Monolith Cocktail Blog

A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)

Maria Arnqvist ‘Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet’
(Sing A Song Fighter)

An incredible, adventurous concept (of a sort) album from the Swedish multi-instrumentalist and composer that not only showcases a breadth of ideas but also draws upon a wealth of worldly musical escapes and travels, Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet! is an ambitious statement.

One half of the self-professed “voodoo punk, art rock and psychedelic” Swedish duo Siri Karlsson, Maria Arnqvist weaves and sows the seeds for her own solo idiosyncratic fantasy on this character-driven songbook of piano-led or prompted quality vocalized and instrumental evocations.

Classically trained on the ivories, the source of this album’s deeply felt, keen and artfully beautiful material springs forth or subtly flows with an ever-moving cascade; a torrent; a disturbed pool or undulation of waves. Arnqvist proves highly talented in this regard; a near maestro of the instrument in fact, with certainly familiar echoes of what has come before – everything from the obvious classical strains and accentuated touches to the avant-garde of the name-checked Philip Glass and feels of quintessential balladry – but made a new when effortlessly merged with such instruments as the West African kora, an air of the folkloric and strange. Sousou Cissoko plays that kora incidentally, spindled melodically and woven beautifully – it reminded a little of the harpist Catrin Finch’s collaborative partnership with Seckou Keita.

There’s also a sort of Flyodian-progressive and Afro-jazz throaty and more float-y saxophone on a couple of songs. Add chamber-like and dramatic symphonic strings to that soundtrack – every track on this album could be a score in itself – and you have something very special and different and (that word again) worldly: at least transportive. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that Arnqvist has traveled abroad a lot, with stays absorbing the local sounds of instruments in Ouagadougou in Burkino Faso, and Boston in the States. When pulled together the results are both sophisticated and playful; the mood and balance shifting between the oddball theater of late 19^th century barrel organ stoked Wild Western saloon japes and shoreline yearned morning choruses to the elements. In fact, this could be an alternative Western, with the unsympathetic roasting sun shimmers and hoofed giddy-up momentum of ‘I Caught You Runnin’ evoking some kind of amalgamation of David Carradine’s Kung Fu, the Mongolian song of Namger, and Sakamoto’s piano – a pursuit across a mirage salt plains perhaps?

At other times the mood is more folksy-classical; although the enchanting opener (a sort of overview overture) seems to reflect a restless spirit, spinning between timeless tones, West African dances and the drama of Mick Harvey’s more stirring sober scores.

The vocals are sung in English when recognizable, as Arnqvist also lyrically and with a melodious air also just swoons or coos the tune, thoughts and descriptive vowels. And the lyrics build up a poetic picture of dramas, emotional ties, scenery and acts, whilst never really making anything explicit as such. Natural elements are left to speak, as Mary Rose and that Purple Quintet meander, fluctuate up and down the scales, quiver and ride the tumultuous softened waves of this loose story.

An enchanting and softening restless spirit is at work on this astonishing, well-thought out and enacted solo turn from the Swedish talent; an album that will gently unfurl its magic and depth over repeated plays and time: and for that, will only get better on each listen.      

Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner & Isambard Khroustaliov ‘In The Glooming’
(Non-Applicable) 16^th February 2024

From the perceptive, intuitive and often haywire minds of the applauded Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner and Isambard Khroustaliov (the nom de plume of one Sam Britton) trio, another exploration into the probed parts of the grouping’s psyche, art forms, inquiry and mischief-making. Thematically wise however, this is latest experiment at the edges of electroacoustic serialism and free-roaming is about the trio’s friendship, perseverance, trust and handle on being human: in a world of ever encroaching technological takeover I’d suggest.

Drawing on their myriad of respectable experience over the decades, with Ohlmeier bringing along his bass clarinet (a pretty deft and extraordinary saxophonist too), Fischerlehner on drums and percussive elements, and Khroustaliov rewiring his electronic apparatus, all three participants pull from the “gloaming” (an expressive word taken from Irish lexicon that describes the “twilight”) a strange sound world and performance of avant-garde jazz, Fortean supernaturalism, the alien, odd and indefinable,

Recorded over in the former Cold War walled East Berlin – make what you will of that location -, melodious, almost at times sweetened and floated, clarinet wafts and occasionally strains amongst the clicks, reversals, signals and oscillations of circuitry and transmogrified data language. All the while sifted, brushed, hinged and more bell shaken percussive instruments often amorphously find a rhythm, a hit or timpani roll in the vagueness of an idea and direction. Unsettled and yet never really hostile, totally maniacal or mad, this is a world in which ECM, Sam Newsome, Roscoe Mitchell, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago and Eric Dolphy merge with Walter Smetek (I’m thinking of his 1974 Smetek LP especially), Valentina Magaletti, Affenstunde Popol Vuh, Angelo Bignamini and Lea Bertucci. A track like the tracing of time, weirdly tweaked and near whistled ‘End Zone’ sounds positively sci-fi and a little ominous. Whilst, the classical unhinged toy workshop combination of elements on ‘Violet Weeds’ sounds like Prokofiev conducting Autuchre for a performance of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse. And ‘Pixel Head’ re-engineers the matrix for an odd futuristic charge of static and cable disarray. Sharing is caring as they say, and this trio seems to deeply feel that connection and intuitive spirit of freedom in creating something challenging, but also in those very special interactive moments: moments inspired in a manner by that twilight hour between the dark and light. A curious, wild and untethered yet professionally made work that defies boundaries.  

Meril Wubslin ‘Faire Cą’
(Bongo Joe Records) 1^st March 2024

Taking their Mitteleuropa mummers vision on the trail to, of all places, Lewisham in southeast London, and the studio of Kwake Bass, the Meril Wubslin trio cast more hallucinatory hypnotic rhythms in new surroundings without leaving that signature mysterious dimension that hovers between French-speaking Lausanne and Brussels.

Bass (or to give him his full due and title, Giles Kwakeulati King-Ashong) has worked with a myriad of influential and explorative figures over the years (from MF Doom and Roots Manuva to Lianne La Havas and Kate Tempest), so carries more than a touch of class and cache of ingenuity and talent. And yet far from changing the sound, based a lot on repetitive rustic nylon-stringed-like guitar rhythms and both scrappy and dreamy spelled percussion, the producer has continued to aid in magic-ing up a strange rural mysterious combination of Rufus Zuphall, These New Puritans, The Knife, Goat, Holydrug Couple and Die Wilde Jagd. 

When the dual male and female vocals – shared and in a strange harmonic symmetry – mistily arise from the mystique and often dreamy-realism of humming motored esoteric vapours and woozy oscillations, they evoke a very removed version of Chanson with Sister Dominique and the pagan song of Summerisle. In fact, there’s a quite a lot of esoteric and folksy-like references sound wise, from the processional to tribal. And a cross-timeline of influences that stretch back into the Medieval. On occasion those hypnotic rhythms and percussive scrapes conjure up Gnawa trance, or the herding of goats in the mountains during older, simpler, primal times. And yet, there’s also a semblance of the Blues, of Dirt Music, to be found amongst the glassy bobbled vibraphone wobbles, trippy drum breaks, pastoral drug lingers, vague visitations from another dimension, UFOs and surreal echoes. 

A diaphanous and occult balance of the rural and otherworldly, of enchantment and suffused otherness, Faire Cą is yet another promising statement of headiness and entrancing spells from the trio.  

Ghost ‘S-T’, ‘Second Time Around’ and ‘Temple Stone’
(Drag City Records)

Following in the wake of Masaki Batoh’s most recent of incarnations, the brain waves initiated Nehan project album An Evening With (reviewed last month in my Perusal column), Drag City are reissuing a triple-bill of vinyl albums from the Japanese acupuncturist, musician and apparatus building artist’s most enduring and long-running ensemble Ghost.

Tying in with the fortieth anniversary of that evolving, line-up-revolving group’s conception, and the tenth anniversary of its completion, disbandment, their first run of albums from the 1990s is being given another pressing by the label that originally repressed them in the first place, three decades before: that run quickly selling out off the back of Ghost’s Lama Rabi Rabi debut album release for the American Drag City Records imprint. Originally released by the Japanese P.S.F. label on CD, that triplet of records laid down the foundations for a nomadic commune trip of acid wooziness, otherworldly folklore, abandoned temple spirit communions and visions.

Hauntingly formed in Tokyo in 1984 by underground and head music stalwart Batoh, their existence and presence on the scene were as veiled, translucent and hermitic as their name suggested. Pretty much adapts of Amon Düül II (from Phallus Dei to Dance of The Lemmings) and Popol Vuh, but also the psychedelic and folk movements of the UK in the 60s and 70s (from the Incredible String Band to Third Ear Band, Haps Hash And The Coloured Coats and Floyd), and closer to home, such native acts as the Far East Family Band and Acid Mothers Temple, these hallucinatory seekers explored various forms of transcendental music and tradition – although, in the PR briefing they’ve been compared to Os Mutantes. All of those reference points can be heard over their self-titled debut (1990) and Second Time Around (92) and Temple Stones (94) albums; reissued here on appropriate psychedelic clear coloured vinyl for the first time in 25 years.

Recurring currents and vibrations can be found on all three albums; the last of which is slightly confusing with a lot of crossover track-titles from the previous two; it must be stressed however, that even though they use the exact same names on Temple Stones, they are different, produced it sounds like, from the same session, but either an alternative to or riff on the original source and tune, atmosphere. Starting with the demigod, deity or presence theme of the “Moungod” on the self-titled album, the ghostly visitations traverse misty-veiled shrines, mountainous trails to meetings with kite-flying yogis, Shinto ceremonies and holy cavern settings. Surprisingly avoiding any real freak outs – ok, the occasional build-up of acid rock thrashing, splashing and tumult, but relatively subdued on that part – the music and atmospherics are often drowsy sounding; spiritually wafting along and even traditional: imagine Popol Vuh, the Incredible String Band and Floyd meets Alejandro Jodorowsky on the Holy Mountain. There’s also a touch of Julian Cope and Jason Pierce, even The Cult amongst the Taoism and other venerated mysterious leanings and moss. And, something that will carry over onto all the albums, there’s a constant air of the Medieval, the courtly and a touch of psychedelic folksy parchment; from maypole dances to willowy recorders whistled and fluty pagan pastoral processions and merriment.

Second Time Around is produced in the same mold, but seems to also have a more progressive feel, and even an air of the Celtic about it; another occult folksy-acid journey through mythological and spiritual tapestries. ‘People Get Freedom’ introduces us to a spindled lattice of gong washes and harpist sound-tracked moss gardens; the stepping stones trip then extending out towards a culmination of talking to Yogi ADII, the Moody Blues and wistful waltzes on the title-track. ‘Awake In A Middle’ however, sounds more like Satanic Majesty’s era and ‘Ruby Tuesday’ Stones, a more doleful King Crimson and fiddly acoustic dreamy Yes. There are murmurings and the odd bit of mooning, spooky chanting, and mantras to give it that occult, otherworldly sound from the ether, the gods, and the transcendental planes.

Finally, the Temple Stone album suffusion of veneration and mystique wonders around those ancient alters like an apparitional collective of the Flower Travellin’ Band, Yatha Sidhra and The Mission. Disturbed mood music and background wails and shouts are balanced with strange primal vapours, acid-folk (again), downer almost shoegaze vocals (although, on the old and magical rural never-world of ‘Freedom’, it sounds like AD II’s very own Chris Karrer), Indian brassy resonance, paused thoughtful piano and overhead drones.

All three albums are brilliant at pulling you into the Ghost troupe’s world of mysticism, drifted travels, psychedelic projections and wanderings. And not one of them is any better than the other, quality wise. Together they form a near-linear bond, capturing a short period in the band’s early-recorded history – the first of these albums appearing six years after the group’s initial conception -, which lasted thirty years. If this introduction style purview and review does grab you, then be quick, as I suspect these vinyl editions will fly off the Drag City Records shelves.

Otis Sandsjö ‘Y-OTIS TRE’
(We Jazz Records) 23^rd February 2024

Following up previous albums in the Y-OTIS series, part TRE continues to deconstruct, shape and rebuild in real time the untethered sessions of the Berlin-based, but Swedish born, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Otis Sandsjö’s studio experiments. With what has been called a “mixtape-like DNA” methodology, Otis with his long-standing foil and Koma Saxo leader Petter Eldh, and keyboardist Dan Nicholls, plus changing ensemble of musicians, remix themselves as they go along; fracturing, stumbling, free-falling, flipping, enveloping, cutting-up and sampling their jams into freeform opportunities and ideas.

The third album is much in the same vein: albeit this time around sounding more like a transmogrification of 90s and 2000s R&B and soul, with echoes and reverberations of slow elongated and stretched breaks. In practice this results in passing moments of J Dilla, Jimi Tenor, Madegg, Gescom, Four Tet, Healing Force Project and Shabazz Palaces tripping-out on jazz, funk and the blues. But that’s only half the story, as hinged and sirocco winded brass and woodwind is flipped out and put with an ever-changing revolution of morphed d’n’b, broken hip-hop beats, vague memory reflexes of Gershwin and the Savoy label era, The NDR Bigband, Philipp Gropper’s Philm and the most wobbly.    

Nothing is quite how it seems, as the fluctuations and changes in the groove, timings and direction of travel often end up somewhere different; take the horizon opening ‘orkaneon’, which begins with a Ariel Kalma-style sustained, trance-y new age sax but finishes on Herbie Hancock being vacuumed and flipped by Squarepusher. In short: another successful adventure in the kooky jelly mould of hip-hop-breakbeat-jazz and beyond.

Various Artists ‘Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación’
(Bongo Joe)

A new year and a new musical excursion for the Bongo Joe label; a first foray and survey of the Dominican Republic’s localized ‘frantic’ Merengue phenomenon.

Sharing its Hispaniola Island location with Haiti (a most tumultuous relationship that’s led to various periods of civil war and bloodshed between the two former brutalized European colonies), the Dominican Republic is well placed to absorb the surrounding cultures of both the Caribbean and Latin America, with Merengue being just one these genres. The style was originally tied-in with the Spanish invaders, taking root on the Island in the early 1800s and played on traditional European instruments like the ‘bandurria’ style guitar. As time went by (especially in the more modern ‘Típico’ era) some of those original instruments were replaced by the accordion (introduced via German trade ships), the güira and the more localized two-headed ‘tambora’ drum (salvaged from rum barrels).

Its Island bedfellow of Salsa might be more globally renowned but Merengue is far older and established; a national dance and music used at various points in the country’s history and fight for independence as a rallying call, a unified and shared common bond: although, in one of the more controversial periods, Merengue was pushed and promoted by the military commander turn dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (nicknamed “El Jefe”). This particular compilation covers the creative boom after Trujillo’s death in the early 1960s – assassinated after a bloody, brutal regime that resulted in the estimated deaths of 50,000 people, including a sizable number of Haitians, and a number of opposition figures overseas. As the reins, paranoia of oppressive rule dissipated, culture grew once more with optimism. Merengue got a new lease of life with contemporary modernizations and expansions to the sound: now featuring strings and the bass. Pioneering figures like the iconic female trailblazer (and one of the stars of this collection) Fefita La Grande helped take the style forward and broke down barriers in a largely male dominated scene. The Afro-Hispaniola influences remained, as did the signature ‘quintillo’ five-beat rhythm, but there was a new step, confidence and joy to the music, which you will hear on this selection of nuggets reissued for the first time ever, chosen by the Funky Bompa – the alias of crate-digger Xavier Dalve.      

Ten showcase tunes of quickened concertinaed ribbing (‘picaresque’ style), dancing, sauntering and jauntiness await; music from such commanding artists as the already mentioned Fefita but also the reeling sweetened and passionate tones of the mysterious Valentin and the Trio Royecell. Scuffling and skiffled, with the güira sounding like a scraped metallic washboard or cheese-grater, groups like the Trio Rosario step to a upbeat squeeze of accordion and touch of the Creole on the fun opening ‘Cuando Yo Muera’. But even when the themes, lyrics are meant to be more plaintive, even bluesy like Aristides Ramierz’s ‘Los Lanbones’, the action is less cantina woes and more “amigo” friendly light-heartedness.

The reach, influences, carry far and wide with knockabout she-shanty bellows, folk and the sounds of Afro-Cuba, Haiti and Colombia ringing away to an infectious, speedy and constantly lively rhythm. As an introduction to that, Merengue Típico offers an insightful party album survey of a Dominican Republic phenomenon, in many cases, still unknown to the greater world outside the Latin community. Here’s an infectious invite to put that gap in the musical knowledge right.  

The Corrupting Sea ‘Cold Star: An Homage To Vangelis’
(somewherecold Records) 1^st March 2024

Mainstay and foundation artist of the label he created, somewherecold’s Jason T. Lamoreaux pays “homage” and fealty to his hero Vangelis on his latest outing as The Corrupting Sea.

Arguably the Greek titan of the electronic and soundtrack form’s most enduring and influential work in the field of cinema and sci-fi, it is the icon’s distilled acid-pin-drop-rain atmospheric waterfall of dystopian mystery noirish Blade Runner score that inspires Jason’s Cold Star suites of synth evocations. The North American composer does this by fluently channeling that data, language and mood music whilst finding rays of hope and chinks in the metallic ominous granular skies.

Track titles will be familiar with even those with only a cursory interest in the grim futurescape and philosophical quandaries of artificial intelligence and what it is to be human storyline, of this bleak but incredibly affecting and prescient film – even more so in light of the introduction of such gimmicky but frightening programs as ChatGPT, and the encroaching possibilities of AI’s applications in making much of what we do redundant: even in the creative fields. For example, the ‘Voight-Kampff’ empathy test used to weed out the “Replicant” from the human in the film based on Richard K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is just one such obvious timely example; here, in this state, chiming with softened sleigh bells, shimmery starry waves and crisp little explosions of grainy fuzz bit-crushes. 

But as I’ve already mentioned, Jason finds some levitated release of hope in the cogs of technological progress; see the tenderness and reflection that is applied to the short ‘Like Tears In The Rain’ suite, which references Rutger Hauer’s iconic replicant character’s last fatalistic scene and memorable quote of the film: “lost in time…like tears in the rain”. The femme fatale of the picture if you like, ‘Rachael’ (with all that name’s Biblical significance) is also a balance of sci-fi and carefully placed stirrings; the calls of the analogue, of Jarre, of arpeggiator cascaded notes and android data.

Tracks like the grainy chomping and zip-line rippling ‘Four Years’ – the programmed-in longevity of replicants, so they supposedly don’t get the time to achieve human emotions and to rebel from their servitude of heavy lifting and soldiery in futuristic off-worlds – are not so much unsettling, but do have detuned bends and an assailing sense of uncertainty and the alien about them.

‘Replicant Hunters’ which opens this album, is pure Vangelis, but also has a hint of the Klaus Schulze about it too; square waves and bobbed bulb-like notes pass like cruisers in the alt-future nights.

Incidentally, that album title, Cold Star, references the cosmological phenomenon of “failed stars”, or “brown drawfs” as they are also known; a star that doesn’t have enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, and so is cold or tepid to the touch. But there is nothing cold or dying about this six-track score, as a final sanctuary of hopefulness in a hopeless bleak dystopia is found on ‘Refuge’ amongst the static-charges and last gasps of a ticking hi-hat rhythm. Corridors are built into these moments of escape and clarity, as Jason pays respect and comes full circle back to his original influence on first starting out in the world of electronic experimentation and mood music.

OdNu + Ümlaut ‘Abandoned Spaces’
(Audiobulb) 10^th February 2024

Drawn together and what proves to be a deeply intuitive union for the Audiobulb label, the Buenos Aires-born but NY/Hudson resident Michel Mazza (the OdNu of that partnership) and the US, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut) form a bond on their reductive process of an album, Abandoned Spaces.

The spaces in that title alongside reference prompts, inspirations motivated by the Japanese term for ‘continuous improvement’, “Kaizen”, and the procrastinated state of weakness of self-will known as the “Akrasia Effect”, are subtly and dreamily wrapped up in a gentle blanket of recollection. The lingering traces of humanity, nature and the cerebral reverberate or attentively sparkle and tinkle as wave after wave of drifty and pristine bulb-like guitar notes hover or linger, and passing drums repetitively add a semblance of rhythm and an empirical and evanescent beat.

The word ‘meticulous’ is used, and that would be right. For this is such a sophisticated collaboration and a near amorphous blending of influences, inspirations and styles: for instance, you can hear an air of Federico Balducci and Myles Cochran in the languorous guitar sculpting and threading, and an essence of jazz on the brushed and sifting, enervated hi-hat pumping drum parts. On the hallucinatory title-track itself there’s a strange touch of Byzantine Velvet Underground, Ash Ra Tempel and Floyd, and on the almost shapeless airy and trance-y ‘Unforeseen Scenes’ a passing influence of Mythos and the progressive – there’s also the first introduction of what sound like hand drums, perhaps congas being both rhythmically padded and in a less, almost non-musical way, flat-handily knocked.    

Tracks are given plenty of time to breathe and resonate, to unfurl spells and to open up primal, mirage-like and psyche-concocted soundscapes from the synthesized and played. And although this fits in the ambient electronic fields of demarcation, Abandoned Spaces is so much more – later on in the second half of the eight-track album, the duo express more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty. Here’s hoping OdNu + Ümlaut continue this collaboration, as this refined partnership proves a winning formula.

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.