Our Daily Bread 403: Bastien Keb ‘The Killing Of Eugene Peeps’
October 7, 2020
Album Review/Dominic Valvona

Bastien Keb ‘The Killing Of Eugene Peeps’
(Gearbox Records) 9th October 2020
The soundtrack to an American-noir-meets-Jackie Brown-meets-cross-continental-cult-60s movie that’s playing out in the head of Sebastian Jones, this ambitious suite of partly lulled and narrated cinematics, instrumentals and set pieces is as diaphanous as it is mournful. With a wide lens Jones (under the nom de plume of Bastien Keb) languidly drip feeds his fatigued melancholy, anxieties and deepest thoughts through a sorry tale of death and despair; as unveiled by a gonzo/Burroughs monologue style gumshoe, and sung, cooed by a fragile soul.
An ode we’re told to Italian Gallo paperbacks on screen, crime flicks of many other kinds and French New Wave cinema, The Killing Of Eugene Peeps mixes genres and influences up into a nostalgic opus that also has something to say about the draining mental stresses and indolent fatalism of the modern world too. Jones, using music as some kind of therapeutic outpouring, impressively managed to find the strength and will to create this impressive (if downbeat and aching) album whilst working a hard slog in a warehouse each night: The exhausting effects of which Jones says turned him into a zombie for a year.
The talented multi-instrumentalist, apart from guest spots by Kenneth Viota, Cappo and Camille Imogues, even played, recorded and produced this whole album single-handedly.
A work in three parts (the film score, soundtrack and incidental music), the dead-body-in-the-room Peeps is not so much told as a murder mystery but dissected in the form of soliloquys and resigned derisions on how this sad tragic event unfolded.
There’s plenty of title riffing on those crime flick inspirations, and musically Jones uses a leitmotif of nods to Lalo Schifrin, Issac Hayes, Alessandro Alessandroni and Krzysztof. A recurring San Fran/New York 70s detective movie and TV sound can he heard on the opening ‘Main Title’, which sounds like Hayes conducting an elegiac Corleone death march side-by-side with a New Orleans band, as a proto Tom Waits drawled figure narrates our city skyline information. Yet musically Jones moves on with the very next track, the soulful oozing pained ‘Lucky (Oldest Grave)’, which has an air of both a choral Clouddead (especially Yoni Wolf) and TV On The Radio about it. Sometimes the vocals are double-tracked, with one track being slurred as to sound almost drugged and lethargic. By the time we reach ‘Theme for An Old Man’ the brass and timpani detective noir is mixed seamlessly with jazz, soul and trip-hop (imagine Four Tet playing around with Portishead). And then the dreamy fluty gauze of ‘All That Love In Your Heart’ evokes some kind of 60s Italian or French flashback.
Echoes of dub, vibes, Ethno-jazz, Bernard Estardy, Miklos Roza, James Reese And The Progressions, Curtis Mayfield and hip-hop follow. Deft Nottingham rapper Cappo switches the narrative and sound, letting loose to a zappy 70s cult score with a consciousness left to roam freely flow on the ominous ‘Paprika’. A jazzy vision of Mike Patten and Jean-Claude Vannier’s creative partnership one moment, a wah-wah soul maverick cop score the next, Jones eclectic musicianship produces a modern noir both poignant and clever. All those various strands are pulled together for a sophisticated despair and eulogy, but also curiosity. This is a most beautiful, ambitious if often traumatic inquiry of a fully released drama, a filmic album of great depth and scope that has Jones channel his personal struggles to the soundtrack of poignant drama.
Perusual #012: The Singles, Tracks, Videos & Oddities Roundup: Ammar 808, Jon Hassell, Kamo Saxo, Itchy-O, Tony Price
June 16, 2020
New Music Of Interest Style Roundup/Dominic Valvona
The Perusal is my regular one-stop chance to catch up with the mounting pile of singles, EPs, mini-LPs, tracks, videos and oddities that threaten to overload the Monolith Cocktail’s inboxes each month. A right old mishmash of previews, reviews and informative inquiry, this weeks assortment includes Ammar 808, Jon Hassell, Itchy-O, Kamo Saxo and Tony Price.
Ammar 808 ‘Marivere Gati (featuring SUSHA )’
(Glitterbeat Records) Single/12th June 2020
“Except you, Divine mother, who else in this earth is to protect us ?
The ones who fall on your feet, giving up completely their ego,
you protect them, take care of them.
Meenakshi I believe in you.”
Dropping out of the nowhere, the latest trailblazing syncopation of transformed futuristic Pan-Maghreb languages, rhythms and ceremony from the leading producer Sofyann Ben Youssef expands the sonic horizons to collaborate with the Carnatic singer Susha.
Converging under Youssef’s most free spirited of electronic projects AMMAR 808, the signature propulsive TR-808 bass and warped effects of that alias meet with the alluring, buoyant spinning tabla driven devotional music of southern India, on the first single to be released from the forthcoming ‘Global Control / Invisible Invasion’ album. An ode to the goddess Meenakshi, who is an avatar of Parvati, the Hindu goddess of Fertility, love, and devotion, this hypnotizing throbbing fusion paves the way for an ever evolving and worldly sonic adventure.
Related from the Archives:
Ammar 808 ‘Maghreb United’ Album Review
Kamo Saxo ‘Koma Mate / Jagd (Feat. Jameszoo)’
(We Jazz Records) Single/12th June 2020
With a psychosis of breakbeats and prowling, jostling conscious jazz – the kind that channels the likes of such titans of the form as Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Lloyd Miller, Leon Thomas and Albert Ayler – the exciting quintet Koma Saxo emerged last year as a new vehicle for a wealth of adroit European contemporary jazz musicians. Assembled by the Berlin-based Swedish bassist/producer Petter Eldh under the umbrella of the brilliant Finnish Jazz label We Jazz, the horn heavy ensemble includes many of the label’s stars, including Jonas Kullhammar, Mikko Innanen, and Otis Sandsjö on brass, and Christian Lillinger on the drums. The group made their performance debut at the label’s own festival in 2019, followed by a double A side single, the exotic flight of fantasy entitled ‘Part Koma/Fanfare For Komarum’, and a self-titled long player.
The latest double A-side single to drop from the ensemble refashions the conscious jazz swinging, double-bass tripping ‘Koma Tema’ performance from that debut album. Reincarnated as ‘Koma Mate’, the beats are dialed up, the skipping even more tripping, and the horns serenading. A sort of breakbeat abstraction with signs of melodious drifting, and cooing diaphanous spirits it doesn’t so much improve on the original as take it in a oft-kilter direction.
On the “flip” side, the Dutch producer Jameszoo is let loose to deconstruct and rebuild the Koma Saxo sound on the flexed and untethered tooting horn ‘Jagd’. Tenor sax floats and meanders over another tripped-up fluctuating groove to push the jazz group towards a hypnotized and fractured dancefloor.
Related from the Archives:
Koma Saxo ‘Port Koma/Fanfare For Komarum’ Single Review
Itchy-O ‘Milk Moon Rite’
(Commissioned by Onassis Foundation as part of the ENTER series) Performance/3rd June 2020
First aired at the beginning of June but recorded on May 7th, as the moon loomed large orbiting at its closest point to Earth, the grand gesturing esoteric Denver collective of Itchy-O executed its own “Milk Moon Rite” performance.
As the ensemble explain: “Earth’s only natural satellite has orbited our sky as a massive emblem for countless religious worshippers across the eons. Known to the Greeks as Selene, the Hebrew Yarcah, and the Hindu lunar god Chandra; Egyptians also associated the moon with Isis, to name just a few appearances across mythos. It personifies the mysteries of life and death, both scientifically and spiritually.”
The 13-minute film is part of ENTER, a series of new works commissioned from artists across the globe, created in 120 hours or less, and drawing on experiences and transformations faced through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In a call to the gods for balance between opposites”, members of the drum driven art ensemble laid down a squalling friction of extemporized industrial ceremony and repetitive taiko beatings and hammerings: a vision that evokes Alejandro Jodorowsky conducting a unholy communion between Faust and Sunn O))) in a landscape in which the chthonian meets satanic. Settle down to the unsettling my children.
Itchy-O have in the past performed with David Byrne & St. Vincent’s band, shared the stage with experimental legends Devo, and anchored the world-renowned Dark Mofo Festival in Tasmania. Other performances include opening for Beats Antique, Melvins, and headlining Austin-based Fantastic Fest three years in a row.
Jon Hassell ‘Fearless’
Taken from the upcoming new album Seeing Through Sound Pentimento Volume Two/24th July 2020
Progenitor of the borderless and amorphous evocatively traced, hazy dream experiments, John Hassell’s transmogrified nuzzling trumpet and sonic soundscape textures have inspired a generation of artists over the last forty odd years. The composer and trumpet player’s pathway, from adroit pupil of Stockhausen to seminal work on Terry Riley’s harangued piano guided In C, encompassed an polygenesis of influences: a lineage that draws inspiration from avant-garde progenitors like La Monte Young, and travels far and wide, absorbing sounds from Java to Burundi. Hassell attempted a reification of what he would term the “fourth world”; a style that reimagined an amorphous hybrid of cultures; a merger between the traditions and spiritualism of the third world (conceived during the “cold war” to denote any country that fell outside the industrious wealthier West, and not under the control of the Soviet Empire) and the technology of the first.
Though an independent artist pioneer in his own right, his name has become synonymous with that of Brian Eno’s, the pair working together on the first ambient traversing volume in Hassell’s Possible Musics series of iconic albums, in the late 70s.
Though he has continued to produce futuristic amorphous peregrinations, his back catalogue has in more recent years been rediscovered through various reissues. As a companion piece to the first Pentimento series of albums, 2018’s Listening To Pictures suite, a second volume is being released later next month. Pentimento is defined as the “reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over”; a process, a layering of coats that is reflected musically on this upcoming experimental vision, Seeing Through Sound. From that album, the foggy-headed mysterious lurking, fanning rayed, early Can metronomic ‘Fearless’.
Related from the Archives:
Jon Hassell/Brian Eno ‘Fourth World Vol.1: Possible Musics’ Album Review
Jon Hassell ‘Dream Theory In Malaya’ Album Review
Jon Hassell/Farafina ‘Flash Of The Spirit’ Album Review
Tony Price ‘Interview’
Track preview from the upcoming LP Interview/Discount/17th July 2020
Abstracted No Wave meets dream fuzzy sparkled organ jazz on the latest suffused nuzzled trip from the multitasking Toronto visionary Tony Price. The New York based producer, musician, and songwriter makes his debut on the Telephone Explosion hub with a new album; a couplet of traversed vaporous jazzy meditations that seem to have been recorded from behind a cozy if mysterious fog. Maybe not a veiled fog, but as the first track from this side-long duo of tracks, ‘Interview’, is described in the accompanying blurb “a meditative exploration of the tile-tunneled labyrinths of NYC’s subway system at night.” You could say a field recording of the most amorphous group of subway jazz buskers emanating thoughts and musings into the nocturnal ether.
Leader on this dial tone hazed peregrination, Price lends his fingertips to an assortment of eye-candy keyboards and synthesizers (Fender Rhodes, Hohner D6 Clavinet, Arp 2600, SP1200, Prophet 5), sketches out gossamer guitar strands and a repetitive lurking bass and also programs the drums. Flanking him on this distant recording are some experimentalist heavyweights: Giosue Rosati on fretless electric bass, blog stalwart and friend Andy Haas on signature untethered saxophones & effects, and Dan Pencer on bass clarinet.
The imbued fleeted spark of modal jazz, electro-funk and narcotic non-linearity of 1970s minimalism style LP is framed as “an electrifying collision of fractured jazz- concréte and combustible downtown funk that crushes the entire continuum between minimalism and maximalism into a hypnotic wreck of metropolitan sound matter.” In practice, to these ears, it sounds like a communion of the Cosmic Range and Zacht Automaat. A winner in my book.
Price has lent his expertise to a wide range of critically acclaimed records on labels like 4AD, DFA, Slumberland and Burger Records amongst many others. In 2017 he founded his label and creative services unit Maximum Exposure, which quickly became an in-demand entity, providing production and design expertise to the likes of Capitol Records, Pat McGrath Labs, Vogue, SSENSE, 4AD, and Night School Recordings amongst others. The new album will be released next month, 17th July 2020, but you can now sneak a listen of the A-Side.
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 Social #XXXV: Roger Bunn, Yasuaki Shimizu, Don Muro, Black Savage…
February 28, 2019
Playlist: Dominic Valvona Selects
I haven’t put together one of these selections in a while; in fact this, Volume XXXV, is the first Social of 2019. But in danger of repeating myself, for newcomers to the site here’s the premise of my playlist selections:
The Monolith Cocktail Social playlist is the blog’s imaginary eclectic radioshow, or DJ set, selection of throwbacks, missives, golden oldies and just cool shit; from across genres, timelines and borders. Previously only ever shared via our Facebook profile and on Spotify our regular Monolith Cocktail Social playlists will also be posted here on the blog itself.
Enjoy…
Tracks:
Don Muro ‘Camel Ride’
Toncho Pilatos ‘Wait’
Lula Côrtes e Zé Ramalho ‘Maracas de Fogo’
Keni Okulolo ‘You Can Only Live But Once’
Willie Dixon ‘Bring It On Home’
Otis Redding ‘Shout Bamalama’
Black Savage ‘Rita’
Little Mell ‘Ain’t That Funky Monkey Fonky’
Vijay Benedict ‘Kasam Paida Karnewale Ki’
Beat Connection ‘Silver Screen’
Les Garçons ‘Les Deux Amants’
The Nerves ‘Sex Education’
The Goats ‘Do The Digs Dug? (Todd Terry Mix)’
FU-Schnickens ‘True Fuschnick’
Farm ‘Sunshine In My Window’
Maya ‘Distant Visions’
Los Dug Dug’s ‘Lost In My World’
Assagai ‘Telephone Girl’
Black Zenith ‘Shango Oba Onina’
Fear Itself ‘The Letter’
Hand ‘The Load’
Bix Medard ‘Tabi’
Bullion ‘The Age Of Self’
Yasuaki Shimizu ‘Mari-Chan’
Sensations Fix ‘Barnhaus Effect No.3’
Peace And Love ‘We Got The Power’
Bongos Ikwue ‘One United Nigeria’
Society Inc. ‘Disc Jockey Jam’
Bossa Jazz 3 ‘Outra Vez’
Bola Johnson And His Easy Life Top Band ‘Jeka Dubu’
Luli ‘Ballero’
Marconi Notaro ‘Fidelidade’
Peter Schickele & Joan Baez ‘Silent Running’
Chuck & Mary Perrin ‘You Knew All Along’
J. Jasmine ‘Broke And Blue’
Anthony Moore ‘Stitch In Time’
Roger Bunn ‘Gido The Magician’
The Kinks ‘Time Song’