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 Revue: March 2024
March 28, 2024
ALL THE CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH
From the discombobulated and sublime to the sound of AI in the death throes of a nervous breakdown, all tastes are covered, all borders breached on the Monthly Revue: Our chance to compile the best representation of the last month’s choice music, with tracks from both reviews and those we didn’t get time to feature but piqued our interest. Those picks come from myself, Dominic Valvona, plus Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Graham Domain.
Without further ado, here’s the link and full track list:::
Augusto Martelli & The Real McCoy ‘Calories’
Avalanche Kaito ‘Tanvusse’
Amateur Cult ‘Eyes’
Ill Considered ‘Linus With The Sick Burn’
Rosie Tee ‘Night Creature’
Circe ‘Blue Love’
Diamanda Galas ‘A Soul That’s Been Abused (Live)’
Madison McFerrin ‘God Herself (Tune-Yards Remix)’
Laetitia Sadier ‘Une Autre Attente’
Mark Trecka ‘New Dreaming Gestures’
Curling ‘Hi-Elixir’
NAH ‘People Lie And Suck’
Blu & Shafiq Husayn Ft. MED/THurz/YaH-Ra ‘We Bang’
Pastense & Uncommon Nasa ‘The Ills’
Cookin Soul/The Musalini/Tha God Fahim ’92 Olympics’
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Hang Tuff’
Mark E Moon ‘Daylight’
Renelle 893 & Bay29 ‘Art Thief’
Leaf Dog ‘Till I’m Clocking Out’
Dave Harrington/Max Jaffe/Patrick Shiroishi ‘Dance Of The White Shadow And Golden Kite’
Twin Coast ‘to feel (Donkey Basketball Remix)’
Cumsleg Borenil ‘exis-ANENCE-sixe, Exis Constraint’
Colin Johnco ‘L’air qui danse’
Lou Lyne & The Blue Almond Project ‘Saudade Tactia’
Luce Mawdsley ‘Latex Feather’
Charlie Risso ‘Good Track’
NCD Instigators ‘Shark Attack’
Felix Machtelinclx ‘Buwigabuwi’
Sinerider ‘Glowing’
Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘What They Love’
Arushi Jain ‘You Are Irresistible’
Leonidas & Hobbes ‘Space Raga’
Regulat Henry (Moses Rockwell & Plain Old Mike) Ft. Dezmatic ‘Pedal Boat’
Homeboy Sandman ‘Do It Right’
Jynx716 & Che Noir ‘Second Impression’
Omniscence Ft. Toz Torcha ‘Stage Presence’
Mega Ran & Jermiside ‘Drop’
ZA! & Perrate ‘Steve Kahn’
Christian Wittman ‘Birth And Death Of An Unknown Star’
Andrew Heath & Mi Cosa de Resistance ‘Until We Meet Again’
Society Of The Silver Cross ‘Wife of the Sea – Temple Hymns Vol 1’
group O ‘ThickO/not thee brightest spark in ur Fukushima plant (37.3920666, 141.0749483)’
Alison Cotton ‘Crepuscule’
Our Daily Bread 602: Eamon The Destroyer, Ex-Norwegian, St James Infirmary, K. Board & The Skreens…
November 24, 2023
THE INIMITABLE BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA DELIVERS HIS VERDICT ON A NEW HAUL OF RELEASES FROM THE LAST MONTH (all of which are available now, unless stated otherwise)
___/SINGLES-EPS\___
Oopsie Daisies ‘Weird Topangas’
(Metal Postcard Records)
The Oopsie Daises are back with another slice of charming pop, replacing their normal Field Mice jangle with two equally charming synth pop ditties, both recalling the 80s synth boom with a charm and freshness that, in fact, gives a new meaning to the saying, “fresh as a Daisy”, as “fresh as an Oopsie Daises” will now sprout forth from the old English caricature of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and a whiff of tea made with tea leaves (not bags), and a season of it being forever Autumn (not the 70s hit from War Of The Worlds). I might add, this is a double-sided beauty that really should grace a 7-inch vinyl single and be bought from Woolworths with your pocket money on a Saturday after a hellish week of school. Yes, a single to make and break a schoolboy’s heart. But sadly those days are over and all we have left is an occasional burst of the magic of pop to make both us feel both young and old, and will bring a slight smile to your face and a tear to your eye.
K. Board & The Skreens ‘Gorillino’
(Metal Postcard Records)
A wonderful pop song, not just tuneful, experimental and funky, but also very catchy indeed; a song I would expect to be drifting from BBC6 music if BBC6 music actually did what it was put on air to do, which is play experimental cutting edge alternative pop. But saying that, nowadays you are more likely hear the Small Faces than a new and upcoming band: I will not hold my breath. But anyway, it is a fine track filled with adventure and charm.
No Drama ‘No Drama EP’
(Hidden Bay Records)
This Debut EP by French indie band No Drama, called No Drama, is actually not just full of drama but also melodies and pure guitar surge (Surge Gainsbourg maybe). Actually it’s more Wedding Present on “Exit”. It has some rather excellent lyrics too. And it’s quite nice also to hear a French bands’ point of view on Brexit, as we Brits on the whole can now agree what a huge mistake it was; and it would also be a huge mistake not to partake in this rather excellent five-track beauty of indie guitar joy. One of my fave eps of the year perhaps.
___/ALBUMS\___
St James Infirmary ‘Abandoned’
(Cruel Nature Records)
I love this album. It’s an album full of beautifully written indie, country, folk songs: so what on earth is their not to love? An album that brings to mind Dylan, The Weather Prophets, Hefner and Lee Hazelwood – especially on the rather splendid ‘Old Fashion Arms’; I am always a sucker for male/female duets as all the regular readers will know. And this one is a humdinger of a song, one worthy of Lee and Nancy.
It is nice to see and to hear that humour and heartache can still go hand-in-hand in this day of throwaway pop frippery, and Abandoned is an album to pop in your cassette player (if you are lucky enough to be one of the 35 purchasers to purchase it) and admire the wit and wisdom wrapped in country-ish melodies.
Look To The North ‘A Shadow Homeland’
(Cruel Nature Records)
The challenge of melancholia is laid down by the formation of grey clowns that gather over the blink of the child from yesterdays eye escapade, the subtle indifference from the bus driver, whether you catch the bus or miss the bus he really does not give a damn, to him it’s just another missed opportunity, another possible night of near passion from the lady in the bar who drinks too much but dreams even more, and dreams very rarely come true, but the drink can deaden the pain, takes off the edges, leaving a hazy smothered blanket of maybe one days. Music by Look To The North is very much like that. It is the soundtrack of everyday sadness and life in all its Technicolor greyness; a drone of a shallow puddle of rain inviting droplets of shared hopes and wishes; a glisten of the magic that occurs in everybody’s existence even if only very occasionally, and very occasionally sometimes can be enough.
Shplang ‘Thank You, Valued Customer’
(Big Stir Records) 1st December 2023
If I owned a jeep, or even in fact if I owned a jeep and could actually drive – no point in owning a jeep if you cannot drive the yellow bastard; yes I imagine the jeep to be yellow, why? I do not know. Anyway I digress – yes it is going to be one of those reviews when I go off in tangents, and really if you do not want to read one of those reviews I would stop reading now and go and buy Mojo and read about how good the new Bob Dylan album is, or how Paul and Ringo took a heartfelt Lennon demo and made it sound average.
If I had a yellow jeep and lived in a place where the sun shone and the streets were bustling with life, not a place that is grey and cold and the streets are paved with last night’s excesses, and the boarded shop doorways inhabited by the homeless, and the only gainful employment is being unemployed, in which this is where I do actually live: and actually, I’m making it sound better than it really is. But living in a sun drenched dreamlike state where yellow jeeps are plentiful, this is the kind of album I would have being played in aforementioned jeep; an album of wah-wah guitars and catchy choruses and the occasional beautiful baroque ballad – “Everyone Can Change” is like the Zombies covering a Wings track from the mid seventies or visa versa; anyway it is bloody beautiful. This is an album one can escape to whether you drive a yellow jeep or have a smack-head as a next-door neighbour; an album of wilful adventure and escape and one I am grateful exists at this point in time.
Eamon The Destroyer ‘We’ll Be Piranhas’
(Bearsuit Records)
The new album by Eamon The Destroyer is once again a trip through a strange old life; a life that involves espionage on a Man From Uncle scale, with 60s spy themes galore performed with a wit and wisdom only matched by the beauty and musical genre hopping extravagance not seen since John Peel dropped his record collection down three flights of stairs only to land at the feet of a 70s Tom O Conner who said, “I’ll name that tune in two”.
Yes indeed, a madness of electronica, psychedelia, dance and pop; at times sounding like an inspired Momus after indulging in sharing magic mushroom soup with Cornelius and Ivor Cutler. Yes, there is magic in these tracks that one can lie back and completely lose themselves in: a journey of selfless discovery.
Ex-Norwegian ‘Sooo Extra’
(Think Like A Key)
Sooo Extra is the 14th album from Ex Norwegian and like all the other Ex Norwegian albums I have heard it is a rather excellent affair full of pop hooks and has a lovely undercurrent of darkness, a bittersweet taste of songwriting savvy you really do not come across everyday: sadly.
They take in old new wave, power pop and alt rock and weave a mighty spell of spell weaver-y that has not been woven since that lost great album The Return Of The Rentals by the equally great Rentals. There is no justice in the music world, but if there were this would be album of the week on WFMU and the like. But as we know we can’t trust the radio. But dear readers trust your own instincts and gave this mighty diamond of a record a listen.
CSE Art Project ‘I Played This Cassette Till It Broke’
(Metal Postcard Records)
I am writing this review on the anniversary of John Peel’s death, which is quite apt as I Played This Cassette Till It Broke is a tribute to the influential DJ, one who has not, and in this day and age, will never be replaced.
It has a splendid moody guitar bass and drums instrumental with a sample running throughout of John Peel running down a Festive 50, which again is very apt as the song is released on Metal Postcard Records which is run by Sean Hocking who is also a DJ on Dandelion Radio, which is the station that was started in John Peel’s memory and the station that was officially handed the mantle of carrying on the Festive 50: so see how it all falls together.
Monthly Playlist Revue: July 2023
July 28, 2023
CHOICE MUSIC SELECTION FROM THE LAST MONTH ON THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL
TEAM EFFORT: DOMINIC VALVONA/MATT OLIVER/BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA/GRAHAM DOMAIN/ANDREW C. KIDD
The Monolith Cocktail Monthly playlist is a revue of the last month on the blog, plus those tunes we didn’t get time to review or feature: including Matt Oliver‘s special hip-hop selection. Curated as a musical journey by Dominic Valvona, there’s a huge diverse array of choice tunes from across the genres and the globe, collated from an amalgamation of posts by Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Graham Domain and Andrew C. Kidd.
THOSE TRACKS IN FULL ARE…
Habitat 617 Ft. Jack Slayta ‘Bricklayer’
Young Van Gundy Ft. Al Divino & Tha God Fahim ‘Fuyu No Senso’
J. Scienide & Napoleon Da Legend ‘Wind Parade’
Annie Taylor ‘Fucking Upset’
White Ring ‘Before He Took The Gun’
African Head Charge ‘Asalatua’
Mokoomba ‘Ndipe’
OKI ‘Tukinahan Kamuy’
Dip In The Dub ‘La Cumbia Del Sufi Que No Sabia Bailer’
Luiza Lian ‘Eu Estou Aqui’
Deja Blu ‘Crash’
It’s Karma It’s Cool ‘Vacations In A Taxi Cab’
Life Strike ‘Whip Around’
K-Nite 13 & Lee Scott Ft. Homeboy Sandman ‘Staple Junk’
The Moose Funk Squad ‘Abe Simpson’
Verb T & Vic Grimes ‘Your Heart Deserves’
SadhuGold ‘Fear Of A Black Yeti’
The Difference Machine ‘His Country’
Rusty Santos ‘Focus’
August Cooke ‘Shed With Me’
Maija Sofia ‘Telling The Bees’
Circe ‘My Boy Aphrodite’
Natalie Rose LeBrecht ‘Holy’
Hackedepicciotto ‘La Femme Sauvage’
Fat Frances ‘The Worm In The Wood’
Mike Gale ‘Summer Be Gone’
Stella Burns & Mick Harvey ‘My Heart Is A Jungle’
Emil Amos ‘Jealous Gods’
Oopsie Dasies ‘Illusioned-Broken Toys’
Zohastre ‘DUNE’ <THIS MONTH’S COVER ART STARS>
The Holy Family ‘Hell Born Babel’
The Dark Jazz Project ‘Jazz’
Healing Force Project ‘Inharmonious Layer’
Sebastian Reynolds ‘Cascade’
Caterina Barbieri ‘Sufyosowirl’
Ziur Ft. Abdullah Miniawy ‘Malikan’
Pierce Artists ‘Black Hooded Generals’
Stu Bangas & Chino XL ‘Who Told You’
Teflon/M.O.P. & DJ Premier ‘The Thoro Side’
Remulak & Moka Only ‘Starlings Green’
Jonny Wickham ‘Uncanny Valley’
Marty Isenberg ‘Life On Mars’
Gibralter Drakus ‘Exode Rural’
Las Mijas ‘Ronca (Carta Para Una Mija)’
ALBUM REVIEW
Dominic Valvona
Mauricio Takara and Carla Boregas ‘Grande Massa D’Agua’
(Hive Mind)
Nestled somewhere between the Brazilin oceanic coastline and the rainforest waterfalls’ of the interior, the impressive duo of Mauricio Takara and Carla Boregas embrace the replenishing vibes of water on their new album for the Hive Mind set.
Both foils in this electroacoustic avant-garde enterprise bring much to the water table, with Takara playing in the (highly recommended) São Paulo Underground, Hurtmold and MNTH set-ups but also involved in an array of sit-ins with such icons as the late Pharoah Sanders, the one-time mushroom mantra haiku Can front man Damo Suziki, and Acid Mothers Temple guardian Makoto Kawabata, and Boregas instigating the Rakto and Fronte Violeta projects, a soloist and founder of the experimental Brazilian venue AUTA and the Dama Da Noite label.
From the fringes of jazz, primitivism and electronica they pour that experience into the immersive, often mysterious, and otherworldly Grande Massa D’Agua set of peregrinations and ushering-ins of the elements.
Tightening, ratcheting, tinkled percussive tools that evoke the work of Walter Smetak sit with both singular bounced and more skittish drum rolls and tumbles across ceremonial, ritualistic, atavistic yet also futuristic invocations. São Paulo and its surrounding nature might be the catalyst but whole different auras and planes are summoned; some of which fall upon the realms of the kosmische and even Faust.
Amongst the rustles of grass, the circled ring of ceremonial bowls and drips of water hints of Aquiles Navarro and Jon Hassell-like trumpet linger on the veiled, textured air, all the while as the drums leap into action, rebounding off the rims and splashes of cymbal.
This is Art Ensemble Of Chicago via the Portico Quartet style jazz meets the percussive, rhythmic experiments and intuition of Valentina Magaletti and Ibn Battuta period Embryo. And yet as the sun rises on the horizon of this exotic landscape, we’re beamed almost into a lunar bending cosmos. Although the refracted, reversed and entrancing ‘Areia Preta’ feels like you’re at the centre of a hallucinatory dream.
Melodic parts emerge out of the avant-garde free-play throughout this both suffused and zigzag rhythmic skate, rattled, poured and chimed water world. The idea of kinetic type energy in the movement (at one point taking on the illusion of a steam chuffed train ride down loose tracks) and sense of progression offer a semblance of musicality and melody even in the middle of the most singular serialism-edging and abstract performances.
Deeply felt and convincing, Grande Massa D’Agua is both an intriguing and true measure of the duo’s quality, pushing at the elementals without losing the listener or thread. They delve with adroit skill and a curiosity for sounding the abstract, and succeed in creating a mysterious and evocative soundtrack.
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.
Kalporz X Monolith Cocktail: (Review) ÉLIANE RADIGUE ‘Occam XXV’
October 10, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW
Edoardo Maggiolo
In a synergy between our two great houses, each month the Monolith Cocktail shares a post (and vice versa) from our Italian pen pals at Kalporz. This month we relay Edoardo Maggiolo erudite piece on the latest project from the pioneering composer Éliane Radigue.
ÉLIANE RADIGUE ‘Occam XXV’
(Organ Reframed, 2022)
If you have ever stopped to look closely at any textile work, you will surely have noticed how, when seen up close, the filaments of the fabric draw textures and arabesques of subtle finesse. The same can be said of music: if we play a note and let it spread in the air, we realise how in reality this is a precious container of harmonics, true filaments of sound.
Few have explored this fundamental acoustic impression like Éliane Radigue, a French composer who has plunged into the study of sound over the course of several decades: first as a student at the Studio D’Essai in Paris, the former place of choice of the French Resistance and then immediately after the war it became both the national radio centre and the electroacoustic and concrete music laboratory of the pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry; then as a precursor to the study of tape feedback, and finally he was one of the leading voices of experimental electronics of the 70s thanks to her compositions for her modular ARP 2500 synthesiser, which she tenderly baptised with the name of Jules.
Today Éliane is a fresh ninety year old who lives in an apartment in Montparnasse and who for at least ten years has discovered the way to her fourth musical life, which began with the cycle of works dedicated only to acoustic instruments called Occam Ocean. Radigue writes with a particular instrument and a particular performer in mind; she invites the latter into her apartment, the two sniff each other a little and, if they like each other, she starts the job tête-à-tête.
Occam XXV is a composition for organ and features the French organist Frédéric Blondy as performer. Here the instrument is completely stripped of any past sacred majesty, becoming the protagonist of what appears to be an icy stasis, but which in reality, despite its bare structure, is a slow but constant emergence from dark and humid mists until it becomes ineffable flight. . If listened to with a receptive ear and not just lazily reclining, on the one hand you notice how within the timbral staff that makes up the piece there are hidden minimal rhythmic impulses, fluttering harmonics and precious subharmonics that make up the wave movement of the individual notes and that they are the real underwater vegetation of this superficially placid sound lake; on the other hand, how a melodic progression of meticulous musical indolence is slowly drawn which, with wise calm, reaches passages of concretely pure beauty. Only in this way is it possible, albeit with difficulty, to describe how in these forty-five minutes one passes almost imperceptibly from the timbral-oceanic depths of the first part to the sonic ascensions of the finale; and in this journey into the unfathomable, the organ is transfigured, looking as much a bubbling synthesiser as a string section with very acute timbres. An ascent of vibrations markedly faded with the sound that, once it reaches the top, transcends itself becoming silence.
Like a thoughtful walk, in which only when we regain the sense of reality do we realise where we have arrived, Occam XXV is the sound of small steps on an acoustic path of mysterious fullness, which challenges even the totally inexpressive form in which is presented. One of the greatest works of a composer who has lived for a lifetime in the only fundamental element of music: pure sound.
The Monthly Playlist: September ’22: No Age, The Beach Boys, Al-Qasar, King Kashmere, Sampa The Great, Yemrot….
September 30, 2022
PLAYLIST
TEAM EFFORT/CURATED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
After avoiding Covid for nearly two and a half years (with periods of shielding) I’ve finally succumbed to the dreaded virus this week. And it’s hit me hard. But because I’m such a martyr to the cause of music sharing I’ve managed to compile this eclectic bonanza of choice music from the last month.
The Monolith Cocktail Monthly features tracks from the team’s reviews and mentions, but also includes those tunes we’ve just not had the room to feature. That team includes me (Dominic Valvona), Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Andrew C. Kidd and Graham Domain.
We’ve supplemented the original audio playlist with a video version on our Youtube channel. This will feature a slightly different lineup (the electronic music collective Violet Nox’s ‘Senzor’ primer for one).
The full track list is as follows:
Dead Horses ‘Macabro’
Grave Goods ‘Source’
No Age ‘Compact Flashes’
Etceteral ‘Rome Burns’
Al-Qasar Ft. Jello Biafra ‘Ya Malak’
Clear Path Ensemble ‘Plazma Plaza’
Antonis Antoniou ‘Syntagi’
Ocelot ‘Vanha Hollywood’
The Beach Boys ‘You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone – Live At Carnegie Hall’
Rezo ‘Soemtimes’
Blue Violet ‘Favorite Jeans’
Teo Russo ‘Novembre’
Keiron Phelan & The Peace Signs ‘Guessing Game’
Micah P. Hinson ‘Ignore The Days’
Sonnyjim/The Purist Ft. MF DOOM & Jay Electronica ‘Barz Simpson’
Salem Trials ‘Just Give Up’
The Bordellos ‘Nurse The Screens!’
Legless Trials ‘Ray’s Kid Brother Is The Bomb’
S. Kalibre ‘Hip Hop World’
King Kashmere/Leatherette ‘G-Cell’
Depf/Linefizzy ‘Rain’
Isomonstrosity/645AR/John Lenox Ft. Danny Brown ‘Careful What You Wish For’
Tess Tyler ‘Try Harder’
Qrauer Ft. Anne Muller ‘Rund’
Sampa The Great Ft. W.I.T.C.H. ‘Can I Live?’
Rob Cave/Small Professor ‘Eastern Migration’
Salem Trials ‘Jc Cells’
Wish Master/Axel Holy Ft. Wundrop ‘FLIGHT MODE’
Alexander Stordiau ‘Nothing’s Ever Acquired’
Simon McCorry/Andrew Heath ‘Mist’
Andrei Rikichi ‘At Home I Hammer Ceramic Golfing Dogs’
OdNu ‘My Own Island’
Floorbrothers ‘In Touch’
Conformist X H O R S E S ‘Heddiw’
Slim Wrist ‘Milk Teeth’
Forest Robots ‘Everything Changes Color With The Rainfall’
Noah ‘Odette’
Yara Asmar ‘there is a science to days like these (but I am a slow learner)’
Tess Tyler/Spindle Ensemble ‘Origami Dogs (Graphic Score Interpretation)’
Christina Vantzou/Michael Harrsion/John Also Bennett ‘Piano On Tape’
Yemrot ‘Big Tree’
NOVEL SERIALISATION
AUTHOR: RICK ACV
Following in the wake of his debut novel THE GREAT IMMUREMENT, which we serialised during the summer of 2020, Vukovar helmsman Rick ACV now follows up with the surreal, esoteric and challenging Astral Deaths & Astral Lights. Playing with format, language, font, with half-thoughts of waking hours and occult merge with dream-realism and a languid sense of discomfort: a sorry state of existence. William Blake and Austin Osman Spare meet Kōbō Abe in the hotel lobby portal of the never-world: personal and universal.
Part One now follows:
THE ASCENDER/DESCENDER
I am The Ascender/Descender of the Lord’s ladders. I get no closer nor further away from Him and His glory; these steps go sideways.
I am an angel, continually changing the affairs of man.
I die nightly and daily there is less of me.
This will continue until there will be less than nothing left.
I
The conscious part of the mind is useless; it only serves to reinforce the separation between ourselves and that which we desire.” – Austin Osman Spare.
This is how to misinterpret and misunderstand someone and something.
Then:
“Rest uneasy.
Consciousness as a forfeit-too-far.
The body’s surrender to silent sleep is not something to underestimate nor un-understand.
____ has begun to experience something disarming in its simple explicity and with an overwhelming lack of disturbation to make this a truly unpleasant experience:
Faces appear. Faces appear in the mind’s eye. Faces unrecognized. Faces constantly morphing into each other, hundreds in number, maybe more. They are as detailed as if they were in the extreme presence.
The faces start to bring a warm feeling of familiarity – the process of the passing of awareness. Lulled. Now. Now it comes. Now as the faces change and interfere with one another’s faces, sleep is on its way.
Only it isn’t sleep.
How can it be?”
This is what I found on a piece of paper in some forgotten pocket. I say forgotten but for how long it has been neglected I have little-to-no-idea. There are those places that drift into view through the mist and the grey-light and you have little clue as to where from and what for they came. You will tell yourself that they are a portal to another world. They must be, as they give something that alters your world-view so drastically that they cannot exist permanently within this world. That’s what the neglected pocket is. And that’s from where the paper did come. Only now, it isn’t paper. It is a recollection of something that is happening right this second, even. As this is being read by whoever’s eyes may be reading, it is also being written by the author long dead. The literal sense of the author being long dead will far outlast the metaphysical.
“It’s a fundamental flaw in the human condition that we appreciate beauty only in absence. We are stars that died centuries ago and our love and light is only fully absorbed after the final fade out. A pin prick in the night sky, a microscopic peephole into heaven. I find myself looking up at the sky in the kind of cold winter night that briefly recharges my belief in the value of existence hoping that through one of these peepholes I will catch a glimpse of your face.” – Daniel Shea.
Every night is the changing of the faces before ascending/descending into the other lands, other places – other people.
Maybe just as an observer, but it doesn’t feel that way.
This is exhausting.
This is all consuming.
This is life-threatening; as The Ascender/Descender, I become far removed from the usual world, to reside in the constant present.
The Constant Present:
A place with no consequence no matter the action. The past cannot be rewritten through changing eyes nor waves of fury. All futures remain an imaginary and far away world.
THE LADDERS
I awake in the body of the dejected and in the mind of the cunning.
I recall the conversation with my blind Father from yesterday and I move with ease from the scorched ground, away from his bitterness and into the bright sunlight that forms a halo around this Earth. The promise that the Holy warmth fills me with is sudden and I know I will one day be the victor.
I have a feeling that my victory will soon be of little consequence.
The first steps upon my journey are undertaken and the hard ground feels welcoming underfoot, I have reassurance from the single, solitary trees that line the path also, as I know there will be place-to-rest within their shade should I need it. A shade within their shade, a sculpture by the sculptor.
Things quickly change, as though in a dream.
What sets this feeling off and the feeling of inconsequential victory is a sudden glimmer in the sky, as though the clouds are glinting and sparkling and shimmering.
It can’t be a dream. I know I am not myself but I know that this self is Their self. There is no disconnect.
This must be a visitation.
The destination moves towards me and I needn’t approach.
I look more closely at the shimmering sky and the little bursts of light; it begins to form waves of awe, waves of silver-white Godly brilliance and I am moved to almost-tears. I cry out, a noise that I have never before heard from myself. His compassion rains and reigns down over and upon my sacrificial spirit, as right before me appears and disappears a Great Ladder. Its shape and form can only be made out by the agitated atmosphere that surrounds it, and I notice the world that was around me has melted away into the unveiling.
Everything comes into focus and the spectre of His love comes clear; the extent of his intent of creation is now known within me and the purpose of his Angels brightens the flesh under my flesh as I observe the moving up and down, passing through their other selves.
Blessed be the path between Heaven and Earth.
Blessed be the Angels, ascending and descending to and from bodies and lives.
Blessed be Me; I understand now that I am one amongst the many Angels Of Light that give cause to the lives of all, the perpetual movement between bodies, the constant Hand in the Constant Present.
I don’t forget the argument with my Father as I am armed with more than just my cunning now.
II
To sleep and to never have to wake. To wake and to never have to sleep. That would be the dream. To be in a constant, secure state and to be exempt from eternal flux is a set of circumstances, I imagine, that would yield a lifetime of peace and contentment.
I do not have a care for the unambition behind this.
I have little enough feeling on anything in the usual world as it is that the idea of having to fake guilt and guiltiness seems too much like an inconvenience.
My absence in the usual world may well be with its setbacks – mostly minor. I’m aware but have such little interest that I’d much prefer to defer to another note. I don’t really know where they come from, but they handily explain my ascensions and descensions. The ladder itself and the actual Astral Dances are fine within my control. These scraps, however, assist the very Innerself to easily given and easily forgotten unexplanations.
This note:
“The ladder is not a physical image and thing and device, but metaphysical.
That said, a literal interpretation is best suited.
It can’t be explained why.
…
In fact, this makes no sense whatsoever.
…
When _____ slept, was his vision of those angels on that path so on-the-nose?
It is hard to believe a creation that touches the Glory Of God can be so unimaginative and so plain.
What are these steps, then, and how do they appear to _____ as they are traversed?
The Death Of The Author will hereby be leaned on (again and always), as perfect an excuse as there Ever-Was and Ever-Will and Ever-Is.
And now
After all this straying
The path becomes lit once more with a fantastical and strictly Holy sense of wonder.”
I am so alone. I stare at the ceiling. I can’t understand the time of the day. You’re so alone. We’re all so, so alone.
This house is a home but I feel like vermin. I didn’t wash today. Again. And now the day is over. Again. I don’t want to sully the fresh-scented sheets. That could be my excuse.
I could just sit and wait and pass through the darkness at the close of day and avoid the coming transformation.
Light or dark, it will still happen, I remind Ourselves.
Myself.
“Lie back and take it like a man.”
Here are the faces.
Here comes the shift.
Here is Thee Transformation.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
Our Daily Bread 526: Jill Richards/Kevin Volans ‘Etudes’
July 11, 2022
ALBUM REVIEW
Andrew C. Kidd
Jill Richards/Kevin Volans ‘Études’
(Diatribe Records)
Kevin Volans is probably most famous for the 1984 Kronos reworking of White Man Sleeps. His beginnings in South Africa to the Neue Einfacheit (in English, New Simplicity) of West Germany with the theorist Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose seminal sine-waves and soundscapes shaped the landscape we understand in electronic music today, are well-documented. The Man With Footsoles of Wind, an opera about the enterprise of the influential poet Arthur Rimbaud in Ethiopia, remains very much on my ‘listening wishlist’. Volans is obviously a musicologist. He is undoubtedly a modernist. This is 2022. He has offered us Études, a collection of his own previously unreleased solo piano works performed by Jill Richards and a second-half where he performs Liszt. The listener has been invited into “a sound world” with “extremely complex and challenging arrangements”. There is also an allusion to twenty fingers playing, rather than ten. These are just some of the insights that accompany the liner notes. My following review reflects the two halves of this collection.
Jill Richards plays Kevin Volans
An étude is a short piece of music that demonstrates skill. The skill is in the composition as well as the performance. Jill Richards, an accomplished pianist and long-standing collaborator of Volans, opens with the Second Étude. It is a rift of split chords and dissociated notation. There are mirroring moments: chords that delve inwards, returning later at varying degrees, but never selfsame. The piece is steady but not stately. It is measured, and open. Throughout this first half, this openness, or rather, these open spaces, are particularly evident on the Seventh Étude where the musical interstices are left unfilled. He also offers more fleeting movements such as the brushed-stabs that flee as harmonic echoes on the Fourth Étude and the alarm-like opening to the First Étude. The latter piece has a walk-around dance motif which toes lightly over the weighty bass clef. Volans opts to juxtapose the tempos of his works on Études. He presses for accelerando whilst raising the reins of decelerando. The icy and pointed Third Étude marks a sudden departure from the glacial kinesia of the Second Étude. The notes of the former rise and fall. Nothing is sequential. There is rhythmic abandonment, best evidenced by the First Étude. The Sixth Étude is an example of anti-meter. It quietly stirs. The Seventh Étude is periodic and concludes by disintegrating completely.
Kevin Volans plays Franz Liszt
From the glissandos that flitter away like rippling caustics of light through water on Fountains Of The Villa D’este to the sweeping whorl of Transcendental Étude No 11 Harmonies Du Soir, Volans captures the beauty and rhythmic complexity of Lizst. On Cypresses Of The Villa D’este, a padding crescendo presses and stresses and accentuates. Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s Liebestod (from the German, liebe, love, and tod, death) was originally the concluding act to Wagner’s operatic drama, Tristan und Isolde. The famous five-note motif is delicately played by Volans. The lovers are beside one another. The piano slowly grows, the tremolandi becomes stronger, the accelerando pulses, the appassionato intensifies. There is quiet transfiguration in its concluding major key. Here Isolde is weeping over the dead Tristan. The calando that Volans plays out continues to emanate away into the lull and loft of her tears that river and mouth and basin. The theme is solemn, yet the piano notes wave and glint away like sun-glitter. The listener is carried outwards to drift on this sonorous and sonic sea. My water metaphor was inspired by the libretto from Tristan: “ertrinken, versinken, – unbewusst, – höchste Lust!” (in English, “to drown, to founder – unconscious – utmost bliss!”).
I consider Études to be a diptych. Volans showcases his pianistic skill and appreciation of the transformative romanticism of Liszt. There is catharsis in the atonality and arrhythmia of his preceding compositions that blow open like air. In the interstitial spaces of each half, he beckons the listener into darkness, yet ultimately bathes us in light.
WORDS: Dominic Valvona
Mai Mai Mai Ft. Vera di Lecce ‘Fimmene Fimmene’
Released through Maple Death Records ahead of the May released album Rimorso
Drawn once more towards the Apulia corner of Italy’s deep south – the jiggered stiletto-like heel of the country’s roughly contoured boot – the Italian experimental electronic and noise artist Mai Mai Mai conjures up another extraordinary vision of gothic ethnological collective toil and ethereal voiced mirages with his brand new single.
Premièred ahead of the ‘colossal’ double-album Rimorso (released 20th May) ‘Fimmene Fimmene’ summons up the spirited protestations of the women labouring in the tobacco fields as part of an extended sonic and vocal psychogeography of Italy’s southern Mediterranean regions. Following in the wake of previous scopes in this area, Mai Mai Mai’s signature blend of southern Italian folklore, industrial drone, proto-techno and punishing miasmic electronica is wiped clean, the heavy sampling and sound manipulations of the past shed with a focus now on the human. And so, as this intoxicating invocation proves, the collaborative door is left wide open to an array of mostly fellow Italian foils, contributors who use both their voices and instruments to transform and investigate Italy’s past and traditions. Step right up the Salento siren priestess Vera di Lecce whose incredible translucent wraith evocations channel not just the traditional but the supernatural and the magical too. A vocal and dance performance member of the lauded ethnic electrifying ensemble Nidi d’Arac turn prolific soloist with a penchant for making magical aggressive synth and exotic percussive potions, and practitioner of the age-old dances of the Apulia, now recasts one of its protest songs as Mai Mai Mai lays down a reverberated pronounced drum beaten march, haunted and scented atmospherics and crystal synthesised shimmers, sparkles.
A two-way mirror between worlds; a communion with troubled souls, ‘Fimmene Fimmene’ is a beautiful hallucination of the mysterious and sorrowful, which you can now experience for yourselves:
The inaugural single from the upcoming double-album is just one piece of a greater work that sees the noted artist morph our understanding of traditions and nostalgia.
An album of deep re-interpretive connective Italian collaborations – with the exceptions of the brilliant maverick Mike Copper, on ‘Mediterranean Gothic’, and the Beirut-born Youmna Saba, on the thematic ‘Nostalgia’ – Mai Mai Mai revisits a piece by the Puglia polyphony voiced female quartet Faraulla with the Rome-based techno-outsider Cosimo Damiano and percussionist ensemble Ars Ludi, on the track ‘Sind’; invites Nziria to hover over the slow thump chopper pulsating techno serenade ‘Musica Nova’, a loosely based vision of the Musicanova orchestra’s own ‘Pizzica Minore’. The album is bookended by the visceral voice of electro-Arabian-punkster Maria Violenza (the solo project alias of the Rome-based Cristina Cusimano), on the obscure folk transformation, reconfigured as a southern gothic mix of enchanted filtered choir and hypnotic voodoo drumming, ‘Secondo Coro Delle Lavandaie’, and ‘Antiche Memorie’, which features longtime Franco Battiato foil, the percussionist and composer Lino Capra Vaccina.
Rimorso promises to be a whole ‘new ritual’ that turns absence into presence; dismantling nostalgia for consummation, framed as an immersion into the ‘temporal disjunction we are experiencing through the essence of (the) human fabric’. You can order that album here.
Mai Mai Mai also has the following dates set-up for a April tour with GNOD:
Apr 6th – GENT @ TREFPUNT
Apr 7th – UTRECHT @ DB’s
Apr 8th – PARIS @ ESPACE B
Apr 9th – NANTES @ LES ATELIERS DE BITCHE
Apr 11th – LYON @ LE SONIC
Apr 12th – ZURICH @ HELSINKI
Apr 13th – GENEVE @ LA CAVE12
Apr 15th – RAVENNA @ BRONSON
Apr 16th – VERONA @ COLORIFICIO KROEN
Apr 17th – NOVA GORICA @ MOSTOVNA
Apr 18th – LJUBLJANA @ GALA HALA
Apr 19th – WIEN @ CHELSEA
Apr 20th – BRNO @ KABINET MUZ
Apr 21st – PRAHA @ UNDERDOGS
Apr 22nd – BERLIN @ URBAN SPREE
Apr 25th – BRUXELLES @ MAGASIN 4
Apr 26th – BREDA @ MEZZ
Apr 27th – LILLE @ LA MALTERIE
Mai Mai Mai is the nom de plume of Toni Cutrone, occasional foil of GNOD and one of both Italy and the wider EU’s most well known experimental artists. Highly prolific, Toni’s released music through Boring Machines, Yerevan Tapes, Not Not Fun, God Unknown, Instruments Of Discipline, La Tempesta International and now the Maple Death label, and worked with a myriad of artists that includes Lina Capra Vaccina, Luciano Lamanna, go Dugong and Maria Violenza. There’s also been various music scores for documentaries, short movies and a project with the fashion house Gucci.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 