Shall we write a new editorial? Oh the endless demand and who needs a damn editorial? No time for editorials, 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, let me circle around one more time and give you the heads up on that one..
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 where in the UK are Rattle from, does it matter that much?
1: Rattle – UK duo Rattle’s forthcoming third album Encircle will be released on Feb 28th (via Upset The Rhythm), “and sees the duo expand their unique experiments in rhythm, metre and tension”. This is a first rather impressive first fifteen minute taste… details via Bandcamp. More from us next year I imagine
2: Helen Ganya – This sounds rather heroic, it builds up in a rather subtle way and a video shot on Shot in Thailand on VHS earlier this year (so we can call it a video this time). Taken from the album Share Your Care, out 7th February 2025 on Bella Union/Whited Sepulchre.
“In the summer of 2021, Brighton-based, Scottish-Thai songwriter Helen Ganya’s grandmother passed away. The grief hit the artist hard, not only because it marked the loss of her last remaining grandparent, but also because it felt like her links to being half-Thai were disintegrating. Ganya grew up in Singapore, but spent her summers in the northeast of Thailand where her mum’s side of the family is from, visiting her grandmother. Where would all those memories go now that the person at the centre of them was gone? What was her relationship to this place without that glue? And so, in an attempt to process it all, Ganya began to write. “I got my diary and wrote every single memory of my time as a child in Thailand, spending time with her, my grandad, my aunts and cousins and everything,” she explains, “I had these snapshots of memories that I just wrote down because I just suddenly panicked: it was like, who am I, then?”
3: Compersion Quartet are Skerik, Brian Haas, James Singleton & Simon Lott and this taste, Unreliable Translator is from the album, Compersion Quartet which you can find on Royal Potato Family
“Seattle’s beloved subterranean music iconoclast Skerik has long found the city of New Orleans a balm for his inherently subversive musical instincts. Currently calling the Crescent City his second home, the saxophonist fully embraces this dichotomy between the profane and ritualistic with Compersion Quartet, for which he’s joined by pianist Brian Hass, bassist James Singleton and drummer Simon Lott. Recorded in New Orleans, the quartet’s debut collects a series of studio improvisations that are amalgamated in fits and starts of cinematic beauty, syncopated melodism and mystic sonic experimentalism.
Compersion Quartet is in many ways an outgrowth of Saucefest, the multimedia festival within a festival—founded and curated by Skerik—that happens annually on the middle Tuesday night of New Orleans Jazzfest when a disparate gathering of local and traveling musicians come together in various configurations for an evening of fearless, no-holds-barred musical collaboration.
“The history between the four of us goes way back, but this specific quartet would eventually come together through Saucefest,” explains Skerik. “I met Brian Haas in the early years of his trio Jacob Jazz Odyssey after he heard me with Critters Buggin. I used to play with Simon Lott in Malestrom Trio along with Brian Coogan. They were both part of the early Saucefest events. I started playing with James Singleton on Johnny Vidacovich gigs and in other combinations. He also did some early Saucefest performances. We share a related collective history. We all are from the same mother of music, siblings without rivalry.”
Throughout the album’s 11 tracks, Compersion Quartet explores deconstruction and rebirth, while undermining the math of music through the enigmatic human vibrations intrinsic to improvisation. Like the green lizard adorning the album’s cover art, just when the listener thinks they’ve captured the essence, its tail detaches and it escapes back into the unknown.
“To us, Compersion Quartet means to support each other and everyone on earth. Let’s leave it at that. I want there to be more mystery and less analytical talk about this music,” concludes Skerik. “There’s really no point in trying to describe the indescribable.”
4: Bambara – “What a band!! One of the best live bands I’ve seen in recent years, Bambara have gotten together with Graham from Bark Psychosis in the producer chair and made one incredible beast of a record… & now first track is here” so said Simon Raymonde over on his Bluesky feed which kind of got us curious (are you on Bluesky yet, the Organ Bluesky feed is here kind of like Twitter was before it all went wrong). Here’s what Simon is talking about, a track called Pray to Me from the upcoming album, Birthmarks, out March 14th 2025 via Bella Union and Wharf Cat (more details here or here via Bandcamp)
5: The Unthanks and a rather warm rather delightfully beautiful piece of music. Recorded live in the studio and another fine moment from The Unthanks in Winter. More about the album here – ORGAN: Five music things – The slowcore beauty of Lobby, The Unthanks announce a new album, something from Michael, Young Hunter, Milkweed have an Oto show and…
More of this next time.
Previously
THE ORGAN 
One response to “ORGAN: Five music things – Compersion Quartet, Bambara, a Fifteen minute first track from Rattle’s forthcoming album, Helen Ganya, more from The Unthanks and…”
[…] We got the first rather fine fifteen minute taste of the new album in the shape of Your Move late last year, that first taster from Nottingham duo Rattle’s forthcoming third album Encircle saw the duo […]