Most Loved and Enjoyed Highlighted Albums of 2024: Part Two: M – Z
December 16, 2024
Part Two of the Monolith Cocktail’s most loved and favourite albums of 2024 lists: from M to Z. Put together by Dominic Valvona and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea.
Picking up on where we left off with Part One of the Monolith Cocktail’s most enjoyed and loved albums of 2024, Part Two continues to list all entries in alphabetical order, starting with M. So without further ado, here is the concluding spread of chosen albums – although anything we reviewed during the year should be considered a winner in that regard.
M_____________
Felix Machtelinckx ‘Night Scenes’ (Subexotic Records)
Chosen Dominic Valvona, reviewed originally by Graham Domain/Review
“The new album from Belgium singer, songwriter and producer Felix Machtelinckx is a strange album. In part electronic, it has an ethereal dreamlike quality where the music seems distant and the vocals sound as though they have been beamed through space from a distant galaxy.
Night Scenes is an intriguing album that is hard to define, but one that grows in definition, depth and subtle beauty with each play. It might prove to be a contender for album of the year.” GD
Marcelo D2 & SambaDrive ‘Direct-to-Disc’ (Night Dreamer)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Transforming choice tracks from his back catalogue of solo albums, put out between 1998 and 2013, the influential and acclaimed Brazilian rapper Marcelo D2 replaces the samples, breaks and scratching for a live, reactive Latin-jazz and samba trio.
As part of the championed ‘direct-to-disc’ series overseen by the Night Dreamer label, the South American hip-hop legend laid down ten performed tracks backed by the brilliant SambaDrive direct onto vinyl at the Haarlem Artone Studio in Holland. With no cuts, no edits, as little interference as necessary, these recordings sound near spontaneous, in the moment. The attitude, the passion, the crammed-in flow and more peppered lyricism is still very much on show, only now lilted towards a jazzier and Latin-fuelled backing that balances the urgency and freewheeling of the rapping with something more pliable, dissipating, funky and stylishly cool. Marcelo D2 & SambaDrive have created something very special; not so much an improvement as an alternative fruitful vision of Samba-rap. “ DV
Luce Mawdsley ‘Northwest & Nebulous’ (Pure O Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Over several years now the former Mugstar guitarist Luce Mawdsley has progressively shorn the more predatory slurred spoken-word mise-en-scenes and lurid, sleazy torturous self-harm from their music; gradually removing the “verbasier” programmed-like demonic effects from their voice and freeing themselves from a circled abyss of sonnets.
An holistic record that rescores the English scenery and places held near for Luce, the unfolding stages are both beautifully conveyed and hallucinatory in equal measure; a retold fairytale without any prompts, and without a human cast; a window in on the enchantments but also non-hierarchical, non-binary and free nature of the wilds and geography: a metaphor for Luce’s struggles to find an identity that feels natural, safe and unburdened. One part classical, one part Americana, and one part folksy (a touch of the Celtic too) there’s still a very modern twist to what we may identify as the familiar: imagine Prokofiev on an acid trip, or Ry Cooder in an English pasture laying down breadcrumbs for Hampshire & Foat.” DV
The Mining Co. ‘Classic Monsters’ (PinDrop Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Continuing to mine his childhood the London-based singer-songwriter Michael Gallagher once again produces a songbook of throwbacks to his formative adventures as a kid growing up in Donegal in Ireland.
His previous album almanac, Gum Card, touched upon a silly fleeting dabble with the occult, but this latest record (his sixth so far) is filled with childhood memories of hammy and more video nasty style supernatural characters, alongside a whole host of “weirdos”, “freaks” and “stoners”.
Once more back in his childhood home, frightened to turn the lights off, checking for Christopher Lee’s Dracula and the Wolfman under his bed, yet daring himself to keep watching those Hammer house of horror b-movies, Salem’s Lot and more bloody shockers, Gallagher links an almost lost innocence with a lifetime of travails, cathartic obsessions and searching desires.
I’m still astounded by the lack of support for his music or exposure, as Gallagher’s The Mining Co. vehicle is worthy of praise, airplay and attention. Hopefully it will be sixth album lucky for the Irishman.” DV
Hannah Mohan ‘Time Is A Walnut’ (Egghunt Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Geographically settling long enough to pen this solo songbook offering, but anything but settled emotionally, the former And The Kids vocalist-songwriter Hannah Mohan attempts to process the break-up of all break-ups.
Mohan rides the roller coaster of a drawn-out break-up with quirkiness and vulnerability, turning tortuous heartache into one of the best and most rewarding songbooks of the year. Mohan may have let her soul sing out, as she comes to accept an emotional turbulent period of stresses and anxieties and pain. But whether she’s finally pulled through the other side or not is up to you the listener.” DV
Jamison Field Murphy ‘It Has To End’ (Tomato Flower)
Chosen by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea/Review
“Ah yes this is more like it. At last, an album with warmth, soul experiment and beauty. Just when I was beginning to think that it was a thing of the past James Field Murphy turns up with this home recorded gem, an album that combines all the things I love about the magic of music: songs with melody, “That Boy” could well be an outtake from The Beach Boys Smiley Smile album, and “It has To End” has a wonderful bonkers McCartney feel to it [remember McCartney was the most experimental of all the Beatles], and this track combines pop with experimental to a beautifully short and wistful degree. “Hate” is another beautiful song; yes indeed, a hate that is alright to love and love it I do. I love the tape pops in the background: you really cannot beat recording on tape.
It Has To End is a rare thing, an album you do not want to end. It’s an album I will be returning to on a regular basis over the coming months as James manages to balance off pop/psych beauty with experimentation perfectly.” BBS
N______________
NCD Instigators ‘Swimming With Sharks’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The NCD Instigators were Tony, Brendan, and Desi Bannon, three brothers from Newcastle County Down in Northern Ireland who decided to form a band in the 80s together after many years of playing in various other bands. They took their love of metal, prog, folk and rock and home recorded several albums for their own pleasure, burning them onto CDRs to give to friends and family and playing the occasional gig.
There is just something quite magical about this album, and it is sad that now it is only being released years after the fact and that Tony (bass and vocals) is no longer with us, having passed away in 2020. Hopefully this release will ignite some long overdue interest in this underground lost great band from Northern Ireland.” BBS
Neon Kittens ‘It’s A NO Thing’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The Kittens have a magic and their own sound: The guitar wizardry of Andy G (In a ideal world David Bowie would not be dead and Andy would be his guitarist songwriter partner) and the spoken, I am going to shove my stiletto shoe heel into your yearning heart, vocal coolness of Nina K. The Neon Kittens are one of those rare bands; we need them more than they need us.” BBS
Neutrals ‘New Town Dream’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“This is splendid stuff, an album of supreme guitar jangle, of well written and catchy songs about life in a small town that at times musically reminds me of early Wedding Present and The Pastels with such wonderfully British lyrics; although I wonder when “Travel Agents Window’s” was written as he mentions buying a bag of chips for 50p, when was the last time you managed to buy a bag of chips for 50p? Maybe life in this small town isn’t as bad as the Neutrals think. I do love this album though. I love the romance of everyday life songs, like little mini-Kitchen sink dramas filmed in grainy black and white. This is quite a gem of an album.” BBS
Not My Good Arm ‘Coffee’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“They take Rock ‘n’ Roll, Ska, Punk and Soul and tie it up and skin it alive whilst berating it with the sort of political soulful joyful nous that hasn’t been heard or witnessed since the Mighty Dexy’s Midnight Runners held the Top Of The Pops viewers enrapt with their explosion of attitude and musical good taste back in the early 80’s. Yes indeed, Coffee is a Northern indie soulful romp of an album by a band that I can imagine being a hell of a good night out to watch and by the looks of it gig on a very regular basis. So, keep your eyes scanned as they may be coming to your locality soon. I understand you can pick up a copy of Coffee on CD from their gigs, as by the looks of it they’ve not yet updated their bandcamp: probably too busy putting the fun into funk.” BBS
O_______________
OdNu + Ümlaut ‘Abandoned Spaces’ (Audiobulb)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Drawn together on what proves to be a deeply intuitive union for the Audiobulb label, the Buenos Aires-born but NY/Hudson resident Michel Mazza (the OdNu of that partnership) and the US, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut) form a bond on their reductive process of an album, Abandoned Spaces.
Tracks are given plenty of time to breathe and resonate, to unfurl spells and to open-up primal mirage-like and psyche-concocted soundscapes from the synthesized and played. And although this fits in the ambient electronic fields of demarcation, Abandoned Spaces is so much more – later on in the second half of the eight-track album, the duo expresses more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty.” DV
Berke Can Özcan & Jonah Parzen-Johnson ‘It Was Always Time’ (We Jazz)
Chosen by DV/Review
““It Was Always Time”, and it was always meant to be, for the telepathic readings of both creative partners in this project prove synchronised and bound, no matter how far out and off-kilter their experiments of curiosity go or take them.
The Turkish polymath drummer and sound designer Berke Can Özcan and his foil the Brooklyn-based baritone/alto saxophonist and flutist Jonah Parzen-Johnson, have worked together before, namely on the former’s Lycian atavistic geographical infused and inspired Twin Peaks album, last year.
But before even that, back in the April of 2022, Parzen-Johnson found himself boarding a flight to Istanbul to perform a one-off gig with Özcan. Incredibly the two had never met until thirty minutes before going on stage for a soundcheck. The gig must have proved a creative, dynamic success as both musicians have now come together under the equal billing of this new album, recorded for the Helsinki-based hub We Jazz.
From the dubby to tribal, the esoteric to cloud gazing, Berke Can Özcan and Jonah Parzen-Johnson play out their fears and joys across an exciting album of possibilities and expressive, erring on the heavenly at one point, feelings. A fruitful combination that will endure, and hopefully reconvene in the future.” DV
P_______________
Pastense Ft. Uncommon Nasa ‘Sidewalk Chalk, Parade Day Rain’ (Uncommon Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Continuing to attract and surround himself with like-minded curious, inventive artisans of prose from the underground leftfield hip-hop scene, the Long and Staten Islands’ rapper and producer/beatmaker Uncommon Nasa now facilitates Pastense’s return with a post-pandemic opus of metaphysical, cosmological unravelled consciousness alchemy.
With no let-up in the quality of the expansive lyrical metaverse, tech comes in conflict with the forest’s birds and nature’s fight for survival amongst the concrete and chemically poisoned wells of so-called progression on an artistically simulated and stimulating canvas of thoughts and connectivity.
Pastense, in partnership with Nasa, creates a most excellent mind-expanding universe, and in doing so, one of the year’s best hip-hop albums: this is an artist and record worth championing.” DV
Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille ‘Embracing The Unknown’ (Mahakala Music) Chosen by DV/Review
“A true “cross-generational” (with two of the participants born in the 1930s) coming together of avant-garde, freeform and hard bop talent, the ensemble quartet of Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille “embrace” experiment. You could call it an extemporized gathering, with no prior arrangements and not much in the way of dialogue.
Making the abstract seem even more so, yet somehow conveying mood, emotions and self-expression, this descriptive and totally improvisational master class in free-thought-jazz somehow captures the internal struggles and reflections of the mind during an age of high anxiety, rage, divisiveness and unease.” DV
James P M Philips ‘Spite, Bile & Beauty’ (Turquoise Coal)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“Punk, folk, rock and a medieval becoming strangeness all collide to bring us another album of psychedelic whimsy from the head and heart of James P M Phillips: an album of joy, sadness, humour and pain. Whether it be the quite wonderfully disturbingly jagged “My Head Is Full Of Rats” or the quite beautiful folk strum of “My New Friend”, James has his own unique way of making music and writing songs; dipping his own original thought patterns into a hybrid of musical genre hopping eccentricity.” BBS
Poppycock ‘Magic Mothers’
Chosen by BBS/Review
“The whole album is joy. I love the mix of jazz, folk and psychedelic pop: alas, if only the last Zombies album was as enjoyable as this.” BBS
Pound Land ‘Live At New River Studios/ Worried’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by DV, but reviewed originally by Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
“This new album by Pound Land is a double whammy of an affair. The first side recorded live, captures the band without guitar but with a rather fetching squelching punk rock synth suppling the health out of the watching masses. Pound Land are of course a punk and post punk rock outfit of political magnitude. A band that captures the atmosphere of living in this divided land we call the United Kingdom and make a hell of a fine racket while capturing the atmosphere as the live side of this cassette magically proves. The second side is taken up by the thirty-one-minute track, “Worried”, which is a fine sonic journey of sadness, horror and experimental splendour that takes in dub, punk, and electro soundscapes; a dream of a nightmare track that really needs to be heard by all.” BBS
R__________________
Revival Season ‘Golden Age Of Self Snitching’ (Heavenly Recordings)
Chosen by DV
Totally missed at the time by us (well, we did feature ‘Chop’ on the February edition of the Monthly playlist), this incredible union between Brandon “BEZ” (B Easy) Evans and beatmaker/producer Jonah Swilley is so “now” it hurts. A synergy that captures the times it was forged in, Golden Age Of Self–Snitching crafts electronic dance music both dystopian and club, hip-hop, 2-Step, the kind of fusions that TV On The Radio used to generate, locked beats and breaks and dub into a commentary on societal change, protestation and revolution. An essential flow of concentrated angst, frustrations and observation criminally overlooked, and which should make every end of year list of there was any real justice in this god damn forsaken world. DV
Kevin Robertson ‘The Call Of The Sea’
Chosen by BBS/Review
““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.” BBS
S___________________
Salem Trials ‘View From Another Window’ (Metal Postcard Records)
Chosen by BBS/ Review
“The Salem Trials are clinically rambunctious. They are never further than being an arm’s length away from genius. They have their own sound: their own model of post-punk if you like. They take all the usual subjects (The Fall, Wire, Gang Of Four, the Blue Orchids and Subway Army) and mix them with a no wave sound coming from the streets of New York in the late 70s early 80s. They release albums constantly – this is actually the first of 2024 though, and fits in nicely with the army of their previously released albums.
Andy still being the inspired guitarist that he is, riffing like a cross between Keith Richards, Tom Verlaine and Brix Smith with a army of admirers gathering in her Dis guarded nightwear, and Russ still being the nutter on the bus wearing the splatter ballistic cop t-shirt and spitting feathers at the naked chickens queuing up outside to be the first in line for the latest modern contraption while he is creating art at its best out of the fuzzy felt of yesteryears clowns hats. You really have to love the Salem Trials.” BBS
The Salisman Communal Orchestration ‘A Queen Among Clods’ (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
“I love the psychedelic otherworldliness of SCO. I love the way the lead vocalist phrases his words. He sings with the soul of an sad imperfect empathetic angel, you actually believe in what he is saying, “[If I Wasn’t ]So Godam Blue” is so goddamn beautiful, and with some pretty wonderful lyrics: “remember those days when I pissed in the street, well that is not my style anymore”. Pure heartbreak poetry at its best. The following track “Rum Punch” is as equally beautiful, a psych country-tinged beauty full of sadness and pathos.
I really do love this album SCO have the perfect blend of magic and tragic, and “A Queen Among Clods” is defiantly one of the most impressive and heartfelt original sounding albums I have had the pleasure to write about this year. A true stunner.” BBS
Sly & The Family Drone ‘Moon Is Doom Backwards’ (Human Worth)
Chosen by DV/Review
“A wrestling match on the barricades between the forces of Marxism, Populism, the consumer culture, nepotism, and encroaching forces of a technological dystopia, the collective forces of this group provide a reification-style soundtrack to the crisis of our times. Often this means escaping via a trapdoor to beyond the ether, or, to off worlds and mysterious alien landscapes. But we’re always drawn back into the horror, stresses and contorted darkness of reality; a sonic PTSD manifested in industrial noises from Capitalism’s workshop.
Poltergeist’s jamming activity, fizzles of sound waves and transmissions from the chthonian, ghost ship bristled low horns and higher pitched shrieks, bestial tubular growls, cymbal shaves, disturbances in the matrix, a short melody of pastoral reeds, drums that sounding like a beating. This is the sound of Moon Is Doom Backwards; pushing and striving to score this hideous age through the cerebral and chaotic.” DV
Juanita Stein ‘The Weightless Hour’ (Agricultural Audio)
Chosen by DV/Review
“And perhaps it all comes to this, that after twenty-five years in the music business as both the frontwoman of the Howling Bells and as an established solo artist Juanita Stein has finally found the strength of her own voice and creative force. Stepping out from behind the safeguards of noisy rock to find that silence resonates deeper and further, Juanita erases everything but the most vital, emotionally receptive and connective elements from her music to produce a sagacious, confident (despite the fragility and vulnerability in places) songbook of personal memories.
The Weightless Hour is the perfect album from a great voice and songwriter, who’s now able to find that distance from the events of the past and a new sense of reflected candidness and honesty in motherhood. Juanita’s true self and strength opens-up, the noise diminished for something far more powerful. Not so much defiant as confident. A definite album of the year.” DV
Mohammad Syfkhan ‘I Am Kurdish’ (Nyahh)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Like an ascending stairway, or flowing and resonating with evocative melodious magic, lute stirring ruminations sweep over Arabia and surrounding regions; referencing anonymous, collective and some original-penned compositions and dances to Islam’s ‘golden age’ of fairytale (‘A Thousand And One Nights’); Kurdish pride in the face of repression (the title-track of course) and its peoples’ struggle for independence and respect (‘Do Not Bow’); lovelorn enquires (‘Do You Have A Lover Or Not?’) and the missed daily activities, interactions of life back home in Raqqa. Across it all the hand drums tab, rattle and roll; the cello arches, weeps and bows in sympathy; and the bouzouki lute swoons and rings out the most nimble and beautiful of ached and more up-tempo giddy tunes.” DV
T____________________
The Tearless Life ‘Conversations With Angels’ (Other Voices Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Both a transference of souls from the now cremated – or laid to rest, depending on your choice of metaphorical ritual death – Vukovar plus a host of orbiting “other voices”, the make-up of The Tearless Life remains relatively, and intentionally, shrouded, obscured.
Taking a while to materialize, The Tearless Life’s debut opus is both the announcement of new age, but also a bridge between this latest incarnation and the former Vukovar invocation – they are in essence, a band that continues to haunt itself. Old bonds remain, sound wise and lyrically, but with a new impetus of murky, vapoured, gossamer, mono and ether effected solace, tragic romanticism, pleaded and afflatus love, spiritual inspired yearning and allegorical hunger.
Talking to angels, conversing with both the seraph and the fallen, the daemons and spirits of the alchemist’s alternative dimensions, the group transduce the writings of that most visionary seer John Dee, the opium eater Thomas De Quincey, William Blake, and the far more obscure Samuel Hubbard Scudder, who’s 19th century, fairy-like, Frail Children of the Air: Excursions Into The World Of Butterflies publication of philosophical essays lends its title to a song of tubular airy manifestations, distortion, wisped spiralling piques and beautified touching emotional anguish.
Conversations With Angels is epic; the first step in, what I hope, will be a fruitful conversation to divine enlightenment, curiosity, psychological and philosophical intelligent synth-pop.” DV
TRAINING + Ruth Goller ‘threads to knot’ (Squama Recordings)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Two connective forces in the experimental, inventive contemporary jazz scenes combine their experiences and art on this sonic and musical hybrid.
There’s enough threads, nodes and junctions in between to feed off, but both partners in this knotted tension and more spiritual, lofty, airy and aria-like ether Linda Sharrock “ah’d” fusion of influences and prompted sparks of inspiration read each other very well. Directed by, and riffing off, the “Exquiste Corpse” parlour game so beloved by the Surrealist movement, the trio of players expand beyond the jazz idiom into shadow worlds, the mysterious, supernatural, cosmic and near industrial.
Pretty much out on the peripherals of jazz, ascending, flexing, rasping, soothing and breathing iterations and more untethered expressions of freeform music, TRAINING + Ruth Goller fashion organic fusions from a process that promises the wild, tumultuous, wrangled and strange, yet also provides the melodic and dreamy.” DV
Twile (featuring Laura Lehtola) “Hunger Moon” (Cruel Nature Records)
Chosen by BBS/Review
““Hunger Moon” is an album that combines folk, trip-hop, electronica and magic, and weaves together a tapestry of undiluted majestic swoonincity that has not been heard since the Portishead debut album “Dummy”.
Hunger Moon really does not put a foot out of place as it flows and hooks you into its warm strangeness, cradling you and sweeping you up to a safe place where dreams are free to play and cast shadows over your deepest thought and emotions. Eight tracks to soundtrack you as you come down from your highest high. Truly magnificent.” BBS
V______________________
Various ‘Athos: Echoes From The Holy Mountain’ (FLEE)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Context is vital: history essential. For the publishing house/record label/curatorial/ethnologist platform FLEE has spent a year unravelling, digging and excavating and researching their grand project dedicated to the Athos monastic community.
No one quite puts in the work that FLEE and their collaborators do, with the scope and range of academia wide and deep. Musically, across a double album vinyl format there’s a split between those artists, DJs and producers that have conjured up new peregrinations influenced by the source material, and a clutch of recordings taken in the 1960s and in recent times of the Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir, Father Lazaros of the Grigoriou monastery, Father Germanos of the Vatopedi and Father Antypas – there’s also attributed performances to the Iviron and Simonopetra monasteries too.
As an overall package however, Echoes From The Holy Mountain is a deep survey of a near closed-off world and all the various attached liturgical and historical threads. FLEE reawaken an age-old practice, bringing to life traditions that, although interrupted and near climatically hindered, stretch back a millennium or more. No dusted ethnographical academic study for students but an impressive and important purview of reverential dedication and a lifetime of service, this project offers new perspectives and takes on the afflatus. Yet again the platform’s extensive research has brought together an international cast, with the main motivation being to work with tradition to create something respectful but freshly inviting and inquisitive. The historical sound, seldom witnessed or heard by outsiders, is reinvigorated, as a story is told through sonic exploration.” DV
Various Artists ‘I’m Glad About It: The legacy Of Louisville Gospel 1958 – 1981’ (The Louisville Story Program/Distributed Through Light In The Attic) Chosen by DV/Review
“When Ben Jones, one of the many voices of authority and leading lights of the Louisville gospel legacy, enthuses that the talent at every Black church during the golden years chronicled in this ambitious box set was akin to witnessing and hearing “ten Aretha Franklins at every service”, he’s not boasting. Jones’ contributions, as outlined in this multimedia package’s accompanying 208-page full colour booklet, lays down the much unrepresented story of a thriving, enduring scene. Alongside a host of reverent members of the various Evangelist, Pentecostal, Baptist and Apostolic churches, artists, instigators and custodians, his informative, animated and passionate words draw you into a most incredible cross-community of afflatus bearers of the gospel tradition. For the Louisville scene was and continues to be every bit the equal of its more famous and celebrated rivals across the American South. And that Aretha quote is no exaggeration, as you will hear some of the most incredible voices and choirs to ever make it on to wax, or, in some cases, make it onto the various radio stations and TV shows that promoted this divine expression of worship. 83 songs, hymns and paeans of assurance, great comfort, tribulations and travails from a gospel cannon of pure quality, moving testament and joy.
‘I’m Glad About It: The legacy Of Louisville Gospel 1958 – 1981’ is an unprecedented example of just how to display and facilitate such a multifaceted project of documentation and archive – in the package I received there were links to a brilliant visual timeline and archive of some 1000 songs recorded by 125 different gospel artists. A labour of love and recognition, taking over three years to put together, The Louisville Story Program has not just set out to preserve but also equip the communities they serve with a genuine platform which can be added to overtime. But importantly, they’ve brought in a number of inspiring voices to help build a concise story of legacy and continued influence of the city and gospel music in general – Ben Jones citing Drake and Kayne unable to find a beat that they didn’t hear in church.” DV
Various ‘Congo Funk! – Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshaha/Brazzaville 1969-1982)’ (Analog Africa) Chosen by DV/Review
“A tale of two cities on opposites sides of the same river, the Congo, the latest excursion for the Analog Africa label celebrates and showcases an abundance of dynamite, soul and funk tracks from the two capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
Congo Funk in all its many variations is put under the spotlight, with an outstanding set list of fourteen tracks (whittled down from a container’s worth of singles) that will enthral and educate in equal measures. Essential dance floor fillers await.” DV
Various ‘Ghana Special 2: Electronic Highlife & Afro Sounds In The Diaspora 1980-93’ (Soundway Records) Chosen by DV/Review
“The first decade of the new millennium proved a fruitful period for (re) discovering Africa’s rich dynamic and explosive music heritage, with both (through their various Afro-funk and Afro-psych compilations) Soundway Records and Analog Africa (in particular their influential African Scream Contests) spoiling connoisseurs and those with just a curiosity alike to sounds rarely heard outside the continent. The former’s original five album Ghana Special spread was one such indispensable collection from that time; a perfectly encased box set survey of one of Africa’s most important musical junctions. Now, unbelievably, a full twenty years later Soundway have followed up that “highlife” triumph with a second volume; moving the action on into a new decade. Ghana Special part two is a refreshing map of the diaspora fusions and hybrids that spread across Europe during a time of movement and turmoil from Ghana’s hotbed of influential stars and musicians. In highlighting the stories and journeys of Ghana’s émigrés, and in introducing us to those sounds, movements that remain either forgotten or just not as celebrated, Volume 2 will become as indispensable as the first.” DV
Various ‘Ulyap Songs: Beyond Circassian Tradition’ (FLEE)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Broadening the scope, the guest list of collaborators stretches the imagination; often completely uncoupled from the source material. All together in one bumper package of ethnomusicology, it makes perfect sense, futuristic alternative planes and visions of a forgotten – mostly passed down orally – tradition. This is a document and testament to the hardiness, perseverance and survival of a culture massacred, exiled and incarcerated, the remnants of a culture almost lost in time, but proving to be very much alive and intriguing to our ears. FLEE and their collaborators, aiders have put together a brilliant, thorough piece of musical research that bristles and wafts with a bounty of possibilities.” DV
Various ‘Wagadu Grooves: The Hypnotic Sound Of Camara 1987-2016’ (Hot Mule)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Shedding light on a rarely told story, the latest showcase compilation from the Paris label Hot Mule unfolds the backstory and “hypnotic” sounds of Gaye Mody Camara’s iconic label; a story that encompasses the West African Soninke diaspora and legacy. The entrepreneur turn label honcho and umbrella for those artists both from the mainland French migrant community and from across swathes of what was the atavistic kingdom of the Soninke ethnic groups’ Wagadu, Camara, through various means and links, helped create a whole industry of music production in Paris during the 80s, 90s and new millennium. The sound is always amazing, and the voices commanding, a mix of those inherited Griot roots, the club, pop and caravan trial. Most importantly Wagadu does have that eponymous ‘groove’ of the title: the ‘hypnotic’ bit too.” DV
Violet Nox ‘Hesperia’ (Somehwerecold Records)
Chosen by DV/Review
“Building new worlds, futuristic landscapes and intergalactic safe havens, and leaving vapour trails of laconic, hypnotizing new age psy-trance mysticism, a message of self-discovery and of resistance in their wake, Violet Nox once more embrace Gaia, Greek and Buddhist etymology and astrology to voyage beyond earthly realms.
Referencing mythological starry nymphs, a sun god’s charioteer, Agamemnon’s granddaughter and scientific phenomenon as they waft, drift and occasionally pump through veils of ambience, trance, dub, EDM and techno, the Boston, Massachusetts trio (although this core foundation is pliable and has expanded its ranks on previous releases) of synthesists and electronic crafters Dez DeCarlo and Andrew Abrahamson, and airy, searching siren vocalist and caller Noell Dorsey, occupy a dreamy ethereal plane that fits somewhere between Vangelis, Lisa Gerrard, Mythos, Kavinsky, Banco de Gaia and ecological revering dance music.” DV
Virgin Vacations ‘Dapple Patterns’
Chosen by DV/Review
“From a multitude of sources, across a number of mediums, the concentrated sonic force that is Virgin Vacations ramp up the queasy quasars and the heavy-set slab wall of no wave-punk-jazz-maths-krautrock sounds on their debut long player. With room to expand horizons the Hong Kong (tough gig in recent years, what with China’s crackdowns on the free press and student activists; installing authoritarian control over the Island) ensemble lay out a both hustled, bustled and more cosmic psychedelic journey, from the prowling to the near filmic and quasi-operatic -from darkened forebode to Shinto temple bell-ringing comedowns that fade out into affinity.” DV
Z__________________________
Tucker Zimmerman ‘I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True’ (Big Potato Records)
Chosen by DV
Whilst living in idyllic seclusion in Belgium during the 1970s, the venerated but underrated idiosyncratic US-born troubadour/singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman left the door ajar to friends (namely Ian A Anderson & Maggie Holland) and the like to spin a collection of unburdened, unpressured homegrown recordings. The results, unsurprisingly magical, halcyon and unassumingly poignantly poetic. The first ever release for ‘I Wonder If I’ll Ever Come True’ is as revelatory as much as it is sublime, felt, intimate, boosting a reputation and clamour for an overlooked maestro. DV
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The Monthly Playlist For September 2024
September 30, 2024
CHOICE MUSIC FROM THE LAST MONTH ON THE MONOLITH COCKTAIL: TEAM EFFORT
The Monthly Revue for September 2024: Fifty choice tracks from the last month, chosen by Dominic Valvona, Matt ‘Rap Control’ Oliver and Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea. Features a real shake up and mix of tracks we’ve both covered in our review columns and articles. We’ve also added a smattering of tracks that we either didn’t get the room to feature or missed at the time. Covering many bases, expect to hear and discover new sounds, new artists. Consider this playlist the blog’s very own ideal radio show: no chatter, no gaps, no cosy nepotism.
TrAcKliSt
David Liebe Hart ‘James Earl Jones’
Mosik Rhymes & Tha God Fahim ‘E.S.P.’ – this month’s cover art
Seez Mics & Metermaids ‘Walter Wrong’
Kong The Artisan, Essa & Phat Kat ‘Get Nasty’
Etran de L’Air ‘Amidinine’
Carmen Souza ‘Amizadi’
Daniel Inzani ‘Beyond The Pale’
Zerrin ‘Spring Cleaning’
Black Artist Group ‘For Peace And Liberty Part 2’
Michal Urbaniak ‘UrbTrap’
AINON ‘Komorebi’
Derrero ‘Painting with Sound’
Neon Kittens ‘Lika Like’
SHITNOISE ‘Gum Opera’
The legless Crabs ‘Piercings And Tattoos’
I do You do Karate ‘Jabiru’
Cuushe ‘Faded Corners’
Inflatable Men ‘He’s Going Out With Marilyn’
Inre Kretsen Grupp & Prins Emanuel ‘Volta Semantron’
Phantom Handshakes ‘Dusk Enchanted’
Xeno & Oaklander ‘Via Negativa (in the doorway light)’
Beauty Stab ‘Use Me As Bait’
Wings Of Desire ‘OTTAMYMIND’
Nonpareils ‘Bring It On’
Short Fuze & 4Most ‘3AM Thoughts’
Desert Camo, Heather Grey & Oliver the 2nd ‘Sun Lord Mixtape’
leisure fm ‘illuminated manuscript’
Ghostwriter ‘Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down’
Elea Calvet ‘Trigger – Acoustic’
Holy Matter ‘The Dove’
Trust Fund ‘The Mirror’
Christopher Haddow ‘Look Homeward’
John Howard ‘Great Horse’
Minarets of Nessef ‘Instrumental’
Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir ‘Christos Anesti, Mode Plagal A’
Umlaut ‘Gaze back into you’
Anja Ngozi & OKI ‘Utanobori’
Will Lawton and the Alchemists ‘Fossils of the Mind – Sebastian Reynolds Rework’
The New Tigers ‘Saba’
Viktor Ori ‘Vsetci sme v tom spolu’
Banca De Gaia ‘Electric Sheep’
Tanya Morgan, 6th Sense & Rob Cave ‘The Motion’
The Doppelgangaz ‘W.I.T.H.H.’
Xray & Monsta Island Czars ‘Evacuate The Club’
Jon Phonics ‘U JUST A LYING ASS HOE’
Ant ‘4-Track Beyond Beat 1996’
Leonard Charles ‘Rose’
Dr. Syntax & Pete Canon ‘Robot Problem’
Diamond D & KRS-One ‘THE KINGS’
Dead Players ‘Just Above Water’
The Perusal #52: Meril Wubslin, Maria Arnqvist, Ghost, Otis Sandsjö…
February 13, 2024
A WORLD OF DISCOVERIES REVIEWED BY DOMINIC VALVONA
(Unless stated otherwise, all releases are available now)
Maria Arnqvist ‘Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet’
(Sing A Song Fighter)
An incredible, adventurous concept (of a sort) album from the Swedish multi-instrumentalist and composer that not only showcases a breadth of ideas but also draws upon a wealth of worldly musical escapes and travels, Mary Rose And The Purple Quintet! is an ambitious statement.
One half of the self-professed “voodoo punk, art rock and psychedelic” Swedish duo Siri Karlsson, Maria Arnqvist weaves and sows the seeds for her own solo idiosyncratic fantasy on this character-driven songbook of piano-led or prompted quality vocalized and instrumental evocations.
Classically trained on the ivories, the source of this album’s deeply felt, keen and artfully beautiful material springs forth or subtly flows with an ever-moving cascade; a torrent; a disturbed pool or undulation of waves. Arnqvist proves highly talented in this regard; a near maestro of the instrument in fact, with certainly familiar echoes of what has come before – everything from the obvious classical strains and accentuated touches to the avant-garde of the name-checked Philip Glass and feels of quintessential balladry – but made a new when effortlessly merged with such instruments as the West African kora, an air of the folkloric and strange. Sousou Cissoko plays that kora incidentally, spindled melodically and woven beautifully – it reminded a little of the harpist Catrin Finch’s collaborative partnership with Seckou Keita.
There’s also a sort of Flyodian-progressive and Afro-jazz throaty and more float-y saxophone on a couple of songs. Add chamber-like and dramatic symphonic strings to that soundtrack – every track on this album could be a score in itself – and you have something very special and different and (that word again) worldly: at least transportive. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that Arnqvist has traveled abroad a lot, with stays absorbing the local sounds of instruments in Ouagadougou in Burkino Faso, and Boston in the States. When pulled together the results are both sophisticated and playful; the mood and balance shifting between the oddball theater of late 19th century barrel organ stoked Wild Western saloon japes and shoreline yearned morning choruses to the elements. In fact, this could be an alternative Western, with the unsympathetic roasting sun shimmers and hoofed giddy-up momentum of ‘I Caught You Runnin’ evoking some kind of amalgamation of David Carradine’s Kung Fu, the Mongolian song of Namger, and Sakamoto’s piano – a pursuit across a mirage salt plains perhaps?
At other times the mood is more folksy-classical; although the enchanting opener (a sort of overview overture) seems to reflect a restless spirit, spinning between timeless tones, West African dances and the drama of Mick Harvey’s more stirring sober scores.
The vocals are sung in English when recognizable, as Arnqvist also lyrically and with a melodious air also just swoons or coos the tune, thoughts and descriptive vowels. And the lyrics build up a poetic picture of dramas, emotional ties, scenery and acts, whilst never really making anything explicit as such. Natural elements are left to speak, as Mary Rose and that Purple Quintet meander, fluctuate up and down the scales, quiver and ride the tumultuous softened waves of this loose story.
An enchanting and softening restless spirit is at work on this astonishing, well-thought out and enacted solo turn from the Swedish talent; an album that will gently unfurl its magic and depth over repeated plays and time: and for that, will only get better on each listen.
Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner & Isambard Khroustaliov ‘In The Glooming’
(Non-Applicable) 16th February 2024
From the perceptive, intuitive and often haywire minds of the applauded Lothar Ohlmeier, Rudi Fischerlehner and Isambard Khroustaliov (the nom de plume of one Sam Britton) trio, another exploration into the probed parts of the grouping’s psyche, art forms, inquiry and mischief-making. Thematically wise however, this is latest experiment at the edges of electroacoustic serialism and free-roaming is about the trio’s friendship, perseverance, trust and handle on being human: in a world of ever encroaching technological takeover I’d suggest.
Drawing on their myriad of respectable experience over the decades, with Ohlmeier bringing along his bass clarinet (a pretty deft and extraordinary saxophonist too), Fischerlehner on drums and percussive elements, and Khroustaliov rewiring his electronic apparatus, all three participants pull from the “gloaming” (an expressive word taken from Irish lexicon that describes the “twilight”) a strange sound world and performance of avant-garde jazz, Fortean supernaturalism, the alien, odd and indefinable,
Recorded over in the former Cold War walled East Berlin – make what you will of that location -, melodious, almost at times sweetened and floated, clarinet wafts and occasionally strains amongst the clicks, reversals, signals and oscillations of circuitry and transmogrified data language. All the while sifted, brushed, hinged and more bell shaken percussive instruments often amorphously find a rhythm, a hit or timpani roll in the vagueness of an idea and direction. Unsettled and yet never really hostile, totally maniacal or mad, this is a world in which ECM, Sam Newsome, Roscoe Mitchell, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago and Eric Dolphy merge with Walter Smetek (I’m thinking of his 1974 Smetek LP especially), Valentina Magaletti, Affenstunde Popol Vuh, Angelo Bignamini and Lea Bertucci. A track like the tracing of time, weirdly tweaked and near whistled ‘End Zone’ sounds positively sci-fi and a little ominous. Whilst, the classical unhinged toy workshop combination of elements on ‘Violet Weeds’ sounds like Prokofiev conducting Autuchre for a performance of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse. And ‘Pixel Head’ re-engineers the matrix for an odd futuristic charge of static and cable disarray. Sharing is caring as they say, and this trio seems to deeply feel that connection and intuitive spirit of freedom in creating something challenging, but also in those very special interactive moments: moments inspired in a manner by that twilight hour between the dark and light. A curious, wild and untethered yet professionally made work that defies boundaries.
Meril Wubslin ‘Faire Cą’
(Bongo Joe Records) 1st March 2024
Taking their Mitteleuropa mummers vision on the trail to, of all places, Lewisham in southeast London, and the studio of Kwake Bass, the Meril Wubslin trio cast more hallucinatory hypnotic rhythms in new surroundings without leaving that signature mysterious dimension that hovers between French-speaking Lausanne and Brussels.
Bass (or to give him his full due and title, Giles Kwakeulati King-Ashong) has worked with a myriad of influential and explorative figures over the years (from MF Doom and Roots Manuva to Lianne La Havas and Kate Tempest), so carries more than a touch of class and cache of ingenuity and talent. And yet far from changing the sound, based a lot on repetitive rustic nylon-stringed-like guitar rhythms and both scrappy and dreamy spelled percussion, the producer has continued to aid in magic-ing up a strange rural mysterious combination of Rufus Zuphall, These New Puritans, The Knife, Goat, Holydrug Couple and Die Wilde Jagd.
When the dual male and female vocals – shared and in a strange harmonic symmetry – mistily arise from the mystique and often dreamy-realism of humming motored esoteric vapours and woozy oscillations, they evoke a very removed version of Chanson with Sister Dominique and the pagan song of Summerisle. In fact, there’s a quite a lot of esoteric and folksy-like references sound wise, from the processional to tribal. And a cross-timeline of influences that stretch back into the Medieval. On occasion those hypnotic rhythms and percussive scrapes conjure up Gnawa trance, or the herding of goats in the mountains during older, simpler, primal times. And yet, there’s also a semblance of the Blues, of Dirt Music, to be found amongst the glassy bobbled vibraphone wobbles, trippy drum breaks, pastoral drug lingers, vague visitations from another dimension, UFOs and surreal echoes.
A diaphanous and occult balance of the rural and otherworldly, of enchantment and suffused otherness, Faire Cą is yet another promising statement of headiness and entrancing spells from the trio.
Ghost ‘S-T’, ‘Second Time Around’ and ‘Temple Stone’
(Drag City Records)
Following in the wake of Masaki Batoh’s most recent of incarnations, the brain waves initiated Nehan project album An Evening With (reviewed last month in my Perusal column), Drag City are reissuing a triple-bill of vinyl albums from the Japanese acupuncturist, musician and apparatus building artist’s most enduring and long-running ensemble Ghost.
Tying in with the fortieth anniversary of that evolving, line-up-revolving group’s conception, and the tenth anniversary of its completion, disbandment, their first run of albums from the 1990s is being given another pressing by the label that originally repressed them in the first place, three decades before: that run quickly selling out off the back of Ghost’s Lama Rabi Rabi debut album release for the American Drag City Records imprint. Originally released by the Japanese P.S.F. label on CD, that triplet of records laid down the foundations for a nomadic commune trip of acid wooziness, otherworldly folklore, abandoned temple spirit communions and visions.
Hauntingly formed in Tokyo in 1984 by underground and head music stalwart Batoh, their existence and presence on the scene were as veiled, translucent and hermitic as their name suggested. Pretty much adapts of Amon Düül II (from Phallus Dei to Dance of The Lemmings) and Popol Vuh, but also the psychedelic and folk movements of the UK in the 60s and 70s (from the Incredible String Band to Third Ear Band, Haps Hash And The Coloured Coats and Floyd), and closer to home, such native acts as the Far East Family Band and Acid Mothers Temple, these hallucinatory seekers explored various forms of transcendental music and tradition – although, in the PR briefing they’ve been compared to Os Mutantes. All of those reference points can be heard over their self-titled debut (1990) and Second Time Around (92) and Temple Stones (94) albums; reissued here on appropriate psychedelic clear coloured vinyl for the first time in 25 years.
Recurring currents and vibrations can be found on all three albums; the last of which is slightly confusing with a lot of crossover track-titles from the previous two; it must be stressed however, that even though they use the exact same names on Temple Stones, they are different, produced it sounds like, from the same session, but either an alternative to or riff on the original source and tune, atmosphere. Starting with the demigod, deity or presence theme of the “Moungod” on the self-titled album, the ghostly visitations traverse misty-veiled shrines, mountainous trails to meetings with kite-flying yogis, Shinto ceremonies and holy cavern settings. Surprisingly avoiding any real freak outs – ok, the occasional build-up of acid rock thrashing, splashing and tumult, but relatively subdued on that part – the music and atmospherics are often drowsy sounding; spiritually wafting along and even traditional: imagine Popol Vuh, the Incredible String Band and Floyd meets Alejandro Jodorowsky on the Holy Mountain. There’s also a touch of Julian Cope and Jason Pierce, even The Cult amongst the Taoism and other venerated mysterious leanings and moss. And, something that will carry over onto all the albums, there’s a constant air of the Medieval, the courtly and a touch of psychedelic folksy parchment; from maypole dances to willowy recorders whistled and fluty pagan pastoral processions and merriment.
Second Time Around is produced in the same mold, but seems to also have a more progressive feel, and even an air of the Celtic about it; another occult folksy-acid journey through mythological and spiritual tapestries. ‘People Get Freedom’ introduces us to a spindled lattice of gong washes and harpist sound-tracked moss gardens; the stepping stones trip then extending out towards a culmination of talking to Yogi ADII, the Moody Blues and wistful waltzes on the title-track. ‘Awake In A Middle’ however, sounds more like Satanic Majesty’s era and ‘Ruby Tuesday’ Stones, a more doleful King Crimson and fiddly acoustic dreamy Yes. There are murmurings and the odd bit of mooning, spooky chanting, and mantras to give it that occult, otherworldly sound from the ether, the gods, and the transcendental planes.
Finally, the Temple Stone album suffusion of veneration and mystique wonders around those ancient alters like an apparitional collective of the Flower Travellin’ Band, Yatha Sidhra and The Mission. Disturbed mood music and background wails and shouts are balanced with strange primal vapours, acid-folk (again), downer almost shoegaze vocals (although, on the old and magical rural never-world of ‘Freedom’, it sounds like AD II’s very own Chris Karrer), Indian brassy resonance, paused thoughtful piano and overhead drones.
All three albums are brilliant at pulling you into the Ghost troupe’s world of mysticism, drifted travels, psychedelic projections and wanderings. And not one of them is any better than the other, quality wise. Together they form a near-linear bond, capturing a short period in the band’s early-recorded history – the first of these albums appearing six years after the group’s initial conception -, which lasted thirty years. If this introduction style purview and review does grab you, then be quick, as I suspect these vinyl editions will fly off the Drag City Records shelves.
Otis Sandsjö ‘Y-OTIS TRE’
(We Jazz Records) 23rd February 2024
Following up previous albums in the Y-OTIS series, part TRE continues to deconstruct, shape and rebuild in real time the untethered sessions of the Berlin-based, but Swedish born, tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Otis Sandsjö’s studio experiments. With what has been called a “mixtape-like DNA” methodology, Otis with his long-standing foil and Koma Saxo leader Petter Eldh, and keyboardist Dan Nicholls, plus changing ensemble of musicians, remix themselves as they go along; fracturing, stumbling, free-falling, flipping, enveloping, cutting-up and sampling their jams into freeform opportunities and ideas.
The third album is much in the same vein: albeit this time around sounding more like a transmogrification of 90s and 2000s R&B and soul, with echoes and reverberations of slow elongated and stretched breaks. In practice this results in passing moments of J Dilla, Jimi Tenor, Madegg, Gescom, Four Tet, Healing Force Project and Shabazz Palaces tripping-out on jazz, funk and the blues. But that’s only half the story, as hinged and sirocco winded brass and woodwind is flipped out and put with an ever-changing revolution of morphed d’n’b, broken hip-hop beats, vague memory reflexes of Gershwin and the Savoy label era, The NDR Bigband, Philipp Gropper’s Philm and the most wobbly.
Nothing is quite how it seems, as the fluctuations and changes in the groove, timings and direction of travel often end up somewhere different; take the horizon opening ‘orkaneon’, which begins with a Ariel Kalma-style sustained, trance-y new age sax but finishes on Herbie Hancock being vacuumed and flipped by Squarepusher. In short: another successful adventure in the kooky jelly mould of hip-hop-breakbeat-jazz and beyond.
Various Artists ‘Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación’
(Bongo Joe)
A new year and a new musical excursion for the Bongo Joe label; a first foray and survey of the Dominican Republic’s localized ‘frantic’ Merengue phenomenon.
Sharing its Hispaniola Island location with Haiti (a most tumultuous relationship that’s led to various periods of civil war and bloodshed between the two former brutalized European colonies), the Dominican Republic is well placed to absorb the surrounding cultures of both the Caribbean and Latin America, with Merengue being just one these genres. The style was originally tied-in with the Spanish invaders, taking root on the Island in the early 1800s and played on traditional European instruments like the ‘bandurria’ style guitar. As time went by (especially in the more modern ‘Típico’ era) some of those original instruments were replaced by the accordion (introduced via German trade ships), the güira and the more localized two-headed ‘tambora’ drum (salvaged from rum barrels).
Its Island bedfellow of Salsa might be more globally renowned but Merengue is far older and established; a national dance and music used at various points in the country’s history and fight for independence as a rallying call, a unified and shared common bond: although, in one of the more controversial periods, Merengue was pushed and promoted by the military commander turn dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (nicknamed “El Jefe”). This particular compilation covers the creative boom after Trujillo’s death in the early 1960s – assassinated after a bloody, brutal regime that resulted in the estimated deaths of 50,000 people, including a sizable number of Haitians, and a number of opposition figures overseas. As the reins, paranoia of oppressive rule dissipated, culture grew once more with optimism. Merengue got a new lease of life with contemporary modernizations and expansions to the sound: now featuring strings and the bass. Pioneering figures like the iconic female trailblazer (and one of the stars of this collection) Fefita La Grande helped take the style forward and broke down barriers in a largely male dominated scene. The Afro-Hispaniola influences remained, as did the signature ‘quintillo’ five-beat rhythm, but there was a new step, confidence and joy to the music, which you will hear on this selection of nuggets reissued for the first time ever, chosen by the Funky Bompa – the alias of crate-digger Xavier Dalve.
Ten showcase tunes of quickened concertinaed ribbing (‘picaresque’ style), dancing, sauntering and jauntiness await; music from such commanding artists as the already mentioned Fefita but also the reeling sweetened and passionate tones of the mysterious Valentin and the Trio Royecell. Scuffling and skiffled, with the güira sounding like a scraped metallic washboard or cheese-grater, groups like the Trio Rosario step to a upbeat squeeze of accordion and touch of the Creole on the fun opening ‘Cuando Yo Muera’. But even when the themes, lyrics are meant to be more plaintive, even bluesy like Aristides Ramierz’s ‘Los Lanbones’, the action is less cantina woes and more “amigo” friendly light-heartedness.
The reach, influences, carry far and wide with knockabout she-shanty bellows, folk and the sounds of Afro-Cuba, Haiti and Colombia ringing away to an infectious, speedy and constantly lively rhythm. As an introduction to that, Merengue Típico offers an insightful party album survey of a Dominican Republic phenomenon, in many cases, still unknown to the greater world outside the Latin community. Here’s an infectious invite to put that gap in the musical knowledge right.
The Corrupting Sea ‘Cold Star: An Homage To Vangelis’
(somewherecold Records) 1st March 2024
Mainstay and foundation artist of the label he created, somewherecold’s Jason T. Lamoreaux pays “homage” and fealty to his hero Vangelis on his latest outing as The Corrupting Sea.
Arguably the Greek titan of the electronic and soundtrack form’s most enduring and influential work in the field of cinema and sci-fi, it is the icon’s distilled acid-pin-drop-rain atmospheric waterfall of dystopian mystery noirish Blade Runner score that inspires Jason’s Cold Star suites of synth evocations. The North American composer does this by fluently channeling that data, language and mood music whilst finding rays of hope and chinks in the metallic ominous granular skies.
Track titles will be familiar with even those with only a cursory interest in the grim futurescape and philosophical quandaries of artificial intelligence and what it is to be human storyline, of this bleak but incredibly affecting and prescient film – even more so in light of the introduction of such gimmicky but frightening programs as ChatGPT, and the encroaching possibilities of AI’s applications in making much of what we do redundant: even in the creative fields. For example, the ‘Voight-Kampff’ empathy test used to weed out the “Replicant” from the human in the film based on Richard K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is just one such obvious timely example; here, in this state, chiming with softened sleigh bells, shimmery starry waves and crisp little explosions of grainy fuzz bit-crushes.
But as I’ve already mentioned, Jason finds some levitated release of hope in the cogs of technological progress; see the tenderness and reflection that is applied to the short ‘Like Tears In The Rain’ suite, which references Rutger Hauer’s iconic replicant character’s last fatalistic scene and memorable quote of the film: “lost in time…like tears in the rain”. The femme fatale of the picture if you like, ‘Rachael’ (with all that name’s Biblical significance) is also a balance of sci-fi and carefully placed stirrings; the calls of the analogue, of Jarre, of arpeggiator cascaded notes and android data.
Tracks like the grainy chomping and zip-line rippling ‘Four Years’ – the programmed-in longevity of replicants, so they supposedly don’t get the time to achieve human emotions and to rebel from their servitude of heavy lifting and soldiery in futuristic off-worlds – are not so much unsettling, but do have detuned bends and an assailing sense of uncertainty and the alien about them.
‘Replicant Hunters’ which opens this album, is pure Vangelis, but also has a hint of the Klaus Schulze about it too; square waves and bobbed bulb-like notes pass like cruisers in the alt-future nights.
Incidentally, that album title, Cold Star, references the cosmological phenomenon of “failed stars”, or “brown drawfs” as they are also known; a star that doesn’t have enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, and so is cold or tepid to the touch. But there is nothing cold or dying about this six-track score, as a final sanctuary of hopefulness in a hopeless bleak dystopia is found on ‘Refuge’ amongst the static-charges and last gasps of a ticking hi-hat rhythm. Corridors are built into these moments of escape and clarity, as Jason pays respect and comes full circle back to his original influence on first starting out in the world of electronic experimentation and mood music.
OdNu + Ümlaut ‘Abandoned Spaces’
(Audiobulb) 10th February 2024
Drawn together and what proves to be a deeply intuitive union for the Audiobulb label, the Buenos Aires-born but NY/Hudson resident Michel Mazza (the OdNu of that partnership) and the US, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut) form a bond on their reductive process of an album, Abandoned Spaces.
The spaces in that title alongside reference prompts, inspirations motivated by the Japanese term for ‘continuous improvement’, “Kaizen”, and the procrastinated state of weakness of self-will known as the “Akrasia Effect”, are subtly and dreamily wrapped up in a gentle blanket of recollection. The lingering traces of humanity, nature and the cerebral reverberate or attentively sparkle and tinkle as wave after wave of drifty and pristine bulb-like guitar notes hover or linger, and passing drums repetitively add a semblance of rhythm and an empirical and evanescent beat.
The word ‘meticulous’ is used, and that would be right. For this is such a sophisticated collaboration and a near amorphous blending of influences, inspirations and styles: for instance, you can hear an air of Federico Balducci and Myles Cochran in the languorous guitar sculpting and threading, and an essence of jazz on the brushed and sifting, enervated hi-hat pumping drum parts. On the hallucinatory title-track itself there’s a strange touch of Byzantine Velvet Underground, Ash Ra Tempel and Floyd, and on the almost shapeless airy and trance-y ‘Unforeseen Scenes’ a passing influence of Mythos and the progressive – there’s also the first introduction of what sound like hand drums, perhaps congas being both rhythmically padded and in a less, almost non-musical way, flat-handily knocked.
Tracks are given plenty of time to breathe and resonate, to unfurl spells and to open up primal, mirage-like and psyche-concocted soundscapes from the synthesized and played. And although this fits in the ambient electronic fields of demarcation, Abandoned Spaces is so much more – later on in the second half of the eight-track album, the duo express more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty. Here’s hoping OdNu + Ümlaut continue this collaboration, as this refined partnership proves a winning formula.
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect for /love. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated.
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