A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries in alphabetical order.
Peter Evans’ Being & Becoming ‘Ars Ludicra’
(More Is More Records) 17th October 2025
Without doubt one of the most exciting, dynamic and explorative trumpet players and band leaders on the avant-garde, psych, hard bop and beyond jazz scenes during the last decade, the New York-based musician and noted improviser Peter Evans once more lends his hallucinogenic, mirage squeezes and spiral climbs and his higher octave pitched, piccolo shrills and freefalls to another inception of the Being & Becoming ensemble: his primary band since its creation back in 2017.
Marking another “chapter”, encapsulating the small evolving group’s extensive touring schedule during the period of 2023 to 2024, the Latinized Ars Ludicra (which I’m sure translates as “sport arts”) captures a quartet (extended to a quintet when including the highly regarded and acclaimed soprano and flutist Alice Teyssier on the album’s finale, ‘Images’) fully trained up on an intensive live regime of flexing, dynamism and experiment. It’s said too that the group have widened their scope and extended their range of instrumentation to embrace sounds previously missing from the last two albums. This is a band, it’s pointed out in the accompanying literature, that has moved on much since their last outing in 2022, under the ‘Ars Memoria’ banner. At least a different energy anyway. But despite splish-splashing with constant resonating and crashing cymbals and the tight rolls and roll offs of Nigerian-American drummer Michael Shekwoaga Ode on the opening oasis promise of ‘Malibu’, there’s a balance struck between moods and action, with some passages and compositions breaching the twilight zone, the astra, a mirage that has more in common with Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter’s more untethered cosmic drifts, and their more abstract feels of transcendence and floating in a psychedelic nothingness on the outer reaches of space.
With the glassy bulb-like play, busy twinkled starry rings and doorbell ding dongs, cascades and translucent vibraphone spells of the Chicago-born but NYC based Blue Note artist Joel Ross these spacy and out-of-body elements recall both a magic and a slipping off into transcendent zones of Bitches Brew and the like. Although Ross could at any one time evoke glimpses of Roy Ayers, Gary Burton and contemporary peer Yuhan Su. There’s the melodious lightness of the Modern Jazz Quartet played against more post-bop and freeform experimentation that often lifts, but also casts out into the near surreal manifestations of dreams. Often it’s played against what I would call anti-music that’s more in keeping with the sound of the Soft Machine and the free-form, and at other times with the jazz-fusion of Weather Report, especially Joe Zawinul (an electronic apparatus and number of synths standing in for organs, electric piano and the like): I’m hearing this on the group’s extended Miles-esque blues-psych-trip and expressively agitated and riled-up cover of the late fateful Siberian poet and punk-folk icon Yanka Dyagilera’s ‘My Sorrow is Luminous’ – a sad tale really, born into the USSR, a fated progenitor of the underground punk scene, Dyagilera sadly died at the age of twenty-four just as the Berlin Wall came crumbling down and the transition from paranoid Cold War empire to free market chaos and oligarch mayhem. Running with the original sentiment, the original lament, and underscored with the historical context, the group nevertheless take it into uncharted territory – like a missing link between Third and Bitches Brew, but with the addition of Toshinori Kondo taking turns with Miles at lead.
The rest of the album features the neutron star electromagnetic radiation beam emitting inspired ‘Pulsar’, ‘Hank’s’ astral trip and the semi-symphonic classical bluesy meta contemplation of ‘Images’. On the latter, as mentioned earlier, guest flute-swapping virtuoso Teyssier provides flutters, flits and the sense of a mysterious woodland universe. ‘Pulsar’ has bounded and stick like Afro-Cubism drums, a hint of Jef Gilson, almost a touch of Chet Baker and vortex hallucinations of the atomised and of science. Evans trumpet all the while is curving and spiralling into infinity or drifting over amorphous borders when not shortened and high pitched, squeezed and tight.
I’d like to just mention the final member of this ensemble, Nick Jozwiak on bass, who moves about quite independently of his foils. Hardly conventional, that bass is flexes but offers little drive or rhythm but bobs up and gives a semblance of direction and timing. The multi-instrumentalist and avant-garde “hired gun” is also credited with synth duties, much like the majority of his colleagues, blending the two instruments together throughout an album that feels cosmic but not so much technological and futuristic, nor electronic.
Evans made our choice albums list last year with his trio (flanked by Koma Saxo and Post Koma instigator and bassist Petter Eldh and New York downtown experimental rock and jazz drummer pioneer Jim Black)and their Extra album. And I got to say, this third album from the Being & Becoming troupe is set to make this year’s list too. Evans is on a roll so to speak, with an album of quality performances and unified dynamics. They’ve managed to capture the live spirit whilst offering plenty of passages of thought, reflection and the cerebral, and to progress ever forward. It says so much about the quality of the group and their latest album, that it was recorded at the rightly venerated Van Gelder studios in New Jersey, with its 60 years plus history and status as a national treasure in the jazz world, home to recordings for Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse! And Verve. A stamp of real excellence, the spirits and vibes of that iconic studio seem to have materialised on the recording: A real recommendation if ever there was one.
Will Glaser ‘Music of The Terrazoku, Ethnographic Recordings From An Imagined Future’ (Not Applicable) 24th October 2025
Opening the door to possible worlds and to possible musics (in the sense of Hassell and his peers’ Fourth World experiments), prompted by climatic disaster/change, Will Glaser’s sprawling ambitious work of eclectic and amorphous, porous and developing peregrinations imagine societal changes through the merging of cultural sonic threads and archeology.
The London-based drummer, electronics manipulator, in-demand foil, and instigator of a multitude or projects has dreamt up an epic double-album format of environments, places and scenes from a world in which all continents seem to have conversed into one super soundscape of influences. Glaser has surmised a backstory, a springboard for his latest project. From a transitional stage in the wake of ecological collapse emerges a new “Earth tribe” network of surviving communities called the “Terrazouku”, resolute on living in harmony with nature whilst resisting the destructive urge to dominate. This vision unfolds over a generous offering of near uninterrupted soundtracks, traverses, expressions and rhythmic workouts.
For the first solo operation – that’s composed and produced entirely by Glaser – in a career that’s filled with collaborations, Glaser has reached out to an enviable who’s who of the current experimental scene in London. Names familiar to Monolith Cocktail readers, such as the composer, bassist and experimental vocalist Ruth Goller, the in-demand reeds player James Allsopp, vocalist Ed Dudley, and reeds experimentalist Alex Bonny, join the French violinist Agathe Max, improvising guitarist, composer Tara Cunningham, extremely busy drummer/percussionist Jem Doulton, Irish vocalist, composer Lauren Kinsella and cellist Kirke Gross. There are crossovers with the revolving lineups of both Sly & The Family Drone and Scarla O’ Horror, but also more than enough connections to each and every artist and musician involved across the album’s sixteen tracks. Some make a fleeting appearance, whilst others linger on for a few tracks. But they all increase the spheres of influence, the scope of the project to take in a near inexhaustible range of musical strands and ideas congruous to the evolution of this story.
Imagined as ethnographic artifacts, it seems that Glaser’s dreamt-up world returns to a primitive-like state of the electro-acoustic for a majority of the album’s length. An amalgamation of tribal naturism, the hermetic, esoteric, mystical and primordial, the album’s four, more or less seamless, sections suggest a real depth and quality.
At the outset we are transplanted and submerged into an environment both recognisable and mysterious. The ‘Then It Wasn’t’ opener manages to evoke gamelan, the go-go rhythms of David Ornette Cherry, the early work of the Aphex Twin, percussive fourth world ideas of Ganesh Anaadan’s Self Made LP with Hans Reichel, Test Dept., Wendy Carlos, the near anti-music drumming splish-splashing of free from jazz, and a taste of Sunburned Hand of Man. The first few tracks are what you might called long form, or at least over seven minutes in length, but tracks constantly vary. And so, all these influences develop in their own time. By the second track (‘Sunshower’), which carries over the ending from the last, the mood changes again with a sci-fi evocation of Komsische music and the Blade Runner score. The disembodied aahing and wooing voice of Ruth Goller can be heard alongside Agathe Max’s searing and stirring violin on a track both otherworldly and yet anchored softly and hauntingly towards classical ambient music. ‘Illusions of Abundance’ meanwhile, takes us into a twittery strange vegetation environment of shuttered and serialism style percussion, before developing into a lumbering Beefheart, Faust and Staraya Derevyna like bluegrass-psych trip through Raymond Boni’s jungle. By the way, the wild languid and out-of-shape guitar is courtesy of Tara Cunningham.
Side B, as it is mapped out, passes through vague suggestions of metal bowls and tubular bell like struck and shimmered Java and Tibet, and blown winds, before the dreamy, drifted and effected bass clarinet of James Allsopp circulates and waddles – duck like – in a style reminiscent of cosmic jazz, John Laurie, Constia Miereanu and Hans Koch on the trio of ‘Howl’, ‘Only The Wind’ and ‘Wrath’ tracks. This phase ends on the pleasantly entitled ‘When The Clouds Pass’; a track that seems to broadcast via the use of transduced bird tweets across an Alejandro Jodorowsky soundscape of mysticism.
The rhythmic phase if you like, Side C starts with a sort of shakers and shackled Afro-Thai type of bounding and bouncing percussive apparatus beat (that’s Jem Doulton’s introduction to this album). Alex Bonney’s flittered, almost digeridoo-like recorder flutters and chuffs over the top, and at times evokes the pan pipes of South America. The following track, ‘Bees’, however, is an entirely different proposition. This is where the electronics really kick in, with a hive mind activity of bees turned into a digital buzz and Germanic techno shutter beat. There’s more of this on ‘Pylons’, which matches lunar birds with dub and the pummelled sound of Room of Wires. I was also picking up hints of Front 242 and the Storm Bugs on this echoey electrified magnetic off-grid fourth world experiment.
Change is in the air and wind again on the final side of this double album spread. Richard H. Kirk like shouts, hysterics reverberate and are funnelled through a static charge and magnetic bombardment of friction and the electrically charged on ‘There’s Shit In The River’. Ed Dudley rages, swears and screams in fits to a distorted crushing of Cabaret Voltaire and Nitzer Ebb industrial primitivism, whilst the waters constantly run by. Copters above the brooding, underscored with menaced tides, continue a wash of the ominous and uncertain over a quartet of tracks steeped in strange jungle vegetation and alien outland mystique. Reimagining tribal gatherings, the convergence of polygenesis communitas unifying on a ravaged Earth that’s been reclaimed by an untamed nature, there’s some very strange and yet recognisable goings on. The near forlorn and sorrowful finale, ‘Dedicated To All Living Beings Who Suffer’, features Lauren Kinsella’s stark and yet grieving and felt reading of a poem by the Chinese poet and activist Yang Licai; played out to the Simon McCorry and Alison Cotton-esque avant-theatre-classical deeply grooved, soulful and wept cello of Kirke Gross. Both beautiful and poignantly full of a harrowed, sacrificial and political language, in the end it all comes down to the life-giving force of “water”. It’s an emotional end to a remarkable and ambitious album, which succeeds in holding the listener’s attention to the end.
Recordings from a Cassandra purported world, the warnings unheeded but with no real knowing grasp on reality, Glaser has built a possible future soundscape and cyber tribal rhythmic primitivism on the sonic fuel and carbon of the world as it is now to great effect and depth. From Mike Cooper to Glove of Bones, Fernando Grillo, John Bergamo, Paul Burwall, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, Bush Of Ghosts era Eno, Jon Hassell and Jon Appleton’s work with Don Cherry, there’s a vast scope of rich influences on display and environments to absorb. An incredible project with untold possibilities that really does feel like a retrieved artifact from a future yet unmade.
GRABENFUSSS ‘The Horror’
Released 5th September 2025
I’m going blind on this recent submission from the obfuscated Glasgow magi behind this amalgamation, chemistry and incantation of hauntology, hermetic, sci-fi, tech, and righteous horror. Fans of the blog (always a good start with any request for a review) for a while, and materialising in my adopted city home of the last decade, this shrouded invocation deserves its anonymity, its mystique.
Their latest initiated rites drama is very, very good. And despite describing their own sound as lo fi sorcery, there’s nothing that lo fi about this ambitious, grand gestured astral and tormented projection and esoteric vexed minor opus. For there is a scale here that seems large and almost cinematic. From the increasingly agitated and riled language of the shriven and the post-punk acolyte of cryptic Gothic ceremony and spells, there’s both an alien and all too harrowed conjunction of worlds; of our trails and oppression under the spectre of technology, the unkindest of political systems, the threat of austerity, war and violence. At times the vocals, part Cabaret Voltaire, part Pop Group, but all Scottish indignation, summon up the arcane. There’s symbolism, the cryptic, the sacrificial, the moon child and the witchery at play, all with a 21st century twist.
Dealing with death in its many manifestations, there’s a serious theme at the heart of this work as it opens on a seemingly lighter bit of play and the sample/recording of a young kid’s take on the subject: When you die, your head falls off, and, and, your body goes into the attic, and, and, and your head goes off into space.” The accompanying incipient drones, charging of motors and generators give it a sort of Lynchian and creepy edge, however. This is ‘Company Robot’, a track of data, electronic rhythms, persistent horns, up beats, the cursed and brooding, the disconsolate and highly atmospheric. It crosses field recordings, magik and the machine to sound like a communal disturbance of the already mentioned Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Ramleh and early Luce Mawdsley.
The soundtrack – as it would make a bloody good one – changes between Gothic industrialism to Kosmische, bounced techno and the chaos of a rolling cascade and pummel of real drums, and the echoed, resonated strokes and picks of a recognisable electric guitar. ‘Light Years Away’ is in the twisted techno camp, bobbing almost to a transformed recall of the Sabres of Paradise and Renegade Soundwave casting down fire and brimstone before a cathedral of lit rays takes over from a clash of drums and the growing noise of transmitted interference. ‘Broken Kingdoms’ starts off with a farty, flutter and sonorous drones, and yet is what I’d call ambient. There’s arching bends and the pierced sounds of hidden alarm, a shake of wind chime blown by esoteric winds, and the near munching of ariels. There could be a UFO present, oscillating overhead, its magnetic fields vibrating. But all of this is interrupted by the roll and smash collider of punk-Kraut-psych-rock drums and an unhinged vocal that repeats in a deranged mantra on “dignified death”. ‘Space Death’ is switch-manipulated percolation of the Pop Group in chthonian mood: Death haunts this doomed orbital convulsion of tongues, utterances and pain as tentacles thrash. Suddenly there’s a broadcast snippet from the news; a riot, police called as the audience at a musical behave with vulgar selfishness: the growing problem of decorous behaviour, chatting away and singing louder than the actors. This being Glasgow reimagined as a portal to unknown dimensions, there’s even a mention of the city’s football legacy with a Celtic Vs Rangers match.
In amongst the more extended tracks, there’s a number of vignette duration recordings coded and numbered under the ***PLSVHF*** headings. Of these, ‘No. 19’ features electronic arpeggiator, visitation transmissions and the odd snatch of a broadcast (something that repeated throughout the album) and a sort of quasi concrete manipulation of the orchestral, whilst ‘No. 31’ has more of a lunar rippled belch and guttural cosmic feel to it – this is where that guitar I mentioned appears.
Overall, imagine a horror show combination of Conrad Schnitzler, Locrian, Hunting Lodge, Yellow Swans and Escupemetralla evocations. Oh, and by the way, GRABENFUSSS is German for “Trench Foot”: make what you will of that; a harbinger of discomfort and agony. A thoroughly curious and tormented work of cosmic-harrowed wrath.
Amira Kheir ‘Black Diamonds’
(Sterns Music/Contro Culture Music) 10th October 2025
An offering of love, respect and homage to her roots, Amira Kheir re-energizes, makes anew and personalises traditional songs from a number of admired songwriters and crafts new magical mirage-style material on her incredible new studio album Black Diamonds. The fourth such self-production, released under her own Contro Culture label in union with the specialist UK label Sterns Music (responsible for introducing the music of such luminaries as Salif Keite, Youssou N’Dour and Franco & OK Jazz to these shores), offers up a dreamy and atmospheric songbook that seamlessly flows between musical styles and across the porous borders of Eastern and Western Africa and the Middle East. All to the benefit of Kheir’s ancestral homeland of Sudan, which positively shines like both the material and proverbial diamonds of the title.
Projecting connections to an afflatus and poetically envisioned land, Kheir beckons the listener into a world of positive vibes, of sweetness, of the lilted, and yet no less yearned, hungered and passionate. And so, the music and scene-setting lyricism of Fadl Almula, Abdel-Gadir Talodi, Abdel-Rahman Alrayyah and Isa Barwi are woven into fresh perspectives on the country and its surrounding neighbours, cultures. Paeans of a kind to the loved sit side-by-side with lyrical magical descriptions of Sudan’s topography and its fauna (the comforting recollected mentions of the neem and palm trees on the longing, dry rattled and spiritual Afro-jazz, with classical strains, ‘Ard Alafrah’, which translates as “land of happiness”), and such important city links as Umdurman, which sits on the western banks of the replenishing Nile (the often spelt or referred to as Omdurman, a major city in the Sudan located within the famous state of Khartoum, is mentioned on the rustically spindled, Tuareg-like and quasi-reggae riffed ‘Sundani’, “my Sudan”). I must add at this point, the piano that appears across these songs reminded me in part more of the South African jazz pianists Nduduzo Makhathini and Abdullah Ibrahim.
Vitally important to the Sudanese-Italian singer-songwriter, is language, with songs sang in Arabic, English and Italian; the links to cultures African, Arabian and European, and the blending of all three, setting her music and vocals apart. Winning a heap of plaudits for that unique eclectic voice, Kheir merges the influences of desert song with jazz, neo-soul, R&B, funk, desert-rock (you can feel the sand itself beneath your feet on the drifted ‘Zenuba’, which sounded in part like the brilliant harmonious dune-shifting mirages of Tinariwen), the Persian and the more traditional styles birthed in the Sudan. Ranging between the earthy and ethereal, the soulful and encapsulating, each song shows a variation of tone, performance and charged emotion: relaxed and beckoning, floating and encapsulating.
The depth is hardly pushed or forced, and yet there is a well of passion and stirring endorsement for a country she obviously loves and beautifies. There are some songs that pass the eight-minute mark, allowed to unfurl gently, soul searching and weaving a dream blanket of atmospheres that are magical and almost hypnotising. Perhaps more than ever, a celebration of such idyllic climes is needed, especially when faced with the devastating humanitarian crisis in the country right now.
But by lifting spirits, revitalising the beauty, grandeur, the magic and the atavistic, Kheir lightens up her vision of an enduring, fascinating, homely, nurturing and enchanting Sudan on a magnificent album of diaphanous and yearning beauty. There’s every chance this will make the end of year lists as one 2025’s most special and captivating albums. This is real soul, reimagined and once more connected to its original roots.
Elsio Mancuso & Berto Pisano ‘Nude Per L’Assassino’
(Four Flies Records) 17th October 2025
I’m sure many fans of the pulp Italian Giallo phenomenon will disagree, but as with most examples of this shock and gore, salacious and voyeuristic exploitation genre, it’s usually the soundtrack that has the quality and not the cinematography and storylines: as influential as they both are, a bridge to the slasher cult in both the US and UK. If wrapped up in some pseudo-European style, and in a foreign language, with film directors, screenwriters and actors alike pulled from more discerning productions, many of the films that were produced during the “golden age” (we’re talking the 60s and 70s) of Giallo were pretty crummy, exploitative and titillating.
There was of course the odd example of female revenge, or a female led cast that didn’t just lose their clothes, or graphically meet the most creatively lurid death. And many leading directors to this day pontificate about its iconic cinematography, its style and its influence. In the former camp, the latest Italian cult favourite to be lifted up by its far superior score, under the facilitation of the Four Flies Records label, Nude Per L’Assassino is one such revenge style flick (spoiler alert), with its racing leathers and motorcycle crash helmet wearing murderer exacting bloody vengeance on both the doctor responsible for the bodged abortion of a fellow model, and all those that either aided, abetted or showed callous disregard for the victim: this included a number of male photographers from the film’s Albatross Modelling Agency and some of its models too. To be fair, most of the victims are incredulous perverts, rapists, and vacuous individuals out to climb the slippery pole.
If researching this title, buried deep within the psyche of cult film buffs, you will find a repeated criticism: that by the date of this film, originally released in cinemas on the August 26th 1975, the genre had become stale, and that this movie was more or less an exercise in Giallo bingo card checklist ticking, with the style now “codified” (as someone else put it) and chiselled in crypt stone. The label describes the film as “the most sexist, sleaziest, and most unhinged Giallo film of the decade.” That reads like an endorsement if anything; a real temptation if ever I heard one.
But worry not, for the soundtrack carries more weight, and features connections and threads that link back to some of Italy’s top pioneering composing talent.
Believed lost but recently found and dusted off by the specialist Italian label, remastered from the original tapes, packaged too in a new “lavish” vinyl edition, Nude Per L’Assassino (or as it’s more well-known in the English-speaking world, stripped of its romantic Italian language, reduced to the blunter and creepier Strip Naked For Your Killer) is now being released just in time for its 50th anniversary. Why should we be excited? Well, probably because it’s pretty cool, and that this occult, hallucinogenic, romantic even, and funky surreal soundtrack is a rarefied find from some of Italy’s most notable composers and musicians of the period. Well, one of the names that adorns the title, Berto Pisano is at least in the running for that status. Pretty much carrying the credit, the only name acknowledged on the film itself, whilst erstwhile partner Elsio Mancuso’s name only previously appeared on the Italian Public Performance Rights Organization (PRO) registered paperwork. There’s very little about Mancusco however online; mostly references to collaborations with other notable composers working in the fields of suspense and that most Italian of Italian genres, the Western – namely the very un-Italian but synonymous with its cinema during the 60s and 70s, composer Vasco Vassil Kujucharov. Pisano, however, has a very well documented CV and history. The Sardinian born composer, conductor, arranger and musician started out as a double bass player on the burgeoning post-war jazz scene, playing with such movers as the Quartetto Astor (later the Asternovas), but also appearing in fellow Italian luminary Peiro Umiliani’s famous octet. He’d also cross creative paths with another of the revered Italian composer’s Armando Trovajoli. Outside jazz, and mostly famously perhaps, Pisano began a successful collaboration with the popular three-octave stretching soprano singing sensation Mina (Mina Anna Mazzini). His most highly prolific career move was in the realms of TV and film, composing around 50 scores and soundtracks across two decades: a mere sampler of titles being A Game Of Crime, Django Kills Softly, Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! and Naughty Nun.
Making an appearance on both smooched, lilted jazzy serenading and cupped trumpet is the Italian flugelhornist and trumpeter Oscar Valdambrini. Bringing some much-needed class, Valdambrini’s resume includes stints with Rex Stewart, Gianni Basso and Freddie Hubbard (who’s influence I believe can be heard suffused amongst the reeds on this score), and arrangements with the already mentioned Trovajoli. It’s claimed the Turin-born maestro was a pivotal figure in the birth of modern jazz in his home country. His wafted pines, tender declarations, cornet-like swaddles, early Miles-esque passages and more Euro-Latino Herb Alpert spells add a certain jazz tinge to the supernatural suspense and spine-tingled dramatics.
And yet, this soundtrack’s opener kicks off proceedings with the bass and hi-hat of a Temptations or Curtis Mayfield record. Near Orleans and NYC back dropped Bondian with funk and soul influences, plus a hint of Lalo Schifrin thrown in on the horns, the film’s title track features scaling strings and tight breaks more in keeping with Motown than Italian slasher vogue. And yet, the second track, ‘Fotomodelle’ (the not so difficult to translate “photo model”) is almost reminiscent of Bacharach: albeit in a dippy Euro kitsch of lush romantic serenades and wooing female voices and skin flick signatures. For the record, so to speak, this package includes a number of variations on each of the main themes and pieces of incidental music, including the ‘Studio Fotografico’ bracketed version of the former, which has a little more sass and sexiness, a Hammond organ and lilt of Alpert trumpet, and the ‘Lounge’ version, which is just that, a jazzy and Bossa-like lounge smoochy take of bub-a-bub female vocals and deliciousness.
In the surrealist forbode category, and nightmarish zone, ‘Follia Omicida’ (“homicidal madness”) rolls in the timpani and tumultuous warnings, and ‘Occhi Senza Sguardo (Voce e Organo)’ (“eyes without gaze: voice and organ”) sets an elegiac funeral scene with its slumber church organ creeps. There are shivers on the psychologically dark prompted ‘Scivolando Nel Buio #2’ (“slipping into the dark”), and something bordering on sci-fi hypnotising terror on the female gasped earlier version of that same track. You can also pick up the use of Hitchcockian blade striking strings and other scares along the way. But for much of the soundtrack, it’s an uneasy entwined harmony of dreamy, even druggy, death and beautified satin thriller.
There’s a melancholy, a sadness, and yet friction of that Giallo signature creeping and stalking menace. But the quality is pretty good, the sound surprising in places. Each track is played with professional skill and respect and the art of description. And rather handily, it’s being released in time for Halloween. Four Flies have saved a classic from the snatches of obscurity whilst showcasing a killer soundtrack.
Sebastián Rojas ‘En La Orilla’
(Buh Records) 17th October 2025
Under crimson skies on the metaphorical, allegorical shoreline, bathed in a synthesized production of synth-wave, cold-wave, new wave pop and at least the spirit of Bolero, of South American experimental and roots pop, the Mexico City scene composer, musician and singer-songwriter Sebastián Rojas plots a solo journey from emotional maelstrom to stability on his debut album. Having previously played guitar in a number of bands from the homeland, straddling the downtown rock, post-punk and art-punk scenes, and collaborated with various artists, Rojas has decided to go it alone. Well, to a point, as he’s asked a few friends to play on that burgeoning venture.
Bringing along his The Americojones Experience foil Américo Hollander on bass, the Demencia Infantil’s Emiliano Tinajero on saxophone, the polymath Nicolás Fernández on synths (he also co-wrote the album track ‘Míranos’, which translates as “look at us”) and key Mexico indie scene figure Hugo Quezada (of Exploded View note) to produce, Rojas is backed by a congruous ensemble of sensitive, attuned and explorative musicians whilst navigating the choppy waters and emotionally blue tide that both beckons and backs away in languorous retreat. In addition to that lineup, there’s such a breadth of subtle instrumentation at use throughout the new album; from machines to the more organic use of acoustic guitar, percussion and the vibraphone (well, it could be a marimba too, but it sounds like the glassy bulb notes of Japanese environmental music meets The Thompson Twins and Cage on the magnetic ‘Marea’ (“tide”).
Informed by a run of bad luck, and a low point in his life, En La Orilla (“on the shore”) was born from a chain of events that began when Covid hit in 2020. Rojas was at the time on tour with his former band, just as they were about to take off, but for obvious reasons as the pandemic’s lockdowns curtailed international travel, was left high and dry, forced to return home broke from Berlin. To add to all the uncertainty, the career limbo, his mother fell gravely ill. And yet, Rojas, we are told, found love and the impetus to rebuild from the setbacks of the Covid crisis. The results of which are unfurled, wrapped in the enigmatic, and more obviously emotionally charged, spread across an album of atmospherics, balladry and the synthesized.
References in the PR literature point out the influences (in spirit) of different Bolero forms, and such icons of the genre as Pedro Infante and Los Panchos, plus the music of Benny Moré, an idol from the Cuban homeland of Rojas’ father. It’s not like you can easily detect it in what is a more contemporary embrace of the 80s, but the saxophone often, in its brassier form, often recalls its use in Central and Southern American music – at other times, it’s a mix of both new wave, Hansa studio and the mirage evoking. There are of course lyrically and most probably insider references to Mexico City and its surroundings, and the continents at large. The finale for instance, borrows a line, phrase from the late award-winning Chilean novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist Roberto Bolaño Ávalos. “Pulmón del trópico”, or “lung of the tropics”, finishes the album with breathing, living and airy abstract feelings played out to mysterious shadowy synths, plastic tubular bass and the psychedelic.
From vague echoes of Memory Tapes to China Crisis, Central Unit, Tiempo 55, Chromatics, Robert Wyatt, Japanese environmental music, imaginary 80s Miami and UK Fairlight synth wave pop and Factory pop, there’s a philosophical but also sentimental ease that permeates both the more stripped back and more atmospheric built songs. Bathed in rays and vapours, or dreamily sailing close to disconsolate abandon, Rojas and his fine ensemble of friends’ drift and lurk between the shadows and the light on an album of both nostalgic leaning and yet contemporary inventive pop music with a depth, sophistication and swimmingly bluesy feel. The Mexico City scene is rewired, re-articulated and made anew.
Cosimo Querci ‘Rimane’
(Quindi Records) Released 4th October 2025
Whilst the name may suggest connotations of the Renaissance, and the ancient valley of Casentino – its rich oval shaped landscape dotted with Medieval villages – location in which this debut solo album was made reinforces ideals of that period from Italy’s history, Cosimo Querci seems to send his idyllic surroundings into a swimming reverberated circulation of post-punk-dub, Krautrock, neo-psych, the baggy, new age and the possible music peregrination territory of both Jon Hassell and Finis Africae.
Certainly, attuned to his Italian roots and a particular period of more experimental, countercultural and leftfield music from the 70s and 80s, the psychedelic troubadour of looping flange and various echoed, dreamy filters and effects takes a core songbook of ideas and marries them to something subtly surprising and fresh, with evocations of the tropics, the Caribbean and the Fourth World. Ebbing in a constant reverberated cycle, with as much groove and rhythm as flights and passages of more atmospheric or light projected neo-spiritualist and cosmic feels, Rimane (“remains”) features five kaleidoscopic and light bathed tracks of differing length journeys. All of which could be said to have a hypnotic and wavy vibrated quality about them, soaked in reverb, resonance and soft spectrums of trippy gauze.
Almost entirely created by Querci (who not only sings but plays the electric 12-string guitar and the bass, an electric organ and flute) with his drumming and percussive foil Walter Bellini, the album progresses through the dreamy evocations of soundsystem culture and hints of Arthur Russell, Careless Hands, Phantom Band and Wild Havana before ending up in a light bringing union between Susumu Yokata and Sergius Golowin on the opening ‘Telepatica Pretesa’ (which I think translates as “telepathic claim”).
‘Rimanemai’ (“never stayed”) carries on the vibe, but this time with a dreamy trippy wash of Panda Bear, Sam Flex and CAN via the Stone Roses – here’s the baggy sound I mentioned earlier. There’s also a slight step change of the Latin on the beat.
‘Nina Ferale’ (“wild Nina”) inhabits the “possible musics” projects of Hassell and likeminded artists of that fourth world exploration; a touch of Malaysia perhaps, something off world too. But once the drums come in, we are in the territory of the Secret Machines and Neu! (using, if stumbling to catch a different timing, the famous motoik beat) and Stereolab.
‘Caotico Drammatico’ (“chaotic dramatic”) starts off very differently, to a sort of preset-like bossa Der Plan electronic shimmy: a little also like Kriedler. The light fills in from both sides as that synchronised rhythm carries through to an airy heavenly haze of indie and new age techno ala Banca de Gaia.
The finale, ‘Manina Nera’ has a very psychedelic, cavernous start with its echoey ricochet like shots off a circus snare and what sounds like a sustained melodica hanging in the ether. Sort of shoegaze, baggy and shuttering.
As debuts go, Rimane is a winner with cult status written all over it; the artist leaving us wanting more of this musical world that he’s created in the ancient valley region of Casentino. Those Italian roots have been taken to far off and imaginative places; a psychedelic world of possibilities.
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you can, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat by donating via Ko-Fi.
For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music and Choice Releases list from the last month.
We decided at the start of the year to change things a little with a reminder of not only our favourite tracks from the last month but also a list of choice albums too. This list includes both those releases we managed to feature and review on the site and those we just didn’t get the room for – time restraints and the sheer volume of submissions each month mean there are always those records that miss out on receiving a full review, and so we have added a number of these to both our playlist and releases list.
All entries in the Choice Releases list are displayed alphabetically. Meanwhile, our Monthly Playlist continues as normal with all the choice tracks from July taken either from reviews and pieces written by me – that’s Dominic Valvona – and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea. Our resident Hip-Hop expert Matt Oliver has also put forward a smattering of crucial and highlighted tracks from the rap arena.
CHOICE RELEASES FROM THE LAST MONTH OR SO:
Alien Eyelid ‘Vinegar Hill’
(Tall Texan) Review
Darko The Super ‘Then I Turned Into A Perfect Smile’
Eamon The Destroyer ‘The Maker’s Quilt’
(Bearsuit Records) Review
Ike Goldman ‘Kiki Goldman In How I Learned To Sing For Statler And Waldorf’
The Good Ones ‘Rwanda Sings With Strings’
(Glitterbeat Records) Review
Headless Kross/Poundland ‘Split Album’
(Cruel Nature Records) Review
John Johanna ‘New Moon Pangs’
(Faith & Industry) Review
The Last Of The Lovely Days ‘No Public House Talk’
(Gare du Nord) Review
Lt. Headtrip & Steel Tipped Dove ‘Hostile Engineering’
(Fused Arrow Records) Review
Pharoah Sanders ‘Love Is Here – The Complete Paris 1975 ORTF Recordings’
(Transcendence Sounds)
SCHØØL ‘I Think My Life Has Been OK’
(GEOGRAPHIE) Review
Tom Skinner ‘Kaleidoscopic Visions’
(Brownswood/International Anthem) Review
Theravada ‘The Years We Have’
Ujif_notfound ‘Postulate’
(I Shall Sing Until My Country Is Free) Review
Visible Light ‘Songs For Eventide’
(Permaculture Media) Review
THE PLAYLIST::
Star Feminine Band ‘Mom’lo Siwaju’
A-F-R-O, Napoleon Da Legend, PULSE REACTION ‘Mr Fantastic’
Pharoah Sanders ‘Love Is Here (Part 1) (Live)’
Tom Skinner ‘Margaret Anne’
Holly Palmer & Jeff Parker ‘Metamorphosis (Capes Up!)’
Matt Bachmann ‘TIAGDTD’
Darko the Super, Andrew ‘The Bounce Back (Heaven Bound)’
Verb T, Vic Grimes ‘Anti-Stress’
Cymarshall Law, Ramson Badbonez ‘Emerald Tablet’
Datkid, Mylo Stone, BVA, Frenic ‘Poundland’
Verbz, Mr Slipz ‘What You Reckon?’
Theravada ‘Doobie’
The Expert, Buck 65 ‘What It Looks Like’
Lt Headtrip, Steel Tipped Dove ‘0 Days Since Last Accident’
Ujif Notfound ‘Postril’
Lael Neale ‘Some Bright Morning’
Alien Eyelid ‘Flys’
John Johanna ‘Justine’
Ike Goldman ‘Land Of Tomorrow’
Ananya Ashok ‘Little Voice’
Rezo ‘Nothing Else’
Howling Bells ‘Unbroken’
The Good Ones ‘Kirisitiyana Runs Around’
Jacqueline Tucci ‘Burning Out’
Dyr Faser ‘Control Of Us’
The Last Of The Lovely Days ‘Runaway’
Frog ‘SPANISH ARMANDA VAR. XV’
The Bordellos ‘The Village People In Disguise’
The Jack Rubies ‘Are We Being Recorded?’
The Beths ‘Ark Of The Covenant’
SCHOOL ‘N.S.M.L.Y.D’
Neon Kittens ‘Own Supply High’
ASSASSUN ‘The Sons Of The United Plague’
Pelts ‘Don’t Have To Look’
Visible Light ‘Purple Light’
Wayku ‘Suchiche’
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need:
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
The Digest for September 2025: New Music/The Social Playlist/And Archives
September 22, 2025
The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated new music reviews; the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating playlist; and choice timely pieces from the archives.
Tom Skinner photograph courtesy of Jason Evans.
___THE NEW___
Group Modular ‘The Tunnel/Lonely Pylon’
Reissue Special Released 19th September
The first transmission (or rather a retransmission if you like) from the Group Modular duo of Mule Driver and Marky Funk in three years, marks the inaugural chapter in a new series of special 7” releases “powered” by the duo’s alter ego Confused Machine and Delights labels. Those lucky enough to have grabbed original copies (sold in separate splits editions, both sold out almost immediately) of ‘The Tunnel’ and ‘Lonely Pylon’ will know that the former was part of Norman Records’ 2021 25th Anniversary split release by Polytechnic Youth, and that the latter was recorded exclusively for the third instalment in Russian Library’s L series of split 7” EPs back in 2022.
Back on the radar, with the chance to own these hauntological sci-fi suites and dramatization soundtracks, the self-described “Outer space sounds from Jerusalem-Tel Aviv route” library music makers reacquaint us all with their brand of analogue period cult space age influences and their taste for atmospheres and theme tunes that emit something that’s near supernatural. ‘The Tunnel’ is a curious Pietro Grossi like rocket ship steam and gas fusion of soft timpani, Roy Budd and Greg Foat-esque barque sci-fi harpsichord, and d ‘n’ b like dub beats. And the electric field throbbed ‘Lonely Pylon’ is a Library music imbued psychogeography of paranormal nature and unnerving children’s sci-fi TV of the 70s and early 80s – imagine Brian Hodgson, Sapphire and Steel and bygone public broadcasted information warnings resurrected by The Advisory Group or My Autumn Empire.
Hopefully this latest 7” series will prove a catalyst for more new recordings from the duo, who haven’t released anything together since Per Aspera Ad Astra in 2022. You’d better be quick, as I have a feeling it will sell out pretty sharpish.
Lt. Headtrip & Steel Tipped Dove ‘Hostile Engineering’
(Fused Arrow Records) 23rd September 2025
The gristle, outpoured thoughts, observations, protestations and glue between the oppressive urban structures of our dysfunctional, unworkable society both poetically and rhythmically twist and flow over a counterculture haunted psychedelic-prog, Krautrock and jazz-soul production on this debut project collaboration.
From the experimental, leftfield platform of Fused Arrow Records and its stalwart producer, engineer, beat maker and artist in his own right, Steel Tipped Dove, a new partnership with rapper, producer and instigator Lt. Headtrip.
Dove’s production and various studio skills can be heard on releases from such notable talent as Fatboi Sharif & Roper Williams, billy woods & Messiah Musik, Darko The Super, MC Paul Barman and Zilla Rocca. He’s also collaborated with the most dope and pioneering Dose One. The Lieutenant’s CV is no less impressive, setting up the ‘we are the karma kids’ label, organizing projects and events in the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens areas, and either collaborating or sharing stages with Armand Hammer, Open Mike Eagle, Quelle Chris, Beans, Backwoods Studioz, Reservoir Sound and Uncommon Records.
A magic combination of old hands from the underground scene then, the Hostile Engineering environment that engulfs them is twisted, churned, inhaled and transformed into a sometimes gothic, sometimes industrial, and sometimes more soulfully halo-lit arena for the spoken and rapped lyrics; the cadence of which reminded me at any one time of the Antipop Consortium, Rob Sonic, dalek, and when humorously and from a self-aware but confident in their own skin way, addresses the issues of sexuality, sex and the tired old tropes of rap machismo on the smoochy drifted saxophone and crunched drum beats produced ‘We Got The Sugar’, comes across a little like Homeboy Sandman: a sample of the lyrics being, “last week I was helpin’ his girl find her panties. This week I’m his bro’s new daddy. Just cause I can rap along to Liquid Swords don’t mean my dick’s boring.”
There’s more than enough clever ideas here, with samples I’ve yet to recognize, and an atmosphere that seems to channel all kinds of musical influences; from zappy Kraftwerkian synth and drum pads electro to the Floydian, Roy Ayers, Soul cuts, cult soundtracks (of suspense, horror and sci-fi futurism), heavy rock and prog – I think I’m overthinking it, but alongside what could be a sample from Sabbath or their ilk, it sounds like a short miraged shiver of cymbal resonance and slow drums from Neu!’s ‘Weissensee’ on the automation for the people, insurance servitude and dead-end careers themed polemic ‘0 Days Since Last Accident’.
Bot factories, the nightmarish promises of constant bodily cosmetic regeneration and the self-absorbed legacies that go with hanging on to the bullshit zenith of eternity, high anxiety, and on the repurposed halcyon soul Kayne-Jay-Z-Biggie fantasy “money, money, money” ‘Fund Don’t Stop’, a backslap to rampart consumerism and unsignifying spectacles of Black Friday (“We been shoppin’ since we bought that serpent’s product in the garden.”) – a lifetime of spending, from the womb to the tomb.
At thirty minutes long, there’s no fat on the bones, and yet plenty of tempo, musical changes, and a fresh rap style that neither preaches nor sits back in a nonchalant pose. A really successful pitch, bringing both talents together to fuse and articulate the present depressing miasma of the times in which we all live; glued to this rock, with no anchor, no compass, attached to the screen and validation culture of social media and its puppet masters. One of the freshest hip-hop releases of 2025.
Tom Skinner ‘Kaleidoscopic Visions’
(Brownswood/International Anthem) 26th September 2025
Reaching the midlife point, the UK drummer and composer Tom Skinner finds time to reflect and take stock with a mature kaleidoscope of culminated visions pulled and drawn from a highly prolific career and enviable CV of performances, collaborations and recordings (from Sons of Kemet to The Smile, David Byrne Floating Points…. the notable list goes on).
Arriving a few years after Voices Of Bishara (an album inspired by the American jazz and classical cellist Abdul Wadud and his seminal privately pressed cult masterpiece ‘By Myself’), the follow up weaves the former into a rich, often cinematic, psychedelic and floated meditation and dialogue of jazz, neo soul, cult soundtracks and the contemporary classical. At 45 years of age, the time felt right for such an undertaking. A culmination of experiences, of influences now coming together; a bond that embraces not only Skinner’s vaguely Middle Eastern entitled Bishara live band but a number of congruous international collaborating foils: neo-soul doyen, and right acclaimed, award-wining polymath (but you can list the main qualifications as singer-songwriter, poet and bassist) Meshell Ndegeocello; the self-described multifaceted Charleston musician, score composer, film and radio programmer and vocalist Khari Lucas, otherwise known as Contour; London born and raised but now Berlin-based keyboardist and vocalist Jonathan Geyevu, aka Yaffra; and on electric guitar for a couple of tracks, Adrian Utley of trip-hop luminaries Portishead.
That group of friends is split between two sides of a traditional vinyl format: a moiety of instrumental material and vocalist starring peregrinations, with side A featuring the electric-chamber-jazz Bishara quartet of bassist Tom Herbert, cellist Kareem Dayer, and woodwind and reeds players Robert Stillman and Chelsea Carmichael, and Side B, a cosmic mirage of sung and spoken discourse, soliloquy and healing. Described as “distinct sonic landscapes”, both parts are harmoniously conjoined, with leitmotifs, recurring sounds and an overall feel that draws upon a cosmology of Afro, spiritual, conscious, spacey, psychedelic and experimental jazz.
It begins with the promise of comfort; a putting of the mind at ease so to speak. ‘There’s Nothing To Be Scared Of’ begins with an incipient jingle-jangle and stirring drones of woodwind and the cello before hitting a peak of what can only be descried as Lalo Schifrin meets Bobby Hutcherson and Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes on a 1960s filmset. From then on out, this jazz-chamber match the flighty, craned and fantastical with amorphous hints of Nicole Mitchell, Village Of The Sun, Kibrom Birhane, the Ancient Infinity Orchestra, Coltrane, Matana Roberts and Sven Wunder. You could call it a cross-generational sound, with the first half of the album feeling itself out across an evocative landscape and more abstract metaphysical space full of reflections on emotional states and those people held either dear or inspirational. That includes the late New Jersey born and raised novelist, writer, memoirist, poet and filmmaker Paul Astor (author of the loose New York Trilogy, Moon Palace and The Music Of Chance), and Skinner’s mother, the former classical concert pianist and victim of the arts misogyny, Anne Shasby.
There are some beautiful moments captured amongst the often-slow momentum, and the gander and bird-like flexes; a sense of the mellow and unfurled: the soulful too. And yet there’s a certain drama to be found, and even mystery to this section of instrumental description, of roots and spiritual emotions.
The second section features the vocal talents and essences of Skinner’s collaborative foils; starting with the soul, funk, jazz, hip-hop, reggae and rock spanning polymath Meshell Ndegeocello, who soulfully and dreamily oozes and woos a sense of both the ancestral therapy and a mirage feeling of homely comfort. Ndegeocello’s voice emerges from a hallucinatory wilderness, floating across a nine-minute cosmic-soul and R&B jazz suite of horn snozzles and soft burbles, glassy bulb vibraphone notes, and gentle plucks.
Taking a sadder, more pained discourse-like tone, Contour’s R&B neo-soul voice aches and yearns on the bluesy chamber-jazz piece ‘Logue’. The language is one of rise and fall, trauma and endurance, survival and striving in a ruthless landscape. And yet, again, there is a kind of near diaphanous beauty about some of the music, the flutier parts and delicate bulb-like notes that seem to float around in a slow ponderous rhythm. It’s the feeling of being drained, and the attempts to break free of the malaise.
The finale, ‘See How They Run’, features the soulful poetic spoken tones of Yaffra both responding to a secondary voice and speaking out loud his thoughts, enquires to the promise of eternal enlightenment, in an almost winding, untethered fashion. It reminded me in part of Andy Hay, Diggs Duke and even Tricky, playing out over another neo-soul leaning dreaminess.
Informed and prompted by middle age (a youthful middle age of experience rather than depressing aging pains), Skinner offers a retrospective pause whilst looking towards a creative future. Cross-generational concerns, references, influences converge in a mature work of feelers, reflections and freedom. Consolation in an age of accelerated isolating atomisation and introspective anxiety.
Water Damage ‘Live At Le Guess Who?’
(Cardinal Fuzz in Europe/12XU in N. America) Released 5th September 2025
In the venerated surroundings of the Medieval city of Utrecht, the religious epicentre of the Netherlands (or so it is said), as part of the Le Guess Who? Festival lineup, the Water Damage ensemble preached their own unique fire and brimstone of monotonous locked-in drones, the wailed and frayed, the squalled and resonant.
Whilst following no recognisable domination on this plane, the Austin collective of like-minded acolytes to all things underground, invoked some kind of near religious sonic experience as they went to work on the opening track, ‘Reel 28’, from their most recent album, Instruments (released back in May of this year). Without a break or let-up, they relentlessly, but slowly, created a mesmerising lumber of the avant-garde, of Motor City, Jap, Kraut and Doom rock. Enslaved to the rhythm you could say, for a full 45 minutes both the group and their audience are caught in the hypnotic flay and sway of the scuzzed and intense bowed needling and sawing momentum that is created.
Absorbed into the core for that performance, guests Ajay Saggar (a serial offender, featured untold times on this site over the years under various collaborative and solo guises: Bhajan Bhoy, Deutsche Ashram, King Champion Sound and University Challenged) and fellow astral traveller Patrick Shiroishi (the Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist and composer, based in L.A., last appeared on this site playing foil on saxophone to Dave Harrington and Max Jaffe on the Speak, Moment collaborative album) take up the mantle on guitar and “free-reeds”. Their contributions are equally as mystical, magical, intense and droning; with Shiroishi especially summoning both a Mogadon Hawkwind and Sam Rivers simultaneously.
With the “Maximal Repetition, Minimum Deviation” motto and mantra, they conure up a monster; a ceremonial rite; even, as the accompanying press release describes it, an exorcism. And yet it is quite melodic. Reference points, for me, would be Tony Conrad and Faust’s seminal Outside The Dream Factory, but also Tony’s Transit Of Venus collab with Hangedup, Glenn Branca, La Monte Young (these last two actually referenced by in the press release), Earth, Boris, Swans, Hala Strana, France, Smote, Pharoah Overlord and Amon Düüls I and II, and The Black Angels. But like the old city that played host to the festival and the Water Damage performance, there’s an almost otherworldly summoning of the Medieval: a sort of mythologised or transmogrified evocation of an abstract atmosphere from that period; it sounds at times almost like a hurdy-gurdy is being wound up like some kind of ancient transmitter; plugged in to a mystical and harrowing age.
I must add, for once, the sound is really good. You can hear every part, every contribution, and even the bass line (you wouldn’t believe how few recordings ever get the bass right, or let you hear anything more than just a mumble of bass; live recordings are often even worse, almost bass free). The bass here is integral to keeping up that never ending rhythmic sway; and despite its repetition, is such a great little riff that is never grows tired. Compliments to the sound engineer, and who ever mastered this performance, then, for instead of a block intensity of lost instruments you get a clear production, with every cog, every drone and note audible.
I’d say an improvement on the album track, and a really intensive yet hypnotic hermetic experience that feels untethered to any particular time, age or period.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 101___
For the 101st time, the Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Last month we celebrated the 100th edition of this series, which originally began over 12 years ago. The sole purpose being to select an eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show, devoid of podcast-esque indulgences and inane chatter. In later years, I’ve added a selection of timely anniversary celebrating albums to that track list, and paid homage to some of those artists lost on the way. In the former camp this month, and to tie in with the Archive spots on Bowie and CAN, there’s a 30th anniversary nod to 1. Outside – a tour I actually witnessed, I kid thee not: Wembley Arena if you must know – and 50th nod to Landed. Joining this celebration there’s also tracks from Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love (40 this year), The Fall’s This Nation’s Saving Grace (also 40), Blur’s The Great Escape (30), Dexter Gordon’s One Flight Up (60), Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary (20) and Mew’s And The Glass Handed Kites (also 20).
Each month I also like to add a number of newish/recentish tunes (more or less anything from the last year): those that either missed out on the regular Monthly Playlist of brand-new music releases, or only just come to my attention. We have Monde UFO, Lukid, the El Maryacho team up with Nowaah The Flood, Penza Penza, the Tone Of Voice Orchestra, Elkotsch (thanks to blog friend and supporter Andy Haas for recommending this one) and the triumvirate collaboration of Phew, Erika Kobayashi and Moebius. Oh, and something not so much new but surfaced from Dylan this week.
The rest of the playlist is an anything goes selection of stuff I’ve accumulated, loved, treasured, wanted to own or played out during my sets over the decades. In that category there’s music from the Walker Brothers, the Jazzpoetry Ensemble, Mother Lion, Garybaldi, A Tent, The Barrino Brothers, Departmentstore Santas, Gene Martin, and Akofa Akoussah.
Track List:::::
Wolf Parade ‘Shine A Light’
Butterglory ‘She Clicks The Sticks’
Blur ‘Entertain Me’
Mew ‘The Zookeeper’s Boy’
David Bowie ‘We Prick You’
Kate Bush ‘The Big Sky’
Garybaldi ‘Maya desnuda’
The Fall ‘I Am Damo Suzuki’
CAN ‘Vernal Equinox’
The Jazzpoetry Ensemble ‘Motherless (Live)’
Dexter Gordon ‘Darn That Dream’
Polyrhythm Addicts ‘Big Phat Boom’
Akofa Akoussah ‘Sumga Ma Bacci’
El Maryacho & Nowaah The Flood ‘SOAPS’
The Barrino Brothers ‘Born On The Wild’
Tone of Voice Orchestra ‘Tourist at God’s Mercy’
Penza Penza ‘Dusty’
Los Darlings De Huanuco ‘Lobos Al Escape’
Elkotsh ‘Da’a Adeema’
Monde UFO ‘Sunset Entertainment 3’
Phew, Erkia Kobayashi & Moebius ‘Katherine’
The Detroit Escalator Co. ‘Manuel Transmission’
A Tent ‘Seven Years – part 2 (Abundance)’
Lukid ‘The Secret of Bell Making’
Bob Dylan ‘Rocks And Gravel (Solid Road)’
Mother Lion ‘Simple House’
The Walker Brothers ‘Walkin’ in The Sun’
Departmentstore Santas ‘Play in the Sun’
Gene Martin ‘We Shall Be Like Him’
The Hitchhikers ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better’
___/Archives___
From the exhaustive Archives each month, a piece that’s either worth re-sharing in my estimates, or a piece that is current or tied into one of our anniversary-celebrating albums.
This month there’s my previous pieces on CAN’s Landed (50 this year) and Bowie’s 1. Outside (30 years old this month).
David Bowie 1.Outside (Arista/BMG) 1995
With ‘five years’ remaining until the new millennium, Bowie, tapping into the anxiety and quest for spiritual relief, returned to his first passion: contemporary art.
Back with his most innovative collaborator, Brian Eno, he dredged the bottomless pit of morose and despair. Dreaming up a morbid tale of future sacrificial performance art gone wild and taboo breaking cybernetics he narrated a woeful diegesis through a series of ‘verbasier programmed’ characters.
Disturbing to say the least, our ‘cracked actor’ pitches an avant-garde ‘whodunnit?’, set in a parallel bleak world where the self-mutilated gestures of Günter Brus (the patriarchal figurehead of body art) and ‘the orgiastic mystery theatre’ of Hermann Nitsch have been taken to new, hyper, extremes of bloodletting.
Led by the investigative diary of art crime detective Nathan Adler, a cryptic cut-up of Burroughs/Burgess language is used to not just explain the circumstances that befell the poor victim Baby Grace, but also delve into the collective psyche.
Out on a limb musically, Bowie’s home life may have been content, yet something suddenly propelled him to bravely create a depressive requiem. Easily the best, if not most original, material since Scary Monsters, 1.Outside was entirely written in the studio as the band extemporized: motivated by Eno’s synonymous oblique strategy cards.
Scott Walker lost in cyberspace; the industrial melancholy is at its most anguished on ‘A Small Plot Of Land’ (a version was used on the, Bowie as Warhol starring, tragic biopic of Basquiat directed by Julian Schnabel), yet a more revved-up, pummelling bombastic variant is used on ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ and ‘The Heart’s Filthy Lesson’ (perfectly playing out David Fincher’s Seven).
Leaving many fans bemused (as I myself witnessed on the Outside tour, the baying audience pleading for the greatest hits package), the philosophical snuff opus seemed puzzling to those familiar with the pop-lite Bowie. Thankfully Bowie cut loose the shackles of commerciality for a contemporary blast of shock and dread.
CAN ‘Landed’ (Virgin) 1975
Richard Branson’s pastoral record label Virgin hooked our Cologne ‘seven-day sonic avant-garde evangelists’ in early 1975, tempting them away from the clutches of their former masters United Artists, whose relationship with the band had been tenuous at best. They now joined the hippie-idealistically run, free thinking label of choice – at least that’s how it appeared to the onlooker-, sharing the stable with both fellow countrymen Faust, Tangerine Dream and Slapp Happy, the psychedelic progressive band Gong, and the million zillion selling Mike Oldfield, Virgin’s biggest selling artist by miles – whose Tubular Bells behemoth had reined in a load of money and success, paving and paying the way for most of the roster.
Branson may have looked like he’d stepped off the cover of a Jethro Tull album, but he turned out to be a shrewd businessman. After all, he managed to propel Faust into the album charts with their Faust Tapes mesh-mash classic: albeit that the said album was put on sale for a paltry 49p and probably didn’t actually net the group much money, but hell, it sold over 100,000 copies, so they became a household name in the head community for a while at least.
Business wise, sister label Harvest – equally rich in allusions to the Woodstock ethos – would distribute CAN’s records in their homeland, whilst EMI, who owned both labels, would just count the cash it hoped would now roll in. One of the stipulations in the Virgin contract was that the band would have to use superior recording equipment for their next album. A multi-tracking desk was delivered to their own sacred Inner Space studio HQ, which they were still allowed to use though the records would now be mixed elsewhere. Unfortunately, a deep sense of forlorn began to creep in, mixed with paranoia, the arrival of the new technology now making it possible for the band to record their parts separately if they so wished. Until this point Holger Czukay had masterminded all the recording and editing on just a two-track recorder. He had also always encouraged the group to play together in the spirit of improvisation. But now, the band could successfully overdub and add parts at a higher quality then had previously been possible before, taking a more insular approach to recording.
In scenes not too far removed from the Beatles fractured shenanigans on the White Album, the group began to play some of their own parts in secrecy, the thought of being scrutinized and criticized by their fellow band members filling them with dread.
Again, like The Beatles, they invited an outside musician into the studio to lift the tension and scrutiny. This fortunate man was Olaf Kubler, who had served as producer on both Amon Duul and Amon Duul II albums, although he dramatically fell out with one of AD II’s bandleaders John Weinzierl, who made his feelings towards him pretty clear in recent interviews. Kubler was called in for his saxophone prowess, being asked to lay down some cool sultry cuts on the track ‘Red Hot Indians’ for what would be the Landed LP.
Sessions for what would be the band’s Landed album began in the first few months of 1975, in-between tour commitments, which included a couple of gigs with the troubled American folk troubadour Tim Hardin, who it’s rumoured was asked to join the band full time.
Hardin didn’t really front CAN in these gigs, instead, he would merely leap on stage to perform one of his own tunes, usually something like ‘The Lady Came From Baltimore’, and maybe front a couple of the groups own tracks before exiting stage right. Whether he ever considered seriously joining the band, Hardin’s deadly heroin habit put a damp squib on things, finally getting the better of him in 1980 with one overdose too many.
Anyhow, Karoli had so far done a good job of semi-fronting the band, going on to lead all the vocals on this album; delivering some softly inspired dream like performances throughout.
Landed in some ways directly follows on from their previous effort Soon Over Babaluma, especially in the sound collage experiments of this album’s ‘Vernal Equinox’ centre piece and ‘Unfinished’, both of which re-work similar themes and threads found on ‘Chain Reaction’ and ‘Quantum Physics’. The rest of the LP consists of far rockier progressive tones, with allusions to their contemporaries, particularly Pink Floyd. To a point there is also an attempt towards the glam-rock of both Roxy Music, Bowie and Mott The Hopple – all influences CAN’s peers, Amon Duul II, also breathed-in on the 1974 album Hijack, though to a less successful degree.
‘Full Moon On The Highway’ and ‘Hunters And Collectors’ relish in the glow of these new influences, though remain slightly more conventional compared to CAN’s usual free roaming exploratory material. Most of the seven tracks now run in at under six minutes and sound much more formulated, the exceptions being the already mentioned two saga driven soundscape pieces, which combined, make up three quarters of the overall albums running time.
The lyrics themselves seem to be full of references to mysterious alluring women, clad in leathers, who turn up at ungodly hours on celestial described highways. Analogies run riot, the open road acting as a metaphor for following certain paths, Karoli constantly encouraging the listener to cut loose and float away. Journalist and friend to the band, Peter Gilmour, co-wrote both ‘Full Moon On The Highway’ and the lazy sedate ‘Half Past One’. Peter would also go on to write CAN’s biggest hit, the disco chugger ‘I Want More’.
Many critics have panned Landed, seeing it as the beginning of the end for the group. It does seem a slight exaggeration. Certainly, the dynamics were slowly ebbed away, the production becoming much more polished, though it suffers from some very messy trebly moments at times.
Footage of them performing ‘Vernal Equinox’ on the Old Grey Whistle Test at the time sees Irmin Schmidt wearing a fetching bondage inspired chain mail waistcoat whilst theatrically commits Hari Kari on his keyboards, whilst Czukay, all ten-yard stare, sports white gloves and a sheriffs’ badge. A mid-life crisis beckoned with all this new pomp and strange fashions, turning off many fans, including the disdain of Julian Cope who states that this act of regalia wearing extravagance ended his relationship with the band. So, in a way CAN did seem to be heading over the precipice, the best days behind them, but this album is viewed way too harshly.
Landed for what it’s worth is a decent album, with enough ideas and demonstrations of superb musicianship, Karoli alone performing some of his most sublime guitar work yet.
The albums artwork, by the curiously alluding Christine, displays a collection of passport photo sized images of the band. Each individual photo is covered in graffiti or scribbled on, lending silly moustaches, cartoon glasses and an array of comical hats and hairstyles to the now light-hearted looking band. Peering out from under the heavy de-faced images they pose in a manner that lets us know they still have much to give- also, am I imagining perhaps a Carlos the Jackal type reference here, the many disguises and such.
CAN shifted back towards the Afro-beat and World music styles on their next couple of releases and also brought in ex-Traffic members Rosko Gee on percussion and Reebop Kwaku Baah on the bass to great effect. Czukay moved away from his bass guitar duties so that he could explore radio short wave editing and cutting up techniques in greater detail. He would of course go on to leave the band in 1977, leaving Liebeziet, Schmdit and Karoli to carry on for a while before everyone split for good to pursue their own solo projects, a reunion in 1989 included Malcolm Mooney and resulted in a new album titled Rite Time.
The year is 1975 and CAN have laid down their 7th album, after being together for nearly eight years. To get this far they have travelled an etymological musical odyssey, that has taken in the dark esoteric voila seeped mood of The Velvet Underground, the psychedelic spiritual enlightenment of America’s west coast, the African dance style rhythms of Nigeria and Ghana, the dreamy hypnotic Turkish flavored folk music, the otherworld tour of the nebula emitted from Hendrix and the lessons learnt from Stockhausen and Von Biel. CAN had surpassed all their peers and become possibly one the greatest assembled bands of musicians that the west has ever seen – seriously these guys could out play anyone, though they never had time to wallow in ego and always looked towards experimentation rather than dwelling on their skills.
There now follows a run-through of the album:
Dropping in with an up-tuned arching guitar fuzz and treble heavy hi-hat, ‘Full Moon On The Highway’ leaps straight into action. Jaki Liebezeit sets down an incessant workman like beat, hammering away on the bass drum as Michael Karoli casually begins his salacious vocals –
‘I made it hard today,
For I had to do it to me.
And if it’s only to hold her,
She’s gonna get it today’
A certain sense of portend fear hangs in the air, Karoli in his full Germanic romantic disdain rattles off omnivorous statements about taking to the highway, where star crossed lovers may unlock some inner meaning and truth.
Rock hard screaming lead guitar hooks run rampant, exercising no sign of restraint and sprinting ahead as though in a 100-meter sprint. Piano flourishes and honky tonk bravado light up the mood as those bawling guitars and Alpha 77 effects wail away like banshees. Czukay takes his bass on free roaming tour of run downs, slides and felicitous infused funk workouts, never staying put in one place for too long, always running his fingers all over his instrument. An intense burst of exuberant searing drums, keyboards and clashing turmoil all culminate into a finale furore, that threatens to end in a mess but is saved by the rallying cry of Karoli riding in on his gleamed-up guitar. He transposes glam via Pink Floyd to produce something unheard, a riff from the other side.
Taking a more serene path, ‘Half Past One’ begins with some archaic ethnographically seductive Spanish guitar and heavy tub tapping drums. A dozy laid-back vocal pronounces –
Over the beach,
Into the sun,
Wake again by half past one,
Alright’
The last word being some kind of reassurance amid the strangely relaxed drug induced soirée, that peers at some snapshot of the protagonists’ relationships, a casual affair on the beach in this case.
Schmidt interjects with some delightful mandolin sounding oscillations and yowling alarmed synths, whilst Czukay adds some chuggering engine bass lines, sliding around the neck as though revving it up.
The general breathless ambiance begins to wash ashore, like a lapping tide, meandering its way towards some welcoming gypsy encampment. Quacking wah-wah and folk tale violins add to the general malaise, building towards a newfound intensity as the song picks up momentum: The final 30 seconds bathing in the now pressured final crescendo.
Now steps forward the ambiguous and genre dodging ‘Hunters And Collectors’, with its almost glam postulations and Afro- funk grooves, this four minute Floyd gesturing dose of mayhem ducks any formal categorisation.
A doom-laden piano emphasis each intro chord, like an operatic indulgence. Karoli in magi pose announces the chorus –
‘Hunters and collectors, all come out at night.
Hunters and collectors, never see the light’
The song now kicks in with some sky rocketing theatrics. Dense melodies of climbing synth lines and evocative sexed up Teutonic choral backing adding to the melodrama. Czukay and Liebezeit cook up a fine jumped-up funky backing, with double shimmering hi-hat action and posing bass guitar. They all soon break down into a more stretched out segue way, taking in the early years of Parliament and some Afro highlife.
Karoli now dabbles with the vocals, as they take on some added menace; he conjures up images of leather clad biker gangs, savage sexual degradation and drugs –
Thirty leather kids, on the gang ban trail,
Get your big brown man with the snakes in bed.
Dirty bother me now, it soaks into a cup,
She says “if you don’t start at all, you never have to stop”.
Other worldly radio signals and snippets of conversation from the ether add to the esoteric atmosphere that is entrenched in seedy tales of chemical indulgences.
The opera swoops back in before what sounds like the set-piece breakdown brings the curtain down, as strange broken cogs, ratchets and springs all produce a comical ending, just before the swept in majestic intro of ‘Vernal Equinox’ is brought in.
As the ambivalent last track on side one, ‘Vernal Equinox’ continues the dynamism and piano melody from the previous track, but runs rough shot and fancy free, producing an eight-minute omnivorous jam or epic narrative.
It all begins with a search light introduction of space age doodling, with a chorus of sonar equipment and lasers shooting off in all directions, all played out over a heavy laden piano, hurtling towards a cacophony of destruction.
Rabid lead guitar rips into the track, Karoli literally plays for his life in a fit of feverish exhaustion, running through the full collection of riffs and chord rushes that he’s picked up over the years.
Flailing drums explode like a barrage of mortars, as UFO’s crash land all around, Czukay finds some cover and rattles off his defensive bass.
That Alpha 77, the exulted secret box of tricks, spits out havoc. Crazed wrecking layers of multiplying textures take the drama back to the cosmos soul searching of Soon Over Babaluma, but with a now more invigorated pumped-up stance. The raging narrative falls into one of those accustomed breakdowns. Liebezeit and his meteoric rhythm accompany arpeggiator sonic waveforms and metallic sounding drips during this break in the pace. The full swing returns in style, turning the jamboree into a jazz funk quest, as what sounds like Robert Fripp battling it out with an alien horde from the planet of Sun Ra, delivers a belting finale of elation.
Side two opens with the bongo tribal reggae of ‘Red Hot Indians’, a jaunty slice of infectious pigeon-toed dance rhythms and cool wistful chant like grooves. Karoli goes all faux-Caribbean with his laid-back vocals, he casually lays down some lines in an almost staccato fashion –
‘It’s the DNA song, DNA song, it’s the DNA song.
Strike mess, hole mess, shadow mess’.
Kubler Olaf blurts out an effortlessly uber cool prompting saxophone melody, liberally peppering the track, whist Liebezeit just reclines back on his sun lounger, knocking off some tom rolls and sipping a pina colada.
Mixing in some more African highlife and even-tempered down Roxy Music, this track flows along in its own serenity. The second wind of extra rhythms start to sway in an hypnotic motion, like some kind of mantra as Karoli mumbles recollection of some cryptic halcyon memories –
‘Then you took me back, steam machine.
Dreamt my way into a daydream.
Let me vanish into yesterday,
And my night drops fade away’.
As though to ratify the shambling theme, the song naturally fades out on its own breezy demeanour.
We now come to the soundscape behemoth of ‘Unfinished’, which by its title remains to be determined by the listener as to whether or not this maybe the case.
A set piece of sound cutting and masking that harks back to Future Days, with its reverential cinema scope builds and gliding synths this track could just yet be one of CAN’s finest moments.
Opening with what sounds like an orchestra tuning up, we hear a noisy interlude of violins, strings, brass and unfamiliar instruments all preparing themselves for the performance. That looming ever-present box of tricks, the Alpha 77, fires up and screeches over the top of our orchestra pit, launching bolts of lightning along with the odd spark of lush melodic wonder.
Breathing in the same aroma found on their soundtrack piece ‘Gomorrha’ and the melodic beauty of ‘Bel Air’, our macabre galactic Schmidt now unleashes some welcoming felicitous doses of extreme perturbation, underpinned by some humbling broody but magisterial bass.
All of a sudden, a series of gory effects and sounds enters the stage, as the demonic bound trip to the nebula goes all pants messing chaotic. Squealing guitars, that evoke the sounds of distressed souls pleading, cut through the heightened tense mire.
Factory steam powered machinery like the sort found on the Forbidden Planet, is ratcheted up, bashing away and powering up some monstrous life form. Some tumbling toms are given a swift kicking, the occasional crash of a cymbal unsettling the air as Liebeziet desperately tries to carry on playing whilst his space craft flies into the sun: holding on for dear life he is soon saved by his comrades who now work towards an uplifting final stretch.
Whistling sounds fly overhead, and gongs gently shimmer in the background, Schmidt throws in everything even the studios sink, as a build towards some sort of journey to the upper echelons of the solar system begins.
Escapist melodies and angelic ethereal guitars all scale the dizzying heights, like the dark side of the moon played by Stockhausen and backed by Ornette Coleman. A dream- like vaporous empyrean utopia opens out as our Cologne astronauts now proceed to save the best till last. Pulchritude swathes of divine beauty flow with delight as a lavishly rich melody of heavenly choral opulence raises us to some higher plain. The final few minutes being amongst the most sublime that CAN ever laid down, a spiritual guiding stairway to the universe.
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The Perusal #71: Matt Bachmann, John Johanna, Johnny Richards & Dave King, The Good Ones…
September 8, 2025
A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona. All entries in alphabetical order.
Image of Wayku courtesy of Jesús Flores
Matt Bachmann ‘Compost Karaoke’
(Orindal Records) 12th September 2025
Imbued and driven by a creatively successful obsession with film scores and incidental musical pieces, Matt Bachmann draws away from the earthy for something far more dreamy, escapist and calming. As if to illustrate, the artist, bassist, keys and various assorted instrumentalist soulfully, and low key, yearns “I don’t want to talk about the news” on the smooched and duck-billed saxophone accompanied dreamy if bluesy ‘Long Road’. And yet tied in part to reality, the dread and anxieties of our times, there’s an attempt to break new ground with music for a movie of life that doesn’t yet exist.
Leitmotifs and a recurring intimate ensemble appear throughout this latest near untethered cinematic-leaning album, but each composition, vignette of a kind, and song can be heard in isolation and apart from the rest. For the majority of the time, on an album mostly made up of instrumentals, with just a couple of tracks featuring Bachmann’s near meandered, contour ascending and descending peaceable vocals, there’s a trio core of longtime foils and ‘confidents’: Derek Baron (of Reading Group Records note) both on drums and a little woodwind; Jeff Tobias (Modern Nature, Sunwatchers) on alto saxophone and bass clarinet; and James Krichenia (Big Thief) ‘gumming’ up the groove (as it’s put) on hand drums and percussion. There’re further contributions from Roberta Michel on flute, Cory Bracken on vibraphone and percussion, and Kyle Boston on guitar. Sometimes altogether, or separately, this ensemble is subtle and attentive but moving freely and near lucid when alongside Bachmann’s carefully placed piano, synth, chime manipulations and bass parts and leads.
Emotions swim or cast adrift in a beautifully conveyed movement of suite-like arrangements, the near minimalist, field recordings, and bursts of music – the opening grasp, tangible hold of ‘Summer’s Last Grab’, is a short burst of spontaneous-like bounding seasonal change; almost like a freeform crescendo, with instruments pulled in from various points and angles. Much ground is covered musically and influence wise, and yet there’s no specific or easy to recognise reference or evocation of filmic composers, expect for Sakamoto, who’s 80s contemporary classical reinventions and scores, his synthesized and real Bamboo music clogs and shutters and tubular chimes can be heard suffused throughout the album’s ten tracks. You can also hear subtle hints of Sakamoto’s oft UK collaborative icon David Sylvain; touches of Japan’s former frontman turned prolific foil’s Rain Tree Crow and Nine Horses.
Japan, the country that is, seems a key inspiration. Amongst the vague Shinto temple bells, rung on a cold crisp day on ‘Autumnal Cycle’, are recalls of Yasuaki Shimizu, Ichiko Aoba, and the piano work of Masakatu Takagi and Akira Kosemura; the latter’s own craft set in motion as a therapy.
Added to that set of reference points, the music and sounds, with ease, amorphously shift and reshape using a palette of chamber music, the classical, jazz, Hassell’s fourth world peregrinations, Afro-Latin and the spiritual. For instance, the Star Trek catch phrase inspired ‘TIAGDTD’ (paired won by Bachmann into an acronym, after the famous Klingon defiant and fated line, “Today is a good day to die”), is a dance, a ceremony almost of Afro and clacked, snuzzled, waddled and mizzled saxophone, fourth world music and Finis Africae influences. The title track could be a horizon gazing and shifting communion of later Alice Coltrane, Keith Jarrett and Nicole Mitchell.
There’s much to admire about this album, from its near choir boy venerable holies, its vibraphone bulb notes meditations, its escape from the clutches of despair, its untethered melodious adaptions of diverse musical inspirations, and its filmic evocations of languid endurance and prevail. A lifeline as Bachmann puts it, this project has allowed for a new freedom of creativity and something more collective, more diaphanous, elusive and mysterious, at a key stage in a life of big changes (career wise, becoming a certified social worker and therapist in NYC); a healthy compost analogy mix of “both greens (food scraps) and browns (dead leaves, cardboard, etc.)”. As intimate as it is full of builds, a little drama and bombast, Compost Karaoke is a shared experience, an open project; the very opposite of Bachmann’s more isolated conceived and produced expressions.
The Good Ones ‘Rwanda Sings With Strings’
(Glitterbeat Records) 29th August 2025
The recording location this time around may have changed, but once more in spirit returning to the rural farmlands of a genocide scarred Rwanda, producer polymath Ian Brennan presses the record button on another in-situ, free-of-artifice and superficial production. The fifth such album of unimaginable stirred grief, heartache, and reconciliation from the country’s nearest relation to American Bluegrass, The Good Ones embrace, for the first time ever, the sound of strings. Accompanied, without any prior meeting, by the musicians Gordon Withers on cello, and Matvei Sigalov on violin, a sense of Americana, country and the beautified, ethereal sounds of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, of early Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake are brought to the Rwandan duo of Adrien Kazigira and Janvier Havugimana’s unique style of truthful roots music.
This could arguably be called The Good One’s American album: their American adventure. A result of travelling to the USA to appear, in part, on NPR’s notable Tiny Desk showcase, the duo were snapped on the same iconic Greenwich Village block that sports the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan LP from 1963 – though Brennan informs me that this wasn’t in any way intentional, as the duo hadn’t even heard of Dylan before being photographed for their own album cover, with a casually draped arm across the shoulder, a tambourine in the other, standing and observing the leafy surroundings of one of New York’s most legendary folkloric talented hothouse neighbourhoods. In a hotel room, with Brennan and their new foils, they created a bridge between their own Rwandan backyard dirt music and that of a countrified, bluesy, traditional and folksy America.
The American theme continues of course with both the addition of Withers and Sigalov, two noted players with extensive CVs, making a name for themselves on the American East Coast. New Yorker Withers, as both a rock cellist and guitarist, has played with the J Robbins’ band, New Freedom Band and Betwixt, and the Russian-born, Washington D.C. based guitarist, violinist, producer and arranger Sigalov has a wide range of experience either playing or recording with Les Paul, Patti LaBelle, Issac Hayes, Ben Monder and Vinnie Colaiuta, amongst others. “The With Strings” part of the title is an intentional reference to records of the same name and of a certain vintage by such icons as Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Chet Baker and Charlie Parker.
I feel at this point that it would be beneficial to the reader, to have some context; a little background; a brief history if you like of the duo’s (parred down in recent times from a trio) direction, of the catalyst that set them on the path of making music.
Triggered, its argued even to this day, by a history of tribal warfare, insurrection, civil war, foreign interventions (rival European powers vying for influence in the region backed, trained or armed one side or the other, but failed to intervene once the bloodshed started) and the assassination of the then president Juvénal Habyarimana, the events of that three month period in 1994 saw a sudden death cull, ethnic cleansing of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority at the hands of the majority Hutus: though even moderate Hutus, along with Rwanda’s third main tribe the Twa were also far from safe, with many caught-up, trapped in the ensuing bloodbath.
Barbaric beyond any semblance to humanity, victims were brutalized, raped, cut to ribbons or herded together in buildings, churches, and schools and burnt alive. Unlike so many previous genocides however, most of those victims were murdered by hand with machetes, rudimental tools, weapons and gallons of Kerosene.
No family was left untouched, with both The Good Ones dual earthy vocalist set-up of Kazigira and Havugimana both losing loved ones, siblings and relatives in the horrific purge.
On the remote hilltop farm where he was born and still continues to work, but record too, Kazigira managed to hide and survive. But Havugimana lost his older brother; a loss felt considerably by the duo who looked up to him as an early musical mentor. Though not appearing this time around, oft third member Javan Mahoro and his foils, all represent one of Rwanda’s main three tribes: Hutus, Tutsi and Twa. And so, bring each culture together in an act of union, therapy and as a voice with which to reconcile the past.
Instantly drawn to the band during a research trip in 2009, Ian recorded their debut international album and the subsequent trio of records that followed: 2015’s Rwanda Is My Home, 2019’s Rwanda, You Should Be Loved, and 2022’s Rwanda…You See Ghosts, I See Sky. Ian’s wife and longtime partner on both this sixteen-year recording relationship and countless other worldly projects, the filmmaker, photographer, activist, writer Marilena Umuhoza Delli, was the one to instigate this Rwanda field trip: Marilena’s mother herself ended up immigrating for refuge to Italy, her entire family wiped out during the genocidal massacres.
In between numerous productions in dangerous and traumatized spots (from Mali to Cambodia and Kosovo) the partners recorded the fourth volume of Glitterbeat Records Hidden Musics series in Rwanda (back in 2017); bringing the incredible stirring songs, performances of the country’s Twa people (or pygmy as they’re unfortunately known; bullied and treated with a certain suspicion by others) to a wider audience.
The focal point, the inspired spot so to speak, throughout is Kazigira’s farm and haven, and the valley in which it is located; from which, a vantage point looks out to all the known world, or at least, the world that has importance, the surroundings that impact with the lives of the duo on a daily basis. It is here that they produce such incredible music and poetry; a sound and vocalised delivery that’s separated from all external influences.
Already receiving accolades aplenty in the West, working with an enviable array of admirers, from Wilco to TV On The Radio, Fugazi, Sleater-Kinney and MBV, it’s extraordinary to think that these earthy harmonic songs were produced in an environment without electricity; music that’s made from the most rudimental of borrowed farm tools, and from the detritus that blows in or litters the landscape.
On various occasions I’ve called this the true spirit of diy, of unfiltered raw emotion. The Good Ones speak of both love and the everyday concerns facing a population stunned and dealing with the effects of not only that genocide but cultural customs and the ongoing struggle to survive economically. Although in recent times, Rwanda has made the headlines as an alternative holding ground, a third-party processing centre for deported migrants from Europe. Whilst still in office, the Conservative government in the UK, after much criticism and protest, decided to fly those migrants denied a right of stay in the country to Rwanda. Only a few volunteers ever boarded such plane rides – and were paid for it too – before the Conservatives were voted out of office, replaced by the Labour party who reversed the policy almost immediately. Copping much international outcry, it soon turned out that other countries had already used Rwanda to dump their own migrant overspills, and that even Germany were seriously considering it.
Existing almost in its own musical category, its own world, The Good Ones play a real raw but also melodic, rhythmic roots music that sways, resonates with vague threads of folk, bluegrass, rock, punk and even a touch of the Baroque. Brennan, a man with an enviable catalogue of productions behind him, from every region of the globe, considers Kazigira ‘one of the greatest living roots writers in the world, in any language’. That’s some praise; one I’m willing to believe and repeat. It’s one hell of a voice, made even better and emotive, near spiritual or stirring when accompanied by percussionist and harmonising foil Havugimana.
On their fifth album, recorded 100% live in a hotel room without overdubs, in single takes, and without much preparation (if any), The Good Ones’ beautifully and plaintively redress various hardships and loss, whilst also evoking the landscape of Rwanda; all now lifted and stirred further by the sound of attuned, sensitive, yearned, tremored, mourned, plucked and touching cello and violin – which also on occasion sounds like a rural American folk fiddle, alongside a guitar, which on occasions similarly evokes a rustic, traditional essence of country and bluegrass banjo. Toil is made almost seamlessly ethereal and near sweet, with songs that despite their titles, often embody a sense of levitation: of hope too. At every atmospheric turn the sound of the Americana campfire, of folklore, the East Village, the sound of a stripped back Band, of Cohen, Drake and especially Van Morrison are entwined with the sweeter touching balladeers of Congo, of Mali and, especially when near a cappella, South Africa – it really reminded me in places of Amadou Diagne too, especially the ‘Freedom’ song.
Hardly rudimental, although The Good Ones duo is only really bringing the most basic of instruments – a springy resonating guitar, the rhythmical sound of finger clicks, an empty paper cup, plastic wrapping, a bucket, a couch cushion and pair of old boots – the sound is impressively alive, and full of feeling. Not so much an exciting, dynamic feeling, but a sensitive one attuned to sorrow, eulogy, pain, experiment and life; the horrors witnessed; the love lost; the ambitions still dreamt; Rwandan customs (doweries, marriage proposals); the theft of land; and the observance of village life.
Rwanda Sings With Strings is yet another incredible songbook, free of over production, and just left to develop. It was indeed an inspiring idea to add a subtle use of strings; one that doesn’t lose any of that homely rural bluesy signature and earthly soul but if anything, further emphasises the unintentional but obvious links to the sound and music brought across to America through African slavery an age ago. Two sets of musicians find true commonality and instantly synch to create something very special. Perhaps one of their best efforts yet; a definite addition to our choice albums of 2025 list.
John Johanna ‘New Moon Pangs’
(Faith & Industry) 12th September 2025
Revivalist songs from across a wide timespan that say as much about present societal woes as they did about the injustice, ruinations and toil of England in the 16th, 17th, 18th and the 19th centuries, are food for John Johanna’s latest, and returning, songbook. Not by name, except in the accompanying track-by-track notes, Johanna (actually the nom de guerre of one of Norfolk nature’s sons, Ben MacDiarmid) is drawn politically and societally towards the ideas of Distributism; a more achievable and perhaps practical philosophical compromise between carefree, devil-may-care Capitalism and hardline Socialism, and the idea that the world’s productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Favouring small independent craftsman and producers, or co-ops, member-owned and mutual organizations over state or big business monopiles, one its most famous cheerleaders was the famous G.K. Chesterton. It’s Chesterton’s works and their evocations of a particular poetically stirring England of both shambolic spiritualism and everyday mysticism that are tied together with a psychogeography through the age’s style road trip along an atavistic road well-travelled, that makes for a Dylan-esque harmonica-backed and skiffle-like ring of the past, on the album’s ‘The Rolling English Road’ meander. An inebriated greased old England of sextons, squires, drunken road workers, off-the-beaten-track detours of famous landmarks, battlefields and towns, and a history littered with references of the Romans and Bonaparte, is recalled from the folk tradition and given a new impetus.
Finding a middle road, Johanna now turns away (in part, but not totally forgotten) from his previous gospel-blues-raga-meets-Radio-Clash Testament references for the sound of poetic acoustic folk-rock. The tinged with painful emotions New Moon Pangs is Johanna’s ‘first fully fledged studio album’ in this mode; recorded with Faith & Industry label foils James Howard on electric bass, Ursula Russell on drums and Kristian Craig Robinson as both the ‘chancer on silver spoons’ and a more substantial role as producer. Recorded over two days at London’s Total Refreshment Centre, but finished at Johanna’s more rustic Norfolk home studio, IMZIM, the new album is both a breath of fresh air, and a bridge between his electrified spiritual Gambian EP collaboration with Sefo Kanuteh and his scriptures and Torah trip Seven Metal Mountains album (which made our choice albums of the year in 2019). Carrying over that afflatus, that divine providence, there’s still a big influence of hymns and psalms: even a mention of the Israelites -, as Johanna both recites near verbatim from that 18th century English Baptist minister and hymn-writer Samuel Medley (the opening reference to that antiquarian city of the Seleucid Empire, Antioch, is harmonised, double-tracked with Georgian England and adulation, praise for the redeemer) and reworks the same language of faith, of the spiritual into songs about grand days out in the Scottish landscape (Johanna and his family’s 2021 escape from the pandemic back to awe inspired nature and the Outer Hebridean geography of the Isle of Lewis and across from its Gallan Head mountain top the Seven Hunters islands, otherwise known as the Flannan Isles), seeking a creative rebirth, and the realisation that the rural life is where he belongs (inspired by the first half of the 20th century poet laureate John Masefield and his famous ‘London Town’, the original words ring true even now, but led Johanna to a concur, that after spending a decade in the capital himself, he really wasn’t a city lad).
Despite this being a thoroughly English tapestry, the influence stretche to the Southern Spirituals, and foundation myths of enterprise, industrialization in an expanding burgeoning America of the 19th century and early 20th., and to Chile and one of its most famous and celebrated composers, singer-songwriters, folklorists, ethnomusicologists and visual artists Violeta Parra. The hell’s ‘Fire’ blaze against avarice tycoons and ‘world dominators’ is another sermon made Dylan-esque (between Blood On The Tracks and Desire) and urgent, and was inspired in part by Johanna’s read-up on William
‘Devil Bill’ Rockefeller Sr., the patriarchal seed of the Rockefeller dynasty, father to Standard Oil’s founders. Variously described as a huckster, con man, ruthless capitalist, and accused of rape (ring any bells with our present shower of leaders and industrialists), Rockefeller was a man of his times, taking whatever he could get away with to eventually build one of America’s wealthiest dynasties. ‘A Dream of Violeta Parra’ meanwhile, is a tribute to the progenitor of Nueva canción Chilena (Chilian New Song); a record of who’s Johanna picked up twenty years ago in Berwick Street, its cover art drawing him in to the world of social-political traditional revivalist Latin America. As a tribute, Johanna weaves Parra’s notable poetics and language (the blossom mingled with mud; the dirt and ethereal) into another of those Dylan-esque whistle-blowed harmonica storyteller’s odes.
The rest of the album is inspired by such ethnomusicologist delights as the Norfolk farmhand come singer of traditional English song (‘Adieu to Old England’), Harry Box and a prison ballad from the days when gruel really was punishing; the drive home from a Chubby and the Gang gig in a blizzard, and the resulting songwriting workshop with pal and artist Harry Malt (‘Justine’); and an anonymous Jacobian/Stuart period broadsheet that despite its historical language could have been written for the sorry state of inequality that plagues us all now (‘The Poor Man Pays For All’).
Musically lilting, melodious there’s a real warmth and lovely feel to this album’s production as it vaguely echoes the sentiments of Terry Bush, the folk-rock of Pentangle, Fairfield Parlour and Steeleye Span, 1970s Fleetwood Mac, child of the Jago meets Thackery Mekons, Cat Stevens, XTC, The Strawbs and more contemporary artists like Paul Winslow and Valentino DeMartini.
The old is rejuvenated, and found relevant, stitched together in a loose Norfolk tableau. The rural lad does good once more, with nothing less than one of the best albums of 2025.
Isambard Khroustaliov & Ben Carey ‘Field Recordings From Other Constellations’
(Not Applicable) 12th September 2025
The award winning, and far too qualified, electronic and sound composer, software developer and researcher Sam Britton is at it again, fusing the generative and interconnective with the human and machine; this time around, pairing up with Australian foil, the equally qualified composer, improviser and educator, Ben Carey.
A serial offender in this department with the notable Long Division and Fake Fish Distribution experiments and through collaborations with such lauded operators as the Aphex Twin (via the Remote Orchestra project) and Matthew Herbert (New Radiophonic Workshop), and has a co-founder of the very platform this latest release is being facilitated by, the artist collective Not Applicable, Britton, under the Ismabard Khroustaliov nom de guerre, hooked up an impressive apparatus of ARP 2600, Buchla 200e, Destiny Plus 16 Psyche, Make Noise Strega & Morphagene, Moog ONE, Oberheim OB-X8 and Sequential Prophet 12 enabler equipment to venture beyond dimensions and space with his willing sonic partner. Carey, who is one half of the voice and electronic duo Sumn Conduit and has collaborated with such notable company as the JACK Quartet, Sydney Chamber Opera, ELISION Ensemble, Joshua Hyde, Chris Abrahams and Marin Ng, seems a fitting cosmonaut volunteer on this untethered and unbound trip, which has been edited down from a much longer, expanded live performance at Coda to Coda in London on the 3rd of July 2023.
Influential Eastern European science fiction and philosophical enquiry meet on this four-track visitation of alien organic matter, metallics, strange leviathans, machines and codes. Inspired by that genius titan of 20th century sci-fi and future prophecy, the Lviv born Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, and one of his most beloved (so it’s said) works, The Cyberiad, two prolific trick noise makers and manipulators of oscillations, wave forms and patches construct an atmospheric soundscape and journey into both satirical, ominous and mysterious space.
The book, or collection of short stories, follows two ingenious constructers (or robots of a kind) travels through a strange Medieval universe, where they encounter such oddities as a machine that is capable of creating anything, as long as it starts with the letter N, kings who oppress their people with parlour games and PhD pirates. Ahead of his time in so many ways, and in in so many different fields (nots just sci-fi), Lem wrote another famous work, the Summa Technologiac, in 1964, about the moral, ethical and philosophical consequences of various futuristic technology: predicting virtual reality (called “phantomatics” in the book), search engines, AI and singularity. Intellectual as it all might be, much of his actual fictional work is quite humorous in tone.
Here, it is transmogrified and transduced into a constantly developing scan and probe across synthetic and alien technology and off world destinations. A soundtrack in a manner, for a film yet to be made (as far as I’m aware of all of Lem’s cannon, it is only the most famous work, Solaris, that has ever been adapted for the big screen), it feels like a navigation at times, a mapping of extraterrestrial technology. But also, a twisting of reality itself and the fabric of the universe.
This is the near classical meets analogue sci-fi, the non-musical and techno minimalism, with centrifugal movements, fizzles, the sound of switches and mechanisms, electrical currents and static, calculus, pattered and padded rhythms, shocks, UFOs, elevators and accelerations. There are certain hints of the recognisable amongst the squirmed and scrawled alien liquids, especially when the sheet metal punch bag timpani pounds in on the Soviet era mirage ‘Discovering Alonta’. And the opener, ‘The Computerised Bullfrog’, recreates the title’s amphibian through said computerised effects: an artificial reality, the living mimicked through tech. But for the most part this is an ambiguous use of sounds and instruments.
If I was going to use any reference points, perhaps orbiting a similar universe as Tangerine Dream, Moebius, Cabaret Voltaire (also Richard H. Kirk’s uncoupled work), Basic Channel and East European experimental sci-fi.
A very atmospheric performance, bringing Lem’s space oddity philosophical quandaries and explorations to life, Field Recordings From Other Constellations builds a real imaginative as well as foreboding and uncertain world from codes, textures and soundboards.
Johnny Richards & Dave King ‘The New Awkward’
(False Door Records) 5th September 2025
Setting new challenges for artists, the restrictions imposed during the various Covid lockdowns, four or five years ago, meant many were forced to work in isolation or apart. And so, collaborations were largely created by participants working remotely and at a distance (sometimes considerable) from each other; sharing and sending results mainly over the Internet. This made for some intriguing, exciting and inventive results. I understand many musicians would rather work in the same room as their foils and partners, but personally, despite the distances, none of projects made during those trying times seemed to really suffer in quality or creativity. In fact, it made for some challenging surprises.
One such exchange of ideas, a sort of transatlantic partnership between the notable and acclaimed UK pianist and composer Johhny Richards and US-based drummer of equal note Dave King, ended up as untethered and genre-defying experiment in ‘impossible music’: or that which is near impossible to recreate, at least live; a response to certain conditions, certain prompts produced during a particular process that involved a bit of toing and froing between the two musicians. It’s Richards’ prompts that come first in this experiment. His piano, whether treated or untreated, adapted with various materials and objects (from screws to Blu-tack and a knife), and his transformance of the very workings, the guts, the hammers, pins and the action, were sent to King, who recorded his reactions, before once more travelling back to Richards to receive further overlayed parts.
The skilful anarchic (yet never too wild and unchained as to run away with itself, to get lost in chaos or totally lose the plot) style of piano which has served Shatner’s Bassoon so well, is once more unleashed. Unburdened by restrictions, sent out into the serialism ether, and without any preconceived ideas of how his drumming partner would respond, the connection and intuitive nature of this collaboration proved as frenzied as it did dramatic. It’s as if they both unknowingly created a score at times, and at other times, a simultaneously mischievous, playful, and avant-garde merger of off-kilter, kooky jazz, electronica, performance art, transmogrified classical music, the Duchampian, La Monte Young, cartoons, math rock equations, fusion and gamelan. It sounds also like a largely acoustic recreation of Warp Records (as mentioned in the briefing, Warp is cited as an influence and direction of travel) output; an experimental electronic record made without much in the way of the electronic.
Muscle memory from King’s impressive haul of instigated groups and ensembles (from The Bad Plus to Happy Apple) can’t help but turn up. But this album of variously paced and cryptic tracks, brilliantly matches random passings of Herbie Hancock, Tim Berne, Bach, Zappa, Mr. Bungle, Radiohead, Matthew Shipp and Cecil Taylor (I’m thinking of the recently released Taylor and Tony Oxley piano-drums combo experiment Flashing Spirits). It makes for a tumultuous balance between re-wired jazz-fusion, the near leapfrogging and frenzied, and the more serious atmospherically framed offerings – ‘False Doors’ with its heavy piano rumbles of a weather and thunder, and distant strike of a buoy out at sea, obscured by a prevailing fog, really sets a moody scene; almost esoteric in part before developing into a jazz-breaks, splashing of ride and crash cymbals and a near thriller or mystery piano dotting of notes-like soundtrack.
From being pulled through the fantastical mirror backwards to the unsettled and skewwhiff, much ground is covered. Starting from nothing, an incipient partnership of effected, pulled, chimed, chopped and string-like plucked piano workings and both dampened bass-y and more recognisable, if near unmanageable, notes seem to run independently of the drums. And yet the shuffles, breaks, spidery skirts and rattles around the kit, and drills, its free from movements, somehow stick to produce a remotely made piece of dynamic art, playfulness and moody observance. A very successful partnership.
Ujif_notfound ‘Postulate’
(I Shall Sing Until My Country Is Free) 9th September 2025
With no end in sight, and yet another deadline from Trump crossed, Putin’s barbaric invasion of the Ukraine depressingly drags on. Three and half years in – although the real flashpoint came in 2014 and the annexation of the Crimea – and Russia continues to pound away at an already devastated ruinous landscape. Casualties may have reached the million mark, as whole generations fill the mass grave sites on a scale rarely seen outside the scenarios of both World Wars.
In these horrific times it falls upon labels such as the electronic artists Dmyto Fedorenko and Kateryna Zavoloka’s I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free to spread the sound of the sonic resistance. A soft power, a cultural emissary of that country’s experimental scene, the profits from its roster of artists, which includes both its founders, are donated to several self-defence and humanitarian foundations and local volunteer activists.
The latest release on that platform sees the noted Ukrainian multi-disciplinary electronic sonic, media and visual artist Georgy Potopalsky channel the apocalyptic horror, the destroyed and twisted concrete and steel scarred geography of his homeland to create a pulverised industrial and force field electrified work of conflict and brutalism. Under the Ujif_notfound alias, and with the artist’s usual themes that draw upon the volatility and dynamics between man and the machine, between user and interface, there’s now a focus towards, what the PR description describes as, ‘blasted soundscapes, frenetic breaks and bristling guitar noise’.
In practice this amounts to heavy meta(l) meets the electrifying bounce and fractures of techno and the gears and torqued industrial granular effects of machines (both the coded and the weaponized). Fizzling and warping, with ring outs of both contorting grindcore and repetitive guitar, the coarse and corrosive, an ominous presence is always near at hand; an alienness almost, and yet sense of war and its physical effects permeate the scorched earth. And yet, as pads are drilled with tight delay, or spiked, rotations spiral out the influence of Basic Channel, acid techno and breakbeat, there’s a danceable aspect, a dynamism of alive circuitry that gives some of the tracks a buzz.
The grains of acid rain, of filaments and detritus of weapons, missiles, rockets and drones appear like sonic drizzle though. But at the very end, a peaceful coda is reached; something approaching the ambient and Eno-esque, channelled once more through tubular metallic effects.
At any one time I’m hearing hints of Alberich, Cabaret Voltaire, Cosy Fanni Tutti, Atsushi Izumi, Brian Reitzell’s American Gods score, Autchere and Einstürzende Neubauten collectively pulled into a heavy set of the magnetic, pulsating, grinding, crushing, and shuttered. As sonically shocking as it is bouncing and charged, a full immersion that conjures up a full multimedia experience from one of Ukraine’s most prolific and creatively stimulating artists.
Visible Light ‘Songs For Eventide’
(Permaculture Media) 19th September 2025
Marking in a visceral, beatific, and sometimes plaintive manner, both seasonal changes and our relationship to the environment, the Visible Light musical partnership between experimentalist cellist and improvisor Amy McNally and multi-disciplinary artist and composer Matthew Hiram is deep in ecological study, philosophy and reflection.
Described as a “chamber-ambient” project, imbued and led by the environment and elements that surround them, the Visible Light vehicle has a both serious and meditative purpose. Hiram, as a “certified Minnesota Water Steward” and active contributor to nature conservation (and public art) initiatives and his foil create a quintet of suites from an atavistic but living and breathing nature. Their debut long-form release, Songs For Eventide, is not only released on the sustainable ecosystem themed Permaculture Media platform, but released in time for the Autumn Equinox this September.
The whole cycle of the seasons, from the awakening blooms of summer to the darkened, colder and more uninviting, even sad, drawing in of winter, are articulated graciously, purposefully, imaginatively and magically through the effected and processed sounds of the cello, flute, drones, vapours and a sustained mysterious bedding of electronic produced atmospheres. From blossoming wildflower carpets to the frozen elegy of the Boreal age – a reference, in technical terms, to the North or most Northern, but also the first climatic phase of the Blytt-Sernander sequence of northern Europe, during the Holocene epoch; its climate characteristics being long winters and short, cool to mild summers), long drawn strokes and bows, the occasional spaced out short pluck of cello, the willow and evergreen flute, sounds of tubular rings, and both ambient and new age electronic elements conjure up evocations of each studied season alongside classical American folk and rustic traditions, the classical, the pastoral, the Oriental (the cello on the opening ‘Bloom To Bloom’ sounds almost like a Southeast Asian dulcimer or something of that nature) and Celtic: both Irish and Scottish.
Each suite is an incredible observation of patterns, of language and a spectrum of natural light. Recorded beneath the canopy of nature, you can hear the soft downpour of rain pelting the tarpaulin that covers those musical observers – or so it sounds like on the chamber-trance and environment captured ‘Boreal Shift’.
The duo mention Sarah Davachi and Harold Budd, amongst others, as reference points. Both good calls, but I’d perhaps add Jeff Bird, Anne Muller, Alison Cotton and Simon McCorry to that loose sphere of influences. In all though, a thoroughly impressive adroit, stirring and near stained glass anointed eco system soundtrack of the reflective and magical.
Wayku ‘Selva Selva’
(Buh) 18th September 2025
Astral mirages, shamanistic dream ceremonies, and festive dances await the listener on this new album from the Peruvian guitarist, researcher and ethnomusicologist Percy A. Flores Navarro. Some of the ideas, the conceptions of these tracks may go back years, but this jungle menagerie and musical map of the abstract atmospheres, the psychogeography, the ancestral traditions of the Peruvian Amazon is a new venture under the adopted Wayku moniker. More or less flying solo, uncoupled from his Motilones de Trarpoto band, it’s the guitar that does most of the talking; channelled through various effects, adopting various meters, Peruvian and greater indigenous and Latin American styles whilst also evoking traces of rock ‘n’ roll, the more frantic and adroit displays of rock guitar soloing, jazz, and surf music.
A really skilful, attuned and expressive guitarist, Percy’s craft is given room and space to perform the articulate, joyful, mysterious and supernatural, bolstered or underlined by the use of synths, the bass and drums. At its heart, rejuvenated and refashioned, is an electrified version of the popular festival genre Pandilla; a more uplifting and celebratory community style that emerged from the Peruvian Amazon. Alongside a diverse range of rhythms, of traditions and more contemporary disciplines, it makes for a rich album of the nimble, playful, mystical, cosmic, otherworldly and infectious: you’ll be dancing along to at least a third of these mostly instrumental affairs.
Steeped in local colloquies, with references to ceremonies, to places and spirits named by the Quechua and even further back, there’s a story behind every track. Originally from the famous Amazon cloud forest city of Tarapoto (sitting in a valley between two rivers, located in the San Martín region of northern Peru, this large epicentre is often referred to as the “city of palms” for its abundance of the plant), which is itself full of myth and magic, Percy encapsulates the unseen forces and the feel of those lands that lay beneath the rich canopy of jungle, and live off and by the sides of the Amazon river in Peru. This porously spills over into bordering Brazil at times, picking up some of the Amazonas (the largest in all of South America) state’s indigenous sounds en route. There’s also, as I mentioned earlier, a certain tremolo-like turnpike wave and twang of coastal South American surf music, ala Dick Dale, to be added to the mix. Perhaps the sound of such Peruvian pioneers as Los Ranger’s de Tingo Maria, Los Zheros and Fresa Juvenil De Tarapoto via Mexico and Brazil propelled into a cosmology of supernatural, mythological and historical gravitas.
Educational in spirit and full of references to the prevailing economic and political disconnections that have separated the city from the interior and its various indigenous societies, Selva Selva is teeming with relevant messages and ethnographical context. The album came with plenty of notes, and plenty of relevant personal connective anecdotes and stories by the artist. Every track has a purpose, is well-thought out and planned. And, depending on how much the listener wishes to expand their understanding of the subject, can go as deep as they like into the interior of Percy’s studied forms.
From the sprinkling of magic and the amazon’s natural medicine cabinet – the wisdom of the ancients – to the short-lived autonomous jungle states and their founders (nods to Guillermo Cervantes’ proclaimed Third Federal State of Loreto in the 1920s, and Emilio Vizcarra’s Selva Nation in the late 19th century), a whole world of panther-like deities and ugly squatted spirit guardians, festival celebrations and fieldwork await as Percy reclaims his home’s legacy with verve and deft musicianship. An outstanding album from an outstanding guitarist.
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THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.
(Photo by Todd Weaver)
___THE NEW___
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s (Exit) Knarr ‘Drops’
(Sonic Transmissions) 22nd August 2025
Growing, developing and expanding the remit from what was meant to be a one-off commission, brought together especially for the Vossajazz Festival, the troupe is now on its third titanic fusion rich studio album proper. Set in motion by Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (who also runs the Sonic Transmissions label, home to the ensemble’s recordings) a number of years back, the (Exit) Knarr now acts as the ‘main creative vehicle’ for the Norwegian bassist going forward it seems.
Settling with a reasonable lineup on this third chapter but inviting in a number of guests on the album’s statement piece, a transformed vision of jazz deity Wayne Shorter’s ‘Deluge’ piece from the revered and influential 1965 album release JuJu, on this outing the sextet takes prompt or inspiration from a more visual source. In the sphere of the Russian maverick abstract visionary and Bauhaus professor Wassily Kandinsky and Swedish mystic and abstract progenitor – some would say the true and first ever abstract artist, beating her peers (Malevich and Mondrian) to pure abstraction by a few good years – Hilma af Klint, a number of graphic scores have been used to foster untethered freedoms and play from a group already in the freeform mode. In one way, addressing perhaps the lack of knowledge, the place in which she should stand, there’s an unsaid elevation of Klint, an early adopter of the very spiritualism, Theosophy, that first led the way for Mondrian and many of his circle to dare to strip away every last visage, reference of the world for abstraction. Arguably Klint can be said to preceded Kandinsky and the others to this goal. And her work is filled with the iconic circular shapes, the colurs that would go on to inspire Sonia Delaunay and many others.
As a visual methodology, these scores go some way to painting a reification of a partly live studio performance and the ‘tweaked’ effected and transmogrified aftermaths.
Bringing together Amalie Dahl on alto, Karl Hjalmar Nyberg on tenor and electronics, Marta Warelis on piano and also on electronics, Jonathan F. Horne on guitar, Olaf Olsen on drums and of course IHF on what sounds like both electric and double bass, the album divides two longer form performances with a couple of shorter pieces. Speaking the experimental language of Anthony Braxton with garbled, hysterical and squeezed abandon, and inspired by the equally freeform pioneering Mats Gustafasson and his No Ensemble, the ensemble open with an already mentioned version of Shorter’s ‘Deluge’; taking the original’s more controlled bluesy swing style of simmering and serenaded and crooned sax for a tumultuous ride on the open seas of both discord and crested freefalls. It starts with twisted guitar wire grabbing and neck sliding and incipient tethered drums but soon develops into a recognisable, familiar feel before numerous swells and peaks resemble a fusion of the Henry Grimes Trio (cicra ‘Fish Story’ if we’re being specific), Rashied Ali, the Anthony Braxton Quartet, Keith Jarratt and Darius Jones. Wild in places, with the guitar going on to sound like a sci-fi dialect of tabbed beeps and switches, and the horns squeezed until the pips fall out, the action is shared out equally between all participants without losing a single instrument.: and that’s when you consider there’s also the guests, Mette Rasmussen on a second alto and a second drummer, Veslemøy Narvesen added to that untamed tidal wave experiment.
The album title is next. A change of a kind in tempo and thought this shorter composition articulates those droplets in various ways on a performance that sounds more open air than studio recorded. The sound of a dragon fly’s wings in rapid hovered form hangs around in a chamber-esque atmosphere of musing and pondering. Part JAF Trio, part ECM and part classical-minded jazz of a certain vintage, the gentle cascade of drips and drops fall very nicely and mysteriously on this Scandinavian ice float.
A second centrepiece if you like, ‘Kanon’ is dedicated to the renowned Norwegian drummer, composer and free jazz improvisor of note Paal Nilssen-Love. From his parents famous Stavanger jazz club located incubator to the capital and onto wide world recognition, Paal played with such notable company as Mats Gustafasson and Peter Brotzmann’s Chicago Tentet, before going on to set up his own All Ears festival. As an inspiration to a generation of Norwegians, Paal’s influence is huge. And in this mode, at this time, the sextet conjures up a semblance of his artform and free experimentation. But first, it all starts with some speaking panning of a curled up rattling drum roll, the quivers and quavers of the piano and what could be the attempt to match the sound of a buzzing bee. But it all soon develops into a wilder proposition of Masayuki Takayanagi, Eric Dolphy (I’m thinking specifically here of Out To Lunch!), Roscoe Mitchell, Andy Haas, Bill Dixon and Last Exit. It keeps changing; whether that’s in the action, dynamics between players, the tampering down parts that then peak into hysterical cries of squeezed, rasped and the burbled. A surprising passage of play even takes on a Lalo Schifrin vibe nearer the end.
The finale is left down to a performance that’s manipulated (or ‘tweaked’ as it’s written here), stretched out and elongated into a sci-fi hallucination. As if being treated and remodelled in real time, it sounds like the band is being pulled via a prism into the mirror backwards. It reminded me of the We Jazz label and their own retreated, remixed projects over the years. But stands as a more electronically led production that offers up a slightly off-kilter and magically alien version of their sound.
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s (Exit) Knarr colour new directions with an extended palette of ideas and sounds; heading towards breaking point before returning back to a recognition of the free form jazz movement that we can recognise. Source it out.
Andy Haas & Brian g Skol ‘The Honeybee Twist’
1st August 2025
Striking up an online and postal friendship since first writing about the highly experimental saxophonist, trick noise maker and effects manipulator when touring as a band member with Meg Remy’s Plastic Ono Band-esque U.S. Girls a few years before Covid, the former Muffin, NYC side man to the city’s attracted maverick luminaries of the avant-garde and freeform jazz, and prolific collaborator with Toronto’s most explorative and interesting artists, has sent me regular bulletins (and physical copies) of his various projects. Some have been in the solo mode, others with friends, foils and collectives.
Running off just a smattering of those releases (a majority of which have been with the highly obscure Resonantmusic imprint) from the last decade or so, and you have three extraordinary albums with the stringed-instrumentalist Don Fiorino (American Nocturne, Don’t Have Mercy and Accidentals), various appearances on records by Matt ‘Doc’ Dunn’s The Cosmic Range, the warped and discombobulating For The Time, Being solo act, and the avant-garde improvised performative triumvirate of SCRT with regular collaborator David Grollman and Sabrina Salamone.
Andy Haas now partners up with fellow Toronto native Brian g Skol for an unusual duet of saxophone and drums. Although it was recorded back in that city in 2024, the finished concentration and spatial experiment is now seeing the light with an official release via Haas’s own Bandcamp profile. I’m glad it hasn’t disappeared into obscurity, as it is one of the best, most radical but surprisingly rhythmic and pumped, worldly sounding album’s he’s made; much of this is down to the visual artist and percussionist/drummer Skol’s expressive and grasp/ear for international influences of rhythm, from both the Latin and Afro-South American to North Africa and the influence of Jaki Liebezeit.
The Honeybee Twist is a strange union between two instruments seldom pitted against each other; certainly not in this setting, with Haas once more wildly controlling the panning of his serialism style and both atonal and shrilling, bristled circular breathing sax and Skol combining hand drums, various percussive elements and drum kit breaks to provide a beat, a groove or more sporadic passages of the tactile, textures and tumultuous.
From nothing, reifications of the fire thief Prometheus, compounds, a vertical axis used in a 3-D space to show depth and elevation, self-assembly and play of words take some form of shape across an album of mystery, extemporization, and musing. Whilst stirring up these evocations, these reference points, both players traverse and kick around Arabian landscapes, Jon Hassell’e fourth world, the extremes of Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, Sonny Simmons, Andrew Cyrille and Evan Parker, and the factory. The opening mythologically entitled ‘The Eagle And Prometheus’, sounds like a sax and drums transmogrification of Battles; leaping straight in with beating drums, splashes of cymbal and that signature circular breathing technique. This is where I believe you can hear an echo of Saw Delight era CAN relocated to Egypt or the Arabian souk: Haas’s sax starts to sound more like a shrilling vibrating mizmar or even a zurna, and Skol’s drums could be mistaken for the daf and riz on occasion.
Against the near constantly moving, feeling and exploring drums and percussion, Haas’s effected sax goes from blues to freeform jazz, to reflections and colloquy and soliloquy. There’s a harshness and roughness at times to that instrument as it goes through various warbles, buzzes, rasps and drones.
Despite the title of ‘Maybe I’m A Machine’, there is no mistaking that this is a very human interaction between two highly experienced experimental artists circumnavigating any kind of easy label, demarcation. The notes of an abstract nature bristle, vibrate and trill to a near amorphous global rhythm on a most experimentally original collaboration. Please seek it out.
Maria Elena Silva ‘Wise Men Never Try Vol. II’
1st August 2025
As promised last month, the second volume in the Wise Men Never Try series from the near evanescent and relaxed but deeply effecting singer and musician Maria Elena Silva.
After previous releases, some of which featured such notable company as Jeff Parker and Marc Ribot, and after stripping back Bob Dylan’s courtly enigmatic dames to their most essential essences with interpretations of both ‘Queen Jane’ and a summoned bell rung ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’, the Chicago homed Maria has turned to readapting, revaluating and transposing various themed songbooks from America’s past. Volume I, reviewed in the July Digest, turned to the pages of the Great American Songbook with familiar standards made anew and enigmatic through the emotively ethereal, connective, almost otherworldly and with a real sense of depth and something approaching the tactile – especially instrument wise.
Under that same ‘umbrella title’ the second volume travels further back in time to the America Civil War period of rousing, rallying, sorrow, tragedy and hope sheet music; much of the material used to bolster a flagging campaign by the Union during the early and mid-years of that horrifying, destructive and divisive war – arguably never really settled, with suspicion still between the North and South of the country culturally, politically and economically. In fact, recalling songs from nigh on 160 years ago has never seemed more prescient; chiming true with the age we find ourselves in right now. A balance is struck, history revisited, propaganda resized, and the sentimental repurposed. But arguably, the emphasis in this case is on the music of the eventual winners in this five-year conflict; although a number of the songs and rallying calls for the Union were also adopted and adapted by the Confederacy after they’d seen the effect it had on boosting morale and symbolising the cause.
Once more in an intimate setting with just the accompaniment of Erez Dessel on piano, Tyler Wagner on double-bass, and Maria on guitar, the Civil War period is amorphously twisted into minimalist meanders and dreamily untethered shapes of the tactile, the avant-garde, and descriptive. At the heart of it all, Maria’s voice is relaxed and diaphanous; pitched somewhere between folk, the Celtic, the traditional and the jazzy. The tragically played out ‘Booth Killed Lincoln’ sounds a little like Joan Baez in parts. It certainly, in all its traditionalist lament, has an air of Dylan about it and the Laurel Canyon circle of female troubadours. Like a play in itself, the acts, steps that lead to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on that fateful day, at that fateful performance at the Ford Theatre, Washington D.C., could be lifted off the sensational pages of that time’s broadsheets. Lincoln’s last breath, rather ironically to the last, is very much Dylan: “Of all the actors in this town, I loved John Wilkes Booth the best.” Musically, there’s but an essence of accompaniment, with the double-bass strings sounding more like a wooden set of spokes and a sort of dampened drum. The odd harmonic is twinged.
However, the album strikes a jarring chord of dissonance, a heavily pressed and free form piano opening gambit of Keith Jarrett and Thomas Schultz. Interpreting the American composer of romance and patriotism George Frederick Root’s most popular rallying call, ‘Battle Cry Of Freedom’, Maria seems to counterbalance Dessel’s passing storms, shades of forbode, salon bar upright tones, uncertainty, the abstract and discordant with disconsolate beauty. A second Root interpretation, the succour giving ‘Tramp Tramp Tramp’ (aka ‘The Prisoner’s Hope’, written in the later stages of the war) is sympathetic to the original, but more melodiously jazzy.
Some of the material leans towards country: albeit a version that exists in a fog of the Appalachians and Woodstock. There’s even a moment on ‘Abraham’s Daughter’ where either the double-bass or guitar resembles a banjo. And the album’s most unusual break from the formula (though to use that word is doing Maria and her foils a disservice), the finale ‘My Old Horse Died’, features a far more rustic, loosely and buzzier more carelessly strummed guitar and the sound of what could be some kind of replicated plucking/picking tines. I do love this song; it sounds like Dylan writing a filmic Western song to feature in Little Big Man or McCabe & Mrs. Miller. As far as I can hear, there isn’t much in the way of horses, but some ironic metaphor for loss, wistful financial and property woes: “Swallowed the place where my home stood. Mortgage guy came round, claimed the hole in the ground where my home once stood.” It almost sounds drunken this slice of Western music from the counterculture.
Remembrance, tragedy, the call to arms, and above all, the encouraging original lyrics of the abolitionist (one of the key themes, subjects of many of these songs) ring like wispy or beautified and pining poetry from the battle fields of America. Only, that same divisive rage, the splits, the distrustfulness and hunger for independence rages still to this day; a constant cry wolf of civil war is voiced whenever the political class weaponizes its losses, or failure to win an election. Handled with subtly, and a classy skill that stretches out the meaning, the lyricism, the mood and intention further, a new spotlight has been drawn upon these historical songs; taken into an avant-garde territory without losing sight of a melody, a form or shape, Maria and her foils create a rather unique and incredible atmosphere; bringing dusted off Civil War pamphlets, sheet music and the like to a new audience. Every bit as encapsulating and dreamy as Volume I. It will be interesting to see what Volume III offers, and where Maria goes next. An excellent, spellbinding series so far.
Saul Williams, Carlos Niño & Friends ‘Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople’ (International Anthem) 28th August 2025
An enviable collaborative union of talent from both the East and West coasts of an America on the eve (or thereabouts) of Trump’s inauguration, under the TreePeople canopy of righteous indignation at the state of a nation, gathered the totemic voiced poetic polymath Saul Williams, the divine styler, multi-instrumentalist, percussionist and producer of afflatus and new age conscious jazz and its many strands, Carlos Niño, and a host of congruous musical friends from a scene of ever-expanding inter-connections. You can’t get any more symbolic than this; setting up for an experimental – perhaps extemporized in part – performance beneath the black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, L.A. Recorded at the time and now seeing the light (so to speak) eight months later into the new Presidency, this ensemble piece’s headlined foils and longtime friends since the 1990s, combine forces across an archaeological dig of free associations.
But before peeling back the layers of this psychogeography, a little about the artists involved in this part explorative, part free expressive, part oratory and part theatre. Not that Niño would boast, but the highly prolific producer, ‘expansive percussionist’, experimental composer, connector and communicator, has made albums as and with such notable luminaries as Ammoncontact, Build An Ark, The Life Force Trio, and others. And also overseen the Alice Coltrane protégé – the keyboardist, composer and actor – Surya Botofasina’s2022 devotional Everyone’s Children. All the while, leading or instigating his own loose ensemble of multidisciplinary artists and the & Friends banner. This time around, those friends include recurring foil Nate Mercereau (the solo artist in his own right’s skills include the guitar, composing, songwriting, live sampling and improvising), Aaron Shaw (the horn player has worked with such notable icons and names as Elijah Blake, Anderson Paak., Dave Chappelle, Herbie Hancock, and made music for TV and film), Andres Renteria (the L.A. percussionist/drummer and DJ has worked with an impressive host of artists over the year: Jose Gonzalez, Father John Misty, Flying Lotus and Nick Waterhouse), Maria The Artiste (hot-housed in the AACM of Chicago, the woodwind player, vocalist, vibraphonist, bandleader and composer is also a member of the late Horace Tapscott initiated, and now six decade running, Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra), Francesca Heart (the partial alias of Italian artist, researcher and electronic artist with a skill at playing the conch shell Francesca Mariano, who makes new age music of a kind on computers), Kamasi Washington (the saxophonist who’s profile has possibly been highest over the last twenty years, after ushering in a revival of a sort on spiritual, odyssey jazz, has picked up a number of awards and plaudits for his work and collaborations) and Aja Monet (the lauded and awarded contemporary poet, writer, lyricist and activist can be heard joining Williams with a forewarned and haunting poetic vision on ‘The Water is Rising/as we surpass the firing squad’).
Needing no introduction, but getting one anyway, American rapper, singer, songwriter, musician, poet, writer, and actor Saul Stacy Williams first came to attention during the late 1980s on the New York café poetry scene. The burgeoning innovator, mixing beat/poetics/slam and hip-hop, soon stood out. A big break came as the lead in the awarding winning Marc Levin directed movie SLAM in the 90s; the phenomenon of slam poetry, its reach via competitive performance outside academia, set free from the stiff studied branches of the elite institutions. The list of peers that Williams has performed with is incredible; from blast master KRS-One to illmatic Nas, The Fugees, beat poet Allen Ginsberg and Black arts movement luminary Sonia Sanchez. Williams has also been a driving force behind the Brooklyn Afro-punk movement, written a libretto for Ted Hearne’s LA Philharmonic produced oratorio PLACE and two symphonies by the late Swiss composer, Thomas Kessler, based on two books of Saul’s poetry, Said the shotgun to the head and The Dead Emcee Scrolls. The scope and range are wide indeed, with both Williams film roles and a stint on Broadway as the lead in the first hip-hop musical, Holler If You Hear Me – based upon the lyrics of Tupac Shakur – to consider. And on top of that a sextet of studio albums and quartet of poetry books, all translated into multiple languages. The self-titled album debut of which was produced by Rick Rubin. There’s so much more of course; a whole Wikipedia page in fact to delve into.
But what’s important is that the experience, creative richness and innovativeness of all participants in this movement of change is in no doubt. And when all brought together like this, the results have a real depth and breadth, weaving together so many connective threads of outrage and riled injustice and indignation. This is meta, an alternative, sometimes more felt than real, history toiled over until exposing the roots.
To distil this performance down to jazz would be an injustice in itself, as the ensemble and their two leads accentuate, ring and punctuate, and, without rhythm in most cases, build a spiritual, conscious and traumatic atmosphere around and bedded beneath the either peppered, prophesied, near uninterrupted flow of racial injury, of hurt, of rage and recourse. The musical and sound elements certainly recall some of the signatures of jazz; of artists such as Coleman, the Pharoah, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, of Don Cherry, The John Betsch Society, of Brother Ah and Idris Ackamoor. But nothing quite frames this performance, demarcated into four parts with an after show of appreciation and emotional final word sit-down with the audience. For amongst the collage of the atavistic and primal, as prehistoric beasts lift their heads disturbed by the stirring hands of the dig, and Edan’s wildlife emerges from the grasslands, and the sax sings a parched reedy song, the percussion mirrors the sounds of dry bones and beads, and the vibraphone’s bulb-like notes float like particles in the style of Jamal, Williams delivers omens and a associative thread of technological, economic, political, social ills. Williams sounds one part Quelle Chris, another part Amiri Baraka on that opening “land map”: that cradle of uncivilised repeal. Later on, as the poetics seem to be less interrupted or stretched, the style is more Watts Prophets; especially on ‘We are calling out in this moment’, which links together the origins of Manhattan and its stock exchange with the original Lenape peoples that once farmed it, cultivated it and called it home before the arrival of the Dutch and then the English. Origin stories connect with the occupy movement, Black Lives Matter in a flurry of redress; the financial epicentres slave trading roots almost matter-of-factly and shockingly mapped out.
Later on, Williams is joined by Aja Monet for the new age balm turn African wilderness haunting ‘‘The Water is Rising/as we surpass the firing squad’, who’s contribution amongst the vibraphone tinkles and dreamy serenaded saxophone wafts and lingers and pines, and the “insect gossip”, recalls Tenesha The Wordsmith passing the mic to the Last Poets, once Williams takes up his post in front of the said allegorical “firing squad”.
Sitting down with the audience at the very end of this astonishing performance – bordering on both the theatre, the counterculture, and the activist -, and after the stats, the re-purposed jargon, the rebalance of history as it was and is, a time of emotional pleading and reminder that there is still work to be done. But that message is one of community and the need to build and maintain networks of support in the tough times; not to wallow or give in. But as one stage in the fight this album marks a new enterprise and platform for greater harmony and a safe place for experimentation. International Anthem can do no wrong, as they continue to facilitate such creative sparks of inventive free play and poetry.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 100___
For the 100th time, the Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share; with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for nearly 12 years now, Volume 100 is the latest eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show from me – the perfect radio show in fact: devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
Here’s to the hundredth edition, which features a homage or two to Terry Reid and Howie Tee, who we both lost recently. Self-coining his own nickname, Reid’s voice was lionised as “superlungs” for his incredible vocal prowess. But as an all-round package, voice, guitarist and rock artist of universal repute – in any article or description, Reid is anointed as the ‘artists’ artist’ -, Reid could shake the foundations of blue-eyed soul and maximum R&B, blues rock and heavy rock. His name was touted around the 1960s, courted to front or join countless luminaries, from Led Zep and Deep Purple (he turned them both down). There’s many eclectic steps on the way, including a penchant for the Latin rhythms of Brazil (falling into his orbit during 1969, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, recently exiled by the military dictatorship of Brazil, were helped by Reid’s attorney to come to London; they would go on to flank Reid at the seminal Isle of Wight Pop Festival almost a year later in 1970), a direction into introspective jazz, desert mountain commune living and session work for Don Henley, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt – this came after Reid more or less decided to retire from his solo career. A rich life lived. So, in my selection I’ve gone for a smattering spread of tracks from the cannon, starting back at the beginning with the title track from the 1968 LP bang bang you’re Terry Reid plus ‘The Hand Don’t Fit The Glove’, ‘Rich Kid Blues’, ‘Live Life’ and ‘Ooh Baby (Make Me Feel So Young)’.
From a whole other sphere of the musical landscape, Howie Tee, the hip-hop and new jack swing hit maker of repute during the 80s and 90s. Born in the UK, but raised up in Flat Bush, Brooklyn, Tee’s (or the name his folks would recognise, Howard Anthony Thompson) musical protectory took flight with a break in the early electro crew CDIII. Already familiarising himself with the mixing desk and production tools, Tee quickly jumped ship to producing, his first success being in conjunction with U.T.F.O.’s Kangol Kid, with the commercially hot hip-hop group Whistle. At the same time Tee also put together the equally successful Real Roxanne collaboration, scoring with ‘Bang Zoom (Let’s Go-Go)’ – which as the name suggests, rides on the go-go phenomenon. There would also be production credits for records by Cash Crew, Seeborn & Puma, E.S.P. and Izzy Ice. Tee then became the in-house producer for the New Jersey-based independent label Select Records, producing relative hits for Special Ed and Chubb Rock. But it wasn’t all hip-hop orientated, for in 1991 he mixed and co-produced Color Me Badd’s ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’: a Billboard number one. And he also made remixes for such diverse acts as Madonna and Maxi Priest. I’ve chosen both Special Ed and the Real Roxanne, plus Chubb’s bromance cut, ‘DJ Innovator’.
In a celebratory mood, I’ve also kept up the monthly inclusion of anniversary album tracks, with 60th nods to The Beatles Help, Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (I’ve gone for, what I hope, is two not so common of known cover versions from both) and Miles Davis E.S.P. There’s also 50th glass raisers to Cortex’s cult favourite, Troupeau Bleu, Don Cherry’s pioneering Brown Rice, and Eno’s Another Green World.
Every month I like to collect up some of the more newish or recent tracks that didn’t make the Monthly playlist selection – either for lack of space or I just forgot to include at the time. In that category there’s Elaine Howley’s diaphanous, translucent ‘Hold Me In A New Way’, Mike Cooper’s vague South Seas, Pacific exotic mirage ‘Eternal Equinox’, U.S. Girls’ Jane (Doe) Country and Plastic Ono Band funk ‘No Fruit’, the collaborative PAUER/Wolfgang Perez/Der Wandler/Magic Island union’s yearning ‘Falling Over You’, and Pons hi-energy 80s work-it no wave dance diatribe ‘Fast Money Music’. There’s also a track from the recently released, and featured, Woody at Home Vols 1 and 2 – Guthrie hanging round like Banquo’s ghost over Dylan, who’s Highway is revisited this month.
The rest of the playlist is made up of cross-generational from across the ages by Jaz-O, Baby Washington, Isan Slete, Vincent Over The Sink, Phantom Payn Days, Lynn Castle, Mad Walls, Massacre and more…
TRACK LISTING:
The Real Roxanne FT. Howie Tee ‘Bang Zoom (Let’s Go-Go)’
Pons ‘Fast Money Music’
Themselves ‘Roman is as Roman Does’
Waylon Jennings ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ Mariangela Celeste & Vangelis ‘Honolulu Baby’
Woody Guthrie ‘One Little Thing An Atom Can’t Do’
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons ‘Queen Jane Approximately’
Terry Reid ‘The Hand Don’t Fit The Glove’
Baby Washington ‘The Ballad Of Bobby Dawn’
Terry Reid ‘Rich Kid Blues’
U.S. Girls ‘No Fruit’
Lynn Castle ‘You Are the One’
John Baldry ‘It Ain’t Easy’
Isan Slete ‘Lam Phloen’
Terry Reid ‘Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’
Miles Davis ‘R.J.’
Jaz-O ‘Put The Squeeze On ‘Em’
Special Ed ‘I Got It Made’
Cortex ‘Automne – Colchiques’
Brian Eno ‘Sky Saw’
Furniture ‘My Own Devices’
Mad Walls ‘Lily’
Massacre ‘Bones’
Terry Reid ‘Live Life’
Mint Tattoo ‘Wrong Way Girl’
Terry Reid ‘Ooh Baby (Make Me Feel So Young)’
Chubb Rock Ft. Howie Tee ‘DJ Innovator’
Don Cherry ‘Degi-Degi’
Elaine Howley ‘Hold Me In A New Way’
Mike Cooper ‘ETERNAL EQUINOX’
Xul Solar ‘Sigh’
Vincent Over the Sink ‘Number Theory’
Phantom Payn Days ‘primitive chamber music phone call blues’
Woody Guthrie ‘I’m A Child Ta Fight’
Willis Earl Beal ‘Like A Box’
Marcos Resende & Index ‘Nina Nenem’
___/Archives___
From the exhaustive Archives each month, a piece that’s either worth re-sharing in my estimates, or a piece that is either current or tied into one of our anniversary-celebrating albums. From the former category, my original review of Willis Earl Beal’s nite flights soul harrowed and ached Noctunes album, released a decade ago this month.
Willis Earl Beal ‘Noctunes’
(Tender Loving Empire) Released 28th August 2015
Whether stretched beyond the realms of fact and fiction or not, the many travails of Willis Earl Beal fit the outsider artist profile perfectly. With more deaths/rebirths than the Dali Lama’s had reincarnations, Beal’s self-made and put-upon myth status as the Zorro masked articulate esoteric blues and soul poet, only reinforces the mystery that surrounds him. Hardly the result of an easy life – one that’s seen him grow up in a sort of odd isolation, plagued by both physical and mental health; a consequence in no small part of his injuries sustained when trying out for the army.
His musical epiphany arrived whilst down-and-out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The untrained, and at one time homeless, but naturally gifted songwriter recorded the rawest of lo fi tracks, leaving them with his hand drawn cover art at various coffee shops around town, alongside flyers seeking a girlfriend with his phone number written on them. These unassuming offerings eventually made their way onto the cover of Found Magazine in America and from there, fell into the hands of XL Recordings Jamie-James Medina. Originally signing to the labels Bronx-based offshoot Hot Charity, releasing two well-received albums – his debut Acousmatic Sorcery in 2012 and Nobody Knows follow up in 2013 – Beal succumbed to either ennui, despondency or the pressures of suddenly being foisted into the music business and quit. Beal slopped off into a self-imposed exile in the backwoods of Olympia, Washington, and became the Noctunes crooner.
As the title suggests – a riff on nocturnes – these twelve nocturnal lullabies, paeans and plaintive ballads evoke the romantic nighttime meditations. Stripped to the barest of accompaniments, yearningly swooning with the occasional burst of a drawn-out primal scream, high notes and pained wallowing, Beal creates a haunted soundtrack. Part southern river ambient journey, part soul-baring soliloquy.
Once again dodging definition, he takes the mournful strings and suffused hymn like aspects of his previous recordings and ditches the bounce and R&B elements for minimalism. Still channelling Otis Redding with a side order of Bill Withers and echoing traces of TV On The Radio’s most dilatory maladies, Noctunes is, when prescribed in small doses, a visceral stirring experience. Choosing to say more with a lot less, lyrics, which if uttered by many other artists would sound like mere platitudes, are given a gut-wrenching and despondent leverage when leaving Beal’s lips.
Often draining, and at times laying it on a bit too thick, the album’s impact can be enervated when digested in one session. Lingering manifestations rather than epiphanies, it feels like our protagonist is unburdening his heart. A tough call on paper, yet the bare faint undertones of funeral parlour organ, stuttering jazz style drums, murmuring hums and synths lift the songs gently above morose and indulgence.
We need your help. If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat by donating via Ko-Fi.
For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music and Choice Releases list from the last month.
We decided at the start of the year to change things a little with a reminder of not only our favourite tracks from the last month, but also a list of choice albums too. This list includes both those releases we managed to feature and review on the site and those we just didn’t get the time or room for – time restraints and the sheer volume of submissions each month mean there are always those releases that miss out on receiving a full review, and so we have added a number to both our playlist and list.
All entries in the Choice Releases list are displayed alphabetically. Meanwhile, our Monthly Playlist continues as normal with all the choice tracks from July taken either from reviews and pieces written by me – that’s Dominic Valvona – , Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, and this month, Kalporz writer Samuel Conficoni. Our resident Hip-Hop expert Matt Oliver has also put forward a smattering of crucial and highlighted tracks from the rap arena.
CHOICE RELEASES FROM THE LAST MONTH OR SO:
Blanco Teta ‘‘La Debacle las Divas’
(Bongo Joe) Review
Lukas Cresswell-Rost ‘Weight Away’
(Wayside & Woodland Recordings) Review
Theon Cross ‘Affirmations: Live at Blue Note New York’
(New Soil) Review
Cumsleg Borenail ‘10mg Citalopram’
(Cruel Nature Recordings) Review
Exploding Star Orchestra ‘Holy Mountains’
Fortunato Durutti Marinetti ‘Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter’
(Quindi Records/We Are Time) Review
Tony Jay ‘Faithless’
Review
Freh Khodja ‘Ken Andi Habib’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) Review
The Lancashire Hustlers ‘Here But Not Here’
(Steep Hill) Review
Kevin Robertson ‘Yellow Painted Moon’
Review
Maria Elena Silva ‘Wise Men Never Try’
Review
Sol Messiah ‘War of the Gods’
THE PLAYLIST::
Blanco Teta ‘Subiduki’
Scotch Funeral ‘Weak at the Knees’
Freh Khodja ‘Aich Sar Bina Koulili’
Brickwork Lizards ‘All the We Are – Reworked by Sebastian Reynolds’
Natural Information Society ‘Sound Talisman’
Sol Messiah Ft. Sa-Roc ‘Auset’
Raekwon Ft. Ghostface Killah & Method Man ‘600 School’
Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire ‘Y.O.Utopia’
Open Mike Eagle ‘ok but I’m the phone screen’
Nicholas Craven & Boldy James Ft. C Dell & Nick Bruno ‘At&T’
Clipse, Pusha T & Malice Ft. Ab Liva ‘Inglorious Bastards’
Estee Nack & V Don Ft. Al-Doe ‘EZBRED’
Rachel Eckroth ‘Yin Yang’
Theon Cross Ft. Isaiah Collier, Nikos Ziarkas & James Russel Sims ‘We Go Again – Live at the Blue Note, NYC’
Peter Evans (Being & Becoming) ‘Malibu’
Homeboy Sandman & Sonnyjim ‘Can’t Stop Me’
Apollo Brown & Bronze Nazareth ‘Wheel Of Misfortune’
Ramson Badbonez & Leaf Dog ‘Celestial Bodies’
Max Schreiber ‘Layla Mistakel’
The Conspiracy ‘Salisbury Road’
SUO ‘Big Star’
Fortunato Durutti Marinetti ‘Beware’
Jeff Tweedy ‘Out in the Dark’
Kevin Robertson ‘Yellow Painted Moon’
Soft Hearted Scientists ‘Hello Hello’
Whitney ‘Dandelions’
The Lancashire Hustlers ‘Perhaps’
Ali Murray ‘ Toby’
Alex G ‘June Guitar’
Spotless Souls ‘In the Heart’
The Noisy ‘Twos’
Wolfgang Perez ‘So Ouco’
Eve Goodman & SERA ‘Blodyn Gwylly’
Joe Harvey-Whyte & Paul Cousins ‘lift’
Sirom ‘For You, This Eve, the Wolves Will Be Enchantingly Forsaken’
Austistici & Jacek Doroszenko ‘After Water Formed A Shape’
Cumsleg Borenail ‘You Mean Something To Me’
Cecil Taylor & Tony Oxley ‘Encore 1’
Exploding Star Orchestra ‘Afterburn (Parable 400)’.
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you can, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat by donating via Ko-Fi.
For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.
___THE NEW___
Autistici ‘Familiarity Enfolded’
(Audiobulb) 2nd August 2025
The middle sequence in a series of transformations by the Sheffield-based electronic composer, Familiarity Enfolded follows on from the first link in a chain of collaborative immersions, Familiarity Folded – released in just the last week. In what could also be a collaborative showcase for the Audiobulb label too, a smattering of artists who’ve previously released material on the platform now bond and work with Autistici in redeveloping or evolving and remixing his compositions and ideas for a three-part project.
Finding common ambient space and minimalist approaches to visioning new soundscapes and movements, part two includes contributions from Tomo-Nakaguchi (an artist we’ve raved about on the site in the last few years, and made our choice albums of the year lists), A Dancing Beggar (who hasn’t appeared for a very long time on this site, but has made our choice albums lists in the past), Russ Young and OdNu (another artist who has appeared in our reviews sections in the last couple of years). The prospects look good already, with this quartet’s sphere of influences within the ambient and electronic realms both adroit and always worthy of attention.
First up both Autistici and Tomo-Nakaguchi match-up for an incipient majestic awe of both the natural and synthetic on the opening ‘Twilight Glow Of The Sky’. What could be the sound of filaments falling like pattering rain on a drum skin or piece of Tupperware can be heard amongst the moving glimmering light captured at such an inspiring moment in time and place.
The cove atmospheric ‘Caiplie’s Hermitage’ references the atavistic caves of the title, found between the Scottish towns of Anstruther and Crail on the coastal pathways of Fife. A Dancing Beggar is the foil this time around, playing on the hallowed ghosts and history of that mysterious cavern, which is believed to have been used as a place or sanctuary of worship for Christians in the 9th century AD. There’s constant wash or downpour of rain and presence of water elements that continue throughout this piece, and it could be that the artists are perhaps sheltering from it as they build up an abstract picture that’s one part natural and the other near sci-fi. The brassy resonating strings of a guitar are plucked, pulled and sprung as heavenly machines move around in the background. A Dancing Beggar joins both Autistici and OdNu on the finale; a twenty minute plus long form illusion inspired by the track title’s Arthurian referenced enchantress, sibling, shapeshifter and seducer Morgan Le Fay mirage, the ‘Fata Morgana’. A “superior mirage” in other words, this optical phenomenon and complex mirage creates distorted and sometimes fantastical images of distantly observed objects. You must have seen this when looking at to sea in particular conditions and seeing tankers or ships appearing to float above the waves. Sonic wise, this reminded me of Jeff Bird with its essence of piped or pumped pastoral sounds. But there’s also something hallucinogenic about it too. There’s a Mark Hollis solo style piano bit, something that sounds almost like a concertinaed ghostly echo of some shipwreck shanty plus the shimmers and shivers of magic.
That leaves the final track of the quartet, the ‘Dissolved in Light’ collaboration with Russ Young, who I must admit I’m unfamiliar with. It begins with the itchy rubbing chorus of crickets and sundown atmospherics. A veil of mist dissipates to reveal a most minimalist timelessness before Laraaji-like bowls are struck softly and the sound of tines and melodious ambient waves entwine. Andrew Heath evocative piano notes and falls meet an amorphous staccato engine as the track moves along its placeable journey to the sacred.
‘Relinquishing’ control, the concept behind this series has worked rather well; resulting in some magical, stirring and illusionary pieces of sophisticated and highly immersive ambient and lowkey electronica. A Dancing Beggar seems to be adding something of the bucolic and pastoral to the mix to give it a connection to the human and greenery, the nature and history. But all four collaborators prove congruous partners on this project. Part three, Familiarity Unfolded, will follow in due course, and it will be interesting to hear the results of another set of sonic and musical partners.
The Lancashire Hustlers ‘Here But Not Here’
(Steep Hill) 4th July 2025
Rolling with the punches meted out by life; tumbling forward into a new songbook; The Lancashire Hustlers seventh album rings true with disillusion, detachment, bewilderment and isolation. It’s a feeling that’s hard to articulate or relate, but that unease at the tides of time and the disenchanted shrugs of malady sound pretty warm, gentle and sellable.
With a MOR breeze of soul in their sails once more, the long-standing duo of guitarist and vocalist Brent Thorley and drummer and backing vocalist Ian Pakes take beat group, Baroque, psych and troubadour influences for a both funky and yearned trip across the Northern countryside and towns of their home. Transporting a hint of Muscle Shoals to Lancashire for an idiosyncratic English take on the music of the Isley Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, the duo (with an extended apparatus of instruments, which they both share) have a slight saunter and roll to their signature to their songwriting and playing. It’s the sound of The Beatles, of individual Lennon and McCartney on their solo work, of the Stones, of Ollie Halsall and John Compton with an undulation of gospel-light and country-soul electric piano and organ. Talking of the country reference, the most lovely ‘Just Because’ has what could be either a melodica or clarinet sounding like a forlorn but romantically sighed harmonica – there’s also the use of a lap steel guitar.
There are some heartfelt, sad plaints, and rural country swamp pop ditties that wouldn’t sound out of place on McCartney’s eponymous solo album and RAM; some songs that err towards the haunted, albeit with instrumental aping scurrying mouse effects – see the confessional, asking for forgiveness, pest and rodents quirky phobia, and Byzantine Stones flavoured ‘I Killed A Mouse’ -; and some that beat themselves up over guilt, frustration and heartache. Most out there, must be the dejected lament of feeling ignored, ‘Like A Ghost’, which sounds like a detour to some mysterious Hispaniola Les Baxter hideaway island of the occult. And yet, they never feel so down or in the blues funk that each song isn’t rich in playfulness lyrics wise, or ever dour.
Another enchanting as it is sorrowful and disenchanted songbook from a duo that continues to make its own luck, releasing a consistent catalogue of instantly likeable, melodious and breezily catchy albums. It’s always a pleasure to review and hear them.
Maria Elena Silva ‘Wise Men Never Try’
4th July 2025
Recently stripping back Bob Dylan’s courtly enigmatic dames to their most essential essences with interpretations of ‘Queen Jane’ and a summoned bell rung ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’, Maria Elena Silva now turns to the pages of the Great American Songbook with a first volume of revisited and transposed standards made anew: that is, made emotively ethereal, near evanescence yet connected and with a real sense of depth and something approaching the tactile.
Under the ‘umbrella title’ of Wise Men Never Try, the inaugural volume features a small intimate accompaniment of players to accentuate and punctuate Silva’s carefully placed and near blown words, or, to wind along to a minimalist performance of the artful, the solo play, the quietened and sullen lament, the show tune stripped of artifice, and the enigmatic, near impregnable shell of a smoky cabaret tortured soulstress. Step forward Erez Dessel, who’s piano both articulates the feel and plays with a freer hand of spine-tinkles, ached suspense, distorts and slightly jars the nerves; especially on the opening version of Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman’s late 1950’s standard, ‘I Walk A Little Faster’ (the singular “I” has been dropped I assume to reframe the angle for a new interpretation), which was a hit for Blossom Desire in 1958. The original’s slight lilt of 50s swing and jazz is replaced with a jilt of dissonance on the piano; made more so because of the near silence that opens the song. In a bluesy-jazzy fashion that also recalls the theatre, Silva amorphously places the words with lulled and delicate breathless ease. As a theme of heartache and denial, this distillation is as beautiful as it is almost troubling and disconsolate. The album’s finale, ‘Some Enchanted Evening’, is the closet interpretation on the whole album, featuring a lovely melodious piano that wouldn’t sound out of place on the original; all very tender and dreamy. The Rodgers and Hammerstein number, composed for the South Pacific musical, is normally sung by male protagonist Emile as he captures the essence of love at first sight. Out of the female gaze, with a female perspective that theme is not so much lost but redefined.
We also have Tyler Wagner popping up on the double-bass, taking a tactile, textural jazzy approach, offering flexed stretches of the body, sensitive little crawls and climbs, and more physical thwacks of the bass strings. The filmic pining ‘I Should Care’, written by Alex Stordahl, Paul Weston and Sammy Cahn for the 1944 MGM matinee Thrill of a Romance – covered by all the notable greats over the decades, from Sinatra to Peggy Lee, Dizzy Gillespie and Amy Winehouse -, features a bass that quietly thumbs away a jazz rhythm in the style of early Blue Note, as Silva sympathetically oozes soulful pursed heartache.
Completing the accompanying trio – who it must be stated, don’t always play together or on every song – is Ben McDonald on electric guitar. Subtle for the most part, ‘I’m In Love Again’ has McDonald pinging harmonics, brushing up and down the fretboard and playing a nice Reinhardt-esque delicate languid sensitive form of haunted sympathy.
It must be pointed out that Silva also plays acoustic guitar on these numbers. ‘You Don’t Know How Glad I Am’, written by Jimmy Williams and Larry Harrison, and made her own by Nancy Wilson on the 1964 single, is an intimate entwined match of Silva’s climbing vocals and a guitar with a pinch of Spanish flair: albeit kept quite subtle. Silva’s version of that recognisable tune sounds somewhere between Judee Sill and Roberta Flack. It’s there again on the next song, ‘Close To You’, a sort of jazzy-gypsy guitar melancholy.
Silva’s voice is labyrinthine and enigmatic yet can’t quite hide the various emotional toils of disconsolate and sacrificial, torturous and resigned heartbreak. Despite the intimacy of the setting, every song has a stage-like atmosphere about it that croons and soothingly oozes sophisticated, elegant jazzy-blues performance from the stillness and blank space. But that voice is hard to define, to pin down; amorphously pitched between the great jazz singers, the voices of perhaps Julie London and Peggy Lee, and something approaching the folk doyens of the 60s. A beautiful, somewhat pining and plaint start to a series of such interpreted songbooks, volume one is a very personal take and perspective on a songbook we have come to take for granted and heard a thousand or more times. In this moment, this setting, those just recognisable songs have taken on a different quality and encouraged a new reading.
If that grabbed you, Silva will be back next month with a second volume, this time concentrated on songs of a certain vintage, and a prescient history, the American Civil War. Expect to read a review of that album at a later date.
Leo Wolf ‘I Saw Your Shadow On The Wall’
1st August 2025
The flicker of Richter’s candle appearing at the end of the labyrinth; the half-dreamt, half-seen M.R. James’ apparitions; the presence of the supernatural and mysterious prompted by sleep hallucinations; these are all in the essence and conjuring of imagery that is crafted from the North Carolina artist Leo Wolf’s ambient, atmospheric and filmic granular synthesis of processed sampled material from classical records and field recordings. With weight and texture these asynchronously breathed, and space filled recordings exist in a semi dream state, simultaneously paranormal and yet tethered to the search for light and gravitas in a world of synthesized melodic wave forms, tones, passes, undulations and bass-y padded throbs.
Building up a moving, simulating and often dramatic sensory experience from hidden sources, machinery and the recognisable captured moments of the artist’s surroundings – from the rain hitting a metal apparatus in the garden, to the clatter of cutlery and plates, the conversations caught between people in a restaurant or café setting -, this album’s building blocks act together and independently of each other to set in motion a feeling both hypnagogic and hypnotic – the former even features in the title of one track. Are we indeed awake or not? Who can tell, as Leo constructs a surprisingly beautiful work of ambient reflection, soundtracks and filtered brilliance.
A brilliance of light (metaphorical and real) can be found on each and every track more or less, as the mists, haze, the unsure fogs of the musty and gauzy are parted to reveal itself.
It sounds to me like 1980s paranormal VHS merged with His Name Is Alive, synthesized monastic and gothic voices, hollowed beams, overhead craft of an alien nature and generators. Nightmare and the sublime through the grainy lens, I Saw Your Shadow On The Wall envelops the listener in Leo’s personal searches and emotional pulls to create a most moving soundtrack.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 99___
For the 99th time, the Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share; with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for nearly 12 years now, Volume 99 is the latest eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show from me – the perfect radio show in fact: devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
Let us pay homage firstly to the late Argentine pianist and composer Lalo Schifrin, who passed away earlier this month. Arguably it took a South American to encapsulate and bottle through blazed horns, funky grooves, a chorus of dramatic near reverent voices, and thriller punches the sound of the streets of San Francisco and New York in the 60s and 70s; when Dirty Harry served Judge Dredd style justice and Steve McQueen handbrake turned and screeched recklessly as a getaway driver. Kung-Fu to Spies, Bossa, Samba, the orchestral, swing, jazz, the cultish and horror, Schifrin’s signature is legendary; his influence so wide and extensive as to have entered the musical lexicon. Arguably amongst the most sampled composers of all time too. So where do you start? How the hell do you represent such a legacy? Well, I’ve chosen a few personal favourites and a couple of more obscure tracks from a cannon that spans over seven decades: the theme from ‘Magnum Force’, ‘Kyrie’, ‘Once A Thief’, ‘Vaccinated Mushrooms’, ‘The Shadow’ and ‘Introit’. And literally as I’m writing this, news arrives of Ozzy Osbourne‘s sad departure from these realms. The Anti-christ, lord of heavy metal (or “heavy mental” as my old man always called it), arguably at least one of the founding fathers of that sound through Black Sabbath of course (or at least one of the earliest adopters), finally succumbed to his plague of illnesses and conditions. Near on breaking his neck on the unseemly naff chariot of a quad bike ages ago, but battling Parkinson’s, a ridiculous amount of addictions, it seemed Ozzy was always on the cusp of death; defying the odds not just to put one foot in front of the other, but to continue his career as dark magi, ring master to metal and its offspring. What seems like an age ago, the TV show that did much to revive his career, one of Brum’s most famous and celebrated sons managed to become relevant again to a whole new generation despite seeing a ramshackle, ailing former rock star on his downers, and unintentionally making a name for himself through various comedic episodes: even entering that lexicon on catch phrases, the metal equivalent of Fred Flintstone’s hollering “Wilma!”, more in desperation, of “Sharon!”. It always seemed a joke, or not to be taken too seriously, all that dark brooding, Satanic rites, devil’s spawn and howling metamorphous werewolf mooning: and it worked very well. And despite the hilarity, the idol status of motel, hotel, holiday inn wrecking, pissing on the Alamo, the Motley Crue pool side incident of snorting a row of ants, wife/partner/enabler/manager Sharon can tell a dark tale or two hundred about Ozzy’s drug-crazed manic violent outbursts. Still, he was a character; a motherfucker as Brian Bordello would say; a true individual; the like of which we won’t ever see again. Many wished Ozzy on, even those who weren’t fans. His final curtain call was only a matter of a few weeks ago, back on home soil. Like the trooper he was, Ozzy gave back to the city that panel-beat and moulded him. I’ve chosen a couple of tunes to see him off (please no jokes about double-checking the coffin on the day), one from the Sabbath days, the other, from Ozzy’s debut 80’s album Dairy Of A Madman.
Moving on now to the anniversary celebrating albums, there’s select tracks from Wayne Shorter’s most (arguably) influential and most covered LP, JuJu (60 this month), The Rolling Stones’ Out Of Our Heads (60 this month), The Fugs’ debut LP (60 this month), Milton Nascimento’s Minas (50 this year), Larry Jon Wilson’s New Beginnings (50 this year), The Verve’s A Northern Soul (unbelievably 30 years old in 2025) and Banco De Gaia’s Last Trian To Lhasa (30 this month).
Each month a smattering of newish tracks that didn’t make the Monthly Playlist of new music manage to creep into the set list. For July, there’s tracks from Nowaah The Flood, Rarelyalways with Nia J,Lunch Money Life, and DJ Haram with Moor Mother and 700 Bliss.
That leaves space for an intergenerational, cross-polygenesis mix of tunes from the triumvirate gathering of Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul (aka A.R.C.), Grass Widow, Julie Coker, Federico Balducci, Johhny Yen Bang, Chakk, MC 900 FT Jesus…
Tracks in full are::::
Lalo Schifrin ‘Theme From Magnum Force’
Banco De Gaia ‘Kincajou’
The Fugs ‘Slum Goddess’
Grass Widow ‘Tattoo’
Mighty Mighty ‘Yours Truly’
Batsumi ‘Mamshanyana’
Federico Balducci ‘Abode’
Black Sabbath ‘Who Are You?’
Lalo Schifrin ‘Kyrie’
Lalo Schifrin ‘Once A Thief’
Wayne Shorter ‘Deluge’
Nowaah the Flood ‘Protocol’
DJ Haram w/ Moor Mother and 700 Bliss ‘Lifelike’
MC 900 Ft. Jesus ‘Dancing Barefoot’
Lunch Money Life ‘The Garden’
Rarelyalways w/ Mia J ‘Paid’
Milton Nascimento w/ Beto Guedes ‘Caso Voce Queira Saber’
El Polen ‘A las Orillas del Vilcanota’
Joe King Kologbo ‘All Fingers Are Not Equal’
Julie Coker ‘Elelemi’
Lalo Schifrin ‘‘Vaccinated Mushrooms’
Chick Corea, Dave Holland & Barry Altschul ‘Games’
Lalo Schifrin ‘The Shadow’
Johnny Yen Bang ‘Kill The Disco’
Harte 10 ‘Some Ronnie – Live’
Ozzy Osbourne ‘Flying High Again’
Chakk ‘Caught in Your Face’
Co-Pilot ‘Cornerhouse’
The Rolling Stones ‘That’s How Strong My Love Is’
Lalo Schifrin ‘Introit’
The Verve ‘On Your Own’
Larry Jon Wilson ‘Broomstraw Philosophers And Scuppernong Wine’
___/Archives___
Already represented in volume 99 of the Social Playlist above, another chance to repost my piece on new age techno pioneer Banco De Gaia’s influential 1995 world peregrination Last Trian To Lhasa. Originally appearing as a twentieth anniversary special, with a repackaged version of the album plus extras.
Banco De Gaia ‘Last Train To Lhasa (20th Anniversary 4xCD Set)’
Despite, what on the surface, seems a plausible misconception, one of the UK’s chief progenitors of global trance peregrinations, Banco De Gaia, has become synonymous with all things Tibetan. Re-released on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, the Banco’s Last Train To Lhasa album may have borrowed the title and evoked a transcendent spirit of the country’s mystical Himalayan landscapes, yet the group’s founder and guiding force Toby Marks never meant to confine his world sounds to one particular place: In truth, more a pan-global sound palette with echoes and traces of the Middle East, Asia and the Orient.
Going as far as to refute suggestions in every subsequent interview since its original release, the LP only actually features a solitary sample from the region and only gained its title from Marks wife on completion. However, Marks lent space on the album’s sleeve to publicising Tibet’s struggle against its overlord Chinese masters and would become a vocal advocate of the Free Tibet campaign – that now seems such a long time ago, and all but forgotten, with China since more or less swallowing Hong Kong and threatening an invasion of Taiwan, which if it does come, might just be the big one: the WWIII event we always dreaded.
Base camp on the enlightened journey to the ethereal, Tibet’s meditative disposition was no match for the authoritarian steamroller of the Communist party machine. And so, an ill-at-ease occupation and stalemate persists a generation later. Its international vessel of protest, the Dalai Lama in his own affable and gentle way backed by the Free Tibet campaign continues to be a big draw yet has decidedly been upstaged by events elsewhere. Clarifying his commitment to the cause, Marks was recently interviewed by the Free Tibet organisation in the run up to his trio of performances at this year’s Glastonbury and the anniversary Last Train To Lhasa release – perhaps a timely reminder.
Musically speaking, as I’ve already mentioned, the twentieth anniversary appraisal of Banco De Gaia’s blueprint reaches far beyond any Tibetan influence, imbued by cultures both imaginary and real from both terra firma and the stratosphere.
Highly praised for merging trance and nuanced electronic four-to-the-floor beats with atavistic echoes from mystically envisioned landscapes, Banco De Gaia’s Last Train To Lhasa was released in the dying ambers of the second rave and house music waves in 1995. On the cusp of Britpop, hung-over from grunge, guitars were about to once again dominate whilst house and techno music in all its many guises had reached superclub status; the underground movements fractured and broken up into a myriad of smaller tribes. Ambient and trance, usually the preserve of afterhours clubbing or allocated space in the “chill out” zones had already blossomed into its own industry. That unfairly and often fatuous “chill out” idiom used to sell everything from nirvana relaxation and transience to any ‘new age” missive. Never new in itself, until progress and technology made it easier and offered more options, the core ambient ingredient had already been in existence for decades. And despite what you may have read, Eno may have given it a name, but he certainly didn’t invent it. In this evolving stage of dance music, Banco De Gaia went to town, sitting on a fluffy cloud, hovering between trance and techno.
LTTL’s suffused panoramic station-to-station soundtrack was different. Sharing some of the peaceable beautiful nephology of The Orb and Air Liquid but with the satellite guided twinkle and kinetic rhythms of Orbital, the album sounded every bit as organic as it did electronic. The original album is boosted by a further three CDs worth of alternative takes, mixes, remixes and the missing until now, Apollo moon landing inspired space-voyage, ‘Eagle’ – recorded at the time but left off the final version of the LP. A box set only available as a limited-edition physical release – though now also available to hear on Bandcamp -, fans and admirers alike can really indulge, with 24 tracks of transcendent aural bliss.
Even if you are far from familiar with the source material, the general method applied is one of respectful tinkering and expansion, with Marks own alternatives plus a line-up of contemporary artists/producer remixes congruously immersive. A ‘Duck Asteroid Extended’ mix of the original ‘Kincajou’ for example, takes the steam driven new age suite on an epic, stripped and even more ambient, 44-minute journey: it takes the mix thirty-minutes to bring in the beats and reach a higher plain. Elsewhere, various tinkering’s of the holy misty mountain proverb ‘China (Clouds Not Mountains)’ takes the languid drifter into ever more esoteric territories, or in the case of Roedelius and Felix Jay collaborator Andrew Heath, adding a diaphanous piano to the meditative calligraphy-brushed valley narrative.
The reverberations of dub, bhangra, and the Orient are sometimes stretched into indolent escapism or given more power and lift on the varied versions of ‘Amber’. Sometimes as with the Carl Craig imbued Bluetech remix of ‘Kuos’, they are taken apart and rebuilt. Though nothing quite matches the rolling timpani introduction and celestial beauty of the original ‘White Paint’, ‘Where’s The Runway Dub’ and alucidnations ‘Dream Remix’ offer interesting interpretations; one a hymn in dub the other a suffused with kosmiche rays romance in the sky.
A carefully considered expansion of the Banco De Gaia panoramic worlds of the mid-90s, the 20th anniversary edition certainly offers the listener an immersive experience. And you can’t complain about getting your money’s worth, with over four hours of music over the four discs to peruse.
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The Perusal #69: Theon Cross, Wolfgang Pérez, Sebastian Reynolds, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti…
July 7, 2025
A world of sonic/musical discoveries reviewed by Dominic Valvona
(photo by Ian Hippolyte of Theon Cross)
Lukas Cresswell-Rost ‘Weight Away’
(Wayside & Woodland Recordings) 4th July 2025
A welcome return home and a welcome return to the fold musically speaking, Lukas Cresswell-Rost is back in Yorkshire after spending the best part of the last 15 years ‘living and getting slightly lost in Berlin.’ Engaging once more with the world around and bringing back a collection of songs and pieces of music he created over the years whilst eking out a creative career in the German capital, Lukas proposes a touching reconnection, a sense of loss, of remembrance and reflection on his new songbook, Weight Away.
A tale of two cities, or two locations, a majority of the newly released material was written back in Berlin, tested at gigs there, but was completed in England with the aid of friendly musical companions James Yates (who goes under the Majetona nom de plume, and also plays with epic45, the duo formed by the co-founders of the label that not facilitates this album) on drums, Danny Laycock on both standard and fretless bass guitars, and his wife Emaline Delapaix on backing vocals.
But before we concentrate on the new album, let’s rewind to Lukas’ previous releases – or the ones I reviewed and featured on the site.
If you’ve followed the Monolith Cocktail over the years, you may well have caught my reviews of both his underappreciated Go Dream and Gone Dreamin’ releases. I praised both highly at the time, saying this about the former: ‘Travelling a well-worn highway; tuned into a radio station straight from in-between the 1970s covers of Rolling Stone, Creem and The Village Voice; accompanied by a cast of “misanthropic” characters, the former Leeds troubadour of deconstructed pop Lukas Creswell-Rost dreams up a most sophisticated songwriting opus. His relocation, five years ago, to the creative hive of Berlin has done the artist a world of good, this solid contextual collection of earnest dramas and lamentable episodes from the rock of ages, slowly but surely, unfurling its quality.’ And about the latter, Gone Dreamin’, ‘a reimagined transformation, taken off into more experimental realms, with ideas, scraps of dialogue, riffs and melodies ‘flying around’, merged with various effects and breaks, these original beautifully vaporous soft rock ballads and cruising songs are given a new lease of life.’
But now back on English soil, Lukas takes stock whilst opening up his sound. And whilst there are hints, especially on the instrumental vignettes, of his past work, the sound is a little less Fairlight 70s/80s troubadour pop, and more like a mix of soft dreamy psychedelic indie, folktronica, the classical, and a mirage-like waned version of Americana. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still the odd hint of Steely Dan, of Wings, but now also hints of a subtle The Flaming Lips, a touch of Galaxie 500 and Mike Gale on the tropical blue Hawaiian dreamt ‘Spiral Island’, which features the soft beachcomber lulls of Delapaix and may or may not be hiding far more philosophical quandaries of death and shaking one’s self out of a stupor, the blues, beneath its fantasy islet vibes. Gale popped up a lot when listening through this generous fourteen-track songbook of vocalised and instrumental pieces, lead-ins to fuller songs and momentary breaks – these short pieces range between the incipient plucks of elastic band strings to near plaintive plinks that induce a real sadness; most of them linking or bringing in the next song like the more minimal or ambient and felt congruous stirs of an intro track.
But then I also heard an inkling of the SFA and even The Beach Boys. But shifting those evocations a little, ‘More Jam Than Band’ made me think of the drifted and near dreamy country bluegrass and Americana music and scores of Myles Cochran: that and Blue Rose Code on a song of harmonic pinged atmospherics, DJ lyric analogies, the semi-classical and reflective.
Personal travails, a battle to escape a state of mentally sapping stasis, and the deaths of those close, including the suicide of a friend, breach comfort zones at every turn – good God, the bass, when not in fretless slides, on ‘The Bird Of Prey’ finale reminded me of Climate of Hunter era Scott Walker. And yet, this is a lush at times, often dreamy (as I’ve already mentioned) listen of the picturesque and emotively drawn-out. With a new set-up, an embrace of musical friends Lukas Cresswell-Rost produces a complicated album of feelings and quandaries made melodious and rich in lucidity.
Theon Cross ‘Affirmations: Live at Blue Note New York’
(New Soil) 11th July 2025
Hot footing across the Atlantic on a wave of critical acclaim tubist son of Kemet Theon Cross lands down in one of the most auspicious of jazz crucibles, the Blue Note in New York City. Off the back of a number of long and short players, and a reputation for working with some of the key trailblazers in the contemporary UK jazz movement (most notably Mosses Boyd and Nubya Garcia), Cross has ventured out on his own in recent years to much fanfare, transporting and transforming the sound of his chosen instrument to probe into ever evolving territories, but also once more putting that brassy instrument at the centre.
Although one of the most durable instruments in the jazz cannon, with a history that dates back to that style’s birth in New Orleans, the tuba has often gone in and out of fashion; disappearing from the frontlines during the electrified era or replaced by the bass (whether that’s the double or electric). Hanging on in there, the tuba was ideal for outdoor performances, its natural resonated amplified bassy notes and rumbles carrying far enough without the need for amplifiers. Through such pioneers and luminaries as Bill Barber, who lent his tuba to various Miles Davis albums, and Raymond Drapper, who was said to have beaten Miles to forming the first jazz-fusion’ ensemble in the 1960s, the tuba has been pulled back into focus, the mix and limelight. Drapper for his part was able to bridge jazz with the burgeoning psychedelic and rock scenes of that decade and take it further – a kind of Sly & The Family Stone of jazz-fusion if you like -, but also laid down markers during a previous decade with such luminaries and anointed saints of jazz as Coltrane. Interestingly, Coltrane and his highly influential Live at the Village Gate LP are mentioned in the notes for Cross’ live debut album – ‘honoured’ alongside Sonny Rollins’ Live at the Village Vanguard LP. And although it isn’t obvious, Affirmations: Live at Blue Note New York has echoes of his spirit, channelled through the saxophone of Cross’ saxophone foil, the celebrated and already established all-rounder, Chosen Few band leader and solo talent Isaiah Collier.
As a side note of a sort, early on in this performance there’s a track named ‘Transition’, which I thought might be a reference to Coltrane’s own track of the same name, recorded in 1965 but only released posthumously five years later. It is in fact just that, a ‘transition’ between pieces, a continual bridge on a performance that never really lets up, dynamically fluctuating between the tampered, incipient and full-on. The whole thing runs continuously for 80 minutes, with the odd shoutout, and simmering down and stripped interaction with the whistling and whooping but respective audience to take the action down a notch or two. In fact, Cross’ intention was to structure this live gig like a DJ set. And it does indeed sound like that, albeit on real instrumentation, with lots of grooves, breaks and plenty of bass lines played either on the tuba or the electric bass guitar.
You could say a journey is mapped out, riffing on both tracks that feature on Cross’ 2019 album Fyah, his 2021 album Intra-I (which translates as “within self”) and his single doublet of Wings/Back To Africa (the former gets a serious airing here) and improvisations that predominately featuring the versatility of the tuba – some of the most experimental pieces in the set, they feature Cross either unaccompanied holding the attention or with minimal interaction from his chosen troupe of talented foils. Solo efforts, introductions to the next group effort, they do occasionally star or put in the spotlight his highly in-demand guitarist Nikos Ziarkas. The Greek guitar virtuoso, who moved to London more than a decade ago, and co-leader of Valia Calda, settles in an evolving experimental and descriptive space between that of mirage, phaser lunar bends, the melted, looped and cosmic; evoking echoes of fusion-jazz, Afro-rock and the work of Bill Frisell and Nels Cline – although Hendrix is mentioned in his own bio, and his guitar parts here do verge on the psychedelic at times, but nothing truly bluesy and heavy. There are whole passages for Ziarkas to navigate and enrich, or to wrangle and describe, accentuate or cast off into space.
Completing this gifted assembled quartet is the brilliant Chicago drummer James Russel Sims, who splashes around, gives groove and a percussive lift to the performances. There’s a real feel of the African and even Latin in some of the tapping, bottle-like and jar hitting. Plus, what sounds like recurring shake or rattle of dried beans, rice or grass. Sims keeps momentum with bass drum kicking bounce, breaks, rolls and punctuations.
The album starts with the dry bones shake and stirred synthesized waves of the mystical and sci-fi like spiritual maelstrom ‘Greetings’, which at any one point evokes the work of Donny MacCaslin, Afrikan Sciences, The Comet Is Coming and Pharoah Sanders. From then on in, we are moved between impressive tuba performances that sound like a digeridoo or bass guitar, or chuff and sonorously register and the lowest of frequencies or quicken and pump without taking any breaths. Soulful, funky and R&B like on the finale ‘Confidence of Your Ability’ but raising the tuba like an elephant’s trunk and puffing away like a New Orleans brass band on the Afro-Futurist’s Egyptology ‘Play To Win’, the scope of influences at play is wide and deep, and yet always connective to Cross’ themes and sound: the whole group unifying their ranges and own CVs worth of past and present projects to help create the perfect ensemble piece. I’m hearing Jon Sass, Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, the Soft Machine, Oren Marshall, Karl Hector & The Malcouns, Coltrane’s Ole, funk-jazz, spiritual, and Afro-futurism vibes that almost roll into hip-hop and breakbeat territories: akin to Roots jamming with Archie Shepp and Idris Ackamoor.
From ascending to transcending, the spiritual to otherworldly, the concentrated to parred down, the vibes vary on a live recording that stays consistently inter-dimensional and cosmic yet tethered to the Blue Note legacy and the iconic live showcases that shone even more anointed light upon such luminaries as Rollins and Coltrane. Above all a showcase for Cross’ inventiveness, energy and command of adroit musicianship, this recorded performance will stand as a testament to his brand of tuba fusions and contemporary jazz journeys of futurism and the universal. A lasting legacy at that, and one of the best live performances I’ve heard in a long time.
Cumsleg Borenail ‘10mg Citalopram’
(Cruel Nature Recordings) 27th June 2025
Nightmare or escapism from mental illness and desperation? AI fever dreams or hyperbolic morphing accelerators to total hallucinational evolution? The collider general of all these elements, the anonymous Cumsleg Borenail, seems to exist in-between various consciousnesses, wired in to an intravenous of 21st century tech overload, distractions, glitches in the matrix and the daily dosage of citalopram – for those who would like to know these things, citalopram is an antidepressant that belongs to the ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor class’. It is used to treat major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and social phobia, but just as likely to be induced by those seeking drug comas of a less medicinal kind.
Like hits of dopamine the discombobulations on Borenail’s latest album – one arrives so quickly these days, that by the time you’ve read this it will have been followed up by at least two more releases – is constantly in a manic shift of growing, evolving industrial electronic music, breakbeat, techno, fucked-up hip-hop beats, no wave, glitch and 80s style sound clash transformations: even the “ambient” breather track is a humorous bastardisation of its own purpose, shooting off 12-gauage gunshots like beats, whilst gazing into the flames. But imagine throughout, a broken up phantasmagoric version of Merzbow, Authchere and Nocturnal Emissions – the latter of which I’m picking up a lot during the course of this thrash-electronic mind-warp that takes more cues from Coil, Populaire Mechanik, The Gruesome Twosome, Conformist and Ramuntcho Matta than it does the EDM or tech experiments of our modern age.
From the kink fattening grossness of the accompanying album artwork to snatches and riffs of dialogue and samples off the telly and from the cult film worlds, life’s general dystopian, vacuous and ridiculous noise and ambience is fed into hadron; spewing out nonsense that makes a mockery of society and its mania, its dependency on gratification and manufactured drug hits. I say that: it could just as easily be a celebration of that very nightmarish shopping list of anxiety-inducing bilge. Broken glass, various dialects and soundbites, both the stringy and pained, the supernatural and daemonic get flicked through like a cluttery rolodex of havoc and silliness.
Fabrication could be the order of the day: fabricated artist, fabricated imagery and fabricated prompted noise installations. It’s impossible to tell how and if there is indeed even a real Cumsleg Borenail behind the machine. Whatever the truth, CB makes the most insane and experimental electric-metal-break-techno-no-wave-thrash on the Internet. And you should care about that, and indeed support it.
Fortunato Durutti Marinetti ‘Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter’
(Quindi Records/We Are Time) 25th July 2025
With an alias borrowed from a saint, a Spanish anarchist and an infamous Italian futurist poet, disruptor, Daniele Colussi suavely carouses between the emotional quandaries and atavistic dualities of the bittersweet on his upcoming, and fourth, album. And despite those moniker references his music is anything but confrontational and revolutionary. Instead, he creates a familiar but repurposed musical songbook world that takes its inspirations from those disconsolate French singer-songwriters that would forlornly gaze across the Seine and light up a Gitane or Gauloise in philosophical reflection, and from those arch, arty broads and dames that dared to tread their own idiosyncratic musical pathways. For this is a smooth, sophisticated songbook with both Mediterranean resort and French-Canadian vibes that’s easy on the ear; effortlessly and loosely moving between the jazzy (the album’s two instrumental Theme tune vignettes bordering on both classic Blue Note and Affirmation Coltrane, but played by a cool European lounge band), soft funk, troubadour, those French and Italian mavericks of the 70s and 80s, the soulful, the Baroque, and both art-pop and Franco-pop.
Colussi perfectly counters the weary with romantic illusions, metaphors and forlorn absurdity; simultaneously pulling on the heart strings, need consolation, and yet dethatched and self-deprecating. Colussi delivers some great lines throughout. On ‘Do You Ever Think’, and in the manner of Gainsbourg, he comes out with this near sardonic: “And tell me, is that dog that’s drowning in your new painting supposed to look like me?” In the same song he changes that voice to sound almost like Lay Lady Lay era Dylan when in a more poetic mode he comes out with this, “When the hawks rush the morning doves, does that make you think of me.” The dog returns, in a different capacity, on the autobiographic allegorical Baroque-Eno ‘Call Me The Author’: “I started out as a dog/A kind of dog that refused to bark”.
Vocally and lyrically, there’s more than a resemblance to the craft of Llyod Cole, Dr Robert and Leonard Cohen. The latter isn’t so surprising to me, because even if it wasn’t intentional, Colussi recorded this album with a full band and brass section in his adopted Toronto home. And though he also has Turin roots, there is a deep Frenchified sound to this record; and of course, a French-Canadian one. So, Cohen seems a good call to make, even though he isn’t mentioned in the notes and bio. Moving away from that, and with the vocal addition of Victoria Cheong on the Chateau-pop-Rhodes-Wonder soulful and string accompanied walk through ‘Beware’, this could be a reunion between Brigitte Fontaine and Areski Belkacem, or a match-up of Gainsbourg and Little Annie: there’s also a hint of Joanne Grauer about it too.
The title and themes of this album are in part inspired by the Canadian author, poet, essayist, translator and classics professor Anne Carson and her debut book of criticism, Eros: The Bittersweet. At its heart, there is an analysis of that ancient Greek deity’s duality, the simultaneous concepts and experiences within its lore of both pleasure and pain. One of the main thread or sources for this book is Sappho, who is said to have coined the phrase, encapsulation of this duality, “glukupikron”: later translated into the “bittersweet”. Carson sees Eros as “deferred, defied, obstructed, hungry, organised around a radiant absence – eros as lack.” Make what you will of that. Colussi for his part, transfers it to a contemporary setting, and yet feels attached to nostalgia and the past.
Despite the melody, the harmony and smooth musicianship, Colussi pushes himself like never before with “chorus-less compositions swirling in 6/8 time”, and a musical accompaniment that includes the attentive airs and sweep of strings and the soft pipes of brass. The meandering palette expands to evoke signs of Sebastien Tellier, Susana Estrada, Loic Lanteine, Annette Peacock, Ricki Lee Jones, The Blow Monkeys, Bernardo Devlin, and I know this will sound odd, but a touch of Jarvis Cocker. All meet in this drama, this setting of cigarette smoking angels, wistful malady and shrugged romantic surrealism.
Things are wrapped up with the detached state of melancholic dark humour curtain call, ‘My Funeral’, with Colussi observant of his own bluesy-jazzy-Franco Jacques Brel and Brecht accompanied passing. Balancing his own scales with reminders of all those good deeds (“But remember, I held the door open for a little old lady.”), this semi-dirge of the barely trumpeted and sulking is a perfect ending to a bittersweet life of despondency and grace. What an album; the perfect one at that. A great songbook that just gets better with every single play. Colussi has produced his best work yet.
Freh Khodja ‘Ken Andi Habib’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 4th July 2025
After various international stopovers, the vinyl reissue specialists return to North Africa, and the former French colony of Algeria with one of the most desired LPs from its diaspora, Freh Khodja’s 1975 released Ken Andi Habib showcase.
Reissued for the first ever, after fifty years that French studio recording has finally been accorded a long overture reprise – remastered and with a package that includes liner notes and context by Rabah Mezouane. Given the tip-off, as it were, by DJ Cheb Gero – the Paris-based DJ and curator is responsible for recently curating the Sweet Rebel Rai set, and for working with WEWANTSOUNDS on their Abranis LP revival a while back – Khodja’s seminal album is rightfully given its dues; a highly influential bridge between Alegria and its diaspora’s adopted European homes, the resulting fusion of cultures and influences culminating in a truly international sound that spans various continents, from North And South America to the Caribbean Islands, Arabian North Africa and Cape Verde.
But first, a little background to this story. Khodja was born in 1949 in Sidi Bel Abbès, an Algerian city famous for its markets, agriculture and industry; named after the noted Muslim noble who is buried there. It’s also a centre, of a sort, for Algeria’s highly popular Rai form of folk music. Translating as ‘opinion’, Rai originated in the Algerian city of Oran sometime in the 1920s and developed into a spirited form of protest and nationalistic pride: falling foul of the French overlords as a rallying cry against colonialism.
Although his family pushed him towards sport, the young aspiring musician quickly took to the saxophone whilst studying musical theory and composition. His obvious talents led him to France in the 1960s. Although, as Mezouane shares in his linear notes and interview with the still thriving and passionate Khodja, his move was saddled by the ‘immigrant experiences’ of working “twelve jobs, thirteen miseries”. Reuniting with his brother in Lyon, Khodja was worked as a lab technician for a period, before later returning to Paris where he enrolled at the Ecole Normale de Musique to study saxophone under the tutelage of the classical saxophonist Marcel Josse.
His first furores into the music world included membership of Les Flammes, a group of immigrant musicians mostly drawn from North Africa – actually, a number of them came from the West African island of Cape Verde. But his career went on to span arranging and composing for film, TV and theatre. He even had a few turns on screen as an ‘occasional actor’.
In 1975, backed by Les Flammes, and with the addition of the vocal harmonizing group El Salem, Khodja went into a Parisian studio to record Ken Andi Habib, a versatile set of numbers that featured horns and an electric mix of instruments, mixed vocal choruses and longed, sometimes feminine yearned harmonies and responses.
A ‘commanding performer’ with obvious stage presence and a way of not only singing but acting the lyrics and their emotional draws, Khodja swings the saxophone round to sound out caresses, the pining and soulful – not so much jazzy as Arabian-soul and R&B style. Trumpets join the brass section, and rather than evoke the North African landscapes seem to suggest both Latin America and the Tex-Mex borders as they blaze and herald like a mariachi band crossed with a Sicilian funeral procession, and a removed version of romantically alluding Stax.
There’s funk, there’s R&B, soul, moments of an electrified Rai and allusions to the homeland across a brilliant performance of reminiscing, heartache, lament and various emotional pulls. But though those Arabian roots are all present and correct, the music often spills over seamlessly into the Med, to African Brazil and into America’s deep South – the often simmered and sustained Hammond or organ that’s present on nearly every track, has more than an air of Southern gospel and soul to it. Some of it sounds like a lost soundtrack to some cult Italian or French detective movie. And there’s more than a passing resemblance to the Cape Verde sound of Funaná – an infectious quick-step of driving percussive rhythms that is played with a kitchen knife scrapping over an iron rod, christened the ‘ferro’ or ‘ferrinho’ by the islanders, and the bellowed dizzying sway and short concertinaed melodies and lead of the diatonal accordion.
A standard bearer if you like, this revitalised LP is an incredible, fun at times, and funky showcase of North African diaspora fusions. Surprises galore on an album that is just as comfortable hot-stepping soul with Rai as it is bare-footing across Caribbean sands and merging Latin America with the Med. A great album from start to finish, and worthy of not only attention but your quickly eroded cash supply. I have a feeling this one will fly.
Wolfgang Pérez ‘Só Ouço’
(Hive Mind Records) 18th July 2025
Making a return to the site after last April’s ‘Memorias Fantasmas’ short, Wolfgang Pérez is back with a brand-new album of mirage/hallucination and dreamy-realism, imbued and led by a penchant for all things Música Popular Brasileira – that post-bossa, urban pop music phenomenon that fused Brazil’s various traditional and Portuguese flavours, its poetry and fantasy with Western modern pop, jazz and rock.
As the name might indicate, with the most German of German names and most Spanish of Spanish names, Pérez’s heritage, his “casta”, is a mix of the two nationalities. Based in Essen, the industrial hub of the Ruhr, the songwriter, arranger, guitarist and artist has previously released albums that draw upon this linage: especially 2024’s Spanish language AHORA album, the follow-up to the debut Who Cares Who Cares from 2021. Within that scope of influences there’s a musical embrace of everything from pop to chamber music and jazz.
Memorias Fantasmas – facilitated by those keen folk at Hive Mind Records, who now release this latest anticipated album – drew from Pérez’s Spanish genes with a transmogrification of the beautified coos and voices, and the melodious traditional accompanied music of his family singing in church. Part memories placed in new sonic surroundings, part mirage/hallucination and “phantom” inhabited, recordings taken by his grandfather Fernando on a cheap piece of “shitty” recording equipment in a church in the historically famous Spanish city of Segoiva are rendered otherworldly and near supernatural.
Hanging onto those roots, and the phantom parts, the dreaminess, Só Ouço (“Just Listen”) brings together an extensive cast of musicians from Brazil (mainly Rio de Janeiro) to reimagine the country’s poetic, fantastical, environmental symmetry of chaos and beauty. Using the elementals of Música Popular Brasileira and its concomitant trends of Tropicália and Samba Rock and Psych, Pérez and his band of foils take a snapshot of their surroundings and moods and weave a magical, often meandering and languid, journey full of sound and sampled collage.
The results of an extended stay in Rio a few years ago (part of an 18-month residency and student exchange programme) the album and band that was assembled to deliver this dance, saunter and off-kilter dream was put together off the back of Pérez’s full-on absorption of the city and its life: So absorbed that Pérez went as far as to learn the idiosyncratic slang and the cultural nuances. There would be introductions to the city’s musical luminaries, including the former Lounge Lizard and no wave pioneer Arto Lindsay and Thiago Nassif – who the former feted, and worked with -, and study with the guidance of the celebrated Josimar Carneiro, Marcello Gonçalves and Almir Cortes masters at UFRJ/UNIRIO.
But through happenstance and chance encounter, and through various jam sessions, a band of a kind took shape with the trio of Luis Magalhães (bass), Pedro Fonte (drums) and Paulo Emmery (electric guitar). This alignment began to thrash out arrangements and ideas, leading to a gig at Audio Rebel, where they met Angelo Wolf, the owner of Wolf Estúdio and engineer for artists such as Bala Desejo, Dora Morelenbaum, Zé Ibarra, Marcos Valle, Antonio Neves and Ana Frango Elétrico. Keen on what he heard, Wolf offered them both a residency and studio time. The band was extended further to incorporate a brass and woodwind section, led by the drummer and saxophonist and arranger Antonio Neves, son of the notable and celebrated saxophonist Eduardo. Also joining this fantastical ensemble was the Rio guitarist, singer-songwriter and artist Carol Maia, who brings a reminiscent beautiful soothed voiced evocation of the 60s and 70s to the vocals.
Altogether, this troupe that assembles around the loose direction and giddy at times imagination of its instigator, maps out a spellbound, fantastical tapestry and languorous cross-traffic prism of Brazil. There’s so much to hear and unpack, from what is a highly sophisticated but organic sounding record. From picking up radio waves and signal codes from overhead choppers, as the contemporary pairing of our host and Maia invoke Joyce Moreno and Naná Vasconcelos on the opening dreamy-realist Brazilian oscillation to the near untethered, psychedelic and cosmic influences of the great Caetano Veloso on the trip-y Latin-jazz tinged, sorrowed beachcomber mirage ‘Tristeza’, there is a both vibrant and yet softly hallucinated filter to this songbook. Songs don’t just play and recall the art and beauty of such noted Brazilian pioneers and icons as Hermeto Pascoal, Som Tres, Flora Purim, Jorge Ben Sor, Tom Zé and Gal Costa, but go further in gently pushing the boundaries of the song format, reaching into pure atmospheres and a collage of passing, fleeting sounds and those emanating from memory to conjure up a sense of place, time and emotion. Church bells peal to evoke something of the country’s Catholic culture, daily saintly worship, but also something far more mysterious. But there’s the sounds of the city, the environment, all reimagined and brought in as a sort of meta layer. Instruments too, with the fluted and pan piped essence of the Amazon floating into the mix.
Some songs really go far out, especially Pérez’s venture with the already briefly mentioned Thiago Nassif, who once made my choice albums of the year list with his experimentally cool, liquid tropical no and new wave album Mente – which I described at the time as ‘A leopard skin upholstered, neon-lit sumptuous groove of the fuzzy and sauntering.’ I’m not sure exactly who’s playing or doing what, but their ‘O Mundo É Um Moinho’ collaboration is a strange pairing of Seu Jorge acoustic guitar and the reverb flapping of beating, thudded wings. Ideas, musical threads seem to almost fly off into the imagery, with dreamt vistas and city life forming a backdrop to a lightened mix of brassy, woodwind fluting, whistling accompaniment and the beautifully conveyed poetic emotional states captured moments of the artist’s absorption of Rio and Brazil. It all comes to a curtain call, with a perfect chorus finale of shimmery organ and horns-serenaded and smoked fun and dancing; the perfect bow to a most lovely and inventive album that reimagines a wealth of Brazilian influences, and yet feels refreshingly dreamy and softly adventurous.
Sebastian Reynolds ‘New Beginnings’
(PinDrop) 4th July 2025
After what seemed like an age, and after an enviable prolific string of projects, collaborations and EP releases behind him, Sebastian Reynolds finally managed to release his debut solo album, Canary, a couple of years back. The Oxford polymath -his juggled roles including that of musician, artist, producer, remixer, PR, label boss and damn fine amateur track athlete – has never really taken a pause since he first began making, remodelling, reworking and transforming both his own and a host of collaborators’ various eclectic projects over a decade ago.
But if we take, say, just for an example his work since 2017, Sebastian has helped shape two impressive volumes of electronic-chamber music with the Anglo-German Solo Collective (a trio that included the virtuoso cellist Anne Müller alongside Reynolds’ longtime foil, the violinist, electronic music star Alex Stolze, who makes several appearances on this album); crafted the multimedia Jataka texts inspired Maṇīmekhalā dance and musical scored drama with a host of collaborators, including the Neon Dance company, chorographer Pichet Klunchun and The Jongkraben Ensemble; released The Universe Remembers, Nihilism Is Pointless, Crows and the long distance running inspired Athletics EPs (a sporting passion for Reynolds, who’s a pretty decent amateur runner and contender in his own right). That’s without considering all his production and remixing duties, or his various stints in other groups; a mere smattering of which is represented on his latest collaborative project showcase, New Beginnings.
A sonic imaginative oeuvre of the dreamy, the cosmic and new age unfolds across previously unheard selected reworks and remixes; the central signatures being, the way Sebastian can transform the material, taking the listener beyond into new spaces, environments and dreamt-up visions of Southeast Asia, Arabia, and India.
From his own backyard of Oxfordshire, there’s treatments and transformations of work by the synth-indie quintet Flights of Helios (named after the Titan harbinger of the sun), the Americana-indie band The Epstein, roots, reggae and dub group Dubwiser, and the idiosyncratic Egyptian-English troupe Brickwork Lizards. The first of these actually included Sebastian within its ranks at one time. Now opening this collection, with a sound of metaphysical imbued space hymns, paeans and bliss, their own “beginnings” act as an introduction to an entrancing and danceable house-style experience that evokes traces of a softened LCD Soundsystem and Der Plan, whilst looking to cerebral fields of the celestial. Fast forward to the centre of this album, and you find a remix of Dubwiser’s Renegade Soundwave via On-U-Sound radio Clash ‘The Jackal’. Empathising not only the reverberated dub and echo chambers but its underlying menace, Sebastian goes full on Sabres of Paradise. Formed from a bond and passion for the music of The Ink Spots, the Brickwork Lizards fusion of Ottoman yore and 1920s English dancehalls joyfully bounds between shellac scratched tea dance music, the Sublime Porte and fantastical diva song of Cairo. Here though, ‘All That We Are’ (a track from their 2018 album Haneen) is converted into an essence, a wisp of mystical Istanbul as reimagined by an electro-dub DJ. A voice straight from the minaret sounds out to an hallucination of dry bean shaken percussion and continuous vibrato string. Finally, from the Oxford scene, the earnest parched yearned alt-country band The Epstein are remoulded by Sebastian into another dreamy astral vision. Their anthemic turn of emotional reassurance, ‘Make This Our Home’ (taken from their expansive Burn The Branches album of 2020; the title now playfully changed to reflect Sebastian’s involvement and touch to “drone”) maintains some of the original vocals, the echoes of a sound that absorbs early Radiohead, Fleet Foxes and the Magnetic Fields, but is given a new gravity and beauty of healing balm astral trance.
From beyond Oxford city and the county – although some of these artists have orbited it or been based there – there’s a solid representation of Irish artists working in the UK. There’s the evergreen songstress and ephemeral harpist Bróna McVittie, who’s‘Broken Like The Morning’ (taken from her 2018 album We Are Wildlife), is given an EDM thump, electro pulses and futuristic folky mystical vibrations. The London and Spain-based Donegal troubadour Michael Gallagher, aka The Mining Co., releases his take on the Christmas hit each year. His previous ‘One Year To Go’ pinecone scented yuletide number now resembles a trip-hop treated semi-psychedelic trip into environmental-trance. The duo of Colm O’Connell and Rory McDaid, otherwise known as Rezo, have released a few decent albums now. Sebastian takes ‘Molotov’ from the former Mitcheners bandmates eclectic songbook The Age of Self Help (released last year) and sculpts a menacing dubby version that has more than a touch of Meatraffle, Adrian Sherwood and the trumpeted reverberation of Horace Andy about it.
As examples of the range in scope, the various musical backgrounds and sounds the final trio of artists featured on this selection includes a Balearic drifted vision of the Kentucky-roots guitarist, composer, songwriter and producer Myles Cochran’s (with additional dreamy vocal hums, airs and yearning from the Oxford singer-songwriter and guitarist Kelly Michaeli) placeable, relented ‘If You Could See Me’; a dream-electro and metal textured percussive dance pulsated rework of the Kritters’ ‘New York’ malady to a city they no longer recognise (I’m hearing both Leftfield and The Juan Maclean); and buoyant if wafted Indian geographical mirage rework of the eclectic Will Lawton & The Alchemists’ ‘Fossils of the Mind’ (the title-track from their 2018 album). With just these three examples you have a fusion of electronic dance duo and poetry, a musician who is able to reimagine and score new vistas from bluesgrass, the Baroque, folk and the influence of John Fahey, and a group that seamlessly merges classical music, electronica, jazz, prog and folk. With sophistication and respect for the artists involved, Sebastian manages to expand horizons further, craft new directions and amplify those parts and sounds and moods he finds most interesting or creatively evocative. New Beginnings in fact are born from old material.
A welcome pause or catch-up style showcase, this collection is a great reminder of Sebastian Reynolds’ versatility and depth. He is able to transport the listener without totally losing the original’s intentions and direction, and to create a cerebral atmosphere of that you can dance to. I don’t think it will be long before we get another volume, such is the demand on his services and his prolific working methods.
Cecil Taylor/Tony Oxley ‘Flashing Spirits’
(Burning Ambulance Music) 11th July 2025
Picture a cross-Atlantic meeting of freeform avant-garde jazz luminaries, with the extemporized pairing up of the renowned American pianist Cecil Taylor and British drummer Tony Oxley, who performed a synergy of the energetically chaotic and serial on a stage in Crawley, West Sussex on the 3rd of September 1988.
As part of the adventurous Outside In Festival programme that year, these two foils entered into a barely controlled but studied, steeped with a rich experience, improvisation that slashed, thrashed, splashed, ran back and forth, up and down and across an imaginary abstract canvas. Sizzled with brassy and metallic resonance, the drum kit’s entire makeup, its apparatus, its stands entered into a dynamic off-kilter union with Taylor’s extraordinary atonal and more sporadic phrases, runs and near untethered crashes and near melodic crossings of chords and notes. For nearly forty minutes the duo’s momentum kept at a pace, never really letting up, and with most of the performance a full-on actionist concentration of pure unleashed non-musical adventure. And yet, there’s a semblance of jazz, of the classical, and above all a history of the avant-garde with a performance that rolls and pounds between the theatrical and jazz at the boundaries of experiment. There are also the tracings of a dance; those flashed spirits of the title like lightning bolts or flickered bodies on an abstract staging, jabbed at and falling, but often placed like a strike.
What led to this partnership of constantly moving and metamorphosizing piano and heightened, galloping and percussive descriptive and tumultuous drums? Well, if we take this moment, expand out and incorporate the decade, Taylor’s radical trailblazing career was hit by the loss of his longtime sideman, the alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, who passed away in 1986. Lyons had of course been an integral and gifted member of Taylor’s famous 60s quartet. It’s said to have come as a real blow. But Taylor, who had previously turned to teaching during furrow periods a decade earlier in the 70s, proved more prolific in the 80s, releasing a number of LPs for such labels as hatART, Soul Note, FMP and Leo Records – the latter’s founder Leo Feigin is a collaborative partner in releasing this previously ‘unknown archival’ live performance.
An improvised jazz stalwart of the British scene for decades, Oxley was in-between groups, having taken the SOH trio with saxophonist Alan Skidmore and bassist Ali Haurand to its conclusion in 1984, and just about to join Taylor in the intermittent (as it has been described elsewhere) Feel Trio with bassist William Parker (who joined in 1989) – a project that lasted until 1990. Before all that though and stretching right back to the beginning of the 1960s, Oxley was already a notable founding figure in this Island’s improvisational jazz scene; so notable that he got the gig as the in-house drummer at the UK’s foremost jazz mecca Ronnie Scot’s during one of the best periods to have been alive in London. His debut album as a bandleader, The Baptised Traveler, arrived at the end of that decade. The 70s beckoned, bringing with it new challenges and the founding of a new label imprint, Incus Records, with renowned saxophonist Evan Parker and guitarist Derek Bailey.
Taylor and Oxley only crossed paths three months before the performance on this specially retrieved recording – limited on CD to a run of 500, packaged in a heavy-duty gatefold mini-LP sleeve and printed on textural artwork by Burning Ambulance’s Founder I.A. Freeman. Which seems extraordinary and speaks volumes about their reputations and readiness to enter the moment together in front of a live audience filled with expectations. That crowd is to be fair, willing the duo on; they show not only the more respectable obligatory hand claps of bravo, but whistle too and nearly roar, caught up in the experience of witnessing such a dynamic full-on performance.
Full of experience, but hardly weathered or worn, both virtuosos adapted and responded in a split second to each other’s art. Taylor leads, if you can call it that. But only because it seems he lights the torch paper first with incipient pushes and dabs and slashes. But really there’s no telling in who leads what, as the action picks up and runs, leaps, dives, falls, tumbles and flushes through a pummelled, sieving, hoof-like gallop and wild non-rhythmic spirited traffic of drums and elbowed as well as cross handed piano. Despite all this avant-gardism and energy, neither of the percipients ever lose the thread, get lost in the excitement and uncoupled freedoms of spontaneity. There’s a real weight involved with streaks of the 1920, the 30s and 60s alongside a very removed vision of the most experimental aspects of both turn of the century classical music and Latin music. How two players can keep this up is beyond me. But there is a couple of ‘encore’ extras that seem to simmer down the action, offering up attentive and expressive bluesy and stirring conclusions. Pretty unique, being sharply focussed yet layered with so much sound and noise, and being near dissonant, this performance is somehow congruous and complete. Two performers at the height of maturity, abandoning convention and free-wiled, Flashing Spirits is an incredible document of disciplined chaos and play. I’m sure there are many comparisons to be found, but off the top of my head, it recalled Chick Corea and the A.R.C. album.
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you can, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat by donating via Ko-Fi.
For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music and Choice Releases list from the last month.
We decided at the start of the year to change things a little with a reminder of not only our favourite tracks from the last month, but also a list of choice albums too. This list includes both those releases we managed to feature and review on the site and those we just didn’t get the time or room for – time restraints and the sheer volume of submissions each month mean there are always those releases that miss out on receiving a full review, and so we have added a number to both our playlist and list.
All entries in the Choice Releases list are displayed alphabetically.
Meanwhile, our Monthly Playlist continues as normal, with all the choice tracks from June taken either from reviews and pieces written by me – that’s Dominic Valvona – or Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea. Our resident Hip-Hop expert Matt Oliver has also put forward a smattering of crucial and highlighted tracks from the rap arena.
CHOICE RELEASES FROM THE LAST MONTH OR SO:
Armstrong ‘Handicrafts’
Review
Audio Obscura ‘As Long As Gravity Persists On Holding Me to This Earth’
Review
Francis Bebey ‘The African Seven Edits’
Jeff Bird ‘Ordo Virtutum: Jeff Bird Plays Hildegard von Bingen, Vol 2’
(Six Degrees Records) Review
Che`Noir ‘The Color Chocolate 2’
Dave Clarkson ‘Was Life Sweeter?’
(Cavendish House) Review
Half Naked Shrunken Heads ‘Let’s Build A Boy’
(Metal Postcard Records) Review
Novelistme ‘Fabulous Nonsense’
Review
Nowaah The Flood ‘Mergers And Acquisitions’
Luiz Ser Eu ‘Sarja’
(Phantom Limb)
Various ‘TUROŇ/AHUIZOTL’
(Swine Records w/ Fayuca Retumba) Review
Voodoo Drummer ‘HELLaS SPELL’
Review
The Wants ‘Bastard’
(STTT) Review
Warda ‘We Malo’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) Review
THE PLAYLIST
Bedd ‘Messed up Your Head’
Dragged Up ‘Clachan Dubh’
John Johanna ‘Seven Hunters’
Vlimmer ‘Gleichbau’
Heavenly ‘Portland Town’
Novelistme ‘I Want You Here’
Half Naked Shrunken Heads ‘Let’s Build A boy’
Juppe ‘Woozy’
Noura Mint Seymali ‘Guereh’
Francis Bebey ‘Agatha – Voilaaa Remix’
Anton de Bruin & Fanni Zahar ‘Running On Slippers’
Chairman Maf ‘Wild Turkey’
Lord Olo & TELEVANGEL ‘BEAT EM!”
Masta Killa Ft. Raekwon & Cappadonna ‘Eagle Claw’
Aesop Rock ‘Movie Night’
Oddisee ‘Natural Selection’
Nowaah The Flood ‘Protocol’
Ello Sun ‘River’
Luiz Ser Eu ‘O Sol Nas Suas Pestanas, Adora’
Elena Baklava ‘Kamber’
Jason van Wyk ‘Remnants’
Mary Sue & Clementi Sound Appreciation Club ‘Horse Acupuncture’
Evidence ‘Different Phases’
Vesna Pisarovic ft. Noël Akchoté, Tony Buck, Greg Cohen, Axel Dörner ‘Vrbas vodo, što se često mutiš?’
Itchy-O ‘Phenex’
Tom Caruana Ft. Dynas ‘Aisle 9’
C-Red & Agent M ‘Godspeed’
Scienze & NappyHIGH Ft. Benny The Butcher and Elaquent ‘Capt. Kirk’
Charles Edison ‘No Love Lost’
Parallel Thought & Defcee ‘Graduation Picture’
Fashawn & Marc Spano Ft. Blu ‘No Comply’
Che Noir ‘Blink Twice’
Saadi ‘Homo sapiens’
Charlie Hannah ‘St. Gregor the Good’
HighSchool ‘149’
Swansea Sound ‘Oasis v Blur’
The Wants ‘Data Tumor’
Tigray Tears ‘Wishing for Peaceful Times to Return’
Jeff Bird ‘Shining White Lillies’
The Good Ones ‘Agnes Dreams of Being an Artist’
Briana Marela ‘Value’
The Still Brothers & Vermin the Villain ‘Alright’
LMNO & D-Styles ‘Best to Lay Low’
The High & Mighty Ft. Breeze Brewin ‘Super Sound’
Slick Rick & Nas ‘Documents’
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you can, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat by donating via Ko-Fi.
For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.
Cover Stars: Blanco Teta
___THE NEW___
(all reviews are in alphabetical order)
bedd ‘Monday 10:55 EP’
27th June 2025
Once more on the site after quite a break – my fault not theirs -, the Oxford project led by singer-songwriter, composer and producer Jamie Hyatt is back with a bridging style EP ahead of a debut album, released in the Autumn.
Sometimes I excel myself with a descriptive summary of a sound, and with bedd’s ‘Auto Harp’ single I described their sound as “an understated breath of fresh air from cosmic suburbia”. This beauty of a single was followed at a later date, during Covid isolation, by a premiere of ‘You Have Nice Things’, which seems to have now continued with its small-town landmarked sense of isolation and sad detachment on the EP’s title-track, the very specifically timed capture of nocturnal plaint and heartache ‘Monday 10:55’. The focus song features fellow Oxford musician, the vocalist and guitarist Emma Hunter (who’s own brand of music, created with drumming foil Tom Bruce, merges the worlds of David Lynch with a penchant for Flamenco, Catholic litany and culture and the 1950s), with extra subtle emotional pull, adding harmony and a touch of the soaring to this drifted indie-blues track. It reminded me in places of Ride and the Engineers.
Before we go any further, we must mention the rest of the band, the ranks of which feature ‘a range of celebrated local Oxford musical talents’, including bass player Darren Fellerdale and guitarist Neil Durbridge, both bandmates from Hyatt’s previous project The Family Machine. Completing the lineup is the guitarist Tom Sharp, electronic musician and producer Tim Midlen (aka The Mancles of Acid) and drummer Sam Spacsman. The EP itself was performed, recorded and produced by Hyatt himself with the band at Glasshouse studios in rural Oxfordshire and mixed and mastered by Robert Stevenson at Sweetzerland Studios.
That’s the credits out of the way. The title-track is flanked at both sides by two very differently paced and performed songs; the opening ‘Messed Your Head’, has more oomph with its mix of Blur’s sliding bass on ‘Beetlebum’ and The Breeders bass line on the equally famous ‘Cannonball’, Elastica-style “woah” and messed up knock-back passionate off-the-chest power-Britpop-indie-rock (I’d go as far as saying an influence of The Pixies), whilst the closer, ‘D Minor’, is a more echo-y reverberated stripped down and atmospheric piece of disconsolate love strains and emotional discourse that has an air of Jeff Buckley about it.
It is not meant as a criticism in anyway, but bedd sent me right back to the 90s with this EP mix of shoegaze, Britpop, indie and grunge-rock. But they add a certain quality of the soundtrack, something that’s a little bit grander. It will be interesting to see what the album is like later this year. But on the strength of this trio of songs, it looks to be a winner.
Blanco Teta ‘La Debacle las Divas’
(Bongo Joe) 4th July 2025
Delivering their 2025 manifesto of the riled and near bestial, the hellraising and electrifying Argentine quartet of Blanco Teta throw off the metaphorical chains of tech disparity and servitude with a mix of the devilish and hardcore.
In the face of AI, ‘crypto-serfdom’, ‘techno-feudalism’, the constantly ever-changing, updated feeds of social media, the pressures of instant gratification and attention seeking validation, and that everything these days only makes an impact culturally if it was prompted or began on tiktok, the group show both their venerability and strengths. They face the uncertainties and anxious dread of our times with velocity as they pound and churn, twist and channel aspects of the post-hardcore sound, punk, riot grrrl-style power-ups, death metal (almost), grunge, rock and 2000s indie-rave-punk-rock.
Marking a return to Bongo Joe, the La Debacle las Divas (‘the debacles of the divas’) album sees the quartet of Josefina Barreix (on vocals), Violeta García (cello), Carlos Quebrada (electric bass) and Carola Zelaschi (drums) change things up, recording for the very first time live in the studio direct to tape. Without edits and overdubs, the album has a real new dynamic; the whole record more or less without a pause, thrashing and driving through an eleven-song set, as if it were a live stage performance. There are various let-ups, if that’s the word, and mood changes, a change in tempo and ferocity too. But this remains a chthonian and cosmic swirl of the grounded-up, menacing, prowled, alarmed, dragged and charged.
The atmosphere of this album is one in which the bonus of youth is wasted, broken upon the pressurised novelties of being young and in the moment, but ready to be disregarded and tossed away into the internet wilderness. They band themselves declare that they feel caught between a stasis of being both in their prime yet already growing too old to be feted. And whilst they were indeed feted, their lives haven’t exactly change for the better: mentally or financially, still burdened to surviving on the vaporous fumes of goodwill, popularity and a presence on the internet. Channelling all that into this diva-rage, borrowing that title and turning its connotations on its head, Blanco Teta (which I think translates as ‘white tit’?) launch a mix of disgruntled and disenchanted maelstroms and more near plaintive reproach and forlorn.
They open with the sound of generator fuzz and scuzz, in a heavy drive of Courtney Love, the Raw Brigade, Bikini Kill and L7. Heavy trebly bass, descending spirals, pounded beaten drums rule the day, but the action and influences fluctuate; on the excitable protestation ‘Subiduki’, I’m hearing Anthrax, Faith No More and Death From above 1979, on raged thud rocked sassy and maniacal decried ‘Joven Promesa’ CSS sharing the stage with Shonen Knife, and on the hardcore, morse code guitar wired space-rocking-psych ‘Perdida’ the Klaxons and The Fall. They also reminded me in part of a Latin version of the Slavic quartet Lucidvox; only with far more guttural daemonic vocals.
Tough and ready for the rumble, yet disconsolate and bereft of answers, Blanco Teta serve up a vortex and heavy meta(l) outcry and alarm at the state of society and the music industry. That debacle of divas has produced one of the year’s most promising, fierce and unique performances.
Dave Clarkson ‘Was Life Sweeter?’
(Cavendish House) 9th May 2025
After briefly crossing paths on Bluesky earlier this month, I’m aware that I’ve entered upon the electronic sound worlds, expressions and atmospheres of Dave Clarkson at a very late point in a career that spans decades of experiment/exploration; at a point when the soloist and collaborating composer is taking stock, questioning that old generational trope of nostalgia for a time that probably never really ever existed. It’s easy to see why of course: seeking comfort, reassurance and perhaps some form of guidance from a period when you were young, still hopeful, at your creative best and fancy free – well for many of us anyway. But no one can really believe at this point in time, with all the social ills, conflict, and tyranny that the future is looking anything but dystopian. Clarkson however draws a line in the sands of wishful thinking time, opting to create a confectionary and candy concepted reification of a childhood. In Clarkson’s own words, this latest album questions ‘the whole hauntological culture of escaping to the past and whether this is a denial of a future left to live.’
Previous works have explored ‘British faded fairgrounds, coastal quicksands, shorelines, caves and forests’, and been created, at least partially, in the field so to speak. Was Life Sweeter? uses a similar device and methodology, with recordings taken in various confectionery sites around the country. And so, you will hear amongst the engineered electronics the complete journey from Space Dust powder, fizzy drinks, ice cream vans and sweet shops indulgence to the inevitable visit to the dentist’s surgery, completed with the sounds of their terrifying cavity filling drills. From what I remember in the 80s, it really didn’t pay to have a sweet tooth; the barbarity of those early visits, the fillings in my milk teeth, still plaguing me with fear to this day.
It all starts in a dreamy-like state, with translucent bulb-like notes suspended and tinkling above the swept waveforms of phaser air, on the mirage of innocence ‘Milk Teeth’. The scoped-up actions, the anticipated weighing of your favourite sweets, is transformed into another piece of skying kosmische fantasy made nearly mystical on ‘Ye Olde Sweet Shop’, whilst space dust explodes on the tongue on the next track: childhood happiness at this candy firework made near dreamlike and then sci-fi. There’s the easily identified fizz of pop later on, and the recordings of voices, the captured playfulness and buzz of devouring such sweet connections to childhood.
The innocuous treat though of a ‘Three Blind Mice’ calling ice-cream van is made cosmic, with the nursery rhyme siren carried on into the infinities of inner space, kept locked in nostalgic memory. And there’s always some sign of the more haunted, more foreboding aspects of that nostalgia trip; recalling those 80s soundtracks from supernatural TV series, the harsh life’s lessons and warnings made terrifyingly clear in TV ads aimed at kids during that decade and something that’s hard to pin down but seems off-kilter and near alien. ‘Sugar Rush (Speed of Life)’ is a speed’s freak sweetened running man, part electro and part German electronica of a certain vintage. An alarm bell rings, and the listener is sprinted off the starting blocks on a rush of candy adrenalin.
Clarkson successfully balances a hallucinatory world of childhood sweetness made more ominous and haunting with abstract quandaries of past lives, miss-reflection and the need to push on through and fully adopt the age in which someone is present. I’d recommend this album for those with an ear for the sounds of the Radiophonic Workshop, Toshimaru Nakamura, The Advisory Circle, Belbury Poly, Jez Butler, Lukid and Harmonia – which should sound like an inviting proposition.
Itchy-O ‘SÖM SÂPTÂLAHN’
Released back in May 2025
Beating out a ritualistic circus of chthonian and alchemist theatre around hell’s gateway, the expanded Denver collective of performers, artists, musicians and conjurers known as Itchy-O once more record their invocations for posterity. Although celebrated for the staging of various themed performances set against a Mad Max meets Mexican Day of the Dead like decorated back drop of iconic and wasteland ruined Denver locations (from the Mission Ballroom to New Tech Machinery buildings, and Covid initiated drive-ins), the circle has only released a smattering of packages to the public since inception.
Described as a ‘Voyage into Exocosm’, their latest behemoth of an album opens both atmospherically disturbing and interdimensional, cosmic instructive portals to the hermetic and spiritual. From – I believe – the Norwegian for ‘seam’ and ‘seven grains’, SÖM SÂPTÂLAHN envelopes mournful bowed Eastern lamented classical strings and the vibrations, frequencies of a specially commissioned apparatus of bronze percussion (to be accurate, 600 pounds of reclaimed bronze remodelled into gongs and metallophones by the group’s collaborative partners, the Colorado School of Mines) with the industrial, otherworldly visitations, magik and necromancy.
Day spa new age outer body experiences tied to mystical and darker forces, transcendental instruction, exercise converge on the astral highway to voodoo and demonology. In practice, that sounds like the Phoenix rising forth, or rather the Great Marquis of Hell, known as ‘Phenex’, to scuzz scales and fried and sawing electric guitar, ringing and resonating gongs and a lattice work of metallophones. It can also sound like an aural rebalance of spectral harmony: As found on the longer form instructive ‘Ptothing/Soktū ōbu’, which soothes the listener with an interactive navigator realignment of the speakers for a cerebral session of breathing exercises and cosmic escape. That greeting and guidance turns into a cinematic-scale, sonorous and daunting projection into dark sci-fi, before release and a unification of mind and body. This is a musical and sonic world in which you will find references to demons, the Latinized groans of chthonian dread, and tuning fork like signals to unnamed leviathans beyond the fourth dimension.
Ambiguously lurking and congregating under the canopy of mystical jungles, or, hanging from the vines; retreating to cult 50s and 60s scored Javanese islands; and conducting ritual replenishment in the shadows of a temple complex, Itchy-O simultaneously draw upon aspects of gamelan, the fairytale, industrial music, the classical, the filmic, folkloric, new age and the avant-garde to pit machine against the physical in an act of exploratory performance, instruction and esoteric mantra.
JLZ ‘Tumba’ (Swine Records) 7th June 2025
Various ‘TUROŇ/AHUIZOTL’ (Swine Records w/ Fayuca Retumba) 17th June 2025
Arriving in the last week or so, a doublet of releases from the collective webmagazine turn newly founded label imprint Swine Records. First up from this venture is the Brazilian producer JLZ’s chthonian and magical esoteric vision of the Brazilian Baile Funk genre known as ‘Romano’. Baile is itself a kind of transformation of hip-hop developed and born in Rio de Janeiro, that takes its influences from a range of sources including Miami bass and freestyle whilst also connecting back to the country’s various indigenous musical styles. The ‘Latin Grammy nominee’ emerges from a thick bass vibrating and high pitch signal arcing canopy of the supernatural and tribal. The EP’s Portuguese title translates into “tomb”, and it’s easy to see why. With a darker electronica filter, some zaps, shuttering and amorphous bass beats and collected vocal samples from hidden sources there’s a suitably mysteriously, hermetic and sometimes Catholic atmosphere of mysticism and multi-layered nocturnal city forebode. Those voices are both evocative of the Afro-Brazilian influence and from some entrancing, lamented corner of the Levant and Middle East. If I had to think of anyone as a reference, then perhaps Cities Aviv, or Escupemetralla.
The second release is a joint venture between the Slovakian imprint and the Mexican label Fayuca Retumba – a project by the Mexican producer Yourte Bugarac. After appearing in an interview for Swine Daily (the web mag outlet of the Swine hub), an idea was formed to commission a number of both Slovak and Mexican artists to create sonic and musical pieces inspired by the “Turoň”, a mythological creature, principally, from Slovak (particularly around Čičmany village), and the Aztec mythological creature “Ahuizotl”. The labels have helpfully summarised, and contextualized each of those inspired prompts for us:
Turoň also called turôň, or chriapa, is a carnival mask that was known not only in Slovakia, but also in Poland and the Czech Republic. Its name is derived from the tur, an animal similar to an ox, which became extinct in Slovakia in the 17th century, and in the magical ideas of our ancestors, symbolized strength and fertility.
Ahuizotl was a water monster in Aztec mythology. It was described as a dog with monkey-like limbs, pointed ears, and a third hand at the end of its long tail. It lured its victims by imitating the cries of a child along the banks of rivers, then caught them with its third hand. The ancient Mexicans considered it an emissary of Tlaloc, the rain god who resided in the depths of rivers. Its function was to catch people by the hand on their tails, drown them, and send them to the god’s house as his servants. In Nahuatl, a(tl) means “water” and huiz(tli) means “thorn”. This name was taken by the warlike and fierce Aztec emperor Ahuítzotl, the eighth tlatoani of Tenochtitlan, who ruled from 1486 to 1502.
Etymology folklore, magic and the ominous converge to form various takes on both of these myths; starting with Lénok electronic pad whipped demonic buzzing hardcore hallucination of swirling vortex orchestra samples, thrashing tentacle slithers and frazzled broken-up beats morphing ‘NeBoyIM’. Dead Janitor’s ‘Ooze’ is like a percussive alien farmyard scene of cow bells and crunchy, crushed d ‘n’ b, whilst Schop1nhauer transmogrifies a creepy hinge worn gate into some industrial haunted factory bit-crush and pylon static frying paranormal unease, on ‘Ungulatheion’. Con Secuencias ‘Stinking Corpse’ opens with cop car sirens before sloping in a laidback style into Miami bass culture repurposed with a flavour of Latin America. The second half of this compilation has a signature Central and South America vibe to its unorthodox techno, trance, EDM and hip-hop sources. El Ángel Exterminador’s ‘Hierba Retorcida’ has just that, a removed rhythmic interpretation of indigenous percussion, a guiro that sounds like a pack of cards being flicked through at high speed, and a sort of cumbia-like vibe that saunters along. The laser shooting 80s VHS cult sounding ‘IZANAMI’ by OFYERF sounds more like Der Plan meets Damon Wild & Tim Taylor.
Altogether a most promising start and introduction to two underground labels doing intriguing, interesting and encouragingly strange, porous boundary experimentation.
Charles Kynard ‘Woga’
(WEWANTSOUNDS Reissue of Mainstream Records original release) 27th June 2025
After recent cult reissues and specials from Egypt and Japan vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS return stateside and to L.A.’s Mainstream Records label, reissuing on wax for the first time the jazz-funk icon Charles Kynard’s much coveted and influential Woga LP.
Regular readers and followers of my review columns over the years may remember the label’s last stopover at Bob Shad’s imprint, with the Mainstream Funk comp a number of years back. One of the brightest progenitors of that roster, the Hammond and electric organist and St. Louis native – before relocating to L.A. after a brief period spent in Kansas – Kynard, memorably fused everything from R&B, the blues, soul and funk to his jazz and gospel background. A staple of the breaks, acid-jazz and hip-hop communities, its highly probable that you’ve heard samples of his music; especially from his key albums for Mainstream in the early 70s, and of course this revitalized LP – remastered with a bonus track and accompanying new notes and essay.
A little background is needed, and one that doesn’t paraphrase those liner notes – of which I learnt a lot. Kynard’s upbringing was imbued by the confluence of sounds washed down the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Born in the 1930s in that former French founded outlier, a staging post for Lewis and Clarke’s famous expeditions West, Kynard absorbed the cross- junction of church music, gospel, jazz, blues, soul and R&B at an early age. The virtuoso uprooted, journeying to Kansas before landing for more or less good in L.A. in the early 1960s having made a name for himself. He quickly started recording for the producer Richard Bock and drummer Roy Harte’s Pacific Jazz label – their signature at the time before expanding the remit, “cool West Coast jazz”. It was during this point that Kynard started working with such luminaries as Howard Roberts, Sonny Stitt and Buddy Collette. His actual debut LP came out in the pivotal year of 1963. But he then switched labels, moving over to Prestige Records; a time in which some of his most influential work was recorded: the jazz-fusion specials Reelin’ With The Feelin’ (1969), Afro-Disiac (’70) and Wa-Tu-Wa-Zui (’71).
Such was his status and rep that when once more changing labels, this time to Mainstream on the cusp of a new decade, his next trio of LPs would attract an enviable cast of talented and iconic players. For the debut offering, arriving in a tumult of social and conscious Black power, of activism and protest, the Swahili borrowed word for “fear” (or “timidity”), Woga, featured an ensemble of notable session players; all of whom, more or less, were in their own right also recording stars and bandleaders, but also sidemen and women to some of the most influential names in Black music. Amongst the ranks for that LP were bass player Chuck Rainey, possibly the most credited bassist in recording history (a 1000 album credits its believed); Tennessee bred blues guitarist Arthur Adams; the Canadian-born arranger, conductor, ensemble leader, trombonist David Roberts; Motor City native and Motown horns player George Bohanon, who at one time was a member of Chico Hamilton’s Quartet, and worked with such luminaries as Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis and Michel Legrand (on the Dingo Soundtrack); the lesser known trumpeter and flugelhorn player James Kartchner; Minnesota trumpeter and flugelhorn player Jerome Rusch, who played with such talented icons as Gerald Wilson, Ray Charles and Willie Bobo; and the exceptional Detroit drummer Paul Humphrey, who worked with the Four Tops, Wes Montgomery, Coltrane, Mingus, Marvin Gaye, Solomon Burke and Quincy Jones (the list goes on).
For the bonus track, a cover the actionist soul-funk group The Undisputed Truth’s ‘Smiling Faces Sometimes’, that same set up features a couple of noted replacements, with the infinitely famous and acclaimed Wrecking Crew member Carol Kaye on customary felt and anchored bass, and the electric guitarist Charles Mallory providing heavy soul licks, and Larry McGuire taking a turn on blazed and searing, truth-will-out, trumpet. Incidentally, on an album that split between originals and covers, Rainey played on the original version of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Rock Steady’ the previous year – featured as it was on the soul diva’s inspirational Young, Gifted and Black LP. A new arrangement means at least a variation on Rainey’s Fender tones; especially as Kynard seems to murmur or hum the original tune to slipped bristling hi-hats, breaks style drums and a movie soundtrack horn section.
It is at this point in my review that I feel I should at least outline the backstory of Mainstream Records: the label that facilitated this LP. Set up by Bob Shand as a “broad church”, the label grew out of what was already a 30-year spanning career when it took shape in the 1960s; a showcase for prestigious artists, session players and Blue Note luminaries chancing their arm at the bandleader or solo spotlight. A musical journeyman himself, Shad (whittled down from Abraham Shadrinsky) began his producer’s apprenticeship at the iconic Savoy label, then moved to National Records before taking up an A&R role at Mercury, where he launched his own, first, label EmArcy. It was during this time that Shad would produce records for the venerated, celebrated jazz singer deity Sarah Vaughan, the Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet, Dinah Washington and The Big Brother Holding Company.
As a testament to his craft, Vaughan would go on to record eight albums on Shad’s label, the next chapter, leap in a career that traversed five decades of jazz, soul, blues, R&B, rock, psych and of course funk. Mainstream’s duality mixed reissues (from such iconic gods of the jazz form as Dizzy Gillespie) with new recordings; with its golden era arguably, the five-year epoch chronicled in the compilation that WEWANTSOUNDS put out a number of years ago.
Spotting the potential in Kynard’s jazz-fusions and ability to transpose signatures and sounds from a wellspring of Black music styles, Shand invited the keys specialist to record a trio of LPs, with Woga being the first.
Despite the warm tones, the rays, shimmers, buzzes of church organ and of reverence gospel, this LP was forged in a time of the conscious Black movements, of Black power, Vietnam outrage, social division and revolutionary zeal. And so, most of the covers chosen for reinvention and homage were from a cadre of strong, troubled and lamented voices appealing for change. I already mentioned Aretha, but there’s also Donny Hathaway’s iconic soul anthem ‘Little Ghetto Boy’, the glorious Staple Singers’ ‘Name The Missing Word’ and the beautifully mellifluous and aching folk protestation ‘The First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face)’, written originally by Ewan MacColl for folk royalty Peggy Seeger, and made famous, given a soulfully blessed but plaintively charged direction by the late Roberta Flack. The former of that trio adds a touch of Nautilus wavy Bob James to a Southern Spiritual church organ sound of the velvety punched and near scored, whilst the latter transposes a familiar melody to sound almost like an Otis Redding ballad recorded on Stax; the organ simmering like a mirage in the sweltering Southern heat; the horns, in sympathy channelling both R&B and the blues. As a worshipping fan of all things Staples, I was pleased to see Kynard having a go at the smoother gospel-soul-R&B smoky and oozing with cool Southern attitude ‘Name The Missing Word’, first released just the previous year. Kynard retains mood, the flavour, but the bass seems a little more menacing, nearly dark, and the timing changes to one that can only be described as Latin-esque.
Kynard showcases his own talents, not just for rearranging, but for composing new jam-like numbers. The trio of ‘Hot Sauce’, ‘Lime Twig’ and ‘Slop Jar’ shows a range of styles, of timings and moods; the first, fusing soft jazz influences with ghetto soul, R&B, blazing lifted horns from Hollywood, and saddling up to funk with some whammy-like whacker guitar; the second, takes the action down a notch or two, to find a mellower tempo that’s more Herb Albert and Bacharach; the dreaminess and melody reminding me in part of Stevie Wonder. The last of those originals is a cool mix of Steve Cropper meets Hendrix and the J.B.’s. There’s some muscle and grunt to this scorched Hammond number. Occasionally the horns section recalls something of Lalo Schifrin, and at other times, of Gil Evans and his orchestra. A real showcase of influences brought together for an impressive smooth and more punchy fusion.
A treat for samplers and acid-jazz, boogaloo fusion fans alike, the range of this revived LP is wide but tethered as always to Kynard’s impressive and warm radiant, sustained and scorching spiritual, jazzy and soul-gospel keys. His wingmen, and one woman, proving an elite force of super experienced players from every field of Black music going. Anyone with even a passing interest in jazz-fusion and soul should grab a copy: I’ve a feeling this will quickly sell out.
___/The Social Playlist Vol. 98___
The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share; with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost and those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for nearly 12 years now, Volume 98 is the latest eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show from me – the perfect radio show in fact: devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
June has been a cruel month, taking two titans of popular music away from us. Losing Sly Stone is one thing, but Brian Wilson in just the matter of two days seems just plain spiteful. Wilson’s travails have been well documented, the effects of various mental and physical conditions, of traumas, taking their toil for decades. But in losing the one woman who did more than most to bring Brian back into the land of the living, to revive his fortunes, Melinda Ledbetter’s death at the beginning of 2024 must have had an unspeakable impact. Although carrying on for another 18 months, his health deteriorated even further, with news that Brian had dementia; and on the death of Melinda, the family filed a petition to place him under conservatorship to help manage his personal and medical needs. But despite all this, there had been an announcement of a new album, Brian’s country songbook, in 2026 – a revival of the 1970 Cows in the Pasture recordings that were shelved when Brian lost interest. This may now see the light of day as tribute. You will find a piece on the late genius from my Brain Wilson files in the Archives section below this.
Suffering just as many travails, addictions and setbacks, grand funk evangelist Sly Stone had spent his later years in court battling for royalty payments against his former manager – a case he won, but still lost out on -, and living a subsistence lifestyle from a camper van. Although riding high as the true innovator of funk-soul-R&B-psychedelic-rock-pop fusion in the 60s and laying down the rhythms and feel and energy for disco and much or less everything that followed, Sly’s battles with drugs – leading to jail time for absconding a drug-driving arrest – hampered his recording career in the 70s and beyond. And yet, the Pentecostal baptised superstar pretty much invented a whole explosion of unifying voices and sounds that merged the counterculture and pop worlds. He’d find a revolutionary voice alright, but one that still had faith in the spirit of compassion, and one that brought everyone together no matter what the creed.
Both late deities will feature in this month’s Social Playlist selection, with a smattering of choice cuts from each one’s cannon. But joining them this June is the electronic music composer Alexander Julien, who followers may recall appeared many moons ago on the site under one of his many non de plumes, Vision External – others included Vision Lunar and Soufferance. I was contacted by his late spouse Rain Frances recently with the sad news of his passing:
‘Vision Eternel’s Alexander Julien passed away on May 14, 2025. Those who are familiar with Vision Eternel, know that Alex’s music is based on nostalgia, emotion and heartbreak. He experienced a lot of anguish in his short 37 years and was often overcome by it. He translated this pain beautifully into his music. His idea of making concept albums showed his talent as well as his dedication to leaving a legacy of music that told the story of love and heartache. He will be missed by all those who loved him.’
Alexander had left notes in his will instructing Rain to get in contact with all the sites that ever reviewed his work. As part of a Special trio of releases from the North American label Somewherecold, I wrote about his For Farewell Of Nostalgia EP a good few years ago:
‘Back towards the ambient spectrum, the final release in the special is a most emotively drawn and purposeful EP of intimate mood music by the Montréal-based Vision Eternel. Coining the phrase “melogaze” to describe his lush “emo” brand of majestic and caressed swirling feelings, heartbreaks and loves, the band’s founder Alexander Julien soundtracks a love lost affair with a most swaddled suite of ambient music, shoegazing, and semi-classical longings.
Over a quartet of channelled “movements” (rain, absence, intimacy and nostalgia), Julien charts this affair-of-the-heart with a both cinematic and melodious touch. The EP though is a greater conceptual work that even arrives accompanied by a short story and plenty of poetic, stirring baggage. Lingering reminisces pour from this composer’s light yet deep vaporous yearnings.
On the cover itself, Julien is painted as some kind of Left Banke thinker meets Graham Greene Third Man and shoe-string Marlowe; a riff on 50s and older covers of that vogue. And so, nostalgia is certainly evoked on this almost timeless EP of abstracted emotionally pulled memories made tangible. It’s actually a most lovely, touching trembled and graceful encapsulation of the themes; beautifully put together. It’s also entirely different and like all three of these releases pushes experimental, ambient music in different directions, yet never loses sight of taking the listener on those same sonic journeys into the cosmic, imaginary, and intimate.’
A glowing review I think you’d agree. And in tribute and as a mark of respect, a track from this EP will feature in the Social playlist this month.
In a more celebratory mood, I’ve pulled together a selection of tracks from those albums that have reached specific milestones this month and year. These include the tenth anniversary of Vukovar’s debut LP proper Emperor, which is being specially re-released this month (see the Archives this week for my original review), plus tracks from Nick Cave and The Bad Seed’s The Firstborn Is Dead…(forty this month), R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction (also forth this June), Dylan and The Band’s The Basement Tapes (fifty this June), and Them’s The Angry Young Men (sixty this month).
The rest of the playlist is made up of tracks from across time, with choice cuts from Volume 10, Credit to the Nation, The Neats, Van der Graaf Generator, Helicon, Sahar Nagy, Drug Rug and many more.
That track list in full::::::
Brian Wilson ‘Rhapsody in Blue (Intro)’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Underdog’
Karim Mosbahi ‘Hanni ya I’hanay karim mosbahi’
Bob Dylan and The Band ‘Odds and Ends’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘I Gotta Go Now (Up On The Floor)/Funky Broadway’
Credit to the Nation ‘Teenage Sensation’
Sahar Nagy ‘Baa Keda’
The Neats ‘Lies’
Kai Martin & Stick! ‘Vi kunde vara allt’
Vukovar ‘The New World Order’
R.E.M. ‘Maps And Legends’
Drug Rug ‘Day I Die’
Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks ‘Hold Back Time’
Brian Wilson ‘That Lucky Old Sun’
Vision Eternal ‘Moments Of Absence’
The Beach Boys ‘Cabin Essence’
Niandan Jazz ‘Idissa-So’
Louden Wainwright III ‘Dilated to Meet You’
Them ‘My Little Baby’
The Beach Boys ‘Time To Get Alone’
Brian Wilson ‘Love And Mercy’
Van der Graaf Generator ‘House With No Door’
International Noise Orchestra ‘Groovin up Slowly’
Deuter ‘Der Turm/Fluchtpunkt’
Locomotive ‘You Must Be Joking’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Searchin’’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘I Want To Take You Higher – Live At Woodstock’
Major Force ‘America 2000’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Fun’
Volume 10 ‘A’cappella/Styleondeck’
Helicon ‘Chateau H (D.ross Remix)’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Luv N’ Haight’
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ‘Train Long Suffering’
Naked City ‘Surfer Girl/Church Key – Live in Quebec ‘88’
Vukovar ‘Regular Patrons of the Salon Kitty’
___/Archives____
The archives return this morning in homage to the late, great Brian Wilson, with a smattering of pieces from the files. Arguably the late 20th and 21st centuries rhapsodic incarnation of Bernstein, Gershwin and Bach, Brian is perhaps one of the only true geniuses of any age, an example of a once-in-a-generation icon. So where do you start? Well, over the years I’ve written reams on the subject, and of course the group he co-founded, The Beach Boys. I’ve included a piece I wrote back in 2016 on the occasion of the tour anniversary of Pet Sounds, plus my original review of the biopic Love & Mercy movie.
But there’s another chance to read my original review of Vukovar’s debut album, Emperor, which is being re-released on the event of its tenth anniversary. Sadly, the band is now defunct, reincarnated in a different light as The Tearless Life.
Brian Wilson presents ‘Pet Sounds’ 50th Anniversary Celebrations
Friday 27th May 2016 at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
In a soft power musical arms race with The Beatles, Brian Wilson more or less now mastering the known limits of the studio, was nudged towards ever more ambitious levels of creativity. As the old adage, music history folklore if you like, goes it was Rubber Soul that finally did it for Brian. The retort to this foil would not only be The Beach Boys first masterpiece, but one of pop and rock music’s most enduring triumphs, Pet Sounds. No longer happy with the California high school, deuce coupe cruising beach party spirit that had so far made the group world famous, cast even further adrift, introspective and all but retired from playing live with the his brothers and comrades, Brian was moving on from the fancy-free and footloose sound of the 45s that had always guaranteed a top ten place in the Billboard charts for something more…well, grown up. Voicing a growing anxiety – or the growing pains – of youth, Brian would compose the sound of young adulthood. As the world came to terms with the idea of the ‘teenager’, Brian began encompassing and articulating a new uneasy transition.
As much about the times as about the heartache and pains of being pure of heart, Pet Sounds marked a growing resentment towards the previous generation. At the beginning of a revolutionary change in attitudes, but a year before the ‘free love’ hippie idealism that brought in the psychedelic epoch, these former golden tanned beachcombers were breaking from their parent’s traditions and rules to set their own course: a life mapped out, from education to career and marriage. But at the very heart of all Brian’s work, even today, was a sense of innocence. An innocence lost as the lovesick but married Brian, now in his mid-twenties, was coming to terms with the anxieties of that adulthood and his growing mental anguish. Undiagnosed for years, left at the mercy of countless well-wishers and confidence tricksters, quacks and pseudo-therapists, Brian’s meticulous obsessive production of Pet Sounds and its subsequent, but not satisfactorily finished until 40 years later, magnum opus SMiLE tipped him over the edge.
Pet Sounds would also mark a lyrically shift, with Brian collaborating with his friend the lyricist and copywriter Tony Asher. A task of reification, Asher would take the often abstract and difficult expressions that roamed around inside the troubled mind and put them into song. Not exactly the most unified of atmospheres, Cousin Mike Love, a constant daddy-o stuck-in-the-mud character, was ready to pour a cold bucket of egotistic sick over anything that he felt would compromise or trouble the calm waters of The Beach Boys, so far, winning formula. To be fair, Love would be right to question this new shift towards the melancholic, almost philosophical anguish. Asher at that time was but a burgeoning talent with little to back up his credibility as a top pop songwriter. Replacing previous writers and solid contributors with an unproven lyricist would however prove to be genius decision. But the success of the album was slow. Its renaissance and rebirth as one of the greatest albums of the twentieth century was down to the audiences overseas. The change in direction had unsettled the market, as America baulked at this sadder, more cerebral tone. Yet, the UK loved it, buying it in droves and sending it to the number 2 spot in the charts – compare that with its 106 placing in the Billboard. Pet Sounds could have been a disaster, but it was saved, becoming a cult, an iconic masterpiece. And though it would take a while to pick up the desirable sales, its legacy grew and grew years after its original release.
Arriving almost in tandem, The Beatles Revolver was released just a couple of months later. Brian’s answer: SMiLE. If Pet Sounds had not only threatened but also sent Brian into a funk, then this grand American musical tour through the ages, from Plymouth Rock to the shores of the Spanish Peninsula, would all but consume and nearly destroy him. So ambitious was the vision that despite the near godlike genius of his assiduous sessions’ ensemble, The Wrecking Crew, the social, political and historically woven rich tapestry lyrics of new songwriting partner Van Dyke Parks, and his own production prowess, the project stalled. Numerous mixes, snippets, vignettes and even completed songs made it onto various albums and compilations over the decades, including the enervated and rushed out – to appease and bring in some much-needed revenue – Smiley Smile. It would take decades for SMiLE to be eventually completed, albeit (sadly and for obvious reasons) without his brothers Dennis and Carl’s near ethereal soulful compassionate voices, and missing any input from Love – now more or less carving the Beach Boys brand up, sporting it like a trophy as he has carte blanche and ownership of the name when touring with his own cabaret version of the group’s back catalogue. Brian did however manage, after spending the longest amount of time and money in recording history on a single, to release the perfectly epic pop rhapsody ‘Good Vibrations’.
Recently documented, quite favourably and sympathetically, by the Love & Mercy movie, Brian’s wilderness years lasted throughout the 80s and into the 90s, before the most accomplished of L.A. bands and Beach Boy fans The Wondermints helped lure Brian back on the road, performing a Pet Sounds extravaganza in 2000. Just four years later the band would join Brian in the studio to finish that nigh mystical, greatest album there never was, SMiLE, before taking it out on the road. Following in 2011 the eventual hidden away, locked in some fabled vaults, SMiLE Sessions of original material was finally released to the public.
A near renaissance, a scarred and troubled but blooming Brian Wilson is back once again on the road. This time he celebrates the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds, arriving in my new hometown of Glasgow on a nationwide tour. Billed as an ‘anniversary celebration’ – the final performance of the iconic album in its entirety – tonight’s performance is a generous one. Split into two performances of greatest hits and Pet Sounds, with an encore of good time classics, Brian was backed by members of the Wondermints and flanked by special guests, Al Jardine and honouree Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin: a set up that has been repeated on many occasions.
As a steady presence for the vulnerable Brian, Al was on hand to soften the odd tremors of quivered uncertainty. But who was on hand to back up Al? Well as it happens his son Matt Jardine. Proving himself the most apt of Beach Boy scions, he was there to aid his old man and Brian with the most adroit and sweetest of falsetto voices. A counterpoint to the now – and for good reason – limited vocal range of Brian, Matt took on the high notes with aplomb and even performed lead on one of the evenings early highlights, ‘Don’t Worry Baby’. He would play the role of a younger Brian during the entirety of the Pet Sounds album suite, almost seamlessly taking on each alternating verse. However, and it seems almost too disingenuous to point out, there were a few wobbles and miscues throughout that just couldn’t be patched over. Yet we all willed Brian on, and when he took lead on the most diaphanous of love declarations, ‘God Only Knows’, the entire audience stood to their feet in adulated applause – the first of many rapturous ovations that night.
Directed and conducted by Paul ‘Von’ Mertens the entire ensemble began the evening with the heavenly choral warm-up ‘Our Prayer’; featured on 20/20 but originally the lead-in to the album version of SMiLE’s grand trans-American tour ‘Heroes And Villains’, which followed. We were then treated to a litany of favourites from the bobby sox high school daze back catalogue of hits, including a swinging, swayed medley of ‘California Girls’, ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Little Deuce Coupe’. Handing over the spotlight, Al performed centre stage with renditions of ‘Wake The World’, ‘Add Some Music To Your Day’ and ‘Cotton Fields’ – all songs plucked from the Brian breakdown period, when the rest of the Band were prompted to take over the creative reins. As lithe and energetic as ever, former Flame and Beach Boy band member (on tour and in the studio during the early 70s) Blondie Chaplin sprouted onto the stage to add some light-hearted theatrics and rock’n’roll vigour. The much-accomplished Durban guitar maestro, looking more and more like a cross between Jagger and Richards (all that time he spent touring with the Stones in the late 90s has worn off on him), launched into a strutting version of ‘Wild Honey’. Expanded from its soulful howled original setting, Chaplin went into bohemian guitar solo overdrive; showboating across the front of the stage and playing to the audience, who lapped it up. From The Beach Boys’ troubled but most brilliant 1973 album Holland, Chaplin picked up the ocean current waltz ‘Sail On Sailor’. The original vocalist on that recording, he returns to it with carefree élan, adding a wild guitar solo to the end, which sends Brian off into the wings in playful mock exasperation.
Back out for act two, the band minus Chaplin for now, begin the reverent Pet Sounds album. Largely enduring because it encapsulated a particular age and time in Brian’s genius, but mostly for capturing the love tribulations and torments of young adulthood in the most perfect pop songs, the album still chimes deeply with audiences fifty years later. Intricate and multi-layered but never ever laboured or strained – witness the Bond-esque Tropicana lounge instrumental suite title track -, each purposely-poised ballad, paean and tryst says all it needs to in less than two minutes. The rousing ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, shared vocally by the Jardines and Brian, opens proceedings of course, followed by a gentler, more serene ‘You Still Believe In Me’. Highlights from the album set included an Al led version of the sea shanty in the manner of a doo wop Ivy League bruiser, with a reference to a particular paranoia plunged bad acid trip thrown in, ‘Sloop John B’, and flipping over the B-side, a poignant and encouraged Brian led ‘Caroline, No’.
The encore promised a “fun, fun, fun” package of hits. But first the band introductions, each band member receiving a musical signature tune as they came back out onto the stage after the interval. It was then straight into a full cast version of ‘Good Vibrations’, including the gesticulating tambourine wielding Chaplin who turned his percussive role into an art form. Rewinding back through the songbook, we were treated to the sing-along classics ‘Help Me Rhonda’, ‘Barbara Ann’, ‘Surfin USA’ and ‘Fun Fun Fun’. By now the audience were up and out of their seats, dancing where they could in the face of the po-faced security and attendants. From our balcony seats looking down on the main auditorium we witnessed hundreds swaying and weaving in almost perfect timing: the atmosphere couldn’t have been better. On a poignant, perhaps paused note Brian finished the evening with a version of the song that spawned the title of the recent movie, Love & Mercy. Written in more recent times, a reminder of the anxieties and anguish that once crippled Brian, the song’s central tenet is a perfect theme to finish on: a great sentiment for the audience to carry with them as they head home into the night. A joy to witness, the Pet Sounds legacy is in safe hands, especially here in Glasgow; a city twinned with Big Sur for one night only. Simply magical.
Love & Mercy Film Review/Purview
By now (or so I believed) the well documented rise and fall and then revival of one of pop music’s titans and true geniuses, shouldn’t come as any shock. Perhaps the nuanced details remain a mystery to most, but the crippling mental fatigue and illnesses that conspired to overwhelm Brian Wilson now go hand-in-hand with and are synonymous with The Beach Boys legacy. Plagued since childhood by the overbearing bullying of others, Brian was made nearly deaf by the clouting punishment of his patriarch Murry Wilson (a failed composer with little talent, forever enviously cruel towards his eldest son); worn down by his cousin and bandmate Mike Love – a year older than Brian but may as well been twenty, the omnipresent ‘straight’ put off by anything less than sweet and commercial, constantly grappling in a power game to control the band -; and emasculated, cut off from the world by the dubious therapist Dr. Eugene Landy. Arguably this triumvirate of manipulative, all damaged in their own way, individuals reflected their own insecurities, envy and even misunderstandings – Love just not getting it and stoic in not wishing to rock the proverbial boat of success – onto Brian; and perhaps due to a lack of ego himself, was unable to believe in his own self-worth allowing others to both take advantage and question his musical aspirations.
Unnerved, strung out and growing isolated from both his childhood sweetheart and first wife Marilyn, and his siblings, Brian went into a slow and long-drawn-out decline. Rare touches of genius would still sparkle occasionally, but after the less than rapturous reception at the release of Pet Sounds, and the aborted (though saved from the ashes and finally recorded and played live forty years later) American peregrination SMiLE, it was more or less downhill all the way.
Adrift now of The Beach Boys, wheeled out sporadically but later sacked, Brian had already undergone numerous treatments during the late 60s, and in 1975 at her wits end, Marilyn called in the services of the quack to the stars, Landy. The movie depicts his motives and less than orthodox style of treatment as quite sinister, but nevertheless he did manage to reduce a bloated lethargic Brian into a slimmer, healthier individual, ready to return back to The Beach Boys fold. However, as it would transpire, Landy took rather too much of an interest, going as far as to attend band meetings and make decisions on Brian’s creative dealings. He was ceremoniously sacked and cast out, losing not only his golden egg, but also losing his professional licence for his methods and liberal pill dispensing (the press would Christian him Dr. Feelgood). Yet ironically, he was recalled back during the 80s after Brian, at his lowest ebb, took an overdose of alcohol, cocaine and psychoactive drugs. This time Landy gave no quarter and micromanaged every single aspect of his patient’s life. Brian would be completely cut off from everyone, and handled like a simpering child by his new legal guardian (who merely replaced Brian’s monstrous real father Murry), with a team on standby to make sure he never wandered from the good doctor’s path of recovery: a recovery that led to Brian’s eponymous solo album of 1988 (Landy brazenly got credits as executive producer and co-writer), of which the opening track Love & Mercy is used for the film’s title. In fear of being institutionalised, Brain would meekly allow this infringement of his privacy and daily life. Overstepping his remit and coming up against Brian’s – depending on who’s account you believe – saviour Melinda Ledbetter (a model turn Cadillac sales women), Landy was eventually forced out when his name mysteriously appeared as the main benefactor on Brian’s will. Already handing over a percentage and forced back into the studio to cover costs, Brian’s publishing rights would still not satisfy Landy’s mounting costs – charging an eye-watering $430,000 annually between 1983 to 1986 – and this along with Melinda’s timely intervention conspired to finally remove him.
A complicated story then, the emphasis on redeeming a fragile genius from a reversion to a near childlike numb state, the film makers and script writers can’t possibly capture every nuance. Instead, Oren Moverman and Michael A. Lerner‘s touching story and unconventional story arc focuses on the perspectives of Brian and Melinda, and hones in on two specific timelines: the mid 60s and 80s. Whilst the story begins with the muddled mind of a younger Brian (an uncannily fragile and compassionate performance from Paul Dano) fading out to darkness, followed by a background montage of the Beach Boys more naive, carefree days (though even these moments show an already uneasy Brian plucking away on his bass guitar, wishing to be anywhere but on stage or in the limelight), we’re speedily propelled forward to John Casuck‘s placid later day Brian’s first meeting with Melinda. Virtuously played throughout by a thoroughly convincing, purposeful Elizabeth Banks, director Bill Pohlad uses her face as a gauge for reaction, whether it’s being played a whimsically beautiful piano motif or hearing the disturbing abuse meted out to Brian by his father. In her opening scene she attempts to sell him a car, before Landy and his posse arrive, but not before Brian slips her a note with ‘Lonely, scared, frightened’ scrawled on it.
Not that the intention is to show any balance in Landy’s depiction, the wig adorned Paul Giamatti is a raging control freak; ready to suddenly blow in a torrid at any time, and constantly, even when smoothing things over, adding a creepy and threatening undertone to every word of advice and suggestion. Meeting one of the only real forms of opposition, Landy’ warnings towards Melinda eventually boil over into some hostile confrontations: an early scene in the dating storyline, with Giamatti’s Landy holding court whilst flipping burgers, grows steadily uneasy and finally ends with an explosive outburst, as a doped-up Brian petulantly interrupts a boorish egotist regaling his own questionable writing virtues with calls to be fed.
Faithfully recreated, Dano’s parts are sometimes tear-jerking. Though we’ve grown used to the back catalogue, hearing the building blocks and attentive beginnings of ‘You Still Believe In Me’, ‘Surf’s Up’ (this performance further convinces me of its eulogy quality and that it belongs on the 1971 titular LP rather than SMiLE), and ‘God Only Knows’ (stunning even its most fragile form, when the young Brian seeks his father’s approval but is despairingly put down by pater’s heartbreaking responses) send chills down your spine. Enthusiasts will be interested in seeing the mechanics of the Pet Sounds and SMiLE sessions; the fantasy of seeing the famed and near mythical Wrecking Crew at work. The crew’s revered and experienced drummer, possibly the best session drummer of the 60s, Hal Blaine is used as a vessel to get the plot moving; his references and reassurances (in one memorable exchange and moment of doubt, the elder statesman’s and cool Hal, sucking on a cigarette, assures Brian that having worked with Phil Spector and a legendary rooster of other talent, the young pup is on another level entirely of genius) are used to settle a young Brian in the grip of mania. But wait until the final sequences, a redeemed Brian breaking from his stupor, soundtracked by the stunning, and reflective diaphanous ‘Til I Die’ – a song that took Brian a year to complete, and was to no one’s surprise by now, originally dismissed before being embraced by Love.
With the emphasis on these characters, most of the extended cast are reduced to walk-on parts and though some background is referred to, Van Dyke Parks and many others aren’t introduced at all, merely swanning about – apart from a meeting in the swimming pool – at various dinners and pool parties. Even his poor siblings Dennis and Carl are more or less demoted to the odd clueless look whilst Al Jardine doesn’t even get a line: Dennis himself succumbed to his own torments, which left him adrift of his family and band mates; his spiral into drink and drugs ended tragically when he drowned just weeks after his 39th birthday in 1983. It is the mixed portrayal of his cousin Love that is emphasised, not really a hero or villain, but malcontent and totally unhip individual uneasy at the changing face of a turned-on L.A. in the grip of LSD. I feel a little sorry for him, played I might add brilliantly by an unrecognisable Jake Abel, who would eventually have to lead the group and take up the mantle; always that little bit older, not so fortunate in the hair department (his fetish for hats arguably covering up his early balding), and ever the professional he found it hard to fit in.
Love & Mercy moves full circle, Melinda coaxing the responsive artist and adult from his child like shell, finishing with Brian’s – and I was lucky enough to attend one of his comeback shows with the Wondermints – return to the stage in the noughties, performing the titular song. Those stumbling blocks and manias that prevent not just geniuses, from making their ideas concrete, still persist. But at least Brian finally received the correct diagnosis of manic depression with auditory hallucinations that can be successfully treated: Landy’s schizophrenia diagnosis and treatment did more harm than good, arguably worse than the cocktail of illicit drugs that Brian was popping so freely before the quack came on the scene. The best hope is that this movie encourages discussion; that we can talk candidly and address the controlling mechanisms that condemn many people to a life spent dealing in isolation with their mental health.
Vukovar ‘Emperor’
(Small Bear Records) – Originally release in 2015; re-released on the 1st July 2025 with various mixes and extras.
Punching well above its weight, the serendipitous label of vaporous lo fi and languid shoegaze Small Bear Records has slipped onto the market its most ambitious marvel yet. From their Isle of Man recording HQ, the Vukovar builds a funeral pyre for the ‘new world order’.
Helping them man the barricades are Rick Clarke and Dan Shea (also of The Bordellos and Neurotic Wreck, but most formerly of the “disintegrated” The Longdrone Flowers), joined by an extended cast of Small Bear artists; including the dreamily aspiring Postcode’s Mikie Daugherty, Jonny Peacock and Marie Reynolds, and Circus worlD’s Mark Sayle all making guest appearances: a super group performance if you will.
Rallying round the decree of “idealists, voyeurs and totalitarians”, and referencing a list of one-word actions/stances (“Ultra-Realism”, “Depravity”, “Monotony”) to describe their sound, the band’s lyrics certainly seem fuelled with protestation and anger. Yet for the most part, they sound despondently magnificent in the most melodic, beautiful shoegaze fashion. Their brand of lush 80s driven alternative rock and more caustic, punchy industrial noise is far too melodic and majestic to be truly brutal.
Taking their name from the infamous Croatian city, the site of an heinous blight on modern European history (always conveniently airbrushed from bellicose EU propaganda; the sort that preaches its union has put paid to and secured the continent from conflict and war amongst its neighbours), when 300 poor souls, mostly Muslims, were rounded up and barbarically executed by Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav People’s Army (the worst committed atrocity of its kind since WWII), Vukovar appeal to the listener who wants to scratch beneath the surface of the banal mainstream. They offer an invitation into the darker recesses of history and social politics unseen in much of the dross that calls itself alternative – even their bandcamp page features an exhaustive manifesto style edict (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) of intent. And so they offer a an out-of-body majestical shoegazing waltz through Reinhard Heydrich’s honey trap brothel and centre of Nazi espionage, the ‘Regular Patrons of Salon Kitty’; drift into Spiritualized and New Order territory on the softly pranged hymn to a former Japanese princess, ‘Part 1: Miss Kuroda’s Lament’; and channel a despondently romantic but resigned Ian Curtis as they utter with despondent beauty that “we’re cowards” on the beautifully sullen and dreamy ‘Nero’s Felines’.
With a maelstrom of clanging, fuzz and Inspiral Carpets jamming with a motor city turned-on Julian Cope vibe, the group yells, shakes and rattles on their noisier outings, ‘Lose My Breath’ and ‘Concrete’. Not always their best material it must be said, they add some tension to the more relaxed melodic and – dare I say – pop songs, which sound far more convincing: ‘Koen Cohen K’ and ‘The New World Order’ are just brilliant; imagine what Joy Division might have sounded like if Ian Curtis had lived on and found solace in the lush veils of shoegaze, or if he fronted Chapterhouse.
Fiddling romantically whilst Olympus burns, the Vukovar’s stand against the illuminati forces of evil couldn’t have sounded any more beautifully bleak, yet somehow liltingly inspiring.
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