Four more albums as the cherry picking goes on (and on and on), this is a non-stop operation and there is no time for an editorial at the top of the page, we have places to be, paint to throw, holes to dig, more music to listen to. Last Friday, an ordinary day around here, saw 176 pieces of music submitted by bands, labels and their PR people. We do listen to everything, we do cherry pick though, and actually, three out of four of these passed our way on Bluesky and curiousity took us to them…

Bunsenburner – Reverie – (Bensnburner records) – Bunserburner, great name for a rather bold instrumental guitar-based band who are slightly too colourful to just be called a Metal band. I mean it is at times a rather metal flavoured thing but it is far far more than that, there’s adventure, colour, feeling, they’re not just banging out cold-hearted riffs like so many do (and thankfully not a hint of that dreadful tech.metal guitar wankery that blights so much). I mean some of it is gloriously Metallic in an imaginative way, pieces like Toro, but don’t dismiss it as just that, there’s hints of lots of things, post rock, prog, free jazz, avant rock and yes at times extreme metal (never too extreme) and things like Trigger are almost early Metallica (or should we say Diamond Head?) with a healthy touch of Voivod thrown in. Hang on, Trigger has gone a bit King Crimson shaped now and, no, they’re not going to be pigeonholed. Reverie is an album loaded with life, with variety, and variety is the spice of life, we need spice, we need variety. This is spicy, this has bite, the music is (almost) as good as that excellent album cover (that brilliant cover really did make me want to like it, that cover made me want to go find out who they were). Beautifully reflective closing track called Waltz, Alone, don’t just dip a toe into the start of this album, Bunserburner really do have something here, they’re not just churning it out. Instrumental post rock or instrumental metal, however experimental, tends to bore me, musos bore me, this album never does. This is really is guitar-driver post rock music as an art, art and heart. Reverie has heart, and yes Bunserburner do challenge (they challenge themselves as much as us), yes they do bite when they need to, yes it it is indeed a masterful blend of raw creativity, genre-defying soundscapes, it does have an emotional depth. The fact that it was recorded live over four days at Huji Maja Studios in the band’s home of Freiburg, Germany, might explain a lot of the heart to be found on an album that probably shouldn’t be as good as it is…   

Bandcamp / Facebook

And here comes some more Earthball….

Thresher/Earth Ball – Thresher/Earth Ball Split (OwnSound) – What we have here is a split album, a tape release, a whole outpouring of “spontaneous composition from Owen Sound’s Thresher on Side A, and Nanaimo BC’s Earthball on Side B. Dig in, and it will dig you out”. Two Canadian outfits then, two rather well matched outfits and a release from OwnSound who in turn claim to be a “rural Ontario Soundwave Collective, DIY Label, kitchen sink of live recordings, jams, solo works etc. curated for release. Home for Improvised experimental works”. Now if you’ve been paying attention you know Earthball were exciting us throughout last year, that album, those gigs, that one at Cafe Oto…

Thresher are heavy, if it is improv, and it sounds like it is, it is well formed, almost structured improv. We’re talking intense gloriously listenable art of noise, we’re talking light and shade, we’re talking a six piece attack that isn’t that far away from the in-flight beauty of Earth Ball. And I like everything about Earthball, I like the way their music looks, the way they paint it, the way their paint sounds, I like their tension, their attitude, their shapes, their boots and their art and intensity of their performances, their commitment to art, to their art, their commitment to my eyes and ears, the places they take me again and again without me ever having to leave my own studio, the marks they make me make on canvas, and the ride that this particular twenty two minute piece of music is taking me on (yes I am tempted to take it to that Arnold Circus bandstand just to sit there and play it loudly for that man who leaned out of his window in appreciation when they played live there last Summer). I love the way Earthball get on a roll and just take you with then, the way it breathes, the breath it takes to listen to them properly, the way they hold you. And Thresher, although I have never had the pleasure of seeing Thresher live, are not a million miles away from Earth Ball, far enough away to have their own elements, their own textures, are those melodies? I like Thresher’s texture, their undercurrents, their feedback, their details, their side roads, the way they build it and then build it some more, te way that voice comes in somewhere in the middle of it now and again. This is an excellent tape album, an excellent double header, a game of two fine halves. The Earthball bit is just one piece, twenty two minutes, the Thresher side is four extracts, that together combined make for around the same twenty two minutes on intensity that Earth Ball got…

Bandcamp

Previous Earth Ball coverage on these pages…

ORGAN: Our best 43 albums of another very musically busy 2024. Who did we rate? The Flying Luttenbachers, Extra life, Earth Ball, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Gazelle Twin, English Teacher, Slift, Uniform…

ORGAN THING: Earth Ball and Chris Corsano kick off a tour at Cafe Oto, London in impressive style – that was intense, that was good, that was avant jazz no wave noise intense, that was serious commitment…

ORGAN THING: Earth Ball’s new album, what can be said about something like this? This being exceptionally intense challengingly rewarding improvisational avant-psychedelic noise from…

The Exu – The Exu (Discus Music) – Don’t ask me about all that Jazz stuff mate, apparently this lot are “a UK-based Anglo, Celtic, Scandi collaboration for fans of Acoustic Unity Trio, Fly Trio, and The Thing”. Their debut album just came out this week, this week being the last week in January. Now I do like The Thing, they really are a thing. The Exu are apparently named after a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting and inspired by the artist’s multi-faceted stylistic approach, but then I might like to point out that Basquiat’s painting was, at times, rather like the paintings (as well as the music) of Miles Davis, no one ever mentions that Basquiat/Davis connection and well, maybe we’re coming full circle? Says here that “known for its raw, expressive, and dynamic qualities, blending street art with neo-expressionism to create bold, thought-provoking work. The Exu make layered, intense, creative and beautiful, thought provoking, genre fluid improvised music”. Really not sure about the street art bit, Basquiat wasn’t really a street artist though, not really, yes he did do things on the street, yes he came from the street, but no, this doesn’t sound like street art, it is painterly though (I might like to paint with them) and really I know jazz-all about Jazz, I’m almost like one of those people who tell me they don’t get art but they know what they like. I like Jazz, I get Jazz, I don’t know enough about Jazz to write Jazz reviews with any kind of authority. I can tell you I like the way this breathes, the space it allows itself, they way it all comes together and that they clearly know when less is more. 

Says here that “the trio brazenly draw their musical influences from the worlds of free jazz, grunge, death metal, hip hop, bebop and experimental music” and that Kane says “we are the sum of our record collections, the films we have seen, the books we have read. It all goes into the mix to make our music” – isn’t that every band ever though? I can’t hear an inch of grunge or death metal or for that matter hip hop in here (now I can write with authority about grunge or death metal or grunge flavoured death metal far more than I can write about Jazz), This really is Jazz, Jazz and Jazz again, there’s not a hint of it ever being within a country mile of anything anywhere near grunge flavoured and they’re about as death metal influenced as a Bon Jovi power ballad! It is good Jazz though. They are James Mainwaring – saxophones, Dave Kane – double bass, Emil Karlsen – drums. it is really good jazz, don’t ask me how original or different it is, it kind of feels like a lot of jazz I might have heard before, but then again, The Field Next To The Road is a field I don’t think I’ve been in before 

– “Kane and Mainwaring share the compositional duties while young Norwegian drummer Emil Karlsen brings versatile, intricate textures and groove. Mainwaring (of Mercury Prize-nominated Roller Trio) blends fiery and sensitive saxophone approaches with playful edge, while double bassist Dave Kane ignites each performance with cathartic, heartfelt energy that lingers long after the final note” –  

Yep, this is Jazz, the good sort, the maple kind and the more you listen to it the more their colours come out and quietly grab you. It is painterly, they’ve got great brush movement, this is good Jazz.  

Bandcamp / discus-music.org

And….

1: Scary Hours Can’t Contend – What we have here is a blisteringly healthy set of politically charged sometimes introspective hardcore metal-edged punk rock slices of what probably is some kind of goodness from New Jersey. Brutal stuff, hitting all the right spots in the right way while never really stepping too far away from the blueprint, what more needs to be said? Fire it up… Bandcamp

and some things we pointed phones at…

And a guerilla gig at Arnold Circus, London 31st May 2024 – This is a short taste of what was a last minute late afternoon performance mostly to random passing people at the end of a UK tour before they flew home to Canada. Shot on my phone at 6pm on a Friday evening… ORGAN THING: What’s this? Really, Earth Ball? Avant jazz-flavoured no-wave improv noise experiments in the bandstand at East London’s Arnold Circus late on a Friday afternoon? Is this really going to happen?

And if you do so the Spotify thing, here’s the still evolving January playlist, we’ll start building the February one any moment now….