On with the new year, and well, same as last year, 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…

Right then, on, further on with the new year, and well, same as last year, who needs a damn editorial let alone a new one? Who needs what? No time for editorials, recycle the last one and 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.

Editorial? Well the music is landing,

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, the first five or a new year, this time we start in Chicago with one of out most favourite of favourite bands….

1: Cheer-Accident just said “Win: This song is on our next (our 27th) album, out on Cuneiform, this summer. Win: Cool Clown Ground segments air every Tuesday at noon, starting in six days, on this very YouTube channel. Wins everywhere you turn. Wince everywhere you turn”. And what a glorious song it is, doesn’t it make you glow inside. I see the video was posted sometime ago but they did jsut say it it something on this Summer’s new album, if we have got it wrong then so what, this is a beautiful beautiful (beautiful) piece of music…

2: Dog Chocolate and another track, Green Stuff, taken from Dog Chocolate’s forthcoming album So Inspired, So Done In, out Feb 27th on Upset The Rhythm.

3: Hirta – Black Chimneys is the second single from Hirta’s new LP to be released in February 2026. “The song is the perfect anthem for blessing your new year”. In Alistair’s own words, “…it feels appropriate to share the song ‘Black Chimneys’ as a simple New Year greeting, as we all do the thing we do every year where we take stock of where we are in our lives and reset to begin another year. The song itself is a reminder to myself of what’s important and, while not necessarily written as a new year song, has the recurring line, ‘Lang may yer lum reek’ – this is a traditional Scottish phrase that people use to toast or say farewell to friends and family around New Year. It translates as ‘long may your chimney smoke’ and symbolizes warmth, and having enough of what you need to be warm, safe and prosper, so it’s extra nice to be able to share it with you at this time.”

Hirta is the solo project of New York multi-instrumentalist Alistair Paxton

Here’s the first track from the album, something we featured late last year – ORGAN THING: A rather radiant first taste of the new Hirta album…

Here’s the Bandcamp thing….

4: Field Commander Ali, from Wollongong, Australia and a rather delicately strong piece of music taken from the album, The Next From Field Commander, out 6th March 2026 via World of Echo & Brierfield Flood Press (AUS/NZ/Japan). Details and the Bandcamp thing…

“Field Commander Ali is the solo project of Ali Mollica, a folk song person living on the South Coast of NSW, Australia . The Next From Field Commander, her new record and second under that taken name, was recorded in her bedroom in Stanwell Park, a beachside town surrounded by bushland. Here, where the Great Dividing Range meets the Tasman Sea, Mollica worked quickly in the early part of 2025, utilising little more than a classical guitar and a 4-track tape recorder to execute her vision. The result is a truly beguiling Australian folk record…”

5: Prostitute – At the tail end of last year, Dearborn, Michigan band Prostitute announced details of their signing to Mute and the first worldwide release of their acclaimed debut album, Attempted Martyr. Today, the band return with a video for its powerful opener, and an undoubted highlight of the record, All Hail (Pressure). There it is up there and here comes the hype via the presss release, they are worth the hype, it isn’t all jsut idlesness….

“Attempted Martyr, produced by Chris Koltay (The Armed, Mdou Moctar), will be released on CD and two vinyl editions – a special limited Arabic edition on Lebanese sunburst vinyl exclusively through Dinked, and a red vinyl edition – on 13th March 2026.

After November’s incendiary tour of Europe and the UK that included two London shows that sold out in a matter of hours, plus a performance at Le Guess Who? – the five-piece announced a spring 2026 tour of Europe and UK that includes two dates at the MOTH Club, London on 28th April & 29th April. All the UK dates are now sold out, and the band will be at Roadburn Festival on 18th April and Supersonic Festival on 26th April – full tour details below.

The group’s debut album, Attempted Martyr, has been steadily accruing devoted followers and accolades since its (very limited) original release. Based in Dearborn, MI, a town with America’s largest Muslim population, Prostitute were founded by Moe (frontman) and Andrew (drummer) who together write the group’s lyrics, and conceived Attempted Martyr’s thematic throughline. Moe explains, “I had an identity crisis, growing up, 9/11 started a lot of xenophobia and Arab hatred and all that kind of shit. I hated being Arabic. I hated Arabs in general, just because people were hating me. Through much of my 20s I felt like, ‘How about I be the character you want me to be?’” Andrew took that crisis and, explains Moe, “ran with it, and made the philosophy behind it, this ‘radical terrorism’, this crazed zealot thing.”

To complete the band, Ross, Bret and Dylan soon came onboard. “It’s all a bit serendipitous,” says Andrew. Each of the members were raised in Dearborn, went to the same schools, orbited the same groups of people and crossed paths before eventually meeting each other and coming together as a band. 

The reaction has been incredible: the audience they have found are dedicated to investigating the infinite nuances within their attack, especially as the themes have swung to the fore of the culture in the years since they conceived it. “When we started the album, the war in Gaza hadn’t begun yet,” says Andrew. “But the world was still pretty fucked up. It already felt like the car was going off the cliff, with no-one at the wheel. There’s an angst to the album. I’m not religious, but I’ve always been drawn to art and stories about religion – this yearning for transcendence, for an answer, for forgiveness. The album is about someone trying to transcend in some way. This character is reprehensible. But we’re not trying to tell anyone what to think. This isn’t some manifesto – this is art, it’s an outlet for things we were feeling.”

Attempted Martyr is out on CD, a special limited Arabic edition on Lebanese sunburst vinyl exclusively through Dinked, and a red vinyl edition, on 13 March 2026 via Mute. Links And here’s the Bandcamp page and the whole album, an album that was originally release back in late 2024…

Here’s another taste…

And while we’re here, a timeless piece of a Peter Hammill song that Cheer-Accident once performed…

One more…