Holy Tongue - Basilikum [Review]
About Holy Tongue
I liked Holy Tongue from the off. Dub-loving, uncompromising electronic producer and multi-instrumentalist Al Wootton and the hardest-working woman in percussion Valentina Magaletti are accomplished artists, but this project was always more than the sum of its parts, and the addition of Japanese émigré, out-of-the-box-thinking multi-instrumentalist and musician about town, Susumu Mukai aka Zongamin, has slotted right in. I really, really, want to see them live, and I don’t say that about too many bands these days. Quite how I’m going to manage that living where I am is an issue - if only I lived in Berlin again, but it appears the project is mutating like a virus, so I’m hopeful they’ll stick around, and that I’ll be in the audience one day.
Review
Their new album has many beating hearts: a love for Jamaican music and it’s UK- dance music offshoots, post-punk attitude, mind-melting sonic deviance, boundary-reshaping desire, Fourth World and outernational percussive rallying cries and an insurrectional vibe - the revolution will be filmed a billion times, just not televised by the platform-controlling billionaires, but they can’t take our speakers and the soundtrack will sound dope.
The stuttering, disorienting intro sets exactly the right tone for Basilikum’s madness, and the hyped broken beats, speaker-punishing bass, frenetic percussion, devilish dub and pointed vocals of Bristol’s Dali De Saint Paul on ‘I’ve stood in this room for a long time’ take you straight to the front of stage mosh pit. If you’re not moving or at least twitching to it, turn away now. Sweat broken, ‘Orange 28’ adopts a more conciliatory vibe and tempo, and so it might with over ten minutes of running time to have its say. The rhythm is set to downtempo hypnotic ritualism, but buoyed by a more urgent bassline, and just for good measure a mystical wind soon blows in from the east. It’s not long though before Magaletti’s skittering percussion suggests clouds are on the horizon, and slowly but surely the hi-grade cumulus rolls in, intensifying the trance state and opening all sorts of perception doors.
Holy Tongues - 'Orange 28' :
Saint Paul gets another lyrical look in on the leftfield, angular, dub-techno chug of ‘Bloom in D Minor’, a brief respite before the techno trance of ‘Vuoto 25’, which is the sort of percussive-techno deviance that most Berlin and Eastern European hard dance clubs need, but few countenance. After a brief interlude, ‘Single-Eyed’ stomps into the listening space, and is something of a lysergic lull and relative listening low point, before the album-closing ‘Nature’ goes back in time for some ambient tribalism and minor mind melting. Now, for that live-show.
If you're a Holy Tongu fan then head over to Japan and check out NIIKKOLAHS' - True Science album, and head back in time for the Holy Tongue vs Shakleton soundclash.
This review ran in TSMM's November 10th newsletter. If you'd like album tips direct to your inbox or the Substack app — plus the odd bit of industry insight and existential musing from TSMM HQ — you can subscribe here.
Playlist Companion
Find Holy Tongue End of Week Freak and Slow Dub Playlist.
