The Perusal #40: Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters, Moonlight Benjamin, BONDO, Kety Fusco, Antti Lötjönen…
February 15, 2023
Upcoming and recent albums in review
Dominic Valvona

Moonlight Benjamin ‘Wayo’
24th February 2023

PHOTO CREDIT: Cedrick Nöt
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.
Born into this mortal world in tragic circumstances, an orphan at childbirth, the poetically named Moonlight started out singing hymns in the Christian Church before crossing the paths of vodou musicians, acolytes and picking up on the sounds of Western rock music on the radio. But with an eventual move to France, Moonlight would also take up the study of jazz. A return in 2009 to Haiti and vodou initiation, Moonlight became a priestess of an age-old religion, practice originally brought to Haitian shores by slaves from West and Central Africa.
Famous for its worked-up rhythmic rituals and exaltations, drama, the sounds and expressive vocalization of vodou was coupled to a myriad of bluesy, rocking, psychedelic, country and desert styles when the guitarist Pascaud entered the picture. Two critically favored, compelling and adventurous albums and numerous gigs later this sonic and, most importantly, vocal partnership now summons up something very special, soulful, spiritual and charged on Wayo.
Translating into a “scream of pain”, the title-track finds Moonlight commanding strength yet also emotional as a tempered, melodious if raw gumbo of New Orleans and Tuareg post-punk swamp blues buzzes around her. That voice, its range from earthiness to squeals and the deeply welled, is hard to compare with anyone else. Melodic with plenty of familiar tunes, those beautiful if on occasion riled tones evoke fleeting grasps of Joan Armatrading, Ami Kate, Brittany Howard, Cold Specks and Big Joanie. Yet this is Afro-Haitian soul, R&B, the venerable and raging conversing with French chanteuse and Portuguese fado; with camel motion traverses and panoramic spells in desert Westerns.
For his part, Pascaud’s sprung, tremolo and gristly guitar, with both a grinding coil and velocity and more melting wanes, stirs up a sinewy flex of Tinariwan, Modu Moctar, Hendrix and Mark Mulholland’s collaboration with another Haiti native, the poet-artist Frankétiene.
With the addition of a bass guitar and drums elements of Boukmen Eksperyans and the Vodoun Band Haiti beat comes into contact with soul revue backbeats, post-punk and cult rock ‘n’ roll.
All together it’s a real rich, ever-changing landscape of driven, slapping, bobbed and stonking rhythms and powerful, rough and yet elegant vocals with a sense of both pain and magic. 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.
Antti Lötjönen ‘Circus/Citadel’
(We Jazz) 24th February 2023

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.
The seasoned Lötjönen, whose provenance includes stints in the Five Corners Quintet, 3TM and Aki Rissanen Trio, reels back in the talents of the alto and baritone saxophonist Mikko Innanen (part of the We Jazz label supergroup Kamo Saxo), tenor saxophonist Jussi Kannaste (a fellow 3TM band mate), trumpet player Verneri Pohjola and drummer Joonas Rippa on another highly impressive outing.
More coherent than the last time around however, the themes of the day, the protestations are galvanized and turned inside-out across a concrete vine swinging, guarded and maddening landscape. Celan’s harrowing verse, consumed as is right with WWII and the Holocaust, his Jewish struggles, is reflected by those old and contemporary challenges with a musicality that evokes the social conscious jazz records of Marcus Belgrave, Sam Rivers and Phil Ranelin. And yet the opening title-track three-part act and its couplet of suites also serenade and offer a lilted New Orleans fanfare, suggestive of America’s earlier Southern States jazz roots. That first trilogy of tracks is a journey in itself; from Dixie and Savoy Jazz (Gigi Gryce for one) to those musical, theatrical sounds of Bernstein and early Miles Davis, through to the farmyard percussion and wilder rushes of sax and trumpet on the final act. It feels at times like an avant-garde or free-jazz modernist score to Animal Farm. With all the connotations, metaphors that title implies, the circus of madness and fortress mentality are played off against each other.
Each suite breaks off into expressive groups, separations, with perhaps the horn section together or double bass and drums reacting to each other in almost isolation. Numerous versions of this practice, these little breakdowns, combos can be heard throughout; all played with expanding minds and adroit skill, dexterity and, that word again, expression. And there are some both playful (is that a “pop goes the weasel” riff on the activist-stoked ‘Defenestration’?) and wailing surprises to be heard on this bounded mix of the quickened, the controlled and purposeful.
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.
Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters ‘Abri Cyclonique’
(Real World) 24th February 2023

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.
At the heart of the 69-year-old farm worker and lumberjack’s earthy song music is a three-drum circle of rhythms. A disciple since being introduced by his Léwòz practicing mother at the age of twelve to this West African originated ritual, dance and music Polobi is a master of the Gwaka, a family of hand drums of all different sizes, used for various effects and parts – the “Buula” for example, being the largest of that family, used as the central rhythm. The “Djeme” is another; a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet shaped drum, its origins tied to the 15th century Mali Empire and its spread across the region; taken up by those unfortunate souls catered off to the Americas during the Transatlantic slave trade.
As an ancestor of those slaves, brought over to the French colonized Guadeloupe archipelago to harvest sugar (among other roles) on the plantations, Polobi’s identity is very much on show here; a call both pleading and poetically ached as this group of islands continues to be attached to France as a “region” – as a consequence, part of the EU too – despite decades of independence campaigns. And that’s despite the Colonist masters loss of the Caribbean islands during its own revolution to the British (the first of two attempts to take them). Yet with certain conditions, it remains a semi-autonomous part of France to this day. This means there’s a strong French culture, especially language wise, with French being the official dialect, but Creole really the more popular used amongst the locals. It’s alluded to in the lyrics on this new album’s trippy ‘Bouladje’ song: “What language should I speak? This one says speak to me in Creole/ This one says speak to me in French. Music is in French/ As children we sang in Creole/ Let’s talk to make ourselves understood.”
The call and response, Cándido-like hand drums rattling and rolled (we’re told Doctor L replaced the drums here with Cuban rhythms) ‘Neg Africa’ makes that connection to displacement from the homeland obvious; sounding as it does like an African homage musically and atmospherically.
To my own ignorance I never knew that there was as Tour de Guadalupe in the cycling calendar. Won by the promising Colombian talent of the same name ‘Camargo’ uses a mirage of nuzzled distant trumpet, slightly elliptical drumming and electronic processes to call for the locals to get energized and to win back the “yellow jersey”; a boost for Guadalupe’s population to take back their own destiny, to feel bolstered with a can-do attitude. Polobi it must be said is a cycling fan, so it can be read as a tribute to that Central American cycling star too.
As important as self-determination is and the struggle to preserve traditions, this album is as much about Polobi’s response to his natural environment. Named after the terrifying threats and realties of cyclones – though also a metaphor we’re told for the “resilience” of the music and for resistance – Abri Cyclonique pays a real tribute to Polobi’s little oasis out in the wilds of the archipelago’s Grande Savane region. ‘La Lézad’, with its spiral wafts of jazzy horn, drum scuttles and Gnawa-like vocals is named after a local river, whilst the mysterious Afro-Caribbean, Terry Hall meets Black Mango ‘Driv’ meanders lyrically through the geography towards the woods.
Biodiversity in sonic form, with the flora, fauna, crops and wildlife permeating the sophisticated interlaced production, Polobi’s rustic idyll comes alive: as much a barrier to the infringing forces of big business as a call to return back to a simpler life in harmony with nature.
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.
Kety Fusco ‘THE HARP, Chapter 1’
(Floating Notes Records) 3rd March 2023

“The harp was born in the 7th century, when the air was different, tastes and experiences had nothing to do with today’s world and to this day I cannot think that there is no evolution: that is why I am designing a new harp, it will still be her, but contemporary and everyone will have the opportunity to approach it; in the meantime, welcome to THE HARP”.
And with that Kety Fusco elicits, pulls, scratches, picks and manipulates both liminal and suggestive notes, textures, timbres, qualities and evocations from her choice instrument on the first of a three-chapter journey in harp exploration. But as that opening quote states, this is nothing less than an “evolution”; a post-classical transformation in which the harp, though present and familiar, is pulled into realms of serialism, soundscaping and futurism: all that history forgotten, or at least erased, in pursuit of innovation and the new.
This means certain avant-garde practices and non-musical materials, processes being brought in to the equation. Hairpins, stones, wax have all been used in the past on Fusco’s often-improvised performative compositions, peregrinations and suites. To further distance the harp from its classical, folk and majestic roots, Fusco uses an electrified soundboard of effects and a database library of digital sounds she’s collected over the years. On this nineteen-minute, more or less seamless journey, the Italian artist is said to have even used a vibrator – banging it against that already mentioned soundboard. Such devices do indeed change the scope of the instrument, making it almost abstract, recondite, the source hidden aurally.
Fusco uses both an 80-kilo wooden harp and a carbon electric harp on Chapter 1 in the new series – chapters 2 and 3 appearing annually over the next three years –, which across its duration passes through the states of elegy, the disturbing, the supernatural and diaphanous.
With an impressive CV of study, accolades and notable performances at festivals, events, even the Swiss parliament, Fusco knows her instrument, theory and practice inside-out. And so whilst there’s a spirit of experimentation and improvisation, Fusco knows exactly what she’s doing, implying and creating.
Released in the run-up to this album a short excerpt, ‘2072’, alluded to the premonition year of Fusco’s death! A Cassandra perhaps, or maybe told this date by a fortuneteller, a meeting with destiny, a preparation for death is congruously pulled form out of the whole piece. The melody is a funeral elegy, destined to carry Fusco over into the next world. Not so much a cascade, as the waves of purposeful picked notes are allowed to ring out each time, given a little space before the next iteration, there’s a sense of some kind of watery flow; a peace of mind with naturalistic stirrings. And yet there is that sadness too, emanating from airy mystery.
No surprises that Fusco has previously conjured up a horror soundtrack, as there’s a constant feeling of the shadowy, even eerie throughout much of the rest of this suite. Especially in the opening passages, I can hear hints of Lucrecia Dalt. Voice-like sounds, both apparitional and almost esoterically holy, stir whilst granular and clearer but mysterious drones and melodies start to build. Glissando and legato notes simultaneously seem light and yet loaded. The atmospheres that are produced move between the chthonian, the vaporous, airy and metallic. Because whilst there’s melody, a rhythm at times, the sound turns more industrial near the end with a film and rotor-like abrasion of steel and wire.
At other times there’s moments of ambience, a sprinkle of starry calculus and reflective stillness.
The harp has seldom sounded so removed, different; Fusco at one, entwined with her harps in a challenging performance that stretches the limits of this usually synonymous heavenly instrument. Where she goes next is anyone’s guess, but I’m sure it will be a whole different experience in sound and stringed exploration that pushes the envelope.
Za! ‘Za! & La Transmegacobla’
3 Phaz ‘Ends Meet’
(Via Discrepant)

An electrified double-bill from the discrepant portal of outlier labels this month, with albums from the Iberian (but worldly reaching) Za! duo and friends and the singular electronic-percussive global beat-maker 3 Phaz.
The first of these finds the Spanish underground favourites Za! in a “tri-state” union with the experimental Catalan Cobla wind quartet La Megacobla and the “trans-folk” duo of Tarta Relena. All together in one space they pool their resources into one, almost exhaustive, opus of controlled chaos and polygenesis musical abandon.
A Kabbalah, a cult that you might actually want to join – willing to sip the spiked kool aid with enthusiasm -, whole branches of Mediterranean dances (from the West Bulgarian quick-quick-slow-quick-quick metric beat Kopanista, to the complex bustling and cheerful Flamenco style of Buleria and the dance in a circle, Catalan, Sardana), folk traditions and sounds from atavistic realms are transported into a colourful vortex of psych, prog, krautrock, heavier riffage and heavy meta(l).
The whole is both crazy and life affirming; a burst of energy and spasmodic cross-pollination. It’s as if Zappa dropped acid in The Master Musicians Of Jajouka’s tea; a heady mix of Anatolian-Turkey, North Africa, Moorish Spain, Eastern Europe and The Levant mixed with hippie ideology and freewheeling cosmic fantasies. At any onetime I can hear snatches, a gaggale of Dakhu Brakha, Elektro Hafiz, Elias Rahbani, Crystal Fighters, Jethro Tull, Tone Of Voice Orchestra, Hebrew, the Medieval, the Tibetan and Moroccan.
A mizmar of the heralded and the theatrical, this combined effort of wild disciplines, influences and practices is a convergence of untethered rituals, ceremonies, spins and mayhem. A place in which Ethno-music and the sounds and traditions of Spain make free associations with a family tree that’s branches spread across the Med and further afield. And yet it all sounds so very new and refreshing.
The second release in this double-bill finds the artist 3Phaz amping up the Egyptian Shaabi sound with a highly percussive mix of Mahraganat (an Egyptian electro street sound originally derived from folk music), Techno and various Bass-heavy subcultures.
A very popular working class music, that Shaabi vibe is rhythmically transported, flung forward into a futuristic soundclash vision of electronica and beats. Although “clash” isn’t the right word as this process, experiment is pretty congruous, with those rattling hand drums, percussive trinket rings and scrapes and both fluted and piped mizmar is very much in synch with the metallic synthesized effects, rounded if deep bass pulsations and sonic signals. Put it another way: that Egyptian, Middle Eastern source material is ramped up in a spin, swirl and body-locking production of electro, jungle music and fuzzed, fizzled alternative futurism.
Tracks like ‘Sharayet’, with its rapid hand drummed drills, willowed Egyptian oboe and acid Arabia beats, sounds like Farhot meets Man parish in Cairo! Meanwhile, ‘Type Beat’ has a more club-y sound mixed with stirrings of Dave Clarke, whilst ‘Shabber’ seems to merge the street sounds of the souk market with Jeff Mills. Neither dystopian nor joyous, Ends Meet is instead a heady septet of electro-techno powered Arabian and Egyptian workouts; a rallying excitable transformation of traditional folk sucked into a newly formed vortex.
The Mining Co. ‘Gum Card’
(PinDrop Records) 17th March 2023

Not so much an artistic leap in the dark, Michael Gallagher has nevertheless put aside his conceptual method of preparation and writing for something less structured and preconceived. On his latest and fifth album, Gum Card, the Donegal native, but London-based, artist and musician has instead managed to piece together a loose theme of nostalgia and youth; throwbacks to an age of obsessive card collecting to particular life-affirming scenes and foolish misadventures (or rather the failure of) dabbling with the occult.
These weathered memories, reminisces are interjected with episodes of artistic doubt, phobias and ambient-settings scored, partially, with in-situ recordings of the atmosphere and room in which they are meant to be recorded – the lounge style Casio keyboard accompanied leftfield ruminating ‘Waiting Room’ for example, originally part of a wider concept of songs to be conceived in a chosen room environment, using that spaces own ambient sounds.
The Casio sound does however highlight Gallagher’s taste for experimenting with the music of his youth in the 80s. A touch of Fleetwood Mac here, some dry-ice and a little retro-cosmic projection over there. Although Gallagher’s soft-peddled signature of Americana and troubadour songwriting is still very much in attendance; a gentle mix of a winsome Chris Isaak and Spain. If anything Gum Card has more in common with the album before last, Frontier, then the previous sci-fi imbued Phenomenolgy – his best work in my opinion. However, no one style dominates this songbook as such, and I consider this album another experiment, progression of his craft. Because amongst the initial knowing MOR and softly-delivered aches and yearns of ‘Primary’, a subtle flange-dream spell of 2000s indie colours the bluesy vibe on a song in which the protagonists are trying to avoid such despondent melodrama, which is ironic as Gallagher actually doesn’t even like the blues.
Later on there’s a hint of Mike Gale’s Casio Bossa pre-set on the memory lane feely ‘Shallow Stream’ (dedicated to fishing with Dad back in Donegal as a young lad, and memorable for accidently harpooning his old man’s hand with a fish hook), shades of Galaxie 500 and Mercury Rev on the title-track, and strobe-lit purred electro-pop on ‘Limits’.
As always there’s great subtlety at work, a slow reveal of emotional pulls and fragility; of nostalgia and memories seen at a great distance, revalued both with wisdom and yet confliction too. Some of the strangest of those draws features Gallagher’s wife, unintentionally stepping in to soothingly sing the opening ‘Wake Up’, and the subject matter of the stripped-back, intimate yearned closer ‘Broken Baby Bird’. Both bookend the album with hospital set pieces; the first, a lunar Fiona Apple and Western-tinged delirium about Gallagher’s fear of the place and needles, the second, a caring allusion to his wife’s vulnerable state after undergoing a major operation: the fledgling fallen from a nest to the ground. Obsessions of youth continuing into adulthood, the worries over loved ones and glimmers of storytelling are all converged with Gallagher’s usual slow release and an ear for something a little different to the usual American, troubadour style of deliverance. He might loathe his London home of recent years, and dream of leaving, yet that crumbling edifice has incubated the development of a real talent; a moody soul with an amiable burr who’s simultaneously comfortable and yet despondent at the state of it all. The Mining Co. proves a brilliant vehicle for Gallagher as he matures into an interesting storyteller and observer, and Gum Card is yet another finely tuned songbook from the Donegal longing maverick.
BONDO ‘Print Selections’
(Quindi Records) 24th February 2023

How does such a languorous sound still have such drive and purpose? Far from listless, definitely not “aimless”, the L.A. quartet reimagines Fugazi as beachcombers, enticed by the twilight hours of a Pacific Ocean surf on their debut album.
Locked-in (“consumed in the process” as they put it) BONDO wind and unwind, drift and with a navel downward gaze somehow weave the indolent slacker vibe into post-hardcore, post-rock, jazzy (that Archie Shep influence in the band’s PR spill not actually that difficult to imagine), lo fi, grunge-y evocations of displacement. The idea being that each member of the band, each personality is “dissolved” to make way for the music, the theme no less than a “mind made anew”, “cleared of data and ego” yet witnessing “nothing in particular”.
With very little in the way of vocals or prompts, it’s mainly down to the feels of the music and the action, which on occasions builds up a surprising intensity on tracks like the “let it all go” spurred grind and slowcore, yet almost carefree, ‘New Brain’ – think OWLS and Bedhead with a touch of Acetones thrown in.
This is California alright, but one in which the punks, garage bands and downcast all hang out on the beachfronts, or, clear their heads whilst observing the coastal tides ebb and flow. And yet, most surprisingly (although that PR spill does name King Tubby as an influence) the Pavement-esque, baggy at times, languid and slowly hung guitar arcs ‘Zion Gate’ (clue is in the title) has a dub-like bent to it.
Print Selections is filled with recast rumbled surf music, echoes of Slint and The Archers Of Loaf, splish ‘n’ splash drums and processed guitars diligently working towards an unburdened purpose and shape. BONDO have risen to the challenge of the album format, holding attention and the gaze with an intelligent visceral L.A. malaise and languorous challenge to cut loose and find those new horizons.
Farid El Atrache ‘Nagham Fi Hayati’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) Available Now

In between leftfield excursions to Japan, cult French label showcases and repressed funk and soul rarities the reissue specialists (branching out with bands like Biensüre into releasing brand new original material too) WEWANTSOUNDS delve into the magic and sublime music of North Africa, Arabia and the Levant with this cinematic treasure from the late Egyptian superstar Farid El Atrache.
Released in 1974, the year that Farid passed away, the Nagham Fi Hayati album is a soundtrack of mawwal-longed sentiment, quickened shimmies and virtuoso performances that show off the matinee idol, singer and oud maestro’s repertoire: now at its most sagacious if ailing.
But first a little background. Born into a princely Druze clan family tree in Syria during WWI, in the grip of fighting with the French colonizers, Fraid, his mother and siblings were forced to flee the homeland. At around the age of nine Farid would pitch up in Egypt; staying until his death in the 1970s. Learning much from his Lebanese mother’s own musical prowess as a singer and oud player, the burgeoning pupil soon came to the attention of his elders; learning for a time under the stewardship of the polymath Egyptian composer Riad Al Sunbat, he would quickly make it to the airwaves, appearing on the country’s National radio station. Moves into the flourishing Egyptian movie business would follow; Farid appearing in thirty-one musical films in total.
As a playboy figure that never quite made it to the alter, Farid romanced co-stars, famous belly dancers and even a former Queen – before his ousting, King Farouk’s wife Nariman Sadek – whilst maintaining a career on celluloid, stage and as a recording artist popular across the entire Arab world and even beyond – a favourite of Brian Eno mo less, a snippet from his famous ‘Awad Hamsa’ song of the 60s was used on John Lennon’s art project ‘Revolution No. 9’.
As it happens, he plays the aging respected singing star in the movie that this album soundtracks. And once the much younger rival ships out to find wealth in Brazil, at first saves, out of kindness, the fallen heroine (played by Mervat Amin) from public shame before falling in love with her for real. Directed by the famed Egyptian director Henry Barakat, Nagham Fi Hayati finds Farid’s character, even with a sizable age gap, doing the honorable thing in marrying his pregnant secretary, the father now across the world with no idea he’s left his former lover knocked-up.
Musically this translates into the lushly and swirled orchestrated classicism, Arabian poetry of sentimental longing and fulgurated vowel prolonged lamenting matinee, ‘Alachan Malich Gheirak’ (“Because There Is No One Else For Me But You”), and the equally yearned emotional orchestration of drama, Franco-Arabian and concertinaed charm, ‘Ya Habaybi Ya Ghaybin’ (“My Absent Lover”).
Sitting between those love-lost and resigned suites, ‘Hebina Hebina’ (“Love Us, Love Us”) picks up the pace with North African darting and dotted quickening organ and a mixed chorus of backing singers, encouragingly and excitedly clapping away.
Appearing for the first time in its full-unedited form (a section was originally cut from the original LP version), the incredible unaccompanied lute set, ‘Takassim Oud’, finds Farid proving every bit the “king” of that stringed instrument. An appreciative audience constantly animated and bursting into applause, eggs on a solo performance that evokes flourishes of Spain, Turkey, and Arabian folk, and Egyptian desert mirages. It’s like witnessing something as sublime, virtuoso and mesmerizing as Django Rhinehardt, only its on the bandy, elastic, thumbed and strummed, picked and plucked, jumping and blurry rapid scales resonating oud.
The first reissue on vinyl since the 70s, this skilfully performed filmic affair-of-the-heart can now be yours. I suggest you make room for it in your collection now, but also start sourcing those old Egyptian movies. Farid was a titan of the form; his voice sublime and musicianship masterful. What a real pleasure to be made aware of this artist and star. Big thanks to WEWANTSOUNDS for that.
GRANDAD ‘S-T’
6th March 2023

Remaining anonymous for now, the E numbers fed maverick who sits behind the GRANDAD alias regurgitates the sort of electronic goofiness that labels such as Artetetra and Bearsuit knock out with such aplomb.
Bauhaus avant-garde theatre morphs into wired skittles’ rainbow cutes, or, a transmogrified Candy Crush on the debut EP by this noted orchestrator, composer and mischievous artist. If I listed the many “illustrious” figures from the scene that this alter ego has worked with, then I’m sure you’d guess who it is. So instead just trust me that this is a seasoned pro who hasn’t just splurged on Damon Hirst’s medicine cabinet but knows (I think anyway) exactly what they’re doing.
A rush of Japanese cartoon fantasy and platform gameplay scores, garbled indigestion and springy silliness is all synchronized with (what sounds like to me) visions of a reggae-house Felix Da Housecat, Egyptian Lover electro, Mike Dred’s spindled rushes and a surprising spot of scenic gazing (the EP’s final harmonium-like, freshly breathed trans-alpine mirage ‘Pest’, which has a touch of Roedelius about it). And then there’s also a scuffed and worked merger of early Jeff Mills, Populäre Mechanik and Basic Channel on the penultimate tubular hammering ‘Runner Runner’.
Attention deficit disorderly conduct wrapped up with more dramatic looming deep moods, kinetic chain reactions, giddy and heavily processed voices (from where or what, who knows) and intricate beat making, GRANDAD’s debut EP submerges and mutilates echoes of µ-Ziq, Autechre, Ippu Mitsui and Andrew Spackman’s SAD MAN project.
Zigzag pills are popped and metals beaten out on, despite all I’ve said, quite a focused set of maximalist propositions. Although, just to further pull this debut EP into the psychedelic-induced realms, the CD is being packaged by the aptly entitled and self-evident mushroom technologists, the Magical Mushroom Company, whose aim is not to microdot the general public but to replace plastic with the “magic of mushrooms”. Lick it and see: it might work. But you won’t need any drukqs or stimulants to enjoy this deep set of colour and goofball electronica.
Room Of Wires ‘Welcome To The End Game’
(Ant-Zen) 15th February 2023

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.
Although both partners (both called Andrew as it happens) have never actually met, and each track is created apart in isolation remotely, every single fibre and inch of their processes comes together to sculpt the nightmares of our technological encroaching and constantly under surveillance world with a search, an escape, into the light. In practice this means for every granular and shadowy techno reverberation there’s a smattering of ambient and neoclassical passages.
It all starts with the sound of Cabaret Voltaire’s Arabian-electro protestations and snatches of dialogue, and moves across a vivid modulated, oscillating structure of ominous strains, tubular mettalics, deep bass-y echoes, slowed and stretched beats and the sound of kinetic-static charged ballbearings being moved around in a circular fashion.
‘Oceans Light’, featuring exm, is a surprise with its ascending beams of light, rising from the refracted still waters, and the mournful ‘Burial’ features a touch of Dead Can Dance’s ethereal, but also Eastern European holy, gauze, which brings some gravitas to the lamentable misty scene. Elsewhere there’s a grind and cosmic concentration of Cosey Fani Tutti, Gescom, Amorphous Androgynous, Art Decade and Mouse On Mars to be found lurking or springing into view.
An often unnerving experience in which you’re never quite sure of the environment, this electronic duo tap into the growing unease and fast-shifting realities of our present cataclysm, of which they believe, by the title, we’ve reached the “end game”, whatever that will reveal. As I said a few paragraphs ago, 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.
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 Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist: Volume XLIII
March 16, 2020
PLAYLIST
Compiled by Dominic Valvona
Graphics Gianluigi Marsibilio
For all our friends and followers alike in coronavirus lockdown, let the Monolith Cocktail ease some of the doldrums and boredoms of quarantine with another Social Playlist (the 43rd edition in fact). The blog’s imaginary radisohow (or podcast if you prefer) brings together tracks from across time, genres and the globe to take the listener on a musical odyssey of discovery.
For those of you without access to Spotify, we’ve chosen a random smattering of tracks from Youtube.
Tracks:
Evie Sands ‘I’ll Hold Out My Hand’
Clarence Reid ‘Along Came A Woman’
Urbano de Castro ‘Urbanito’
Marva Whitney ‘What Kind Of Man’
The Scruffs ‘Go Faster’
The Cake ‘Ooh Poo Pah Doo’
The Koobas ‘A Little Piece Of My Heart’
Eternity’s Children ‘The Sidewalks Of The Ghetto’
Armando Trovajoli ‘I Love You’
Ziad Rahbani ‘Raksat Tahiat’
Eris Van Bloom ‘Forget Me After’
Yasuaki Shimizu ‘Lebon Lipon’
The Clientele ‘I Had To Say This’
The Plastic Cloud ‘Shadows Of Your Mind’
Grapefruit ‘Yesterday’s Sunshine’
Moses Gunn Collective ‘Mercy Mountain’
3Ds ‘Evocation Of W.C. Fields
The Exploding Hearts ‘Throwaway Style’
Rockin’ Ramrods ‘Willie’s Plastic People Factory’
The Fe-Fi-Four Plus 2 ‘Pick Up Your Head’
The Pazant Brothers ‘Dancing In The Street’
Anthony Braxton ‘G-647 (Opus 23H)’
Sonny Sharrock ‘Bailero’
Crispy Ambulance ‘Chill’
Big L ‘Devil’s Son’
Ramson Badbonez ‘I Got Dat Sting’
Tuff Crew ‘Show Em Hell’
Sonny & The Sunsets ‘Ghost Days’
Moonshake ‘Mugshot Heroine’
Lungleg ‘Punk Pop Travesty’
Thee Headcoats ‘The Messerschmitt Pilot’s Severed Hand’
The Intelligence ‘My Ears Are Dust’
Jeremy Steig ‘Home’
Weldon Irvine ‘Turkish Bath’
Bembeya Jazz National ‘N’Lanyo’
Bongos Ikwue ‘Ella’
Seamajesty ‘Abacat’
Acid Arab ‘Electrique Yarghol’
Pan Ron ‘Pros Reang Yeh Yeh’
Benkadi International ‘Kelou Na’
Dzyan ‘Light Shining Out Of Darkness’
Green On Red ‘Drifter’
For Youtubers
All Selections made by Dominic Valvona
Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist: #XXXVII:
July 15, 2019
PLAYLIST
Dominic Valvona
Cool shit that the Monolith Cocktail founder and instigator Dominic Valvona has pulled together, the Social playlist is a themeless selection of eclectic tracks from across the globe and ages. Representing not only his tastes but the blogs, these regular playlists can be viewed as an imaginary radio show, a taste of Dominic’s DJ sets over 25 plus years. Placed in a way as to ape a listening journey, though feel free to listen to it as you wish, each playlist bridges a myriad of musical treasures to enjoy and also explore – and of course, to dance away the hours to.
Volume XXXVII pays a small homage to two recent lost brothers, the Prince of ‘Orleans, the ragtime-mardi-gras-R&B-soul-funk-cajun-swamp-boogie titan Dr. John, and 13th Floor Elevator operator of the third-eye, Roky Erickson. Not intentional, but this latest volume also seems to have taken on an afflatus mood, with many paeans to this and that lord, a plateau of gods and that deities. For your aural pleasure, music from as diverse a collection as Carlos Garnet, Compost, Tuff Crew, OWLS, Zuhura & Party, The Electric Chairs and Moonkyte: 36 tunes, over two and halfs.
Tracklist:::
Carlos Garnet ‘Chana’
Purple/Image ‘What You Do To Me’
Compost ‘Take Off Your Body’
The Braen’s Machine ‘Fall Out’
I Marc 4 ‘Dirottamento’
Black Sheep ‘The Choice is Yours’
The 7A3 ‘Coolin’ In Cali’
Tuff Crew ‘Drugthang’
Boss (Ft. Papa Juggy) ‘Deeper’
Brand Nubian ‘Claimin’ I’m A Criminal’
The Avengers ‘The American In Me’
OWLS ‘Ancient Stars Seed’
The Electric Chairs ‘So Many Ways’
Sam Flax ‘Another Day’
New Paradise ‘Danse Ta Vie – Flashdance’
Rick Cuevas ‘The Birds’
Roger Bunn ‘Old Maid Prudence’
Verckys & L’Orchestre Veve ‘Bassala Hot’
Extra Golden ‘Jakolando’
Zuhura & Party ‘Singetema’
Brian Bennett ‘You Only Live Twice’
Roky Erickson ‘I Walked With A Zombie’
Jim Spencer ‘She Can See’
Sapphire Thinkers ‘Melancholy Baby’
Roundtable ‘Eli’s Coming’
Madden And Harris ‘Fools Paradise Part 2’
NGC-4594 ‘Going Home’
Ruth Copeland ‘The Music Box’
Chairman Of The Board ‘Men Are Getting Scarce’
Bill Jerpe ‘You’ll Get To Heaven’
The Apostles ‘Trust In God’
Johnnie Frierson ‘Out Here On Your Word’
The Brazda Brothers ‘Walking In The Sun’
Moonkyte ‘Search’
Dr. John ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’
The Move ‘Feel Too Good’
Photography:: Giorgio Lamonica
Continuing our running penpal-like exchange with the leading Italian culture site Kalporz, we are excited to share Giorgio Lamonica‘s photographs of the immensely popular Minnesota indie-rock titans Low and their support, Italian artist Lullabier; all of which are taken from the recent concert in Bologna.
Monolith Cocktail collaborates with Kalporz
March 5, 2019
News: Exciting Collaboration
The Monolith Cocktail in collaboration with leading Italian music publication Kalporz will be cosying up and sharing reviews, interviews and other bits from our respective sites each month. Keep an eye out for future ‘synergy’ between our two great houses as we exchange posts.
Our inaugural post has just gone up on Kalporz; a review of the upcoming blistering tumult from the Italian-Tunisian post-punk-meets-Sufi-ritual Ifriqiyya Electrique. Catch that review here…
The first Kalporz post will be published shortly. But first, here’s some background on Kalporz:

Albums of 2018: Part Two: Thomas Nation to Thom Yorke
December 6, 2018
Albums Selected By Dominic Valvona and Matt Oliver.
Welcome to Part Two of our alphabetically ordered best/choice/favourite albums of 2018 feature. You can find Part One here…
The decision making process:
Being the exhaustive and eclectic set of features our albums of the year are, we know you probably don’t need to or want to dally about reading a long-winded prognosis of our judgement process. But in short, here it is anyway.
Continuing to shy away from fatuous rating systems and ‘best of lists’, the Monolith Cocktail endeavors to offer a more visceral and personal spread of worthy ‘choice’ picks, with no album dominating or holding any particular numbered position – unlike most of our contemporaries lists, stuck with the ridiculous task, for example, of explaining why one album is more deserving of their numbered spot than another.
With no hierarchical order, we’ve lined our album choices up alphabetically; split into two features – Part One: A (Idris Ackamoor) to M (Moonwalks); Part Two:N (Thomas Nation) to Z (Thom Yorke).
All of our favourite new and reissued albums and EPs from 2018 are of course considered to be the most interesting, vibrant and dynamic of the year’s releases. But the best? Granted, to make this list you have to have made some sort of impact, but we’d never suggest these entries were categorically the best albums of 2018: even if that might be true. Instead our list is an indicator of our amorphous tastes, rounding up another year in the life of the Monolith Cocktail, and we hope, introducing you to titles and artists/bands that may have dropped below the radar or got lost in the noise of more commercial better promoted releases.
All selections in PART TWO from me (Dominic Valvona) and Matt Oliver.
N.
Thomas Nation ‘Battle Of The Grumbles’ (Faith & Industry)
Fixed intently on the anguishes of identity in a post-Brexit voted England, yet bleaching his 1960s bucolic and 1970s lounge (erring towards yacht rock almost) imbued songbook with nostalgia, the lyrics themselves read as augurs yet embedded on parchment, Blue House front-man James Howard weaves a diaphanous if plaintively foreboding chronicle of the past and present.
Creating a whole new persona as Thomas Nation, his commitment to a hazy timeless sound, both rustic and ambitious, goes as far as using only his rough mono mixes; undeveloped and left in their most honest, purest form. You won’t be surprised to learn that Howard has also released his Nation moniker debut, Battle Of The Grumbles, on cassette tape.
Littered with references to this Island’s past (both at home and overseas), from the illustrated album cover scene of the 16th century ‘Battle of the Spurs’ (when the Holy Roman Empire teamed up with Henry VIII’s England) to more ambiguous stirrings and despondent yearnings that feature musical echoes from across that ages, Battle Of The Grumbles stands metaphorically at the precipice of the white cliffs of Dover awaiting Britain’s fate.
A gentle spirit, James Howard creates a pastoral nostalgic journey filled with augurs, despair and disillusion but always diaphanous. The first of what Howard hopes will be an annual ‘pilgrimage’, the Thomas Nation incarnation is a cerebral wonder through the essence of Englishness, questioning and probing the psyche as it meanders through the psychogeography and heart of the countryside. Full review…
(Dominic Valvona)
Tony Njoku ‘H.P.A.C’ (Silent Kid Records)
Bringing a very different perspective and life experience to the London avant-garde art and electronic music scene, the British-Nigerian producer with the earthy falsetto, Tony Njoku, articulates a most unique form of magical soul music on his stunning new album. Though undulated with an ethereal to malady suffused backing of sophisticated synthesized travails, Njoku’s vocals always seem to bobble and float above the choppy breaks and ebbing tides.
Adrift in so many ways, through his life experiences, transferring as he did at the age of fourteen to London from a life spent hiding his true personality in the toxic macho boarding schools of Lagos, the sensitive Njoku found at least one kind of solace; able to show a vulnerability and pursue the music career he really wanted having previously recorded a number of hip-hop albums (the first when he was only twelve) that proved entirely counterintuitive, but were completely in tune with Nigerian environment he grew up in. Yet in the arts community he joined in his new home of London, he found few Afrocentric voices or people he could identify with or relate to. From that isolation comes an album inspired by the ‘high art sonic’ forms of Arca and Anhoni, and by the metamorphosis nature of Bjork; Njoku’s own compositions feature a beautiful synthetic shuffle of Afrofuturism soul and more searing discordant synth waves that clash and distort on arrival but gradually sync and become part of the motion. From beauty to pain and release, and often back again, each track (and not in a bad way) seems open-ended; a constant flowing cycle of emotions, which can be healed during that moment, in that space and time, but will inevitably return: A calm followed by turbulence and hopefully the light.
Eloquently in a hymn like fashion between pained malady and the venerable, heavenly but also melancholic and turbulent, H.P.A.C is a futuristic soul album of delicate intellect. Full review…
(DV)
P.
Micall Parknsun & Mr Thing ‘Finish What We Started’ (Village Live)
“Mainstays trusted with hip-hop restoration…with all the answers for those exaggerating hip-hop’s downfall” – RnV July 18
Featuring “beats to make your eyebrow dip” and the flow of one of the UK’s most reliably disdainful when it comes to holding your own, Micall Parknsun and Mr Thing made the very good decision to turn 2017’s one-off ‘The Raw’ into a 40 minute non-apology for playing the game properly. With hip-hop mumbling its way to the dogs, this pair have fire in the belly for the unfashionable return to beats and rhymes designed to stick around and give a damn. Measured run-ups streaked with bluesy, soulful headspace occupancy (with drums front and centre each and every time), a crux of blockbusters and pure boom bap battery, all land like a two-footed tackle, Thing researching and sculpting ‘the real’ without making it a puff piece on nostalgia or announcing they’re here to save the world. Park-E does his utmost to remain an upstanding citizen, pushed to his limits by both Thing’s heavyweight kicks and snares and general scene lethargy. The emcee’s systematic, it’s on when I say so-flow, perfectly lands the elbow once the producer has left you staggering backwards.
(Matt Oliver)
Josh T. Pearson ‘The Straight Hits’ (Mute)
Changing his tune (literally) Josh T. Pearson, the lonesome blues Texan with a wagonload of baggage, heads out onto the range with a swag bag of more joyful, unencumbered ‘golden hits’ with his latest album for Mute Records.
Leaving behind the more apocalyptic gospel concepts of his work with the short-lived but acclaimed Lift To Experience, Pearson sets himself new parameters; adhering to a five-point rules system for transforming a “batch of tunes” he’d been working on for a decade. Earmarked originally for the ‘unrecorded’ Bird Songs album, the nine original songs on The Straight Hits are a lighter and as the title suggests ‘straighter’ attempt to change the mood.
Far from set in stone – the unwritten rock’n’roll law that all rules are written to be broken is invoked on the tender yearning A Love Song (Set Me Straight) – each song must at least try to follow Pearson’s self-imposed requirements: Number one, all songs must have a verse, a chorus and a bridge; two, the lyrics must run sixteen lines or less; three, they must have the word ‘straight’ in the title; four, that title must be four words or less; and five, they must submit to song above all else i.e. “You do as she tells you, whatever the song tells you”, “You bend to her, and not her to you.”
The Straight Hits is a most rallying rodeo that gives the Americana soundtrack a much-needed kick-in-the-pants; the themes of love, whether it’s the analogical kind, ‘take me right now’ kind, or lamentable kind, enacted across a varied but blistering songbook. Rejecting the stimulants and his demons, Pearson choses the good ol’ fashioned power and redemptive spirit of gospel ye-ye and country rock’n’roll. And don’t it sound just mighty fine and swell! Full review…
(DV)
Q.
Qujaku ‘Qujaku’ (So I Buried Records)
Occupying both the spiritual and cosmic planes, emerging from the gloom and holy sanctuaries of the dead, the brooding Hamamatsu-based Japanese band Qujaku wowed with their second album of operatic Gothic and psychedelic doom-mongering. Beginning as they mean to go on, the opening ‘Shoko No Hakumei’ suite, more an overture, is itself a full on Ring cycle (as conducted by Boris) that is dramatic and sprawling: running almost the entire length of a full side of a traditional vinyl album.
On a very large foreboding canvas, Qujaku build-up an impressive tumult across the album’s nine-tracks of prowling esotericism and galloping drum barrage immensity. Between crescendo-bursting three-part acts and shorter volatile slabs of heavy caustic drone rock, the group often evokes an Oriental Jesus And Mary Chain, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Spacemen 3, or Nine Inch Nails when at their most enraged. Psychedelic in the mode of The Black Angels, but also straying at their most languid and navel-gazing towards Shoegaze, Qujaku’s dark spanning cacophony of throbs and trembles bear many subtle nuances and becalmed breaks amongst the masses and maelstroms.
On an epic scale, dreaming big and intensely, Qujaku perform the most dramatic of daemonic theatre. Full review…
(DV)
R.
RAM ‘August 1791’
Considering the tumultuous bloody revolution from which an independent Haiti was born, RAM leader Richard A Morse‘s “Our existence is a political statement” mantra is unsurprising. Named after the initials of their road well travailed founder, RAM perform an entrancing spectacle of the ritualistic. Morse, originally born in Puerto Rico but brought up in Connecticut, spent the 80s rubbing shoulders with the polygenesis New York art and music scene’s Jean-Michel Basquiat and Warhol’s factory. His interest piqued by the new wave’s adoption of Afro-diaspora rhythms and world music, Morse decided to travel to his native homeland to study the Haitian sound.
The son of Haiti folk legend Emerante de Pradine, Morse was already well aware of his ancestral roots, but had yet to indulge in or absorb the rich history of the island fully. After an initial short trip, Morse found himself it seems so seduced and inspired by Haiti’s culture that he decided to stay for good. Marrying local dancer and singer Lunise, he kick started the frenzied, rambunctious troupe, channeling the ideas he picked up on in New York and merging them with the signature instrumentation and sounds of the local Vodou belief, mizik-rasin and the drifting currents of the Caribbean and Africa.
This year’s odyssey, guided by the spirits and with dedications to the marternel and those that have helped (including the pivotal film director Jonathan Demme, who prominently featured one of their tracks in his or award-winning Philadelphia movie in 1994) shaped the band over the years, springs from Haiti’s enslaved population’s struggle for independence from its European masters. August 1791, the year and month of revolution (inspired by their colonial masters own revolution), frames this tropical fusion of tragedy and sauntering joy. Returning to the legends that sparked this fight, such as the ill-fated former slave turned leader of revolt, Toussaint Louverture (driving out the Spanish and British but captured and imprisoned under Napoleon’s regime; languishing in a cell at Fort de Joux until he died in 1803), and first Emperor of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (assassinated by disgruntled members of the burgeoning administration), RAM evoke the spark that set in motion the first free republic of African heritage people in the Western hemisphere. Their seventh album not only pays tribute but features a musical accompaniment from that era; with a sound more or less, when stripped to its essence, that would be familiar to the Creole and African communities of the late 18th century.
Uniting in a busy percussive fusion the Americas with the roots of Africa, RAM bustle and hustle traditions to produce a paean to the Island they call home.
(DV)
Soho Rezanejad ‘Six Archetypes’
Impressive in all its striking celestial and throbbing distressed staccato shimmer the experimental Danish artist Soho Rezanejad’s ethereal but equally futurist dystopian ambitious new LP, Six Archetypes, is a bold exploration of identity politics.
Interplaying six of the major character symbols (The Guardian, The Orphan, The Seeker, The Russian, The Idealist, The Prostitute) from the Tarot with Carl Jung’s Psychological writings on the collective and structured reality, Rezanejad weaves the complex contemporary themes of gender liquidity and self-discovery into an amorphous mix of electronica, darkwave and Gothic pop suites.
Though not always audible, Rezanejad’s untethered vocals – vaporous and often ghostly undulating in an aria style – whisper, coo, lull, pant, wrench and shout throughout the shard majestic and multilayered intricate backing of synthesized, programmed, modeled sounds. It’s a striking voice too. At times, such as the beautiful but serious stellar flight of the navigator, Bjork meets Chino Amobi, rotary opener Pilot The Guardian, she sounds like Nico. And at other times, such as the lush Bowie/Sylvian synchronicity, Soon, her vocals sound like a mixture of Jesus Zola and Lykke Li.
Returning to the soil, so to speak, Rezanejad saves her most heartfelt yearn until the end; lovingly but starkly impassioned, singing in her ancestral tongue of Farsi – Rezanejad is the daughter of first generation Iranian immigrants – the National Council Of Resistance Of Iran’s alternative national song in protest against the state’s heavy-handed ideology.
An ambitious debut opus of dark beauty and ominous despair, Six Archetypes is a highly impressive cosmology of gender, roots and futurism politics and narratives. Full review…
(DV)
S.
Sad Man ‘ROM-COM’
Haphazardly prolific, Andrew Spackman, under his most recent of alter egos, the Sad Man, has released an album/collection of giddy, erratic, in a state of conceptual agitation electronica every few months since the beginning of 2017.
The latest and possibly most restive of all his (if you can call it that) albums is the spasmodic computer love transmogrification ROM-COM. An almost seamless record, each track bleeding into, or mind melding with the next, the constantly changing if less ennui jumpy compositions are smoother and mindful this time around. This doesn’t mean it’s any less kooky, leaping from one effect to the next, or, suddenly scrabbling off in different directions following various nodes and interplays, leaving the original source and prompts behind. But I detect a more even, and daresay, sophisticated method to the usual skittish hyperactivity.
Almost uniquely in his own little orbit of maverick bastardize electronic experimentation, Spackman, who builds many of his own bizarre contraptions and instruments, strangulates, pushes and deconstructs Techno, the Kosmische, Trip-Hop and various other branches of the genre to build back up a conceptually strange and bewildering unique sonic shake-up of the electronic music landscape. Full review…
(DV)
Otis Sandsjö ‘Y-OTIS’ (We Jazz Records)
Imbued as much by the complex language of North American and European modernist jazz as those who use it to riff on in the hip-hop and electronic music genres, the adroit Gothenburg saxophonist and composer Otis Sandsjö transmogrifies his own jazz performances so they transcend, or at least amorphously (like liquid) expand into polygenesis soundscapes.
Y-OTIS reimagines a musical union between Flying Lotus and Donny McCaslin, or better still, Madlib reconstructing the work of 3TM; the flow, if you can call it that, sounding like a remix deconstruction in progress as the rapid and dragging fills and staggered rolls of his group’s drummer Tilo Webber are stretched out, inverted and reversed into a staccato to dynamic bursting set of breakbeats and loops. Mirroring all the various cut-and-paste techniques of the turntablist maestros, Sandsjö and his dexterous troupe of keyboardist Elias Stemeseder, bassist Petter Eidh and Webber sound like a group being remixed in real time, live: And it sounds brilliant, as you’re never quite sure where each of these compositions is going to end up.
Sandsjö’s debut album, released via the Helsinki festival and label platform We Jazz Records, is a multilayered serialism suite of ideas and experimental visions. All of which, despite that complexity and blending of sophisticated avant-garde jazz, hip-hop, R&B, trip-hop and dance music, keep an ear out for the melody. If the ACT label, or ECM, ever converges with Leaf and Anticon, Y-OTIS might well be the result. Full review…
(DV)
Scran Cartel ‘Blue Plaque Candidates’ (Scran Cartel)
“A great, belt-loosening spread grilling you with much more than just a bunch of culinary one-liners” – RnV Aug 18
Brit grafters MNSR Frites (Granville Sessions) and Benny Diction (Corners) read you the specials for twelve fascinating tracks, packing foot-related rhetoric from the moment the dinner bell sounds. It’s quite an accomplishment to master such a particular angle without it being a gimmick, and easy to forget that ‘Blue Plaque Candidates’ is not specifically a concept album, just an expression of culinary love. These two really know their cookbooks and have a shopping list that you can’t check out quick enough, from cordon bleu menu toppers to bread and butter basics and young at heart sweetshop favourites, the Estuary English plating your three squares a day with the same near-apathy as they do exotic, forbidden fruit. The jazzy, funky beats are garnish to the duo cookery schooling everyone, indulging in one sub-grime moment on the E-numbered ‘Dundee’, and a cultural knowhow showing that greed isn’t always good, adds weight to their sprattish statement of “we write and record rap songs about food”. A chef fingers’ kiss for this one.
(MO)
Skyzoo ‘In Celebration of Us’ (First Generation Rich)
“Some of the smoothest psychology and concrete consciousness you’ll hear this year. One to be toasted over and over” – RnV Feb 18
Giving ‘In Celebration of Us’ the grown man rap label is a bit of a giveaway given Skyzoo’s opening skit of confiding in a pal about giving up the streets for the sake of his newborn. The Brooklynite and new father speaks a lot of sense, a flow that will express disappointment rather than anger and keep the titular celebrations modest, and attracts a captive audience when aiming at your head twofold, comprehensively ensuring the wateriness of neo-soul doesn’t just ebb away, or the dustiness of Detroit-style beats fugs your judgement. Picture a sometimes reluctant lecturer, as everyman as the tales you’ll familiarise yourself with, but giving you the full education once the mic in his hand. Not clinging to verse, hook, verse structure, Skyzoo doesn’t ramble, rather makes certain that he’s examined everything from top to bottom, very much schooled in knowing that if something’s worth doing, do it properly. Enough to make you feel warm and fuzzy – there are some undeniably slick, R&B moves crossing over as well – and rather more pensive when presented with the cold light of day.
(MO)
The Last Skeptik ‘Under the Patio’ (Thanks for Trying)
“An album simmering down the summer’s sticky restlessness: dusky beats that never fade to black, understated in their genre reach” – RnV July 18
Intense from The Last Skeptik, extremely well connected and arguably more well rounded since after a spell of paying extra-curricular dues. Surrounding himself with a boiling pot of hungry emcees gets a maximum return from teeth gritted, rapid fire, pound the road, witty unpredictables, all of whom casually playing down their iron mic grip. Synth-wired, at times spindly beats either host the back-to-mine session or storm the stage, perfect for its roll call – Bonkaz, Kojey Radical, Doc Brown, Scrufizzer but four headliners to pick from – to move through and dominate while playing the back, with motive or just willing daylight away. While originally noted for soundtracking summer humidity, ‘Under the Patio’ is decidedly not an album for office hours. Dabbling in shades of the exotic and skilfully soulful throughout for an album of rough edges, it’s the careful contrasts – the haunting ‘Hide & Seek’ featuring Matt Wills, the inexplicable but permissible ‘Calm Down’ inviting The Manor round for a knees up (there’s the versatility for you) – and Skeptik’s own version of ‘Deep Cover’ on posse cut ‘Oxymoron’ – that triumph in their cohesion to give TLS a massive W.
(MO)
Stella Sommer ’13 Kinds Of Happiness’ (Affairs Of The Heart)
In the vogue of an age-old central European malady, the dour romanticism that permeates the stunning solo debut album from the German singer/songwriter Stella Sommer is wrapped in a most beautiful gauze of melodious uplift and elegiac heartache.
Artistically, as the results prove, making the best decision of her career, Sommer steps out for a sojourn from her role in the German band Die Heiterkeit. Far from an extension of that group (though band mates Hanitra Wagner and Phillip Wolf both join her on this album), there are of course concomitant traces of it. Sommer however makes louder but also accentuates these traces and lingering relationships; her lived-in, far-beyond-her-years vocal more sonorous and commanding than before.
Possibly as perfect as an album can get, 13 Kinds Of Happiness is an ambitious, slowly unveiling album of diaphanous morose. Pastoral folk songs and hymn-like love trysts are transduced by a Gothic and Lutheran choral liturgy rich backing that reimagines Nico fronting Joy Division, or Marianne Faithfull writhing over a Scary Monsters And Super Creeps era Bowie soundtrack (especially on the galloping Northern European renaissance period evoking thunderous drumming ‘Dark Princess, Dark Prince’; just one of the album’s many highlights). I don’t use that Nico reference lightly: Sommer channeling the fatalistic heroine’s best qualities atmospherically speaking.
A curious Teutonic travail of venerable lovelorn despair and modesty, Sommer’s debut LP will take time to work its magic. But work its magic it will. A tremendous talent lyrically and vocally, serious and astute yet melodically enriching and lilted, her sagacious deep tones are starkly dramatic, but above all, rewarding. Here’s to a solo indulgence that I hope long continues. Full review…
(DV)
Station 17 ‘Blick’ (Bureau B)
With near enough thirty years of experience behind them and a changeable lineup of both musicians with and without various disabilities, the Station 17 collective once more shift their focus and sound; moving away from the all-out pop of the last album Alles Für Alle for a more improvised travail through the Krautrock, Kosmische and experimental electronica cannon.
Free of predetermined structures, lyrics and ideas they enjoyed an improvised freedom; inviting a host of German musical royalty to take part in what is a collaborative recording experience – something they’ve done in the past, having worked with icons such as Michael Rothar and the late Holger Czukay. And so each of the album’s tracks feature the signatures sounds and quirks of its guests: The writhing prehistoric Krautrock-jazzy Le Coeur Léger, Le Sentiment D’un Travail Bien Fait for example features the guiding avant-garde, ‘musique concrète’ presence of drum and bass partnership of Jean-Hervé Péron (the French title track I dare say his idea) and Zappi Diermaier; key founders of the reverent agent provocateurs Faust, who in recent decades have broken away to form their own iteration of the group under the faUSt banner. And, though only as part of its most modern regeneration, Tangerine Dream’s Ulrich Schnauss appears to gaze through a progressive Kosmische tinged explored ‘astronomical telescope’ on the album’s heaven’s gate opening finale.
From another generation, Dirk Dresselhaus, aka Schneider TM, appears both as an engineer, capturing these sessions and crafting them into a coherent album, and as a collaborator on the kooky bossa nova preset Die Uhr Spricht. Andreas Spechtl of Ja, Panik! infamy appears alongside Station 17 singer Siyavash Gharibi on the poppier, Der Plan-esque Dinge, and another Andreas, Andreas Dorau, joins the same upbeat, marimba like candour on what we’re told is an “enduring appraisal of post-capitalist perversion”, Schaust Du, whilst Datashock travel through the primordial soup into another dimension on the Acid Mothers-hitch-a-ride-aboard-the-Cosmic Jokers-spaceship Zauberpudding.
Turning the dial on an imaginary radio station, attuned to all the highlights from Germany’s most experimental if rhythmic decades, Blick confidently absorbs the influences and inspirations of its multitude of guests to produce social commentary and reflect on the here and now. Full review…
(DV)
T.
Rodrigo Tavares ‘Congo’ (Hive Mind Records)
The amorphous traversing post-rock and jazz travelogue from Brazilian guitarist/composer Rodrigo Tavares is filled with a sense of contemplation and meditation, and a yearn for the spiritual. The spiritual is represented in Congo’s genesis; the catalyst for Tavares soundtrack inspired, in part at least, by a visit to the controversial ‘spiritual healer’ John of God – a medium, psychic surgeon of dubious repute -, who lives in the remote central Brazilian town of Abadiânia. The meditative, in this case, runs throughout the suggestive instrumental passages and vignettes that ponderously drift, cascade and ebb across a real and imagined borderless global soundtrack.
Suffused throughout this album you’ll find lingering traces of the ACT jazz label, minimalism, Tortoise post-rock, Brazilian legends Joâo Gilberto, Dorival Caymmi and Tom Jobim, and removed by quite a few degrees, a hint of the free-form untethered to any easy classification, evolving guitar experimentation of the Sun City Girls – as it happens a show in a remote former gay bar in Brazil by the same band was one of the stopovers on Tavares ‘transformative road trip’; the fruits of which and experience laying down the creative foundations for Congo.
Truly transglobal, Tavares helps take Brazilian music – like his fellow compatriot Sentidor – into often trance-y, unburdened and unlabored directions. With few rough edges, this congruous soundtrack makes for a ruminating, thoughtful smooth journey. Full review…
(DV)
Samba Touré ‘Wande’ (Glitterbeat Records)
In a country abundant with guitar virtuosos, the highly genial Samba Touré still stands out as one of Mali’s most celebrated and accomplished; transducing the travails, heartache but also joy of his homeland through his signature articulate nimble-fingered style of playing.
His third album for Glitterbeat Records – the first, Albala, was the label’s inaugural release in 2013 – Wande is billed as a warmer homely songbook: previous releases were produced during the Islamist insurgency that swept aside and hijacked the Northeastern Tuareg communities’ battle for autonomy in the north eastern regions of Mali. Far from a complete break, the sadness endures on Wande; though Touré sadness is a most beautiful, cantering and lingering one. Especially when paying tribute to his friend and collaborator, sokou fiddle maestro Zoumana Tereta, on the spoken word with wavering drifty, almost dub-like echo-y effects tracks of the same name, which features the late musician’s spindly evocations from beyond the ether.
Recorded in under two weeks, allowing weekends for band members to scratch a living playing at weddings, sessions for the album were relaxed, performances captured on their first take with few overdubs. The lo fi production feel of the rocking blues ‘Yerfara/We Are Tired’ could be a lost inspiration for 80s period Rolling Stones with its almost transmogrified Start Me Up like Richards riff. ‘Goy Boyro/The Good Work (Well Done)’ even begins with a Taj Mahal, BB King reminiscent introduction hook, before dipping over the horizon. But whatever you do, don’t call this is a desert blues album, or even an African one; Touré correctly insistent that this is contemporary ‘universal’ rock music.
Not quite such a leap of faith or different to previous albums, an unpolished and laidback methodology has produced a slightly more sagacious, free-floating quality and another essential Touré masterpiece. Full review…
(DV)
Ty ‘A Work of Heart’ (Jazz Re:Freshed)
“Almost feels like a magic carpet ride over the capital’s skyline; come and spread your arms if you really need a hug” – RnV Mar 18
Soft focus viewed with the wisest of eyes cutting through life’s smokescreen: the eminent UK statesman preserves the essence of never getting too high or too low. Ty has long had that trustworthy delivery of a life coach who can pep you up – inspirational with quiet authority – and tell you to man up without raising his voice, any hints at vulnerability given the very British keep calm and carry on treatment (“when you smile with me publicly I’m wearing a mask, gritting my teeth, a wolf in a bundle of sheep”). The liltingly clean production is what might turn a few ears belonging to those thinking hip-hop’s not for them – right from the off it’s of a Ty-tracked, toasted cinnamon bun snugness, a concrete jungle paved with a yellow brick road heading towards promised lands, but with the plain sailing carrying some turbulence. ‘A Work of Heart’ sounds as good as when Jack Frost comes knocking, as much as when the summer’s hose pipes were forbidden fruit. And like the first blooms of spring. AND the first leaves of autumn falling too.
(MO)
U.
U.S. Girls ‘In A Poem Unlimited’ (4AD)
Featuring most of the Toronto cast of collaborators that propelled the first U.S. Girls release for 4AD records, Half Free, forward, but stretched and lushly flexed into space boogie and other equally eclectic grooves by the city’s multi-limbed collective The Cosmic Range, Meg Remy’s latest cerebral pop revision tones down some of the vibrancy for acerbic, sax-wailing pouted-lips resignation and introversion.
Moving across the border from the USA with her husband and musical collaborator Maximilian Turnbull, aka guitar-slinging maverick Slim Twig, long before Trump reached The White House, Remy has broadened her postmodernist transmogrification of bleeding hearts 60s girl group meets tape-loops signature to accommodate femme fatale disco and funk since making a new home for herself in Canada.
The momentum of this album fluctuates throughout, and compared to Half Free, takes a lot to bed in and flow – and I’m still not sold on the two skits -, starting as it does with the aching ponderous slow burner Velvet 4 Sale – perhaps Remy’s most dark fantasy yet, imaging (just imagining mind) a role reversal of power, as she implores a girl friend to buy a gun for protection, impressing that the only way to change men is for women to use violence. An unsettling twist played out to a dragging soul fuzz backing track, the song’s central tenant imagines a world where women take up arms against men, though Remy ‘deplores violence’ of course. It’s followed by an equally sensually nuzzling sax and yearned vocal performance, and take on the Plastic Ono Band, Rage Of Plastic, before picking up with the album’s most bouncy weaponized boogie, M.A.H. – a chic Ronnie Spector fronting Blondie style diatribe broadside aimed at the democrats venerated saviour Obama, who Remy condemns for the charismatic charm seduction that pulled-the-wool over many supporters eyes, hiding the fact that he presided over a covert number of unsavory drone strikes.
Hardly disarming then, In A Poem Unlimited deplores the present hierarchy with a seething checked rage, set to a challenging but melodious soundtrack of yearning no wave, scintillating chic disco, Plastic Ono Band soul, vaporous 80s pop and even jazz. The patriarch comes in for some scathing poetic justice; played out to some of the year’s best tunes and performances. Full review…
(DV)
V.
Vukovar ‘Infinitum’ (Le Recours Forêts Production)
Vukovar/Michael Cashmore ‘Monument’
Among the most prolific of bands, Vukovar have released two of their most stunning albums in just the last quarter of 2018 alone. Keeping to the signature three-syllable grandly entitled Gothic statements of malcontent, melodrama, aggrandizement and melconholy, both Infintum and Monument romantically encircle the void better and with more sagacious quality than previous records. Though only in existence for barely three years, and perhaps already splitting up, Vukovar are improving on every release. Both are included because…well, I can’t make my mind up about which of these recent opuses of despair and hermetic exploration I prefer. Hell….they’re both great. And here’s why:
The fifth LP in the malcontent’s cannon, Infinitum, pulls at the mortal coil of human misery in a murky quagmire. An endless backing track of reverberating delayed snare strikes, a rolling timpani bounding bass drum, esoteric stately sounding waltzes, unwieldy bestial guitar, resigned new romantic synth and escaped melodies muddily, and often amorphously, swim and oscillate around a combination of longing, if worn down and depressed, swooning vocals and Rimbaud-meets-Crowley-meets-Kant-on-the-edge-of-an-abyss poetic despairing narration, on what is a bleak if at times gloriously dark beauty of an album.
Bound-up in their own self-imposed limitations, these anarchistic dreamers go one further than the Hebrew code of law commandments by adhering to 13 of their own; each one a rule or restriction in the recording process that couldn’t be broken, at any cost. So strict were these conditions that even if the band were close to finishing the album, any infringement no matter how minor, would result in the entire sessions being abandoned. Mercifully they made it through to the end; releasing a troubled, bleak lo fi ritualistic romance of an grand opus.
Cut from the same cloth, but collaborating with an undoubted influence, the group’s sixth LP, Monument, traverses the void with Current 93 stalwart and producer/composer Michael Cashmore (appearing under the guises of his Nature And Organization nom de plume). A congruous in what is a melancholy harrowing romantic partnership with the morbidly curious Vukovar, Cashmore leads with a vaporous, industrial and often godly (whichever God/Gods they be) brutalist swathe of sagacious moodiness. Arguably inheritors of Current 93 and, even more so, Coil’s gnostic-theological mysticism and brooding venerable communions, Cashmore seems the obvious foil. Current’s The Innermost Light and Coil’s (and John Balance’s swan song as it were) The Ape Of Naples both permeate this conceptual opus.
From haunting melodrama to harrowing decay, unrequited love to radiant escape, the loss of innocence and youth to sagacious death rattles, Vukovar prove ideal torchbearers of the cerebral Gothic sound and melancholic romanticism. A meeting of cross-generational minds with both partners on this esoteric immersive experience fulfilling their commitments, Monument shows a real progression for Vukovar, and proves a perfect vehicle for Cashmore’s uncompromising but afflatus ideas to flourish in new settings, whilst confirming his reputation and status.
Whatever happens next, this ambitious work will prove a most fruitful and lasting highlight in the Vukovar cannon; one that’s growing rapidly, six albums in with a seventh already recorded; another ‘momentous’ statement that affirms the band’s reputation as one of the UK’s most important new bands. Full reviews…
(DV)
Y.
‘Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs Of World War II’ (Six Degrees)
In light of the recent Tree Of Life synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh, the increasingly uncomfortable language and hostility from the far Left, and the rising tide of European wide anti-semitism, this most tragic songbook of WWII Soviet Union laments from the Jewish community that joined Stalinist Russia’s defence against the Nazis, is a timely reminder of persecution from the graveyard of history. 400,000 men and women signed up to fight Hitler’s forces in one of the most bloody and apocalyptic campaigns in military history. If gratitude was ever warranted, the fate that awaited many of the survivors was anything but; mistrust and resentment instead led to swathes of the Soviet Union’s Jews being imprisoned, tortured and murdered by Stalin’s regime, their sacrifice for the mother nation all but airbrushed out of existence – almost.
Thought lost in the annals of time; suppressed, if not destroyed, the tragic but poetic WWII testaments, made lyrical prose, of just a small cross-section of Russia’s Jews is given the richly evocative and adroit production showcase it deserves by a collective of professors, producers and musicians. Originally unified in an anthology by an ethnomusicologist from the Kiev Cabinet For Jewish Culture, Moisei Beregovsky, alongside colleague Rovim Lerner, hundreds of Yiddish songs written by Red Army soldiers, victims and survivors of the Nazi’s massacres were gathered in the hope of being eventually published and performed. Unfortunately at the very height of the Communist Party’s purges in the decades that followed the end of WWII, both these well-intentioned preservationists were arrested. Subsequently the project was never finished, the work sealed up and hidden away. But as it would later transpire, not destroyed.
Transcribing these laments and firsthand accounts of endurance (many of which included testament evidence to various Nazi atrocities) would take patience, skill but above all respect. The results of this this most tragic desideratum are underscored by the musical director and violinist Sergei Erdenko‘s conducted stirring accompaniment ensemble of classically trained instrumentalists and singers; all of whom were brought together by the producer, and overseer (one amongst a whole group of people that have perserved, shared and made this project possible over the decades) Dan Rosenberg.
Songs of heroism, stoic belief, and even more violently encouraging prompts to machine gun as many Nazis as possible, are brought back to life. But despite the materials obvious harrowing and tragic heart-wrenching nature, the music throughout is a dizzying, waltzing mix of Yiddish, Roma, Klezmer, folk and even jazzy cabaret that’s often upbeat. The band does a sterling job in giving voice to those suppressed individuals and the songs that were believed lost forever, destroyed by a regime that would treat its loyal Jewish community, many of which made the ultimate sacrifice and wholeheartedly believed in the socialist doctrine, little better than the Nazis they so valiantly overcame. Yiddish Glory is not just a reminder however, or even just a revelation, but a beautifully produced and evocative performance. Full review…
(DV)
Thom Yorke ‘Suspiria (Music For The Luca Guadagnino Film) (XL Recordings)
I’ve no idea of the inimitable Thom Yorke‘s methodology and process – whether he composed directly to a cut of Luca Guadagnino‘s remake, or, went away on the premise that…well, it’s Suspiria, and this iconic Gallo trip knows exactly what sort of a soundtrack it thirsts for, so I’ll just make it up in me head -, but whatever it is, his evocative harrowing soundtrack technique works; providing an eerie balance of spine-chilling tension and beautiful dreamy waltzes.
Elevating further the progressive and ritualistic treatment of the original 1977 Suspiria movie soundtrack by Italy’s revered Goblin, Yorke’s mirror-y hypnotised lingered vignettes and bestial guttural scares are treated with earnest seriousness.
If a film could be even more stylised than its original forbearers, this post-millennial disturbed take by Gundagino is an artistically knowing, conceptually aloof indulgence for the senses that receives the most stunning, richly esoteric of soundtracks. Compelling, alluring and plaintive; using many of the arty macabre’s signature tricks, atmospheric mood stirrers and prompts – from heightened Gothic choral aches to Carpenter meets Oldfield piano note and tubular chiming nerve tinklers – Yorke sets out his soundtrack somewhere between the perimeters of Kubrick, magic realism, psychological drama, Dario Argento, Francois de Roubaix and his very own solo work.
The proof is in the candle-lit shadowy mood induced eating of course, and sitting as I was in the daylight of the early afternoon, I couldn’t help but feel unnerved enough to check behind the curtains for murderous witchery dance troupe teachers, who’s intent was to embed a sacrificial knife into my skull. Yes I was spooked.
A frightful but often ethereal magical score, Yorke matches his Radiohead foil, Jonny Greenwood in the field of soundtracks: an artform all in itself. I’ve no doubt it will become a cult album; equal to the sacred Goblin score, if not, dare I suggest, an improvement.
(DV)
Our Daily Bread 287: R. Seiliog ‘Megadoze’
November 14, 2018
Album Review/Dominic Valvona
R. Seiliog ‘Megadoze’ (Turnstile Music) 30th November 2018
The Welsh producer’s most cerebral and tactile electronic evocations yet, Robin Edwards’ (under the mantle of his R. Seiliog moniker) new album subtly pushes out into the expanses of a naturalistic imbued void with a depth and patience seldom heard outside the fields of ambient and new age music.
Echoing the trance-y and controlled build-ups of techno’s burgeoning creative epoch in the early to mid 1990s – especially the likes of Seefeel, Sun Electric, Beaumont Hannant and, well, a fair share of the Warp and R&S labels output in that period – Edwards ‘ambisonic’ visions shift seamlessly between the mysterious and radiant; weaving together elements of Kosmische, minimalism, intelligent techno and even psychill into wondrous soundtrack of discovery.
Megadoze is in no way, as the title might suggest, one big somnolent snooze fest; even if there is a lot of suffused ambience to be found, and tracks take an unhurried amount of time to unfurl their brilliance and scope. The minimalist whispery, silvery and peaceable ‘DC Offset’ (a reference to ‘mean amplitude displacement’ too lengthy to discuss here) for example bears traces of The Orb and David Matthews, yet also features the sort of downplayed beats and rhythms associated with sophisticated dance music. In fact, no matter how gentle or languid, each track features constantly stimulating and evolving textures of metallic and crisp, whipped beats amongst the vapours, undulations, drones and waveforms.
A manufactured wilderness and cosmos, Megadoze sounds like Autechre rewiring The Future Sound Of London and Steve Reich: Imagine cascading waters, volcanic glass, the dewy lushness of fauna and awe of the constellations organically shining or ringing through omnipotent machinations and the itchy, pitter-patter of computerized, sequenced drums.
In many ways a 90s album thrust into the next century, produced on more sophisticated apparatus; Edwards’ brand of nuanced electronica is rich with the possibilities of both eras. His most ambitious work to date, Megadoze is alive with ideas and tactile sensibilities, a moody record that can, over time, open-up with wonder and radiant magic.
Tickling Our Fancy 069: Minyeshu, Dr. Chan, Brace! Brace!, Grand Blue Heron, Don Fiorino and Andy Haas…
October 9, 2018
Dominic Valvona’s new music reviews roundup
Another fine assortment of eclectic album reviews from me this month, with new releases from Papernut Cambridge, Sad Man, Grand Blue Heron, Don Fiorino and Andy Haas, Junkboy, Dr. Chan, Minyeshu, Earthling Society and Brace! Brace!
In brief there’s the saga of belonging epic new LP from the Ethiopian songstress Minyeshu, Daa Dee, a second volume of Mellotron-inspired library music from Papernut Cambridge, the latest Benelux skulking Gothic rock album from Grand Blue Heron, another maverick electronic album of challenging experimentation from Andrew Spackman, under his most recent incarnation as the Sad Man, a primal avant-garde jazz cry from the heart of Trump’s America from Don Fiorino and Andy Haas, the rage and maelstrom transduced through their latest improvised project together, American Nocturne; and a bucolic taster, and Music Mind compilation fundraiser track, from the upcoming new LP from the beachcomber psychedelic folk duo Junkboy.
I’ve also lined up the final album from the Krautrock, psychedelic space rocking Earthling Society, who sign off with an imaginary soundtrack to the cult Shaw Brothers Studio schlockier The Boxer’s Omen, plus two most brilliant albums from the French music scene, the first a shambling skater slacker punk meets garage petulant teenage angst treat from Dr. Chan, The Squier, and the second, the debut fuzzy colourful indie-pop album from the Parisian outfit Brace! Brace!
Minyeshu ‘Daa Dee’ (ARC Music) 26th October 2018
From the tentative first steps of childhood to the sagacious reflections of middle age, the sublime Ethiopian songstress Minyeshu Kifle Tedla soothingly, yearningly and diaphanously articulates the intergenerational longings and needs of belonging on her latest epic LP, Daa Dee. The sound of reassurance that Ethiopian parents coo to accompany their child’s baby steps, the title of Minyeshu’s album reflects her own, more uncertain, childhood. The celebrated singer was herself adopted; though far from held back or treated with prejudice, moving to the central hub of Addis Ababa at the age of seventeen, Minyeshu found fame and recognition after joining the distinguished National Theatre.
In a country that has borne the scars of both famine and war, Ethiopia has remained a fractious state. No wonder many of its people have joined a modern era diaspora. Though glimmers of hope remain, and in spite of these geopolitical problems and the fighting, the music and art scenes have continued to blossom. Minyeshu left in 1996, but not before discovering such acolytes as the doyen of the country’s famous Ethio-Jazz scene, Mulatu Astatke, the choreographer Tadesse Worku and singers Mahmoud Ahmed, Tilahun Gessesse and Bizunesh Bekele; all of whom she learnt from. First moving to Belgium and then later to the Netherlands, the burgeoning star of the Ethiopian People To People music and dance production has after decades of coming to terms with her departure finally found a home: a self-realization that home wasn’t a geographical location after all but wherever she felt most comfortable and belonged: “Home is me!”
The beautifully stirring ‘Yetal (Where Is It?)’ for example is both a winding saga, with the lifted gravitas of swelling and sharply accented strings, and acceptance of settling into that new European home.
Evoking that sense of belonging and the theme of roots, but also paying a tribute and lament to the sisterhood, Minyeshu conveys with a sauntering but sorrowful jazzy blues vibe the overladen daily trudge of collecting wood on ‘Enchet Lekema’; a hardship borne by the women of many outlier Ethiopian communities. Though it can be read as a much wider metaphor. The blues, in this case, the Ethiopian version of it (perhaps one of its original sources) that you find on ‘Tizita’ (which translates as ‘longing’ or ‘nostalgia’), has never sounded so lilting and divine; Minyeshu’s cantabile, charismatic soul harmonies, trills and near contralto accenting the lamentable themes.
There is celebration and joy too; new found views on life and a revived tribute to her birthplace feature on the opulently French-Arabian romance ‘Hailo Gaja (Let’s Dance)’, and musically meditating, the panoramic dreamy ‘Yachi Elet (That Moment)’ is a blissed and blessed encapsulation of memories and place – the album’s most traversing communion, with its sweet harmonies, bird-like flighty flutes and waning saxophone.
Not only merging geography but musical styles too, the Daa Dee LP effortlessly weaves jazz (both Western and Ethiopian) R&B, pop, dub, the theatrical, and on the cantering to lolloping skippy ‘Anteneh (It Is You?)’, reggae. Piano, strings and brass mix with the Ethiopian wooden washint flute and masenqo bowed lute to create an exotic but familiar pan-global sound. Minyeshu produces a heartwarming, sometimes giddy swirling, testament that is exciting, diverse and above all else, dynamic. Her voice is flawless, channeling our various journeys and travails but always placing a special connection to those Ethiopian roots.
Don Fiorino and Andy Haas ‘American Nocturne’ (Resonantmusic) 16th September 2018
Amorphous unsettling augers and outright nightmares permeate the evocations of the American Nocturne visionaries Don Fiorino and Andy Haas on their latest album together. Alluded, as the title suggests, by the nocturne definition ‘a musical composition inspired by the night’, the darkest hour(s) in this case can’t help but build a plaintive warning about the political divisive administration of Trump’s America: Nicola Plana’s sepia adumbrated depiction of Liberty on the album’s cover pretty much reinforces the grimness and casting shadows of fear.
Musically strung-out, feeding off each other’s worries, protestations and confusion, Fiorino and Haas construct a lamentable cry and tumult of anger from their improvised synthesis of multi-layered abstractions.
Providence wise, Haas, who actually sent me this album after seeing my review of a U.S. Girls gig from earlier in the year (he was kind enough to note my brief mention of his Plastic Ono Band meets exile-in-America period Bowie saxophone playing on the tour; Haas being a member of Meg Remy’s touring band after playing on her recent LP, In A Poem Unlimited), once more stirs up a suitably pining, troubled saxophone led atmosphere; cast somewhere between Jon Hassell and Eno’s Possible Musics traverses, serialism jazz and the avant-garde. The Toronto native, originally during the 70s and early 80s a band member of the successful Canadian New wave export Martha And The Muffins, is an experimental journeyman. Having moved to New York for a period in the mid 80s to collaborate with a string of diverse underground artists (John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Thurston Moore and God Is My Co-Pilot) he’s made excursions back across the border; in recent times joining up with the Toronto supergroup, which features a lion’s share of the city’s most interesting artists and of course much of the backing group that now supports Meg Remy’s U.S. Girls, the Cosmic Range (who’s debut LP New Latitudes made our albums of the year feature in 2016). He’s also been working with that collective’s founder, Matt ‘Doc’ Dunn, on a new duo project named KIM (the fruits of which will be released later this year). But not only a collaborator, Haas has also recorded a stack of albums for the Resonantmusic imprint over the years (15 in total), the first of which, from 2005, included his American Nocturne foil, Fiorino. An artist with a penchant for stringed instruments (guitar, glissenter, lap steel, banjo, lotar, mandolin), Fiorino is equally as experimental; the painter musician imbued by blues, rock, psychedelic, country, jazz, Indian and Middle Eastern music has also played in and with a myriad of suitably eclectic musicians and projects (Radio I Ching, Hanuman Sextet, Adventures In Bluesland and Ronnie Wheeler’s Blues).
Recorded live with no overdubs, the adroit duo is brought together in a union of discordant opprobrious and visceral suffrage. Haas’ signature pained hoots, snozzled snuffles and more suffused saxophone lines drift at their most lamentable and blow hard at their most venerable and despondent over and around the spindly bended, quivery warbled and weird guitar phrases of Fiorino. Setting both esoteric and mysterious atmospheres, Haas is also in charge of the manic, often reversed or inverted, and usually erratic drum machine and bit-crushing warped electronic effects. Any hint of rhythm or a lull in proceedings, and it’s snuffed out by an often primal and distressed breakdown of some kind.
Skulking through some interesting soundscapes and fusions, tracks such as the opening ‘Waning Empire Blues’ conjures up a Southern American States gloom (where the Mason-Dixon line meets the dark ambient interior of New York) via a submerged vision of India. It also sounds, in part, like an imaginary partnership between Hassell and Ry Cooder. ‘Days Of The Jackals’ has a sort of Spanish Texas merges with Byzantium illusion and ‘New Orphans’ transduces the Aphex Twin into a shapeless, spiraling cacophony of pain.
With hints of the industrial, tubular metallic, blues, country, electro and Far East to be found, American Nocturne is essentially a deconstructive jazz album. Further out than most, even for a genre used to such heavy abstract experimentation, this cry from the bleeding heart of Trumpism opposition is as musically traumatic as it is complex and creatively descriptive. Fiorino and Haas envision a harrowing soundtrack fit for the looming miasma of our times.
Papernut Cambridge ‘Mellotron Phase: Volume 2’ (Ravenwood Music/Gare du Nord) 5th October 2018
A one-man cottage industry (a impressively prolific one at that) Ian Button’s Eurostar connection inspired label seems to pop up in every other roundup of mine. The unofficial houseband/supergroup and Button pet project Papernut Cambridge, the ranks of which often swell or contract to accommodate an ever-growing label roster of artists, is once again widening its nostalgic pop and psychedelic tastes.
Following on from Button’s debut leap into halcyon cult and kitsch library music, Mellotron Phase: Volume 1 is another suite of similar soft melodic compositions, built around the hazy and dreamy polyphonic loops of the iconic keyboard: An instrument used to radiant, often woozy, affect on countless psych and progressive records. That first volume was a blissful, float-y visage of quasi-David Axelrod psychedelic litany, pop-sike, quaint 60s romances and a mellotron moods version of Claude Denjean cult lounge Moog covers.
This time around the basis for each instrumental vision is the rhythm accompaniments from Mattel’s disc-based Ontigan home-entertainment instrument. These early examples of instrumental loops and musical breaks were set out across the instrument’s keys so that chord sequences and variations can be used to construct an arrangement. Mellowed and toned-down in comparison to the first volume, though still featuring drum breaks, percussion, bass and on the Bacharach-composes-a-screwball-tribute-to-French-Western-pulp-fiction (Paris, Texas to Paris, France) ‘A Cowboy In Montmartre’, an accordion. If the French Wild West grabs you then there’s plenty of other weird and wonderful mélanges to be found on this whimsically romantic, sometimes comically vaudeville, and often-yearning fondly nostalgic album. The swirling cascade of soft focus tremolo vibrations of the stuttered ‘Cha-Cha-Charlie’ sounds like Blue Gene Tyranny catching a flight on George Harrison’s Magical Mystery Tour. The Sputnik space harp pastiche of ‘Cygnus Probe’ is equally as Gerry Anderson as it is Philippe Guerre, and ‘Boss Club’ reimagines Trojan Records transduced through lounge music. Kooky Bavarian Oompah Bands at an acid-tripping Technicolor circus add to the mirage-like mellotron kaleidoscope on ‘Sergeant Major Mushrooms’, Len Deighton’s quintessentially English clandestine spy everyman, as scored by John Barry, cameos on the clavinet spindly and The Kramford Look-esque ‘Parker’s Last Case’, and Amen Corner wear their soft soul shufflers on the Tamala backbeat ‘Soul Brogues’.
A curious love letter to the forgotten (though a host of champions, from individuals to labels, have revalued and showcased their work) composers and mavericks behind some of the best and most odd library music, Mellotron Phase will in time become a cult album itself. As quirky as it is serenading, alternative recalled obscure soundtracks that vaguely recall Jean-Pierre Decerf, Jimmy Harris, Stereolab, Jean-Claude Vannier and even Roy Budd are given a fond awakening by Button and his dusted-off mellotron muse.
Sad Man ‘ROM-COM’ October 2018
Haphazardly prolific, Andrew Spackman, under his most recent of alter egos, the Sad Man, has released an album/collection of giddy, erratic, in a state of conceptual agitation electronica every few months since the beginning of 2017. Many of which have featured in one form or another in this column.
The latest and possibly most restive of all his (if you can call it that) albums is the spasmodic computer love transmogrification ROM-COM. An almost seamless record, each track bleeding into, or mind melding with the next, the constantly changing if less ennui jumpy compositions are smoother and mindful this time around. This doesn’t mean it’s any less kooky, leaping from one effect to the next, or, suddenly scrabbling off in different directions following various nodes and interplays, leaving the original source and prompts behind. But I detect a more even, and daresay, sophisticated method to the usual skittish hyperactivity.
Showing that penchant for exploration tracks such as the tribal cosmic synwave ‘Play In The Sky’ fluctuate between the Twilight Zone and tetchy, tentacle slithery techno; whilst the shifting bit-crush cybernetic ‘Hat’ sounds like a transplanted to late 80s Detroit Art Of Noise one minute, the next, like a isotope chilled thriller soundtrack. Reverberating piano rays, staggered against abrasive drumbeats await the listener on the sadly melodic ‘King Of ‘. That is until a drilling drum break barrels in and gets jammed, turning the track into a jarring cylindrical headbanger. ‘Coat’ whip-cracks to a primitive homemade drum machine snare as it, lo fi style, dances along to a three-way of Harmonia, The Normal and Populare Mechanik, and the brilliantly entitled ‘Wasp Meat’ places Kraftwerk in Iain Banks Factory.
Almost uniquely in his own little orbit of maverick bastardize electronic experimentation, Spackman, who builds many of his own bizarre contraptions and instruments, strangulates, pushes and deconstructs techno, the Kosmische, Trip-Hop and various other branches of the genre to build back up a conceptually strange and bewildering new sonic shake-up of the electronic music landscape.
Grand Blue Heron ‘Come Again’ (Jezus Factory) October 19th 2018
Grand Blue Heron, or GBH as it were, do some serious grievous harm to the post-punk and alt-rock genres on their latest abrasive heavy-hitter, Come Again. Partial to the Gothic, the Benelux quartet prowl in the miasma; skulking under a repressed gauze and creeping fog of doom as they trudge across a esoteric landscape of STDs, metaphorical crimes of the heart and rejection.
Born out of the embers of the band Hitch, band mates Paul Lamont (who also served time with the experimental Belgium group and Jezus Factory label mates, A Clean Kitchen Is A Happy Kitchen) and Oliver Wyckhuyse formed GBH in 2015 as a vehicle for songs written by Lamont. Straight out of the blocks on their thrashing debut Hatch, they’ve hewn a signature sound that has proven difficult to pin down.
Both boldly loud with smashing drums and gritty distorted guitars, yet melodic and nuanced, they sound like The Black Angels and Bauhaus working over noir rock on the vortex that is ‘Wwyds’, a grunge-y Belgium version of John Lyndon backed by The Pixies on the controlled maelstrom title-track, and Metallica on the country-twanging, pendulous skull-banger ‘Head’. They also sail close to The Killing Joke, Sisters Of Mercy (especially on the decadent wastrel Gothic ‘The Cult’), Archers Of Loaf and, even, The Foo Fighters. They rollick in fits of rage and despondency, beating into shape all these various inspirations, yet they come out on top with their own sound in the end.
Playing live alongside some pretty decent bands of late (White Denim, Elefant, The Cult Of Dom Keller) the GBH continue to grow with confidence; producing a solid heavy rock and punk album that reinforces the justified, low-level as it might be, hype of the Belgium, and by extension, Flanders scene.
Dr. Chan ‘Squier’ (Stolen Body Records) October 12th 2018
Keeping up the petulant garage-punk-skate-slacker discourse of their obstinate debut, the French group with just a little more control and panache once more hang loose and play fast with their spikey influences on the second LP Squier.
Hanging out with a disgruntled shrug in a 1980s visage of L.A. central back lots, skating autumn time drained pools in a nocturnal motel setting, Dr. Chan crow about the transition from adolescence to infantile adulthood. Hardly more than teenagers themselves, the band seem obsessed with their own informative years of slackerdom; despondently ripping into the status of outsiders the lead singer sulkingly declares himself as “Just a young messy loser” on the opening boom bap garage turn space punk spiraling ‘Wicked & Wasted’, and a “Teenage motherfucker” on the funhouse skater-punk meets Thee Headcoats ‘Empty Pockets’.
The pains but also thrills of that time are channeled through a rolling backbeat of Black Lips, Detroit Cobras, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Hunches, Nirvana and new wave influences. The most surprising being glimmers of The Strokes, albeit a distressed version, on the thrashed but polished, even melodic, ‘Girls!’ And, perhaps one of the album’s best tracks (certainly most tuneful), the bedeviled ride on the 666 Metro line ‘The Sinner’, could be an erratic early Arctic Monkeys missive meets Blink 182 outtake.
The Squier is an unpretentious strop, fueled as much by jacking-up besides over spilling dumpsters, zombified states of emptiness and despair as it is by carefree cathartic releases of bird-finger rebellious fun. Reminiscing for an adolescence that isn’t even theirs, Dr. Chan’s directed noise is every bit informed by the pin-ups of golden era 80s Thrasher magazine as by Nuggets, grunge and Jon Savage’s Black Hole: Californian Punk compilation. The fact they’re not even of the generation X fraternity that lived it, or even from L.A. for that matter, means there is an interesting disconnection that offers a rousing, new energetic take. In short: Ain’t a damn thing changed; the growing pains of teenage angst still firing most of the best and most dynamic shambling music.
Brace! Brace! ‘S/T’ (Howlin Banana) 12th October 2018
Looking for your next favourite French indie-pop group? Well look no further, the colourful Parisian outfit Brace! Brace! are here. Producing gorgeous hues of softened psychedelia, new wave, Britpop and slacker indie rock, this young but sophisticated band effortlessly melt the woozy and dreamy with more punchier dynamic urgency on their brilliant debut album.
Squirreled away in self-imposed seclusion, recording in the Jura Mountains, the isolation and concentration has proved more than fruitful. Offering a Sebastian Teller fronts Simian like twist on a cornucopia of North American and British influences, Brace! Brace! glorious debut features pastel shades of Blur, Gene, Dinosaur Jnr., Siouxsie And The Banshees (check the “I wrecked your childhood” refrain post-punk throb and phaser effect symmetry guitar of ‘Club Dorothée’ for proof) and the C86 generation. More contemporary wafts of Metronomy, Mew, Jacco Gardner, the Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Deerhunter (especially) permeate the band’s hazy filtered melodies and thoughtful prose too.
At the heart of it all lies the subtly crafted melodies and choruses. Never overworked, the lead-up and bridges gently meet their rendezvous with sweet élan and pace. Vocals are shared and range from the lilted to the wistful and more resigned; the themes of chaste and compromised love lushly and wantonly represented.
This is an album of two halves, the first erring towards quirky new wave, shoegaze-y hearty French pop – arguably featuring some of the band’s best melodies -, the second, a more drowsy echo-y affair. Together it makes for a near-perfect debut album, an introduction to one of the most exciting new fuzzy indie-pop bands of the moment.
Junkboy ‘Old Camera, New Film’ – Taken from Fretsore Record’s upcoming Music Minds fundraiser compilation; released on the 12th October 2018
Quiet of late, or so we thought, the unassuming South Coast brothers Hanscomb have been signing love letters, hazy sonnets and languorous troubadour requests from the allegorical driftwood strewn yesteryear for a number of years now. The Brighton & Hove located siblings have garnered a fair amount of favorable press for their beautifully etched Baroque-pastoral idyllic psychedelic folk and delicately softly spoken harmonies.
To celebrate the release of their previous album, Sovereign Sky, the Monolith Cocktail invited the duo to compile a congruous Youtube playlist. Proper Blue Sky Thinking didn’t disappoint; the brothers’ Laurel Canyon, Freshman harmony scions and softened psychedelic inspirations acting like signposts and reference points for their signature nostalgic sound: The Beach Boys, Thorinshield, Mark Eric, The Lettermen, The Left Bank all more an appearance.
A precursor to, we hope, Junkboy’s next highly agreeable melodious LP, Trains, Trees, Topophilia (no release date has been set yet), the tenderly ruminating new instrumental (and a perfect encapsulation of their gauzy feel) ‘Old Camera, New Film’ offers a small preview of what’s to come. It’s also just one of the generous number of tracks donated to the worthy Music Minds (‘supporting healthy minds’) cause by a highly diverse and intergenerational cast of artists. Featuring such luminaries as Tom Robinson, Glen Tilbrook and Graham Goldman across three discs, the Fretsore Records release coincides with World Mental Health Day on the 12th October.
Sitting comfortably on the second disc with (two past Monolith Cocktail recommendations) My Autumn Empire, Field Harmonics and Yellow Six, Junkboy’s mindful delicate swelling strings with a hazy brassy, more harshly twanged guitar leitmotif beachcomber meditations prove a most perfect fit.
Earthling Society ‘MO – The Demon’ (Riot Season) 28th September 2018
Bowing out after fifteen years the Earthling Society’s swansong, MO – The Demon, transduces all the group’s various influences into a madcap Kool-aid bathed imaginary soundtrack. Inspired by the deranged Shaw Brothers film studio’s bad-taste-running-rampart straight-to-video martial arts horror schlock The Boxer’s Omen, the band scores the most appropriate of accompaniments.
The movie’s synopsis (though I’m not sure anyone ever actually wrote this story out; making it up in their head as they went along more likely) involves a revenge plot turn titanic spiritual struggle between the dark arts, as the mobster brother of a Hong Kong kickboxer, paralyzed by a cheating Thai rival, sets out on a path of vengeance only to find himself sidetracked by the enlightened allure of a Buddhist monastery and the quest to save the soul of a deceased monk (who by incarnated fate happens to be our protagonist’s brother from a previous life) killed by black magic. A convoluted plot within a story of vengeance, The Boxer’s Omen is a late night guilty pleasure; mixing as it does, truly terrible special effects with demon-bashing Kung Fu and Kickboxing.
Recorded at Leeds College of Music between November 2017 and February of 2018, MO – The Demon is an esoteric Jodorowsky cosmology of Muay Thai psychedelics, space rock, shoegaze, Krautrock and Far East fantasy. Accenting the mystical and introducing us to the soundtrack’s leitmotif, the opening theme song shimmers and cascades to faint glimmers of Embryo and Gila; and the craning, waning guitar that permeates throughout often resembles Manuel Göttsching later lines for Ash Ra Tempel. By the time we reach the bell-tolled spiritual vortex of the ‘Inauguration Of The Buddha Temple’ we’re in Acid Mothers territory, and the album’s most venerable sky-bound ascendant ‘Spring Snow’ has more than a touch of the Popol Vuh about it: The first section of this two-part vision features Korean vocalist Bomi Seo (courtesy of Tirikiliatops) casting incantation spells over a heavenly ambient paean, as the miasma and ominous haze dissipates to reveal a path to nirvana, before escalating into a laser whizzing Amon Duul II talks to Yogi style jam. The grand finale, ‘Jetavana Grove’, even reimagines George Harrison in a meeting of minds with Spiritualized and the Stone Roses; once more setting out on the Buddhist path of enlightenment.
Sucked into warped battle scenes on the spiritual planes, Hawkwind (circa Warriors On The Edge Of Time) panorama jams and various maelstroms, the Earthling Society capture the hallucinogenic, tripping indulgences of their source material well whilst offering the action and prompts for another set of heavy psych and Krautrock imbued performances. The Boxer’s Omen probably gets a much better soundtrack than it deserves, as the band sign off on a high.