Albums, a couple more and some thoughts on the whole process and the reasons why and how it works and well, why should we? Well because there’s a new Warmduscher album out and because that recently released Scions album, when you block out the rest of it and just focus on the music, when you do that then the debut album from Canada’s Scions isn’t bad either. We’re coming up to Organ’s 38th birthday, we probably should have taken it out to the back of the barn and put an end to it all long ago, we have tried to more than once, the damn thing won’t just go away in a dignified way. What we don’t need are e.mail lectures from PR people who on one hand are constantly asking for our support and on the other hand oh never mind, here’s a couple more albums worth checking out when you have a moment..

Scions – To Cry Out In The Wilderness (Idée Fixe Records) – Scions, so they or their people like to tell us, are “an innovative experimental ensemble”. They’re a relatively new group featuring people from the minimalist chamber-jazz quartet New Hermitage, the drone-hymn duo Joyful Joyful, and the acclaimed producer and composer Michael Cloud Duguay. They are rather good, we have said so several times already as those of you paying attention to our pages or airwaves and playlists will have maybe noted, we have rather thanklessly featured them a number of times on this pages ahead of the release of this debut album, we probably gave them their first radio play over here, and yeah, sometimes you do feel like you’re rudely being treated as nothing more than the unpaid arm of the marketing department by the label’s appointed PR company as they take it all for granted and give you little more than a Bandcamp link and expect an album review in return as they “loook for support on this one”, a Bandcamp link that you can listen to three times before the “The time has come to open thy heart/wallet” message comes up and Bandcamp won’t let you listen any more unless you buy the damn album and you think to yourself why the hell should I? You point this out to the PR Guy who’s on your back and “circling around again” for a review and in return he fires an e.mail lecture at you telling you how out of order you are. If we do post a review, no doubt said PR man is going to take the credit when he sends his end of campaign report and his invoice to the band’s record label. We don’t like being taken for granted, we’re kind of use to it and well what with the price of paint these days why should we bother? Why should we have to buy the music you’re asking us to play or reviews? Yeah I know, all very hissy pissy of us and shut up and get on with the damn review and look at the size of our egos! I’d say we’ve earned it ten times over by now and when we go down we go down swinging or something like that. Never had had much time for the ways of the music industry, don’t be badgering us for support if all you’re going to send us is a link to Bandcamp page that can only be listened to three times before the door is closed and the demand for money is made. 

Scions meanwhile, and at this point we’ll point out again that someone else had that band name first, how hard is it to do a search before you settle on a name for your new band or experimental ensemble or whatever this Canadian Scions are? This Scions have just released their debut album, it is at times a rather beautiful, rather hopeful, rather uplifting album, it is maybe a little less forward looking in terms of musical adventure than that first original taste of Fight Song had suggested it might be, do rather like the heroic defiance of it all, the epic ambition, the widescreen warmth. Apparently their collaboration began at the Sappyfest music festival in Sackville, New Brunswick, in August 2022. During this event, New Hermitage and Joyful Joyful connected for the first time and teamed up with Duguay for a spontaneous improvisational performance based on his song writing. “The enthusiastic response, capped by a standing ovation, solidified the ensemble’s decision to pursue the project further, with Duguay deftly shifting from front-person to producer and musical director”.

Scions are good, their drones are warm, inviting, their mix of ambient flavours, hints of prog, their epic dare we say expansive post-rock moments, the things that just might be of an improvisational nature, their at times minimalist passages and the overall almost avant-garde feel to their music is uplifting, positive, welcome, welcoming. Speaking on the narrative of To Cry Out In The Wilderness vocalist and lyricist Cormac Culkeen said: “When we came together to make this body of work, we started from a narrative seed; a post-apocalyptic humanity relearning and recreating itself, after a total ecological collapse.” Speaking on Fight Song they add, “Fight Song became the song we thought the last of us might need. It is sung for an imagined last stand. It is a rallying cry to wholeheartedly fight a losing battle. So it is for us now, in this time of great dismay and unease. The axe must be disobeyed.”  and if it is a last fight, a last stand, whatever that last stand might be, then it is a positively defiant one, and if is a warning then well, it probably is too late by now but hey, when we/they go down, we all go down swinging.  This is a fine album, at times a beautiful album, it is, whatever they might be saying, a hopeful album, it is an album to listen to in one go rather than just odd tracks here and there and quite a shame we didn’t have any more of it to play on the radio but hey, your lecturing man at the PR company thinks we should buy the music he demands we support and review for him like it never is a two way thing and yes that was, as we already said a bit of a hissy pissy review (or whatever you want to call it) but we long since past the point of giving even a hint of a shit about the music industry and those who ride on the various swings and roundabouts. Scions have released a rather fine debut album, it maybe isn’t quite as experimental and envelope pushing as early tastes suggested in might be, it is rather good though, the Bandcamp is right there…   

Bandcamp

Warmduscher  – Too Cold To Hold (Strap Originals) – According to the flyposters on the street outside the Organ bunker over here, there’s a new Warmduscher album out so put on your air lock, breathe in, play, repeat, overtime, sometime, something straight from world war nine and snake oil dripping from that smile or something like that. They do somehow make you smile while you work your three jobs and get high just to stay alive and is as good as that Midnight Dipper? They are of course brilliant live, one of the best live bands out there, they drip with attitude when you catch them live, live they are the world’s rocking horse, here in a recorded state they’re a little more subtle, a little more refined and maybe not quite so electric and on your toes, still good though, hang on though, hang on, give it time, this review is just warming up, more after the video interuption…

You know the story, you know who they are, if not you can look it up, they’ve been around for something like ten years now, Craig Higgins (Clams Baker Jr.), Benjamin Romans-Hopcraft (Mr. Salt Fingers Lovecraft), Adam J. Harmer (Quicksand), Quinn Whalley (The Witherer), Marley Mackey (Three Piece aka the Worm), Bleu Ottis (Bleucifer)  and whoever else is in the room at any given time, this time Irvine Welsh, Lianne La Havas, Janet Planet, Jeshi and CouCou Chloe to name but a few. They kind of play by their own rules, they kind of don’t stick to their own rules that may or may not revolve around cooler-than-you take on repetitively positive polyrhythmic grooves, a touch of streetwise jazz, gqom an “alluring South African take on house music” so we’re told, afrobeat flavours to you and me and none of the bluffing even if it does all come with a good heart…. more under the video..

He’s got a good heart, shame about, well no shame about anything, no need to worry about anything here, funk, jazz, hip-hop, low slung groove, rock that doesn’t need to rock in any kind of conventional rock kind of way and here comes the start of forever, not slowing down, not yet, one day they might, but this is all coming together now, the album I mean (or maybe the review?). I mean we can’t expect the live electricity, this recorded state is a different thing but give it a couple of goes, let it settle, let it flow and the London gang might just have made their best album yet. Some kind of lounge rock swagger but not that obvious and nowhere near that easy to nail down and that was lazy of me, that won’t do, scrub that, lazy writing, maybe a little older and a tiny bit wiser? Maybe? Them, not me, they’re still as cool as flip but there’s a little more now, still serving it up like a seven day Sunday, eclectic, poetic, all the right weeds growing in the garden. Not sure if we need Irvine Walsh’s two minute spoken word bit at the front end of it all but that’s what the fast forward button is for when you’re not in the mood for it and split that smile and do that dance, get yourself some new shoes, don’t be waiting outside, get yourself in for this one. And be warned, Pure At The Heart is a real grower, the whole thing is, pure indeed, Too Cold To Hold takes a little time to warm up but hey, once it does, it really really (really) does, cool as, damn fine album, probably their best so far….   

More here or here or the last time we encountered them – ORGAN THING: Are Black Midi still undefeated? Did Warmduscher take their crown? How were Be Your Own Pet at All Points East? HotWax, The Lazy Eyes? Another day at that big big East London festival in Victoria Park…

And we’ll probably do it all again tomorrow because, well just because…