Monolith Cocktail Blog

Upcoming and recent albums in review
Dominic Valvona

Moonlight Benjamin  ‘Wayo’
24^th February 2023

PHOTO CREDIT: Cedrick Nöt

No one quite channels the “iwa” spirits and musical, drum-beating ceremony of Haitian vodou like one of its most exhilarating priestesses, Moonlight Benjamin. Returning with her atmospheric and grinded-scuzz swamp-blues foil Matthis Pascaud for a third manifestation of hungered electrified vodou-blues, Moonlight roughs up and adds a wider tumult of energy to her vocally incredible and dirt music imbued sound of deep southern roots, West African and Hispaniola influences: an all-round Francophone sound you could say, from Louisiana to Mali and, of course, her homeland of Haiti. 

Born into this mortal world in tragic circumstances, an orphan at childbirth, the poetically named Moonlight started out singing hymns in the Christian Church before crossing the paths of vodou musicians, acolytes and picking up on the sounds of Western rock music on the radio. But with an eventual move to France, Moonlight would also take up the study of jazz. A return in 2009 to Haiti and vodou initiation, Moonlight became a priestess of an age-old religion, practice originally brought to Haitian shores by slaves from West and Central Africa.

Famous for its worked-up rhythmic rituals and exaltations, drama, the sounds and expressive vocalization of vodou was coupled to a myriad of bluesy, rocking, psychedelic, country and desert styles when the guitarist Pascaud entered the picture. Two critically favored, compelling and adventurous albums and numerous gigs later this sonic and, most importantly, vocal partnership now summons up something very special, soulful, spiritual and charged on Wayo.

Translating into a “scream of pain”, the title-track finds Moonlight commanding strength yet also emotional as a tempered, melodious if raw gumbo of New Orleans and Tuareg post-punk swamp blues buzzes around her. That voice, its range from earthiness to squeals and the deeply welled, is hard to compare with anyone else. Melodic with plenty of familiar tunes, those beautiful if on occasion riled tones evoke fleeting grasps of Joan Armatrading, Ami Kate, Brittany Howard, Cold Specks and Big Joanie. Yet this is Afro-Haitian soul, R&B, the venerable and raging conversing with French chanteuse and Portuguese fado; with camel motion traverses and panoramic spells in desert Westerns.

For his part, Pascaud’s sprung, tremolo and gristly guitar, with both a grinding coil and velocity and more melting wanes, stirs up a sinewy flex of Tinariwan, Modu Moctar, Hendrix and Mark Mulholland’s collaboration with another Haiti native, the poet-artist Frankétiene.

With the addition of a bass guitar and drums elements of Boukmen Eksperyans and the Vodoun Band Haiti beat comes into contact with soul revue backbeats, post-punk and cult rock ‘n’ roll.

All together it’s a real rich, ever-changing landscape of driven, slapping, bobbed and stonking rhythms and powerful, rough and yet elegant vocals with a sense of both pain and magic. As wild as it is composed, Moonlight Benjamin takes the vodou spirits back home to Africa, before returning, via the bayou, to Haiti on another fraught electrified album of divine communication.

Antti Lötjönen ‘Circus/Citadel’
(We Jazz) 24^th February 2023

During the initial pandemic wave of April 2020 the double-bassist maestro Antti Lötjönen released his debut proper as bandleader to a quintet of exciting Finnish jazz talent.

That album, Quintet East, with its monograph vignettes and flexible free-play of be bop, Sonny Clark, the left bank and Bernstein-like musical NYC skylines, is improved upon by the ensemble’s follow-up, Circus/Citadel. With a title both inspired and imbued by the Romanian-born, German-language titan of 20^th century poetry, Paul Celan, the issues of a tumultuous world on the precipice of disaster is channeled through a controlled chaos and a reach for the old and new forms of expressive jazz.

The seasoned Lötjönen, whose provenance includes stints in the Five Corners Quintet, 3TM and Aki Rissanen Trio, reels back in the talents of the alto and baritone saxophonist Mikko Innanen (part of the We Jazz label supergroup Kamo Saxo), tenor saxophonist Jussi Kannaste (a fellow 3TM band mate), trumpet player Verneri Pohjola and drummer Joonas Rippa on another highly impressive outing.

More coherent than the last time around however, the themes of the day, the protestations are galvanized and turned inside-out across a concrete vine swinging, guarded and maddening landscape. Celan’s harrowing verse, consumed as is right with WWII and the Holocaust, his Jewish struggles, is reflected by those old and contemporary challenges with a musicality that evokes the social conscious jazz records of Marcus Belgrave, Sam Rivers and Phil Ranelin. And yet the opening title-track three-part act and its couplet of suites also serenade and offer a lilted New Orleans fanfare, suggestive of America’s earlier Southern States jazz roots. That first trilogy of tracks is a journey in itself; from Dixie and Savoy Jazz (Gigi Gryce for one) to those musical, theatrical sounds of Bernstein and early Miles Davis, through to the farmyard percussion and wilder rushes of sax and trumpet on the final act. It feels at times like an avant-garde or free-jazz modernist score to Animal Farm. With all the connotations, metaphors that title implies, the circus of madness and fortress mentality are played off against each other.

Each suite breaks off into expressive groups, separations, with perhaps the horn section together or double bass and drums reacting to each other in almost isolation. Numerous versions of this practice, these little breakdowns, combos can be heard throughout; all played with expanding minds and adroit skill, dexterity and, that word again, expression. And there are some both playful (is that a “pop goes the weasel” riff on the activist-stoked ‘Defenestration’?) and wailing surprises to be heard on this bounded mix of the quickened, the controlled and purposeful.

I’m always building the We Jazz label up; always aggrandising that Helsinki based hub of Scandinavian jazz. But really, this is an enriching, immersive and artful start to the label’s 2023 calendar with a classic jazz album in the making. I reckon it will be one of the year’s best.  

Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters ‘Abri Cyclonique’
(Real World) 24^th February 2023

Suffused, elevated and morphed with Parisian-based Doctor L’s jazz, electronica Francophone new waves and trip-hop, the ancestral Guadeloupe rural folk traditions of Léwòz and one of its renowned modern practitioners-deliverers Moïse Polobi is transformed into an environmental traverse. As the good doctor has proscribed so well for Les Amazon D’Afrique and the Mbongwana Stars, the roots of another form are, with subtle wondering and sophistication, given a unique sound experience.

At the heart of the 69-year-old farm worker and lumberjack’s earthy song music is a three-drum circle of rhythms. A disciple since being introduced by his Léwòz practicing mother at the age of twelve to this West African originated ritual, dance and music Polobi is a master of the Gwaka, a family of hand drums of all different sizes, used for various effects and parts – the “Buula” for example, being the largest of that family, used as the central rhythm. The “Djeme” is another; a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet shaped drum, its origins tied to the 15^th century Mali Empire and its spread across the region; taken up by those unfortunate souls catered off to the Americas during the Transatlantic slave trade.

As an ancestor of those slaves, brought over to the French colonized Guadeloupe archipelago to harvest sugar (among other roles) on the plantations, Polobi’s identity is very much on show here; a call both pleading and poetically ached as this group of islands continues to be attached to France as a “region” – as a consequence, part of the EU too – despite decades of independence campaigns. And that’s despite the Colonist masters loss of the Caribbean islands during its own revolution to the British (the first of two attempts to take them). Yet with certain conditions, it remains a semi-autonomous part of France to this day. This means there’s a strong French culture, especially language wise, with French being the official dialect, but Creole really the more popular used amongst the locals. It’s alluded to in the lyrics on this new album’s trippy ‘Bouladje’ song: “What language should I speak? This one says speak to me in Creole/ This one says speak to me in French. Music is in French/ As children we sang in Creole/ Let’s talk to make ourselves understood.”

 The call and response, Cándido-like hand drums rattling and rolled (we’re told Doctor L replaced the drums here with Cuban rhythms) ‘Neg Africa’ makes that connection to displacement from the homeland obvious; sounding as it does like an African homage musically and atmospherically.

To my own ignorance I never knew that there was as Tour de Guadalupe in the cycling calendar. Won by the promising Colombian talent of the same name ‘Camargo’ uses a mirage of nuzzled distant trumpet, slightly elliptical drumming and electronic processes to call for the locals to get energized and to win back the “yellow jersey”; a boost for Guadalupe’s population to take back their own destiny, to feel bolstered with a can-do attitude. Polobi it must be said is a cycling fan, so it can be read as a tribute to that Central American cycling star too. 

As important as self-determination is and the struggle to preserve traditions, this album is as much about Polobi’s response to his natural environment. Named after the terrifying threats and realties of cyclones – though also a metaphor we’re told for the “resilience” of the music and for resistance – Abri Cyclonique pays a real tribute to Polobi’s little oasis out in the wilds of the archipelago’s Grande Savane region. ‘La Lézad’, with its spiral wafts of jazzy horn, drum scuttles and Gnawa-like vocals is named after a local river, whilst the mysterious Afro-Caribbean, Terry Hall meets Black Mango ‘Driv’ meanders lyrically through the geography towards the woods.

Biodiversity in sonic form, with the flora, fauna, crops and wildlife permeating the sophisticated interlaced production, Polobi’s rustic idyll comes alive: as much a barrier to the infringing forces of big business as a call to return back to a simpler life in harmony with nature.

A very personal album, this is the first to be released under Polobi’s own name. Previously the Guadalupe star has performed with his Indestawa Ka band, releasing eight albums and performing internationally. But this cyclonic whirlwind is something different, a galvanised, electrified and bolstered earthy and magical vision of his country’s past, present and future. It’s one of the most interesting albums yet in 2023, with a sound that reboots folkloric traditions in the face of an ever-encroaching modernity.  

Kety Fusco ‘THE HARP, Chapter 1’
(Floating Notes Records) 3^rd March 2023

“The harp was born in the 7th century, when the air was different, tastes and experiences had nothing to do with today’s world and to this day I cannot think that there is no evolution: that is why I am designing a new harp, it will still be her, but contemporary and everyone will have the opportunity to approach it; in the meantime, welcome to THE HARP”.

And with that Kety Fusco elicits, pulls, scratches, picks and manipulates both liminal and suggestive notes, textures, timbres, qualities and evocations from her choice instrument on the first of a three-chapter journey in harp exploration. But as that opening quote states, this is nothing less than an “evolution”; a post-classical transformation in which the harp, though present and familiar, is pulled into realms of serialism, soundscaping and futurism: all that history forgotten, or at least erased, in pursuit of innovation and the new.

This means certain avant-garde practices and non-musical materials, processes being brought in to the equation. Hairpins, stones, wax have all been used in the past on Fusco’s often-improvised performative compositions, peregrinations and suites. To further distance the harp from its classical, folk and majestic roots, Fusco uses an electrified soundboard of effects and a database library of digital sounds she’s collected over the years. On this nineteen-minute, more or less seamless journey, the Italian artist is said to have even used a vibrator – banging it against that already mentioned soundboard. Such devices do indeed change the scope of the instrument, making it almost abstract, recondite, the source hidden aurally.

Fusco uses both an 80-kilo wooden harp and a carbon electric harp on Chapter 1 in the new series – chapters 2 and 3 appearing annually over the next three years –, which across its duration passes through the states of elegy, the disturbing, the supernatural and diaphanous.

With an impressive CV of study, accolades and notable performances at festivals, events, even the Swiss parliament, Fusco knows her instrument, theory and practice inside-out. And so whilst there’s a spirit of experimentation and improvisation, Fusco knows exactly what she’s doing, implying and creating.

Released in the run-up to this album a short excerpt, ‘2072’, alluded to the premonition year of Fusco’s death! A Cassandra perhaps, or maybe told this date by a fortuneteller, a meeting with destiny, a preparation for death is congruously pulled form out of the whole piece. The melody is a funeral elegy, destined to carry Fusco over into the next world. Not so much a cascade, as the waves of purposeful picked notes are allowed to ring out each time, given a little space before the next iteration, there’s a sense of some kind of watery flow; a peace of mind with naturalistic stirrings. And yet there is that sadness too, emanating from airy mystery.

No surprises that Fusco has previously conjured up a horror soundtrack, as there’s a constant feeling of the shadowy, even eerie throughout much of the rest of this suite. Especially in the opening passages, I can hear hints of Lucrecia Dalt. Voice-like sounds, both apparitional and almost esoterically holy, stir whilst granular and clearer but mysterious drones and melodies start to build. Glissando and legato notes simultaneously seem light and yet loaded. The atmospheres that are produced move between the chthonian, the vaporous, airy and metallic. Because whilst there’s melody, a rhythm at times, the sound turns more industrial near the end with a film and rotor-like abrasion of steel and wire.

At other times there’s moments of ambience, a sprinkle of starry calculus and reflective stillness.

The harp has seldom sounded so removed, different; Fusco at one, entwined with her harps in a challenging performance that stretches the limits of this usually synonymous heavenly instrument. Where she goes next is anyone’s guess, but I’m sure it will be a whole different experience in sound and stringed exploration that pushes the envelope.

Za! ‘Za! & La Transmegacobla’
3 Phaz  ‘Ends Meet’
(Via Discrepant)

An electrified double-bill from the discrepant portal of outlier labels this month, with albums from the Iberian (but worldly reaching) Za! duo and friends and the singular electronic-percussive global beat-maker 3 Phaz.

The first of these finds the Spanish underground favourites Za! in a “tri-state” union with the experimental Catalan Cobla wind quartet La Megacobla and the “trans-folk” duo of Tarta Relena. All together in one space they pool their resources into one, almost exhaustive, opus of controlled chaos and polygenesis musical abandon.

A Kabbalah, a cult that you might actually want to join – willing to sip the spiked kool aid with enthusiasm -, whole branches of Mediterranean dances (from the West Bulgarian quick-quick-slow-quick-quick metric beat Kopanista, to the complex bustling and cheerful Flamenco style of Buleria and the dance in a circle, Catalan, Sardana), folk traditions and sounds from atavistic realms are transported into a colourful vortex of psych, prog, krautrock, heavier riffage and heavy meta(l).   

The whole is both crazy and life affirming; a burst of energy and spasmodic cross-pollination. It’s as if Zappa dropped acid in The Master Musicians Of Jajouka’s tea; a heady mix of Anatolian-Turkey, North Africa, Moorish Spain, Eastern Europe and The Levant mixed with hippie ideology and freewheeling cosmic fantasies. At any onetime I can hear snatches, a gaggale of Dakhu Brakha, Elektro Hafiz, Elias Rahbani, Crystal Fighters, Jethro Tull, Tone Of Voice Orchestra, Hebrew, the Medieval, the Tibetan and Moroccan.

A mizmar of the heralded and the theatrical, this combined effort of wild disciplines, influences and practices is a convergence of untethered rituals, ceremonies, spins and mayhem. A place in which Ethno-music and the sounds and traditions of Spain make free associations with a family tree that’s branches spread across the Med and further afield. And yet it all sounds so very new and refreshing.

The second release in this double-bill finds the artist 3Phaz amping up the Egyptian Shaabi sound with a highly percussive mix of Mahraganat (an Egyptian electro street sound originally derived from folk music), Techno and various Bass-heavy subcultures.

A very popular working class music, that Shaabi vibe is rhythmically transported, flung forward into a futuristic soundclash vision of electronica and beats. Although “clash” isn’t the right word as this process, experiment is pretty congruous, with those rattling hand drums, percussive trinket rings and scrapes and both fluted and piped mizmar is very much in synch with the metallic synthesized effects, rounded if deep bass pulsations and sonic signals. Put it another way: that Egyptian, Middle Eastern source material is ramped up in a spin, swirl and body-locking production of electro, jungle music and fuzzed, fizzled alternative futurism.

Tracks like ‘Sharayet’, with its rapid hand drummed drills, willowed Egyptian oboe and acid Arabia beats, sounds like Farhot meets Man parish in Cairo! Meanwhile, ‘Type Beat’ has a more club-y sound mixed with stirrings of Dave Clarke, whilst ‘Shabber’ seems to merge the street sounds of the souk market with Jeff Mills.  Neither dystopian nor joyous, Ends Meet is instead a heady septet of electro-techno powered Arabian and Egyptian workouts; a rallying excitable transformation of traditional folk sucked into a newly formed vortex.    

The Mining Co.  ‘Gum Card’
(PinDrop Records)  17th March 2023

Not so much an artistic leap in the dark, Michael Gallagher has nevertheless put aside his conceptual method of preparation and writing for something less structured and preconceived. On his latest and fifth album, Gum Card, the Donegal native, but London-based, artist and musician has instead managed to piece together a loose theme of nostalgia and youth; throwbacks to an age of obsessive card collecting to particular life-affirming scenes and foolish misadventures (or rather the failure of) dabbling with the occult.

These weathered memories, reminisces are interjected with episodes of artistic doubt, phobias and ambient-settings scored, partially, with in-situ recordings of the atmosphere and room in which they are meant to be recorded – the lounge style Casio keyboard accompanied leftfield ruminating ‘Waiting Room’ for example, originally part of a wider concept of songs to be conceived in a chosen room environment, using that spaces own ambient sounds.

The Casio sound does however highlight Gallagher’s taste for experimenting with the music of his youth in the 80s. A touch of Fleetwood Mac here, some dry-ice and a little retro-cosmic projection over there. Although Gallagher’s soft-peddled signature of Americana and troubadour songwriting is still very much in attendance; a gentle mix of a winsome Chris Isaak and Spain. If anything Gum Card has more in common with the album before last, Frontier, then the previous sci-fi imbued Phenomenolgy – his best work in my opinion. However, no one style dominates this songbook as such, and I consider this album another experiment, progression of his craft. Because amongst the initial knowing MOR and softly-delivered aches and yearns of ‘Primary’, a subtle flange-dream spell of 2000s indie colours the bluesy vibe on a song in which the protagonists are trying to avoid such despondent melodrama, which is ironic as Gallagher actually doesn’t even like the blues.  

Later on there’s a hint of Mike Gale’s Casio Bossa pre-set on the memory lane feely ‘Shallow Stream’ (dedicated to fishing with Dad back in Donegal as a young lad, and memorable for accidently harpooning his old man’s hand with a fish hook), shades of Galaxie 500 and Mercury Rev on the title-track, and strobe-lit purred electro-pop on ‘Limits’.

As always there’s great subtlety at work, a slow reveal of emotional pulls and fragility; of nostalgia and memories seen at a great distance, revalued both with wisdom and yet confliction too. Some of the strangest of those draws features Gallagher’s wife, unintentionally stepping in to soothingly sing the opening ‘Wake Up’, and the subject matter of the stripped-back, intimate yearned closer ‘Broken Baby Bird’. Both bookend the album with hospital set pieces; the first, a lunar Fiona Apple and Western-tinged delirium about Gallagher’s fear of the place and needles, the second, a caring allusion to his wife’s vulnerable state after undergoing a major operation: the fledgling fallen from a nest to the ground. Obsessions of youth continuing into adulthood, the worries over loved ones and glimmers of storytelling are all converged with Gallagher’s usual slow release and an ear for something a little different to the usual American, troubadour style of deliverance. He might loathe his London home of recent years, and dream of leaving, yet that crumbling edifice has incubated the development of a real talent; a moody soul with an amiable burr who’s simultaneously comfortable and yet despondent at the state of it all. The Mining Co. proves a brilliant vehicle for Gallagher as he matures into an interesting storyteller and observer, and Gum Card is yet another finely tuned songbook from the Donegal longing maverick.

BONDO ‘Print Selections’
(Quindi Records) 24^th February 2023

How does such a languorous sound still have such drive and purpose? Far from listless, definitely not “aimless”, the L.A. quartet reimagines Fugazi as beachcombers, enticed by the twilight hours of a Pacific Ocean surf on their debut album.

Locked-in (“consumed in the process” as they put it) BONDO wind and unwind, drift and with a navel downward gaze somehow weave the indolent slacker vibe into post-hardcore, post-rock, jazzy (that Archie Shep influence in the band’s PR spill not actually that difficult to imagine), lo fi, grunge-y evocations of displacement. The idea being that each member of the band, each personality is “dissolved” to make way for the music, the theme no less than a “mind made anew”, “cleared of data and ego” yet witnessing “nothing in particular”.

With very little in the way of vocals or prompts, it’s mainly down to the feels of the music and the action, which on occasions builds up a surprising intensity on tracks like the “let it all go” spurred grind and slowcore, yet almost carefree, ‘New Brain’ – think OWLS and Bedhead with a touch of Acetones thrown in.

This is California alright, but one in which the punks, garage bands and downcast all hang out on the beachfronts, or, clear their heads whilst observing the coastal tides ebb and flow. And yet, most surprisingly (although that PR spill does name King Tubby as an influence) the Pavement-esque, baggy at times, languid and slowly hung guitar arcs ‘Zion Gate’ (clue is in the title) has a dub-like bent to it. 

Print Selections is filled with recast rumbled surf music, echoes of Slint and The Archers Of Loaf, splish ‘n’ splash drums and processed guitars diligently working towards an unburdened purpose and shape. BONDO have risen to the challenge of the album format, holding attention and the gaze with an intelligent visceral L.A. malaise and languorous challenge to cut loose and find those new horizons.   

Farid  El Atrache ‘Nagham Fi Hayati’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) Available Now

In between leftfield excursions to Japan, cult French label showcases and repressed funk and soul rarities the reissue specialists (branching out with bands like Biensüre into releasing brand new original material too) WEWANTSOUNDS delve into the magic and sublime music of North Africa, Arabia and the Levant with this cinematic treasure from the late Egyptian superstar Farid El Atrache.

Released in 1974, the year that Farid passed away, the Nagham Fi Hayati album is a soundtrack of mawwal-longed sentiment, quickened shimmies and virtuoso performances that show off the matinee idol, singer and oud maestro’s repertoire: now at its most sagacious if ailing.

But first a little background. Born into a princely Druze clan family tree in Syria during WWI, in the grip of fighting with the French colonizers, Fraid, his mother and siblings were forced to flee the homeland. At around the age of nine Farid would pitch up in Egypt; staying until his death in the 1970s. Learning much from his Lebanese mother’s own musical prowess as a singer and oud player, the burgeoning pupil soon came to the attention of his elders; learning for a time under the stewardship of the polymath Egyptian composer Riad Al Sunbat, he would quickly make it to the airwaves, appearing on the country’s National radio station. Moves into the flourishing Egyptian movie business would follow; Farid appearing in thirty-one musical films in total.

As a playboy figure that never quite made it to the alter, Farid romanced co-stars, famous belly dancers and even a former Queen – before his ousting, King Farouk’s wife Nariman Sadek – whilst maintaining a career on celluloid, stage and as a recording artist popular across the entire Arab world and even beyond – a favourite of Brian Eno mo less, a snippet from his famous ‘Awad Hamsa’ song of the 60s was used on John Lennon’s art project ‘Revolution No. 9’.

As it happens, he plays the aging respected singing star in the movie that this album soundtracks. And once the much younger rival ships out to find wealth in Brazil, at first saves, out of kindness, the fallen heroine (played by Mervat Amin) from public shame before falling in love with her for real. Directed by the famed Egyptian director Henry Barakat, Nagham Fi Hayati finds Farid’s character, even with a sizable age gap, doing the honorable thing in marrying his pregnant secretary, the father now across the world with no idea he’s left his former lover knocked-up.

Musically this translates into the lushly and swirled orchestrated classicism, Arabian poetry of sentimental longing and fulgurated vowel prolonged lamenting matinee, ‘Alachan Malich Gheirak’ (“Because There Is No One Else For Me But You”), and the equally yearned emotional orchestration of drama, Franco-Arabian and concertinaed charm, ‘Ya Habaybi Ya Ghaybin’ (“My Absent Lover”).

Sitting between those love-lost and resigned suites, ‘Hebina Hebina’ (“Love Us, Love Us”) picks up the pace with North African darting and dotted quickening organ and a mixed chorus of backing singers, encouragingly and excitedly clapping away.

Appearing for the first time in its full-unedited form (a section was originally cut from the original LP version), the incredible unaccompanied lute set, ‘Takassim Oud’, finds Farid proving every bit the “king” of that stringed instrument. An appreciative audience constantly animated and bursting into applause, eggs on a solo performance that evokes flourishes of Spain, Turkey, and Arabian folk, and Egyptian desert mirages. It’s like witnessing something as sublime, virtuoso and mesmerizing as Django Rhinehardt, only its on the bandy, elastic, thumbed and strummed, picked and plucked, jumping and blurry rapid scales resonating oud.

The first reissue on vinyl since the 70s, this skilfully performed filmic affair-of-the-heart can now be yours. I suggest you make room for it in your collection now, but also start sourcing those old Egyptian movies. Farid was a titan of the form; his voice sublime and musicianship masterful. What a real pleasure to be made aware of this artist and star. Big thanks to WEWANTSOUNDS for that.

GRANDAD ‘S-T’
6^th March 2023

Remaining anonymous for now, the E numbers fed maverick who sits behind the GRANDAD alias regurgitates the sort of electronic goofiness that labels such as Artetetra and Bearsuit knock out with such aplomb.

Bauhaus avant-garde theatre morphs into wired skittles’ rainbow cutes, or, a transmogrified Candy Crush on the debut EP by this noted orchestrator, composer and mischievous artist. If I listed the many “illustrious” figures from the scene that this alter ego has worked with, then I’m sure you’d guess who it is. So instead just trust me that this is a seasoned pro who hasn’t just splurged on Damon Hirst’s medicine cabinet but knows (I think anyway) exactly what they’re doing.

A rush of Japanese cartoon fantasy and platform gameplay scores, garbled indigestion and springy silliness is all synchronized with (what sounds like to me) visions of a reggae-house Felix Da Housecat, Egyptian Lover electro, Mike Dred’s spindled rushes and a surprising spot of scenic gazing (the EP’s final harmonium-like, freshly breathed trans-alpine mirage ‘Pest’, which has a touch of Roedelius about it). And then there’s also a scuffed and worked merger of early Jeff Mills, Populäre Mechanik and Basic Channel on the penultimate tubular hammering ‘Runner Runner’.  

Attention deficit disorderly conduct wrapped up with more dramatic looming deep moods, kinetic chain reactions, giddy and heavily processed voices (from where or what, who knows) and intricate beat making, GRANDAD’s debut EP submerges and mutilates echoes of µ-Ziq, Autechre, Ippu Mitsui and Andrew Spackman’s SAD MAN project.

Zigzag pills are popped and metals beaten out on, despite all I’ve said, quite a focused set of maximalist propositions. Although, just to further pull this debut EP into the psychedelic-induced realms, the CD is being packaged by the aptly entitled and self-evident mushroom technologists, the Magical Mushroom Company, whose aim is not to microdot the general public but to replace plastic with the “magic of mushrooms”. Lick it and see: it might work. But you won’t need any drukqs or stimulants to enjoy this deep set of colour and goofball electronica.    

Room Of Wires ‘Welcome To The End Game’
(Ant-Zen) 15^th February 2023

A buzz, whine, flex and resonating ring of zinc and alloy, of recondite machines, permeates another heavy set from the Room Of Wires duo. The latest in a strong catalogue of such dark materials and alien mystery, Welcome To The End Game ties together a complex of dystopian woes, rage and dramas into an interlayered twisting and expanding metal muscled album of electronic.  

Although both partners (both called Andrew as it happens) have never actually met, and each track is created apart in isolation remotely, every single fibre and inch of their processes comes together to sculpt the nightmares of our technological encroaching and constantly under surveillance world with a search, an escape, into the light. In practice this means for every granular and shadowy techno reverberation there’s a smattering of ambient and neoclassical passages.

It all starts with the sound of Cabaret Voltaire’s Arabian-electro protestations and snatches of dialogue, and moves across a vivid modulated, oscillating structure of ominous strains, tubular mettalics, deep bass-y echoes, slowed and stretched beats and the sound of kinetic-static charged ballbearings being moved around in a circular fashion.

‘Oceans Light’, featuring exm, is a surprise with its ascending beams of light, rising from the refracted still waters, and the mournful ‘Burial’ features a touch of Dead Can Dance’s ethereal, but also Eastern European holy, gauze, which brings some gravitas to the lamentable misty scene. Elsewhere there’s a grind and cosmic concentration of Cosey Fani Tutti, Gescom, Amorphous Androgynous, Art Decade and Mouse On Mars to be found lurking or springing into view.

An often unnerving experience in which you’re never quite sure of the environment, this electronic duo tap into the growing unease and fast-shifting realities of our present cataclysm, of which they believe, by the title, we’ve reached the “end game”, whatever that will reveal. As I said a few paragraphs ago, Room Of Wires navigate and balance the uncertainty with glimmers of escape, and moments of hope and release; the machinations and unseen forces that bear down upon us all at least dissipated enough to offer some light.

Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.