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.
The Monthly Playlist: February 2022: Animal Collective, Future Kult, Che Noir, Your Old Droog, Orlando Weeks…
February 28, 2022
PLAYLIST SPECIAL
An encapsulation of the last month, the Monolith Cocktail team (Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Graham Domain) chose some of the choicest and favourite tracks from February. It may have been the shortest of months, yet we’ve probably put together our largest playlist in ages: all good signs that despite everything, from Covid to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, artists, bands everywhere are continuing to create.
65 tracks, over 4 hours of music, February’s edition can be found below:
That exhaustive track list in full:::
Animal Collective ‘Walker’
Modern Nature ‘Performance’
Gabrielle Ornate ‘Spirit Of The Times’
The Conspiracy ‘Red Bird’
Cubbiebear/Seez Mics ‘All Friended Up’
Dubbledge/Chemo ‘Itchy Itchy’
Dirty Dike ‘Bucket Kicker’
Future Kult ‘Beasts With No Name’
Lunch Money Life ‘Jimmy J Sunset’
Ben Corrigan/Hannah Peel ‘Unbox’
Uncommon Nasa ‘Epiphany’
War Women Of Kosovo ‘War Is Very Hard’
Ben Corrigan/Douglas Dare ‘Ministry 101’
Sven Helbig ‘Repetition (Ft. Surachai)’
Ayver ‘Reconciliacion Con La Vida’
Lucidvox ‘Swarm’
Provincials ‘Planetary Stand-Off’
Wovenhand ‘Acacia’
Aesop Rock ‘Kodokushi (Blockhead Remix)’
Junglepussy ‘Critiqua’
Tanya Morgan/Brickbeats ‘No Tricks (Chris Crack) Remix’
Buckwild ‘Savage Mons (Ft. Daniel Son, Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon & Eto) Remix’
Che Noir ‘Praises’
Koma Saxo w/Sofia Jernberg ‘Croydon Koma’
Medicine Singers/Yontan Gat/Jamie Branch ‘Sanctuary’
Black Josh/Milkavelli/Lee Scott ‘Die To This’
Funky DL ‘I Can Never Tell (Ft. Stee Moglie)’
Mopes ‘Home Is Like A Tough Leather Jacket’
ANY Given TWOSDAY ‘Hot Sauce (Ft. Sum)’
Split Prophets/Res One/Bil Next/Upfront Mc/0079 ‘Bet Fred’
Nelson Dialect/Mr. Slipz/Vitamin G/Verbz ‘Oxford Scholars’
Immi Larusso/Morriarchi ‘Inland’
Homeboy Sandman ‘Keep That Same Energy’
Wax Tailor/Mick Jenkins ‘No More Magical’
Ilmiliekki Quartet ‘Sgr A*’
Your Old Droog/The God Fahim ‘War Of Millionz’
Ramson Badbonez/Jehst ‘Alpha’
Ghosts Of Torrez ‘The Wailing’
Pom Poko ‘Time’
Daisy Glaze ‘Statues Of Villians’
Orange Crate Art ‘Wendy Underway’
Seigo Aoyama ‘Overture/Loop’
Duncan Park ‘Rivers Are A Place Of Power’
Drug Couple ‘Linda’s Tripp’
Ebi Soda/Yazz Ahmed ‘Chandler’
Brian Bordello ‘Yes, I Am The New Nick Drake’
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets ‘Bubblegum Infinity’
Steve Gunn ‘Protection (Ft. Mdou Moctar)’
Jane Inc. ‘Contortionists’
Black Flower ‘Morning in The Jungle (Ft. Meskerem Mees)’
Jo Schornikow ‘Visions’
The Goa Express ‘Everybody In The UK’
Pintandwefall ‘Aihai’
Thomas Dollbaum ‘God’s Country’
Crystal Eyes ‘Don’t Turn Around’
Glue ‘Red Pants’
Super Hit ‘New Day’
Legless Trials ‘Junior Sales Club Of America’
Monoscopes ‘The Edge Of The Day’
Alabaster DePlume ‘Don’t Forget You’re Precious’
Orlando Weeks ‘High Kicking’
Carl Schilde ‘The Master Tape’
Bank Myna ‘Los Ojos de un Cielo sin Luz’
Park Jiha ‘Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans’
Simon McCorry ‘Interstices’
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:
Our Daily Bread 453: Dal:um ‘Similar & Different’
June 21, 2021
ALBUM REVIEW PIECE/Dominic Valvona
PHOTO CREDIT/Kim Shin Joong
Dal:um ‘Similar & Different’
(tak:til/Glitterbeat Records) 25th June 2021
Transforming, expanding and transporting the signature silken stringed sensibilities of Korea’s prominent traditional instruments, the ‘gayageum’ and ‘geomungo’, two of those zither-like instruments’ contemporary practitioners draw upon their studies and training to sonically paint new serial emotionally and contemplative suites.
Finding a congruous home on Glitterbeat Records’ Jon Hassell, ‘possible musics’, inspired imprint tak:til, Seoul-based musicians Ha Suyean and Hwang Hyeyoung weave, pluck and twang both intricate and broader calligraphy like brush strokes on their new album, Similar & Different. Those brush strokes I mention probably arise from the duo’s aesthetic influences, channeling as they do the ‘inherent dialogue (and harmony) between emptiness and fullness in traditional Asian painting’.
A balance ‘between traditional and experimental practices’, the Dal:um (the literal meaning of which is, ‘keep pursuing something’) partnership pushes a pair of 6th and 5th century instruments beyond the ancient Three Kingdoms of Korea landscape towards the often abstract and exploratory. For all the extraordinary freedoms of expression and amorphous pondering though, the often strange quivers, scrapes, flourishes and swishes of Suyean’s gayageum and Hyeyoung’s geomungo, and the adventurous stirrings and purposeful silences are all unmistakably Oriental: The 12-stringed (though regional variants expand that number from 18 to 25 strings) gayageum is said to have been created as a Korean version of the Chinese ‘guzheng’. And so you will probably recognise some strokes, tones and even melodies on an album of largely untethered possibilities.
Though melody and rhythm are kept to a minimum, this feels like a progressing performance that starts to flow and take shape, beginning as it does with the incipient preparation tuning of chimes and rings of ‘Dasreum’, before striking up an elasticated delicate momentum on the next track, the scenic ‘tal’.
Romantic, contemplative, sometimes courtly, the duo threads a balance between worlds and the senses in a sonic space in which the sighs, gaps and ambience in-between notes is just as important as any melody: more so in some cases.
Dal:um’s harmonically balanced album shares so much in common with the tak:til roster (especially fellow Korean artist, Park Jiha); blurring as it does the boundaries of tradition and something altogether futuristic; often unknown. They take those similar ancient instruments and perform something new and captivating: dreaming up timeless emotions and places with adroit calmness and piques of more quickened swishes, banjo-like springy tangles and Harpist ethereal flourishes.
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 390: Paper Birch ‘MORNINGHAIRWATER’
August 3, 2020
Review/Dominic Valvona
Paper Birch ‘MORNINGHAIRWATER’
(TAKUROKU) 5th August 2020
Mooning and pining through a caustic wall of fuzz, feedback and waning the cross-city, cross-border collaboration of Dee Sada and Fergus Lawrie articulate desire and heartbreak in a pandemic. Recorded during the lockdown, between the months of May and June, former primal yelping An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump D-bird and current member of NEUMES Sada and her Glasgow pen pal foil Lawrie, of cult Urusei Yatsura fame, meet up in the internet ether to construct both a chthonian and dreamy long-distance musical romance.
Pooling their resources together under the peeling bark lament of the Paper Birch tree the duo wistfully woo sweet discourse amongst an invocation of squalling scuzz, shoegaze, C86, drone space rock and post-punk; all of which they manage to wield to their own unique desires and plaintive resignation, in the face of a quarantined blues.
Sada’s signature softly cooed atmospheric translucent vocals prove a congruous fit with Lawrie’s deeper, more grunge-y despondency; sounding at times like Psycho Candy era Jesus And Mary Chain in harmonious matrimony with Mazzy Star, or, the Pop Group hooks up with MBV. Sada often ventures out solo on this gauzy album, lulling diaphanous heartache like an apparition. This brilliant pairing sound like star-crossed lovers in duet mode, poetically, if sometimes forlornly, missing the other’s company. This love can be creepy and Gothic too, with the duo conjuring up a vision of Jason Pierce’s Spiritualized tuning into a lunar radio broadcast as Sada lurks in a moonlit serenaded graveyard on ‘Cemetery Moon’, and acts the part of a lamenting phantom on ‘Elegy (As We Mourn)’. The veiled, almost submerged, supernatural dreamscape ‘Hide’ even slips into the Lynchian. Less morbid, the duo wistfully ties Lou Reed, Suicide and the Spacemen 3 together on the leather surf entanglement ‘I Don’t Know You’.
Despite a cursed language of disenchantment, and even the metaphorical pained heartbreak of poisoned relationships, plus a tumult of stressed white noise and distorted guitar contouring Sada and Lawrie swoon in beautifully fragile harmony throughout this experimental album. London and Glasgow sensibilities and beautiful morose come together to add something different to the vaporous influences that have inspired it. A barbed romance and set of mentally fatigued musings set in anxious times, MORNINGHAIRWATER marks a divine conjuncture between its creators; a baptism not only for Paper Birch but Café OTO’s newly formed label platform TAKUROKU. I really hope that both parties continue to pursue this successful union, as this burgeoning effort is fast becoming one of my favorite records of 2020.
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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