Reviews

Monolith CocktailComposer of “lower case” minimalism Andrew Heath and his willing foil on this collaboration, the Argentinian ambient composer Fernando Perales (under the guises of his Mi Cosa de Resistence alias), slow down time to convey abstract disquiet and a sense of the plaintive on their first proper album together – the pair previously worked together on A Speechless Body, but this is their first actual fully shared collaborative immersion. For the title translates from the French as “a state of melancholy sadness”; an encapsulation of a mood made famous and iconic by the lauded surrealist and poet Paul Éluard who in turn inspired his French compatriot Françoise Sagan to pen the 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse, which went on to spawn a movie adaptation. Obviously the “café” part if that album title needs less explanation or inquiry, evoking as it does the legacy of ruminating whilst measuring the passage of time sipping on a cappuccino or knocking back espressos: The café as centre of every movement worth mentioning in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in Europe where this sort of almost resigned and wistful contemplation.

Having built up quite the reputations and CVs (Heath no stranger to this blog, with his last solo album, Scapa Flow making our “choice albums of 2023” lists) both participants bring much adroit subtlety to this dreamy drifting traverse of feelings that cannot be described so much in words or song. Perales’ main job seems to be in picking out the right atmospheric guitar notes, the right motifs and bended mirages, which in turn either linger or float over Heaths vapours, ambient scapes and wafts. Across strange refractive sun-lit Western vistas, near ethereal visions and rain swept European boulevards, those synthesized and tremulous, gently plucked and pinged instruments – a signature presence too of Heath’s translucent and more dulled piano is also in attendance – somehow manifest images of the French waiter taking his break in-between services, taking a drag perhaps on a cigarette to unwind from the tensions, stresses as he or she watches the comings and goings on the street outside: Time seems to be suspended during these moments of contemplation.

And yet there are moments that, to me, suggest an almost Vangelis-style Blade Runner kind of pathos (especially the ambient vision ‘The Absentee’). There’s certainly the air of mystery suffused throughout this album of musical novellas. If the guitar work of Fererico Balducci and Myles Cochran enthuse merging perfectly with invocations of Eno, John Laneand Roedelius enthuse you then this perfectly matched collaborative affair of the heart and cerebral feels will very much impress.

Original > HERE