Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part Two: M – Z
December 16, 2024
Part Two of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists: from M to Z. Put together by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Picking up on where we left off with Part One of the Monolith Cocktail’s most enjoyed and loved albums of 2024, Part Two continues to list all entries in alphabetical order, starting with M. So without further ado, here is the concluding spread of chosen albums – although anything we reviewed during the year should be considered a winner in that regard.
M_____________
Felix Machtelinckx ‘Night Scenes’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen Dominic Valvona, reviewed originally by Graham Domain/Review
“The new album from Belgium singer, songwriter and producer Felix Machtelinckx is a strange album. In part electronic, it has an ethereal dreamlike quality where the music seems distant and the vocals sound as though they have been beamed through space from a distant galaxy.
Night Scenes is an intriguing album that is hard to define, but one that grows in definition, depth and subtle beauty with each play. It might prove to be a contender for album of the year.” GD
Marcelo D2 & SambaDrive ‘Direct-to-Disc’ (Night Dreamer)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transforming choice tracks from his back catalogue of solo albums, put out between 1998 and 2013, the influential and acclaimed Brazilian rapper Marcelo D2 replaces the samples, breaks and scratching for a live, reactive Latin-jazz and samba trio.
As part of the championed ‘direct-to-disc’ series overseen by the Night Dreamer label, the South American hip-hop legend laid down ten performed tracks backed by the brilliant SambaDrive direct onto vinyl at the Haarlem Artone Studio in Holland. With no cuts, no edits, as little interference as necessary, these recordings sound near spontaneous, in the moment. The attitude, the passion, the crammed-in flow and more peppered lyricism is still very much on show, only now lilted towards a jazzier and Latin-fuelled backing that balances the urgency and freewheeling of the rapping with something more pliable, dissipating, funky and stylishly cool. Marcelo D2 & SambaDrive have created something very special; not so much an improvement as an alternative fruitful vision of Samba-rap. “ DV
Luce Mawdsley ‘Northwest & Nebulous’ (Pure O Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Over several years now the former Mugstar guitarist Luce Mawdsley has progressively shorn the more predatory slurred spoken-word mise-en-scenes and lurid, sleazy torturous self-harm from their music; gradually removing the “verbasier” programmed-like demonic effects from their voice and freeing themselves from a circled abyss of sonnets.
An holistic record that rescores the English scenery and places held near for Luce, the unfolding stages are both beautifully conveyed and hallucinatory in equal measure; a retold fairytale without any prompts, and without a human cast; a window in on the enchantments but also non-hierarchical, non-binary and free nature of the wilds and geography: a metaphor for Luce’s struggles to find an identity that feels natural, safe and unburdened. One part classical, one part Americana, and one part folksy (a touch of the Celtic too) there’s still a very modern twist to what we may identify as the familiar: imagine Prokofiev on an acid trip, or Ry Cooder in an English pasture laying down breadcrumbs for Hampshire & Foat.” DV
The Mining Co. ‘Classic Monsters’ (PinDrop Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Continuing to mine his childhood the London-based singer-songwriter Michael Gallagher once again produces a songbook of throwbacks to his formative adventures as a kid growing up in Donegal in Ireland.
His previous album almanac, Gum Card, touched upon a silly fleeting dabble with the occult, but this latest record (his sixth so far) is filled with childhood memories of hammy and more video nasty style supernatural characters, alongside a whole host of “weirdos”, “freaks” and “stoners”.
Once more back in his childhood home, frightened to turn the lights off, checking for Christopher Lee’s Dracula and the Wolfman under his bed, yet daring himself to keep watching those Hammer house of horror b-movies, Salem’s Lot and more bloody shockers, Gallagher links an almost lost innocence with a lifetime of travails, cathartic obsessions and searching desires.
I’m still astounded by the lack of support for his music or exposure, as Gallagher’s The Mining Co. vehicle is worthy of praise, airplay and attention. Hopefully it will be sixth album lucky for the Irishman.” DV
Hannah Mohan ‘Time Is A Walnut’ (Egghunt Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Geographically settling long enough to pen this solo songbook offering, but anything but settled emotionally, the former And The Kids vocalist-songwriter Hannah Mohan attempts to process the break-up of all break-ups.
Mohan rides the roller coaster of a drawn-out break-up with quirkiness and vulnerability, turning tortuous heartache into one of the best and most rewarding songbooks of the year. Mohan may have let her soul sing out, as she comes to accept an emotional turbulent period of stresses and anxieties and pain. But whether she’s finally pulled through the other side or not is up to you the listener.” DV
Jamison Field Murphy ‘It Has To End’ (Tomato Flower)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“Ah yes this is more like it. At last, an album with warmth, soul experiment and beauty. Just when I was beginning to think that it was a thing of the past James Field Murphy turns up with this home recorded gem, an album that combines all the things I love about the magic of music: songs with melody, “That Boy” could well be an outtake from The Beach Boys Smiley Smile album, and “It has To End” has a wonderful bonkers McCartney feel to it [remember McCartney was the most experimental of all the Beatles], and this track combines pop with experimental to a beautifully short and wistful degree. “Hate” is another beautiful song; yes indeed, a hate that is alright to love and love it I do. I love the tape pops in the background: you really cannot beat recording on tape.
It Has To End is a rare thing, an album you do not want to end. It’s an album I will be returning to on a regular basis over the coming months as James manages to balance off pop/psych beauty with experimentation perfectly.” BBS
N______________
NCD Instigators ‘Swimming With Sharks’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The NCD Instigators were Tony, Brendan, and Desi Bannon, three brothers from Newcastle County Down in Northern Ireland who decided to form a band in the 80s together after many years of playing in various other bands. They took their love of metal, prog, folk and rock and home recorded several albums for their own pleasure, burning them onto CDRs to give to friends and family and playing the occasional gig.
There is just something quite magical about this album, and it is sad that now it is only being released years after the fact and that Tony (bass and vocals) is no longer with us, having passed away in 2020. Hopefully this release will ignite some long overdue interest in this underground lost great band from Northern Ireland.” BBS
Neon Kittens ‘It’s A NO Thing’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Kittens have a magic and their own sound: The guitar wizardry of Andy G (In a ideal world David Bowie would not be dead and Andy would be his guitarist songwriter partner) and the spoken, I am going to shove my stiletto shoe heel into your yearning heart, vocal coolness of Nina K. The Neon Kittens are one of those rare bands; we need them more than they need us.” BBS
Neutrals ‘New Town Dream’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is splendid stuff, an album of supreme guitar jangle, of well written and catchy songs about life in a small town that at times musically reminds me of early Wedding Present and The Pastels with such wonderfully British lyrics; although I wonder when “Travel Agents Window’s” was written as he mentions buying a bag of chips for 50p, when was the last time you managed to buy a bag of chips for 50p? Maybe life in this small town isn’t as bad as the Neutrals think. I do love this album though. I love the romance of everyday life songs, like little mini-Kitchen sink dramas filmed in grainy black and white. This is quite a gem of an album.” BBS
Not My Good Arm ‘Coffee’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“They take Rock ‘n’ Roll, Ska, Punk and Soul and tie it up and skin it alive whilst berating it with the sort of political soulful joyful nous that hasn’t been heard or witnessed since the Mighty Dexy’s Midnight Runners held the Top Of The Pops viewers enrapt with their explosion of attitude and musical good taste back in the early 80’s. Yes indeed, Coffee is a Northern indie soulful romp of an album by a band that I can imagine being a hell of a good night out to watch and by the looks of it gig on a very regular basis. So, keep your eyes scanned as they may be coming to your locality soon. I understand you can pick up a copy of Coffee on CD from their gigs, as by the looks of it they’ve not yet updated their bandcamp: probably too busy putting the fun into funk.” BBS
O_______________
OdNu + Ümlaut ‘Abandoned Spaces’ (Audiobulb)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Drawn together on what proves to be a deeply intuitive union for the Audiobulb label, the Buenos Aires-born but NY/Hudson resident Michel Mazza (the OdNu of that partnership) and the US, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut) form a bond on their reductive process of an album, Abandoned Spaces.
Tracks are given plenty of time to breathe and resonate, to unfurl spells and to open-up primal mirage-like and psyche-concocted soundscapes from the synthesized and played. And although this fits in the ambient electronic fields of demarcation, Abandoned Spaces is so much more – later on in the second half of the eight-track album, the duo expresses more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty.” DV
Berke Can Özcan & Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘It Was Always Time’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
““It Was Always Time”, and it was always meant to be, for the telepathic readings of both creative partners in this project prove synchronised and bound, no matter how far out and off-kilter their experiments of curiosity go or take them.
The Turkish polymath drummer and sound designer Berke Can Özcan and his foil the Brooklyn-based baritone/alto saxophonist and flutist Jonah Parzen-Johnson, have worked together before, namely on the former’s Lycian atavistic geographical infused and inspired Twin Peaks album, last year.
But before even that, back in the April of 2022, Parzen-Johnson found himself boarding a flight to Istanbul to perform a one-off gig with Özcan. Incredibly the two had never met until thirty minutes before going on stage for a soundcheck. The gig must have proved a creative, dynamic success as both musicians have now come together under the equal billing of this new album, recorded for the Helsinki-based hub We Jazz.
From the dubby to tribal, the esoteric to cloud gazing, Berke Can Özcan and Jonah Parzen-Johnson play out their fears and joys across an exciting album of possibilities and expressive, erring on the heavenly at one point, feelings. A fruitful combination that will endure, and hopefully reconvene in the future.” DV
P_______________
Pastense Ft. Uncommon Nasa ‘Sidewalk Chalk, Parade Day Rain’ (Uncommon Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Continuing to attract and surround himself with like-minded curious, inventive artisans of prose from the underground leftfield hip-hop scene, the Long and Staten Islands’ rapper and producer/beatmaker Uncommon Nasa now facilitates Pastense’s return with a post-pandemic opus of metaphysical, cosmological unravelled consciousness alchemy.
With no let-up in the quality of the expansive lyrical metaverse, tech comes in conflict with the forest’s birds and nature’s fight for survival amongst the concrete and chemically poisoned wells of so-called progression on an artistically simulated and stimulating canvas of thoughts and connectivity.
Pastense, in partnership with Nasa, creates a most excellent mind-expanding universe, and in doing so, one of the year’s best hip-hop albums: this is an artist and record worth championing.” DV
Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille ‘Embracing The Unknown’ (Mahakala Music) Chosen by DV/Review
“A true “cross-generational” (with two of the participants born in the 1930s) coming together of avant-garde, freeform and hard bop talent, the ensemble quartet of Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille “embrace” experiment. You could call it an extemporized gathering, with no prior arrangements and not much in the way of dialogue.
Making the abstract seem even more so, yet somehow conveying mood, emotions and self-expression, this descriptive and totally improvisational master class in free-thought-jazz somehow captures the internal struggles and reflections of the mind during an age of high anxiety, rage, divisiveness and unease.” DV
James P M Philips ‘Spite, Bile & Beauty’ (Turquoise Coal)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“Punk, folk, rock and a medieval becoming strangeness all collide to bring us another album of psychedelic whimsy from the head and heart of James P M Phillips: an album of joy, sadness, humour and pain. Whether it be the quite wonderfully disturbingly jagged “My Head Is Full Of Rats” or the quite beautiful folk strum of “My New Friend”, James has his own unique way of making music and writing songs; dipping his own original thought patterns into a hybrid of musical genre hopping eccentricity.” BBS
Poppycock ‘Magic Mothers’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The whole album is joy. I love the mix of jazz, folk and psychedelic pop: alas, if only the last Zombies album was as enjoyable as this.” BBS
Pound Land ‘Live At New River Studios/ Worried’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV, but reviewed originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“This new album by Pound Land is a double whammy of an affair. The first side recorded live, captures the band without guitar but with a rather fetching squelching punk rock synth suppling the health out of the watching masses. Pound Land are of course a punk and post punk rock outfit of political magnitude. A band that captures the atmosphere of living in this divided land we call the United Kingdom and make a hell of a fine racket while capturing the atmosphere as the live side of this cassette magically proves. The second side is taken up by the thirty-one-minute track, “Worried”, which is a fine sonic journey of sadness, horror and experimental splendour that takes in dub, punk, and electro soundscapes; a dream of a nightmare track that really needs to be heard by all.” BBS
R__________________
Revival Season ‘Golden Age Of Self Snitching’ (Heavenly Recordings)
Chosen by DV
Totally missed at the time by us (well, we did feature ‘Chop’ on the February edition of the Monthly playlist), this incredible union between Brandon “BEZ” (B Easy) Evans and beatmaker/producer Jonah Swilley is so “now” it hurts. A synergy that captures the times it was forged in, Golden Age Of Self–Snitching crafts electronic dance music both dystopian and club, hip-hop, 2-Step, the kind of fusions that TV On The Radio used to generate, locked beats and breaks and dub into a commentary on societal change, protestation and revolution. An essential flow of concentrated angst, frustrations and observation criminally overlooked, and which should make every end of year list of there was any real justice in this god damn forsaken world. DV
Kevin Robertson ‘The Call Of The Sea’
Chosen by BBS/Review
““The Call Of The Sea” is the fourth solo album from Kevin Robertson, a man who is also one of the vocalists/guitarists from Scottish guitar band The Vapour Trails. And here we have him once again showering us with sublime melodies. Melodies that are wrapped in Byrdsian like guitar jangle and vocal harmonies that have just stepped from scratched vinyl copies of ye olde mid-sixties beat boom collectables stopped for a cup of the finest Earl Grey with late 80’s early 90’s Scottish indie guitar wunderkinds’ Teenage Fanclub and Superstar while scribbling on postcards to send their love to those old scouse reprobates Shack and The La’s and the Coral.” BBS
S___________________
Salem Trials ‘View From Another Window’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/ Review
“The Salem Trials are clinically rambunctious. They are never further than being an arm’s length away from genius. They have their own sound: their own model of post-punk if you like. They take all the usual subjects (The Fall, Wire, Gang Of Four, the Blue Orchids and Subway Army) and mix them with a no wave sound coming from the streets of New York in the late 70s early 80s. They release albums constantly – this is actually the first of 2024 though, and fits in nicely with the army of their previously released albums.
Andy still being the inspired guitarist that he is, riffing like a cross between Keith Richards, Tom Verlaine and Brix Smith with a army of admirers gathering in her Dis guarded nightwear, and Russ still being the nutter on the bus wearing the splatter ballistic cop t-shirt and spitting feathers at the naked chickens queuing up outside to be the first in line for the latest modern contraption while he is creating art at its best out of the fuzzy felt of yesteryears clowns hats. You really have to love the Salem Trials.” BBS
The Salisman Communal Orchestration ‘A Queen Among Clods’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the psychedelic otherworldliness of SCO. I love the way the lead vocalist phrases his words. He sings with the soul of an sad imperfect empathetic angel, you actually believe in what he is saying, “[If I Wasn’t ]So Godam Blue” is so goddamn beautiful, and with some pretty wonderful lyrics: “remember those days when I pissed in the street, well that is not my style anymore”. Pure heartbreak poetry at its best. The following track “Rum Punch” is as equally beautiful, a psych country-tinged beauty full of sadness and pathos.
I really do love this album SCO have the perfect blend of magic and tragic, and “A Queen Among Clods” is defiantly one of the most impressive and heartfelt original sounding albums I have had the pleasure to write about this year. A true stunner.” BBS
Sly & The Family Drone ‘Moon Is Doom Backwards’ (Human Worth)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A wrestling match on the barricades between the forces of Marxism, Populism, the consumer culture, nepotism, and encroaching forces of a technological dystopia, the collective forces of this group provide a reification-style soundtrack to the crisis of our times. Often this means escaping via a trapdoor to beyond the ether, or, to off worlds and mysterious alien landscapes. But we’re always drawn back into the horror, stresses and contorted darkness of reality; a sonic PTSD manifested in industrial noises from Capitalism’s workshop.
Poltergeist’s jamming activity, fizzles of sound waves and transmissions from the chthonian, ghost ship bristled low horns and higher pitched shrieks, bestial tubular growls, cymbal shaves, disturbances in the matrix, a short melody of pastoral reeds, drums that sounding like a beating. This is the sound of Moon Is Doom Backwards; pushing and striving to score this hideous age through the cerebral and chaotic.” DV
Juanita Stein ‘The Weightless Hour’ (Agricultural Audio)
Chosen by DV/Review
“And perhaps it all comes to this, that after twenty-five years in the music business as both the frontwoman of the Howling Bells and as an established solo artist Juanita Stein has finally found the strength of her own voice and creative force. Stepping out from behind the safeguards of noisy rock to find that silence resonates deeper and further, Juanita erases everything but the most vital, emotionally receptive and connective elements from her music to produce a sagacious, confident (despite the fragility and vulnerability in places) songbook of personal memories.
The Weightless Hour is the perfect album from a great voice and songwriter, who’s now able to find that distance from the events of the past and a new sense of reflected candidness and honesty in motherhood. Juanita’s true self and strength opens-up, the noise diminished for something far more powerful. Not so much defiant as confident. A definite album of the year.” DV
Mohammad Syfkhan ‘I Am Kurdish’ (Nyahh)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Like an ascending stairway, or flowing and resonating with evocative melodious magic, lute stirring ruminations sweep over Arabia and surrounding regions; referencing anonymous, collective and some original-penned compositions and dances to Islam’s ‘golden age’ of fairytale (‘A Thousand And One Nights’); Kurdish pride in the face of repression (the title-track of course) and its peoples’ struggle for independence and respect (‘Do Not Bow’); lovelorn enquires (‘Do You Have A Lover Or Not?’) and the missed daily activities, interactions of life back home in Raqqa. Across it all the hand drums tab, rattle and roll; the cello arches, weeps and bows in sympathy; and the bouzouki lute swoons and rings out the most nimble and beautiful of ached and more up-tempo giddy tunes.” DV
T____________________
The Tearless Life ‘Conversations With Angels’ (Other Voices Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Both a transference of souls from the now cremated – or laid to rest, depending on your choice of metaphorical ritual death – Vukovar plus a host of orbiting “other voices”, the make-up of The Tearless Life remains relatively, and intentionally, shrouded, obscured.
Taking a while to materialize, The Tearless Life’s debut opus is both the announcement of new age, but also a bridge between this latest incarnation and the former Vukovar invocation – they are in essence, a band that continues to haunt itself. Old bonds remain, sound wise and lyrically, but with a new impetus of murky, vapoured, gossamer, mono and ether effected solace, tragic romanticism, pleaded and afflatus love, spiritual inspired yearning and allegorical hunger.
Talking to angels, conversing with both the seraph and the fallen, the daemons and spirits of the alchemist’s alternative dimensions, the group transduce the writings of that most visionary seer John Dee, the opium eater Thomas De Quincey, William Blake, and the far more obscure Samuel Hubbard Scudder, who’s 19th century, fairy-like, Frail Children of the Air: Excursions Into The World Of Butterflies publication of philosophical essays lends its title to a song of tubular airy manifestations, distortion, wisped spiralling piques and beautified touching emotional anguish.
Conversations With Angels is epic; the first step in, what I hope, will be a fruitful conversation to divine enlightenment, curiosity, psychological and philosophical intelligent synth-pop.” DV
TRAINING + Ruth Goller ‘threads to knot’ (Squama Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Two connective forces in the experimental, inventive contemporary jazz scenes combine their experiences and art on this sonic and musical hybrid.
There’s enough threads, nodes and junctions in between to feed off, but both partners in this knotted tension and more spiritual, lofty, airy and aria-like ether Linda Sharrock “ah’d” fusion of influences and prompted sparks of inspiration read each other very well. Directed by, and riffing off, the “Exquiste Corpse” parlour game so beloved by the Surrealist movement, the trio of players expand beyond the jazz idiom into shadow worlds, the mysterious, supernatural, cosmic and near industrial.
Pretty much out on the peripherals of jazz, ascending, flexing, rasping, soothing and breathing iterations and more untethered expressions of freeform music, TRAINING + Ruth Goller fashion organic fusions from a process that promises the wild, tumultuous, wrangled and strange, yet also provides the melodic and dreamy.” DV
Twile (featuring Laura Lehtola) “Hunger Moon” (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Hunger Moon” is an album that combines folk, trip-hop, electronica and magic, and weaves together a tapestry of undiluted majestic swoonincity that has not been heard since the Portishead debut album “Dummy”.
Hunger Moon really does not put a foot out of place as it flows and hooks you into its warm strangeness, cradling you and sweeping you up to a safe place where dreams are free to play and cast shadows over your deepest thought and emotions. Eight tracks to soundtrack you as you come down from your highest high. Truly magnificent.” BBS
V______________________
Various ‘Athos: Echoes From The Holy Mountain’ (FLEE)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Context is vital: history essential. For the publishing house/record label/curatorial/ethnologist platform FLEE has spent a year unravelling, digging and excavating and researching their grand project dedicated to the Athos monastic community.
No one quite puts in the work that FLEE and their collaborators do, with the scope and range of academia wide and deep. Musically, across a double album vinyl format there’s a split between those artists, DJs and producers that have conjured up new peregrinations influenced by the source material, and a clutch of recordings taken in the 1960s and in recent times of the Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir, Father Lazaros of the Grigoriou monastery, Father Germanos of the Vatopedi and Father Antypas – there’s also attributed performances to the Iviron and Simonopetra monasteries too.
As an overall package however, Echoes From The Holy Mountain is a deep survey of a near closed-off world and all the various attached liturgical and historical threads. FLEE reawaken an age-old practice, bringing to life traditions that, although interrupted and near climatically hindered, stretch back a millennium or more. No dusted ethnographical academic study for students but an impressive and important purview of reverential dedication and a lifetime of service, this project offers new perspectives and takes on the afflatus. Yet again the platform’s extensive research has brought together an international cast, with the main motivation being to work with tradition to create something respectful but freshly inviting and inquisitive. The historical sound, seldom witnessed or heard by outsiders, is reinvigorated, as a story is told through sonic exploration.” DV
Various Artists ‘I’m Glad About It: The legacy Of Louisville Gospel 1958 – 1981’ (The Louisville Story Program/Distributed Through Light In The Attic) Chosen by DV/Review
“When Ben Jones, one of the many voices of authority and leading lights of the Louisville gospel legacy, enthuses that the talent at every Black church during the golden years chronicled in this ambitious box set was akin to witnessing and hearing “ten Aretha Franklins at every service”, he’s not boasting. Jones’ contributions, as outlined in this multimedia package’s accompanying 208-page full colour booklet, lays down the much unrepresented story of a thriving, enduring scene. Alongside a host of reverent members of the various Evangelist, Pentecostal, Baptist and Apostolic churches, artists, instigators and custodians, his informative, animated and passionate words draw you into a most incredible cross-community of afflatus bearers of the gospel tradition. For the Louisville scene was and continues to be every bit the equal of its more famous and celebrated rivals across the American South. And that Aretha quote is no exaggeration, as you will hear some of the most incredible voices and choirs to ever make it on to wax, or, in some cases, make it onto the various radio stations and TV shows that promoted this divine expression of worship. 83 songs, hymns and paeans of assurance, great comfort, tribulations and travails from a gospel cannon of pure quality, moving testament and joy.
‘I’m Glad About It: The legacy Of Louisville Gospel 1958 – 1981’ is an unprecedented example of just how to display and facilitate such a multifaceted project of documentation and archive – in the package I received there were links to a brilliant visual timeline and archive of some 1000 songs recorded by 125 different gospel artists. A labour of love and recognition, taking over three years to put together, The Louisville Story Program has not just set out to preserve but also equip the communities they serve with a genuine platform which can be added to overtime. But importantly, they’ve brought in a number of inspiring voices to help build a concise story of legacy and continued influence of the city and gospel music in general – Ben Jones citing Drake and Kayne unable to find a beat that they didn’t hear in church.” DV
Various ‘Congo Funk! – Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshaha/Brazzaville 1969-1982)’ (Analog Africa) Chosen by DV/Review
“A tale of two cities on opposites sides of the same river, the Congo, the latest excursion for the Analog Africa label celebrates and showcases an abundance of dynamite, soul and funk tracks from the two capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
Congo Funk in all its many variations is put under the spotlight, with an outstanding set list of fourteen tracks (whittled down from a container’s worth of singles) that will enthral and educate in equal measures. Essential dance floor fillers await.” DV
Various ‘Ghana Special 2: Electronic Highlife & Afro Sounds In The Diaspora 1980-93’ (Soundway Records) Chosen by DV/Review
“The first decade of the new millennium proved a fruitful period for (re) discovering Africa’s rich dynamic and explosive music heritage, with both (through their various Afro-funk and Afro-psych compilations) Soundway Records and Analog Africa (in particular their influential African Scream Contests) spoiling connoisseurs and those with just a curiosity alike to sounds rarely heard outside the continent. The former’s original five album Ghana Special spread was one such indispensable collection from that time; a perfectly encased box set survey of one of Africa’s most important musical junctions. Now, unbelievably, a full twenty years later Soundway have followed up that “highlife” triumph with a second volume; moving the action on into a new decade. Ghana Special part two is a refreshing map of the diaspora fusions and hybrids that spread across Europe during a time of movement and turmoil from Ghana’s hotbed of influential stars and musicians. In highlighting the stories and journeys of Ghana’s émigrés, and in introducing us to those sounds, movements that remain either forgotten or just not as celebrated, Volume 2 will become as indispensable as the first.” DV
Various ‘Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition’ (FLEE)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Broadening the scope, the guest list of collaborators stretches the imagination; often completely uncoupled from the source material. All together in one bumper package of ethnomusicology, it makes perfect sense, futuristic alternative planes and visions of a forgotten – mostly passed down orally – tradition. This is a document and testament to the hardiness, perseverance and survival of a culture massacred, exiled and incarcerated, the remnants of a culture almost lost in time, but proving to be very much alive and intriguing to our ears. FLEE and their collaborators, aiders have put together a brilliant, thorough piece of musical research that bristles and wafts with a bounty of possibilities.” DV
Various ‘Wagadu Grooves: The Hypnotic Sound Of Camara 1987-2016’ (Hot Mule)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Shedding light on a rarely told story, the latest showcase compilation from the Paris label Hot Mule unfolds the backstory and “hypnotic” sounds of Gaye Mody Camara’s iconic label; a story that encompasses the West African Soninke diaspora and legacy. The entrepreneur turn label honcho and umbrella for those artists both from the mainland French migrant community and from across swathes of what was the atavistic kingdom of the Soninke ethnic groups’ Wagadu, Camara, through various means and links, helped create a whole industry of music production in Paris during the 80s, 90s and new millennium. The sound is always amazing, and the voices commanding, a mix of those inherited Griot roots, the club, pop and caravan trial. Most importantly Wagadu does have that eponymous ‘groove’ of the title: the ‘hypnotic’ bit too.” DV
Violet Nox ‘Hesperia’ (Somehwerecold Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Building new worlds, futuristic landscapes and intergalactic safe havens, and leaving vapour trails of laconic, hypnotizing new age psy-trance mysticism, a message of self-discovery and of resistance in their wake, Violet Nox once more embrace Gaia, Greek and Buddhist etymology and astrology to voyage beyond earthly realms.
Referencing mythological starry nymphs, a sun god’s charioteer, Agamemnon’s granddaughter and scientific phenomenon as they waft, drift and occasionally pump through veils of ambience, trance, dub, EDM and techno, the Boston, Massachusetts trio (although this core foundation is pliable and has expanded its ranks on previous releases) of synthesists and electronic crafters Dez DeCarlo and Andrew Abrahamson, and airy, searching siren vocalist and caller Noell Dorsey, occupy a dreamy ethereal plane that fits somewhere between Vangelis, Lisa Gerrard, Mythos, Kavinsky, Banco de Gaia and ecological revering dance music.” DV
Virgin Vacations ‘Dapple Patterns’
Chosen by DV/Review
“From a multitude of sources, across a number of mediums, the concentrated sonic force that is Virgin Vacations ramp up the queasy quasars and the heavy-set slab wall of no wave-punk-jazz-maths-krautrock sounds on their debut long player. With room to expand horizons the Hong Kong (tough gig in recent years, what with China’s crackdowns on the free press and student activists; installing authoritarian control over the Island) ensemble lay out a both hustled, bustled and more cosmic psychedelic journey, from the prowling to the near filmic and quasi-operatic -from darkened forebode to Shinto temple bell-ringing comedowns that fade out into affinity.” DV
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Tucker Zimmerman ‘I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True’ (Big Potato Records)
Chosen by DV
Whilst living in idyllic seclusion in Belgium during the 1970s, the venerated but underrated idiosyncratic US-born troubadour/singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman left the door ajar to friends (namely Ian A Anderson & Maggie Holland) and the like to spin a collection of unburdened, unpressured homegrown recordings. The results, unsurprisingly magical, halcyon and unassumingly poignantly poetic. The first ever release for ‘I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True’ is as revelatory as much as it is sublime, felt, intimate, boosting a reputation and clamour for an overlooked maestro. DV
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A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
(Photo : Zara Saraon @zarasaraon)
Luce Mawdsley ‘Northwest & Nebulous’
(Pure O Records) 29th March 2024
Over several years now the former Mugstar guitarist Luce Mawdsley has progressively shorn the more predatory slurred spoken-word mise-en-scenes and lurid, sleazy torturous self-harm from their music; gradually removing the “verbasier” programmed-like demonic effects from their voice and freeing themselves from a circled abyss of sonnets.
During that time Luce has also gravitated ever nearer towards a self-described “queer” vision of the Western soundtrack. This can be especially felt and heard on the last solo album to be featured and premiered on the Monolith Cocktail, Vulgar Displays Of Affection, which showed the Liverpool-based artist/musician moseying to a removed, transported alternative version of this Western re-imaging: a culminated merger of Morricone, Blood Meridian, Crime And The City Solution, El Topo and Hellenica.
Now onto their sixth studio album proper, Luce not only fully embraces that Americana influence but also now joins it with echoes of the English pastoral tradition and chamber music.
Another alternative score, and another progressive step in Luce’s well-being and journey of self-discovery and identity, all traces of their voice have been erased to escape an unhealthy cycle of unhappiness. In penning those disturbed and candid poetics and morbid descriptions, Luce wasn’t released from their torment, but instead locked into a spiral of reinforced misery. Breaking free from that process, Luce has found sanctum with their latest journey-like score, Northwest & Nebulous – the first to be released on Luce’s own label imprint, Pure O Records. Through a “non-human lens” the often amorphous, sometimes ambiguous, landscapes of this new record seem to let nature take its course: wherever it may lead.
Under the auspices of a Grade II listed Scandinavian church in Liverpool, and with chamber pairing of Nicholas Branton on clarinets and Rachel Nicholas on viola (making another appearance after adding something of the ethereal to the Vulgar Displays Of Affection album) at Luce’s side, a magical bucolic spell is unlocked. The music and atmospheres are mysterious in part, yet more natural and placeable, invoking landscapes, lakesides, and woodlands simultaneously quintessentially English and yet also American – think the Catskills, the Appalachians, and the Deep South. Within that tapestry the wildlife is mimicked with pecking and swanned charm – on the cockerel evoked ‘Roosting’, you could imagine a Jemima Puddle-duck like character waddling across the barnyard, albeit to a reimagined vision of bluegrass music composed by Vaughan Williams.
An holistic record that rescores the English scenery and places held near for Luce, the unfolding stages are both beautifully conveyed and hallucinatory in equal measure; a retold fairytale without any prompts, and without a human cast; a window in on the enchantments but also non-hierarchical, non-binary and free nature of the wilds and geography: a metaphor for Luce’s struggles to find an identity that feels natural, safe and unburdened.
One part classical, one part Americana, and one part folksy (a touch of the Celtic too) there’s still a very modern twist to what we may identify as the familiar: imagine Prokofiev on an acid trip, or Ry Cooder (all the melted, bendy, twanged, picked, tremolo guitar work down to Luce, who also provides the organ and percussion) in an English pasture laying down breadcrumbs for Hampshire & Foat. And then again, there are echoes of the occult, a little Wicca, and the occasional wilder sound of the clarinet harking like Anthony Braxton. The Moody Blues, Between, Jade Warrior, Federico Balducci, Andrew Wasylyk all appear on the horizon of this earthly paradise and portal. Luce might just have found their sanctuary amongst the unencumbered undergrowth; beside the refracted light inspired lakes, the gentle versants, and valleys of Northern England. Luce’s imagination is certainly in a better place, the organic nature of their music proving creatively successful in counterbalancing two great and much inspired landscapes together to produce something very beautiful and magical.
Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille ‘Embracing The Unknown’ (Mahakala Music) 29th March 2024
A true “cross-generational” (with two of the participants born in the 1930s) coming together of avant-garde, freeform and hard bop talent, the ensemble quartet of Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille “embrace” experiment. You could call it an extemporized gathering, with no prior arrangements and not much in the way of dialogue. And you called also say it was an intentional sounding collaboration, taking in, as it does, the Brazilian roots of the tenor saxophonist Perelman and the American roots (from Arkansas to Memphis, Philly and New York) of stritch (a large straight sax or alto sax without the curved bell) and saxello (a unique soprano sax with a curved bell and neck that lets out a distinctive sound) player Fowler, bass, saw and percussionist Workman and fellow percussionist Cyrille.
Released on Fowler’s own imprint, this circle of acclaimed and proficient artists/musicians brings a wealth of experience to the studio, performance space. Workman’s CV alone is incredible, knocking around with such gods of the form as Coltrane, Blakey and Monk, whilst drummer Cyrille had a long-standing association with the free jazz pianist-poet luminary Cecil Taylor. For their parts, Perelman has a prolific catalogue of albums stretching back to his debut in 1989 (moving from his native Sao Paulo that same year to New York), whilst the multi-instrumentalist Fowler has played on and produced everything from soul to R&B and jazz recordings.
From the titles alone this pooling of experiences, from across 70 plus odd years, Embracing The Unknown takes an undefined freeform journey of the mind; the references to “self” to “reflection” and “introspection” obvious, prompted and described, in a fashion, by the tones, pitches, entanglements, wails, strains and blasts of intensity. An expulsion of expressive query, and maybe a lighthearted leap from the psychiatrist’s couch the self-exploration of the mind and soul combine to evoke shades of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Marshall Allen, Pharoah Sanders, John Zorn, Barney Wilen, Roscoe Mitchell and Sam Rivers. The inner self is landscaped with the skylines of New York, but a semblance also of a transported South America and New Orleans in the untethered mix.
The various saxophones often resemble a gaggle of geese, or squeak, shrill, squawk, and squeal to the rafters. Hysterics of a kind are met with the giddy and more soul-searching passages. And then you get almost apparition-style spells: more playful than scary. Those horns can pierce but also serenade wistfully, as they do on the measured and near soliloquy sonnet, and Coltrane-light ‘Self-Reflection’. The percussive elements and drums can also be varied, with more springy “boings”, metal and tin cup scuttles and rattles, and the dusting, sieving of drum skins. Those same drums break out at times into a pattern of a kind; sometimes in an almost freeform swing fashion and at others, almost hitting hard bop. It’s hard to describe or even get across what I mean, but certainly the finale, ‘Self-Contemplation’, has the spindled and tinny semblance of something approaching Latin America.
Making the abstract seem even more so, yet somehow conveying mood, emotions and self-expression, this descriptive and totally improvisational master class in free-thought-jazz somehow captures the internal struggles and reflections of the mind during an age of high anxiety, rage, divisiveness and unease.
Arushi Jain ‘Delight’
(Leaving Records) 29th March 2024
Rejuvenation, reinvention and reenergized, the melodious form of the Ragga Bageshri is adopted by the polymath artist, musician, composer, vocalist, engineer and ‘modular synthesist’ Arushi Jain on the follow up to 2021’s well-received Under A Lilac Sky album. Undergoing various changes, imbued with, and surrounded by, the wildlife, light, and art of an empty house on the seaside, that original romantic Indian ragga of longing conveyed the feelings of a lover waiting to reunite with their beloved, but Jain now replaces that devotional love with invocations of “delight”: or as Jain puts it, “…to instill belief in the ever-present nature of delight…assert[ing] the need to actively seek it when not readily found.”
Jain also transduces and transforms the arrangement and the essence of that tradition into something very futuristic, artful, and ethereal sounding; the main sound, sonic and instrument being that incredible voice, which can be as sonorous as it can be vaporous. Across nine highly atmospheric tracks of the astral, celestial, ebbing, beatific and technological, that voice is built upon with layers of tonal lulls and coos or, in stark but reverberated contrast, sings to the heavens, the higher learning. Yet there are also assonant utterings that call to the “void”; propelled forward on a Basic Channel, Jeff Mills-esque chopper-like minimalist techno beat. At times those effected vocals and wafted harmonies are morphed into synthesized waves and lines (at one point almost monastic), and at other times are left to convey the sentiments of the theme – the quasi-remix like ‘You Are Irresistible’ being the clearest example; a mix of club, modern warbled R&B and hypnotizing cosmic dream spells.
Underneath, undulating or attentively in unison with that magical voice there’s a sophisticated envelope of light-giving arpeggiator and algorithms, and the distilled, transparent, and warping. The environment is itself, as I mentioned earlier, transduced into an artificial metallic menagerie, with the sun’s rays and beams gently radiating and penetrating the dreamy new age and trance-y ambience. Notes fall, cascade, and drop like crystalloid bulbs, whilst a synthesized symphonic orchestra pipes up with a whistled and fluty spring and bounce. I can hear a semblance of marimba, or something very much like it bobbling about on ‘Our Teaching Tongues’, which also features a building chopper, rotor-bladed circulation of minimalist electronic. And there seems to be some sort of mizzle-like seepage of a horn too in places.
Every element is put together wonderfully as a softened balance is sort between the soaring and suffused, insularly reflected and the amorphously never-ending. And through it all “delight” is sort out, courted, embraced and enraptured in a futuristic retelling of sagacious Indian arts, wills and universal feels; producing an extraordinary and diaphanous biosphere.
Ill Considered ‘Precipice’
(New Soil) 22nd March 2024
Despite the hurry to lay down this stripped-down improvised vision of the jazz ensemble – recorded in a day, with no overdubs; mixed the following day –, the refreshed Ill Considered trio exercise a new verve and itch to reassemble, recreate and reignite without sounding in a rush. Back to a core triumvirate lineup of Idris Rahman on saxophone, Liran Donin on bass and Emre Ramazanoglu on drums, the very much lauded UK jazz collective set a new course free of augmentation and effects; an invocation of the great trios of jazz’s golden age through a modern lens, with all the history and development that comes with it.
Away from the dramatics of the album’s “precipice” title, this is a group in flux, reconnecting perhaps with the basics in an act of renewal (a lot the “re” going on I know); starting over you could say, but nothing so year zero as that. The dynamics and interactions of which are balanced: the wild with a certain tightness, and an abstractedness and playfulness that never quite breaks out into the freeform. Whilst Rahman’s saxophone penetrates and shrills, sometimes bristles and trills more fervently, you can always recognize it – a more melodic hybrid of Sam Rivers, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and Alex Roth. His foils on drums and bass seem pretty anchored as they lay down the various rhythms and feels. Donin seems to cross post-punk, no wave (there’s a particular Liquid Liquid spin on the Arthur Russell goes downtown ‘Linus With The Sick Burn’) and, of course, jazz bass lines, repeated prods, probes and elasticated wobbles, whilst Ramazanglu plays with breakbeats, drills, rattled spidery sticks and more percussive sounding scuttles.
Whether the titles came later, or were used as prompts, reference points, they do go some way in describing the performances: to a point. Name checking mythology, repair and the natural world, improvisations like ‘Vespa Crabro’, as in the European hornet, does have a real spikey buzz and sting to it; the bass like a rubber band being pulled and twanged in a busy manner, whilst the sax honks and cuts right through like the angry said wasp darting from one direction to the next. The fire ants, ‘Solenopsis’, that lend their name to the ninth improvisation on this album evoke West Africa; a desert farm setting in which the drums seem to work off the metals, the cattle bells and water troughs as the sax pecks bird-like, or flits about on the dry earth. ‘Kintsugi’ feeds into the thinking behind this slimmed-down chapter of the group; referencing as it does the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with slow-drying ‘urushiol’ based lacquers, dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The philosophy of which is that you treat breakage and repair as part of that objects history, rather than try to disguise it. Sound wise, the trio seems to touch on splayed Afro-rhythms and hip-hop, as the bass bounces in the spaces and skips, and the sax reverberates and drifts. ‘Katabatic’ on the other hand, takes a chthonian journey into Greek myth with a tunneled sax circulating in an underworld atmosphere of mysterious probes and J Dilla breaks.
Ill Considered in trio form is neither reductive nor compromised, managing instead to transform and amplify the basics into a concentration of promising new material. Laid down in the moment, feeding off of each other’s energy but sense of control and direction too, they open up their horizons with a riff on the jazz trio idiom.
Alison Cotton ‘Engelchen’
(Rocket Recordings)
In the wake of the barbaric terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, and the ensuing destructive retaliation/ obliteration of Gaza by Israel since, there seems little room – let alone nuance and balance – on the debate; battle lines have been drawn and divisions sowed. And so this inspired tale of ‘derring-do’ (originally performed live at the Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland) performance suite from the Sunderland composer Alison Cotton is a most timely reminder of dark history, but also of altruistic acts of kindness.
Scoring the story of the innocuous Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, and their incredibly brave rescue attempts to save the lives of twenty-nine Jews from occupied Europe during the build-up and eventual outbreak of WWII, Cotton ties in the modern plight of refugees escaping similar persecutions: the album’s reprised neo-classical pained and suffered leitmotif, and a capella style stirring voices, are used on the finale, ‘Engelchen Now’, to draw attention to a female Kurdish “teacher/activist”, making a similar passage and aided by similar “angels” over eight years later.
Originally from Cotton’s hometown, the Cook sisters moved on to London, with jobs in the civil services, and remained largely innocuous until their obsession for opera took them to Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. In an age when international travel was still very much the preserve and enjoyment of the upper echelons of society, the sisters managed to visit many of the famous opera houses on both the continent and across the Atlantic. Over the course of many years they built up friendships with such well-known and respected figures as the Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss and his wife, the Romanian opera singer Viorica Ursuleac, whilst also hobnobbing with such stars of the form like Rosa Ponselle and Ezio Pinza. Through sending boutiques to dressing rooms, requesting autographs and photographs with the stars, the Cook sisters would build up a network that would prove vital in saving Jews from the Nazi purge.
Almost like characters from an Ealing Comedy or Hitchcock movie, the sisters surface naivety and eccentricity proved a good cover; the sisters managing to bluff their way past SS guards on a few occasions, and remain undetected even when smuggling through those escapees furs and jewelry. Unflattering, but both sisters were described as being “plain” and “gawky”, their clothes made from magazine patterns by Ida. And so they were often dismissed: under the radar as it were. They used this to their advantage, and in so doing saved many lives in what was a most dangerous climate.
For their kind acts they were anointed as “Engelchens” (“angels”), and given the honorific title of Righteous Among the Nations: a title used by ‘Israel to describe all of the non-Jews who, for purely altruistic reasons, risked their lives in order to save Jews from being exterminated by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.’
Despite this, the Cook sisters’ exploits have remained relatively obscure: although Ida did pen a memoir, We Followed Our Stars, in the 1950s (reprinted as Safe Passage in 2008), and there is a possible film adaptation in the works. (Ida incidentally wasn’t the only writer, sibling Louise, going under the pen name of Mary Burchell, had a sideline in writing romances for Mills & Boon). Through their connection with Cotton’s Sunderland hometown, that story is now picked-up and relived: reimagined through the use of strings and voice by a dedicated composer.
Less a morbid, dark soundtrack to the evils of the Nazi regime and Holocaust, Cotton instead conveys the enormity and the danger of the Cook’s enterprise through slow tidal movements, tones, intonations and changes in the atmosphere. Throughout it all a prevailing presence and emotional pull can be felt: The mood music of grief, the plaintive and sorrowful cumulating in a beautifully played series of arrangements and suites that are as somber as they are beautiful and moving – reminding me in parts of Alex Stolze, Anne Müller, Simon McCorry and Aftab Darvishi.
Both wordless Hebrew hymnal lulls and sung poetics hold and swim in the haunted ripples of time, as the story unfolds in bellowed and concertinaed breaths and to the bowed strains of strings. There are subtle drums too on occasion, either brushed and sieved, or marching like a softened military drill – prompting that danger I mentioned, militaristic Germany, the warning of a firing squad and peril.
Some movements have a squeezebox, almost folk and near Celtic, saltiness that evokes the sea; none more so than the album’s first single, ‘The Letter Burning’. Pulled, drawn from obfuscation, the correspondence that was burned by Louise from that time, are ruminated upon to the strike of the gong and an organ-like (could be a harmonium) tide of simultaneously haunting and dreamy a capella remembrance and woe. Sung references are made to those “saved”, and the location where news of their plight was first discussed. Whilst the intentions behind the erasure of these letters are unknown, Cotton interprets Louise’s actions as a gesture of remorse at all those poor souls the sisters couldn’t save: literally haunted by the thought of their fates. Perhaps it was an attempt at moving on with their lives, to not dwell on such tragedy, and instead look to more hopeful times. The world was moving on, quickly forgetting, even aiding and abetting many former Nazis. After the anger and some justice, initial worldwide broadcasted trials soon vanished from the public psyche. Many perpetrators, facilitators of that regime were soon forgotten.
In the wake of another tumultuous, scary period of anti-Semitism, but in a more general manner, with hostility at an all time high towards to the refugee community, it is such stories and projects as Cotton’s Engelchen that remind us of the cost of our loss of humility and humanity. With so many layers to the Cook sisters’ story (let alone the obvious there’s a strong feminist angle to raise) and connotations for our own time, this score, soundtrack, performance comes full circle: the fates of 1930s/40s Jews in Germany tied to those of Kurds and other persecuted ethnic groups in the 21st century.
Andrew Heath And Mi Cosa de Resistence ‘Café Tristesse’
(Audiobulb) 16th March 2024
Composer of “lower case” minimalism Andrew Heath and his willing foil on this collaboration, the Argentinian ambient composer Fernando Perales (under the guises of his Mi Cosa de Resistence alias), slow down time to convey abstract disquiet and a sense of the plaintive on their first proper album together – the pair previously worked together on A Speechless Body, but this is their first actual fully shared collaborative immersion. For the title translates from the French as “a state of melancholy sadness”; an encapsulation of a mood made famous and iconic by the lauded surrealist and poet Paul Éluard who in turn inspired his French compatriot Françoise Sagan to pen the 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse, which went on to spawn a movie adaptation. Obviously the “café” part if that album title needs less explanation or inquiry, evoking as it does the legacy of ruminating whilst measuring the passage of time sipping on a cappuccino or knocking back espressos: The café as centre of every movement worth mentioning in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in Europe where this sort of almost resigned and wistful contemplation.
Having built up quite the reputations and CVs (Heath no stranger to this blog, with his last solo album, Scapa Flow making our “choice albums of 2023” lists) both participants bring much adroit subtlety to this dreamy drifting traverse of feelings that cannot be described so much in words or song. Perales’ main job seems to be in picking out the right atmospheric guitar notes, the right motifs and bended mirages, which in turn either linger or float over Heaths vapours, ambient scapes and wafts. Across strange refractive sun-lit Western vistas, near ethereal visions and rain swept European boulevards, those synthesized and tremulous, gently plucked and pinged instruments – a signature presence too of Heath’s translucent and more dulled piano is also in attendance – somehow manifest images of the French waiter taking his break in-between services, taking a drag perhaps on a cigarette to unwind from the tensions, stresses as he or she watches the comings and goings on the street outside: Time seems to be suspended during these moments of contemplation.
And yet there are moments that, to me, suggest an almost Vangelis-style Blade Runner kind of pathos (especially the ambient vision ‘The Absentee’). There’s certainly the air of mystery suffused throughout this album of musical novellas. If the guitar work of Fererico Balducci and Myles Cochran enthuse merging perfectly with invocations of Eno, John Laneand Roedelius enthuse you then this perfectly matched collaborative affair of the heart and cerebral feels will very much impress.
NAH ‘Totally Recalled’
(Viernulvier Records) 15th March 2024
Not so much disjointed or a clattering collision but more an “overlapping” controlled chaos of influences, sounds and beats, the drummer, producer and visual artist NAH rebuilds and shuttles a polygenesis set of rhythms into a noisy assemblage of broken beats, cosmic effects, repurposed House and Rave music, removed jazz, hip-hop, d’n’b and Techno.
Releasing this latest experiment, propelled from an effects pedal embellished drum kit, on the Ghent, Belgium art center of Viernulvier’s label (Use Knife, Youniss and Hieroglyphic Being), NAH’s sonic immersion is, when seen in the live environment, complimented with visuals. But I wouldn’t call this a art project as such, more an experiment in combining the chaos, constant generated overflow of information in a world in which technology encroaches ever more upon our understanding of being human: tying in with NAH’s balancing of the acoustic and synthetic.
This latest album “serves headphones submersion” but is better “witnessed live in all its decibel meter breaking glory.” It’s certainly full of noise and constantly on the move, shuttling, galloping and barreling around, or in pneumatic fashion, drilling those beats into the conscious. A jumbled cacophony at times of J Dilla, People Like Us, Plug, Wagon Christ, Bugz In The Attic and Cities Aviv (who is just one of many artists NAH has collaborated with over the years, since his debut in 2011) with transmogrified and more clearer vocal samples (many of which seem to have been borrowed off soul and R&B records), Totally Recalled is like an inner rolodex of logged breaks and snippets pulled together to create “alternative” movement of musical ideas, dynamisms. And so you might hear an alternative version of Tony Allen drumming on R&S Records in the 90s, or, Kosmische-like star gate synthesized space takeoffs as envisioned by Tomat. Some tracks seem to discombobulate hip-hip, d’n’b and hardcore Techno in one go; clattering together in the same space without sounding a mess, but somehow making perfect sense – imagine Madlib working with Jeff Mills. There’s even, what sounds like, a beat made out of a typewriter at one point.
Looped, remodelled, recharged and rebuilt, NAH’s methodology and processes continue to wrong-foot and drum up invigorating or overloaded rhythmic, percussive accelerations into immersive and exciting uncertainty.
Various ‘Africamore – The Afrofunk Side Of Italy (1973-1978)’
(Four Flies Records) 22nd March 2024
Shedding ever more light on Italian curiosities of a certain vintage and status, the Four Flies Records label digs out of the vaults another selection of cult finds; building on a rich archive catalogue of Italian film composers, personalities with a compilation of African and Afro-Caribbean inspired nuggets from a mixed bag of mavericks, entertainers, obscure bands and producers.
Covering a five-year period and the advent of the disco era, this showcase explores the Italian music industry’s fascination and adoption of African music and sounds in the 1970s, from the most sampled and covered African track of all time, the Cameroon saxophonist Manu Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’ – covered in this instance by African Revival (whoever the hell that was), who take it via the grasslands into Peter King and Fred Wesley territories -, to the imported vodun spells of Hispaniola – the Italian-Eritrean singer, entertainer, impresario and record producer Silvana Savorelli (who went under both the Tanya and, in this instance, the Lara Saint Paul aliases) works her kitsch magic on ‘The Voodoo Lady’; the sort of fake swamp mist effected Afro-Caribbean tropical lilt, with chuffing woodwind, that you might expect to hear in an episode of Miami Vice (and to think Savorelli was once produced by Quincy Jones, and this particular track, featured on her winning, commercially successful 1977 LP Saffo Music, amazingly enough featured The Pointer Sisters on backing vocals).
Prompted and influenced by what was developing across the Atlantic in the States, with the already mentioned Dibango classic picked up by such impresario DJs on the New York scene as Dave Mancuso (mentioned in the liner notes to this compilation) Italy gratefully received the Afro-funk, Afro-beat and Afro-Latin sounds. The infectious groove that would propel a boom in nightclubs, these sounds, tribal rhythms were both fired up and exploited in equal measures; although the Italian husband and wife duo behind Chrisma (made up from the couple’s names of Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser; later on in the new wave era renamed Krisma) has the legendry Ghanaian-British Afro-Funk band Osibisa providing the rhythm section on their delicious, tropically-lilted, semi-Gainsbourg mating dance, ‘Amore’ (produced, extraordinarily, by Nico Papathanassiou and his more famous sibling Vangelis), and the Jamaican actress, model, presenter, singer and, of all things, aphrodisiac cook book author Beryl Cunningham fronts the hand drum heavy, ocean side view cabaret ‘Why O’ – Beryl, who famously starred in the Italian erotic Le Salamandre drama before shooting to semi-fame in such films as The Weekend Murderers and The Black Decameron, sounds like a cross between Marva Broome and Miriam Makeba.
Expanding on that international field, there’s even room on this collection for the Indian percussionist Ramasandiran Somusundara, who offers up his “bean smuggling” single from 1973. A member at one time or other with Bambibanda E Melodie, Maya and New Trolls Atomic System (is that even real?!), his musicality in this regard seems to combine bush whacker rituals with Black Level on a classic Italo-funk record.
Returning to the Euro fold, Luca D’Ammonio mixes NYC Latin soul with Joe Baatan and Cymande on his white boogaloo mover ‘Oh Caron’, whilst the film composer (The Bronx Warrior, Our Man In Bagdad, The House By The Cemetery) Walter Rizzati rustles up a quasi streets of San Fran action thriller score on ‘L’unica Chance’: a paler shade of Black sounds, with a soft scuzz on the whacker guitar, some chuffing Jeremy Steig flute, and a touch of cool jazzy-funk organ and claves (the sort of music lapped up by Sven Wunders and Greg Foat at one time).
The strange pairing of The Real McCoys and Italian composer, arranger and TV personality Augusto Martelli (famous for his Il Dio Serpente theme, which topped the charts and set his career in motion) come up with the collection’s most unusual track, ‘Calories’, which seems to marry Nino Ferrer and the new wave in a limbo of libido thrusts and alluring promises of coquettish sexual desires. Covering everything from Saravah Records to the Jorge Autuori Trio, Idris Muhammad, Drummers of Burundi, Mongo Santamaria, Paulo Ferrarai, Bruno Nichols and the disco era, this compilation of cultish singles and album tracks is more Dr. No than Shaft In Africa – I’m almost detecting Iron Butterfly’s most famous riff on the more flowery, slick but wild ‘Africa Sound’ track by the duo of Jean Paul and Angelique, who were a woodwind/strings and guitar combo of note, originally making records together under the Elio & Angelique moniker. But then I’m being too harsh, as there are some right stonkers and infectious dancefloor fillers amongst the kitsch and enervated Afro influences. And many better known tracks and composers (see Albert “Weyman” Verrecchia) already finding an audience in the crate digger and vinyl aficionado communities. But if you thought you’d heard it all on the Italian music front, then Africamore will give succour to new discoveries, and fill in some of the history.
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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