Monolith Cocktail Blog

PLAYLIST/ARCHIVES: DOMINIC VALVONA

The Monolith Cocktail Digest is both home to Dominic Valvona’s long-running eclectic, cross-generational Social Playlist, and a platform for celebrating significant anniversary albums and, more sadly, commemorating those artists we’ve lost in the last month, with pieces from the Archives.

Starting with the 81^st edition of that playlist, Dominic has curated a selection of past glories, music from his own collection, reissues, newish tracks and a smattering of choice tunes from albums that have reached either a 60^th, 50^th, 40^th, 30^th, 20^th or 10^th anniversary. In that camp, there’s nods to Yoko Ono’s Feeling The Space, John Lennon’s Mind Games, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain Soundtrack (see the archive spot piece further down the post) and one of the crowning achievements in documentary, The World At War. All of which have reached the 50^th landmark, released and aired as they were in 1973.

A decade later and the electronic/synthesized progenitor Dieter Moebius released both the solo Tonspuren offering and, in communal partnership with krautrock/kosmische pioneer producer Conny Plank and Guru Guru’s maverick drummer-leader Mani Neumeier, the Zero Set albums: both of which have been repackaged and reissued this month. From the same year of 1983, there are tracks from The Rolling Stones’ patchy Undercover and The Fall’s rambunctious magnificent Perverted By Language LPs.

Into the 1990s, and Dominic has chosen representative choices from the Staten Island branch of the shaolin school of kung-fu hip-hop, the Wu-Tang Clan’s classic debut Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers); A Tribe Called Quest’s seminal Midnight Marauders; Bowie’s less than universally championed The Buddha Of Suburbia; and Ritchie Hawtin’s highly influential Plastikman alter-ego intelligent techno masterpiece, Sheet One – another recent reissue, repackaged release. 

The rest of the Social features a couple of recent-ish tracks from Lisa Butel and foil Brent Cross, and Royal Flush. And from across the decades and genres, music by Tyvek, Ron House, Mircea Florain, Kong Ney, Crossbones, Lazy Smoke and more… In the Archive section this month, there’s a short piece on Jodorowsky’s alchemist tapestry of esotericism, the Holy Mountain Soundtrack, and from a decade ago, plucked from the back pages, a review of M.I.A.’s Matangi.

TrackList:::

The Rolling Stones ‘Undercover’
The Fall ‘Neighbourhood Of Infinity’
Voluntarios da Patria ‘Io Io’
Tyvek ‘Circular Ruins’
Ron House ‘New Maps Of Hell’
John Lennon ‘Tight A$’
A Bolha ‘E So Curtir’
Yoko Ono ‘Woman Power’
Mircea Florian ‘Harap Alb A Treia Oara Ratacit In Padure’
Jackson Conti ‘Nao Tem Nada Nao’
Moebius/Plank/Neumeier ‘All Repo’
Plastikman ‘Koma’
A Tribe Called Quest ‘We Can Get Down’
Wu-Tang Clan ‘Method Man’
Royal Flush ‘B.O.B.’
Crossbones ‘You Always Get Me Wrong’
Alejandro Jodorowsky ‘Trance Mutation’
Kong Ney ‘Bom Pet’
Luiz Eca ‘La Vamos Nos’
Dick Khoza ‘WD 46 Mendi Road’
Travel Agency ‘Cadillac George’
Danny & Dusty ‘Baby We All Gotta Go Down’
Baker Gurvitz Army ‘The Dreamer’
Under Milkwood ‘Empty Room’
Kaira Ben ‘Mousso Loule’
Moebius ‘Contramio’ Piotr Figiel ‘Skrawek Przestrzeni’
David Bowie ‘Ian Fish UK Heir’
Baaska & Scavelli ‘The Green Hills Of Earth’
Lazy Smoke ‘Sarah Saturday’
Lisa Butel & Brent Cross ‘Vox Canon’
The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra ‘End Theme From The World At War’

ARCHIVE SPOTS

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Don Cherry and Ronald Frangipane ‘Holy Mountain Soundtrack’ 1973

Never formally released at the time of the film itself, the soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s esoteric kool-aid psychedelic movie, The Holy Mountain, has since languished in folklore, only to be bundled out at a later date as part of subsequent DVD reissues. I myself have relied upon the good-nature of others to obtain my copy.

Though the ins-an-outs of musical accreditation remain somewhat recondite and obscure – Jodorowsky taking the lions share –, the well-revered avant-jazz cornetist, Don Cherry, and composer Ronald Frangipane (credits include playing on The Midnight Cowboy and Barberella scores) both played an integral and major part in playing and producing this potted spiritual and alchemical mind trip. Meandering eastern dirges and fluted love swanned serenades meet cult funky B-movie cuts and the less memorable vignettes, used to create the enlightened scenes and atmospherics. ‘Trance Mutation’ for my money, entrancing and ritualistically Kabbalah and Eastern arts/Tibetan hums as it is, cries Cherry. But don’t expect anything close to revelatory; as this soundtrack is for the most part mediocre.

M.I.A. ‘Matangi’ 2013
(Taken from Our Daily Bread 022)

Not so much a klaxon sounding clarion call as a reaffirmation of the voracious M.I.A. manifesto, the latest ‘hyperbolic’ riot of polygenesis colour and sound, Matangi, is quite a measured, translucent, and sparkly in places, personal affair. Mellowed somewhat by the delay in its release by more than a year (at one point M.I.A. threatened to leak the record online, frustrated at the label’s negative response – apparently it wasn’t dark enough for them!).

But fear not as that same explosive ennui driven mix of earth-shaking bhangra, boombox subversion and Arabian chic – as evidenced on the last three records – still permeates and threatens to piss on the apathetic parade: Indecorous to a fault, yet dangerously alive and exciting.

Following in the family name tradition of the last three albums, Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam explores the etymological source of her own namesake, the Hindu goddess Matangi. Found amongst the ‘untouchables’ – the poor and destitute – in the slums, Matangi chose to live away from the temples of the gods, to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of the lower castes: the salt of the earth so to speak. The goddess of inner thought as well as music, her mythical presence and attitude are used as a reference and guide throughout, channeled in the more meditative escapist passages.

A perfect figurehead and encapsulated spirit of the times, a cross-pollinated artist-musician-polymath character seemingly congruous with the Internet, M.I.A. is both an advocate and fierce foil of the digital world. The burgeoning promise of a carefree, interconnected, community, richly educated and informative, has rather disappointingly been hijacked by a camarilla of ‘facilitators’, corporations and an over-zealous state. Intent it seems on eroding free speech and free movement, imposing instead a military style control and surveillance on our lives. In short…. we’ve been sold down the river.

None of this is new to M.I.A. of course, already a well publicised supporter of Wikileaks and its defacto – exiled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London – leader Julian Assange (who recently opened for a M.I.A. performance in New York, via a skype link, and is said to have contributed to the schizoid dubstep Matangi LP track, ‘atTENTion’). But with the ongoing revelations of Edward Snowdon and the increasing torrid of abusive vitriol from her detractors (mostly it must be said from America), there’s more than enough material to transduce into anger, even if M.I.A. and her augury warning, ‘THE MESSAGE’ (the opening gambit from the 2010 MAYA LP), pretty much summed it all up: “iPhone connected to the internet/ Connected to the Goggle/ Connected to the government.”

Using a similar template then, M.I.A. begins with a mantra of intent, delivered over a stuttering electric current: “Ain’t Dalai Lama, Ain’t Sai Baba/ My words are my armour, and you’re about to meet your kharma.” From then on in she amorphously twists and turns, from protestation to romantic stomp, cutting up and reworking R&B, pop and Hip Hop into ringside swagger (‘Only 1 U!’), bombastic gangsta strut (‘Warriors’) and bubblegum dancehall (‘Come Walk With Us’).

Hardly light on rhetoric – whether collecting all the data of hate and criticism, leveled against her (including the ‘one-finger’ Super Bowl debacle, N.Y. Times spread and accusations of provocation), or banging heads on the lack of originality in culture and railing against our failure to fight the systems that seek to turn everything into a humongous pile of shit: “If you only live once, why keep doing the same shit?”

‘Bad Girls’, ‘Bring The Noize’ and ‘Y.A.L.A.’ have all previously been made public in the long run-up to this fourth LP – the original Bad Girls in incubated form was first aired on the 2010 mixtape, Vicki Leeks, later to be accompanied by a car-crazy, Sheiks-do-Hip Hop wild video in 2012. This triumvirate of revved-up ‘nasty’ tracks more or less gives the album its most hardened, prowling highlights. But as the smoke from those riotous, sophisticated joints clear, M.I.A. choses a more indolent swaying direction (well less threatening anyway), her rhyming couplets smoothed and laid back on the neon lit, Siam charmed, ‘Come Walk With Me’, and lamentably swinging on the bookended pairing of ‘Exodus/Sexodus’.

In case you never got the admonitory memo or understood the ‘Lady of Rage’ the first, second and third time around, she once again rattles off another dictate and denunciation for you, whilst raising the game for those who seek to follow in the vapour trail. M.I.A. proves to be the most exhilarating, provocative artist to crossover into the general psyche, without losing their soul; able to roll with the punches and at least stand for something in a mixed-up world of contrary stifled debate and fucked-up moral objection to all the wrong things.

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.