The Digest for January 2026: New Music/The Social Playlist
January 16, 2026
The monthly Digest includes a clutch of accumulated short new music reviews and the social inter-generational/eclectic and anniversary albums celebrating playlist.
___THE NEW (All those latest & upcoming releases in brief) ___
The Bordellos ‘Who Do you think You Are? Paul McCartney?’
Single – (Metal Postcard Records) 7th January 2025
More The Rutles’ Stig than The Beatles’ McCartney, the latest self-depreciated, no-fi buzzing guitar string strummed piece of “silliness” from The Bordellos family (that’s Brian Shea and his brother Ant, and Brian’s son Dan) pays a handsome tomfoolery homage to good ol’ Paul.
The Bordellos were behind Half Man Half Biscuit and the Cleaners From Venus in the dole queue of the 1980s; powered by aphorism, a ridicule of the current industry, and a litany of muthafuckers from across the golden age of rock ‘n’ roll, punk and post-punk, psych and garage. Brian will be no stranger to followers of the Monolith Cocktail, having regaled us with his reviews over the years, and of course gracing these pages as a solo performer: think John Shuttleworth meets Sparklehorse.
This latest single to be released by the Metal Postcard Records hub was influenced (I quote) “by [Brian’s] love of Paul McCartney and memories of walking up to Dead Fly Rehearsal rooms in the 80’s with my guitar and every time an old man in his garden would shout “Who Do You Think You Are? Paul McCartney”. As I walked past…it never got old for both him and me…I was tempted occasionally to buy a gun and shoot him and shout who do you think you are? John Lennon!”
If skiffle-indie-punk was a thing, then here it is in all its rudimental, near distorted jangled and sprung glory. It actually sounds less Paul and more like a sarky Lennon…that and a touch of Frank Sidebottom. No one quite manages to summarise a feeling, an era, a memory like The Bordellos, nor sound so brilliantly shambolic and devoid of even the rubber bands to replace the long loosened/slackened and fucked bands in their Tascam 4-track recorder. Off to a fine rambling start in 2026.
Greg Stasiw ‘Guesswork’
Album – (Hidden Harmony Recordings) 2nd February 2026
Greg Stasiw could quite rightly be called a polymath with a worldly scope of influences, having travelled and spent time in New York, Tokyo, Toronto, Paris, Boston, and Bratislava. Home, I believe, is New England on America’s Northeastern edge. The CV includes the occupations of experimental musician, visual artist and writer, but also include the study of anthropology, animation and illustration. Channelling all that into a musical sonic practice and the results are less happenstance than that title might suggest.
Guesswork was actually intended as a collaboration, a response to a visual stimulus created by the artist Phillipe Shewchenk. For one reason or another it was shelved, but Stasiw decided to continue experimenting and formulating a ponderous biomorphic set of ideas relating to a range of subjects, from plumbing systems for plants, to real locations and adjective prompts; many of which seem to point to nature, geography and the weather.
Ending up as Stasiw’s debut album, this amorphous blending of vignettes, studies, semi-improvised experiments sounds like a field trip conducted by Walter Smetek, Nicolas Gaunin and Hiroshi Yoshimura. It’s both recognisably trudging through the lush, the humid and exotic environments of Earth, yet simultaneously otherworldly and near sci-fi. To label it ambient would be a mistake, but minimalist all the same with its airs and the skying sound-scaping, the synth effects of kosmische and the new age combined with Harold Budd and his like.
Real sounds, like the bird life under a rich canopy, mix with percussive tools like a pestle and mortar, the knocks of heavy objects, the drawing of chains and desert sonar-like signals. A shuddery and often lovely reflective piano can be heard alongside a church-like organ producing the most melodic of paused moments. Thrusting gleams of light on the horizon; tunnelled chutes to new worlds; windy tundra’s; playful landscapes of bulb-like shaped notes; Stasiw magics up a stimulating, often pretty and with a sonorous depth, soundscape of possibilities and artistic mystery.
Tachube ‘Mincminc’ (Inverted Spectrum Records/PMGJazz)
Album – Released 4th January 2026
An international combination of band members and album facilitators/labels makes for a truly ambiguous and amorphous experiment with the latest moody and wild post-jazz exploration from the improvisational trio of Tachube. Based in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, a culmination of various musical strands and influences brings together Saint Petersburg electroacoustic/noise musician and founder of the Intonema label Ilia Belorukov (who performs on both the alto sax and rudimental, playful fluteophone), plus two active members of the Novi Sad free and ambient jazz and psychedelic dub scenes, Marko Čurčić on effects pedals and electric bass, and Nemanja Tasić on a minimised drum kit.
Their third collaborative release, platformed in conjunction with the independent boutique label and booking agency that spans in Hungary, Serbia and Turkey, Inverted Spectrum Records and the Macedonian label PMGJazz, Mincminc sounds like Anthony Braxton, Andy Haas and Sam Rivers creeping, prowling and consumed on a mysterious plain with Krononaut. It’s a combination of the improvised Polish and American freeform jazz schools, but also an emotional fit and squeeze of mythology, the darkness and the arid; enveloped as it all is by meta and the depth of the trio’s expanded spheres of influence and skills.
Incipient stirrings and jangles create the right mystique, with blows and the driest of alto expressions, quivered and shivered and shaved cymbals, busy undulated and descending bass runs and the knocks and mulch sounds of hidden sources building a serial and abstract atmosphere that vaguely invokes the Balkans and its geographical history, psychogeography and mystery. Something different in the jazz field; an expansion of ideas and moods and the extemporised.
Roudi Vagou & Läuten der Seele ‘Taghelle Nacht’
Album – (Quindi) 6th February 2026
Once more stepping out behind their aliases, the collaborative union of German artists Matthias Kremsreiter and Christian Schoppik (respectfully reimagined as Roudi Vagou and Läuten der Seele) transduce and manipulate ripples in time to invoke both blissfully dreamy and more mysteriously haunting sonic and musical ideas of nostalgia, German nationalism and geography.
Drawing upon their personal connections, their relationship to the lands and the city that moulded and influenced them both, this latest union could be filed under the hauntology label – a very good label as it happens, one that perfectly, if overused and misdirected on occasions, fits this interdimensional album of filmic score passages, vignettes and looped hallucinations. For Taghelle Nacht captures the “day-bright night” character of a simultaneously pastoral Heimatfilm era vision of German cinema, of the surreal, of fairytale and mirages whilst providing a suitably ghostly and occultist atmosphere.
It’s as if Roedelius and Moebius, or even Popol Vuh, fed the movie scores of Hans J. Salter, Philip Martell, Harry Robinson and Ronald Stein into a German time machine. Old matinee and classical suites, songs of the romanticised, the near ethereal coos of apparition sirens and angels, a fairground Bavarian Wurlitzer, the call of an esoteric nature (the field recordings of trampled walks across the land, the birds in the trees), and the sound of woodwind and brass are looped or obfuscated by the sounds of hidden whirly, unoiled sound sources, of Fortean machines and valves, folksy horror soundtracks, the concertinaed and bellowed and surface noise of old wax cylinders. Melodies and the wistful embrace of that old age are embraced and then somehow made more unreal and otherworldly as if transmitted through a séance or played on a possessed record player from an earlier age. And then again, you can pick out hints of Belbury Poly and their ilk, Martin Denny and Drew Mulholland across a haunting backdrop stepped in historical values, horrors and the mystical.
Charles ‘Poppy Bob’ Walker ‘Double-Wide’
Album – (Castle Dome Records) 10th February 2026
Outsider art from the 1980s, the left behind recordings of the fabled Charles ‘Poppy Bob’ Walker have already filled one such album of haunted imaginings, of mirages and dusty Western peregrinations. Released back in 2024, the Dirt Bike Vacation collection platformed a near secret archive of desert renderings, of loosened and ambient-esque country sketches. It reads however like one of those concocted projects, the alias of a very much still-breathing silent partner hiding behind anonymity. But reassuringly, this “normal guy”, who worked hard, kept some friends, though never married or had kids, liked nothing more than to drive off on various recording adventures in his old, yellow Datsun pickup.
The remembrance of an unassuming outsider, articulating or washing or crafting or letting his inner thoughts and observations and meditations of places in and around his Yuma, Arizona home ghostly emit through the lo fi amplified strings of his Martin D-28 guitar, onto his trusty and rudimental Tascam 4-track recorder. And as such an unassuming amateur working in the field, Walker’s music has, refreshingly, no one to please, no one to serve other than its creator’s own vision and perhaps improvised musings and contouring’s of the landscape, the thoughts and reification of mood and place.
At one turn taking on the mantle of a hidden Ry Coder soundtrack, or indeed invoking certain passages and refrains from Dylan’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack, this latest collection’s controlled, mediated and shortened cinematic qualities build towards an alternative country-waned and mirage-like score. From incorporating a rustic banjo to the electrified vapours and more concrete panning and splayed strums and strikes of his guitar and the chorus of hidden sounds (from the railroad barrier’s bell-rung-like signal to the occasional use of reverberated lo fi synthetic drums, the esoteric rattle snake shaken ceremonies of the second cut, the windbreakers and even the sound of the tape’s hiss and surface sounds) Double-Wide feels like we’re watching a dreamy, hallucinating film of the surreal American West.
If you dig the art and experiments of such alt-country company as Myles Cochran, The Droneroom, the Gunn-Truscinski duo, Daniel Vickers and Chuck Johnson, then Walker should be as much a revelation as a familiar companion on the transformed leftfield road of such maverick artists.
___/The Monolith Cocktail Social Playlist Vol. 104___
The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, with tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years and both selected cuts from those artists and luminaries we’ve lost on the way and from those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
In the latter camp we have the following anniversaries to mark:
The oldest celebration this month falls to Them’s mighty garage R&B raver I Can Only Give You Everything, taken from their 1966 LP Them Again. Van the man Morrison in full on maximum R&B glory; turn it up you muthafuckers! Still the best, guaranteed to get every dancefloor riotously jumping. The whole LP is peerless.
David Bowie’s Station To Station is 50 this month, and I’ve picked the Word On A Wing version used in Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream spectacular. Bowie’s epitaph Blackstar is 10 in January. I’ve decided on Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime).
Bob Dylan’s Desire is also 50 this month. Not the most sympathetic of subjects to mythologise, what with equal opportunities pain-in-the-neck Mafia types like Joey Gallo, but there’s merit with Oh Sister and its sublime backing vocals by Emmylou Harris (apparently, and very rare, overdubbed a day later). The musical attempt to clear the former middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter on Hurricane is overlong and sanctimonious in comparison.
Another 50th anniversary special, Cheyenne Fowler’s Cheyenne’s Comin’ boards the funky Stevie Wonder goes indigenous funk train. I was nice enough to give this original LP to my old pal James Bull a number of years; it probably now sits in his collection, getting an occasional airing on his turntable making in California.
Lou Reed’s country bar room bell-ringers Coney Island Baby is another LP celebrating the half century mark this month. I’ve gone for the opener, Crazy Feeling, not the best track, but still a favourite.
Only just making our albums of the year list last month with their first album in a decade (Touch), Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die is unbelievably 30 this month. An album that defined a post-everything scene and year. And so, what to pick. How about the various gears-changing Glass Museum.
Very different, but from the same era. Britpop’s The Bluetones‘ Expecting To Fly is an unmistakable example of that era’s sound. Slight Return was the single, and track that made them, and still their best moment on wax.
Beth Ditto’s Gossip fired up the noughties, arriving with the vanguard of attitude post-no-wave, funk punk and such titans as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Some incredible fiery matriarchs stamped all over the sensibilities of the male dominated indie and rock scenes. The trio’s debut Standing In The Way Of Control is twenty this month, and I could have picked anything from an album that is almost a perfect encapsulation of the times it was made. But here’s Jealous Girls.
I never really need an excuse to feature Serge Gainsbourg, but to honour the memory of that French muse, chanteuse of new age French cinema and 60s starlet Brigitte Bardot here’s Initials B.B and the outlaw duet Bonnie & Clyde. Remarkably still such an icon, despite her best and most of her work being in the 1960s: retiring more or less early to concentrate on animal welfare for the next sixty years of her life.
From the newer section, or those recentish tracks that missed out on a place on the site’s Monthly Playlists, a smattering of tracks released in the last few months (occasionally a little further back). From the Live In Mestre Venezia series of outstanding performances, Get Happy by the ’84 union of sax and jazz pianist icons Sam Rivers and Mal Waldron; made available near the end of 2025. Also, and I’d bet a very popular choice amongst my peers, The House That Doesn’t Exist from Melody’s Echo Chamber’s Unclouded album, released last month; Leave by NEDA, released back in September; Volcano by Penza Penza, released last month; Pete Evans and Mike Pride’s exploratory alchemy of Substance X, also put out last month; Deanna Petcoff’s Not Too Proud, another December release; and Papernut Cambridge’s I’m A Photograph Of You, released just in the last couple of weeks.
From across time, across genres, across geography, a number now of tracks I either played in my various DJ sets over the years, wished I’d owned, or just came across in my research. This includes the mellotron imbued prog-rockers Gracious and Introduction; another prog obscurity, Kingdom Come and Spirit of Joy; American jazz trumpeter Kamal Abdul Alim and Al Nafs; German electronic and kosmische luminary and progenitor Conrad Schnitzler and Convex 4; the Memphis snot rocking garage thumping R&B outfit Compulsive Gambler’s and The Way I Feel About You; the Chicago post-rock-avant-garde Shrimp Boat and Pumpkin Love; the Cleveland garage-prog troupe Damnation ( their name whittled down for some reason by their label from The Damnation of Adam Blessing) and their funky-psych-Hammond cover of The Monkees’ Last Train To Clarksville; hip-hop royalty from the golden age, Showbiz & A.G. with Silence Of The Lambs; strange sampled fruit from Ether Bunny with the Bunny Jump; and because I was recently reminded of this song through Apple TV’s Palm Royale series, Moonshot by the dodgy, or found out, Buffy Saint Marie – not so indigenous American as she had us all believe, and yet, the music is just as sublime, the lyrics incredible.
As a special this time around, and to show at least some support for those bravely taking to the streets of many of Iran’s cities to protest against its authoritarian theocracy, and the crippling cost of living crisis (burdened by Western sanctions), I’ve chosen to include some choice music from the country’s inspiring female underground. Written – and just to show how these protests have continued since the pandemic, flaring up after brutal crackdowns, executions and state murder – back in 2023 my review of AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah’s co-founded Apranik Records compilation platform of Iranian artists is receiving another airing today (read below, with some modifications in light of recent events).
I’m also adding a number of tracks to this month’s social – the least I can do. The left’s moral compass seems stuck at outright condemnation. In fact, it has fallen completely silent on the matter, as thousands of body bags mount up on the Iranian streets. Whilst American influence, and Trump’s threats to strike at the regime if it doesn’t stop murdering its citizen protesters all feed into the conspiracy theories of Western interventionism, it must be pointed out that all previous protests – and we are talking a sizable percentage of the population that are fed up with the hardline authoritarianism; a whole younger generation wishing to have the same freedoms enjoyed in the West, the same opportunities – have failed under heavy handed suppression and sanctioned violence.
Let’s hope the Iranian people can make that change for a much better future.
Various ‘Intended Consequences’
(Apranik Records)
With a hellish multitude of flashpoints and distractions across the globe keeping the continuing fight for women’s liberation in Iran off the news rolls, it has become apparent that the Iranians themselves have been left to carry on the struggle with little support; that is until late last year and early 2026, with Trump weighing in with threatening strikes upon the regime and those that keep them there. In an ongoing war between the forces of the authoritarian religious state and a younger generation demanding an end to the erosions of their civil liberties and freedoms, heavily impeded by sanctions that began as a consequence of the country’s nuclear programme, the crisis in the country entered a dark bloody chapter in 2022 with the murder, in custody, of Masha Zhina Amini by the “morality police”.
After a rightful campaign of protest and action at such a heinous crime, a brutal crackdown by the state led to mass arrests and even executions (mostly of male supporters and activists, usually on trumped up charges). Further restrictions were invoked. And just as horrifying, in 2023 there was a nationwide spate of deliberate poisonings of schoolgirls (one of the groups who mobilised against the authorities in the wake of Amini’s cruel death). Defiant still, even in the face of such oppression, the brave women of Iran have strengthened their resolve only further.
In the face of such attacks, clampdowns, the music scene has responded with a strong message of resistance and solidarity. Despite everything, cities like the capital of Tehran have a strong music scene of contemporary artists, composers, DJs and performers working across all mediums, including art (which is probably why so much of the music is also so visceral, descriptive and evocative of imagery). One such collaborative force of advocates, AIDA and Nesa Azadikhah, co-founded the Apranik Records label, a platform for female empowerment.
Following 2022’s earlier Women Life Freedom compilation, a second spotlight volume delves further into not only the Tehran scene but picks out choice tracks from those female Iranians working outside the country in such epicenters as London (AZADI.mp3) and Berlin (Ava Irandoost).
Sonic wise it covers everything from d’n’b, trance, deep house and techno to sound art experimentation. The range of moods is just as diverse in that respect, from restlessness to the reflective and chaotic.
Contributions from both Azadikhah (the hand drum rattled d’n’b breaks and spacy, airy trance ‘Perpetual’) and AIDA (the submerged melodious and dreamy techno ‘Ode To Expectations’, which features the final love-predicament film sample, “You know that I love you, I really do. But I have to look after myself too.”) can be found alongside a burgeoning talent pool. The already mentioned London-based producer and singer AZADI.mp3 opens this collection with a filtered female chorus of collective mantra protest, set to a sort of R&B, 2-step and bass throbbed production, on ‘Empty Platform’– just one of many tracks that uses the sounds of a more traditional Iran, especially the daf drum, alongside modern and futuristic warped effects. The sound artist and composer Rojin Sharafi likewise features the rattled rhythms of hand drums and some hidden spindled instrument – like running a stick across railings – on her entrancing kinetic techno ritual of “trauma”, ‘dbkk’.
Abji_hypersun allows the sounds of the environment to seep into her slow-building track of field recordings, collage and breaks (two-stroke scooters buzz by as distant female conversations reverberate on the street). Part jungle breaks pirate radio, part Matthew David, Jon The Dentist and LTJ Bukem, ‘Resist The God Trick’ evokes a tunneled vision of haunted reminisces and resistance in the shadows.
Emsho’s ‘Down Time’ is a rotor-bladed electro mix of Basic Channel and The Chemical Brothers, and Aida Shirazi’s mysterious wind of dark meta ‘R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N’ spells out the rage with a shadowy, near daemonic scripture of wrath and revenge – a gothic synth sinister avenging angel promises that the women of Iran will neither “forget” nor “forgive” their oppressors, torturers and murderers. Farzané seems to evoke the alien, the sci-fi on her experimental, sometimes disturbing dial twisting and crackled ‘Quori’ transmission, and the Berlin-based DJ, video artist and music producer Ava Irandoost draws on Laraaji-like dulcimer tones for her dream mirrored kosmische evocation ‘CINEREOUS’. The Tehran composer, pianist and bassist Ava Rasti draws a close to the compilation with a classical-tinged, harmonic ringed, saddened piano-lingering performance, entitled ‘Eight Night’ – an atmospheric troubled trauma is encapsulated with the deftest of touches.
It might be my own nostalgic penchant for 90s electronic music (my formative years of course), but this series (if we can call it that) could be an Iranian version of the Trance Europe Express compilations brought out during that decade; a treasure trove of discoveries and whole scenes that opened up a world of previously unknown music to many of us not living in the epicenters of North America, the UK and Europe and beyond. Hopefully this latest platform of innovative artists from across the arts will draw the attention it deserves; the message hardly virtuous, in your face, but sophisticated: the very act of female Iranians making a name for themselves despite censorship and bans a sign of empowerment and resistance in itself. Few groups deserve our support (which in the West has been sadly absent) more, but don’t just purchase for the cause but for the musical strives being awakened and produced under tyrannical oppression, and because this is a solid collection of great electronic music.
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THE MONTHLY DIGEST OF ACCUMULATED NEW MUSIC; THE SOCIAL INTER-GENERATIONAL/ECLECTIC AND ANNIVERSARY ALBUMS CELEBRATING PLAYLIST; AND CHOICE PIECES FROM THE ARCHIVES.
Photo Credit:: Shalev Ariel
THE NEW/
Apifera ‘Keep The Outside Open’
(Stones Throw) 21st June 2024
Pouring forth from hangout sessions at Yuvi Haukin’s studio (a member of the L.A. based quartet), the friendly, playful and jovial toking environment around Apifera’s second album inspires a constant change and lucid fluctuation between prompted musical fusions.
Near omnivorous in tastes and drivers, the often dreamy, hallucinating moods envelope a psychedelic, trippy palette of jazz-funk, disco, vapour synth music, the kosmische, the progressive, Euro chic scores and Indian influences. The later is can be heard via the cadence, almost meandered mantra vocals, of the album title (“keep the outside open”) on the opening Secret Machines-esque slow released, spacy ‘Iris Is Neil’ – a reference to the search for a missing cat called Iris, who was chasing a bat named Neil at the time of the feline’s disappearance.
Over the course of fifteen tracks (some mere vignettes in duration) Havkin, Nitai Hershkovits, Amir Bresler and Yonatan Albalak open minds and broaden horizons through various portals and mirrors; soaking up the cosmic rays whilst wistfully contemplating the universal, aching dreamily over infatuations and casting drug-induced allusions. Everything is pretty smooth and evened out, the changes in style rounded so as not jolt, but work in harmony together.
With a diverse and notable range of CVs, we have Havkin’s electronic-jazz alter ego Rejoices, Albalak fronting the post-rock-psych-jazz band Geshem, Bresler’s Afrobeat and jazz blended Liquid Saloon, and Hershkovits’s soloist piano outings for the esteemed ECM label. All of which is channeled and merged further with both suffused waves and shorter flashes of Sven Wunder, Wax Machine, The Future era George Duke, Greg Foat, Flying Moon In Space, The Flaming Lips, Jini Tenor, El Michels affair, Les McCann and The Fatback Band.
Extending the loose configuration of influences further still, the quartet invite the trumpeter and ECM signing Avishai Cohen to blow smokestack Miles Davis and more southern border bluesy expressions over the minimal vapors and gauzy airs of the finale, ‘Sera Sam’.
A smattering of made-up characters fashioned from “smoking jams” act as cartoon, psychedelic-like vehicles for sharing concerns, woes, but also for conveying a message of escapism from the increasingly divided, polarised suffocation of a hostile world at war. Advocating a return of a “wilder” untethered “freestate” of culture, music and life, Apifera leave the gateways permanently open, inviting us all to embrace, not fear, such anarchic freewheeling.
Herald ‘Linear B’
(Errol’s Hot Wax) 14th June 2024
If mid-70s Eno working his magic with Merriweather Post Pavilion sounds like a match anointed in heaven then Lawrence Worthington’s ridiculously long-delayed debut album is going to send you into a woozy alt-pop state of bliss. The latter partner in that ideal fantasy of influences is hardly surprising, with the Animal Collective’s “infrequent” co-founding member Josh Dibb (aka Deakin) playing the part of co-producing foil and soundboard. And although the eventual Linear B album was first conceived twenty plus years ago, when the Animal Collective and Panda Bear and a menagerie of congruous bands were building an alternative-psych-pop scene – the darlings (quite rightly) of Pitchfork and the burgeoning MySpace culture -, and when the musical palette of sounds is produced on cheap 90s Casio and Yamaha equipment, Worthington’s Herald nom de plume still resonates and feels refreshingly dreamily idiosyncratic.
And yet of its time, Linear B chimes, swims, shimmers, drifts and bubbles along to tubular and padded Casio percussive presets and both dream and coldwave patterned synths like it’s the late 90s and early 2000s.
The gap, after drumming his way through the 90s with The Male Nurse, Country Teasers and Yummy Fur, is due to such important affairs of the heart as marriage but also relocation and the pursuit of a useful trade – probably more important than ever, with the musician and artist’s plight never so woefully dire in monetary terms.
Picking up the ideas and partially written songs from that time at a much later date, Worthington met Dibb (a natural music partner if ever there was one) whilst (and here’s where that carpentry trade comes in not only useful but fatefully too) helping to build a recording studio. Getting on like the proverbial house-on-fire through a mutual passion for The Residents, Frank Ocean, Love’s Forever Changes, Portishead’s Third and J&MC’s Psychocandy, and spurred on by close friends, that pair set to creative work: Worthington would send his new friend demos until something struck, at which point Dibb’s would suggest booking time in the studio when the real fun began.
The results set a personal psychedelic language of feels and character-dotted whimsy to a maverick alt-synth-pop production: imagine Syd Barrett, K. Leimar and Edward Penfold backed by a Factory Records White Fence or Panda Bear. Unassumingly lo fi yet symphonic, you can hear hints of neo-romantics, colder synth spells, the post-punk, the Bureau B label’s cult German new wave and post-krautrock offerings, John Cale and a very removed vision of The Beach Boys – a stretch I know, but I swear I can hear them on the album’s closer, ‘SS Caledinghi’.
There’s much to love about this album of vapours, rays, waves, almost angelic-like moments of drifting coos. The quality, production is first rate, with each song opening up more of its subtleties and sophistication on every play.
If anything the passing of time, life hiatus, has helped in giving Worthington the space and wealth of experiences to develop and really make the album he always wanted to.
Sis ‘Vibhuti’
(Native Cat) 21st June 2024
“Vibhuti” means many things to many people; the etymology translated differently by a host of Indian cultures, spiritualists and denominations, and depending on which language, can be defined in a myriad of ways. In this case, Sis, the spiritual imbued recording guise of Jenny Gillespie Mason, uses the Sanskrit meaning of that title: “the divine spirit in the human body”.
Framed as a “roving document of spiritual awakening”, prompted by a series of “healing dreams”, the Vibhuti album channels new age motherhood, rebirth and the poetic output of the Indian mystic, nationalist and Noble Prize contender (nominated twice, once for literature and later, for peace) Sri Aurobindo and his partner in spiritual-literary learning and teaching, Mirra Alfasssa: Known as “Mother”, the French national was considered the equal partner of Aurobindo in every way – she would eventually join the maharishi at his Pondicherry retreat pursing a lifetime of philosophical and devotional learning.
An integral part of Mason’s lyricism, that iconic pairing’s message of humanity and the recognition of our divine origins and future ascension is mixed with environmental poetry, gratitude and the wonders of birth and love, love, love.
The musical vibrations are pretty surprising, helped in part by a guest list that includes the notable addition of Devendra Banhart providing subtle electric guitar lines and vibrations to a couple of tracks, but also Will Miller’s overall suffused Fourth World imbued Jon Hassell-like gauzy trumpet pines and snuggles. Longtime foils Brijean and Doug Stuart are also on hand once more to provide chimed, tinkled and trinket shimmer percussion, smooth basslines and production. But this is both a mirage and trance-like electronic alt-pop-jazz-soul-new-age-chill-wave spread of diaphanous and rainbow refracted vapours and more softly driven swells of yearned searching. One minute we’re in the realms of Alice Coltrane and Carlos Niño, the next, 70s Fleetwood Mac harmonising with Karen Vogt. And then there’s spells in which it sounds like a loose merger of Curtis Mayfield Roots period, EDM and the Tara Clerkin Trio. Beautifully sung, expressed and fluid throughout, the articulations and messages of self-healing prove artistically therapeutic and successful. Mason branches musical experimental and commercial to produce a melodious, memorable entrancing and devotional odyssey of discovery and Indian inspired philosophical mindfulness.
Neuro…No Neuro ‘Mental Cassette’
(Audiobulb) 14th June 2024
Charging up the neurons and memory receptors once more, the Tuscon, Arizona synthesist and electronic artist Kirk Markarian softly captures abstract feels and recollected scenes/evocations from his past. Under the binary Neuro…No Neuro nom de plume, Kirk’s bulb shaped translucent spaced-out notes, pips, bubbles and cloud gazing and horizon opening waveforms soundscape the subtle gauzy mental reminisces contained in the memory banks of a febrile mind.
On cassette form, with all its idiosyncratic tweaks and foibles – from a little hiss, the odd spell of bity granular surface noise and some staccato stuttered cuts and breaks in the flow – this latest hallucinogenic mirage of the tingled, arched, bended, warbled and languorous is like being blanketed in the soft play area of a psychoanalyst session.
Woozy ambience and delicate, rounded pollinations and mauve-coloured coated melodic minimal electronics and echoes of Library music conjure up such innocuous prompts as sticky tape, coaches and playground slides. This is like a watercolor version of fond recollections of innocence; an almost hypnotizing and dreamy abstraction of childhood created by a truly unique sound artist.
But changing the mood, the signature, there’s a longer remix treatment of ‘My words Come Out In Different Ways’ by Subgenuis – who, for all I know, might just be another disguise, alter ego of Kirk. This never quite hits its stride, filtering, as it does, in and out of a sort of vapoured psy and techno futuristic vibe; with a sample (I think) of some female writer/speaker communicating some theoretical address to an audience on the processes of something creative that involves dialogue, the sharing of one’s thoughts: and perhaps, repressed memories.
The Mental Tapes now could be said to archive, document for posterity those feelings and emotional states of regression therapy. Connecting with one’s childhood has seldom sounded so oblique and empirical.
Morio Maeda & All-Stars ‘Rock Communication Yagibushi’
(WEWANTSOUNDS)
As part of the vinyl specialist’s Japanese catalogue, WEWANTSOUNDS have thankfully found the time to reissue, for the first time internationally, the coveted jazz-funk-swing Rock Communication Yagibushi fusion by the renowned arranger, pianist Morio Maeda.
A beat-maker, DJ cut chemist’s and crate-digger’s delight, Maeda’s Americanized swung and Lalo Schifrin cop theme scored reinterpretations of age-old Japanese Islands folk songs and dances was originally released on the cusp of a new decade in 1970.
Using a similar formula to its precursor, This Is Rock (recorded in cahoots with foil saxophonist Jiro Inagaki), only this time replacing international hits with the traditional Shinto, the festive, the fisherman’s laments and romantically alluded handed-down songs and poetry of a diverse Pacific geography closer to home, this cult display takes many of its cues from the U.S. of A. – see the already mentioned Schifrin signatures, but also David Axlerod, a little Jerry Fielding, Jimmy Castor Bunch and Ahmed Jamal (I’m thinking specifically here of ‘Footprints’). That and a smattering of 60s Italian cinema and Library music – Armando Trovajoli springs immediately to mind.
The horns blaze and bristle, trill like a mounted curbside bust on the streets of San Fran, or swoon with lovelorn plaint in a similar West Coast location – a dockside romantic moment perhaps – as the more indigenous sounds and song from Yamageta, Kumamoto, the Island of Sado, Fukushima and Akita are transferred, given oomph and a funky showtime swagger. There are exceptions to that rule; the sake drinking seaman’s ode to love, ‘Sado Okesa’, seems to be channeling an Egyptian Hammond vibe and snake charmer’s oboe.
Largely self-taught – although it was with encouragement from his father, who taught him how to read sheet music – the 1930s born Maeda was quick to embrace jazz. Moving to Tokyo in the mid 1950s, the pianist-arranger joined the Japanese guitarist Shungo Sawada’s ensemble, and a little later, the saxophonist Konosuke Saijo’s West Liners band. In-between both those contributions and afterwards, he started his own group, the Wind Breakers, and founded We3 with the notable jazz players Yasuo Arakawa and Takeshi Inomata. He also penned music for the The Blue Coats, Tatsuya Takahasi and Nobuo Hara. The culmination of that provenance, Maeda’s All-Stars – two actual lineups make up that all-star cast, a quintet and a extended ensemble boosted by a larger horn section – Rock Communication Yagibushi adds a fuzz and twang of 60s guitar and jazz drum rolls, crescendos, a glassy-sounding marimba and sustained Dr. Lonnie Smith organ to the native heritage. Breaks aplenty, samples and fun await all those eager to get their hands on an affordable copy of a cult fusion from a revered artist on the fringes of jazz, swing, TV and film scores.
THE SOCIAL PLAYLIST VOLUME 87\__
The Social Playlist is an accumulation of music I love and want to share, tracks from my various DJ sets and residencies over the years, and both selected cuts from those artists, luminaries we’ve lost and those albums celebrating anniversaries each month.
Running for over a decade or more, Volume 87 is as eclectic and generational spanning as ever. Look upon it as the perfect radio show, devoid of chatter, interruptions and inane self-promotion.
As always, each month I select choice cuts from albums that have reached certain milestone anniversaries. This June (or thereabouts) that selection includes tracks from LPs by Bob Dylan and The Band (Before The Flood, 1974), Jade Warrior (Floating Worlds, ’74), Arti & Mestieri (Tilt, ’74), Miles Davis (Decoy, 1984), Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds (From Here To Eternity, ’84) and Noura Mint Seymali (Tzenni, 2014, which is also featured below in the archives section).
There’s also a smattering of homages to the late French chanteuse of forlorn and sorrow, Françoise Hardy, who passed away just last week. An impossible choice, but I’ve picked out a quartet of interesting tunes and covers from different points of her grand sweeping career that spanned six decades.
I’ve added a sprinkling of newish tunes too; picking tracks I didn’t get the time or room to feature in the Monthly Playlist Revue. That roll call includes Chris Cohen, Ivan The Tolerable, Beak>, The Green Kingdom, and a cut from the recently released collection of ‘homegrown’, homespun songs from the much-overlooked troubadour Tucker Zimmerman.
That leaves room for an eclectic mix of intergenerational tunes from a myriad of genres: KMD, Twenty Sixty Six & Then, the Mo-Dettes, Howdy Moon, Drahla, TVEGC, Peter Principle, Bill Dixon, Tadalat and more…
TRACK LIST IN FULL\__________
Françoise Hardy ‘That’ll Be The Day’
Typical Girls ‘Girl Like You’
Meta Meta ‘Oba Ina’
Beak> ‘Ah Yeh’
Julian Jay Savarin ‘Stranger’
Arti & Mestieri ‘In Cammino’
Kante Manfila ‘Diniya’
Miles Davis ‘That’s What Happened’
Bill Dixon ‘Vecctor’
KMD ‘Popcorn’
Tadalat ‘Tamiditin’
Noura Mint Seymali ‘Hebebeb (Zrag)’
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ‘Cabin Fever!’
Jade Warrior ‘Red Lotus’
Ivan The Tolerable ‘Supermoon’
The Green Kingdom ‘Softly Away’
David Gasper ‘China Camp’
Tucker Zimmerman ‘It All Depends On The Pleasure Man’
Françoise Hardy ‘Suzanne’
Bob Dylan & The Band ‘Up On Cripple Creek’
Twenty Sixty Six & Then ‘Time Can’t Take It Away’
Françoise Hardy ‘La Sieste’
Chris Cohen ‘Damage’
Howdy Moon ‘For Tonight’
Françoise Hardy ‘Et Voila’
Mo-Dettes ‘Sparrow’
Drahla ‘Second Rhythm’
The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club ‘I Kick Higher Than A Child’
Peter Principle ‘Friend Of The Extinction’
Saecula Saeculorum ‘Radio no Peito’
ARCHIVES\_____
This month’s archive spots travel back a reasonable and recent decade ago, with the whirlwind dynamic griot star Noura Mint Seymali’s first album, Tzenni, for the Glitterbeat Records label, and Mick Harvey’s re-released consummate 2014 package of homages to Serge Gainsbourg.
Noura Mint Seymali ‘Tzenni’
(Glitterbeat Records)
The technicalities, pentatonic melodies and the fundamental mechanics aside, nothing can quite prepare you for that opening atavistic panoramic vocal and off-kilter kick-drum and snare; an ancestral linage that reaches back a thousand odd years, given the most electric crisp production, magically restores your faith in finding new music that can resonate and move you in equal measure.
The afflatus titular experience channeled with energetic passion and poetic lament, revolves around the whirling – and at its peak moment of epiphany, a fervor – dance. Performed over time under the desert skies and khaima tents by the Moorish griots, this cyclonic Hassaniya worded movement (which variously translates as, ‘to circulate’, ‘to spin’ or ‘to turn’) that enacts the orbiting solar system and with it all the elements (wind and tides) on Earth, is hypnotically invigorating.
From the German label, Glitterbeat Records, this latest Maghreb African transmission follows in the wake of the equally compelling electric transcendent desert blues of Tamikrest, Dirt Music, Samba Touré and the Bedouin diaphanous song of Aziza Brahim. Tzenni by Noura Mint Seymali and her accompanying clan make suggestive musical and social/political connections with all of these groups and artists.
Hailing from the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, nestled in between Algeria, Senegal, Mali and the Western Sahara, with the Atlantic lapping its shoreline, Noura keeps tradition alive in a modern, tumultuous, climate. Her homeland – run ever since a coup in 2008, by the former general Mohamed Ould Abdul Aziz, duly elected president in 2009 – was rocked by the immolation sparked Arab Spring and subsequent youth movement protests; all of which were violently suppressed by the authorities. Add the omnipresent problems of FGM, child labour and human trafficking to the equation and you have enough catalysts to last a lifetime. However, Noura’s veracious commanding voice responds with a dualistic spirit, the balance of light and shade putting a mostly positive, if not thumping backbeat, to forlorn and mourning.
Recorded in New York, Dakar and in the Mauritania capitol, Nouakchott, the album transverses a cosmopolitan map of influences and musical escapism. The original heritage still remains strong, yet the ancient order of griot finds solace with the psychedelic and beyond. Noura’s family linage is one of the regions most celebrated; her father, Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall, was instrumental in bringing Mauritanian music to the outside world, her late stepmother, who the whole nation mourned, was the great Dimi Mint Abba. Noura would serve an apprenticeship with Dimi, and later strike up an inspired union with her husband, the visionary guitarist Jeiche Ould Chighaly, whose dune-shifting amorphous flange-delivered licks and spindly fingered riffs create a kosmiche alien landscape, flirting with both rock and the blues. No less respected, the bass and drums combo of Ousamane Touré and Matthew Tinari bring the funk and groove.
Moving at a momentum and seamlessly across these musical boundaries, the band articulate a mostly uplifting exultation to turbulence and instability, steering through Amon Duul II and Ash Ra Tempel like field studies on the groups break out titular anthem, meditatively channeling the wah-wah delta blues on ‘El Mougelmen’, and paying homage to the prophet with an epic vocal note holding hymn to forgiveness on ‘Soub Hanallah’.
Noura Mint Seymali will undoubtedly follow Tamikrest’s success in reaching across the divide. The Northern Mali electric-blues Tuareg’s, in no small part brought to attention by the escalations in the country’s insurgency and later containment by the former colonists, France, last year wowed new, less keen world music fans. Though obviously a result of its own unique history and culture, Noura’s sound is congruous with that of both Tamikrest and Aziza Brahim – vocally. Like those artists, she will undoubtedly find a receptive, ever hungry for horizons new, audience.
Mick Harvey ‘Intoxicated Man/ Pink Elephants’
(Mute)
Creatively absent from sparring with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in 2013, fellow founding member and stalwart Mick Harvey missed out on the group’s mid-life opuscule, Push The Sky Away: an album that surely marks a pinnacle in meditative requiems.
Yet, since leaving the ranks, Harvey has enjoyed a fruitful run of his very own. Despite being ignored by the majority of press and blogs, his charmingly understated Four (Acts Of Love) album of afflatus paeans and lamentable covers and original numbers was wholly embraced by the Monolith Cocktail, the only blog, to our knowledge, to both critically endorse it and grant it a coveted place in a ‘choice LPs of the year’ list. In 2014, Harvey alongside Crime and the City Solutions’ Alexander Hacke and Danielle De Picciotto and musical director Paul Wallfisch, formed the nursery grime musical outfit The Ministry Of Wolves for a set of theater performances. By way of the Pulitzer Prize winning author Anne Sexton’s, even more, macabre revisionist take on the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales, the acclaimed stage production has also spawned a soundtrack LP, Music From Republik De Wölfe – reviewed favorably by us back in February.
And now, we have the re-release, accompanied by live tour dates, of Harvey’s homages to the late great, salacious Gallic maverick, Serge Gainsbourg to once again fall in love with. To coincide with the anniversary of Gainsbourg’s birth, Harvey’s 1990s moiety duo of tributes to the lecherous titan of cool, Intoxicated Man and Pink Elephants, were trundled out on April 2nd. The vinyl versions are earmarked for the 23rd June. As a precursor to this celebratory push, Harvey and his band performed a selection of songs at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs curated ATP festival back in 2013. Threatening to forever bring down the curtain on this tributary oeuvre, he has recently been back out on the road, performing in his native Australia, the UK and throughout Europe, nailing the lid shut on his Gainsbourg infatuation for good with the last date on the 14th June in Tilburg, the Netherlands: or so we believed.
Not without reservation, Harvey the ardent fan, was persuaded and prompted to record a whole catalogue of cover versions whilst working with fellow Antipodean Anita Lane, in the mid 1990s. The sleepy-eyed coquette singer/songwriter, object of desire for Nick Cave during The Birthday Party and burgeoning Bad Seeds days, Lane proposed to record the post-coital ‘Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus’ in English; originally performed of course by Gainsbourg and his English muse, Jane Birkin. Troubled by the inimitable quirks and idiosyncrasies, Harvey labored long and hard to translate the French into a less than preposterous English version: Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus as ‘I Love You…Nor Do I’ is no less steamy but Nick Cave, filling in for the nonplussed Gainsbourg, is a little too theatrical as the song takes on a less shrouded, more mooning, conversion.
Truly egged on, Harvey expanded his horizons and eventually recorded enough material for two albums and more: left over and unreleased at the time, the sociopath loony, ‘Dr. Jeckyll’ and soft focus love tragedy, ‘Run From Happiness’ have been bundled in with this re-release. But none of this would work without the quality of the supporting cast, who excelled. Channeling Gainsbourg’s leading ladies, Lane oozes that same knowing breathy sexiness, her entwined cooing dove vocals and comely sighs emulating the love nest fey Bardot and Birkin. Lane is joined in these misadventures by a qualitative backing of longtime collaborators, such as the already mentioned Cave, and newly appointed Bad Seed miscreant, Warren Ellis (both appearing on the 1997 Pink Elephants LP). Permeating and driving it all on are the lavish, though sumptuously tentative, string arrangements of French musician/composer Bertrand Burgalat and former Orange Juice bassist David McClymont.
The first of those suites, Intoxicated Man, doesn’t shy away from the hard truths, yet it is perhaps the lighter, popier and accomplished of the two records. Released in 1995, this hangover scoundrel of an album merges those blissfully unabashed dry-humping classics with its newly acquired 90s panache for European Yé-Yé, cutesy 60s nostalgia and, itself spurred on by reliving the golden decade, Britpop. However, Harvey also injects some of the more serious, Gothic-tinged, aspects of his infamous day-job band, into the pulchritude mix for good measure. Rather convincingly, Harvey’s intonations and impressions are quite good, and the English language versions of these iconic songs capture the Left Bank spirit: never availed of Gainsbourg’s ever-present genius, but nevertheless offering a fresh take.
Huskily delivered by our troubadour and caressed by Lane’s sultry enchantress tones, the deadpan Harvey begins as he means to go on, with the opening double-entendre chanson, ‘60 Erotic Year’. Flitting and flirting between erotically charged, metaphorical, pop and wanton lust, it proves the ideal introduction. Highlights are frequent, the chariot-to-the-gods, motorcycle riot, ‘Harley Davidson’, a petulant enough anthem of the ‘die young stay pretty’ variety – a rollicking union of Transvision Vamp and Saint Etienne -, just one of the many great three-minute bursts of rebel-rousing freedom. A predilection for auto-erotica persists with the arousing tribute to the Ford Mustang, and with the unfortunate plunge off the cliff road on the way to Monte Carlo, amusing ‘Jazz In The Ravine’ – “At dawn, they used a spoon to scrape up the remains.”
Harvey ups the ante on the carnival, rolling-conga fueled, ‘New York, USA’, and forlornly duets with Lane – stepping in for Bardot – on the fateful depression-era-most-wanted-on-the-run-Rom-com, and standout, ‘Bonnie And Clyde’. Bridget Bardot, whose fleeting but torrid affair with Gainsbourg left plenty of indelible marks, also inspired the album’s whirlwind, stabbing string, final affair, ‘Initials B.B.’: performed with brilliant understated morose.
Complimenting that first volume, the 1997 released, Pink Elephants, is a slightly darker proposition. It begins with the titular instrumental, a swooning cinematic teary-eyed lament, and is followed by the Massive Attack-esque, rolling trip-hop bassline and drum beat slinky, ‘Requiem’: Harvey with a Jarvis Cocker like contemptuous whisper, relishes the opportunity to sneer detestably, “You stupid cunt.” Continuing to echo Gainsbourg’s morbid curiosity and the allure of dysfunction Harvey tackles the pervy, voyeuristic ‘Hotel Specifics’; warns the kids to stay off the hard drugs (“don’t shoot-up that shit”) with wry cynicism on ‘To All The Lucky Kids’; and as Harvey imitating Gainsbourg imitating Jacques Brel, tells a sorry tale of repetitive boredom and depression, as the suicidal ‘Ticket Puncher’.
From the earliest incarnations via the various troubled and sexually heightened duets, Harvey cast his net wide, choosing a varied feast of delectable and lustfully spurned soliloquies and contemptuous exchanges between lovers. Mambo to disco-noir, each manifestation of the troubled, often objectionable and drunkenly debauched, flawed genius’s work is masterfully handled by the ensemble. Translating those quirks of language, phrases and cadence can’t have been easy, and though Harvey doesn’t exactly treat the source material with kid gloves or reverence, his dedication and love for Gainsbourg shines through every note and verse: It’s really quite an accomplishment; pretty much a resounding success.
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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