A January Digest: Kety Fusco, Mentrix, Gangsta Rabbi, Edo Funk, De La Soul, Beach Boys & Yukihiro Takahashi
January 17, 2023
New Music on our radar, news and archive spots
Dominic Valvona

A new thread, feed for 2023, the Digest pulls together tracks, videos and snippets of new music plus significant archival material and anniversary celebrating albums or artists. In the inaugural edition we draw your attention to exploratory harp virtuoso Kety Fusco, Iranian backbeat techno from Mentrix, a relatively short mash of post-punk-metal-lo fo from the cult Gangsta Rabbi, a slice of Edo Funk from The Good Samaritans and news that De La Soul finally make it to streaming platforms. The Beach Boys Holland LP reaches 50, and a nod to the passing of Japanese icon and Yellow Magic Orchestra member Yukihiro Takahashi.
TRACKS
Ket Fusco ‘2072’ – Single, taken from the upcoming The Harp, Chapter I album, released 3rd March 2023
Not quite as far into the future as Zagar & Evans, the Italian virtuoso harpist Kety Fusco transforms her instrument into a premonition eulogy of her own death in that titled year of 2072. So sure of this far-off inevitable, Kety has even whittled it down to an exact date: “On 13 January 2072 I will die”. With a certain mysterious if plaintive quality, a translucent picked reverberation of notes that convey memories and tubular peaks of diaphanous grief, the live processed and spell-casted melody of this music will accompany Kety to her tomb.
The composition of this track, we are told, is based on a live granulation of Kety’s electric harp, combined with drone sounds created with a pulsating massager on the soundbox of the 47-string classical harp, and vocal reminiscences emitted by Kety with scratchy screams inside the harp soundboard, which decorate this post- classical sound. The gifted exploratory artist is renowned for pushing the envelope and the very definition of what a harp sounds like with experimental generated augmentation, effects and various manipulations. To see it live, on video, is extraordinary and performative, with a method that is usually improvised and felt rather than studied.
2072 is part of a much longer suite taken from the upcoming album The Harp, Chapter 1 – itself part of trilogy I believe of such works, released over the next few years. You will be able to read my review of it in time for its inaugural full performance on the 3rd of March at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Mentrix ‘Be Masha Be Nika’ – Taken from the upcoming Arpanik labels’ Woman, Life, Freedom compilation, released 20th January 2023
As the West’s attention is quite rightly invested in the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine, it’s fallen on artists, musicians to draw that intense scrutiny on the Iranian regime and its heinous treatment of women. Prompted by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in the custody of the authorities last year, an ensuing battle of ideals and freedoms has ensued that threatens to topple the tyranny. However, the regime has pushed back harder and with an almost unprecedented violence started executing (mainly men so far) supporters and activists on trumped up, tortured confessional charges of treason. But even in the face of this bloody repression history is on the side of Iran’s younger more liberal generations.
As artists, the Iranian’s AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah have announced a not-for-profit compilation Woman, Life, Freedom in support:
‘Throughout Iranian history, women have been at the forefront of music and performing arts. However for the past 44 years under the Islamic regime, women in Iran have been banned from singing, dancing, and performance. Facing threats to the safety of themselves and their families, to their career and reputation, female artists are forced to quit, leave Iran, or to go underground facing grave risks. Despite this, Iranian women have remained active and at the forefront of their art, pushing boundaries from Iran and different corners of the world.
Woman, Life Freedom is a collection of original music from Iranian women artists, dedicated to the recent uprising of people, especially the women in Iran who have endured silencing, censorship, and forced control over the past four decades.
The compilation consists of 12 new tracks across electro, breaks, techno, ambient and experimental from Iranian artists including SarrSew, MENTRIX, Sharona Lico and AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah themselves, with many of the tracks either directly addressing or inspired by the current revolution.
The goal of this project is to raise awareness of the international music community about the bravery, talent, and difficulty of female musicians to work under the Islamic Republic’s Regime, as well as the brutal killings of people who have been speaking up since the start of the revolution in September 2022.
AIDA can be found at the intersection of two contrasting worlds: rich Iranian roots and a serene west-coast Canadian upbringing. This dichotomy is infused in everything she crafts, combining elements of world-inspired music with electronic, she gives colorful twists to masterful blends of groovy house, techno, and breaks geared for the dancefloor.
Nesa Azadikhah is a Tehran-based DJ, music producer, composer, sound artist, and musician. From playing Tonbak and Daf at the age of six to DJing at the age of sixteen in the underground dance scene, she has established herself as one of Tehran’s most in-demand electronic music and sound artists and composers. Nesa is also the founder and managing director of Deep House Tehran, which focuses on showcasing Iranian electronic musicians.
Proceeds from this release will be donated to charities that help struggling women in Iran. The first selected charity is Saraye Mehr, an organisation that helps women and children recovering from domestic violence, addiction, homelessness, and societal distress in Iran.’
Today, we are happy to share Mentrix‘s ‘Be Masha Be Nika‘, a backbeat reverberating Matmos-esque slice of Iranian techno. You can purchase the compilation, and we encourage you to do that, from bandcamp.
The Gangsta Rabbi ‘Ana’mika (138th Entr’acte)’
In comparison to his usual hour plus long ‘militia punk’ performances, this newest concentrated dirge and explosive force of post-punk antagonism and mayhem from Steve Lieberman, aka the Gangsta Rabbi, is a mere vignette-sized grenade toss of fleeting lo fi paranoia and radio unfriendly twaddled madness.
The new single ‘Ana’mika (138th Entr’acte)’ is taken from the upcoming 4th King of Jewish Punk Calling Out From Radio Bad’lania (#41/79) album. It will be his 79th album in his catalog, which includes the Guinness World Record holder for Longest Officially Released Song, ‘The Noise Militia (#38/76)’ running close to 36 hours long. Unbelievably it has already racked up over 400,000 plays on Spotify alone! After thirty years at this shit, we can perhaps say the cult polymath (from magician to punk-metal singer, arranger and songwriter) name is out of the bag.
The Good Samaritans ‘Onughara’ – Taken from the upcoming No Food Without Taste If By Hunger album, released on 3rd March 2023 by Analog Africa
From the rarified vaults of Nigeria’s Benin City , a shuffling lively funky slice of Highlife action. Many just know it as ‘modern Highlife’, others as a whole different brew entirely called ‘Edo Funk’: a more stripped and raw sheen-less and less slick version of the productions emanating from the nightclubs of 80s Nigeria. Born in the much fought-over Edo State capital of Benin City in the cosmopolitan region of Southern Nigeria, the Edo Funk phenomenon was a reductive alternative to the polished productions that dominated the scene, and one that delivered, in many cases, the same spirited protestations that Fela Kuti wrapped around Afrobeat.
Analog Africa released a first volume of such hits a couple of years back. Now, they’ve unearthed No Food Without Taste If By Hunger by The Good Samaritans, one of the most obscure Nigerian albums ever recorded. Originally released in 1982, The Good Samaritans is Philosopher Okundaye‘s Edo Funk project. He produced four albums under this name (No Food Without Taste If By Hunger is the first of these), all recorded with a 24 track at Phonodisk Studio in Ijebu Igbo in Ogun State, east of Lagos. Okundaye who played many instruments, engaged the right musicians for each project and mixed the whole thing himself, is known as the composer of a large part of Benin City’s celebrated hits in the 80s. His name keeps popping up but somehow his role in the scene remains a bit hazy, giving the character an image of something like the gray eminence of Edo Funk.
Here’s the first cut to drop in the run-up to that treasure’s release in March.
ARCHIVE

The Daisy Age’s chief protagonists will finally make it to streaming platforms – for better or worse. With a deal cut at last, samples cleared, copyrights navigated, De La Soul can now officially be shared on such behemoths as Spotify. It was the trio themselves that felt left out of the picture; the glaring missing link from the story of Hip-Hop. They announced this deal by dropping ‘The Magic Number’ single and 3 Feet High And Rising album track. The full debut will be released in due course along with the group’s first quartet of albums.
The dawning of a ‘daisy age’, a psychedelic trigger to expand rap music’s horizons, the debut album from the New York trio dared to dream bigger and better. The Haight Asbury to the street level epistles and rage of such luminaries as KRS-One and his Boogie Down Bronx collective or Public Enemy, and far less dogmatically pro-Nation of Islam as X Clan and the Brand Nubians, De La Soul wove an almost electric kool aid tapestry of skittish humour and enlightened social commentary: closer in spirit to Prince than their fellow Hip Hop brethren.
A change had to come, and 3 Feet High And Rising was a zeitgeist: nothing before or after was quite the same creatively. Of course, they weren’t the first to sample outside the usual soul, funk and R&B influences; both Run DMC and The Beastie Boys had beaten them to AM rock and heavy metal. They weren’t the first either to take up the Afrocentric cause, their fellow Native Tongues partners, The Jungle Brothers (bookending 1989 with their own accomplished and, arguably, one of the genres best albums, Done By The Forces Of Nature) already delivering that with their, soul-zap, jazz, hip house debut, Straight Out Of The Jungle, the previous year. Yet they managed with the help of original Stetsasonic honcho and Hip Hop’s leading experimental light, Prince Paul, to create the Sgt.Pepper of rap; a counterbalance to the tough and egotistic mantra gesticulating stereotype hoods that had dominated the scene for the past decade, turning the party jam and electro golden dawn into a bloody rivalry of dangerous put downs and postcode spates.
In keeping with the burgeoning of the intelligent hoodlum, De La Soul used their halcyon flower sprouting noodles to turn on society’s ills. Not only, ingenuously, making Hall & Oates hip for a brief moment, ‘Say No Go’ and the beat poetic nursery rhyme resigned ‘Ghetto Thang’ both deliberated on the cruel and seamier side of the shaded sidewalk without swearing or boasting.
For sure it would be a milestone, but it would also be a millstone around the trio’s neck. The accolades and acclaim that followed would never match the debut’s impact, though not for want of trying. Even as far back as their sophomore release they pessimistically – though with an ironic knowing – announced their own demise with the equally sophisticated but much serene De La Soul Is Dead. Decades later they’re still making records, and once, as a bestowed gift to the world, gave all their music away free for a 24-hour period. The legacy that followed cannot be overstated, sparking a leftfield revolution that helped spawn and motivate A Tribe Called Quest, Leaders Of The New School, Queen Latifah, The Black Sheep, KMD, Divine Styler, Digable Planets and Main Source to name just a few, though we could also arguably blame them for PM Dawn too!
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The Beach Boys Holland LP makes fifty this month. Recently part of the double album appraisal box set Sail On Sailor 1972, this pilgrims trail, for many of us, marks a return to form after the previous passable Carl And The Passions – So Tough R&B and soft-rock revue. With former Flames Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Faatar on board again, but a lacklustre, meditating Brian Wilson yet to break out of his malaise, the songwriting was even more varied but good. They lost Bruce ‘Disney Girls’ Johnston from the lineup, and handed control over to Carl Wilson and manager, producer (and general instigator, mentor) Jack Rieley – the man mostly responsible for shaking the group out of their stupor, and encouraging the Surf’s Up cult favourite.
Relocating out of some misplaced belief that in a different location miles from home, it would either shake or force Brian to take up the mantle, the group instead found themselves writing a lovesick postcard to their Californian home. Rather than break out of repeating patterns, Brian felt ill at ease in new surroundings – no sandbox beneath his feet. He did write the nursery rhyme, radio hall ‘Mount Vernon And Fairway’ transistor bedtime story – for better or worse. Step forward Carl, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson and the South African duo of Chaplin and Faatar to compose an American almanac.
I’d always thought that the reason for crossing the Atlantic to Holland was some kind of homage to the founding fathers; being the port of call after leaving England, for the pilgrim fathers and mothers. And so why not a songbook dedicated to this history. One that seems to follow the Western trials, the steamboat river journeys all the way to California; not flinching from Steinbeck’s visions of the great depression in the dust bowl states, the Trail of Tears and Borrow My Heart sentiments of crimes against the Native Indian populations. ‘The Trader’ an encapsulation of the latter, paints a sort of Americana picture – I’m reminded of The Band’s ‘Arcadian Driftwood‘. The poetry, imbued words of Robinson Jeffers and Robert Frost ring clear as the old West meets the new age vibrations of Country Joe And The Fish at Big Sur. And yet there’s room for the incredible heart-aching ‘Leaving This Town‘, from the Chaplin/Faatar pact, opening favourite nautical themed ‘Sail On Sailor’ and Dennis/Love penned heart-crushing piano ballad ‘Only With You’ (sang by Carl) – the former reflecting a mature love despondent yearn of soft balladry from the group.
And so couple of my personal favourites from that album:
From the Beach Boys vaults on the Monolith Cocktail:
Brian Wilson And Friends Live In Glasgow
Also…added to at regular intervals, my defining playlist:
Obituary

Musically (sartorial too for that matter) one of the great pantheon influences of modernist Japanese music, part of the holy Yellow Magic Orchestra trinity of Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yukihiro Takahasi helped birth the Tokyo, or City, glow pop explosion of the 80s in his homeland. Which thanks to labels such as WEWANTSOUNDS have been in an ascendence of late – that label also re-releasing his debut, more European cool and suave album Saravah too – a kind of Japanese Brian Ferry!
Japan before there was a Japan (the David Slyvian kind), Takahasi first took up with his YMO foils, playing drums in the country’s premier and most innovative electro-pop group, before swanning off and trying to out-Bowie 80s Bowie. Crafting some irresistible, charismatic neo-romantic hits, the star released an abundance of sentimental but always cooly-lit neon heartaches and pensive croons, even a cover version or two. Here’s just a few of them:
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Our Daily Bread 553: (Album/Video) Clamb ‘Glittering Watermelon Oracle’ and ‘Eggs’Our Daily Bread 553:
January 16, 2023
A look at both the new live album and video from the Boston trio Clamb
Words by Dominic Valvona

Clamb ‘Glittering Watermelon Oracle (Live At The Midway Café, July 19th 2021)’
“Eggs’ video created by Peter Danilchuk and Collaborators Digital
All hail the grapefruit, the egg and… well, the watermelon deities as our Boston pyramid schematic of jazz-funk-prog-krautrock-fusion release a live album of their pumped works. Once more into the magik temple with a sound that can only be described as warped mix of Mahavishu Orchestra, the Zapp band and Qüassi, Clamb both reinterpret tracks from their debut album Earth Mother Grapefruit and improvise new peregrinations – the title-track for one.
From the Midway Café stage (Jamaica Plain, Boston to be exact) on one excitable night after coming out from lockdown, the three-piece (though it looks like they extend to a quartet live) whoop and howl, simmer and stutter to polymetric drums (courtesy of Joshua Merhas), synthesized zips and zaps (Peter Danilchuk) and jazzy, funk-fried noodling fretless basslines (Jameson Stewart). Egged-on by an enthusiastic, let loose from pandemic morose, audience at all times, they transform the debut album tracks ‘Oyster Sunday’, ‘Land Breath’, ‘Triangular Fÿord’ and ‘Fields Cornelius’. The first two being twinned as it were, connected in one almost continuous performance that’s one-third Parliament, one-third Yes, and another third Can. The Floydian “Fÿord” (encouraged with a “we can do this one!”) is retuned to the gothic flange of The Banshees and various krautrock evocations of the vapourous and evaporating. The latter, and album finale, combines the Jah (Wobble) with the Jarre (Jean-Michael) on a radiating progressive voyager trip.
In-between those Earth Mother Grapefruit inclusions there’s the stuttered and scuttled, cymbal dancing, ray emitted astro-funk title-track (imagine Tortoise sharing room on an 80s sci-fi soundtrack with Holy Fuck and the Van Allen Belt); the Numan/Vangelis modulating, oscillating sine wave plant life panorama ‘Emerge! O Citroid’; and Tangerine Dream(ed) space dusted orbital re-entry ‘Plutonian Auspex’. And through it all there’s a sense that Clamb is having fun with these outlandish prog-jazz fusions: those heads being raised up shaking with enjoyment rather than downcast towards the navel and erstwhile. This same attitude bleeds into the band’s new hand-made animated video for ‘Eggs’ – taken from their already mentioned debut album. Danilchuk’s volcanic erupted covered Hellenic columns and ruins strewn landscape and phoenix rising from Easter eggs cut-ups are handed over to Digital Awareness (responsible for projecting the visuals at the group’s live shows), who dress it up further with various psychedelic acid-rain, buzzing and lava spewing effects. It’s a collaboration that perfectly captures Clamb’s cyber-generating mix of the surreal, charming, goofy and magical. All hail the fruits of a funked nature.
Premiere Spot: (Video) Rainbow Island ‘Mithra Night Soup’
January 11, 2023
Ahead of the Italian quartet’s new album Moonlit Panacea, the Monolith Cocktail premieres Dottor Pira’s video for the second single Mithra Night Soup.

Rainbow Island ‘Mithra Night Soup’
Single taken from the Moonlight Panacea album, released on the 18th January 2023 by Riforma
In theosophical vision-scope the scattered but originally Rome based quartet of Rainbow Island conjure up another interdimensional world of mystifying crystal-lined chasms and frozen or blancmange-like landscapes pulled from fantasy playing cards, myth and the occult. Their newest album, arriving a few years after the omnivorous and warped derangement of the frazzled bubble bath Illmatrix, finds the group communing under the banner of the ‘fantastic’, ‘unfolding a snug and meditative ritual’ under a Moonlit Panacea of healing vibes.
As therapeutic as it is esoteric and strange, the album’s atmospheres, evaporations and musical mirages have been completed both online and at home by the repeating lineup of PikkioMania (analog synths and lem baby operator), Simne Donadni (pure data percussion and karplus-strong arpeggios), Lou Pappagallo (processed Vocals and endless flow) and DJ Kimchi (op1 virtuoso and semi-modular engineer). Together in this a curious world that references magical games, the mystical and paranormal concept of Tulpa manifestations and sugarcoated kingdoms, the quartet create alternate realms and play with a real sense of freedom: the destinations, goals undecided, the listener allowed to just be guided wherever the flow and direction of travel takes them. In practice this translates into the wobbled, gravity-defying strange soft lollop and spells of the almost dub-y ‘Karplusan Forest’, the obscured and foggy atavistic ethnographic sourced, bird twittering, turn piercingly fluted ‘Hidden Birubu’ and the beautifully esoteric match of Cosey Fanni Tutti, Clovvder and Dance Of The Lemmings Amon Düül II imbued ‘Marzipan Castle’. All the while Pappagallo’s Cabaret Voltaire and Xqui-like muffled, processed vocals gabble, speak in futuristic tongues and cry throughout.

Alluding to gods in both the album title and the single video premier the Monolith Cocktail is pleased to share with you today, the Greek Panacea’s remedy for all the difficulties and ills of the world sits on the same plane as the Persian adopted Zoroastrian deity Mithra in a soundscape of primitivism, European underground tape cassette culture, the psychedelic, experimental modulations, Krautrock, futuristic folk and what’s been labeled in recent years as ‘new weird Italia’. And so for the unveiling of ‘Mithra Night Soup’, a tune, an experience of vague nuzzled sax-like floating, ringing droplets, hovering, paddled plastic tubular bass, campfire trance and rumblings and vibrations from the bowels of the Earth, presented in cartoonish comic book form with the past crumbling edifices of old civilizations and the purple cold mountain, moonlit backdrop video designed and animated by Dotter Pira. For the ones who don’t know the character, Dr. Pira is the creator of Fumetti della Gleba (the longest running Italian webcomic since the 90s, only worst quality for your eyes). He’s published several books with the major Italian editors (Feltrinelli, Rizzoli, Coconino…), different series for magazines (L’Internazionale, XL di Repubblica, Vice Magazine, Smemoranda…) and several self-published editions. His works have been exhibited at some of the most important gastronomic festivals too.
The quartet describe’s that collaboration thus: “Pira set up ‘Mithra Night Soup’ in a digital medieval land, where the gang of four characters stand around the campfire. The track is a banging dreamrecall where squared and saturated synths triggers this weirdomagique ritual. So-called “vanga dub” broken riddim and clody ambient solos beat time and draw a nocturnal scenario: Mithra Night Soup is the turning point in Moonlit Panacea’s adventures.”
Going further, they describe that peregrination with this illuminating – of further masking obfuscation – description:
“Drinking the soup by the moonlight, they did good with gentle detailing, such as capping the highlights with bold bubbles. When the warp rounded, Leela paused in revising her timeline: “I will forgive you. But I’m afraid we could lose the warp. As is our duty. If all goes according to plan, I will hold it open. Please supply me the task recommended by you. We’ll finish off the Hydra and Megotons in Graith Warp. Fence the pond so they don’t overlap and try to cross.” Leela grabbed one of the tallest rocks in the world, confidently plucking it from his power’s spectrum and scraping it onto his open revolving brightly lit plate. She sacrificed regret to maintain connection to her ears”
Moonlit Panacea is due out on the 18th January via the Rome/Turin “screw-wave” label Riforma, so not long to wait. Until then, here is the premiered video:
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist #72: Terry Hall, Tiger, The The, Popol Vuh, Manuel Göttsching, Lion’s Drum, June McDoom….
January 4, 2023
2023’s Inaugural Social Playlist
Anniversary Albums And Deaths Marked Alongside An Eclectic Mix Of Cross-Generational Music, Newish Tunes And Surprises.

Just give me two hours of your precious time to expose you to some of the most magical, incredible, eclectic and freakish music that’s somehow been missed, or not even picked up on the radar. For the Social is my uninterrupted radio show flow of carefully curated music; marking anniversary albums and, sadly, deaths, but also sharing my own favourite discoveries over the decades and a number of new(ish) tracks missed or left out of the blog’s Monthly playlists.
In the anniversary category there’s 50th celebrating LPs from Vangelis (1973’s Earth album), Popol Vuh (the divine styling Seligpreisung), Sparks (A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing), Judy Collins (True Stories And Other Dreams album with Mark Abramson), Bruce Springsteen (Greetings From Ashbury Park, N.J.), Ellen Mcllwaine (We The People) and The Beach Boys (Holland). A lot of debuts in amongst that lot, in what was an incredible month and year for music. As it happens The Beach Boys cover that period, that pilgrim’s album, on their latest yearly box set reprise, Sail On Sailor 1972, from which I’ve also sprinkled a couple of previously unreleased and live nuggets – ‘Body Talk – Grease Job’, ‘Gimmie Some Lovin’/I Need Your Love’ and the poetic demo try-out ‘The Road Not Taken’.
Standing alone in representing 1993 – unbelievably, from where I’m standing, thirty bloody years ago) – I’ve added a tune from The The’s Dusk LP to this mix.
And so in marking the legacy of those we’ve lost over the Christmas period and a little before, I’ve included tributes to the late great idiosyncratic and moody Terry Hall and Kosmische/Krautrock leviathan Manuel Göttsching – of Ash Ra and soloist cosmological and techno music progenitor fame. As a cheeky aside, there’s also one of the late mischievous wind-up merchants, critic and Private Eye contributor, Victor Lewis-Smith’s phone call time wasting operations to smirk or have a laugh at.
In what is one of the most welcome moves of late, the back catalogue of Tiger has been unleashed on Spotify. Possibly one of the UK’s most important and best bands of the 90s – I followed them around for a number of years from Festival to gig, bought all the painted 7” singles, and basically built a shrine to their unwavering (YBAs) art pop drone form of mullet haired audacity – Tiger more or less vanished from the scene after only two albums and smattering of singles. Such is my fandom I’ve been greedy and included three of their tracks: ‘Where’s The Love?’ from the B Sides gathering, ‘Ray Travez’ from the band’s debut long player We Are Puppets – of which my vinyl version ended up as a skinning-up mat when I lent it to one of my fellow art school pals – and ‘River’ from the second album, Rosaria. I hope it revives some interest and joy in rediscovering such an important idiosyncratic band.
A healthy inclusion of New(ish) tracks from the backend of 2022, and some much earlier ones, can be found on this year’s first Social playlist. Choice tracks from Sven Wunder, Orchestra Gold, Sun’s Signature, Årabot, June McDoom, Lion’s Drum, Your Old Droog, Sentidor, Noori & His Dorpa Band and a track from the multimedia Meditations On Crime’s recent collaborative album with a host of freaks, enlightened troopers and such, ‘We The People Of The Myths’ with King Khan and Marshall Allen’s led incarnation of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
TRACK LIST IN FULL::
Vangelis ‘Let It Happen’
Sven Wunder ‘Sun Kissed’
Idris Muhammad ‘Brother You Know You’re Doing Wrong’
The Beach Boys ‘Body Talk- Grease Job’
Noori & His Dorpa Band ‘Saagama’
Orchestra Gold ‘Keleya’
El Molino ‘Moliendo Parches’
Fun Boy Three ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)’
Masonic Wonders ‘I Call Him’
Tony Williams ‘There Comes A Time’
Büdi Und Gumls/Lion’s Drum ‘Tanz Der Korperlinge – the Lion’s Drum Edit’
Little Albert ‘Reclaim Myself’
Tiger ‘Where’s The Love?’
Årabot ‘Green Fire’
Ashra ‘Deep Distance’
The Sunshine Fix ‘Future History And The Irrelevance Of Time’
Popol Vuh ‘Selig sind die, die da hungern’
Sentidor ‘Sonho Das Flores’
Sparks ‘Do-Re-Mi’
Tiger ‘River’
Rema-Rema ‘Feedback Song’
Major Organ and the Adding Machine ‘Life Form (Transmission Received)’
Your Old Droog ‘Fela Kuti’
Tiger ‘Ray Travez’
The The ‘This Is The Night’
Judy Collins & Mark Abramson ‘So Begins The Task’
The Beach Boys ‘Gimme Some Lovin’/I Need Your Love – Medley’
Ellen Mcllwaine ‘Ain’t No Two Ways To It (It’s Love)’
The Specials ‘Maggie’s Farm’
The Beach Boys ‘Leaving This Town’ Bill Fey ‘I Hear You Calling’
Bruce Springsteen ‘It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City’
June McDoom ‘Babe, You Light Me Up’
Sun’s Signature ‘Underwater’
Michael Hoenig & Manuel Göttsching ‘Early Water – Part 1’
The Beach Boys ‘The Road Not Taken – Demo’
Victor Lewis Smith ‘Cubism Crisis’
Meditations On Crime w/ King Khan, Marshall Allen and the Sun Ra Arkestra ‘We The People Of The Myths’
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Monthly Playlist: November 2022: Cities Aviv, Mui Zyu, Edrix Puzzle, Juga-Naut, Illogic, Arthur King…
November 30, 2022
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH
CURATED BY DOMINIC VALVONA

The very last monthly playlist of 2022 is a bumper edition of eclectic choice music from the last month, with a smattering of tracks from upcoming December releases too.
This month’s picks have been collected from Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Shea’ Bordello and Graham Domain. The full track list can be found below the Spotify link.
The monthly will be back in the New Year. Until then absorb this behemoth of a selection, and next month, ponder and peruse the blog’s 140 plus albums of 2022 features.
TRACK LIST IN FULL
Black Market Karma/Tess Parks ‘The Sky Was All Diseased’
Enter Laughing ‘Met Me When I landed’
Salem Trials ‘Man From Atlantis Is Dead’
Humour ‘Jeans’
Cities Aviv ‘Funktion’
Vlimmer ‘Mathematik’
Gabrielle Ornate ‘Phantasm’
Dead Horses ‘Can’t Talk, Can’t Sleep’
Lunar Bird ‘Driven By The Light’
Mui Zyu ‘Rotten Bun’
Thank You Lord For Satan ‘When We Dance’
Pozi ‘Slightly Shaking Cells’
My Friend Peter ‘When I Was’
U.S. Girls ‘Bless This Mess’
Sofie Royer ‘Feeling Bad Forsyth Street’
Surya Botofasina ‘Beloved California Temple’
Edrix Puzzle ‘Shadow of Phobe’
Let Spin ‘Waveform Guru’
Etceteral ‘Gologlavka’
Juga-Naut ‘Camel Walk’
The Pyramids ‘Queens Of The Spirits Part 1’
Illogic ‘Nowhere Fast’
Planet Asia/Snowgoons/Flash ‘Metabolism’
Dabbla/alone ‘Adept’
Karu ‘Spears Of Leaves’
Neon Kittens ‘Nil By Vein’
Renelle 893/King Kashmere ‘My Demons’
Mount Kimbie/Don Maker/Kai Campos Ft. Slowthai ‘Kissing’
Homeboy Sandman/Deca ‘Satellite’
Uusi Aika ‘S-T’
Gillian Stone ‘The Throne’
Raw Poetic/Damu The Fudgemunk ‘A Mile In My Head’
Boldy James/Futurewave ‘Mortemir Milestone’
Arthur King ‘Dig Precious Things’
Tom Skinner ‘Voices (Of The Past)’
Trans Zimmer & The DJs ‘Wind Quintet No. 3 In E Major, Second Movement’
George T ‘Dub On, King’s Cross’
The Dark Jazz Project ‘Great Skies’
Noémi Büchi ‘Measuring All Possibilities’
Russ Spence ‘Spectrum’
Seez Mics/Aupheus ‘Cancel The Guillotine’
Dezron Douglas ‘J Bird’
Fliptrix/Illinformed ‘Eden’
Apollo Brown/Philmore Greene ‘This Is Me’
Illogic ‘She Didn’t Write’
Milc/Televangel Ft. AJ Suede ‘Ronald Reagan’
Vincent/The Owl/Nick Catchdubs ‘Fade 2 Black’
Shirt/Jack Splash ‘Cancel Culture’
Clouds In A Headlock/ASM/Daylight Robbery ‘3D Maze’
The Strange Neighbour/Leolex/Bobby Slice Ft. DJ Sixkay ‘Keep Your Head Straight’
Kormac Ft. Loah & Jafaris ‘Bottom Of The Ocean’
A. O. Gerber ‘Walk In The Dark’
Ben Pagano ‘Hot Capital’
Hög Sjö ‘Love Is A Gamble’
Kinked ‘Introduzione Alla Fabula’
Årabrot ‘Going Up’
Old Fire Ft. Julia Holter ‘Window Without A World’
Meg Baird ‘Star Hill Song’
Susanna/Stina Stjern/Delphine Dora ‘Elevation’
Rita Braga ‘Nothing Came From Nowhere’
Orchid Mantis ‘Endless Life’
The Zew ‘Come On Down’
Ocelot ‘Santa Ana’
LINN ‘Okay, Sister’
Sanfeliu ‘Grassy Patch’
Young Ritual ‘Ages’
Yermot ‘Leaning To Lie’
ALBUM REVIEW
Dominic Valvona

Mauricio Takara and Carla Boregas ‘Grande Massa D’Agua’
(Hive Mind)
Nestled somewhere between the Brazilin oceanic coastline and the rainforest waterfalls’ of the interior, the impressive duo of Mauricio Takara and Carla Boregas embrace the replenishing vibes of water on their new album for the Hive Mind set.
Both foils in this electroacoustic avant-garde enterprise bring much to the water table, with Takara playing in the (highly recommended) São Paulo Underground, Hurtmold and MNTH set-ups but also involved in an array of sit-ins with such icons as the late Pharoah Sanders, the one-time mushroom mantra haiku Can front man Damo Suziki, and Acid Mothers Temple guardian Makoto Kawabata, and Boregas instigating the Rakto and Fronte Violeta projects, a soloist and founder of the experimental Brazilian venue AUTA and the Dama Da Noite label.
From the fringes of jazz, primitivism and electronica they pour that experience into the immersive, often mysterious, and otherworldly Grande Massa D’Agua set of peregrinations and ushering-ins of the elements.
Tightening, ratcheting, tinkled percussive tools that evoke the work of Walter Smetak sit with both singular bounced and more skittish drum rolls and tumbles across ceremonial, ritualistic, atavistic yet also futuristic invocations. São Paulo and its surrounding nature might be the catalyst but whole different auras and planes are summoned; some of which fall upon the realms of the kosmische and even Faust.
Amongst the rustles of grass, the circled ring of ceremonial bowls and drips of water hints of Aquiles Navarro and Jon Hassell-like trumpet linger on the veiled, textured air, all the while as the drums leap into action, rebounding off the rims and splashes of cymbal.
This is Art Ensemble Of Chicago via the Portico Quartet style jazz meets the percussive, rhythmic experiments and intuition of Valentina Magaletti and Ibn Battuta period Embryo. And yet as the sun rises on the horizon of this exotic landscape, we’re beamed almost into a lunar bending cosmos. Although the refracted, reversed and entrancing ‘Areia Preta’ feels like you’re at the centre of a hallucinatory dream.
Melodic parts emerge out of the avant-garde free-play throughout this both suffused and zigzag rhythmic skate, rattled, poured and chimed water world. The idea of kinetic type energy in the movement (at one point taking on the illusion of a steam chuffed train ride down loose tracks) and sense of progression offer a semblance of musicality and melody even in the middle of the most singular serialism-edging and abstract performances.
Deeply felt and convincing, Grande Massa D’Agua is both an intriguing and true measure of the duo’s quality, pushing at the elementals without losing the listener or thread. They delve with adroit skill and a curiosity for sounding the abstract, and succeed in creating a mysterious and evocative soundtrack.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.