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The Secret of Graduation Party Invites That Nobody Is Discussing

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 The Secret of Graduation Party Invites That Nobody Is Discussing

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The dreadful Negative Effects of Graduation celebration invitations

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Recognizing Graduation Celebration Invites

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Words: Gianluigi Marsibilio

Frog ‘Count Bateman’
(Audio Antihero/Tape Wormies) 16th August 2019

Frog are a kiosk by the sea, on a suburban beach.

The essence of their work is gathered in a search for intimacy that is expressed in DIY and lo-fi passages; a very successful sound universe touched by Bon Iver, Daniel Johnston and other such sacred monsters.

Their flame is lit on Count Bateman. The new album in fact captures the peak of a clear path and placed lo-fi sound. The interweaving of stories on this record are a safe place that puts us at peace and in dialogue with the idea of Frog’s music.

The ability of the work is to go down, and at the same time transcend, in a strongly psychological dimension, but there is no Freud or Jung, but simply a dose of sharpness and freshness that make us feel good, almost inexplicably.

The guitar landscape of songs like ‘It’s Something I Do’ or ‘Black Friday’ is uncontaminated, a walk with Christopher McCandless. The sound is light; it’s a wave of fresh water, an immersion in a style very close to that of Daniel Johnston.

In Frog there is the rediscovery of a low profile attitude, which must be understood and studied in the light of a historical moment in which the ability to remain in the dark, with the light off, has been lost, even in more indie environments.

Frog are like Matisse, painters of windows and fixtures that open in an expanse of neighborhoods, cities and stories. Count Bateman is an open window from which air enters and often there is also a hurricane breeze; in fact the second part of the record is full of unusual sounds and more driven, electronically, for the duo.

Words: Ayfer Simms

Until recently a regular contributor to the Monolith Cocktail, Ayfer Simms has taken time away from the blog to concentrate on finishing her debut novel, A Rumor In Üsküdar. Living with her husband and daughter in the same region of that title, in the sprawling metropolis that is Istanbul, Ayfer moved back into the family home after her father was unfortunately taken ill: later passing away. Within a wider context of political hostility in Turkey (bordering on the dystopian), the process of grieving is explored both evocatively and metaphysically by Ayfer in what is a semi-biographical, semi-alternative futuristic geopolitical purview of her home country and home city.

We’ve so far been proud to feature three extracts from A Rumor In Üsküdar. Part four in this series of previews from the book is both a real and metaphorical archeologist dig into the problems facing modern Turkey. A psychogeography you could say; one that merges veiled fantasy versions of a political cast and events.

Part Four:

Mrs. Muazzez must now be at least 100 years old or perhaps older. Specialized in Sumerian culture, she has a vast knowledge in all archeological matters. In 2006, at the age of 92, she was accused of hating the state: for having published a book on the wearing of the veil. She claimed that the custom came from the Sumerians, priestesses initiating young people to sexual practices.

Veysel pulled his hair no doubt and put the veil back in its place. He is not crazy, however, and did not incarcerate the centenary. Mrs. Muazzez lives on the European side in an old house that looks like a museum. She has an unprecedented passion for Veysel’s dead rival, Mustapha. At her age, she saw the former statesman shake the country and give a bit of a voice to women (mostly privileged ones).

370 days after the beginning of the excavations under the Bosphorus, the digging got interrupted by the discovery of Byzantine vessels, silver coins, cooking utensils and other trinkets. Skeletons have also resurfaced that day. What we did with them I do not know. I did not see them at the Istanbul Archeology Museum, at least not yet. Time erases the status of humanity, everyone knows it. The Üsküdar wharf was then disemboweled in a hurry, in a rush, because there was a lot of money to lose. The Japanese were politely impatient: they wanted to finish there anti seismic tunnel and leave at once.

I was not yet in Istanbul during these works, but I arrived just in time to see the opening of the new Marmaray line. The train station was planted in the middle of the ruins; the rest was covered with earth, after taking pictures that were hung on the walls leading to the turnstiles. The archaeologists spread coffee all over their shirt to save everything, but they were hungry and witnessed the swallowing of the site with cold sweats.

Since the opening of the line that joins Asia to Europe under the sea, several years have passed while work continues everywhere. Large shopping centers, widening of the wharf and other projects make the wound still fresh.

I see from time to time the black casings rising from the cement, the glowing stones – are they old? I try to guess what is hidden in the old earth, hoping also to discover the Byzantines or the traces of the life of those who walked on this patch before us. It’s a stealthy look that I throw nevertheless. I check over my shoulder that the mud spits out its piece.

An object has however made its appearance during the excavations and the rumors reach us only now. Turkish archaeologists – those who are not in cahoots with the government in power, or who are unaware of the impact of their discovery, or who are conscious of having to protect it at all costs – are scientifically eager to let the international scene know: on they pass it to a French specialist team. The results of which, we have only echoes despite discretion, suggest that this is something likely to displease the President of the Republic Veysel. The latter also ordered to stop the excavations, the object in question would have been confiscated upon the return of archaeologists and they were obliged to “resign”. It is impossible for us to know if this news is true or if it is the propaganda tool of the opponents of Veysel or is invented by its own entourage to make a diversion on other fundamental subjects. As nonsense is commonplace, we believe everything and we believe nothing.

The president is not afraid of anything. But, it is said, bad tongues – that he is afraid of his wife. She let him put his head on her knees, and ask her to recite prayers to appease his troubles and ill moods.

She whispers to him “God is great and he is behind you”.

It is said that he has seizures of depression. That he happens to be confused. That he sometimes does not believe in God.

That he has shoeboxes full of money.

That he has nightmares. That one hears him exclaim in the morning: “I killed God !!”

In the opacity of the still deep night, he murmurs, “I’m the greatest”, at the same time he beats with all his might his chest like a furious gorilla. He takes an ax and strikes God in the face. No more reverence. Veysel knocks, beats the air and collapses. They say he sleeps badly. We understand why. How can you sleep well after doıng what he does? He looks terrible, yet his cancer is healed – his cancer is also hidden – but his complexion remains pale and faded. Is he cured, really? Like a superhuman defying all the viruses feared by all of us? The emotions shake him and it is visible in his features. He is agitated. But he does not die of illness like his population.

Veysel feels great but lost. He has reflexes of a believer and has shaped his image on Islam. Islam is its legitimacy. He must perhaps now go beyond religion to remain powerful.

Why say such a thing? It would cost a lot to anyone who dares saying that kind of thing: Unless it’s a rumor. The object accidentally extracted from the depths of the Bosphorus, or rather from the banks of the Bosphorus, would put an end to the monotheistic religions, they say. They would put these religions in the class of superstitions or medieval folklore. This book/object (we do not know anything more) would be like the famous comet that put an end to dinosaurs.

Veysel is naked without his religion. We imagine that it would be his end. That, however, we still have trouble believing it. The danger is that he does not give up so easily. He would continue to urge women to have four children, to avoid laughing out loud, to be modest in all sense of the term.

I look over my shoulder. Watch a smart shark spring from the waters of the Bosphorus to swallow me for thinking these things. The Bosphorus swallowed me once; I fell in it when I was 4 years old. My parents’ friend fished me out before anyone noticed I was gone. I do not remember. It left me with a fear of algae and everything that swarms in the undulating mass. The second time in 1999, the sea caused an earthquake of 8.7 on the Richter scale and claimed 17,000 lives. That summer, my apartment in Kozyatagi was scorching with heat. It was one of those summers that we could only spend dozing. I was bored. Birant had decided to leave me without telling me openly by planning a holiday to the south. I had hoped he would not leave me behind, but I read it in his eyes.

The evening of the earthquake, I drank wine, alone. When I was ready to go to bed, drunk, and feverish I was like Veysel facing a dilemma: to be independent and turn the page over Birant or continue my pathetic grip. When I decided to leave Turkey, Veysel was put in prison for 4 months for reciting a poem judged to be inciting religious hatred.

When I came back some twenty years later, as it happens it is him who boxed us all in.

Words: Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea

Toxic Chicken - Monolith Cocktail

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. Each month we end him a deluge of new releases on his virtual desk to see what sticks.

Toxic Chicken ‘Uncomfortable Music’
21st July 2019

I don’t apologise for writing another review of Toxic Chicken, as this is his 3rd LP in as many months, and this like the other two is a work of pure maverick pop genius: and not just because there is a four second track called ‘Brian From The Bordellos’ on it!

This LP has everything that I love about the magic and joy of music. It has humour and a madness that at times reminds me of the great Syd Barrett and the wonderful White Noise Electrical Storm LP. It is eccentric pushed to the extreme. Songs with the subject matter of eating politicians and love songs for cats and for Mother Nature and what is bad about England, but that track only being under two minutes long does not quite manage to list everything.

Uncomfortable Music is certainly an enjoyable and rewarding listening experience, and at times, the subject matter does live up to its title. But this album is a pay-what-you-want to download, so is well worth a listen. Another great album from a great artist: And I mean artist. And the track ‘Little Snail’ is the best dance track I have heard all year.

Snapped Ankles ‘Stunning Luxury’
1st March 2019

The whirring and exciting sounds of post punk circa 2019 coming at you like a extravagant wholemeal piece of chiffon scarred alternative disco meat; the sound of Devo fucking the brains and beats out of the B52s whilst the horny ghost of Mark E Smith watches on making cutting asides whilst stomping on the hopes and dreams of the not yet born love child of David Byrne and Lena Lovich.

This LP is one big extravagance of dark dance and post punk joy, the sort of album to soundtrack your wildest night out ever: sordid clubs, cheap drinks, hanging out with girls and boys who really should know better, the best musical electro porn one could ever hope to gorge oneself on.

Stunning Luxury is dirty, it is funky, it is experimental, it is blistering rock ‘n’ roll. A luxury indeed. One that should be enjoyed by all.

Anton Barbeau ‘Berliner Grotesk’
(Beehive Records / Pink Hedgehog Records) 19th July 2019

There is a dark playful melancholy I love about this LP, not the weeping into your hanky kind, or, the “oh I feel so sorry for myself kind”, but the, “I am middle aged and looking back at my life through the good and bad the happy and bad” kind. There is hope in the future kind, the kind of melancholy that Martin Newell thrives at writing. Even the cover of the Beatles ‘Love Me Do’ is enriched with a sadness the original misses; this version overcomes the familiarity by transforming it into a slightly electro reggae beauty.

But not all is sadness and tears there is also fine pop of the power variety: the sort Jellyfish so excelled at releasing. The Bowie Mott and the Fabs influences of course shine bright bringing a lovely old time Englishness that is so often ignored in modern music of today. This LP is a finely crafted pop album, with enough quirks and twists to make it a very enjoyable listen.

Simon Waldram ‘Into The Blue’
27th July 2019

Simon Waldram made one of my favourite LPs from 2016, the wonderful self released Insolation, an LP that dipped and swayed, taking in JAMC one minute and the next, beautiful swathes of psych folk. This, his new album, Into The Blue, takes off where that album left off, but is a slightly more subdued affair: Songs of darkness, love, depression and hope merge into a quite beautiful collection.

In these days when the acoustic guitar has taken over the electric, sales wise, there is certainly a market for LPs of softly strummed melancholia, and Simon does it far better than most; bringing to mind at times, the beautiful slowcore shimmer of Low (especially on ‘Breaking Waves’), at other times, recalling the magic of the Go Betweens and The Smiths.

The highlight for me though is the beautiful psych folk instrumental ‘Sea Turtles’: a few moments of total bliss.

Into The Blue is a fine LP and with the right backing and a bit of luck could well fight its way to the top of the overcrowded melancholic brigade, and could find favor on many late night radio shows. An album of real beauty and sadness and hope.

Moody Mae ‘Throwing Rocks at John E. Road’
2nd July 2019

Indie pop from Sweden is on the whole a wonderful thing indeed, and this EP/mini LP from Moody Mae keeps within that wonderful remit. Beatles like ‘Martha My Dear’ piano, lovingly could not give a toss female vocals, ba ba bas and lofi psychedelia join forces to force music lovers to nod their heads and grin like grinning idiots. And to think that this was recorded in 2005 and has taken 14 years to see the light of day. I think it may be time for Moody Mae to reform and record a full length waxing. For when a band has the gift of pure pop wonderment it is a shame not to share that wonderment with the less fortunate. A treasure of a release.

Radio Europa ‘Community Is Revolution’
(Wormhole) 19th July 2019

It seems like a weekly event that Wormhole Records release a new underground LP of chilled out darkness. This weeks release is by Radio Europa and is an LP of chilled out darkness with the odd offering of a glimpse of light appearing through the cracks of the drawn heavy curtains called life: The beam of light showing the particles of dust exploding and hovering around the thoughts of insolvent tomorrows and the broken promises of yesterday.

Gentle soft spoken vocals lilt into the wave of dark synth and drum beats that blanket you in the warmth of the cold that whispers sweet nothings whilst grinding a worn down stiletto heel into your vacant soul.

Community Is Revolution is an album to soundtrack these uncertain times; an album to close your eyes and let the music sweep over you and take you to the dark recess of your mind where devils and angels juggle with the happy/sad of your life.

bigflower ‘Night And Day’
13th July 2019

Another week another fine free to download single from bigflower. An explosion of post punk guitars do battle with horns and a bass riff so mighty it would make Jean Jacques Burnel want to call it a day and to take up flower arranging. When oh when are this mighty band going to be picked up by some label. For this is far to a fine a track to slip under the radar yet again. Blogs, djs of the alternative variety should be ramming this down people’s throats instead of some acoustic guitar charlatan whining on about how twee their girlfriend’s vagina is [like they have saw their girlfriend’s vagina! They saw an egg box and let their imagination take hold]

Bigflower are one of the most exciting underground bands around at the moment and we at the Monolith Cocktail will keep ranting on about their majestic take on modern life until the less with-it blogs catch on. Blogs, djs, record labels for God sake get your fingers out.

Why Sun ‘Frugte’
14th June 2019

Softly strummed guitars and deeply crooned vocals kick start this beautiful five track EP of softly strummed guitars and deeply crooned vocals; songs that bring the joys of Galaxie 500 and the Wild Swans oozing into my mind, and lovers of those bands and the many bands of that ilk should enjoy this. So give it a listen especially if you are hung-over or on the verge of doing fuck all.

Words: Andrew C. Kidd

Park Jiha ‘Philos’
(tak:til) 14th June 2019

Following her universally applauded debut album, Communion, Park Jiha has chosen Philos – from Greek, plural: loving, fond of, tending to – as the title for her latest release on Glitterbeat‘s sub-label, tak:til.

It has been described as an “evocation of her love for time, space and sound”. This is certainly evidenced in the multi-instrumental and baleful opener, ‘Arrival’, which consists of simple, metronomic strums and reedy high notes that lace around each other in ominous prismaticism. The piri, a double-reed bamboo flute played by Park, features heavily in this piece, as it does later during the album’s title track.

‘Thunder Shower’ is counterpoint and pacey. It also polyrhythmically balanced: an illusionary allargando (illusionary because the time-signature remains the same) offsets the urgency of the first third and peters out to the sounds of gentle rain before the original yanggeum-played motif resurfaces. It is a clever and rather effective musical metaphor.

The metallic yanggeum, a hammered dulcimer, reappears on ‘Walker’: In Seoul’. This track is played at a strolling pace and blends Park’s steely and melodic instrumentation with more abstract field recordings. I listened to this whilst reading a Hwang Sok-yong novel and it served as the perfect musical accompaniment to the piercing realism of his Seoul-dwelling protagonist. Similarly with the tuneful ‘When I Think Of Her’, where the yanggeum and saenghwang (mouth organ) elegantly dovetail, I am taken to a greeny, open space in a city flanked by buildings that arrow up towards the light blue.

The album departs from the instrumental during the track, ‘Easy’, which features the breezy and philosophical (or, rather, extrajudicial) spoken word of the Lebanese poet, Dima El Sayed. The upper notes intensify and push the vocals to a dizzying and distorting conclusion. ‘Pause’ follows and offers the listener a momentary armistice after the rallying call of ‘El Sayed’; the familiar but distant sounds of static and microphonic noise are point’s d’appui in an otherwise transcendental world of intangible sounds. This hypnotism is also evident on the final track, ‘On Water’, as the piri melody and xylophonic bells glint gently in the eventide.

There is an eloquent passage in the album notes which describes Philos as “[looking] to the future whilst continuing to converse with a rich instrumental language from the past”. This admixture of traditional Korean and Western instrumentation, coupled with compositions that lean towards the ambient and neoclassical, transmute Park’s experiences of a world awash with changing tides, transitory weather and ever-expanding cities into something that is indefinably atemporal.

Live Revue
Words: Gianluigi Marsibilio

Thom Yorke Live
Rome 21st July 2019

The stage is an icon, Thom Yorke a mirror.

Here’s the consideration that a metaphysical set like this leads you to do, but there’s more and then I tried to make a small setlist of short and ramshackle thoughts about Thom Yorke live in Rome.

Thom Yorke is a genre in itself

Yorke moves with a cinematic attitude, and the movement on stage is an ode to the dance of Suspiria. This is a meeting of the many elements, developments and musical paths undertaken over the years. Thom Yorke’s live performance in Rome is the closing of a cycle and, at the same time, the opening of another. Thom is, finally, a multidimensional being, who can musically make genre by himself, expressing at best a crisis of many ideas and visions: some, even very different from each other.

The concert is an iconographic tale

You could follow the concert from an artistic point of view, and tell how the digital painting that moves on video walls is a condensation of an artistic research that also includes graphics and visual art.

We could play to tell the live in three paintings, I choose, in doubt, “Number 11” Pollock. The idea of graphic contamination has served.

Anima is a pure germ

The new solo album Anima is a real art-attack. A light and structured breath on a homogeneous and not confusing storytelling, Anima is a solo peak in Yorke’s career, because it has a whole series of elements that are perfectly connected with the idea of drawing songs in an extremely scenic, told and cinematographic way.

Suspiria was a blessing for Thom

So let’s close the film, consistent with the live set. The clear element is that: Suspiria has done well to Thom’s work and creativity. Being under creative and artistic pressure is a test that every artist has to undergo, the cinema is a machine that eats and incorporates but Thom has been stronger than on any other destructive push, and has pulled out a genuine music score. Calmness is the virtue of the dead, creativity needs chaos and the work with Luca Guadagnino, also built on the strong common vision, has helped Thom to build and solidify even better.

Words: Dominic Valvona
Photo Credit:
Tadej Čauševič

Širom ‘A Universe That Roasts Blossoms For A Horse’
30th August 2019

Channeling the varied topography of their respective parts of the Slovenian landscape via a kitchen table of both recognizable instrumentation and found assemblage (everything including the kitchen sink and water tank), the Širom trio of Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin create a kind of dream realism. Inspired by this environment yet ambiguous, they float across the borders to evoke a certain mystery and yearn to create something new. In so doing, they’ve coined the term ‘imaginary folk’ to describe their amorphous blending of geographical evocations and echoed fables.

However, the roots of this music is tethered to the cartography of Slovenia, a country that the empirical travel writer Simon Winder summarizes in his Danubia purview as a state “[…] stuck together from the rubble of the [Habsburg] Empire’s end, with its core made up from the Duchy of Carniola with bits of Styria, Gorizia, Istria and a small piece of the old Hungarian country of Vas.” Despite being pulled this way and that over a millennia; despite countless displacements and border changes/reductions – mostly enforced by a succession of conquering empires and invaders – Slovenia’s people remained stoic with a distinct identity. Yet rather than nationalistic pride, the trio in this instance use their native environment’s history and sense of belonging and its apparatus to traverse new sonic terrains. And so with vague undulations and floating echoes of an atavistic Balkans remaining a constant they venture into the Orient, North Africa, Middle East and Americas; never quite settling anywhere, in place or time.

Whilst improvisation is part of the initial creative process for Širom, all these drifting and free moving sounding peregrinations are planned and crafted with precision: the end results very considered and articulated and not left to chance.

A concomitant extension of their last musical journey, I Can Be A Clay Snapper (which made our albums of 2017 features), the propound folkloric entitled A Universe That Roasts Blossoms For A Horse features many of the lingering, visionary magical astral planning themes of that previous unique album. Humdrum items from the trio’s rural retreat studio rub against a myriad of instrumentation from every continent: ribab, balafon, gamelan, banjo and lyre. In their hands a rack of kitchen utensils can suddenly be transformed into something cosmic and mystical, even ominous. And on this five-track suite, there’s plenty of that. Even the voice takes on a veiled new form, as both Kravanja and Kutin bewail, lull and warble melodically like sirens and ghosts: Kravanja, on the opening magik soundtrack ‘Spran Fantič Iz Vreče Žabje Vzema Fosile’ (A Washed Out Boy Taking Fossils From A Frog Sack), simultaneously evokes, with her vivid longing wails, images of India, Kathmandu, Marrakesh and Greek tragedy.

From the Mongolian Steppes to sorrows of East Europe and the hints of the Appalachians and Sumatra, Širom draw inspiration – whether intentional or not – from a fecund of sources; the Slovenian backdrop melting into a polygenesis mirage. With this spiritual, ritual, dreamy longing for a kaleidoscope of real and imaginary cultures the trio’s second album for the Glitterbeat label’s instrumental imprint tak:til is as poetically wondrous as it is (sometimes) supernatural and otherworldly. An alternative folk fantasy imbued in part by the hard won geography, Širom once more wander unafraid across an ever-ambiguous musical cartography that (almost) fulfills their wish to produce something unique: A soundtrack of infinite possibilities.

If you were in love with, or found a connection with the last album than this latest expansive query will not disappoint. There are really few musical excursions and explorations quite like it.

Photo Credit: Tadej Čauševič

Dominic Valvona

Cool shit that the Monolith Cocktail founder and instigator Dominic Valvona has pulled together, the Social playlist is a themeless selection of eclectic tracks from across the globe and ages. Representing not only his tastes but the blogs, these regular playlists can be viewed as an imaginary radio show, a taste of Dominic’s DJ sets over 25 plus years. Placed in a way as to ape a listening journey, though feel free to listen to it as you wish, each playlist bridges a myriad of musical treasures to enjoy and also explore – and of course, to dance away the hours to.

Volume XXXVII pays a small homage to two recent lost brothers, the Prince of ‘Orleans, the ragtime-mardi-gras-R&B-soul-funk-cajun-swamp-boogie titan Dr. John, and 13th Floor Elevator operator of the third-eye, Roky Erickson. Not intentional, but this latest volume also seems to have taken on an afflatus mood, with many paeans to this and that lord, a plateau of gods and that deities. For your aural pleasure, music from as diverse a collection as Carlos Garnet, Compost, Tuff Crew, OWLS, Zuhura & Party, The Electric Chairs and Moonkyte: 36 tunes, over two and halfs.

Carlos Garnet  ‘Chana’
Purple/Image  ‘What You Do To Me’
Compost  ‘Take Off Your Body’
The Braen’s Machine ‘Fall Out’
I Marc 4  ‘Dirottamento’
Black Sheep  ‘The Choice is Yours’
The 7A3  ‘Coolin’ In Cali’
Tuff Crew  ‘Drugthang’
Boss (Ft. Papa Juggy)  ‘Deeper’
Brand Nubian  ‘Claimin’ I’m A Criminal’
The Avengers  ‘The American In Me’
OWLS  ‘Ancient Stars Seed’
The Electric Chairs  ‘So Many Ways’
Sam Flax  ‘Another Day’
New Paradise  ‘Danse Ta Vie – Flashdance’
Rick Cuevas  ‘The Birds’
Roger Bunn  ‘Old Maid Prudence’
Verckys & L’Orchestre Veve  ‘Bassala Hot’
Extra Golden  ‘Jakolando’
Zuhura & Party  ‘Singetema’
Brian Bennett  ‘You Only Live Twice’
Roky Erickson  ‘I Walked With A Zombie’
Jim Spencer  ‘She Can See’
Sapphire Thinkers  ‘Melancholy Baby’
Roundtable  ‘Eli’s Coming’
Madden And Harris  ‘Fools Paradise Part 2’
NGC-4594  ‘Going Home’
Ruth Copeland  ‘The Music Box’
Chairman Of The Board  ‘Men Are Getting Scarce’
Bill Jerpe  ‘You’ll Get To Heaven’
The Apostles  ‘Trust In God’
Johnnie Frierson  ‘Out Here On Your Word’
The Brazda Brothers  ‘Walking In The Sun’
Moonkyte  ‘Search’
Dr. John  ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’
The Move  ‘Feel Too Good’

Words: Dominic Valvona

The 76th edition of Dominic Valvona’s ever-eclectic spread of recommendations and reviews includes new albums from the improvisation-heavy Krautrock-Kosmische-Post Punk duo The Untied Knot; the newly formed Gare du Nord label trio of haunted surf, rock ‘n’ roll and avant-garde Föhn, a group made up of the iconic Italian underground artist and poet Napo Camassa, label boss polymath Ian Button and Liverpool psychedelic stalwart Joss Cope; the first ever vinyl format release of Nicolas Gaunin’s exotic amorphous Noa Noa Noa LP; a new epic two-track EP of theatre of ritualistic doom psychedelia from the Japanese band Qujaku; a masterful lesson in compositional balance and experiment from the South African jazz icon Abdullah Ibrahim; and the debut album from the emerging Swedish songwriting talent Julia Meijer.

There’s also the recent EP from the balladry classical meets Trip-Hop and winding troubadour Munich-based artist Elizabeth Everts; another limited edition cassette of experimental abrasive soundscapes from the Crow Versus Crow label, in the form of a cathartic album of dissonance from Chlorine; and news and review of the upcoming flight of jazz fantasy single from the newly formed We Jazz label ensemble, Koma Saxo.

The Untied Knot  ‘Falling Off The Evolutionary Ladder’
(Sonic Imperfections)  Out Now

Imbued with a sense of scientific methodology and monocular dissection, the experimental United Knot duo of Nigel Bryant and Matt Donovan attempt once more to sonically convey the wonders and enormity and chaos of the universe on Falling Off The Evolutionary Ladder.

Possibly, in this form anyway, the duo’s last album the follow-up to the previous science paper laid out Descriptions Of A Flame (highly recommended at the time by us, an album of the year in 2015) continues to sear, wrangle and grind through an imprint of Krautrock, Kosmische, Shoegaze, Post-Punk (imagine a Lyndon free PiL) and Rock, and drone-like ambience.

With both band members serving a variation of roles in the improvisational and electronic music fields, Bryant and Donovan have all the experience and skills needed to create something that is refreshingly dynamic as it is ponderous. Playing hard and loose with a myriad of influences, Donovan’s constantly progressive drum rolls, tribal patters, cymbal burnishes and more skipping jazzy fills recall Faust’s Weiner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier and Guru Guru’s Mani Neumeier, whilst surprisingly, on the late 60s West Coast rock experiment ‘Rhythm From Three Intervals’ a touch of Mick Fleetwood. Meanwhile, Bryant, on both bass and atonal guitar duties (both also share the synth), channels Ax Genrich, Jah Wobble and Youth.

Though gleaming the geological, anthropological and chemical, they can’t help but be affected by the most concentrated themes of climate change and, especially in the duo’s hometown of London, knife crime. The echoes of an early Popol Vuh permeate the chthonian Anthropocene reference to a proposed dating title of a modern epoch: one that would mark an era that had seen the most significant human impact on the climate. ‘Span Of A Knife Fight’ is an untethered slasher; a sonic nervous breakdown of fretboard rock and the avant-garde, riled in fact. Though I’m not sure what the ‘Tattooed Brain’ is all about, it does have an air of 80s baggy, mixed with The Telescopes drone-wrangling: imagine The Pixies and Stone Roses sharing a spliff.

Far from weary and burnt-out, the Untied Knot go out on a high; stretching their influences with improvised skill and depth, a buzz saw, scrawling caustic but investigative soundtrack for the times.

Nicolas Gaunin ‘Noa Noa Noa’
(Hive Mind Records) 10th July 2019

Vinyl (and the odd cassette tape) specialists with a considered taste for something different, the Hive Mind’s burgeoning roster of international discoveries once more gives a platform to the unusual and difficult to define.

Already, through a quartet of re-releases, bringing to a wider audience a range of established and emerging global practitioners, such as the late Gnawa maestro Maalem Mahmoud Gani and rising South American jazzy-traversing star Rodrigo Tavares, the Brighton-based imprint is now inviting us to immerse ourselves in the strange exotic minimalism of Italian electronic artists Nicola Sanguin, who’s original ambiguous mash-up of world music influences and surreal sound experiments Noa Noa was released by Artetetra Records in 2018. Now with an additional extra “noa” to the title this odd curiosity of atavistic African percussive rhythms and stripped radiophonics is getting another pass with its first ever vinyl release.

Using the barely interchangeable anagrammed Nicolas Gaunin name for his solo projects, Sanguin builds a both recognizable but exotically amorphous soundscape that at times recalls the Krautrock legends Embryo’s more percussive experiments in Africa, the dreamy mysterious invocations of Le Mystere Jazz de Tumbautau, Radio Tarifa, Ethno-jazz at its most untethered and Analogue Bubblebath era Richard James. And yet still, it doesn’t really sound like any of these, or, anything else for that matter.

Definitely in the sunnier light-hearted, more diaphanous and optimistic camp of electronic music – a scene that all things considered is duly reflecting the anxiety and uncertainty of the times, moving towards the dystopian – there’s still less than a bubbly, even euphoric radiance to these tropical heat intensive recordings: Many of which, we’re told, were recorded in one take. Abstract to say the least, vague sounds of thumb-piano, Serengeti and jungle wildlife, bamboo glockenspiel, clacking wooden and bass-heavy hand drums ride over, merge with or undulate under a minimalistic Techno workshop accompaniment. Noa Noa Noa is indeed a thing of curious evocation; a searing balmy transduced soundtrack worth investigating.

Abdullah Ibrahim ‘The Balance’
(Gearbox Records) 28th June 2019

Rightly occupying the same lauded heights of veneration as his late South African compatriot and good friend Hugh Masekela, the sagacious adroit Abdullah Ibrahim enthuses nothing but respect and praise for his activism and music; with even Nelson Mandela no less, anointing him as “South Africa’s Mozart”.

Embodying the many travails of that country, giving voice to the townships with, what many consider the unofficial national anthem of the anti-apartheid movement, ‘Manneberg’, Ibrahim (who converted to Islam in the late 60s, changing his artistic name from Dollar Brand in the process) spent decades fighting the system through his music: mostly jazz. In a former epoch, when merely performing that form in South Africa was seen as an act of resistance, the pianist-composer was mixing it up with his legendary jazz counterparts across the Atlantic, playing with a staggeringly impressive cast of doyens including Duke Ellington, Max Roach, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman.

Now in his 84th year and four years since his last album, Ibrahim has returned to the studio, recording a counterpoint album of both full band arrangements and solo piano improvisations. The Balance, as the title suggests, does just that; balancing purposeful ruminating evocations with gentle pushes (outside the comfort zone) into more experimental skittish, sometimes, lively performances.

Recorded over the course of one day in the RAK studios in London last November, with his Ekaya troupe in full swing, this accentuate attuned album of sophisticated jazzery and the classical is rich with the musical language of those lauded greats he once played with: a early touch of 50s New York skyline Coltrane via Gershwin and Bernard Herrmann on the gracious balancing act between subtle gliding blues and more thriller heightened discordant notation ‘Dreamtime’, and Ellington on the flighty ascendant with chorus of saxophone and trumpet ‘Nisa’. There’s even a certain air of bouncing-on-the-balls-of-your-feet Broadway jazz on the lively ‘Skippy’.

Elsewhere the inspiration is more homegrown; the almost cartoonish scurrying score ‘Tuana Guru’ alludes to a mystical East but features an African soundscape of the wild and trumpeting. The fast skimming drum and busy bandy double-bass partnership opening ‘Jabula’ even features a joyful embrace of Highlife on a what is a celebratory-like composition of timeless quality.

Nuanced and masterfully performed, both on the bounce and when more agitated, and whether it’s in brushed burnished contemplation, or solo devotional élan, Ibrahim and his accomplished band of players do indeed find a nuanced balance between the classical and contemporary: a balance between those timeless qualities and the need for reinvention. A most dreamy, thoughtful way to pass away an hour or two with.

Koma Saxo ‘Port Koma/Fanfare For Komarum’
(We Jazz) 2nd August 2019

Fast becoming one of my favourite labels, the Helsinki-based We Jazz (as the moniker makes pretty clear) imprint ‘does jazz’: an innovative, progressive and thoroughly modern kind of jazz at that. Only last month I included a track from the blowout peregrination baritone sax and wired-up Jonah Parzen-Johnson, and last year, We Jazz label mate, Otis Sandsjö made my albums of the year features with his reconstructive, remix-in-motion, Y-OTIS – think Madlib deconstructing 3TM. Sandsjö, as it happens, is just one of a frontline triumvirate of saxophonists to appear in the exciting newly formed Koma Saxo quintet.

Assembled by the Berlin-based Swedish bassist/producer Petter Eldh, the horn heavy ensemble includes a veritable feast of European players, with Jonas Kullhammar and Mikko Innanen flanking Sandsjö, and Christian Lillinger on the drums. Though they made a performance debut at the label’s own festival last year, this double A side single, the exotic flight of fantasy entitled ‘Part Koma/Fanfare For Komarum’, is the troupe’s inaugural recorded release.

Cut from the same cloth but atmospherically and rhythmically different, ‘Port Koma’ is an ennui psychosis of breakbeats, prowling, jostling conscious jazz with Scandinavian thriller noir aspirations (Bernard Herrmann lifted and dropped in the cold ominous landscape of a Stig Larsson novel), whilst ‘Fanfare For Komarum’ is a spiritual carnival tooting parade of Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Lloyd Miller, Leon Thomas and Spiritual Unity era Albert Ayler; a bustled procession through the Valley Of The Kings, a veneration to Ra.

Kept in check somehow, the forces at play on both tracks threaten to veer and spin off into separate directions, with the heightened Port sounding like three individual signatures simultaneously riding and sliding in and out of focus.

This is an exciting, traversing jazz odyssey; and so an essential purchase. We Jazz keep on delivering.

Föhn ‘Ballpark Music’
(Gare du Nord) 4th July 2019

Ever expanding the remit of his Kentish Estuary satellite label, Gare du Nord, Ian Button’s latest project provides a melodious if experimental base for the avant-garde sonic work and poetry of Italian artist Napo Camassa III. A stalwart of the late 1960s and 1970s Italian underground scene, a smattering of tapes from that period were due a mini-revival through Button’s highly prolific label. As fate would dictate, those tape recordings proved far too brittle to transfer, falling apart in the process. Taking this as an opportunity to instead create something new but in keeping with the spirit of Camassa’s experimental soliloquy and ad-libbed one line poetics, and quivered ghostly channeling seedy rock ’n’ roll vocals, the outsider music framed Ballpark Music merges the lingering, almost supernatural, presence of its influences with deconstructive homages and vague elements of jazz, surf and art-rock to produce something recognizable yet chaotic and skewered.

Balancing on the edge of this chaos the Button/Camassa dynamic, widened to bring in label mate and stalwart of the psychedelic/art-rock and Liverpool scenes Joss Cope (sibling to arch druid Julian, and just as active an instigator of countless bands in his own right over the decades), uses the well-chosen descriptive weather name of Föhn to articulate the relationship between the random, improvised and more structured, Föhn being a warm summer wind that blows in from the Alpine uplands; strong enough at times to blow tiles off a roof, at others, an enervated breeze, barely felt. Musically representing this windy phenomenon, the trio at their most blowy and heavy reaches for an abstraction of post-punk, no-wave, garage, shambling blues and Krautrock; at their most subtle and drift the surf noir dreaminess and mystery of The Beach Boys and evangelical spiritualism, gospel ye-ye and rock ‘n’ roll of Charlie Megira, Alan Vega and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.

Tributes of a strange kind are paid to the latter in the form of a reference heavy trio of Beach Boys mirages. ‘Shiny Seeburg’, ‘The Scenenaut’ and ‘Wilson Mitt’ namecheck Pet Sounds and SMiLE as they weave nostalgia for a more giddy carefree, surface age – when the “deck chair” patterned shirt attired legends were chronicling the “fun, fun, fun” and teenage romance of the Boomers – with a certain lamentable weariness at what mental anguishes would soon befall the group’s genius, Brian Wilson: The first of these three tracks actually sounds like a deconstructed ‘Do It Again’.

The surf synonymous twang of that same era is celebrated on the Trashman-meets Sigue Sigue Sputnik meets Adam And The Ants ‘Surfin’ Dan Electro’, a quivery, rattle ‘n’ roll bandy homage to the iconic guitar.

Elsewhere there are hints of Alexandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain soundtrack, Spiritualized and a vision of Wah! Heat as fronted by Malcolm Mooney.

Though the central tenant of nearly everything that Ian Button does musically is nostalgia (Button and his unofficial label house band, Papernut Cambridge, have also released more or less at the same time another volume of Nutflakes inspired cover versions), Föhn is one of the more interesting and progressive projects he’s been involved with of late; heeding the past certainly, but pushing the original concept for this enterprise to produce something anew, the wilder poetic assemblages of Camassa tethered, in part, to an amorphous melodious soundtrack.

Hopefully this is one area that Button will continue to pursue with his foils Camassa and Cope.

Julia Meijer ‘Always Awake’
(PinDrop Records) 12th July 2019

Making good on a trio of singles that promised a tactile skewed and angulated vision of Scandinavian pop; Julia Meijer’s debut album expands the musical horizons even further.

Subtle throughout, Always Awake showcases the Swedish-born (now Oxford-based) singer-songwriter’s naturalistic ability to switch between tightened new wave and the hymnal, and mix the glacial enormity of the Icelandic tundra, as so beautifully conveyed in prose by the frozen Island’s own late national hero poet Steinn Steinarr, with the vaporous veils of an English Avalon: Inspiration for the album (the first on the new label venture from the music management firm PinDrop) opener ‘Ocean’ flows from that first half of the 20th century poet’s very own ‘Hav’ peregrination, fashioned into a dreamy mirage that evokes Lykke Li drifting out of Mondrian’s abstracted Pier And Ocean series. Originally accompanying that stripped diaphanous plaint, the more eerie Gothic folksy ‘England’ errs towards Florence And The Machine, whilst the love-longed, synth-glistened ‘I’m Not The One’ has a hint of a fey Debbie Harry.

Featured recently on the Monolith Cocktail, the page turning metaphorical single ‘Train Ticket’, with its two-speed verse and chorus change, even imagines the New Young Pony Club channeling the Tom Tom Club.

Backed in this enterprise by a couple of Guillemots and their offspring (band members Greig Stewart on drums and Fyfe Dangerfield on Hammond duties, whilst Grieg’s daughter, Effie, adds a spell of saxophone) plus guitarist Andrew Warne and label honcho and all-round prolific polymath Sebastian Reynolds offering various synthesized parts, the sound palette is widened: as is for that matter Meijer’s vocals, which once more are deceptively subtle in filling the space, fluctuating gently between lulls, lyrical trill and partly Kate Nash narrated ‘whatevs’.

An electric debut of nuanced indie brilliance and melodious songwriting, far outgrowing the Scandi-pop tag, Always Awake is a fantastic eclectic record, and the ideal launch for a new label.

Elizabeth Everts ‘Contraband EP’
25th May 2019

An EP of contrasts, pianist-troubadour Elizabeth Everts fluctuates vocally between balladry pop and crystalline aria, and musically between the cheaper ticking metronome of a Casio preset and the more lofty rich swells of classical instrumentation. Her latest release, a beautifully off-kilter articulated EP called Contraband is a case in point: a mini-requiem of both lo fi and expensive.

Everts, ever the true confessional, lays herself open to various degrees of success over the EP’s controlled tumult of romantic brooding and lament. With Californian roots but living for the past decade or more in Munich, the melodious voiced Evert has a fairly unique sound that ebbs and flows continuously, weaving echoes of Tori Amos, Raf Mantelli and Fiona Apple with touches of lounge-jazz, trip-hop, the classical, and on the closing, almost played straight, attuned weepy ‘Black Is The Colour’ the elegiac folk of Christy Moore.

From the diaphanous rolling aria sowing of the opening ‘Harvest Time’ to the ethereal vibraphone flitting prowl of ‘I Just’ the Contraband EP is an experiment both in vulnerability and musicality: a subtle one at that. Everts is pushed gently to expand her horizons, which can only be a good thing.

Qujaku ‘In Neutral’
(So I Buried Records) 26th July 2019

Invoking an almost operatic daemonic theatre of an album last year (making our choice albums of 2018 features in the process) the Hamamatsu, Japan doom-weavers Qujaku return with a sprawling but intense new two-track EP, ahead of a mini European tour. Reflecting two sides of the psychedelic band’s ritualistic sound, title-track (dare I suggest) shows a more delicate, subtle visage (at least at the start anyway), whilst ‘Gloria’ pursues more of a gnashing and bestial course.

Building slowly towards its goal, ‘In Neutral’ turns a wafting wash of guitar noodling and wooing saxophone into a menacing Gothic-jazz incantation. ‘Gloria’ has more heft, bigger ritual drumming, slaying guitar and dark arts psychedelics – imagine the Acid Mothers on a bad trip.

Communing with ghosts, inhabiting an underworld, Qujaku once again conjure up an ambitious dissonance of doom, stoner, operatic, dark and witchery rock.

Be sure but be quick to pick up one of these EPs, as stocks are limited to only 200 copies.

Chlorine ‘Gallooner’
(Crow Versus Crow) 12th July 2019

Somehow managing to convey a cathartic tumult of anxieties and distress from a (mostly) high-voltage abstract soundscape, Gateshead-based multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Graeme Hopper creates a sort of autobiographical profile on his new LP for Crow Versus Crow.

Under the oxidizing halogen Chlorine moniker, Hopper’s latest set of recordings (limited in physical form to a run of 50 copies on cassette tape, but available as a digital download) traverse a caustic buzz of abrasive music-concrete and sentinel pylon metallic at its most ominous, yet offers a glimmer of light, even the barest of serial notation and tuning-up, at its most serene.

A reification of feelings you could say, the dissonance-frazzled, static and electrical steel-dragon whiplash licks of the daemonic goes scrap metal fairground gallop ‘Song For Silhouette’ could be read as an unsettling concentration of the mind. Craning leviathans and industrial machinery-in-motion meet obfuscated strings to fashion a strange rhapsody of esoteric frayed emotion on ‘My Trying Hands’, Lost And Tired’, whilst a more naturalistic ambience of distant dog barks and bird song offer a short release on ‘Confessions Of A Broken Temperament’.

Post-this and post-that, Gallooner subverts a myriad of genres from the experimental fields of exploration, be it industrial, Techno, ambient or noise, yet remains somehow removed from any of them. There’s even a sporadic breakout of veiled spontaneous free form drumming amongst the polygon-ambient electronics of the album’s track, ‘Perfect Lust’, and hints of either a ghostly fiddle or string instrument on a few others.

A conductor-charged pulse to the membrane; sculpting something that bears a resonance of both depression and alienation from the caustic wall of noise, Hopper has produced a most unlikely empirical soundscape.

Words: 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. Each month we pile a deluge of new releases on his virtual desk to see what sticks.

Duncan Lloyd ‘Outside Notion’
(Afternoon In Bed Records) 7th June 2019

Duncan Lloyd is of course from Maximo Park, a band I really paid little attention to although my son was rather fond of them in his early teenage years. And so this came as a bit of a surprise as I wasn’t expecting the melancholy shifting breeze of the opening track ‘Historic Elements’, or the dark soft mellowness and beauty of the tracks that followed – bringing both Beck in his Sea Change days and the Beta Band to mind and even Chris Rea on ‘Planetarium’ -, but this shows that the LP is no cut and thrust of indie rock but a more mature and sedate affair; an album of well crafted songs filled with love and tenderness that comes with the passing of summers. There is also a wonderful Nick Drake like instrumental that would not have sounded out of place on Bryter Layter in the track ‘Journey B’.

Duncan is not quite ready for the retirement home yet, though the Neil Young come Dinosaur Jr guitar merriment that explodes on the excellent ‘Young Dreams’, and the lovely male/female duet ‘Outside Notion’ are the two poppiest and most commercial songs on the LP.

Outside Notion is a delight of an album, and one that will hopefully get the attention this well written collection of songs deserves.

The Martial Arts ‘I Used To Be The Martial Arts EP’
(Last Night From Glasgow) 5th July 2019

An EP of pop splendor, four songs of enriched sunshine to melt your ice cream and to ruffle your tail feather, songs that bring back memories of the halcyon days of 70s pop and the indie sounds of the early 80s, songs that would not look or sound out of place on Shang-a-Lang or one of those other beautiful works of TV pop art from the 70s.

What is quite strange about this EP is that the weakest track, ‘New Performance’, is actually the first. I’m not saying that the track is weak – it’s actually a very good pop romp – but that it just shows the strength of the other three tracks, especially the glam of track two, ‘I Used To Be’, which is a wave your tartan scarf in the air wonder.

A must have EP for all lovers of that crazy magical thing called pop.

Palavas ‘Played’
(Wormhole) 5th July 2019

Another fine release from the excellently weird Wormhole Records, a LP they describe as dream folk and a might fine description it is as songs melt and purr and drift through a sea of tranquility, whispered vocals, softly strummed guitars and synth strings evoke images of a better place, a place where God exists, a place where there is not only beauty but a place of sadness, for sadness is not sadness at all without the image of beauty to watch over and to wipe the tears away.

This is a LP to load up onto your listening device and go for a long walk through the countryside, or, along a desolate beach holding hands with the ghost from your yesterdays and finding solace in the dying embers of the sun. This LP is simply heartbreakingly beautiful.

The Top Boost ‘Dreaming EP’
(You Are Cosmos) 24th June 2019

Chiming guitars and harmonies flow into this summer strum of a three-track single that recalls the beauty of the Byrds, Big Star and Teenage Fanclub. If you like your pop with ba ba ba’s this EP is almost certainly for you.

The A side, ‘Dreaming’, has me thinking what it might have sounded like if a young David Cassidy had replaced Gene Clark in the Byrds; a joy filled three minutes of a pop song: a Dream indeed. I can almost feel the sand between my toes and the annoying kid with a Frisbee getting on my tits. But this single is worth it; only a melted ice cream away from being pop perfection.

Armstrong ‘Under Blue Skies’
(Country Mile Records) 12th July 2019

Julian Pitt, aka Armstrong, is one of the finest songwriters to emerge from Wales in recent years; a man who has been blessed with the gift of melody that can be comparable to McCartney, Wilson and Jimmy Webb. Yes, he really is that good.

This is an expanded reissue of his first LP, which was originally released as a limited edition cdr, one that I played constantly. Thankfully it’s getting a much-deserved official re-release from The Beautiful Music label.

Julian has the gift to write melodies that should be gracing the nations radio, songs that explode the myth that pop music is dead. ‘Crazy World’ and ‘Baby You Just Don’t Care’ for example are both upbeat and summery, in a Aztec Camera kind of way, but he comes into his own with a ballad, ‘Sorry About Lately’, a drop dead beaut. The real killer on the LP though is the wonderful ‘The Things That Pass You By’, one of those rare songs that can bring both goosebumps and tears to your eyes, a song most songwriters would sell their soul to have the talent to write, and the thing is this album is filled with them.

I am so happy this great lost LP has finally got the release it deserves; it is no longer lost just simply Great, one of the finest pastoral pop LPs you will ever hear.

Quimper ‘I Am An Italian Souvenir’
27th June 2019

Wonky pop and the flow of a sea dive melody erupt beautifully from this four track instrumental dream of an EP. The kind of thing 4AD might have released in the days when the label meant something, and not just Beggars Banquet in an artier form.

Batman bass beats and 60’s sci fi imagery weave like a speed injected butterfly soundtracking Kraftwerk getting their ends away; a baroque stab at sexual solvency, a master class on how to make music interesting original and fun to listen to. A pay what you want to download, I would advise you download and let it be a part of your summer.

Paper Hats ‘Tearing’
(No Funeral) 21st June 2019

I love small indie labels the are the lifeblood of the music industry, without them the industry would be one big rotting corpse of mediocre wannabees all perfectly in tune and smelling like roses, but beneath the sheen, be boring as hell, and who wants to be in a industry like that? So thank the lord for labels like No Funeral for releasing such fine music as this. Music they describe as math rock but myself being English I have no idea what math rock is. If it is this wonderful angular experimental pop art that The Fall thrived at, I want to spend my middle-aged years submerged in the glorious off kilter whimsy.

This five-track gem of an EP by the Paper Hats is all that I wanted it to be. It is fun, it has discordant guitars, it has mumbley vocals alternating with shouts -anyone out there who remembers John Peel faves Mazey Fade will love this -; it brings up so many memories of my youth when venues let such wonderful disarray perform their outpourings to the kids who soaked up every wonderful discordant note.

This is available on a limited edition cassette. I would advise you to check it out and snap one up as it is a fine release indeed.

Babybird ‘Photosynthesis’
19th July 2019

How pleased was I to see that I’d received the new LP by Stephen Jones, aka Babybird, to review: a man much after my own heart; a man who has been following the same path as myself and my merry band of Bordellos, though obviously with much more critical and commercial success than myself.

What I love about Stephen Jones, aka Babybird, apart from his wonderful songwriting talent and his dark humor and his obvious love of music and its many genres, is that he has so much soul. He has so much love for music in fact that he makes music not just because he may make a decent living from it but because he has no choice, he has to make it like he has to breath to stay alive. He has to create music, create art, he has to experiment with the magic of melody and write such beautiful songs, and Photosynthesis is an LP full of dark beauty and such bloody good songs.

Drum machine beats and synth strings cradle the twisted musings of the anti escapism of real life songs that make you want to get up in the morning just to remind you how shit life is, and this soundtracks it so, so, beautifully: heartbreakingly beautifully.

A small dark masterpiece, a masterclass in songwriting.

Words: Matt Oliver

Welcome to the latest Rapture & Verse – if you don’t like some of the opinions expressed, don’t worry, VAR has probably got your back. Financial management and futures planning from the eloquently frank Charles Edison breaks it down to ‘Bricks’, striking a chord for those trying to keep their head above water and a roof over it. The guru-like linkage of Chong Wizard summons a mix of voices and beatsmiths to ‘The Soul Stone’, six tracks worth of soulful bumps with criminal connections, ground down by headliners Vic Spencer, El Ay, Juga-Naut, Vandal Savage and Stack Skrilla. ‘Cypher Sore Eyes’ is boom-bap balm for the ears from the game face of Nottingham’s Louis Cypher, getting stuck in and hounding the supplies of DJ Severe, Kastanza and Pete 1st Blood. A six-track EP that’s got soul and a will to win.

An EP of energy spikes and crashes, either frantically running for its life or staggering back so what’ll be will be, ‘Defo Not Normal’ is the badge of honour worn by the twitchy Bang On when prompted and prodded by Reklewz. Will put your speakers in a cobra clutch, whatever direction it’s moving in. “Outlook = miserable, forecast = kill ‘em all” – so say the Delusionists, keeping grounded from their position in the ‘Clouds’. Warnings of caution, carefully, smartly conveyed, make them the responsible choice. A classic sunup-to-sundown beat from Ded Tebiase – slightly stoned, but bassy enough to ring around the borough – allows Ash the Author the maximum means to ‘Transmit’ loud and clear.

Gawd Status is not a crown that lies heavy with Joker Starr and King Kashmere, ‘Firmamentum’ a rolling thunder of articulate rage and a fiercely tribal shakedown rewriting the Blaxploitation manifesto. The Iguana Man, an absolute banshee on the boards, appears in a more advisory, all-seeing role on the mic, while Joker Starr is at the front, warring so that no man is safe, allowing for occasional leave of reality. Militant pride that’ll uproot those sitting on the fence, including a silky smooth soul intermission playing its position, at a scandalously slim eight tracks long it’s a saga that must run and run. Absolutely boomin’.

Ronnie Bosh has both the no-nonsense name and gameplan of the glory days of East End hard cases, taking great disdainful chunks out of this debut ‘All People Expect’. Setting rhymes in stone with no right of reply, Bosh is perfectly aware that there’s no need to overthink matters or get too technical, yet is never economical with the truth, squeezing the mic in a considered accumulation of pressure. Jazzy head shots and drowsier dips care of Dirty Dike, complete the definition of raw and uncut.

Announcing his album arrival with the pretty outrageous ‘FCK Boy!’, Mr Muthaf*ckin’ eXquire delivers on his promises of a wild ride, armed with a bunch of spanners to hurl work-wards. Just as disruptive is his shrewd taste for narrative, hitting home without promising happy endings. Satisfying your ignorant itch and also reducing dancefloors to bloody smithereens, it’s a surprisingly, satisfyingly well-rounded album where the bite backs up the bark.

Reconvening with Madlib on Etch-a-Sketch (well, not quite) and Freddie Gibbs toting his usual gangsta trappings, the much hyped ‘Bandana’ exploits the sweet spot of Lord Quas’ soul raids and loop manoeuvres as peacekeeper/mostly silent partner in the face of Gibbs’ tirades – not that he needs too much direction to vent anyway. Open to discussion, and that’s before appearances from Anderson Paak, Pusha T, Killer Mike, Yasiin Bey and Black Thought, ‘Bandana’ kind of wings it, mostly cementing their inexplicable chemistry made bespoke.

Tread carefully should you receive directions to and from the Delivery Room, whose eponymous album rolls out the red carpet to a house of horrors and takes uncomplicated swings like a headhunter test-driving a new axe. Sometimes funky in amongst perpetual pulverisation, the Scottish crew reach a rowdy peak as ‘Break Loose’ chucks Flat Eric and The Prodigy into the moshpit. Hocking rhymes like kerb-ready lung butter but always staying one step ahead of the naysayers, Frani P never sweats as ‘Mr Small Stuff’, ducking and diving with the goods to convince you of his chatty flow, particularly when ‘Golden’ shows he’s no Jonny-come-lately. Production from Turkish Dcypha and Marley D perfectly allows him to go wide, notably and aptly wielding Ian Dury’s rhythm stick as they go.

Look no further for beats and rhymes practised until perfect than Ill Effect’s advancement as ‘Loop Junkies. Never taking their position for granted as they take on the world, no doubt the trio have got skills and sonics for days, but half an hour is exhibition enough of what they’re about, making them a heavy tapedeck presence. Also a champion for the good old days without being a golden era bore, Dyzzi’s ‘Kids Back Then’ has got the taste and skill for coming-of-age nostalgia; of course, the soulful snaps that help paint the picture don’t hurt either, and the same goes for the DivSel emcee’s ability to go from dewy-eyed to dervish. One for the summer.

 Literally five minutes after dropping end-of-year cert ‘It Wasn’t Even Close’, Your Old Droog has the temerity to drop another end of year chart troubler. His means of ‘Transportation’ – “rather be a dope failure than a wack success” – takes the form of actual…er…modes of transport (‘My Plane’, ‘Train Love’ allowing himself to get a lil’ bit sentimental, ‘Taxi’ with Quelle Chris), remaining the smoothest source of scornful, so-what couplets and eyewitness accounts. “Half man, half crustacean, 100% asshole” – that’s how Dillon be selling ‘The Tails of Lobsterdamus’, the new face about town where men wanna shell out like him, women wanna peel him off. Doing straight-faced anthropomorphism going beyond the sea, slick rhymes dictate understatedly pimped out beats, entertaining you until he’s cashed out and squids in.

‘Plugs I Met’, restoring the argument of whether seven tracks is album length (etc etc), is Benny the Butcher starting off fairly fluidly, and then getting progressively heavier until bones start splintering. In a world of wiretaps, silencers, balaclavas and dry as a bone extortion knocking down your front door, no quarter is given from Black Thought, Pusha T, Jadakiss, 38 Spesh and Conway the Machine, making this a very dangerous gang-up to ignore.

The ‘Mobb Deep Remixes’ from DJ Duce shows respect to the classics (staples from ‘The Infamous’ and ‘Hell on Earth’) while sticking his own death rattle to the Prodigy & Havoc back catalogue, and ensuring the drama he brings is no small thing with a dozen alternatives meeting the reaper at the gates of Queensbridge.

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The Area

Plakias itself is a small Mediterranean village with a picturesque little fishing-harbor, sandy beaches, small hotels, taverns, cafes and shops. The crystal clean waters of the Mediterranean invite for bathing and diving. The atmosphere is always relaxed and friendly. Everybody seems to be busy, but in slow motion.

The Area

Morpheas Apartments as starting point for excursions

Plakias is known as an ideal starting point for excursions to explore the surrounding area with its natural beauty.

is of course high on the list of destinations. It is “The City” of the area, situated at the northern coast of Crete, only 30 km away. On your way to Rethymnon you will pass beautiful narrow gorges, picturesque villages and maybe experience the Cretan way of motoring. Just let them pass and admire them for their courage. They live here and usually know what they’re doing.
Rethymnon itself offers endless shopping possibilities, lots of nice taverns and coffee houses, a lively night life and the air of Cretan – Venetian and Cretan – Turkish history. The Old Town, Venetian Harbour, the impressive town castle Fortezza is a must. Don’t miss the festivals there.

The Mountains

Kryoneritis (1312 m.), Kouroupas (984 m.), Holy Cross (1133 m.), Dry Mountain (904 m.) are waiting to be explored especially in spring when nature is full of colors, flavors and temperatures are suitable for walking.

Preveli and The Beaches

The Monastery of Preveli from the 18th century is a harmonious architectural complex, with rare paintings and icons, and a wonderful Holy Cross. Preveli was famous for the continuous and tireless efforts on educating the enslaved people.
In the region you will meet unique natural beauty, stunning beaches, crystal clear waters, some deserted and others crowded, one following the other between steep mountains sinking into the sea like “The Lake of Preveli”, The beaches of Damnoni, Souda, Shinaria, Ammoudi and a bit away: Agios Pavlos, Triopetra, Ligres, Agia Fotia, Korakas, and Frangokastello.

Other Activities

Apart from the endless hikes in neighboring canyons and villages, you can have other activities. Horse riding and riding lessons, diving, climbing the imposing vertical cliff of Paligremnos. Cycling and adjacent beach Damnoni many kinds of water sports. With the boat you can visit the nearby beaches starting from Plakias. There are some routes even to Gavdos, the southernmost island of Europe.

Day Trips

Plakias, a great starting point for day trips exploring Crete

The Aquarium “Thalassocosmos” in Gournes near Heraklion is a very interesting place to visit. It is one of the most modern and largest aquariums in Europe with more than 1500 marine organisms.

Knossos is the most important archeological site in Crete. The pioneering Minoan civilization, still fascinates the world.

Apart from nearby canyons many visitors explore the well known majestic Samaria Gorge going down from Omalos to Agia Roumeli.

The famous Arkadi Monastery and the beautiful Monastery of Agia Triada on the Akrotiri peninsula near Chania are also very worthwhile destinations for day trips.

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For your convenience, Morris Sussex Sports has compiled all of the content from the 2016 football season and put it into one comprehensive and fun-to-follow digital composition that called the 2016 Morris Sussex Sports Football Yearbook.  The best part is you can have this 227-page keep sake for $10 which goes directly to helping MSS continue working hard to providing the best coverage they can and running their second-to-none internship program for high school students!

Here’s what you get in the 2016 Morris Sussex Sports Football Yearbook & Year in Tweets

  • 2016 Preseason Previews for all 37 Morris-Sussex teams
  • 2016 Weekly Predictions for all regular, playoff games and state championship games
  • 2016 Salerno Duane Weekly Stats & Top Performers for the regular season and postseason
  • The 2016 FBU Player of the Week Powered by the Athletic Republic of Randolph for every week, including the postseason
  • 2016 Special Features including the mid-season playoff picture and our “who’s in and who’s out of the playoffs” piece
  • 2016 Postseason All Unruly Awards special including top awards, 1st team, 2nd team, 3rd team, honorable mention and future star players
  • Every Tweet from August 1st of 2016 through June 1st of 2017
  • And much, much more

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Yearbook and Year in Tweets are in PDF format
Includes hundreds of color, high-resolution photos from the preseason from Morris Sussex Sports, Gameface Photos and Lisa Mita Photography
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Teams represented in all of our content include:
Boonton, Butler, Chatham, Delbarton, Dover, Hackettstown, Hanover Park, High Point, Hopatcong, Jefferson, Kinnelon, Kittatinny, Lenape Valley, Madison, Mendham, Montville, Morris Catholic, Morris Hills, Morris Knolls, Morristown, Morristown-Beard, Mount Olive, Mountain Lakes, Newton, North Warren, Parsippany, Parsippany Hills, Pequannock, Pope John, Randolph, Roxbury, Sparta, Sussex Tech, Vernon, Wallkill Valley, West Morris and Whippany Park.

Why is such awesomeness only cost $10?

We are offering this awesome item for only $10 because we don’t want financial limitations to get in the way of having a player or a family enjoying of all of the great memories from the 2016 football season in Morris-Sussex.

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Please feel free to share this link with your friends so they don’t miss out on this.

Thank you!

-Morris Sussex Sports

George Muha has been covering high school sports since 2006. He feels high school scholar-athletes are the most important part of the community and highlighting their achievements on the field, in the classroom and within the community is his personal mission.

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Seasonal Card Creations

Good morning, friends! Today I wanted to share with you the first round of holiday cards I made this year. These are all available in my Etsy Shop .

Products used: Lawn Fawn’s Winter Skies stamps and dies, Lawn Fawn’s Stitched Hillside Borders, Distress Oxides, and Stickles.
Products used: Simon Says Stamps’s Ugly Sweater stamps & dies, Darice Wire Fence embossing folder, Lawn Fawn’s Knit Picky paper, Stickles, and Copic Markers.
Products used: Lawn Fawn’s Winter Sparrows stamps & dies, Lawn Fawn’s Cozy Christmas stamps, Distress Oxides, Doodlebug Design’s Hello Assortment Glitter Sprinkles, Stickles, Copic Markers, and the snowflakes are a stencil I borrowed from a friend and I’m not sure of the brand (sorry!)
Products Used: Distress Oxides, Lawn Fawn’s Slimline Forest Border, Lawn Fawn’s Joy to the Woods Stamps, Lawn Fawn Liquid Starsust, and Stickles.
Products used: Stampin’ Up White Christmas stamps, Lawn Fawn’s Stitched Mug Frame & Outside In Stitched Mug dies, acetate, sequins, glitter, the green dot paper was a freebie with a Lawn Fawn order I believe, Simple Stories Sn@p! Wood Basics, Stickles, Nuvo Drops, and Copic Markers.
Products used: Lawn Fawn Winter Otter, Winter Alpaca, Winter Penguin, Winter Narwhal stamps & dies, Simple Stories Sn@p Wood Basics, acetate, glitter, Copic Markers, Stickles, the thin ribbon is from Michaels and comes on a roll with 3 different shades of blue with silver trim.


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The Most Permanent Magnet Motor is intrinsically safe and secure, as it does not have any external moving parts. No belts, sheaves or external braking. The drive head plugs into the rest of the drive system as opposed to being centered on the polished rod.

  • Simplified operation requires minimal manpower.
  • Has no external moving parts making this drive the safest in the industry.
  • Completely enclosed (no field restrictions).
  • Back spin and torque are completely controlled.
  • Class 1 Division 2 explosion proof motor.
  • 97% energy efficient.
  • 35% less power consumption.
  • Low noise emission.
  • Electric eliminates possible hydraulic oil leaks.
  • Good over loading capabilities.
  • Class 1 Division 2 explosion proof motor.
  • High power to weight ratio.
  • Controlled over torqueing feature.
  • Smooth and accurate torque control even at the low 30 rpm.
  • Automatic re-start when VFD sees back spin has finished.


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Overview of FLEX lm

This section explains the basics of floating (network) licensing, and gives a quick overview of the components of FLEX lm . It explains where system administrators have control and where end users have control. The section Getting Started Checklist describes how to start managing FLEX lm for both system administrators and end-users.

Introduction to FLEX lm

FLEX lm is a network license manager used by many software developers to control the use of their software products. FLEX lm allows software licenses to be available (float) anywhere on a network, instead of being tied to specific machines. Floating licensing benefits both users and system administrators. Users can make more efficient use of fewer licenses by sharing them on the network. System administrators can control who uses the licensed application, and the node(s) where the licenses will be available.

FLEX lm components

FLEX lm consists of the following four main components:

· License manager daemon

· Vendor daemon

· License file

· Application program

License Manager Daemon ( lmgrd )

The license manager daemon ( lmgrd ) handles the initial contact with the client application programs, and passes the connection on to the vendor daemon. It also starts and restarts the vendor daemons. FLEX lm permits multiple redundant license manager daemons on different server nodes, allowing you to make your license available only if any two out of three server nodes is running. The lmgrd eliminates the necessity of splitting your licenses among multiple servers or of relying on any one machine.

Vendor Daemon

In FLEX lm , licenses are handled by running processes. There is one process for each vendor who has a FLEX lm -licensed product on the network. This process is called the vendor daemon . The vendor daemon keeps track of how many licenses are checked out, and who has them. If the vendor daemon terminates for any reason, all users lose their licenses. Users normally regain their license when lmgrd restarts the vendor daemon.

Client programs communicate with the vendor daemon through TCP/IP or UDP/IP sockets. The client (where the application runs) and the daemon processes (the license server) can run on separate nodes on your network. Also, the traffic between the client and the license manager daemon is machine-independent, allowing for heterogeneous networks. This simply means the license server and the workstation running an application can be either different hardware platforms or different operating systems.

License File

Licensing data is stored in a text file called the license file. The license file is created by the system administrator. It contains information about the server nodes and vendor daemons, and at least one line of data (called a FEATURE line) for each licensed feature. Each FEATURE line contains an encryption code based on the data in that line, the hostids specified in the SERVER lines, and other vendor-specific data.

In some environments, the licensing information for several vendors may be combined into a single license file. The default location is:

Users can override this location by setting the environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE to point elsewhere, or by following instructions supplied with the licensed application. If your site has software from multiple vendors with incompatible license files (due to different sets of servers), you can keep the data in separate files and set theLM_LICENSE_FILE variable to reference multiple files. For details, refer to License File .

The application program using FLEX lm is linked with the program module (called the FLEX lm client library) that provides the communication with the license manager daemon. During execution, the application program communicates with the vendor daemon to request a license.

License request process

When you run a FLEX lm -licensed application the following occurs:

1. The license module in the client application finds the license file, which includes the host name of the license server and port number of the license manager daemon, lmgrd .

2. The client establishes a connection with the license manager daemon ( lmgrd ) and tells it what vendor daemon it needs to talk to.

3. If the license server is a redundant server configuration, the lmgrd determines which machine and port correspond to the master vendor daemon and sends that information back to the client.

4. The client establishes a connection with the specified vendor daemon and sends its request for a license.

5. The vendor daemon checks in its memory to see if any licenses are available and sends a grant or denial back to the client.

6. The license module in the application grants or denies use of the feature, as appropriate.

Configuring FLEXlm

Most FLEXlm parameters can be configured by the system administrator. The following parameters can be set:

· Location of the license file

· Location of all executables

· Location of all log files

· TCP/IP port number used by the license manager process, lmgrd

Additionally, the system administrator can reserve licenses for specific users, nodes, or groups, and control other license-related options. See section Options File for more detailed information about changing parameters.

Note: Refer to your vendor's documentation before attempting to change file names locations, or contents.

Getting Started Checklist

This section provides a quick overview of how to set up and use licensing for FLEX lm -licensed products. By scanning the list, the system administrator should be able to quickly find the areas of interest. Cross-references point to more details in other parts of this manual.

Notes for system administrators

This section describes how to set up licensing on your system or network. If you are an end-user of the application, and you are not involved in the installation process, go to Notes for end users .

Note: The installation guide for your application software supersedes these instructions for installing and configuring FLEX lm .

General steps for installing FLEXlm

Generally, however, installing FLEX lm licensing requires the following steps:

1. Select your license server nodes and get their hostids.

2. Give the hostids to your software vendor and get a license file (or the data to enter in the license file) in return.

3. Determine how the new license file relates to any other license files that may already be on your system, and install it appropriately.

4. Determine if an options file is required or desired, and if so set it up.

5. Determine where to install the FLEX lm utility programs such as lmgrd , lmstat , and lmdown and install them.

6. Start lmgrd (the license daemon) manually; optionally, you may also want to set it up to start automatically at boot time.

The following sections briefly describe each step, including cross-references to more detailed sections.

License servers and hostids

Before running any FLEX lm -licensed program using floating licenses, you will need to set up your license server node (or nodes). You must select which node or nodes to run your license servers on, and provide the hostid of those machines to your software vendor. For pointers on selecting your server machine, see Selecting Server Nodes .

Obtain the hostid of the server machine by running FLEXlm's lmhostid utility on that machine. If you don't havelmhostid , you can obtain the hostid of your machine by using the appropriate command as described in Hostids for FLEXlm-Supported Machines .

After giving the hostid of your server machines to your software vendor, the vendor will send you a license file that enables their application software.

lmgrd and license files

Once you receive a license file from your vendor, you must install it on your system and startup the license manager daemon, lmgrd .

· If you have multiple FLEX lm -licensed products, avoid licensing conflicts. For more detailed information, see Combining License Files .

· Unless your software vendor selected a default location for your license file, you can use any location you wish. For more detailed information, see License File .

· Some vendors provide special scripts to start up the license daemon. If not, you can run the lmgrd program directly. To start lmgrd automatically at boot time, you must modify your system files. For more detailed information, see Specifying Location of the License File .

Administration tools

Globetrotter Software supplies administration tools to your software vendor. The vendor usually includes them with their product. The recommended location for the tools is /usr/local/bin , but you can install them in a different location (or not at all). See User Commands for more information.

Options files

The options file controls various options such as reservations and timeouts of licenses. Most users run without an options file, but you may decide you want to use some options. For example, many administrators use an option to limit the quantity and content of logged messages. To set up an options file, see Options File .

Notes for end users

As a user of a FLEX lm -licensed application, you must know how to:

· Specify to an application which license file to use.

· Query the system to find out who is using a license.

Specifying a license file

The license file determines what features are available to a program. It also contains information telling the application how to connect to the license server.

For information about the standard way of specifying a license file for an application, see License File .

Obtaining license information

To find out who is using a license run lmstat , as described in User Commands .


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Welcome to The Mountain Hermitage

Welcome to The Mountain Hermitage

The Mountain Hermitage is dedicated to the inner cultivation and outer manifestation of concentration, wisdom, lovingkindness, compassion, and peace.  This home for long-term spiritual practice, grounded in the principles of Theravada Buddhism, is based in the quiet and beautiful mountain area of Taos, New Mexico.

Many Mountain Hermitage retreats are for experienced Dharma practitioners; however, the Hermitage is now offering some week-long retreats open to both beginning and experienced students. All retreats are held in appropriate rented places in and around Taos.  The small group size at Hermitage retreats (usually a maximum of 18 students)  helps create a more intimate experience and easier access to teachers.

The Mountain Hermitage extends a special welcome and has established a scholarship fund to support Buddhist monks and nuns and lay Dharma teachers, as well as multi-cultural practitioners and other Dharma students who without scholarship aid would not be able to attend Hermitage retreats.

All who come to practice at The Mountain Hermitage will be honored and supported in their quest to awaken to the deepest truths and to manifest these truths in their daily lives.

Looking for new insights?

Every month we add a new Dharma article to the Reflections on Practice page. Sign up for our newsletter if you’d like to receive these insights by email

Latest News, Dharma Talks, and Reflections on Practice


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A Gracie Hello

Sweet Gracie is happy to say hello to you.  She is hopeful all is well with you and yours. ❤

Gracie is wearing an outfit we found at Ruthsdolls. This includes her leather shoes and white  socks. She is so happy to have a new outfit. 😊

This adorable outfit is toddler sized and fits her well.

Though Gracie is a studio Bebe, she has always claimed hat she is not a baby.  I do agree with Gracie and think she looks extra sweet modeling her pretty new outfit.

Thank you for visiting our site.  We hope you enjoyed this post.  Gracie and I both hope you have a happy weekend. ❤

Hello from Sasha Shangri-La

We haven’t posted in quite some time.  Without knowing, I had too many photos stored from previous posts which took me over my limit. My previous attempts to post were unsuccessful.  So, I have deleted a lot of photos. I hope this action will allow me to post.

This sweet BIV studio doll is named Evie.  She came to Sasha Shangri-La this year.  I love her and especially her blue eyes.

Evie is wearing a beautiful smocked dress made by Thu Cuc Faes in Switzerland. I love the fabric.  Her red leather shoes were made by Ruthsdolls.  That is Chloe next to her.  She is a 1966 brunette NP.

I hope you enjoyed this short post and I hope it posts! Have a great week! ❤

It feels good to be back and I thought it should be short and sweet. ❤

Clara at Home on Cow Creek

I was on Facebook recently and saw this beautiful reroot by Jackie Rydstrom.  I adopted her immediately. Her hair is a very soft, wavy mohair.

Jackie also made her lovely dress. Looking closely, you can see tiny brown bows. I added brown leather shoes by Sashapotamus.

Beautiful Clara. ❤

Thank you for visiting today. I hope you have a great week.

Clara and her puppy Molly send you hugs and happy wishes for the upcoming holiday season. ❤

New Outfit and Onesie for Bea 🐝

Hello! My name is Bea. I am a BII Sasha studio doll.  Mommy has given me a beautiful onesie to wear because I came without any under garments.  Plus, Mommy gave me a wonderful school girl outfit to wear.   I hope you enjoy seeing these photos.

My onesie was knitted by Rosie Laird. Mommy saw on Facebook that Rosie knitted a onesie for the 16 inch vinyl Sasha dolls. So she wrote to Rosie and asked her if she would knit a larger version for a studio doll like me! Rosie said yes, Mommy provided measurements, and look at the beautiful knitting I now have! Thank you Rosie! 🌹

The onesie is so very nice, and fits so very well, that Mommy ordered more of them for my studio sisters!

Next, I am so excited to share with you my beautiful school girl outfit hand made by Brigitte Schwitter.  Brigitte also made my socks and shoes.  I am on cloud nine! ❤

Mommy does not know who previously owned me but she was told that my original studio outfit was a school girl outfit. So she wrote to Auntie Brigitte and she made me this fantastic outfit. Thank you Brigitte from our hearts. ❤

Look at the beautiful sweater she knitted for me. ❤

I feel pretty, oh so pretty!

It fits perfectly!

I think I am ready to go back to school.  These fabulous shoes are made for walking!😊

Then, as a wonderful surprise, Mommy added her scarab bar pin which is so nice to wear.

I hope you enjoyed my new outfit from top to bottom! Thank you for visiting with me today.

Have a wonderful day and week to come.  Bye now!  ❤

Dreamy Brunette Side Part Girls

Until last month, there were no brunette side part girls living at Sasha Shangri-La.  Then, I adopted one brunette girl from a dear friend and a few weeks later another dear friend offered me a brunette side part and I am thrilled to say there are now two very different and very lovely brunette side parted girls here on Cow Creek.

On the left is Lenore and she is wearing a beautiful knitted outfit by Christine Durand. Lenore came in her original pink dress which is stored for her use later.  On the right is a petite, tiny eyed girl that I have named Tiny.  Tiny was my mother’s nickname and it brings me very fond memories.  Tiny is wearing a beautiful silk creation by Francis Tricket.  I love the floral pattern and the tiny buttons. Both outfits fit perfectly and both came with fantastic handbags.  Both girls are wearing leather shoes made by Jean Jensen.

Tiny is actually smaller than her sister Lenore. She is shorter, has a smaller face, and has tiny eyes.

Both girls have retained their gold tags.

Tiny up close. I love her beautiful painting.

Tiny’s eyes up close.

Tiny’s shoulder bag.

JJ sandals.

Beautiful Lenore has a wider face than her sister.

Lenore up close.  She has a very sweet, sensitive expression.

JJ shoes in an unusual blue gray color.

Beautiful detailing on her dress.

Both girls enjoying a sunny day with very nice and not too hot temperatures….finally!

They are beginning to meet other sisters and brothers but they stay together most of the time.  I lightly ran a wide tooth comb through their hair and no hair came out on either girl. I do not brush vigorously and I take special care when handling early brunette dolls.  I am happy to say that these two girls have managed to keep their lovely hair.

They are very close sisters.

A few photos of the girls together.

Thank you from Tiny and Lenore and me for visiting with us today. We hope you enjoyed the post.  Have a wonderful week to come. ❤ xxx

A Waterlogue image to enjoy.


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Usuhari Tumbler L for two

This product is currently sold out.

Usu-hari (thin glass) are each carefully hand blown and crafted by master craftsmen in the Sumida district in downtown Tokyo.

These tumbler srets make a great gift - perfect for enjoying an ice cold beer or crystal clear mineral water, for example.

Usuhari are created using the same techniques that was traditionally used for hand-making glass light bulbs. Less than 1mm thick, the feel of it in your hands, the sound ice makes when it is swirled in the glass, and fineness of the rim is truly exquisite and unique to this glass.

Usuhari appear to be extremely delicate but it can be handled like normal glassware. So experience and enjoy this exquisite glass for yourself often. It adds an exquisite touch to enjoying your favourite drink.

Come giftbxoed in Palownia wood box
Box size:15.5 x 17.5 x 90
375ml / two of Tumbler L


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Seven ingredient milk chocolate hobnobs

When I was little my brother and I used to have the loveliest Czech babysitter. As all little people do, we loved convincing adults to tell us swear words in different languages so that we could use them in the school playground or wherever without getting told off, so anyone who spoke a foreign language was a valuable resource to us. Our babysitter didn’t mind indulging us in our favourite pastime (anything to keep us occupied while our parents were out) so she taught us a couple of words. One such word was ‘hovno’ which is apparently Czech for ‘shit’, but the way she said it it sounded like ‘hobnob’ which to us was hilarious and of course it stuck.

To be fair to hobnobs they aren’t shit in fact they’re pretty delicious, especially when accompanied with a cup of tea on the side, but they are full of sugar (each 18.8g biscuit has a whopping 6.2g of sugar) and other ingredients I tend to try and avoid such as palm oil and cow’s milk.

So without further ado (read: rambling) let me present to you my seven ingredient milk chocolate hobnobs – all natural, no nasties, just pure, unadulterated deliciousness. They’re literally the best thing ever and I now can’t stop making (and eating) them! Give them a go and you’ll see what I mean!

  • 1 1/4 cup oats
  • 3/4 cup ground almonds
  • 1/2 cup cashew butter (or any other nut or seed butter)
  • 1/2 cup maple syrup
  • 1/2 tsp salt

For the chocolate on top

  • 1/2 cup cacao butter
  • 3 tbsp maple syrup
  • 3 tbsp cacao powder
  • 1 tbsp cashew butter

To make the biscuits, just combine the ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir well so that everything is all nicely combined. Preheat the oven to 180C and bake for 15 minutes – the biscuits might still seem a little soft in the middle but they will continue cooking after you take them out so don’t worry! Leave them on a cooling rack for an hour or so then make the chocolate by melting the cacao butter in a  bowl over a saucepan half full of water and then stirring in the other ingredients. Dip the biscuits in the chocolate (you might want to do this a couple of times for each biscuit) and then drizzle any extra chocolate on top. Leave them in the fridge for a couple of minutes so that the chocolate sets, put the kettle on and get your favourite tea brewing and dig in!

Love, Mrs H xx

12 thoughts on “Seven ingredient milk chocolate hobnobs

  1. Pingback: Family Favourite recipes - Bumpkin Betty Baking Club

  2. Have to say I was sceptical when I baked these the other week having had many disappointments from “healthy” baking. HOWEVER, they were delicious! So super lovely and really really hobnobby! I would choose them over the store-bought version any-day. Thanks so much for the recipe 🙂

  3. I was so keen to make these! They sounded absolutely delicious. And taste delicious they sure do! (addicting). I’m just wondering about the presentation though – I don’t care what they look like for myself but they didn’t look nice and flat like your cookies, even though I flattened them down a bit – how flat did you make them before putting them in the oven? And secondly the chocolate looked much more dark choc than milk (not complaining!!) just wondering if the ratios were 100% correct? Still tasted delicious and my housemate and I love them so no complaints at all, just curious 🙂

    • Hey Lauren! I’m so glad you liked the recipe! So for the purposes of making things pretty for Instagram I did take a little extra time to make them quite flat and even, but usually when I make them they aren’t quite so presentable! If you fancy making the chocolate milkier you can add a little extra cashew butter, that usually does the trick for me! Emma xx

  4. Keep forgetting to get the ingredients for the chocolate covering (though have used the choc recipe from your flapjack before which works well – but it’s a bit melty in summer !) , so we just eat them plain in our house, and they last just about a day ! Made double lots for friends coming round the other day for coffee and they all went in about an hour ! (Only had 6 friends round !! )Thanks for great recipe.

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