Never mind the editorial bit at the top or what we said the last time or last year, you’ve read all this already, just jump down past this editorial and let the actual music do the actually walking and the talking. Exact same thing again, another five (or so) slices of musical things that have passed our way recently 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 rabbits 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, same as last time, in no particular order….

1: Slift – We are still clearing up after last year, we are starting to think about new things, dip into the musical things that are starting to land here like this nine minute slice from Slift. Seems righ that the musical year should start in France. I’m not sure if I’d call them psychedelic, if they are then they’re on the brooding side, the darker side, the metallic side. is this a (slightly epic) taste of the first really significant album of 2024?   

 “On the 19th of January, French psychedelic rock outfit Slift will release their Sub Pop debut, ‘ILION’, on CD/LP/DSP. Today, following the previously released singles “Ilion” and “Nimh,” comes a third and final pre-release single and official video by Guthio and Alexis Regidor with visuals by Dimitri Thouzery for the album’s centrepiece, “Weavers’ Weft.”
 
“The band shares this about the song: “‘Weavers’ Weft’ is the song that opens the album’s second half. There was a tipping point in the narrative at the end of the first half of the album. The second half of the record is no longer situated in the linear flow of time that serves as a backdrop for many stories. From ‘Weavers’ Weft’ onwards, time goes both into the past and into the future. The piece talks about weavers of the fabric of time, entities who continually create space-times, each containing its share of universes. Everything that exists is written there, and it is possible to travel between frames. Everything is cyclical and infinite. To illustrate this (or maybe it’s the other way around?), we wanted something monolithic and timeless. It is as if this song has been sung for millennia (time goes back to the past!). The heavier parts are inspired by bands like Part Chimp and Gnod.”

Bandcamp / website / Album details

Do like that this epic progrisivness from Slift is coming out on Sub Pop of all labels, I bet that boils piss with some of those sad old Melody Maker NME types who kept putting the knife in back there eh Mr T?

SLIFT live dates:
Fri. Feb. 23 – Brighton, UK – Chalk
Sat. Feb. 24 – Manchester, UK – Gorilla
Sun. Feb. 25 – Dublin, IE –  Whelan’s
Mon. Feb. 27 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
Wed. Feb. 28 – London, UK – Electric Ballroom

2: Imelda Marcos – Right now It sounds like a squeaky shed door in a tornado, a big door mind you, a hefty heavy door, a door that doesn’t know if it wants to be open or shut, and now  Imelda Marcos sound like a rather regimented wasp in a jam jar, a very mathematical wasp and a four track fifteen minute positively repetitive set of musical equations from the Chicago-based instrumental band. I guess if you must call it something then you’d call it relentless math rock with more shoes than anyone could possible need all being worn at the same time… Find it on Bandcamp     

3: Hyper Gal ahve a video, this is good news, they’re about to launch their album, more here – ORGAN THING: Hyper Gal have four of their rather colourful, rather challenging, rather noisy paintings up on line now. They sound thrilling, they sound exciting, they sound like 2024 already and we still have four days before we get to 2024…

4: Civic – Taken By Force (ATO) – Sometimes they sound like The Ruts, sometimes they sound like Magazine, right now they sound like Stiff Little Fingers, are they from 77, 78 or 1979, where ever the Brighton band are from they do their chosen thing very very (very) well indeed, they sdound proper, proper songs and well we probably should have said so back in February whe nthe album came out but hey, we can#t be everywhere, who can? Thank the Dirtsharks for this one, better late than never.

5: Grieving - Another band who sound like a million bands we’ve heard over the last gawd knows how many years, they do that early emo DC Hardcore thing very well indeed. You’re right, they’re not exactly bringing anything new to the already rather full cooking pot,but hey, we need bands to pick it up and run with it all, to maybe evolve as they find their feet? This in Grieving’s first shot of an already rather battered and bruised 2024, a new track released today along with news of a new album, a debut album…

“Grieving are a band from Cambridge whose music is not as immediately morbid as their name might suggest. With a nod towards the needling DC hardcore of classic Dischord, early emo and to anthemic late 90’s and early 00’s indie-rock and punk, their debut EP, released pre-pandemic, saw support from the likes of Stereogum and blah blah blah….”

That, for those of you not tuning in from the UK, that is Cambridge over here in England, they could e from any of the Cambridges anywhere in the world, it is a very North American sound.

“After an acclaimed 7” split in 2021 on Venn Records with Johnny Foreigner side project Yr Poetry, Other Half and Yarraman, the band have announced their debut album “Everything Goes Right, All At Once”, the title a positive play on a quote from The Room where – instead – all at once, everything goes wrong.

The eleven song album lands on March 15th on By The Time It Gets Dark and was recorded in part by Matty Moon (Lonely The Brave, Spielbergs) locally at Half Ton Studios and with Bob Cooper (The Orielles, Nai Harvest, Self Defense Family) at his Crooked Rain Studios in Leeds….”

The press release goes on to give us all the hype on how great the album is, we’ll be the judge of that, or maybe we won’t, we’ll see if any of it hints at a finger print or a band with a little bit more identity, so far so good, we’ll wait for more…

The band have shared this rather healthy new single, “Tarpaulin”, a song that bassist Jack Hurst attributes to: “personally approaching a sense of self-doubt, and accepting that certainty in life is rarely exactly that.”

Bandcamp / previously on Bandcamp / Facebook

And okay, a brief look back towards Civic, and hello darkness my old friend, no time for the sound of slilence, on we go, 2024… Although if you did miss our best of 2023 radio show on London Arts radio station Resonance 104.4fm, here it is, this is how we entered the new year, listen via this link - ORGAN: The New Years Eve Organ radio show on Resonance FM, the playlist, the links and the details and if you missed it then listen back to the show here…

And there is the albums of 2023 list to explore, we did actually wait until the year was actually over… ORGAN: Our best 43 albums of a very musically busy 2023. Who did we rate?

And we are off with 2024 playlists now…