All the striving and the doing it, on we go, the Five music things thing yet again for whatever it still might be worth. Five? There’s something rather compelling about five, cross-pollination? Five more? Do we need to do the editorial bit again? Is there another way? A cure for pulling cats out of hats? Is there a rhyme? Is there a reason? Was there ever? What do reasons make? Five more, same as last time (and the time before) five, and no, we never do and the proof of the pudding is in that proof reading. When we started this thing, oh never mind, it doesn’t matter and like we asked last time, does anyone bother reading the editorial? Does anyone ever actually look down the rabbit hole or is it all just method acting? We do listen to everything that comes in, we do it so you don’t have to, we are very (very) picky about what we actually post on these pages or play on the radio or hang in a gallery. Cut to the chase, never mind the editorial there’s loads of music further down the page, well five or so pieces of music that have come our way in the last few days and cut cut slash and cut to the damn chase, who needs an editorial? Here’s your five for today.

1: Vonamor – more Vonamor, let it build now, let the drama build up, ahead of their self-titled debut album (out February 18), the Rome-based darkwave electro rock trio have let loose another video and another fine track, a slow building piece of drama (and a beautifully coloured video), we’re told “the sound weaves together stories of men, power and protest worldwide to sharp dialogue between male and female”. More on the album in a moment I imagine, for now, here’s a second taste, the first was here, go hear, we like their style, we like their dark drama, like we said before, there’s something rather compelling about Vonamor 

2: Scraboutcha – “Electrical and technological scribbles against a background of childishness with Nathan Octave (Taxidermists, Norchestra), Nico Gitto (Why The Eye?, Facteur Cheval, Simple Apparatus) and Florence Cha! (LEM, Cha!Selektor, Refurinn Kitsune)” so we’re told. We checked then out becasue they#re opening for PoiL Uneda at the begining of March somewhere in France and if someone thinks they’re interesting wnough to be on a bill with PoiL then we want to know more. Here’s some footage of Scraboutcha playing live in 2019, this is about all there seems to be out there, but hey, who are Facteur Cheval?

….but hey, who are Facteur Cheval?

And who are Volcan Timide? Hang on, here’s something from North Wales, here’s some Lloyd Steele

3: Lloyd Steele – A new video, with art made by, Ella Owen, Leah Freeman, and Catherine Lewis (they designed and built the masks for the video). The video was created by Lwp, it has just been released. Ella, Leah and Catherine are students on the currently rather celebrated Art Foundation course based in Bangor, North Wales, it was their art that made us check our Lloyd. Finding more about Lloyd isn’t that easy, rather like the way this flows, certainly one of the five this week.

4: Crows – More Crows, as we reported a few weeks back – ORGAN: Five Music Things – Crows return in ferocious style, Some Jerks, Ben Marc, Gapeseed, We Broke The Weather, Necking, Meer, Focus Pool, that is five right? – Crows are back and Crows are sounding good. Last time we said “London four-piece Crows share new single Slowly Separate, their first new music in three years, plus they announce their highly-anticipated second album Beware Believers out 1st April 2022 via Bad Vibrations Records”. They’ve just let loose this second slice and well, here it is….

“‘Room 156’ was inspired by Crows singer James Cox’s past obsession with true crime, and old faith healers. It thunders through chanting lyrics that’ll result in a rabbit hole of your own. The video was made by Cuan and Angus who bring the tense background and feeling of being trapped to life, so said someone in a press release..

“I used to be quite obsessed with true crime, and this song was kind of born out of researching H.H Holmes and the World Trades Hotel in the 1860’s where he would murder people staying at his hotel informally called ‘The Murder Castle’ ”, James says of the new single.

He adds, “I also got quite obsessed with a faith healer from the early 1900’s called Reverend Major Jealous Divine and reading transcripts of his old sermons, so this is basically just a weird amalgamation of mad shit I read about.”

The track is taken from new album Beware Believers. “Equal parts ferocious and hedonistic, the incoming LP is due out April 1st 2022 via Bad Vibrations Records and perfectly captures the raucous, anarchic energy that Crows have become renowned for on the stage. 

“Beware Believers has felt like a marathon, a real endurance test that’s been a long, winding road filled with highs and lows and plenty of twists and turns. The majority of the themes on the album came from what was going on in the world around summer 2019, Covid wasn’t in our lives and the biggest impact was Brexit and the madness our government were putting us through. I was reading a lot of J.G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut whilst all this craziness was going on around us and it was a weird headspace to get into.”

5; And who are Volcan Timide? One band leads us to the next, blame PoiL for all this or maybe thank them? There isn;t much yet, a burst of video making in the middle of last year, a website that tells us little, no social media that we can find, heopefully this isn;t thefirst ansd last we hear from them…

And while we’re here, we really couldn’t post this latest Five Music Things feature withour paying our respects to the cooler than cool sound of Betty Davis this week, she passed away this week, she was so racically cool, she always will be, she was probably ahead of her time, her truth was her power, her truth will always powerful, I do rather suspect her music will last for a long long time, R.I.P Betty Davis, this is a track from her self-titled 1973 album.

and a little bit more

and well, more more

“Betty Davis changed the landscape for female artists in America. She “was the first…” as former husband Miles Davis said. “Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince”. An aspiring songwriter from a small steel town, Betty arrived on the 70’s scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She befriended Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers and the Commodores, and married Miles – startlingly turning him from jazz to funk on the album she named “Bitches Brew”. She then, despite being banned and boycotted, went on to become the first black woman to perform, write and manage herself. Betty was a feminist pioneer, inspiring and intimidating in a manner like no woman before. Then suddenly – she vanished. Creatively blending documentary and animation this movie traces the path of Betty’s life, how she grew from humble upbringings to become a fully self-realized black female pioneer the world failed to understand or appreciate. After years of trying, the elusive Betty, forever the free-spirited Black Power Goddess, finally allowed the filmmakers to creatively tell her story based on their conversations”.