Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part One: A – L
December 10, 2024
Welcome to part one of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists.
Picked by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Despite the tumult of problems that face artists and bands in the music industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, the worrying trend of venue closures, the ever-encroaching domination of streaming against physical sales and exposure, and the onslaught of AI, people just can’t quit making music. And that’s all without listing the political, social and economic woes that continue to make life unbearable for most of us; the scandalous forces of austerity/cost-of-living crisis and post-Covid hangover threatening to constantly drag us under. We, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys, the music makers, do in the face of such intense stresses.
In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so (as I say every year) instead of those silly, factious and plain dumb numerical charts that our peers and rivals insist on continuing to print – how can you really suggest one album deserves their place above or below another; why does one entry get the 23rd spot and another the 22nd; unless it is a vote count, and even then, does it really come down to a popularity contest? –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic and democratic alphabetical order – something we (more or less) started in the first place.
The lists are broken up this year into two parts, A-L, and M-Z, and include those albums we’ve reviewed or featured on the site in some capacity, plus a smattering of those we just didn’t get the time to include. All entries are displayed thus: Artist (in alphabetical order) then the album title, label, who it was chosen by and a review link, if there is one. We also included quotes and summaries underneath.
Before we precede, we’d like to thank the following contributors to the site this year: Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Matt Oliver, Graham Domain, Mikey McDonald and Andrew C. Kidd, plus our Italian friends at Kalporz. Also, our gratitude and love for all our supporters during the year, and to those that have donated to https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail We really can’t have continued without it.
A_
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Retro Porter’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Review
“The sound of John Lane’s most prolific and artistically successful alias, A Journey Of Giraffes (no stranger to the blog, and often featured in our choice end of year features) is given almost unlimited time and space to unfurl on the ambitious opus-spanning Retro Porter album of ambient empirical suites.
An expansion upon Lane’s previous work – especially last year’s choice album entry, Empress Nouveau – each evolving sensory piece allows all the Baltimore composer’s signatures, motifs and serialism-like enquires to recollect memories of places and scenes, of the abstract, over the course of what sounds like a whole day.
Mirages, imaging’s, the sound of birds in the iron lattice gardens of an ostentatious arcade percent as described in late 19th century novella’s, sonorous pitches, the softened sound of a taiko drum at the Kabuki theatre, various hinges, dulcimer-like strokes all evaporate then solidify to create an ambient opus; a lifetimes work coalesced into one expansive, layered work of soundscape art and abstraction. Lane has allowed his mind to wander and explore organic and cerebral long form ideas like never before to produce, perhaps, his most accomplished unrestricted work yet.” DV
Annarella and Django ‘Jouer’ (We Are Busy Bodies/Sing A Song Fighter)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Born from the Senegalese imbued and inspired hub built around Sweden’s Wau Wau Collectif, another cross-cultural project that embraces that West African nation’s (and its neighbours) rich musical heritage. Fusing the roots, landscape and themes of Senegal with those of Europe, the partnership of Swedish flutist Annarella and the Malian born ngoni master Django absorbs the very atmosphere of that westernmost African republic, transposing and transforming age old traditions with a hybrid of contemporary musical effects and influences and guest list of diverse musicians and voices.
Django’s home environment and the outlier around it seeps into and materializes like a dreamy haze across all the album’s tracks, as evocations of the classical, of jazz and the blues mixes with the local stew of diverse languages. Tracks like ‘Degrees of Freedom’ are more mystical sounding, near cosmic, as the band saunter like gauze under the moon and across the desert’s sandy tides. Jouer, which translates from the French into “play”, is just that, a lovely stirring union of the playful that seamlessly entwines the two musician’s respective practices with sympathy, respect and the earthly concerns of our endangered societies and world. Hopefully this collaboration will continue and grow over the years; there’s not been a better one since Catrin Finch teamed up with Seckou Keita.” DV
Fran Ashcroft ‘Songs That Never Were’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“There is a uniqueness about this album; a trueness and soul you do not come across often much in these days of music to be played on phones. These are songs that could have been written anytime over the last 50 or so years, with some quite beautiful melodies and great lyrics; songs made for and by a music lover…already one on my end of the year best list.” BBS
B__
Donald Beaman ‘Fog On Mirror Glass’ (Royal Oakie)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The play and course of light, the recurring “phantom” and a beautiful subdued, nigh on elegiac poetry conjures up a simultaneous union of the beatific and longing on the latest solo effort from Donald Beaman.
Like a drifter’s songbook of subtle, intimate and home-recorded wanderings, metaphors and the like for yearned and plaintive romantic loss, fondness, the passing/measuring of time, and the urge to find comfort and solace, Fog On Mirror Glass uses memories of the weather, the way the light touched or dimmed at a given moment in time, and the smallest of witnessed movements/touches to evoke the right atmosphere of gossamer and sparsity.
In all, a most impressive and understated songbook of honest quality and performance, themed largely around the way light falls upon any given metaphor, analogy, phrase, description and texture. Unadorned, the feelings are left to pull and draw the listener into a most intimate world. Each play reveals more, as the album really begins to grow on you. A fine record indeed.” DV
Beauty Stab ‘Guide/Frisk’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“After a five plus year wait, we have the debut, and who knows, only album from the one time much tipped for big things Beauty Stab. An album filled with sex sleaze and glamour but with a healthy or unhealthy dose of darkness.
The sound and feel of eighties chart land I think has a big influence on Beauty Stab. They do share a name with ABC’s second album after all, and I can almost hear Martin Fry emote over the bass heavy synth pop funk of “Manic”.
“GUIDE/FRISK” is a wonderful and inventive crafted album that celebrates the joy and darkness and power that great pop music can bring to your life and really deserves to be heard by all.” BBS
Black Artist Group ‘For Peace And Liberty, In Paris December 1972’ (WEWANTSOUNDS)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Saved from obscurity and jazz lore, the previously believed “long-lost” recordings of the Black Artist Group’s radical free, avant-garde, spiritual and Afro jazz (with a side order hustle of funk) performance in Paris has been thankfully unearthed, dusted off and remastered in a project partnership between the band and the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel. Facilitating this operation are the reissue revivalist vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS – regularly featured in my review columns over the years -, who’ve invited various connoisseur experts to provide liner notes, essays and photographic images to this package.
At times we’re talking Coltrane and Sun Ra, and at other times Roscoe Mitchell, Carlos Garnett and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. You can also pick up some Chick, a touch of Cymande, of Art Blakey, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton. But to be specific, if you dig Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s ‘Safari’, Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’ and Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society then you’ll really need to part with the cash and have this on your shelf asap: not before blasting it out from your turntable.” DV
Black Diamond ‘Furniture Of The Mind Rearranging’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transported back in time, and then propelled forward into the now via Chicago’s musical legacy, its rich heritage of innovators and scope in the world of jazz, Artie Black and Hunter Diamond’s dual saxophone and woodwind focused vehicle can trace a line from the Windy City’s smokestack bluesy outlines of the 50s through the icons Sun Ra, Roscoe Mitchell, Eddie Johnson, Lester Bowie, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Anthony Braxton and the hothouse of undeniable influence and talent, the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians.
Across an ambitious double-album spread of both quartet and duo mode formations, those Black Diamonds don’t so much shine as smoulder and fizzle to a smoky and simmering resonance and metropolis backdrop encroached by wild jungles and fertile growth.” DV
Bloom De Wilde ‘The Circular Being’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the muse and the music of Bloom de Wilde. It has a tender all-consuming innocence and hope that calmly plays Rock Paper Scissors with a wistful sadness and melancholy.
Bloom writes songs that offer hope against all the odds; songs that embrace the eccentrics and outsiders, all the underdogs in life. Maybe that is why I feel a connection to her music and at times find myself totally engrossed with her beautiful tapestry of pop, jazz, folk and psychedelia, which she has woven with great love and skill to make great art.
Bloom is a fine songwriter, which may sometimes be overlooked due to the wonderful eccentricities of her personality and is a quite an accomplished and original lyricist, as this fascinating eleven song album of love, hope and magic shows.” BBS
The Bordellos ‘Nobody’s Listening’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by DV/Review by Graham Domain
“This is another perfect ‘slice of life’ album from The Bordellos. If all they had was a pair of spoons and a cassette-recorder, they would still be driven to record these hazy snapshots of life, in the same way that L S Lowry splashed his canvas with the daily drudgery and drama of the northern working-class. Was anyone paying attention to Mr Lowry at the time? No! But today there are hotels, theatres and tree-lined streets named after him. (Even Bowie was one to acknowledge the match-stalk painters genius titling his best album Low)!” Graham Domain
boycalledcrow ‘Kullau (Mortality Tables)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A musical atmospheric hallucination and psychedelic dream-realism of a roadmap, the latest transduced-style album from Carl M Knott (aka a boycalledcrow) takes his recollections, memory card filled photo albums, samples and experiences of travelling through Northern India between 2005 and 2006 and turns them into near avant-garde transported passages of outsider art music.
Place names (that album title refers to the village, an ancient kingdom, of ‘Kullu’, which sits in the ‘snow-laden mountain’ province of Himachel Pradesh in the Western Himalayas), Buddhist self-transformation methods (the extremely tough self-observation process of “non-reaction” for the body and mind known as “Vipassana”), Hindu and Jainism yogis (the “Sadhu”, a religious ascetic, mendicant or any kind of holy person who has renounced the worldly life, choosing instead to dedicate themselves to achieving “moksha” – liberation – through meditation and the contemplation of God) and language (the localised distinctive Kullu dialect and syntax of “Kanashi”, currently under threat) are all used as vague reference points, markers in this hallucinatory grand tour.” DV
Brevity ‘Home Is Where Your Dog Is’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The wonderfully named “Home Is Where your Dog Is” is the unreleased album, plus some demo recordings, by late the 60’s early 70’s Chicago rock band Brevity, a band who never actually got to release anything at the time but had interest and encouragement from both Island Records and Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight Records. Truth be told, released here for the first time by Think Like A Key Records, it is indeed a bit of a lost and now found musical treasure.
“Home Is Where Your Dog Is” is one of those rare lost albums that actually deserves to be labelled a lost classic, and the added demos actually have an indie/post punk feel to them that reminded me strangely of very early Pulp in their more acoustic like days. Yes, one of my favourite albums I have had the pleasure to listen to this year: a true Gem of an album.” BBS
Charlie Butler ‘Wild Fictions’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“The music is all that you hoped it would be, for music without hope is hopeless and this is anything but that; it is the cream cake among lesser mortals.” BBS”
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Chris Corsano ‘The Key (Became the Important Thing [and Then Just Faded Away])’
(Drag City) – Chosen by DV
The prolific free-jazz, avant-garde and avant-hard drumming innovator Chris Corsano can be found as an instigator or willing foil across a multitude of experimental collaborations (recently on the MC appearing alongside Nels Cline, Darin Gray and Glenn Kotche as part of the We Jazz signed-off Saccata Quartet) but his soloist works are just as numerous and far reaching/influential. I lost count of appearances and album releases in 2024, but this constant rhythmic and non-rhythmic progressing album is my favourite, taken from back in June.
Literally letting rip with an apparatus of recognisable and often non-musical implements, Corsano fuses a noise and splash of ripping and tearing sounds with no wave Kraut-punk (think CAN, Faust), West African drumming, alternative jazz and jazz-prog-rock. Untethered, clever, and anarchistic in equal measures. DV
Alison Cotton ‘Engelchen’ (Rocket Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“In the wake of the barbaric terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, and the ensuing destructive retaliation/ obliteration of Gaza by Israel since, there seems little room – let alone nuance and balance – on the debate; battle lines have been drawn and divisions sowed. And so, this inspired tale of ‘derring-do’ (originally performed live at the Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland) performance suite from the Sunderland composer Alison Cotton is a most timely reminder of dark history, but also of altruistic acts of kindness.
Scoring the story of the innocuous Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, and their incredibly brave rescue attempts to save the lives of twenty-nine Jews from occupied Europe during the build-up and eventual outbreak of WWII, Cotton ties in the modern plight of refugees escaping similar persecutions.
Less a morbid, dark soundtrack to the evils of the Nazi regime and Holocaust, Cotton instead conveys the enormity and the danger of the Cook’s enterprise through slow tidal movements, tones, intonations and changes in the atmosphere. Throughout it all a prevailing presence and emotional pull can be felt: The mood music of grief, the plaintive and sorrowful cumulating in a beautifully played series of arrangements and suites that are as sombre as they are beautiful and moving – reminding me in parts of Alex Stolze, Anne Müller, Simon McCorry and Aftab Darvishi.” DV
D____
Ëda Diaz ‘Suave Bruta’ (Airfono)
Chosen by DV/ Review
“A rarefied artist who manages to merge dream-realism with both the traditional and contemporary, Ëda Diaz occupies multiple realms of geography to produce sublime and club-lite Latin-European R&B pop music. Between spheres of influence, her French-Colombian heritage is bonded across an exotic soundboard of effects, precise cut electronica, and transformed repurposed old dances and song; the latter of which includes an electrified form of currulao, ‘wonky’ Colombian salsa, bolero, bullerengue, vallenato and ‘dembow’. I absolutely love this spellbinding, vulnerable and playful Latin-Euro vision.” DV
E_____
Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit’ (Spiritmuse Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Originally hot-housed in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (the mid-1960s nonprofit organization instigated by Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall and Phil Cohran in Chicago, which El’Zabar himself once chaired) incubator, El’Zabar’s percussive, drumming rhythms for the mind, body and soul channelled the windy city’s rich musical lineage of jazz, blues, R&B, soul, Godspell and what would become house and dance music.
Following on from last year’s Spirit Gather tribute to Don Cherry (which featured the worldly jazz icon’s eldest son David Ornette Cherry shortly before his death) this latest conscious and spiritual work channels that rich legacy whilst worshipping at the altar of those icons, progenitors and idols that came before; namely, in this instance, Miles Davis, Eugene McDaniels and McCoy Tyner.
El’Zabar’s once more heals, opens minds and elevates with another rhythmic dance of native tongues and groove spiritualism. The ancient roots of that infectious groove and the urgency of our modern times are bonded together to look back on a legacy that deserves celebrating. After fifty years of quality jazz exploration and collaboration, El’Zabar proves that there is still much to communicate and share as he and the EHE recast classics and original standards from the back catalogue.” DV
Empty House ‘Bluestone’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The megalithic period “cromlech” (frequently interchanged with and referred to a “dolmen” too) construction of large stone blocks that stands within the borders of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in the village of Pentre Ifan, acts as a gateway to the imagination for the Blackpool-based musician Fred Laird, who goes under the moniker of Empty House.
Avalon mists descend across a communication with the landscape, whilst shriven archaic reenactments stir-up the hallucinatory and esoteric. Old vacuums of air blow through the spaces in between the stones as a haunted geology shrieks, howls, mourns and swirls. And a wispy passage of monastery choral voices carries on the wind as children giggle and the neolithic generator revs up vibrations and pulses from the afterlife. The Incredible String Band makes merry with Julian Cope; Steve Hillage joins Ash Ra Tempel; and Affenstunde period Popol Vuh invokes ghostly parallel histories with Xqui and Quimper on a tour of Ley lines. Atmospheres and scenes from a long history of settlement, of the spiritual, envelope the listener on a most subtle but rich field recording trip.” DV
Peter Evans ‘Extra’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A meeting of avant-garde minds to savour, the union of Peter Evans with Koma Saxo and Post Koma instigator and bassist Petter Eldh and New York downtown experimental rock and jazz drummer pioneer Jim Black is every bit as dynamic, explosive, torqued, moody, challenging and exciting as you’d imagine.
A crossroads of separate entangled influences and backgrounds, legacies, with all three practitioners in this Evans-fronted project and their CVs stretching back a few decades, the avant-garde rubs up against the blues, hard bop, atmospheric set scores, hip-hop style breaks, the electronic and classical. By using both the piccolo and flugelhorn on this album, some passages sound like Wynton Marsalis playing over Mozart, or Alison Balsom lending classical airs to an Alfa Mist production.
One of the best jazz albums you’ll hear all year, with a spot saved for the choice albums of the year lists, Extras is a thoroughly inventive and exciting dynamism of contemporary luminaries at the height of their skills and knowledge.” DV
F______
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly ‘MESTIZX’ (International Anthem X Nonesuch)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transformed and remoulded for a more progressive age the “MESTIZX” title of this partnership’s debut album takes the Spanish term for “mixed person” (namely, a union between those indigenous people in the Latin conquered territories of South America and the Spanish) away from its colonial roots and repurposes it on an album of dream realism duality.
With the multimedia performer and singer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti’s Bolivian and the jazz drummer Frank Rosaly’s Puerto Rican heritages, the pre-colonial history of South America is woven into a contemporary revision of magic, organic forms and ritual rhythms mixed with elements and a suffusion of Chicago post-rock, post-jazz and alternative Latin leftfield pop.
There’s much to admire in this world of the untamed and wild, with new perspectives, mixed histories and the largely melodious reverberations of the lost exercising a new language of ownership. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly perfect and expand their organic explorations, bewitching messages and oracles on an intriguing, moving and dreamily trippy debut album.” DV
G_______
Michal Gutman ‘Never Coming Home’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Never Coming Home” is a darkly beautiful album; an album of twisted musical discovery, with songs worthy to fall from the lips and the pen of the great Dory Previn; songs that pull you into a strange and beguiling solitude place, where you only have memories and fears and regrets for company. Musically stark and bewitching like an unused broken fairground ride: a bass guitar has never sounded so much like the faded remnants of an old lover’s final kiss. “Never Coming Home” is quite simply stunning.” BBS
Nino Gvilia ‘EP Number 1: Nicole’ & ‘EP Number 2: Overwhelmed By The Unexplained’ (Hive Mind Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Creating a musical, lyrical eco system of their own, soundtracked by folk, minimalism, the hallucinatory and pastoral – with only the final vaporous misty esoteric second EP’s titular track changing from cuckoo-like voiced loops and sympathetic strings to disturbing futuristic daemonic augur –, the Nino Gvilia encompassed guise ebbs and flows with the movement of the replenishing waters, the lakeside and mill turning scenes of the surroundings, to produce a disarming hymn. Idiosyncratic in beauty, I’d recommend this diaphanous accomplished mini opus to those with a penchant for Hatis Noit, Seaming To, Tia Blake and Roberto Musci.”
H________
Hackedepicciotto ‘The Best Of Hackedepicciotto (Live In Napoli)’ (Mute)
Chosen by DV/Review
“As a duo in recent years, Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto under the twinned Hackedepicciotto moniker, have channelled their diverse experiences as members/instigators of such groups as Einstürzende Neubauten, Crime And The City Solution and the Space Cowboys, into a signature sound that embraces the cabaret and soundtrack gravitas of post-punk, post-industrial, electronica, the esoteric, weird folk and twisted fairytale: which they themselves have described as “symphonic drone”.
Their fifth album, the partial sonic and lyrical autobiography, part photo album scrap book dedication, Keepsakes, was released last year. As with most of their catalogue, the duo’s albums are either recorded in a stirring, inspiring location, or in a different country. The most recent being no exception, recorded as it was at Napoli’s legendary Auditorium Novecento using the famous venue’s stock of various instruments. That album now forms the focal or centre point for this live release of choice bell tolled maladies and drone sonnets from the duo’s back catalogue. Performed over two nights, they’ve chosen to return to the Auditorium Novecento setting that made Keepsakes such an atmospherically rich and momentous, dramatic record. And so, they perform a quartet of songs from that most recent album alongside picks from the Menetekel (2017), The Current (2020), The Silver Threshold (2021) and Perseverantia (2023) albums. And it proves a winning formula as the perfect showcase, and a more unique approach to performing the “best of” their back catalogue.” DV
Christopher Haddow ‘An Unexpected Great Leap’ (Erol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A comfort blanket bookended by the reassuring signs of life via the sounds of an ultrasound, Christopher Haddow’s first steps out as a solo artist (flanked on either side by the contributions of Josh Longton on double-bass and Jamie Bolland on piano) capture the abstract feelings of parenthood. An Unexpected Great Leap is in fact, partially, an ambient tool to send both Christopher and his artist wife Athene Grieg’s son Louie off to sleep.
You may know Christopher as the former lead guitarist of Paper Planes and as a member of Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gates, but under his own name and with a different, more personal, direction he’s beautifully, imaginatively and conceptually complimented his wife’s visual feels of parenthood with a searching and settling album of ambient Americana and womb music.” DV
Sahra Halgan ‘Hiddo Dhawr’ (Danaya)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Few artists from the disputed region of Somaliland could qualify better than the singer, freedom fighter and activist Shara Halgan to represent their country’s musical legacy. As an unofficial cultural ambassador and symbol for female empowerment Halgan’s journey is an inspiring one: Forced out of her homeland during a destructive civil war – in which she played a part in nursing and “comforting” fighters from Somaliland’s secession movement, sometimes alleviating suffering through song –, Halgan had to flee abroad to “survive” hardships and dislocation in France, but eventually, a decade after the overthrow of Siad Barre’s ruling military junta, returned home to motivate and promote proud in Somaliland’s cultural heritage.
It was during her time in France, removed from her roots and homesick, that Halgan would meet the musicians that went on to form her studio and touring band: step forward percussionist and founder of the French-Malian group BKO Quintet, Aymeric Krol, and the guitarist and member of the Swiss ensemble Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp and L’etrangleuse, Maël Salètes. Both appear on the latest, and third Halgan album, alongside newest recruit Régis Monte, who adds “vintage organ” and “proto-electronic embellishments” to the heady and fuzzed mix.
Enriched soul music with an edge and buzz, Halgan and her troupe strike a balance between the heartfelt and empowered on electrifying album; that focal voice sounding so fresh and young yet wise and experienced, able to encapsulate a whole culture whilst moving forward.” DV
Herandu ‘Ocher Red’ (Hive Mind Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Trance is spun with bass noodling, Ethio-jazz, post-punk funk, Moroccan and Arabian cassette culture, retro space age keys, no wave dance music and the Aphex Twin to create an interesting explorative zap, skip, playful, mysterious and dreamy vision that mirrors the Gavrilov brothers feelings of their native landscape, and the episodes of life, the shaping of their creativity, born in that Siberian setting.” DV
Herald ‘Linear B’ (Errol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“If mid-70s Eno working his magic with Merriweather Post Pavilion sounds like a match anointed in heaven then Lawrence Worthington’s ridiculously long-delayed debut album is going to send you into a woozy alt-pop state of bliss. The latter partner in that ideal fantasy of influences is hardly surprising, with the Animal Collective’s “infrequent” co-founding member Josh Dibb (aka Deakin) playing the part of co-producing foil and soundboard. And although the eventual Linear B album was first conceived twenty plus years ago, when the Animal Collective and Panda Bear and a menagerie of congruous bands were building an alternative-psych-pop scene – the darlings (quite rightly) of Pitchfork and the burgeoning MySpace culture -, and when the musical palette of sounds is produced on cheap 90s Casio and Yamaha equipment, Worthington’s Herald nom de plume still resonates and feels refreshingly dreamily idiosyncratic.
The results set a personal psychedelic language of feels and character-dotted whimsy to a maverick alt-synth-pop production: imagine Syd Barrett, K. Leimar and Edward Penfold backed by a Factory Records White Fence or Panda Bear. Unassumingly lo fi yet symphonic, you can hear hints of neo-romantics, colder synth spells, the post-punk, the Bureau B label’s cult German new wave and post-krautrock offerings, John Cale and a very removed vision of The Beach Boys.” DV
Holy Matter ‘Beauty Looking Back’
Chosen by DV/Review
“Bathed in a new diaphanous light, Leanna Kaiser steps away from her ambient shrouded Frances With Wolves duo (albeit with an embraced cast of familiar faces and musicians) to take up the soloist guise of Holy Matter.
Following up on a tapestry of enchanted and dreamy singles, woven from gossamer threads of fairytale and fantasy, the musician, songwriter and filmmaker now unfurls an entire beautiful album of nostalgic imbued troubadour-folk, softened psychedelia and country woes, sad lilted resignation, solace, reflection and pathos.
Gazing both lamentably and in sighed resignation from metaphorical fairytale towers and vantage points emphasised by poetic weather patterns, Kaiser gently exudes a longing sense of wistful pulchritude. The past is always near, inescapable and worn like a comfort blanket; moulded to Kaiser’s desires, sorrows, reflections and duality. Holy Matter proves an interesting alluring and enchanting creative progression for Kaiser, her debut solo a refreshing take on the familiar and the tropes of time. “ DV
Hungrytown ‘Circus For Sale’ (Big Stir Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is the fourth album from Hungrytown, but the first I have had the pleasure of hearing, and indeed it is a pleasure as psych folk with more than a hint of baroque pop is right up my street. There is a beauty and calmness to it that one can lose themself in and ignore and forget briefly the day-to-day turmoil that surrounds them. Vocalist Rebbecca Hall is blessed with a magically sweet innocent voice that floats and weaves its way through the musical sea of melodious tranquillity that wraps itself around the listener: pure bliss.” BBS
K___________
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw ‘As Those Gone Before’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for weird, strange folk music, I put it down to watching too much Bagpuss and The Clangers as a toddler: wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child. So, this fine album of weird, strange folk songs is right down my summer pathway stroll of mischievous delight.
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw go from the childlike tales of the sinister folk whimsy “Christopher Tadpole” to the dark and cold clawing of “Mole Man“; if you wondered what story time at the nursery school on summer isle might sound like, these gems will answer your wonderings. “The Four Trains That Killed Me” and “Last Of The Little Lost Lambs” are both wonderfully John Cale like in the darkness and utter beauty as much as “Accused Isle” is like listening to a slightly deranged Pam Ayres on the old Radio Luxembourg via an old transister radio under the bed clothes in the darkest of nights [wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child]. “As Those Gone Before” is a true magical gem of off-kilter folk whimsy, an album of true eccentric magnificence.” BBS
L____________
The Legless Crabs ‘No Condoms, Just Satan’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The sound of rock ‘n’ roll future and past collide in this nineteen-track beauty of anger and attitude: songs that deal with the strangeness of living in this world today.
From the Cramps like “I Catfished My Brother” and the sonic escapades of “Rope Bunny”, to the heaviness and sludge-rock dark humour of “Shark Lover” this is an album that should be all over alternative radio, and once again, has to compete with far less talented and easier and blander beige alternative rock.” BBS
Letters from Mouse ‘Clota’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Graham Domain
“In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Clota was patron of the River Clyde and brought purity to the natural landscape. The album pieces reflect the beauty of nature and how nature evolves and changes, both with the day and with the changing of the seasons.
Altogether it’s a beautiful album that deserves to be heard by many. It is also a great ambient album for meditation or creative work such as painting. Wonderful.” GD
LINA_ ‘Fado Camões’ (Galileo Music)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Back this time with the British producer and musician Justin Adams and a small ensemble, LINA_ takes on the classical 16th century poetics of Portugal’s most famous literary son, Luís Vaz de Camões.
Musically tender, accentuated and like a fog, mist at times, even vapour of the mere essence of a score, there’s echoes of old Spain, the Balearics, North Africa, the Middle East but also Turkey and the Hellenic. LINA_ is a leading light, pushing the boundaries without losing the soul, truth and appeal of the music she adopts and transforms. Fado Camões is another artistic triumph.” DV
The Loved Drones ‘Live at Atelier Rock HUY’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Loved Drones have a power and an all-round likability and uniqueness that all the great bands have. They are a band who plough their own furrow through live casting off tangent animal shapes at the sun, raising two fingers to the lack of talent and originality that currently is forced upon us by the mainstream radio and press. The Loved Drones are quite wonderful.
“The Hindenburg Omen” is a instrumental that a blockbuster film should be made just so it can be included on the soundtrack, and “Humans Can’t Compete” once again is brimming with a Cope-like magnificence. These eight live tracks show what a great band we have in our mists and really should be heard and appreciated by all of us music lovers who love mind bending space hopping cosmic musical delights.” BBS
THE MONTHLY DIGEST OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND ARCHIVE MATERIAL.ALL WRITTEN & CHOSEN BY DOMINIC VALVONA
___/NEW\___
Leah Callahan ‘Curious Tourist’
29th April 2024
Still channeling The Glass Set’s The Sundays and My Bloody Valentine vibes, Bostonian singer-songwriter Leah Callahan continues the musical journey under her own name. The fourth album since leaving behind the group she once fronted in the mid 2000s, Callahan works hand-in-hand with foil Chris Stern of The Sterns fame. A fan of Callahan’s former band, Stern’s congruous contributions including co-writing, arranging, producing and playing a number of instruments on Curious Tourist: a title that more or less sums up both partners on this songbook’s exploration and revival of various music scenes and sounds; like a re-energized flick back through the record collection, picking out and giving a contemporary take on the new wave, power pop, C86, alt-synth-pop, shoegaze and Britpop genres.
Callahan’s voice has already been compared to a female Morrissey, whilst the flange reverberations and chimes of Johnny Marr’s guitar riffs can be heard ringing out across a number of the tracks on the newest album. But I also detect more modern echoes of the Sparrow & The Workshop’s Jill O’ Sullivan and a touch of LoveLikeFire. However, every track seems to take a different turn from the one before; from the cathedral organ intro that soon turns into an indie anthem of languid yearned vocals and strings – evoking both Lush and Echobelly – ‘Nowhere Girl’, to the indie-country espionage merger of Howling Bells, Interpol and Blondie ‘No One’. Those Western twangs are made even more obvious and atmospheric on the next song and title track, with rattle snake tambourine shakes, cinematic vistas and melting heat mirage guitar bends and tremolo – imagine a more subtle Heartless Bastards. Taking yet another turn on the highroad, ‘Ordinary Face’ was written as an answer to the Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’, but I’m picking up Beatles and early Floyd, mixed with 90s Dubstar, light psych-pop vibes.
Often such pick ‘n’ mix attempts can sound incoherent and incongruous, but Callahan and Stern make each excursion their own; keeping a momentum and signature that is all theirs. I hope Callahan stays “curious”.
Sarah/Shaun ‘It’s True What They Say?’
(Hobbes Music)
A sprinkled stardust statement of heartbreak and yearned romanticism from the Edinburgh wife and husband team of Sarah and Shaun McLachlan, making their debut on the Scottish capital’s leftfield electronic (and beyond) label, Hobbes Music. Shaun’s previous highlights with Delta Mainline (a band we have reviewed in the past, comparing them to an angelic Jesus And Mary Chain, OMD, Wilco and Spiritualized) put him in good stead, working arm-in-arm with Sarah on their duo’s first EP, with that band’s expansive epic ambitions and big horizons carried over into this more cosmic alluded project.
The lovelorn voiced pair, who duet together or back each other up harmoniously throughout and play and arrange a multitude of instruments between them, are joined by complimentary friends and foils Jaguar Eyes (a band mate of Shaun’s in Delta Mainline, contributing guitars and synths and arranging strings, programming drums and on engineering duties), Darren Coghill (of Neon Waltz fame, providing some percussion and drums, effects and, rather strangely, credited on “fire extinguisher”), Daniel Land (The Modern Painters’ instigator helps out on guitar), Chris Dixie Darley (the oft Father John Misty guitarist offers touches of slide guitar), Bruce Michie (brass) and Gavin King (the longtime collaborator and pal provides keys, and offers his pre-production and engineering skills). Altogether, this ensemble cast open up the sound: dreamily in a shoegaze fashion, but big.
With an affinity for the ending of the Star Man movie, and its romantic allusions, but in particular the score, Sarah and Shaun paly star-crossed lovers across a constellation of diaphanous synth and dream pop, of waned country music and Sarah Records influences. Imbued with memories, the almost impossible to describe feelings of everything from hope to family and community, the EP changes course from soft electronic pumped reminisces of the 80s to star-gazing from a range in the old West. Lulled, soothed and other times almost lamented, the vocals voice lyrical fancies of love but also heartbreak and concern at veiled loss and breakups.
Musically, sonically, the duo and their contributing partners touch upon Beach House, Ladytron, The Sundays, The Mining Co., The Field Mice, Sparklehorse, Duke Spirit and Cocteau Twins. From moseying across the open plains to following vapour trials; from electronica to starry strings arranged dreamy indie; and from the filmic to the personal; the scale is epic and feels nostalgic. I’m looking forward to more from this duo over the coming year: if only to see how expansive and enveloped in twinkled space dust it can get.
Nicolas Cueille ‘Curiositi’
(Un je-ne-sais-quoi)
As that title – one amongst a number of phonetically broken down prompts and descriptions of the artist’s headspace, direction of travel – translates, the French composer and multi-instrumentalist Nicolas Cueille let’s his curiosity run loose on the first album he’s ever released under his “birth” name.
A magical, and as stated, “discombobulated” realm of field recordings, digital and analogue synths, Cueille’s gentle succinct vocals settle amongst a wonderment of strangely constructed yet organic wildernesses and liquid primordial cup-poured and water-mill turning exotic atmospheres. The voice is almost soulfully indie (like a cross between Douglas Dare and Panda Bear) compared to the synthesized springy and sprung oddities, the textural transmogrified tin and string stretched sounds, rustles in the undergrowth, ambiguous workshop tools and machinery and waves of arpeggiator.
Abstractions of Walter Smetak, Fabbrica Vuota, David Slyvian (his music not voice in this instance), Heiko Maile, Eno, The Books, abstract works era Aphex Twin, µ-Ziq, neo-romantic synth and Library Music inhabit this quirky see-saw balance of softly put questions and emotions. The sounds of a cup-and-ball, knocks, nocturnal wildlife, plops and cheek slapping are transformed across Cueille curious musical terrains, his yins and whims and inquiries, to create something quite unique: the machine integrating with the biosphere.
Alexander Stordiau/The Stordiau Revolution ‘Skin Of Salt’
Breathing in the coastal airs, conversing with the local seagulls, and ruminating about such existential enquires as the circle of life and the still lingering traces of those loved-ones that passed on, the Belgium-based electronic composer, DJ and producer Alexander Stordiau returns with his revolutionary-suffix moniker to provide a new soundtrack to the motions and questions circling around in his consciousness.
Featured on the Monolith Cocktail over the years, through his partnerships with the Edinburgh label Bearsuit Records and Tokyo label Pure Spark, Stordiau has been constantly evolving his sound into various categories, split into the fields of ambience, trance, analogue sounding early electronica, minimal techno and kosmsiche. All of which are now enacted on his newest release, Skin Of Salt; a sophisticated retro soundtrack of fluctuating synthesized, arpeggiator movements and wave forms both shooting through the galaxy and articulating matters closer to home.
Covering millenniums, as humanity left the “salty water” and primordial soup to live on land, and articulating the abstract, almost impossible to describe traces and sounds left behind in the family home after parents pass away – the comforting sound, in this case, of fond memories of mum opening drawers in the corridor cupboards -, Stordiau uses a sound palette of Roedelius, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Sky Records, Jarre, Schulze and stripped back techno to build his thematic tracks. Alpha waves and knocked beats pass by the Twilight Zone, as theremin-like kooky waves evoke the lunar and supernatural on what sounds like a soviet era space programme documentary soundtrack on the opener ‘Fear Merges Easily’, whilst the title-track travels back to the dawn of time and back in state of near transcendental mystique of cathedral Tangerine Dream and retro-synth dramas.
Over four tracks the electronic fields vary, with even moments of 303 hi-hats and claps that wouldn’t sound out of place on early Ritchie Hawtin records, and there’s always a touch of Library music to be found in the more quirky parts. Supernatural breathes, lunar spells, the vaporous and visitations are all involved on this sophisticated electronic sound suite, as Stordiau transduces his environment and thoughts into another class retro-synth journey.
Distropical ‘Jaguarundi’
19th April 2024
As diverse and numerous as their globally sourced sounds and field recordings, the new EP from the Milan duo of Govind Singh Khurana and Stefano Greco borrows from nature, the landscape and ethnographical. Taking inspiration from an amorphous map of possible worldly fusions, the electronic partnership warp, effect and morph the sounds and vegetation of India, South America, the Far East and Africa, merging them with sophisticated dance beats, bounced bass, and diamond crystalized synth rays – there’s also an effect that sounds like the slow reassembling of broken glass.
From Asian monkeys (‘Astral Langur’) to the tiny Japanese town that hosts a remarkable small shrine (‘Birds of Toi’) and a famous Venezuelan cacao-producing village that can only be reached by boat (‘Chuao Chuao’), reference points on the compass are brought to sonic life. Traditional sounds and in-situ recordings from these navigated locations are amplified and given a House, Psy-Trance and Techno spin. Rainforest raves meet clattering tribal rhythms in the dense lush undergrowth, whilst futuristic tech is overgrown with the fertile vines. Chuffed blows from Castaneda’s fantastical shaman are pumped along by a combination of Basic Channel, Anteloper, Lion’s Drum, Bonobo, Ammar 808 and Mr. Ozio. Authenticity – from the recordings of Afro-Venezuelan drums to the unforgettable South American sounding acoustic guitar used on the wild ‘cougar-esque’ feline referenced title-track, ‘Jaguarundi’ – is still at the root of these electronic propulsive transformations; two worlds, two histories, coming together in a congruous dance-fueled exotic combination.
Empty House ‘Bluestone’
(Cruel Nature Records) 26th April 2024
The megalithic period “cromlech” (frequently interchanged with and referred to a “dolmen” too) construction of large stone blocks that stands within the borders of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in the village of Pentre Ifan, acts as a gateway to the imagination for the Blackpool-based musician Fred Laird, who goes under the moniker of Empty House.
Theories as to the purpose, significance of these stones vary: A monument perhaps? A communal burial chamber, maybe? Or perhaps an elaborate demonstration of its builders’ skills? Whatever that purpose, in the right light, the right season this atavistic assemblage evokes the mysterious, mystical, and otherworldly. Even the stones’ geological make up, providence is used as a soundboard; the album title of Bluestone even references it – one now long debunked theory suggested that the local bluestone was used and carted all the way to build Stonehenge. That same bluestone is thought to have been hewn and moved from Pembrokeshire’s Preseli Mountains (also often referred to as the less imposing “hills”) region which surrounds the cromlech at the centre of this complimentary partner album to February’s “brighter sounding” The Golden Hour – recorded in a similar fashion, but during the Spring/Summer of 2023. Its “lunar sister” (recorded last November) is a field trip of atmospheric psychogeography; an empirical soundtrack that channels the emanating signals that either exist or remain mere fantasy.
It’s one of Wales’s most impressive and largest structures of that age and kind (we’re talking more than 5000 odd years ago here). If it could talk/communicate, what stories it could tell. Laird gives it a suitable antiquarian, new age and megalithic ambient go anyway; telling or implying and evoking a veiled timeline of Druidic initiations, of magic, of pagan rituals, of long dead spirits invoked, of Medieval pastoral processions, and of the more ominous and near doomed.
Traversing and absorbing various elements, from the supernatural to Wiccan, the ancients to the kosmische music of the 70s, Laird uses sonorous guitar drones, sustained e bow feedback, suitably evocative synthesized melodies, the pastoral spindled movements and folk sounds of the Irish bouzouki (an adopted version of the original Greek long-necked and pear-bottomed shaped plucked instrument, introduced to Irish music in the mid 60s, most notably by the Sweeney’s Men folk group), tinkled piano notes, a crackling fire and subtle bellows to magic up a soundscape illusion. Introduced into that sphere, Nick Raybould and his West African rope-tuned goblet drum, a djembe, make a guest appearance on the fire-lit crackled hybrid ‘Fires At Midnight’ – a scene that merges the relaxed hand drum patters of the djembe with kosmische oscillations, a Fortean transmitter and hints of sci-fi.
Avalon mists descend across a communication with the landscape, whilst shriven archaic reenactments stir-up the hallucinatory and esoteric. Old vacuums of air blow through the spaces in between the stones as a haunted geology shrieks, howls, mourns and swirls. And a wispy passage of monastery choral voices carries on the wind as children giggle and the neolithic generator revs up vibrations and pulses from the afterlife. The Incredible String Band makes merry with Julian Cope; Steve Hillage joins Ash Ra Tempel; and Affenstunde period Popol Vuh invokes ghostly parallel histories with Xqui and Quimper on a tour of Ley lines. Atmospheres and scenes from a long history of settlement, of the spiritual, envelope the listener on a most subtle but rich field recording trip.
___/THE SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOLUME 85\___
Continuing with the decade-long Social – originally a DJ club night I’d pick up at different times over the past 20 plus years, and also a café residency from 2012 to 2014 – playlist, each month I literally chose the records that celebrate anniversary albums, those that I’d love to hear on the radio waves or DJs play once and while, and those records that pay a homage and respect to those artists we’ve lost in the last month.
Anniversary picks this month include a big 60th shoutout to The Rolling Stones debut (see a little piece on my thoughts further down the page), 50th call outs to jazz-funk-soul greats Calvin Keys (Proceed With Caution!) and Weldon Irvine (Cosmic Vortex (Justice Divine)), Funkadelic (Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On). Moving into the 80s, REM’s Reckoning is unbelievably now 40 years.
Pulp’s His ‘N’ Hers LP, and Britpop’s near zenith with it, reaches the 30th milestone. An album that couldn’t be more different from the same year, Nas’ decade defining Illmatic is also 30 this month.
We now reach the unfortunate part of the playlist selection: the deaths or death in this case of the one of the last mavericks, John Sinclair. Synonymous for steering and kicking out the jams in his short role as manager of Detroit’s renowned rebel rousing motherfuckers The MC5, renegade poet, scholar, activist and establishment rattler John Sinclair is also remembered for his free radical zeal and dalliances with the law.
Even too hardcore for the MC5, Sinclair’s foundation of the anti-racist socialist White Panthers, and his countless associations with equally revolutionary counterculture players and shakers, marked him out; leading as it did to the now infamous drug bust for marijuana possession in 1969. Whilst his love for the herb and gesticulations, whether through poetry or diatribes, is in no doubt, the way this particular bust was set-up (for what was a very insignificant amount of drugs) is considered heavy-handed and unjustifiable. Handed an initial ten-year sentence, Sinclair’s status in the “heads” and political agitators’ communities had singled him out as a poster child for deterring the like-minded boomer generation from stepping out of line. Fortunately (to a degree) this sentence and media furor galvanized support and sympathy and reduced that ten-year stretch to two, with Sinclair emerging from jail in 1971.
Keeping his hand in so to speak but taking up residency in Amsterdam – a much safer bet -, the beatnik jazz sage continued to perform, write, and record. I’ve chosen a mere smattering of his recordings.
I always sprinkle a few newish tracks into the cross-generational mix. This month it’s the turn of the Neon Kittens, Mick Harvey, Nduduzo Makhathini and Forest Swords.
The rest of the playlist, well, it’s just tunes I played out, own or just rate. In that vein, there’s Mary Wells, Nefertiti, The 3, The Mad’s, Okay Temiz, Danny Arakaki, Ilous and more….
Calvin Keys ‘Aunt Lovey’
Weldon Irvine ‘Love Jones’
Jean Wells ‘Somebody’s Been Loving You (But It Ain’t Me)’
Funkadelic ‘Sexy Ways’
Nefertiti ‘Miss Amutha Nature’
3 Melancholy Gypsys ‘The 3’
Nas ‘It Ain’t Hard To Tell’
John Sinclair ‘When Will The Blues Leave’
The Mad’s ‘Feels Like Love’
The Rolling Stones ‘Little By Little’
Eulenspygel ‘Menschenmacher’
Okay Temiz ‘Galaxy Nine’
The Monkees ‘Time And Time Again’
Donnie Fritts ‘Prone To Lean’
Danny Arakaki ‘All Thanks’
Samadi ‘La Luna Llena’
Coumba Sidibe ‘Djagolla’
Ilous ‘Chanson Chagrin’
John Sinclair ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Business’
R.E.M. ‘Little America’
Neon kittens ‘Schrodinger’s Party Animal’
Virna Lindt ‘Shiver’
Pulp ‘Joyriders’
The Twilights ‘Sorry, She’s Mine’
Mick Harvey ‘When We Were Beautiful & Young’
Clancy Eccles ‘I Need You’
Gerardo Manuel & El Humo ‘Where Did You Go’
Nduduzo Makhathini ‘Libations: Omnyama’
Forest Swords ‘Torch’
John Sinclair ‘Sitarrtha’
__//ARCHIVES\\__
50th Anniversary to Guru Guru’s Dance Of The Flames and a staggering 60th to The Rolling Stones’ Debut.
Guru Guru ‘Dance of The Flames’
(Atlantic Records)
Trawling around Europe – and wherever they found a door that was laid open to them – like a ragtag gypsy caravan convoy, Guru Guru took their 1973 album, Don’t Call Us (We Call You), out on the road. With most of their monies funneled into purchasing a solid and heavy monolithic ballsy sound-system, they bled dry the ears of many a ‘head’.
The trios imbued in sonic genius and omnivorous lynch-pin guitar gunslinger, Ax Genrich, somehow managed to disappear from this mad procession, leaving the group and heading into nigh obscurity. His difference of opinion on which direction the ennui band of lunatics should progress resulted in a split, with Mani Neumaier hell bent on creating improvisational material against Genrich’s more delineate structured compositions – though it must be made clear that Genrich always threw himself unwieldy into every track, regardless of who wrote it or what form it took. For a scene that produced an abundance of over-qualified, sickeningly gifted, innovative, and erudite guitarists – West Germany spewed them out like an ever-efficient Volkswagen production line – it was, you could say, a job to stand out from the mighty throngs of erudite axe welders. Yet Genrich with his re-wired Hendrix and deconstructed rock’n’roll space licks, managed to leave an indelible footprint in the Krautrock canon, and hall of fame.
To plug this gaping chasm, and before embarking on the next LP, the one-time member of the progressive jazz outfit Eliff and exotically named Houchäng Nejadepour – half German, half Persian – joined the one-album veteran Hans Hartmann and founding father Neumaier to become part of Guru Guru mark III. Talented in many disciplines including guitar and sitar, alongside both compositional and technical production skills, Nejadepour added a more Popol Vuh-esque flavour to the band’s sound, lending Guru Guru a Balearic and far eastern quality. Such was his contribution – though this could also be partially down to Neumaier’s lack of new material – that the well-talented troubadour composed half of all the tracks on their next album, Dance Of The Flames. Unfortunately, that listless and cold-footed obligation to move on, led to Nejadepour’s departure soon after the LP’s recording in the Spring of 1974 – his replacement was Gila axe man Conny Veit, who himself only managed a short sojourn of a few months.
Dance Of The Flames, the second release on Atlantic, not only saw a wider and more cosmopolitan influence and catchment, but it also grew fat on a robust hard rock sound, which at times plunged into the dark recesses of Gothic heavy metal. Andalusian vistas and South American themed Sambas cut the collection of eight-songs into two camps. Neumaier, as chief patriarch, tends to either brood on or veer towards folly. Take the opening grandstanding ‘Dagobert Duck’s 100th Birthday’, a paean ode to Donald Ducks tight-beaked Uncle Scrooge, that could also be a reference to the last Merovingian king of the Franks, but then maybe not. The track features a display of fatuous duck-call kazoos and outlandish gestures of both The Edgar Winter Bands ‘Frankenstein’ and King Crimson, on showboating duties. But then there are also ethereal opuses, such as the romanticized ‘The Girl From Hirschhorn’ – a lament to the mysterious figure of affection, who resides in the nearby German town of the title – to balance it all out.
Production values are high, and slickly executed with every note, no matter how drenched in echo, reverb, or fuzz, all audible and separated apart. Those erratic rolling time signatures and unruly voracious drum solos of Neumaier are all still in evidence, as usual, as are the dependable assiduous bass runs and jazz riffs, favored by Hans Hartmann who’d joined the Guru Guru family the previous year. The high-plain astral traveler, preparing us for a meeting with visitors from beyond the stars, is almost erased from the groups original founding musical manifesto, replaced by a sturdier rock and, world music, agenda.
From the start:
Kazoo twitching gonzo trumpets announce the extravagant goof-off rock opus that is ‘Dagobert Duck’s 100th Birthday’ party anthem. This flitting Alice Cooper muscling rocker features a jovial, if under the surface portentous, ode to Donald Duck’s disparaging money grabbing capitalist Uncle Scrooge – known in Germany as Dagobert. Macho feats of savage and squalling guitar solos brand scorch marks across the stonking, stalking monster backing track; Nejadepour hurtling through the scales at a rabid rate of knots, hoping to erase the hovering presence of Ax Genrich, with his own blistering blurry-eyed fret work. Gratuitous and highly ridiculous in equal measure, this slab of over-cooked mega prog, is used as some kind of showcase, just to prove their mettle.
An inexorable ethereal and lightly laid-back gallop of a groove rolls into view over a harmonic pinpoint sweeping introduction. The diaphanous love pinning tryst, ‘The Girl From Hirschhorn’ – placed highly in my all-time top 100 Krautrock tunes, just in case you were wondering – floats in on the dreamy breezy melody. Hans Hartmann builds up a repetitive pounding bass line, as a gliding quivering lead guitar preens and majestically swoons along to the rousing pleasing and drifting backing. After seven-minutes of proto-Amon Düül II Wolf City era bliss, and dashes of love-in Acid Mother Temple – you can see why Neumaier went on to work with them – a vocal relief sublimely transcends the soundtrack, as Neumaier exhales joyfully –
“I can’t stop thinking of you.
Where could you be, little babe,
Why I am gently playing this song for you?”.
With his querying display of lament finally let out, the band hyper-drive towards a lunar wah-wah stop/starting outré; shimmering in reverb and slipping into a jazz-rock sporadic free-for-all, that spills over and onto side one’s closing track, a bombastic spasmodic odyssey.
‘The Day Of Time Stop’ is Sun Ra, Beefheart and Santana all sharing a pleasure voyage to the 5th Dimension. Staccato timings create a jump and off-kilter raging loop, that acts as a cyclonic spiraling blast for Nejadepour to launch another blast of light-speed attacking pomp, searing from his bewildered guitar. Stumbling drums and octave hurling bass brew up a right shitstorm before the trio use the Arthur. C. Clarke galactic elevator to the stars, disappearing into some distant cosmological whirlpool of depravity. Like Edger Winter, our maddened guitar alchemist, runs wild, flipping through key changes and reeling off utterly fanciful and one-fingered licks – total filth.
Side two begins with the album’s title track. Neumaier promptly rattles off a smashing cymbals introduction, as Hartmann slaps his bass around some bending rhythms. Everything is coated in a strange reverberated and, reversed effect, flipping backwards and forwards, stretching out the instrumental and whipping it into a twisted carcass of a song, with the very air itself sucked out into some kind of vacuum.
A taste of the Samba is up next, albeit an Hieldberg etymological version of the sun-kissed exotic dance. Nejadepour’s sprightly jazz-tinged composition sounds like a happy-go-lucky Yes, twinned with the be-bop indulgences of Herb Albert. Hartmann twangs and bounces along on the contra bass, as a cheerful Neumaier taps away on the congas, each of them enjoying the succinct distraction that is ‘Samba Dos Rosas’ – just one of Hejadepour’s Balearic enthused joints that make up most of side two’s track list.
‘Rallulli’ is cast from the same mold, but steers closer to home, as the musical accompaniment melds together fits of acoustic jamming and hidden-in-the-attic sound effects. Tablas, congas, and a trapped jar of hornets produce a strange old avant-garde miss-mash, the final word going to a flushed toilet – perhaps a critique of the track, or more of that Neumaier humor.
Those Andalusian plains and mountains come a calling, as pranged delicate harmonies add to a pained melancholic mood-piece entitled ‘At The Juncture Of Light And Dark’. Hemmingway-esque Death In The Afternoon allusions are cast, with resplendent flamingo flourishes and a suspense filled air of Spanish mystery – file under evocative musical narrative.
Bringing the album to a dramatic close is the doom lit curtain call of ‘God’s Endless Love For Man’, a Gothic heavy metal droning and throbbing prowling instrumental that stabs a fork in the eye of the creator. More like an attempt to soundtrack the works of Bosch then a hymn to the divine, this bubbling cauldron of a stonker takes over from Amon Düül II’s Phallus Dei quest and drags Black Sabbath through the killing fields. This is indeed some scary shit: Guru Guru on a fuck-rock satanical crusade, summoning up some kind of end-plan Armageddon. Interspersed in the mire, bursts of rapid-fire jazz rich breaks and tangled glorious guitar solos add a glimpse of hope to this one-way helter skelter ride into the abyss.
The Rolling Stones ‘S-T’
(Decca) 1964
Those sulky near petulant straight-faced punks stare out from their dark shadowed album with a look that means business. Made-up almost entirely of cover versions, grabbed from the patron black blues and r’n’b characters of Chicago, The Mississippi and Tennessee, the debut LP is almost an exalted tribute to their heroes.
Rambunctious and loud, the pure rawness and bleed over of the instruments (something that no-one seemed concerned about in the studio at the time; encouraged by their manager Oldham) as they filled each other’s space, was a mixture of giddy adulation and blue-eyed indecorous rebellion. From the frayed, proto-punk amateurish sound of ‘Route 66’ to the gospel ye-ye of ‘Can I Get A Witness’, this album shambles along and offers up some convincing attempts to sound like Jimmy Reed, Willie Dixon and Slim Harpo. Of course, they fail but the results are better than the intention in many ways; the vital kick start to a whole scene and call for a generation. Can it really be sixty years old this month?!
Monolith Cocktail Blog 