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Never mind the editorial bit at the top or what we said the last time or where the music coverage has been in recent weeks, everything has gone sideways here and you’ve read all this already, just jump down past this editorial bit and let the actual music do the actually talking. Exact same thing again, another five (or so) slices of musical things that can do all the talking themselves and however you like to slice it and of course it was the price of apples and here comes the intro….

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 again, in no particular order….

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1: Pound Land – now this latest release sounds like a big leap forward – “Pound Land were formed in 2020 by vocalist/lyricist Adam Stone (Future Bomb/sometime collaborator with Dead Sea Apes) and multi-instrumentalist Nick Harris (Reverends of Destruction/ ex-Dead Sea Apes) – an absurdist post-industrial ‘kitchen-sink’ punk for a dogshit-dull Britain, set in both the recent past and the imagined near-future.” Well those are the facts or the background, not that anyone wants to read the facts anymore. The excellently named Pound Land are from Manchester, they just let loose a rather heavy, rather weighted, rather foreboding album, they released it just in time, just before yesterday’s news runs out of whatever, something like that anyway, Gawd they’re bleak, a barrel of laughs this is not and as abstracted acedemic concepts go this is actually eccellent. Something about the new Babylon, just off junction five on the M1 where the owls make their homes in the abandoned fridges and the worry of the mistakes they’re making. Did he say owls? I’d like to think he did – the abstracted ramifications of owls living in fridges and the disgarded medival equipment. This is different. They’re gloriously bleak, properly real, nihilistic, actually Pound Land are, as grim as this is, sounding brilliant (is there a touch of Slab in there, all that get back to your cities stuff) . that sax is filthy, the whole thing is dirty, it sounds like the best thing they’ve done yet and didn’t anybody tell yer, they took away your future? Carry on, carry on…

“Violence is the new album from Pound Land – eight filthy tracks of vitriolic desperation recorded by the core duo of Nick Harris and Adam Stone and featuring a number of guest musicians, including Steve Watson of Iron Monkey, Stephen Bradbury (aka Black Tempest) and solo artist Adam Petiss. Violence, the band’s sixth album, often veers towards a nineties alt-metal/industrial sound, along with the usual smatterings of customary Pound Land abstraction. In addition, this new album continues to aggressively push lyrical themes relating to the same old shit that seems to be getting worse: corporate hegemony, business culture, mainstream media influence, automation, class polarisation and economic austerity…. ”

Violence is bleak bleak bleak, Violence is also brilliant, Find the just released album on Bandcamp

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3: Bones of Minerva have just announced they are to Join Svalbard for German and French Tour Dates which kind of gives us an excuse to feature the band here on these fractured pages seeing as we damn well didn’t last year when their rather fine album Embers came out. Do they have a bit of Huge Baby about them?

Following their UK tour, including a performance at Bristol’s esteemed ArcTanGent festival, Madrid-based post-rock/metal band Bones of Minerva will be joining the British post-metal outfit Svalbard on their upcoming October tour. The Spanish quartet will be supporting Svalbard during their shows in Germany and France, making their debut appearances in both countries.

Bones of Minerva in Germany and France in October looks like this;15th Cologne, DE @Helios 37, 16th Berlin, DE @Urban Spree, 17th Dresden, DE @Chemiefabrik, 18th Neunkirchen, DE @Strummsche Reithalle, 19th Paris, FR @Backstage By The Mill

Since the release of Embers last year, Bones of Minerva have been on a rather busy ride. In June 2023, they performed at Azkena Rock in the Basque Country, sharing the stage with legendary acts like Melvins and Iggy Pop. And recently, after completing their August UK tour successfully, they played an intense gig with fellow Spanish grungy noise rockers Rosy Finch. Additionally, they are lined up for a series of other shows across Europe. There’s a couple of videos here on this page and the latest album, released back in September last year is right there to play and can be bought via Bandcamp

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3; Airbridge – we did already feature the new album Airbridge album, this track is worthy of repeat though. More about the band and thier soon to be released new abum via this link – The delight of Airbridge, the cult 80’s prog band are back with another new album and a rather forward looking first taste…

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4: KC Rae (AKA Now, Now’s KC Dalager) will release her debut solo album Think I’m Gonna Die on November 10th, 2023 – “The news will surely add to anticipation among KC’s fans, who’ve been eagerly following along this summer as she quietly began releasing singles (Blockbuster and Bathroom Floor) as a solo artist. The songs mark KC’s first new output since the 2018 release of her band Now, Now’s critically-acclaimed  album, Saved“

“‘Parking Lot’ is about the feeling of being held captive by someone else’s rage,” KC explains. “Then the song concludes with the realization that I can take my power back.” The track is aptly placed as the final song on an album which, throughout, details the cycle of oppression, surrender, reflection, rebirth and return. “I’m becoming cognizant of a greater process in motion, that we are always going to land where we were meant to land,” she muses, “and for me, that tends to be back where I started, but with a new and deeper awareness.”

Find the track here

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5: Rifle are from London, they have a new EP out towards the end of October, a debut, they deal out a kind of heard it all a million times before punk rock thing, they sound like Gog Magog actually, that slightly sneer of ’77,  no one will have much of a clue who the Gogs were now, I guess we need a new band like this every three or four years, new blood and all that, we can all be wobbling around Rebellion on our walking sticks hanging on to what’s left of our mohawks, You might say of Rifle “Rowdy, musically bankrupt, furious,…”, they certainly sound committed, the real deal, a bit more than just another fashion parade down the Old Blue Last if you know what I mean. Rifle sound like it matters to them and for that alone they should matter to you. they’re a blast of slightly state fresh air, they sound just right on great Saturday morning, it’ll probably all end in some kind of car crash six months down the line but for now it sounds like a ride to jump on…   

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And while we’re here, the Man from Uncle, it didn;t get much cooler back there… R.I.P David McCallum