Monolith Cocktail Blog

THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.

Cover Stars: Blanco Teta

___THE NEW___
(all reviews are in alphabetical order)

bedd ‘Monday 10:55 EP’
27^th June 2025

Once more on the site after quite a break – my fault not theirs -, the Oxford project led by singer-songwriter, composer and producer Jamie Hyatt is back with a bridging style EP ahead of a debut album, released in the Autumn.

Sometimes I excel myself with a descriptive summary of a sound, and with bedd’s ‘Auto Harp’ single I described their sound as “an understated breath of fresh air from cosmic suburbia”. This beauty of a single was followed at a later date, during Covid isolation, by a premiere of ‘You Have Nice Things’, which seems to have now continued with its small-town landmarked sense of isolation and sad detachment on the EP’s title-track, the very specifically timed capture of nocturnal plaint and heartache ‘Monday 10:55’. The focus song features fellow Oxford musician, the vocalist and guitarist Emma Hunter (who’s own brand of music, created with drumming foil Tom Bruce, merges the worlds of David Lynch with a penchant for Flamenco, Catholic litany and culture and the 1950s), with extra subtle emotional pull, adding harmony and a touch of the soaring to this drifted indie-blues track. It reminded me in places of Ride and the Engineers.

Before we go any further, we must mention the rest of the band, the ranks of which feature ‘a range of celebrated local Oxford musical talents’, including bass player Darren Fellerdale and guitarist Neil Durbridge, both bandmates from Hyatt’s previous project The Family Machine. Completing the lineup is the guitarist Tom Sharp, electronic musician and producer Tim Midlen (aka The Mancles of Acid) and drummer Sam Spacsman. The EP itself was performed, recorded and produced by Hyatt himself with the band at Glasshouse studios in rural Oxfordshire and mixed and mastered by Robert Stevenson at Sweetzerland Studios.

That’s the credits out of the way. The title-track is flanked at both sides by two very differently paced and performed songs; the opening ‘Messed Your Head’, has more oomph with its mix of Blur’s sliding bass on ‘Beetlebum’ and The Breeders bass line on the equally famous ‘Cannonball’, Elastica-style “woah” and messed up knock-back passionate off-the-chest power-Britpop-indie-rock (I’d go as far as saying an influence of The Pixies), whilst the closer, ‘D Minor’, is a more echo-y reverberated stripped down and atmospheric piece of disconsolate love strains and emotional discourse that has an air of Jeff Buckley about it.

It is not meant as a criticism in anyway, but bedd sent me right back to the 90s with this EP mix of shoegaze, Britpop, indie and grunge-rock. But they add a certain quality of the soundtrack, something that’s a little bit grander. It will be interesting to see what the album is like later this year. But on the strength of this trio of songs, it looks to be a winner.   

Blanco Teta ‘La Debacle las Divas’
(Bongo Joe) 4^th July 2025

Delivering their 2025 manifesto of the riled and near bestial, the hellraising and electrifying Argentine quartet of Blanco Teta throw off the metaphorical chains of tech disparity and servitude with a mix of the devilish and hardcore.  

In the face of AI, ‘crypto-serfdom’, ‘techno-feudalism’, the constantly ever-changing, updated feeds of social media, the pressures of instant gratification and attention seeking validation, and that everything these days only makes an impact culturally if it was prompted or began on tiktok, the group show both their venerability and strengths. They face the uncertainties and anxious dread of our times with velocity as they pound and churn, twist and channel aspects of the post-hardcore sound, punk, riot grrrl-style power-ups, death metal (almost), grunge, rock and 2000s indie-rave-punk-rock.    

Marking a return to Bongo Joe, the La Debacle las Divas (‘the debacles of the divas’) album sees the quartet of Josefina Barreix (on vocals), Violeta García (cello), Carlos Quebrada (electric bass) and Carola Zelaschi (drums) change things up, recording for the very first time live in the studio direct to tape. Without edits and overdubs, the album has a real new dynamic; the whole record more or less without a pause, thrashing and driving through an eleven-song set, as if it were a live stage performance. There are various let-ups, if that’s the word, and mood changes, a change in tempo and ferocity too. But this remains a chthonian and cosmic swirl of the grounded-up, menacing, prowled, alarmed, dragged and charged.   

The atmosphere of this album is one in which the bonus of youth is wasted, broken upon the pressurised novelties of being young and in the moment, but ready to be disregarded and tossed away into the internet wilderness. They band themselves declare that they feel caught between a stasis of being both in their prime yet already growing too old to be feted. And whilst they were indeed feted, their lives haven’t exactly change for the better: mentally or financially, still burdened to surviving on the vaporous fumes of goodwill, popularity and a presence on the internet. Channelling all that into this diva-rage, borrowing that title and turning its connotations on its head, Blanco Teta (which I think translates as ‘white tit’?) launch a mix of disgruntled and disenchanted maelstroms and more near plaintive reproach and forlorn.  

They open with the sound of generator fuzz and scuzz, in a heavy drive of Courtney Love, the Raw Brigade, Bikini Kill and L7. Heavy trebly bass, descending spirals, pounded beaten drums rule the day, but the action and influences fluctuate; on the excitable protestation ‘Subiduki’, I’m hearing Anthrax, Faith No More and Death From above 1979, on raged thud rocked sassy and maniacal decried ‘Joven Promesa’ CSS sharing the stage with Shonen Knife, and on the hardcore, morse code guitar wired space-rocking-psych ‘Perdida’ the Klaxons and The Fall. They also reminded me in part of a Latin version of the Slavic quartet Lucidvox; only with far more guttural daemonic vocals.

Tough and ready for the rumble, yet disconsolate and bereft of answers, Blanco Teta serve up a vortex and heavy meta(l) outcry and alarm at the state of society and the music industry. That debacle of divas has produced one of the year’s most promising, fierce and unique performances.

Dave Clarkson ‘Was Life Sweeter?’
(Cavendish House) 9^th May 2025

After briefly crossing paths on Bluesky earlier this month, I’m aware that I’ve entered upon the electronic sound worlds, expressions and atmospheres of Dave Clarkson at a very late point in a career that spans decades of experiment/exploration; at a point when the soloist and collaborating composer is taking stock, questioning that old generational trope of nostalgia for a time that probably never really ever existed. It’s easy to see why of course: seeking comfort, reassurance and perhaps some form of guidance from a period when you were young, still hopeful, at your creative best and fancy free – well for many of us anyway. But no one can really believe at this point in time, with all the social ills, conflict, and tyranny that the future is looking anything but dystopian. Clarkson however draws a line in the sands of wishful thinking time, opting to create a confectionary and candy concepted reification of a childhood. In Clarkson’s own words, this latest album questions ‘the whole hauntological culture of escaping to the past and whether this is a denial of a future left to live.’

Previous works have explored ‘British faded fairgrounds, coastal quicksands, shorelines, caves and forests’, and been created, at least partially, in the field so to speak. Was Life Sweeter? uses a similar device and methodology, with recordings taken in various confectionery sites around the country. And so, you will hear amongst the engineered electronics the complete journey from Space Dust powder, fizzy drinks, ice cream vans and sweet shops indulgence to the inevitable visit to the dentist’s surgery, completed with the sounds of their terrifying cavity filling drills. From what I remember in the 80s, it really didn’t pay to have a sweet tooth; the barbarity of those early visits, the fillings in my milk teeth, still plaguing me with fear to this day.

It all starts in a dreamy-like state, with translucent bulb-like notes suspended and tinkling above the swept waveforms of phaser air, on the mirage of innocence ‘Milk Teeth’. The scoped-up actions, the anticipated weighing of your favourite sweets, is transformed into another piece of skying kosmische fantasy made nearly mystical on ‘Ye Olde Sweet Shop’, whilst space dust explodes on the tongue on the next track: childhood happiness at this candy firework made near dreamlike and then sci-fi. There’s the easily identified fizz of pop later on, and the recordings of voices, the captured playfulness and buzz of devouring such sweet connections to childhood.

The innocuous treat though of a ‘Three Blind Mice’ calling ice-cream van is made cosmic, with the nursery rhyme siren carried on into the infinities of inner space, kept locked in nostalgic memory. And there’s always some sign of the more haunted, more foreboding aspects of that nostalgia trip; recalling those 80s soundtracks from supernatural TV series, the harsh life’s lessons and warnings made terrifyingly clear in TV ads aimed at kids during that decade and something that’s hard to pin down but seems off-kilter and near alien. ‘Sugar Rush (Speed of Life)’ is a speed’s freak sweetened running man, part electro and part German electronica of a certain vintage. An alarm bell rings, and the listener is sprinted off the starting blocks on a rush of candy adrenalin. 

Clarkson successfully balances a hallucinatory world of childhood sweetness made more ominous and haunting with abstract quandaries of past lives, miss-reflection and the need to push on through and fully adopt the age in which someone is present. I’d recommend this album for those with an ear for the sounds of the Radiophonic Workshop, Toshimaru Nakamura, The Advisory Circle, Belbury Poly, Jez Butler, Lukid and Harmonia – which should sound like an inviting proposition.

Itchy-O ‘SÖM SÂPTÂLAHN’
Released back in May 2025

Beating out a ritualistic circus of chthonian and alchemist theatre around hell’s gateway, the expanded Denver collective of performers, artists, musicians and conjurers known as Itchy-O once more record their invocations for posterity. Although celebrated for the staging of various themed performances set against a Mad Max meets Mexican Day of the Dead like decorated back drop of iconic and wasteland ruined Denver locations (from the Mission Ballroom to New Tech Machinery buildings, and Covid initiated drive-ins), the circle has only released a smattering of packages to the public since inception.

Described as a ‘Voyage into Exocosm’, their latest behemoth of an album opens both atmospherically disturbing and interdimensional, cosmic instructive portals to the hermetic and spiritual. From – I believe – the Norwegian for ‘seam’ and ‘seven grains’, SÖM SÂPTÂLAHN envelopes mournful bowed Eastern lamented classical strings and the vibrations, frequencies of a specially commissioned apparatus of bronze percussion (to be accurate, 600 pounds of reclaimed bronze remodelled into gongs and metallophones by the group’s collaborative partners, the Colorado School of Mines) with the industrial, otherworldly visitations, magik and necromancy.

Day spa new age outer body experiences tied to mystical and darker forces, transcendental instruction, exercise converge on the astral highway to voodoo and demonology. In practice, that sounds like the Phoenix rising forth, or rather the Great Marquis of Hell, known as ‘Phenex’, to scuzz scales and fried and sawing electric guitar, ringing and resonating gongs and a lattice work of metallophones. It can also sound like an aural rebalance of spectral harmony: As found on the longer form instructive ‘Ptothing/Soktū ōbu’, which soothes the listener with an interactive navigator realignment of the speakers for a cerebral session of breathing exercises and cosmic escape. That greeting and guidance turns into a cinematic-scale, sonorous and daunting projection into dark sci-fi, before release and a unification of mind and body. This is a musical and sonic world in which you will find references to demons, the Latinized groans of chthonian dread, and tuning fork like signals to unnamed leviathans beyond the fourth dimension.

Ambiguously lurking and congregating under the canopy of mystical jungles, or, hanging from the vines; retreating to cult 50s and 60s scored Javanese islands; and conducting ritual replenishment in the shadows of a temple complex, Itchy-O simultaneously draw upon aspects of gamelan, the fairytale, industrial music, the classical, the filmic, folkloric, new age and the avant-garde to pit machine against the physical in an act of exploratory performance, instruction and esoteric mantra.

JLZ ‘Tumba’ (Swine Records) 7^th June 2025
Various ‘TUROŇ/AHUIZOTL’ (Swine Records w/ Fayuca Retumba) 17^th June 2025

Arriving in the last week or so, a doublet of releases from the collective webmagazine turn newly founded label imprint Swine Records. First up from this venture is the Brazilian producer JLZ’s chthonian and magical esoteric vision of the Brazilian Baile Funk genre known as ‘Romano’. Baile is itself a kind of transformation of hip-hop developed and born in Rio de Janeiro, that takes its influences from a range of sources including Miami bass and freestyle whilst also connecting back to the country’s various indigenous musical styles. The ‘Latin Grammy nominee’ emerges from a thick bass vibrating and high pitch signal arcing canopy of the supernatural and tribal. The EP’s Portuguese title translates into “tomb”, and it’s easy to see why. With a darker electronica filter, some zaps, shuttering and amorphous bass beats and collected vocal samples from hidden sources there’s a suitably mysteriously, hermetic and sometimes Catholic atmosphere of mysticism and multi-layered nocturnal city forebode. Those voices are both evocative of the Afro-Brazilian influence and from some entrancing, lamented corner of the Levant and Middle East. If I had to think of anyone as a reference, then perhaps Cities Aviv, or Escupemetralla.

The second release is a joint venture between the Slovakian imprint and the Mexican label Fayuca Retumba – a project by the Mexican producer Yourte Bugarac. After appearing in an interview for Swine Daily (the web mag outlet of the Swine hub), an idea was formed to commission a number of both Slovak and Mexican artists to create sonic and musical pieces inspired by the “Turoň”, a mythological creature, principally, from Slovak (particularly around Čičmany village), and the Aztec mythological creature “Ahuizotl”. The labels have helpfully summarised, and contextualized each of those inspired prompts for us:

Turoň also called turôň, or chriapa, is a carnival mask that was known not only in Slovakia, but also in Poland and the Czech Republic. Its name is derived from the tur, an animal similar to an ox, which became extinct in Slovakia in the 17th century, and in the magical ideas of our ancestors, symbolized strength and fertility.

Ahuizotl was a water monster in Aztec mythology. It was described as a dog with monkey-like limbs, pointed ears, and a third hand at the end of its long tail. It lured its victims by imitating the cries of a child along the banks of rivers, then caught them with its third hand. The ancient Mexicans considered it an emissary of Tlaloc, the rain god who resided in the depths of rivers. Its function was to catch people by the hand on their tails, drown them, and send them to the god’s house as his servants. In Nahuatl, a(tl) means “water” and huiz(tli) means “thorn”. This name was taken by the warlike and fierce Aztec emperor Ahuítzotl, the eighth tlatoani of Tenochtitlan, who ruled from 1486 to 1502. 

Etymology folklore, magic and the ominous converge to form various takes on both of these myths; starting with Lénok electronic pad whipped demonic buzzing hardcore hallucination of swirling vortex orchestra samples, thrashing tentacle slithers and frazzled broken-up beats morphing ‘NeBoyIM’. Dead Janitor’s ‘Ooze’ is like a percussive alien farmyard scene of cow bells and crunchy, crushed d ‘n’ b, whilst Schop1nhauer transmogrifies a creepy hinge worn gate into some industrial haunted factory bit-crush and pylon static frying paranormal unease, on ‘Ungulatheion’. Con Secuencias ‘Stinking Corpse’ opens with cop car sirens before sloping in a laidback style into Miami bass culture repurposed with a flavour of Latin America. The second half of this compilation has a signature Central and South America vibe to its unorthodox techno, trance, EDM and hip-hop sources. El Ángel Exterminador’s ‘Hierba Retorcida’ has just that, a removed rhythmic interpretation of indigenous percussion, a guiro that sounds like a pack of cards being flicked through at high speed, and a sort of cumbia-like vibe that saunters along. The laser shooting 80s VHS cult sounding ‘IZANAMI’ by OFYERF sounds more like Der Plan meets Damon Wild & Tim Taylor.

Altogether a most promising start and introduction to two underground labels doing intriguing, interesting and encouragingly strange, porous boundary experimentation.

Charles Kynard ‘Woga’
(WEWANTSOUNDS Reissue of Mainstream Records original release) 27^th June 2025

After recent cult reissues and specials from Egypt and Japan vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS return stateside and to L.A.’s Mainstream Records label, reissuing on wax for the first time the jazz-funk icon Charles Kynard’s much coveted and influential Woga LP.

Regular readers and followers of my review columns over the years may remember the label’s last stopover at Bob Shad’s imprint, with the Mainstream Funk comp a number of years back. One of the brightest progenitors of that roster, the Hammond and electric organist and St. Louis native – before relocating to L.A. after a brief period spent in Kansas – Kynard, memorably fused everything from R&B, the blues, soul and funk to his jazz and gospel background. A staple of the breaks, acid-jazz and hip-hop communities, its highly probable that you’ve heard samples of his music; especially from his key albums for Mainstream in the early 70s, and of course this revitalized LP – remastered with a bonus track and accompanying new notes and essay.

A little background is needed, and one that doesn’t paraphrase those liner notes – of which I learnt a lot. Kynard’s upbringing was imbued by the confluence of sounds washed down the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Born in the 1930s in that former French founded outlier, a staging post for Lewis and Clarke’s famous expeditions West, Kynard absorbed the cross- junction of church music, gospel, jazz, blues, soul and R&B at an early age. The virtuoso uprooted, journeying to Kansas before landing for more or less good in L.A. in the early 1960s having made a name for himself. He quickly started recording for the producer Richard Bock and drummer Roy Harte’s Pacific Jazz label – their signature at the time before expanding the remit, “cool West Coast jazz”. It was during this point that Kynard started working with such luminaries as Howard Roberts, Sonny Stitt and Buddy Collette. His actual debut LP came out in the pivotal year of 1963. But he then switched labels, moving over to Prestige Records; a time in which some of his most influential work was recorded: the jazz-fusion specials Reelin’ With The Feelin’ (1969), Afro-Disiac (’70) and Wa-Tu-Wa-Zui (’71).

Such was his status and rep that when once more changing labels, this time to Mainstream on the cusp of a new decade, his next trio of LPs would attract an enviable cast of talented and iconic players. For the debut offering, arriving in a tumult of social and conscious Black power, of activism and protest, the Swahili borrowed word for “fear” (or “timidity”), Woga, featured an ensemble of notable session players; all of whom, more or less, were in their own right also recording stars and bandleaders, but also sidemen and women to some of the most influential names in Black music. Amongst the ranks for that LP were bass player Chuck Rainey, possibly the most credited bassist in recording history (a 1000 album credits its believed); Tennessee bred blues guitarist Arthur Adams; the Canadian-born arranger, conductor, ensemble leader, trombonist David Roberts; Motor City native and Motown horns player George Bohanon, who at one time was a member of Chico Hamilton’s Quartet, and worked with such luminaries as Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis and Michel Legrand (on the Dingo Soundtrack); the lesser known trumpeter and flugelhorn player James Kartchner; Minnesota trumpeter and flugelhorn player Jerome Rusch, who played with such talented icons as Gerald Wilson, Ray Charles and Willie Bobo; and the exceptional Detroit drummer Paul Humphrey, who worked with the Four Tops, Wes Montgomery, Coltrane, Mingus, Marvin Gaye, Solomon Burke and Quincy Jones (the list goes on).  

For the bonus track, a cover the actionist soul-funk group The Undisputed Truth’s ‘Smiling Faces Sometimes’, that same set up features a couple of noted replacements, with the infinitely famous and acclaimed Wrecking Crew member Carol Kaye on customary felt and anchored bass, and the electric guitarist Charles Mallory providing heavy soul licks, and Larry McGuire taking a turn on blazed and searing, truth-will-out, trumpet. Incidentally, on an album that split between originals and covers, Rainey played on the original version of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Rock Steady’ the previous year – featured as it was on the soul diva’s inspirational Young, Gifted and Black LP. A new arrangement means at least a variation on Rainey’s Fender tones; especially as Kynard seems to murmur or hum the original tune to slipped bristling hi-hats, breaks style drums and a movie soundtrack horn section.

It is at this point in my review that I feel I should at least outline the backstory of Mainstream Records: the label that facilitated this LP. Set up by Bob Shand as a “broad church”, the label grew out of what was already a 30-year spanning career when it took shape in the 1960s; a showcase for prestigious artists, session players and Blue Note luminaries chancing their arm at the bandleader or solo spotlight. A musical journeyman himself, Shad (whittled down from Abraham Shadrinsky) began his producer’s apprenticeship at the iconic Savoy label, then moved to National Records before taking up an A&R role at Mercury, where he launched his own, first, label EmArcy. It was during this time that Shad would produce records for the venerated, celebrated jazz singer deity Sarah Vaughan, the Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet, Dinah Washington and The Big Brother Holding Company.

As a testament to his craft, Vaughan would go on to record eight albums on Shad’s label, the next chapter, leap in a career that traversed five decades of jazz, soul, blues, R&B, rock, psych and of course funk. Mainstream’s duality mixed reissues (from such iconic gods of the jazz form as Dizzy Gillespie) with new recordings; with its golden era arguably, the five-year epoch chronicled in the compilation that WEWANTSOUNDS put out a number of years ago.

Spotting the potential in Kynard’s jazz-fusions and ability to transpose signatures and sounds from a wellspring of Black music styles, Shand invited the keys specialist to record a trio of LPs, with Woga being the first.

Despite the warm tones, the rays, shimmers, buzzes of church organ and of reverence gospel, this LP was forged in a time of the conscious Black movements, of Black power, Vietnam outrage, social division and revolutionary zeal. And so, most of the covers chosen for reinvention and homage were from a cadre of strong, troubled and lamented voices appealing for change. I already mentioned Aretha, but there’s also Donny Hathaway’s iconic soul anthem ‘Little Ghetto Boy’, the glorious Staple Singers’ ‘Name The Missing Word’ and the beautifully mellifluous and aching folk protestation ‘The First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face)’, written originally by Ewan MacColl for folk royalty Peggy Seeger, and made famous, given a soulfully blessed but plaintively charged direction by the late Roberta Flack. The former of that trio adds a touch of Nautilus wavy Bob James to a Southern Spiritual church organ sound of the velvety punched and near scored, whilst the latter transposes a familiar melody to sound almost like an Otis Redding ballad recorded on Stax; the organ simmering like a mirage in the sweltering Southern heat; the horns, in sympathy channelling both R&B and the blues. As a worshipping fan of all things Staples, I was pleased to see Kynard having a go at the smoother gospel-soul-R&B smoky and oozing with cool Southern attitude ‘Name The Missing Word’, first released just the previous year. Kynard retains mood, the flavour, but the bass seems a little more menacing, nearly dark, and the timing changes to one that can only be described as Latin-esque.

Kynard showcases his own talents, not just for rearranging, but for composing new jam-like numbers. The trio of ‘Hot Sauce’, ‘Lime Twig’ and ‘Slop Jar’ shows a range of styles, of timings and moods; the first, fusing soft jazz influences with ghetto soul, R&B, blazing lifted horns from Hollywood, and saddling up to funk with some whammy-like whacker guitar; the second, takes the action down a notch or two, to find a mellower tempo that’s more Herb Albert and Bacharach; the dreaminess and melody reminding me in part of Stevie Wonder. The last of those originals is a cool mix of Steve Cropper meets Hendrix and the J.B.’s. There’s some muscle and grunt to this scorched Hammond number. Occasionally the horns section recalls something of Lalo Schifrin, and at other times, of Gil Evans and his orchestra. A real showcase of influences brought together for an impressive smooth and more punchy fusion.

A treat for samplers and acid-jazz, boogaloo fusion fans alike, the range of this revived LP is wide but tethered as always to Kynard’s impressive and warm radiant, sustained and scorching spiritual, jazzy and soul-gospel keys. His wingmen, and one woman, proving an elite force of super experienced players from every field of Black music going. Anyone with even a passing interest in jazz-fusion and soul should grab a copy: I’ve a feeling this will quickly sell out.   

___/The Social Playlist Vol. 98___

The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share; with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost and those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.

Running for nearly 12 years now, Volume 98 is the latest eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show from me – the perfect radio show in fact: devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.

June has been a cruel month, taking two titans of popular music away from us. Losing Sly Stone is one thing, but Brian Wilson in just the matter of two days seems just plain spiteful. Wilson’s travails have been well documented, the effects of various mental and physical conditions, of traumas, taking their toil for decades. But in losing the one woman who did more than most to bring Brian back into the land of the living, to revive his fortunes, Melinda Ledbetter’s death at the beginning of 2024 must have had an unspeakable impact. Although carrying on for another 18 months, his health deteriorated even further, with news that Brian had dementia; and on the death of Melinda, the family filed a petition to place him under conservatorship to help manage his personal and medical needs. But despite all this, there had been an announcement of a new album, Brian’s country songbook, in 2026 – a revival of the 1970 Cows in the Pasture recordings that were shelved when Brian lost interest. This may now see the light of day as tribute. You will find a piece on the late genius from my Brain Wilson files in the Archives section below this.

Suffering just as many travails, addictions and setbacks, grand funk evangelist Sly Stone had spent his later years in court battling for royalty payments against his former manager – a case he won, but still lost out on -, and living a subsistence lifestyle from a camper van. Although riding high as the true innovator of funk-soul-R&B-psychedelic-rock-pop fusion in the 60s and laying down the rhythms and feel and energy for disco and much or less everything that followed, Sly’s battles with drugs – leading to jail time for absconding a drug-driving arrest – hampered his recording career in the 70s and beyond. And yet, the Pentecostal baptised superstar pretty much invented a whole explosion of unifying voices and sounds that merged the counterculture and pop worlds. He’d find a revolutionary voice alright, but one that still had faith in the spirit of compassion, and one that brought everyone together no matter what the creed.

Both late deities will feature in this month’s Social Playlist selection, with a smattering of choice cuts from each one’s cannon. But joining them this June is the electronic music composer Alexander Julien, who followers may recall appeared many moons ago on the site under one of his many non de plumes, Vision External – others included Vision Lunar and Soufferance. I was contacted by his late spouse Rain Frances recently with the sad news of his passing:

‘Vision Eternel’s Alexander Julien passed away on May 14, 2025. Those who are familiar with Vision Eternel, know that Alex’s music is based on nostalgia, emotion and heartbreak. He experienced a lot of anguish in his short 37 years and was often overcome by it. He translated this pain beautifully into his music. His idea of making concept albums showed his talent as well as his dedication to leaving a legacy of music that told the story of love and heartache. He will be missed by all those who loved him.’

Alexander had left notes in his will instructing Rain to get in contact with all the sites that ever reviewed his work. As part of a Special trio of releases from the North American label Somewherecold, I wrote about his For Farewell Of Nostalgia EP a good few years ago:

‘Back towards the ambient spectrum, the final release in the special is a most emotively drawn and purposeful EP of intimate mood music by the Montréal-based Vision Eternel. Coining the phrase “melogaze” to describe his lush “emo” brand of majestic and caressed swirling feelings, heartbreaks and loves, the band’s founder Alexander Julien soundtracks a love lost affair with a most swaddled suite of ambient music, shoegazing, and semi-classical longings.

Over a quartet of channelled “movements” (rain, absence, intimacy and nostalgia), Julien charts this affair-of-the-heart with a both cinematic and melodious touch. The EP though is a greater conceptual work that even arrives accompanied by a short story and plenty of poetic, stirring baggage. Lingering reminisces pour from this composer’s light yet deep vaporous yearnings.

On the cover itself, Julien is painted as some kind of Left Banke thinker meets Graham Greene Third Man and shoe-string Marlowe; a riff on 50s and older covers of that vogue. And so, nostalgia is certainly evoked on this almost timeless EP of abstracted emotionally pulled memories made tangible. It’s actually a most lovely, touching trembled and graceful encapsulation of the themes; beautifully put together. It’s also entirely different and like all three of these releases pushes experimental, ambient music in different directions, yet never loses sight of taking the listener on those same sonic journeys into the cosmic, imaginary, and intimate.’

A glowing review I think you’d agree. And in tribute and as a mark of respect, a track from this EP will feature in the Social playlist this month.

In a more celebratory mood, I’ve pulled together a selection of tracks from those albums that have reached specific milestones this month and year. These include the tenth anniversary of Vukovar’s debut LP proper Emperor, which is being specially re-released this month (see the Archives this week for my original review), plus tracks from Nick Cave and The Bad Seed’s The Firstborn Is Dead…(forty this month), R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction (also forth this June), Dylan and The Band’s The Basement Tapes (fifty this June), and Them’s The Angry Young Men (sixty this month).

The rest of the playlist is made up of tracks from across time, with choice cuts from Volume 10, Credit to the Nation, The Neats, Van der Graaf Generator, Helicon, Sahar Nagy, Drug Rug and many more.

That track list in full::::::

Brian Wilson ‘Rhapsody in Blue (Intro)’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Underdog’
Karim Mosbahi ‘Hanni ya I’hanay karim mosbahi’
Bob Dylan and The Band ‘Odds and Ends’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘I Gotta Go Now (Up On The Floor)/Funky Broadway’
Credit to the Nation ‘Teenage Sensation’
Sahar Nagy ‘Baa Keda’
The Neats ‘Lies’
Kai Martin & Stick! ‘Vi kunde vara allt’
Vukovar ‘The New World Order’
R.E.M. ‘Maps And Legends’
Drug Rug ‘Day I Die’
Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks ‘Hold Back Time’
Brian Wilson ‘That Lucky Old Sun’
Vision Eternal ‘Moments Of Absence’
The Beach Boys ‘Cabin Essence’
Niandan Jazz ‘Idissa-So’
Louden Wainwright III ‘Dilated to Meet You’
Them ‘My Little Baby’
The Beach Boys ‘Time To Get Alone’
Brian Wilson ‘Love And Mercy’
Van der Graaf Generator ‘House With No Door’
International Noise Orchestra ‘Groovin up Slowly’
Deuter ‘Der Turm/Fluchtpunkt’
Locomotive ‘You Must Be Joking’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Searchin’’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘I Want To Take You Higher – Live At Woodstock’
Major Force ‘America 2000’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Fun’
Volume 10 ‘A’cappella/Styleondeck’
Helicon ‘Chateau H (D.ross Remix)’
Sly & The Family Stone ‘Luv N’ Haight’
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ‘Train Long Suffering’
Naked City ‘Surfer Girl/Church Key – Live in Quebec ‘88’
Vukovar ‘Regular Patrons of the Salon Kitty’

___/Archives____

The archives return this morning in homage to the late, great Brian Wilson, with a smattering of pieces from the files. Arguably the late 20^th and 21^st centuries rhapsodic incarnation of Bernstein, Gershwin and Bach, Brian is perhaps one of the only true geniuses of any age, an example of a once-in-a-generation icon. So where do you start? Well, over the years I’ve written reams on the subject, and of course the group he co-founded, The Beach Boys. I’ve included a piece I wrote back in 2016 on the occasion of the tour anniversary of Pet Sounds, plus my original review of the biopic Love & Mercy movie.

But there’s another chance to read my original review of Vukovar’s debut album, Emperor, which is being re-released on the event of its tenth anniversary. Sadly, the band is now defunct, reincarnated in a different light as The Tearless Life.

Brian Wilson presents ‘Pet Sounds’ 50th Anniversary Celebrations
Friday 27th May 2016 at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

In a soft power musical arms race with The Beatles, Brian Wilson more or less now mastering the known limits of the studio, was nudged towards ever more ambitious levels of creativity. As the old adage, music history folklore if you like, goes it was Rubber Soul that finally did it for Brian. The retort to this foil would not only be The Beach Boys first masterpiece, but one of pop and rock music’s most enduring triumphs, Pet Sounds. No longer happy with the California high school, deuce coupe cruising beach party spirit that had so far made the group world famous, cast even further adrift, introspective and all but retired from playing live with the his brothers and comrades, Brian was moving on from the fancy-free and footloose sound of the 45s that had always guaranteed a top ten place in the Billboard charts for something more…well, grown up. Voicing a growing anxiety – or the growing pains – of youth, Brian would compose the sound of young adulthood. As the world came to terms with the idea of the ‘teenager’, Brian began encompassing and articulating a new uneasy transition.

As much about the times as about the heartache and pains of being pure of heart, Pet Sounds marked a growing resentment towards the previous generation. At the beginning of a revolutionary change in attitudes, but a year before the ‘free love’ hippie idealism that brought in the psychedelic epoch, these former golden tanned beachcombers were breaking from their parent’s traditions and rules to set their own course: a life mapped out, from education to career and marriage. But at the very heart of all Brian’s work, even today, was a sense of innocence. An innocence lost as the lovesick but married Brian, now in his mid-twenties, was coming to terms with the anxieties of that adulthood and his growing mental anguish. Undiagnosed for years, left at the mercy of countless well-wishers and confidence tricksters, quacks and pseudo-therapists, Brian’s meticulous obsessive production of Pet Sounds and its subsequent, but not satisfactorily finished until 40 years later, magnum opus SMiLE tipped him over the edge.

Pet Sounds would also mark a lyrically shift, with Brian collaborating with his friend the lyricist and copywriter Tony Asher. A task of reification, Asher would take the often abstract and difficult expressions that roamed around inside the troubled mind and put them into song. Not exactly the most unified of atmospheres, Cousin Mike Love, a constant daddy-o stuck-in-the-mud character, was ready to pour a cold bucket of egotistic sick over anything that he felt would compromise or trouble the calm waters of The Beach Boys, so far, winning formula. To be fair, Love would be right to question this new shift towards the melancholic, almost philosophical anguish. Asher at that time was but a burgeoning talent with little to back up his credibility as a top pop songwriter. Replacing previous writers and solid contributors with an unproven lyricist would however prove to be genius decision. But the success of the album was slow. Its renaissance and rebirth as one of the greatest albums of the twentieth century was down to the audiences overseas. The change in direction had unsettled the market, as America baulked at this sadder, more cerebral tone. Yet, the UK loved it, buying it in droves and sending it to the number 2 spot in the charts – compare that with its 106 placing in the Billboard. Pet Sounds could have been a disaster, but it was saved, becoming a cult, an iconic masterpiece. And though it would take a while to pick up the desirable sales, its legacy grew and grew years after its original release.

Arriving almost in tandem, The Beatles Revolver was released just a couple of months later. Brian’s answer: SMiLE. If Pet Sounds had not only threatened but also sent Brian into a funk, then this grand American musical tour through the ages, from Plymouth Rock to the shores of the Spanish Peninsula, would all but consume and nearly destroy him. So ambitious was the vision that despite the near godlike genius of his assiduous sessions’ ensemble, The Wrecking Crew, the social, political and historically woven rich tapestry lyrics of new songwriting partner Van Dyke Parks, and his own production prowess, the project stalled. Numerous mixes, snippets, vignettes and even completed songs made it onto various albums and compilations over the decades, including the enervated and rushed out – to appease and bring in some much-needed revenue – Smiley Smile. It would take decades for SMiLE to be eventually completed, albeit (sadly and for obvious reasons) without his brothers Dennis and Carl’s near ethereal soulful compassionate voices, and missing any input from Love – now more or less carving the Beach Boys brand up, sporting it like a trophy as he has carte blanche and ownership of the name when touring with his own cabaret version of the group’s back catalogue. Brian did however manage, after spending the longest amount of time and money in recording history on a single, to release the perfectly epic pop rhapsody ‘Good Vibrations’.

Recently documented, quite favourably and sympathetically, by the Love & Mercy movie, Brian’s wilderness years lasted throughout the 80s and into the 90s, before the most accomplished of L.A. bands and Beach Boy fans The Wondermints helped lure Brian back on the road, performing a Pet Sounds extravaganza in 2000. Just four years later the band would join Brian in the studio to finish that nigh mystical, greatest album there never was, SMiLE, before taking it out on the road. Following in 2011 the eventual hidden away, locked in some fabled vaults, SMiLE Sessions of original material was finally released to the public.

A near renaissance, a scarred and troubled but blooming Brian Wilson is back once again on the road. This time he celebrates the 50^th anniversary of Pet Sounds, arriving in my new hometown of Glasgow on a nationwide tour. Billed as an ‘anniversary celebration’ – the final performance of the iconic album in its entirety – tonight’s performance is a generous one. Split into two performances of greatest hits and Pet Sounds, with an encore of good time classics, Brian was backed by members of the Wondermints and flanked by special guests, Al Jardine and honouree Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin: a set up that has been repeated on many occasions.

As a steady presence for the vulnerable Brian, Al was on hand to soften the odd tremors of quivered uncertainty. But who was on hand to back up Al? Well as it happens his son Matt Jardine. Proving himself the most apt of Beach Boy scions, he was there to aid his old man and Brian with the most adroit and sweetest of falsetto voices. A counterpoint to the now – and for good reason – limited vocal range of Brian, Matt took on the high notes with aplomb and even performed lead on one of the evenings early highlights, ‘Don’t Worry Baby’. He would play the role of a younger Brian during the entirety of the Pet Sounds album suite, almost seamlessly taking on each alternating verse. However, and it seems almost too disingenuous to point out, there were a few wobbles and miscues throughout that just couldn’t be patched over. Yet we all willed Brian on, and when he took lead on the most diaphanous of love declarations, ‘God Only Knows’, the entire audience stood to their feet in adulated applause – the first of many rapturous ovations that night.

Directed and conducted by Paul ‘Von’ Mertens the entire ensemble began the evening with the heavenly choral warm-up ‘Our Prayer’; featured on 20/20 but originally the lead-in to the album version of SMiLE’s grand trans-American tour ‘Heroes And Villains’, which followed. We were then treated to a litany of favourites from the bobby sox high school daze back catalogue of hits, including a swinging, swayed medley of ‘California Girls’, ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Little Deuce Coupe’. Handing over the spotlight, Al performed centre stage with renditions of ‘Wake The World’, ‘Add Some Music To Your Day’ and ‘Cotton Fields’ – all songs plucked from the Brian breakdown period, when the rest of the Band were prompted to take over the creative reins. As lithe and energetic as ever, former Flame and Beach Boy band member (on tour and in the studio during the early 70s) Blondie Chaplin sprouted onto the stage to add some light-hearted theatrics and rock’n’roll vigour. The much-accomplished Durban guitar maestro, looking more and more like a cross between Jagger and Richards (all that time he spent touring with the Stones in the late 90s has worn off on him), launched into a strutting version of ‘Wild Honey’. Expanded from its soulful howled original setting, Chaplin went into bohemian guitar solo overdrive; showboating across the front of the stage and playing to the audience, who lapped it up. From The Beach Boys’ troubled but most brilliant 1973 album Holland, Chaplin picked up the ocean current waltz ‘Sail On Sailor’. The original vocalist on that recording, he returns to it with carefree élan, adding a wild guitar solo to the end, which sends Brian off into the wings in playful mock exasperation.

Back out for act two, the band minus Chaplin for now, begin the reverent Pet Sounds album. Largely enduring because it encapsulated a particular age and time in Brian’s genius, but mostly for capturing the love tribulations and torments of young adulthood in the most perfect pop songs, the album still chimes deeply with audiences fifty years later. Intricate and multi-layered but never ever laboured or strained – witness the Bond-esque Tropicana lounge instrumental suite title track -, each purposely-poised ballad, paean and tryst says all it needs to in less than two minutes. The rousing ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, shared vocally by the Jardines and Brian, opens proceedings of course, followed by a gentler, more serene ‘You Still Believe In Me’. Highlights from the album set included an Al led version of the sea shanty in the manner of a doo wop Ivy League bruiser, with a reference to a particular paranoia plunged bad acid trip thrown in, ‘Sloop John B’, and flipping over the B-side, a poignant and encouraged Brian led ‘Caroline, No’.

The encore promised a “fun, fun, fun” package of hits. But first the band introductions, each band member receiving a musical signature tune as they came back out onto the stage after the interval. It was then straight into a full cast version of ‘Good Vibrations’, including the gesticulating tambourine wielding Chaplin who turned his percussive role into an art form. Rewinding back through the songbook, we were treated to the sing-along classics ‘Help Me Rhonda’, ‘Barbara Ann’, ‘Surfin USA’ and ‘Fun Fun Fun’. By now the audience were up and out of their seats, dancing where they could in the face of the po-faced security and attendants. From our balcony seats looking down on the main auditorium we witnessed hundreds swaying and weaving in almost perfect timing: the atmosphere couldn’t have been better. On a poignant, perhaps paused note Brian finished the evening with a version of the song that spawned the title of the recent movie, Love & Mercy. Written in more recent times, a reminder of the anxieties and anguish that once crippled Brian, the song’s central tenet is a perfect theme to finish on: a great sentiment for the audience to carry with them as they head home into the night. A joy to witness, the Pet Sounds legacy is in safe hands, especially here in Glasgow; a city twinned with Big Sur for one night only. Simply magical.

Love & Mercy Film Review/Purview

By now (or so I believed) the well documented rise and fall and then revival of one of pop music’s titans and true geniuses, shouldn’t come as any shock. Perhaps the nuanced details remain a mystery to most, but the crippling mental fatigue and illnesses that conspired to overwhelm Brian Wilson now go hand-in-hand with and are synonymous with The Beach Boys legacy. Plagued since childhood by the overbearing bullying of others, Brian was made nearly deaf by the clouting punishment of his patriarch Murry Wilson (a failed composer with little talent, forever enviously cruel towards his eldest son); worn down by his cousin and bandmate Mike Love – a year older than Brian but may as well been twenty, the omnipresent ‘straight’ put off by anything less than sweet and commercial, constantly grappling in a power game to control the band -; and emasculated, cut off from the world by the dubious therapist Dr. Eugene Landy. Arguably this triumvirate of manipulative, all damaged in their own way, individuals reflected their own insecurities, envy and even misunderstandings – Love just not getting it and stoic in not wishing to rock the proverbial boat of success – onto Brian; and perhaps due to a lack of ego himself, was unable to believe in his own self-worth allowing others to both take advantage and question his musical aspirations.

Unnerved, strung out and growing isolated from both his childhood sweetheart and first wife Marilyn, and his siblings, Brian went into a slow and long-drawn-out decline. Rare touches of genius would still sparkle occasionally, but after the less than rapturous reception at the release of Pet Sounds, and the aborted (though saved from the ashes and finally recorded and played live forty years later) American peregrination SMiLE, it was more or less downhill all the way.

Adrift now of The Beach Boys, wheeled out sporadically but later sacked, Brian had already undergone numerous treatments during the late 60s, and in 1975 at her wits end, Marilyn called in the services of the quack to the stars, Landy. The movie depicts his motives and less than orthodox style of treatment as quite sinister, but nevertheless he did manage to reduce a bloated lethargic Brian into a slimmer, healthier individual, ready to return back to The Beach Boys fold. However, as it would transpire, Landy took rather too much of an interest, going as far as to attend band meetings and make decisions on Brian’s creative dealings. He was ceremoniously sacked and cast out, losing not only his golden egg, but also losing his professional licence for his methods and liberal pill dispensing (the press would Christian him Dr. Feelgood). Yet ironically, he was recalled back during the 80s after Brian, at his lowest ebb, took an overdose of alcohol, cocaine and psychoactive drugs. This time Landy gave no quarter and micromanaged every single aspect of his patient’s life. Brian would be completely cut off from everyone, and handled like a simpering child by his new legal guardian (who merely replaced Brian’s monstrous real father Murry), with a team on standby to make sure he never wandered from the good doctor’s path of recovery: a recovery that led to Brian’s eponymous solo album of 1988 (Landy brazenly got credits as executive producer and co-writer), of which the opening track Love & Mercy is used for the film’s title. In fear of being institutionalised, Brain would meekly allow this infringement of his privacy and daily life.  Overstepping his remit and coming up against Brian’s – depending on who’s account you believe – saviour Melinda Ledbetter (a model turn Cadillac sales women), Landy was eventually forced out when his name mysteriously appeared as the main benefactor on Brian’s will. Already handing over a percentage and forced back into the studio to cover costs, Brian’s publishing rights would still not satisfy Landy’s mounting costs – charging an eye-watering $430,000 annually between 1983 to 1986 – and this along with Melinda’s timely intervention conspired to finally remove him.

A complicated story then, the emphasis on redeeming a fragile genius from a reversion to a near childlike numb state, the film makers and script writers can’t possibly capture every nuance. Instead, Oren Moverman and Michael A. Lerner‘s touching story and unconventional story arc focuses on the perspectives of Brian and Melinda, and hones in on two specific timelines: the mid 60s and 80s. Whilst the story begins with the muddled mind of a younger Brian (an uncannily fragile and compassionate performance from Paul Dano) fading out to darkness, followed by a background montage of the Beach Boys more naive, carefree days (though even these moments show an already uneasy Brian plucking away on his bass guitar, wishing to be anywhere but on stage or in the limelight), we’re speedily propelled forward to John Casuck‘s placid later day Brian’s first meeting with Melinda. Virtuously played throughout by a thoroughly convincing, purposeful Elizabeth Banks, director Bill Pohlad uses her face as a gauge for reaction, whether it’s being played a whimsically beautiful piano motif or hearing the disturbing abuse meted out to Brian by his father. In her opening scene she attempts to sell him a car, before Landy and his posse arrive, but not before Brian slips her a note with ‘Lonely, scared, frightened’ scrawled on it.

Not that the intention is to show any balance in Landy’s depiction, the wig adorned Paul Giamatti is a raging control freak; ready to suddenly blow in a torrid at any time, and constantly, even when smoothing things over, adding a creepy and threatening undertone to every word of advice and suggestion. Meeting one of the only real forms of opposition, Landy’ warnings towards Melinda eventually boil over into some hostile confrontations: an early scene in the dating storyline, with Giamatti’s Landy holding court whilst flipping burgers, grows steadily uneasy and finally ends with an explosive outburst, as a doped-up Brian petulantly interrupts a boorish egotist regaling his own questionable writing virtues with calls to be fed.

Faithfully recreated, Dano’s parts are sometimes tear-jerking. Though we’ve grown used to the back catalogue, hearing the building blocks and attentive beginnings of ‘You Still Believe In Me’, ‘Surf’s Up’ (this performance further convinces me of its eulogy quality and that it belongs on the 1971 titular LP rather than SMiLE), and ‘God Only Knows’ (stunning even its most fragile form, when the young Brian seeks his father’s approval but is despairingly put down by pater’s heartbreaking responses) send chills down your spine. Enthusiasts will be interested in seeing the mechanics of the Pet Sounds and SMiLE sessions; the fantasy of seeing the famed and near mythical Wrecking Crew at work. The crew’s revered and experienced drummer, possibly the best session drummer of the 60s, Hal Blaine is used as a vessel to get the plot moving; his references and reassurances (in one memorable exchange and moment of doubt, the elder statesman’s and cool Hal, sucking on a cigarette, assures Brian that having worked with Phil Spector and a legendary rooster of other talent, the young pup is on another level entirely of genius) are used to settle a young Brian in the grip of mania. But wait until the final sequences, a redeemed Brian breaking from his stupor, soundtracked by the stunning, and reflective diaphanous ‘Til I Die’ – a song that took Brian a year to complete, and was to no one’s surprise by now, originally dismissed before being embraced by Love.

With the emphasis on these characters, most of the extended cast are reduced to walk-on parts and though some background is referred to, Van Dyke Parks and many others aren’t introduced at all, merely swanning about – apart from a meeting in the swimming pool – at various dinners and pool parties. Even his poor siblings Dennis and Carl are more or less demoted to the odd clueless look whilst Al Jardine doesn’t even get a line: Dennis himself succumbed to his own torments, which left him adrift of his family and band mates; his spiral into drink and drugs ended tragically when he drowned just weeks after his 39th birthday in 1983. It is the mixed portrayal of his cousin Love that is emphasised, not really a hero or villain, but malcontent and totally unhip individual uneasy at the changing face of a turned-on L.A. in the grip of LSD. I feel a little sorry for him, played I might add brilliantly by an unrecognisable Jake Abel, who would eventually have to lead the group and take up the mantle; always that little bit older, not so fortunate in the hair department (his fetish for hats arguably covering up his early balding), and ever the professional he found it hard to fit in.

Love & Mercy moves full circle, Melinda coaxing the responsive artist and adult from his child like shell, finishing with Brian’s – and I was lucky enough to attend one of his comeback shows with the Wondermints – return to the stage in the noughties, performing the titular song. Those stumbling blocks and manias that prevent not just geniuses, from making their ideas concrete, still persist. But at least Brian finally received the correct diagnosis of manic depression with auditory hallucinations that can be successfully treated: Landy’s schizophrenia diagnosis and treatment did more harm than good, arguably worse than the cocktail of illicit drugs that Brian was popping so freely before the quack came on the scene. The best hope is that this movie encourages discussion; that we can talk candidly and address the controlling mechanisms that condemn many people to a life spent dealing in isolation with their mental health.

Vukovar ‘Emperor’
(Small Bear Records) – Originally release in 2015; re-released on the 1^st July 2025 with various mixes and extras.

Punching well above its weight, the serendipitous label of vaporous lo fi and languid shoegaze Small Bear Records has slipped onto the market its most ambitious marvel yet. From their Isle of Man recording HQ, the Vukovar builds a funeral pyre for the ‘new world order’.

Helping them man the barricades are Rick Clarke and Dan Shea (also of The Bordellos and Neurotic Wreck, but most formerly of the “disintegrated” The Longdrone Flowers), joined by an extended cast of Small Bear artists; including the dreamily aspiring Postcode’s Mikie Daugherty, Jonny Peacock and Marie Reynolds, and Circus worlD’s Mark Sayle all making guest appearances: a super group performance if you will.

Rallying round the decree of “idealists, voyeurs and totalitarians”, and referencing a list of one-word actions/stances (“Ultra-Realism”, “Depravity”, “Monotony”) to describe their sound, the band’s lyrics certainly seem fuelled with protestation and anger. Yet for the most part, they sound despondently magnificent in the most melodic, beautiful shoegaze fashion. Their brand of lush 80s driven alternative rock and more caustic, punchy industrial noise is far too melodic and majestic to be truly brutal.

Taking their name from the infamous Croatian city, the site of an heinous blight on modern European history (always conveniently airbrushed from bellicose EU propaganda; the sort that preaches its union has put paid to and secured the continent from conflict and war amongst its neighbours), when 300 poor souls, mostly Muslims, were rounded up and barbarically executed by Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav People’s Army (the worst committed atrocity of its kind since WWII), Vukovar appeal to the listener who wants to scratch beneath the surface of the banal mainstream. They offer an invitation into the darker recesses of history and social politics unseen in much of the dross that calls itself alternative – even their bandcamp page features an exhaustive manifesto style edict (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) of intent. And so they offer a an out-of-body majestical shoegazing waltz through Reinhard Heydrich’s honey trap brothel and centre of Nazi espionage, the ‘Regular Patrons of Salon Kitty’; drift into Spiritualized and New Order territory on the softly pranged hymn to a former Japanese princess, ‘Part 1: Miss Kuroda’s Lament’; and channel a despondently romantic but resigned Ian Curtis as they utter with despondent beauty that “we’re cowards” on the beautifully sullen and dreamy ‘Nero’s Felines’.

With a maelstrom of clanging, fuzz and Inspiral Carpets jamming with a motor city turned-on Julian Cope vibe, the group yells, shakes and rattles on their noisier outings, ‘Lose My Breath’ and ‘Concrete’. Not always their best material it must be said, they add some tension to the more relaxed melodic and – dare I say – pop songs, which sound far more convincing: ‘Koen Cohen K’ and ‘The New World Order’ are just brilliant; imagine what Joy Division might have sounded like if Ian Curtis had lived on and found solace in the lush veils of shoegaze, or if he fronted Chapterhouse.

Fiddling romantically whilst Olympus burns, the Vukovar’s stand against the illuminati forces of evil couldn’t have sounded any more beautifully bleak, yet somehow liltingly inspiring.

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