The Monthly Playlist selection of choice music, plus our Choice Albums list from the last month.
We decided at the start of the year to change things a little with a reminder of not only our favourite tracks from the last month, but also a list of choice albums too. This list includes both those releases we managed to feature and review on the site and those we just didn’t get the time or room for. All entries are displayed alphabetically.
Our Monthly Playlist continues as normal, with tracks from April (and a few from the end of March) chosen by me, Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Those Choice Albums____
Ayarwhaska ‘Dendritas Oscilantes’
(Buh Records) Review
Jonah Brody ‘Brotherhood’
(IL Records) Review
The Corrupting Sea ‘Political Shit’
(Somewherecold Records)
Manu Dibango ‘Dibango ‘82: La Marseille December ‘82’
(WEWANTSOUNDS) Review
Nana Horisaki ‘Scoppi’
(Kirigirisu Recordings)
iyatraQuartet ‘Wild Green’
Review
Pidgins ‘Refrains of the Day, Vol. 2’
(Lexical Records) Review
Pound Land ‘Can’t Stop’
(Cruel Nature Records) Review
Michael Sarian ‘ESQUINA’
(Greenleaf Records) Review
Conrad Schnitzler ‘RhythmiCon’
(Flip-Flap) Review
Sleepingdogs ‘DOGSTOEVSKY’
(Three Dollar Pistol Music)
Toxic Chicken ‘Mentally Sound’
(Earthrid) Review
The Playlist____
Joe Probet ‘Landslide’
Penza Penza ‘Carl Wilson’s Morning Routine’
Homeboy Sandman & yeyts. ‘Thanksgiving Eve’
Blu, August Fanon, Kota the Friend & R.A.P. Ferreira ‘Happy’
Aupheus w/ Kool Keith ‘It’s My Space’
Ukandanz ‘Yene Felagote’
Lamat 8 and Tartit ‘Afous Dafous (Yoga Flow)’
Manu Dibango ‘Waka Juju Part 3’
Michael Sarian ‘Glory Box’
sleepingdogs ‘sell fish’
Kannaste4 ‘Ups and Downs’
Your Old Droog & Edan ‘The Glitch’
Anarchitact, Myka 9, N ‘Daddication Pt. 1’
The High & Mighty, The Alchemist & Your Old Droog ‘The Rose Bowl’
Masai Bey & Kitchen Khemistry ‘Transit Authority’
Dr. Syntax & Palito ‘Sprung’
Claude Cooper ‘Happenings’
Batsauce ‘Murmurate – Instrumental’
Ammar 808 ‘Ah Yalila’
Kin’Gongolo Kiniata ‘Bunda’
Jonah Brody ‘The Ancestors Are Taking Workshops’
iyatraQuartet ‘Wild Green’
Wolfgang Perez ‘Preludio A Un Suicida’
Pidgins ‘Results Oriented’
Briana Marela ‘Vibrant Sheen’
Hectorine ‘Everybody Says’
The Pennys ‘Say Something’
Bernardo Devlin ‘5:45’
Ayarwhaska ‘Desasosiego2000’
Occult Character ‘New Mothball Empire’
VESCH ‘Who the Hell are You’
SUE ‘Get Over It’
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones 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 or interest in. 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 say thanks or show
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Reviews Roundup – Instant Reactions
The Pennys
Ayarwhaska ‘Dendritas Oscilantes’
Album (Buh Records) 11th April 2025
This album is noisy. It is chaotic. It is fun. It has an experimental vigour that should be applauded. The first track is called “XXX Speed Grindcore” and lasts 52 seconds and is the kind of thing John Peel would fill in 52 seconds of his show with. There are guitar riffs aplenty, ones that would make Billy Childish weep with joy. There are off-kilter vocal forays into electronic noise, feedback aplenty and the sound of someone clearing their throat. If this is what Peruvian Punk Rock sounds like please send me a Box Set.
NOTE: Presently no examples of the music available until release. Visit the Buh label bandcamp page.
The Conspiracy ‘Rainbow Prism’
Single (Metal Postcard Records) 13th March 2025
There is an old British psychedelic magic about ‘Rainbow Prism’ that should be celebrated by the current ever expanding psych fraternity. And the only reason I can think of why it isn’t, is because they have not heard it. For it has all the great qualities of British psych, and if this track was released on say Fruits De Mer Records, The Conspiracy would be all over Record Collector and Shindig and getting airplay from late night BBC 6 music: attention The Conspiracy deserves.
Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera ‘Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera (Remaster Reissue)’
Album (Think Like A Key Records) 25th April 2025
What we have here is not a new band. No, I have made an exception to the rule of only reviewing new music to review this wonderful reissue of the Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera’s self-titled, and only, album from 1968 (I think) reissued on the wonderful Think Like A Key Records.
It is quite a marvellous album full of mellotrons, sitars and screaming like psych rock guitars and a quite marvellously busy bassist that has to be heard to be believed. This is really a must have for any fans of 60’s psych or music lovers who want to get the aural feel of life in late 60’s swinging London.
NOTE: Presently no examples of the music available until release, but you can find or order the album here
Occult Character ‘Party Heaven’
Album (Metal Postcard Records) 4th April 2025
Party Heaven is an eight-track mirage of deranged emotional psychosis; a Party Platter of unhinged outpourings of electro-punk. Yes, Occult Character is back with eight short tracks that confuses and delights in equal measure; songs that captures the ugliness of modern life, painting a dark picture but with a huge pink lipstick smile scrawled all over it. Madness and Magic at its most extreme.
The Pennys ‘Say Something’
Track/Video
A song of pure sweetness and sadness; a lovely jangle guitar Odyssey of lo-fi home recorded indie bliss. A track worthy of the golden days of jangle pop when Subway supplied darn fine tooting slices of indie pop melancholy and not overpriced sandwiches. Album to follow this summer.
Poundland ‘Can’t Stop’
Album (Cruel Nature Records) 28th March 2025
You can lose yourself in a abattoir of current events, open the newspaper, open twitter or X or whatever it is called nowadays, read the news listen to the news watch the fucking news and you are overcome, overwhelmed with the sinking feeling of life in its most horrible reality. In this time of being on the brink of world war 3 and lost in the everyday mundanity of the 9 to 5 life or the hoping to get onto the mundanity of the 9 to 5 life just so you can get away from your bloody job coach and the latest nonstarter of training course you have to attend, its only three buses there and three buses back and there is a chance no matter how slight that they will keep you on in a full time position as a general dogsbody until they discard you when a much more viable and cost cutting option comes along. Poundland are the soundtrack to this life; they are the suppliers of the modern British folk song but not the hey diddly dee bounce your child on your knee with your finger in your ear type folk song, they are writing about street life for the everyday working class. They write songs about the everyday experience. They write about how the littlest thing can make a difference – like how the thought of the flapjack in your pocket can lift the mundanity of your working day – and the banality of tv, but not set to acoustic guitar and fiddle but the dense sound of noise or the simple drumbeat and the confusion, the feedback of the distorted guitar and bass: lo-fi punk at its best.
Poundland are one of the finest and important bands in the UK today, and capture the essence of true life in Britain in 2025 in all its ugly lack of glory.
Smellsofwitches ‘Bride of Fistula’
Single 28th March 2025
Brides Of Fistula is the debut release from new Wigan outfit, the wonderfully named Smellsofwitches. And it is a strange fish of a track, all experimental improvised glory but with a marvellously warm texture and feel. It may not have a melody that one can hum along to but is all the more fascinating and bewitching for that very reason.
SUE ‘Get Over’
Single
This is actually rather good, a throwback to those days of flannel shirts and The Late Show being dedicated to those pesky grunge bands from the good old US of A. And indeed, this track by Sue would not be out of place on that show: all angst vocals and heavy guitars. This could do very well, or would have 30 odd years ago.
Toxic Chicken ‘Mentally Sound’
Album (Earthrid) 16th April 2025
Let’s be honest, the only thing musically mentally sound about the great Toxic Chicken is the title of this album, as we in the know all know Toxic is one of the great musical eccentrics that live in the underground occasionally releasing mostly instrumental forays into the psych of electronica. And this wonderful album is an aural stroll through a strange Forrest as the sun goes down. Tracks that bewitch and amuse, entertain in equal measure. Songs that trip and drip through the mind, a relaxing frenzy of the old adage that a bird in the bush is a better than the bird in the freezer, or something similar that really is not too similar at all, and that is the perfect description of the works of The Toxic Chicken. For it sounds like electronica; it feels like electronica; but there is just something there that makes it much more. It has a slight dark ember of a twisted foray into the thinking of a musical maverick; an index into the mind of the closest thing the world of electronica has to Syd Barrett. Mentally Sound is indeed extremely sound but in the most magically unsound way.
Vesch ‘Passport’
Album (Incompetence Records) 11th April 2025
Art-Punk Cabaret is how Vesch describe themselves, and I’m not going to argue with that. For what we have is an enjoyable foray into a land where Xray Spex and The Teardrop Explodes and Lena Lovich rule the radio, as at different times the band remind me of all three. Maybe late seventies post punk and early eighties pop is what is in vogue in Russia at the moment, as that is where Vesch hail from.
Passport is an album made up of off-kilter and extremely enjoyable unusual inventive pop music. It may not be to everybody’s taste but is certainly to mine.
Our Daily Bread 327: John MOuse, Sue, Delta Mainline, The Pinheads, Earth Tongue, The Blue Orchids.
May 16, 2019
Reviews Roundup: Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
John MOuse ‘There’s A Hole In My Heart (An Area The Size Of Wales)’
(Keep Me In your Heart Records) 24th May 2019
John MOuse and the wonderfully titled ‘There’s A Hole In My Heart An Area The Size Of Wales’ is a rampant romp through the indie pop hills of blissful wanton love. A song that could bring the smile to the face and polish the soul of even the most miserable of curmudgeon gits: it made me smile anyway.
Orange Juice guitars and Neil Hannon like vocals erupt from the speakers to nudge radio programmers to add the ode to forthcoming playlists…if there is any justice in radio land that is. A fine pop single.
Sue ‘It Will Never End’
Out Now
Stooges and Sex Pistols riffs abound as Sue put in their claim for the for leaders of the wannabe kings of the new guitar movement – as there certainly are a number of fine guitar bands forming and releasing records at the moment, and Sue are indeed up there with a fighting chance of making their way To the top of the pile.
What gives Sue the edge is that they have a fine vocalist; he has the Lyndon sneer perfected, and when he screams “I gotta get outta here” in ‘Gotta Gotta Gotta’ you somehow believe him. This boy has soul. Anybody can scream but not everybody can scream with such style – he has a wonderful early Marc Almond quality too his voice (listen to Soft Cells Last Night In Sodom and see if you disagree).
I await with interest to see how this band develops and grows over future albums as they certainly show that they know how to knock out a decent tune and know their way around the art of songwriting, and am sure more influences will show as they progress with their career and yes they are indeed fine enough to have a career. Mark out as ones to watch.
The Pinheads ‘Is This Real?’
(Stolen Body Records) 24th May 2019
I love how the first track is called ‘Pure Hate’, it is a fine way to start a rock’n’roll LP and the song in itself lives up to its title; a song that has a subtle spite and fuck you quality that all the best Stooges tracks have. This is the sound of a band at the top of its game. The world, us, theirs, it’s there for the taking and the great thing about it is they know it is theirs.
It really is a joy to listen to guitar music as joyous as this: What is it about guitar bands that come from Australia they all seem to have a certain magic with a melody that we Brits seem to have discarded in a fit of generic apathy: maybe it’s the lack of sun. For this is what it sounds like to be young. Well, in a rock’n’roll road movie kind of way.
What I really love about this album is how it makes me want to be young again myself; it makes me want to experience hearing these riffs for the first time as they have been played so many times by so many bands over the years but when it is played with so much passion energy and enjoyment as this the pleasure spits itself out of the speakers. This LP should be forced into the lives of today’s teenagers and maybe then they will take their eyes off the screens of their fucking Smartphones and start listening to music and going to gigs and experience life instead of posting a “selfie” on instagram.
Is this real? is a fine LP, and indeed, is the real deal.
Earth Tongue ‘Floating Being’
(Stolen Body) 14th June 2019
Is Stolen Body Records quietly, or not so quietly, becoming one of the best record labels on the planet at the moment? It has not only just released the fine new LP by The Pinheads but also this wonderful album by Earth Tongue. [I wonder if they fancy releasing a Bordellos LP?]
If you have ever wondered what the sound of the d&a of the B52’s, Bongwater and the Cardiacs would sound like if they were melted down and stirred in a big rock n roll pot then purchase this fine album and find out, even if you haven’t ever wondered, still buy the LP anyway as at the time of writing it has stormed right into my 5 faves of the year already.
This is what real psych punk should sound like; distorted fuzz bass and guitar colliding with the chiming guitars with beautifully stomping drums. I never knew ethereal vocals could sound so enthusiastic, like an angel after drinking too much fizzy pop.
Floating Being is a beautifully produced rock’n’roll psych punk rock gem that could be destined for bigger things. I love discovering new exciting bands.
The Blue Orchids ‘The Magical Records Of The Blue Orchids’
(Tiny Global Productions) 7th June 2019
The Blue Orchids doing an LP of obscure 60s garage rock covers and an unrecorded song written with Mark E Smith, what is there not to like.
A quite beatastic affair in fact, I do like The Blue Orchids and am very passionate about 60s garage/psych music so it is pretty obvious I’m going to like it. It doesn’t matter that the versions are not quite as good as the originals as they are all performed with enough style and panache and love for the music for the album to be a huge success.
Something else I like about the album is that it sounds like all the songs could have been written by the Blue Orchids in one of their poppier frame of minds, and to hear Martin Bramah play garage rock riffs as sublime as these is quite heavenly, like for example, ‘Painted Air’, a stand alone wonder of a version.
This album is a nothing more or nothing less than a gem of a listen, go and give your ears a treat.
Delta Mainline ‘Bel Avenir’
3rd May 2019
This is quite a pretty record at times, resembling a quite not as heartbreakingly dark or as special Sparklehorse – a band I have a deep love for -, and at other times, it resembles Wilco. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; it is a most pleasing way to spend forty minutes or so.
Bel Avenir is one of those albums I’d love to hear stripped right down to the bone; to take away as much of the production as possible and see if it would stand up on its own two feet, or whether it would wither and diminish. Production sometimes can be the enemy of song and I feel as well produced as this LP is and as commercial as it sounds it may actually take the genius away from the song: as they are all in fact, very fine songs.
Although I think the LP may flow more if it wasn’t interrupted by soundcloud ads for just eat and car insurance, but I am sure they will not appear on the compact disc or vinyl version, or maybe they will. If so, an original and groundbreaking money making idea selling advertising space on your album. But back to the album. Delta Mainline are a band that wear their influences on their sleeves, but wear them pretty well and with great style. For example, ‘Mountain Music’ is a fine country lament that brings Spiritualized to mind – my favourite track on the whole Album. Bel Avenir is an album I would recommend to all fans of the above mentioned in this review.
Brian Shea is the maverick patriarch bandleader of the infamous St. Helens family cult lo fi band, The Bordellos.
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