The Digest for March 2026: New Music/The Social Playlist
March 9, 2026
The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated short new music reviews and the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating picks.
Image: Credited to the Asian Arts Initiative
Something a little different this month after missing February’s Digest deadline. In case readers/followers and those new to the site haven’t heard or seen on some of the blog’s social media platforms, I’ve been in the wars, spending a lot of time this year in hospital. Earlier this year after being ill for a while, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune kidney disease, but then was struck down, out of the blue (and totally unrelated) by a minor stroke. This has meant untold tests, appointments, and treatments, of which I’m merely just beginning to get my head around. I won’t lie, and whilst the stroke is still a mystery with no actual diagnoses as to why I had one yet, it has been a very frightening and confusing time. This will affect the site and my writing going forward, so I ask for some patience and understanding.
I’ve gathered together a number of reviews, pretty much completed before much of this happened for the new(ish) releases section. And for the archives and social playlist have decided to share videos of tracks taken from those albums enjoying various anniversaries this month (or thereabouts), from those dear artists/producers that have left our mortal realm.
___THE NEW (All those latest & upcoming releases in brief) ___
Camille Baziadoly ‘Skin On Fire EP’
(PinDrop) 6th March 2026
Somehow simultaneously intimate yet panoramic and universal, a whole emotive register of vulnerabilities emanates from the both aria-like cutting and yet also diaphanous breathed voice of the French-born, but Oxford-based, singer-songwriter Camille Baziadoly. The new EP, following on from last year’s favourably reviewed and received Fifteen album, opens with the former single and title-track, and from there, unfurls its beauty, its reverence and pained prangs of fragility across a quartet of newly written songs in the key of slowed-trip-hop-crunching-and-mechanized-winding dreampop and Gothic cinematic allurement.
Skin On Fire EP feels like a score; the soundtrack to what’s lyrically alluded to, an abstract feeling of recovery, therapeutic healing and self-care. From the very first line of declaration (“Skin is all I am”) to the loss and grief, the despondency and aches of the transfixed beatific yearned ‘Trial’ and the even more reverent, steamed and mirrored beat cranked ‘Under Water’. The former reminded me of a little of the dreamy, veiled music and voice of Celestial North, but the synths of Chromatics, whilst the latter, recalled the production of Julee Cruise and the submersible aquatic poetry and voice of Nino Gvilia and the atmospheres of This Mortal Coil. The final act, ‘Around You’, is perhaps the most tenderly if plaintive song of them all. Whether stepping outside and removed from this particular relationship, looking in from the ether and from behind the most minimalistic of backings, or lamenting someone else’s, Baziadoly fills the vapours with a real yearning.
Despite the care, gentleness and its subtleties in the use of both instrumentation and the electronic (from minimal but no less evocative piano and organ to various well-placed effects), the production has an air of gravitas and drama about it: of scale too if you like, and of ambition. Much of this is down to the highly prolific (and a constant presence on the Monolith Cocktail) Sebastian Reynolds, who in a producer’s role articulates, emphasis whilst also allowing Baziadoly’s voice to shine, resonate and breath. That production can at any time invoke the influence of Beach House, Air, and the Cocteau Twins.
It is the voice that truly makes this EP however, and its ability to soar towards the birds but also navigate the harsh realities, troubles and traumas of life, love and hurt. Baziadoly brilliantly and cerebrally emerges from the other side having shown such vulnerability and sang such heartaches of balladry to claim another transfixing success.
Márcio Cunha ‘Imaginary Soundtrack’
(Nostril Records) Released 8th January 2026
A sonic showreel collating a year’s worth of recordings made throughout the period of 2019 and 2020 – just as the world lurched fatally over the cliff edge of Covid -, the Portuguese experimental musician, composer and multidisciplinary artist Márcio Cunha’s newest release is a CV of possibilities. As a calling card and sampler of his obvious eclectic and omnivorous influences and talents, this generous thirty-six track work mines, traverse and explores a portfolio’s worth of stand-alone ideas, passages, vignettes, filmic scores, cosmic mirages and electronic motions, and comes together as one loose soundtrack.
Either submerged and muffled or clean and crystal, the overall atmosphere and sound is one of familiar Earth-bound electronica, instances of tangly and strung-out guitar and marching snares, and the buzz, fuzz and static generator force field charges of machines and the alien. For Cunha projects towards the stars, but often toward unseen, mysterious forces beyond our reaches.
Within that universe and orbit you can expect to hear techno, d ‘n’ b, kosmische, all kinds of beat-bouncing electronic, various mechanics, the more tribal, vapour waves, a roll of hand drums, liquidated electro, oscillations, the plastique, Basic Channel, Room Of Wires, Aphex Twin, Mouse On Mars, Sven Vath, Conrad Schnitzler, the industrial, music of the spheres, lunar indolent shimmies, wonky bell-ringing, the burbling, and the tubular. Some come with an added drama and celestial voiced airs, whilst others almost recall the post-punk. But there’s a general signature to be found throughout, connecting all these numerous experiments together; a sort of oeuvre with a general purpose and theme, guided or inspired by the unknown elements of the cosmos.
You’re bound to find something interesting, absorbing or able to send you off on some space adventure from this veritable CV of electronic experiments. A prolific range that will keep you invested for an hour or two.
The Early ‘I Want To Be Ready’
(Island House Recordings) 27th February 2026
Transposing a newly invested language of sonic, musical and extemporised ideas over the last five or six years together, the most recent version of an idea that was formed back in 2004, imbued by many of the Chicago undergrounds’ most enduring post-rock and post-jazz doyens (Tortoise being the most obvious glowing influence), sees guitarists and synths operator Alex Lewis and drummer and electronics manipulator Jake Nussbaum take inspiration from improvised dance.
Taking a lead from the central tenets of the choreographer, researcher and author Danielle Goldman’s 2010 published work I Want To Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom, the duo enact the book’s outlined “state of readiness for whatever’s to come”. As repeated and lifted from Goldman’s study, “A skilled improviser will be intimately familiar with her habitual ways of moving, as well as the shifting social norms that gives these movements meaning. Then, on a moment-to-moment basis, she figures out how to move.” This is a distillation of course, whittled down from years and acres of research enquiry. But as a starting point for The Early foils, this demonstratable exploration of improvisation proves a successful prompt to investigate or just let a feel lead the various forms of instrumentation towards interesting, tactile, multilayered and stirring spaces and horizons; some that melt, others that are near otherworldly or like mirages.
From the cluttering to reverberating and shuttering, the off jazzy breaks to post-rock mirages of wrangled, melting and spikier guitar entanglements and loops, meaning is transcribed via the caresses, the resonated touches, scuffs, the subtle streaks of movement up and down the nickel guitar strings, moments of melody, the drifted, the bending and various generated waves of electronica effects. Time itself falls freely in this space, the passing of it almost suspended for the duration as the duo feel their way with a kind of musical telepathy. From Tortoise-style blues to the Fourth World and the redolent explorations of Pacha Wakay, the sound of The Cosmic Range, the Zacht Autommat, of Daniel Lanois, the guitar work of Jeff Parker, Yonatan Gat, Steve Gunn and Christopher Haddow, and the pendulous near swung and thumping drumming of Werner ‘Zappi’ Deirmaier (especially on the Faust-like ‘SandClock’), there’s vague echoes of ethnic sounds and dreamt landscapes. It reminds me of a relatively obscure duo called Pidgins, and the way they stir up such familiar and yet almost unique soundscapes, horizons and atmospheres built from a stream of always evolving sources. And yet, once in the space, once together with the feelers spreading out, can magic up both dreams and the mysterious with equal skills. The non-musical and serial join together with passages of the rhythmic and melodious on an album that will unfurl its full creative expanses and oeuvre over numerous plays. A scion of the Chicago hothouse of such experiment, even if it was made in Philly, The Early pick up the baton and run with it.
MMBTUPM ‘Meditation Music Beyond The Unsleeping Psychopathic Mind’
(Hidden Harmony) 28th February 2026
Directed or merely amorphously suggested a direction by the multi-instrumentalist (mainly focused on the alto sax, the drums and synths, but I guess generally can get a sound out of anything) and prolific instigator Davin Brahja Waldman, the newly brought-together Meditation Music Beyond The Unsleeping Psychopathic Mind troupe of like-minded twisted and untethered artists/musicians invoke various apparitions, paranormal, spiritualist and new age vibrations from the Fortean transmitter on their inaugural session together.
Drawing from an ensemble that includes a triple-threat of saxophonists covering all the tones (Devin himself on alto of course, joined by Adam Kinner on tenor and Conner Bennett on soprano), another triple bill of keys, synth and vocalists (Annie Shaw, Sarah Good and Devin tour mate Nadah El Shazly), and various guitarists and drummers (Vicky Mettler and Alexei Orechin in the former camp, Daniel Gélinas and Philippe Melanson in the latter), Devin stirs up an improvised smog and hauntology of a both damaged and solace-finding bluesy psyche.
From stoking up supernatural atmospheres to charging up meditative pulsations fed through various generators, the atmosphere is heightened by a simultaneously feeling of unease and the unknown in equal measure. Redolent wafts, dried exhales and the pipe strains of jazz and such saxophone luminaries as Julius Hemphill, the Pharoah and Donny McCaslin are woven into a fabric of old RKO ghost scores, the wails, soars and apparitional otherworldly evoking vocal expressions and mewls of Matana Roberts, the synthesized calculus and data of esoteric technology, the brainwave experiments of Nehan, and the body movement mechanism rhythms of David Ornette Cherry. And even within that framework of the extemporised you’ll hear what can only be described as passages of New Orleans dockyard smog and procession, and a near child-like apparatus of ghost house toy instruments on the march.
A peculiar place and vibe are envisioned from an enviable pool of talent (Devin alone has performed with or played foil to Patti Smith, Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch, his famous poet aunt Anne Waldman, and Malcom Mooney, but also steered his own Brahja band and been a member of Heroes Are Gang Leaders and Land of Kush) on their first outing together. A baptism of strange no wave jazz, the séance, the transcendental and paranormal cross streams in an improvised state awash and circulated by bellowed and wooden mechanised movements, bellows, roulette-like spins of bearings and the spellbound.
Phew & Danielle de Picciotto ‘Paper Masks’
(Mute) 20th February 2026
Whilst unassumingly stuck out in the hinterlands of experiment and electronica, a collaboration between Phew and Danielle de Picciotto proves an unmissable and intriguing phenomenon to experience and savour.
Phew’s own entry into this field of explorative and manipulated investigation and inquiry started with the instigation of the Osaka psychedelic-punk group Aunt Sally in 1978, which she fronted until their brief but influential burnout just a couple of years later. During the next decade Phew would work with an enviable cast of experimental doyens including Ryuchi Sakamoto, DAF’s Christo Haar, and, as if to tie in with this latest union, Danielle’s husband and foil Alex Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten fame. Fast-forwarding to the noughties and the underground pioneer has performed live and recorded with The Raincoats’ Ana Da Silva, Jim O’Rourke and Ikue Mori and Yoshimi of the OOIOO/Boredoms/Saicobab arc of ensembles. Her solo work tends to err towards amorphous sonic sensibilities that exist both in the metallic gauze of space and in more concentrated earthly reverence.
Danielle meanwhile, is the co-founder of the Love Parade, the lead singer of the Space Cowboys, for a longtime, a stalwart member of Crime And The City Solution and member of Ministry Of Wolves. But for the last nine-years Danielle has been making some her most sublime and interesting work together with her husband Hacke under the “symbiotic” coupled Hackedepicciotto banner – standing at five albums thus far. Mixing anything from heightened snatches of beauty, romance and drama to a backdrop of the Biblical, cinematic and ominous, the Morricone, the Weimer and heavy meta, their sound and performances have proven as captivating as they are dream-like, Gothic and otherworldly.
Produced “quietly” we’re informed over the course of five years, the futuristic, alien and sci-fi contextualised, discombobulated and manipulated Paper Masks finds Danielle’s vocalised and spoken interests, stories, observations, fairy tales and inquisitive announcements transformed via Phew’s various apparatus of effects and minimalistic
Drawing on decades of experience whilst always responding to the now, both partners in this latest enterprise combine forces to create a unique space and soundscape; a cyber ecological plane of archaeology filled with the ghosts, traces, messages, and cerebral memories. Phew envelopes, wraps or places a factory of unseen mysterious alien machines and tech, acid squiggles, looming piercing arcs, code and high pitches and frequencies around, above and under Danielle’s both surreal and evocative wordage. From furry philosophers and ghosts to the tundra and fog, and the flights of whispered thoughts that are prompted by personalised memories and incidents, a transformed language of mewls, phrases, narration, song, the untethered and unshaped is now woven into a dialect both humanly distorted and droid-esque, mournful and ominous. And yet, at times, it feels or sounds like a fairy tale transposed to off-worlds and the age of technological symbiosis.
Simultaneously as haunting and mysterious as it is Intelligent and challenging, Paper Masks wears its many faces well to straddle the worlds of art, theatre, electronica, the spoken word and cyber. A signature Mute experiment and listening experience, and yet something very different and original. Let’s hope the two partners bring their talents together more often in the future.
Toshi Tsuchitori and Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘Disappointment–Hateruma’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 27th February 2026
Whether it was building a unifying electronic music post-war future with the Yellow Magic Orchestra, building Bamboo houses of colour with David Slyvain, scoring the harrowing tragedy of war with Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, or winning gold at the Oscars/Grammys for his innovative soundtrack work, Ryuichi Sakamoto reworked neoclassical and electronica into a most influential new language – not totally at odds with its past, yet constantly evolving and probing at the edges of the undiscovered. But rewinding back further, to the incipient days of the early and mid 70s, whilst still a student at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and a contributor to such influential outliers as Transonic Magazine, Sakamoto was navigating his way freely and untethered as a member of the multimedia group Gakushudan alongside future collaborative percussionist and ethnomusicologist Toshi Tsuchitori.
Crossing paths in those burgeoning days, the pair quickly worked upon their obvious musical/sonic chemistry to release a new language and interacted experience devoid of solid foundations and free of boundaries. Tsuchitori had recently returned from New York having imbued himself and embraced the philosophy of free form jazz luminary Milford Graves. For those unfamiliar with Graves natural fused approach, he drew upon Indian, African and Asian rhythms, playing with and for such icons as Sun Ra, Albert Ayler and Anthony Braxton. And if you have been following my Monolith Cocktail Social playlists over the years and months, will perhaps recognise Graves as the drummer totem alongside Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover in the obscure but highly influential Children of the Forest trio.
Breaking from convention, the duo transmogrifies Shinto spirits and traditions and various other Japanese forms from across the centuries into a hurtled, collapsing, often racing and wild convergence of Western avant-garde forms, abstract-classical, free form jazz and the ambient. Certainly not music in any serial or familiar sense, these experiments, improvisations or whatever you wish to demarcate them are mostly devoid of rhythm and form; more expressive unyielding clashes and quietened passages of air, skying and the wind – passed through vents and metallic contraptions. Taking up a whole side, the opening ‘綾 (Aya)’ is one such climatic acceleration of drums, percussion and running, dashing and scuttling piano that recalls Graves and Billy Cobham stirring up voodoo spells, rituals and an entanglement of scrapes and rattles.
Later on, there’s what sounds like the marimba, the steel drums and more zippy prangs and hinged springs of piqued percussion. ‘a / Φ (musique differencielle 1°)’ however, sounds like something you’d expect to hear on an early Richard James album, and seems almost hypnotic: an early attempt in my mind at combining minimalist techno and mysticism. Playing with their lips and tongues at times, especially on the finale, ‘∫ / 𝔷 (musique differencielle 2°’, there’s another attempt to break away into something highly experimentally weird as, and I’m not sure who it is, puffs, shoos, exhales steam-like breaths and swats whilst the sticks roll across skins and rims, or sometimes fall imaginatively across an apparatus of world drums and percussive tools.
Released for the very first time on vinyl, this original 1976 LP (put out by the notable producer Yukio Kojima on his equally notable imprint label ALM Records) will find room with fans of Sakamoto, but also those craving something highly avant-garde and experimental, just with enough touches of African/Afro-Cuban/Asian and free form jazz drumming. Sakamoto wouldn’t dwell long on this phase of exploration, of breaking entirely from tradition and form, so get your fix whilst you can as I’m sure this highly sought-after vinyl package from the guys at WEWANTSOUNDS (one of my favourite such platforms over the last decade) will fly.
/ALBUM ANNIVERSARIES SECTION_______
No playlist this month, but video selections tied to those albums celebrating anniversaries this month (and some from February too). Starting with demigod jazz sublime progenitor Coltrane and his 1966 LP Ascension.
Placebo meets Radiohead on the peripherals of Britpop, one of those unique bands form the period that should have been much bigger than they were: accumulating plaudits but not the sales and fame. Subcircus delivered one of the better LPs of that era with their debut Carousel.
Sparks Hello Young Lovers reaches its twentieth anniversary. The Gilbert And Sullivan of cerebral pop music takes the form to ever-new intelligent heights of absurdity and revelation. Daring to merge intellectual ideas and themes into an art form; yet never laborious, condescending or aloof, every song on this theatrical rock and pop suite features an infectious melody, satirical but heartfelt clever lyricism and the usual Noel Coward piano witticisms (updated for the modern age of course).
Time to rip it up with the screamin’ tantrum boom of The Sonics; Garage band proto-punk miscreant royalty, the band’s era defining Boom LP is unbelievably sixty years old.
One of Cope’s muthafuckers and idols, the Arthur Lee led Love dared to dream bigger with their Baroque flourishes, jangles and lamentable love requests. The tapestry songbook that is Forever Changes is also sixty years old this month.
Fast-forwarding to the 90s, and Howie B‘s influential LP, Music For Babies is thirty this month. In that Mo Wax trip hop way, here’s one of my faves, the title track:
Prince time. Parade is forty in March. And here’s my fave of all time video and track, Mountains. The man was incredible. How do you make the shakers effortlessly cool? Or running on the spot in Casanova Rose of Texas gear look cheekily sexy and sassy? Could be naff in anyone else’s hands, but works in the hands of such a singular talent. I miss the conceptual planning, the whole effort from pop stars today as AI does the heavy lifting, and most artists seem totally devoid of ideas. “Guitars and drums on the one!”
Mock 21st century terrordome meets art-punk new wave. Does anyone remember Sigue Sigie Sputnik? Well Flaunt It is forty this month, an LP perhaps ahead of its time or maybe not.
Something more cerebral and experimental now with a live version of the title cut from jazz guitarist progenitor Pat Metheny’s 1976 LP Bright Size Life. Still going strong, with recent releases, we hail back to the 70’s era of fusion-jazz.
__THE DEARLY DEPARTED/___
Pete Dello: Baroque scrolls and flourishes of yearned love, Pete Dello is best remembered as the lead singer of Honeybus during the 60s and for the hit single I Can’t Let Maggie Go. Which is enough in itself to be inducted into great hall of fame and pantheons. But growing up in my household it was Pete’s remarkable And Friends effort Into Your Ears that really resonated and led to my appreciation of his songwriting talents. Quintessentially English, forged from the worlds of Lewis Carroll and T.H. White, this cultish psychedelic Baroque folk songbook uses various characters (including the knightly earwig Harry) to imagine disarming songs of regret, the lovelorn, yearned and fantastical. If in raising a glass to Pete you explore any of his work, this is a great place to start.
John Maus: You got to feel for poor old Maus. Any other vocal pop group of the 60s era may have seen his rep fly. But unfortunately for Maus, he shared the stage with the genius baritone Scott Walker, who’s tones better suited the arrangements and the sense of scale and moodiness of sullen unrequited and dramatic love affairs. Both changed their names to better fit their newly formed Walker Brothers aggrandisement with third member and garage band royalty Gary Leeds (a former Standell no less). But whilst despite his own self-inflicted sabotages, Scott’s star rose, John’s merely fizzled out. And despite attempts to go solo after the Walkers first split in the late 60s, the trio in mosey mode donned cowboy denims and reformed in late ’74. Staying together until the dawn of the next decade before finally drifting aimlessly apart, they did manage to produce the coveted and extremely influential Nite Flights LP, which though unsuccessful in terms of sales is critically up there. In between regular jobs John knocked out the odd recording, but never returned to the heady days or success of the Walkers triumphant period in the 60s. And never really connected with his old foil Scott.
Simon Harris: Almost going unnoticed, but not to an old Britcore Hip-Hop head like me. Producer and Music of Life founder Simon Harris passed away last month. Its’ his highly influential and memorable comps from the 80s that cement the rep for me; platforming early raw tracks from the Demon Boyz, She Rockers, Derek B, Asher D & Daddy Freddy, Hijack, M.C. Duke and many others: part of the original stable of UK talent that fought back against the US wave of hip-hop, giving it a distinct UK twang and even harder edge at times. A real progenitor and leading light in the scene that deserves our full respect.
Country Joe McDonald: I couldn’t not mention counterculture figurehead Country Joe, who literally died in the last couple of days (as I write this). Obvious choice, but his famous crowd-led rendition of THE Vietnam protest song at Woodstock in ’69 – at the age of 17 he enlisted in the US Navy, stationed over in Japan. The Boomer journals will go in overdrive, so I’m not wasting time with obituaries or list of accomplishments. But suffice to say, Country Joe released a hell of a lot of quality protestations, rebellious yells, most notably with his The Fish comrades. Go seek out.
The Digest for September 2025: New Music/The Social Playlist/And Archives
September 22, 2025
The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated new music reviews; the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating playlist; and choice timely pieces from the archives.
Tom Skinner photograph courtesy of Jason Evans.
___THE NEW___
Group Modular ‘The Tunnel/Lonely Pylon’
Reissue Special Released 19th September
The first transmission (or rather a retransmission if you like) from the Group Modular duo of Mule Driver and Marky Funk in three years, marks the inaugural chapter in a new series of special 7” releases “powered” by the duo’s alter ego Confused Machine and Delights labels. Those lucky enough to have grabbed original copies (sold in separate splits editions, both sold out almost immediately) of ‘The Tunnel’ and ‘Lonely Pylon’ will know that the former was part of Norman Records’ 2021 25th Anniversary split release by Polytechnic Youth, and that the latter was recorded exclusively for the third instalment in Russian Library’s L series of split 7” EPs back in 2022.
Back on the radar, with the chance to own these hauntological sci-fi suites and dramatization soundtracks, the self-described “Outer space sounds from Jerusalem-Tel Aviv route” library music makers reacquaint us all with their brand of analogue period cult space age influences and their taste for atmospheres and theme tunes that emit something that’s near supernatural. ‘The Tunnel’ is a curious Pietro Grossi like rocket ship steam and gas fusion of soft timpani, Roy Budd and Greg Foat-esque barque sci-fi harpsichord, and d ‘n’ b like dub beats. And the electric field throbbed ‘Lonely Pylon’ is a Library music imbued psychogeography of paranormal nature and unnerving children’s sci-fi TV of the 70s and early 80s – imagine Brian Hodgson, Sapphire and Steel and bygone public broadcasted information warnings resurrected by The Advisory Group or My Autumn Empire.
Hopefully this latest 7” series will prove a catalyst for more new recordings from the duo, who haven’t released anything together since Per Aspera Ad Astra in 2022. You’d better be quick, as I have a feeling it will sell out pretty sharpish.
Lt. Headtrip & Steel Tipped Dove ‘Hostile Engineering’
(Fused Arrow Records) 23rd September 2025
The gristle, outpoured thoughts, observations, protestations and glue between the oppressive urban structures of our dysfunctional, unworkable society both poetically and rhythmically twist and flow over a counterculture haunted psychedelic-prog, Krautrock and jazz-soul production on this debut project collaboration.
From the experimental, leftfield platform of Fused Arrow Records and its stalwart producer, engineer, beat maker and artist in his own right, Steel Tipped Dove, a new partnership with rapper, producer and instigator Lt. Headtrip.
Dove’s production and various studio skills can be heard on releases from such notable talent as Fatboi Sharif & Roper Williams, billy woods & Messiah Musik, Darko The Super, MC Paul Barman and Zilla Rocca. He’s also collaborated with the most dope and pioneering Dose One. The Lieutenant’s CV is no less impressive, setting up the ‘we are the karma kids’ label, organizing projects and events in the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens areas, and either collaborating or sharing stages with Armand Hammer, Open Mike Eagle, Quelle Chris, Beans, Backwoods Studioz, Reservoir Sound and Uncommon Records.
A magic combination of old hands from the underground scene then, the Hostile Engineering environment that engulfs them is twisted, churned, inhaled and transformed into a sometimes gothic, sometimes industrial, and sometimes more soulfully halo-lit arena for the spoken and rapped lyrics; the cadence of which reminded me at any one time of the Antipop Consortium, Rob Sonic, dalek, and when humorously and from a self-aware but confident in their own skin way, addresses the issues of sexuality, sex and the tired old tropes of rap machismo on the smoochy drifted saxophone and crunched drum beats produced ‘We Got The Sugar’, comes across a little like Homeboy Sandman: a sample of the lyrics being, “last week I was helpin’ his girl find her panties. This week I’m his bro’s new daddy. Just cause I can rap along to Liquid Swords don’t mean my dick’s boring.”
There’s more than enough clever ideas here, with samples I’ve yet to recognize, and an atmosphere that seems to channel all kinds of musical influences; from zappy Kraftwerkian synth and drum pads electro to the Floydian, Roy Ayers, Soul cuts, cult soundtracks (of suspense, horror and sci-fi futurism), heavy rock and prog – I think I’m overthinking it, but alongside what could be a sample from Sabbath or their ilk, it sounds like a short miraged shiver of cymbal resonance and slow drums from Neu!’s ‘Weissensee’ on the automation for the people, insurance servitude and dead-end careers themed polemic ‘0 Days Since Last Accident’.
Bot factories, the nightmarish promises of constant bodily cosmetic regeneration and the self-absorbed legacies that go with hanging on to the bullshit zenith of eternity, high anxiety, and on the repurposed halcyon soul Kayne-Jay-Z-Biggie fantasy “money, money, money” ‘Fund Don’t Stop’, a backslap to rampart consumerism and unsignifying spectacles of Black Friday (“We been shoppin’ since we bought that serpent’s product in the garden.”) – a lifetime of spending, from the womb to the tomb.
At thirty minutes long, there’s no fat on the bones, and yet plenty of tempo, musical changes, and a fresh rap style that neither preaches nor sits back in a nonchalant pose. A really successful pitch, bringing both talents together to fuse and articulate the present depressing miasma of the times in which we all live; glued to this rock, with no anchor, no compass, attached to the screen and validation culture of social media and its puppet masters. One of the freshest hip-hop releases of 2025.
Tom Skinner ‘Kaleidoscopic Visions’
(Brownswood/International Anthem) 26th September 2025
Reaching the midlife point, the UK drummer and composer Tom Skinner finds time to reflect and take stock with a mature kaleidoscope of culminated visions pulled and drawn from a highly prolific career and enviable CV of performances, collaborations and recordings (from Sons of Kemet to The Smile, David Byrne Floating Points…. the notable list goes on).
Arriving a few years after Voices Of Bishara (an album inspired by the American jazz and classical cellist Abdul Wadud and his seminal privately pressed cult masterpiece ‘By Myself’), the follow up weaves the former into a rich, often cinematic, psychedelic and floated meditation and dialogue of jazz, neo soul, cult soundtracks and the contemporary classical. At 45 years of age, the time felt right for such an undertaking. A culmination of experiences, of influences now coming together; a bond that embraces not only Skinner’s vaguely Middle Eastern entitled Bishara live band but a number of congruous international collaborating foils: neo-soul doyen, and right acclaimed, award-wining polymath (but you can list the main qualifications as singer-songwriter, poet and bassist) Meshell Ndegeocello; the self-described multifaceted Charleston musician, score composer, film and radio programmer and vocalist Khari Lucas, otherwise known as Contour; London born and raised but now Berlin-based keyboardist and vocalist Jonathan Geyevu, aka Yaffra; and on electric guitar for a couple of tracks, Adrian Utley of trip-hop luminaries Portishead.
That group of friends is split between two sides of a traditional vinyl format: a moiety of instrumental material and vocalist starring peregrinations, with side A featuring the electric-chamber-jazz Bishara quartet of bassist Tom Herbert, cellist Kareem Dayer, and woodwind and reeds players Robert Stillman and Chelsea Carmichael, and Side B, a cosmic mirage of sung and spoken discourse, soliloquy and healing. Described as “distinct sonic landscapes”, both parts are harmoniously conjoined, with leitmotifs, recurring sounds and an overall feel that draws upon a cosmology of Afro, spiritual, conscious, spacey, psychedelic and experimental jazz.
It begins with the promise of comfort; a putting of the mind at ease so to speak. ‘There’s Nothing To Be Scared Of’ begins with an incipient jingle-jangle and stirring drones of woodwind and the cello before hitting a peak of what can only be descried as Lalo Schifrin meets Bobby Hutcherson and Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes on a 1960s filmset. From then on out, this jazz-chamber match the flighty, craned and fantastical with amorphous hints of Nicole Mitchell, Village Of The Sun, Kibrom Birhane, the Ancient Infinity Orchestra, Coltrane, Matana Roberts and Sven Wunder. You could call it a cross-generational sound, with the first half of the album feeling itself out across an evocative landscape and more abstract metaphysical space full of reflections on emotional states and those people held either dear or inspirational. That includes the late New Jersey born and raised novelist, writer, memoirist, poet and filmmaker Paul Astor (author of the loose New York Trilogy, Moon Palace and The Music Of Chance), and Skinner’s mother, the former classical concert pianist and victim of the arts misogyny, Anne Shasby.
There are some beautiful moments captured amongst the often-slow momentum, and the gander and bird-like flexes; a sense of the mellow and unfurled: the soulful too. And yet there’s a certain drama to be found, and even mystery to this section of instrumental description, of roots and spiritual emotions.
The second section features the vocal talents and essences of Skinner’s collaborative foils; starting with the soul, funk, jazz, hip-hop, reggae and rock spanning polymath Meshell Ndegeocello, who soulfully and dreamily oozes and woos a sense of both the ancestral therapy and a mirage feeling of homely comfort. Ndegeocello’s voice emerges from a hallucinatory wilderness, floating across a nine-minute cosmic-soul and R&B jazz suite of horn snozzles and soft burbles, glassy bulb vibraphone notes, and gentle plucks.
Taking a sadder, more pained discourse-like tone, Contour’s R&B neo-soul voice aches and yearns on the bluesy chamber-jazz piece ‘Logue’. The language is one of rise and fall, trauma and endurance, survival and striving in a ruthless landscape. And yet, again, there is a kind of near diaphanous beauty about some of the music, the flutier parts and delicate bulb-like notes that seem to float around in a slow ponderous rhythm. It’s the feeling of being drained, and the attempts to break free of the malaise.
The finale, ‘See How They Run’, features the soulful poetic spoken tones of Yaffra both responding to a secondary voice and speaking out loud his thoughts, enquires to the promise of eternal enlightenment, in an almost winding, untethered fashion. It reminded me in part of Andy Hay, Diggs Duke and even Tricky, playing out over another neo-soul leaning dreaminess.
Informed and prompted by middle age (a youthful middle age of experience rather than depressing aging pains), Skinner offers a retrospective pause whilst looking towards a creative future. Cross-generational concerns, references, influences converge in a mature work of feelers, reflections and freedom. Consolation in an age of accelerated isolating atomisation and introspective anxiety.
Water Damage ‘Live At Le Guess Who?’
(Cardinal Fuzz in Europe/12XU in N. America) Released 5th September 2025
In the venerated surroundings of the Medieval city of Utrecht, the religious epicentre of the Netherlands (or so it is said), as part of the Le Guess Who? Festival lineup, the Water Damage ensemble preached their own unique fire and brimstone of monotonous locked-in drones, the wailed and frayed, the squalled and resonant.
Whilst following no recognisable domination on this plane, the Austin collective of like-minded acolytes to all things underground, invoked some kind of near religious sonic experience as they went to work on the opening track, ‘Reel 28’, from their most recent album, Instruments (released back in May of this year). Without a break or let-up, they relentlessly, but slowly, created a mesmerising lumber of the avant-garde, of Motor City, Jap, Kraut and Doom rock. Enslaved to the rhythm you could say, for a full 45 minutes both the group and their audience are caught in the hypnotic flay and sway of the scuzzed and intense bowed needling and sawing momentum that is created.
Absorbed into the core for that performance, guests Ajay Saggar (a serial offender, featured untold times on this site over the years under various collaborative and solo guises: Bhajan Bhoy, Deutsche Ashram, King Champion Sound and University Challenged) and fellow astral traveller Patrick Shiroishi (the Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist and composer, based in L.A., last appeared on this site playing foil on saxophone to Dave Harrington and Max Jaffe on the Speak, Moment collaborative album) take up the mantle on guitar and “free-reeds”. Their contributions are equally as mystical, magical, intense and droning; with Shiroishi especially summoning both a Mogadon Hawkwind and Sam Rivers simultaneously.
With the “Maximal Repetition, Minimum Deviation” motto and mantra, they conure up a monster; a ceremonial rite; even, as the accompanying press release describes it, an exorcism. And yet it is quite melodic. Reference points, for me, would be Tony Conrad and Faust’s seminal Outside The Dream Factory, but also Tony’s Transit Of Venus collab with Hangedup, Glenn Branca, La Monte Young (these last two actually referenced by in the press release), Earth, Boris, Swans, Hala Strana, France, Smote, Pharoah Overlord and Amon Düüls I and II, and The Black Angels. But like the old city that played host to the festival and the Water Damage performance, there’s an almost otherworldly summoning of the Medieval: a sort of mythologised or transmogrified evocation of an abstract atmosphere from that period; it sounds at times almost like a hurdy-gurdy is being wound up like some kind of ancient transmitter; plugged in to a mystical and harrowing age.
I must add, for once, the sound is really good. You can hear every part, every contribution, and even the bass line (you wouldn’t believe how few recordings ever get the bass right, or let you hear anything more than just a mumble of bass; live recordings are often even worse, almost bass free). The bass here is integral to keeping up that never ending rhythmic sway; and despite its repetition, is such a great little riff that is never grows tired. Compliments to the sound engineer, and who ever mastered this performance, then, for instead of a block intensity of lost instruments you get a clear production, with every cog, every drone and note audible.
I’d say an improvement on the album track, and a really intensive yet hypnotic hermetic experience that feels untethered to any particular time, age or period.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 101___
For the 101st time, the Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Last month we celebrated the 100th edition of this series, which originally began over 12 years ago. The sole purpose being to select an eclectic and generational spanning playlist come radio show, devoid of podcast-esque indulgences and inane chatter. In later years, I’ve added a selection of timely anniversary celebrating albums to that track list, and paid homage to some of those artists lost on the way. In the former camp this month, and to tie in with the Archive spots on Bowie and CAN, there’s a 30th anniversary nod to 1. Outside – a tour I actually witnessed, I kid thee not: Wembley Arena if you must know – and 50th nod to Landed. Joining this celebration there’s also tracks from Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love (40 this year), The Fall’s This Nation’s Saving Grace (also 40), Blur’s The Great Escape (30), Dexter Gordon’s One Flight Up (60), Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary (20) and Mew’s And The Glass Handed Kites (also 20).
Each month I also like to add a number of newish/recentish tunes (more or less anything from the last year): those that either missed out on the regular Monthly Playlist of brand-new music releases, or only just come to my attention. We have Monde UFO, Lukid, the El Maryacho team up with Nowaah The Flood, Penza Penza, the Tone Of Voice Orchestra, Elkotsch (thanks to blog friend and supporter Andy Haas for recommending this one) and the triumvirate collaboration of Phew, Erika Kobayashi and Moebius. Oh, and something not so much new but surfaced from Dylan this week.
The rest of the playlist is an anything goes selection of stuff I’ve accumulated, loved, treasured, wanted to own or played out during my sets over the decades. In that category there’s music from the Walker Brothers, the Jazzpoetry Ensemble, Mother Lion, Garybaldi, A Tent, The Barrino Brothers, Departmentstore Santas, Gene Martin, and Akofa Akoussah.
Track List:::::
Wolf Parade ‘Shine A Light’
Butterglory ‘She Clicks The Sticks’
Blur ‘Entertain Me’
Mew ‘The Zookeeper’s Boy’
David Bowie ‘We Prick You’
Kate Bush ‘The Big Sky’
Garybaldi ‘Maya desnuda’
The Fall ‘I Am Damo Suzuki’
CAN ‘Vernal Equinox’
The Jazzpoetry Ensemble ‘Motherless (Live)’
Dexter Gordon ‘Darn That Dream’
Polyrhythm Addicts ‘Big Phat Boom’
Akofa Akoussah ‘Sumga Ma Bacci’
El Maryacho & Nowaah The Flood ‘SOAPS’
The Barrino Brothers ‘Born On The Wild’
Tone of Voice Orchestra ‘Tourist at God’s Mercy’
Penza Penza ‘Dusty’
Los Darlings De Huanuco ‘Lobos Al Escape’
Elkotsh ‘Da’a Adeema’
Monde UFO ‘Sunset Entertainment 3’
Phew, Erkia Kobayashi & Moebius ‘Katherine’
The Detroit Escalator Co. ‘Manuel Transmission’
A Tent ‘Seven Years – part 2 (Abundance)’
Lukid ‘The Secret of Bell Making’
Bob Dylan ‘Rocks And Gravel (Solid Road)’
Mother Lion ‘Simple House’
The Walker Brothers ‘Walkin’ in The Sun’
Departmentstore Santas ‘Play in the Sun’
Gene Martin ‘We Shall Be Like Him’
The Hitchhikers ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better’
___/Archives___
From the exhaustive Archives each month, a piece that’s either worth re-sharing in my estimates, or a piece that is current or tied into one of our anniversary-celebrating albums.
This month there’s my previous pieces on CAN’s Landed (50 this year) and Bowie’s 1. Outside (30 years old this month).
David Bowie 1.Outside (Arista/BMG) 1995
With ‘five years’ remaining until the new millennium, Bowie, tapping into the anxiety and quest for spiritual relief, returned to his first passion: contemporary art.
Back with his most innovative collaborator, Brian Eno, he dredged the bottomless pit of morose and despair. Dreaming up a morbid tale of future sacrificial performance art gone wild and taboo breaking cybernetics he narrated a woeful diegesis through a series of ‘verbasier programmed’ characters.
Disturbing to say the least, our ‘cracked actor’ pitches an avant-garde ‘whodunnit?’, set in a parallel bleak world where the self-mutilated gestures of Günter Brus (the patriarchal figurehead of body art) and ‘the orgiastic mystery theatre’ of Hermann Nitsch have been taken to new, hyper, extremes of bloodletting.
Led by the investigative diary of art crime detective Nathan Adler, a cryptic cut-up of Burroughs/Burgess language is used to not just explain the circumstances that befell the poor victim Baby Grace, but also delve into the collective psyche.
Out on a limb musically, Bowie’s home life may have been content, yet something suddenly propelled him to bravely create a depressive requiem. Easily the best, if not most original, material since Scary Monsters, 1.Outside was entirely written in the studio as the band extemporized: motivated by Eno’s synonymous oblique strategy cards.
Scott Walker lost in cyberspace; the industrial melancholy is at its most anguished on ‘A Small Plot Of Land’ (a version was used on the, Bowie as Warhol starring, tragic biopic of Basquiat directed by Julian Schnabel), yet a more revved-up, pummelling bombastic variant is used on ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ and ‘The Heart’s Filthy Lesson’ (perfectly playing out David Fincher’s Seven).
Leaving many fans bemused (as I myself witnessed on the Outside tour, the baying audience pleading for the greatest hits package), the philosophical snuff opus seemed puzzling to those familiar with the pop-lite Bowie. Thankfully Bowie cut loose the shackles of commerciality for a contemporary blast of shock and dread.
CAN ‘Landed’ (Virgin) 1975
Richard Branson’s pastoral record label Virgin hooked our Cologne ‘seven-day sonic avant-garde evangelists’ in early 1975, tempting them away from the clutches of their former masters United Artists, whose relationship with the band had been tenuous at best. They now joined the hippie-idealistically run, free thinking label of choice – at least that’s how it appeared to the onlooker-, sharing the stable with both fellow countrymen Faust, Tangerine Dream and Slapp Happy, the psychedelic progressive band Gong, and the million zillion selling Mike Oldfield, Virgin’s biggest selling artist by miles – whose Tubular Bells behemoth had reined in a load of money and success, paving and paying the way for most of the roster.
Branson may have looked like he’d stepped off the cover of a Jethro Tull album, but he turned out to be a shrewd businessman. After all, he managed to propel Faust into the album charts with their Faust Tapes mesh-mash classic: albeit that the said album was put on sale for a paltry 49p and probably didn’t actually net the group much money, but hell, it sold over 100,000 copies, so they became a household name in the head community for a while at least.
Business wise, sister label Harvest – equally rich in allusions to the Woodstock ethos – would distribute CAN’s records in their homeland, whilst EMI, who owned both labels, would just count the cash it hoped would now roll in. One of the stipulations in the Virgin contract was that the band would have to use superior recording equipment for their next album. A multi-tracking desk was delivered to their own sacred Inner Space studio HQ, which they were still allowed to use though the records would now be mixed elsewhere. Unfortunately, a deep sense of forlorn began to creep in, mixed with paranoia, the arrival of the new technology now making it possible for the band to record their parts separately if they so wished. Until this point Holger Czukay had masterminded all the recording and editing on just a two-track recorder. He had also always encouraged the group to play together in the spirit of improvisation. But now, the band could successfully overdub and add parts at a higher quality then had previously been possible before, taking a more insular approach to recording.
In scenes not too far removed from the Beatles fractured shenanigans on the White Album, the group began to play some of their own parts in secrecy, the thought of being scrutinized and criticized by their fellow band members filling them with dread.
Again, like The Beatles, they invited an outside musician into the studio to lift the tension and scrutiny. This fortunate man was Olaf Kubler, who had served as producer on both Amon Duul and Amon Duul II albums, although he dramatically fell out with one of AD II’s bandleaders John Weinzierl, who made his feelings towards him pretty clear in recent interviews. Kubler was called in for his saxophone prowess, being asked to lay down some cool sultry cuts on the track ‘Red Hot Indians’ for what would be the Landed LP.
Sessions for what would be the band’s Landed album began in the first few months of 1975, in-between tour commitments, which included a couple of gigs with the troubled American folk troubadour Tim Hardin, who it’s rumoured was asked to join the band full time.
Hardin didn’t really front CAN in these gigs, instead, he would merely leap on stage to perform one of his own tunes, usually something like ‘The Lady Came From Baltimore’, and maybe front a couple of the groups own tracks before exiting stage right. Whether he ever considered seriously joining the band, Hardin’s deadly heroin habit put a damp squib on things, finally getting the better of him in 1980 with one overdose too many.
Anyhow, Karoli had so far done a good job of semi-fronting the band, going on to lead all the vocals on this album; delivering some softly inspired dream like performances throughout.
Landed in some ways directly follows on from their previous effort Soon Over Babaluma, especially in the sound collage experiments of this album’s ‘Vernal Equinox’ centre piece and ‘Unfinished’, both of which re-work similar themes and threads found on ‘Chain Reaction’ and ‘Quantum Physics’. The rest of the LP consists of far rockier progressive tones, with allusions to their contemporaries, particularly Pink Floyd. To a point there is also an attempt towards the glam-rock of both Roxy Music, Bowie and Mott The Hopple – all influences CAN’s peers, Amon Duul II, also breathed-in on the 1974 album Hijack, though to a less successful degree.
‘Full Moon On The Highway’ and ‘Hunters And Collectors’ relish in the glow of these new influences, though remain slightly more conventional compared to CAN’s usual free roaming exploratory material. Most of the seven tracks now run in at under six minutes and sound much more formulated, the exceptions being the already mentioned two saga driven soundscape pieces, which combined, make up three quarters of the overall albums running time.
The lyrics themselves seem to be full of references to mysterious alluring women, clad in leathers, who turn up at ungodly hours on celestial described highways. Analogies run riot, the open road acting as a metaphor for following certain paths, Karoli constantly encouraging the listener to cut loose and float away. Journalist and friend to the band, Peter Gilmour, co-wrote both ‘Full Moon On The Highway’ and the lazy sedate ‘Half Past One’. Peter would also go on to write CAN’s biggest hit, the disco chugger ‘I Want More’.
Many critics have panned Landed, seeing it as the beginning of the end for the group. It does seem a slight exaggeration. Certainly, the dynamics were slowly ebbed away, the production becoming much more polished, though it suffers from some very messy trebly moments at times.
Footage of them performing ‘Vernal Equinox’ on the Old Grey Whistle Test at the time sees Irmin Schmidt wearing a fetching bondage inspired chain mail waistcoat whilst theatrically commits Hari Kari on his keyboards, whilst Czukay, all ten-yard stare, sports white gloves and a sheriffs’ badge. A mid-life crisis beckoned with all this new pomp and strange fashions, turning off many fans, including the disdain of Julian Cope who states that this act of regalia wearing extravagance ended his relationship with the band. So, in a way CAN did seem to be heading over the precipice, the best days behind them, but this album is viewed way too harshly.
Landed for what it’s worth is a decent album, with enough ideas and demonstrations of superb musicianship, Karoli alone performing some of his most sublime guitar work yet.
The albums artwork, by the curiously alluding Christine, displays a collection of passport photo sized images of the band. Each individual photo is covered in graffiti or scribbled on, lending silly moustaches, cartoon glasses and an array of comical hats and hairstyles to the now light-hearted looking band. Peering out from under the heavy de-faced images they pose in a manner that lets us know they still have much to give- also, am I imagining perhaps a Carlos the Jackal type reference here, the many disguises and such.
CAN shifted back towards the Afro-beat and World music styles on their next couple of releases and also brought in ex-Traffic members Rosko Gee on percussion and Reebop Kwaku Baah on the bass to great effect. Czukay moved away from his bass guitar duties so that he could explore radio short wave editing and cutting up techniques in greater detail. He would of course go on to leave the band in 1977, leaving Liebeziet, Schmdit and Karoli to carry on for a while before everyone split for good to pursue their own solo projects, a reunion in 1989 included Malcolm Mooney and resulted in a new album titled Rite Time.
The year is 1975 and CAN have laid down their 7th album, after being together for nearly eight years. To get this far they have travelled an etymological musical odyssey, that has taken in the dark esoteric voila seeped mood of The Velvet Underground, the psychedelic spiritual enlightenment of America’s west coast, the African dance style rhythms of Nigeria and Ghana, the dreamy hypnotic Turkish flavored folk music, the otherworld tour of the nebula emitted from Hendrix and the lessons learnt from Stockhausen and Von Biel. CAN had surpassed all their peers and become possibly one the greatest assembled bands of musicians that the west has ever seen – seriously these guys could out play anyone, though they never had time to wallow in ego and always looked towards experimentation rather than dwelling on their skills.
There now follows a run-through of the album:
Dropping in with an up-tuned arching guitar fuzz and treble heavy hi-hat, ‘Full Moon On The Highway’ leaps straight into action. Jaki Liebezeit sets down an incessant workman like beat, hammering away on the bass drum as Michael Karoli casually begins his salacious vocals –
‘I made it hard today,
For I had to do it to me.
And if it’s only to hold her,
She’s gonna get it today’
A certain sense of portend fear hangs in the air, Karoli in his full Germanic romantic disdain rattles off omnivorous statements about taking to the highway, where star crossed lovers may unlock some inner meaning and truth.
Rock hard screaming lead guitar hooks run rampant, exercising no sign of restraint and sprinting ahead as though in a 100-meter sprint. Piano flourishes and honky tonk bravado light up the mood as those bawling guitars and Alpha 77 effects wail away like banshees. Czukay takes his bass on free roaming tour of run downs, slides and felicitous infused funk workouts, never staying put in one place for too long, always running his fingers all over his instrument. An intense burst of exuberant searing drums, keyboards and clashing turmoil all culminate into a finale furore, that threatens to end in a mess but is saved by the rallying cry of Karoli riding in on his gleamed-up guitar. He transposes glam via Pink Floyd to produce something unheard, a riff from the other side.
Taking a more serene path, ‘Half Past One’ begins with some archaic ethnographically seductive Spanish guitar and heavy tub tapping drums. A dozy laid-back vocal pronounces –
Over the beach,
Into the sun,
Wake again by half past one,
Alright’
The last word being some kind of reassurance amid the strangely relaxed drug induced soirée, that peers at some snapshot of the protagonists’ relationships, a casual affair on the beach in this case.
Schmidt interjects with some delightful mandolin sounding oscillations and yowling alarmed synths, whilst Czukay adds some chuggering engine bass lines, sliding around the neck as though revving it up.
The general breathless ambiance begins to wash ashore, like a lapping tide, meandering its way towards some welcoming gypsy encampment. Quacking wah-wah and folk tale violins add to the general malaise, building towards a newfound intensity as the song picks up momentum: The final 30 seconds bathing in the now pressured final crescendo.
Now steps forward the ambiguous and genre dodging ‘Hunters And Collectors’, with its almost glam postulations and Afro- funk grooves, this four minute Floyd gesturing dose of mayhem ducks any formal categorisation.
A doom-laden piano emphasis each intro chord, like an operatic indulgence. Karoli in magi pose announces the chorus –
‘Hunters and collectors, all come out at night.
Hunters and collectors, never see the light’
The song now kicks in with some sky rocketing theatrics. Dense melodies of climbing synth lines and evocative sexed up Teutonic choral backing adding to the melodrama. Czukay and Liebezeit cook up a fine jumped-up funky backing, with double shimmering hi-hat action and posing bass guitar. They all soon break down into a more stretched out segue way, taking in the early years of Parliament and some Afro highlife.
Karoli now dabbles with the vocals, as they take on some added menace; he conjures up images of leather clad biker gangs, savage sexual degradation and drugs –
Thirty leather kids, on the gang ban trail,
Get your big brown man with the snakes in bed.
Dirty bother me now, it soaks into a cup,
She says “if you don’t start at all, you never have to stop”.
Other worldly radio signals and snippets of conversation from the ether add to the esoteric atmosphere that is entrenched in seedy tales of chemical indulgences.
The opera swoops back in before what sounds like the set-piece breakdown brings the curtain down, as strange broken cogs, ratchets and springs all produce a comical ending, just before the swept in majestic intro of ‘Vernal Equinox’ is brought in.
As the ambivalent last track on side one, ‘Vernal Equinox’ continues the dynamism and piano melody from the previous track, but runs rough shot and fancy free, producing an eight-minute omnivorous jam or epic narrative.
It all begins with a search light introduction of space age doodling, with a chorus of sonar equipment and lasers shooting off in all directions, all played out over a heavy laden piano, hurtling towards a cacophony of destruction.
Rabid lead guitar rips into the track, Karoli literally plays for his life in a fit of feverish exhaustion, running through the full collection of riffs and chord rushes that he’s picked up over the years.
Flailing drums explode like a barrage of mortars, as UFO’s crash land all around, Czukay finds some cover and rattles off his defensive bass.
That Alpha 77, the exulted secret box of tricks, spits out havoc. Crazed wrecking layers of multiplying textures take the drama back to the cosmos soul searching of Soon Over Babaluma, but with a now more invigorated pumped-up stance. The raging narrative falls into one of those accustomed breakdowns. Liebezeit and his meteoric rhythm accompany arpeggiator sonic waveforms and metallic sounding drips during this break in the pace. The full swing returns in style, turning the jamboree into a jazz funk quest, as what sounds like Robert Fripp battling it out with an alien horde from the planet of Sun Ra, delivers a belting finale of elation.
Side two opens with the bongo tribal reggae of ‘Red Hot Indians’, a jaunty slice of infectious pigeon-toed dance rhythms and cool wistful chant like grooves. Karoli goes all faux-Caribbean with his laid-back vocals, he casually lays down some lines in an almost staccato fashion –
‘It’s the DNA song, DNA song, it’s the DNA song.
Strike mess, hole mess, shadow mess’.
Kubler Olaf blurts out an effortlessly uber cool prompting saxophone melody, liberally peppering the track, whist Liebezeit just reclines back on his sun lounger, knocking off some tom rolls and sipping a pina colada.
Mixing in some more African highlife and even-tempered down Roxy Music, this track flows along in its own serenity. The second wind of extra rhythms start to sway in an hypnotic motion, like some kind of mantra as Karoli mumbles recollection of some cryptic halcyon memories –
‘Then you took me back, steam machine.
Dreamt my way into a daydream.
Let me vanish into yesterday,
And my night drops fade away’.
As though to ratify the shambling theme, the song naturally fades out on its own breezy demeanour.
We now come to the soundscape behemoth of ‘Unfinished’, which by its title remains to be determined by the listener as to whether or not this maybe the case.
A set piece of sound cutting and masking that harks back to Future Days, with its reverential cinema scope builds and gliding synths this track could just yet be one of CAN’s finest moments.
Opening with what sounds like an orchestra tuning up, we hear a noisy interlude of violins, strings, brass and unfamiliar instruments all preparing themselves for the performance. That looming ever-present box of tricks, the Alpha 77, fires up and screeches over the top of our orchestra pit, launching bolts of lightning along with the odd spark of lush melodic wonder.
Breathing in the same aroma found on their soundtrack piece ‘Gomorrha’ and the melodic beauty of ‘Bel Air’, our macabre galactic Schmidt now unleashes some welcoming felicitous doses of extreme perturbation, underpinned by some humbling broody but magisterial bass.
All of a sudden, a series of gory effects and sounds enters the stage, as the demonic bound trip to the nebula goes all pants messing chaotic. Squealing guitars, that evoke the sounds of distressed souls pleading, cut through the heightened tense mire.
Factory steam powered machinery like the sort found on the Forbidden Planet, is ratcheted up, bashing away and powering up some monstrous life form. Some tumbling toms are given a swift kicking, the occasional crash of a cymbal unsettling the air as Liebeziet desperately tries to carry on playing whilst his space craft flies into the sun: holding on for dear life he is soon saved by his comrades who now work towards an uplifting final stretch.
Whistling sounds fly overhead, and gongs gently shimmer in the background, Schmidt throws in everything even the studios sink, as a build towards some sort of journey to the upper echelons of the solar system begins.
Escapist melodies and angelic ethereal guitars all scale the dizzying heights, like the dark side of the moon played by Stockhausen and backed by Ornette Coleman. A dream- like vaporous empyrean utopia opens out as our Cologne astronauts now proceed to save the best till last. Pulchritude swathes of divine beauty flow with delight as a lavishly rich melody of heavenly choral opulence raises us to some higher plain. The final few minutes being amongst the most sublime that CAN ever laid down, a spiritual guiding stairway to the universe.
Here’s the message bit we hate, but crucially need:
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
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
Tickling Our Fancy 090: Harmonious Thelonious, Krononaut, Map 71, Phew, Young Knives…
August 18, 2020
Album Reviews Roundup/Dominic Valvona
In-between lockdowns the only good news is that at least this month and next is shaping up to be the busiest months in 2020 so far, with a significant rise in the number of releases. And so, just scratching the surface, I’ve picked out just a smattering of interesting and brilliant albums from the thousands that the Monolith Cocktail receives each month.
German contemporary electronic music pioneer Stefan Schwander under the Harmonious Thelonious title, creates a new sophisticated polygenesis dance album of itchy scratching no wave, the tribal and industrial for the Hamburg label Bureau B; a survey of various contemporary experimental artists come together for charity to interpret the amorphous Plague Score graphic score of Nick Gill; Japanese underground luminary Phew releases a sort of mixed compilation of new material and unreleased sessions from her 2017 album’s Light Sleep and Voice Hardcore for the Disciples imprint. Lurking in the jazz-fusion subterranean, a new project from classically leaning producer and guitarist Leo Abraham and jazz drummer Martin France and their ensemble of collaborators, is the latest release on Glitterbeat’s experimental instrumental imprint tak:til. Krononaut converges the avant-garde with post-rock, post-punk and krautrock. Sometime Roedelius foil Andrew Heath releases yet another understated ambient sound collage of the real and imaginary for the Disco Gecko label; the patient escapist ‘The Alchemist’s Muse’. The Israeli-Russian collective Staraya Derevnya release a treble album haul, though I’m concentrating on the marvellous culmination of improvised performances pieces and additional material avant-garde krautrock folk Inwards Opened The Floor.
Handling the pandemic and escalating divisive free fall with spite, energy and violence, there’s the new Map 71 album, Turn Back Metropolis, and a barricade breaching, loud and primal return for the Young Knives with their first full-on album in nearly seven years, Barbarians.
Young Knives ‘Barbarians’
(Gadzook) Album/4th September 2020
Hurtling back from a four-year hiatus with a barrage, the brothers Dartnall unleash an angry firestorm of a dystopian album; the first fully realised collision since 2013’s Sick Octave.
The now not so Young Knives have been busy sharpening their sonic disconsolations in all that time, ready to pounce with an attack on the senses; reappearing at a most depressingly divisive time. Not that there hasn’t been more than enough material to keep the Knives awake at night, but they’ve been inspired to light the fuse by reading up on the apocalyptic philosopher/writer John Gray’s resigned tract on the illusions (as he sees it) of self-determination, Straw Dogs, and the controversial professional man-hater Valerie Solanas and her patriarchal death-knell, the S.C.U.M. Manifesto (an abbreviation of the Society For Cutting Up Men). In what’s said to be their most “cathartic” and “noisy” release yet, the self-confessed nihilists and miserablists have channeled the Clockwork Orange borstal of primal savage human nature, as explored in Gray’s polarizing theorem, and Solanas’ (what some critics and commentators consider a clever parody, even satire of “the performance of patriarchal social order it refuses”; though attempting to murder Andy Warhol, and by association the American critic Maria Amaya, puts a damper on that suggestion) utopian pipe-dream to knock seven bells out of the indie-dance and post-post-punk blueprints.
Essentially, as the title makes clear, despite all our graces, technologic advances and awareness, humans have never lost their barbaric cruelty. Is this just part of our nature and makeup? And if so, how do we live with it? It’s a quandary that hasn’t diminished over time, and a fate amplified in the pressing destructive times of 2020; a cold war of ideals, divisive politics kindled by a raging pandemic. And so, you can expect an explosive despondency from the Knives as they tear up and skulk through the debris.
It starts by plowing into a sustained menacing buzzy and harassed krautrock like grooving thrust merger of Techno, Siouxsie’s Banshees and PiL (Henry Dartnall will use will Lydon’s signature cocky sneer and haranguing rage throughout this Molotov hurling album), and continues to caustically cut-up a barreling and marching rant of These New Puritans, Scary Monsters and Outside era Bowie, NIN, the Chemical Brothers, Death From Above 1979 and The Slits. There’s even, I might suggest, a hint of supernatural Alex Harvey, albeit jazzed-up with rollicking Bloc Party drums, on the creeping witchery ‘Jenny Haniver’. I’m not surprised it has a daemonic esoteric feel, as the title refers to the ghastly unnatural looking mummified carcasses of rays and skates that have been dried-out and modified to resemble fanciful creatures like dragons and demons.
Brutality is everywhere, with samples of audio from a bare-knuckle brawl on the tortuous fist-clenched whirlwind title-track, and a squall of harsh and heavy breakbeats and alarms constantly rattle the cerebral. Yet breaking the barbarous grind and bounce are moments of brief relief: the venerable and prayerful female chorus on the ‘Holy Name 68’’ vignette (a distorted calm from the past), and the milder relief of a vague brass band finale serenade on the previously Blurt honking post-punk ‘Slashed What I Saw’ curtain call.
Henry shouts that the “scum will inherit the earth” and other such sloganism, knowing full well his rage will inevitably dissipate as the barricades come tumbling down once more. A future hell on repeat, the Knives at least have a good go at firing up the audience; it’s a noise and row that has been largely missing in the music world, and proves the perfect poisoned tonic for these end times. It’s good to have them back.
Phew ‘Vertigo KO’
(Disciples) Album/4th September 2020
In case you haven’t been introduced to the avant-garde voice iterations and various drone landscaping experiments of the Japanese artist known as Phew, then this new and unique compilation of her personal sonic statements and moods is both an eye-opener and a good place to start.
Phew’s entry into this field started with the instigation of the Osaka psychedelic-punk group Aunt Sally in 1978, which she fronted until their brief but influential burnout just a couple of years later. During the next decade Phew would work with an enviable cast of experimental doyens including Ryuchi Sakamoto, Alex Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten fame and DAF’s Christo Haar, and also making an album with the illustrious Can pairing of Holgar Czukay and Jaki Leibzeit and legendary producer Conny Plank. Fast-forwarding to the noughties and the underground pioneer has performed live and recorded with The Raincoats’ Ana Da Silva, Jim O’Rourke and Ikue Mori and Yoshimi of the OOIOO/Boredoms/Saicobab arc of ensembles. Quite the providence, it’s a back catalogue that can be heard suffused throughout the latest collection of specially recorded new material, unreleased works from Phew’s two most recent solo album sessions (2017’s Light Sleep and Voice Hardcore) and a, removed from its original disjointed source, cover version.
Framed by the artist herself as “An unconscious sound sketch…” and as “personal documentary music”, Vertigo KO is a special kind of compilation. Forward thinking, progressive rather than looking back, the tracks on this album can’t be dated or easily linked back to those previous works. It sounds in fact like a new work entirely, made in the moment, all at the same conjuncture of creativity and thought. The label Disciples has already put out a limited edition cassette, Vertical Jamming, of Phew’s “long form drone work”, but this collection seems untethered, themeless concept wise and musically. Well that’s not entirely true, Phew states that her last two albums from which some of the martial has been lifted is personal and not an attempt at a “worldview”: the overall undercurrent and hidden message being “what a terrible world we live in, but let’s survive”. Phew seems to convey this survival by counterbalancing ascendant crystal rays of nature and heavenly with mysticism, otherworldliness and ominous Sci-fi: The skying drones and refractions that build towards a cathedral in the clouds on the opening ‘The Very Ears Of Morning’ evoke the beauty and enormity of nature’s first light. Yet by the second track Phew has transmogrified the loose post-punk slumbering Raincoats distress ‘The Void’; transporting the bare bones to a neon-futuristic industrial setting, ala Bladerunner.
Some of the more truly “out there” avant-garde moods involve various vocal repetitions and multi layering. These voices, intonations and peculiar annunciations can be in the form of obscured incantations (as they are on the vaporous hive humming consciousness mystery ‘Let’s Dance, Let’s Go’), vowel stretching (on the dial twisting ‘All That Vertigo’) or monastic (on the mystical Buddhist/Shinto call to prayer vacuum ‘Hearts And Flowers’). Sometimes it’s used as a rhythm, at other times as a lingering trace of yearning from the “void”.
Phew’s amorphous sonic sensibilities exist both in the metallic gauze of space and in more concentrated earthly reverence. A pioneer of the form, the Japanese icon of the underground continues to produce some of her strongest work as a new decade beckons, birthed in a pandemic. The signatures, reference points and mode will be familiar to those already well acquainted with the Phew’s varied catalogue, yet Vertigo KO offers some sublime and inventive surprises to be an essential edition to the collection. Those unfamiliar would do well to experience this set of suites and then work backwards.
Krononaut ‘Krononaut’
(tak:til/Glitterbeat Records) 4th September 2020
Out on the peripherals of identifiable jazz-fusion the newly assembled Krononaut ensemble conjure up a mysterious extemporize performance on their debut vision for Glitterbeat’s highly experimental instrumental imprint tak:til.
Instigated, led by producer and guitarist Leo Abraham (who’s contextual guitar lines can be heard on Eno’s sublime Small Craft On A Milk Sea LP) and drummer Martin France (who’s played with, amongst others, Nils Petter Molvaer and Evan Parker) but methodology wise a democratized unit that embraces the atmospherical leanings and peregrinations of its extended lineup of collaborators, Krononaut was created out of a musical disciplinary challenge: To converge Leo’s classical sensibilities and learning with Martin’s jazz background. The results of which linger, spiral and prowl in an abstract subterranean space of hybrid jazz, Jon Hassell’s possible musics, krautrock, post-punk, post-rock and, at least in part, are informed, inspired by the unique rhythms found in the Madoh Shamanic funeral music of Tajikistan.
Recorded in London last year over two sessions, the inaugural featuring multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily (from Tom Waits to Laurie Anderson) on bass, the follow-up, the enigmatic saxophonist Matana Roberts, Swedish trumpeter Arve Henriksen and on bass duties too, Tim Harries, the Krononaut album reimagines a musique concrete Miles Davis, Sam Rivers and Grachen Moncur III skulking a masked, mournful to a point, ether that once in a while floats into the ethereal (in evidence on the diaphanous aria veneration ‘Vision Of The Cross’).
Navigating dark recesses in a spidery probing with the bass on the shadowy ‘Location 14’, and evoking their label mates Pulled By Magnets on the semi-industrial, cavernous and falling ‘Power Law’, this ensemble creep into post-punk; sounding like a transmogrified deconstructive PiL. Yet despite this the Krononaut’s are never so disjointed, dark or brash as to raise the volume above the discordant or even delicate; nothing runs away or untethers itself completely from the musicians’ grip.
Vague bursts of Guru Guru, drifting Eastern horns and filmic qualities drift in and out of serialism vaporuos industrial soundscapes and odd primal lagoons. Sporadic fits of propulsive drummed rhythms materialize from these non-liner recordings, but for the most part we’re strung out in the stresses and entanglements of composed, sophisticated avant-garde explorers: jazz and those classical leanings only really play one of many parts to this conjuncture of elements.
Ponderous, stalking, lolloping, spiritual, fluctuating – an exercise in relearning and discovery in fact – the Krononaut album of fourth world like experiments is free of limitations. It’s a project that escapes, even defies, categorization; another congruous fit with the ethos of the tak:til label.
Harmonious Thelonious ‘Plong’
(Bureau B) 28th August 2020
Fitting congruously within the Bureau B label family, Stefan Schwander’s inaugural album of sophisticated minimalist dance music for the Hamburg platform chimes with its roster of German experimental electronic pioneers; from Zuckerzeit candy era Cluster to the deconstructive Populäre Mechanik and the more contemporary Pyrolator.
More or less ten years into his Harmonious Thelonious alter ego, Schwander now offers a more “industrial sound” made from concrete objects vision of his American “minimalism” convergence with African rhythms and European melodies signatures. Inspired in part by the iconic Basle club of Totentanz, where the German electronic artist spent some of his misspent youth catching performances by the no wave dance act Liquid Liquid, the Gun Club, Jonathan Richman and a very young Aztec Camera, the Plong album channels some of the atmosphere and nostalgic vibes of those formative years. The club is immortalized on the final track; a sort of tribal beat with a barely audible hooted dance track that could be described as “intelligent” techno for the soul. In fact, the Liquid Liquid reference, or at least that vibrant post-new wave dance sound that they excelled at, can be heard permeating tracks like ‘Höhlenmenschenmuzik’; a multi-textural bass pronounced no wave dance of Carl Craig and Kriedler, the title of which translates as “caveman music” and evokes atavistic cave daubings leaping off the dank walls and vibrating, dancing like a host of Keith Harring characters bouncing down a NYC boardwalk.
Elsewhere amongst the deep Detroit techno and house music the tubular and knocking mettalics, tight delayed electronic sequencing and cleverly layered kinetics and mirages of a mysterious Arabia can be detected on the opening desert sands ‘Original Member Of A Wedding Band’. An obscured xylophone or marimba somehow captures an air of Africa on the lightly malleted and translucent itching vibrant ‘Geistertrio Booking’, and the staccato clumsy motioned ‘The Roller’ features a quasi-bobbing West African rhythm.
The tribal is subtly transformed into a futuristic suspense; 80s electro and no wave dance is twinned with lurking industrial electronica; bubbling concoctions float across mechanical refractions on a meticulously constructed deep dance soundtrack of multiple interesting rhythms. Plong, which could be a title Harmonia/Cluster may very well have used, fits perfectly with the Bureau B vibe, yet cuts a clean polygenesis electronic dance sound of its own.
https://soundcloud.com/bureau-1/harmonious-thelonious-plong-snippets
Various ‘Plague Song’
(Via Bandcamp) Album/14th August 2020
A plague has descended on all our houses it seems, with no corner of the globe left untouched by Covid-19. Yet not so much a plague in either the Biblical sense or even a 1000th as destructive as the Black Death that left populations decimated Covid-19 predicted effects and the measures being used to contain it and our civil liberties is proving more destructive and stressful. As lockdown lifts for some, only to be reintroduced as clusters break out in localized areas, and thoughts and anxieties can be translated, we’re seeing creatives release their cathartic impressions and traumas.
One such contextualization, instigated by the North Yorkshire based composer, multi-instrumentalist, solo artist and member of Fireworks Night and The Monroe Transfer ensemble, Nick Gill brings together a international cast of experimental artists and composers to interpret the project leader’s pencil-shaded abstract ‘Plague Song’ graphic score. Following in the footsteps of John Cage who first pioneered the concept, Gill sketches a roughly hewn amorphous score that offers a freehand to those invited to respond. With no instructions as to duration, instrumentation or performance style it’s entirely down to the artists to conjure up something evocative; a sonic representation from the elongated funnels and arched lines found beneath sharper cross-hatching scribbled noise. The author of that graphic score does offer his own interpretation however; offering a suitably atmospheric and watery composition of Craig Ward like multi-textural guitar reverberations.
Erring towards the perimeters of ambient, neo-classical and experimental music the guests on this charitable compilation (proceeds going towards Médecins sans Frontières) produce some searching visions of the present mood. Carrying on the imbued literary (Anthony Burgess to Joseph Heller) cross chatter and abstracted resonance of his many sonic adventures in India and Southeast Asia, Oxford polymath Seb Reynolds cuts-up and morphs a recurring “not as fatal” line with the sound of veiled Orient and tram clatter on his take of the score. Others, such as the renowned NYC stage, film and even opera composer Nico Muhly, produce something more sublime and trembling; the composer behind soundtracks for The Reader and Marnie glides towards a skying ascendance of rippling ambient beauty.
In the quasi Sci-fi mood, electronic composer and performer Hainbach generates some strange off-world atmospheres and primal lunar threats with his interpretation: evoking, I think, Bernard Szajner’s Dune imagings. The spherical Canadian team-up of musician, activist and producer Rebecca Foon and Polaris Prize winning singer-songwriter, producer Patrick Watson prove a congruous pairing, offering up an almost cosmically heavenly searing soundtrack of voices obscured in the vapour.
The track list is numerous; too numerous to mention everyone, so I’ll just mention a few more highlights and standouts. Tiece beckon with a signature “witchery” and “smoky” trip-hop soulful jazzy vision that evokes a warped Four Tet, whilst vocalist, sound artist David Michael Curry goes for something more supernatural, strung-out, with his added locational cryptic post-rock bluesy “scene report from Somerville Masc.” And perhaps one of the oddest interpretations, double-bassist and organist composer, arranger Ben Summers takes the listener through shades of South America, jazzy cocktail hour club soiree and 60s Italian soundtracks: a million miles removed from the compilations leitmotif of shared mysterious ominous drones and recondite ambient carpeting.
Gill’s original graphics are lent a swathe of interpretations, some less somber than others, from a cosmology of contemporary composers. A survey of mood pieces, from science fiction augurs to introspective concentrations. Yet seldom does the soundtrack wallow in the darkness, or creep into nightmares, which considering the title seems both optimistic and a relief. Plague Song is a worthy embrace of the uncertain; a translation of abstract stress and danger given an expansive treatment.
Map 71 ‘Turn Back Metropolis’
(Foolproof Projects/Fourth Dimension Records) Album/4th September 2020
Just the sort of J.G Ballard and Anthony Burgess flavoured dystopian claustrophobia we need in these pandemic striven times; the estuary high-rise colliding duo of disillusioned poet and artist Lisa Jayne and pounding sonic foil Andy Pyne deliver a skulking barrage from the edges of the inner city and suburban wastelands. Under the Map 71 cover they release a fifth album sound-clash of post punk electronica, no wave, post Krautrock and tribal industrial music.
Turn Back Metropolis finds the urban-planners of derision and concrete hardened social realism back in the stairwells and landings of a decaying omnipresent city, dreaming of escapism: “The fields are in sight of the city, but there’s a curfew and the city waits for your return.”
Against the stench of this imposed backdrop of societal misdemeanors, the grime of everyday existence is lyrically and starkly drip-fed by Lisa over beating toms, slinking dub, sporadic drumming, alarmed synths, contorted metals and London swagger. Lisa channels a petulant Ari Up and Viv Albertine, whilst Andy, at any onetime, conjures up an accompaniment of Cabaret Voltaire, Fad Gadget, PiL, The Au Pairs, Lonelady, 80s Rick Rubin and The Classical.
Seething yet composed, they stalk their subjects like prey through the entrancing, spiraling and more cutting on a futuristic punk album of malcontent. Tracks such as the squalling, speed-shifting, arcade-fire over-surge ‘Highrise’ can induce vertigo, and the rattling ‘Stitches’ evokes a seedy switch-bladed administered trauma. Descriptively as livid as it is poetically brilliant, with a musically edgy, harrowing but crafted sonic accompaniment to match, Map 71 delivers another sinister violent architectural imposing shockwave.
Related posts from the Archives:
Map 71 ‘Sado-Technical-Exercise’ Review
Andrew Heath ‘The Alchemist’s Muse’
(Disco Gecko) Album/4th September 2020
Carrying the torch for the kind of ambient and neo-classical swathes and calmly evolving ruminations pioneered by such luminaries as Roedelius, Andrew Heath is a maestro of, what he calls, “small-case minimalism”. Lucky enough to work with the self-taught acolyte and co-founder of the electronic music and kosmsiche legends Kluster/Cluster/Qluster arc, Heath has obviously picked up some ideas from the best in the field. The English composer of refined, understated evocations collaborated with Roedelius on both the Meeting The Magus and Triptych In Blue suites.
The “magus” pupil has become the “alchemist” on this latest exploration of minimalism, texture, tone and the “sonic detritus that litters our environment”. Using, as ever, a kind of English pastoral and esoteric poetry to reference moods and locations, as well as the sources of some of his field recordings, Heath counterbalances his naturalistic settings with delicately played (but deeply felt) piano, resonating electric guitar, and on the album’s title track the swan like and sonorous bass-clarinet of guest Bill Howgego, and of course the various apparatus that transmits those soft, veiled ambient tones and gossamer atmospheres. This translates into translucent compositions that merge the intercom chatter of a pilot’s radio with dropped bauble piano notes and stratospheric gliding, on the opening piece ‘Observers And Airmen’, and the squawk of a woodland menagerie and running water with Eno-esque pining scenic mystery and alien wiry quivers, on ‘Of Mill Leats And The Walter Meadows’.
Hints, traces of voice can be found throughout, but its Heath’s second guest, Romanian poet, writer and journalist Maria Stadnika, who offers the most fragile and emotional. Returning, after appearing on heath’s 2018 Evanfall album, Stadnika’s sighed wistful whispery ‘The Garden Reveals Itself’ receives a ‘Night Mix’ re-run. The senses of those waiting on the inevitable cycle of life and other such poignant chimes on the passing of time are soundtracked with an accentuated magical dreamy night garden score.
Recorded at his home in the Cotswolds’ earlier in the year, and framed as an album that provides a certain sense of calm and tranquility, Heath’s idyllic set piece is indeed rich with moments of stillness and contemplation. It all sounds serenely beautiful. From the announcer on the subway vignette ‘A Good Service,’ to the wooing undercurrents of ‘The Muse And Her Dreams’, both echoes of daily life blend with more mysterious surroundings in a superb sound collage. Ambient music it seems is in good hands, Heath’s seventh album for the Disco Gecko label is a sublime patient suite that offers a rest in these most troubling, intense times.
Archives:
Andrew Heath And Toby Marks ‘Motion’ Review
Andrew Heath ‘Soundings’ Review
Andrew Heath ‘Evenfall’ Review tof068
Staraya Derevnya ‘Inwards Opened The Floor’
(Raash Records) Album/4th September 2020
A culmination of Café OTO Project Space recorded performances from 2017 and additional material from that same year to 2019, the latest avant-garde inter-dimensional experiment from the Russian-Israeli straddling Staraya Derevnya is part of treble release schedule. Alongside the featured Inwards Opened The Floor there’s also a duo of improvisations recorded with Hans Grusel’s Kranken Kabinet entitled Still Life With Apples, released on cassette by Steep Gloss, and more live material under the OTO/Tusk title, released as a double CD spread by TQN-aut. A veritable bonanza of imaginative, much improvised albums from the St. Petersburg metro stop adorned group; though I’m going to concentrate on just the hallucinatory doors-of-perception opening opus, an expansive set of traverses, deconstructive marches and post-punk harangues built around lyrics inspired by the poems of Arthur Molev.
Expanding to accommodate up to twelve musicians, and an assemblage of musique concrete apparatus, radio waves, voices and more conventional instruments the Staraya Derevnya inhabit a shrouded soundscape of kosmische, post-punk and what can only be described as a kind of krautrock folk – think a meeting of The Faust Tapes and Can’s Unlimited scrapes and incipient windows in on cut short experiments but extended and more rhythmic.
Developing, magically entitled tracks such as ‘On How The Thorny Orbs Got Here’ drift off almost dreamily to a hushed narration and strung-out jazzy clarinet, brassy sonorous vibrations and short drum rolls, whilst the attic toy box clockwork march of ‘Chirik’ Is Heard From The Treetops’ chugs along at first like a wooden top Ballet Russes but then takes on a more traumatic force of industrial hooting and ripped, revved guitar: Russian folklore goes bananas.
Kazoos, rocking chairs, a not so “silent cello” help create a mysterious aura throughout: one that moves between the strained and distressed, the ambient and biting. For instance garroting wire cello and wooden tubular like percussion tangle with speed-shift space void effects and scrapes on the menacing ‘Hogweed Is Done With Buckwheat’, and on the almost swooning existential romance ‘Burning Bush And Apple Sauces’; soup plops, a radio broadcasted talky duet and a collage of piano and strings echo with hints of late Popul Vuh, OMD and the Pale Fountains.
The poetry is as whispery, haunting as it is erratic and harassed on these most probing clattery, screamed, rasped but equally fantastical tracks. I’m hooked. This is an astonishing set of cross-city amorphous urges, lingers and deconstructions like no other; an avant-garde wandering into the tapestry of Russian folklore and magic dream realism.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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