Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part One: A – L
December 10, 2024
Welcome to part one of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists.
Picked by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Despite the tumult of problems that face artists and bands in the music industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, the worrying trend of venue closures, the ever-encroaching domination of streaming against physical sales and exposure, and the onslaught of AI, people just can’t quit making music. And that’s all without listing the political, social and economic woes that continue to make life unbearable for most of us; the scandalous forces of austerity/cost-of-living crisis and post-Covid hangover threatening to constantly drag us under. We, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys, the music makers, do in the face of such intense stresses.
In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so (as I say every year) instead of those silly, factious and plain dumb numerical charts that our peers and rivals insist on continuing to print – how can you really suggest one album deserves their place above or below another; why does one entry get the 23rd spot and another the 22nd; unless it is a vote count, and even then, does it really come down to a popularity contest? –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic and democratic alphabetical order – something we (more or less) started in the first place.
The lists are broken up this year into two parts, A-L, and M-Z, and include those albums we’ve reviewed or featured on the site in some capacity, plus a smattering of those we just didn’t get the time to include. All entries are displayed thus: Artist (in alphabetical order) then the album title, label, who it was chosen by and a review link, if there is one. We also included quotes and summaries underneath.
Before we precede, we’d like to thank the following contributors to the site this year: Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Matt Oliver, Graham Domain, Mikey McDonald and Andrew C. Kidd, plus our Italian friends at Kalporz. Also, our gratitude and love for all our supporters during the year, and to those that have donated to https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail We really can’t have continued without it.
A_
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Retro Porter’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Review
“The sound of John Lane’s most prolific and artistically successful alias, A Journey Of Giraffes (no stranger to the blog, and often featured in our choice end of year features) is given almost unlimited time and space to unfurl on the ambitious opus-spanning Retro Porter album of ambient empirical suites.
An expansion upon Lane’s previous work – especially last year’s choice album entry, Empress Nouveau – each evolving sensory piece allows all the Baltimore composer’s signatures, motifs and serialism-like enquires to recollect memories of places and scenes, of the abstract, over the course of what sounds like a whole day.
Mirages, imaging’s, the sound of birds in the iron lattice gardens of an ostentatious arcade percent as described in late 19th century novella’s, sonorous pitches, the softened sound of a taiko drum at the Kabuki theatre, various hinges, dulcimer-like strokes all evaporate then solidify to create an ambient opus; a lifetimes work coalesced into one expansive, layered work of soundscape art and abstraction. Lane has allowed his mind to wander and explore organic and cerebral long form ideas like never before to produce, perhaps, his most accomplished unrestricted work yet.” DV
Annarella and Django ‘Jouer’ (We Are Busy Bodies/Sing A Song Fighter)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Born from the Senegalese imbued and inspired hub built around Sweden’s Wau Wau Collectif, another cross-cultural project that embraces that West African nation’s (and its neighbours) rich musical heritage. Fusing the roots, landscape and themes of Senegal with those of Europe, the partnership of Swedish flutist Annarella and the Malian born ngoni master Django absorbs the very atmosphere of that westernmost African republic, transposing and transforming age old traditions with a hybrid of contemporary musical effects and influences and guest list of diverse musicians and voices.
Django’s home environment and the outlier around it seeps into and materializes like a dreamy haze across all the album’s tracks, as evocations of the classical, of jazz and the blues mixes with the local stew of diverse languages. Tracks like ‘Degrees of Freedom’ are more mystical sounding, near cosmic, as the band saunter like gauze under the moon and across the desert’s sandy tides. Jouer, which translates from the French into “play”, is just that, a lovely stirring union of the playful that seamlessly entwines the two musician’s respective practices with sympathy, respect and the earthly concerns of our endangered societies and world. Hopefully this collaboration will continue and grow over the years; there’s not been a better one since Catrin Finch teamed up with Seckou Keita.” DV
Fran Ashcroft ‘Songs That Never Were’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“There is a uniqueness about this album; a trueness and soul you do not come across often much in these days of music to be played on phones. These are songs that could have been written anytime over the last 50 or so years, with some quite beautiful melodies and great lyrics; songs made for and by a music lover…already one on my end of the year best list.” BBS
B__
Donald Beaman ‘Fog On Mirror Glass’ (Royal Oakie)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The play and course of light, the recurring “phantom” and a beautiful subdued, nigh on elegiac poetry conjures up a simultaneous union of the beatific and longing on the latest solo effort from Donald Beaman.
Like a drifter’s songbook of subtle, intimate and home-recorded wanderings, metaphors and the like for yearned and plaintive romantic loss, fondness, the passing/measuring of time, and the urge to find comfort and solace, Fog On Mirror Glass uses memories of the weather, the way the light touched or dimmed at a given moment in time, and the smallest of witnessed movements/touches to evoke the right atmosphere of gossamer and sparsity.
In all, a most impressive and understated songbook of honest quality and performance, themed largely around the way light falls upon any given metaphor, analogy, phrase, description and texture. Unadorned, the feelings are left to pull and draw the listener into a most intimate world. Each play reveals more, as the album really begins to grow on you. A fine record indeed.” DV
Beauty Stab ‘Guide/Frisk’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“After a five plus year wait, we have the debut, and who knows, only album from the one time much tipped for big things Beauty Stab. An album filled with sex sleaze and glamour but with a healthy or unhealthy dose of darkness.
The sound and feel of eighties chart land I think has a big influence on Beauty Stab. They do share a name with ABC’s second album after all, and I can almost hear Martin Fry emote over the bass heavy synth pop funk of “Manic”.
“GUIDE/FRISK” is a wonderful and inventive crafted album that celebrates the joy and darkness and power that great pop music can bring to your life and really deserves to be heard by all.” BBS
Black Artist Group ‘For Peace And Liberty, In Paris December 1972’ (WEWANTSOUNDS)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Saved from obscurity and jazz lore, the previously believed “long-lost” recordings of the Black Artist Group’s radical free, avant-garde, spiritual and Afro jazz (with a side order hustle of funk) performance in Paris has been thankfully unearthed, dusted off and remastered in a project partnership between the band and the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel. Facilitating this operation are the reissue revivalist vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS – regularly featured in my review columns over the years -, who’ve invited various connoisseur experts to provide liner notes, essays and photographic images to this package.
At times we’re talking Coltrane and Sun Ra, and at other times Roscoe Mitchell, Carlos Garnett and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. You can also pick up some Chick, a touch of Cymande, of Art Blakey, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton. But to be specific, if you dig Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s ‘Safari’, Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’ and Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society then you’ll really need to part with the cash and have this on your shelf asap: not before blasting it out from your turntable.” DV
Black Diamond ‘Furniture Of The Mind Rearranging’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transported back in time, and then propelled forward into the now via Chicago’s musical legacy, its rich heritage of innovators and scope in the world of jazz, Artie Black and Hunter Diamond’s dual saxophone and woodwind focused vehicle can trace a line from the Windy City’s smokestack bluesy outlines of the 50s through the icons Sun Ra, Roscoe Mitchell, Eddie Johnson, Lester Bowie, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Anthony Braxton and the hothouse of undeniable influence and talent, the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians.
Across an ambitious double-album spread of both quartet and duo mode formations, those Black Diamonds don’t so much shine as smoulder and fizzle to a smoky and simmering resonance and metropolis backdrop encroached by wild jungles and fertile growth.” DV
Bloom De Wilde ‘The Circular Being’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the muse and the music of Bloom de Wilde. It has a tender all-consuming innocence and hope that calmly plays Rock Paper Scissors with a wistful sadness and melancholy.
Bloom writes songs that offer hope against all the odds; songs that embrace the eccentrics and outsiders, all the underdogs in life. Maybe that is why I feel a connection to her music and at times find myself totally engrossed with her beautiful tapestry of pop, jazz, folk and psychedelia, which she has woven with great love and skill to make great art.
Bloom is a fine songwriter, which may sometimes be overlooked due to the wonderful eccentricities of her personality and is a quite an accomplished and original lyricist, as this fascinating eleven song album of love, hope and magic shows.” BBS
The Bordellos ‘Nobody’s Listening’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by DV/Review by Graham Domain
“This is another perfect ‘slice of life’ album from The Bordellos. If all they had was a pair of spoons and a cassette-recorder, they would still be driven to record these hazy snapshots of life, in the same way that L S Lowry splashed his canvas with the daily drudgery and drama of the northern working-class. Was anyone paying attention to Mr Lowry at the time? No! But today there are hotels, theatres and tree-lined streets named after him. (Even Bowie was one to acknowledge the match-stalk painters genius titling his best album Low)!” Graham Domain
boycalledcrow ‘Kullau (Mortality Tables)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A musical atmospheric hallucination and psychedelic dream-realism of a roadmap, the latest transduced-style album from Carl M Knott (aka a boycalledcrow) takes his recollections, memory card filled photo albums, samples and experiences of travelling through Northern India between 2005 and 2006 and turns them into near avant-garde transported passages of outsider art music.
Place names (that album title refers to the village, an ancient kingdom, of ‘Kullu’, which sits in the ‘snow-laden mountain’ province of Himachel Pradesh in the Western Himalayas), Buddhist self-transformation methods (the extremely tough self-observation process of “non-reaction” for the body and mind known as “Vipassana”), Hindu and Jainism yogis (the “Sadhu”, a religious ascetic, mendicant or any kind of holy person who has renounced the worldly life, choosing instead to dedicate themselves to achieving “moksha” – liberation – through meditation and the contemplation of God) and language (the localised distinctive Kullu dialect and syntax of “Kanashi”, currently under threat) are all used as vague reference points, markers in this hallucinatory grand tour.” DV
Brevity ‘Home Is Where Your Dog Is’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The wonderfully named “Home Is Where your Dog Is” is the unreleased album, plus some demo recordings, by late the 60’s early 70’s Chicago rock band Brevity, a band who never actually got to release anything at the time but had interest and encouragement from both Island Records and Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight Records. Truth be told, released here for the first time by Think Like A Key Records, it is indeed a bit of a lost and now found musical treasure.
“Home Is Where Your Dog Is” is one of those rare lost albums that actually deserves to be labelled a lost classic, and the added demos actually have an indie/post punk feel to them that reminded me strangely of very early Pulp in their more acoustic like days. Yes, one of my favourite albums I have had the pleasure to listen to this year: a true Gem of an album.” BBS
Charlie Butler ‘Wild Fictions’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“The music is all that you hoped it would be, for music without hope is hopeless and this is anything but that; it is the cream cake among lesser mortals.” BBS”
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Chris Corsano ‘The Key (Became the Important Thing [and Then Just Faded Away])’
(Drag City) – Chosen by DV
The prolific free-jazz, avant-garde and avant-hard drumming innovator Chris Corsano can be found as an instigator or willing foil across a multitude of experimental collaborations (recently on the MC appearing alongside Nels Cline, Darin Gray and Glenn Kotche as part of the We Jazz signed-off Saccata Quartet) but his soloist works are just as numerous and far reaching/influential. I lost count of appearances and album releases in 2024, but this constant rhythmic and non-rhythmic progressing album is my favourite, taken from back in June.
Literally letting rip with an apparatus of recognisable and often non-musical implements, Corsano fuses a noise and splash of ripping and tearing sounds with no wave Kraut-punk (think CAN, Faust), West African drumming, alternative jazz and jazz-prog-rock. Untethered, clever, and anarchistic in equal measures. DV
Alison Cotton ‘Engelchen’ (Rocket Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“In the wake of the barbaric terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, and the ensuing destructive retaliation/ obliteration of Gaza by Israel since, there seems little room – let alone nuance and balance – on the debate; battle lines have been drawn and divisions sowed. And so, this inspired tale of ‘derring-do’ (originally performed live at the Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland) performance suite from the Sunderland composer Alison Cotton is a most timely reminder of dark history, but also of altruistic acts of kindness.
Scoring the story of the innocuous Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, and their incredibly brave rescue attempts to save the lives of twenty-nine Jews from occupied Europe during the build-up and eventual outbreak of WWII, Cotton ties in the modern plight of refugees escaping similar persecutions.
Less a morbid, dark soundtrack to the evils of the Nazi regime and Holocaust, Cotton instead conveys the enormity and the danger of the Cook’s enterprise through slow tidal movements, tones, intonations and changes in the atmosphere. Throughout it all a prevailing presence and emotional pull can be felt: The mood music of grief, the plaintive and sorrowful cumulating in a beautifully played series of arrangements and suites that are as sombre as they are beautiful and moving – reminding me in parts of Alex Stolze, Anne Müller, Simon McCorry and Aftab Darvishi.” DV
D____
Ëda Diaz ‘Suave Bruta’ (Airfono)
Chosen by DV/ Review
“A rarefied artist who manages to merge dream-realism with both the traditional and contemporary, Ëda Diaz occupies multiple realms of geography to produce sublime and club-lite Latin-European R&B pop music. Between spheres of influence, her French-Colombian heritage is bonded across an exotic soundboard of effects, precise cut electronica, and transformed repurposed old dances and song; the latter of which includes an electrified form of currulao, ‘wonky’ Colombian salsa, bolero, bullerengue, vallenato and ‘dembow’. I absolutely love this spellbinding, vulnerable and playful Latin-Euro vision.” DV
E_____
Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit’ (Spiritmuse Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Originally hot-housed in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (the mid-1960s nonprofit organization instigated by Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall and Phil Cohran in Chicago, which El’Zabar himself once chaired) incubator, El’Zabar’s percussive, drumming rhythms for the mind, body and soul channelled the windy city’s rich musical lineage of jazz, blues, R&B, soul, Godspell and what would become house and dance music.
Following on from last year’s Spirit Gather tribute to Don Cherry (which featured the worldly jazz icon’s eldest son David Ornette Cherry shortly before his death) this latest conscious and spiritual work channels that rich legacy whilst worshipping at the altar of those icons, progenitors and idols that came before; namely, in this instance, Miles Davis, Eugene McDaniels and McCoy Tyner.
El’Zabar’s once more heals, opens minds and elevates with another rhythmic dance of native tongues and groove spiritualism. The ancient roots of that infectious groove and the urgency of our modern times are bonded together to look back on a legacy that deserves celebrating. After fifty years of quality jazz exploration and collaboration, El’Zabar proves that there is still much to communicate and share as he and the EHE recast classics and original standards from the back catalogue.” DV
Empty House ‘Bluestone’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The megalithic period “cromlech” (frequently interchanged with and referred to a “dolmen” too) construction of large stone blocks that stands within the borders of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in the village of Pentre Ifan, acts as a gateway to the imagination for the Blackpool-based musician Fred Laird, who goes under the moniker of Empty House.
Avalon mists descend across a communication with the landscape, whilst shriven archaic reenactments stir-up the hallucinatory and esoteric. Old vacuums of air blow through the spaces in between the stones as a haunted geology shrieks, howls, mourns and swirls. And a wispy passage of monastery choral voices carries on the wind as children giggle and the neolithic generator revs up vibrations and pulses from the afterlife. The Incredible String Band makes merry with Julian Cope; Steve Hillage joins Ash Ra Tempel; and Affenstunde period Popol Vuh invokes ghostly parallel histories with Xqui and Quimper on a tour of Ley lines. Atmospheres and scenes from a long history of settlement, of the spiritual, envelope the listener on a most subtle but rich field recording trip.” DV
Peter Evans ‘Extra’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A meeting of avant-garde minds to savour, the union of Peter Evans with Koma Saxo and Post Koma instigator and bassist Petter Eldh and New York downtown experimental rock and jazz drummer pioneer Jim Black is every bit as dynamic, explosive, torqued, moody, challenging and exciting as you’d imagine.
A crossroads of separate entangled influences and backgrounds, legacies, with all three practitioners in this Evans-fronted project and their CVs stretching back a few decades, the avant-garde rubs up against the blues, hard bop, atmospheric set scores, hip-hop style breaks, the electronic and classical. By using both the piccolo and flugelhorn on this album, some passages sound like Wynton Marsalis playing over Mozart, or Alison Balsom lending classical airs to an Alfa Mist production.
One of the best jazz albums you’ll hear all year, with a spot saved for the choice albums of the year lists, Extras is a thoroughly inventive and exciting dynamism of contemporary luminaries at the height of their skills and knowledge.” DV
F______
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly ‘MESTIZX’ (International Anthem X Nonesuch)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transformed and remoulded for a more progressive age the “MESTIZX” title of this partnership’s debut album takes the Spanish term for “mixed person” (namely, a union between those indigenous people in the Latin conquered territories of South America and the Spanish) away from its colonial roots and repurposes it on an album of dream realism duality.
With the multimedia performer and singer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti’s Bolivian and the jazz drummer Frank Rosaly’s Puerto Rican heritages, the pre-colonial history of South America is woven into a contemporary revision of magic, organic forms and ritual rhythms mixed with elements and a suffusion of Chicago post-rock, post-jazz and alternative Latin leftfield pop.
There’s much to admire in this world of the untamed and wild, with new perspectives, mixed histories and the largely melodious reverberations of the lost exercising a new language of ownership. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly perfect and expand their organic explorations, bewitching messages and oracles on an intriguing, moving and dreamily trippy debut album.” DV
G_______
Michal Gutman ‘Never Coming Home’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Never Coming Home” is a darkly beautiful album; an album of twisted musical discovery, with songs worthy to fall from the lips and the pen of the great Dory Previn; songs that pull you into a strange and beguiling solitude place, where you only have memories and fears and regrets for company. Musically stark and bewitching like an unused broken fairground ride: a bass guitar has never sounded so much like the faded remnants of an old lover’s final kiss. “Never Coming Home” is quite simply stunning.” BBS
Nino Gvilia ‘EP Number 1: Nicole’ & ‘EP Number 2: Overwhelmed By The Unexplained’ (Hive Mind Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Creating a musical, lyrical eco system of their own, soundtracked by folk, minimalism, the hallucinatory and pastoral – with only the final vaporous misty esoteric second EP’s titular track changing from cuckoo-like voiced loops and sympathetic strings to disturbing futuristic daemonic augur –, the Nino Gvilia encompassed guise ebbs and flows with the movement of the replenishing waters, the lakeside and mill turning scenes of the surroundings, to produce a disarming hymn. Idiosyncratic in beauty, I’d recommend this diaphanous accomplished mini opus to those with a penchant for Hatis Noit, Seaming To, Tia Blake and Roberto Musci.”
H________
Hackedepicciotto ‘The Best Of Hackedepicciotto (Live In Napoli)’ (Mute)
Chosen by DV/Review
“As a duo in recent years, Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto under the twinned Hackedepicciotto moniker, have channelled their diverse experiences as members/instigators of such groups as Einstürzende Neubauten, Crime And The City Solution and the Space Cowboys, into a signature sound that embraces the cabaret and soundtrack gravitas of post-punk, post-industrial, electronica, the esoteric, weird folk and twisted fairytale: which they themselves have described as “symphonic drone”.
Their fifth album, the partial sonic and lyrical autobiography, part photo album scrap book dedication, Keepsakes, was released last year. As with most of their catalogue, the duo’s albums are either recorded in a stirring, inspiring location, or in a different country. The most recent being no exception, recorded as it was at Napoli’s legendary Auditorium Novecento using the famous venue’s stock of various instruments. That album now forms the focal or centre point for this live release of choice bell tolled maladies and drone sonnets from the duo’s back catalogue. Performed over two nights, they’ve chosen to return to the Auditorium Novecento setting that made Keepsakes such an atmospherically rich and momentous, dramatic record. And so, they perform a quartet of songs from that most recent album alongside picks from the Menetekel (2017), The Current (2020), The Silver Threshold (2021) and Perseverantia (2023) albums. And it proves a winning formula as the perfect showcase, and a more unique approach to performing the “best of” their back catalogue.” DV
Christopher Haddow ‘An Unexpected Great Leap’ (Erol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A comfort blanket bookended by the reassuring signs of life via the sounds of an ultrasound, Christopher Haddow’s first steps out as a solo artist (flanked on either side by the contributions of Josh Longton on double-bass and Jamie Bolland on piano) capture the abstract feelings of parenthood. An Unexpected Great Leap is in fact, partially, an ambient tool to send both Christopher and his artist wife Athene Grieg’s son Louie off to sleep.
You may know Christopher as the former lead guitarist of Paper Planes and as a member of Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gates, but under his own name and with a different, more personal, direction he’s beautifully, imaginatively and conceptually complimented his wife’s visual feels of parenthood with a searching and settling album of ambient Americana and womb music.” DV
Sahra Halgan ‘Hiddo Dhawr’ (Danaya)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Few artists from the disputed region of Somaliland could qualify better than the singer, freedom fighter and activist Shara Halgan to represent their country’s musical legacy. As an unofficial cultural ambassador and symbol for female empowerment Halgan’s journey is an inspiring one: Forced out of her homeland during a destructive civil war – in which she played a part in nursing and “comforting” fighters from Somaliland’s secession movement, sometimes alleviating suffering through song –, Halgan had to flee abroad to “survive” hardships and dislocation in France, but eventually, a decade after the overthrow of Siad Barre’s ruling military junta, returned home to motivate and promote proud in Somaliland’s cultural heritage.
It was during her time in France, removed from her roots and homesick, that Halgan would meet the musicians that went on to form her studio and touring band: step forward percussionist and founder of the French-Malian group BKO Quintet, Aymeric Krol, and the guitarist and member of the Swiss ensemble Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp and L’etrangleuse, Maël Salètes. Both appear on the latest, and third Halgan album, alongside newest recruit Régis Monte, who adds “vintage organ” and “proto-electronic embellishments” to the heady and fuzzed mix.
Enriched soul music with an edge and buzz, Halgan and her troupe strike a balance between the heartfelt and empowered on electrifying album; that focal voice sounding so fresh and young yet wise and experienced, able to encapsulate a whole culture whilst moving forward.” DV
Herandu ‘Ocher Red’ (Hive Mind Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Trance is spun with bass noodling, Ethio-jazz, post-punk funk, Moroccan and Arabian cassette culture, retro space age keys, no wave dance music and the Aphex Twin to create an interesting explorative zap, skip, playful, mysterious and dreamy vision that mirrors the Gavrilov brothers feelings of their native landscape, and the episodes of life, the shaping of their creativity, born in that Siberian setting.” DV
Herald ‘Linear B’ (Errol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“If mid-70s Eno working his magic with Merriweather Post Pavilion sounds like a match anointed in heaven then Lawrence Worthington’s ridiculously long-delayed debut album is going to send you into a woozy alt-pop state of bliss. The latter partner in that ideal fantasy of influences is hardly surprising, with the Animal Collective’s “infrequent” co-founding member Josh Dibb (aka Deakin) playing the part of co-producing foil and soundboard. And although the eventual Linear B album was first conceived twenty plus years ago, when the Animal Collective and Panda Bear and a menagerie of congruous bands were building an alternative-psych-pop scene – the darlings (quite rightly) of Pitchfork and the burgeoning MySpace culture -, and when the musical palette of sounds is produced on cheap 90s Casio and Yamaha equipment, Worthington’s Herald nom de plume still resonates and feels refreshingly dreamily idiosyncratic.
The results set a personal psychedelic language of feels and character-dotted whimsy to a maverick alt-synth-pop production: imagine Syd Barrett, K. Leimar and Edward Penfold backed by a Factory Records White Fence or Panda Bear. Unassumingly lo fi yet symphonic, you can hear hints of neo-romantics, colder synth spells, the post-punk, the Bureau B label’s cult German new wave and post-krautrock offerings, John Cale and a very removed vision of The Beach Boys.” DV
Holy Matter ‘Beauty Looking Back’
Chosen by DV/Review
“Bathed in a new diaphanous light, Leanna Kaiser steps away from her ambient shrouded Frances With Wolves duo (albeit with an embraced cast of familiar faces and musicians) to take up the soloist guise of Holy Matter.
Following up on a tapestry of enchanted and dreamy singles, woven from gossamer threads of fairytale and fantasy, the musician, songwriter and filmmaker now unfurls an entire beautiful album of nostalgic imbued troubadour-folk, softened psychedelia and country woes, sad lilted resignation, solace, reflection and pathos.
Gazing both lamentably and in sighed resignation from metaphorical fairytale towers and vantage points emphasised by poetic weather patterns, Kaiser gently exudes a longing sense of wistful pulchritude. The past is always near, inescapable and worn like a comfort blanket; moulded to Kaiser’s desires, sorrows, reflections and duality. Holy Matter proves an interesting alluring and enchanting creative progression for Kaiser, her debut solo a refreshing take on the familiar and the tropes of time. “ DV
Hungrytown ‘Circus For Sale’ (Big Stir Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is the fourth album from Hungrytown, but the first I have had the pleasure of hearing, and indeed it is a pleasure as psych folk with more than a hint of baroque pop is right up my street. There is a beauty and calmness to it that one can lose themself in and ignore and forget briefly the day-to-day turmoil that surrounds them. Vocalist Rebbecca Hall is blessed with a magically sweet innocent voice that floats and weaves its way through the musical sea of melodious tranquillity that wraps itself around the listener: pure bliss.” BBS
K___________
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw ‘As Those Gone Before’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for weird, strange folk music, I put it down to watching too much Bagpuss and The Clangers as a toddler: wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child. So, this fine album of weird, strange folk songs is right down my summer pathway stroll of mischievous delight.
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw go from the childlike tales of the sinister folk whimsy “Christopher Tadpole” to the dark and cold clawing of “Mole Man“; if you wondered what story time at the nursery school on summer isle might sound like, these gems will answer your wonderings. “The Four Trains That Killed Me” and “Last Of The Little Lost Lambs” are both wonderfully John Cale like in the darkness and utter beauty as much as “Accused Isle” is like listening to a slightly deranged Pam Ayres on the old Radio Luxembourg via an old transister radio under the bed clothes in the darkest of nights [wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child]. “As Those Gone Before” is a true magical gem of off-kilter folk whimsy, an album of true eccentric magnificence.” BBS
L____________
The Legless Crabs ‘No Condoms, Just Satan’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The sound of rock ‘n’ roll future and past collide in this nineteen-track beauty of anger and attitude: songs that deal with the strangeness of living in this world today.
From the Cramps like “I Catfished My Brother” and the sonic escapades of “Rope Bunny”, to the heaviness and sludge-rock dark humour of “Shark Lover” this is an album that should be all over alternative radio, and once again, has to compete with far less talented and easier and blander beige alternative rock.” BBS
Letters from Mouse ‘Clota’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Graham Domain
“In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Clota was patron of the River Clyde and brought purity to the natural landscape. The album pieces reflect the beauty of nature and how nature evolves and changes, both with the day and with the changing of the seasons.
Altogether it’s a beautiful album that deserves to be heard by many. It is also a great ambient album for meditation or creative work such as painting. Wonderful.” GD
LINA_ ‘Fado Camões’ (Galileo Music)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Back this time with the British producer and musician Justin Adams and a small ensemble, LINA_ takes on the classical 16th century poetics of Portugal’s most famous literary son, Luís Vaz de Camões.
Musically tender, accentuated and like a fog, mist at times, even vapour of the mere essence of a score, there’s echoes of old Spain, the Balearics, North Africa, the Middle East but also Turkey and the Hellenic. LINA_ is a leading light, pushing the boundaries without losing the soul, truth and appeal of the music she adopts and transforms. Fado Camões is another artistic triumph.” DV
The Loved Drones ‘Live at Atelier Rock HUY’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Loved Drones have a power and an all-round likability and uniqueness that all the great bands have. They are a band who plough their own furrow through live casting off tangent animal shapes at the sun, raising two fingers to the lack of talent and originality that currently is forced upon us by the mainstream radio and press. The Loved Drones are quite wonderful.
“The Hindenburg Omen” is a instrumental that a blockbuster film should be made just so it can be included on the soundtrack, and “Humans Can’t Compete” once again is brimming with a Cope-like magnificence. These eight live tracks show what a great band we have in our mists and really should be heard and appreciated by all of us music lovers who love mind bending space hopping cosmic musical delights.” BBS
The Perusal #60: Anna Butterss, Niwel Tsumbu, TRAINNING + Ruth Goller, Donald Beaman…
October 10, 2024
A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Anna Butterss ‘Mighty Vertebrate’
(International Anthem)
Branching out once more to lead a company of long-time collaborators on an expletory journey of groove and rhythm (because no matter what the concept, the theory, the strategy, this album has both), bassist and composer Anna Butterss fuses the likely and unlikely into a new album of expressive possibilities, landscapes and feels.
The scope of wandering into new worlds, conjuring up new moods and peregrinations is large. Mainly a result of wanting to write music after a long period of extensive touring, Mighty Vertebrate is a refreshing outlet of ideas prompted by Oblique Strategy-like stimulations. Hardly restricting, as I’ve already laid out, these strategies spark creative trains-of-thought, of process, methodology and performance. So, for example, as Butterss describes, they are “…going to make a song where the bass doesn’t function in the role of a bass”, or, “…make a song that uses groups of three-bar phrasing”. And so on. Technical yet simultaneously vague and even open-ended, this amorphous set of rules merely acts as a starting point: not only for the in-demand bassist but their foils as well. And despite all that technical musical language and the range of influences, sounds, ideas, the bass guitar (sometimes Butterss switches to the upright) is mostly recognisable: sounding on occasion quite funky (think Bootsy Collins) and soulful, rather than avant-garde and deconstructed.
Moving in the right-on circles in L.A., and very much in-demand for not only heading their own projects but collaborating and improvising with such notable names as Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven, Phoebe Bridges and Jason Isbell, the Australian-born artist is a member of that city’s Small Medium Large super-quintet. Members of that same group now join their bandmate on their solo adventure, with both Gregory Uhlmann (on guitar) and Josh Johnson (on saxophone) contributing parts throughout alongside International Anthem’s (pretty much) in-house sound mixer, Call & Response concert series founder, in-demand drummer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Lumsdaine (acting as the album’s co-producer and percussionist). Added to that quality lineup, the L.A. based guitarist and composer, “prolific sideman”, oft member of the highly influential Tortoise and founding member of both Isotope 217 and the Chicago Underground, Jeff Parker offers up a special one-off turn on the electro 80s, Japanese new wave and jazz twiddling fusion ‘Dance Steve’.
Hints and recalls from all the above’s own groups, ensembles and projects can be heard at one time during the duration of Mighty Vertebrate. And why not? This is one talented bunch of players and innovators, working in a very hot scene right now; encouraged by one of the most prolifically brilliant labels of recent years in contemporary jazz and beyond. And yet it feels like a culmination of musical threads being put together, whether intentionally or just going with the energy, the directional prompts of the moment.
Across many of the tracks there’s a balafon-like bobble and shuttering woody percussive influence of Africa (Mali, perhaps Kenya too), a simmered down Afrobeat rhythm ala Tony Allen in places, and the saxophone of Peter King. This fuses with a Tortoise, Yoshiaki Ochi and Ramuntcho Matta vibe on the opening ‘Bishop’, and merges with touches of label mates Jeremiah Chiu And Sofia Honer, Antibalas and LAGOSS on the fluted and smoky sax serenaded ‘Shorn’.
The more gently inclined and peaceable ‘Ella’ reminisce takes a jazzier blues and American prog approach. And the following mirage shimmered ‘Lubbock’ (named after the Texan city with a famous son, Buddy Holly, and famously nicknamed “Hub City”) reminded me of both Daniel Vickers and Daniel Lanois. ‘Breadrich’ is a real mix, with its crunching more gnarly bass, Cobham fusion jazz inklings and Brides Of Funkenstein meets cosmic 80s Italian new wave vibes. And then at other times it’s more like Ariel Kalma, Chick Corea’s Elektric Band, Alfa Mist, Joe Zawinul, Coltrane, and Matthew Halsall. But regardless of all that, Butterss finds a near intuitive pathway of individuality that crosses borders, timelines, moods, musical signatures and structures to find rhythm and groove balanced by emotional pulls to important reference points and feelings in their life. I’m not even sure if you’d call it leading so much, but this solo gig proves a stimulating treasure trove of musical and sonic ideas with purpose and skill.
TRAINNING + Ruth Goller ‘threads to knot’
(Squama Recordings) 18th October 2024
Two connective forces in the experimental, inventive contemporary jazz scenes combine their experiences and art on this sonic and musical hybrid.
Although both participants have crossed paths previously, this is the inaugural adventure from the German drumming and saxophone combo of Max Andrzejewski and Johannes Schleiermacher and the serial UK jazz movement instigator Ruth Goller. Regular readers may have recognised the former pairing, both being synonymous with the HÜTTE name, an ensemble that began back in 2011, and featured on the Monolith Cocktail back in 2019 with their radical take on the music of Robert Wyatt. Born out of more recent rehearsals, the TRAINNING appellation has stuck for now, and it is in this form that they appear now – although that Northern European HÜTTE influence is hard to resist.
Goller’s CV is way too impressive and prolific to list in its entirety here, but the composer and bass player’s most notable credits include two of the most important and influential groups to set off a jazz renaissance in recent years, Acoustic Ladyland and Melt Yourself Down. Goller has also performed with such luminaries as Kit Downes, Sam Amidan, Marc Ribot and (Sir) Paul McCartney, and plays with both Let Spin and Vula Viel.
There’s enough threads, nodes and junctions in between to feed off, but both partners in this knotted tension and more spiritual, lofty, airy and aria-like ether Linda Sharrock “ah’d” fusion of influences and prompted sparks of inspiration read each other very well. Directed by, and riffing off, the “Exquiste Corpse” parlour game so beloved by the Surrealist movement, the trio of players expand beyond the jazz idiom into shadow worlds, the mysterious, supernatural, cosmic and near industrial.
Although popular in France amongst many circles, the Surrealists used the exquisite corpse game as a subversive collaborative drawing exercise in which each participant added whatever subconscious extension they could dream up to a chain of hidden images, the results of which when revealed could result in the weirdest of oddities. With the likes of grand doyen of the form, and way beyond, Max Ernst taking part alongside Dali and Miró you might have big bird’s plumage next to the shapely naked crossed legs of a muse and tennis racket feet. It’s used differently here however, generations on, and in musical form, with one of the players either writing bars or music, but then passing only the last bar, or sometimes only the last two notes, onto the next, then the same again to the next player and so on until a song’s skeleton was formed.
Far from exotic creatures and humans of dreams and nightmares, the results are a mix of chaotic freeform, post-punk prowling, the down beat, the foggy and the fourth world experiments and suffused atmospheres of Jon Hassell.
Both the TRAINNING lads also play synths and guitars, and so the range of sounds and instruments is expanded even further than sax, drums, voice and bass: sometimes towards the electronic. There are oscillations, arpeggiators and synth lines that hint at the kosmische and early analogue sound: from Conrad Schnitzler to Kraftwerk and Schulze. The guitars meanwhile have more than a hint of Marc Ribot about them, especially in passages on the hovering, alt-country ritual of ‘Backlog’ – this one is as disturbing as it is mysterious and vague with its post-rock doom threads, singular thumped drum, shimmered hazy rattle shakes of percussion and harmonic picks and plucks.
Elsewhere, old as dirt, ‘Agelong’ walks in the shadows of Scott Walker and Krononaut; the bass guitar, gnarled and trebly in a post-punk fashion, lurking and shaking in an atavistic gloom. And the messy off-kilter escalation that grows out of the opening electronics of ‘Threadfin’ is more like Last Exit and Peter Brötzmann. But then as the track progresses the mood changes again, merging math rock and punk no wave with Ethio jazz, veiled gauzy voices and instances of a more soothed Ivo Pearlman in a spiritual communion with Matana Roberts. By contrast, ‘Finback’ reminded me of Tortoise in some parts, and Donny McCaslin in others, whilst the dotted cone-like electronics that bring in ‘Lineage’ change shape and form, breaking out into a spell of Ill-Considered jamming with Nocturnal Emissions.
Pretty much out on the peripherals of jazz, ascending, flexing, rasping, soothing and breathing iterations and more untethered expressions of freeform music, TRAINNING + Ruth Goller fashion organic fusions from a process that promises the wild, tumultuous, wrangled and strange, yet also provides the melodic and dreamy.
Niwel Tsumbu ‘Milimo’
(Diatribe Records)
So, what does it sound like when a Democratic Republic of Congo born and raised virtuoso guitarist brought up on that central African region’s homegrown Soukous, studies the classical, relocates to Ireland, and finds themselves recording their debut LP at Peter Gabriel’s famous Real World label studios with the assistance of the renowned engineer Dom Shaw. Well, it sounds almost courtly, Iberian, Baroque, intricate, studied, and bluesy with a jazzy lilt and underlying feel of the homeland. For such is the range of Niwel Tsumbu’s skills as a deft and expressively rich maestro of the nylon-stringed guitar that the blending of international inspirations and absorptions is near effortlessly merged to create something quite unique.
Outlined in the press blurb, Tsumbu’s music and direction of travel is as influenced by the classical genius of Bach as it is by the Spanish Flamengo maestro Paco de Lucía and jazz deity Charlie Parker. Match this with the inspirational sounds of François Luambo Luanzo Makiadi, aka the legendary “Sorcerer of the guitar” Franco, one of the most influential figures in Congolese music in the last century (one time leader of the mighty TPOK Jazz band), and Congolese Rhumba’s more up-tempo and brighter, more intricately played scion/offshoot, Soukous, and you have a real worldly fusion of cultures at play.
With not much more than a guitar, and on only one occasion, a voice that seems to follow that guitar’s versant and twirling patterns, you can hear legato, glissando and the “rubato” (from the Latin for “stolen time”) signature of expressing rhythmic freedom by slightly speeding up and the slowing down the tempo forms of those referenced inspirations. It’s de Lucía, with a little Sabicas too, on the opening ‘Rubato’ reflection, and on the entwinned gypsy classical, plucked and pricked ‘Polyphony’; Bach, with touches of courtly old England on the trio of ‘Etude’ shorts; and Parker, joined by Wes Montgomery, on the near romantic dappled and picked ‘Tirizah’. The open-ended finale of watery motioned notes, ‘To Be Continued’, could be Bach resurfacing during the jazz age of 1920s America. And the sliding intro title-track has a nylon buzzy toned resonation of Mali blues to it.
The album’s most experimental performance/composition, ‘The Silence Within’, takes a completely different turn. A resonation of harmonics, a shimmer and rung pluck of notes hangs and lingers in the echoed canyons of Tsumbu’s inner sanctum.
With both a depth and real intricate lightness of touch to the often rapid, near seamless phrases, runs, articulations and intonations on this solo offering, and with a foot in both Africa and abroad, a classical learning is blended with a contemporary ear and musically well-travelled soul to produce a modern guitar gem.
Donald Beaman ‘Fog On Mirror Glass’
(Royal Oakie) 25th October 2024
The play and course of light, the recurring “phantom” and a beautiful subdued, nigh on elegiac poetry conjures up a simultaneous union of the beatific and longing on the latest solo effort from Donald Beaman.
Like a drifter’s songbook of subtle, intimate and home-recorded wanderings, metaphors and the like for yearned and plaintive romantic loss, fondness, the passing/measuring of time, and the urge to find comfort and solace, Fog On Mirror Glass uses memories of the weather, the way the light touched or dimmed at a given moment in time, and the smallest of witnessed movements/touches to evoke the right atmosphere of gossamer and sparsity.
Although backed on his previous four outings by a full band, Beaman has stripped right back, recording the bulk of the material in his own living room: where he sat and wrote most of the songs. Longtime stalwart Kit Land helped Beaman set up a makeshift studio of a sort, whilst also contributing bass and keys, and that room’s resonance and reverberated surface sounds can be heard throughout. It also gives the album sound an almost lo fi quality at times: in a good way. Yet despite that pared down approach, Beaman states that this album emerged from an idea he had to “present solo performances in conversation with full-band work”. And so, he brings in Michael Nalin on brushing and dusting light drum duties – occasionally those same accentuated, snare resonating rattled and languid drums gather some more pace and rhythm -, Jen Benoit to add a subtle and emotional touch of attentive backing vocals to the stairway of winding time, ‘Awhile’, and the yearned, disconsolate ‘Usual Phantom’, and Ken Lovgren on additional guitar for the slow-paced, fatigued title-track.
In a former life part of The Doubles band, and a mover on the turn of the new millennium New York City scene, Beaman has in one guise or another shared stages with a staggeringly impressive range of artists, from the late Jonathan Richman to Sharon Van Etten, Mdou Moctar and Marisa Anderson, and toured with an eclectic list of noughties influencers.
But his music, and in this instance, is like a Venn diagram of Cass McCombs, Bob Dylan, Bert Jansch, Jeffery Silverstein, Jake Xerxes Fussell, The Mining Co. and early Fleetwood Mac. However, the opening lovely trickled and drifted warmth and resonance of ‘Glass Bottom Boat’, formed in New York and finished once making it to his new home of North California, has an air of Robbie Robertson playing some Baroque or near Greek beauty on a mandolin about it – by the way, I don’t believe it is actually a mandolin being played on the record, just has that feel. A wanderer’s tale; an alternative aquatic floating road trip in the humid heat, it’s perhaps one of my favourite songs on the album.
Some songs also have almost a country and bluegrass feel to them, like the skiffle and shuffled “drawn by the light” ‘Old Universe’ – one of those themes of distilling the entire gravity of it all, the world, the universe, into a moment captured, a gesture, a turn or look in a very particular room, on the stairwell or in an idyllic but less than homely scene by a river. There’s also the inclusion of a church-like organ to add some kind of beatific bathed light on the Leonard Cohen-esque ‘Your Dreaming Eyes’.
In all, a most impressive and understated songbook of honest quality and performance, themed largely around the way light falls upon any given metaphor, analogy, phrase, description and texture. Unadorned, the feelings are left to pull and draw the listener into a most intimate world. Each play reveals more, as the album really begins to grow on you. A fine record indeed.
Rhombus Index ‘hycean’
(See Blue Audio)
Named after the hypothetical type of planet with liquid water oceans under a hydrogen atmosphere – in other words, a promising candidate for habitability -, Rhombus Index’s fourth album for the discerning introspective ambient and electronic label See Blue Audio reflects on the ever expanding, and encroaching, fusion of artificial intelligence and the organic. Sonically in wonderment, if near joyously radiant and positive in places, that relationship between nature and the digital is stimulating, regenerative and subtly hypnotically entrancing.
Back in solo mode after his collaboration with See Blue Audio label mate f5point6, the West Yorkshire artist and crafter of biomorphic worlds continues that “symbiotic” union by releasing his album on the same day as his foil. Both are similarly cut from the same kinetic ambient and electronic cloth it seems.
hycean however, has a certain life force of softly bobbing bulb-like notes, melodic wave forms, gentle ebbing synthetic tides, dancing atoms and dispersing playful pollen fizzes that builds towards insect wing fluttered and rotor-bladed itchy ticking techno beats. The natural shapes of geography are mapped out on a soundboard of the blanketed, submerged, the beaming and vaporous. In fact, the gentle ambient undulated ‘Coastal Curve’ uses a “sonification of coastal path measurement data” to evoke the desired effect.
Sometimes the beats are more active, like on ‘Flotsam’. Here they sound almost like some kind of transformed version of sticks or hand drums, or even tablas, tapping away in a near soft d’n’b style. ‘Digital Anemone’ (from looking it up, I’ve come up with “anemone” being the word for a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family) doesn’t so much break out into but builds lovingly towards a joyful beaming dance of subtle techno and trance.
A musical photosynthesis; a sonic growth of fauna, flora and algae; hycean is both an audio and image generated fusion – see the videos and accompanying artwork – of crystallisation, the blooming and expanding: an image manifestation that shows nature in a very alien new light. Part Dr. Alex Paterson ‘Loving You Live’, part Seefeel, part eco trance, it will (excuse the pun) really grow on you with each new listen.
Poppy H ‘Wadham Lodge’
(Self-Release)
Haunted invocations of past lives and half lost and half hallucinatory recalled memories swim around in the metallic filament ether of Poppy H’s imagination on the mysteriously veiled experimental artist’s latest release.
In “celebration” of the cassette format – the first physically tactile album in a while from the prolific composer -, all the foibles of that format are emphasised and played with; from the degradation in quality, changes in speed, and the signature surface sounds of tape itself, to the physical presses of the stop, pause and play buttons on a tape recorder. Finding its way onto tape culture, the expletory concept and processes used to conjure up Wadham Lodge – apart from the name of the semi-professional East London football team Walthamstow F.C.’s home ground, and the Tudor era Wadham patrons who founded an Oxford Collage, I’m not sure if this title is borrowed, meant to be based on a real place or a reference, or made up – are new. Physical recordings of his catalogue of work, both old and unreleased, were played and mixed live simultaneously, and accompanied by original live improvisation and compositions. This multilayered process was then captured and mixed, like much of his work, on to a mobile phone.
An interesting and novel concept that results in Fortean transmissions, mirages and vague traces of human activity, conversations and environment. Greyed out, filtered and often in a lo fi magnetic shroud that borders on the paranormal and apparitional, more melodic tunes, mechanised beats and sonic illusions manifest from the mystical fabric of reconstructed time.
Memories are fed into a cryptic model of visitations and sonic consciousness. Take ‘loosely based on grief’, which merges the familiar – albeit manipulated and filtered – sounds of industry and the train yard contact points – the iron scuffed and screeched sounds of a train moving down the tracks – with a Faust Tapes-like foreign broadcast. Or the woody mechanical slot machine-like sounds that merge with a mist of a supernatural Murcof and the Aphex Twin and tweeting bird life on the time measured ‘wild stab in the dark’. From these prompts, these maybe half lingered forgotten thoughts of scenes and the moving world around him, emerge visages and emotions.
It’s the sound of the Boards of Canada, Matthewdavid, Lukid and Oberman Knocks half reminisced, and captured on to ghost tapes. Another unique experiment from Poppy H that elicits new visions.
The Galactic Cowboy Orchestra ‘Lost In Numbers’
(Independent) 11th October 2024
Losing themselves in the mathematical technicalities, phrasings and time signatures of a tumultuous, but kind and melodious, jazz-prog-country-indie-alt-rock fusion, the highly talented Galactic Cowboy Orchestra run the numbers forwards, backwards and every which way their dynamic performances take them.
Originally founded back in 2009 by bassist extraordinaire John Wright, imbued and prompted by the music of such notable influences as King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra and The Dixie Dregs, the quartet have since fashioned their own form of technically challenging music that expands beyond the fusion sphere into all kinds of genres and moods.
The most recent iteration of the group features John’s wife and electric violin/lead vocalist foil Lisi Wright, drummer/percussionist Mario Dawson and acoustic and electric guitarist Dan Neale (who also occasionally picks up the mandolin, in true prog rock instrument switching style). Across various themes they masterfully gallop, spike and pique, riding a constant shimmer and splash of cymbals and percussion, as they fuse a squalling Michael Urbaniak and Jessica Pavone with Arti & Mestieri, a noodling Jaco Pastoruis and King Crimson: and that’s just on the opening title-track. When Lisi sings however, the mood is more like The Charlottes or Belly, even Madder Rose, backed by Zappa or Rush – see the math rock prog and alt 90s female-led ‘Righteous’ and more enchanting lyrical winding ‘Faith, Peace, Hope’.
To further the sound and influences even further, the group mimic the speedy flourishes and scales of the Raga Piloo on ‘In Passing’ – entwinning the traditional Indian form with ariel-like violin and active busy drums -, and sound positively supernatural, otherworldly on, what I take to be a tamed riff on Coltrane’s even wilder, maddening ‘Ascension’.
The Galactic Cowboy Orchestra’s new album (their sixth I believe) is for those seeking something different in the jazz and rock-fusion worlds, something as melodic and tuneful as it is technically clever and complicated.
Groupe Derhane/ freddie Murphy & Chiara Lee ‘Batch #4’
ALBUM (Purplish Records)
When not in the company of the celebrated Tuareg musician-guitarist Mdou Moctar (in a roll that includes bass, guitar, backing vocals, drum machine and producing duties) Mikey Coltun runs his Purplish Records label, dropping unconventional releases in “batches”: a singing of which is the already mentioned Moctar. With this unique method, Coltun twin’s artists from completely different backgrounds, international zones and genres, in a double cassette package.
Volume #4 really attracts polar opposites, with albums from both the Niger Tuareg band Groupe Derhane, fronted by Issouf Derhane, and the Italian experimental partnership of freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee, who also go under the name of Father Murphy, channelling Catholic guilt through natural and synthetic manipulation.
What unites both participants is a shared reification of the concepts, atmospheres and geographies of deserts; Derhane, with the most exquisite camel motioned rhythm and with that signature desert blues and rock guitar resonance, contouring and paying respect, whilst also longing, for the south central Saharan region of Ténéré (which in the Tuareg language literally means “desert”), and the Murphy/Lee duo scoring the overwhelming nothingness of the white desert landscapes of Antarctica for fellow Italian film director Lorenzo Pallota. Both works find their creators embedded in the landscape, performing and extracting the mood of the place.
With a remarkable back story of travails and movement, Issouf Derhane started off life in the Tuareg (though it must be pointed out, depending on who you ask, that many from this community of freewheeling Beaudoin prefer the term Kel Tamashek instead of the later Tuareg colonial loaded name) encampment of Tidene in Niger, a hub as it turns out for exceptional musicians, including Omara “Bombino” Moctar. But he was quickly swept up, we’re told, and itching to travel, ending up in Libya where he picked up the guitar. As the horrific, destabilising shitstorm of that country’s civil war broke out, and the Gaddafi regime tumbled, Derhane was forced to move once again, returning to Niger and the city of Agadez, the “gateway to the desert”, in 2015. This is where he met a fellow guitar enthusiast by the name of Mohamed. A connection was made, fuelled by shared roots, and together they formed the Groupe Derhane band, which quickly became a bit of a sensation in Tuareg circles.
Channelling a tumultuous time in the Tuareg plight, with the fight still ongoing for autonomy within the regions that spread across Niger, Chad, Mali and the Sahel, the increasingly alarming over-desertification and effects of climate change, and preservation of their way of life, the Derhane group encapsulate a longing and paean for home and their roots that sounds entrancing, beautifully and emotionally charged. The clapped rhythms, motions of the camel trail and shifting sand dune contours, and constantly turning, brightly resonating and buzz of the guitar are close to the sound of such Tuareg icons of the form as Faris, Terakraft and Tinariwen. It’s not mentioned in the notes, but I take it that both the opening ‘Tamidtin’ and closing ‘Ténéré’ are both riffs on or covers of Tinariwen’s songs, albeit with a less bassy and low vocal, more echo and brightness.
There’s a subtle use of the synthesized and electronic, which makes the reverberating and buoyant ‘Khay Tamadroyte Tamacheq’ sound near cosmic and throbbing.
The six-track showcase is an invitation to dig deeper, consume and absorb a burgeoning talent on the Tuareg scene.
Sharing this dispatches double-bill, the Torino-based sonic partnership of freddie Murphy (the lower case is intentional) and Chiara Lee channel a whole different kind of desert. More an isolated, white awe-expansive tundra, they transform the abstract forbode, mystery and overwhelming senses of vast Antarctica into a soundtrack for Lorenzo Pallotta’s experiences aboard an icebreaker. On his return from this field trip, the film director emphasised the shock of readjustment in a land where the sun never sets; where time has no meaning, or at least is hard to measure. Pallotta also described the vibrations, the breakage of the vessel as it cut through the ice, sounding like a constant earthquake.
All of this is fed into a soundtrack of the paranormal, primal, fogged, beastly and wonderous. Manipulated off-world readings, hums, surfaces noises, drones, dissonance and obfuscated voices provide the paranoid, the esoteric and a sense of movement through a world with no borders, nothing concrete but just space: lots of white space. Nurse With Wound, Throbbing Gristles, Gunther Westhoff and Szajner lost in the cold psychogeography, the Antarctic is as disturbing as it is a polar adventure vision of the Heart Of Darkness. But then the finale double of ‘Intermezzo + Closer’ sounds like an electronic kosmische scenery of Dinger and Cluster and cult Library music; the radiant magnetic lights of the southern hemisphere shimmy to a tubular dance.
Consider the mood set, the senses retuned.
Batch number four is yet another unique pairing of influences and sounds; two different geographies, different methods, yet both sharing a general theme of landscape and all the unsaid or unsayable abstract feelings, atmospheres that go with it.
Pyramid Waves ‘Screaming Brain’
(Syrup Moose Records) 18th October 2024
A cerebral haemorrhage; a blunt force of industrial sonics, caustic electronica and Fortean distress, the fifth work of traumatic discourse and dissonance from the French duo of Pyramid Waves drills into the four pillars of our dysfunctional modern society: that being, addictions, mental health, anxiety and cravings.
A bastard trauma of Front Line Assembly, Test Dept. and Merzbow, the Screaming Brain improvisations (recorded at their home studio) will leave you in no doubt as to the pained sufferings of its creators.
Demarcated into four parts of static white noise, analogue reverberations and interdimensional radio transmissions, crunch and crumbled beats, and echoed voices from some distant harrowing memory, doors to a tumultuous mind are opened to forces from beyond the mortal world. Because whilst the gristle for this album is all very real, the sounds grate, spin, switch towards a phantasm of the paranormal and alien. It’s as if a trapped psychogeography of echoing stresses and long dormant troubled episodes in the cortex has been wired into a supernatural apparatus of haunted and bestial sonorous severe disturbances.
Unsettling to put it mildly – especially the repeating dreamy melodic piano part that plays and meanders over a coarse bed of fearful distortion on ‘Trapped Underwater’ -, this uncomfortable but fascinating pull into the metal torture workshop of neuroscience squeals, slaps meat, drills and thumps its way to challenging and meeting its psychological demons.
If Richard H. Kirk, Richard James and SEODAH invoked Cthulhu whilst all in a room together, hunched over an apparatus of transistors, generators, motors, tools, drum pads and effects, then this is surely what it would sound like. Screaming Brian by name and nature, Pyramid Waves dissect the psyche of our troubling times, and the battles faced by the individual screwed-up by the system with horror and hurt.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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