The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated short new music reviews, the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating playlist and a piece from the Archives.
Before you read on, and if by the end of reading this column you’ve enjoyed this selection/the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, please consider donating to the Monolith Cocktail blog’s Ko-Fi donation account. We are pretty much a one-man show with no sponsors or affiliations, and have sworn to never use or platform AI artists or use this tool in our own writing or research. Curated in a manner, each post and column is entirely self-motivated and beholden to no one. Please enjoy this month’s Digest column from MC founder Dominic Valvona.
___/NEW MUSIC REVIEWS SELECTION___
(All entries in alphabetical order)
bu.re_ ‘seasons in migration’
(AKP Recordings) 21st August 2026
Lower-case absorbed observations and measures of the seasons, as distilled through a both softened and gently piqued dappled lens, the latest traversed set of recordings from the L.A. born producer and multi-instrumentalist bu.re_ builds upon a process, a foundation and methodology to produce near weightless evocations of a familiar and yet almost abstract visceral capture of the seasonal changes.
If we want to get technical and precise, the quartet of tracks on this latest release from AKP Recordings is actually built upon a 12-chord progression, divided into four groups of chords; each of one of which lines up with and reflects a particular phase in the yearly cycle of the said seasons.
Ambience, the new age and Japanese environmental music prove complimentary in capturing the unfurling buds of Spring to the arrival of light poured rains and the lasting, expansive and near nothingness of a “tundra” environment recording that shifts its subtleties over the course of a whole long form suite: starting with a sort of thrashing and sieving sound before developing into Suzanne Ciani and Fairlight CMI-like waves, snuggled and mizzle and airy saxophone purrs, expansive horizon gazing synthesized vistas, and the floated specks of crystallised pollen.
Marking perhaps deeper meaningful episodes in the artist’s life, a reification of feelings invoked by watching such phenomenon, each beautifully conveyed piece is brilliant in its mood music encapsulation of sweltering mirages, roll out of an environment waking from its winter stupor and sleep and the blowy breaths of the wind arriving from a cooler North.
Impressions of Ariel Kalma, my old pal John Lane (going under his A Journey of Giraffes guise I’m reminded of his own homage of a kind to Susumu Yokoto on the Kono album), David Casper, Park Jiha’s summery vibraphone twinkles, and on the static slow released and languidly sax-pipped ‘heat simmer’, Matthewdavid and a restrained, Pharoah Sanders. For across the synthesised and the bulb shaped notes that materialise and float from the electric piano, and over the amorphous soundings of the tubular and bamboo, bu.re_ also adapts both the sax and flute to swan, breathe, waft, flutter its feathery wings and near hallucinate.
Gathered samples from over the last six years are transduced and made evocatively touching, contemplative and inviting when combined with an apparatus of electronic and wind instruments, processes and effects. A most diaphanously touched and sincere mused form of the four seasons, bu.re_ manifests so much more than just the weather and the measuring of the Calander months as they leave their mark upon milestones and concerns of a deeper nature.
Enfo ‘Small Modernist House In Woodland Setting’
(Subexotic Records) 14th August 2026
Despite the personality, the life stories, travails and hopefully more joyful and escapist episodes embedded within this opus-like scale journey from Enofa, I’ve pretty much ignored the research and notes to let the sounds, sonics, tape manipulations and melodic sweeps and soars of this generous eighteen-track album to speak and unravel their sensibilities and captured moods and experiences to me. I’m sure every suite and action has an explanation or series of prompted connections to the artist’s growth, anxieties and meditations, but to embrace without any prior judgement Small Modernist House In Woodland Setting is a both mysterious hauntology and surprising concepted work of ambience, field recorded and snatched sampled collage, disturbances in the soundscape fabric, environmental music and the exotic.
A fourth world vision in many ways that takes in timelines and evocations of periods from across history; from the near courtly and banquet music of the Medieval age and a weird folkloric England to vague chants and ceremonies from what could be Africa, South America and the Far East and Java. More Robert Musci and Glove of Bones than Hassell, but with the amorphous signatures of porous border leakages and influences of bamboo music, the tribal, the jug poured waters of an exotic garden retreat, the bowl reverberations of Lhasa you could be simultaneously and subtly taking in the worldly and off worldly.
It begins with the lushly Japanese-esque ritual karmas and spindled dulcimer-like tones of ‘The Wormery’ (reminded me of both Walter Smetek and a trumpet-free Don Cherry), and then both flows and disjoints with either surface noises or the unruly into passages of shaken dried beans or rice and ghostly waves of wooden tubular pole building on the speaking insect foliage chorus of ‘The Whispering Forest’ and the peculiar Staraya Derevnya and Lotus Eater’s plucked and twanged folkloric guitar mystical ‘Earthfasts’.
The album (or rather double LP) has its own recurring themes and signatures yet constantly expands and takes in an abundance of sources and influences; everything from an astral Mosquito Coast of reverberating hollas and pipped rituals (‘Interstitial’, which reminded me in part of both Elve and Amorphous Androgynous) to starry ecological trance and space mulch (‘Life Flower Totem’) and a more childlike discombobulation of toy instruments and radio tunning (‘Siobhan And Roisin Dance A Ceilidh’).
Metallic pins rain down whilst a Boyd Rice-like voice intones a gothic post-punk esoteric poignancy; motors judder and voices, interactions, aggro and choral voices lie in the undergrowth or the tape ether. Zen meditations overlap with the supernatural; cloud surfing beauty breaks away from the ominous soundscapes of Ramleh. A balance is kept throughout, as Enofa pulls the listener into an extraordinary travelogue and diary of memories, abstracted feelings and life changes. Anything but indulgent, it’s still a lot to take in, and the ambience of it may surprise when it turns corners and undulates with an eclectic spread of sound, the atonal, the discourse and the mysterious.
Nonturn ‘Repeating Town’
(Audiobulb Records) 22nd August 2026
Underlying this often pleasant and understated rhythm of the concrete is the idea of “how the city can be made to function as music”. Beats and loops created from the environment and resonance of Tokyo’s famous “bohemian” neighbourhood of Koenji are repeated, layered and placed on a 96 BPM grid and used as the basis of sampled material, with the results being a most ambient and minimal soundtrack of kinetics, soft industrials, reverberations and the tubular.
The alias of Kanazawa-born and Tokyo-based electronic composer Nozom Yoneda, the Nonturn project utilizes everything from the tools of construction to the traffic and architecture of a well-known musical underground (especially punk rock it’s said) and retail district in the Western regions of that metropolis. And all of it without the use of instruments, nor the obvious or familiar sounds of a buzzing city; transformed from their sources into a low rhythm and groove and set of looped or sampled sonics and ambience.
Every track is interesting in its style and mode of rhythm; from cupping sounds to the ringing of metallic reverberations, swept motions, scaffold and the warbled oscillations and vibrations and the pneumatic drills of machines. With some exceptions it makes for a softened post club absorption of Boards of Canada, Kriedler, Japanese Environmental music, and the early Warp label.
Those exceptions however, can be found in the form of the camera-like shutter snaps hollowed-out tubed captures of ‘Fathom’, and on the psychogeography of the industrial and more supernatural sounding ‘Disrupt’ – I’m convinced that the spirits of the district’s original temples, of which it is named after, are invoked through the mystical and spirit sounds that prick the metallurgy of the slab concreted exteriors; something seeping through from the back alleys in which the old has been hidden and rebuilt. The peeling of layers, of the daily actions and converse of a city district come alive through attentive and subtle uses of sampling and the transduced to create a most immersive sound world that grooves and rhythmically finds a connection with the concrete.
Sly & The Family Drone ‘With Love’
28th August 2026
Are they taking the piss? That discombobulation of provocative, riled up, multi-limbed distortions and dynamics, Sly & The Family Drone have only gone soppy on us? Well, at least with the title and the artwork of their latest instigated power play of no wave jazz and space rock transmogrification it seems their originally framed Valentine’s Day project is packaged in Barbara Cartland pink lace, satin and velvet; a single gloved hand laying a singular rose on a love heart shaped box of unknown delights. So, to all intents and purposes a romantic gesture; a sentimental wheeze.
A love letter to their fans perhaps, there’s a limited edition of twenty individually cut 12”s up for grabs, (if you’re asking, cut no less “in real time” by Michael Lawrence at Bladed Flier!) and a less limited version on pink and grey vinyl to devour. But I for one am not buying this Barbiefication for one minute, and once on the turntable it’s a whole different matter or meta of sonic infusions.
On this particular occasion, in this particular zone, the troupe corralled the talents ofmainstaytrick noise maker of various hazardous and dissonance electronic effects, voice and percussionist Matt Cargill, drummer and electronics dial turner Kaz Buckland,another electronicinstigator Ed Dudley (also credited here as voice), fellow trick noise conjuror and drummer Will Glaser, and tenor saxophonist James Allsopp. Attentive certainly to the forces in the room, this diverse cast of players and artists – their lives and projects criss-crossing with each other over the years, and too numerous and extensive to list here -, they group both send out feelers to the universal forces and concentrate their psychic antenna on the cosmic.
Not so dissimilar to their lunar evocations and Fortean dialled-up peregrinations and activities on Moon Is Doom Backwards, but somehow even more alien, and this time around seemingly evoking both Irmin Schmidt’s Alpha 77 switchboard and Gunther Wüsthoff’s box of tricks alongside Amon Düül II very own Yogi talks to the Interstellar Drive circular oscillations of acid-space take offs.
Yes, this is an intergalactic trip of varying fusions, with a constant prevailing presence of space zeppelin propellors (another nice ADII vibe), constant rattling rim and tribal forward momentum drums (think Battles and Art Blakey meets Jacki Liebezeit – especially his Cyclopean team up), transmitted crackles and electricity, and a blurting and skonking, far out use of saxophone (Donny McCaslin lands with the Pharoah in the backyard of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World).
Moonwalks in zero gravity and the wafted trippy Floydian synched up with the Wizard of OZ airs of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ drift across the fabric of space to bring the mood into an untethered slowdown of song Byrd impressions and astral traverses. But the action is mostly navigated towards portal tunnelled and magnetic spherical space rock jazz jams that escape out through one star gate and appear in another dimension.
Like Hawkwind and Agitation Free riding aboard the Chariots of the Gods whilst crashing Chris Corsano’s stage, With Love is a space sonic drama; the band projected to some alien craft heading through a psychedelic wormhole towards a rendezvous with the illustrated worlds of Chris Foss and Angus McKie.
Centrifugal forces are ripped and then slowly forced out into a space field of acid, no wave and cosmic cried jazz on this voyager around the solar system and beyond: even the inner space of the mind…albeit one cooked and fried on various red and blue pills. Now as for the love, well, there’s definitely some fun going on with a release of voices left to wail and echo in glee and silly mooning. A love-in with the astrophysics and the pursuit of cosmic uncertainty and beauty, all rolled into one incredibly organic-fed performance.
Marvin Tate ‘Controlled Burn’
(Amalgam Music) 29th August 2026
Not so much parred down or enervated as intimate, the maverick (idiosyncratic would be a good description) poet, author, performer, artist, radio host and songwriter polymath Marvin Tate lets loose and agitates a conscious and wise accumulated stream to the sonics and guitar sculptured fuzz and scuzz of the former Wilco multi-instrumentalist LeRoy Bach.
With a number of previous bigger ensemble collaborations under his belt, Tate now finds a more minimal, but no less atmospheric and evocative, sound board with his fellow Chicago foil. Although the close-tied combo is expanded to include both a cameo from the Chicago hot housed and international Anthem stalwart Ben Lamar Gay on synth flute – you can hear it on the purred tweet-y sounded fluted and organ bedded ‘Best Side’. An invitation is also made to another of the contemporary Chicago gumbo scene’s notable players, the drummer, composer and improviser Quinn Kirchner. Opening out the sound and dynamics a touch with his drums, Kirchner can be heard, just about, on the Eugene McDaniels flange and wavey keys unrequited split-up short ‘Love Bass (I Was Hoping)’; the drum pad slavishly lo fi and cymbal crashed electronic cLOUDDEAD meets TV on the Radio ‘Mosh Pit’ – the lyrics either a continuation or repeat of the metaphor used by Tate’s on Mike Reed’s 2023 The Separatist Party album -; and a scrunched near heavy rock-prog Sabbath via Iron Butterfly and hard jazz roll and thrash on the rock-out punky Bukowski ‘First You Hear’.
Tate’s inimitable loose phrasing, observations, deciphers, enigmas, questioning and street staged episodes of life in this hood or that comes across like a combination of Malcom Mooney, Amiri Baraka, Thomas Albert Fabio and a less naïve and goofy David Liebe Hart. Without the lecturing tone, nor on the attack, politics and social comments are delivered candidly with a visual description unlike any other. No one quite encapsulates a whole woeful episode from the life of hard knocks quite like him, whether its recalls back to his older brother with both a fondness but brutal ghetto honesty, or the travails and inherited traumas that continue to plague the mind set and daily interactions. And then there’s a lot of references, remarks, poetic beats about a love lost, a love pornified and a love that stills worthy long after it’s died on the vine of reminisce.
There’s actions and annunciations driven just as much by agitation and immediacy as by attentiveness and inquiry. From a Chicago set vision of Cain and Able to proving that he was listening all along, highlights includes amorphous crossovers into Southern country-spirituals on the near plaintive, resigned ‘Robin’; the “streets made him” and numerous great lines from the brotherly affection ‘Baller’; the near Krautrock electronic pulsed octave, signal fluctuating ‘Went For A Run’; and the Sunn O))) meets Craig Ward and Hendrix on a bad trip scuzzed and riled ‘ Darren’.
Can meets Bad Brains; a post-punk transference of blues-rock and Fluxus; the sonic and sound world that underlays each poetic entry is kept lo fi and stripped-back so as not to overpower or take anything away from Tate’s startling and descriptive prose and near hectors of both low and high art.
Vivid throughout, there’s no doubt as to the drive and creative spontaneity that arises and flows from Tate’s poetry book of realities and cultural flotsam; of the eternal struggles and implicit dramas and the colourful ensemble that make up the poet’s life.
___/THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOL. 109____
Yes, the same introductory paragraph and moan from this month. Despite Spotify’s many attempts to piss me off and burry my numerus playlists, I’m still persevering with the platform: more fool me. You may or may not have noticed holes and a smattering of said playlists suddenly disappearing. I’m pruning. And to be honest, after compiling over 300 of them since 2012 I’ve slowed down and fucked up my account to the point in which it has become tiresome to use. So, I’ve trimmed out those less popular playlists, and the ones with holes in them – various copyrights being either removed or now out of date, labels and those responsible for said artists and tracks either leaving the site or for some other reason taking down individual tracks from their catalogue without any explanation; luckily I’ve never, and I hope way too good at what I do to have ever included anything AI in my playlists over the years or recently, so that doesn’t hold as a reason.
In case you were wondering, or haven’t seen it on Reddit, social media posts or on notice boards, Spotify has at least decided to act by clamping down on AI created music, with some hilarious results as arbitrator of what constitutes the artificial and what doesn’t. There’s a methodology I’m told, which has unfortunately caught some true boba fide artists in the net. However, it was Spotify in the first place that was inventing and predominantly lifting up AI artists in their own playlists and on the platform as a whole.
By the way, if you are having trouble finding me on Spotify, I’m there under my name: DominicValvona.
And so, we come to this month’s Social, and the same old template of new and old tunes, cult and anniversary celebrating album tunes alongside some more recent ones that didn’t make the site’s Monthly playlist.
This month we pay our respects to Liverpool drummer and Teardrop Explodes totem Gary Dwyer, who’s death was announced by his former band mate David Balfe on the 10th August. The co-founding mainstay of the legendary post-punk-art band went on to also play on Julian Cope’s solo debut LP and serve as an integral part of the Liverpool scene. Dwyer has a couple of writing credits on the early singles and Kilimanjaro tracks ‘Laughing Gas’ and ‘Bouncing Babies’, and the later ‘In-Psychlopaedia’. I’ve gone with the first of those tracks, and one of my all-time favourites: I was obsessed for years, including in untold DJ mixes and shows.
Moving on to this month’s (or thereabouts) LP anniversaries, there’s select tracks from The Beatles’ Revolver (60 this month), with covers of ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ by Guadalcanal Diary and an all-out showtime version of ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ by Jackie Trent. Sharing that sixtieth accolade, The Walker Brothers’ Portrait, and Larry Young’s Unity. Two decades on and Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ transmogrified covers/homage, Kicking Against The Pricks, is unbelievably forty years old this month. Moving forward another decade, and making me feel all my years, The Sneaker Pimps’ Becoming X is now thirty years old. A new century and The Dears’ criminally underrated Gang Of Losers and equally passed-over Arts And Crafts album by Black Neon are both twenty this month. Closer to home, from 2016, I’ve decided to mark David West’s Peace And Love (featured below in the Archive section) and Ian Brennan’s in-situ recordings from Cambodia – Khmer Rouge Survivors: They Will Kill You, If You Cry.
The remainder of this month’s playlist includes cross-generational treasures and craziness and sublimity and headcases from across the globe and genres, including Connie Kim, The Exkursions, Royal Servants, Greg Foat, Pam Amsterdam, Yeah Yeah Noh, YAZ-KAZ, Thee American Revolution and many, many more…
The Complete Track List Is As Follows:
The Teardrop Explodes ‘Sleeping Gas’
The Walker Brothers ‘Saturday’s Child’
Royal Servants ‘Someone to Be with Me’
Jackie Trent ‘Got to Get You into My Life’
Sophie Baker ‘Paradise Lost’
Connie Kim ‘Doan Nguoi Lu Thu’
The Exkursions ‘Third Eye’
Thee American Revolution ‘Electric Flame’
Guadalcanal Diary ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’
Sneaker Pimps ‘Walking Zero’
Larry Young ‘Zoltan’
David West ‘Dream on Dreamer’
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ‘Sleeping Annaleah’
Battre Lyss ‘Vidsel-Sthlm, Enkel’
Frutos Del Pais ‘Todo Se Termina’
Soun San ‘Pjanch Meah (Defeat the Giant)’
Alice ‘Les fleurs’
The Black Neon ‘TX81Z’
The Dears ‘Ballad of Humankindness’
Yeah Yeah Noh ‘Cottage Industry’
Vasco De Mento ‘Nightmares’
YAS-KAZ ‘Bone Knife’
Piero Umiliani ‘Rivoluzionari’
Neuro…No Neuro ‘Spare One For Another’
Greg Foat ‘Blob #4’
Alarmist ‘CGI Sky’
Band of Holy Joy ‘I Got This Job On the Brutalism E’
Pan Amsterdam, Spice Programmers ‘Cutlery’
Kobalt 60 ‘Kaos from Order’
Baby Berserk ‘Entertainment’.
____/ARCHIVES_____
Plucked from the exhaustive archives’ sections of the site, released more or less a decade ago and reviewed on the site, David West’s languidly dreamy bedroom album, Peace Or Love.
David West ‘Peace Or Love’
Released by Tough Love, 5th August 2016
Languidly transducing his free and easy scraps of bedroom recordings into something resembling an album, the Pacific crossing maverick David West (based both in Australia and the USA) ties-down enough material to fashion eleven tracks for posterity on his latest release.
The follow-up to the Drop Out Of Collage cassette tape, Peace Or Love is a cornucopia of ideas, some fleeting others ambitious, delivered in the dreamiest gauze-y obscured way. Using a collage of samples, jams and more thought-out song suggestions, West sometimes meanders into somnolence, yet also stumbles into more fertile pastures.
His soft bulletins evoke a post-disco feel and groove on the funky keytar dance track, ‘Happiest Man In The Room’, and breezier, 99 Records meets Postcard ‘Au Contraire’. Somewhere between baggy indie and New Order, a synth pop 80s New York vibe is flittered with on the ‘heaven can’t wait’ poetic lilting ‘Dream On Dreamer’.
Purposely creating a lo-fi mood, West still hints at the bigger ideas. Strings (sampled I presume) can often be heard stirring throughout, lending either a plaintive note of mooning resignation or certain grandeur to proceedings. Vignettes such as ‘At Peace’ use them for a mixed emotional response: the title might suggest the comfort of death, and this bears out on the instrumental which is itself a mournful and ambient noise collage that features strange scrambled flickers of something from beyond the earthly realm.
Shifting genres, ‘Do You Miss Me Around’, with its overloaded noise gate distortions, sounds like a stab at No Age, and the first of a three-act suite, ‘Darkness In My Heart’ has an air of Wolf Parade. Touches, no matter how slight, of Tim Goldsworthy, ESG, Archie Bronson Outfit ‘Chunk’ period, Young Marble Giants and even Cabaret Voltaire all seem to make an appearance. And with contributions from an axis of San Fran/LA/Perth friends and West’s various stints with the Red Columns, Liberation and Rank/Xerox to expand and inspire the musical horizons, Peace Or Love is filled with some interesting hybrids and possibilities.
The Monthly Playlist selection of choice music, plus our Choice Albums list from the last month.
We decided at the start of the year to change things a little with a reminder of not only our favourite tracks from the last month, but also a list of choice albums too. This list includes both those releases we managed to feature and review on the site and those we just didn’t get the time or room for.
All entries are displayed alphabetically.
Meanwhile, our Monthly Playlist continues as normal, with all the choice tracks from May selected by Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
CHOICE RELEASES FROM THE LAST MONTH OR SO:
A Single Ocean ‘S-T’
Review
The Balloonist ‘Dreamland’
(Wayside & Woodland) Review/Piece
Black Liq & Dub Sonata ‘Much Given, Much Tested’
The Bordellos ‘Liam Gallagher’
(Metal Postcard)
Cumsleg Borenail ‘It’s Your Collagen Not Your Conversation I Desire, My Pretty’
Famo Mountain ‘For Those Left Behind’ – This month’s cover art
Fir Cone Children ‘Gearshifting’
(Blackjack Illuminist Records) Review
LIUN + The Science Fiction Band ‘Does It Make You Love Your Life?’
(Heartcore Records) Review
Neon Crabs ‘Make Things Better’
(Half Edge Records) Review
SAD MAN ‘Art’
(Cruel Nature Records) Review
Staraya Derevyna ‘Garden Window Escape’
(Ramble Records/Avris Media) Review
Tomo-Nakaguchi ‘Out Of The Blue’
(Audiobulb Records) Review
Zavoloka ‘ISTYNA’
AND NOW, THE MONTHLY PLAYLIST::
LIUN + The Science Fiction Band ‘SPEAK TO ME’
SISTER WIVES ‘YnCanu’
Neon Crabs ‘J Spaceman’s Blues’
Fir Cone Children ‘Madness!’
A Single Ocean ‘White Bright Light’
Your 33 Black Angels ‘Your Sickness Solution’
Dabbla, Ghosttown, Dubbledge ‘Karate Good’
Black Liq & Dub Sonata ’10 Black Commandments’
Homeboy Sandman & Brand The Builder ‘Infinite Pockets’
Milena Casado ‘Yet I Can See’
Wildchild ‘Change For 2 Cents’
The Strange Neighbour & L One ‘625’
Pan Amsterdam & Leron Thomas ‘Evening Drive’
Famo Mountain ‘My Struggle To Survive’
Orain ‘Tangerine’
Smashing Red ‘Dark Eyed Girl’
Meggie Lennon ‘Running Away’
Dyr Faser ‘Sinister Dialogue’
Battle Elf ‘Stops Pretty Places’
Violet Nox ‘Strange Remix by Jonathan Santarelli’
Tomo-Nakaguchi ‘Indigo Line’
Tom O C Wilson ‘Better Off’
The Mining Co. ‘Treasure in Spain’
Oliver Earnest ‘Directionless’
The Bordellos ‘Cabbage Patch Doll Kiss’
Mama Oh No ‘Samba De Janeiro’
Zavoloka ‘Vesnianka’
Cumsleg Borenail ‘Signus Vectors’
OvO ‘Scavo’
Fatboi Sharif & Driveby ‘Swim Team Audible Function’
Cosmic Ear ‘Father and Son’
Staraya Derevnya ‘Tight-Lipped Thief’
Operation Keep The monolith Cocktail Afloat:
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last 15 years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones 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 or interest in. 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 say thanks or show support, than you can now buy us a coffee or donate via https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail
Hip-Hop Roundup/Matt Oliver
Singles
A miniature singles round-up this month – blame it on the boogie – but a good pair of twofers all the same to kick off the latest referendum-ready Rapture & Verse. Ken Masters articulating like the clappers over a glitzy gala of a bossa nova loop is a very good thing indeed: hear now the sweet sound of ‘Fresh Air’. As part of the Badroaches team with Torb the Roach, he also sets sail on a mystic river as an ambassador of ‘Cosmic Viking Wizard Funk’, capable of administering bad juju. Open Mike Eagle continues to go from strength to strength, ‘What Happens When I Try to Relax’ a half dozen cracking open of his brick bodied skull that blasts arena-sized synths and shrunken beats equally projecting unique visions made gospel truth. Entertaining wordplay that’s as much about satisfying his own high standards in syllable practice. He then teams with Pan Amsterdam on the calmingly engrossing ‘No Snare’, a sharing and airing of respective kooks over a jazzy groove to be welcomed like a summer flashback.
Albums
Beneath the floorboards of ‘Mansion 38’, Jam Baxter orchestrates ‘Touching Scenes’, lo-fi gloom and scarred wit capable of exploding off the page. Appearances from Rag n Bone Man and Kate Tempest show the strength of Baxter’s blurred mind racing into HD – still no slouch when everything says otherwise – as he and Chemo on production ooze into every nook and cranny, handing you a surgeon’s blade to dissect the depth of their dark circles. A tightrope walk slumping against a pressure cooker.
Back in no time at all, Lee Scott continues to skewer the world, this time bringing the lung butter to the soiled surveillance camera sounds of Reklews as Hock Tu Down. Both exhibit punch-drunkardness on ‘Hock Tu 3’, like looking at the world through a spoon, yet are unputdownable: mind control by and for misfits and malevolent spirits – after all, “reality is what you make it, even if there’s no-one to corroborate it”. No need to read between the lines when CNT come to town, the Code Name Theory of Manage and Blitz insisting you cup an ear on ‘Sounds About Right!’ Beats and rhymes are soaked in honest Brit bitterness, mind’s eye doing double shifts on the beguiling ‘Need Guidance’, and the care with which they take their craft means their messages always carry in the right way.
‘The Post Apocalyptic Story Teller’ is a role where Chester P earns his golden handcuffs, casting end day tales and folk-angled parables fit for today’s diminishing civilisation. Long a master of vividly narrating from the no man’s land beyond the street corner, the mediaeval and the evil that men do will have you huddling round, but in full blast of a frosty Task Force reception. No slip-ups on D Tail’s ‘Happy Accident’, slick and swift grime-trained rhymes taking to hip-hop funk with impudence and asking some searching questions along the way. Toss a mic in his direction and he’ll always be ready to respond en masse: a final posse cut involving Ras Kass and Leaf Dog shows he’s got the goods. A compact cross section of instrumental despair and beats seeking emcees to bruise knuckles with, Nick Roberts dips into ‘False Consciousness’, with Dizzy Dustin, Pudgee tha Phat Bastard, Ash the Author and Cyrus Malachi taking advantage of when the producer isn’t longingly working the MPC with a wistful glint. No false moves made by anyone here.
Rugged but always smooth, Apollo Brown painting pictures with Joell Ortiz on ‘Mona Lisa’ is a great, late end of year candidate that’s reflective with a forked tongue and makes the stoop sofa-soft. Able to turn nasty on a sixpence (‘Cocaine Fingertips’ is as sharp as a Kruger manicure), there’s a lot of comfort to be taken from the union of two opposing authority figures exercising supreme quality control, transfixing you like you’re intimately eyeballing the pair’s much ogled muse.
Many parallels can be drawn from Masta Ace and Marco Polo’s ‘A Breukelen Story’, which save for tired skits piping up, is a similar exertion of concentrated strength. An immovable flow that has never let the former down, inimitably representin’, knowing the ‘ledge or reeling off what might have been, takes over production capitalising on a previous hook-up and taking in plenty of fresh, buzzing for autumn air, content on letting the words take the spotlight (even if Pharoahe Monch threatens to upstage everyone on final track ‘The Fight Song’).
The moreish ‘Pieces of a Man’ is Mick Jenkins knowing how to work a crowd. Powered by the woozy, a retreat nudging over into the club with keys constantly paddling, just when you think he’s coasting with the heat off, the Chicagoan plucks it out of the fire with a turn of phrase, concept, or one-liner more damaging than the casual ear can locate. “I be on my show and prove, not my show and tell” – persevere with it and the layers will reveal themselves. A mix of reluctant popstar, drifter hip-hop and traditional Midwest spin, deM atlaS tells the crowd to get lighters up in anticipation of jumping into them. Produced by Ant of Atmosphere, ‘Bad Actress’ is all showman, taming himself after exuberant opening exchanges. The wearing of multiple hats won’t be for everyone: the vulnerability, rap/rockstar/R&B whims, heart-to-hearts, including a remake of Mobb Deep’s ‘Where Your Heart At’, and development of a spectacle, could unlock a lot of new ears.
This month’s Ronseal album: ‘Grimey Life’ by Big Twins, a 15 track upkeep of realness delivered in shredded ghetto baritone. All the street consumption you could possibly ask for, flooded with blood, sweat and tears. Meanwhile in mid-apocalypse Ontario, Lee Reed’s ‘Before & Aftermath’ announces itself as a timebomb, an anti-establishment front row provocateur refusing to accept easy answers. Drums and funk kick down doors like the crooked figures in Reed’s crosshairs, with a twang dragging Your Old Droog and Vast Aire into the fire. Cherried by the all inclusive ‘Fuck Em’, you can’t spell renegade without the name Reed: burn speakers burn.
‘The Beat Tape Co-Op’ 10th anniversary compilation from 77 Rise rounds up 30 instrumental cameos and bite-sized boom bap bops, laced with soul slipping down the hourglass. The likes of Kuartz, Dr Drumah, Ben Boogz, Klim Beats and Profound79 put in the neck work and make their presence felt on a selection where it’s okay to touch that dial. ‘Dressed for CCTV’ by Aver avoids being a Hard-Fi tribute and gets knee-deep in instrumental murk glistening with a sharp film, dredging for drums and coming up with intriguing droplets of gold to create an atmosphere where emcees fear to tread, save for Cappo manning up on ‘Something from Nothing’. A classy retread of trip hop’s noir-ish particulars.
The spectre of the late Alias looms large on ‘Less is Orchestra’, enabling the supervillain flow of Doseone’s effusive battery acid gargles – scarier when he reaches dog whistle levels – with a cavernous, chrome-finished bunker of wires, pulses and logical mechanoid scurries. A game of good cap bad cop launching the Anticon equivalent of the bat signal.
Taking the street into the club and vice versa, Swizz Beatz’ strong ‘Poison’ brings the fuel, Lil Wayne, Giggs, Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz and Young Thug add the fire. It was never gonna be an album of modest contemplation (though quieter storms reserved for Nas and Pusha T don’t disrupt the sequence), but it’s still a pretty good, well condensed elbow sharpener with everyone on their game.
Look out for the Monolith Cocktail end of year album roundup coming soon, chock full of Rapture & Verse’s favourites from over the last 12 months.
Quarterly Playlist Revue of 2018: Part Two: Ammar 808, Warmduscher, Dr Octagon, Grimm Grimm and more…
June 12, 2018
Quarterly Playlist 2018: Part Two: Choice tracks from the last three months.
Welcome to part two of the Monolith Cocktail’s carefully selected and put-together quarterly playlist revue of 2018. Featuring an eclectic mix of ‘choice’ new music, re-releases and recently dug-out nuggets, all released in the last three months of the year, the blog’s staff (well me, Dominic Valvona, and our resident hip-hop fanatic Matt Oliver) have, as usual, produced a lively, sometimes meditative, at times distressed and harrowing, playlist.
Twisted dark arts sit next to cosmic sounds from the Maghreb; peregrinations flow into more steely razor sharp post-punk; and key hip-hop pontifications go hand-in-hand with shoegaze and the psychedelic. But as always, the musical flow will take you to all the most interesting locations, and hopefully introduce you to something you’ve never heard before.
Tracklist in full:
London Plane ‘New York Howl’ Review
Josh T. Pearson ‘Straight To The Top!’ Review
The Seven Ups ‘Stampede’
Homeboy Sandman & Edan ‘#NeverUseTheInternetAgain’ Review
Lee Scott & Jazz T ‘What If Lee Was A Super Dope Rapper In 1988?’ Review
The Nonce ‘Chocolate Cake’ Review
Warmduscher ‘Standing On The Corner’
Samba Toure ‘Yefara’ Review
The Turbans ‘Zawi’ Review
David Dor ‘Sapri Tama’
Hany Mehanna ‘Mouna’
Bernard Estardy ‘La Route Au Tabac’
The Magic City Trio ‘Black Dog Following Me’ Review
Grimm Grimm ‘Still Smiling’ Review
Black Light white Light ‘Forward Backwards’ Review
Matt Finucane ‘Damn Storyteller’ Review
Canshaker Pi ‘Pressure From Above’
Ammar 808 ‘Bognga & Sandia’ Review
Shimshon Miel ‘Amsterdam Experience’
The Mauskovic Dance Band ‘The Opposite’
Black Thought ‘9th vs. Thought’ Review
Pan Amsterdam ‘The Lotion Song’ Review
Del The Funky Homosapien ‘Humble Pie’ Review
Brownout ‘Don’t Believe The Hype’
Dr. Octagon ‘Operation Zero’ Review
Sad Man ‘Parrot’ Review
Yonatan Gat ‘Projections’ Review
Die Wilde Jagd ‘2000 Elefanten’ Review
Elefant ‘Norsun Muisti’ Review
Lucy Leave ‘Look//Listen’ Review
Bas Jan ‘Argument’
Sudan Archives ‘Pay Attention’
Georgia Greene ‘Lonely For You’
Evil Bone ‘In Vain’ Review
The Bordellos ‘Fading Honey’ Feat
Anton Barbeau ‘Secretion Of The Wafer’ Review
Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ Review
Thomas Nation ‘Hold My World’ Review
The Lancashire Hustlers ‘Consider Me’ Review
Alex Stolze ‘Way Out’ Review
Crayola Lectern ‘Rescue Mission’
Tanzania Albinism Collective ‘Albino’
Spiritualized ‘A Perfect Miracle’
Rapture & Verse: May 2018:
May 24, 2018
HIP-HOP REVIEW: WORDS: MATT OLIVER
Singles/EPs
If you can look away from Kanye rediscovering his Twitter password, here’s the new Rapture & Verse to clog up your social media feeds with self-amusing jpegs, resent at royal wedding snubs, and wondering who’ll step up next after J Cole’s ‘KOD’ and Childish Gambino’s ‘This is America’. The saga continues when Salar examines the ‘Demigod Complex’, whose who-wants-some rhymes come wrapped in dynasty strings measuring you for a horse’s head. S. Kalibre takes the weather personal on ‘Sun and Rain’, a quiet storm looking for a sliver of light in burdened times. Bluesy keys and dipping sunshine won’t hold back Fliptrix, asserting ‘It’s Like That’ with bladed precision synching syllables against the shimmer. “If the bars don’t get ‘em, then the flow will” – Legion of Goon lump you with extra credit, ‘AIOFO’ and ‘Flashing Lights’ keeping up their strain of witty unpredictable. ‘Lock Your Doors’ is a pretty flimsy means of resistance once Ramson Badbonez does his best Jack Torrance impression, and ‘Safe’ by Kalieon won’t provide shelter from a measured pounding of the streets battling uphill.
The sweg of sarky master Lee Scott continues unabated, ‘Oh, The Fun We’re All Having’ a seven tracker finding pleasing ways to rise up from his customary wit pricking dulled psychedelica. ‘When It Rains It Pours’, and when Lewis Parker reaches cucumber temperature, it’s normally a keys and breeze classic, smoothness to the Nth degree with Verbz on the mic a good fit for street forecasting. Three times for your mind, the P Brothers’ buccaneering ‘Mentaltainment’, with Daniel Son, Doo Wop, Your Old Droog and Milano picking up and brandishing the baton, does heavyweight jail breaking you’ll lose your shoes over. On 2018’s system update of ‘don’t touch that dial’, Homeboy Sandman and Edan attempt to break superhighway shackles and ‘#NeverUseTheInternetAgain’, a fun old skool caper with a hook from the rooftops capping exasperated moral guardianship/public health warning.
Interesting spoken word/rhyming at both ends of the candle from Lausse the Cat tells the tale of ‘The Girl, The Cat and The Tree’. A cosy jazz bedding of some splendour can show its claws, and the comfortably muted storytelling joins the dots between telltale realities of love and life, and what’s going on through the looking glass. The powerful, stark prose and spectacle in the spotlight of ‘Without Certainty’ has Ceiling Demons speaking up in a bid to bring a pertinent good cause to the fore: job done if it strikes a chord or doesn’t leave you sitting comfortably. “Emotional damage, you know I’m a vet” – at the junction of heartbreak ridge and breaking point, WLK’s ‘The Gry’ EP is a bid for survival knocking you sideways: industrially scalded, claustrophobic in surround sound, and lashing out when rationality evaporates. With a Guilty Simpson-esque roughness around the edges, MIKE’s ‘Black Soap’ EP is a steel wool wash of loops and freestyle static circling the drain, that gruff command structuring and keeping heads above water.
Albums
A whiny, shrill, eyeballs bulging flow researching Cage at the height of his neuroses with a dash of Chester P: that’s the mist of Eric the Red descending on ‘Caught Red Handed’. Eric’s mugshot is front and centre while Illinformed helps himself out back, in prime form with 14 shots to the dome and his own mutinous agenda. A swift in and out job, as much about partnering in crime as trying to stitch one another up, this is a thick cut of hella lairy British beef.
Spraying bars to bleach your grey cells and decreeing “I’d rather be real shallow than fake deep”, Lunar C has got the smarts to back the undoubted brat factor. ‘Dirtbrain’ rides mischief and sledgehammers found on grime stairwells (see the scales-breaking ‘Skwolla’), with WTF wordplay goading the rewind button. But canny operations that could well take him further, show his strength for the gift of gab beyond gobbing off. Ain’t no such things as halfway crooks, but there is The Mouse Outfit’s ‘Jagged Tooth Crook’, which is neo-soul, nailed. Manchester’s late night live band stick to the script and show the usual steady steps spiced by a rota of emcees and guests.
With assistance from Earl Sweatshirt and Knxwledge, Denmark Vessey’s ‘Sun Go Nova’ is a laborious half and half of rhymes most ears won’t be ready for, and a turnaround of instrumentals riffing off of needle fluff. “For lack of a better word, it’s alternative and leftfield” says the man himself, which is putting it mildly. An insurgent radio station needing the deftest of twiddles to lock onto, follows an audience address admirable for its single-mindedness, chipping away at your defences.
If the origins and whereabouts of Pan Amsterdam lead your search engine down a dead end, ‘The Pocket Watch’ shrugs ‘so what?’ if its skittish ghetto Jackanory leads you down a rabbit hole/Never-Netherlands. Easily distracted with thought pieces of no why and wherefore, the coolest town crier refuting time and space that you’d never imagine medicates to funk, jazz and electro paying low rent but giving glints of bygone razzle dazzle. Unfazed, unconstrained, and easily up for cult listen of the year.
Instrumental scaremongering from Dew8 offers a one-way ticket to a two-way street of the outer limits and no man’s land with lo-fi ghoulishness, ‘Pigeon Feed’ perfecting the classic of letting your ears fill in the gaps for what horrors will follow. Parallel altered state ambience and patent anxiety from Sam Zircon reserved ‘For Shipping and/or Storage’ is like trying to piece together the ghosts of dreams past, offering sub zero degrees of nostalgic comfort and a boom bap itch that you can never quite get to.
Solidify your summertime listening with Dumi RIGHT’s ‘Doing It The Right Way’, the Zimbabwe Legit emcee doing user-friendly consciousness with help from Mr Lif and Mike G of the Jungle Brothers; a good one to throw on once debate breaks out over beers and barbeque. Follow suit with Offwhyte’s ‘Both Sides of the Mississippi’, packing contemplative punch from that fairly gentle, ever fluent flow of his, where rhymes manifest over perfectly matched beats until he’s the last man standing. More fire from The Doppelgangaz tells you to open wide and say ‘Aaaaggghh’. Tinted a little darker than their rockingly good ‘Dopp Hopp’, still crossing from East to West but like they’ve dimmed the high beams on the low-rider (‘Slay Bells’ demands are you listening), all praise remains due to The Cloak from one of the baddest assed pairs out there.
The love of lexicon is still the apple of Paul Barman’s eye. More than meets the ear in his answer-for-everything, stimulator kook role, ‘Echo Chamber’ carries on closing the gap between potent politics, funky lounge lizard off-the-tops and bizarre hypotheses, burrowing its way through the toughest of leather bound volumes to have you picking the bones out for weeks on end. A supporting cast of ?uestlove, Mark Ronson, Open Mike Eagle, Prince Paul, DOOM and Masta Ace means it’s not far from frickin’ awesome. Blu and Shafiq Husayn’s flaky ‘The Blueprint’ has funk to be found, but sounds like it’s constantly going in and out of tunnels while it breaks down gang divisions and geography by the most basic means possible.
Some proper old skool, four-track business out of Cali produces a re-up of The Nonce’s ‘1990’, the Project Blowed affiliates finding their feet with De La Soul-style rhymes, pointers towards Peanut Butter Wolf & Charizma and The Pharcyde, and interplay and concepts (little metaphor needed for the napkin-tucking ‘Chocolate Cake’) getting the most out of raw materials. Royce da 5’9” continues to go from strength to strength when unlocking the ‘Book of Ryan’, piled high with battles and confessionals, life lessons and fears to open eyes and ears. Given the LP’s length, ‘I’m not getting better, I’m just getting started” will make you think twice if you thought you knew everything about the man already.
With so much drama in the CNT it’s kinda hard being the LDZ. Funky DL does GTA, and Sam Krats has got the cream.
Matt Oliver’s Essential Hip-Hop Review
So, it turns out that 50 Cent isn’t a bitcoin millionaire after all. And that Talib Kweli found about the Black Star album reunion on the internet, like the rest of us. So Rapture & Verse has had its fingers burnt while attempting to keep ‘em on the pulse. We’ve been consoling ourselves instead with the possibility of that zillion dollar Wu-Tang album being relisted on eBay – we’re more likely to bid on that than go for a Record Store day reissue of Cam’ron’s finest hour – and that a trip to Busta Rhymes Island (a legitimate map location, not a Flipmode Squad theme park) could be just the job to escape this frightful weather.
Singles/EPs
Del the Funky Homosapien and Amp Live – not in the roles of Nicky Campbell and Carol Smillie – wheel up the ‘Wheel of Fortune’, a banger that pleasingly doesn’t travel straight up and down as the club dictates. Music to fry by, ‘Fajita Effect’ is the Doppelgangaz letting loose another dollop of that ‘Dopp Hopp’, East-to-West funk that’ll make you guard your grill. MED and Guilty Simpson pledge ‘Loyalty’ with a set of easygoing back-and-forths nudging you to fling your windows wide open, save for ‘Face Down’ making you eat mat.
‘Donkey Punch!’ from Wundrop & Kemastry is here to make an ass of us all, an unsteady hallucination turned into actual fact. More Juga-Naut for you on ‘Found Objects’ means more East Midlands elitism, striking blows and a pose over half-inched favourites and rocking some of his own wares with a dissertation worth of references to chew over. The right honourable Harvs le Toad gives the airwaves some zing with ivory tinkler ‘Minty Fresh’, Vitamin G and Louis Loan tipping their hat to a beatsmith taking his jazz all the way to Walford.
Pragmatic in the face of joy, lo-fi curio ‘Plus One’ by Pan Amsterdam balances spring-has-sprung strings with a deadweight flow locked between Jonwayne and Count Bass D. Killer horns lift the firing Bishop Nehru up to the ‘Rooftops’, and ‘The Mood’ lifted by Smoke DZA featuring Joey Bada$$ would be relegated to just another trapper by numbers were it not saved by a lovely ice cream van riff wafting over the top. Back with a new set of scalpels, Dr Octagon – Kool Keith, Q-Bert and Dan the Automator – prescribe a one-way ticket to ‘Area 54’, full of that ‘cosmetic, kinetic, ultramagnetic” good stuff measuring you for a bodybag.
Albums
Calming yet still able to speak up, Ty’s ‘A Work of Heart’ almost feels like a magic carpet ride over the capital’s skyline, especially with singles ‘Brixton Baby’ and ‘Eyes Open’. Or the navigating of London backstreets like it’s a gambol though the countryside, despite there always being potholes en route. Or set adrift on memory bliss before stubbing its toe. You get the idea, so come and spread your arms if you really need a hug.
Apathy’s continued research into finding six million new ways for you to pop your clogs, means ‘The Widow’s Son’ is a fourteen round fight for your life (the title track calling in a favour from He-Man). Producers DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Buckwild, Nottz and Stu Bangas spread out in a bid to keep up with punchlines and wordplay battling into the fantastical. Remember, “while you rocking man-buns, I’m cocking handguns”. The second Prhyme instalment of Premier and Royce 5’9” continues their restoration job of hip-hop integrity. It still might not be enough for hardcore dream team assemblers, yet there are far worse concepts than an emcee extending his hot streak right from the off, and the producer richly rounding out the boom bap rat-a-tat, without either stuttering in stride.
Black Milk confidently advises you to catch his ‘Fever’, smooth neo-soul style that keeps your ear pressed hard to the speaker, and whose live band wisdom is velvety enough to give you a universally appealing education that cuts through the smoke. 2018 has another seat filled for best of reservations come Christmas.
It’s rare for an instrumental album/beat tape to sound so luxurious, but Calvin Valentine isn’t skimping when putting his feet up in the ‘Plush Seats’, 20, sub two minute silk cuts of soul and funk to have you glued to your pew. On the clunkier but no less funkier side, Exile’s excerpt in the ‘Baker’s Dozen’ series chops away to great effect, treating the MPC like a punch bag and still able to get smooth with it. ‘Sunlight Grace/O\Moonlight Vibes’ tells you all you need to know about Sai Wai, a pulse-steadying emcee keeping fires burning once jazz has closed shop for the day and has a date with a long hot bath in mind. Good for what ails you.
Still sounding like they’re working on Her Majesty’s Secret Service and still not giving the game away, The Herbaliser’s ‘Bring Out the Sound’ mixes lavish funk escapades with hip-hop involving peak-time Rodney P and beats styled as B-boy informants. Also eating away at hip-hop’s wider possibilities, Cut Chemist steps up to add songs and scope to his signature turntable torque. Edan, Mr Lif, Chali 2na, Myka 9 and Biz Markie fulfil mic duties as wings are spread into dusty, enquiring indie-dance and electronica that helps build an intriguing album that’s more a fluid soundclash than dazed collision.
Germany’s DJ Obsolete lays down jazzy failsafes in the field of pleasantly mature, springtime-in-the-90s boom bap, with features from Blabbermouf, Gee Bag, Warpath and Nomadic. ‘The Mandela Effect’ pays careful attention to expectations of the headnodders panel, and keeps it swift and to the point. Inviting you to wallow with them in sour times, the dejection of Dove Rock and Jackson Jones’ ‘A Pretty Way of Saying Ugly Things’ points loops downwards and posts spiritedly accepting lyrics peering over the fence, way too smart for being moored in the back of beyond. Gritty, windswept drama on a countdown to D-day, you shouldn’t expect anything else from the John Does also known as The Incredible Disappearing Man. On their eponymous album, grimly determined rhymes keep their head, buffeted and taunted by beats bound by the hands of fate.
For those up for some “unapologetic nerdcore boom bap schizophrenia”, Dngr Eyelnd open ‘A Lovely Room of DEATH’, a destination plastered in warning signs yet one where the madness is kept methodical, an intimidator honouring beats and rhymes protocol by arguing that “if this ain’t real hip-hop, then Taylor Swift is classic rock”. Make your reservation now. The tumultuously grungy Moodie Black and their symbol for ‘Lucas Acid’ fill the moshpit with feedback and threats, death rattles and loud, industrial spite; not a place for smiley faces. ‘Bulletproof Luh’ comes cultish – an at-odds flow from Mach Hommy stone-facedly seeks a ride or die chick, over far more adventurous, self-produced sampledelic beats.
Mixtapes
He’s been there, done that, got the T-shirt and now has the Presidential cap to match. DJ Yoda’s ‘Make Mixtapes Great Again’ is his usual long shot of heavyweight hip-hop, TV and pop nostalgia, declassified secret weapons and mischief closing the gaps in between. Expect Prodigy in combat with Bob Holness, KRS-One duetting with Bobby Brown, Paul Barman taking a sleigh ride, a 128K version of ‘Forgot about Dre’, Huey Lewis and The News, and so on and so on.
This month’s moving pictures: C.A.M. takes to the streets, Quelle Chris & Jean Grae take it to the arcade, 4orce and King Kashmere take a hike, and the late Craig Mack shows who’s boss.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 