Monolith Cocktail Blog

A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)

Luzmila Carpio ‘Inti Watana: El Retorno Del Sol’
(ZZK Records) 21^st September 2023

Full of wonderment and magic, the Bolivian performer and composer Luzmila Carpio returns with her first all-encompassing album in a decade. Imbued with an ancestral heritage and language that predates the Conquistadors colonial apocalypse, Carpio weaves and plays with her Aymara and Quechua roots, its creation stories, shamanistic ceremonies and humble custodianship of nature.

With a providence that stretches back decades and a prolific catalogue of releases, the enigmatic icon has become a representative voice for the indigenous people of not only her Potosi home (a city and region in the Southern Highlands of Bolivia, dominated by its history of silver mining), but also the impressive, pristine “high plain” Altiplano region (said to be the most extensive high plateau on Earth outside of Tibet; the bulk of which is in Bolivia but straddles Peru and Chile too) and the South American continent as a whole. Speaking up and out again with an admittedly beautifully disarming voice, Carpio draws attention to various struggles and causes; lamenting with an almost Latin funeral march ‘requiem’ the self-centered quest for individualism and success at the expense of others on the spiritual-yearned, harmonium sustained and almost oriental ‘Requiem Para Un Ego’. A “critique on modern civilization”, Carpio uses a protagonist “powerbroker” figure who regrets a life of greed and avarice.

But for the most part Inti Watana: El Retorno Del Sol is a scenic enchantment of conversations with Mother Earth (or “Pachamam” as she calls her) and “Father Sun” (“Tata Inca”), that although localized projects its mystical and lilted beauty across the globe, opening doors to a wealth of rich instrumentation from Argentina, Armenia and Asia, and evocations of voices from The Steppes and beyond – reminding me in places of the Mongolian star Namgar and even a less avant-garde, hysterical Yoko Ono.

With the Argentinian producer and ZZK label stalwart Leonardo Martinelli, aka Tremor, on board there’s a further layer of more contemporary electronica and atmospheres added to the mix of Pre-Columbus rhythms. Under that alias of Tremor, Martinelli, alongside artists like Nicola Cruz and Chanche Vía Circuito, previously reworked the Bolivian icon’s music for a special ZZK collection in 2015. Back in that aura the synthesized production elements are quite subtle, but effective. Various vapours, wisps and drones help enforce a mystical, otherworldly, even mythological, experience.

Carpio’s voice is captivating, unusual, startling and majestic in equal measures; from the almost childlike “lada-dee” wonder of the Sentidor-like, softly trudging, dried shaking sticks opener ‘Kacharpayita’ to the rainforest menagerie of exotic trilled, chirped, tittered and whistled calls on the shivered bow stringed and more somber piano-backed whimsy, ‘Ofrenda De Los Pájaror’. She soothes a sort of lullaby on the reassuring toned Aymara dialect gauzy “celestial” tribune to the Earth, ‘Pachamama Desde El Cosmos’, and hums and warbles like a theremin on the floated bulb notes fluted new age Andean Shamanic ceremony, ‘Hacia La Luz’.  

Altogether it evokes a whole cosmology of symbolist wildlife; of condors in majestic flight, strafing sacred atavistic mountains, and the sound of glacial waters flowing into the lush forests. In a manner, this is both a love letter to her home and a forewarning of the consequences of rapid modern encroachment upon the environment in question. Carpio invites us into her dreams and meditations with a wonderful message of universal care and respect for that which nurtures and feeds us; an unbroken link to civilizations like the Incas, propelled into the 21^st century.

Darius Jones ‘fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred)’
(We Jazz/Northern Spy) 29^th September 2023

Absorbing all the history and ethos of Vancouver’s multidisciplinary Western Front hothouse, the acclaimed alto-saxophonist, composer and bandleader Darius Jones conceptually, artfully embodies the spirit of that creative hub’s avant-garde, Fluxus/Duchampian foundations on his new album of free-jazz movements.

Commissioned by the artist run centre back in 2019, leading to a series of residences, Jones was able to spend some time with one of the institute’s octet of founders, the Vancouver visual/performance artist and Brute Sax Band instigator Eric Metcalfe, who alongside his fellow leopard spot Brutopia conceptual foil and wife Kate Craig and the artists Martin Bartlett, Mo Van Nostrand, Henry Greenshaw, Glenn Lewis, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov created this space in 1973. If not all members of, they were at least inspired by the radical 60s and 70s Fluxus movement; a loose group of concrete poetry, mail art, installation, performance, urban planning, video and neo-dada noise music creators, the ranks of which included at any one time Terry Riley, Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, La Monte Young and of course its proto-founder, de facto leader, George Maciunas (who is said to have coined their moniker).

The Western Society, housed in what was originally the fraternal HQ of the Knights Of Pythias (which we shall come to later; inspiration for this album’s fourth and final suite, ‘Damon And Pythias’), also has a legacy of activism, but musical exchange programs too: hosting such notables as George Lewis and Ornate Coleman, who’s inspired art is suffused throughout Jones’ album. Picking up on those vibes, wired into a conceptual arts hive of activity on all sides, it’s unsurprising to find yet another celebrated Canadian artist bringing yet another cerebral vivid layer to the project. Film, video, photographer and installation artist Stan Douglas is a most congruous choice for providing the cover art. Although noted for his themes of class, the technical and societal aspects of mass media and failed, obsolete utopias, the Documenta stalwart once created a video installation in 1992, Hors-Champs, which included a performance of Albert Ayler’s 1965 composition ‘Spirits Rejoice’ by a quartet of American musicians who had moved to France during the free-jazz period of the 60s. By extension that musical freedom was associated with the rise of Black consciousness, but many of jazz’s bigwigs escaped the segregated, civil rights struggles and ignorance of America for Europe, and in particular France, where it was far more revered, appreciated; especially amongst the leftist, Marxist crowds.

Douglas has created an abstract image that’s neither painting nor photography for the album cover. Part of his DCT series (running since 2016), ‘Occ 6’ was created through manipulating frequencies, amplitudes and colour values at the point of a digitalization process where a photographic image is only represented by code. It looks like a kind of lightly blurred piece of op art, with nodes formed by the unique colourful electromagnetism. Where it fits in with this project of movements is purely abstract and visceral; part of a whole arts imbued theme with Jones producing the sonic renderings, paintings.

The Virginia-born and bred Jones feeds off a legacy whilst bringing an impressive CV of multi-diverse projects to the table (from trad-jazz to the avant-garde and freeform; from chamber to modern dance) and of course a Quintet of strings, bass and drum players. Merging the abstract, Jones combines the double bass of James Meger and drums of Gerald Cleaver with the dual front of violinists Jesse and Josh Zubot and cellist Peggy Lee, on an extemporized-like tumult, strain, drama and trauma of transmogrified out-there classical music, freeform jazz and wilder non-musical experimentation.

In these surroundings, at the Grand Luxe Hall, all six musicians push the proverbial envelope. Prompted by the titular “fLuXkit”, a collection of artworks and everyday objects placed in a small container or box, a whole opus of challenging expressive, consciousness imbued performances are given free flight to roam, prowl and tumble through space and time.

Inspired, as I mentioned, by the Western Front’s home, originally owned by the cultish sounding Knights Of Pythias, ‘Damon And Pythias’ references that fraternity’s foundation; namely the Greek legend of friendship, loyalty and honour in the time of Dionysius I of Syracuse in Hellenic Sicily. And yet this is a drama of Stravinsky, harangued and shrieked strings; a discombobulating distress of splayed drums, geese-like sax pecks and shrills, and factory machinery-like resonance. Art Ensemble Of Chicago meets The Modern Jazz Quartet across a whole seventeen-minutes of honked traffic, struggles and withering, this finale ends with a more tuneful, near chamber music linger of breath.

Named (I think we can softly assume) after the two violinists in this ensemble, ‘Zubot’ comes closet to the Fluxus idiom, with a highly experimental squawk, harried slot machine assemblage of La Monte Young, Joseph Bryd, Anthony Braxton and demigod, science fiction progenitor Coleman. The violins truly go all out, like Tony Conrad flitting, straining and pulling on taut strings until they cry. But the opening suite, ‘Fluxus VST 1S1’, takes all that art and runs it through noir-like suspense, hard bop, the far out, the troubled and dramatic. Jones impressive alto playing evokes Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Albert Ayler and Marion Brown, untethered and yet attentive, bird-like and even caressing and smoky. It’s one hell of a statement, with far too many individual highlights or worthy musicianship to mention (although as a former bassist myself, I will note James Meger, who here and later on, sounds like a strung-out Mingus thwacking and pulling at the bass).

However, ‘Rainbow’ has a self-declared influence of Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite. But I’d suggest a smoky incense too of 50s New York skylines: a touch of Gershwin perhaps and the Savoy label. It starts with a three-minute drum solo in the style of Billy Cobham; Gerald Cleaver working off the entire kit, firing off rolls, pumping the hi-hat pedal and tumbling a sort of tribal swing.

Jones and ensemble have created something emotionally charged and highly expressive (challenging too, in a good way) from a site and history. The home of the avant-garde in Vancouver proves fertile, fiery kindle for an impressive, raw at times, catharsis and unload of free thought and art. 

Also released around the same time by one the partners in Jones conceptual album release, We Jazz have a just as impressive, free form and wild opus from the Norwegian drummer/composer Gard Nilssen to sale you. A debut in fact, Nilssen and his Supersonic Orchestra Family album is ambitious in scale and musicality; a real impressive first effort that in which Prikoviv, Ayler, Coleman, Braxton, Dolphy and Phil Ranelin mix it with Ill Considered, Binker & Moses and The Hypnotic Brass Band over an octet of extended suites. I can hardly do it justice in the brief space I’ve got left, but suffice to say, this is an incredible cacophony of every era in the jazz and classical cannon you can think of; everything from Latin to bop, the soulful, theatrical, wild and even stage. Wow. A real feat.   

          

Carlos Niño & Friends ‘(I’m Just) Chillin’, On Fire’
(International Anthem) 15^th September 2023

A slow musical movement, bathed in the new age transcendence of Alice Coltrane’s spiritual oasis, the latest album from the L.A. producer-percussionist Carlos Niño is a (mostly) disarming opus of afflatus and conscious jazz.

In a West Coast scene rich with multidisciplinary artists crossing genres and collaborating on their neighbor’s projects, Niño invites an abundance of notable friends to wash their feet in the calming waters of his organically evolving divine collage. Part jazz, part mysticism, part day spa and part fourth world music, (I’m Just) Chillin’, On Fire finds our host creating a experience that, literally, washes over the listener. A pause; a break from the vacuous all-up-your-face smartphone music that blights our lives with the artificial, you’re cordially invited to embrace something more lasting, connected and organic.

His who’s who of Californian natives and those who’ve made the State their creative home includes an actual Alice Coltrane protégé, the keyboardist, composer and actor Surya Botofasina. Niño oversaw the ashram acolyte’s 2022 devotional Everyone’s Children, and in kind, now features Botofasina on nearly half of this album’s communal peregrinations and hymnals; starting with a serenading and romantic turn on the John Coltrane love supreme, seashore scene of ‘Love Dedication (For Annelise)’ – Niño’s recurring shimmy percussion and tubular chimes adding a mystical spell of something almost transcendent and dreamy. His next appearance is alongside the Mesoamerican musical explorer Luis Pérez Ixoneztli on the lunar oasis hallucination of lush otherworldly presence and unseen machinery, ‘Am I Dreaming?’. And then, we hear him on a string of rattlesnake percussive spiritual jazz shimmers, washes and celestial balms.

Connecting both albums, the L.A. singer-songwriter Mia Doi Todd also appeared on Botofasina’s long player, and now joins that inimitable Outkast André 3000 and the German-American vocalist Cavana Lee for a Jon Hassell and Finis Africae-like vision on ‘Conversations’. It could be the Outback, the African bush; the condor hovered mountains of South America, or even, the Orient – especially with a touch of Sakamoto keys amongst the meditative bubbled healing waters.

The guest list keeps on giving, with a rather unsurprising appearance by one of the original divine stylers of experimental pulchritude and zither radiance, Laraaji. Eno, Budd and the already mentioned Hassell foil appears with the Woodstock producer and DJ Photay under the Afro-cosmic waterfall of ‘Maha Rose North 102021, Breathwork’. Laraaji’s heavenly touch gently permeates a noisy cascade of Vanney chemistry set effects, the fluted, tubular bells and plastic-paddled rhythms.   

It’s a ridiculous, expansive circle of friends, far too numerous to list. But the saxophonist, Holophonor leader and Thelonious Monk Institute Of Jazz Performance alumni Josh Jackson, multi-instrumentalist songwriter, producer and player on records by such notables as Jay-Z, Lizzo and The Weekend, Nate Mercereau, and the multidisciplinary artist and drummer Jamire Williams all pop up the most across the album. Personally I found the contributions of the Maskandi/avant-garde fusion “savant” Sibusile Xaba almost otherworldly; his expressive merger of the alien and atavistic unique against the primordial water bathing and pouring’s of Jamael Dean’s piano and the kosmische, bird-like and computer game sounds of ‘Taaud’.

Deantoni Parks, who goes under the Technoself moniker, appears on the J. Dilla hip-hop-like, trinket glittered and wind chimes equinox ‘Flutestargate’, and the polymath, sometime Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra troupe member Maia features on the running man/woman, 2-step stumbled and softly bushed Iberian guitar new age jazz breakbeat vibe, ‘Transcendental Bounce, Run To It’. From replenishing streams, the Californian surf breaking on the shoreline to the branches of a memorable willow tree, Niño reflects, absorbs or echoes his surroundings on the soundtrack to his visionary spiritual retreat. The issues of the day do crop up of course, if in a more hushed, dwelled-on manner. But this is a lush conceptual fusion of new age jazz, much in the style of such luminaries as Alice Coltrane. A little repetitive, but beautiful all the same, this astral and more earthly opus is a singular concentration of divine intervention.

Richard Sears ‘Appear To Fade’
(Figureight Records) 29^th September 2023

An efflux of muted, glassy notes blurred, muffled, and submerged by the tape-loop processes of his foil Ari Chersky, the very removed jazz and ambient serialism and modal improvisations of Richard Sears convey empirical passages of time, nostalgia, and locations. His fifth “led” album covers a transitional move from New York to Paris, and all the uncertainty, prospects it entails; including fond memories of his upbringing near the Santa Cruz coastline in Manresa, set to what sounds like a wax cylinder recorded timeless dream of crystal and brassier resonated piano and loop reversals.

With Chersky transforming an archive of live performed short pieces, through various tape methods of distortion and disintegration, the compositions on Appear To Fade are reduced in density but not value; sounding at times ghostly in an iteration of hiss, crackles and fog. Occasionally it sounds almost hallucinated, or like a mirage. And throughout, seems to take either a languid dive beneath the ocean, or float up on top, waiting to be brought back in on the tide. For obvious reasons, ‘Oceans’ makes this aquatic theme apparent, albeit with a near off-chord and tonal dissonance that strikes throughout this seabed discovery. ‘Flotsam’, as the title suggests, bobs up on top to a refracted lighted and pitter-patter like pretty tinkle of piano notes that evoke a pirouetting ballet music box. ‘Urchin’, to my ears anyway, is a sonic bedfellow to the two previous suites: a trippy splash of warping mystery below the waves.

Although channeling touches, influences of Nils Frahm, Kali Malone, Sakamoto and Johnny Greenwood (I’d add the “lower-case” minimalist Andrew Heath perhaps and Matthew David), Sears pays homage to the Estonian composer Toivo Tulev. The pianist/composer studied choral composition under his tutelage, and on his namesake track seems to warp that choral mystique and an atmosphere of the Estonian’s almost spooked ‘For My Little Sister’ piano piece into a haunting and melting suite of abstract modal jazz and semi-classicism.

Part of Sears sound is down to the soft pedal Una Corda, which makes the piano notes sound both glass-like and muted. This additional keyboard transformer is notably used on the album’s finale, ‘What I Meant To Say Was’, a deft delightful and timeless recital of jewelry box music, Novello and Bacharach.

Deteriorate rather than decay, there’s just the right amount of old tape disorientation to slow, warble, slur and sift the varied melodic piano pieces, and make them mysterious, magical or uncertain. Sepia veils play with memoary and time as those tape effects envelope and send Sears improvised touches back through a mirror. Together, a biosphere of recollection is transduced into dreamy fading fragments and traverses; art and music experiment in a curious union.

Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘Ongaku Zukan’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) 29^th September 2023

A timely, special release in the wake of the Japanese icon’s death in March of this year, the impeccable vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS have reissued Sakamoto’s cult 1984 solo album Ongaku Zukan (or “Musical Encyclopedia”).

In 1986 (or thereabouts) 10 Records/Virgin released a much different assembled version (with a different track list) of that album. But until now, there’s never been a faithful (as Sakamoto intended) version of that classic LP on the market. The original was released in both “regular” and “limited” editions, the former, with an extra 7” EP (which both included the ‘Replica’ and ‘Ma Mere L’ Oye’ tracks), and the latter, with a bonus 12” EP (this included another version of ‘Tibetan Dance’). WWS have remained faithful to that moiety of records, including the artwork and linear notes.

Hardly obscure despite a limited release outside of Japan, it does however remain one of the least well known, or written about – it’s one of the few album entries on Sakamoto’s Wiki page without any information or its own page. However, it marks a transitional period and an apex, as the Japanese doyen of electronic music finally brought a halt to his simultaneous work as a co-founding member of the Yellow Magic Orchestra after six years to concentrate on his solo and collaborative projects – of which there were many, from David Sylvain to Robin Scott.

In an enviable position as regards to exposure and creativity, Sakamoto had flirted with international stardom after the success of his acting role and debut score for the WWII Japanese prisoners of war movie Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence – much of which was down to his co-star David Bowie’s portrayl of the bleached-out blond Maj. Jack “Strafer” Celliers; the Let’s Dance incarnated Bowie spending a lot of downtime with Sakamoto during the shoot, yet never, apparently, discussing the soundtrack that his co-star was shy to push even though he would have welcomed the input and help at the time.

The former jazz-inspired (namely Coltrane and Coleman) activist turn ethnomusicologist and early electronic pioneer went on to win one of each prestigious award for his soundtracks (Grammy, Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe). It was on this high that he entered the Onkyo Haus Studio in Tokyo with around thirty basic tracks he’d made the previous year. And despite giving up the YMO, brought in his former band mates, Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi (who also sadly passed away this year) to help record his fourth solo outing. In addition to those foils, the lauded composer, producer, saxophonist, arranger and solo artist Yasuaki Shimizu (pushing the origami envelope with not only Sakamoto but the conceptual artist Nam June Paik and Helen Merrill), huge Japanese star, record producer and pioneer of the City Pop style, Tatsuro Yamashita, and avant-garde fusionist trumpeter (working with a host of experimental doyens like Bill Laswell and John Zorn) Toshinori Kondo offer up there skills across a fluctuating album of genres.

A “musical encyclopedia” no less, there’s a futuristic hybrid and yet sometimes retro fusion of ideas on display; the connective, permeating and overriding influence being Sakamoto’s use of the iconic digital synthesizer, sampler embedded workstation, the Fairlight CMI (an acronym of course for Computer Musical Instrument). Not the first to be seduced by this revolutionary game-changing apparatus. With its seemingly limitless capabilities at the time, Sakamoto was among its first maestros. The Australian invention was quickly snapped up by Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Prince, Hans Zimmer and Nick Rhodes, and more or less became one of the 80s key sounds. There’s even footage of a demonstration by Herbie Hancock that you can find on Youtube. Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice soundtrack wouldn’t sound the same without it.

By the time Sakamoto recorded this album, the Fairlight CMI was part of the fabric that powered the decade of excess. And you can hear its sequencing, its programming and sample palette on every second of this diverse musicology; starting with the first of the bookended ‘Tibetan Dance’ variants, the first version of which features keyboard activated drum-claps, repurposed percussive scrapes and ratcheting on a sort of Niles Rodgers-like production that seems to smoothly funk-up the Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence theme. Slinking Bamboo pop with an Oriental melody, this peaceable white-funk score is extended on the second version, with additional Sign O’ The Times eara Prince acoustic guitar (very Spanish sounding), reversal effects and sleek downtime club chill-out vibes.    

Moving on, ‘Etude’ suggests something classical, and in part this track evokes a tuxedo (as the cover art shows) donned host conducting a pop symphonic of Kyoto capital period pre-war Westernized Japanese officers club, or cocktail, lounge music. But merged with his Esperanto period Art Of Noise sampling experiments, and strangely, a warm soft bristled trumpeted vision of Calypso: even Ska. There are hints also to his eventual work with Robin Scott. Harpist sounds and a chuffed rhythm bring in the mysterious, cozy primordial soup shimmy ‘Paradise Lost’. Milton languishes in Polynesian waters on Taito’s Rainbow Islands to Czukay’s cuts and shunts, dialed in obscured broadcasts, cutes, vapours and a snuggled version of Coleman’s trumpet. ‘Self Portrait’ is like The Cars fused with sympathetic balladry style autobiographical reflection and Euro kitsch, and ‘Tabi No Kyokuhoku’ molds pined romantic smooching sax with Let’s Dance Bowie, electronic Shinto tubular bell ringing, City Pop and touches of the classical. ‘M.A.Y. In The Backyard’ could be a 80s thriller score; a pitter-patter notation drama of Bamboo music, Nyman, Cage, rolling marimba and Colombo! ‘Hane No Hayashide’ is a strange one; a sort of mesh of the Oriental, the misty, Herbie Hancock, art-pop and Einstein/Hawking’s cosmic science. It features the first real vocals, a singer-songwriter haze on “time”. ‘Mori No Hito’ is just as hazy, maybe foggy, and again features that transformed Shinto or ancient Japanese spiritual yin of percussive bells, played like harmonics. But ‘A Tribute To N.J.P’ feels like interloping on a personalized eulogy: heaven sent indeed. For much of that track the smoky jazz sax seems to duet with a sentimental 50s jazz style piano, but later on we hear ethereal dreams and a captured passage of a background conversation.

One of the original “extras”, ‘Ma Mere L’ Oye’ features the sort of cult Japanese childlike choir beloved by hip-hop crate diggers. It’s theater meets snuffled and raspy horns on a piece of both futurist Japan and yet also Samurai cult soundtrack. And if none of that grabs you, then I don’t know what will.

Sakamoto assails the mid 80s with his own manual, a merger of signatures and fresh horizons, but above all, rewriting the Japanese cannon whilst reaching into a future yet unwritten. There will be a lot of people very happy that this classic has been rejuvenated, whilst a new generation can hear what all the fuss is about. Not his best by any stretch of the imagination, but everything Sakamoto touched is worthy of investigation, and this feels like a bridge between periods. WWS has done us all a great favour in resurfacing this lost class piece of experimentation and groove.

Vumbi Dekula ‘Congo Guitar’
(Hive Mind Records/ Sing A Song Fighter)

Removed from a full-on band setting of loud blazed, wailed horns, thundering drums and chanted vocals Kahanga “Vumbi” Dekula’s legendary guitar shines on a new solo album of his melodious virtuoso playing.

Conceived by the Swedish producer and Wau Wau Collectif band member Karl-Jonas Winqvist, who released The Dekula Band (the group that Dekula set up in 2008) debut album Opika in 2019, the idea was to hear that expressive, resonating guitar sound with little more than a minimal accompaniment of itching and woody percussion, a Casio preset Rumba rhythm, bass melodica, the most cooing and lulling harmonic voices and glassy, tine-like standup piano. Intimate, stripped this project still amplifies a big sound that fills the space: Winqvist described it as an orchestra.

Before we delve in, a little background is needed. Dekula’s travails began at an early age, born with polio in the lush region of Kivu in the D.R.C. (a large area that includes and surrounds Lake Kivu). He grew up in a Swedish missionary home, where he picked up the guitar at an early age; quickly learning the country’s number one music export of Congolese Rumba and its quicker scion Soukous off the two styles leading luminaries: Dr. Nico and Franco being two of the most notable names in that cannon.

Believed to have entered the Congolese consciousness in the 1930s, imported from Cuba and fused with the Congo’s own traditional and folk music, Rumba took a distinctive turn. Embedded and now synonymous with this behemoth of a conflicted country, UNESCO even listed it as an “intangible” part f the D.R.C.’s culture. Another one of its chief practitioners was the iconic Verckys (anointed by James Brown no less as “Mister dynamite”), who went further than most in merging the style with a funk trunk of Pachanga, pop and soul. Incidentally, Verckys was a member (for a brief time) of Franco’s famous OK Jazz band.

Soukous, as I mentioned, is an offshoot of Rumba, faster in tempo with longer dance sequences and brighter intricate guitar. Both styles remain at the heart of Dekula’s sound, a signature of infectious joy and feeling to shuffle onto the dance floor.

Dekula’s journey continues with a move to Tanzania in the 80s, where he successfully auditioned for a lead guitarist spot in the Orchestra Maquis. This was the same period in which he “earned’ his nickname “Vumbi”, and gained a reputation for his soloing chops, drawing in the crowds. Another move, this time to Sweden in the 90s, saw him play in the Makonde Band and Ahmady Jarr’s Highlife Orchestra, before setting up his own group in 2008.

Forward into the Covid epoch and Winqvist encourages Dekula to record a solo album at the Helter Skelter studio in Stockholm, over two days during lockdown. Which unless I’d read, I’d have sworn it sounds more like the humid busy, bustled, horn-honked streets of Kinshasa than the Swedish capital; the opening dual-guitar jazzy-blues cascaded and brassy resonated ‘Afro Blues’ sounding like its been performed with a opened door onto the streets outside. A beautiful start, trails of loop-like fluid rhythmic brushed handwork express a constantly turning melody of bass-y and more higher classical African longing.

It’s followed by the sweetened daintily sprung and plucked ‘Maamajacy’, a kind of Cuban or Haitian beachcombers oceanic lullaby that features Winqvist and guest Emma Nordenstam wooing a gentle swaddled balm.

Feelings, sentiments of home (or homes even) perhaps, ‘Zanzibar, Kinshasa & Vällingby’ reminded me of South Africa and Zimbabwe musically. A warmth flows over you on this pastoral, green serenade. There’s a similar South Africa vibe on ‘Congo Yetu’, which also sounds like the outside world has been encouraged into the studio space, with an atmosphere of interaction and voices off the microphones. Another Rumba preset shimmy ‘Zuka’ is a nimble dance of near calypso, South Seas vibrations and a tine-like spindled fairground piano. This sort of lo fi, muffled piano gives the music a whole different dimension; like a merry-go-round, an end of the pier music hall sound somehow. More courtly, the lightly fanned and melodica resonating ‘Weekend’ has a slightly quicker canter and stream of higher-pitched notes.

Pulling us disarmingly into the D.R.C.’s current crisis, Dekula rightly draw attention to the continuing failure of the UN forces (the “blue helmets” as they are known) in his home state of Kivu on the self-explanatory finale, ‘UN Forces (Get Out Of The Democratic Republic Of Congo)’. Known through the French vernacular as the MONUSCO, this cross-international UN sanctioned force has done little to stabilize a critical flashpoint. Invited in since 1999 to protect a local population, many of them farmers, from an ever-widening conflict across the region and its borders, more than a 120 different armed groups, including Islamist insurgents, war over control of the land, people and rich mineral resources. The situation is bleak, with the blue helmets more or less frozen in their attempts to bring any sort of security to the province. And as the armed militias’ victims’ pile up, and protest gain momentum, have even shot some of the very people they are meant to serve and protect. Although the UN is due to withdraw next year, the government wants them to leave now as anger and resentment grows. Dekula brings out the banjo on this Rumba and blues canter, as he makes a reasonable argument against those contested protectors; neither vitriol nor plaintive, but almost shimmying to a peaceable message in the most grave of circumstances. It also kind of brings us right back to the now, and Dekula’s homeland; a nice finish and return to his roots. Congo Guitar proves a worthy and entertaining showcase of the maestro’s deft, descriptive playing; a fluid mix of Rumba, Soukous, the blues, rock-a-by-baby type soothing balms, the tropical and Afro-Cuban. Hive Mind’s inaugural partnership with Winqvist’s own Sing-A-Song-Fighter label is both a joy and discovery; the Congolese star, more or less, singlehandedly capturing the listener’s attention with a captivating septet of natural, expressive performances.

Louis Jucker & Le Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain ‘Suitcase Suite’
(Humus Records) 22^nd September 2023

Packed for an open-ended travail of sonic, musical and lyrical experimentation, the Swiss singer-songwriter, producer, diy musician, event curator, music prize winner and Humus Records co-founder uses his assemblage of suitcases filled full of homemade effects and electroacoustic instrumentation to produce an almost mechanized clockwork workshop version of cerebral leftfield bluesy-indie and the new wave.

The lead singer of the “hardcore” Coilguns finds a more intimate outlet under his solo guise, and prompted by a self-enforced set of parameters, offers a more intriguing, mysterious proposition. Four years after his Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain commission, Jucker releases the results of a project guided by a number of conditions; namely that he would build all the instruments (in keeping with this artist’s methodology of tinkering and constructing such apparatus from various flea market and attic finds) himself; be present on stage to sing the songs with the rest of the orchestra; be allowed to make a record or two from it; and continue the project beyond its initial remit. And with that the Suitcase Suite (with all its various “suitcase” connotations and metaphors, but basically a means of transporting all his noise making instruments) unpacks an understated moody drama of resignation, dewy-eyed eulogies and heartache. All the while Jucker sounds like a cross between Cass McCombs, Damien Rice, Jeff Buckley, The Books and Thom Yorke straddling the singer-songwriter vernacular of indie-folk, the blues and both atmospheric vapour-set and subtle effects manipulated analogue electronics.

Wooden-like contraptions and more industrial generated motors drone away, or click, turn and ripple as Jucker either strokes harp-like instruments or artfully strike’s up the electric guitar. I mentioned in relation to the vocals Thom Yorke, but the musical environment, the sometimes-near ominous saddened mood is also near Radiohead-esque. But then, on tracks such as the 80s dry-ice stirred, sloping and constant signal beeped ‘Seasonable’, there’s a hovering flute and classical chamber tune-up of squiggles being whirled into a distressed tumult.

Caustic flapped effects; reverberations and crackles sit with subtle airs of sustained, concertinaed bellowed instrumentation on the Anne Calvi-like ‘My Windy Heart’. Those generators hum an almost darkened, haunted tone (a cross between John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream) on the increasingly wooed and cooed analogue tape undulated ‘Asylee’, and yet the voice and lyrics seem more plaintive and downbeat. There’s more of that motor-generated sound and tools working away on the album’s finale, ‘March Of The Fallen Scions’, albeit to a removed form of the American spiritual and shades of David Byrne. But personally, the downcast, near lo fi, reflective lament of loss, ‘The House We Let Them Take Away’, is a standout track; if not because it’s so different to the rest of the material. A subtle but rousing stirred contemplation on the loss of a family home that despite its state, held obvious significance and memories. We’re not really told the circumstances (foreclosure, debt, fire), but can sympathize with this gently spindled plaint. Confessionals and struggling emotions are laid out to a life support system of homemade instrumentation, the constant whirling zips and ripples of a suitcase workstation proving anything but limiting; rather inspiring a sophisticated use of the diy instead to produce a very different sort of record.      

Late Aster ‘Light Rail Session EP’
(Slow & Steady Records/Bright Shiny Things) 29^th September 2023

Diaphanous throughout as they merge hints, evaporations and more heralded swirling signs of a (cornet) trumpeting Don Cherry, Miles Davis and Chat Baker with synwaves and dream pop to produce what I would call vapour-jazz, the gauzy efflux San Francisco duo of Aaron Messing and Anni Hochhalter are somewhat unique.

Both classically-trained in brass instrumentation, but open-ended on their embrace of the ethereal and electronica, the blossoming Late Aster duo build upon their 2021 debut EP, True And Toxic, with a relenting but emotively-pulled quartet of previously unreleased “live” audio and visual tracks. On this voyage they extend the lineup to include the guitarist Charles Mueller and Mark Yoshizumi, who not only mastered this EP but also co-produced and co-engineered it with Mueller. They also brought in another fellow San Fran creative, the artist and photographer Deadeye Press, to film the session on hi-8 tape from a handheld video recorder – each track will be accompanied by its own visual hallucination and heat sensor trip.

Recorded in a day (the 9^th of June to be specific) in the Light Rail studio of the title, the resulting traversing and wrapping, enveloping mirages are near translucent in delivery. Using an apparatus of brass (the already mentioned trumpet, but I think the French Horn too), fx pedals, drum machine/sampler, the Korg Miniloge and Moog Subharmonicon polyphonic synths, and of course a free-roaming creativity, they offer a trio of original peregrinations and one transformative vision of an old standard. The latter, ‘It Never Entered My Mind’, is a wispy, submerged and wafted vision of Rodgers & Hart’s 1940s musical plaint, covered by an assortment of stars and luminaries, from crooner Sinatra to Julie London and jazz notables like Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. But this take seems to sail closet to Miles Davis’ Quintet recording, a solitary romantic pine of regret. Hochhalter sings a gauzy absorbed spell that’s barely there.

Songs like ‘Safety Second’ voyage towards the algorithms and arpeggiator of kinetic-pop and trance; a drifted Chet trumpet is present of course, but this feels less jazzy, more dreamy and cerebral. ‘Play It As It Lays’ sounds like the male/female duet affected ethereal sound of Hackedepiccitto in a cosmic starry embrace with Hugh Masekela, whilst ‘Ripple’ exists in a electronic-pop fog of Miles in Spain, near echoes of Mexico, Panda Bear and Colliery soul brass.

Effortlessly converging a removed version of the classical, jazz, dream pop and analogue-sounding electronica, Late Aster, in a live and filmed setting, produce moving music with a spacey, ethereal hazy feel. I love this EP, which bodes well for the duo’s inaugural album, released sometime in 2024.

Rita Braga ‘Illegal Planet’
(Comets Coming)

The stardust cowgirl, Lynchian chanteuse and idiosyncratic Portuguese siren Rita Braga is back with another disarming celluloid and kitsch songbook of alluring noir and daytime soap murder-mystery theatrics. I say disarming, because as fantastical, dreamy and exotic as it all is, there’s always a sense that something is not quite right: the plunge of a knife or drop of an axe, a creeping spine-tingling box of sounds, is never far away. A carnival of supernatural illusions and shivers permeates an often whimsical and lilting mood of warbled, wobbled lunar vibrations, Casio pre-set rhythms, shimmy and sauntering percussion, cinema organ and bobbing vibraphone and marimba.

At the heart of these off-kilter mambos, rumbas and jazzy enchantments lies a despondent feminist message, with Rita as femme fatale condoling lounge crooner and bewitching spell-caster, the star of her own Singing Detective musical, breaking the fourth wall to deliver beguiled thoughts on some very serious topics. Illegal Planet is bookended with dialogue borrowed from a film or TV show I’m not familiar with, the crux being that a mysterious “Rita” has enticed, charmed the male protagonist into her web and intrigues. The title-track features an exchange with a second male character, who more or less tries to shake his pal out of her spell, before the real Rita swoons sweet nothings from a spook-tinged cocktail lounge stage. Stereotypes are played with and owned you could say; Rita firmly in charge. Outside of that, the finale, ‘Unclassified’, with another line from that source, is a sleepy dusted, chiming outro of “thanks” and “gratitude” to the listener. But no matter how nice and whimsical, the “Please don’t forget to hit subscribe”, “one of the reasons I’m still alive”, lyrics (in my mind) can’t help but end on the all-too-real struggle of an artist in the online world: competing for validation, but more importantly attention, from the seldom found generosity of an audience increasingly used to freely streaming their favourite artists, or being blinded by the distractions of tiktok et al. 

Rita has cast herself as costume-changing everywoman-like character, evoking Julee Cruise’s The Art Of Being A Girl on one role, and dreaming up fleeting exchanges with a mystical dog in a Belle Époque Paris setting in another. There’s also visits to Hawaii and the tropics (suggested by Rita’s beautifully played ukulele), out into the cosmos, the gothic and even a spot of climate change time-travelling – a hundred years to a boiling Earth, the colour scheme of burning scorched planet at least “cool” enough to pull-off a 70s retro style décor to match a bland IKEA world of decorated conformity. 

We’re reminded too that “nothing comes from nowhere”; Rita pulling from out of the four winds, the ether, a bluesy kind of noirish yearning, accompanied by a smooching and aching saxophone. With no real prompts as such, maybe you can read a comment on cultural appropriation, culture recycling or just an echo that there really isn’t “anything new under the sun” so why worry about it. We all borrow. Then again it could be about the spread of information, or misinformation.

Kooky yet seductive, deep yet flighty and often fun, Rita’s masquerade of dames is a combination of Hollywood, Twin Peaks, Tim Burton, Pulp Fiction and a Renaissance Fair. But above all this is a world of its own making, a familiar sound magically screw-balled towards Rita’s worldview.

Trapped on the surface of a never-ending hell, Rita dreams up and fantasies in the glare and soft focus of the film camera. An “illegal” – with all what that word entails- alien cast adrift in a Walter Mitty world, Rita escapes the bland with eccentric élan on a finely crafted album of the imaginative and charmingly odd.  

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.