New year, new editorial bit at the top? Nah, on with the music and what we said 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 (we’ll leave all the talking to the dirTsharks). 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, starting in Oxford…

1: Sinews make a gloriously hardboiled noise, I know, I know, they’ve got this kind of brooding thing going on, they’re from Oxford, we said that already, they release their Reanimated EP on January 19th, right now you can hear two of the five tracks on their Bandcamp page, the two tracks are rather impressively strong though, heavy, slightly mean, a touch Fugazi, a bit Mclusky, got soething of thier own in there though. Sinews play a number of shows this month including a free gig at the Victoria, Dalston, Hackney, East London on Wednesday 17th January, with support from embryonic mostly instrumental math rock band Theresa Kelly and Top Shortage (who say “we are a queer post-punk band from oxford” but don’t appear to have any music anywhere on line yet. More after the show I suspect,

2: The Pheromoans – A first rather heartwarming taste of the forthcoming Wyrd Psearch album from The Pheromoans (due out at the start of March)

“The Pheromoans are tenants of an unruly domain. Over the last 18 years the group have evolved from garage rock primitivists to auteurs of their own curious sound; a frothy brew of loose electronics, refractory rock and humdrum musing. Their songs are mutable, capricious, unreliable narrations, often withholding as much as they reveal. Russell Walker’s understated vocal has always been the band’s unifying focus, it is wry, unsparing and wilfully honest. Walker’s lyrics are an observational tour de force, sometimes droll, yet often tipping over into unlikely pathos. With previous releases on Upset The Rhythm, Convulsive and Alter, 2024 will witness The Pheromoans return with lucky album number 13, entitled ‘Wyrd Psearch’ (out March 1st on Upset The Rhythm).

‘Wyrd Psearch’ was recorded in Lewes throughout 2023. This was undertaken by founding member James Tranmer, his keen instinct for how the band should sound shaping many of the creative decisions. Joined by new guitarist Henry Holmes, the five piece doubled down on a decidedly breezy, melodic approach…. more

3: Mark Trecka – A one track taste, it seems to be the thing to do now, entice, tease, give one track on a Bandcamp page and hope to hook us in, it kind of works with this one, he does have us curiously wanting more. He’s from, or at least based in Paris and we’re told that “Mark Trecka’s The Bloom of Performance was recorded over the course of a year with Sam Skarstad (Yellow Eyes) and features contributions from Martin Courtney (Real Estate), Evan Hydzik (Pillars and Tongues), Andrew Petzold-Eley (Obelisk Ruins), A-Y/dancers, and Audra Wolowiec” The Bloom of Performance is one of Trecka’s most generous projects to date so they say – well we like the one track we can hear right now, an intriguing piece of music alive with find detail and well, we await more…

4: Gibson & Toutant – “I’m excited to share that lo-fi indie roots duo Gibson & Toutant (Elephant Micah, Thee Tsunamis) have joined forces with fellow collaborators Jake Xerxes Fussell and Libby Rodenbough (Mipso) to offer “The Click.”  Their second release from their forthcoming debut album On The Green,  “The Click” is a sweet and salty ride with a deep groove that starts at a café and ends in 90s cyberspace” so said a Sleepy Cat spokesperson

We will be exploring the album this weekend, Sleepy Cat is always an interesting label, they did bring us the recent Aliee Gerrard alum – ORGAN THING: Alice Gerrard’s latest rather beautiful album, warm wise Americana. In a career spanning nearly sixty years, the 89 year old musician has known, learned from, and performed with many of the old-time and bluegrass greats…

5: Mòs Ensemble – They’re from Ghent, Belgium, they have a deliciously beautiful new single called Red Turtle….

Since their debut in 2019, mòs ensemble, another band who rather annoyingly don’t do capital letters when it comes to their name, have turned into an eight-piece band “guided by a collective vision, with a preference for areas where genres overlap or cease to matter, where rich arrangements of voices and other instruments become fully realized. The band members are active with an impressive list of bands and projects – in pop, jazz and remote areas, and relinquish this broad-mindedness with a self-evident love for adventure and exciting interaction. The result is a collective in continual transformation,maintaining a balancing act between wonder and determination….”

From what we can work out, their last album came out in 2022, there doesn’t seem to be a Bandcamp or any other kind of link for the single other than streaming sites right now. Here is that last album and here’s their website

Here’s half an hour of live footage