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 DIGEST FOR SEPTEMBER 2024: New Music/The Social Playlist/And Archives
September 23, 2024
THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.
____/THE NEW
Holy Matter ‘Beauty Looking Back’
ALBUM 4th October 2024
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.
Using a poetic license inspired by Leonard Cohen (that new moniker lifted straight from the pages of Beautiful Losers, and one inspiring mantra from that same book, “I change; I am the same”, can be read as this album’s slogan) and the Ukiyo-e style artworks of Hishikawa Moronobu as an illustrated mirrored metaphor, Beauty Looking Back explores the personal, environmental and seasoned changes in Kaiser’s life. Namely her move to L.A. from St. Louis, and the relationships either left behind or maintained through the framing of memorable weather and atmospheres.
On the surface a most magical, wisped and tubular bells chiming yearning, and at times full of moving regret and the evocations of the Laurel Canyon and Riot On Sunset Strip eras, there’s a real depth to the lyrics, musicianship and reference points. Moronobu’s iconic Beauty Looking Back painting for instance, features sartorial readings of status and the changing of fashions and traditions in Edo period Japan; the muse, subject of this work embellished in the striking red kimono decorated with chrysanthemums and cherry blossoms of the wealthy and yet to be married. To keep a relative peace during an epoch of conservative but prosperous Shogunate rule, an age of pleasure was ushered in with the building of designated walled areas inside Japan’s cities, put aside for the growth of tea houses, brothels and Kubuki theatre. Artists such as Moronobu were on hand to paint and depict the new “free-flowing nature of urban life”.
Seeking both comfort and reassurance from a nostalgic haze however, Kaiser, together with her former bandmate foil Andy Kahn on keys, guitar and bass, her partner Matt Popieluch (of Big Search note) on classical, near Iberian and South American-flavoured guitar, 12-string and violin, Kate Bellinger on backing vocals, and producer David Glasebrook, who also brings in drummer Raphi Gottesman and upright bassist Josh Housh, convey a mirage shimmer and fey delicate trace of Judee Sill, Sibylle Baier, Jewel, Marina Allen and The Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The vampiric Laurel Canyon ‘Eve’s Hollywood’, apart from its magik and scene-setting lyrics, has a touch of a laconic and knowing Nancy Sinatra about it.
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.
Scarla O’ Horror ‘Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses’
ALBUM (Not Applicable)
We could be here all day if I listed the various musical achievements, the actions and the cross-fertilisations and creative fraternizing of this London-based collaboration of jazz (in all its many guises) players and explorers. Within the Scarla O’ Horror’s sphere of influence, in-demand tenor saxophonist, bass and clarinettist James Allsopp has worked with such notable pioneers and shakers as The Last Poets, David Axlerod, Mulatu Astake, Kit Downes, and picked up awards for innovation and the best album from the BBC over the course of a twenty-year thus career. His foils in this quartet include the no less talented and renowned producer, performer and, on this album, trumpet player Alex Bonney, who you may recognize from such groups as Leverton Fox, Brass Mask, lightbox and both Olie Brice’s Quintet and Octet; the multiple award-winning prodigy drummer Tim Giles, who’s credits include collaborations with Allsopp, Riaan Vosloo and Ben Lamdin; and the electronic trick noise maker, sound artist, software developer and composer Sam Britton, otherwise known as Isambard Khroustaliov – Monolith Cocktail readers will definitely recognise this name, as San has appeared under that non de plume a number of times on the site over the years.
An enviable dynamic grouping of talent that’s ready to push the boundaries, react and counteract to the environment, situation and conditions of the studio setup, the quartet pool their resources and experience into another experimental free form and avant-garde extemporization. Dissection, taxidermy, semi-conductors…what’s that all about? Well, sound wise those prompts unleash a supernatural, data and robotic calculus off-world soundtrack of tremulant, tooted, straining brass, rolling and scrabbling drums, near avant-garde classical clarinet strains and synthesized mirages, illusions and gleaming, glinting and searing alien technology. It all begins with the lead-in, introductory ‘Racoon With A Wound’, which reimagines some kind of mysterious, near extraterrestrial fusion of Esa Helasvuo, cult Italian horror soundtracks, Walter Smetek, Don Cherry and Kinkajous.
We then hit the main event, with two uninterrupted improvisations of far out Fortean radar, and ghost freighter free jazz. The first, ‘The Rats Of Gilet Square’ is inspired by the group’s observation one night of rats having a whale of a time scurrying around and “plundering” the rubbish bins outside the Vortex Jazz Club. Sound wise, you can pick up elements of Sun Ra, Kaleidoscope Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, BAG, Sam Newsome, Bendik Giske and Marja Ahti. The second long form piece, ‘Ermine Chowder’, reminded me of Chet Baker wandering a futuristic space version of the Mary Celeste. The atmosphere is sifting almost, with peaks and sci-fi, György Ligeti, Khroustaliov’s In The Gloaming album collaboration with Lothar Ohlmeier and Rudi Fischerlehner, Lynch, Eric Dolphy and Daniel Carter’s collab with Jim Clouse.
Untethered responses to a method, of a kind, and process, Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses opens up possibilities, spaces and expands horizons further. Concentrated, yet free, exploratory jazz at its finest, the quartet chalk up another illusionary and paranormal, sci-fi and near ominous performance.
Banco de Gaia ‘Trauma’
ALBUM (Disco Gecko)
Has it really been eight years since Toby Marks last made a record under his trance global alter ego Banco de Gaia moniker. Apparently so, as the latest digital and compostable bio-wrapped coloured vinyl LP Trauma follows on from his 2016 set of peregrinations The 9th Of Nine Hearts. And from that title, and period of travails, there is a lot to unpack: climate change, Brexit and an ungovernable land, war, a pandemic, economic disparity, divisiveness on a scale not seen before, the advent of AI….the list goes on and on and on.
For those unfamiliar with Marks Banco de Gaia project and label, next year marks the thirtieth anniversary of his highly influential trance and techno marker Last Train To Lhasa. On the cusp of Britpop, hung-over from grunge, guitars were about to once again dominate whilst house and techno music in all its many guises had reached superclub status; the underground movements fractured and broken up into a myriad of smaller tribes. Ambient and trance, usually the preserve of after hours clubbing or allocated space in the “chill out” zones had already blossomed into its own industry. That unfairly and often fatuous “chill out” idiom used to sell everything from nirvana relaxation and transience to any ‘new age” missive. Never new, until progress and technology made it easier and offered more options, the core ambient ingredient had already been in existence for decades. And despite what you may have read, Eno may have given it a name, but he certainly didn’t invent it. In this evolving stage of dance music, Marks went to town, sitting on a fluffy cloud, hovering between trance and techno.
Last Train To Lhasa’s suffused panoramic station-to-station soundtrack was different. Sharing some of the peaceable beautiful nephology of The Orb and Air Liquid but with the satellite guided twinkle and kinetic rhythms of Orbital, the album sounded every bit as organic as it did electronic. And despite the heavy Tibetan reference, the album and sound was global, taking in samples, sounds from Africa, the Middle East and Orient.
Expanding that unique universe, Marks has built up a discography of eclectic experiments over the decades. And now, in 2024, he’s decided to unload his concerns, worries about the state of the world across eight tracks (the digital versions include two extra tracks, the trauma channelling and pained Natacha Atlas-like, dub-ricochet shot ‘Endure’ andthe Philip K. Dick meets Adamski and Coldcut-up exotic whomp and whooped ‘Electric Sheep’) of varying moods, timings and influences. On an album of, as Marks himself points out, ‘juxtapositions’ the opening serene spacy ‘Mir’ plays of both the Russian translation of that title, “peace”, and the name of that nation’s orbiting space station. Looking down on Earth before re-entering the atmosphere, the Floydian saxophone space bird plaints and enormity-emotional stirrings of guest Matthew Jenkins serenade a prog-ambient yearn. Sparked by a bee sting – the poor crash-landed bee on the album’s cover I’m assuming -, ‘A Bee Song’ features said hive humming buzzes and sense of earthly nature. The first signs of the Banco global samples appear alongside the insect accompaniment, with a recording of a traditional hand and wood clapping song/dance from Namibia. When such ethnic strands meet with electronica and trance, the new age and breaks, it sounds like Real World Records fusing with Gary Numan, System 7, Saafi Brothers and Children of the Bong.
The read-out Cymraeg poem of ‘Draig Ddu’ is a vehicle for Welsh nationalism but is also used here as a process for grieving and loss. An air of mystery wraps itself around this ratcheted-up 90s techno-trance plaint. ‘War is self-explanatory. The frustrations, the breakdown in international dialogue and onset of violence, are transduced into a heavier slice of techno and EDM, with missiles and projectiles and various questioning and resigned spoken samples laid over a production that’s part The Prodigy, part The Orb and part Ammar 808.
Borders, or maverick circumnavigations of them and government control, are the feature of the next track, ‘My Little Country’. To a dance like mix, you can hear the voice of the late radio ham Roy Bates being interviewed on his self-declared Sealand principality and famous former sea fort turn pirate radio station, Roughs Tower; a convoluted story of evading the censorship and draconian broadcasting rules of the 1960s in Britain that needs far more room and space to regale in full here – but look it up.
From the Irish for “my god”, Marks looks at the near religious awe of space exploration, the universe and all that, on the talking head satellite orbiting, Massive Attack and Lisa Gerrard-like ‘Mo Dhia’. But by the “dying light”, the insect chatter has returned, and a sense of universal worth and levity is invoked with a cosmic uplift and bathing light beams. Through it all, Marks finds himself transcending the traumatic breakdowns of communication and umpteen different disasters that threaten to tip civilisation over the edge into total disaster, finding solace and escape routes, ideals and joy despite it all to a soundtrack of trance, EDM, techno, new age, trip-hop, breakbeats and vapour synth conjured moods.
Unicorn Ship Explosion ‘There’s A Rhinoceros In The Mega Church’
ALBUM (Sound Record) 4th October 2024
Refreshingly self-deprecating in their own skills as musicians, despite their listed achievements (of a sort) and obvious knowledge and experiences with juggling around with a multitude of styles and influences, the Unicorn Ship Explosion duo of Rob (who apparently did attend jazz school at least, whatever that is, and is “near the final chapter of piano lessons”) and Sash (a “great guy” we’re assured, but “average musician”, who gets by on tinkering around with modular synths whilst making the odd sound design pitch for designer brands) unleash their debut album of cross-pollinated sounds upon the general public.
Where to begin on an album that seems to pack a lot in, fusing countless genres into a discombobulating and atmospheric playful hybrid that AI would find beyond its capacity to emulate. Just the opening account of ‘All Things Everywhere’, which gives us a clue to this method, traipses over borders, timelines and inspirations to sound at any one time like a limbering Tony Allen, Ethio-jazz, Melt Yourself Down, Embryo and pylon buzzed electricity.
By track two we’ve already shifted the pitch by being introduced to the drawled, questioning and confrontational performative voice of sometime collaborator Agnieszka Szczotka – a Polish cross between Gina X, Saâda Bonaire’s Claudia Hossfeld and Little Annie -, who in lingering and almost dismissive style inhabits the nighttime and dances with identities on the celestial edges primal space bound ‘Agi Took The Choo Choo Train’. Szczotka, a former Royal Academy student of conceptual art, is used sparingly, and only appears again with the Freudian mothering sexual analogy of “cum” and spit loaded poetics ‘Bloody Bastard (Like Mother)’ – there’s many connotations to unload from that one.
The influences, the combinations expand further than that though, with hints of Library music, sci-fi, dark jazz, fusion jazz, percussive passages that sound like the missing link between Tibet and Valentina Magaletti, Battles, Holy Fuck, Jan Hammer, Portico Quartet, International Pony, floppy disk experimenting Sakamoto (listen to ‘Yeah But’ and get back to me if I’m wrong) and Rave At Your Fictional Borders. It’s a mad roll and round kit demonstration of drums and electronic apparatus in full breakbeat, electro, funky, otherworldly and metal pots and pan rattled splash mode. The album bends between playful fuckery and reconfiguration, free of artifice and dullness. Put it this way, they don’t take themselves too seriously: even if there are obvious loaded references, a pun here and there that suggests unease, protestation and that all is not well in the state of the world. Enjoyably familiar at every turn, the duo and their foil partner in this escapade fuse various mood music and energetic performances together to make anew.
ShitNoise ‘I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend’
ALBUM (Cruel Nature Records)
Shit noise. Shit house. Shit shitty world. Shit outcomes for one and all. Yes, as rats fester on our decline and the parasitic spectres of autocracy, divisive ideologies and malware bleed into our craniums, you can always rely on someone or some group, in this case a duo, to channel such bleak outcomes into a riling torment of mania, hysterical, resigned and frothing near daemonic expression. And ShitNoise dine out on a veritable feast of outrageous indignation, piss poor behaviours, and the problems that grind many of us down each day. But some rats eat out better than others and being down and out in Monte-Carlo is better than most places. Hailing from that Rivera paradise, the duo’s Aleksejs Macions (on vocals and guitar) and Paul Albouy (on drums) can see, experience a near unparalleled division between the casino, the F1 jet set and those eking out a living from the morsels drip fed from those bulging crypto, old money, asset rich digital wallets. There are worse places to be for sure, but a killer to witness all that luxury during an age of such misery and despair.
This brings us to the duo’s latest and third album thus far, I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend, which is framed as a more polished and mature departure from their more noise-crushing signature. I can hear that. But as someone who is very new to the duo, it still sounds intensely dissonant, grinding and full of barraging, barrelling and head-kicked-in drum bashing. However, it does have melody, and it does have some tunes too. I also believe there are points in which you can even dance to it. They’ve widened their influences, and brought in a little more shade and light, changed the tempos and had a go at knocking the shit out of and repurposing a haul of bands from the punk, metal, alt rock, no wave, noise, grunge, doom and industrial scenes. Although, ‘Hashish (The Yelling Song)’ features UFO oscillating take-offs and Itchy-O ritual magik. It’s like Mudhoney brawling with the Sea Hags one minute, Nitzer Ebb in a knife fight with Ministry and Lightning Bolt the next. And I do believe they are having a lot of fun doing it: despite the crushing blows, dread and yelling!
It gets less noisy as the album progresses; the trajectory between the opening cranium screams and angle grinding industrial punk scrawl of ‘Ho-Ho! (No More)’ and the closing alt-rock late night bar room knockabout chorus affinity of ‘The Ballroom Brawl’ is congruous but worlds apart. The former, sounds like the Revolting Cocks, Spanish underground tape culture of the 80s and CUNTROACHES in some unholy union, whilst the latter, is a more lolling drinking game between Swans and The Heartbreakers, with David Bowie’s Hansa saxophone serenading and coiling round the bar tab. The vocals meanwhile have a range that takes in the Occult Character, the indescribable, the resigned, the sulky and menacing.
Playing hard and loose with the noise, the duo have moulded frustration and protestation into a hacked-off thrashing, barracking and distorting maelstrom of various funnelled music channels and organised chaos.
Leisure FM ‘Illuminated Manuscript’
Single
Like some Gothic fairytale from Eastern Europe, the Szymanek twins materialized a while back in Southeast London, via time spent in the lyrical Wales of Dylan Thomas. From the English capital’s warehouse scene of recent years and a monthly RTM Radio spot, Milena and Weronika progressed to conjuringuphallucinatory imagery, dejection andfate under their later ego, Lesuire FM. Receiving a favourable review by me, their fables EP set an atmosphere of Eastern European morose, magic, demons and cathartic relief.
Loaded with the Catholic imagery and theatre of their Polish homeland, the twins of woozy struggles of the heart turn their chthonian and weary poetic gaze on the fatalistic Greek myth of Icarus with a new single, ‘Illuminated Manuscript’. Flying too close to the sun, his wings clipped and burned and crashing to his death, the tragic parable of that sorry tale and all its connotations are whittled down into a modern resigned plaint that balances the ecstasy of freedom and escape with the agony of falling out of the sky to one’s death, and the devastating consequences of not heeding instruction, advice in the pursuit of big rewards and high risk: in Icarus’s case, ignoring the advice of his sagacious dad Daedalus. This sorry tale plays out to a misty veil of chugging and flange-like Banshees guitar, trip-hop drums and swirled Tom Arnold thriller-like strings, sounding at times like Lomi MC singing over Delerium, Switchblade Symphony, the Tara Clerkin Trio, SU and Propaganda. But in short, thematically, poetically and fatalistically, imagine a Hellenic Lyudmila Petrushevskaya conspiring with Dylan Thomas.
The B-side (in old money) is a guest remix version of the title-track from the twin’s 2023 EP fables. The chosen candidate Kourosh Oliver Floyd Adhemy casts a phantasmagoria spell over the original, adding his very own misty filters, near demonic voice effects, vapours, tabla-like tripsy beats and bulb shaped notes. Together, both tracks atmospherically waft around in Gothic trip-hop revelation, caught between worlds.
Elea Calvet ‘Trigger (Acoustic)’
SINGLE (Mahogany Records)
After artfully captivating listeners with the sighed adroit wistfulness of ‘Sinuous Ways’ earlier this year, the burgeoning enchantress Elea Calvet now breathes an almost knowing southern gothic air of doomed bleak mystery and trauma into the subtly dramatic ‘Trigger’.
Triggering a sublime duality of the diaphanous and noirish, of malady and allurement, of the pained and unbound, Calvet’s vulnerability is matched by her strength in conveying abstract feelings of the bittersweet and identity.
Entirely self-produced over the course of one inspiring weekend at her “overcrowded home studio”, ‘Trigger’ can be imagined as a misty and near supernatural country cinematic hunger of Anna Calvi, PJ Harvey and Amanda Acevado.
We’ve been assured that another single is on its way next month, but in the meantime take in the magical torment and achingly writhed quality of Calvet’s growing songbook.
____/THE SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOLUME 90
The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years, and both selected cuts from those artists, luminaries we’ve lost and those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for over a decade or more, Volume 90 is as eclectic and generational spanning as ever. Look upon it as the perfect radio show, devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
This month’s choice tracks include a bundle of anniversary albums from John Lennon (Walls And Bridges ’74), David Bowie (Tonight ’84), R.E.M. (Monster ’94), Cluster (Zuckerzeit ’74) and Gudrun Gut and Joachim Irmler (500m 2014). I’ve gone for something a little different with the first of those two selections; choosing to kick off the playlist with the TV Personalities rambunctious gnarly version of Lennon’s ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’, and Icehouse’s sympathetic take on Bowie’s ‘Loving The Alien’. I’ve also chosen a live cut of one of my favourite tracks from R.E.M.’s Monster, ‘Strange Currencies’.
There’s a small selection too of newish tracks – those that have been released in the last couple of months that I either missed or didn’t get room to place in the Monthly Playlist selections. In that camp there’s Jay Cue, Conjunto Media Luna, Dr. Walker, Reymour and Vox.
In between those selections I’ve scattered a smattering of music from Bad Dream Fancy Dress, Son Of Noise, Ms. Melodie, Baseball Furies, Tal Rose, Antonino Riccardo Luciani and others. There’s also a cap doffed in respect to the late Herbie Flowers, who passed on earlier this month, with the inclusion of Sunforest’s ‘Where Are You’, just one of many such album session Flowers played on over the years.
tRaCkLiSt
Television Personalities ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’
Flora Purim ‘Stories To Tell’
Cossa Nostra ‘Nuestra Cosa’
Poobah ‘Watch Me’
Reale Accademia di Musica ‘Macumba Hotel’
Azar Lawrence ‘Novo Ano’
Conjunto Media Luna ‘Doombia del Agotamiento’
Dogbowl ‘Love Bomb’
Nicolas Greenwood ‘Hope And Ambitions’
Reymour ‘Sleepy time’
Bad Dream Fancy Dress ‘Lemon Tarts’
Icehouse ‘Loving The Alien’
Jay Cue ‘Hyperbolic Time Chamber’
Dr Walker ‘Was ist Dad Rap?’
Son Of Noise ‘Down With Son Of Noise’
Ms. Melodie ‘Remember When…?’
This Kind Of Punishment ‘Some More Than Others’
Baseball Furies ‘Ain’t Comin’ Home’
Bass Drum of Death ‘Left For Dead’
Tal Ross ‘Green and Yellow Daughter’
R.E.M. ‘Strange Currencies (Live at the BBC)’
Lee Baggett ‘All Star Day’
Appaloosa ‘Tulu Rogers’
Sunforest ‘Where Are You’
Antonino Riccardo Luciani ‘Eclisse lunare’
General Strike ‘Next Day’
Cluster ‘Rotor’
Michael Garrison ‘Theme to Onday’
Vox ‘Metaphysical Back Alley’
Gut und Irmler ‘Chlor’
____/ARCHIVES
Albums decades apart, both released originally during this month, there’s another chance to read my review of Bowie’s Tonight LP from 1984, and Gudrun Gut and Joachim Irmler’s dizzying altitude 500m collaboration of 2014.
Tonight (EMI)
‘Keeping his hand in’ so to speak, Bowie kept up the pop-lit pretence with Tonight. Arriving straight off the back of his Serious Moonlight world tour, and with the very same backing group – including the Borneo horns troupe – the follow-up to his massively successful Let’s Dance showcase was a far patchier affair.
A filled-out, skiing obsessed, pastel shaded crooner, long since divorced from his moiety Angie, and now in custody of their child Zowie, he was less concerned with previous concepts and play acting and more interested in growing pains and heart-strung romantic indulgence.
Of course, every time ‘Davey Jones’ sported new garbs and ventured out on the road he was always acting a part. But the burgeoning film career, which began with The Man Who Fell To Earth through to his stage roles in Baal and The Elephant Man on Broadway, allowed a new avenue of total immersion for Bowie. Channelled then via celluloid, the previous year alone saw him star as a forlorn ageing vampire in The Hunger, and as the English prisoner-of-war ‘Strafer Jack’ Celliers in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence: that exuberant theatrical spirit was missing for the most part from his music.
However, Bowie did get to indulge himself on the ‘Blue Jean’ (perhaps Tonight’s saviour from total disaster). Well, the video/mini-movie at least, directed by Julian Temple, and stretched out to twenty-minutes, featured the singer adorned with a makeshift turban and piled-on make-up.
A new production, the largely untested Derek Bramble, and Hugh Padgham tried to mix things up, but instead lost their way as Bowie made a pig’s ear of things. The fact that his knock-about ‘comrade-in-arms’ Iggy Pop pitched in is almost irrelevant, as all the edge is erased by a fuzzy saccharine mush. Using a maudlin calypso and faux reggae backing he teamed up for countless misfires; duetting with Tina Turner on the dawdling title track (originally sung by Pop on his second solo LP, Lust For Life): ruining all his erstwhile partner’s contributions. “God Only Knows” what he was thinking by covering Brian Wilson’s (lyrics by Tony Asher) beatific masterpiece, and you also must question the addition of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s gold standard, ‘I Keep Forgettin’: thrown in as a so-called return to rock’n’roll? Hardly!
Luckily ‘Saving The Alien’ was on hand to at least stop the spread of rot. ‘All the gear and no idea’, Tonight paved the way for Labyrinth, Bowie’s forked tongue and sardonic protestations all but muted so that his crossover, inter-generational appeal could now reach even the youngest sections of society.
Gudrun Gut and Joachim Irmler ‘500m’
(bureau b) Released 8th September 2014
Doyens, and for that matter mavericks, of the more cerebral and avant-garde boarders of the German music scene, otherworldly evocative organ grinder Hans-Joachim Irmler and his visual artist musical polymath siren, Gudrun Gut, join forces for a mesmerizing electronic trip.
As a founding member of the mighty irritant, heavy mentalists Faust in the 70s, Irmler’s keyboard hovered ominously between the alien and sublime. Continuing to bear the name – existing in a disconnected alter-dimensional timeline with an alternative Faust that features fellow founder members, Jean-Hearve Péron and Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier – Irmler founded an eponymous named studio, used by a who’s who of the German and beyond experimental electronica and classical scenes: from Cluster to the Modern String Quartet. Whilst the man himself has collaborated both wide and far, recently releasing the Flut LP with Can’s drum titan, Jaki Liebezeit on his own label, Klangbad – set up 15-years ago to originally release continuing Faust projects, but since expanded into a full-on label and festival, duty bound in ‘nurturing’ ‘genre bending’ music.
Gudrun, no less active, moved to Berlin in the mid 70s. An early member of the industrial strength Einstürzende Neubauten, Gudrun would go on to appear in and help form a number post-punk and electronic bands, including Mania D, Malaria!, Matador and also bring out a solo debut effort, I Put A Record On, in 2007. She is also head honcho at the labels Monika Enterprise and Moabit Musik.
Together, both artists create a collection of transient progressive techno moods. Developed in two stages, the congruous collaboration first improvised at Irmler’s lightheaded inducing Scheer, Baden-Württemberg located Faust studio – the name of the album alluding to the giddy effecting altitude of the studio, 500 meters above sea level, which gave Gudrun a constant sense of dizziness – before Gudrun refined and added her own techy, scuttling and nuanced drum loops, back in her own space. These recordings would then once again make their way back to Irmler for further exploration and tweaking.
Billed as a merger between Irmler’s ‘meandering, wistfully psychedelic organ sound’ and Gudrun’s ‘reverb-laden, whispering, breathy voice’, the results of this union obscure and abstract both. Loaded instead with vapourous and metallic waltzing veils, interchangeable programmed drum patterns (mostly caustically trebly but cut with pinpoint accuracy and among some of the most sophisticated I’ve heard in ages) and esoteric percussion.
Succinctly entitled, each track is both simultaneously a concomitant lead into the next and an individual self-contained, evocative story of its own. Not that those titles give much away, but on occasion they allude to a rectification of some vague theme. For example, ‘Traum’, translated as ‘dream’, has a magical Freudian hallucinatory quality, and festive wintery charm broken up by a freakish raspy and squelching noise, underfoot.
‘Noah’ on the other hand may or may not bare any relationship to the Biblical flood survivor and great God hope for the future, being more of a ritualistic gaze at shooting stars and passing satellites. However, Irmler adds some extemporized gabbling speech, delivered by a remote transmission affected, introverted megaphone – you can even hear Gudrun off mic, laughing or encouraging Irmler, from the sidelines.
‘Früh’ translates as ‘early’, but early for what exactly we can’t quite tell, the rotor-bladed intro cylindrically bringing in a chain-reaction of busily interchanging particles and tight delay mechanics, all heading down a highway marked ‘the future’.
Always moving somewhere, either skywards from a subterranean vault or as with ‘Auf Und Ab’, ‘to and fro’ between the kinetic beats of Detroit techno, circa Rob Hood’s Metroplex days, and a sort of moody decadence. Upward and onwards then, 500m travels on the solar winds and elevates from a reverent esoteric organ produced sanctum into another great mystery.
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