We are kind of doing some end of year cleaning up and sorting out before we pull down the shutters on the year and throw open next year’s doors and windows and before we srart to think about those end of year list (no jumping the gun here, the year ain’t over until the end of December, there’s still new albums being released).

JAAW Supercluster (Svart) – JAAW are a post-industrial supergroup featuring Andy Cairns (Therapy?), Jason Stoll (Mugstar, KLÄMP, Sex Swing), Wayne Adams (Death Pedals, Big Lad, Petbrick) and Adam Betts (Three Trapped Tigers, Goldie, Squarepusher). “JAAW glories in big riffs and massive hooks, while also pushing the boundaries of what that even means thanks to its uncompromising strangeness”.

 And over here in the Organ bunker we are still engaged in a clearing the decks and catching up with things operation, dealing with the things that got lost in the studio chaos and the cans of paint and broken bits of Moog and the millions of old demo tapes, there’s boxes and boxes of old tapes in here, that first tape Andy Cairns sent us before Therapy? came along is in there somewhere. JAAW’s album fell through the holes in here back when it came out in back in May “In the back of JAAW’s minds are the 1990s, an era when the experimental heaviness of acts like Ministry and Godflesh could find surprisingly large audiences. They also draw on the sonic ground that’s been broken since. The disorientating ferocity of Brazil’s DEAFKIDS. The gaseous, shapeshifted vocals on Burial’s records. The freakout-laden noise-rock of Lightning Bolt. Far from emulating the industrial metal masters of the past, JAAW will help shake lesser rock bands out of their generic complacency. With scant regard for typical verse/chorus/verse formulas, JAAW’s song structures are closer to the nonlinear approach of body-shaking dance music.. Recorded intensely in a matter of days at Wayne’s Bear Bites Horse studio in London, the result is one of the most distinctive and exciting records that will be released this year, so heavy in textures that repeat listens will prove endlessly rewarding.”

And well yes, it easy to go with a lot of that and it does bite down instantly although it does feel like most of it may be about that instant hit, that dark adrenaline rush, it is one of those albums to fire up and play very loudly for a bit and then stash away until you need that volume and that rush again. It does sound like it is something build on the foundations laid by Godflesh and their kin like back there. At times foreboding, at times all consuming, it feels big  

“Experimenting with squealing effects pedals selected from the studio’s racks, Cairns was reminded of his love for the feedback-drenched records of Helios Creed and Nuklear Blast Suntan. Having grown up listening to Therapy?, Adams loved throwing HM-2 pedals at Cairns and hearing his riffs through Entombed-style distortion. Bassist Stoll liked the idea of “Celtic Frost playing something by NEU!” This turned into the album’s bludgeoning centrepiece, Bring Home The Motherlode, Barry. As co-vocalists, Adams and Cairns wrote lyrics informed by the hallucinatory horror movies of Panos Cosmatos and the unforgettable set-pieces from Ari Aster’s Midsommar”.

Is there some Into The Pandemonium Frostiness sprinkled in there? Is it even possible to make something that sounds like Celtic Frost playing something by NEU!? Surely that would be beyond the known laws of musical physics? Damn good attempt though, have they achieved something more like The Frost messing with the power of killing Joke maybe?  And is Hellbent on Happiness a little more 1000 Homo DJ flavoured?  Whatever it is they’ve cooked up, they have the right ingredients in there, what ewe have here is a delicious set of rather heavy cakes or as they put it, some kind of greyscale psychedelic revolution, although it sounds more like dark reds and deep burnt browns and purples to these ears. Whatever it is this is another album that really deserves to be mentioned before the year gets put to bed. Damn fine industrially fried take on Bjork’s Army of Me to close things as well, worth the price of admission for that alone. (sw)

Bandcamp

Aunty Rayzor – Viral Wreckage (Hakuna Kulala) – Meanwhile Hakuna Kulala, a label based in Kampala, Uganda continued to come up with musical treats in 2023. The label deals in “Club explorations from the East African and Congolese Electronic Underground and beyond”, we featured several of their releases this year, in particular, new tracks from the then forthcoming Bisola Olungbenga a.k.a Aunty Rayzor album Viral Wreckage that did eventually come out in September of this year. We never did get around to reviewing the whole thing though, we really need to befor the year ends (and that list is made)  

Viral Wreckage is alive with challenge, with musical freshness, Rayzor is a cross-genre innovator who blends hip-hop, Afrobeat, R&B and experimental sounds with a whole load of flavouring  all brought together on this fine fine album to form a thrilling portrait of contemporary Lagos. An album alive with forward-looking energy, with attitude, with a knowing swagger, 

“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”

From the off and Stuttrap this is an album that grabs you, it feels exciting, it feels fresh, the tastes we had up front of Viral Wreckage had us anticipating something special, we haven’t been let down, from the first sounds we hear to that last closing second this is an album that demands to pay it full attention, an album that makes you smile, and album that makes you move. That first track finds her rapping rather assertively in what I read is Yoruba and English over Scotch Rolex’s trap backdrop. Apparently it’s not far removed from the producer’s work with excellent Kenyan/Ugandan underground star MC Yallah (who also released a rather fine album this year). hey look, there’s so much here, some of it really is incendiary, all of it is right on your toes and letting you know just who’s in control here, she’s not messing! There’s swinging West African rhythms, there’s complex word play, clever counterbalance, so much colour in those street music flavours that just keep coming at us along with the dance moves. It isn’t relentless, there are mood swings, there is light and shade, there is soul, there are moments where she steps back a little. Hell, I can’t bluff it here. there’s all kinds of things that I really don’t know enough about to talk about here with any kind of authority and yeah, I could go google some more and bluff my way through a review but I’m not going to bullshit here, this sounds exciting, it sounds fresh, it sounds like blends of many exciting things from many places I’ve never been to, it sounds exciting, it sounds new, it sounds now, it sounds vital and whatever it is Viral Wreckage is one of the standout albums of 2023. Love it!    (sw) 

Bandcamp

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2oTW2MQSGCc%3Fsi%3Dx75a1La5OVJB8XAa

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=zbh9gh7B0Us%3Fsi%3DnreVs5dayCxChFD9

And….

Algiers – Shook (Matador) – And still on the end of year deck clearing dotting the eyes and crossing the cups of tea and catching up o the things we really should have mentioned already and need to before the year ends, Algiers came out with an other impressively soul-drenched album back there, album that we really should have covered back when 2023’s daffodils were just thing about saying hello. Shock is the band’s fourth album and “Algiers are a band of musicians born in Atlanta, Georgia, the rotten hub of the Ol’ American South, where W.E.B. Dubois once saw a riot goin’ on, and where the hell and highwater swirls ‘round to the knees”.

The band consists of multi-instrumentalists Franklin James Fisher, Ryan Mahan, Lee Tesche, and Matt Tong. They pull together a sound built of a divergent number of musical (and nonmusical) influences, they blend a post-punk soul  with hints of hip-hop, Southern Gothic literature, and what they say is the concept of the Other. Their sound has been described as dystopian soul, which it is said might just be something to do with their somber moods and that rich afrofolk inspired vocal approach that comes with a heavy emphasis on atonal textures

So the dystopian soul outfit (for that is very much what they are) pulled together an impressive cast list of musician friends (the names are on the cover art jsut down there) and made a rather low-slung rather compelling soul-drenched fourth album that really does feel very very much right here and now, right there in the mess of it all. Shock is a powerful album, an album with a lot to say, a  running commentary on (American) life, a spiritual rooted in a time and place, a kind of What’s Going On for right now. Seventeen tracks long and not a hint of a filler, an album alive with just the right sort of heart and soul and something we should have mentioned back there at the start of the year. (sw)

Bandcamp / website