Never mind the editorial bit at the top or what we said the last time, you’ve read all this already, just jump down to the music. Exact same thing again today, another five (or so) slices of musical things that can do all the talking themselves and however you slice it and of course it was the price of apples and here comes the introduction to 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 dogs out of the clouds? Is there a rhyme? Is there a reason? Was there ever a reason? What do reasons make? Five more? Snake oil? 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 damn 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 music and don’t forget whatever it was we said last time…
Here we go, in no particular order….
1: Nick Norton has announced a new album Music for Sunsets out September 15th, sometimes the simple things are the best things, this feels like a rather healthy less is more kind of thing, a touch of old school magic, a touch of delight….
“Composer and sound artist Nick Norton’s music combines vintage synth grooves, field recordings, acoustic instruments, and studio magic to create tactile sonic experiences. His debut full length solo album, Music for Sunsets (mixed by Lewis Pesacov) is evidence of this amalgamation of musical technique: an ambient electronic voyage that documents his slow recovery from and acceptance of a severe mental health diagnosis in 2020.
Music for Sunsets will be released on September 15th on People Places records (pre-order). Today Nick Norton is sharing Slow Night At The Arcade the first track to be released from the forthcoming album and its accompanying video.
On the track Nick Norton says: Slow Night at the Arcade is me trying to cultivate a vibe that I’d like to exist in most of the time. It’s mellow, but there’s cool stuff happening that you can look around at and pay attention to if that’s your thing. Also it’s got this kind of hazy neon glow. It’s interesting to me that the retro arcade sounds in it are from a recent device, a Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator PO-20 Arcade. They’re these little calculator-looking things that are like $50. The entire song is one unedited take, and it took me maybe 20 tries to nail it all the way through. That might never happen again, and I like musical things that can only happen once. When we went in to mix it we ended up using a bunch of tape delays that Lewis (Pesacov) had. A Binson Echorec and an Echoplex, I think the EP-2? I’d never played with real tape, and was instantly in love. You can pull a lever to adjust the delay speed right as key moments hit, to get this speeding up and slowing down echo effect that you have to perform in real time. It messes with your sense of space. What made it into the song is actually the first take, when I was just figuring out how to do it. So that’s very raw and human, which I think is unusual and kind of neat for electronic music made on a toy synth”.
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2: Elk City – New Jersey psychedelic art-rock collective Elk City have released Strong (You’re Not Alone), a swirling neo-folk offering “baked in cult obsessiveness”, heralding their seventh album Undertow (out September 22). More of their Jefferson Airplane flavoured warmth and maybe sounding stronger this time? Bolder maybe, a depth, making their own way a little more…
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3: Ora Cogan – And not a million miles away from Elk City, well on this particular piece of music anyway, a track called Dyed from Ora Cogan’s soon to be released new album…
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“New York, NY (July 17, 2023) – Experimental singer-songwriter Ora Cogan recently announced the Aug 25th release of her new album Formless by sharing the VHS/Super 8 video for the first single Cowgirl, a haunted acid trip of intense sorrow, deep solitude, and dark nights of the soul. Today, Cogan ponders awkward love with the release of the haunting Dyed
“I wrote ‘Dyed’ while I was reading Italo Calvino’s Difficult Loves“, says Cogan. “It’s about how strange and ridiculous romance is… how ridiculous human interaction can be. You’re dealing with people on the surface but also their imaginations, fears, dreams, and projections. We’re just a bunch of broken funhouse mirrors sometimes and that’s sort of horrifying but also kinda fun.”
Dyed is part two of a trilogy of videos by Latro Films created for Formless. The video revolves around a singular character who carries water as a symbol for the human heart and we follow her interactions with others in her world.
Formless, finds beauty, absurdity, humour, and unlikely joy in the bleakest of times. Cogan’s smoky, psychedelic approach to gothic country and hazy folk merges with post-punk, groove, psych rock, and traditional balladry.
Recorded in mostly off-the-floor takes with rhythm section David Proctor and Finn Smith on analog tape at Vancouver Island’s Risque Disque studio and co-produced by Cogan and Loving’s David Parry, the album features international guest stars including Cormac Mac Diarmada from LANKUM, who plays strings on Feel Life, and a duet with Y La Bamba on Ways of Losing.
Raised by a photographer and a singer-songwriter on the islands of Canada’s Pacific coast, where she once again resides, Cogan shaped her approach to music far from big-city scenes. Her childhood home played host to a constant stream of artists as it served as a professional recording studio. Cogan absorbed a myriad of influences from Édith Piaf, Ladino and Rumbetico to Karen Dalton, and American country blues, all feeding into her glacial and cinematic yet tinglingly intimate sound.
Formless took form in the abyss of grief and pandemic isolation. “I spent a lot of time wandering aimlessly in the woods with my dog,” said Cogan. The result is an outpouring of ruminations on awkward love, pain, internal struggles, and a fight to find ways to feel good when everything goes bad”.
For those in Canada, Cogan and her close-knit band will be performing an album release show in support of Formless at The Wise Hall in Vancouver, BC on October 25. Tickets are on sale now and available here.
And here comes the Bandcamp and website
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Now this is something rather tasty, rhythm that goes to different places, movement, movement. viral wreckage indeed, these thnigs just land in the inbox with little warning,…
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4: Aunty Rayzor – Meanwhile Hakuna Kulala, a label based in Kampala, Uganda continue to come up with musical treats. The label deals in “Club explorations from the East African and Congolese Electronic Underground and beyond”, we have featured several of their releases in recent times , this time, a new Bisola Olungbenga a.k.a Aunty Rayzor video and a first track from the album Viral Wreckage that’s due out in September
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“One of Nigeria’s most vibrant emerging artists, Rayzor is a cross-genre innovator who blends hip-hop, Afrobeat, R&B and experimental sounds into an energetic portrait of contemporary Lagos.
Olunbenga was just nine years old when she started writing music. Encouraged by her piano playing mum, she would come home from school and compete with her sister, dreaming up verses and choruses for rewards of candy. ‘Viral Wreckage’ is Olugbenga’s debut album and follows the breakout success of her viral 2021 street anthem ‘Kuku Corona’. This time she’s assembled a line-up of some of the world’s most exciting producers to help realize her vision: Congolese singer, guitarist and producer Titi Bakorta, young Ugandan producer Ill Gee, veteran Japanese innovator Scotch Rolex, São Paulo-based baile funk producer DJ Cris Fontedofunk, French beatmaker Debmaster, Nigerian singer and producer Slimcase, and Kenyan Avant pop futurist Kabeaushé
‘Stuttrap’ is the first blast of sound we hear, and Olungbenga quickly pilots us into her sonic universe, rapping assertively in Yoruba and English over Scotch Rolex’s chrome-plated trap backdrop. It’s not far removed from the producer’s work with Kenyan/Ugandan underground star MC Yallah, but Aunty Rayzor’s incendiary, tongue-twisting raps coax listeners into a musical expression that’s hard to define and only gets more expansive when we hit ‘Doko’. Featuring Slimcase, who’s collaborated with Nigerian superstars like Wizkid and Mr Eazi, this track melts together swinging West African rhythms with complex poetics from both Slimcase and Rayzor. Olungbenga slips into a different mode again on ‘Bounce’-one of the album’s most dancefloor-ready cuts-almost whispering over a corrosive neo-baile shuffle from DJ Cris Fontedofunk. São Paulo is responsible for some of the world’s most effervescent dance music right now, and with Rayzor on vocals the result is predictably explosive, making connections between vital street music from two separate continents.
Recent Nyege Nyege signing Titi Bakorta brings Olungbenga into another different zone on ‘Fall Back’, linking to vintage Afrobeat with low-slung guitar riffs that perfectly compliment Rayzor’s soaring vocals. Bakorta’s voice is the perfect foil, centring the track in traditions that stretch back through Nigerian history without sounding nostalgic. Kabeaushé hits a similarly complimentary note on ‘You not worthy of my love’, twisting Rayzor’s AutoTune-mangled rhymes into fresh-faced avant R&B that sits a few paces from the mainstream, without losing its infectious sing-along quality. And that’s the key to unravelling ‘Viral Wreckage’; Olungbenga is able to be eclectic but sharply focused, bringing in sounds from across a wide world of musical innovation without sacrificing her Nigerian identity. It’s an album that’s almost effortlessly creative, and one that comes straight from the heart of an artist who’s deserves a way larger platform”.
Here’s the Bandcamp things you’ll need…
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5: MC Yallah – And while we’re checking out things on Hakuna Kulala, here’s something rather deliciously impressive from the label that came ouy earlier this year…
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“Born Yallah Gaudencia Mbidde in Kenya and raised in Uganda, MC Yallah has been involved in East Africa’s rap scene since 1999. Alternating rhymes in Luganda, Luo, Kiswahili and English, her conscious, poetic and experimental style was slow to creep into Uganda’s mainstream. Following a brief but necessary hiatus, she returned to the stage in 2018 with a new lease of life accepting her role as a central component of the Nyege Nyege/Hakuna Kulala family.
“Yallah Beibe” is the fiery follow-up to Yallah and Berlin-based producer Debmaster’s acclaimed 2019 debut “Kubali”. After her tour plans were cut short as COVID-19 broke out in 2020, Yallah returned to Kampala and started work on her sophomore album at Nyege Nyege’s villa. The process was more complicated this time around, developing pointedly from an initial back-and-forth with Debmaster and flourishing as beats appeared from Japanese producer Scotch Rolex and Congolese club maestro Chrisman. The finished album is an international patchwork of futuristic cyber-rap experiments fastened together by Yallah’s unforgettable personality and elastic flow.
More charged than its predecessor, “Yallah Beibe” is an apt soundtrack to a challenging era. Yallah is an experienced and versatile MC and channels her layered understanding of the complicated global cultural landscape into 12 stories that skate through trap, dancehall, club and industrial styles. Her authoritative guiding force is never more evident than on ‘No One Seems To Bother’, a collaboration with Duma’s gravel-voiced singer Lord Spikeheart. Trading bars over Debmaster’s slippery, bass-heavy rhythm, Yallah and Spikeheart ink an alternative East African sonic landscape, with activated lyrics (“the world is going under, no-one seems to bother”) and rasping, death metal-inspired groans.
“Yallah Beibe” is a call to action, a loud siren that’s intended to educate the wider world of East Africa’s shrouded history and bright future. Yallah’s collaboration with rising star Rati Gan ‘Bigbung Song’ is the best evidence of this, looping Rati’s Afro-Caribbean dancefloor flex and Yallah’s politicized flow around a twisted bass-heavy beat from Chrisman, joining hands between the DRC, Uganda and the wider diaspora. Tracks like ‘Baliwa’ and the anthemic ‘HERA’ meanwhile completely center Yallah’s signature lyrical dexterity, playing her tongue twisting raps against Scotch Rolex’s pan-global foley-trap splatter. At times, the sounds feel as if they’re from their own planet entirely – a fourth world that’s rooted in collaboration rather than appropriation.
If “Kubali” re-established Yallah as a force to be reckoned with, “Yallah Beibe” cements her status as one of the world’s most exciting MCs, both on record and on the stage. There’s nobody doing it quite like her”.
Here’s the Bandcamp
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And while we’re here, let’s park some classic Webcore here, one the most important bands out there during the early days of Organ. We said goodbye to Grob yesterday. A sipme ceremony and a fine celebration – ORGAN: R.I.P Grob, a massive part of the 90’s London Underground has left us. All those gigs and bands like Gong, Fugazi, CroMags, The Orb, Discharge, Rancid and…
THE ORGAN 
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