One last collection of five musical things before the year ends, one more gathering up of things and thoughts and sounds and as we said last time, who needs a damn editorial let alone a new one? Who needs what? No time for editorials, let the actual music do the actual walking and the actual talking. Exact same thing as last time once again, another five (or so) slices of music that have passed our way recently, five slices of music cherry picked for your delight and however you like to slice it and of course it was the price of peaches and here comes the editorial.
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? Snake oil? Bake the 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 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 music further down the page, 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 on these Five pages we reguarly post?
Here we go, five more slices of music that have recently come our way, this time we start with a look forward to what Thinking Plague’s Mike Johnson has waiting for us in the new year….
1: Mike Johnson – “Who is Mike Johnson, where did he come from and how is it possible that he has made one of 2026’s most ambitious, adventurous, and relevant releases?” ask Cuneiform Records. We know Thinking Plague’s Mike Johnson well around here of course, we’ve been covering and playing his music via our various radio shows for years. Thinking Plague are quite simply one of those vital bands and this first taste of a new album is as important as it is exciting as we head into a new year
“Co-founded in 1982 by Mike Johnson, Thinking Plague is a storied band, whose forty-five year history has seen it cleave consistently to the extreme limits of what is possible to do within rock music. Genre-defying and, above all, unique, Thinking Plague’s music can be described equally as post-rock and/or post-classical”.
Michael Johnson’s The Garden of Loss is out on Cuneiform Records on January 30th 2026. Here’s a first taste via the magic of Bandcamp
“As some will know, most Thinking Plague music and lyrics over the years were written by me, and the band has essentially been my project since the mid-nineties. But for this album, I was hoping to be free of the some of the expectations and assumptions that come with the name Thinking Plague. I wanted to try some different things, and take full credit or blame for the outcome. One of my main objectives was to make an album incorporating an orchestra, of sorts at least, which required me to employ a lot of new people, such as a string quintet, a new flutist, an oboist, bassoonist, trumpeter, trombonist, etc. And I wanted some different musicians in key roles – like Simon Steensland on bass and Morgan Ågren and Kimara Sajn on drums, and Jeremy Kurn on piano….”
2: Non Euclidean Mass Of Eyes And Tentacles and one more album before the year ends, an album called The Castle at the End of Time released on December 31st 2025 and a band who are either from outerspace or from somewhere called Norman, Oklahoma (which may as well be from outerspace to us here in our East London bunker) – “From OUTside space and time comes the joyous occasion of Non Euclidean Mass of Eyes and Tentacles!” so they say
What we have here is an opening eighteen minute piece of industrial sludge, space rock clutter (positive clutter), guitar that cuts through the airwaves and lighthouse beacons, churing metal guitar and a whole stew of, well go taste it for yourself, there’s all kinds of flavours in that big melting pot of music in there with the eyes and the tentacles and the riffs that battle for attention, I like it, I like the secret purpose of it all… Bandcamp
3: Radio Free Alice and a band (from Australia) who we haven’t really covered on these pages yet, soemthing that I expect will change as the new year kicks in. It was once again the chance meeting with the Queen of Australia in an art gallery and her insistance that we check out two bands from her land, the first was The Empty Threads and the second was Radio Free Alice. You see msuic is still about people and meeting people and sharing information and have you checked out this? No, not yet, it is about people coming together and the positive power of music and we end another troublesome year. Here’s Radio Free Alice’s Linktree, they’re back over here in the Summer….
4: Geese – We haven’t really said too much about New York’s Geese this year, do rather like them though, here’s a bit of a treat of a live basement session from about a month ago from the rather forward looking acid flavoured blues band from Brooklyn. Hey, they’re darling of the establishment indie press, they don’t really need us, they are damn good though, their Getting Killed album that came out back in late September is a well worth everyone’s time (if only there was time). They do sound like the timeless real deal and this footage and live performances will tell you why they are getting the attention they are….
We probably should cover the album before we wave goodbye to 2025…
Geese – Getting Killed (Partisan Records / Play It Again Sam) – “New York City’s Geese return with their highly anticipated 3rd studio album, Getting Killed. After being approached by Kenneth Blume at a music festival, Geese tracked the album in his LA studio over the course of ten fast-paced days. With scant time for overdubbing, the finished project emerges as something of a chaotic comedy, shambolic in structure but passionately performed, informed by an exacting vision. Garage riffs are layered upon Ukrainian choir samples; hissing drum machines pulse softly behind screeching guitars; strange, lullaby-esque songs are interspersed with furious, repetitive experiments. With Getting Killed, Geese balance a disarming new tenderness with an intensified anger, seemingly trading their love of classic rock for a disdain for music itself….”
And yes, there is a tenderness to their beautiful almost freeform chaos, there’s a warmth, a soul, they sound like they know, Geese are a knowing band, they’ve got ‘it’, Geese have soul as well as bombs, it isn’t anything new, it isn’t massively different, they just do it timelessly right and we needed to say so on this last day of 2025. Let us dance away forever, we like Geese…. Bandcamp
And one more we haven’t properly covered athough there were lots of preview tracks featured and loads and loads of radio play through the year and hey, his label chooses not to be that on the case in terms of Organ and blah blah blahand you’ll never stop laughting when you… It is a rather beautiful album
5: Michael Woodman, he of Thumpermonkey, a band covered around here rather a lot back in their early days, did release a rather a rather fine solo album, Hiss Of Today, back in April of 2025, an album full of powerfully hypnotic folk horror, prog rock darkness that kicked in the flu-addled haze of 70s children’s TV memories and culminating in a theophanic encounter with a horde of terrifying rock puppets and went on from there in that beautifully dramatic gloriously detailed way all things Thumpermonkey flavoured do. Once again this is an album that creeps up on you, that takes it own time to let you know just how good it actuallyis. If you missed that car being sideswiped and the curve being clipped then here it is via Bandcamp and that feels like as good a place as any to end this musical year, althought it is still early afternoon on December 31st, there probably will be one more release sent in that really needs to be before the year ends. By the way, didn’t we hear a rather good film soundtrack over Christmas, so much so we hung on and watched the credits to Mrs Harris Goes To Paris and there was the name of Rael Jones, he of Thumpermonkey). Thumpermonkey’s Michael Woodman released a very fine rather timeless and rather beautiful album back in the Spring of 2025…
And that’s it, we’re done for the year. We’ll be along with that albums of the year list and that round up of the the art year tomorrow afternoon, Happy New Year everyone, there was far too much good music and rather a lot of good art (although not enough) and yes we do have a bag load to tell you about in terms of early 2026 releases, give us a second…
Hang on, while we’re here some classic John Cale in a year when the best two gigs we probably saw were Peter Hammill’s raw performance at the Royal Festival Hall and Neil Young’s show in the park back in the Summer (well besides Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and KayoDot at ArcTanGent and that Extra Life show and….)
And this seems like a fine song and an even finer thought to end the year on. See you on the other side…
That bit of promised John Cale because good music doesn’t come with a sell by date and age is just a number as we look foward to Organ’s 40th birthday in 2026…
THE ORGAN 