Upcoming and recent albums in review
Dominic Valvona
Frédéric D. Oberland ‘Solstices’
(ZamZamRec) Available Now
An epic reverberated fusion of recondite apparatus and the mystical, spiritual music of Tunisia, the self-taught multi-instrumentalist Frédéric D. Oberland and his zoukra mizzle playing and ritualistic percussion foil Awlad Fayala, magic up a performative soundtrack of Solstices on this incredibly immersive album.
A journey into the cosmos, the co-funding instigator of such experimental projects as Oiseaux-Tempête, Fourde!, Le Réveil Des Tropiques and Farwell Poetry absorbs the environments, the alarmism of climate change and the spirit of improvisation to create an untethered work of wonderment, woe and mysticism.
The first quartet of atmospheric scores – an avant-garde soundtrack to the Discovery Channel – on this album are taken from a 2021 performance in Paris. Marking the tenth anniversary of Petit Bain, Frédéric chartered a course for space. The theory of alien DNA, organisms and bacteria from other planets and solar systems making its way via comets and meteoroids, unscathed in the depths of space, to land and spread life to another world, aka “panspermia”, is used as a title to the first of these peregrinations. The rumble of thrusters, of rocket fuel gases comes later but first a monologue from the late Cassandra of environmental doom, Stephen Hawking, who offers a cataclysmic assessment of humanity with little glimmer of hope (hey, at least the hole in the Ozone Layer is closing up). This is done to the sound of tingling and shimmery sounds, fizzing valves and a synthesized lunar choral requiem. University Challenged and Tomat spring to mind musically, sonically, on this warning from the genius of propound theories and quantum mechanics.
Those boosters are ignited at the start of ‘À Norte Nuit’ (“to our night”), but evolve into the kosmische feels of Cluster: that or some lost recording from the Sky Records catalogue. Within that rocketed atmosphere a zoukra or something like it can be heard blowing away like Colin Stetson’s saxophone, lingering and circulating in the foggy resonating loops. Moving on, ‘Quatre Épaves d’Acies’ (“four steel works”) sounds like a 80s VHS sci-fi, or horror, score made by Kavinsky and Klaus Schulze. Zodiac in the fourth house of the moon, or whatever, there’s a sense of both mysterious ceremony and heavens-like ascendency.
By the time we reach the more dramatic, electric storm of bounding drums and alien minimalist techno ‘Worst Case Scenario’ the Arabian radio waves of North Africa are growing stronger, caught up in a vacuum of constant building echoes whipped up by Frédéric’s transformed hidden sound sources.
The final movement, ‘Cosmos Bou Dellif’, is taken form another incredible live performance, this time in a Tunisian butcher’s market, part of the Gabè’s Cinema Festival. In contrast to the meat trade, Frédéric and Awlad get swept up into a cyclonic swirl of drones, piped and whistled atavistic Tunisian Hermeticism and machine oscillations. Occasionally it wonders into the veil of Tibetan esotericism, and at others, Walker’s partnership with Sunn O))). It’s almost chaotic, nearly unnerving, yet also strangely mesmerising with its architect entranced as he feeds the live elements in real time into loops and a synthesis of cosmic veneration. It proves a great visceral and universally mysterious way to finish a great sonic project of fusions; an alchemy of earthly propositions and the all-too real omens of destruction seen from the wonderment of space and beyond.
Carmen Jaci ‘Happy Child’
(Noumenal Loom) 30th March 2023
With knowing childlike wonder and curiosity the French-Canadian (based in the Netherlands) composer Carmen Jaci bounces through a soft play crèche portal into a day-glow surrealist rainbow of giddy disjointed harmony. I say harmony, because despite the discombobulated polyphonic orchestrations, the deconstructed zips, zaps and sporadic voices that pop up and the Esperanto era floppy-disc cut-ups of Sakamoto, every one of these experiments is fun, cute and surprisingly melodious.
Instead of friction, abrasion, there’s a softening; a dizzy lightness and sensibility that borders on pop: granted a strange, loose version of it.
A visual feast for the eyes too – a blusher of Kandinsky, Sonia Delaney and Léger pulled into a hyper-vivid geometric fantasy studio of contemporary abstraction -, Carmen has gone for a full immersive experience, taking time to place every acoustic, synthesized and vocal transduced sample in the best place to stimulate a kooky idiosyncratic mix of naïve (I mean in the best possible sense of the word) electronica, art and theatre.
This Happy Child climbs the arpeggiator stairway to slide back down into a bubble bath of illimitable alacrity, serrated rubbed vibes, manipulated assonant and aria-like voices and placeable collage. We’re talking a skipping pleasant feeling of sinfonietta, of Bauhaus ballet and a mix of Trans Zimmer & The DJs, Mira Calix, Der Plan and Coldcut. In one lush-coloured environment Stravinsky’s Rites Of Spring meets Prokfiev atop of a marshmallow beanbag; early Chicago techno bounces along to a saturation of Skittles; and MIDI timpani and harp orchestrate an ornamental garden of 80s Japanese electronic-pop.
A brilliance of candy-electronica and Casio symphonies, Happy Child is a clever work of unburdened, unpretentious, but indeed deliberate and well-crafted, kidulthood. Carmen’s magical, if occasionally straying into the mysterious, new album pings back and forth with humour and, above all else, playfulness. Not for the burgeoning artist (I say burgeoning, Carmen is quite the professional technician with some years of experience: you can even pay for one-on-one tuitions at her own studio) the sour-faced seriousness of many of her peers, this is electronic music with a taste of fantasy and fun recollections of childhood.
Boycalledcrow ‘Nightmare Folk Art’
(Subexotic) 31st March 2023
Despite the god awful, ungovernable times we live in, and after absorbing the alternative-future of a San Fran(sicko) class conflict of survival, as laid out in William Gibson’s dystopian sci-fi novel Virtual Light (stolen nanotech glasses ensue a caper of renegades, assassins and corporate foes), the Chester-based sound artist Carl Knott has found some sort of solace in a dreamy escapist vision of the pastoral on his latest album, Nightmare Folk Art. That title suggests some sort of dread, darkness, but in fact this is the sound of Knott’s home and extended county country-walks landscape transduced into a magic-realism and hallucinated version of outsider art and weird folk music.
Unsure in places, mysterious and often spun into a reverberating loop of interlayered nylon-stringed acoustic samples that can confuse, Knott, under yet another successful alias as a Boycalledcrow (previous incarnations include Wonderful Beasts and Spacelab), conjures up the unreal. Again, this is a dream state in which you’re never quite relaxed but never really thrown into a nightmare. There’s even a track named after the family dog (‘Sister Poppy Is A Good Girl’) for heaven’s sake! And talking of heaven, occasionally those various stringed instruments actually take on a harp-like beauty: that or a mandolin, a dulcimer and even the African kora.
Off-kilter in a resonated movement of picked, fanned, spindled guitar loops, metallic and whipped drums, constant echoes and rotor or flickered speed-shifted vapours, a distant essence of folk music can just about be detected. In fact it’s more Fripp and Eno (especially on the sailing ‘Be More Kind, Like Frank’), more Syrinx and Popol Vuh (on the diaphanous, hallowed and melodious ‘Sister Poppy…’) than idyllic or psychedelic folk. There’s a semblance of Cluster for instance on ‘Easy Tiger’, and the growl of a trebly amped-up post-punk bass on the reversed and breathing, Warp drums smacking ‘Beautiful Women’.
Sometimes a synthesis of guitar manipulations turn into something almost indescribable, hard to quantify; into an atmosphere or rhythm that stirs up a strange mood, environment far from the idylls of an English countryside or the abstract portals of family and emotions. From a deconstructive process something strangely weird and yet something that can be very emotive takes shape or merely dissipates into the ether. Boycalledcrow conjures up a phantom dream world in which the acoustic guitar iterations and looped bass-y rhythms of Land Observation are transformed into a mere echo and whisper of that folk seed.
Joel Harrison & Anthony Pirog ‘The Great Mirage’
(AGS Recordings) 17th March 2023
A cross-generational partnership of guitar virtuosos pull together their individual provenance and art for a showcase journey of atmospheric evocations of place and time, on a new musical mirage.
The longer standing senior partner on this enterprise, Joel Harrison, has an enviable CV and catalogue of 22 albums to his name. The Guggenheim fellow and polymath guitar language and technique educator, composer, arranger, lyricist and writer’s music has appeared on film (Southern Comfort and the Oscar-nominated Traffic Stop) and across a myriad of other stages (one such notable commission for Chamber Music America). His previous albums have featured some incredibly talented artists, including such luminaries as Norah jones and the contemporary jazz mover and shaker (and Bowie’s last recording foil) Donny McCaslin.
Harrison’s jazz-trained junior (in age only) partner Anthony Pirog has recorded and played in an eclectic lineup of projects over the years; from his collaboration with his life partner and cellist Janel Leppin to the harder-rocking New Electric quartet.
Both based in the Washington D.C. area, both students of jazz, their shared geography and musical interests crossover into the spheres of rock, country, prog, folk, psych and even, what I would describe as both post-punk and krautrock. This could all be wrapped up as fusion music. Fusion music, that is, with a roaming curiosity to redefine or at least play with stretching the capabilities of the guitar in the 21st century: good luck with that.
Harrison and Pirog are not alone on that venture, bringing in the talents of Stephen Crump on bass and Allison Miller on drums to widen the scope and bolster the sound; to give body, a drive and even groove too: Miller’s drumming skills, it must be said, can be just as free and loose as they can be in smashing, drilling and motoring along the compositions.
Unsurprisingly both highly competent guitarist technicians and creative of their craft are pretty good at conveying the mood, at building, expressing a sense of place whilst at switching on the Steve Vai and Pat Methany blazing fretwork soloing dynamics. On the title-track itself they fuse later 70s King Crimson with a certain aria-bending mystique, hints of that jazz learning and final biting fuzz bedding of Sunn O))). Later on with ‘Mortgage My Soul’ they rev-up that same fuzz and scuzz for a concentration of bashed-out heavy rock.
Easing the pace, compositions like the wistful, plaintive ‘There’s Never Enough Time’ and ‘Desert Solitaire’ take on a country music lilt of waning and bottleneck sliding, whilst the shorter vignette, ‘Last Rose Of Summer’, lingers beautifully in an rustic-acoustic charm of gauzy serenaded country-folk. ‘I’ll See You In The Shinning World’ starts off in a similar mode (reminding me in part of Myles Cochran) but then subtly moves through changes of funk, the jazzy and spacey.
Travelling south musically, ‘Clarksdale’ takes a pinch of Muscle Shoals and the blues to evoke a very American landscape, whilst at the other end of the scale, the no less evocative mood of ‘Critical Conversation’ feels like a tumult, a squirming tension of energetic discourse and guitar effects experimentation – post-punk, post-rock in sound, jazzy in channeling a certain angst.
Anything but a demonstration, this album is an impressive showcase of dexterity and virtuoso skill of composition and expressive playing. The Great Mirage stays constantly interesting as it moves between reflection and displays of whining and squealed guitar frippery. Never indulgent, the focus is always on merging a shared experience in which the guitar (both electric and acoustic) bends, molds and wields to its practitioner’s concept of free-expression. I’d suggest they’ve done quite well in mining their eclectic sources to shape that freedom and pushing of the boundaries in a modern age.
Bhajan Bhoy ‘To Love Is To Love (Volumes 1 & 2)’
(Cardinal Fuzz in the UK/Feeding Tube in the US) Available Now
Ajay Saggar once again travels the astral highway and byways as guru Bhajan Bhoy, across two volumes of transcendence, raga mantras and afflatus dreamwave psychedelia.
When not masquerading under the Deutsche Ashram title or acting the part of foil to Oli Hefferman and Kohhei Matsuda in the University Challenged trio, and again with Oli in the long-running King Champion Sounds troupe, Saggar channels his divine styles into this newish incarnation – the debut Bhajan Bhoy album, Bless Bless, was released in 2020.
Three years later, and out the other side of the pandemic, Saggar brings us “love” in abundance with a moiety of albums that channel previous projects: especially the intoxicating club beat, shoegaze, post-punk haze of his Deutsche Ashram duo with the gauzy-hushed Merinde Verbeck. Because sometimes amongst the radio waves of India and the brassy resonance of the sitar there is a hint of a transported and flange fanning Stone Roses, the Cocteau Twins, Jah Wobble and MBV. I’m not sure who accompanies Saggar this time around, but those similar airy vapours f ethereal vocals can e heard suffused across a number of peregrinations that have lyrics; these being utterances, vague chants and the sort of hippie new age speak of the 90s trance and rave scenes.
Volume 1 opens with the Mancunian acid dripped and Indian echoed mizzle of ‘The Guiding Light’; a both kaleidoscopic and druggy vacuum of Ash Ra Tempel, the Moon Duo and 80s neo-pop. ‘On A Higher Plain’, with concertinaed spells and reverberating tremolo twangs, envisions El Topo transported to the Indian subcontinent. ‘Raga Shanti’ as the name makes clear, fulfills the spiritual Eastern quota well with a spectrum of cosmic dialing tones, echoes of Amon Düül II-speaks-to-Yogi and the sound of Shankar. ‘Oh Seeker’ brings back those near-ethereal washy female vocals – reminding me a lot of the female tri-vocal led French psych group Gloria – across synthesized accelerating waves, flange-like guitar and entrancing drones.
Volume 1 ends however on the mystified, dreamy fairytale enveloped ‘Lovely Day For Cricket’. I’m not sure if there’s a hidden meaning – you can never be sure these days when even the most harmless or joyous innocuous activities can enrage or fuel discourse on the British Empire, who of course brought that sport to most of their colonies -, or, if it’s merely a celebration of this sport’s obvious mega popularity, cultural importance – the national game in India (and its neighbours too) more or less. Commentary and the crowd from a match is morphed and sent out gently into a sort of cosmic twilight zone.
Volume 2 follows on with the sequined bejeweled chimes of finger cymbals and bells and the fanned-out and spindled raga and kosmische trance of ‘Hari Om Sharan’ – Popol Vuh and Floyd meet Harrison for a daily devotional. That Popol Vuh sound, unsurprisingly, can be heard on the Aguirre-like Amazonian atmospheric dedication to that group’s cinematic soundtrack patron, Werner Herzog, on ‘Abshaku…The Ecstatic Truth’. The Vuh, in communion with late 70s/early 80s Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, traverse Herzog’s dream-realism and documented travels with vague panpipe blows, drifted Heart of Darkness guitar and the misty veils of Machu Picchu.
‘Accordi-Ohm’ meanwhile, sounds like a dub-y bellowing and concertinaed vision of Augustus Pablo on the trial of the crystal skulls: yeah imagine that! That leaves the finale, ‘Eliane’s Conch’, another of those vaporous dreamy and static-charged dreamwave echoed traverses that reminded, a little, of the Dead Skeletons’ hypnotic mantras.
Overall both albums flow, waft or linger across the cosmic, spiritual pathway of kosmische, krautrock, acid-rock, psych, shoegaze and beyond. The sound of India is taken to various planes within that spectrum, woven into a fabric of cultish, trippy and new age influences. Blessed be the search for love in an increasingly hostile, intense, divisive and mentally draining world; Saggar’s Bhajan Bhoy incarnation certainly has its work cut out. And yet, with his collected ensemble of musical partners, he creates a musical escape route on a purview of enlightenment and even fun transcendental spiritualism.
Healing Force Project ‘Drifted Entities (Vol. 2)’
(Beat Machine Records) 17th March 2023
The re-rebirth of cool in an ever-forward momentum of flux, Antonio Marini’s Healing Force Project once more tumbles across a broken-beat, jungle, free-jazz and cosmic spectrum of reverberating exploration and spliced assemblage.
Last year’s first Drifted Entities volume made my choice albums list of 2022 with its echoed washes of On-U Sound and elements of Basic Channel, Plug, Luke Vibert and The Mosquitoes; all bouncing and resonating with the contorted rasps and strains and inspirations of Albert Ayler’s Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe –the title and source of this sonic untethered beat-sculpted project.
Volume 2 adheres to the same principles but is heavier on the beats and the percussion. Filtering, falling, paddled, sifting and shivered throughout this deconstruction-reconstruction are echoes of Miles Davis’ 80s soundtrack suffused trumpet blows and noirish winds, Jan Hammer and Greg Foat’s organ and synth held chords and bulb-like notes and Billy Cobham’s expletory drum kit. Constantly developing, in motion, each track throws up all manner of shuttled and skimming contortions. Brown Calvin, Thundercat, Roni Size, the Aphex Twin and the worldly musical adventures of Don Cherry simultaneously exist in Marini’s singular and off-kilter rhythmic quadrant of cosmic freefalling and electrified jazz.
A splashy mirage of effected, realigned beats and reframed jazz inspirations sent out into space, Volume 2 in this series continues the ‘spiritual music mission’ but offers something once more eclectic and boundless.
Areia ‘Stories’
Available Now
An album of stories imbued by various triplet-like references and cycles, the latest lightly executed work of chamber, neoclassical and explorative jazz from the guitarist and bandleader Siebren Smink is rich with descriptive wistfulness and reflection.
Inspired in part by the cause of the “three Marias”, whose feminist stance in the early 1970s against the fascist Catholic conservatism of António de Oliveira Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal helped usher in the downfall of that regime, and by the near inscrutable scribed “language music” methods of the free-jazz luminary Anthony Braxton, these two influences converge in a balancing act of quiet thought and more expressive drama, dynamics. And so, rather than create an erratic exploration of Braxton’s cryptic drawings, plans of trills and brills, and the rage of those incensed by Maria Isobel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velha da Costa’s struggle to fight the oppressive moralistic legal system of authoritarian Portugal, this album of mood suites manages to control those looser free-forming ideas with subtlety and sensitivity.
That Marias story was seen by Smink whilst visiting the Resistance Museum (a former prison for political prisoners) in Lisbon, and struck a chord. This trio’s crime was to publish a collection of unsigned essays, poetry, stories and letters that drew on the letters of a Portuguese Nun in the 17th century, obsessed as she was with a French soldier who abandoned her. The book proved a sensation, falling foul instantly of the regime’s censorship laws, quickly banned and destroyed. The actual court case that ensued – the penalty, imprisonment at the least – ended just as the country’s Carnation Revolution – so called because of the flowers the crowds gave to the soldiers who carried out the coup to replace him – helped topple Salazar’s rule. The penal code was especially discriminating towards women, treating them as second-class citizens, and so the odds of overturning the ban and escaping sentencing didn’t look good. But fortunately as the regime came crashing down, and with support from activists from around the world, the case was thrown out, the ladies collection even declared a work of art of the highest quality by the judge.
Sympathetic to that cause, chiming with the contemporary, Smink and his returning quartet of Adrián Moncada on piano, Antonio Moreno Glazkor on trumpet and Hristo Goleminov on tenor saxophone take musical cues from Pat Metheny and the Jimmy Giuffre 3, but the ACT label too, to produce music that hopefully doesn’t fall on deaf ears. Not that any of this is obvious, nor an on-message sound as such, but it is descriptive and resonates with a language of thoughtful yet roaming and loosened feelings.
Instruments interact or just fly off into opposite, but always congruous, directions of play. Harmonics ping, guitar strings softly accentuate or subtly climb the frets, and the tenor sax blows in both a suffused manner or in quicker circles, whilst the trumpet flits, spirals or holds a particular expressive note. The piano parts seem to drift or linger with a harder, starker prods or in a softened way evokes reminisces, aches and reflections. In parts the action accelerates with dotted notes, a little tension and even tumult: though nothing like a discourse, a cacophony or even crescendo. Sometimes just the mere essence of an instrument is all that’s needed to conjure up the mood, and sometimes just shortened prompts and small bursts of activity will speak volumes.
The Stories album is full of stirring moments and a melodious and not quite so melodious interplay, but also has a spirit of the untethered explorations synonymous with free jazz. Upsides mingle with deep thoughts, a flit of action and dialed down reflected sadness on an album that reveals more with every subsequent listen.
Above all, this album finds Smink and his Areia quartet vehicle on a refined journey of distilled and considered jazz; a balancing act that successfully weaves together freer interactions and the sort of expressive musical language that Antony Braxton would find very encouraging.
Lukas Traxel ‘One-Eyed Daruma’
(We Jazz) Available Now
The Swiss double-bassist maestro and composer Lukas Traxel is back with a new trio project prompted by an open invitation from the Moods jazz club in Zurich. With We Jazz label stalwart Otis Sandsjö on tenor saxophone and Moritz Baumgärtner on drums; Traxel creates a mysterious, plaintive, conscious and abstract environment out of avant-garde, free jazz and experimental counterpoints with this new turn. And the influences on this new project include Caroline Shaw, Colin Vallon’s trio, Gabriel Kahane, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Guiffre and Keith Jarrett, but I’d add Sam Rivers, the late great Pharoah and the contemporary, mirroring Ill Considered trio.
Initially stumped, emotionally coming to terms with the death of his father, Traxel was suddenly freed from the dreaded writer’s block after noticing the mysterious-looking figure of an eyeless “Daruma”, starring out from the corner of his piano. In Japanese lore this harbinger of fate brings luck and prosperity. And as tradition dictates, you must first draw an eye on your daruma whilst making a wish; only adding a second eye if this wish comes true. It remains, for now, the ‘one-eyed daruma’ of the album title.
Conveying that loss and absence, but little bit of hope too, the trio build simmering, rasped and probing atmospheres from which subtle melodious ideas and feelings emerge; breaking out at points into either broken beats, break beats and cymbal splashes – the conscious jazz and elliptical rhythmic ‘The Call’ reminded me a little of Gescom. However, the album opens with the Rollins leads Floydian sizzled and brushed ‘First Times’: a balance of both thinly parched tenor and the wane, whine of hidden rusty metallic or brass instruments, gently prompted by the double-bass. The more chaotic ‘Nasty People’ stumbles and lurches through an Art Ensemble Of Chicago workshop and toy box. I’m not sure of the intention or the theme, but at one point a kid’s police siren whoops amongst the squiggles, shakes and craziness; and as it continues on, it feels like the drums are hitting out at, or being flung at, something/someone: A sort of venting of torque and tensions.
An act of flexing instruments and sounds to quantify expression and mood, Lukas Traxel’s sparsely executed showcases a theme of counterpoint – actions counterpointed by reflections, hinged and resonating, and by more recognizable holds and shortened toots of sax. The performances coalesce different tensions, speeds and articulations in the same track: for example, Baumgärtner’s drums moving at pace and drive whilst Sandsjö’s sax brushes the surface and Traxel’s double-bass plucks out singular notes.
Initially brought about by invitation, I wouldn’t mind hearing more from this successful trio experiment in the future. Their burgeoning debut an essential addition to the We Jazz catalogue and in turn, your record collection.
John Atkinson ‘Energy Fields’
(AKP Recordings) 15th march 2023
A reification of the hidden energy sources that power industry and the homes of America, John Atkinson’s atmospheric synthesized treatments lend a both morphed factory and more alien sound to both carbon and renewable technology on this new solo work. Uncoupled from his foil Patrick Taylor and their East Portal duo, Atkinson funnels the sounds of his 2019 residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming – the largest coal-producing state in the whole of America, and in recent times the hub of renewable energy and carbon capture – into a conceptual investigation and peregrination of transition. As much in awe as he is anxious about the shifting tides and changes (I’m guessing that transition isn’t fast enough) in that field, this quartet of ambient, electrified soundscapes evoke states of uncertainty and mystery; an otherworldly balance of machinery and a removed, transformed vision of nature living side by side in the shadow of a climate change emergency (depending on who you listen to).
Atkinson has skin in the game so to speak, having spent the last fifteen years writing about this energy shift in terms of policy, tech and economics, as a day job. And so that drive and interest is channeled into a sonic experience of shunting coal trucks, the swing and hinge movements of heavy bucketed tools and cranes, and the rotation of bladed turbines.
A static energy current ripples through a soundtrack of filaments, high-pitched steam and industrial thumps on the opening ‘Spiritual Electricity’ track. A coal-fired plant errs towards a strange stirring of the unfamiliar, recondite, as Atkinson gives sound to such abstract concepts. ‘Black Thunder’ delves into the furnace with what sounds like boxcars unloading their materials and the pressurized whistles of dials and valves. Cleaner, sonorous waves and purrs emerge from out of the industrial activity however, hinting at some kind of submerged mystery, unease.
Across a windy plain from atop of a wind turbine, ‘Casper’ features ambient drifts, glints of the outdoors and a suffusion of twinkles and chimes. A strange nature exists alongside those imposing machines and tech that borders on the supernatural; a snatch of passing traffic perhaps caught in a blowy gloom. The more implicitly entitled ‘World Wind’ features more of those natural elements – the mating call of bison perhaps – running side-by-side with slowly stirring neoclassical gravitas and the churning turns of rotor blades.
Atkinson captures an evocative and interesting enough theme, a necessity to understanding or relating to that which remains disconnected to us; the apparatus, resources that generate our lives at the flip of switch seldom considered. As fossil fuels remain the principle source in a global climate of war, fear and increasing authoritarian, post-pandemic insecurity, Atkinson draws our attention to the burgeoning developments in off-setting that reliance; an abstract propound proposition transduced into a fully immersive site-specific world of industry and field recordings.
Anthéne & Simon McCorry ‘Florescence’
(Oscarson) 31st March 2023
As stirring evocative ambient-neoclassical-kosmische partnerships go, Brad Deschamps – under the Anthéne signature alias – and Simon McCorry seem the perfect match of subtle expressive drone guitar contours and equally descriptive, majestic cello. These two stalwarts of their forms set out to capture the essence of the seasons again; honing in on the first light, slow blossoming of Spring for this, their third such, collaboration – the first to be released on vinyl.
The previous Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man, inspired, poetic Mind Of Winter (which made my choice albums of 2022 list) was a sublime reification of the beauty of a crystalized, snow-dusted soundscape; a gentle yet deeply felt album of Wintery suites. From out of winter’s minimal light, Deschamps and McCorry, with both serenity and a touch of mystery, blend subtle electronics and what sounds like non-musical objects with their chosen stringed instruments; the processes of their atmospheric methodology mirroring Spring’s process of flowering and blooming.
In practice this leads to abstract reflections, thoughts, moods and the near unquantifiable transduced into both scores of hidden and more familiar sounding instrumentation. No one manages to expand the cello quite like McCorry, but that bowed, hollowed resonating cello body often sighs or pines more melodious phrases alongside trembled or droning sustain. Likewise Deschamps both obscures and yet also casts recognizable phrases, lingering tracery and permeating drones.
Nature comes alive as the light begins to play across meadows, versants and an often more mystically veiled landscape in which ripples across a pool of water can musically evoke so much more than a simple observation of the environment: one that’s awakens from a seasonal hibernation. Although the majority of the time we’re in the same musical sonic sphere as Eno (even a touch of his late 70s partnership with Bowie on the mirrored mirage, ‘Reach Towards The Earth’), Andrew Wasylyk and early Ambient Works Richard James ‘Unreflecting Pool’, with its plucked tines, chimes and generally gauzy airy mood, evokes a sort of misty Avalon; the sort of Arthurian waters so beloved of the Pre-Raphaelites (I could be letting my own imagination run away with me here). A both hallowed and moving merger of seasonal changes, suffused with a certain gravitas and meaning, the pastoral is revalued and sent out on a voyage of reflection. Florescence is yet another minimalistic work of sublime quality from a collaboration perfectly in-synch with each other.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist #74: Yoko Ono, Wayne Shorter, Trupa Trupa, Blue Lake…
March 14, 2023
Anniversary Albums And Deaths Marked Alongside An Eclectic Mix Of Cross-Generational Music, Newish Tunes And A Few Surprises. Dominic Valvona.
Just give me two hours of your precious time to expose you to some of the most magical, incredible, eclectic, and freakish music that’s somehow been missed, or not even picked up on the radar. For the Social is my uninterrupted radio show flow of carefully curated music; marking anniversary albums and, sadly, deaths, but also sharing my own favourite discoveries over the decades and a number of new(ish) tracks missed or left out of the blog’s Monthly playlists.
The grand dame of high and conceptual arts, Fluxus major, and formidable musician Yoko Ono recently celebrated her 90th birthday. Incredible. And still in fine fettle after nine decades of groundbreaking work. A smattering of choice songs from the back catalogue waits.
As is customary each month, I also mark a number of choice anniversary celebrating albums. 50 in March, there’s tracks from the Faces Ooh La La, T-Rex’s Tanx, Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Birds Of Fire and Cymande’s Second Time Round. There are also a couple of hip-hop specials, with 30th selections from Ice-T’s Home Invasion and Lords Of The Underground’s Here Come The Lords. A mere fledgling in comparison, I also selected a tune from Crime And The City’s 2013 rebirth, American Twilight – in my opinion one of their best.
As ever I also pay a small tribute to those we’ve lost on the way, with nods to both De La Soul’s Trugoy the Dove/Plug 2 (nee David Jolicoeur), and the jazz doyen Wayne Shorter.
Spread out amongst that lot is newish music from Trupa Trupa, Lee Paradise, Florence Adooni, The Church, Elaine Howley, Misha Panfilov, Hinako Omori and Blue Lake. I’m currently in the middle of an escapist binge, soaking up episodes of Miami Vice, and so couldn’t resist adding a more obscure soundtrack from the series: Executive Slack’s ‘Our Lady’.
38 tracks in all; the alternative soundtrack to your week, or weekend. The alternative radio show, devoid of the chatter, the sycophantic and the bores.
___Track List___
Yoko Ono ‘Hirake’
Trupa Trupa ‘OPÓR’
Executive Slacks ‘Our Lady’
Lee Paradise ‘Timeless’
Wayne Shorter ‘Angola’
R.A.P. Ferreira ‘Fighting Back’
De La Soul ‘Plug Tunin’’
Florence Adooni ‘Yinne’
Wayne Shorter ‘Joy Ryder’
Faces ‘My Fault’
Yoko Ono ‘Approximately Infinite Universe’
Crime And The City Solution ‘My Love Takes Me There’
The Church ‘No Other You’
Lords Of The Underground ‘Flow On (New Symphony)’
De La Soul ‘Oodles Of O’s’
T-Rex ‘Mister Mister’
Roxy Music ‘Beauty Queen’
Yoko Ono & Automatique ‘Coffin Car’
Yoko Ono ‘Growing Pain’
Elaine Howley ‘Silent Talk’
Floating World Pictures ‘Til Dusk, At Devran’
Wayne Shorter ‘The Soothsayer’
De La Soul ‘Pass The Plugs’
Wayne Shorter ‘Montezuma’
Nacho Mendez ‘Levais Mi Amor’
Paul Fishman ‘Paradise’
Misha Panfilov ‘At The Helm’
Hinako Omori ‘Snow’
Wayne Shorter ‘Harry’s Last Stand’
Mahavishnu Orchestra ‘Celestial Terrestrial Commuters’
De La Soul ‘Tread Water’
Missus Beastly ‘Decision’
Horse Lords ‘Rundling’
Yoko Ono ‘Greenfield Morning I Pushed An Empty Baby Carriage All Over The City’
Cymande ‘Anthracite’
Blue Lake ‘Shoots’
Yoko Ono ‘It’s Time For Action!’
Ice-T ‘G Style’
A March Digest: Lonnie Liston Smith, Saba Alizadeh, Crime And The City Solution, Faust Tapes, Brian Bordello…
March 9, 2023
New Music on our radar, news and archive spots
Dominic Valvona
A new thread, feed for 2023, the Digest pulls together tracks, videos and snippets of new music plus significant archival material and anniversary celebrating albums or artists. The March edition features new sounds from Lonnie Liston Smith, Saba Alizadeh, Benedict Benjamin, Sebastian Reynolds, Brian Bordello,…plus from the Archives, a tenth anniversary piece on Crime And The City Solution’s 2013 rebirth ‘American Twilight’, and 50th anniversary piece on the Faust Tapes.
NEW MUSIC IN BRIEF
Lonnie Liston Smith ‘Cosmic Change’
(Jazz Is Dead)
Smooth soulful vibes, bulb-like notes and cosmic fanning rays from the great jazz-funk doyen Lonnie Liston Smith, who is set to release his first album in 25 years! Thanks to the overseeing facilitators of the enriching Jazz Is Dead label project, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad have coaxed the legendary artist, ensemble bandleader and sideman for such impressive luminaries as Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri and Leon Thomas, back into the studio; just one of many great names from the spiritual, conscious and funky-jazz rolls of inspiring talents.
Co-composing and collaborating with their chagrin Younge and Muhammad both work in the old magic with a sense of the new and forward; paying homage yet creating something new, performing the very kinds of influential music that had an impact on those who came later, namely the hip-hop fraternity (Jazzmatazz era Guru and the Digable Planets being just two such notable collaborators and acolytes).
I can’t wait to get a hold of the full deal.
Lonnie Liston Smith JID017 is due out on the 28th April 2023.
Saba Alizadeh ‘Nafir (Clamour)’
(30M Records)
A very special, politically important vivid visual and musical statement from the evocative Iranian artist-composer and reputable virtuoso kamancheh (Iranian spike fiddle) player, Saba Alizadeh, ‘Nafir’ (or “Clamour”) is a metaphorical, symbolic encapsulation on life during the recent uprisings. Set in motion after the callous killing of Mahsa Amini and the strict authoritarian imposition of Islamic law and the violation of women’s right, last year’s protests in Iran were brutally crushed – with a number of executions carried out on the most tenuous of charges. And, if it couldn’t get much worse, there’s been an escalation of mass poisonings in girl’s schools throughout the country. The war in Ukraine, a continued war of words with the West over Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the growing pains of the economy have done all they can to bury the attention, brave opposition and movement for change since the initial spark in July of 2022.
As a reminder to the pain and suffering of that movement, Alizadeh has released this touching and moving video and electroacoustic suite. You can read his statement and press blurb below, which explains the thinking, process behind this incredible track.
“Nafir” is the sound of a million outcries channeled through the ancient string instrument Kamancheh” says composer and musician Saba Alizadeh about his latest single. “It’s the voice of the shed tears and blood”.
His instrument, the Kamancheh is said to be resemble the spectrum of the human voice, and it’s why he used it prominently in this piece as a metaphor for singing, for the gathered voices and cries of the oppressed, fighting against the darkness, the oppressor, here represented by the rhythm section.
Alizadeh explains: “This section is based on the rhythms of T’azie (traditional religious mourning ceremonies during shia commemoration Ashura) but at the same time resembles the sound of explosions (the sound that became the soundtrack of our lives in Iran for the past 5 months) and a respirator machine. It is at the same time a spray paint can that is writing slogans on walls or wiping them out.
At some point in the piece the rhythm section crescendos and tries to distort and destroy the kamancheh melody but it is not able to.”
In the video which is masterfully implemented by visual artist Siavash Naghshbandi, the voice of the Kamancheh and the beam of light interact with each other: the louder the voice of the kamancheh gets the brighter the beam becomes. It battles with the rhythm section and a metaphoric swarm of Kalashnikov bullets (as a universal sign of oppression). The finale gives hope: the cry of the Kamancheh and the warm bright light succeed defeating the bullets, the darkness and oppression.
Benedict Benjamin ‘Furlough Blues’
I’m not sure I could put it better, but the high anxiety of the Covid era is as Benedict Benjamin (formerly of The Mariner’s Children and Peggy Sue) puts it, channeled through a merger of the Byrds, Electrelane and DJ Shadow. Folk bluesy pop meets the psychedelic the roll of breakbeats and even an echo of jazz on a pandemic journal that’s almost wistfully disarming in its vocal delivery.
Featured a while back in Brian Bordello’s column (and making last month’s choice music playlist), Benjamin has now painstakingly produced a video for the song, the first in a series of such visual storytelling accompaniments to songs taken from the upcoming Tunnel album (released in June). A mix of collage and stop motion, the Furlough Blues video is a visual metaphorical feast of rocketed lighthouses and “evil catholic altars” that blast off towards the moon and fly across various digests, magazine backgrounds, beaming out their light.
Since that video’s official drop last week, Benjamin has released another single ‘White Noise’, which moves the music into another psychedelic folksy indie direction: “Elliott Smith crossed with Serge Gainsbourg” as Benjamin puts it. Have a listen here:
Abel Ray Remixes Sebastian Reynolds ‘Cheptegei’
A simmered techno reverberated dance vision of polymath composer and long-distance runner Sebastian Reynolds’ most recent athletics-euphoric and travailed inspired ‘Cheptegei‘ by Abel Rey, has just been dropped on Youtube. Feel the itching electronic vibes as Rey builds up a sophisticated remix of the homage to the 5000M Ugandan superstar Joshua Kiprui Cheptegei. The original version appeared on Seb’s Athletics EP last May, but there’s news of a new album, Canary, being released this summer.
Lunar Bird ‘Creatures’
I just have room to mention the latest diaphanous dream-pop single and video from those heavenly creatures Lunar Bird. Beach House with a taste of Italy and Cardiff, the brilliant, beautifully captivating group, swayed and floated along by Roberta Musillami‘s charming lush vocals, have been a mainstay of the Monolith Cocktail for a few years now. Once more they beguile and charm, even with the most plaintive and yearning of themes, on this infectiously spellbound new song. You don’t need much more than that…just give it your time and embrace the Lunar Birds magic.
NEW MUSIC/LONGER READ HIGHLIGHT
Brian Bordello ‘Songs For Cilla To Sing’
(Think Like A Key Music)
It is telling that Brian Bordello uses the title of a famous and lauded book/movie that depicts the desperation of a diorama of washed-up, failed characters willing to die in the course of winning a dance marathon, and so gaining the attentions of those who might save them from a life of pure poverty (and worst of all, obscurity and irrelevance) in America’s great depression. Horace McCoy ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They’ melodrama, later turned into a film by Sidney Pollock almost forty years later in 1969, reflects the Shea Family patriarch and instigator of the Bordellos and soloist’s own, against all odds, desperations to get noticed; leading to one of the great “what ifs” in rock ‘n’ roll’s annals.
As ridiculous as it may seem on the surface, the lower than lo fi (making Sparklehorse sound like a flash git bombastic ELO in comparison), nee no fi King of the well-worn Tascam four-track and St. Helens idiosyncratic Les Miserable, was only one person away on the Venn diagram of Cilla Black’s orbit. His potential songbook of flange-y distorted (more through low grade recording techniques) and curmudgeon demos did make its way to the, then retired from singing, Liverpool songbird – in the three or four decades before her death more the star of TV presenting and hosting than performer.
We don’t know what the late Cilla made of it; the 80s Merseyside via Manc diy, C86 and Jason Pierce-echoed hushed unrequited and lovesick pop musings of Brian, recorded on the most basic of bog-standard equipment.
And yet, the aphorism, puns, and “desperation” prove melodically heart aching, touching and, above all, truthful. Use your imagination. Replace that guitar with a conducted orchestra, a touch of Abbey Road professionalism, and you can easily hear the one-time hatcheck girl personality turn songstress belt out some of these lamentable odes. Especially such fair as the shabby rain-washed ‘Betrayal’ and the vibraphone-like chimed ‘Impossible’. Saying that, the creepier, wallowed and spanked ‘Not Such A Bad Girl’ could easily be a nun-habit frocked Marianne Faithful number, and the lo fi breezy, almost continental bastardised, Paris meets Entertaining Mr. Sloan, ‘Handsome Jacques’ isn’t a million miles away from any Gauloise-fawned chanteuses of the 60s Belle Époque era.
Of course for me, as Brian’s editor at the Monolith Cocktail (our Brian has now been furnishing us with his reviews for the last four years or more) but also as a fan and obvious insider, I know and hear his passion for the spirit of a purer, more personality driven rock ‘n’ roll, and for the pop symphonies, ballads of such starlets and characters as Cilla and her generation. A nostalgia perhaps for simpler times, but also for a time when there was such a thing as the working classes getting on in the music and arts industries. That despite living it rough with a bog in the brick outhouse, no central heating and the fact you had to entertain yourself in those days, the greatest changes, such icons could reign.
And so this songbook is as much about the past as it is in catapulting another working class talent onto a bigger stage: hopefully through such patronesses as Cilla. That wasn’t to be of course, and so Brian continues to drag his arse up the coalface of obscurity each week. Saying that, as part of the American label Think Like A Key Music’s diy series, this album has had a small flourish of popularity, even making some lo fi amazon chart the other week. For a Collection of Cilla demos – some since released and transformed on other Bordellos releases – lost down the back of a proverbial sofa, it’s done quite well. If imagining Brian Epstein inviting Ian McCulloch to front The Tremolos, or The Red Crayola, Spaceman 3 and a budget Inspiral Carpets time-travelled back to 1962 sounds like one incredible proposition, then this songbook is for you. Unguarded, heart-on-the-sleeve honesty, pity and yet always with a wry sense of humour, Brian has conjured up a brilliant album: possibly despite himself. A national destitution, his name should join the pantheon of such notable mavericks as Stevie R. Moore, Roky Erickson and Saint Julian of Cope.
ARCHIVES/ANNIVERSARY
Crime And The City Solution ‘American Twilght’
(Mute Records) 2013
The second/third/fourth rebirth, incarnation of the iconic cult Crime And The City Solution was launched in 2013 with, perhaps, one of the ensemble’s best albums yet: American Twilight. Ten years on and my original review, written for the Welsh-international indie webzine God Is In The TV, still stands.
Re-born, so to speak, after a twenty-year hiatus, the poetically forlorn Antipodes Crime & The City Solution have returned to document the miasma landscape of our troubled times.
Breathing in the toxic fumes of mass-unemployment, foreclosures and desperation, their re-location to what was once the industrial hub of America, Detroit, seems entirely apt. Home to the furious garage rock and political spit of the MC5 and Stooges (to name just two big guns from the motor city’s heritage) Detroit imbues its latest émigrés with a wealth of material to chew on.
The four horseman of impending doom have tested the waters lately, their scout parties observed on the horizon by the band, who announce to anyone that listens: “Here comes the rain!” Though there is, thankfully, always a chance of redemption: “We must not let the doomsayers and the naysayers cause us to lose our faith. Because without love and without hope there can be no future.”
Morosely inquisitive, our ‘shined-on’ vessels wrestle with compassionate displays of belief and optimism in a very bleak world. Hardly strangers to the darker and seedier side of the boardwalk, the group’s numerous twists and turns since their birth in the late 70s, has seen them burn up the punk/post-punk scenes of Sydney and Melbourne; relocate to London at the invitation of Bad Seed, Mick Harvey; and end-up gaunt and morbid, residing in Wim Wender’s black and white ‘Wings Of Desire’ Berlin: their most productive but fabled swan song.
At one time or another their ranks have included members from The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Einstürzende Neubauten and DAF. Now in the lord’s year of 2013, core founder Simon Bonney and ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’s’ Alexander Hacke and Bronwyn Adams are joined in their quest by visual artists Danielle de Picciotto, drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Cat Power), guitarist David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower, Wovenhand), bassist Troy Gregory (Witches) and Moog, keyboard operator Matthew Smith (Outrageous Cherry, Volebeats).
Mob-handed their wide-screen panoramic sound seems more spiritual and relenting, though still informed by that Gothic, almost Lynchian, twang: amplified through the country blues and Americana that’s absorbed by the group on this American Twilight odyssey.
Released as a teaser a few months back, the beatific, choral backed, ‘My Love Takes Me There’ exudes a haloed magnificence, yet equally darkened with distorted guitars and plaintive vocals that hail back to the bands earlier brooding soliloquies. A mature romantic nature is also found on the leading single, ‘Goddess’, an Apache toms-beaten power paean to a mythologized beauty: perhaps the bands most commercial anthem yet, though still permeated by those esoteric layers of lapsed Catholicism and scuzzy strident rock.
Meanwhile ‘The Colonel (Doesn’t Call Anymore)’ is a chilled reading from the scriptures, complete with a teetering Tower of Babel and ravaged roaming wolves, Bonny comes on like a mix of Scott Walker and a jaded Bob Dylan. And the ‘Domina’ is a gospel swaying, minor lament, heavenly remorseful and waning.
Looking for inspiration, whether it’s in the atavistic spiritualism of ghosts of the desert or in the sepulchre of organised religion, Bonney and his pilgrims move towards the light on their expansive return to form.
Faust ‘Faust Tapes’
(Virgin) 1973
50 this year, the second Faust album release of 1973 was a publicity stunt of subterfuge on the general public. With a ridiculously silly throw-away price tag, the Virgin label had a massive loss-making exercise in stupidity on their hands with the launch of their German malcontent signings. Now iconic, a cultish collage of propagandist machine music, industrial snores, the avant-garde, and krautrock break-outs of performed scraps, the Faust Tape may have sold over 50,000 copies in the scramble for a good deal, but it did little to help the fortunes of the band. Here then is my original lengthy essay on that story and album, taken from my night 20 year-old kruatrock odyssey series.
Virgin records began life in 1972, the brainchild of Richard Branson, Nik Powell and Simon Dapper, the story of which began with a shop in Notting Hill gate and a backroom mail order business known as Virgin Records and Tapes. The company name reflected their in-experience and self-confessed, but enthusiastic, naivety towards business. Starting out at first to sell other labels material and to unearth those hard to get underground releases, these three rather green long-haired upstarts, quickly transgressed to setting up a label of their own within a year of starting. Specialising in import records, Virgin relied upon a dedicated customer base of like-minded heads, who would inform them of what was currently worth checking out. This included turning the trio of entrepreneurs onto the burgeoning Krautrock scene of the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Requests began to roll in for obscure German bands, so many in fact, that Drapper contacted the infamous Ohr label, putting in an order for the more hip-happening groups of the moment. Soon a rich bundle of over thirty titles arrived on Drapper’s desk, comprising mostly of ‘Utter rubbish’ – Drapper’s words – and a few highlights, such as Tangerine Dream and Faust. But by this time, Virgin had already made an early play for the proto-spiritual ambient pioneer Mike Oldfield, whose Tubular Bells opus would become the first official release on the label. Overtures then, were made to both the Tangerine Dream and Faust, who it seemed were just about to drop ship from their current paymasters Polydor.
Uwe Nettlebeck and his band of crazed, freewheeling insurgents had finally over-stayed their welcome with that major label, testing the patience of the boardroom just a little too far. Faust’s last album, So Far, failed to toe the party line as more commercially viable big-seller. Continuing instead to follow there own agenda, the band hurried along an uncompromising avant-garde pathway of revolutionary deconstructive music. A move that drew much celebrated reactionary pats on the back, but did little to shift copies of their albums. Cast adrift, Faust now welcomed the attention of Virgin, deciding to sign a deal, though Uwe had no intention of making life easy for them, insisting that the first release must be sold for free to the public.
Uwe then handed over a collection of cutting room floor ideas and musical experiment excerpts, left over from the previous album recording sessions, giving the content away to Virgin for a nominal fee: zero in other words. This set of 26 unique snippets, sound collages and cutaways, would be bundled together and be titled “The Faust Tapes”, and end up being priced at the reduced token rate of 49p – at the time the price of a single – to cover expenses. Virgin to this day insists they never lost any money on the deal.
From the mere glancing explorations in piano, drums and voices to encouraging moments of startling produced promising songs, chaos reigns down, with pitched intergalactic warfare breaking out amongst the spillage from some industrial accident, to make this bundle of tracks far from boring or uninspired. God only knows what the public would make of this LP, with its Bridget Riley Op-Art black and white cover and reputation scaremongering press clippings on the back, to the missing track list and controversial price tag.
Well, the first week of release alone they shifted 50,000 copies, doubling sales not soon after and putting the band in the charts – for the first and only time – at number 12, though they would be removed on the grounds of the cover price. The heads and public seemed to go into a sort of feeding frenzy, buying into this relatively unheard of act from the fatherland, as if it was a competition. A large number of people hated the record, once they actually got it home, and as a consequence the follow up record, released at the end of the year, Faust IV, sold quite poorly in comparison. Branson, carried away in the initial overnight success, was convinced that they’d created a new ingenuous business model with which to break new bands – he would quite quickly rethink that strategy.
The Faust Tapes were an enigma, with small mystifying scraps of info and those untitled vignettes; the album became something of a cult. John Peel added to the aloof campaign that went with the record, by announcing a list of mock titles for the as yet unnamed tracks, stirring up the listeners in anticipation to quickly grab a pen as he would only read them out once. As it turned out, old Peely was in on the act, swindling many fans including Julian Cope with a disdained gesture of ridicule.
Virgin decided to back up the over-whelming success of the 1973 album by bringing the guys over for their first ever UK tour.
Fair enough you might think, only Uwe and co. had other plans; like throwing some turbulent spanners into the faces of the label.
The band’s Hans-Joachim Irmler and Rudolf Sosna refused point blank to embark on the tour, unless a ridiculous advance sum of £500,000 was paid – half exuberant and half antagonistic, fully encouraged by Uwe. A now apparent rift formed within the ranks, leading to Werner Diermaier, Jean- Hearvé Péron and Gunter Wüsthoff and a hastily recruited Peter Blegvad of Slapp Happy infamy, to fulfil the live dates. In true rebellious style, Uwe conceived a sort of auto-destructive performance with pneumatic drills, TVs and a cement mixer acting as props, waiting to be interacted with or smashed to smithereens: If anyone in the band got bored by all this reactionary antagonism, they could take a rest and play on the handy pinball machine, which would also deck the stage. All of this was of course meant to test the audience’s patience, on top of the proceeding ear splitting, innards dislodging hailstorm of sound that would leave them feeling sick.
Borrowing a PA from none other then the world’s one time loudest band The Who, Faust upped the ante and went one louder, channelling the most insane industrial gut wrenching music through their engineer, Kurt Graupner’s satanic black box of tricks, whilst chewing up the stage with the many building site strewn tools. This resulted in an often gob-smacked audience reacting in disbelief at the musical equivalent of having a bucket of pig shit poured over their heads. Even Blegvad remarked that it was the worst music he’d ever heard, and that it induced countless bouts of nose bleeding, leaving him with feelings of misery and nausea – and that’s one of their friends and band mates He went on to describe witnessing one over-enthusiastic young man headbutting the stage floor in unison to the bass drums incessant pounding, the resulting streaming blood worn like a badge of honour.
Despite all this, their fans were quite forgiving and sympathetic to the cause, even happily lapping up the handed out manifestos of intent, though usually in that typical pleasant English manner of ours, which never really leads to acting on our convictions.
After the uproarious set of concerts, Faust were scheduled to record their fourth album; Virgin insisting on them recording in England at their very own choice studio, the famous Manor House in Oxfordshire. Uwe objected at first but backed down, his band of misfits agreeing under a certain duress. Irmler and Sosna must have agreed to set aside their demands, as they both appear on the record. Faust IV would be their third album proper and cause many upsets, tantrums and even lead to arrests – don’t worry I’m saving this till the next chapter for you.
The Faust Tapes finally gained a track list when transferred to CD, which basically rectifies to a certain extent, what is actually taking place on each piece of sound or music. Some tracks have French or German titles, such as ‘J’ai Mal Aux Dents’, which translates as “I have toothache”, or ‘Der Baum’, which means “the tree”. Most remain untitled still or are referred to as exercises with maybe a bracketed explanation for a guide.
BUT WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?
Out of the eerie discourse of enigmatic sounding disturbances, fades into view a rumbling low bass and ivory tinkling cramped run down, as various sets of hands feel up the grand piano for a thrill. The rumble turns into a drone over this short rift, like a squadron of B52s flying overhead on their way to some unfortunate target. Our first exercise is over in under a minute, interrupted by the next, a call and response loop that features some garbled compressed drums and saxophone gargles. Sharp intersected snippets of screeching car brakes are dispersed throughout the track, as someone blares out an illegible cuckoo taunt in a fraught hysteria fashion.
‘Flashback Caruso’ gently flows in with some embracing wistful acoustic guitar picking and delicate artful strumming, in the manner of an English psychedelic folk number, with wry token impressions of a Germanic Syd Barrett, who sings of marshmallow sandwiches and Lewis Carroll garden parties. A leftover from the late 60’s, this delightful foray even has the vocals bounce from speaker to speaker, as gentle waves of beautiful percussion and piano head towards la la land – the first highlight of the album.
Next up, a return to the exercise labelling with an otherworldly effects driven voices segue way. Elephant like trumpeting and disturbed bellowing is dripped in reverb, delay and echo to create an unsightly incident in the middle of a Marrakech bazaar, before swiftly leaving the scene and stumbling into the next track. ‘J’ai Mal Aux Dents’ shambles in, falling over a mix of proto-punk and staccato Stooges, conducted by a jittery guitar, its erratic rhythmic workout attacked by various thrown in sound effects and a rather obtuse saxophone. Disregard for conventional grooving gets under way as the song moves into uncharted territory, though it awkwardly has all the appearance of Them’s ‘Gloria’ being played by Devo or Dr. Feelgood met with a torrent of situationist sloganeering.
Moving on, we eavesdrop onto an atmospheric recording of the band going about their daily routine washing up, stacking bottles, listening to the radio and continuously stomping up and down a never-ending flight of wooden stairs. An answer machine unravels its un-translated message, which could imply something serious or banal. Funky zip zapping break beat drumming announces the intro of ‘Arnulf and Zappi on drums’, an explosion of Silver Apples, UFO’s and hurried phasered sounds that interject over the glorious rhythms. Péron knocks up a soul shaking krautrock bass riff to get this party truly off the ground.
‘Dr. Schwitters’ whips up a mesmerising diagnosis of baroque electro synths, holy sounding melodies and futuristic brain food on this far too short and promising exquisite burst of ethereal bewitchment. The good doctor of the title certainly knows his pills, liberally dishing out some kaleidoscope inducing mind benders for this track. Soon we are thrust into the melancholy, as the next vignette has dark moody shifting mangled soundscapes to chew on; ones that suffocate the listener in their grip. A further couple of excerpts also stray towards the shadows, comprising of short uncomfortable bursts of Trappist monks solemnly groaning or delayed soaked chainsaws from space, cutting through an incessant tribal esoteric led drum barrage. All the while choral accompaniments float in the background, sending the willies right up you with their stirring macabre spooky wallowing.
Our good doctor returns to duty with another charmed moment of grooving, though it doesn’t have any of the same identifying themes of its counterpart, this quick shot of falling apart drums and whirling dreamy organs sure taste good though.
Side one finishes on a de-tuned untitled cacophony of cosmic slop, as chaotic forward rolling drums and alarming synthesizer currents of sparks bash away together in the primordial soup.
Side two opens with more untitled bouts of fun and trickery, as phasers, delay and echo conjugate round a shifting space age theme, before jumping head long into a menagerie of saxophones squeaking away in confused unison. These haunting animalistic sirens of sax sound like Sun Ra on a real downer, as they wallow away like a herd of brass wildebeest drifting across the Serengeti in pained expressions of woe. Storms now gather overhead on our next stop, with curious metallic sounding strings wrestled through a speed shifter grinder and taken on some oriental styled esoteric nightmare. A last departing gesture of Gothic evoking piano leaves its mark on this occult oddball.
Those low humming aeroplane drones are back on Sosna’s little suite of keyboard and guitar excursions; he is given a trio of tracks to bewilder the listener with. Firstly he builds up a Dune evocative sweeping veranda of humming bass and oscillating spirits, then lets loose on a promising piano score, played with alluring and poised composure, before ending on drip-dropping dabs of ghostly cosmic effects. These droplets work towards a rhythm and are accompanied by more over-head bombing raids and reverberating nonsense.
An old world calls from the mists on the following bundle of non-titled tracks, as an atmospheric caustic blowing soundscape is built up for a wandering set of drums and unobtrusive xylophone. This is dragged into an attention-starved moment of up-tempo tumbling rhythms, menaced with an onset of gongs, drills, rattles, scaffold tubes, which are processed through heavy reverb.
Then a twitchy guitar is let loose, pinging around and fiddling while the background burns away. Some light percussion and piano quietly go about their business, neither adding nor taking anything away from this aimless ditty.
We’re now into the final few furlongs, which are all more conventionally song based, though that’s a slight misleading description, as they’re anything but conventional. ‘Stretch Out Time’ starts with jangled guitars, bass and tambourine and Zappi’s cardboard box/tin pots sounding drum kit. The vocals ape the title and offer such poignant romantic reflections as:
‘Stretch out time, dive into my mind and sign,
Get answer and hold dime,
But not into the coco smile.
Love is really so,
Love is really true.’
Faust attempt to be loved by the listener!
‘Der Baum’ is a lo-fi affair, which constantly stop/starts over its duration. Tight delay on the drums and emphasised cymbal shimmers, go all proto ‘Jennifer’ on this warmly felt ode. A descriptive analogy to the environment is used to express some memories of a failed love affair:
‘See her sitting on her chair,
When she stops kissing I know she won’t care.
He opened the door, turned on the light,
And it hurt my eyes.’
They continue with a final regretful, but touching verse of:
‘Feeling like a tree today,
And it’s a nice feeling, yeah.
The wind has come now,
So the leaves, they’re gone,
Because the wind has come.
See her lying in her bed,
Must be a nice feeling for her head.’
The final song ‘Chère Chambre’ translates as “dear room”, though the colourful narrated French/German prose gives few clues as to whether the vocalist is spewing forth his thoughts from a lonely room, dictating an abundance of ideas to his secretly or reading aloud from a Dear John letter. Thankfully I found a transcribed translation that seems to describe a free-flowing uninterrupted spewing of motorway journeys, emotional wellbeing, questions and state of mind, all told in a story telling like rendition.
A twee folksy guitar plays all the way through in an affable manner, whilst the narrator switches languages and continues to eloquently lay down genial tones.
The Faust Tapes act as a jump-off point for the next album. With startling insights and textural ideas it draws obvious comparisons to CAN’s Limited Edition LP, which likewise dips into the psyche of the band, digging up promising snatches of pure gold. It differs however from the Faust studio albums, which tend to follow a particular theme through to a conclusion, whereas this album hops quite erratically from one idea to the next. Generally an impressive futuristic and de-constructive collection of tracks, with touches of pulchritude and effulgent wonder that further enhances the reputation of Faust as trailblazing counter culture visionary misfits.
MEMORIAL
Ye Gods….the jazz messenger, doyen of melodious free jazz and teacher of the ways, Wayne Shorter has sadly passed away. Blue Note deity, still making it, still pushing at the envelope and still relevant even in his 80s, saxophonist/clarinetist/composer Shorter leaves behind one of the most accomplished and enviable catalogues in the jazz cannon. Where do you start? Art Blakey. Miles Davis. Weather Report. Herbie Hancock. Gil Evans. The Power Of Three. Esperanza Spalding. The list goes on and on, and across so many eclectic planes; electronica to opera. And so here is just a smattering:
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Our Daily Bread 562: Ali Farka Touré ‘Voyageur’
March 2, 2023
ALBUM REVIEW/FEATURE
Dominic Valvona
Ali Farka Touré ‘Voyageur’
(World Circuit) 3rd March 2023
With a name woven into the very fabric and soil of Mali, no one performer can claim to represent such a multifaceted culture and land quite like the venerated Ali Farka Touré. That rightly celebrated titan was able to channel the various traditions of a people as diverse as the Songhaï – the ancestors of a predominantly Muslim community that once dominated the Western Sahara in the 15th and 16th centuries – and the Bozo fishing communities of the Niger River. In between that, absorbed into his burgeoning craft, Ali’s many job roles – from subsistence farming on the family land to mechanic, taxi driver and ambulance driver – brought him into contact with the pastoralist Fula and endeared him to the wonderful pentatonic harp and female voiced music of the Wassoulou region – an historical and cultural area without defined borders that on a modern map amorphously spreads out into Mali, the Ivory Coast and Guinea.
Many of which, especially the Wassoulou sound, can rightly lay claim to giving birth to our Westernised form of blues music. But don’t ever dare utter its name, as Ali, when later exposed to and picked up by audiences in Europe and the States, was saddled with that “blues” tag. He would famously dismiss such comparisons, favouring the term “local” music instead. It’s an important distinction in understanding his music. With no real equivalence in the West, the music press and media were still quick to label it so. It must be said that after first encountering a six-string acoustic guitar after seeing a 1956 ballet performance in Guinea, Ali would be inspired to tune into the radio waves emanating from across the ocean, especially the burgeoning blues sounds of Albert King and John Lee Hooker – the artist who, if any, can be said to have come closest to Ali’s sound. But soul and R&B also played their parts, with a liking for James Brown and Otis Redding. What Ali played was authentic music, the roots of which were taken with the enslaved unfortunate souls across the Atlantic.
Born himself in the central Mali town of Niafunké, close to the region of Timbuktu and the lifeline of the River Niger, Ali’s initial one-string apprenticeship flowered into a sound few have equaled since. As ever a deft, skilled expressive storyteller on the six-string as he was on the traditional thumbed and nimbly picked instruments of his homeland, the rural star’s fortunes and access to the music industry changed when he took on a job as a recording engineer for Radio Mali in the 1970s. He would record a septet of influential albums during that period for the Paris label Son Afric. Enter the label behind this, and previous, Ali Farka Touré showcases, the 80s formed World Circuit, whose instigator Anne Hunt made a journey to Mali to find Ali – now semi-retired – in the hope of signing him up. Hunt was successful in facilitating the concerts in London that would lead, in part, to a rush of adulation and several world tours. As the momentum grew giddy, with an abundance of Western artists lining up to collaborate, Ali recorded a run of impressive influential albums with such notable icons as Ry Cooder – they would team up for the World Circuit released Grammy Award (one of many) winning Talking Timbuktu LP. But despite the creative successes something didn’t feel right spiritually, the pull of his homeland just too deep. And so, Ali would return home to his birthplace, but maintain a recording schedule with the release of both the village inspired Niafunké and the Savane (released posthumously) albums. His collaborations would continue too, with an impressive doublet of Grammy winners with the kora maestro Toumani Diabate.
Photo credit: Henriette Kuypers
This latest project, produced by the label’s Nick Gold who spent time with the late Ali (his brilliant accompanying notes are full of vivid anecdotes and adventures spent with the Mali icon) and his scion, the equally gifted virtuoso Vieux Farka Touré (who I’m lucky enough to have seen live, and not blowing one’s own trumpet, has one of my lines, soundbites, used in his Wikipedia entry), is the first album of ‘unheard’ material from the legend since his 2010 posthumously released partnership with Diabate – released four years after his death from cancer in 2006. Voyageur is a welcoming addition to the catalogue, an incredible nomadic traverse of songs that capture Mali’s diversity and rich musical heritage; especially with his celebrated guests opening the sound up, travelling even further afield to those bordering regions that meet Mali.
Ali’s earthy timbre and twined, trilled, and constantly turning over guitar parts find a congruous union with the ngoni plucks of his guests Bassekou Kouyate (another leading light of the Mali scene) and Mama Sissoko, the R&B and soulful sax melodies and phrases of one-time James Brown sideman Pee Wee Elis and the majestic, carrying vocals of ‘The songbird of Wassoulou’ Oumou Sangaré.
Coalesced from a trio of recording opportunities (a 1995 session at Elephant Studios in London, a ‘91 session at Berry Street Studios, also in London, and captured recordings from the Hotel Mande in the Mali capital of Bamako in 2004) over a fifteen year span, the nine songs on this collection show a relaxed performer; the spiritual doyen of that often-used “desert blues” appellation almost effortlessly switching from flange fanning electric to spindled and rustic acoustic as he plucks out expressive paeans and yearns. Comparable acoustic and electric versions of the earnest Fula praised ode to ‘Sambadio’, the legendary fearless farmer, cultivator of the land, prove shining examples of this switch. The stripped-back campfire version heads down the rural, mosey route with a country hushed hoof-like rhythm, tool tilling sounds and a roots-based feel of Malian blues – even if we’re not supposed to use that term. Its electrifying companion is a merger of reedy tooted, pined, soulful highlife, Marvin Gaye and picked out guitar fanning.
But the album opens by administering the right kind of medicine with the Songhaï driven, stick rattling and fluty (courtesy of the Niger Fula flute player Yacouba Moumouni) swirls and undulations of the forthright vocalized ‘Safari’. The ‘medicine’ is this case refers to the guidance in bringing someone back to their senses. Ali sings that he has the medicine to cure ‘baliky lalo’ – “old men whose behavior is contrary to our customs and morals.” The song reminded me in part of fellow Malian guitar star Samba Touré. Later, and in a similar vein, the song of praise to the Bozo fishing elite who’ve mastered the water spirits, ‘Kombo Galia’, amps up that fuzzed electrified buzz with a sound that could be said to evoke swamp boogie and John Lee Hooker.
This album really comes alive with the addition of the beautifully, effortlessly commanding vocals of Oumou Sangaré. A World Circuit signing, friend to the late Ali, her ease permeates the lion-taming Fula Celebration to the Diona chief Amiri Amadou Dicko, ‘Bandolobourou’, and the acoustic, lifting and snozzled account of the Donso hunters, ‘Sadjona’. However, released in the run-up to this album, aired on YouTube last month, her lilted but resonating turn on the delicately spun and fluttered ‘Cherie’ duet (of a kind) is a particular highlight: a constantly nimble-fingered, light yet deeply felt laidback joy.
Ali Farka Touré aficionados will find this a welcome addition to the chronology, with recordings that many will have either never known about or been anticipating. But I’m sure there’s going to be surprises for even the most committed of fans. And for newcomers to Ali’s legacy, this album will prove a great entry point with its diversity and range, showing Ali with various collaborators and paying homage to several cultural styles, traditions. These songs are anything but unfinished scraps, demos, or downtime experiments. Instead, Voyageur is a collection of real quality.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Monthly Playlist Revue Of February 2023: Moonlight Benjamin, Von Pea, Philip Selway, Pussy Riot…
February 28, 2023
The Monolith Cocktail’s Monthly Playlist Of Choice Music
Picked By Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’, Gillian Stone, Graham Domain
Four hours of choice music from February, the Monolith Cocktail Revue features tunes from our reviews and columns, plus the tracks we didn’t get room to feature. This month’s selection is courtesy of Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ She, Graham Domain and Gillian Stone.
.:TRACK LIST IN FULL:.
Moonlight Benjamin ‘Wayo’
Lunar Bird ‘Creatures’
Von Pea ‘Ode To Slick Rick’
Champion Poundcake ‘RAGS ANYMORE’
Spectacular Diagnostics ‘The Played List (Ft. Sonnyjim and Kid Acne)’
The Go! Team ‘Whammy-O’
Rogue Jones ‘Fffachlwch Bach (Bach)’
the clickBAITERS ‘Rear Ended’
Lucy & The Drill Holes ‘A Mouse’
Langkamer ‘Sing At Dawn’
First Day Of Spring ‘Normal Person (Love You Forever)’
SUO ‘Blue Evening’
Bondo ‘Instrument’
Mary Ocher ‘Love Is Not A Place (Ft. Your Government)’
Novelistme ‘Make Nothing’
Benjamin Benedict ‘Furlough Blues’
Za!/Tarta Relena/La TransMegaCobla ‘El Sweep The Lehelan’
Seljuk Rustum ‘Desi Bunny’
La Tene ‘La Taillée’
Imaad Wasif ‘Mr. Fear So Long (Money Mark Rework)’
Efeks ‘As Good As It Gets (Ft. The Strange Neighbour)’
The God Fahim ‘Man Of Steel’
Fliptrix ‘OCD With The LOVE (Ft. Coops And Verb T)’
Brainorchestra ‘Thin Patience’
Flying Monk & Wz (Corrupted Monk) ‘AF1’s’
Room Of Wires ‘Welcome To The End Game’
ANKHLEJOHN & LOOK DAMIEN! ‘CELINE AT THE MET GALA’
Pussy Riot ‘Putin’s Ashes’
Geeker-Natsumi ‘A Sheep That Never Gets Lost’
ASSASSUN ‘At Gunpoint’
Neon Kittens ‘Portable Fire’
Demikhov/Norda ‘Science! Science! Science!’
Antti Lötjönen ‘Circus/Citadel Pt. III’
Saint Abdullah ‘Divine Timing Is Intuitive’
Tachycardie ‘Collision Au Sens Strict’
Kety Fusco ‘Starless’
Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters ‘Kawmélito’
Seaming To ‘Blessing’
Lisel ‘Immature’
Sly Moon ‘The Ghosts Comin’’
FUZ ‘First light’
Lavar The Star & Shabazz Palaces ‘Glass Top Roof (The One)’
Mecánica Clásica ‘Mantra De Felpa’
Kalia Vandever ‘Temper The Wound’
Xqui & Kaiho Zion ‘Agori Quitonie’
Stereo Hypnosis & Roedelius ‘VÍK I’
Philip Selway ‘Strange Dance’
The Good Ones ‘This Amazing Love Has Stayed With Me’
NO(w) Beauty ‘Atonia’
Floral Portrait ‘Winter Isolation’
Hawk Percival And Friends ‘The Mountain’
The Mining Co. ‘Wake Up’
Steve Stoeckel ‘Just One Kiss’
Chris Plum ‘As Long As The Sun’
Total Refreshment Centre ‘Black (Ft. Brother Portrait)’
Anteek Recipes ‘NY Fatcap’
Verb T & Illinformed ‘Bogus Journey’
Hus KingPin ‘Tony (Ft. Sagelnfinite)’ Copywrite/AWOL One & Kount Fif ‘Word From Our Sponsor’
Our Daily Bread 559: Dur-Dur Band Int. ‘The Berlin Session’
February 22, 2023
Album Review by Dominic Valvona
Dur-Dur Band Int. ‘The Berlin Session’
(Outhere Records) 3rd March 2023
Marking the first session of new-recorded music since the halcyon days of their heydays in 80s Somali, the revivalist legacy incarnation of the Dur-Dur Band is back with a truly “international” sounding groove. The International addition in that ensemble title not only references the sound – Somali in origin but spreading throughout the region and across the seas to evoke the rhythms of Indonesia, Thailand, the Caribbean and beyond – but also the history and consequences of a band that has been forced to split up and flee abroad to escape the civil war.
A band for decades now in a diaspora, the original line-up that first caused a sensation on the Euro-chic Via Roma stretch of Mogadishu’s cafes, cinema and music culture has changed over time. But founding member and bass player Cabdill Cujeeri (some names can be confusing as people switch between their Somali spellings and English, which in this case is Abdillahi Ugery) with vocalists Xabiib Sharaabi (the Somali “king of pop”) and Faadumina Hilowle have been joined by a number of other talented Somalia’s: even members from rival groups.
It must be stated – depending on what source you use or find – that the band’s history is a complicated one. Sharing the stage with that other famous and popular Somali group, the Iftin Band, the initial Dur-Dur Band could be found hotfooting across both the stages of the Jubba Hotel and the Mogadishu National Theatre before civil unrest and war forced them to disband in the 90s and scatter to the four winds. At one point they reconvened in Addis Ababa, over the border in Ethiopia. A move that makes perfect sense musically yet came with its own drawbacks. Members then emigrated to Djibouti, the USA and UK. It would be a fundraiser that brought them back together, or rather a loose configuration of that troupe, in 2003 with the Somali “revivalist” and community advocate Liban Noah’s benefit concert for the restoration of Somalia’s Hargesia’s National Theatre. A strong tradition in the country, with pop bands and the like often state-funded, you find groups like the Dur-Dur used as backing for plays – one such run being for May One Of Us Fall In Love. This stepping out would later lead to the formation of the Dur-Dur Band Int., paying homage to their legacy and keeping the flame alive as it were. It helped of course that John Beedle – not entirely aware of who it was – uploaded a cassette tape of the band to his popular Likemba blog. Labeled as “Mystery Somali funk”, it started a whole Western clamour for both the Dur-Dur Band and their peers music. All of a sudden a flurry of compilations and collections followed, building up a picture of a near fabled, undiscovered African music scene.
The most recent chapter of a story that is vey much ongoing, finds the band going into the studio to lay down some new material ahead of a HKW performance in Berlin. With a performative enthusiasm and trio of vocalists (the Djibouti singer, founder of the Sharef Band, Cabdinuur Alaale joining Fadumina and Xabiib) the energy in the room is palpable, starting with the familiar sunny-side-up funk, radiance and looseness of ‘Wan Ka Helaa’ – which I think is a riff or meant to be a version of Fadumu Qassim and the Waaberi Band’s ‘Waakaa Helaa’ (or, “I Like You”). Afro-beat, shades of Cambodia and Ethiopia, a touch of the Hues Corporation lilted upbeat, the Lijadu Sisters and Gyedu-Blay Ambolly converge on one soulful introduction.
We’re into a reggae vibe, or to be exact the North Somali and Ethiopian neighbour’s “Dhaanto” style that’s said to have inspired that Jamaican honed phenomenon, on the simmered and Compass Point Allstars (Cabdinuus – I think – sounding almost like Grace jones) sounding ‘Riyo’. On the next song that Dhaanto gait starts to merge with slackened ska and Ethio-jazz. But it’s back to a shuffle and swing of Mogadishu funk, soul, zappy keyboards and ray-fanned organ on the second half of the album. There’s even room for some spells of Kuti, a little Ebo Taylor and Xasan Diiriya in that magical mix of yearned and excitable love and plaint.
Simultaneously familiar whilst offering a fresh songbook (of a sort), the Dur-Dur Band Int. Berlin Session is as lilting as it is dynamic. Above all it’s always grooving to a unique fusion of worldly rhythms and beats, catapulting that Somali funk to new heights and hopefully making new fans with lively and cool performances. Nothing should keep you buying a copy.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Perusal #40: Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters, Moonlight Benjamin, BONDO, Kety Fusco, Antti Lötjönen…
February 15, 2023
Upcoming and recent albums in review
Dominic Valvona
Moonlight Benjamin ‘Wayo’
24th February 2023
PHOTO CREDIT: Cedrick Nöt
No one quite channels the “iwa” spirits and musical, drum-beating ceremony of Haitian vodou like one of its most exhilarating priestesses, Moonlight Benjamin. Returning with her atmospheric and grinded-scuzz swamp-blues foil Matthis Pascaud for a third manifestation of hungered electrified vodou-blues, Moonlight roughs up and adds a wider tumult of energy to her vocally incredible and dirt music imbued sound of deep southern roots, West African and Hispaniola influences: an all-round Francophone sound you could say, from Louisiana to Mali and, of course, her homeland of Haiti.
Born into this mortal world in tragic circumstances, an orphan at childbirth, the poetically named Moonlight started out singing hymns in the Christian Church before crossing the paths of vodou musicians, acolytes and picking up on the sounds of Western rock music on the radio. But with an eventual move to France, Moonlight would also take up the study of jazz. A return in 2009 to Haiti and vodou initiation, Moonlight became a priestess of an age-old religion, practice originally brought to Haitian shores by slaves from West and Central Africa.
Famous for its worked-up rhythmic rituals and exaltations, drama, the sounds and expressive vocalization of vodou was coupled to a myriad of bluesy, rocking, psychedelic, country and desert styles when the guitarist Pascaud entered the picture. Two critically favored, compelling and adventurous albums and numerous gigs later this sonic and, most importantly, vocal partnership now summons up something very special, soulful, spiritual and charged on Wayo.
Translating into a “scream of pain”, the title-track finds Moonlight commanding strength yet also emotional as a tempered, melodious if raw gumbo of New Orleans and Tuareg post-punk swamp blues buzzes around her. That voice, its range from earthiness to squeals and the deeply welled, is hard to compare with anyone else. Melodic with plenty of familiar tunes, those beautiful if on occasion riled tones evoke fleeting grasps of Joan Armatrading, Ami Kate, Brittany Howard, Cold Specks and Big Joanie. Yet this is Afro-Haitian soul, R&B, the venerable and raging conversing with French chanteuse and Portuguese fado; with camel motion traverses and panoramic spells in desert Westerns.
For his part, Pascaud’s sprung, tremolo and gristly guitar, with both a grinding coil and velocity and more melting wanes, stirs up a sinewy flex of Tinariwan, Modu Moctar, Hendrix and Mark Mulholland’s collaboration with another Haiti native, the poet-artist Frankétiene.
With the addition of a bass guitar and drums elements of Boukmen Eksperyans and the Vodoun Band Haiti beat comes into contact with soul revue backbeats, post-punk and cult rock ‘n’ roll.
All together it’s a real rich, ever-changing landscape of driven, slapping, bobbed and stonking rhythms and powerful, rough and yet elegant vocals with a sense of both pain and magic. As wild as it is composed, Moonlight Benjamin takes the vodou spirits back home to Africa, before returning, via the bayou, to Haiti on another fraught electrified album of divine communication.
Antti Lötjönen ‘Circus/Citadel’
(We Jazz) 24th February 2023
During the initial pandemic wave of April 2020 the double-bassist maestro Antti Lötjönen released his debut proper as bandleader to a quintet of exciting Finnish jazz talent.
That album, Quintet East, with its monograph vignettes and flexible free-play of be bop, Sonny Clark, the left bank and Bernstein-like musical NYC skylines, is improved upon by the ensemble’s follow-up, Circus/Citadel. With a title both inspired and imbued by the Romanian-born, German-language titan of 20th century poetry, Paul Celan, the issues of a tumultuous world on the precipice of disaster is channeled through a controlled chaos and a reach for the old and new forms of expressive jazz.
The seasoned Lötjönen, whose provenance includes stints in the Five Corners Quintet, 3TM and Aki Rissanen Trio, reels back in the talents of the alto and baritone saxophonist Mikko Innanen (part of the We Jazz label supergroup Kamo Saxo), tenor saxophonist Jussi Kannaste (a fellow 3TM band mate), trumpet player Verneri Pohjola and drummer Joonas Rippa on another highly impressive outing.
More coherent than the last time around however, the themes of the day, the protestations are galvanized and turned inside-out across a concrete vine swinging, guarded and maddening landscape. Celan’s harrowing verse, consumed as is right with WWII and the Holocaust, his Jewish struggles, is reflected by those old and contemporary challenges with a musicality that evokes the social conscious jazz records of Marcus Belgrave, Sam Rivers and Phil Ranelin. And yet the opening title-track three-part act and its couplet of suites also serenade and offer a lilted New Orleans fanfare, suggestive of America’s earlier Southern States jazz roots. That first trilogy of tracks is a journey in itself; from Dixie and Savoy Jazz (Gigi Gryce for one) to those musical, theatrical sounds of Bernstein and early Miles Davis, through to the farmyard percussion and wilder rushes of sax and trumpet on the final act. It feels at times like an avant-garde or free-jazz modernist score to Animal Farm. With all the connotations, metaphors that title implies, the circus of madness and fortress mentality are played off against each other.
Each suite breaks off into expressive groups, separations, with perhaps the horn section together or double bass and drums reacting to each other in almost isolation. Numerous versions of this practice, these little breakdowns, combos can be heard throughout; all played with expanding minds and adroit skill, dexterity and, that word again, expression. And there are some both playful (is that a “pop goes the weasel” riff on the activist-stoked ‘Defenestration’?) and wailing surprises to be heard on this bounded mix of the quickened, the controlled and purposeful.
I’m always building the We Jazz label up; always aggrandising that Helsinki based hub of Scandinavian jazz. But really, this is an enriching, immersive and artful start to the label’s 2023 calendar with a classic jazz album in the making. I reckon it will be one of the year’s best.
Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters ‘Abri Cyclonique’
(Real World) 24th February 2023
Suffused, elevated and morphed with Parisian-based Doctor L’s jazz, electronica Francophone new waves and trip-hop, the ancestral Guadeloupe rural folk traditions of Léwòz and one of its renowned modern practitioners-deliverers Moïse Polobi is transformed into an environmental traverse. As the good doctor has proscribed so well for Les Amazon D’Afrique and the Mbongwana Stars, the roots of another form are, with subtle wondering and sophistication, given a unique sound experience.
At the heart of the 69-year-old farm worker and lumberjack’s earthy song music is a three-drum circle of rhythms. A disciple since being introduced by his Léwòz practicing mother at the age of twelve to this West African originated ritual, dance and music Polobi is a master of the Gwaka, a family of hand drums of all different sizes, used for various effects and parts – the “Buula” for example, being the largest of that family, used as the central rhythm. The “Djeme” is another; a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet shaped drum, its origins tied to the 15th century Mali Empire and its spread across the region; taken up by those unfortunate souls catered off to the Americas during the Transatlantic slave trade.
As an ancestor of those slaves, brought over to the French colonized Guadeloupe archipelago to harvest sugar (among other roles) on the plantations, Polobi’s identity is very much on show here; a call both pleading and poetically ached as this group of islands continues to be attached to France as a “region” – as a consequence, part of the EU too – despite decades of independence campaigns. And that’s despite the Colonist masters loss of the Caribbean islands during its own revolution to the British (the first of two attempts to take them). Yet with certain conditions, it remains a semi-autonomous part of France to this day. This means there’s a strong French culture, especially language wise, with French being the official dialect, but Creole really the more popular used amongst the locals. It’s alluded to in the lyrics on this new album’s trippy ‘Bouladje’ song: “What language should I speak? This one says speak to me in Creole/ This one says speak to me in French. Music is in French/ As children we sang in Creole/ Let’s talk to make ourselves understood.”
The call and response, Cándido-like hand drums rattling and rolled (we’re told Doctor L replaced the drums here with Cuban rhythms) ‘Neg Africa’ makes that connection to displacement from the homeland obvious; sounding as it does like an African homage musically and atmospherically.
To my own ignorance I never knew that there was as Tour de Guadalupe in the cycling calendar. Won by the promising Colombian talent of the same name ‘Camargo’ uses a mirage of nuzzled distant trumpet, slightly elliptical drumming and electronic processes to call for the locals to get energized and to win back the “yellow jersey”; a boost for Guadalupe’s population to take back their own destiny, to feel bolstered with a can-do attitude. Polobi it must be said is a cycling fan, so it can be read as a tribute to that Central American cycling star too.
As important as self-determination is and the struggle to preserve traditions, this album is as much about Polobi’s response to his natural environment. Named after the terrifying threats and realties of cyclones – though also a metaphor we’re told for the “resilience” of the music and for resistance – Abri Cyclonique pays a real tribute to Polobi’s little oasis out in the wilds of the archipelago’s Grande Savane region. ‘La Lézad’, with its spiral wafts of jazzy horn, drum scuttles and Gnawa-like vocals is named after a local river, whilst the mysterious Afro-Caribbean, Terry Hall meets Black Mango ‘Driv’ meanders lyrically through the geography towards the woods.
Biodiversity in sonic form, with the flora, fauna, crops and wildlife permeating the sophisticated interlaced production, Polobi’s rustic idyll comes alive: as much a barrier to the infringing forces of big business as a call to return back to a simpler life in harmony with nature.
A very personal album, this is the first to be released under Polobi’s own name. Previously the Guadalupe star has performed with his Indestawa Ka band, releasing eight albums and performing internationally. But this cyclonic whirlwind is something different, a galvanised, electrified and bolstered earthy and magical vision of his country’s past, present and future. It’s one of the most interesting albums yet in 2023, with a sound that reboots folkloric traditions in the face of an ever-encroaching modernity.
Kety Fusco ‘THE HARP, Chapter 1’
(Floating Notes Records) 3rd March 2023
“The harp was born in the 7th century, when the air was different, tastes and experiences had nothing to do with today’s world and to this day I cannot think that there is no evolution: that is why I am designing a new harp, it will still be her, but contemporary and everyone will have the opportunity to approach it; in the meantime, welcome to THE HARP”.
And with that Kety Fusco elicits, pulls, scratches, picks and manipulates both liminal and suggestive notes, textures, timbres, qualities and evocations from her choice instrument on the first of a three-chapter journey in harp exploration. But as that opening quote states, this is nothing less than an “evolution”; a post-classical transformation in which the harp, though present and familiar, is pulled into realms of serialism, soundscaping and futurism: all that history forgotten, or at least erased, in pursuit of innovation and the new.
This means certain avant-garde practices and non-musical materials, processes being brought in to the equation. Hairpins, stones, wax have all been used in the past on Fusco’s often-improvised performative compositions, peregrinations and suites. To further distance the harp from its classical, folk and majestic roots, Fusco uses an electrified soundboard of effects and a database library of digital sounds she’s collected over the years. On this nineteen-minute, more or less seamless journey, the Italian artist is said to have even used a vibrator – banging it against that already mentioned soundboard. Such devices do indeed change the scope of the instrument, making it almost abstract, recondite, the source hidden aurally.
Fusco uses both an 80-kilo wooden harp and a carbon electric harp on Chapter 1 in the new series – chapters 2 and 3 appearing annually over the next three years –, which across its duration passes through the states of elegy, the disturbing, the supernatural and diaphanous.
With an impressive CV of study, accolades and notable performances at festivals, events, even the Swiss parliament, Fusco knows her instrument, theory and practice inside-out. And so whilst there’s a spirit of experimentation and improvisation, Fusco knows exactly what she’s doing, implying and creating.
Released in the run-up to this album a short excerpt, ‘2072’, alluded to the premonition year of Fusco’s death! A Cassandra perhaps, or maybe told this date by a fortuneteller, a meeting with destiny, a preparation for death is congruously pulled form out of the whole piece. The melody is a funeral elegy, destined to carry Fusco over into the next world. Not so much a cascade, as the waves of purposeful picked notes are allowed to ring out each time, given a little space before the next iteration, there’s a sense of some kind of watery flow; a peace of mind with naturalistic stirrings. And yet there is that sadness too, emanating from airy mystery.
No surprises that Fusco has previously conjured up a horror soundtrack, as there’s a constant feeling of the shadowy, even eerie throughout much of the rest of this suite. Especially in the opening passages, I can hear hints of Lucrecia Dalt. Voice-like sounds, both apparitional and almost esoterically holy, stir whilst granular and clearer but mysterious drones and melodies start to build. Glissando and legato notes simultaneously seem light and yet loaded. The atmospheres that are produced move between the chthonian, the vaporous, airy and metallic. Because whilst there’s melody, a rhythm at times, the sound turns more industrial near the end with a film and rotor-like abrasion of steel and wire.
At other times there’s moments of ambience, a sprinkle of starry calculus and reflective stillness.
The harp has seldom sounded so removed, different; Fusco at one, entwined with her harps in a challenging performance that stretches the limits of this usually synonymous heavenly instrument. Where she goes next is anyone’s guess, but I’m sure it will be a whole different experience in sound and stringed exploration that pushes the envelope.
Za! ‘Za! & La Transmegacobla’
3 Phaz ‘Ends Meet’
(Via Discrepant)
An electrified double-bill from the discrepant portal of outlier labels this month, with albums from the Iberian (but worldly reaching) Za! duo and friends and the singular electronic-percussive global beat-maker 3 Phaz.
The first of these finds the Spanish underground favourites Za! in a “tri-state” union with the experimental Catalan Cobla wind quartet La Megacobla and the “trans-folk” duo of Tarta Relena. All together in one space they pool their resources into one, almost exhaustive, opus of controlled chaos and polygenesis musical abandon.
A Kabbalah, a cult that you might actually want to join – willing to sip the spiked kool aid with enthusiasm -, whole branches of Mediterranean dances (from the West Bulgarian quick-quick-slow-quick-quick metric beat Kopanista, to the complex bustling and cheerful Flamenco style of Buleria and the dance in a circle, Catalan, Sardana), folk traditions and sounds from atavistic realms are transported into a colourful vortex of psych, prog, krautrock, heavier riffage and heavy meta(l).
The whole is both crazy and life affirming; a burst of energy and spasmodic cross-pollination. It’s as if Zappa dropped acid in The Master Musicians Of Jajouka’s tea; a heady mix of Anatolian-Turkey, North Africa, Moorish Spain, Eastern Europe and The Levant mixed with hippie ideology and freewheeling cosmic fantasies. At any onetime I can hear snatches, a gaggale of Dakhu Brakha, Elektro Hafiz, Elias Rahbani, Crystal Fighters, Jethro Tull, Tone Of Voice Orchestra, Hebrew, the Medieval, the Tibetan and Moroccan.
A mizmar of the heralded and the theatrical, this combined effort of wild disciplines, influences and practices is a convergence of untethered rituals, ceremonies, spins and mayhem. A place in which Ethno-music and the sounds and traditions of Spain make free associations with a family tree that’s branches spread across the Med and further afield. And yet it all sounds so very new and refreshing.
The second release in this double-bill finds the artist 3Phaz amping up the Egyptian Shaabi sound with a highly percussive mix of Mahraganat (an Egyptian electro street sound originally derived from folk music), Techno and various Bass-heavy subcultures.
A very popular working class music, that Shaabi vibe is rhythmically transported, flung forward into a futuristic soundclash vision of electronica and beats. Although “clash” isn’t the right word as this process, experiment is pretty congruous, with those rattling hand drums, percussive trinket rings and scrapes and both fluted and piped mizmar is very much in synch with the metallic synthesized effects, rounded if deep bass pulsations and sonic signals. Put it another way: that Egyptian, Middle Eastern source material is ramped up in a spin, swirl and body-locking production of electro, jungle music and fuzzed, fizzled alternative futurism.
Tracks like ‘Sharayet’, with its rapid hand drummed drills, willowed Egyptian oboe and acid Arabia beats, sounds like Farhot meets Man parish in Cairo! Meanwhile, ‘Type Beat’ has a more club-y sound mixed with stirrings of Dave Clarke, whilst ‘Shabber’ seems to merge the street sounds of the souk market with Jeff Mills. Neither dystopian nor joyous, Ends Meet is instead a heady septet of electro-techno powered Arabian and Egyptian workouts; a rallying excitable transformation of traditional folk sucked into a newly formed vortex.
The Mining Co. ‘Gum Card’
(PinDrop Records) 17th March 2023
Not so much an artistic leap in the dark, Michael Gallagher has nevertheless put aside his conceptual method of preparation and writing for something less structured and preconceived. On his latest and fifth album, Gum Card, the Donegal native, but London-based, artist and musician has instead managed to piece together a loose theme of nostalgia and youth; throwbacks to an age of obsessive card collecting to particular life-affirming scenes and foolish misadventures (or rather the failure of) dabbling with the occult.
These weathered memories, reminisces are interjected with episodes of artistic doubt, phobias and ambient-settings scored, partially, with in-situ recordings of the atmosphere and room in which they are meant to be recorded – the lounge style Casio keyboard accompanied leftfield ruminating ‘Waiting Room’ for example, originally part of a wider concept of songs to be conceived in a chosen room environment, using that spaces own ambient sounds.
The Casio sound does however highlight Gallagher’s taste for experimenting with the music of his youth in the 80s. A touch of Fleetwood Mac here, some dry-ice and a little retro-cosmic projection over there. Although Gallagher’s soft-peddled signature of Americana and troubadour songwriting is still very much in attendance; a gentle mix of a winsome Chris Isaak and Spain. If anything Gum Card has more in common with the album before last, Frontier, then the previous sci-fi imbued Phenomenolgy – his best work in my opinion. However, no one style dominates this songbook as such, and I consider this album another experiment, progression of his craft. Because amongst the initial knowing MOR and softly-delivered aches and yearns of ‘Primary’, a subtle flange-dream spell of 2000s indie colours the bluesy vibe on a song in which the protagonists are trying to avoid such despondent melodrama, which is ironic as Gallagher actually doesn’t even like the blues.
Later on there’s a hint of Mike Gale’s Casio Bossa pre-set on the memory lane feely ‘Shallow Stream’ (dedicated to fishing with Dad back in Donegal as a young lad, and memorable for accidently harpooning his old man’s hand with a fish hook), shades of Galaxie 500 and Mercury Rev on the title-track, and strobe-lit purred electro-pop on ‘Limits’.
As always there’s great subtlety at work, a slow reveal of emotional pulls and fragility; of nostalgia and memories seen at a great distance, revalued both with wisdom and yet confliction too. Some of the strangest of those draws features Gallagher’s wife, unintentionally stepping in to soothingly sing the opening ‘Wake Up’, and the subject matter of the stripped-back, intimate yearned closer ‘Broken Baby Bird’. Both bookend the album with hospital set pieces; the first, a lunar Fiona Apple and Western-tinged delirium about Gallagher’s fear of the place and needles, the second, a caring allusion to his wife’s vulnerable state after undergoing a major operation: the fledgling fallen from a nest to the ground. Obsessions of youth continuing into adulthood, the worries over loved ones and glimmers of storytelling are all converged with Gallagher’s usual slow release and an ear for something a little different to the usual American, troubadour style of deliverance. He might loathe his London home of recent years, and dream of leaving, yet that crumbling edifice has incubated the development of a real talent; a moody soul with an amiable burr who’s simultaneously comfortable and yet despondent at the state of it all. The Mining Co. proves a brilliant vehicle for Gallagher as he matures into an interesting storyteller and observer, and Gum Card is yet another finely tuned songbook from the Donegal longing maverick.
BONDO ‘Print Selections’
(Quindi Records) 24th February 2023
How does such a languorous sound still have such drive and purpose? Far from listless, definitely not “aimless”, the L.A. quartet reimagines Fugazi as beachcombers, enticed by the twilight hours of a Pacific Ocean surf on their debut album.
Locked-in (“consumed in the process” as they put it) BONDO wind and unwind, drift and with a navel downward gaze somehow weave the indolent slacker vibe into post-hardcore, post-rock, jazzy (that Archie Shep influence in the band’s PR spill not actually that difficult to imagine), lo fi, grunge-y evocations of displacement. The idea being that each member of the band, each personality is “dissolved” to make way for the music, the theme no less than a “mind made anew”, “cleared of data and ego” yet witnessing “nothing in particular”.
With very little in the way of vocals or prompts, it’s mainly down to the feels of the music and the action, which on occasions builds up a surprising intensity on tracks like the “let it all go” spurred grind and slowcore, yet almost carefree, ‘New Brain’ – think OWLS and Bedhead with a touch of Acetones thrown in.
This is California alright, but one in which the punks, garage bands and downcast all hang out on the beachfronts, or, clear their heads whilst observing the coastal tides ebb and flow. And yet, most surprisingly (although that PR spill does name King Tubby as an influence) the Pavement-esque, baggy at times, languid and slowly hung guitar arcs ‘Zion Gate’ (clue is in the title) has a dub-like bent to it.
Print Selections is filled with recast rumbled surf music, echoes of Slint and The Archers Of Loaf, splish ‘n’ splash drums and processed guitars diligently working towards an unburdened purpose and shape. BONDO have risen to the challenge of the album format, holding attention and the gaze with an intelligent visceral L.A. malaise and languorous challenge to cut loose and find those new horizons.
Farid El Atrache ‘Nagham Fi Hayati’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) Available Now
In between leftfield excursions to Japan, cult French label showcases and repressed funk and soul rarities the reissue specialists (branching out with bands like Biensüre into releasing brand new original material too) WEWANTSOUNDS delve into the magic and sublime music of North Africa, Arabia and the Levant with this cinematic treasure from the late Egyptian superstar Farid El Atrache.
Released in 1974, the year that Farid passed away, the Nagham Fi Hayati album is a soundtrack of mawwal-longed sentiment, quickened shimmies and virtuoso performances that show off the matinee idol, singer and oud maestro’s repertoire: now at its most sagacious if ailing.
But first a little background. Born into a princely Druze clan family tree in Syria during WWI, in the grip of fighting with the French colonizers, Fraid, his mother and siblings were forced to flee the homeland. At around the age of nine Farid would pitch up in Egypt; staying until his death in the 1970s. Learning much from his Lebanese mother’s own musical prowess as a singer and oud player, the burgeoning pupil soon came to the attention of his elders; learning for a time under the stewardship of the polymath Egyptian composer Riad Al Sunbat, he would quickly make it to the airwaves, appearing on the country’s National radio station. Moves into the flourishing Egyptian movie business would follow; Farid appearing in thirty-one musical films in total.
As a playboy figure that never quite made it to the alter, Farid romanced co-stars, famous belly dancers and even a former Queen – before his ousting, King Farouk’s wife Nariman Sadek – whilst maintaining a career on celluloid, stage and as a recording artist popular across the entire Arab world and even beyond – a favourite of Brian Eno mo less, a snippet from his famous ‘Awad Hamsa’ song of the 60s was used on John Lennon’s art project ‘Revolution No. 9’.
As it happens, he plays the aging respected singing star in the movie that this album soundtracks. And once the much younger rival ships out to find wealth in Brazil, at first saves, out of kindness, the fallen heroine (played by Mervat Amin) from public shame before falling in love with her for real. Directed by the famed Egyptian director Henry Barakat, Nagham Fi Hayati finds Farid’s character, even with a sizable age gap, doing the honorable thing in marrying his pregnant secretary, the father now across the world with no idea he’s left his former lover knocked-up.
Musically this translates into the lushly and swirled orchestrated classicism, Arabian poetry of sentimental longing and fulgurated vowel prolonged lamenting matinee, ‘Alachan Malich Gheirak’ (“Because There Is No One Else For Me But You”), and the equally yearned emotional orchestration of drama, Franco-Arabian and concertinaed charm, ‘Ya Habaybi Ya Ghaybin’ (“My Absent Lover”).
Sitting between those love-lost and resigned suites, ‘Hebina Hebina’ (“Love Us, Love Us”) picks up the pace with North African darting and dotted quickening organ and a mixed chorus of backing singers, encouragingly and excitedly clapping away.
Appearing for the first time in its full-unedited form (a section was originally cut from the original LP version), the incredible unaccompanied lute set, ‘Takassim Oud’, finds Farid proving every bit the “king” of that stringed instrument. An appreciative audience constantly animated and bursting into applause, eggs on a solo performance that evokes flourishes of Spain, Turkey, and Arabian folk, and Egyptian desert mirages. It’s like witnessing something as sublime, virtuoso and mesmerizing as Django Rhinehardt, only its on the bandy, elastic, thumbed and strummed, picked and plucked, jumping and blurry rapid scales resonating oud.
The first reissue on vinyl since the 70s, this skilfully performed filmic affair-of-the-heart can now be yours. I suggest you make room for it in your collection now, but also start sourcing those old Egyptian movies. Farid was a titan of the form; his voice sublime and musicianship masterful. What a real pleasure to be made aware of this artist and star. Big thanks to WEWANTSOUNDS for that.
GRANDAD ‘S-T’
6th March 2023
Remaining anonymous for now, the E numbers fed maverick who sits behind the GRANDAD alias regurgitates the sort of electronic goofiness that labels such as Artetetra and Bearsuit knock out with such aplomb.
Bauhaus avant-garde theatre morphs into wired skittles’ rainbow cutes, or, a transmogrified Candy Crush on the debut EP by this noted orchestrator, composer and mischievous artist. If I listed the many “illustrious” figures from the scene that this alter ego has worked with, then I’m sure you’d guess who it is. So instead just trust me that this is a seasoned pro who hasn’t just splurged on Damon Hirst’s medicine cabinet but knows (I think anyway) exactly what they’re doing.
A rush of Japanese cartoon fantasy and platform gameplay scores, garbled indigestion and springy silliness is all synchronized with (what sounds like to me) visions of a reggae-house Felix Da Housecat, Egyptian Lover electro, Mike Dred’s spindled rushes and a surprising spot of scenic gazing (the EP’s final harmonium-like, freshly breathed trans-alpine mirage ‘Pest’, which has a touch of Roedelius about it). And then there’s also a scuffed and worked merger of early Jeff Mills, Populäre Mechanik and Basic Channel on the penultimate tubular hammering ‘Runner Runner’.
Attention deficit disorderly conduct wrapped up with more dramatic looming deep moods, kinetic chain reactions, giddy and heavily processed voices (from where or what, who knows) and intricate beat making, GRANDAD’s debut EP submerges and mutilates echoes of µ-Ziq, Autechre, Ippu Mitsui and Andrew Spackman’s SAD MAN project.
Zigzag pills are popped and metals beaten out on, despite all I’ve said, quite a focused set of maximalist propositions. Although, just to further pull this debut EP into the psychedelic-induced realms, the CD is being packaged by the aptly entitled and self-evident mushroom technologists, the Magical Mushroom Company, whose aim is not to microdot the general public but to replace plastic with the “magic of mushrooms”. Lick it and see: it might work. But you won’t need any drukqs or stimulants to enjoy this deep set of colour and goofball electronica.
Room Of Wires ‘Welcome To The End Game’
(Ant-Zen) 15th February 2023
A buzz, whine, flex and resonating ring of zinc and alloy, of recondite machines, permeates another heavy set from the Room Of Wires duo. The latest in a strong catalogue of such dark materials and alien mystery, Welcome To The End Game ties together a complex of dystopian woes, rage and dramas into an interlayered twisting and expanding metal muscled album of electronic.
Although both partners (both called Andrew as it happens) have never actually met, and each track is created apart in isolation remotely, every single fibre and inch of their processes comes together to sculpt the nightmares of our technological encroaching and constantly under surveillance world with a search, an escape, into the light. In practice this means for every granular and shadowy techno reverberation there’s a smattering of ambient and neoclassical passages.
It all starts with the sound of Cabaret Voltaire’s Arabian-electro protestations and snatches of dialogue, and moves across a vivid modulated, oscillating structure of ominous strains, tubular mettalics, deep bass-y echoes, slowed and stretched beats and the sound of kinetic-static charged ballbearings being moved around in a circular fashion.
‘Oceans Light’, featuring exm, is a surprise with its ascending beams of light, rising from the refracted still waters, and the mournful ‘Burial’ features a touch of Dead Can Dance’s ethereal, but also Eastern European holy, gauze, which brings some gravitas to the lamentable misty scene. Elsewhere there’s a grind and cosmic concentration of Cosey Fani Tutti, Gescom, Amorphous Androgynous, Art Decade and Mouse On Mars to be found lurking or springing into view.
An often unnerving experience in which you’re never quite sure of the environment, this electronic duo tap into the growing unease and fast-shifting realities of our present cataclysm, of which they believe, by the title, we’ve reached the “end game”, whatever that will reveal. As I said a few paragraphs ago, Room Of Wires navigate and balance the uncertainty with glimmers of escape, and moments of hope and release; the machinations and unseen forces that bear down upon us all at least dissipated enough to offer some light.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist #73: Stella Chiweshe, Digable Planets, Milk TV, Sonic Youth, Bob Dylan, Dori Sorride…
February 13, 2023
Anniversary Albums And Deaths Marked Alongside An Eclectic Mix Of Cross-Generational Music, Newish Tunes And Surprises.
To reiterate last month’s message, just give me two hours of your precious time to expose you to some of the most magical, incredible, eclectic and freakish music that’s somehow been missed, or not even picked up on the radar. For the Social is my uninterrupted radio show flow of carefully curated music; marking anniversary albums and, sadly, deaths, but also sharing my own favourite discoveries over the decades and a number of new(ish) tracks missed or left out of the blog’s Monthly playlists.
Anniversary picks this month include tracks from 50th anniversary celebrating LPs from Dr. John (In The Right Place), Alice Cooper (Billion Dollar Babies) and The Stooges (Raw Power); 40th’s from the likes of Echo And The Bunnymen (Porcupine) and Sonic Youth (Confusion Is Sex); hip-hop heavy 30th’s from the Souls Of Mischief (93 ’till Infinity), Digable Planets (Reachin‘) and Brand Nubian (In God We Trust), plus more indie, just on the cusp of Britpop fair from Radiohead (Pablo Honey) and The Auteurs (New Wave).
Marking those who’ve passed on in the last four weeks, where do you begin to start with such titans as Burt Bacharach, his genius, melody writ large into the very fabric of our culture, our cinema and musical cannon. Well, you just pick a favourite, and so I’ve gone for that Walkers Brother classic ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’. Similarly how do you represent the extensive, long career of the Zimbabwean songstress and ‘Queen of Mbira’ Stella Chiweshe with just one choice track. Again, just pick what you love and so here’s the opening buoyant lilt from her more recent Ambuya! album, ‘Chachimurenga’. It has been a terrible month for notable deaths, and so we also have tracks from Tom Verlaine and Yukihiro Takahashi too; the former, from the iconic doyen of alternative rock, new wave, punk’s 1979 eponymous solo, and the latter, taken from the former Yellow Magic Orchestra instigators’s 1981 solo album, Neuromatic – out new romantic(ing) the new romantics, and out Japan(ing) Sylvain’s Japan.
In the new(ish) category I’ve chosen a smattering of delights from Neuro….No Neuro, Karen Vogt & Simon McCorry, Marlene Riberio and Milk TV. That just leaves a curated selection of discoveries and music from my collection from across time and genres, and those older releases that have just been uploaded to Spotify in recent weeks, with songs and music from Jessie Mae Hemphill, Seventies Tuberide, Phil Mufu, A. R. & The Machines, Leo Sayer, Laurence Vanay, Chip Wickham, Ramon Farran & Lucia Graves and many more.
::That Tracklist In Full::
Stella Chiweshe ‘Chachimurenga’
A.R. & The Machines ‘Echo Boogie – Live At Elbphilharmonie Hamburg’
Dr. John ‘I Been Hoodood’
Digable Planets ‘Nickel Bags’
Madison Washington ‘((((Facts)))))’
Souls Of Mischief ‘Never No More’
Brand Nubian ‘Punks Jump Up To Get Beat Down’
Jessie Mae Hemphill ‘Tell Me You Love Me’
Some Cash Players ‘Cold 40s’
Seventies Tuberide ‘Eyes Closed’
Milk TV ‘Bowery’s Swing’
Tom Verlaine ‘Red Leaves’
Sonic Youth ‘Confusion Is Next’
Radiohead ‘I Can’t’
The Auteurs ‘How Could I Be Wrong’
Blue House ‘Accelerate’
Yukihiro Takahashi ‘Drip Dry Eyes’
Phil Mfu ‘Electronic Jam Number 7’
Joel Vandroogenbroeck ‘Rocks’
Neuro…No Neuro ‘Blunt Affect’
Karen Vogt & Simon McCorry ‘The Path Divides’
Marlene Riberio ‘You Do It’
Holly Henderson ‘The Planes’
Bob Dylan ”Till I Fell In Love With You’
Leo Sayer ‘Only A Northern Song’
Laurence Vanay ‘Voyage Les Yeux Fermes’
VRITRA ‘Safe Passage’
Burt Bacharach ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’
Dori Sorride ‘Persone Fragili’
Chip Wickham ‘Lower East Side’
Alice Cooper ‘Unfinished Sweet’
The Stooges ‘Shake Appeal’
Echo & The Bunnymen ‘Back Of Love’
Ramon Farran & Robert Graves ‘Under The Olives’
Nyokabi Kariuki ‘Ngurumo, Or Feeding Goats Mangoes’
Dougie Stu ‘Silhouettes’
Our Daily Bread 557: Trupa Trupa ‘ttt’
February 9, 2023
Cassette Tape Album Review
Trupa Trupa ‘ttt’
(Glitterbeat Records) 21st February 2023
The Polish outfit Trupa Trupa fashion their very own Faust Tapes out of an accumulation of sonic explorations, unfinished jams and rehearsal sessions, field recordings and play, off the back of their highly acclaimed (made my choice albums list of 2022) B Flat A album last year.
In the interval between recording new martial ttt is an almost seamless cassette offering of two experimental sound collages – coming in at just under the forty-minute mark. A development played out under the spell of psychedelic hallucination, mirage and more caustic machined distortions and abrasions, the triple “ts” experiment could be read as a really untethered avant-garde outlet for the band. Not that they’ve ever been conventional on that front with previous works melding and contorting, as they do, psych with no wave, post-punk, the industrial and indie to produce a multi-limbed psycho drama or revelation, the hypnotic and propulsive.
In fact, and as this latest couplet of suites proves, Trupa Trupa have always managed to layer the meta, whether its been on the Syd Barrett-esque succinct voiced lyricism of the whirled kooky ‘Uniforms’ (from B Flat A) or the heavy guitar wrangled, Swans cover The Church, ‘Remainder’ (from the 2019 album Of The Sun). Of The Sun, as I wrote at the time, even has a sort of Can Unlimited track called ‘Angle’, which wouldn’t sound out of place on this tape. As it also happens, Can’s late tape manipulator, early sampler and cut-up doyen, Holger Czukay was born in the band’s home city of Gdansk (albeit when it was the known as the Free City of Danzig), a fact that can’t have escaped them, especially as the already mentioned off-cuts, experimental threads compilation of Unlimited and indeed Can themselves could well be a heavy influence.
De facto spokesman, point of contact for me, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski mentions similar(ish) musical and visual experiments in this field by Glenn Gould (The Idea Of North) and The Beatles (‘Revolution 9’), both of which I can detect: to a point. But this is most definitely the spliced and continuously assembled world of Trupa Trupa, both in the metaphysical environments and psychogeorgaphy of Gdansk and out on the road. With that in mind, sides A and B suggest a radio free Europe of transmissions, dialled in emergent glimpses of ideas and rehearsal space workouts with industrialisation, mystery and the recondite.
Part A begins with a looping guitar that almost trips over itself, and cooed, mooning and aaah’d voices – a sort of outsider art form of primitivism and the psychedelic. Soon the atmosphere changes into a form of metal machine music, with a mysterious darkened funnel of Scott Walker and Sun O))) and a sharp static Lynchian scratch of something alien, and perhaps ominous. As it goes on the mood shifts from Cosey Fanni Tutti and Kluster to the lo fi-ness of Sonic Youth and the Red Crayola; later on it’s incipient stirrings of space rock Hawkwind and ADII. A knocking tool, utensil sounds like it’s hitting a wooden fence panel by the end of this journey.
Over to side B and strung-out voices and the sound of tape itself make way for a dreamy, jazzy session of enervated psych-gospel. A recent Radiohead vibe and Can evocations merge for a played-out musical performance that wanders almost listlessly into a cosmic peregrination. But then something almost daemonic tries to contact us through the Fortean Times radio set, and we’re back in more esoteric territory. Answer machine or a fax or photocopier set of stretched bleeps repeat across a pulsating passage of ambience after that, but makes way for a spike of backbeat Suicide and a squall of windy distortion. A finale wash, flow of voluminous water pours over a reflective environmental outro. You can hear a soft, almost peaceable guitar being strummed delicately in a troubadour style as thoughts meander against the hidden backdrop of a fountain, or a waterfall, or even a watermill – maybe none of these -; a gushing stream of consciousness balanced against gentler trials and errors in music making.
Reminisces, vignettes of a particular time and place; what could have been an evanescent moment lost; radiophonics and the extemporised are all captured within the unburdened perimeters of Trupa Trupa’s unlimited world of sound exploration. An intriguing “annex” as it were to the sonic, literary, philosophical, and historical interlayering processes of this Polish band, ttt offers, nee suggests ever more experimental avenues and an alternative release of the group’s inner workings; a sort of non-linear (off)roadmap to a “lost highway” and a mysterious European trauma. And yet for a band synonymous with grappling with the difficult questions, the evils of legacy (especially when confronting episodes from Poland and Europe’s history in relation to Kwiatkowski’s own Concentration Camps heritage) this tape is a mostly congruous affair.
Trupa Trupa are in their ascendency all right, their creative collective consciousness constantly dreaming up fresh ways of hearing and articulating the wastelands of what was once called civilisation; the discourse all but filtered out for the most part on this immersive experience. They can do no wrong it seems at the moment, and must be considered one of the most important bands to emerge from Europe in the last decade. On the strength of this latest release it will be very interesting to know where they will go next.
You can order that tape here, and if you’re quick enough, can grab one of the limited edition signed copies.
A February Digest: Siavash Amini, Kalia Vandever, John Howard, Stella Chiweshe, Popol Vuh, Kahil El’Zabar Ethnic Heritage Ensemble…
February 3, 2023
New Music on our radar, news and archive spots
Dominic Valvona
A new thread, feed for 2023, the Digest pulls together tracks, videos and snippets of new music plus significant archival material and anniversary celebrating albums or artists. In the February edition we draw your attention to the upcoming album from the Chicago jazz luminary Kahil El’Zabar and his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble with a live recorded performance of the Pharoah’s ‘Harvist Time’, Brooklyn-based trombonist, composer quartet leader and soloist performer Kalia Vandever manages to make her instrument sing a nuzzled bluesy song of longing and thoughtfulness on his newest tune ‘Temper The Wound’, and the avant-garde Iranian composer Siavash Amini creates a fully immersive, drawn-in electroacoustic suite for State51 Conspiracy’s instigated Singularity Series. In the Archive sections we have tributes to both Tom Verlaine and Stella Chiweshe, look at the re-release of John Howard’s Cut The Wire album on vinyl, and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Popol Vuh’s Seligpreisung LP.
THE NEW
Kahil El’Zabar Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Harvest Time’
(Spiritmuse Records) Youtube Now
Partly as a tribute to and marking the late David Ornate Cherry’s last ever project, the Chicago jazz maestro, percussionist, and band leader Kahil El’Zabar and his ensemble reimagine the late Pharoah Sanders’ spiritually shimmered ‘Harvest Time’, as part of the upcoming Spirit Gatherer • Tribute to Don Cherry opus on Spiritmuse Records.
A celebration, a homage to two icons of the avant-garde and worldly jazz scenes, this album is dedicated to both riffs on such icons as the Pharoah and David’s late, great luminary father Don Cherry. Sadly both the Pharoah and David passed away late last year, David just as he was collaborating, partnering with Kahil on this new record. You can however catch David playing the piano on this video live version of that reinterpretation-in-their-own-image performance, together with Kahil on balafon, Dwight Trible giving divine voice and the pairing of Alex Harding and Corey Wilkes on horns.
Kahil has this to say about his great inspirations:
“Pharoah Sanders was the most popular village griot of the avant-garde jazz movement”, says El’Zabar of the late, great saxophonist. “So, when Pharaoh did songs like ‘Harvest Time’, they became something that the entire community embraced. In the same way, Don Cherry was the griot of the community”, and there’s no better way to pay tribute to these noble ‘warriors’, by connecting their spirit in music.”
I was lucky enough (paid too as well) to write the liner notes of Kahil’s last album, A Time For Healing.
But you can find previous reviews here:-
Spirit Groove Ft. David Murray
Kalia Vandever ‘Temper The Wound’
(AKP Recordings) Out Now
When you need that deep bass, a bow from the ship’s horn kind of low but almost huffed sound then the trombone is the choice instrument to use. The Brooklyn-based trombonist, composer quartet leader and soloist performer Kalia Vandever manages to make it sing a nuzzled bluesy song of longing and thoughtfulness on her newest tune ‘Temper The Wound’.
Released ahead of the upcoming debut solo album We Fell In Turn, this lingered, reedy resonated serenade of gentle breaths, touching reflection and gazing is accompanied by the interdisciplinary NYC artist Fame’s video animation. They had this to say about it:
“The animation expresses the feeling of intimacy, soothing, and healing, which simulates the same sense when listening to “Temper the Wound”. The visuals trigger haptic sense by using gently rubbing gestures from the audience’s point of view. It also reveals a scar on the hand that caresses in the form of memory metaphor to the wound itself has the healing power.”
As a hand brushes a pool of water, wafts in a wild garden, it turns inwards to reveal in its palm a window, portal to a sketched scene of footsteps. It makes for a subtle and gentle set of images to a jazzy-bluesy stirred remembrance.
Siavash Amini ‘Not Yet Plant-Life, No Longer Flesh’
(The State51 Conspiracy Singularity Series) Out Now
Adding his name to the notable roll call of experimental and avant-garde artists taking part in the independent portal State51 Conspiracy instigated Singularity Series, the avant-garde Iranian composer Siavash Amini creates a fully immersive, drawn-in electroacoustic suite of recondite natural sounding string manipulations and more machine-like creaks and whines. A both aural and visual experience, Amini’s slithers, scrapes, hinged and bracketed shifts and drones are heard and seen through the geometric light play vision of Louise Mason’s film, featuring Nathan Sherwood’s “Kaleidobscura” lens.
Across its 18-minute duration ‘Not Yet Plant-Life, No Longer Flesh’ seeks both the light and the alien with passages and suggestions of sonic intensity and calmer pattern shifts of near melodic mystery. Inside this kaleidoscope are evocations of spidery crawls across wires and strings, gleaning metallic surfaces, the slithered, looming and rumbling, and the sound of unwinding, and unraveling or sppeded up tape reels.
‘Not Yet Plant-Life, No Longer Flesh’ is released both as a lathe-cut 12” (limited to only 51 copies) and via digital channels. At a later date (April 14th 2023 to be exact) the lathe series, which also includes releases from Alison Cotton, Shit and Shine, Hey Colossus, Vanishing Twin, and Matmos, will be compiled both digitally and as a special lathe box set.
The facilitators that commissioned these pieces of sonic art, State51 Conspiracy, are a completely independent one-stop music company. Record label duties include dealing with physical and digital distribution, marketing, rights management and monetisation, creative, product design and media production. Intrigued? You can visit them here.
ARCHIVES
John Howard ‘Cut The Wire’
(Think Like A Key Music) Out Now
Recently reissued and given its debut vinyl release by Think Like A Key Music, John Howard’s 2019 album Cut The Wire (originally on You Are The Cosmos label) marks a sort of break and period of reflection for the singer-songwriter, author and pianist of renown. Busier and more productive than at anytime in his forty-plus years career, with new albums every other year since the 2010s, and a trilogy of autobiographies, John can now gaze back at these wonders and take a breath.
As with near enough everything he’s released, I wrote a review on this album on its release – back in the post-Covid heady days as it were. Here’s a reminder of what I had to say at the time:
Returning after the deep cerebral peregrinations of the previous Across The Door Sill album to the shorter romantic balladry and stage show-like songwriting that first garnered such acclaim for the adroit pianist troubadour, John Howard’s first full songbook in three years is a most sagacious beautifully articulated affair of the heart.
Enjoying a renaissance of interest in recent years; choosing projects wisely and wholly on artistic and desirable (enjoyable too) merit, Howard has recorded a well-received collaboration with Andy Lewis, Ian Button and Robert Rotifer, under the The Night Mail moniker, the already mentioned open-ended experimental ATDS, and delivered the first volume in a vivid and travail autobiography (part two to follow anytime soon) that not only deals with Howard’s haphazard rise and misfortunes in the music industry but chronicles the misadventures of a gay artist in a far from understanding world. The star-turn dealt a typical band hand by the industry as a burgeoning artist in the 1970s, the singer-songwriter pianist turned to A&R (quite successfully as it happens) but always seem destined to plow his own unique furrow; decades later and with wised self-belief, fully in control of his own career. Though he’s found congruous labels, including the wonderful You Are The Cosmos, to launch his recent catalogue of new music, Howard is a candid one-man industry, totally in command of his legacy and story.
So far the overall results of this output have been anything but indulgent, the quality maintained, with arguably some of his best work being produced in the previous five or six years. The 16th studio album, Cut The Wire, is the first to be recorded at Howard’s Una Casita hacienda studio oasis in Murcia; surroundings that lend themselves well to the meditative and questioning yearns of Howard’s most rich balladry.
Those familiar with the previous From The Morning EP of inspired cover versions will hear the imbued spirit of The Incredible String Band once more on this album’s percussive jangly and bellow-y Parisian peaceable opener ‘So Here I Go’ and the mobile-trinket twinkly and bowed strings title-track: The first of those homespun-words-of-wisdom sonnets evoking a Krishna Dylan, even Donovan. Intentioned or not, the softened doo-wopish lull of enduring adversity ‘Keep Going, Angel’, the forlorn venerated organ blessed ‘We Are’, and sweetly-laced Baroque-psych autobiographical ‘Remains’ all sound like lost ballads from The Beach Boys Friends and Surf’s Up albums. You can also pick up the scents of prime 1970s Elton John, The Beatles, Jeff Lynne and Nilsson in the sage’s purposeful beatific longing maladies and paean performances.
Decentering with blissful melodic ease, Howard, with signature vulnerability, swells and also glides through various chapters of his life; ‘Remains’ recalling to a chiming harpsichord and swooning harmonies regrets in not standing one’s ground, and the nostalgic dreamy-pop ‘Idiot Days’ reflects on the foolish indulgences of youth and the oblivious-at-the-time harmful consequences. But Howard, in more mournful mood, also ruminates on the divisive topics of Brexit; sailing on an accordion wafting elegiac barge on ‘Pre-Dawn’ with cathartic despondency to the changing political landscape and the lack of generosity.
A thoughtful songbook that returns to the melodious balladry of past triumphs and a nod to the rich tapestry of influences that first inspired him, Cut The Wire is timeless; another beautifully written and sung album from an artists radiant with quality.
You can purchase said album here.
ARCHIVE/ANNIVERSARY
Popol Vuh ‘Seligpreisung’
The big 5-0 this year, the Vuh’s fourth album proper was released back in 1973. From my old Krautrock odyssey series, another chance to read my appraisal of this afflatus divine music…
If there is such a reassuring prospect as an afterlife then Popol Vuh‘s divine-styler Florian Fricke would surely have cemented his rightful place in the eternal, empyreal, choir above.
Covering all bases, just in case, Fricke’s reconnoitre’s into the heart of Mayan mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity guaranteed him a fair hearing upon reaching all those nirvanas.
Fricke thumbed through the New Testament for inspiration and solace; falling upon the canonical gospel of Matthew and lifting its blessed text for Popol Vuh’s fourth outing, Seligpreisung. Loosely translated as “beatitude” (‘happiness of the highest kind’) or “song of praise”, Seligpreisung is a continuous 30-minute long service built around Matthew’s profound utterances and writings: Matthew’s gospel – the first book of the New Testament – followed the life of Christ, from his ministry to crucifixion, and resurrection.
Coalesced into adumbrate passages, each of the 8-tracks represents Matthew’s pronouncements and declarations on the worthy; those he considers the righteous: from the meek to the poor. For example the ongoing leitmotif, “Selig sind die, die da hunger. Selig sind die, die da dursten nacho Gerechtigkeit. Ja, sie sollen stat warden” – a right old mouthful -translates as, “Blessed are those which are hungrey. Blessed are those that are after justice. Yes, they are to become fuller”.
Continuing with the same elegiac mellifluous exhalations as on previous releases, Popol Vuh’s diaphanous psalms finally break-out of their suffused ambient constraints into bouts of meditative acid-rock, as the drum-kit is introduced for the first time. Sharing similar spiritual harmonics and builds as Amon Duul II‘s, “stairway-to-OM”, opus Wolf City, Seligpreisung uses a familiar exotic, eastern, musical palette; with reverent pinning oboe and the raga inspired soul-stirring charms of, both, the harpsichord-like cembalo, and lute-toned tamboura all directing us towards the holy calling of Tibet.
Subtly transforming the dynamics with a more progressive, flowing, feel, Fricke also took a step backwards, reverting to a more traditional – if not classical – template; led by the majestic atavistic tones of a grand piano. This shift was partly influenced by the introduction of Amon Duul II’s Daniel Fichelscher, who contributed swathes of plaintive electric guitar and, those newly added élan drums, to the Popol Vuh transient sound.
Whether through mutual appreciation or due to the efflux of ideas criss-crossing between the two bands, Popol Vuh’s resident star-gazer lead-guitarist, Conny Veit, also reformed his dismantled prog-rock band Gila; bringing both Fricke and Fichelscher along to help produce that groups most acclaimed work – the Native Indian history of America inspired tome – Bury My heart At Wounded Knee. Unfortunately Gila broke up again the following year (1974), but for a brief period they functioned as two groups.
Absent from this synthesis hippie-trip are the lilting choral shading vocals of Djong Yin – temporally tied-up at the time, she returned for the next album, Einjager & Seibenjager. Not entirely convinced of his own timbre, Fricke found himself forced to fill-in; yearning and placably sighing numerous hallelujahs at the quasi-alter of worship – though he makes a good job of it. With its, now male, cooing and tentative vocals, Seligpreisung peacefully lifts the spirt over its short duration; altering the main opening theme of “Holy Mountain mystical escapism meets pastoral rock” enough so that each lose bracketed track bleeds into the next; though some of these movements are used as laconic breathers and interregnums before the main narratives.
Every piece is as beautiful as the last, so highlights are difficult to single-out; the atmosphere kept at a constant heavenly quality, and the playing spread evenly: Fichelscher and Veit play some of their most soaring magical guitar paeans, whilst Fricke’s cembalo and piano tenderly weep and dance amongst the climbing melodies and chords.
It might be considered an unfair criterion with which to gauge the music of Popol Vuh by, but this album was my very first purchase of the groups artful poised soundtracking vistas, so I’ve come to love it – I’ve obviously had to work backwards, from full band line-up jamming to minimal ambience. This LP hardly shakes off the ominous trance-like state and translucent stripped blueprint of their last three records – I mean even with a fuller sound, they’re still restrained and kept in check – so consider this as the “letting-their-hair-down” experiment, or Ash Ra Tempel without the Leary-spiked incentives.
ARCHIVE//THOSE WE’VE LOST
Stella Chiweshe
Sad news reached us near the end of last month via the esteemed world label Glitterbeat Records that the Zimbabwean songstress and ‘Queen of Mbira’ Stella Chiweshe had died on January 20th. Back in 2018, the Glitterbeat imprint picked up a compilation of the groundbreaking artist’s early singles: called Kasahwa. As a bio, state of providence here’s my review of that album and purview of Stella’s legacy…
Spearheading a second revival and paving the way to a comeback of a sort, the previously only available as a digital-release version (via that increasingly encroaching behemoth, Bandcamp) of the Zimbabwe music icon and maestro of the mbira instrument Stella Chiweshe’s Kasahwa: Early Singles collection, has been picked up by the award-winning global music label Glitterbeat Records. To be released on the full gamut of formats (both physical and digital) this remastered smattering of previously rare healing paeans and emotional tumults will for many, be an introduction to the diaphanous and earthy roots metal-y springy mbira accompanied soul of Chiweshe.
With her most formative years spent in colonial Rhodesia, before Zimbabwe’s eventual independence in 1980, in an environment that didn’t exactly encourage or foster equality between races let alone sexes, the strong-willed Chiweshe nevertheless pursued a career in music. More attuned to the Western sounds of Rock’n’Roll and Country than the atavistic culture of her native homeland, feasting instead on a diet of Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jim Reeves and The Everly Brothers (and why not), it would take some time and an epiphany before Chiweshe picked up the mbira: an instrument and style she would soon master; so much so that she would be hailed as the ‘Queen of Mbira’ in the following decades.
Confusingly for the student and novice, mbira refers not only to an instrument – made-up of 22 to 28 metal keys, mounted on a ‘wooden healing tree body’ – but also an all-encompassing Zimbabwean spiritual but also secular culture and way of life. Mbira, which is cultivated by the Shona people of the region, involves the ceremonial ritual practice of invoking contact with deceased ancestors and tribal guardians through musical accompaniment; just one of the influences that imbues the voice and playing style of Chiweshe’s captivating songs.
Showing the independent spirit she’d long be admired and celebrated for, a younger Chiweshe would, despite meeting stoic opposition, overcome the bigotry of her male compatriots and elders to embrace not only the Mbiri heritage but the instrument too. Stiff resistance from teachers and even instrument makers, outright refusing to build her a mbira, wouldn’t stop her from recording a debut single (the one that give’s its name to this compilation) in 1974: even though she would have to borrow an ad hoc thumb piano; unable to lay her hands on a mbira. Chiweshe would not only preserver but flourish.
Trumpeted in our modern virtue-labeling climate as a ‘feminist’, the outspoken star was certainly strong-willed, even a rebel. Making a name for herself overcoming the obstacles of tradition and a patriarchal-dominated society, her obstinacy soon garnered attention, not only in Zimbabwe but further afield. In a decade that saw a surge in Western interest in ‘world music’, thanks in part to (in the UK anyway) such global music explorers and passionate advocates as Andy Kershaw and John Peel (who would play host to two Chiweshe performances on his coveted Radio 1 sessions), the Mbira star would soon be touring internationally: first as a featured soloist with the New National Dance Company of Zimbabwe, and later under her own name. Chiweshe would even make a second home for herself in Berlin, criss-crossing between the German city and her native home for the next 35 years.
Still performing her spiritually soulful intense and trilling vocals and mbira craft, but perhaps not as prominent a figure on the world stage, this re-introduced eight song package of formative years recordings will revive an interest in not only Chiweshe but the music of Zimbabwe: a state that looked to be finally emerging from the grasp of Robert Mugabe, whose role (lets face it) has soured and hidden the true face and culture of the country; though in the aftermath of his resignation and after new elections, his successor in the ZANU-PF party, candidate President Mnangagwa and self-declared winner of those elections, has meted out extreme violence on oppositions supporters (killing a number of them in the process) taking to the streets in protest at the contested results. An uneasy tension exists, even with outside observers presiding over these elections, as Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change candidate Nelson Chamisa stoically refuses to back down, rejecting the results outright.
With helpful encapsulation style suffixes summing up each song’s theme, the early singles opens with the determined ‘Ratidzo’; a high whistling and trickling stream like mbira melodic accompanied invocation of the lush landscapes of Zimbabwe that pretty much encompasses Chiweshe’s struggle to become a musician with its matter-of-fact subtitle, ‘Managing to do what people considered impossible’. More traumatic themes follow, with the unceasing waterfall cascades of the mbira and earthy lamented ‘Musarakunze’ suddenly making an emotional impact when translated as ‘An orphan seeing what the late elders never saw’; so beautifully played as to almost hide the plight. The ‘Innermost emotional pain is like a fishbone stuck in the throat’ ‘Kasahwa’ has a similar air of beautiful delivery even when kicking up the dust and rotating to a more abrasive and rubbing scratchy percussion; the pained evocations confined to that title rather than performance.
Mbira as a living tradition and healing process is enacted on the grasslands lilted ‘Chipindura’ – ‘The herb that transforms anything’ – and the placeable tubular turning ‘Mayaya’ (in two parts no less; the longest articulation on this entire collection) – ‘The effect of healing herbs’. Both of which, whether it’s intentional or not, feature a percussion that reflects the rubbing, grinding preparation of these herbs. Elsewhere the routine travails of a people kept through colonial oppression and then the misrule, surviving in abject poverty, is evoked on the yodeled sung ‘Nhemamusasa’; a song that describes and articulates ‘Cutting branches for a temporal home’.
Channeling the very soul of Zimbabwe, performing the mbira with energy but also certain serenity, and in a soliloquy manner voicing the empirical, Stella Chiweshe’s early recordings may sound swimmingly diaphanous, yet they serve as a reminder to the struggles of change. Recorded during the Chimurenga – roughly translating from the Shona language as ‘revolutionary struggle’, this, the second such ‘war’ or uprising, pitted African Nationalist groups against the predominantly white minority government; also known by its eventual victors as the Zimbabwe Liberation War, it would lead to independence and the rise of one of the resistance’s key figures, Robert Mugabe – revolution these singles, no matter how lilting, could be celebrated as a testament and clarion call for not only a resistance to the patriarch but seen also as a break from the atavistic status quo, with Chiweshe’s twist laying down the path for those to follow; a more equal rebalance giving voice to the often repressed matriarchal singers and musicians of Africa.
Tom Verlaine
What a shock to the system to see poor old Tom Verlaine pass way last week, the gaunt frontman of pre-punk favourites Television – far too arty and well-read to be part of the dumb nihilistic punk vanguard, but all the same in that initial rush of bands that would crown an entire scene. Although what we call a counter-culture, a in-scene New York phenomena, Verlaine’s unique lyricism and guitar playing would go on to influence possibly as many people as the Velvet Underground and Nico’s infamous Banana LP. If you were in any doubt, just look at the scale of homages, tributes and the Marquee Moon album covers displayed across the worldwide net of social media validation. This is an album that both sailed close to the edge, but was melodic enough to encourage a future new wave scene. In fact it has become such an obvious record, a copy in every record collection. And yet it hasn’t lost any of its power, twists and art school pretensions because of that absorption into popular culture.
There will be extensive eulogies and bios to come or indeed already shared. And so I’m just going to share some favourite clips and tracks; hopefully some you may not have seen or come across. A celebration then:
That’s it from me for another month. You can find January’s edition here...
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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