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 music that have passed our way recently and however you like to slice it and of course it was the price of oranges and here comes the editorial. 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?

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 Chicago…

1: Horsegirl – Switch Over is taken from the Chicago band’s new album Phonetics On and On which in turn is out February 14, 2025 on Matador Records…

“There is something about the bitter cold in Chicago that unites the city in January— the two weeks in 2024 that Horsegirl spent recording Phonetics On and On were some of the coldest days in Chicago that year. With the heating off in The Loft to avoid sound interference, the band was bundled in multiple sweaters and sitting on their hands between takes. Working closely with musician/producer Cate Le Bon (Deerhunter, Kurt Vile, Wilco) Horsegirl found focus and intimacy in the studio that can only arise when it’s simply too cold to step outside. Abandoning the heavy saturation and character studies of Versions of Modern Performance, Le Bon leads them into new, bright, clear, sonic territories that highlight the inventive nature of these new songs….” I guess we’ll do some more exploring later (don’t think nuch of the album cover)

2: Violeta García is a cellist, composer and curator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, based in Bern, Switzerland. Working across a broad spectrum of artforms including improvisation, contemporary classical and electronic music, she is set to release her new album In/Out on the 7th March via Bongo Joe. Here’s a first rather warm taste, more from us soon I expect…

3: Goat + MC Yallah – It is the MC Yallah side of things that caught the eye and demanded the ear (as well as had us wondering where Aunty Rayzor has got to?). I mean Goat are okay, their label aren’t that bothered what we say, but Goat can be rather rewarding, the press release will have it that “Goat have long been mapping the shape of fuzzed ‘70s sounds culled from far-flung corners of the world, splicing tape-market aesthetics and poly-rhythmic pounce to a deep bench of Swedish psychedelics”, yeah, Goat do their thing well enough, but it is the MC Yallah fingerprints all over this new single (due out in Feb) that has us hitting the play button before all the other play buttons demanding out attention this Tuesday morning…

And this does leave us with an excuse to revisit this piice of graceful beauty

“Removing crate digging from the equation and tapping directly into the marrow, the band offers up a new song that underscores bars from Kenyan-born, Ugandan-based rapper MC Yallah. Created in their Gothenburg studio and volleyed back and forth between Yallah and the mixing desk at Lightship 95 Studios, the cut brings together the band’s frayed sonics and Yallah’s infectious, acrobatic pacing with the sonic sculpting of London producer Giles Barrett….”  I mean anything from MC Yallah and pretty much everything on Hakuna Kulala is worth checking out

No we can’t leave without sharing this again

Change the channel, it goes, it goes, it goes….

4: Clipping – new Clipping, something from the album, Dead Channel Sky, out March 14th, 2025 on Sub Pop Records, here’s some links and there’s a couple more tracks on Bandcamp, do we need to say anything more? Maybe not, but someone on the Bandcamp page is going on about Jethro Tull, something to do with their “mix of hellified gangster shit and progressive compositions, I once jokingly called Clipping “Deathrow Tull.” Well, it’s not a joke anymore. While their last few projects have been record-long concepts like the classic prog rock of old, Dead Channel Sky is mixtape-like, a carefully curated collection of songs in which every track is a love letter to a possible present. Like a mashup of distinct elements, the overall concept is there, but the result is brief glimpses into a world rather than an overview of it. It sounds crisp and classic at the same time. When something strikes us as retrospective and futuristic at the same time, it’s a reminder of how slipshod our present moment truly is”.

Weren’t Jethro Tull always up to their neck or at least knee deep in gangsta shit back there? How neat are things flowing with the latest Five Music Things page?

5: Jethro Tull have something new, if it is really still Jethro Tull? Well it kind of sounds like Jethro Tull, I guess anything with Ian Anderson’s voice and lyrical phrasing along with that flute is going to sound soemthing like Jethro Tull and well it is hard to not like it. It is a polite version of the band, it does kind of feel like Mr Anderson and a bunch of yes men, it doesn’t bite like classic Tull often did but hey, You Tube decided it was what I wanted to listen to straight after some new here for fifteen megabites band some tedious music PR company were hyping at us and we do count our lives in seconds past and bring on the decent voices all unfit to frolic, and well – “after two consecutive new Jethro Tull album releases in 2022 and 2023 (that apparently passed us by or did we listen and leave them alone and sit on the fence ignoring the view whilst reaching for the glories of Thick as a Brick?), another collection – Curious Ruminant – is unleashed on the 7th March 2025. Consisting of nine tracks varying in length from two and half minutes to almost seventeen minutes, this is an album of mostly full band music. Amongst the musicians featured are former keyboardist Andrew Giddings and drummer James Duncan, along with the current band members David Goodier, John O’Hara, Scott Hammond and, making his recording debut with the band, guitarist Jack Clark”. I have no idea who any of those people are, this new track feels comfortable enough, it feels like a well worn in pair of shoes you’re not quite ready to give up on, it feels like Jethro Tull, it feels harmlessly good or maybe it just feels like Mr Anderson and company are harming no one as they make something that’s probably a little more than an A.I version of the one cutting edge band, I like it far more than the here for fifteen megabites band some tedious music PR company were pushing at us on the cold January Monday morning, it isn’t Locomotive Breath but hey, in the shuffling madness and with no way to slow down and well besides the drummer who really does desperately need to put a bit more life into is it.  Neat enough video as well… Here come the links should you feel you need them. As the band the PR company were pushing at us, well you know what the policy on coverage is around here…