More albums, more catching up with things, more staying ahead of things, more cherry picking through the mountain of albums before the year end, more picking of the cherries, picking off the cherries, the never ending pile of demanding cherries that find their way here on a daily basis. You surely know the policy by now? We do, on the whole, only feature the albums and things we feel positive about. We really don’t have time to clutter up these already overloaded pages with negative coverage of things that do nothing for us, there isn’t the time or space, there isn’t any need, although some times there probably is. Here’s another five or so and we clear the decks at the end of the year….
NYOS – Growl (Pelagic Records) – From Jyväskylä, Finland, Nyos have been regulars via the airwaves of Other Rock Show this year, they say they “have been making noise since the summer of 2014” and well, this album that came out back in October of 2025 is another one we really need to catch up with before we start the cleanslate of next year and do this all again…
Nyos have a dense twinkle to them, post rock mathy rhythms, that, knowingly or not feel positively African in bright alive king of way. Two people just working together so so well, joyous without ever being close to overbearing, just brightly alive music. Superstar does feel like some kind of triumphant homage to some kind of superstar, they do have rather fine variations of their central theme, it could easily become tediously repetitive, it never ever does. Right now there’s a throbbing forward movement to what they’re doing, we’re halfway through something called Lo4 for the umpteenth time as that slight are of menace turns to some kind of rush to get to wherever we need to go, or maybe away from wherever we were? Entirely instrumental, always full of colour, carefully placed colour, creative hue, rewarding and an excellent album that stands up to repeat playing (it didn’t growl though). What more do we need to say?
Shearling – Motherfucker, I am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”… ( – As it say of their Bandecasmp page, “Motherfucker; I am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”… is one of a kind. Shearling bolts from the gates with the unbridled release of their debut album”. An album that came out in May of this year –
Intensity from Los Angeles as Alex Kent and Sylvie Simmons continue their creative endeavours straight through the dissolution of Sprain and as they join forces with drummer Andrew Chanover and bassist Wes Nelson shortly thereafter. I do believe Elizabeth Carver is in there somewhere as well…
They have pretty much everything in here, several kitchen sinks and “a collaboration that produced hundreds of hours of unreleased recordings as they amassed a sound bank from which they sampled to tailor the musical tapestries featured on this record. An eclectic patchwork of dissonant noise rock, neoclassical arrangements, minimalist folk, chiptunes, glitch experiments, percussion ensembles, homemade gamelan, microtonal MelLotron drones, re-sampled improvisations, and electroacoustic noise…” – It is indeed a dizzying aural splay as they throw a soup of contradiction and a barrage of noise at us or in a blender or at a wall to see what would stick. Glorious details, bits and bites that jump out from the stew and jsut what is all the shouting about? That little haunted house. Apparently there was enough noise made and enough to collage together to “spill over into a complete sister record that is well underway. Motherfucker is part one”.
Part One, if that is what this is, is a glorious noise, a stew of almost pained shouting and howling and the successfully running of mouths. Jarring, barbed, words as flow, string of what, as instruments clang and he screams about the need remind him of how the melody goes. it is hyperbolic, it is intense, the quite bits and the stops for air are as intense as the onslaughts, it does feel stark, raw, naked, an open set of wounds. This is dark, it goes to many places, touches high, goes way down there, right now it is tasting a little like those Ahleuchatistas as those boundaries are touch and it all churns on (and we must thank Evan Kilmartin for his unwitting involvement in this rather rushed end of year semi-review) as we deal with the illusion that any of this might matter and he goes on about god knows what. Hang on things have completely changed pace now, suddenly we can hear the wiping of tears and the gentle scraping of string, minimalist rather than maximalist, a sky full of stars and big wide opens spaces, a handful of dust –
– this is one piece of music, it is a couple of minutes over an hour long, it is a rather remarkable hour, this bit right now is so quiet, almost delicate, it has been extremely noisy, right not things are quiet and it feels like somewhere out in middle America with horses and ploughs and his and their wide open improvisation is where we’re at now with the poetic spoken word and the utter performance of it all. This is unrelenting audacity, that and the naked commitment of it all, this really is something. What is going to happen with the horses? This is one hell of a piece of (motherfuckin’) music. Now leave me alone with this for a week or so so I can start to at least get to the beginning of unravelling it all. This is the moment now. They say this is music for farms, and as we may have said a few times already this year, don’t miss this one.
We are doing that end of year catch up, does Clipping need Organ coverage now? Obviously not, not like they did back in the days when the threesome were regularly on these fractured pages, they did release another fine album this year though, the first in five years? The album did come out in March and then an extended version later in the year when Dead Channel Sky Plus expanded and reordered the original 20-song sequence. The album grew to now be a 24 track long beast…
Clipping – Dead Channel Sky Plus (Sub Pop) – Not sure if the second version builds that much on the dystopian, neon-drenched view that the original March release presented, I don’t which version I’d pick if forced to? Maybe, if I may dare to venture, at times, this time around things sound a touch like someone is going to start a fire? A touch of a Prodigy feel to their immersive thing this time around maybe? Something that, as others have said, does indeed capture the essence of cyberpunk in a very Clipping kind of way. Maybe not quite so on the cutting edge in terms of their previous avant-garde experimental hip-hop driven soundscapes. The flow is as thrilling as ever, the art of the wordery, the biting of every minute, Clipping have always been thrilling, there’s always been a dark edge to it all, those flashes forward, it really is dystopian, even those ice blue coloured tennis shoes sound dystopian, it does sound like Science Fiction this times, Science Fiction crossroads, is it easier on the ear this time? Codes and key cracked? Hip hop science fiction? Clipping really don’t need our support or our words now, they are almsot mainsteam now, once again though this is an album that needs to be mentioned before we eventually close the door of the year, these coordinates do need to be checked, she how he run… A dystopian concert album, how very prog of them. Exellent once more but they didn’t need us to say so…
THE ORGAN 