A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Tabu Ley and African Fiesta National, 1970 (Copyright – Analog Africa)
Various ‘Congo Funk! – Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshaha/Brazzaville 1969-1982)’ (Analog Africa)
A tale of two cities on opposites sides of the same river, the Congo, the latest excursion for the Analog Africa label celebrates and showcases an abundance of dynamite, soul and funk tracks from the two capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
The roots of both are entwined and yet very different. The mega city of Kinshasa only adopted its name during independence (but not without interference from its former brutal colonial masters Belgium, and also the West, and in more recent times, China) in the 1960s, a product of the “authenticity”, or “renativizing”, policies of Joseph Désiré Mobutu. The largest city and capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo – itself, renamed over centuries depending on who controlled it, but for a twenty-six year window between 1971 and 1997 known as Zaïre – the constantly expanding Kinshasa was founded in the late 19th century by Henry Morten Stanley, who was in the employ at the time of the Congo’s most disastrous barbaric ruler, Leopold II. Named in his honour, it stood for half a century or more as a hub for Belgium’s rape of the gargantuan central African country’s natural resources, minerals and people. Once free (only to a point) of European mastery its name was changed to reflect a hunger for authentic African heritage: named in fact after what was once a humble village on the same site.
On the northern side of the Congo River stands the capital of the Congo Republic, Brazzaville. It too was originally founded by a European, the Italian-born – but later granted French citizenship – explorer Pierre Savorgnan Brazza, who took it as a prize for the French Empire. The name stayed, but after greater independence this city became a thriving hive of activity for the burgeoning music scene: designated by UNESCO in 2013 as a “city of music” no less.
Circling back on its regional neighbor, Kinshasa became a seat of power for the dictatorship of Mobutu (the Belgium and US-backed usurper who took power after the assassination of the promising Black Nationalist, but Soviet-favored, Patrice Lumumba). Famously drawing a global audience in 1974, the world tuned into the legendary, iconic titanic grudge match between Ali and Foreman: aka the “rumble in the jungle”. Instigated by the boxing promoter and hustler Don King off the back of Ali’s full “motherland” endorsed conversion, Mobutu saw the potential in not only raising his own profile but that of his country by vouching for and putting on this great boxing spectacle in a revitalized Kinshasa.
History would later prove Mobutu to be a tyrant and thief, but for this shining moment of self-publicity the American stars of the fighting game and music/entertainment scenes were lured to the city. Seen in various documentaries since, but favouring the American stars of R&B, soul and funk – including the anointed godfather of soul himself, James Brown – the African artists and musicians that took part in a three-day festival of music around the main event included a rafter of local talent too. Competing to gain the spotlight, dominated by the likes of B.B. King, Bill Withers, The Pointer Sisters and The Fania Latin All Stars, were two of the Congo’s most famous icons: the bandleader, honed pioneer of an attacking repetitive guitar style that tore up the local dancefloors and airwaves, Francois “Franco” Luambo, and rival Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu, aka Tabu Ley, the leading light of African rumba and one of the continent’s most influential artists. Franco fronted the TPOK Jazz troupe at that music extravaganza, a band with a lot of history: famous for their part in spreading Congolese rumba.
The event’s musical organizers, Hugh Masekela and Stewart Levine, gave Franco free reign as a creative guide, but it’s said that Tabu stole the show. It’s a convoluted backstory, but the band that Franco fronted, the TPOK, actually changed their name from the O.K. Jazz band a decade or more after forming in the mid 50s – even more confusing, you will see the name written down in various forms, sometimes with the abbreviated dots. Both this troupe and Tabu make appearances on this Congo Funk! showcase – the funk being only one part of a both dynamite electrifying and more riverside lilted set of Afro-rock, soul, R&B and more localized serenading sweetness. Tabu for his part, leading the Et L’ Orchestra Afrisa, moves to a forgiving soulful rumba-esque groove (Congolese rumba being a signature, often dominate, movement honed in the region by such luminaries as Tabu and the famous Verckys) on the sun-blazed horn serenaded and buzzing guitar licked ‘Adeito’. With their L’ Orchestre additional name, O.K. Jazz makes an appearance under the Lolo affixed title (I will readily admit I have not read the liner notes this time around, and so have no idea if this is an artists or just a reference to one of the villages in the area) on the funky raw Booker T/Stax steal ‘Lolo Soulfire’, and holding the full limelight, go for some “humph” and laughter on ‘Kiwita Kumunani’.
As with much of the collection’s roster, less established acts and groups outside the major label networks (many subsidiaries of Western labels) struggled at first to get heard or raise the prohibitive sums needed to record. The PR notes briefly describe what happened, but to fill the void, a number of pioneering entrepreneurs entered the market to levitate the costly process. The likes of smaller, more independent labels such as Cover No.1, Mondenge, Editions Moninga and Super Contact could take a punt on newly emerging younger artists; those who were influenced by the “rumble in the jungle” festival of sound, going on to cut their own hybrid versions of American soul and funk, of which this compilation is filled. Pumped out across the airwaves of Radio Brazzaville or beamed out by Télé-Zaïre and RTV du Zaïre – the TV shows of which were apparently so huge that the president ordered the latter to put out daily concerts because they were found to quell unrest and criminal activities during transmissions. Arriving at the opposite end of this compilations window, released in 1982, the opening salvo, ‘Sungu Lubuka’ by Petelo Vicka Et Son Nzazi, seems a likely candidate for this change. Sounding like the heralding horn section from a Dexys track and homage to Jackie Wilson and his peers, before slipping into a Latin-like groove, this track connects two worlds: as influenced by the Fania All Stars as it is by disco funk. It’s certainly a blazing start to a cracking collection, and obvious single choice. It’s followed by the Afro-rock and Kuti horns simmering ‘Mfuur Ma’ by the Groupe Minzoto Ya Zaïre; yet another single showstopper that seems to echo the Pazent Brothers and J.B.’s. And another worthy punchy tune, the closing ‘Ah! Congo’ by the Orchestre National Du Congo, proves the perfect, high energy R&B, bookend to a brilliant compilation.
Tracks like Les Bantous De La Capitale’s ‘Ngantsie Soul’ just roll on and on like a 12” disco mix; a funky but not erratic groove that pulls you in with a constantly fluid moving soul riff and clopping percussion. Next to that, Les Frères Soki Et L’ Orchestre Bella-Bella’s ‘Nganga’ shuffles and scuffles down the train tracks to a fit of horns in a workout that lasts nearly nine minutes.
Congo Funk in all its many variations is put under the spotlight, with an outstanding set list of fourteen tracks (whittled down from a container’s worth of singles) that will enthral and educate in equal measures. Essential dance floor fillers await.
Fran & Flora ‘Precious Collection’
(Hidden Notes) 12th April 2024
Arriving just months after Alex Roth’s new Cut The Sky project’s Esz Kodesz debut and Alison Cotton’s Engelchen, Fran & Flora release their own European Jewish culturally and historically inspired album. Addressing similar passages of loss and commemoration to the absence and tragedy of the Eastern and Central European branches of that community’s heritage, they also respond to its most joyous, strengthened traditions, transforming in a sophisticated, adroit and knowledgeable way the music of the Ashkenazi: otherwise known as “Klezmar”. And whilst those mentioned albums by Roth and Cotton channel different aspects of history – the former, covering the same Ashkenazi communities, but in Galicia, and the later, telling the story of the English Cook sisters who helped to save fleeing Jews from Germany during WWII -, the first overlaps this duo’s emotive and stirring story of lineage by overcoming tumultuous times to preserve a culture in a part of the continent that ruthlessly eradicated it’s identity and people.
For as Roth channeled past barbarity and conflict in what is now Ukraine for a harrowing and incredible abstract reaction, Francesca Ter-Berg and Flora Curzon (to give them their full names) also tread the same lands, but also across into Romania – as the album’s second track, the beautifully but moodyily and mysteriously described Eastern-European fairytale ‘Romanian Fantasies II’ makes abundantly clear (imagine the strings aspects of The Holy Mountain soundtrack meets Širom and Gypsy music, whilst a didgeridoo-like sound blows away).
I might be reading too much into it, but the duo’s Precious Collection suite closes with what, over time, has become a formal greeting in the Jewish community: “Sholem Aleichem”. Translating from Hebrew etymology to mean “[May] peace [be] upon you”, it was also the nom de plume of the famous Yiddish author and playwright Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, whose stories of Tevye the Dairyman were the source for the Fiddler On The Roof musical. Born in the old Tsarist Russian conquered and subjected shtel of Voronkiv in what is now central Ukraine, Rabinovich experienced the pograms firsthand; escaping to the USA at one point, but in doing so promoted the often looked-down-upon Yiddish culture and language. Also, and not surprising when facing the marauding savagery and alienation of the Russian Empire’s genocidal actions, and the Anti-Semitism and ruinous policies of the Austro-Hungarian empire too, that he also advocated the return of his people to the Holy Land as a member of the Hovevai Zion (lovers of Zion) cause. Hounded out of his homeland when alive, a Putin era Russia erected a monument in his honour in Moscow, whilst Ukraine paid homage throughout its many cities and even issued stamps – ironically or not, many of those cities have been bombed relentlessly by Russia in the past two years. Whether this is a mere coincident or not, it’s a useful connection and part of the history of the region covered on this album; especially as the place where Klezmer was born or at least fashioned – that loose confederation of dance tunes, ritual melodies and “virtuosic improvisations” is made up of influences from the Jewish diaspora, from Ottoman Greece and Romania to the Germany and Slavic countries. The “Klei” part of that form means “tools, utensils or instruments of” and the “zemer” translates as “melody”, an assemblage if you like, of different musical threads but rooted in the faith. Klezmer was, and of course still is, played at weddings and other social functions, but more importantly it is a bond and hand-me-down language, poetry and litany of their heritage and story.
Drawing upon this legacy and knowledge the duo of cellist Fran and violinist Flora (both also cover the vocals and electronic elements) both interpret traditional material and compose new arrangements that simultaneously evoke classical music and the atmospheric, with echoes of folktronica, the avant-garde resonance and atonal essence of hidden metallic and instrumental sources and fantastical – imagine Walter Smetek conducting a Eastern European chamber ensemble. There’s even a removed hint of jazz and near breakbeat drums at one point, when they do get to sustain a rhythm. The drumming circle is courtesy of guests Ursula Russell (of Snapped Ankle and Alabaster DePlume fame) and Simon Roth (Chris Potter, Alice Zawadzki, Adrian Dunbar on his CV), plus, what the PR notes call, the appearance of a Ukrainian Poik style marching drum – my research has drawn a blank on this one I’m afraid.
Some pieces of music directly reference Jewish culture, history, with the stripped and plucked diaphanous but haunting ‘Nign’ a unique take on the traditional religious vocal song of the same name. Largely improvised, sung in groups, Bible verses or classical quotes from other Jewish texts are repeated to form what’s know as a “nign”. Sometimes a lamented prayer, and at other times out of joy or victorious, this contemporary vision sounds like beatific and ethereal sirens uttering assonant mystique and worry from behind a translucent covering. But the vibrations, melodies even amongst the most abstracted, near non-musical parts still carry, forming as they do, evocations of landscapes and time. Sympathetic and attentive at all times, the music encompasses wild playfulness and abandonment on the opening running freedom of ‘Nudity’, and nature’s call on the Caucuses imbued, choral lulled ‘Feygele – Little Bird’.
Woven at times like a tapestry, and at other times, near esoteric, the beatific merges with the plaintive, pleaded and mysterious, and folk music is effortlessly weaved with folk-rock, the experimental and the classical. Within that framework traditional dances and songs are wrapped up in a meticulously crafted otherworldly suite of experimental strings and minimalistic electronica. The Klezmer source material is held on to but transformed with a contemporary expansion of ideas and experimental composition, all of which flows lucidly and in a most stirring manner to create an exceptional album.
Herandu ‘Ocher Red’
(Hive Mind Records) 26th April 2024
A second release on the Hive Mind label to feature Misha Sultan, or rather the true face behind that guise, Mikhail Gavrilov, the Herandu debut is a new project and new sound for the Siberian artist and his brother Evgeny (who has his own alias of Dyad).
The siblings, caught between the Covid pandemic and invasion of Ukraine by Russia, put this latest vehicle in motion during trips back home to Siberia’s most populous city of Novosibirsk in 2022. The so-called “Chicago of Siberia”, Novosibirsk is situated on the banks of the Ob River, a crossing point of the romanticised and legendary Trans-Siberian Railway and historically an important flashpoint during the Russian civil war and engine of post-revolutionary Russian industry. Originally founded in 1893 and christened with the Tsarist Imperialist title of Novonikolayevsk after Emperor Nicholas II, the Communists gave it the current name of “New Siberia” in 1926. Geographically sitting between the Ural Mountains and Northern Asia, touching the Pacific in the East, Siberia isn’t just the infamous exiled atelier of record and literature but a beautifully diverse Eurasian landscape.
As on Mikhail’s Misha alias Roots album, released by Hive Mind back in the late Spring of 2022 (as it happens, that marvelous album also included a cameo from his brother, under his Dyad moniker), that famous industrial transport capital and its outlying regions are once more transduced via the soundboard and imagination to articulate and convey backdrop set moments of rumination, of particular captured interactions and moods, and an essence of place and time – the industrial set against the more plush shades of nature. Informing and inspiring a new direction, the label has described the brother’s collaboration as sounding like Metalheadz meets Weather Report; or to my ears, Plug plays around with the music of the Mahavishnu Orchestra using the production of 80s Miles Davis records whilst hauling in later 70s and 80s Herbie Hancock on cosmic ray beam keys and what sounds like a keytar.
Actually, with a mix of warmer sounding live instrumentation (from Stanley Clarke-light jazzy-funk slap and picked bass guitar and Greg Foat-esque electric-piano to pinning, floating and sizzled reedy saxophone – courtesy of friend and musician Vladimir Luchansky) and more programmed synthesized breakbeats, chops and atmospheres, the brothers branche out into all kinds of international genres, with evocations of the Caucasus, Tibet and both East and North Africa merging with photons and clap-drums. Jazz-fusion and world music hybrids from the Silk Road and Samarkand cross paths with Jimi Tenor, Amorphous Androgynous, Rip Rig & Panic, Transglobal Underground and The Pop Group. And yet that only goes so far in describing the subtle but cross-pollination of influences on show. The timpani bounds of ‘An Incident At The Theater’ play up the title’s stage drama, but soon break out into those Weather Report references, and the misty vaporous ‘Downtown Street’, heads off in the direction of both Hansa studio and later Outside period Bowie and 80s Scott Walker.
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 brothers feelings of their native landscape, and the episodes of life, the shaping of their creativity, born in that setting.
Kira McSpice ‘The Compartmentalization Of Decay’
12th April 2024
Nature’s compartmentalized reactions to injury and decay (via the studied description laid down by the pathologist and biologist Alex L. Shigo) are drawn upon, referenced and used as a metaphor for Kira McSpice’s own coping mechanisms; the American singer-songwriter and musician dealing with trauma by channeling both desirable and undesirable energy into working through the darkest, most fearful physical and mental strains of painful morose.
Almost like therapy, although bad dreams plagued McSpice throughout the writing process, the troubled chanteuse of the self-coined “freak folk” sound faces blow after blow of gothic lament and harrowing despair. And yet there is a beauty too, with passages of the near ethereal, beatific and afflatus ebbing over chthonian mourning and distress. In fact, the suffused nocturnal atmospherics, whilst hiding allegorical esoteric nightmares and spirits, are like a strange fairytale set filled by operatic and theatrical characters and life.
It’s the voice that draws you into that visionary world however; an apparitional-like calling, lulling, assonating and hurting vocal that soars past the contralto-bass to reach near aria like heights. With an obvious keenness and deep knowledge of the craft, McSpice artfully constructs inter-layered choral circles and marooned, mournful and cut-to-the-marrow pained releases, which as the album progresses gradually seem to find the gauzy light – ‘Photosynthesis’ facing that light source and growing in a somnolent fashion sounds almost like a daydreaming Mazzy Star. The welling and plaintive, sometimes struggling, voiced woes and pathos is enveloped with heightened atmospherics, suffused and smothered hazy horns (what sounds like a tuba, but also oboe, clarinet and maybe a saxophone of a sort), a Goth acoustic air of All About Eve, and Tilt-period Scott Walker eerie, stark and heart of darkness style electric guitar. All of which has a very distinct sound: pitched somewhere between haunted chamber music, the operatic and baroque and obscure, hermetic prog-folk. Slowly removing a metaphorical armour. McSpice arises from the symbolic mists and fogs to forge a shaken, knocked but hard-won identity. The rooms and spaces maybe dark, but through McSpice’s cleverly poised and escalating vocal chills and more beautifully heartbreaking, fraught processes there is a clearing of the miasma and the promise of a reprieve. Nothing short of an extraordinary album.
Pando Pando ‘S-T’
(Not Applicable) 12th April 2024
With enviable experience and CVs with incredible depth and variation, all three participants in the Pando Pando project tantalize with the prospects of their experimental explorations. The names of trumpeter, electronic musician, engineer and producer Alex Bonney (performing with Leverton Fox, Scarla O’ Horror, Brass Mask, the list goes on), drummer and percussionist Jem Doultan (played in Róisín Murphy’s band for seven years, drummed in The Thruston Moore Group and is one part of the Too Many Things duo) and fellow drummer/percussionist Will Glaser (a stalwart of the UK jazz scene, teacher and foil for an impressive roster of bands and artists including Soweto Kinch, Kit Downes, Yazz Ahmed and Sly And The Family Drone) will be familiar to many on the contemporary improvisational scene.
All three crossed paths through the New River Studios arts space in London, forming a trio off the back of a series of improvised gigs in the capital. In partially describing their evolution and process they’ve named themselves after one of the natural world’s largest single living connective organisms, or in its scientific terminology, “a clonal organism that represents an individual male quaking aspen that spans 106 acres and is the largest tree by weight and by landmass.” This breathing, living behemoth of plant life is, in case you were interested, located in the District of Fishlake National Forest, between Colorado and South-Central Utah.
Growing in a quasi-organic abstract fashion, the drum and percussion heavy avant-garde movements and stirrings on the trio’s debut album take electroacoustic probes, prods and tumultuous splashes into the depths as a foundation to build otherworldly atmospheric workouts, prowls and freeform breakouts. Recognizable instruments and electronic elements, effects are used to evoke the most unusual and sometimes esoteric. An assemblage of trinkets, bells, finger cymbals, metallic textures, pots and pans and tubular scaffolding are used alongside the drum kit to evoke the influence of such luminaries of the form as the Art Ensemble Of Chicago (mentioned in the PR notes that accompanied this release), but to my ears, also the E.F.S experiment extractions from Can’s Limited/Unlimited LPs, Valentina Magaletti, Krononaut, Mani Neumeier and, on the weird d’n’b veiled clanged and distorted ‘Fluffy Wires’ like Matthewdavid warping a samba band of drummers. However, the peculiarly named ‘Eno’s Bathroom’ is not what I would imagine the ambient doyen’s bathroom to sound like at all; less scented candles, sandalwood and eco-friendly, fair trade handmade soap and more krautrock and ghost freighter Tibetan lurking mind-bended weirdness.
Titles, like much of the music, is on the disturbing side with references to marine deaths (the windbreaker flapping prowl into the ocean abysses ‘The Graveyard Of Sharks’ and incipient sonar signaled, dub-y ricochet thrash around in marooned waters ‘Dolphin Suicide’) and blamed birds (the final wing-flapped primordial squelch, and mystical gongs, bowls and tool brushed and sifted ‘It Must Have Been The Magpies’ –our common English garden visitor has a bad rep for a variety of things, from the old adage about bad luck to stealing anything that glitters, and for savagely protecting its nests).
An evolving organism of their own making, breaking out of, growing and expanding the perimeters of improvised electroacoustic experimentation, the Pando Pando trio make unsettling tones and sounds, rhythms and serialism for ecologically climatic times.
Audio Obscura ‘Acid Field Recordings In Dub’
(Subexotic Records) 26th April 2024
Drifting in and out of post-op drug-induced recuperation, Neil Stringfellow (aka Audio Obscura) laces his dreamscapes and stupors with signature 303 acid squelches and dial releases, frequencies, snatches of broadcasts and bubbled liquids; much of which is transformed or made out of the archive of sounds he’s built up over the last twelve years, from a recurring flock of chirping birdlife to the innocuous, taken for granted and missed, sounds of the streets outside and daily interactions between, in this case, hidden sources of dialogue and conversation, even child’s play.
Take all that and expand the mystery, the unease and esoteric with a wafted reverberation and echo of dub and you have a real hallucinogenic experience, the ebbing of the consciousness between passages of the recognizable and distorted. That roosting menagerie of birds that Neil could hear from his hospital bedside, out of the window on one humid day in 2022, now resembles the acid-dial-turns of Mike Dred, a street cleaner’s broom, banging against his cart as he wheelbarrows it down a hill in Norwich, suddenly mimics a dub snare drum when added with plenty of On-U Sound echo.
The gravity fields, cartography, the memorable (through a soporific haze of painkillers) passages of a day and the unidentified coastline take on otherworldly dimensions through this mirage-inducing lens as elements of Air Liquide, The Orb, Amorphous Androgynous, Cousin Silas And The Glove Of Bones, FSOL, Andrew Wasylak and Cabaret Voltaire pass through – the latter is unsurprising, and not for the obvious reasons that CV are just one of the all-time most influential and inspired electronic groups of all time but because the Cabaret’s Chris Watson hosted a field recording introductory week that Neil attended.
Field recording adventures in sound, under the dreaded sirens of a nuclear winter and apocalyptic distress, this album is a lucid acid wash of near-remembered haunted piano melodies, various sonic yips and yeeps, bulb-shaped notes, recalled melodica, lost transmissions half-heard, radioactive effects, the atonal and prowling. Paranoia meets the languorous and medicated on a productive experiment in acid-dub and sound art.
Khôra ‘Gestures Of Perception’
(Marionette) 19th April 2024
Ambitious in scope and influence, Matthew Ramolo’s Plato-coined Khôra vessel overlaps the afflatus with the mythological, hermetic and philosophical across a double-album spread of peregrinations, processions and transcendental mysticism. References abound from opened seals, with nods to branches of Buddhism, astronomy, the Hellenic, Tibetan, Heliopolis and atavistic: all the way back to the creation myth. Literally from the ground up (the Dzogchen concept of “rigpa”, which subscribes the qualities of purity, spontaneity and compassion to the primordial ground), Ramolo, using an apparatus of international instrumentation, drums-up simultaneous visions of the new age and alien. Name checking the Latinized, the Orient and spiritual Asia in its many forms, but also cosmic projecting, the alchemy at play on this opus vibrates with evocations of ksmische, Jon Hassell’s “fourth world musics” explorations, trance, magnetic electronics, courtly and ceremonial.
The central sounds are percussive in nature; from those Tibetan stirrings of bowls, tubular bells, wind chimes and movements that sound like the turning of a mani wheel, to claves, what sounds like stones, a scaffold of pans and tubes, and frame, hand and other more rhythmic drums. Other elements include electronic vapours and waves, the springy and plucked, divine radio and satellite transmissions, occasional bellowed wafts and bulb shaped notes of light. Yogi talks to, well…the world, as nirvana is opened to all on this trip of dial up meditations, explorations and mysterious off-world atmospherics. The echoes of Syrinx, Kalacakra, Bhajan Bhoy, Ariel Kalma, A.R. & Machines, Sergius Golowin and Iasos wrap themselves around an epic suite of spiritual and mystical excursions in the pursuit of navigating a formless, third way through new envisaged worlds: or something like that. Eastern spiritual music is often abstracted in this world, merged with hidden sources to produce something familiar yet a bit different.
Esbe ‘La Serenissima’
(New Cat Music)
Inhabiting each world she enters as if it were a past life, another reincarnation, the gifted singer-songwriter Esbe steps right out of the times, the locations and scenery as if she was born to it. From atavistic Egyptology to classic songbook reinterpretations, from across the ages and genres, Esbe seems to belong to whatever setting she channels.
Proving consistent in every endeavor and prolific, she now releases her ninth album of magical revue; once more interpreting the old, but also conjuring up original compositions and arrangements that congruously feel like part of the traditional cannon. Sweeping into the city of duality, Venice, or rather the 17th century anointed “La Serenissima” as it was once known, Esbe channels its famous history, literature, art and architecture; from a secret rendezvous on a canal bridge to masked balls, painted scenes from the late Renaissance and cinematic sweeps that move like the tidal currents out of the city and carry on towards the exotic and cosmopolitan hubs of this city-state’s once expansive empire of trading routes. I say duality, because this is both the city of love and center of much political and stately intrigue during the Medieval period, when what we now know as a unified Italian geography was split into various warring and competing Papal states; the port cities being amongst the strongest, carrying more weight with their navies and trading fleets, able to negotiate or bring in allies from abroad to support their claims of dominance.
Mentioned as an inspiration, Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice – or rather its most famed locations within the city – throws up all kinds of Anti-Semitic stereotypes; the city’s Jewish ghetto appalled a conquering Napoléon centuries later: commanding the French forces that occupied Venice in 1797, the as yet to be emperor would famously end the ghetto’s separation from the rest of the city, removing barriers and renaming it the Contrada dell’unione. But Esbe is tapping into the city’s mystery, its art and majesty, whilst casting yearns outbound from the harbor to old trading routes in the Med and further abroad: see the heart-wrenching, diaphanous soaring operatic ‘Palazzo’, a Thomas Newman modern Bond-esque filmic score that evokes Istanbul, passionately sung in the Turkish language.
The very embodiment of a certain style of Venetian art, Canaletto’s iconic (though many disparage it as mere chocolate box art) cityscape dioramas are referenced within the PR briefing; a inspiration, jump off point for magical lyrical and musical painting and storytelling imagination. Almost a feature of a certain time back in England, my late grandfather like many of his generation, had a print on the wall – of Italian decent himself, his one and only actual visit to the homeland was as part of the Allied forces making their way up through Italy to capture Rome during WWII, and even then, he never managed to get to Venice. You can now imagine Esbe, one hand trailing in the canal waters or “sighing” over a romantic set bridge gazing at the light play on the surrounding architecture; dreamily envisioning a bygone time as she sings and coos about imagined liaisons, and characters that could have walked straight off a Medieval tapestry.
As with most of her work, Esbe balances the atavistic and traditional with more modern electronic vapours and wisps of the esoteric, haunting and spellbinding. Sounding somewhere between Dead Can Dance, Maria Callas, the Baroque, folk and Arabian, she can turn a foggy apparitional mystique into an aria, an expelled breath into a whole act, or story. Her most obvious talent is with that already described voice, which is as dramatic and theatrical as it is ethereal and subtle; delivering a suspenseful Latinized lulled and desired vocal on the Catholic regal service ‘Te Amo’ – luring us towards a steeped in mystery and serious alter -, and lending a near dreamy tidal pulled entranced performance on the romantic vision ‘Amarilli, Mia Bella’ – a reinterpretation of Giulio Caccini’s operatic love song, written for the 1602 Le Nuove Musiche collection of monodies and songs for solo voice and basso continuo.
Classical styles feature heavily, but are veiled or gauzily enveloped to sound more haunting, atmospheric and even like a mirage in some cases. Throughout it all the instrumentation, from chamber to synths, guitars and the sound of bubbling waters, are artfully suggestive and stirring; scoring the drama, downcast lament of a returning army from one of the Papal wars, or in emoting misty-eyed overtures to mysterious subjects.
Esbe once again breathes life into her surroundings, this time around playing with and choreographing an inspired songbook of Venetian evocations; absorbing the lagoon and canals of this impressive, iconic city and its forbearers to envision something that’s simultaneously magical and hauntingly surreal.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Monthly Playlist: January 2023: Mentrix, Kahil El’Zabar, Sara Noelle, Your Old Droog, Onoe Caponoe…
January 31, 2023
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH: TEAM EFFORT
The inaugural Monthly Revue playlist of 2023; a choice selection of tracks from the last month on the blog. Curated by Dominic Valvona with Matt Oliver on the Rap Control once more, and music from reviews by our latest recruit Gillian Stone plus Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Graham Domain. Expect to hear the unexpected.
TRACK LIST//
Mentrix ‘Be Mahsa Be Nika’
Meadow Argus ‘No Company’
Anton Barbeau. ‘Dollis Hill Butchers’
Guided By Voices ‘Wild Kingdom’
The Wot Nots ‘Oi!’
Wings Of Desire ‘Runnin”
The Gangsta Rabbi ‘Ana’mika (138the Entr’acte)’
Neon Kittens ‘Chalk’
Smuts ‘Kalashnikova’
Dyr Faser ‘Life Form’
Earth ‘Rocker’
Xqui Ft. Bettina Schroeder ‘I Have A Knife’
Flexagon ‘Fort Saumarez: MP2’
George Winstone & Ben Monder ‘Part I’
Liela Moss ‘Empathy Files’
The Good Samaritans ‘Onughara’
Phil Ranelin & Wendell Harrison. ‘Genesis’
Fliptrix/Onoe Caponoe/Ramson Badbonez ‘SM58’
Masai Bey/BMS ‘I.a.a’
Micall Parknsun/Jazz T ‘Still…’
Dexter Dine ‘Sunshine In A Can’
Elise Preys/Marc-Antoine Perrio ‘Petites Heures’
Bjorn Magnusson ‘Everybody’s Got Something’
Designers ‘Moulindjek’
dal:um ‘Dot’
Clamb ‘Glittering Watermelon Oracle – Live’
Justo The MC/Axian ‘Autopilot’
Skyzoo/The Other Guys ‘Bodies!’
Carlos Nino & Friends ‘Drum Solo +, “Sounds Like Memory…”‘
Ghostwoods ‘Terminus’
Kety Fusco ‘2072’
Raul Refree ‘La Plage’
Esbe ‘Coventry Carol’
Sara Noelle. ‘Blooming Yucca’
Kahil El’Zabar And The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Harvest Time’
Beats & Pieces Big Band ‘Op’
Galactapus ‘Radio Kolossos’
Oddisee ‘Many Hats’
Upfront MC/Badhabitz ‘Stay Afloat’
Your Old Droog ‘Here’s Johnny’
Onoe Caponoe ‘Pet Cemetry’
Our Daily Bread 469: Esbe ‘Under Cover’
September 15, 2021
ALBUM REVIEW/ DOMINIC VALVONA
Esbe ‘Under Cover’
(New Cat) 17th September 2021
When not in a captivating mood as a Daughter of the Desert, and channeling a former life as an Egyptian deity, it seems that the gifted, hypnotically voiced siren Esbe desires to reinterpret the standards.
After a fare old work rate of five original albums in just under four years, Esbe is ready to leave her own indelible trace on a songbook of classics: a timeline that runs from the 1960s to the age of Gershwin and even further back. Almost as a rites of passage for artists, sharing the songs that have in kind inspired them, Esbe now does likewise on her new album Under Cover.
But what can anyone possibly bring to such old worn songs as ‘Yesterday’, ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘The Sound Of Silence’? The last of those, and the second Paul Simon song from his partnership with Art Garfunkel, does have a particular affinity. Not only is Simon held aloft as the singer’s most respected songwriter but the lyrics of this malady chime with her own Jewish heritage. Esbe transforms it into something approaching the mystical. Accompanied by a synthesis of sampled strings (made by Spitfire Audio and recorded at Sir George Martin’s famous Air Studios in London no less), Vangelis sci-fi vapours and tablas, she wraps the original words around an ambiguous cosmological. Esbe’s rendition of another Simon song, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, which in many artist’s hands turns to insufferable mush and a cloying dirge, sounds more like a tirp-hop vision of Lisa Gerrard in comparison.
Tapping into that traditional training and reimagining songs she would have undoubtedly learnt whilst studying, from the great American songbook Esbe takes on Gershwin and DuBuse Hayward’s languid ‘Summertime’, and the hymnal late 18th century Christian beauty, with words by the English Anglican clergyman-poet John Newton, ‘Amazing Grace’. One becomes a spiritual anthem, taken on by the African-American community, whilst the other, was influenced in turn by that same communities own musical journey and travails. Here, with Esbe’s methodology of approaching each song (pretending she’s never heard the music, only the lyrics), these well known standards float off into a plaintive trembled voiced ether of both swelled and fraught strings and bit-crushed echo, with only the most tenuous of the originals recognized melodies and feel.
Elsewhere Lennon & McCartney’s ‘Yesterday’ is rendered mysterious and wistfully wispy – like the Chromatics on the Twin Peaks set -, whilst ‘Eleanor Rigby’ sounds like its sung by the protagonist’s diaphanous heart yearned ghost. ‘A Taste Of Honey’ travels back in time to sound like a celeste plaintive weep from the 1700s as reimagined by Pentangle.
There are similar envisioned versions of the iconic lipstick-on-the-collar Billie Holiday weepy ‘Don’t Explain’ (handed a misty veil accompaniment of scale-y shaken percussion and dreamy vapours), and a synthesised vision of the old choral ‘Silent Night’ too on this explorative covers songbook. Under Cover succeeds in connecting us to the artist and to what makes them tick; what moves them, what inspires them. Coming at old standards from another angle, more or less discarding the original compositions, timings and rhythms, cadence, Esbe wraps and weaves her often cooed, apparition like hypnotising voice around songs that need reenergising; so common they’ve blended into the background. Esbe’s evocative process of spellbinding reinterpretations prompts the listener to take another look at, and to perhaps find something novel or new, in old recordings. The familiar suddenly becomes worth investigating all over again.
Further Reading:
Monolith Cocktail Monthly Playlist: September 2020:
September 28, 2020
PLAYLIST REVUE/Dominic Valvona/Matt Oliver/Brain ‘Bordello’ Shea
Join us for the most eclectic of musical journeys as the Monolith Cocktail compiles another monthly playlist of new releases and recent reissues we’ve featured on the site, and tracks we’ve not had time to write about but have been on our radar.
Expect to hear everything and anything; from Azerbaijan guitar heroes (very perceptive at the moment considering the geopolitical border shooting in the news), jazz peregrinations, lopsided psychedelic pop, stop-start funk, abstract deconstructions, Beach Boys imbued ebb and flow ruminating, sketches from a doyen of Krautrock, a cross pollination of 808 Maghreb and India, poignant personal ambient laments, plus a load of choice Hip-Hop cuts. 50 tracks in all.
Those Tracks In Full Are:
Songhoy Blues ‘Barre’
Leron Thomas ‘Endicott’
Nubya Garcia ‘The Message Continues’
Dele Sosimi, Medlar ‘Gudu Gudu Kan’
Sidi Toure ‘Farra Woba’
Floodlights ‘Matter Of Time’
Lou Terry ‘The View’
Lizzy Young ‘Obvious’
Sampa The Great, Junglepussy ‘Time’s Up (Remix)’
Marques Martin ‘Hailey’
Nicky William ‘Pathetic Fuck’
Gibberish ‘I Dreamed U’
La China de La Gasolina ‘El Camino’
The Green Child ‘Fashion Light’
Ludwig Dreistern ‘New Oddity’
Namir Blade ‘Stay’
This Is The Kit ‘Coming To Get You Nowhere’
Esbe ‘My Love Knows No Bounds’
Stella Sommer ‘The Eyes Of The Summer’
Brona McVittie ft. Isan & Myles Cochran ‘Falling For Icarus’
Badge Epoque Ensemble ft. U.S. Girls & Dorothea Pass ‘Sing A Silent Gospel’
Liraz ‘Injah’
Junkboy ‘Belo Horizonte’
Rustem Quilyev ‘Ay Dili Dili’
Phew ‘All That Vertigo’
Krononaut ‘Leaving Alhambra’
The Strange Neighbour ‘Stuntman’
dedw8, Conway The Machine, 0079 ‘Clean The Whole Room Out’
Syrup, Twit One, Turt, C.Tappin, Summers Sons ‘Burn Out’
Verb T, Illinformed ‘New Paths’
Good Doom ‘Zig Zag’
Sheltered Workshop Singers ‘Dan I Am’
Staraya Derevnya ‘Hogweed Is Done With Buckwheat’
Sheltered Workshop Singers ‘My Life’
Violent Vickie ‘Serotonin’
Julia Meijer ft. Fyfe Dangerfield ‘The Place Where You Are’
Mike Gale ‘Pastel Coloured Warm’
Michael Rother ‘Bitter Tang’
Extradition Order ‘Let’s Touch Again’
Schlammpeitziger ‘Huftgoldpolka’
Ammar 808 ft. Kali Dass ‘Ey Paavi’
Edrix Puzzle ‘Jonny Buck Buck’
SOMA, Shumba Maasai, Hermes ‘Rudeboi’
Babylon Dead ‘Nineteen84’
The Jux, Turkish Dcypha, Wavy Boy Smith ‘Lost In Powers’
Verbz, Mr. Slipz ‘2202 Fm’
Tune-Yards ‘Nowhere, Man’
Chiminyo ‘I Am Panda’
Sebastian Reynolds ‘Heartbeat’
Tamar Collocutor, Tenesha The Wordsmith, Rebecca Vasmant ‘Yemaya (Vasmant Mixmaster)’
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.
Tickling Our Fancy 091: Maalam Mahmoud Gania, Pons, Rüstəm Quliyev, Schlammpeitziger, Sheltered Workshop Singers…
September 14, 2020
Album Reviews Galore
Words: Dominic Valvona
An eclectic array of reviews, Dominic Valvona’s long-running Tickling Our Fancy column aims to cast the net wide, choosing a diverse collection of recent and upcoming releases for your perusal.
This month’s selection includes two special reissues, the first, the cross-pollinating “Azerbaijani Gitara” music of the late Caucasus legend Rüstəm Quliyev, the second, a beatific Gnawa set of recordings from the late esteemed Moroccan master Maalam Mahmoud Gania.
I also have a gander at the fantastical anthropologist ambient tape from the shrouded Maitrii Orboreal Ceremony, and a new album of sun-dappled affirmations from the Beach Boys imbued pastoral recluse Mike Gale. There’s the American three-piece Pons, who launch a torrid of punk and indie-dance mayhem on the unsuspecting public with their debut album, Intellect. From the prolific Hamburg label of experimental electronica, there’s a new reggae-imbued techno suite from Schlammpeitziger, and a very special project from the renowned producer Ian Brennan, his most personal yet, the Sheltered Workshop Singers (perhaps the first recording of its type anywhere). And finally, Esbe takes us on an Egyptian and Sufi India fantasy with her new synthesised album, Saqqara.
Pons ‘Intellect’
(Stick ’n’ Move Records) Album/17th September 2020
A volatile chaos that is remarkably tactile in places, the blossoming erratic American trio of Pons throw everything into their debut album Intellect. The culmination of various mischievous bombardments and jerked dances on a slew of EPs and singles, from a band that first formulated their blueprint in North Carolina in 2018 before relocating a year later to Virginia, this paranoid hectic and ridiculous fully realised long-player whips up a torrid of unhinged energy.
Reminding me of that first White Denim album, yet coarser and heavier, Intellect is full of ideas in what, by now, is a worn cross-section of post-punk and garage related genres. From the off though, you know this is going to be something else; a diy friction of scuzzed garage/skate/doom punk that creeps as much towards the Gothic as it does towards indie-dance.
They set us up with a reverberated, eerie lead-in of “we got a winner” samples and bird squawks, then roll pendulously into an harassed vision of The Stooges ripping it outta the Talking Heads before speed-freaking style riffing on Liquid Liquid, Ludus, Essential Logic and The Black Lips: Phew! Suck that up.
An ennui of rhythms, time changes and moods flip constantly between intense mania and more limbering no-wave downtown NYC Keith Herring doodled electro-funk. ‘Primal Urge’ is just that: a primal doom quickened, kettle rolling grunt of 80s Californian punk. ‘Jimmy Two-Dimes’ fucks up brilliantly The Strokes, and even, smashes up the NY Dolls and Suicide. But if we’re talking of real concentrated madness, ‘Dick Dastardly’ runs that cartoon scoundrel through a gruff free fall of James Chance, Ornate Coleman (yeah imagine that!) and space rock.
Funhouse Teenage Shutdowns, Nuggets garage gets roughed up on ‘Fabrication’, and Black Randy fights it out with The Electric Eels on the paranoia enclosing ‘Polly’s Hotel’. Single ‘Subliminal Messages’ takes a different musical route entirely; the advertiser slated consumerist nightmare limbers onto a dancefloor occupied by Disco Drive, Gang Gang Dance and Juan MacClean. ‘I See My Name In Lights’ bastardizes Electric 6, DAF, the Italian proto-punk dance miscreants Halleluah!, Renegade Soundwave and Death Grips: perhaps a touch of a synth-punk Beastie Boys.
What a record. I’m not sure I could really argue that the Pons are doing anything particularly new. Yet Intellect has quickly enthralled and excited me. Subtle meets the hardliners, as the bonus of youth drudges, sludges and drums up a vortex of generation X and boomer credulity. Nothing short of a brilliant noise, energy directed for the benefit of all, a glorious skewered and deranged indie-dance album of punk snot petulance and fun.
Mike Gale ‘The Star Spread Indefinite’
Album/25th September 2020
The former Co-Pilgrim and Black Nelson instigator Mike Gale may have retired from performing live some time ago now, but he’s still been highly prolific in recording. Using his trusty 32-track TASCAM cassette recorder, in just the last 18 months Gale has released the Pacific Ocean lulled sorrowed album, Summer Deluxe, a recent compilation of (far from) unfinished works and B-side paeans and breezes entitled B, C, D Side Volume 1, and a lockdown mini-album, Sunshine For The Mountain God. And now with this latest acoustic-led songbook, Gale furnishes us with the astral dreamy entitled The Star Spread Indefinite.
That cosmological title was found amongst his recent reading material, in Justin Hopper’s The Old Weird Albion. In one particular section, the uncovering of an ancient piece of artwork, scratched into the wall of a flint mine in Sussex triggered a beautiful starry-poetic response from the discoverer who found and named it. As a poetic prompt it brings Gale out of the melancholy of lockdown into a most dreamy state of reflection. And in his most lulled, drifting ruminating moments, balances a languid sense of yearning despondency with a peaceable message of positive affirmation for our near-miraculous existence.
The Monolith Cocktail was lucky enough to share the album’s precursor video-track (created by Jussi Virkkumaa) recently, ‘Go Help’: A tropical-lilted wistful tiptoe sauntering, and disarming disconsolate bobbing continuation of the plaintive beachcomber Beach Boys sound that has permeated the reclusive polymath’s output for a number of years. That means more of those lulled layered harmonies and the present lingering presence of a distant lapping tide. Though Gale lends an English pastoral bent to the Beach Boys California beach combing romanticisms. You can hear it clearly on the 70s AM radio dial wash ‘Stripped Sunlight’, which has an air of the SMiLE era about it.
Elsewhere in his harmonious gauzy hushed way, Gale evokes the Laurel Canyon dappled loveliness of Marc Eric, a beachside relocated epic45 and Roger Bunn on the sweetly synthesized golden ray affirmation ‘This Year’. The starry lush ‘Pastel Coloured Warm’, with its bahbahbah lilting chorus, hints at a meeting between the Go-Betweens and Prefab Sprout. Albeit a less sparse version, Gale also channels the spirit of Sparklehorse throughout this often-gossamer songbook. There’s also an easing into the Yacht Rock genre and the 80s phaser-effect and dry-ice cool of Phil Collins to provide a softened pop feel to some of the washes.
With soothing élan and shimmery dreaminess, Gale aches and wistfully fights through the disappointment, knock backs and anxiety to lift himself above it all with repeated mantras of “I’ll get my wish”, or, “This year I’m going to make it.” Let’s hope he does make it, as Gale is a fine musician and songwriter. The Star Spread Indefinite confirms that.
See also…
Mike Gale ‘Go Help‘ Premiere
Schlammpeitziger ‘Ein Weltleck In Der Echokammer’
(Bureau B) Album/25th September 2020
After previously unconsciously composing a kind of reggae and dub vision of Kraut-tronica over nine albums, Cologne stalwart of thirty years Jo Zimmermann has decided to now consciously meld those genres to his quirky lilt of electronic music on the tenth album, Ein Weltleck In Der Echokammer (for those needing a translation, that’s “a world leak in the echo chamber”).
It wasn’t, we’re told, until Zimmermann’s friend and ‘reggae expert’ Bettina Lattak remarked upon the composer, illustrator and performance artist’s oblivious use of those Caribbean flavours that it all suddenly clicked. And for this latest electro-fusion, fun, radiant, bouncing and sub-tropical suite, he, unabashed, tinkers almost effortlessly with a reggae sound stripped of context, history and religion: Just the feel, vibe and resonance. In practice this results in dubby warbled bass and echo, limbering gaited rhythms and a laid-back candour. There’s even a lilted saunter of steel drums to be heard, bobbing away on the tropical soulful electro-funk ‘Handicapfalter’.
That relaxed sound and sway – bordering on sun-bleached escapism – is counterbalanced by electro-cool starry synths, industrial metallic scuttles and a sophisticated layering of synthesized toms, kick-drums and polygons. It’s a sound that transduces label mates Station 17 and Clap! Clap!, a more languid Dunkelziffer, Holgar Czukay and Kraftwerk into a kind of Krautrock Compass Points Allstars, or, a futurist Marvin Gaye produced by a late 70s post-punk erring Eno. The itching percussive space-y tweeting ‘Tanzfußfalle’ seems to have invited Air, Psycho & Plastic and International Pony onto a dancefloor. That Kraftwerk namedrop evidently is a given. Zimmermann, trading under his longstanding Schlammpeitziger persona, references the Baroque harpsichord neo-classical Trans-European Express suite ‘Spiegelsaal’ (or ‘The Hall Of Mirrors’ as most of us know it) on his own mirrored trans-alpine refracted Oompah magic ‘Hüftgoldpolka’. Imbued with the Dusseldorf unit’s own spell-casting allusions on fame and image, Zimmermann leads a merry dance of his own.
There are of course some serious moments on what is essentially a tempered subtle pleasant soundtrack of understated techno, Kosmische and dance music. In what is a newish development, on this the second release for Bureau B, Zimmermann takes to singing; adding a cryptic whimsy and curiosity of half-narrated and humming, sighing and despondent lyricism to a number of tracks.
A warping, bended and sometimes crystalline, sometimes rattling, reggae-light sonic quirk, Ein Weltleck In Der Echokammer seems to offer a bright window into another world; a ladder out of the echo chamber towards a nice suffusion of Germanic electronic escapism.
Sheltered Workshop Singers ‘Who You Calling Slow?’
Album/18th September 2020
Used to travelling around the globe as the inconspicuous in-the-field recordist and in-situ producer, Ian Brennan has made a critically acclaimed career out of recording some of the most persecuted, ignored and neglected communities: from an Albinism refuge in Tanzania to the Abatwa pygmies of Rwanda and the victims of Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia. It’s a varied career; with projects as diverse as the Malawi Mouse Boys film score that never was to recording the prisoners of that same country’s maximum-security facility in Zomba.
Yet all of those projects share Ian’s overriding raison d’être, as laid out in his brilliantly engaging How Music Dies (Or Lives) tome: ‘My concern is not cultural authenticity, but emotional truth and uncloying performances. Purity, without baggage!’
The Grammy-nominated award winner’s latest project though, is his most personal yet. Collaborating with his only sister, Jane, who has Down Syndrome, Ian uniquely facilitates a platform for the Sheltered Workshop of diverse voices; spotlighting the ‘developmentally-disabled’ population in what could be the first ever album of its kind. In his notes Ian refers to a nameless “music expert” and his recent assertions that there was no such thing as a “virgin birth”, as he called it, left in music, that it was all based on “outside influence”. Ian however calls upon that “expert” to witness “what can happen when you hand a guitar for the first time to someone who has only partial use of their limbs.” As do some of the ensemble on this remarkable set of recordings. For this is a cast that have never before had that access or even opportunity to make themselves heard through the connective joy of music: the same one Ian enjoys with his sister Jane.
This album is far from an exercise in either charitable virtue or worse, exploitation. It’s more an overdue platform for those who have previously been ignored, sidelined and even patronized due to their needs and disabilities; especially vocally with most unable to articulate because of a reduced vocabulary and speech impediment. However, Ian finds that there are few more “expressive singers” than that are “non-verbal”. And the various pure emotions on display from this group of performers, who’ve previously never sung in front of a mic or played an instrument before, are deeply felt and resonating.
It’s a language that often sounds strikingly stripped of convention; often, to my ears, having more in common with Ian’s recordings from Africa, especially the incredibly vulnerable Tanzania Albinism community on the White African Power album. Sometimes almost ghostly and fragile, and at other times harmonic and utterly compelling, these voices can be as succinct as the performer Dan repeating his name with a raspy growl over a twanged guitar string accompaniment, or, as amorphous as the group effect of mourned vocals on ‘I Love You (Farewell Father)’. Incantation mantra meets the soulful and even fearless.
Accompaniments come in the form of the most expressive and unburdened of experimentation. The already mentioned Dan seems to channel both Medieval sonnet and primal blues-y-swamp rock on his opening turn, whilst Grace’s life story, with its guitar buzz, distortion and drone, hints at psychedelic grunge and shoegaze doom. Tom’s disconsolate ‘Sometimes I Feel Just Like A Zombie’ is so mysterious with its throat-singing snouts and hums that it could be some lost Tibetan malady. Glass-sounding xylophone keyboard effects, trembled strings, slapped rhythms and choruses of kazoos all make appearances on this open and candid collection of unbridled and unreserved communication. But don’t ever think to buy this album just out of charity or compassion, or even as a novelty (even though proceeds do go to a great cause); instead buy it because of those purely uncloying and truthful performances. But buy it because it has personality and something important to say.
See also…
Ian Brennan ‘Interview’ (here)
Ustad Saami ‘God Is Not A Terrorist’ (here)
Malawi Mouse Boys ‘Score For A Film About Malawi Without Music From Malawi’ (here)
Tanzania Albinism Collective ‘White African Power’ (here)
Esbe ‘Saqqara’
(New Cat) album/25th September 2020
Channeling a dreamy cast of ancient Egyptian characters (both fictional and historical), the diaphanous-breathed enchantress Esbe conjures up a most atmospheric peregrination on her fifth album, Saqqara. A musical odyssey of imagined reincarnated lives, the vocalist, producer and composer drifts down an atavistic Aswan, past the landmarks of Pharaoh dynasties: A musical traverse that extends from one civilisation to the next, past Arabia towards Uruk and then into the mystifying regions of Indian Sufi.
But firstly, more about the Egyptian allure that drew Esbe in. The album’s title Saqqara (or sometimes spelt as “Sakkara”) refers to the desert edge site of the awe-inspiring pyramid-tomb of the IIIrd dynasty Pharaoh Djoser; son of the dynasty foundress Nimaathap, who ruled sometime between the years of 2667 – 2648 BC. Not just a resting place but a show of power, Djoser’s impressive tomb was conceived by the even more famous polymath prime minister, high priest and royal architect (known by some Egyptologists as the Egyptian Leonardo) Imhotep. It forms part of the legendary City Of The Dead necropolis that extends across Giza and Dahshu, but is the only one still standing. As it inspired countless others before, this Step Pyramid now forms at least some of the storytelling poetry and atmospherics of this continuously hypnotizing electronic, real instruments and vocal mirage.
Under that monument’s shadow Esbe imagines an Egyptian woman dreaming of a lover, symbolically laying down with the revered Arabian leopard, to an entrancing, circling exotic menagerie and a shimmered procession on the album’s opening ambient fusion ‘My Love Knows No Bounds’. Esbe also evokes the torrid romance between Cleopatra and Mark Anthony on an updated vision of the sword and sandal soundtrack, ‘Carry Me Away’. Half Mills & Boon, half alluring lovelorn exotic camel trail; the two star-crossed lovers are cast adrift to a sound-bed of ponderous synthesizer vapours and cluttering drums.
The desires of escapism of a slave girl, seconded to laboring under the deathly heat on the pyramids, form the yearning sorrows of the Celtic-Arabian ‘I’ll Fly’. Subtle tubular Japan-esque synth percussion and sand dune jazz, dusky trumpet serenade and snake rattles converge to create the musical accompaniment.
Biblical augurs of doom are given a pining 80s synth dreamwave of crystal rays on the duel environmental and lunar phenomenon ‘Paint The Moon’, and low key acid-Arabia undulations permeate the caressed astral ‘Bedouin Prince’.
Moving further east to the subcontinent of India, Esbe lulls and coos melodious devotionals in the style of the Sufi music of Qawaali. Inspired by that forms doyen Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Esbe spindles an electronic spiritual version of Transglobal Underground on ‘Qawaali Dance’, and builds up a filmic drama of unfurled beauty on the epic ‘Qawaali Siesta’.
It’s a cinematic musical world that fuses tablas, zither and electronics with the sounds of the desert wildlife. Vocally Esbe draws on her eclectic Polish, Lithuanian and Jewish roots whilst embracing the phrasings, melodies of North Africa, the Middle East and mystical India. It makes for an ambiguous and impressive vocal that soars aria-like and chorally fills the space: A voice that even smolders.
Saqqara is a dreamy soundtrack that perfectly encapsulates an Egyptian fantasy: one that has a lushly performed lyrical and thematic message for the present epoch.
Maitrii Orboreal Ceremony ‘Prismic Passageways’
(Moonside Tapes) Album/11th August 2020
An ethnographical fiction, bordering on Atlantis myth, the shrouded instigators behind this latest experimental ambient peregrination for the always intriguing cassette label Moonside Tapes set sail for an imaginary land of shaman rituals and mysticism.
With a backstory mined from the annals of real historical anthropology and the field recorder’s archives, those mysterious forces of the Maitrii Orboreal Ceremony build up a half-convincing soundscape catalogue of fantastical atmospheres from the missing geographical link of Maitrii, a South Pacific realm that could have been part of another fantastical dreamed-up sunken continent, Aninomola. Because it never existed, it acts as an inspiration and blank canvas for an atavistic soundtrack of quasi-tribal primitivism and spiritualism.
The back-story goes that the only remnants, evidence of this obscure place and civilization are to be found in the notebooks and recordings of the anthropologist Dr. August Maynard, who it seems disappeared; his belongings in turn, found by villagers on the shores of that equally mystical, though very real, abandoned oasis, Easter Island.
Split into two lengthy recordings of grouped together themes, Prismic Passageways is divided into Trance and Meditation suites. “Presented here unabridged” and in “stereo”, the trance quintet of seamlessly strung-together tracks swirls around in Shamanistic communion, whilst the meditation sextet of dreamy esoteric atmospheres ventures past the misty coastline holy places into the interior. That first side of the tape feels like a misty ether veiled rowing boat drift to Skull Island. Summoned forth into a strange landscape, obscured creature calls and the haunted presence of the Maitrii spirits lure the weary travellers into an ambient sound world. A sorcerer’s crystalline ray reaches out to break the omnipresent foggy mirage at one point, and later, those so far feint rolls across a frame drum and lightly woody beaten pallets are ramped up into heavily reverberating, echoed elongated rhythms. It ends in an intoxicant spiral of drug-induced hallucinogenics: a spiral wispy drowsy and unsure ceremony in the catacombs.
That flip side, which traverses a ‘dawn prayer’, the fabled sun eater, and references the Hebrew biblical place of the ‘Land of Beulah’ – a place somewhere between Heaven and Earth -, features a venerable resonance of South Seas ancient mantric voices, bobbing trickled wooden marimba and minimal ambient suffusions.
For those wishing something different from their ambient traverses, enter the strange anthropological mystery of the Maitrii Orboreal Ceremony.
See also:
Jimmy W ‘Midi Canoe’ (here)
Cousin Silas And The Gloves Of Bones ‘Kafou In Avalonia’ (here)
Reissue Features:
Rüstəm Quliyev ‘Azerbaijani Gitara’
(Bongo Joe) Album/18th September 2020
The history and travails of the fecund oil rich country of Azerbaijan are atavistic. This is a nation that has striven to gain independence from a string of empires: both Tsarist and Soviet Russia, Iran, Albania, and much further back, the great Mongol Khan Timur. Desired not only for its abundance in fossil fuels – providing 80% of the Soviet’s oil on the Eastern Front during WWII, and continuing even now to be a vital pipeline for the post-communist Russian Federation – but for its geographical corridor to its fellow Transcaucasia neighbours of Georgia and Armenia in the west, to the south, Iran, in the north, Russia, and to the west, the vast inland lake, the Caspian Sea.
Khanates, caliphates, communism and secularism – Azerbaijan’s first declaration of independence came in 1918 and with it the first secular Muslim state – have all made their marks on this fertile land that in recent years has attempted to make inroads with NATO, the EU and China, whilst shaking off corruption. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it Azerbaijan’s second declaration of independence, coups and counter-coups have hampered a smooth transaction towards democracy. Though the country remains stable, if governed for at least the last two decades by the Aliyev family.
Bordering as it does so many cultures, its no wonder that one of the country’s most celebrated guitar pioneers Rüstəm Quliyev absorbed and embraced such a diverse range of customs from abroad and far; from local modals, wedding celebrations and traditions to the regal music of the Persian court, Bollywood musicals and dreamy evocations of Arabia. Reissued by those tastemakers at Bongo Joe Records, this incredible sounding compilation brings together a smattering of eclectic guitar led tracks from the late legend’s expansive diy produced catalogue.
As with many of his forbearers and peers, Rüstəm would firstly master the region’s traditional instruments, the tar (an ornate curvy looking waisted long-necked lute) and saz (another long-necked lute instrument, shaped like a teardrop almost) before picking up the guitar; an instrument or version of which first trickled into the country from the Czech factory makers Jolana in the 1960s. But Rüstəm’s first introduction to the “gitara” was whilst serving in the Soviet military in Russia; an episode that soon ended, allowing the burgeoning talent to return to a civil war in his own homeland.
Hailing from the disputed mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, Rüstəm’s backyard was in the middle of a war. A convoluted history, but circumstances saw the autonomous Armenian ethnic-majority southern Caucasus area internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but governed by the Republic Of Artsakh. Both breakaway states locked horns in the wake of the Soviet implosion; old rivalries, disputes were bought to the surface and violence soon ensued, including ethnic cleansing atrocities. In 1994 Russia secured a ceasefire after six years of conflict. As a consequence of this upheaval, with populations dispersed in some cases, Rüstəm moved further west towards the country’s Caspian costal capital of Baku; a move that would connect the rural visionary’s formative training with the lakeside cosmopolitan city’s network of international visitors and students, one of which, a student from Afghanistan, would introduce Rüstəm to such Afghan luminaries as Ahmed Zair. Included in this collection, ‘Əfqan Musiqisi’ is inspired by a track on a mixtape his Afghan student pal made for him. As an honour to him this pining song includes the heartfelt lines, “Let’s meet each other again, my friend, because separating is like unexpected death.” It sounds, as does most of his music, like a cross-pollination of influences; a Silk Road lament of bobbed hand drums, threaded lute and synthesized moaning choral voices. That synthesizer patch work is an integral part of the music by the way; a cheap sounding keyboard theatre of misty gazing ambience, punctuation of bass and percussive rolls that accompanies the often rapid, if elegant, nimble guitar performances.
Imbued both by doyens of the country’s “gitara” scene, including fellow Karabakh legend Rafiq Hüsey (aka Ramis), yet experimenting himself by refashioning a Jolana Czech guitar, Rüstəm managed to craft a unique merger of the past and present, the traditional and innovative. It helped that he came from a family of engineers, and with his brothers was able to set up a home studio. You can, if inclined, read more details about his tweaks, tunings and such in the liner notes provided by the album’s compilers Ben Wheeler and Stefan William. But in short, his style incorporated a wealth of inspirations, even wider than those already mentioned. For example, you can hear that wealth of influences on both the scenic searching, rough ’n ’ready Persian blues and rock number ‘İran Təranələri’, and the misty-eyed classical, popular Iranian street number, ‘Fars Musiqisi’ – the former via a transmogrified Niles Rodgers. Looking towards India, a famous Bollywood song imbues the strangely windy, horn heralding Western gallop ‘Tancor Disko’: imagine Pino Ruches riding shotgun with Ry Coder and Link Wray. Rüstəm transforms the highly complex classical poetic and improvised folk traditions of the country’s Mugham culture with the silken courtly, echoed fret work of ‘Neyçün Gəlməz’, and replaces the saz for his rapid guitar riffing on the Baba Zula like psychedelic ‘Yanıq Kərəmi’ and 80s sheened wedding dance ‘Baş Sarıtel’.
A caucuses Dick Dale, Omar Souleyman, Hank Marvin, perhaps as some people have proposed, even a touch of funk Mardi Gras Eddie Hazel, Rüstəm was an extraordinary gifted guitarist; one that could riff and strangulate, wrangle a constant trickle of quickened notes and multilayering, resonating poetry. Often he mimics a voice, at other times the lute or saz, yet always sounds mesmerizing and untethered. A rich showcase indeed, it’s time to traverse the Transcaucasia, the Steppes and beyond for those bored with western guitar slingers. Dip your toes into a whole unique and heartening guitar landscape.
Maalam Mahmoud Gania ‘Aicha’
(Hive mind Records) Album/October 2020
After various cultural excursions in South America, Arabia and West Java, Hive Mind Records return full circle to the “Gnawa” music that launched them with a striking reissue package of the beatific Aicha album by the form’s late great doyen Maalam Mahmoud Gania. It was of course Gania’s final studio album Colours Of The Night that first kicked off the label a few years ago. Now, picking up on that saintly venerating Moroccan music again, and in collaboration with Gania’s family, the label have chosen this moment of great turmoil (you could say it was a calm, healing balm just when we needed it most) to release a previously shrouded 90s cassette tape of entrancing communion and invocations from an artist rightly celebrated for pushing Gnawa beyond his hometown of Essaouira to an international audience. For one thing, Gania is celebrated for, perhaps, releasing the first ever Gnawa record, but also for working with such luminaries as Pharaoh Sanders, Bill Laswell and Santana.
The Islamic spiritual devotional poetry, dance and music of the Gnawa ethnic group – a group of Sub-Saharan people descended from slaves – this trance like sound is said to be one of the roots of the “blues” rhythm. Though a scion of the Islamic faith, this music is less restrictive in paying devotion and paean to a host of earthly saints and supernatural “mluk” (or “melk”). These abstract entities, the mluk, are represented by seven saints and seven colours; colours that “entrancer” dancers can wear in the form of robes or scarves. On the album’s bluesy, even jazzy threaded ‘Assamaoui’, those trancers wear blue in reference to the song’s sainted “Sidi Sma” (or “Samaoui”) and their implied ascendant relationship to the sky.
Gnawa is, in short, a music, culture of displacement because of its origins, but taken hold in Morocco, especially Gania’s home the key port of Essaouira, a strategically important fortress trading port on the country’s western coastine with the Atlantic. Gania’s home is where this set of recordings was made with an intimate setting of musicians. Though information remains scant, Berkley scholar and curator of the Moroccan Tape Stash blog Tim Abdellah attempts to dig deep and uncover the details; invited as he was to write the extensive liner notes and context for this special reissue. In fact, I’ve learnt a hell of a lot from his writing and scholarly notes on the subject. There’s even a translation of the exonerating call and response lyrics, which are often short lines of veneration for sainted shrines and deities that can be both combined with or sung in any order depending on occasion and mood.
Aicha, itself a reference to “she of many monikers”, a powerful female entity with untold mythical origins, is rich with the anticipated quivery strums and throbbing tensions of Gania’s “gumbari” – a camel-skin covered three-string lute. Bowed, stringy and incessant, but gentler and deeper than his playing on Colours Of The Night, Gania’s signature instrument weaves a nice bluesy accompaniment to his soulful exaltations. As always Gania’s gumbari lead is joined by the scuttled, scratchy tin paddled percussive rhythm of the iron castanets, the “krakebs”. It makes for a lively but soothing liturgy of entrancing adulation and praise.
Hypnotizing as always, with the galloping kept to a minimum, this spiritual six-track album is a Gnawa highlight, and a great place to begin discovering this immersive and special music. The label’s done another first class job of bringing this to a wider audience.
See also…
Maalam Mahmoud Gania ‘Colours Of The Night’ (here)
Houssam Gania ‘Mosawi Swiri’ (here)
Moulay Ahmed El Hassani ‘Atlas Electric’ (here)
Rodrigo Tavares ‘Congo’ (here)
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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