THE MONTHLY DIGEST OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC, THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST, AND ARCHIVE MATERIAL CHOSEN BY DOMINIC VALVONA
___/NEW\___
Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘You’re Never Really Alone’
(We Jazz)
The soloist is never alone it seems, when on stage. And the highly prolific, serial collaborator and in-demand Chicago born, but Brooklyn-based, alto and baritone saxophonist and flutist Jonah Prazen-Johnson (regular followers will recognize the name from his trio partnership appearance with the Lycia inspired Berke Can Özcanon the Twin Rocks album from late last year) stands in the spotlight reacting to, feeding off of, and giving it all back to his audience and the wider community: hence the “We made this together” statement included on the album cover.
In the age of high anxiety, division and unwilling compromise, Jonah finds both the space to let go of the strains on the mind, the worries and concerns. In a nutshell, with just the use of his polytonal saxophone holds, wanes and drones (between higher trills and deeper bass-y vibrations; often together simultaneously) and willow-y, natural blossom garden flute, he projects invocations of regret and rumination whilst offering support, and even “courage” to see through the worst of it. To the undulating waves, near bristled distortions and more melodious tones, to the didgeridoo-like circles, fog horns, honks and drawn-out, Jonah evokes melodic traces of his native home (Chicago), the avant-garde, explorative and pastoral. If names and luminaries such as Sam Rivers, Marshall Allen, Coltrane, Roscoe Mitchell (especially his partnership with Anthony Braxton), John Zorn, Peter Brötzmann and Jeremy Steig grab you, then make the commitment and purchase a copy a.s.a.p.
ZA! + Perrate ‘Jolifanto’
(Lovemonk) 22nd March 2024
Bonding together on one Dadaist inspired transmogrified cross-pollination of sonic and musical ideas, the Spanish collaboration of the duo ZA! (No strangers to this blog; first featured in my highly popular Spanish Underground piece from more than a decade ago) and the experimental vocalist Perrate come together on an extraordinary album of sound assaults and hybrids that turn Iberian traditions and cultures on their heads.
Both partners in this enterprise have spent two decades or more transforming the traditional music of their native land; the critically applauded Perrate exploring the “outer edges” of Flamenco, his identity and heritage entwined with the age-old Gitano Iberian Romani community of which he is descended – a culture abundant with the stars and progenitors, innovators of Flamenco -, and ZA! often crazily and imaginatively merging a variety of Spanish styles, folk music, with anything from the African beats to the psychedelic, electronic, Balinese polyrhythms, thick distortion, free jazz and the shepherds of Tuva.
Taking the first word from Hugo Ball’s exhaustive Dada recited ‘Karawane’ phonetic poem, “Jolifanto” is packed with ideas and flights of fantasy; yet never loses its Iberian foraged roots, with plenty of recognizable Flamenco guitar frills and intimate quivery entwined attentive and descriptive accompaniment – sometimes sounding like a cross between Raül Refree and Jeff Buckley. You can also pick up the atmospheric settings of the dance, the performance throughout the album. The original performance of that poem, performed at the famous iconic Cabaret Voltaire, put Hugo in a trance; the captivated audience compelled to rush up on stage before the Dadaist luminary was dragged away. A certain lunacy, this spirited experimentalism and performance is transcribed to a lot of ZA!’s music, but it somehow makes perfect sense when combined with the poetic longing calls, mewling, whoops, mantra, assonant and almost muezzin-like vocals of Perrate. At any one time you are likely to hear echoes of Moorish Andalusia, oscillated dub, elephant horns, percussive scuttles, krautrock, Vodun invocation, post-punk, no wave and Afro-Cuban, and pick out bursts of Jah Wobble, Anthony Braxton, Zacht Automaat, CAN, Greco and Cambuzat, African Head Charge, the Reynols, Mike Cooper & Viv Cooringham’s ‘A Lemon Fell’, Harry Belafonte (I kid you not), Sakamoto and the Gypsy Kings.
From the cosmic and unsettling to near terrifying, there’s a lot to process in this slightly madcap collaboration. And yet in saying that, this album has soul and a seriousness about it in revaluating, pushing at the boundaries and ideas of what Iberian culture means in the 21st century; finding connections across the borders with music from as far away as Arabia, South America and the original roots of the region’s Romani communities. A great work of art and brilliance from the partnership that will excite, wrong foot and entrance in equal measures.
Leonidas & Hobbes ‘Pockets Of Light’
(Hobbes Music)
Expanding upon their sonic partnership with a debut album of epic cosmological proportions, Leonidas & Hobbes reach further than ever before into both the cerebral and outer limits of space to channel a litany of anguish woes.
Between them, this pairing of like-minded curious and lauded electronic musicians/DJs/club night instigators, cover the capitals of London and Edinburgh with their enviable CVs and provenances in everything from house to techno, the ambient, Balearic and dance music genres. Making good on previous EPs (2017’s Rags Of Time and 2021’s Aranath) they now face the philosophical quandaries of humanity, technology, climate change, extinction and metaphysics across thirteen movements, dance grooves, soundtracks and celestial symphonies.
A self-proclaimed ‘lockdown album’, the pandemic and stretches of time spent apart from socializing and giging, have had a deep impact on both artists; combine that with becoming parents and breakups, and you’ll find a pair of minds concentrated on finding the ‘light’ in a universe of emptiness and apocalypse. With effected dialogue snatches of ground control communications and alternative pseudo drug escapes from authoritarian mind control and conditioning speeches, and broadcasted weather reports from the eye of the storm (in Charleston, North Carolina to be exact) smattered throughout, the concerns, enquires and philosophies of both partners on this odyssey are made clear.
Like one long set, a voyage of peaks, beats and more trance-y and contemplated ambient pieces, this album goes from literal takeoff to drifting untethered in the void and back to the inner mindscape. Production and style wise there’s retro-space and kosmische hints of Vangelis, La Dusseldorf, Iasos and Klaus Schulze next to more acid zapping old school evocations and breaks of Wagon Christ, Orbital, Luke Slater, Mo Wax and Howie B, plus a Balearic vision of The Orb and echoes of the 303 drum sounds of Mantronix and Man Parrish. Vapours and wisps mystify certain suites, whilst others bounce along on more kinetic waves as mindscapes are mixed with technology, science and the sci-fi. Pockets of Light channels Leonidas and Hobbes’ worries and prophecies into a reflective existential soundtrack.
Their Divine Nerve ‘The Return Of The Lamb’
(Staalplaat)
A second inclusion this year for the Ukrainian trick noise maker Dmytro Fedorenko, his last Variát collaborative venture with Masami Akita (under his Merzbow alias), Unintended Intention, was featured in this year’s inaugural Digest. A brutal, scarred abrasion of twisted steel and concrete that same atmospheric heavy set of dark META electronica is now stripped almost entirely of the human touch for something altogether more esoteric and alien.
With the Washington DC experimental artist Jeff Surak (who has a CV far too numerous and varied to list here, but in brief, he made his first tape manipulations in the 80s under the 1348 moniker on his own Watergate Tapes imprint, lived in Russia in the early 90s, and after returning home, directed the annual Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music in DC for thirteen years…the list goes on) as his foil, Dmytro finds yet another vehicle for expelling demons, the bestial, the apparitions in the machines and unearthly. Under the afflatus/supernatural imbued Their Divine Nerve title both accomplished participants retune the Fortean radio set for a corrosive, fizzled, buzzing unholy noisy embrace of the pained, hurt, mystical and chthonian.
Generous with the amount and duration of the material, this is a serious set of discordant and more hermitic vibrations, spread over ten (thirteen tracks if you buy the “bonus” version, which does actually include the title-track) post-industrial strength hauntings of the soul and psyche. The action varies, however, from invocations of early Richard H. Kirk to Basic Channel, Bernard Szajner, SEODAH, Coil, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain score, and Spain’s underground tape culture in the 80s. And within that sound-off board, portals and channels open up to the slithered tentacles of the Cthulhu and other leviathans from the depths, as dark matter is resourced to build a haunted factory of unidentified operative machinery and tools. Phantoms are everywhere in this fuckery of scrunched marches, square bladed sawing, needle sharp scratches of surfaces and iron materials.
Axes to grind, metaphors for the growing unease and trepidations of unimpeded violence, the continuing evil invasion of Ukraine, you could easily read the sonic tealeaves on this immersive experiment. All I know is that the biblical inspired The Return Of The Lamb offers analogies to the Christian symbol of sweetness, forgiveness, meekness, gentleness, innocence and purity, but it’s also a representation of both Christ himself and that of a sacrificial animal – when depicted with the Lion it can mean a state of paradise. Make what you will of that liturgy, but hope and salvation might yet arise from the distresses and savagery. In short, Their Divine Nerve is a successful debut in noisy art forms, horror, alien visitations and mystery.
Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe and Patrick Shiroishi ‘Speak, Moment’
(AKP Recordings)
An enviable trio of acclaimed and highly prolific musicians pulls together their talents and experiences for an improvisational album of both suffused gazing/reflection and wilder, unbound avant-garde extemporized entanglements. Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe and Patrick Shiroishi’s CVs, appearances and collaborations are lengthy and varied: far too numerous to list here anyway. But suffice to say this triumvirate of contemporary jazz explorers covers more or less all avenues of that genre’s legacy and penchant for change, experiment – from the more pliable to wielding and addressing the abstract evocations of trauma.
In the spirit of improvisation, all three players dashed this recording off in a single afternoon (as it happens, a couple of years back in an LA studio on the 25th October, my birthday!) having only met that same day for the first time. Astonishingly, Speak, Moment is a very sophisticated, cohesive album that gels together perfectly: even during its more untethered and intense passages of abandon.
The performances move loosely from the near ambient undertones of Jaffe’s incipient and resonating textural cymbal and sieved-like snare washes, the subtle twangs and psychedelic mirages of Harrington’s guitar, and the lilted tonal flutters and more tuneful rises of Shiroishi’s saxophone, to the near cacophony of staccato breaks of later tracks like ‘Ship Rock’ – a sort of stormy tempest rock-jazz fusion that sounds like The Jim Black Trio tied to a maelstrom tossed raft with Chris Corsano, Pat Metheny and the Red Crayola.
The traversed dreamy opener, ‘Staring Into The Imagination (Of Your Face)’, seems to allow the trio all the time and space needed to eloquently and in a more gauzy manner, express a soliloquy to the processing of feelings, environment and the unsaid – Harrington’s guitar reminding me in part of Fernando Perales and Myles Cochran, whilst Patrick Shiroishi’s sax has touches of Dexter Gordon, Roscoe Mitchell and Sam Rivers. Talking of Harrington, I did read that his own influences range from Bill Frisell to John Zorn and Jerry Garcia. The latter is very much channeled on the spiritual percussive trinket rattled and leviathan looming ‘How To Draw Buildings’, with guitar parts that sound almost late 60s Woodstock acid-rock in inspiration (almost Hendrix-like in his more restrained and meditative mode). You can also hear the aria-theremin higher voice-like notes of Sonny Sharrock amongst the wilderness and mizzle and sizzled resonance of Jaffe’s drums on that same track.
The next track, ‘Dance Of The White Shadow And Golden Kite’, reminded me of Ariel Kalma – that and Ornate Coleman in an exotic Afro-jazz bobbing dance with the Art Ensemble Of Chicago.
The atonal sensitivities shift amongst the ambiguous presence of other forces and introspective moods across a quintet of spontaneous explorations on an accomplished gathering of talented musicians. If you have an ear and like for the Cosmic Range, Tumi Mogorosi, Yonatan Gat and the Gunn-Truscinski Duo then you have to own this traversing improvised experiment.
Twin Coast ‘To Feel’
Back with another enveloped in guitar feedback sculpted and layered vision, the Chicago shoegazers and noiseniks Twin Coast get pulled into a paranormal alternate dimension: A static TV set cell that seems to be at least languidly comfortable and dreamy. Almost numbed to the whole sorry state of it all, the duo lose themselves in an unholy hallucinogenic white noise of static fuzz and crystal shimmers and flange reverberations. I’m calling erased apparitional shoegaze.
The traditional B-side as it were, is handed over to diy electronic artist Isaac Lowenstein, aka Donkey Basketball (a EDM project that apparently started off a joke but quickly grew into a very real act, mixing and merging everything from acid to jungle and techno). Isaac, a fellow Chicago resident, transform the original into a kinetic, machine and mechanics switching, twisting, ratcheting and spring-loaded minimalist techno percussive tunneled and vaporous space-trip. I’m hearing a touch of Mike Dred, Mouse On Mars, Ritchie Hawtin, Basic Channel and Autechre added to the mere essence of the original shoegaze immersion from the ether.
___/THE SOCIAL PLAYLIST: VOLUME 84\___
Continuing with the decade-long Social – originally a DJ club night I’d pick up at different times over the past 20 plus years, and also a café residency from 2012 to 2014 – playlist, each month I literally chose the records that celebrate anniversary albums, those that I’d love to hear on the radio waves or DJs play once and while, and those records that pay a homage and respect to those artists we’ve lost in the last month.
Anniversary spots this month go to the Style Council’s ’84 special Café Bleu (I’ve chosen to kick the whole playlist off this week with the more dance-funk, WAR impressionist ‘Strength Of Your Nature’, from an album that slips mostly into more Post-MOD, Jazz Café piano), RUN-DMC’s self-titled holler from the same year and Scott Walker’s menacing, out-there Climate Of The Hunter masterpiece. From a decade before, I’ve added a glam pop-gun tune from T. Rex’s Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow – the LP that must have been on Bowie’s mind when recording Young Americans. Leaping ahead twenty years and there’s a smattering of ’94 releases from the Hip-Hop royalty Gang Starr (Hard To Earn), Main Source (Fuck What You Think), The Auteurs (Now I’m A Cowboy) and the Aphex Twin (Selected Ambient Works 2; so good I’ve included two tracks). From more recent(ish) times, there’s a choice track from the late metal face don of leftfield Hip-Hop MF Doom and the equally revered Madlib, under their partnership guise of Madvilliany – I’ve chosen the Sun-Ra anointing ‘Shadows Of Tomorrow’, which pulls in the aardvark Quasimoto. And, as featured below in this month’s archive spot, a track from the Ministry Of Wolves ensemble cast of fairytale weavers album Republik Der Wölfe: subtitled ‘A Fairytale Massacre With Live Music’, a joint enterprise between the Dortmund Theater’s production director Claudia Bauer and musical director Paul Wallfisch, with the unholy musical alliance of Bad Seeds co-founder and adroit solo artist Mick Harvey, one time Einstürzende Neubauten, Crime And The city Solution grizzled maverick and one half of the Hackedepicciotto duo Alexander Hacke and fellow Crime and the City band mate, Berlin Love Parade co-instigator and the better half of that Hackedepicciotto partnership, Danielle De Picciotto, providing the suitable nursery grime soundtrack.
We can’t pass the month without marking the sad death of Karl Wallinger, the master songwriter behind hits for others, but also sole instigator of World Party – after leaving The Waterboys in the mid 80s. I guess ‘She’s The One’ will be rotated extensively, but I’ve chosen the just as popular and more soulfully blusy ‘Ship Of Fools’.
From the new to old past gloires, missives and curiosities, making up the rest of the playlist are tracks from Fat Francis, Dalla Diallo, Alamo, Trips And Falls, De La Soul, Heldon, MIZU, Gary Clail, Incentive and more….
TRACK LIST IN FULL:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The Style Council ‘Strength Of Your Nature’
Vampire Rodents ‘Trilobite’
Gang Starr ‘Code Of The Streets’
Run-DMC ‘Hollis Crew (Krush Groove 2)’
Madvillian (MF Doom/Madlib FT. Quasimoto) ‘Shadows Of Tomorrow’
Dalla Diallo ‘Sinde M’bobo’
T-Rex ‘Painless Persuasion V. The Meathawk Immaculate’
Metamorfosi ‘Caronte’
World Party ‘Ship Of Fools’
Walpurgis ‘Disappointment’
Fat Francis ‘It’s Not Rock and Roll’
Alamo ‘Got To Find Another Way’ We Cut Corners ‘Three People’
In Time ‘This Is Not Television’
The Wizards From Kansas ‘Hey Mister’
Eyes Of Blue ‘Largo’
Trips And Falls ‘I Learned Sunday Morning, On A Wednesday’
Kevin Vicalvi ‘Song From Down The Hall’
The Auteurs ‘Chinese Bakery’
Scott Walker ‘Rawhide’
The Ministry Of Wolves ‘Rumpelstiltskin’
MIZU ‘prphtbrd’
Heldon ‘Ballade Pour Puig Antich, Révolutionnaire Assassiné en Espagne’
Aphex Twin ‘#24’
Stringmodulator ‘White Noise’
Aphex Twin ‘#12’
Liz Christine ‘Two Seconds’
Heldon ‘Ouais, Marchais, Mieux Qu’en 68’
Incentive ‘Time Flows Beyond You’
Gary Clail ‘A Man’s Place On Earth’
Okay Temiz ‘Galaxy Nine’
De La Soul ‘What’s More’
Main Source ‘F*CK WHAT YOU THINK’
___/ARCHIVE\___
TEN YEARS OLD THIS MONTH: THE MINISTRY OF WOLVES ‘MUSIC FROM REPUBLIK DER WÖLF’
The Ministry Of Wolves ‘Music From Republik Der Wölfe’(Mute) 10th March 2014
Pre-dating the Viennese totem of the subconscious but already a Freudian labyrinth of analogy, metaphor and augury, the Gothic fairytale fables of the Brothers Grimm have just got a hell of a lot more unsettling and personal. Given a Pulitzer Prize winning overhaul by the esteemed award winning, self-confessional American poet Anne Sexton in her 1971 book ‘Transformations’, these same tales were brought back into the realm of the adults. Her candid, revisionist take, from the point of view of a ‘middle-aged witch’, on these standard stories is a beat poetic vivid survey on human nature: those all too familiar idiosyncrasies and failures set to a contemporary (for its time) miasma of inner turmoil.
Proving to be just as poignant forty odd years later, those reinterpretations are revitalized in a brand new multimedia stage production, debuting at the Theater Dortmund. To be performed tonight (15th February 2014) the Republik Der Wölfe, subtitled ‘A Fairytale Massacre With Live Music’, is a joint enterprise between both the Dortmund’s production director Claudia Bauer and musical director Paul Wallfisch, with the unholy musical alliance of Bad Seeds co-founder and adroit solo artist Mick Harvey, one time Einstürzende Neubauten and now Crime And The city Solution grizzled maverick Alexander Hacke and fellow Crime and the City band mate and Berlin Love Parade co-instigator Danielle De Picciotto, providing the suitable nursery grime soundtrack. Detached however from the visual spectacle, that very same soundtrack is due its own inaugural release next month; its loose narrative a series of congruous chapters, easily followed without any other stimulated aide to guide you.
Original characters that we’ve grown to love, hate, revile or recoil from, are transposed into the darker parts of our psyche. Those parable like lessons and auguries of danger get kicked around in a quasi-junkie Burroughs nightmare of cynicism and surreal terror. Tucked into a all too knowing grown ups world of jealousy and greed, Picciotto plays the part of storyteller – in this case switched, as I’ve already mentioned, from the usual young, naïve heroine into a middle-aged witch – on the opening account, ‘The Gold Key’. It’s followed by the Teutonic heavy drawling gusto of Hacke’s ‘Rumpelstiltskin’; played up to full effect, as the poisoned dwarf is revealed to be our doppelganger, ‘the enemy within’, and the spilt personality waiting to cut its way out of all of us. Sounding quite like a missing Amon Duul II number from the Hi Jack era, the song’s maligned and mischievous protagonist elicits a kind of sympathy: ‘No child will ever call me Papa’. Condemned to play the part of cruel interloper, poor old Rumpelstiltskin exists to remind us of our demonic, primal nature: a nagging inner soul tempting us to commit hari-kari on restraint.
The fabled ‘Frog Prince’ is a slithery customer, made to sound like an odious creep pursuing his very turned-off love interest. Mick Harvey moons and croaks with relish in recalling the bizarre tale of doomed romance; the moral, though dark and disturbing, can be summed up as: be careful what you wish for, the law of averages doesn’t exist and in this case turned out to be a dud, the frog was certainly no prince.
Happy endings become even more blurred with the triumvirate of leading ladies ‘Cinderella’, ‘Rapunzel’ and ‘Snow White’. ‘Cinders’ is a Casio pre-set piece of waltzing lullaby, dreamily led by our protagonist chanteuse, whilst Rapunzel and Snow White are given a fluid pained Leonard Cohen treatment. The latter a roll call of ‘seven’ inspired symbolism and metaphor, the former an idolised plaintive requiem to the exiled and ill-fated American dancer, Isadora Duncan – forced to leave the States for Europe because of her pro-Soviet sympathies, Duncan died rather ironically at the hands of the famous scarves she used to so great an effect in her dances, after one become entangled around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle of a car she was travelling in, breaking her neck.
Other notable tales of woe include the opium-induced, somnambulist ‘Sleeping Beauty’ – literally a languid sleepwalk through some Tibetan flavoured labyrinth – and lurid Harvey sung ‘Hansel & Gretel’ – the apparent naïve, saintly, twins getting the better of a cannibalistic old crone. But its ‘Little Red Ridding Hood’ who inhabits the most contemporary street hustling environment, transported from the danger lurking Black Forests into a world of creeps, junkies and ‘transmorphism’. The levels of macabre are amped up and the underlying psychosis adroitly delivered with atmospheric relish; our cast of ‘make-believe’ characters all too fallible human traits and sufferings enriched with a Murder Ballads style makeover, part Gothic part horrid histories.
FIFTY YEARS OLD THIS MONTH: T-REX ‘ZINC ALLOY AND THE HIDDEN RIDERS OF TOMORROW’
T-REX ‘Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow’ 1st March 1974
Whilst we are, or should be, aware of Bowie’s flirtatious lifting of Marc Bolan ideas, it’s the Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow: A Cream Cage In August album’s experiment with soul, a full eighteen months before the Thin White Duke’s own Young Americans, that proves to be the most obvious example of this latent influence (or if you want to be less generous, theft).
Swelling the ranks with the seductive, sumptuous tones of Gloria Jones – who evidently became Bolan’s love interest and partner till he died in 1977; a relationship that resulted in the birth of their son, Rolan – Bolan’s music opened out into yet greater velvety, blue-eyed soulful panoramas; a mix of plastic R&B, glamorous strutting and quasi-New York candy pop. From the bomp and shoop of the Gloria(fied), ‘Truck On’, to, in Bolan’s mind, one of T.Rex’s most ambitious singles, ‘Teenage Dream’, there’s an almost salacious knowing sophistication at work.
Already being regarded in some circles as washed-up, the ‘Zinc’ alter ego was an attempt to concentrate resources on the UK, as he’d spent considerable time attempting to crack the US market. He would continue to adapt the soul train, jingle-jangle sound with various other ‘boogie-woogie’ styles, including swamp rock; as he demonstrates with zeal on the poorly received LP, Bolan’s Zip Gun – at this point he may have thought seriously about sticking that ‘zip gun’ to his head as the album didn’t even chart.
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.
FEATURE/SELECTION/Dan Shea
The Monolith Cocktail is ecstatic and grateful to have coaxed a guest spot contribution from the impassioned and adroit musician/writer Dan Shea. Roped into his family’s lo fi cult music business, The Bordellos, from a young age, the candid but humble maverick has gone onto instigate the chthonian Vukovar (currently working through a trio of ‘greatest hits’ packages here) and, with one part of that ever-shambling post-punk troupe, musical foil Buddy Preston, the seedy bedsit synth romantics Beauty Stab (who’ve just this week released their second single ‘French Film Embrace’, here)
An exceptional talent (steady…this is becoming increasingly gushing) both in composing and songwriting, the multi-instrumentalist and singer is also a dab hand at writing. For his debut, Dan shared a grand personal ‘fangirl’ purview of major crush, the late Rowland S. Howard (which can be found here), on the eve of Mute Records appraisal style celebration reissue of his highly influential cult albums ‘Teenage Snuff Film’ and ‘Pop Crimes’. This was followed by an often difficult, unsettling, potted with dark comedy, read on Dan’s friend and foil Simon Morris (of the Ceramic Hobs infamy; the piece can be read here), who took his own life last year.
Now, from his lockdown quarantine, Dan furnishes us with the first of his ‘imaginary film screening jukebox’ selections come loose horror fictions.
Surrender – Suicide
A Kenneth Anger motorbike gang, gay greasers checking their hair in the switchblade reflection. Using semen as Brylcreem. The homecoming queen dumped like so many empty bottles and cans.
Vega as Vegas.
The backing vocals drift in from a malt shop that was burned down by some queer bashers pre Stonewall and no one flinched. In a world where high school sweethearts go to a drive in to sneakily and fumblingly attempt autoerotic asphyxiation together as they watch Jayne Mansfield crash in slow motion.
When Vega sings, “I surrender to you”, it could be sex or God or just the voices shrieking through the tinfoil mirror of our synapses but aren’t all those things the same? Lynch would play this behind beehived girls in tight red sweaters first lesbian tryst behind a doughnut shop ran by Anton LaVey and Ricki Lake.
Which Way To Turn – Bryan Ferry
One of weird uncle David’s mystery blondes in trouble smiles from a smashed picture frame, a Stepford femme fatale. All the memory I can dredge up is here. Artfully hung and shot drapes blow in a late summer breeze. A heatwave desire and hungover regret. Blood on your lips, lipstick oozing out of your wounds. The plastic rum cups Mike gave us in the bar are overturned.
“I can’t control my feelings if I tried” sung with all the hauteur this high society Frankenstein can muster. Ferry is often spoken about as some style icon, ignoring how goofy he has frequently looked. See the Manifesto red leather suit, the Top of the Pops Jealous Guy Alan Partridge outfit or his giant shirt in The High Road. For ages I thought something was lost when he became the figure he started out parodying yet yearning to be on the first Roxy albums but that’s a lazy cliché.
This period is one of straw etching your initials in coke on a mixing desk, high-class session musicians playing three notes then disappearing. Some of my favourite stuff he did. The powder lasts an hour but the regret lingers eternal.
Lou Reed – Coney Island Baby
Lana Del Rey – Blue Jeans
The personal connections are all but overwhelming here. I band these two together as Lynch used Lou on a soundtrack and Lana IS Dorothy Vallens and Frank Booth and Sandy and Jeffrey. She’s not just the mystery woman in trouble but the architect of your demise. Lou, he’s the man behind the curtain. Whispering these tracheotomy hymns through a straw, through a hole in your wall into your sleeping mind.
I’d put these back to back to dehydrate myself: Lou’s choked murmur of “I could give the whole thing up for you” will never not crumple me. Send this one out to Lou and Rachel, the romantic ideal of my nightmares.
Lydia Lunch – I Fell In Love With A Ghost
I should’ve learned the lesson from Pet Sematary and Vertigo. I’d done all I could but she came back wrong.
She didn’t reply to anything I said, other than as a series of strangled groans. I heard “yes” where I wanted to hear yes. The first time I caught her crawling spider like along my ceiling, mournfully unaware how she got there should’ve been the tip off. Or the way there was nothing behind her eyes. But even though she’d died and she was now just a beautiful empty vessel, she looked the same. I imagined her side of our conversation the way I did when she was still dead.
Then she was in the bath. This was progress. She was able to wash herself. I supervised, to keep her safe and because I wanted to. She kept turning the hot tap. The bath water was boiling, smoke was rising and she was crying out pathetically. Water spilling over the edge of the bath. The screams got louder. I tried to turn the hot tap off and she lunged forward and head butted me with a force that sent me unconscious SPRAWLED.
I came around in a pool of bloody water in time to watch the love of my life disappear down the plughole.
Cocteau Twins – Musette and Drums
Dylan and Patrick meet in a side street. The snow is still falling lightly, flakes landing on their black leather jackets. They embrace knowing this is truly the last time. The sound of traffic is all but overwhelming but there is not a car to be seen.
They kiss and blood oozes from Dylan’s lips. He turns, walks away and disappears entirely into thin air. He is dragged out of the sea by trawlers, his arms tied behind his back and his eyes pierced by emeralds: “natural causes”.
Smoke enshrouds us as we reach the clearing. I take your hand and we kiss. The world is ending, the tiny grey pinpricks in the sky are opening up. Remember when I first told you I saw them? Be quiet, the ice is melting.
Xiu Xiu – Botanica de Los Angeles
Gersten Hayward is turning tricks now and I want her for her mind as much as her body. That’s okay. I’m turning tricks as well. You get a discount for hiring us as a couple. If you look like a young David Lynch then I don’t charge.
Her love is free to me and as for the whoring it keeps us in whiskey and hash browns. We watch Mulholland Drive together. She freezes, but not at the scene in the diner. Something suddenly clicks in her.
“Dan?”
“Yes darling?”
“I’ve got the incredible feeling that I’m not real”
“Gersten I’ve been dreading this conversation. It is true that you are fictional. I am unsure if I am also fictional.”
“How did my mother birth a fiction?”
I show her the clip from The Return where she is cradling her ODing boyfriend and gently tell her that because he was never born he can never die. This is why I am largely anti natalist. Then a client comes by.
SSQ – Anonymous
The party is over and we watch the nightlife crop itself shorter still through a haze of smoke. A mute TV shows static, like pictures in the fire I just about make out the image of a screaming man watching an emaciated woman disappearing down a plughole. He is entirely naked and smearing his genitals with lipstick.
Thankfully you / she steps in my way. A cigarette dangles from your drunken lips. You don’t even smoke. You in that black velvet dress. You turn around and bid me to unzip it, smiling at me.
Then I wake up in their living room. Where I first heard this record. I thought it was a synth pop revivalist record. Something like the Chromatics where it’s so fetishistically close to that mid 80s sound you think it could only have been made in the last ten years. No. It’s actually from the mid 80s and prefaces her hi NRG records.
The girl is real but she wants nothing to do with me. She probably doesn’t even own a black velvet dress. Gersten hasn’t been returning my calls. Maybe I should try ringing her number.
Scott Walker – Jesse
It’s a shame Lynch and Walker never worked together as this always makes me think of Episode 8. The slow motion Jailhouse Rock chords make me imagine the earth opening itself up to weep. The Penderecki strings that have ran through Scott’s work since as early as Plastic Palace People or It’s Raining Today.
The 50s he dreams of never happened. They are an autistic reflection in a fish bowl. Elvis was weirder than anything you could ever dream up. We don’t deserve rock’n’roll.
I dreamt you were crawling through a tunnel looking for me. My stuck needle entreaties and iconoclast drag. I watch her crawl across the ceiling. I, your supplanter.
Now I’m day drunk on daydreams on a train and an Indian man is shaking me. “We’ve terminated mate. The train is over”. My psychic next of kin I’d know you in my sleep. I, Supplanter.
Album Review: Dominic Valvona
Simon Bonney ‘Past, Present, Future’
(Mute) 3rd May 2019
Arguably one of the great voices of Australian music over the last four decades, Simon Bonney is nothing if not proficient in taking hiatuses. Emerging from just the most recent one, five years after the release of the last Crime And The City Solution opus American Twilight – itself, the first album by the iconic alienated nihilists turn beatific augurs of country-doom in twenty years -, and twenty-odd years since the shelving of his third solo LP Eyes Of Blue, Bonney makes a welcome return to the fold.
Prompted by the decision of Mute Records to facilitate the release of that fabled last solo songbook, the Past, Present, Future collection is both a reminder, featuring as it does tracks from both the 1992 Forever and 1994 Everyman albums, and showcase for six previously unreleased tracks from Eyes Of Blue.
Caught in the industry merger machinations of the late 90s, the Detroit imbued-recorded Eyes Of Blue fell victim to the fallout of A&M Records, “dissolved” into the behemoth of the Universal Music Corp just as Bonney was agreeing a deal with them to release it. As a consequence, what would have been his third solo outing and the perfect bookend to a brilliant run of country blues inspired songbooks, instead sat in the vaults, waiting patiently to get released.
Not new material but a catalyst for projects going forward, this solo collection proves as prescient today as it did back then. Especially the beguiling cover turns homage (in light of the recent passing of Scott Walker) of the brooding maestro’s stately majestic lament to fading beauty and decadence, ‘Duchess’. Brought to Bonney’s attention during recording suggestions for Eyes Of Blue by his producer on those sessions, Dave Feeny, Walker’s sullen lyrical masterpiece proves a congruous fit for the Australian’s rich lap steel and Dobro resonator thumbed and waning country malady signature style.
The effects of time and the changing landscape are running themes in all of Bonney’s solo work. Echoing loudly with the ongoing divisive debate of the present, many of these beautifully articulated sad declarations feature a protagonist searching for their place in the world, set often to a kind of American West favoured by The Band, but also the Outback. Alienation is a given: Bonney’s own past travails richly mined; the teenage runaway leaving behind the vast rustic expanses of Tasmania for the city life of Sydney, via the Australian metropolis’s Red Light district and squats. It was of course where the fourteen-year-old outsider formed the first incarnation of Crime And The City Solution, one of four such phases, the next taking shape with a move to London in 1984 and including both Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard (alongside the equally notable Harry Howard and Swell Maps’ Epic Soundtracks), the third such version taking shape in Berlin (embracing musicians from the city’s post-punk and post-Krautrock scenes, such as Einstürzende Neubauten’s Alexander Hacke), and fourth, in Detroit.
The greatest panoramic opus, an unedited version of the Everyman LP’s leitmotif, is in three parts a grand sweep with military snap snares. Bonney in resigned fatalism almost, swoons “I’m looking for a life I can’t explain” as a full-on assault from all directions bombards him. ‘Ravenswood’, taken from the Forever LP, is in a similar Western mythos mode a hard worn thunder and rain-beaten plaints with the age-old “rain on, rain on, rain on me” yearn that sets our high plains drifter on a course for redemptive change. Following in its wake is a ran of highlights from both Forever and Everyman, including the Orbison plays twanged angel to the Lone Justice declaration ‘Don’t Walk Away From Love’, the Lynchian motel spell (complete with a bongo anguish) ‘There Can Only Be One’, and bowing Greyhound bust tour through Texas Rose country runaway ‘Where Trouble Is Easier To Find’.
Much of the Bonney songbook, delivered with earnest, deep timeless country-imbued veneration, aches, even worships, for a string of muses; an undying, unwavering love to both the unattainable and lost. One such elegiac object of such pathos-inspired yearning is Edgar Allan Poe’s famous Annabelle Lee –the metaphorical lamentable figure of the Gothic polymath’s last poem -, who appears on both the eponymous and title tracks from Eyes OF Blue. Lovingly conveyed, even if it marks the death of that lady, it proves symmetry to the album’s profound poetic loss of influence, desire and alluring surface beauty of Duchess. Eyes Of Blue, which makes up half of this collection, follows on from the previous solo works perfectly. A touch deeper, even reverent perhaps, but every bit as bathed in country suffrage. Salvaged at long last, that lost album offers a closure of a kind. Proving however, to chime with the present, far from dated, the Eyes Of Blue part of this collection is a perfect finish to a great run of epic, though highly intimate, solo opuses; the songwriting as encapsulating and grandiose, earthy as you would expect.
Bonney remerges just when we need him; back after many setbacks, but enjoying music again (he says). Past, Present, Future can also be seen as perfect compilation of that solo catalogue for both hardy fans of the artist and as an introduction to one of Australia’s outstanding talents.
Words: Dominic Valvona
Album Review: Dominic Valvona
Raf And O ‘The Space Between Nothing And Desire’
(Telephone Records) 31st May 2019
Imbued by both the musicality and spirit of David Bowie, Scott Walker, David Sylvian (both as a solo artist and with the fey romantics Japan), Kate Bush and in their most avant-garde mode, Bjork, the South London based duo of Raf (Raf Montelli) and O (Richard Smith) occupy the perimeters of alternative art-rock and experimental electronica as the true inheritors of those cerebral inspirations.
Previous albums by the unique duo have featured the most spellbinding, frayed accentuate of Bowie covers, with even Aladdin Sane’s oft pianist Mike Garson extolling their strung out exploration of ‘Lady Grinning Soul’, and a version of the Philly Soul period ‘Win’, quite exceptional in its purring beauty, that ranks amongst the best covers I’ve ever heard. Paying further tribune to, easily, the duo’s most revered musical deity, they lay a diaphanous ethereal accompanied wreath at the metaphorical graveside on the latest, and fourth, album opener ‘A Bow To Bowie’. With all the duo’s hymnal and venerable qualities in full bloom, Raf’s dream-realism coos and fluctuating accented velvety tones ripple through the Bowie cosmos; sending thanks across a strange space-y soundscape of satellite bleeps, mirror reversals and twilight vortex. If he is indeed somewhere up there in the void or ether, pricking our consciousness, I’m sure he’ll appreciate such sentiments and idol worship.
To add to the covers tally, Raf And O also weave a sophisticated dreamy elegy of the early but burgeoning Bowie plaint ‘The London Boys’; a wistful malady, already ghostly when it first emerged, resurrected by Bowie himself and slipped into later setlists, now elegantly clothed in a spell bounding, draped gauze by our duo.
Almost held in as high esteem, sharing the pantheon of idols, Kate Bush can be heard channeled through Raf’s extraordinary vocals: on the surface vulnerable and stark yet beneath lies a steely intensity that often whips, lashes and jolts. It’s unsurprising considering that Raf’s most recent side-project, the Kick Inside, is an acoustic tribute to Kate Bush that almost spookily capture’s the doyen’s phrasings and deft piano skills perfectly.
On their spiritual and philosophical quest to articulate the space between nothing and desire, Raf embodies that influence once more; crystallizing and reshaping to just an essence; part of a diverse vocal range that always manages to sound delicate but otherworldly, like an alien pirouette doll full of colourful giddy exuberance, yet a darker distress and tragedy lurks in the shadows.
Swept up in the Lutheran romantic maladies of a third idol, Scott Walker, Raf And O strip down and reconstruct the late lonesome maverick’s Jack Nitzsche-string conducted gravitas ‘Such A Small Love’. That stirring, solemn almost, ballad of existential yearning was originally part of the inaugural solo-launched songbook Scott. In this version those strings are replaced by, at first, a minimal revolving acoustic guitar and wash of sonorous bass. And instead of the reverential cooed baritone Raf’s hushed beatific voice is shadowed instead by a second slurred, slowed and deep, almost artificial, one: think a dying HAL.
Beautifully spinning a fine web of both delicate vulnerability and strength, at times even ominous, Raf And O seek out enchanting pleasures beneath the sea on ‘Underwater Blues’, crank up the gramophone and let the tanks trundle across a churning lamentable wasteland re-imagination of Bertolt Brecht’s famous unfinished WWI Downfall Of The Egoist Johann Fatzer on ‘With Fatzer’, and coo with a strange clipped vocal gate over a mellotron-like supernatural ballad soundtrack on ‘The Windmill’.
Sublime in execution, subtle but with a real depth and levity, TSBNAD is an astonishing piece of new romantic, avant-theater pop and electronica that dares to unlock the mind and fathom emotion. I’m not sure if they’ve found or articulated that space they seek, between nothing and desire, but the duo have certainly created a masterclass of pulchritude magnificence. Lurking leviathans, strange cosmic spells and trips into the unknown beckon on this, perhaps their most accomplished and best album yet; an example of tactile machinations and a most pure voice in synergy.
The influences might be old and well used, but Raf And O, as quasi-torchbearers, show the way forward. They deserve far more exposure and acclaim, and so here’s hoping that TSBNAD finally gains this brilliant duo their true worth.
Playlist: The Monolith Cocktail Social #28
May 17, 2017
A PLAYLIST FROM OUR IMAGINERY RADIO SHOW OR ‘SOCIAL’
Chosen by Dominic Valvona
In case you don’t know the drill by now, previously only ever shared via our Facebook profile and on Spotify our regular Monolith Cocktail Social playlists will also be posted here on the blog itself. With no themes or demarcated reasoning we pick songs from across a wide spectrum of genres, and from all eras. Reaching edition #28 and eclectic as ever, this latest playlist chosen by the blog’s founder, Dominic Valvona, features magical Indian peregrinations from Ariel Kalma, deconstructed, only to be rebuilt in their vision, Wu-Tang soul from the El Michels Affair, early hand jive saxophone shenanigans from Scott Walker and Italo disco Afro soundtrack funk from In Flagranti, plus many more.
Tracklist:
Ariel Kalma ‘Almora Sunrise’
Sunbear ‘Let Love Flow For Peace’
Ikebe Shakedown ‘Road Song’
El Michels Affair ft. Lady Wray ‘You’re All I Need’
The Intruders ‘Turn The Hands Of Time’
Alice Coltrane ‘Om Rama’
Freestyle Fellowship ‘Inner City Boundaries’
Stetsasonic ‘Talkin’ All That Jazz’
Scott Walker ‘Willie And The Hand Jive’
Orlando Julius ft Ashiko ‘Awade (Here We Come)’
Ayyuka ‘Gabor’
K. Leimer ‘Lonely Boy’
Spectral Display ‘It Takes A Muscle (To Fall In Love)’
Outlands ‘New Reptiles’
79.5 ‘Terrorize My Heart (45 edit)’
Laurence Vanay ‘Strange Moment’
Merrymouth ‘Wenlock Hill’
Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs ‘Get To Hell Out Of Here (Live)’
Rob Galbraith ‘Happy Times’
Boco ‘Smile’
Dead Moon ‘Johnny’s Got A Gun’
CAN ‘Turtles Have Short Legs’
Patemoster ‘Old Danube’
In Flagranti ‘And You Know What?’
Harvey Mandel ‘Snake Attack’
Mighty Shadow ‘Dat Soca Boat’
Joni Haastrup ‘Wake Up Your Mind’
Gary Bartz Ntu Troop ‘Uhuru Sasa’
Banda Los Hijos De La Nina Luz ‘Quiero Amanecer’
Tito Rodriguez ‘Yambere’
Barney Wilson ‘Sannu Ne Gheniyo’
Monolith Cocktail Blog 