The End of the Month Playlist For September 2026
September 29, 2026
Our Monthly Playlist selection of choice music from the last month. Curated by Dominic Valvona & Matt Oliver.
Choice music and sonics from the last month (or so) picked from our reviews, but also featuring the tunes we missed out on or didn’t get the room to feature at the time.
Curated by Dominic Valvona with choice hip-hop cuts selected by Matt Oliver and some tunes lifted from reviews by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea. Includes entries from the Ukraine to Turkey to Somalia, the Americas and Europe. This month’s courtesy of featured artist Juga-Naut.
Please note: The Monolith Cocktail has given up its accounts on both Instagram and bluesky. You can find the blog on WordPress, in every search engine going, or on Facebook and X. Or if you don’t want to miss anything, you can sign up to email notifications.
If you’ve enjoyed this selection, the writing, or been led down a rabbit hole into new musical terrains of aural pleasure, and if you able, then you can now show your appreciation by keeping the Monolith Cocktail afloat through the Ko-Fi donation site.
The Track List For September 2026:
Dragonflies ‘Slower’
megiapa ’11.11’
Your Old Droog & Evidence ‘Brighton Beach’
Pastense ‘Colors in the Puddles’
Al-Khemetic, Sa-Roc & Dezarie ‘Power Bars’
Regina Collage ‘First New Place’
Crystal Eyes ‘Pretending To Be People’
American Motors ‘no horses’
Devon Church ‘Vast As Space’
Boycalledcrow ‘mantis man’
Baba Zula ‘Kutsal Zeytin Halayi’
Juga-Naut ‘Never Nothing’
Che Noir & The Uce ‘Urban Essence’
Jam Baxter ‘Whole Sky’
Dur-Dur Band ‘Adigaa I Dhalanrogey (You’ve Changed Me)’
The Male Pattern ‘Charlie (The Robbery)’
The Bordellos ‘Oh Nora’
Greg Freeman ‘Cahokia’
Party Dozen ‘Euro Stomper’
White Ring ‘CATATONIC’
Blu & Sndtrak ‘LA’
Michael Christmas, Chris Crack & Girl Talk ‘Garfield Hated Mondays But Didn’t Have A Job’
Blockhead, Proleter & Arms and Sleepers ‘Garbage Time’
Datkid, Illinformed & Dumb Logic ‘Narcotic Athletics’
Dollar Brand, Don Cherry & Carlos Ward ‘Bra Joe From Kilimanjaro’
Hieroglyphics, Casual, Opio, Phesto, Pep Love & Del The Funky Homosapien ‘Hard Numbers’
Curly Castro, shemar, Blackchai, Sunmundi ‘New Mutants’
Super Scintillant ‘Phase IV’
Xqui & Pyramids of Phobos ‘Progressive Modernism – Strings Version’
Mike Gale ‘Our Place’
Jon Tye, Amine Mesnaoui & Cubenx ‘Morning Glow’
For The Curious and Those Wishing To Catch Up On The Last Month’s Posts, Here’s The Links:
Perusal #83 – Super Scintillant, Érick d’Orion’s ‘Mes fantômes’, The Bordellos, Devon Church, Dragonflies, Leenalchi, megiapa, Stylianos Ou
Our Daily Bread 661 – Fran Ashcroft, bigflower, Cut Chord, The Free Four, Herb DiamantE, The Male Pattern, Minot, Neon Kittens, Spygenuis
Premiere: (Track) Tiger Mendoza ‘Words’
November 18, 2020
Premiere
Dominic Valvona
Photo Credit: Helen Messenger
Tiger Mendoza ‘Words (Featuring Kate Herridge)’
Taken from TMSK8: The Mixtape
6th November 2020 via bandcamp
20th November 2020 via all digital service platforms
Previously limited exclusively to Bandcamp, Oxford-based guitarist, producer and remixer Tiger Mendoza (the moniker of one Ian De Quadros) is sharing the slinking and sulking Trip-Hop ‘Words’ track from his new project, TMSK8: The Mixtape, with the Monolith Cocktail ahead of a general digital release on the 20th November 2020 (with a physical release in the pipeline). This no wave funk sass of soulful but haunting moody attitude features the vaporous sultry voice of Ocean Ruins’ Kate Herridge sophisticatedly evoking a hint of SAULT and ESG, whilst Ian’s UNKLE and DJ Shadow influences provide the breaks.
When asked about the roots of Tiger Mendoza, Ian says “having initially been more focused on song-writing on guitar from the age of 16, I fell in love with acts such as UNKLE and DJ Shadow and composers such as Clint Mansell and Vangelis, these artists lead me to start experimenting with making electronic music”. All of which you can expect to hear on the mixtape, alongside a haul of contemporary Hip-Hop, glitch electronica, Chemical Brothers style refashions and guest spot collaborations.
As well as keeping busy working on his own tracks, Ian has produced remixes for luminaries such as Public Enemy and DJ Shadow, and has supported AKDK and Sink Ya Teeth.
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.
Kalporz X Monolith Cocktail: TRICKY ‘Fall to Pieces’
October 8, 2020
Album Review/Nicola Guerra
Continuing with our collaboration with the leading Italian music publication Kalporz a short summer break, the Monolith Cocktail will be cosying up and sharing reviews, interviews and other bits from our respective sites each month. Keep an eye out for future ‘synergy’ between our two great houses as we exchange posts.
This month Nicola Guerra goes deep in analysing trip-hop luminary Tricky’s Fall To Pieces album.
TRICKY ‘Fall to Pieces’
(False Idols, 2020)
I spent the whole summer thinking about Tricky. Not specifically about him and not even about the huge tragedy that afflicted the former couple Adrian Thaws (aka Tricky) and Martina Topley Bird (the suicide of their daughter Mazy Mina on 29 May). No, I thought about how crucial to Tricky’s career was a gloomy record like Pre-Millenium Tension. An album that was sacked after the great success of Maxinquaye, a milestone in trip-hop, and which, incredibly, he pulled out of it in an oblique and really personal way. So, I thought, from the pedestal of the world to the suburb of the soul the step was short. But how can you face the opposite? How do you react when the darkness is greater than you can imagine? Look for the light or sink without going back up?
Fall to Pieces does not give answers. The fourteenth (!) work of the Bristol artist is deliberately unfinished, almost as if to re-emphasize the inability to concentrate on details but leave the instinct to communicate something free. But what? What do you try to say when the world collapses under your feet? What do you say when really “Hell is round the corner”? The song that most explains this non-form of self-analysis is ‘Running Off’, a metropolitan tarantella that contrasts the melody of slow and powerful basses that could sink to infinity. Instead, one minute forty-four and you change register. Why not go deeper? Because it hurts too much to investigate. It hurts too much to try to understand.
It is better to hover in search of beauty. In search of Pop, as good Tricky says (“Fall Please”, splendid piece that hides love). Then comes, in the middle, “Hate This Pain”. “What a fucking game What a fucking game I hate this fucking pain I hate this fucking pain Was crying, endless coast Baby girl, she knew me most I hate this fucking pain I hate this fucking pain At ten, I’ll take a flight Try to be there, I guess I might I miss my baby while I fly In my head, I want to die…” I want to die, the former Tricky Kid whispers angrily (one of the few songs sung by him, the rest is entrusted to the female voices of Oh Land and Marta Ziakowska).
Instead, music wins. Once again.
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.
