THE MONTHLY DIGEST INCLUDES A CLUTCH OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC REVIEWS PLUS VOLUME 97 OF THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST.
Cosmic Ear
___/THE NEW___
LIUN + The Science Fiction Band ‘Does It Make You Love Your Life?’
(Heartcore Records) 23rd May 2025
In the making for five years the latest release from the alliance between the vocalist, artist, bandleader Lucia Cadotsch, producer and saxophonist Wanja Slavin and an ensemble of woodwind, strings and brass and electronic foils, is a magic electroacoustic trip of fantasy and fairytale.
With a voice that floats over contours, swirls, piques, spins, scales, plunges and drops, the dreaminess of Cadotsch is enhanced by an attentive soundtrack that is simultaneously dramatic, theatrical and musical. And yet it’s all somehow tethered to the urban, with its use of electronica (from synth pop to breakbeat and trip-hop) and often subtle but deep bass vibrations and near alien and imposing atmospheres.
Questioning and testing the boundaries without ever falling apart nor sounding incongruous, every turn and sound is perfectly balanced; from the near swells of orchestration that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Hans Zimmer or David Arnold score, to the jazzy woodland spritely breakbeating woodwind evocations of Otis Sandsjö found on the orbital progressive-jazz celestial ‘Bloody Breakup’ – the latter reference is unsurprising, as one of Cadotsch’s other projects, the Speak Low Trio, includes both Sandsjö and Peter Eldh amongst its ranks.
Everything is channelled into a concrete tripsy fusion of contemporary dance and the balletic, with the themes, the language translucently yet deeply connective; a yearn or near wistful set of observations on modern romance, attachment/detachment, place, belonging, and finding your feet and legacy in an increasingly cold and hostile environment. Titles include a reference to the iconic movie dame Faye Dunaway, who has gone through the mill herself, a unique tough singular talent hampered by travails aplenty, mental health, alcoholism, and the focus last year of a major (and candid) documentary, and an innocuous but curiously and inspired observed daddy longleg.
Though Swiss herself, most of Cadotsch’s partners in this union are from or work in Berlin, where this album was forged. The groundwork and ideas of which began back at the start of this decade. Does It Make You Love Your Life? was ushered in and helped on its way by Kurt Rosenwinkel, the American jazz guitarist and polymath who not only plays the synth on this album but also releases it on his own label Heartcore Records.
The talent pool is in no question, the enablers and musicians that join the mizzle and fuzzed, the blizzard-like chuffs, the lifting and raspy saxophone odes, etudes, cycles and sentiments of Slavin’s cinematic, stage and jazzy saxophone, and Cadotsch’s often melisma vocals adding an extended flavour of the playful, the worldly, the sentimental, the classical and avant-garde. At times this sound palette invokes a touch of Southeast Asia, of Indonesian Gamelan, and at others, like a strange version of a Satie music box.
Stirrings of the Tara Clerkson Trio, Qrauer, Ruth Goller, Kreidler, Alex Stolze, Nyman and Glass are transduced into urban pop and trip-jazz for an accomplished, often understated but impactful, album that has soul and magic in equal parts. Well worth the wait.
Your 33 Black Angels ‘Eternities II’
Released last month
Generously gifting us a vinyl version of their eighth album, the second ‘eternities’ volume (arriving six years after the first), the simultaneously pumped, glammed, moody and near psychedelic three-decade spanning New York kissed angels prove able and dynamic at integrating a fusion of electronic genres and ideas into their sound.
Sophisticated and lively, from the dancefloor to the darker creeping recesses of the underground and strip-light flickered underpasses, Dan Rosato, Josh Westfal and Daniel Bombach seem fresh and in an experimental mood. Considering the amount of time they’ve been producing their signature mix of “bubble house”, “acid pop wonder”, “electro” and “dream-pop”, they sound neither jaded nor tired. In fact, as familiar as the elements and various inspirations are, this is a dynamic record of the brooding and near euphoric. This is electronic pop with a certain, sometimes menacing, edge and depth of quality seldom heard in much synth-pop or electronic-indie music. For there is a range of effects, of influences and references both human and near otherworldly and alien – cosmic celestial sounds alongside more twisted and creepy affected voices; dystopian sci-fi against the cool chrome possibilities of Moroder-like arpeggiator.
The difference in mood and style is almost on a track-by-track basis; the atmospheric scene-setting ‘Test_Run’ opener of digital metaphor and cyber dread is from the underpass, or the Tresor bunker, with its pulsated broody beats, hints of Fad Gadget, a less bombastic Muse and Brian Reitzell, whilst the very next track, the surrealist novel inspired ‘Macunaíma’, has a strange, removed Latin electronica feel of vocoder lyrics, tripping memories and touch of Banco da Gaia new age trance. The latter of those two is a reference to the surrealist polymath Mário de Andrade’s famous novel, which I said to have either ushered in or been in the first flourish of what’s termed Brazil Modernism. Far too convoluted to get into here in the form of a music review, the protagonist, “a hero without any character”, stands as magical-realist metaphor for Brazil’s three races origin myths – the white, the black and the native. Director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade made a loosely based film of the story in 1969, changing some of the plot, with our main character near corrupted after leaving his Amazonian home for the city (Rio in the film, Sao Paulo in the book), and undergoing a transformation, changing his very race, meeting terrorists and birthing his only child – his own birth a really strange miracle, emerging fully formed as an adult from his elderly mother. Read into it what you will, but here there is a vibe that is swimmingly tripsy and soaring.
Further on, ‘Light Life’ seems to ape early Richard James and his Polygon Windows phase on Warp, and yet shimmers with globules and digital trails to emerge as a sci-fi pop version of Daft Punk and Beat Connection. ‘It’s In’ reminded me of 80s NYC electronic and synth collage experimentation, post-punk-disco, Front 242, Cabaret Voltaire and the Yellow Magic Orchestra. And ‘Shaggy & Joe’ could be a quirky kiss-off of Foster The People, Apparat and Reflektor era Arcade Fire. They finish off the album on a sort of Cathy Pacific serenade of glissando and plucked gilded beautifully reflective strings. But they really reminded me in places of Barbarian era Young Knifes. The grit and energy perhaps, and the acceleration. Computerised synthesisers, the drum pad fuzzes, breaks and machine-made beats and something of the kinetic is balanced by more humanistic-played instruments and vocals – although at times this voice is filtered, transformed through R&B pop-style vocoder and twisted into the near demonic. A constant thread of lip smacked rebuttals, of breakup and the machine is interlocked into a futuristic dance catalogue of eternal footprints.
Spelterini ‘Hyomon-Dako/Magnésie’
(Kythibong) 20th May 2025
Well-received last time on the Monolith Cocktail (back in 2022 as part of my Perusal #36 column with their ‘Paréidolie’ drum and drone journey) the French quartet are back with a “diptych” style album of longform rhythmic trances and squalling focused intensities.
Named in honour of the 19th century Italian tightrope walker, Maria Spelterini, who’s death-defying stunts included numerous handicapped (blindfolded, manacled or with weighted peach baskets strapped to her feet) walks across the Niagara Falls, the Spelterini pairing of Papier Tigre, La Colonie de Vacances and Chasusse Trappe members likewise walk a similar path, balancing between influences from the post-punk, minimalist, drone, kosmische and krautrock spheres. Once again keeping balanced whilst straddling the rhythmic, the droning, the hypnotising and wilder and more industrial, Pierre-Antoine Parois, Arthur de la Grandière, Meriadeg Orgebin and Nicolas Joubo emerge from their arts lab incubator to progress over what used to be in old money, the equivalent of two sides of a standard LP format.
Covering Side One, if you like, is the staccato turn cymbal splashed motoring (but not motorik) ‘Hyomon-Dako’. The starting point is a Stereolab magnetic bounce and paddled-like drums and dwindled guitars, with an essence of more modern faUSt and Beak>. You’d have to throw in Nurse With A Wound and This Heat as the action seems to build subtly over an entrancing beat that’s one part post-punk and another part locked-in kosmische hypnotism. The finale is a crescendo of harsher, near hardcore and industrial noise and static.
The white powder of magnesium oxide inspired ‘Magnésie’ is another twenty-minute build-up of similar influences but sounds like a transmogrified Velvets at times. Dot-dash-like Morse Code and heavier strains of wielding and welding work in and out of a looping-like concentration of psych-post-punk and needle-registering frequencies.
Spelterini combine their source, influences to create another hypnotising concentration of neo-krautrock and post-punk intensity and an ever-changing progressive trajectory.
Cosmic Ear ‘Traces’
(We Jazz) 25th May 2025
Traces of the Don Cherry sound imbue the debut album from the newly formed Cosmic Ear troupe of celestial and fourth world journeying accomplished intergenerational players. Referencing benchmarks, both familiar sounding and near amorphous geographical points of inspiration, this ensemble embark on the ancient trade routes that connect exotic mirages to straddle a number of inspired jazz soundscapes, rhythms and atmospheres.
No one is more able to carry on the legacy of this album’s spiritual guardian than the Swedish musician, composer and visual artist Christer Bothén, who collaborated frequently with Cherry back in the 70s. Expanding his own skills of instrumentation, and after learning hunter music and taking instruction from the Malian master musician Broema Dombia, Bothén introduced the innovative cornetist to the West African n’goni, a canoe-shaped, dried-animal skin wrapped lute favoured in Mali and its bordering regions. That same instrument now appears here, alongside the Angolan berimbau (a gourd resonating instrument used in Brazilin music) the Malian karignan (a metal scraper) and range of signature jazz instruments, from tenor sax to trumpet (of course), contra bass, clarinets, double bass, piano, various metal and tin sounding percussive tools and the congas.
Furthering the musical scope with Afro sounds (from Afro-jazz to Afro-Brazil and an essence of North Africa and Arabia) the group seamlessly meld flavours and spices, the “brown rice” ingredients, to conjure up their own worldly visionary sound that feeds on Cherry’s explorative work in the 1970s and 1980s; taking in, as referenced on the album’s finale ‘TRACES of Codona and Mali’, Cherry’s Codona triumvirate world fusion and free-jazz crossroads experiment with foils Colin Walcott and Nana Vasconcelos. The echoes ring exotically loud on not only this suite of spindly dulcimer-like threads, both calling and wilder expressions of Albert Ayler-like sax and Miles trumpet, and an overall essence of Alice Coltrane and fourth world possibilities, but across all the album’s six variant mood pieces, travels and motions.
With the leading sideman and instigating Swedish tenor saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, the Croatian roots composer, bandleader and trumpeter force behind the Tropiques, Fire! Orchestra, Angles 9 and Subtropic Arkestra projects Goran Kajfeš, South American studied noted percussionist Juan Romero and bassist and multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Terbjorn Zetterberg (appearing here under his Kansan Zetterberg alias) completing the circle, the range of experiences is infinite. The quintet expands to include special guest Marianne N´Lemwo, adding a touch more of the West African sound to the varied peregrinations and feel. Within that lineup there’s plenty of crossovers, with various players at various points in their career joining forces: notably Bothén and the reeds experts Gustafsson and Kajfeš, all three Scandinavians having collaborated in various setups over the years.
In practice, this interchange of ideas summons up images of jungles, grasslands, sand dune processions, the cerebral, pining and cosmically mysterious and lunar. On the opening ‘Father and Son’ movement Cherry’s percussive elements – tubular metal instruments, dried beans and rice being shaken like slow waterfalls – mate with bristled and elephant trunk brass and Afro-jazz groove that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Orlando Julius or Peter King track. The near obligatory and worldly free-jazz explorers go to source of inspiration, ‘TRACES of Brown Rice’, draws from the Cherry wellspring but also recalls The John Betsch Society as the group move from the blues to mirage.
A sort of removed, or at less more oblique version of the romantic, ‘Love Train’ certainly has its dreamy evocations and serenades, but progresses from a classical but just off and contemporary enough to slightly jar Abdullah Ibrahim and McCoy Tyner style piano part to echoes of Tangiers and Salah Ragab style Cairo. That is until the horns bleat and scream, cry and climax in near hysterical fits of tumult and emotional discharge. ‘Right Here, Right Now’ features the already mentioned n’goni, but merges a Malian landscape with elements of the AEoC, Andy Haas and the oscillating shimmers of Irmin Schmidt. Sympathetically, and highly atmospheric, the hallucinatory serenades and longing conveyed on ‘Do It (Again)’ once more call upon Cherry’s spirit percussively: the general signature beads that shake and rattle, the textural sounds of instruments unfamiliar to Western ears, forming a lived-in but also fresh and exotic backdrop. There’s a suffix title, “For Sofia Jernberg”, which I believe is a nod to the Ethiopian-born and Swedish adopted singer, improviser and composer, and noted collaborator with her homeland’s most famous export, Hailu Mergia. Whilst nothing is so obvious as to reflect those roots, the track does have a certain vibration and bluesy gauze that could be said to have borrowed from that part of the world, and from Jernberg’s own cross-pollination embrace of the chamber, of jazz, the classical.
A new chapter. A new break. A new legacy-charged and inspired setup from some of Scandinavia’s most important and exploratively adroit players, Cosmic Ear is an open experiment of free, Afro, spiritual, bluesy, rootsy jazz that traverses all points of the African Continent (from South to the West, East and North), South America, the Indian Subcontinent and Arabia, whilst seeking the limitless expanses of the cosmos. A brilliant debut from a mighty fine ensemble of gifted sagacious but playful and experimental artists.
The Mining Co. ‘Treasure In Spain EP’
(PinDrop Records) 30th May 2025
More or less back in the present, or at least with recollections from a much more recent past, the Irish troubadour Michael Gallagher finds gold in his creative home-from-home of Andalusia in Spain. As the title suggests, this is a metaphorical, allegorical treasure of romantism and tender reflections on his muse and partner, but also another chance to bathe in the suffused warmth of Southern Iberia and the inspiring studio of his chosen producer Paco Loco.
Once more in the wings as overseer and foil, Loco (who has worked with the outstanding Josephine Foster, the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris and The Sadies) pitches in on bass and with a touch of glimmered and shimmering sustained Muscle Shoals spiritual organ and what sounds like an opened-up Exiles On Main Street piano – echoes of that iconic dishevelled album can be heard on the EP’s finale, ‘We Are Not Alone’, a country burred amalgamation of the Stones, Josh T Pearson and the Tindersticks in a sort of country-rock séance. That same track carries on the familiar theme of apparitions, spirits, and the supernatural that ran throughout last year’s Classic Monsters album – one of our choice albums 2024 no less –, and to a lesser extent on Gum Card. A creepy invocation, the dead walk amongst us, accompanied by flange effected guitar, harmonies and a full band feel of shambled, breaky heart Stones influences.
Filling out the role of Gallagher’s band is both Rober García and a returning Esteban Perles on drums, and Pablo Errea and Laia Vehí on backing vocals/harmonies. With the feel more or less a comfortable conjuncture of soft Southern soul, R&B backbeats as reimagined by Mick Ronson, Americana and country-rock. Perhaps the most fully realised performance yet, this four-track songbook is the most radio friendly too: which isn’t a bad thing.
With a mix of touching declarations of love and support to his muse and mini dramas, observations and reflections that play with analogies to scarred environments and plaintive souvenir collectors that hide a much deeper, troubling trauma, Treasure In Spain reminded me in parts of John Craigie, the Brakes, the Style Council and Boomtown Rats. Essentially, a well-crafted congruous production of rounded songs that balance paean with the lamented and lilting.
Gallagher’s most commercial, melodiously warm and fully communicated release yet is still rich with his Mining Co. signatures, tweaks, idiosyncrasies, turn-of-phrase and personality. Americana meets the Donegal diaspora after returning to Earth from his cosmological spells and more rooted autobiographical statements. Hopefully after plugging this man’s talents for so many years now, Treasure In Spain will finally shine more light on a under-appreciated songwriting treasure.
___/The Social Playlist Vol. 97___
The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share; tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years; and both selected cuts from those artists, luminaries we’ve lost and those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for nearly 12 years now, Volume 97 is the latest eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show from me – the perfect radio show in fact, devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
One of the pillars of that playlist series is the anniversary celebrating albums slots: usually 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries. This month I’ve selected tracks from Albert Ayler’s supernatural apparition sprouting divine styled Spiritual Unity (60 this month); Minnie Riperton’s melliferous and slinking soul fantasy Adventures In Paradise (50th this month); New Order’s third album, the Kraftwerkian, German new waver Lowlife (40 this month); Scott Walker’s harrowed-by-thou-name Tilt (30 this year); and Teenage Fanclub’s Big Star and Crazy Horse imbued Grand Prix (dropping right in the middle of the Britpop phenomena in ‘95).
I always like to select a smattering of recentish releases each month, usually those tunes I missed or didn’t get the room to feature in the site’s exclusively new Monthly Playlist selections: consider it a second chance. May’s edition includes 2025 tracks from MIEN, the Natural Information Society with Bitchin Bajas, Occult Character, The Body, Dis Fig, and Peter Cat.
The rest of the playlist is made-up of tracks I rate, love, wish I owned or indeed do own, from decades of music collecting and DJing. So find RJ Payne, The God Fahim and Knowledge The Pirate on the spook vibes plus Shyheim, Joe Gibbs, Railroad Jerk, Howie B, The Black Lips, Captain Beefheart, Doris, Andre Williams, Kool Kim, Saar Band, The Mice, Toys That Kill, Luke Jenner, The Models, Docteur Nico, Charles Gayle, The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, Mappa Mundi and French TV.
Tracks in full for Vol. 97 are:::
The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience ‘Einstein’
MIEN ‘Evil People’
Railroad Jerk ‘Don’t Be Jealous’
The Mice ‘Not Proud of the USA’
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band ‘Click Clack’
Minnie Riperton ‘Feelin’ That The Feeling’s Good’
Saar Band ‘Double Action’
Andrew William’s Velvet Hammer ‘I Miss You So’
Shyheim ‘Here Come The Hits’
Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas ‘Nothing Does Not Show’
The Body, Dis Fig ‘Holy Lance (Audiotree Live Version)’
Scott Walker ‘Tilt’
Doris ‘You Never Come Closer’
Albert Ayler ‘Ghosts: First Variation’
RJ Payne, The God Fahim & Knowledge The Pirate ‘THE UGLINESS’
Occult Character ‘She’s A Reptile’
New Order ‘This Time of Night’
Luke Jenner ‘About to Explode’
Docteur Nico ‘Toyei Na Songo’
Joe Gibbs ‘He Prayed Version’
Howie B. ‘How To Suckie’
Kool Kim ‘The Heavenly Sword’
Teenage Fanclub ‘Don’t Look Back’
The Models ‘Bend Me, Shape Me’
Peter Cat ‘Starchamber’
Toys That Kill ‘Psycho Daisies’
Black Lips ‘You’re Dumb’
Charles Gayle ‘Compassion I’
French TV ‘The Kokonino Stomp’
Mappa Mundi ‘Sexafari’
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
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