halsall and John Compton with an undulation of gospel-light and country-soul electric piano and organ. Talking of the country reference, the most lovely ‘Just Because’ has what could be either a melodica or clarinet sounding like a forlorn but romantically sighed harmonica – there’s also the use of a lap steel guitar.
There are some heartfelt, sad plaints, and rural country swamp pop ditties that wouldn’t sound out of place on McCartney’s eponymous solo album and RAM; some songs that err towards the haunted, albeit with instrumental aping scurrying mouse effects – see the confessional, asking for forgiveness, pest and rodents quirky phobia, and Byzantine Stones flavoured ‘I Killed A Mouse’ -; and some that beat themselves up over guilt, frustration and heartache. Most out there, must be the dejected lament of feeling ignored, ‘Like A Ghost’, which sounds like a detour to some mysterious Hispaniola Les Baxter hideaway island of the occult. And yet, they never feel so down or in the blues funk that each song isn’t rich in playfulness lyrics wise, or ever dour.
Another enchanting as it is sorrowful and disenchanted songbook from a duo that continues to make its own luck, releasing a consistent catalogue of instantly likeable, melodious and breezily catchy albums. It’s always a pleasure to review and hear them.
Maria Elena Silva ‘Wise Men Never Try’
4th July 2025
Recently stripping back Bob Dylan’s courtly enigmatic dames to their most essential essences with interpretations of ‘Queen Jane’ and a summoned bell rung ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’, Maria Elena Silva now turns to the pages of the Great American Songbook with a first volume of revisited and transposed standards made anew: that is, made emotively ethereal, near evanescence yet connected and with a real sense of depth and something approaching the tactile.
Under the ‘umbrella title’ of Wise Men Never Try, the inaugural volume features a small intimate accompaniment of players to accentuate and punctuate Silva’s carefully placed and near blown words, or, to wind along to a minimalist performance of the artful, the solo play, the quietened and sullen lament, the show tune stripped of artifice, and the enigmatic, near impregnable shell of a smoky cabaret tortured soulstress. Step forward Erez Dessel, who’s piano both articulates the feel and plays with a freer hand of spine-tinkles, ached suspense, distorts and slightly jars the nerves; especially on the opening version of Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman’s late 1950’s standard, ‘I Walk A Little Faster’ (the singular “I” has been dropped I assume to reframe the angle for a new interpretation), which was a hit for Blossom Desire in 1958. The original’s slight lilt of 50s swing and jazz is replaced with a jilt of dissonance on the piano; made more so because of the near silence that opens the song. In a bluesy-jazzy fashion that also recalls the theatre, Silva amorphously places the words with lulled and delicate breathless ease. As a theme of heartache and denial, this distillation is as beautiful as it is almost troubling and disconsolate. The album’s finale, ‘Some Enchanted Evening’, is the closet interpretation on the whole album, featuring a lovely melodious piano that wouldn’t sound out of place on the original; all very tender and dreamy. The Rodgers and Hammerstein number, composed for the South Pacific musical, is normally sung by male protagonist Emile as he captures the essence of love at first sight. Out of the female gaze, with a female perspective that theme is not so much lost but redefined.
We also have Tyler Wagner popping up on the double-bass, taking a tactile, textural jazzy approach, offering flexed stretches of the body, sensitive little crawls and climbs, and more physical thwacks of the bass strings. The filmic pining ‘I Should Care’, written by Alex Stordahl, Paul Weston and Sammy Cahn for the 1944 MGM matinee Thrill of a Romance – covered by all the notable greats over the decades, from Sinatra to Peggy Lee, Dizzy Gillespie and Amy Winehouse -, features a bass that quietly thumbs away a jazz rhythm in the style of early Blue Note, as Silva sympathetically oozes soulful pursed heartache.
Completing the accompanying trio – who it must be stated, don’t always play together or on every song – is Ben McDonald on electric guitar. Subtle for the most part, ‘I’m In Love Again’ has McDonald pinging harmonics, brushing up and down the fretboard and playing a nice Reinhardt-esque delicate languid sensitive form of haunted sympathy.
It must be pointed out that Silva also plays acoustic guitar on these numbers. ‘You Don’t Know How Glad I Am’, written by Jimmy Williams and Larry Harrison, and made her own by Nancy Wilson on the 1964 single, is an intimate entwined match of Silva’s climbing vocals and a guitar with a pinch of Spanish flair: albeit kept quite subtle. Silva’s version of that recognisable tune sounds somewhere between Judee Sill and Roberta Flack. It’s there again on the next song, ‘Close To You’, a sort of jazzy-gypsy guitar melancholy.
Silva’s voice is labyrinthine and enigmatic yet can’t quite hide the various emotional toils of disconsolate and sacrificial, torturous and resigned heartbreak. Despite the intimacy of the setting, every song has a stage-like atmosphere about it that croons and soothingly oozes sophisticated, elegant jazzy-blues performance from the stillness and blank space. But that voice is hard to define, to pin down; amorphously pitched between the great jazz singers, the voices of perhaps Julie London and Peggy Lee, and something approaching the folk doyens of the 60s. A beautiful, somewhat pining and plaint start to a series of such interpreted songbooks, volume one is a very personal take and perspective on a songbook we have come to take for granted and heard a thousand or more times. In this moment, this setting, those just recognisable songs have taken on a different quality and encouraged a new reading.
If that grabbed you, Silva will be back next month with a second volume, this time concentrated on songs of a certain vintage, and a prescient history, the American Civil War. Expect to read a review of that album at a later date.
Leo Wolf ‘I Saw Your Shadow On The Wall’
1st August 2025
The flicker of Richter’s candle appearing at the end of the labyrinth; the half-dreamt, half-seen M.R. James’ apparitions; the presence of the supernatural and mysterious prompted by sleep hallucinations; these are all in the essence and conjuring of imagery that is crafted from the North Carolina artist Leo Wolf’s ambient, atmospheric and filmic granular synthesis of processed sampled material from classical records and field recordings. With weight and texture these asynchronously breathed, and space filled recordings exist in a semi dream state, simultaneously paranormal and yet tethered to the search for light and gravitas in a world of synthesized melodic wave forms, tones, passes, undulations and bass-y padded throbs.
Building up a moving, simulating and often dramatic sensory experience from hidden sources, machinery and the recognisable captured moments of the artist’s surroundings – from the rain hitting a metal apparatus in the garden, to the clatter of cutlery and plates, the conversations caught between people in a restaurant or café setting -, this album’s building blocks act together and independently of each other to set in motion a feeling both hypnagogic and hypnotic – the former even features in the title of one track. Are we indeed awake or not? Who can tell, as Leo constructs a surprisingly beautiful work of ambient reflection, soundtracks and filtered brilliance.
A brilliance of light (metaphorical and real) can be found on each and every track more or less, as the mists, haze, the unsure fogs of the musty and gauzy are parted to reveal itself.
It sounds to me like 1980s paranormal VHS merged with His Name Is Alive, synthesized monastic and gothic voices, hollowed beams, overhead craft of an alien nature and generators. Nightmare and the sublime through the grainy lens, I Saw Your Shadow On The Wall envelops the listener in Leo’s personal searches and emotional pulls to create a most moving soundtrack.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 99___
For the 99th time, the Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share; with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for nearly 12 years now, Volume 99 is the latest eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show from me – the perfect radio show in fact: devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
Let us pay homage firstly to the late Argentine pianist and composer Lalo Schifrin, who passed away earlier this month. Arguably it took a South American to encapsulate and bottle through blazed horns, funky grooves, a chorus of dramatic near reverent voices, and thriller punches the sound of the streets of San Francisco and New York in the 60s and 70s; when Dirty Harry served Judge Dredd style justice and Steve McQueen handbrake turned and screeched recklessly as a getaway driver. Kung-Fu to Spies, Bossa, Samba, the orchestral, swing, jazz, the cultish and horror, Schifrin’s signature is legendary; his influence so wide and extensive as to have entered the musical lexicon. Arguably amongst the most sampled composers of all time too. So where do you start? How the hell do you represent such a legacy? Well, I’ve chosen a few personal favourites and a couple of more obscure tracks from a cannon that spans over seven decades: the theme from ‘Magnum Force’, ‘Kyrie’, ‘Once A Thief’, ‘Vaccinated Mushrooms’, ‘The Shadow’ and ‘Introit’. And literally as I’m writing this, news arrives of Ozzy Osbourne‘s sad departure from these realms. The Anti-christ, lord of heavy metal (or “heavy mental” as my old man always called it), arguably at least one of the founding fathers of that sound through Black Sabbath of course (or at least one of the earliest adopters), finally succumbed to his plague of illnesses and conditions. Near on breaking his neck on the unseemly naff chariot of a quad bike ages ago, but battling Parkinson’s, a ridiculous amount of addictions, it seemed Ozzy was always on the cusp of death; defying the odds not just to put one foot in front of the other, but to continue his career as dark magi, ring master to metal and its offspring. What seems like an age ago, the TV show that did much to revive his career, one of Brum’s most famous and celebrated sons managed to become relevant again to a whole new generation despite seeing a ramshackle, ailing former rock star on his downers, and unintentionally making a name for himself through various comedic episodes: even entering that lexicon on catch phrases, the metal equivalent of Fred Flintstone’s hollering “Wilma!”, more in desperation, of “Sharon!”. It always seemed a joke, or not to be taken too seriously, all that dark brooding, Satanic rites, devil’s spawn and howling metamorphous werewolf mooning: and it worked very well. And despite the hilarity, the idol status of motel, hotel, holiday inn wrecking, pissing on the Alamo, the Motley Crue pool side incident of snorting a row of ants, wife/partner/enabler/manager Sharon can tell a dark tale or two hundred about Ozzy’s drug-crazed manic violent outbursts. Still, he was a character; a motherfucker as Brian Bordello would say; a true individual; the like of which we won’t ever see again. Many wished Ozzy on, even those who weren’t fans. His final curtain call was only a matter of a few weeks ago, back on home soil. Like the trooper he was, Ozzy gave back to the city that panel-beat and moulded him. I’ve chosen a couple of tunes to see him off (please no jokes about double-checking the coffin on the day), one from the Sabbath days, the other, from Ozzy’s debut 80’s album Dairy Of A Madman.
Moving on now to the anniversary celebrating albums, there’s select tracks from Wayne Shorter’s most (arguably) influential and most covered LP, JuJu (60 this month), The Rolling Stones’ Out Of Our Heads (60 this month), The Fugs’ debut LP (60 this month), Milton Nascimento’s Minas (50 this year), Larry Jon Wilson’s New Beginnings (50 this year), The Verve’s A Northern Soul (unbelievably 30 years old in 2025) and Banco De Gaia’s Last Trian To Lhasa (30 this month).
Each month a smattering of newish tracks that didn’t make the Monthly Playlist of new music manage to creep into the set list. For July, there’s tracks from Nowaah The Flood, Rarelyalways with Nia J,Lunch Money Life, and DJ Haram with Moor Mother and 700 Bliss.
That leaves space for an intergenerational, cross-polygenesis mix of tunes from the triumvirate gathering of Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul (aka A.R.C.), Grass Widow, Julie Coker, Federico Balducci, Johhny Yen Bang, Chakk, MC 900 FT Jesus…
Tracks in full are::::
Lalo Schifrin ‘Theme From Magnum Force’
Banco De Gaia ‘Kincajou’
The Fugs ‘Slum Goddess’
Grass Widow ‘Tattoo’
Mighty Mighty ‘Yours Truly’
Batsumi ‘Mamshanyana’
Federico Balducci ‘Abode’
Black Sabbath ‘Who Are You?’
Lalo Schifrin ‘Kyrie’
Lalo Schifrin ‘Once A Thief’
Wayne Shorter ‘Deluge’
Nowaah the Flood ‘Protocol’
DJ Haram w/ Moor Mother and 700 Bliss ‘Lifelike’
MC 900 Ft. Jesus ‘Dancing Barefoot’
Lunch Money Life ‘The Garden’
Rarelyalways w/ Mia J ‘Paid’
Milton Nascimento w/ Beto Guedes ‘Caso Voce Queira Saber’
El Polen ‘A las Orillas del Vilcanota’
Joe King Kologbo ‘All Fingers Are Not Equal’
Julie Coker ‘Elelemi’
Lalo Schifrin ‘‘Vaccinated Mushrooms’
Chick Corea, Dave Holland & Barry Altschul ‘Games’
Lalo Schifrin ‘The Shadow’
Johnny Yen Bang ‘Kill The Disco’
Harte 10 ‘Some Ronnie – Live’
Ozzy Osbourne ‘Flying High Again’
Chakk ‘Caught in Your Face’
Co-Pilot ‘Cornerhouse’
The Rolling Stones ‘That’s How Strong My Love Is’
Lalo Schifrin ‘Introit’
The Verve ‘On Your Own’
Larry Jon Wilson ‘Broomstraw Philosophers And Scuppernong Wine’
___/Archives___
Already represented in volume 99 of the Social Playlist above, another chance to repost my piece on new age techno pioneer Banco De Gaia’s influential 1995 world peregrination Last Trian To Lhasa. Originally appearing as a twentieth anniversary special, with a repackaged version of the album plus extras.
Banco De Gaia ‘Last Train To Lhasa (20th Anniversary 4xCD Set)’
Despite, what on the surface, seems a plausible misconception, one of the UK’s chief progenitors of global trance peregrinations, Banco De Gaia, has become synonymous with all things Tibetan. Re-released on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, the Banco’s Last Train To Lhasa album may have borrowed the title and evoked a transcendent spirit of the country’s mystical Himalayan landscapes, yet the group’s founder and guiding force Toby Marks never meant to confine his world sounds to one particular place: In truth, more a pan-global sound palette with echoes and traces of the Middle East, Asia and the Orient.
Going as far as to refute suggestions in every subsequent interview since its original release, the LP only actually features a solitary sample from the region and only gained its title from Marks wife on completion. However, Marks lent space on the album’s sleeve to publicising Tibet’s struggle against its overlord Chinese masters and would become a vocal advocate of the Free Tibet campaign – that now seems such a long time ago, and all but forgotten, with China since more or less swallowing Hong Kong and threatening an invasion of Taiwan, which if it does come, might just be the big one: the WWIII event we always dreaded.
Base camp on the enlightened journey to the ethereal, Tibet’s meditative disposition was no match for the authoritarian steamroller of the Communist party machine. And so, an ill-at-ease occupation and stalemate persists a generation later. Its international vessel of protest, the Dalai Lama in his own affable and gentle way backed by the Free Tibet campaign continues to be a big draw yet has decidedly been upstaged by events elsewhere. Clarifying his commitment to the cause, Marks was recently interviewed by the Free Tibet organisation in the run up to his trio of performances at this year’s Glastonbury and the anniversary Last Train To Lhasa release – perhaps a timely reminder.
Musically speaking, as I’ve already mentioned, the twentieth anniversary appraisal of Banco De Gaia’s blueprint reaches far beyond any Tibetan influence, imbued by cultures both imaginary and real from both terra firma and the stratosphere.
Highly praised for merging trance and nuanced electronic four-to-the-floor beats with atavistic echoes from mystically envisioned landscapes, Banco De Gaia’s Last Train To Lhasa was released in the dying ambers of the second rave and house music waves in 1995. On the cusp of Britpop, hung-over from grunge, guitars were about to once again dominate whilst house and techno music in all its many guises had reached superclub status; the underground movements fractured and broken up into a myriad of smaller tribes. Ambient and trance, usually the preserve of afterhours clubbing or allocated space in the “chill out” zones had already blossomed into its own industry. That unfairly and often fatuous “chill out” idiom used to sell everything from nirvana relaxation and transience to any ‘new age” missive. Never new in itself, until progress and technology made it easier and offered more options, the core ambient ingredient had already been in existence for decades. And despite what you may have read, Eno may have given it a name, but he certainly didn’t invent it. In this evolving stage of dance music, Banco De Gaia went to town, sitting on a fluffy cloud, hovering between trance and techno.
LTTL’s suffused panoramic station-to-station soundtrack was different. Sharing some of the peaceable beautiful nephology of The Orb and Air Liquid but with the satellite guided twinkle and kinetic rhythms of Orbital, the album sounded every bit as organic as it did electronic. The original album is boosted by a further three CDs worth of alternative takes, mixes, remixes and the missing until now, Apollo moon landing inspired space-voyage, ‘Eagle’ – recorded at the time but left off the final version of the LP. A box set only available as a limited-edition physical release – though now also available to hear on Bandcamp -, fans and admirers alike can really indulge, with 24 tracks of transcendent aural bliss.
Even if you are far from familiar with the source material, the general method applied is one of respectful tinkering and expansion, with Marks own alternatives plus a line-up of contemporary artists/producer remixes congruously immersive. A ‘Duck Asteroid Extended’ mix of the original ‘Kincajou’ for example, takes the steam driven new age suite on an epic, stripped and even more ambient, 44-minute journey: it takes the mix thirty-minutes to bring in the beats and reach a higher plain. Elsewhere, various tinkering’s of the holy misty mountain proverb ‘China (Clouds Not Mountains)’ takes the languid drifter into ever more esoteric territories, or in the case of Roedelius and Felix Jay collaborator Andrew Heath, adding a diaphanous piano to the meditative calligraphy-brushed valley narrative.
The reverberations of dub, bhangra, and the Orient are sometimes stretched into indolent escapism or given more power and lift on the varied versions of ‘Amber’. Sometimes as with the Carl Craig imbued Bluetech remix of ‘Kuos’, they are taken apart and rebuilt. Though nothing quite matches the rolling timpani introduction and celestial beauty of the original ‘White Paint’, ‘Where’s The Runway Dub’ and alucidnations ‘Dream Remix’ offer interesting interpretations; one a hymn in dub the other a suffused with kosmiche rays romance in the sky.
A carefully considered expansion of the Banco De Gaia panoramic worlds of the mid-90s, the 20th anniversary edition certainly offers the listener an immersive experience. And you can’t complain about getting your money’s worth, with over four hours of music over the four discs to peruse.
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you can, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat by donating via Ko-Fi.
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THE DIGEST FOR SEPTEMBER 2024: New Music/The Social Playlist/And Archives
September 23, 2024
THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.
____/THE NEW
Holy Matter ‘Beauty Looking Back’
ALBUM 4th October 2024
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.
Using a poetic license inspired by Leonard Cohen (that new moniker lifted straight from the pages of Beautiful Losers, and one inspiring mantra from that same book, “I change; I am the same”, can be read as this album’s slogan) and the Ukiyo-e style artworks of Hishikawa Moronobu as an illustrated mirrored metaphor, Beauty Looking Back explores the personal, environmental and seasoned changes in Kaiser’s life. Namely her move to L.A. from St. Louis, and the relationships either left behind or maintained through the framing of memorable weather and atmospheres.
On the surface a most magical, wisped and tubular bells chiming yearning, and at times full of moving regret and the evocations of the Laurel Canyon and Riot On Sunset Strip eras, there’s a real depth to the lyrics, musicianship and reference points. Moronobu’s iconic Beauty Looking Back painting for instance, features sartorial readings of status and the changing of fashions and traditions in Edo period Japan; the muse, subject of this work embellished in the striking red kimono decorated with chrysanthemums and cherry blossoms of the wealthy and yet to be married. To keep a relative peace during an epoch of conservative but prosperous Shogunate rule, an age of pleasure was ushered in with the building of designated walled areas inside Japan’s cities, put aside for the growth of tea houses, brothels and Kubuki theatre. Artists such as Moronobu were on hand to paint and depict the new “free-flowing nature of urban life”.
Seeking both comfort and reassurance from a nostalgic haze however, Kaiser, together with her former bandmate foil Andy Kahn on keys, guitar and bass, her partner Matt Popieluch (of Big Search note) on classical, near Iberian and South American-flavoured guitar, 12-string and violin, Kate Bellinger on backing vocals, and producer David Glasebrook, who also brings in drummer Raphi Gottesman and upright bassist Josh Housh, convey a mirage shimmer and fey delicate trace of Judee Sill, Sibylle Baier, Jewel, Marina Allen and The Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The vampiric Laurel Canyon ‘Eve’s Hollywood’, apart from its magik and scene-setting lyrics, has a touch of a laconic and knowing Nancy Sinatra about it.
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.
Scarla O’ Horror ‘Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses’
ALBUM (Not Applicable)
We could be here all day if I listed the various musical achievements, the actions and the cross-fertilisations and creative fraternizing of this London-based collaboration of jazz (in all its many guises) players and explorers. Within the Scarla O’ Horror’s sphere of influence, in-demand tenor saxophonist, bass and clarinettist James Allsopp has worked with such notable pioneers and shakers as The Last Poets, David Axlerod, Mulatu Astake, Kit Downes, and picked up awards for innovation and the best album from the BBC over the course of a twenty-year thus career. His foils in this quartet include the no less talented and renowned producer, performer and, on this album, trumpet player Alex Bonney, who you may recognize from such groups as Leverton Fox, Brass Mask, lightbox and both Olie Brice’s Quintet and Octet; the multiple award-winning prodigy drummer Tim Giles, who’s credits include collaborations with Allsopp, Riaan Vosloo and Ben Lamdin; and the electronic trick noise maker, sound artist, software developer and composer Sam Britton, otherwise known as Isambard Khroustaliov – Monolith Cocktail readers will definitely recognise this name, as San has appeared under that non de plume a number of times on the site over the years.
An enviable dynamic grouping of talent that’s ready to push the boundaries, react and counteract to the environment, situation and conditions of the studio setup, the quartet pool their resources and experience into another experimental free form and avant-garde extemporization. Dissection, taxidermy, semi-conductors…what’s that all about? Well, sound wise those prompts unleash a supernatural, data and robotic calculus off-world soundtrack of tremulant, tooted, straining brass, rolling and scrabbling drums, near avant-garde classical clarinet strains and synthesized mirages, illusions and gleaming, glinting and searing alien technology. It all begins with the lead-in, introductory ‘Racoon With A Wound’, which reimagines some kind of mysterious, near extraterrestrial fusion of Esa Helasvuo, cult Italian horror soundtracks, Walter Smetek, Don Cherry and Kinkajous.
We then hit the main event, with two uninterrupted improvisations of far out Fortean radar, and ghost freighter free jazz. The first, ‘The Rats Of Gilet Square’ is inspired by the group’s observation one night of rats having a whale of a time scurrying around and “plundering” the rubbish bins outside the Vortex Jazz Club. Sound wise, you can pick up elements of Sun Ra, Kaleidoscope Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, BAG, Sam Newsome, Bendik Giske and Marja Ahti. The second long form piece, ‘Ermine Chowder’, reminded me of Chet Baker wandering a futuristic space version of the Mary Celeste. The atmosphere is sifting almost, with peaks and sci-fi, György Ligeti, Khroustaliov’s In The Gloaming album collaboration with Lothar Ohlmeier and Rudi Fischerlehner, Lynch, Eric Dolphy and Daniel Carter’s collab with Jim Clouse.
Untethered responses to a method, of a kind, and process, Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses opens up possibilities, spaces and expands horizons further. Concentrated, yet free, exploratory jazz at its finest, the quartet chalk up another illusionary and paranormal, sci-fi and near ominous performance.
Banco de Gaia ‘Trauma’
ALBUM (Disco Gecko)
Has it really been eight years since Toby Marks last made a record under his trance global alter ego Banco de Gaia moniker. Apparently so, as the latest digital and compostable bio-wrapped coloured vinyl LP Trauma follows on from his 2016 set of peregrinations The 9th Of Nine Hearts. And from that title, and period of travails, there is a lot to unpack: climate change, Brexit and an ungovernable land, war, a pandemic, economic disparity, divisiveness on a scale not seen before, the advent of AI….the list goes on and on and on.
For those unfamiliar with Marks Banco de Gaia project and label, next year marks the thirtieth anniversary of his highly influential trance and techno marker Last Train To Lhasa. On the cusp of Britpop, hung-over from grunge, guitars were about to once again dominate whilst house and techno music in all its many guises had reached superclub status; the underground movements fractured and broken up into a myriad of smaller tribes. Ambient and trance, usually the preserve of after hours clubbing or allocated space in the “chill out” zones had already blossomed into its own industry. That unfairly and often fatuous “chill out” idiom used to sell everything from nirvana relaxation and transience to any ‘new age” missive. Never new, until progress and technology made it easier and offered more options, the core ambient ingredient had already been in existence for decades. And despite what you may have read, Eno may have given it a name, but he certainly didn’t invent it. In this evolving stage of dance music, Marks went to town, sitting on a fluffy cloud, hovering between trance and techno.
Last Train To Lhasa’s suffused panoramic station-to-station soundtrack was different. Sharing some of the peaceable beautiful nephology of The Orb and Air Liquid but with the satellite guided twinkle and kinetic rhythms of Orbital, the album sounded every bit as organic as it did electronic. And despite the heavy Tibetan reference, the album and sound was global, taking in samples, sounds from Africa, the Middle East and Orient.
Expanding that unique universe, Marks has built up a discography of eclectic experiments over the decades. And now, in 2024, he’s decided to unload his concerns, worries about the state of the world across eight tracks (the digital versions include two extra tracks, the trauma channelling and pained Natacha Atlas-like, dub-ricochet shot ‘Endure’ andthe Philip K. Dick meets Adamski and Coldcut-up exotic whomp and whooped ‘Electric Sheep’) of varying moods, timings and influences. On an album of, as Marks himself points out, ‘juxtapositions’ the opening serene spacy ‘Mir’ plays of both the Russian translation of that title, “peace”, and the name of that nation’s orbiting space station. Looking down on Earth before re-entering the atmosphere, the Floydian saxophone space bird plaints and enormity-emotional stirrings of guest Matthew Jenkins serenade a prog-ambient yearn. Sparked by a bee sting – the poor crash-landed bee on the album’s cover I’m assuming -, ‘A Bee Song’ features said hive humming buzzes and sense of earthly nature. The first signs of the Banco global samples appear alongside the insect accompaniment, with a recording of a traditional hand and wood clapping song/dance from Namibia. When such ethnic strands meet with electronica and trance, the new age and breaks, it sounds like Real World Records fusing with Gary Numan, System 7, Saafi Brothers and Children of the Bong.
The read-out Cymraeg poem of ‘Draig Ddu’ is a vehicle for Welsh nationalism but is also used here as a process for grieving and loss. An air of mystery wraps itself around this ratcheted-up 90s techno-trance plaint. ‘War is self-explanatory. The frustrations, the breakdown in international dialogue and onset of violence, are transduced into a heavier slice of techno and EDM, with missiles and projectiles and various questioning and resigned spoken samples laid over a production that’s part The Prodigy, part The Orb and part Ammar 808.
Borders, or maverick circumnavigations of them and government control, are the feature of the next track, ‘My Little Country’. To a dance like mix, you can hear the voice of the late radio ham Roy Bates being interviewed on his self-declared Sealand principality and famous former sea fort turn pirate radio station, Roughs Tower; a convoluted story of evading the censorship and draconian broadcasting rules of the 1960s in Britain that needs far more room and space to regale in full here – but look it up.
From the Irish for “my god”, Marks looks at the near religious awe of space exploration, the universe and all that, on the talking head satellite orbiting, Massive Attack and Lisa Gerrard-like ‘Mo Dhia’. But by the “dying light”, the insect chatter has returned, and a sense of universal worth and levity is invoked with a cosmic uplift and bathing light beams. Through it all, Marks finds himself transcending the traumatic breakdowns of communication and umpteen different disasters that threaten to tip civilisation over the edge into total disaster, finding solace and escape routes, ideals and joy despite it all to a soundtrack of trance, EDM, techno, new age, trip-hop, breakbeats and vapour synth conjured moods.
Unicorn Ship Explosion ‘There’s A Rhinoceros In The Mega Church’
ALBUM (Sound Record) 4th October 2024
Refreshingly self-deprecating in their own skills as musicians, despite their listed achievements (of a sort) and obvious knowledge and experiences with juggling around with a multitude of styles and influences, the Unicorn Ship Explosion duo of Rob (who apparently did attend jazz school at least, whatever that is, and is “near the final chapter of piano lessons”) and Sash (a “great guy” we’re assured, but “average musician”, who gets by on tinkering around with modular synths whilst making the odd sound design pitch for designer brands) unleash their debut album of cross-pollinated sounds upon the general public.
Where to begin on an album that seems to pack a lot in, fusing countless genres into a discombobulating and atmospheric playful hybrid that AI would find beyond its capacity to emulate. Just the opening account of ‘All Things Everywhere’, which gives us a clue to this method, traipses over borders, timelines and inspirations to sound at any one time like a limbering Tony Allen, Ethio-jazz, Melt Yourself Down, Embryo and pylon buzzed electricity.
By track two we’ve already shifted the pitch by being introduced to the drawled, questioning and confrontational performative voice of sometime collaborator Agnieszka Szczotka – a Polish cross between Gina X, Saâda Bonaire’s Claudia Hossfeld and Little Annie -, who in lingering and almost dismissive style inhabits the nighttime and dances with identities on the celestial edges primal space bound ‘Agi Took The Choo Choo Train’. Szczotka, a former Royal Academy student of conceptual art, is used sparingly, and only appears again with the Freudian mothering sexual analogy of “cum” and spit loaded poetics ‘Bloody Bastard (Like Mother)’ – there’s many connotations to unload from that one.
The influences, the combinations expand further than that though, with hints of Library music, sci-fi, dark jazz, fusion jazz, percussive passages that sound like the missing link between Tibet and Valentina Magaletti, Battles, Holy Fuck, Jan Hammer, Portico Quartet, International Pony, floppy disk experimenting Sakamoto (listen to ‘Yeah But’ and get back to me if I’m wrong) and Rave At Your Fictional Borders. It’s a mad roll and round kit demonstration of drums and electronic apparatus in full breakbeat, electro, funky, otherworldly and metal pots and pan rattled splash mode. The album bends between playful fuckery and reconfiguration, free of artifice and dullness. Put it this way, they don’t take themselves too seriously: even if there are obvious loaded references, a pun here and there that suggests unease, protestation and that all is not well in the state of the world. Enjoyably familiar at every turn, the duo and their foil partner in this escapade fuse various mood music and energetic performances together to make anew.
ShitNoise ‘I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend’
ALBUM (Cruel Nature Records)
Shit noise. Shit house. Shit shitty world. Shit outcomes for one and all. Yes, as rats fester on our decline and the parasitic spectres of autocracy, divisive ideologies and malware bleed into our craniums, you can always rely on someone or some group, in this case a duo, to channel such bleak outcomes into a riling torment of mania, hysterical, resigned and frothing near daemonic expression. And ShitNoise dine out on a veritable feast of outrageous indignation, piss poor behaviours, and the problems that grind many of us down each day. But some rats eat out better than others and being down and out in Monte-Carlo is better than most places. Hailing from that Rivera paradise, the duo’s Aleksejs Macions (on vocals and guitar) and Paul Albouy (on drums) can see, experience a near unparalleled division between the casino, the F1 jet set and those eking out a living from the morsels drip fed from those bulging crypto, old money, asset rich digital wallets. There are worse places to be for sure, but a killer to witness all that luxury during an age of such misery and despair.
This brings us to the duo’s latest and third album thus far, I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend, which is framed as a more polished and mature departure from their more noise-crushing signature. I can hear that. But as someone who is very new to the duo, it still sounds intensely dissonant, grinding and full of barraging, barrelling and head-kicked-in drum bashing. However, it does have melody, and it does have some tunes too. I also believe there are points in which you can even dance to it. They’ve widened their influences, and brought in a little more shade and light, changed the tempos and had a go at knocking the shit out of and repurposing a haul of bands from the punk, metal, alt rock, no wave, noise, grunge, doom and industrial scenes. Although, ‘Hashish (The Yelling Song)’ features UFO oscillating take-offs and Itchy-O ritual magik. It’s like Mudhoney brawling with the Sea Hags one minute, Nitzer Ebb in a knife fight with Ministry and Lightning Bolt the next. And I do believe they are having a lot of fun doing it: despite the crushing blows, dread and yelling!
It gets less noisy as the album progresses; the trajectory between the opening cranium screams and angle grinding industrial punk scrawl of ‘Ho-Ho! (No More)’ and the closing alt-rock late night bar room knockabout chorus affinity of ‘The Ballroom Brawl’ is congruous but worlds apart. The former, sounds like the Revolting Cocks, Spanish underground tape culture of the 80s and CUNTROACHES in some unholy union, whilst the latter, is a more lolling drinking game between Swans and The Heartbreakers, with David Bowie’s Hansa saxophone serenading and coiling round the bar tab. The vocals meanwhile have a range that takes in the Occult Character, the indescribable, the resigned, the sulky and menacing.
Playing hard and loose with the noise, the duo have moulded frustration and protestation into a hacked-off thrashing, barracking and distorting maelstrom of various funnelled music channels and organised chaos.
Leisure FM ‘Illuminated Manuscript’
Single
Like some Gothic fairytale from Eastern Europe, the Szymanek twins materialized a while back in Southeast London, via time spent in the lyrical Wales of Dylan Thomas. From the English capital’s warehouse scene of recent years and a monthly RTM Radio spot, Milena and Weronika progressed to conjuringuphallucinatory imagery, dejection andfate under their later ego, Lesuire FM. Receiving a favourable review by me, their fables EP set an atmosphere of Eastern European morose, magic, demons and cathartic relief.
Loaded with the Catholic imagery and theatre of their Polish homeland, the twins of woozy struggles of the heart turn their chthonian and weary poetic gaze on the fatalistic Greek myth of Icarus with a new single, ‘Illuminated Manuscript’. Flying too close to the sun, his wings clipped and burned and crashing to his death, the tragic parable of that sorry tale and all its connotations are whittled down into a modern resigned plaint that balances the ecstasy of freedom and escape with the agony of falling out of the sky to one’s death, and the devastating consequences of not heeding instruction, advice in the pursuit of big rewards and high risk: in Icarus’s case, ignoring the advice of his sagacious dad Daedalus. This sorry tale plays out to a misty veil of chugging and flange-like Banshees guitar, trip-hop drums and swirled Tom Arnold thriller-like strings, sounding at times like Lomi MC singing over Delerium, Switchblade Symphony, the Tara Clerkin Trio, SU and Propaganda. But in short, thematically, poetically and fatalistically, imagine a Hellenic Lyudmila Petrushevskaya conspiring with Dylan Thomas.
The B-side (in old money) is a guest remix version of the title-track from the twin’s 2023 EP fables. The chosen candidate Kourosh Oliver Floyd Adhemy casts a phantasmagoria spell over the original, adding his very own misty filters, near demonic voice effects, vapours, tabla-like tripsy beats and bulb shaped notes. Together, both tracks atmospherically waft around in Gothic trip-hop revelation, caught between worlds.
Elea Calvet ‘Trigger (Acoustic)’
SINGLE (Mahogany Records)
After artfully captivating listeners with the sighed adroit wistfulness of ‘Sinuous Ways’ earlier this year, the burgeoning enchantress Elea Calvet now breathes an almost knowing southern gothic air of doomed bleak mystery and trauma into the subtly dramatic ‘Trigger’.
Triggering a sublime duality of the diaphanous and noirish, of malady and allurement, of the pained and unbound, Calvet’s vulnerability is matched by her strength in conveying abstract feelings of the bittersweet and identity.
Entirely self-produced over the course of one inspiring weekend at her “overcrowded home studio”, ‘Trigger’ can be imagined as a misty and near supernatural country cinematic hunger of Anna Calvi, PJ Harvey and Amanda Acevado.
We’ve been assured that another single is on its way next month, but in the meantime take in the magical torment and achingly writhed quality of Calvet’s growing songbook.
____/THE SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOLUME 90
The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years, and both selected cuts from those artists, luminaries we’ve lost and those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for over a decade or more, Volume 90 is as eclectic and generational spanning as ever. Look upon it as the perfect radio show, devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
This month’s choice tracks include a bundle of anniversary albums from John Lennon (Walls And Bridges ’74), David Bowie (Tonight ’84), R.E.M. (Monster ’94), Cluster (Zuckerzeit ’74) and Gudrun Gut and Joachim Irmler (500m 2014). I’ve gone for something a little different with the first of those two selections; choosing to kick off the playlist with the TV Personalities rambunctious gnarly version of Lennon’s ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’, and Icehouse’s sympathetic take on Bowie’s ‘Loving The Alien’. I’ve also chosen a live cut of one of my favourite tracks from R.E.M.’s Monster, ‘Strange Currencies’.
There’s a small selection too of newish tracks – those that have been released in the last couple of months that I either missed or didn’t get room to place in the Monthly Playlist selections. In that camp there’s Jay Cue, Conjunto Media Luna, Dr. Walker, Reymour and Vox.
In between those selections I’ve scattered a smattering of music from Bad Dream Fancy Dress, Son Of Noise, Ms. Melodie, Baseball Furies, Tal Rose, Antonino Riccardo Luciani and others. There’s also a cap doffed in respect to the late Herbie Flowers, who passed on earlier this month, with the inclusion of Sunforest’s ‘Where Are You’, just one of many such album session Flowers played on over the years.
tRaCkLiSt
Television Personalities ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’
Flora Purim ‘Stories To Tell’
Cossa Nostra ‘Nuestra Cosa’
Poobah ‘Watch Me’
Reale Accademia di Musica ‘Macumba Hotel’
Azar Lawrence ‘Novo Ano’
Conjunto Media Luna ‘Doombia del Agotamiento’
Dogbowl ‘Love Bomb’
Nicolas Greenwood ‘Hope And Ambitions’
Reymour ‘Sleepy time’
Bad Dream Fancy Dress ‘Lemon Tarts’
Icehouse ‘Loving The Alien’
Jay Cue ‘Hyperbolic Time Chamber’
Dr Walker ‘Was ist Dad Rap?’
Son Of Noise ‘Down With Son Of Noise’
Ms. Melodie ‘Remember When…?’
This Kind Of Punishment ‘Some More Than Others’
Baseball Furies ‘Ain’t Comin’ Home’
Bass Drum of Death ‘Left For Dead’
Tal Ross ‘Green and Yellow Daughter’
R.E.M. ‘Strange Currencies (Live at the BBC)’
Lee Baggett ‘All Star Day’
Appaloosa ‘Tulu Rogers’
Sunforest ‘Where Are You’
Antonino Riccardo Luciani ‘Eclisse lunare’
General Strike ‘Next Day’
Cluster ‘Rotor’
Michael Garrison ‘Theme to Onday’
Vox ‘Metaphysical Back Alley’
Gut und Irmler ‘Chlor’
____/ARCHIVES
Albums decades apart, both released originally during this month, there’s another chance to read my review of Bowie’s Tonight LP from 1984, and Gudrun Gut and Joachim Irmler’s dizzying altitude 500m collaboration of 2014.
Tonight (EMI)
‘Keeping his hand in’ so to speak, Bowie kept up the pop-lit pretence with Tonight. Arriving straight off the back of his Serious Moonlight world tour, and with the very same backing group – including the Borneo horns troupe – the follow-up to his massively successful Let’s Dance showcase was a far patchier affair.
A filled-out, skiing obsessed, pastel shaded crooner, long since divorced from his moiety Angie, and now in custody of their child Zowie, he was less concerned with previous concepts and play acting and more interested in growing pains and heart-strung romantic indulgence.
Of course, every time ‘Davey Jones’ sported new garbs and ventured out on the road he was always acting a part. But the burgeoning film career, which began with The Man Who Fell To Earth through to his stage roles in Baal and The Elephant Man on Broadway, allowed a new avenue of total immersion for Bowie. Channelled then via celluloid, the previous year alone saw him star as a forlorn ageing vampire in The Hunger, and as the English prisoner-of-war ‘Strafer Jack’ Celliers in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence: that exuberant theatrical spirit was missing for the most part from his music.
However, Bowie did get to indulge himself on the ‘Blue Jean’ (perhaps Tonight’s saviour from total disaster). Well, the video/mini-movie at least, directed by Julian Temple, and stretched out to twenty-minutes, featured the singer adorned with a makeshift turban and piled-on make-up.
A new production, the largely untested Derek Bramble, and Hugh Padgham tried to mix things up, but instead lost their way as Bowie made a pig’s ear of things. The fact that his knock-about ‘comrade-in-arms’ Iggy Pop pitched in is almost irrelevant, as all the edge is erased by a fuzzy saccharine mush. Using a maudlin calypso and faux reggae backing he teamed up for countless misfires; duetting with Tina Turner on the dawdling title track (originally sung by Pop on his second solo LP, Lust For Life): ruining all his erstwhile partner’s contributions. “God Only Knows” what he was thinking by covering Brian Wilson’s (lyrics by Tony Asher) beatific masterpiece, and you also must question the addition of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s gold standard, ‘I Keep Forgettin’: thrown in as a so-called return to rock’n’roll? Hardly!
Luckily ‘Saving The Alien’ was on hand to at least stop the spread of rot. ‘All the gear and no idea’, Tonight paved the way for Labyrinth, Bowie’s forked tongue and sardonic protestations all but muted so that his crossover, inter-generational appeal could now reach even the youngest sections of society.
Gudrun Gut and Joachim Irmler ‘500m’
(bureau b) Released 8th September 2014
Doyens, and for that matter mavericks, of the more cerebral and avant-garde boarders of the German music scene, otherworldly evocative organ grinder Hans-Joachim Irmler and his visual artist musical polymath siren, Gudrun Gut, join forces for a mesmerizing electronic trip.
As a founding member of the mighty irritant, heavy mentalists Faust in the 70s, Irmler’s keyboard hovered ominously between the alien and sublime. Continuing to bear the name – existing in a disconnected alter-dimensional timeline with an alternative Faust that features fellow founder members, Jean-Hearve Péron and Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier – Irmler founded an eponymous named studio, used by a who’s who of the German and beyond experimental electronica and classical scenes: from Cluster to the Modern String Quartet. Whilst the man himself has collaborated both wide and far, recently releasing the Flut LP with Can’s drum titan, Jaki Liebezeit on his own label, Klangbad – set up 15-years ago to originally release continuing Faust projects, but since expanded into a full-on label and festival, duty bound in ‘nurturing’ ‘genre bending’ music.
Gudrun, no less active, moved to Berlin in the mid 70s. An early member of the industrial strength Einstürzende Neubauten, Gudrun would go on to appear in and help form a number post-punk and electronic bands, including Mania D, Malaria!, Matador and also bring out a solo debut effort, I Put A Record On, in 2007. She is also head honcho at the labels Monika Enterprise and Moabit Musik.
Together, both artists create a collection of transient progressive techno moods. Developed in two stages, the congruous collaboration first improvised at Irmler’s lightheaded inducing Scheer, Baden-Württemberg located Faust studio – the name of the album alluding to the giddy effecting altitude of the studio, 500 meters above sea level, which gave Gudrun a constant sense of dizziness – before Gudrun refined and added her own techy, scuttling and nuanced drum loops, back in her own space. These recordings would then once again make their way back to Irmler for further exploration and tweaking.
Billed as a merger between Irmler’s ‘meandering, wistfully psychedelic organ sound’ and Gudrun’s ‘reverb-laden, whispering, breathy voice’, the results of this union obscure and abstract both. Loaded instead with vapourous and metallic waltzing veils, interchangeable programmed drum patterns (mostly caustically trebly but cut with pinpoint accuracy and among some of the most sophisticated I’ve heard in ages) and esoteric percussion.
Succinctly entitled, each track is both simultaneously a concomitant lead into the next and an individual self-contained, evocative story of its own. Not that those titles give much away, but on occasion they allude to a rectification of some vague theme. For example, ‘Traum’, translated as ‘dream’, has a magical Freudian hallucinatory quality, and festive wintery charm broken up by a freakish raspy and squelching noise, underfoot.
‘Noah’ on the other hand may or may not bare any relationship to the Biblical flood survivor and great God hope for the future, being more of a ritualistic gaze at shooting stars and passing satellites. However, Irmler adds some extemporized gabbling speech, delivered by a remote transmission affected, introverted megaphone – you can even hear Gudrun off mic, laughing or encouraging Irmler, from the sidelines.
‘Früh’ translates as ‘early’, but early for what exactly we can’t quite tell, the rotor-bladed intro cylindrically bringing in a chain-reaction of busily interchanging particles and tight delay mechanics, all heading down a highway marked ‘the future’.
Always moving somewhere, either skywards from a subterranean vault or as with ‘Auf Und Ab’, ‘to and fro’ between the kinetic beats of Detroit techno, circa Rob Hood’s Metroplex days, and a sort of moody decadence. Upward and onwards then, 500m travels on the solar winds and elevates from a reverent esoteric organ produced sanctum into another great mystery.
Tickling Our Fancy 064: Ammar 808, Alex Stolze, Elefant, Pyramid, Lucy Leave, London Plane…
May 31, 2018
NEW MUSIC REVIEWS ROUNDUP: WORDS: DOMINIC VALVONA
Photo Credit: Sia Rosenberg
This edition of Tickling Our Fancy includes records by Ammar 808, Alex Stolze, Elefant, Matt Finucane, Pyramid, Lucy Leave, London Plane, Disco Gecko and Waldo Belloso.
Interesting releases from across the world and music spectrums; Tickling Our Fancy is the, Monolith Cocktails founder, Dominic Valvona’s most eclectic of reviews roundups. With no themes, demarcations of any kind, or reasoning other than providing a balanced platform for the intriguing, the great and at times, most odd releases, I bring you this month’s latest selection.
My latest bumper edition of releases from the last couple of months includes the recent fully realized romantically shadowy chamber pop electronic suite, Outermost Edge, from the Berlin composer, violinist and label boss Alex Stolze; the debut album proper from Belgium’s prowling post-punk, sludge metal experimentalists Elefant, Konark Und Bonark; Sofyann Ben Youssef of the Bargou 08 collaboration, under his Ammar 808 moniker, fuses the atavistic sounds and culture of North Africa with futuristic drum machine effects on his new album for Glitterbeat Records, Maghreb United; Toby Marks aka 90s techno trance star Banco de Gaia, celebrates the 20th anniversary of his label Disco Gecko with a collection of reworked tracks from the catalogue; and the maverick Brighton-based artist Matt Finucane returns with one of his best EPs yet of grueling, grinding Bowie and post-punk influences, Ugly Scene.
But that’s not all, I also take a look at new re-releases of both obscure Argentine exotica and Cologne tripping Kosmische from the Spanish Guerssen hub; the first a reissue (for the first time ever) of Waldo Belloso’s visionary and library music kitsch ‘Afro-Progresivo’, the second, another rare album, the titular album in fact, from the infamous and debatable Krautrock era Pyramid label. Oxford trio Lucy Leave limber, thrash and jerk through their debut album of no wave jazz, math rock, punk and jilting alternative rock, Look/Listen. And finally, the debut album from the New York brooding strobe-lit pop and punchy rock partnership, London Plane.
Ammar 808 ‘Maghreb United’ Glitterbeat Records, 15th June 2018
Throwing the traditional unwieldy Maghreb, before it was demarcated and split into colonial spheres of influence, back together again in the name of progress and unity, Sofyann Ben Youssef fuses the atavistic and contemporary. With past form as one half of the Bargou 08 partnership that gave a modern electric jolt to the isolated, capitulating Targ dialect ritual of the Bargou Valley on the northwestern Tunisia and Algeria border, Youssef under the moniker of Ammar 808 once again propels the region’s diverse etymology of languages, rhythms and ceremony into the present, or even future: hopefully a more optimistic one.
An area once connected despite ethnical differences, the Maghreb heritage is reinvented as a metaphor for not only setting course for a brighter, possible future, but in taking control of the past: As Youssef says, “The past is a collective heritage.”
Envisaged as a visual as well as a sonic experience live when the Maghreb United goes out on the road, he has brought together a team of “visual researchers, designers and actors” to create a fully immersive, hypnotic concept. An ambitious odyssey, the music, as Youssef’s alter ego time-traveller nomadic moniker suggests, is a hybrid of past and (retro) futurism; the 808 of that name standing in for the iconic 1980s Roland TR-808 drum machine, a device he uses to transform those traditions into something more cosmic and mysterious.
Jon Hassell’s ‘possible musics’ meets Major Lazer, the traversing adaptations from the Gnawa, Targ and Rai traditions and ritual are amorphously swirled or bounced around in a gauze of both identifiable and mystically unidentifiable landscapes. Mixing modern R&B, dub, electro effects with the dusky reedy sound of the evocative gasba and bagpipe like zorka, and a range of earthy venerable and yearning vocals from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria artists, Youssef distorts, amps up or intensifies a resonating aura of transformative geography and time.
Throbbing, pulsing, entrancing and vaporous, the Ammar 808 effects transport its source material and desert songs towards a new uncertainty.
In a land still rocked and reeling from the impacts of the Arab Spring, with a power vacuum in many cases replacing rotten governments with even less savory administrations at worse, and at best, struggling to cope political parties, the Maghreb has had its fair share of violence and tribulation. Rather than dwell on the negatives, Youssef projects a better future through his science fiction inspired visions of collective ownership.
Not so out there as to be detached from those sources that inform it, the Maghreb United is an interesting sonic experiment which will be enhanced further when experienced live. I don’t know about predicting what will make sense in ten, fifty or a hundred years time, but this fusion makes a lot of sense in the here and now.
Alex Stolze ‘Outermost Edge’ Nonostar, 23rd March 2018
Following up on his previous electronic chamber pop EP, Mankind Animal, the Berlin virtuoso violinist, composer and (in the last year or two) label owner Alex Stolze expands on his signature transformation of the classical and contemporary electronica genres with a fully realized new album suite.
Moving a while back to the pastoral German/Polish borders, renovating a previously ruinous pile into not only a new home for his family but also the inspirational HQ of Alex and his artist wife Andrea Huyoff’s creative cottage industry –Andrea’s art can be seen adorning Alex’s new album -, this accomplished soloist has found a solace away from hustle and bustle of the city. Far from inspiring gentle, peaceable visions of optimism and rejoice from his retreat, Alex creates yearning and haunted shadowy waltzes.
Highly political, yet preferring to romantically allude to the instability and rise of authoritarianism with poetic sonnets and metaphors to mysterious out-of-reach chanteuses and objects of affection (illusions to the enigmatic woman, or women, in Alex’s life that aren’t just seen as equals but much more), Outermost Edge provides neo-classical pop maladies and aching heart love suites that comment without division and rage.
Weaving his European Jewish heritage musically and etymologically with sophisticated undulations of effects and synthesized waves and amped-up trip hop like live drums, Alex mingles scenes and dioramas with guest vocal songs. Usually appearing together, one harmonically echoing the other, Yehuda Amichai and Ofrin exude an often lulled and ghostly presence on the clandestine meeting in cold war Vienna, traffic light analogy lament Serve All Loss, and He Poos Clouds pinned tango New.
Of course at the centre of all this is Alex’s adroit pricked and accentuated weeping bowed violin performances. Never indulgent, if anything still, withheld with a minimalist sensibility, they are beautifully and stirringly administered; channeling both the avant-garde and classical; running through a full gamut of subtle layered emotions.
Released via Alex’s burgeoning label Nonostar – home to the triumvirate Solo Collective of Alex, Anne Müller and Sebastian Reynold’s astonishing Part One album, which made our choice albums of 2017 features – Outermost Edge is yet another plaintively aching and most beautiful shadowy album of neo-classical electronic pop.
Elefant ‘Konark Und Bonark’ 9000 Records, 11th May 2018
Emerging from the Belgium underground scene, with members from a myriad of bands, each one more obscure than the next, the Elefant in this room is a twisted agit-post-punk, boiler come forensic team suited troop of noise peddlers.
Lurking around basement venues for a while now, the sludge metal and gallows Krautrock merchants have released a slurry of EPs but never a fully realized album until now.
For an album that grapples with Marilyn Manson, Swans, Killing Joke, Muse, industrial contortions and Germanic experimentation, Konark Und Bonark is a very considered, purposeful statement. Though things get very heavy, implosive and gloomy and the auger like ghosts in the vocals can sound deranged, there is a semblance of melody, a tune and hint of breaking through the confusing, often pummeling, miasma.
Following a concept of narratives (of a sort), the album opens with a plaintive hybrid of machine and human vocals reading out an almost resigned poetic eulogy – part Bowie Diamond Dogs, part Outside. From then on in, as the eerie machinations of an apocalyptic aftermath dissipate, we are thrown into a controlled chaos of supernatural Kosmische and hypnotic industrial ritual: The group’s defector leader vocalist Wolf Vanwymeersch opting for a becalming message of love overcoming the conspired forces of darkness.
In this vacuum of progressive and hardcore influences, Elefant throw up plenty of surprises, pendulously swaying between a tom tom ritual dreamscape on Schräg, but transmogrifying glam rock and Dinosaur Jnr on the tech meltdown finale ‘Norsun Muisti’, or as on the twisting “with our love we will change the world” sentiment of ‘Credulity’, melding Gary Numan and Gothic New Romanticism.
A seething rage is tightly controlled throughout, the sporadic flits and Math Rock entangled rhythms threatening to engulf but never quite reaching an overload, or for that matter, becoming a mess. Elefant’s prowling and throbbing sound of creeping menace and visions of an artificial intelligent domineering dystopia is an epic one. Arguably the band have produced their most ambitious slog yet and marked themselves out as one of the country’s most important bands of 2018.
Various Artists ‘In The Blink Of An Eye’ Disco Gecko, 6th June 2018
Starting out as a platform for the global trance and techno peregrinations of Toby Marks’ alter ego Banco de Gaia in the late 90s, the Disco Gecko label has gone on to expand its remit in the last few years by adding a number of congruous artists from the dance and electronica genres.
Famous for setting off on the mystical eastern bound ‘Last Train To Lhasa’ in 1995, Marks’ initial success was often frustrated by the labels he worked with. And for that reason it seemed perfectly logical for him to set up his own imprint, which now celebrates its twentieth anniversary. It would however take until 2014 before anyone other than Marks released anything on the label; this accolade going to Andrew Heath with his Silent Cartographer LP. Heath, the ambient pianist of ‘lower-case’ contemplation, appears alongside the label’s full roster on this special anniversary compilation.
Rather than a straight-up ‘best of’ showcase, Marks has asked each of the label’s artists to remix or collaborate with each other to produce alternative transformed versions of original tracks from the back catalogue. Seeing as we have already mentioned him, and he appears quite a lot as an integral part of the Disco Gecko story (including a role in creating the artwork and layout of this collection), Heath’s ‘A Stillness Of Place’, as sublimely guided to ever more radiant heights by the Nottingham duo Radium 88, opens this compilation with a serene ambient diaphanous. Later on, with Heath in the role of remixer himself, he subtly accents and stirs the 100th Monkey’s dreamy plaintive and haunted choral ‘The Last Inuit Snow Song’: literally melting before our ears, the serialism piano composer, imbued by one of his most iconic past collaborators Hans-Joachim Roedelius, adds short trails of sonorous piano and amps up the Eno-esque mood.
Probably one of the label’s most commercial coups, the air-y sophisticated soulful singer/songwriter Sophie Barker, who’s tones have appeared on a catalogue of electronica and dance hits by David Guetta, Groove Armada and Robin Guthrie (of Cocteau Twins fame), is represented with her longing ‘Road 66’ song. From Tampere in Finland, Karl Lounela, aka LO18, transforms the original down tempo trepidation and dub like vapours of the original. Alongside Fastlap, Barker in more a collaborated than remix role, gets to passionately ache and yearn on Marks own traverse ‘Glove Puppet’, whilst LO18’s original vision ‘Huima’ is taken in a Sylvain oriental visage direction by 100th Monkey.
Elsewhere on this compilation, the Indian sub-continent enthused ‘Darjeeling Daydream’ submersion by Dr. Trippy is consumed with even more swampy and lunar effects than before by the intercontinental collective The Dragonfly Trio, and Radium 88’s misty mountain ambient journey ‘Bury Each And Every Prayer’ is becalmed even further with sacred panoramic views and Popol Vuh dissipations by polymath composer Simon Power.
Refreshing a relatively short and recent back catalogue with the aim being to move ever forward, In The Blink Of An Eye is a novel conception in both celebrating the Disco Gecko legacy and in looking ahead to the future of ambient and electronic music.
Matt Finucane ‘Ugly Scene’ Crude Light, 11th May 2018
Sporadic yet prolific, the idiosyncratic Matt Finucane has probably appeared on this blog more times than anyone else over the years. Constantly cathartic, pouring out his surly heart on every record, the Brighton-based maverick channels the anxieties of our times with a certain resigned lament over an ever-changing backing of indie, Krautrock, punk and post-punk influences.
His latest exercise in primal scream therapy (though crooning would be a more apt description) is the quasi-Neu!-meets-Faust-meets-Pixies grinding turmoil Ugly Scene EP. Perhaps among his best releases yet, the epic sinewy grueling opener ‘Not Too Far’ could be Bowie fronting The Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch. A listless Finucane languidly swoons for much of the duration of this monotonous track before eventually mooning and howling the “I’m so sick of it all” refrain in various strung-out and deranged ways.
Changing tact slightly, ‘The Wrong Side’ transmogrifies Johnny Thunders, Bowie (again! But why not?!) and shades of Britpop, whilst the EP’s title track throws The Sonics, Damned, Monks and Beefheart into a spinning chaos as an increasingly sneer-y and disillusioned Finucane unburdens himself. Expanding his tastes still further, the steely acoustic guitars and slight English psychedelic hints of ‘Damn Storyteller’ evoke not only Lou Reed but also Kevin Ayers, and the post-punk dub ‘City Consolation’ sounds not too dissimilar (in my warped mind anyway) to an imaginary Black Francis fronted Compass Point Allstars jamming with Jah Wobble.
Hardly the easiest of listening experiences, Finucane letting each track run its natural course, Ugly Scene is nevertheless filled with soul and melody; an experimental EP of resignation and heartache that finds the artist at his most sagacious and venerable but also constructive. Finucane has seldom sounded better and more imaginative.
Lucy Leave ‘Look/Listen’ 27th April 2018
Gangly, strung-out, limbering with moments of intensity and entangled noodling the Oxford trio Lucy Leave expand upon their math rock, no wave and grunge amalgamation with the debut album, Look/Listen. Transducing the conceptual Scandi-Socialist tapestries of weaver Hannah Ryggen with the group’s own sense of isolation whilst making this album (still smarting over Brexit; the theme that fired them up on last year’s The Beauty Of The World EP), coupled with a general dissatisfaction at the political landscape, Lucy Leave don’t so much enrage and shout as jerk sporadically through their agit-post-punk and American college radio influences.
The targets and intellectual concerns of their ire are all there to be deciphered in the, mostly, stop/start dynamism. In what seems a generous offering, the eighteen tracks on this album are all laid out in a purposeful manner; a journey, spread out in the fashion of a double album, with shorter vignettes alongside the spikey and more slow building minor epic thrashes.
Flexing their dual vocals, with both taking turns on lead but often shadowing each other, Mike Smith strays between a better mannered PiL era Lydon and milder D. Boon of The Minutemen (incidentally one of the band’s biggest influences), whilst Jenny Oliver fluctuates between Ariel Up and Vivian Goldmine. They begin however with echoes of an a capella Talking Heads on the vocal chorus introduction ‘Barrier Reef’, before the freefall into a spunk rock twist of The Fall, The Damned and (as I’ve already mentioned) The Minutemen on the following pair of congruous songs, ‘Kintsugi’ and ‘Ammoniaman’.
Slowing down occasionally for gentler posturing, meditations, the later third of the album offers some surprising material; the more controlled psychedelic acoustic ‘Hang Out With Now’ bearing hints of Julian Cope and Ultrasound, and the progressive pastoral weepy ‘Long Sequence’ sounding simultaneously like The Moody Blues, 70s Pretty Things and Bowie.
Thrashing elsewhere through Californian Black Hole punk, Sonic Youth, Archers Of Loaf, Deerhoof, The Raincoats and, especially with the drifting contorted saxophone riffs, no wave jazz, Lucy Leave successfully drag together all their influences to convey the present confusion and madness of the times. Entangled, angulated, crashing but never frustrating, Look/Listen is an ambitious debut from a band still finding its groove: and all the better for it.
Pyramid ‘Pyramid’ Mental Experience, May 10th 2018
Pulled from the archives of an obscure Kosmische label that head music scholars still refute even existed, the title album from the titular amorphous studio set-up behind the legendary Pyramid label appears in the guise of a lost treasure from the 70s Cologne underground. Reissued for the first ever time by the Guerssen hub imprint Mental Experience, this previously lost experiment from the ‘Mad Twiddler’ studio engineer bod Toby Robinson is poured over in the linear notes by The Crack In The Cosmic Egg almanacs’ Alan Freeman: though providence is debatable and the album’s cast difficult to verify.
What we do know (or so the myth goes) is that Robinson, alongside the avant-garde and conceptual antagonistic Fluxus movement’s Robin Page, set the Pyramid label up originally. Though with only a handful; of recordings to emerge from their time together in the mid 70s, it seems that it was never meant to be a commercial enterprise; more a retreat and outlet for unrushed mind expansions and improvisations. Any releases that did escape the studio were confined to ‘micro’ scale pressings (hence their value and status amongst Krautrock connoisseurs). Many still believe these recordings to be the work of nefarious pranksters, recording them decades later, passing them off as finds from the great Krautrock and Kosmische epoch.
Robinson though, as we’re told, was an assistant at a myriad of Cologne studios during that original era; working most famously at Dieter Dierks’ Kosmische incubator, where some of the dream flights and galactic transcendence music of the Ohr and Pilz labels was produced. In the ‘so-called’ dead hours between recording sessions, Robinson and friends, collaborators, would lay down their own ideas.
Split into two, the ‘Dawn Defender’ expansive free-form experiment that straddles the Pyramid LP alludes artistically to Erich von Däniken and Popol Vuh; the Mayan stone tablet (I might be wrong) insignia and mountains at the start of a cosmic highway and massive glitterball (which seems somewhat incongruous and modern for its time and genre), tuning into transcendent and alien dimensions. Musically we have it all (nearly all), the full Kosmische gamut, as the anonymous band traverse different phases yet maintain a repeating vaporous hazy atmosphere. Shifting from faint echoes of UFO era Guru Guru, Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempe in the first ambient air-y and primordial lunar stages to mellotron oscillating Dance Of The Lemmings Amon Düül II, the Far East Family Band and ghostly visitations, the Pyramid collective sound distinctive enough even amongst the quality of their peers.
Trance-y, hypnotic with distant reverberations of the Orient and Tibet, the group does occasionally break out into sporadic displays of acid rock ala Gila and the Acid Mother Temple, but soon simmer down into The Cosmic Jokers style peregrinations. They finish off this uninterrupted flowing half hour opus with some heavenly strings and beautiful flourishes – even though veiled moody distractions and knocks persist; indicating an unearthly presence.
Whoever did produce this work, in whatever circumstances, the Pyramid album is a brilliantly atmospheric and executed Kosmische experience, ticking off all the genres signatures yet still distinctive enough to reveal some interesting passages and ideas.
Cuasares ‘Afro-Progresivo’ Pharaway Sounds, 10th May 2018
From another Guerssen hub offshoot, Pharaway Sounds dig up yet another forgotten ‘nearly ran’ from the peripherals of exotica and cosmic psychedelic. The obscure distant celestial named Cuasares project (which is Spanish for the star like ‘quasars’ that emit large amounts of energy, billions of light years away) is the work of the ‘enigmatic’ Argentine pianist and composer Waldo Belloso, who (unsurprisingly) released it in 1973 to the smallest of fanfares. Afro-Progresivo now resurfaces as a reissue (the first), complete with plenty of scholarly fanboy notes and information.
The title is slightly misleading as this album leans more towards the Latin: merging mambo and samba with both counterculture soundtrack music from the Italian and French b-movie libraries and Les Baxter-esque tropical South Seas Island rituals.
Gazing at celestial bodies and alluding to ‘evanescent’ fleeting romantic phenomena, Waldo funkily trips through Andean kitsch, languid beachcomber Hawaiian wanderings, kooky space fantasy and Southeast Asian exotic psych. His sauntering, jaunty and often musing suites feature increasingly distorted, jarring organ, radiant vibraphone, echo-y drums, fuzzed-up guitar doodles and surreptitiously trickling piano. All of which articulates a sort of acid-Latin Axlerod soundtrack that straddles the South American and Asian continents with cosmic jazz and exotica.
Though this is all fairly well trodden ground, Afro-Progresivo remains a curious example of South American obscure progressive and kitsch-y weird, but remember also funky, experimentation.
London Plane ‘New York Howl’ 18th May 2018
A paean to the city that name checks one of New York’s, now defunct, obscure underground groups and, with a poetic license, reimagines the entries of a mysterious stranger’s abandoned diary – lured to the metropolis from Portland in the 1970s – New York Howl is both a romantic yet strobe-lit gothic brooding fantasy. Fronted by enchantress singer Cici James and lead songwriter David Mosey, London Plane (in honor to the American sycamore crossed Oriental plane tree that you see lining the iconic broad walks of New York) reframe the troubled dairy writer protagonist’s sporadic poems, scenes and “half-recounted dreams” in a loose concept album of timeless emotions.
Found by Mosey on the streets of the city, in a suitcase, the London Plane instigator was intrigued enough to take it home with him; leading to an obsession and the spark of inspiration that brought this project together. Written over an eight-year period between 1975-1982, the final abrupt and enigmatic words, ‘I hope he gets it’, proved a fruitful prompt, the results of which suffuse this ten-track songbook of new wave, collage radio rock, synth pop and proto-punk. Letting the mind wonder with entries in the aftermath of such New York tragedies as the murder of John Lennon, the band interrupt the author Francis’ backstory and movements; running through the full gamut of emotions. They allude to a ‘ghost story’; the presence of their protagonist diarist vanishing before they make a connection; haunting the city like a specter and auger, always out of reach.
Musically channeling New York’s obvious musical legacy, but also a far wider spectrum of influences, the bright and brilliant title track hones the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blondie and Ronnie Spector, with Cici’s vocals evoking a rich myriad of more controlled Karen O, Debbie Harry, Madonna and weirdly, on the Broadway synth plaint ‘Make It Our Own’, ‘Losing My Mind’ 80s era Liza Minnelli!
Good solid pop songs mingle with more romantically vaporous tracks; the dreamy fantasy of ‘The Farther Down We Go’ and Chromatics style whispery neon synth ‘Roxanne’ sitting well with the Echo And The Bunnymen meets Blondie style ‘If It Got Me You’. A New York house band obviously in love with their city, mining the last four decades of its heritage, New York Howl may offer musings on isolation, regret and the fears, trepidations of a big city, yet the lingering traces and mystery of Francis are sound tracked with both a dreamy veneer and punchy pop quality. The London Plane could be just the start of a beautiful musical partnership.
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