Premiere (Single): Crab Costume ‘Disaster’
May 10, 2021
Crab Costume ‘Disaster’
One half of the double-A-side single ‘Betterer/Disaster’ (Boo Boo Love Records) 14th Mat 2021
Cupid strikes a bum note on today’s premiere; offering not affections, love, but a cold shrug of incredulity. As the resigned soul singer, and one half of the Crab Costume collaboration, Asher Dust plaints: “Just found out that cupid’s a liar”.
A slice of trip-y electronic neo-soul, the second part of a split single from the transatlantic duo of Oxford-based Asher and the British-born, now based in NYC, producer, beat maker Mars Kestrel, ‘Disaster’ is a doleful sore account of broken down love: “What’s the point, this love is done”.
Sitting alongside the more neon R&B and down low bass wobbled ‘Betterer’, this moody piece of subtly placed beats, plucked vague exoticism and rock music resonance is a mix of Massive Attack, a winding TV On The Radio and Tricky; with vocals that swing between Lee Fields, Bobby Womack and Finley Quaye.
Both partners in this fruitful enterprise were previously members of the ‘legendary’ hip-hop outfit Big Speakers, so have form. On this idiosyncratic venture they interlace trip-hop, leftfield rap with soul, down beats, electronica and the sometimes psychedelic.
‘Betterer/Disaster’ is released through the duo’s own imprint, Boo Boo Records, on the 14th May 2021. You can now hear the latter premiere ahead of that date below:
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.
Premiere (Video): Field Kit ‘Don’t’
May 7, 2021
Field Kit ‘Don’t’
(Nonostar Records)
Cinematic electro-acoustic music with a small ‘c’, filled with gravitas and a hunger to stir the emotions, the Field Kit collective pairing of its central force and instigator, the Berlin-based composer-musician Hannah von Hübbenet, and her collaborative foil, the pianist-producer John Gürther, create mini filmic scenes and atmospheres together on the group’s eponymous debut album for Alex Stolze’s burgeoning imprint Nonostar.
Possibly the first album on the celebrated polymath’s label that doesn’t include Stolze’s magnetic tender collaborative skills (previous releases on the roster include the violinist, composer, songwriter and producer’s own solo work alongside his collaborative efforts with Anne Müller and Sebastian Reynolds on the Solo Collective, and with repeated foil Ben Osborn), Field Kit are nevertheless in a similar sort of neo-classical orbit to their label partner’s merger of strings imbued by centuries of swelling heartache and travail, voices and synthesised instrumentation effects.
Former students of both the Universität der Künst in Berlin and the Filmakademie Baden-Württemburg, violinist Hannah and pianist John now draw on that study for their inaugural adroitly blended album of ‘warm acoustic(s)’ and more ominous, incipient ‘cold mechanical’ movements and shadows: A sound that is described as ‘cyber-noir’.
Those cinematic qualities are in evidence throughout, with hints of Scott Walker’s late soundtrack work and also Johann Johansson’s on the almost bestial, caged and chained combative subterranean, hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raiser, ‘Human Behavior’. You can hear a touch of both Mica Levi and Jed Kurzel on the heightened mourned strings yearn ‘String Adrift’. There’s a sense that unforeseen forces are ready to emerge from the duo’s conjured atmospherics; perhaps something otherworldly or horrifying, or something from another age, coming out of the mists – I thought for some reason of a Viking longship on the solemn opening crackled piece ‘Distant Approach’. Haunted coos, the vibrating resonance of finger bowls and a semblance of a removed Orientalism meanwhile permeate the plucked, dust trickled ‘Counterfeit’, whilst ‘Motorized Piano’ opens up the instrument’s inner workings and the movement of time for an almost clandestine thriller – the slow release UNCLE like drums roll in to set the pace; a race across a metro platform.
The single track we’re concentrating on however, and premiering the video of ahead of the album’s release next month, is the ethereal but fragile finale ‘Don’t’. Affected sighs, and sometimes heart aching strings, lunar synth and a gauze of electro-pop plaint form a bed for the manipulated vulnerable repeated vocals on a filmic score that borders on both trip-hop and the classical. Go now and immerse yourselves in this magical diaphanous suite from the collective.
Field Kits debut album is due out on the 4th June 2021 through Nonostar Records. You can order it now through the label’s Bandcamp page. You can now buy and download the single ‘Don’t’ from today.
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.
Première: (Video) Balkan Taksim ‘Anadolka’
January 26, 2021
Words: Dominic Valvona
Photos: Miluţă Flueraş
Atavistic yet contemporary in its merging of Balkan traditions and psychedelics with broken-beats, synth-electronica, dub and global bass the Sașa-Liviu Stoianovici and Alin Zăbrăuțeanu duo of Balkan Taksim inject a respective new dynamism and energy into the music of their Romanian roots. They’ve expanded that to a wider exposure and education of Slavic cultures throughout the Balkans region, congruously working with local singers and musicians to record the songs, tunes of their heritage. Reworking this source material in the studio, they’ve added an air of modernity with an array of sophisticated and articulate (rather than “banging IDM”) style electronica sounds, atmospherics, heavy bass and powerful beats. But don’t call it a “fusion”: it goes deeper than that, with many of the sounds being sampled direct from original traditional Balkan instruments, both musical worlds existing on equal terms.
It’s a magical, transportive futurist vision that’s attracting a lot of acclaim and attention.
The duo, having just signed to the Parisian label Buda Musique, are readying themselves to release a debut album this Spring. Ahead of that, the Monolith Cocktail is premiering the brand new video for the “journey into a maelstrom of memory” imbued ‘Anadolka’. The duos take on a Balkan classic merges Yugoslav pop-rock with the sound of the long-necked Ottoman tanbur and electric saz and the plaintive lyrical poetry of Bosnia’s Serbo-Croatian dialect to produce an almost shivery, frayed and haunting malady.
The Romanian film director Andra Hera created the video for the reimagined ‘Anadolka’. She has this to say about the visual narrative:
“A contemporary poet is haunted by the spirit of a beautiful woman from the Balkans. He chases her shadow while visiting an old lonely house, by the side of a desolate lake. Wintertime brings memories of a past saturated with desire, with a guilty love that is on the edge of tearing apart an old friendship. A visual poem, in which the layers of time melt. In the end, the observer is the one who is observed.”
Balkan Taksim breath life into an ancient Balkan psychogeopgraphy, creating an often-entrancing atmosphere that weaves those Slavic traditions and yearnings with an amorphous soundtrack of electronica. Experience that mood music now with the première below.
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.
Premiere: (Track) Ancient Plastix ‘Late Summer Low’
November 30, 2020
Words: Dominic Valvona
Ancient Plastix ‘Late Summer Low’
Taken from the self-titled new album released via Maple Death Records on December 11th 2020
From the forthcoming self-titled debut album by the Liverpool producer and composer of labyrinth puzzled ambient soundscapes, Ancient Plastix, the scene-setting ‘Late Summer Low’. We’re proud to be premiering this crispy static and fizzing fissures simulation suite of contemplated cosmic neoclassical note droplets and shooting star communications ahead of the album’s official release on the 11th December.
Under the Ancient Plastix alter ego, Paul Rafferty has set out to capture the feelings of discovery and adventure he first had as a teenager experimenting with a rudimental Tascam 414 four-track in the 90s. Using that bit of recording kit once again, Rafferty recorded his album of graceful imagined spaces and emotional pulls using a cheap Yamaha synth and small collection of guitar pedals; leaving in all the atmospheric grainy hiss and fuzz of a lo fi process. And so more analog than digital, without the interference and the “burden of screen squashed waveforms” these spontaneous and linear constructed tracks evoke the early synth work of Sky Records, Tangerine Dream and on the thoughtful but also playful, starry bass bending meander ‘The Yellowed Grass’, a hint of Roedelius.
Yet the delicate majestic and sophisticated work of more contemporary figures such as Marc Barreca, Yasuaki Shimizu and Hiroshi Yoshimura can also be heard permeating the descriptively entitled compositions, which glide and refract between space and inner cerebral explorations. There’s quite a variation too, with the heart beat pulsing synthesized bass drum Kosmische ‘Dead Body Drawing’ unfurling a helicopter rotor chopping vision of a supernatural Vietnam War soundtrack produced by John Carpenter, and the proto-Kraftwerk race and train track chuffing, bottle tapping and woody percussive ‘Endurance Dream’ imagining a peculiar upbeat dream state workout.
The Monolith Cocktail invites our followers to now experience the stirring, opening suite from Rafferty’s upcoming debut album for Maple Death Records, ‘Late Summer Low’, below.
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.
Premiere: (Track) Tiger Mendoza ‘Words’
November 18, 2020
Premiere
Dominic Valvona
Photo Credit: Helen Messenger
Tiger Mendoza ‘Words (Featuring Kate Herridge)’
Taken from TMSK8: The Mixtape
6th November 2020 via bandcamp
20th November 2020 via all digital service platforms
Previously limited exclusively to Bandcamp, Oxford-based guitarist, producer and remixer Tiger Mendoza (the moniker of one Ian De Quadros) is sharing the slinking and sulking Trip-Hop ‘Words’ track from his new project, TMSK8: The Mixtape, with the Monolith Cocktail ahead of a general digital release on the 20th November 2020 (with a physical release in the pipeline). This no wave funk sass of soulful but haunting moody attitude features the vaporous sultry voice of Ocean Ruins’ Kate Herridge sophisticatedly evoking a hint of SAULT and ESG, whilst Ian’s UNKLE and DJ Shadow influences provide the breaks.
When asked about the roots of Tiger Mendoza, Ian says “having initially been more focused on song-writing on guitar from the age of 16, I fell in love with acts such as UNKLE and DJ Shadow and composers such as Clint Mansell and Vangelis, these artists lead me to start experimenting with making electronic music”. All of which you can expect to hear on the mixtape, alongside a haul of contemporary Hip-Hop, glitch electronica, Chemical Brothers style refashions and guest spot collaborations.
As well as keeping busy working on his own tracks, Ian has produced remixes for luminaries such as Public Enemy and DJ Shadow, and has supported AKDK and Sink Ya Teeth.
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.
Premiere: (Video) Giacomelli ‘The Best Of Both Possible Worlds, Part II’
September 17, 2020
Premiere
Words: Dominic Valvona
Giacomelli ‘The Best Of Both Possible Worlds, Part II’ taken from the upcoming album suite Cosmic Order released by Somewherecold Records, 9th October 2020
Beamed across the Atlantic by the North American hub Somewherecold Records, we have a most grand spanning opus from Silicon Valley composer Steve Giacomelli, who releases his triple CD expansive series of cosmic ordered suites for the experimental ambient and electronic label next month.
His fourth such album of ambient minimalism for the label, this celestial and evolutionary mined impressive ARP Odyssey synth birthed album of thirty-six ascendants, refractions, pulses and gravitas inspiring space music uses a number of techniques to accomplish an overall sound of forgotten Sky Record maestros (think Asmus Tietchens, Wolfgang Riechmann), Tangerine Dream, early Cluster, Vangelis, Tomat and solo Roedelius. This synthesized vision – that can sometimes err towards the ominous forebode and mystery of Kubrick – synthesis of the abstract, deep space, the inner mind, nature and the heavenly is accomplished with an apparently limited pallet and the use of counterpoint sequences, the generative and a method, favoured by Frank Zappa, called “xenochrony” – that is the extracting of a solo or other part from its original context and placing it into a completely different song/composition. These techniques make for a most impressive traverse of the astral planes, new age transcendence, theorems, gases and topographic ebbs and flows.
From that three-hour epic, the Monolith Cocktail is premièring the geometric patterned and busy algorithm Kosmische junction of nature and technology, ‘The Best Of Both Possible Worlds II’. Personally I’m hearing a cross serenity and pulse of Kraftwerk, Eno and Cage, but see what you think as we share this sweeping analogue soundtrack.
The 3XCD and digital download Cosmic Oder album is released by Somewherecold Records on the 9th October 2020
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.
Premiere: (Video) Junkboy ‘Salt Water’
August 14, 2020
Premiere/Dominic Valvona
Junkboy ‘Salt Water’
(Fretsore Records) Download only single, released 14th August 2020. Taken from the upcoming digitally issued/reissued Sovereign Sky album, released on the 25th September 2020
Attracting a sort of cult status over the years since it’s initial release back in 2014, the Estuary soft psychedelic and pastoral beachcomber Hanscomb brothers’ unassuming Sovereign Sky album, it seems, was limited to only a select few despite its critical acclaim: especially by the Monolith Cocktail. A culmination of Mik and Rich Hanscomb‘s experiments with a number of styles, Sovereign Sky adopted a relaxed attitude to the pastoral, cooing frat-folk, surf music, psychedelia, Britpop and the hip sound of Tokyo’s Shibuya Kei district. That album gave fair voice and a wistfully charmed backing of tenderly picked acoustic guitars, stirring strings and hushed, almost whispered, vocals to both the pains and loves of maturity, the brothers mellowed tones and introspection offered a mature observation on the world around them: especially, at the time, their new found home of Brighton. It’s a place in which Marc Eric meets Cornelius, and epic45 make friends with Harpers Bizarre; a place where Hawthorne, California is transcribed to the English downs and seaside.
One such convert to that most peaceable of songbooks is Fretsore Records’ Ian Sephton, who signed the brothers back in 2019, releasing their South Coast topography imbued Trains Trees Topophilia album that same year. He suggested re-releasing the album on all digital platforms and on digipack CD; augmented with liner notes written by Parisian record collector, vinyl archivist and fellow believer, Quentin Orlean. The boys rightly jumped at that suggestion, as Mik explains: ‘We used this as an opportunity to go back to the tapes and improve the sound for digital release utilizing our home studio’s new outboard gear and tech acquired in the interim period. And the benefit of hindsight!’
Sovereign Sky channels the kind of music Mik and Rich have listened to since their youth. A Thames Estuary take on the lo-fidelity, budget -baroque of the first Cardinal LP and the vintage mellifluousness of The Lilys. There’s also a healthy dose of British Romanticism – an imaginary Albion in their heads somewhere between the socialist utopia of William Morris and Bob Stanley’s Gather In The Mushrooms compilations- while their hearts lie sun-kissed and blissed in Southern California like a pair of burnt out troubadours in deck shoes sourced with meticulous discernment from the Shibuya Kei district of Tokyo.
‘And yes’ confirms Rich, ‘we were enamoured with so many (often) home studio cooked and lost West Coast psych records – A Gift from Euphoria by Euphoria, Save for a Rainy Day by Jan & Dean, Another Day, Another Lifetime by The David, Initiation of a Mystic by Bob Ray, The Smoke’s self-titled album, Marc Eric’s A Midsummer’s Day Dream, and anything by Merrell Fankhauser….’
Presented here in an enhanced format that manages to transcend even the original vinyl’s beauty, Sovereign Sky is a Nugget that deserves to be a little less lost and a lot more loved.
Taken from that revitalised album we have the video accompanied teaser, reminder, and downloadable single, the relaxed soulful Love-esque rhythm guitar played lapping tidal reflection ‘Salt Water’. A concise, post-sike ode to the soul replenishing nature of sea side town existence, the brothers made field recordings at Hove Lagoon, East Sussex and wove them into a song built around a circular riff Rich devised after he woke up from a dream in which a version of ‘Yacht Dance’ by XTC produced by American Beauty era Jerry Garcia was on the radio twenty-four-seven. Sweet dream, man!
For the video, the boys sought to juxtapose the gaudy, grim reality of Brighton beach with the soothing calm waves of neighbouring Hove by means of a gently psychedelic, deep chilled Zen trip undertaken by an origami boat: Music and visuals in perfect harmony. Lap it up while you can.
Related posts from the Archives:
Junkboy ‘Sovereign Sky’ Review
Albums of 2019: Junkboy ‘Trains, Trees, Topophilia’
Premiere ‘Waiting Room’
‘Fulfil b/w Streets Of Dobuita’ Review
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.
Premiere: (Video) Mike Gale ‘Go Help’
August 5, 2020
Premiere/Dominic Valvona
Mike Gale ‘Go Help’
Video track taken from the upcoming album The Star Spread Indefinite, released 25th September 2020
A tropical-lilted wistful tiptoe sauntering continuation of the plaintive beachcomber Beach Boys sound that permeated the reclusive polymath’s output for a number of years, Mike Gale once again does wonders with another disarming yet disconsolate bobbing beauty, ‘Go Help’.
The former Co-Pilgrim and Black Neilson instigator has been highly prolific of late with last year’s Pacific Ocean lulled sorrow Summer Deluxe album, a recent compilation of (far from) unfinished works and B-side ruminations, paeans and breezes entitled B, C, D Side Volume 1, and a lockdown mini-album Sunshine For The Mountain God. And now with this precursor video track Gale announces the release of his next fully realized songbook, The Star Spread Indefinite; released on the 25th September 2020.
“A celebration of the value of quiet contemplation and the pursuit of solicitude and calm”, lockdown it seems may have just suited Gale, who retired from live performances in 2018. Inspired, in part, by escaping the daily divisive barrage of noise, Gale has also been reading Justin Hopper’s The Old Weird Britain book; in particular the passage about the ancient artwork found scratched into the wall of a flint mine in Sussex, who’s discoverer, rather poetically, embellished it with the title that is now borrowed to adorn Gale’s upcoming album.
Premiering today on the Monolith Cocktail, we have the ‘Go Help’ video, made by the photographer and video maker Jussi Virkkumaa, who juxtaposes the song’s quiet “dystopia” unease with a rotation of revolving surrealist objects: from a mannequin’s hand in a steaming bowl to fidgeting fauna and a stuffed crane like bird. Virkkumaa has this to say about his visual accompaniment and the song:
“Well I think that what I love about Go Help, is that I got a feeling of happy isolation, and little by little I begin to question the lullaby-kind of tune to be something more to the dystopian. It delivers (for me at least) a feeling of lost control, but at the same time there’s beauty. I tried to go kind of a similar route, choosing symbolic figures, which are in an absurd environment, just rolling around endlessly. I think the situation could be something like the Voyager’s golden record flying in outer space, just in case, a time capsule to burn in some distant planets atmosphere.”
If this latest effortless sounding wash of Afro-Caribbean lilt, Beat Connection surf noir and 80s pop snuzzled trumpet is anything to go by, then Gale’s cosmic-dreamily entitled The Star Spread Indefinite is set to be another languidly beautiful affair.
Related posts form the ARCHIVES:
Mike Gale ‘B, C, D Sides’ Review
Mike Gale ‘Summer Deluxe’ Review
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.
Premiere: (Track) Luke Mawdsley ‘Misery Gland’
July 20, 2020
PREMIERE/REVIEW/Dominic Valvona
Luke Mawdsley ‘Misery Gland’ taken from the upcoming album Vulgar Displays Of Affection, released on 24th July 2020 through Maple Death Records.
For those of you with a morose curiosity you’ll find that Luke Mawdsley’s metaphorical river of consciousness runs deep with it. The former Mugstar guitarist circumnavigates the dark waters of trauma and anxiety on his second solo outing, but first for the caustic experimental Italian label Maple Death Records, Vulgar Displays Of Affection.
Billed as a “cathartic meticulous journey brimmed with emotion and failure”, Mawdsley’s spoken-word mise en scène dictation is masked with a warped and slurred daemonic vocal effect, both menacing and disdainfully as it splashes around in the mire of minimalist industrial electronica and the harrowing flagellations of Scott Walker. Plumbing the depths Mawdsley’s one part King Midas Sound, one part the more deranged examples of a “verbasier programmed” Bowie on the Outside album removed voice pours a lucid string of vivid depictions and despair into the listener’s ears. Today’s premiere track, taken from that upcoming album, is a case in point; the murky generator throbbing and wretched stained ‘Misery Gland’, a vision of Einstürzende Neubauten trading blows with Coil, seers with despondent spoken monotones and more speeded-up demon giggles.
The scene is set with sonorous rings, strung-out tremolo, hammerings and knocks, tight-delayed repetitive drum machine hi-hats, fizzles and a looming threat of synthesized atmospherics. It is a stench as much as a tonal soundtrack that reaps a malady of industrial noise, drifting esoteric blues and the Lynchian. An uncertain, anxious and often sinister creeping discourse on the themes of sexuality and disorientation, this haunted murky generated dungeon music draws from a well of disillusion.
The lyrics themselves either slither through the mulch of a mashed-up brain or almost predatory turn subjects into the lurid and dangerous. There are various play-on-words type track titles, from ‘Vauxhall (Cavalier) & I’ – a space-echoed car boot lubricated with a threatening musk – to ‘A Grudge Supreme’, and a chilling Ry Cooder blues fantasy built around the fictional parody of the Dr. Steve Brule hosted public access psycho-analysis spoof Check It Out! – the naïve Brule character played by John C. Reilly, expunges by happenstance horrifying details of his life story whilst discussing a range of topics. Sometimes despite the pain, distress and that creepiness, Mawdsley can offer a twisted sort of humour with the surreal images he conjures up. And the music does offer some lovely melodious waves, and even the glimmer of something less suffocating.
‘The River Takes It All’ declares the album’s finale; an increasingly distorted caustic and hostile wrangle of a climax with tortuous appeal, the waters of which threaten to engulf. A deeply revealing experience of the lurid, coarse, disturbing and vivid, Mawdsley’s immure vulgar displays rest wearily upon the shoulders. In this cursed time of uncertainty and vehement argument, the pained artist struggles through the miasma of indignity to create a drip-feed of chthonian distress.
Ahead of its release, we bring you the premiere of the album track ‘Misery Gland’.
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.
Premiere (Single): bedd ‘You Have Nice Things’
June 25, 2020
Premiere/Dominic Valvona
bedd ‘You Have Nice Things’
Single/26th June 2020
Tenderly building upon the understated elegiac beauty of the previous single ‘Auto Harp’, the Jamie Hyatt led musical project bedd once more open up their hearts on the sad but charmed pop conversational ‘You Have Nice Things’.
Speaking thoughts out loud, or rather in hushed tones with a choral wash of harmonies, a lonesome Hyatt contemplates what it all means from atop of his wooden step ladder as he gazes out and reflects in an array of locations, from tennis courts to industrial estates and parks. Enigmatically shot by filmmaker Liam Martin, in and around the Oxford town in which Hyatt is based, the video accompaniment to this pining single seems a poignant reminder to the loneliness and isolation of the Covid-19 lockdown.
Though it can’t help but evoke the times we live in, the theme of this sighed ponder is universal and timeless, as Hyatt explains: “the track starts as a quiet conversation – almost a confession – that opens up into an unashamed celebration of the mundanity of existence, the beauty of the everyday and our perceived sense of our own successes and failures”.
The singer, songwriter and producer manages to expressing those feelings with few, but and just enough, words backed by a sort of Britpop (an air of Gene in there) chamber pop accompaniment of reverbed lingered guitar, anthemic ascendant rises and when it hits, handclap drums and dissipated washed cymbals.
‘You Have Nice Things’ is released on the 26th of June 2020. The Monolith Cocktail is delighted to be sharing the single/video a day in advance.
Before we hold you up any longer, and premiere the video, just a little background about bedd.
Hyatt is a longstanding Oxford musician known for his previous bands The Family Machine, The Daisies and Medal, as well as his score for the film Elstree 1976.
Alongside him, this extended ensemble is made up of a range of celebrated local Oxford musical talent, including bandmates from his previous project The Family Machine in the shape of bass player Darren Fellerdale and guitarist Neil Durbridge. Also in the mix are guitarist Tom Sharp, electronic musician and producer Tim Midlen (also known as The Manacles of Acid) and drummer Sam Spacsman. You Have Nice Things was recorded and produced by Hyatt with the band at Glasshouse studios in rural Oxfordshire and mixed and mastered by Robert Stevenson.
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.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 