Monolith Cocktail Blog

DOMINIC VALVONA’S MONTHLY RECCOMEDNATIONS AND DISCOVERIES

(Photo credit: Ben Semisch, courtesy of Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts)

Jaimie Branch ‘Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war))’
(International Anthem) 25th August 2023

As an unwittingly last will and testament, the late experimental trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s final led album with her Fly Or Die ensemble is a beautiful collision of ideas and worldly fusions that pushes and pulls but never comes unstuck. In fact, despite the “world war” suffix backdrop this album of both hollered and more disarming protestation colourfully embraces the melodic, the groove and even the playful.

Whilst the “avant-garde” label sticks, this rambunctious, more ambitious, more demanding minor opus flows and swings to a polygenesis mix of spiritual, conscious, Afro, Latin and Ethio-jazz, the great American songbook, no wave, noise and the psychedelic. And yet, on the other hand, is almost punk in attitude; a sort of anything goes in the pursuit of the message: an embodiment of challenging the boundaries.

In light of her untimely death at the age of just thirty-nine last year (the release of this album tying in with the first anniversary of her passing), this incredible statement can be read as a sonic monument; a legacy project left behind as a blueprint for a whole movement. The lyrics to the actionist rumpus ‘Burning Grey’, delivered more like Ariel Up or Polystyrene, to a swinging protest march of Phil Cohran, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and Cab Calloway, seem almost prophetic: “Wish I had the time” and the lasting sign-off, “Don’t forget to fight”.

The final album is one Branch would recognize; more or less musically complete, recorded as it was back in April of 2022 during an artist residency at the Bemis Center For Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska. However, Branch’s sister Kate and a cast of collaborators rallied round to finish the artwork and production; the final article a proud achievement encouraged on by well-wishers and friends alike.

Alongside “Breezy” Branch, who not only masters the trumpet but pushes her voice like never before and picks up on the percussion and some keys, is her stalwart troupe of Lester St. Louis (cello, flute, keys, marimba and voice), Jason Ajemian (double bass, electric bass, marimba and voice), and Chad Taylor (bells, drums, mbira, timpani and, you guessed it, marimba). That quartet is expanded further by an array of guests, including a trio of notable Chicago-hailed innovators (the city, one of Branch’s biggest influences and home for a period), the arranger/composer/engineer/trombonist Nick Broste, musician/vocalist Akenya Seymour and fellow International Anthem label mate, the drummer Daniel Villarreal (he released his debut, Panama ’77 on the imprint last year). Rounding that worthy impressive list off is the American multi-instrumentalist, Cave/Exo Planet/Circuit des Yeux (the list goes on) instigator Rob Frye.   

Not so much a surprise, the album opens with a sort of stained glass bathed organ overture: part the afflatus, part pastoral hallowed ELP, part new age kosmische. A roll of bounded controlled thunder and gravitas is added to a crystal bellow and squeeze of radiant notes and the thinly pressured valves of Branch’s trumpet, which makes a brief appearance after the Ariel Kalma-like transcendence. ‘Aurora Rising’ lays down a short ceremonial communion with nature’s light before changing gear and spheres of influence. ‘Borealis Dancing’ now adds Mulatu Astake Ethio-jazz, a touch of Fela Kuti, Don Cherry and Yazz Ahmed to the ephemeral Northern Lights show as Branch toots long and softly at first before changing to higher pitch shrills. The rhythm, timing changes at the halfway mark towards a slinking groove of funk and Afro-jazz, the trumpet now cupped and echoing.

By the fourth track, ‘The Mountain’, there’s a complete sea change in mood, direction as Branch and her foils transform The Meat Puppets quickened country yin ‘Comin’ Down’. A dueting Branch and Ajemian bring it back home (so to speak) to the Ozarks and Appalachians via Paul Simon, Dylan, 60s West Coast troubadour traditions and a reimagined Sun Records. A brassy-sounded trumpet repeats the tone and springy country vocals as a gurgle of drawn-out cello plays a more somber rumination of hardy travail. To be honest, I was unaware of The Meat Puppets original, but this is a welcome meander in a different direction.

A full lineup joins in on the marimba heavy carnival turn mysterious swamp ether ‘Baba Louie’. Francis Bebey swerves to Satchmo New Orleans, whilst taking a dance around Masekela’s Soweto on a bustled bounce of joy and triumph, before succumbing to the voodoo psychedelic vapours; enticed by a cooing R&B flavoured misty Seymour. This bleeds into the bluegrass fiddled stirrings of ‘Bolinko Bass’, another Orleans evoked, almost regimental drummed bayou Mardi Gras of David Byrne, Funk Ark and Phil Ranelin. Almost mournful, ‘And Kuma Walks’ is more bluesy sounding, yet estranged at the same time; skulking amongst the spirits as someone saws through a fiddle as the trumpet aches in elegiac plaint.

Single, ‘Take Over The World’ is a hyped-up rattle and untethered excitement of no wave, punk jazz. Branch repeats a wild mantra and plays a burning bright thrill of trumpeted blasts whilst a controlled chaos spins all around her. Protest and partying converge for an electrifying, and later on, psychedelic bending stretched act of defiance.

The album ends by simmering down to a period of Afro-spiritual lament and reflection, on the sloganist berating ‘World War (Repirse)’. There’s serious bowed strings, trilled and forewarned trumpet, a sustained organ and windy, desolate enacted atmosphere on this weary actionist swan song: Branch urging caution at “false flags” and encouraging the fight.

For me Branch’s main instrument burns bright, and yet never seems to dominate, lead or overstay its welcome at any point on the album. Not for nothing is her own quote of “…meaning every note”, with not one rasp, trill, toot and cycle out of place; nothing is pushed but just felt and right at that moment. It feels to me, despite such a rich and diverse back catalogue, that Branch had so much more to give, her best still to come. And her gift was not just in crossing and mixing styles, influences, but also in pushing others to reach their own full potential as musicians. Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war)) is an accomplished album that channels the legacies of Chicago, New Orleans and New York to create an eclectic modern adventure in protest jazz.

Knoel Scott Ft. Marshall Allen ‘Celestial’
(Night Dreamers)

A leading light in the Sun Ra cosmology since auditioning for the Saturn jazz ambassador’s famous Arkestra ensemble in 1979, the baritone saxophonist, composer, vocalist and, when the occasion arises, dancer Knoel Scott amasses a lifetime of experience and musicianship on his debut solo-headed album. I say debut and solo, and without the extension of his previous KS Quintet named release, but the reeds specialist shares his Celestial project title with the Arkestra’s freeform progenitor, Marshall Allen.  

Allen’s relationship with Sun Ra, on an album positively radiant and lunar with his guardianship and influence, goes back much further than Knoels; a stalwart since the ensemble’s formation in the 1950s, leading the troupe, the baton passed down as it were, after the cosmic Afrofuturist titan’s death in 1993. Unbelievably still in fine fettle, despite almost celebrating his centenary (that’s next May by the way), the avant-garde, inter-dimensional alto saxophonist, flutist, oboe, piccolo and EWI (that’s Electronic Wood Instrument) synthesist can be heard lending the latter’s strange sci-fi arcs, bends and space dust to the album’s title-track. It’s unsurprising to find that ‘Celestial’ has all the hallmarks of Ra too, written as it was originally with strings for the Arkestra, but never recorded.

The Arkestra family is extensive with celestial poetry taken from the late Arnold “Arto” Jenkins, recited on this universal lullaby. Art stuck with the Arkestra for thirty-six years, right up until his death in 2012. You can hear him and his “space megaphone” delivered offerings to the galaxy on Secrets Of The Sun, way back in 1962. As a homage to that universal-spiritualist’s wanton guidance, Knoel trips the radiant light fantastic, giving praise to the wisdom of the ancients and star people on a seeker’s performance of UFO oscillations, serenaded sentiments and dreamy translucence. It sounds like Cab Calloway and 50s wings being beamed up into Sun Ra’s off-world paradise.

The influence continues with the presence of the Paris scene stalwart and multifaceted (from Dancehall to Makossa, and of course jazz) drummer Chris Henderson, who’s experiences lend a both studied and more untethered freeform feel that moves between swing, big band, Latin, bop and the experimental.

This however is an inter-generational album, with fresher faces of the London scene, the very much in-demand UK keyboardist and versatile pianist Charlie Stacey and Verona-bred electric bassist and oft Arkestra and Knoel Quartet foil, Mikele Montolli. Hailed, quite rightly, as an advanced player, able to adapt to a wealth of styles, Stacey’s touch can evoke the best of those sublime 50s Blue Note recordings, touches of Oscar Peterson and Allen collaborator Terry Adams. The piano both flows with a tinkled busy lightness or strikes the heightened and jarring near-dissonance of freeform jazz; a descending off-tune part here, Cuban show time and bluesy or smoky lounge parts elsewhere: Unstated, yet moving along the action, or taking a soft stroll down the scales.

It’s another musician, part of the luminary brethren, that inspires the Afro-Cuban via Saturn’s rings ‘Makanda’. Paying tribute to a late mentor, Dr. Ken “Makanda” McIntyre, Knoel cooks up a Latin flavoured cool breeze of Havana, Harold Land vibes and R&B grooves: all undulated by sci-fi warbles and flits. A pivotal figure and influence for Knoel, “Makanda” (a name bestowed upon the reeds maestro and composer when playing in Africa, it translates from the Ndekele language as “many skins”, and in the Shona as “many heads”) founded the first ever African American music program in the States in 1971, and had worked with such notable talent as Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor and Nat Adderlay. Knoel and friends up the funk and balmy rhythms on this soulful homage to the late great man.

On his part, Knoel’s saxophone squawks, strains, honks and squeaks, and yet also serenades: even soothes. Wilder higher registered beak pecks turn into a near chaos, a cacophony, on the improvisation piece ‘Conversation With The Cosmos’. Coltrane, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton wail in zero gravity, whilst those wild rasps feel almost smoldering and lounge-like on the final mid paced twelve-bar slinky ‘Blu Blues’.

What a stellar set from the Arkestra acolyte, the Marshall and inner circle; and well done to the Night Dreamers for coaxing out this cosmic marvel. The process if you’re new to this label project, is to record the performances direct to tape before cutting on a Sally lathe the final vinyl artifact. In mono, recorded in an analogue studio, the sound is alive, inviting and, well, “celestial”. The experience speaks, communicates, and pushes the perimeters on every note, as a culmination of African American jazz styles are attuned to the stars.

Andrew Hung ‘Deliverance’
(Lex Records) 11^th August 2023

With pain, suffering and anguish former Fuck Buttons trick noise maker Andrew Hung finds a cathartic release on his third solo outing, Deliverance. But as that title suggest, the anxieties and sense of isolation and belonging now seem to have slowly dissipated as Hung feels he’s been delivered from the morose and dark fog of depression; although there’s plenty of broody, moody despair and darkened thoughts to wade through before catching the light of hope.

Hope, being set free, the constantly developing artist and producer does seem to have found his creative peace; likening this album to “the end of the chrysalis stage, like breaking free from a previous life.” Not so much reincarnation as a new incarnation, pushed on during lockdowns to mine the deep well of his soul, to face regrets and failings, but also find what’s missing.

An act of self-realization perhaps, Hung conducts a therapeutic session both unflinching and revealing. If the lyrics of ‘Don’t Believe It Now’ are anything to go by, thoughts and mental anguish at one point were truly dark. However, that filtered vapour counters the resigned with a reviving build up. And on the opening tunneled, Sister Bliss and Underworld like, moody turn freedom spin, ‘Ocean Mouth’, Hung faces a list of disappointing traits head on: Almost like taking a breath as the Robert Smith-like palpitations and rave-y Bloc Party velocity of the production avoids suffocation and gravitates towards the techno cathedral of light. Submerged at every turn with recurring references to water, Hung swims and navigates the torrents and tides to find a number of revelations about himself: conquering fear.   

The previous solo album, Devastations (a choice album no less in my end of year lists for 2021) looked to the cosmos with a propulsion of electronic, kosmische, motorik, Madchester and synth pop influences, and featured Hung the self-taught singer evoking a mix of Robert Smith (some very cure-esque touches musically too), Karl Hyde, Mark Hollis and The Cry’s Kim Berly. More distressed, gasping and wrenching Hung takes some of those same influences forward on Deliverance, whilst also seeming to whip up a touch of Minny Pops, New Order, Soft Cell and John Foxx on the struggles of isolation and need to belong themed neo-romantic ‘Find Out’.

In another honest cycle of shedding shame and casting away the pain in favour of finding that alluded love “saturation”, ‘Never Be The Same’ builds from synthesized drum pad elements of the 80s German new wave, Factory Records and industrial synth-pop into another unshackled escape towards the light of revelation. I’d throw in Martin Dupont, Tears For Fears and Yazoo to that both pumped and vapourous mix.

Floundering no more, Hung looks to have found his place, his voice too. Deliverance finds him channeling his lamentable, pained, and unsure emotions into something positive and bright with another candid confessional solo album of rave-y synth-pop indie brilliance.     

Various ‘Intended Consequences’
(Apranik Records)

With a hellish multitude of flashpoints and distractions across the globe keeping the continuing fight for women’s liberation in Iran off the news rolls, it has become apparent that the Iranians themselves have been left to carry on the struggle with little support. In an ongoing war between the forces of the authoritarian religious state and a younger generation demanding an end to the erosions of there civil liberties and freedoms, the crisis in the country entered a dark bloody chapter last year with the murder in custody of Masha Zhina Amini by the “morality police”. 

After a rightful campaign of protest and action at such a heinous crime, a brutal crackdown by the state led to mass arrests and even executions (mostly of male supporters, activists, and usually on trumped up charges). Further restrictions were invoked. And just as horrifying, in the last year, and right up to the last few months, there has been a nationwide spate of deliberate poisonings of schoolgirls (one of the groups who mobilized against the authorities in the wake of Amini’s cruel death) on mass. Defiant still, even in the face of such oppression, the brave women of Iran have strengthened their resolve only further.

In the face of such attacks, clampdowns, the music scene has responded with a strong message of resistance and solidarity. Despite everything, cities like the capital of Tehran have a strong music scene of contemporary artists, composers, DJs and performers working across all mediums, including art (which is probably why so much of the music is also so visceral, descriptive and evocative of imagery). One such collaborative force of advocates, AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah, co-founded the Apranik Records label, a platform for female empowerment. Following this year’s earlier Women Life Freedom compilation, a second spotlight volume delves further into not only the Tehran scene but picks out choice tracks from those female Iranians working outside the country, in such epicenters as London (AZADI.mp3) and Berlin (Ava Irandoost).

Sonic wise it covers everything from d’n’b, trance, deep house and techno to sound art experimentation. The range of moods is just as diverse in that respect, from restlessness to the reflective and chaotic.

Contributions from both Azadikhah (the hand drum rattled d’n’b breaks and spacy, airy trance ‘Perpetual’) and AIDA (the submerged melodious and dreamy techno ‘Ode To Expectations’, which features the final love-predicament film sample, “You know that I love you, I really do. But I have to look after myself too.”) can be found alongside a burgeoning talent pool. The already mentioned London-based producer and singer AZADI.mp3 opens this collection with a filtered female chorus of collective mantra protest, set to a sort of R&B, 2-step and bass throbbed production, on ‘Empty Platform’– just one of many tracks that uses the sounds of a more traditional Iran, especially the daf drum, alongside modern and futuristic warped effects. The sound artist and composer Rojin Sharafi likewise features the rattled rhythms of hand drums and some hidden spindled instrument – like running a stick across railings – on her entrancing kinetic techno ritual of “trauma”, ‘dbkk’.

Abji_hypersun allows the sounds of the environment to seep into her slow-building track of field recordings, collage and breaks (two-stroke scooters buzz by as distant female conversations reverberate on the street). Part jungle breaks pirate radio, part Matthew David, Jon The Dentist and LTJ Bukem, ‘Resist The God Trick’ evokes a tunneled vision of haunted reminisces and resistance in the shadows.

Emsho’s ‘Down Time’ is a rotor-bladed electro mix of Basic Channel and The Chemical Brothers, and Aida Shirazi’s mysterious wind of dark meta ‘R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N’ spells out the rage with a shadowy, near daemonic scripture of wrath and revenge – a gothic synth sinister avenging angel promises that the women of Iran will neither “forget” nor “forgive” their oppressors, torturers and murderers. Farzané seems to evoke the alien, the sci-fi on her experimental, sometimes disturbing dial twisting and crackled ‘Quori’ transmission, and the Berlin-based DJ, video artist and music producer Ava Irandoost draws on Laraaji-like dulcimer tones for her dream mirrored kosmische evocation ‘CINEREOUS’. The Tehran composer, pianist and bassist Ava Rasti draws a close to the compilation with a classical-tinged, harmonic ringed, saddened piano-lingering performance, entitled ‘Eight Night’ – an atmospheric troubled trauma is encapsulated with the deftest of touches.

It might be my own nostalgic penchant for 90s electronic music (my formative years of course), but this series (if we can call it that) could be an Iranian version of the Trance Europe Express compilations brought out during that decade; a treasure trove of discoveries and whole scenes that opened up a world of previously unknown music to many of us not living in the epicenters of North America, the UK and Europe and beyond. Hopefully this latest platform of innovative artists from across the arts will draw the attention it deserves; the message hardly virtuous, in your face, but sophisticated: the very act of female Iranians making a name for themselves despite censorship and bans a sign of empowerment and resistance in itself. Few groups deserve our support (which in the West has been sadly absent) more, but don’t just purchase for the cause but for the musical strives being awakened and produced under tyrannical oppression, and because this is a solid collection of great electronic music.

Nagat ‘Eyoun El Alb’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 25^th August 2023

Renowned as one of the greatest, most exceptional voices to have emerged from the golden 40s/50s/60s epoch of Egyptian and the greater Arabian songstresses and divas, Nagat El Seghirah was a rightly revered performer, who’s career spanned more than half a century.

Even in an age rich with accomplished, influential and groundbreaking singers Nagat held her own against such icons as Oum Kalthoum, Fairuz, Warda and perhaps the most celebrated of the lot, the anointed “voice of Egypt” Umm Kulthum. The latter, hailed the “star of the east”, was an influence on the early starter during the burgeoning years of imitation, when Nagat was a child, barely in her teens. Her affectionate appellation, “El Seghirah” or “El Sagheera”, can be translated as “the small”, “the young”, and marks the singer, performer and film star’s young apprenticeship; from entertaining the notable guests that gathered at her father’s (the famed calligrapher Mohamad Hosny) home at the age of five onwards, to her first role in cinema at the age of eight, starring in the 1947 film Hadiya. Hosny was known to push his extensive brood of children from two marriages, sometimes excessively, into various creative careers: Nagat’s half-sister was the famous actress Soad Hosny, her older brother, Ezz Eddin Hosni, a notable composer who helped her own development and natural talent.

During those initial years of development Nagat would interpret songs by such legendary figures as Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Baligh Hamdy and Kamal Al Taweel, but would find both her true and distinctive voice when interpreting the work of the Syrian diplomat-poet Nizar Qabbani. She gained adulation and fans after performing the esteemed poet’s tragic ‘Irja Ilyya’ (“Return To Me”), which is based on his sister who committed suicide rather than enter into an arranged marriage. Plaintive, stark, it rightly struck a chord with the public at the time, with its feminist lyrics and spotlight on forced marriages. It would be become a torchlight for freedom and injustice, with Nagat adding her own improvised original lines during the 1970s.   

Born in 1938 but already gaining plaudits by the end of the next decade, into the next, Nagat released her first actual song ‘Why Don’t You Allow Me To Love You’ in 1955; the year she would also be married, for the first time, to a friend of one of her brothers: still only sixteen. It’s no surprise, although in no way a forced marriage, that she could, with a commanding voice, perform Qabbani’s tragedy. That marriage would only last however until the turn of the 1960s; when Nagat went on to marry the Egyptian film director Houssam El-din Mustafa in 1967 (a marriage that lasted an even shorter time). Nagat would remain, in fact seeing as she is still alive, in her eighties, remains unmarried. In recent years, since her singing retirement over twenty years ago, living a semi-reclusive life in Cairo but in poor health, there’s been some contact, even projects floated. Only last year she was featured on the official soundtrack for the streaming service series Moon Knight.

From concert to soundstage with starring roles in the films Black Candles, Beach Of Fun, My Dear Daughter and Dried Tears, Nagat gradually moved from shorter songs to ever more lengthy performances, some of which would last an hour. As time went on the songstress actress would find it harder to find those inspired works to perform. Retiring from film in 1976, Nagat would still persevere with music. And by the time she reached her early forties, in the 1980s, would release this four-track showcase of matured talented performances entitled Eyoun El Alb.

Originally brought out exclusively on cassette (like so much of the Egyptian music market), forty odd years later the reissue vinyl specialists of impeccable tastes (releasing a myriad of jazz titles and nuggets from across the Arabian world and Japan), WEWANTSOUNDS in conjunction with the Arabia and North African crate-digger Disco Abrabesquo (the moniker of the Egyptian, Amsterdam-residing DJ, Moataz Rageb), have pressed it onto vinyl for the first time. If you are a regular reader, or in fact a regular WWS’s follower and buyer, then you will be aware of that label’s previous collaboration with DA, last year’s (although they’ve also released a smattering of Egyptian focused records too over the years) Sharayet El Disco compilation. One notable inclusion on that eye-opening compilation (reviewed by me in May’s Perusal column) was from the legendary Al Massrieen. A much sought after recording outfit, the group’s Hany Shenouda produced the scenic, romantic ‘Ana Bashaa El Bahr’ (or “I Adore The Sea”) finale on this Nagat album. Adoration and yearned dreaminess for a place and time are evoked to Shenouda’s trebly near-psych tremolo guitar and light hand drum patters.  Alongside the more lilting and fluted ‘Bahlam Meeak’ (“I Dream With You”), this is one of those examples of Nagat’s shortened form of storytelling romance and heartache. ‘Bahlam Meeak’ is also an example of Nagat’s more lightened, honeyed approach to what is a tinkled serenaded, wafted vision of blossom scented sand dune balladry. It evokes the music of Bacharach and the cool soundtracks of early 60s French and Italian new wave cinema.

Taking up the entirety of Side One, there’s the long form titular performance of heightened drama and searing swirled strings oboe and scuffled trinkets. Over eighteen-minutes of longed romantic gestures, the action pauses repeatedly between undefined sections; allowing the auditorium audience to show its appreciation, encouragement, which they do constantly, even when the music starts back up again. On a Matinee scale, this mini-story, unveiling of lovelorn exultations, but vulnerability and occasional lament, moves like a desert caravan across an Egyptian set, or, sumptuously glides into a Persian court. A fantastic display of sagacious craft, Nagat’s voice never has to rise or push to convey a class piece of theatre and effective yearn of love.

Only half that duration, but still a long track, ‘Fakru’ (“Do You Remember”) is a rumination; the vibrating pools of memoary reflected in the dreamy wobbled effects that permeate this fluctuating lead vocal delivery and prompting chorus of female voices. Classical Cairo, there’s a chink and tinkle of percussion and shimmy-shaking, belly dancing rhythm that luxuriantly accompanies a yearning poetic and sometimes coquettish Nagat on her reminisces. As I said already, this album represents various sides of the enchanting, soulful and also distinctive icon’s vocal presence and range. The long and short: the unmistakable sound of Egypt, but also those influences from abroad too, are melded together on a classy piece of cinematic and poetic mastery. Make room again on those creaking shelving units for another vinyl addition to the collection.         

CHELA ‘Diagonal Drift’
(Echodelick – USA, We Here & Now – CA, Ramble Records – Aus, Worst Bassist Records – EU)

In communion with his long-time friend and collaborative foil in the University Challenged trio (alongside Oli Heffernan) Kohhei Matsuda, Ajay Saggar extends his blessed travels along the astral highways and byways with a new venture, CHELA.

Absorbed, imbued and inspired by Indian spiritualism, history and travails, its psychogeography and trauma, both partners in the new direction come together under the Sanskrit word for “disciple”; taken from the verb and root “to serve”, the “Chela” is similar in concept to a student, but implies a more loyal closeness with their teacher. In Hinduism this bond is considered sacred: An apt moniker for such inter-dimensional, afflatus dreamers and acolytes of raga, the new age, psychedlia and kosmische music. 

Divine styler Saggar (who is also a member of King Champion Sounds, solos under the Bhajan Bhoy alias, and collaborates with Merinde Verbeck in the Deutsche Ashram duo) and Japanese noisenik Matsuda (most notably a member of the Bo Ningen quartet) spent much of 2022 putting this inaugural baptism together. And so with dedication to their art, the duo have sonically and melodically taken time, given depth to their new mysterious broadcast; that is, broadcasts from the ether, supernatural, uncertain, Fortean and cosmic. Different yet not entirely detached from previous incarnations, fans of both artists will pick up on past signatures, sounds and conceptions. However, they’ve managed to realign those same signatures, tuning into the mystical but often with trepidation and a sense that the noisier elements could consume all in their path.

Think Julius Eastman meets Fennesz we’re told; a good succinct summary. But I’d add a hell of a lot more, including Taylor Deupree and a cosmology of cosmic couriers. The opening ripple in the fabric of time, ‘Flyspray’, is an expanded peregrination of Beautifully tinkled Florian Fricke-like piano hauntings, Ariel Kalma and Syrinx new ageism and various Sky Records pioneers (Asmus Tietchens and Riechman spring to mind), all caught up in analogue wispy wind cacophony of divine rays, the esoteric and Eastern drones. Trippy warped reversals and folds, generator and processors nearly overwhelm the vague evocations of Tony Conrad, Schultz and a springy, but also spoke splayed banjo (which in itself seems to vaguely evoke the Balkans, Greece and strangely, India) on the reverberating ‘Appalachjo’.

In what could be a suggestion of “peace” and “harmony”, or reference to the Japanese town, ‘Heiwa’ is a hummed raga-like hymnal. A stand-up barrel-type piano plonks away from the ether, whilst ambient waves and traces of Dyzan invite heavenly reflection. ‘Ticker’ is a very different proposition. An intense chemistry of signals, beeps, quickened arrpegiator, moody signs of Faust and the sound of the Heart Of Darness are melted with Günter Schickert guitar, heavy acid Gong and various calculations.  

‘Tanker’ feels like the most obvious attempt to score the sound of the title’s overbearing object; sounding like a alien freighter, both foreboding and mysterious. A scrawl and flapped ripple of radar and sonar bites into a resonating field of drones and sound waves, fog and guitar.  

The final, spiritual and otherworldly track, ‘Worship’, features ghostly Indian voices and visitations from an event, service or chapter in time and history. A melodious piano chimes away in wisps of fanned cosmic mystique and cyclonic radio effects, whilst shades of FSOL, King Creosote (From Scotland With Love period) and Boards Of Canada linger. The video is more illuminating, a sepia film of bedside “worship”, healing for a leader, martyr, and a travelling funeral cortege that takes in rows of witnesses moved to touch, or just be in the essence of a distinguished teacher.

Once again with the cosmic and afflatus, Saggar and Matsuda expand their sound further. Diagonal Drift’s transcendental projection is just that, despite the building intensity and uncertainty, the broadcast noise of krautrock and kosmische styled aerial bends and radio tunings. CHELA is another welcome addition to the two artists oeuvre: one more step on the astral journey of mind-expanding experimentation.