The editorial, the introduction bit and the Five music things thing for whatever it is all about. 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, everything must go and 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) very very picky about what we actually post on these fractured pages or what gets played on the radio or what we 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 or words in general? Just facts and links then, here you go, grab your five, eat your greens, go eat some art…

1: Saajtak have just released a rather impressive debut album, the Detroit outfit are that rare thing, a genuinely different rock band. Are they even a rock band? What are we listening to here? They look like a rock band, they tour like a rock band, there’s four of them, They’ve been called “One of the most intriguing and unclassifiable bands in the country right now”, the Detroit/Brooklyn band make “futuristic music that synthesizes a wide range of genres – often in ways that seem to clash against each other, always in service to the song. saajtak weave together experimental electronica, post-rock, trip-hop, and cosmic opera in a spirit of deep collaboration”.

Properly progressive, glimpses of many things, glorious textures, layers, a genuinely different thing, Other Rock you might say (now if only there was a radio show for that kind of thing). Saajtak are genuinely exciting, refreshing, they’re about to tour the US in suport of their newly released album For The Makers out via American Dreams Records and well, here you go…

.

And we did mention Saajtak back in May – ORGAN: Five music things – Avawaves, more Traams, Bloodmist, Kayo Dot’s Toby Driver, Blue Luminaire, the glitchy future prog of Saajtak and… but now the album is up there in full on Bandcamp for you to explore and well, here’s some more from the press release…

“The band has quietly made music in Detroit for the better part of a decade, collaborating with members of clipping. and sharing bills with Xiu Xiu, Ava Mendoza and Greg Fox. Koi sings and writes lyrics; Taylor plays drums, Willis bass; Alexander-Adams contributes keyboard and electronics. But to individuate their contributions does the music a disservice. Saajtak sounds, feels, like a living, breathing organism, for which recordings don’t present definitive documents as much as they reflect songs at given points in their lives. For the Makers, the band’s first album, brims with ideas, treating their shape-shifting compositions with a high depth of field.

Saajtak’s compositions are rooted in collective improvisation; their first release, spectral [ drips ], collects several free improvisations. The band was recording music live for a full-length debut when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic pressed pause on their principal way of making music. In response, the band began working on new music remotely, in increments of eight days. Every two days, members would trade songs, gradually sculpting them into final iterations. Willis recalls putting on his headphones as he began recording bass: “The layers that Alex, Simon, and Jon had begun to craft engulfed me like a wave, filling me. I was suddenly surrounded by my friends.” Over time, the music organically cohered into an album, bringing together influences as wide-ranging as Richard Davis, Meredith Monk and Melvins. Koi’s lyrics balance narrative and enigma, incorporating several perspectives within a song in an approach she calls polyphonic narrative. “I like to imagine how personas might converse in worlds with varying levels of familiarity and skewness,” she explains. “What we receive are relationships that flow between splintery and harmonious, and that contain both ecstasy and affliction. There’s a big thrill in all this, when nothing can be apathetic.”

Throughout, the album mixes the organic and synthetic. Even as motifs, images and lyrics recur, the music thrums with energy, opening into new worlds. This, perhaps, is part of the point: to illustrate an escape, to be one. To Alexander-Adams, For the Makers was “as much a healing practice as it was a means to create”; to Willis, it “feels like a year-improvisation, for which the music never stopped the whole time.” Says Taylor, “it represents our collective voice in the deepest sense: an amalgamation of our individual vulnerabilities, imaginations, ambitions, and love for each other.” The album is testament to the restless creativity powering Saajtak’s engine, and the importance of cultivating creativity, trust and community”. 

Meanwhile, who is Lady Neptune? Hyper destructive what?

2: Lady Neptune – We have here some “Hyper-destructive gabber, happy hardcore, synthetic industrial & twisted pop” and an album or and EP or whatever it is, something called ‘NOZ’ – “the debut vinyl release by Glasgow-based artist Moema Meade aka Lady Neptune. Six face-melting gurners of breathless ecstasy for the 21st century’s wilted & jilted generation” Not sure about the wilted and jilted generation it rather sounds like the last century to us, but then we liked lots of those broken bits from the end of the last century and banging thrashing Gabber is almost a nostagia blast from times that were maybe a little more hopeful.

Hang on, stop the bus, we got more Lady Neptune details now – “Recorded & mixed at Glasgow’s legendary Green Door Studios & mastered by Rashad Becker, out as a limited edition vinyl 12” out 5th September with the Digital out now via Night School Records. Reminds us of Peacekiller adventures.

“Glasgow’s Lady Neptune follows her New Gorbals Gabber cassette E.P. with her debut vinyl release NOZ. Over the course of 23 bloody fisted minutes, Lady Neptune’s – aka Moema Meade – hyper destructed take on Gabber and Happy Hardcore breaks down the genre tropes before rebuilding them as a new pop music. If 2020’s New Gorbals Gabber showed an artist building their own language from fragments of different genres, 2022’s NOZ goes harder into the cyberpunk-ass future and takes no prisoners. Recorded and mixed at Glasgow’s legendary Green Door Studios and mastered by Rashad Becker, here Lady Neptune evolves into a monster”.

Love it, bust out that old Mokum t-shirt and bring the hammer down, okay so we might have heard this kind of thing rather a lot, it is some kind of throwback, it has been some time but there is something extra there, an old school edge, a welcome dose of banging attitude, a refreshing set of tunes delivered with an I couldn’t care lesss what you think swagger

.

Do check out Lady Neptune’s Abba Gabber as well

.

3: Balothizer are a”heavy psych power trio who describe their renditions of Greek island Crete’s traditional music as “post- Cretan”. Their following however has come up with a tagline that defines their concoction of thrash metal with acid-blotted Cretan folk… Cretan Music From Hell!” They have a new single, here it is, you can grab it via Bandcamp and then go explore some more. These five pieces of music pieces really are jsut about throwing up signposts and links and bites of flavour, really up to you what you do with it all… The single is released on Louvana Records

.

The 2020 Balothizer album will tell you lots more about the band than one single will…

.

4: Guided By Voices – “From the Guided By Voices album Tremblers And Goggles By Rank, in stores Friday July 1, 2022”. Kind of like that there’s a new Guided By Voices album, Robert Pollard and his band have always been awkwardly good in a healthy leftfield wholesome kind of way and right now I really should be building an installation piece for the start of the Leytonestone Arts Trail that kicks off on Saturday rather than getting distracted by the new Guided by Voices album. Tried to sign them to ORG Records once, way back in their/our early days. The new album feels warm, familiar, comfortable and more than welcome, it all feels lind of right, you have the video and a link

And well, who can keep up with them and okay now, forget it, join the winner’s circle or back out or something like that, there’s just a warmth to Guided By Voices that always feels just, well just so right, just so reassuringly easy to get on with, so just there when you need to reach for them. Find the new album on Bandcamp and and and here’s the band’s website, I think that’s our work done here, these days Organ is pretty much jsut about throwing up links and signposts…  

.

5: Tension Span – Last week on these somewhat fractured pages we posted a song we’ll post again along with the words we posted last time – “This is a sneak peak of my new band, Tension Span. Full album on Neurot Recordings soon” so said Noah Landis, he of Neurosis and various tasty bands of a hardcore punk rock nature, bands like Blister, Christ on Parade (and the legendary Everything Must Go of course). Here then is a first taste of “Pandemic born punk collaboration based out of the East Bay”, sounding good,…

This week Noah has posted more on his social media feed and the full four track What Future EP is now avaiable to hear (and buy) via Bandcamp so we’ll repeat the posting of that song and his latest words concering it all – “Friends – last week I posted a sneak peek of my new band Tension Span with Mauz and Geoff. I had more cryptic pics and lyrics to share but then Friday’s supreme court ruling happened and it felt trivial to post about new punk rock songs when the country was dealt such a devastating blow to WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Today I had the thought that it might be the perfect thing to do – so here is a new song about anger, confusion, questions about where we go from here, and truly heartfelt RAGE!”

.

And while we’re here…