A (near) 150 albums survey of the year, with choice eclectic albums chosen by the Monolith Cocktail Team.
Well was I wrong last year when I called 2021 the annus horribilis of all years. It has been soundly beaten by the shit-show that is 2022. The invasion of the Ukraine, cost of living crisis, another hideous wave of Covid – which even if the jabs are being rolled out, and the deaths rate, hospitalisations is nothing like the first wave back in 2020, is still causing major illness, absences and disruptions to a society already facing a heap of doomsday scenarios -, strikes, activism, fuel poverty, Iranian protests, and the continuing horror show of a zombie government being just some examples. Yes 2022 qualifies as one of the most incomprehensible years on record of any epoch; an ungovernable country in the grip of austerity point 2.0, and greater world untethered and at the mercy of the harridans on either side of the extreme political divide, the billionaire corporates and narcissist puritans.
And yet, it has been another great year for music. Despite the myriad of problems that face artists and bands in the industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, and the ever encroaching problems of streaming against physical sales and exposure, people just can’t quit making music. And for that we, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys do. In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so, 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) –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic, democratic alphabetical order – something we more or less started in the first place. We also throw every genre, nationality together in a serious of eclectic lists: no demarcation involved.
The lists include those albums we reviewed, featured on the site in some capacity, and 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 chose it, a review link where applicable, and finally a link to the album itself.
Because of the sheer number of entries, we’ve split that list in to two parts: Part One (A – L) starts with Anthéne & Simon McCorry and finishes with Lyrics Born; Part Two (M-Z) begins with Machine Girl and finishes with The Zew.
This year’s picks have been chosen by (Dominic Valvona), Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Matt Oliver, Andrew C. Kidd and Graham Domain.
A.
Anthéne & Simon McCorry ‘Mind Of Winter’ (Hidden Vibes) Dominic Valvona
Review
Seigo Aoyama ‘Prelude For The Spring’ (Audiobulb) DV
Review
Armstrong ‘Happy Graffiti’ Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Review
Yara Asmar ‘Home Recordings 2018-2021’ (Hive Mind) DV
Review
Avalanche Kaito ‘S-T’ (Glitterbeat) DV
Review
Avantdale Bowling Club ‘TREES’ Andrew C. Kidd
B.
Caterina Barbieri ‘Spirit Exit’ (Warp Records) ACK
Review
Jam Baxter ‘Fetch the Poison’ (Blah) Matt Oliver
Oliver Birch ‘Burning Daylight’ BBS
Review
Ｂｌａｃｋ Ｍｅｓａ ‘Research Facility’ (猫 シ Corp. ‘Selected Works’) ACK
Brigitte Beraha ‘Blink’ DV
Review
Brian Bordello ‘Cardboard Box Beatles’ (Metal Postcard Records) DV
Review
The Bordellos ‘Ronco Revival Sound’ (Metal Postcard Records) Graham Domain
Review
Boycalledcrow ‘Wizards Castle’ (Waxing Crescent Records) BBS
Review
Broadcast ‘The Maida Vale Sessions’ (Warp Records) GD
Apollo Brown & Philmore Greene ‘Cost of Living’ (Mello Music Group) MO
Brown Calvin ‘dimension//perspective’ (AKP Recordings) DV
Review
C.
Loyle Carner ‘Hugo’ (EMI) MO
Tom Caruana ‘Strange Planet’ (Tea Sea Records) MO
Cities Aviv ‘Man Plays The Horn’ (D.O.T.) DV
Claude ‘A Lot’s Gonna Change’ (American Dreams) DV
Review
Clouds in a Headlock ‘Breakfast in Phantasia’ (Offkiltr/Fat Beats) MO
Julian Cope ‘England Expectorates’ BBS
Link
D.
The Dark Jazz Project ‘S-T’ (Irregular Frequencies) DV
Review
Aftab Darvishi ‘A Thousand Butterflies’ ACK
Review
The Difference Machine ‘Unmasking the Spirit Fakers’ (Full Plate) MO
Review
Ferry Djimmy ‘Rhythm Revolution’ (Acid Jazz) DV
Matt Donovan ‘Habit Formation’ DV
Review
The Doomed Bird Of Providence ‘A Flight Across Arnham Land’ DV/BBS
Review
Dubbledge ‘Ten Toes Down’ (Potent Funk) MO
Review
E.
Eamon The Destroyer ‘A Small Blue Car – Re-made/Re-modelled’ (Bearsuit Records) BBS
Review
El Khat ‘Albat Alawi Op.99’ (Glitterbeat) DV
Review
Kahil El’Zabar Quartet ‘A Time For Healing’ (Spiritmuse) DV
Roger Eno ‘The Turning Year’ (Deutsche Grammophon) GD
Review
Eerie Wanda ‘Internal Radio’ (Joyful Noise Recordings) DV
Exociety ‘Deception Falls’ (Exociety) MO
F.
Fera ‘Corpo Senza Carne’ (Maple Death Records) DV
Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita ‘Echo’ (bendigedig) DV
Review
Flat Worms ‘Live In Los Angeles’ (Frontier Records) DV
Review
Forest Robots ‘Supermoon Moonlight Part Two’ (Subexotic) DV
Review
Nick Frater ‘Aerodrome Motel’ (Big Stir Records) BBS
Review
Future Kult ‘S-T’ (Action Wolf/AWAL) DV
Review
G.
Mike Gale ‘Mañana Man’ DV
Premiere
Dana Gavanski ‘When it Comes’ (Full Time Hobby / Flemish Eye) GD
Review
Gold Panda ‘The Work’ (City Slang) ACK
The Good Ones ‘Rwanda…You See Ghosts I See Sky’ (Six Degrees) DV
Review
Goon ‘Hour of Green Evening’ (Demode Recordings) Graham Domain
Review
Guillotine Crowns ‘Hills to Die On’ (Uncommon Records) MO
Review
Gwenno ‘Tresor’ (Heavenly Recordings) GD
H.
Aldous Harding ‘Warm Chris’ (4AD) GD
Healing Force Project ‘Drifted Entities Vol. 1’ (Beat Machine Records) DV
Review
Sven Helbig ‘Skills’ (Modern Recordings) DV
Review
Bruno Hibombo ‘Parting Words’ DV
Houseplants ‘II’ (Win Big Records) DV
Review
John Howard ‘From The Far Side Of A Miss’ (Kool Kat) DV
Review
I.
IBERI ‘Supra’ (Naxos World Music) DV
J.
Juga-Naut ‘Time & Place’ (Juga-Naut) MO
JPEGMAFIA ‘OFFLINE!’ ACK
K.
Kamikaze Palm Tree ‘Mint Chip’ (Drag City) BBS
Review
Kick ‘Light Figures’ (Anomic Records/Dischi Sottoernnei/Sour Grapes) DV
Review
King Kashmere ‘Woof’ (High Focus) MO
Evan Kertman ‘Rancho Shalom’ (Perpetual Doom) BBS
Review
KMRU ‘Temporary Stored’ ACK
L.
Labelle ‘Éclat’ (Infiné) DV
Review
The Legless Crabs ‘Always Your Boy’ (Metal Postcard Records) BBS
Review
The Legless Trials ‘Cheese Sandwich’ (Metal Postcard Records) BBS
Kristine Leschper ‘The Opening Or Closing Of A Door’ (Anti-) DV
Review
Liraz ‘Roya’ (Glitterbeat) DV
Review
Francesco Lurgo ‘Sleep Together Folded Like Origami’ (Bosco Records) DV
Review
Lyrics Born ‘Mobile Homies’ (Mobile Home Recordings) MO
Review
Keep an eye out later this week for Part Two.
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.
The Monthly Playlist Revue: May ’22: Junior Disprol, Misha Sultan, Vera Di Lecce, Celestial North…
May 30, 2022
THE PLAYLIST
Dominic Valvona/Matt Oliver/Brian Bordello Shea
All the choice tracks from the last month, plus a few missed ones we’ve corralled from last month, the Monolith Cocktail team’s playlist revue is both a catch-up and showcase of the blog’s eclectic and mind bending tastes. Sitting in on this month’s selection panel is Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
TRACK LIST IN FULL IS:
Junior Disprol Ft. Krash Slaughta ‘Rotund Shogun’
Deca ‘Tuning’
Exterior ‘Orthodox Dreams’
FAST DE ‘Miss Trutti Finally Found Her Gem’
Pussy Riot Ft. Slayyter ‘HATEFUCK’
Masai Bey ‘Stanza X’
BITHAMMER! ‘Make You Mine’
Flat Worms ‘Into The Iris (Live)’
Salem Trials ‘Vegaville’
Walker Brigade ‘Disease’
Team Play ‘Sunrise’
James Howard ‘Baloo’ Adam Walton ‘Mary Sees U.F.O.S.’
Joviale ‘UW4GM’
Shabaka ‘Black Meditation’
Kritters ‘New York’
Ralph Of London ‘Lys’
Ethan Woods ‘Utopia Limited (Cuddly Tie-In)’
Staples Jr. Singers ‘I’m looking For A Man’
Ramson Badbonez ‘Rap Bio’
Mr. SOS & Maxamill ‘War Criminal’
The Difference Machine ‘Old Men’
Omega Sapien ‘Jenny’
Mr. SOS ‘Peace & Prosperity’
Jermiside & The Expert Ft. Tanya Morgan ‘Crime Rule The City’
Quelle Chris ‘DEATHFAME’
Wish Master & Billy Whizz ‘THOUGHTS OF THOUGHTS’
Guillotine Crowns ‘Killer’ Orryx ‘Eldritch’
Celestial North ‘When The Gods Dance’
Henna Emilia Hietamäki ‘Protesti’
Lucrecia Dalt ‘No One Around’
STANLAEY ‘Fluorescent Fossils’
Your Old Droog ‘Go To Sleep’
Tommaso Moretti Ft. Ben LaMar Gay ‘A Call For Awareness’
Black Mango Ft. Samba Touré ‘Are U Satisfied’
Avalanche Kaito ‘Flany Konare’
Tomo-Nakaguchi ‘Halation’
Private Agenda ‘Splendour’
Sebastian Reynolds ‘Four-Minute Mile’
Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers ‘Agwetaroyo’
Misha Sultan ‘Nyepi’
The Master Musicians Of Jajouka ‘Khamsa Khamsin’
Gustavo Yashimura ‘Las Prendas del Corazon’
Stephanie Santiago ‘Activa Tu Cuerpo’
Gabrielle Ornate ‘Free Falling’
Black Monitor ‘Xexagon77’
Borban Dallas & His Filipino Cupids ‘Too Convenient’
Martha And The Muffins ‘Save It For Later’
Super Hit ‘Blink 182’
Reverend Baron ‘Let The Radio Play’
Alas The Sun ‘Distant Drone’
Jelly Crystal ‘I Tryyy’
LINN ‘Happiness Is Real’
Lenka Lichtenberg ‘That Monster, Custom’
Brigitte Beraha ‘Blink’
Vera Di Lecce ‘Altar Of Love’
Francesco Lurgo ‘I Am Already Far Away’
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.
ALBUM REVIEW/MATT OLIVER
Guillotine Crowns ‘Hills to Die On’
(Uncommon Records)
Do not read between the lines: these crowns haven’t been made to sit comfortably atop underground sovereigns. Hills To Die On is an uprising as well as an upholding of 80s-made disaster, predicting a New York-Chicago futurism that’s actually right under your fingernails, dirt and all. In orators Uncommon Nasa, whose clipped bravado, capable of coiling ad infinitum until he’s constricting your windpipe, and Short Fuze, no less strident but a case of always having to watch the quieter ones in times of distraction, Guillotine Crowns fuck up the b-boy stance and the front rows they’re liable to jump into. Dystopia may be the easy catch-all term to apply to this album of margin-ignoring hip-hop, and these are no gilded garlands on display; but when added to its deeply rooted survivalist spirit, just being without ever seeking hero status, Hills To Die On becomes music to spray skyscrapers by.
As with the Monolith Cocktail-approved, 2019 Uncommon Nasa project City As School with Kount Fif, indie/leftfield hip-hop titans Company Flow and Cannibal Ox, both of whom are referenced in rhyme, are where yardstick parallels are drawn and which give the album a weird throwback status caught in forward thinking-retro fantasy-modern living crossfire. Throw this back to times of Anticon/Def Jux etc (in which Nasa earned his stripes) and you’re hopeful for the scene all over again, thrilled by the likes of ‘Horseman Armour’ and ‘Scope of the Guillotine’ spewing out abstract angles hiding as straight lines and taking no shortcuts in unseating speakers.
The duo recognise the need to mobilise, but also the parameters of the friends/enemies axis. Whereas the resistance of ‘They Can’t Kill Us All’ is comparable to an all-for-one zombie outbreak, ‘The Product’ has Guillotine Crowns accepting the Sword of Damocles as both potential sealer of fate and a means of going for self amongst online/media minefields. Dense, dry and pretty unforgiving without being indecipherable, GC embark on “around-the-clock stakeouts to reset history” with enough ear catching references – Pelle Pelle sweatshirts, shouts to EPMD, Wu-Tang, DOOM and “Flava Flav with the 12Gauge” – to ease furrowed brows. The pertinence of their streams of consciousness will eventually emerge like a word balloon, forced into your eyeballs as a revision of the Clockwork Orange syllabus.
“My life is fast forward, while yours is a series of pauses” says the crushing headswim of ‘Rebel Crowns’, proposing the question of “do you want to be right, or do you want to be correct?” that through the wrong mic would just be look at me-level pretentious. And like any hip-hop act, underground or mainstream, the pair know the worth of a good hook that punters can take as gospel or make a tattoo of, acknowledging rap’s saviour-like status on the come up and pledging allegiance to the grind. The two leaders are joined on the mic by a bunch of street corner-dwelling savages slash town criers – Jyroscope, Duke01, Gajah, Tracy Jones, Skech185 a sometimes improbable cross-section of survivors and reinforcements to reroute the tide.
The sound of everyday anarchy is dominated by drum machines bullying backdrops like they’re about to cause the 80s music scene to splinter. Guitar chords are crowbarred if not sawn off, and holographic, peace-seeking synths become something more gothic and sinister, analogous to arcade machines becoming sentient. The programming of effects and percussion make tracks itch, irritating your inner ear. ‘Art Dealers’ sounds like ‘Brooklyn Zoo’ in a backpack. The scarily beautiful ‘Generosity’, with its damning hook sample, sounds jettisoned in space, while providing rhymes for the ages that measure the distance of returning to reality.
The dissonant ‘Bare Hands’ projects a robot uprising with the metropolis as its playground, whose hook of “I will destroy you with my bare hands…my power is limitless, you can’t come close to stopping me” both boosts and belies its Gotham-like setting, with ‘Hills’ providing a triumphant, comic book-coloured sci-fi fanfare and a chorus to leap headlong into for anyone needing a new manifesto. Rarely does the Hills… have time to check its pulse across 46 minutes; ‘Tape Deck’ tries to act dreamy, but can’t get no sleep. The industrial grind of ‘City Breathing’ is made for tank-as-low rider, and ‘Killer’, with Short Fuze calculating villainously, reaches the apex of the album’s claustrophobia living in a police state.
Hills To Die On is classic anti-socialism in the shock-of-the-new, ghettoblaster on full blast sense, though suffering the establishment, rather than just being anti-establishment, seems to be the Guillotine mindstate. All hail the Crown rulers setting standards from home to the Terrordome.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 