A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Tabu Ley and African Fiesta National, 1970 (Copyright – Analog Africa)
Various ‘Congo Funk! – Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshaha/Brazzaville 1969-1982)’ (Analog Africa)
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.
The roots of both are entwined and yet very different. The mega city of Kinshasa only adopted its name during independence (but not without interference from its former brutal colonial masters Belgium, and also the West, and in more recent times, China) in the 1960s, a product of the “authenticity”, or “renativizing”, policies of Joseph Désiré Mobutu. The largest city and capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo – itself, renamed over centuries depending on who controlled it, but for a twenty-six year window between 1971 and 1997 known as Zaïre – the constantly expanding Kinshasa was founded in the late 19th century by Henry Morten Stanley, who was in the employ at the time of the Congo’s most disastrous barbaric ruler, Leopold II. Named in his honour, it stood for half a century or more as a hub for Belgium’s rape of the gargantuan central African country’s natural resources, minerals and people. Once free (only to a point) of European mastery its name was changed to reflect a hunger for authentic African heritage: named in fact after what was once a humble village on the same site.
On the northern side of the Congo River stands the capital of the Congo Republic, Brazzaville. It too was originally founded by a European, the Italian-born – but later granted French citizenship – explorer Pierre Savorgnan Brazza, who took it as a prize for the French Empire. The name stayed, but after greater independence this city became a thriving hive of activity for the burgeoning music scene: designated by UNESCO in 2013 as a “city of music” no less.
Circling back on its regional neighbor, Kinshasa became a seat of power for the dictatorship of Mobutu (the Belgium and US-backed usurper who took power after the assassination of the promising Black Nationalist, but Soviet-favored, Patrice Lumumba). Famously drawing a global audience in 1974, the world tuned into the legendary, iconic titanic grudge match between Ali and Foreman: aka the “rumble in the jungle”. Instigated by the boxing promoter and hustler Don King off the back of Ali’s full “motherland” endorsed conversion, Mobutu saw the potential in not only raising his own profile but that of his country by vouching for and putting on this great boxing spectacle in a revitalized Kinshasa.
History would later prove Mobutu to be a tyrant and thief, but for this shining moment of self-publicity the American stars of the fighting game and music/entertainment scenes were lured to the city. Seen in various documentaries since, but favouring the American stars of R&B, soul and funk – including the anointed godfather of soul himself, James Brown – the African artists and musicians that took part in a three-day festival of music around the main event included a rafter of local talent too. Competing to gain the spotlight, dominated by the likes of B.B. King, Bill Withers, The Pointer Sisters and The Fania Latin All Stars, were two of the Congo’s most famous icons: the bandleader, honed pioneer of an attacking repetitive guitar style that tore up the local dancefloors and airwaves, Francois “Franco” Luambo, and rival Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu, aka Tabu Ley, the leading light of African rumba and one of the continent’s most influential artists. Franco fronted the TPOK Jazz troupe at that music extravaganza, a band with a lot of history: famous for their part in spreading Congolese rumba.
The event’s musical organizers, Hugh Masekela and Stewart Levine, gave Franco free reign as a creative guide, but it’s said that Tabu stole the show. It’s a convoluted backstory, but the band that Franco fronted, the TPOK, actually changed their name from the O.K. Jazz band a decade or more after forming in the mid 50s – even more confusing, you will see the name written down in various forms, sometimes with the abbreviated dots. Both this troupe and Tabu make appearances on this Congo Funk! showcase – the funk being only one part of a both dynamite electrifying and more riverside lilted set of Afro-rock, soul, R&B and more localized serenading sweetness. Tabu for his part, leading the Et L’ Orchestra Afrisa, moves to a forgiving soulful rumba-esque groove (Congolese rumba being a signature, often dominate, movement honed in the region by such luminaries as Tabu and the famous Verckys) on the sun-blazed horn serenaded and buzzing guitar licked ‘Adeito’. With their L’ Orchestre additional name, O.K. Jazz makes an appearance under the Lolo affixed title (I will readily admit I have not read the liner notes this time around, and so have no idea if this is an artists or just a reference to one of the villages in the area) on the funky raw Booker T/Stax steal ‘Lolo Soulfire’, and holding the full limelight, go for some “humph” and laughter on ‘Kiwita Kumunani’.
As with much of the collection’s roster, less established acts and groups outside the major label networks (many subsidiaries of Western labels) struggled at first to get heard or raise the prohibitive sums needed to record. The PR notes briefly describe what happened, but to fill the void, a number of pioneering entrepreneurs entered the market to levitate the costly process. The likes of smaller, more independent labels such as Cover No.1, Mondenge, Editions Moninga and Super Contact could take a punt on newly emerging younger artists; those who were influenced by the “rumble in the jungle” festival of sound, going on to cut their own hybrid versions of American soul and funk, of which this compilation is filled. Pumped out across the airwaves of Radio Brazzaville or beamed out by Télé-Zaïre and RTV du Zaïre – the TV shows of which were apparently so huge that the president ordered the latter to put out daily concerts because they were found to quell unrest and criminal activities during transmissions. Arriving at the opposite end of this compilations window, released in 1982, the opening salvo, ‘Sungu Lubuka’ by Petelo Vicka Et Son Nzazi, seems a likely candidate for this change. Sounding like the heralding horn section from a Dexys track and homage to Jackie Wilson and his peers, before slipping into a Latin-like groove, this track connects two worlds: as influenced by the Fania All Stars as it is by disco funk. It’s certainly a blazing start to a cracking collection, and obvious single choice. It’s followed by the Afro-rock and Kuti horns simmering ‘Mfuur Ma’ by the Groupe Minzoto Ya Zaïre; yet another single showstopper that seems to echo the Pazent Brothers and J.B.’s. And another worthy punchy tune, the closing ‘Ah! Congo’ by the Orchestre National Du Congo, proves the perfect, high energy R&B, bookend to a brilliant compilation.
Tracks like Les Bantous De La Capitale’s ‘Ngantsie Soul’ just roll on and on like a 12” disco mix; a funky but not erratic groove that pulls you in with a constantly fluid moving soul riff and clopping percussion. Next to that, Les Frères Soki Et L’ Orchestre Bella-Bella’s ‘Nganga’ shuffles and scuffles down the train tracks to a fit of horns in a workout that lasts nearly nine minutes.
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.
Fran & Flora ‘Precious Collection’
(Hidden Notes) 12th April 2024
Arriving just months after Alex Roth’s new Cut The Sky project’s Esz Kodesz debut and Alison Cotton’s Engelchen, Fran & Flora release their own European Jewish culturally and historically inspired album. Addressing similar passages of loss and commemoration to the absence and tragedy of the Eastern and Central European branches of that community’s heritage, they also respond to its most joyous, strengthened traditions, transforming in a sophisticated, adroit and knowledgeable way the music of the Ashkenazi: otherwise known as “Klezmar”. And whilst those mentioned albums by Roth and Cotton channel different aspects of history – the former, covering the same Ashkenazi communities, but in Galicia, and the later, telling the story of the English Cook sisters who helped to save fleeing Jews from Germany during WWII -, the first overlaps this duo’s emotive and stirring story of lineage by overcoming tumultuous times to preserve a culture in a part of the continent that ruthlessly eradicated it’s identity and people.
For as Roth channeled past barbarity and conflict in what is now Ukraine for a harrowing and incredible abstract reaction, Francesca Ter-Berg and Flora Curzon (to give them their full names) also tread the same lands, but also across into Romania – as the album’s second track, the beautifully but moodyily and mysteriously described Eastern-European fairytale ‘Romanian Fantasies II’ makes abundantly clear (imagine the strings aspects of The Holy Mountain soundtrack meets Širom and Gypsy music, whilst a didgeridoo-like sound blows away).
I might be reading too much into it, but the duo’s Precious Collection suite closes with what, over time, has become a formal greeting in the Jewish community: “Sholem Aleichem”. Translating from Hebrew etymology to mean “[May] peace [be] upon you”, it was also the nom de plume of the famous Yiddish author and playwright Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, whose stories of Tevye the Dairyman were the source for the Fiddler On The Roof musical. Born in the old Tsarist Russian conquered and subjected shtel of Voronkiv in what is now central Ukraine, Rabinovich experienced the pograms firsthand; escaping to the USA at one point, but in doing so promoted the often looked-down-upon Yiddish culture and language. Also, and not surprising when facing the marauding savagery and alienation of the Russian Empire’s genocidal actions, and the Anti-Semitism and ruinous policies of the Austro-Hungarian empire too, that he also advocated the return of his people to the Holy Land as a member of the Hovevai Zion (lovers of Zion) cause. Hounded out of his homeland when alive, a Putin era Russia erected a monument in his honour in Moscow, whilst Ukraine paid homage throughout its many cities and even issued stamps – ironically or not, many of those cities have been bombed relentlessly by Russia in the past two years. Whether this is a mere coincident or not, it’s a useful connection and part of the history of the region covered on this album; especially as the place where Klezmer was born or at least fashioned – that loose confederation of dance tunes, ritual melodies and “virtuosic improvisations” is made up of influences from the Jewish diaspora, from Ottoman Greece and Romania to the Germany and Slavic countries. The “Klei” part of that form means “tools, utensils or instruments of” and the “zemer” translates as “melody”, an assemblage if you like, of different musical threads but rooted in the faith. Klezmer was, and of course still is, played at weddings and other social functions, but more importantly it is a bond and hand-me-down language, poetry and litany of their heritage and story.
Drawing upon this legacy and knowledge the duo of cellist Fran and violinist Flora (both also cover the vocals and electronic elements) both interpret traditional material and compose new arrangements that simultaneously evoke classical music and the atmospheric, with echoes of folktronica, the avant-garde resonance and atonal essence of hidden metallic and instrumental sources and fantastical – imagine Walter Smetek conducting a Eastern European chamber ensemble. There’s even a removed hint of jazz and near breakbeat drums at one point, when they do get to sustain a rhythm. The drumming circle is courtesy of guests Ursula Russell (of Snapped Ankle and Alabaster DePlume fame) and Simon Roth (Chris Potter, Alice Zawadzki, Adrian Dunbar on his CV), plus, what the PR notes call, the appearance of a Ukrainian Poik style marching drum – my research has drawn a blank on this one I’m afraid.
Some pieces of music directly reference Jewish culture, history, with the stripped and plucked diaphanous but haunting ‘Nign’ a unique take on the traditional religious vocal song of the same name. Largely improvised, sung in groups, Bible verses or classical quotes from other Jewish texts are repeated to form what’s know as a “nign”. Sometimes a lamented prayer, and at other times out of joy or victorious, this contemporary vision sounds like beatific and ethereal sirens uttering assonant mystique and worry from behind a translucent covering. But the vibrations, melodies even amongst the most abstracted, near non-musical parts still carry, forming as they do, evocations of landscapes and time. Sympathetic and attentive at all times, the music encompasses wild playfulness and abandonment on the opening running freedom of ‘Nudity’, and nature’s call on the Caucuses imbued, choral lulled ‘Feygele – Little Bird’.
Woven at times like a tapestry, and at other times, near esoteric, the beatific merges with the plaintive, pleaded and mysterious, and folk music is effortlessly weaved with folk-rock, the experimental and the classical. Within that framework traditional dances and songs are wrapped up in a meticulously crafted otherworldly suite of experimental strings and minimalistic electronica. The Klezmer source material is held on to but transformed with a contemporary expansion of ideas and experimental composition, all of which flows lucidly and in a most stirring manner to create an exceptional album.
Herandu ‘Ocher Red’
(Hive Mind Records) 26th April 2024
A second release on the Hive Mind label to feature Misha Sultan, or rather the true face behind that guise, Mikhail Gavrilov, the Herandu debut is a new project and new sound for the Siberian artist and his brother Evgeny (who has his own alias of Dyad).
The siblings, caught between the Covid pandemic and invasion of Ukraine by Russia, put this latest vehicle in motion during trips back home to Siberia’s most populous city of Novosibirsk in 2022. The so-called “Chicago of Siberia”, Novosibirsk is situated on the banks of the Ob River, a crossing point of the romanticised and legendary Trans-Siberian Railway and historically an important flashpoint during the Russian civil war and engine of post-revolutionary Russian industry. Originally founded in 1893 and christened with the Tsarist Imperialist title of Novonikolayevsk after Emperor Nicholas II, the Communists gave it the current name of “New Siberia” in 1926. Geographically sitting between the Ural Mountains and Northern Asia, touching the Pacific in the East, Siberia isn’t just the infamous exiled atelier of record and literature but a beautifully diverse Eurasian landscape.
As on Mikhail’s Misha alias Roots album, released by Hive Mind back in the late Spring of 2022 (as it happens, that marvelous album also included a cameo from his brother, under his Dyad moniker), that famous industrial transport capital and its outlying regions are once more transduced via the soundboard and imagination to articulate and convey backdrop set moments of rumination, of particular captured interactions and moods, and an essence of place and time – the industrial set against the more plush shades of nature. Informing and inspiring a new direction, the label has described the brother’s collaboration as sounding like Metalheadz meets Weather Report; or to my ears, Plug plays around with the music of the Mahavishnu Orchestra using the production of 80s Miles Davis records whilst hauling in later 70s and 80s Herbie Hancock on cosmic ray beam keys and what sounds like a keytar.
Actually, with a mix of warmer sounding live instrumentation (from Stanley Clarke-light jazzy-funk slap and picked bass guitar and Greg Foat-esque electric-piano to pinning, floating and sizzled reedy saxophone – courtesy of friend and musician Vladimir Luchansky) and more programmed synthesized breakbeats, chops and atmospheres, the brothers branche out into all kinds of international genres, with evocations of the Caucasus, Tibet and both East and North Africa merging with photons and clap-drums. Jazz-fusion and world music hybrids from the Silk Road and Samarkand cross paths with Jimi Tenor, Amorphous Androgynous, Rip Rig & Panic, Transglobal Underground and The Pop Group. And yet that only goes so far in describing the subtle but cross-pollination of influences on show. The timpani bounds of ‘An Incident At The Theater’ play up the title’s stage drama, but soon break out into those Weather Report references, and the misty vaporous ‘Downtown Street’, heads off in the direction of both Hansa studio and later Outside period Bowie and 80s Scott Walker.
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 brothers feelings of their native landscape, and the episodes of life, the shaping of their creativity, born in that setting.
Kira McSpice ‘The Compartmentalization Of Decay’
12th April 2024
Nature’s compartmentalized reactions to injury and decay (via the studied description laid down by the pathologist and biologist Alex L. Shigo) are drawn upon, referenced and used as a metaphor for Kira McSpice’s own coping mechanisms; the American singer-songwriter and musician dealing with trauma by channeling both desirable and undesirable energy into working through the darkest, most fearful physical and mental strains of painful morose.
Almost like therapy, although bad dreams plagued McSpice throughout the writing process, the troubled chanteuse of the self-coined “freak folk” sound faces blow after blow of gothic lament and harrowing despair. And yet there is a beauty too, with passages of the near ethereal, beatific and afflatus ebbing over chthonian mourning and distress. In fact, the suffused nocturnal atmospherics, whilst hiding allegorical esoteric nightmares and spirits, are like a strange fairytale set filled by operatic and theatrical characters and life.
It’s the voice that draws you into that visionary world however; an apparitional-like calling, lulling, assonating and hurting vocal that soars past the contralto-bass to reach near aria like heights. With an obvious keenness and deep knowledge of the craft, McSpice artfully constructs inter-layered choral circles and marooned, mournful and cut-to-the-marrow pained releases, which as the album progresses gradually seem to find the gauzy light – ‘Photosynthesis’ facing that light source and growing in a somnolent fashion sounds almost like a daydreaming Mazzy Star. The welling and plaintive, sometimes struggling, voiced woes and pathos is enveloped with heightened atmospherics, suffused and smothered hazy horns (what sounds like a tuba, but also oboe, clarinet and maybe a saxophone of a sort), a Goth acoustic air of All About Eve, and Tilt-period Scott Walker eerie, stark and heart of darkness style electric guitar. All of which has a very distinct sound: pitched somewhere between haunted chamber music, the operatic and baroque and obscure, hermetic prog-folk. Slowly removing a metaphorical armour. McSpice arises from the symbolic mists and fogs to forge a shaken, knocked but hard-won identity. The rooms and spaces maybe dark, but through McSpice’s cleverly poised and escalating vocal chills and more beautifully heartbreaking, fraught processes there is a clearing of the miasma and the promise of a reprieve. Nothing short of an extraordinary album.
Pando Pando ‘S-T’
(Not Applicable) 12th April 2024
With enviable experience and CVs with incredible depth and variation, all three participants in the Pando Pando project tantalize with the prospects of their experimental explorations. The names of trumpeter, electronic musician, engineer and producer Alex Bonney (performing with Leverton Fox, Scarla O’ Horror, Brass Mask, the list goes on), drummer and percussionist Jem Doultan (played in Róisín Murphy’s band for seven years, drummed in The Thruston Moore Group and is one part of the Too Many Things duo) and fellow drummer/percussionist Will Glaser (a stalwart of the UK jazz scene, teacher and foil for an impressive roster of bands and artists including Soweto Kinch, Kit Downes, Yazz Ahmed and Sly And The Family Drone) will be familiar to many on the contemporary improvisational scene.
All three crossed paths through the New River Studios arts space in London, forming a trio off the back of a series of improvised gigs in the capital. In partially describing their evolution and process they’ve named themselves after one of the natural world’s largest single living connective organisms, or in its scientific terminology, “a clonal organism that represents an individual male quaking aspen that spans 106 acres and is the largest tree by weight and by landmass.” This breathing, living behemoth of plant life is, in case you were interested, located in the District of Fishlake National Forest, between Colorado and South-Central Utah.
Growing in a quasi-organic abstract fashion, the drum and percussion heavy avant-garde movements and stirrings on the trio’s debut album take electroacoustic probes, prods and tumultuous splashes into the depths as a foundation to build otherworldly atmospheric workouts, prowls and freeform breakouts. Recognizable instruments and electronic elements, effects are used to evoke the most unusual and sometimes esoteric. An assemblage of trinkets, bells, finger cymbals, metallic textures, pots and pans and tubular scaffolding are used alongside the drum kit to evoke the influence of such luminaries of the form as the Art Ensemble Of Chicago (mentioned in the PR notes that accompanied this release), but to my ears, also the E.F.S experiment extractions from Can’s Limited/Unlimited LPs, Valentina Magaletti, Krononaut, Mani Neumeier and, on the weird d’n’b veiled clanged and distorted ‘Fluffy Wires’ like Matthewdavid warping a samba band of drummers. However, the peculiarly named ‘Eno’s Bathroom’ is not what I would imagine the ambient doyen’s bathroom to sound like at all; less scented candles, sandalwood and eco-friendly, fair trade handmade soap and more krautrock and ghost freighter Tibetan lurking mind-bended weirdness.
Titles, like much of the music, is on the disturbing side with references to marine deaths (the windbreaker flapping prowl into the ocean abysses ‘The Graveyard Of Sharks’ and incipient sonar signaled, dub-y ricochet thrash around in marooned waters ‘Dolphin Suicide’) and blamed birds (the final wing-flapped primordial squelch, and mystical gongs, bowls and tool brushed and sifted ‘It Must Have Been The Magpies’ –our common English garden visitor has a bad rep for a variety of things, from the old adage about bad luck to stealing anything that glitters, and for savagely protecting its nests).
An evolving organism of their own making, breaking out of, growing and expanding the perimeters of improvised electroacoustic experimentation, the Pando Pando trio make unsettling tones and sounds, rhythms and serialism for ecologically climatic times.
Audio Obscura ‘Acid Field Recordings In Dub’
(Subexotic Records) 26th April 2024
Drifting in and out of post-op drug-induced recuperation, Neil Stringfellow (aka Audio Obscura) laces his dreamscapes and stupors with signature 303 acid squelches and dial releases, frequencies, snatches of broadcasts and bubbled liquids; much of which is transformed or made out of the archive of sounds he’s built up over the last twelve years, from a recurring flock of chirping birdlife to the innocuous, taken for granted and missed, sounds of the streets outside and daily interactions between, in this case, hidden sources of dialogue and conversation, even child’s play.
Take all that and expand the mystery, the unease and esoteric with a wafted reverberation and echo of dub and you have a real hallucinogenic experience, the ebbing of the consciousness between passages of the recognizable and distorted. That roosting menagerie of birds that Neil could hear from his hospital bedside, out of the window on one humid day in 2022, now resembles the acid-dial-turns of Mike Dred, a street cleaner’s broom, banging against his cart as he wheelbarrows it down a hill in Norwich, suddenly mimics a dub snare drum when added with plenty of On-U Sound echo.
The gravity fields, cartography, the memorable (through a soporific haze of painkillers) passages of a day and the unidentified coastline take on otherworldly dimensions through this mirage-inducing lens as elements of Air Liquide, The Orb, Amorphous Androgynous, Cousin Silas And The Glove Of Bones, FSOL, Andrew Wasylak and Cabaret Voltaire pass through – the latter is unsurprising, and not for the obvious reasons that CV are just one of the all-time most influential and inspired electronic groups of all time but because the Cabaret’s Chris Watson hosted a field recording introductory week that Neil attended.
Field recording adventures in sound, under the dreaded sirens of a nuclear winter and apocalyptic distress, this album is a lucid acid wash of near-remembered haunted piano melodies, various sonic yips and yeeps, bulb-shaped notes, recalled melodica, lost transmissions half-heard, radioactive effects, the atonal and prowling. Paranoia meets the languorous and medicated on a productive experiment in acid-dub and sound art.
Khôra ‘Gestures Of Perception’
(Marionette) 19th April 2024
Ambitious in scope and influence, Matthew Ramolo’s Plato-coined Khôra vessel overlaps the afflatus with the mythological, hermetic and philosophical across a double-album spread of peregrinations, processions and transcendental mysticism. References abound from opened seals, with nods to branches of Buddhism, astronomy, the Hellenic, Tibetan, Heliopolis and atavistic: all the way back to the creation myth. Literally from the ground up (the Dzogchen concept of “rigpa”, which subscribes the qualities of purity, spontaneity and compassion to the primordial ground), Ramolo, using an apparatus of international instrumentation, drums-up simultaneous visions of the new age and alien. Name checking the Latinized, the Orient and spiritual Asia in its many forms, but also cosmic projecting, the alchemy at play on this opus vibrates with evocations of ksmische, Jon Hassell’s “fourth world musics” explorations, trance, magnetic electronics, courtly and ceremonial.
The central sounds are percussive in nature; from those Tibetan stirrings of bowls, tubular bells, wind chimes and movements that sound like the turning of a mani wheel, to claves, what sounds like stones, a scaffold of pans and tubes, and frame, hand and other more rhythmic drums. Other elements include electronic vapours and waves, the springy and plucked, divine radio and satellite transmissions, occasional bellowed wafts and bulb shaped notes of light. Yogi talks to, well…the world, as nirvana is opened to all on this trip of dial up meditations, explorations and mysterious off-world atmospherics. The echoes of Syrinx, Kalacakra, Bhajan Bhoy, Ariel Kalma, A.R. & Machines, Sergius Golowin and Iasos wrap themselves around an epic suite of spiritual and mystical excursions in the pursuit of navigating a formless, third way through new envisaged worlds: or something like that. Eastern spiritual music is often abstracted in this world, merged with hidden sources to produce something familiar yet a bit different.
Esbe ‘La Serenissima’
(New Cat Music)
Inhabiting each world she enters as if it were a past life, another reincarnation, the gifted singer-songwriter Esbe steps right out of the times, the locations and scenery as if she was born to it. From atavistic Egyptology to classic songbook reinterpretations, from across the ages and genres, Esbe seems to belong to whatever setting she channels.
Proving consistent in every endeavor and prolific, she now releases her ninth album of magical revue; once more interpreting the old, but also conjuring up original compositions and arrangements that congruously feel like part of the traditional cannon. Sweeping into the city of duality, Venice, or rather the 17th century anointed “La Serenissima” as it was once known, Esbe channels its famous history, literature, art and architecture; from a secret rendezvous on a canal bridge to masked balls, painted scenes from the late Renaissance and cinematic sweeps that move like the tidal currents out of the city and carry on towards the exotic and cosmopolitan hubs of this city-state’s once expansive empire of trading routes. I say duality, because this is both the city of love and center of much political and stately intrigue during the Medieval period, when what we now know as a unified Italian geography was split into various warring and competing Papal states; the port cities being amongst the strongest, carrying more weight with their navies and trading fleets, able to negotiate or bring in allies from abroad to support their claims of dominance.
Mentioned as an inspiration, Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice – or rather its most famed locations within the city – throws up all kinds of Anti-Semitic stereotypes; the city’s Jewish ghetto appalled a conquering Napoléon centuries later: commanding the French forces that occupied Venice in 1797, the as yet to be emperor would famously end the ghetto’s separation from the rest of the city, removing barriers and renaming it the Contrada dell’unione. But Esbe is tapping into the city’s mystery, its art and majesty, whilst casting yearns outbound from the harbor to old trading routes in the Med and further abroad: see the heart-wrenching, diaphanous soaring operatic ‘Palazzo’, a Thomas Newman modern Bond-esque filmic score that evokes Istanbul, passionately sung in the Turkish language.
The very embodiment of a certain style of Venetian art, Canaletto’s iconic (though many disparage it as mere chocolate box art) cityscape dioramas are referenced within the PR briefing; a inspiration, jump off point for magical lyrical and musical painting and storytelling imagination. Almost a feature of a certain time back in England, my late grandfather like many of his generation, had a print on the wall – of Italian decent himself, his one and only actual visit to the homeland was as part of the Allied forces making their way up through Italy to capture Rome during WWII, and even then, he never managed to get to Venice. You can now imagine Esbe, one hand trailing in the canal waters or “sighing” over a romantic set bridge gazing at the light play on the surrounding architecture; dreamily envisioning a bygone time as she sings and coos about imagined liaisons, and characters that could have walked straight off a Medieval tapestry.
As with most of her work, Esbe balances the atavistic and traditional with more modern electronic vapours and wisps of the esoteric, haunting and spellbinding. Sounding somewhere between Dead Can Dance, Maria Callas, the Baroque, folk and Arabian, she can turn a foggy apparitional mystique into an aria, an expelled breath into a whole act, or story. Her most obvious talent is with that already described voice, which is as dramatic and theatrical as it is ethereal and subtle; delivering a suspenseful Latinized lulled and desired vocal on the Catholic regal service ‘Te Amo’ – luring us towards a steeped in mystery and serious alter -, and lending a near dreamy tidal pulled entranced performance on the romantic vision ‘Amarilli, Mia Bella’ – a reinterpretation of Giulio Caccini’s operatic love song, written for the 1602 Le Nuove Musiche collection of monodies and songs for solo voice and basso continuo.
Classical styles feature heavily, but are veiled or gauzily enveloped to sound more haunting, atmospheric and even like a mirage in some cases. Throughout it all the instrumentation, from chamber to synths, guitars and the sound of bubbling waters, are artfully suggestive and stirring; scoring the drama, downcast lament of a returning army from one of the Papal wars, or in emoting misty-eyed overtures to mysterious subjects.
Esbe once again breathes life into her surroundings, this time around playing with and choreographing an inspired songbook of Venetian evocations; absorbing the lagoon and canals of this impressive, iconic city and its forbearers to envision something that’s simultaneously magical and hauntingly surreal.
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.
Monthly Playlist Revue: March 2024
March 28, 2024
ALL THE CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH
From the discombobulated and sublime to the sound of AI in the death throes of a nervous breakdown, all tastes are covered, all borders breached on the Monthly Revue: Our chance to compile the best representation of the last month’s choice music, with tracks from both reviews and those we didn’t get time to feature but piqued our interest. Those picks come from myself, Dominic Valvona, plus Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Graham Domain.
Without further ado, here’s the link and full track list:::
Augusto Martelli & The Real McCoy ‘Calories’
Avalanche Kaito ‘Tanvusse’
Amateur Cult ‘Eyes’
Ill Considered ‘Linus With The Sick Burn’
Rosie Tee ‘Night Creature’
Circe ‘Blue Love’
Diamanda Galas ‘A Soul That’s Been Abused (Live)’
Madison McFerrin ‘God Herself (Tune-Yards Remix)’
Laetitia Sadier ‘Une Autre Attente’
Mark Trecka ‘New Dreaming Gestures’
Curling ‘Hi-Elixir’
NAH ‘People Lie And Suck’
Blu & Shafiq Husayn Ft. MED/THurz/YaH-Ra ‘We Bang’
Pastense & Uncommon Nasa ‘The Ills’
Cookin Soul/The Musalini/Tha God Fahim ’92 Olympics’
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Hang Tuff’
Mark E Moon ‘Daylight’
Renelle 893 & Bay29 ‘Art Thief’
Leaf Dog ‘Till I’m Clocking Out’
Dave Harrington/Max Jaffe/Patrick Shiroishi ‘Dance Of The White Shadow And Golden Kite’
Twin Coast ‘to feel (Donkey Basketball Remix)’
Cumsleg Borenil ‘exis-ANENCE-sixe, Exis Constraint’
Colin Johnco ‘L’air qui danse’
Lou Lyne & The Blue Almond Project ‘Saudade Tactia’
Luce Mawdsley ‘Latex Feather’
Charlie Risso ‘Good Track’
NCD Instigators ‘Shark Attack’
Felix Machtelinclx ‘Buwigabuwi’
Sinerider ‘Glowing’
Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘What They Love’
Arushi Jain ‘You Are Irresistible’
Leonidas & Hobbes ‘Space Raga’
Regulat Henry (Moses Rockwell & Plain Old Mike) Ft. Dezmatic ‘Pedal Boat’
Homeboy Sandman ‘Do It Right’
Jynx716 & Che Noir ‘Second Impression’
Omniscence Ft. Toz Torcha ‘Stage Presence’
Mega Ran & Jermiside ‘Drop’
ZA! & Perrate ‘Steve Kahn’
Christian Wittman ‘Birth And Death Of An Unknown Star’
Andrew Heath & Mi Cosa de Resistance ‘Until We Meet Again’
Society Of The Silver Cross ‘Wife of the Sea – Temple Hymns Vol 1’
group O ‘ThickO/not thee brightest spark in ur Fukushima plant (37.3920666, 141.0749483)’
Alison Cotton ‘Crepuscule’
The Monthly Playlist Revue: February 2024
February 29, 2024
ALL THE CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH
Let’s keep this short and get straight to the action, with the musical journey we’ve created for you. From the Monolith Cocktail TEAM (that’s me, Dominic Valvona, plus Matt Oliver and Brian Bordello Shea) all the choice music from February on one exceptional, eclectic playlist.
:::TRACKLIST:::
Bab L’ Bluz ‘Imazighen’
Liraz ‘Bia Bia – Reeperbahn Festival Collide Session’
Trio Rosario ‘Cuande Me Muera’
Masta Ace & Marco Polo ‘Certified’
Your Old Droog w/ Roman Streetz ‘Northface With The ACGs’
clipping. ‘Tipsy’
Bostjan Simon ‘Bebey’
Vatannar & G.A.M.S. ‘Aminat Pt. 4’
Will C. ‘Colossal Pound Cake Break’
Yamin Semali ‘Boo Boo The Fool’
Juga-Naut ‘Shampain’
Revival Season ‘Chop’
Willie Evans Jr. ‘Bargaining’
Nowaah The Flood & Giallo Point ‘No Speculation’
Black Milk ‘In The Sky’
mui zyu ‘The Mould’
Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer ‘Stay Centered’
OdNu + Umlaut ‘Kaizen’
Louis Carnell & Wu-Lu ‘Eight’
Madeleine Cocolas ‘Bodies II’
Otis Sandsjo ‘OOMY’
David Liebe Hart & Jason The Cat ‘I Believe In The Unknown’
Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me’
Confucius MC, Pitch 92 & Jehst ‘Days Hours Minutes’
Dr. Syntax & Gotcha ‘The Urge’
Sly Moon ‘Aces Baby’
Reef The Lost Cauze ‘Umar’s Revenge’
Renelle 893 & Bay29 ‘Art Thief’
Kingmakers Of Oakland ‘Too Long’
Kemastry, Jazz T & Ramson Badbonez ‘Apocalyptic Flows’
Dyr Faser ‘Bronze’
Ryann Gonsalves ‘Lost & Found’
Oliver Birch ‘On Our Hill’
BMX Bandits ‘Time To Get Away’
DAAY ‘Follower’
Maria Arnqvist ‘Rubies And Gold’
The Children’s Hour ‘Dance With Me’
The Pheromoans ‘Faith In The Future’
Boeckner ‘Euphoria’
epic45 ‘Be Nowwhere’
James jonathan Clancy ‘Black & White’
Flowertown ‘The Ring’
twin coast ‘Forget To Know’
The Legless Crabs ‘Stuckist Manifestos In The Western World’
The Deli, Moka Only & Baptiste Hayden ‘Fivefourthreetwoone’
Ol’ Burger Beats ‘For The Family FT. Awon’
Da Flyy Hooligan, D-Styles ‘Gallery Oasis’
Spectacular Diagnostics ‘1000 Heartbeats’
Our Daily Bread 612: Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit’
February 26, 2024
REVIEW/DOMINIC VALVONA
PHOTO CREDIT: TRIO SHOT BY CHRISTOPHER ANDREW
Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit’ (Spiritmuse Records) 8th March 2024
I need little persuasion to review this latest album from the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, having already subscribed and danced to the Kahil El’Zabar rhythm for some time now. I must also declare that this same label invited me a couple of years back to provide the liner notes to the Kahil El’Zabar’s Quartet’s A Time For Healing LP; one of now six such collaborative albums the Chicago doyen has released on the Spiritmuse platform in the last decade – arguably his most prolific period, in a career that stretches back across more than five decades as a willing foil sideman, bandleader and collaborator.
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, channeled the windy city’s rich musical lineage of jazz, blues, R&B, soul, Godspell and what would become house and dance music. Within that influence, you can hear the inspiration, pioneering spirit of Louis Armstrong, Jellyroll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Benny Goodman, and trace the beating language of the talking drums of the motherland. Even in that company of such acclaimed innovators, El’Zabar’s style, choice of instrumentation was remarkably unique.
Paying his dues under the mentorship of such deities of the form as Eddie Harris, the multi-instrumentalist and composer went on to found his most enduring troupe, the EHE, in 1974. And so hence the 50th anniversary release date of that group’s Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit LP; a celebratory healing balm of both revisited originals and transformed classics that also coincides with Black History Month and the ensemble’s North American tour. Originally in quintet form, the EHE soon slimmed down to a trio by the time of their first official album release in 1981, the cut-to-the-chase, no explanations needed, entitled Three Gentlemen From Chicago. Whilst the lineup has changed over the ensuing decades (numbering the likes of Light Henry Huff, Kalaparusha Maurice Macintyre, Joseph Bowie, Hamiett Bluiett, and Craig Harris at any onetime over that timespan), in recent times El’Zabar has corralled the well-respected Chicago trumpet player and bandleader Corey Wilkes to his steady ranks, and invited in the Detroit-born baritone saxophonist Alex Harding, who he’s knocked about with since the beginning of the 2000s: both playing together in Joseph Bowie’s Defunkt. But in a change of direction, he’s brought in the evocative and wilder strings of the Chicago-based violin/viola player and leader James Sanders (notably leading the Latin ensembles Conjunto, and Proyecto Libre), and the cellist, improviser and composer Ishmael Ali. This partnership adds a yearned, timeless and sorrowful Michael Urbaniak-esque layer of folk, Catskills country, the classical and wilder sympathies and stirrings to the eclectic range of horn styles and percussion, which also includes a full drum kit by the sounds of it – coming in handy when evocating the busy, always moving splash, bounce and rolling crescendos of drumming demigod Elvin Jones, on the McCoy Tyner burst of restless, near North African, energy, the ‘Passion Dance’. Jones famously appeared alongside Joe Henderson and Ron Carter on the title-track from the jazz pianist Tyner’s Real McCoy Blue Note release in 1967; a classic that has been picked up by El’Zabar on his latest EHE album.
THANKS TO CHRISTOPHER ANDREW FOR THE IMAGE
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 El’Zabar’s legacy whilst once more worshipping at the alter of those icons, progenitors and idols that came before; namely, in this instance, Miles Davis, Eugene McDaniels and the already mentioned Tyner.
It’s a version, of a kind, of Davis’s ‘All Blues’ (with an added “The” from the EHE) that opens the album. Originally the opening suite on Side 2 of the gold standard Kind Of Blue opus, this twelve-minute example of modal blues in G mixolydian piece is, thanks to Wikipedia on this score, ‘a twelve-bar blues in 6/8 time signature’, of which, ‘the chord sequence is that of a basic blues and made up entirely of seventh chords, with a ♭VI in the turnaround instead of just the usual V chord. In the composition’s original key of G this chord is an E♭7.’ On this sympathetic take, an air of the pastoral, of country folk and Southern roots is merged with smokestack smoldered city skylines, skonk baritone sax, turning-over kalimba tines-plucked harmonics and a constant timekeeping jangle of bells. It’s still very much a part of the blues idiom, but there’s a new soul and relaxed murmur of close-eyed healing that takes it someplace else.
A favourite of El’Zabar’s father, Clifton Blackburn, Eugene McDaniels’ stalwart protest song ‘Compared To What’, is given a fresh workout by the ensemble; that original 60s polemic to hypocrisy (taking in the Vietnam War, LJB and inequality), made famous on record by Roberta Flack in 1969 but also given an outing by Les McCann and Eddie Harris at the Montreux Jazz Festival in the same year, is now shuffled along to what can only be described as an acoustic house music beat and elephant trunk lifting heralding honks and jangled bells. Almost riffing at a leisurely pace throughout, El’Zabar channels Gil Scott-Heron vocally on this enriched street level shakedown.
And as with most El’Zabar led projects, there’s always a tribute or two, a homage and laying down of fealty of a most respectful sort, to one of the old guard: the pioneers. And so why not pay it to one of the deities of the form, the free jazz demigod himself, Ornette Coleman. Although neither in the Science Fiction nor Skies Of America modes, the ensemble revise that esteemed innovator’s legacy with what can only be described as a slinky soul-funk and hip-hop groove and untethered flight of Ornette-style brass.
From across the back catalogue, there’s a smattering of original compositions reenergized and given a new impetus. From his 1998 Bright Moments LP collaboration with saxophonists Joseph Jarman and Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, bassist Malachi Favors and pianist Adegoke Steve Colson, the titular album and track title ‘Return Of The Tribe’ is like a concrete safari strutting from swing Chicago to hot-stepping New Orleans and Latin Quarters NYC with Cab Calloway, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago and La Monte Young in processional tow.
From the same decade, albeit the opposite end of the 90s, another album and track title take, in the form of the EHE’s ‘Hang Tuff’, is given an airing. Stepping in for the originals, Edward Wilkerson and Joseph Bowie, Corey and Sanders raise their horns skywards, whilst Harding and Ali wildly entangle themselves at a busy junction of avant-garde folk-country and Mondrian age crosstown traffic jazz. From the Ritual Trio’s (that’s El’Zabar with Ari Brown and Malachi Favors; a group that lasted over fourteen albums, right up until 2014) Conversations LP partnership with the venerated Archie Shepp, there’s also an off-kilter, early 60s inspired version of ‘Kari’. Obviously, now featuring the wiry and scribbled addition of cello and violin, the original composition has a new feel and direction of travel.
Elsewhere, ‘Can You Find A Place’ swings from the vine into a spiritual wilderness and swamp of sorrowed cornet blues, whilst ‘The Whole World’ finds El’Zabar channeling Bill Withers, the Isley Brothers and righteous Last Poets on a street side hummed liturgy of godly universal benevolence and unity. But the title-track that brings down the curtain on this conscious elevating rhythm provider evokes both Davis and Coleman, heading out east on an Afro-Latin percussive prayer and house music style primal beat.
El’Zabar’s once more heals, opens up minds and elevates with another rhythmic dance of native tongue and groove spiritualism: a balm for the mind, body and soul. 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.
Please help if you can to keep the Monolith Cocktail afloat in 2024:
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Perusal #52: Meril Wubslin, Maria Arnqvist, Ghost, Otis Sandsjö…
February 13, 2024
A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Maria Arnqvist ‘Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet’
(Sing A Song Fighter)
An incredible, adventurous concept (of a sort) album from the Swedish multi-instrumentalist and composer that not only showcases a breadth of ideas but also draws upon a wealth of worldly musical escapes and travels, Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet! is an ambitious statement.
One half of the self-professed “voodoo punk, art rock and psychedelic” Swedish duo Siri Karlsson, Maria Arnqvist weaves and sows the seeds for her own solo idiosyncratic fantasy on this character-driven songbook of piano-led or prompted quality vocalized and instrumental evocations.
Classically trained on the ivories, the source of this album’s deeply felt, keen and artfully beautiful material springs forth or subtly flows with an ever-moving cascade; a torrent; a disturbed pool or undulation of waves. Arnqvist proves highly talented in this regard; a near maestro of the instrument in fact, with certainly familiar echoes of what has come before – everything from the obvious classical strains and accentuated touches to the avant-garde of the name-checked Philip Glass and feels of quintessential balladry – but made a new when effortlessly merged with such instruments as the West African kora, an air of the folkloric and strange. Sousou Cissoko plays that kora incidentally, spindled melodically and woven beautifully – it reminded a little of the harpist Catrin Finch’s collaborative partnership with Seckou Keita.
There’s also a sort of Flyodian-progressive and Afro-jazz throaty and more float-y saxophone on a couple of songs. Add chamber-like and dramatic symphonic strings to that soundtrack – every track on this album could be a score in itself – and you have something very special and different and (that word again) worldly: at least transportive. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that Arnqvist has traveled abroad a lot, with stays absorbing the local sounds of instruments in Ouagadougou in Burkino Faso, and Boston in the States. When pulled together the results are both sophisticated and playful; the mood and balance shifting between the oddball theater of late 19th century barrel organ stoked Wild Western saloon japes and shoreline yearned morning choruses to the elements. In fact, this could be an alternative Western, with the unsympathetic roasting sun shimmers and hoofed giddy-up momentum of ‘I Caught You Runnin’ evoking some kind of amalgamation of David Carradine’s Kung Fu, the Mongolian song of Namger, and Sakamoto’s piano – a pursuit across a mirage salt plains perhaps?
At other times the mood is more folksy-classical; although the enchanting opener (a sort of overview overture) seems to reflect a restless spirit, spinning between timeless tones, West African dances and the drama of Mick Harvey’s more stirring sober scores.
The vocals are sung in English when recognizable, as Arnqvist also lyrically and with a melodious air also just swoons or coos the tune, thoughts and descriptive vowels. And the lyrics build up a poetic picture of dramas, emotional ties, scenery and acts, whilst never really making anything explicit as such. Natural elements are left to speak, as Mary Rose and that Purple Quintet meander, fluctuate up and down the scales, quiver and ride the tumultuous softened waves of this loose story.
An enchanting and softening restless spirit is at work on this astonishing, well-thought out and enacted solo turn from the Swedish talent; an album that will gently unfurl its magic and depth over repeated plays and time: and for that, will only get better on each listen.
Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner & Isambard Khroustaliov ‘In The Glooming’
(Non-Applicable) 16th February 2024
From the perceptive, intuitive and often haywire minds of the applauded Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner and Isambard Khroustaliov (the nom de plume of one Sam Britton) trio, another exploration into the probed parts of the grouping’s psyche, art forms, inquiry and mischief-making. Thematically wise however, this is latest experiment at the edges of electroacoustic serialism and free-roaming is about the trio’s friendship, perseverance, trust and handle on being human: in a world of ever encroaching technological takeover I’d suggest.
Drawing on their myriad of respectable experience over the decades, with Ohlmeier bringing along his bass clarinet (a pretty deft and extraordinary saxophonist too), Fischerlehner on drums and percussive elements, and Khroustaliov rewiring his electronic apparatus, all three participants pull from the “gloaming” (an expressive word taken from Irish lexicon that describes the “twilight”) a strange sound world and performance of avant-garde jazz, Fortean supernaturalism, the alien, odd and indefinable,
Recorded over in the former Cold War walled East Berlin – make what you will of that location -, melodious, almost at times sweetened and floated, clarinet wafts and occasionally strains amongst the clicks, reversals, signals and oscillations of circuitry and transmogrified data language. All the while sifted, brushed, hinged and more bell shaken percussive instruments often amorphously find a rhythm, a hit or timpani roll in the vagueness of an idea and direction. Unsettled and yet never really hostile, totally maniacal or mad, this is a world in which ECM, Sam Newsome, Roscoe Mitchell, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago and Eric Dolphy merge with Walter Smetek (I’m thinking of his 1974 Smetek LP especially), Valentina Magaletti, Affenstunde Popol Vuh, Angelo Bignamini and Lea Bertucci. A track like the tracing of time, weirdly tweaked and near whistled ‘End Zone’ sounds positively sci-fi and a little ominous. Whilst, the classical unhinged toy workshop combination of elements on ‘Violet Weeds’ sounds like Prokofiev conducting Autuchre for a performance of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse. And ‘Pixel Head’ re-engineers the matrix for an odd futuristic charge of static and cable disarray. Sharing is caring as they say, and this trio seems to deeply feel that connection and intuitive spirit of freedom in creating something challenging, but also in those very special interactive moments: moments inspired in a manner by that twilight hour between the dark and light. A curious, wild and untethered yet professionally made work that defies boundaries.
Meril Wubslin ‘Faire Cą’
(Bongo Joe Records) 1st March 2024
Taking their Mitteleuropa mummers vision on the trail to, of all places, Lewisham in southeast London, and the studio of Kwake Bass, the Meril Wubslin trio cast more hallucinatory hypnotic rhythms in new surroundings without leaving that signature mysterious dimension that hovers between French-speaking Lausanne and Brussels.
Bass (or to give him his full due and title, Giles Kwakeulati King-Ashong) has worked with a myriad of influential and explorative figures over the years (from MF Doom and Roots Manuva to Lianne La Havas and Kate Tempest), so carries more than a touch of class and cache of ingenuity and talent. And yet far from changing the sound, based a lot on repetitive rustic nylon-stringed-like guitar rhythms and both scrappy and dreamy spelled percussion, the producer has continued to aid in magic-ing up a strange rural mysterious combination of Rufus Zuphall, These New Puritans, The Knife, Goat, Holydrug Couple and Die Wilde Jagd.
When the dual male and female vocals – shared and in a strange harmonic symmetry – mistily arise from the mystique and often dreamy-realism of humming motored esoteric vapours and woozy oscillations, they evoke a very removed version of Chanson with Sister Dominique and the pagan song of Summerisle. In fact, there’s a quite a lot of esoteric and folksy-like references sound wise, from the processional to tribal. And a cross-timeline of influences that stretch back into the Medieval. On occasion those hypnotic rhythms and percussive scrapes conjure up Gnawa trance, or the herding of goats in the mountains during older, simpler, primal times. And yet, there’s also a semblance of the Blues, of Dirt Music, to be found amongst the glassy bobbled vibraphone wobbles, trippy drum breaks, pastoral drug lingers, vague visitations from another dimension, UFOs and surreal echoes.
A diaphanous and occult balance of the rural and otherworldly, of enchantment and suffused otherness, Faire Cą is yet another promising statement of headiness and entrancing spells from the trio.
Ghost ‘S-T’, ‘Second Time Around’ and ‘Temple Stone’
(Drag City Records)
Following in the wake of Masaki Batoh’s most recent of incarnations, the brain waves initiated Nehan project album An Evening With (reviewed last month in my Perusal column), Drag City are reissuing a triple-bill of vinyl albums from the Japanese acupuncturist, musician and apparatus building artist’s most enduring and long-running ensemble Ghost.
Tying in with the fortieth anniversary of that evolving, line-up-revolving group’s conception, and the tenth anniversary of its completion, disbandment, their first run of albums from the 1990s is being given another pressing by the label that originally repressed them in the first place, three decades before: that run quickly selling out off the back of Ghost’s Lama Rabi Rabi debut album release for the American Drag City Records imprint. Originally released by the Japanese P.S.F. label on CD, that triplet of records laid down the foundations for a nomadic commune trip of acid wooziness, otherworldly folklore, abandoned temple spirit communions and visions.
Hauntingly formed in Tokyo in 1984 by underground and head music stalwart Batoh, their existence and presence on the scene were as veiled, translucent and hermitic as their name suggested. Pretty much adapts of Amon Düül II (from Phallus Dei to Dance of The Lemmings) and Popol Vuh, but also the psychedelic and folk movements of the UK in the 60s and 70s (from the Incredible String Band to Third Ear Band, Haps Hash And The Coloured Coats and Floyd), and closer to home, such native acts as the Far East Family Band and Acid Mothers Temple, these hallucinatory seekers explored various forms of transcendental music and tradition – although, in the PR briefing they’ve been compared to Os Mutantes. All of those reference points can be heard over their self-titled debut (1990) and Second Time Around (92) and Temple Stones (94) albums; reissued here on appropriate psychedelic clear coloured vinyl for the first time in 25 years.
Recurring currents and vibrations can be found on all three albums; the last of which is slightly confusing with a lot of crossover track-titles from the previous two; it must be stressed however, that even though they use the exact same names on Temple Stones, they are different, produced it sounds like, from the same session, but either an alternative to or riff on the original source and tune, atmosphere. Starting with the demigod, deity or presence theme of the “Moungod” on the self-titled album, the ghostly visitations traverse misty-veiled shrines, mountainous trails to meetings with kite-flying yogis, Shinto ceremonies and holy cavern settings. Surprisingly avoiding any real freak outs – ok, the occasional build-up of acid rock thrashing, splashing and tumult, but relatively subdued on that part – the music and atmospherics are often drowsy sounding; spiritually wafting along and even traditional: imagine Popol Vuh, the Incredible String Band and Floyd meets Alejandro Jodorowsky on the Holy Mountain. There’s also a touch of Julian Cope and Jason Pierce, even The Cult amongst the Taoism and other venerated mysterious leanings and moss. And, something that will carry over onto all the albums, there’s a constant air of the Medieval, the courtly and a touch of psychedelic folksy parchment; from maypole dances to willowy recorders whistled and fluty pagan pastoral processions and merriment.
Second Time Around is produced in the same mold, but seems to also have a more progressive feel, and even an air of the Celtic about it; another occult folksy-acid journey through mythological and spiritual tapestries. ‘People Get Freedom’ introduces us to a spindled lattice of gong washes and harpist sound-tracked moss gardens; the stepping stones trip then extending out towards a culmination of talking to Yogi ADII, the Moody Blues and wistful waltzes on the title-track. ‘Awake In A Middle’ however, sounds more like Satanic Majesty’s era and ‘Ruby Tuesday’ Stones, a more doleful King Crimson and fiddly acoustic dreamy Yes. There are murmurings and the odd bit of mooning, spooky chanting, and mantras to give it that occult, otherworldly sound from the ether, the gods, and the transcendental planes.
Finally, the Temple Stone album suffusion of veneration and mystique wonders around those ancient alters like an apparitional collective of the Flower Travellin’ Band, Yatha Sidhra and The Mission. Disturbed mood music and background wails and shouts are balanced with strange primal vapours, acid-folk (again), downer almost shoegaze vocals (although, on the old and magical rural never-world of ‘Freedom’, it sounds like AD II’s very own Chris Karrer), Indian brassy resonance, paused thoughtful piano and overhead drones.
All three albums are brilliant at pulling you into the Ghost troupe’s world of mysticism, drifted travels, psychedelic projections and wanderings. And not one of them is any better than the other, quality wise. Together they form a near-linear bond, capturing a short period in the band’s early-recorded history – the first of these albums appearing six years after the group’s initial conception -, which lasted thirty years. If this introduction style purview and review does grab you, then be quick, as I suspect these vinyl editions will fly off the Drag City Records shelves.
Otis Sandsjö ‘Y-OTIS TRE’
(We Jazz Records) 23rd February 2024
Following up previous albums in the Y-OTIS series, part TRE continues to deconstruct, shape and rebuild in real time the untethered sessions of the Berlin-based, but Swedish born, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Otis Sandsjö’s studio experiments. With what has been called a “mixtape-like DNA” methodology, Otis with his long-standing foil and Koma Saxo leader Petter Eldh, and keyboardist Dan Nicholls, plus changing ensemble of musicians, remix themselves as they go along; fracturing, stumbling, free-falling, flipping, enveloping, cutting-up and sampling their jams into freeform opportunities and ideas.
The third album is much in the same vein: albeit this time around sounding more like a transmogrification of 90s and 2000s R&B and soul, with echoes and reverberations of slow elongated and stretched breaks. In practice this results in passing moments of J Dilla, Jimi Tenor, Madegg, Gescom, Four Tet, Healing Force Project and Shabazz Palaces tripping-out on jazz, funk and the blues. But that’s only half the story, as hinged and sirocco winded brass and woodwind is flipped out and put with an ever-changing revolution of morphed d’n’b, broken hip-hop beats, vague memory reflexes of Gershwin and the Savoy label era, The NDR Bigband, Philipp Gropper’s Philm and the most wobbly.
Nothing is quite how it seems, as the fluctuations and changes in the groove, timings and direction of travel often end up somewhere different; take the horizon opening ‘orkaneon’, which begins with a Ariel Kalma-style sustained, trance-y new age sax but finishes on Herbie Hancock being vacuumed and flipped by Squarepusher. In short: another successful adventure in the kooky jelly mould of hip-hop-breakbeat-jazz and beyond.
Various Artists ‘Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación’
(Bongo Joe)
A new year and a new musical excursion for the Bongo Joe label; a first foray and survey of the Dominican Republic’s localized ‘frantic’ Merengue phenomenon.
Sharing its Hispaniola Island location with Haiti (a most tumultuous relationship that’s led to various periods of civil war and bloodshed between the two former brutalized European colonies), the Dominican Republic is well placed to absorb the surrounding cultures of both the Caribbean and Latin America, with Merengue being just one these genres. The style was originally tied-in with the Spanish invaders, taking root on the Island in the early 1800s and played on traditional European instruments like the ‘bandurria’ style guitar. As time went by (especially in the more modern ‘Típico’ era) some of those original instruments were replaced by the accordion (introduced via German trade ships), the güira and the more localized two-headed ‘tambora’ drum (salvaged from rum barrels).
Its Island bedfellow of Salsa might be more globally renowned but Merengue is far older and established; a national dance and music used at various points in the country’s history and fight for independence as a rallying call, a unified and shared common bond: although, in one of the more controversial periods, Merengue was pushed and promoted by the military commander turn dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (nicknamed “El Jefe”). This particular compilation covers the creative boom after Trujillo’s death in the early 1960s – assassinated after a bloody, brutal regime that resulted in the estimated deaths of 50,000 people, including a sizable number of Haitians, and a number of opposition figures overseas. As the reins, paranoia of oppressive rule dissipated, culture grew once more with optimism. Merengue got a new lease of life with contemporary modernizations and expansions to the sound: now featuring strings and the bass. Pioneering figures like the iconic female trailblazer (and one of the stars of this collection) Fefita La Grande helped take the style forward and broke down barriers in a largely male dominated scene. The Afro-Hispaniola influences remained, as did the signature ‘quintillo’ five-beat rhythm, but there was a new step, confidence and joy to the music, which you will hear on this selection of nuggets reissued for the first time ever, chosen by the Funky Bompa – the alias of crate-digger Xavier Dalve.
Ten showcase tunes of quickened concertinaed ribbing (‘picaresque’ style), dancing, sauntering and jauntiness await; music from such commanding artists as the already mentioned Fefita but also the reeling sweetened and passionate tones of the mysterious Valentin and the Trio Royecell. Scuffling and skiffled, with the güira sounding like a scraped metallic washboard or cheese-grater, groups like the Trio Rosario step to a upbeat squeeze of accordion and touch of the Creole on the fun opening ‘Cuando Yo Muera’. But even when the themes, lyrics are meant to be more plaintive, even bluesy like Aristides Ramierz’s ‘Los Lanbones’, the action is less cantina woes and more “amigo” friendly light-heartedness.
The reach, influences, carry far and wide with knockabout she-shanty bellows, folk and the sounds of Afro-Cuba, Haiti and Colombia ringing away to an infectious, speedy and constantly lively rhythm. As an introduction to that, Merengue Típico offers an insightful party album survey of a Dominican Republic phenomenon, in many cases, still unknown to the greater world outside the Latin community. Here’s an infectious invite to put that gap in the musical knowledge right.
The Corrupting Sea ‘Cold Star: An Homage To Vangelis’
(somewherecold Records) 1st March 2024
Mainstay and foundation artist of the label he created, somewherecold’s Jason T. Lamoreaux pays “homage” and fealty to his hero Vangelis on his latest outing as The Corrupting Sea.
Arguably the Greek titan of the electronic and soundtrack form’s most enduring and influential work in the field of cinema and sci-fi, it is the icon’s distilled acid-pin-drop-rain atmospheric waterfall of dystopian mystery noirish Blade Runner score that inspires Jason’s Cold Star suites of synth evocations. The North American composer does this by fluently channeling that data, language and mood music whilst finding rays of hope and chinks in the metallic ominous granular skies.
Track titles will be familiar with even those with only a cursory interest in the grim futurescape and philosophical quandaries of artificial intelligence and what it is to be human storyline, of this bleak but incredibly affecting and prescient film – even more so in light of the introduction of such gimmicky but frightening programs as ChatGPT, and the encroaching possibilities of AI’s applications in making much of what we do redundant: even in the creative fields. For example, the ‘Voight-Kampff’ empathy test used to weed out the “Replicant” from the human in the film based on Richard K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is just one such obvious timely example; here, in this state, chiming with softened sleigh bells, shimmery starry waves and crisp little explosions of grainy fuzz bit-crushes.
But as I’ve already mentioned, Jason finds some levitated release of hope in the cogs of technological progress; see the tenderness and reflection that is applied to the short ‘Like Tears In The Rain’ suite, which references Rutger Hauer’s iconic replicant character’s last fatalistic scene and memorable quote of the film: “lost in time…like tears in the rain”. The femme fatale of the picture if you like, ‘Rachael’ (with all that name’s Biblical significance) is also a balance of sci-fi and carefully placed stirrings; the calls of the analogue, of Jarre, of arpeggiator cascaded notes and android data.
Tracks like the grainy chomping and zip-line rippling ‘Four Years’ – the programmed-in longevity of replicants, so they supposedly don’t get the time to achieve human emotions and to rebel from their servitude of heavy lifting and soldiery in futuristic off-worlds – are not so much unsettling, but do have detuned bends and an assailing sense of uncertainty and the alien about them.
‘Replicant Hunters’ which opens this album, is pure Vangelis, but also has a hint of the Klaus Schulze about it too; square waves and bobbed bulb-like notes pass like cruisers in the alt-future nights.
Incidentally, that album title, Cold Star, references the cosmological phenomenon of “failed stars”, or “brown drawfs” as they are also known; a star that doesn’t have enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, and so is cold or tepid to the touch. But there is nothing cold or dying about this six-track score, as a final sanctuary of hopefulness in a hopeless bleak dystopia is found on ‘Refuge’ amongst the static-charges and last gasps of a ticking hi-hat rhythm. Corridors are built into these moments of escape and clarity, as Jason pays respect and comes full circle back to his original influence on first starting out in the world of electronic experimentation and mood music.
OdNu + Ümlaut ‘Abandoned Spaces’
(Audiobulb) 10th February 2024
Drawn together and 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.
The spaces in that title alongside reference prompts, inspirations motivated by the Japanese term for ‘continuous improvement’, “Kaizen”, and the procrastinated state of weakness of self-will known as the “Akrasia Effect”, are subtly and dreamily wrapped up in a gentle blanket of recollection. The lingering traces of humanity, nature and the cerebral reverberate or attentively sparkle and tinkle as wave after wave of drifty and pristine bulb-like guitar notes hover or linger, and passing drums repetitively add a semblance of rhythm and an empirical and evanescent beat.
The word ‘meticulous’ is used, and that would be right. For this is such a sophisticated collaboration and a near amorphous blending of influences, inspirations and styles: for instance, you can hear an air of Federico Balducci and Myles Cochran in the languorous guitar sculpting and threading, and an essence of jazz on the brushed and sifting, enervated hi-hat pumping drum parts. On the hallucinatory title-track itself there’s a strange touch of Byzantine Velvet Underground, Ash Ra Tempel and Floyd, and on the almost shapeless airy and trance-y ‘Unforeseen Scenes’ a passing influence of Mythos and the progressive – there’s also the first introduction of what sound like hand drums, perhaps congas being both rhythmically padded and in a less, almost non-musical way, flat-handily knocked.
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 express more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty. Here’s hoping OdNu + Ümlaut continue this collaboration, as this refined partnership proves a winning formula.
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.
PART THREE OF THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL’S ALBUMS OF THE YEAR LISTS
Welcome to the concluding part of the Monolith Cocktail’s choice and favourite albums of the year lists (Part One and Part Two). Compiled by Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Graham Domain, each entry is in alphabetical order, with this final run down starting at P and finishing at Z.
P________________
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ‘60’ (The Village)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Serving the South Central L.A. Black community from within for six decades (and counting), the late Horace Tapscott and his preservation Arkestra ensemble captured and reflected the social and racial injustices of that oppressed community with a righteous politically conscious and radical jazz style blueprint; a documentation, but also self-reliant stand against the state’s brutality and economic suppression.
The 60 album proves an important preservation of a self-reliant social activist institution, integral to the community in which it serves, teaches and rises up. A great encapsulation of that story, musical journey and the changes it has gone through, this will both excite the Ark’s fans and newcomers to the cause.’ DV
Nico Paulo ‘Nico Paulo’ (Forward Music Group)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is a wonderful summery album of Bacharach-like melodies by the Portuguese-Canadian singer. A truly remarkable debut of ten self-composed wonderful songs that sound like standards.
Her voice is a bewitching combination of Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell and Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood). Musically it covers a wide spectrum of Tropicalia, Folk, Americana, Jazz and Pop. Her voice conveys real emotion and depth that is bounced off the beautiful melodies and lyrics.
A future classic that will undoubtedly have a far-reaching influence on stars not yet born!’ GD
Hawk Percival ‘Night Moods Vol. 1’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘Oh my god! How I love Hawk Percival. She is like a lo-fi indie Noosha Fox (I am once again showing my age). But come on, ‘S-S-S-Single Bed’ was one of the singles of the 70s and I think that Hawk Percival shows the potential to make something equally as wonderfully magical, as this 6 track mini album shows so much pop suss and quirky originality.
It takes from the past – you can hear the timeless melodies from the 60s/70s – and twists it into something new. She plucks the spinning melodies from the air and weaves them into her own unique creation making an album of future desert island discs. I think Hawk Percival could well be one to watch.
This album is part of the DIY music series released by the excellent Think Like A Key records, and good on them for releasing this little lo-fi treasure.’ BBS
Polobi & The Gwo Ka Master ‘Abri Cyclonique’ (Real World)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Suffused, elevated and morphed with Parisian-based Doctor L’s jazz, electronica Francophone new waves and trip-hop, the ancestral Guadeloupe rural folk traditions of Léwòz and one of its renowned modern practitioners-deliverers Moïse Polobi is transformed into an environmental traverse. As the good doctor has proscribed so well for Les Amazon D’Afrique and the Mbongwana Stars, the roots of another form are, with subtle wondering and sophistication, given a unique sound experience.
A very personal album, this is the first to be released under Polobi’s own name. Previously the Guadalupe star has performed with his Indestawa Ka band, releasing eight albums and performing internationally. But this cyclonic whirlwind is something different, a galvanised, electrified and bolstered earthy and magical vision of his country’s past, present and future. It’s one of the most interesting albums yet in 2023, with a sound that reboots folkloric traditions in the face of an ever-encroaching modernity.’ DV
Psyche ‘Self-Titled Debut Album’ (Four Flies Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is a brilliant album of funky Mediterranean psychedelic instrumentals that sits somewhere between Khruangbin and the Barry Gray Orchestra! Every track is a Gem! Wonderful!’ GD
R__________________
Raf And O ‘We Are Stars’ (Telephone Records)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Few artists have purposely entwined themselves so deeply with their idols than the Raf And O duo of Raf Mantelli and Richard Smith (the “O” in that creative sparked partnership). David Bowie and Kate Bush loom large, permeating near every note and vocal infliction of their idiosyncratic, theatrical, cinematic and up-close-and-personal intimate style of avant-garde pop and art school rock experimentation. Raf even has a Kate Bush tribute side project; coming the nearest I’ve yet heard of anyone to that maverick progenitor’s range-fluctuating, coquettish and empowered delivery, and her musicianship and erudite playful and adventurous songwriting.
An alternative time travelling theatre of interwoven fantasy, dream realism and the reimagined, We Are Stars is as playful with its unique style as it is only too aware of the deep held stresses, strains, pain and detachment that plagues society in the aftermath of a global pandemic, economic meltdown and war. Looking to the stars, but knowing that even escapist dreams of the cosmos have failed us, Raf And O (who I haven’t mentioned in name at all, but is an adroit craftsman of his form, accentuating, punctuating or loosely weaving a meandered musicality around Raf) take their concerns, observations and curiosities into ever more arty and intriguing directions. They remain one of the most individual acts in the UK; true inheritors of Bowie and Bush’s legacy and spirit.’ DV
Refree ‘El Espacio Entre’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Coming on like an Iberian vision of the Neel Murgai Ensemble and Hackedepicciotto trapped with Nacho Mendez (I’m thinking of the Ángeles y Querubines album) in an undefined, veiled timeline and atmosphere, the follow up sketchbook album of Raul Refree’s imagination is yet again a unique, “seamless”, amalgamation of reflective enquiry, soundtracks, semi-classical etudes and the visceral.
Not so much an album of performances as a quality production of fleeting descriptions, of moments captured in poignant scenery, Refree’s second such album of scores and sound pieces is an incredible, immersive mood board of magical and often plaintive thoughts, feelings, processes and films yet to be made. I’ve been sitting on this album for months and it never loses its initial pull, gut feeling, and yet I can also hear new things on every listen. Raul Refree is a great talent indeed.’ DV
Sebastian Reynolds ‘Canary’ (PinDrop)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘After what seems like an age, and with a prolific string of projects, collaborations and EP releases behind him, Sebastian Reynolds finally unveils his debut solo album.
A near lifetime’s experience and musicology is called upon for a mostly sophisticated and subtle amalgamation of the electroacoustic, trance, EDM, electronic-chamber music, techno ambience and soundtracks on an album that draws on all of Reynolds passions and emotional threads. Self-help guidance with the neurons fired-up, the mind open, Canary counterpoints mistrust with wonderment, alarm with the rational and the optimistic. It has taken a while to arrive, but Reynolds debut expanded album of thoughts and ideas is a mature statement of quality. ‘ DV
Room Of Wires ‘Welcome To The End Game’ (Ant-Zen)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A buzz, whine, flex and resonating ring of zinc and alloy, of recondite machines, permeates another heavy set from the Room Of Wires duo. The latest in a strong catalogue of such dark materials and alien mystery, Welcome To The End Game ties together a complex of dystopian woes, rage and dramas into an interlayered twisting and expanding metal muscled album of electronic.
Room Of Wires navigate and balance the uncertainty with glimmers of escape, and moments of hope and release; the machinations and unseen forces that bear down upon us all at least dissipated enough to offer some light.’ DV
Seljuk Rustum ‘Cardboard Castles’ (Hive Mind)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Imbued by a rich history of place and time, and the trading winds that brought so many atavistic and less ancient civilizations to its natural harbor hub, Seljuk Rustum’s Kochi-base of creative activity is a city steeped in polygenesis sounds and ideas.
For the most part the musical mind of Rustum and his partners on this magical, entrancing and dreamy journey, reveals a great sonic knowledge, both a part of, yet also in some ways, escaping history.’ DV
S___________________
Salem Trials ‘What Myths Are We Living’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by DV & GD/Reviewed by Graham Domain/Link
‘Crawling along dark streets, shadows loom in every doorway, footsteps echo in the night silence. Cold sweat trickling down spine, dark rumblings from a dirty basement, shadows dancing on the barred windows. Fish bones in a mouth. Coughing up blood and the smell of urine. Decay and aftershave. Cracked voice and beer-stained floor. Each step shoes stick. Black trail like slime from a snail. A coffin landfill club of noise and danger! The night ignites with saw-like melodies and cavernous hypnotic rhythms kicking against the pricks! Smoke and dark truths bounce off the walls shaking flesh and brick, glass and bone. Inspiration as sonic affray, until the last notes flare into a howl of darkness. A murder of youth collapse through doors and out along streets. City centre lights, a loneliness of drinkers cast adrift, flowing like a cut artery in a thrombosis of social isolation. Music smashed against walls! Exciting! Unbreakable!’ GD
Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘Ongaku Zukan’ (WeWantSounds)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A timely, special release in the wake of the Japanese icon’s death in March of this year, the impeccable vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS have reissued Sakamoto’s cult 1984 solo album Ongaku Zukan (or “Musical Encyclopedia”).
Sakamoto assails the mid 80s with his own manual, a merger of signatures and fresh horizons, but above all, rewriting the Japanese cannon whilst reaching into a future yet unwritten. There will be a lot of people very happy that this classic has been rejuvenated, whilst a new generation can hear what all the fuss is about. Not his best by any stretch of the imagination, but everything Sakamoto touched is worthy of investigation, and this feels like a bridge between periods. WWS has done us all a great favour in resurfacing this lost class piece of experimentation and groove.’ DV
Schizo Fun Addict ‘Love Your Enemies’ (Fruits Der Mer)
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘This album is one of the best and wormiest sounding albums I have heard in many years. It has the same magic and otherworldly but inwardly peaceful calmness about it as Pet Sounds, and there is something about Schizo Fun Addict that reminds me of the Beach Boys but without ever actually sounding like them – I will put it down to musical genius and heavenly inspiration.’ BBS
Seaming To ‘Dust Gathers’ (O Sing At Me)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by Gillian Stone/Link
‘The structure and tracking of Dust Gatherers are utterly brilliant. Instrumental “AnOverture” introduces the juxtaposition of the electronic and symphonic elements the make up the album’s ethos. The next three tracks, “Blessing”, “Tousles”, and “Brave” are imbued with choral synths and swirling vocals. It is not until the fifth track, “Traveller”, that acoustic instruments come back into the fold, with the introduction of Seaming To’s clarinet. Clarinets then mesh beautifully with synths on “Water Flows”, followed by the instrumental synth piece “xenanmax”. The album then takes a left turn into the string-quartet-driven “Hitchhiker”, and pivots again into the Björk-style melodies and microbeats of “Look Away”. The final two songs on Dust Gatherers, which appear to be companion pieces, harken back to the golden era of jazz, finishing the record with a sense of timelessness. Piano ballad “Pleasures are Meaningless” alludes to the final track, jazz standard “Tenderly”, which is tethered down by pulsing clarinets and synth glitches. Ever present are Seaming To’s profoundly strong character vocals, which evoke goosebumps at every turn.’ GS
Silver Moth ‘Black Bay’
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘Cinematic tracks full of atmosphere and grandeur! 45 minutes of Bliss! It may become the holy grail of lost albums in future years – if it slips under the radar!’ GD
Slow Readers Club ‘Knowledge Freedom Power’ (Velveteen Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘The fifth (official) album by Manchester band The Slow Readers Club comes across like a live album such is the energy captured in the recording. First track ‘Modernise’ is perhaps the most powerful, if least representative, song on the album. With its Chemical Brothers rave intro and pounding rhythm it also has the most individual sounding vocal on the album, a bit PIL like! It’s a song created to be exciting live and it serves that purpose well!
A great album of powerful anthemic songs and possibly their most consistent effort to date.’ GD
Lonnie Liston Smith ‘Cosmic Change’ (Jazz Is Dead)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Smooth soulful vibes, bulb-like notes and cosmic fanning rays from the great jazz-funk doyen Lonnie Liston Smith, who released his first album in 25 years in 2023. Thanks to the overseeing facilitators of the enriching Jazz Is Dead label project, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad have coaxed the legendary artist, ensemble bandleader and sideman for such impressive luminaries as Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri and Leon Thomas, back into the studio; just one of many great names from the spiritual, conscious and funky-jazz rolls of inspiring talents.
Co-composing and collaborating with their chagrin Younge and Muhammad both work in the old magic with a sense of the new and forward; paying homage yet creating something new, performing the very kinds of influential music that had an impact on those who came later, namely the hip-hop fraternity (Jazzmatazz era Guru and the Digable Planets being just two such notable collaborators and acolytes). and of course, Liston is in supreme form as sagacious keyboard foil.’ DV
Snowcrushed ‘Snowcrush’
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘Snowcrushed’s A Frightened Man debut album was one of my fave albums of 2021; an album of beguiling atmospheric found sounds ambient gems. But on Snowcrush he’s gone on an alternative music journey of post-punk, Goth and Darkwave, and on occasion lo-fi folk – the excellent ‘Cowardice’ sounding like someone has taken Kurt Cobain’s tortured soul and spread it on Johnny Cash’s toast, which he ate before recording the American Recordings series of albums: A truly dark wonderful song. Although nothing else on the album quite matches up to the brilliance of ‘Cowardice’, which is no slight as not many other tracks I have heard this year matches up to it, the rest of the album is still full of unsettling dark gems.’ BBS
Samuele Strufaldi ‘Davorio’ (Música Mascondo)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Every expression has meaning, a story, which is then transformed by Strufaldi’s production into something almost dream like and cosmic yet still connected to the villagers’ roots. A transistor radio collage here, some Songhoy Blues on a bustling street with a small amp there; a display of rattled and scrapping percussion and hymnal stirrings merge with zaps, warbles and various embellishments. This cultural exchange with the Ivory Coast blurs the lines between worlds; an act of preservation, but much more, as the foundations of this culture prove intoxicating, dynamic and mesmerising.’ DV
Susanna ‘Baudelaire and Orchestra’ (Susanna Sonata Label)
Chosen by GD
T____________________
Tachycardie ‘Autonomie Menerale’ (Un-je-ne-sais-quoi)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is the third album in a trilogy of ambient sound-art works by French composer Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy. Consisting of seven pieces of strange, dark, tribal, alien ambient dissonance and warm unnatural half-light!
In the first piece, ‘Parties sud puis nord’, tribal drums and hyper percussion are intermittently infiltrated by reverberating clangs and deep disturbed atmospheric noise. It is a strangely compelling listen! Although if listened to by those of a disturbed mind it may likely trigger psychosis, one-legged.
You will not find another album like this. It will penetrate your dreams bringing raptures of nightmare terror, joyous pain and nerve scraping pleasure. As the stones with eyes move closer, watching, surrounding your house, you may never ‘escape into night’ or feel at ease again!’ GD
Tele Novella ‘Poet’s Tooth’ (Kill Rock Stars)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A wistful, almost disarming, Tele Novella weave their magic on an album that takes its cues from Harold & Maude and a removed version of the heartbreak yearning vulnerability of Nashville and Texas country music; albeit a version in which Cate Le Bon and Aldous Harding sip despondently from a bottle of life’s despair. Better still, Mike Nesmith writing for Patsy Cline.
As whimsical and beautifully executed as it all is, Poet’s tooth is a moving album of timeless tropes, somehow delivered musically and visually through a slightly off, sometimes surreal, vision of the familiar. Natalie Ribbons and foil Jason Chronis dream up an idiosyncratic staged world, their moniker taken from the serial drama/soap opera phenomenon of the “television novel”, a format most prominently produced for the Latin American markets.
Adolescence escapism wrapped in a softened, but no less stirring, epiphany, Tele Novella has a surreal, dreamy quality about them. From the Tex-Mex border of yore to the contemporary Austin scene of City Limits, they weave a really impressive songbook that’s as Hal Ashby and Sidney Lumet as it is pining Country and Western. Poet’s Tooth is both lyrically and musically perfect; one of my favourite albums of 2023 – no idle boast. Prepare to be equally charmed and moved with a counterculture resurgence of quality, subtle comedy and tragedy, eccentric disillusion.’ DV
Tomo-Nakaguchi ‘The Long Night in Winter Light’ (Audio Bulb Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is a beautiful album where each piece conjures-up a different vision of winter – the wonder of nature surviving and flourishing as the seasons change! As the composer himself says, the music reflects the beauty of nature – frost glistening on grass – a field of snow lit by moonlight – the night sky filled with stars! Like a ray of light, a ray of hope, this is beauty that shines through the darkest of times!’ GD
Ali Farka Touré ‘Voyageur’ (World Circuit)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘This latest project, produced by the label’s Nick Gold who spent time with the late Ali (his brilliant accompanying notes are full of vivid anecdotes and adventures spent with the Mali icon) and his scion, the equally gifted virtuoso Vieux Farka Touré is the first album of ‘unheard’ material from the legend since his 2010 posthumously released partnership with Diabate.
Voyageur is a welcoming addition to the catalogue, an incredible nomadic traverse of songs that capture Mali’s diversity and rich musical heritage; especially with his celebrated guests opening the sound up, travelling even further afield to those bordering regions that meet Mali.
Ali Farka Touré aficionados will find this a welcome addition to the chronology, with recordings that many will have either never known about or been anticipating. But I’m sure there’s going to be surprises for even the most committed of fans. And for newcomers to Ali’s legacy, this album will prove a great entry point with its diversity and range, showing Ali with various collaborators and paying homage to several cultural styles, traditions. These songs are anything but unfinished scraps, demos, or downtime experiments. Instead, Voyageur is a collection of real quality.’ DV
Trupa Trupa ‘ttt’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘The Polish outfit Trupa Trupa fashion their very own Faust Tapes out of an accumulation of sonic explorations, unfinished jams and rehearsal sessions, field recordings and play.
In the interval between recording new martial ttt is an almost seamless cassette offering of two experimental sound collages – coming in at just under the forty-minute mark. A development played out under the spell of psychedelic hallucination, mirage and more caustic machined distortions and abrasions, the triple “ts” experiment could be read as a really untethered avant-garde outlet for the band. Not that they’ve ever been conventional on that front with previous works melding and contorting, as they do, psych with no wave, post-punk, the industrial and indie to produce a multi-limbed psycho drama or revelation, the hypnotic and propulsive.
Trupa Trupa are in their ascendency all right, their creative collective consciousness constantly dreaming up fresh ways of hearing and articulating the wastelands of what was once called civilisation; the discourse all but filtered out for the most part on this immersive experience. They can do no wrong it seems at the moment, and must be considered one of the most important bands to emerge from Europe in the last decade. On the strength of this latest release it will be very interesting to know where they will go next.’ DV
V______________________
Various ‘New No York’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘A compilation of music from Metal Postcard bands, but what all these bands have in common is Andy Goz. Yes, the guitar genius who’s in all these bands, and all the bands are of course pretty darn special.
New No York is a quite wonderful comp of post-punk invention and fury and no doubt will be soundtracking my next few weeks.’ BBS
Various ‘Parchman Prison Prayer – Some Mississippi Sunday Morning’ (Glitterbeat Records) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Back in the state penitentiary system, the producer, author and violence prevention expert Ian Brennan finds the common ground once more with another cast of under-represented voices. Eight years on from his applauded, Grammy nominated Zomba Prison Project, Brennan, thousands of miles away from that Malawi maximum-security facility in the deep, deep South of America, surprises us with an incredible raw and “uncloyed” (one of Brennan’s best coined interpretations of his production and craft) set of performances of redemption and spiritual conversion.
There’s music, song and litany that would be recognizable to inmates from the turn of the last century, whilst others, tap right into the modern age. The Gospel’s message runs deep in the Southern realms, and encouragingly seems to motivate even those with little hope of being released. Hard times are softened by belief and redemption on a revelatory production. Returning to America after a myriad of recordings throughout the world’s past and present war zones, scenes of genocide and remote fabled communities, Brennan finds just as much trauma and the need for representation back home.’ DV
Various ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ & ‘Intended Consequences’ (Apranik Records)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link /Link two
‘As the West’s attention is quite rightly invested in the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine, it’s fallen on artists, musicians to draw that intense scrutiny on the Iranian regime and its heinous treatment of women. Prompted by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in the custody of the authorities last year, an ensuing battle of ideals and freedoms has ensued that threatens to topple the tyranny. However, the regime has pushed back harder and with an almost unprecedented violence started executing (mainly men so far) supporters and activists on trumped up, tortured confessional charges of treason. But even in the face of this bloody repression history is on the side of Iran’s younger more liberal generations.
In bringing that plight to Western attention and ears, Iranian artists AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah announced two volumes of not-for-profit compilations.
Both platform a multi-diverse cosmology of electronic female artists working both under endurable pains and censorship inside Iran, or self-exiled and making waves in the diaspora. Each compilation is a discovery of riches in the field of the avant-garde, techno, sound experimentation and protest. There’s been few worthier causes, and few that have been so ignored: the outrage, protests and marches here in the West sadly lacking and silent.’ DV
Violet Nox ‘Vortex And Voices’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A sci-fi chemistry of vapours the Boston, Massachusetts electronic outfit Violet Nox once more entrance with a futuristic new age album of psy-trance, cerebral techno and acid ethereal-voiced self-realization/self-discovery. Wired into the “now” however, messages of self-love and inclusiveness waft and drift to a rhythmic, wavy vision of EDM, crossover rave music and soulful electronica.
For this newest venture – their first for the highly prolific and quality North American label Somewherecold Records – features, more than ever, the experimental, often effected, vocals of group member Noell Dorsey: a mix of hippie cooed yearn, Tracey Thorn, Claudia Brücken and Esbe if you will.
Whether it’s journeying into the subconscious or leaving for celestial rendezvous’, Violet Nox turn the vaporous into an electronic art form that’s simultaneously yearning and mysterious. Fizzing with techy sophistication and escapism, the American electronic group continue to map out a fresh sonic universe.’ DV
W_______________________
The Waeve ‘The Waeve’ (Transgressive)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘The WAEVE are a new band formed by Blur’s Graham Coxon (vocals/sax/guitar/medieval lute) and The Pipettes’ Rose Elinor Dougall (singer/songwriter/piano/ARP 2000 Synth).
The interaction and balance between the two voices is perfect with each singer excelling in their introversion and reserve! The band do have their own sound – a strange mix of folk-rock, punk, no wave, psych and easy listening! A truly great album that deserves a wide audience! Give it a listen – you may be surprised!’ GD
The Wedding Present ’24 Songs’ (HHBTM Records)
Chosen by BBS
‘An album that collects the A and B-sides to the series of singles released last year by the mighty Wedding Present, so obviously one of the best of the year.’ BBS
Y__________________________
Dhafer Youssef ‘Street of Minarets’ (Back Beat Edition)
Chosen by GD
Z___________________________
Zohastre ‘Abracadabra’ (ZamZam)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Spinning and dancing around the phosphor glowing fire whilst invoking a polygenesis array of pagan, hermetic and galactic deities, the French-Italian combo cast magical spells of progressive, psychedelic, noise, primitivism, electronica and cosmic krautrock on their conjuring sonic Wurlitzer.
Reworking references from each of the duos respective countries into a dizzy and often accelerated kaleidoscope of acid-trip occult ritual and more moody, near eerie, mystical uncertainty, Héloise Thibault and Olmo Guadagnoli combine an electronic soundboard with drums as they hurtle, collide and work a frenzy around the maypole.
For those seeking to discover some lost tribe of extraterrestrial worshipping acolytes with a penchant for Zacht Automaat, Sunburned Hand Of Man and the Soft Machine then ZamZam Records have you covered with an occult and tripping invitation too good to be missed.‘ DV
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.
Choice/Favourite Albums Of The Year: Part Two: H to N
December 14, 2023
SELECTED BY GRAHAM DOMAIN, BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA & DOMINIC VALVONA
Welcome to PART TWO of this year’s favourite/choice albums features. If you missed PART ONE, follow this link.
2023’s list, as ever in alphabetical order, is broken down into three more digestible parts.
And as we have since our inception back in 2008, the Monolith Cocktail continues to avoid 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. We’ve always chosen a much more diplomatic, democratic alphabetical order – something we more or less started in the first place.
Whilst we are proud to throw every genre, nationality together in a serious of eclectic lists, this year due to various collaborators commitments, there will be a separate Hip-Hop roundup by Matt Oliver in the New Year.
The lists, broken up this year into three parts (A to F, H to N, P to Z), includes 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 chose it, a review link where applicable, and finally a link to the album itself and a quote.
So without further ado, cast your eyes over the H to N entries for 2023.
H________
Hackedepicciotto ‘Keepsakes’ (Mute)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘The sound of Berlin with stopovers across Europe and New York City, Keepsakes conjures up evocative visions, dramas and characters out if the arty, the gothic, the cerebral and surreal; creating an alternative photo album and collection of memories, events. As earthy as it is dreamily floating in a constructed world of fairytale, myth and magic, the creatively sagacious couple draws upon a lifetime of experiences, friendships to produce another captivating album for the Mute label.’ DV
H. Hawkline ‘Milk For Flowers’ (Heavenly)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by Gillian Stone/Link
‘Starting out a certain way, where you think you know what you’re getting into, then taking you by surprise, is the thematic journey of H. Hawkline’s Milk For Flowers (Heavenly). So is lyrical vulnerability.
Milk For Flowers begins steeped in traditional songwriting, takes you on a breathless journey, then brings you back into a place of safety, where feelings can be acknowledged and processed.’ GS
Healing Force Project ‘Drifted Entities Vol. 2’ (Beat Machine)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘The re-rebirth of cool in an ever-forward momentum of flux, Antonio Marini’s Healing Force Project once more tumbles across a broken-beat, jungle, free-jazz and cosmic spectrum of reverberating exploration and spliced assemblage.
A splashy mirage of effected, realigned beats and reframed jazz inspirations sent out into space, Volume 2 in this series continues the ‘spiritual music mission’ but offers something once more eclectic and boundless.’ DV
Andrew Heath ‘Scapa Flow’ (Disco Gecko)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A geopoetry; a psychogeography of that famous body of shallow waters, Heath’s gauzy drifts, serene washes, glassy piano notes, Myles Cochran and Joe Woodham-like post-rock refracted guitar bends and harpic zither spindles coalesce to score an effective mysterious soundtrack to the former naval base and battleship graveyard.
Andrew Heath plays a combination of instruments, merged with ambient and real sounds that falls somewhere between such notable artists as his old foil Roedelius, Eno, John Lane (i.e. A Journey Of Giraffes), Jon Tye, Ulrich Schnauss and Flexagon. Stirrings from beneath are conveyed with a subtle drama and sonic history on yet another exemplary album of minimalist music.’ DV
The Holy Family ‘Go Zero’ (Rocket Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A phantasmagoria of occult manifestations, conjured or drawn from out the old soil, from out of the ether, The Holy Family’s Go Zero album offers darkness with glimmers of light. The Holy of their name, taken from the controversial Angela Carter narrated documentary on Christ’s depiction in the Western art cannon, not so forgiving and Christian, but an open vassal for confronting and exploring the divine and ungodly. Guidance there is none, as the band unnerve, rush, grind or prowl across a mystical dreaded mind fuck of a world that mirrors our own mortal chaotic, ungovernable hell hole. In short, it’s a great dense trip with dramatic voodoo and accelerated velocity.’ DV
James Howard ‘Peek-A-Boo’ (Faith & Industry)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘To a languid soundtrack of bendy, dreamy blue Hawaii (relocated to Margate), and Tales Of The Unexpected and Third Man waltzes performed in a spoiled ballroom that Strictly Come Dancing couldn’t even revive, James Howard once again wanders wistfully across a worn, battered, disconsolate post-Brexit landscape.
Augurs of a reckoning; the sullied state of a septic Isle; an English seaside Ennio Morricone; just some of the feels and atmospheres all listlessly and longingly channeled into a well-crafted songbook (complete with leveling-up asides/intervals). Howard shields the hurt to an extent with his soft stinging observations, aphorisms and melodramas on yet another fantastic album; one of my favourites of 2023 already.’ DV
J__________
Carmen Jaci ‘Happy Child’ (Noumenal Loom)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A brilliance of candy-electronica and Casio symphonies, Happy Child is a clever work of unburdened, unpretentious, but indeed deliberate and well-crafted, kidulthood. Jacki Carmen’s magical, if occasionally straying into the mysterious, new album pings back and forth with humour and, above all else, playfulness. Not for the burgeoning artist (I say burgeoning, Carmen is quite the professional technician with some years of experience: you can even pay for one-on-one tuitions at her own studio) the sour-faced seriousness of many of her peers, this is electronic music with a taste of fantasy and fun recollections of childhood.’ DV
Kenneth Jimenez ‘Sonnet To Silence’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Taking a leap into the untethered realms of Kenneth Jimenez’s dreams, the jump off point for his newest album literally takes flight. The Brooklyn-based bassist, composer and quartet bandleader runs for the mountains and sprouts wings; flying over the valley and the versant contours of free jazz and hard-bop: ala New York style.
So much is happening on this incredible, engaging and sometimes challenging (in the best possible way) album, which draws you in and then ups or changes the tempo, mood and direction. This is free jazz at its most promising; certainly encouraging and with dreamy quality that lifts you up into an imaginative vision of soaring and more complicated expression. Kenneth Jimenez and his quartet have produced one of the leading jazz albums of 2023.’ DV
Darius Jones ‘fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred)’ (We Jazz/Northern Spy)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Absorbing all the history and ethos of Vancouver’s multidisciplinary Western Front hothouse, the acclaimed alto-saxophonist, composer and bandleader Darius Jones conceptually, artfully embodies the spirit of that creative hub’s avant-garde, Fluxus/Duchampian foundations on his new album of free-jazz movements.
Jones and ensemble have created something emotionally charged and highly expressive (challenging too, in a good way) from a site and history. The home of the avant-garde in Vancouver proves fertile, fiery kindle for an impressive, raw at times, catharsis and unload of free thought and art.’ DV
Junkboy ‘Littoral States’ (Wayside & Woodlands)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A loving tribute, romantic cartography and healing process, Littoral States provides an alternative pathway from another age; a world away from the vacuous self-absorption of popular culture and the distractions of the internet. It’s a wonderful, magical, and for the most part reassuring, gentle gradient landscape that the brothers dream up; tailoring nostalgia and influences into something picturesque, peaceable but above all, moving. Folklore from a recent past is woven into much older geological layers, with the emphasis on the element of water; acting as the source, the road that connects the stopover on this West and East Sussex travelogue photo album. It’s good to have them back in the fold, so to speak, waxing lyrical and dreamily envisioning such beautiful escapism.’ DV
L____________
Laraaji & Kramer ‘Baptismal’ (Shimmy Disc)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Divine styler of radiant ambiance zither spiritualism Laraaji can be found in communion with no less a pioneer than Shimmy Disc founder and downtown no wave doyen Mark Kramer, on this latest release from the New York label. Two pioneers of their form together over four movements of immersive, deeply affected mood music, draw on their extensive knowledge and intuition to create suites rich in the mysterious, the afflatus and more supernatural. What’s not to like.’ DV
Natalie Rose LeBrecht ‘Holy Prana Open Game’
Chosen by DV & Graham Domain/Reviewed by Graham Domain/Link
‘This is a beautiful album of cosmic folk strangeness singular in its vision and unique today, in its combination of sounds.
Sitting somewhere between Nico, Linda Perhacs and Alice Coltrane, the six haunting songs have superb intricate arrangements and a wonderful spiritual element! It could easily be mistaken for a long-lost album from the 1970’s, such is its charm.
Every home should own a copy of this album and play it each day as the sun rises bringing hope to the world.’ GD
Legless Crabs ‘American Russ’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by Brain Bordello Shea/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘What if Joan Jett was telling lies and she did not love Rock ‘n’ roll at all, and she was just playing at it to make her millions, and really she loved nothing better than to listen to the old sequence dance compilations – the Swing And Sway series say – or was really a closet Pat Boone fan and preferred his version of Long Tall Sally and not in a ironic way, and did not believe in the old adage that the devil had all the best tunes (which to be truthful is not true, as Cliff Richards Jesus single was one of the finest singles of the 1970s). If Joan Jett was indeed a fake I am sure The Legless Crabs could and would turn the leather panted one to the dark side. And I don’t mean the Dark Side Of The Moon as that is as rock ‘n’ roll as a defrosted box of Fish Fingers. I mean the dark side of rock ‘n’ roll, the side filled with feedback and Cramps like guitar riffs and both sexual frustration and sexual exploitation (in a seedy 70s porn like way). See, that is what I like about the Legless Crabs, they are rock ‘n’ roll in a seedy 70s porn like way.’ BBS
Yungchen Lhamo ‘One Drop of Kindness’ (Real World Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is a fantastic album of beautiful spiritual music by the wonderful world-renowned Tibetan female singer. Accompanied by a variety of acoustic instruments from around the world the seven songs are offerings to the Great Divine Spirit ‘devoted to spiritual awakening, unconditional love and compassion for all beings!’ A record to treasure – a beacon of hope in the darkest of times.’ GD
The Lilac Time ‘Dance Till All The Stars Come Down’ (Poetica)
Chosen by BBS
‘‘Why Stephen Duffy is not as big as Bob Dylan, I will never know. Maybe it is because Dylan did not form Duran Duran or make albums with Robbie Williams and Nigel Kennedy (one of the best LPs from the 90’s). Dance Till The Stars Come Down is yet another album from The Lilac Time‘s that is criminally ignored.’ BBS
Antti Lütjönen ‘Circus/Citadel’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘During the initial pandemic wave of April 2020 the double-bassist maestro Antti Lötjönen released his debut proper as bandleader to a quintet of exciting Finnish jazz talent.
That album, Quintet East, with its monograph vignettes and flexible free-play of be bop, Sonny Clark, the left bank and Bernstein-like musical NYC skylines, is improved upon by the ensemble’s follow-up, Circus/Citadel. With a title both inspired and imbued by the Romanian-born, German-language titan of 20th century poetry, Paul Celan, the issues of a tumultuous world on the precipice of disaster is channeled through a controlled chaos and a reach for the old and new forms of expressive jazz.
I’m always building the We Jazz label up; always aggrandising that Helsinki based hub of Scandinavian jazz. But really, this is an enriching, immersive and artful start to the label’s 2023 calendar with a classic jazz album in the making. I reckon it will be one of the year’s best.’ DV
Lukid ‘Tilt’ (Glum)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Those of you waiting on a new Lukid album will not be disappointed. If more ‘refined’, composed and ‘simplistic’ than before, there’s still a real rhythm to Luke’s form of subtle but effective electronica. A ‘tilt’ perhaps of process, method and outcomes, this is a minimalistic iteration styled vision of dance music, submerged in lo fi veils, fuzz and gauze.
Tilt is an album of real quality; a cerebral distillation of Ambience, Techno, House and Electronic forms into some reification of time and moments caught before they disappear in smoke. This is a great returning album from the Lukid alias, one of the best in its field in 2023.‘ DV
Lunar Bird ‘The Birthday Party’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Disarming malady and alienation with such vaporous gauzy diaphanous veils of dream wave, Lunar Bird with a myriad of fellow Italian artists and musicians weave vulnerability and fragility into the most purified of intoxicating pop songs.
Not so much dipping as submerged fully in that drowsy intoxicating dream vision, Lunar Bird entwine emotional pulls, anxieties with the most delicious, sumptuous of Southern European ethereal pop. The Birthday Party is a spellbinding songbook that subtly pushes the Italo-Welsh group into swimmingly new waters without losing the signature diaphanous bohemian sound we all love them for. There’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t be much bigger, well known and successful with potential hits like this.’ DV
M_____________
June McDoom ‘With Strings’ (Temporary Residence Ltd.)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Despite the diaphanous, wispy and hushed delivery, June McDoom’s voice is anything but evanescent or forgettable. Because just like one of her most cherished heroines, Judee Sill, every word and expression is believable as a lived experience of heartbreak, yearning and a close relationship with the elementals of an ethereal, but deeply felt, nature.
McDoom’s inspirations are worn on the sleeves, and yet I keep racking my brain to fathom who she reminds me of. An American Maria Monti? A softer Natalie Ribbons? Maybe a passing resemblance to Connie Converse perhaps? McDoom settles somewhere in-between them all as a refreshing, heavenly talent as she disarms the hurt and depth of emotional turmoil, inquiry and wonder with the most beautiful and impressive of deliveries.’ DV
Jean Mignon ‘An/al’ (Metal Postcard)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘
‘Raucous debut album by New York based Johnny Steines. A mixture of high energy garage punk and high-speed rock and roll – it sounds like a live album such is the energy contained in the grooves!
‘Tackled By Men’ recycles parts of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, whilst ‘Canadian Exit’ has echoes of Warsaw’s ‘Failures’. If he can produce this excitement in a live-setting he will surely make his own impact! Primal Rock and Roll that screams from the speakers andexcites like a high-speed car chase!’ GD
Liela Moss ‘Internal Working Model’ (Bella Union)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘There are some great melodies and expressive vocal performances on the album. At times, she reminds me of Sarah Blasko at her most colourful and daring! ‘The Wall from the Floor’ sounds like a James Bond theme with its ethereal vocals and ‘Bad World’ refrain! ‘Ache in the Middle’ meanwhile has a melody that falls somewhere in-between Tears for Fears Mad World and Kate Bush the Sensual World! ‘New Day’ feels like a hymn to World Leaders for a better tomorrow – a call to feel empathy for others, concern and love for each other! If the overall feel of the electronic music is one of dystopia, alienation and oppression, the intent, the motivation is human – love and kindness as the antidote to isolation and inertia, feelings of helplessness transformed into positivity and action!’ GD
MultiTraction Orchestra ‘Reactor One’ (Aion Records)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘‘A moving, evocative odyssey [through] a myriad of imaginative, mysterious environments and landscapes. One of those albums that truly gets better and better with every listen.’ DV
N______________
N’dox Électrique ‘Tëdd ak Mame Coumba Lamba ak Mame Coumba Mbang’ (Bongo Joe) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Continuing to circumnavigate the depths of Africa, on a quest to connect with the purest origins of that continent’s atavistic rituals, the Mediterranean punk and avant-rock motivators Gianna Greco and François R. Cambuzat seize on the adorcist practices of Senegal’s Lebu people.
The successor to that partnership’s Ifriqiyya Electrique collaboration with the descendants of Hausa slaves (a project that produced two albums of exciting Sufi trance, spirit possession performance and technology), the next chapter, Ndox Électrique, radically transforms the Lebu’s N’doep ceremonies of spirit appeasement.
Between worlds the Ndox Électrique transformation moulds spheres of history and sound, whilst creating a dramatic new form of communication and ritual. Summoning up answers to a sickening society, both groups of participants in this blurred boundary exchange rev-up the sedate scene with a blast of authentic regeneration and dynamism. One that is neither wholly African nor European. Dimensions are crossed; excitement and empowerment, guaranteed.’ DV
Neon Kittens ‘Nine Doesn’t Work For An Outside Line’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS & GD/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘Post-punk beatnik shenanigans are afoot with this the new release from Neon Kittens. Their second album [I think] carries on where their last left off, with spoken female vocals purring erotically like an attractive nun filing her nails, smiling, knowing her crotchless knickers are only slightly hidden by her too short mini habit wondering just where to place her oversized cross next, over the scratch and sniff guitar yearnings that are part Fire Engines, part Scary Monster & Super Creeps, part rock ‘n’ roll, and part sexual abandonment. Yes, this is the true sound of total derailment. This is the sound of a 15 year old girl French kissing her jazz induced slightly older best friend with benefits; an album of pure off-center genius.’ BBS
Sam Newsome & Jean-Michel Pilc ‘Cosmic Unconsciousness Unplugged’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Joining the ranks of the great jazz (although they go beyond that, into the blues, classical and avant-garde) duos, the partnership of experimental soprano saxophonist and composer Sam Newsome and pianist, composer and educator Jean-Michel Pilc left a critically acclaimed marker with 2017’s Magic Circle album. Before that, and ever since, both foils in that collaborative duet built up enviable reputations, notably with Newsome as a soloist, and Pilc with his trio.
There’s some real class mixed with the unburdened pouring through every second of this album’s fifteen pieces; a real sense of freedom on the move, with the destination uncharted, unsettled and in some small part, mysterious. But as a showcase, the ‘unplugged’ consciousness platform reinforces the reputations of Sam Newsome and Jean-Michel Pilc’s explorative mastership and ingenious collaboration.’ DV
Greg Nieuwsma & Antonello Perfetto ‘Earth’ (Submarine Broadcasting Co.)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by Andrew C. Kidd/Link
‘The score offered by Nieuwsma and Perfetto is as complex and intricate as the source material. Their waveforms and filters arpeggiate poetically to illuminate its idealism. They bring me closer to the chimaera of collectivisation that Dovzhenko was perhaps intending to showcase.’ ACK
Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra ‘Family’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘The debut from Gard Nilssen and his Supersonic Orchestra Family album is ambitious in scale and musicality; a real impressive first effort that in which Prikoviv, Ayler, Coleman, Braxton, Dolphy and Phil Ranelin mix it with Ill Considered, Binker & Moses and The Hypnotic Brass Band over an octet of extended suites. I can hardly do it justice in the brief space I’ve got left, but suffice to say, this is an incredible cacophony of every era in the jazz and classical cannon you can think of; everything from Latin to bop, the soulful, theatrical, wild and even stage. Wow. A real feat.’ DV
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.
Choice/Favourite Albums Of The Year: Part One: A to F: A Journey Of Giraffes to Nick Frater
December 11, 2023
SELECTED BY GRAHAM DOMAIN, BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA & DOMINIC VALVONA
Just when we thought it couldn’t get much worse: it did. 2023 has been yet another, if not even more depressing shit show on the world stage and closer to home. The stalemate defence of Ukraine, Hamas’ barbaric massacre and rape on the 7th October, and the Israeli retaliation; the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region; the cost of living crisis; threat of pandemics and all kinds of illness; bedbugs; A.I.; strikes; activism; fuel poverty; Iranian protests; and the continuing horror show of a zombie government dragging on, being just some examples. 2023 qualifies as one of the most incomprehensible years on record of any epoch; an ungovernable country in the grip of austerity point 2.0 (the architect of the last one now back to haunt us all again), and greater world untethered and at the mercy of the harridans on either side of the extreme political divide, the billionaire corporates and narcissist puritans.
Despite the myriad of problems that face artists and bands in the industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, and the ever encroaching problems of streaming against physical sales and exposure, people just can’t quit making music. And for that we, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys do. In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so, instead of those silly, factious and plain dumb numerical charts that our peers and rivals insist on continuing to print – how can you really suggest one album deserves their place above or below another; why does one entry get the 23rd spot and another the 22nd; unless it is a vote count –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic, democratic alphabetical order – something we more or less started in the first place.
Whilst we are proud to throw every genre, nationality together in a serious of eclectic lists, this year due to various collaborators commitments, there will be a separate Hip-Hop roundup by Matt Oliver in the New Year. The lists, broken up this year into three parts (A to F, H to N, P to Z), includes 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 chose it, a review link where applicable, and finally a link to the album itself.
A_
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Empress Nouveau’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen & Reviewed By Dominic Valvona/ Link
‘Imbued by a suffusion of influences, most notably Harold Budd and Susumu Yokota (once more) but also Kazumichi Komatsu, Sakamoto & Sylvain, Andrew Heath and Eno, John Lane spins, weaves and spindles the essence of place and time; stirring up dulcimer-like tones of the Orient, a hand-ringing school (could also be a call to prayer, or assembly point prompt, perhaps the intermission signal at the opera or theatre) bell, or softly evoking a South American wilderness.
This is yet another essential album from one of the best artists working in this field of subtle, sometimes breathtaking and sublime, exploration – although this is experimenting without sounding like you’re experimenting, if that makes sense. It’s a joy to experience.’ DV
Dot Allison ‘Consciousology’ (Sonic Cathedral)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by Matteo Maioli/Link
‘Folks? backstory? Chamber-pop? I do not know. All this and also none of it. Simply: Dot Allison.’ MM
Anohni and the Johnsons ‘My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross’ (Rough Trade)
Chosen by Graham Domain
Anthéne & Simon McCorry ‘Florescence’ (Oscarson)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A both hallowed and moving merger of seasonal changes, suffused with a certain gravitas and meaning, the pastoral is revalued and sent out on a voyage of reflection. Florescence is yet another minimalistic work of sublime quality from a collaboration perfectly in-synch with each other.’ DV
Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff ‘Magg Tekki’ (Sing A Song Fighter/Mississippi Records) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘In action, they sound out a controlled raucous of rustling, shaking ancestral calls and conscious version of Afro-beat, Afro-jazz and Afro-soul; like Kuti sharing the stage with Laba Sosseh and Seckou Keita. As a counterbalance, a pause from the rolling and polyrhythmic drums, there are short interludes of time-outs in the community and under nature’s canopy of bird song: the sound of the breeze blowing through the trees overhead and all around, and of children playing in the background, as the kora speaks in communal contemplation.
At times they create a mysterious atmosphere of grasslands, and at other times, play a more serenaded song on the boulevards that lead down to the sea. On fire then, when in full swing, but able to weave a more intricate gentler sound too, the AGBDGY prove an exhilarating, dancing combo with much to share: the ancestral lineage leading back centuries, but lighting up the present.‘ DV
B__
Moonlight Benjamin ‘Wayo’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘No one quite channels the “iwa” spirits and musical, drum-beating ceremony of Haitian vodou like one of its most exhilarating priestesses, Moonlight Benjamin. Returning with her atmospheric and grinded-scuzz swamp-blues foil Matthis Pascaud for a third manifestation of hungered electrified vodou-blues, Moonlight roughs up and adds a wider tumult of energy to her vocally incredible and dirt music imbued sound of deep southern roots, West African and Hispaniola influences: an all-round Francophone sound you could say, from Louisiana to Mali and, of course, her homeland of Haiti.
As wild as it is composed, Moonlight Benjamin takes the vodou spirits back home to Africa, before returning, via the bayou, to Haiti on another fraught electrified album of divine communication.’ DV
Blur ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ (Parlophone/Warner)
Chosen by Brian Bordello
‘An album of nostalgia, melancholy and heartbreak, and one of Blur’s best.’ BBS
Brian Bordello ‘Songs For Cilla To Sing’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by DV & GD/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘As ridiculous as it may seem on the surface, the lower than lo fi (making Sparklehorse sound like a flash git bombastic ELO in comparison), nee no fi King of the well-worn Tascam four-track and St. Helens idiosyncratic Les Miserable, was only one person away on the Venn diagram of Cilla Black’s orbit. His potential songbook of flange-y distorted (more through low grade recording techniques) and curmudgeon demos did make its way to the, then retired from singing, Liverpool songbird – in the three or four decades before her death more the star of TV presenting and hosting than performer.
If imagining Brian Epstein inviting Ian McCulloch to front The Tremolos, or The Red Crayola, Spaceman 3 and a budget Inspiral Carpets time-travelled back to 1962 sounds like one incredible proposition, then this songbook is for you.’ DV
The Bordellos ‘Star Crossed Radio’ (Metal Postcard)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘The latest release by St Helens finest is a cabinet of curiosities containing some wonderful lo-fi gems and hitherto lost standards!
This album is one to treasure, an Aladdin’s cave of eclectic life affirming songs. The Bordellos are the fine web that holds the stars in place!’ GD
Jaimie Branch ‘Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War))’ (International Anthem) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘As an unwittingly last will and testament, the late experimental trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s final led album with her Fly Or Die ensemble is a beautiful collision of ideas and worldly fusions that pushes and pulls but never comes unstuck. In fact, despite the “world war” suffix backdrop this album of both hollered and more disarming protestation colourfully embraces the melodic, the groove and even the playful.
Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war)) is an accomplished album that channels the legacies of Chicago, New Orleans and New York to create an eclectic modern adventure in protest jazz.‘ DV
Julie Byrne ‘The Greater Wings’ (Ghostly International)
Chosen by GD
Bex Burch ‘There Is Only Love And Fear’ (International Anthem)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘In the moment extemporized expressions in multiple locations, both in Europe and North America, the feels on Bex Burch’s new album are led or prompted by a hand made xylophone. Any yet, there’s no particular pattern nor pathway to these captured performances; Burch joined as she is by a myriad of notable artists/musicians, all of whom only met for the first time before each improvised performance.
Each day is a different sound and a new canvas for Burch, who transcends her bearings and musical boundaries. There’s rhythm to these improvisations, a real groove that at times counterbalances the passages of avant-garde expression to create a non-linear journey of emotions, thoughtfulness and sense of yearned fears.’ DV
C___
Luzmila Carpio ‘Inti Watana: El Retorno Del Sol’ (Bongo Joe)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Full of wonderment and magic, the Bolivian performer and composer Luzmila Carpio returns with her first all-encompassing album in a decade. Imbued with an ancestral heritage and language that predates the Conquistadors colonial apocalypse, Carpio weaves and plays with her Aymara and Quechua roots, its creation stories, shamanistic ceremonies and humble custodianship of nature.
Carpio invites us into her dreams and meditations with a wonderful message of universal care and respect for that which nurtures and feeds us; an unbroken link to civilizations like the Incas, propelled into the 21st century.’ DV
Billy Childish & CTMF ‘Failure Not Success’ (Damaged Goods Records)
Chosen by BBS
‘Quite simply what Billy Childish does best: spit feathers at an unplucked rock ‘n roll chicken.’ BBS
Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers ‘Somanti’ (Bongo Joe)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Reuniting for a second explosive dynamic album of electrified Vodou and Mizik Rasin, the Haitian collective Chouk Bwa and the Belgian production duo The Angströmers once more propel ritual and ceremony into an otherworldly futuristic setting.
Music from another dimension, the Haitian roots music and performative religious invocations and words of wisdom from Chouk Bwa are sent through a vortex into the future on another successful union.’ DV
Julian Cope ‘Robin Hood’ (Head Heritage)
Chosen by BBS
‘An album of psych, folk and pop wizardry; one that matches up to the best of the man. Cope is on a run of brilliance that is equal to his run of greatness from the late 80s to early 90s. A national treasure, and one of the last living motherfuckers.’ BBS
Creep Show ‘Yawning Abyss’ (Bella Union)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘Make no mistake, John Grant is a genius! As half of Creep Show he provides the moments of sheer joy! ‘Bungalow’ comes over like a song that could have been on any of his brilliant solo albums, post ‘Queen of Denmark’. It’s a fantastic vocal, the music dark, funny, sexy, – electronic music at its best and a good song to boot! Elsewhere we find him singing strange rhymes on the title track ‘Yamning Abyss’ – a song that grows on you with each play.’ GD
D____
Vumbi Dekula ‘Congo Guitar’ (Hive Mind/Sing A Song Fighter)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Removed from a full-on band setting of loud blazed, wailed horns, thundering drums and chanted vocals Kahanga “Vumbi” Dekula’s legendary guitar shines on a new solo album of his melodious virtuoso playing.
Hive Mind’s inaugural partnership with Winqvist’s own Sing-A-Song-Fighter label is both a joy and discovery; the Congolese star, more or less, singlehandedly capturing the listener’s attention with a captivating septet of natural, expressive performances.’ DV
Diepkloof United Voice ‘Harmonizing Soweto: Golden City Gospel & Kasi Soul’
(Ostinato Records) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Incredibly moving and enriching for the soul, the united Diepkloof chorus has achieved the seminal with nothing more than their voices; releasing perhaps one of the year’s most essential records.’ DV
Dexter Dine ‘Flood’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by Gillian Stone/Link
‘The self-defined Brooklyn, NY-based “apartment rocker” conjures a diverse and expansive sound that is a “mixture of melodic samples, multi-part drum grooves, and off-kilter saxophone solos”. From the Animal Collective vibes of “Flooded Meadows”, “Splatter In Two”, and “Lockeeper”, to the Juana Molina-esque “Peanutbutter”, to the Bossa Nova feel of “Valley Of Air”, the beats he creates are the driving force behind this electroacoustic pursuit.
Dine is a prolific artist, and his work is ethereal, striking, and drenched in both sunshine and melancholy.’ GS
Matt Donovan ‘Sleep Until The Storm Ends’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘In the face of political, social discourse and ruin, lawlessness, loss and anxiety Donovan captures the evocative moments and scenes we all often take for granted; turning nighttime walks, the memories of loved ones into something musically and sonically lasting.
Barefoot Contessa daydreams sit well with clavichord buzz splintered boogies on yet another enriching and rewarding album that slowly unfurls its understated balm of warmth and also protestation gradually over repeated plays. On the fringes certainly, a true independent diy artist, Matt Donovan is far too good to stay under the radar. Do yourselves a favour, grab a copy on bandcamp now.’ DV
Dur-Dur Band Intl. ‘The Berlin Session’ (Outhere Records)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Marking the first session of new-recorded music since the halcyon days of their heydays in 80s Somali, the revivalist legacy incarnation of the Dur-Dur Band is back with a truly “international” sounding groove.
Simultaneously familiar whilst offering a fresh songbook (of a sort), the Dur-Dur Band Int. Berlin Session is as lilting as it is dynamic. Above all it’s always grooving to a unique fusion of worldly rhythms and beats, catapulting that Somali funk to new heights and hopefully making new fans with lively and cool performances. Nothing should keep you buying a copy.’ DV
Dutch Uncles ‘True Entertainment’ (Memphis Industries)
Chosen by GD
Dyr Faser ‘Karma Revenge’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘It turns out that Dyr Faser are rather good at mixing the esoteric krautrock of the Amon Düül family (especially the Wagnerian acid-wash and otherworldly vocals of Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz) with grunge, alt/post/space rock and doom; bridging morbid curiosities, spirals of melancholy with black sun fun, fun, fun! A great duo to discover. ” DV
E_____
Eamon The Destroyer ‘We’ll Be Piranhas’ (Bearsuit Records)
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘Performed with a wit and wisdom only matched by the beauty and musical genre hopping extravagance not seen since John Peel dropped his record collection down three flights of stairs… A madness of electronica, psychedelia, dance and pop; at times sounding like an inspired Momus after sharing magic mushroom soup with Cornelius and Ivor Cutler. Yes, there is magic in these tracks that one can lie back and completely lose themselves in…’ BBS
The Early Mornings ‘Ultra-Modern Rain’ EP (Practise Music/Rough Trade)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD /Link
‘It is an exhilarating ride of moody bass lines, spikey guitar, distorted chords and garage drums with vocals by Annie Leader.’ GD
Ex-Norwegian ‘Sooo Extra’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘Sooo Extra is the 14th album from Ex Norwegian and like all the other Ex Norwegian albums I have heard it is a rather excellent affair full of pop hooks and has a lovely undercurrent of darkness, a bittersweet taste of songwriting savvy you really do not come across everyday: sadly.’ BBS
F______
Fantastic Twins ‘Two Is Not A Number’ (House Of Slessor)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Competitive from the outset, birthed from a primordial cosmic womb, the Fantastic Twins in Julienne Dessagne’s otherworldly sci-fi fantasy go through hellish travails and separation before finding a final resolution. From the bawled birth of ‘I Was First’, the Berlin-based French producer, musician and vocalist explores the magic, duality and multiplicity of twins over an album of metallic, chrome and liquefied material sci-fi and otherworldliness: even the haunted and supernatural.
Albums from Carl Craig, Man Parrish, Fever Ray, Andy Stott and others, alongside the influence of Cosey Fanny Tutti, Chris Carter, Coil, Nina Simone and Pan Sonic can be added to the depth and range of this accumulative mood board and framework.
It proves a fertile concept and doorway to the investigations of the “psyche” and its relationship to all manner of inquisitive explorations. A most striking sophisticated debut from an artist with depth and curiosity.’ DV
Fat Francis ‘Oyster’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Disillusioned despondency and a touch of the roguish are filtered through softened hues of idiosyncratic lo fi beauty, as Fat Frances’ hardened, worn-down posterior reveals a heart-wrenching drip-drip pouring of poetic insecurity, dealt and languorous resignation.
Yet despite the wretchedness of the world, the austerity and the lawlessness and directionless malaise of our times, there’s a melodious magic to be found in this rough diamond’s (excuse the cliché) Northern lament. It’s as if Frances has somehow brought an air of Bonnie & Clyde folklore, or an enervated and far less violent Badlands to a West Yorkshire pastoral landscape.
Oyster has quickly become one of my favourite albums of 2023 – the balmy washes and heartache wistfulness drift of ‘Billy’, a worthy earnest but sublime song, being just one highlight. It should if life was fair, bring attention and plaudits to this artist, but I won’t hold my breath.’ DV
Fhae ‘Sombre Thorax’ (4000 Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is a wonderful album of ethereal, ambient, dream-folk-pop that ebbs and flows like the tides and inhabits its own world of subtle beauty. Sometimes, mists of the sea seem to creep into the music and the edges of reality become blurred, the music shape shifting into another dimension!
A fantastic debut album, I can’t wait to hear more!’ GD
Fir Cone Children ‘The Urge to Overtake Time’ (Blackjack Illuminist Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is fantastic album from Berlin based band Fir Cone Children. It sounds like it was recorded in 1979 when New Wave (Post Punk) creativity took hold for a couple of years and no two bands were the same!
Time Needs an Upgrade’ sounds like the Cure mixed with the Pop Group. ‘Snowblack’ sounds like Wire led by Jeff Lynne! ‘The Inability to Raise the Left Corner of my Mouth’ sounds like the Buzzcocks if they had been from San Francisco circa 1968. ‘It Feels Complete’ sounds like the Cramps if they had been Buddhist Monks! ‘Spider School’ sounds like the Scars mixed with the Undertones and Interpol. ‘One Hundred Years’ sounds like the Sound mixed with Wire and MBV! But moreover, although there are always comparisons to be made, Fir Cone Children have an individual spark; the music is much more than the sum of its influences! Perhaps, the best German band since Faust!’ GD
Flagboy Giz ‘Disgrace To The Culture’ (Injun Money Records)
Chosen by DV
‘Exciting bounce-hip-hop-modern-R&B cross-pollinations from the colorful, parading Mardi Gras tail-feather shaking chief, who once more leads with attitude and verve another street theatrics company of like-minded artists on a strut through New Orleans. The second album from motivator, performer, producer and MC, Flagboy Giz – he of the world famous Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians -, and his crew of contributors, is a rambunctious hyper merger of The Meters, Neville Brothers, Lee Dorsey, Dr. John. Master P, Lil Wayne and DJ Jubilee. What’s not to like.’ DV
Flat Worms ‘Witness Marks’ (Drag City)
Chosen by DV
‘I’d like to believe the reemergence of the L.A. garage-punk-rockers is down to my glowing review of the their Live In L.A. album from 2022 (which made our choice albums of that year). But whatever the reasons, their return (back once again in the Ty Segall fold) is very much welcome; especially as they’ve lost none of that vociferous wired attitude and spirit. Witness Marks is an assured, mature and heavy vortex of growling and fierce, but slacker too, Gang Of Four, Salem Trials, Modern Lovers, The Fall and The Southern Death Cult sounds. And if that doesn’t grab you, nothing else will.’ DV
Flexagon ‘The Towers I: Inaccessible’ (Disco Gecko)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Through a near domination of the high seas, a skill in winning wars, a Norman lineage and generally to annoy the French, the Channel Islands have been a British dependency for centuries. During that time a whole lot of history has passed under the bridge; the last 200 years of which are channeled by the Guernsey native, artist and environmental, site-specific composer Flexagon.
A work of site-specific atmospheric stirrings and timelessness, The Towers I: Inaccessible album translates the off-limits sites of Guernsey into a multi-layered sonic map for inquiring minds. An Island life, history and shared trauma is transduced across a mix of styles and delivery methods as both repurposed and more derelict out of bounds architecture is allowed to breath and to tell stories of the history that’s passed through its doors. Even with the all too awful reminders of Guernsey’s occupation (finally liberated in the May of 1945 after nearly five years of German authoritarian rule; at least a thousand of its people deported to camps in Southern Germany) these towers transmit plenty of arresting Meta and fertile research, which Flexagon and his foils have turned into a lush, dreamy and mysterious veiled journey.’ DV
Nick Frater ‘Bivouac’
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘The art of the concept album is alive and well and living in the confines of Nick Frater’s new album Bivouac; an album about escaping post industrial Britain and seeking solitude in a woodland sanctuary.
All the tracks run into each other giving you the blanket of warmth and melody, which really is not a bad thing and with the coming Winter months can indeed be an essential requirement as it may be the only warmth we get this year. It’s sunshine pop after all. It brings to mind the magic of Jellyfish and Squeeze at their best. The 70s am pop of Andrew Gold, Billy Joel, Todd Rundgren all collide and cause an explosion of one of the most heart warming and joyful albums of the year.’ BBS
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
The Perusal #50: Lea Bertucci, Universal Harmonies & Frequencies, June McDoom, Kenneth Jimenez, George Demure…
December 6, 2023
A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Universal Harmonies & Frequencies ‘Tune IN’
(Yeyeh)
Recorded in a five day window before their collaborative performance at the electronic music Dekmantel Festival (held in the Amsterdamse Bos, in the Netherlands), Jamel “Hieroglyphic Being” Moss and foil Jerzy Maczyński’s improvised sessions cover a lot of eclectic ground.
Marshall Jefferson meets Marshal Allen; jazz transduced through an electronic wave of electronic body movement, house, techno, trance and ambience, the project reconfigures, transforms and resets the perimeters with a spontaneous search for answers, realms, spaces and spiritual inquiry.
From an original soundboard of twenty-six long form peregrinations, whittled down and either left in their improvised form or reworked and reproduced under the guidance of recording engineer Rein De Sauvage Nolting (known on the scene as RDS), twelve finalized tracks emerged, selected by label facilitator Pieter Jansen. Each track finds a more exotic, mysterious and sometimes chaotic way to follow the rhythm and groove. For this is a strange and refreshing vision of dance music; an acid shooting laser beam and Artificial Intelligence album series imbued trip of whirly birds, alchemist mysticism, sci-fi and Pynchon metaphysics.
There’s fun to be had too, but a considered, sophisticated freedom of experience and influences that puts a diverse range of saxophone contours, breathing lungs-like expulsions of ruminated air, rasps, quacks and spirals with synthwaves, counter flows, various synthetic apparatus and a whole electronic ecology. Just the opening titular-track (running to twelve minutes) alone progresses through a shimmy-shimmer polygon analogue score of Sky Records kosmische, Lukid, psy-trance, house, Basic Channel, Beaumont Hannant and warbled synth-funk. Changing course, ‘Can U Hear The Hum’, which follows, marries Amazonian foliage and a squirreling Harmonia with the Inre Kretsen Grupp. And when we get to hear Moss and his motivational speeches on ‘Multidimensional Transformations’, it’s like Ramuntcho Matta go-going to early Chicago house music.
The fantasy mystery, ‘The Book Of Forbidden Knowledge’, reminded me of Bowie and his last ever foil, Donny McCaslin, and the tubular reed strained and piped ‘The Fifth Science’, has a touch of Matthew “Doc” Dunn’s Cosmic Range and his work with the saxophonist Andy Haas.
Within that stretch of the imagination, there’s moments of controlled tumult, the faraway sounds of a removed North Africa, crystallised visionary vistas, beautifully constructed mists, and waterside meditations. To put it another way, this partnership is like Floating points meets The Black Dog, Klaus Schulze, Benjamin Lew and Rebecca Vasmant in the most unique, transported of dance clubs: And that’s a very inviting proposition indeed.
June McDoom ‘With Strings EP’
(Temporary Residence Ltd.) Out Now Digitally/Vinyl Arrive February 24th 2024
Credit: Bella Newman
Despite the diaphanous, wispy and hushed delivery, June McDoom’s voice is anything but evanescent or forgettable. Because just like one of her most cherished heroines, Judee Sill, every word and expression is believable as a lived experience of heartbreak, yearning and a close relationship with the elementals of an ethereal, but deeply felt, nature.
On the follow-up to her debut EP, the burgeoning McDoom leads with a watery replenished and droplet-mimicking rendition of Sill’s environmental devotional, ‘Emerald River Dance’. The tragic, resurrected to cult status in recent years, troubadour’s fatalistic life was like something out of the gospels: updated in the bohemia of the Laurel Canyon. Forced into prostitution and petty crime to feed her drug addiction, and with a string of coerced and unhealthy marriages/relationships, Sill first came into contact with the afflatus sound that would become her trademark when in reform school during the 1960s; spending time learning the liturgy and gospel music whilst picking up the church organ. In a similar vein to the no less unfortunate Karen Dalton – a peer with an equally ill-fated car crash of failed marriages and addiction, and who’s stripped-back, unpretentious folk style is echoed on this EP -, Sill, despite her obvious talent and the circles she moved in (signed to Geffen’s Asylum Records, with a song bought and made famous by The Turtles no less, and her debut single, ‘Jesus Was A Cross Maker’, produced by Graham Nash), remained an obscure cult figure on the peripherals of the folk music scene. Possibly garnering more attention forty odd years later than she did in her own time. Every song, recording, newly discovered demo is heavily loaded, and yet transcendent.
McDoom has her work cutout, and yet breathes a new life into this near Southern spiritual hymn of softened beatific poetry. The original words remain intact, but with the added “I will hear what it is” line; McDoom placing herself within the sentiment of this aquatic and pastoral embrace. A favourite song for years, part of McDoom’s live repertoire, it proves the perfect congruous opener.
A second cover, and age-old standard of the Celtic set that translates across cultures and time, the traditional ballad, ‘Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair’, has roots (it’s believed) in Scotland. Nina Simone performed an impressionable version, and the American-in-Paris Tia Blake recorded an incredible minimalistic rendition. Both inspired McDoom to record a version; channeling in particular Blake, who is another interesting, fleeting artist from the folk cannon that disappeared off the radar, recording only one album of traditional songs at the age of nineteen in the French capital. Traversing, rather effortlessly I’d say, the Baroque, Appalachians and old Iberia, McDoom conjures up an apparitional-style mist of lament and dreaminess on her near-filmic and airy heaven-bound transformation.
As that EP title makes clear, With Strings doesn’t so much embellish as sympathetically accentuates and carefully brings home the emotional, touching and longed sentiment of McDoom’s stripped-down style with the small, intimate introduction f chamber strings and harp. Reimagining both ‘On My Way’ and ‘The City’ with this magnificent accompaniment that’s one part semi Baroque classical, and one part Alice Coltrane and cosmic, the vocals are further enhanced with the otherworldly three-part harmonies of Cécile McLorin Salvant and Kate Davis: Between them, their CVs and voices are imbued by jazz, French choral music, Creole, pop and the classics. Together it all reaches a near ethereal magic of the untethered and gauzy, with a semblance of the blues, country, and folk and spiritual. And yet, it’s all so modern sounding. ‘The City’ especially, has a breathless air and the space to progress: to confess too. Like a long list Lomax recording born anew, mixed with the beauty of Mercury Rev and The music Tapes, McDoom’s lacey arts and crafts vulnerability is soothed through a gauzy yesteryear. This city plaint is nothing short of sublime.
McDoom’s inspirations are worn on the sleeves, and yet I keep racking my brain to fathom who she reminds me of. An American Maria Monti? A softer Natalie Ribbons? Maybe a passing resemblance to Connie Converse perhaps? McDoom settles somewhere in-between them all as a refreshing, heavenly talent as she disarms the hurt and depth of emotional turmoil, inquiry and wonder with the most beautiful and impressive of deliveries. Certainly, one to watch.
Kenneth Jimenez ‘Sonnet To Silence’
(We Jazz)
Taking a leap into the untethered realms of Kenneth Jimenez’s dreams, the jump off point for his newest album literally takes flight. The Brooklyn-based bassist, composer and quartet bandleader runs for the mountains and sprouts wings; flying over the valley and the versant contours of free jazz and hard-bop: ala New York style.
This bird-like weightless journey often takes in the bustle, chaos of the city, and the excitable energy of his southern neighborhood (or “barrio” in this case) and ports. As the titles suggest, there’s a reference to Jimenez’s Costa Rican roots, and more than a spirit of that Central American’s oasis diverse landscape and bird life. But off the beaten track, Sonnet To Silence truly roams free between mirages and the strains of concentrated expression.
With Angelica Sanchez on piano, Gerald Cleaver on drums and Hery Paz on saxophone, the action is in a constant, almost restless state of movement: of the flighty, swanned, rolling, sprung, stretched, chuffed, pulled and heightened. Between them the quartet invoke Liberty era Jeremy Steig and Prince Lasha & Sonny Simmons on the whistled and wiry drawn-out and busy ‘Dia Laboral’ (“working day”), and Roscoe Mitchell and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago on the frayed taut double-bass stretched (Jimenez is an obvious talent in this department), turn bluesy and tumultuous, ‘El Patio’ (“the backyard”).
The dockyard 50s and 60s New York evoked ‘Mr. Shipping’ has a slight swing, plus a touch of both Marion Brown and Cecil Taylor – Sanchez in full flow, switching effortlessly between the melodious and experimental with almost jarred prods and block chords; reminding me at times, of Alice Coltrane accompanying Pharoah Sanders, but a little resonance of Oscar Patterson too.
So much is happening on this incredible, engaging and sometimes challenging (in the best possible way) album, which draws you in and then ups or changes the tempo, mood and direction. This is free jazz at its most promising; certainly encouraging and with dreamy quality that lifts you up into an imaginative vision of soaring and more complicated expression. Kenneth Jimenez and his quartet have produced one of the leading jazz albums of 2023.
Unwavering ‘Songs From A Tomb EP’
The solo moniker of one Matt Bennett, Unwavering has made an impact with now three of the blog’s writers. Before me, both Graham Domain and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea pretty much nailed this atmospheric project of indie-folk: as difficult as it is to describe.
Following on from the debut album, Freeze/Thaw/Chorus, and last year’s Ley Lines In The Forth (great title by the way) EP, the Lothian winter’s mists and ‘dreich’ dampness seep into the new EP of acoustic evocations, blessings and stirrings. From the crypt, mausoleum to the nave, Bennett sends out both resonating roused rhythm guitar strikes and quieter, almost ambient in parts, passages of mediation and near despondency.
A hauntology of the downbeat – Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea described it as akin to a downcast Stone Roses, without Mani and Reni – and capture of the abstract environments – catching floating dust particles in a weakened beam of light, shining in through the cellar’s iron gridded window – from which it seems he is performing, there’s a real strange, cultish and sometimes hallowed beauty to the music. His guitar fills the cavern, the church and basement; resounding and loud but always melodious and effecting.
And through it all, he channels centuries of psychgeography; the marks left upon the landscape’s he’s trawled; the erosions and evaporated essences of what were. All of this is merged with personal inner feelings, remembrance and wounded modern travails, written, so it sounds, with a quill by candlelight.
At times it sounds like fellow Scot, Ali Murray, and at other times like the Cocteau Twins pairing with Steve Mason and Parachute era Pretty Things (that’s especially so on the hallucinatory, ambient textural and foggy ‘Slow Digression’), but also a hint of stripped 80s acoustic Goth and even Joan Of Arc. Bennett himself name-checks Kurt Vile, Harold Budd and Low, all of which ring true. But this EP is really quite idiosyncratic, between realms, time and spaces; a unique folk-indie inspired songbook that works outside the usual perimeters, length and borders of song writing. A really interesting discovery waits.
George Demure ‘Ear Candy Dandy + Bonus Album Dandy In Dub’
(Hobbes Music)
On a bobbled and float-y, light sunbeam dappled vapor of deep house, garage, electro, kosmische, leftfield pop electronica, dub and new wave (both the German and UK’s), the Edinburgh DJ/producer and singer-songwriter George Thomson continues the good work he laid down on the last EP: 2021’s well-received The Record Store.
With the same self-imposed limitations that he set back then, his latest George Demure alias album (expanding to a eighteen-track package with the addition of the Dandy In Dub bonus) makes a sophisticated use of a drum machine, two analogue synths (a mono and poly version) and a computer (to record upon). And yet, as sparse as that sounds, Thomson manages to fully expand his subtle sonic, musical, rhythmic and effects universe even further; channeling four decades of experience in both the Scottish and English capitals.
The CV is impressive and varied, starting out (roughly at the same time as myself, but geographically 500 miles away) in the burgeoning techno and house scenes of the early 90s in Edinburgh. After building up a reputation for producing his own music under the George T moniker, he made a move to London in the 2000s. The ‘T’ was put on hiatus however, and George Demure was born. This still gave Thomson ample time to collaborate with others, namely in recent years as one half of the Jeanga And George partnership. Facilitators and labels for those multiple projects and appellations include NRK, Stickman, 2020 Vision, Crosstown Rebels, Tirk, Greco-Roman, Optimo, Output Recordings and, now, Hobbes Music.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to find Thomson well versed and full of ideas; using this album, in a fashion, to rediscover and connect with his formative years. A culmination if you like, of his years in the scene. But this is a very fresh projection of that, with both vocal tracks and instrumentals that bob about with the lightest of touches and skill. That’s not to say there isn’t depth, as no matter how soft they are, the bass does thump and the machinery and generators add something concrete and textural to the music.
Of one production, there’s still a wide variety of ideas and genres across the original album’s ten tracks and the bonus moiety’s further eight variants of sung, instrumental and ‘beat’ tracks. The opening, ‘Hello Mr. George’, offers an awakening rural scene, complete with bird song. Bouncing drum pads patter out a gentle bip-bop beat enveloped by light chords on a dappled electronic piano-like synth across a morning idyllic scene. By the time we reach the chimmy new wave-esque ‘Dub In Your Bubble’, and the opening crooned vocal of “Johanna”, we’re almost in the yearning schmooze territory of the crooner. Though as the song progresses, it becomes apparent that it’s more Robin Scott than Scott Walker; mixed I might add with a touch of the Sabres Of Paradise. Another vocal track, ‘Circles’, sounds more like a soulful leftfield downcast Matthew Dear.
An after hours downtime serenade, ‘Late Again’, that features Stevie ‘Chicago’ Christie whizzing Felix Da Housecat vibes past satellites, is a particular highlight – imagine Eno and Scott’s M persona making pop music together. By contrast, the therapy session, ‘Blah De Blah’, sounds like Polygon Windows lost in a haze of Bowie and Level 42! All the vocals have a real drift to them; almost languorous and untethered; a kind of free association soul-house-pop vibe that gives.
Elsewhere, the impeccable production mixes rotor-bladed Moroder with EDM; Kriedler with the melodica dub cloud operations of The Orb and FSOL; and the outdoor environments of epic45 with Roedelius and Thomas Dinger. Within that scope kinetic sounds are matched with the cosmic, vaporous and far out ‘jack-your-body’ moves. It’s a most lovely, swimmingly blend of motivations, feels and deep grooves that effortlessly comes together in a generous offering of electronic music: the very epitome of the Hobbes label’s remit in delivering leftfield unique visions of now techno, house and club sounds.
Lea Bertucci ‘Of Shadows And Substance’
(Cibrachrome Editions)
From the chthonian bowels of the geological to the vaporous airs of archaic pseudo-scientific sexism, the New York-based composer, producer, performer, saxophonist and label founder (of the Cibrachrome Editions imprint, under which this album is being released) Lea Bertucci continues to capture the intangible and abstract on her latest work, Of Shadows And Substance – a title borrowed from an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Two scored performances; two separate commission; each atonal experiment is an avant-garde and prompted reaction to a theme that simultaneously hides its sources, instrumentation, sense of place and time, yet evokes a certain recognisable mood.
Covering what used to be two sides of the traditional vinyl LP, these congruous long form pieces tap into Bertucci’s research methodology and serialism of composition and interpretation; stimulating the actions and atmospherics, but granting a form of autonomy to the musicians taking part. This includes an “intonation” tuning structure, the textural and semi-improvisational, and the use of the cello, double bass, harp, percussion and electronic apparatus.
As the album title might suggest, Side One’s ‘Vapours’ piece is, in part, informed by the literal description of the word: that is, a molecule existing on the verge of a liquid, gaseous or solid state. But it’s also a reference to the, far from sympathetic and almost dismissive, term to diagnose types of hysteria in women from a bygone age. Commissioned and played by the Italian Quartetto Maurice, these two interpretations mask the familiar with a highly experimental treatment, strain, stretching whining and searing atonal performance that conjures up shades of Walter Smetek, John Cale, Simon McCorry, Cale, Riech and Fluxus. At one point, when the intensity builds towards an otherworldly, unnerving drama of sawing and heightened tensions, there’s more than a trace of György Ligeti.
Maintaining a constant resonance of metallic sheens, rubs and refraction – in some manner, almost melodic, in the most removed sense of the word -, there’s a permeating connection that carries on throughout the various stages of drones, drawn-out bows, frictions, chaffs and didgeridoo-like blows. Neither vapourous nor hysterical, but somewhere in between, the Quartetto summon some unique visions of distress and abstracted classicism.
In a similar vein, the title-track sonically conveys the arse-end, final days of the anthropogenic epoch. Commissioned this time by the Philadelphia creative foundation, the ARS Nova Workshop, and performed by Henry Fraser, Lester St. Louis, Lucia Stravros and Matt Evans, this twenty-minute plus movement digs deep into the Earth. Like Scott Walker mining an atavistic psychogeography, layers of crust are removed to reach the present state of geological trauma: Or as Bertucci puts it, ‘a meditation on time-travel’ and ‘measure of accumulated events over glacial periods of time’; ‘a metaphor for social and environmental shifts’. This translates into shimmery vibrated cymbals, barely recognized saxophone rasps, the thump of primordial creatures chained to the bedrock, and spooked piano. By the close, the hovered instrumentation is in the airy realms of a calmer, more settled gauze.
Challenging in the best possible way, this couplet of performances is so textural that you could grasp it in your hands. A gateway, window into an experimental atonal world, Of Shadows And Substance is an inventive and intriguing proposition from a unique and adventures artist.
Xqui ‘Melting With Ice’
In the time it takes me to cast my critical mind and ear over this release from Xqui, there will most certainly have been at least another, if not more, projects cast out from the experimental creator’s hothouse studio: such is the abundant output from this highly prolific artist. Across an array of labels and facilitators, and in both a solo and collaborative capacity, Xqui occupies a liminal space between ambient music, sound art, musique concrete, transformed field recordings, hidden source material and voice exploration/transmogrification. Anything recognisable is made anew, strange and alien within this amorphous blending of the synthesised and technological – which isn’t to say these ideas aren’t organic, or that they lose that connection with their environmental, atmospherics settings. It’s safe to say that you never quite know what to expect with each release, such is the diversity and range.
Leaning more towards synthwaves and a chemical, scientific, numerical calculus of sum-parts and references, Melting With Ice draws us into an alternative futuristic and space-searching world of veiled machinery hums, generators, percolators and soft pulses; a sci-fi odyssey of Ligeti, Richard H. Kirk and the Theremin-like arias and apparitional sirens of Star Trek. But this is balanced out with a more naturalistic alchemy of watery elements, an exotic aviary of birds, and subtle hints of the pastoral.
Playing with voices, speech, annunciation and phonetics, Xqui uses a range of effects to convey just the mysterious, curious essence of conversations, whispers, breaths, expulsions of air, the choral and informed. ‘Cherry Red, Neon Blues’ is different in that regard. Here we find a Simon Armitage type poetically inhabiting a Gary Numan-like Blade Runner cybernetic set of neon-buzzed, hummed and lit removed romanticisms and forebode.
There’s a ghost in the matrix, aboard the cosmic flights of deep space probing, and under the Earth, as the ice caps melt and everything from the molecular to most expansive chasms changes: for the better or worse.
The minimalistic, with shades of Twin Peaks and Vangelis, ‘Pygmalion Effect’ references the famous psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performances/outcomes in any given area, whilst low expectations lead to the opposite. Its name of course comes from the sculptor in Greek mythology who fell so in love with his ‘perfectly beautiful’ sculpture that it came to life. Make what you will of that. But as usual, based on the quality labyrinth of past creations, expectations are usually high for an Xqui album. And this is no exception; another highly evolved sound world that somehow makes even the innocuous more sci-fi or otherworldly, and attaches a deeper meaning, an experience to it: for example, the passing traffic driving through puddles as the rain hits the pavements to cause its own splash-back tide on ‘Sunrise Waves’; a recording enveloped in the thoughtful and searching. I recommend you check this one out, and the entire catalogue for that matter.
Alessandro Alessandroni ‘Alessandroni Proibito Vol. 2 (Music From Red Light Films 1976-1980)
(Four flies Records)
The stellar talent of over forty film scores, part of the great Italian composers epoch of the 1960s and 70s, and owner of one of the most iconic whistles and guitar riffs in cinematic history, really deserved so much more; putting his name to the forgettable skin-flick exploitation movies that don’t even get named on this second volume of obscurities from the Alessandro Alessandroni vault.
The dire schlock smut quintet of movie scores that inform this latest Italo-soundtrack maverick limited edition run from the Italian Four Flies label, have disappeared off a cliff. However, Alessandroni’s modest home studio scores remain, with a smattering of tracks from each now spread over a quintet of 7” vinyl singles, collected together in an alluring box set.
A peer, foil, mentor and friend to such luminaries as Morricone and Piero Umiliani, the Rome born composer, multi-instrumentalist maestro and artist must have hit the skids by the time these red light movies were released. For despite making a name for himself with that Spaghetti Western twang-y Duane Eddy signature and his highly influential work for Sergio Leone, by the the late 70s he was scoring more and more mondo trash, erotica and garish S&M horror – see Lady Frankenstein and Killer Nun. And yet, the quality of his work is never in doubt; often elevating such tawdry, amateurish affairs to cultish status by the music alone.
Although far from serious, it seems Alessandroni’s craft is likened to playing with an amusement park of ideas, sounds and instruments: entertaining but also captivating in equal measures. With an ear attuned to the contemporary fashions, but the classical and traditional too, a lot of musical ground is covered in his compositions: from Italian folkloric standards to disco, library music and the salacious. The second Proibito volume is no exception, with soft-pop-lit dalliances with the blues and Turkish-sounding guitar (the desire prowled sleazy, deep heat floor show, ‘Luci Rosa’: translating as “pink lights”), 10cc soft rock erotic body contouring (the lulled, wandering fingers caress down the spine ‘Tahiti Joint’), and Gallo humping orgasms (the weird spooked, moist-dripped cave (oh-ah!) and piano wire malarkey shivered ‘Climax’). Some of those tracks feature erotic wordless allurements and enticements, with Alessandroni’s wife, the fellow Roman and singer-actress Giulia De Mutiis, providing the sexy coquettish trapeze artist vibe expressions of dizziness on the Broadway stage circus act, ‘Ticket’. I think she also provides the Betty Davis-like oozed erotica on the smoky and funky ‘Miss X’.
In case you’re interested, Mutiis has credits for roles in 15 Scaffolds For A Murderer, The Laughing Woman and Any Gun Can play, but also joined her husband’s octet vocal group, The Modern Choristers (in 1961), which specialized in those choral wordless calls and atmospheres: appearing on many a film score. Apparently other family members were also corralled into Alessandroni’s experiments, although no one else is specially mentioned in the notes, and there are plenty of those siren voices to be heard throughout this compilation. The main man appears himself, delivering the “do-doing” and “bah-bahs” on the new wave discotheque and art-rock ‘Racing’.
As a member of the Italian set of pioneers and new wave, it’s unsurprising to hear echoes of the already mentioned Umiliani (both partners in the supposed anonymous rock group Braen’s Machine in the 70s), Giuliano Sorgini, Roberto Pregadio and Paolo Casa (especially his clavichord and electric piano, Stevie Wonder-esque moments). But with the use of the mandolin, accordion and melodica too, plus that famous guitar twang, you could be mistaken for thinking you’ve been transported to any port on the Med, South America and further East – especially when that spindled guitar starts to ape the resonating rings of a sitar. There’s a craft. There’s fun. There’s a swerve of soul-funk and frolicking titillation in these previously unreleased on vinyl recordings that make it worth the admission price. For those fans of Trunk Records and Finders Keepers, but also anyone with a penchant for the cult and Italian cinema, you’ll love this collection of smut recordings with élan.
Don Fiorino & Andy Haas ‘Accidentals’
(Resonantmusic)
After two decades of intermittent collaboration, Don Fiorino and Andy Haas have found a common language of challenging, free-expressive experimentalism and exploration together. Speaking that sonically, atonal and often non-musical dialect fluently across the previous albums of Death Don’t Have No Mercy and (the monolith cocktail profiled) American Nocturne, these two highly impressive musicians/artists have pushed thresholds and boundaries to emit a tumult of squeezed, pulled, squealed, entangled, gabbling, whistled and indescribable sounds from a host of stringed instruments and the saxophone. The duo’s third album is no exception, with eighteen descriptive, indicated and playful titles of the pressurized, near-distorted, flutter, fizzed, bandy and bended.
But before we go any further, a little CV check. Former Muffin, saxophonist maestro and transformer Andy Haas first blazed and scorched Martha’s ‘Echo Beach’ hit in ’78, before relocating from Canada to New York City in the early 80s; making a name for himself in the post-punk, no-wave and avant-garde scenes, and collaborating with such luminaries as John Zorn, Ikue More, Marc Ribot, Ken Aldcroft (which comes the closet to Haas’ improvisations with Fiorino)…the list goes on. Nearly two decades later and Haas relocated back to Toronto, just in time to prove an in-demand foil to a new generation of artists and producers; firstly joining the orbit of collaborators around Matthew ‘Doc’ Dunn’s head music super group, The Cosmic Range, and then Meg Remy’s U.S. Girls led vehicle, performing on 2018’s In A Poem Unlimited and on the subsequent tour – I personally witnessed Haas blowing up a storm on the tiniest sax I’d ever laid eyes on! A multitude of projects, solo albums fill the gaps in-between; many of which were released on this album’s label, Resonantmusic.
Likewise, Fiorino’s backstory spans the decades with a diverse range of improvisational projects as an incredible guitarist and painter – the latter informing the former. This expands to the glissentar, lap steel, bass, banjo, lotar and mandolin, and covers a host of influences from across the globe. You can find him filed under the Radio I-Ching trio and The Hanuman Sextet, but he also appears on the late drummer Dee Pop’s various projects, and with Daniel Carter, John Sinclair and Adventures In Bluesland.
It all amounts to a lifetime of experimentation for both partners in this venture.
Accidentals isn’t the easiest of listens; rooted by the sounds of it, and by that title, to the accidental results of close quarter improvised wrangling and inquisitiveness; the captured, freeform and untethered results recorded in-between longer performances perhaps? An intimate reaction to downplay perhaps?
By chuffing, rasping, stretching out and releasing tensions on the saxophone, and with Fiorino switching between his racks of stringed instruments, there’s some wild and crazy far-out flexed, physical contortions. Valves let out the steam slowly, as unrecognizable sources trill, flutter, suck, ripple and resonate. When on the fretless bass, it sounds like Bunny Bruen or Percy Jones or Mohini Dey thwacking, patting, tabbing and slapping full-trebled thickened strings. Haas meanwhile channels everyone from Antony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell to Marshall Allen and Jeremy Steig. Within that sphere of inspiration, his sax finds moments of melody, serenade and the heralded.
Whilst there are evocations of jazz-fusion, La Monte Young, Walter Semtek, Federico Balducci, Zappa, the Middle and Far East, the personal ‘Eulogy 4 Dee’ (that’s Fiorino’s foil and band mate, the drummer Dee Pop) crosses Mali with Louisiana Delta Blues and Mardi Gras for a purposeful goodbye. And the flit, flighty and reed-squeezing ‘Curled Time’ merges Stooges Fun House with the sort of uncoying, stripped of artifice stringed recordings found on Ian Brennan’s recordings from forgotten parts of the world. But for the majority of the time, Accidentals is an album of abstraction, extraction and free-play, performed by two musicians at the height of their perceptive and explorative skills; the language now almost telepathic, with no prompts needed for expressing the chaos, tumult and stresses of the environment and greater geopolitical climate.
Cándido ‘La Muerte de Occidente’
(Natural Sciences)
On the face of it, nothing could be more incongruous than a practicing, bona fide Hare Krishna making gothic-punk house music. And yet, Cándido has done just that. Gone are the mantra chants, yoga and tambourines for an embrace of 80s underground electro Streetsounds, 303s and 808s, post-punk industrial S&M, the German new wave, EBM and jack-your-body early house music. For despite the opening Laraaji-like spiritual chimes and trinkets, this is an occultist club scene rave-up back dropped by the spiraling ‘death of the western world’.
A lively sound clash from the Buenos Aires underground, this album (Cándido’s debut for the Manchester imprint Natural Sciences) is less Zen and more dungeon; a dance music vision permeated by radio waves and samples of the reaper’s prophecy, film clips, cults, political epitaphs and a salacious Latin vamp (courtesy of the featured Contacto). In practice that all sounds like Mantronix, Cabaret Voltaire and Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley bruising it with Meat Beat Manifesto, or, an ashram soundtracked meeting between Nitzer Ebb, the Revolting Cocks, Rockit era Herbie Hancock, Farley Jackmaster Funk, Executive Slacks and Rammellzee.
It’s a unique take that has more in common with the Spiral Tribe, Chicago house scene, and Catholic guilt kinks than spreading the word of karma. In fact, it can all sound more gothic and illicit then blessed and spiritually enlightening. The only reincarnation going on here is in the beats. Cándido’s electro funeral pyre proves an infectious beat-driven 80s collider of underground dance music and industrial cut-and-shunt: An alternative route to transcendence.
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.
Monthly Playlist For November 2023: Pidgins, SANITY, Danny Brown, June McDoom, LINA, Flexagon…
November 29, 2023
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH/CHOSEN BY THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL TEAM
Every month, depending on who’s contributing, the Monolith Cocktail team create a choice track journey of eclectic music; an encapsulation of that month’s reviews plus those tracks we either didn’t get time or room to write about, but loved all the same. Joining me, Dominic Valvona, this November, there’s selections from our resident Hip-Hop guru Matt Oliver and indie, lo to no-fi and underground motherfucking rock ‘n’ roll maverick, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, all-rounder Graham Domain and electronic-classical expert Andrew C. Kidd.
Without further ado, let’s crack on with the playlist and track list:::
Rave At Your Fictional Borders ‘Potion Trigger’
Yungchen Lhamo ‘Sound Healing’
Johanna Burnheart ‘Ems’
Assiko Golden Band De Grand Yoff ‘La Musique Du Coeur’
Pidgins ‘These Models Scale’
Neon Kittens ‘Child In A Pet’
Fir Cone Children ‘The Inability To Raise The Left Corner Of My Mouth’
Ultrasonic Grand Prix, Little Barrie & Shawn Lee ‘Seamoon Rising’
Daneshevskaya ‘Big Bird’
K. Board & The Skreens ‘Gorillino’
Bloom de Wilde ‘Clown’s Ride On A Kangaroo’
U.S. Girls ’28 Days – Live’
Koma Saxo ‘Sista Dansen’
SANITY ‘Part Time’
Elaquent Ft. Skyzoo ‘Spirit Of Richard Wright’
Benaddict, Slim, Ella Mae Sueref ‘Birds Of A Feather’
Uber Magnetics, Sir Beans OBE ‘Brain On Drugs’
Eamon The Destroyer ‘Underscoring The Blues’
Danny Brown ‘Dark Sword Angel’
Sonnyjim & Lee Scott Ft. CRIMEAPPLE, D-Styles ‘Tommy Lee Scott’
Von Pea & The Other Guys Ft. Donwill ‘Putcha Weight On It’
Berke Can Ozcan ‘The Way Back Hill’
The Stance Brothers ‘Futuristic Earth’
George Demure Ft. Stevie Christie ‘Late Again’
H31R, Jwords & Maassai ‘Right Here’
Don Leisure & Amanda Whiting ‘Walk With Us’
Radhika De Saram ‘Little Sloth Bear’
Blockhead & UGLYFRANK ‘Lighthouse’
Essa & Yungun ‘Push’
Metermaids & Seez Mics ‘Still, Life’
EF Knows ‘Bug’
Leisure FM ‘Weather Warning’
Oopsie Dasies ‘Weird Topangas’
Humm ‘Danced Alone (Who I Am When I’m In Love)’
Sweeney ‘The Fear & The Failing’
Roedelius & Arnold Kasar ‘Lifeline’
June McDoom ‘The City – With Strings’
Diepkloof United Voices ‘Round & Round’
LINA & Rodrigo Cuevas ‘Q Que Temo E O Que Desejo’
Flexagon & Lihou ‘Un Vert Bocage’
Nick Frater ‘Little Sister Moon’
Ex Norwegian ‘Send Nudes’
Dog Door ‘Cover-Up Contest’
Zahn ‘Zebra’
Sone Institute ‘Going To Hell In A Handbasket’
Room Of Wires ‘Stormdrains’
Tetsüo ii ‘!!’
N’dox Electrique ‘Sango Mara Rire’
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