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Never mind the editorial bit at the top or what we said yesterday, exact same thing today. Another five slices of music things and however you slice it and of course it was the Pixies and here comes the introduction that heralds the latest Five Music Things feature thing. 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 pigeons out of the clouds? Is there a rhyme? Is there a reason? Was there ever a reason? What do reasons make? Five more? Snake foil? 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? What’s Wordsworth? Just facts and links and sounds then. Here you go, play the music, grab your five, eat your greens, go eat some art, go eat some fresh flowers and don’t forget whatever it was we said last time…

Did we really just a get an e.mail telling us about a new Eater single? Oh dear, is nothing past it?

1: Es – Swallowed Whole is taken from Es’ new Ep entitled Fantasy, out on Upset The Rhythm this April. The London band’s video was stylishly directed and edited by Maria Cecilia Tedemalm, these things need to be mentioned, filmed by Leigh Arthur

Here’s the Es Bandcamp for more

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2: Mark Barrott – Now this is rather refined, rather beautiful, peacefully blissful, perfectly so, a track from a new album duw out in April, we don’t need to say that much about these things do we? You know we’re picky about who we feature on there pages, the music itself should do all the talking…

Acclaimed composer, producer and electronic musician Mark Barrott has a new album out this April via Reflections. Today he shares the latest single ‘Icarus’, a piece blends elements of jazz and improvisation resulting in a deeply poignant piece of music while there is a melancholy in its simplicity.

“Barrott’s musical direction for the album and the resulting eight tracks is a journey through the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations of traditional and contemporary Japanese culture with a focus on atmosphere and melody and sits in a space between Ólfaur Arnalds, Auntie Flo and Nils Frahm.

Towards the end of 2019, he had been working so relentlessly as a record producer for artists such as South African DJ Themba and the late Virgil Abloh, that he developed Repetitive Strain Injury, and was forced to take time off, and it was during this down-time he received an email from a director asking him to write the score for his new documentary, ‘Jōhatsu… the art of Evaporation’. ‘Jōhatsu’ refers to people in Japan who purposely vanish from their established lives without a trace. This phenomenon can be seen all over the world, such as the United States, the UK, and Germany. However, it is likely more prevalent in Japan given certain cultural factors.

There is a general perception in Western countries that we have more missing persons in Japan than in the rest of the world, thanks to the media coverage about Japan in the West, but Japan has become widely known for the excessive number of people who have vanished – reportedly 100,000 a year. They are often driven by shame and hopelessness, leaving behind lost jobs, disappointed families, and mounting debts and it’s been there for centuries, since the Samurai and Bushido. If you lose your job in the UK, you might avoid going to the pub for a month, but in Japan, you may well want to disappear. Some take their own lives, while others decide to simply… evaporate. Jōhatsu refers to these people who decide to purposely disappear, leaving their lives they knew behind without a trace. Some of these people go through the process of paying a company for a totally new identity and life. Those who do it will disappear permanently, moving to another part of the country or the world. ‘Jōhatsu… the art of Evaporation’, shadowed a Japanese man as he went through this exact process, paying a contractor to help him vanish, moving from central Kyoto to Scandinavia.

An artist that creatively speaking, never stops moving, Barrott’s musical career has taken many forms. From Future Loop Foundation, the alias he used to create and perform ambient drum and bass from the mid-90s, to his Sketches from an Island albums released under his own name, and as founder of the highly influential International Feel label that spearheaded the bespoke vinyl movement of the 2010’s and brought DJ Harvey out of studio retirement, Barrott has spent close to four decades exploring new sonic territory and pushing the boundaries of various genres, and is considered a pivotal figure in the revival of the Balearic music scene of the last decade”.

Album details / Reflections Records

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3: Spirit Award are from Seattle, Washington, do rather like that (Hawk)throb of Guilt and Shame, do like the slight feeling of menace, before the melody kicks in, is it melody, don’t ask me, I did like that first big riff and I do like the way al lthese parts are put together, the sum of the whole and proof in the eating of the pudding, here’s the Bandcamp, one day you’ll say thanks for all this, one day, maybe not today, today it all feels like a rather thankless task…

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4: Me Lost Me – Eye Witness is are rather beautiful track taken from Me Lost Me‘s forthcoming album RPG, out July 7th through Upset The Rhythm. The video by Joshua Roland, the colour is pleasing, the warmth is inviting, the detail a delight, delight sounds twee, didn’t mean to be twee, beguiling was probably the word i wanted. “Led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent who takes influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music, the project has transformed since 2017 from a solo endeavor to an expanded group; regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope”

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5: Single Mothers – never really liked the name of this Canadian “punk rock outfit” (they said punk rock, we didn’t, punk rock was always about flying in the face of things like convention, this does feel like conventional corporate North American “punk rock”, I do rather like this particular song, their people have tried ot get our attention several times now, they have a new album called Roy out in April, sometimes I feel like we’re little more than aprt of the marketing plan and well nothing worse than hippies walking around with flowers in their hair and diving in to their air conditioned pools and blah blah (as the Oozes would say). I don’t know, we’ll probably have forgtten it in five minutes but for now the song is hitting some kind of spot, what a sad dumb game…

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“Dine Alone Records and Canadian punks Single Mothers are pleased to announce the Friday, April 28 release of the band’s new album, Roy. Written over the course of a week during a particularly challenging time for frontman  and Single Mothers’ only permanent member Drew Thomson, Roy is a complete anomaly not only within the music scene but within the band’s own catalog. It’s a far cry from the scathing hardcore rippers of their beloved 2014 release, Negative Qualities, and it bears little resemblance to the more mellowed post-punk sounds that populated 2022’s Everything You Need. Instead, Roy dabbles a bit in Eighties New Wave and a bit in tripped-out indie-rock”. is this a band with an identity crisis?

And while we’re here….

Dragged Up – And while we’re here, well, while we’re late to the party, something to do with only just seeing the conspiracy sprawelled on a brick wall down the hall, Dragged Up are from Glasgow, this is their rather raw rather brooding beautifully dark album 2020 album, find it on Bandcamp They are Chas, Eva, Lisa, Simon are Stephan

“Great new garage rock formation, who set the bar infinitely high with their first album 9.1/10” said Reverb Is For Lovers, don’t us, we never did the giving art a mark out of ten thing we do like thier fuzz though, good job they started following us on the Organ Twitter thing (that Elon is busy destroying) really or we might never have heard them

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Here’s some more Es from a couple of years ago, from their debut album, also Upset The Rhythm, find the links with the new trac kat the top of the page, Es are good, Es are good…

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