Let the music do the talking, never mind the editorial bit at the top, same thing, different week. Another five slices of music thing (or things) again and however you slice it and of course it was sushi and here comes the introduction that heralds the latest Five Music Things thing and whatever the hell the five music thing is actually 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 better way? A cure for pulling flying pigs out of the clouds? Is there a rhyme? Is there a reason? Was there ever a reason? What do reasons make? Five more, everything must go and same as last time (and the time before that) 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 why we started this thing 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 really try to 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 about what gets played on the radio or indeed 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 it, who needs an editorial or words or worms in general? Just facts and links then. Here you go, play the music, grab your five, eat your greens, go eat some art, go eat some dirt and don’t forget whatever it was we said you shouldn’t forget last time…

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Here come the latest five, we start of in France (again), Tout est excellent…

1: Fleuves Noirs – As someone else said of this video, “Tout est excellent, la musique, les danseurs, le rythme, la force vitale top-rock, la réalisation. Merci.” and yes it is excellent. curiosity took us to Fleuves Noirs, we saw they were opening for Extra Life in Paris and thought, well if someone thnks they’re interesting enough to be on a bill with Extra life we better go find out more, And a coupl of link clicks later here they are, and yes, we agree “Everything is excellent, the music, the dancers, the rhythm, the top-rock life force, the production. Thanks”. Here’s the band’s Bandcamp, the most recent album came out in October 2022. Fleuves Noirs are from Lille, France, are all the most interesting bands coming from France at the moment? More soon, watch this space, this is a nonstop operation…

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2: Jenny O – You Are Loved Eternally is the 4th single from the new Jenny O. record ‘Spectra’ (out February 24th, 2023 on Mama Bird Recording Co.) which has sent us off to explore more of what is turning oout to be a rather infectiously delicious new album. She’s from los Angeles, California, she kind of sounds like she is, her songs come in many colours, do give three or four of them ago before you file her sound and style. Jenny O has art, she has heart.

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Commenting on “You Are Loved Eternally” Jenny O. says: The phrase “You Are Loved Eternally” was hand-painted on an old mirror frame in my friend’s grandfather’s cabin. Weeks after I visited in 2020, the cabin and everything it contained burned up in the Sequoia Complex Fire along with 10% of the world’s giant sequoias. I imagine that mirror reflecting a room of flames before it too was consumed- the 1950’s furniture, local nature books, even the iron wood stove melted. At that time someone I love deeply was in trouble, in depressive peril. I wrote this song for them, for me, for everyone I know and don’t know. We get lost and fall disconnected from the warm glow of human connectivity, loving awareness, the web of life.. 

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For those tuned in from California, Jenny O. has also announced several shows supporting Steven Page. The band will be performing on January 19th at The Troubadour in Los Angeles and on January 20th at Pappy & Harriet’s in Joshua Tree.

Here is that new album, well some of it for now but the Bandcamp page will tell you lots more…

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The press release that landed with the new single this morning tell us that “Spectra is the fourth full-length album by Jenny O. It is a celebration of the universal, the organic– a manual straight from the soul on how to love practically and unconditionally, in all directions. Spectra is the staggering result of Jenny O.’s contemplation on what it means to be a weirdo, to communicate, and ultimately, to be useful. 

The listener is transported to a warm and luminous innerworld thanks to the masterful production of Kevin Ratterman (My Morning Jacket, S.G. Goodman, Andrew Bird). The album opens with Jenny at the Hammond B3 organ. The drums– performed by Josh Adams throughout Spectra – almost weep, tumble and leap with reverence, while Baroque clangs from a zither, juts of mellotron strings and choral call-and-response instigate pure psychedelia. “You Are Loved Eternally” is jangle heaven, disarming the uneasy children of the universe with a playful bop and a simple mantra. These are hymns straight from the Church of Rock n’ Roll. But Jenny O. writes outside of genre and Spectra contains multitudes. Technicolor slow jams like “Prism,” “The Natural World,” and “Golden” are stitched among new wave romps “Advice At A Dinner Party” and “The Big Cheese.” “There Is A Club,” a demented outsider’s anthem, is a rowdy a cappella jolt that drops right into “Solitary Girl,” a tough, fuzz strut with the murky mischief of the glam greats. 

Jenny O. played the guitar, bass, synthesizers and more on Spectra. She grew up on Long Island, New York, in a household that worshiped early rock n’ roll. She is a classically trained composer and double bassist who studied jazz and experimented with trip hop in the early 2000’s before making her way to California and back to rock n’ roll. She made two albums with Jonathan Wilson – Automechanic and Peace & Information, followed by New Truth and now Spectra – both with Kevin Ratterman. She has toured with legends like Sixto Rodriguez, Violent Femmes, Father John Misty, and Faye Webster, and performed vocals on recordings by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Conor Oberst, and Jim James”.  

And there is a club and well, we’re rather enjoying this…

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And here come the no messing beasts known as The Oozes

3: The Oozes – Here’s their Linktree thing with everything you need to explore. Not seen thay much ooze from them recently, they just announced a re-arranged April 2023 date at Camden Underworld here in London (wonder if we’re still banned from the damn place?). The news of the gig is mainly why we mention the gloriously good for you punk rock band today, details of the gig are on the Linktee link you just passed, April 20th I do believe. Shame they don’t do Bandcamp rather than just the more corporate places, here’s a track from their latest set of recordings (from December) called “Live Demos”, they say the recordings are available on Jelly Cube Records, you can find the recordings if you want to stream them, on a variety of corporate platforns, ah well, don’t shoot us, we’re just the messy messengers, I like their cuppa tea, I like the way they talk, poison girls indeed, or maybe they don’t like being called girls? Go listen. (we do use and abuse those damn corporate platforns ourselves, find the glorious Oozes on our January Spotify playlist if that’s the way you swing)

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Here’s some more Ozzzzzzing….

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And here comes Gina , Gina is a punkrocker….

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4: Gina Birch – Last Autumn, the oft covered (around here) Raincoats bass player, painter and many things besides, Gina Birch announced her debut solo album, I Play My Bass Loud, and shared the single Wish I Was You, which featured an assist from Thurston Moore. Today, she’s back with another new song, this time the title track from her upcoming LP. It comes with a music video directed by Vice Cooler. here it is, there’s the link to the Bandcamp, and the album detials, hopefully the auto-correct monster won’t change her to Gina Bitch this time, you know we never proof-read… THe album is out on February 24th and cup of tea is stewing and the painting lisght is going, music is such a distraction,

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Talking of the video Gina said “Vice asked his long-term friend writer, dancer, and choreographer, Oakland-based Brontez Purnell, to be the central character of the video”, she continued “There are five women bass players performing in the video, Emily Elhaj (Angel Olsen), Hazel Rigby (TBHQ), Mikki Itzigsohn (Small Wigs), Staz Lindes (The Paranoyds), and myself. We shot the video in L.A. so the bass players in the video are not primarily the ones on the track apart from Emily Elhaj who plays bass with Angel Olsen and Gina B. The song is a celebration of bass guitar as a voice, simple or layered, pounding or dancing, or everything at once. A celebration of a shout, a yell from the window, and the I am Here, of a woman’s creativity on the bass guitar. I play my bass, my bass my bass my bass, I play my bass loud”.

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Previously on these pages… ORGAN: Frieze week, Gina Birch at Whitechapel’s Gallery 46. There’s a feeling here that she’s experimenting, discovering, not so much finding her painterly voice but feeling she can start to visually shout…

and that time at the ICA – ORGAN THING: Celebrating the subversive with the Neo Naturists…

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and…

5: The Psychotic Monks – Crash by The Psychotic Monks, taken from “Pink Colour Surgery” (available on February 3rd 2023 – Vicious Circle Records / Fat Cat Records). Here’s the video produced by Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox

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Here’s the press release hype and the details and such…

With new album Pink Colour Surgery out 3rd February 2023 (produced by Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox) via Fatcat Records / Vicious Circle (pre-order here), France’s The Psychotic Monks share experimental new single ‘Crash’ with a video directed by Bart Price (Black Country, New Road). 

They also announce their only UK date at London’s Pickle Factory on 4th March with tickets on sale now here. 

Speaking on the new track, Paul Dussaux says “Crash was made out of jam sessions, as we were trying to get out of our comfort-zone and explore more electronic rhythms and sounds. The lyrics are about people on tour, feeling exhausted about live, festivals, and about the mental health within the music industry. We got a lot of testimonies plus our personal experience that motivates us to try to talk about it. Not without some heavy emotions, this track means to create a safe moment of dance for all.”

Paul adds, “During the mixing process, Daniel (Fox) put the different elements of the song in places we had never though of, which made us rediscover the song as a more techno-like track that we really enjoyed, not without a doubt because it was really far from everything we had ever done.”

Director Bart Price says of the video, “The music video for ‘Crash’ combines HD stock clips, iPhone shots of the singer and sped-up and reversed footage that I filmed in Times Square in NYC. It’s a dark late-capitalist fever dream in which everyone is constantly moving backwards, at the same time as making you feel like you’re stuck in fast-forward like being trapped inside a broken old VHS player. There’s also a lot of videos of people running. Joggers seem to have such purpose in their lives and believe in the possibility of self-improvement. I like the idea of that – in many ways this music video is a celebration of physical exercise. Just do it.”

Yet radical, Pink Colour Surgery’s work is truly accessible to those who immerse themselves in it in depth. One is unceasingly hypnotised, shaken, because its soul flirts dangerously with a furious and oppressive trance. How then the journey becomes addictive, letting yourself slide from one track to another, sometimes struck, sometimes set ablaze with an unexpected epiphany, because its light irradiates us. Live their music is an intimate, sensory experience, whose deflagration is still received long after. 

Pink Colour Surgery is produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band – composed in part by improvisations, it arrives as an act of resistance to the ambient violence. Disconcerting at first sight, this new opus operates in the dark a surgery of ethics which is fleshed out of pink for a staggering metamorphosis. Its very structure embarks us entirely on an initiatory trip full of secret corners, provided that we accept to dive into it, to plunge into it.

Already releasing two fiery albums, Silence Slowly And Madly Shines in 2017 (Alter K) and Private Meaning First in 2019 (Vicious Circle / Fatcat Records), The Psychotic Monks have never ceased to impress us with their maturity and determination to offer a singular stage and discographic presence. 

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And while we’re here, the day after the made up marketing things that is Blue Monday, soemthing you’re probably heard and seen but hey, maybe you haven’t? “New Order’s Blue Monday was released on 7 March 1983, and its cutting-edge electronic groove changed pop music forever. But what would it have sounded like if it had been made 50 years earlier? In a special film, using only instruments available in the 1930s – from the theremin and musical saw to the harmonium and prepared piano – the mysterious Orkestra Obsolete present this classic track as you’ve never heard it before”.

and YouTube just isisted we wanted to hear this next, not ‘heard it for a dozen years or more, still sounds good!