Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Reviews Roundup – Instant Reactions. All entries in alphabetical order.
Joel Cusumano ‘Waxworld’
Album (Dandyboy Records) 24th October 2025
I like this album. I was expecting the typical power pop tuneful bombast, which it does to a certain extent have, but with a slightly tattered heart that at times reminds me of what Blondie might have sounded like if they were fronted by Pete Perrett instead of the lovely Debbie – especially on “Through A Darkened Glass“. Waxworld is an entirely enjoyable listening experience, one I would recommend to all those power pop aficionados out there, as Joel Cusumano performs like he is Joel Cusumano and not a stars in the eyes Mathew Sweet.
John Howard ‘Kid In A Big World (The Prof Stone Remaster)’
Album (Think Like A Key Records) Released back in August 2025
Autumn is upon us and is the perfect season to discover or even rediscover this 50-year-old classic debut from one of Britain’s finest hidden treasures. Yes, John Howard‘s excellent debut has been remastered by Prof Stone, available from Think Like A Key Records Bandcamp as a download only.
Do I need to pontificate about the magic of this much written about debut. Probably not, but I will anyway. If Elton John was as good as people think he is, he would sound like this album. And John does not feel the need to sing in a phoney American accent or share Dame Edna’s stylist. Why he never made it as a chart regular and enlightened the screens of Saturday night tv in the seventies can only really be put down to the homophobia that existed in the 70’s especially in the upper offices of The BBC and as John never felt the need to hide the fact that he was gay (as Elton wisely career wise did).
Kid In A Big World is a wonderful record and should a hold a place both in all music lovers record collections and hearts … and if I was Amazon or Spotify or Youtube I would say if you enjoyed this album you might enjoy Hunky Dory, or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road or Year Of The Cat. And it deserves mentioning in the same breath.
The Legendary Ten Seconds ‘Ricardian Churchward’
Album – Released 2nd October 2025
I love Musical British Eccentrics (it takes one to know, so they say), and here we have a wham doozy of a release by The Legendary Ten Seconds. Imagine if you will, that Julian Cope had not taken drugs and only read Horrible Histories books and was influenced by The Monochrome Set, then he could well have made this album.
This is the kind of album that could one day (if enough people get to hear this gem of a release) become a bit of a cult classic. For it is a fine collection of psych folk Medieval indie-pop (is there such a thing). The only bad thing I can say about this release is that it’s not available as a CD, as it is one that I would happily add to my collection.
Legless Trials ‘American Russ Never Sleeps’
Single (Metal Postcard Records) Released 13th September 2025
More post punk glory from the Legless Trials. American Russ Never Sleeps pt 1 and pt2 is two tracks of Public Image Ltd styled smooth discord with an air of dubby splendour and chaotic lyricism that once again pokes holes into the flimsy facade of shittery that currently engulfs the world: like a bedtime story read to you by Michael Myers.
Picniclunch ‘snaxbandwitches’
Album – Released 13th October 2025
snaxbandwitches is an album of supreme post punk noisery, experimental fun and undoubtedly surprisingly tuneful. Think the Fall, early Pavement, Morphine (the band not the drug) and early Talking Heads but only if they had been in the pub since opening time and David Byrne had been replaced with someone less annoying.
This is the sound of the true alternative; the sound of a band who would not use a Rickenbaker guitar but an old Woolworths copy battered and played through a borrowed amp. Yes, this is the true spirit of the garage band; the true spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. This is a band who should join forces with The Legless Crabs and do a double headline tour of all the dives in America, and influence the current American underground. If I had a record label, I would sign them up.
Edward Rogers ‘Astor Place’
Album – Released 10th October 2025
I love warm sounding timeless, slightly unusual sounding pop albums and Astor Place is an unusual sounding pop album. Unusual in its joyful mash of psychedelia and rose tinged eloquent nostalgia, at times sounding like a true English gentleman narrating over a backdrop of a huge love-in from ‘67 and believe it or not, sadly it’s not ‘67 and that’s what is so unusual about this album that it would not sound out of place if it was, but not in a retro way just in its feeling and atmosphere, screaming guitars and cucumber sandwiches is it seems a match made in heaven. Hippy heaven even.
If Noel Coward made a psych album, I believe this is what it may have sounded like. And me being a huge Noel Coward fan and a lover of the whole fairytale of the summer of ‘67 I love it. He also name checks Tommy Steele in the lyrics, which for me makes this album slightly more fabulous than it already is.
Smash Palace ‘87’
Album – Released 10th October 2025
87 was supposed to be the second album from Smash Palace in 1987, but their label Epic dropped them before they got around to recording it and releasing it. So, what we have here is a strange beast: 5 of the songs have been rerecorded by the original band and the other five songs are the original studio demos recorded in the 80s. The five freshly recorded songs are bright and chirpy covered with an old MTV sheen, with guitars that jangle and guitars that strut like they are going out on a date with Keith Richards; songs, at times, that remind me of The Hoodoo Gurus and the Smithereens and other bands from the 80s of that ilk – the kind of bands VJ’S with mullets would introduce wearing shiny leather jackets and being all hip to go.
The other five are the real deal from the 80s recordings, not as shiny and bright but have the advantage or disadvantage, depending on how you feel about 80s major label production values, of having the atmosphere of that strange decade. The five 80s tracks one can imagine not being out of place on the Pretty In Pink soundtrack or The Breakfast Club or The Lost Boys…yes indeed, an album to soundtrack Molly Ringwald looking gorgeous.
Striped Bananas ‘Eternity Forest’
Album – Released 3rd October 2025
I always imagine that the married couple that make up the Striped Bananas live in a thatched cottage just outside some enchanted forest in upper Connecticut and spend their time weaving magic. For their music has a fairytale cartoon quality to its Psychedelia; it’s as if Lou and Nico had discovered and became addicted to candyfloss instead of Heroin.
Eternity Forest is a joyful beatastic trip of wonder and delight, an album full of melody, invention and fun; an album where guitars, Hammond organs and Theremin weave together to make one heavenly cartoon album of pure adventure. It’s like going on a daytrip to the fairground with the Banana Splits while having a playlist made up of Buffalo Springfield, The June Brides, The Velvet Underground the Archies and Strawberry Alarm Clock playing in transit. As the Beach Boys once eloquently put it: “it’s Fun Fun Fun”.
Vexations ‘A Dream Unhealthy’
Album (Cruel Nature Records) 17th October 2025
Vexations could well be your new favourite band. “A Dream Unhealthy” is a rather impressive beast of an album, five tracks of pure post psychedelic rock n roll, off kilter as hell and probably as hot, with almost spoken screamed vocals surfing on an explosion of noise frenzy. This album is worth hearing for the drumming alone, which is not to say that everything else about the band is not as equally as wonderful. They produce such a cavalcade of cavernous hypnotic spine-tingling beat poetry.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and the Shea family house band, the Bordellos, have a new single out on Metal Postcard Records this month called ‘The Village People In Disguise‘.
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.
For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones 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 or interest in. 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 say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
The Digest for April 2025: New Music/The Social Playlist
April 25, 2025
The Monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated new music review, and the Social Inter-Generational/Eclectic and Anniversary Albums Celebrating Playlist.
___/THE NEW___
Staraya Derevyna ‘Garden Window Escape’
(Ramble Records/Avris Media) 2nd May 2025
Pulling out of the historic district of St. Petersburg once more to conjure up an amorphous polygenesis-sourced hallucination, the pan-global Staraya Derevyna capture of diverse artists, led by the Israel/Ukrainian musician and sound engineer Gosha Hniu, wheel out the mechanical dream-machine on their latest estranged and avant-garde descriptive album Garden Window Escape.
Imagine Beefheart conducting the Sharmanko Kinetic Theatre, or Faust manhandling a pair of shearing buzzing shavers. Perhaps, the Plastic Beatniks warped mirage vision of Americana coming up against the sound worlds and the alternative pyschogeographic folk of Širom and La Tène. You can imagine the Red Crayola in Eastern Europe during the Medieval times, hanging out with CAN as they dish out their EFS series experiments whilst a languid Einstürzende Neubauten add their signature imaginings and post-punk industrial stirrings.
The imaginative hermitic workings and the transmogrified poetic works of the Russian polymath Arthur Molev that suffuse this latest release of performative and fantasy clockwork circus merges the mysterious with the murky, the atmospherics of alternative pastoral histories with the strained, strangulated and brassy textural wanes of bass clarinet, the flute and the cello, and the hidden source sounds of rope pulleys and cogs and levers that need oiling. For the icon Rus, the holy reimagined Rus is rewoven by the merry-go-round minstrels of Maya Pik, Ran Nahmias, Grundik Kasyansky, Miguel Pérez, Yoni Silver and Andrea Serafino to atheatre of esoteric poetry and dreams.
Who knows what it all means, but this collective always impress with their journeying and deeper connections to a sense of conceptualisation steeped in both the real and fantastical. Through the abstract and most emotive and surreal, every Staraya Derevyna is a revelation. And Garden Window Escapeis just as imaginative and evocative.
Michael Sarian ‘ESQUINA’
(Greenleaf Records) 25th April 2025
On the corner or a “corner”, albeit with a Spanish/Portuguese language entitled twist, the accomplished trumpeter, bandleader and composer Michael Sarian is imbued by the spirit of Miles Davis’s iconic 1972 LP – that and the electrified period that also took in Bitches Brew, Black Beauty and Agharta albums – on his latest album, ESQUINA.
Full of lunar mystery and dreamy mirages, Sarian traverses, hovers, inhabits and floats across a largely improvised vision of prog-jazz and jazz fusion; taking a different direction after a trio of albums that bordered more upon a chamber-jazz and acoustic sound. The same players now venture into territory mapped out so cosmically and exploratively by Jon Hassell, the Soft Machine, Nucleus, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock and the already mentioned Davis. In addition to the long form peregrinations that make up this three track album, the ensemble also transposes Portishead’s classic trip-hop track ‘Glory Box’; an influence for Sarian since he first heard it as a kid on its original release in the mid 90s, and here, transformed into a spacy soul-jazzy lounge vision of Pink Floyd and the El Michels Affair with the smooth melodic trumpet drifts and near sensitive expressions of Chat Baker and Kenny Dorman.
Back in the fold, now reconfigured and in a freeform mood of prompted celestial and hallucinatory dream experimentation and resonating gauze, noted Argentine pianist and composer Santiago Leibson probes, dabs, sustains Marion Brown bulb-like notes, galactic Davis sounds and Herbie Hancock effects, metallic and vibrating languages from the Hammond B3, the Mini Moog and Wurlitzer, Alaska born, NYC relocated in-demand bassist Marty Kenny offers near cosmic soulful bass lines, prog noodling and swamp funk undertones, and renowned Brooklyn-based drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell makes his way around the kit as he offers the subdued and descriptive and leaps of near d ‘n’ b-like breaks and cymbal splashes. As I said before, this is near lunar in its projection, on the edges of tripping out; at times, and as noted in the PR notes, sounding not too dissimilar to the work of Donny McCaslin. At other times it reminded me of Arve Henriksen. We are of course in the jazz fusion sphere of influence, but not quite indulgently prog enough to put people off.
Instead, we get a band escaping their surroundings, pepped up on electric Davis but not quite breaking out into the psychedelic funk boom-bap of that period. Dreaming and pushing an intuitive bond they conjure up an intergalactic dream of influences, musical genres as they enter another dimension. Tamed but adventurous, this is a group at their playful and inventive best.
iyatraQuartet ‘Wild Green’
11th April 2025
Imbibed by individually strong and impressive classical CVs and a shared experience of study at the Royal Academy of Music, the iyatraQuartet ensemble have previously merged a penchant for India and Arabia with European and closer-to-home influences from across time.
The last time I featured the quartet, back in 2020 with the Break The Dawn album, they gravitated towards India, both musically and religiously. The group’s name, pronounced “ey-at-ra”, is even taken from the Hindu expression for travel, “yatra”. It helps that the quartet’s co-founder and violinist maestro (to name just one instrument among her eclectic repertoire) Alice Barron studied South Indian violin techniques with the country’s star turn duo, the Mysore Brothers. And on this latest empirical and tapestry-come-alive thematic album of nature’s cycles and seasonal graces, Wild Green, you can hear the distinctive bellowed drone of that region’s Shruti box instrument on the title-track. As an indicator of the direction of travel and the scope of influences, this venerable, stirring choral fluctuated voiced sprouting of the pastoral was actually originally inspired by the noted historical European polymath figure of Hildegard of Bingen, better known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, who, apart from being a Benedictine abbess, founder of monasteries, a medical writer and practitioner, philosopher, mystic and visionary was also an influential composer of “monophony”, the simple musical form typically sung by a single singer or played by a single instrumentalist. In choir, or choral form as it is here, it usually means the ensemble of voices all singing the same melody. Incorporated within that framework is a vast swathe of traditional and folk music that counters subtle hints of those Indian foundations with the Medieval.
Either literally woven from a parchment canvas or played in the “wilds”, the garden idyllic, Barron, alongside George Sleightholme on clarinets, Rich Phillips on cello and Will Roberts on percussion (all four pitch in together voice wise), compose a greenery of Orcadians’ prayers, legendary tales of enchanted fish, lunar bound vibrations, Yuletide lullaby and the changing of the calendar seasons.
Beautifully pitched between the romantic languages of old Europe (the music box springs dance and love song ‘Beatriz’ is sung in the Medieval language of Occitan, which poured across borders from France into pockets of Spain, the valleys of Italy and Calabria) and vocalised expressions of the apparitional and banshee-like, the classical and atavistic, life is breathed into a rousing scenery. Celtic, Eastern European, the Baltics, the South American and fantastical are all entwinned on an album of minor rhapsody, the plaintive, yearned and near mysterious; the musicianship first rate as you’d expect, expressive, just as identifiable as it is obscured and used to sound out the growth of branches, seeds and flowers, the atmospheres of antiquity and a present reflection on nature, and the shrills, vibrations, looming arches and mists of imaginative storytelling. The voices, from across the ages, personify historical references and skill; illuminating and beatified in equal measures, with an ear for the classics, the folk-rock of the 1960s and early 1970s, various traditions, and the improvised.
This is living, breathing music that reflects the imaginative surroundings and themes of the ensemble as they mould chamber music, the classical, the pastoral, folklore and folk music to their own unique signature of the felt and stirring.
IOM ‘Spiritual Wastelands’
(Cruel Nature Records) 28th March 2025
Circulating, pulsing and dancing through the magnetic circuits of the inner body and mind, caught up in the chaotic stresses and violence of our current times, the latest album from the Spanish musician and sound designer Iker Ormazabal Martinez is powered by a caustic electricity and metallic industrial percussive tools.
Under the soloist guise of IOM, Martinez wields his EBM and industrial synth-techno influences to beat out and charge up a physical sonic response to modern existence. Wretched, sometimes near violent, but always with structure and rhythm, the nine concomitant pieces that make up the thematic whole of Spiritual Wastelands move between the darker club music of the German underground and the alien factories of dead industry.
From Basque country Vitoria to Catalonia Barcelona and a relocation in recent years to London, the granular guide of frazzled and force field gated electronica has merged his experiences as a keyboardist and sample-instigator for pop and rock groups, a musician with a company of Butoh dancers (originally a Japanese “dance of utter darkness” in which performers, usually covered in white paint makeup, intentionally use slow body movements and confront themes of darkness and transformation, but also far more radical and taboo subjects), and experimental electronic artist to create a vaporising density of tubular, barracking sheet metal dance music. Through the distress and clang of the pipes, the fizzled and machine reverberated, glimpses of trance-y light are found, and on the mystical voiced ‘Light’, featuring The Seer no less, there’s an obscured hint of Middle Eastern horns and a shrouded spiral of the Sufi against a darker churn of laboured drones and resonating steel.
Vocals sound near Germanic, or of that school, or go deep and near sinister; reminding me in part of Front 242 and NIN but put against sounds and rhythms and beats that err towards Basic Channel, Pan Sonic, Cabaret Voltaire and CABLE. The futuristic computerised and iterated saw brushed ‘Somatic Response’, sounds almost Kraftwerkian in comparison: perhaps a little Kriedler.
Mind and body yearning for spiritual guidance or a way out, react to the modern furnace on an album full of oomph and fried electricity. Does After releasing a variety of works on a myriad of labels, IOM finds the perfect pitch with Cruel Nature ever seldom put out an uninteresting or intriguing album.
Conrad Schnitzler ‘RhythmiCon’ and ‘Drei Kugeln’
(Flip-Flap) 29th March 2025
A leading, if often overlooked, progenitor of the Kosmiche and Krautrock eras, Conrad Schnitzler’s various stints as a founding member and instigator of the inaugural Kluster (forming the trio with fellow Zodiak Free Arts Lab stalwarts Hans-JoachimRoedelius and Dieter Moebius in 1969) and Tangerine Dream groups (an early member in 1970, he featured on the group’s debut LP Electronic Meditation) would reverberate throughout his solo and collaborative work, right up until his death in 2011. After more or less setting in motion an entire field of sound experimentation in the 1970s, by the 1980s Conrad had accumulated a strong body of work and was once again forming new bonds and ideas with Germany’s post-punk generation: integrating some of the more interesting ideas into his synthesizer-based modulations and soundscapes that would both echo and inform the German new wave and techno.
A Berlin stalwart and co-founder of the already mentioned and famous Zodiak Arts Lab, it would be Conrad’s contact with the leading performance and installation progenitor of that era, Jospeh Beuys, that helped form his early thinking and ideas of free play and experimentation. Leading, an admittedly amateur musician, to a both conceptual and playful method of exploration within the circuitry, cables, soundboards, switches and apparatus of electronic and analogue fields of sound development and rhythm. None more so than with this double-bill of unearthed album selections from the Flip-Flap label; a special platform set up in 2021to release a limited-edition series of selective works personally chosen by Conrad himself. A while back, it was the Hamburg-based, all-things German electronica, label Bureau B that seemed to have the role of releasing his recordings from the vaults and lab; some of which featured reworks, and finishing touches by the artist/musician/producer Kurt Dahlke (a founding member of D.A.F. and Der Plan of course), under his Pyrolator alias. But, seemingly, picking up the baton, this enterprise revives that body of work, previously left dormant or sealed behind closed doors.
The first album of which, Rhythmicon, is, as that title suggest, a selection of tracks focussed on the play and kinetic chain reactionary experiments of prompted, set in motion and manipulated rhythmic constructions. As part of my research, I’ve looked that album title up and found that it actually references an electro-mechanical musical instrument of the same name, designed and built by Leon Theremin for composer Henry Cowell. It was intended, so the Wikipedia entry goes, “to reveal connections between rhythms, pitches and the harmonic series.” A further description: the Rythmicon “used a series of perforated spinning disks, similar to a Nipkow disk, to interrupt the flow of light between bulbs and phototoreceptors aligned with the disk perforations. The interrupted signals created oscillations which were perceived as rhythms or tones depending on the speed of the disks. It generated both pitches and rhythms and has been described as a precursor of drum machines.”
I take it that this apparatus signals Conrad’s own idiosyncratic rhythm productions, created over an eighteen-year period from 1982; now collected together for an hour-plus album of strange, modulated shapes, reverberations, chemistry, neutrons, rays, bounces and tubular metallic cosmic dances and playful techno visions made on some orbiting spacelab.
Part futuristic, part tribal, part alien, part chemistry, part hypnotically entrancing and part new wave, Conrad sometimes leads and sometimes absorbs the current trends, the evolution taking place within electronic music during the pivotal 80s and 90s periods. And so, you can hear echoes of Luke Slater, Rob Hood, Autechre, Populaire Mechanik (the brainchild of fellow Berlin-based musician/drummer Wolfgang Seidel, who actually collaborated with Conrad during the Zodiak Lab days and was inspired to form the mechanic group as a consequence), Kriedler, Basic Channel and on the “7:51” track (all tracks are named after their duration in minutes and seconds) a touch of OMD’s debut album.
Intentionally made to be simple, there is however a lot of sophistication and skill in these often off-kilter rhythmic reactions; the art and skills of constant movement and drum machine-like patterns really mesmerising and spacy, but near skeletal industrial and machine made too with particles bouncing around and various symbiotic shapes forming.
By contrast, the second album to transmit from the Flip-Flap facilitators, Drei Kugeln, is more about the soundscape and the atmosphere. A continuous soundtrack in a manner, the thirty tracks that make up this both mysterious and alien visitation from the reaches of some science-fiction evoked off-world, subtly build or change a thematic sound palette of hidden metallic sources, force fields, paranormal activity, reversals, signals, lost and found transmissions and near choral passages of space awe and venerable breath.
Channelling past experiments with Tangerine Dream and other such congruous nebula searching and invoking kosmische music projects, but mythology and technology too, Conrad brings mystique to his deep investigations and chilled solar wind breathed vortex transformation of inner and outer space. Aboard a supernatural space freighter, or sucked into the very machine itself, Drei Kugeln is a very rare sonic immersive experience with plenty of interesting, explorative changes and feelings of both the uncertain and dreamy.
This is a great package and showcase for an innovator who is sadly missed and often forgotten in the story of electronic and analogue evolution. Proving just as fresh, alive and futuristic as the day they were recorded, these experiments perfectly balance out the more rhythmic encounters of the first album. Both releases are perfect examples of Conrad’s art form and constant motivation to explore and experiment. Nothing short of revelations from a back catalogue and library of electronic play and inventiveness that needs to be in the public realm and celebrated. Don’t choose, but put both releases on your wish list.
___/THE SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOLUME 96__
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 now, Volume 96 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.
Each month I mark the passing of those artists we’ve recently lost, and during the last four weeks both Clem Burke (an oft Mod Ramone for the kicks, stalwart and force behind Blondie, and numerous collaborations, sit-ins) and David Thomas (the iconic frontman of the cult Pere Ubu).
In the Anniversary albums category, there’s tracks from Joan Baez’s Diamonds & Rust (released 50 years ago this mont), Roland Haynes’ 2nd Wave (another 50th), Prince’s Around The World In A Day (40 years old this exact week), the Aphex Twin’s …I Care Because You Do (30 this month), Pavement’s Wowee Zowee (also 30 this month), the Tindersticks celebrated self-titled LP of 1995, and The Books’ Lost And Safe (20 this month).
Amongst a selection of tracks from across the ages, the genres, and from across the world, there’s a smattering of recentish tracks from MC Paul Barman, Che Noir, Marcelo D2, Eiko Ishibasi and Leah Neal.
__/TRACKLIST____
Blondie ‘Dreaming’
Pere Ubu ‘Modern Dance’
Leah Neal ‘Down On The Freeway’
Joan Baez ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’
Eiko Ishibasi ‘Trial’
Che Noir ‘Bow And Arrow’
Erick Cosaque ‘An madam cadimalade’
Roland Haynes ‘2nd Wave’
MC Paul Barmen ‘Pearl Of Light’
Prince ‘America’
Pavement ‘Fight This Generation’
Pere Ubu ’49 Guitars And One Girl’
Aphex Twin ‘Next Heap With’
The Books ‘Vogt Dig For Kloppervok’
Marcelo D2 ‘LUCIDEZ
Agincourt ‘Going Home’
Tindersticks ‘No More Affairs’ The Anderson Council ‘Do You Remember Walter’
Kak ‘Electric Sailor’
Suburban Studs ‘PUTIN’S BOMB’
Blondie ‘Love At The Pier’
Autosalvage ‘Rampart Generalities’
Buffalo ‘Ballad Of Irving Fink’
Robert Dick ‘Third Stone From The Sun’
Blondie ‘Kung Fu Girl’
Chandra ‘Get It out of Your System’
Pere Ubu ‘Love Is Like Gravity’
Thee U.F.O ‘Kranke Schussel’
Romeo Void ‘Six Days and One’
Teisco ‘Vision of Shore’
Now For The Pleading:
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones 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 or interest in. 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 say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA’S REVIEWS ROUNDUP – INSTANT REACTIONS.
Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available to purchase now
Aiden Baker & Stefan Christoff ‘Januar’
ALBUM (Cruel Nature Records) 25th October 2024
Januar is a five-part suite of heartfelt improvised musical interplay, a heart play if one likes; an album of minimalistic experimental ambience; a conversation between piano and guitar electronic tonal seduction. Importantly Januar was recorded live in the studio, so capturing the emotion and power of Baker & Christoff‘s performance.
The five tracks weave a becoming slow dance of meditation lulling one into a dreamlike state and letting the waves of pure bliss wash over you leaving you mesmerised and in awe of the fragility and beauty of the music. Januar is an artful bewitching delight of improvised brilliance.
Bell Monks ‘Watching The Snow Fall’
ALBUM (Wayside & Woodland) 1st November 2024
Is slowcore-indie-hipster-post-jazz a musical genre? If not, it doesn’t matter as that is how I am describing this rather beautiful album of, well…slowcore-indie-hipster-post-jazz. What does slowcore-indie-hipster-post-jazz sound like? Well, it sounds like the Bell Monks. Okay, imagine The Cure and Low and the Postal Service and Red House Painters having a cravat wearing competition, or party even, and sipping on a sherry in dimmed lights and recording whilst their wives and kids are sleep. Yes, it is all hushed tones, hushed deep vocals and general blue moods.
How could it not be beautiful, it’s called “Watching The Snow Fall” after all. And is indeed an album to close the curtains to and lock yourself away from the cold and the outside pressures of life.
Broken Candles ‘Falling Asleep In The Sky’
ALBUM (Cruel Nature Records) 25th October 2024
I wonder, does the ghost of Elliott Smith roam this land taking hold of the imaginations and musings of the wandering minstrel, the heartbroken troubadour, as I feel he certainly means a great deal to the life of Broken Candles as this album contains ten songs of supreme sadness steeped in a melancholy prose that Elliott Smith would be proud of.
I’m not saying that Broken Candles is a Smith copyist, just that he walks the same winding path of sadness and hope. Both have beautiful voices and the gift of writing sublime melodies.
“Falling Asleep In The Sky” is an album of pure stillness and beauty.
Cosmopaark ‘Backyard’
EP (Howlin’ Banana Records)
The Backyard EP is five tracks of extremely easy on the ear catchy indie pop/shoegaze, and of course nothing that one has never heard before, but there is nothing wrong with that. Cosmopaark do this shoegaze business with enough enthusiasm and aplomb that lovers of this kind of soundtrack to looking at your shoes business will no doubt lap it up and enjoy it so much that they’ll be heading down to Clarkes to get themselves a new pair of sandals to stare at whilst listening.
Ex Norwegian And Friends ‘Sing Wistle Tunes’
ALBUM
Sing Wistle Tunes is a tribute to the late John Entwistle, of course former bassist with The Who. And this is an album of his songs written by the great man, performed by the wonderful Ex Norwegian and friends.
I must say I’m not a huge Who fan. I loved them from 1965 up until Tommy (1968) and then I found them a bit hit and miss [never really got on with Roger Daltrey and his vocal histrionics]. So, I’m not a man who is too precious about the band and their musical output. But saying that, I find this an enjoyable romp through songs I’m not overly familiar with, taking in melody filled tracks of psych-tinged power pop and alt rock. Highlights there are many, and I must point out one of them is the quite wonderful drumming on all the Ex Norwegian tracks [somebody buy that drummer a drink]. John Howard performs with almost Beach Boys like beauty the song “What Are We Doing Here”, which is all harmonic 70s like filled grace, and “When I Was A Boy”, where Ex Norwegian is joined by Fernando Perdomo, which is a self-celebratory delight of psych pop wonder. There are many gems on this album, and I’d recommend it to you if you love The Who, or don’t really care, as it’s an album of fine pop.
High Wasted Genes ‘Skatepark’
SINGLE
I like this single. I like the 80s like synth power chords and the beguiling nostalgia of the lyrics; it paints a picture of the happier trouble-free times of your youth, hanging out with your friends in the sunshine and trying to unpeel the apple of your eye. A song steeped in heartfelt pop wisdom.
The Junipers ‘Imaginary Friends’
ALBUM
The Junipers…now then, if I’m not mistaken my band The Bordellos once appeared on a compilation album alongside these lovely lads. The Future Is Bright The Future Is Cloudy or vice versa. Anyway, a fine compilation from many years ago. But I digress once again.
What we have here is the fourth album from the group, and what a cracking little pop gem it is. An album of pure pop, the kind Macca and Gilbert O Sullivan used to make in the early seventies, with a touch of pure 60s pop harmony magic that The Zombies would no doubt write home to their mothers about, and playful psych undertones that yearns for the day when London used to swing and Russ Sainty used to loiter outside the Bag O Nails with that bunch of dandies The First Impression. Imaginary Friends is a wonderful album filled with quite wonderful songs. And is really made for your record collection.
The Loved Drones ‘Live at Atelier Rock HUY’
ALBUM
Welcome to the live sonic space rock world of the quite wonderful Loved Drones, a band that takes psych, post-punk and space rock to new and cosmically dizzy heights.
Recorded live in Belgium this year it’s a perfect introduction to anyone who has not yet had the pleasure to lay ears on the band.
The album kicks off with the quite excellent “Dirt & Leaves”, which is all Fall like lead guitar riffs, sonic ambiance and Julian Cope like 2 car garage like rock ‘n’ roll [I told you they were good].
The Loved Drones have a power and an all-round likability and uniqueness that all the great bands have. They are a band who plough their own furrow through live casting off tangent animal shapes at the sun, raising two fingers to the lack of talent and originality that currently is forced upon us by the mainstream radio and press. The Loved Drones are quite wonderful.
“The Hindenburg Omen” is a instrumental that a blockbuster film should be made just so it can be included on the soundtrack, and “Human’s Can’t Compete” once again is brimming with a Cope-like magnificence. These eight live tracks show what a great band we have in our mists and really should be heard and appreciated by all us music lovers who love mind bending space hopping cosmic musical delights.
Occult Character ‘Swifties’
EP (Metal Postcard Records)
There is a darkness about this EP that I find quite enlightening. Four very short tracks that capture the slight unhinged mess of the times we find ourselves in. I have written about Occult Character many times over the years and the more I hear, the darker and twisted his music seems to become.
He is a modern-day musical folk anti-hero: part Woody Guthrie part Walmart Eminem. He is a one off, and he captures the mood of America; not always in what he is saying, but how he is saying it, and with the atmosphere that surrounds his music.
Occult Character is a very important musical artist and one day he will be discovered, receiving the acclaim he richly deserves. He may not always be easy to listen to but is always fascinating.
Pound Land ‘Live At New River Studios/ Worried’
ALBUM (Cruel Nature Records) 25th October 2024
This new album by Pound Land is a double whammy of an affair. The first side recorded live, captures the band without guitar but with a rather fetching squelching punk rock synth suppling the health out of the watching masses.
Pound Land are of course a punk and post punk rock outfit of political magnitude. A band that captures the atmosphere of living in this divided land we call the United Kingdom and make a hell of a fine racket while capturing the atmosphere as the live side of this cassette magically proves. The second side is taken up by the thirty-one-minute track, “Worried”, which is a fine sonic journey of sadness, horror and experimental splendour that takes in dub, punk, and electro soundscapes; a dream of a nightmare track that really needs to be heard by all.
Salem Trials ‘Big Bad King’
SINGLE
The Salem Trials are back with a fuzzed distorted post-punk slice of punk rock. Yes, two tracks of pure unadulterated alternative pop frenzy with melodies bathed in menace and slightly gone off honey. Yes a honey larynx explosion of pure spite and delight, in that order.
The Smashing Times ‘Mrs. Ladyships And The Cleanerhouse Boys’
TRACK
I really like this track. Imagine if you will the early Go Betweens deciding to go all 60s: just pre psychedelic pop. It’s all 12-string guitar chime but played by someone who is slightly down on life, a melancholic haze of happy memories and flat beer. If this song was a girlfriend, it would be a keeper. But I bet your mum would not approve, but your dad would.
Juanita Stein ‘Mother Natures Scorn’
SINGLE (Agricultural Audio)
What I really like about this little beauty of a song is the stripped backline of it. No drums, no bass, just electric guitar and beautiful harmony, it gives the song room to breathe and to draw you into the soundscape fragility, and to bask in the fading sun quality of the song. A lovely little thing indeed.
The Striped Bananas ‘Flowers In The Air’
SINGLE – 25th October 2025
“Flowers In The Air” is a bit of a gem, all sixties Hammond organ prose and garage flower beat, the sound of Neil Young Jamming with the Strawberry Alarm clock in the hope of making the perfect single to spread the message of free love and discotheque flashback ecstasy.
Swansea Sound ‘Toxic Energy’
SINGLE (Skep Wax (UK), Formosa Punk (Germany) and Sm. Craft Advisory (US))
“Toxic Energy” is an imagined duet between the late great Terry Hall and the ‘I have no idea what his time keeping is like but there is nothing great about him apart from what a great nasty piece of work he is’ Elon Musk.
And a fine single it is too. A song full of vim and vigour and annoying urgency and indeed energy, and the energy is indeed toxic as I am currently doing laps around the living room trying to lasso Reilly the cat. I’m sure “Toxic Energy” will be lighting up the alternative airwaves over the next few weeks. It should come with a health warning.
Our Daily Bread 620: John Howard, SWIFTUMZ, MAbH…
June 21, 2024
BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA’S REVIEW SECOND REVIEWS ROUNDUP OF MAY – INSTANT REACTIONS.
UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE ALL RELEASES CAN BE PURCHASED RIGHT NOW
SCHØØL ‘N.S.M.L.Y.D’
(Géographie)
Baggy drumbeats from the late eighties and shoegaze guitars, are we watching Snub TV? No it seems that the past is once again the present in this ever-evolving circle of not evolving at all. N.S.M.L.Y.D is actually a pretty catchy little number with a nagging keyboard riff that elevates it from the good to the quite good stakes. If this was the late eighties/early 90s it would have a good chance to making the bottom end of the top 40 and a fleeting appearance on the Chart Show.
John Howard ‘Currently/ I am Not Gone’
5th July 2024
The new single from John Howard is a beautiful thing. Two songs that take you back to the days when songwriters used to write simple melodic songs that would appear magically on the radio and brighten your day. The days when you could pick up the song you heard on the radio from your local record shop, or the record department from one of the bigger stores like Boots or Woolworths, on 7-inch vinyl; and you would not have to sell your grandma’s China to be able to afford it. Ah those where the days we of a certain age remember with a tear in our eye. And why am I babbling on about memories from old you may ask, and not writing beautiful prose about the new John Howard single? Well I am, because that is the beauty and magic John has, the power to weave with his music. He has the bewitchery to take one back on a melancholic magic carpet ride to the days of record store dust and memories of old friends and lovers and celebrate the bittersweet beauty of still being alive and finding wonder in the simple everyday things we in younger years would not have noticed. Hopefully people of all ages will find the simple pleasure and wonder in these two rather touching ballads.
Yea-Ming and The Rumours ‘I Can’t Have It All’
(Dandy Boy Records)
For some reason I thought I had already reviewed this fine album, but I have not; it must be the latter stages of middle age setting in. Either way this album by Yea-Ming and The Rumours [not to be confused with Graham Parker and The Rumours] is quite a lovely steeped-in-summer indie pop album with beautifully constructed pop songs all lushly strummed acoustics and some quite lovely twangy guitar lead lines. Lovers of the Gentle Waves and bands of that ilk will indeed find this album extremely appealing: as do I.
Neutrals ‘New Town Dream’
This is splendid stuff, an album of supreme guitar jangle, of well written and catchy songs about life in a small town that at times musically reminds me of early Wedding Present and The Pastels with such wonderfully British lyrics; although I wonder when “Travel Agents Window’s” was written as he mentions buying a bag of chips for 50p, when was the last time you managed to buy a bag of chips for 50p? Maybe life in this small town isn’t as bad as the Neutrals think. I do love this album though. I love the romance of everyday life songs, like little mini Kitchen sink dramas filmed in grainy black and white. This is quite a gem of an album.
SWIFTUMZ ‘Simply The Best’
(Empty Cellar) 14th June 2024
I recently had the misfortune to hear the new Jesus and Mary Chain album; an album that lacked their normal magic: in fact it was quite dull. It was missing what this album has in troves, which is sparkling guitar pop songs, songs that jangle and chime with a wild abandon and ballads that are sincere and quite beautiful, like ‘Second Take’, a Sparklehorse like treasure of a track, or the Alex Chilton like ‘For Bucher’.
Simply The Best is a prime example of the magic that can be achieved when making Bedroom Pop. It has a warmth and invention, which when done well cannot not be matched for heart and soul, and SWIFTUMZ does it very well indeedy.
MAbH (Mortuus Auris & the Black Hand) ‘Wolves, Windows And Curtains’
(Cruel Nature Records) 28th June 2024
From your mother’s cunt to the coffin is an experience we all have. An experience filled with laughter, tears, love and heartbreak; of times of pure and utter despair to times of great happiness. And if we are lucky, the good will outweigh the bad.
In times when we are living, or at least surviving, through the bad, the good times can seem like they have never happened: just a brief dream someone else has told you about. It’s like they have never happened to you, and sometimes the happy memories just drive the nail into your skull, into your heart kicking you between the legs, telling you, taunting you just how shit life is at this time. We have all been there: if you haven’t, then you have never experienced life in its all so tragically naked beauty. MAbH has experienced this, and through this dark work of spoken word tonal poems lets you into the black precipice he currently resides.
Score ‘Temporary Arrangement’
(Cruel Nature Records) 28th June 2024
This is an enjoyable instrumental romp through the sounds of a distance past. Instrumental tracks that bring to mind the drunken early mornings of watching Ceefax and job finder, awaiting for the oncoming treat of sleep or to the soundtrack to some straight to video bad movie. This fine album captures all that is magical from the instrumental glory that is a cheap Casio keyboard, guitar, bass and a fertile imagination.
Brian Bordello and The Bordellos newest album compilation, The Lo-Fi Psych Sounds Of The Bordellos, is available now on Bandcamp and Spotify, via Metal Postcard Records.
Bandcamp Link
Our Daily Bread 607: John Howard, James P M Phillips, Corduroy Institute, Charlie Butler…
January 18, 2024
A ROUNDUP OF REVIEWS FROM BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA
__/SINGLES\__
Heskey ‘Crack In The Mirror’
Do you like Teenage Fanclub and bands of tuneful guitar strum? If so you are going to enjoy this blissful pop song of tunesmithery; it has all the ingredients one would want for such a release; if it was fish and chips it would just have the right amount of salt and vinegar.
John Howard ‘Safety In Numbers/In The Light Of Fires Burning’
(Kool Kat Music)
The brand new single from John Howard is upon us and it is a double A-sided thing of nostalgic beauty, two brief glimpses of how songs where written and performed, with a pop eloquence that sadly seems mostly a thing of the past. To kick things off we have “Safety In Numbers”, a sublime pop ballad that brings to mind The Beach Boys in their Pet Sounds days; wonderful harmonies drift upon a sea of piano tranquility. The second little pop gem is “In The Light Of Fires Burning”, which again is another nostalgic gem a song that captures the magic and sadness of growing old whilst celebrating your youth and memories through the joys of pop song: A song worthy of Sedaka at his finest.
Liam Gallagher & John Squire ‘Just Another Rainbow’
I was expecting nonsense I will be honest, but was taken aback by just what an explosion of nonsense it was. We have John “I have all the Led Zep albums on vinyl, cd and cassette” Squire showing he knows all the chords, and he has six strings, and he is going to play everyone of them with as little subtlety as possible. He has seen rock school. He knows how it goes. Is it original? No, we have heard it all before. Is it good? No. Did I want the monstrosity to stop? Yes! Not to be outdone by John “I have all the Led Zep albums on vinyl cassette, cd and 8 track” Squire, we have Liam ‘I have done poo poo’s in my pants” Gallagher once again demonstrating his vocal prowess; the singing like he has just been told off by his mum vocal emoting. And to show that he is not going to be outdone by John “I have every Led Zep album on vinyl, cassette, cd, 8 track and download” Squire he decides to demonstrate how he knows the names of all the colours in the laugh out loud badness of the lyrics. I once wrote that the Oasis song “Little James” could be the worst song ever written by a grown up. Well, maybe not any longer. It is a close run thing. So for that, Squire and Gallagher should be proud.
___[ALBUMS]___
James P M Philips ‘Spite, Bile & Beauty’
(Turquoise Coal)
Punk, folk, rock and a medieval becoming strangeness all collide to bring us another album of psychedelic whimsy from the head and heart of James P M Phillips: an album of joy, sadness, humour and pain. Whether it be the quite wonderfully disturbingly jagged “My Head Is Full Of Rats” or the quite beautiful folk strum of “My New Friend”, James has his own unique way of making music and writing songs; dipping his own original thought patterns into a hybrid of musical genre hopping eccentricity. And it is pleasure to listen to an album of short snippets of musical madness and joy.
The Incurables ‘Inside Out & Backwards’
(Big Stir Records)
It does make me smile when middle-aged men sing about growing up, as The Incurables do on the first track ‘When I Grow Up’. As I well know, middle-aged men who play in bands never grow up; that is the power and magic of music and long may it continue.
The Incurables are a punk pop band that performs punk pop well, and at times they remind me of Green Day but without the annoying singer and with a more bubblegum sometimes New York Dolls feel, and some quite wonderful Batman bass riffs: in fact, some just wonderful bass riffs. This music is no longer going to change the world but sadly I cannot see any music anymore doing that, but The Incurables have their place and that place is in any pop punkers record collection.
Corduroy Institute ‘Take A Train To Manchester’
I have taken a train journey to Manchester many times in my life and none have been as enjoyable or as interesting as this, or indeed, as experimental – is it possible to take an experimental train journey I wonder? Anyway, the title track is a wonder: imagine Funkadelic being sucked into a video game whilst Delia Derbyshire juggled fruit. And from there we are taken on a long and dreamlike journey, calling at stops that are both rewarding and disturbing in a good way.
“[A] Girl Named Philosophy” is a bass heavy vacuum of Scott Walker like lust and mystery – just how much I miss that man and his artistry. And I could be wrong, but Scott could be a big influence on the excellently named Corduroy Institute: at least they are reading from the same book or singing from the same hymn sheet.
I love how the Corduroy Institute take jazz, pop, classical and funk and mold it into a warm expression of artistic splendicity; from at times sounding like Japan tuning up – not the band I might add, but the whole country -, and you opening your eyes and seeing life for the first time for what it is: full of love, hate, sadness and joy. An album of supreme aural wonder, and next time you take a train to Manchester soundtrack it with this.
Orchard Til You Fall Down
(Cruel Nature Records)
Punk rock is alive and well and living in Cruel Nature Records. Another ltd edition cassette delight of lo-fishness from the label that offers you all kinds of alternative delights; this time supplying us with ram jam bag of indie punk experimental joy. With mostly just guitar and drums, and occasional bass, and some fine vocals it reminds me at times of early Siouxsie and The Banshees. And, with all its beautiful post punk starkness, takes you back to an old dive of a small venue that was full of cheap booze, cig smoke and battered leather jackets and dreams of your youth when the world offered the chance to make a difference and the future was coloured in the shade of weekly music papers and John Peel on the radio and local bands blowing your minds on a weekly basis. Til You Fall Down is an album of old hopes remembered: a beauty of a release.
Charlie Butler ‘Wild Fictions’
(Cruel Nature Records) 1st February 2024
Are you all fuzzed up and ready to take that trip to the local magic carpet store and fly your purchase home, but not first deciding to stop by the local fields to pick a few magic mushrooms to pop into your grannies soup and watch her explode into a explosion of rainbow colours, which Liam Gallagher will then tell you the names of as he is good like that – he knows all the names, he is a clever boy, it won’t be long before he’s been toilet trained. You then decide to soundtrack this event by popping the brand new cassette into your hi-fi that the postman has delivered riding on his old 70s vintage chopper bike; the cassette has been posted by some kind wizard who works at Cruel Nature Records, and you are more than delighted by the magic the tape emits; the sound of all your yesterday’s rolled into four slices of psychedelic keyboard frenzy that slow dances with some augmented guitar. Oh how the soup is warm and refreshing; like how your granny is warm and refreshing, her skin surfing with delight at every organ chime; a lovely of ladybirds sit outside your window marvelling at the aural majesty not heard since the golden days of the Spacemen 3 and those long summer days daisy hopping. The music is all that you hoped it would be, for music without hope is hopeless and this is anything but that; it is the cream cake among lesser mortals.
Fran Ashcroft ‘Songs That Never Were’
(Think Like A Key)
There is magic afoot, a warm kind of musical magic; a treasure trove of forgotten emotions that are plucked and streamed from the past 50 years and gathered together in the form of the greatest of artforms; songs that explode with a cheeky nod and a wink to our musical past, our musical heritage. Yes indeed, Fran Ashcroft has given us a strange and warm sounding album.
All the music that I’ve heard Fran has had a hand in producing is always steeped in a loving glow: From the excellent “Waiting For A Britpop Revival” – a song Luke Haines would sell his left arm to have written – to the McCartney like “I Believe In You” – a song worthy of the Pete Ham album “7 Park Avenue”.
There is a uniqueness about this album; a trueness and soul you do not come across often much in these days of music to be played on phones. These are songs that could have been written anytime over the last 50 or so years, with some quite beautiful melodies and great lyrics; songs made for and by a music lover…already one on my end of the year best list.
Cumsleg Borenail ‘…Plays The Beatles’
I am a huge Beatles fan and this album captures all the magic and experimental forward thinking music the Beatles recorded. These are some of the finest and well thought out and performed covers of well known classics; songs you can hear everyday by turning on the radio can eventually sound stale, but these have been reworked and reimagined to such a degree that they would have the avant-garde young 60s Macca waving his thumbs in delight. This is an album to be heard and cherished by all Beatles fanatics.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 