Our Daily Bread 555: Sara Noelle, Dexter Dine, La Tene
January 23, 2023
New Contributor Alert: Gillian Stone’s inaugural reviews roundup for the Monolith Cocktail
Joining the team in 2023, Gillian Stone is a multi-instrumentalist and interdisciplinary artist originally from the Pacific Northwest and based in Toronto, Canada. Through her eponymous vocally-driven post-rock/drone folk solo project, she has released two singles, “Bridges” and “Shelf”, and her debut EP, Spirit Photographs. Stone holds a BFA in Jazz Studies from Vancouver Island University and an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto. Drawing from her eclectic taste, she has worked with Michael Peter Olsen (Zoon, The Hidden Cameras), Timothy Condon and Brad Davis (Fresh Snow, Picastro), The Fern Tips (Beams) Völur (Blood Ceremony), NEXUS (Steve Reich), and visual artist Althea Thauberger.
Sara Noelle ‘Do I Have To Feel Everything’
27th January 2023
Do I Have to Feel Everything, Sara Noelle‘s third album, oozes vulnerability and expresses feelings both directly and allegorically through naturalistic themes. Ever present are the Los Angeles-based artist’s soothing, velveteen vocals which deliver melodies that often sweep into unexpected places. Produced by Dan Duszynski (Loma), the album pays homage to its influences while also managing to hold its own. The opening track, “Blooming Yucca”, begins with a bassline that is distantly PJ Harvey-esque, like something from To Bring You My Love, while “Slip Away” gives a gentle nod to Harvey’s White Chalk. The title track, “Do I Have to Feel Everything”, transitions into an 80’s synth vibe. This aesthetic evolves further in “Sun Fades the Pain”, which evokes a sonic landscape of The War on Drugs being interpreted through the lens The High Priestess archetype. Perhaps the most stunning moment on the album is “Dust Clouds” moving into “Hum”; the former being an interlude built with creepy, beautiful, natural
ambient soundscapes, and the latter being a journey of unexpected chord progressions. Do I Have to Feel Everything is a gorgeous and gentle journey that ebbs and flows like water on a calm day.
Dexter Dine ‘Flood’
31st January 2023
Dexter Dine’s Flood is best listened to with headphones. The self-defined Brooklyn, NY-based “apartment rocker” conjures a diverse and expansive sound that is a “mixture of melodic samples, multi-part drum grooves, and off-kilter saxophone solos”. From the Animal Collective vibes of “Flooded Meadows”, “Splatter In Two”, and “Lockeeper”, to the Juana Molina-esque
“Peanutbutter”, to the Bossa Nova feel of “Valley Of Air”, the beats he creates are the driving force behind this electroacoustic pursuit. There is even a touch of Burial in Dine’s sound, which spatially meanders around the physical sonic space – again, excellent for headphone listening. Interspersed throughout Flood are sometimes trilling, sometime harmonized reverby alto sax
parts that congeal the album’s sound into something that stands on its own. In addition to Flood being Dine’s eighth record since mid-2016, and he also does sound design for gallery- based dance performances. Dine is a prolific artist, and his work is ethereal, striking, and drenched in both sunshine and melancholy.
La Tène ‘Ecorcha/Taillée’
(Bongo Joe Records) 3rd February 2023
La Tène’s Ecorcha/Taillée is a meditative, minimalist folk masterpiece. It’s two pieces, “L’Ecorcha” and “La Taillée”, travel and swirl in stunning glacial motion. Released by Genevan label Bongo Joe Records, the three core members of the French/Swiss ensemble create a droning, modern artifact by use of harmonium, hurdy-gurdy, and percussion. For Ecorcha/Taillée, the group expanded into a seven-piece, with guest artists contributing guitar, bass, headband, and bagpipes. The album, which was recorded live in a single take, was produced in a cultural centre and ballroom converted from a barn. In line La Tène’s singular folk aesthetic, the main functionality of this space is to build interest in folk music from Auvergne, a region in central France.
The starting minutes of “L’Ecorcha”, which runs at 18:26, establish a repeating, ascending melody that solders the foundation of the album’s trance-like odyssey. Almost unchanging until six minutes in, the piece then slowly swells into a spiraling, understated density. “La Taillée” (14:34, a short piece by the band’s standards) maintains a pulsating minor 2nd chord progression and clave rhythm from start to finish. The piece has distinct parts, starting almost-dance like, breaking into a minimal groove, then descending into a gentle dissonance before softly exploding. Both “L’Ecorcha” and “La Taillée” are utterly captivating and are imbued with experimental triumph. The members of La Tène are avant-garde historians, and the result of their work is a timeless sonic world that is hauntingly beautiful.
Gillian Stone
Our Daily Bread 364: INTENTA: Experimental & Electronic Music From Switzerland 1981 – 1993
February 21, 2020
ALBUM REVIEW
Dominic Valvona
Various ‘INTENTA: Experimental & Electronic Music From Switzerland 1981 – 1993’ (Les Disques Bongo Joe/Décalé Records) LP/28th February 2020
Overshadowed by its neighbours, the landlocked trans-alpine polyglot nation of Switzerland has a mixed history, both politically and culturally. The neutralized haven for at least the last century, the 26 canton state has proved a fertile climate for the arts especially; a key incubator for the birth of Dadaism and in turn, from its ashes, Surrealism (dreamed up in part by the Zurich Cabaret Voltaire of such luminaries Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and Hans Arp, to name just a few), to the role of modern conceptual stars such as Urs Fischer, Thomas Hirschhorn and Sylvie Fleury.
Musically though, I draw a bit of a blank.
Bongo Joe along with their partners on this electrified Swiss odyssey, Décalé Records, are here to help, filling in those blanks with at least one important transitional period in the country’s music history; a twelve-year window in which the synthesized ‘hedonism’ of club and burgeoning Techno scenes emerged from a more politicized radical youth-led movement.
From 1981 onwards the great and good and more obscure mavericks of Switzerland embraced the technology and production; experimenting to varying degrees of success, from louche Euro-pop to the avant-garde; Kosmische style peregrinations to lo fi futurism. Plucked from the crates by Matthias Orsett and Maxi Fischer, a mixed bag of the ‘under-appreciated’, ‘sought-after’ and plain odd are brought together under the INTENTA title.
An intergenerational compilation, old hands like the multi-tasker artist/actor/poet/ski instructor and Jacques Brel adapt Jean-Pierre Huser feature alongside a rabble of Swiss post-punk-turn-synth-pioneers such as the ex-Grauzone saxophonist Claudine Chirac. The former, Huser, high on the Gauloises nicotine of Gainsbourg wraps a seedy Yello-esque gauze-y electro production around the 1984 down and out cocaine languor in ‘Chinatown’; the latter, sees Chirac reimagine what it might sound like if Wendy Carlos had been signed to the early Mute label, composing a Baroque-futurist elegy on the 1982 ‘Etudes’ exercise: part neoclassical, part videogame.
Quality and access, from the privately pressed to bigger full-on slick productions, this collection – which is neither linear nor thematic – dots Eurovision starlets amongst the most rudimentary of early synth tinkerings. At the more polished end, Swiss pop-chanteuse Carol Rich makes the cut with the vaporous hushed air-y ‘Computered Love’; the congruous flip side to Rich’s 1984 Eurovision entry ‘Tokyo Boy’. At the more lofi level, Dressed Up Animals 1983 serialism and ritualistic sound experiment ‘Mondtanz’, morphs Faust and Cabaret Voltaire.
The influences are just as wide-ranging; smoky, sexy Grace Jones vibes and Trevor Horn on Peter Philippe Weiss’ soulfully sultry underground transport diorama ‘Subway’ – a private pressing with high production values, remastered especially for this compilation – and D-Sire’s French-esque bluesy drumpad splash crescendo ‘Wintertime’.
Other notable attractions on this selection include the opening ‘Untitled’ Krautrock traverse, attributed to the 19th century Swiss folk hero Andreas Hofer – the Tyrolean innkeeper/drover turn rebel leader in the fight against Bonaparte; captured and later executed -; the Ryuichi Sakamoto with touches of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, dance across the Alpine glacial, ‘Swiss Air’, by Bells Of Kyoto; and mechanical water-treading ‘Django’, labeled as the Unknownmix.
As varied as Juan Atkins is to the 39 Clocks or Niles Rodger’s 80s Bowie production is to The Normal, the differences in synthesizer production and style is numerous. You can hear more or less every development in electronic music, from soundscaping to city lights NYC electro funk on this eager compilation that traces a less cherished passage in the evolution of European electronica. A collection of artists that absorbed but lent a certain Swiss bent to the genre. INTENTA is well worth seeking out, if not only to own some very rare and expensive sounds.
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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.
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