Monolith Cocktail Blog

New Music on our radar, archive spots and now home to the Monolith Cocktail “cross-generational/cross-genre” Social Playlist – Words/Put Together By Dominic Valvona

A new thread, feed for 2023, the Digest pulls together tracks, videos and snippets of new music plus significant archival material and anniversary celebrating albums or artists -sometimes the odd obituary to those we lost on the way. From now on in the Digest will also be home to the regular Social Playlist. This is our imaginary radio show; an eclectic playlist of anniversary celebrating albums, a smattering of recent(ish) tunes and the music I’ve loved or owned from across the decades.

June’s edition features something old but new (if that makes sense), with an unearthed, “never heard before”, teaser of Coltrane and Dolphy at the Village Gate residency in the summer of ’61 – believe me when I say this is unbelievable. Plus new, new music from Celestial North, Omar Ahmad, Granny Smith and Hackedepicciotto. And in the Archives there’s the 50th anniversary of the Dusseldorf organic futurists, Neu! and their second, matter-of-factly entitled, album, 2.

NEW MUSIC IN BRIEF

John Coltrane Ft. Eric Dolphy ‘Impressions’
(Taken from EVENINGS AT THE VILLAGE GATE: JOHN COLTRANE WITH ERIC DOLPHY, released by Impulse! July 14th)

Staggering to think how many other lost recordings remain hidden, overlooked in the vast archives of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I mean, imagine this incredible, exciting, evolution in jazz performance laying dormant forever, never to be heard again. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Titan of the form John Coltrane and his celebrated quintet rip it up on this salvaged tape of performance gold from the summer of ’61 residency at the iconic Village Gate in Greenwich Village. Flanked and imbued by the powers of such luminaries as McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, Elvin Jones and Eric Dolphy, but an ever evolving cast of players, there was a trailblazing comet of talent igniting the jazz scene that glorious summer. The upcoming album will feature eighty minutes of never-before-heard music; offering a glimpse into a powerful musical partnership that ended much too soon – Dolphy sadly passed away three years later and this recording is the only live recording of their legendary Village Gate performances. In addition to some well-known Coltrane material (‘My Favorite Things’,  and ‘Greensleeves‘), there is a breathtaking feature for Dolphy’s bass clarinet on ‘When Lights Are Low‘ and the only known non-studio recording of Coltrane’s composition ‘Africa‘ that includes bassist Art Davis. Another Dolphy communion, and Coltrane number, ‘Impressions‘, has been dropped as a teaser in the run-up to the official release, on the 14th July 2023. Enjoy the magic wail, bawl, spiralling tumult and energy of this phenomenal exchange between the deities, as they really tease out the best in each other: the quality of the recoding is outstanding too. Could it be, one of the best albums of 2023 will be a recording from 1961! Yes is the short answer.

Omar Ahmad ‘Cygnet Song’
(Single taken from the Inheritance album, released by AKP Recordings on 7th July)

The second single to be shared in the run-up to the attentive Palestinian-American composer/producer/DJ/sound artist Omar Ahmad‘s solo debut turn Inheritance, a peaceable calm of reverberated pattering rain and gentle, trickled contemplative acoustic guitar disarms deeper feelings of loss and the distant sirens of the emergency services blaring in the backdrop. ‘Cygnet Song’ is, as that title suggest, a swanned, slightly somber, enchantment of the ugly duck syndrome – a subject that is close to the artist’s heart; feeling for so long like that proverbial fledgling ignored, isolated, but eventually finding an inner beauty and self-realisation. Revisiting childhood once more, “lamenting the time lost” worrying about peer groups and the actions of others, Ahmad now turns over a descriptive guitar melody and picked sorrow under, what sounds like, a waterfall. Fragility finds a musical partner in playfulness on a loose stringed trickle of warmth.

Celestial North ‘Otherworld’
(Taken from the Otherworld album, released 7th July)

About as “pagan euphoria” as it gets, the Scottish-born siren and child of nature’s hermetic powers, Celestial North is once more dreamily occupying the twin planes of ethereal pop and apparitional electronica on her newest single, and teaser for the upcoming album of the same name, ‘Otherworld’.

The, now, Kendal relocated artist describes this latest vapour trail across menhir marked Ley Lines and dales as, “A rabble-rousing pick-me-up on days when life feels a bit much, a reminder that it will all be ok and that we are never truly alone in this world. Providing the beat and movement of life for us all to shake it off together.” And with a countenance and gauzy wisp voice that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Pre-Raphaelite diorama canvas, nor on some object beautifully crafted by the Celts, worlds and epochs are brought together in a techno-Avalon spell of Circe, Grimes and Rules. From the magic of Cumbria, where Sea Power (formerly “British” until the namedrop protestation in recent post-Brexit years) also hail (although, as I myself did bump into them from time to time, they are also and were a part of the Brighton scene for some considerable time; originally moving from Cumbria down to the Southern seaside belle of a city), and whose band member “woody” has produced the album, stirs something quite diaphanous and yet powerful. The omens pray good for the album, which drops in less than a month’s time.

Granny Smith ‘Egypt’

I seldom come across such perfect musical and visual alignments, but the latest and “greatest” (I’m told) step in the Toronto-born artist Jason Bhattacharya‘s journey is an incredible piece of artistry. Inspired by the painter grandparents he never got to meet, and using super8 film stills and photographs as prompts of remembrance and self-discovery, Bhattacharya’s slowly-released adroit applied washes of layered solo/acoustic/wah guitar, bass, piano, bongos and percussion are lent a constantly changing imagery both busily sketched and illusionary by Dan Trapper. Rushes of more arid landscapes change into sequences of lusher, meadow riversides and an evolving turn of flickery buildings, including a pyramid, through a combination of stopmotion animation and AI image generator software called Stable Diffusion.

Both beautifully etched and yet in a constant flux of memories and thought, Bhattacharya, appearing under his Granny Smith alias, creates something simultaneously timeless yet in the now; his deeply felt yet translucent quality composition suggesting an ambiguous psychogeography of the titular “Egypt”, but also the Levant and India – towards the end of this near entranced track, the guitar starts to sound almost like a sitar. Imaginative footsteps through a personal history are fully realised with a perfect symmetry of music and video art.

Hackedepicciotto ‘Schwarze Milch’
(Taken from the upcoming Keepsakes album, released by Mute on the 28th July 2023)

Entwined in a symbiotic marriage of creative ideas and sonic invention, the husband and wife team of Alexander Hacke and Love Parade co-founder Danielle de Picciotto have between them a notable worthy CV of explorations to channel in their own musical adventures together. Apart, Alexander has been a stalwart foil in Einstürzende Neubauten, whilst his wife, is and has been part of the Crime And The City Solution troupe. Together they’ve both appeared in the Ministry Of Wolves alternative nursery rhymes and fairytales project with Paul Wallfisch and Mick Harvey.

For the same label, Mute, the travailed and sagacious coupling have ventured out on the universal highway of cerebral experiment. Their last album, The Silver Threshold, made our choice albums of 2021 roundup; a universal, lockdown yearn of the Biblical kind. Choosing to embrace an old cliche, their latest album, Keepsakes, is billed as their most personal yet, with each track dedicated to a friend. But the recording environment also plays its part; this time in the form of the famous Auditorium Novecento in Napoli. With the likes of Enrico Caruso and his peers gliding through its doors, and a vast array of instruments to play with, including Ennio Morricone’s celeste, the sound has been expanded like never before.  

From that upcoming album (released on the 28th July; a review forthcoming from us next month by the way) we share the surreal Weimar cabaret jazz brushed, hurdy gurdy winded ‘Schwarze Milch’. I can only decipher that this is a reference to the German-Mongolian film drama, which in English translates as “Black Milk”, directed and starring the German-Mongolian Uisenma Burchu, who plays the part of one of the film’s leading sisters character from two cultures, Wessi. Described by the Hollywood Reporter as a “sexually liberated drama of the Steppes”, it tells the story of two sisters reuniting after decades; Wessi’s character having left Mongolia for West Germany (in real life the director/actress’ family actually did move from that homeland to East Germany right before reunification) now makes a less than successful return home. I could have misread this entirely though, and the song may have sod all to do with it.

Back to the song itself, which is shared in narrated weirdness by the couple, who also don various animal mask (both pagan and odd) as they pick up each different instrument on this tubular, sifted, droning and smoked, snozzled sax rich languid look into an alternative world. A stage theatrical. A circus. A variety show complete with a ventriloquist dummy, childlike playfulness and yet something almost disturbing and mysterious, its Brecht meets Thomas Traux and the Bad Seeds in a basement magic show. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the album.

ARCHIVES/ANNIVERSARY

Neu! 2 Reaches Its 50th Anniversary This Year

Following the extolled reception and success of their stark, but incipient strident motorik debut, the Dusseldorf organic futurists hit the road for a tour. With former Kraftwerker Eberhard Krahnemann taking on bass duties, Neu! performed a number of concerts before being pressured to get back into the studio. Both Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger became slightly uneasy, it seems the much applauded Neu! desideratum blueprint resonated so well with both critics and fans that the duo became spooked – Rother would of course jump ship and join the recently formed Harmonia, but make an eventual return back into the arms of his musical partner, after much hand-wringing, for the Neu! 75 reunion. Things were made even worse when recording for the follow-up album actually began. After only laying down the inaugural vista spread of  ‘Für Immer’, they were promptly told by the Brain record label that the budget had run out, there was no more money in the coffers.

A few months previously Neu! had made a single as a stop gap between LPs, though the label was dead set against it, out of commercial concerns. The double A-side of ‘Neuschnee/Super’ featured those marked references from their first album, but also came equipped with harder and more broodier proto-punk snarls and growls. Appearing on Neu! 2 alongside ‘Für Immer’ to make up for the startling gap now left after funds ceased, these tracks still only amounted to a running time of 18-minutes. Whether it was the production wizard of Krautrock’s idea or Dinger and Rother’s, it was decided that the recorded tracks should be cut up and pasted to make up a strange D.I.Y collage type fashioned suite. Only this merely equated to Dinger speeding and slowing down ‘Neuschnee’ and ‘Super’ on a record player, then re-recording them, or just holding his thumb down on the reel-to-reel machine and recording it; an idea that must have been hoisted up the flagpole and saluted by all concerned. The result was quite frankly weird, but not in a good way. In fact it sounds for the most part like a tomfoolery exercise in taking the piss: a fuck you to the label. Dispersed amongst the key tracks and ludicrous speed variant nonsense are a number of experimental atmospheric pieces and doomly staggered vignettes, which allude to esoteric imagined landscapes and scary extremes of mental cacophony.

Once again the Neu! branded moniker was brandished like a washing powder product. A spray can 2 marks the only difference from their last affair, whilst inside scrawled track names and info shadowed by photo booth passport photos, are crossed out and re-written.

‘Neu! 2’ lacks the calming vision of their famously lauded original ‘Neu!’ soundtrack. Full of miscalculated slip-ups, pressured ideas and short-change experiments, this miss-fire companion still radiates with some heightened moments of hymn like joy and traversing triumphs. Both ‘Für Immer’ and ‘Neuschnee’ build on the foundations of ‘Hallogallo’; adding richer textures and searing layers to the motif. ‘Super’ and ‘lila Engel’ meanwhile rough it out with Faust and metal; giving the duo an escape route towards darker musical pleasures. Short change accusations hinder this album to a degree. Rother famously took to the woods with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius to join their Harmonia project, after this album was released. Dinger meanwhile, began working on the La Dusseldorf imprint with both his brother Thomas and Plank’s tape operator, Hans Lampe, though their first offering wasn’t released until 1975. After a brief hiatus, both men made-up their differences – Rother and Dinger clashed often over direction and whether they should play live or not – and returned for the reunion ‘Neu! 75’ record in 1974, and later in the 80s for what would be the last hurrah of ‘Neu! 4’, an album Rother fell out over with his sparring partner.

But What Does It Sound Like?

Anticipation steadily builds as the very first stirrings of the Neu! signature, pulsing, motorik drill, incipiently fades into view. Prolonged laconic pronounced drums work their magic as Rother’s suffused guitar strains delicately kiss the flange coated textures of sound; produced from a mixture of Japanese banjo, fiddle, piano and various electronic devices. ‘Für Immer’ means “forever”, which this richly striding companion piece to the hallowed ‘Hallogallo’ certainly tries to achieve. Heavier interjections are implemented as though we were becoming dazed from the hypnotic, suffused, snarling jam of pulchritude. Echo-chamber shakes and vortex warping effects twist the percussion and pliable guitar mantras through a quantum leap, before emerging from a inter-dimensional mind bender back into the main groove all over again. Those recurrent waterside motifs continue, as lapping waves crash against the river bank, ‘Für Immer’ is caught in the tide and is beckoned beneath the waters to make way for the next section of ‘Neu! 2’. Isolation tank suffocated drums wallow in oscillating cycles of space-rock; ‘Spitzenqualität’ is coated in reverb and, yet more flange, as it manipulates timings with both distorted scathing guitar and laboured drumming: a desolate plains search and slow methodical pause of a tune.

Neu! tunes seldom end, they just tend to fizzle out or evaporate. With that in mind, ‘Gedenkminute’ takes over from its preceding triggered outro, wafting in on the last remaining resonating pools of sound. This short interlude drags us through some Edgar Allen Poe descriptive rich graveyard, the wind blowing menacingly as a haunted Germanic girls voice communicates to us from the other side. Thank the lord for the battering ram metal psych barrage of ‘Lila Engel’ (“Lilac Angel”) – surely a joke, this doomed warning of a tome is far from angelic or seraph. Sounding like the godfather to both the Southern Lord franchise of biblical droning rock, and to industrial punk. Dinger’s no-fucking-nonsense power tool drums compete with Rother’s revving, ringing-out licks, over a three-tier build-up. Each level increases in volume and savageness: yeah you never knew they could mix it with those barbarians of the wild frontier, Faust.

A collage of trickery and ameliorate masking awaits on side two, Neu! stretching the boundaries of what a band can get away with. Coming up short on material, they manipulatively assuage their own tracks starting with ‘Neuschnee’, which is introduced at 78 rpm. Dinger and Rother actually record the original single version sped-up – you even hear the hiss and crackles of the vinyl. Ridiculous high-pitched sounds give it a comedic Egyptian mystical garb, as the stylus jumps when it hits any scratches.  ‘Super 16’ follows the same premise, only at 16 rpm. Slow over-aching momentum of a tune, this sounds like another doom inspired hellish crawl through the pits of Hades. – imagine Richard James remixing Boris and naming it ‘Satanic Moonscape’.

At last the authentic ‘Neuschnee’ is given an airing at the right speed. Thumb-plucked instruments ease in another classy Neu! motoring opus. Rother’s guitar now weeps and sings a glorious bewailing paean, whilst Dinger taps out some kind of secret code, hitting a cycle of drumrolls, and ending each run with a customary exclamation mark cymbal crash. ‘Casseto’ is a short vignette  of caustic and harrying heaviness. The banging evil soundclash transcends nightmarish, repeating scariness.  Back to the fatuous with ‘Super 78’, as now we are introduced to the crazily speeding variant of this key track, plucked from their original single. Once again a manic wheeze of squeezed demonic acid-mice, and galloping nonsensical bewilderment; fucked with and played to a skeptical audience – file under eccentric diversion tatic.

‘Hallo Excentrico!’ features half the title of their most famed and applauded track, but that’s where the similarities end. Dinger once more pisses about with the tape machine, his cohorts chattering away in the corner blissfully oblivious to the recording process. But it all gets swept up by the Teutonic brain food of ‘Super’, which pitches the signature whacker-whacker chops of Rother with a Stooges motor city Nuremburg stomp. A sublime smiling primal-scream and unscripted series of chants roll around in the background – signs of the Dinger archetype La Dusseldorf sound is woven here.  ‘Neu! 2’ opens up the duo’s musical horizons, at times for the better, and at other times, its highly debatable. A harder and climatic dark side is implemented with their meditative explorations containing more layers and development of sound. Of the eleven-tracks, at least  a third can be taken with a pinch of salt. Whether they generally believed that or this pokery would open up revelations or set off new discoveries remains iffy.  The fact they’d been left in the shit with no money to finish recording may explain things. Still their second tome offers ethereal and inspired anthems, which in my view, are more influential then their debut.

The Social Playlist #77

Anniversary Albums And Deaths Marked Alongside An Eclectic Mix Of Cross-Generational Music, Newish Tunes And A Few Surprises. 

Repeating myself, but if this is your first time here, first of all, welcome, and secondly here’s the lowdown on what the Social is:

Just give me two hours of your precious time to expose you to some of the most magical, incredible, eclectic, and freakish music that’s somehow been missed, or not even picked up on the radar. For the Social is my uninterrupted radio show flow of carefully curated music; marking anniversary albums and, sadly, deaths, but also sharing my own favourite discoveries over the decades and a number of new(ish) tracks missed or left out of the blog’s Monthly playlists.

First off, couldn’t resist paying a little tribute to the late Barry Newman, who famously played the counterculture idol, disillusioned ex-cop and racing driver Kowalski, cranked on speed, star of the iconic drive through the heart of a Vietnam-fucked America Vanishing Point – musically, and all that goes with it, utterly stolen hook line and sinker by Primal Scream. I’ve chosen the main soul busting theme from a original soundtrack that plays like a radio station. And, what sort of lowlife piece of shit would I be if I didn’t pay homage to the Acid Queen of rawkish soul, R&B and rock, Tina Turner. A smattering from golden period Tina awaits.

Anniversary wise, there’s 50th celebrations this month of albums by Donny Hathaway (Extension Of A Man), Arthea Franklin (Hey Now Hey) and Roger McGuinn (Self-Titled), and 30th salutations from the Intelligent Hoodlum (Self-Titled) and Manic Street Preachers (Gold Against The Soul).

Added to that list is music, recent and old, from New Air, Szun Waves, Zacht Automaat, Bob Dylan, Kassi Valazza, The Shivvers, Bloodrock, Ezy Minus and many more…

_________TRACKLIST__________

Jimmy Bowen ‘Super Soul Theme’
Amiri Baraka ‘Kutoa Umoja’
Ike & Tina Turner ‘Such A Fool For You’
Aretha Franklin ‘Hey Now Hey (The Other Side Of The Sky)’
Donny Hathaway ‘The Slums’
Intelligent Hoodlum ‘Black And Proud’
Lynx 196.9 ‘No Apologies’
Ike & Tina Turner ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’
Rick Asikpo ‘Ebun Oluwa’
Pixinguinha ‘Pula Sapo’
MUF ‘Wrong Age’
New Air Ft. Cassandra Wilson ‘Achtud El Buod (Childern’s Song)’
Flow Trio – Joe Mcphee ‘Incandescence’
Szun Waves ‘In The Moon House’
Double Happys ‘Needles And Plastic’
Manic Street Preachers ‘Roses In The Hospital’
Roger McGuinn ‘My New Woman’
Kassi Valazza ‘Room In The City’
Bob Dylan ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’
Oracle Sisters ‘Lunch And Jazz Chords’
Hadley Caliman ‘Old Devil Moon’
James Henry & The Olmpics ‘Sticky’
Sandro Brugnolini ‘Amo Me (Vocal Version)’
Ike & Tina Turner ‘Bold Soul Sister’
The Shivvers ‘Hey Deanie’
Okan Dincer ‘Mutlu Ol’
BroselMaschine ‘The Old Man’s Song’
Bloodrock ‘Don’t Eat The Children’
Kraan ‘Prima Klima – Live At Porta Westfalica 1975’
Carlo Rustichelli ‘Missione Bionde Platino’
Ezy Minus ‘Nuvole Che Passano’
Zacht Automaat ‘Bite The Invisible Hand’

God I hate the hard sell, but Kowalski’s spirit says be cool and support the Monolith Cocktail. Life is hard but it goes much smoother with the help of a good friend and recommender of taste like my good self. If my departure, and that of the greater MC team, leaves a sad big hole in your lives, or the contemplation of this site’s death leaves you unable to sleep at night, you can always donate to our Ko-Fi micro-donation platform here. Thank you in advance. But hey, no worries if you can’t, we are all struggling in one way or another.