Shall we write a new editorial? Who needs a damn editorial let alone a new one? 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 apples and here comes the editorial and smoking ain’t cool, it never was, it doesn’t make you look cool in your music video, it just makes you look like a sucker…

Five? There’s something rather compelling about five. Cross-pollination? Five more? Is there another way? A better way? A cure for pulling flying swordfish out of the clouds? Is there a rhyme? Is there a reason? Was there ever a reason? What do reasons make? Five more? Cake oil? Everything must go somewhere 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, we never should have done 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 with something from Paris…

1: Lovers – Lettres d’amour is the first album from Lovers and this rather impressive, rather colourful experimental piece, Could I Expect Love No Matter What, is an early taste on the album from the Parisian duo formed by Linda Olah (vocals/electronics) and Giani Caserotto (guitar/fx). “They play electroacoustic music which elegantly maneuvers between several different musical genres: Improvisation, classical music, jazz, and dreamy, gauzey, shoegazey pop”.

Linda Olah: After no less than nine years of work our duo (with giani caserotto) are finally releasing our debute-album Lettres d’amour. Awaiting the release in September we’ll share a couple of singles to get you all hooked and aboard on this maiden voyage with us!!  This one lives in the space between hope and doubt — a question we might all carry in quiet moments.We’ve been playing this song live since the early days, and it’s been part of our story for years. The duo began in 2009, and this album has quietly been in the making since 2016. Every note carries a bit of that history.”   The new album Lettres d’amour is released on CD, vinyl and digitally, 12th September, on Thanatosis Produktions, these first tastes are rather intriguing 

“Born in Stockholm, Linda Oláh began singing at a very young age in musicals. A multifaceted musician, she shapes and transforms her voice using its entire spectra; screams, breaths, vocal crackles, classical and jazz techniques. During her career she has been brought to explore a wide range of different aesthetics, performing compositions by Moondog and Kraftwerk with Cabaret Contemporain (FR), singing 50s jazz-standards with the Umlaut Big Band (FR), and interpreting Fausto Romitelli’s Index of Metals together with the ensemble Miroirs Étendus (FR). She has also been a steady member of the Orchestre National de Jazz.”

“Guitarist, composer, and improviser Giani Caserotto works on the relationship between composition and improvisation, classical and popular music. As a guitarist, he seeks to push the limits of the instrument, whether electric or acoustic. Inspired by electronic music, he transposes the sound creation processes of synthesisers and plug-ins into the practice of his instrument. As a composer, he has written music for films (Soleil battant), choreographic pieces (Arthur Perole), and multimedia installations (Zeitlinie). His piece Cardinales for amplified string quartet and spatiality, commissioned by the Quatuor Impact, was premiered in November 2019 at Théâtre de Vanves. He is a member of Cabaret Contemporain, an acoustic techno group,and the ensembles Le Balcon (contemporary music), Onceim (improvised music), and Théo Ceccaldi Freaks (jazz)”. 

The second track that can be heard (on Bandcamp) from the album, a track called Mundane Thing backs up the intrigue, we await more…

2: Jasss – And another early taste, this time and early taste of what sounds like it might be a rather intriguing new album from Berlin’s Jasss

“Eager Buyers is an observation of longing, of memory, of attempted connection, of lost innocence, and irreconcilable dreams. It’s the sound of broken promises for a bright future, where rose-tinted glasses have lost their clarity, dirtied with disaffection over time. Spanish-born, Berlin-based artist Jasss, presents her third LP, Eager Buyers. It’s the inaugural release on her own new platform called AWOS, which also encompasses musical, AV and art collaborations, live events, and a radio show.

Across this sultry, smoky, cinematic epic, Jasss attempts to process mixed feelings amidst the modern malaise. Alluringly atmospheric and cerebral, but bold and direct, with high-spec sound design, Jasss spaces each element with expert definition. Searing swathes of noise nestle with crisp breakbeats, billowing bass, dark ambience, prepared piano, phosphorescent electronics and calibrated percussion.

“Whether you buy into the dream of capitalism or not, on a subconscious level, many people that lived through the 90s and 2000s had capitalist hope from the 80s and 90s drummed into them. It was a promise of something that never came true. We put our faith in a mirage, and now we’re left in an existential void, struggling with a very real collapse.” – Jasss

3: Dave Pen – The First single taken from the new solo album – Life Inside The Feeder Mind, find the rather beautiful track and the album details via Bandcamp. The album is released in October. All about early tastes and first tracks off new albums today.

“Musician Dave Pen is best known for his role as co-frontman and co-songwriter in the successful prog/alt rock collective Archive. He also fronts the alt rock/electronic duo BirdPen. Dave also released his debut solo album Abran Wish & The Light Party in autumn 2021. Other projects have included collaborations with film/TV composer Robin Foster as We Are Bodies”

4: Paper Hats – A debut piece of music or track or single or whatever these things are called these days? Something from a new London band, a self declared “emotional noise rock band”. They certainly have that feel of those early days, that musical ambition, that raw emotion, that need to be expansive and take it to different places. That is a rather explosive start to both the track and to a band, let’s see where they take it. Sounds like they’ve been listening to the much missed Black Midi, that’s surely no bad thing. Here’s their Bandcamp and their Linktree

5: Idles – There is new Idles, make way for collateral damage, when we’re bored of them we’ll let you know, Do the luge take a cruise assault and batter when we’re bored of them, for now Idles continue to challenge us, themselves and well here’s Rabbit Run…

Here’s the press release and the latest hype (is the NME reallt still a thing?), hey, they back up that hypes, the walk it while the press release talks it…

“IDLES’ ‘TANGK’ era has been a triumph as the band achieved their second UK #1 album, earned three Grammy Award nominations (Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance), and earned international, across-the-board acclaim. They’ve excelled on the road too, with a phenomenal Other Stage headline set at Glastonbury, which saw NME’s five-star review state that they made “a claim to headline the Pyramid in the future.” Elsewhere they headlined Truck and End of the Road, and completed a UK headline tour that saw them perform to 20,000 people in London alone over two nights at Alexandra Palace – and there’s still this weekend’s Bristol Block Party shows left to come.   Yet as that era draws to a close, it’s still opening up remarkable creativity opportunities for the band. Drawing inspiration from the gritty energy of the 1990s New York punk scene that permeates Academy Award nominee Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming crime caper ‘Caught Stealing’, IDLES have contributed four original tracks to the project’s soundtrack as well as having recorded the full film score composed by Rob Simonsen (‘The Whale’, ‘Deadpool’, ‘Wolverine’). Also included is a striking cover of the Junior Marvin-penned ‘Police and Thieves’, a song famously covered by The Clash on their 1977 self-titled debut album.   ‘Caught Stealing’ which will be released theatrically by Sony Pictures on August 29th, and its accompanying soundtrack album will be issued that same day via Partisan Records.   IDLES and Darren Aronofsky (‘Requiem for a Dream’, ‘The Wrestler’, ‘Black Swan’) quickly formed a creative kinship, united by a deep mutual respect for each other’s work. When Aronofsky began developing ‘Caught Stealing’ he turned to his favourite band to shape the film’s sonic identity. Together, IDLES, Aronofsky and Simonsen formed a uniquely exhilarating collaboration, pushing and pulling from one another’s areas of expertise to elevate the greater whole. “Rabbit Run” is a lean, anxious punk ripper that starts in a panic and ends in defiance. Fueled by minimal, motorik drums and distorted guitars, it mirrors the film’s central theme of confronting fear head-on. IDLES frontman Joe Talbot barrels through like a man being chased, until he turns and charges straight into the fire.   Joe Talbot says, “This has been a huge opportunity for us that seemingly came about after a chance meeting backstage at Fallon when we both happened to be guests on the same day. But in hindsight, I realise that Darren is one of my favourite directors and his films have in some ways made me who I am as an artist. This lucid dream has been a lifetime in the making and one that I will live over and over with a huge sense of humility and joy.”   Darren Aronofsky comments, “I built ‘Caught Stealing’ to be a roller coaster of fun and wanted to supercharge the film by main lining a punk sensibility. I don’t think a band has really been tasked with performing a score for a movie. Who better to collaborate with than IDLES? It has been a dream watching them bend their notes to blast a hole in our movie screen.”   Rob Simonsen adds, “I was really excited by the idea that Darren had for our third project together, which was to write a score for IDLES, using them as our orchestra. They had created original songs for the film, and building a palette that started from their sound – the incredible textures they create through inventive use of feedback, distortion, and pedals – was a really satisfying challenge. Our work with the band was genuinely inspiring. They’re not only extraordinarily talented musicians, but individuals with clear eyes, big hearts, and bold souls.” In ‘Caught Stealing’, Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) was a high-school baseball phenom who can’t play anymore, but everything else is going okay. He’s got a great girl (Zoë Kravitz), tends bar at a New York dive, and his favourite team is making an underdog run at the pennant. When his punk-rock neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) asks him to take care of his cat for a few days, Hank suddenly finds himself caught in the middle of a motley crew of threatening gangsters. They all want a piece of him; the problem is he has no idea why. As Hank attempts to evade their ever-tightening grip, he’s got to use all his hustle to stay alive long enough to find out…   ‘Caught Stealing’ was directed by Aronofsky from a screenplay by Charlie Huston, based on his book of the same name. The film stars Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Griffin Dunne, Benito Martínez Ocasio and Carol Kane. Watch the official trailer here.   Completed by Mark Bowen (lead guitar), Lee Kiernan (rhythm guitar), Adam Devonshire (bass) and Jon Beavis (drums), IDLES will play two celebratory homecoming summer Block Party shows at Bristol’s Queen Square on August 1st and 2nd – their only UK headline shows of 2025. They will then play select shows in Europe before heading to North America for shows with My Chemical Romance and Deftones as well as sets at Riot Fest and Shaky Knees. Limited tickets for the first Bristol show and a list of all their upcoming gigs are available here ORGAN: Three albums reviewed, the electricity of Antler Family, the chamber pop delight of Urvanovic, the almost elegant new album from Idles end… ORGAN THING: Idles take the park, London’s burning in the best possible way, the first day of All Points East is a triumph… ORGAN THING: Joy As An Act Of Resistance, Idles in an old East London garage, not just another art show, an art show and a band who feel right in so so many ways… Previous Idles coverage on these pages

And while we’re here, a little late I know, Give and Take, I am the robot, sick of you being a robot, we are the robots, until you suss it out man, this ain’t a song, this is a warning. RIP Kif Kif

And if the cap fits then wear it. This is a John Peel session from 1978, a session pretty much jammed live and improvised and I love you are me and I am you!!! Twinkle Twinkle! Love love love love!

And some recently rediscovered the 012 one take version of Asbestos Lead Asbestos filmed in Galena Road Yardiverse with KK, Alan Dogend and Jose Gross. Recently burnt out Bedford Green Goddess on right waiting to be turned into the skull bus. Jimi Hendrix eat your heart out. The original DIY/Cassette scene superstars.