The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated short new music reviews, the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating playlist and a piece from the Archives.
Before you read on, and if by the end of reading this column you’ve enjoyed this selection/the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, please consider donating to the Monolith Cocktail blog’s Ko-Fi donation account. We are pretty much a one-man show with no sponsors or affiliations, and have sworn to never use or platform AI artists or use this tool in our own writing or research. Curated in a manner, each post and column is entirely self-motivated and beholden to no one. Please enjoy this month’s Digest column from MC founder Dominic Valvona.
___/NEW MUSIC REVIEWS SELECTION___
(All entries in alphabetical order)
bu.re_ ‘seasons in migration’
(AKP Recordings) 21st August 2026
Lower-case absorbed observations and measures of the seasons, as distilled through a both softened and gently piqued dappled lens, the latest traversed set of recordings from the L.A. born producer and multi-instrumentalist bu.re_ builds upon a process, a foundation and methodology to produce near weightless evocations of a familiar and yet almost abstract visceral capture of the seasonal changes.
If we want to get technical and precise, the quartet of tracks on this latest release from AKP Recordings is actually built upon a 12-chord progression, divided into four groups of chords; each of one of which lines up with and reflects a particular phase in the yearly cycle of the said seasons.
Ambience, the new age and Japanese environmental music prove complimentary in capturing the unfurling buds of Spring to the arrival of light poured rains and the lasting, expansive and near nothingness of a “tundra” environment recording that shifts its subtleties over the course of a whole long form suite: starting with a sort of thrashing and sieving sound before developing into Suzanne Ciani and Fairlight CMI-like waves, snuggled and mizzle and airy saxophone purrs, expansive horizon gazing synthesized vistas, and the floated specks of crystallised pollen.
Marking perhaps deeper meaningful episodes in the artist’s life, a reification of feelings invoked by watching such phenomenon, each beautifully conveyed piece is brilliant in its mood music encapsulation of sweltering mirages, roll out of an environment waking from its winter stupor and sleep and the blowy breaths of the wind arriving from a cooler North.
Impressions of Ariel Kalma, my old pal John Lane (going under his A Journey of Giraffes guise I’m reminded of his own homage of a kind to Susumu Yokoto on the Kono album), David Casper, Park Jiha’s summery vibraphone twinkles, and on the static slow released and languidly sax-pipped ‘heat simmer’, Matthewdavid and a restrained, Pharoah Sanders. For across the synthesised and the bulb shaped notes that materialise and float from the electric piano, and over the amorphous soundings of the tubular and bamboo, bu.re_ also adapts both the sax and flute to swan, breathe, waft, flutter its feathery wings and near hallucinate.
Gathered samples from over the last six years are transduced and made evocatively touching, contemplative and inviting when combined with an apparatus of electronic and wind instruments, processes and effects. A most diaphanously touched and sincere mused form of the four seasons, bu.re_ manifests so much more than just the weather and the measuring of the Calander months as they leave their mark upon milestones and concerns of a deeper nature.
Enfo ‘Small Modernist House In Woodland Setting’
(Subexotic Records) 14th August 2026
Despite the personality, the life stories, travails and hopefully more joyful and escapist episodes embedded within this opus-like scale journey from Enofa, I’ve pretty much ignored the research and notes to let the sounds, sonics, tape manipulations and melodic sweeps and soars of this generous eighteen-track album to speak and unravel their sensibilities and captured moods and experiences to me. I’m sure every suite and action has an explanation or series of prompted connections to the artist’s growth, anxieties and meditations, but to embrace without any prior judgement Small Modernist House In Woodland Setting is a both mysterious hauntology and surprising concepted work of ambience, field recorded and snatched sampled collage, disturbances in the soundscape fabric, environmental music and the exotic.
A fourth world vision in many ways that takes in timelines and evocations of periods from across history; from the near courtly and banquet music of the Medieval age and a weird folkloric England to vague chants and ceremonies from what could be Africa, South America and the Far East and Java. More Robert Musci and Glove of Bones than Hassell, but with the amorphous signatures of porous border leakages and influences of bamboo music, the tribal, the jug poured waters of an exotic garden retreat, the bowl reverberations of Lhasa you could be simultaneously and subtly taking in the worldly and off worldly.
It begins with the lushly Japanese-esque ritual karmas and spindled dulcimer-like tones of ‘The Wormery’ (reminded me of both Walter Smetek and a trumpet-free Don Cherry), and then both flows and disjoints with either surface noises or the unruly into passages of shaken dried beans or rice and ghostly waves of wooden tubular pole building on the speaking insect foliage chorus of ‘The Whispering Forest’ and the peculiar Staraya Derevnya and Lotus Eater’s plucked and twanged folkloric guitar mystical ‘Earthfasts’.
The album (or rather double LP) has its own recurring themes and signatures yet constantly expands and takes in an abundance of sources and influences; everything from an astral Mosquito Coast of reverberating hollas and pipped rituals (‘Interstitial’, which reminded me in part of both Elve and Amorphous Androgynous) to starry ecological trance and space mulch (‘Life Flower Totem’) and a more childlike discombobulation of toy instruments and radio tunning (‘Siobhan And Roisin Dance A Ceilidh’).
Metallic pins rain down whilst a Boyd Rice-like voice intones a gothic post-punk esoteric poignancy; motors judder and voices, interactions, aggro and choral voices lie in the undergrowth or the tape ether. Zen meditations overlap with the supernatural; cloud surfing beauty breaks away from the ominous soundscapes of Ramleh. A balance is kept throughout, as Enofa pulls the listener into an extraordinary travelogue and diary of memories, abstracted feelings and life changes. Anything but indulgent, it’s still a lot to take in, and the ambience of it may surprise when it turns corners and undulates with an eclectic spread of sound, the atonal, the discourse and the mysterious.
Nonturn ‘Repeating Town’
(Audiobulb Records) 22nd August 2026
Underlying this often pleasant and understated rhythm of the concrete is the idea of “how the city can be made to function as music”. Beats and loops created from the environment and resonance of Tokyo’s famous “bohemian” neighbourhood of Koenji are repeated, layered and placed on a 96 BPM grid and used as the basis of sampled material, with the results being a most ambient and minimal soundtrack of kinetics, soft industrials, reverberations and the tubular.
The alias of Kanazawa-born and Tokyo-based electronic composer Nozom Yoneda, the Nonturn project utilizes everything from the tools of construction to the traffic and architecture of a well-known musical underground (especially punk rock it’s said) and retail district in the Western regions of that metropolis. And all of it without the use of instruments, nor the obvious or familiar sounds of a buzzing city; transformed from their sources into a low rhythm and groove and set of looped or sampled sonics and ambience.
Every track is interesting in its style and mode of rhythm; from cupping sounds to the ringing of metallic reverberations, swept motions, scaffold and the warbled oscillations and vibrations and the pneumatic drills of machines. With some exceptions it makes for a softened post club absorption of Boards of Canada, Kriedler, Japanese Environmental music, and the early Warp label.
Those exceptions however, can be found in the form of the camera-like shutter snaps hollowed-out tubed captures of ‘Fathom’, and on the psychogeography of the industrial and more supernatural sounding ‘Disrupt’ – I’m convinced that the spirits of the district’s original temples, of which it is named after, are invoked through the mystical and spirit sounds that prick the metallurgy of the slab concreted exteriors; something seeping through from the back alleys in which the old has been hidden and rebuilt. The peeling of layers, of the daily actions and converse of a city district come alive through attentive and subtle uses of sampling and the transduced to create a most immersive sound world that grooves and rhythmically finds a connection with the concrete.
Sly & The Family Drone ‘With Love’
28th August 2026
Are they taking the piss? That discombobulation of provocative, riled up, multi-limbed distortions and dynamics, Sly & The Family Drone have only gone soppy on us? Well, at least with the title and the artwork of their latest instigated power play of no wave jazz and space rock transmogrification it seems their originally framed Valentine’s Day project is packaged in Barbara Cartland pink lace, satin and velvet; a single gloved hand laying a singular rose on a love heart shaped box of unknown delights. So, to all intents and purposes a romantic gesture; a sentimental wheeze.
A love letter to their fans perhaps, there’s a limited edition of twenty individually cut 12”s up for grabs, (if you’re asking, cut no less “in real time” by Michael Lawrence at Bladed Flier!) and a less limited version on pink and grey vinyl to devour. But I for one am not buying this Barbiefication for one minute, and once on the turntable it’s a whole different matter or meta of sonic infusions.
On this particular occasion, in this particular zone, the troupe corralled the talents of mainstay trick noise maker of various hazardous and dissonance electronic effects, voice and percussionist Matt Cargill, drummer and electronics dial turner Kaz Buckland, another electronic instigator Ed Dudley (also credited here as voice), fellow trick noise conjuror and drummer Will Glaser, and tenor saxophonist James Allsopp. Attentive certainly to the forces in the room, this diverse cast of players and artists – their lives and projects criss-crossing with each other over the years, and too numerous and extensive to list here -, they group both send out feelers to the universal forces and concentrate their psychic antenna on the cosmic.
Not so dissimilar to their lunar evocations and Fortean dialled-up peregrinations and activities on Moon Is Doom Backwards, but somehow even more alien, and this time around seemingly evoking both Irmin Schmidt’s Alpha 77 switchboard and Gunther Wüsthoff’s box of tricks alongside Amon Düül II very own Yogi talks to the Interstellar Drive circular oscillations of acid-space take offs.
Yes, this is an intergalactic trip of varying fusions, with a constant prevailing presence of space zeppelin propellors (another nice ADII vibe), constant rattling rim and tribal forward momentum drums (think Battles and Art Blakey meets Jacki Liebezeit – especially his Cyclopean team up), transmitted crackles and electricity, and a blurting and skonking, far out use of saxophone (Donny McCaslin lands with the Pharoah in the backyard of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World).
Moonwalks in zero gravity and the wafted trippy Floydian synched up with the Wizard of OZ airs of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ drift across the fabric of space to bring the mood into an untethered slowdown of song Byrd impressions and astral traverses. But the action is mostly navigated towards portal tunnelled and magnetic spherical space rock jazz jams that escape out through one star gate and appear in another dimension.
Like Hawkwind and Agitation Free riding aboard the Chariots of the Gods whilst crashing Chris Corsano’s stage, With Love is a space sonic drama; the band projected to some alien craft heading through a psychedelic wormhole towards a rendezvous with the illustrated worlds of Chris Foss and Angus McKie.
Centrifugal forces are ripped and then slowly forced out into a space field of acid, no wave and cosmic cried jazz on this voyager around the solar system and beyond: even the inner space of the mind…albeit one cooked and fried on various red and blue pills. Now as for the love, well, there’s definitely some fun going on with a release of voices left to wail and echo in glee and silly mooning. A love-in with the astrophysics and the pursuit of cosmic uncertainty and beauty, all rolled into one incredibly organic-fed performance.
Marvin Tate ‘Controlled Burn’
(Amalgam Music) 29th August 2026
Not so much parred down or enervated as intimate, the maverick (idiosyncratic would be a good description) poet, author, performer, artist, radio host and songwriter polymath Marvin Tate lets loose and agitates a conscious and wise accumulated stream to the sonics and guitar sculptured fuzz and scuzz of the former Wilco multi-instrumentalist LeRoy Bach.
With a number of previous bigger ensemble collaborations under his belt, Tate now finds a more minimal, but no less atmospheric and evocative, sound board with his fellow Chicago foil. Although the close-tied combo is expanded to include both a cameo from the Chicago hot housed and international Anthem stalwart Ben Lamar Gay on synth flute – you can hear it on the purred tweet-y sounded fluted and organ bedded ‘Best Side’. An invitation is also made to another of the contemporary Chicago gumbo scene’s notable players, the drummer, composer and improviser Quinn Kirchner. Opening out the sound and dynamics a touch with his drums, Kirchner can be heard, just about, on the Eugene McDaniels flange and wavey keys unrequited split-up short ‘Love Bass (I Was Hoping)’; the drum pad slavishly lo fi and cymbal crashed electronic cLOUDDEAD meets TV on the Radio ‘Mosh Pit’ – the lyrics either a continuation or repeat of the metaphor used by Tate’s on Mike Reed’s 2023 The Separatist Party album -; and a scrunched near heavy rock-prog Sabbath via Iron Butterfly and hard jazz roll and thrash on the rock-out punky Bukowski ‘First You Hear’.
Tate’s inimitable loose phrasing, observations, deciphers, enigmas, questioning and street staged episodes of life in this hood or that comes across like a combination of Malcom Mooney, Amiri Baraka, Thomas Albert Fabio and a less naïve and goofy David Liebe Hart. Without the lecturing tone, nor on the attack, politics and social comments are delivered candidly with a visual description unlike any other. No one quite encapsulates a whole woeful episode from the life of hard knocks quite like him, whether its recalls back to his older brother with both a fondness but brutal ghetto honesty, or the travails and inherited traumas that continue to plague the mind set and daily interactions. And then there’s a lot of references, remarks, poetic beats about a love lost, a love pornified and a love that stills worthy long after it’s died on the vine of reminisce.
There’s actions and annunciations driven just as much by agitation and immediacy as by attentiveness and inquiry. From a Chicago set vision of Cain and Able to proving that he was listening all along, highlights includes amorphous crossovers into Southern country-spirituals on the near plaintive, resigned ‘Robin’; the “streets made him” and numerous great lines from the brotherly affection ‘Baller’; the near Krautrock electronic pulsed octave, signal fluctuating ‘Went For A Run’; and the Sunn O))) meets Craig Ward and Hendrix on a bad trip scuzzed and riled ‘ Darren’.
Can meets Bad Brains; a post-punk transference of blues-rock and Fluxus; the sonic and sound world that underlays each poetic entry is kept lo fi and stripped-back so as not to overpower or take anything away from Tate’s startling and descriptive prose and near hectors of both low and high art.
Vivid throughout, there’s no doubt as to the drive and creative spontaneity that arises and flows from Tate’s poetry book of realities and cultural flotsam; of the eternal struggles and implicit dramas and the colourful ensemble that make up the poet’s life.
___/THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOL. 109____
Yes, the same introductory paragraph and moan from this month. Despite Spotify’s many attempts to piss me off and burry my numerus playlists, I’m still persevering with the platform: more fool me. You may or may not have noticed holes and a smattering of said playlists suddenly disappearing. I’m pruning. And to be honest, after compiling over 300 of them since 2012 I’ve slowed down and fucked up my account to the point in which it has become tiresome to use. So, I’ve trimmed out those less popular playlists, and the ones with holes in them – various copyrights being either removed or now out of date, labels and those responsible for said artists and tracks either leaving the site or for some other reason taking down individual tracks from their catalogue without any explanation; luckily I’ve never, and I hope way too good at what I do to have ever included anything AI in my playlists over the years or recently, so that doesn’t hold as a reason.
In case you were wondering, or haven’t seen it on Reddit, social media posts or on notice boards, Spotify has at least decided to act by clamping down on AI created music, with some hilarious results as arbitrator of what constitutes the artificial and what doesn’t. There’s a methodology I’m told, which has unfortunately caught some true boba fide artists in the net. However, it was Spotify in the first place that was inventing and predominantly lifting up AI artists in their own playlists and on the platform as a whole.
By the way, if you are having trouble finding me on Spotify, I’m there under my name: DominicValvona.
And so, we come to this month’s Social, and the same old template of new and old tunes, cult and anniversary celebrating album tunes alongside some more recent ones that didn’t make the site’s Monthly playlist.
This month we pay our respects to Liverpool drummer and Teardrop Explodes totem Gary Dwyer, who’s death was announced by his former band mate David Balfe on the 10th August. The co-founding mainstay of the legendary post-punk-art band went on to also play on Julian Cope’s solo debut LP and serve as an integral part of the Liverpool scene. Dwyer has a couple of writing credits on the early singles and Kilimanjaro tracks ‘Laughing Gas’ and ‘Bouncing Babies’, and the later ‘In-Psychlopaedia’. I’ve gone with the first of those tracks, and one of my all-time favourites: I was obsessed for years, including in untold DJ mixes and shows.
Moving on to this month’s (or thereabouts) LP anniversaries, there’s select tracks from The Beatles’ Revolver (60 this month), with covers of ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ by Guadalcanal Diary and an all-out showtime version of ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ by Jackie Trent. Sharing that sixtieth accolade, The Walker Brothers’ Portrait, and Larry Young’s Unity. Two decades on and Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ transmogrified covers/homage, Kicking Against The Pricks, is unbelievably forty years old this month. Moving forward another decade, and making me feel all my years, The Sneaker Pimps’ Becoming X is now thirty years old. A new century and The Dears’ criminally underrated Gang Of Losers and equally passed-over Arts And Crafts album by Black Neon are both twenty this month. Closer to home, from 2016, I’ve decided to mark David West’s Peace And Love (featured below in the Archive section) and Ian Brennan’s in-situ recordings from Cambodia – Khmer Rouge Survivors: They Will Kill You, If You Cry.
The remainder of this month’s playlist includes cross-generational treasures and craziness and sublimity and headcases from across the globe and genres, including Connie Kim, The Exkursions, Royal Servants, Greg Foat, Pam Amsterdam, Yeah Yeah Noh, YAZ-KAZ, Thee American Revolution and many, many more…
The Complete Track List Is As Follows:
The Teardrop Explodes ‘Sleeping Gas’
The Walker Brothers ‘Saturday’s Child’
Royal Servants ‘Someone to Be with Me’
Jackie Trent ‘Got to Get You into My Life’
Sophie Baker ‘Paradise Lost’
Connie Kim ‘Doan Nguoi Lu Thu’
The Exkursions ‘Third Eye’
Thee American Revolution ‘Electric Flame’
Guadalcanal Diary ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’
Sneaker Pimps ‘Walking Zero’
Larry Young ‘Zoltan’
David West ‘Dream on Dreamer’
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ‘Sleeping Annaleah’
Battre Lyss ‘Vidsel-Sthlm, Enkel’
Frutos Del Pais ‘Todo Se Termina’
Soun San ‘Pjanch Meah (Defeat the Giant)’
Alice ‘Les fleurs’
The Black Neon ‘TX81Z’
The Dears ‘Ballad of Humankindness’
Yeah Yeah Noh ‘Cottage Industry’
Vasco De Mento ‘Nightmares’
YAS-KAZ ‘Bone Knife’
Piero Umiliani ‘Rivoluzionari’
Neuro…No Neuro ‘Spare One For Another’
Greg Foat ‘Blob #4’
Alarmist ‘CGI Sky’
Band of Holy Joy ‘I Got This Job On the Brutalism E’
Pan Amsterdam, Spice Programmers ‘Cutlery’
Kobalt 60 ‘Kaos from Order’
Baby Berserk ‘Entertainment’.
____/ARCHIVES_____
Plucked from the exhaustive archives’ sections of the site, released more or less a decade ago and reviewed on the site, David West’s languidly dreamy bedroom album, Peace Or Love.
David West ‘Peace Or Love’
Released by Tough Love, 5th August 2016
Languidly transducing his free and easy scraps of bedroom recordings into something resembling an album, the Pacific crossing maverick David West (based both in Australia and the USA) ties-down enough material to fashion eleven tracks for posterity on his latest release.
The follow-up to the Drop Out Of Collage cassette tape, Peace Or Love is a cornucopia of ideas, some fleeting others ambitious, delivered in the dreamiest gauze-y obscured way. Using a collage of samples, jams and more thought-out song suggestions, West sometimes meanders into somnolence, yet also stumbles into more fertile pastures.
His soft bulletins evoke a post-disco feel and groove on the funky keytar dance track, ‘Happiest Man In The Room’, and breezier, 99 Records meets Postcard ‘Au Contraire’. Somewhere between baggy indie and New Order, a synth pop 80s New York vibe is flittered with on the ‘heaven can’t wait’ poetic lilting ‘Dream On Dreamer’.
Purposely creating a lo-fi mood, West still hints at the bigger ideas. Strings (sampled I presume) can often be heard stirring throughout, lending either a plaintive note of mooning resignation or certain grandeur to proceedings. Vignettes such as ‘At Peace’ use them for a mixed emotional response: the title might suggest the comfort of death, and this bears out on the instrumental which is itself a mournful and ambient noise collage that features strange scrambled flickers of something from beyond the earthly realm.
Shifting genres, ‘Do You Miss Me Around’, with its overloaded noise gate distortions, sounds like a stab at No Age, and the first of a three-act suite, ‘Darkness In My Heart’ has an air of Wolf Parade. Touches, no matter how slight, of Tim Goldsworthy, ESG, Archie Bronson Outfit ‘Chunk’ period, Young Marble Giants and even Cabaret Voltaire all seem to make an appearance. And with contributions from an axis of San Fran/LA/Perth friends and West’s various stints with the Red Columns, Liberation and Rank/Xerox to expand and inspire the musical horizons, Peace Or Love is filled with some interesting hybrids and possibilities.
Perusal #82: Becca Bartlett, Hui, Spaer, Free From Society…
August 3, 2026
In review: a world of sonic discoveries. Dominic Valvona
Becca Bartlett ‘Me, Myself And A Mirror’
Released 24th July 2026
The burgeoning Newfoundland singer-songwriter Becca Bartlett is wise beyond her years both creatively and emotionally, pulling on the heart strings but not in any kind of overblown sense, but subtly and with enough atmosphere and musical skill to serve up age old themes of self-identity and how to hold on to it.
Losing something of herself to appeal and seek validation, Becca seems to have already turned the page by the sounds of the sophisticated, but easily pulling on the emotions, set of songs: the current Berklee College of Music student’s debut EP no less.
Whilst finding a way in the world, and despite the yearns, lament and often plaintive subject matters and lyrics, Becca’s musicianship and vocals seem confident and at last, comfortable. Piquing my interest anyway, especially with the opening tree bug ‘Cicadas’ malady come beautifully heart aching cathartic release, her music is fresh introspection of atmospherics, country, the American 90s indie singer-songwriter scene, and folk-pop.
It begins with that already mentioned opening country-twang voiced – like the Cowboy Junkies meets Junita Stein; and even a touch of Tim Buckley – encouragement of finding one’s own place in the world despite the views and actions, the cold shoulder or discouragement of others – friends, or so-called friends, peers and romantic attachments. But with a range that is suffused with a hurting and yet enduring voice, sympathetic soft guitar and piano, and an attentive, comforting use of drums (just a few subtle uses of splashes and shimmering crescendos to stir the troubled waters), Becca can wisely rise through the scales and find the odd surprising note or two to turn even the most familiar sounding of ballads and releases of the spirit into something very interesting and deeply felt. Joni Mitchell is mentioned in the references, and it’s not immediately obvious but ‘Cicadas’ does have the air about it of a Joni song in its choice of these arcs and rises.
The title-track itself draws on the emotional wellspring that motivates and charges each of the EP’s six songs. Anecdotal wise, and it’s easy to imagine when you hear it, Becca has been overcome when performing ‘Me, Myself And A Mirror’. Written as a response to rejection (specifically mentioned, a rejection letter from her dream music school during a particular period of turmoil, when “nothing she accomplished felt like enough.”), this song is one of endurance, of overcoming the turbulence to finally see in that allegorical, metaphorical and all too real mirror a person worthy of acceptance and self-worth. Once more tugging at the proverbial in a dreamy hunger of dusted drums and country-folk-soul.
The rest of this generous EP’s songbook reminded me in part of a less esoteric Gillian Stone (the fellow Canadian artist who was once a writer on this site), of Neko Case and Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiely fame. The ecologically distressed Cassandra laments of ‘Tears Of Gaia’ feature a lovely watery tumult of piano and performance not too dissimilar to Tori Amos, whilst ‘The Static’ has an air of Celtic-country to its longed ache for a mended and entwined heart.
Even the most jaded will reconcile with their tear ducts upon hearing this brilliant songbook: A captivating if heart aching debut from an artist with much to share.
Free Form Society ‘Jam Session #1’
(Free Form Society) Released 22nd July 2026
New beginnings this month, or at least the burgeoning anticipation of a team-up from the Argentine pairing of filmmaker, composer and sound artist Melisa Aller and Rob Conlazo of maverick favourites The Reynols.
A fresh enterprise, the Free Form Society is an umbrella for new musical improvisations and label activities, and a platform for experimenting further with “expanded cinema”.
Not so much a manifesto, the rules of this platform are scant (“no repetition”, “no rehearsals” and “no corrections” being the main ones), but include the abandonment of most restrictions in creating immersive improvised experiences of image, cinema and sonics.
Step forward the multi-talented Aller, who’s oeuvre includes experiments with Super 8 film (its apparatus and processes), the notable debut feature film Las Decisiones Formales and the Oberhausen International selected Caida triptych. Since 2013 Aller has been composing the soundtracks to her own films, whilst also releasing a couple of studio albums (2024’s Plastiques and 2026’s Destruktion), and taking part on various musical experiments with CS8 and EPM.
With a haywire provenance dating back decades, Conlazo’s day job sonically with The Reynols has so far produced at least 120 albums since 1993. A list of their collaborators and foils over those years will tell you all you need to know about the direction of sonic travel: Pauline Oliveros, Lee Ranaldo, The Nihilist Spasm Band, Damo Suzuki, Paul Dutton, John Oswald, Michael Snow, Alan Licht, Birchville Cat Motel and the Acid Mothers Temple. Alongside this outsider unit Conlazo has maintained an independent visual and conceptual art practice.
Brought together in this open-ended configuration, the pair now cruise, pummel, speed and also float through a both sleazy leather Vega and more Japandorf and Dinger motored extemporised cosmic vacuum on the project’s inaugural jam session.
One solid aural operation of sonic propulsion and vortex giddy, zero gravity noise oscillations, this twenty-three plus minutes session, recorded live in Buenos Aires, keeps up multiple passages of rhythm and momentum as it first lays into a psychobilly space rock tunnelled beat at the start: this arriving after what sounds like the astral chinking glassy wind chimes and the steam engine chug of the last train to Lhasa.
From skying to the Spacemen 3 and Acid Mothers, then beamed through the cylindrical reverberations of the space time continuum, there’s reference points to CAN, Johhny Marr, Hawkwind and industrial gothic rock. But the action moves on organically into a surreal lunar soup and the whirly uncertain space of the off world with distortions, metallic alien vessel architecture, a garbled use of tribal South American voices from Castaneda’s dreams, and Moorcock adventure. All the while a guitar, both in tremolo and reverb mode, strings out and wrangles suitably galactic hymns, contours, unrestrained scores and undulations whilst the filters and effects loosely circle and hover overhead.
A suitably imaginary inner and outer space is invoked through this spectrum of experiences, influences and the spirit of improvisation to set in motion a free form idea of collaboration without perimeters: a unique funnelling of multimedia disciplines into something uncharted.
Hui ‘Zerbricht Fels’
(Jollies) 6th August 2026
An inner and outer space menagerie of organic and synthetic biospheres and growth await the listener on this latest enterprise and union from Johannes Schebler and Sven Fritz; both electronic artists creating electronic eco-systems and fun, bobbled, bubbly and mysterious mutations under their respective Baldruin and Ervin Omsk alias.
Though connecting via label overlaps, the two had previously never met in person; not realising until recently that they both resided in the old German spa town of Wiesbaden, located in the Southern western state of Hess. Incongruous perhaps to that town’s famous old worldly German Kingdom vibe, the result of that creative partnership showcases each individual’s signatures of digital micro and macrobiotic life synthesis, and surprising sonic outcomes derived from fever dreams and surrealist juxtapositions of sci-fi, nature and a candy crush arcade machine giddy transmogrification of funny and more woeful, worried voices.
In the German vernacular that album title translates as “Breaks rocks”, whilst the track titles remain partly vague and partly inquisitive prompts; gateways you could say to a discombobulation, a twist and Dadaist/Fluxus sound off-world of alternative futurism and the view from both below and above the microscope of lunar playfulness.
And for your admittance into this attractive and absorbing fantasy, you can expect to her the very sounds of crystallised growth; the pitter patter and fanning of not quite rhythms and beats but something like it; the yip and zip, the mewl of furballs and high-pitched transformed voices; and a sort of dulcimer spindle of possibilities using hollowed out pipes and tines to play out a tune across a cavernous hideaway of stalactites.
If reference points terms – the old “you listened to this, so check out these curious companions” manner of finding similar bedfellows -, this exotic and galactic field work reminded me in part of Carmen Jacci, Mir Calix, the Italian Atretetra label’s output, Sakamoto’s floppy disc experiments and even, probably wide off the mark, Walter Smetek.
Adventurous in one way, the partnership lubes up their mechanicals, metallic filaments and percussion, and alien oddities for a promising collaboration of hyper-vivid and more nonsensical experimental and living, breathing, existing biomorphic play.
Motohiro Nakashima ‘Sea Of Thought’
(FLAU) 12th August 2026
Beautiful deterioration and the art of salvaging something meaningful, contemplative and worth holding on to from the events that seem set to overpower or engulf us; these are the considered subtly relented and forgiving musical evocations that emerge from both the diaphanous and the near shapeless perspectives of Motohiro Nakashima’s guitar renderings and electronic effects apparatus.
The Fukuyama (Hiroshima Prefecture) born, and Nara based guitarist uses delicate and floated picking skills, the worn cassette loops method of Frippertronics, self-built instruments and his collaborating guests’ own enervated forms of accentuation and near amorphous formed renderings to formulate and address the “contradictions and quiet helplessness embedded in contemporary life”. A fragility that is represented by the enervations of textures, of surface atmospherics and a technique of layering pioneered by Fripp (especially on the No Pussyfooting) and Eno (Discreet Music) that is laid down like a wash or bed for fellow label mates and fellow Japanese artists ARAKI Shin, marucoporoporo and Kumi Takahara to dreamily or introspectively add their amorphous ideas of observational expression and traversing feels.
Shin, whose participated in recordings, live performances, and compositions/arrangements for artists such as Aimyon, Sonoko Ito, Exile, Chemistry, Miu Sakamoto, Sawako, Shingo Sekiguchi, and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, contributes a form of near Fourth World and dry raspy suffused blows of saxophone to a number of tracks: sometimes almost sounding like the fuzz or fizzle of static, a mysterious substance and vapour, and at other times more like a wafted and near airy clarinet or oboe sound.
Singer and songwriter marucoporoporo can be heard vocally on the whispery, near breathless ‘Sea Of Thought’. Her voice could be described as ghost-folk, with a touch of the ethereal, as it emerges from the trembled minimalist washes and soft airs of consciousness over the waters.
Bringing a touch of Alison Cotton, of evocative chamber pastoral music and an abstract veneer of nature to these interconnective suites and emotional erasures, the Tokyo-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Takahara offers some sublime and gentle peaks of yearning, mulling, sentiment and drama: at one point building towards a more minimalist version of Sigur Ros, and at other times more like Simon McCorry.
Nakashima’s guitar picks, loops and permeations themselves reminded me in part of Junkboy, Steve Gunn, Myles Cochran and Peter Broderick. Taken altogether with the cyclonic effects of celluloid and taped memories; the near venerated and spiritual passages out in the pastures and fields, anointed by a sense that a great weight and miasma has been lifted; and the very subtle use of drums (see the Tortoise-like post-rock-jazz pining ‘Cycle’), this reminded me of a more washed out version of Robert Musci’s ‘Blue’ union with Massimo Mariani and Giovanni Venosta. But it feels very much a part of the whole FLAU family and its ascetic too; another understated album of meditations, reflections shaped from more sombre themes yet made somehow more introspectively pleasing and lightened.
Neon Crabs ‘A Big Dumb Racket’
(Metal Postcard Records) Released 28th July 2026
Here we go again, round the Pere U-bend with a Unabomber MC 900ft Jesus and Eastern European blade runner dominatrix in tow; another “dumb racket” from the misanthropic transatlantic dust-up of Andy Goz and his Neon Kittens foils Nina K and Hope and their Dallas Internet pen pal Matt Nauseous of Occult Character and Legless Crabs infamy.
No longer a burgeoning venture or sideline collaboration, the Neon Crabs project is at least four or five releases in (probably more, as the label and all the participants seem to release tracks every other month without fanfare or through a very tight number of controlled outlets; unfortunately, the MC not being deemed worthy enough to get the memos). And it’s obvious, despite the rile, nausea and petulant aphorisms of derision at the state of the world, they’re having a laugh pulling together and distilling their respective musical influences and distain into a fusion of new and no wave, post-punk (both of the spikey and the danceable kind) and the industrial.
Made in the collaborative long-distance mode – a necessity of the Covid pandemic age -, Andy and his Fall-like femme fatales in York match or discombobulate and harness the energy and despondency of their Texan counterpart across four tracks of varying disturbed speaking and scuzz.
The buzz hallucinogenic turn sinister grab of the 70s and 80s, ‘Altered States’, could be a Fripp’s turn on ‘It’s No Game’ via Disco Inferno; a lyrical smash up of Coupland, Easton Ellis and Lanier, whilst ‘Invisible’ is roughed up Iggy and the kind of “your pretty face is going to hell” jolted dance and street jive evocation of The Stooges breaking bread with Biting Tongues: an ode to the ignored that takes on a near stalker and ominous tone.
Nina K is on duty like a chatroom AI version of Michi Hirota on the second half of this EP (I’m it calling that, but I’m not really sure if it’s an extended single or a short EP). Kas Product in a technocratic feudal and online broadcast of removed entertainment wars and Internet addicted and addled porn runs in a kind of automated style on ‘Prison Of Imagination’, and has a blast with the Poison Girls, Black Randy and PiL on the just as pornified and sleazy dissection of branded ownership dystopia, ‘Letter To Dog’.
Prolific to a fault, with a track and project, a new album or EP every other day, it’s hard to keep up, but Andy, Nina and Hope’s maverick disgruntled and fun times cynical match up with the idiosyncratic Matt has both the legs and promise.
Raymond Roussel ‘No One Asked Us Yet’
(Halocline Trance) 21st August 2026
The second of two releases on the Halocline Trance label this month from the idiosyncratic musician, band leader and cultural theorist Eldritch Priest, the French polymath imbued Raymond Roussel trio alias sees Priest once again acquainting himself with those jazz roots after various curious chamber experiments.
Not so much an accompaniment or moiety, but from the same hand, Priest’s other release this month, Too, So Like Nothing, sees three of his piano compositions performed by the notable Roger Admiral, whilst No One Asked Us Yet has the Canadian polymath back on guitar, leading his trio into ever wilder, more avant-garde spaces and dreamt-up spells of somnolent phenomenon and untethered conceptual freeform expression.
With visionary aplomb and a deft style of conjuring up a fusion of ideas and angles, Priest is aided in his ideas, transferences and wanderings by fellow Canadian foils James Meger (on bass) and Brady Cranfield (on drums and electronic effects manipulations and filters).
For the record, Meger is described online and in the PR notes as ‘an active bassist and composer working primarily in the fields of jazz, free improvisation and rock music.’ And has worked with both local and international talent, including such noted company as Wayne Horvitz, Lori Freedman, Ig Henneman and Kris Davis, whilst also playing in Ron Samworth’s Dogs Do Dream, Peggy Lee’s Echo Painting, Sick Boss, The Alicia Hansen band, The Bruno Hubert Trio, Ten Thousand Wolves, The Now Orchestra, Cow Trance and others.
Cranfield meanwhile is ‘a Vancouver-based sound and visual artist, musician, and writer.’ He’s a holder of both a MA in Communications and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. ‘He’s also the founder and co-organizer (in collaboration with the artist Kathy Slade) of the ongoing public art project The Music Appreciation Society, and frequently collaborates with artist Jamie Hilder. He is currently also a member of the improv/electronic/jazz trio Alfred Jarry and the duo Vomit Fraud with Kay Higgins.’
Priest meanwhile has been working as a composer and improvisor for twenty-five years. His compositions include explorations in the chamber vernacular as well as solo works, some of which have been performed in ‘North American and Europe by interpreters such as the Arditti Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini, Philip Thomas, Continuum, and Arraymusic’. This practice is described on his bio as being characterized by an ‘ob/excessive approach to melody, not in a systematic or meaningful sense, but in the sense that they don’t stop and tend towards the absurd.’ ‘His improvisational work is like this too but improvised. Along with John Mark Sherlock, he co-founded the Toronto-based experimental music collective Neither/Nor, which in the early noughties commissioned and performed works by an international array of musician-composers.’
At present he’s a billed as an ‘active member of Vancouver’s improvisation and experimental jazz community’ as one half of Alfred Jarry, a duo that takes its name from the inventor of ’pataphysics – “the science of imaginary solutions that symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.”
‘Alongside his musical practice, Priest has pursued a career in academia as a cultural theorist, where he writes on sonic culture, experimental aesthetics, and the philosophy of experience from a ’pataphysical perspective. His writing has appeared in several journals and books including Theory, Culture and Society, Postmodern Culture, and AM: Journal of Art and Media Studies. Additionally, Priest has published two manuscripts—Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure (Bloomsbury 2013), and Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams and Other Imaginary Refrains (Duke University Press 2022). With members of the experimental theory group The Occculture, he co-wrote Ludic Dreaming: How to Listen Away from Contemporary Technoculture.’
The exhaustive list of credits continues, is fattened even more, but before this becomes just a Wiki entry let’s move on to his trio’s latest soundboard and art-rock-jazz imbued album of the inquisitive, the mysterious, the abstracted and the freeform.
Taking at least a page out of the book of the infamous and conceptually renowned French poet, novelist, playwright, musician and let’s not leave out, chess enthusiast Roussel, Priest and his foils riff not only on their own improvisational sounding arrangements but both on a lamentable lovelorn tradition and one of Bill Evan’s more pleasant swing numbers.
Roussel, beloved of the surrealists, exonerated by such leading conceptualists as Duchamp and revitalized by the Oulipo and Nouveau Roman thinkers, was famously ignored or heavily criticised whilst he lived; his homonymic puns, his coded layers dismissed by his peers, although in later years, his genius became a springboard, his books (including possibly two of his most well-known, Impressions d’Afrique and Locus Solus) a catalyst for his scions and the generations that followed – a big influence no less on Duchamp’s symbolic large glass, early installation work, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. Somehow as the umbrella over Priest’s trio, their investigations and mirages, his legacy and processes seem to have been absorbed into a musical language that seems at first wildly loose and challenging to measure or make sense of. Here we see hints and peaks of what we know as the most out there and infused of jazz styles, an embrace of far out rock and post-rock, the electronic manipulations and dial twiddles of Squarepusher and Warp, and the more lunar and floated and drifted atmospheres of space.
There’s certainly prompts title-wise, from sleepwalking to venturing out beyond the great beyond on the album’s finale of mirage-feeling surrealism and musing moody rolls across an amorphous border between reality and the ether. More obvious, and as briefly alluded to a paragraph ago, there’s a languid come Zappa take on Bill Evans’ ‘Five’ – actually a combination of Wes Montgomery, Steve Vai and Allen Holdsworth finding common ground in the strung-out machinations of space. There’s also a dreamy fusion of the marooned and the reverberatingly cosmic on the trio’s interpretation of the old traditional ‘Black Is The Colour’ folk song; long since adapted and remoulded over the decades and centuries; it’s original writer long since forgotten I’m sure, with among its most famous takes being that of Christy Moore in the Celtic mode.
Elsewhere the action is both surprisingly attentive if avant-garde, with of course passages and whole tracks that seem serial and to follow no linear progression as such. It reminded me in places of everyone from Pat Methany, Jeff Parker, Last Exit, Bill Frisell, Wolfgang Muthspiel’s work with Brian Blade, Tonbucket and some of the guitar centric releases on the European ACT label. But a big surprise, though it may only be me hearing it, ‘Luster’ convinced me that I was hearing Radiohead for a minute; the electronics, an understated Aphex Twin. At one point on the drumsticks scattered, click-clack rolling and oscillated ‘Derelict Lounge’ Priest’s guitar takes on the sound of a violin.
Bent out of shape and then take on various flights of inquiry and the distorted, each performance seems to exist in its own space and time; dialled into its own special language and intelligence. A most remarkable and abstracted record.
Spaer ‘Lessons And Nonsense’
(VHS Records) 20th August 2026
An amorphous electic songbook of accumulated lessons learned and quirkier nonsense picked up across a decade or so, the solo project of Psymon Spine co-founder Peter Spears is an idiosyncratic package of observed oddities, curiosities and the more poignantly disenfranchised and disenchanted.
With disarming psychedelia, a pop naivety and embrace of the Beach Boys sublime harmonies and their whimsies (the album that really wasn’t, bundled together mostly out of scraps from the abandoned SMiLE sessions, Smiley Smile is referenced in the Spears PR notes, but even Wild Honey, Sunflower and Surf’s Up could be cuddled into that love-in) via the Animal Collective (Panda Bear especially, but also the Geologist’s solo projects too), Cloud and Terror Pigeon, the Spaer version of Spears is a strange bedfellow of the Psymon Spine group sound and ideas. Each song is from the same artist’s palette, but mixed differently, with the opening wistful cartoonish Aesop’s tale come universal observation of friendship through futility, ‘The Salamander And The Snail’. After witnessing the titular characters sharing a flip flop (I’m sure there’s point to be made here about manmade plastics and rubbers ending up thrown away or lost in the natural environment; here used as a handy makeshift boat or float, but usually a blight and hindrance and poison on the landscape) whilst attempting to navigate the cyclonic current of a river in Vermont, Spears has turned his musical sketch into a swimmingly concertinaed and bellowed wave of all those already mentioned Beach Boys influences.
And yet, there’s also a pastoral washed drawing board of references and experiments that wander off into their own world of influence and observation; including dalliances with the indie dance music of the early 2000s, Todd Rundgren, 70s solo artists of a certain pop-rock bent, prog-lite, Duncan C’s Fairlight and smoke machine years, Sam Flex, Bright Eyes, The Shins and The Unicorns. There’s what I would term a Balearic-like sound to the acoustic guitar at times on the Bergmann meets Wes Anderson nostalgic kick, whistled and cooed, ‘Indie Movie’, and even a campfire Fleet Foxes vibe meets Pixies moodiness to the “earnest” meant Autumnal love ode ‘The Woodstove’.
By the time we reach the finale of ‘These Bugs’, where the well-intentioned smacks straight into reality, Spears has corralled both his former bandmate Jon Becker in on Mick Ronson-style rock-out guitar and former collaborator, the singer, performer, bandleader and composer Kate Mertucci on vocals. With a touch of both the country twang (almost in jest), some hint of The Dears, Telenova and Blonde Redhead, Mertucci says sorry in a both touching and almost tongue-in-cheek dramatics as she deals with an infestation of ants: a true story ramped up to a sort of indie-dance rock opera, inspired by Spears’ own Vegan girlfriend and her principles suddenly overrun by marauding ants in their thousands.
Alluding to enquires about his own characterisation, a philosophical whimsy of a thread runs throughout this mini album (or extended EP if you will); all real concerns, woes, worries, anxieties and the more pleasing aspects of the daily grind are washed over by an amorphous feel for melody, feel and the quirky twists and turns of a mind set loose to wander and ruminate life’s foibles, set to a most pleasing soundboard of ideas.
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need:
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 able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
The End of the Month Playlist For July 2026
July 30, 2026
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music from the last month. Curated by Dominic Valvona & Matt Oliver.
Choice music and sonics from the last month (or so) picked from our reviews, but also featuring the tunes we missed out on or didn’t get the room to feature at the time. Curated by Dominic Valvona with choice hip-hop cuts selected by Matt Oliver.
The Track List:
THAO & The Get Down Stay Down w/ Tune-Yards ‘Sick of the Times’
A Certain Ratio ‘Knife Slits Water (EM) 12” Version’
foamboy ‘FAR AWAY’
Homeboy Sandman & Jack Splash & CeeLo Green ‘World On Fire’
ECID ‘Break Up Insurance’
Space Afrika & Tony Njoku ‘MLN’
Skyzoo ‘Short Money’
Peter Evans ‘Genesis/Schismogenesis – Stage 4’
A-F-R-O & MotionPlus ‘Labor of Fruit’
Brian Ennals & Blockhead & Defcee & Mikie Mayo ‘Yellow School Buses’
King Kashmere & Genesis Elijah & Killa P & Dabbla ‘Big[Bad]’
Chuck Strangers ‘L2LL2C’
Post Elvis ‘Luna (Evil’s Ballad)’
Simon Klein ‘Don’t Leave Me Alone’
Robyn Hitchcock ‘My Dead Astronaut’
Babe Rainbow ‘Acid and Honey’
John Howard ‘Abbey Road, April 1974’
Skyjack ‘Shozi’
Richard Spaven & Wildchild ‘Finders’
The God Fahim ‘GFY’
Distant Fires Burning & Autistici ‘Scalar (Reverend Basstorius Remix)’
hackedepicciotto ‘Zeitwende’
Aisha Vaughan ‘Frozen’
August Cooke ‘On The Line’
Biita Houdei ‘The Ground Here’
Tristan Da Cunha ‘Preludio’
Feverdreamt ‘Shadow Catching Up’
Sir Richard Bishop ‘They Shall Take Up Serpents’
Park Jiha ‘Summer Illusion’
Los Orientales de Paramonga ‘Viajando Con Un Loco’
EYE WITH AN EYE (Bloom de Wilde & Nick Trepka) ‘flow.’
Tōth ‘Easy – Live With the Brooklyn Choir Project’
The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated short new music reviews, the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating playlist and a piece from the Archives.
Photo Credit: Marilena Umuhoza Delli
___/NEW MUSIC REVIEWS SELECTION___
al niente ‘al niente’
(Discreet Archive) Released 10th July 2026
Drawing upon a diverse range of experiences, experiments and study, the Italian quartet of notable players known as al niente form a bond and untethered atonal, mostly non-musical and avant-garde language together to produce this atmospheric performance of the improvised and text-based compositions. The latter of which includes an interpretation of the composer and cellist Stefan Thut’s ‘Some, 1 – 4’, which finds a suitable spot amongst the near-quiet of nothingness and stirrings of resonated, shaved and hinging brass, the dry rasps and the steam-like released whistles of the flute. A double-bass thumbs or plucks a one note prompt (or reaction) as the silence acts not so much as a pause but a repeated use of space and abstract tone in itself: an important, integral part of the whole response to the initial sounds that set each performance in motion.
You can find it on the Bandcamp description yourself, but Thut describes this rendering and process of his template thus:
“What remains here of traditional notation is the succession of two elements and the vertical arrangement as in a four-voice setting. At first glance the columnar image receives a liquefaction as it expands through the action of making sound. But the repeated actions of the four performers also bring it back to the static of the image yielding an impression.”
The reference to voices is interesting, and easy to imagine replacing the instruments and resonation on not just this track but the others: a removed form of vocals I’d admit, more, and chiming with the quartet’s signature, atonal in execution.
Comprising of Beatrice Miniaci on both flute and bass flute, Cosimo Fiaschi on soprano saxophone, Gabriele Pagliano on double-bass and Luca Venitucci on the accordion and what’s termed “objects”, the quartet work in a kind of avant-garde, non-musical mode that evokes the most minimalist fields of jazz and the avant-garde; sieving, shifting and stretching the possibilities of the elements of breath and instrumental textured experiment.
Within that expanse of light and shaded microtonal and held suffused progressions and dialogues there’s light refractions and various pitches interacting with the industrial sounds of the workbench, of mechanics and tools, or with near esoteric leanings and released steam. Mysterious and almost esoteric in places, recorded somewhere in the city of Rome where the quartet are based, they conjure up as much atmosphere as they evoke a certain skill of untethered musicianship and reaction. Windows are opened – literally sounding at times like the hinges being activated – on this abstract horizon swell and permeation of Anthony Braxton and his peers, the tradition of innovative atonal experimentation and the avant-garde in Europe, and Ariel Kalma.
The Breedling ‘A Straunge And Terrible Wunder’
(Wrong Speed Records) 4th August 2026
Sticking close to home with a horror show score of electronic dark arts and Satanic conjuring, Chris Spalton (under The Breedling guise) soundtracks the supernatural and folkloric psychogeography of his county by reviving the hell hound legend of the bedevilled Black Shuck.
To borrow from Rev. Abraham Fleming’s August of 1577 dated account of the infamous beast – as repeated orally and with just a sensational touch of exaggeration for publishing purposes -, the most dramatic legendary description, passed down through the generations, and obviously unsubstantiated, of the East Anglian miscreant is as follows:
“This black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse (God hee knoweth al who worketh all,) running all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a momet where they kneeled, they stragely dyed.”
Or better still and heading the title of this latest album from the Norfolk-based artist, Fleming summarised this beast and its most notorious episode as a “Strange and terrible wunder”.
Sightings and accounts continue, and just like UFO sightings, each period in history is reflective of its own hangups, fears and cultural obsessions. But in this mode and time, recalling the late Tudor era’s own distresses and religious fervours and religious wars, the bestial hound is no dressed-up Baskerville masquerade but a symbol of the daemonic sent to rip out the throats of the metaphorical flock of Christianity, or at the very least to frighten the congregation into towing the right pathway. Then again, there’s not much defence when such sharp-clawed and blood thirsty imaginings are about to pounce on the unsuspecting.
Inhabiting a world not unlike that of Robert Eggers nightmares, with a dash of quintessential English rural occultism and weirdlore, a chill of spine-tingling Gallo Italian horror and an apparatus best described as industrial foreboding and sinister. And yet there’s a darkly rooted use of ambience too, and incipient quietened passages in which the wind, the atmosphere is held off just long enough to escape the doom-laden electronica, the NIN-esque squalls, steely guitar resonance and hammered, nail-gunned (like a brutal version of modern diy workshop crucifixion) and beaten drumbeats.
Entwinned with the bracken density and shadows of the English woodlands, oscillations and prowls are exchanged for the creaking floors of an old mill struck out in isolation in the wilds or the sound of tormented individuals being tortured and ripped limb from limb. And yet, you can detect a suffusion or perhaps just a passing influence of Haxan Cloak, Umberto, Ital Tek and Lucrecia Dalt amongst the hell’s gateway of snared, growling, almost gaggled and howling, biting hounds and dark bewitched invocations. There is however some gleam of relief in the dying embers of the finale, a sudden navigation of the rotated and circled esoteric environment turns up in the clearing to the sound of bird song and a reminder that none of this has been real: or has it?
Spalton delivers an immersive, ominous soundtrack of real quality; a dungeon doom and folkloric rural electrified reading of a timely legend that demands attention. |It would be good to see some director pick this up for a movie, but until then, let the sonic distress and mystery invoke its own images and story.
Himba Hymn Collective ‘Ghosts Of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast’
(Sublime Frequencies) Released 8th May 2026
Possibly the most featured producer and in-situ instigator of inspiring, exceptional and jaw-dropping recordings on the Monolith Cocktail since its inception, Ian Brennan’s highly prolific output (not just musically, he’s also an incredibly expressive and candid writer too, as demonstrated by his accompanying descriptive linear notes) most recent release completely slipped my notice: an unheralded release it seems by Sublime Frequencies.
Joined on each of his global expeditions, as always, by his partner and foil the Italian-Rwandan photographer, author and filmmaker Marilena Umuhoza Delli, Ghosts Of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast finds the acclaimed producer, musician, writer and violence prevention advocate practising what he preaches in recording the unheard voices and performances of some of the world’s most isolated, ignored, disadvantaged, and marginalized.
Described by Ian as the ‘Most disproportionate travel to recording time ratio we’d ever risked.’ With ‘Four days flight, four days driving (two entirely off-road) to record for a few hours’ Ian and Marilena travelled to the world’s driest and oldest desert (not atavistic but even older, back to prehistoric times) in Namibia, on the southwestern coastline of Africa to capture the unique voices of the age-old Himba people; perhaps one of the most objectified and photographed tribes in the world, yet until now rarely given the space or platform to perform vocally and musically. The muse of National Geographic and untold covers for their famous red-hued moisturised and decorated skin – a second skin and mix of animal fat and ochre powder, it is both used as a sort of sunscreen that protects them from the harsh and unforgiving sun and cosmetically – and eroticized state of undress – the women usually going about their daily lives and routines topless -, the females, but men too, celebrate beauty.
With their near unbroken ancestral traditions, the Himba live a still largely pastoral existence, eking out a living through their most prized possession: cattle. Sharing much with their fellow Namibian’s, the Herero (both originally migrating from elsewhere in Africa to settle in the most sparsely populated large country on the continent, the two groups also share a Bantu ancestry), every hamlet features a central ‘Kraal’ where the cattle and goats are herded for safety each night.
The Himba are smattered in and around the Namibia desert, which despite its arid and dry reputation lies along the cool coastal exterior of the country, with the ocean to its side. Stretching for 1200 miles and reaching up to 100 miles inland, this vast challenging landscape is famous for its trade routes and important movement of both minerals and fish. Relatively stable these days – in fact, one of the safest places in Africa – that same desert and the country as a whole has suffered from some very dark, tumultuous and violent periods; including what has been called the first genocide of the 20th century, when the Colonialist rulers of what was then German South West Africa carried out a heinous and ruthless execution of the Herero and the Namaqua peoples after a rebellion by Chief Samuel Maharero – started after decades of slavery, persecution, the confiscation of cattle and starvation. The Germans originally colonised the region in 1884; an act of occupation, a stemming or barrier to the British Empire who were expanding westwards. Anywhere from 50,000 to 65,000 people were killed during the bloody years between 1904 and 1907, but the Dutch originated settlers the Boars were also known to have had their conflicts and subjugations of the same people too. War has followed, both civil and from across the borders, but Namibia is a much changed and settled country, a favourite to backpackers and tourists alike.
But with a near unbroken tradition, the Himba continue to draw attention to their idiosyncratic way of life and exotic (if I’m allowed to dare use that word) look. But the focus here is on their songs and performances, with a requested amassed cluster of both women and men captured for posterity on tape by Ian and shared to an international audience. With a rudimental or striped down travel kit of apparatus, recordings are usually raw, caught in the very moment when something is about to happen; a spontaneity; a one-off for the conditions and environment in which it has been sealed.
Ian’s own descriptions make my job easier, and I could literally just copy and paste his insights, his descriptions and directness. He really manages to evoke the scene, the ardent journey to the middle of a most unforgiving desert location, conjuring up the smells, the atmosphere, the cast of various performers brilliantly. My personal favourite is when Ian manages to reference the reduced life expectancy figure for the region as sixty with a request that he’d made earlier for the Himba villagers to specifically put forward their elders for the recordings. When Ian and Marilena finally make it, they are met with a group of men who aren’t so much as elderly as near the same age as Ian himself (hardly queuing up just yet to get his pension), and so proving just how reduced that life expectancy really is in these harsh conditions.
Ian just as brilliantly describes what you are about to hear: a psychedelic vocal tapestry, esoteric even in parts. The use of what’s called the Cattle Gun (a rarefied found these days we’re told, expensive and coveted, this lengthy horn, taken from the Oryx antelope, is coated in mud, and can be described as kind of strange jazz horn come breathed rattle) and the way in which the Himba cup their hands to cover their mouths in order to create the effect of chorusing and flanging is extremely helpful in understanding what you are about to experience.
Let’s take the psychedelic description first. You can hear it permeating nearly every track as a strange effect of hallucination and mirage. But when you get to the stringy strummed ‘Friend’s Who’ve Passed’ its entwinned with a rootsy vision of Beefheart and the blues. The vocal (I believe attributed to lead vocalist Tjamburu) is near garbled and active in its elegiac act of remembrance.
Esoterically there’s the opening introduction to the tribe’s reenactment of lion attack upon its prized cattle. Summoning up the heaving chest exhales and sweat, the growling threat and devouring jaws and clawed menace of a predator, the group effort of interactions and overlayered voices is near supernatural and bestial in invoking such a carnage.
As with so many of Ian’s previous truly international recordings there’s so much to pick up, so many crossovers or reverberations with traditions and music from other regions. You could be mistaken for thinking the pleaded ‘Please Help Me’ was an ancient recall from the Mississippi voice of spiritual gospel to the motherland – there’s an odd, near unmusical, languid if indolent enervated accompaniment (if you can call it that) of metal or tin being occasionally scrapped and shaved in the background, which only makes the whole thing more happenstance and surreal. ‘Don’t Cry (Your Father & Grandfather Are Good)’ reminded me a little of the harmonious unions of voices heard across the border in South Africa, albeit in the hallucinogenic mode, and the trilling, rolled tongue echoes – accompanied by what sounds like a klaxon going off – and laughing gas inhaled-like octave change of voice into the realms of the childish and silly ‘Be Brave In The Face Of Death’ reminded me of a far-off recollection of dub crossed with King Ayisoba.
Vocally otherworldly and yet also drawing on physicality, justifiable grievances, the confrontational, there’s a balance of the soulful, the earthy and the impassioned; using breathing and various mouth pulled and loose lipped trills to express both the painful and the ritualistic; indignation and communication.
Not so much worthy as essential listening to everyone who really wishes to get clued up and experience the sounds, the joy, the spontaneity and passions of music and performance from outside the mediocre TikTok trending dominated scope of the West and its global markets. Uncluttered and truthful, catalogued not as a Lomax-esque curiosity, and uncoupled from that whole World Music cloying presumption of posterity and study – even though these recordings will reserve and keep account of the Himba and their performances -, these expressions are very much still alive and just as important as the songs sung by the ancestors.
Nicola Miller’s Living Things ‘SPIT!’
(Watch The Ends The Night) 7th August 2026
Bouncing through a lively Latin and French Quarters whilst throwing up reminiscent city jazz skylines of the 50s and 60s and chasing the dramas of Noir and feeding off the spirit of the Big Easy, renowned Canadian saxophonist and composer (also, as you will hear, a deft hand on the flute too) Nicola Miller and her quartet troupe send out lively and excitable free form vibes on their latest album together, SPIT!
Spit in its various forms, from the driest reedy evocations to the most spittle and flappy lipped experiments of actionist jazz and its avant-garde cousin, this extraordinary display of loose and dynamic performances swings on the jungle vine whilst promenading and heralding down the New Orleans streets, thumping along the San Fran pavements of Lalo Schifrin and scoring the chaos and bustle of the boardwalks.
And then again, such as through the three-part ‘Telecommunications’ suite, you get the brass resonating, woodpecker woody block percussive and rasped reedy sucked valve work, the bristling and brushed abstracts of such icons as Anthony Braxton and Rosco Mitchell, Mats Gustafason and Ivo Perelman. Throw in the blues, and the puddle duck, pastoral chamber classical familiars of Prokofiev and the whole deal gets even more interesting, expanded and ambitious.
Imbued by her Nova Scotia base (subtle hints on the smog bound shipping horns of Doug Tielli’s trombone, and a general feel of the maritime can be heard suffused throughout the album), and already collecting an enviable haul of plaudits for her craft following the release of the Living Things’ 2024 debut (released on fellow Canadian label Cacophonous Revival), Miller now amps up the “extrovert” in her and “fires” up the band to produce a both experimental and untethered album of first class jazz performance and musicianship.
With reference points to a whole history of such jazz explorations and freedoms, Satchmo meets Sam Rivers, Eric Dolphy and Peter Brotzmann on the opening city lights, blasted and blared, brassy and swung opener; Miller’s alto sax going through various phases of the winding, the strangled and vibrated whilst Tielli’s sliding and elephant trunk raising trombone recalls a mix of Phil Ranelin and Theon Cross.
The already mentioned ‘Telecommunications’ triptych passes through just as many phases, from the flapped and dried-up breaths and cuckoo-like knocks and steamed resonance of Part I to the 50s jazz sonnet, greenery and wounded cornet-like strange harks of Part II and the busier film score excitements and confusions of Part III.
‘Where’ The Line’ settles into a strange duck-clarinet (that will be clarinettist and second saxophone player Frank Gratkowski, a former mentor to Miller whilst she was studying for her Masters) described bluesy and dreamy lost world of the misty and mysterious; obscure renderings of foggy ship horns again, with a walking stealthy bass line courtesy of Nicolas D’Amato, plunge us subtly into a primal swamp or an old coastline, with obscure recalls of Gershwin and Bix Beiderbecke.
Though not wholly dedicated to the troupe’s versatile drummer Nick Fraser, the finale, as its ‘Drummers Are Bad’ title may indicate, neither scolds nor lets the sticks man hog the entire track. Fraser does get to scuttle, skittle and feel his way in the avant-garde vogue around his kit in the name of unrestrained quickened and fired up improvisation; his foils equally building towards the wild, and a duck-billed excitement of brass and cartoonish chases along a pastoral pathway left overgrown and blanketed by the mists.
An incredible album from a burgeoning project of gifted, experienced and still inventive players surrounding the main instigations and prompts of their leader Miller. One of the best jazz albums so far in 2026, and that’s about as good a recommendation as you can get from me.
Tristan da Cunha ‘Maris Stella’
(Boring Machines) Released 10th July 2026
Touched by the afflatus the Italian trio of Francesco Vara (using the guitar to imitate the strings), Luca Scotti (on drums), and Nicolò Vara (on viola) make neo-classical and ambient oblations to the titular “star of the sea”, the ancient allegorical and metaphorical Latin name given to the Virgin Mary.
A reification of faith and guidance perhaps, or the act of being saved from the troupe’s overriding theme and concept of “isolation”, Maris Stella is deep adagio, often elegiac and mystical, suffusion of subtle atonal and more melodic and dramatic suites and vignettes – the latter labelled “interludio” like moments of reflection and pause; the first being an ambient corridor of rough textual tension on the bow, and the second, more like a verset of hallowed evensong and pipped liturgy.
Pitched somewhere between Reich and Alison Cotton with the imbued influences of Arvo Pärt,Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Stars of the Lid in tow, the score, the minor opus and longer form suites encompass post-rock, chamber music, soundtracks/scores, and obviously the religious – hear the gentle genuflections of the viola and its companions, or the sanctified choral voices that appear from a Mediterranean chapel on the mysterious ‘The Veil’.
Sometimes burnished, often shimmery cymbals and the deadened hit of the drum conjure up images of stirred-up waves splashing against the hull of the trio’s boat; an invitation to navigate both slowly and supernaturally amongst the recondite tides of the serious and classy, the careful and subtly monumental. Searching woes follow melodious escapes, venerability and the venerated but make, apart from the title, no obvious references other than musically to the church, but Mary stands as the abstract lighthouse, a sanctuary and point of lifting transcendence in the silence of loneliness and detachment of the modern era.
Whatever the intentions, the island borrowed Tristan da Cunha named trio combine reverence, the blessed age old iconography of the Christian church, and the matriarchy with an experimentally skilful use of ambience and various classical ideas; changing the traditional setup of a chamber ensemble by replacing the strings (except the viola, which is used almost like a lead instrument here) with the guitar and drums to evoke a number of expansive musical concepts and ideas that lead into other disciplines.
A complete work of art and a beacon with which to draw upon in this moment of crisis and isolation.
___/THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOL. 108____
Despite Spotify’s many attempts to piss me off and burry my numerus playlists, I’m still persevering. You may or may not have noticed holes and a smattering of said playlists suddenly disappearing. I’m pruning. And to be honest, after compiling over 300 of them since 2012 I’ve slowed down and fucked up my account to the point in which it has become tiresome to use. So, I’ve trimmed out those less popular playlists, and the ones with holes in them – various copyrights being either removed or now out of date, labels and those responsible for said artists and tracks either leaving the site or for some other reason taking down individual tracks from their catalogue without any explanation; luckily I’ve never, and I hope way too good at what I do to have ever included anything AI in my playlists over the years or recently, so that doesn’t hold as a reason.
In case you were wondering, or haven’t seen it on Reddit, social media posts or on notice boards, Spotify has at least decided to act by clamping down on AI created music, with some hilarious results as arbitrator of what constitutes the artificial and what doesn’t. There’s a methodology I’m told, which has unfortunately caught some true boba fide artists in the net. However, it was Spotify in the first place that was inventing and predominantly lifting up AI artists in their own playlists and on the platform as a whole.
By the way, if you are having trouble finding me on Spotify, I’m there under my name: Dominic Valvona.
I’m going to try and keep everything from the covid years onwards, but you may now see gaps in the back catalogue as I move forward. And so, we come to this month’s Social, and the same old template of new and old tunes, cult and anniversary celebrating album tunes alongside some more recent ones that didn’t make the site’s Monthly playlist.
Sadly, and inevitably, I also mark the passing of those we’ve lost. In this case, and just a week or so ago, the British jazz-rock-prog-fusion community lost keyboardist and composer Dave Greenslade. An incredible CV, wealth of experiences, Dave’s journey took him from the burgeoning bluesy/R&B scene of London to Casablanca, a stint with the Ram Jam R&B/soul revue troupe motivated and led by Geno Washington and the virtuoso boasting Colosseum, before forming the just as legendary doubled-up keys instigated Greenslade – as every obituary almost in disbelief repeats, a group that dared to dispose of the role of lead guitar: the audacity!
On the Anniversary LPs front, there’s one big Sixtieth birthday to The Byrd’s Fifth Dimension and a fiftieth nod to The Beach Boys’ 15 Big Ones. Another decade closer and its fortieth salutations to Doug E. Fresh’s Oh My God, 2 Live Crew’s The 2 Live Crew Is What We Are, R.E.M.’s Life’s Rich Pageant and the Spacemen 3’s Sound Of Confusion. Leaping through the decades, I’m also marking the twentieth anniversaries of TV on the Radio’s Return To Cookie Mountain and Thom Yorke’s Eraser. And as featured in this month’s archives below, a tenth nudge to Ed Scissor & Lamplighter’s Tell Them It’s Winter.
The rest of this list is made up of intergenerational reaching tracks from Alcatraz, Lapera, Bal Pare, Sophie Nzayisenga, Double Happys, Evil Weiner, plus more recentish tunes from Clementine March and J Sciende. Lots more of course, to make up the thirty tracks in the July social revue.
Track list in full:::
The Beach Boys ‘Susie Cincinnati’
TV On The Radio ‘A Method’
Clementine March ‘Upheaval (First Version)’
The Byrds ‘Captain Soul’
Colosseum ‘Three Score And Ten, Amen’
Okay Temiz & Johnny Dyani ‘I’m A Green Lamp – Yesil Fener’
Angry Angels ‘Apparent-Transparent’
Greenslade ‘Time To Dream’
Hopkins-Bradley ‘Funny, But The Way I Feel’
Evil Wiener ‘Koo Koo’
R.E.M. ‘Fall On Me’
Double Happys ‘Some Fantasy’
Colosseum ‘The Machine Demands A Sacrifice’
J Sciende & Opio ‘Krush Groove Kangol’
Doug E. Fresh ‘The Show – Oh My God! Remix’
2 Live Crew ‘2 Live Is what We Are…(Word)’
Himba Hymn ‘Who Is going to Welcome The White People?’
Sophie Nzayisenga ‘Story of Nyangezi’
heka & GG Skips ‘High Tide’
Spacemen 3 ‘Rollercoaster (Live)’
Bal Pare ‘Die Idioten’
Naomie Klaus ‘Can You Tell Me What Is Micronet?’
Thom Yorke ‘The Clock’
Thick Pigeon ‘Sudan’
Human Greed ‘Freeview’
Ed Scissor & Lamplighter ‘TTIW’
Lapera ‘Catarsi’
Alcatraz ‘Where The Wild Things Are’
Walter Daniels/Oblivians/Monsieur Jeffery Evans ‘It Don’t Take Too Much’
Greenslade ‘Siam Seesaw’.
___/ARCHIVES___
Ed Scissor & Lamplighter ‘Tell Them It’s Winter’
Released by High Focus Records, July 15th 2016
Emerging damaged and deeply troubled from the miasma underbelly of modern life, the congruous leftfield hip-hop partnership of wordsmith Ed Scissor and Glasgow-based producer Lamplighter convey a sad poetic beauty in their dystopian visions.
Much has been made of the duo’s caustic, and at times nihilistic, articulations and augurs. And their latest remote collaboration – the duo rarely share the same room as each other during the writing/recording process – Tell Them It’s Winter does explore familiar morbid curiosities, both musically and lyrically.
Yet, despite the travails, despite the gloom and all too real drudgery of an algorithm-driven society, Ed and his Lamplighter foil offer glimmers of light. Reminding us constantly of the universal infinite, Ed describes forces beyond the mundane. References to astrology, metaphysics and science flow like relentless streams of consciousness from Ed’s lips in a delivery style that shifts between rap, spoken word and, even, grime. Abstract elements of hip-hop and trip-hop mix seamlessly with the Shakespearean and biblical to produce the poetry, whilst tetchy minimal electronica and slow methodical beats layered over cLOUDDEAD expansive atmospheres and traces of neo-classical strings and looped recordings of old scratchy records create the backdrop to Ed’s winter of discontent.
Each track is free of demarcation and often floats off on different pathways before returning to focus once again on the central mood. There’s no room for prowess and flexing, Ed’s verses constructing a framework of unflinching honesty. Cormac McCarthy and Winterfell metaphors aside (the critics consensus analogies and reference points it seems for this album), the impending Machiavellian horsemen of doom bolted a long time ago. Tell Them It’s Winter is, if anything, a reminder that nothing has changed and that the central tenets of human suffrage carry on unabated in the 21st century.
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need if we are to continue:
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 able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries in alphabetical order.
Photo Credit: Mara von Kumme
AD Ozium ‘In The Style Of Dead Sparrows’
(Saccharine Underground) Released 9th June 2026
Through a storm, a blizzard, and heavy reverberation the Washington D.C. based musician Jeremy Moore (of Zabus, Zero Swann and Bell Barrow note) creates both a mirage and world of paranormal and hallucinatory built-up environments; that and evocations prompted by the various deciphered titles that allude to mysterious enquires into faith and death.
A unique world of transmogrified guitar drifts and twangs and tape manipulations, In The Style Of Dead Sparrows is as esoteric as it is dreamy, with sounds that could only be described as a mutated helicopter-like chop of insects or Captain Beefheart guitars meets a stained-glass-polygon-window version of the Aphex Twin with one foot in dissonance and another in a blanched-out desert. From fear to distortions and white noise you can feel the presence of the unearthly, or at least transformed and made more worrying; unidentified propellers and rotors, the tunnelling scrolls of blanketing winds and the clawed and scratched offer something alien, an inter-dimensional being, or the abstract but sonorous weight of heavy meta.
A coarse atmosphere fizzles and hisses all the while as both enervated and more amped up guitar distortions, pliable twinges and twangs, resonance, and untuned improvs drift in and out of the Fortean surfaces of the spooked and ominous. It parts it reminded me of both of Blake Edward Conley’s Droneroom project and of Steve Gunn – the guitar often sounding like some very removed but evocative indolent glimpse of Hawaiian and a nightmarish Ry Coder -, but then this almost industrial and clanged punctuated blast through imaginative distortions of Death Valley and references to the Nazarene, the throne and terminal, is unique. Projected somewhere between the crumbled and the surreal, the supernatural and engineered, everything is engulfed in a production of magnified magnetics, tape malarky and derangement.
Once in, you become fully absorbed and caught up in the halcyon redial, the layered mechanics and more lo fi experimentation.
Audio Obscura ‘Dream States’
Released 12th June 2028
Drifting between dreamy somnolence and jet-lagged like misperceptions of space and time, Neil Stringfellow’s explorative Audio Obscura project finds a liminal plane of the half-remembered, half-reminisced and a track list of prompting mementos.
Creeping downstairs to unlock the imagination, to freely take to the piano, after restless nights spent fighting off the insomnia of a heatwave, Neil found solace and both inspiration from Duke Ellington’s perceptive and visceral line that “No this is not piano, this is dreaming” – the original extract, along with a little more expansion on dreams, is used on the opening piece, and appears again later, mouthed this time by what sounds like a manipulated and Orb-like child’s voice.
Running untethered from experience, study and the like, this central Ellington description is used like a soft mantra to create various mirages, surrealist dream states, contemplations, thought processes, balladry and the more mysterious. But unconnected to jazz, Neil seems to weave together two different musical or sonic ideas at once; for example, there’s neo-classical fragments of piano that suddenly get overridden by μ-Ziq and Aphex Twin-like dashes of electronica or d ‘n’ b (actually this album did remind me in part of the drukqs album).
Throughout the trickles, tinkles, the diaphanous flows and more plinky-plonky gated reactions of piano you can perhaps be reminded of Keith Jarrett, Cage, of La Monte Young, Sabine Liebner, Margaret Leng Tan and the prepared piano work of Nam June Paik, but compromised or jolted by break beats, ambient passages, satellite beeps, fizzles and phasers and vapours. Those electronic effects, the beats and overrides brought up echoes of Tomat, Apparat and Roni Size.
Surrealist pillows float on heavenly clouds, caressed by the harp, and metallic reverberations chime against a soundscape of breaths, soft choral voices and slow hallucinations to somehow clutch at the abstract; to sound a particular experience, a date and day of great empirical importance. If a piano could in fact dream, then this album does much to convince us of its sentinel being, separated from its author, as if playing and recollecting passages, phrases and ideas itself.
Distant Fires Burning & Autistici ‘Scalar’
(Audiobulb Records) 18th July 2026
The experimental electronic label and hardware hub is known for its unconventional approaches to remix projects. Those familiar with this site may recall one such release by the latter of this team up, the Sheffield-based electronic composer Autistici, whoreleased acollaborative chain of such repurposed, resourced explorations through the Familiarity series. In that series fellow peers and label mates went to work on transducing or expanding upon the original material: or sounds and code adjacent to it anyway. Sharing the spotlight this time around with Belgium bass-player and “knob twiddler” Gert De Meester and his Distant Fires Burning alias (a moniker that leans towards the bass guitar), their Scaler track is given free reign and transported via various electronical fields of inquiry and exploration by a clutch of similar artists.
Opening with an “E-xtended Mix”, the foundation is hollowed tubular bounce and fizzle bed of static-charged kinetic techno track. Partly organic in its makeup but a synthesis of padded beats, squiggles, broadcast interferences and a transformed trebly bass guitar track, it reminded me of Kriedler, Orbital and Cabaret Voltaire. Meester does his own homework later on under the Reverend Basstorius alias, keeping (like most of the crew involved on this seven-track remix special) the static charges, the crispiness but adding a cosmic soundscape of Banco de Giai and early Warp label trance.
UK “sound experimenter” Kingbastard (as he known) continues to play with the crackled atoms of the original, but goes for an electrical charge of techno and filtered passes and switchery zips, whilst the Hungarian producer, sound-designer and instrumentalist Ficture (the solo project appellation of Gábor Tokár) deepens the bass, adds a circulating spin of cyber wind and a Land Observations-style set of guitar loops to the vaporized mood – there’s what can only be described as a sort of Indian-trance-jig at the very end.
Erik Schoster, appearing under the active alias of He Can Jog, seems to be heading towards a similar current as the Bureau B label in Germany; some echoes of Harmonious Thelonious amongst the zippy and farty bass lines, the wizzes and generally slowed down playfulness. Appearing on the site a few times before, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (who uses the Ümlaut guise) brings the mystique, plus a spring woody ruler-like repeated sound and wispy cosmic dust to the kinetic original.
The final remix is by the rather anonymous Pulse Mandala, who settles the source material into a signature relaxation (though pining and almost electronically bluesy) of space-bound reflection, breaths and drifted neo-classical piano spells.
Combined, this is an interesting, entrancing and kinetic bouncing metallic EP or mini-album or extended 12” release of both subtle and cerebral techno music and genre offshoots; the quality is obvious and the ideas not just intelligent but visceral too.
Hackedepicciotto ‘Lichtung’
(Mute) 10th July 2026
From the metallic synthesised undulations and suffusions of the German hinterlands, the coupling of Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto once more entwine themselves as they conjure up yet another Gothic romanticism of surrealism, the near theatrical, the magical, and the elegiac.
Proving the most prolific of duos over the last five or six years, with a number of enigmatic and powerful symbiotic albums of the sulfuric and dreamy, they once more draw upon an enviable experience of projects as they return to the wilds and nature of their now rooted German home on the rural outskirts of Berlin. For the nomadic lifestyle and creative process of most of their work (for example, the album Menetekel was recorded in a medieval church in Krems on the Danube, whilst The Current was recorded in Blackpool and Keepsakes was recorded at the famous Auditorium Novecento in Naples) has found a home amongst the “clearings”, the fields, and fauna of that inspired home; one that is just distant enough from the urban pull of the city, but close enough for creative engagements.
Both partners in this marriage share a singular vision to evoke and somehow put into their own language and sonic soundscape their fears, loves, longing appeals, and processes of rumination and more essentially, escapism.
As Covid proved a “weird euphoria” of inspiration for the duo, the alarming discourse and divisive political and societal climate providers suitable fodder, with Alexander and Danielle returning to the land and environments that offer solace and reflection without the noise and rage of the Tiktok generation’s confrontational activism.
Almost looping all the way back to his formative years as a teenager in Germany, experimenting at a young age with electronica, and his membership just a little while later of the iconic and most influential Einstürzende Neubauten, Alexander once more sets to the controls of this synthesized and electro biomorphic concocted pastoral soundtrack – a combination actually of Teutonic kosmische music, a light touch of techno, and smattering of Kreidler, Der Plan, NIN and Thomas Dinger. His wife and musical foil Danielle (a co-founder of Berlin’s most famous techno Mardi Gras, the Love Parade, and collaborator in a number of projects, but also an oft member of Crime & The City Solution) is American, but found herself drawn to Berlin For the first time ever I believe, she has chosen to wholly adopt the German language of romanticism, fantasy and poetry for this latest album Lichtung.
Duetting at every turn, the cadence, syntax and accent is as German as you can get; from the harsher fully announced and pronounced to the softer joys of embodying a life well lived and enjoyed amongst the greenery of their retreat, away from the madness. It’s almost like a return or full embrace of a Germanic culture rescued from nationalism and put to better use amongst the cosmic tubular auras and peaceable longing intentions of their sonic soul partners. For it shares more in common with the land sound artistic experiments and innovations and feels of Cluster, Ariel Kalma and Syrinx, but thrust forward into the 1980s, and augmented by passages of drama, seriousness and elegy: there’s a moment on the haunting funeral procession closer, ‘Der Marschall’ (which isn’t difficult to translate as “the marshal”) when the bell that tolls could equally be taken from the ominous elegiac scene of a Western as it could be from Joachim Patnir’s Charon Crossing The Styx painting.
There’s even more of this Western hint on the warping Gothic and hard German accented ‘Vogelfrei’ (“outlawed”), which reminded me both of Mick Harvey’s more broody bass lines and of Crime & The City Solution. A maverick swell and spindled yarn of tin star weight that evokes something altogether beautifully enigmatic and sombre.
Organic whilst absorbed in a metal and kinetic electro field, machines, drum pads and transmission bleeps and blips interact with weeping and sorrowful lamented strings: often recalling the work of neo-classicism and the score work of Nicolas Britell. Enchantment follows the substance of emotional plaint and recall, as the music takes on a near Kraftwerkian vibe on the most kosmische and German electronic springy bounced plastique and tube-paddled magnetic ‘Zeitenwende’ (“turning point”). And yet strangely, sounding melodically and vocally familiar, it feels like one of those near timeless tributes to the landscape, not so much joyful in abundance but romantically finding a gleam of light in the density of these most troubled times amongst the pastures and wilds of the countryside.
I hope this coupling always continue to make music. They’ve brought a seriousness but also near Dadaist and Surrealist legacy, plus a kind of industrial fairy tale sound, to soundscaping and capturing a most uniquely artful encapsulation of their woes, worries, loves and dreams. Back home, happy – even if this album is filled with an elegiac theme – in their skins and surroundings, rather than draw away into isolation and a cooling balm of therapeutic deliverance from the hostility of the age they’ve continued to explore and magic up a magnetic and beautifully delivered, charismatic soundtrack. Long may it continue.
Skjack ‘Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet’
(Kujua) Released 3rd July 2026
Hardly a recent turn in fortunes or a resurgence of exposure for the melodiously, politically and consciously aware South African jazz scene, the country can however boast of such noughties talents as Nduduzo Makhathini (recording for and anointed no less than by Blue Note), Thandi Ntuli and the alto-saxophonist Mthunzi Mvubu. Those are just a smattering of a worthy and exciting pool of players and artists in a celebrated scene that’s broken internationally. You can also throw in the mixed Swiss and South African, Cape Town formed, quintet of Skyjack to that burgeoning list.
Skyjack are imbued by a most incredible landscape (despite the painful history, the Apartheid system and its barriers to the Black African majority’s access to it; shunted and enclosed into the shanty towns that grew up around the diamond and coal mines) and an equally incredible musical legacy that includes the likes of both Abdullah Ibrahim and his Dollar Bill alias, Hugh Masekela, the Jazz Epistles, Bheki Mseleku, and the Blue Notes. You can hear the influence of those luminaries on the latest, and fourth, album by the quintet of pianist Kyle Shephard, bassist Shane Cooper, drummer Jonno Sweetman, and the dual horns section of trombonist Andreas Tschopp and saxophonist Marc Stucki. And although it’s very much an equally shared recording, you can’t help but be drawn to Shephard’s prowess and, should I dare to suggest, leadership on the piano; one part Ibrahim, another part Oscar Peterson and Thelonious Monk, a mixture of the neo-classical concert hall, the township, the South African vista and a timeless vibe of America’s pioneering and counter experimental leaders of the 50s and 60s. Beautifully melodic with notes and phrases and runs that sometimes softy jar or rise up toward the plateaus and heights, his piano expertise (the CV is indeed wide, with projects that include scores) and ability to cross hands is exemplary and always interesting without losing a sense of touch, feeling and melody. During the course of one track the style can take in the stage, the lounge, the serenaded, and the improvised.
Before drawing in the rest of the group and that inspirational geography, the references that spring to mind whilst taking in this album include Archie Shepp’s union with Jason Moran, Billy Higgins’ Quartet (“Soweto”) and Idris Mohammad’s “Sudan”, but also the very European jazz label ACT and its enviable catalogue of collaborative albums.
Back to that stunning (as you can tell, I’m still going with the superlatives to describe that landscape) topography and the Western Cape province town of Stellenbosch, renowned for its abundance of oak trees, its sheltered valley and hilly terrain, and of course beauty. An eternal reminder of its Dutch settlers founding, Stellenbosch is, I believe, one of the earliest such towns to be imposed on the South African landscape by Europeans. Having never been, the pictures online testify to its outstanding surroundings. In a studio, I presume, within that idyllic spot, Skyjack inspired by that oft quoted 13th century Persian poet, Rumi (a line of which is used as the album title), turn on a deeply interconnective performance of descriptive peregrinations and moods, of the near romantic and philosophical, and a sound that recalls the almost joyful union and resistance of township jazz, and of the tribal – coming off like Ndikho Xabu when escaping dreamily into the bush or conjuring up a dialogue with the ancestors.
Each player has a lot to offer both in the semi soloist encounters and when all playing together at once across a panorama and near flowing abundance of solid great jazz tunes and expressions. Shane Cooper gets to flex, but never so bended or pulled as to lose shape; there’s a solo vignette with his instrument’s name on it, a break, but short spotlight on his spring grooves and bobbled and reverberated improvisations. Meanwhile, Jonno Sweetman changes with the mood music, offering sympathy and the cuddled with passages of splashing and shimmy shimmering cymbals, dynamic swells and upturns in action and rolls. Andreas Tschopp does a cracking job on trombone (a touch of Phil Ranelin perhaps), making that instrument cover a diverse range of tunes, more wild spirals and heralds and blasting when the occasion calls. Keeping on the horns, Marc Stucki’s saxophone parts can be as soulful and serenading as they can be more in keeping with the untethered work of the Pharoah, Wayne Shorter and Grachan Moncur III – there’s a nice fluttery, near buzzed, Cage-like free form expressive study on the moth that lets the sax hog the spotlight nicely against strange ethereal arias.
Creating their very own expansive universe, but somehow describing and paying some kind of homage to the environment itself, Skyjack make a thoroughly impressive melodious album of contemporary and past South African jazz themes. A befitting tribute but also an album to get lost in poetically, spiritually and imaginatively.
Aisha Vaughan ‘Water World’
(Leaving Records) 17th July 2026
Through the studio window and out until the glades, the lush valleys and hills, the meadows and fields and pastures of remote Wales, diaphanous expressions are left to freely roam and hang in the air.
Sharing much with another Celtic siren of the form, Celestial North (the Scottish artist lives over the border these days in the Lake District), Aisha Vaughan embraces a similar New Age vibe of fusing nature with a subtle use of electronica to conjure up misty voiced myths, fantasies and cosmic transcendence. But whilst softly veiled in a both atavistic stripped time – before humans had made their mark or converted the land to the new religions – and something more attuned to the 80s and 90s eras of Trance and the already mentioned New Age musical genre, Vaughan demonstrates the processes and acts of overcoming past traumas and restrictions under the replenishing rains and waters of the Welsh landscape, or under the moon beams of the lunar cycle.
And yet, you could be mistaken in part, especially when the fluty panpipes reveal themselves, for wandering amorphously from the ancient shepherded Bannau Brycheiniog to Breton or the Andes. Such is the near seamless drift and suffusion of ethereal qualities and near wordless beautifully longed and channelled vocals that the Wales backdrop is not so obviously reflected musically You could perhaps find it referenced through the wooded canopies and riverbanks of bird song, the allure and draw of Celtic invoked mysticism from another age and the entrancing undulations of this appropriately entitled Water World.
Electronically placing arpeggiators both beneath and over ambient breaths and a bed of lush if gauzy melodious waves of fairytale, the celestial and twinkled, each piece on this mini album invites you into a carefully constructed cascade of healing and therapeutic deliverance.
Julee Cruise meets Clannad and Amethystium as Moroder and Vangelis build up their synthesis of early electronica; or the Chromatics visit the Celtic psychogeography, invited by Alison Goldfrapp. These are just two descriptions that spring to mind whilst absorbing and laying back in my study of this dreamy, sometimes haunting (but not really in a paranormal or especially supernatural way) shrouded soundscape and vocally expressive peregrination and inviting magical plane.
Colin Webster/ Balázs Pándi/ Matt Cargill ‘Chewed Up And Spat Out’
(Raw Tonk Records) Released 15th May 2026
In sporadic bursts, popping up from time to time over the years on the Monolith Cocktail, agitator sonic noise diviner and hazardous dissonance unloader Matt Cargill is back this early summer with two releases: firstly, as a collaborator on this tumultuous union, and once more with the oft-day-job of Sly & The Family Drone (see this month’s review).
Rolling into London town for a few days, Hungarian drummer extraordinaire Balázs Pándi decided to call upon The Spasm Band, Sex Swing and Dead Neanderthals saxophonist Colin Webster, who in turn pulled Cargill into a death match/death roll of free form jazzcore, noiseniks, doom, alien and hysterical experimentation. Our Hungarian drumming friend has a CV that takes in everything from the Venetian Snares to various collaborative formations with Merzbow, To Live And Shave In L.A., The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and Zu. And that’s keeping it brief by the way.
We can only imagine the scene and set up, but the sound that was produced was both squawked and screwy, frightening and primal; a crazed distressing free jam of the strained (no more so than with the one long strained dump that’s squeezed out in alarming pain and hysterics on the ‘The Money Shitter’), the bestial, and the strangulated (like squeezing the last pips out of a dry reed, or standing on the Webster’s intestines).
Whilst there’s splashes and rolls, breaks on the drums to latch onto, the free spirited if caustic concentrations of interplay are in the avant-garde meets fucked-jazz zone. It reminded me in places of Andy Haas and his various projects, but also of John Zorn, Roscoe Mitchell, a little of such jazzcore noise and histrionics as UIUIUI, and the AEOC. Between and underneath the lattice work of percussion, the rollicking and bashed, beaten, sieved and sifted and spidery drums and the saxophone howls, distress, konks, doom spirals and rasps, Cargill keeps up a communication and undulation/oscillation of rippled effects, ariel-tunings, squiggles, and radio menace. It makes for a strange, sometimes captivating, but always challenging reading of the present confusion of the world; a spontaneous outpouring of aggressions, frequencies, vibrations, expressions and invocations from three always interesting and inventive musicians.
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 able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
The End of the Month Playlist Revue for June 2026
June 30, 2026
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music from the last month. Curated by Dominic Valvona & Matt Oliver.
Track Listing is as follows:
Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band ‘Do The Right Thing’
Pussy Riot ‘PAIN/БОЛЬ’
Parallel Thought ‘Casus Belli’
Sam Krats, Edo. G, Jeru The Damaja, El Da Sensei & DJ Rougue ‘360’
Wiki Ft. Your Old Droog ‘All in The Lining’
The Difference Machine, Day Tripper, Dr. Conspiracy & GRETZKY DA ‘Star Children’
Baba Zula ‘Kutsal Zeytin Halayi’
The Taps of the Holy Trinity ‘Most Of Them Were Ghost’
Movie Star Junkies ‘Hard To Beat’
Mick Harvey & Amanda Acevedo ‘Perfect Storm’
Tele Novella ‘Ring Of Stones’
Claptrap ‘Shrug Emoji’
Oopsie Daisies ‘HAGS’
Schizo Fun Addict ‘Scent Of Heather’
BLEU REINE ‘Cavalier Seul’
Leah Callahan ‘Driving’
The Loft ‘Sad Comedian’
Max Knouse ‘Cavalrain’
Suzanne Ciani, Metropole Orkest & Simon Dobson ‘Section 4: Animal Kingdom’
The Moose Funk Squad & The Primitive One ‘Freaks of Nature’
Wish Master ‘Think About It’
Awon and The Other Guys ‘Ice Rink’
Kong the Artisan, J Littles & Blak Twang ‘Know About Me’
Qewl & Nightwalker ‘On My Mama’
Supreme Cerebral & The Beat Junkies ‘Supreme Junkies’
Boards of Canada ‘Blood In The Labyrinth’
Fatoumata Diawara ‘Massa’
Puce Moment ‘Tehuano’
DJ Grzyb, Tamten, Maysia Osu, Silky Oolong ‘Trombita Dub’
Tomat ‘Blue Reverie’
Here’s the message bit we hate, but need:
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 able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
ALBUM REVIEWS BY DOMINIC VALVONA: A WORLD OF SONIC DISCOVERIES
Photo Credit: Trevor Stuurman
Burial Cake ‘small steps’
(Somewherecold Records) 19th June 2026
Motivated, or forced if you like, to reevaluate life after the triple whammy of a near-death experience, subsequent hospitalisation and the implosion of a twelve-year relationship, Blake Edward Conley picks and shakes away at a new tonal pathway of soundtrack-like strung-out and mirage evoked Americana under the newly fashioned alias of Burial Cake.
His usual signature trade of abandonment, oaths, mourning and love hang like tangible descriptions in rippled, palpitating and softly juddered panoramas and mirages. But with a sudden change in misfortune, Blake heads inside, faces the interiors of an intimate setting and just lets the tape roll as his off-grid atmospheric and often moody reflections take shape; manifestations and haunted near improvised and spontaneous sounding efforts produced to comprehend the abstract and all too real brushes with mortality and a love lost.
Without prying, and as the PR blurb enquires from the beginning, this latest album of what looks like randomly smattered numbered recordings could be experienced perfectly well without its context and backstory. But once the circumstances are revealed its difficult not to hear or read into each tremolo vibration, stroke, zoomed slides, body and fretboard knocks and tactile hand gestures something both darker and often lonely. But then out of the rustle and wrangle, the more melodic attempts – like Robbie Robertson’s caught on the Twin Peaks set, or a foggy recollection of the Spanish-Texas sound -, there’s a couple of answer machine messages to prompt and make pretty clear the background to this sorry tale of woe, recovery and heartache. The spikey bluesy distorted ‘small steps #13’ and the melted country-drone ‘small steps #14’ both feature these final worries and concerns, both callers imploring Blake to get in contact as soon as possible. It can’t but prompt also concerns in us the listener of the state of the artist, in his dark place, breaking off or unable to reciprocate that same concern back: to just let them know he’s alive, let alone all right.
Inspired in part, title wise, by a reversal of Coltrane’s seminal famous Giant Steps LP of 1960 on Atlantic Records, Blake actually, especially on the opening track, seems to almost ape the saxophone with a magnetic-like buzz and fuzz of vibrated electrified strings. A gateway to modern improvised jazz, that LP signalled something new and the way forward. Blake however, in a much more intimate, private way, still recalls his long-standing droneroom project, but tries to refocus his artform and channel it differently with this latest project and move (as a consequence I believe of the split) from Tacoma to Seattle (although a city move, he remains in the same Northwestern state of Washington).
Magnetic with spells of the dreamy and near magical, the feel and musicianship is a balance of broodier and more attentive forces: Sunn O))) meets Gunn, or Fred Frith in a crush with Ry Coder. Rattle snacks, a long since abandoned rust belt, the cactus dotted landscapes and borderlands all merge into that performance space of gloomy rumination and bluesy experimental loss. It feels like some passages are there to haunt Blake, whilst others almost offer some light, a way to process and recover.
Hadley Caliman ‘Iapetus’
Reissue Special (Wewantsounds) 19th June 2026
Our friends at the specialist rare finds and vinyl reissue label WEWANTSOUNDS continue to mine the vaults of the crate-digger’s and breakbeat connoisseur’s favourite, the Mainstream label this month. The first such vinyl reissue of its kind, the imprint has resurrected one of the best ever recorded examples of its kind, with one of the most outstanding and illustrious of lineups, shining a light on the tenor saxophonist and flutist Hadley Caliman’s much revered and classic solo album of 1972, Iapetus.
Bob Shad’s original Mainstream “broad church” imprint grew out of an already 30-year spanning career when it took shape in the 1960s; a showcase for prestigious artists, session players and Blue Note luminaries chancing their arm in the bandleader or solo spotlights. A musical journeyman himself, Shad (whittled down from Abraham Shadrinsky) began his producer’s apprenticeship at the iconic Savoy label, then moved to National Records before taking up an A&R role at Mercury, where he launched his own, and very first, label EmArcy. It was during this time that Shad would produce records for the venerated, celebrated jazz singer deity Sarah Vaughan, the Clifford Brown & MaxRoach Quintet, Dinah Washington and The Big Brother Holding Company.
Mainstream was home to the developing tastes and an incubator for 70s jazz, whether that was fusion, the spiritual, the art rock variety or the conscious kind. One such glowing example was Shad’s signing, the highly impressive Oklahoma raised but L.A. and San Francisco hot-housed Caliman, who recorded a couple of impressive and defining solo LPs for the label at the turn of that new decade.
After securing his platform in 1971 with the self-titled debut, Caliman followed up with the Greek Titan and Jupiter moon etymological entitled Iapetus. The majority of the compositions on this far-reaching and renowned LP were composed by the no less notable and influential pianist, composer, electronic musician, essayist and conceptual artist Todd Cochran; just one of the many doyens and acclaimed artists and musicians lining up to enrich and push the boundaries of Caliman’s Modal and spiritual vibed visions.
With so many crossovers, links in the network and amongst the players on this rarefied treasure, it would be fair to outline each band member’s diverse backgrounds and connections. Cochran himself is the polymath most responsible for helping put this LP together, having arrived off the back of performing on and shaping the Bobby Hutcherson’s Quartet’s iconic Head On LP for Blue Note, and already releasing a couple of LPs for Prestige. As a side nom de plume for some his career, Cochran also went under the Bayeté name. As a master of composition and keys virtuoso, you can hear a heavy use of the Fender Rhodes on Caliman’s eclectic fusion of a showcase LP; bulbs shaped electrified notes hover, hang around like pollen and space dust, or reverberate, whilst Oscar Peterson-like displays of modal and explorative notes and runs cascade and trickle both melodically and in a more avant-garde style.
Stepping up next, we have the sensational Woody “Sonship” Theus, an L.A. birthed virtuoso who was already “well acquainted” with the flute, violin, trumpet and piano as a kid before homing in on the drums. By the way, that middle name is in honour of not only Jesus but Coltrane’s ‘Sun Ship’. As an incredible engine room, but tactile drummer too, Theus worked with such luminaries of the art as Larry Nash, John Klemmer, Charles Llyod, McCoy Tyner, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Michael Urbaniak and the exalted Pharoah. Here, he delivers a drumming showcase, splashing around with cymbals, hurtling away in an Irmin Schmidt-like phaser and flange tunnelled cosmic psych effect, and rolling and beating out a spiritual, experimental and sometimes just funky breakbeat. He’s just as at ease on the more mirage and dreamy peregrinations and settings; sifting, sieving and tactile across primal horizons and nature. Rhythms and timings can suddenly leap into action from nowhere, and he’s been left at times to play off in duets with just the double-bass or the keys.
Moving on, but in the same music section of the ensemble, we also have the percussive pairing of Spanish Harlem’s conga and timbales player Victor Pantoja and the Dominican drummer and fellow timbales player Hungria Garcia. The former is probably best known for his time with both Santana and the also the Latin rock band Azteca – founded and linked by Santana percussionist Coke Escovedo – and was named by his peers and foils as “El Negrito”, whilst the latter was famously a member of Mongo Santamaria’s Cuban spectacle and outfit, going on to form the Riot rock group in the 70s, and playing with such noted visionaries as Gabor Szabo, Don Ellis and Stevie Wonder. They both add a certain exotic presence, a simmer, rattle and shake of dragon flies and butterflies, the brush and scrub of the earth, and the jingle of cattle bells from the African bush on the atmospheric dreamy nature and spiritual yin ‘Dee’s Glee’. It might also well be their inclusion that helps to steer the Latinised ‘Quadrivium’ towards the Afro-Latin sounds of Brazil and Cuba; an almost pan-fluted and whistle caress of Latin America via Hermeto Pascoal and Jeremy Steig.
Next on trumpet and flugelhorn, the Houston born but Afro-Cuban roots Luis Gasca, who also (and that’s where those connections and nodes cross once more) played with Mongo Santamaria he also but played with that other Latin-Jazz titan Tito Puente, but once he let his hair down, or grow, in keeping with the hippie countercultural norms of the late 60s, hung out as a renowned sideman on the San Francisco Bay scene, turning up as at Woodstock with Janis Joplin and The Big Brother Holding Co., lending his now psychedelic horns to the Grateful Dead, and also filling the ranks of Santana’s band during those heady days. His cult LP, For Those That Chant, is a classic. That trumpet is equally as blazing and burning as it is burnished and dry across the Iapetus skyline: recalling a host of gifted auteurs of the art form but swinging also to a 50s and early 60s period of influences too.
Finally, we have the moving Modal bass lines and flexes of the notable double-bassist James Leary. The CV is impressive to say the least, with periods conducting on Broadway and stints with Count Basie, Eddie Harris, Dizzy and Max Roach. There’s plenty of room for that hummed and descriptive double-bass to swing between stage and the golden era of Blue Note, whilst also sounding out the terrain on the dreamier hallucinated and lunar pieces.
I guess we should return back to the man of the hour, and Caliman’s own impressive background. Crossing networks porously, and just like a number of his foils on this LP, he also worked up musical relationships with Santana, but also whilst moving between the West Coast and Washington, with such luminaries and notables as Earl Hines, the Grateful Dead, Freddie Hubbard and Jon Hendrick, and Ray Draper. L.A and San Fran were the calling, and his sophomore LP, illuminated by the mythological references to a progenitor of mankind, the father of Prometheus, and the astrological references to the mostly iced, distinctively bright and dark hemispheres observed their largest moon of Saturn, sits well in that environment; from noirish blues to showtime swing, the near psychedelic, the spiritual, and when the keys and drums and horns merge on the opening ‘Watercress’, evocations of Bitches Brew Miles and soul-jazz.
Elsewhere you can pick up flashes of Byard Lancaster, Joe Zawinul and Miles’ own electric key experiments, plus Oscar Peterson, Max Roach, the funk and more soulful, and something almost otherworldly.
Far too impressive, and filled with a most enviable ensemble, to lay dormant or unloved, the Iapetus reissue is a stunning, visionary masterclass in both expanding and firing up jazz so that it swings as much as it floats or hovers between the Latin and the experimental, the orbital and the primal.
Fatoumata Diawara ‘MASSA’
(NØ FØRMAT!) 6th June 2026
Although the diaphanous voiced Fatoumata Diawara hardly shies away from delicately and beautifully articulating the subjects she holds dear, to spotlighting with a certain tenderness but also power the problems of polygamous family woes in Western African, of motherhood and the contemporary ills that plague not just her homeland but the world as a whole, her music is a celebration of roots and culture; an exchange of ideas and art between her homeland and the modern approaches and pop and club music of the French producer and project instigator -M-.
Whilst Mali is being ripped apart, a decade or more into a grippling war and ongoing, but never extinguished, Islamic insurgency, its music scene has never been more influential and in rude health. It must be said, mainly as a result of its musical diaspora, with many forced to flee to Europe, across the borders: from various celebrated Tuareg nomadic groups to a number of internationally acclaimed virtuosos. Many have stayed of course, but the daily threat of attacks must be plaguing their nerves.
A complicated picture that needs far more nuance and context than I can give it here, the back-and-forth battle between the government and the combined forces of the al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and ethnic Tuareg separatists under the umbrella of the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), rages on indefinitely; once halted by the intervention of the former colonial forces of France, who were themselves more or less kicked out of the country to be replaced, by of all the worst possible choices, a ragtag of Russian mercenary forces – who have themselves failed miserably and dangerously to defend the capital and huge swathes of the country, letting the insurgents gain the upper hand. As it stands, Mali is on the precipice of an Islamic terrorist takeover if something isn’t done soon by the current governing regime.
Concentrating many minds, Diawara, who runs a charity in Mali that provides financial support to make art and music accessible to children with albinism and disabilities, must look on with horror at the developing crisis back home. But this album, in this time, is as I’ve already said, a kind of celebration or at least outward unifying collaboration between Mali and the contemporary productions of Europe.
Already working with a host of such projects, including the Gorillaz, the singer, songwriter, guitarist (influential and acclaimed enough on this instrument to have made history this year as the first black woman to sign a signature guitar deal with Gibson Epiphone) now reconnects with -M-‘s Malian-French Lamomali collective; the lineup of which often features the acclaimed kora maestro Toumani Diabate and his grandson, the singer, kora scion and producer Sidiki Diabate. But as a solo fronted venture, Diawara keeps the roots of home very close whilst expanding her sights on futurizing that sound with synthesizer effects, and a quite subtle but effective use of modern production. And so, whilst imbued by the desert blues, the stripped rock n roll and the more traditional vocals of Mali, you can expect to hear her storytelling prowess and messages of resilience, the “orphan’s song”, faith and motherhood blended with spells of Afropop, Chic-like funk, modern R&B, pop and electronica.
Alongside the synthesizer pads, the metallic effected parts of piano, the flat drumbeats and Euro-club feels, you can hear Diawara’s electrified and acoustic guitar trills, solos, and nomadic desert bluesy landscape projections and a voice that is commanding and yearned as it is filled with reassurance and sympathy for the subjects she’s articulating or agitating.
As an experiment in spreading Malian music to an ever-greater international audience I’d suggest Fatoumata Diawara, with help from her production foil -M-, has achieved those aims with aplomb, depth and with an ease of the rhythmic and funky.
Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band ‘The New Atomic’
(Trash City Records) 26th June 2026
Transmogrified through a maximalist and hysterical, but also attentive and swooning use of untold influences and accumulated aspirations, Fergus Quill goes fully “atomic” on a revived Big Band sound.
Long since grown unfashionable and no longer economically viable for the most part, Quill throws everything but the kitchen sink at it; scattering an eclectic record collection, years of experiment and a healthy absorption of inspirations into a thoroughly excitable, dramatic and unifying set of performances and transformed cover version homages.
Already a renowned instigator, musician and bandleader on the British jazz scene (although you’re as likely to think you’ve been dropped in the Chicago, New York, old MGM backlot scene of L.A. in the golden age of cinema and New Orleans hothouses of the past as you are the in a more contemporary London), notable for his contributions alongside Theo Goss and Nico Widdowson in a critically applauded trio since 2020, and for co-founding the Independent Record label and his involvement with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, Quill draws in a number of friends and past collaborators for his Imaginary Big Band’s third outing. There’s a writing credit for Widdowson on the Lalo Schifrin horn blazing and whacker Mainstream funk label Cotton Club vine swinging street beat ‘Do The Right Thing’ and an arranging credit on the more intimidate, dreamy and magical WWII era radio music hall sentimental recall ‘Same Sky’. The former could be a manic reconstruct of Spike Lee’s home turf brought into the hands of Jimi Tenor, whilst the latter, features the swooning and contralto-like wartime heartache of co-writer and vocalist Amy Clark (Quill is co-signer so to speak on that same flashback to a bygone era; a mix of Radio Hall Sarah Vaughan and Vera Lynn!).
Just the opening nine-minute blast of interstellar atomic age throwbacks, ‘Jay Sufin On Saturn’, runs through an entire album’s worth (for anyone else) of ideas and references; from Saturn’s cultural ambassador to Earth Sun Ra to The Big Easy, the soundtracked beat of Eastwood’s Callahan in San Fran, Duke Ellington, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Gershwin, Gil Evans, James Chance, Skies Of Americas Ornette Coleman, Cab Calloway and Glenn Branca. Fast forward to the creature-feature drama of ‘iBesszilla’, and the action is a fun and silly madness of Max Steiner, horror picture shows of the 1950s and the more experimental dried reed and strangulated horns of Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton, and a sudden acceleration of hardcore.
A bit of a surprise, but there’s a stalking Muscle Shoals via swamp soul version of Bob Dylan’s minor key bitter love pill ‘Love Sick’. Here, and with a renewed if plaintive vocal treatment, Time Out Of Mind Dylan is given a delta bluesy jazzy feel that seems entirely plausible. The curtain call protestation, ‘I Shall Not Be Removed’ is returned back to its American Spiritual roots, its gospel home ground so to speak, with a harmonious and beautified Orleans influence and snuggled Big Band finish.
Breathing new life into the Big Band sound whilst referencing its past glories and the very reasons its both bombastic and more romanticised sounds were so special and revered, Quill and his imaginary troupe playfully and in actionist dynamism, realign the olds with a refreshing blast of no wave, the avant-garde, Afro-futurism, and a mania of contemporary flashpoints. There’s much to unpick and enjoy in equal measure.
Andy Haas ‘Messianic Time’
(Resonant Music) Released 14th May 2026
On a creatively prolific role of late, with a trio of headed albums plus a recent dispatch from the Van Pool (check out my review from April) unit, Andy Haas isn’t just pushing envelopes but refolding them into shapes and sonic sounds unbeknown to the saxophone outside the arenas of freeform jazz, the avant-garde and musique concrete.
I’ve previously outlined Andy’s CV, his background, and untold cross-generational collaborations both in the New York scene and over the border in Canada. Too many to list, the orbit that has been pulled towards the explorative musician is exceptional; everyone who’s worth mentioning on the underground during the course of the last forty plus years anyway.
Flanked once more by a revolving lineup of such gifted players, Andy’s latest project includes the gangly post-punk, hardcore and no wave jazz growls, revved-up and snarled bass pulsations and prowls of Brenna Rey, and the tumultuous freefalling and rolling thunderous drums of James Paul Nadien – think Art Blakey meets Fuzai and Last Exit.
Our saxophonist of note is back at the centre of this both bestial, wild and Antony Braxton-style piped and squeezed experiment; once more setting the controls of his effects apparatus in real time and afterwards to suck out the tune or to give his horn a vibrating mania of high pitch tones, squeals, metallic resonance, something that can only be described as snorkelling, and an edge. That sax sounding at any one time like an old-fashioned kettle whistling and pleading to be taken off the stove, the oboe and the mizmar.
Theme wise, it seems the trio are either manifesting or invoking the arrival of a new messiah or taking part in a primal scream therapeutic session to overcome the end times. With violent near hardcore thrashed blasts at war itself and Blurt and The Flying Luttenbachers no wave blasts at sacred cow gods, the Abrahamic triangle of religious apocalyptic texts, there’s a funnelling of oppressions waiting to explode. You can hear what sounds almost like the steam being released, the pressure valves being opened on that old golden calf as Moses descends from the heights carrying God’s ten commandments, or the impending doom of the next missile as it lands and tears up another Guernica.
At this point I have to point out that Messianic Time has a slight novelty factor track list wise, with the Bandcamp version containing two tracks not on the CD version, whilst the physical version contains four tracks not available on Bandcamp. Just for transparency, I jumped the gun and listened to the Bandcamp version whilst waiting on the CD. But the general improvised growl and darkened jazz mood is the same I believe across both.
It’s not all action, but the forces of Rosco Mitchell, Laddio Bolocko, Pere Ubu, Dewey Redman (circa Tarik), Brom, Peter Kowald, and Scrala O’ Horror all collide to evoke a maelstrom of Biblical chaos and hope. Another incredible performance of effects manipulated free-dark-hardcore-jazz and oft-groove from the sax maverick and his foils.
Puce Moment ‘O.R.G.II’
(Odd Doo) 12th June 2026
A continuation of Nicolas Devos and Pénélope Michel’s Puce Moment’s collaborative spirit of exploration; an exercise in transformative pipe organ music, imbued by and then lifted from the venerated stage of St. Jospeh Church in Armentières (located on the Belgian border, Northwest of Lille) and set to the performance of Christian Rizzo’s à l’ombre d’un vaste détail, hors tempête at the Biennale de Lyon in 2025.
First Introduced to a 1942 mechanical instrument version of the organ in February of 2019, the conceptual duo has built upon those early experiments, working with the likes of the artistic director, curator, choreographer and visual artist polymath Rizzo, but also with such international company as the Gagaku Music Society and the São Paulo born choreographer and dancer Vania Vanneau. This has led to a merger of their Kosmische Zodiak Club-esque soundscapes with dance, visual movement and performance art over the years, and most recently, this droned and piped contextualized special performance.
With titles that reference a multitude of mythological and religious etymological derived forms of wind and air (from the widely-used Ottomon Turkish derived sea breeze of “Imbat” to the Hebrew “wind”, “breath” of the Holy Spirit “Ruach”, and the violent “Tehuano” wind that blows through the gap of the Chivela Pass in Mexico), the source and inspiration is referenced in every breath and bellow that’s played through that auspicious organ; augmented by the duo’s electronic apparatus, and featuring a specially constructed mechanical hand, used to play along on one octave and controlled by a sequencer.
More akin to the kosmische expansions of early Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream and their ilk, and to the pastoral ambience of Jeff Bird than the holy and reverential, the pumped, filtered and droned atmospheres seem to reach out past the stained-glass and into the abstract and as yet undiscovered. Melodic rays and patterns seem to emerge from the enveloped and a foundational bed of undulated pipe music. At times almost glassy, and at others, throbbed and anointed by repeating touches of light, the sounds stretch out and expand into the air itself. Hymnal qualities are balanced by both the playful and by the elemental manifestations of the titles: such as the scorched, arid and sun blared aspects of the opening Church service come Kosmische-inspired ‘Simoon’; a reference to the strong, hot, dry and dust-laden desert “poison wind”.
Organ music is once more transformed and yet despite the various concepts and effects, doesn’t lose its sustained, rising and building qualities and evocations.
The Taps Of The Holy Trinity ‘Customs & Rituals’
(Fenny Compton) 20th June 2026
Invoking the ancestors through various “customs and rituals”, the Australian troupe with strong Hellenic and Mediterranean roots cast suitably evocative spells and conjure up various visions of both the atavistic and esoteric as the newly formed The Taps Of The Holy Trinity cult.
From Dionysus to the Byzantine, and via the Ottoman Empire’s colonisation and conquest of Greece and its neighbours, an atmosphere of acid-psych-folk and atavistic past lives that brush up against passages of Aussie Gothic, the dirt music of Hugo Race and Chris Eckman, and a strange mirage of Outback and North African desert blues melts perfectly with a hauntology of diaspora and displacement. Whilst Australia seems to have been a real pull for tens of thousands of Greek citizens, their journey starts back in less auspicious times, fighting for national identity against the Ottomans during the 19th and 20th centuries – a history that is way too complex and layered to go into here. The first Balkan War (in short, and again, without the entire history and context, this period references the war between 1911 – 1912, when Bulgaria alongside Greece, Serbia and Montenegro fought against the Ottoman Empire, just before its historic loss, its demise and rebirth as Turkey after World War I) led to such displacement and a refugee crisis. There’s a reference on the album to the walking on fire ritual of ‘Anastenaria’, which, depending on the sources you research, seems to have originated either from Ancient Greece or from those refugees (many of which were Bulgarian) forced out of what was then known as Eastern Thrace (a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe that roughly corresponds with what we know as Thrace) following the first Balkan War of its name. Dancing in an ecstatic ceremony across burning coals, this show of faith proves fertile inspiration for the crackled and exhaled mysticism of the group and their trippy manifestation of a mystified land full of apparitions.
Lining up to field this project is the Aussie with Med ties pairing of Arthur Karanikas (of BBQ Haque note we’re told) and Michael Plater (working both solo and as The Right Hand Is Doomed To Blacken, and the H.P. Lovecraft or M. R. James-esque The Northern Lighthouse Board). They are joined on a suitably eclectic variety of traditional and indigenous instruments by Dee Hannan (a member of the congruously evoked George Xylouris Ensemble), Dave Bullock (of both the incredibly entitled Paul Kidney Experience, and Kiss My Poodle’s Donkey), and Danny Martinov (of The Exit Keys). That foundation is rounded off with the European showing of Italian violinist Massimiliano Gallo and the UK experimentalist Paul Rodgers. Widening the scope further, this culmination of talent lays down the popular Demotika folk style of Greece with the folk styles of Anatolia and its surrounding lands with an exotic Byzantine incense of magic, courtly rituals, the hungering and hallucination.
Golden metallic-encased gong-like shimmers and the rustle and jangle of trinkets build up an atmospheric picture, as ghostly wails and Boyd Rice and Current 93-like male vocals play on the esoteric – you can throw in Nature & Organisation and Sol Invictus if you desire. At times it’s like Brian Jones unshackled from the Stones, cross-legged in a Sublime Porte opium bizarre with the Velvets and Aphrodite’s Child. But then you get, like on the whistly piped and reverberated bluesy ‘Burial Crowns’, a whiff of Alejandro Jodorowksy and Popol Vuh.
A sonic version of the bubble rising inside a lava lamp, the The Taps Of The Holy Trinity’s debut album is an intriguing debut from a Hellenic vision of the Incredible String Band brought up on the dirt music of the 80s Aussie scene; a meeting with the ancestors and stories of a magically imbued and yet also lamentable land trapped on an astral plane of psychedelic mischief and panoramic cosmic gazing.
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need more than other:
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 able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
The End of the Month Playlist Revue for May 2026
May 29, 2026
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music from the last month. Picked by Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver & Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
The Track list is as follows:
Sub Hop Collective ‘Hundred and One’
Konono No1 ‘Volta’
Sunk Giants ‘Radio Problems’
Party Dozen ‘Special Unit’
Occult Character ‘Anti-Human Hate Machine’
Spirit Level ‘Forest Lagoon’
Khalab & Baba Sissoko ‘Denifurla’
Dumama ‘No Abiding City’
Cocanha ‘Forabanda’
Stik Figa & Heather Grey ‘All Is Fair’
The Allergies ‘Dig It Up’
7X3=21 & Pruven Ft. Masai Bey & Fred Ones ‘Woven Fabric’
Black Milk ‘Crash Test Dummy’
Meiko Kaji ‘Tokyo Nagare Mono’
Farma G & Relense ‘The Circus’
Juga-Naut ‘Scratch The Surface’
Whait/More Eaze/Wendy Eisenberg ‘Suffer Less’
Yazz Ahmed ‘A Moment To Be Free’
J Scienide ‘Stay Tuned’
Von Pea ‘The Goof’
Termanology/Royal Flush/Dru Hoffa ‘Angel Whispers’
Vic Spencer/BlaQ Chidori/J Wade/Aakeem Eshu/Lil Kydd ‘The Becomers’
A-F-R-O ‘The Hangman’
The Bordellos ‘Hop To It Bunny Girl’
Thomas Dollbaum ‘Pulverize’
Kyivite ‘test cylinder’
Neuro…No Neuro ‘Doubting’
Arab Strap ‘You You You’
Opus Kink ‘The Sweet Goodbye’
Double Francoise ‘Allumer’
The Legendary Ten Seconds ‘A Universe That Has No End’
Upupayama ‘Mystic Chords of Memory’
Lunar Bird ‘Sinderesi’
SUO ‘Lightening Strikes’
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BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA’S REVIEWS ROUNDUP – INSTANT REACTIONS.
Arab Strap Photo: Luke Bovill
Arab Strap ‘You You You’
Single (Rock Action Records)
If I was young and one of these influencer types you see popping up on YouTube and such, being all jolly and hip and now and current and suchlike, I would describe this as a bit of a banger and not mean old car or sausage but a bit of a toe tapper, one to cut some rug to; a record in the bygone age of when Morrissey had something to say; a record that would have dented the bottom half of the Hit Parade as indie crossover singles tended to do. Ahh…those were the days, of Gallup chart machines and record shops. And this song would have been good enough to visit your local record store and part with your penis. I meant to write pennies but I will stick with penis as it could even be good enough to part with your penis, unless you don’t have one which would mean having to borrow someone else’s to part with, and if you did, what compartment in the till would you put it? The notes or change compartment? The mind boggles.
Double Francois ‘La Poursuite’
EP (Freaksville) 15th May 2026
La Poursuite is a rather lovely thing indeed. 5 tracks of pure French pop from the synth pop of Allumeur to the lovely acoustic summery jazz Trop Ou Paz Assez and the blissfully sweet romance of the love duet Un apres- midi a Paris which features the wonderful Benjamin Schoos. Yes, five wonderful tracks that will soundtrack the oncoming summer; songs to lick ice cream and drink wine whilst trying to look cool in ill-fitting flannel trousers.
Filalete ‘Frequencies Of The Soul’
Album (Cruel Nature Records) 16th June 2026
I will be completely honest, me writing about modern classical is like asking the incredible Hulk to successfully reenact the final meeting scene in Brief Encounter: it is not going to end well.
Modern classical is a musical genre I have only occasional dipped into, mostly when I have been sent some new music to review. But I am a human being for god sake! And have emotions and fallibilities like most others, so can appreciate beauty and soul and feeling. And those three things are in abundance with this rather lovely album and has me thinking there are far worse ways of me spending my Sunday afternoon than being totally moved by the outpourings of instrumental piano emotional grandeur.
The Legendary Ten Seconds ‘Sci Fi Hi Fi’
Album Released 7th May 2026
Well, what’s not to like about an Sci Fi themed album with songs concerning planets and space and aliens and ray guns. It’s all twanging guitars ala The Ventures and suchlike and whooshing sci fi synths and Monochrome Set like vocals. Sci Fi Hi Fi has a wonderful eccentricity and includes many rewrites of Incense and peppermints, which believe me can only be a great thing.
Occult Character ‘The Zodameta Working’
EP (Subvert)
This is rather wonderful, the new EP by Occult Character is a splendid three track EP of pure bonkers experimental pop/dance part Eurovision, part Welsh Male voice choir, part satanic black mass. The Occult Character never fails to astound and surprise with this quite hypnotic three track gem.
Opus Kink ft The New Eves ‘The Head Tree’
Single
I quite enjoy the madness of this track. Imagine if you will Sam and The Womp getting together with Nick Cave to perform a track about hanging a witch, the kind of thing one really does not hear much about these days on the radio: That’s if you still listen to the radio, nowadays it’s all curated playlists and suchlike. I know that makes me sound like I am old enough to remember the days when they used to burn and hang witches but maybe it’s because I am.
Schizo Fun Addict ‘Desolate Ecstasy’
Album (Fruits de Mer) 10th June 2026
The world needs a new album by Schizo Fun Addict, it honestly does. The tragic thing about this is that the world does not realise it yet as they are criminally undervalued. The perfect pop band, just like The Beatles and The Beach Boys (in the 60s and 70s) and the Velvet Underground are perfect like Orange Juice (another criminally undervalued band), The Smiths and first few albums by the B52s where perfect.
SFA have a wonderful sense of adventure and inner spirituality that all the finer artists and, indeed, people do. In fact, there really should be a Schizo Fun Addict cartoon (Hanna-Barber get on it please). The world is a mess, more of a mess than I have known in my near 60 years on this planet, so we need Schizo not just to soundtrack these times but also give us an escape route from life for the 35 minutes that this gem of an album plays. The radio and mags and blogs in an ideal world should be all over this album.
Desolate Ecstasy is a pop fantasy. It is the lighted up pave stones of Billie Jean. It is the mop top headshake. It is the aural image of Otis Redding falling to his knees and begging for a little tenderness. The band bring all the magic and danger and sexiness of the last 60 years or so of Rock ‘n’ Roll because they still believe in the magic.
The album kicks off with the single “Pasteline Dream”, a guitar jangling pop beauty that brings the sound of the early Stone Roses being fronted by the girls from The B52s. Jayne Gabriel and Ilona Virostek voices blend perfectly: they have that perfect blend of heavenly sass that all the best 60s girl groups have and again on “The Scent Of Heather” the sound of the BJM being fronted by the Shangri-La’s – perfect heavenly sass psych pop.
Desolate Ecstasy is one of those albums when it really is impossible to choose your favourite track as it constantly changes depending on your mood, and because all the tracks are quite special. “Coming To You” is a rather hypnotic and beautiful mellow gaze of a dance track that once again highlights both the spirituality and sensuality of the girls’ vocals, a song that takes me back to the days of the Manchester Acid scene when the Hacienda was many a peoples place of worship: “Coming To You” is an aural E of togetherness. “The Line Is Gone” is a somewhat darker beast of a track, one that highlights the genius of guitarist and producer Rex John Shelverton; a song drenched in fury and guitar twang in equal measure, the sound of the priest in the Exorcist driving the Demons out of Linda Blair by playing her The Ventures greatest hits. “Strange Theatres”, at the time of writing my current fave from the album, is a wonderful baggy like dirty pop gem of a track with sleazy bass and groove drums of Daniel Boivin and Jet Wintzer sounding like he has been possessed by the spirit of Sean Ryder chanting “let the people all die”: a truly dark and hypnotic listening experience I tell thee. So Desolate Ecstasy is quite wonderful and could be the best Schizo Fun Addict album yet and probably already my favourite album of the year. I have just realised I have not mentioned the track “Cathedral Sunshine”, a song so perfect that JAMC could have written it when they were very special…And that is very good indeed.
The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated short new music reviews, the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating playlist, and a piece celebrating the 60th anniversary of Pet Sounds from the Archives.
___/NEW MUSIC IN REVIEW____
The Bordellos ‘Let’s Play Lo-Fi’
(Metal Postcard Records) Released 8th May 2026
Marking our own homework so to speak, regular contributor to the site Brian Shea and his family band The Bordellos have released a new album on the unsuspecting public. Well, I say new, but it is in fact another chance to hear a compilation of older tunes recorded over 26 years, mostly over the course of a drunken Friday night at Ant Shea’s abode.
Almost silently slipped out, unheralded and with absolutely jack-shit in the way of promotion, it’s as if it never happened. A campaign run out of embarrassment, or perhaps in the manner of their lo-fi(ish) credentials, dropped out of the ether without a thought. This compilation sounds like it could have in fact been recorded at any time over the last forty odd years. Pop songs saved from obscurity however, we are grateful for this opportunity to rave about the lost band.
A band that revels in self-sabotage, The Bordellos walk a line between notoriety and truth. But they need to unshackle from the lo fi prison they’ve built for themselves, as many of the aphorisms and self-deprecated songs on this new album are far too good to lay languishing in irrelevance and indifference. They are better than many of the bands they emulate, and a damn sight more witty, true and sharp than the overrated Jesus And Mary Chain, who they sometimes evoke – the buzzy and flange indie tune ‘Sleeptight’ sounds like a much more genuine and earnest version of the Scottish band’s Psychocandy era. Dan Shea’s vocals are a highlight as always, but that’s not to do down Ant and Brian Shea. With the bonus of youth, but just as malcontent, Dan isn’t quite as despondent and dispassionate as his dad and uncle, and recalls the very best of Sarah Records, Postcard, and umpteen great indie labels from the golden period of the C86 phenomenon. In contrast, his older generation X relations sound like John Shuttleworth (“Can I borrow Batman Forever? No, you got to bring it back tomorrow”)of John Cooper Clarke over a backing that despite the buzzes, the low rent apparatus, the chirping at one point of a budgie, and the distortion, could be off a New Order demo or The Sundays. Then again, you can’t not pick up on The Fall vibes; the love of beat groups and the garage music of the 1960s; all filtered through the hazy recollections of a Northern town in England during the 80s and 90s.
Appearing on bass, for at least some of the songs, is good old Gary Storey, who emphasis the band’s pop and post-punk credentials with a twang of Hooky and some C86 inspired lines.
An album filled with declaration to that age old trope of unrequited love, or lost love, or a love that cannot survive the class divides of a grimy life spent at the coalface of modern Britain – which is as Blur correctly pointed out, if in an actual halcyon age compared to now, on their famous LP of the early 90s. In the vape shop, nail salons and chicken takeaways dominate arcades and precents of shitty England, the band find something worth putting to song, as they praise, desire and court a string of both unsuitable and suitably uninterested muses. That and the odd drug addict; those that have fallen to the wayside in an age of despair and high anxiety. ‘Driftwood’ is an ode to the high jinks’ tragedy of Dennis Wilson, spooked by a Manson and heavy bass.
The lyrics make the album as usual. Far too many to quote, they could fill a book of modern toss age poetry with observational dark humour, despondent asides and gripes. But love is never far from the sneering captured lines that perfectly sum up the age in which we are unlucky to be living through. Heartfelt, lovelorn and yearning, you get a sense that the band really means it. And that’s where that truth comes to the forefront.
As I said already, this songbook is way too good to be lost on bandcamp amongst the millions of releases dolled out each day. Or indeed on Spotify, where it will be lucky to reach the proscribed limit to receive any compensation of a thousand plays. If this was released over forty years ago, we’d be speaking about The Bordellos in the same breath as the BMX Bandits and their ilk. As it is, this cult release will probably need every push it can get. Then again, the playfulness of the title, the silly snowman dress up costume that Brian adorns on the cover point towards a confliction of amateurish fucking around and finding the audience and acclaim they deserve: that’s showbiz. I’ve done my bit, the rest is up to you, kind followers/readers.
In The Labyrinth ‘Worlds On Fire’
Released 2nd May 2026
Across Nepalese mountain ranges at the heights of nirvana, then seamlessly blending into the Afghan valleys before taking the troubadour’s journey to Turkey and ending up in a fantastical vision of olde Europe, In The Labyrinth’s latest album collection of past material saved from the vaults and remade anew, of original new compositions and transformed covers takes its Nordic roots on a geographical music tour. From Arabia to Peshawar and Iran; from Tudor England to India, there’s musical absorptions that all fans of prog and psych-rock will be familiar with and various signature stopovers on the hippie trail: a Kabul of a very different era, the holy sanctuaries of Varanasi.
Orbiting around the Swedish version of Mike Oldfield – playing an exhaustive and too long to list assortment of instruments -, Peter Lindahl since the early 90s, but born out of the previous Aladdin’s Lantern in the 1980s, In The Labyrinth opens its doors to a wide range of foils and accomplices. So many people are involved, including former band members and acquaintances, over this album’s span of at least forty years of material refashioned or revived and newly augmented. There’s too many to name individually anyway, with various international musicians and voices – including the ethereal, soothing, near spirit-like backing vocals and harmonies of Helena Selander and Natalie Knutsen. One such mirror-y Krishna-vibe atmospheric soundtrack of replenished waters and Yeti era Amon Düül II-esque, ‘Varanasi Sunrise’, is recalled back from the late 90s, just before band member and drummer Feri (Fereidoun Nadimi) returned back to his native Iran.
Pulled through Lewis Carroll’s mirror both forwards and backwards, there’s a spectrum of psychedelic influences at play on this fantasy of tumultuous ills and more dream-like and healthy meditations.
The album opens with a revival of the Catholic litany, as made so cultishly famous by Axelrod’s Electric Prunes project on the Mass In F Minor LP of ’67. Here it’s given an almost pastoral feel that’s somewhere between a Medieval Yes, Clannad and The Far East Family Band sunning it in the Byzantine Court. ‘Kabul’ is very much of its inspiration but reminded me of that electric-saz vamped up Turkish-Anatolian configuration of Baba Zula, whilst the psychedelic posed ‘Disillusion’ – partly a new arrangement of a song from the turn of the 21st century about losing one’s self-esteem during a relationship gone sour – has a touch of Head era Monkees, Van Der Graaf Generator and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. One of the album’s covers/interpretations, ‘Golden Hair’ reimagines the Madcap Laughs Syd Barret in Rapunzel’s Indian acid-fairy tale tower, and the brassy sitar resonated ‘Sagarmatha’ – initially released back in ’99, the song was first featured on the Floralia Volume 3 compilation by Wot 4 Records – once more talks to Yogi on the ADII and Aphrodite’s Child, projecting in a trance-like state to mystical India.
Just when you think you may have the measure of this group, along comes the strange bass heavy and phaser, flange and vapour trip ‘The Endless City’; a mix of Steve Hillage, post-punk, and Hawkwind, this track is, I believe, an amalgamation of the 90s tracks ‘The Black Plague’ and ‘Lovecraft’ originally made under the Lovecraft moniker. The sword and sorcery of ‘Nightriders’ reminded me in part of Jefferson Airplane, whilst the hallucinogenic Alice In Wonderland-ish ‘The Mirror’ somehow reminded me of Bryan Ferry, but partnering up with Steve Hackett and Floyd. There’s also takes on the Swedish prog and rock scene of the 70s with versions of tracks based on or inspired by Gregg Fitzpatrick (the American bred musician slipped the Vietnam War ending up in India, before navigating back west to first Finland than his eventual home of Sweden, where he performed under various Nordic pseudonyms to escape detection, but managed to form many bands and have an eventful career) and Kebnekajse. The former, and the album’s title piece, takes the maverick American’s plaint and Medieval-like folkish lament and adds a mystifying layer of the Indian subcontinent, the Celtic and the environments of a bustling street. The later reprises a traditional Swedish folk song made famous by the “foremost” Swedish folk-rock band, amping up the fuzz and Queen-ish rock postures.
Each song has a story you could say. Each one a chapter in a particular period of the band and its offshoot’s career arcs. But all fit together rather well on this fantastical new age acid trip of evergreen troubadour folkery, prog, the regal, the enchanted and worldly musical.
Kyïvite ‘Broadcast’
(Staalplaat) Released 24th April 2026
As Putin’s increasingly unhinged invasion of Ukraine continues, now stretching into yet another year – a war period so long now that volumes and untold books about it have been published, but been found wanton or made redundant by the escalations and constant changing landscape of events both in Europe and outside it –, the survival of the country’s culture, its music, hasn’t just been left to those fighting on the extensive frontlines but its army of archivists, its radio stations still broadcasting under the frightening threat of drone and missile attacks and its many independent labels.
Despite it all, Putin’s previous cold steely determination and tyrannical unapologetic resolution has taken a battering. His war is all but check-mated, stalled and in fact losing ground. As untold thousands return to home from the front, with limbs missing, psychologically damaged, Russia’s people have seen the Vietnam effect– that and the hundreds of thousands of coffins – and realised the implications and realities of this unjust invasion. And as yet another peace deal, or at least break in the ongoing destruction is tabled, it will take some convincing in making the Ukraine give up any land or concessions, just as the tide has turned and they look to have made significant ground up and penetrated and set fear into the minds of Russia’s ruling regime.
One such conservationist of the country’s musical legacy is the Kyïvite, a Kyïv-based ambient-radio experimental music project that merges electronics with Ukrainian folk, archival recordings and minimalist sound design. Embodying erasure, the loss and way in which we remember fragments and scrapes of the past, the people behind this latest release recall and reprise filtered and deliberately made gauzier and obscured archival material from the country’s renowned Transcarpathian Folk Choir.
Led for a time between the years of 1954 and 1969 by the Kyïv Conservatory hot-housed conductor, composer and vocalist Mykkhailo Krechko, the professional artistic collective and recognized folk choir was founded in the Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod in 1945. Sitting by the Uzh River in Western Ukraine, the city is close to the country’s border with both Hungary and Slovakia; famous for its Medieval castle, its holy places and diverse cross-border mix of cuisines. Enduring the Soviet years, a range of the choir’s beatified and ethereal performances have had new life breathed back into them at a time when the country, suffering unimaginably, is working to save its independency, its spiritual nationalist identity and its very survival against an Empire bent on domination if not erasure of Ukraine and its history. Broadcast, then, isn’t just a creative, artistic exercise but an act of preservation.
Connecting old recordings with a contemporary interference of minimalist techno, broken beats, various sound effects of reverberation and the spectre of war, Kyïvite work a Fortean-like radio set to invoke ghostly visions. A hauntology of a kind, but one that churns, recycles and loops some truly beautifully sung and impressively voiced evocations of remembrance, loss, historical record and pastoral romantism. Holding on to that culture, each track merges its timelines whilst being submerged under a constant soundtrack of wax cylinder-like crackles, record scratches, static, retuning and a signalled calculus of buzzes and oscillations. Some titles prompt more elegiac and serious matters, whilst others reference traditional dances (track eight, ‘dudochka (pipe) dance’, is, I believe, a fast-paced Ukrainian folk dance performed in pairs, lines or solo; moving with lightness and flow) and draw on the country’s diverse historical peoples (a reference to the famed Cossacks of Ukraine; one strand of which can be rooted back to the famous western Zaporizhia Cossacks who were centred near the Dnieper River).
As with the terrain and focus there’s many an elegiac example to be found on this album: ‘ballad of a soldier’, ‘ballad of a widow’, ‘ballad of a Cossack’s death’. But all are as supernatural as they are evocative and near esoteric. Elsewhere there’s spells of what can only be described as dub, and other times, when the choirs are less obfuscated, some passages of the stately, the gospel and filmic.
The machine against the naturalistic vocals of a different time adds up to an experimental broadcast steeped in historical documentation, lament and the beautiful. Time is drawn back and forth in an alternative dimension, as Soviet era Ukraine, very much under the cosh and finding its former independence and sperate culture erased for that of tyrannical Communist ideals, connects with a country once more threatened with the very same erasure. At the time of writing this however, the tide has turned in Ukraine’s favour. Putin looks far less stable, and cracks are emerging. Let’s hope this conflict does end soon in Ukraine’s favour, and that we really don’t have to foresee the eradication of its culture and rich musical heritage.
Neuro…No Neuro ‘Memloss’
(Audiobulb) Released 2nd May 2026
Having had to face a debilitation of my cognitive capabilities, of memory erasure and problems with speech since being hit out of nowhere by a stroke this year (still waiting, still being tested to find out exactly why) I can sympathise and relate to the ongoing work of the Tucson, Arizona synthesist and electronic artist Kirk Markarian. Coming to terms with, or rather as a result of increasingly noticing that his own speech and memory has become inconsistent, Markarian (under his micro-inspired cerebral Neuro…No Neuro alias) finds that everything from articulating his emotions, thoughts and instructions to remembering steps in his various daily tasks are disappearing into the ether and fog. Those aren’t the words he’s using, but I get the sense that, and especially as demonstrated by the small sounds on this latest album, his grip on holding on to such memories is slowly being tested, and that his grasp on the routine tasks is being eroded.
To compensate, or to prompt and kick-start the neurological charges, Markarian has linked together the various detritus and fragments of life through producing a soundtrack of softened bulb-shaped notes, musical microbes and atoms, ambient waves and spheres and the tubular. If it was a colour (as demonstrated by the artwork) it would be a washed-out rose red or an enervated pink.
Using titles as prompts and reference points, a new language is created that hopes to remind or jog a memory in decline. Sometimes almost like illusions or mirages, and at other times like more saddened passages of loss, each track plays with the building blocks a little differently; from searching spheres of pretty notation bouncing or bobbling over vapours, to the glassy, the sticky, the licked and pinged. Sometimes there’s points in which it feels the artist has remembered something only for it to then fade away; a smack of this, a gamelan like pattern suddenly of metallic percussion, and a spacy fur of remembrance.
Tiny steps on the road to recovery of memories and the cognitive, Markarian’s latest work of erasure and recollective gravitas is suddenly more serious; a blueprint to sonically cataloguing and hanging on to what’s been lost.
___/THE SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOLUME 106
The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share; tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years; and both selected cuts from those artists, luminaries we’ve lost and those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
The series has been running for over a decade or more now. Volume 106 is the latest eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show from me – the perfect radio show in fact, devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
Manic Street Preachers ‘Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier’ – Taken from Everything Must Go album, released this month 30 years ago.
Super Fury Animals ‘Frisbee’ – Taken from the Fuzzy Logic album, released this month 30 years ago.
NOV3L ‘To Whom It May Concern’ – angular no wave funk dance from the Canadian collective.
High Pass Filter ‘Eat System’ – Melbourne electro-dub group, from the mid 90s to the early 2000s; once supported the likes of Tortoise, Fugazi and the Beasties.
Hamburger All-Stars‘One Million Hamburgers’ – Post-punk dub and funk no wave band from the West London squat scene of the early 80s. A shifting lineup as such that featured at any one-time members of Alternative TV, Blue Midnight, The Impossible Dreamers and The Pretenders.
Sleeper ‘Dress Like Your Mother’ – Taken from The It Girl album, released this month 30 years ago.
Dwi ‘Reanimate’ – just love this from the alter ego of Dwight Abell, the Vancouver-based multi-instrumentalist and bassist with The Zolas A newish track.
Nine Days Wonder ‘Hovercraft Queen’ – Sax-honked and squeezed, cow bell rock from the German group.
The Beach Boys ‘You Still Believe In Me (Mono)’ – Taken from the Pet Sounds 60th Deluxe anniversary edition; see also my piece on Pet Sounds in the Archives spot.
Beverly Martin ‘Get To The One I Want To’ – paying homage this month to the late folk icon (left somewhat in the shade by her famous husband), who died earlier this month.
The RDF ‘He Is Coming’ – An abbreviation of the band members, “Russ, Fred, and Dan”, a bluegrass down country Christian outfit.
The Difference Machine ‘Orange Lazarus’ – Futuristic Cosmic dystopian hip-hop from the counterculture Atlanta collective and friends.
Run-D.M.C. ‘Proud To Be Black’ – Taken from the Raising Hell album, released forty years ago this month.
Geeker-Natsumi ‘Advertiser’ – New tune from the Japanese maverick of odd pop and bitcrush game machine electronica shunts.
The Beach Boys ‘I Know There’s An Answer (Stack-O-Vocals)’ – Taken from the Pet Sounds 60th Deluxe anniversary edition; see also my piece on Pet Sounds in the Archives spot.
Keith Jarrett ‘Solara March (Dedicated To Pablo Casals And The Sun)’ – Originally released this month, fifty years ago.
Delired Cameleon Family ‘Le bouef’ – prog-electronica peregrinations from the obscurest 1970s French band.
Beverly Martin ‘Reckless Jane’ – paying homage this month to the late folk icon, who passed away earlier this month.
Nick DeCaro And Orchestra ‘Caroline, No’ – a cover version tribute this month, paying tribute to one of the most complete and perfect album’s ever made: Pet Sounds.
Susan Alcorn ‘Mercedes Sosa’ – new spiritualism suite from the iconic pedal steel guitarist, bandleader, improviser and composer.
The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood ‘Early Bird Café’ – One from the American jazz guitarist of repute and notable sessions star’s 1970 country-rock ensemble.
Electric Sandwich ‘China’ – Very much on topic this month, a hand-drum electrical rock jam from the Krautrock era group.
Pip Pyle ‘Hannello’ – Prog-jazz from the journeyman drummer and Canterbury scenester.
The Beach Boys ‘I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (Stack-O-Vocals)’ – Taken from the Pet Sounds 60th Deluxe anniversary edition; see also my piece on Pet Sounds in the Archives spot.
Vincent Over The Sink ‘Number Theory’ – psychedelic mirage from the Australian duo.
The Tryp ‘I Dream In Black And White’ – British revivalist psych band.
Sonic Youth ‘Green Light’ – Taken from the Evol album, released forty years ago this month.
Scott Walker ‘Psoriatic’ – Taken From The Drift album, released 20 years ago this month.
The Butthole Surfers ‘Space’ – Taken from the Electriclarryland album, released forty years ago this year.
John Saturley and The Slumber Party ‘Midnight Deathbed’ – North Carolina outfit I believe, with scant information nor any real bio. Kind of spacy Human League meets Numan and Hercules & The Love Affair.
___/ARCHIVES______
To coincide with the 60th anniversary of Pet Sounds (possibly one of the most complete and greatest albums in the rock/pop cannons), another chance (yet again, having already reprised it after the death of Brian Wilson) to read my review and purview of the 50th anniversary celebrations and tour that stopped off in Glasgow, back in 2016.
Brian Wilson presents Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary Celebrations
Friday 27th May 2016 at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
In a soft power, musical arms race with The Beatles, Brian Wilson more or less now mastering the known limits of the studio, was nudged towards ever more ambitious levels of creativity. As the old adage, music history folklore if you like, goes it was The Beatles Rubber Soul that finally did it for Brian. The retort to this foil would not only be The Beach Boys first masterpiece, but one of pop and rock music’s most enduring triumphs, Pet Sounds. No longer happy with the California high school, deuce coupe cruising, beach party spirit that had so far made the group world famous, cast even further adrift, introspective and all but retired from playing live with the his brothers and comrades, Brian was moving on from the fancy-free and footloose sound of the 45s that had always guaranteed a top ten place in the Billboard charts for something more…well, grown up. Voicing a growing anxiety – or the growing pains – of youth, Brian would compose the sound of young adulthood. As the world came to terms with the idea of the ‘teenager’, Brian began encompassing and articulating a new uneasy transition.
As much about the times as about the heartache and pains of being pure of heart, Pet Sounds marked a growing resentment towards the previous generation. At the beginning of a revolutionary change in attitudes, but a year before the ‘free love’ hippie idealism that brought in the psychedelic epoch, these former golden tanned beachcombers were breaking from their parent’s traditions and rules to set their own course: a life mapped out, from education to career and marriage. But at the very heart of all Brian’s work, even today, was a sense of innocence. An innocence lost as the lovesick but married Brian now in his mid-twenties, was coming to terms with the anxieties of that adulthood, and his growing mental anguish. Undiagnosed for years, left at the mercy of countless well-wishers and confidence tricksters, quacks and pseudo-therapists, Brian’s meticulous obsessive production of Pet Sounds and its subsequent, but not satisfactorily finished until 40 years later, magnum opus SMiLE, tipped him over the edge.
Pet Sounds would also mark a shift in lyricism, with Brian collaborating with his friend the lyricist and copywriter Tony Asher. A task of reification, Asher would take the often abstract and difficult expressions that roamed around inside the troubled mind and put them into song. Not exactly the most unified of atmospheres, Cousin Mike Love a constant daddy-o stuck-in-the-mud character, ready to pour a cold bucket of egotistic sick over anything that he felt would compromise or trouble the calm waters of The Beach Boys, so far, winning formula. To be fair, Love would be right to question this new shift towards melancholic, almost philosophical anguish. Asher at that time was but a burgeoning talent with little to back up his credibility as a top pop songwriter. Replacing previous writers and solid contributors with an unproven lyricist would however prove to be genius decision. But the success of the album was slow. Its renaissance and rebirth as one of the greatest albums of the twentieth century was down to the audiences overseas. The change in direction had unsettled the market, as America baulked at this sadder, more cerebral tone. Yet, the UK loved it, buying it in droves and sending it to the number 2 spot in the charts – compare that with its 106 placing in the Billboard. Pet Sounds could have been a disaster, but it was saved, becoming a cult, an iconic masterpiece. And though it would take a while to pick up the desirable sales, its legacy grew and grew years after its original release.
Arriving almost in tandem The Beatles Revolver was released just a couple of months later. Brian’s answer: SMiLE. If Pet Sounds had not only threatened but also sent Brian into a funk, then this grand American musical tour through the ages, from Plymouth Rock to the shores of the Spanish Peninsula, would all but consume and nearly destroy him. So ambitious was the vision that despite the near godlike genius of his assiduous sessions ensemble The Wrecking Crew, the social, political and historically woven rich tapestry lyrics of new songwriting partner Van Dyke Parks, and his own production prowess, the project stalled. Numerous mixes, snippets, vignettes and even completed songs made it onto various albums and compilations over the decades, including the enervated and rushed out – to appease and bring in some much-needed revenue – Smiley Smile. It would take decades for SMiLE to be eventually completed, albeit (sadly and for obvious reasons) without his brothers Dennis and Carl’s near ethereal soulful compassionate voices, and missing any input from Mike Love – now more or less carving the Beach Boys brand up, sporting it like a trophy as he has carte blanche and ownership of the name when touring with his own cabaret version of the group’s back catalogue. Brian did however manage, after spending the longest amount of time and money in recording history on a single, to release the perfectly epic pop rhapsody ‘Good Vibrations’.
Documented, quite favourably and sympathetically, by the Love & Mercy movie, Brian’s wilderness years lasted throughout the 80s and into the 90s, before the most accomplished of L.A. bands and Beach Boy fans The Wondermints helped lure Brian back on the road, performing a Pet Sounds extravaganza in 2000. Just four years later the band would join Brian in the studio to finish that nigh mystical, greatest album there never was, SMiLE, before taking it out on the road. Following in 2011 the eventual hidden away, locked in some fabled vaults, SMiLE Sessions of original material was finally released to the public.
A near renaissance, a scarred and troubled but blooming Brian Wilson is back once again on the road. This time he celebrates the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds, arriving in my new hometown of Glasgow on a nationwide tour. Billed as an ‘anniversary celebration’ – the final performance of the iconic album in its entirety – tonight’s performance is a generous one. Split into two performances of greatest hits and Pet Sounds, with an encore of good time classics, Brian was backed by members of the Wondermints and flanked by special guests, Al Jardine and honouree Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin: a set up that has been repeated on many occasions.
As a steady presence for the vulnerable Brian, Al was on hand to soften the odd tremors of quivered uncertainty. But who was on hand to back up Al? Well as it happens his son Matt Jardine, proving himself the most apt of Beach Boy scions, was there to to aid his old man and Brian with the most adroit and sweetest of falsetto voices. A counterpoint to the now – and for good reason – limited vocal range of Brian, Matt took on the high notes with aplomb and even performed lead on one of the evenings early highlights, ‘Don’t Worry Baby’. He would play the role of a younger Brian during the entirety of the Pet Sounds album suite, almost seamlessly, taking on each alternating verse. However, and it seems almost too disingenuous to point out, there were a few wobbles and miscues throughout that just couldn’t be patched over. Yet we all willed Brian on, and when he took lead on the most diaphanous of love declarations, ‘God Only Knows’, the entire audience stood to their feet in adulated applause – the first of many rapturous ovations that night.
Directed and conducted by Paul ‘Von’ Mertens the entire ensemble began the evening with the heavenly choral warm-up ‘Our Prayer’; featured on 20/20 but originally the lead-in to the album version of SMiLE’s grand trans-American tour ‘Heroes And Villains’, which followed. We were then treated to a litany of favourites from the bobby sox high school daze back catalogue of hits, including a swinging, swayed medley of ‘California Girls’, ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Little Deuce Coupe’. Handing over the spotlight, Al performed centre stage with renditions of ‘Wake The World’, ‘Add Some Music To Your Day’ and ‘Cotton Fields’ – all songs plucked from the Brian breakdown period, when the rest of the Band were prompted to take over the creative reins. As lithe and energetic as ever, former Flame and Beach Boy band member (on tour and in the studio during the early 70s) Blondie Chaplin sprouted onto the stage to add some light-hearted theatrics and rock’n’roll vigour. The much-accomplished Durban guitar maestro, looking more and more like a cross between Jagger and Richards (all that time he spent touring with the Stones in the late 90s has worn off on him), launched into a strutting version of ‘Wild Honey’. Expanded from its soulful howled original setting, Chaplin went into bohemian guitar solo overdrive; showboating across the front of the stage and playing to the audience, who lapped it up. From The Beach Boys’ troubled but most brilliant 1973 album Holland, Chaplin picked up the ocean current waltz ‘Sail On Sailor’. The original vocalist on that recording, he returns to it with carefree élan, adding a wild guitar solo to the end, which sends Brian off into the wings in playful mock exasperation.
Back out for act two, the band minus Chaplin for now, begin the reverent Pet Sounds album. Largely enduring because it encapsulated a particular age and time in Brian’s genius, but mostly for capturing the love tribulations and torments of young adulthood in the most perfect pop songs, the album still chimes deeply with audiences fifty years later. Intricate and multi-layered but never ever laboured or strained – witness the Bond-esque Tropicana lounge instrumental suite title track -, each purposely-poised ballad, paean and tryst says all it needs to in less than two minutes. The rousing ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, shared vocally by the Jardines and Brian, opens proceedings of course, followed by a gentler, more serene ‘You Still Believe In Me’. Highlights from the album set included an Al led version of the sea shanty in the manner of a doo wop Ivy League bruiser, with a reference to a particular paranoia plunged bad acid trip thrown in, ‘Sloop John B’, and flipping over the B-side, a poignant and encouraged Brian led ‘Caroline, No’.
The encore promised a “fun, fun, fun” package of hits. But first the band introductions, each band member receiving a musical signature tune as they came back out onto the stage after the interval. It was then straight into a full cast version of ‘Good Vibrations’, including the gesticulating tambourine wielding Chaplin who turned his percussive role into an art form. Rewinding back through the songbook, we were treated to the sing-along classics ‘Help Me Rhonda’, ‘Barbara Ann’, ‘Surfin USA’ and ‘Fun Fun Fun’. By now the audience were up and out of their seats, dancing where they could in the face of the po-faced security and attendants. From our balcony seats looking down on the main auditorium we witnessed hundreds swaying and weaving in almost perfect timing: the atmosphere couldn’t have been better. On a poignant, perhaps paused note Brian finished the evening with a version of the song that spawned the title of the recent movie, Love & Mercy. Written in more recent times, a reminder of the anxieties and anguish that once crippled Brian, the song’s central tenet is a perfect theme to finish on: a great sentiment for the audience to carry with them as they head home into the night. A joy to witness, the Pet Sounds legacy is in safe hands, especially here in Glasgow; a city twinned with Big Sur for one night only. Simply magical.
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need:
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