A March Digest: Lonnie Liston Smith, Saba Alizadeh, Crime And The City Solution, Faust Tapes, Brian Bordello…
March 9, 2023
New Music on our radar, news and archive spots
Dominic Valvona
A new thread, feed for 2023, the Digest pulls together tracks, videos and snippets of new music plus significant archival material and anniversary celebrating albums or artists. The March edition features new sounds from Lonnie Liston Smith, Saba Alizadeh, Benedict Benjamin, Sebastian Reynolds, Brian Bordello,…plus from the Archives, a tenth anniversary piece on Crime And The City Solution’s 2013 rebirth ‘American Twilight’, and 50th anniversary piece on the Faust Tapes.
NEW MUSIC IN BRIEF
Lonnie Liston Smith ‘Cosmic Change’
(Jazz Is Dead)
Smooth soulful vibes, bulb-like notes and cosmic fanning rays from the great jazz-funk doyen Lonnie Liston Smith, who is set to release his first album in 25 years! Thanks to the overseeing facilitators of the enriching Jazz Is Dead label project, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad have coaxed the legendary artist, ensemble bandleader and sideman for such impressive luminaries as Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri and Leon Thomas, back into the studio; just one of many great names from the spiritual, conscious and funky-jazz rolls of inspiring talents.
Co-composing and collaborating with their chagrin Younge and Muhammad both work in the old magic with a sense of the new and forward; paying homage yet creating something new, performing the very kinds of influential music that had an impact on those who came later, namely the hip-hop fraternity (Jazzmatazz era Guru and the Digable Planets being just two such notable collaborators and acolytes).
I can’t wait to get a hold of the full deal.
Lonnie Liston Smith JID017 is due out on the 28th April 2023.
Saba Alizadeh ‘Nafir (Clamour)’
(30M Records)
A very special, politically important vivid visual and musical statement from the evocative Iranian artist-composer and reputable virtuoso kamancheh (Iranian spike fiddle) player, Saba Alizadeh, ‘Nafir’ (or “Clamour”) is a metaphorical, symbolic encapsulation on life during the recent uprisings. Set in motion after the callous killing of Mahsa Amini and the strict authoritarian imposition of Islamic law and the violation of women’s right, last year’s protests in Iran were brutally crushed – with a number of executions carried out on the most tenuous of charges. And, if it couldn’t get much worse, there’s been an escalation of mass poisonings in girl’s schools throughout the country. The war in Ukraine, a continued war of words with the West over Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the growing pains of the economy have done all they can to bury the attention, brave opposition and movement for change since the initial spark in July of 2022.
As a reminder to the pain and suffering of that movement, Alizadeh has released this touching and moving video and electroacoustic suite. You can read his statement and press blurb below, which explains the thinking, process behind this incredible track.
“Nafir” is the sound of a million outcries channeled through the ancient string instrument Kamancheh” says composer and musician Saba Alizadeh about his latest single. “It’s the voice of the shed tears and blood”.
His instrument, the Kamancheh is said to be resemble the spectrum of the human voice, and it’s why he used it prominently in this piece as a metaphor for singing, for the gathered voices and cries of the oppressed, fighting against the darkness, the oppressor, here represented by the rhythm section.
Alizadeh explains: “This section is based on the rhythms of T’azie (traditional religious mourning ceremonies during shia commemoration Ashura) but at the same time resembles the sound of explosions (the sound that became the soundtrack of our lives in Iran for the past 5 months) and a respirator machine. It is at the same time a spray paint can that is writing slogans on walls or wiping them out.
At some point in the piece the rhythm section crescendos and tries to distort and destroy the kamancheh melody but it is not able to.”
In the video which is masterfully implemented by visual artist Siavash Naghshbandi, the voice of the Kamancheh and the beam of light interact with each other: the louder the voice of the kamancheh gets the brighter the beam becomes. It battles with the rhythm section and a metaphoric swarm of Kalashnikov bullets (as a universal sign of oppression). The finale gives hope: the cry of the Kamancheh and the warm bright light succeed defeating the bullets, the darkness and oppression.
Benedict Benjamin ‘Furlough Blues’
I’m not sure I could put it better, but the high anxiety of the Covid era is as Benedict Benjamin (formerly of The Mariner’s Children and Peggy Sue) puts it, channeled through a merger of the Byrds, Electrelane and DJ Shadow. Folk bluesy pop meets the psychedelic the roll of breakbeats and even an echo of jazz on a pandemic journal that’s almost wistfully disarming in its vocal delivery.
Featured a while back in Brian Bordello’s column (and making last month’s choice music playlist), Benjamin has now painstakingly produced a video for the song, the first in a series of such visual storytelling accompaniments to songs taken from the upcoming Tunnel album (released in June). A mix of collage and stop motion, the Furlough Blues video is a visual metaphorical feast of rocketed lighthouses and “evil catholic altars” that blast off towards the moon and fly across various digests, magazine backgrounds, beaming out their light.
Since that video’s official drop last week, Benjamin has released another single ‘White Noise’, which moves the music into another psychedelic folksy indie direction: “Elliott Smith crossed with Serge Gainsbourg” as Benjamin puts it. Have a listen here:
Abel Ray Remixes Sebastian Reynolds ‘Cheptegei’
A simmered techno reverberated dance vision of polymath composer and long-distance runner Sebastian Reynolds’ most recent athletics-euphoric and travailed inspired ‘Cheptegei‘ by Abel Rey, has just been dropped on Youtube. Feel the itching electronic vibes as Rey builds up a sophisticated remix of the homage to the 5000M Ugandan superstar Joshua Kiprui Cheptegei. The original version appeared on Seb’s Athletics EP last May, but there’s news of a new album, Canary, being released this summer.
Lunar Bird ‘Creatures’
I just have room to mention the latest diaphanous dream-pop single and video from those heavenly creatures Lunar Bird. Beach House with a taste of Italy and Cardiff, the brilliant, beautifully captivating group, swayed and floated along by Roberta Musillami‘s charming lush vocals, have been a mainstay of the Monolith Cocktail for a few years now. Once more they beguile and charm, even with the most plaintive and yearning of themes, on this infectiously spellbound new song. You don’t need much more than that…just give it your time and embrace the Lunar Birds magic.
NEW MUSIC/LONGER READ HIGHLIGHT
Brian Bordello ‘Songs For Cilla To Sing’
(Think Like A Key Music)
It is telling that Brian Bordello uses the title of a famous and lauded book/movie that depicts the desperation of a diorama of washed-up, failed characters willing to die in the course of winning a dance marathon, and so gaining the attentions of those who might save them from a life of pure poverty (and worst of all, obscurity and irrelevance) in America’s great depression. Horace McCoy ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They’ melodrama, later turned into a film by Sidney Pollock almost forty years later in 1969, reflects the Shea Family patriarch and instigator of the Bordellos and soloist’s own, against all odds, desperations to get noticed; leading to one of the great “what ifs” in rock ‘n’ roll’s annals.
As ridiculous as it may seem on the surface, the lower than lo fi (making Sparklehorse sound like a flash git bombastic ELO in comparison), nee no fi King of the well-worn Tascam four-track and St. Helens idiosyncratic Les Miserable, was only one person away on the Venn diagram of Cilla Black’s orbit. His potential songbook of flange-y distorted (more through low grade recording techniques) and curmudgeon demos did make its way to the, then retired from singing, Liverpool songbird – in the three or four decades before her death more the star of TV presenting and hosting than performer.
We don’t know what the late Cilla made of it; the 80s Merseyside via Manc diy, C86 and Jason Pierce-echoed hushed unrequited and lovesick pop musings of Brian, recorded on the most basic of bog-standard equipment.
And yet, the aphorism, puns, and “desperation” prove melodically heart aching, touching and, above all, truthful. Use your imagination. Replace that guitar with a conducted orchestra, a touch of Abbey Road professionalism, and you can easily hear the one-time hatcheck girl personality turn songstress belt out some of these lamentable odes. Especially such fair as the shabby rain-washed ‘Betrayal’ and the vibraphone-like chimed ‘Impossible’. Saying that, the creepier, wallowed and spanked ‘Not Such A Bad Girl’ could easily be a nun-habit frocked Marianne Faithful number, and the lo fi breezy, almost continental bastardised, Paris meets Entertaining Mr. Sloan, ‘Handsome Jacques’ isn’t a million miles away from any Gauloise-fawned chanteuses of the 60s Belle Époque era.
Of course for me, as Brian’s editor at the Monolith Cocktail (our Brian has now been furnishing us with his reviews for the last four years or more) but also as a fan and obvious insider, I know and hear his passion for the spirit of a purer, more personality driven rock ‘n’ roll, and for the pop symphonies, ballads of such starlets and characters as Cilla and her generation. A nostalgia perhaps for simpler times, but also for a time when there was such a thing as the working classes getting on in the music and arts industries. That despite living it rough with a bog in the brick outhouse, no central heating and the fact you had to entertain yourself in those days, the greatest changes, such icons could reign.
And so this songbook is as much about the past as it is in catapulting another working class talent onto a bigger stage: hopefully through such patronesses as Cilla. That wasn’t to be of course, and so Brian continues to drag his arse up the coalface of obscurity each week. Saying that, as part of the American label Think Like A Key Music’s diy series, this album has had a small flourish of popularity, even making some lo fi amazon chart the other week. For a Collection of Cilla demos – some since released and transformed on other Bordellos releases – lost down the back of a proverbial sofa, it’s done quite well. If imagining Brian Epstein inviting Ian McCulloch to front The Tremolos, or The Red Crayola, Spaceman 3 and a budget Inspiral Carpets time-travelled back to 1962 sounds like one incredible proposition, then this songbook is for you. Unguarded, heart-on-the-sleeve honesty, pity and yet always with a wry sense of humour, Brian has conjured up a brilliant album: possibly despite himself. A national destitution, his name should join the pantheon of such notable mavericks as Stevie R. Moore, Roky Erickson and Saint Julian of Cope.
ARCHIVES/ANNIVERSARY
Crime And The City Solution ‘American Twilght’
(Mute Records) 2013
The second/third/fourth rebirth, incarnation of the iconic cult Crime And The City Solution was launched in 2013 with, perhaps, one of the ensemble’s best albums yet: American Twilight. Ten years on and my original review, written for the Welsh-international indie webzine God Is In The TV, still stands.
Re-born, so to speak, after a twenty-year hiatus, the poetically forlorn Antipodes Crime & The City Solution have returned to document the miasma landscape of our troubled times.
Breathing in the toxic fumes of mass-unemployment, foreclosures and desperation, their re-location to what was once the industrial hub of America, Detroit, seems entirely apt. Home to the furious garage rock and political spit of the MC5 and Stooges (to name just two big guns from the motor city’s heritage) Detroit imbues its latest émigrés with a wealth of material to chew on.
The four horseman of impending doom have tested the waters lately, their scout parties observed on the horizon by the band, who announce to anyone that listens: “Here comes the rain!” Though there is, thankfully, always a chance of redemption: “We must not let the doomsayers and the naysayers cause us to lose our faith. Because without love and without hope there can be no future.”
Morosely inquisitive, our ‘shined-on’ vessels wrestle with compassionate displays of belief and optimism in a very bleak world. Hardly strangers to the darker and seedier side of the boardwalk, the group’s numerous twists and turns since their birth in the late 70s, has seen them burn up the punk/post-punk scenes of Sydney and Melbourne; relocate to London at the invitation of Bad Seed, Mick Harvey; and end-up gaunt and morbid, residing in Wim Wender’s black and white ‘Wings Of Desire’ Berlin: their most productive but fabled swan song.
At one time or another their ranks have included members from The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Einstürzende Neubauten and DAF. Now in the lord’s year of 2013, core founder Simon Bonney and ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’s’ Alexander Hacke and Bronwyn Adams are joined in their quest by visual artists Danielle de Picciotto, drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Cat Power), guitarist David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower, Wovenhand), bassist Troy Gregory (Witches) and Moog, keyboard operator Matthew Smith (Outrageous Cherry, Volebeats).
Mob-handed their wide-screen panoramic sound seems more spiritual and relenting, though still informed by that Gothic, almost Lynchian, twang: amplified through the country blues and Americana that’s absorbed by the group on this American Twilight odyssey.
Released as a teaser a few months back, the beatific, choral backed, ‘My Love Takes Me There’ exudes a haloed magnificence, yet equally darkened with distorted guitars and plaintive vocals that hail back to the bands earlier brooding soliloquies. A mature romantic nature is also found on the leading single, ‘Goddess’, an Apache toms-beaten power paean to a mythologized beauty: perhaps the bands most commercial anthem yet, though still permeated by those esoteric layers of lapsed Catholicism and scuzzy strident rock.
Meanwhile ‘The Colonel (Doesn’t Call Anymore)’ is a chilled reading from the scriptures, complete with a teetering Tower of Babel and ravaged roaming wolves, Bonny comes on like a mix of Scott Walker and a jaded Bob Dylan. And the ‘Domina’ is a gospel swaying, minor lament, heavenly remorseful and waning.
Looking for inspiration, whether it’s in the atavistic spiritualism of ghosts of the desert or in the sepulchre of organised religion, Bonney and his pilgrims move towards the light on their expansive return to form.
Faust ‘Faust Tapes’
(Virgin) 1973
50 this year, the second Faust album release of 1973 was a publicity stunt of subterfuge on the general public. With a ridiculously silly throw-away price tag, the Virgin label had a massive loss-making exercise in stupidity on their hands with the launch of their German malcontent signings. Now iconic, a cultish collage of propagandist machine music, industrial snores, the avant-garde, and krautrock break-outs of performed scraps, the Faust Tape may have sold over 50,000 copies in the scramble for a good deal, but it did little to help the fortunes of the band. Here then is my original lengthy essay on that story and album, taken from my night 20 year-old kruatrock odyssey series.
Virgin records began life in 1972, the brainchild of Richard Branson, Nik Powell and Simon Dapper, the story of which began with a shop in Notting Hill gate and a backroom mail order business known as Virgin Records and Tapes. The company name reflected their in-experience and self-confessed, but enthusiastic, naivety towards business. Starting out at first to sell other labels material and to unearth those hard to get underground releases, these three rather green long-haired upstarts, quickly transgressed to setting up a label of their own within a year of starting. Specialising in import records, Virgin relied upon a dedicated customer base of like-minded heads, who would inform them of what was currently worth checking out. This included turning the trio of entrepreneurs onto the burgeoning Krautrock scene of the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Requests began to roll in for obscure German bands, so many in fact, that Drapper contacted the infamous Ohr label, putting in an order for the more hip-happening groups of the moment. Soon a rich bundle of over thirty titles arrived on Drapper’s desk, comprising mostly of ‘Utter rubbish’ – Drapper’s words – and a few highlights, such as Tangerine Dream and Faust. But by this time, Virgin had already made an early play for the proto-spiritual ambient pioneer Mike Oldfield, whose Tubular Bells opus would become the first official release on the label. Overtures then, were made to both the Tangerine Dream and Faust, who it seemed were just about to drop ship from their current paymasters Polydor.
Uwe Nettlebeck and his band of crazed, freewheeling insurgents had finally over-stayed their welcome with that major label, testing the patience of the boardroom just a little too far. Faust’s last album, So Far, failed to toe the party line as more commercially viable big-seller. Continuing instead to follow there own agenda, the band hurried along an uncompromising avant-garde pathway of revolutionary deconstructive music. A move that drew much celebrated reactionary pats on the back, but did little to shift copies of their albums. Cast adrift, Faust now welcomed the attention of Virgin, deciding to sign a deal, though Uwe had no intention of making life easy for them, insisting that the first release must be sold for free to the public.
Uwe then handed over a collection of cutting room floor ideas and musical experiment excerpts, left over from the previous album recording sessions, giving the content away to Virgin for a nominal fee: zero in other words. This set of 26 unique snippets, sound collages and cutaways, would be bundled together and be titled “The Faust Tapes”, and end up being priced at the reduced token rate of 49p – at the time the price of a single – to cover expenses. Virgin to this day insists they never lost any money on the deal.
From the mere glancing explorations in piano, drums and voices to encouraging moments of startling produced promising songs, chaos reigns down, with pitched intergalactic warfare breaking out amongst the spillage from some industrial accident, to make this bundle of tracks far from boring or uninspired. God only knows what the public would make of this LP, with its Bridget Riley Op-Art black and white cover and reputation scaremongering press clippings on the back, to the missing track list and controversial price tag.
Well, the first week of release alone they shifted 50,000 copies, doubling sales not soon after and putting the band in the charts – for the first and only time – at number 12, though they would be removed on the grounds of the cover price. The heads and public seemed to go into a sort of feeding frenzy, buying into this relatively unheard of act from the fatherland, as if it was a competition. A large number of people hated the record, once they actually got it home, and as a consequence the follow up record, released at the end of the year, Faust IV, sold quite poorly in comparison. Branson, carried away in the initial overnight success, was convinced that they’d created a new ingenuous business model with which to break new bands – he would quite quickly rethink that strategy.
The Faust Tapes were an enigma, with small mystifying scraps of info and those untitled vignettes; the album became something of a cult. John Peel added to the aloof campaign that went with the record, by announcing a list of mock titles for the as yet unnamed tracks, stirring up the listeners in anticipation to quickly grab a pen as he would only read them out once. As it turned out, old Peely was in on the act, swindling many fans including Julian Cope with a disdained gesture of ridicule.
Virgin decided to back up the over-whelming success of the 1973 album by bringing the guys over for their first ever UK tour.
Fair enough you might think, only Uwe and co. had other plans; like throwing some turbulent spanners into the faces of the label.
The band’s Hans-Joachim Irmler and Rudolf Sosna refused point blank to embark on the tour, unless a ridiculous advance sum of £500,000 was paid – half exuberant and half antagonistic, fully encouraged by Uwe. A now apparent rift formed within the ranks, leading to Werner Diermaier, Jean- Hearvé Péron and Gunter Wüsthoff and a hastily recruited Peter Blegvad of Slapp Happy infamy, to fulfil the live dates. In true rebellious style, Uwe conceived a sort of auto-destructive performance with pneumatic drills, TVs and a cement mixer acting as props, waiting to be interacted with or smashed to smithereens: If anyone in the band got bored by all this reactionary antagonism, they could take a rest and play on the handy pinball machine, which would also deck the stage. All of this was of course meant to test the audience’s patience, on top of the proceeding ear splitting, innards dislodging hailstorm of sound that would leave them feeling sick.
Borrowing a PA from none other then the world’s one time loudest band The Who, Faust upped the ante and went one louder, channelling the most insane industrial gut wrenching music through their engineer, Kurt Graupner’s satanic black box of tricks, whilst chewing up the stage with the many building site strewn tools. This resulted in an often gob-smacked audience reacting in disbelief at the musical equivalent of having a bucket of pig shit poured over their heads. Even Blegvad remarked that it was the worst music he’d ever heard, and that it induced countless bouts of nose bleeding, leaving him with feelings of misery and nausea – and that’s one of their friends and band mates He went on to describe witnessing one over-enthusiastic young man headbutting the stage floor in unison to the bass drums incessant pounding, the resulting streaming blood worn like a badge of honour.
Despite all this, their fans were quite forgiving and sympathetic to the cause, even happily lapping up the handed out manifestos of intent, though usually in that typical pleasant English manner of ours, which never really leads to acting on our convictions.
After the uproarious set of concerts, Faust were scheduled to record their fourth album; Virgin insisting on them recording in England at their very own choice studio, the famous Manor House in Oxfordshire. Uwe objected at first but backed down, his band of misfits agreeing under a certain duress. Irmler and Sosna must have agreed to set aside their demands, as they both appear on the record. Faust IV would be their third album proper and cause many upsets, tantrums and even lead to arrests – don’t worry I’m saving this till the next chapter for you.
The Faust Tapes finally gained a track list when transferred to CD, which basically rectifies to a certain extent, what is actually taking place on each piece of sound or music. Some tracks have French or German titles, such as ‘J’ai Mal Aux Dents’, which translates as “I have toothache”, or ‘Der Baum’, which means “the tree”. Most remain untitled still or are referred to as exercises with maybe a bracketed explanation for a guide.
BUT WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?
Out of the eerie discourse of enigmatic sounding disturbances, fades into view a rumbling low bass and ivory tinkling cramped run down, as various sets of hands feel up the grand piano for a thrill. The rumble turns into a drone over this short rift, like a squadron of B52s flying overhead on their way to some unfortunate target. Our first exercise is over in under a minute, interrupted by the next, a call and response loop that features some garbled compressed drums and saxophone gargles. Sharp intersected snippets of screeching car brakes are dispersed throughout the track, as someone blares out an illegible cuckoo taunt in a fraught hysteria fashion.
‘Flashback Caruso’ gently flows in with some embracing wistful acoustic guitar picking and delicate artful strumming, in the manner of an English psychedelic folk number, with wry token impressions of a Germanic Syd Barrett, who sings of marshmallow sandwiches and Lewis Carroll garden parties. A leftover from the late 60’s, this delightful foray even has the vocals bounce from speaker to speaker, as gentle waves of beautiful percussion and piano head towards la la land – the first highlight of the album.
Next up, a return to the exercise labelling with an otherworldly effects driven voices segue way. Elephant like trumpeting and disturbed bellowing is dripped in reverb, delay and echo to create an unsightly incident in the middle of a Marrakech bazaar, before swiftly leaving the scene and stumbling into the next track. ‘J’ai Mal Aux Dents’ shambles in, falling over a mix of proto-punk and staccato Stooges, conducted by a jittery guitar, its erratic rhythmic workout attacked by various thrown in sound effects and a rather obtuse saxophone. Disregard for conventional grooving gets under way as the song moves into uncharted territory, though it awkwardly has all the appearance of Them’s ‘Gloria’ being played by Devo or Dr. Feelgood met with a torrent of situationist sloganeering.
Moving on, we eavesdrop onto an atmospheric recording of the band going about their daily routine washing up, stacking bottles, listening to the radio and continuously stomping up and down a never-ending flight of wooden stairs. An answer machine unravels its un-translated message, which could imply something serious or banal. Funky zip zapping break beat drumming announces the intro of ‘Arnulf and Zappi on drums’, an explosion of Silver Apples, UFO’s and hurried phasered sounds that interject over the glorious rhythms. Péron knocks up a soul shaking krautrock bass riff to get this party truly off the ground.
‘Dr. Schwitters’ whips up a mesmerising diagnosis of baroque electro synths, holy sounding melodies and futuristic brain food on this far too short and promising exquisite burst of ethereal bewitchment. The good doctor of the title certainly knows his pills, liberally dishing out some kaleidoscope inducing mind benders for this track. Soon we are thrust into the melancholy, as the next vignette has dark moody shifting mangled soundscapes to chew on; ones that suffocate the listener in their grip. A further couple of excerpts also stray towards the shadows, comprising of short uncomfortable bursts of Trappist monks solemnly groaning or delayed soaked chainsaws from space, cutting through an incessant tribal esoteric led drum barrage. All the while choral accompaniments float in the background, sending the willies right up you with their stirring macabre spooky wallowing.
Our good doctor returns to duty with another charmed moment of grooving, though it doesn’t have any of the same identifying themes of its counterpart, this quick shot of falling apart drums and whirling dreamy organs sure taste good though.
Side one finishes on a de-tuned untitled cacophony of cosmic slop, as chaotic forward rolling drums and alarming synthesizer currents of sparks bash away together in the primordial soup.
Side two opens with more untitled bouts of fun and trickery, as phasers, delay and echo conjugate round a shifting space age theme, before jumping head long into a menagerie of saxophones squeaking away in confused unison. These haunting animalistic sirens of sax sound like Sun Ra on a real downer, as they wallow away like a herd of brass wildebeest drifting across the Serengeti in pained expressions of woe. Storms now gather overhead on our next stop, with curious metallic sounding strings wrestled through a speed shifter grinder and taken on some oriental styled esoteric nightmare. A last departing gesture of Gothic evoking piano leaves its mark on this occult oddball.
Those low humming aeroplane drones are back on Sosna’s little suite of keyboard and guitar excursions; he is given a trio of tracks to bewilder the listener with. Firstly he builds up a Dune evocative sweeping veranda of humming bass and oscillating spirits, then lets loose on a promising piano score, played with alluring and poised composure, before ending on drip-dropping dabs of ghostly cosmic effects. These droplets work towards a rhythm and are accompanied by more over-head bombing raids and reverberating nonsense.
An old world calls from the mists on the following bundle of non-titled tracks, as an atmospheric caustic blowing soundscape is built up for a wandering set of drums and unobtrusive xylophone. This is dragged into an attention-starved moment of up-tempo tumbling rhythms, menaced with an onset of gongs, drills, rattles, scaffold tubes, which are processed through heavy reverb.
Then a twitchy guitar is let loose, pinging around and fiddling while the background burns away. Some light percussion and piano quietly go about their business, neither adding nor taking anything away from this aimless ditty.
We’re now into the final few furlongs, which are all more conventionally song based, though that’s a slight misleading description, as they’re anything but conventional. ‘Stretch Out Time’ starts with jangled guitars, bass and tambourine and Zappi’s cardboard box/tin pots sounding drum kit. The vocals ape the title and offer such poignant romantic reflections as:
‘Stretch out time, dive into my mind and sign,
Get answer and hold dime,
But not into the coco smile.
Love is really so,
Love is really true.’
Faust attempt to be loved by the listener!
‘Der Baum’ is a lo-fi affair, which constantly stop/starts over its duration. Tight delay on the drums and emphasised cymbal shimmers, go all proto ‘Jennifer’ on this warmly felt ode. A descriptive analogy to the environment is used to express some memories of a failed love affair:
‘See her sitting on her chair,
When she stops kissing I know she won’t care.
He opened the door, turned on the light,
And it hurt my eyes.’
They continue with a final regretful, but touching verse of:
‘Feeling like a tree today,
And it’s a nice feeling, yeah.
The wind has come now,
So the leaves, they’re gone,
Because the wind has come.
See her lying in her bed,
Must be a nice feeling for her head.’
The final song ‘Chère Chambre’ translates as “dear room”, though the colourful narrated French/German prose gives few clues as to whether the vocalist is spewing forth his thoughts from a lonely room, dictating an abundance of ideas to his secretly or reading aloud from a Dear John letter. Thankfully I found a transcribed translation that seems to describe a free-flowing uninterrupted spewing of motorway journeys, emotional wellbeing, questions and state of mind, all told in a story telling like rendition.
A twee folksy guitar plays all the way through in an affable manner, whilst the narrator switches languages and continues to eloquently lay down genial tones.
The Faust Tapes act as a jump-off point for the next album. With startling insights and textural ideas it draws obvious comparisons to CAN’s Limited Edition LP, which likewise dips into the psyche of the band, digging up promising snatches of pure gold. It differs however from the Faust studio albums, which tend to follow a particular theme through to a conclusion, whereas this album hops quite erratically from one idea to the next. Generally an impressive futuristic and de-constructive collection of tracks, with touches of pulchritude and effulgent wonder that further enhances the reputation of Faust as trailblazing counter culture visionary misfits.
MEMORIAL
Ye Gods….the jazz messenger, doyen of melodious free jazz and teacher of the ways, Wayne Shorter has sadly passed away. Blue Note deity, still making it, still pushing at the envelope and still relevant even in his 80s, saxophonist/clarinetist/composer Shorter leaves behind one of the most accomplished and enviable catalogues in the jazz cannon. Where do you start? Art Blakey. Miles Davis. Weather Report. Herbie Hancock. Gil Evans. The Power Of Three. Esperanza Spalding. The list goes on and on, and across so many eclectic planes; electronica to opera. And so here is just a smattering:
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.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Roundup
Unless stated otherwise, all releases are currently available to buy.
SINGLES:
Schizo Fun Addict ‘Fate Chaser’
Schizo Fun Addict are one of the Magnificent Seven; one of the most important bands in the underground today: one of the seven bands that are making music as good as anything released in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
Music wise they are a jack-of-all-trades and master of them all. They take musical genres and mix them with a cunning ease and panache that other bands can only stand with mouths agape wondering how they achieve such beauty and experimental originality. With this their new single they dip their toes into the magical myth that is the Laurel Canyon of the late 60s, and produce a song of supreme summer jangle. This is the sound of Michelle Philips combing her hair; the sound of Arthur Lee preening himself in front of a full-length mirror in the castle. This is pure nostalgia, a song of the summers we no longer seem to be blessed with; a tear stained memory of teenage romantic yearning.
bigflower ‘The Pill’
The dark world of bigflower once again is upon us with a lovely strange voyage of psyche and psychosis; an off-kilter journey where not everything seems to be where it should be, but strangely fits together perfectly. A song that strangely could and should last longer, which is indeed a very rare thing; an aural journey of a song with shuffling drum beat and beautifully simple strummed electric guitar led astray in a wave of vague drone solitude. Another winner from Ivor Perry.
Borben Dallas & His Filipino Cupids ‘Too Convenient’
I love this single. It starts off all scuzzed-up rock ‘n’ roll and dank and pringy and urgent, then in the middle goes all experimental and almost Beach Boys like. It gives one the impression that Borben Dallas has just found god or at least a God substitute. The post-finding-God section of the song goes back to the first but with an added pringiness that one can only bow their head or even shake it in a Status Quo like manner to. A spellbinder of a single. Originality is not dead it is alive and well and living in the essence of Borben Dallas and His Filipino Cupids.
Martha and the Muffins ‘Save It For Later’
The man who wrote this song is actually a bit of a fan of my band The Bordellos, calling me the natural successor to John Cooper Clarke. Maybe he meant I too am skinny and wear all black, but sadly my hair has long gone the way of my hopes and dreams completely out the window. But that man be the wonderful talented songwriter Dave Wakeling who of course was and is frontman of Ska Beat legends The Beat and this my dearest cherubs is a cover of their classic ‘Save It For Later’, and it’s not a bad version. It’s all post punk jangles and a melody no doubt one would hear emitting even echoing on a beach [see what I did there] from a tiny transistor radio this summer. Martha And The Muffins have indeed done a pop delight of a cover and has managed to put a smile on my face and a skank to my hips. [Please do not take that image to bed with you, I beg of you].
James Howard ‘Baloo’
(Faith & Industry)
As I sit mid Sunday morning writing reviews, this is pretty perfect listening; a song that takes and pulls in the art of traditional songwriting and wraps it around ones heart, squeezing tears and hope from your now moistened eyes. A track of pure beauty; a song I can imagine the great Elvis Presley performing with such gusto and panache extinguishing all the previous night’s demons. James Howard could well be one to watch and I await an album with my breath somewhat baited. A true beaut of a song.
Fast De ‘Miss Trutti Finally Found Her Gem’
(Bloomer Records)
A lovely instrumental surprise of fuzzed-up pop grandeur, fuzzy synths get off my tail eloquence, and a sweet, so sweet scuzzy melody that it will not just rot your teeth as you chew on it, getting all the juicy goodness from the track, but your grandmas and her twice removed wannabe lovers teeth as well. Yes indeed it is times like this one can only sit back and enjoy the taste of adventure in music.
Pineapple ‘Trials’
(Metal Postcard Records)
Pineapple is a fruity little dish of a band, taking in post punk and talking in post punk sensibilities. It’s an EP of nostalgic splendor; one that takes me back to the days when the local punk band had to compete with the jukebox in the down at heel pub venue, we of a certain age all have played/frequented at some time in our lives. Yes, this is an EP of enjoyable guitar punky scrunge that takes in Billy Childish, Julian Cope and The Fall in equal measure, and ‘Snake & Ladders’ is one of the best songs about football I have heard in many a year.
Linn ‘Happiness is Real’
I love this track. I have listened to it a number of times in a row, and found it a song that is both utterly bewitching and quite disconcerting: imagine Jane [‘Its A Fine Day’ fame] being swallowed whole by early My Bloody Valentine on the sunniest yet saddest day of the year. I hope Linn has an album coming out soon as I think I’m ready to be seduced.
ALBUMs/EPs
Faust ‘Punkt’
(Bureau B)
Punkt is the lost album by Faust and everybody loves a good lost album. But in honesty many lost albums actually deserve to remain lost and never be found. They are lost for a good reason normally, the reason quite often being it is not very good, but years later are looked through rose-tinted nostalgic eyes and held to one’s collective bosom as a work of previously unreleased genius.
But there is always an exception, and like Shacks masterwork Waterpistol, Punkt is that exception.
Punkt carries on where Faust IV left of, with a brief ear turned and tuned into melody where the industrial noise is swamped with psych-tinged song writing skill and invention. ‘Morning Land’ sounding very much like what Einstürzende Neubauten would make years later with great success. ‘Knochentanz’ is indeed a Chinese burn of a track, taking jazz and electronic noise to new extremes; like a melting corpse dripping into the eyes of the soulful bugler at dawn wondering whether alcohol will taste quite the same again, it is almost funky and after many spirit enhancing drugs could well be danced to and even at the length of 11.45 it never outstays its welcome. ‘Fernlicht’ follows as a short psychedelic interlude, again covering the noise and drone with a quite becoming melody. And that is a fair summing up of the album actually: the normal Faust invention of drone and noise but with a covering of instrumental beauty, as the quite breath-taking journey of a track ‘Schön Rund’ proves: the sound of Elton John slowly sinking into the ocean; a treat indeed.
So as a lost album this is indeed a found again treasure; one that all lovers of Krautrock will enjoy and stroke the chins over a martini to [or other tipples of choice].
Jelly Crystall ‘ILY’
(Smuggler Music/PIAS) 3rd June 2022
All said and done this EP is rather beautiful. The opening track reminds me of the beautiful Paul Quinn and the Spirit of Independence albums, which is indeed high praise. There is such a romantic 50s early 60s magic that those periods in time oozed with, and Jelly Crystal have captured the magic without being too retro.
This is music to be heard coming out of your radio whilst you slow dance with your significant other in the darkness, in the park with the cool evening breeze whispering sweet nothings…truly magical.
Alas The Sun ‘Wild Honey Inn’
(Taxi Gauche Records)
The beautiful sound of summer is what we have here; jangling guitars beautiful harmonies and well-written songs with heart and soul. Everybody who reads these reviews of mine knows I am a sucker for bands with boy/girl vocal duets, and Alas The Sun are indeed blessed with such a thing; both voices blending into a soft honey dew like substance that melts and makes you feel all warm inside.
Whether it be the jazzy ‘Distant Drone’ or the subtle ‘White Rabbit’ soft shuffling beat of ‘Love At Twenty-Two’, which is almost Prefab Sproutish in its texture and feel, Wild Honey Inn is an album of laid-back beauty; an ideal record to soundtrack sheltering in the shade on a too hot summer’s day, when lazing about relaxing is all one needs in life.
Black Monitor ‘Snake Of My Heart’
(Ikarus Records)
Snake Of My Heart is an album full of tuneful joyful psychedelic pop, and lovers of such will indeed enjoy it. To be honest, there is nothing not to enjoy about it, as it is vibrant, wide space music made to fill the wide musical space in your life; an album taking in the influences of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, the Brianjonestown Massacre, early Blur and many other fine pop bands touching on c86 jangle, especially on the Sarah Records like ‘On A Wire’. But there is a slight difference as Black Monitor has a slightly dark edge to the music, a slight uneasiness that many bands that produce music of this ilk do not quite manage to achieve.
There’s a slight appealing wonkiness and depth to the songs that I think will draw me back to and explore more and more over the coming weeks, a quality that many fail to produce with alt radio friendly songs. This a quite lovely and rewarding listen.
Super Hit ‘Pocket Rock EP’
(Metal Postcard Records)
There is a beauty in lo-fi jangly guitar music that I cannot resist, and this seven-track mini album is full of the beautiful little blighters. Any one of the seven songs could quite easily fit onto the compilations Sarah Records released in their all too brief existence. Songs that beguile and charm in equal measure, songs soaked in DIY bedroom lack of glamour but steeped in a yearning and heartache and pure charm that really is hard to beat, and Super Hit is an artist deserving of more attention.
Spiral Of Silence ‘Landmark’
(Jezus Factory)
This is Spiral Of Silence’s first release in 20 years, a band I have not come across before, and described as the Belgian Joy Division – probably because they are from Belgium and have that Peter Hook/Cure bass thing going on and are quite dark and gothic. And despite all that I still enjoyed the EP.
It is nothing I have not heard before, but The Spiral Of Silence do the Joy Division thing very well and cover their darkness with layers of radio friendly melody, and I can see it appealing to the long black coat brigade [if they still exist].
The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist #64: The Fall, Your Old Droog, DakhaBrakha, The Jam…
March 4, 2022
PLAYLIST/Curated by Dominic Valvona
The Monolith Cocktail Social is one of two long-running playlist series on the blog. Running in tandem with the Monthly Revue, which represents all the new music both I and the MC team have been listening to and writing about during the month, the Social is a cross-generational, eclectic imaginary radio show, where anything goes: featuring tracks from the last 50 or more years.
Volume #64 features tracks from a number of anniversary celebrating albums. Kicking off proceedings, ‘Jawbone And the Air-Rifle’ is plucked from The Fall‘s 1982 Hex Education Hour, and from the same year, I’ve picked ‘Just Who Is The 5 O’Clock Hero’ from on The Jam‘s swansong The Gift, and the title track from Sparks‘ Angst In My Pants. There’s also the title cut from The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy‘s 92 special, Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury, a gospel inspired southern roller from The Rolling Stones 72 opus Exile On Main Street and the title track from Faust‘s incredible So Far album.
In solidarity with our Ukraine friends, going through hell-on-earth at the hands of a raving despot, intent on reconquering the collapsed Soviet Union empire and a bit of Peter The Great’s grandiose plan, plus building a corridor to the Balkans, I’ve chosen some venerable, traditional and more contemporary tracks from the country’s artists (and choirs). Step forward the National Choir Of The Ukraine, Your Old Droog, Oleska Suyhodolyak and DakhaBrakha. I could resist including the Bee Gees beautified ‘Odessa‘ too.
Mingling amongst that lot are eclectic tracks from Pugh Rogefeldt, Dennis The Fox, Wau Wau Collectif, OKI, Solid Space, Life Pass Filter, Jim Ford and many others…
THOSE TRACKS IN FULL ARE:::
The Fall ‘Jawbone And the Air-Rifle’
The Jam ‘Just Who Is The 5 O’Clock Hero’
Pugh Rogefeldt ‘Love, Love, Love’
Dennis The Fox ‘Piledriver’
Yesterday’s Children ‘Sad Born Loser’
Rarelyalways & Hanni El Khatib ‘Manic’
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy ‘Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury‘
National Choir Of The Ukraine ‘Sviatyj Boje’
Cold Specks ‘Winter Solstice’
The Rolling Stones ‘I Just Want To See Your Face’
Wau Wau Collectif ‘Yaral Sa Doom’
Sven Wunder ‘Magnolia’
Georgia Anne Muldrow ‘Ayun Vegas (Ft. Ayun Bassa)’
Your Old Droog ‘Odessa (Ft. Billy Woods)’
La La Lars ‘Haxa’
Heshoo Beshoo Group ‘Emakhaya’
Fabrizio De Andre ‘Primo Intermezzo’
Sparks ‘Angst In My Pants’
Oleska Suyhodolyak ‘Gutsul Kolomyika (Dance-Song)’
OKI ‘Yaykatekar Dub (Love Dub)’
John Lurie ‘AI AI AI AI’
Sourakata Koite ‘Kano’
Solid Space ‘Radio France’
The Primitives ‘The Ostrich’
DakhaBrakha ‘Vynnaya Ya’
Mike Cooper ‘Boogie Boards And Beach Rubbish’
Robert Wyatt ‘Heaps Of Sheep’
Lua ‘Pozzanghere e Sigarette’
Life Pass Filter ‘Queen Ghat’
Faust ‘So Far’
Lonnie Holley ‘Crystal Doorknob’
The Blue Angel Lounge ‘Bewitch My Senses’
palliatives for dirty consciences ‘breakthrough’
Brigid Dawson And The Mothers Network ‘Ballet Of Apes’
Jim Ford ‘Point Of No Return’
Bee Gees ‘Odessa (City On The Black Sea)’
The Monthly Playlist: September 2021: The August List, The Felice Brothers, Blu, Jazzmeia Horn…
September 30, 2021
PLAYLIST: Dominic Valvona/Matt Oliver/Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
The monthly recap and chance to catch up with all the most eclectic music that the Monolith Cocktail team has been listening to over the last four weeks (with a few additional tracks we missed back in August). Chosen by me (Dominic Valvona), Matt ‘Rap Controller’ Oliver and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, the September 2021 edition features a truly global lineup of the best and most interesting Hip-Hop, Electronica, Jazz, Nu-Soul, Krautrock, Post-Punk, Experimental, Pop and beyond, with musical waves from Africa, the Med, Americas, Europe, Far East and of course the UK.
TRACK LIST:::
The August List ‘Seams’
Monsieur Doumani ‘Astrahan’
Ex Norwegian ‘Thot Patrol’
The Speed Of Sound ‘The Day The Earth Caught Fire’
Motorists ‘Go Back’
The Crystal Casino Band ‘Waste My Time’
The Felice Brothers ‘Jazz On The Autobahn’
Timo Lassy ‘Orlo’
Blu ‘Everyday Blu(e)s’
DJ JS-1 ‘Spaghetti Park’
Lukah ‘THE WAY TO DAMASCUS’
Jazzmeia Horn And Her Noble Force ‘Where Is Freedom?’
Kondi Band ‘Everything That Sierra Leone Has’
Los Camaroes ‘Esele Mulema Moam’
Mopes ‘Facts Machine’
Solem Brigham ‘Couple Towns’
Gift Of Gab Ft. Vursatyl, Lateef The Truthspeaker ‘You Gon’ Make It In The End’
Gotts Street Park ‘Diego’
Hiero ‘Soil’
Showtime Ramon Ft. Illecism ‘Julius Erving’
Viktor Timofeev ‘Portal Of Zin II’
Variet ‘The Ancient Of Seconds’
Faust ‘Vorsatz’
Vilmmer ‘Fensteraus’
Late ‘Verbal Introduction’
King Kashmere & Alecs DeLarge ‘Soul Caliber’ Robert & SonnyJim Ft. Rag’n’Bone Man ‘Porridge’
Niklas Wandt ‘Lo Spettro’
Badge Epoch ‘Galactic Whip’
Dr. Joy ‘No Deal’
Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters ‘Speak In Capitals’
Psycho & Plastic ‘Wunsch, Indianer Zu Werden’
Sone Institute ‘Forget Everything’
Steve Hadfield ‘Ascension’
Headboggle ‘Skip Pop’
Forest Robots ‘Every Particle Of Water Understands Change Is Essential’
Wish Master & Illinformed Ft. Datkid and Gaza Glock ‘Chefs Recipe’
Dceased, Telly McLean and Unlike People ‘Rainey Day Relapse’
Nukuluk ‘Ooh Ah’
Boohoo ‘Forever’
The Legless Crabs ‘A Saucer Is Born’
Bordello & Clark ‘Dreams Of Rock And Roll Stars’ Santa Sprees ‘Save Yourself’
Birthday Cake! ‘Retrospect’
Salem Trials ‘No York’
Helm ‘Repellent’
Will Feral ‘The Minx’
Sun Atoms ‘The Cat’s Eye’
Simon McCorry ‘Flow 04’
Group Listening ‘Sunset Village’
John Howard ‘Dreamland’
Andrew Heath ‘The Healing Pt. 1’
Tara Clerkin Trio ‘Night Steps’
Color Dolor ‘Underwater’
Gina Birch ‘Feminist Song’
Esbe ‘Amazing Grace’
Our Daily Bread 387: Gunther Wüsthoff ‘Total Digital’
July 13, 2020
ALBUM REVIEW/DOMINIC VALVONA
Gunther Wüsthoff ‘Total Digital’
(Bureau B) Album/10th July 2020
Attuned to the signals and broadcast traffic chatter of a very different kind when serving out his military service as a naval radio operator, the one-time Faust instigator and soloist Gunther Wüsthoff tapped into that formative training to search and tune-in to more imaginative and alien frequencies when set loose from the tumult of post-war Germany.
As the legend goes, Wüsthoff’s pathway towards sonic experimentation was laid out in art school, where he met future Faust comrades Rudolf Sosna and Jean-Hervé Peron. All three musical malcontents came together in the late 60s to from the band Nukleus. It was during this point that former leftist mouthpiece publication Konkret editor turn ad hoc record producer and scout for Polydor Records, Uwe Nettelbeck (through his filmmaker contact Helmut Costa) was introduced to the trio. Nettelbeck was handed the task by the label’s A&R honcho Kurt Enders, to find a German version of The Beatles, but also to tap into the burgeoning “Krautrock” scene that was emerging. What they got was something far more revolutionary and avant-garde: at their most confrontational and hostile they made Throbbing Gristle sound like The Beach Boys. As opposed to their compatriots Can, Faust excelled at breaking things.
The musical trio was merged with members of another Hamburg band, Campylognatus Citelli, whose ranks included Werner “Zappi” Diermaier, Hans-Joachim Irmler and Arnulf Meifert. Instead of a Teutonic Fab Four, Polydor were delivered an unruly fist full of industry dissonance and barracking noise. Wüsthoff for his part would play both synthesizer and the saxophone during his time with the often-fractious group; lasting through Faust’s most important and influential run of records during the first half of the 1970s (from the X-Ray iconic sleeved debut to the only album Wüsthoff would design the cover for, Faust IV).
Following his departure, Wüsthoff would take on roles at both Studio and Filmhaus Hamburg; but also take further studies in editing so that he could work freelance. Continuing his musical practice however, Wüsthoff’s sonic experiments became more and more informed by the aleatory.
Looking for imperfections and friction in the increasingly repetitive and slick production of the Western canon, he found that in explaining his theory to those accustomed to playing music in the doctrinal fashion, and against the intuitive grain of human instinct that the machine might be better placed to his musical methodology and motto: “Due to previous but also temporary excesses of mainstream consumption and the omnipresent, repetitive emissions of the western world’s music industry, devoid of contours and as slick as possible, we are faced with an indissoluble weariness. A criterion for music one can listen to today is, for me, that an element of friction is present: temporally, metrically, rhythmically, tonally or harmonically. Or that somewhere, something is somehow imperfect. Only then can music be truly alive.”[Gunther Wüsthoff 2005]
“Today I would add: Regardless of whether it is created by man or machine.”
And so, becoming a “music machinist”, Wüsthoff relinquished the idea of virtuosity for good, handing over a major part of the process to the machine. A compositional counterbalance between the synthesized and the human touch you could say: not “total digital” but getting there.
Collected in this retrospective compilation is a scattering of tracks from a twenty-year time span; from a trio of solar orbiting ‘TransNeptun’ suites to a number of more rhythmic erratic dashes and tubular metallic chimes. Tuning into planetary waves, the three-part (‘Anflung’, ‘Ankunft’ and ‘Begrüßung’) ‘TransNeptun’ traces the tones and contours of cosmic satellites with a sonic generator palette of lunar delay, arpeggiator, whining dialed squiggles and hums. Through this off world broadcast, Wüsthoff traverses the Kosmische, hints of Bernard Szajner, a dance of binary languages and ominous prowling shadowy dwarf planets.
In a different direction the avant-garde ‘Dragon Walking’ sounds like a convolution of Populäre Mechanik and Reich; with touches even of Eno’s off kilter Warm Jets. Going through numerous cycles, from post-punk to robotic ballet, instruments are introduced in stages: a real sounding drum kit, hand drums, marimba (I think) and pizzicato notes. ‘Alien Crosstalk’ is a strange one. Bagpipe type bellows and concertinaed sounds are integrated with fucked-up House music, out-of-time piano and titular’s “crosstalk” of obscured voices. Though far too sophisticated as to sound distorted or a mess, the elements all seem to fit together in the end. And even when erring towards the disturbing and dark, seems less chilling but mysterious.
Wüsthoff’s philosophical driver, the “transitory nature of life”, is evident in the fleeting presence of those random generated sonics and instruments, which pass through an evanescent process.
Perhaps Wüsthoff doesn’t enjoy the profile of some of his former Faust comrades, but if your only knowledge of his experiments were from that period then make time to explore the solo work. A good place to start will be with this handy compilation, from a label that seems to act as a hub for members from that group’s subsequent work.
Faust Faust, So Far, Faust Tapes’
Faust ‘j US t’
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.
Dominic Valvona’s essential reviews roundup
Interesting releases from across the world and music spectrums; Tickling Our Fancy is the most eclectic of reviews roundups. With no themes, demarcations of any kind, or reasoning other than providing a balanced platform for the intriguing, the great and at times, most odd releases, I bring you this month’s latest selection.
We have the ninth, and apparently most ‘honest’ personal album yet from the renowned soundtrack composer Bob Holroyd, The Cage; a pair of releases from Ian Button’s inimitable Gare du Nord label: the ‘musical gift to a friend’s son’ EP of charming alt-American and pop from the Lille-based Life Pass Filter, Joseph, and Jack Hayter’s most brilliant psycho geographical folk survey of London’s Abbey Wood; the fiery and petulant art school Swiss/Canadian duo Peter Kernel’s third, and most impressive, album The Size Of The Night; the tenth album from the German experimental group Station 17, Blick, which features the cream of Germany’s experimental electronic and avant-garde including members of Tangerine Dream and faUSt; Die Wilde Jagd’s second album of adroit industrial and organic electronica, Uhrwald Orange; and the latest magical, Kosmische and psychedelic cult sounds songbook from David Thayer and friends Little Tornadoes project, Apocalypse!.
Jack Hayter ‘Abbey Wood’ Gare du Nord, 23rd March 2018
Bringing light, or at least opening up a psycho-geographical narrative dedicated to the very edges of a largely ignored London postcode – so far out on the South Eastern outskirts as to be part of Kent –, an earnest Jack Hayter composes a yearning lament to Abbey Wood on what is his first solo album in fifteen years.
This doesn’t mean that our Jack has been indolent or on a respite; the former Hefner band member who also helped found Dollboy and the South London group Sponge Finger, has during that period been working with fellow Hefnerian Darren Hayman as well as Oliver Cherer, Ralegh Long and the Gare du Nord label’s house band turn supergroup, Papernut Cambridge. Many of those artists, including the Gare du Nord team leader Ian Button – in the capacity of host for this album, and as a drummer on the graceful, lilted and warbled guitar duet with Suzanne Rhatigan, Bigger Than The Storm – contribute to this earthy rustic minor opus; with the equally gifted storyteller Cherer – his last album, The Myth Of Violet Meek appeared in our 2017 ‘choice albums’ features – adding a omnivorous like range of instruments (piano, horns), tools (saw) and his voice throughout the Foley like atmospheres and moods; Long tinkling the ivory on the swirling fairground blues The Strangers Fair; and Riz Maslen provides ‘ethereal’ and eerie sorrowful lulling accompaniment to a quartet of songs in the first half of this album.
Talk about slumming it; living for his art, Hayter’s literature, and pun and landmark panoply was created in the most unconducive to creativity and safety environmental of a derelict Children’s home in Abbey Wood. With no utilities plumbed or wired in, Hayter took showers under a hose, cooked on a camping stove and slept on a bed made from warehouse pallets. For security he kept a very big stick handy. ‘Cold but free’, a self-imposed lifestyle, he was at least qualified to regale tales of isolation and hardship; experiencing the daily grind of survival on one of the capital’s unloved outposts; from the shitty end of life’s (other) big stick.
Featuring long forgotten laments and forlorn vignettes, two of the most vivid and haunting being the bookended tragedy of the Arandora Star; Hayter laying cooing elegiac wreaths to those unfortunate souls aboard the WWII requisitioned Blue Star Line passenger ship who died in the Atlantic Ocean, sunk by a German U-boat on July 2nd 1940, whilst travelling to Canada with hundreds of interned German and Italian citizens. The first part, written with Trudie Willingham, is a much-desired remembrance service to the unmarked watery grave, whilst the album’s final swansong is an Italian language translated and narrated eulogy, featuring the voice of Slyvia De.
Just as poignant is the equally haunting and sad But I Didn’t Know Frankie, a softly spoken word tale of woe, with a choral-like ghostly accompaniment, about the aforementioned stranger: sleeping rough, the circumstances of misfortune unknown but death on a fateful frozen night – unable to gain access to a warm sanctuary inside the Abbey Wood’s sub station – immortalized by Hayter; the exact spot marked out in a sympathetic but matter-of-fact tone: “They say he died right here, frozen solid underneath this window.”
Connected in some way to the Abbey Wood diaspora or its position as a gateway to the world via fateful songs that draw in the one-time gold rush phenomenon outpost of the British Empire, Bendigo in Victoria, Australia (on the Mick Harvey with a pinch of Dire Straits I Sent My Love To Bendigo), and the stoic symbol of a solitary Mulberry Tree that attracts a beautifully resigned woven historiography, which via the arrival of a curious Chinese girl name checks the silk trade – or lack of one – but turns into a malady about Abbey Wood’s melancholic scenery. Playing on local haunts, such as John Cleland’s infamous 18th century Fanny Hill heroine/survivor turn pub name, on the disjointed Georgian Fanny On The Hill, Hayter can transport the listener back to the age of Thackeray – to a bawdry alehouse, a resigned diorama of highway men forced into brigandry and misbehavior – as easily as draw upon the present for inspired re-readings of abuse, tragedy and grief.
Abbey Wood deftly played with twangs of bucolic and Baroque folk, blues, synthesized atmospherics, Americana and reverent chamber music, is a multilayered songbook; a lived-in musical novel, rich with references, landmarks and peopled by those who left an indelible, if at times fleeting, mark upon this much forgotten or passed over postcode: their ghosts, no matter how small the part they played in its story, never inconsequential; remembered and written about with a certain gravitas by Hayter, who creates the most accomplished and brilliant of testaments.
Station 17 ‘Blick’ Bureau B, 9th March 2018
With near enough thirty years of experience behind them and a changeable lineup of both musicians with and without various disabilities, the Station 17 collective once more shift their focus and sound; moving away from the all-out pop of the last album Alles Für Alle for a more improvised travail through the Krautrock, Kosmische and experimental electronica cannon.
Leaving the city, retreating to a point from the ‘modern world’, the Hamburg group spent a few weeks in the ‘summery seclusion’ of a coastal idyll, recording their tenth album at the Watt’n Sound Studio, near to the North Sea coastline. Free of predetermined structures, lyrics and ideas they enjoyed an improvised freedom; inviting a host of German musical royalty to take part in what is a collaborative recording experience – something they’ve done in the past, having worked with icons such as Michael Rothar and the late Holger Czukay. And so each of the album’s none tracks features the signatures of its guests: The writhing prehistoric Krautrock-jazzy Le Coeur Léger, Le Sentiment D’un Travail Bien Fait for example features the guiding avant-garde, ‘musique concrète’ presence of drum and bass partnership of Jean-Hervé Péron (the French title track I dare say his idea) and Zappi Diermaier; key founders of the reverent agent provocateurs Faust, who in recent decades have broken away to form their own iteration of the group under the faUSt banner. And, though only as part of its most modern regeneration, Tangerine Dream’s Ulrich Schnauss appears to gaze through a progressive Kosmische tinged explored ‘astronomical telescope’ on the album’s heaven’s gate opening finale.
Bringing out their very own homage to Germany’s golden age of analogue synth and motorik, journeymen and label mates Eberhard Kranemann (a founding member no less of early Kraftwerk and Neu!) and Harald Grosskopf (drummed on a number of Klaus Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel albums) have a ‘blast’ on the post-punk mooning Ein Knall; running through the full Klaus Dinger catalogue, from Neu! to Japandorf.
From another generation, Dirk Dresselhaus, aka Schneider TM, appears both as an engineer, capturing these sessions and crafting them into a coherent album, and as a collaborator on the kooky bossa nova preset Die Uhr Spricht. Andreas Spechtl of Ja, Panik! infamy appears alongside Station 17 singer Siyavash Gharibi on the poppier, Der Plan-esque Dinge, and another Andreas, Andreas Dorau, joins the same upbeat, marimba like candour on what we’re told is an “enduring appraisal of post-capitalist perversion”, Schaust Du, whilst Datashock travel through the primordial soup into another dimension on the Acid Mothers-hitch-a-ride-aboard-the-Cosmic Jokers-spaceship Zauberpudding.
Turning the dial on an imaginary radio station, attuned to all the highlights from Germany’s most experimental if rhythmic decades, Blick confidently absorbs the influences and inspirations of its multitude of guests to produce social commentary and reflect on the here and now. A sort of Bureau B label all-stars – the German label rapidly, more or less, signing up everyone of note from the last five decades; a home to most of the country’s experimental electronic music and Krautrock pioneers – this latest album from Station 17 uses its pool of talent and resources well, balancing the edgy with a melodic, motoring, cruising sensibility.
Peter Kernel ‘The Size Of The Night’ On The Camper Records, 9th March 2018
Visually composed (except for the differing skateboard graphic style track listings) with one half of this Swiss/Canadian duo, Barbara Lehnhoff’s elegant, almost stately, childhood dog Arrow gazing out with a certain ruminating calm on the album cover, the music that lies within this sleeve is anything but.
Not surprising for a duo that originally met whilst attending the visual communications school in Switzerland, the already mentioned Canadian Lehnhoff choosing film whilst her foil, Swiss native, Aris Bassetti chose graphic design, both collide in bringing their own baggage and ideas together for an explosive art school sound.
Formed in 2006 under the figurehead moniker of Peter Kernel – an ambiguous character they funnel all their musical protestations and fantasies into – but only now releasing, on their very own imprint, a third album, it seems the duo aren’t so much succumbing to procrastination as taking their time and waiting for the right moment to launch a barrage of musical discourse. The previous album, the darkly resigned entitled White Death & Black Heart, was launched off the back of a UK/European tour supporting the most brilliant Wolf Parade in 2008 (I vividly remember attending the Brighton leg of this same tour); it was the band’s Spencer Krug who invited them to open for the acclaimed Canadian indie band.
Playing over 600 gigs, from diverse spots at the Montreux Jazz Festival and Milan Fashion Week, Peter Kernel have in recent years been nominated for awards at the Swiss Music Grand Prix and Swiss Live Talent for their dynamic live performances. Congruous to their artistic disciplines they also scored the music for Swiss-Peruvian director Klaudia Reynicke’s Il Nido film, and rearranged their own back catalogue for piano, harp, cello, harmonium and viola under the auspicious of the orchestral project, Peter Kernel & The Wicked Orchestra.
Hardly light of material in these anxious ‘hashtag’ prefixed times; the duo’s latest album title philosophically channels the complex duality of human behavior. Under the cover of the ‘night’ they posture such enquiring questions as, “What is the size of the night?”, and, “How can we measure the night?”. To them, the night acts as cipher, a totem for its ominous fears and obvious darkness, but also its mystery and allure.
The cloak of darkness is however lifted, as both Lehnhoff and Bassetti try to find a balance and acceptance that they can simultaneously be both “sensitive” and “assholes!”. Expressing “this new consciousness” between bouts of light and shade post-punk, grunge, doom and the psychedelic, they throw themselves into and hurtle with a controlled energy, into the night.
This is an album filled with musical surprises, spiraling as the duo does through petulant yelped Katie White (of The Ting Tings fame) fronted Royal Trux lovelorn spite (There’s Nothing Like You), marauding Raincoats dub-y bass verses breakbeat drums lumbering coquettish sarcasm (Pretty Perfect) and what sounds like transmogrified Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra western style chanson duets (The Fatigue Of Passing The Night); all of which is a positive in my view. At their most esoteric they channel the Black Angels channeling The Beatles on the book of the dead kick Drift to Death, and oozing with dark exotic distaste (flipping between English and Italian), they venture towards the Middle East or Byzantine on Men Of Women.
Most of the themes that are currently keeping the Twittersphere active are covered, though more in the manner of sympathetic deciphered enquiry and at times, metaphorical nagging doubt; or as with the sloganize looping shout out The Shape Of Your Face In Space, a host of “isms” is spewed forth, like an exercise in expelling fear.
Never a cacophony, always in control, The Size Of The Night finds the duo at their apex; a good balance of dynamics and rhetoric that stretches post-punk to the max.
Bob Holroyd ‘The Cage’ HTML, 9th March 2018
Composing some of the most intimate and personable of cinematic music for an impressive number of movies and mainstream TV shows over the last two decades – from The Sopranos to Panorama; The Dark Knight to Coast – Bob Holroyd’s sophisticated peregrinations have embraced ambient, minimalism, world music, classical and jazz to create a diverse body of work: Whether its the use of the percussive sounds he picked up on his travels throughout Africa and Asia for the club sound of African Drug, or in highlighting the plight of the Kalahari Bushmen through the collaborative Sanscapes project, Holroyd crosses cultural boundaries in his quest to produce interesting, engaging musical narratives and thoughtful soundtracks. The likes of which Coldcut, Four Tet, Nitin Sawhney and Steve Roach have felt compelled to remix over the years.
With what could be his most ‘personal’, intimate and honest album yet, Holroyd cites work in therapy and an exploration of the complex emotions that make up “every moment of our lives” as inspiration. The metaphorical ‘cage’ of his ninth album title references a (to a point) self-imposed barrier; one created subconsciously to guard against “negative emotions”; a safeguard that “ultimately made” Holroyd “unapproachable to others” and even himself. Instead of trying to escape that cage, he enlarges its dimensions, widening the bars to accommodate all emotions, all feelings, experiences and people: “If EVERYTHING is in the Cage then I am more free then if I were keeping all influences out.” This sudden epiphany results in Holroyd’s “liberating” new approach to recording; lifting the constraints of the past in favour of a more organic process of just recording what feels right on the day.
Despite the turmoil and complexity of whatever lies beneath those subconscious thoughts, the twelve ambient suites on this album are mostly contemplative and peacefully ruminative, subtle in creating what are, spaces to think. Prompting track titles offer an emotive starting point or describe a relevant response to the ambient woven textures that follow. Inner Mind Sigh sounds like just that; a slow pause, in-take of breath and dissipated exhale of cerebral reflection set to a trickling neo-classical purposeful piano and throb of neurons. Falling Together with its gossamer David Sylvain vibes and refraction like Jah Wobble bass notes tumbles deftly through the movement of the droplet falling piano; and, no surprises, Into The Light, which could be a missing Mogwai score, finds a passage out of the dimmer gauze of the subterranean into (you guessed it) the light!
Manipulating the many tools and instruments at his disposal, and those of his contributors, Holroyd reverses, shapes and bends the subtle guitar, piano, cello and minimal synthesized textures into open space. Notes and plucked reverberations often hang or float in a mix of Eno-esque traverses and more mechanically turned interplays between kinetic elements. The rare occasions when a rhythm is struck up, such as the Four Tet like Woven, the movement is kept sparse and controlled, despite the roaming wavering intentions.
Looking inwards to expand outwards, Holroyd encapsulates a myriad of cerebral elements and processes into a soundtrack of deep, tender and measured reflections; a slow release of composure that longs to escape like a gauze-y mist from The Cage.
Little Tornadoes ‘Apocalypse!’ River Jones Music, 9th March 2018
More or less making music of one kind or another, under a host of names, over the past thirty years, David Thayer’s most recent project, Little Tornadoes, channels cult sounds, Kosmische, psych, counter-culture country, post-rock, 70s pastiche French chanson and even acid-jazz to dreamily muse over the end times.
Born in the States, Thayer began making music in his native San Jose on the cusp of the 90s, before making his way towards San Francisco during that decade, setting up a bi-weekly event, inviting the cream of the techno movement to play at the Bahia Cabana Club. A change of international scenery, the eclectic collector and absorber of various music scenes made a move to Europe as the new millennium dawned; finding a hub for his sonic and political activities in Zurich. From the squat scene performances as the Xeno Volcano in Switzerland and Germany, revitalizing the infamous and original fountain of Dadaism, the Cabaret Voltaire (alongside Mark Divo), taking over the running of the Sue Ellen Bar in Zurich, and in setting up the Iniciativa project to recuperate the contaminated waters of the Bogota River in Colombia, Thayer’s interests are far reaching and varied.
His second album as the Little Tornadoes, like most of what he does, involves a myriad of contributors, including long-term collaborator and foil Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab fame – who of course, Thayer has worked with on numerous occasions in the past and when the group were still active – on bass line duties and backing vocals. Keeping up the Kosmische and psychedelic vibe are guest spots from a trio of drummers, Holden/Astrobal member Emmanuel Mario, Tortoise’s John Herndon, and Hans Hansen as well as some more bass guitar from Amin Khatir, guitar from Joel Raif and vocals from both Caroline Sallee and Giorgio Tuma.
Leaning heavily towards that Stereolab sparkle and pop lilt, and also lightly underpinned with a melodious country drift, Thayer’s Apocalyptic entitled vision gently meanders through a relaxed if ominous on occasions songbook of Super Furry Animals psychedelic sunshine, languid Raincoats dub gait post-punk, subconscious Andean shoegaze and Altered Images fronted by Cate Le Bon indie pop. Setting up a range of scenes, Thayer and friends muse like broody French noir characters acting out a resigned affair over coffee and Gauloise on Cherie La Mouche; take a languorous space walk on Ursa Major; drift off on a sun lounger beside the Sea of Tranquility on Water Song; and return to Thayer’s desert origins on the drunken piano and country breakdown, Texas.
There’s plenty of well-crafted songs on this album; most of which are short in duration and so devoid, thankfully, of indulgence and extended experimental tedium. Each idea breezes in, no matter how troubled or serious the lyrical themes, travelling between its various inspirations and musical collages with a light touch. Apocalypse! is a candy-coloured psychedelic, cosmic and country trip; sighing over the anxieties and stresses of what could be the end times.
Life Pass Filter ‘Joseph EP’ Gare du Nord, Available now
Unsurprisingly for a label with such a romantically gestured affinity for the city of Paris’ most famous railway station – a label based in the English county of Kent, where the Eurostar hurtles through, passing on its way between London and the Continent before hitting the Channel Tunnel – would at some point add a bona fide French act to their growing roster. The curious Lille-based collaboration between composer/sound designer Antoine Boucherikha and graphic designer Anne Hélou, under the moniker of Life Pass Filter, have marked their inaugural debut for Ian Button’s Gare du Nord label with a succinct EP of endearing advice and comfort; a present to Joseph Chevalier-Poher, the first-born among the duo’s inner circle of closet friends.
A celebration but also a document that records the change when young adults suddenly become parents and proper grown-ups with responsibilities, the Joseph EP is a melodious encapsulation of the ‘sweetness of childhood’ and a peaceable message to the “adult this boy will one day grow up to be”.
Consciously hinting at 60s and modern pop, you could be mistaken for believing this was an American artist at work; the scent of France all but obscured by their penchant for a stateside sound. To a mostly lilting acoustic accompaniment, Boucherikha sings a vibrato effect song of assurance, welcoming the “little man” into the world on the slightly tropical wistful opener, and offers the sweet adage that there’s “no place like home” on the repeating, twanged pedal-looping song of the same title. There’s a psychedelic gauze-y feel to Morning Lights, which sounds like a soothing Flaming Lips playing at the crèche. And the finale, Lullaby, sends the little guy off to up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire; a dreamland where Beck gentle coos and plucks away in quivered bliss.
Short but sweet, this intimate celebration has a curious undertone of seriousness too, a present of knowing and depth that makes this EP anything but saccharine playtime treat. Young Joseph should feel honoured and blessed that someone is bothered to save this moment for posterity; a testament to hope, sagacious wisdom and childhood.
Die Wilde Jagd ‘Uhrwald Orange’ Bureau B, 6th April 2018
Fashioning a mysterious ‘Clockwood Orange’ world of Gothic and ominous dreamscapes, inspired by and named, in part, after the studio it was produced in, and by both the 17th century menagerie paintings of the Flemish artist Frans Snyder and the collected devotional Medieval period songs of the Llibre Vermell De Montserrat artifact, Die Wilde Jagd’s Sebastian Lee Philipp takes us on an eerie, cosmic and slinking travail through a throbbing sophisticated earthy electronic soundtrack. His musical partner on the group’s adroit debut self-titled experiment, producer Ralf Beck, is excused from the follow-up but lends out his extensive racks of vintage analogue synthesizers to Philipp, who transforms and obscures their banks of sounds into ghostly permutations, shadowy creatures and lurking, dancing and honking sonorous cries from a murky wilderness.
Building each track up gradually, with over half the album’s tracks running over ten minutes in length, these soundscapes and semi-organic, semi-industrial pulsing dance tracks twist and contort, with elements rotating from the background to foreground. Live sounding drums and limbering My Life In The Bush of Ghosts style bass lines move it all forward, with tracks such as the clip clopping hoofed bestial, industrial laced pop 2000 Elefanten heading towards a strange amalgamation of Depeche Mode and DAF; especially when there’s stoic Teutonic soul-in-the-machine vocals and sleek techno pulses flashing.
Merging post-punk, Kosmische, dance music and darker evocations of the clandestine and sinister together, Philipp conjures up arcane and futuristic, esoteric and Eastern mystical visions; from the balalaika echoed, prowling Popol Vuh venerable soundtrack of Kreuzgang (translates as Cloister), which could as easily be set in Tibet as the Medieval Lutheran Benelux, to the Velvet Underground and Nico ponder tribal cult witchery, Ginsterblut (Broom Blood).
Die Wilde Jagd’s progressive sound is tight, rhythmic and cleverly put together. Uhrwald Orange is a classy imagined score, balancing cool, gleaming and aloof German electronica with menacing, nocturnal earthiness, yet also reaching for the celestial. One minute imbued with hints of Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Eno, Cluster, and Faust, the next slinking on to the Tresor club or Basic Channel dancefloor. In short: a most impressive album.
Our Choice Albums/EPs of 2017: Part One: Yazz Ahmed to Al Lover Meets Cairo Liberation Front
December 4, 2017
CHOICE ALBUMS/EPS OF 2017 PART ONE: A – L
SELECTION/WORDS: DOMINIC VALVONA & MATT OLIVER
The decision making process:
Continuing to shy away from fatuous rating systems and ‘best of lists’, the Monolith Cocktail endeavors to offer a more eclectic spread of worthy ‘choice’ picks, with no album dominating or holding any particular numbered position – unlike most of our contemporaries lists stuck with the ridiculous task, for example, of explaining why one album is more deserving of their fatuous number 32 spot than another.
Lined up in alphabetical order then, our favourite new and reissued albums and EPs from 2017 are of course considered to be the most interesting, vibrant and dynamic of the year’s releases. But the best? Granted, to make this list you have to have made some sort of impact, but we’d never suggest these entries were categorically the best albums of 2017, even if that might be true. Instead our list is an indicator of our amorphous tastes, rounding up a year in the life of the Monolith Cocktail, and we hope, introducing you to titles and artists/bands that may have dropped below the radar or got lost in the noise of more commercial better promoted releases.
The Context: An Age Of Hysteria. Dominic Valvona
The silent majority to the wrath and often derision of a mouthy, louder, minority carried on defying and surprising the establishment on both sides of the political divide in 2017. The ‘outraged’ of Tunbridge Wells in the letters pages of yore has been replaced with the ‘outraged of social media’, as the year’s unofficial collective anxious end times tagline #losingourshit replaces moderation, distance and analyses: comment before taking it in fully and reading without prejudice.
Context is thrown out the window when the instant gratification of outrage surfaces.
Despite the rolling news miasma of events feeding into the social media vacuum that has now, more or less, become impossible to ignore or leave; despite the encroachment on every facet of our daily lives by technology and the progressive zealots augurs of a complete matrix like synchronization with our gadgets and tech, the fact that people can be bothered to release music on vinyl still, let alone cassette tapes, is heartening, even if the naysayers bemoan that it’s a gimmick, mostly repackaging old material and reissues or an excuse to charge a lot of money for the tactile and physical. The death of everything physical – from books to newspapers, vinyl to CDs – has always been exaggerated; fueled in hope more than actual demand by the camarilla of Silicon Valley.
Still, streaming is fast becoming the most popular model, even though hardly anyone is benefitting – even Spotify, whose business model is particularly hostile towards the artist, is branching out into other industries, including makeup, because though their value is constantly marketed as high, they have failed to make a profit. Soundcloud, running ads now, is constantly teetering on the edge of folding. And the high expectations, glossy launch of the artist love-in Tidal has failed likewise in changing that model, currently languishing way behind its rivals. Bandcamp meanwhile remains the best choice for artists at present, and gives more control to those who use it. Yet, Bandcamp have recently moved into marketing those who frequent its site, writing roundups and blog posts, moving into a promotional critic’s role. How far this will go is anyone’s guess, I’m a little uncomfortable myself with its implications, its method of choosing the worthy from its vast catalogue, and what incentivizes them. How any of these platforms will hold-up going into another uncertain year politically and economically is anyone’s guess, yet despite the constant harping and expectancy of one of these sites and many like them to close, they’ve all managed to limp on regardless.
A teetering stasis between the physical and the digital exists for now. Writing anyone off at this stage would be foolish.
History is a marvelous scholarly pursuit. Yet anything past the year dot of social media’s conception is either revised to fit contemporary fashions or discarded totally. And so a sense of perspective is needed more than ever, especially up against the worrying diplomatic and military developments taking place throughout the Middle East, Europe (both at the very heart of the EU, including Brexit and with the unfolding independence row in Catalonia, but also Russia’s continuing moves and baiting in the Ukraine), Central and South America and Asia.
We also have the march of the robots and automation to consider, the impact of which will take a little time to filter through but will eventually change all our lives, not necessarily for the better – the most repeated mantra that it will only replace the most monotonous, labour intensive and under resourced job roles shtick is evidently untrue, as automation, bots and the programs being designed and rolled out are coming not only for the middle class occupations but all our creative roles too.
Unsurprisingly much of the music that has been released in the past year reflects the ‘fake news’ obsessed, Trumpism, post-postmodern era in which we find ourselves, some brilliantly, others whining and melodramatic – the cyclone of #metoo and the mounting charge sheet of sexual assaults and misdemeanours stacking up against men in, it seems, most industries is live, but yet to filter through yet on record (well there are few exceptions of course). Not many artists offer answers, certainty or solutions though. And some would say that we’re missing the venom, bite, and the rebellious streak that defined the spirit of rock’n’roll, punk and hip-hop.
And so below, the albums and EPs chosen by myself, Matt Oliver and Ayfer Simms reflect the concerns, protestation, lament of the times in which we live: for better or for worse. And not just from the myopic view of the UK, Europe and North American music scenes, but also from Africa, South America, Australasia and Southeast Asia. The Monolith Cocktail has always done its utmost to draw our readers attention to what’s happening outside the Western dominated music industry, and this year’s two-part feature includes artists as diverse as the entrancing Algerian/Tunisian Bargou 08 and Moroccan Gnawa legend Maalem Mahmoud Gania.
So without further ado…here is the first part of this year’s ‘choice albums’ feature. Part two will follow in a week’s time, and our final Quarterly Revue Playlist the week after that.
A.
Yazz Ahmed ‘La Saboteuse’ (Naim Records)
Encapsulating the dreamy enchantment and exotic peregrinations of her Bahrain heritage with the polygenesis jazz scene of her London home, soloist, collaborator and composer extraordinaire Yazz Ahmed takes us on an evocative, transcendental at times, voyage with her new album, La Saboteuse.
Working with everyone from Radiohead – who’s Bloom track is covered by Yazz on this imaginative Arabian suffused suite – to These New Puritans, from Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry to Amel Zen, trumpet virtuoso – though she seems to be proficient with most wind and brass instruments, including the flugelhorn – Yazz steps out to lead her own small troupe on her first solo album since 2011’s Finding My Way Home. With Shabaka Hutchings on bass clarinet and Naadia Sheriff on Fender Rhodes piano, she lingers in an entrancing and often mysterious world of magical brooding vistas and dusky silhouetted sand dunes.
Isolated trumpet lingers and wafting meditations and traverse style vignettes are placed between longer performances of spiritual and Miles Davis sublimity, as Yazz guides us under the starry skies of Arabia and beyond. Dominic Valvona
Tony Allen ‘The Source’ (Bluenote)
The divine rhythm-provider to Fela Kuti, trustee of the Afrobeat groove, Tony Allen has, and not before time, been recognized for his ability to transcend the style he’s rightly venerated for. Hardly surprising to find him furnishing the jazz tastemakers choice label, Blue Note, with an impressive hybrid album of both – though arguably Afrobeat and jazz have influenced and inspired each other over the decades.
Releasing a four-track homage earlier in the year for the same label, a nod to one of his inspirations, Art Blakey (A Tribute To Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers), Allen traverses that Blakey swing and the sound of the Savoy label via Lagos and the Parisian joints of the city he has called home for years on the polyrhythm elasticated The Source. Joining him on this enterprise is a band of Paris jazz musicians and the Cameroonian guitarist Indy Dibongue providing the licks, as well as the odd guest spot, including Damon Albarn’s low key contribution to the heralding Kuti funk Cool Cats – a reference no doubt to ‘Sir’ Victor Olaiya’s highlife band of the same name that Allen was hired to play claves for in his early career.
As I say, it has the swing, it has the funk, it has the jazz, and most definitely it returns to the source. Allen bends morphs and pushes those rhythms beyond showboating to produce a remarkable fusion and synergy. DV
Chino Amobi ‘PARADISO’ (UNO)
Looking out from the balcony of a crumbling civilization, reciting a chilling poetic melodramatic transmogrification of Edgar Allan Poe’s The City In The Sea, as tumultuous storms and waves, the sound of seagulls, the crashing of towers fallen into the sea and gargling howls conjure up all manner of Chthonian trepidation, Chino Amobi’s displaced stark and bleak electronic collage soundtrack PARADISO begins as it means to go on.
The Richmond, Virginia artist has dropped his Diamond Black Hearted Boy moniker in favour of his own name for this expansive plunge into the void. And what a dark world it is to discard masks and alter egos in.
A co-founder of the NON collective of African artists, and of the diaspora, Amobi’s remit is focused on ‘using sound as’ the ‘primary media, to articulate the visible and invisible structures that create binaries in society, and in turn distribute power. The exploration of ‘non, prior to the adjective gives intel into the focus of the label, creating sound opposing contemporary canons’.
This translates in the short concatenate serialist style vignettes and passages of worrying trepidation, heavy thumping, bleak, chilling and uncertain twisted minimal electronica, concrete, post punk, Foley sounds and experimental dystopian vistas. A long list of NON collaborators make appearances on this disturbing, at times violent, end times suite, whether it’s through narrated passages, occasional erratic and gauze-y raps or radio show interjections.
A contorted reality awaits, a world without end. Are we circling the void or already in it? Meanwhile crows feed on the flesh, heralded fanfares sound and bestial cyclones blow us off course from Paradise Lost into a sonic chaos. Yet, we’re not so lost as to be totally incapable of redemption; and the ill effects, as the glimmers that do appear allude and Amobi himself has suggested, are reversible. DV
Austra ‘Future Politics’
Imbued by, amongst others, the work of Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams and their manifesto for the end of capitalism tome, Inventing The Future, which calls for and envisions better days for all of us – an escape from the toxic neoliberalism that has defined that last twenty years -, the Canadian synth siren Katie Stelmanis creates a most encapsulating, pining and beautiful glossy synthesizer pop opus on Future Politics.
Written before the Trump victory of 2016 and the spiraling decay of both political and societal moderation that followed in its wake, Stelmanis, under her Austra persona, has inadvertently synchronized her angelical and suffused dreamy pop swooning airs, arias and coos to the anxious end times.
Stelmanis excels, as you will hear for yourselves, in evocative and cool glimmer-of-hope dreamy minimalist electronica pop. She strips away any excess this time around, going further than usual in producing a starker but highly melodious, trance-y and vaporous swooning melodrama fit for the club and heart. DV
B.
Bargou 08 ‘Targ’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Ahh…the sounds of a dusky reedy gasba flute; the tactile patted and burnished bendir drum; the rustic, earthy strung loutar, and the flowing, soaring scale vocals of the Bargou 08 project’s chief instigator Nidhal Yahyaoui, set an impressive atmosphere in the first couple of minutes of the album’s opening track, Chechel Khater. And that’s all you’d need, except there’s another eight equally evocative and thrilling tracks to hear.
The source of this sound derives from a relatively uncharted region that lies obscured between the mountains of northwest Tunisia and the Algerian border, called the Bargou Valley, which despite its barren isolation, has cultured a unique musical fusion, stretching back hundreds of years. Captivating and magical enough in its ancestral unchanged form, the songs of the valley, sung in the local Targ dialect (a language that is one part Berber, the other Arabic), are given a contemporary jolt that transforms the atavistic paeans, odes and poetry of yore into an intoxicating swirling rapture of electronic North African funk.
Filled with a legacy of turmoil and tension that goes back an aeon the album’s many themes, from describing a lover’s vital attributes on Mamchout to laments of alienation, resonate strongly with the growing unease of events, initiated six years ago by the Arab Spring. Tunisia itself is facing a struggle and teetering on the edge, with no guarantee that certain cultures won’t just disappear or be fragmented in the ensuing melee. Originally setting out to document his Bargou Valley home’s musical heritage before it disappeared, Yahyaoui has successfully and thankfully, with his musical partner, producer and the album’s keyboard player Sofyann Ben Youssef captured this rich mesmeric culture for posterity. And in doing so, produced a masterpiece that will endure. DV
Beans ‘Love Me Tonight’ (Tygr Rawwk Records)
Returning after a short hiatus with a highly prolific fervor, the founding member of the legendary Anti-Pop Consortium leftfield hip-hop troop Beans has made a sort of triple album comeback; putting out a triumvirate of bold, salacious, congruous and provocative records all within a few months of each other. It’s hard to choose but preference dictates that it is the middle of that trio Love Me Tonight that edges it.
A futuristic gleam of eeriness and trepidation hangs over proceedings as Beans travails Cliff Martinez meets Daft Punk club, torture chamber chiming gloom, Super Mario jazz acceleration, Exorcist organ and female led R&B. Changing moods convincingly each and every time, you think you’re getting a Kanye West style dancefloor disco rap album one minute, the next, a dystopian cerebral hip-hop ride into the abyss.
Reading out prose, narratives, scripts and passages like a rap ‘beat poet’ (as well as recording Beans has also released his debut novel, Die Tonight, this year) Beans spit is almost like abstract narration; lyrics broken down into compounds like chemistry and descriptive soliloquy.
In keeping with rap music’s provocative of featuring a roll call of collaborators and guests, Elucid and the Kid Prolific chide in on the hiccup scratching, “that dream is over”, – and perhaps my favourite track of Beans – dark chiming Waterboarding, and the darkwave R&B artist Prince Terrence adding the right soulful yearning tones to the Talons love-in, and pep to the club pumped opener, Apeshit.
Passing lyrical dexterity and abstract thoughts on all the ills currently spinning round in the tumult vortex of 2017, but also carrying on a theme of domestic abuse through a number of tracks, with a running forensic detailed commentary on a father and son crime scene on the disturbing V.X., Beans Love Me Tonight seems like a cry for help, or at least an attempt to make sense of it all. Though at times the lyrics are outright schlock pornographic, and accent hardly plaintive. In a manner it’s a tease, attracting certain condemnation as well as respect. DV
Big Toast & Ill Move Sporadic ‘You Are Not Special’ (Starch Records)
“Blocking today’s culture of aspiration with dollops of common sense; a specialist subject for this year’s UK curriculum that won’t fail you”. RnV, Aug 17
In these troubled times we need assurance and support more than ever. Big Toast and Ill Move Sporadic are not the knights in shining armour the situation requires, rerouting British bulldog spirit by mapping out modern reality more genuine than a million so called keep-it-realists. With one of the great voices to dwarf the mic on his way to becoming his own protest march, Big Toast hammers home the black and white of life ten times over, a dismissive totem who won’t budge for anyone and will battle any life aspect until it’s crying back to its casting couch.
IMS has the cheek to throw in a couple of slow jams to tuck you in when Toast is tucking you up, otherwise coming out swinging from the first bell and landing tooth-loosening one-twos. Anti-motivational speakers who will get your arse in gear, and what the youth of today should be listening to. Matt Oliver
Black Angels ‘Death Song’ (Partisan Records)
If you were looking for a creative musical reaction to Trump and the anxious times we live in then The Black Angels beautiful apocalyptic Death Song must be one of the most anguished and daemonic of responses. The Austin psych-rocking overlords first album in four years was written and recorded during the miasma of the US elections after all: and doesn’t it show!
An emotionally charged despair and anger with moments of catharsis, carried out to a Byzantine flavored soundtrack of esoteric Amon Duul II and Far East Family Band psych, a vortex of 80s Goth inspirations – including The cult and Siouxsie and the Banshees – and the tolling chimes of doom and drone, Death Song is, as the title suggests, a heavy, but most excellent trip.
Brooding romantically in Gothic tragedy as the world continues to turn, undaunted by the prospects of universal uncertainty, The Black Angels spread their wings magnificently on what is, perhaps, one of their best albums yet. The leviathans of the psych-rock scene have learnt much and after a recording hiatus return with something sharper, refined but just as mystical and hallucinatory. DV
The Bordellos ‘Love, Life And Billy Fury’ (Recordiau Prin)
Prolific, if haphazardly, dropping albums upon the unsuspecting, and quite frankly undeserving, public at a whim, St. Helen’s greatest dysfunctional family bring us one of their most ambitious collections of cynical derision and honest yearned anxiety yet: a kind of Joy ‘de vive’ Division.
More or less The Bordellos love songs collection, this latest lo fi affair – that makes even The Fall sound professional – is a raw opening of the heart, and in some cases, the veins. Transmogrifying Spector’s voices of the beehives (The Crystals to The Ronettes), the Spacemen 3, The Cure and, of course, The Velvet Underground, The Bordellos eulogize the nearly man of British rock’n’roll, Billy Fury, craft (perhaps) one of their most beautiful ballads, Starcrossed Radio, and pen a “speeding train” metaphor themed ode to breakups.
Romancing the stoned, the life, loves and failures of rock’n’roll are laid bear and as usual, ignored by an unsympathetic, disinterested public. But despite mostly alluding recognition and validation (because that seems to be all that matters in the social media age: affirmation from the echo-chamber of peers), The Bordellos mope and grind on, producing some of the most important diatribes and, in this case, scuzzy, dirge-y and primal garage band spirited love-pained grievances. DV
Brother Ali ‘All the Beauty in This Whole Life’ (Rhymesayers)
“A triumph of crowd gathering words to the wise meets devil’s advocacy, guaranteeing end of term honours”. RnV. May 17
In these troubled times we need assurance and support more than ever. Comparing two of 2017’s most prominent protesters, Joey Bada$$ (on All Amerikkkan Bada$$) got you to show your colours while keeping it funky. Brother Ali on the other hand was there so a circle could form around him when handing out affirmative rhymes that wouldn’t sound out of a place around a campfire, promising the “type of love you can’t type with your thumbs”.
Without detracting from the former, it’s the latter’s warmth that makes him sound like he’s talking to you one to one, and where a rapt audience will follow, that gets the nod; a soft, grit-speckled delivery assuring everything’s gonna work out even when he’s recounting history lessons to the contrary. To a backdrop of blazing suns starting to dip and winter huddles taking shape thanks to great cleanse and polish from Atmosphere’s Ant Davis, it’s confirmation you should always put faith in Brother Ali’s hands. MO
C.
Dr. Chan ‘Southside Suicides’ (Stolen Body Records)
Like some obscure French exchange garage band of students – the kind you’d find if it existed, on a European version of the Teenage Shutdown! compilations – hanging out in the 80s L.A. of plaid shirt and paisley bandana fatigue wearing skater-punks, Dr Chan are an abrasive and coarse mix of renegade petulant inspirations.
Essentially powered by garage rock and all its various manifestations, the group from the south of France hurtle through an up tempo and raging backbeat of The Chocolate Watch Band, The Standells, The Rationales, Black Lips and Detroit Cobras. The difference here is that they also throw in a miscreant Molotov of thrash punk, courtesy of Fidlar, and “death rap” – cue Florida’s $uicideboy$ and their dollar sign typeface indulgence – into the riot on their Southside Suicides protest. It gives the Chan’s brand of garage band mania a different intensity and drive: more screaming in a ball of flames spikiness than tripping psych.
Riled and obviously pissed about the current state of affairs both at home and overseas, Dr Chan’s rage and insolence is in keeping with the primal spirit of rock’n’roll: fun, fun, fun! It’s a blast. DV
Oliver Cherer ‘The Myth Of Violet Meek’ (Wayside & Woodland)
Set in the Forest of Dean, this lamentable concept album (billed as ‘part-fiction’ ‘part fact’) from the man behind Dollboy, Oliver Cherer, weaves the dreamy folkloric story of the tragic protagonist Violet Meek (a play on words of ‘violence’); mauled to death or not by the dancing bears of a visiting circus troupe in the twisted and, musically alluded ominous maybe magical, tree thickened woods. Based we’re told on a vaguely real event that happened in the 1880s, Cherer’s story isn’t just a vintage walk in the past and melodic indictment on the cruelty of Victorian society towards women, but draws parallels with the continuing issues of inequality, chauvinism and mistreatment still prevalent in our own times.
This is an unforgiving unflattering portrayal of England, a nascent nostalgic one with little room for equality and the presence of outsiders, but every bit as revealing about our present. As lovely, often dreamily so, as the music is the 70s pastoral accompaniment is often trembling and quivering, the fiddles distressed and bewitchery, enticing us into a esoteric psychogeography that features a languid brushed backbeat and Morris Dancers like flourish around the maypole on one song, but finds evil in the idyllic scenery on another.
In short, it is a most stunning, ambitious and beautiful minor opus. For those who like their folk and pastoral eerie and esoteric. DV
The Church ‘Man Woman Life Death Infinity’
To infinity and beyond, Australia’s stalwart alternative rock and pop guitar romantics The Church, nearly thirty years since their inception continue to breathily produce quiet masterpieces; continue to experiment and explore new sonic textures. Travelling into the ethereal, the sagacious Man Woman Life Death Infinity is a suffused glide and traverse of air-y vapours and misty mystery; beginning with the opening, soaring minor opus Another Century, sustained throughout, with each song materializing out of the ether.
Reflecting but an unconscious inspiration, The Church’s founding member Steve Kirby calls this album the group’s “water record”. Though all the characteristics of water, trickling chords, cascaded dripping notes and a sense of floating are all correct, this dreamy pop and transient songbook seems to leave the ocean floor and rivers for something more astral. Songs such as Submarine for instance seem imbued with a spirit of the Kosmische. Yet fans of the group’s staple of pop guitar swan songs and subtle psychedelic 80s lovelorn classics will love Before The Deluge and I Don’t Know How I Don’t Know: both of which show traces of that college rock meets garage riffage that arguably inspired or was picked up by The Stone Roses.
Still writing timeless anthems without lazily reverting to the back catalogue, still pushing forward after four decades, The Church can still illuminate and surprise. This, there 26th, album is anything but jaded. If anything it seems that The Church are still very much in the game, and able to balance familiarity with discovery. DV
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ‘The Tourist’
Inimitably jump-starting a cerebral indie-pop scene in the mid noughties with his unique off-kilter melodies and quivered, yodeled vocals, the fiercely independent, Alec Ounsworth created major ripples with his nom de plume, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-released debut in 2005.
Ounsworth stumbles and ponders through a “post factual” strewn world of challenging emotions trying to make sense of it all on The Tourist. At times the album title could even be said to act as a metaphor for the artist’s own estranged and removed soul-searching: a tourist in his own country. Despite some sad and profound pathos heavy lyricism, Ounsworth’s “purging” of thoughts is meant to be a cathartic experience. The anxieties of our times can’t help but leak from every other line, yet this album is a fairly warm, jangly surprise package of lolloping and anthemic songs.
Building and soaring to an emotive brightened crescendo of sweetness and yearning on The Vanity Of Trying; contorting and bending guitar textures in a Robert Fripp fashion on the psych-pop gnarled Down (Is Where I Want To Be); and, up close and personal (every breathe audible) to the mic, driving through an 80s nocturnal rock ballad on Better Off, the inimitable Ounsworth careers through a full gamut of moods and chaos in the most natural and energetically purposeful way.
Clocking in at well under the forty minute mark (bands and artists take note) The Tourist is an unlabored, near-perfect melodious album. It says all it needs to and more; free of indulgence, and despite its bombast, sophisticated suffused layering is incredibly lean and brisk. A most enjoyable if poignant experience, this album already sets the benchmark in 2017, and is without doubt one of CYHSY’s best. DV
Full review…
Anna Coogan ‘The Lonely Cry Of Space & Time’
Not the easiest of bedfellows, difficult to love and often (rightly) condemned as indulgent and overblown, but the worlds of rock and opera do occasionally overlap in a congruous union. The unquestionably talented Anna Coogan for instance, mixes the two majestically, using her finely trained 3-octave soprano and classical background to offer fluttering siren-like arias that seem to surreptitiously manifest from, what is, an ever-changing metamorphosis of musical styles, on her latest album, The Lonely Cry Of Space & Time.
Inspired by scientific discoveries, a “childhood listening to Puccini’s La Boheme”, the fateful poet Sylvia Plath, the tumultuous grave mistakes of intervention in the Middle East and, no surprises, the 2016 US elections Coogan’s ambitious suite of songs and instrumental evocations is far from lofty and classical.
Spanning country, Ry Cooder desert meditations, Anna Calvi like trembled sensual emulations, PJ Harvey and even bubbly synth pop, Coogan together with musical collaborator Willie B – offering atmospheric Moog bass line undertones and drums – produces a ‘wave’ fixated lamenting and balletic travail and a surprise highlight of 2017. DV
D.
Daniel Son ‘Remo Gaggi’ (Crate Divizion)
“Toasting the high life and low lives, gangster rap bearing honourable intentions”. RnV, May 17
Canadian slick talker Daniel Son is the front for this, one of many Giallo Point heists that the UK producer ran during 2017. With the authentic mob experience evident in such titles as Flat Tyers, Car Seizures, Strippers Den etc and the kingpin adoring the sleeve, it’s instantly noticeable how dry GP’s noir-ish production is; sharply tailored loops of muted house band jazz that has seen nefarious comings and goings, but are gagged by confidentiality agreements and the fear of loose lips sinking ships.
Potent in what it doesn’t disclose, display one bead of sweat and you’re in trouble. Before you know it Daniel Son – “we the reason that the yacht insurance be going up” – has decked you with a leg sweep before disappearing back into the night. While it’s easy to apply Godfatherly stereotypes to Remo Gaggi, the style of this international union contrasting brash and diligent, compellingly separates the best from the rest. MO
Dope KNife ‘NineteenEightyFour’ (Strange Famous)
“An absolute battering ram of four wheel drive blasting through the boggiest of boom bap. Big Brother would think twice about listening in”. RnV, Feb 17
We’re not trying to discredit Dope KNife by saying that NineteenEightyFour is an almost unfashionable antidote to tween trap, happily, mercilessly fanning the flames of the very 2017 argument of what constitutes real hip-hop between upstarts and originals (and if there’s an argument abound, it’s only right that Sage Francis is tagged in as well). Far from an Orwellian vision yet probably something of a dystopia to some as he walks with an intimidating shadow, DK comes slathered in dirt, ready to punch you in the ear with a splattered larynx.
As a one-man steamroller on beats and rhymes it’s not an exact science, but that’s absolutely fine with us, the battle-hardened, bitter-as-blasé (yet also able to reference the Fresh Prince theme tune) Georgia emcee leaving competition standing (“I can’t help being a damn cynic, this damn planet got a fucking lot of wack in it”). MO
The Doppelgangaz ‘Dopp Hopp’ (Groggy Pack)
“A drop of ‘Dopp Hopp’ a day will keep the haters away; will creep up on the button marked ‘repeat’ until it progresses to heavy rotation”. RnV, Jul 17
Despite the sub-Gothic sleeve looking like the NY pair are auditioning badly for a death metal gig, Dopp Hopp ranks high on this year’s list on the strength of its smoothness alone. “Live by the cloak, die by the cloak” say The Ghastly Duo; but the mystery ends once their views from West Coast low riders, developing a smoky lens that’s intoxicating but never fuggy, embrace the inevitable sunshine.
Also readymade for reminiscing as on E.W.W. and Strong Ankles, the ‘Gangaz have set themselves the relatively easy task of riding the vibes properly, and they oblige with a natty turn of phrase prepared to shift towards the nearest street corner at their leisure. Dopp Hopp is another feather in a cap looking more and more like the crown jewels. Beats and rhymes guarantee return visits to golden-edged climes, where you simply have to rewind the boast that “if ‘Dopp Hopp’ was a beer, it’d be an IPA”. MO
75 Dollar Bill ‘Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock’
(Glitterbeat Records)
This album could have rightly qualified for last year’s feature, but re-launched, repackaged for Glitterbeat Records’ burgeoning new imprint tak:til, 75 Dollar Bill gets another shot: mainly because it slipped under most radars on its maiden voyage in 2016. Now in 2017 with a hopefully wider global release it will shine.
Adhering to Jon Hassell’s “fourth world music” blurring of the division between futurism and tradition the 75 Dollar Bill duo of NYC-based musicians Rick Brown and Che Chen, traverse the psychedelic desert rock and trance of the Maghreb, avant-garde, jazz and even swamp boogie delta blues in a most indolent but listless transient manner on W/M/P/P/R/R. Motivated by an interest in “compound meters” – meter involves the way multiple pulse layers work together to organize music in time; a compound essentially dividing the beat into three equal parts -, but playing in a fashion that feels natural and organic, the follow-up to 2015’s more “forward momentum, stomping and shaking” style Wooden Bag is a nuanced clever exploration of interconnected tonality and tactile responses to a wealth of harmonics and melodies from a pan-global array of influences: from modal jazz to Arabic modes and eastern scales.
What they produce is an often adumbrate, repetitive experience that builds gradually, slowly releasing various tangents of interplay between the principle duo and their extended backing group of friends; traversing genres and moods to evoke new expletory musical spaces. DV
E.
Ester Poly ‘Pique Dame’ (Ikarus Records)
Experimentally rocking the cantons of their Swiss home for a while in their respective separate outfits, Béatrice Graf and Martina Bérther unite as an unholy drum and electric bass alliance under the Ester Poly (a scramble of ‘polyester’ of course) banner.
Pitching generation X(er) Bérther with Y(er) Graf, this rambunctious vehicle for the duo’s feminist protestations and irony is hardly hampered by the limitations of their chosen drum and bass instrumentation, and hardly comparable to any of the many such similar combinations plying their trade. Instead, Ester Poly use a stack of effects and distortion tools to widen their sound spectrum; evoking hints and obvious homages to post-punk, art school, Jazz, doom rock, heavy metal, no wave and Krautrock in the process.
Recorded in more or less one-takes, both combatants facing off against each other in the studio with no headphones or click track, Pique Dame captures not only the lively, hostile and enraged but also the humour (even if it is dark and resigned) of this energetic union. Despite the raging tumults, dynamism and soundclash of ideas, this album is a steady and even showcase of festering ideas and moods. It’s also quite brilliant and encapsulates the ‘pique’ perfectly; arousing, curious and irritated! DV
F.
Faust ‘Fresh Air’ (Bureau B)
Still banging the cement-mixer drum and manning the barricades after forty odd years in the business, the Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier duo version of Faust – at its most base drummer/percussionist and bassist-come-tormentor of sound – and their latest protestation Fresh Air is a sort of art-provocateur road trip of the USA, featuring an abundance of locals and internationalist artists and musicians, picked-up on the way through New York, Texas and California: A counter-cultural agitation travail from coast to coast.
Featuring the usual Faust totems and that workmanlike methodology of extracting sounds and evocations from machinery, found objects, debris and the architecture – even Péron’s front door hinges from home make an appearance – Fresh Air is an urgent gasp for relief from the polluted, choked, environment. It’s also a highly convoluted attempt at transforming geometrical forms and abstractions into a sonic score. Three of the tracks on this album take their inspiration from a faux-workshop at the highly regarded California Institute of the Arts. A session that includes the loony 23-second vocal exercise symphony Partitur – defined loosely as “a sort of Dadaist choir, a musique impressionniste” by Péron –; the loose Slits do souk jazz, camel ride Chlorophyll, which features Barbara Manning “sneaking” in word association sketches alongside Zappi’s own strange utterings; and the saxophone squalling, motoring Lights Flicker, which again features Manning, bridging the role of Laurie Anderson and Patti Smith, repeating an agitated mantra over a quasi art-dance backing.
Continuing with their signature agitation, often menacing, call-to-arms whilst also sonically turning the abstract into something audible, Péron and Zappi can still be relied upon to create provocative statements, five decades on from when the original Faust dynamic barraged audiences with the most confrontational and experimental sound ideas. Struggling like the rest of us, but finding a comradely with another generation of artists and musicians, they look for hope in the miasma. DV
Craig Finn ‘We All Want The Same’ (Partisan Records)
Occupying a rich postmodern American literary landscape, channeling such celebrated chroniclers as Bruce Springsteen and Vic Chesnutt, former The Hold Steady, and prior to that Lifter Puller, front man Craig Finn has in more recent years carved out a career as a successful solo artist. In true Springsteen style, though with far less guttural bombast, Finn brings a certain levity and importance to the lives of America’s “ordinary folk”, building a highly erudite diorama to stage the unfolding, and to outsiders, the often inconsequential dramas that are acted out across the States on a daily cycle.
Subtly tapping into the “liberal” creative psyche of America, one that’s still in a state of shock, but also the so-called “blue collar” America that put Trump in the White House, Finn doesn’t so much point fingers or berate as reflect the resignation of a cast on the peripherals of society.
Enriched with the graceful subtle presence and soaring vocal harmonies of Caithlin De Marrais and singer/songwriter Annie Nero, the keys of Sam Kassirer, swaddling and lifting horns maestro Stuart Bogie and longtime contributor from The Hold Steady, guitarist Tad Kubler, the musical backdrop is a mix of rolling Warren Zevon piano psychodrama, bluesy rock’n’roll and Ashbury Park period E Street Band brass. A solid performance and assiduous edition to the modern American songbook, Finn’s third solo album shows a full-bodied, sagacious artist at his pinnacle. DV
G.
Maalem Mahmoud Gania ‘Colour Of The Night’ (Hive Mind Records)
Maalem Mahmoud Gania, the near-exulted star of the Moroccan honed Gnawa – a style of traditional Islamic dance, music and poetry with roots spread across the sub-Saharan crescent of Africa; considered by many to be one of the origins of the “blues” rhythm – and artisan of the genre’s key instrument, the camel-skin covered three-string lute like “guimbri”, released an extensive catalogue of recordings for labels such as Tichkaphone, La Voix El Maaref and Sonya Disques.
Choosing such a revered icon with which to launch their inaugural new imprint Hive Mind Records, the Brighton outfit’s inaugural baptism is the legend’s final studio recording, the afflatus, entrancing Colours Of The Night. What makes it special is that this is the first solo release by the artist outside his native homeland to be released on vinyl.
Stringy, wiry, occasionally a tone or two lower and played like a quasi-bass guitar, Gania’s playing style is raw, deep and always infectious: from blistering solos to slower and lighter ruminating descriptive articulations; this is equally matched by his atavistic soulful voice and the chorus of swooning, venerated female and male voices and harmonies that join him on each track.
Colours Of The Night is a highly hypnotic collection of performances both magical and transcendental, beautifully traversing Arabia and desert blues traditions. DV
Golden Teacher ‘No Luscious Life’
Seeming to just follow wherever the groove takes them, whether it’s ESG uptown/downtown Boho Noho Soho New York, electro Afrobeat, the griot traditions of West Africa or 80s Chicago House, the polygenesis influences of Glasgow’s sonic multilingual Golden Teacher sextet seamlessly entwine to produce the most solid of on-message dance music.
Flexing and limbering to a hip 80s heavy melting pot of sounds and references, the Glasgow troupe move like liquid through a soundtrack of polyrhythms, acid and tight drum presets, oscillations, clean and not so clean futuristic galactic house funk. Not many groups can inaugurate and move between both the Senegalese griot matriarch Aby Ngana Diop and Cabaret Voltaire on the same album, but such is the myriad of musical backgrounds, and they encompass every kind of genre you can think of, of the band members that make up this loose collective, you’re never quite sure what you might hear next.
Though rhythmically and melodically, pumping and sonically doing all the talking for them, there are succinct, atmospheric vocals from Cassie Ojay and Charles Lavenac to give either a certain sway and louche entrancing quality or, as on the opening Afro-funk meets pumping House Sauchiehall Withdrawal – a reference to one of Glasgow’s most, famous and popular main thoroughfares, with everything from the Glasgow School Of Art and CCA art hub of venues and galleries to shopping and nightclubs on its mile and a half long strip – a soulful austerity groundhog day political context: dutifully working the daily slog and for what?!
Moving to Glasgow, from about as far south of the border as you can go, a couple of years ago, one of the first gigs I saw was a sort of impromptu, diy style, performance from the group at The Old Hairdressers in town. Improvised to a degree they caught the wide-eyed excitement and dynamism of an earlier time as if it was fresh and new. A must-see live turn, the group has, unlike so many others before them, captured that free spirit and looseness on record. Yet production is really slick.
The city has always enjoyed a reputation for the eclectic, and Golden Teacher more than most, encapsulate that cross-pollination, borderless approach to absorbing music from across the globe – from The Levant to Compass Point – and making it funky. DV
H.
Happyiness ‘Write-In’ (Moshi Moshi)
Ah…the sound of a band embracing the heartfelt warmth, accentuated dazed melodies and special feel of such 70s fare as Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and Big Star, Happyness evoke the hazy fond memories and subtle sophistication of these and other complimentary artists on their brilliant album Write In.
The opening Falling Down gambit, with its radiant phaser guitar, conjures up the Scottish indie supremos (and fellow Big Star acolytes) Teenage Fanclub, whilst the pastel-shaded saddened tone of The Reel Starts Again sounds like a lost, ghostly remnant of a George Harrison and Jeff Lynne malady. A touch of the Brighten The Corners era Pavement permeates the band’s weary slacker muffled Uptrend/Style Raids, but by the time we reach the halfway stage of the album the lads are back to thrashing out a languorous grunge-y grind on Bigger Glass Less Full.
Subtle and confident, Write In is a halcyon, beautifully executed album with real depth and personality. Happyness have found their flow with loose but perceptively well-crafted gentle pop songs of a timeless quality: to be played as the “credits roll forever”. DV
Here Are The Young Men And Uncle Peanut ‘This Is Standard Life’
(Musical Bear Records)
Unceremoniously released almost on the sly, though because we are inundated with 100s of releases every week it could be we missed this one, the brilliant cut price, and with far more humour, authenticity and irony than the Sleaford Mods (as if scribbled by David Shrigley) Here Are The Young Men & Uncle Peanut are back with a load more broadsides leveled at life’s most cunty personalities and foibles.
Not so much poetic, not really rap in the true sense of the word either, they make observational snatches of overheard misnomers, condemnations and Estuary patois on the modern toss life of a pissed-stained mattress society. Modern life isn’t so much rubbish as depressingly shite, as the group transmogrify a sort of Daft Punk ‘Teachers’ style litany of great influential bands into a council estate, backroom punk paean to the spirit of punk and good music; safe in the knowledge that Mark E Smith Is Still Doing The Fall, even after a hundred years!
Diatribes on outsourcing, hipsters (the Day The Hipsters Stole Our Look; those penny-farthing riding tossers), lads banter (“yes mate, yes mate, standard”), gentrification, “nobbers” (who are “fucking everywhere!” on the Underworld goes punk song of the same name) and pop stars abound, and there’s even collaborations with Art Brut’s inimitable Eddie Argos (on the and Billie Ray Martin (of S’Express and Electribe 101 fame).
It’s nothing short of fucking brilliant, short and anything but sweet. The use of swearing alone is commendable. A sort of vitriolic, generation X middle-aged series of rants on what we’ve lost, what we are set to lose and what we could do without. DV
I.
Ifriqiyya Électrique ‘Rûwâhîne’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Capturing something quite unique, the collaborative industrial post-punk and avant-garde rock scenes of Europe clash head-on with the descendants of the Hausa slaves atavistic rituals styled group, Ifriqiyya Electrique, create an often unworldly chthonian conjuncture of Sufi trance, spirit possession performance and technology.
A film project and now immersive sonic experience, inspired by the important Banga music traditions and the accommodating, rather than exorcising, of spirits ceremonial wild dances and call and response chanted exaltations of the black communities – originally transported to the region from sub-Saharan Africa – in the oasis towns of southern Tunisia, this astounding meeting of cultures and history is anything but scenic.
Formed in the Djerid Desert, the idea forged by field-recordist and veteran guitarist of the politically-charged Mediterranean punk and “avant-rock” scenes, François Cambuzat, and bassist Gianna Greco – both of which occasionally join forces with that livewire icon of the N.Y. underground, Lydia Lunch, to form the Putan Club -, the Ifriqiyya Electrique spans both continents and time. For their part, Cambuzat and Greco provide the grind, industrial soundscape texturing, sonorous drones and flayed guitars, but mostly, the “electrique”, whilst, offering a dialogue with the spirits and the tradition, Banga musician Ali Chouchen – joined in the live theatre by an expanded cast of fellow voices, krabebs and Tunisian tabla players from the community, which includes Tarek Sultan, Yahia Chouchen and Youssef Ghazala – provides peripheral sounding evocative echoed and esoteric vocals and equally haunting nagharat.
Spiritual conversations transformed and realigned with the machine age turmoil of industrial noise, Arthur Baker style rock and hip-hop production, post-punk and even Teutonic techno, Rûwâhîne is a rambunctious unique force. DV
J.
Jam Baxter ‘Mansion 38’ (High Focus)
“Half cut, whip smart. Ultimate, grungy outlaw hip-hop, putting the trap in trapdoor”. RnV, Mar 17
UK crown rulers High Focus reached new levels of cult when Mansion 38 became that creepy house at the end of the road that may be good for a heart-in-mouth laugh at Halloween, but not somewhere you’d venture to acquire a friendly cup of sugar.
Recorded and produced in Bangkok, Jam Baxter’s quotable cynicism is of an emcee breed that gets caught in a landslide escaping reality in a bid to keep himself amused, but whose focus is actually doing overtime. Seeming nonsense suddenly swoops down at you with lethal intent, most notably on the shrewd consumerist commentary on offer For a Limited Time Only. He of The Gruesome Features squats on Chemo’s production, and where there’s no such thing as a wrong turn, it’s alien, exotic, and worryingly comforting at once, slowly beginning sinkhole formation, and with Dumb demanding you take cover while running in slow-motion. Bugged out, bug-bombed, brilliant. MO
Jehst ‘Billy Green is Dead’ (YNR)
“Showing the sort of word association and plain English penmanship that has long made him the UK’s premier emcee”. RnV, Jun 17
Whether the eponymous subject of Jehst’s sixth full-length is man or myth, a reflection on society or the High Plains Drifter letting his imagination run wild while disclosing clues from his own personal memoirs, you’ll be hanging on Billy Green’s every move, tic and confession.
It’s the album’s lost, tired soul trying to keep the walls from closing in, but then seeming to be at peace with any pending doom. It’s the human element, from the debilitation of an everyday Joe to referencing the Kardashians and when the most important decisions can sometimes boil down to choosing “the Snickers or the Mars, E&J liquor or the six-pack of the Stella Artois”. It’s Jehst’s delivery that even when close to succumbing to heat exhaustion, finds a reserve from deep down that’s of an improbable, impeccable sharpness. It’s the simmering sphere of wax and wane production whose highs and lows run a perfect parallel. ‘Billy Green is Dead’, long live Jehst. MO
Jonwayne ‘Rap Album Two’ (Authors Recording Co)
“Personal struggle both poignant and unapologetic for showing its hand…watch its humble humanity become the choice of the open eared this year”. RnV, Feb 17
Rap Album Two approaches that long-standing hip-hop (and society in general) elephant in the room: the refusal to admit vulnerability. In laying crises on the line, Jonwayne becomes his own therapist and subsequently an outlet for the hesitant and anxious to claim as their own. At his most lo-fi, the times to think become deafening and don’t necessarily mean there’s a clean pathway to redemption.
It would take a kingsized about-turn for Jonwayne to become self-destructive on record, but it’s the legitimacy of his 20/20 vision and the potential of the what-ifs that sit kindly. Particularly on the beautifully dejected/accepting Out of Sight and Afraid of Us, bearing the powerful “look at these people, counting on me when I can’t even count on myself”, you can hear him fighting for his very survival. Also behind the excellent Black Boy Meets World by Danny Watts (who features here), Rap Album Two bridges the gap between cult hero and everyman icon. MO
K.
King Ayisoba ‘1000 Can Die’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Sounding the klaxon call in defense of his native Ghana, and Africa at large, on his inaugural LP for Glitterbeat Records, the striking, lively King Ayisoba, from the roots up, uses his guttural earthy howl and atavistic kologo lute to great effect in demonstrating not only a raw anger but also a deep love for a much misunderstood continent.
From the very outset Ayisoba and his contributors Wanlov da Kubolar & Big Gad – just two of the many guest appearances on this album – rap, sing and stamp a slogan sentiment on the opening Africa Needs Africa of, “Let’s fight for Africa/Africa needs us.” Covering the North African diaspora, the boat people’s sorry saga, the colonial past and umpteen other issues that more or less shape the image that those observers from outside the continent believe is the only side to Africa – between a misplaced sentimentality and outright ignorance. There is protestation and indictment, but also a lively focus on the positives too; finding solutions through the medium of music and culture.
In-between the fiery, bordering on punk, clatter of guluku, dundun and Djembe drums and rambunctious electronic phasing beats there are more plaintive, yearning stripped-back moments: Grandfather Song, a toiled from the soil of tragedy lament, offers a more intimate knee-jerk from the full-on band sound, and Dapagara is sent off into a sweeping, wafting vista by the Nigerian legend Orlando Julius’ traversing, reedy accentuated saxophone.
Raw from the heart, highly evocative and rebellious, King Ayisoba’s songs of rage and vitality actually offer a kind of hope in the face of adversity. The future of Ghana’s music scene is in good hands at least. DV
L.
L’Orange ‘The Ordinary Man’ (Mello Music Group)
“An evocative performance capturing a concerto producer whose trick-from-sleeve ratio remains visionary”. RnV, Nov 17
Another 12 months of might and magic on Mello Music Group, including must-checks from Oddisee and Mr Lif and Akrobatik as the reconvening Perceptionists. However, it’s the beatsmith with the knack from Nashville building up quite the back catalogue where Tenneseein’ is Tennebelievin’. Loosely based around the sleight-handed history of when illusionists were the rockstars of their day – on premise alone, L’Orange is out by himself – the mostly instrumental The Ordinary Man is described as “vaguely reminiscent of RJD2’s ‘Deadringer’”, where loops slip off straitjackets and straight up gallivant.
Reserving the mic for only a handful of guests after a starry stack of collaborative LPs, L’Orange offers jazziness with a spring in its step, even when its grainy monochrome quality appears to be suffering (perhaps reflecting his own personal health issues). Covered in a sweet patchwork of samples, the headnodding will rock your neck stiff (Cooler than Before soars like the plane on Raekwon’s Criminology), while placing it delicately upon a pillow. MO
Liars ‘TFCF’ (Mute)
The confusing soundtrack to a musical divorce, the enduring creative partnership behind the Liars, Angus Andrew and Aaron Hemphill, finally fell apart after the release of Mess. Though confounding fans and critics alike on every release, the now streamlined version of the Liars sees Andrew at the helm of, essentially, a one-man band, churning up and lurching through what should by rights be another ‘mess’ of ideas to produce something quite vivid and experimentally sharp.
Chronicling what he felt was akin to a musical marriage, Andrew sitting miserably slumped in a wedding dress, left holding the bouquet on the cover of TFCF (Theme From Crying Fountain) charts a deteriorating relationship, with dysfunctional material – some of which was marked for the next Hemphill & Andrew Liars album – spun into a brilliant sulky, miserable melodrama of electronic, new wave, punk and cerebral pop.
Leaving L.A. for his native home of Australia, a dethatched Andrew transmogrifies those American influences into acoustic, labored drum break lamentable sneers (The Grand Delusional), Love style Mexican psych flare crossed with Medieval courtship (Cliché Suite) and disjointed daggered, The Knack meets Beck, lurches (Cred Woes).
Often resigned, hurt, pranged with pity throughout, it hardly sounds appealing, yet TFCF is full of reinvention, experimentation and lyrically, both dreamily and petulantly opprobrious. DV
Al Lover Meets Cairo Liberation Front ‘Nymphaea Caerulea’ (Hoga Nord)
A meeting of exotic minds, San Francisco producer/remixer Al Lover (The Brian Jonestown Massacre to Goat) and the Tilburg collective Cairo Liberation Front set out on an evocative mesmerizing flight of escapist fantasy on the extended Nymphaea Caerulea EP.
Continuing a partnership with the Hoga Nord label and following up the previous Zodiak Versions, Al and his collaborators merge psychedelic dance music with a spiritually mysterious imagined vision of Egypt: Nymphaea Caerulea being the Latin name for the blue Egyptian lotus, a flower of the Orient.
Over six ‘levels’ they traverse and evoke entrancing Egyptian flute led feverish ritual, mysticism, sweeping desert winds, ancient kingdoms, belly dancing and cyclonic Afro-Futurist beats.
References to a new sonic deliverance, a musical Arab Spring, infuse the six instrumental tracks with a certain levity and theme. But rather than bang the drum of rage and protest in the land of the Pharaohs and old gods, Al and the Cairo Liberators create a moody mysterious, veiled soundtrack fit for the dancefloor. DV
PLAYLIST
SELECTIONS: DOMINIC VALVONA, MATT OLIVER AND AYFER SIMMS
The second quarterly revue of 2017 gathers together a faithful purview of the last three months of reviews and articles on the Monolith Cocktail. Myself, Matt Oliver and Ayfer Simms have chosen a mere smattering of our favourite music from that period; featuring both tunes from albums/singles/EPs/collections we’ve reviewed or featured on the site and some we just never had the time to include.
Our customary eclectic playlist features synthesized peregrinations and quirky electronica from Ippu Mitsui, AXL OTL and Swamp Sounds; forlorn desert blues and experimental polygenesis traverses and bombast from Ifriqiya Electrique, King Ayisoba, Tanzania Albinism Collective and Songhoy Blues; a smattering of choice cuts from Matt Oliver’s Rapture & Verse hip-hop review, including Raekwon, Prozack Turner, Brother Ali and Shabazz Palaces; plus pop makossa vibes from Cameroon, aria electric guitar cosmological paeans from Anna Coogan, heavy doom psychedelia from the Black Angels and much, much more. In all: A sense of anxiety. A sense of angst. A sense of unease. And a sense of wonder.
Tracks:
Ippu Mitsui ‘Bug’s Wings’ (review)
AXL OTL ‘Ondes Beta’
Swamp Sounds ‘Skull Disco’ (review)
In Flagranti ‘Sidewalk Salsa’
Flamingods ‘Mixed Blessings’
King Ayisoba (ft. Wanlov da Kubolor & Big Gad) ‘Africa Needs Africa’ (review)
Ifriqiyya Electrique ‘Arrah arrah abbaina-Bahari-Tenouiba’ (review)
Tanzania Albinism Collective ‘Tanzania Is Our Country, Too’ (review)
Vieux Farka Toure ‘Bonheur’ (review)
Tanzania Albinism Collective ‘Mistreated’
Colin Stetson ‘Spindrift’
Uncle Pops & The Dumbloods ‘Harry Smith’s Paper Planes’ (review)
Raekwon ‘Crown Of Thorns’
BocaWoody (ft, Blu Rum 13) ‘At It Again’ (review)
The Last Skeptik (ft. Scrufizzer, Mikill Pane, Dream Mclean, Al The Native) ‘Drumroll Please’ (review)
DJ Format & Abdominal ‘Still Hungry’ (review)
Prozack Turner ‘Obsession’ (review)
Danger Mouse & Run The Jewels ‘Chase Me’ (review)
Ramson Badbonez & DJ Fingerfood ‘Hypnodic’ (review)
Jehst (ft. Eric Biddines & Strange U) (review)
Brother Ali ‘Own Light (What Hearts Are For)’ (review)
Shabazz Palaces (ft. Thaddillac) ‘Shine A Light’ (review)
El Michels Affair (ft. Lee Fields & The Shacks) ‘Tearz’ (review)
Alex Stolze ‘Don’t Try To Be’ (review)
Earlham Mystics ‘Truth’
Andrew Wasylyk ‘Under High Blue Skies’ (review)
Bill Loko ‘Nen Lambo’ (review)
Vincent Ahehehinnou ‘Best Woman’
Songhoy Blues ‘Bamako’
The Black Angels ‘Hunt Me Down’ (review)
Faust ‘Lights Flicker’ (review)
Oiseaux-Tempete ‘Baalshamin’
Anna Coogan ‘The Lonely Cry Of Space And Time’ (review)
Sergio Beercock ‘Jester’ (review)
Sparks ‘What The Hell Is It This Time?’
Der Plan ‘Lass die Katze stehn’ (review)
Arcade Fire ‘Creature Comfort’
Lucy Leave ‘Talk Danish To Me’
Vassals ‘Sea Spells’ (review)
Mount Song ‘Nothing’ (review)
Carlo Mazzoli ‘Avalanche Blues’ (review)
Happyness ‘Tunnel Vision On Your Part’ (review)
NEW MUSIC REVIEW
Words: Dominic Valvona
Featuring: Sergio Beercock, The Bordellos, faUSt, ANi Glass, Duncan Lloyd, Carlo Mazzoli and Mount Song.
Back from a recent sabbatical in Palermo and catching up with all the most interesting releases of the last month, this edition of my regular Tickling Our Fancy revue features an assortment of albums/EPs and tracks from both April and May. An unofficial sort of house band for the blog, St.Helens’ greatest lo fi, les miserable, export The Bordellos have featured on this blog countless times over the years, I take a look at their latest sampler EP, Debt Sounds. There’s also the latest art-attack protestation from the infamous faUSt, a vitriol extemporized road trip across the States with friends entitled Fresh Air, and the latest cathartic songbook from Jacob Johansson, under his latest moniker Mount Song, the second Duncan Lloyd outing, IOUOME, from the Maximo Park guitarist/songwriter, the latest EP from the Welsh siren of the most ethereal and danceable protest rousing electronic pop ANi GLASS, and two new showcase albums from Italian-based bards/troubadours Carlo Mazzoli and Sergio Beercock.
faUSt ‘Fresh Air’
Bureau B, 26th May 2017
Belligerently sharing the Faust moniker, splitting into a moiety of founding member versions of the original group that so terrorized the 70s underground music scene, the glaring capital letter “US” in this incarnation is used by founding fathers Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier.
Still banging the cement-mixer drum and manning the barricades after forty odd years in the business, the, at its most base drummer/percussionist and bassist-come-tormentor of sound, duo’s latest protestation is a sort of art-provocateur road trip of the USA, featuring an abundance of locals and internationalist artists and musicians, picked-up on the way through New York, Texas and California: A counter-cultural agitation travail from coast to coast.
Featuring the usual Faust totems and that workmanlike methodology of extracting sounds and evocations from machinery, found objects, debris and the architecture – even Péron’s front door hinges from home make an appearance – Fresh Air is an urgent gasp for relief from the polluted, choked, environment. It’s also a highly convoluted attempt at transforming geometrical forms and abstractions into a sonic score. Three of the tracks on this album take their inspiration from a faux-workshop at the highly regarded California Institute of the Arts. A session that includes the loony 23-second vocal exercise symphony Partitur – defined loosely as “a sort of Dadaist choir, a musique impressionniste’ by Péron –; the loose Slits do souk jazz, camel ride Chlorophl, which features Barbara Manning “sneaking” in word association sketches alongside Zappi’s own strange utterings; and the saxophone squalling, motoring Lights Flicker, which again features Manning, bridging the role of Laurie Anderson and Patti Smith, repeating an agitated mantra over a quasi art-dance backing.
From the east coast Jersey City leg of their travels, viola player Ysanne Spevack adds a stirring, Jed Kurzel like harrowed drone to the album’s title track. A seven and a half minute opus, building from the narration of a poem, written by a French school friend of Pérons, to a struggle for life, Fresh Air shows that the spirit of ’68 and hunger for transforming and tearing down the destructive political environment hasn’t diminished in all those years. It’s bookended with a soliloquy-like Péron narration on, among other tropes, the confusing, alarming change from childhood to young adulthood on the album’s curtain call, Fish. Tidal washes and suitable transitional analogies on the soul and growing pains profoundly roll over another viola drone and minimal bass drum accompaniment before entering a noisy cacophony of oscillations and sonic crescendos.
Passing through Austin, faUSt capture the Birds Of Texas, merging their crowing calls with a suitable enough mirage-y, Peyote-induced desert peregrination, and open up an interstellar box of tricks to create a space-funk, Teutonic swamp performance – not a million miles away from Can – on La Poulie.
Continuing with their signature agitation, often menacing, call-to-arms whilst also sonically turning the abstract into something audible, Péron and Zappi can still be relied upon to create provocative statements, five decades on from when the original Faust dynamic barraged audiences with the most confrontational and experimental sound ideas. Struggling like the rest of us, but finding a comradely with another generation of artists and musicians, they look for hope in the miasma.
Mount Song ‘Mount Song’
Suncave Recordings, 5th May 2017
Previously garnering plaudits in his native Sweden for his debut album under the appellation of The Big Monster (no less heralded as the Swedish debut of the year in 2014 by the country’s biggest music publication), the longing singer/songwriter Jacob Johansson is back to contemplate all of life’s harsh lessons and trials on this latest venture, Mount Song.
This self-titled songbook of ambitious poetic campfire musings and inner turmoil spun yearnings is simultaneously both intense and intimate; mixing a catharsis of emotions with a soundtrack of acid-folk, country, psych and alternative pop. As the accompanying notes and music itself testifies, Johansson was “brought up on grunge.” And throughout the album this American export leaves its indelible mark with hazy languid lingering traces and washes of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr. Far from slavishly recreating that grunge sound, our philosophical troubadour and his band merely hint at its presence and influence with a certain panache.
More to the point, it’s that 90s demigod of plaintive despair and torment, Jeff Buckley, who imbues Johansson’s vocals and sound the most. Most obviously and unabashed you can hear an unmistakable melody sequence three quarters of the way through the light and shade softened crescendo Here It Goes. As for that genius fluctuating vocal, from Latin choirboy to candid outpourings of grief, Johansson goes for it on the skipping backbeat psych-grunge Make Up with a falsetto and almost trembling howled vocal performance.
The opening melodrama Halo, which wells up from subtle jangled acoustic guitar to a deeply atmospheric synth and repeating thudding drum punctuation of sorrow, deals with one’s demons in the manner of a sober, more somber Jose Gonzalez and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – two more important influences for Johansson.
Though there’s plenty of sadness and even wallowing, Johansson can hardly be accused of drawing copious amounts of melancholy from the well of self-pity. There is hope after all. And a certain, if naïve at times, call for peace, even a protest song of disarmament in the fashion of the Thunderclap Newman does New Radicals protest anthem, All Over The World.
You can’t avoid, sidestep the multiple political storm clouds amassing overhead, and with all those “inner demons” in tow, not feel anxious and dare say despondent. Though whether the sun will shine through the miasma is another matter, but Johansson handles all this swimmingly, in a gauzy sound space of dissipated crescendos and attentive melodies. Mount Song will take time to unveil its, often languid, subtleties, but is an album with more than enough push and direction.
Duncan Lloyd ‘IOUOME’
Afternoon In Bed Records, 26th May 2017
Seeing as I’d never previously had the inclination nor desire to listen to a Maximo Park record, finding not much of worth and interest in their second-generation Britpop with attitude sound, it’s hardly surprising that the solo career of one of the “driving forces” behind the Newcastle upon Tyne group, guitarist/songwriter Duncan Lloyd, has so far alluded me.
Cut loose of that band I’m happy to reveal that Lloyd has not only stepped out of the – if ever there was a poisoned chalice of validation – Mercury Music Prize nominated stars shadow but creatively blossomed on his own terms.
A fair weather friend, I’ve arrived late, Lloyd having already built-up a considerable catalogue of releases under numerous titles (Decades In Exile, Nano Kino) with various labels (Warp, PIAS, Crash Symbols Tapes). His latest solo outing (the second album released using his own name) is a melodic guitar led mix of gauze-y looseness and swimming longing.
With Maximo drummer Tom English in tow, the IOUOME album travels back further for its inspiration, recalling Postcard Records less fidgety and more hazy offerings, and the early 80s sound of Manchester. Candidly wistful nuanced twanged songs such as You Seem Confused’ bare traces of The Cure and even The House Of Love, underpinned with the limp gait of The Smiths, whilst the halcyon rays through a downpour Steel Pin Raindrops rumbles along to a Joy Division-esque toms beat and disheartened romantic synth. However, our cousins across the Atlantic can be heard on the loose but controlled enough and attentive Tomorrow Fires, as an imaginary Postcard era The Byrds share the melodic sonic landscape with early R.E.M and Midlake.
“Being Frank”, as one of the album’s song titles suggests, is what Lloyd is all about. Not so much a case of moping around in his softened layers and sprawling, relaxed but accentuated network of guitar riffs and lines, our protagonist faces all his emotional turmoil and strife with a songbook of composed observations and intimacy. Written on the road, usually at the end of the day, as ideas become less concrete and evolve instead into something more challenging, these yearnings on “ailing relationships, division and self-destruction” are executed well, both the songwriting and guitar playing subtle but memorable with a real depth of character.
The Bordellos ‘Debt Sounds Sampler EP’
Small Bear Records, Available now
If sales and general acknowledgment amongst the masses is considered validations that a band is entering the general psyche, all my previous efforts to propel St. Helen’s greatest musical export The Bordellos beyond a small circle of appreciative followers and critics have failed dismally. Still mining the pit face of unashamed discordant lo-fi irritant indie after decades, The Bordellos is it seems fated to be forever ignored by the general public.
A hard act to sell granted; knocking out disgruntled low-key underground releases that barely register ad hoc style and keeping a creditable distance from the rest of the music industry. Like a band perpetually mourning the age before Spotify, plugged-in to a continuous John Peel session from a time when it seemed a group of miscreant family band members could take on the world, they seem totally adrift of the times they live in. And all the better for it: if “modern life” was “rubbish” the “tech age” is plain fucking awful.
Even cheaper than The Fall, the group’s tools of trade are usually brought from Cash Converters or Poundland. Their abundance of EPs and albums are created in a rush, often recorded in one take in the shabbiest of mockup home studios. Plucked from a 2009 LP, the group’s third full-length release, the four-tracks on this latest Bandcamp platform broadcast from The Bordellos demonstrate this method well.
Stripped down and raw, Debt Sounds originally vanished as soon as it appeared. Previously, for many obvious reasons, unavailable online, originally sold as a limited run on CDR and snubbed as unsalable by their label at the time, Brutarian, Debt Sounds is a 17-track encapsulation of moping romanticism fueled by late night drinking and whatever else did the trick sessions and self pity. Setting themselves the most restrictive and loony perimeters, including no overdubs and one-take vocals, each song on the album had to be recorded within the same week it was written – and at a nocturnal hour by the sounds of it.
A quartet of tunes, the strain of which helped to break up two relationships, are almost randomly taken from that album and collated under the Sampler EP suffix title; the first of which, Fading Honey sets the My Bloody Valentine on Mogadon, despondent love-sick, bordering on sinister, mood. In a late hour atmosphere of whining plugging-in amp socket hum and low emitting fuzzy static The Bordellos pour out their hearts.
A meeting of generations, the youngest member of this unhappy brood Dan was only seventeen at the time and elder statesman Brian considerably older and cynically wiser, Debt Sounds pits teen angst against a midlife crisis; both appearing to meld in the intimate shared, Inspiral Carpets on a budget, You Better Run and elsewhere.
Really flexing those “outsider” credentials, the next song, Seal Head, is a surreal melodica derangement that languidly emerges then submerges into a slumberous mad-hatter state of weirdness. The most ominous, stalkerish even, is saved until last. Honeypie is an unhinged, electric guitar thrashing and pumped-up bass line session on the psychiatrist’s couch, which features a druggy-drowsy female chorus that sounds like the protagonist’s girlfriend singing it is more captive than willing participant. A lost Jesus And Mary Chain grinder meets stoner garage punk malaise, Honeypie slumps over a sorry state of romantic affairs.
Re-released by the Isle of Man independent label Small Bear Records, you can now appreciate or ignore some lowlights from Debt Sounds album once again; a lost triumph from the band’s rebellious back catalogue that stakes a claim to the real spirit of rock’n’roll. It acts in any case as a bridge between new releases; The Bordellos threatening to release their next album this summer on the Welsh label Recordiau Prin. In the meantime get your lug holes around this underground lo fi down and out.
Sergio Beercock ‘Wollow’
800a Records, May 2017
Quite by chance Sergio Beercock is the first of two artists in this revue to hail from Italy, or rather in his case the strongly independent minded Island of Sicily.
Enjoying a slow revival in fortunes; open for business and tourism after a tumultuous period of inter-war between the Island’s most destabilizing blot on the landscape and psyche, the costra nostra, a tough but fair mayor in the shape of Leoluca Orlando has over several terms in office transformed the capital of Palermo, putting away a huge swathe of Mafioso and funneling their ill-gotten gains into rebuilding the infrastructure and reputation of the city and Sicily as a whole.
Overshadowed for so many decades by this miasma, the capital of Palermo is enjoying a boom in visitors and interest, as I’ve seen firsthand myself after a recent holiday there. With much still to be done, the migrant crisis for one thing – Sicily’s position as a stepping stone between the north African coastline and Europe attracting record numbers – and the staggeringly high unemployment figures, especially among the young, there are still optimistic signs of a resurgence: culturally and musically. Recorded at the 800a collectives multipurpose Indigo Studios in the city, Beercock’s new minimal and bucolic switched-on folk meets acoustic-electro Wollow album is evidence of that optimism.
Half British, half Italian, the Kingston-upon-Hull singer/bard moved to his mother’s homeland at an early age. Working, quite successfully it seems, in both music and theatre the bi-linguist Beercock has built a name for himself in Italy. Wollow though has its sights firmly set on the UK market, with the troubadour presently promoting and showcasing his talent at a number of events and festivals across the country – only last week performing live on London’s Resonance FM and playing spots in Hull, Oxford, Liverpool and at the Wood Festival.
Almost entirely sung in English, except for the final stripped and stark a cappella version of the Argentine singer Pedro Anzer’s stirring Silencio, which is delivered in Spanish, the Wollow album is a pastoral, bordering on Elizabethan at times, and quaintly English “metaphorical journey” through the travails and sounds that have inspired Beercock. The opening gently-plucked entwining Reason – which introduces us to the bard’s impressive though peaceable vocal range -, reverent like misty veils of Canterbury Tor, guitar picked swirling beauty, Naked, and the tumble-in-the-fields-whilst-the-old-man’s-not-looking weary parable, The Barley And Rye, are all unashamedly submerged in the English tradition.
You could say the mix of song covers and original material is of a “timeless” quality. Redefining folk and the atavistic tales of forewarning and life in the manner of such artists as James Yorkston and many others.
Breaking it up however with more ambient instrumental soundscape passages and soaring evocations, Beercock also sails towards the Americas; using a Bolivian flute and the atmospherics of The Andes and Amazon to lift and elevate both An Exaggerated Song and Jester from the less than exotic and magical tempered atmospheres of Northern Europe.
Using a mostly acoustic range of instruments (and even his own body) and his voice – which sounds at times like a chamber-folk Jeff Buckley – our troubadour ups the ante on occasion with a few surprises, launching congruously throughout into energetic, twisting, stretching and straining cello and double bass slapping and avant-jazz like dance beat liveners.
Probably the first time many of us will have heard the Sicilian-based troubadour, Wollow is an attentively as any crafted showcase introduction to a burgeoning experimental folk talent.
Carlo Mazzoli ‘Avalanche Blues’
Available now
The second artist in this revue from Italy, the founding member of folk-rock band Dead Bouquet, Carlo Mazzoli branches out on his own with this self-produced solo effort, Avalanche Blues. Billed as the most intimate of his releases so far, this ambitious songbook flexes Mazzoli’s talents as a yearning blues songwriter and performer troubadour; equally at home romantically flourishing and cascading through a Freddie Mercury like rousing ballad on the piano, as donning the mantle of Neil Diamond and Springsteen on a steel-pedal waning Nashville love tryst.
Singing in English, influenced by a UK/US axis of blues, balladry, country, folk and 70s songwriting inspirations there’s no reference, except a hint in the burr, or signs of Italy to be found. This is after all an international affair musically and thematically, full of the age-old tropes of sadness and joy that are common to all of us.
If there were, however, a leitmotif, an aching bond of familiarity, it would be in Mazzoli’s penchant for the dusty old west trail. There’s certain overtures made to the stoic reflective journeyman and cowboy of that old west lore on Steel Rail Blues, on the rougher-hewn King At The End, and on the Dylan-esque, tremolo twanged love-pranged Goin’ Astray. Flirtations, executed impressively with attentiveness and lyricism, with the mosey-on down blues, Nilsson, Grant Lee and even Elton John – on the closing gospel meets 70s rock radio piano anthem On The Horizons.
From the cynical wells of despair and pity (“It might be the darkest place but it’s not the bottom of the sewer.”) to mountain climb metaphors, Mazzoli flows between crescendo splashes of anguish and saloon dive barreling swank throughout. The field is crowded but there’s more than enough talent and a certain unique style to set Mazzoli out from the legions on Avalanche Blues. As I’ve said before, this is an ambitious album, but also expansive, delving as it does into a myriad of musical styles with a certain ernest elan.
ANi GLASS ‘Ffrwydad Tawel’
Recordiau Neb
Credit: Ani Saunders
Part of a groundswell of artists and bands supporting the use, and by that preservation, of the Welsh language (and Cornish too, but that’s another story for another time), electronic siren, photographer and artist Ani Saunders, better know musically as ANi GLASS, uses what is a most phonetically poetic dialect beautifully. Even when it’s used as a rallying cry on the opening glassy-visage labour of love Y Newid, which weaves the lingering ruminants of a rousing speech by the Socialist activist and Labour councilor Ray Davis with Ani’s breathy defense of the trade union movement, her voice sails close to the ethereal. Echoing even the most amorphous exhaled sighs, utterances and vocal sounds alongside the pronounced, Ani’s Welsh protestations and longings for “change” always sound passionate but disarming.
The obvious impassioned themes of keeping the Welsh heritage alive, of reconnection with that heritage and country, and the hope of building a more stable fair society in the face of such hostile uncertainty runs deep throughout. Inspired by the use and mix of bleak colours and destruction by fellow Welsh contemporary artist Ivor Davis’ 2016 major exhibition at the National Museum Cardiff, Ani’s latest EP reflects that show’s despondent expositions of society in Wales. Later invited to perform with Davis as part of this extended vision, Ani’s resulting material can be heard channeled through the – perhaps most beautifully performed protest song of 2017 – lamentable panoramic closing track Cariad Cudd, which charts the “cruel” decline of Welsh industry.
Elsewhere on this six-track collection, she traverses Baroque new romanticism on the breathy echoing Y Ddawns – last year’s single included once again in this package -, Alison Goldfrapp whispery Dietrich candy strobe light meets Grimes on the cool reflective pulsing Dal I Droi, and a Valley-girl Madonna riding over sine waves on the Moroder-esque Geiriau. It all sounds quite Europhile – in fact Y Ddawns is a prime Eurovision entry in waiting – and glowing, straddling the serious with crystal synth pop.
Critics are always finding the most tenuous evidence and links for trends or movements in music, but Ani is the second former Welsh member of the twee doo-wop girl group The Pipettes to make the shift into electronic music, following her sister, the rising and critically lauded Gwenno, in honing a solo career. Both sisters arrive on a wave of a renaissance in Welsh electronica, with mostly unassuming artists and bedroom mavericks producing some of the best and interesting examples of the genre in the last five or so years; from the avant-garde and techno of R. Seiliog and the Cam o’r Tywyllwch radio show to the Ritalin-starved hyper sample electro-punk of The Conformist.
Ani Saunders is another impressive advocate of the Welsh spirit and artistic confidence, producing some of the most danceable and evocatively politically, socially charged electronic pop in 2017.
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