Premiere (Single): Provincials ‘One-Armed Swordsman’
May 15, 2020
Premiere Single/Dominic Valvona
Provincials ‘One-Armed Swordsman’
(Sacred Geometry) Single/Video
Released during the tumult and crisis of 2019, in the throes of post-Brexit negotiations, alternative-folk duo Provincials produced the mesmerizing and spellbinding miasma The Dark Ages. At the time it can be seen as a protestation against the forces of Nationalism, even Imperialism, but as Covid-19 reaps its harvest and sweeps across the world in 2020 you can’t help but see it now as an augur of an all too real plague-crisis Dark Age. Despite the dread, the duo portrayed that Domesday dystopia with a diaphanous lulled and beautifully administered deft touch, painting a bleakly poetic diorama of being swept under a despairing riptide. That album – the duo’s second – was an increasingly more experimental move away from the serene changing-of-the-seasons joyful reflection of their earlier work, especially the Ascending Summer EP: which seemed like a dreamy folk ode and peaceable traverse of the English scenery.
Meandering along a path that stretches from the Norman church dotted shingly shoreline of the southeast coast of Romney to a revenge-soaked Iberia, taking in the trauma, stress of The Crimean War and WWI, Provincials conjured up a lamentable present on that last minor-epic. Recorded in the same period but left off the album, today’s premiere ‘One-Armed Swordsman’ was deemed perhaps too wild, different and incongruous to sit on that songbook. Not a problem, as the duo has found the ideal time to release it as a separate entity in the most anxious of epochs, and furnished with a rustic-set esoteric symbolized video, shot in lockdown isolation. In separate rural homes, Seb Hunter hangs his head wearily from atop of the stable, strains the lyrics from some dusty tome form behind his eagle like garden sculpture and re-strings his ‘baritone-growled’ guitar, whilst siren foil Polly Perry flails and dances round the Theremin. Both exude the pining mood of our alienated stasis.
A precursor to their third LP (scheduled for the Spring of 2021), to be released on Weird Walks co-founder and psychogeography musical artist Owen Tromans’ marvelous expletory landscape inspired label, Sacred Geometry, this gnarled, grunge-y plaintive tumult was recorded and produced by Dan Parkinson at Wooden Heart Studios, Hampshire. Dan also plays the grinded-out drums, which take time to emerge from the opening sustained gristle and entanglement of Hunter’s experimental guitar and Polly’s Theremin fluctuations lead-in.
A pained expression waiting to be let out, the encumbered ‘One-Armed Swordsman’ sounds like a torrid merger of Swans, Dinosaur Jnr. and Ultrasound. Marking a change perhaps in direction, this single may have been recorded in less daunting times, but encompasses the feelings of disconnection and nervousness in the now. We wait to hear the results of lockdown on the Provincials next album in the Spring of 2021.
Related posts from the Archives:
Provincials ‘Dark Ages’ Review
Provincials ‘Ascending Summer EP’ Review
Owen Tromans ‘Between Stones’ Review
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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 interest/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.
Quarterly Revue Playlist 2019: Part Four
December 16, 2019
PLAYLIST SPECIAL
COMPILED: Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Gianluigi Marsibilio
ARTWORK: Gianluigi Marsibilio
From an abundance of sources, via a myriad of social media platforms and messaging services, even accosted when buying a coffee from a barristo-musician, the Quarterly Revue is expanding constantly to accommodate a reasonable spread that best represents the Monolith Cocktail’s raison d’etre.
As you will hear for yourselves, new releases and the best of reissues plucked from the team – that’s me, Dominic Valvona, and Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Andrew C. Kidd and Gianluigi Marsibilio (who also put together the playlist artwork) – rub shoulders in a continuous musical journey.
The final playlist of 2019 is no less eclectic and frantic, with electrifried peregrinations from Mali next to the best new hip-hop cuts and a wealth of post-punk, souk rock, jazz, noise, indie and the avant-garde.
That tracklist in full:
Automatic ‘Too Much Money’
Dead Rituals ‘Closer’
Comet Gain ‘The Girl With The Melted Mind And Her Fear Of The Open Door’
BRONCHO ‘Boys Got To Go’
SUO ‘Honey I’m Down’
Pocket Knife ‘Manger Constructeur’
Prince Rama ‘F.A.T.E (Bought Us Together)’
Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox ‘Fireman’
Elizabeth Joan Kelly ‘Baleen Executioner’
Bear With Me ‘Cry’
Max Andrzejewski’s HUTTE ‘Little Red Robin Hood Hits The Road’
Tapan Meets Generation Taragalte ‘Yogi Yamahssar’
Junis Paul ‘Baker’s Dozen’
Invisible System ‘Diarabi’
Homeboy Sandman ‘Yes Iyah’
Guilty Simpson & Phat Kat ‘Sharking’
Iftin Band ‘Il Ooy Aniga’
Kalbata ft. TIGRIS ‘Tamera’
The Budos Band ‘Old Engine Oil’
Aziza Brahim ‘Hada Jil’
Atomic Forest ‘Life Is Anew’
Klashnekoff ft. K9 & Ricko Capito ‘The Road Is Long’
Chris Orrick & The Lasso ‘No Place Is Safe’
Blockhead ‘Spicy Peppercorn’
Willie Scott & The Birmingham Spirituals ‘Keep Your Faith To The Sky’
Jehst & Confucius MC ‘Autumn Nights’
Xenia Rubinos ‘DIOSA’
Genesis Elijah ‘Haunted Trap House’
Rico James & Santos ‘New York Cut’
Hiach Ber Na ‘Another Human Brain’
Mike Patton & Jean-Claude Vannier ‘Cold Sun Warm Beer’
TELGATE ‘Cherrytight’
Land Of OOO ‘Waiting For The Whales (Radio Edit)’
Big Thief ‘Not’
Gary Davenport ‘True Freedom’
Northwest ‘The Day’
The Cold Spells ‘I Hate It When You’re Sad’
Mick Harvey & Christopher Richard Barker ‘A Secret Hidden Message’
Boa Morte ‘Sleep/Before The Landslide’
Vola Tila ‘All Alone’
Owen Tromans ‘Burying The Moon King’
The Good Ones ‘My Wife Is As Beautiful As A Sunset’
Dub Chieftain ‘Enter The Chieftain’
Provincials ‘Cat’s Cradle’
Right Hand Left Hand ‘White Sands’
Ringfinger ‘Burning’
Giant Swan ‘YFPHNT’
Rafiki Jazz ‘My Heart My Home Home (Shallow Brown/Light of Guidance/The Settlers Wife/Shedemati)’
PREVIOUS QUARTERLIES
Our Daily Bread 353: The Provincials ‘The Dark Ages’
November 7, 2019
LP REVIEW
Dominic Valvona
The Provincials ‘The Dark Ages’
(Itchen Recordings) LP/ 15th November 2019
In full Panavision, The Provincials duo of vocalist Polly Perry and guitarist and author Seb Hunter articulate a mesmerizing and spellbinding miasma of a domesday on their long awaited second LP, The Dark Ages. The original dark ages epoch was named so for a lack of documentary and archeological evidence from as, we now know, a rich if tumultuous period in the history of these Isles and beyond: A time that roughly marks the decline of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the next millennium. It’s used here of course to weave a lyrical, sometimes Shakespearean, vision of our contemporary times: Brexit especially (I presume). Even if they portray it with a diaphanous lulled and beautifully administered deft touch, The Provincials paint a bleakly poetic diorama of being swept under a despairing riptide. Depending on which side of that divide you feel comfortable pontificating or barracking from, Brexit and by association (though far more complex to all tie-in) so-called “populism” in politics, you either believe that this is all an exciting, tide-turning, opportunity or, the end times!
And so reminders of past imperial ventures overseas (an empirical vague gesture to the infamous ‘Inkerman’; a decisive score draw monumental battle in the Crimean War saga) and the slaughter and PTSD anguish legacy of WWI (the Shell-shocked Medieval waltz ‘We Lost Our Minds’) are woven into a musical hallucination of dour romanticism and melancholy. However, the pains and woes are handled deftly; especially from the aria like performances of Perry, who’s range longingly flows between the ethereal and dramatic. Counterbalancing nimbly-picked Pentangle folk with more rousing swamp boogie and flange-dreamy Britpop, Hunter’s acoustic and electrified guitar playing rings out, offering both stripped-back accentuate caresses and moods, and more punctuating punches. The only additional instrumentation (the barest of stirring ambience, with trickled and sonorous bass note piano parts and drums courtesy of producer Dan Parkinson) is used most sparingly, with the most full-on songs being the breakout rocking ‘Inkerman’, which sounds like a crescendo stomping combo of The White Stripes, Anna Calvi, The Classical and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. More winding and suffused with mysterious ambient tones tough, the sonnet-like trickling ‘The Western Shore’ bears the atmospherics of Popol Vuh’s Affenstunde.
Meandering along a path that stretches from the Norman church dotted shingly shoreline of the southeast coast of Romney to a revenge-soaked Iberia, The Provincials conjure up a lamentable present. Perhaps we are indeed doomed. Perhaps these are the end days or the darkness before the light. Whatever the truth, this diaphanous duo has articulated such augurs with a gauze-y, beautiful veneer worth savoring and improved no end since their last album.
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