Five more musical things. Five more musical things? Some eyecutting from The Weez, abstraction indeed. Five more musical things that havecome our way over the last few days, things carefully plucked from the overflowing in-box and the millions of e.mails that find their way here every week. Five slices of music in no particular order, who knows why?

Why? who really knows why? Five recommended musical things for you to explore…

1: Wessel Walter, he of Flying Luttenbachers and things, has just said hi and fired some news and a musical threat or two at us. They do feel like threats, challenges, I dare you to like this one, I dare you ot get through this one…

“A new album by The Flying Luttenbachers, called “Negative Infinity” will be out early next year on LP, CD and download. It is a concise 45 minute/6 song eruption of tight ensemble modernism. This time around there’s lots of composed stuff – it’s dissonant, fast, dramatic and precise. I think some people are going to compare it favourably to past works like “The Void” and “Cataclysm”, but I assure you it’s pushing things to a new level. The personnel will be revealed with the release next Spring. There will be surprises. If you think you know what the band is about now, you might be coming to a rude (and hopefully pleasant) awakening! In the meantime”. He’s right there of course, the only thing you really know about the Luttenbachers is that it will be challenging, it won’t be easy, it will be rewarding and the only thing we can assume is that it will be intense. More about that in the new year, right now, another pound of weasel flesh. a monster of a Weasel Walter solo thing called “Another Pound of Flesh”

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 “Released on or before December 11, 2020 – Preorder now!!!! After the massive insanity of the 2017 “A Pound of Flesh” 4CD box set of solo works, the Weez is back with another monolithic display of electro-acoustic abstraction and sonic heaviness! Close to 4 hours of complex, detailed aural deconstruction utilizing a wide array of approaches and timbres to create alien landscapes. The limited physical edition is strictly limited to a numbered edition of 100 copies, featuring 3 pro-duplicated CD-rs and a colour 16 page booklet with extensive liner notes, packed into a slim single-sized jewel case. The digital version contains the same music and a pdf booklet. From the macabre stomping doom of “Eyecutter” to the apocalyptic noise onslaught of “The Last Sixty Minutes”, “Another Pound of Flesh” is an overwhelming experience of bizarre sound and structure in action. The total running time is 3 hours and 43 minutes” – I do like that 43 minutes bit, can we take three hours and 43 minutes in one go? Here’s a flavour or two via the Bandcamp – you’ve got to love “the Weez”, actually this sounds like painting music..

I do like the sound of Eyecutter, that intense sound, and I do know a bit about eyecutting, you really haven’t lived until you’ve been strapped down so you can’t move, and you get to see the needle coming down  in to your eye, sure, there was local anaesthetic but you could still see the damn thing and you eye is clamped open and there;s not a thing you can do about it, it – more a need to scream and okay, this isn’t the same, this is like being stalked, this is brooding, this is dark, this is someone in the dark who might be wanting to cut you if he or she (or it) finds you. And id if this is just 17 minutes of the three hours and 43 minutes then…. Hey, I never noticed the spell checker wanting to turn Luttenbachers to Schoolteachers, my god, imagine that, what on earth would the Weez  (as he now surely must be known) want ot teach the kids?   

Curse Against Hypocrites and Liars is glorious experimentation and, yes, we’ve been hooked, need all three hours and 43 minutes of this…

2: Yore have (or has) just released a new piece of music called Sally Our, the Hackney band (or solo project with lots of collaborators), have an alnum out any moment now. There’s been a number of rather fine releases recently. Actually Yore is a solo project from London based musician & producer Callum Brown. Hawing, a piece featruring Rakel Mjöll from Dream Wife came out back in October, the self-titled album is out today, today being a cold wet and rather dismal December 4th, cold and wet here in Hackney anyway, you might be reading this in the sunshine of wherever in the world you are? We rather like the old-school dream pop of Yore, bring back Snub TV and pass the Chapterhouse album, enough of this rain. The album is out on Flat five, here’s the Bandcamp

3: Bisbâyé – Okay, Meshuggah do come to mind in a rather immediate kind of way, there’s enough in there in terms of their own fingerprint for it not to be too much of a problem. Pronounced ‘bees-bow-yay’—translates as “what happens when there is nothing else one can do, when uncertainty and obstacles require excelling oneself”. Initially from Quebec’s remote region of Saguenay (home of prog metallurgists Voïvod), the Montreal-based band was founded in 2001 by guitarist Jean-Pierre Larouche with drummer Hugo Veilleux. Currently based in Montreal, Bisbâyé is rounded up by bassist Vincent Savary, guitarist Nathanaël Labrèche, and a second drummer, Julien Daoust. Bisbâyé includes two drum kits, with the two percussionists answering each other’s beats in real time, creating a compelling stereo effect.

“Larouche, the band’s leader and main composer,  cites Don Caballero and Meshuggah as influences, but experiencing Bisbayé’s music is something else entirely. Yes, the intricacy and drum-heavy approach of Bisbâyé’s compositions can remind the former, while the sheer aggression of some of their most intense moments is akin to the Swedish extreme metal act’s surgical sound. King Crimson’s influence is also undeniable, so is the sophistication of the math-rock genre’s best acts (e.g., Battles, Dillinger Escape Plan), while you can find some of Larouche’s favorite composers (Steve Reich, Gyorgy Ligeti) in there as well. We might also say there is a bit of Primus guitarist Larry Lalonde’s discordant riffing in Bisbâyé’s wall of sound.

Larouche explains: “By superposing melodic layers and different forms of rhythms (polyrhythms, isorhythms, phase shifting and contrapuntal ones), I create sonic textures of emerging properties. Their sometimes disorienting and complex effects are contrasted with instrumentation and simple composition structures borrowed to popular music. Mostly, I tend to toy with the listener’s perception, inviting them to let go of their preconceptions to dive completely into the sound itself to explore new frontiers of possibilities. “

Le Sens de la Fin (The Sense of an Ending) is out on  January 22, 2021 on Cuneiform Records

4: Yujirofujii released an album last year. The album, of what is described as minimal math rock, is called 16-20, you can download it for a pay what you want to price from Bandcamp – it might have come out last year but good art doesn’t come with a sell by date.

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5 James Johnston and Steve Gullick – Well this looks and sounds rather rewarding, James Johnston and Steve Gullick, two people with quite a history in terms of bands, music and photography and painterly things, they first met back in 1991,  Steve Gullick was working at a music photographer at the time (we assume he still is), and James Johnston was a founder of Gallon Drunk, “they began blurring the boundaries between audio and visual” in 2004 when they formed their own band. Seems they’ve maintained the habit of collaborating on things ever since, with Gullick subsequently founding Tenebrous Liar and Johnston pursuing a career, alongside his work with PJ Harvey and a tenure in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, as an acclaimed visual artist and painter. The latest collaboration sees a new album that comes with all the visual stimulation you’d expect.

“As a teaser for our new LP ‘We Travel Time’ – Stormy Sea. Animated by Steve, based on a set of my charcoal drawings”  Apparently there’s a limited edition vinyl version of the album that comes “with a book of my charcoal drawings used in our video, designed by Steve”. More details via their Bandcamp

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There you have it, five more things of a musical nature. It was the Organ’s 34th birthday yesterday, it probably is time to hit it all on the head, it probably was years ago, we’ll probably have more for you tomorrow or the next day, We spent part of yesterday listening to Tracey Emin scream, there’s always something. It was all about the collage really…