Shall we write a new editorial? Oh the endless demand and who needs a damn editorial? We were busy with Frieze Week, we’re still busy with the catch up, no time for editorial, 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 lemons and here comes the intro, Don’t be flippant she said, how could it ever be flippant? I can’t remember why she said that now, in one ear, out the other, we have a bad attitude here apparently, no respect for those who work in the music industry, well no poop Sherlock, have you only just worked that one out? We’ve been showing (and getting) zero respect since the last century, zero flips given…
Five? There’s something rather compelling about five. Cross-pollination? Five more? 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 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, skip this bit, 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 what’s Wordsworth? Just the basic facts and links and those sounds (and visuals), that’s surely all you need from us?
Here we go, five more slices of music that have recently come our way, this time we start somewhere in, well just where are Flock from? London
1: Flock – “Flock is a collaboration between five leading musicians from London’s open-minded jazz and experimental scenes: Bex Burch, Sarathy Korwar, Danalogue, Al MacSween and Tamar Osborn”. The track up there is a taste of their new album, Flock II, an album that comes out later month, the music does the talking, I don’t need to, you don’t want me to, play it yourself, it sounds a joyful as it is clever, there’s more of it on Bandcamp
Flock’s Danalogue explains: “Meet your own shadow is about delving into parts of yourself that you don’t necessarily want to look at, parts we don’t want to accept about ourselves, the darker aspects. Personally this was one of my favourite improvisations from our recording session, born from a series of compositional games, where we each got to lead a section. It has a sort of raw urgency and darkness that I tend to lean towards, so I took back to my studio later to give it some extra synths and production, to try and take it all the way, very happy the rest of Flock were okay with how it ended up!”
2: Unstable Shapes are from Minneapolis, Minnesota, a relatively new noisy post-whatever kind of band who sound like they might just be heading in the right direction, here’s what they said…
“Hi, We’re a Minneapolis-based band influenced by noisy 90’s alternative, post-punk, and post-hardcore artists like Unwound, Drive Like Jehu, Fugazi, Sonic Youth, Lungfish, and Les Savy Fav. We can make a bit of racket but always maintain a heavy emphasis on keeping melody parallel to the noise. We’re releasing our third single, Feral Joy on Friday, November 1st, 2024″
Here’s a previous release, available via Bandcamp while we await the feral joy of the next one….
3: CocoRosie – Always good to have new CocoRosie popart. Today sister duo CocoRosie share their new single Least I Have You and are excited to announce they’re newly signed to the rather excellent label that is Joyful Noise Recordings (Deerhoof, ONEIDA, Kishi Bashi, WHY?, Surfer Blood, etc).
“Least I Have You is the hardest-earned and purest distillation of the CocoRosie project yet. Currently, in the studio, they are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year and beginning a new era”.
“The entire CocoRosie project—which has, above all else, been a conduit for sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady’s connection—has been leading up to these words: “if no one in the world understands, at least I have you”. They are the chorus of their latest song “Least I Have You”, as well as the spiritual reward for Sierra and Bianca’s twenty-year-long stint of carrying one another’s pain and transmuting it into trashy treasure. In another artist’s mouth they might scan as trite, but in the sisters’ they are revelatory. CocoRosie has a unique talent for turning the kitsch primordial, the platitudinous, into fresh truths. And no one has earned those nakedly sentimental words as much as the Casady sisters.
The song’s musical arc mirrors the sisters’ relationship: it begins combatively, with the sound of gun-toting guitar squalls and beats like Street Fighter punches, before leveling out into tentative euphoria, cautiously crawling towards the ecstatic union of that chorus. “Up until this song, we used to take our pain out on each other,” says Sierra. “Until we allowed our sisterhood to become the antidote to the damage that came in our younger years.” The song, Bianca adds, came “just in a simple way.” “It’s vulnerable. It’s cute. It’s cliche. It’s all these things I don’t think we would have been able to approach in the past.”
4: Kim Deal is still sounding as cool as Kim Deal, A Good Time Pushed is taken from Nobody Loves You More, Kim Deal’s debut solo album, out 22nd November via 4AD. Here come the links. The single sounds like classic Kim Deal to us.
There’s more to be heard on Bandcamp Crystal Breath is wonderful…
5: Spirit in the Room – the Los Angeles-based “eclectic rock conjurors” will release their Passengers EP on October 25th through Housecore Records. This a taste of the rather warm rather spiritual rather dark six tracker and “If you ever wondered what goes on in the head of a film noir hitman, horror novel asylum inmate, or a golden age silver screen villain, it might sound something like Spirit in the Room. The vision of Louisiana-born and Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Dennis R. Sanders.
“Show Me You is more or less about an infatuation with the idea of an individual” offers Sanders. “Who we think they are. Who they think they are. And vice versa. I’ve met people in real time that I’ve found to be quite interesting only to become friends on social media and find them incredibly unattractive and insufferably typical. As much as we like to think that it’s all fake, people really show you who they are on social media. You just have to know better.” Here’s the Bandcamp page with the details
6: Tomo Katsurada – Hey, let’s have six, we need to catch up, we’ve been at Frieze all week. Tomo Katsurada (Kikagaku Moyo) has a debut mini-album Dream of the Egg out on November 15th 2024. “In the meantime, please enjoy the opening track, Moshimo, out today :)” – Here’s more about it from earlier – ORGAN THING: Kikagaku Moyo frontman Tomo Katsurada has just launched a rather illuminating solo project. Complementing the music is a beautifully-designed picture book illustrated by the acclaimed Japanese artist Shoko Otake. Hear the rather calming Zen Bunglow here…
okay, seven then, this could last forever, or at least all night
7: The Jackets – “Swiss garage legends The Jackets have a new album coming soon, their first in five years. I hope you enjoy it and feel it worthy of a review, news item or feature. The first video Ours Forever was released today”. Not sure what day that was, we are catching up here and I didn’t know there were any Swiss garage rock legends, rather like the song though. More here should you feel the need for more…
THE ORGAN 