Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part Two: M – Z
December 16, 2024
Part Two of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists: from M to Z. Put together by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Picking up on where we left off with Part One of the Monolith Cocktail’s most enjoyed and loved albums of 2024, Part Two continues to list all entries in alphabetical order, starting with M. So without further ado, here is the concluding spread of chosen albums – although anything we reviewed during the year should be considered a winner in that regard.
M_____________
Felix Machtelinckx ‘Night Scenes’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen Dominic Valvona, reviewed originally by Graham Domain/Review
“The new album from Belgium singer, songwriter and producer Felix Machtelinckx is a strange album. In part electronic, it has an ethereal dreamlike quality where the music seems distant and the vocals sound as though they have been beamed through space from a distant galaxy.
Night Scenes is an intriguing album that is hard to define, but one that grows in definition, depth and subtle beauty with each play. It might prove to be a contender for album of the year.” GD
Marcelo D2 & SambaDrive ‘Direct-to-Disc’ (Night Dreamer)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transforming choice tracks from his back catalogue of solo albums, put out between 1998 and 2013, the influential and acclaimed Brazilian rapper Marcelo D2 replaces the samples, breaks and scratching for a live, reactive Latin-jazz and samba trio.
As part of the championed ‘direct-to-disc’ series overseen by the Night Dreamer label, the South American hip-hop legend laid down ten performed tracks backed by the brilliant SambaDrive direct onto vinyl at the Haarlem Artone Studio in Holland. With no cuts, no edits, as little interference as necessary, these recordings sound near spontaneous, in the moment. The attitude, the passion, the crammed-in flow and more peppered lyricism is still very much on show, only now lilted towards a jazzier and Latin-fuelled backing that balances the urgency and freewheeling of the rapping with something more pliable, dissipating, funky and stylishly cool. Marcelo D2 & SambaDrive have created something very special; not so much an improvement as an alternative fruitful vision of Samba-rap. “ DV
Luce Mawdsley ‘Northwest & Nebulous’ (Pure O Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Over several years now the former Mugstar guitarist Luce Mawdsley has progressively shorn the more predatory slurred spoken-word mise-en-scenes and lurid, sleazy torturous self-harm from their music; gradually removing the “verbasier” programmed-like demonic effects from their voice and freeing themselves from a circled abyss of sonnets.
An holistic record that rescores the English scenery and places held near for Luce, the unfolding stages are both beautifully conveyed and hallucinatory in equal measure; a retold fairytale without any prompts, and without a human cast; a window in on the enchantments but also non-hierarchical, non-binary and free nature of the wilds and geography: a metaphor for Luce’s struggles to find an identity that feels natural, safe and unburdened. One part classical, one part Americana, and one part folksy (a touch of the Celtic too) there’s still a very modern twist to what we may identify as the familiar: imagine Prokofiev on an acid trip, or Ry Cooder in an English pasture laying down breadcrumbs for Hampshire & Foat.” DV
The Mining Co. ‘Classic Monsters’ (PinDrop Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Continuing to mine his childhood the London-based singer-songwriter Michael Gallagher once again produces a songbook of throwbacks to his formative adventures as a kid growing up in Donegal in Ireland.
His previous album almanac, Gum Card, touched upon a silly fleeting dabble with the occult, but this latest record (his sixth so far) is filled with childhood memories of hammy and more video nasty style supernatural characters, alongside a whole host of “weirdos”, “freaks” and “stoners”.
Once more back in his childhood home, frightened to turn the lights off, checking for Christopher Lee’s Dracula and the Wolfman under his bed, yet daring himself to keep watching those Hammer house of horror b-movies, Salem’s Lot and more bloody shockers, Gallagher links an almost lost innocence with a lifetime of travails, cathartic obsessions and searching desires.
I’m still astounded by the lack of support for his music or exposure, as Gallagher’s The Mining Co. vehicle is worthy of praise, airplay and attention. Hopefully it will be sixth album lucky for the Irishman.” DV
Hannah Mohan ‘Time Is A Walnut’ (Egghunt Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Geographically settling long enough to pen this solo songbook offering, but anything but settled emotionally, the former And The Kids vocalist-songwriter Hannah Mohan attempts to process the break-up of all break-ups.
Mohan rides the roller coaster of a drawn-out break-up with quirkiness and vulnerability, turning tortuous heartache into one of the best and most rewarding songbooks of the year. Mohan may have let her soul sing out, as she comes to accept an emotional turbulent period of stresses and anxieties and pain. But whether she’s finally pulled through the other side or not is up to you the listener.” DV
Jamison Field Murphy ‘It Has To End’ (Tomato Flower)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“Ah yes this is more like it. At last, an album with warmth, soul experiment and beauty. Just when I was beginning to think that it was a thing of the past James Field Murphy turns up with this home recorded gem, an album that combines all the things I love about the magic of music: songs with melody, “That Boy” could well be an outtake from The Beach Boys Smiley Smile album, and “It has To End” has a wonderful bonkers McCartney feel to it [remember McCartney was the most experimental of all the Beatles], and this track combines pop with experimental to a beautifully short and wistful degree. “Hate” is another beautiful song; yes indeed, a hate that is alright to love and love it I do. I love the tape pops in the background: you really cannot beat recording on tape.
It Has To End is a rare thing, an album you do not want to end. It’s an album I will be returning to on a regular basis over the coming months as James manages to balance off pop/psych beauty with experimentation perfectly.” BBS
N______________
NCD Instigators ‘Swimming With Sharks’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The NCD Instigators were Tony, Brendan, and Desi Bannon, three brothers from Newcastle County Down in Northern Ireland who decided to form a band in the 80s together after many years of playing in various other bands. They took their love of metal, prog, folk and rock and home recorded several albums for their own pleasure, burning them onto CDRs to give to friends and family and playing the occasional gig.
There is just something quite magical about this album, and it is sad that now it is only being released years after the fact and that Tony (bass and vocals) is no longer with us, having passed away in 2020. Hopefully this release will ignite some long overdue interest in this underground lost great band from Northern Ireland.” BBS
Neon Kittens ‘It’s A NO Thing’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Kittens have a magic and their own sound: The guitar wizardry of Andy G (In a ideal world David Bowie would not be dead and Andy would be his guitarist songwriter partner) and the spoken, I am going to shove my stiletto shoe heel into your yearning heart, vocal coolness of Nina K. The Neon Kittens are one of those rare bands; we need them more than they need us.” BBS
Neutrals ‘New Town Dream’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is splendid stuff, an album of supreme guitar jangle, of well written and catchy songs about life in a small town that at times musically reminds me of early Wedding Present and The Pastels with such wonderfully British lyrics; although I wonder when “Travel Agents Window’s” was written as he mentions buying a bag of chips for 50p, when was the last time you managed to buy a bag of chips for 50p? Maybe life in this small town isn’t as bad as the Neutrals think. I do love this album though. I love the romance of everyday life songs, like little mini-Kitchen sink dramas filmed in grainy black and white. This is quite a gem of an album.” BBS
Not My Good Arm ‘Coffee’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“They take Rock ‘n’ Roll, Ska, Punk and Soul and tie it up and skin it alive whilst berating it with the sort of political soulful joyful nous that hasn’t been heard or witnessed since the Mighty Dexy’s Midnight Runners held the Top Of The Pops viewers enrapt with their explosion of attitude and musical good taste back in the early 80’s. Yes indeed, Coffee is a Northern indie soulful romp of an album by a band that I can imagine being a hell of a good night out to watch and by the looks of it gig on a very regular basis. So, keep your eyes scanned as they may be coming to your locality soon. I understand you can pick up a copy of Coffee on CD from their gigs, as by the looks of it they’ve not yet updated their bandcamp: probably too busy putting the fun into funk.” BBS
O_______________
OdNu + Ümlaut ‘Abandoned Spaces’ (Audiobulb)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Drawn together on what proves to be a deeply intuitive union for the Audiobulb label, the Buenos Aires-born but NY/Hudson resident Michel Mazza (the OdNu of that partnership) and the US, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut) form a bond on their reductive process of an album, Abandoned Spaces.
Tracks are given plenty of time to breathe and resonate, to unfurl spells and to open-up primal mirage-like and psyche-concocted soundscapes from the synthesized and played. And although this fits in the ambient electronic fields of demarcation, Abandoned Spaces is so much more – later on in the second half of the eight-track album, the duo expresses more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty.” DV
Berke Can Özcan & Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘It Was Always Time’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
““It Was Always Time”, and it was always meant to be, for the telepathic readings of both creative partners in this project prove synchronised and bound, no matter how far out and off-kilter their experiments of curiosity go or take them.
The Turkish polymath drummer and sound designer Berke Can Özcan and his foil the Brooklyn-based baritone/alto saxophonist and flutist Jonah Parzen-Johnson, have worked together before, namely on the former’s Lycian atavistic geographical infused and inspired Twin Peaks album, last year.
But before even that, back in the April of 2022, Parzen-Johnson found himself boarding a flight to Istanbul to perform a one-off gig with Özcan. Incredibly the two had never met until thirty minutes before going on stage for a soundcheck. The gig must have proved a creative, dynamic success as both musicians have now come together under the equal billing of this new album, recorded for the Helsinki-based hub We Jazz.
From the dubby to tribal, the esoteric to cloud gazing, Berke Can Özcan and Jonah Parzen-Johnson play out their fears and joys across an exciting album of possibilities and expressive, erring on the heavenly at one point, feelings. A fruitful combination that will endure, and hopefully reconvene in the future.” DV
P_______________
Pastense Ft. Uncommon Nasa ‘Sidewalk Chalk, Parade Day Rain’ (Uncommon Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Continuing to attract and surround himself with like-minded curious, inventive artisans of prose from the underground leftfield hip-hop scene, the Long and Staten Islands’ rapper and producer/beatmaker Uncommon Nasa now facilitates Pastense’s return with a post-pandemic opus of metaphysical, cosmological unravelled consciousness alchemy.
With no let-up in the quality of the expansive lyrical metaverse, tech comes in conflict with the forest’s birds and nature’s fight for survival amongst the concrete and chemically poisoned wells of so-called progression on an artistically simulated and stimulating canvas of thoughts and connectivity.
Pastense, in partnership with Nasa, creates a most excellent mind-expanding universe, and in doing so, one of the year’s best hip-hop albums: this is an artist and record worth championing.” DV
Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille ‘Embracing The Unknown’ (Mahakala Music) Chosen by DV/Review
“A true “cross-generational” (with two of the participants born in the 1930s) coming together of avant-garde, freeform and hard bop talent, the ensemble quartet of Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille “embrace” experiment. You could call it an extemporized gathering, with no prior arrangements and not much in the way of dialogue.
Making the abstract seem even more so, yet somehow conveying mood, emotions and self-expression, this descriptive and totally improvisational master class in free-thought-jazz somehow captures the internal struggles and reflections of the mind during an age of high anxiety, rage, divisiveness and unease.” DV
James P M Philips ‘Spite, Bile & Beauty’ (Turquoise Coal)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“Punk, folk, rock and a medieval becoming strangeness all collide to bring us another album of psychedelic whimsy from the head and heart of James P M Phillips: an album of joy, sadness, humour and pain. Whether it be the quite wonderfully disturbingly jagged “My Head Is Full Of Rats” or the quite beautiful folk strum of “My New Friend”, James has his own unique way of making music and writing songs; dipping his own original thought patterns into a hybrid of musical genre hopping eccentricity.” BBS
Poppycock ‘Magic Mothers’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The whole album is joy. I love the mix of jazz, folk and psychedelic pop: alas, if only the last Zombies album was as enjoyable as this.” BBS
Pound Land ‘Live At New River Studios/ Worried’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV, but reviewed originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“This new album by Pound Land is a double whammy of an affair. The first side recorded live, captures the band without guitar but with a rather fetching squelching punk rock synth suppling the health out of the watching masses. Pound Land are of course a punk and post punk rock outfit of political magnitude. A band that captures the atmosphere of living in this divided land we call the United Kingdom and make a hell of a fine racket while capturing the atmosphere as the live side of this cassette magically proves. The second side is taken up by the thirty-one-minute track, “Worried”, which is a fine sonic journey of sadness, horror and experimental splendour that takes in dub, punk, and electro soundscapes; a dream of a nightmare track that really needs to be heard by all.” BBS
R__________________
Revival Season ‘Golden Age Of Self Snitching’ (Heavenly Recordings)
Chosen by DV
Totally missed at the time by us (well, we did feature ‘Chop’ on the February edition of the Monthly playlist), this incredible union between Brandon “BEZ” (B Easy) Evans and beatmaker/producer Jonah Swilley is so “now” it hurts. A synergy that captures the times it was forged in, Golden Age Of Self–Snitching crafts electronic dance music both dystopian and club, hip-hop, 2-Step, the kind of fusions that TV On The Radio used to generate, locked beats and breaks and dub into a commentary on societal change, protestation and revolution. An essential flow of concentrated angst, frustrations and observation criminally overlooked, and which should make every end of year list of there was any real justice in this god damn forsaken world. DV
Kevin Robertson ‘The Call Of The Sea’
Chosen by BBS/Review
““The Call Of The Sea” is the fourth solo album from Kevin Robertson, a man who is also one of the vocalists/guitarists from Scottish guitar band The Vapour Trails. And here we have him once again showering us with sublime melodies. Melodies that are wrapped in Byrdsian like guitar jangle and vocal harmonies that have just stepped from scratched vinyl copies of ye olde mid-sixties beat boom collectables stopped for a cup of the finest Earl Grey with late 80’s early 90’s Scottish indie guitar wunderkinds’ Teenage Fanclub and Superstar while scribbling on postcards to send their love to those old scouse reprobates Shack and The La’s and the Coral.” BBS
S___________________
Salem Trials ‘View From Another Window’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/ Review
“The Salem Trials are clinically rambunctious. They are never further than being an arm’s length away from genius. They have their own sound: their own model of post-punk if you like. They take all the usual subjects (The Fall, Wire, Gang Of Four, the Blue Orchids and Subway Army) and mix them with a no wave sound coming from the streets of New York in the late 70s early 80s. They release albums constantly – this is actually the first of 2024 though, and fits in nicely with the army of their previously released albums.
Andy still being the inspired guitarist that he is, riffing like a cross between Keith Richards, Tom Verlaine and Brix Smith with a army of admirers gathering in her Dis guarded nightwear, and Russ still being the nutter on the bus wearing the splatter ballistic cop t-shirt and spitting feathers at the naked chickens queuing up outside to be the first in line for the latest modern contraption while he is creating art at its best out of the fuzzy felt of yesteryears clowns hats. You really have to love the Salem Trials.” BBS
The Salisman Communal Orchestration ‘A Queen Among Clods’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the psychedelic otherworldliness of SCO. I love the way the lead vocalist phrases his words. He sings with the soul of an sad imperfect empathetic angel, you actually believe in what he is saying, “[If I Wasn’t ]So Godam Blue” is so goddamn beautiful, and with some pretty wonderful lyrics: “remember those days when I pissed in the street, well that is not my style anymore”. Pure heartbreak poetry at its best. The following track “Rum Punch” is as equally beautiful, a psych country-tinged beauty full of sadness and pathos.
I really do love this album SCO have the perfect blend of magic and tragic, and “A Queen Among Clods” is defiantly one of the most impressive and heartfelt original sounding albums I have had the pleasure to write about this year. A true stunner.” BBS
Sly & The Family Drone ‘Moon Is Doom Backwards’ (Human Worth)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A wrestling match on the barricades between the forces of Marxism, Populism, the consumer culture, nepotism, and encroaching forces of a technological dystopia, the collective forces of this group provide a reification-style soundtrack to the crisis of our times. Often this means escaping via a trapdoor to beyond the ether, or, to off worlds and mysterious alien landscapes. But we’re always drawn back into the horror, stresses and contorted darkness of reality; a sonic PTSD manifested in industrial noises from Capitalism’s workshop.
Poltergeist’s jamming activity, fizzles of sound waves and transmissions from the chthonian, ghost ship bristled low horns and higher pitched shrieks, bestial tubular growls, cymbal shaves, disturbances in the matrix, a short melody of pastoral reeds, drums that sounding like a beating. This is the sound of Moon Is Doom Backwards; pushing and striving to score this hideous age through the cerebral and chaotic.” DV
Juanita Stein ‘The Weightless Hour’ (Agricultural Audio)
Chosen by DV/Review
“And perhaps it all comes to this, that after twenty-five years in the music business as both the frontwoman of the Howling Bells and as an established solo artist Juanita Stein has finally found the strength of her own voice and creative force. Stepping out from behind the safeguards of noisy rock to find that silence resonates deeper and further, Juanita erases everything but the most vital, emotionally receptive and connective elements from her music to produce a sagacious, confident (despite the fragility and vulnerability in places) songbook of personal memories.
The Weightless Hour is the perfect album from a great voice and songwriter, who’s now able to find that distance from the events of the past and a new sense of reflected candidness and honesty in motherhood. Juanita’s true self and strength opens-up, the noise diminished for something far more powerful. Not so much defiant as confident. A definite album of the year.” DV
Mohammad Syfkhan ‘I Am Kurdish’ (Nyahh)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Like an ascending stairway, or flowing and resonating with evocative melodious magic, lute stirring ruminations sweep over Arabia and surrounding regions; referencing anonymous, collective and some original-penned compositions and dances to Islam’s ‘golden age’ of fairytale (‘A Thousand And One Nights’); Kurdish pride in the face of repression (the title-track of course) and its peoples’ struggle for independence and respect (‘Do Not Bow’); lovelorn enquires (‘Do You Have A Lover Or Not?’) and the missed daily activities, interactions of life back home in Raqqa. Across it all the hand drums tab, rattle and roll; the cello arches, weeps and bows in sympathy; and the bouzouki lute swoons and rings out the most nimble and beautiful of ached and more up-tempo giddy tunes.” DV
T____________________
The Tearless Life ‘Conversations With Angels’ (Other Voices Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Both a transference of souls from the now cremated – or laid to rest, depending on your choice of metaphorical ritual death – Vukovar plus a host of orbiting “other voices”, the make-up of The Tearless Life remains relatively, and intentionally, shrouded, obscured.
Taking a while to materialize, The Tearless Life’s debut opus is both the announcement of new age, but also a bridge between this latest incarnation and the former Vukovar invocation – they are in essence, a band that continues to haunt itself. Old bonds remain, sound wise and lyrically, but with a new impetus of murky, vapoured, gossamer, mono and ether effected solace, tragic romanticism, pleaded and afflatus love, spiritual inspired yearning and allegorical hunger.
Talking to angels, conversing with both the seraph and the fallen, the daemons and spirits of the alchemist’s alternative dimensions, the group transduce the writings of that most visionary seer John Dee, the opium eater Thomas De Quincey, William Blake, and the far more obscure Samuel Hubbard Scudder, who’s 19th century, fairy-like, Frail Children of the Air: Excursions Into The World Of Butterflies publication of philosophical essays lends its title to a song of tubular airy manifestations, distortion, wisped spiralling piques and beautified touching emotional anguish.
Conversations With Angels is epic; the first step in, what I hope, will be a fruitful conversation to divine enlightenment, curiosity, psychological and philosophical intelligent synth-pop.” DV
TRAINING + Ruth Goller ‘threads to knot’ (Squama Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Two connective forces in the experimental, inventive contemporary jazz scenes combine their experiences and art on this sonic and musical hybrid.
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.
Pretty much out on the peripherals of jazz, ascending, flexing, rasping, soothing and breathing iterations and more untethered expressions of freeform music, TRAINING + Ruth Goller fashion organic fusions from a process that promises the wild, tumultuous, wrangled and strange, yet also provides the melodic and dreamy.” DV
Twile (featuring Laura Lehtola) “Hunger Moon” (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Hunger Moon” is an album that combines folk, trip-hop, electronica and magic, and weaves together a tapestry of undiluted majestic swoonincity that has not been heard since the Portishead debut album “Dummy”.
Hunger Moon really does not put a foot out of place as it flows and hooks you into its warm strangeness, cradling you and sweeping you up to a safe place where dreams are free to play and cast shadows over your deepest thought and emotions. Eight tracks to soundtrack you as you come down from your highest high. Truly magnificent.” BBS
V______________________
Various ‘Athos: Echoes From The Holy Mountain’ (FLEE)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Context is vital: history essential. For the publishing house/record label/curatorial/ethnologist platform FLEE has spent a year unravelling, digging and excavating and researching their grand project dedicated to the Athos monastic community.
No one quite puts in the work that FLEE and their collaborators do, with the scope and range of academia wide and deep. Musically, across a double album vinyl format there’s a split between those artists, DJs and producers that have conjured up new peregrinations influenced by the source material, and a clutch of recordings taken in the 1960s and in recent times of the Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir, Father Lazaros of the Grigoriou monastery, Father Germanos of the Vatopedi and Father Antypas – there’s also attributed performances to the Iviron and Simonopetra monasteries too.
As an overall package however, Echoes From The Holy Mountain is a deep survey of a near closed-off world and all the various attached liturgical and historical threads. FLEE reawaken an age-old practice, bringing to life traditions that, although interrupted and near climatically hindered, stretch back a millennium or more. No dusted ethnographical academic study for students but an impressive and important purview of reverential dedication and a lifetime of service, this project offers new perspectives and takes on the afflatus. Yet again the platform’s extensive research has brought together an international cast, with the main motivation being to work with tradition to create something respectful but freshly inviting and inquisitive. The historical sound, seldom witnessed or heard by outsiders, is reinvigorated, as a story is told through sonic exploration.” DV
Various Artists ‘I’m Glad About It: The legacy Of Louisville Gospel 1958 – 1981’ (The Louisville Story Program/Distributed Through Light In The Attic) Chosen by DV/Review
“When Ben Jones, one of the many voices of authority and leading lights of the Louisville gospel legacy, enthuses that the talent at every Black church during the golden years chronicled in this ambitious box set was akin to witnessing and hearing “ten Aretha Franklins at every service”, he’s not boasting. Jones’ contributions, as outlined in this multimedia package’s accompanying 208-page full colour booklet, lays down the much unrepresented story of a thriving, enduring scene. Alongside a host of reverent members of the various Evangelist, Pentecostal, Baptist and Apostolic churches, artists, instigators and custodians, his informative, animated and passionate words draw you into a most incredible cross-community of afflatus bearers of the gospel tradition. For the Louisville scene was and continues to be every bit the equal of its more famous and celebrated rivals across the American South. And that Aretha quote is no exaggeration, as you will hear some of the most incredible voices and choirs to ever make it on to wax, or, in some cases, make it onto the various radio stations and TV shows that promoted this divine expression of worship. 83 songs, hymns and paeans of assurance, great comfort, tribulations and travails from a gospel cannon of pure quality, moving testament and joy.
‘I’m Glad About It: The legacy Of Louisville Gospel 1958 – 1981’ is an unprecedented example of just how to display and facilitate such a multifaceted project of documentation and archive – in the package I received there were links to a brilliant visual timeline and archive of some 1000 songs recorded by 125 different gospel artists. A labour of love and recognition, taking over three years to put together, The Louisville Story Program has not just set out to preserve but also equip the communities they serve with a genuine platform which can be added to overtime. But importantly, they’ve brought in a number of inspiring voices to help build a concise story of legacy and continued influence of the city and gospel music in general – Ben Jones citing Drake and Kayne unable to find a beat that they didn’t hear in church.” DV
Various ‘Congo Funk! – Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshaha/Brazzaville 1969-1982)’ (Analog Africa) Chosen by DV/Review
“A tale of two cities on opposites sides of the same river, the Congo, the latest excursion for the Analog Africa label celebrates and showcases an abundance of dynamite, soul and funk tracks from the two capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
Congo Funk in all its many variations is put under the spotlight, with an outstanding set list of fourteen tracks (whittled down from a container’s worth of singles) that will enthral and educate in equal measures. Essential dance floor fillers await.” DV
Various ‘Ghana Special 2: Electronic Highlife & Afro Sounds In The Diaspora 1980-93’ (Soundway Records) Chosen by DV/Review
“The first decade of the new millennium proved a fruitful period for (re) discovering Africa’s rich dynamic and explosive music heritage, with both (through their various Afro-funk and Afro-psych compilations) Soundway Records and Analog Africa (in particular their influential African Scream Contests) spoiling connoisseurs and those with just a curiosity alike to sounds rarely heard outside the continent. The former’s original five album Ghana Special spread was one such indispensable collection from that time; a perfectly encased box set survey of one of Africa’s most important musical junctions. Now, unbelievably, a full twenty years later Soundway have followed up that “highlife” triumph with a second volume; moving the action on into a new decade. Ghana Special part two is a refreshing map of the diaspora fusions and hybrids that spread across Europe during a time of movement and turmoil from Ghana’s hotbed of influential stars and musicians. In highlighting the stories and journeys of Ghana’s émigrés, and in introducing us to those sounds, movements that remain either forgotten or just not as celebrated, Volume 2 will become as indispensable as the first.” DV
Various ‘Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition’ (FLEE)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Broadening the scope, the guest list of collaborators stretches the imagination; often completely uncoupled from the source material. All together in one bumper package of ethnomusicology, it makes perfect sense, futuristic alternative planes and visions of a forgotten – mostly passed down orally – tradition. This is a document and testament to the hardiness, perseverance and survival of a culture massacred, exiled and incarcerated, the remnants of a culture almost lost in time, but proving to be very much alive and intriguing to our ears. FLEE and their collaborators, aiders have put together a brilliant, thorough piece of musical research that bristles and wafts with a bounty of possibilities.” DV
Various ‘Wagadu Grooves: The Hypnotic Sound Of Camara 1987-2016’ (Hot Mule)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Shedding light on a rarely told story, the latest showcase compilation from the Paris label Hot Mule unfolds the backstory and “hypnotic” sounds of Gaye Mody Camara’s iconic label; a story that encompasses the West African Soninke diaspora and legacy. The entrepreneur turn label honcho and umbrella for those artists both from the mainland French migrant community and from across swathes of what was the atavistic kingdom of the Soninke ethnic groups’ Wagadu, Camara, through various means and links, helped create a whole industry of music production in Paris during the 80s, 90s and new millennium. The sound is always amazing, and the voices commanding, a mix of those inherited Griot roots, the club, pop and caravan trial. Most importantly Wagadu does have that eponymous ‘groove’ of the title: the ‘hypnotic’ bit too.” DV
Violet Nox ‘Hesperia’ (Somehwerecold Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Building new worlds, futuristic landscapes and intergalactic safe havens, and leaving vapour trails of laconic, hypnotizing new age psy-trance mysticism, a message of self-discovery and of resistance in their wake, Violet Nox once more embrace Gaia, Greek and Buddhist etymology and astrology to voyage beyond earthly realms.
Referencing mythological starry nymphs, a sun god’s charioteer, Agamemnon’s granddaughter and scientific phenomenon as they waft, drift and occasionally pump through veils of ambience, trance, dub, EDM and techno, the Boston, Massachusetts trio (although this core foundation is pliable and has expanded its ranks on previous releases) of synthesists and electronic crafters Dez DeCarlo and Andrew Abrahamson, and airy, searching siren vocalist and caller Noell Dorsey, occupy a dreamy ethereal plane that fits somewhere between Vangelis, Lisa Gerrard, Mythos, Kavinsky, Banco de Gaia and ecological revering dance music.” DV
Virgin Vacations ‘Dapple Patterns’
Chosen by DV/Review
“From a multitude of sources, across a number of mediums, the concentrated sonic force that is Virgin Vacations ramp up the queasy quasars and the heavy-set slab wall of no wave-punk-jazz-maths-krautrock sounds on their debut long player. With room to expand horizons the Hong Kong (tough gig in recent years, what with China’s crackdowns on the free press and student activists; installing authoritarian control over the Island) ensemble lay out a both hustled, bustled and more cosmic psychedelic journey, from the prowling to the near filmic and quasi-operatic -from darkened forebode to Shinto temple bell-ringing comedowns that fade out into affinity.” DV
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Tucker Zimmerman ‘I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True’ (Big Potato Records)
Chosen by DV
Whilst living in idyllic seclusion in Belgium during the 1970s, the venerated but underrated idiosyncratic US-born troubadour/singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman left the door ajar to friends (namely Ian A Anderson & Maggie Holland) and the like to spin a collection of unburdened, unpressured homegrown recordings. The results, unsurprisingly magical, halcyon and unassumingly poignantly poetic. The first ever release for ‘I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True’ is as revelatory as much as it is sublime, felt, intimate, boosting a reputation and clamour for an overlooked maestro. DV
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The Perusal #57: Hannah Mohan, Black Diamond, Society Of The Silver Cross, Passepartout Duo & Inoyama Land…
July 3, 2024
A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Photo credit: George Rae Teensma
Hannah Mohan ‘Time Is A Walnut’
(Egghunt Records) 12th July 2024
Geographically settling long enough to pen this solo songbook offering, but anything but settled emotionally, the former And The Kids vocalist-songwriter Hannah Mohan attempts to process the break-up of all break-ups.
After leaving home at the age of sixteen, restless and curious, Mohan spent her formative years on the road, crisscrossing North America, busking and honing a creative craft. On returning home, after five years of travel and travail, Mohan formed And The Kids with a school friend. After a trio of albums between 2014 and 2019, and with the global pandemic’s nefarious effects on the music industry and wellbeing, the band unfortunately came to an end. Throw in the heartache, the confusing cross-signals of a fateful relationship, and you’ve suddenly accumulated a whole sorry mess of emotional pain and a lot of questions that need addressing or analyses.
Luckily Mohan is a highly talented musician and songwriter, able to turn sorrow and reflection into gold. For Time Is A Walnut is a rich album full of familiarity and yet melodically and lyrically idiosyncratic, shaped as it is to Mohan’s particular cadence, timbre and way-with-words.
Less moping and more a full gamut of hurt, weariness, despondency, incriminations and plaint, Mohan travels full circle on her break-up journey: from shock to vented indignation, from losing one self in the moment to escaping from reality. All the feelings of resentment, the pulling apart of a fragile soul, and decoupling sound surprisingly melodious and disarmingly anthemic throughout: even during the bitterest exchanges and grievances.
Hand-in-hand with producer and musician Alex Toth (of Rubblebucket and Tōth fame), working away with little sleep in Mohan’s basement, the resulting thematic songbook is filled with great alt-pop songs; some with a country lent, others suddenly mystified and misty with an air of atmospheric Celtic vibes, or, channeling 80s new wave German synth music – Toth, I assume, almost in DAF mode on the darker-lit, hurting ‘Peace Be The Day’.
Almost breezy in parts, there’s tunes galore as Mohan evokes the Cowboy Junkies, Angel Olsen, Tanya Donelly, Madder Rose, Sophie Janna (especially on the vapour-piped Ireland illusion ‘Runaway’) and Feist. But you can also throw in a touch of dry-ice 80s synth-pop and a touch of Bacharach on the whistle-y saddened beauty that is ‘Upside Down’.
In sympathy and often softly lifting, there’s a fair use of trumpet on the album. Less jazzy – although saying that, there’s vague suggestions of Chet Baker – and more Southern, nee Mexican serenade and atmosphere, that instrument’s suffused and occasional enervated brassy blazes is a perfect fit with Mohan’s candid, sanguine delivery.
A congruous choice of guest, working in a similar mode, songwriter-musician Lady Lamb features on the 60s troubadour echoed, vibrato-trilled sing-a-long anthem ‘Hell’. The details and the unforeseen circumstances, the ‘messy eroticism’ and loss, disconnection from someone else’s life are all lay bare in a melodious beauty.
Hannah Mohan rides the roller coaster of a drawn-out break-up with quirkiness and vulnerability, turning tortuous heartache into one of the best and most rewarding songbooks of the year. Mohan may have let her soul sing out, as she comes to accept an emotional turbulent period of stresses and anxieties and pain. But whether she’s finally pulled through the other side or not is up to you the listener.
Black Diamond ‘Furniture Of The Mind Rearranging’
(We Jazz)
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 smolder and fizzle to a smoky and simmering resonance and metropolis backdrop encroached by wild jungles and fertile growth.
The majority of this moiety evolution is handed over to the quartet ensemble, with Artie and Hunter joined by the softened taut but flexing and always on the move double-bassist Matt Ulery and the constant cymbal splashing and rolling, fills and tight woody rattling drum breaking drummer Neil Hemphill. That set both swells and finds pause to a certain lowness and more weighted pull of the freeform and melodic, the rhythmic.
Saxophones sound willowy as they either entwine, take turns on the climb, exhale drawn-out mizzles or drizzles; all the while the action recalls every formative era from the 1920s onwards, from the blues to the African, the spiritual, bop and the serenaded. All those cats mentioned in the opening paragraph pop up alongside the Pharoah, Ornette, Evan Parker (I’m thinking of the woodwind elements, which both Hunter and Artie switch between throughout), Mingus and on the opener, ‘Carrying The Stick’, Lalo Schfrin of all people.
From concrete to near pastoral dustings, a menagerie of bird-like brass and woodwind sings and stretches, often letting the steam out of those valves with a bristle and rasp. The drum and bass combo keep it all moving forward, developing, with Ulery’s slackened bass even opening a couple of tracks.
In a more stripped-down and even more experimental mode, Side D (in old money vinyl terms) of the album is given over to the duo format of sax and woodwind.
Leaning towards Braxton, John Zorn and Andy Haas in near-non-musical freedom of expression, they probe new, amorphous spaces without clear signage or reference to environments or moods. The saxophone often sounds reedier, more rasping, and is enveloped with the very sound of its brassy metallic resonance and surface makeup. Every exhaled breath is used to conjure up the mysterious, the onset of some unease, but also a pauses for certain moments of reflection.
Perhaps a mizmar played at dusk, an ominous peace or a meditative haze, these experiments, forms of tonal, timberical evocation are difficult to describe or catalogue. Only that they fit in with the freedoms, the expressions and language of the Chicago school of freeform inventiveness and exploration, deconstruction of an instrument.
Black Diamond run with the ‘stick’ or baton passed on by the Chicago hothouse of jazz notables and luminaries, proving themselves to be a quality, dynamic act ready to push forward. Rearranging the cerebral and musicality furniture as never sounded both so classy and explorative.
Damian Dalla Torre ‘I Can Feel My Dreams’
(Squama Recordings) 12th July 2024
Subtle in approach and process, the cross-fertilization of South American and European cultures, prompts and environments on Damian Dalla Torre’s second album, I Can Feel My Dreams, is a tangible synthesis of abstract feels, moods and an exchange of musical ideas.
Nodes, points in a larger dream-realism canvas reference the Leipzig-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer’s footprints across both continents.
Sparked by a residency to teach, write and practice his craft in the Chilean capital of Santiago, Torre absorbed all that city and its surroundings had to offer: the vistas, colours and art. With a certain amorphous guaze that magical landscape of rainforest canopy enveloped menageries, flowing waters, Andean fluted heights and valleys, and exotic lushness is merged effortlessly with complimentary vocal harmonies and assonant arias, dewy and caressed extended dainty picked harp, quivers of guitar, trembles of piano and spells of electronica. The realms of jazz, sparse techno, ambience, voice experiment, nature, futurism, sound art and the new age seamlessly yield and relent.
The haul of notable guests invited to play on the album is staggering, and in no way distracts from the main leitmotifs and direction of drifted, wispy travel. Instead, each guest enhances with a certain gracefulness and calm each musical expedition and piece of mood music. Unsurprisingly given Leipzig’s musical history and legacy (home to an enviable catalogue of classical music giants over the centuries; perhaps one of the biggest most impressive concentrations in that genre’s history of iconic composers and musicians), but also its more modern burgeoning jazz and electronic music scenes, there is a host of musicians and artists from or based in the German city taking part on the album; cue the blossoming ‘genre traversal’ Jan Soutschek, ensemble singer and soprano soloist Viola Blanche, guitarist and composer Bertram Burkert and jazz improviser, pianist and composer Jonas Timm. Add to that the Austrian-Ethiopian harpist Miriam Adefris, the Danish composer and arranger Christian Balvig, pianist Felix Römer and the range and influences probe even further and deeper. Altogether, from the replenishing waters of renewal to the generator and manipulated electronics of modernity, all these contributions prove beneficially harmonious and complete.
This is a biomorphic world in which echoes of Eno, Alice Coltrane, Talk Talk, Oh No Noh, and Lara Alarcon all coalesce and dream. The architect, Torre, manages to keep everything constantly green and lush; showcasing a flair for pulling together a myriad of sources to create something almost familiar by new.
Society Of The Silver Cross ‘Festival Of Invocations’
(8668 Records)
Stepping from the shadows after abstaining from the material world for the last five years, the matrimonial partnership of Joe Reinke and Karyn Gold-Reinke return with a second rebirth, regeneration of Indian, Byzantium, Egyptian and Gothic imbued pathos and bathos.
Harnessing the themes of fate, the eventual and unavoidable specter of death and its harbingers, its demons, and even its angels, the Seattle couple walks the path of hermetic cults, atavistic Indian spiritualism and magik to induce cosmic awakenings and transformations. With all of mortality’s connotations and meanings, death is also seen as a renewable force on this couple’s second album under the occultist Society Of The Silver Cross heading.
But there’s no escaping the atmospheric dread and the curiosity of deathly rituals invoked by the Indian-style drones, harmonium-pumped sustains and concertinaed bellows – part ‘Venus In Furs’ Velvets, part Alan Edgar Poe shipwreck hauntology shanty, and part courtly mysticism. And yet Karyn’s siren-esque duets with boa Joe can lift towards the light at times, escaping the Fortean broadcasting waves, the splashed crashed tumultuous sea-like cymbals and gongs, Book of the Dead mantras and distressed Andy Haas-like geese pecked sax (if it is indeed even a saxophone) hauntings.
But for a majority of the time the couple’s counterbalancing act of apparitional, bewitching and more baritone, from the bowels of the deep and human soul, vocals muster spiritualist visitations, a theatre of sorrow, past incarnations and an unbreakable multi-levelled circle of added magic both heavy and foreboding.
I was picking up spells of Death In June, Nick Cave’s duet with Kyle, Mick Harvey’s time with P.J. and Amanda Acevedo, Backworld, David Lynch, Dead Can Dance, Current 93 and Angels of Light. The folksy Gothic-art-music-shanty-motioned ‘When You Know’ (with my imagination) sees Serge Gainsbourg laying flowers on Jim Morrison’s alter in the Cimeti ére du Père-Lachaise. The mystical finale, ‘Rajasthan’, not only features those synonymous Indian tones but also has an air of the Spanish-Baroque guitar and a touch of The Limiñanas about it. Shrouded in rousing tribal dramatics and ether visions, the couple’s lasting nod to the land in which they spent much time absorbing the cultural-musical spiritualist vibes before making their debut singles and album (Verse 1), is steeped in the mists of time; invoking India’s largest state before eventual unification, and its history of early Vedic and Indus civilizations. “Rajasthan” is a portmanteau of words, but can be translated as the “Land of the kings”; its courtly, royal verbose and stately reputation echoes as the final word on this album of rebirth and the coming to terms with death. Making true on their previous chapter, Joe and Karyn once more follow the call of the silver cross-societal allure. Atmospheres, processions and possession that are more than just songs, you don’t so much liberally catch, or, casually listen to each propound and chant-like forewarning as enter a fully constructed world of elementals and alchemist mystique. These are drones, dirges and more opened-up astral projections that will stay with you days after first hearing them. A Festival Of Invocations is a chthonian play of supernatural, spiritualist and funeral parlor riches; a successful follow-up after a five year hiatus.
Droneroom ‘As Long As The Sun’
(Somewherecold Records) 19th July 2024
Amorphous Western sun-cooked melting mirage panoramas are stoked and drawn from the Droneroom’s long form guitar peregrinations. The sixth (I believe) alt-country drone-cowboy album from Blake Edward Conley’s singular experiment for the Somewherecold label, As Long As The Sun is a filmic soundtrack-like conjuncture of Paris, Texas, Blood Meridian and a myriad of supernatural and alien visions of the ‘big country’.
The Western sounds of the twang, rattle and bends is unmistakable, and the sounds we’ve taken for granted, like the freight train convey that hurtles down the tracks and with it’s velocity and size shakes the passing dinging and ringing rail barrier junction, but Conley’s familiar markers, references make them near hallucinogenic under the sun’s powerful debilitating rays. I can imagine Ry Coder fronting Ash Ra Tempel, or early Popol Vuh relocated to the arid planes of outlier Texas, or a mule-riding Don Quixote tilting at the shadows of cacti.
A contemplation of all life’s spiritual quandaries and fate no less, all elicited from the magnified and amplified reverberations, quivers, strokes, gestures, brushes and more driven rhythmic passages of the guitar. Fuzzed-up with flange and sustain, these descriptive lines, resonated waves and vibrations are like drawn-out echoes of Michael Rother, Gunn-Truscinski, Jason Pierce (in his Spaceman 3 days) and Yonatan Gat. On the searing, razored and heated coil moody ‘Last Train To Soda Spring’ (the small Idaho city which gets its name from the 100s of carbonated water springs that dot the landscape) there’s a build-up of layering and rhythms that breaches the hazy space rock barriers – Hawkwind crosses fully into Motorhead. Whilst the shamanic marooned, railroad vision, ‘East Facing Window’ has a kind of krautrock generator field around it that hums and pulsates, invoking both alien and paranormal activity – I’m thinking a little of Roedelius’s experimentation on Sky Records.
As Long As The Sun beats down upon Conley’s cowboy hatted noodle, its gravitas, life force and heat inspiring serious abstract empirical vistas, atmospheres and the soundtrack to a movie yet to be made.
Luke Elliott ‘Every Somewhere’
(AKP Recordings) 12th July 2024
Composing a more inclusive biosphere and exchange of cultures, influences and sounds, the Amsterdam-based, Leeds born, sound artist Luke Elliott transforms his source material of field recordings (from what could be acts of making in a workshop to tramples through the undergrowth of Moat Farm in Somerset and the windy tubular sea organ of Zadar in Croatia) into a fully working lunar off-world vision.
A new world no less, Every Somewhere’s vague, recognizable, or by happenstance, playful tastes of gamelan and Southeast Asia, early analogue modulations and patterns, tape music experiments and sonic land art (that already mentioned Zadar organ, which was built as a large scale land art instrument to bring some sort of random melodious colour to the Dalmatian coastal town’s monotonous concrete wall scape, rebuilt with haste after the devastations of WWII) are sampled then re-sampled, fed through effects and an apparatus to build a more sympathetic, attentive environment.
At least influenced in part by a fascination with Alfred W. Crosby’s ‘Colombian Exchange’ theory, as outlined in his 1972 propound book, which gave a now fashionable name to the legacy of colonialism and the destructive and loaded exchanges between the Western hemisphere and the then ‘New World’, Elliott’s imaginative world is more nurtured towards a beneficial exchange of cultures.
In a liminal zone between the earthly, otherworldly, near cosmic, dreamy and liquid, the kinetic, algorithmic, arpeggiator and magnetic atoms and transparent notes bobble and squiggle about over atmospheric ambience and to the rounded rhythms of paddled tubular obscured instruments. And then, once the guitar is introduced to tracks like the glassy delicate ‘Objects Of Virtue’, the mood changes towards a bluesy post-rock vibe.
Magical escapes, stargazing from the observatory, solar winds, near operatic cloudscaping and various gleams, glints and globules recall Goo Ages’s Open Zone album, Tomat, Raymond Scott, Edgar Froese and Zemertz.
Elliott’s debut for the astute AKP Recordings label maps tactile environments both intriguing and melodically mindful. It paves the way for new visions of a more equal future.
Passepartout Duo & Inoyama Land ‘Radio Yugawara’
(Tonal Union) 26th July 2024
The freely geographical traversing Passepartout Duo find congruous partners with collaborative foils Inoyama Land – those fine purveyors of Japanese Kankyō Ongaku, or environmental ambient new age music – on their latest balance of the tactile, organic and synthesized.
A free association of cultures and musical processes, despite laying down loose perimeters, the Italian/US duo of Nicoletta Favari and Christopher Salvito combine explorative forces with the Japanese musical partnership of Yasushi Yamashita and Makoto Inoue for a remarkable interaction with their surroundings, a mix of children’s instruments and percussive and wind apparatus.
Favari and Salvito have already appeared on the Monolith Cocktail, with reviews of both the Chinese art platform-backed Vis-à-Vis and Daylighting albums. Those experiments in the timbrical, rhythmic and melodic, imbued by the Meili Mountains, Lijiang and fabled imaging’s of Shangri-La, were created during and in-between the restrictions of the Covid pandemic. A year before news broke of that global crisis the duo travelled to Japan. Connecting with the Inoyama Band, a duo that had transformed the abstract feelings, magnetism, sublime transcendence and peace of the landscape since the 1980s, they were invited in to their host’s shared space sanctum – an auditorium inside Inoue’s family-run kindergarten in Yugawasa that doubles-up on Sundays as a studio.
Set out on tables for all participants, a myriad of playful and more studied instruments and a set of “game rules”. The quartet could only use the mix of electronic and acoustic instruments separately or altogether for ‘revolving duets’, with each taking turns to play through a cycle of ‘four duos’. But then ‘anything’ was permitted in that session, which lasted three hours. In this complete state, that long improvisation and set of prompts has been distilled into eleven more digestible parts. Within the sonic, contextual and languid peaceable realms of the Kankyō Ongaku genre and greater scope of Japanese acoustic-electronic music, there’s an air of Satoshi Ashikawa, Yasuaki Shimizu, Yoshio Ojima and Tomo-Nakaguchi about this album. You could add hints of Slow Attack Ensemble, Eno, the Hidden Notes label and Bagaski to a subtle layering environment that takes in all points of the compass, with chimed bulb-like notes and the ringing, searing and chimed bamboo music of Java, Tibet, Vietnam and the dreamy.
The recognizable sound of soft-mallet patterned and paddled glockenspiel and xylophone merge fluidly with hand bells, higher-pitch whistled recorders, concertinaed wafted melodica and harmonicas, and racks of wind chimes. Whilst atmospheric elements and the use of electronic devices create mysterious vapours, oscillated wisps, knocked rhythms and floppy disc sampled voices.
Gazing at diaphanous beamed and lit cloud formations from a comfortable snug in the landscape, or, submerged below Mexican waters inhabited by the strange aquatic Axolotl salamander, each part of this performance is somehow similar and yet variably different. Between the illusionary, dreamy, sonorous, see-through and swimmingly, two sets of adroit partnerships create organic meta and a sublime near-nothingness of slow musical peacefulness and environmental absorbed transience.
Myles Cochran ‘You Are Here’
(9Ball Records) 26th July 2024
Unhurried and once more placable, the all-round embracing American composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Myles Cochran follows up his 2021 debut album (Unsung) with another carefully spun canvas of subtle emotive pulls, TV and filmic-like soundtrack scores, ruminations and mirages.
Traversing an amorphous palette of Americana, the blues, classical, folk, experimental, Baroque and traditional, Cochran integrates his Kentucky roots with spells in New York City and the UK (where he’s lived for some time) whilst letting his unprompted imagination travel to more exotic climes and cerebral dreamscapes.
Although an adroit player of many instruments, Cochran’s work is mostly led, directed, informed and suffused by both the acoustic and electric guitar. Understated but keen and expressive, his choice of guitar is once again left to stir up visions of a celluloid panoramic and more mystifying melting Western America, the Appalachians, Ozarks and home. Only this time around he’s also invited in the accomplished cellist Michelle Packman and bassist Reggie Jones to add a transported subtle semblance of chamber music, period drama and jazz. Jones, playing a stand-up (or upright) bass throughout, emphasizes rhythm, a pace and sense of travel – especially so on the shaky rhythmic travelogue ‘Making Something Out Of Nothing’, which, by its title, indicates a conjuring of a composition, performance out of just playing or fiddling around, but evokes (for me) the imagined title sequences of some wintery Northern American drama, out on the road with the harsh, snowy landscape passing by the window of our protagonist’s truck. Meanwhile, the following countrified-meets-the-pastoral-and-renaissance crafted ‘Signs And Symbols’ has an air of Fran & Flora about it with the sounds of a breathy and fiddle-like cello.
Widening the vistas, the quiet inner battles of turmoil and conflict, sympathetic bowing and pining cello enhances the mood and subtle expressions of Cochran’s compositional style, which both ebbs and flows between the echoes of Chuck Johnson, Ry Cooder, Bill Frisell, John Fahey, Martin Renbourn and Jeff Bird.
There’s a pick up in the pace with dusty brushed drums, but for the most part it’s a quivery horizon gaze of sophisticated slow to mid-tempo observations and introspection. None more so then on the mature vocalized jazzy-bluesy and dusty ‘The Deepest Sea’, which sounds like Hugo Race or Chris Eckman in questioning Leonard Cohen mode backed by Chris Rea.
A culmination of travels, thoughts, hopes and fears, You Are Here further expands Cochran’s musicianship and influence. Those Americana roots are being pushed further into new pastures, helped by his cellist and bassist foils and freshly attuned ear. Eroded, waned, giving and dreamily melting in the heat, his guitar parts overlap and transmute into piano, strings and the ambient. Each track is like a short score, the qualities of which offer sensibilities and a way of following or telling a story, a moment in time or scene. In all: a very sensitive work of maturity and unrushed reflection.
___/+ THESE RECOMMENDATIONS IN BRIEF
Any regular readers will know that I pride myself in writing more in depth purview-style reviews with a wider context. This means I naturally take more time and effort. Unfortunately this also means that I can only ever scratch the surface of the 4000+ releases both the blog and I get sent each month. As a compromise of sorts, I’ve chosen to now include a really briefly written roundup of releases, all of which really do deserve far more space and context. But these are recommendations, a little extra to check out of you are in the mood or inclined to discover more.
Pocket Dimension ‘S-T’
(Cruel Nature Records)
Exploratory voyages into the kosmische and sci-fi, straight from the illustrated pages of Stewart Cowley’s Spacecraft 2000 – 2100 AD, the Lanarkshire-based artist Charlie Butler doesn’t so much launch as fire the languid thrusters into the mesmerizing, enticing and dream like voids of a soundtracked cosmos. On many levels, through four continuous stages, the drifted and wonder of space is balanced with fizzled raspy electronica and eventual IDM, siren wailing bends, shoots, and a rotating centrifugal force that seems to envelope the whole trip in both mystery and the presence of unknown forces hovering in the galactic ether.
Various ‘TRÁNSITOS SÓNICOS – Música electrónica y para cinta de compositores peruanos (1964-1984)’ (Buh Records)
Filling in the blanks in the story of South America’s experimental and avant-garde scenes, Buh Records throws the spotlight on Peru and a host of experimental boffins working to cross indigenous sounds with the new and yet to be discovered.
Off-world, futuristic, UFOs, tape manipulation, the shrills of something magnetic, steely industrial tools, reel to reel melting, mind bending and rattling old atavistic bones, assonant female voices, and shamen augers, this compilation includes examples from the likes of Arturo Ruiz del Pozo, Luis David Aguilar, and Corina Bartra; a wealth of cult composers struggling to explore new sonic boundaries in a country devoid of the apparatus, foresight and laboratory conditions. And so most of the atmospheric – sometimes heading towards chilling alien – and transmogrified Peruvian environmental peregrinations were recorded in private studios. The story and scope needs way more room than this piffy, glib little piece. Suffice to say, I highly recommend it.
Rehman Memmedli ‘Azerbaijan Guitara Vol. 2’
(Bongo Joe)
The history and travails of the fecund oil rich country of Azerbaijan are atavistic. This is a nation that has striven to gain independence from a string of empires: both Tsarist and Soviet Russia, Iran, Albania, and much further back, the great Mongol Khan Timur. Desired not only for its abundance in fossil fuels but for its geographical corridor to its fellow Transcaucasia neighbours of Georgia and Armenia in the west, to the south, Iran, in the north, Russia, and to the west, the vast inland lake, the Caspian Sea. And although at various times at war with its direct neighbour Armenia (recent flare ups have led to a startup in violence, and accusations of ethnic removal), the country’s close proximity to a mix of cross-cultural and geographical influences has led to an absorption of all kinds of musical styles.
Bongo Joe‘s second volume of ‘guitara’ music showcases is fronted by another Azerbaijan legend, Rehman Memmedli (the first volume was handed over to the equally iconic Rüstəm Quliyev), who first learnt the accordion and harmonica before picking up a relative’s guitar – but also the region’s synonymous traditional tar instrument too (an ornate curvy looking waisted long-necked lute). Suitably eclectic in styles, from belly dancing Turkey and Arabia to shimmy Bessarabia and local wedding music, Memmedli scores and scorches up and down the fretboard at speed. Spindling, bending, skirting and wobbling, and even sounding at times like an erratic stylophone, vistas and ruminating sonnets are conjured up from a nibble-fingered maverick: Persia, the Caucasus, and beyond are summoned forth from electrified scuzz and fuzz and drama.
Cumsleg Borenail ‘Fragile And Adaptive’
Video – Taken from the new album Time Is A pˈætɚn Of Shifting d͡ʒiˈɑːmətɹiz
Proving incredibly impossible to pin down, whilst impossible to fully keep a track of, such is the prolific output, the artist formerly known as Cumsleg Borenail has released a host of albums, EPs over just the last few months alone.
The latest, and discombobulating entitled, Time Is A pˈætɚn Of Shifting d͡ʒiˈɑːmətɹiz,will officially go live a week or so after this column. As a teaser, Borenail has fucked around with AI to produce this strange, biomorphic, tumorous metamorphous of metallic clay dancers, bound together in some super fucked up hallucinatory creepy body assimilation style video. I will admit that I fucking hate AI – ‘artificially inflated’ as someone has already quipped – so it is lost on me – for those who want the tech, ‘all models’ were ‘created in blender, then whapped into ADOBE to AI generate backgrounds and randomly alter model edges.’ But musically we are talking about whippy body music that channels Detroit mechanic funk techno and the sound of grooving over broken glass. Derrick May, Suburban Knight, Ron Trent in the mechanics of the surreal and industrial. As artificial as it all is, there’s a certain soul in this machine. I look forward to hearing the rest of the album later in the month.
Neon Kittens ‘In The Year Of The Dragon (You Were A Snake)’
(Metal Postcard Records)
System of downer sinewy post-punk, like the Pop Group falling on top of PiL, the latest video output from the ridiculously prolific Neon Kittens is another semi-metal-guitar-string buzz and grind of gnashing venom and risk. The vocals sound like a toss off and up of honey trap glossed fake AI and taking no crap no wave female provocateur in the mode of Michi Hirota, unimpressed by the snake-like actions of a former lover; the action, like a lost grated down stroke of Fripp(ery) from the Scary Monsters And Super Creeps LP.
Keep an eye out next week for Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s review of the band’s EP.
Dyr Faser ‘Crime Fever’
(Self-release)
Boston, Massachusetts duo of Eric Boomhower and Amelia May previously skirted the krautrock dreaminess of Amon Duul II on their hermetic, drowsy Karmic Revenge. They seem to change their sound, if only subtly, on each new album, and Crime Fever’s haunted, scuzzed playfulness leans more towards Lou Reed this time around – but only if he’d jammed with Dinosaur Jnr. Jefferson Airplane and Ty Segall.
Still, they maintain a buzzy, fuzzy, and even Byrds-like loose dusting of the psychedelic and a backbeat throughout, with those ether-giddy vocals tones of May invoking Blonde Redhead, Beach House, and of course a little of a slacker rock, shoegaze vision of Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz.
Needs far more attention than I have the capacity to manage but have a read of my piece on their KR album from a while back to get enthused.
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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