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 in New York with the Collapsible Shoulder Big Band

1: Chris Cochrane / Collapsible Shoulder Big Band have a live album on the way via the good people of Cuneiform Records in late March. You can hear one rather impressive track right now via Bandcamp, the rest will be along later. We’re particuarly interested to hear what they’ve done with the This Heat piece, The Fall of Saigon, that they’ve covered.

“This recording is comprised of two concerts of the band recorded live at Roulette in 2019 and 2020, with a small amount of studio work to shore things up, but the atmosphere and energy of the band playing in the venue is captured. The recording consists primarily of original compositions by Chris, and also cover tunes by Robert Pollard, Fred Frith, This Heat, and a bit of Erik Satie thrown in for good measure”.

“From 2016-2020 the Collapsible Shoulder Big Band became an annual event made up of an array of musicians based in New York, with other special guests coming through town. “I started doing this as an annual birthday concert, gathering musicians together from many projects and eras and we’d collaborate on these one-time gigs,” Cochrane says. “As the band grew more diverse in membership we began making more elaborate arrangements, and taking advantage of member’s history of improvisation, composition and vocal arrangements.” More via Bandcamp

“Many thanks for the recordings. That’s a pretty great band.” – Chris Cutler

“I am so happy to see THE REFERENCE GROUP tracks, that have been in my secret archives for years, finally available to everyone on the planet. So many of my favorite things are in these tracks! Ågren, Maksymenko, Magic Band influences, amazing drumming, amazing slide guitar. I could listen to the recordings every day and be a more merry and clever person from that listening.” – Henry Kaiser

2: Rafiq Bhatia – Each Dream, A Melting Door (Anti) – A new EP from avant-garde American musician, composer, guitarist and producer Rafiq Bhatia, five tracks, just over twenty six minutes, created in collaboration with pianist Chris Pattishall. The two improvise across the EP’s five tracks, five slow moving quietly accomplished pieces that flow rather easily yet come with a deliciously unpredictable undercurrent. It does unfurl in seamlessly enjoyable was, it does kind of feel like a short film, a somewhat sculptural, slow moving set of pieces that immediately reward and then quietly soothingly slowly reveal more if you have the patience to listen, illuminating. Each Dream, A Melting Door is Bhatia’s first solo release since co-scoring 2023’s Academy Award-winning Best Picture Everything Everywhere All At Once with his bandmates in Son Lux, where they earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations for their head-spinning score so were told although, if these are improvised pieces I’m really not sure how it can be billed as solo release? Chris Pattishall’s grand piano is very much to the foreground here, if anything it is surely his album?  Something to do with marketing it? Bandcamp / Website

3: BBBBBBB – “Japan’s BBBBBBB just finished up an insane first tour of the US, destroying every city they went to! To celebrate the historic moment, and to give new fans a chance to grab one, we’re reissuing their ‘Positive Violence’ cassette from 2023. The first run sold out almost instantly, so be sure to preorder one while you can!” so shouted our friends at Deathbomb Arc, which gives us a chance to post this slice of positive violence. Although I really don’t get all this love of cassette tape… Bandcamp

“As close to the sound of being electrocuted as possible, BBBBBBB from Okazaki, Japan recklessly shred all genres into pure energy turning them into some of the noisiest hyper-hardcore to scorch the planet. On the heels of their manic single “SHIN GOD”, BBBBBBB unleash an electronic hardcore sound of pure fury, with relentless walls of noise propelled by undercurrents of manic rhythm and panic attack level vocals. No one can stand in the way without feeling the love of their Positive Violence“.

4: Hum of the Green Star – “In the words of Sun Ra, “Space is the Place”, and in the words of William S Burroughs, “We Are Here to Go”. The group’s name was inspired by “Krtek a zelená hvězda” (The Little Mole and the Green Star), a 1969 Czechoslovakian animated film short remembered from when daytime TV was padded out with wonderful (cheaply) imported programmes from eastern Europe”, these are all important things to note while explore the second of Hum of the Green Star’s monthly singles… Bandcamp

5: The Reference Group existed for a short period in the years 2007-2008, this information comes at you today because there’s some recordings about to be released, once again via the good people of Cuneiform Records and once again in late March. “The group was formed by Ralf Nygård and Michael Maksymenko with the aim of playing their own original compositions partly from previous musical activities – but also new material. The idea was to perform only instrumental music, and the group were completed when guitarists Jimmy Ågren and Mathias Danielsson joined”.

and while we’re here and as the Collapsible Shoulder Big Band have a cover of it coming out…