A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries are in alphabetical order.
Geologist ‘Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights?’
(Drag City) 30th January 2026
Owing to their inarguable influence and impact on the American and international indie and underground scenes of the noughties, any release from a member of the Animal Collective fraternity is news. No less a debut solo, the inaugural album from the collective’s original founding member Brian Weitz, under the Geologist nickname that stuck since collage (apparently a friend misheard his major, but it also refers to the headlamp he wears to see his electronic apparatus during live shows) proves transitional; a step away almost entirely for the material he’s known for with his foils David Portner (better known as Avey Tare) and Noah Lennox (Panda Bear).
Incidentally, and still working in one way of another with his former band mates, Portner, another piler of the long since hibernated Animal Collective, pops up on bass alongside a host of contributions and help from Adam McDonald, Emma Garau, Alianna Kalalal, Ryan Oslance, Shane McCord, Micky Powers and Adam Lion. There’s also an intergenerational appearance from Wietz’s son Merrick on acoustic guitar, playing something resembling an indie-grunge rhythm on the strange bird hooting and whirly ‘Government Job’.
Under a throwaway entitled line, used repeatedly over time as a kind of in-joke, a winking aphorism, Weitz instrumentally and sound wise soundtracks his observations, traverses, reflections, the places he recalls and moments of both retrospection and introspection. But musically, this album is very different, taking as it does inspiration from the noted inventive guitarists Bill Orcutt and Susan Alcorn – though both artists, musicians’ talents extend beyond just that instrument. The steel pedal-like atmospheric and more wiry freeform Americana playing of these influences can be heard throughout, coupled also with Bill’s more gnarly free-post-punk-blues-jazz contortions and distortions (a touch of Bill Frith too for that matter). The second main influence is that of the hurdy-gurdy, its droning windups more in line with Ethan James’ reimagined Medieval tapestries and ceremonies, and Dorothy Carter, Le Tene, and GOAT. Its signature conjures up all sorts of imaginary landscapes, plateaus and scenes; from Tibet and the Himalayan holy valleys to the mirage arid dry lands of the America’s West and a dreamt-up revision of olde pastoral Europe.
With variations on each track, the mood and direction changes often: even if it inhabits an overall thematic musical world of drones, frequencies, circular blows, Chris Corsano-like free drums, the electrified, walking basslines, the hypnotic and near mystical. Period pieces via the Velvet Underground, Matthias Loibner and Emmanuelle Parrenia sit or run into wrangled post-punk post-rock tracks that sound more like a toss-up between PiL and Tortoise, and soundscape scores that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Daniel Lanois production. And then there’s the near native dances of tracks like glittery dusted, hurdy-gurdy wound, and padded foot stomping drummed ‘Pumpkin Festival’, and despite its title, ‘Not Trad’.
From highway oracles to dust bowls and soundtracks paid to the late repeated Altman player and Kubrick whipping girl ‘Shelly Duvall’ and the final desert peregrination turn splashing cymbal dusted and electric band motivated moving ‘Sonora’, the Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights? album is an open-ended enquiry of moods and memories; of exploration and the time spent in various places, landscapes. An interesting turn from the member of a band I once called a postmodernist noughties Beach Boys. A very different, unique direction indeed.
Clémentine March ‘Powder Keg’
(PRAH Recordings) 9th January 2026
The French-British chanteuse Clémentine March effortlessly swoons, coos, waltzes, saunters and hovers between the French and South American art pop decades with a multilingual ease on her latest, and third, album. And although its title, Powder Keg, was taken from a lyric out of Bonnie Tyler’s 80s power ballad, a ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, the inspiration and music sounds less sentimental big hair belter and more like a freed-up chamber-pop, alt-folk, country waned and glitterball hybrid of gathered thoughts, romantic encounters and introspections voiced by Brigitte Fontaine, Cate Le Bon and Gina Birch.
But that’s only really one part of this album’s scope, with the repertoire and influences opening up even more once March’s cast of friends and foils alike is brought in. Take the former Goat Girl band member turn solo folk singer Naima Bock, who March supported on a tour of the UK. Taking in some of Bock’s shared Greek-Brazilian heritage and folk signature March pays a bit of a homage on the opening song, ‘After The Solstice’; though to my ears, I’m picking up hints of John Cale, Aldous Harding and Dana Gavanski – it’s one of my favourites by the way. The latter of those names on this feathered country art-folk number, Gavanksi, is actually present as one of the many congruous ensemble members of March’s expanding circle. March is flanked throughout by Ollie Chapman on bass and Sophie Lowe on drums, but at any one time you’ll hear pop up a famous artist or musician across this songbook of the heart-pranged, fun, wistful and more driven. For after also paying a tribute of a kind to the Os Mutantes turn three-decade solo Brazilian icon Rita Lee on the suitably South American lilted ‘Lixo Sentimental’, March duets, in a style, with Evelyn Gray on the disco-indie spun ‘Fireworks’. Gray seems the ideal vocal partner on a more upbeat dizzy turn under the glitterball whilst alluding to “romantic encounters” at the Green Man Festival. The song takes in a Come Dancing Blancmange, Postcard Records, Lizzy Mercier Descloux Mambo Nassau and Hercules & The Love Affair.
The title-track itself sounds like a missing McCartneys family song whipped up by the SFA and Stereolab, and ‘Honestly’ sounds like Susana Vega borrowing an old Neil Young number. Little touches cause the ear to wander: the sax on ‘The Power Of Your Dreams’ reminded me of Don Weller’s sessions with 80s Bowie, and the faint Appalachian/bayou stirs of maverick bluegrass and Cajun ‘You Are Everything’ conjured up images of Isabelle Pierre or Karen Dalton fronting The Band. And then you get the more fuzzed-toned and powered-up indie-rock blast of ‘Upheaval’, which sounds like a cross between Husker Du and The Misfits.
As open as always, imbued by but never quite adopting the aloof coolness of the French new wave and its art pop existential chanteuses, March finds a personal, less cloying way of navigating sentiment, romance, the passing of time and how we measure it, the recall of memories and joy. A unique voice, constantly expanding and trying things out, March’s latest magical tour de force is both escapism and a dance around issues that both plague and enrich her life. Already one of my favourite albums of 2026.
Foster Neville ‘Through Lands Of Ghosts’
(Subexotic) 16th January 2026
Imbued by the late travel writer progenitor H.V. Morton and his quest to unearth, contextualise and celebrate the “mythical soul of England” from the 1920s to the 1940s, experimental musician (also the role of sound editor for the digital copy of the Trebuchet contemporary arts magazine) Foster Neville navigates his own sound map of these islands; atmospherically and unnervingly crossing national borders by starting his journey in Scotland before moving south throughout Northern England and the Southwest.
Morton’s never-out-of-print series of guides, written and often an accumulation of his columns for the Daily Express newspaper, have arguably influenced generations. Responsible for around forty such books, the topics covering not only England and Scotland but his numerous journeys throughout the Holy Land, Morton’s idiosyncratic English manners (often travelling in his typically unfussy and understated English motor, a bull-nosed Morris) and vignettes style embodied a near spiritual but difficult to encapsulate essence that bonded old England and its people. His reputational stock has however taken a severe knock ever since the publication of Michael Bartholomew’s biography. Through old dairy entries and letters Morton’s more distasteful and outright disgustingly racist prejudices came to light, most notably his Anti-Semitism but also slights on democracy (not a fan) and various other nationalities – he once described the US, dismissively, as “that craven of Jews and foreigners”. The famed journalist scooper, there at both the famous and infamous opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb, held not just questionable views but unfortunately seemed to flirt with fascism in the run up to the war, declaring that he found many of Hitler’s ideas appealing.
Parking that controversy aside, Foster is personally interested in Morton’s most famous totem, and much lauded In Search Of England, which could be said to lay some of the groundwork for the future study of “psychogeography”. A problematic term that now connects with Foster’s latest work, and pretty much one that is now dismissed by those who are said to embody it, the leading light of such dense readings and speculation of the land, or specific sites and communities (in this case, the Eastend of London) is the rightfully hailed Iain Sinclair. Preferring such terms as “deep topography” (as coined by the “London perambulator”, Nick Papadimitriou), detaching himself from an overused tag, one made almost redundant and often out of context, Sinclair’s own works merge old ghosts with history through the ages, the occult and multiple layers of cultural text. It’s why he was asked to pen an “appreciation” of Foster’s album, or rather the limited-edition vinyl version of Through Lands Of Ghosts – I’ve not had access to this by the way.
Tying together such esteemed authors, Foster’s album carries some weight; a touch of the studied even. And, despite the dismissal by some, uses the psychogeography description in the label’s press briefing; although they also use the more appropriate term of “hauntology” to describe this mystical ghostly and whispered, wisped and Kosmische-style take on the lie of the land.
Foster now builds his own picture; one steeped in the supernatural, of the memories and tracings and scars of locations marked by either death or the movements of time. These places seem empty of everything except its apparitions, its left recordings of voices and the sound and apparatus of subtle atmospheric and ambient equipment. A presence exists throughout; the haunted visitations that occupy a liminal space between the paranormal and more settled visions of an intriguing past and its elementals; of how it speaks to us now.
Sonically capturing something throughout this circumnavigation that seems to wander from the antler framed Highlands of Scotland and its most southern point on the Mull of Galloway and across the border to the site of a rail accident in Derbyshire, a nameless abandoned village and the neolithic chambered tombs of West Kennet’s famous long barrow excavations. Somewhere between the near sci-fi, séance, ambient music and Vangelis Olympian, new agism and apparitional vocals, Fowler engineers an often-veiled mystery of forgotten time and chapters from a both atavistic and more present age: The haunted “residue” of the Chapel-en-le-Firth freight train wreck tragedy, immortalised by Ewan McCall and Peggy Seegar in ‘The Ballad of John Axon’, the train driver who gave his life to avert an even greater disaster (posthumously awarded the George Cross for his actions) is invoked through the spectre aria shoos and coos and movements of sounds and what could be the environment around it.
From observing the dying flickers of lives once lived in the rural villages of WWI England and the absorption of an unseen ancient people who once roamed and buried their dead into the barrow mounds of that same countryside more than three millennia before, Foster connects various epochs, various events and the ebb and flow of time to conjure a 21st century quest to unearth the soul of the UK. I’d recommend this album to attentive listeners with an ear for the works of Oliver Cherer, Cold Hands Warm Heart, Ancient Plastix, Pye Corner Audio, Bagski and Tangerine Dream. A most successful, and I’m going to say it despite myself, psychgeography experience that could well lead to further exploration and investigation of the subject matter and locations mapped out sonically.
Sarah/Shaun ‘In Silence Love Speaks Loudest (EP)’
(Hobbes Music) Digitally Released December 2025/Physical Release 30th January 2026
The Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra of synthesized dream-pop, the Edinburgh wife and husband team of Sarah and Shaun McLachlan finish of an 18-month triptych run of EPS with this year’s simultaneously optimistic but ached and plaintive In Silence Love Speaks Loudest. Like a space-chartered St. Etienne, the couple’s latest four track showcase for the Scottish capital’s leading leftfield electronic and dance label Hobbes Music is another celestial bound flight of diaphanous pop and trip-hop break-like and trance-y electronica: stepping out on to the neon lit dancefloors on occasion too.
Making their debut in 2024 with the highly rated It’s True What They Say? (see my review of the stargazing EP), followed up by last year’s Someone’s Ghost, the duo has been busy on the live circuit making new allies and fans. And now ahead of the debut album, promised sometime this year, they’ve released this stardust sprinkled songbook of both heartache and romantic reassurances.
You might well recognize Shaun from his previous band, Delta Mainline. Coupling up with the missus, and most wooing of vocalist’s, Sarah, Shaun has concentrated all his efforts on expanding those musical horizons further. When we reviewed his band in the past, we compared them to an angelic Jesus And Mary Chain, OMD, Wilco and Spiritualized. And as it turns out the latter of those references now pops up here, with the group’s Tony ‘Doggen’ Foster adding some subtle sentimental rainbow arcs and bendy guitar/slide guitar to the dry-ice trapped-in-a-French-noir-movie-like floated ‘Desperation Looks Ill (From The Other Side)’. Appearing alongside Foster on that same track is Bruce Michie on Eno/Hansa Studio type romantically alluding saxophone duties and supplying the introductory French wafts of dialect Rebecca Growse.
As always there’s an extended cast number of foils ready to join the ranks, with both serial offenders Jaguar Eyes (a band mate of Shaun’s in Delta Mainline, contributing guitars and synths and arranging strings, programming drums and on engineering duties as well as co-producing the last three records by the coupling), and Darren Coghill (of Neon Waltz fame, providing some percussion, drums and effects) both cropping up. But also, this time around the addition of Roy Molloy (the Alex Cameron mucker appears with a soft toned saxophone sentiment on the finale, ‘Who Just Wants To Survive?’) and Exterior (a fellow Hobbes Music signing adding synths to ‘Heart Started Beating (Backwards)’).
As I’ve said before, the couple have an affinity for the ending of the Star Man movie, and its romantic allusions, but in particular the film’s score, twinned with, to my ears, the sound of dream pop, of waned country music, 80s electro-pop and Sarah Records. With songs that stretch right back to the Covid pandemic (the reassuring, despite the travails, ‘When We Dance’), or at least their inception, to songs written during the most tumultuous of periods, as the world falls apart around us, this third EP in the beautiful cosmic saga recalls hints of Air, The Tara Clerkin Trio, Beach House, The Sundays and the Cocteau Twins.
Tethered to the Earthly pains of the heart but looking towards the stars and the escape hatch, both co-writers, multi-instrumentalists and vocalists draw emotions of desperation and love from an understated but no less ambitious and anthemic production. The mood music of which varies between the near melancholic to the airy and wisped; the sad and more wistfully dreaming. Keeping up the quality, a congruous bookend to the series, In Silence Love Speaks Loudest further expands the sound and scope; an indicator perhaps of what to expect with that near future album.
Sis and the Lower Wisdom ‘Saints and Aliens’
(Native Cat) 9th January 2026
Disarmingly enchanting with the healing balm, the pliable near weightless songstress and multi-instrumentalist Jenny Gillespie Mason once more inhabits the role of generous light-bringing sister or Sis on a most beautiful album of hippy pop excellence.
Surrounded once more with a friendly circle of artis/musicians (named the Lower Wisdom) – you can hear the reassuring thumbs up from the recording studio sound desk on a couple of tunes, but feel a general support system of musical encouragement throughout -, Jenny weaves Alice Coltrane vibes with Fleetwood Mac and Alabaster DePlume to create a sort of jazz-pop-light magic version of new age 70s/80s songwriting.
Alighting the celestial staircase into a yoga retreat of snuggled and drifty serenaded and wafted saxophone, airy mystique and mirages, Saints and Aliens is a poetically descriptive album of both moods and songs. Bringing visitors from the stars to a world imbued by Jenny’s spiritual studies, the philosophical teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Sanskrit language are called upon once more: or at least referenced on tracks like the near ethereal floaty jazzy calling ‘Yasholipsa’ – which translates into the desire for glory, the aspiration for fame, victory and power, and a spiritual striving for achievement and deep yearning for renown or divine accomplishment.
Away from the Gaia, the Indian divinities and the Gnosticism there’s a lovely blooming of soulful pop free-flowing singles like ‘Luce’ and the almost trippy and poetic opener ‘Crocus Man’: a sample of which is, “Quicksilver clown, you’ve been through hell”.
As diaphanous as it all is, there’s an undulating tone of travail; the lyrics often referring to overcoming various obstacles and finding a way out, the air to breath once more or height to elevate towards: Salvation awaits once you learn that the key is inside all of us.
The Sis alias delivers once more with a near faultless album of dipsy, sprite-like free pop and spiritual altruism. A great start album to start of the new year with.
Wilson Tanner Smith ‘Perpetual Guest’
(Sawyer Editions) 13th January 2026
Tying together the omnipresence, both in the past and in the now, of conflict, the Helsinki-based composer, improvisor/artist Wilson Tanner Smith uses site-specific performance art and music to evoke an essence of what was contained within the walls of the long since disused Kreenholm Textile Factory in Estonia’s Narva region. To be exact, located on an island in the middle of the river that gives its name to the city, slap bang in the middle too of the border with a threatening, overreaching expansionist Russia.
A flashpoint in what’s described as NATO’s most eastern flank, it has been breached in recent months by Russian soldiers – possibly testing reaction and defences. Narva has the largest Russian-speaking population, proportionally, in the EU at 97% (its total population is around 60,000). This is down to a legacy of historical invasions and the transporting of thousands of workers from Russia to work in its factories over time. Sitting across from its Russian counterpart of Ivangorod, the city is fatefully targeted as one of the starting points, if it ever comes, for WWIII: Putin has already mused in that sly threatening way he has that Narva was historically part of Russia and would be “taken back”. The city was of course under Czarist rule for a time until the revolution and Estonia’s fight for independence between 1918 and 1920.
Fast forward a generation and Soviet Russia invaded Estonia at the start of WWII. They lost it to Nazi Germany a short time later, before once more taking it back behind the Iron Curtain after Hitler’s catastrophic failure to invade and knock Russia out of the war. This situation remained right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union’s collapse at the start of the 1990s. For a long time after that period, Russians and Estonians moved freely between the two borders; the influx of Russian workers, as I mentioned earlier, living in a now industrialised Estonian city would frequently hop over that same border for shopping trips to St. Petersburg and the like.
With the heinous invasion of Ukraine in the last four years, and ramped-up – despite the talks of bring the conflict to an end – rhetoric of Putin and his expansionist plans to march right into Europe, that all came to a divisive halt. An uneasy situation prevails, with Estonia distancing itself from Russia – Estonia’s first female prime minister Kaja Kallas has been on the front-foot in supplying weaponry to Ukraine and fought to implement sanctions on Russia whilst also offering asylum to Russians escaping conscription. Kallas was at one point, put forward as a possible candidate to lead NATO; an organisation that Smith’s adopted country of Finland joined in 2023 following a rapid policy shift from military non-alignment to alliance membership in response to Russia’s aggression. Finland, which until that point had never countenanced joining, has prior aggrievances with Russia of course: a history that goes back to the Finnish War of 1808-1809, when Alexander’s Imperial Russia, allied with Napoleon, invaded and conquered Finland from Sweden, turning it into the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, and much later when fighting off Russia during both the Winter War of 1939 and 1940, and the Continuation War of 1941-44. Despite being heavily outnumbered on all fronts, the Finns managed to fight them off, albeit with a loss of some land. Their example may prove an omen, as Russia have likewise failed to steamroll the Ukrainians; the initial invasion planned to take months if not weeks to fully capture the country and force it back into Russian hands.
Before this becomes a geopolitical, military essay on the state of Eastern Europe and Russia, I should really focus now on Smith’s project; a series of performances created using both instruments brought to the space and the dust, the accumulation of memories of the environment itself. The prompts, the reference points as such or indicators and sparks for creativity reference the various scrapes of signage and other detritus found lying around, or reference and tie together both a shared bond between Finland and Estonia; the closing performance of ‘Läksin minä kesäyönä käymään’ (which can be translated into English as “I went out into the groove on a summer’s night”) is a kosmische-style beamed cathedral wonder of magic that features a melody borrowed from an obscure suite on Finnish Themes by the Russian composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich. Embarrassingly for the Soviets, it was meant to be played in Helsinki once it had been conquered during the first of those wars between the two countries. It never happened of course, and now acts in a manner as a reminder of overreached aggression and expansionism coming unstuck.
In this theatre, Smith performs a number of pieces of conceptual and environmental imbued and motivated musical and atonal art. Seeming to speak much of the times, and yet evoke a history of Eastern European malady, toil and travail.
Smith has connected the space and columns that hold it up the factory’s huge celling’s with rope and string, which he pulls on at points in this performance; dragging lightly, fragments of glass or what looks like metal along the floor to elicit a serial percussive sound. At other times, Smith is part of an avant-garde chamber trio of strings and woodwind and apparition vocalist calls from the ancestors; drawing on the labour, the emotive pulls of those that once worked this factory, whilst also referencing the geographical and looming presence of its neighbouring behemoth, Russia. But primarily, Smith is seated in front of the album’s most permeating instrument, a well-used antique harmonium that he found and repaired on site; and itself, handed and passed down from a church to a school, a living room and basement. It’s used to produce some of the most venerable of bathed pastoral drones, resonated chords, concertinaed waves and evocative reverberations. But its frame and lid is used too; the picking up of the hands as they press on the keys, or the foot pedal pump. And yet there’s also passages in which those bellowed-like breaths and airs, beds of layered tones, produce vibrations that are more unsettling (not quite Krzysztof Penderecki-like but getting there), and at other times, closer to psychedelic-folk.
Fluctuating at a slow pace between suggestions of the neo-classical, the work of Cage, Cale and Conrad, and brought forward into to the realms of Colin Stetson, Alison Cotton and Jeff Bird (I’m thinking of his more recent Cottage Bell Peace album), all the instruments and apparatus involved are simultaneously as harmonic as they are expressive in describing the abstract psychogeography of the factory, a location now standing on the edge of potential conflict; perhaps, but lets hope not, about to once more witness Russian expansionism.
Strangebird–Sounds ‘Minerals From The Crust’
(Audiobulb Records) 16th January 2026
Inspired by the natural jewels and gem-like minerals that lie beneath the Earth’s crust, the Belgium experimental composer Gregory Geerts, under the Strangebird–Sounds guise, transforms those crystallised forms into a most pleasant, subtle ambient-techno soundtrack and set of movements.
Materialising, metamorphosing and breathing each track is built around sonically capturing the abstract colourisation, the way the light plays, reflects or gleams on each chosen subject; add to that the soft use of environmental field recordings, the enervated veils of the surroundings and the just as subtle use of the everyday world in the form of various undulating captured voices, of play and people going about their business.
From the more commonly found Calcite to the rare quartz of Ametrine found almost exclusively centuries ago in just one mine in Bolivia, Geerts amplifies a sense of allure and mystery; but also feeds into the marvel of each element as it glistens and grows; pulses and vibrates. In doing so he opens up to the etymology and history, covering a millennia of usage: The atavistic Egyptians used to carve Calcite, relating it to their goddess Bast – hence part of the origins of the word alabaster -, and Ametrine, though long discovered by the native peoples of what would later become Bolivia, was, it’s been documented and said, to have made its way to Europe as part of the dowry between a local Ayoreo princess and Spanish conquistador in the 1600s. Sometimes these references are mythological: see the silicate mineral Neptunite, which is named after the Roman god of the sea of course, though because of its origins and locality of discovery is associated with the Scandinavian god of the sea, Ægir.
With the innovative use, we’re told, of a Eurorack modular apparatus our sound geologist presents an often lush, semi-tropical world of exotic birds, botanical foliage and replenishing life-giving waters. The underground is brought to the surface you could say, out into the open as it meets with the celestial and radiating. This is a subterranean world brough to life.
Both arpeggiator and freed-up notes bobble and bounce, or float like bulb-shaped and translucent particles and gentle specks against the biosphere; the synthesized; the occasional paddled tubular rhythms (on one occasion, almost like a Jeff Mills minimalist techno samba). The sounds of techno at its most sophisticated and ambient music, polygons and crystals, needles and sulphites all merge wonderfully to draw comparisons with the work of Xqui, Boards of Canada and Japanese environment music. Audiobulb continues to release some of the best work in this field, under the radar, out on the peripheral. Geerts Strangebird-Sounds vehicle is no exception; experimental without losing the listener; finding a most pleasant, inviting but also intriguing method, from the ground to the orbital, of giving sound to geological abstracts. `
Leo Wolf ‘Veiled In Light’
(The Oldest River) 13th January 2026
Following up on last year’s excellent I Saw Your Shadow On The Wall, North Carolina artist/musician Leo Wolf once more captures the abstract through the use of ambient, atmospheric and filmic granular processes, sampled material from classical records and field recordings and acoustic instruments; this time focusing on bringing the light in a range of descriptive, atonal and evocative ways.
Secular and venerated, stained glass anointed, veiled light sources cast circular-like beams and impressions on suitably invocative surfaces, columns and precious objects to capture a scenic and textural form of sonic and cinematic mysticism. Like longform and short form scores, a gradual slow movement of whispered and wispy disembodied and scaly voices, tubular machines, generators, apparitions and aliens, the sounds of hive-like buzzes and flies are echoed and reverberated to great descriptive effect. It reminded me in part of Ambient Works Aphex Twin, but also His Name Is Alive and Laraaji’s Baptismal collaboration with Kramer. And on a couple of occasions, when oscillating to an unsettling otherworldly vision of supernatural sci-fi György Ligeti.
Titles give some reference point; although I’m not sure if on the briefly gothic-like announcer’s tone narrated ‘Blood Meets The Iris’ if it is a reference to the revered Iris Murdoch’s The Sandcastle, which mentions some of the descriptive language of the track; especially the ritual part. They could be used of course just to set in motion an idea, theme or initial spark before opening up to be interpreted by the listener.
In ecclesiastical settings, in wet subterrains, from the centre of divination and various rituals, and out on cerebral planes of contemplated life and death cycles, I love how Wolf builds such plays between the venerated and unknown. Ebbing away or in constant motioned waves, the veiled presence and concrete inspirations are exaggerated or made new on an album that challenges as much as envelopes. Is something reaching out to us from the gauze, the soft and wispy shrouds? Only you can work that out. Another sophisticated and immersive ambient score from a deeply engaging composer.
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need:
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End of the Year Revue For 2025: Part Two: N to Z
December 15, 2025
Choice Highlights From The Last Year Part Two
In case you missed Part One of this illustrious list, here’s a recap.
I said I wasn’t going to do it this year. And this may be the last. But here is the second part of a comprehensive revue listing of choice albums (some extended EPs too) from 2025 that we returned to the most, enjoyed or rated highly. See it as a sort of random highlights package if you will.
As usual a most diverse mix of releases, listed alphabetically – numerical orderings make no sense to me unless it is down to a vote, otherwise what qualifies the placing of an album? What makes the 25th place album better than the 26th and so on…
Whilst there is the odd smattering of Hip-Hop releases here and there, our resident selector and expert Matt Oliver has compiled a special 25 for 25 revue of his own, which will go out next week.
Part One: A to M can be perused here
N……………
Neon Crabs ‘Make Things Better’ (Half Edge Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Noir & Superior, Che ‘Seeds In Babylon’
Picked by Dominic Valvona
Novelle & Rob Mazurek, Alberto ‘Sun Eaters’ (Hive Mind Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Nowaah The Flood ‘Mergers And Acquisitions’
Picked by Dominic Valvona
O……………
Occult Character ‘Next Year’s Model’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Picked by Dominic Valvona
P…………….
Philips Arts Foundation, Lucy ‘I’m Not A Fucking Metronome’
Reviewed by Brian Bordello Shea here
Phill Most Chill & Djar One ‘Deal With It’ (Beats House Records)
Picniclunch ‘snaxbandwitches’
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Pound Land ‘Can’t Stop’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Q……………..
Querci, Cosimo ‘Rimane’ (Quindi Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
R………………
Robertson, Kevin ‘Yellow Painted Moon’
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Rose, Sophia Djebel ‘Sécheresse’ (Ramble Records/WV Sorcerer Productions/Oracle Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Rumsey, Andrew ‘Collodion’ (Gare du Nord)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
S……………….
SAD MAN ‘Art’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Salem Trials ‘Heavenly Bodies Under The Ground’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Sanders, Pharoah ‘Love Is Here – The Complete Paris 1975 ORTF Recordings’
(Elemental Music Records) Picked by Dominic Valvona
Schizo Fun Addict ‘An Introduction To…’ (Fruits der Mer)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Schnitzler, Conrad ‘RhythmiCon’ (Flip-Flap)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Scotch Funeral ‘Ever & Ever’
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Silva, Maria Elena ‘Wise Men Never Try’ Review
‘Wise Men Never Try Vol. II’ Review by Dominic Valvona
Širom ‘In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper’
(Glitterbeat Records) Picked by Dominic Valvona
Sleepingdogs ‘DOGSTOEVSKY’ (Three Dollar Pistol Music)
Picked by Dominic Valvona
Soft Speaker ‘Rippling Tapestries’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Sol Messiah ‘War of the Gods’ Picked by Dominic Valvona
Staraya Derevyna ‘Garden Window Escape’ (Ramble Records/Avris Media)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Stewart, Macie ‘When The Distance Is Blue’ (International Anthem)
Review by Dominic Valvona
T………………..
Teamaker, Marc ‘Teas n Seas’
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Theravada ‘The Years We Have’ Picked by Dominic Valvona
Toivanen Trio, Joona ‘Gravity’ (We Jazz)
Reviewed by Dominic Valvona here
Tomo-Nakaguchi ‘Out Of The Blue’ (Audiobulb Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Tortoise ‘Touch’ (International Anthem X Nonesuch Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Toxic Chicken ‘Mentally Sound’ (Earthrid)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Trupa Trupa ‘Mourners’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Info/Singles Review Feature by Dominic Valvona
U…………………
Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes, Gregory ‘Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes’
(International Anthem) Review by Dominic Valvona
Ujif_notfound ‘Postulate’ (I Shall Sing Until My Country Is Free)
Review by Dominic Valvona
V………………….
Various ‘TUROŇ/AHUIZOTL’ (Swine Records w/ Fayuca Retumba)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Various ‘Wagadu Grooves Vol. 2: The Hypnotic Sound Of Camera 1991 – 2014’
(Hot Mule) Review by Dominic Valvona
Vexations ‘A Dream Unhealthy’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Violet Nox ‘Silvae’ (Somewherecold Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Voodoo Drummer ‘HELLaS SPELL’
Review by Dominic Valvona
W…………………..
Wants, The ‘Bastard’ (STTT)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Warda ‘We Malo’ (WEWANTSOUNDS)
Review by Dominic Valvona
West Virginia Snake Handlers Revival ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’
(Sublime Frequencies) Reviewed by Dominic Valvona
Winter Journey, The ‘Graceful Consolations’ (Turning Circle)
Reviewed by Dominic Valvona here
Y…………………….
Yellow Belly ‘Ghostwriter’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Young Mothers, The ‘Better If You Let It’ (Sonic Transmissions)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Z……………………..
Zavoloka ‘ISTYNA’ Picked by Dominic Valvona
For those that can or wish to, the Monolith Cocktail has a Ko-fi account: the micro-donation site. I hate to ask, but if you do appreciate what the Monolith Cocktail does then you can shout us a coffee or two through this platform.
End of the Year Revue For 2025: Part One: A to M
December 11, 2025
Choice Highlights From The Last Year
I said I wasn’t going to do it this year. And this may be the last. But here is the first part of a comprehensive revue listing of choice albums (some extended EPs too) from 2025 that we returned to the most, enjoyed or rated highly. See it as a sort of random highlights package if you will.
As usual a most diverse mix of releases, listed alphabetically – numerical orderings make no sense to me unless it is down to a vote, otherwise what qualifies the placing of an album? What makes the 25th place album better than the 26th and so on…
Whilst there is the odd smattering of Hip-Hop releases here and there, our resident selector and expert Matt Oliver has compiled a special 25 for 25 revue of his own, which will go out next week.
Without further ado….the first half of that selected works revue:
A.
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Emperor Deco’ (Somewherecold Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Alien Eyelid ‘Vinegar Hill’ (Tall Texan)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Allen, Marshall ‘New Dawn’ (Week-End Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Armstrong ‘Handicrafts’
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Audio Obscura ‘As Long As Gravity Persists On Holding Me to This Earth’
Review by Dominic Valvona
Aus ‘Eau’ (Flau)
Review by Dominic Valvona
B..
Balloonist, The ‘Dreamland’ (Wayside & Woodland)
Review/Piece by Dominic Valvona
Barman, MC Paul ‘Tectonic Texts’
Picked by Dominic Valvona
Bedd ‘Do Not Be Afraid’
Review by Dominic Valvona
Bird, Jeff ‘Ordo Virtutum: Jeff Bird Plays Hildegard von Bingen, Vol 2’
(Six Degrees Records) Review by Dominic Valvona
Blanco Teta ‘‘La Debacle las Divas’ (Bongo Joe)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Bordellos (with Dee Claw)/Neon Kittens, The ‘Half Man Half Kitten’
(Cruel Nature Records) Review by Dominic Valvona
Braxton, Anthony ‘Quartet (England) 1985’ (Burning Ambulance)
Picked by Dominic Valvona
Brody, Jonah ‘Brotherhood’ (IL Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Brother Ali ‘Satisfied Soul’ (Mello Music Group)
Picked by Dominic Valvona
Burning Books ‘Taller Than God’ (Ingrown Records)
Reviewed by Dominic Valvona
C…
Cindy ‘Saw It All Demos’ (Paisley Shirt Records)
Reviewed by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea here
Craig, Kai ‘A Time Once Forgotten’ (Whirlwind Recordings)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Crayola Lectern ‘Disasternoon’ (Onomatopoeia)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Cross, Theon ‘Affirmations: Live at Blue Note New York’ (New Soil)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Cubillos, Julian ‘S-T’ (Ruination Record Co.)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Cumsleg Borenail ‘10mg Citalopram’ (Cruel Nature Recordings)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Joel Cusumano ‘Waxworld’ (Dandyboy Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
D….
Dammann Sextet, Christopher ‘If I Could Time Travel I Would Mend Your Broken Heart aka Why Did The Protests Stop’ (Out of Your Head Records) Review by Dominic Valvona
Darko The Super ‘Then I Turned Into A Perfect Smile’
Picked by Dominic Valvona
Dyr Faser ‘Falling Stereos’
Picked by Dominic Valvona
E…..
Eamon The Destroyer ‘The Maker’s Quilt’ (Bearsuit Records)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Expose ‘ETC’ (Qunidi)
Reviewed by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea here
F……
Farrugia, Robert ‘Natura Maltija’ (Phantom Limb/Kewn Records)
Reviewed by Dominic Valvona here
Fir Cone Children ‘Gearshifting’ (Blackjack Illuminist Records)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Fortunato Durutti Marinetti ‘Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter’ (Quindi Records/We Are Time)
Review by Dominic Valvona
G…….
Goldman, Ike ‘Kiki Goldman In How I Learned To Sing For Statler And Waldorf’
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Good Ones, The ‘Rwanda Sings With Strings’(Glitterbeat Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
H……..
Haas & Brian g Skol, Andy ‘The Honeybee Twist’
Review by Dominic Valvona
Howard, John ‘For Those that Wander By’(Think Like A Key)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
I………
Ishibashi, Eiko ‘Antigone’ (Drag City)
Picked by Dominic Valvona
iyatraQuartet ‘Wild Green’
Review by Dominic Valvona
J……….
Jay, Tony ‘Faithless’
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Johanna, John ‘New Moon Pangs’(Faith & Industry)
Review by Dominic Valvona
K………..
Kheir , Amira ‘Black Diamonds’(Sterns Music/Contro Culture Music)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Khodja, Freh ‘Ken Andi Habib’(WEWANTSOUNDS)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Kweli, Talib & J Rawls ‘The Confidence Of Knowing’
Picked by DV
L…………
Lassy Trio, Timo ‘Live In Helsinki’ (We Jazz)
Picked by Dominic Valvona
Last Of The Lovely Days, The ‘No Public House Talk’(Gare du Nord)
Review by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Lt. Headtrip & Steel Tipped Dove ‘Hostile Engineering’ (Fused Arrow Records)
Review by Dominic Valvona
LIUN + The Science Fiction Band ‘Does It Make You Love Your Life?’
(Heartcore Records) Review by Dominic Valvona
Locks, Damon ‘List Of Demands’ (International Anthem)
Reviewed by Dominic Valvona here
M………….
Mikesell, Emily & Kate Campbell Strauss ‘Give Way’ (Ears & Eyes Records)
Reviewed by Dominic Valvona here
Mirrored Daughters ‘S/T’ (Fike Recordings)
Review by Dominic Valvona
Mohanna, Nickolas ‘Speakers Rotations’ (AKP Recordings)
Review by Dominic Valvona
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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 Perusal #74: F. Ampism, Aus, Burning Books, Mauricio Fleury…
December 3, 2025
A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries in alphabetical order.
F. Ampism ‘The Vertical Luminous’
(Hive Mind) 5th December 2025
A curious and, as the title suggest, luminous biomorphic world of inner and outer bodied molecules, particles and matter, the Brighton-based F. Ampism cuts a most wonderfully playful, curious and intriguing album for the always enlightening and brilliantly experimental label Hive Mind this month.
Ampism (that’s Paul Wilson when uncloaked from their sonic pseudonym) delights in making atoms speak, communicate, sing, gargle, mewl and murmur in a world of floated forms and running, pouring waters. Of an organic nature, sounds both recognisable and not connect with the electronic to create hallucinogenic, near cosmic and twinkled aspects of both cerebral and microscopic observations. And within that sphere there’s a host of fluctuations: ‘Worm Moon’ a near silken spun and spindled delicate vague evocation of Japanese theatre and ambient jazz, whilst the serial rhythms and beats, the suspended alien forms and cup pours of ‘Lunar Mansions’ could be a union between Mira Calix and Carmen Jaci. Such is the gentleness and dreaminess of this amorphous fourth world and bubbling and burbling chemistry that even the synth possessed ‘Midi Evil’ whirls and discombobulates disarmingly and harmlessly. ‘The Severed Head Is Smiling’ is also hardly sinister, caught in a magic-realism of mirrors, hallowed tubular dimensions and the sounds of the bird house.
Lovingly produced, full of that luminosity and replenished liquid growth, the album evokes feelings of happiness, rumination, the inquisitive and of near alien visitations. Less studied and technical, and more an enjoyable life form of music and sounds that proves a most enjoyable and mostly beautiful experience.
Aus ‘Eau’
(Flau) 6th December 2025
Finely balanced, Japan’s national instrument, the koto, is disarmingly and organically taken from its courtly origins and placed in more intimate, attuned settings. With his adroit koto foil Eden Okuno, the Tokyo composer and producer Yasuhiko Fukuzono creates a both fragrant and descriptive subtle album of ambient music, minimalist and environmental electronica; unmistakably Japanese, with threads and traces of the neo-classical and Hogaku music traditions and even further back, and yet almost in the spheres of Fourth World experimentation and the futuristic.
Under the Aus alias, Fukuzono produces a new project that centres around the fine, delicate and spindled use of the half-tube zither koto. Said to be an “ancestor” of the Chinese guzheng, brought over to Japan during either the 7th or 8th century, it’s thirteen or seventeen-stringed forms, strung over movable bridges, are plucked by the fingerpicks on the player’s right hand. Depending on the piece the instrument can be tunned differently, and sometimes, the seventeen-string version, when used in an ensemble, takes on the duties of the bass. It has an instantly recognisable sound; the accompaniment to rumination and contemplation within the bamboo waterfall replenished gardens of Japan; the uncurling flowery weavings and the calligraphy-like strokes of the brush.
Here, Okuno’s keen playing skills dazzle with subtle aplomb, description and a cascade of repeating rhythms as an electronic bed of surfaces and effects are placed underneath or used like an envelope. There’s also an equally subtle use of the piano – the lower-case work of Andrew Heath, a touch of Roedelius and even Tim Story, but also Sakamoto, sprung to mind -, the suffused presence of various poured, ceremonial and dripped waters, and the chimes, the tinkles, jangles and rings of various percussive and wind chime features. Altogether it makes for a most beautifully felt work of sensibilities, the naturalistic and meditative and visceral scales. And within that sound you can hear the crafting and scraping of artistic tools, the atmospheres of the recording settings and spaces, and the near fuzzy hum of the tape.
Attentive to the surroundings, but also aware of pushing the use of the koto, saving it from its more ceremonial staidness and just so preparations, Fukuzono claims the instrument for his own purposes and experiments for something more modern and intimate. For those with a penchant for the music of Satomi Saeki, Jo Kondo, Laraaji – who has even recorded a track after the instrument -, Akira Ito, Masahiro Sugaya and the partnership of Francesco Messina and Raul Lovisoni. Flau continue to produce exquisite, thoughtful works of disarming skill.
Burning Books ‘Taller Than God’
(Ingrown Records) Released 17th November 2025
One day someone will write the great study on music made during the Covid pandemic. A period that defined an era, no matter the cultural, geographical and political differences, by providing far too much time for all of us to think and reflect on the pointlessness of our existence: or was that just me? A shared consciousness of anxiety, stress and uncertainty prevailed, which hasn’t really abated: getting worse if anything. That day is not today, however. But, just one of the latest releases to pop up in my inbox this month from the highly prolific Ingrown Records imprint (if you ever want to disappear down the proverbial rabbit hole, to find new artists on the periphery then head over to the label’s bandcamp page for hours if not days of aural discoveries), Burning Books’ dramatically entitled Taller Than God album, was created during that momentous period.
Despite the epic subject matters, the grappling with all life’s philosophical quandaries, much of the music produced from between 2019 to 2021 was usually quite understated. And even though there is a presence outside us, a looming leviathan to be found hovering and often bearing down over the sonic landscapes here, the production is itself a balance of isolated intimacy and the sonorous heaviness and awe of the gradual, glacial movements of time over that map. A personal attempt to make sense of the enormity without losing sight of the individual at the centre.
And so, the trials and travails, the feelings of mental anguish are all transduced into a stunning work of both ambience and weight, a merger of the haunted and the reflective, the deep and tingly. Enervated passages of past or found recordings, a dancing pirouetted dancer a top of an old music box, can be heard amongst the near Lynchian and prowling as memories pass through the veils and hues of the shadows cast upon the mountain sides and across the plains. Gleams and drones, ebbing waves contour and create various atmospheres, whilst the reverberating chings and fuzz of an electric guitar and bass articulate something more ominous and brooding. The electrification occasionally sounds more like a mirage, almost like the country ambience of Steve Gunn and Daniel Vickers on tracks like the humming tone, soft knocked ‘Mountains Move’. Within that scope, the fateful creep of ‘Death Is Forgetting’ sounds like a union between Mike Oldfield and John Carpenter. There are a few instances of this near supranatural feel and atmosphere to be found, alongside the mysterious deep sounds of a ship in the mist, the bowels letting out some esoteric ferryman’s call. Elsewhere there’s faint hints of Eno, A Lily and the heavy bowed evocations of Simon McCorry. And on the finale title-track a touch of Daniel Lanois amongst the glassy hues, drones, percussive crescendos and scale. Taller Than God ends on the reassurances of hope after immersing us all in a simultaneously personal and collective experience across a varied topography of emotions and reflections. An ‘ode to humanity’, no less, Burning Books has produced one of the very best and well-crafted, sophisticated but empirical albums of this genre in 2025.
Mauricio Fleury ‘Revoada’
(Altercat Records) 5th December 2025
The last time I saw the well-travelled Brazilian musician Mauricio Fleury live was nearly a decade ago, when bandmates from the Bixiga 70 troupe he helped found led a carnival conga of audience members through the aisles of a seated venue as part of Celtic Connections – held each year in Glasgow, my adopted home of the last ten years. That night, and for a further seven or eight years, he was part of a collective that fused the language of Fela Kuti (which they spoke fluently) with a menagerie of Latin influences and the sound of Brazil’s inner-city bustle and hustles. And although it is a much celebrated and critically applauded group, Fleury’s CV is filled with more enviable collaborations, including a meeting and jam session with none other than Afrobeat rhythm provider and progenitor Tony Allen and the “blacktronica” and soulful house luminaries Ron Trent, Theo Parrish and Steve Spacek. This was back in 2007, but alongside his work with both the Brazilian jazz and bossa nova piano icon João Donato and tropicalia titan songstress Gal Costa, proved a catalyst for a migratory-like album of personal indulgences/stories, dramas and experiment.
Stepping out on the solo pathway, inspired as much by the places he’s lived and toured as by his crate-digging passions, the architecture, parks, its exotic bird life, and more urban environments of Brazil and further afield act as melodiously assured but pliable and warm map references. For Revoada is a personal album of worldly influences that springs forth from Brazil into Europe and the gateway to the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Eastern Africa. Starting out in ‘Kadıköy’, a district on the Asian shore of the Bosporus straddling city of Istanbul that overlooks the Sea of Marmara, Fleury reminisces on a hectic hunt for records by the cool Anatolian rock icons Barış Manço, Erkin Koray and Cem Karaca; in the city for a jazz festival back in 2017. This led to dreams of all those records he didn’t manage to find and this composition: the trip also led to Fleury, now living in Berlin, picking up the saz. The album’s opener takes a spice of Koray, a pinch of the backing from Selda Bağcan’s records and matches it with Altin Gun and a warm feeling of clavichord soul and Med grooves: It sounds like the Isley Brothers sunbathing in old Anatolia. There’s just enough electrified fuzz to make this an acid-soul number, as reimagined by Batov Records.
The first trip is followed by memories of home and the playground environment and its formative hangouts. ‘Banhando’ can be translated from Portuguese to mean “showered’ or “bathed”, but in this context is a reference to the nature park in the southeastern Brazilian city of São José dos Campos, where Fleury grew up. With a big rolling intro of bossa that quickly shimmies into a Latin-jazz sound with hints of Brubeck, Ramsey Lewis, Ayzymuth’s ‘Seems Like This’ and Greg Foat, there’s a sense of both breezily laid out memories and reminisces that capture the very feel of the place. The keys sound like bulbs of light. We next head to the city in which Bixiga 70 was formed, São Paulo, and the classic Riviera Bar, a place that obviously holds many memories for Fleury. ‘Tanto Faz’ is meant to be inspired in part by the sound of old TV soap – which it does – but reminded me in part of a Latin Americanised Lalo Schifrin and Michael LeGrand in the middle of a whistle and fluted diaphanous melody of feathered friends.
Fleury himself plays a range of keyboards, analogue synths, the flute and guitar on this musical voyage, aided by longtime foils, a number of notable and exciting Brazilian artists and players, and good friends. On pliable, walking and flexible acoustic and electric basses is the renowned Latin Grammy Award winner, producer and guitarist Fabio Sá;on rolling, falling, splashed drums and dried bone rattled, Latin percussion is the versatile producer and music director Vitor Cabral; the vibraphone and effects of Beto Montag (on the album’s zappy, beamed and jazzy-funk retro-fitted finale ‘Briluz’); and as part of the tumultuous, thunder wrapped dramatic turn Andrés Vargas Pinedo whistled bird called woodwind and brass rich title track ensemble, the flute of Sintia Piccin, oboe of Julianna Gaona, bassoon and French horn of Richard Fermino and clarinet of María “Mange” Valencia. Sá was also asked to write the wind quintet of bird-like mimics on the exotic aviary inspired title-track. This is a composition of contrasts, beginning as it does with a more serious turbulence of wobble board-like thunder and stormy cymbals, both reflecting the themes of travails and more difficult times, and a second part that opens up with that bird call menagerie. Sá also wrote the album’s Eastern African, via the spiritual jazz route, detour, ‘Jimma’. Inspired and influenced by the Ethiopian Jazz luminary Mulatu Astatke, who he toured Brazil with a number of years back, Sá paid homage to the great multi-instrumentalist and arranger’s hometown with a composition of spontaneity; a camel ride like motion trail across the dunes, unseating and decamping to the Addis saloon for a loose Ethio-jazz jamboree around the piano. There are hints of not only Astatke, Hailu Mergia and Abdou EL Omari but The Sorcerers, Ndikhu Xaba and one of Fleury’s biggest influences and musical heroes, Sun Ra.
A most touching, reminiscing and delightful travelogue of places, dear memories, and evocations that shows off, in a disarming and harmoniously melodious and funky jazzy way, Fleury’s capabilities and skills as both a composer and musician. The solo route looks to be a delightful and pleasingly creative one on an album with much to offer, setting out various moods and journeys.
Hamouna Isewlan ‘Təlle Talyadt’
(Remote Records / Studio Mali) Released 28th November 2025
Like many of the desert blues and rock luminaries before and after him, Hamouna Isewlan’s new album is suffused by the nomadic freewheeling and artisanal skills of the Berber ancestral Tuareg people; a loosely atavistic-connected confederacy (to put it into any kind of meaningful context) of diverse tribes that have traditionally roamed Sub-Saharan Africa since time immemorial. If further context and history was needed, this diverse society of various people, grouped together in an age that demanded a label, the term of ‘Tuareg’ is highly contested: arguably brought into the lexicon through the language of European Colonialism, though etymology traces the term back further through multiple sources. But many in the community would prefer we used the original ‘Kel Tamashek’. Isewlan’s rootsarein Mali, a country that he has been forced to leave to seek sanctuary in Algeria due to the unstable conditions; though as I write this, events are overtaking me as both the capital of Bamako and Mali itself are at risk of collapse and takeover by Jihadist groups.
Carved out of France’s greater Western African empire, demarcated without any sympathy for its diverse populations and history, Mali was cut more or less into two on its inception; the poorer north, one such seat of the Kel Tamashek, was more or less left to wither by the south and the government who considered its nomadic peoples backward, uncouth and because of their lighter skin colour, inferior. Though extremely complicated and far more nuanced than space allows here (I recommend reading Tim Marshall’s The Power of Geography: The Maps That Reveal the Future Of Our World for an analysis of the entire Sahel region and its many conflict over the decades), the Kel Tamashek began a decades long fight to create a self-governing autonomous state known as the Azawad. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing until more recent times, this struggle made worldwide headlines when it was hijacked spectacularly by more extremist Islamic insurgents. Worryingly gaining ground as a Trojan Horse within their nomadic allies’ fight for independence, the destructive Islamist horrified many when they took the ancient seat of West African learning and trade, Timbuktu, and preceded to demolish it like barbarians. Former Colonial masters France were forced to intervene, finally halting the insurgents progress before forcing all groups involved back to where they started: many of them back across the border. Far from ideal, the Islamist usurpers dissipated to a degree but then switched to sporadic acts of terrorism, carrying out smaller militia attacks in Mali’s capital. This was pre Covid of course and the situation has changed dramatically; the threat has intensified with many declaring Mali a state on the verge of a Jihadist takeover. Much of this has been down to the expulsion of France by a Malian junta, led by General Assimi Goita. But with their departure the junta was unable to secure the country or even the capital. They made an even greater mistake by hiring Russian mercenaries, who failed miserably to fight off the main jihadist insurgent group, Jamat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an affiliate of al-Qaeda. The capital of Bamako has been under direct threat and siege by the group who, as The Times reported last month, “paralysed the Malian economy with a fuel blockade that has prevented harvesting in several regions and forced the government to ration power, close schools and restrict civilian movement.” Anything can happen, including another coup within the Malian military itself: the omens are looking bleak; the outcome a possible state run by Jihadists: another Afghanistan in the making. It is undeniable that the country is suffering, with no-go zones across Mali, the threat of extreme violence and of imposed strict Islamic rule in those places controlled by the Jihadist groups. The original Kel Tamashek campaign and fight has been hijacked, its concerns, politics were always more localised but have now been engulfed by terror groups hellbent on a complete takeover of the entire Sahel region.
However, despite all this turmoil music is still being made, life is still going on in the country: as tough as they may be. In the face of such geopolitical upheaval and violence Isewlan chooses to embrace various topics of love: the yielding kind; the plaintive; the yearned; the desired; and the declared. A most touching but also yearning album that tends to the subjects of betrayal, universal and more intimate and personal love.
His new album, under this name (Isewlan in the Tamashek Tuareg language translates poetically as “the mountains of the desert”), is a songbook full of wanton reflections of both a love lost and gained, projected against the desert landscapes of his homeland. You can literally follow the pathways, the very contours, love lines and sloping dunes of Mali through his resonating electrified guitar work and the percussive and drummed rhythms and grooves of the band; many of the tracks moving in a camel or hoofed horsed motion across that iconic terrain.
An incredible player, starting out like so many of his peers and inspirations crafting a rudimental guitar from just tin cans and planks of wood (and still out blasting, outperforming those Western guitar gods with every luxury to hand), Isewlan’s career began to take off during the early noughties after making the leap from performing at weddings to recording with the band he co-founded in 2012, Aratan N’Akalle. Inspired in equal parts by Tinariwen, Ali Farka Touré, Aboubacar Traoré “Karkar”, Mark Knopfler, but most surprising, REM, the burgeoning lead artist now creates multiple evocative mirages and dreamy wanderings from a romantic travail of heartaches and more pleasing paeans to the pursuit of love and his muse.
Musically buoyant, changing from a rockified blues that Southern Americans would recognise (‘War hi toyyed’) to the signature sound of Tuareg desert rock (‘Iamna Iahla’) and a sort of rural form of reggae (‘Tənhay titt in’), the album is full of rich evocations and great flange and reverberated demonstrations of playing. I’m also hearing that Dire Straits influence on the pining resonating ‘Agg Adduniya’, and Vieux Farka Touré on the clopped motioned title-track.
This album, incidentally, has been released by the Bamako label and studio project Remote Records, but been brought to my attention by Paul Chandler, who has chronicled Mali’s music scene for a good couple of decades now. If you’ve been following us for a while, you may recall my piece on Chandler’s most excellent Every Song Has Its End: Sonic Dispatches From Traditional Mali survey (volume 2 of Glitterbeat Records’ Hidden Musics series), which went on to make our choice albums of that year’s list. So, thank you for introducing us to an artist keeping the traditions alive but also in the moment; Təlle Talyadt is an electrifying experience of lovelorn sentiment, rhythm and blues and groove.
Modern Silent Cinema ‘Surveillance Film (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)’
(Bad Channel Records) 1st December 2025
A veritable flurry of activity this month from Cullen Gallagher’s long-running Modern Silent Cinema project, with both redux versions of archival soundtrack albums The Man Who Stopped and Stared at the Clouds (premiering on CD, vinyl and digital, we’re told, on the 15th December) and Flesh Mother (released on vinyl and CD on the 29th December) plus the new Surveillance Film soundtrack album. But for the purposes of this review, I’m going to focus on the latter, and Gallagher’s fifth collaborative original motion picture score for the Baltimore-based experimental filmmaker Matt Barry.
Plot wise, Barry’s latest docu-fiction movie interweaves the filmmaker’s own questions of intent with theoretical discussions about surveillance aesthetics and early cinema. On previous projects Gallagher reverberations, resonated shakes of the psychedelic, post-rock, krautrock, scuzz and fuzz have been led by the guitar and various atmospherics experiments; the themes ranging from the art of Duchamp, Man Ray and Marc Allégret and Winsor McCay’s famous Gertie On Tour animation. Here though, the sound is inspired or influenced in part by the scores of Ennio Morricone and his oft foil and Italian peer Alessandro Alessandro, but also by the use of the jaw or Jew’s harp in the former’s iconic Western soundtracks – played by Billy Strange. That instrument’s springy and spongy signature bounces and leaps like the march hare across many of the Latinised and Greek mythologically entitled instrumental tracks and vignettes/passages. That crucial instrument forms Riley-like patterns, boings and rebounds, as glass-like bulb, the bell jar notes and the crystal ring out or chime on the first few tracks.
Evocations of Walter Semtak and A Journey Of Giraffes sprung to mind on the first half of the album, that and the essence of those Italian composers working on Giallo soundtracks, Alain Goraguer, and on one of the quartet of mythological referenced Empusa (a one-footed shape-shifting female) tracks John Barry scoring Harry Palmer in an Hellenic setting. Later on, the mood reminded me of the submersible synth and electronic scores of Shepard Stevenson; especially on the plastic tube-y paddled and Fourth World-light ‘Medius’ – named I believe after one of Alexander the Great’s officers and friends, a native of Thessaly. But there’s many changes, from the near supernatural to distorted, the kinetic and library music-esque. It can give a near paranoia feeling, or at times something close to terrifying and ominous. And then again, there’s a sense of mystery, of myth and the ghostly amongst the loosened wires, detuned and both toy-like and spooked piano workings.
Gallagher expands his palette of instruments and ideas for a highly atmospheric score that stands alone and yet doesn’t proving overbearing or distract from the film it accompanies. Well worth the cinema ticket.
Andrew Spackman ‘The Marcus Neiman Cookie Recipe Hoax’
(Mortality Table Records) 12th December 2025
I’ve estimated that Andrew Spackman under his various alias and appellations (from the forlorn SAD MAN to Duchampian Nimzo Indian, Cars From The Future and The Dark Jazz Project) has easily released over thirty albums in just over the last decade. From boffin produced apparatus to techno glitches, distortions and soundtracks, the idiosyncratic inventive trick noise maker has tried his hand at everything, including a number of conceptually minded multimedia projects and stories.
Uncloaked, under his own name, Spackman builds an impressive sonic and melodic world from one of the Internet’s earliest viral bullshit hoaxes. The Marcus Neiman Cookie Recipe, as it was known, fuelled a whole industry of such faked indignations; not the only such lie to run and run, many varied episodes followed in its wake. For one of the best summaries, the Dallas (the city in which this hoax takes part) Eater obliges:
‘A woman visited “Neiman-Marcus Cafe” in Dallas and ordered a dessert after her dinner — the Neiman Marcus cookie. The woman was so enthralled by the delicious cookie that she asked an employee at the cafe if she could have the recipe. When the employee declined, the woman asked to purchase the recipe, and was told that it would cost her “two-fifty.” When the woman received her VISA statement a month later, she’d been charged $285 — $10 each for two salads, $20 for a scarf, and $250 for the famous cookie recipe.’ The outrage however was in mishearing the original “two-fifty”, which in her mind meant $2.50, not $250. And so, both incensed and in pique of revenge, she posted the recipe online for free. It doesn’t matter, as the recipe and entire incident was hokum – although the company at the centre of this lie did decide, after receiving opprobrium and a flood of angry letters, to eventually create their own cookie -, but the actual ingredients and baking instructions were pretty run-of-the-mill: nothing special. Over time, and various iterations the story has changed and the recipe with it: replacing certain ingredients, adding maybe more to the mix.
As a metaphor/analogy on the spread of such “compelling lies” and hyperbole, Spackman has cooked up a fantasy of his own; running with the original tale, handing out the ingredients and building up and scaling up a concept-based album of electronica and vague horns that sweep, drift, herald and toot across a plane of the cerebral, distorted and melodious.
Working across various electronic spines, with passages that conjure up the dramatic and at other times dissonant, the album’s ten tracks vary between shorter and long form passages. Between tubular pipes and scores, it can sound simultaneously like a lost futuristic Vangelis soundtrack or Mike Dred and Richard James lost in the fourth world peregrinations of Hassell and Pekka Airaksinen. There’s much to unravel, as each track develops in its own way and forms a hallucinatory experience of the buzzing, bristled, shaved, blowing and screwy.
Amongst the effects, the electronically synthesized there’s wah-wah-wah, heraldry to jazz tones and airs of sax, Budd-like tinkles and iterations of piano and pipes. A mix of avant-garde, a Riley nightmare on occasions, the most removed wisps of jazz, the cosmic, the metallic and machined and vapored voices, The Marcus Neiman Cookie Recipe Hoax is like a meeting between Variát, Popol Vuh, Robert Musci, and the Warp and Artetetra labels. Both in and projected outside the machine, new sound, sonic and sometimes melodious feelings are fed into the abstract, into entropy, the alarming and liquid. Whilst the themes, the inspiration are concrete, this soundtrack (I would call it it) shutters, expands and atmospherically offers more. Spackman is on a roll, with already a successful SAD MAN enterprise earlier this year, and now this on top of other recent filmic and art-electronic projects. Check back in a week or two to see if it has made my choice albums of the year list.
West Virginia Snake Handlers Revival ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’
(Sublime Frequencies) Released 3rd October 2025
Reminding in part of the kind of religious sermon broadcasts used to great effect on Eno And Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, but reverberated here, booming like a bluesman preacher half crazed by the effects of the poisonous serpents he wields and insists take’s a bite out of his arms to show a deadly, fateful commitment to faith, the performances and voices on this latest in-situ recording project by Ian Brennan (in cooperation and facilitated by Sublime Frequencies) is a revelatory reclamation of the original rock and roll and blues spirit. Or at least a more zealous form of the music used to accompany and rally literal interpretations (depending on sources, one that could be very skewed indeed) of lines from the Gospels of both Mark and Luke on healing and showing a strength of faith:
‘Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’ Luke 10:19
‘And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’ Mark 16:17 – 18 (Thanks to Wikipedia for these quotes)
In all his time navigating the most dangerous and difficult to reach peoples and places in the world, it took a trip closer to home, to the only remaining West Virginian community of snake handlers, to witness a truly alien experience. Nothing could prepare for what awaited Ian on that fateful day, setting up his usual stripped-down apparatus of recording equipment, placing mics so as not to interfere or distract from the performances around the alter and platform for both bloodletting and speaker-breaking screaming exaltations.
To put it in more context, loosened and set free from the archetypal studio, Ian’s ad hoc and haphazard mobile stages have in the past included the inside of a Malawi prison, Mali deserts, and the front porches and back rooms of Southeast Asia: one of which was on the direct flight path of the local airport. Even that is only a tiny amount of a near forty release back-catalogue recorded over just the last two decades. As regular followers will know, I’ve interviewed and featured a majority of those projects from the field-recordist, producer, writer and violence prevention expert. But I have to say, this is one of the most incredible and wild yet.
From his own notes and descriptions ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’ is linked to 2023’s Parchman Prison Prayer – Some Mississippi Sunday Morning album; back in the state penitentiary system, Ian recorded the songs of various prisoners inside the infamous maximum-security facility in the deep, deep South of America, finding a number of surprising performances of redemption and spiritual conversion. On the opposite bank geographically and spiritually speaking, showing certain divisions between the two forms and locations, the Appalachian side of this coin takes its lead from a controversial and dangerous (sometimes fatal) practice with its use of poisonous snakes. So dangerous in fact that at least a hundred prominent pastors have died over the last century, including founding father, the noted George West Hensley – an illiterate Prohibition era convicted moonshiner. Even if you survive, the omens are not great, with all medical intervention strictly forbidden. They do this to primarily test the faith, but also sometimes in the use of healing.
Excuse the pun, but a dying art, the practice as all but vanished from most parts of America; from 500 or more flocks in the 1970s to just a handful of dwindling pockets in the backwoods. As both a religion and way of life, scorned by Middle Class American, frowned upon by many as arcane, primitive and even backwards, the last surviving outposts of this rite stand now as a sort of twisted bastion against modernity and outsiders. The whole region has itself been decimated by globalisation and the move either overseas or away from its most prized industry of coal mining. Gutted out, as Ian would put it, this part of American is now infamous for its drug deaths: the highest per capita.
You may of course have seen the church of snake handler’s phenomenon via the 2020 HBO documentary Alabama Snake, which hones in on the 1991 attempted murder of Darlene Summerford by her husband, snake handling pastor Glenn Summerford (investigative journalist Dennis Covington originally covered this in his Salvation on Sand Mountain book), or through the National Geographic Channel aired Snake Salvation series of 2013 (again, another fatal snake bite killed the show’s main focus, Jamie Coots), or even the Sundance Film nominee Them That Follow, starring current in vogue star of the screen Walton Goggins. If you haven’t, then you’re in for a crazy, wild ride; a vehement demonstration of faith set to both the rawest and most pastoral rock ‘n’ roll and blues accompaniment.
The whole thing is insane, a reclamation of rock ‘n’ roll from Satan. For this church and their forebears believe they actually created the musical form: On the same crossroads as Robert Johnson, but instead of selling one’s soul for it, they wrestled it back from the devil. Near riotous – and Ian’s own descriptions are strikingly vivid, crazy and backdropped by the ritual of blood being spilled liberally from the climatic snake bite wounds; though it seems no one died this time thankfully.
It’s akin to witnessing the first flash of danger/excitement of the original rock ‘n’ roll spirit: say, Jerry Lee Lewis smoking his keys, setting alight to the piano for the first time. A spectacle, stripped back to the essence of performance, scripture and evangelism, every speech is delivered in a weird Captain Beefheart style – could this indeed be where the great progenitor of psych and off-the-grid rock ‘n’ roll and blues got it from in the first place. All the energy, palpitations, heaving convulsions and sweat comes through in the recordings. You could be there, in amongst the congregation as the musicians in the flock belt out roots rock ‘n’ roll like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in communion with John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat. Though it could also as easily evoke the MC5, and on the scuffle bluesy boogie ‘Jesus Has To Be #1’ a trace of ‘It’s All Over Now” and Taj Mahal. The more scuzzed-up doomed Biblical prophecy of ‘Prepare For The Time Of Famine’ recalled, to my ears anyway, both Wreckless Eric and electric Muddy Waters. And yet there’s also more refined moments of gospel to be found amongst the possessed teachings; an amble along a less rocky road to the banks of the River Jordon and onto heaven – however, it takes until the very end to hear a lead female vocal, much in the style of June Carter.
The titles are worthy of investigation alone: I never thought I’d ever see “ADHD Meds & Starbucks” in the same sentence together, or the supposedly reassuring and testing fateful last words of “Don’t worry, it’s just a snake bite” – the sub-title in brackets, being a disapproving and rhetorical “what happened to this generation”.
White men (and women) sing the blues in a fevered frenzy of the expelled and exhalated. Foreign, estranged, to even most of their fellow Americans, this practice is given free rein to astound and surprise the listener. Without any hint of the preconceived and without prejudice, Ian shines a light in on a controversial isolated community in the grip of social and economic disillusion and disparity: you could call it a retreat from the mechanisms of the outside world that works against such communities. Ian is neither an interloper nor ethnomusicologist in his role; choosing instead to let us decide or form opinion to these highly dangerous and volatile sermons, the words spoken, and acts invoked. This project is nothing short of a revelation; a glimpse into Godly anointed rock ‘n’ roll of a very disturbing and often evocatively punkish kind.
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The Digest for November 2025: New Music/The Social Playlist
November 19, 2025
THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS AND THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST
Photo Credit: Babau by Marco Valli
_/THE NEW___
Babau ‘The Sludge of the Land’
(Artetetra) 14th November 2025
A phantasmagorical shifting of tectonic plates and fever dream of a Henri Rousseau conjured equatorial lost world. And I could leave it at just that, but I’m sure both you as the reader and curious mind, and the duo behind this strange fourth worlds peregrination and inhabitation, would want a bit more to go on.
From the Artertra label founding sonic partnership of Italians Matteo Pennesi and Lugi Monteanni and their long-term Babau project an album that moves an imagined continent of influences towards new sonic, hallucinatory and kooky climes. The first “full length” work since 2023’s Flatland Explorations Vol.2, The Sludge of the Land funnels library music, the avant garde, the discombobulated, wonky electronica, the cartoonish, 32-bit console music, vague uses of ethnography and the atavistic, the visions of Jon Hassell, the breakdown shunts and floppy disc music of Esperanto era Sakamoto, the morphing AI electronic lunacy of Cumsleg Borenail, the fun kookiness and springy worlds of Carmen Jaci and Trans Zimmer & The DJs, new age trance, and at times, the more sublime drifts of Wu Cloud and Iasos into an odd repurposed wilderness. A track like ‘I tried to find myself but eventually found another, and now it’s the two of us somehow’ for example, merges Carl Stone with the mirage guitar bends and hangs of Daniel Vickers, the thinly dried blows of Ariel Kalma.
With titles that are so long as to read like haikus or little stories in their own right, there’s much in the way of descriptive prompts – although some seem like they might reflect the overuse these days of feeding blindly words, detritus and meta from the Internet into ChatGPT or some such device. Much of it describes a hodgepodge of ritual, mythologies, culture and the surreal. And musically and sonically reads like a mixed topography of palm trees, exotic islands, deserts, misty mountains and wet vegetation.
As part of a residency at Casa degli Artisti, Milan, in 2022, Babau turned their creative space into a recording studio and performing venue thanks to audio engineer and musician Francesco Piro, who produced the album. That apparatus includes instruments and effects that make sounds like reversed shaves, tangled and gangly wires, springs, chimes, the mistily fluted, and whistled alongside the recognisable sounds of a lingering foggy sax, of sauntered and hand tub drumming rhythms and both the inner workings of and the serial kooky notation of the piano.
This is an environment that squeezes the Mosquito coast up against Java, Malaysia, Polynesia and the near fantastical to produce something familiar but disjointed and surreal.
The Flower Press ‘Slowdance’
6th November 2025
Continuing to pursue a solo course, but now under the new appellation of the delicate craft imbued The Flower Press, Matt Donovan, in his own meditative and wistful way, turns the sudden loss of his sister into a subtly beautiful and reflective work of art on his fourth album.
The process of grief that prompted not only a change in musical direction (not so much that the musical signatures of past albums are entirely lost) but a much-needed therapeutic outlet, a project in which to find meaning from such a tragic event. The softly evocative Slowdance album offers consolation and testament to a life lived; the memories – referenced in a style with the track titles -, near abstract and visceral, are quantified and saved in sound and musical form to reflect upon with a great fondness and love. For Matt doesn’t just pay his respects, but also sends out moving testimony and vibrations as a way of keeping contact, of saying all the things he might have never had the chance to before, whilst healing himself.
Regular readers of the site may know Matt as the former motorising and propulsive drum beat behind Eat Lights Become Lights, and for his collaborative partnership with Nigel Bryant in the psych-Krautrock-post-punk-folk-industrial duo The Untied Knot. Away from the latter, Matt has released a trio of solo albums: Underwater Swimming (’21), Habit Formation (’22) and Sleep Until The Storm Ends (’23). This latest album of mainly instrumental pieces, takes some of the old influences but, with warmth and a wisped gauze of ether, is moving towards the orbits of Ariel Kalma, Daniel Lanois, The Durutti Column, the flange guitar-like ambient works of Harold Budd, Eno, Susumu Yokota and Mark Hollis post Talk Talk. But then there’s always a certain quirkiness and flash of post-punk and no wave dance music trebly bass playing to be found. And of course, the acoustic folksy and troubadour influences that sound particularly pastoral or in-situ: conjuring up some held dear or nostalgic escape, a glade perhaps or the sensation and touch of falling snowflakes and the building of a snowman. Some of those moments reminded me of the Wayside & Woodlands label whilst others of Arthur Russell.
The measuring of time, the chimes and triangle rings; the thin stick hitting tablas and the desert melting mirage guitar evocations of Daniel Vickers; the harmonium like moods and the Fripp-esque articulated memory of a slow dance watched from dreams; and both the stillness and the wavy, reverberated movements all articulate notions of remembrance and invested introspection. But also perhaps, manifestations of better times ahead, of durability in the face of such a heavy personal loss: the loss of a sibling hitting all that much harder.
A most wonderful album that eventually soars towards a starry celestial plane, Slowdance hovers and drifts above terra firma on a quest to evaluate and represent a life lived and the memories that pour forth from such fateful challenges. With a new title, Matt pushes into ever new and emotionally resonating territories.
Erell Latimer ‘Stay Still’
(Kythibong) 18th November 2025
The translation of visceral and abstract speech, dialogue, narration, poetry, testament, inquiry through musique concrète and tape manipulation, the new experiment from the sociolinguist composer and writer Erell Latimer is an immersive performance of reaction, interaction and interruption.
I’m not sure of the apparatus used, but other than the various machines used for effects, distortion, and what sounds like the manipulated in real time, folded, counter-folded and warped tape reels, both the long form pieces that make up this work rely upon Latimer’s voice and readings. Described in the accompanying notes as partly “concrete fiction”, fragments of Latimer’s text pieces and writings are set to a both alien and distorted, machine-like and discombobulated sounds and oscillations. Mostly in French, with passages of often disturbed or obstructed poetic philosophy and forbode from some English male speaker, the texts fluctuate between the hushed, the near in-hiding and held hostage to the clearly proclaimed and read. The cadence, both interrupted and defined signifies pain, anguish, the critical, stress, panic and theory.
The various resonated and reverberated voices and talks move from background quietness to foreground rustled distortion, and often form interlayered semantic rhythms and new utterances. Often though, Latimer’s voice is stripped down to an assortment of breathing techniques: often sounding like the aftermath of a panic attack, with Latimer trying to get her breath back or get it under control: exhales as important as anything else in this experiment and expression of “alienation, confinement, suffering, resignation, abandonment and death”.
There’s plenty of interesting, thrown, or points and nodes where both vocals and sounds interact to form hallucinations or more supernatural and haunting passages. Sometimes these interactions culminate in simulated tumults of hurricane winds, and others, into something far more musical; nearer the end of the first piece, ‘Ils seront silencieux après’ (“they will be silent after”), there’s a sort of lovely piece of music that’s part Gainsbourg, part Krautrock, part classical soundtrack.
From what sounds like paper or tape fluttering in the draft of a ventilation unit or extractor to bulb-like notes rings and chimes and the sounds of the environment, the voices and speech find space across a constantly explored soundscape of effects and obfuscation. At times it reminded me of Michèle Bokanowski, Matija Schellander, Lucie Vítková and that musique concrete progenitor Pierre Schaeffer; in short, an experimental work of language and semantics that deserves greater attention.
Plants Heal ‘Forest Dwellers’
(Quindi) 28th November 2025
The prolific and always into something drummer and trick noise maker Dave De Rose is back with his keyboardist/percussionist foil Dan Nicholls and visual anthropologist collaborator Louise Boer (otherwise known as Lou Zon) for another round of the electroacoustic project, Plants Heal.
De Rose popped up on the site as part of the Rave At Your Fictional Borders union of Jon Scott of (of GoGo Penguin note), Marius Mathiszik (Jan Matiz, I Work In Communications) and Henning Rohschürmann a while back, but his CV is packed with notable creative enterprises and collaborations, including membership of Electric Jalaba, a stint with the acclaimed Ethio-jazz luminary Mulatu Astake and instigation of the Athens-London traversing Agile Experiments project. The initial seeds for the Forest Dwellers project were planted both through the latter and through Nicholls and Lou’s London-based Free Movements events; both acting as intersections for all three contributors to cross paths, and to explore the central tenant of merging instrumental music with live electronics and DJ sets. If we’re talking about spheres of influence and CVs, Nicholls of course has just as prolific and busy schedule as a keyboardist, reeds player, composer, producer, and visual artis, whilst Lou’s documentary and experimental filmmaking and visual skills have led to a teaching role at Goldsmiths.
Lou’s work revolves around ecology, community, plant medicine, feminism, movement and experiments with analogue techniques. And this seems a good base from which De Rose and Nicholls have spontaneously reacted or conjured up improvised-like sounds and rhythms rich with organic meta and matter. During performances Lou improvises with analogue footage from her library run through video mixers and synthesisers, focused on medicinal plants such as yarrow, hawthorn, nettle and thistle. All those plants feature in processed form on the cover of the record, which was designed in collaboration with Lou’s brother Arthur Boer. Meanwhile, Lou recorded additional footage in Athens during the recording sessions to feed into the continued cycle of the project’s live evolution.
The trio’s second album together (their previous self-titled debut was released back in 2021) is a biomorphic eco system of new age trance music, techno, dub, light jazz, breaks, amorphous ethno-beats, acid and both plant-based and more alien atmospherics. Tech and nature combine to create a kind of Fourth World version of electronic dance music. But that’s really only part of the story, as the living and breathing creepers, vines and branches of the forest canopy and floor integrate with pulsations, shuttered, tubular, hollowed pole paddled and shaved or slowly released electronics to produce a camouflage reverberating effect of movement, growth and expansion.
There’s a revolution of a kind in the same air, with whispery like effected and morphed voices emerging from the fauna, and a revision of the old tribal gathering nature-tech and freedom rave-ups of the late 80s and early 90s. I’m hearing vague signs of Richard H. Kirk, FSOL, Jeff Mills, Lukid, Warp Records, Conrad Schnitzler, Mike Dred and Jon Hassell. Still, there’s more to unpick from the very much percussive and drum led rhythmic evolutions on this album; echoes of various more atavistic and exotic musical influences; timings and patterns enhanced by ethnography study and absorption. From terra firma to the stars, this organic flora form of electroacoustic dance music proves pliable, liquid but full of substance and the tactile, the earth and air.
Super Grupa Bez Fałszywej Skromności ‘The Book Of Job’
(Huveshta Rituals) 28th November 2025
From true obscurity and the dusty shelves of dormant archiving, The Book of Job emerges from its forty-year sleep – recorded as it was back in an omnipresent Soviet controlled Poland of 1985 – into a climate that scarily resonates. Whilst the sickle and hammer have disappeared from the flag, and Communist totalitarian rule has been replaced by a new form of oppressive authoritarianism in Putin’s leader-cult Russia, aggression persists and the threat of invasion, or at least escalation against those former countries that fell behind the Iron Curtain after WWII, looms large. No longer an abstract threat, Russia’s expansionist ambitions look to lock horns with Nato and the West, with a near apocalyptic destructive war in neighbouring Ukraine pushing at the borders of Poland. If nerves can no longer hold, if there is no end to the hostilities, no ground given on either side of this brutalist invasion, and if Ukraine is lost, then Poland becomes the new frontier between Europe and dictatorial Russia: a Russia hellbent it seems on regaining its lost influence and control of Eastern Europe.
There will be generations now totally separated from Poland’s past as an occupied state, subjected to draconian control by the USSR. But the timely arrival of this cult recording will once more remind its people and the world at large, of events in the 1980s; a decade when despite violent suppression, the population rose up to eventually overthrow its Soviet authorities at the end of that decade. When the various notable luminaries of the Polish underground and jazz scenes, and the counterculture’s actors and voices behind the collective ensemble of Super Grupa Bez Fałszywej Skromności first performed this multilingual and faith spanning work at the 1981 Jazz Jamboree festival, the omens weren’t quite so grave. Only weeks later the situation had changed dramatically, with Genral Jaruzelski’s ordained Martial Law rules cracking down ruthlessly on the population. In light of civil peaceful protest and the strike action and heroism of Lech Wałęsa’s famous Solidarity movement, the authorities more or less implemented a military coup of extreme measures: As the accompanying album’s scene-setting essay informs us, “Art was replaced by parades of heavy artillery”. By the time this same group recorded an album, four years later, the very act of making music would be considered a symbol of defiance: unless of course it was used to glorify the Soviet regime. “Paradoxically” the Catholic Church of Poland became a sanctuary. This may explain, in part, why the Hebrew’s Old Testament (reused in the Christian Bible and also “echoed” in the An-Nisa chapter of Islam’s Qur’an) chronicle of Job was used as totem for endurance in the face of such suffering. Because much as Job suffered tribulations and trails at the hands of God, beguiled and tempted by Satan to turn away from his piety, many of the Polish people found solace, resistance and hope despite the relentless attacks on their freedoms.
An allegory of the human condition, The Book of Job, for those who never attended their Sunday Schooling lessons, nor attended a faith-based school, tells the tale of the protagonist and his testing by God through litany and prose: that’s three cycles of debates between Job and his friends, Job’s lamentations, a poem to Wisdom, Elihu’s (a critic of Job and his friends, who may have been a descendent of the Abraham lineage) speeches, and God’s two speeches from a whirlwind. In short, Job is a wealthy God-fearing man with a comfortable life and large family, living in the Land of Uz (which has been situated in various locations of the atavistic Levant and beyond by various sources; anywhere from the old Aram, now modern Syria, to the Edomites kingdom, which now stretches across modern Jordon and Israel). God discusses his piety with Satan (though this is often written down as “adversary”, but we know who they mean), who rebukes God, stating that Job would turn away from God if he was to lose everything within his possessions: which was a lot. God decides to test that theory or challenge by allowing Satan to inflict pain on Job. The test increase, the suffering gets much, much worse, and Job ends up losing his wealth, children and health. Through it all he maintains his faith and piety, but not without much discussion and challenge. By the epilogue, Job’s fortunes and family are thankfully returned to him: Satan I take it, scuttling off to curse and sulk in the shadows.
Recorded in a makeshift “high-fidelity” studio at the STU Theatre in Krakow in the Spring of 1985, The Book of Job album draws with serious depth and political allegory upon the text. Covering everything from stage theatre to the filmic, the avant-garde and of course jazz – most of the lineup in this singular gathered super group hail from Poland’s incredible and influential jazz scene -, but so much else, the Holy Land is transported across porous borders to Eastern Europe to take in the Jewish diaspora, acolytes of Indian and Far Eastern scriptures and the then contemporary 80s sounds of the underground.
The “revered” pool of players, luminaries that took part include the multi-instrumentalist Milo Kurtis, a Pole of Greek origin, born into a family of refugees escaping the civil war in Greece, noted for his roles in Grupa w Skład, Ya-Sou, the cult rock band Maanam and jazz-fusion super group Ossian (also said to have worked with Don Cherry, who gifted Milo his ocarina), on percussion, Jew’s harp and trombita; the Polish flutist of world renown, composer and arranger Krzysztof Zgraja, who made his debut in the jazz-rock band Alter Ego, but also played with Czesław Gładkowski and Jacek Bednarek, on not only his main instrument of choice but the lighter made and smaller range Fortepiano; the Polish avant-garde and free jazz player Andrzej Przybielski, who’s notable credits include stints with the Gdansk Trio, Sesia 72, the Big Band Free Cooperation and Acoustic Action, on trumpet; drummer, composer and cultural animator Janusz Trzciński, known for his extensive work in the theatre, a writer of plays and one of the main instigators behind this project, on drums; the highly rated Zbigniew Wegehaupt, who played with just about every Polish jazz icon going and in both Wojciech Gogolewski’s Quartet and Extra Ball, on both electric bass and double-bass; and the Polish composer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and teacher Mieczysław Litwiński, who studied with such groundbreaking luminaries as Stockhausen and co-founded far too many groups and projects to list here, but notably the Independent Studio of Electroacoustic Music and Light For Poland, on sitar.
Added to that role call was an ensemble of either commanding, English Repertory-like or ominous voices and vocalists from stage, screen, including Ignacy Machowski, Adam Baruch, Zdzisław Wardejn, Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Juliusz Berger and Andrzej Mitan. It must be pointed that only Mitan receives the credit of vocalist; the Polish poet, performer, founder of the Alma Art record label, chants a poetically evocative forgiving gospel of obedience and implored yearning whilst on the album track ‘When A Man Dies’. Echoed as much from a cavern or cave on the desolate plains of the Uz as in the synagogue, the repeated mantra of “Man. World. Pain. Silence” is stoically announced over and over to sombre and yet beautiful tones. The rest of that cast find themselves either narrating or interlayered with a whisper, chattering chorus of atmospheric dialogue. It reminded me, in part, of Aphrodite’s Child own Biblical opus 666.
Hallowed yet dark and almost Chthonian in places – a touch of Byzantine too – the album sets an otherworldly, afflatus but esoteric scene with the opening resonated waves of airy, fluted and blowy vibrations, moving like cycled or tubular wind from the subterrain, on the introductory entitled opener. Something mystical dances in the wind, as echoes of Alice Coltrane and Prince Lasha stir up spiritual jazz mirages and something quite ghostly seems to be lurking in the vibrations. The story unfolds, the mood suitably enacted. ‘Satan’s Concept’ follows this with percussive shimmer and shivers and a supernatural voice of forbode. Evocations of both Don Cherry and 80s Miles Davis like trumpet both trill and sound almost swaddled on another visceral and porous geographical musical landscape: the vibrated bowl sounds of Tibet for example. But the whole feel changes on the first of three litanies, with what could be called a post-punk bass and signs of krautrock and jazz-fusion: think an impressive union of Einstürzende Neubauten, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts Eno and Byrne, Desert Players Ornette Coleman, Jon Hassell and Ramuntcho Matta relocated to the land of the lost tribes. ‘Accusation’ has a promising Blue Note jazzy double bass introduction, a little bluesy and bendy. It’s accompanied by some rattled hand drums; the only instruments that express and lay down the atmospheric flexed, stretched, harmonic pinged backing to the biblical echoed English voice that narrates and questions God.
The post-punk-jazz mood is back for the second litany. A sort of no wave funk noodle of Dunkelziffer and Miles, a long low horn from the Steppes, and dialogue of wisped and more esoteric voices spoken in multiple dialects, there’s a supernatural quality to the atavistic summoning of scripture, and the age-old battles between good and evil. Almost skulked, there’s vocal coos and spectre like demons and angels in the shadows of this dramatic Krautrock-esque holy visitation. ‘Hope’ brings back in the Eastern influences, the sound of Buddhist India with the signature reverberations and brassy rings of the sitar: Shiva on the Vistula. With its psychedelic ragga mediations, the sitar acts in unison with the twanged boing sound of the Jew’s harp, the only accompaniment to the Hebrew narration.
The third and last of the litanies is quasi-80s funking jazz, with elements of Hassell’s Fourth World experiments. The flute whistles and flutters willowed fashion on a moving jazzy-fusion-funky-no-wave bass, as overlayed voices create a more convivial dialogue. There’s a smog horn too that creates a misty vapour effect. But the rhythm is like some kind of Israeli or Eastern European dance.
The album finishes on a strongly reverberated Hebrew voiced narration, a sacred holy conversation. Near the end of ‘Final’ a dreamier ray of light like flute emerges, slowly and softly drifting skywards. The sound of relief. A burden lifted.
You can easily find the parallels, the battles with faith in the face of such brutality, of oppression, and in this case, Soviet authoritarianism: The role of religion and believing playing a crucial part in resistance. As a near cryptic or hidden means of showing such defiance, The Book of Job and its lessons carried that message of artistic and political/social hope. This album, even without any of its important cultural and political context, is an artefact that deserves saving and savouring: a real intriguing, atmospheric and near theatrical experience worthy of attention and acclaim. Not just a slice of history but an experimental work of art.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 103___
For the 103rd time (and most probably the last as I change the format for next year), the Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
It was a few months back that I celebrated the 100th edition of this series, which originally began over 12 years ago. The sole purpose being to select an eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show, devoid of podcast-esque indulgences and inane chatter. In later years, I’ve added a selection of timely anniversary celebrating albums to that track list, and paid homage to some of those artists lost on the way.
The final social of 2025 merges together anniversary celebrating albums from both November and December. This selection includes 50th trumpeted milestones for Eno’s Another Green World, Patti Smith’s Horses, Kraftwerk’s Radio-activity, Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey and Parliament’s Mothership Connection. There are even older throwbacks, 60th salutations, to The Who’s My Generation (I’ve gone for The Users version of ‘It’s Not True’ for something a bit different) and The Beatles’ Rubber Soul (I’ve gone for two covers, Davy Graham’s take on ‘I’m Looking Through You’, and Anne Murray’s version of ‘You Won’t See Me’). Added to that impressive list are 40th nods to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy, and LL Cool J’s Radio; and finally, whilst we’re in the hip-hop icon camp, I had to drop a track from the Genuis/GZA’s Liquid Swords, which is 30 this month.
The rest of the list includes songs from across the last five decades, with entries from Excepter, Vitriol, The Mattoid, Cowboys International, Milford Graves triumvirate free jazz experiment with Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover under the Children of the Forest banner, Pekka Airaksinen, Sir Robert Orange Peel, Byzantium, Thony Shorby Nwenyi, Fat Spirit and more…
Tracks:
The Users ‘It’s Not True’
Anne Murray ‘You Won’t See Me’
Cowboys International ‘Part Of Steel’
Brian Eno ‘I’ll Come Running’
Excepter ‘Maids’
The Mattoid ‘Suicide’
Patti Smith ‘Redondo Beach’
The Jesus and Mary Chain ‘Taste The Floor’
Fat Spirit ‘Planet Earth III’
Catherine Ribeiro ‘Iona melodie’
The Springfields ‘Are We Gonna Be Alright?’
Davy Graham ‘I’m Looking Through You’
This Heel ‘Bad World Above’
LL Cool J ‘That’s A Lie’
Parliament ‘Mothership Connection’
GZA ‘Hell’s Wind Staff/Killah Hills 10304’
Pekka Airaksinen ‘Ratnasikhin’
Vitriol ‘Restart’
Sir Robert Orange Peel ‘Brutalists’
Kraftwerk ‘Antenna’
Et At It ‘Beets’
Burning Spear ‘Marcus Garvey’
Thony Shorby Nwenyi People in the World’
Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover ‘March 11, 1976 II’
Byzantium ‘What A Coincidence’
Dry Ice ‘Mary Is Alone, Pt. I’
EABS ‘Niekochana’
Jack Slade ‘Lipstick’
Eberhard Schoener ‘Only The Wind’.
A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries in alphabetical order.
Le Grand Couturier ‘S-T’
(Un Je-ne-sais-quoi) 7th November 2025
The hula limbo swinging hoop of French-Polynesia is both languidly and more wildly reimagined, transported and pulled in various directions by the Le Grand Couturier trio of Rachel Langlais (keyboards and vocals), Jean-François Riffaud (composition, steel guitar and sharing vocals) and Clément Vercelletto (drums, synths).
Newly formed for the explorative Un Je-ne-sais-quoi label, with two of that group already familiar names to Monolith Cocktail readers – I reviewed Rachel’s solo avant-garde, textural and tactile prepared piano suites album Dothe for the same label back in 2021, and Clément’s nightjar imbued experimental L’ engoulevant album for the label at the start of this year -, this ensemble of widely diverse experiences draws upon a rich soundscape of tradition and the psychedelic to weave a sort of part-beckoning and part-chaotic Hawaiian homage. Cross-referencing a multitude of sources, some form their own projects, the trio’s debut album is an altogether more mirage and hallucinatory vision of Island life, drawn into a modern world of electrical-charged, felt-like rippled interreferences and coarser transmissions. Whilst sauntering and swaying to a familiar Hawaiian rhythm and melody and the sound of the steel guitar, there’s a constant funnelling and layering of what sounds at times like scraps from CAN’s ‘Unfinished’ and ‘E.F.S.’ series, The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour funfair organ and psych trippy reversals, and musique concrete.
If you loved Pete Fowler’s Monsterism Island curated compilations then you will easily pick out traces of Les Baxter, White Noise, The United States of America (especially Rachels’s ether emergent distant voice on ‘Maneki Neko’, a reference to the lucky “beckoning cat” figurine), The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and Martin Denny. But maybe surprised to hear the delightful South Seas motions and lilt of Makoto Kubota & The Sunset Gang and the wavey bendy sounds of bluegrass and country: reimagined by Moebius & Plank, Charlie Megira and Bailey’s Nervous Kats. But what’s this approaching from the sea, paddling through the waves on an outrigger canoe of old, but Dick Dale and The Bel-Airs thumbing a lift in the company of Sonido Galle Negro.
A sanctuary come portal to other worlds, this tropical magical hideaway proves fertile ground for musical and sonic manipulation, repurpose. Hawaiian phrases – ‘I Ku’u Wa Li’i Li’i’ or “my childhood days” for example – and typography, the vibe of the place, its blues and more fragrant wilts, marooned lethargy is not so much guarded or restored as woven into something beguiling, strange, serenading, sometimes distorted and often swimmingly lunar. There’s undoubtedly some layer of post-colonial revisionism, of ownership and the anthesis of European lens ethnography, but the trio’s debut album is just a very lovely, magical thing of Polynesia fantasy. It will be interesting to hear more.
Imperial Motors ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’
Released 21st October 2025
States/countries that claim to have adopted the Marxist doctrine have, historically, usually enforced it with a totalitarian fist, forcing its artists to propagate the authoritarian propaganda of its own choosing. We can forgive the exuberance and contemporary rage of the young, possibly knowing that they will have less, pay more, and lose many of their freedoms in the process: making them a doomed generation depending on your pessimism scale. Marxism has its utopian promises: a fairness of distribution, power to the proletarian and all that – and I’m sure Marx, to paraphrase, said that the worker can never be happy working for someone else: though self-employment is no picnic. But like every idea, in reality fails to grasp our innate individualism, our differences. But as I already opened with, artists in such climates have usually been just as threatened, locked up and sent to Siberia for daring to stray from the one-party line.
Anyway, I’m only banging on about this because the latest agit-post-punk-disco-indie band to emerge from the Brooklyn scene, Imperial Motors, have mentioned it in their email to me. Or at least, as an influence (and damn fine one to have) they cite the Gang Of Four’s version of sonic Marxist rhetoric and fire. Whilst also, it must be stated, they use the term satirical, they wish to employ their political polemics and protestations via music, rather than throw real Molotov’s from the barricades. And yet, despite the rightful outrage, disillusion and riled injustices of our present times the quartet’s debut EP is actually very melodic, tuneful, disarming in parts and full of DFA Records and post-punk disco synth lines and beats: think early LCD Sound System and the anarchic energy and maximalist approach of such contemporary groups as Crack Cloud and Squid matched by Martin Dupont, the Pop Group and Boots For Dancing. And that’s only half the story.
But let’s introduce the band first. We have Liam O’Toole on vocals and guitar, Josh Cukier on drums and also vocals, Ben Biber on synth/keys, and again, sharing vocals, and Andrew Graces on guitar. This core has expanded for the proposes of the EP’s second half pairing of tracks, ‘Sonya’ and ‘Infinite Money Glitch’, bringing in the climatic ariel bending intensity of violists Ryan Anderson and Jarrod Ajhar and violinist Lila Lifton on the latter, and the accompanying vocals of Hely Morales on the former.
Referencing, so it says in the email, a level from Call of Duty but obviously a cultural throwback to Sandinista era The Clash via its original immortal line in Apocalypse Now – spoken by Robert Duvall’s character, Lieutenant Colonel William “Bill” Kilgore -, Charlie Can’t Surf is twisted by the toxins in the waters. Each track is a battle between holding it together and falling apart in a world torn asunder, starting with the brilliant opener ‘Bartender’, which pits our protagonist bar fly spiralling into a pit of doubt and reactionary disillusion by the transactional culture that leave us all numbed, isolated and without any sincerity. Lurching like a derailed David Byrne or even Scary Monsters period Bowie, and even an Eno, between eyeing up the unrequited bartender and spinning into bar stool bursts of preachy frustration; a statement on the poisoned waters and our inability to fish without contamination and erosion of our closeness to nature. It sounds like a slice of Scottish 80s post-punk via XTC and has a great chorus that stays with you.
‘Freeloader’ sees a slight change in direction; still riled-up, and almost unhinged in places, but now evoking signs of ‘Helicopter’ era Bloc Party and The Futureheads. The band attempt to find the tangible, connective in a world of synthetic vacuous exchanges; turning on neighbours like a passionately agitated Talking Heads in suburbia. The EP’s most surprising turn is ‘Sonya’, a damaged love song, about to be squashed by the collapse of the Artic shelf. Their most synth-pop-orientated track is disarming with its subject: climate change apocalypse. The lovelorn glaciologists at the centre of this sorry doomed love explosion of euphoric crescendo art-pop contemplate a sort of Romeo & Juliet suicide in the shadow of ecological destruction.
No one could put it better in trying to explain the finale, ‘Infinite Money Glitch’ than the band themselves: I would have missed most of this contextualised layering. The “uncanny valley is inverted: it’s not machines imitating humans, but humans running on cold, mechanical instinct. Screeching guitar, off-kilter drums, and an asymmetrical bass groove lay the black midi-like foundation as various speakers retell colonial anecdotes through glib, filtered vocals as if automated by their own apathy. “Mortgage rates [are] saved on the mass graves,” sings a real estate agent. “Seafront plots if you can spot some, never mind the bones, the flotsam.” The various narrators then become united by the refrain “help us make a difference / help us make them different, combining into one single voice, one single organism — the US colonial project of subjugation, domination, and profit. In the name of corporate growth, annihilation is just collateral.” You all got that? Good. It’s a very nice closer actually, heavenly gilded with drama and showing signs of all the influences I’ve already mentioned plus Faith No More, PONS and Black Medi. Capitalism is a bitch. Apathy the curse. And yet there is a certain fantastical element, and the sense of something rising up out of the gloom.
An impressive EP that offers much hope and anticipation for the album; a burgeoning band with much potential, caught between dancing and riling at the system.
Shoko Nagai ‘Forbidden Flowers’
(Infrequent Seams) 14th November 2025
Revealing a both playful and more stirring emotional tumult of memories, chapters from the multi-instrumentalist and experimental musician Shoko Nagai’s life encapsulate a musical conjuncture of the wild, the avant-garde and more plaintively classical on a most extraordinary album.
At the head of a new quartet, and in a “semi-autobiographical” mode, Nagai draws upon a lifetime it seems of eclectic influences and experiences; at any one time, and often in the same composition, combining Japanese salon music, free form jazz, klezmer and Eastern European classical tragedy with spine-tingling and haunted tension soundtracks and the manic.
But before we go any further, a little information is needed: some background if you like. For those unaware of Nagai’s reputation and prowess, the keys specialist – I say keys, as on this record, she plays an assortment of such instruments, from the piano to the Farfisa and Fender Rhodes, but is credited for electronics and the most unusual of sound devices, the Nintendo DS – made her way from Japan to the USA, where she studied at the prestigious hot house of Berklee. Career wise, Nagai has rightfully received a number of nominations and awards, and worked with such luminaries as Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Satoshi Takeishi, and Yiddish singers. Joining her on this latest album under the newly assembled quartet are the Brooklyn-based drummer and percussionist Kate Gentile, active on the NYC jazz scene since 2011; the Grammy Award-winning recording artist and composer, and on this album violinist, Pauline Kim Harris; and trumpet/flugelhorn player and composer Pamela Fleming. All three have extensive, admirable CVS, and plenty of experience in their chosen fields. And bring an almost infinite scope of musical and sonic possibilities to the album.
If led is the right word, this ensemble matches and stretches the ideas, sentimental prompts and both bluesy and more poetic fluid language of Nagai’s playing and compositional set-ups. I haven’t any info on how this record was made, so no idea how planned or improvised it is, but it sounds like the perfect balance of both; there’s room for exploration, room for passages and break outs of energy, tension and release, and yet there is something always tangible, a melody, a direction and compositional device to make a return. For every more instantaneous Art Ensemble of Chicago burst or more manic, quick-stepped Bad Plus moment there’s a moment of reflective musical haiku. And for every leap into the jazz-fusion of the Weather Report, or the more fluid quickened piano works of Ryo Fukui and Cecil Taylor, there’s echoes of Cosmic Coltrane, Annie Gosfield and Alex Roth’s Cut the Sky project.
The action is constantly on the move between splashing waves and near cartoon retro gaming music, between deep classical poignancy and the more sinister and troubling. For example, ‘Whispering to the Bubbling Wall’ could be Phillip Glass in troubling, near haunted and ghoulish circumstances, whilst ‘Hello Universe’ sounds like a burbled synth and twinkled keyed and cartoon skidding and skirting of Ethio-jazz and Shigeo Sekito. But then you get pieces that are more like the music of Toru Takemitu, the Jewish diaspora in Eastern Europe, the Don Cherry Quintet and La Monte Young.
Every instrument is put through its paces, stretched but also played with near grace at times, or melodically holding an emotion and reference to a particular piece of Nagai’s story and expressions. And whilst a switchboard of calculations, quirky effects and near shrills and heralded trumpets blast or staccato across kooky flighty spells of quickness, the electrifyingly hectic and whistled, there’s a real weight to each poetically entitled episode in this story. Forbidden Flowers is simultaneously a whirlwind, contemplation, observation and incredible creative outpour of musicianship; the sources and influences proving surprising and dynamically playful in equal measures.
Silver Nun ‘Tabula Rasa’
(The Crystal Cabinet) Release 31st October 2025
Driven up into a ringing and resonating performance of the mystically ritualistic and expressively rallying, the international Silver Nun duo of Lucy Valentine and Simo Laihonen proves that both distance and time are no barriers to a congruous union of creative disciplines. Demarcated to a point, though running near seamlessly into each other, Tabula Rasa is one long complete work set in motion by Valentine and recorded during the Pandemic: born into a very different world to now. On that day, in the venerable, or not, setting of a “deconsecrated” church – shorn of its original afflatus purpose for secular inclusion or as an idiosyncratic venue -, the County Durham silversmith, film maker, label founder (this album is being released through Valentine’s own The Crystal Cabinet imprint, an electroacoustic label that focuses, I believe, on cassettes) and multi-instrumentalist strummed, blazed and whipped up a resounding invocation and rallying concentration on the guitar. This was in 2021. At a later date in 2023, drumming and percussionist foil, Laihonen added his own rhythms, cymbal splashes and crashes and hoof-like gallops. It sounds however like the collaborative partners were both in the same space together, not two years apart, with one in the North of England the other in Finland.
Going much deeper, this nebulous offering and invocation evokes the melodic circled spins and dervish religious music of Iran, of atavistic Persia, the Levant and amorphous echoes of various Gothic folk styles, of doom music and the Biblical. It’s akin at times to dropping Death In June or Ash Ra Tempel in the Middle East of the Sufi. And then again, the stamps and danced steps in places reminded me of Islamic Spain. But then the temenos set ‘Underneath the Hypaethral Sky’ segment sent me into an incense smoked trance-like recall of the Hellenistic. And the guitar at times reminded me of Steve Gunn, and at others, like the music of Wovenhand, the mood describing a more esoteric vision of the old American West.
There’s a lot going on reference wise to be sure: even the title of the album is borrowed from the Latin, “the idea of individuals being born empty of any built-in mental content, so that all knowledge comes from later perceptions or sensory experiences”: or to put it simply, “a clean slate”. And yet “rasa” is also used in Indian culture and religion, describing the aesthetic flavour of any literary, visual or musical work that evokes an indescribable feeling in the reader or listener. Channelled into one reverberating and beating, fluctuating momentum of rattled rhythmic strings, metallic and burnished elements, the spun and more elan, and frame drummed and more kit rolling bounds, both the daemonic and the spiritual collide to create an atmosphere that’s simultaneously refined yet strong. In years to come, generations will study this period of creativity very closely; the most bleak, restrictive and frightening period in most people’s living memory was a catalyst for a pouring of anxieties, stresses but deliverance too. The Silver Nun vehicle, its title reflecting Valentine’s silversmith craftsmanship and how it applies to and informs her musical processes, is ritualistic, a purging almost or letting go; the changes ringing out, sounding out into a suitably atmospheric environment. And yet travelling far, reaching across time and geography to take in near Byzantine and atavistic old evocations. A sound collaboration that proves distance is no barrier to a unifying experience like no other.
SML ‘How You Been’
(International Anthem) 7th November 2025
The inter-connections and overlaps are strong on this one, with the enviable might and scope of influences stretching across a multitude of scenes, styles, decades and geography.
Based in L.A. but from a multi-national and even international cast, the often abbreviated Small Medium Large includes the Aussie-born artist, bassist and composer Anne Butterss (last year’s solo headed, but featuring many SML band mates, Mighty Vertebrate album was included in our choice list of 2024), “synthesist” Jeremiah Chiu (another favourite from 2024, Chiu’s team up with the violist Marta Sofia Horner and luminary of new age trance Ariel Kalma, The Closest Thing To Silence, another highlight of 2024), saxophonist Josh Johnson (back in March Johnson collaborated with fellow SML member Gregory Uhlmann and Sam Wilkes for the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes triumvirate), drummer Booker Stardrum (this is the first time that the all-round percussionist and drummer, educator and composer, who’s worked with Weyes Blood and Lee Ranaldo, has appeared on this site I believe) and the guitarist Uhlmann. In some ways this combo could be called the International Anthem house band, or the label’s super group of a sort, as near enough each member has released of featured on an album or two on that Chicago institution – celebrating a modest birthday anniversary recently, the label has managed in a quick time to establish itself as one of the most critically favoured experimental imprints; a hub for all things jazz and beyond, and just the other month, the chosen platform for Tortoise’s first album in years – a group who’s imprint can be heard and felt on this SML album.
For the ensemble’s second album together, and following a similar process, methodology to their debut, the rhetorical How You Been features an “extensive post-production of recordings from a handful of shows” pulled together to make a whole – you can hear the audience’s appreciation at one point. Flexing and honing their improvisations and more locked-in work outs, they’ve managed to surprise and take a few quirky, kooky and often funky turns to create a kinetic fusion of post-rock, post-jazz, no wave, agit-dance music body movements, fourth world musics, environmental ambience and vague ethnographic percussion. On one hand its Ariel Kalma and Tortoise meet with Jan Jelinek and Kirk Barley, and on the other, like Kraftwerk deciding to move to downtown NYC in the early 80s. But then again, I’m hearing Eno & Byrne, Golden Teacher, Heroes Side Two Bowie, Kriedler and Carl Stone too. For between the longer future-post-punk-funk and jazz-fusion (if rewired by the Chicago hothouse of stars) numbers there’s shorter passages of the tubular, fluttered, new age and liquid: a lot of water passing through, from deep dives to the ocean bed to water side tranquillity gazing.
Titles merely set out amorphous prompts, steps and references, as a “Moving Walkway” is musically represented more by a Greg Foat-esque walking milky way traverse. And “Blood Board SHROOM” shapes up to be an atmospheric passage of crystallised light forming. But generally, you never know exactly where the SML group are going to take you. Essentially though, this is an outfit with groove and rhythm and confidence in extending an already loose jazz core into new fields and orbits. If no one has put this proposal forward already, they’d be great touring partners with Tortoise.
Snorkel ‘Past Still Present Tense’
(Slowfoot & Archaeon) 14th November 2025
Tortoise with a groove and rhythm as manipulated and effected by Lee Scratch Perry. The Mosquitos meets Populäre Mechanik at the workshop of Walter Smetak. Just as couple of reference point combinations I’m throwing out there to describe this evolving and revolving South London based ensemble’s sound and scope of influences. And yet, it barely scratches the surface, as the fixed – at that moment of time when recording this loose collection come both retrospective and future teasing survey – lineup modulate, discombobulate, stutter, flex, warp, transform, oscillate and reverberate ideas as eclectic as gamelan, industrial funk, krautrock/kosmische, post-rock, jazz, d ‘n’ b, no wave, post-punk, cult library music, the fourth world “musics” of Hassell, Byrne and Eno, and of course dub.
But let’s pull back a moment before ploughing into this generous double-album spread – the group’s third studio album proper I believe, following on from 2007’s Glass Darkly and 2012’s Stop Machine -, and share a little information about this incarnation of Snorkel. Original instigator, drummer-percussionist, performer with This Is Not This Heat, Daniel Sullivan and the Lifetones, and producer for such acts as Gong, Charles Hayward and Vibration Black Fringe, Frank Byng is joined by Ben Cowen (another connection to Vibration Black Fringe, Cowen was also formerly a member of 7-Hurtz and has collaborated with Morcheeba) on keys and synths, Tom Marriott (a member of Pest) on trombone and effects, Roberto Sassi (formerly of the Vole Trio and Cardosanto, and a current member of Heckle Chamber and Charles Hayward’s Abstract Concrete project) on guitar, Ralph Cumbers (releases music under the Bass Clef moniker) on modular synth and samplers, trombone and bass, Charles Stuart (currently the music director for Grace Jones’ live band, but also the driving force behind The Fish Police; Stuart also goes under the “clandestine” cloak of 129 when producing and gets a separate credit under both on this album) on various electronic apparatus, percussion, melodica, vocals, keys and guitar, and, popping up on two tracks on the D-Side of this double-album, Nick Doyne-Ditmas (credits include Pinski Zoo, Monkey Puzzle Trio and Crackle) on bass duties. You’ll probably not going to get the chance to listen to this particular septet configuration again, so enjoy the moments captured, improvisation style, during the time it took to lay all nineteen tracks down in the studio environment. I imagine that whatever happens next, the set-up will again have changed: another varied lineup of connected players from the scene, orbiting around the mainstays.
Past Still Present Tense mixes not only time but combines elements of sci-fi, global rhythms, the near clandestine, Giallo spooks and something more alien into an often-post-punk-funk of the kooky, mystical, esoteric, futuristic and galactic. The foundation, the base, or I should say, the main influence that permeates throughout is dub (more On-U Sound, Lee Scratch Perry and World of Echo); transmogrified and liquified to vibrate and resonate off an electrical wave of zapped electronica and jilted, skewered, wavy metallic dance music. And yet somehow, they’ve managed to run it through the same processors, the same gait metric as Dunkelziffer, Conrad Schnitzler, Der Plan and Klaus Kruger to give it a Germanic bent.
Hand drums, various ethnic percussion and instruments (the Ghanian Gyil is mentioned in the accompanying press notes) are interwoven and merged with electronica, the yells and hysterics and riles of post-punk (the vocals pitched somewhere between the Pop Group, Cabaret Voltaire and Damo Suzuki) and the subversive. There are traces of everything from tubular concrete musique to the ambient, from Bill Laswell to Jeff Parker, Krononaut and Holy Fuck; from Roni Size to Finis Africae, Moebius, The Missing Brazilians, Gary Numan and Irmin Schmidt. The organic and machine in a loose rhythm cross multiple borders to create both a post-no wave dance and more mysterious, sometimes creeping and dystopian sci-fi (the nod to Iain Banks ‘The Wasp Factory’ couldn’t escape anyone’s notice). There’s much to discover and absorb with each play that I can imagine this collection will keep listeners very busy – a lifetime of work in some band’s cases.
Suntou Susso ‘Jaliya Silokang: The Path Of A Griot’
7th November 2025
“Some people are born into a family of kings
Some people are born into a family of farmers
Some people are born into a family of scholars
God has created me to be a Griot.”
Right from the outset the Gambian Griot, multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer and filmmaker (you could claim a true polymath) Suntou Susso sets out his afflatus legacy with the chorus on this album’s title track and opener ‘Jaliya’. Born into a service, the divine anointed position of “cultural guardian”, of “storyteller”, of “praise singer” (all terms used to describe the ancient role that stretches back over 700 years), Suntou like his father before him continues in the grand tradition, yet always looks to pastures new, working with and pushing those roots forward.
Roughly explained as a musician or entertainer from Western Africa whose performances include tribal histories and geologies, the Griot’s instrument of choice is the 21 or 22-string (Suntou favours the later), a long-necked lute crafted out of half a gourd and covered with cow skin. Suntou is just one such brethren from the extended family to play this harp-like sounding instrument; his half-brother is none other than the equally celebrated Seckou Keita (no stranger to this blog over the years), and his father, the legendary Mamudou Susso. Just in the last year or so, Suntou toured the great Griot songbook with his father: an intergenerational experiment you could say. That musical heritage continues through his sister, the applauded vocalist Binto Suso. Binto makes an appearance on the serious kora spilling and, starting off with, near solemn attentive piano backed track ‘Jula Jekereh’; a reimagining of an ancient Griot song, the protagonist of which was a well-known wealthy flamboyant trader called Jekereh Bayo who decided to celebrate the age-old traditional Muslim festival of Tobaski ten days later than usual, co-opting the regions kings and all the right movers with his riches. Close to her brothers lead vocal, Binto carries a beautiful echo of Miriam Makeba – the kora actually reminds me of Suntou’s half-brother Seckou. As the song progresses this voice starts to soar and cover the heights, beautifully sung, like all the songs, in the ancestral Mandinka mother tongue – a community and dialect found predominantly in the Senegambia region, but also in Southern Mali and Eastern Guinea, the Mandinka are said to be descended from the atavistic Mali Empire.
Binto appears alongside a number of special guest stars and an extended company of musicians (twenty in all). For this is nothing if not an ambitious record, recorded both in the UK and Senegal with an expanded ensemble of gifted players; from strings to brass, drums, guitars and of course a host of backing vocalists. Perhaps one of the most iconic names to have contributed to the album is that of the Malian guitar legend Vieux Farka Touré, son of the rightly venerated late icon Ali Farka Touré. He brings a more tamed version of his sustained fuzz desert rock style and Bamako club movers’ shoe-shuffle to ‘Joulou Fula’, a song that entwines both sets of guitar and kora strings together in an electrified bluesy union across the sand dune contours of the land. Another “super” star, the Ghanian performer, vocalist, percussionist, arranger, bandleader and art director Kweku Sackey, otherwise known professionally as K.O.G., makes an appearance and leaves an impression on the Afro-rock fusion ‘Lannaya’. In celebration, the values of trust, integrity, love and mutual respect are given a funky ride, as Kweku both toasts and vocalises with a positive energy: if there was a camera in on the session, I’m sure he’d be very animated and dancing about in the vocal booth.
With a production of both fluidity and softened punches, elliptical and staccato rhythms merging effortlessly with the smooth, Jaliya Silokang: The Path Of A Griot’s amorphously crosses porous borders culturally and musically. With both golden and rustic threads, the spindled and cascading, and a kora sound that is simultaneously harp-like and woven as if making a tapestry, it’s a most pleasant, beautiful, soul-searching, yearned, reflective and gracefully transportive listening experience. And with the addition of strings and serenaded and more drifty saxophones, there’s both subtle evocations of the classical and jazz genres to enrich the overall sound.
All of this fits together very nicely, extending the musical family geographically, and embracing modern sounds and the old in another successful intergenerational project that looks back whilst facing current strife and the topics of immigration. But at the heart of this album is a joy and need to embrace heritage, and to celebrate the Griot: a role that bookends the album, firstly at the very beginning with a song about the family’s traditional roots, and at the end with a ruminating panoramic display of rolling and expressive kora playing that articulates the eternal Griot traveller’s journey from destination to destination, storytelling and musically sharing the stories and bonds of that calling. This is a most ambitious and sprawling album that uses its many threads brilliantly and evocatively and will do much to cement Suntou Susso’s reputation as a burgeoning star and virtuoso of the Griot form and the kora.
Tana Delle Pigri ‘Wunderkammer’
Released 3rd October 2025
Five EPs into a newish project from the very excellent K. Board & The Skreens’ Jacopo and friends Guido and Pioppo, and the Monolith Cocktail is introduced to a languid amorphous sound world of post-punk-jazz, post-punk-funk, krautrock, psychedelia, post-hardcore and vague Ethnic destinations. A play on words that only really works in Italian, Tana Delle Pigri or “Den of the Lazy” repurposes Den of Tigers, is an illusion/hallucination of almost organic and relaxed influences, cast adrift, dangled or hovered, almost as if improvised or in a live setting.
From the mirage like shadows cast across arid plains on the opener to spells in which the atmosphere of finger cymbals and percussion evoke the Middle East and the Far East and the Byzantine, or when the woody breathed and chuffed lazy flute points towards fourth world sketches of the Amazon or Egypt, there’s both a balance of prods and flexed wanders across familiar turned unfamiliar terrains. All the while that trebly bass provokes echoes of post-punk mixed with Fugazi, but also CAN, Dunkelziffer and Embryo. But the vibes change on nearly every track, moving between the Killing Joke and The Untied Knot, Isotope 217, Mosquitoes, The Cosmic Range (for sure on the lovely finale ‘Musica Maestro’) and Slint. There’s even an organ serenade of Ethio-jazz at one point, and a sort of Red Hot Chilli Peppers if warped by Introvoid bit on ‘Felpa Grigia’ (“grey sweatshirt”). Touches on every instrument seem near indolent at times, relaxed, as they manifest pictures, scenes and landscapes both earthly and on the astral planes. But overall, there’s some intriguing and brilliant ideas taking shape from such indolent qualities. A fascinating project from the Italians.
Yalla Miku ‘2’
(Bongo Joe Records) 7th November 2025
Cornering the market in musical Cyril’s it seems, the Swiss-based loose collective of Yalla Miku features both the Cyril Cyril partnership of Bongo Joe label honcho Cyril Yeterian and drummer/percussionist Cyril Bondi, plus a revolving lineup of congruous foils plucked from the canton’s diverse assembly of globally imbued and post-punk groups and projects. The mainstay in this case, and co-founding instigator and Ethiopian and Eretria pentatonic scale Krar lute player come vocalist, Samuel Ades Tesfagergsh brings the roots and connections of his homeland to an already busy and seamlessly blended fecund of sounds and influences. A refugee starting life anew in Switzerland, Tesfagergsh came to the attention of Yeterian through the Bongo Joe shop and hub; the record store and label founder’s own upbringing and roots traverse the Middle East, with the PR notes referencing Lebanon, Syria and pre-Türkiye, Anatolia.
This combination, the spheres of influence and backgrounds makes for some surprising and edgy fusions.
Marking a shift in personal after the departures of Simon Aubert, Annouar Baouna, Vincent Bertholet and Ali Bouchaki, the simply entitled new album, 2, features Boxing Noise’s Emma Souharce on machines, synths and vocals and Louis Knobil, who goes under the Knobil signature, on electric bass and vocals. Apart from slimming down to a quintet, the main changes have been vocally, with now every member of the group providing singing, narrating or talking duties. But the merger of the Swiss post-punk underground and the international sounds of the Middle East, North Africa, but Arabian world at large, remains the focus; it’s to what degree that signature is loosened and widened.
Thematic wise, this album is imbued with references to Tesfagergsh’s former Eritrean home, his culture too. His village of Embeyto is immortalised via the vibes of an East African PiL lurking in a dubby reverberated soundscape of metallic hand drums and creaky opening doors, and a ghostly taste of The Specials. Common throughout the album’s ten tracks, between the authentic trills, hollers, cries of the Arab world, the post-punk jutted, elliptical and spikiness of The Pop Group and the Dead Kennedys (see ‘Post-Aventures’), the resonated dub exotics, otherworldliness and wavey bass lines of The Mosquitos and Jah Wobble, and the Anatolian and Egyptian dance pop disco of Altin Gun, there’s a sound that mimics the organ of both Ethio-jazz and fun house spooks garage music: a ghost train merger of Hailu Mergia, ? And the Mysterians and Baba Zulu. Seemingly more pliable, more crypt frights and hauntology than general dark arts and paranormal, the veils of the esoteric add a layer or mist of mystery and creeping disquiet to the themes being aired: the use of religion as a tool to wield power, the geopolitical and status of disposed, and traditions of marriage. Embeyto could be just a lovely nostalgic admiration of home, but its location within the Tigray region can’t help but draw attention to the recent, and much forgotten, conflict there.
To be honest, it’s far beyond my own knowledge and scope of specialism, the conflict fought in the Tigray region (the most northern state within the borders of Ethiopia) is convoluted and has a long history stretching back generations. But to be brief, this two-year conflict pitted forces allied to the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF had previously been a dominant force politically in Ethiopia before conflict with its neighbours, unrest within the country, and disputes over leadership spilled out into horrific violence. But during this particular and most recent chapter, between the 3 November 2020 and 3 November 2022, it is estimated that two million people were displaced from the region, and 600,000 killed. Tigray was itself left in ruins; its capital turned over to the federal government. Reports began to emerge in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing and war crimes. And the situation is no more stable now, a few years along, with conflict once more looming within Eritrea. If you were interested in Tigray musical culture, and liked the sound of the Krar, then you should check out Ian Brennan’s recent raw and uncloyed production project, Tigray Tears ‘The World Stood By’. There’s even a reference, title wise, on the hoof galloping, gangly post-punk North African dance ‘Alemuya’ to the song and album by the Eritrean singer Dehab Faytinga. Mixed in with the Tigrayan/Eritrean thread are references to the Arabian world, its language and even religion; the diverse region’s music effortlessly fused with a myriad of influences from across the diaspora, from Europe and beyond. One minute its quite chic Swiss French, the next authentically North African. It’s Bloc Party, Stereolab, Dunkelziffer, the Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp and Snapped Ankles meets Bongo Joe’s own Maghreb K7 Club survey and Cyril Cyril in an electrified new wave punk and no wave confederation. I can’t think of a better album with which to encapsulate the Bongo Joe sound, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. A highly recommended album.
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
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music and Choice Releases list from the last month.
We decided at the start of the year to change things a little with a reminder of not only our favourite tracks from the last month but also a list of choice albums too. This list includes both those releases we managed to feature and review on the site and those we just didn’t get the room for – time restraints and the sheer volume of submissions each month mean there are always those records that miss out on receiving a full review, and so we have added a number of these to both our playlist and releases list.
All entries in the Choice Releases list are displayed alphabetically. Meanwhile, our Monthly Playlist continues as normal with all the choice tracks from October, taken either from reviews and pieces written by me – that’s Dominic Valvona – and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea. Our resident Hip-Hop expert Matt Oliver has also put forward a smattering of crucial and highlighted tracks from the rap arena.
CHOICE RELEASES FROM THE LAST MONTH OR SO:
Bedd ‘Do Not Be Afraid’
Review
Joel Cusumano ‘Waxworld’
(Dandyboy Records) Review
Peter Evans’ Being & Becoming ‘Ars Ludicra’
(More Is More Records) Review
Will Glaser ‘Music of The Terrazoku, Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future’
(Not Applicable) Review
Amira Kheir ‘Black Diamonds’
(Sterns Music/Contro Culture Music) Review
The Legendary Ten Seconds ‘Ricardian Churchward’
Review
NiCKY ‘with’
(PRAH Recordings) Review
Picniclunch ‘snaxbandwitches’
Review
Cosimo Querci ‘Rimane’
(Quindi Records) Review
Širom ‘In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper’
(Glitterbeat Records)
Striped Bananas ‘Eternity Forest’
Review
Sum of R ‘Spectral’
Tortoise ‘Touch’
(International Anthem X Nonesuch Records) Review
Vexations ‘A Dream Unhealthy’
(Cruel Nature Records) Review
Violet Nox ‘Silvae’
(Somewherecold Records) Review
THE PLAYLIST::
Howling Bells ‘Heavy Lifting’
Melody’s Echo Chamber ‘Eyes Closed’
Arcigrandone & Sone Institute ‘Ancide Sol La Morte’
Pray-Pax ‘Can’t’
Peter Evans Being & Becoming ‘Pulsar’
Petter Eldh Ft. Savannah Harris ‘MIDSUM BREW’
Myka 9, Blu & Mono En Stereo ‘Battle’
Jesse the Tree & Sage Francis ‘A Bad MFer’
Verb T & Vic Grimes ‘Distraction’
Elsio Mancusco & Berto Pisano ‘Nude per l’assassino’
Joker Starr Ft. AnyWay Tha God & Jazz T ‘Don’t Try to Test’
Summers Sons Ft. Ben B.C ‘Promises’
Sebastian Rojas ‘Pulmon Del Tropico’
Amira Kheir ‘Rabie Aljamal (Spring of Wonder)’
Oswald Slain ‘Cranberry Juice’
NiCKY ‘I Saw You’
The Legendary Ten Seconds ‘Bones in the River’
Edward Rogers ‘Astor Place’
Joel Cusumano ‘Death-Wax Girl’
The Stripped Bananas ‘Vampire of Mine’
Bedd ‘Paulie’s a Bum’
Legless Trials ‘American Russ Never Sleeps’
Vexations ‘Let Me In’
OvO ‘Gemma’
Sum of R ‘Violate’
GRABENFUSSS ‘Broken Kingdoms’
Cosimo Querci ‘Rimanemai’
Valley Voice ‘As Though I Knew’
Samara Cyn ‘vitamins n minerals’
The Strange Neighbour ‘No Mans Land’
Truth by Design ‘Stray Shots’
The Cool Kids, Sir Michael Rocks & Chuck Inglish ‘We Got Clips’
Dillion & Paten Locke ‘Always Never’
Sol Messiah & Connect The Dots Movement ‘Small axe wins the battle’
Tortoise ‘Works and Days’
Sirom ‘For You, This Eve, the Wolves Will Be Enchantingly Forsaken’
Violet Nox ‘Whisper’
Liz Cooper ‘New Day’
Sweeney ‘Silent J’
RULES ‘Run Boy’
Tinariwen ‘Chaghaybou – Adalan’
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
Halloween 2025: The Hell’s Bells Playlist
October 27, 2025
Fiendish sounds and fever dreams, the devil’s music selection this year is, as ever, a twisted tale of soundtracks, freakish and macabre passages, harrowed indie, horrorcore rap, the theatrical, esoteric post-punk and rock ‘n’ roll jukebox mischief. The selection this year devilishly devised by Dominic Valvona.
Pulp ‘The Mark of the Devil’
My Solid Ground ‘The Executioner’
The Wytches ‘Coffin Nails’
The Awkward Silences ‘Haunted by my own ghost’
Byron Lee & The Dragonaires ‘Frankenstein’
Naked City ‘Graveyard Shift (Live in Quebec 1988)’
itsokaylove & Black Wick ‘The Grim Denial’
Casper Ghostly & Uncommon Nasa ‘Floor Thirteen’
Lords Of The Underground ‘Psycho’
Fatboi Sharif, Driveby & Lungs ‘Basquiat Painted Transylvania’
itchy-O ‘Entangled|Unbinding – JG Thirlwell Remix’
The Northern Lighthouse Board ‘Ancient Sorceries’
Ruth White ‘The Litanies of Satan’
Nick Kuepfer ‘Vampyro’
Thomas Truax ‘The Cannibals Have Captured Our Nicole Kidman (Sebastian Reynolds Remix)’
The Eurosuite ‘Reflection Monster’
Kitchen Cynics ‘Phosphorus Tenement’
Lalo Schifrin ‘A Pact with Satan’
Pere Ubu ‘Satan’s Hamster’
Sonic Youth ‘Satan Is Boring’
30 Door Key ‘Cavern Of The Seasons Gone By’
Tetsuo ii ‘The Howling’
The Pretty Things ‘Death’
Mint Tattoo ‘Mark Of The Beast’
Librarians With Hickeys ‘Ghoul You Want’
The Legless Crabs ‘Sleep Sweet Satan’
Candice Gordon ‘Cannibal Love’
So Beast ‘Beastride’
Society of the Silver Cross ‘Mourning the Night’
A smattering of previous Halloween playlists and posts:
From 2012: Selection of Youtube videos and tunes.
Our Daily Bread 648: Tortoise ‘Touch’
October 23, 2025
Album Review By Dominic Valvona
Image courtesy of Todd Weaver
Tortoise ‘Touch’
(International Anthem X Nonesuch Records) 24th October 2025
The highly influential and many tentacled Tortoise collective have pretty much reached a pantheon status as innovators of a postmodernist fusion of influences and musical strands that includes jazz and all its many fecund offshoots, rock, the leftfield, the avant-garde and the electronic. This almost seamless if explorative and experimental embrace of “post-everything” ideas is unsurprising, for they were hot-housed in that much important cultural hub of Chicago, home to some of the most important and most influential developments and artists in the jazz, the blues, rock ‘n’ roll, dance music and hip-hop fields. Of course, there’s also that post-rock scene tag to consider, a label that has followed the group around since their inception in the early 1990s – although the story really begins back in the late 80s with founding members Douglas McCombs and drummer John Herndorn, both of which, despite some lineup changes, departures and new recruitments over the past thirty odd years, have stayed the course.
Whether together under the Tortoise shell or apart, divided up into spin-offs and wholly sperate projects and entities (from the various versions of the Chicago Underground to Isotope 217 and Brokeback) their reach on the late 20th and early 21st centuries musical landscapes has been impressive. They’ve arguably created something that is there’s alone; a language and method (apparently anarchic yet egalitarian) that works for such a diverse range of musicians with experiences in an eclectic range of genres. But they’ve been apart as a group, so to speak, since the release of 2016’s The Catastrophist.
Committed however to unifying the vehicle that has proven so successful, stalwarts McCombs and Herndorn are joined by Dan Bitney, John McEntire and Jeff Parker for their eighth album, Touch. Their first album in nearly nine years is also the first album to be recorded across a tri-cities network. Previous records have been recorded more or less in the city that birthed them: Chicago. But now, members are spread across state lines, in Portland and L.A., and so there’s a new impetus and methodology of remote exchange and layering: The process has changed somewhat from the days of collectively living and creatively jamming together under one loft space roof.
They’re back, but then again, they never left, grouping as they have under various umbrellas and collaborations. For example, guitarist Parker has branched out in recent years under his own name with albums on International Anthem, one of the partners, alongside Nonesuch Records, in the co-operative label sharing enterprise behind the new Tortoise album. Just as renowned on record as they are live, fans and those who’ve yet to be drawn towards the group but who might find this latest album appealing, will be delighted to hear that there’s a whole bunch of both North American and European live dates to look forward to this year and next.
Preludes and tasters, videos and multimedia teasers have been dropped in the run up to the Touch album release – some involving recent International Anthem roster names. And so, the anticipation has been building for months. Those familiar with the treasured catalogue will find a group certainly keen to plough new sonic and musical furrows, and yet remain connected to such iconic albums as Millions Now Living Will Never Die and TNT.
With references to a demanding work by a love-sick and hurt Erik Satie, a submarine volcano in the Pacific and the heaviest element in the periodic table, there’s prompted doses of science, geography and the avant-garde made human with emotional pulls and swept gestures that could be called romantic. For this time around Tortoise, no matter how unique in practice, seem to be creating a certain drama and evocative sentiment on tracks like the estranged Parisian tango shimmy and classically strained ‘Promenade à deux’, and the twangy mirage Western, reframed by Sky Records, gravity defying cosmic soundtrack ‘Oganesson’ – named after the Armenian/Russian nuclear physicist and the element that has the most heavy protons and electrons on the Periodic table, atomic number 118: a synthetic element if anyone is asking, that doesn’t appear naturally on Earth and which is extremely difficult to process. The former of those two tracks features the guest strings pairing of violinist Marta Sofia Honer (readers may recall Honer’s The Closet Thing To Silence partnership last year for International Anthem with Ariel Kalma and Jeremiah Chiu, which went on to make our choice albums of 2024 list) and cellist Skip Vonkuske adding their own special something to the transmogrified Francophone vibes.
Expanding into all sorts of areas musically and sonically, the album matches The Cars with Pino Rucher and Holy Fuck on the tubular bristled, clapped and encouraged turn timpani rumbling and nicely rolled-off ‘Vexations’ – a reference to the incredibly tough one-page notation piece by Satie that calls for the pianist to repeat an instruction 840 times, and takes anywhere from 16 to 20 hours to perform; Cage, not one to put off by such trivialities of endurance and an audience’s attention, famously had a go at it -, and evokes a motorik driven sensibility of Rother and Electrelane with hints of Thomas Dinger on the electrically harped ‘Axial Seamount’ – named after the complex and still poorly understood, it’s said, Pacific Ocean submarine volcano that sits at the epicentre of the Cobb-Eickelberg Seamount chain; first discovered in the 1970s.
Many ideas are formed, all congruously converging to create something a bit different; the doorbell like chimes and lattice of tubular bells and scaffold coming together with jazz-rock and the kosmsiche, or the Techno beats of ‘Elka’ that follow on from the squirrelling 80s fusion of new wave jazz turn heavily laboured, weighted down ‘Works and Days’. ‘A Title Comes’ meanwhile, reminded me of Sven Wunder reimagining the Faust Tapes. This is what they do best, forming or transducing what could be a mess of influences, strands and experiences into something that gels and conjures up descriptions, emotions, scenes, events, science facts, chemicals, and states of the mind and the landscape. And with this latest album, the comeback that might or might not be, they continue to avoid definition. Flexing if anything and creating ever new pathways for sonic and musical exploration. This album however is filled with mood music: some that dances and is propulsive, and some that are far more lucid and sensitive. Touch is an album that I predict will grow on you and get better with each and every play. Only time will tell if it becomes one of their most endurable and lasting influential works.
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 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.
Image: Violet Nox artwork by Allison Tanenhaus
_/THE NEW___
Bedd ‘Do Not Be Afraid’
31st October 2025
After an initial break from the site – this is down to me, and not the band -, the Oxford bedd project led by singer-songwriter, composer and producer Jamie Hyatt has now appeared twice in the space of just a few months: firstly, back in the June Digest with a bridging style EP entitled Monday 10:55, and now, this month, with a full debut album called Do Not Be Afraid.
Repeating myself again, sometimes I excel myself with a descriptive summary, and with one of bedd’s most early singles, ‘Auto Harp’ (released during the lockdowns of 2020) I described the sound as “an understated breath of fresh air from cosmic suburbia”. This beauty of a single was followed at a later date, during Covid isolation, by a premiere of ‘You Have Nice Things’, which seemed to have continued with its small-town landmarked sense of isolation and sad detachment on the EP’s title-track, the very specifically timed capture of nocturnal plaint and heartache ‘Monday 10:55’.
None of the tracks on that EP feature on this debut album, but it does gather up a string of previous singles, stretching back over the years, including ‘Party On dude (Endless)’, which featured on Jon Spira’s The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee homage film in 2024. The track itself, is a two-parter of a sort, starting off with more haunted wistful piano tones, synthesized atmospherics and chemistry set sounds, before suddenly entering a party vibe of 80s old school hip-hop and electro samples and scratches and Chic-like funk: think Lovebug Starski meets Whistle and Doug E. Fresh in the graveyard. Jamie, the mastermind behind bedd and instigator of The Family Machine, The Desires and Medal trio of bands, has scored a few film projects over the years: most notably the Elstree 1976 documentary film that chronicles the making and legacy of Star Wars. You could say that this filmic quality and experience, a bit of scale and drama, has helped to lift much of the material, giving crescendo, a build-up and oomph to the mainly indie-rock and electronic-pop influenced sounds. Sometimes the near fatalistic tone of the voice and lyrics rises above the melancholy, malady and eulogy to twinkle and glisten with a big swell or sense of something much bigger: the universal perhaps.
Before going any further, I need to name the band that has formed around Jamie for this project, which includes “a range of celebrated local Oxford musical talent”. There’s bass player Darren Fellerdale and guitarist Neil Durbridge, both bandmates from Hyatt’s previous project The Family Machine, plus the guitarist Tom Sharp, electronic musician and producer Tim Midlen (aka The Mancles of Acid) and drummer Sam Spacksman. Together, they push the fragility and vulnerability towards the stars with music that sits comfortably between a traditional band set up and the electronic (much of which is atmospheric, rather than in the form of synth waves or bass lines and such; far more in the manner of the cosmic, of adding something more magical, of transmissions, the odd captured recordings of chatter and the environment); they sound on occasions vaguely Britpopish, a little like Radiohead circa Pablo Honey and The Bends, Jeff Buckley, Benjamin Shaw, and on the shorter saddened song track about expectations, of life and being left deflated ‘Bed Sheet’, like both Blur and Gene.
I’ve already used the word fatalistic, and with references to Bowie’s Ziggy period world ending calamity (‘Five Years’), and despondent impressions of our social media and self-obsessed culture and its ways of dealing with tragedy, death and loss (‘Gone’ and ‘I Whoo Yeah’), you’d be right to expect it. And yet, the candidness of Jamie’s lyrics, especially on the nostalgic and fragile eulogy ‘Everything’s Coming Around’, have lift and a quality of endurance as our protagonist pushes through a weight of memories. Cutting through beautifully the filters of an Instagram encased world, Jamie transforms real concerns, injury and failures into something very magical and full of memorable tunes, hooks and feeling. A great album from a fine project indeed.
Yusef Mumin ‘Journey To The Ancient’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 31st October 2025
Continuing to unearth those both privately pressed and obscure recordings from a golden period of free from conscious and Black identity jazz, the reissue specialists at WEWANTSOUNDS have collaborated with the notable musician Yusef Mumin to bring some of his previously unreleased peregrinations and expressions to vinyl for the first time ever. Following on from last year’s extraordinary Black Artist Group ‘For Peace And Liberty, In Paris December 1972’ special (of which there are some musical parallels), the label has brought together a quartet of recordings from the multi-instrumentalist, co-band leader and pioneer’s personal archive. Bringing an expanded context, and a framing of the history, the relevance, the influences and sparks of inspiration, prominent jazz writer Pierre Crépon joins the dots with some insightful liner notes, making for a very desirable package.
Whilst I won’t just repeat Crépon’s studied but creatively written research and notes, a rough outline of Mumin’s career is needed before we go any further. Born Jospeh W Phillips on August 25th, 1944, the wartime baby grew up in Cleveland, a city that would prove a hub, crossroads for all kinds of societal, spiritual, radical and cultural activities. Drawn from a young age to such luminaries of the jazz form as The Modern Jazz Quartet and Yusef Lateef, but also classical pioneers such like Igor Stravinsky, Phillips would develop his own musical language, inspired by reading liberally a great many esoteric works: taking an interest in everything from Zen Buddhism to the Kabbalah, the Zohar, but eventually finding a calling from Islam. Cleveland during this time, as a growing epicentre of Black Nationalism, of Black self-preservation and worth, hosted such groups as the Nation of Islam (where they set up Mosque No. 18), a Moorish Science Temple and branches of the Ahmadiyya (an international Muslim movement started in India in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who purported to be divinely appointed as both the Mahdi and Messiah). I’m not sure when, but in the tradition of such Islamic faith conversations, Phillips adopted the Yusuf Mumin name – a reconnection with his African/Islamic roots, a rebirth if you like and shedding of a European-Christianised identity, the mark of ownership.
Taking up alto saxophone, absorbing a fecund of jazz sounds and developments taking shape in the 1960s – from Ornette to Sun Ra and Ayler (an artist he’d have a lifeline interest in, a praise for; his own art said to be a continuation of what the free form tenor saxophonist started), Mumin gravitated towards the trumpeter Norman Howard, who’s credentials included a stint with Ayler: namely playing on his iconic Spirits LP. They formed a group together for a fleeting passage of time before Mumin co-founded his most iconic partnership a year or so later, the Black Unity Quartet. The original quartet soon pared down to the now legendary trio of Mumin (on reeds), the cellist Abdul Wadud and drummer Hasan Shahid (weirdly, and I must point this out, when searching online for a bio or any details of this short-lived group, there are multiple versions of this lineup being shared, examples of misinformation: names spelt wrong, instruments attributed wrongly too.) They’re predominantly known for the cult status and rarity of their only LP, Al-Fatihah, recorded in the December of ’68. Privately pressed with no interference, but crucially no publicity or push from a label, it would take decades for this record to be re-issued and given a larger significant launch and place in free form jazz history – an interview with Mumin, and a playlist selection featured in the Wire magazine at the time of this release. Inspired by the afflatus and the opening chapter of the Quran – the first seven verses of prayer that gives guidance and mercy -, Al-Fatihah can be translated into English as roughly “The Opening” and “The Key”. Carrying on this journey, going on to collaborate with an enviable cast of jazz greats Charles Tyler, Horace Tapscott, Arthur Blythe and Butch Morris, Mumin built up an impressive archive of his own recordings; some of which are now finally seeing the light of day as the Journey To The Ancients album.
With only his Dan Nuby double-bass credited pseudonym and the drummer William Holmes (an “associate” we’re told of the blistering alto free form, modal and hard bop luminary Sonny Simmons) as company, Mumin’s quartet of recordings are brought together for a fitting showcase of spiritual, longed, radical free-play and searching, questioning roots jazz. Despite featuring different themes, it feels like a complete work: a missing act from the celebrated cannon that connects the spiritual and political quest for African American liberty with a hunger for the homelands, and unity under the crescent flag. As my reading goes, the short opening passage of Bakumbadei, is a divine song of longing, and an invocation. As both Mumin himself and Crépon’s make clear, the title “relates to power of definition, or new wine, as offerings to the fathers.” Playing the cello, both as a mark of respect to his former foil Wadud (rightly acclaimed as one its finest practitioners in the jazz and classical fields) and because it just sounds so evocatively deep and almost pained in expressing a majesty, a dignity, and classical strain of the atavistic, Mumin also sings with an equally deep, but not quite baritone, voice, repeating the title chant, spell.
The very next piece, and title-track, now opens the door into a more extensive world of ancient caravan trail jazz. Incipient stirrings, shakes of Kahil El’Zabar and drifted rasps of saxophone moodily conjure up a landscape of some dreamt-up vision of Arabian North Africa, of the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent, but also of something far more out there in an alternative plane or dimension. A spiritual, pining Afro-journey with classical traces and a touch of the New York Art Quartet, Jospeh Jarman, Maurice McIntyre and the James Tatum Trio Plus. An awakening you could say, its sets the pathway up for what’s to come.
‘A Distant Land’ is another of those searches, this time for a new Jerusalem or a land in the sky. What could be tablas set up a more bended and buoyant Eastern feel of the longed. The spaced-out bass notes, sometimes ponderous, make steps on this slow rhythmic trial as the flute now, half in the style of Llyod McNeill and half in the style of Jeremy Steig chuffs and blows its course across a deep dive of temples and jungle.
More unsteady, with Holmes’ improvised like and active minor tumults of free form drumming, ‘Diaspora Impressionism’ is a tumble and uneven keel expression of the misplaced people, but also a response to the pain, ancestral trauma and indignity, the travails of the Transatlantic slave trade legacy. At time Mumin is blowing almost dry, without any spit, in reaching that encapsulation of hurt and anger; there’s parts in which he is literally, or sounds like it, fighting with his instruments as the fraught sax mimics the viola and violin. And yet amongst the splashes and rolls, there’s passages of rhythms and melody to be found; a yearning moment or two in which the trials and tribulations find some sort of peace. But as this combo go at it, they perform a wild form of jazz that has parallels with the art of the Children of the Forest, Wayne Shorter, Evan Parker’s more far out material, Ayler, Sunny Murray and Dewey Redman.
An album of beauty and toil; of consciousness and the imagination; a balanced and congruous set of recordings that feels like a unifying statement of divinity, experimentation, hardships and free expression. WWS have done it again and retrieved a vital album from a key and pioneering artist/musician in the story of free form jazz.
NiCKY ‘with’
(PRAH Recordings) 28th October 2025
Broadening the scope and the queer landscape musically whilst inviting in some congruous collaborative bedfellows since their last outing, with the by EP in 2024, the London songwriter and performance artist simply known as NiCKY presents a new songbook of haunted, touching, tender and resilient balladry, theatre-esque numbers, behind closed doors masquerades and near heartbreaking drama.
From the very first brush of tambourine and affecting touch of late-night saloon poised piano on the opening beautiful, but hunting, declaration ‘I Saw You’, I was sold. Slowly charged with expressions of both vulnerability and lust, played out in the dimmed lit recesses of an after-hours drinking hideaway, with one eye in anticipation of the next affair, the next pick-up, yet desiring a special frisson and love, with the passing influence of Lou Reed, John Cale, Stephan Trask and Anohni, NiCKY reworks lyrics originally conceived by the queer Irish playwright and activist Colm Ó Clúbhán and the theatre group that he became a member of once immigrating from his native Ireland to London in the early 70s, the Brixton Faeries: their activities emerging from the noted Railton Road squats. In its original form, the song first featured in the “agit-pop play about cottaging” GENTS, but finds a new avenue of expression, disarmed with a different kind of poignancy and heartache, and now repurposed for a restaging of Ó Clúbhán’s Reasons For Staying play – an avenue for telling the marginalised stories of the Irish diaspora in the capital, centring on the lives of its queer characters, but also of those women seeking abortions. It’s a highlight for me on a generous EP of such “uninhibited” serenades, off-Broadway cabaret turns, and the requited.
Already off to a great start then, the second number, ‘The Fall’ features the iconic French chanteuse, writer (from the International Times to plays), one-time tightrope walker (taking to the high wire or rope for such diverse companies as COUM Transmissions and Jérôme Savary’s Grand Magic Circus in Paris) and celebrated underground icon (memorably appearing and performing in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and also, apparently taking part in Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World gala) Hermine Demoriane, who’s circus skills come in handy, metaphorically speaking, on a song about emotional support. Providing a safety net, Dermoriane’s unmistakable unique voice (for some reason, reminding me of Isabella Rosselini when she tries on a French accent) spins circus analogies to a piano led ballad that reminded me in part of both Mark Kuzelek and Elton. You can also pick up the soft, near brushed and slipped, drums I believe, of another guest, the alt-jazz, R&B and soul multi-instrumentalist and artist Donna Thompson, and the squeezed subtle wistful saxophone of either Euan Hinshelwood (who also produces and plays some bass on the EP) or CJ Calderwood (the multi-disciplinary artist and composer, who you may recognise as a member of both Lol K and Good Sad happy Bad): sorry, it doesn’t specify which one played on this track.
I use the words torch song, but in a lazy fashion, and it might be out of place here: Though you could perhaps argue that the heartbreaking curtain call, the swan song of ‘Fool’s Convention’ is one such torch song; apparently, so the notes say, a fusion of Kylie’s ‘I Believe In You’ and Nat King Cole’s ‘Nature Boy’. But there is a held, restrained, emotional charge to each of these songs that is hard to put a finger on.
In a liminal spot between resolution and malady; between hurt and lovelorn celebration; the rest of the album falls between Bob Fosse imbued theatre-musical and the music of John Howard, the observatory songwriting of Soho night owls, and a contemporary vision of a wistfully voyeuristic Ivor Novello cataloguing the goings ons and affairs at private views and parties in the capital. Although, the piano riff on ‘LDN Wars’ did remind me for some reason of Bruce Hornsby.
Variations on the signature include both the longed American dreamy stage number ‘Pink Pony Club’, which finds NiCKY adopting more of a Jack Shears persona; carried over into the next track, ‘Private Glance’, which has a Brazilian carnival meets Latin Miami atmosphere, and sounds at any one time like a shimmy-chimmy parade of Grace Jones, Midnight Magic and Roxy.
A most excellent second EP from an artist with much to share and shed on the themes of queer identity, vulnerability and resilience; the craft is superb and affecting. Definitely a choice release this month, if not this year.
Pray-Pax ‘The Lolita Years’
(Zel Zele) 24th October 2025
You’ve got admire anyone who can riff on CAN’s ‘Chain Reaction’ whilst deliberating on sexual and material fancies in the style of Lydia Lunch, but this is just one such take-away from a compilation style overview of the pioneering sound and musical theatre of the 1980s French duo. Combing a Krautrock sample with speeding cars and snatches, manipulations of Musique concrète, they turn a play-of-words on ‘Can’t’ to something approaching no wave post-punk swing. And they do this fusion of the haywire, the silly, the maverick, the dadaist and modern throughout a collection that brings together a multi-disciplinary array of their “unearthed” pieces.
A moiety, a part of the expanded Lolita Danse collective of dancers, artists, set designers and musicians – both that and the name of this survey possibly the very worst thing to ever look up online; that French obsession and flirtation with the taboo and all that -, Pray-Pax provided the soundtrack to an organised chaos of individual expressions and contemporary dances: an act that takes in circus-like acrobatics, the anarchic, kinetic and contemporary. And as part of a greater reprieve of this ensemble’s work, from ’81 to ’89, the design studio Mestiza Estudo is set to publish the Lolita Danse archive at the end of the year. As the press release outlines: “The book features material drawn from a selection of more than 10,000 images that document not only the collective’s performances but the entanglement of their personal and professional lives. This will form a portrait of the collective in motion: sets, costumes, music, videos, drawings, rehearsals, and more. The archive extends far beyond the visual: travel journals, letters, sound recordings, press clippings, and videos trace the full sweep of their creative ecosystem.”
Herding a messy story, from an ensemble that performed either solo in duets or as a group, and one that managed to slip any form of easy categorisation – never unifying under one banner, nor outlying or defining any particular sound or style -, the Istanbul/London shared label and NTS radio show platform Zel Zele present a fourteen (sixteen in the case of the digital formats, with the extras being bonus material as such) track document of art-music and sound fusions.
Behind the Pray-Pax moniker lies the creative instigators Thierry Azam and Alain Michon. These very capable experimental musicians combined the cabaret of the absurd, the frightening and playful with a sound collage that warped, reversed, cut-up and transmogrified everything from no wave to Iberian classical guitar, jazz, the classical, Fluxus, the concertinaed music of old France, post-punk, alt-Catholicism, the mysterious, noirish and the work of Francois Bayle and Pierre Schaeffer – especially on the opening flippery of the vague Afro-rhythmic, marimba bobbled, transmission synching cut-up ‘Domani non c’e sarà più’ (or “tomorrow there will be no tomorrow”), which sounds like a concrete version Holger Czukay, David Byrne and La Monte Young sharing the stage together.
There’s a combination of ideas that run from the rhythmic, the vocalised (though also examples of the talked, narrated and pranked) and beat driven to those that are soundtrack-like or just really odd. Tracks like ‘Down in the North’ sound like a phantom haunting The Residents and Art of Noise, whilst ‘Prudnik Blues’ sounds like a no wave jazz bluesy noirish juxtaposition of Cecil Taylor, Ramuntcho Matta and John Laurie. ‘Le Harve’ imagines Moebius and Roedelius decamping to the Northern French coastline, ‘No Regrets’ seems to transform some silver screen score from the 1920s into a Mexican mule ridden clip-clopping and French serenaded exotic experiment from Sakamoto’s Esperanto album. But bells also chime, pool balls are pocketed, dogs bark, wisps of ether draw across the crypt, and the rain falls on a number of atmospheric pieces. And within those perimeters you can detect passing traces of Devo, The Flying Lizards, Cage, and Lizzy Mercier Descloux.
Your mind has to do the conjuring without the performances (although there is a video of ‘Can’t’), and for that these pieces of music prove very intriguing, imaginative and in some instances, convulsive and hip in that downtown NYC way. In all, a very interesting survey of musicians combining performance art, dance and sound for a snapshot of the French experimental 80s.
Violet Nox ‘Silvae’
(Somewherecold Records) 21st October 2025
Building new worlds, futuristic landscapes and intergalactic safe havens in the wake of vapour trails of laconic, hypnotizing new age psy-trance mysticism, Violet Nox once more embrace Gaia, Greek mythological etymology, astrology and science-fiction/fact on their latest album, the poetically entitled Silvae.
The Boston, Massachusetts trio of synthesists and electronic crafters Dez DeCarlo and Andrew Abrahamson, and airy searching siren vocalist and caller Noell Dorsey occupy a dreamy ethereal plane that fits somewhere between Richard H. Kirk’s Sandoz, Vangelis, Lisa Gerrard, Banco de Gaia and ecological revering dance music – though that trio has expanded its ranks, indeed very pliable, over the course of the last decade.
On their eighth album together (released via the highly prolific and influential North American label Somewherecold Records) the topics of identity, androgyny, resolution, self-discovery, self-love and resistance are lifted towards the stars, pumped and projected through the veils of ambience, trance, dub, EDM, rave, electro-pop, cold wave, techno and more. The trio dreamingly, and in the moment, explore new textures, dynamics and atmospheres, and perhaps, produce their finest work to date: certainly, in places, the sound is more electronic-pop, with vague traces of New Order, Propaganda’s Claudia Brücken and 808 State – their sort of melodica like flutiness especially.
With references, title wise and lyrically to ancient Greek named guardian stars (“Arcturus”, brightest star in the Boötes constellation, notable for its seemingly red colouring, and observed, described by Ptolemy and Chaucer) and the ghostly visages of deep space to the “crescent” shaped cartilage of the knee (“Meniscus”), the album’s themes explore protection, recovery and pain (both physical and mental). Through the beckoning, the near operatic at times scaling, and drifted vocals of Dorsey they find relief, a second chance, in an astrosphere of near organic and sophisticated synthesizer and electronic apparatus plug-ins, effects, pads and keys. And sounds at any one time like a merger between Tangerine Dream, LFO and Massive Attack.
Whether it’s journeying into the subconscious or leaving for celestial rendezvous, Violet Nox turns the vaporous into an electronic art form that’s simultaneously yearning and mysterious, cinematic and ready for the dance floor. Fizzing with techy sophistication and escapism, the American electronic group continue to map out fresh cerebral sonic visions on their new, and again, possibly best album yet.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 102___
For the 102nd time, the Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
A couple of months back I celebrated the 100th edition of this series, which originally began over 12 years ago. The sole purpose being to select an eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show, devoid of podcast-esque indulgences and inane chatter. In later years, I’ve added a selection of timely anniversary celebrating albums to that track list, and paid homage to some of those artists lost on the way. In the former camp this month, and to tie in with the Archive spots on Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘Esperanto’ LP from 1985 and, though I actually missed the original release date in September, U.S. Girls’ Half Free LP from 2015. Other anniversary albums this month or year include François Hardy’s L’amitie (60), The Who’s By Numbers (50), Sparks Indiscreet (also 50), Grace Jones Slave To The Rhythm (40), Shriekback Oil And Gold (40), Pulp Different Class (30 this month, which I find hard to believe), DANGERDOOM ‘The Mouse & The Mask’ (20), Super Fury Animals ‘Love Kraft’ (20) and Broken Social Scene self-titled LP from 2005.
On the radar but missing out on a place in the blog’s Monthly Choice Music Playlist, I like to include a number of newish releases – anything really from the last four or five months of 2025. In October this list includes something from the L.A. collective Human Error Club, Alejandrito Argenal, Tetsuo ii, and Connect The Dots Movement collaboration with Sol Messiah.
The rest of this month’s social is made up of tunes loved, played out from across the last 60 or more decades: LICE (that rap union between Aesop Rock and Homeboy Sandman, which just so happens to be a decade old this year), François Tusques and Noel Mcghie, Harold Alexander, schroothoup, Angel Bat Dawid, Sandii, Inherit The Moon…
That Full track list is…
François Hardy ‘En t’attendant’
The Who ‘Dreaming From the Waist’
Broken Social Scene ‘Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day)’
Mordicai Jones ‘Son Of A Simple Man’
Steve Reid ‘Kai’
Harold Alexander ‘New York Sister’
Sol Messiah & Connect The Dots Movement ‘What Goes Around’
Lice (Aesop Rock & Homeboy Sandman) ‘Katz’
Sparks ‘The Lady Is Lingering’
SANDII ‘Drip Dry Eyes’
Grace Jones ‘Slave To The Rhythm’
Super Fury Animals ‘Frequency’
Great Speckled Bird ‘Long Long Time To Get Old’
Shriekback ‘Nemesis’
Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘A Wongga Dance Song’
François Tusque & Noel Mcghie ‘Va Et Viens’
Pulp ‘Live Bed Show’
U.S. Girls ‘Sororal Feelings (Live)’
Alejandrito Argenal ‘Apasionada’
DANGERDOOM ‘The Mask’
HUMAN ERROR CLUB ‘FROGTOWN’
Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari ‘Black Stones of Sirius’
Tetsuo ii ‘Praise the Sun’
schroothoop ‘Bilkschade’
Amadou Diagne ‘Freedom’
We All Inherit the Moon ‘When We Finally Fall Asleep, Pt. 1’
Possible Humans ‘Absent Swimmer’
Polyrock ‘Cries and Whispers’
Trifle ‘Old Fashioned Prayer Meeting’
Excepter ‘Maids’
___/Archives___
Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘Esperanto’
(Originally released October 5th 1985, and re-released by WEWANTSOUNDS in 2021)
Already riding the visionary synth waves with the Yello Magic Orchestra and through his inspirational projects with David Sylvian, Sakamoto went on to score success with the plaintive, harrowing Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence soundtrack. The sixth solo release in that oeuvre however was a return to his more leftfield, challenging roots: a marked change from the semi-classical emotional pulls of the film soundtrack. A kind of cutting-edge theatre and ballet, Esperanto was composed for a performance by the New York choreographer Molissa Fenlay with contributions from the Lounge Lizard’s experimentalist guitarist Arto Lindsay and the Japanese percussionist Yas-Kaz. You’ll have to use your imagination to how it all worked visually – though later on art luminaries Kit Fitzgerald and Paul Garrin turned this soundtrack into a conceptual video project.
Sounding very much of its time, on the burgeoning apex of dance music and early hip-hop, electro, this polygenesis experiment often evokes both the Art Of Noise and Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit’. Using a super-sized computer and state-of-the-art tech, Sakamoto merged futuristic Japanese theatre with a mechanical Ballets Russes, workshop shunts and huffs with the plastic, and electronic body music with Hassell’s fourth world music inspirations.
Snatches of voices, dialogue get cut-up and looped in a primal techno performance of mechanics, rippled and tapping corrugated percussion, synth waves and oscillations, serial piano dashes and rolls, and Japanese spiritual garden enchantments. At any one time you can pick up the echoes of the Penguin Café Orchestra, Phillip Glass, Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Eno and Populäre Mechanik within the often mysterious, exotic performativity. Motoring, bobbing or in staccato mode, Sakamoto produces a futurist dance set of suspense and experiment, an omnivorous feast of programmed and real sounds. Though very dated by today’s technological wizardry standards, the electro workshop Esperanto remains an iconic, very much sought after work well worth its admission price and indeed reissue status.
U.S. Girls ‘Half Free’
(4AD) 25th September 2015
Beckoned to the label hotbed of deconstructive cerebral pop 4AD, the Illinois raised, Toronto relocated, polygenesis songstress Meg Remy continues to entrance with her latest U.S. Girls album Half Free. Transmogrifying the template evocation of Ronnie Spector and The Shirelles with a fresh perspective and penchant for glitter ball maladies, neon lit dub and glamorous scintillating bubblegum pop, Remy’s moiety of revisionary girl group backbeats and venerable candid highly unsettling laments address a myriad of issues, from disparity between the sexes to the growing pains of modern womanhood – cue the unsettling vignette ‘Telephone Play No.1’, which plays out as a phone call catch-up between siblings but then unnervingly reinforces a deep resentment on stereotype psychology.
Remy’s most dazzling, hypnotically eclectic album yet, both thematically and musically, Half Free is essentially a highly sophisticated and gracefully slick pop triumph: On a parallel, alternative timeline this could have been (stay with me on this one) a Camille Paglia championed Madonna era masterpiece from the mid 80s; her veracious sensual heartache and woozy dream like escapism is certainly evoked at various times throughout the album. Madonna aside, Meg takes on the mantle of various female personalities and vamps, but often desexualizes and reduces their carnal allure to a sense of isolation and discomfort. Her cast of troubled personas this time around owes a debt to the characters of John Cassavetes and Michael Ondaatje, and to the broken-down protagonist of a lost 70s plaintive disco classic.
Channelling the wallowing despair of Ronnie Spector, and loosely walking the line of the troubled Nora Bass from Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter novel, on the opening churning looped melodrama ‘Sororal Feelings’, Meg’s sisterly pleads of the broken wife yearningly progress through a Lee Hazelwood envisioned deep southern soundtrack: the strange fruit and methodology metaphorically replaced: “Going to hang myself. Hang myself from a family tree.” An emotional draining start, which grows on you with repeated plays, Sororal is followed up by the super-charged dub reggae hybrid ‘Damn That Valley’ – perhaps the most refreshing slice of on-message pop in 2015. Taking her cue from the acclaimed journalist Sebastian Junger’s Afghanistan front reportage War chronicles, Meg rages with a reverberating wall of sonic shrilling and grief as an imagined war widower riling against the futility and platitude sentiments of the government. Beating out an electro sound clash, part N.Y. City no wave of the early 80s, part Mikey Dread Jamaican sunshine dancehall, long-time collaborator and Toronto producer Onakabazien takes it to the next level.
Already aired, ‘Damn That Valley’ is the most colourfully vibrant of a trio of songs released since May in the run up towards the release of the LP. The second of these, ‘Woman’s Work’, closes the album. Extended from its more radio and video friendly version to a fading seven-minute plus requiem, the female gaze is sinisterly reproached by a Cindy Sherman posing façade and operatically Baroque gilded Moroder soundtrack. Amplifying the venerable atmospherics, Meg is joined by the siren sonic ethereal pitch of Ice Cream’s Amanda Grist – who can also be heard doubling-up on the Damn That Valley vocals – as they traverse an eerie veil of Catholic electro.
Released in more recent weeks, the last of this trio ‘Window Shades’ revives Gloria Ann Taylor’s original 70s unrequited disco ballad ‘Love Is A Hurting Thing’. Stumbled upon by Meg’s husband and DFA label signed artist Slim Twig (who contributes throughout the album); a touch of Madonna blusher and woozy glitter ball noir is added, whilst the universal theme is updated: apparently written after Meg watched the cod-autobiographical documentary Part Of Me, the meme circus spotlight on the life of Katie Perry that even with a soft coating of saccharine idolisation exposes the cracks and fatuous nature of celebratory.
Elsewhere on the album Meg appropriates the bubble gum glam of Bolan and the spikey punk beat of The Misfits on ‘Sed Knife’ (a minimal poem set to a bouncing backbeat, originally released as the B-side to 2012’s ‘Rosemary’). Whilst she offers an elegantly cool, misty oscillating sonorous bass-y air of mystique, – piqued by cold war jarred piano note suspense – clandestine variant on the spy thriller soundtrack with ‘New Age Thriller’: The actual battle it seems is between self-respect and male pressure. Red lipstick marks the collar of the churning, western guitar twanged, murky ‘Red Comes In Many Shades’, which itself borrows from the put-upon, downbeat beauty of Nancy Sinatra. Whether intentional or not, the song sounds like a slowed down version of New Age Thriller, and thematically dissects the struggles, and in this case, the betrayal of an affair.
Honing the darkness and plight of what was always celebrated as the innocent, teenage growing pains of adolescence with more gravitas, Meg’s robust themes swim amorphously through the dry-ice, crystal waves of the late 70s and 80s to produce a post-modern pop triumph. Progressing from the basement tapes and reverberated Spector sonic loops of the past to her latest incarnation as the pining pop artist, Meg Remy’s production values are highly ambitious: her previous work a precursor series of experimental outings. Without a doubt Half Free is her best, most mature, meticulous and glorious sounding collection of songs yet.
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