The Monthly Playlist Revue: January 2024
January 30, 2024
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH
THE INAUGURAL MONTHLY PLAYLIST FOR 2024: Tracks chosen by the Monolith Cocktail team of Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea and Graham Domain that represent the eclectic and international tastes of the blog, the Monthly is our chance to remind our followers and readers of the last 31 days (we may have added in a few late entries from December too) in aural delights on the site, with music from review sections and posts, plus the odd track we might not have had room to feature, all compiled into one epic playlist.
TRACKLIST:….
Brion Gysin ‘Sham Pain’
George Demure ‘Wishful Thinking’
Donita Sparks ‘Sliding Through Life On Charm’
MIZU ‘Pavane’
Hesky ‘Dandelion’
The Bordellos ‘Running Back To You’
Bound By Endogamy ‘Nothing’
Rhys Bloodjoy ‘Vividsection’
Lynx 196.9, Arturo Banbini & Kool Keith ‘Wild Cowboys’
Shottie, Farmabeats & Skam2? ‘Organizized Confusion’
Black Josh, Sly Moon & Lee Scott ‘Council Pop’
K. Board & The Skreens ‘Mystery Magoo’
Vilmmer ‘Mauerkipp’
Kreidler Ft. Khan Of Finland ‘Loisaida Sisters’
Nehan ‘Ocean Side – Edit’
Park Jiha ‘Pink Lakes’
Neuro… No Neuro ‘A Day With Focus’
Cumsleg Borenail ‘Tsdtenhyilnm Sdhco Kiiwya U-‘
Sad Man ‘Go Egg’
King Kashmere, Cuth ‘Door Of Truth’
Essa, Yungun, Devise ‘What Eye See Pt. 2’
Oldboy Rhymes, Sage Francis, Rituals Of Mine, ALXNDRBRWN ‘Master Cleanse’
Tammy Faye Starlite, Barry Reynolds ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’
divr ‘Tea High’
Charles Lloyd ‘Defiant, Tender Warrior’
Corduroy Institute ‘Say Something Gentle’
FANALI, Vera Di Lecce ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’
Kiledjian, Sako Wana ‘Shaadu’
Lina ‘Cancao’
Che Noir, Your Old Droog, Evidence ‘Junior High’
Eda Diaz ‘Sabana y Banano’
Matthew “Doc” Dunn ‘My Love’
Letters From Mouse ‘Habitual Joy’
Nino Gvilia ‘Raspberry Hands’
Elea Calvet ‘Sinuous Ways’
Anni Kiviniemi Trio ‘Tiu Dropar’
C’mon Tigre ‘Nomad At Home’
Walter Kemp 3 ‘Defacto (Live)’
RELEASES ON THE RADAR FROM THE LAST FEW MONTHS & A METAL POSTCARDS LABEL SPECIAL/REVIEWED BY WRITER-MUSICIAN GRAHAM DOMAIN
Letters from Mouse ‘Clota’
(Subexotic Records) – Vinyl LP and Digital DL
Steven Anderson (Letters from Mouse) returns with a beautiful album of ambient dreamscapes played with a lightness of touch using modular synthesisers.
In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Clota was patron of the River Clyde and brought purity to the natural landscape. The album pieces reflect the beauty of nature and how nature evolves and changes, both with the day and with the changing of the seasons.
The album begins with ‘Frogspawn’, which sounds like new life emerging. A red sun high in the sky, watercolours smudged by the brightness of the day.
‘Juniper’ sounds like beautiful winter landscapes illuminated by a low winter sun. Wonderful.
‘Bowling Greens and Tennis Courts’ sounds like the sun coming out as the last remnants of a summer storm fade. It’s late in the evening but still light, as the sun has one last boastful appearance before the end of the day.
‘Piglet’ employs electronic harp and sounds very playful. It puts me in mind of summer, very early morning as the sun rises, rabbits and small animals appear, foraging for food, the dawn chorus of birds mixes with the hum of insects in flight, busy for the day ahead.
‘Cosm’ sounds like swimming under water, the sunlight getting stronger, shining through the water as you approach the surface.
‘Habitual Joy’ sounds like the warm morning sun, life affirming, awakening to the joy of a brand-new day.
Altogether it’s a beautiful album that deserves to be heard by many. It is also a great ambient album for meditation or creative work such as painting. Wonderful.
Various ‘The Faithful: A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull’
(In the Q Records / Bandbox) – Vinyl and Digital Download
As the name suggests, this is a tribute album to Marianne Faithfull with all benefits going to assist her in her recovery from long Covid.
Marianne has had a checkered career with numerous labels and her voice changed and became more ‘lived in’ as she struggled with severe bouts of laryngitis and addiction. This has not given her body of work a consistent identity. However, her struggles with addiction, illness and health problems have never stopped her working. After losing her voice, her last album was spoken word poetry backed by Warren Ellis (of the Bad Seeds). Marianne is an intuitive survivor!
Most of the songs on this tribute album were not written by Marianne. Her forte being in the way she sang and interpreted the songs of others. While not having great commercial success after the 1960s, she was always appreciated by other singers, musicians and music critics. Her most well known album Broken English often being name checked by other artists. Thus, we get 19 appreciative artists covering the songs of MF. The standout tracks are ‘Working Class Hero’ by Iggy Pop and Cat Power, ‘Why’d Ya Do It’ by Shirley Manson and Peaches, ‘Broken English’ by Joan As Police Woman and ‘Love, Life and Money’ by Lydia Lunch. Hopefully, it will make enough money to help MF in her darkest hour whilst also creating interest and investigation of her colourful back catalogue, with maybe some reissues. Get better soon you husky voiced inspiration.
C’mon Tigre ‘Habitat’
(Intersuoni) – Vinyl and Digital DL
This is the fourth album by international music collective C’mon Tigre featuring, amongst others, Seun Kuti, Arto Lindsay, Xenia Franca and Giovanni Truppi.
It’s a beautiful menagerie; a wondrous sound fusion underpinned by Brazilian and African rhythms. The essence is always danceable and the album becomes more and more fascinating with each play, incorporating elements of jazz, electronic, funk and a subtle blend of influences from all around the world. Both Tricky and Sly Stone are in the mix.
Standout tracks include ‘The Botanist’, ‘Teenage Kingdom’, ‘Nomad at Home’, ‘Na Danca Das Flores’ and ‘Sixty-four Seasons’, but to be honest all the tracks are excellent.
If you are open to innovative music or want to insert something different and exciting in your DJ set, then this is a great album to check out.
A METAL POSTCARDS LABEL SPECIAL::
The Bordellos ‘Nobody’s Listening’
ALBUM – Digital DL
As Bill Fay said ‘life is people’ and here we have thirteen songs about the ups and downs that make up peoples’ lives. The themes are universal, the culture – survival in a world where the outgoings are more than the income. The highlights are many.
‘Running Back to You’ is a ‘standard-in-waiting’, ready-made for covering. Indeed, it may be that time of the year, but with a few Christmas bells added and a video with white snow parkas (a la East 17) it could be a Christmas smash!
‘Brief Taste’ has all the warped charm of an Eels track, with the refrain ‘Seduction ain’t that much of a hobby when you ain’t got that much of a body.’ Brilliant!
‘Soundtrack to getting your end away’ sounds like New Order jamming with Bob Dylan. Great lyrics and supernatural melodicism. Poetry for the soul!
‘Marianne’ is part Pixies, part The Fall, part Ted Hughes. Wonderful!
‘Tom Waits Blues’ has the melancholy atmosphere of a rainy day spent scouring shops looking for your favourite bands’ new album only to find no one has it in stock! Soaking wet and missed your bus, but there’s always tomorrow!
‘Soft Get Smile’ is a true anthem. A sing-a-long for the disenchanted. Hope among the ruins.
This is another perfect ‘slice of life’ album from The Bordellos. If all they had was a pair of spoons and a cassette-recorder, they would still be driven to record these hazy snapshots of life, in the same way that L S Lowry splashed his canvas with the daily drudgery and drama of the northern working-class. Was anyone paying attention to Mr Lowry at the time? No! But today there are hotels, theatres and tree-lined streets named after him. (Even Bowie was one to acknowledge the match-stalk painters genius titling his best album Low)!
No one (sic) may be listening to The Bordellos today but one day… recognition will be theirs! (Bordellos Night on the X Factor anyone)?
Tim. M ‘Turn This Thing Around’
Single – Digital Down Load
This is the second solo single from Tim. M (the Aliens singer). A piano based ballad, it falls into the space somewhere between James Blunt, Harry Nilsson, Crowded House (Neil Finn), Karl Wallinger (World Party) and the New Radicals.
The song grows on you with each play and after a few plays I knew all the words. Orchestrally it reminds me of Bowies ‘Life on Mars’, leading me to sing Bowie-voiced backing vocals on the chorus of ‘Listen to me now…yeah yeah’. If he stays with the piano and keyboard sound, I want to hear more.
Andi Roti (featuring Oti Soe) ‘Shazam Me At the Beach Bar’
Single – Digital Down Load
This is a great chilled dance record destined to be played in many air-conditioned beach bars around the globe. The bass line sounds very Chic-like, while the funky guitar is underpinned by warm keyboards and bongos. When it starts it reminds me of a Thom Bell production from the 70s. Topping it off are soulful Indonesian vocals from Oti Soe. Already an underground classic – make sure you ask for it on your next night out! Stone Cold Electric! #Shake that Leg Thang!
K. Board and the Skreens ‘Beauty Lies Everywhere’ and ‘Mythical Creature’ Singles – Digital Down Loads
Two singles released in rapid succession.
‘Beauty Lies Everywhere’ sounds like Sultana by Titanic deconstructed by robots and beamed live to Roswell Roxy Cinema in 1968 to soundtrack a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western. Not the usual pop hit – aliens, robots and time travel meet Ennio Morricone! Fantastic!
‘Mythical Creature’ is a brooding synth fare that sounds like the soundtrack to John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 crossed with a possessed cat on heat and dwarfs dancing round a maypole. All recorded during an alien-visit-power-cut-surge! Stup-id-end-ous! Play it when doing Cat -Yoga!
Choice/Favourite Albums Of The Year: Part One: A to F: A Journey Of Giraffes to Nick Frater
December 11, 2023
SELECTED BY GRAHAM DOMAIN, BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA & DOMINIC VALVONA
Just when we thought it couldn’t get much worse: it did. 2023 has been yet another, if not even more depressing shit show on the world stage and closer to home. The stalemate defence of Ukraine, Hamas’ barbaric massacre and rape on the 7th October, and the Israeli retaliation; the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region; the cost of living crisis; threat of pandemics and all kinds of illness; bedbugs; A.I.; strikes; activism; fuel poverty; Iranian protests; and the continuing horror show of a zombie government dragging on, being just some examples. 2023 qualifies as one of the most incomprehensible years on record of any epoch; an ungovernable country in the grip of austerity point 2.0 (the architect of the last one now back to haunt us all again), and greater world untethered and at the mercy of the harridans on either side of the extreme political divide, the billionaire corporates and narcissist puritans.
Despite the myriad of problems that face artists and bands in the industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, and the ever encroaching problems of streaming against physical sales and exposure, people just can’t quit making music. And for that we, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys do. In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so, instead of those silly, factious and plain dumb numerical charts that our peers and rivals insist on continuing to print – how can you really suggest one album deserves their place above or below another; why does one entry get the 23rd spot and another the 22nd; unless it is a vote count –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic, democratic alphabetical order – something we more or less started in the first place.
Whilst we are proud to throw every genre, nationality together in a serious of eclectic lists, this year due to various collaborators commitments, there will be a separate Hip-Hop roundup by Matt Oliver in the New Year. The lists, broken up this year into three parts (A to F, H to N, P to Z), includes those albums we’ve reviewed or featured on the site in some capacity, plus a smattering of those we just didn’t get the time to include. All entries are displayed thus: Artist in alphabetical order, then the album title, label, who chose it, a review link where applicable, and finally a link to the album itself.
A_
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Empress Nouveau’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen & Reviewed By Dominic Valvona/ Link
‘Imbued by a suffusion of influences, most notably Harold Budd and Susumu Yokota (once more) but also Kazumichi Komatsu, Sakamoto & Sylvain, Andrew Heath and Eno, John Lane spins, weaves and spindles the essence of place and time; stirring up dulcimer-like tones of the Orient, a hand-ringing school (could also be a call to prayer, or assembly point prompt, perhaps the intermission signal at the opera or theatre) bell, or softly evoking a South American wilderness.
This is yet another essential album from one of the best artists working in this field of subtle, sometimes breathtaking and sublime, exploration – although this is experimenting without sounding like you’re experimenting, if that makes sense. It’s a joy to experience.’ DV
Dot Allison ‘Consciousology’ (Sonic Cathedral)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by Matteo Maioli/Link
‘Folks? backstory? Chamber-pop? I do not know. All this and also none of it. Simply: Dot Allison.’ MM
Anohni and the Johnsons ‘My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross’ (Rough Trade)
Chosen by Graham Domain
Anthéne & Simon McCorry ‘Florescence’ (Oscarson)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘A both hallowed and moving merger of seasonal changes, suffused with a certain gravitas and meaning, the pastoral is revalued and sent out on a voyage of reflection. Florescence is yet another minimalistic work of sublime quality from a collaboration perfectly in-synch with each other.’ DV
Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff ‘Magg Tekki’ (Sing A Song Fighter/Mississippi Records) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘In action, they sound out a controlled raucous of rustling, shaking ancestral calls and conscious version of Afro-beat, Afro-jazz and Afro-soul; like Kuti sharing the stage with Laba Sosseh and Seckou Keita. As a counterbalance, a pause from the rolling and polyrhythmic drums, there are short interludes of time-outs in the community and under nature’s canopy of bird song: the sound of the breeze blowing through the trees overhead and all around, and of children playing in the background, as the kora speaks in communal contemplation.
At times they create a mysterious atmosphere of grasslands, and at other times, play a more serenaded song on the boulevards that lead down to the sea. On fire then, when in full swing, but able to weave a more intricate gentler sound too, the AGBDGY prove an exhilarating, dancing combo with much to share: the ancestral lineage leading back centuries, but lighting up the present.‘ DV
B__
Moonlight Benjamin ‘Wayo’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘No one quite channels the “iwa” spirits and musical, drum-beating ceremony of Haitian vodou like one of its most exhilarating priestesses, Moonlight Benjamin. Returning with her atmospheric and grinded-scuzz swamp-blues foil Matthis Pascaud for a third manifestation of hungered electrified vodou-blues, Moonlight roughs up and adds a wider tumult of energy to her vocally incredible and dirt music imbued sound of deep southern roots, West African and Hispaniola influences: an all-round Francophone sound you could say, from Louisiana to Mali and, of course, her homeland of Haiti.
As wild as it is composed, Moonlight Benjamin takes the vodou spirits back home to Africa, before returning, via the bayou, to Haiti on another fraught electrified album of divine communication.’ DV
Blur ‘The Ballad Of Darren’ (Parlophone/Warner)
Chosen by Brian Bordello
‘An album of nostalgia, melancholy and heartbreak, and one of Blur’s best.’ BBS
Brian Bordello ‘Songs For Cilla To Sing’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by DV & GD/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘As ridiculous as it may seem on the surface, the lower than lo fi (making Sparklehorse sound like a flash git bombastic ELO in comparison), nee no fi King of the well-worn Tascam four-track and St. Helens idiosyncratic Les Miserable, was only one person away on the Venn diagram of Cilla Black’s orbit. His potential songbook of flange-y distorted (more through low grade recording techniques) and curmudgeon demos did make its way to the, then retired from singing, Liverpool songbird – in the three or four decades before her death more the star of TV presenting and hosting than performer.
If imagining Brian Epstein inviting Ian McCulloch to front The Tremolos, or The Red Crayola, Spaceman 3 and a budget Inspiral Carpets time-travelled back to 1962 sounds like one incredible proposition, then this songbook is for you.’ DV
The Bordellos ‘Star Crossed Radio’ (Metal Postcard)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘The latest release by St Helens finest is a cabinet of curiosities containing some wonderful lo-fi gems and hitherto lost standards!
This album is one to treasure, an Aladdin’s cave of eclectic life affirming songs. The Bordellos are the fine web that holds the stars in place!’ GD
Jaimie Branch ‘Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War))’ (International Anthem) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘As an unwittingly last will and testament, the late experimental trumpeter Jaimie Branch’s final led album with her Fly Or Die ensemble is a beautiful collision of ideas and worldly fusions that pushes and pulls but never comes unstuck. In fact, despite the “world war” suffix backdrop this album of both hollered and more disarming protestation colourfully embraces the melodic, the groove and even the playful.
Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((word war)) is an accomplished album that channels the legacies of Chicago, New Orleans and New York to create an eclectic modern adventure in protest jazz.‘ DV
Julie Byrne ‘The Greater Wings’ (Ghostly International)
Chosen by GD
Bex Burch ‘There Is Only Love And Fear’ (International Anthem)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘In the moment extemporized expressions in multiple locations, both in Europe and North America, the feels on Bex Burch’s new album are led or prompted by a hand made xylophone. Any yet, there’s no particular pattern nor pathway to these captured performances; Burch joined as she is by a myriad of notable artists/musicians, all of whom only met for the first time before each improvised performance.
Each day is a different sound and a new canvas for Burch, who transcends her bearings and musical boundaries. There’s rhythm to these improvisations, a real groove that at times counterbalances the passages of avant-garde expression to create a non-linear journey of emotions, thoughtfulness and sense of yearned fears.’ DV
C___
Luzmila Carpio ‘Inti Watana: El Retorno Del Sol’ (Bongo Joe)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Full of wonderment and magic, the Bolivian performer and composer Luzmila Carpio returns with her first all-encompassing album in a decade. Imbued with an ancestral heritage and language that predates the Conquistadors colonial apocalypse, Carpio weaves and plays with her Aymara and Quechua roots, its creation stories, shamanistic ceremonies and humble custodianship of nature.
Carpio invites us into her dreams and meditations with a wonderful message of universal care and respect for that which nurtures and feeds us; an unbroken link to civilizations like the Incas, propelled into the 21st century.’ DV
Billy Childish & CTMF ‘Failure Not Success’ (Damaged Goods Records)
Chosen by BBS
‘Quite simply what Billy Childish does best: spit feathers at an unplucked rock ‘n roll chicken.’ BBS
Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers ‘Somanti’ (Bongo Joe)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Reuniting for a second explosive dynamic album of electrified Vodou and Mizik Rasin, the Haitian collective Chouk Bwa and the Belgian production duo The Angströmers once more propel ritual and ceremony into an otherworldly futuristic setting.
Music from another dimension, the Haitian roots music and performative religious invocations and words of wisdom from Chouk Bwa are sent through a vortex into the future on another successful union.’ DV
Julian Cope ‘Robin Hood’ (Head Heritage)
Chosen by BBS
‘An album of psych, folk and pop wizardry; one that matches up to the best of the man. Cope is on a run of brilliance that is equal to his run of greatness from the late 80s to early 90s. A national treasure, and one of the last living motherfuckers.’ BBS
Creep Show ‘Yawning Abyss’ (Bella Union)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘Make no mistake, John Grant is a genius! As half of Creep Show he provides the moments of sheer joy! ‘Bungalow’ comes over like a song that could have been on any of his brilliant solo albums, post ‘Queen of Denmark’. It’s a fantastic vocal, the music dark, funny, sexy, – electronic music at its best and a good song to boot! Elsewhere we find him singing strange rhymes on the title track ‘Yamning Abyss’ – a song that grows on you with each play.’ GD
D____
Vumbi Dekula ‘Congo Guitar’ (Hive Mind/Sing A Song Fighter)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Removed from a full-on band setting of loud blazed, wailed horns, thundering drums and chanted vocals Kahanga “Vumbi” Dekula’s legendary guitar shines on a new solo album of his melodious virtuoso playing.
Hive Mind’s inaugural partnership with Winqvist’s own Sing-A-Song-Fighter label is both a joy and discovery; the Congolese star, more or less, singlehandedly capturing the listener’s attention with a captivating septet of natural, expressive performances.’ DV
Diepkloof United Voice ‘Harmonizing Soweto: Golden City Gospel & Kasi Soul’
(Ostinato Records) Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Incredibly moving and enriching for the soul, the united Diepkloof chorus has achieved the seminal with nothing more than their voices; releasing perhaps one of the year’s most essential records.’ DV
Dexter Dine ‘Flood’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by Gillian Stone/Link
‘The self-defined Brooklyn, NY-based “apartment rocker” conjures a diverse and expansive sound that is a “mixture of melodic samples, multi-part drum grooves, and off-kilter saxophone solos”. From the Animal Collective vibes of “Flooded Meadows”, “Splatter In Two”, and “Lockeeper”, to the Juana Molina-esque “Peanutbutter”, to the Bossa Nova feel of “Valley Of Air”, the beats he creates are the driving force behind this electroacoustic pursuit.
Dine is a prolific artist, and his work is ethereal, striking, and drenched in both sunshine and melancholy.’ GS
Matt Donovan ‘Sleep Until The Storm Ends’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘In the face of political, social discourse and ruin, lawlessness, loss and anxiety Donovan captures the evocative moments and scenes we all often take for granted; turning nighttime walks, the memories of loved ones into something musically and sonically lasting.
Barefoot Contessa daydreams sit well with clavichord buzz splintered boogies on yet another enriching and rewarding album that slowly unfurls its understated balm of warmth and also protestation gradually over repeated plays. On the fringes certainly, a true independent diy artist, Matt Donovan is far too good to stay under the radar. Do yourselves a favour, grab a copy on bandcamp now.’ DV
Dur-Dur Band Intl. ‘The Berlin Session’ (Outhere Records)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Marking the first session of new-recorded music since the halcyon days of their heydays in 80s Somali, the revivalist legacy incarnation of the Dur-Dur Band is back with a truly “international” sounding groove.
Simultaneously familiar whilst offering a fresh songbook (of a sort), the Dur-Dur Band Int. Berlin Session is as lilting as it is dynamic. Above all it’s always grooving to a unique fusion of worldly rhythms and beats, catapulting that Somali funk to new heights and hopefully making new fans with lively and cool performances. Nothing should keep you buying a copy.’ DV
Dutch Uncles ‘True Entertainment’ (Memphis Industries)
Chosen by GD
Dyr Faser ‘Karma Revenge’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘It turns out that Dyr Faser are rather good at mixing the esoteric krautrock of the Amon Düül family (especially the Wagnerian acid-wash and otherworldly vocals of Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz) with grunge, alt/post/space rock and doom; bridging morbid curiosities, spirals of melancholy with black sun fun, fun, fun! A great duo to discover. ” DV
E_____
Eamon The Destroyer ‘We’ll Be Piranhas’ (Bearsuit Records)
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘Performed with a wit and wisdom only matched by the beauty and musical genre hopping extravagance not seen since John Peel dropped his record collection down three flights of stairs… A madness of electronica, psychedelia, dance and pop; at times sounding like an inspired Momus after sharing magic mushroom soup with Cornelius and Ivor Cutler. Yes, there is magic in these tracks that one can lie back and completely lose themselves in…’ BBS
The Early Mornings ‘Ultra-Modern Rain’ EP (Practise Music/Rough Trade)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD /Link
‘It is an exhilarating ride of moody bass lines, spikey guitar, distorted chords and garage drums with vocals by Annie Leader.’ GD
Ex-Norwegian ‘Sooo Extra’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘Sooo Extra is the 14th album from Ex Norwegian and like all the other Ex Norwegian albums I have heard it is a rather excellent affair full of pop hooks and has a lovely undercurrent of darkness, a bittersweet taste of songwriting savvy you really do not come across everyday: sadly.’ BBS
F______
Fantastic Twins ‘Two Is Not A Number’ (House Of Slessor)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Competitive from the outset, birthed from a primordial cosmic womb, the Fantastic Twins in Julienne Dessagne’s otherworldly sci-fi fantasy go through hellish travails and separation before finding a final resolution. From the bawled birth of ‘I Was First’, the Berlin-based French producer, musician and vocalist explores the magic, duality and multiplicity of twins over an album of metallic, chrome and liquefied material sci-fi and otherworldliness: even the haunted and supernatural.
Albums from Carl Craig, Man Parrish, Fever Ray, Andy Stott and others, alongside the influence of Cosey Fanny Tutti, Chris Carter, Coil, Nina Simone and Pan Sonic can be added to the depth and range of this accumulative mood board and framework.
It proves a fertile concept and doorway to the investigations of the “psyche” and its relationship to all manner of inquisitive explorations. A most striking sophisticated debut from an artist with depth and curiosity.’ DV
Fat Francis ‘Oyster’
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Disillusioned despondency and a touch of the roguish are filtered through softened hues of idiosyncratic lo fi beauty, as Fat Frances’ hardened, worn-down posterior reveals a heart-wrenching drip-drip pouring of poetic insecurity, dealt and languorous resignation.
Yet despite the wretchedness of the world, the austerity and the lawlessness and directionless malaise of our times, there’s a melodious magic to be found in this rough diamond’s (excuse the cliché) Northern lament. It’s as if Frances has somehow brought an air of Bonnie & Clyde folklore, or an enervated and far less violent Badlands to a West Yorkshire pastoral landscape.
Oyster has quickly become one of my favourite albums of 2023 – the balmy washes and heartache wistfulness drift of ‘Billy’, a worthy earnest but sublime song, being just one highlight. It should if life was fair, bring attention and plaudits to this artist, but I won’t hold my breath.’ DV
Fhae ‘Sombre Thorax’ (4000 Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is a wonderful album of ethereal, ambient, dream-folk-pop that ebbs and flows like the tides and inhabits its own world of subtle beauty. Sometimes, mists of the sea seem to creep into the music and the edges of reality become blurred, the music shape shifting into another dimension!
A fantastic debut album, I can’t wait to hear more!’ GD
Fir Cone Children ‘The Urge to Overtake Time’ (Blackjack Illuminist Records)
Chosen by GD/Reviewed by GD/Link
‘This is fantastic album from Berlin based band Fir Cone Children. It sounds like it was recorded in 1979 when New Wave (Post Punk) creativity took hold for a couple of years and no two bands were the same!
Time Needs an Upgrade’ sounds like the Cure mixed with the Pop Group. ‘Snowblack’ sounds like Wire led by Jeff Lynne! ‘The Inability to Raise the Left Corner of my Mouth’ sounds like the Buzzcocks if they had been from San Francisco circa 1968. ‘It Feels Complete’ sounds like the Cramps if they had been Buddhist Monks! ‘Spider School’ sounds like the Scars mixed with the Undertones and Interpol. ‘One Hundred Years’ sounds like the Sound mixed with Wire and MBV! But moreover, although there are always comparisons to be made, Fir Cone Children have an individual spark; the music is much more than the sum of its influences! Perhaps, the best German band since Faust!’ GD
Flagboy Giz ‘Disgrace To The Culture’ (Injun Money Records)
Chosen by DV
‘Exciting bounce-hip-hop-modern-R&B cross-pollinations from the colorful, parading Mardi Gras tail-feather shaking chief, who once more leads with attitude and verve another street theatrics company of like-minded artists on a strut through New Orleans. The second album from motivator, performer, producer and MC, Flagboy Giz – he of the world famous Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians -, and his crew of contributors, is a rambunctious hyper merger of The Meters, Neville Brothers, Lee Dorsey, Dr. John. Master P, Lil Wayne and DJ Jubilee. What’s not to like.’ DV
Flat Worms ‘Witness Marks’ (Drag City)
Chosen by DV
‘I’d like to believe the reemergence of the L.A. garage-punk-rockers is down to my glowing review of the their Live In L.A. album from 2022 (which made our choice albums of that year). But whatever the reasons, their return (back once again in the Ty Segall fold) is very much welcome; especially as they’ve lost none of that vociferous wired attitude and spirit. Witness Marks is an assured, mature and heavy vortex of growling and fierce, but slacker too, Gang Of Four, Salem Trials, Modern Lovers, The Fall and The Southern Death Cult sounds. And if that doesn’t grab you, nothing else will.’ DV
Flexagon ‘The Towers I: Inaccessible’ (Disco Gecko)
Chosen by DV/Reviewed by DV/Link
‘Through a near domination of the high seas, a skill in winning wars, a Norman lineage and generally to annoy the French, the Channel Islands have been a British dependency for centuries. During that time a whole lot of history has passed under the bridge; the last 200 years of which are channeled by the Guernsey native, artist and environmental, site-specific composer Flexagon.
A work of site-specific atmospheric stirrings and timelessness, The Towers I: Inaccessible album translates the off-limits sites of Guernsey into a multi-layered sonic map for inquiring minds. An Island life, history and shared trauma is transduced across a mix of styles and delivery methods as both repurposed and more derelict out of bounds architecture is allowed to breath and to tell stories of the history that’s passed through its doors. Even with the all too awful reminders of Guernsey’s occupation (finally liberated in the May of 1945 after nearly five years of German authoritarian rule; at least a thousand of its people deported to camps in Southern Germany) these towers transmit plenty of arresting Meta and fertile research, which Flexagon and his foils have turned into a lush, dreamy and mysterious veiled journey.’ DV
Nick Frater ‘Bivouac’
Chosen by BBS/Reviewed by BBS/Link
‘The art of the concept album is alive and well and living in the confines of Nick Frater’s new album Bivouac; an album about escaping post industrial Britain and seeking solitude in a woodland sanctuary.
All the tracks run into each other giving you the blanket of warmth and melody, which really is not a bad thing and with the coming Winter months can indeed be an essential requirement as it may be the only warmth we get this year. It’s sunshine pop after all. It brings to mind the magic of Jellyfish and Squeeze at their best. The 70s am pop of Andrew Gold, Billy Joel, Todd Rundgren all collide and cause an explosion of one of the most heart warming and joyful albums of the year.’ BBS
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.
Monthly Playlist: May 2023: Delilah Holliday, Tony Allen, Alecs DeLarge & King Kashmere, Lucia Cadotsch…
May 31, 2023
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH: TEAM EFFORT
The Monthly Revue playlist of 2023; a choice selection of tracks from the last month on the blog. Curated by Dominic Valvona with Matt Oliver on the Rap Control once more, and music from reviews by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Graham Domain and Andrew C. Kidd. Expect to hear the unexpected.
TRACKLIST//
Alecs DeLarge & King Kashmere ‘Damien Darhk’
Samuele Strufaldi ‘Davorio’
Les Dynamites ‘Pop Oud #2’
Andrew Hung ‘Ocean Mouth’
Matt Saxton ‘Freedom’
John Parish & Aldous Harding ‘Three Hours’
Lunar Bird ‘The Birthday Party’
YOVA ‘Feel Your Fear’
Atmosphere ‘Dotted Lines’
Illogic ‘Hot Lead’
Odd Holiday, Mattic & Daylight Robbery! ‘It Is Whut It Iz’
Delilah Holliday ‘Silent Streets’
Big Yawn ‘Crying’
Tony Allen ‘No Beginning’
Harold Land ‘Chocolate Mess’
Baby Cool ‘Magic (Live)’
Dyr Faser ‘This Menace’
Mekong ‘Out Of Control’
The Telescopes ‘(The Other Side)’
The Bordellos ‘Attack Of The Killer B-Sides’
Adjunct Ensemble ‘Nothing Grows/How Dare You Be Free’
Kassa Overkill, Danny Brown & Wiki ‘Clock Ticking’
Depf & Linefizzy ‘My Love’
Paw One ‘Sepekku’
Cas One ‘Silver Spoons’
Axel Holy & Badhabitz ‘Runnin’
Efeks, The Strange Neighbour & Downstroke ‘Its Only Right’
Chocolate Hills ‘Mermaids’
Orange Crate Art ‘We’re Just Innocent Men’
Tinariwen Ft. Fats Kaplin ‘Ezlan’
Cherry Bandora ‘Esy’
Danuk ‘Sewqo’
Lucia Cadotsch ‘I Won’t’
Jman & The Argonautz ‘Green Light’
Chuck Strangers & Obii Say ‘Say’
Billy Woods, Kenny Segal & Danny Brown ‘Year Zero’
Caterina Barbieri ‘Swirls Of You’
August Cooke ‘Flying Swimming Dredging’
Liz Davinci ‘I’m Through With Love’
Kayhan Kalhor & Toumani Diabate ‘Anywhere That Is Not Here’
Oceans ‘Mike Tysong’
Creep Show Ft. John Grant ‘Moneyback’
Jean Mignon ‘Canadian Exit’
GRAHAM DOMAIN’S RUN-THROUGH OF RECENT AND UPCOMING NEW RELEASES
__/SINGLES\__
THE TELESCOPES ‘Where Do We Begin’
(Tapete Records) (Download only Single)
It seems only vocalist Stephen Lawrie remains from the original group and only his voice reminds of The Telescopes classic sound!
This is the first single taken from forthcoming album Of Tomorrow. As such, it sounds a bit like the House of Love with Lou Reed – a psychedelic song about filling in the hole in your soul with more emptiness – the modern consumer society looking for fulfillment amid the waffle of internet influencers, ‘reality’ celebrity and brand name hypnosis! I await the new album with interest!
MATT SAXTON ‘Freedom’
(Bandcamp) (Download Single)
This is an electronic track with folktronica leanings that reminds me of John Grant. It’s a delight – like eating your favourite ice cream! Give it a listen while eating a Cornetto!
YOVA ‘Feel Your Fear’
(Bandcamp) (Download Single)
Unusual pop song from Yova – interesting, odd and compelling! Yova are a duo – with exposure they could be massive!
SALEM TRIALS ‘ESPERS SYC (See Your Crime)’ / ‘End of Level Boss’
(Metal Postcard) (Download Double A Side Single)
Excellent Double A Side from Salem Trials – ‘Espers SYC’ comes across like the Fall playing a speeded-up Joy Division ‘Exercise One’ – some nice jarring chords and fried bacon rhythm!
With singalongs like ‘reasonable doubt my arse’ it could become a staple at Strangeways Indie disco! The crime? Presumably using your intuition (ESP) – contravening Section 7 of the State Controlled Thought Act 2023.
‘End of Level Boss’ meanwhile conjures up the ghost of Ian Curtis dancing to James Brown after the sacked JB’s were replaced by a funky Sunn O))) – Mesmeric!
___/ALBUMS\___
OCEANS ‘Dreamers in Dark Cities’
(Bandcamp) (Vinyl/DL)
There are a few bands named Oceans but this particular band hail from Melbourne Australia. They sound like they have been listening to a lot of 1980’s indie music like the Sound, the Chameleons, New Model Army, Cocteau Twins, Pale Saints, Slowdive, The Scars.
‘Pure’ sounds like a poppier Pale Saints and is perhaps the best song on the album. “I just want to feel alive” he cries as the music rises in life affirming sonic radiance! ‘Apart’ reminds me of the Scars with touches of Ride and Pale Saints. ‘Feels Like You’ hints towards Slowdive, MBV and Ride.
‘Mike Tysong’ sounds like New Model Army circa ‘The Ghost of Cain’ but with vocals akin to Adrian Borland (the Sound of ‘The Lions Roar’ fame). ‘Soft’ has hints of The Chameleons guitar sound combined with vocals akin to Lush! ‘Look Into My Eyes’ employs the 3 / 4 rhythm beloved of The Cocteau Twins circa ‘Treasure’. An album of youthful energy and life affirming beauty. The songs are energetic, well-constructed and well-produced. I like the album, but the band need to bring more of their own creativity to the table so they sound like themselves rather than the sum of their influences. Once they find their own sound, they will be magnificent. They are part way there and I predict great things for them in the future.
CREEP SHOW ‘Yawning Abyss’
(Bella Union) (CD/Download Album)
Make no mistake, John Grant is a genius! As half of Creep Show he provides the moments of sheer joy! ‘Bungalow’ comes over like a song that could have been on any of his brilliant solo albums, post ‘Queen of Denmark’. It’s a fantastic vocal, the music dark, funny, sexy, – electronic music at its best and a good song to boot! Elsewhere we find him singing strange rhymes on the title track ‘Yamning Abyss’ – a song that grows on you with each play.
The band Wrangler are the other half of Creepshow. Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder sharing vocal duties on such tracks as ‘Moneyback’ – “You want your money back / I didn’t think so”! Overall, a fine return from Creep Show who are doing a short tour of the UK over the summer!
JEAN MIGNON ‘AN/AL’
(Metal Postcard) (Download Album)
Raucous debut album by New York based Johnny Steines. A mixture of high energy garage punk and high-speed rock and roll – it sounds like a live album such is the energy contained in the grooves!
‘Tackled By Men’ recycles parts of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, whilst ‘Canadian Exit’ has echoes of Warsaw’s ‘Failures’. If he can produce this excitement in a live-setting he willsurely make his own impact! Primal Rock and Roll that screams from the speakers andexcites like a high-speed car chase!
Key Tracks: All of them!
The BORDELLOS ‘Starcrossed Radio’
(Metal Postcard Records) (Download Album)
The latest release by St Helens finest is a cabinet of curiosities containing some wonderful lo-fi gems and hitherto lost standards!
Beginning with the glam stomp of ‘Attack of The Killer B-Sides’ – name checking great B- Sides by the likes of The Smiths, Stone Roses, The Beatles, Billy Fury, Shangri-Las, New Order, Rolling Stones, Mersey Beats etc… All delivered in a Mark Smith type drawl. Like any music fan, flipping a 45 over and discovering a great B Side was exciting and would lead to more investigation of the artist’s music.
‘Never Learn’ sounds like a lost standard to me – reminding of Morrissey when he was good, the accordion sound giving it a shade of the Pogues! The nice melody is under-pinned by what sounds like a balloon deflating, a synth or a cat being slowly trod on mixed with static and silence! Experimental brilliance!
‘Free New Music Day’ meanwhile takes the sound of the Doors Texas Radio and the Big Beat and transfers it to Northern England where you can ’take a cut price trip to the stars – singing Hallelujah in Karaoke bars’ – poetry from the streets Jim Morrison could only aspire to!
Other highlights include the strange melody picked out on guitar on ‘Sunk and Screwed’, which could be the theme to a weird kids cartoon! Oddly disturbing! I’m still humming it! ‘Vicious Circle’ could be a single. ‘Hurting Kind’ sounds like a lost Beach Boys campfire surf song – Brilliant!
The album ends with the sublime ‘Life Love and Billy Fury’ – a part electronic song where the melody or maybe some of the chord changes put me in mind of New Order without actually sounding like them! Great lyrics – another ‘lost standard’!
This album is one to treasure, an Aladdin’s cave of eclectic life affirming songs. The Bordellos are the fine web that holds the stars in place!
The Monthly Playlist: September ’22: No Age, The Beach Boys, Al-Qasar, King Kashmere, Sampa The Great, Yemrot….
September 30, 2022
PLAYLIST
TEAM EFFORT/CURATED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
After avoiding Covid for nearly two and a half years (with periods of shielding) I’ve finally succumbed to the dreaded virus this week. And it’s hit me hard. But because I’m such a martyr to the cause of music sharing I’ve managed to compile this eclectic bonanza of choice music from the last month.
The Monolith Cocktail Monthly features tracks from the team’s reviews and mentions, but also includes those tunes we’ve just not had the room to feature. That team includes me (Dominic Valvona), Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Andrew C. Kidd and Graham Domain.
We’ve supplemented the original audio playlist with a video version on our Youtube channel. This will feature a slightly different lineup (the electronic music collective Violet Nox’s ‘Senzor’ primer for one).
The full track list is as follows:
Dead Horses ‘Macabro’
Grave Goods ‘Source’
No Age ‘Compact Flashes’
Etceteral ‘Rome Burns’
Al-Qasar Ft. Jello Biafra ‘Ya Malak’
Clear Path Ensemble ‘Plazma Plaza’
Antonis Antoniou ‘Syntagi’
Ocelot ‘Vanha Hollywood’
The Beach Boys ‘You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone – Live At Carnegie Hall’
Rezo ‘Soemtimes’
Blue Violet ‘Favorite Jeans’
Teo Russo ‘Novembre’
Keiron Phelan & The Peace Signs ‘Guessing Game’
Micah P. Hinson ‘Ignore The Days’
Sonnyjim/The Purist Ft. MF DOOM & Jay Electronica ‘Barz Simpson’
Salem Trials ‘Just Give Up’
The Bordellos ‘Nurse The Screens!’
Legless Trials ‘Ray’s Kid Brother Is The Bomb’
S. Kalibre ‘Hip Hop World’
King Kashmere/Leatherette ‘G-Cell’
Depf/Linefizzy ‘Rain’
Isomonstrosity/645AR/John Lenox Ft. Danny Brown ‘Careful What You Wish For’
Tess Tyler ‘Try Harder’
Qrauer Ft. Anne Muller ‘Rund’
Sampa The Great Ft. W.I.T.C.H. ‘Can I Live?’
Rob Cave/Small Professor ‘Eastern Migration’
Salem Trials ‘Jc Cells’
Wish Master/Axel Holy Ft. Wundrop ‘FLIGHT MODE’
Alexander Stordiau ‘Nothing’s Ever Acquired’
Simon McCorry/Andrew Heath ‘Mist’
Andrei Rikichi ‘At Home I Hammer Ceramic Golfing Dogs’
OdNu ‘My Own Island’
Floorbrothers ‘In Touch’
Conformist X H O R S E S ‘Heddiw’
Slim Wrist ‘Milk Teeth’
Forest Robots ‘Everything Changes Color With The Rainfall’
Noah ‘Odette’
Yara Asmar ‘there is a science to days like these (but I am a slow learner)’
Tess Tyler/Spindle Ensemble ‘Origami Dogs (Graphic Score Interpretation)’
Christina Vantzou/Michael Harrsion/John Also Bennett ‘Piano On Tape’
Yemrot ‘Big Tree’
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Roundup
Unless stated otherwise, all releases are currently available to buy.
SINGLES:
Schizo Fun Addict ‘Fate Chaser’
Schizo Fun Addict are one of the Magnificent Seven; one of the most important bands in the underground today: one of the seven bands that are making music as good as anything released in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
Music wise they are a jack-of-all-trades and master of them all. They take musical genres and mix them with a cunning ease and panache that other bands can only stand with mouths agape wondering how they achieve such beauty and experimental originality. With this their new single they dip their toes into the magical myth that is the Laurel Canyon of the late 60s, and produce a song of supreme summer jangle. This is the sound of Michelle Philips combing her hair; the sound of Arthur Lee preening himself in front of a full-length mirror in the castle. This is pure nostalgia, a song of the summers we no longer seem to be blessed with; a tear stained memory of teenage romantic yearning.
bigflower ‘The Pill’
The dark world of bigflower once again is upon us with a lovely strange voyage of psyche and psychosis; an off-kilter journey where not everything seems to be where it should be, but strangely fits together perfectly. A song that strangely could and should last longer, which is indeed a very rare thing; an aural journey of a song with shuffling drum beat and beautifully simple strummed electric guitar led astray in a wave of vague drone solitude. Another winner from Ivor Perry.
Borben Dallas & His Filipino Cupids ‘Too Convenient’
I love this single. It starts off all scuzzed-up rock ‘n’ roll and dank and pringy and urgent, then in the middle goes all experimental and almost Beach Boys like. It gives one the impression that Borben Dallas has just found god or at least a God substitute. The post-finding-God section of the song goes back to the first but with an added pringiness that one can only bow their head or even shake it in a Status Quo like manner to. A spellbinder of a single. Originality is not dead it is alive and well and living in the essence of Borben Dallas and His Filipino Cupids.
Martha and the Muffins ‘Save It For Later’
The man who wrote this song is actually a bit of a fan of my band The Bordellos, calling me the natural successor to John Cooper Clarke. Maybe he meant I too am skinny and wear all black, but sadly my hair has long gone the way of my hopes and dreams completely out the window. But that man be the wonderful talented songwriter Dave Wakeling who of course was and is frontman of Ska Beat legends The Beat and this my dearest cherubs is a cover of their classic ‘Save It For Later’, and it’s not a bad version. It’s all post punk jangles and a melody no doubt one would hear emitting even echoing on a beach [see what I did there] from a tiny transistor radio this summer. Martha And The Muffins have indeed done a pop delight of a cover and has managed to put a smile on my face and a skank to my hips. [Please do not take that image to bed with you, I beg of you].
James Howard ‘Baloo’
(Faith & Industry)
As I sit mid Sunday morning writing reviews, this is pretty perfect listening; a song that takes and pulls in the art of traditional songwriting and wraps it around ones heart, squeezing tears and hope from your now moistened eyes. A track of pure beauty; a song I can imagine the great Elvis Presley performing with such gusto and panache extinguishing all the previous night’s demons. James Howard could well be one to watch and I await an album with my breath somewhat baited. A true beaut of a song.
Fast De ‘Miss Trutti Finally Found Her Gem’
(Bloomer Records)
A lovely instrumental surprise of fuzzed-up pop grandeur, fuzzy synths get off my tail eloquence, and a sweet, so sweet scuzzy melody that it will not just rot your teeth as you chew on it, getting all the juicy goodness from the track, but your grandmas and her twice removed wannabe lovers teeth as well. Yes indeed it is times like this one can only sit back and enjoy the taste of adventure in music.
Pineapple ‘Trials’
(Metal Postcard Records)
Pineapple is a fruity little dish of a band, taking in post punk and talking in post punk sensibilities. It’s an EP of nostalgic splendor; one that takes me back to the days when the local punk band had to compete with the jukebox in the down at heel pub venue, we of a certain age all have played/frequented at some time in our lives. Yes, this is an EP of enjoyable guitar punky scrunge that takes in Billy Childish, Julian Cope and The Fall in equal measure, and ‘Snake & Ladders’ is one of the best songs about football I have heard in many a year.
Linn ‘Happiness is Real’
I love this track. I have listened to it a number of times in a row, and found it a song that is both utterly bewitching and quite disconcerting: imagine Jane [‘Its A Fine Day’ fame] being swallowed whole by early My Bloody Valentine on the sunniest yet saddest day of the year. I hope Linn has an album coming out soon as I think I’m ready to be seduced.
ALBUMs/EPs
Faust ‘Punkt’
(Bureau B)
Punkt is the lost album by Faust and everybody loves a good lost album. But in honesty many lost albums actually deserve to remain lost and never be found. They are lost for a good reason normally, the reason quite often being it is not very good, but years later are looked through rose-tinted nostalgic eyes and held to one’s collective bosom as a work of previously unreleased genius.
But there is always an exception, and like Shacks masterwork Waterpistol, Punkt is that exception.
Punkt carries on where Faust IV left of, with a brief ear turned and tuned into melody where the industrial noise is swamped with psych-tinged song writing skill and invention. ‘Morning Land’ sounding very much like what Einstürzende Neubauten would make years later with great success. ‘Knochentanz’ is indeed a Chinese burn of a track, taking jazz and electronic noise to new extremes; like a melting corpse dripping into the eyes of the soulful bugler at dawn wondering whether alcohol will taste quite the same again, it is almost funky and after many spirit enhancing drugs could well be danced to and even at the length of 11.45 it never outstays its welcome. ‘Fernlicht’ follows as a short psychedelic interlude, again covering the noise and drone with a quite becoming melody. And that is a fair summing up of the album actually: the normal Faust invention of drone and noise but with a covering of instrumental beauty, as the quite breath-taking journey of a track ‘Schön Rund’ proves: the sound of Elton John slowly sinking into the ocean; a treat indeed.
So as a lost album this is indeed a found again treasure; one that all lovers of Krautrock will enjoy and stroke the chins over a martini to [or other tipples of choice].
Jelly Crystall ‘ILY’
(Smuggler Music/PIAS) 3rd June 2022
All said and done this EP is rather beautiful. The opening track reminds me of the beautiful Paul Quinn and the Spirit of Independence albums, which is indeed high praise. There is such a romantic 50s early 60s magic that those periods in time oozed with, and Jelly Crystal have captured the magic without being too retro.
This is music to be heard coming out of your radio whilst you slow dance with your significant other in the darkness, in the park with the cool evening breeze whispering sweet nothings…truly magical.
Alas The Sun ‘Wild Honey Inn’
(Taxi Gauche Records)
The beautiful sound of summer is what we have here; jangling guitars beautiful harmonies and well-written songs with heart and soul. Everybody who reads these reviews of mine knows I am a sucker for bands with boy/girl vocal duets, and Alas The Sun are indeed blessed with such a thing; both voices blending into a soft honey dew like substance that melts and makes you feel all warm inside.
Whether it be the jazzy ‘Distant Drone’ or the subtle ‘White Rabbit’ soft shuffling beat of ‘Love At Twenty-Two’, which is almost Prefab Sproutish in its texture and feel, Wild Honey Inn is an album of laid-back beauty; an ideal record to soundtrack sheltering in the shade on a too hot summer’s day, when lazing about relaxing is all one needs in life.
Black Monitor ‘Snake Of My Heart’
(Ikarus Records)
Snake Of My Heart is an album full of tuneful joyful psychedelic pop, and lovers of such will indeed enjoy it. To be honest, there is nothing not to enjoy about it, as it is vibrant, wide space music made to fill the wide musical space in your life; an album taking in the influences of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, the Brianjonestown Massacre, early Blur and many other fine pop bands touching on c86 jangle, especially on the Sarah Records like ‘On A Wire’. But there is a slight difference as Black Monitor has a slightly dark edge to the music, a slight uneasiness that many bands that produce music of this ilk do not quite manage to achieve.
There’s a slight appealing wonkiness and depth to the songs that I think will draw me back to and explore more and more over the coming weeks, a quality that many fail to produce with alt radio friendly songs. This a quite lovely and rewarding listen.
Super Hit ‘Pocket Rock EP’
(Metal Postcard Records)
There is a beauty in lo-fi jangly guitar music that I cannot resist, and this seven-track mini album is full of the beautiful little blighters. Any one of the seven songs could quite easily fit onto the compilations Sarah Records released in their all too brief existence. Songs that beguile and charm in equal measure, songs soaked in DIY bedroom lack of glamour but steeped in a yearning and heartache and pure charm that really is hard to beat, and Super Hit is an artist deserving of more attention.
Spiral Of Silence ‘Landmark’
(Jezus Factory)
This is Spiral Of Silence’s first release in 20 years, a band I have not come across before, and described as the Belgian Joy Division – probably because they are from Belgium and have that Peter Hook/Cure bass thing going on and are quite dark and gothic. And despite all that I still enjoyed the EP.
It is nothing I have not heard before, but The Spiral Of Silence do the Joy Division thing very well and cover their darkness with layers of radio friendly melody, and I can see it appealing to the long black coat brigade [if they still exist].
Our Daily Bread 335: Stereo Total, Spam Javelin, Bloome de Wilde, Skyjelly, Krause, Goa Express…
June 28, 2019
REVIEWS
Words: Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Proving a highly popular roundup from the idiosyncratic Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, the cult leader of St. Helens dysfunctional geniuses The Bordellos, this regular splurge of advice/critique and pontificating is doing a roaring trade with our readers. We even love the constant self-publicising – God knows he needs it -; a constant reminder that the Bordellos have been gnawing away at the coalface equivalent of the music industry for decades without success, knocking out albums at a rate that even makes The Fall seem fucking slack – though they have lost their titan figurehead leader in recent years and grinded to a halt, that might be an unfair comparison to make. You can find a tiny portion of that back catalogue here… A new album – which Brain has aggrandised as one of the best albums ever made, period -, Bordello And Clarke, is due out next month.
Skyjelly ‘We Pull The Stars Over Our Heads Like Covers’
(I Heart Noise) 25th May 2019
This is a slandered youth of an LP, a jab in the eye with a rusty nail, a rewound coil waiting to spring the bejesus out of a waiting catholic mass of persuasion.
Slaughtered guitars and hyperactive bass makes light with the idea of topping the hit parade with reverb littered witterings of your off-the-head-neighbour trying to make sense of the backward spinning of the Brianjonestown Massacre after overdosing on the best tea served in the china cup, after being retrieved from Carol Deckers vagina.
Skyjelly are the type of band you would take home to meet your parents if they were dead or blissfully unaware of any situation; the type of boy I would love my daughter to bring home as it would mean she would be enjoying her youth and hanging out with people with a outsider view on life and art: A band that sticks two fingers up to the bland and monotone; a band with an attitude that can only be admired, and an LP that should be enjoyed by all.
Stereo Total ‘Ah! Que! Cinema’
(Tapete Records) 12th July 2019
This LP is bloody genius. Any LP that kicks off with a track that sounds like The Prodigy but played on a Bontempi organ is not going to go very wrong, and then carries on with the pure blissfulness of French lo-fi garage pop.
‘Ich Bin Cool’ lives up to its name – if only all pop could be as glorious as this I would actually walk about with a smile instead of my constant unbecoming frown.
There are melodies that could melt the heart of the sternest of motherfuckers: Tin pot drum machine twangy guitars wonderful sexy French female vocals dripping with drop dead Sandie Shaw like shoeless beauty, and when the ballad ‘Methadrine’ kicks in, has there been a better song recorded this year? A beautiful offbeat ballad of sadness and humour and drugs: “nine days a week we were so high”.
This LP is so good it has pissed me off a little. I thought I had made the album of the year with the Bordello and Clark Atlantic Crossing LP, but this has knocked it into a cocked hat. But don’t mind, especially when there are bands capable of making records of such beauty; when bands can come on like Stereolab one minute and a French Velvet Underground the next – ‘Brezil Says’ is a track worthy of the Velvets at their finest: pure pop heaven.
I think the playing of Ah! Quel Cinema may become a daily event this year; an LP to lose yourself in the pure beauty of perfect lo fi pop.
Spam Javelin ‘Fake News’
(link2wales Records) 7th June 2019
In these days of blandness and political correctness I’m happy to report that there is something of an underground renaissance of the guitar band; the kind of band that actually have something to say and to bring back the feeling of ‘oh fuck off you cunts, Buddy Holly did not die so you could pitch tune the hell out of this smartphone friendly soulless money making piece of fluff.’
Leading this charge are the North Wales non stop gigging machine Spam Javelin, who have just released a fine piece of punk rock fuck offery in the shape of Fake News. Three minutes of pure rock ’n’ roll, nothing more nothing less: Do you need anything more than three minutes of pure rock ’n’ roll? If the answer is yes you do, then you are dead from the waist down and the neck up. You are nothing but a chest with arms. I look forward to the LP, The Crack Whores Of Betws Garmon, and so should you.
Bloome De Wilde ‘Soul Siren’
8th July 2019
There is beauty in life and there is life in beauty, and this single by Bloome de Wilde is brimming with both; a wonderful shimmering haze of early summer evenings wrapped in a chocolate box wish; a slow dance to the long forgotten hits of Sergio Mendes; the rapture of your first long lingering kiss, this song in under four minutes captures the magic of all this.
This lovely chime of aural pop art is the first single taken from Bloome de Wilde’s debut solo LP, which going off the loveliness of ‘Soul Siren’ could well be this years “Shoegaze Bossa Nova” – which of course was last year’s submergence in blissful if onlys by Schizo Fun Addict. If Bloome de Wilde’s debut is half as good, then we are truly in for a summer of love.
Listen download and enjoy.
Krause ‘The Ecstasy Of Infinite Sterility’
(Riot Season) 5th July 2019
Rock ’n’ roll sludge, but good rock ’n’ roll sludge.
The Goa Express ‘The Day’
5th July 2019
I like this: It has a wonderful old early 80s post-punk feel about it, like the Teardrop Explodes before they signed with a major. It’s like a ramshackle polyphonic Spree; a band erupting out of the rehearsal rooms with a willingness to share their love of pop music with the garage psych subtleties of a young Syd preferring to do lasting damage to his brain than spend time in the company of geography teachers. I look forward to the LP.
Albums of 2018: Part One: Idris Ackamoor to The Moonwalks
December 3, 2018
Selected by Dominic Valvona, Matt Oliver and Gianluigi Marsibilio.
The decision making process:
Being the exhaustive and eclectic set of features our (choice) albums of the year are, we know you probably don’t need to or want to dally about reading a long-winded prognosis of our judgement process. But here it is anyway.
Continuing to shy away from fatuous rating systems and ‘best of lists’, the Monolith Cocktail endeavors to offer a more visceral and personal spread of worthy ‘choice’ picks, with no album dominating or holding any particular numbered position – unlike most of our contemporaries lists, stuck with the ridiculous task, for example, of explaining why one album is more deserving of their fatuous numbered spot than another.
With no hierarchical order, we’ve lined our album choices up alphabetically; split into two features – A (Idris Ackamoor) to M (The Moonwalks), andN (Thomas Nation) to (Thom Yorke) Z.
All of our favourite new and reissued albums and EPs from 2018 are of course considered to be the most interesting, vibrant and dynamic of the year’s releases. But the best? Granted, to make this list you have to have made some sort of impact, but we’d never suggest these entries were categorically the best albums of 2018: even if that might be true. Instead our list is an indicator of our amorphous tastes, rounding up another year in the life of the Monolith Cocktail, and we hope, introducing you to titles and artists/bands that may have dropped below the radar or got lost in the noise of more commercial better promoted releases.
All selections have been made by me (Dominic Valvona), Matt Oliver and Gianluigi Marisibilio.
A.
Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids ‘An Angel Fell’ (Strut Records)
Serving a worthy musical apprenticeship from and imbued by the masters Coltrane, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Cecil Taylor, the polymath musician, activist, director of The Pyramids ensemble and torchbearer of spiritual and Afrofuturist jazz, Idris Ackamoor once more makes holy communion with the cradle of civilisation on the lamentable An Angel Fell. Imploring a unified message, a connectivity, a reminder that we can all trace our ancestry back to the same place, Ackamoor follows up on ‘We All Be Africans’ with an epic sweeping album of Afro-jazz 2-Step ‘Warrior Dances’ and plaintive primal jazz catharsis.
Walking through the Valley of The Kings; sailing aboard Sun Ra’s Arkestra; conducting the empyrean; evoking Kuti’s Lagos Afrobeat jive; Ackamoor and his troupe traverse the mismia of a broken, corrupt world, delivering cries of anguish and auguers aplenty. Whether penning requiems to the gunned-down black victims of the US Justice system (‘Soliloquy For Michael Brown’), or in radiant prayer (‘Sunset’), they effortlessly and wondrously summon forth the leading lights of each musical genre they inhabit. Afrobeat, gospel, spiritual, funk, blues, future-past-present all come together in one of the year’s most important, enlightening and defining opuses.
(Dominic Valvona)
Ammar 808 ‘Maghreb United’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Throwing the traditional unwieldy Maghreb, before it was demarcated and split into colonial spheres of influence, back together again in the name of progress and unity, Sofyann Ben Youssef fuses the atavistic and contemporary. With past form as one half of the Bargou 08 partnership that gave a modern electric jolt to the isolated, capitulating Targ dialect ritual of the Bargou Valley on the northwestern Tunisia and Algeria border, Youssef under the moniker of Ammar 808 once again propels the region’s diverse etymology of languages, rhythms and ceremony into the present, or even future: hopefully a more optimistic one.
Jon Hassell’s ‘possible musics’ meets Major Lazer, the traversing adaptations from the Gnawa, Targ and Rai traditions and ritual are amorphously swirled or bounced around in a gauze of both identifiable and mystically unidentifiable landscapes. Mixing modern R&B, dub, electro effects with the dusky reedy sound of the evocative gasba and bagpipe like zorka, and a range of earthy venerable and yearning vocals from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria artists, Youssef distorts, amps up or intensifies a resonating aura of transformative geography and time.
Nothing short of visionary. Full review…
(DV)
Angels Die Hard ‘Sundowner’ (Jezus Factory Records)
Admittedly taking some time to grow on me, the Angels Die Hard combo’s Monsterism Island meets Les Baxter ethnographic phantasm of a remote Southeast Asian archipelago instrumental concept album, Sundowner, has finely unfurled its full magic: just in time to be included in the annual albums of the year features.
Imbued with a legacy of progressive, alt-rock, psych, exotica and post-punk influences plus Julian Cope’s Krautrock compendium, the Angels transduce and channel a cornucopia of styles once more as they soundscape the tropical island of Andaman. An environmental clarion call as much as a progressive rocking exotica, Sundowner is dedicated, at least partially, to the environmental tragedy of the plastic-strewn oceans.
Beachcombing a radioactive luminous landscape of musical opportunity, from bummer downers to mind-expanding space rock jams, these Angels expand their horizons (literally), on the band’s best album to date. Some ideas work better than others of course, but when they do get it right they produce some fantastic opuses of amorphous abandon. Full review…
(DV)
Any Other ‘Two, Geography’ (42 Records)
The story of Adele Nigro (Any Other) is made of beautiful songs originating from a desire to subvert a rather conservative musical culture, just like the Italian one.
2018 has given us many beautiful pieces, of the most varied atmospheres, but to find a compact and complete album in each of its parts, touch refuge in Two, Geography (42 Records).
The numerous collaborations that Any Other has collected, as a musician, in recent years, have been invaluable to develop, refine and embellish her poetics.
The sonorities of the album are very distinct, and at the same time loquaciously soaked by all the experiences brought on stage (or in the studio) during the year that is inexorably past.
With Two, Geography, however, there is more, Adele coming out with her head held high, they are not only beautiful pieces that stand out for their immediacy and vitality, but also the international character of the project.
Any Other’s work was immediately presented as something else, for depth and acuity, starting from that ‘Roger Roger, Commander’ or from the same singles who announced Two, Geography.
The simplicity in intertwining linear arpeggios, bright rhythmic lines and a voice, both delicate and particular, makes us immediately think of the disc in a different way, we immediately understand that such a sound must be appreciated with attention and in its various nuances.
Since the first bars of ‘Silently. Quietly. Going Away’ (the first work of Any Other) you could see her skill in shaping a song form as a real opportunity for musical and textual speculation.
The song ‘Capricorn No’ is a monument of modernity that comes on, not only for its immediate and deep style, but because it plays with the atmosphere that you can hardly expect from an Italian artist.
The work as a whole is a challenge, a part of a musical resistance, a progressive push in the sea magnum of ideas that too often settle down, even in brilliant artists.
Any Other is the 2018, the beautiful and fundamental face to make us remember that, all in all, this year went well.
(Gianluigi Marsibilio)
B.
Anton Barbeau ‘Natural Causes’ (Beehive/Gare du Nord)
Ian Hunter via Robyn Hitchcock via Luke Haines via Julian Cope, wrapped inside an enigma, the Sacramento born, Berlin-based, Anton Barbeau changes his style of delivery repeatedly yet always maintains an idiosyncratic ingenuity in whatever he does. The results of an aborted project under the Applewax banner, made in the run up to the 2016 US elections, Natural Causes is the reflective, more open antithesis to what would have been a far darker and mournful proposition. Richly melodious and halcyon, this most brilliant new collection finds Barbeau both transforming some of the back catalogue (for the better) and penning new glorious sounding maverick pop songs: The quality of which are cerebral, memorable, melodic but also adventurous and inventive.
Barbeau and a congruous cast of guests lend a touching caress to a songbook of contemporary surreal lyrical musings and love songs. Unrushed, even breezy in places but hardly lacking intensity, there’s an air of nostalgia in homages to the radio stations and DJs that first sparked interest in the young Barbeau on the Hunter fronts Tom Petty band finale Down Around The Radio. And with a nod to one of the music cannons greatest ever records, The Beatles Sgt. Pepper kaleidoscope, a stab at a popsike hit (a missing link from one of Strange Days magazines 80s halcyon compilations) is made with a song that was originally written to be recorded at the venerated Fab Fours’ inner sanctum of Abbey Road, with the quirky Disambiguation.
Fans of Barbeau will be once again charmed by his unique songwriting abilities, and those still unfamiliar with the inimitable generation X artist of renown will find much to love about his psychedelic pop genius. Full review…
(DV)
MC Paul Barman ‘Echo Chamber’ (Mello Music Group)
“Potent politics, funky lounge lizard off-the-tops and bizarre hypotheses, burrowing its way through the toughest of leather bound volumes to have you picking the bones out for weeks on end” RnV May 18
In many ways this is the consummate Paul Barman album, but it bears repeating straight off the bat, while trying super hard to not sound incredulous, that ‘Echo Chamber’ features production from ?uestlove, DOOM and Prince Paul (funky/sidekick status, from stoop to playground), with additional contributions from Mark Ronson (upping the ludicrousness with a tweak of The Ronettes’ ‘Sleigh Ride’), Masta Ace and Open Mike Eagle. That’s some serious string pulling from an explicitly cult concern only reinforcing his standards in lewdness and a smart Aleck riot act both downplaying and toadying a racing IQ (his relocation to Mello Music Group keeps him in his own lane as well). Ridiculous as ever with the dictionary and remaining a brilliant observer – see ‘Youngman Speaks on Race’, and ‘Commandments’ going one better by taking the Decalogue to Sesame Street and Biggie’s Bed-Stuy – Barman carries on making the longest of long shots with battle raps that’ll bamboozle and WTF one-liners that Jackanory or congress will sadly never benefit from. Bigger, better and geekier than ever.
Bixiga 70 ‘Quebra Cabeça’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Translating as the ‘puzzle’, Bixiga 70‘s latest album is a full 360-degree panoramic evocation (both joyful and lamentable) of their homeland’s African roots. Translating those roots, an ancestry that runs through many of the band members (some individuals descended from the Africa-Caribbean religion of ‘candomble’ for instance), Bixiga are also inspired on this journey by some of the highly talented artists they’ve shared various stages with over the years. Artists such as the Ghanaian highlife singer Pat Thomas, the Nigerian sublime traversing saxophonist legend Orlando Julius and Brazilian octogenarian star João Donato. Incorporating the lot they merge their brass-y signature carnival funk and shaking Afrobeat sass with cosmic voodoo, Afro-jazz and sloping funk.
The quality as always shines through on every track, with the visions and evocations of both Africa and Bixiga’s city home of Sao Paulo articulated by an energetic but also ruminating soundtrack of the tribal, funky, cosmic, tropical, gospel and ritual. The slave portal of Benin, further outlying deserts of the sub-Sahara and busy rhythmic bustles of Nigeria are channeled via the melting pot hubs of Brazil on the group’s most epic, ancestral and geographical straddling album. It only remains to see just how great it will sound live on stage. Full review…
(DV)
The Bordellos ‘Debt Sounds’
Brian Bordello ‘The Death Of Brian Bordello’ (Metal Postcard Records)
In a parallel universe the Jesus And Mary Chain never left East Kilbride; Julian Cope never formed the Teardrop Explodes; and Brian Wilson was in fact born in St. Helens in the late 1960s, and recorded all his opusus on a Tascam four-track, inspired by Mark E Smith. This alternative world is one the dysfunctional family circle The Bordellos inhabit. Probably the best lo fi rock’n’roll-meets-post-punk-meets-the-Spaceman 3 hapless band you’ve never heard of, the prolific group, headed by the patriarchal masthead Brian Bordello, have been luridly, sinisterly, laughably and pessimistically knocking-out their brand of disgruntled alternative yearnings for a decade or more with little attention from anyone other than us loyal fans – who probably need our heads examined in all honesty. You either get them or you don’t. And you could find some of their more confrontational dark humour (songs about the BBC killing John Peel, still loving the musical cannon of Gary Glitter, and on this album, Debt Sounds, some sinister predatory sexual allured shclock about Rolf Harris) too unsettling, even perverse.
Debts Sounds, in the manner of a Half Man Half Biscuit play-on-words, is The Bordellos low cost Pet Sounds. That may not be initially obvious. But stay with me on this one. Fashioned and realised by Brian from the band members and even affiliates, girlfriends and whatnots various outpourings and late night sessions into a most epic song book of unrequited love, sick love, obsessed love, compromised love, salacious love, and even some tender love – they excel themselves on the laid bare and touching ‘Spirograph’ and quasi-Beatles ‘My Life’ meets the hardened north romanticism of ‘I May Be Reborn’ (Take this for a line: “Every smoking chimney my Statue of Liberty”), Debt Sounds is full of great maverick performances and songwriting, made in a period of crisis, anxiety and manic depression. Ok…so more Don Van Vliet than Brian Wilson, but still a valid comparison.
Whereas will you hear odes, homages and eulogies to Jimmy Campbell and Faron’s Flamingos to a back track featuring vague indifferent shades of Thom Yorke, Cope, Velvet Underground, Red Crayola, Joy Division and the The Seeds? Nowhere that’s where. Brian Bordello’s Track-by-track breakdown…
Knocking out records on a whim, it seems inconceivable that the leader of the Bordellos has never actually released a solo effort until this year (and only a few weeks from the end of 2018). Paring down, enverated, Brian Bordello steps outside the family unit on his debut solo, The Death Of... Not expecting many flowers on that graveside elegy of a album title, Brian takes a sort of reflective pause and looks back on a litany of tropes that have come to encapsulate his resigned fatalism. With only a clipped, rough and unguarded acoustic guitar and his trusted Tascam for company, Brian pays tribute to rock’n’roll icons Eddie Cochran (again) and Mark E Smith (who Brain thinks should be canonised as a saint); wears his heart on his sleeve cooing songs about lingering memories of bunk-ups, unrequited wooing gone wrong and lost kitchen sink romances; and languishly but candidly weary sonnets on depression.
As lo fi as it can get, Brian’s most intimate, personal performances yet strip away all the caustic dissonance and fuzz to reveal his most brilliant songwriting. The Death Of is an often beautifully morose songbook that lays bare the talents of a true uncompromising outsider.
(DV)
Brace! Brace! ‘S/T’ (Howlin Banana)
Producing gorgeous hues of softened psychedelia, new wave, Britpop and slacker indie rock, this young but sophisticated band effortlessly melt the woozy and dreamy with more punchier dynamic urgency on their brilliant debut album.
Squirreled away in self-imposed seclusion, recording in the Jura Mountains, the isolation and concentration has proved more than fruitful. Offering a Sebastian Teller fronts Simian like twist on a cornucopia of North American and British influences, Brace! Brace! glorious debut features pastel shades of Blur, Gene, Dinosaur Jnr., Siouxsie And The Banshees (check the “I wrecked your childhood” refrain post-punk throb and phaser effect symmetry guitar of ‘Club Dorothée’ for proof) and the C86 generation. More contemporary wafts of Metronomy, Mew, Jacco Gardner, the Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Deerhunter (especially) permeate the band’s hazy filtered melodies and thoughtful prose too.
A near-perfect debut album, an introduction to one of the most exciting new fuzzy indie-pop bands of the moment. Full review…
(DV)
Apollo Brown & Joell Ortiz ‘Mona Lisa’ (Mello Music Group)
“Rugged but always smooth, reflective with a forked tongue…there’s a lot of comfort to be taken from the union of two opposing authority figures exercising supreme quality control” – RnV Nov 18
This duo’s mutual will to only work with the elite – Joell Ortiz as a member of Slaughterhouse, Apollo Brown extending his collaborative run after shared albums with Skyzoo, Ghostface Killah, Ras Kass, Planet Asia – is head start number one. Yes these are extremely experienced experts in their field who shouldn’t drop the ball, but 12 tracks, one emcee and one producer, two guests maximum, and everything absolutely finely tuned is still the best advantage to press home. A steadiness to both performances has BPMs instantly finding their sweet point so instrumental richness can build, settle, simmer and seduce, and vocals slip straight into the pocket housing an imperceptible line between recognition and vengeance. The introspection of ‘Mona Lisa’ pays respects with a feeling that it doesn’t pay to dwell, that while everything may be upbeat and secure – visuals of sauntering down a street and coloured in something like a high definition sepia – slippery slopes, with ‘Cocaine Fingertips’ the album’s most rotten apple and situations like the bittersweet resonance of ‘That Place’, are always around the corner. Another win for the seemingly indefatigable Mello Music Group as well.
(Matt Oliver)
C.
The Cold Spells ‘S/T’ (Gare du Nord)
Esoterically gentle and wistful, The Cold Spells debut long player is a gauze-y organic and ambiguous (to a point) affair of undulating ‘moss covered’ circuitry, folk, quintessential English psych, paisley patterned hallucinogens and Kosmische.
Communing with the ether, connecting with the psychogeography of their chosen environment – from the soft Wiccan with forebode travail of Thomswood Hill to the alluded-to abandoned mental hospital waste ground near Hainault -, a host of spirits tune in and out of the continuous, though (as we’re told) not in a linear order, flowing suite of laudanum imbued Victoriana lyricism and Beatles-esque melody.
A surprise package, quietly unassuming, the trio’s encapsulation of an age of ghostly memories – the ancestors inhabit the band’s present to address the here and now concerns of a troubled, unstable world – is magical and gently lamentable; a perfect evocation of aicd folk and pastoral esotericism, as beautifully plaintive as it is ominous. Full review…
(DV)
D.
Die Wilde Jagd ‘Uhrwald Orange’ (Bureau B)
Fashioning a mysterious ‘Clockwood Orange’ world of Gothic and ominous dreamscapes, inspired by and named, in part, after the studio it was produced in, and by both the 17th century menagerie paintings of the Flemish artist Frans Snyder and the collected devotional Medieval period songs of the Llibre Vermell De Montserrat artifact, Die Wilde Jagd’s Sebastian Lee Philipp takes us on an eerie, cosmic and slinking travail through a throbbing sophisticated earthy electronic soundtrack. His musical partner on the group’s adroit debut self-titled experiment, producer Ralf Beck, is excused from the follow-up but lends out his extensive racks of vintage analogue synthesizers to Philipp, who transforms and obscures their banks of sounds into ghostly permutations, shadowy creatures and lurking, dancing and honking sonorous cries from a murky wilderness.
Uhrwald Orange is a classy imagined score, balancing cool, gleaming and aloof German electronica with menacing, nocturnal earthiness, yet also reaching for the celestial. One minute imbued with hints of Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Eno, Cluster, and Faust, the next slinking on to the Tresor club or Basic Channel dancefloor. In short: a most impressive album. Full review…
(DV)
Dur-Dur Band ‘Dur Dur Of Somalia: Volume 1, Volume 2 And Previously Unreleased Tracks’(Analog Africa)
A highlight in a catalogue of outstanding reissues from the Analog Africa label, intrepid crate digger Samy Ben Redjeb reprises the first two volumes of Somali fusion funk music from the legendary 1980s outfit, the Dur-Dur Band. Embodying a period in the decade when Mogadishu could boast of its cosmopolitan reputation – notably the European chic Via Roma stretch in the Hamar-Weyne district, a colonnade for café culture, cinema and of course music – the hybrid Dur-Dur Band moped up the polygenesis fever of their native city with effortless aplomb during their short heyday.
Saved from ‘tape-hiss’ and ‘wobbles’, remastered to sound the best they’ve ever sounded, these curious but above all loose-limbed nuggets successfully merged a myriad of Somalia traditions with a liberal smattering of disco, reggae (via the northern part of the country’s ‘Daantho’ rhythm style; an uncanny surrogate for Jamaica’s number one export), soul and funk. Mirroring a similar fusion thousands of miles away in New York, the Dur-Dur languidly produced an electrified no wave-new wave melting pot.
Split up across a triple LP and double CD formats the Dur-Dur Band’s first two albums proper, Volumes 1 and 2, and a couple of unreleased tunes feature on this, the first in a promised series of re-issues. Released originally in 1986, the first of these and the band’s debut album, Volume 1, has a rawer unpolished but snazzy sound that saunters, skips and grooves along with aloof coolness to sweltering laidback funk; opening with the wah-wah chops and a fuzzy organ stunner, ‘Ohiyee’ , which lays down a sophisticated but explosive spiritual dance floor thriller. Volume 2 by contrast seems a little brighter and tropical; beginning as it does with the dub echoed, Trenchtown pirate radio broadcast ‘Introduction’.
Going further than most to bring the sounds of Africa to a wider audience, the Dur-Dur Band release proved to be one of the label’s most difficult, as Redjeb tackled the geopolitical fall-out of a country devastated by civil war to bring us a most unique sounding and essential collection. Full review…
(DV)
E.
Elefant ‘Konark Und Bonark’ (9000 Records)
Emerging from the Belgium underground scene, with members from a myriad of bands, each one more obscure than the next, the Elefant in this room is a twisted agit-post-punk, boiler come forensic team suited troop of noise peddlers. Lurking around basement venues for a while now, the sludge metal and gallows Krautrock merchants have released a slurry of EPs but never a fully realized album until now.
For an album that grapples with Marilyn Manson, Swans, Killing Joke, Muse, industrial contortions and Germanic experimentation, Konark Und Bonark is a very considered, purposeful statement. Though things get very heavy, implosive and gloomy and the auger like ghosts in the vocals can sound deranged, there is a semblance of melody, a tune and hint of breaking through the confusing, often pummeling, miasma of artificial intelligence armageddon.
A seething rage is tightly controlled throughout, the sporadic flits and Math Rock entangled rhythms threatening to engulf but never quite reaching an overload, or for that matter, becoming a mess. Elefant’s prowling and throbbing sound of creeping menace and visions of an artificial intelligent domineering dystopia is an epic one. Arguably the band have produced their most ambitious slog yet and marked themselves out as one of Belgium’s most important exports of 2018. Full review…
(DV)
Bernard Estardy ‘Space Oddities: 1970-82’ (Born Bad)
‘Fragmented D’une Empreinte Magnétique: Rares 1966-2006’ (Gonzai Records)
Because sometimes you just can’t decide, I’ve chucked in two reappraisal celebrating compilations of the odd, curious, thrilling and kitsch flights of fantasy musical fragments/sketches/soundtracks/compositions from the late and most gifted venerated French composer Bernard Estardy. I can’t even claim that these are great collections, let alone the best albums of the year, but they’ve kept me smiling all year.
Nicknamed ‘The Baron’, the founder of the CBE recording studio (which he set up in 1966) collaborated with a host of famous French icons in his time (arranging, producing or sound engineering for Johnny Hallyday, Francoise Hardy, Nino Ferrer, Michel Sardou and Jean Guidoni amongst others), but found an unleashed creative freedom as the master of consoles on his own excursions and dream flights of curiosity. Enjoying a resurrection of a sort in 2018, in part down to his daughter Julie Estardy‘s biography ‘The Giant’, Bernard’s eclectic back catalogue, from the realised to cutting room floor, is being reissued or rediscovered by a new generation through a number of different labels, both in France and internationally.
Two such compilations swept me up in their bombast; the first an album that couldn’t be described any better than the title it comes with, Space Oddities, and the second, Fragmented D’une Empreinte Magnétique, a Gauloises hotbed of weepy venerated organ romanticism and salacious sleek soundtracks. The first takes library music to the stars and beyond on a sassy opulent voyage of esoteric cosmic discovery. Jazz meets deep space on a drum-heavy collection of mysterious thrillers, phantasms and exotic awe. Tracks such as the more romantic, flute-y glide in space blues ‘Slow Very Slow’ sound like they could have made it to the ears of Goldfrapp or Greg Foat. The second of the pairing frequents more Earthy realms, pitching gospel with Bacharach yearnings, sentimental laments (the torn love soliloquy ‘It’s A Lovely Day To Die’ sums it up perfectly) and the strangest of deep-chested sung French cowboy soundtracks (A very Parisian journey to buy your ciggies, ‘La Route Au Tabac’, is rerouted through a lonesome pine trail). Both are as brilliant as they are audacious; a refreshing escapism and proof of a unique talent.
(DV)
Evidence ‘Weather or Not’ (Rhymesayers)
“From the moment he draws first breath on ‘Weather or Not’, Evidence embarks on a masterclass” – RnV Feb 18
A meteorological masterpiece showing that it’s rarely sunny in LA, whenever it rains it pours, and that Evidence is always bringing the weather with him. Ever laconic but whose economy of words is always wisely directed and word association seems slight but cuts deep, Ev walks the streets with collar up and hands dug into pockets, seemingly always in search of a contentment whose elusiveness he’s fine with. This prolongs a character pairing the enigmatic with a spokesman calling it straight down the line (“things I never thought about, trying to be elusive in the process, get forgot about”), a wallowing wanderer with whiplash in the tale and forever in control of his destiny (feel the tempered triumph of the concluding ‘By My Side Too’). A spread of AM band forecasts, a splash of psychedelic epiphanies and head nodders that buck like a bronco from Premier, Nottz and Babu, plus some Step Brothers espionage from Alchemist, allow the Dilated Peoples man to find you: because ‘Weather or Not’, you can’t run, you can’t hide.
(MO)
F.
Flora Fishbach ‘À Ta Merci’ (Blue Wrasse)
The French music press we’re told have fallen hook, line and synth for the alluring contralto voice of Flora Fishbach, who’s 80s revisionist pop twist on chanson oozes with such sophistication that its difficult not to embrace. Fishbach picked up the album révélation award at the Le Prix des Indés for best independent debut LP, winning high praise and plaudits galore ever since. Looking to make a similar impact across the Channel, the ‘bohemian darling’ has just released a deluxe edition of her electro pop requiem À Ta Merci. That decision is more or less echoed in the album’s title, which translates as, “at your mercy”.
Featuring the original running order and a bonus septet of gorgeous live recordings, this aloofly chic, yet theatrical, and especially when performing, animated album recasts Françoise Hardy as a disco pop and electro swooned crooner. Effortlessly channeling the vaporous dreamy pining of Kazu Makino on the moon dust sprinkled fantasy title-track and ambient textured, synthesizer bass bubbling yearned lament ‘Un beau langage’, and a Gallic Alison Goldfrapp on the opening ice-y cool malady ‘Ma voie lactée’, Fishbach adds a French nuance and sensibility to the synthesized pop ascetic: a signature you could say that despite the revivalist backing of electronic drum pads, post-punk sass, Moroder arpeggiator, Rococo harpsichord and hi-energy is unmistakably contemporary and French.
With the momentum already building in France and with the recent runaway success of music press darling Christine And The Queens (who I personally find utterly dull) I’m sure the UK will embrace this sophisticated chanteuse. This is overwhelmingly a better, more fun record than Christine’s (or the name she’s now adopted, Chris). Fishbach has certainly impressed me enough – what’s not impressive about referencing the philosophical aloof quandary that is Rimbaud’s “Je est un autre” (“I am another”) on a tropical slinking crystalline pop song, Un Autre Que Moi (“Another Me”) – to recommend her as one to watch in 2019. Full review…
(DV)
Fliptrix ‘Inexhale’ (High Focus)
“‘Inexhale’ masters the art of knocking you down with a feather: the pugilistic psychoanalysis is untouchable” – RnV Sept 18
It’s a little disingenuous to say Fliptrix became the High Focus main man this year, given he’s the driving force behind the label and already has a back catalogue of textbook pen and pad amplification. What with the label’s ever bubbling pool of talent seeing Ocean Wisdom blazing all and sundry, Jam Baxter expanding his cult appeal and two late night smokers from Coops, ‘Inexhale’ could’ve played the holding role and sat in the pack. But with breath control putting a copyright on the title and not a single word wasted, it’s an album that will leave you levitating. Be that from his street level strain of spirituality – letting the sharp end of something herbal work him over, or thoroughly aware of the rights and wrongs of his surroundings – or from the velocity of what’s spat (‘Inside the Ride’ doesn’t and won’t ever flop). Then flipping what the surroundings suggest, and never getting lost in the haze even with eyes at the reddest, Fliptrix finds the perfect medium between headphone moments and smacks to the head.
(MO)
Fofoulah ‘Daega Rek’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Bustling onto the transglobal London and Bristol scenes in 2014 with their earthy and urban bombastic fusion of Wolof African culture and dub electronica rich debut LP, the Fofoulah ensemble laid down the template for the a unique adventurous sound. Though taking its time to materialize, four years on, the follow-up album hasn’t just moved on but supersonically zoomed into the experimental void; even an esoteric, spiritual one at times.
Daega Rek, ‘the truth’ when translated from the Wolof language of coastal West Africa, sees Fofoulah’s saxophonist, keyboardist and producer Tom Challenger transmogrify the original Gambian talking drum of the group’s shamanistic rapping lead Kaw Secka and the accompanying percussion and propulsive drumming rhythms of his band members. (All of which were laid down at the Real World studios). Secka would then reappear in post-production to record his half spoken/half-rapped protestations and observations; the results all re-shaped into a ricocheting lunar-tropical bounding dub cosmology.
Skipping and skittish in motion; pushing the envelope as they pay tribute to lost brothers (‘Kaddy’ pays 2-Step rhythmic eulogy to the late photographer Khadija Saye who died in the Grenfell Tower disaster), the visceral taste of home (‘Chebou Jaine’ dedicated to Secka’s cousin, who cooked the best national Gambian dish) and search for the truth, Fofoulah lunge into the electrified dub ether of sonic adventure. Full review…
(DV)
G.
Goatman ‘Rhythms’ (Rocket Recordings)
An amorphous exploration of world ‘rhythms’ as transduced by one the mysterious Scandinavian GOAT band members through a an arsenal of filters, modulators and oscillations, the debut Goatman suite blends its polygenesis inspirations perfectly.
Offering up magical and scintillating rhythms galore, from Kuti’s compound Afrobeat to a tremolo and laser bouncing variant of RAM’s Haiti vibe, you can expect to hear the venerable tones of gospel, jazz, reggae, psych and pure ethereal acoustic Kosmische on this sonic flight of fantasy. Earthy yet light enough to soar, this impressive experiment side-project channels its influences perfectly to conjure up new musical ideas. Echoes of GOAT are never far away of course, yet this imaginative take feels more natural, more organic, and above all, more soulful. A fantastic debut.
(DV)
H.
Jack Hayter ‘Abbey Wood’ (Gare du Nord)
Bringing light, or at least opening up a psycho-geographical narrative dedicated to the very edges of a largely ignored London postcode – so far out on the South Eastern outskirts as to be part of Kent –, an earnest Jack Hayter composes a yearning lament to Abbey Wood on what is his first solo album in fifteen years.
Hayter’s deftly played, with twangs of bucolic and Baroque folk, blues, synthesized atmospherics, Americana and reverent chamber music, multilayered songbook connects with the psychogeography of his chosen location. From songs about the Abbey Wood diaspora and its position as a gateway to the world to laying cooing elegiac wreaths to those unfortunate victims of the WWII Arandora Star passenger ship tragedy, Hayter produces a lived-in musical novel, rich with references, landmarks and peopled by those who left an indelible, if at times fleeting, mark upon this much forgotten or passed over postcode: their ghosts, no matter how small the part they played in its story, never inconsequential; remembered and written about with a certain gravitas by the erstwhile troubadour, who performs the most accomplished and brilliant of testaments. Full review…
(DV)
Homeboy Sandman & Edan ‘Humble Pi’ (Stones Throw)
“A banquet of slaps that will become one of your five a day, and ultimately year” – RnV Oct 18
If seven or so tracks are good enough for Pusha T, Kanye etc, then they’re an ample fit for this elite underground swashbuckler of a showdown brought to us by the matchmaking Gods. Having flitted around the periphery for what seems forever, Edan returns with some of his best, ear-piercing archaeology to date as he shifts the B-boy-psych continuum once more; and Homeboy Sandman, both revelling in getting in the thick of it and firing off missives as he’s swept along for the ride, gets off the wall (“see me looking photogenic in the Book of Genesis, waving off medicines”), yet reels off some of the realest in recent times (it’s still, and shall remain, all about ‘Never Use the Internet Again’, which stylistically is actually a bit of a left-turn). The feeling pervades that the pair are proudly gladiatorial, indulging in friendly, unspoken competition as much as fighting the good fight as anointed hip-hop saviours. Let’s hope the sub 30-minute running time means the door is open for a second bout some time soon.
(MO)
J.
Juga-Naut & Sonnyjim ‘The Purple Door’ (Eat Good Records)
“Their usual, indomitable personas on the mic never skimp on Michelin-starred quality, and they still aren’t the ones to test if you think they’re pushing their luck” – RnV Aug 18
It’s an album largely based on elitist boasts, expensive trinkets and accessories and some pretty outlandish claims, but hey, these boys done good. Larger than life and living the playboy lifestyle making the ludicrous seem obtainable – you too can be a ‘Purple Door’ gold card holder – Juga-Naut and Sonnyjim transform the Midlands into St Tropez with a load of gala funk to make a red carpet entrance to, with just a hint of a twinkle in its eye like a felonious exile that has everyone’s backing. That said, you can’t live the life of a Rat Packer if you ain’t got the gab, and these two are no novices: the great suitability of their top table rhyme personas – Juga-Naut will have you believing every word he spits, Sonnyjim coming in dry and stonefaced yet smelling (and producing) like a million bucks – shares a love of all things gastronomic on the likes of ‘Duck Season’ that comes sweeping down a spiral staircase, while ‘Look Around’ takes a moment to act more tactfully, pledging family honour like a good fella. It might not be dining etiquette, but these two are pulling chairs from under the competition.
(MO)
Park Jiha ‘Communion’ (Glitterbeat Records)
Circumnavigating the globe to bring much-needed exposure to new sounds, Glitterbeat Records imprint tak:til gives a second wind to a suite of acuity serialism from Southeast Asia. Released originally in South Korea in 2016, the neo-classical musician/composer Park Jiha’s debut solo album Communion is given an international release by the label.
Inspiring what we’re told is a burgeoning Korean music scene (well, an alternative to the K-Pop craze), a chief progenitor of the movement Jiha alongside collaborative partner Jungmin Seo originally melded the country’s musical heritage with an eclectic range of contemporary sounds as the 숨[suːm] duo in 2007. Releasing the highly influential regional albums Rhythmic Space: A Pause For Breath (2010) and 2nd (2014), Park and Seo crossed the time zones to perform at both WOMAD and SXSW. Congruously putting the duo on hold to explore a more ‘personal’ and minimalistic ‘musical vocabulary’ as a solo artist, Jiha dexterously balances the air-y abstract breathes of the ‘piri’ double reed bamboo flute, the searing twang of the ‘saenghwang’ mouth organ and the softly paddled patter of the ‘yanggeum’ hammered dulcimer in what is a dialogue between a dulcet calm, the meditative and an entangled dissonance.
Transforming Korean traditions into a more experimental language that evokes the avant-garde, neo-classical and jazz yet something quite different, Park Jiha’s tranquil to entangled discourse evocations reach beyond their Southeast Asian borders both musically and metaphysically into something approaching the unique and amorphous. Full review…
(DV)
John Johanna ‘I’ll Be Ready When The Great Day Comes’ (Faith And Industry)
More a mini-album, even 12″ to be contrary, the beautifully cooed, warbled and ached venerable I’ll Be Ready When The Great Day Comes is nothing less than an afflatus anointed paean to a higher purpose. Informed by the mystical cosmology of the Eastern Orthodox Church, John Johanna‘s spiritual blues-y and gospel rock’n’rock hymns are both diaphanous and mesmerizing, even hypnotic; recalling visages of Morricone, Fleetwood Mac, Terakaft, Dirtmusic and Wovenhand as it wanders a picturesque but troubled soundscape.
On the devotional pilgrimage, the troubadour of the most evocative, stirring country burr, switches between aching falsetto yearning to lovelorn cowboy on the Andes romanticised cooing, and from the ethereal to fraught, as he makes communion.
No two songs are quite the same, as the wooing rustic sits next to (what can only be described as) the holy desert rock fusion of Native Indian and Afro-beat title track, and Bossa shuffle meets Yonatan Gat raindance. It all congruously comes together in one most divine service. A minor masterpiece.
(DV)
M.
Marlowe (L’Orange & Solemn Brigham) ‘Marlowe’ (Mello Music Group)
“Both excel in never revealing what’s steaming around the next corner, even when you’ve grabbed your toothcomb for the umpteenth time” – RnV July 18
Another yearly round up, another L’Orange inclusion. North Carolina stands up as latest collaborator Solemn Brigham rhymes his ass off: weirdly, without necessarily feeding off what the producer is trawling, and helping create something of an odd couple match made in heaven. L’Orange sets the scene, usually a funky hoedown, a sample-heavy brouhaha anticipating a stand-off or a psychedelic neck-snap. As is his wont, there’s a narrative to be spun, or some simple time-travelling to be done where no two bops are the same. Brigham on the other hand, blurbed as “summoning the holy spirit of Big L” without getting sucked into the danger zone, just jumps in with a garrulous B-boy stance and goes for it. Without L’Orange surrounding him in a world of imagination, give Brigham a park bench and a ghettoblaster and the results would be the same. What he does guarantee is that you’ll be going back to what he has to say, and whatever the variables, the energy and entertainment (grounded surrealism?) never dips. L’Orange may have found himself an emcee to keep on retainer.
(MO)
Hugh Masekela ’66-‘76’ (Wrasse Records)
A most poignant and timely reminder of one of the true greats, the mammoth 66-’76 collection shows a multifaceted Hugh Masekela: The exile. The trumpet maestro. The bandleader. The activist. The colonial revisionist. The angry young man. But also the conciliatory. These are just some of the many faces of the South African titan of jazz and African musical fusions that can be found inside the latest essential collection of the late great polymaths’ back durable catalogue.
Put together especially by Masekela and his good friend, producer and collaborator on a number of projects together, Stewart Levine, just before he passed away at the beginning of this year, the three disc spanning collection features key tracks from many of his most iconic and experimental albums (two of which are included in their entirety). But what makes this especially appealing to collectors and fans alike, is that many of these albums were never officially released in the UK and Europe before. Progressing in the chronological order they were recorded, we follow Masekela’s journey not just musically but politically across his most formative decade and his partnership with Levine and collaborations with such legendary ensembles as the Hedzoleh Soundz combo. From the combined jazz and Township fusions of The Emancipation Of Hugh Masekela all the way to criss-crossing the transatlantic slave routes on Colonial Man, this collection is a sheer joy. Full review…
(DV)
(MO)
Brona McVittie ‘We Are The Wildlife’
With the lightest, most deft of touches, Irish songstress and harpist Brona McVittie embarks on a voyage of ‘psycho-geographic’ inspired encapsulations of a mysterious, magical landscape and history on her debut album, We Are The Wildlife.
Tracing the sonic contours of London’s urban fringes and the rural landscapes of Mourne, McVittie pitches her fluttery diaphanous harp-led songbook somewhere between post-folk and the cinematic – helped along in part by the drifting trumpet evocations of film composer Hutch Demouilpied, who’s contributions sound at times like Miles Davis Dingo transported to an Irish peat bog.
Her ephemeral harp melodies and phrases often feel like a breath or just the merest hazy lingering presence of the instrument, which might in some ways be down to McVittie’s technique of playing them all on the guitar first before transcribing over. It certainly offers a different perspective and technique. And it certainly takes this heavenly traditional instrument into even more mystical, accentuate abstract realms, helped of course by an accompaniment of meadow flute (Keiron Phelan), sad bowed delicate strings (Richard Curran), searching fleeting slide-guitar and shuffling to full-on breakbeat drums (Myles Cochran). All of which amorphously pushes the often-ancient feelings and geography towards John Martyn and Bert Jansch one minute, towards the Incredible String Band or trip-hop the next.
Played with the lightest of touches, McVittie’s wildlife and Celtic inspired filmscape subtly crafts tradition into a cerebral suite of neo-classical and ambient folk. We Are The Wildlife is the most inviting and unique of debuts. Full review…
(DV)
Minyeshu ‘Daa Dee’ (ARC Music)
From the tentative first steps of childhood to the sagacious reflections of middle age, the sublime Ethiopian songstress Minyeshu Kifle Tedla soothingly, yearningly and diaphanously articulates the intergenerational longings and needs of belonging on her epic LP, Daa Dee.
Minyeshu left her native Ethiopia in 1996, but not before discovering and then learning from such acolytes as the doyen of the country’s famous Ethio-Jazz scene, Mulatu Astatke, and the choreographer Tadesse Worku and singers Mahmoud Ahmed, Tilahun Gessesse and Bizunesh Bekele. First moving to Belgium and then later to the Netherlands, the burgeoning star of the Ethiopian People To People music and dance production has after decades of coming to terms with her departure finally found a home: a self-realization that home wasn’t a geographical location after all but wherever she felt most comfortable and belonged:“Home is me!”
Evoking that sense of belonging and the theme of roots, but also paying a tribute and lament to the sisterhood, Minyeshu conveys with a sauntering but sorrowful jazzy blues vibe not only the burden and grind of daily life for many of her compatriots back home in the tumultuous climate of a fragmented and often chaotic Ethiopia, but also the joy of song and togetherness.
Not only merging geography but musical styles too, the Daa Dee LP effortlessly weaves jazz (both Western and Ethiopian) R&B, pop, dub, the theatrical, and on the cantering to lolloping skippy ‘Anteneh (It Is You?)’, reggae. Piano, strings and brass mix with the Ethiopian wooden washint flute and masenqo bowed lute to create an exotic but familiar pan-global sound. Minyeshu produces a masterful heartwarming, sometimes giddy, swirling testament that is exciting, diverse and above all else, dynamic. Her voice is flawless, channeling various journeys and travails but always placing a special connection to and emphasis on those special roots. Full review…
(DV)
Moonwalks ‘In Light (The Scales In The Frame)’ (Stolen Body Records)
At least geographically close to the spirit of the Motor City, if generations apart, Detroit’s Moonwalks brood in the shadows of the counterculture doyens that made it such an infamous breeding ground for snarling attitude garage, psych and acid rock in the 60s and early 70s.
Transitioning, so we’re told, from ad hoc abandon warehouse performances as a diy glam psych rock troupe to experimental space rock stoners, spiraling in a vaporous gauzy vortex of 80s British Gothic and acid shoegaze influences, the Moonwalks make a certain dynamic progression on their second full length album, In Light.
Sometimes they sound like a black magic rites Byrds and at others like a doomed The Glass Family on a bum ride. Their curtain call, The Joy Of Geraniums, is the most odd song of all; taking the Moonwalks into a whistling led peyote-induced trip to the Mojave Desert.
Vocally malaise the voices waft between Siouxsie Sioux, Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. Of course it fits the nebulous cosmic doom and dreamy psych style of the group perfectly; ambiguously drifting through magical rites and sulky pretensions aplenty. Full review…
(DV)
Quarterly Playlist Revue of 2018: Part Two: Ammar 808, Warmduscher, Dr Octagon, Grimm Grimm and more…
June 12, 2018
Quarterly Playlist 2018: Part Two: Choice tracks from the last three months.
Welcome to part two of the Monolith Cocktail’s carefully selected and put-together quarterly playlist revue of 2018. Featuring an eclectic mix of ‘choice’ new music, re-releases and recently dug-out nuggets, all released in the last three months of the year, the blog’s staff (well me, Dominic Valvona, and our resident hip-hop fanatic Matt Oliver) have, as usual, produced a lively, sometimes meditative, at times distressed and harrowing, playlist.
Twisted dark arts sit next to cosmic sounds from the Maghreb; peregrinations flow into more steely razor sharp post-punk; and key hip-hop pontifications go hand-in-hand with shoegaze and the psychedelic. But as always, the musical flow will take you to all the most interesting locations, and hopefully introduce you to something you’ve never heard before.
Tracklist in full:
London Plane ‘New York Howl’ Review
Josh T. Pearson ‘Straight To The Top!’ Review
The Seven Ups ‘Stampede’
Homeboy Sandman & Edan ‘#NeverUseTheInternetAgain’ Review
Lee Scott & Jazz T ‘What If Lee Was A Super Dope Rapper In 1988?’ Review
The Nonce ‘Chocolate Cake’ Review
Warmduscher ‘Standing On The Corner’
Samba Toure ‘Yefara’ Review
The Turbans ‘Zawi’ Review
David Dor ‘Sapri Tama’
Hany Mehanna ‘Mouna’
Bernard Estardy ‘La Route Au Tabac’
The Magic City Trio ‘Black Dog Following Me’ Review
Grimm Grimm ‘Still Smiling’ Review
Black Light white Light ‘Forward Backwards’ Review
Matt Finucane ‘Damn Storyteller’ Review
Canshaker Pi ‘Pressure From Above’
Ammar 808 ‘Bognga & Sandia’ Review
Shimshon Miel ‘Amsterdam Experience’
The Mauskovic Dance Band ‘The Opposite’
Black Thought ‘9th vs. Thought’ Review
Pan Amsterdam ‘The Lotion Song’ Review
Del The Funky Homosapien ‘Humble Pie’ Review
Brownout ‘Don’t Believe The Hype’
Dr. Octagon ‘Operation Zero’ Review
Sad Man ‘Parrot’ Review
Yonatan Gat ‘Projections’ Review
Die Wilde Jagd ‘2000 Elefanten’ Review
Elefant ‘Norsun Muisti’ Review
Lucy Leave ‘Look//Listen’ Review
Bas Jan ‘Argument’
Sudan Archives ‘Pay Attention’
Georgia Greene ‘Lonely For You’
Evil Bone ‘In Vain’ Review
The Bordellos ‘Fading Honey’ Feat
Anton Barbeau ‘Secretion Of The Wafer’ Review
Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ Review
Thomas Nation ‘Hold My World’ Review
The Lancashire Hustlers ‘Consider Me’ Review
Alex Stolze ‘Way Out’ Review
Crayola Lectern ‘Rescue Mission’
Tanzania Albinism Collective ‘Albino’
Spiritualized ‘A Perfect Miracle’
