Monthly Playlist Revue: September ’23: Flagboy Giz, Darius Jones, Vumbi Dekula, Rob Cave, Lalalar, Babel…
September 28, 2023
PLAYLIST SPECIAL/SELECTED BY DOMINIC VALVONA/MATT OLIVER/BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA
Each month the Monolith Cocktail distils an entire month’s worth of posts into a choice, eclectic and defining playlist. Due to the sheer volume of releases on our radar, we don’t always get the time or room to feature all of them. And so, the Monthly is also an opportunity to include those tracks we missed out.
Dominic Valvona, Matt ‘rap control’ Oliver, and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea put September’s selection together, which features New Orleans rap and bustle, émigré Russian post-punk, Fluxus imbued jazz and diaphanous vaporous ambience.
____/TRACK LIST\____
Flagboy Giz Ft. Spyboy T3 ‘Still Beat Cha’
Kurious, Cut Beetlez/Yahzeed The Divine ‘Mint Leaves’
Lucidvox ‘Don’t Look Away’
Flat Worms ‘Sigalert’
Public Speaking ‘Swollen Feet’
Guilty Simpson, Uncommon Nasa, Guillotine Crowns, Short Fuze ‘The Era That Doesn’t Know’
Donwill Ft. Rob Cave ‘Snob’
Apollo Brown, Planet Asia ‘Fly Anomalies’
Black Josh, Wino Willy, Lee Scott, Sonnyjim ‘E R M8’
Darius Jones ‘Zubot’
Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra ‘The Space Dance Expirement’
Marike Van Dijk ‘Landed’
Trupa Trupa ‘Thrill’
Red Pants ‘Watch The Sky’
The Crystal Teardrop ‘By The River’
Connie Lovatt ‘Heart’
Mike Gale ‘Grumble Pie’
Yungchen Lhamo ‘Sound Healing’
Violet Nox ‘Ascent’
Vumbi Dekula ‘Afro Blues’
Anon (Parchman Prison) ‘I Give Myself Away, So You Can Use Me’
Blck.Beetl, Vermin The Villain ‘flowers.’
The Strangers, General Elektriks, Leeroy, Lateef The Truthspeaker ‘2222 (Go That Way)’
Dillion, Diamond D ‘Turn The Heat Up’
Napoleon Da Legend Ft. Crazy DJ Bazarro ‘Burning My Cosmos’
Ol’ Burger Beat, Gabe ‘Nandez Ft. Fly Anakin ‘Recuperating’
Smoke DZA, Flying Lotus Ft. Black Thought ‘Drug Trade’
Bisk, Spectacular Diagnostics ‘DIVE’
Declaime, Theory Hazit ‘Asylum Walk 2023’
Rob Cave, Thxk_u ‘Morning Prayers For Strange Days’
Dead Players, Jam Baxter, Dabbla, Ghosttown ‘Death By A Thousand Cocktail Sticks’
Marina Herlop ‘La Alhambra’
Aoife Nessa Francis ‘Fantasy’
Maija Sofia ‘Saint Aquinas’
Tori Freestone, Alcyona Mick, Natacha Atlas, Brigitte Beraha ‘Who We Are Now’
Charlie Kaplan ‘I Was Doing Alright’
Novelistme ‘I Need New Music’
Neon Kittens ‘I Was Clumsy’ Tony Jay ‘The Switch For The Light’
Graham Parker & The Goldtops ‘Sun Valley’
Lalalar ‘Göt’
Buildings And Food ‘Blank Slate Cycle’
Carlos Niño & Friends ‘Etheric Windsurfing, Flips And Twirls’
Richard Sears ‘Oceans’
Babel ‘Crush’
Louis Jucker ‘Seasonable’
Late Aster ‘Safety Second (Live)’
Rita Braga ‘Illegal Planet’
Paula Bujes, Alessandra Leão ‘Na Sombra Da Cajazeira’
Our Daily Bread 297: Dub Colossus ‘Dr. Strangedub (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Dub The Bomb)’
January 28, 2019
Album Review: Dominic Valvona
Dub Colossus ‘Dr. Strangedub (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Dub The Bomb)’
(Echomaster) 20th January 2019
Galvanized by political turmoil and the shambolic progress of Brexit, polygenesis visionary Nick Dubulah revives two of his most successful world music troupes, Dub Colossus and Transglobal Underground, in the pivotal year of Britain’s exit from the European Union. Spending the last few years watching from the sidelines, convalescing from cancer treatment and an operation, Nick’s not only in good health but raring to go with a schedule of live performances and records.
For the first time since 1996 he will be appearing once more with a full Transglobal line-up; bringing back the international traversing group he formed in 1990, leaving seven years later to start-up the congruous Temple Of Sound, but dedicated since the mid noughties to the amorphous soundsystem echoing Dub Colossus. Both groups found favour in the world music and electronic scenes: the Transglobal famously featuring the alluring exotic tones of Natacha Atlas, and the Colossus rotating a singing circle of various toasters and East African sirens.
Off the back of this shared new album of originals and remixed versions of tracks from the 2014 championed Colossus LP, Addis To Omega (his first album for the Echomaster label; one of a trio of albums released under this moniker), Nick will bring together a stellar cast of vocalists and instrumentalists, as he takes both bands out on the road in 2019.
With barely controlled indignation and countless allusions, references in song titles and lyrics alike, Nick and his guests make it obvious which divisive side of the Brexit fence they stand. Framing Kubrick’s satirical dark comedy, with its all too serious consequences of mutual assured nuclear destruction, with the UK’s referendum decision to leave the EU, the pun-tastic Dr. Strangedub (Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Dub The Bomb) takes aim at all the main players in this debacle. Sounding like an exasperated schoolmistress taking charge of an unruly brattish battle-bus of immature public school boy politicians, one of the many guests on this album, the burlesque star Immodesty Blaise, contemptuously brings into line Boris and Farage on a magical mystery coach tour over a cliff edge ‘Tainted Dub’ (the ‘Brexitbus Mix’ no less). PJ Higgins meanwhile, accompanied by the evocative pining hues of the deft Polish mandolin player Bolesław Usarzewski, gives David Cameron a deserved kicking on ‘Family Man Dub’.
Though Brexit preys on the mind, the album is also inspired by the exotic; both wandering and dreamily vaporous, roaming the Patagonia and African landscapes. A mirage of the first is imagined on the Lee Scratch Perry at languid ease, love song ‘Whole Lotta Dub’ (about as far removed from the Nordic demi-rock-god cock-swinging Led Zep version that you can get), and the latter, is evoked by the reggae moonwalk, Orb meets Kubrick, title track, which pays a special paean to the featured vocalist Sintayehu Zenebe Ethiopian homeland.
Other guests and musical soirees include Nick’s foil on the brilliant 2015 ‘post-Troika Hellenic Trance music’ project Xaos, Ahetas, playing subtle pace-y drone microtonal keyboards on the metallic searing ‘A World Without Dub’; the evocative throat singing of YAT KHA vocalist Tuvan Albert Kuvezin on the Mongolian cosmic plains ‘clubdub mix’ of an Addis To Omega track, ‘A Voice Has Power’; and a sauntering touch of Cuba, on another Addis treatment, ‘A Spy In The House Of Dub’.
Drenched in a dubtasim of effects, with voices and instruments and sounds resonating and reverbing incessantly, Dub Colossus ratchet-up their raison d’être; taking the form on both an earthly and cosmological circumnavigation; drifting and wafting, blending and crisscrossing musical borders with ease. Nick announces his return with an expansive dub showcase that reunites old friends and introduces new; a return at a most important time; a voice of protest and alarm that hopes (probably in vain) to stop a calamity.
Words: Dominic Valvona
Monolith Cocktail Blog 