Who needs who? No time for editorials, repeat, replete, reheat, 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 bird seed and…
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? What do reasons make? Five more? Cake oil? Snake oil? Bake the oil, soil, 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? 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 somewhere in Berlin…
1: Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mouse on Mars announce album Spatial, No Problem. The album will be released on June 5th, here’s a first single Rockcurry
“After the passing of Lee “Scratch” Perry, a deluge of recordings appeared claiming to be the “last” or “final” project of the Jamaican icon. However, his last official album project took him to Berlin, Germany where he landed on the doorstop of electronic pioneers Mouse on Mars (aka Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma). The resulting album Spatial, No Problem. will be released on June 5th.
Alongside the album announcement, the first single from the record has been shared today, Rockcurry. The opening song from Spatial, No Problem., “Rockcurry” is indicative of Perry’s time in Berlin, where he was drawn into the soundworld of his “German Professors” in their “German laboratory,” taking to the group’s blend of motorik rhythmic elements with free improvisation, digital glitches, dada poetry and the dubby “voodoo” he always insisted haunted our machines. Whilst Perry was keen to not do a reggae album with Mouse on Mars, he was too much a part of reggae to disavow it, and the weight of that legacy is present in every track they recorded.
The video for Rockcurry, directed by Studio Sparks, uses photos from the recording sessions, drawings and found objects collaged together to create an energetic ode to Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mouse on Mars’ time in the studio”.
2: Sara Parkman and a just released piece of music, a single called Paradiset that is just so gloriously good. Thankfully, I don’t need to write about it, I just need to say, “hey, listen to this, just press play”. This is why we still do thing damn Organ thing, music like this –
“Since her debut album in 2016, Sara Parkman has pushed the boundaries of what folk music can be. Her albums have repeatedly been praised for weaving together tradition and the future. Along the way, she has been honoured with a number of prestigious awards – from Grammis wins to Dagens Nyheter’s Culture Prize – and she has sold out tour after tour. As the figurehead of a movement larger than herself, she has also carved out a unique space for Scandinavian folk music, not least through her involvement in her own record label, Supertraditional”.
Paradiset features Tuva Syvertsen (Valkyrien Allstars/Tuvas Blodklubb) and is taken from Sara’s forthcoming album Aster, Atlas. “A musician and singer, Tuva Syvertsen has made a name for herself as the leader of Valkyrien Allstars and as a champion of folk and underground music at Tuvas Blodklubb”.
“Parkman’s new album, Aster, atlas, is released on 8 May, and today two tracks are out: Paradiset, a duet with Tuva Syvertsen (Valkyrien Allstars), and Ora et Labora.
3: Downtown Boys – Where were we? “Hi Sean! Could you check out this new Downtown Boys track if you have time? The punk band are back with their new album Public Luxury out June 26th via Sub Pop (this is their first new album since 2017). The band pushed relentlessly forward as an artistic and political project since their founding and their enthralling new record keeps politics front and centre while summoning the band’s most urgent and powerful sound to date…”. Well we could ask ourselves about the notions of what punk is these days? Just a genre? Another box for those big labels and their PR people to put things in or is it anything more these days? Answers of a the back of a flyer sent via a fourteen times used envelope and a well soaped system-smashing stamp, here’s what those Downtown Boys are doing this weekend….
And here’s the New York band’s Bandcamp thing and things. Thing is, oh never mind, here is all is. Says on their Bandcamp thing that “Downtown Boys have pushed relentlessly forward as an artistic and political project since their founding. Singer Victoria Marie and guitarist/singer Joey La Neve DeFrancesco first met at union meetings while working together at a hotel in Providence, RI, writing many of the band’s early songs about their organizing efforts and exploitative workplace conditions. The quintet is completed by saxophonist-synthesist Joe DeGeorge, bassist Mary Jane Regalado, and drummer Joey Doubek. Through years of creating and touring, Downtown Boys continued to grow as artists, musicians, and organizers. Now, Downtown Boys have arrived with Public Luxury on Sub Pop Records, an enthralling new record that keeps politics front and center while summoning the band’s most urgent and powerful sound to date….” That’s centre to you and me and well, we shared it
4: Kathryn Mohr and more of her forthcoming album Carve, which, as we might have said last time, is out April 17th 2026 on the label knows as The Flenser. So far the two tracks from the album that have been heard promise much….
“Carve is the second full-length by Bay Area artist Kathryn Mohr. Written over the course of five years and recorded over several weeks in a rural singlewide in the Mojave Desert, the album centres on love experienced as a form of grief, not as an aftermath of loss, but as a condition of intimacy itself….”
5: Deafkids and something from Cicatrizes Do Futuro, an album from the Brazilian duo that’s due out in late May on Neurot, here’s some links and here’s the Bandcamp and let’s see if the rest of the album lives up to the first taste…
And while we’re here, a little more….
THE ORGAN 