A WORLD OF SONIC/MUSICAL DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
Battle Elf ‘10’
(Birdman Records) 2nd May 2025
Tago Mago era CAN invoking visitations in cahoots with Third era Soft Machine, the sound of the motor city trio of Battle Elf is a mysterious, supernatural concentration of various elementals and threads pulled together in heavy psychedelic dose of “conflict” and “redemption”.
Harnessing the Detroit environment of both active and defunct, rusted decayed industry and manufacture, the triumvirate draw of Gretchen Gonzales and Chris Peters on guitars and David Hurley on drums moves across a simultaneously disturbing and experimentally evocative landscape of cosmic and tribal mirages, the barren and chaotic. With leaps and bounds of faith and reaction, they recall the already mentioned influences of CAN – especially ‘Aumgn’, although ‘Stops Pretty Places’ could be a live version of the group – and the Soft Machine – tell me that doesn’t remind you of proto–Mike Ratledge Geiger-counter-like ripped organ on the opening part of the album’s first track, ‘Behind The Wilderness’ – alongside Fred Frith, Eddie Hazel, Ash Ra Tempel, and most surprisingly, the Cosmic Jokers. Apart from the Canterbury troupe, the rest are all referenced in the PR notes. But you could add Bill Orcutt and maybe some Faust to that list, along with a whole modern smorgasbord of similar sounding kosmische and experimental psych travellers, of avant-garde and space jazz funk influences. For an album without brass or horns of any kind, 10 has a real jazz feel and sound about it: you could say a Cosmic Slop version of Bitches Brew and such psychedelic affected LPs.
It helps that all three members of this project, between them, have a diverse range of bands, collaborations to channel; from Peters’ Racehorses Are Resources union with hip-hop producer and artist Quelle Chris, to Gonzales’ Universal Indians partnership with John Olson of Wolf Eyes note, and Hurley’s membership and crossover union with Peters in the Panto Collapsars trio. All tangents, interactions now meet at the Detroit crossroads: motor city now a distant memory of a heyday, superseded by kick out the jams, the revolutionary call of post-industry decline and the electricity and rebellion that forged the techno movement of the 1980s.
In this time and space, out on the margins, they counter actions of entanglement with the resonating effects of machinery and steel, the otherworldly and alien with the chthonian and wild. Free-range and yet examined, this avant-hard mood music of a kind is both improvisational and yet concentrated in heavy meta.
There’s plenty of nice touches, surprising and intriguing sounds and motions to be found across the quartet of long form pieces, with untethered rhythms emerging from the melee and more considered passages of guitar play and obscured atmospheric soundings. At times they manage to echo Manuel Gottsching’s transcendent and alien visions: both the menacing kind and the inviting astral plane kinds.
A cult record for head music nuts, the fantastical role-playing Battle Elf pulls together a strange, unearthly and yet industrial scarred heavy psych trip of the supernatural, marooned and wild.
A Single Ocean ‘S-T’
2nd May 2025
From the Chicago hot-house resurgence of cross-pollinated ideas and experiments, another vital conjuncture of that city’s underground post-everything sounds. In the form of an amorphous single ocean of rhythms, of fourth world possible and Japanese environmental musics, of organic electronica and analogue patterns, of post-rock-no-wave-funk and the chimed, the trio of Cameron Brand, Scott McGaughey and Christopher Schreck come together in a special union of transformed and edited improvisation.
After ‘formerly’ coming together to produce a solo album by McGaughey back in 2018, all three foils decided to continue the good work under the open-ended, all flows into the same body of water metaphor, A Single Ocean heading. The collaboration’s debut album is an impressive, congruous but fluctuating immersion and absorption of influences both studied and traversing.
There’s subtlety but more than enough surprising turns on the way, as that ocean of music ebbs and flows between shifts in emotion, pitch, rhythm and style. But that rhythmic response and the ease of the swimmingly and magnetic flows alongside the quirks, the manipulations, and building blocks (layering like bricks of sound, loops, percussion on top of each other) that echo Harmonia & Eno’s ’76 union as much as they do Eno’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts collab with Byrne, and even, Bowie’s Hansa period – especially the momentary squeezes and freedom wafts of saxophone. But from the opening dulcimer-like chimes and bamboo music, the near breathes of flute and the use of what could be a Fairlight-like 80s evocative synth, the trio meticulously seem to place the inspired spark of influence soundly in the 1980s and late 1970s. I’m hearing Japan (both the country and band) on the sprinkled ‘Cascades’ alongside Cybe; a hint of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s inaugural LP alongside skying new age trance, Masayoshi Fujita and Tortoise – taking the post-rock out of the highly influential Chicago ensemble’s sound – on the poles and tubular synth shuttered and percussive ‘6.4 Blocks’; and a near complete change around of brooding bass and cool no wave on the synth-pop meets 80s cut-up hip-hop collage ‘White Bright Light’. You could add shades of moody TV On The Radio, Holy Fuck and Major Force to the latter. This is all within the boundaries of the first few tracks on a twelve-track spread, as the trio merge hidden sources of percussive instrumentation with the tubular and the electronic. For instance, ‘Waterways’, to these ears, reminded me of a Warp 9 kind of near nu-funky bassline, yet also seemed to work in Jon Hassell and Ramuntcho Matta to the clap of wood and bubbled bulbs of sparkle and strange dialectical, non-religious but near sacred or mysteriously voiced, hints of Bowie’s Low period. Voices, when they appear, are often obscured in some way, or broken up like a clicky disembodiment. There are snatches of what could be samples, snippets from various sources adding to a sense of tuning in to the frequency of the time and place, but perhaps eliciting another evocation, a sense that there is more going on beneath and surface and woven into the fabric.
By the time we reach the second half of the album, there are beams of near cathedral and pastoral organ, those drifted elements of a transmogrified Modern Jazz Quartet, and moments of Casio preset Arabia, Tonto’s Exploding Head Band, Richard Pinhas, Myssa Musique and Lukid; all effortlessly flowing to a data calculus, chemistry and airy mix of electronic movement music. A perfect balance and perfect album that will surprise as much as hypnotise and transport you, A Single Ocean is fresh and inventive enough to softly and subtly set its own course over familiar seas of sounds and influences. This comes highly recommended, especially for those fans of International Anthem and the rich Chicago underground scene.
OvO/Mai Mai Mai ‘Split Album’
(Arsenic Solaris) 25th April 2025
Both frightening visions and supernatural arcane traditions are invoked by the two sets of partners on this split album release from the French label. Having crossed paths a few years back at the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands, the Ravenna-originating noiseniks OvO duo of chthonian and daemonic Biblical sludge-metal-doom-dread and the disguised Rome-based sonic explorer Mai Mai Mai converge for a special shared vinyl title: four new tracks from the former and two from the latter.
I’ve championed the work of Mai Mai Mai before. A few years back, I was kindly asked to premiere the ‘Fimmene Fimmene’ track from 2023’s double-spread Rimorso album, a work that drew upon the traditions and mysticism of the Apulia region of Italy’s deep south and included a contribution from the mesmerising ethereal elementals siren and Apulia folkloric choreographer dancing spirit of Vera di Lece. Something I called “Gothic ethnological” at the time, Mai Mai Mai transforms, transmogrifies the rural outliers, the regions shrouded in occult traditions, taking recordings from toiled fields, old superstitious rituals and traditional forms of music and combining them with the industrial, proto-techno, drones and, sometimes, punishing miasmic electronics.
Identified as Toni Curtone when unshrouded, the Rome artist now provides a couplet of supernatural atmospheres based around real documentations of spiritualism and old beliefs. ‘Affascino’ (or “I fascinate”) uses a recording of a Calabrian ritual to protect against the “evil eye”. Slowed down otherworldly transformations of monastic-like ceremonial incantation and instruction are merged with force fields, unidentified looming and zip-line craft, exorcism and an anointing cleansing cymbal brush.
‘Portatore di Luce’ (“bearer of light”) is similar in atmosphere and theme, featuring as it does the credited voice of M.E.R. taking part in a Mediumship trance. Communing with the spirit world in whispers before inhabiting some strange apparitional force, the voices of spiritualism are gradually turned into near animalistic barks, pants and unholy evocations as sonic wisps of paranormal activity envelope an ominous entrancement.
OvO (who I must admit I’m not familiar with) consists of guitarist and vocalist Stefania Pedretti and drummer Bruno Dorella, who seem to drag up from the bowels of hell, a heavy meta(l) of apocalyptic distress and bestial vocalised conniption. Across a quartet of fresh recorded material, the duo generates tunnelled industrial unit forbode, drag carcasses across morbidly curious horizons and attune themselves to heretic broadcasts. From the near laboured, and in some kind of near suspended pendulum drop, to accelerated kick drumming pummels and needle-like scratches, various 666 invocations and more mystical cultish atavistic forces are conjured up in infinite realms of horror and trauma. Pedretti talks in tongues, curses and growls from the very depths of pained recall and stressed guttural unhinged torment, as noise, various metals and machinery, and pulses stir up something unashamedly prophetic and fucked-up. ‘In Hollywood’ for example, features a repeated sample from some radio announcement transmogrified into something weirdly supernatural and creepily abstracted.
Together in a near unholy and otherworldly premonition of sonic manipulation, both partners prove their worth in striking up visitations and avant-doom communions.
SAD MAN ‘Art’
(Cruel Nature Records) 9th May 2025
The title is Art, and perhaps the first time that the Sad Man – uncloaked as Andrew Spackman – has cast off the implied references to his great love, his career outside the circuitry and boffin-made instrumentation and electronics of sound and rhythm, to make clear his intentions and inspirations.
Spackman’s most prolific guise yet is once more absorbed in the concept of art, or to be more particular surrealism. Taking as a muse, or a springboard for leaps further into the fantastical, this latest work of electronica and voice manipulation, dream-realism and alien supernaturalism is inspired by the famous English surrealist artist and poet Emmy Bridgwater. Though her station in Edwardian England and before WWII was hardly destitute, but of working-class stock, her progression and life choices were stymied – both due to her parent’s profession and her sex. And yet she entered both the Birmingham and London circles of the Surrealist movement, becoming a prominent member of both groups through her use of automatist pen ink drawings, magic realist and abstract paintings and collage.
Unlike many of her peers at the time, there would be no artistic furores to Paris, the epicentre of that movement during the first half of the 20th century. Many of Emmy’s contemporaries were of largely middleclass and upper-class stock, and so able to afford the time to pursue their art, to travel freely and even idle away their lives dining out on their radical ideas and playing out various stunts to overthrow closeted society. Emmy was already relied upon to care for her disabled sister, and when her mother took ill, she was forced to pretty much stall her artistic ambitions. But there would be return, in the 1970s, a time far more used to conceptualism and long since familiar with surrealism and all its eccentricities. The focus was now on collage and that continued use of juxtaposition and symbols, of placing the familiar in more magical or strange landscapes and situations.
One piece in particular, the Garden of Pleasure, has informed Spackman’s latest Sad Man concept story and soundtrack. A menagerie of animals both wild and domesticated, from a bird of prey to Heffer, butterflies and elephants, have been picked up and placed in a new setting, up on the hills whilst down below a cast of characters (from the shoulders up) have been plunked on pedestals. And a group of straw-hatted workers toil away in an unspecified field in the corner of the picture. The train-of-thought that has been imitated has spun a woven back story featuring a fictionalised version of Emmy; pulled out of time and cast in a story that both makes some sense and none at all. For a father, who isn’t really who he says he is, dies and leaves the family farm to his daughter Emmy – very prescient in these times, with Labour’s inheritance tax changes to farmers, and the ensuing battle between a political metropolitan class at odds with those of the traditional rural heartlands. Whilst travelling to the village in which she grew up, and to claim her holdings – although she doesn’t want or need a farm, and will sell it -, Emmy meets various suicidal characters and ghosts of the past. Between the linear narrative there’s chapters that hark back to the family history; a father overseas winning the war but making a fateful poor decision to throw the deeds on the show of a hand of cards, and Emmy’s special gift of talking to animals is described through what could be imagined events. The farm is central to all this, but the village pub, which is situated, it is said, across ley lines, is also a focus of strange going ons, a time-travelling portal to inquiries and philosophical questions of time itself and belonging.
Each chapter (there is ten in all) loosely applies to the sound world and the manifestations conjured and manipulated by Spackman on the score to this tale. However, the soundtrack extends to twelve pieces, each one having its own title and flight of reference point fantasy. Some of which seem to be computed spelling glitches, others more obvious descriptions such as ‘Voice’, which builds an almost serial suite and canvas of mysterious futurism, rotary shaved metallic pins, a walking or stomping soft but deep bass sense of movement and cybernetic techno from the panted, the uttered, rattled and detuned samples of an AI-like siren – sounding like Holly Herndon, who Spackman has collaborated with in the past on a NFT project that used her Holly+ AI digitalised vocals, and Laure Anderson. I’m convinced that this voice is repeating a line that sounds something like “hot house” at the start of the track.
Capturing the “surrealist” element in the making, Spackman’s artform is an attempt to subvert and find a unique or new approach to creating music and sound; to encapsulate the abstract in a form that doesn’t depend on the usual tools, the usual processes, especially in his chosen field of experimental electronica and soundtrack. Whilst even with the Panglossian lure and excitement of AI, it is almost impossible to make anything anew, unheard before. But Spackman’s discontented sounding Sad Man has a good try at remodelling a form that has now been around for half a century, combining a constant movement, his own juxtaposition of abrasive, coarse, needle-sharp electronic stalactites and beats, of magnetics and metal fillings with melodic touches, airs, beams of Tangerine Dream-like cathedral cosmic light, and the vapoured visions of Vangelis. He is after all looking for the “beauty” in such harsh examples of the kinetic, of mechanics and the bit-crushed and tightly wound.
Across both longer and shorter pieces, all of which themselves go through various changes, never ending up in the place in which they started, there’s those moments of tubular rays, wisps of cloud, dreamt vistas, parallel worlds and the playful. Overall, that grasp, the unearthing or celebration of crystal light and beams, reflections, is very sci-fi. Solar airs and stratospheric cathedrals hover and hang over a more hardened techno and electronic soundscape, as hints of Riley and Glass emerge from force fields, obscured alien terrains and ghostly visitations. The familiar trigger of tablas and a near lulling guitar stand out in the washes, the moistened dripped environments, and constantly evolving, changing passages of distortion, the plastique, and granular shapeshifting. Within that sphere there are sounds that could be alien breathing apparatus, an electrical storm of hailstones falling on a screen and shooting lasers.
Choosing a more inventive way to form this soundtrack, Spackman’s mode of dream-realism, his surrealist inspirations, sound somehow out of time and yet very much futuristic. The Garden of Pleasure collage is now more alien and needs deciphering, transformed as it is into a space between technological meltdown and the hallucinogenic. For Spackman this is yet another intriguing conceptual score and piece of literature fantasy. Art also pays homage to a pivotal figure within the English surrealist movement, and a local Brummie icon in freedom and inventive art – Spackman is himself from near about that neck of the wood -; one that deserves far wider attention.
Tomo-Nakaguchi ‘Out Of The Blue’
(Audiobulb Records) 3rd May 2025
A refined balance of the sonorous and lightened, of microtonal sounds and wave forms, and transformed instruments, constantly drifting and wafting and sometimes reverberating over a traverse of serenity, the lunar and blossomed, Tomo-Nakaguchi’s third album for the Audiobulb label is, as it is billed in the promotional material, “meticulous” and “intricate”.
Adroit with every sound, every texture and translucent jingle and tinkle placed perfectly to both subtly evoke a dance of filaments, of abstracted but felt scenes, moments captured in time and more cosmic/kosmische suspended animations.
As the title suggest, Out Of The Blue does have its surprises; the appearance out of more quiet and subdued ambient fields of a more abrasive but not overhearing electric guitar, sustained in an ebbing fashion, or, the beauty of a beachside aviary succumbing to hallucinatory mirages of the acoustic guitar: as transformed as it to sound more like a dulcimer or even a celeste. The flap of loosened recording tape, the sound of an amp switch, of the power sources that fire it up are there to offer a technological contrast to the more naturalistic soundings, the weightless and warming.
The generated soon winds down. The beauty soon shines through. And distortions never hide or shade the mostly floated airs of the saxophone, the bulb-like electric piano notes that pollinate the sun-bathed haze and various glassy tones. Environment music of 80s Japan, a touch of early Cluster, even something approaching the Kraftwerkian on the majestic ‘Filament’, and A Journey of Giraffes all came to mind when absorbing this slow ambient, modernist classical and cerebral electronic voyage of the inner and outer spaces, imaginings and landscapes transduced into an atmospheric dream. In all, a most immersive experience from the Japanese musician and composer, and contender for this month’s choice albums list.
Neon Crabs ‘Make Things Better’
(Half Edge Records) 2nd May 2025
Another twisted conception as members of the highly prolific and durable Neon Kittens and The Legless Crabs pool together in both a riled and darkly humorous, embittered frenzy; with jived barbed lyrics and wrangled steely sinewy guitar projectiles, sustain, wails and chugged punk-snot-rock and post-punk velocity aimed at the Trump administration and the greater board of douche bags running the “USS of A”. Yes, as the title of this remotely orchestrated and recorded project’s opening salvo makes clear, this is a rebellious sonic and hardwired dig at the authoritarian rule of the Donald and his cronies; a call-to-arms against the fascistic goosestepping march of a class that seems to relish being a piece-of-no-good-shit.
From both sides of the Atlantic, the British Neon’s instigator Andy Goz and his foils Nina K and Hope Munro join forces with their estranged Legless Crabs American maverick cousin Matt Nauseous on an album of bleak aphorisms, derangement, petulance and suicidal tendencies. Catching the zeitgeist, as the Trump maxim of unchained and lethal disruption, bullying negotiation and chaotic messaging throws up a new kind of hell and threatens to supersede the globalised norms of the past two decades for an unruly alliance of authoritarian “strongmen”, this violent, contortion of underground artists mines the present landscape of drug dependency escapism, disillusion, victimhood, suffering, austerity and anxiety.
Coming on at times like a wake-up call from a union between Iggy Pop and the B52s, and at others, like a skulking PiL and Scary Monsters Bowie, or even Sonic Youth, the action and timings fluctuate between the driven, the motoring and more strung-out. For this is often an album that evokes a bastardised and re-routed route 66 rock’n’roll Alan Vega shake of the open and on the road vision of America. Nauseous takes this on an amusing detour, via the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, The Beach Boys and Kim Fowley’s Animal God of the Streets, on the phaser and flange guitar mockery of intergalactic frippery ‘Space Vibes USA’ – a dig perhaps at the egotistical Musk and other entrepreneurial space dreamers.
The lyrics, as always, are fucking great; both fun, mocking (that word again) and hardcore. Not so much whining or crying, but simultaneously as irreverent as they are making a serious point about the disfunction of our times, and the spectre of fascism – I’d argue this word has been often overused in the past, and perhaps has outlived its usefulness, as fascism now, to me, doesn’t so much reflect its origins, its supremacist roots as stand for authoritarianism nationalism of a different ideological stripe; so for instance, Russia is fascistic, Iran is fascistic, China is fascistic, and so on and so on. A civil war, a cultural war has already begun – perhaps as long ago as a decade or more. A battle between the classes and the politics of globalism, open borders against the warranted fears of those that haven’t benefited a cent or penny from it. I’m being glib, opining a summary, when the various motivations and reasons need reams and hours of discussion. The Neon Crabs have a good stab at it though; paring down sometimes into one line how we all feel, or how fucking crazy the whole damn situation is.
Concerning to these ears though, the dejected Heroes style ‘Age of Annihilation’ sounds like a suicide chatroom. Nina K delivers a customary deadpan mix of virtual girlfriend empathetic malfunction and a Slavic version of Michi Hirota on this distraught Armageddon anthem. In contrast, ‘Some Random Country’ takes the throwaway disingenuous bully boy put-downs and antagonism of Trump and his shrill Vance against foreigners and the international community on a hyperbole piss-take – Vance, as he showed against Zelensky in the worst disrespected exchange to soil the White House, has no real grasp of history or geography; his comments aimed at Europe, but we all know he meant Britain and France, on war and conflict were so twisted and contemptible as to make this plank sound like a thicko tool in pay of the Russian state. (Has America actually won, outright, a single conflict on its own? Britain in contrast has, and so has France, but both have enabled, sacrificed and fought with America; both joined the coalitions in America’s war with Iraq and Afghanistan alongside something like 50 other countries. America, for all its recent pomp, hasn’t stood alone since Vietnam: and we all know how that turned out.)
As Nauseous hails on the drug-kick Iggy turn ‘J Spaceman’s Blues’ “wake up man!”. But then he also sings, “you bring the needle, I’ll bring the crystal”, and fist pumps drug addiction as Rome comes tumbling down around him. As the American SS reigns supreme, ripping up and skidding across the White House lawn in their gas-guzzling convertible Humvee, the Neon Crabs shake, rattle and roll up a post-punk derisory resistance. Long live this cross-Atlantic union.
Xqui ‘The Colour Of Spring’
2nd May 2025
Although, for the most part, a form of emotive evocative purity, of colder near tundra-like white breaths, tubular airs and chills, the highly prolific experimental composer Xqui ushers in the warming seasonal change, as the clocks go forward and the evenings get lighter. For Spring sounds less like a pretty, flowering, budding and blossoming dance of dewdrops and hazy sun beams, and more a thawing out distillation of Winter.
And then again, just to throw us off the scent, Xqui pays homage to the late, great Mark Hollis by naming both the album title and tracks after both songs from his Talk Talk and soloist (if that did mean only one, very influential and acclaimed, album under his own birth name) catalogues. The legacy of the adventurous and pioneering artful pop group Talk Talk is echoed mostly through those title references, with examples such as ‘Life’s What You Make It’, ‘Spirit of Eden’, ‘After The Flood’ and ‘Chameleon Day’. But it is Hollis’s sparser minimalistic later work that can be detected here across eleven ambient, atmospheric and near glacial visions of the crystalized, blowen and clean. Visions that often promise serenity and reflection, but also offer subtle hints of enormity, of environmental change and the cosmic. Some tracks could even be said to be moving in a sci-fi direction, aping echoes of the Kubrickian, of Tangerine Dream and a host of other quality synthesized and analogue space score sculptors. There are signs of deeper leviathans, of the alien, or a presence of some kind – maybe even some form of craft, or Arthur C. Clarke visionary intelligence aboard…I don’t know, maybe a cigar-shaped, impenetrable ship that hovers on the border of the ominous and awe-inspired on the edge of our atmosphere. At other times, this could the bow of a ship hidden in a fog or even an ether, slowly passing by in cycles. The ether element is a key one I think, as sometimes the atmospheres, the refined, perfectly measured minimal waves, pitches, scales seem to serenely merge with such a substance and mystery.
Alongside the mentioned spheres of influence and sounds, there’s a sense of drama, a transformed version of hidden sources and instruments and sentiment of reverence – especially on the lower but soft scales and movements of the mysterious ship like bows on ‘It’s Getting Late In The Evening’ – a title borrowed from the B-side to one of Talk Talk’s most commercially successful singles, ‘Life’s What You Make It’. Elsewhere, we are submerged within amorphous shaped clouds and elements that seem to have no density at all. And yet there is a real weight to it all that’s hard to describe. But for the most part Xqui creates the merest of essences, as he sculpts and prompts reactions and encapsulates a feeling and scape from the ether, his sources and finely attuned inspirations. Not so much a homage, as a prompt, a transformed response to the late Hollis, Spring is an original seasonal abstraction, and further expansion of Xqui’s desire to carry on communicating his sonic and compositional experiments to the wider world.
Greg Nieuwsma & Antonello Perfetto ‘Bird Brain’
(Cruel Nature Records) 25th April 2025
Connecting in Krakow as members of the progressively experimental Sawark before an eventual disbandment, the Midwest American and Neapolitan bred musicians Gerg Nieuwsma and Antonello Perfetto formed the Corticem partnership before sporting their own birth names for a new avant-garde chapter. After a number of albums, and once more partnering up with the Cruel Nature Records limited edition cassette platform, the duo expands their sound further still, prompted by a pair of nesting blackbirds observed over a month-long duration on Nieuwsma and his family’s balcony.
Taking the usual “bird brain” put-down and flipping it round to reflect both an affinity and near reverence for our avian friends, the duo sound out and react to the cerebral, philosophical and impressive behaviour and communications of the blackbird. But, inspired by Nieuwsma and his wife studying with curiosity and anticipation the birth of a quartet of “nestlings”, these themes also incorporate the very humanistic feelings of loss and nurturing, with Nieuwsma’s own thoughts about his kids leaving the family roost. And yet, after reading and swatting up on the study of such pioneering theorists as Robert Dooling and the philosophers Michel Serrer and Vinciane Despret, found that his perceptions, his sympathies and actions to protect and nurture were unwarranted. This was made clear when with a concentrated mind and plenty of research material, he found that blackbirds, and all birds, measured time differently: to them a month may seem like a year. This was made clear when the blackbird family abandoned their nest after only a month on Nieuwsma’s balcony, bringing up their family of fledglings in what seemed like such a short space of time.
Time and perception are the key words, but this album is also the reification of fascinating stats and theories on how we perceive the life cycle and our humanistic projections on nature as a whole. It all makes for an interesting, near miraged at times and psychedelic, soundboard experiment and device for free-improvised quantification. The blackbird’s song, the communication between its cloud or merl, are transformed from the familiar to the near alien, disturbing and supernatural through a trio of environmental field recordings. In either naturalistic real time or stretched-out and compressed, these recordings take on various transformative values; the variations change from the tranquil capture of passing time to a near otherworldly and paranormal pairing of cult Italian horror suspense and early Amon Düül II. Chirps suddenly sound more like squiggles, as the passing motions of hidden real sounds take on the generated machine sounds of a space craft.
Musically though, the rest of the album is in either a state of near slow suspension, a slowing down of time, or more spilled and splashing with the feelers in a sort of improvised mode of travel. With Nieuwsma on guitar and his foil Perfetto on a constant move across his drum kit and percussive apparatus, the playing shifts between a slacker-like bluesy psych vibe, post and math-rock, raga-like hallucinations and melts, and a strange aping of Moroccan gnawa. You could describe it better as Guru Guru meets King Champion Sounds, Don Caballero and Rhyton in a loose, acid head rock world of the wild and more languorous – throw in a little Velvets and a Mogadon induced Archers of Loaf to that mix for the full picture.
As momentary expectant, encouraging parents to a blackbird family, Nieuwsma and Perfetto channel study, theory, surprise, shock, and observation into a musical and sonic experimental flight of fantasy and improvised-like free play. Cerebrally transducing how time is measured by more or less embodying or looking at the subject through the eyes and brains of our avian friends, the duo question, inquire and mark their intricate behavioural patterns and unsaid intelligence, their speech and remarkable life cycles.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years both me and the MC team have featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world: ones that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored, and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love or interest in. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to say thanks or show
Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part One: A – L
December 10, 2024
Welcome to part one of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists.
Picked by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Despite the tumult of problems that face artists and bands in the music industry, from a lack of general interest to the increasingly punitive costs of touring and playing live, the worrying trend of venue closures, the ever-encroaching domination of streaming against physical sales and exposure, and the onslaught of AI, people just can’t quit making music. And that’s all without listing the political, social and economic woes that continue to make life unbearable for most of us; the scandalous forces of austerity/cost-of-living crisis and post-Covid hangover threatening to constantly drag us under. We, as critics – though most of us have either been musicians or still are – really appreciate what you guys, the music makers, do in the face of such intense stresses.
In fact, as we have always tried to convey, we celebrate you all. And so (as I say every year) 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, and even then, does it really come down to a popularity contest? –, the Monolith Cocktail has always chosen a much more diplomatic and democratic alphabetical order – something we (more or less) started in the first place.
The lists are broken up this year into two parts, A-L, and M-Z, and include 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 it was chosen by and a review link, if there is one. We also included quotes and summaries underneath.
Before we precede, we’d like to thank the following contributors to the site this year: Dominic Valvona, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Matt Oliver, Graham Domain, Mikey McDonald and Andrew C. Kidd, plus our Italian friends at Kalporz. Also, our gratitude and love for all our supporters during the year, and to those that have donated to https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail We really can’t have continued without it.
A_
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘Retro Porter’ (Somewherecold Records)
Chosen by Dominic Valvona/Review
“The sound of John Lane’s most prolific and artistically successful alias, A Journey Of Giraffes (no stranger to the blog, and often featured in our choice end of year features) is given almost unlimited time and space to unfurl on the ambitious opus-spanning Retro Porter album of ambient empirical suites.
An expansion upon Lane’s previous work – especially last year’s choice album entry, Empress Nouveau – each evolving sensory piece allows all the Baltimore composer’s signatures, motifs and serialism-like enquires to recollect memories of places and scenes, of the abstract, over the course of what sounds like a whole day.
Mirages, imaging’s, the sound of birds in the iron lattice gardens of an ostentatious arcade percent as described in late 19th century novella’s, sonorous pitches, the softened sound of a taiko drum at the Kabuki theatre, various hinges, dulcimer-like strokes all evaporate then solidify to create an ambient opus; a lifetimes work coalesced into one expansive, layered work of soundscape art and abstraction. Lane has allowed his mind to wander and explore organic and cerebral long form ideas like never before to produce, perhaps, his most accomplished unrestricted work yet.” DV
Annarella and Django ‘Jouer’ (We Are Busy Bodies/Sing A Song Fighter)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Born from the Senegalese imbued and inspired hub built around Sweden’s Wau Wau Collectif, another cross-cultural project that embraces that West African nation’s (and its neighbours) rich musical heritage. Fusing the roots, landscape and themes of Senegal with those of Europe, the partnership of Swedish flutist Annarella and the Malian born ngoni master Django absorbs the very atmosphere of that westernmost African republic, transposing and transforming age old traditions with a hybrid of contemporary musical effects and influences and guest list of diverse musicians and voices.
Django’s home environment and the outlier around it seeps into and materializes like a dreamy haze across all the album’s tracks, as evocations of the classical, of jazz and the blues mixes with the local stew of diverse languages. Tracks like ‘Degrees of Freedom’ are more mystical sounding, near cosmic, as the band saunter like gauze under the moon and across the desert’s sandy tides. Jouer, which translates from the French into “play”, is just that, a lovely stirring union of the playful that seamlessly entwines the two musician’s respective practices with sympathy, respect and the earthly concerns of our endangered societies and world. Hopefully this collaboration will continue and grow over the years; there’s not been a better one since Catrin Finch teamed up with Seckou Keita.” DV
Fran Ashcroft ‘Songs That Never Were’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“There is a uniqueness about this album; a trueness and soul you do not come across often much in these days of music to be played on phones. These are songs that could have been written anytime over the last 50 or so years, with some quite beautiful melodies and great lyrics; songs made for and by a music lover…already one on my end of the year best list.” BBS
B__
Donald Beaman ‘Fog On Mirror Glass’ (Royal Oakie)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The play and course of light, the recurring “phantom” and a beautiful subdued, nigh on elegiac poetry conjures up a simultaneous union of the beatific and longing on the latest solo effort from Donald Beaman.
Like a drifter’s songbook of subtle, intimate and home-recorded wanderings, metaphors and the like for yearned and plaintive romantic loss, fondness, the passing/measuring of time, and the urge to find comfort and solace, Fog On Mirror Glass uses memories of the weather, the way the light touched or dimmed at a given moment in time, and the smallest of witnessed movements/touches to evoke the right atmosphere of gossamer and sparsity.
In all, a most impressive and understated songbook of honest quality and performance, themed largely around the way light falls upon any given metaphor, analogy, phrase, description and texture. Unadorned, the feelings are left to pull and draw the listener into a most intimate world. Each play reveals more, as the album really begins to grow on you. A fine record indeed.” DV
Beauty Stab ‘Guide/Frisk’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“After a five plus year wait, we have the debut, and who knows, only album from the one time much tipped for big things Beauty Stab. An album filled with sex sleaze and glamour but with a healthy or unhealthy dose of darkness.
The sound and feel of eighties chart land I think has a big influence on Beauty Stab. They do share a name with ABC’s second album after all, and I can almost hear Martin Fry emote over the bass heavy synth pop funk of “Manic”.
“GUIDE/FRISK” is a wonderful and inventive crafted album that celebrates the joy and darkness and power that great pop music can bring to your life and really deserves to be heard by all.” BBS
Black Artist Group ‘For Peace And Liberty, In Paris December 1972’ (WEWANTSOUNDS)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Saved from obscurity and jazz lore, the previously believed “long-lost” recordings of the Black Artist Group’s radical free, avant-garde, spiritual and Afro jazz (with a side order hustle of funk) performance in Paris has been thankfully unearthed, dusted off and remastered in a project partnership between the band and the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel. Facilitating this operation are the reissue revivalist vinyl specialists WEWANTSOUNDS – regularly featured in my review columns over the years -, who’ve invited various connoisseur experts to provide liner notes, essays and photographic images to this package.
At times we’re talking Coltrane and Sun Ra, and at other times Roscoe Mitchell, Carlos Garnett and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. You can also pick up some Chick, a touch of Cymande, of Art Blakey, Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton. But to be specific, if you dig Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s ‘Safari’, Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’ and Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society then you’ll really need to part with the cash and have this on your shelf asap: not before blasting it out from your turntable.” DV
Black Diamond ‘Furniture Of The Mind Rearranging’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transported back in time, and then propelled forward into the now via Chicago’s musical legacy, its rich heritage of innovators and scope in the world of jazz, Artie Black and Hunter Diamond’s dual saxophone and woodwind focused vehicle can trace a line from the Windy City’s smokestack bluesy outlines of the 50s through the icons Sun Ra, Roscoe Mitchell, Eddie Johnson, Lester Bowie, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Anthony Braxton and the hothouse of undeniable influence and talent, the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians.
Across an ambitious double-album spread of both quartet and duo mode formations, those Black Diamonds don’t so much shine as smoulder and fizzle to a smoky and simmering resonance and metropolis backdrop encroached by wild jungles and fertile growth.” DV
Bloom De Wilde ‘The Circular Being’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the muse and the music of Bloom de Wilde. It has a tender all-consuming innocence and hope that calmly plays Rock Paper Scissors with a wistful sadness and melancholy.
Bloom writes songs that offer hope against all the odds; songs that embrace the eccentrics and outsiders, all the underdogs in life. Maybe that is why I feel a connection to her music and at times find myself totally engrossed with her beautiful tapestry of pop, jazz, folk and psychedelia, which she has woven with great love and skill to make great art.
Bloom is a fine songwriter, which may sometimes be overlooked due to the wonderful eccentricities of her personality and is a quite an accomplished and original lyricist, as this fascinating eleven song album of love, hope and magic shows.” BBS
The Bordellos ‘Nobody’s Listening’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by DV/Review by Graham Domain
“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)!” Graham Domain
boycalledcrow ‘Kullau (Mortality Tables)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A musical atmospheric hallucination and psychedelic dream-realism of a roadmap, the latest transduced-style album from Carl M Knott (aka a boycalledcrow) takes his recollections, memory card filled photo albums, samples and experiences of travelling through Northern India between 2005 and 2006 and turns them into near avant-garde transported passages of outsider art music.
Place names (that album title refers to the village, an ancient kingdom, of ‘Kullu’, which sits in the ‘snow-laden mountain’ province of Himachel Pradesh in the Western Himalayas), Buddhist self-transformation methods (the extremely tough self-observation process of “non-reaction” for the body and mind known as “Vipassana”), Hindu and Jainism yogis (the “Sadhu”, a religious ascetic, mendicant or any kind of holy person who has renounced the worldly life, choosing instead to dedicate themselves to achieving “moksha” – liberation – through meditation and the contemplation of God) and language (the localised distinctive Kullu dialect and syntax of “Kanashi”, currently under threat) are all used as vague reference points, markers in this hallucinatory grand tour.” DV
Brevity ‘Home Is Where Your Dog Is’ (Think Like A Key)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The wonderfully named “Home Is Where your Dog Is” is the unreleased album, plus some demo recordings, by late the 60’s early 70’s Chicago rock band Brevity, a band who never actually got to release anything at the time but had interest and encouragement from both Island Records and Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight Records. Truth be told, released here for the first time by Think Like A Key Records, it is indeed a bit of a lost and now found musical treasure.
“Home Is Where Your Dog Is” is one of those rare lost albums that actually deserves to be labelled a lost classic, and the added demos actually have an indie/post punk feel to them that reminded me strangely of very early Pulp in their more acoustic like days. Yes, one of my favourite albums I have had the pleasure to listen to this year: a true Gem of an album.” BBS
Charlie Butler ‘Wild Fictions’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“The music is all that you hoped it would be, for music without hope is hopeless and this is anything but that; it is the cream cake among lesser mortals.” BBS”
C___
Chris Corsano ‘The Key (Became the Important Thing [and Then Just Faded Away])’
(Drag City) – Chosen by DV
The prolific free-jazz, avant-garde and avant-hard drumming innovator Chris Corsano can be found as an instigator or willing foil across a multitude of experimental collaborations (recently on the MC appearing alongside Nels Cline, Darin Gray and Glenn Kotche as part of the We Jazz signed-off Saccata Quartet) but his soloist works are just as numerous and far reaching/influential. I lost count of appearances and album releases in 2024, but this constant rhythmic and non-rhythmic progressing album is my favourite, taken from back in June.
Literally letting rip with an apparatus of recognisable and often non-musical implements, Corsano fuses a noise and splash of ripping and tearing sounds with no wave Kraut-punk (think CAN, Faust), West African drumming, alternative jazz and jazz-prog-rock. Untethered, clever, and anarchistic in equal measures. DV
Alison Cotton ‘Engelchen’ (Rocket Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“In the wake of the barbaric terrorism of Hamas on October 7th, and the ensuing destructive retaliation/ obliteration of Gaza by Israel since, there seems little room – let alone nuance and balance – on the debate; battle lines have been drawn and divisions sowed. And so, this inspired tale of ‘derring-do’ (originally performed live at the Seventeen Nineteen Holy Church in Sunderland) performance suite from the Sunderland composer Alison Cotton is a most timely reminder of dark history, but also of altruistic acts of kindness.
Scoring the story of the innocuous Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, and their incredibly brave rescue attempts to save the lives of twenty-nine Jews from occupied Europe during the build-up and eventual outbreak of WWII, Cotton ties in the modern plight of refugees escaping similar persecutions.
Less a morbid, dark soundtrack to the evils of the Nazi regime and Holocaust, Cotton instead conveys the enormity and the danger of the Cook’s enterprise through slow tidal movements, tones, intonations and changes in the atmosphere. Throughout it all a prevailing presence and emotional pull can be felt: The mood music of grief, the plaintive and sorrowful cumulating in a beautifully played series of arrangements and suites that are as sombre as they are beautiful and moving – reminding me in parts of Alex Stolze, Anne Müller, Simon McCorry and Aftab Darvishi.” DV
D____
Ëda Diaz ‘Suave Bruta’ (Airfono)
Chosen by DV/ Review
“A rarefied artist who manages to merge dream-realism with both the traditional and contemporary, Ëda Diaz occupies multiple realms of geography to produce sublime and club-lite Latin-European R&B pop music. Between spheres of influence, her French-Colombian heritage is bonded across an exotic soundboard of effects, precise cut electronica, and transformed repurposed old dances and song; the latter of which includes an electrified form of currulao, ‘wonky’ Colombian salsa, bolero, bullerengue, vallenato and ‘dembow’. I absolutely love this spellbinding, vulnerable and playful Latin-Euro vision.” DV
E_____
Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit’ (Spiritmuse Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Originally hot-housed in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (the mid-1960s nonprofit organization instigated by Muhal Richard Abrams, Jodie Christian, Steve McCall and Phil Cohran in Chicago, which El’Zabar himself once chaired) incubator, El’Zabar’s percussive, drumming rhythms for the mind, body and soul channelled the windy city’s rich musical lineage of jazz, blues, R&B, soul, Godspell and what would become house and dance music.
Following on from last year’s Spirit Gather tribute to Don Cherry (which featured the worldly jazz icon’s eldest son David Ornette Cherry shortly before his death) this latest conscious and spiritual work channels that rich legacy whilst worshipping at the altar of those icons, progenitors and idols that came before; namely, in this instance, Miles Davis, Eugene McDaniels and McCoy Tyner.
El’Zabar’s once more heals, opens minds and elevates with another rhythmic dance of native tongues and groove spiritualism. The ancient roots of that infectious groove and the urgency of our modern times are bonded together to look back on a legacy that deserves celebrating. After fifty years of quality jazz exploration and collaboration, El’Zabar proves that there is still much to communicate and share as he and the EHE recast classics and original standards from the back catalogue.” DV
Empty House ‘Bluestone’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“The megalithic period “cromlech” (frequently interchanged with and referred to a “dolmen” too) construction of large stone blocks that stands within the borders of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in the village of Pentre Ifan, acts as a gateway to the imagination for the Blackpool-based musician Fred Laird, who goes under the moniker of Empty House.
Avalon mists descend across a communication with the landscape, whilst shriven archaic reenactments stir-up the hallucinatory and esoteric. Old vacuums of air blow through the spaces in between the stones as a haunted geology shrieks, howls, mourns and swirls. And a wispy passage of monastery choral voices carries on the wind as children giggle and the neolithic generator revs up vibrations and pulses from the afterlife. The Incredible String Band makes merry with Julian Cope; Steve Hillage joins Ash Ra Tempel; and Affenstunde period Popol Vuh invokes ghostly parallel histories with Xqui and Quimper on a tour of Ley lines. Atmospheres and scenes from a long history of settlement, of the spiritual, envelope the listener on a most subtle but rich field recording trip.” DV
Peter Evans ‘Extra’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A meeting of avant-garde minds to savour, the union of Peter Evans with Koma Saxo and Post Koma instigator and bassist Petter Eldh and New York downtown experimental rock and jazz drummer pioneer Jim Black is every bit as dynamic, explosive, torqued, moody, challenging and exciting as you’d imagine.
A crossroads of separate entangled influences and backgrounds, legacies, with all three practitioners in this Evans-fronted project and their CVs stretching back a few decades, the avant-garde rubs up against the blues, hard bop, atmospheric set scores, hip-hop style breaks, the electronic and classical. By using both the piccolo and flugelhorn on this album, some passages sound like Wynton Marsalis playing over Mozart, or Alison Balsom lending classical airs to an Alfa Mist production.
One of the best jazz albums you’ll hear all year, with a spot saved for the choice albums of the year lists, Extras is a thoroughly inventive and exciting dynamism of contemporary luminaries at the height of their skills and knowledge.” DV
F______
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly ‘MESTIZX’ (International Anthem X Nonesuch)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transformed and remoulded for a more progressive age the “MESTIZX” title of this partnership’s debut album takes the Spanish term for “mixed person” (namely, a union between those indigenous people in the Latin conquered territories of South America and the Spanish) away from its colonial roots and repurposes it on an album of dream realism duality.
With the multimedia performer and singer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti’s Bolivian and the jazz drummer Frank Rosaly’s Puerto Rican heritages, the pre-colonial history of South America is woven into a contemporary revision of magic, organic forms and ritual rhythms mixed with elements and a suffusion of Chicago post-rock, post-jazz and alternative Latin leftfield pop.
There’s much to admire in this world of the untamed and wild, with new perspectives, mixed histories and the largely melodious reverberations of the lost exercising a new language of ownership. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly perfect and expand their organic explorations, bewitching messages and oracles on an intriguing, moving and dreamily trippy debut album.” DV
G_______
Michal Gutman ‘Never Coming Home’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Never Coming Home” is a darkly beautiful album; an album of twisted musical discovery, with songs worthy to fall from the lips and the pen of the great Dory Previn; songs that pull you into a strange and beguiling solitude place, where you only have memories and fears and regrets for company. Musically stark and bewitching like an unused broken fairground ride: a bass guitar has never sounded so much like the faded remnants of an old lover’s final kiss. “Never Coming Home” is quite simply stunning.” BBS
Nino Gvilia ‘EP Number 1: Nicole’ & ‘EP Number 2: Overwhelmed By The Unexplained’ (Hive Mind Records) – Chosen by DV/Review
“Creating a musical, lyrical eco system of their own, soundtracked by folk, minimalism, the hallucinatory and pastoral – with only the final vaporous misty esoteric second EP’s titular track changing from cuckoo-like voiced loops and sympathetic strings to disturbing futuristic daemonic augur –, the Nino Gvilia encompassed guise ebbs and flows with the movement of the replenishing waters, the lakeside and mill turning scenes of the surroundings, to produce a disarming hymn. Idiosyncratic in beauty, I’d recommend this diaphanous accomplished mini opus to those with a penchant for Hatis Noit, Seaming To, Tia Blake and Roberto Musci.”
H________
Hackedepicciotto ‘The Best Of Hackedepicciotto (Live In Napoli)’ (Mute)
Chosen by DV/Review
“As a duo in recent years, Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto under the twinned Hackedepicciotto moniker, have channelled their diverse experiences as members/instigators of such groups as Einstürzende Neubauten, Crime And The City Solution and the Space Cowboys, into a signature sound that embraces the cabaret and soundtrack gravitas of post-punk, post-industrial, electronica, the esoteric, weird folk and twisted fairytale: which they themselves have described as “symphonic drone”.
Their fifth album, the partial sonic and lyrical autobiography, part photo album scrap book dedication, Keepsakes, was released last year. As with most of their catalogue, the duo’s albums are either recorded in a stirring, inspiring location, or in a different country. The most recent being no exception, recorded as it was at Napoli’s legendary Auditorium Novecento using the famous venue’s stock of various instruments. That album now forms the focal or centre point for this live release of choice bell tolled maladies and drone sonnets from the duo’s back catalogue. Performed over two nights, they’ve chosen to return to the Auditorium Novecento setting that made Keepsakes such an atmospherically rich and momentous, dramatic record. And so, they perform a quartet of songs from that most recent album alongside picks from the Menetekel (2017), The Current (2020), The Silver Threshold (2021) and Perseverantia (2023) albums. And it proves a winning formula as the perfect showcase, and a more unique approach to performing the “best of” their back catalogue.” DV
Christopher Haddow ‘An Unexpected Great Leap’ (Erol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A comfort blanket bookended by the reassuring signs of life via the sounds of an ultrasound, Christopher Haddow’s first steps out as a solo artist (flanked on either side by the contributions of Josh Longton on double-bass and Jamie Bolland on piano) capture the abstract feelings of parenthood. An Unexpected Great Leap is in fact, partially, an ambient tool to send both Christopher and his artist wife Athene Grieg’s son Louie off to sleep.
You may know Christopher as the former lead guitarist of Paper Planes and as a member of Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gates, but under his own name and with a different, more personal, direction he’s beautifully, imaginatively and conceptually complimented his wife’s visual feels of parenthood with a searching and settling album of ambient Americana and womb music.” DV
Sahra Halgan ‘Hiddo Dhawr’ (Danaya)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Few artists from the disputed region of Somaliland could qualify better than the singer, freedom fighter and activist Shara Halgan to represent their country’s musical legacy. As an unofficial cultural ambassador and symbol for female empowerment Halgan’s journey is an inspiring one: Forced out of her homeland during a destructive civil war – in which she played a part in nursing and “comforting” fighters from Somaliland’s secession movement, sometimes alleviating suffering through song –, Halgan had to flee abroad to “survive” hardships and dislocation in France, but eventually, a decade after the overthrow of Siad Barre’s ruling military junta, returned home to motivate and promote proud in Somaliland’s cultural heritage.
It was during her time in France, removed from her roots and homesick, that Halgan would meet the musicians that went on to form her studio and touring band: step forward percussionist and founder of the French-Malian group BKO Quintet, Aymeric Krol, and the guitarist and member of the Swiss ensemble Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp and L’etrangleuse, Maël Salètes. Both appear on the latest, and third Halgan album, alongside newest recruit Régis Monte, who adds “vintage organ” and “proto-electronic embellishments” to the heady and fuzzed mix.
Enriched soul music with an edge and buzz, Halgan and her troupe strike a balance between the heartfelt and empowered on electrifying album; that focal voice sounding so fresh and young yet wise and experienced, able to encapsulate a whole culture whilst moving forward.” DV
Herandu ‘Ocher Red’ (Hive Mind Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Trance is spun with bass noodling, Ethio-jazz, post-punk funk, Moroccan and Arabian cassette culture, retro space age keys, no wave dance music and the Aphex Twin to create an interesting explorative zap, skip, playful, mysterious and dreamy vision that mirrors the Gavrilov brothers feelings of their native landscape, and the episodes of life, the shaping of their creativity, born in that Siberian setting.” DV
Herald ‘Linear B’ (Errol’s Hot Wax)
Chosen by DV/Review
“If mid-70s Eno working his magic with Merriweather Post Pavilion sounds like a match anointed in heaven then Lawrence Worthington’s ridiculously long-delayed debut album is going to send you into a woozy alt-pop state of bliss. The latter partner in that ideal fantasy of influences is hardly surprising, with the Animal Collective’s “infrequent” co-founding member Josh Dibb (aka Deakin) playing the part of co-producing foil and soundboard. And although the eventual Linear B album was first conceived twenty plus years ago, when the Animal Collective and Panda Bear and a menagerie of congruous bands were building an alternative-psych-pop scene – the darlings (quite rightly) of Pitchfork and the burgeoning MySpace culture -, and when the musical palette of sounds is produced on cheap 90s Casio and Yamaha equipment, Worthington’s Herald nom de plume still resonates and feels refreshingly dreamily idiosyncratic.
The results set a personal psychedelic language of feels and character-dotted whimsy to a maverick alt-synth-pop production: imagine Syd Barrett, K. Leimar and Edward Penfold backed by a Factory Records White Fence or Panda Bear. Unassumingly lo fi yet symphonic, you can hear hints of neo-romantics, colder synth spells, the post-punk, the Bureau B label’s cult German new wave and post-krautrock offerings, John Cale and a very removed vision of The Beach Boys.” DV
Holy Matter ‘Beauty Looking Back’
Chosen by DV/Review
“Bathed in a new diaphanous light, Leanna Kaiser steps away from her ambient shrouded Frances With Wolves duo (albeit with an embraced cast of familiar faces and musicians) to take up the soloist guise of Holy Matter.
Following up on a tapestry of enchanted and dreamy singles, woven from gossamer threads of fairytale and fantasy, the musician, songwriter and filmmaker now unfurls an entire beautiful album of nostalgic imbued troubadour-folk, softened psychedelia and country woes, sad lilted resignation, solace, reflection and pathos.
Gazing both lamentably and in sighed resignation from metaphorical fairytale towers and vantage points emphasised by poetic weather patterns, Kaiser gently exudes a longing sense of wistful pulchritude. The past is always near, inescapable and worn like a comfort blanket; moulded to Kaiser’s desires, sorrows, reflections and duality. Holy Matter proves an interesting alluring and enchanting creative progression for Kaiser, her debut solo a refreshing take on the familiar and the tropes of time. “ DV
Hungrytown ‘Circus For Sale’ (Big Stir Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is the fourth album from Hungrytown, but the first I have had the pleasure of hearing, and indeed it is a pleasure as psych folk with more than a hint of baroque pop is right up my street. There is a beauty and calmness to it that one can lose themself in and ignore and forget briefly the day-to-day turmoil that surrounds them. Vocalist Rebbecca Hall is blessed with a magically sweet innocent voice that floats and weaves its way through the musical sea of melodious tranquillity that wraps itself around the listener: pure bliss.” BBS
K___________
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw ‘As Those Gone Before’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for weird, strange folk music, I put it down to watching too much Bagpuss and The Clangers as a toddler: wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child. So, this fine album of weird, strange folk songs is right down my summer pathway stroll of mischievous delight.
Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw go from the childlike tales of the sinister folk whimsy “Christopher Tadpole” to the dark and cold clawing of “Mole Man“; if you wondered what story time at the nursery school on summer isle might sound like, these gems will answer your wonderings. “The Four Trains That Killed Me” and “Last Of The Little Lost Lambs” are both wonderfully John Cale like in the darkness and utter beauty as much as “Accused Isle” is like listening to a slightly deranged Pam Ayres on the old Radio Luxembourg via an old transister radio under the bed clothes in the darkest of nights [wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child]. “As Those Gone Before” is a true magical gem of off-kilter folk whimsy, an album of true eccentric magnificence.” BBS
L____________
The Legless Crabs ‘No Condoms, Just Satan’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The sound of rock ‘n’ roll future and past collide in this nineteen-track beauty of anger and attitude: songs that deal with the strangeness of living in this world today.
From the Cramps like “I Catfished My Brother” and the sonic escapades of “Rope Bunny”, to the heaviness and sludge-rock dark humour of “Shark Lover” this is an album that should be all over alternative radio, and once again, has to compete with far less talented and easier and blander beige alternative rock.” BBS
Letters from Mouse ‘Clota’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen by DV/Review originally by Graham Domain
“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.
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.” GD
LINA_ ‘Fado Camões’ (Galileo Music)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Back this time with the British producer and musician Justin Adams and a small ensemble, LINA_ takes on the classical 16th century poetics of Portugal’s most famous literary son, Luís Vaz de Camões.
Musically tender, accentuated and like a fog, mist at times, even vapour of the mere essence of a score, there’s echoes of old Spain, the Balearics, North Africa, the Middle East but also Turkey and the Hellenic. LINA_ is a leading light, pushing the boundaries without losing the soul, truth and appeal of the music she adopts and transforms. Fado Camões is another artistic triumph.” DV
The Loved Drones ‘Live at Atelier Rock HUY’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Loved Drones have a power and an all-round likability and uniqueness that all the great bands have. They are a band who plough their own furrow through live casting off tangent animal shapes at the sun, raising two fingers to the lack of talent and originality that currently is forced upon us by the mainstream radio and press. The Loved Drones are quite wonderful.
“The Hindenburg Omen” is a instrumental that a blockbuster film should be made just so it can be included on the soundtrack, and “Humans Can’t Compete” once again is brimming with a Cope-like magnificence. These eight live tracks show what a great band we have in our mists and really should be heard and appreciated by all of us music lovers who love mind bending space hopping cosmic musical delights.” BBS
Our Daily Bread 626: JAMC, Dar Disku, Moreish Idols, Brevity…
September 18, 2024
BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA’S REVIEWS ROUNDUP – INSTANT REACTIONS.
bigflower ‘Criminal ii’
SINGLE (Self-Release)
There are things we can always rely on a weekly/monthly basis, such as Everton being shit, and on a brighter note, a new track by bigflower. This new instalment is called “Criminal ii” and is an upbeat harmonic drone of a gem, a song with a spring in its step, a song with subtle guitar whiz etched over its grinning face.
Beauty Stab ‘Words (b/w ‘Avé Maria’)’
SINGLE (Self-Release)
Another new single from Beauty Stab [this time Bandcamp only], again taken from their forthcoming album, and only coming a few weeks after the Synth pop dance romp that was “Bring Me The Boy”. “Words” is a different affair altogether, much darker, a synth goth track that will appeal to fans of their old band Vukovar, one that is more Black Celebration era Depeche Mode than Bronski Beat.
As good as “Words” is, the real gem is the B-side, a cover of the Roland S Howard song “Ava Maria”. A beautiful stroll through the 50’s Film Noir soundtrack, coming all reverb breezy guitar and Roy Orbison come early Elvis Sun Session era vocals; a track so sublime that if David Lynch heard it I’m sure he would be tempted to make a new film just to include it. How this band has no record deal is a great musical mystery.
Brevity ‘Home Is Where Your Dog Is’
ALBUM (Think Like A Key)
The wonderfully named “Home Is Where your Dog Is” is the unreleased album, plus some demo recordings, by late the 60’s early 70’s Chicago rock band Brevity, a band who never actually got to release anything at the time but had interest and encouragement from both Island Records and Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight Records. Truth be told, released here for the first time by Think Like A Key Records, it is indeed a bit of a lost and now found musical treasure.
There is a bit of the Bill Fays about the songs – again another artist who spent years in obscurity -, and of course touches of all the usual suspects: The Zombies/Beatles, especially on the gem of the song “Come See Paris In The Fall” and the equally beautiful “Lullaby”, which has a rather fetching harpsichord chiming away in the background, and “Cakewalk” could have easily fitted on the proto punk sounding Pink Fairies debut “Never Never Land”.
“Home Is Where Your Dog Is” is one of those rare lost albums that actually deserves to be labelled a lost classic, and the added demos actually have an indie/post punk feel to them that reminded me strangely of very early Pulp in their more acoustic like days. Yes, one of my favourite albums I have had the pleasure to listen to this year: a true Gem of an album.
Dar Disku ‘Sabir (Feat. Billur Battal)’
SINGLE (Soundway Records)
Now then I do like this, it is damn funky in fact. It has a lovely 70’s vibe; part psychedelic part let’s get down and boogie funk and disco. Baccara and Funkadelic join forces to make the feel-good summer disco swaggabond hit of 2024. A gem of a single.
Derrero ‘Breezing Up’
ALBUM (Recordiau Prin)
“Breezing Up” is Derrero‘s 6th album and is indeed another fine collection of pop songs. Songs with a beautiful 70’s MOR/AOR feel; the opening track “Ride On Rider” could have easily stepped off one of The Beach Boys early to mid 70’s masterpieces, and also “The Drive Home” and “A Line In Space” have a lovely laidback 70’s vibe. The title track “Breezing Up” is a Hawkwind like instrumental, and the lovely “Cosmic Shift” successfully mines the same terrain as Mercury Rev. The whole album is a wonderful relaxing laid back pop triumph of a listen.
I Do You Do Karate ‘Peanut Carter’
SINGLE (Half A Cow Records)
I Do You Do Karate rewrite Ash’s “Girl From Mars” and call it “Peanut Carter”. And it’s not a bad little power pop /alt pop guitar jangle. For all lovers of Teenage Fanclub and the already mentioned Ash and other bands of that ilk and such will no doubt enjoy the little slice of guitar pop fun.
J Pump And The Bulldozers ‘The Mudshark Incident Presents: In Memory Of Duncan Black’ ALBUM (link2wales)
What we have here is a tribute to the late Duncan Black an extremely talented guitarist who sadly passed away in August – all the money raised will go The End Of Life Palliative Care Team. And this is his last performance, recorded live at the Skerries in Bangor in 2023.
It is a fine recording as well. J Pump and The Bulldozers are in fine form offering songs of psych folk and folk punk. “Fishing For Cats” and “My Head Is Full Of Rats” are unhinged gems of songs and gems of performances when it comes down to it. The latter wouldn’t sound out of place on the Monks “Black Monk Time” album, which of course is high praise indeed. As I have already said, this is a really fine album and is for an extremely good cause. So please check it out.
The Jesus And Mary Chain ‘Pop Seeds’
SINGLE
The brand-new song single from the JAMC is upon us and is actually pretty good. A commercial tuneful Mary Chain like pop song, a sweet nostalgic melodious look back at their beginnings and their love of music and defiantly a step up from the all-round averageness of their last album.
The legless Crabs ‘Piercings and Tattoos’
SINGLE (Metal Postcard Records)
The rock ‘n’ roll extravagance of split back fury is back and shinning to the lamplight of the ghost of Mark E Smith, and the rumblings of John Peel trying to dig his way out of the coffin so he can give The Legless Crabs a radio session. Yes, the power of the crabs, powerful enough to resurrect your favourite dead DJ … Scratch, scratch, scratch…can you hear him? He is coming for the Crabs, I tell thee.
Moreish Idols ‘Pale Blue Dot’
SINGLE (Speedy Wunderground)
Speedy Wunderground have reached their landmark 50th single release, which in this day and age, and with the current state of the music industry, is some feat. So congratulations to them. What is the 50th single, and what is it like I hear you all cry. Well, it is a rather fetching catchy indie rock number by the Moreish Idols, and is a fine Pavement like slice of misadventure, a song with a bee in its bonnet, but a laid-back pleasant Bee with only good intentions.
Neon Kittens ‘Lika Like’
SINGLE (Metal Postcard Records)
A new single from the Neon Kittens and I Lika Like a lot. A track that reminds me of what a soundtrack of 60’s spy film might sound like if Joseph K had laid their mighty jangle all over it. Both sexy and beguiling and one I feel the need to get my black polo neck jumper on and climb through a neighbours bedroom window holding a box of Milk Tray chocolates after listening to the short gem of angular velocity. The power of the Neon Kittens should not be underestimated.
The New Tigers ‘Saba’
SINGLE (Soliti)
Now this is a bizarre one. If I spoke Finnish, it may make sense, but as I don’t it really does not. This track “Saba” is by the Finnish band The New Tigers and has a spoken in Finnish monologue running all the way through it. Instrumentally it reminded me of the mighty Orange Juice in the latter end of their existence with a smooth layer of indie jangle funk. So imagine if you will the Chef out of the Muppets being backed by Edwyn and his gang of merry mischief makers: defiantly worth a listen.
Rogers & Butler ‘Studio 3’
ALBUM (Think Like A Key Records)
“Studio 3” is so named in tribute to the studio where it was recorded, in probably the most famous recording studio in the world: Abbey Road. Recorded live in two days, trying to capture the magic of bygone days and the music the famous walls have no doubt soaked up, Rogers & Butler indeed succeed in their mission, with twelve well written and performed songs, each recalling memories and celebrating the art of the crafted melody and pithy lyrics. Songs that recall the golden days of 60’s “Soho Beat” or the Stones like 70s pub rockery of “Jigsaw Puzzle”, which could easily have been a lost track from an early Graham Parker & Rumour album. Or the excellent Ray Davies like “Teddy Boys”.
None of this album is cutting edge or tries to be current, and that is the charm and beauty of it. This is an album that sounds like an album and not a selection of singles thrown together like a Spotify play list. It sounds like an album to be played on a record/cd player and not on a smart phone at full volume by some spotty teenager trying to get the attention of the boy/girl they fancy sat at the other end of the bus. “Studio 3” is a gracefully crafted album which could have been recorded anytime in the last 50 or so years and is good fun and a good listen.
SIB ‘Swelling Itching Brain’
ALBUM (Other Voices)
If post-industrial synth cosmic gothic madness is your thing, then this is indeedy the album for you. An album to help you as you eagerly await the coming new Cure album. Although this sounds nothing like the Cure except in the parts when it does. “Swelling Itchy Brain” is an enjoyable cool and cold slab of alternative eastern European metallic industrial magic, an album that fans of Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly will no doubt cherish and hold close to the sledgehammer beats of their hearts.
Various ‘Tales Of A Kitchen Porter: A Tribute To The Cleaners From Venus’
COMPILATION (Dandy Boy Records)
I adore the songs of Mr “Cleaners From Venus” Martin Newell so this album is a bit of a godsend to my ears. For what we have here is fifteen covers of Newell’s songs by fifteen extremely wonderful bedroom pop bands.
Tales Of A Kitchen Porter is a bit of a rarity, for normally on albums like this there is normally a hot potch of tracks differing in quality. But all the tracks on this comp are of the highest quality, which both tells of just not the quality of the songs but also of the quality of the bands performing them, from the power pop of The Sob Stories version of “Victoria Grey” to the excellent almost Bay City Rollers sounding “He’s Going Out With Marilyn” by Inflatable Men and the lo-fi beauty of the Flowertown‘s version of “Clara Bow”. All in all, fifteen tracks of pop seduction and melodious delight.
Our Daily Bread 621: New Starts, Neon Kittens, The Legless Crabs, The Sad Eyed Beatniks…
July 16, 2024
BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA’S REVIEWS ROUNDUP FOR JULY – INSTANT REACTIONS
UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE ALL RELEASES CAN BE PURCHASED RIGHT NOW.
Bigflower ‘Strange Days’
Single (Self-Released)
“Strange Days” is an atmospheric gem of a beauty, a tune in search of a movie. As I’ve said many times before about bigflower, they have a cinematic elegance, a widescreen view of musicality. There really aren’t that many artists making music like bigflower. They have their own sound, an echoing cavernous emptiness that is both enriching and steeped in a melancholy that is thought provokingly wonderful.
Comet Gain ‘Only Happy When I’m Sad/ Dreams Of A Working Girl’
Single (Spinout Nuggets)
What else can you expect from one of the finest guitar bands from the last thirty years or so, but a splendid slice of summery pop. Two songs that whistle and breezes, so full of summer goodness you will have to take hay fever medication after hopefully hearing them drift from the radio in the coming months. The phrase Pop gems was invented for this fine double sided delight of a single.
The Legless Crabs ‘No Condoms Just Satan’
Album (Metal Postcard Records)
The sound of rock ‘n’ roll future and past collide in this nineteen track beauty of anger and attitude: songs that deal with the strangeness of living in this world today.
From the Cramps like “I Catfished My Brother” and the sonic escapades of “Rope Bunny”, to the heaviness and sludge-rock dark humour of “Shark Lover” this is an album that should be all over alternative radio, and once again, has to compete with far less talented and easier and blander beige alternative rock.
The legless Crabs over the years have become one of those bands that never disappoints and takes from punk, electro and indie pop grunge and mashes it all into a strange kind of Alternative musicality with fine lyrics shouted/whispered /spoken or sang over.
They’re are one of the most important bands in the current underground musical scene and this album should be heard and loved by all as darkness, humour and danger really does need to make a comeback into mainstream music as an alternative to the current worship of pleasant but far to healthy and clean and wholesome pop that currently filling the Ticketmaster friendly airwaves today.
Neon Kittens ‘Minutes Of Fun’
EP (Metal Postcard Records)
This brand new four track EP is as good as you would expect it to be, depending on how much you love the kittens. And I adore them, so of course I love this EP. As angular sexy as no-wave and avant-garde as always – and really would we have it anyway else -, the sound of Miss Kitten bitching to a friend on her smartphone whilst the Fire Engines rehearse in the same room is pure bliss.
New Starts ‘Asbestos Roof’
Single (Fika Recordings)
I have always liked the songwriting of Darren Hayman. I love his pinpoint accuracy in the details of relationships gone right or wrong in his lyric writing. And once again he has supplied us with another gem, which has me looking forward to the forthcoming debut album from this his brand new band.
Red Tory Yellow Tory ‘Omni–Party’
Album (Highest Common Denominator)
Its all very nice all very good, it’s new music, it’s the future, it is no longer important it is a model of your greatest fancy sculptured out of Spam – the kind you used to get on rations in the good old days when we were getting bombed by Nazi Germany. This is the kind of album people who employ friends to clean their house would hate. It has no jangly guitars or songs about being broken hearted because the girls of your dreams are just a figment of your imagination. No, this is an album that takes the beats of late 80s early 90s chill dance music and indie with sampled vocal layers of synth and repetitive yearnings of art that reminds one of Throbbing Gristle or Add N To X or the KLF in their more mellow moments. This is an album that will appeal to those who used to enjoy listening to John Peel and now try and catch every show on Dandelion Radio at least once every month. This album is fun it has a sense of humour and an enjoyability that I find humorous and enjoyable.
Kevin Robertson ‘The Call Of The Sea’
Album
“The Call Of The Sea” is the fourth solo album from Kevin Robertson, a man who is also one of the vocalists/guitarists from Scottish guitar band The Vapour Trails. And here we have him once again showering us with sublime melodies. Melodies that are wrapped in Byrdsian like guitar jangle and vocal harmonies that have just stepped from scratched vinyl copies of ye olde mid-sixties beat boom collectables stopped for a cup of the finest Earl Grey with late 80’s early 90’s Scottish indie guitar wunderkinds’ Teenage Fanclub and Superstar while scribbling on postcards to send their love to those old scouse reprobates Shack and The La’s and the Coral. I will be honest, I get sent loads and loads of albums to review all showing these very same influences but the main difference here being Kevin is a very good songwriter with a gift for melody that would have had him stood head-to-head, shoulder to shoulder with his influencers. And if was performing in the 1960’s would no doubt have been a regular on Shindig and Ready Steady Go, and signed to Decca or Fontana or Pye.
The Sad Eyed Beatniks ‘Ten Brocades’
Album (Meritorio Records)
The sound of The Velvet Underground, The Pastels, The Go Betweens, the question is, if I was asking a question, would be do you like them? If the answer is in the affirmative, no doubt this album would be right up your street as it’s full of the things you associate with the said bands: the lovely jangling guitars, the raise of the arched eyebrow – like if Roger Moore was the Beatnik James Bond -, the blissful melodies, the soundtrack to wearing a black polo neck jumper. Yes indeed this album is the sound of the local music scene, the sound of youth and the still wonder you can find from the strumming of the electric guitar.
The Sad Eyed Beatniks will indeed bring tears to your eyes. But they will be tears of memories of romance and yearning and failed romantic dalliances and the memories of the guitar chord playing British Bulldog with your heart.
Vinyl Kings ‘Big New Life’
Album
Now I was not expecting this. For some reason I was expecting just another power pop album, but no, this is an album of 70s radio friendly pop rock tracks that had me hurling back to my preteen days of having the transistor radio glued to my ear; the days of me wearing flared jeans and T-shirt’s with the Silver Surfer on them while my older brother looked resplendent in Star Tank Tops and flared cords.
Yes this is one of those albums of pure perfect pop, just like they used to make: 70s Cliff wrestling with the sound of ELO, David Cassidy singing the songs of Harry Nilsson. “Smoke Rings For Renee” is an example of drop dead gorgeous pop songwriting. McCartney/Billy Joel like ballads, “So Easily Fooled”, rubbing shoulders with guitar tones that have not been heard since the days of the Grange Hill Theme. This is a beautiful album of pop finery that should be treasured by all.
A (near) 150 albums survey of the year, with choice eclectic albums chosen by the Monolith Cocktail Team.
Well was I wrong last year when I called 2021 the annus horribilis of all years. It has been soundly beaten by the shit-show that is 2022. The invasion of the Ukraine, cost of living crisis, another hideous wave of Covid – which even if the jabs are being rolled out, and the deaths rate, hospitalisations is nothing like the first wave back in 2020, is still causing major illness, absences and disruptions to a society already facing a heap of doomsday scenarios -, strikes, activism, fuel poverty, Iranian protests, and the continuing horror show of a zombie government being just some examples. Yes 2022 qualifies as one of the most incomprehensible years on record of any epoch; an ungovernable country in the grip of austerity point 2.0, 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.
And yet, it has been another great year for music. 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. We also throw every genre, nationality together in a serious of eclectic lists: no demarcation involved.
The lists include those albums we reviewed, featured on the site in some capacity, and 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.
Because of the sheer number of entries, we’ve split that list in to two parts: Part One (A – L) starts with Anthéne & Simon McCorry and finishes with Lyrics Born; Part Two (M-Z) begins with Machine Girl and finishes with The Zew.
This year’s picks have been chosen by (Dominic Valvona), Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Matt Oliver, Andrew C. Kidd and Graham Domain.
A.
Anthéne & Simon McCorry ‘Mind Of Winter’ (Hidden Vibes) Dominic Valvona
Review
Seigo Aoyama ‘Prelude For The Spring’ (Audiobulb) DV
Review
Armstrong ‘Happy Graffiti’ Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Review
Yara Asmar ‘Home Recordings 2018-2021’ (Hive Mind) DV
Review
Avalanche Kaito ‘S-T’ (Glitterbeat) DV
Review
Avantdale Bowling Club ‘TREES’ Andrew C. Kidd
B.
Caterina Barbieri ‘Spirit Exit’ (Warp Records) ACK
Review
Jam Baxter ‘Fetch the Poison’ (Blah) Matt Oliver
Oliver Birch ‘Burning Daylight’ BBS
Review
Ｂｌａｃｋ Ｍｅｓａ ‘Research Facility’ (猫 シ Corp. ‘Selected Works’) ACK
Brigitte Beraha ‘Blink’ DV
Review
Brian Bordello ‘Cardboard Box Beatles’ (Metal Postcard Records) DV
Review
The Bordellos ‘Ronco Revival Sound’ (Metal Postcard Records) Graham Domain
Review
Boycalledcrow ‘Wizards Castle’ (Waxing Crescent Records) BBS
Review
Broadcast ‘The Maida Vale Sessions’ (Warp Records) GD
Apollo Brown & Philmore Greene ‘Cost of Living’ (Mello Music Group) MO
Brown Calvin ‘dimension//perspective’ (AKP Recordings) DV
Review
C.
Loyle Carner ‘Hugo’ (EMI) MO
Tom Caruana ‘Strange Planet’ (Tea Sea Records) MO
Cities Aviv ‘Man Plays The Horn’ (D.O.T.) DV
Claude ‘A Lot’s Gonna Change’ (American Dreams) DV
Review
Clouds in a Headlock ‘Breakfast in Phantasia’ (Offkiltr/Fat Beats) MO
Julian Cope ‘England Expectorates’ BBS
Link
D.
The Dark Jazz Project ‘S-T’ (Irregular Frequencies) DV
Review
Aftab Darvishi ‘A Thousand Butterflies’ ACK
Review
The Difference Machine ‘Unmasking the Spirit Fakers’ (Full Plate) MO
Review
Ferry Djimmy ‘Rhythm Revolution’ (Acid Jazz) DV
Matt Donovan ‘Habit Formation’ DV
Review
The Doomed Bird Of Providence ‘A Flight Across Arnham Land’ DV/BBS
Review
Dubbledge ‘Ten Toes Down’ (Potent Funk) MO
Review
E.
Eamon The Destroyer ‘A Small Blue Car – Re-made/Re-modelled’ (Bearsuit Records) BBS
Review
El Khat ‘Albat Alawi Op.99’ (Glitterbeat) DV
Review
Kahil El’Zabar Quartet ‘A Time For Healing’ (Spiritmuse) DV
Roger Eno ‘The Turning Year’ (Deutsche Grammophon) GD
Review
Eerie Wanda ‘Internal Radio’ (Joyful Noise Recordings) DV
Exociety ‘Deception Falls’ (Exociety) MO
F.
Fera ‘Corpo Senza Carne’ (Maple Death Records) DV
Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita ‘Echo’ (bendigedig) DV
Review
Flat Worms ‘Live In Los Angeles’ (Frontier Records) DV
Review
Forest Robots ‘Supermoon Moonlight Part Two’ (Subexotic) DV
Review
Nick Frater ‘Aerodrome Motel’ (Big Stir Records) BBS
Review
Future Kult ‘S-T’ (Action Wolf/AWAL) DV
Review
G.
Mike Gale ‘Mañana Man’ DV
Premiere
Dana Gavanski ‘When it Comes’ (Full Time Hobby / Flemish Eye) GD
Review
Gold Panda ‘The Work’ (City Slang) ACK
The Good Ones ‘Rwanda…You See Ghosts I See Sky’ (Six Degrees) DV
Review
Goon ‘Hour of Green Evening’ (Demode Recordings) Graham Domain
Review
Guillotine Crowns ‘Hills to Die On’ (Uncommon Records) MO
Review
Gwenno ‘Tresor’ (Heavenly Recordings) GD
H.
Aldous Harding ‘Warm Chris’ (4AD) GD
Healing Force Project ‘Drifted Entities Vol. 1’ (Beat Machine Records) DV
Review
Sven Helbig ‘Skills’ (Modern Recordings) DV
Review
Bruno Hibombo ‘Parting Words’ DV
Houseplants ‘II’ (Win Big Records) DV
Review
John Howard ‘From The Far Side Of A Miss’ (Kool Kat) DV
Review
I.
IBERI ‘Supra’ (Naxos World Music) DV
J.
Juga-Naut ‘Time & Place’ (Juga-Naut) MO
JPEGMAFIA ‘OFFLINE!’ ACK
K.
Kamikaze Palm Tree ‘Mint Chip’ (Drag City) BBS
Review
Kick ‘Light Figures’ (Anomic Records/Dischi Sottoernnei/Sour Grapes) DV
Review
King Kashmere ‘Woof’ (High Focus) MO
Evan Kertman ‘Rancho Shalom’ (Perpetual Doom) BBS
Review
KMRU ‘Temporary Stored’ ACK
L.
Labelle ‘Éclat’ (Infiné) DV
Review
The Legless Crabs ‘Always Your Boy’ (Metal Postcard Records) BBS
Review
The Legless Trials ‘Cheese Sandwich’ (Metal Postcard Records) BBS
Kristine Leschper ‘The Opening Or Closing Of A Door’ (Anti-) DV
Review
Liraz ‘Roya’ (Glitterbeat) DV
Review
Francesco Lurgo ‘Sleep Together Folded Like Origami’ (Bosco Records) DV
Review
Lyrics Born ‘Mobile Homies’ (Mobile Home Recordings) MO
Review
Keep an eye out later this week for Part Two.
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.
BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA’S REVIEWS ROUNDUP
SINGLES/TRACKS
Alexander Stordiau ‘Nothings Ever Required’
(Timeless Music Records)
‘Nothings Ever Required’ is a gem of a aural discovery; a moody piece of John Carpenter-esque solitude over five minutes of pure instrumental poetry. The kind of mood piece to soundtrack the passing daylight by watching passing strangers walk past the old coffee house window trying to read the faces, read their thoughts, lost in your memories, and hopes slowly making the coffee last, cusping it in your warms to keep in the warmth, with Alexander Stordiau gently caressing the shifting time of loneliness.
It’s Karma It’s Cool ‘A Gentle Reminder’
‘Gentle Reminder’ is a in fact a gentle reminder that pop music is a wonderful thing, as this tuneful little ditty shows three and a half minuets of perfectly formed guitar pop rock, with a Peter Holsapple guesting on keyboards – that is in fact one of the highlights of the track – giving this perfectly formed pop rock of a song a slight new wave sense of danger.
Anxiolytics ‘S{R}[C]O[{T}[R]CHED EARTH’
Anxiolytics are an experimental synth duo from North Wales and have an evil but lovingly portrayed glint in their eye I bet, this single being a strange and haunting affair that takes me back to the post punk early 80s of the Passage and Soft Cell and offers something both original and different; a song that has a cold warmness that will smother and intoxicate you with a germ ridden freshness that has not been inhaled since the passing of the great David R Edwards and the wonder that was Datblygu. Once again I am left awaiting the debut album.
Floorbrothers ‘Drive’
(Ikarus Records)
Ahh Mr Floorbrothers, ‘Fade Into You’ by Mazzy Star is one of my favourite tracks as well. So slowing it down and making it into a drug induced waltz, adding new lyrics and making it sound like Mott The Hoople needing a good night’s sleep is a pretty nifty idea and one I stand and applaud. A good single then.
Bigflower ‘Tried To Care’
The first new track from the mighty bigflower in a few months I think, and yes, they have once again supplied a dark piece of dense guitar magic; a track to help soundtrack these dark, dark frightening days and months that lie ahead in the UK; the kind of track we need to be blasted from car radios as we head to work knowing after a week of hard slog we will still not be able to afford to pay our bills and put food on the table. Although this is not an out and out political lambasting of our uncaring and failing government it is a song to capture the intensity and hopelessness of these worrying times.
EP
Rob Clarke And The Woolltones ‘Rubber Chicken B-Sides’
(Aldora Britain Records)
This is an enjoyable little forage into the dim and distant past. Four songs that take the hip swinging beatitude of the sixties, all beat chords and “What’d I Say” riffage songs your nan would have curled her hair to in her youth before going down the ballroom to watch the local beat band. Four songs that are all enjoyable and warm sounding and with the final track, ‘Love And Haught’, being especially splendid, a track worthy of the final days of the wonderful Escorts: close your eyes and you are back in 1966 heaven. A beautiful release and only 50p to download: that is 12 and a half pence a track. Yes this EP does take you back when half a pence was such a thing.
ALBUMS
The Pixies ‘Doggeral’
(BMG) 30th September 2022
I used to love The Pixies back in the day when they first appeared, and to be honest I’ve not really listened to them much since they got back together. I’ve not really listened to them since Indie Cindy, and I think I might have been missing out if this album is anything to go by; although they are obviously missing the divine Kim Deal. But that is all they seem to be missing. They still have quite a loud thing going on (‘Haunted House’), are still masters of distorted surf guitar (‘Vault Of Heaven’), and have not lost their knack for a catchy strange pop tune, (‘Get Stimulated’). The lovely charmingly charming pop beauty that is ‘The Lord Has Come Back Today’ might just be my favourite track on this rather fine enjoyable album. They even have a whistling solo on ‘Pagan Man’, which there is certainly not enough of in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. So, the eighth Pixies album is in fact quite a musical treat.
Keiron Phelan & The Peace Signs ‘Bubblegum Boogie’
(Gare Du Nord) 23rd September 2022
What we have here my lukewarm fluffy bunny fetishists is an album of sophisticated polite pop – and we all need a little sophistication and politeness in our lives. Remember children always say please and thank you afterwards [ooeer missus]. And this album of melody rich pop could be your injection of sophistication for the day.
‘Trojan Pony’ kicks off the album with a fine Harry Nilsson like pop ditty that would not sound out of place on any of his early 70s pop masterpieces. Kieran Phelan is obviously a fan of the seventies laid-back pop as we find a tribute to the lovely gentleman and cult favourite John Howard with ‘Song For John Howard’, a lovely short piano ballad that not just recalls the music of the great man but also Brian Wilson as well, which indeed cannot be a bad thing.
The whole album is awash with gentle laid-back slightly quirky songs that have a layer of sadness and memories, and sometimes, sad memories are the most beautiful. And Bubblegum Boogie is indeed a beautiful little sophisticated bubble gum pop album.
Grave Goods ‘Tursday. Nothing Exists’
(Tulle) 9th September 2022
“Step softly into the new world of the underground” is the opening line from the opening track ‘Come’ from this rather fine post-punk album of clattering guitars and such malarkey. And it’s an invitation I would readily advise all fans of clattering guitars and such malarky to well accept. For they will be treated to seven tracks of aggressive alternative rock post-punk that takes some rather fine lyrics [which I am very taken with] and guitar riffs that put Grave Goods a step up from the usual gallop of the many many other post-punk bands. An album well worth investigation dear readers.
The Legless Crabs ‘And If You Change Your Mind About Rock ‘n’ Roll’
(Metal Postcard Records)
Thank the fuck for the Legless Crabs. After spending over an hour going through my emails to see what delights I could pontificate about and tell you lovely readers all about, I was left bereft. I had listened to loads of power pop with shite lyrics; shoegaze which in itself stands alone as why I have not reviewed it: anything that describes itself as shoegaze is enough to put me off, we all know what shoegaze is, music that reaches for the stars but very rarely manages not to leave the ground. So thank fuck for the rock ‘n’ roll un pc digs at modern life the Legless Crabs on a regular basis release. And If You Change Your Mind About Rock ‘n’ Roll’ is up to their normal high standard.
Guitars that fuzz and buzz and on this occasion form layers of pure confusion that take you back to the golden age of watching loud guitar bands in dingy clubs. ‘Piss Lake’, ‘Anti -Christian Scientists’ and every other track on this album are filled with an anger and disgust at the way modern life is shaping up.
This album is a much more serious and mature sounding album of rock ‘n’ roll. They no longer sound like the slap dash young noise merchants that overdosed on JAMC and the Cramps and Pussy Galore and now sound like they have had to grow up and get jobs. And that has just made them even angrier.
This is an album of darkness like their others, but the others came with a cheeky wink this with just a terrifying blank stare.
Salem Trials ‘Postcards From The Other Side Of The Sun’
(Metal Postcard Records)
A triple album by the Salem Trials: well it would be a triple LP if it were released on vinyl. There are 29 tracks and each and everyone is filled with the whip snap guitar madness that the Salem Trials deal in.
Songs that echo the world we live in full of dark humour, nostalgia, darkness and T Rex riffs. ‘Black Flash’, which imagine instead of David Bowie guesting on the Marc Bolan Show you had Mark E Smith, and instead of it being in a TV studio it was on a small boat that was slowly sinking below the waves, slowly lapping around Marc and Mark E’s knees; a song of pure and beautiful magic and maybe my fave ever Salem Trials song. Pure brilliance. But there are so many. Andy and Russ are quite incapable of not doing anything that is not at least very good; they have their own sound; they have their own feel; they have their own magic.
The Salem Trials are one offs. They take their influences of post-punk, psych, seventies glam, no wave, indie pop and merge into what can only be described as a unique and rewarding listening experience.
Andrei Rikichi ‘Caged Birds Think Flying Is A Sickness’
(Bearsuit Records)
Apart from Caged Birds Think Flying Is A Sickness being a great album title it is also a fine album; an album that takes electronica, dance and cinematic sculptures to a new and experimental place, a place where white noise and James Bond soundtracks collide to great and unusual effect. ‘What Happened To Whitey Wallace’ sounds like monks playing on a old ZX 90 computer game and ‘Bag, Lyrics, New Prescription’ could be on a soundtrack to an Alfred Hitchcock movie set in a colourful but black and white jazz world.
Yes, indeed once again Bearsuit Records have released an album crammed with original thought-provoking music that is both experimental but also very listenable; an album to soundtrack the spin of a roulette wheel and the shadow-stained wet pavement of a neon signed littered night time street.
The Monthly Playlist: April 2022: SAULT, Nduduzon Makhathini, Lyrics Born, Ed Scissor…
April 28, 2022
PLAYLIST SPECIAL
The sounds that have piqued the team’s interest, filled their hearts, fucked with their heads, or just sent sauntering towards escapism, the Monthly playlist gathers together all the music we’ve featured over the last month. We’ve also picked some of those tracks that managed to evade us and some we just didn’t get the time or room to exalt.
Our eclectic as usual mix starts in Tel Aviv with the Şatellites and moves across continents to take in Rwanda’s The Good Ones, Sao Tomé and Principe’s vintage África Negra, the Georgian choir Iberi, and one of Scandinavia’s principle jazz ensembles, OK:KO.
There’s plenty of more, with a freshly produced diaphanous, slow knocking beat gauzy treatment of the burgeoning pop enchantress and dystopian muse Circe’s ‘Mess With Your Head’ – now transformed into ‘It’s All Over’ under the Secret World Orchestra guise -, and a rafter of choice hip-hop cuts from Billy Woods, Dabbla, Lyrics Born and Lunar C with Jehst. Pop, jazz, electronic, dreamwave, psychedelic and post-punk are all represented. And there’s even a track from our very own Brian Shea and his cult dysfunctional family band The Bordellos.
The Monolith Cocktail team, corralled into action by me, Dominic Valvona, currently includes Matt Oliver, Brain ‘Bordello’ Shea, Graham Domain and Mikey MacDonald.
Those Tracks In Full Are:{
Şatellites ‘Zuhtu (Live)’
Melody’s Echo Chamber ‘Personal Message’
IKE (Ft. Sera Kalo) ‘What Then’
Dana Gavanski ‘Indigo Highway’ Crystal Eyes ‘Wishes’
Pete Rock ‘Brother On The Run’
Steve Monite ‘Only You’
África Negra ‘Vence Vitoria’
Samora Pinderhughes ‘Holding Cell’
Izzi Sleep & Rat Motel ‘Good Going Down’
Mercvrial ‘Look Inside’
The Bordellos ‘I Hate Pink Floyd Without Syd Barrett’
Peace De Résistance ‘Boston Dynamics’
The Legless Crabs ‘Boo Hoo Hoo’
Otoboke Beaver ‘YAKITORI’
Papercuts ‘Palm Sunday’
Kloot Per W ‘Le Pays’
Nicole Faux Naiv ‘Moon Really’
Liz Davinci ‘Daisy’
Julia Holter, Harper Simon & Meditations On Crime ‘Heloise’
Amine Mesnaoui & Labelle ‘Bleu Noir’ Billy Woods ‘Wharves’
Professor Elemental ‘Inn At The End Of Time (Remix)’
Dabbla ‘Alec Baldwin’
Nelson Dialect & Mr. Slipz ‘Association’
SAULT ‘June 55’
Nduduzo Makhathini ‘Amathongo’
Rob Cave & Small Professor ‘Respect Wildlife’
Lyrics Born (Ft. Rakaa Iriscience, Shing02, Bohan Phoenix, Cutso) ‘Anti (Remix)’
Kino & Sadistik ‘The Earth Was Empty’
Aethiopes (Ft. El-P, Breeze Brewin) ‘Heavy Winter’
Laddio Bolocko ‘Nurser’
Novelistme ‘Never’
Astrel K ‘Maybe It All Comes At Once’
David J ‘(I Don’t Want To Destroy) Our Beautiful Thing’
Jörg Thomasius ‘Okoschadel’
Ed Scissor ‘Dad’
Violet Nox ‘Eris’
Moscoman ‘Dalmar Is Back And It’s Final’
Grandamme, Claudia Kane & Bastien Keb ‘Nirvana’
FloFilz (Ft. Dal) ‘Levada’
Chairman Maf ‘Gammon Island’
Moon Mullins ‘Welcome To Tilden’
IBERI ‘Arkhalalo’
Papé Nziengui ‘Gho Boka Nzambé’
The Good Ones ‘Happiness Is When We Are Together’
OK:KO ‘Vanhatie’
Ubunye ‘Our Time’
Shrimpnose & BLOOD $MOKE BODY ‘Beyond The Villian’
Justo The MC & Remulak ‘Knockturnal’
Lunar C (Ft. Jehst) ‘Any Given Wednesday’
Qrauer ‘The Mess’ Circe/Secret World Orchestra ‘It’s All Over’
Brianwaltzera ‘tracing Rays [reality glo]’
Kota Motomura (Ft. Akichi) ‘Flower’
BRIAN BORDELLO SHEA’S REVIEWS JAMBOREE
Unless otherwise stated, all release can be purchased now.
Papercuts ‘Palm Sunday’
(Labelman)
This is a rather fine jangly pop song well written with a melancholy air that should be bottled and released into atmosphere to seep into the summers day and soak and enrich the lives of we the general public; a song that captures a snapshot, a brief still of a beautiful girl, a beautiful boy, a moment in time that will forever be etched onto our hearts.
Crystal Eyes ‘Like A Movie’
(Bobo Integral Records) 22nd April 2022
There are some fine radio friendly guitar pop singles being released at the moment, and here we have another one. It reminds me of Catatonia with rather fetching breathy vocals and chiming grungy guitars and a semi ‘Be My Baby’ drum beat: a lovely ballad. So what on earth is there not to like…I will tell you… there is nothing not to like. So yes, as Simple Simon would say, “I like it”.
Otoboke Beaver ‘Pardon’
(Damnably)
If sparkling punk pop is your thing then I would advise you to check out this short blast of pure fun from the all girl Japanese band Otoboke Beaver. It rams you in the gullet with its nonsensical charms dipping your brain into an infectious mix of madness and melody goofiness, its like losing yourself in a chocolate inspired dream after overdosing on milkshake spiked with happy thoughts.
YOVA ‘Make It Better’
(Quartertone)
I like this single it has a subtle political(ness) about it and a great nagging violin sounding [I do not know if it is a violin, but it sounds like one] riff picking away, clawing out your eyes and picking worms from your unsettled mind like a big black angry crow shouting fuck you in between pecks. Yes, I’m a bit of a fan of this single and through further investigation I’m becoming a bit of a fan of Yova: who it seems has just released her debut LP, Nine Lives.
East Portal ‘Untitled #3’
(AKP Recordings)
This sounds like something from a beatnik black and white horror film from the 60s; a road movie featuring scary gipsy children who like to devour their victims’ souls with egg spoons whilst offering their spittle to the charred remains of their god; a Mister Punch doll worked by top hatted old raggedy gentleman who has no teeth but a lot of self-belief in the power of coffee houses and backward performed poetry. You are not going to hear this track on Radio One. And it is all the better for that.
Evan Kertman ‘Rancho Shalom’
(Perpetual Doom) 29th April 2022
Rancho Shalom is a rather fetching album of baroque alt country; an album stuffed full with beautiful well-written songs. Songs with melodies that pull and twist your emotions and lyrics that both make you want to smile and cry. Evan Kertman is a man blessed with a honey rich voice that oozes class and emotion with a heart in the same place as Kurt Wagner, and Evan’s music affects you in the same way that the mighty Lambchop does.
There is just something so beautifully laid back about this album, an album to laze about in the sun to as you drink yourself into a silent oblivion with only birds and memories for company, and this album is such great company. ‘No Good Reason’ is a rather stunning song of break up and heartache with one of my favourite lines from the album, “I left you first, but you left me better”. A quite stunningly beautifully written song amongst an album of stunningly beautifully written songs.
The Legless Crabs ‘Always Your Boy’
(Metal Postcard Records)
The legless Crabs are back with another blast of sonic rock ‘n’ roll; once again proving why they are the band to be kicking the decaying corpse of culture not just in the USA but life in general everywhere. Who couldn’t agree with the sentiment of “Fuck Your Boss” from ‘Time Theft’, and anyone who couldn’t have any love for the myth of rock ‘n’ roll, does not do cartwheels, when hearing the quite wonderful JAMC like ‘Fake Weed Emergency’ hasn’t an ounce of joy left in their once thriving rock ‘n’ roll soul.
The Legless Crabs as I have mentioned so many times are the true sound of adventure and seedy darkness in the underground, and are probably ignored by many other blogs for that reason, as attitude and a devil care telling of the truth does not settle well with the meme inspired Instagram friendly culture that is currently rotting and killing our beloved mainstream alternative scene.
The Legless Crabs are not power pop; they do not cover their music in a coating of authentic rose petals from the 60s; do not make auto tuned radio friendly pop, but listen to ‘Give It A Wiggle’ and not think it’s perfect pop, as it is short catchy and pretty perfect. And Always Your Boy is an album filled with sonic adventure, be it short blasts of pretty perfect alternative punk rock or longer tracks of scuzzed up bass experimental splendor; an album that needs to be in the record collection of anyone who remembers the true magic of Rock N Roll the emphasis being on the N Roll!
Mercvrial ‘Brief Algorithms’
(Crafting Room Recordings) 29th April 2022
This is a very enjoyable album of 80s sounding indie guitar music, the kind House of Love used to tempt and seduce us with all those years ago. That can be explained by the fact that Mercvrial features the talents of one Terry Bickers on lead guitar, and the songs are awash with Terry Bickers’ guitar genius.
The songs chime with magic and melody, dipping in and out, taking me back to the days when the Sunday pub was followed by Snub TV. Ah, yes, those where indeed the days, but this is not an album of nostalgia it is an album of finely crafted and performed guitar songs and will appeal to anyone who loves well-crafted guitar indie/alternative music from any decade.
Our Daily Bread 388: Beauty Stab, The Legless Crabs, Peel Dream Magazine, The Waterboys…
July 23, 2020
REVIEWS/Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team in January 2019. The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. His most recent releases include The Bordellos beautifully despondent pains-of-the-heart and mockery of clique “hipsters” ode to Liverpool, and the diatribe ‘Boris Johnson Massacre’. He has also released, under the Idiot Blur Fanboy moniker, a stripped down classic album of resignation and Gallagher brothers’ polemics. His next album, The King Of No-Fi is due out next month on Metal Postcard Records.
Each week we send a mountain of new releases to the self-depreciating maverick to see what sticks. In his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases, here Brian’s latest batch of recommendations.
Beauty Stab ‘French Film Embrace’
Single/12th July 2020
Oh lord this is bloody good. It’s perfect pop in its most perfect form. It gives me goosebumps. It has everything one wants in pop music. No wonder there is a buzz about this band that has not been heard of since…well, lord knows when.
This is worthy of The Associates at their heartbreaking best; a song that could and should if there was any justice in the world be all over the radio to brighten and enlighten, we the listening masses. Maybe too early in the year to say single of the year…but I will say it anyway…single of the year.
Related:
Beauty Stab Interview
Beauty Stab ‘O Edan’
The Waterboys ‘The Soul Singer’
(Cooking Vinyl) Single/Out Now
I have a bit of a soft spot for The Waterboys; I quite like how Mike Scott had the music world at his feet with the release of the This Is The Sea album, and was on the verge of U2 like success. It was his for the taking, but instead he locked himself away in Ireland and made two beautifully of kilter folk albums. That kind of career sabotage has to be applauded.
One of rock music’s more eccentric and lovable characters, and here we have a sonnet to another one of rock’s eccentrics the grumpily lovable Van Morrison. This is a fine sun filled pop song in a Radio 2 kind of way, the kind of song that will have you tapping your fingers on the steering wheel as you listen to the radio stuck in traffic. I wonder what Van thinks of it.
She’s A Fish ‘Downstream’
(Puffy Pastryd) Single
This is one for all you pop pickers out there with a taste for the mildly twisted, Shadow hungry psychedelic sounds bordering on the kind of off kilter post punk delights served up by the wonderful Swell Maps all those years ago; hastily scrubbed semi acoustics scratch out the nagging melody of pure austere glory. A little gem of a song.
Peel Dream Magazine ‘Moral Panics’
EP/3rd July 2020
I like this especially track two, the ridiculously titled ‘Verfremdungseffekt’, which comes on like early Julian Cope circa his first two solo albums, and early Belle and Sebastian. A mellow pop treat for sure, the Casio organ and fine melody gives one a splendid few minutes of pop bliss. The rest of the EP is fine garage pop psych tinged mellow shoegaze with lovely floating Casio like keyboards that are both soothing and enriching, giving you the warm feeling of being sponged down by the greatest hits of a sexy but enigmatic European.
Violent Vickie ‘The Blame’
Single/10th July 2020
I wonder if Violent Vickie has ever had her music described as splendid before. For that is what it is: splendid. It has a splendid lo-fi dark syntheses about it that can only be described as, well, splendid. It has a lovely dark crunchy guitar and vocals that can only be described as, splendid. The splendicity of this track is one I enjoyed a great deal and I was a bit concerned at first the press release mentions Joy Division, and normally that is a big turn off in a press release mentioning Joy Division, as every bugger who classes their music as Dark Synth always mentions Joy Division and this sounds nothing like Joy Division I’m pleased to report; there will be no mishaps hanging up her washing…thank the lord, as there is always room for splendid music in my life.
Astral Swans ‘Bird Songs’
Single/10th July 2020
Now I do like a good pop song stuffed with self-loathing and unhappiness but disguised with pop melody and sing-along ability, and this track has those qualities in abundance. It has the same feeling and in fact same beat as Smogs wonderful ‘Cold Blooded Old Times’. It is a song to sing to yourself while walking alone in the park, and we all need one of those in our life.
The Legless Crabs ‘One People One Mind One Death’
(Metal Postcard Records) Album/25th June 2020
The debut proper from the Texas Punk rockers The Legless Crabs is upon us, and what a fine LP it is too. Discordant guitar, ramshackle drums, echo laden vocals and off beat lyrics takes us to the strange world they inhabit. Pussy Galore, The Jesus And Mary Chain and The Shaggs are fine reference points, but placed into a glittering concrete music mixer to supply a musical house art all of its own making; a place where Roky Erickson would happily reside. The 13th Floor elevators are also brought to mind especially on my personal favourite, the wonderfully spaced out ‘Not The Good Kind’, which starts out as almost strange lounge punk and then erupts into waves of feedback, a track of pure wonder which perfectly fits on this album of pure wonders. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, one of the albums of the year.
Our Daily Bread 381: DeathDeathDeath, The Legless Crabs, No Exits, It’s Karma It’s Cool…
May 27, 2020
Reviews/Brian ‘Bordellos’ Shea
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team in January 2019. The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. His most releases include The Bordellos beautifully despondent pains-of-the-heart and mockery of clique “hipsters” ode to Liverpool, and, under the guises of the Idiot Blur Fanboy moniker, a stripped down classic of resignation and Gallagher brothers’ polemics.
Each week we send a mountain of new releases to the self-depreciating maverick to see what sticks. In his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases, here Brian’s latest batch of recommendations.
With all live gigs and events more or less quashed for the foreseeable future, buying music (whether it’s physical or through digital platforms such as Bandcamp) has never been more important for the survival of the bands/artists/collectives that create it. We urge you all to keeping supporting; to keep listening.
The Legless Crabs ‘Be A Sadist’
LP/Available Now
If you remember a few weeks ago I reviewed a single from The Legless Crabs declaring them the future of rock n roll. Well they have just compiled a free to download LP of all their singles and EPs, and released it as a free to download compilation.
Essential is the word dear readers, essential! The early Mary Chain meets the Shaggs with a touch of Daniel Johnson and Pussy Galore thrown in, it’s dark and it has guts and a do not give a fuck attitude. It is a shambolic noisy stew of noise but with wonderfully written melodies and lyrics. The best band to come from the USA since the Banana Splits: no doubt about it.
No Exits ‘No Exists EP’
Available Now
The 80s post punk sound really is making a bit of a re-emergence, and why not, as when it’s done well it’s a fine thing indeed: and No Exits do it very well indeed.
Their music takes me back and has me thinking of very early Dead Or Alive and Theatre Of Hate with a touch of Soft Cell, and something about it really reminds me of Theatre Of Sheep (maybe its their guitar sound), but very entertaining nonetheless. So if the 80s post punk swirl is your thing you should really enjoy this fine EP.
The Loungs ‘Hey Brain’
(Fresh Hair Records) Single/Available Now
It’s nice to have those St Helens Psych Monkees The Loungs back after a far too long a layoff since their gem of a third LP, the 2015 baroque flavoured Short Circuit. And this little beauty carries on where that fine album left off. ‘Hey Brain’ being a quirky short stroll through the Summery psych of one’s past, recalling the woozy delights of the Super Furry Animals with a hint of the Zombies and Cat Stevens, but with a charm of their very own. A true delight, which could of only been better if it was called, “Hey Brian”.
DeathDeathDeath ft. Lomi MC ‘Love Is A Construct’
(Numavi Records) Single/Available Now
I love this. It’s rather quite beautiful and whoever says they don’t make pop music as quite magical as they used to do should be made to listen to this on repeat until they admit they are wrong. It has a wonderful warm quality about it that takes my aging mind back to the wonderful music of Jane and Barton. A soft summer aural seduction that I advise music lovers of all ages should allow themselves to be seduced by. They won’t be sorry.
Graham Domain ‘Waking World’
(Metal Postcard Records) EP/Available Now
What we have here is another EP from one of Manchester’s greatest hidden musical secrets. Yes, there is something quite engrossing about the music of Graham Domain, a certain quiet dignified subtle madness that completely beguiles. It has a dark seductive charm from the tinkling piano and synth strings and jazz bass that lures you into the textured dream of the songs, and as it pulls you in and you begin to lose yourself in the magic you then notice the beauty of the lyrics and the phrasing: nobody quite sings like Graham Domain anymore. I’m sure that somewhere along the line the quiet genius of his music will find a audience and hopefully the large one it deserves, plus on the track ‘What Love Means’ there is the best crazy synth solo one can ever hope to hear.
Bloom De Wilde ‘The Heart Shall Be Rewarded By The Universe’
LP/Available now
If only life could be as wonderfully magical as this album. Bloom De Wilde has an aura about her that emits a certain belief in the beauty of life, with her songs of nature and love, she gives one hope in these times of backbiting misery and disease that music and love can be the answer. Maybe we all need to return to the spiritual freedom of 1967 and not be wrapped up in the junk and social media that clouds up our minds and hearts, for this album casts a mighty spell that is bewitchingly hypnotic, that slowly seeps through the layers of self doubt mistrust and ego and has you smiling again, has you laughing, has you counting your blessings and looking forward to living your life and making the most of it as you only have one life so why not make the most of it. The Heart Shall Be Rewarded By The Universe is one of those rare albums that is made with pure love and should be treated with pure love: a shimmering delight.
Drew Davies ‘Drew Davies’
(AD1) LP/Available now
Is the good old 80s the new 60s? I wonder as I’m getting sent a load of music that is so influenced by the decade. This LP by Drew Davies could have easily been released in that decade – if I hadn’t known better I would have thought this was a reissue of some album that slipped under the radar at the time.
Drew Davies obviously worships at the altar of David Bowie, which indeed is no bad thing. He could have worshiped at the altar of Stefan Denis, and do we really need that. Instead we are treated to the kind of album a major label would have released in the 80s pretending that it was an indie. It has the same polished Alt rock glamour and choruses that has the audience punching the sky while keeping one eye for the queue at the bar to thin out so you can send your girlfriend. It is in no way the greatest LP you will hear this year or any year from the 80s but you will certainly hear worse, and any fans of Billy Idol or 80s Bowie or even John Moores Expressway [remember them] will certainly enjoy this album as I did, as melodies and glamour do not age.
Dog Paper Submarine ‘Slippery Satellites’
(Small Bear) Album/Available Now
So we finally get the final LP by Dog Paper Submarine, two years after it was recorded, and it was indeed worth the wait as it is as always fine indie rock: part dEUS part Pixies, but all Dog Paper Submarine.
Clattering guitars, instrumental surf basslines, melodies that prod and gouge and caress are all one wants from their indie rock. To be honest I’m not a huge indie rock fan, I find it incredibly dull mostly these days, which again from a personal point of view makes this album and Dog Paper Submarine even more impressive, as this is a album I will play and enjoy, and that should be enough for any music lover.
Salem Trial ‘Head On Rong’
(Metal Postcard Records) Single/Available Now
I love this. From the start the explosive wall of Thin Lizzy like double lead guitars leap out at you and joyfully throttle you ears to death in the nicest possible way, whilst Beefheart like vocals and a melody catchy enough to hook yourself make for a whopper. It’s a song that has me yearning for the wild and drunken nights at the Royal Alfred in the late 80s, while being entertained by the wonderful local band The Volunteers, who made one mini album of sublime Beefheart frenzy called Bladder Of Life. This song reminds me of those days. That’s high praise indeed believe me. ‘Head On Rong’ is a must have for music lovers old and young alike.
It’s Karma It’s Cool ‘Woke Up In Hollywood’
Album/Available Now
If your thing is music with sparkling guitars and joy filled melodies then this album is for you. At times recalling Lloyd Cole with his Commotions and maybe a poppy REM after overdosing on the sun, songs shimmer and cast shadows of one string Rickenbacker guitar solos, the kind that The Bangles would embrace and comb their hair to whilst kissing posters of Gene Clark.
Woke Up In Hollywood is an album that exists to take one back to the golden days of the California sounds from the mid 60s through to power pop of the early 80s; from The Byrds to The Tremblers, even at times reminding me of the English Beat.
If you like, this is an album that should come with a large cut-out sun to hoist up into your room as the heat and pure light emerges from your stereo or laptop.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 