Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part One: A – L
December 10, 2024
Welcome to part one of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists.
Picked by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Despite the tumult of problems that face artists and bands in the music industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, the worrying trend of venue closures, the ever-encroaching domination of streaming against physical sales and exposure, and the onslaught of AI, people just can’t quit making music. And that’s all without listing the political, social and economic woes that continue to make life unbearable for most of us; the scandalous forces of austerity/cost-of-living crisis and post-Covid hangover threatening to constantly drag us under. We, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys, the music makers, do in the face of such intense stresses.
In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so (as I say every year) instead of those silly, factious and plain dumb numerical charts that our peers and rivals insist on continuing to print – how can you really suggest one album deserves their place above or below another; why does one entry get the 23rd spot and another the 22nd; unless it is a vote count, and even then, does it really come down to a popularity contest? –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic and democratic alphabetical order – something we (more or less) started in the first place.
The lists are broken up this year into two parts, A-L, and M-Z, and include those albums we’ve reviewed or featured on the site in some capacity, plus a smattering of those we just didn’t get the time to include. All entries are displayed thus: Artist (in alphabetical order) then the album title, label, who it was chosen by and a review link, if there is one. We also included quotes and summaries underneath.
Before we precede, we’d like to thank the following contributors to the site this year: Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Matt Oliver, Graham Domain, Mikey McDonald and Andrew C. Kidd, plus our Italian friends at Kalporz. Also, our gratitude and love for all our supporters during the year, and to those that have donated to https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail We really can’t have continued without it.
A_
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Retro Porter’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Review
“The sound of John Lane’s most prolific and artistically successful alias, A Journey Of Giraffes (no stranger to the blog, and often featured in our choice end of year features) is given almost unlimited time and space to unfurl on the ambitious opus-spanning Retro Porter album of ambient empirical suites.
An expansion upon Lane’s previous work – especially last year’s choice album entry, Empress Nouveau – each evolving sensory piece allows all the Baltimore composer’s signatures, motifs and serialism-like enquires to recollect memories of places and scenes, of the abstract, over the course of what sounds like a whole day.
Mirages, imaging’s, the sound of birds in the iron lattice gardens of an ostentatious arcade percent as described in late 19th century novella’s, sonorous pitches, the softened sound of a taiko drum at the Kabuki theatre, various hinges, dulcimer-like strokes all evaporate then solidify to create an ambient opus; a lifetimes work coalesced into one expansive, layered work of soundscape art and abstraction. Lane has allowed his mind to wander and explore organic and cerebral long form ideas like never before to produce, perhaps, his most accomplished unrestricted work yet.” DV
Annarella and Django ‘Jouer’ (We Are Busy Bodies/Sing A Song Fighter)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Born from the Senegalese imbued and inspired hub built around Sweden’s Wau Wau Collectif, another cross-cultural project that embraces that West African nation’s (and its neighbours) rich musical heritage. Fusing the roots, landscape and themes of Senegal with those of Europe, the partnership of Swedish flutist Annarella and the Malian born ngoni master Django absorbs the very atmosphere of that westernmost African republic, transposing and transforming age old traditions with a hybrid of contemporary musical effects and influences and guest list of diverse musicians and voices.
Django’s home environment and the outlier around it seeps into and materializes like a dreamy haze across all the album’s tracks, as evocations of the classical, of jazz and the blues mixes with the local stew of diverse languages. Tracks like ‘Degrees of Freedom’ are more mystical sounding, near cosmic, as the band saunter like gauze under the moon and across the desert’s sandy tides. Jouer, which translates from the French into “play”, is just that, a lovely stirring union of the playful that seamlessly entwines the two musician’s respective practices with sympathy, respect and the earthly concerns of our endangered societies and world. Hopefully this collaboration will continue and grow over the years; there’s not been a better one since Catrin Finch teamed up with Seckou Keita.” DV
Fran Ashcroft ‘Songs That Never Were’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“There is a uniqueness about this album; a trueness and soul you do not come across often much in these days of music to be played on phones. These are songs that could have been written anytime over the last 50 or so years, with some quite beautiful melodies and great lyrics; songs made for and by a music lover…already one on my end of the year best list.” BBS
B__
Donald Beaman ‘Fog On Mirror Glass’ (Royal Oakie)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The play and course of light, the recurring “phantom” and a beautiful subdued, nigh on elegiac poetry conjures up a simultaneous union of the beatific and longing on the latest solo effort from Donald Beaman.
Like a drifter’s songbook of subtle, intimate and home-recorded wanderings, metaphors and the like for yearned and plaintive romantic loss, fondness, the passing/measuring of time, and the urge to find comfort and solace, Fog On Mirror Glass uses memories of the weather, the way the light touched or dimmed at a given moment in time, and the smallest of witnessed movements/touches to evoke the right atmosphere of gossamer and sparsity.
In all, a most impressive and understated songbook of honest quality and performance, themed largely around the way light falls upon any given metaphor, analogy, phrase, description and texture. Unadorned, the feelings are left to pull and draw the listener into a most intimate world. Each play reveals more, as the album really begins to grow on you. A fine record indeed.” DV
Beauty Stab ‘Guide/Frisk’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“After a five plus year wait, we have the debut, and who knows, only album from the one time much tipped for big things Beauty Stab. An album filled with sex sleaze and glamour but with a healthy or unhealthy dose of darkness.
The sound and feel of eighties chart land I think has a big influence on Beauty Stab. They do share a name with ABC’s second album after all, and I can almost hear Martin Fry emote over the bass heavy synth pop funk of “Manic”.
“GUIDE/FRISK” is a wonderful and inventive crafted album that celebrates the joy and darkness and power that great pop music can bring to your life and really deserves to be heard by all.” BBS
Black Artist Group ‘For Peace And Liberty, In Paris December 1972’ (WEWANTSOUNDS)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Saved from obscurity and jazz lore, the previously believed “long-lost” recordings of the Black Artist Group’s radical free, avant-garde, spiritual and Afro jazz (with a side order hustle of funk) performance in Paris has been thankfully unearthed, dusted off and remastered in a project partnership between the band and the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel. Facilitating this operation are the reissue revivalist vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS – regularly featured in my review columns over the years -, who’ve invited various connoisseur experts to provide liner notes, essays and photographic images to this package.
At times we’re talking Coltrane and Sun Ra, and at other times Roscoe Mitchell, Carlos Garnett and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. You can also pick up some Chick, a touch of Cymande, of Art Blakey, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton. But to be specific, if you dig Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s ‘Safari’, Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’ and Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society then you’ll really need to part with the cash and have this on your shelf asap: not before blasting it out from your turntable.” DV
Black Diamond ‘Furniture Of The Mind Rearranging’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transported back in time, and then propelled forward into the now via Chicago’s musical legacy, its rich heritage of innovators and scope in the world of jazz, Artie Black and Hunter Diamond’s dual saxophone and woodwind focused vehicle can trace a line from the Windy City’s smokestack bluesy outlines of the 50s through the icons Sun Ra, Roscoe Mitchell, Eddie Johnson, Lester Bowie, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Anthony Braxton and the hothouse of undeniable influence and talent, the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians.
Across an ambitious double-album spread of both quartet and duo mode formations, those Black Diamonds don’t so much shine as smoulder and fizzle to a smoky and simmering resonance and metropolis backdrop encroached by wild jungles and fertile growth.” DV
Bloom De Wilde ‘The Circular Being’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the muse and the music of Bloom de Wilde. It has a tender all-consuming innocence and hope that calmly plays Rock Paper Scissors with a wistful sadness and melancholy.
Bloom writes songs that offer hope against all the odds; songs that embrace the eccentrics and outsiders, all the underdogs in life. Maybe that is why I feel a connection to her music and at times find myself totally engrossed with her beautiful tapestry of pop, jazz, folk and psychedelia, which she has woven with great love and skill to make great art.
Bloom is a fine songwriter, which may sometimes be overlooked due to the wonderful eccentricities of her personality and is a quite an accomplished and original lyricist, as this fascinating eleven song album of love, hope and magic shows.” BBS
The Bordellos ‘Nobody’s Listening’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by DV/Review by Graham Domain
“This is another perfect ‘slice of life’ album from The Bordellos. If all they had was a pair of spoons and a cassette-recorder, they would still be driven to record these hazy snapshots of life, in the same way that L S Lowry splashed his canvas with the daily drudgery and drama of the northern working-class. Was anyone paying attention to Mr Lowry at the time? No! But today there are hotels, theatres and tree-lined streets named after him. (Even Bowie was one to acknowledge the match-stalk painters genius titling his best album Low)!” Graham Domain
boycalledcrow ‘Kullau (Mortality Tables)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A musical atmospheric hallucination and psychedelic dream-realism of a roadmap, the latest transduced-style album from Carl M Knott (aka a boycalledcrow) takes his recollections, memory card filled photo albums, samples and experiences of travelling through Northern India between 2005 and 2006 and turns them into near avant-garde transported passages of outsider art music.
Place names (that album title refers to the village, an ancient kingdom, of ‘Kullu’, which sits in the ‘snow-laden mountain’ province of Himachel Pradesh in the Western Himalayas), Buddhist self-transformation methods (the extremely tough self-observation process of “non-reaction” for the body and mind known as “Vipassana”), Hindu and Jainism yogis (the “Sadhu”, a religious ascetic, mendicant or any kind of holy person who has renounced the worldly life, choosing instead to dedicate themselves to achieving “moksha” – liberation – through meditation and the contemplation of God) and language (the localised distinctive Kullu dialect and syntax of “Kanashi”, currently under threat) are all used as vague reference points, markers in this hallucinatory grand tour.” DV
Brevity ‘Home Is Where Your Dog Is’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The wonderfully named “Home Is Where your Dog Is” is the unreleased album, plus some demo recordings, by late the 60’s early 70’s Chicago rock band Brevity, a band who never actually got to release anything at the time but had interest and encouragement from both Island Records and Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight Records. Truth be told, released here for the first time by Think Like A Key Records, it is indeed a bit of a lost and now found musical treasure.
“Home Is Where Your Dog Is” is one of those rare lost albums that actually deserves to be labelled a lost classic, and the added demos actually have an indie/post punk feel to them that reminded me strangely of very early Pulp in their more acoustic like days. Yes, one of my favourite albums I have had the pleasure to listen to this year: a true Gem of an album.” BBS
Charlie Butler ‘Wild Fictions’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“The music is all that you hoped it would be, for music without hope is hopeless and this is anything but that; it is the cream cake among lesser mortals.” BBS”
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Chris Corsano ‘The Key (Became the Important Thing [and Then Just Faded Away])’
(Drag City) – Chosen by DV
The prolific free-jazz, avant-garde and avant-hard drumming innovator Chris Corsano can be found as an instigator or willing foil across a multitude of experimental collaborations (recently on the MC appearing alongside Nels Cline, Darin Gray and Glenn Kotche as part of the We Jazz signed-off Saccata Quartet) but his soloist works are just as numerous and far reaching/influential. I lost count of appearances and album releases in 2024, but this constant rhythmic and non-rhythmic progressing album is my favourite, taken from back in June.
Literally letting rip with an apparatus of recognisable and often non-musical implements, Corsano fuses a noise and splash of ripping and tearing sounds with no wave Kraut-punk (think CAN, Faust), West African drumming, alternative jazz and jazz-prog-rock. Untethered, clever, and anarchistic in equal measures. DV
Alison Cotton ‘Engelchen’ (Rocket Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“In the wake of the barbaric terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, and the ensuing destructive retaliation/ obliteration of Gaza by Israel since, there seems little room – let alone nuance and balance – on the debate; battle lines have been drawn and divisions sowed. And so, this inspired tale of ‘derring-do’ (originally performed live at the Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland) performance suite from the Sunderland composer Alison Cotton is a most timely reminder of dark history, but also of altruistic acts of kindness.
Scoring the story of the innocuous Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, and their incredibly brave rescue attempts to save the lives of twenty-nine Jews from occupied Europe during the build-up and eventual outbreak of WWII, Cotton ties in the modern plight of refugees escaping similar persecutions.
Less a morbid, dark soundtrack to the evils of the Nazi regime and Holocaust, Cotton instead conveys the enormity and the danger of the Cook’s enterprise through slow tidal movements, tones, intonations and changes in the atmosphere. Throughout it all a prevailing presence and emotional pull can be felt: The mood music of grief, the plaintive and sorrowful cumulating in a beautifully played series of arrangements and suites that are as sombre as they are beautiful and moving – reminding me in parts of Alex Stolze, Anne Müller, Simon McCorry and Aftab Darvishi.” DV
D____
Ëda Diaz ‘Suave Bruta’ (Airfono)
Chosen by DV/ Review
“A rarefied artist who manages to merge dream-realism with both the traditional and contemporary, Ëda Diaz occupies multiple realms of geography to produce sublime and club-lite Latin-European R&B pop music. Between spheres of influence, her French-Colombian heritage is bonded across an exotic soundboard of effects, precise cut electronica, and transformed repurposed old dances and song; the latter of which includes an electrified form of currulao, ‘wonky’ Colombian salsa, bolero, bullerengue, vallenato and ‘dembow’. I absolutely love this spellbinding, vulnerable and playful Latin-Euro vision.” DV
E_____
Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit’ (Spiritmuse Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Originally hot-housed in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (the mid-1960s nonprofit organization instigated by Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall and Phil Cohran in Chicago, which El’Zabar himself once chaired) incubator, El’Zabar’s percussive, drumming rhythms for the mind, body and soul channelled the windy city’s rich musical lineage of jazz, blues, R&B, soul, Godspell and what would become house and dance music.
Following on from last year’s Spirit Gather tribute to Don Cherry (which featured the worldly jazz icon’s eldest son David Ornette Cherry shortly before his death) this latest conscious and spiritual work channels that rich legacy whilst worshipping at the altar of those icons, progenitors and idols that came before; namely, in this instance, Miles Davis, Eugene McDaniels and McCoy Tyner.
El’Zabar’s once more heals, opens minds and elevates with another rhythmic dance of native tongues and groove spiritualism. The ancient roots of that infectious groove and the urgency of our modern times are bonded together to look back on a legacy that deserves celebrating. After fifty years of quality jazz exploration and collaboration, El’Zabar proves that there is still much to communicate and share as he and the EHE recast classics and original standards from the back catalogue.” DV
Empty House ‘Bluestone’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The megalithic period “cromlech” (frequently interchanged with and referred to a “dolmen” too) construction of large stone blocks that stands within the borders of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in the village of Pentre Ifan, acts as a gateway to the imagination for the Blackpool-based musician Fred Laird, who goes under the moniker of Empty House.
Avalon mists descend across a communication with the landscape, whilst shriven archaic reenactments stir-up the hallucinatory and esoteric. Old vacuums of air blow through the spaces in between the stones as a haunted geology shrieks, howls, mourns and swirls. And a wispy passage of monastery choral voices carries on the wind as children giggle and the neolithic generator revs up vibrations and pulses from the afterlife. The Incredible String Band makes merry with Julian Cope; Steve Hillage joins Ash Ra Tempel; and Affenstunde period Popol Vuh invokes ghostly parallel histories with Xqui and Quimper on a tour of Ley lines. Atmospheres and scenes from a long history of settlement, of the spiritual, envelope the listener on a most subtle but rich field recording trip.” DV
Peter Evans ‘Extra’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A meeting of avant-garde minds to savour, the union of Peter Evans with Koma Saxo and Post Koma instigator and bassist Petter Eldh and New York downtown experimental rock and jazz drummer pioneer Jim Black is every bit as dynamic, explosive, torqued, moody, challenging and exciting as you’d imagine.
A crossroads of separate entangled influences and backgrounds, legacies, with all three practitioners in this Evans-fronted project and their CVs stretching back a few decades, the avant-garde rubs up against the blues, hard bop, atmospheric set scores, hip-hop style breaks, the electronic and classical. By using both the piccolo and flugelhorn on this album, some passages sound like Wynton Marsalis playing over Mozart, or Alison Balsom lending classical airs to an Alfa Mist production.
One of the best jazz albums you’ll hear all year, with a spot saved for the choice albums of the year lists, Extras is a thoroughly inventive and exciting dynamism of contemporary luminaries at the height of their skills and knowledge.” DV
F______
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly ‘MESTIZX’ (International Anthem X Nonesuch)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transformed and remoulded for a more progressive age the “MESTIZX” title of this partnership’s debut album takes the Spanish term for “mixed person” (namely, a union between those indigenous people in the Latin conquered territories of South America and the Spanish) away from its colonial roots and repurposes it on an album of dream realism duality.
With the multimedia performer and singer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti’s Bolivian and the jazz drummer Frank Rosaly’s Puerto Rican heritages, the pre-colonial history of South America is woven into a contemporary revision of magic, organic forms and ritual rhythms mixed with elements and a suffusion of Chicago post-rock, post-jazz and alternative Latin leftfield pop.
There’s much to admire in this world of the untamed and wild, with new perspectives, mixed histories and the largely melodious reverberations of the lost exercising a new language of ownership. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly perfect and expand their organic explorations, bewitching messages and oracles on an intriguing, moving and dreamily trippy debut album.” DV
G_______
Michal Gutman ‘Never Coming Home’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Never Coming Home” is a darkly beautiful album; an album of twisted musical discovery, with songs worthy to fall from the lips and the pen of the great Dory Previn; songs that pull you into a strange and beguiling solitude place, where you only have memories and fears and regrets for company. Musically stark and bewitching like an unused broken fairground ride: a bass guitar has never sounded so much like the faded remnants of an old lover’s final kiss. “Never Coming Home” is quite simply stunning.” BBS
Nino Gvilia ‘EP Number 1: Nicole’ & ‘EP Number 2: Overwhelmed By The Unexplained’ (Hive Mind Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Creating a musical, lyrical eco system of their own, soundtracked by folk, minimalism, the hallucinatory and pastoral – with only the final vaporous misty esoteric second EP’s titular track changing from cuckoo-like voiced loops and sympathetic strings to disturbing futuristic daemonic augur –, the Nino Gvilia encompassed guise ebbs and flows with the movement of the replenishing waters, the lakeside and mill turning scenes of the surroundings, to produce a disarming hymn. Idiosyncratic in beauty, I’d recommend this diaphanous accomplished mini opus to those with a penchant for Hatis Noit, Seaming To, Tia Blake and Roberto Musci.”
H________
Hackedepicciotto ‘The Best Of Hackedepicciotto (Live In Napoli)’ (Mute)
Chosen by DV/Review
“As a duo in recent years, Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto under the twinned Hackedepicciotto moniker, have channelled their diverse experiences as members/instigators of such groups as Einstürzende Neubauten, Crime And The City Solution and the Space Cowboys, into a signature sound that embraces the cabaret and soundtrack gravitas of post-punk, post-industrial, electronica, the esoteric, weird folk and twisted fairytale: which they themselves have described as “symphonic drone”.
Their fifth album, the partial sonic and lyrical autobiography, part photo album scrap book dedication, Keepsakes, was released last year. As with most of their catalogue, the duo’s albums are either recorded in a stirring, inspiring location, or in a different country. The most recent being no exception, recorded as it was at Napoli’s legendary Auditorium Novecento using the famous venue’s stock of various instruments. That album now forms the focal or centre point for this live release of choice bell tolled maladies and drone sonnets from the duo’s back catalogue. Performed over two nights, they’ve chosen to return to the Auditorium Novecento setting that made Keepsakes such an atmospherically rich and momentous, dramatic record. And so, they perform a quartet of songs from that most recent album alongside picks from the Menetekel (2017), The Current (2020), The Silver Threshold (2021) and Perseverantia (2023) albums. And it proves a winning formula as the perfect showcase, and a more unique approach to performing the “best of” their back catalogue.” DV
Christopher Haddow ‘An Unexpected Great Leap’ (Erol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A comfort blanket bookended by the reassuring signs of life via the sounds of an ultrasound, Christopher Haddow’s first steps out as a solo artist (flanked on either side by the contributions of Josh Longton on double-bass and Jamie Bolland on piano) capture the abstract feelings of parenthood. An Unexpected Great Leap is in fact, partially, an ambient tool to send both Christopher and his artist wife Athene Grieg’s son Louie off to sleep.
You may know Christopher as the former lead guitarist of Paper Planes and as a member of Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gates, but under his own name and with a different, more personal, direction he’s beautifully, imaginatively and conceptually complimented his wife’s visual feels of parenthood with a searching and settling album of ambient Americana and womb music.” DV
Sahra Halgan ‘Hiddo Dhawr’ (Danaya)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Few artists from the disputed region of Somaliland could qualify better than the singer, freedom fighter and activist Shara Halgan to represent their country’s musical legacy. As an unofficial cultural ambassador and symbol for female empowerment Halgan’s journey is an inspiring one: Forced out of her homeland during a destructive civil war – in which she played a part in nursing and “comforting” fighters from Somaliland’s secession movement, sometimes alleviating suffering through song –, Halgan had to flee abroad to “survive” hardships and dislocation in France, but eventually, a decade after the overthrow of Siad Barre’s ruling military junta, returned home to motivate and promote proud in Somaliland’s cultural heritage.
It was during her time in France, removed from her roots and homesick, that Halgan would meet the musicians that went on to form her studio and touring band: step forward percussionist and founder of the French-Malian group BKO Quintet, Aymeric Krol, and the guitarist and member of the Swiss ensemble Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp and L’etrangleuse, Maël Salètes. Both appear on the latest, and third Halgan album, alongside newest recruit Régis Monte, who adds “vintage organ” and “proto-electronic embellishments” to the heady and fuzzed mix.
Enriched soul music with an edge and buzz, Halgan and her troupe strike a balance between the heartfelt and empowered on electrifying album; that focal voice sounding so fresh and young yet wise and experienced, able to encapsulate a whole culture whilst moving forward.” DV
Herandu ‘Ocher Red’ (Hive Mind Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Trance is spun with bass noodling, Ethio-jazz, post-punk funk, Moroccan and Arabian cassette culture, retro space age keys, no wave dance music and the Aphex Twin to create an interesting explorative zap, skip, playful, mysterious and dreamy vision that mirrors the Gavrilov brothers feelings of their native landscape, and the episodes of life, the shaping of their creativity, born in that Siberian setting.” DV
Herald ‘Linear B’ (Errol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“If mid-70s Eno working his magic with Merriweather Post Pavilion sounds like a match anointed in heaven then Lawrence Worthington’s ridiculously long-delayed debut album is going to send you into a woozy alt-pop state of bliss. The latter partner in that ideal fantasy of influences is hardly surprising, with the Animal Collective’s “infrequent” co-founding member Josh Dibb (aka Deakin) playing the part of co-producing foil and soundboard. And although the eventual Linear B album was first conceived twenty plus years ago, when the Animal Collective and Panda Bear and a menagerie of congruous bands were building an alternative-psych-pop scene – the darlings (quite rightly) of Pitchfork and the burgeoning MySpace culture -, and when the musical palette of sounds is produced on cheap 90s Casio and Yamaha equipment, Worthington’s Herald nom de plume still resonates and feels refreshingly dreamily idiosyncratic.
The results set a personal psychedelic language of feels and character-dotted whimsy to a maverick alt-synth-pop production: imagine Syd Barrett, K. Leimar and Edward Penfold backed by a Factory Records White Fence or Panda Bear. Unassumingly lo fi yet symphonic, you can hear hints of neo-romantics, colder synth spells, the post-punk, the Bureau B label’s cult German new wave and post-krautrock offerings, John Cale and a very removed vision of The Beach Boys.” DV
Holy Matter ‘Beauty Looking Back’
Chosen by DV/Review
“Bathed in a new diaphanous light, Leanna Kaiser steps away from her ambient shrouded Frances With Wolves duo (albeit with an embraced cast of familiar faces and musicians) to take up the soloist guise of Holy Matter.
Following up on a tapestry of enchanted and dreamy singles, woven from gossamer threads of fairytale and fantasy, the musician, songwriter and filmmaker now unfurls an entire beautiful album of nostalgic imbued troubadour-folk, softened psychedelia and country woes, sad lilted resignation, solace, reflection and pathos.
Gazing both lamentably and in sighed resignation from metaphorical fairytale towers and vantage points emphasised by poetic weather patterns, Kaiser gently exudes a longing sense of wistful pulchritude. The past is always near, inescapable and worn like a comfort blanket; moulded to Kaiser’s desires, sorrows, reflections and duality. Holy Matter proves an interesting alluring and enchanting creative progression for Kaiser, her debut solo a refreshing take on the familiar and the tropes of time. “ DV
Hungrytown ‘Circus For Sale’ (Big Stir Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is the fourth album from Hungrytown, but the first I have had the pleasure of hearing, and indeed it is a pleasure as psych folk with more than a hint of baroque pop is right up my street. There is a beauty and calmness to it that one can lose themself in and ignore and forget briefly the day-to-day turmoil that surrounds them. Vocalist Rebbecca Hall is blessed with a magically sweet innocent voice that floats and weaves its way through the musical sea of melodious tranquillity that wraps itself around the listener: pure bliss.” BBS
K___________
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw ‘As Those Gone Before’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for weird, strange folk music, I put it down to watching too much Bagpuss and The Clangers as a toddler: wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child. So, this fine album of weird, strange folk songs is right down my summer pathway stroll of mischievous delight.
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw go from the childlike tales of the sinister folk whimsy “Christopher Tadpole” to the dark and cold clawing of “Mole Man“; if you wondered what story time at the nursery school on summer isle might sound like, these gems will answer your wonderings. “The Four Trains That Killed Me” and “Last Of The Little Lost Lambs” are both wonderfully John Cale like in the darkness and utter beauty as much as “Accused Isle” is like listening to a slightly deranged Pam Ayres on the old Radio Luxembourg via an old transister radio under the bed clothes in the darkest of nights [wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child]. “As Those Gone Before” is a true magical gem of off-kilter folk whimsy, an album of true eccentric magnificence.” BBS
L____________
The Legless Crabs ‘No Condoms, Just Satan’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The sound of rock ‘n’ roll future and past collide in this nineteen-track beauty of anger and attitude: songs that deal with the strangeness of living in this world today.
From the Cramps like “I Catfished My Brother” and the sonic escapades of “Rope Bunny”, to the heaviness and sludge-rock dark humour of “Shark Lover” this is an album that should be all over alternative radio, and once again, has to compete with far less talented and easier and blander beige alternative rock.” BBS
Letters from Mouse ‘Clota’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Graham Domain
“In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Clota was patron of the River Clyde and brought purity to the natural landscape. The album pieces reflect the beauty of nature and how nature evolves and changes, both with the day and with the changing of the seasons.
Altogether it’s a beautiful album that deserves to be heard by many. It is also a great ambient album for meditation or creative work such as painting. Wonderful.” GD
LINA_ ‘Fado Camões’ (Galileo Music)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Back this time with the British producer and musician Justin Adams and a small ensemble, LINA_ takes on the classical 16th century poetics of Portugal’s most famous literary son, Luís Vaz de Camões.
Musically tender, accentuated and like a fog, mist at times, even vapour of the mere essence of a score, there’s echoes of old Spain, the Balearics, North Africa, the Middle East but also Turkey and the Hellenic. LINA_ is a leading light, pushing the boundaries without losing the soul, truth and appeal of the music she adopts and transforms. Fado Camões is another artistic triumph.” DV
The Loved Drones ‘Live at Atelier Rock HUY’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Loved Drones have a power and an all-round likability and uniqueness that all the great bands have. They are a band who plough their own furrow through live casting off tangent animal shapes at the sun, raising two fingers to the lack of talent and originality that currently is forced upon us by the mainstream radio and press. The Loved Drones are quite wonderful.
“The Hindenburg Omen” is a instrumental that a blockbuster film should be made just so it can be included on the soundtrack, and “Humans Can’t Compete” once again is brimming with a Cope-like magnificence. These eight live tracks show what a great band we have in our mists and really should be heard and appreciated by all of us music lovers who love mind bending space hopping cosmic musical delights.” BBS
RELEASES ON THE RADAR FROM THE LAST FEW MONTHS & A METAL POSTCARDS LABEL SPECIAL/REVIEWED BY WRITER-MUSICIAN GRAHAM DOMAIN
Letters from Mouse ‘Clota’
(Subexotic Records) – Vinyl LP and Digital DL
Steven Anderson (Letters from Mouse) returns with a beautiful album of ambient dreamscapes played with a lightness of touch using modular synthesisers.
In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Clota was patron of the River Clyde and brought purity to the natural landscape. The album pieces reflect the beauty of nature and how nature evolves and changes, both with the day and with the changing of the seasons.
The album begins with ‘Frogspawn’, which sounds like new life emerging. A red sun high in the sky, watercolours smudged by the brightness of the day.
‘Juniper’ sounds like beautiful winter landscapes illuminated by a low winter sun. Wonderful.
‘Bowling Greens and Tennis Courts’ sounds like the sun coming out as the last remnants of a summer storm fade. It’s late in the evening but still light, as the sun has one last boastful appearance before the end of the day.
‘Piglet’ employs electronic harp and sounds very playful. It puts me in mind of summer, very early morning as the sun rises, rabbits and small animals appear, foraging for food, the dawn chorus of birds mixes with the hum of insects in flight, busy for the day ahead.
‘Cosm’ sounds like swimming under water, the sunlight getting stronger, shining through the water as you approach the surface.
‘Habitual Joy’ sounds like the warm morning sun, life affirming, awakening to the joy of a brand-new day.
Altogether it’s a beautiful album that deserves to be heard by many. It is also a great ambient album for meditation or creative work such as painting. Wonderful.
Various ‘The Faithful: A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull’
(In the Q Records / Bandbox) – Vinyl and Digital Download
As the name suggests, this is a tribute album to Marianne Faithfull with all benefits going to assist her in her recovery from long Covid.
Marianne has had a checkered career with numerous labels and her voice changed and became more ‘lived in’ as she struggled with severe bouts of laryngitis and addiction. This has not given her body of work a consistent identity. However, her struggles with addiction, illness and health problems have never stopped her working. After losing her voice, her last album was spoken word poetry backed by Warren Ellis (of the Bad Seeds). Marianne is an intuitive survivor!
Most of the songs on this tribute album were not written by Marianne. Her forte being in the way she sang and interpreted the songs of others. While not having great commercial success after the 1960s, she was always appreciated by other singers, musicians and music critics. Her most well known album Broken English often being name checked by other artists. Thus, we get 19 appreciative artists covering the songs of MF. The standout tracks are ‘Working Class Hero’ by Iggy Pop and Cat Power, ‘Why’d Ya Do It’ by Shirley Manson and Peaches, ‘Broken English’ by Joan As Police Woman and ‘Love, Life and Money’ by Lydia Lunch. Hopefully, it will make enough money to help MF in her darkest hour whilst also creating interest and investigation of her colourful back catalogue, with maybe some reissues. Get better soon you husky voiced inspiration.
C’mon Tigre ‘Habitat’
(Intersuoni) – Vinyl and Digital DL
This is the fourth album by international music collective C’mon Tigre featuring, amongst others, Seun Kuti, Arto Lindsay, Xenia Franca and Giovanni Truppi.
It’s a beautiful menagerie; a wondrous sound fusion underpinned by Brazilian and African rhythms. The essence is always danceable and the album becomes more and more fascinating with each play, incorporating elements of jazz, electronic, funk and a subtle blend of influences from all around the world. Both Tricky and Sly Stone are in the mix.
Standout tracks include ‘The Botanist’, ‘Teenage Kingdom’, ‘Nomad at Home’, ‘Na Danca Das Flores’ and ‘Sixty-four Seasons’, but to be honest all the tracks are excellent.
If you are open to innovative music or want to insert something different and exciting in your DJ set, then this is a great album to check out.
A METAL POSTCARDS LABEL SPECIAL::
The Bordellos ‘Nobody’s Listening’
ALBUM – Digital DL
As Bill Fay said ‘life is people’ and here we have thirteen songs about the ups and downs that make up peoples’ lives. The themes are universal, the culture – survival in a world where the outgoings are more than the income. The highlights are many.
‘Running Back to You’ is a ‘standard-in-waiting’, ready-made for covering. Indeed, it may be that time of the year, but with a few Christmas bells added and a video with white snow parkas (a la East 17) it could be a Christmas smash!
‘Brief Taste’ has all the warped charm of an Eels track, with the refrain ‘Seduction ain’t that much of a hobby when you ain’t got that much of a body.’ Brilliant!
‘Soundtrack to getting your end away’ sounds like New Order jamming with Bob Dylan. Great lyrics and supernatural melodicism. Poetry for the soul!
‘Marianne’ is part Pixies, part The Fall, part Ted Hughes. Wonderful!
‘Tom Waits Blues’ has the melancholy atmosphere of a rainy day spent scouring shops looking for your favourite bands’ new album only to find no one has it in stock! Soaking wet and missed your bus, but there’s always tomorrow!
‘Soft Get Smile’ is a true anthem. A sing-a-long for the disenchanted. Hope among the ruins.
This is another perfect ‘slice of life’ album from The Bordellos. If all they had was a pair of spoons and a cassette-recorder, they would still be driven to record these hazy snapshots of life, in the same way that L S Lowry splashed his canvas with the daily drudgery and drama of the northern working-class. Was anyone paying attention to Mr Lowry at the time? No! But today there are hotels, theatres and tree-lined streets named after him. (Even Bowie was one to acknowledge the match-stalk painters genius titling his best album Low)!
No one (sic) may be listening to The Bordellos today but one day… recognition will be theirs! (Bordellos Night on the X Factor anyone)?
Tim. M ‘Turn This Thing Around’
Single – Digital Down Load
This is the second solo single from Tim. M (the Aliens singer). A piano based ballad, it falls into the space somewhere between James Blunt, Harry Nilsson, Crowded House (Neil Finn), Karl Wallinger (World Party) and the New Radicals.
The song grows on you with each play and after a few plays I knew all the words. Orchestrally it reminds me of Bowies ‘Life on Mars’, leading me to sing Bowie-voiced backing vocals on the chorus of ‘Listen to me now…yeah yeah’. If he stays with the piano and keyboard sound, I want to hear more.
Andi Roti (featuring Oti Soe) ‘Shazam Me At the Beach Bar’
Single – Digital Down Load
This is a great chilled dance record destined to be played in many air-conditioned beach bars around the globe. The bass line sounds very Chic-like, while the funky guitar is underpinned by warm keyboards and bongos. When it starts it reminds me of a Thom Bell production from the 70s. Topping it off are soulful Indonesian vocals from Oti Soe. Already an underground classic – make sure you ask for it on your next night out! Stone Cold Electric! #Shake that Leg Thang!
K. Board and the Skreens ‘Beauty Lies Everywhere’ and ‘Mythical Creature’ Singles – Digital Down Loads
Two singles released in rapid succession.
‘Beauty Lies Everywhere’ sounds like Sultana by Titanic deconstructed by robots and beamed live to Roswell Roxy Cinema in 1968 to soundtrack a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western. Not the usual pop hit – aliens, robots and time travel meet Ennio Morricone! Fantastic!
‘Mythical Creature’ is a brooding synth fare that sounds like the soundtrack to John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 crossed with a possessed cat on heat and dwarfs dancing round a maypole. All recorded during an alien-visit-power-cut-surge! Stup-id-end-ous! Play it when doing Cat -Yoga!
REVIEWS ROUNDUP/Dominic Valvona
Longplayers/Extended
Spaceface ‘Anemoia’
(Mothland) 28th January 2022
Ushered in with a cosmic and exotic air flight announcement the latest disarming psychedelic pop trip from Spaceface brings the slick funk and disco party vibe to the stiff shirted cosmological experiments carried out at the CERN institute. With a vibrant sparkle and rainbow candy élan, the ever-shifting moon unit of past and present members from Flaming Lips and Pierced merge science-fact with groovy sunshine grooves on a smoothly universal album of goodwill.
Written before the pandemic at the Blackwatch Studios with producer Jarod Evans in the hot seat, Anemoia is a cocktail of good times rolled out to a soundtrack that at various points evokes MGMT, Swim Mountain, Tame Impala, the Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Sam Flex and International Pony. The halcyon funk wooed and Labrys guest spot ‘Long Time’ even comes with it’s own cocktail recipe and instructions (1oz each of Bourbon, Vermouth and Lynas, served with orange peel and on the rocks).
Guests appear in various guises throughout, from the brilliant Meggie Lennon (who recently appeared in our choice albums of the year lists) to Mikaela Davis and the sampled effects of the CERN’s scientist choir! Spaceface seem to be reaching beyond the usual themes of pop to metaphysical explorations and a sense of understanding the mind boggling theories of particle physics. It’s also seemingly all connected to the very on trend subject of identity and place in an increasingly dysfunctional uncertain world. Fear not as these concerns all melt away in a soulfully and bubbly millennial soundtrack of the cute, hippie and galactic; a plane of psychedelic pop and yacht rock funk pitched somewhere between a yoga retreat and cult space tour.
Roedelius & Story ‘4 Hands’
(Erased Tapes) 28th January 2021
Incredibly now well into his eighties the kosmische and neoclassical pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius is still exploring, still intrigued and still, if peaceably, pushing the perimeters of his signature forms on the piano. When not collaborating under the Qluster umbrella (just the most recent three decades adoption of the original Kluster/Cluster arc) or flying solo across the keyboard, Roedelius carefully picks projects that offer stimulus or purpose.
In this instance the self-taught composer once again crosses reflective and experimental paths with the Grammy-nominated American composer and friend Tim Story; the fifth such exercise of its kind with Story since their 2003 album Lunz.
4 Hands proves better than two, with Roedelius laying down patient, fluttered and singular noted “etudes” for Story to harmoniously refine and swell, or, to add sophisticated congruous layers until both performers phrases and playing styles become so entwined as to prove impossible to separate. Hopefully as Story comments in the notes: ‘Because it was all recorded on the same piano, the result has a very appealing consistency of sound, and hopefully blurs our individual contributions into a single integrated voice.’ I’d say they succeeded with this interplay and balance of disciplines, which at times conjures up Chopin’s no.6 etude being transformed by Cage.
This transatlantic exchange between North American and European contemporary classical movements features compositions that seem to measure time and make allusions to various instructive linguistic phrases (the relatively immediate ebb and flow opener ‘Nurzu’ derives from the German encouragement to “go ahead and do it”) and a sense of place, mood. Tellingly the resonating serial 1920s suggestive ‘Haru’ is dedicated to the late great avant-garde composer and poet Harold Budd, who just before his death in December 2020 was played this timeless peregrination.
A forty-year friendship imbues every touch and even the spaces in-between each wave, trickle, glide and tingled gesture. The very workings of this shared instrument, the pins and softened hammers are transformed into spiralled tines and fanned percussive like rhythms – sometimes evoking the Far East. A mix of improvised contours, considered tensions and nodes crisscross and flow together in a complementary fashion throughout this album of entwined synchronicity, as both artist’s read each other’s thoughts with understated adroit perfection.
From The Archive:
Hans-Joachim Roedelius Interview
‘Selbstporträt Wahre Liebe’ Review
Qluster ‘Elemente’ Review
Cluster ‘1971 – 1981’ Review
Cephas Teom ‘Automata’
(METR Music) 28th January 2021
Less Kraftwerk’s “pocket calculator” and more vintage 1980s Japanese Casio digital watch, the debut album from Cephas Teom (the atavistic etymological alias of the West Country musician and producer Pete Thomas) swims and Tokyo drifts in a solution of nostalgic Far Eastern tech. From Japanese sound gardens to retro video arcades and driving across once promising neon lit city highways of the future, Thomas evokes touches of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto, Yukihiro Takahashi and House Of Tapes as he ponders the quandaries of an ever encroaching technology and the wonders of A.I.
Featuring the Monolith Cocktail premiered vaporwave single ‘Tomorrow’s World’ (aired back in November of last year), Automata weaves broadcasts of figures such as Jung and the coiner of ‘cymatics’ Hans Jenny with the fatalistic voices of those drawn to extraterrestrial savior cults (such as the mass suicidal Heaven’s Gate) to present a scientific-philosophical soundtrack of both unease and nostalgia: that’s nostalgia for a society not yet disenchanted with the promises of a brighter hi-tech, computerized utopia.
Skilfully constructed Thomas emulates both the handcrafted mechanisms of Jaquet-Droz automation curiosities from another age and the dreamy airs of a dawning integrated A.I. future. It begins however with the projector-clicked lecture come chimed baubles, zappy squiggled, deep bass throbbing Japanese Zen water feature ‘Primordial Forms’, before winding up with the clicks and movements of a Sakamoto twinkled mechanized but enchanting melodic ‘Automation I’. By comparison ‘Automation II’ sees nature’s son in more pastoral surroundings, still in that contemplative garden, serenaded by classical-like drops of piano and wind chime percussion. Oh the force of the electronic Orient is strong with this one, incorporating everything from subtle hints of bamboo music, a very removed bobble of gamelan and J-pop with intricate layering of Autechre wiring, lo fi 8-bit gaming and bit-crushed effects. Surprisingly Thomas takes a kind of liquid jazz-fusion turn on the psychedelic therapy mindbender ‘Above Human’.
Solar winds blow across a circuit board tundra as Tron-like glowed vehicles cruise to the sounds of acid, techno, Manga, Namco and Sega soundtracks, veiled augurs, virtual paradises and various 80s warbles, variants and equations. A wonderful world in which to contemplate all those delusions of an automated miracle – a world in which Eagle comic’s, the BBC’s long running Tomorrow’s World programme and Silicon Valley optimistically painted as a blissful, harmonious, work-free utopia, Automata explores the networks, nodes and grids of electronic music to navigate a tricky complicated philosophical debate.
From The Archive:
Cephas Teom ‘Feet Of Clay’ Premiere
Cephas Teom ‘Tomorrow’s World’ Premiere
Mondoriviera ‘Nòtt Lönga’
(Artetetra) Available Now
You know you’re getting old when today’s young musicians consider your formative years, back in the 80s, as “nostalgic”. And so it is with Mondoriviera’s recent envisioned ‘fragmented bedtime story’ meets ‘interactive’ supernatural styled soundtrack; one of the last releases of 2021 from the insane, discombobulating ‘mondo bizzaro manufacturer’ Artetetra platform.
For this is a 80s VHS graded score of Italian folk-horror and dream-reality wrapped up in an 8-bit fantasy of crushed Super Mario Bros. platform hopping, early Warp label Aphex Twin, Darrel Fritton and Speedy J, and the combined soundtrack and gaming elements of Takafumi Fujisawas, Akira Yamaoka and Andrew Barnabas.
Unless you read all the accompanying notes you’ll miss the psychogeography apsects of this score: the mysterious cloaked figure behind this glassy spherical mirage and Elm Street dream warrior spooked world invokes the arcane, one time seat of the Western Roman Empire and Byzantine jewel, Ravenna. Quite the historical stargate with its continuous pre-Middle Ages upheavals, reputation as an early centre of Christianity, glorious architecture and mosaics it’s the city’s darker corners, the abattoir and sinister that seeps into Nòtt Lönga’s soundscape.
Strange, eerie in places, this alternative plane of retro arppegiator and algorithms and virtual reality is a nocturnal spell caught drifting and gliding between ominous fairytales and the paranormal: even alien. A disturbed 80s-style electronic hall of mirrors that draws you in with the promise of languid floating, the synthesised melodies softly come in waves before glitching like the glass screen façade of some simulation engineered by a higher intelligence from another dimension. Mondoriviera dares the listener to dream in a soundtrack theatre of his cult imagination.
Sven Helbig ‘Skills’
(Modern Recordings) 4th February 2022
The versatile (from working with such diverse acts as Rammstein to the Pet Shop Boys) East German composer-producer Sven Helbig conducts an incredible suffusion of colliery meets a minimalistic Sibelius brass on his first statement of 2022. The craftsman’s/artisan’s struggles, ‘despair’ and creative processes go through ten stages of varying reflective and plaintive stirring driven drama on an album that draws together the classical and contemporary to create an almost timeless spell.
As timeless that is as the symbolic ‘vanitas’ still life tableaus of the Dutch master Harmen Steenwijck in the 17th century; Helbig’s own modernist take on that tradition of painting places a skateboard and mobile phone next to a mortality loaded allegorical skull: the inevitable death of everything, but in this case, a symbol for the dying art of a craft and ‘skills’. As one tradition perishes another is born so to speak. But this leitmotif runs deep, right back to a pre-unified Germany, when ‘diy culture’ and craftsmanship were a necessity to those unable to afford, or even have any of the luxuries enjoyed in the West. And so Skills is a sostenuto concentrated homage to that tradition, yet also a mood board reification of the passing of time itself: the time between toil and inspiration. In a kind of Lutheran atmosphere of earnest labour, with compositions that can evoke a candlelit garret or bleak workshop in Worms, Helbig’s brass ensemble and string quartet conjure up a most beautiful gravitas that can harmoniously set hardship with the near ethereal.
Straddling the neoclassical, operatic and cinematic there’s even room for the coarser, scrunched synthesized concrete textures and pulsations of the Chicago-based musician Surachai on the album’s sober but stunning unfolding ‘Repetition’ suite.
Tunnels of daylight fall upon mechanisms and cogs as they come to life in atmospheric settings. Baubles and floating dust particles tinkle and slowly cascade gently whilst both longer and shortened strings build the tension and a French horn sounds a low, almost misty-eyed, romantic note. Luminous and dreamy on the starry ‘Vision’, and evoking the avant-garde and a touch of Kriedler on the workbench clockwork diorama ‘Flow’, the Skills album is a measured, aching and brooding work of art; a moving testament to the élan and craft of an impressive composer who’s classical roots transcend the genre.
War Women Of Kosovo ‘A Lifetime Isn’t Enough’
4th February 2022
Never ones to shy away from the harrowing atrocities committed on communities across the world, the partnership of Grammy-winning producer & author Ian Brennan and Italian-Rwandan photographer & filmmaker Marilena Umuhoza Delli have continued to stripe away all artifice and sentimentality from those victim’s stories; recording for posterity some of the most vulnerable accounts of genocide, prejudice and sexual violence in countries such as Rwanda, South Sudan, Comoros, Vietnam, Ghana and Romania. Brennan’s no fuss, in-situ style of recording has brought us unflinching accounts: the onus being on under-represented women, the elderly, and persecuted groups within under-represented populations, languages, and regions.
No less candid in this regard, the partnership’s latest collection features those nameless victims of the horrific Balkan wars of the 1990s; namely the Kosovan community of women and children raped by the aggressors as both an act of subjection, revenge, and as part of a sanctioned campaign of terror and erasure of the region’s Muslim population. Far too complicated and beyond my grasp of history to recount here, the Balkans blew up into an inter-fractional, racial, religious conflict between neighbours once kept together under the iron fist of Tito in the Slavic block of Yugoslavia, and before that, the Ottoman Empire. Once that towering force died, and with the deterioration of Soviet Russia, the region was broken up and plunged into chaos, war. On the doorstep of a practically useless EU, and with little appetite to get involved the escalation of atrocities eventually spurred the UN and NATO into action, with one of the consequences being the formulation of a separate majority Muslim state, the Republic of Kosovo – formerly part of Serbia that was until the late 80s a semi-autonomous state within that country. Admittedly this is a very glib account of events during that decade – I would recommend for further reading trying out Misha Glenny’s Balkans tome.
In what is a subject very close to both Marilena and Ian’s hearts – her only two living Rwandan relatives were born of genocidal rape, whilst Ian’s life was irreversibly impacted by the sexual assault and near murder of a loved one – the voices of Kosovo’s rape victims are given a platform in what amounts to a healing process. The trauma weighs heavy for sure, undulated as it is with the minimalistic, earthy scene-setting sounds of bells, a thrum of lamented, grieving voices, rustic scraps and some obscure stringed instruments – though there’s also some kind of odd keyboard too and a chorus of traumatic sounds that threaten to engulf the listener at one point. The record even comes with a ‘trigger warning’ (just look at the titles); the language and sentiment of those courageous survivors impossible to not take in.
Not the easiest of experiences, but then how could it (and why should it) be. We need such projects to jilt us out of our obsessive virtual realities and comfort zones; to be reminded that in many of the people who will read this review’s lifetime such post-WWII atrocities were carried out in a closeted Europe. As much a piece of activism as a sonic and vocal reminder, A Lifetime Isn’t Enough is an essential plaintive cry from a recent past that needs addressing; the consequences of which are felt every day by the women taking part, to them though this isn’t history or a footnote but an ongoing collective trauma.
From The Archives:
Witch Camp (Ghana): ‘I’ve Forgotten Who I Used To Be’.
Sheltered Workshop Singers ‘Who You Calling Slow?’
Tanzania Albinism Collective ‘White African Power’
The Ian Brennan Interview.
Letters From Mouse ‘Tarbolton Bachelors Club’
(Subexotic Records) 28th January 2022
You can forgive most Scots for the dewy-eyed worship of the unofficial national bard, Robert Burns. After all, every tartan decorated rousing of nationalism, and every lowland toiled symbolic feature of Scotland is run through with the verses of the 18th century poet/lyricist. There’s even a secondary-like New Year type holiday in his name, celebrated up here in Scotland – Burns Night on January 25th.
All roads, threads and references certainly lead back to Burns on Steven Anderson’s latest typographic contoured and fantasised album, the Tarbolton Bachelors Club. The follow-up to his previous window view An Gàrradh album, released under the Burns inspired Letters From Mouse alias, could be described as a psychogeography that takes in prominent locations, the spaces and essence of the venerated subject without all the bagpipes and kilt adorned folklore. Instead, Anderson weaves a captivating, thoughtful ambient, trance and ambiguous electronic soundtrack, both dreamy and with a touch of gravitas: Not so Scottish, glinting and fanned radiant spokes are spindled with an air of the Far East – like a pastoral mirage Masami Tsuchiya – on the opening track ‘Elizabeth’.
Traces of Burns history, brought into our world through a portal, are suffused with a touch of mystery but also beauty: none more so, again, than on that opening softly majestic sentiment to Burns daughter ‘Bess’, the first illegitimate child he had after an affair with his family’s servant girl Elizabeth Paton. Bess appears most notably immortalized in her father’s famous poem, Love-Begotten Daughter as “Lily Bonie”, a line used later on as a track title.
The album title is itself a reference to Burns quasi-masonic gentlemen’s club; a haven for debate and discussion on all the hot topics of the day. There was even a token produced to commemorate this infamous lodge, as alluded to by Anderson on the golden breathed ‘Tarbolton Penny’. Tarbolton for those unfamiliar with the great bard’s locality is a village in South Ayrshire, a county in which the romanticist was born and spent much of his life roaming.
Of course, you can’t construct such an escapist soundtrack without featuring some of Burns actual words; ghostly emerging as they do from the esoteric folk wafts of ‘South Church Beastie’, a past reminder of Burns adoration and forewarning idealised social covenant with nature and classless egalitarianism. Almost in its full version, ‘A Man’s A Man For A’ That’ – a scornful in places stab at those unwilling to rock the boat, carrying on with bowing their heads and doffing caps to their pay masters, although he was one of them himself, the poetic farmer, landowner – is read out to the Eno-esque synthesised curtain call of the same name.
Echoes of Artificial Intelligence Warp, Charles Vaughen, Tangerine Dream, Bradbury Poly and Library music permeate a chimed soundtrack of map coordinates, scenes viewed from propeller powered aircraft, vacuums and walks as Anderson offers a semi-Baroque meets late 20th century abstract vision of a thoughtful, magical sonic historiography. Anderson proves that the ghosts of that period still have much to share; a resonating voice brought back from the enlightenment with an evocative soundtrack to match.
Compilations…
Various ‘Mainstream Funk’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 28th January 2022
The specialist rare finds and vinyl reissue label WEWANTSOUNDS first release of 2022 is another dip into the vaults of the, crate-digger’s and breakbeat connoisseur’s favourite, Mainstream label.
Bob Shad’s original “broad church” imprint grew out of an already 30 year spanning career when it took shape in the 1960s; a showcase for prestigious artists, session players and Blue Note luminaries chancing their arm it the bandleader or solo spotlight. A musical journeyman himself, Shad (whittled down from Abraham Shadrinsky) began his producer’s apprenticeship at the iconic Savoy label, then moved to National Records before taking up an A&R role at Mercury, where he launched his own, first, label EmArcy. It was during this time that Shad would produce records for the venerated, celebrated jazz singer deity Sarah Vaughan, the Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet, Dinah Washington and The Big Brother Holding Company.
As a testament to his craft, Vaughan would go on to record eight albums on Shad’s Mainstream label, the next chapter, leap in a career that traversed five decades of jazz, soul, blues, R&B, rock, psych and of course funk. Mainstream’s duality mixed reissues (from such iconic gods of the jazz form as Dizzy Gillespie) with new recordings; with its golden era arguably the five-year epoch chronicled in this latest compilation. From the first half of the 1970s, WEWANTSOUNDS has picked out twelve nuggets of varying quality, starting with Vaughan who leads the pack with a classy, showy jazz-soul cover of one of Marvin Gaye’s career-defining classics, the downtown social commentary ‘Inner City Blues’. Oozing sophistication amongst a soft tangle of horns and funky licks, the rightly venerated jazz soulstress barely breaks a sweat. Following that icon is the “underrated” alto/tenor saxophonist Buddy Terry with the ten-minute plus jazz-funk exotic peregrination turn workout ‘Quiet Afternoon’, which proves anything but a gentle meander in the park. Probably of note for the appearance of Stanley Clarke, this burnished sun-lit turn changes signatures from the relaxed to a “pure” dynamic free fall of free bird flighty flutes, screaming horns and infused exotic jazz-fusions. An epic of the form this should prompt further investigation of Terry’s small back catalogue – that’s two albums for Mainstream, and not much else.
Many will recognize such names as Blue Mitchell, the former trumpet-player who honed his craft as a member of Horace Silver’s famed Quartet. Already a Blue Note alumni, Mitchell joined the Mainstream label in 1971, going on to record six albums for Shad’s eclectic imprint. On this compilation, taken from his 1973 Tango=Blues LP, is the sassy, San Fran TV detective soundtrack and funk version of Gato Barbieri’s sensual score for the controversial ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ Last Tango In Paris movie. With a dash of Mayfield, some gentle whacker-whacker guitar funk chops and lilt of South America, Mitchell turns a blue movie into the blues. Another former Blue Note acolyte, hard-bop and post-bop pianist LaMont Johnson, who worked with both Jackie McLean and science-fiction jazz progenitor Ornate Coleman, showcases a bit of “state-of-the-art-tech” on his kooky bendy futuristic ‘M-Bassa’ – taken from the 1972 album Sun, Moon And Stars. The rudimental phaser effects of the Yamaha EX42 analog synth augment quickening gabbles up the fretboard and echoes of spiritual jazz.
Moving on there’s a smooth, heartening and snuggled version of the rainbow nation Sly And The Family Stone’s ‘Family Affair’ by the saxophonist and flute prodigy (already able and serving his apprenticeship at the age of 13 in the Baltimore Municipal Band) Dave Hubbard; the original Muscle Shoals lit funky ‘Super Duper Love’ 45” – picked up by Joss Stone a generation later – by the sexed-up Willie ‘Sugar Baby’ Garner; the ridiculous salacious Zodiac chat-up soul-funk ‘Betcha Can’t Guess My Sign’ number (complete with Alvin the chipmonk helium backing vocals) by Prophecy; and a slick rattled percussive jazzy R&B pleaser from the saxophonist Pete Yellin entitled ‘It’s The Right Thing’.
A smattering of sampler’s delights, relatively obscure examples of jazz-funk fusions and more famous classics, Mainstream Funk is a classy and decent compilation to kick off the New Year with.
Various ‘Excuse The Mess Volumes 1 + 2’
(Hidden Notes) 4th February 2022
Across two albums of extemporized in-situ performances the great and adroit of UK-based contemporary classical and electronica experimentalism conjure up an imaginative mood board of compositions within the set perimeters of the Excuse The Mess podcast challenge. Invited for a chat in the personable surroundings of the titular space, each interview subject was asked to abide by the rules in creating a special something with the host, Ben Corrigan.
Created in that location, in that time there could be no pre-planning, no added electronic manipulations; each artist was allowed to only use a single instrument. Many of those taking part choose to use their signature instrument, others more obscured props; the most bizarre being the transmogrified ‘ice rink’ field-recorded ice-skating samples (figure-of-eight slushes and sliced ice-skate scrapes transduced into an abstract subterrain) used by the South African born multidisciplinary Warp label artist Mira Calix, and the tub patted oscillating and soft emerging techno rhythmic ‘pesto jar’ that MBE (no less) gonged electronic-acoustic composer Anna Meredith puts to good sonic use on Volume 2 closer ‘Oopsloops’.
More fathomable instruments can be detected however; for example, the renowned hand/steel pan and saucer shaped ‘hang’ player Manu Delago kicks things off by spreading his tapping fingers across his resonating percussive specialty to traverse an ambiguous cosmic atmosphere on the near-sublime ‘Collider’. Following in that peregrination’s wake is Dinosaur jazz quartet stalwart and acclaimed multifaceted composer-improviser Laura Jurd’s trumpeted ‘Copper Cult’ – a changeable vapour and march of soundtrack Miles Davis, Don Cherry and Yazz Ahmed.
In turn, the esteemed composer (pieces performed by the London Symphonic Orchestra and London Sinfonietta) Emily Hall tunes an electronic magnetic harp to ethereal heights; singer-songwriter and Erased Tape regular Douglas Dare, with just the use of his layered uttered, whispered a cappella vocals, magic’s up a dark romantic plead; and the Emmy-nominated composer and BBC 3 broadcaster Hannah Peel builds towards a shuttered clapboard rhythm and chorister-like wafted divine pirouette with just the use of a music box. Other notable inclusions (though every piece is stirring and intriguing in its own right) that piqued my attention were the fizzed and caustic frayed and slow-drawn violin evocations of the Kazakh-Brit improviser-collaborator-leader of the London Contemporary Orchestra Galya Bisengalieva – who seems to evoke Sunn O))), only with just a violin -, and the Canadian-born composer (scoring The Imposter) Anne Nikitan imagines an 8-bit Castlevania as transformed by µ-Ziq, funnelled into an early mute label version of ‘Da Da Da’.
A wealth of talent from the arts, theatre, classical and film score arenas appear on both volumes of this musical challenge: proving if anything, just how lucky the UK is to have so much talent working on its doorstep. The restrictions don’t seem to have narrowed either the quality or the originality. In fact, if anything, each artist has been creatively pushed to use their ingenuity in composing something anew, on the spot. A brilliant double-bill selection, ‘excuse the mess’ can only describe the accumulative space in which these tracks were created, and not the sounds or music, which are anything but. A novel criteria has resulted in some mysterious, spellbinding and often traversing experiments. The Hidden Notes platform ushers in a new year with a quality release package.
Brazen Hussies ‘Year Zero: An Anthology’
(Jezus Factory Records) Vinyl Version January 2022
Despite the distain, rambunctious methodology and carefree attitude to making it in the lower levels of the music scene in the 90s and early noughties, the scuzzed and abrasive Brazen Hussies were far too knowing and artful than their shambolic, contrary myth would have us believe. Quite frankly that status is shambollocks!
For this ‘lost’ London group played loosely and quite skilfully with their influences, which ranged (by the sounds of it) to everyone from Richard Hell to The Monochrome Set, from The Pixies to the Nuggets box set. Anything but a complete mess they showed a certain élan for the pivot, for the light and shade as they transitioned from the needled and coarse gnarling for halftime downtime and even a bit of melody. Because out of the ramshackle punk, post-punk and cutting dissonance there was always some remnant, a semblance of a half-decent tune.
Simultaneously as courted as they were slagged off by a hostile music press during their apex in the late 90s, it’s hard to get a handle; difficult to tell if they deserve this anthology reappraisal, or whether it’s all just a scam: elevating fleeting losers from rock’s back pages. Actually they were quite bloody good, and at least (for the majority of the time) only ever recorded three-minute songs so as not to overstay their hobnail Dr. Martens boot on the throat welcome. Their farewell ‘Bridesville’ blowout is one of the few exceptions; running to a ridiculous insufferable 26-minutes of whined post Britpop and salon bar piano malcontent.
Fronted by the duel vocals of Dave Queen (a Canadian by god) and Lou McDonnell, backed by the ‘rhythm section’ of Lunch on trebly Bauhaus-Gang-Of-Four-Killing-Joke bass duties (proving anything but out to “Lunch”) and Russell Curtis on barracking and tom rolled drums, they sounded like a contortion of the Bush Tetras and Stone Temple Pilots on the scowling ‘Touch It’; like a flange-affected X-Ray Spex on the brilliant character assignation turn halftime concerned pathos riled ‘Thin Lips’; and like the Cowboy Junkies on the country-folk-punked counterpoint of squealed industrial shredded guitar and sweeter down-heeled sung ‘Kimberley’.
In between sporadic bursts of an early Manics (Dave sails close to a young, petulant James Dean Bradford), the Stooges, Slater-Kinney, The Fall and Essential Logic they turn in two highly contrasting covers. A more obvious Seeds homage is made with a cover of the acid-garage legend’s Nuggets stalwart ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’ – a real shambles of a badly recorded demo – and an odd enchanted nod to the Beach Boys’ doughy-eyed California daydream ‘All Summer Long’. It’s as if an entirely different band turned up for the second of those: well I’ve since found out that the honeyed, almost Christmas-y, Beach boys take was recorded by a flying solo Dave.
With a bedraggled smattering of releases to their name and odd appearances on a myriad of compilations, what little success they had was never capitalised on. Instead, just as those in the press that saluted their brazen despondency, protests, even heralding them as “visionaries”, they drew just as much scorn and bile. Neither a piece of crap nor the second coming, the Brazen Hussies were a great controlled mess of punk and all its off-shoots, Britpop, garage, alt-rock and skag country: in fact, a very 90s band. Is it worth the plastics melted down to produce the vinyl (digital and CD versions released back in 2021) edition? I’d say so, and I think you’ll agree when you slap it on the turntable; finding a missing link from a decade that’s increasingly becoming the new “80s”.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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