So many albums landing here at the moment, it really is impossible to keep up, by the time you’ve anywhere near properly digested one, another dozen have landed and the wood can’t be seen for the trees full of vultures and that one gets left over there or the page is left open and suddenly the tab had been open for weeks alongside dozens of other tabs and more turn up and “did you have any thoughts of that one I sent you three days ago and why haven’t you reviewed this one yet?!” and where were we and where is the time to go back to the albums you love and I didn’t get where I am today by reviewing hundreds of albums (and they never send you an e.mail that says thanks for the review let me share the link right away, only e.mails that demand to know why you haven’t reviewed it yet) and what with the shape of things to come and well there only so many loaves of bread and there is paint to throw and albums albums albums, here’s a few that stood out from the others and you need a new song and…
Sol Sol – Almost All Things Considered (Sail Cabin Records) – Now this is very much a Jazz thing, not a Jazz flavoured thing, this is no holds barred full on no messing Jazz. I can bluff about Jazz, I can tell you I love the wild Jazz that Fire! make, I can go over to the corner of the studio and pull Ornette Coleman or John Coltrane records or any number of Jazz Rock albums off the shelf, I can talk of improv, of no wave Jazz attacks from thrilliant outfits like those glorious Flying Luttenbachers, I can talk of that excellent new Earth Ball album and looking forward to their shows at Cafe Oto next week but I can’t really write about a full on Jazz album like this with any real authority. I can tell you pieces like First Day Of Spring are beautifully fluid, that there’s some delicious passages, details, and right now the eleven minute album opener Elena is honking and brewing up and peculating and boiling in a rather tasty way. The tracks here are written by saxophonist Elin Forkelid (Fire! Orchestra, Vilhelm Bromander’s Unfolding Orchestra, Anna Högberg Attack…) and David Stackenäs (Labfield, Ballrogg…), they talk of influences from Carla Bley and Joni Mitchell to Ornette Coleman and Jimi Hendrix. Making up the quartet are drummer Anna Lund (Frida Hyvönen, Ane Brun…) and bassist Mauritz Agnas (Agnas Bros). I can tell you Almost All Things Considered is a fine album, that it is very much a jazz thing, that title track Almost All Things Considered itself is a bit or a heavy duty rock out, that Can I Have The Bill, Please? is as soft and All Things Considered is hard, did the the bill really need to be paid? That was rather polite of Sol Sol, they surely could have just made a run for door? Got a little more muscular about it? First Days Of Spring is a beautiful piece, it has a delicious hook and some gorgeous bass lines, but I can’t really tell you with any real authority where it all sits in terms of the great scheme of jazz things, all I can really say is I rather like (most of) it and that the title track itself is a bruised delight…
Sam Lee – Songdreaming (Cooking Vinyl) – Sam Lee released his fourth studio album back in March, yes the tab has been open that long – ‘songdreaming’ is how it is, no capital letter, not around here mate, they’ll just chalk it up to yet another damn Organ typo. Another sublime album, a warm album, an album and an artist rooted in traditional folk song and for a while and a really enjoyable album that maybe grows a little bit one paced and well, how can I politely put it? As rich as it is, as beautiful as the detail is, as heartfelt and crafted as it is, an album that maybe grows just a little bit dreary after a while.
Corker Conboy – In Light of That Learnt Later (Bad Info) – A reissued album, along with a new 12″ single, both to be released in late May. The instrumental album dates from the turn of the century, 2003, it sounds lie a lot of quietly absorbing things from around that time and many many politely glowing things that have come along since. Echoes of bands or people Tortoise, it isn’t just another one, there are different colours here, it is rather pastel coloured, maybe more pastoral than pastel? Delicate, almost folky, they are Post-rock/electronic duo Corker Conboy aka musician and composer Adrian Corker and recording artist and composer Paul Conboy and well once again it is all very nice, it is all delicately strong and very easy on the ear and nice and is nice enough? I guess nice is more than enough for most people. The 12″ is the opening track from the album along with a remix on the other side. It is mostly polite easy on the ear minimalist post rock instrumental politeness that isn’t as obvious as most post rock tends to be… Tediously boring artwork though.
Greg Saunier – We Sang, Therefore We Were (Joyful Noise) – Well you really don’t need to double check, you immediately know even if you don’t know his name, you know that Greg Saunier is yer man from Deerhoof. The whole album sounds like Deerhoof without ever sounding like Deerhoof, actually some of it sounds very (very) much like Deerhoof and around these parts we’re more than fine with that, Deerhoof are brilliant, they have been one of the most consistently rewarding bands of this century. This album is full or treats, wrong to pick out highlights, it is all good, but yeah, Yeah You, Person is full of those hooks, those details, that familiar delight, while Don’t Design Yourself This Way has this brilliant bit of euphoria in the middle of the two minutes and 43 seconds it takes – that big riff that sounds like it might have been borrowed from some big rock monster from the 70s before being given the treatment, the magic, that euphoric bit in the middle is brilliant. Furrowed Sugarloaf sounds like a delightful sugary pop song with a country rock undercurrent, all of these things always sounding like they’ve been made by no one else but from the guy from Deerhoof and are those bird tweets on the album or are they outside in the yard? There’s a bit in Grow Like a Plant that’s just pure joy and that short short bit of a jagged guitar solo is surely from the Tim Smith school of undoing things. Actually the whole album is a joy, an experimental delight, the whole album is brilliant feast of left-field experimental pop music, and yes it does go off and things now and again but never ever obviously. Not for Mating, Not for Pleasure, Not for Territory is as brilliant as the brilliant title suggests it will be, it is all brilliant. Brilliant! And then when you think you have it all pegged and worked out and that it all sounds like another brilliant Deerhoof album without ever being another Deerhoof album, when you think you have it all worked out, that you know where’s things are going, when you think you know, then there’s the brilliant brilliant curveball halfway through the closing six and a bit minute track that is Playing Tunes of Victory on the Instruments of Our Defeat, let the track unfold, let it fool you for two and a half minutes, i don’t want to spoil it, go find out for yourselves, brilliant. The whole album is just a brilliantly uplifting delight, both boxy and harsh as they like to say, brilliant!
Morgan Garrett – Purity (Orange Milk records) – Now we get thousands (no, really, thousands) of things that walk in here claiming to be experimental, most of the time there’s no hint of anything that get’s anywhere near being challengingly experimental. This is experimental, this is extreme, this is barbed, this is a challenge, the songs, and yes they are songs, are right on the edge of not being songs, some of it sounds like The Central Scrutinizer has escaped from Joe’s Garage, some of it sounds like he’s sick of blaming his innocence on hurt and feeling down..
“Morgan Garrett has long been and continues to be a stalwart presence in independent American experimental music. One of those souls reared in the borderlands where rural Appalachia begins to melt into the Midwest, where the long shadows of DuPont Chemical and Perdue Pharma lay over thousands of lives, his artistic voice is rooted in performing and hosting hundreds of underground shows at what the coastal trainees of various art institutions often view as a distant cultural out-road. Performing solo as well as in a variety of musical outfits such as SSS, Scream Culture, The Car?, Frankie Teardrop and SIGN-OFF. His solo music, primarily self-released up until 2023’s Extreme Fantasy released on Orange Milk Records – still emerges from an approach saturated in relentless experimentation”.
This a extreme, most of the time this is bleak, most of the time very bleak, intensely so, jagged, rusty, it isn’t for a sunny Sunday afternoon, today is a very sunny Sunday here in East London), actually it is sound rather good on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon in East London. Some of it gets very metallic, a metallic KO, almost formed riffs that sound like they’d like to be on some raw and blistered extreme metal album, elsewhere it is rather inward looking, dark, disturbing, minimal, almost but not quite falling apart..
“Purity is a response to finding a neighbour’s dead body. While processing this trauma and his own relationship with suicidal ideation, Morgan Garrett created an album of dissonance and fragile voice, oscillating between dense electric guitars and anxiety ridden whispers. This mesh of avant-garde, traditional “Rock” and hi-fidelity production is a new assertion in underground music. An Appalachian Ohioan, Garrett weaves in and out of rustbelt drug use narratives before arriving at sobriety. Purity is Morgan’s post-punk, avant-garde past, coalesced with production by Alex Nagle, witch-house hip hop aesthetics, and an ASMR Tomomi Adachi–if his vocal pieces were hijacked by Disturbed using only the wrong notes”.
And as dark as it is, as abrasive as it is, as brooding, as hard-boiled and difficult, as much as it almost keels over and comes to a complete stop more than once, there’s something rewarding in this, some cathartic, something that makes you want to stop and listen and not dismiss what’s going on, something that makes you want to stand and listen, to pay proper attention. I rather like it.
And while we’re here listening to albums a classic from 1987 and the early days of Organ, Webcore did help fuel us…
THE ORGAN 