DOMINIC VALVONA’S MONTHLY RECCOMEDNATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
(Photo credit: Ben Semisch, courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts)
Jaimie Branch ‘Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war))’
(International Anthem) 25th August 2023
As an unwittingly last will and testament, the late experimental trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s final led album with her Fly Or Die ensemble is a beautiful collision of ideas and worldly fusions that pushes and pulls but never comes unstuck. In fact, despite the “world war” suffix backdrop this album of both hollered and more disarming protestation colourfully embraces the melodic, the groove and even the playful.
Whilst the “avant-garde” label sticks, this rambunctious, more ambitious, more demanding minor opus flows and swings to a polygenesis mix of spiritual, conscious, Afro, Latin and Ethio-jazz, the great American songbook, no wave, noise and the psychedelic. And yet, on the other hand, is almost punk in attitude; a sort of anything goes in the pursuit of the message: an embodiment of challenging the boundaries.
In light of her untimely death at the age of just thirty-nine last year (the release of this album tying in with the first anniversary of her passing), this incredible statement can be read as a sonic monument; a legacy project left behind as a blueprint for a whole movement. The lyrics to the actionist rumpus ‘Burning Grey’, delivered more like Ariel Up or Polystyrene, to a swinging protest march of Phil Cohran, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and Cab Calloway, seem almost prophetic: “Wish I had the time” and the lasting sign-off, “Don’t forget to fight”.
The final album is one Branch would recognize; more or less musically complete, recorded as it was back in April of 2022 during an artist residency at the Bemis Center For Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska. However, Branch’s sister Kate and a cast of collaborators rallied round to finish the artwork and production; the final article a proud achievement encouraged on by well-wishers and friends alike.
Alongside “Breezy” Branch, who not only masters the trumpet but pushes her voice like never before and picks up on the percussion and some keys, is her stalwart troupe of Lester St. Louis (cello, flute, keys, marimba and voice), Jason Ajemian (double bass, electric bass, marimba and voice), and Chad Taylor (bells, drums, mbira, timpani and, you guessed it, marimba). That quartet is expanded further by an array of guests, including a trio of notable Chicago-hailed innovators (the city, one of Branch’s biggest influences and home for a period), the arranger/composer/engineer/trombonist Nick Broste, musician/vocalist Akenya Seymour and fellow International Anthem label mate, the drummer Daniel Villarreal (he released his debut, Panama ’77 on the imprint last year). Rounding that worthy impressive list off is the American multi-instrumentalist, Cave/Exo Planet/Circuit des Yeux (the list goes on) instigator Rob Frye.
Not so much a surprise, the album opens with a sort of stained glass bathed organ overture: part the afflatus, part pastoral hallowed ELP, part new age kosmische. A roll of bounded controlled thunder and gravitas is added to a crystal bellow and squeeze of radiant notes and the thinly pressured valves of Branch’s trumpet, which makes a brief appearance after the Ariel Kalma-like transcendence. ‘Aurora Rising’ lays down a short ceremonial communion with nature’s light before changing gear and spheres of influence. ‘Borealis Dancing’ now adds Mulatu Astake Ethio-jazz, a touch of Fela Kuti, Don Cherry and Yazz Ahmed to the ephemeral Northern Lights show as Branch toots long and softly at first before changing to higher pitch shrills. The rhythm, timing changes at the halfway mark towards a slinking groove of funk and Afro-jazz, the trumpet now cupped and echoing.
By the fourth track, ‘The Mountain’, there’s a complete sea change in mood, direction as Branch and her foils transform The Meat Puppets quickened country yin ‘Comin’ Down’. A dueting Branch and Ajemian bring it back home (so to speak) to the Ozarks and Appalachians via Paul Simon, Dylan, 60s West Coast troubadour traditions and a reimagined Sun Records. A brassy-sounded trumpet repeats the tone and springy country vocals as a gurgle of drawn-out cello plays a more somber rumination of hardy travail. To be honest, I was unaware of The Meat Puppets original, but this is a welcome meander in a different direction.
A full lineup joins in on the marimba heavy carnival turn mysterious swamp ether ‘Baba Louie’. Francis Bebey swerves to Satchmo New Orleans, whilst taking a dance around Masekela’s Soweto on a bustled bounce of joy and triumph, before succumbing to the voodoo psychedelic vapours; enticed by a cooing R&B flavoured misty Seymour. This bleeds into the bluegrass fiddled stirrings of ‘Bolinko Bass’, another Orleans evoked, almost regimental drummed bayou Mardi Gras of David Byrne, Funk Ark and Phil Ranelin. Almost mournful, ‘And Kuma Walks’ is more bluesy sounding, yet estranged at the same time; skulking amongst the spirits as someone saws through a fiddle as the trumpet aches in elegiac plaint.
Single, ‘Take Over The World’ is a hyped-up rattle and untethered excitement of no wave, punk jazz. Branch repeats a wild mantra and plays a burning bright thrill of trumpeted blasts whilst a controlled chaos spins all around her. Protest and partying converge for an electrifying, and later on, psychedelic bending stretched act of defiance.
The album ends by simmering down to a period of Afro-spiritual lament and reflection, on the sloganist berating ‘World War (Repirse)’. There’s serious bowed strings, trilled and forewarned trumpet, a sustained organ and windy, desolate enacted atmosphere on this weary actionist swan song: Branch urging caution at “false flags” and encouraging the fight.
For me Branch’s main instrument burns bright, and yet never seems to dominate, lead or overstay its welcome at any point on the album. Not for nothing is her own quote of “…meaning every note”, with not one rasp, trill, toot and cycle out of place; nothing is pushed but just felt and right at that moment. It feels to me, despite such a rich and diverse back catalogue, that Branch had so much more to give, her best still to come. And her gift was not just in crossing and mixing styles, influences, but also in pushing others to reach their own full potential as musicians. Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war)) is an accomplished album that channels the legacies of Chicago, New Orleans and New York to create an eclectic modern adventure in protest jazz.
Knoel Scott Ft. Marshall Allen ‘Celestial’
(Night Dreamers)
A leading light in the Sun Ra cosmology since auditioning for the Saturn jazz ambassador’s famous Arkestra ensemble in 1979, the baritone saxophonist, composer, vocalist and, when the occasion arises, dancer Knoel Scott amasses a lifetime of experience and musicianship on his debut solo-headed album. I say debut and solo, and without the extension of his previous KS Quintet named release, but the reeds specialist shares his Celestial project title with the Arkestra’s freeform progenitor, Marshall Allen.
Allen’s relationship with Sun Ra, on an album positively radiant and lunar with his guardianship and influence, goes back much further than Knoels; a stalwart since the ensemble’s formation in the 1950s, leading the troupe, the baton passed down as it were, after the cosmic Afrofuturist titan’s death in 1993. Unbelievably still in fine fettle, despite almost celebrating his centenary (that’s next May by the way), the avant-garde, inter-dimensional alto saxophonist, flutist, oboe, piccolo and EWI (that’s Electronic Wood Instrument) synthesist can be heard lending the latter’s strange sci-fi arcs, bends and space dust to the album’s title-track. It’s unsurprising to find that ‘Celestial’ has all the hallmarks of Ra too, written as it was originally with strings for the Arkestra, but never recorded.
The Arkestra family is extensive with celestial poetry taken from the late Arnold “Arto” Jenkins, recited on this universal lullaby. Art stuck with the Arkestra for thirty-six years, right up until his death in 2012. You can hear him and his “space megaphone” delivered offerings to the galaxy on Secrets Of The Sun, way back in 1962. As a homage to that universal-spiritualist’s wanton guidance, Knoel trips the radiant light fantastic, giving praise to the wisdom of the ancients and star people on a seeker’s performance of UFO oscillations, serenaded sentiments and dreamy translucence. It sounds like Cab Calloway and 50s wings being beamed up into Sun Ra’s off-world paradise.
The influence continues with the presence of the Paris scene stalwart and multifaceted (from Dancehall to Makossa, and of course jazz) drummer Chris Henderson, who’s experiences lend a both studied and more untethered freeform feel that moves between swing, big band, Latin, bop and the experimental.
This however is an inter-generational album, with fresher faces of the London scene, the very much in-demand UK keyboardist and versatile pianist Charlie Stacey and Verona-bred electric bassist and oft Arkestra and Knoel Quartet foil, Mikele Montolli. Hailed, quite rightly, as an advanced player, able to adapt to a wealth of styles, Stacey’s touch can evoke the best of those sublime 50s Blue Note recordings, touches of Oscar Peterson and Allen collaborator Terry Adams. The piano both flows with a tinkled busy lightness or strikes the heightened and jarring near-dissonance of freeform jazz; a descending off-tune part here, Cuban show time and bluesy or smoky lounge parts elsewhere: Unstated, yet moving along the action, or taking a soft stroll down the scales.
It’s another musician, part of the luminary brethren, that inspires the Afro-Cuban via Saturn’s rings ‘Makanda’. Paying tribute to a late mentor, Dr. Ken “Makanda” McIntyre, Knoel cooks up a Latin flavoured cool breeze of Havana, Harold Land vibes and R&B grooves: all undulated by sci-fi warbles and flits. A pivotal figure and influence for Knoel, “Makanda” (a name bestowed upon the reeds maestro and composer when playing in Africa, it translates from the Ndekele language as “many skins”, and in the Shona as “many heads”) founded the first ever African American music program in the States in 1971, and had worked with such notable talent as Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor and Nat Adderlay. Knoel and friends up the funk and balmy rhythms on this soulful homage to the late great man.
On his part, Knoel’s saxophone squawks, strains, honks and squeaks, and yet also serenades: even soothes. Wilder higher registered beak pecks turn into a near chaos, a cacophony, on the improvisation piece ‘Conversation With The Cosmos’. Coltrane, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton wail in zero gravity, whilst those wild rasps feel almost smoldering and lounge-like on the final mid paced twelve-bar slinky ‘Blu Blues’.
What a stellar set from the Arkestra acolyte, the Marshall and inner circle; and well done to the Night Dreamers for coaxing out this cosmic marvel. The process if you’re new to this label project, is to record the performances direct to tape before cutting on a Sally lathe the final vinyl artifact. In mono, recorded in an analogue studio, the sound is alive, inviting and, well, “celestial”. The experience speaks, communicates, and pushes the perimeters on every note, as a culmination of African American jazz styles are attuned to the stars.
Andrew Hung ‘Deliverance’
(Lex Records) 11th August 2023
With pain, suffering and anguish former Fuck Buttons trick noise maker Andrew Hung finds a cathartic release on his third solo outing, Deliverance. But as that title suggest, the anxieties and sense of isolation and belonging now seem to have slowly dissipated as Hung feels he’s been delivered from the morose and dark fog of depression; although there’s plenty of broody, moody despair and darkened thoughts to wade through before catching the light of hope.
Hope, being set free, the constantly developing artist and producer does seem to have found his creative peace; likening this album to “the end of the chrysalis stage, like breaking free from a previous life.” Not so much reincarnation as a new incarnation, pushed on during lockdowns to mine the deep well of his soul, to face regrets and failings, but also find what’s missing.
An act of self-realization perhaps, Hung conducts a therapeutic session both unflinching and revealing. If the lyrics of ‘Don’t Believe It Now’ are anything to go by, thoughts and mental anguish at one point were truly dark. However, that filtered vapour counters the resigned with a reviving build up. And on the opening tunneled, Sister Bliss and Underworld like, moody turn freedom spin, ‘Ocean Mouth’, Hung faces a list of disappointing traits head on: Almost like taking a breath as the Robert Smith-like palpitations and rave-y Bloc Party velocity of the production avoids suffocation and gravitates towards the techno cathedral of light. Submerged at every turn with recurring references to water, Hung swims and navigates the torrents and tides to find a number of revelations about himself: conquering fear.
The previous solo album, Devastations (a choice album no less in my end of year lists for 2021) looked to the cosmos with a propulsion of electronic, kosmische, motorik, Madchester and synth pop influences, and featured Hung the self-taught singer evoking a mix of Robert Smith (some very cure-esque touches musically too), Karl Hyde, Mark Hollis and The Cry’s Kim Berly. More distressed, gasping and wrenching Hung takes some of those same influences forward on Deliverance, whilst also seeming to whip up a touch of Minny Pops, New Order, Soft Cell and John Foxx on the struggles of isolation and need to belong themed neo-romantic ‘Find Out’.
In another honest cycle of shedding shame and casting away the pain in favour of finding that alluded love “saturation”, ‘Never Be The Same’ builds from synthesized drum pad elements of the 80s German new wave, Factory Records and industrial synth-pop into another unshackled escape towards the light of revelation. I’d throw in Martin Dupont, Tears For Fears and Yazoo to that both pumped and vapourous mix.
Floundering no more, Hung looks to have found his place, his voice too. Deliverance finds him channeling his lamentable, pained, and unsure emotions into something positive and bright with another candid confessional solo album of rave-y synth-pop indie brilliance.
Various ‘Intended Consequences’
(Apranik Records)
With a hellish multitude of flashpoints and distractions across the globe keeping the continuing fight for women’s liberation in Iran off the news rolls, it has become apparent that the Iranians themselves have been left to carry on the struggle with little support. In an ongoing war between the forces of the authoritarian religious state and a younger generation demanding an end to the erosions of there civil liberties and freedoms, the crisis in the country entered a dark bloody chapter last year with the murder in custody of Masha Zhina Amini by the “morality police”.
After a rightful campaign of protest and action at such a heinous crime, a brutal crackdown by the state led to mass arrests and even executions (mostly of male supporters, activists, and usually on trumped up charges). Further restrictions were invoked. And just as horrifying, in the last year, and right up to the last few months, there has been a nationwide spate of deliberate poisonings of schoolgirls (one of the groups who mobilized against the authorities in the wake of Amini’s cruel death) on mass. Defiant still, even in the face of such oppression, the brave women of Iran have strengthened their resolve only further.
In the face of such attacks, clampdowns, the music scene has responded with a strong message of resistance and solidarity. Despite everything, cities like the capital of Tehran have a strong music scene of contemporary artists, composers, DJs and performers working across all mediums, including art (which is probably why so much of the music is also so visceral, descriptive and evocative of imagery). One such collaborative force of advocates, AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah, co-founded the Apranik Records label, a platform for female empowerment. Following this year’s earlier Women Life Freedom compilation, a second spotlight volume delves further into not only the Tehran scene but picks out choice tracks from those female Iranians working outside the country, in such epicenters as London (AZADI.mp3) and Berlin (Ava Irandoost).
Sonic wise it covers everything from d’n’b, trance, deep house and techno to sound art experimentation. The range of moods is just as diverse in that respect, from restlessness to the reflective and chaotic.
Contributions from both Azadikhah (the hand drum rattled d’n’b breaks and spacy, airy trance ‘Perpetual’) and AIDA (the submerged melodious and dreamy techno ‘Ode To Expectations’, which features the final love-predicament film sample, “You know that I love you, I really do. But I have to look after myself too.”) can be found alongside a burgeoning talent pool. The already mentioned London-based producer and singer AZADI.mp3 opens this collection with a filtered female chorus of collective mantra protest, set to a sort of R&B, 2-step and bass throbbed production, on ‘Empty Platform’– just one of many tracks that uses the sounds of a more traditional Iran, especially the daf drum, alongside modern and futuristic warped effects. The sound artist and composer Rojin Sharafi likewise features the rattled rhythms of hand drums and some hidden spindled instrument – like running a stick across railings – on her entrancing kinetic techno ritual of “trauma”, ‘dbkk’.
Abji_hypersun allows the sounds of the environment to seep into her slow-building track of field recordings, collage and breaks (two-stroke scooters buzz by as distant female conversations reverberate on the street). Part jungle breaks pirate radio, part Matthew David, Jon The Dentist and LTJ Bukem, ‘Resist The God Trick’ evokes a tunneled vision of haunted reminisces and resistance in the shadows.
Emsho’s ‘Down Time’ is a rotor-bladed electro mix of Basic Channel and The Chemical Brothers, and Aida Shirazi’s mysterious wind of dark meta ‘R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N’ spells out the rage with a shadowy, near daemonic scripture of wrath and revenge – a gothic synth sinister avenging angel promises that the women of Iran will neither “forget” nor “forgive” their oppressors, torturers and murderers. Farzané seems to evoke the alien, the sci-fi on her experimental, sometimes disturbing dial twisting and crackled ‘Quori’ transmission, and the Berlin-based DJ, video artist and music producer Ava Irandoost draws on Laraaji-like dulcimer tones for her dream mirrored kosmische evocation ‘CINEREOUS’. The Tehran composer, pianist and bassist Ava Rasti draws a close to the compilation with a classical-tinged, harmonic ringed, saddened piano-lingering performance, entitled ‘Eight Night’ – an atmospheric troubled trauma is encapsulated with the deftest of touches.
It might be my own nostalgic penchant for 90s electronic music (my formative years of course), but this series (if we can call it that) could be an Iranian version of the Trance Europe Express compilations brought out during that decade; a treasure trove of discoveries and whole scenes that opened up a world of previously unknown music to many of us not living in the epicenters of North America, the UK and Europe and beyond. Hopefully this latest platform of innovative artists from across the arts will draw the attention it deserves; the message hardly virtuous, in your face, but sophisticated: the very act of female Iranians making a name for themselves despite censorship and bans a sign of empowerment and resistance in itself. Few groups deserve our support (which in the West has been sadly absent) more, but don’t just purchase for the cause but for the musical strives being awakened and produced under tyrannical oppression, and because this is a solid collection of great electronic music.
Nagat ‘Eyoun El Alb’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 25th August 2023
Renowned as one of the greatest, most exceptional voices to have emerged from the golden 40s/50s/60s epoch of Egyptian and the greater Arabian songstresses and divas, Nagat El Seghirah was a rightly revered performer, who’s career spanned more than half a century.
Even in an age rich with accomplished, influential and groundbreaking singers Nagat held her own against such icons as Oum Kalthoum, Fairuz, Warda and perhaps the most celebrated of the lot, the anointed “voice of Egypt” Umm Kulthum. The latter, hailed the “star of the east”, was an influence on the early starter during the burgeoning years of imitation, when Nagat was a child, barely in her teens. Her affectionate appellation, “El Seghirah” or “El Sagheera”, can be translated as “the small”, “the young”, and marks the singer, performer and film star’s young apprenticeship; from entertaining the notable guests that gathered at her father’s (the famed calligrapher Mohamad Hosny) home at the age of five onwards, to her first role in cinema at the age of eight, starring in the 1947 film Hadiya. Hosny was known to push his extensive brood of children from two marriages, sometimes excessively, into various creative careers: Nagat’s half-sister was the famous actress Soad Hosny, her older brother, Ezz Eddin Hosni, a notable composer who helped her own development and natural talent.
During those initial years of development Nagat would interpret songs by such legendary figures as Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Baligh Hamdy and Kamal Al Taweel, but would find both her true and distinctive voice when interpreting the work of the Syrian diplomat-poet Nizar Qabbani. She gained adulation and fans after performing the esteemed poet’s tragic ‘Irja Ilyya’ (“Return To Me”), which is based on his sister who committed suicide rather than enter into an arranged marriage. Plaintive, stark, it rightly struck a chord with the public at the time, with its feminist lyrics and spotlight on forced marriages. It would be become a torchlight for freedom and injustice, with Nagat adding her own improvised original lines during the 1970s.
Born in 1938 but already gaining plaudits by the end of the next decade, into the next, Nagat released her first actual song ‘Why Don’t You Allow Me To Love You’ in 1955; the year she would also be married, for the first time, to a friend of one of her brothers: still only sixteen. It’s no surprise, although in no way a forced marriage, that she could, with a commanding voice, perform Qabbani’s tragedy. That marriage would only last however until the turn of the 1960s; when Nagat went on to marry the Egyptian film director Houssam El-din Mustafa in 1967 (a marriage that lasted an even shorter time). Nagat would remain, in fact seeing as she is still alive, in her eighties, remains unmarried. In recent years, since her singing retirement over twenty years ago, living a semi-reclusive life in Cairo but in poor health, there’s been some contact, even projects floated. Only last year she was featured on the official soundtrack for the streaming service series Moon Knight.
From concert to soundstage with starring roles in the films Black Candles, Beach Of Fun, My Dear Daughter and Dried Tears, Nagat gradually moved from shorter songs to ever more lengthy performances, some of which would last an hour. As time went on the songstress actress would find it harder to find those inspired works to perform. Retiring from film in 1976, Nagat would still persevere with music. And by the time she reached her early forties, in the 1980s, would release this four-track showcase of matured talented performances entitled Eyoun El Alb.
Originally brought out exclusively on cassette (like so much of the Egyptian music market), forty odd years later the reissue vinyl specialists of impeccable tastes (releasing a myriad of jazz titles and nuggets from across the Arabian world and Japan), WEWANTSOUNDS in conjunction with the Arabia and North African crate-digger Disco Abrabesquo (the moniker of the Egyptian, Amsterdam-residing DJ, Moataz Rageb), have pressed it onto vinyl for the first time. If you are a regular reader, or in fact a regular WWS’s follower and buyer, then you will be aware of that label’s previous collaboration with DA, last year’s (although they’ve also released a smattering of Egyptian focused records too over the years) Sharayet El Disco compilation. One notable inclusion on that eye-opening compilation (reviewed by me in May’s Perusal column) was from the legendary Al Massrieen. A much sought after recording outfit, the group’s Hany Shenouda produced the scenic, romantic ‘Ana Bashaa El Bahr’ (or “I Adore The Sea”) finale on this Nagat album. Adoration and yearned dreaminess for a place and time are evoked to Shenouda’s trebly near-psych tremolo guitar and light hand drum patters. Alongside the more lilting and fluted ‘Bahlam Meeak’ (“I Dream With You”), this is one of those examples of Nagat’s shortened form of storytelling romance and heartache. ‘Bahlam Meeak’ is also an example of Nagat’s more lightened, honeyed approach to what is a tinkled serenaded, wafted vision of blossom scented sand dune balladry. It evokes the music of Bacharach and the cool soundtracks of early 60s French and Italian new wave cinema.
Taking up the entirety of Side One, there’s the long form titular performance of heightened drama and searing swirled strings oboe and scuffled trinkets. Over eighteen-minutes of longed romantic gestures, the action pauses repeatedly between undefined sections; allowing the auditorium audience to show its appreciation, encouragement, which they do constantly, even when the music starts back up again. On a Matinee scale, this mini-story, unveiling of lovelorn exultations, but vulnerability and occasional lament, moves like a desert caravan across an Egyptian set, or, sumptuously glides into a Persian court. A fantastic display of sagacious craft, Nagat’s voice never has to rise or push to convey a class piece of theatre and effective yearn of love.
Only half that duration, but still a long track, ‘Fakru’ (“Do You Remember”) is a rumination; the vibrating pools of memoary reflected in the dreamy wobbled effects that permeate this fluctuating lead vocal delivery and prompting chorus of female voices. Classical Cairo, there’s a chink and tinkle of percussion and shimmy-shaking, belly dancing rhythm that luxuriantly accompanies a yearning poetic and sometimes coquettish Nagat on her reminisces. As I said already, this album represents various sides of the enchanting, soulful and also distinctive icon’s vocal presence and range. The long and short: the unmistakable sound of Egypt, but also those influences from abroad too, are melded together on a classy piece of cinematic and poetic mastery. Make room again on those creaking shelving units for another vinyl addition to the collection.
CHELA ‘Diagonal Drift’
(Echodelick – USA, We Here & Now – CA, Ramble Records – Aus, Worst Bassist Records – EU)
In communion with his long-time friend and collaborative foil in the University Challenged trio (alongside Oli Heffernan) Kohhei Matsuda, Ajay Saggar extends his blessed travels along the astral highways and byways with a new venture, CHELA.
Absorbed, imbued and inspired by Indian spiritualism, history and travails, its psychogeography and trauma, both partners in the new direction come together under the Sanskrit word for “disciple”; taken from the verb and root “to serve”, the “Chela” is similar in concept to a student, but implies a more loyal closeness with their teacher. In Hinduism this bond is considered sacred: An apt moniker for such inter-dimensional, afflatus dreamers and acolytes of raga, the new age, psychedlia and kosmische music.
Divine styler Saggar (who is also a member of King Champion Sounds, solos under the Bhajan Bhoy alias, and collaborates with Merinde Verbeck in the Deutsche Ashram duo) and Japanese noisenik Matsuda (most notably a member of the Bo Ningen quartet) spent much of 2022 putting this inaugural baptism together. And so with dedication to their art, the duo have sonically and melodically taken time, given depth to their new mysterious broadcast; that is, broadcasts from the ether, supernatural, uncertain, Fortean and cosmic. Different yet not entirely detached from previous incarnations, fans of both artists will pick up on past signatures, sounds and conceptions. However, they’ve managed to realign those same signatures, tuning into the mystical but often with trepidation and a sense that the noisier elements could consume all in their path.
Think Julius Eastman meets Fennesz we’re told; a good succinct summary. But I’d add a hell of a lot more, including Taylor Deupree and a cosmology of cosmic couriers. The opening ripple in the fabric of time, ‘Flyspray’, is an expanded peregrination of Beautifully tinkled Florian Fricke-like piano hauntings, Ariel Kalma and Syrinx new ageism and various Sky Records pioneers (Asmus Tietchens and Riechman spring to mind), all caught up in analogue wispy wind cacophony of divine rays, the esoteric and Eastern drones. Trippy warped reversals and folds, generator and processors nearly overwhelm the vague evocations of Tony Conrad, Schultz and a springy, but also spoke splayed banjo (which in itself seems to vaguely evoke the Balkans, Greece and strangely, India) on the reverberating ‘Appalachjo’.
In what could be a suggestion of “peace” and “harmony”, or reference to the Japanese town, ‘Heiwa’ is a hummed raga-like hymnal. A stand-up barrel-type piano plonks away from the ether, whilst ambient waves and traces of Dyzan invite heavenly reflection. ‘Ticker’ is a very different proposition. An intense chemistry of signals, beeps, quickened arrpegiator, moody signs of Faust and the sound of the Heart Of Darness are melted with Günter Schickert guitar, heavy acid Gong and various calculations.
‘Tanker’ feels like the most obvious attempt to score the sound of the title’s overbearing object; sounding like a alien freighter, both foreboding and mysterious. A scrawl and flapped ripple of radar and sonar bites into a resonating field of drones and sound waves, fog and guitar.
The final, spiritual and otherworldly track, ‘Worship’, features ghostly Indian voices and visitations from an event, service or chapter in time and history. A melodious piano chimes away in wisps of fanned cosmic mystique and cyclonic radio effects, whilst shades of FSOL, King Creosote (From Scotland With Love period) and Boards Of Canada linger. The video is more illuminating, a sepia film of bedside “worship”, healing for a leader, martyr, and a travelling funeral cortege that takes in rows of witnesses moved to touch, or just be in the essence of a distinguished teacher.
Once again with the cosmic and afflatus, Saggar and Matsuda expand their sound further. Diagonal Drift’s transcendental projection is just that, despite the building intensity and uncertainty, the broadcast noise of krautrock and kosmische styled aerial bends and radio tunings. CHELA is another welcome addition to the two artists oeuvre: one more step on the astral journey of mind-expanding experimentation.
Monthly Playlist Revue: July 2023
July 28, 2023
CHOICE MUSIC SELECTION FROM THE LAST MONTH ON THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL
TEAM EFFORT: DOMINIC VALVONA/MATT OLIVER/BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA/GRAHAM DOMAIN/ANDREW C. KIDD
The Monolith Cocktail Monthly playlist is a revue of the last month on the blog, plus those tunes we didn’t get time to review or feature: including Matt Oliver‘s special hip-hop selection. Curated as a musical journey by Dominic Valvona, there’s a huge diverse array of choice tunes from across the genres and the globe, collated from an amalgamation of posts by Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Graham Domain and Andrew C. Kidd.
THOSE TRACKS IN FULL ARE…
Habitat 617 Ft. Jack Slayta ‘Bricklayer’
Young Van Gundy Ft. Al Divino & Tha God Fahim ‘Fuyu No Senso’
J. Scienide & Napoleon Da Legend ‘Wind Parade’
Annie Taylor ‘Fucking Upset’
White Ring ‘Before He Took The Gun’
African Head Charge ‘Asalatua’
Mokoomba ‘Ndipe’
OKI ‘Tukinahan Kamuy’
Dip In The Dub ‘La Cumbia Del Sufi Que No Sabia Bailer’
Luiza Lian ‘Eu Estou Aqui’
Deja Blu ‘Crash’
It’s Karma It’s Cool ‘Vacations In A Taxi Cab’
Life Strike ‘Whip Around’
K-Nite 13 & Lee Scott Ft. Homeboy Sandman ‘Staple Junk’
The Moose Funk Squad ‘Abe Simpson’
Verb T & Vic Grimes ‘Your Heart Deserves’
SadhuGold ‘Fear Of A Black Yeti’
The Difference Machine ‘His Country’
Rusty Santos ‘Focus’
August Cooke ‘Shed With Me’
Maija Sofia ‘Telling The Bees’
Circe ‘My Boy Aphrodite’
Natalie Rose LeBrecht ‘Holy’
Hackedepicciotto ‘La Femme Sauvage’
Fat Frances ‘The Worm In The Wood’
Mike Gale ‘Summer Be Gone’
Stella Burns & Mick Harvey ‘My Heart Is A Jungle’
Emil Amos ‘Jealous Gods’
Oopsie Dasies ‘Illusioned-Broken Toys’
Zohastre ‘DUNE’ <THIS MONTH’S COVER ART STARS>
The Holy Family ‘Hell Born Babel’
The Dark Jazz Project ‘Jazz’
Healing Force Project ‘Inharmonious Layer’
Sebastian Reynolds ‘Cascade’
Caterina Barbieri ‘Sufyosowirl’
Ziur Ft. Abdullah Miniawy ‘Malikan’
Pierce Artists ‘Black Hooded Generals’
Stu Bangas & Chino XL ‘Who Told You’
Teflon/M.O.P. & DJ Premier ‘The Thoro Side’
Remulak & Moka Only ‘Starlings Green’
Jonny Wickham ‘Uncanny Valley’
Marty Isenberg ‘Life On Mars’
Gibralter Drakus ‘Exode Rural’
Las Mijas ‘Ronca (Carta Para Una Mija)’
Our Daily Bread 585: An Experiment with Myuthafoo
July 21, 2023
LITERATURE/ANDREW C. KIDD
Caterina Barbieri explores the mutability of time on Myuthafoo, a 6-track piece released on the Light-Years label on 16th June 2023. It was composed in the same period as Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego, 2019).
I have written a short story which references the broad-themed narrative of time. The two characters in the story are connected through a transient common consciousness, independent of time, each sharing their own respective experiences millennia apart. They are unconscious of this at first, but gradually develop insights into the event.
The first character is a cosmometeorologist (denoted as *) who exists in the distant future, returning from an interstellar mission, repeating his observations of TOI-2180 b, the Jupiter-like planet located 379 light-years away in the Draco constellation. The second character is a taikonaut (denoted as ∆) who is the first person to enter the orbit of Mùxīng. Mùxīng is the Mandarin word for Jupiter, translating as ‘Star of Wood’. They both listen to Myuthafoo on their respective journeys.
*
After a rapid deceleration, the long body of the survey vessel made an uncomfortably abrupt stop. A single occupant was jolted forward in his harness. The monitor projecting inside his helmet blinked the characters TOI-2180 b. The red writing of the display flooded through his visor as the synthesisers of Memory Leak sawed and played out triumphantly in his headset.
Finally!, he gleamed inside, the Draco constellation. The journey had been a long one, and
not without challenge.
Steely synths arped and orbited on Math of You in a manner not too dissimilar to his own trajectory around the exoplanet. He smiled witlessly at this reference.
He vacated the lead-lined safety of his survival pod and immediately felt the stifling heat within the grand archways and long corridors of the ship – this was the unintended transference of heat through the protective shields of its fusion reactors. His heart rate still bounded away at a fast-tempo; it held steady as he glimpsed out of the bow window.
The familiar rubor of this exoplanet reddened the white suit of the cosmometeorologist in pinkish projection. He observed its clouds that banded and danced in linear synergy as they rapidly rotated upon its axis. Their formations and morphology were recorded perfunctorily. Superstorms he named after other nebulae because that was easier than remembering the names of men and gods that he had never known or cared to know. The cloud vortices expanded and contracted in eternal rage. He marvelled at their fury.
This visit to Draco was a routine one: a simple stop-off to allow the hot heat exchanger to cool on his return from the recesses of intermediate space. Soon, his palm would hover over the propellant injector control, releasing the fusion pellet to send the ship forward, and him homeward.
After collating the new data, he made arrangements to have these safely stored for future analyses. During this process, he had started to feel uneasy: an unnerving sensation was propagating through him. He turned off the music blaring loudly in his headset, beckoning silence and space to breathe. The dizzying modulations of the synths had reached a pinnacle of inorganic arrhythmicity – perhaps this had been the cause for his unsettling?
He stared out silently at the hulking exoplanet for a while longer, pondering whether the way he felt had something to do with its magnetic energy. He peered into the dense orb in an act of mindfulness, imagining what metals and minerals its core contained. This had little effect. The discomforting feeling had become more pervasive.
What is this!? His mind called out in internal inquisition.
It was as if an invisible force was streaming slowly through him, illuminating not only his body, but his very being.
∆
A white-suited taikonaut was sitting at a seemingly incommodious 45-degree angle. Yet he sat quite comfortably, completely weightless in space, shuffling through the alphabetically-stored sounds that he had brought with him on this momentous journey.
Don Buchla – not today…
A reading of Golden Apples of the Sun…
No, no… it’s under ‘m’… ah, m…
The North Shanxi Suite by Ma Ke…
Moon, Silver Apples of…
Yes… here it is…
Myuthafoo
He pressed the play button on his receiver, smiling broadly because the celebratory opening track embodied the spirit of adventure. Minutes later, the shorn cross-section of the wooden planet came into view through the bow window.
Mùxīng, he declared to himself.
*
Mùxīng? I… I… what is this? I have never been here before – the star system, it… it is completely unrecognisable. It seems… illusory – a déjà vu, but…
Moving his hand away from the propellant injector control, he turned around to look through the observation aperture on the starboard side.
Barked appearance; ringed by age; gaseous whorls; circular and impermeable –
He paused to observe the ever-changeability of the line-like clouds that wrapped around the planet. They moved in opposing directions like some great puzzle that would eventually split open to reveal its hidden contents.
He left the observation station and made the short walk to the bridge; there, he would recalibrate the cartograph.
Red words continued to blink TOI-2180 b in his visor. He knew that the co-ordinates of the ship would have already been checked and double checked by the on-board neural network; still, he manually validated these in accordance with protocol. His location had been confirmed: he remained within the confines of Draco.
The cosmometeorologist had already passed through this constellation on his forward voyage. He compared the measurements of the specific gravity that he had obtained those short years ago with his updated readings.
It is much lighter… three-times lighter on this occasion!
His stomach had started to churn and a mild nausea built up inside him – invocations of the unexpected sight of this strange planet. For the first time in his life, he experienced the nervous excitement of uncertainty, the heavy weight of expectation. It was quite a remarkable achievement: he was the first to…
He stopped himself.
I have not been the first to observe this.
He sat down guardedly. Thoughts oscillated in his head. Eventually he calmed his mind by visualising absolutely nothing. He inhaled and exhaled four times a minute, repeating internally:
I am a cosmometeorologist. I am recording the density of TOI-2180 b. The presence of this exoplanet is undeniable. I knew it was here. I observed it only a few short years ago. This is a routine mission. My forward and return data should be the same.
I am not here to discover. There are vessels for that purpose situated in deep space.
I cannot discover something that has already been discovered!
I… I have discovered nothing here!
∆
‘Are you getting this, Control?’
The taikonaut remained suspended in pseudo-weightlessness, the padded shoulder straps securing him to the modular seat. He had already pressed the blue ‘load’ button on the grey panel in front of him. The dimly-lit red display blinked in confirmation that his message had been sent.
‘Affirmative. We have your location. Aphelion: 816 Gm. Perihelion 740 Gm. Location confirmed as Mùxīng.’ The static in his receiver crackled in return. It continued.
‘Commander, Mùxīng marks a colossal milestone in our celestial journey!’
This congratulatory statement had washed over the taikonaut. The reference had made no sense: he had trodden on nothing. His focus remained firmly on the readings on his monitor. He leant forward and pressed the blue button again.
‘Control, it is…’.
‘Repeat…’, Control broke in. ‘We could not make out your last transmission.’
‘The exoplanet…’, the taikonaut paused momentarily. ‘It is… much denser than I imagined. Also, it has far fewer moons than we had previously considered’.
‘Exoplanet?’, the static of Control enquired.
*
Am I truly conscious of this? Has the arduous journey unlocked some deeper awareness within me?
My vital signs are normal.
What is this feeling that… no, it is not fleeting because I can still feel it – it is… fading.
I must be imagining it. Yes, it is in my imagination.
But how can I be imagining something that I already knew was there.
The cosmometeorologist had closed his eyes to enter the deeper reaches of his mind.
I cannot be experiencing this… it… it is as if someone else has already lived in this moment… transf–… transference of thought… that would be improbable… impossible, even!
The cloud-ringed planet continually resurfaced in his consciousness. He opened his eyes to stare at its globular shape, the Great Spot, its barge, its moons –
The moons! Hah! the radius of its moons and their respective orbits – yes, the moons… I will use them to calculate its density.
The cosmometerologist peered through his viewing apparatus, eventually recoiling in shock.
How can that be?! 95 moons!
As he leant back in his chair, his headset clipped the edge of its protective padding, switching the music suddenly back on. The step-like cyclisms of Alphabet of Light played unhurriedly. He listened to the organic sound. It was oxymoronic. The pioneering excitement still fluttered within him. He turned around as the Gas Giant momentarily left his visual field: the window pillar of the ship had blocked out its unfamiliar appearance in quiet orbit.
∆
A soulful symphonia continued to play with the starlight: the two-toned lightness of Sufyosowirl echoed back the title track. It was organ-like as it entered another modular sequence. The taikonaut remained poised in controlled weightlessness.
‘I can confirm my last transmission as being correct. Exoplanets. I repeat: exoplanets, and exomoons. I am visualising something truly marvellous here. A Mùxīng-like planet, Jovian in stature; yet, something on a wholly grander scale.’
‘According to our readings, your present location is Mùxīng’, Control hissed into his receiver. ‘Please relay your bearings.’
The taikonaut remained silent: he had sunk into a deep introspection.
Am I imbalanced because I am listening to a contrapuntal melodia, one that holds its notes before stepping down the next rung of the polyphonic ladder? Disorientation through some form of sonic imbibement…
‘Please repeat’, Control rasped.
A new sound for a new vision – synthetic and tom-tom like, steadily moving me further away from the reality of this moment.
The taikonaut observed the exoplanet long after his vessel had escaped its magnetic pull. He moved slowly away on his mission to reach the dust-ringed world of Saturn.
*
The image of the gaseous clouds slowly dissipated into the ether of the cosmometeorologist’s mind. Swirls of You crackled indistinctly in his headset, bringing him back to the present. He knew that this would fade into a calming niente.
His monitor repeatedly blinked out the characters TOI-2180 b. His hand moved down to prime the nuclear fusion engines. He returned to the sanctity of the lead-lined survival pod during this pre-propulsive state. Glancing one last time at the disappearing planet, his ship lurched forward to leave a long and vapour-like trail of plasma that stretched far enough to traverse infinity.
Our Daily Bread 583: Alabaster DePlume, Comet Gain, Maija Sofia, Natalie Rose LeBrecht…
July 17, 2023
GRAHAM DOMAIN’S REVIEWS ROUNDUP: A SUMMARY OF THE LAST MONTH: NEW FINDS, DISAPPOINTMENTS AND TRIUMPHS
___{SINGLES}___
Alabaster DePlume ‘Did You Know’
(International Anthem)
I liked last year’s album Gold and the wonderful eccentric single ‘Don’t Forget You’re Precious’ on
which he talk-sang. This is the first single from new album Come with Fierce Grace, out in September. It’s a sad jazz ballad sang by Momoko Gill and is reminiscent of Corrine Bailey Rae. It’s not particularly memorable and is a bit of a disappointment after last year’s excellent output!
Deja Blu ‘Crash’
(Fragile Hands)
The new single from dream-pop duo Deja Blu is a mesmeric tune that begins like a dreamy cross between Massive Attack and the Sundays before DJ Shadow type drums kick-in and propel the song into a world of echoing dream ambience! Fabulous!
Maija Sofia ‘Four Winters’
(Tulle Collective)
The new single from Galway’s Maija Sofia is a song that sits somewhere close to Aldous Harding but with its own strangeness akin to early Kate Bush. A song that mixes woodwind, harps and harmonic discord with poetic lyrics of womanhood and the joy of pain via emotional growth! A bright flare in a sea of shiny blandness!
Peter Brewis (from Field Music) ‘Lemoncadabra’
(Daylight Saving Records)
This instrumental reminds me of the mid seventies when any song with a synth on it seemed magical. It does not have much in the way of a tune but sounds like he’s been listening to Chick Corea (circa The Mad Hatter), Yellow Magic Orchestra and perhaps Tomita! It sounds more like a BSide or Demonstration Disc than a tune with any commercial intent! Caramel Latte Froth (with sweeteners)!
___[ALBUMS]___
Playdate ‘Wonderland’
(Idee Fixe Records/Bandcamp/Ansible Editions)
This is an interesting album of modern technology versus traditional instruments, or put another way, programmed and improvised synths trade melodies and inspired ‘sojourns into space’ with vibraphones, woodwind instruments and even pedal steel! The group are a trio from Toronto made up of Carl Schilde, Matthew Bailey and Scott Harper, and guest improvisers include Christine Bourgie, Michael Davidson, Daniel Pencer and Andy Shauf’s woodwind section. The result is an album of chilled dreamscape music. Not essential listening, but ambient music that does have its own charm! ‘Insert Quarter(s)’ has echoes of Japan’s ‘My New Career’.
Comet Gain ‘The Misfit Jukebox’
(Tapete Records)
The Pandemic of 2020 gave David Christian Bower the time to re-visit the archive of unreleased tracks, demos and live recording for his band Comet Gain. The highlights of which were gradually released via Bandcamp throughout 2022. These are now released as a 17-track album of rarities.
The breadth of vision of the band is evident from the genre crossing musical make-up of the songs.Thus, we get energy and melody combined in a variety of musical settings – punk-pop, punk-funk, melodic pop-folk to name a few! Even the noisiest of Comet Gain songs has melody at its core. ‘The Weekend Dream’ has all the pop-punk energy of the Buzzcocks or the Only Ones. ‘Pinstriped Rebel’ meanwhile encompasses the jangle-funk of late-period Jam, the Style Council or the modernist cold white-funk of the new romantics. ‘When’ sounds like a song from the early 80’s Mod Revival or a pale 1970’s cover of a Wigan Casino northern soul song. ‘You’re Just Lonely’ sounds like New Order without the programmed synths! ‘Only Happy When I’m Sad’ is perhaps the pop nugget of the collection sounding like a mixture of Stereolab, Broadcast, St. Etienne and Everything but the Girl. A wonderful, warm, melodic, strange song.
The album is a fine addition to the Comet Gain musical catalogue, a compilation of rarities but also an album that succeeds on its own merits.
Natalie Rose LeBrecht ‘Holy Prana Open Game’
(American Dreams)
This is a beautiful album of cosmic folk strangeness singular in its vision and unique today, in its combination of sounds. Opener ‘Home’ combines strings, synths, woodwind and guitar with haunting vocals to produce a strange folk-infused cosmic jazz masterpiece. ‘Prana’ follows with its synths and vocal harmonies underpinned by piano and jazz drums sounding not unlike something from the Roman Polanski film Dance of the Vampires, evolving in the middle into a beautiful atmospheric sound-world! ‘Holy’ meanwhile is a chilled piano-led song complete with tremolo guitar and woodwind.
Sitting somewhere between Nico, Linda Perhacs and Alice Coltrane, the six haunting songs have superb intricate arrangements and a wonderful spiritual element! It could easily be mistaken for a long-lost album from the 1970’s, such is its charm.
The band include Jim White (drums) and Mick Turner (guitar) from the Dirty Three. If the album had been made by someone with a higher commercial profile, say Lana Del Ray, then it would be lauded as a masterpiece and top the end of year poles! That not being the case, the album is still a masterpiece of haunting music that has a meditative quality and reveals more of its colour with each play! Every home should own a copy of this album and play it each day as the sun rises bringing hope to the world.
M. Ward ‘Supernatural Thing’
(ANTI Records)
This is a nice album of easy listening Americana-pop! Songs such as ‘Too Young to Die’ and ‘Engine 5’ featuring First Aid Kit, have a Nancy (Sinatra) and Lee (Hazlewood) feel to them! However, much like his albums recorded with Zooey Deschanel as She and Him, the album never rises above ‘pleasant’!
To some it may seem that Matthew Ward’s music has slowly declined since the release of his influential Post War album in 2006. Being stuck in one place can still be inspiring if you have the presence of mind to see beauty in the everyday and there is plenty of evidence of that here. No matter where we are, we all share the same sky – some see nothing, others see the beauty in the changing light of day and are inspired seeing the shifting patterns in nature. But is M Ward on the cusp of regaining his greatness? Only time will tell if M Ward is indeed a writer of songs of subtle depth and longevity. He remains ‘one to watch’!
Bravery In Battle ‘The House We Live In’
(Believe)
French band Bravery in Battle have released a Video-Album that puts music behind words from International ecological activists calling for a rethink of how we live. Climate change is of course at the forefront of this urgent call to arms. ‘The Market’ is a key track on the album and melodifies a lecture by Australian ecological activist Clive Hamilton enhancing the message and sharpening the focus. A worthy release and worth a watch on YouTube.
Monthly Playlist: June 2023: Valia Calda, Killer Mike, Sparks, Kool Keith, Luzmila Carpio…
June 29, 2023
THE JUNE SELECTION: 50 plus tracks from the artists/bands we championed, rated and loved during the last thirty days. This is the eclectic, global and influential Monolith Cocktail Monthly Playlist, with music chosen from all the releases we covered in June plus those we didn’t have room for at that time. Selectors include Dominic Valvona (who curated this expansive playlist), Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Andrew C. Kidd and Graham Domain.
___TRACKLIST___
Valia Calda ‘Stalker’
La Jungle ‘La Compagnie de la Chanson’
Ramuntcho Matta ‘Hukai’
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ‘Nation Rising’
Killer Mike Ft. Jagged Edge ‘SUMMER’
Royalz Ft. THE HIDDEN CHARACTER ‘God In Da Ghetto’
Professor Elemental ‘Ready Or Not’
DJ Mk & Sonnyjim ‘WORTH THE RISK’
Revival Season ‘Chop’
Vieira and The Silvers ‘The Judge’
Trees Speak ‘Radiation’
Cat Box Room Bois ‘California Stars’
ANGHARAD ‘Postpartum’
Outer Limit Lotus ‘Let The Night Ride You’
The Kingfishers ‘Lapwings’
Sedona ‘Domino’
Katie Von Schleicher Ft. Lady Lamb ‘Elixir’
Mari Kalkun ‘Munamae Loomine (The Creation Of Munamagi|)’
Sparks ‘Not That Well Defined’
Bob Dylan ‘Queen Jane Approximately’
Maija Sofia ‘Four Winters’
Mike Cooper Ft. Viv Corringham ‘A Lemon Fell’
Dirty Dike Ft. Jam Baxter ‘The Places We’ve Been In’
The Chives ‘Your Mom’s A Bitch’
Lunch Money Life ‘The God Phone II’
Martha Skye Murphy ‘Dogs’
Sacrobosco ‘Pearl’
CODED ‘Binary Beautiful (Sunshine Variation)’
Baldruin ‘Zuruckgelassen’
Lauren Bousfield Ft. Ada Rock ‘Hazer’
Ital Tek ‘The Mirror’
Joe Woodham ‘Spring Tides’
WITCH ‘Streets Of Lusaka’
Celestial North ‘Otherworld’
Psyche ‘Kuma’
Omar Ahmad ‘Cygnet Song’
Luzmila Carpio ‘Inti Watana – El Retorno del Sol’
Ricardo Dias Gomes ‘Invernao Astral’
Andrew Heath ‘Fold’
Granny Smith ‘Egypt’
Spindle Ensemble & Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan ‘Lucid Living – Live’
Pawz One & Preed One ‘Revenge Of Silky Johnson’
ILL BILL, Non Phixion, La Coka Nostra, Kool G. Rap, Vinnie Paz ‘Root For The Villain’
Syrup Ft. Twit One, C. Tappin & Turt ‘Timing Perfect’
John Coltrane Ft. Eric Dolphy ‘Impressions – Live’
Vermin the Villain & ELAM ZULA ‘POWER OF TWO’
King Kashmere & Alecs Delarge Ft. HPBLK, Ash The Author & Booda French ‘Astro Children’
Lukah ‘First Copy’
Kool Keith ‘First Copy’
Stik Figa & The Expert ‘Slo Pokes’
S. Kalibre Ft. Scoob Rock, Slap Up Mill, Jabba The Kut ‘Murda Sound Bwoy’
Verbz, Nelson Dialect & Mr. Slipz ‘Beside Me’
Dillion & Diamond D ‘Uncut Gems’
ALBUM REVIEW BY ANDREW C. KIDD
Gabríel Ólafs ‘Lullabies for Piano and Cello’
(Decca Records) 9th June 2023
Unsurprisingly, Icelandic lullabies are hard to come by. The few that do exist are comparatively bleaker – less cradle song; one could argue abstruse. Take the title of Móðir Mín Í Kví, Kví (in English, Mother of mine in the sheep pen), or the lines of Bíum bíum bambaló, a lullaby from Iceland made famous by Icelandic post-rock stalwarts Sigur Rós: ‘Bíum bíum bambaló / Bambaló og dillidillidó’; in English, ‘My little friend I lull to rest / But outside, a face looms at the window’. Still, a lullaby in the orthodox sense should serve to lull. Enter pianist Gabríel Ólafs. Lullabies for Piano and Cello offers something altogether gentler and less menacing. It is his second long play after the 2019 release Absent Minded, which earned him plenty of plaudits.
The opening piece is the spry Fantasía. It is finely poised and well-balanced. The long notes of Sigurðardóttir’s cello play slowly and jig around the piano keys that staccato and pirouette. Sálmur derives its title from the Old Norse word ‘salmr’, a psalm. The keys are bittersweet. Here there is clever use of the foot pedal: Ólafs holds the notes suspensefully, allowing the cello to inhale and exhale measuredly as they alternate between legato and bowed tremolo. Octaves are climbed by the piano, but the cello remains rooted in the bass clef. Moonlight streams in glittering certitude on Noktúrna. The piano is light and a little more distant than it was previously, perhaps in the same way that the eye perceives the blue light of the moon: familiar but altered – illusory even. Embers emerge and billow away on Eldur (from the Old Norse ‘eldr’, or fire). The cello enters and vacates as quickly as it emerged. It echoes the
piano, elongating the notes as it evaporates into the ether.
Ólafs is an effective narrator. On Frost, the left-hand plays gently. Its melody is simple and dots around a major scale. It is clear and glistens and is made momentary as it welcomes the sun; soon, it will become water, evaporating to air, exiting the world as quickly as it entered it. Is it too far-fetched to suggest that this is a bleak allegory of life? I shall leave that for the listener to decide. It is an Icelandic lullaby after all.
The harmonics of the cello play quietly, deepening the piano on Vísa. The melody is played legato. It is fluent. This deftness, this wonderful una corda (soft pedal) of the piano is felt again on Mamma which almost progresses into a lullaby; I write ‘almost’ because although the structure is circular, the melody is not repeated. Barnkind is Icelandic for ‘child’. The cello is the sole focus here. In the accompanying album notes, the cello is considered to be the “mother’s voice, sometimes speaking, sometimes singing” – this assertion is most evident on this piece. It soothes.
On Bambaló the cello bows quietly. It encompasses the mysticism of early folk – was this an ode to a tree, or a long-lost lover, or an ideal? The piece intensifies, yet the piano remains light and unimodal throughout. Its chords, its narrative, are progressed solely by the cello. The keys mimic in gentle accompaniment. It ends thoughtfully. Draumheimar is the final piece. It translates into English as ‘dreamworlds’. Clocking in at over three-minutes, it is longest piece on the album. The piano takes centre stage and plays a major key melody. I hear echoes of Ólafs’s previous LP at this juncture. The keys become less distinct and the hammer-action of the piano strings are audible here: they are dulcimer-like. It is pianissimo: very quiet; then calando: it softens and slows.
Lullabies for Piano and Cello is beguiling. Compared to much of modern-day classical composition, the pieces are very short, yet none are perfunctory. More so, it is completely emptied of electronics and field recordings. It is a work of simplicity. The melodies are short-lived and never reprised. Even more beguiling is the origins of this album: Ólafs chancing upon a collection of melodies in an antique bookshop. It beggars the question as to how many unplayed lullabies are lying unthumbed and unturned in bookshelves elsewhere in our world.
Monthly Playlist: May 2023: Delilah Holliday, Tony Allen, Alecs DeLarge & King Kashmere, Lucia Cadotsch…
May 31, 2023
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH: TEAM EFFORT
The Monthly Revue playlist of 2023; a choice selection of tracks from the last month on the blog. Curated by Dominic Valvona with Matt Oliver on the Rap Control once more, and music from reviews by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Graham Domain and Andrew C. Kidd. Expect to hear the unexpected.
TRACKLIST//
Alecs DeLarge & King Kashmere ‘Damien Darhk’
Samuele Strufaldi ‘Davorio’
Les Dynamites ‘Pop Oud #2’
Andrew Hung ‘Ocean Mouth’
Matt Saxton ‘Freedom’
John Parish & Aldous Harding ‘Three Hours’
Lunar Bird ‘The Birthday Party’
YOVA ‘Feel Your Fear’
Atmosphere ‘Dotted Lines’
Illogic ‘Hot Lead’
Odd Holiday, Mattic & Daylight Robbery! ‘It Is Whut It Iz’
Delilah Holliday ‘Silent Streets’
Big Yawn ‘Crying’
Tony Allen ‘No Beginning’
Harold Land ‘Chocolate Mess’
Baby Cool ‘Magic (Live)’
Dyr Faser ‘This Menace’
Mekong ‘Out Of Control’
The Telescopes ‘(The Other Side)’
The Bordellos ‘Attack Of The Killer B-Sides’
Adjunct Ensemble ‘Nothing Grows/How Dare You Be Free’
Kassa Overkill, Danny Brown & Wiki ‘Clock Ticking’
Depf & Linefizzy ‘My Love’
Paw One ‘Sepekku’
Cas One ‘Silver Spoons’
Axel Holy & Badhabitz ‘Runnin’
Efeks, The Strange Neighbour & Downstroke ‘Its Only Right’
Chocolate Hills ‘Mermaids’
Orange Crate Art ‘We’re Just Innocent Men’
Tinariwen Ft. Fats Kaplin ‘Ezlan’
Cherry Bandora ‘Esy’
Danuk ‘Sewqo’
Lucia Cadotsch ‘I Won’t’
Jman & The Argonautz ‘Green Light’
Chuck Strangers & Obii Say ‘Say’
Billy Woods, Kenny Segal & Danny Brown ‘Year Zero’
Caterina Barbieri ‘Swirls Of You’
August Cooke ‘Flying Swimming Dredging’
Liz Davinci ‘I’m Through With Love’
Kayhan Kalhor & Toumani Diabate ‘Anywhere That Is Not Here’
Oceans ‘Mike Tysong’
Creep Show Ft. John Grant ‘Moneyback’
Jean Mignon ‘Canadian Exit’
GRAHAM DOMAIN’S RUN-THROUGH OF RECENT AND UPCOMING NEW RELEASES
__/SINGLES\__
THE TELESCOPES ‘Where Do We Begin’
(Tapete Records) (Download only Single)
It seems only vocalist Stephen Lawrie remains from the original group and only his voice reminds of The Telescopes classic sound!
This is the first single taken from forthcoming album Of Tomorrow. As such, it sounds a bit like the House of Love with Lou Reed – a psychedelic song about filling in the hole in your soul with more emptiness – the modern consumer society looking for fulfillment amid the waffle of internet influencers, ‘reality’ celebrity and brand name hypnosis! I await the new album with interest!
MATT SAXTON ‘Freedom’
(Bandcamp) (Download Single)
This is an electronic track with folktronica leanings that reminds me of John Grant. It’s a delight – like eating your favourite ice cream! Give it a listen while eating a Cornetto!
YOVA ‘Feel Your Fear’
(Bandcamp) (Download Single)
Unusual pop song from Yova – interesting, odd and compelling! Yova are a duo – with exposure they could be massive!
SALEM TRIALS ‘ESPERS SYC (See Your Crime)’ / ‘End of Level Boss’
(Metal Postcard) (Download Double A Side Single)
Excellent Double A Side from Salem Trials – ‘Espers SYC’ comes across like the Fall playing a speeded-up Joy Division ‘Exercise One’ – some nice jarring chords and fried bacon rhythm!
With singalongs like ‘reasonable doubt my arse’ it could become a staple at Strangeways Indie disco! The crime? Presumably using your intuition (ESP) – contravening Section 7 of the State Controlled Thought Act 2023.
‘End of Level Boss’ meanwhile conjures up the ghost of Ian Curtis dancing to James Brown after the sacked JB’s were replaced by a funky Sunn O))) – Mesmeric!
___/ALBUMS\___
OCEANS ‘Dreamers in Dark Cities’
(Bandcamp) (Vinyl/DL)
There are a few bands named Oceans but this particular band hail from Melbourne Australia. They sound like they have been listening to a lot of 1980’s indie music like the Sound, the Chameleons, New Model Army, Cocteau Twins, Pale Saints, Slowdive, The Scars.
‘Pure’ sounds like a poppier Pale Saints and is perhaps the best song on the album. “I just want to feel alive” he cries as the music rises in life affirming sonic radiance! ‘Apart’ reminds me of the Scars with touches of Ride and Pale Saints. ‘Feels Like You’ hints towards Slowdive, MBV and Ride.
‘Mike Tysong’ sounds like New Model Army circa ‘The Ghost of Cain’ but with vocals akin to Adrian Borland (the Sound of ‘The Lions Roar’ fame). ‘Soft’ has hints of The Chameleons guitar sound combined with vocals akin to Lush! ‘Look Into My Eyes’ employs the 3 / 4 rhythm beloved of The Cocteau Twins circa ‘Treasure’. An album of youthful energy and life affirming beauty. The songs are energetic, well-constructed and well-produced. I like the album, but the band need to bring more of their own creativity to the table so they sound like themselves rather than the sum of their influences. Once they find their own sound, they will be magnificent. They are part way there and I predict great things for them in the future.
CREEP SHOW ‘Yawning Abyss’
(Bella Union) (CD/Download Album)
Make no mistake, John Grant is a genius! As half of Creep Show he provides the moments of sheer joy! ‘Bungalow’ comes over like a song that could have been on any of his brilliant solo albums, post ‘Queen of Denmark’. It’s a fantastic vocal, the music dark, funny, sexy, – electronic music at its best and a good song to boot! Elsewhere we find him singing strange rhymes on the title track ‘Yamning Abyss’ – a song that grows on you with each play.
The band Wrangler are the other half of Creepshow. Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder sharing vocal duties on such tracks as ‘Moneyback’ – “You want your money back / I didn’t think so”! Overall, a fine return from Creep Show who are doing a short tour of the UK over the summer!
JEAN MIGNON ‘AN/AL’
(Metal Postcard) (Download Album)
Raucous debut album by New York based Johnny Steines. A mixture of high energy garage punk and high-speed rock and roll – it sounds like a live album such is the energy contained in the grooves!
‘Tackled By Men’ recycles parts of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, whilst ‘Canadian Exit’ has echoes of Warsaw’s ‘Failures’. If he can produce this excitement in a live-setting he willsurely make his own impact! Primal Rock and Roll that screams from the speakers andexcites like a high-speed car chase!
Key Tracks: All of them!
The BORDELLOS ‘Starcrossed Radio’
(Metal Postcard Records) (Download Album)
The latest release by St Helens finest is a cabinet of curiosities containing some wonderful lo-fi gems and hitherto lost standards!
Beginning with the glam stomp of ‘Attack of The Killer B-Sides’ – name checking great B- Sides by the likes of The Smiths, Stone Roses, The Beatles, Billy Fury, Shangri-Las, New Order, Rolling Stones, Mersey Beats etc… All delivered in a Mark Smith type drawl. Like any music fan, flipping a 45 over and discovering a great B Side was exciting and would lead to more investigation of the artist’s music.
‘Never Learn’ sounds like a lost standard to me – reminding of Morrissey when he was good, the accordion sound giving it a shade of the Pogues! The nice melody is under-pinned by what sounds like a balloon deflating, a synth or a cat being slowly trod on mixed with static and silence! Experimental brilliance!
‘Free New Music Day’ meanwhile takes the sound of the Doors Texas Radio and the Big Beat and transfers it to Northern England where you can ’take a cut price trip to the stars – singing Hallelujah in Karaoke bars’ – poetry from the streets Jim Morrison could only aspire to!
Other highlights include the strange melody picked out on guitar on ‘Sunk and Screwed’, which could be the theme to a weird kids cartoon! Oddly disturbing! I’m still humming it! ‘Vicious Circle’ could be a single. ‘Hurting Kind’ sounds like a lost Beach Boys campfire surf song – Brilliant!
The album ends with the sublime ‘Life Love and Billy Fury’ – a part electronic song where the melody or maybe some of the chord changes put me in mind of New Order without actually sounding like them! Great lyrics – another ‘lost standard’!
This album is one to treasure, an Aladdin’s cave of eclectic life affirming songs. The Bordellos are the fine web that holds the stars in place!
Monthly Playlist: April 2023: Circe, Micall Parknsun, Suki Sou, Carla Boregas, Ammar 808…
April 27, 2023
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH: TEAM EFFORT
The Monthly Revue playlist of 2023; a choice selection of tracks from the last month on the blog. Curated by Dominic Valvona with Matt Oliver on the Rap Control once more, and music from reviews by our latest recruit Gillian Stone plus Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Graham Domain and a returning Andrew C. Kidd. Expect to hear the unexpected as we leave you with this 45 track selection before we go off on a May sabbatical (well half of May, be back around the 15th with a packed schedule of choice music).
TRACKLIST//
Altın Gün ‘Çıt Çıt Çedene’
Ammar 808 Ft. Belhassen Mihoub ‘Yarima’
Les Abranis ‘Achethkhi’
Orti, Mayorga y Chiriboga ‘Muñequita Blanca’
Tuzeint ‘Mujer Divina’
United Grind Ft. Gamechangers ‘Doin This All Night’
King Kashmere & Alecs DeLarge ‘Most Blunted’
Neon Kittens ‘Loving Your Neighbour’s Wife’
Opus Kink ‘1:18’
Gabrielle Ornate ‘Delirium’
H. Hawkline ‘Plastic Man’
Land Of OOO ‘Matthew’
African Head Charge ‘A Bad Attitude’
Swans ‘Paradise Is Mine’
The Oldest Voice In The World ‘Talysh Mountain Border’
La Faute ‘The Crown’
fhae ‘Love You’
Alice ‘Triste et tout seul’
foil ‘Don’t Look’
Ali Murray ‘Spirit Of Unknowing’
Khotin ‘Lovely’
MultiTraction Orchestra ‘Reactor One’
Tobias Meinhart ‘Luna Park’
Deca & Ol’ Burger Beats ‘Blight’
Prastense & Shortrock Ft. Uncommon Nasa ‘A Broken Letter’
Micall Parknsun ‘Back’
Your Old Droog ‘Pronouns’
Illinformed Ft. Eric The Red ‘Doctor’
Silver Moth ‘Sedna’
Escupemetralla ‘Several specimens of ruminant animals with large udders chewing grass in a Cambridge meadow’
Sweeney ‘High School Damage’
Ale Hop & Laura Robles ‘Son de los diablos’
Cornelius Corvidae ‘Silver Flower’
James Howard ‘The Reckoning’
Draag ‘Mitsuwa’
Mike Cale ‘Slow Club’
Suki Sou ‘Petrichor’
Issei Herr ‘Aria’
Carla Boregas ‘A Cidade doe Outros’
Simon McCorry ‘Halcyon Fire’
CIEL ‘Somebody’
Tomato Flower ‘Destroyer’
Cindy ‘Earthly Belonging’
Circe ‘Riot Of Sunlight’
Chloe Gallardo ‘Bloodline’
Première: Renato Fiorito ‘Medusa’
March 29, 2023
TRACK PREMIERE
Dominic Valvona
Renato Fiorito ‘Medusa’
Taken from the upcoming Lustra album, released on May 4th by Non Sempre Nuoce
A votive offering of gratitude and devotion to the city he calls home, Renato Fiorito’s personal vision of Naples is the subject of the upcoming symphony, Lustra.
Following on from the Neapolitan composer, sound artist, live performer and sound engineer’s site-specific sound installation ‘Straight/Wandering’, commissioned and premièred at the 2022 Le Guess Who?! festival, this new concept album pays a special sonic homage to both Naples’ rich afflatus and street musical theatre and the bustling lives of its people; merging and filtering collected field recordings from across the city with passing melodies, reverberations of fleeting song, exchanges and a production of stirring, congruous electronica.
Straddling the bay looking out towards the Gulf, a fertile fecund in part because of its precarious proximity to Mount Vesuvius, Naples has perhaps one of the most incredible histories of any important city: in fact, perhaps one of the oldest continuously inhabited legacies too, stretching back to its foundation by the Greeks in the first millennium B.C. Fought over in that time by untold invaders, part of a number of forced (and more welcome) kingdoms, the people have still maintained a strong independent identity: a unique marriage of turmoil, violence and the sublime. Fiorito calls it a “place of ashes, blood; place of flowers and wine”. Artistically and culturally ascendant whilst the undead still linger in catacombs below the streets, a busy modern society attempts to navigate an archaic metropolis.
With a saintly “voto” alter on every street corner; a shopkeeper’s aria and promenade serenade competing to be heard above the rigged mufflers of mopeds, Lustra, as its “illuminate” translation describes, lightens up Naples psychogeography, shining a lens on the daily sounds, the unplanned, uncloyed captured moments when the industrial and abstract comes into contact with the musical. This manifests as mere evaporations, mirages or vapoured airs of a time and place; mirages often suffused with the sound of the sea rolling ashore, a crackling fire or the non-musical rhythm of play, of tools working away on some project or other. Serialism woven into a fabric of engineered sine waves, refractions, ambience, metallic and minimalistic percussive beats, the familiar becomes mysterious, holy, even ominous; the ephemeral now caught and bottled for posterity.
From that album, the Monolith Cocktail is premiering the vaporous, patted-beat turn subtle circular wave ‘Medusa’. “Jellyfish” or a reference to the mythological gorgon immortalised by all the Italian greats, including Naples fleeting wanderer Caravaggio, there’s a sense of under-the-surface breathes beneath the building granular and lightly churned textures.
Released on May 4th Lustra sees Fiorito once more collaborate with his sonic partner and fellow Neapolitan Antonio Raia on the crackling fireside, faint melodic and reflective softly rasped saxophone memory ‘3694’. Fiorito and Raia previously created the similar conceived Thin Reactions soundscape during lockdown in 2021, for the same Naples boutique label Non Sempre Nuoce (a track from which we premièred). The album’s only other named guests, the notable Suonno d’Ajere trio, can be heard on the well-known transformed aria ‘Mmiez’ ‘o Ggrano’; emerging from a filtered dream like submersion, a ether of singing, wave forms and subtle beats, their signature serenade of Neapolitan song pulls focus on the city’s dignified street musician heritage.
A new language formed from the musical history of Naples; its loves, devotions, desires and day-to-day interactions take shape in a contemporary field of ambience and downplayed electronica. You can pre order it now.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 