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
Annarella and Django ‘Jouer’
ALBUM (We Are Busy Bodies/Sing A Song Fighter)
Born from the Senegalese imbued and inspired hub built around Sweden’s Wau Wau Collectif, another cross-cultural project that embraces that West African nation’s (and its neighbours) rich musical heritage. Fusing the roots, landscape and themes of Senegal with those of Europe, the partnership of Swedish flutist Annarella and the Malian born ngoni master Django absorbs the very atmosphere of that westernmost African republic, transposing and transforming age old traditions with a hybrid of contemporary musical effects and influences and guest list of diverse musicians and voices.
But before we go any further, delve deeper into this partnership’s debut album, a little background information/ context is needed. A key member of Karl Jonas Winqvist’s Wau Wau Collectif gathering since 2016, making the motivational trip to Senegal that more or less inspired that group’s sound, network of collaborators and friends – a trip that also planted the seed for Winqvist’s Sing A Song Fighter label, a partner in the release of the this album alongside We Are Busy Bodies -, the Örebro born flutist Annarella, believe it or not, trained as a psychologist. Honed on woodwind, but able to play a variety of instruments, Annarella has chosen a more playful approach to her craft: an eclectic one at that.
Annarella’s musical foil, meanwhile, was born in Mali and brought up in the ancient griot tradition of storytelling. The family tree of which is impressive. His cousin was the late and great kora (a 21-string long-necked harp-like instrument crafted out of a gourd, covered in cow skin) virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, who famously partnered with another legend, Ali Farka Touré, for a duo of Grammy Award winning albums. And his uncle was the master balafon (one of Mali and Western Africa’s most recognised sounds, the balafon is a gourd-resonated xylophone) player Kélétigui Diabaté. It’s no surprise then that Django picked up the ngoni, a (normally) animal skinned wrapped canoe-shaped lute instrument synonymous for accompanying the griot storyteller: A tradition that, some say, dates back to the Malian Empire of the 12th century. Django however upped sticks and made the move to Senegal and the capital of Dakar many years ago. It’s a city that is abstractedly threaded into the very fabric of this album: immortalised alongside Annarella’s hometown on the album’s first single and this debut album’s third track.
Whilst on tour together as part of the Wau Wau, they found themselves wiling away the downtime hours by jamming. A spark was ignited. A project formed. But for a time, both musicians had to return to their respective homes, where it seems they set to work on composing and laying down tracks for each other, ideas and prompts to riff on.
The sphere of influence grew further, as both participants in this international peregrination invited in several musicians and artists to carry the music into articulate and more atmospheric new spaces. Joining the duo were of course Winqvist, as co-producer and a member of the filled-out rhythmal section that also includes Lars Fredrik Swahn and Pet Lager, the renowned Swedish folk musician and multiple instrumentalist Ale Möller, who provides not only trumpet but the Jew’s harp, accordion, melodica and the double-reed shawm, and Django’s wife, Marietou Kouyaté, on harmonical vocals.
Altogether, this circle of impressive talent conjures up an atmosphere of the willowy, mystifying, hazy, rhythmically shuttering, dreamy, ached and yearning. Because whilst uniting two cultures together in a most congruous sounding, melodious and beautiful union, there are both musically felt and more obvious appearances of social and economic protestation to be found.
After the fluted leafy pastoral airs and light nimble twine of the intro, the gentle hi-hat claps, Arabian-like shawm, whistles, chuffs and fluty blows of the Francis Bebey motion ‘Aduna Ak Asaman’, and the near Malian Turag camel drive with bird-like woodwind and Chet Baker mirage trumpeted ‘Dakar-Örebro’, there’s a short tunning-like, freely and spiritual jug carrying backed snippet of the American economist Richard David Wolff besmirching the virtues of capitalism on ‘No More’. A noted Marxist economist, part of the Rethinking Marxism movement, Wolff’s words chime with the rampart, unforgiving nature of what I would call a twisted form of capitalism; the ill effects felt no more so than on the scarred, mined lands of Africa and its people. Picking up the ‘Megaphone’, the style is more African with a soft Dirt Music backbeat, the voices more reminiscent of Amadou & Mariam. That vocal partnership can be heard again on the longed and languid sand dune contoured, flighty and reedy trill fluted ‘Sarajalela’.
Django’s home environment and the outlier around it seeps into and materializes like a dreamy haze across all the album’s tracks, as evocations of the classical, of jazz and the blues mixes with the local stew of diverse languages. Tracks like ‘Degrees of Freedom’ are more mystical sounding, near cosmic, as the band saunter like gauze under the moon and across the desert’s sandy tides. There’s the Arabian, the African, the otherworldly and fantastical all rolled into a seamless hover and spindle of enchantment and mystery. ‘Hommage á Dallas Dialy Mory Diabate’ however, is just a pretty, sentimental passage of loving tribute – the tune is very familiar, but I’m kicking myself to place it.
Jouer, which translates from the French into “play”, is just that, a lovely stirring union of the playful that seamlessly entwines the two musician’s respective practices with sympathy, respect and the earthly concerns of our endangered societies and world. Hopefully this collaboration will continue and grow over the years; there’s not been a better one since Catrin Finch teamed up with Seckou Keita.
Peter Evans ‘Extra’
ALBUM (We Jazz) 25th October 2024
A meeting of avant-garde minds to savour, the union of Peter Evans with Koma Saxo and Post Koma instigator and bassist Petter Eldh and New York downtown experimental rock and jazz drummer pioneer Jim Black is every bit as dynamic, explosive, torqued, moody, challenging and exciting as you’d imagine.
Heading this trio and making his debut on Helsinki’s We Jazz label-festival-magazine platform (one of the best contemporary jazz labels in the universe, certainly quality wise and highly prolific with it), the New York-based musician and noted improviser synchronizes and leads a constant movement of breakbeat drums and wood stretched, thumbing and busy bass on his small, higher octave pitched, piccolo trumpet.
A crossroads of separate entangled influences and backgrounds, legacies, with all three practitioners in this Evans-fronted project and their CVs stretching back a few decades, the avant-garde rubs up against the blues, hard bop, atmospheric set scores, hip-hop style breaks, the electronic and classical. By using both the piccolo and flugelhorn on this album, some passages sound like Wynton Marsalis playing over Mozart, or Alison Balsom lending classical airs to an Alfa Mist production.
The classical brass is however adopted and adapted to stir up a wind and tumult of uncertainty as to what’s coming next. For the action, the rhythm and direction is as tightly wound as it is loose and slowed down: the ‘Nova’ passage, this album’s shortest track, seems to lurk in a strange otherworldly atmosphere of mysterious thriller piano prompts and vibrated percussive and cymbal shivered resonance. The following track, ‘Movement 56’, starts off with the brass sounding like it’s being played through a cone, before buzzing and expanding, contouring a cosmic calculus performance of the alien, unsure, spatial and lunar. It finishes with a bended generator motored ripple and signal that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Bernard Szajner record.
Elsewhere the action blows and gallops between moods and intensity. The opening ‘Freaks’ has a busy rhythm section, yet tampered, the nearly skims along (imagine Ben Riley circa ‘The Bridge’, a recognisable sprouting of Art Blakey, and touch of Mingus) that evokes 60s NYC skylines (but no swing) and the downtown happenings of the 80s with something quite bluesy but very of the moment. Meanwhile, Evan’s short and longer cyclonic trumpet breaths recall Ralph Alessi, Tomasz Stańko and Miles Davis. On the staccato fashion prowl of ‘Boom’, it’s Chet sharing room with Kirk Knuffke over a slightly less erratic and menacing Last Exit.
There’s so much to love about Extra. A combo that has worked together before I believe, shows how to find a perfect challenging balance of the dashed, of action and the more tactile and explorative without losing that essential breakbeat and woody stretched body resonating and pulled spring bass rhythm and movement: that movement always being ever forward. Never dwelled on, nor really repeated, this feels like an improvised session without the need for analysis or instruction from its leader Evans. Possibly one of the best jazz albums you’ll hear all year, with a spot saved for the choice albums of the year lists, Extras is a thoroughly inventive and exciting dynamism of contemporary luminaries at the height of their skills and knowledge.
Yaryu ‘For Damage’
ALBUM (Ramble Records – AUS/ Centripetal Force – US/ Cardinal Fuzz – UK)
25th October 2024
Eclectic Japanese collective Yaryu, birthed just a couple of years ago, invite a host of peers and influential teachers from the country’s acid, psych, cosmic and astral scenes to sprinkle some magic on the new album, For Damage.
Led by bulb-note and caressing soulful electric pianist, wafted and concertinaed melodica player, atmospheric stirring autoharpist, synthesist and percussionist Hyzo, the group play host to members of Sundays & Cybele, Dhidalah and the freak out titans of the form, the Acid Mothers Temple. In all, at least seventeen participants, playing everything from the instruments of a conventional band set-up to woodwind, traditional Japanese and brass. Some of which also lend various forms of vocalisation, from the mewling to folky, strange and supernatural.
Fanning out and expanding the range of spiritual and emotional influences, the album starts out with a seamless continuation of elemental waters (trickles, pours, running streams to more settled, light refracting twinkles), the leafy and blossoming, diaphanous and glittery. The gentle opening introduction of ‘Up The Creek’ is a beautiful guide to this magical, enchanted, but simultaneously mystical and mystery balance of tranquilly and the otherworldly; sounding at times like Mythos connecting with Hiroshi Yushimura and Meitei, and existing in the same realms of Kankyō Ongaku, or “environmental music”. ‘Asobe’ (which I think means “not working”, but spelt slightly different, could be a reference to the Shinto priestesses that performed rituals that appeased the souls of the dead during the Heian period) drifts towards dry bone rattled, ceremonial caravan of Alice Coltrane, Bernie Maupin and Pharoah Saunders vibes.
But though keeping in that relatively subtle direction, ‘Nagare’ seems a little jazzier and more soulful as it follows the currents of running water. It features a cornet-like trumpet, some soft whistles, a near wafted Hawaiian guitar – think Makoto Kubota – and hand drums in the mode of Curtis Mayfield as it sets out some idyllic castaway plane. ‘Utena’ floats close to the Far East Family Band, but with a Fleetwood Mac bassline, constant metronome like ticking away and shimmering cymbals. But by the time we reach the atavistic sounding ‘Gandhara’ (the ancient Indo-Aryan civilization centred in what it is today present northwestern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan), the mood is far more mystical and shrouded; a Japanese Gothic-psych visitation from the psychogeography of the wailed and ghostly. ‘Sacrifice’ is noirish in comparison but begins with a sort of Cluster-like synth-pop rhythm, before shimmering and soulfully gliding into Greg Foat territory. It evokes sun-lounging attendees at the shrine on one of Japan’s most exotic, paradise island borders.
The album finishes on what in old money vinyl terms would be the whole side of an album, and the near twenty-minute “melody” suite ‘Shirabe’. A wilderness of trees and roots and creaking, croaking bird life is converged with tranquil jazzy evocations, woodpecker knocks, soft and low inviting sax blows and subtle funky guitar. As the peregrination continues, that sax goes into Donny McCaslin mode, and connects to the weird and cosmic.
Another name to add to the rich legacy of cult, psychedelia, folk, esoteric and cult sounds emanating from Japan, Yaryuand their distinguished guests connect with the elements, the spirits and sprites, and the roots of their magical astral plane on several levels to create a both earthly, supernatural and spiritual daydream. Tending the garden whilst offering up mysticism and languid stirrings of the elements.
The Tearless Life ‘Conversations With Angels’
ALBUM (Other Voices Records) 27th October 2024
Both a transference of souls from the now cremated – or laid to rest, depending on your choice of metaphorical ritual death – Vukovar plus a host of orbiting “other voices”, the make-up of The Tearless Life remains relatively, and intentionally, shrouded, obscured.
What we do know is that this new entity is a meeting of minds that have spent the last decade ploughing their own unique vision of hermetic, esoteric alchemy of synth-pop, industrial, post-punk, darkwave and a form of neo-new-romantism influences. And whilst they remained criminally overlooked – sometimes due to their own self-sabotage – they attracted such acolytes and luminaries of the genre as Rose McDowall, Michael Cashmore and the late Simon Morris, all of whom proved worthy foils on various Vukovar-headed collaborative releases.
Taking a while to materialize, The Tearless Life’s debut opus is both the announcement of new age, but also a bridge between this latest incarnation and the former Vukovar invocation – they are in essence, a band that continues to haunt itself. Old bonds remain, sound wise and lyrically, but with a new impetus of murky, vapoured, gossamer, mono and ether effected solace, tragic romanticism, pleaded and afflatus love, spiritual inspired yearning and allegorical hunger.
The void needs to be fed in a Godless world as they say, as addictions, troubled relationships, the longing for a special someone who remains aloof, untouchable and beyond reach, and the metaphysical coalesce with an all-consuming passion.
Talking to angels, conversing with both the seraph and the fallen, the daemons and spirits of the alchemist’s alternative dimensions, the group transduce the writings of that most visionary seer John Dee, the opium eater Thomas De Quincey, William Blake, and the far more obscure Samuel Hubbard Scudder, who’s 19th century, fairy-like, Frail Children of the Air: Excursions Into The World Of Butterflies publication of philosophical essays lends its title to a song of tubular airy manifestations, distortion, wisped spiralling piques and beautified touching emotional anguish.
Atmospheric at every turn, swilling around in the shrouds, a Victorian music box and toll of peeling bells can evoke the creeping, the mysterious and tormented. Psychological trauma, and physical pains roam the wards of a mental hospital; stained-glass rays anoint lovers; death’s touch is never far away; the talking of tongues and language of the shriven invokes fantasies; and the spectre of morose dines on the unfortunates to create an esoteric banquet.
Some of these songs will sound familiar to those missing Vukovar, but The Tearless Life seem to have integrated a duality of harmonies and vocals much better. The music is itself at least attempting to find the light at the end of the tunnel, touching upon snatches, vague influences of Nature And Organisation, Death in June, Jarboe, Brian Reitzell, the Pale Fountains, Scorpion Wind, Les Chasseurs De La Niot, Alan Vega, and on the pump organ-like remembrance of darkened soul mates, ‘The Mistress’, a combination of Purple Rain era Prince and Ultravox!
My only disappointment is in the production, which could be so much more dynamic and clearer, instead of being so murky. I think it loses some of its impact. But this is minor in comparison to the depth, quality and atmospherics of such an ambitious undertaking. For this album transfers poetry, the writings and fiction of the hermetic and the dreamers wonderfully, if plaintively. If the world was indeed not so bereft of celestial beings’ wisdom and advice as it is, it would rightly receive the critical acclaim it deserves. Conversations With Angels is epic; the first step in, what I hope, will be a fruitful conversation to divine enlightenment, curiosity, psychological and philosophical intelligent synth-pop.
i4M2 ‘Shut Up’
ALBUM (Drone Alone Records)
Whilst eliciting feelings of grand, sometimes overbearing, landscapes and a sense of movement from granular gradients, frazzled fissures, currents under the he didnt appellation back in the summer, the shrouded Oxford-based producer, guitarist and musician now ventures out under the new guise of i4M2.
Although similarly charged with electricity, white noise, static and magnetic filings Shut Up is a very different record indeed. Gone are, for the most part, the blocks of drones for a tubular metallic coursing of melodic music, found sounds and field recordings of captured voices from a city environment, and the mysterious near supernatural at times: or perhaps more unknown, hard to figure out, and maybe alien. Whilst recognisable glimpses of overheard and taped conversations, of a company of choral singers, and wobbled broadcasts of a kind suggest humanity, there’s much machine coded, synthesised and cybernetic surface noise and unnerving drama to be found.
Inspired in part by the “…pirate-radio noise the kids play on their mobile phones at the back of the bus in London.” And by the energy of all those “…cool beats and ideas”, this debut album channels those sparks of inspiration into a sophisticated construction of techno, electronica, the metallic, buzzing and fizzled. Beats arrive in the form of the rotor-bladed, the wing flapped, corrosive, spun, padded and sizzled. Together with those passages and undulations of melody and tune, it sounds like a mix of Nik Colk Void, early Tresor, The Pyrolater, Aphex Twin, Carter and Tutti, Oberman Knocks and Boards of Canada.
Both forms of the London scenester dropped in rural Oxford are great, but for me, I think this latest alter ego just about edges it. Seek it out.
Suumhow ‘5ilth’
ALBUM (n5MD)
You could consider the fifth album from the Belgian experimental duo of Suumhow as a sonic companion piece to i4M2’s ‘Shut Up’ (see above); fizzing as it is with electrical charges, frazzles and sculpted, purposed distorted crunches and metal filings, but balanced by a certain sensitivity and pull towards hazy, gauzy light forces. For there is melody, a tune to be found amongst the bristled blizzard effects and slabs of static buzzing, the corrosive and outright “filthy”. That last one being especially prominent in both the language and text used to promote this album, and in the distorted joy of sonic bombardment and bracketed vibrated grimy, glitchy drilling.
5ilth is by nature a counterpoint of distressed post-industrial techno, the leftfield, the pneumatic and ricocheting, which then opens out into calmer, more reflective ambient passages and square waves; sometimes floating or maybe drifting above the clouds, and other times, ascending towards the light. Far from brutal, despite the rasping scrunched beats, and chain clinked synthesized percussion, the mood is mostly mysterious and dreamy, with some parts akin to gliding in the stratosphere – see the obliquely, not giving anything away, entitled ‘F’. Like rips and tears in the fabric, yet somehow harmonically compatible, the duo’s work craftily spins a harsh, ratcheted and crackled abrasion of sounds and effects with ambient stirring evocations of thought, quite wanderings and reflection.
I hate to repeat myself, but as with the last review, I’m hearing Aphex Twin, but this time in the company of Petrolio, Room of Wires, Emptyset and Forest Swords. Which I think is a very inviting proposition.
Rich God ‘Unmade’
ALBUM (Somewherecold Records) 31st October 2024
The third such album of static-charged dissonance and fizzles, sculpted to and rendered to provide the sound, score and expression of the concrete this month, the pairing of Blake Edward Conley, who regular readers will recognise as the droneroom, and Jason T. Lamoreaux, who goes under The Corrupting Sea appellation, will appeal to those who like to read the abstract messages and gauge a sense of place, time and mood from industrial noise and corrosive electricity.
Mainstay and founding artist of the experimental label, Somewherecold Records, Jason teams up with one of his most prolific label singings to sculpt meaning from the frazzled generated noise, crunched barrages of drums and the sifting, fizzled and warped rhythms. Conway’s usual signature of minimal alt-country and drone cowboy electric guitar tracings, brushes, hovered notes and sun-cooked melting vistas is absorbed and sometimes crushed almost by Jason’s industrial effects and mettalic needling.
With nothing to go on, theme wise or explanation wise to the album’s seven titles, it is left to us the listener to make what we will of this union. But my reading is a transmogrified vision of post-industrial rust belt horror and trauma. There’s certainly prompts in the use of samples taken from broadcasts, perhaps the TV – which often sounds like a flickering portal set to the paranormal and Fortean -, with some guy’s diatribe against the banks or stock exchange/Wall Street (“If money is evil, then that building is hell!”) and a radio phone-in exchange about some horrific psychosomatic condition (the words murder scene and suicide both pop up).
In what sounds like a psychogeography of old machinery, the apparatus of production and a troubled society, Unmade whips up a blizzard of crickets on a sweltering day on the road towards a run-down and foreboding field of decay; conjures up the empty silos, rusted conveyer belts of a desolate wrecked farming community; and uses the needle scratches of a polygraph test and the resonance of steel mill saws to channel a recognisable fear.
Whipped and industrialised, yet also showing less harsh and abrasive fragments, pauses in the rippled tears of the bestial, spooky, alien and caustic, Unmade is like a distortion of Bleaeck, Raime, Atsushi Izumi, Cabaret Voltaire and IDM influences. Not the easiest of listens, and certainly challenging, but worth the effort, as two experimental artists combine their signature qualities into a heavy loaded sonic statement for the times we find ourselves in.
Andy Haas ‘For The Time, Being’
ALBUM (Resonantmusic)
Time has never sounded so warped and amorphous, bereft of reference in a space that morphs into serialism, the surreal, the painful, the otherworldly, paranormal, conceptual and indescribable. Yes, once more the experimental saxophonist Andy Haas ventures into sonic territories seldom explored with his latest (I believe either 19th or 20th release for the Resonantmusic label) album of abstract trauma, avant-gardism, playfulness, and physicality. For this album is indeed a physical experience, focussed as it is on the Andy’s unique method of strapping a small tremolo box to his leg so that he can control the depth and the rate of extreme panning whilst playing the sax, and manipulating slowly spun vinyl records.
The discombobulating, shrieking, sonorous diffusions and effects hit hard at times, leaving a real sense that the soundwaves have penetrated the listener’s body and senses: To get the full effect, Andy stresses that For The Time, Being is experienced best on a system with better low end response: laptop speakers just won’t cut it.
Out on the fringes for at least five decades (and counting), with a brief period of commercial success as a founding member of the Canadian new wave band Martha And The Muffins (leaving the group after three albums to pursue more adventurous pathways in the New York underground scene of the early-to-mid 80s) , Andy’s original sparks of inspiration and catalysts for picking up the saxophone (his first instrument being one he rented for $5 a month in the 70s) were jazz avant-garde supremos Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker, who he witnessed playing together in concert at an early age back in the 70s. Both icons of the form permeate much of Andy’s work, including this newest experiment. But you can add a channelling of such diverse company as John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Thurston Moore, Keiji Haino and Fred Firth, all artist’s Andy has worked with since the 80s, to that sound palette.
In more recent times, during the late nineties and the noughties, he’s collaborated with stringed-instrumentalist Don Fiorino on three extraordinary albums (American Nocturne, Don’t Have Mercy and Accidentals), toured and recorded with the Plastic Ono Band-esque reinvention of Meg Remy’s U.S. Girls, and been a member of Matt ‘Doc’ Dunn’s The Cosmic Range. Again, feeding into an already expansive field of influences.
But here, in solo mode, the perimeters, experiences are all reset and transmogrified into an intense, frightening and sometimes near cartoonish world of spatial manipulation and hallucination. This is jazz at its furthest boundaries, the avant-gardism of Fluxus, of Monty Young, Alan Sondheim (specifically T’ Other Little Tune LP), Richard Maxfield, David Tudor and Takehisa Kosugi combining with the dry, bristled and trilled raspy reedy blows, plastic tube-like sucks, flapped air and wind, the hinging and the movement of valves and atonal resonance, and the more melodic flutters and mizmar-like drones of Braxton, Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Ornette Coleman, Marshall Allen and Oliver Lake.
Each track varies between unseen sources of accelerating motors, hovering drones overhead, the disorientating, the wounded, the near sci-fi and triggered, with signals and codes manipulated like slowing and speeding reel-to-reel tapes. Reality is questionable and the sense of time (although there is a parenthesis “nocturne” reference on one track) akin to a fever dream. Andy produces a unique physically effective sound experiment that is impossible to define; his saxophone simultaneously recognisable and yet parping, droning and in a cycle that pushes that instrument towards the tactile and spatial.
___/PLAYLIST: THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL SOCIAL VOLUME 91
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 91 is as eclectic and generational spanning as ever. Look upon it as the perfect radio show, devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
First up the LP anniversaries, starting with 50th nods to Sparks Propaganda (in my estimates, the double-acts’ best 70s album), Redbone’s Beaded Dreams Through Turquoise Eyes, Yumi Arai’s Misslim, and The Rolling Stones It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll – see below in the archives section for my little summary, if dismissive, piece on the album.
Released this month forty years ago, there’s tracks from The Fall’s The Wonderful And Frightening and Cabaret Voltaire’s Micro-Phonies. Jumping forward another decade, and I’ve also included a track from the Digable Planets’ 94’ released Blowout Comb. Another leap forward and I’ve chosen to also mark the tenth anniversary of Scott Walker’s collaboration with Sunn O))), Soused – you can read my original piece on the album in the archive below; one of my finest hours I reckon.
Whilst the Monolith Cocktail’s Monthly Playlist is all about the newest music, I miss things or just don’t have room to feature everything. And so, the Social offers room to some of those newish, recent releases that missed out. This month there’s choice tracks from Heyme, Waaju and Majid Bekkas, The Bordellos, Reverand Baron and Calvin Love, and Paten Locke.
You’ll also find, from across the decades, borders and genres, a smattering of musical choices from Heltah Skeltah, Lowlife, Samuel Prody, Gilli Smyth, The Sun Also Rises, Michel Magne, Debile Menthol, Lita Bembo, Art Zoyd, Tudor Lodge, Tommy Keene, The Silver Dollar, Vince Martin & Fred Neil, Yoch’ko Seffer, Male and Mahjun.
TrAcKlIsT iN fUlL
Michel Magne ‘Cine qua pop’
Debile Menthol ‘Tante Agathe’
Samuel Prody ‘She’s Mine’
Tudor Lodge ‘The Lady’s Changing Home’
Tommy Keene ‘My Mother Looked Like Marilyn Monroe’
The Rolling Stones ‘Dance Little Sister’
Cabaret Voltaire ‘James Brown’
The Bordellos ‘King Of The Bedroom’
The Fall ‘2 X 4’
Male ‘Bilk 80’
The Jazz June ‘Silver Dollar’
Mahjun ‘L’un dans I’autre’
Art Zoyd ‘Alleluia’
Yochk’o Seffer ‘GONDOLAT’
Waaju and Majid Bekkas ‘Fangara (Live Edit)’
Yumi Arai ‘On the Street of My Home Town’
Lita Bembo ‘Muambe’
Digable Planets Ft. Guru ‘Borough Check’
Paten Locke ‘Widdit’
Heltah Skeltah ‘Clan’s, Posse’s, Crew’s & Clik’s’
Redbone ‘Cookin’ with D’Redbone’
Heyme ‘Downtown Train’
Reverend Baron & Calvin Love ‘Famous Feelin’’
Scott Walker & Sunn O))) ‘Brando’
Lowlife ‘Again And Again’
Citymouth & People’s Palms ‘Singlecycles’
Gilli Smyth ‘Shakti Yoni’
The Sun Also Rises ‘Wizard Shep’
Vince Martin & Fred Neil ‘Morning Dew’
Sparks ‘Bon Voyage’
/ARCHIVES_____
This month, I’m reviving my archived pieces on The Rolling Stones It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll, which is fifty years old this month, and the late Scott Walker’s unholy alliance with Sunn O))), Soused, which reaches its tenth anniversary in October.
Relax, It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll. The Stones ’74 LP is 50 this month. (Appearing originally in my four part potted history of the group).
The basic premise of the Stones 12th album was to give their critics, especially the punctilious music writer Lester Bangs, the bird-finger.
Bangs’ condemnation at the paucity and profligate decline of the group was particularly scathing – quite justified in some respects – and only increased with each new release.
Incredulous at the growing derision and, as they viewed it, over-the-top analyses of their music, this album makes no bones about its regression back into the rock ‘n roll womb: albeit a version of that initial scene performed by a languid miscreant bunch of lolloping posers reprising oldies from the blues-R&B-r’n’r cannon.
The self-titled track and single from It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (And I Like It) was strangely – so it’s claimed by Richards – conceived by a testy Jagger and recorded with his new “soul mate” Bowie as a rough demo. Such was the internal drift between the Stones creative partnership that Jagger often composed and thrashed out ideas away from his Glimmer Twins foil. During this break in communications, Richards was hanging out with The Faces lead guitarist and crow-haired sporting Ronnie Wood at his London studio. Wood had begun recording a solo LP and had asked along both Richards and Mick Taylor to add a touch of sleazy blues. Whilst at one of these relaxed sessions, Jagger dropped in and cut a version with Woods and, Small Faces/Faces drummer, Kenny Jones, but also produced another version with his comrades at a later date (Woods again played on this, contributing the rhythm guitar part on the 12-string). Regardless of who had their paws on it, It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (And I Like It), is a stereotypical Stones pruning swaggered anthem, one that leans very heavily upon the strutting glam-rock pout of T-Rex.
Geographically separated, and as usual, sabre-rattling with the establishment, the band pushed-on, even though by now Richards’s increasing drug-fuelled skirmishes looked certain to scupper any attempts to successfully record.
To top it all, Taylor’s growing resentment at the lack of credit and acknowledgement for his contributions set the ball in motion for his resignation from the band a year later. Yet despite his disgruntlement, Taylor hung-on in there, playing on a majority of the albums ten-songs but not the title-track single; even though he appears in the video.
Without their due-diligent and overseeing producer, Jimmy Miller, the production fell to the aggrandising pairing of Jagger & Richards. Miller, a stalwart member of their inner circle and sometimes sobering force for good, had finally succumbed to his drug habit (picked-up whilst working with the band) and left, leaving the pair to take control for the first time since Their Satanic Majesties Request. And we all know how that turned out!
Scott Walker + Sunn O))) ‘Soused’ – Harrowed by thy name.
The usual rolled-out cliché of criticism that always greets every Scott Walker release, charts the enigmatic artist’s pop light to experimental morose career arc; from the teen swoon idol heady days of the Walker Brothers, via monastic alienation and Jacques Brel inspired crooner of esoteric idiosyncrasies, to existential avant-garde isolation.
Inhabiting the darkest recesses of humanity and history for at least half of that time, we should be used to this morbid curiosity, worn with earnest pride by Walker, who peers into the abyss on our behalf. Confronting with a meta-textural style the barbarity and failings of humanity for at least thirty odd years then, any developments in the Walker peregrination, shouldn’t really surprise anyone: at least the critic.
In what was met with certain trepidation or surprise by many, his unholy union with the habit adorned disciples of hardcore drone Sunn O))) is actually a very shrewd and congruous partnership; a 50/50 immersive experience, with both parties seemingly egging each other on. Walker for his part lyrically less cryptic, the Sunn chaps pushed to produce one of their most poetic and nuanced beds of sustained drones yet, and on this occasion, even cracking out various wild shortened, punctuating and unyielding riffs – verging on full metal and heavy rock riffage. Letting rip with a resonant field of sustained one-chord statements and caustic stings that bend or longingly fade out into a miasma, trying to find a meaning in these drones is akin to an Auger interpreting symbols and signs from the entrails of a wretched, just slain sacrificial beats. Yet it does work, and the bare minimal, fuzzy and wrenching bed of murmuring, primal guitars perfectly set up the intended atmosphere.
Once again, Daemonic forces have conspired. The result, a five act guttural opus, entitled Soused – in this instance the title is to be taken as a plunging or submersion into liquid or water, rather than a slang for hard liquor intoxication (though if it were, the brew on offer would be hemlock!).
What starts out and continues as a sort of proxy chorus (the nearest you’ll ever get to one on a Walker outing), the introductory crystallised, even dreamy, sense of melodic relief that introduces the album’s first musical tome, ‘Brando’, is soon corrosively despoiled by the menacing first strikes of a signature Sunn O))) chord and bullwhip.
A rather odd theme for Walker to build a threatening tower of misery from, the song alludes to the obligatory sacrificial martyrdom of the title’s Marlon Brando. Whether as self-flagellation, Brando had a penchant for taking on or even bringing (off his own back, so to speak) the act of taking a brutalised beating to his roles: from vigilante beatings in The Wild One to feeling the sharp end of a Elizabeth Taylor horse whipping in Reflections In A Golden Eye. Brando’s fatalistic characters were either the naïve well-intentioned disaffected (Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront) or assassinated disenchanted mavericks (Colonel Kutz in Apocalypse Now). The repeated lashings of a bull whip in this instance, however, refer to his role as the conniving bank robber Rio in the western One Eyed Jacks; one of the movie’s most memorable scenes being when Rio is administered the whipping of his life by a disgruntled and wronged former criminal partner, Dad Longworth (played by Karl Malden), in front of the towns people.
Perhaps this series of observations, first set off by watching One Eyed Jacks, from Walker is over-played, but it is remarkable as you play back through the actor’s movie catalogue and find a connective theme of taking the blows and even death on the chin. Probably reading too much into now and Walker does have a history of wry and acerbic wit, but Brando could be said to be offering his body up to the mortal sins as a punch bag (taking method acting literally) or was just masochistic (Last Tango In Paris M’lud). You decide, it makes for one reason or another a most apocalyptic soundtrack, mixing as it does, doom with Walker’s almost uplifting, visionary vocals to a flaying cycle of whip happy bullies.
Biblical in more ways than one, the standout mega-bestial centrepiece must be the harrowing ‘Herod 2014’; an atavistic disturbing chapter from the Roman occupied Middle East, it alludes to, what many historians say, is a wholly fictional tale of King Herod’s decreed infanticide of his kingdom (allowed by the Roman occupiers to reign over Judea and surrounding areas). Bathed in a sonorous reverberation of fearful discordance and a distressed unworldly cry of danger, this twelve-minute opus is stalked by the harangued forces of malcontent and revved-up torturous drones. The conceptual allusions, which can’t help but echo through time to the present, are far bigger than this baby cull, the region has, after all, always been awash with both the fabled and all too real episodes of death and misery for thousands of years. Yet despite this, the song is itself one of Walker’s best and even most melodically poetic, sitting happily with the material on his last two albums, The Drift and Bish Bosch.
Lyrically traumatic, but almost beautifully hewn from the English language, the opening lines bellow a nuanced scene-setting intellect, more novelistic pyschogeography than song: ‘She’s hidden her babies away. Their soft gummy smiles won’t be gilding the memory.’ In setting up the horrid event and psychological primal emotions that resonate with his audience, Walker goes on to mention two of the most famous painters to depict this crime, Nicolas Poussin and Rubens, who both fashioned their own (setting it in their own time) Massacre of The Innocents.
Herod 2014 straddles the LP like a monolithic titan. A real horror show, both wrenching yet also surprisingly compelling.
You would perhaps be fond of some relief after sitting through all that, but Walker won’t let you off that easily; summing another Sunn 0))) crackled, anvil- beating, industrial chorus of esoteric dread. ‘Bull’ is fraught with tension, languidly striking with stabbing guitars and post-industrial riffs one minute, sinking into the mire of silence and emerging like a troubled crooner monk the next. Heavy and brooding with mechanical timepieces, crowing shadows and subterranean spirits moving amongst the low buzzing presence of a pant-messing sustained drone, the Bull is unsettling to say the least, like a game of tag in the Labyrinth of the Minotaur. And the song with the longest outré of all; Walker finishing off his cryptic lines halfway through, leaving the last four minutes to his comrades to play out.
‘Fetish’ as it may already suggest is a sadomasochistic affair. A soundtrack set to some cannibalistic or serial killer shocker, where the action is carried out entirely on a Mona Hatoum barbed wire bed in a meatpacking factory. Thrashing around and violently piqued by a harassed beak like attack, the backing is a maelstrom of dentist drills, panting shakers and eerie hanging silence, until it breaks out with the album’s first drum break and rhythmic holy chorus. Throughout, Walker swoons in resignation, dropping lines like, “acne on a leaper”, and “glim away little brute”, in a disjointed narrated sombre tone that gets more dangerous as the song churns to its climax. A ritualistic metaphor, the song’s central tool of terror, the blade or scalpel, is held as an abstract reference point to gleam some meaning, whether it pertains to the cosmetic, life-threatening surgery, torture, the sexual or even tattooing, Walker and Sunn O))) build a nuanced layer upon layer of industrial buzzing queasiness to a trope.
Be under no illusion with the finale to this Dante inferno, the ‘Lullaby’ tones on offer here in no way promise a good night’s sleep. This is after all Walker’s crooned eulogy to assisted lullaby suicide, and the sound of death’s hallucinatory vibrations, gradually taking hold.
Interpreting the song in her own enigmatic way, Ute Lemper bravely grappled with the song for her 1999 album, Punishing Kiss, but Walker now takes back what he at first giveth, converting it into an even gloomier anthem with his monastic brethren.
You can almost hear the percussive ticking of a Newton’s cradle: the mortal clock running out as the drugs take effect; comfort is not an option. The whole thing sounds like a seething hotbed of psychological thrillers and horror, played out remorsefully until the final bleep of the life support signals the end. Walker never nails home his own social or political solutions, and so this, very much a topic debated in recent years and ongoing, is more a diorama set piece, which neither condones nor condemns assisted suicide.
Disturbing throughout, this unnerving suite is obviously not to be recommended to those already on the knife-edge or for those who stay clear of the news or anything that may remind them of human suffrage. You also need stamina and plenty of nerve to sit through this uncomfortable 49-minutes of music at its most challenging. Not so much hostile as shredded by a repeating rotor blade cutting action that piques and prods, even the quietest passages are threatened by an unseen presence of danger. Hell knows (literally) how this album would go down live, the option tentatively hanging in the air, depending on its reception; a possibility that could see the maverick auteur and theatrical seven-day avant-gardist performing for one of the first times in eons.
Both parties in this experiment prove their mettle, reinforcing their reputations but producing an album that is not only accessible to the devotees and followers but also those who’ve previously skirted around taking a walk through the catacombs of the bleakest recesses of a conflicted mind.
Archive spots and now home to the Monolith Cocktail “cross-generational/cross-genre” Social Playlist – Words/Put Together By Dominic Valvona
A new thread, feed for 2023, the Digest pulls together tracks, videos and snippets of new music plus significant archival material and anniversary celebrating albums or artists -sometimes the odd obituary to those we lost on the way. From now on in the Digest will also be home to the regular Social Playlist. This is our imaginary radio show; an eclectic playlist of anniversary celebrating albums, a smattering of recent(ish) tunes and the music I’ve loved or owned from across the decades.
The August edition includes anniversary celebrating spots for both the Rolling Stones 1973 classic Goat’s Head Soup and Faust’s IV albums. There’s also volume 79 of the Social Playlist, with smatterings of class cuts from the late Jane Birkin (this month’s cover start) and Sinéad O’Connor, more anniversary albums and a mix of newish and older choice tunes from every genre possible and corner of the globe.
The Social Playlist #79
Anniversary Albums And Deaths Marked Alongside An Eclectic Mix Of Cross-Generational Music, Newish Tunes And A Few Surprises
Repeating myself, but if this is your first time here, first of all, welcome, and secondly here’s the lowdown on what the Social is:
Just give me two hours of your precious time to expose you to some of the most magical, incredible, eclectic, and freakish music that’s somehow been missed, or not even picked up on the radar. For the Social is my uninterrupted radio show flow of carefully curated music; marking anniversary albums and, sadly, deaths, but also sharing my own favourite discoveries over the decades and a number of new(ish) tracks missed or left out of the blog’s Monthly playlists.
We start of course with the twin tragedies of loss, and the passing of two of the most enigmatic, idiosyncratic and individual artists, Sinéad O’Connor and Jane Birkin. The former, never lost for words and causes, could channel Yeats whilst haranguing the Pope; pontificate on the Irish famine and sing ethereal tenderness like no one else. Sinéad didn’t always get it right (and has said some right old rubbish in her time), but whatever ire was raised her cause and protestations, actions had an impact; her music incredibly moving and evocative. So astonishing a talent, she managed to rile Prince to a state of jealous incandescent (and allegedly) and physical rage after the Irish singer-songwriter covered and pretty much owned the Purple One’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. I never understood her conversion to Islam – what with all its own problematic ideals, scriptures and general feelings towards women – but that was Sinéad, always plowing her own pathway in the world, carrying a lifetime of travails and baggage, pain and anger. The latter of the two, Jane Birkin, was something else entirely. Pretty much destined it seemed and more comfortable with the culture and lifestyle of her adopted France, the coquettish muse enraptured the country’s supreme talent, Serge Gainsbourg – and John Barry before that – , and pretty much became a French deity. A polymath of a sort, from film to of course performing both with Serge and a solo career, she was a fashion icon to generations but above all, eccentrically unique: a true individual in every sense of the word. Both artists leave a great legacy of material behind, of which I’ve merely chosen a smattering of personal favourites.
Anniversary wise, and featured below in more detail, there’s tracks from The Rolling Stones Goats Head Soup and Faust IV. Alongside Stevie Wonder‘s glorious Innervisons, they all celebrate the big 5-0 this year. Alongside them are 40th anniversary nods to Cabaret Voltaire‘s The Crackdown and The Chameleons View From A Hill, plus a 30th acknowledgment to Amorphous Androgynous‘ Tales Of Ephidrina.
Newish tunes this month in the Khalab, Saigon Blue Rain, Laura Agnusdei and Zeus B. Held sit alongside older eclectic tracks from The Nuns, Family Band, Motion Man, Erica Pomerance, Fapardokly, Trends Of Culture, Kuumbia-Toudie Heath, A.B. Crentsil, Bonnie Koloc, Felius Andromeda and more…
ARCHIVE/ANNIVERSARY
Goats Head Soup: recipe for distraction
Taken out of storage, from my original potted history of The Rolling Stones series, another chance to read my concise summary of Goats Head Soup, which is of course 50 years old this year.
As the first Rolling Stones tenure drew to a close and a new epoch approached, the now appellate “Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll band in the world” could look back proudly on a fruitful career – despite the smack, in-fighting and tragedies of course (namely the loss of Brian Jones). From 1962 to ‘72 they’d released ten, mostly, omnivorous and stunning albums and a staggering forty-five singles; many of which didn’t appear on the albums.
Their next stormy chapter would mark the end of their most productive period.
Sounding like a playful allusion to Satanism (again!) or a sub-Saharan delicacy, Goats Head Soup is a strange heady brew that has more in common with Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed than with their last magnum opus, Exile On Main St.
In an exile funk, arguably of his own making, Richards’ options of residency were limited. Booted-out of France, non-grata for tax purposes in the UK, and out-staying his welcome in the States, it was either the “yodel-leh-hee!” skiing ranges and mountains of Switzerland or…the pleasurable oasis of Jamaica. Yep, Richards and his debacle settled in that winter of 72 upon the island, setting up base at Kingston’s Dynamic Sound Studio.
Remarkably, the evident aroma of the local intoxicates didn’t seem to upset the bands flow; if anything, they wrote and recorded far too many tracks. The old magic returned as Jagger settled down and began strumming the opening chords of the Gram Parsons-esque Winter; a number first conceived during sessions for Sticky Fingers.
Hustling that now synonymous Louisiana drawl and salacious swagger, the album opens with a voodoo raunchy skulk across a St. Louis cemetery on Dancing With Mr. D. Heard crackling and seeping through in a state of efflux, the chiming funk-fried presence of Billy Preston can be heard playing the clavinet on both this nod to mortality and the rest of the LP. Recalled for a second time, alongside Richards’s right-hand sax man and friend BobbyKeys, he joined an exotic mix of percussionists to add a certain reverent tone and mood that sways between the reflective beguilement of 100 Years Ago, and the “urban R&B”Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker); a song in which Jagger interweaves the tall tales of a boy mistakenly shot dead by US cops, and a 10 year-old girl who dies of a drug overdose in a sleazy back alley.
Faust ‘Faust IV’: 50 years old and still the sound of the future.
Taken from my original Krautrock series meander through the back catalogues of Popol Vuh, Can, Guru Guru, and of course Faust. Written around 16 years ago.
Nestled snugly in the quaint Oxfordshire countryside, the 16th century converted recording studio known simply and synonymously as The Manor, is up for sale.
This reputable legendary grade 2 listed building has been home to a right motley bunch of bands over its almost forty-year history, and seen some right old carry ons, including a naked Keith Richards running away from an aggrieved shotgun wielding husband, and countless Hieronymus Bosch like depictions of debauchery.
In 1971 Richard Branson brought this country pile and set about renovating it to accommodate a full-on state of the art studio with overnight rooms for bands to decamp, as part of his vision to change the way albums were made.
Up until this time most musicians had to travel to the major cities and record in workman like three-hour sessions, in much the same way that classical musicians did. Branson thought this was all a bit un-rock’n’roll like and arcane, he’d rather send off his bands to more tranquil and inspiring pastures far from the confines of the inner city, somewhere they could work 24 hours on their music without any worries or distractions, with a bed to lay the weary heads upon only a crawls length away.
One of the first artists to record at The Manor, was the rather green 19-year old Mike Oldfield, whose Tubular Bells new age classic single handily bankrolled the entire Virgin Label. Alongside him were groups such as The Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band, Tangerine Dream and of course the mighty Faust. Later on Queen, XTC, Black Sabbath and Radiohead would all pass through its doors to record singles or LPs.
In 1973 Faust had a sort of partial success from the release of their Faust Tapes album, which carried the publicity stunt ’49p’ mark-up, and sold in abundance, though a whole swathe of the public who purchased it remained bewildered by it. A collection of cutting room floor outtakes and burgeoning ideas, roughly collaged together for release as a sort of interregnum between albums, the Tapes was a buffer for the groups next release proper, Faust IV – the true successor to So Far.
Faust began sessions in the spring, with the band haphazardly jamming new material, racing through ideas at a great speed, yet finding it difficult to settle on any specifics.
In fact a deep dragging feeling of ennui had taken hold, with cracks starting to appear in the dynamics and leadership. Recent touring had jaded them, especially Péron, as they were encouraged to keep to a similar set list of tracks and to tone down the more outrageous behaviour.
Faust weren’t normally used to repeating a performance, having had the luxury of being able to experiment at will, and also being lavished with their very own studio back in Wümme, where they could produce anything they wanted and change when the mood took them.
No. Faust were not used to conventions, which led to the albums sessions being fraught with tension and lethargy, and with Sosna repeatedly calling for his antagonistic fellow band members to slow down and relax a little.
If anyone needed any evidence of their short attention span then you’d only have had to have seen them live, with all their props including a load of TV sets, that may have indicated by their presence as being apparatus for some actionist performance art, but were in fact for the sake of the band in case they got bored – sometimes Zappi would mic them up if anything interesting did come on, jamming along to it in a kind of impromptu sampling session.
Frustrated at a lack of progress after months of work, and feeling constrained, they promptly reverted back to their old ways in antagonistic behaviour and began to waste Virgins money as quickly as they did Polydor’s. Yet it must be said that they did manage to create some really evocative and startling tracks in the village green picturesque landscape of The Manor, with the hypnotic ‘Jennifer’ and raucous ‘Giggy Smile’ amongst them, which both encapsulated the multifaceted angles of the bands sound to that point.
In fact IV is arguably the most balanced and complete LP in their catalogue, with its almost greatest hits sampler conclusive feel and well-rounded overall sound, it brings together the cut-up vignettes from The Faust Tapes and the best song based moments from So Far.
Their time at The Manor wasn’t entirely wasted.
Eventually they managed to produce at least the remunerates of an album, though they still needed a few tracks to finish off. With time running out, they included two good old recordings from the Wümme days, the trance heroics of the affectionately mocking entitled ‘Krautrock’, which had already been played on the John Peel radio show, and the German released single ‘It’s A Bit Of A Pain’. They also reworked the minor segue way ‘Picnic On A Frozen Lake’ from So Far, this time in the guise of an extended assemblage piece and sporting the added suffix of ‘…Deuxieme Tableux’, to finally put a lid on it.
Before it was released to the general public, compatriots and fellow sympathetic musicians had often dropped in to see what was afoot, eagerly looking forward to hearing this new material. Members from the Anglo/French trippers Gong – who shared the billing with Faust for a few concerts – and also Henry Cow – who were inspired by the group – both shared a perplexed and disappointed criticism of the album, feeling it lacked lustre.
Many critics only liked the second side, preferring its more welcoming and polished tones, writing off, as they saw it, the befuddled ‘Krautrock’ and dirge acid haze of ‘Jennifer’.
On the other hand, some fans were very vocal in criticising the record for not being radical enough, and for the more conventional leanings found on some of the tracks.
Faust IV failed to carry on the momentum of their last Virgin release, which sold an impressive 100,000 plus copies, though most people who owned a copy soon wished they hadn’t. Though not a failure, it hardly set the world alight, with its sometimes Pink Floyd psychedelic folk tones and vague lyrical drug fuelled floating excesses, as well as the blank music sheet artwork and workman like title, it did little to inspire.
But hey, lets not be too ingenuous, as it is a remarkable record full of some epic moving moments, and genius ideas – apart from maybe ‘The Sad Skinhead’, which seems to be an exercise in Germanic humour at our expense.
Uwe and the boys soon frustratingly packed their bags and left old Blighty for the Fatherland, where they booked into a Munich studio to record their next album, again the brain storming sessions for album titles can’t have been up to much as they called it Faust V.
Both Irmler and Sosna were supposed to produce this album of improvised recording sessions, but those cracks between the members started to really pull proceedings apart, with tensions running high both in the group and with the label.
Péron and his cohorts booked themselves into a luxury hotel, using the good old ‘We’re with Virgin’ excuse to pass the check-in desk.
After running up an extortionate bill, they decided to do a runner, with the repeat offender Péron acting as getaway driver. Unfortunately the hotels foyer entrance had a concrete post with an attached metal barrier, which they promptly drove straight into. They were then apprehended by the local plod and slung in jail. A rather embarrassing phone call to their parents eventually got them released, but not before a bill for 30,000 DM was flung in their face – they often joked that they’d never ever managed to pay it off.
The eventual album that emerged from the this chaos, was ceremonially turned down flat by Virgin, and only existed as a promotional tape for years, though you can find various versions on CD nowadays.
Faust and Uwe became disillusioned and decided to call it a day, splitting into two factions, who both went on to spasmodically release albums over the next thirty years, and occasionally tour.
The ‘drum and bass’ combo version of Faust, which featured Zappi and Péron, released a seminal return to form album in 2009, to favourable reviews – making it into my very own top albums of 2009 list.
They still manage to show those pesky kids a thing or two, with their uncompromising theatrics and forty plus years of anarchic grizzled moodiness, though there’s always a twinkle in their eye.
REVIEW
Faust waste no time with introductions, instead leaping straight into the twelve-minute throbbing minor opening opus of ‘Krautrock’, which languishes in its profound moniker and delivers on its bombastic arrogance with a snide oft-hand touch of heavy caustic jamming.
Flange and delay bounce around with about being reigned in; creating a dreamy psychosis that draws the listener in with faint promises of reaching some undiscovered and unattainable higher level of knowledge – they wish!
Huge swathes of backward effects and layers of phasered guitars, tambourines and biting bass fall all over the swirling off-kilter timing, which obscures where one bar begins and another ends.
This electric soup of an instrumental is penetrated on all sides by static, blips and radio interference for over seven minutes, before an organ is totally thrashed and Zappi barges his way through the mire with the first sign of drums crashing in on a signature roll.
‘Krautrock’ continues at a pace, with barrages of humming white noise, whilst the backing fades in and out, fooling with our tiny minds.
Faust waste no time with introductions, instead leaping straight into the twelve-minute throbbing minor opening opus of ‘Krautrock’, which languishes in its profound moniker and delivers on its bombastic arrogance with a snide oft-hand touch of heavy caustic jamming.
Flange and delay bounce around with about being reigned in; creating a dreamy psychosis that draws the listener in with faint promises of reaching some undiscovered and unattainable higher level of knowledge – they wish!
Huge swathes of backward effects and layers of phasered guitars, tambourines and biting bass fall all over the swirling off-kilter timing, which obscures where one bar begins and another ends.
This electric soup of an instrumental is penetrated on all sides by static, blips and radio interference for over seven minutes, before an organ is totally thrashed and Zappi barges his way through the mire with the first sign of drums crashing in on a signature roll.
‘Krautrock’ continues at a pace, with barrages of humming white noise, whilst the backing fades in and out, fooling with our tiny minds.
Our voracious crew turn their hand to reggae next, on the track ‘The Sad Skinhead’, albeit a version of the genre that’s uniquely German.
Coming across like Television ironically discovering the attributes of Kingston’s second finest export via a squat in the downtown New York district of Soho, Faust bumble their way through in an embarrassing whiter than white mocking style.
They of course inject some of their very own brand of squelch like cosmic sounds and slightly off-beat rhythms to the song, even going as far as to throw in an indulged burst of insane solo guitar chatter and delightful twinkling away xylophone.
The song’s lyrics further pour scorn on the subject material, taking a barely disdainfully hidden pop at those shaven headed miscreants, whose gestures, choice of street wear and haircut hardly seem to resonate with the music of Jamaica –
‘Apart from all the bad times you gave me,
I always felt good with you.
Going places, smashing faces,
What else could we do?’
Side one closes with, perhaps, one of Faust’s finest recordings, the ethereal chimerical and hypnotising ‘Jennifer’.
A diaphanous pulsating chorus of dreamy biting effects and a series of tom rolls beckon in assiduous waves of floating drifting synths, as a delicate soft toned Syd Barrett, or even Donovon, swoons a quite moving Beatlesque ode amongst the truly startling layers.
The almost acid fueled lyrics consist of only a few lines, yet somehow manage to convey more then enough and make sort of sense –
‘Jennifer your red hairs burning,
Yellow jokes come out of your mind’.
As the track moves into the chorus, of sorts, a descending run gives the flange absorbed backing and timing a slight kick, then returns to that familiar oscillating repetitive echoing theme.
After proceeding along at a numbing intoxicating pace, which sends you off into a relaxed state, the song changes into a more crunching distorted instrumental, that picks up a whole myriad of manic sounds on its journey to shaking us from our stupor.
It all ends with the arrival of an old fashioned barrel organ, that plays some traditional Bavarian tavern tune from a passed epoch in time, before slap dashingly stepping out of synch and exploding in a blaze of fuzz.
Side two opens its account up with the broody, looming and swaggering bass/drums combo introduction of ‘Just A Second’, strutting out from the stereo uninvited and ready to inflict some pain.
Wüsthoff picks out some unremitting piercing notes and displays a care free attitude, by unloading some killer deft guitar riffs of the heavy loaded variety and dropping chords wherever he sees fit – very cool.
Again as with most of these tracks, the mood shifts as swarms of galactic swamp insects converge on the studio, their dangerous white noise buzzing sucking the very life out of the band.
Esoteric atmospherics soon boil over, with a piano being launched down a flight of stairs and into the nightmarish caustic sea of ungodly spirits, whilst the rest of the band are drowned by some lurking macabre atavistic life forms, who emerge from the pool of asperity intent on dragging their prey with them.
Due to some mislabelling confusion, the next track should really be ‘Giggy Smile’ instead of ‘Picinic On A Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableux’ – this mix up appears on the CD versions and may also affect download versions too. Also it must be pointed out that Faust themselves use a different track list on their own site, for reasons of clarity I’m using the version I purchased in 2000.
‘Giggy Smile’ strides along, bouncing on a pumped up constant strafing bass line, which evokes those late 60’s west coast jazz-rock heads.
The vocals are pretty much quaint and jovial, seeming to play around with references to naked Germans and Burroughs own starkly bare lunch, as the guys wax about a certain tease, whose ‘giggy smile’ sends them overboard.
They shift the tempo and go all out on a redolent burst of Cream – if they’d been born in Munich – whilst punctuating the mood with just the merest hint of David Axlerod’s old worldly charm heroics.
A solo spot is reserved for the saxophone, that squeals and blows itself out by taking a chaotic detour, whilst Péron leads the band into another gear change, with merrily contorted rundowns and impressive feats of twiddling freeform bravado.
Percussive backing turns us onto an almost hurried dash through some whimsical medieval carry-on, as Wüsthoff strangles his guitar into submission.
The band find themselves unceremoniously cut-off in their prime at the end, as if the meter had run out on them.
‘Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableux’ begins with some studio banter before a romanticised acoustic guitar strums a wistful sonnet.
Tambourine, handclaps and laidback drums tap out a pleasing pulchritude love tryst, to the mid-tempo calm contemplative melody, that invokes images of J.A Waterhouse’s Victorian period Arthurian maidens.
Soon a lyrical prose is poetically crooned in the language of love – French of course – and a violin/flute combination waltz together, flirting with each other in the background and accompanied by a mouth organ, that sends the mood towards a Morricone film score.
An undulating low moody synth, or, organ slowly builds up an ambient atmospheric Eno type soundscape on the introductory tones of ‘Laüft…Heisst Das Es Laüft Oder Es Kommt Bald…Laüft’ – which doesn’t actually translate well, but loosely comes out as ‘run is called that it run or it comes soon run’.
Indolent and inspiring, waves of extra subtle sound are added, which leads to the distant echoes becoming louder, before melting away.
Some brief distorted harsher hums are added for just a moment before elegantly being subdued again.
Gently strummed acoustic guitars return to play out the final track, sounding evocative of Ziggy’ era Bowie, on ‘It’s A Bit Of A Pain’.
Nick Drake tones influence the vocal direction, as our protagonist repeats the same few lines of resigned indifferences to his plight-
‘It’s a bit of a pain,
To be where I am.
It’s a bit of a pain,
To be where I am,
But it’s all right now.’
A chanteuse of mystery takes over the vocal duties, reading out, rather then singing those same lyrics, though in a semi sultry German style.
Garbled flange assisted guitar sticks a fist into proceedings, signalling some sort of alert, every time it gets too comfortable and soulful.
Barely three minutes long, this relaxed ditty finishes the album on a highly accessible success.
It’s been said, that Faust IV manages to encompass and coalesce all the work that came before. Merging all those cut and paste heroics, experimental vignettes, epic freewheeling behemoths, startling laid bare nuances, anarchic scrapes and unworldly segue ways into one album, Faust quite possibly recorded their most serene volume of work.
Monolith Cocktail Monthly Playlist: August 2020: Secret Machines, Nosaj Thing, Charles Tolliver, Fliptrix, AUA…
August 28, 2020
PLAYLIST REVUE/Dominic Valvona/Matt Oliver/Brain ‘Bordello’ Shea
Join us once more for the most eclectic of musical journeys as the Monolith Cocktail compiles another monthly playlist of new release and recent reissues we’ve featured on the site, and tracks we’ve not had time to write about but have been on the radar.
The August edition kicks off with a blistering sunny-disposition Ron Gallo,space rock barrage returning Secret Machines and riotous Young Knives. Later on we’ve a host of jazz smarts from Stanley J. Zappa & Simo Laihonen, Charles Tolliver and Donny McCaslin.
As diverse as ever though, there’s a host of genres represented, including ‘Sufi Dub’ (Ashraf Sharif Khan & Viktor Marek) ‘after geography’ ambience (Forest Robots), ‘Eastern European femme fatal punk’ (Shishi) and ‘Euclid inspired polygon techno’ (Kumo).
Matt Oliver furnishes as ever with a host of choice hip-hop tracks from Fliptrix, Helsinki Booze Mercanhts, Loki Dope and Verb T.
There’s also a second despondent melodious grunge-y new wave rocker from the burgeoning talent that is Jacqueline Tucci. Something for everyone, more or less.
TRACKS
Ron Gallo ‘HIDE (MYSELF BEHIND YOU)’
Secret Machines ‘Everything’s Under’
Young Knives ‘Swarm’
Death By Unga Bunga ‘Trouble’
Shishi ‘OK Thx Bye’
Jacqueline Tucci ‘Sweeter Things’
Elian Gray ‘High Art’
Loki Dope ‘Have You Any Wool?’
Stanley J. Zappa & Simo Laihonen ‘E38 E 14th, City Of Piss, USA’
Charles Tolliver ‘Copasetic’
Nosaj Thing ‘For The Light’
Donny McCaslin ‘Reckoning’
VRITRA ‘CLOSER TO GOD’
Remulak & Type.Raw ‘Mad Skillz’
Vex Ruffin ‘Hinde Naman’
Mazi & Otarel ‘Staiy’
Fliptrix ‘Holy Kush’
Sausage Spine & Relentless Exquisite ‘Skin Diamond’
Verb T & Illinformed ‘Rotten Luck’
Pitch 92 & Lord Apex ‘Suttin’ In The Trunk’
Helsinki Booze Merchants ‘Tokyo Drift’
Fliptrix ‘Powerizm’
Diassembler ‘A Wave From A Shore’
Forest Robots ‘Over The Drainage Divide’
Mark Cale, Ines Loubet and Joseph Costi ‘Bodies Of Water’
Lucia Cadotsch, Otis Sandsjo, Petter Eldh ‘Azure’
Paradise Cinema ‘Possible Futures’
Only Now ‘Merciless Destiny’
J. Zunz ‘Four Women And Darkness’
Alan Wakeman, Gordon Beck ‘Chaturanga’
BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON ‘Numb’
Brian Bordello ‘Rock n Roll Is Dead’
The Hannah Barberas ‘W.Y.E.’
AUA ‘I Don’t Want It Darker’
Ashraf Sharif Khan & Viktor Marek ‘Drive Me On The Floor’
Harmonious Thelonious ‘Hohlenmenschemuziek’
Kumo ‘South African Euclid’
Cabaret Voltaire ‘Vasto’
Pons ‘Subliminal Messages’
Freak Heat Waves ‘Busted’
Constant Bop ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’
Josephine Foster ‘Freemason Drag’
John Howard ‘Injuries Sustained In Surviving’
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.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 