Perusal #003: Singles, Previews & Oddities Roundup: Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela, Verses Bang, Brona McVittie…
January 27, 2020
Videos/Singles/LPs
Dominic Valvona
In quick succession, following last week’s inaugural roundup of 2020 of perused singles, videos, previews and the odd album that threaten to overload our inboxes, another selection of releases that you need to know about. This week’s honors go to Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela, Brona McVittie, Ippu Mitsui, Verses Bang and JZ Replacement.
Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela ‘We’ve Landed’
(World Circuit Records) Preview Video
This is one convergence of talent worth ‘rejoicing’. Arguably two of the most important motivator/instigators in the development of African music over the last 50 years, Afrobeat progenitor, drummer extraordinaire Tony Allen and his foil trumpet virtuoso, bandleader, activist and South African national treasure, the late Hugh Masekela, finally crossed paths in 2010 to record this sublime swinging and lilted atmospheric album: an album that had been in the making since the two central figures in Afrobeat and Afrojazz first met in the 1970s. However, those original sessions were put on hold until last year.
With renewed resolution, Allen and producer Nick Gold, with the blessing and participation of Hugh’s estate, unearthed the original tapes and finished recording the album last year at the same London studio where the original sessions had taken place. Allen and Masekela are accompanied on the record by a new generation of well-respected jazz musicians including Tom Herbert (Acoustic Ladyland/The Invisible), Joe Armon-Jones (Ezra Collective), Mutale Chashi (Kokoroko) and Steve Williamson.
Rejoice is set to drop on the 20th March 2020; until then here’s the loose Francophone swinging jazz announcement ‘We’ve Landed’ to savior: every bit as effortlessly cool, bouncing and smoky as you’d expect. Look out for a full review on the site in the next month or so.
Links of interest from our archives
Hugh Masekela ’’66-‘76’
Tony Allen ‘The Source’
Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra ‘A.H.E.O’
JZ Replacement ‘Tubuka’
(Rainy Days Records) Single/Now
Introducing the new dynamic fusion project from saxophonist Zhenya Strigalev (Ambrose Akinmusire, Eric Harland) and drummer Jamie Murray (Sun Ra Arkestra, Native Dancer), the first single to drop from the JZ Replacement moniker duo is the off-kilter acceleration of moodier Massive attack prowls, lurching breakbeats, d’n’b and vortex squawking contemporary jazz with blasts of hard bop, ‘Tubuka’.
With an already enviable providence as both a performing duo in their own right and with a host of luminaries on the scene, Strigalev and Murray look further afield to develop and challenge their sound. As part of that challenge, the duos upcoming new LP, Disrespectful (due to drop on the 13th March 2020) was recorded with the increasingly in-demand L.A. bass master, Tim Lefebvre (who played with the Donny McCaslin led troupe that backed David Bowie on his swansong album, but also such notable talent as Wayne Krantz, Elvis Costello and Mark Guiliana). On the evidence of this precursor single, the album promises to be a ball of exploratory jazz and grooves.
Verses Bang ‘The Eagle Has Landed’
Single/Video/January 2020
In case you missed one of the UK’s most burgeoning talents on the Hip-Hop and beyond music scene, the ever sartorially sharp Verses Bang drops a reminder single and new video from last year’s high anxiety deconstruction of an addicted personality, Cardigans & Calories, ‘The Eagle Has Landed’. From his own mission control, Verses’ convergence of rap, grime and trap lurks menacingly on this unsanctioned Apollo flight into the shadows.
Verses name drops idiosyncratic references to British culture and TV and tongue-in-cheek digs at the varnished validation culture of many of his more puffed-up peers on social media, with the pressures of trying to make it whilst battling those addictions. One to watch for sure in 2020.
Ippu Mitsui ‘Break Through 50 Watts’
(Pure Spark Records) LP/23rd January 2020
Always in a state of developing and reworking, Tokyo electronic composer and label boss Ippu Mitsui draws breath with an album of rerecorded, remasterd and in some cases, alternate visions of his back catalogue on Break Through 50 Watts.
Delivered via his very own burgeoning experimental electro and dance label, Pure Sparks Records, Ippu hurtles and careers through a miscellaneous of tracks from 2017, including a freshly coated twitch-house take of the opening 32-bit, dial-up tone skittish collage ‘Bug’s Wing’s’ (taken from his L+R LP for the Edinburgh label Bearsuit Records) and a sophisticated shadowy airy refresh of the cruising ‘Rotation’ (taken from his Shift Down EP for Submarine Broadcasting Company). Ippu watchers might also recognize remasters of the E Noise EP’s breakbeat thriller ‘Chromium’ and the Resonance EP’s re-Warp busy percussive ‘Biorhythm’. Scattered amongst these are a host of equally cybernetic and machine code engineered techno treats: the dulcimer chiming timepiece soundtrack ‘Recovery’, melodic childlike piano downtempo ‘Playground’ and the strange putting-robots-to-sleep deconstructive techno number ‘Sea Slug In Love’ being some of the more interesting and diverse tracks on offer.
New to the charms and exploration of Ippu Mitsui, then this collection would be a grand starting point to a one-man electro and techno industry.
Links of interest from our archives
Ippu Mitsui ‘L + R’
Brona McVittie ‘The Green Man/Eileen Aroon’
(Company of Corkbots) Single/20th January 2020
In anticipation of the ephemeral harpist and diaphanous lulled singer’s second solo album this year, Brona Mcvittie releases a couplet of fluttery yearnings that pay homage to Celtic imbued contoured landscapes. Brona’s magical, lingering, self-penned ode to the atavistic ‘The Green Man’ (a song idea that “literally grew out of the trees visible from my living room window”) and beautifully sang version of the Carroll O’ Daly 14th century paean ‘Eileen Aroon’ (a song in which the protagonist of that tale espouses his love for Eleanor Kavanagh, daughter of the Leinster chieftain, comparing her to a “flower of the hazel glade”) continue the harp-led evocations and trip-folk cinematic landscaping of the debut LP We Are Wildlife (which made our albums of 2018).
Producing melodies and phrases that often feel like a breath or just the merest presence of the harp and voice, Brona amorphously pushes the often-ancient feelings and geography towards John Martyn and Bert Jansch one minute, towards the Incredible String Band or Boards of Canada the next.
Be sure to keep an eye out for a future review of that upcoming album.
Links of interest from our archives
Brona McVittie ‘We Are Wildlife’
Perusal #002: Singles, Previews & Oddities Roundup: Ani Glass, Betacrack, Kamilita, Dijf Sanders, Jonah Parzen-Johnson…
January 20, 2020
Singles, Previews & Oddities Roundup
Dominic Valvona
A quick shifty, glance, a perusal of the mounting pile of singles, EPs, mini-LPs, tracks, videos and oddities that threaten to overload our inboxes this month by me, Dominic Valvona.
Featured artists include Ani Glass, Dijf Sanders, Betacrack, Kamilta, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and Liz Davinci.
Dijf Sanders ‘Ravana’
(Unday Records) Single/2nd January 2020
A plucking, steaming and lumbering exotica of amorphous esoteric Tibet, the Far East and China, the leading single from David ‘Dijf’ Sanders new album, Puja, is a downtempo fantasy of vague ethio-jazz, psychedelic and breaks. The Belgium composer and multi instrumentalist follows up previous traversing suites with another dramatic vision of borderless escapism. Sourced from a Hindu epic, ‘Ravana’ is a courtly sumptuous and hypnotic introduction to a sonic layered world of mystery.
Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘Up’ & ‘Stand Still’
(We Jazz) Preview tracks from the upcoming new LP, Imagine Giving Up, released 7th February 2020
From a label we have tried to champion over the last couple of years, We Jazz, another inventive ambient explorative jazz suite (make that two) from the Brooklyn based baritone saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson. Doing imaginative things with the saxophone and an undulation of lopping, augmented synth effects, Jonah produces a kind of Hassell meets Colin Stetson vision of untethered and unburdened music. Taken from the upcoming new LP, Imagine Giving Up, there’s the minimalist wafted and swaddling sax drifting over a ‘fourth world musics’ like electronic choppy reverb ‘Up’, and the more electrified and elongating, shimmery romanticism of ‘Stand Still’. It all makes for a very promising album.
Ani Glass ‘Mirores’
(Recordiau Neb) Single/17th January 2020
Welsh dream-synth chanteuse Ani Glass casts enchanting diaphanous gossamer shapes over a Moroder style bedding of enervated glitterings, vapours and piqued bubbles on her new single ‘Mirores’. Sang in the native Welsh tones, and with that veiled magical 80s soundtrack accompaniment, Ani’s coos glide towards fantasy.
‘Mirores’ is taken from the upcoming debut LP of the same name, due out on the 6th March 2020; summed up here from the press clippings: ‘With its tapestry of electronic sounds, elliptical melodies and samples threaded into a song cycle, MIRORES is based around the idea of movement and progress – one which takes us on a journey around her hometown of Cardiff. You can hear Ani’s recorded sounds of the urban landscape throughout; the movement of traffic and people and the magical yet infrequent sounds of nature coming together to create the score of a city’s symphony.’
Kamilita ‘Broken Hearted Freak’
Going to keep this one as brisk and vaporous as the artist’s music, but Kamilita wafts through an 80s backtrack of dreamy hazy Grimes meets Sugababes electro pop plaint on the latest single ‘Broken Hearted Freak’. Not much is known about the Seattle artist, who seems to have just materialized from the net to produce neo-pop visions of hi-nrg fitness video sass. Go seek and find out more.
Betacrack ‘Unselected Ambient Works Vol.1’
(Grumpy Records) LP/17th January 2020
The poor relation to Richard James’ iconic and highly influential Ambient Works collections, the ‘deranged’ components in the makeup of Betacrack’s electronic renderings sound like they’ve just gone plain wrong at their most resigned (‘Allude’), yet pickup for a caustic bity livener when they threaten to break out of the matrix (‘Duldrum’). A (re)Warp of the Aphex Twin and Analouge Bubblebath for an anguished, distressed mind, these Unselected Ambient Works from the Portland, Oregon wiz span many fields of introverted experimentation and minimalist Techno escapism. Basically: great. Again, please seek out!
Liz Davinci ‘Harvest Time’
Video/Single 11th January 2020
Starting the New Year with a new name and new video single, maverick chanteuse of semi-classical brooding aria pop Elizabeth Everts will from this point forward be addressed as the renaissance styled Liz Davinci. As a baptism of sorts, the American troubadour (living and composing music abroad in Munich) has released the inaugural video/single under the Davinci moniker, ‘Harvest Time’. Finding plenty of favour on a multitude of playlists and radio station selections, Liz’s understated 2019 EP Contraband featured on the Monolith Cocktail. The diaphanous rolling, almost operatic, sowed ‘Harvest Time’ is taken from that same EP.
Dominic Valvona
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.comFor 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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