Never mind nothing, on with the music and what we said last time or last week or last year, you’ve read all this already, never mind the damn editorial, never mind the biscuits or the dogfish, just jump down past this editorial, who needs an editorial? Jump past and let the actual music do the actual walking and the actual 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, Don’t be flippant she said, how could it ever be flippant?
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 Kampala rather than Glasgow this time…
1: Masaka Masaka – A more than welcome first taste of the new album Barely Making Much, due out on the ever excellent ever rewarding Hakuna Kulala label (home of the briliiant Aunty Rayzor, her latest was one of the vital albums of last year, as well as MC Yallah and a whole load more) on March 22nd. The label, based in Kampala, Uganda, is really coming up with the goods right now, everything they do is worth exploring…
“Growing up in Uganda, multi-disciplinary artist Ian Nnyanzi (aka Masaka Masaka) always knew he wanted to make music, he just needed enough time and breathing room to figure out what exactly his contribution had to be. He cut his teeth fashioning rudimentary hip-hop beats at a friend’s studio on Makindye, a hill that overlooks Kampala’s balmy Murchison Bay, and quickly realized that he wanted more. “Out here, everyone seems okay to listen to the same thing,” he explains, and Nnyanzi wasn’t interested in following the crowd. During regular commutes across the city, his mind was being cracked open by sounds from Dean Blunt, Slauson Malone, Arca, Jpegmafia and Vegyn; he knew he needed to show Kampala something similarly distinct.
‘Barely Making Much’ is a sprawling, ambitious album that’s as sculptural as it is explorative, reaching through genre membranes and refusing to stay still for a second. Masaka Masaka wrote it over a fragmented two year period at Nyege Nyege’s Kampala studio, and tapped into a jumble of interconnected sounds, from jungle and experimental hip-hop to techno and smoked-out, dubwise ambient music. He was particularly absorbed by the loose, open-minded production style he heard from Manchester’s Sockethead, who makes an appearance on ‘Before I go’, a frayed tapestry of stuttering snares and floury breaks that billows into jazzy euphoria.
On ‘cut right through’, Masaka Masaka bends fictile piano hits through a lattice of Afro-Brazilian-style vocal chops, trap hi-hat rolls and serrated, synthesized bass thumps. Airy and energetic, the track makes an unexpected left turn when the hats transform into insectoid rasps that cushion a woody hand drum patter. Elsewhere, Nnyanzi isn’t afraid to go straight for the jugular: on ‘elv9t’ he sets atmospheric, back room pads against booming, soundsystem-ready Southern rap subs, and on the kinetic ‘let me out’, he remolds hard techno in his image, knocking the 4/4 kick off grid to perplex seasoned dancers, and hammering the nail in further with swirling, psychedelic synth fuzz.
Even when Masaka Masaka’s working in a more contemplative mode – like on the hypnotic title track and the fragile cinematic finale ‘it’s okay to dance alone’ – he maintains the momentum, swirling otherworldly vocal loops and erratic percussion into pools of melted ambience. ‘Barely Making Much’ is a charming, hyperactive debut that wears its influences on its sleeve, playing like a lysergic, literate mixtape packed with layers and subtle gestures. Cool-headed and mysterious, it exposes the twilit side of the Kampala underground”.
2: Gentle Giant have just let loose another video and another taste of their recently reissued 1977 album The Missing Piece, an album reviewed on these pages a couple of weeks back, all the links and details are there with that review – ORGAN THING: Gentle Giant’s 1977 album The Missing Piece remixed, reissued and reviewed…
3: Parsnip – Green shoots have burst forth from Parsnip, or so it says here. Right now we can hear just one track from the Australian group’s new album Behold. An album recorded across three sessions over the last three years, Behold is said to be “a testament to Parsnip at their most creative, catchy and collaborative. This album showcases the multi-talents of all four members, with spirited performances adding dazzle to the thirteen tracks. Paris Richens lets the bass playfully roam. Carolyn Hawkins tumbles feeling into the drum rumble. Stella Rennex’s guitar soars alongside her saxophone work, whilst a sprightly keyboard is tenderly attended by Rebecca Liston. Everyone sings amidst this lush canopy”.
“Patience, environmental cues and internal signals are integral for a garden to flourish. The same can be said of the conditions necessary for ‘Behold’ to emerge. It is an album gleeful in reassessment, changed priorities and anticipation. The roots are deeply anchored to mystery, drinking up a hidden wonderment that lies within. ‘Monument’ is a twist of melody and mania, “For what am I? But a channel of light” they attest amongst the whoops and hollers. ‘The Babble’ sounds like Ray Davies playing Wordle for enlightenment. In fact most of these songs are pointing the way towards growth and understanding. ‘Turn to Love’ is mesmeric and timeless, thoroughly serene and… more“. The album is released on April 26th, 2024
3: VR Sex – Somewhere in the massive backlog of albums waiting for coverage (and the thousands of other things waiting for attention) there’s a really really good new album from VR Sex waiting in line,te album is due out in early March, Another track from the album has just been let loose, here it is, we’ll be along with more before the release, here’s what we previously said and a touch of background if you can’t wait until then, we got places to be today… ORGAN THING: VR Sex have a new whatever it is? Jagged, edgy, urgent, the track is ‘Real Doll Time’ and does some of that sound a little bit cardiac arresting? Neat tune, neat neat neat…
4: DIIV – Brown Paper Bag is from the upcoming DIIV album, Frog In Boiling Water, not sure we like that idea, do like this though, it kind of feels liek watching Snub TV in a shared house somewhere in the early 90s before heading off for the late night early morning offering at Feat First over at Camden Palace. Yeah, we’ve heard it all before, Chapterhouse, Slowdive and the rest, but it is rather graceful and the early Spring sunshine is helping this morning. The piece of music has grace, it movesd beautifully, all the time in the world t onot really go anywhere, I like that. They’re from Brooklyn, New York, on the strength of this one track they’re kind of sounding like they should be from Oxford or somwwhere English and dreamy like that this time around…
“DIIV are Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, Ben Newman, and Zachary Cole Smith, they’ve just announced their fourth album, Frog in Boiling Water. Produced by Chris Coady and set for release on May 24th via Fantasy Records, Frog In Boiling Water was a four-year process that nearly broke the band before the album was completed. With an aim to push their sound, make a record that challenged them, and treat the band as a democracy for the first time, DIIV began an ambitious journey, both individually and collectively. This journey left their relationships with one another fraying, with the many complex dynamics of family, friendship and finances entangled, coupled with suspicions, resentments, bruised egos, and anxious questions. They ultimately found their way through, and the result is ten songs that mine a new lyrical and musical depth, those two halves mirroring one another inside a reflective and immersive whole. It is a mesmeric testament to enduring, to envisioning anything else on the other side while you remain here, in the slowly heating water of right now”. These are of course the words on the press release and not are, we’ve only heard the one track, we can’t comment on anything more than that that one taste…
Frog in Boiling Water, both the title and the themes of the record, reference The Boiling Frog in Daniel Quinn’s The Story of B. The band explains, “If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.”
“We understand the metaphor to be one about a slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal. That’s the boiling water and we are the frogs. The album is more or less a collection of snapshots from various angles of our modern condition which we think highlights what this collapse looks like and, more particularly, what it feels like.”
Alongside the announcement of Frog in Boiling Water, DIIV shares the album’s lead single Brown Paper Bag” today. Brown Paper Bag funnels dejection and angst into an exquisite intersection of dream-pop and post-rock, a wispy tune stretching from a steely foundation.
Live dates:
5th March – TivoliVredenburg – Utrecht, Netherlands
6th March – Ancienne Belgique – Brussels, Belgium
7th March – Mojo Club – Hamburg, Germany
8th March – Huxley’s Neue Welt – Berlin, Germany
9th March – Post Tenebras Rock (PTR) – L’Usine – Geneva, Switzerland
10th March – Le Trianon – Paris, France
12th March – O2 Kentish Town Forum – London
13th March – New Century – Manchester
14th March – Vicar Street – Dublin
5: The Bug – This is the fifth and final instalment in The Bug’s intensely beautiful heavyweight series of ‘Machine’ EPs. The five tracks here continue in terms of that intensely physical intent of the earlier releases, more of those powerfully thick textures and those heavy heavy pressures that push in on you…
PREVIOUSLY….
And while we’re here, here’s The Ebb covering Hawkwind…
During the 2020 Coronavirus lockdown, Ebb had a bit of fun at rehearsal with bass synths and melotron leading to an impromptu cover of Hawkwind’s ‘The Demented Man’ from the 1975 ‘Warrior on the Edge of Time’ album. Recorded and filmed in one take with NO overdubs.
THE ORGAN 