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, everything must go somewhere and no, we never do and the proof of the pudding is in that proof reading and who reads editorials?
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, who are the cake? 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? On these Five Pieces of Music pages you 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 Sydney, Australia and one of our favourite bands or duos or bands that only have two people from recent years. Please to say signing with a larger label has not blunted the rather brilliant Party Dozen in any kind of way…
1: Party Dozen – Says here “Sydney duo Party Dozen return with a new single Special Unit, out now via City Slang. Written, performed, recorded, mixed and mastered by the band themselves, the track packs a lot into its two minutes and 39 seconds. Less is more. More volume. More energy. In a three week period that will see Party Dozen play Sydney Opera House (for Vivid Festival) and Red Rocks (with Amyl & The Sniffers), Special Unit is a huge noise for the huge rooms”. Well they always make huge noise for huge rooms and if you’re lucky enough to get a chance to see them in a small room grab it, they ripped East London’s George Tavern apart a couple of years ago, and yes, they’ve just signed to City Slang –
About the track, Party Dozen share: “You have the right to remain stupid. Anything you say or do will be laughable. If you cannot afford common sense, a version of it will be provided for you. You have minimal training and exhibit zero qualities that qualify you for the authority bestowed upon you. So here’s your gun, and your uniform. Have fun out there and welcome to Special Unit”.
“These words serve as an introduction to the track’s video, which allows us to spend an evening in the company of the Party Dozen Special Unit. As in the award-winning clip for Crime In Australia’s ‘Coup De Gronk’, which was declared Best Video at SXSW Sydney 2025, Kirsty and Jono are a duo inflicting terror upon the people of Sydney, but this time (arguably?) from a different side of the law, and in an altogether less calculated and more chaotic way”.
Party Dozen on Instabloodygram where you will find their constantly updated Linktree
Previously
2: Nick Carlisle and a just released video, a classic bit of prog and Jester Quantised, a track from the new Nick Carlisle album The Mad Decades, released 29th May 2026 on The Colour Inverted label. Read the album review here, it is a rather good one, the album, not the review, the review is rather positive –Albums, albums, albums – Hyper Gal’s Our Hyper and more of their extreme noise pleasure, Nick Carlisle’s The Mad Decades and more of his glorious prog flavoured pop, Grumm Trencher and some folk flavoured playing with The Bat and the Hellebore…
There is one of those Bandcamp listening parties on the 27th May, here’s the Facebook event page which I guess will be your first chance to hear the whole thing. It really is worth hearing….
And do check out Nick’s previous album if you haven’t already, this link will take you to our review of it…
3: Eartheater and a piece of music from the new Album Heavenly Body: If I’m The Bottle You’re The Message, an album that’s out on July 14, 2026…
“The New York City-based artist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and vocalist Eartheater distills experimental digital production, a three-octave vocal range, and classical composition into works suspended between obsessively detailed sonic tapestries and almost recklessly gestural electronica…”
– Is it too digital? Is that a problem? Shall we sit on the fence and wait for the album while we enjoy the lush flavourings on this first piece from it? There’s the Bandcamp, here’s more links and…
4: Rien faire – There’s a new animated video that flows rather well with the delight of Rien Faire’s music, a video réalisé par Rémi Richarme and inspiré d’un personnage d’A.Battaglia. Rien Faire are a delight, we have said this more. This is a piece of music you can find on the recently released Le Défilé album, here’s our review from earlier this year – Albums, albums, albums – Jah Wobble & Jon Klein whereupon Mr Wobble, with the help of Mr Klein, continues to go all radio rental in this oh so modern world, Fangus make heavy rock from somewhere around 1971, while Rien faire, the bright and breezy band from Lyon continue to blaze a trail…
And….
5: Gnoomes and a piece of music, Foreign Agent, taken from the just annouced album Losey, an album to be released on Rocket Recordings on the 4th September 2026.
Shall we give you the press release and the hype? Is that a touch cynical of us? That Cynical Smile t-shirt on once more? Herem jsut as background should you want it, is the press release…
“Confronting 2026, hope can seem in short supply, as the most divisive and toxic voices worldwide are amplified amidst an ever-rising temperature of conflict and alienation. Yet hope is abundant in Losey, the sixth release on Rocket Recordings from the mercurial duo Gnoomes. Here, all they’ve encountered forms fuel for transcendence in musical form. Just as this couple have taken a bold step into the unknown by leaving Russia and moving to Slovenia, so their music has followed suit and thrown off all shackles to flourish in a defiant show of vibrant and revivifying colour.
“The life of an immigrant is a strange thing” says the band’s Sasha Piankov “But luckily, that glow music brings us has never faded, even though the emotional landscape has definitely shifted. Living in the countryside, partially in isolation, gave us space to be ourselves. It helped reduce the constant background anxiety we’d carried for most of our lives. We often say that moving from Russia wasn’t just a political decision, it was a nervous system decision.”
Yet whilst the music that Sasha and his creative and life partner Masha Piankova came up with is testimony to a liberating triumph against oppression and adversity, it also goes beyond. These luminous and life-affirming beyond-genre serenades speak to the manner in which physical constraints can give flight to songs that expand to untold dimensions.
Besides drums – which were recorded by their old bandmate Pasha in Perm – Losey was essentially created without leaving the house. “Those circumstances pushed us to find a new format, in how we interact with each other, both musically and in real life” notes Sasha. “As you know, we’re a married couple, and the process turned out to be deeply therapeutic and empowering.”
What has emerged is a kaleidoscopic collision of styles which sends the ‘skygazing’ realm of their previous work spinning into electronic orbit. Here wildly disparate influences coalesce with the duo’s quest for new frontiers, thus whilst the opener ‘Foreign Agent’ explicitly tackles the pressures of the Russian state, it also throws a Stereolab-style motorik meditation through an in-the-red psychedelic prism, Elsewhere we can behold Bulgakov and Joy Division as bedfellows amidst the mesmeric, 303-fried EBM of ‘Satan’s Ball’.
Meanwhile, heavy and perhaps unlikely influence came from Paul McCartney (whose melodic nous influenced the ‘dada pop daydream’ of ‘Shakshuka And Pie’ just as his post-Beatles farm-based solitude helped inspire the band’s process) not to mention Chris & Cosey, whose music informed the crepuscular acid stomp of the title track, not to mention the album title itself…”
Here, seeing as record companies seem to think we’re here as nothing more than a free bit of marketing for them, is the thankless order link.
And here’s some Steve Earle, he doesn’t need out coverage, we all need him though. I must confess I’m feeling rather pissed off with it all today, like I might want to hit the whole thing on the head, hard to stay pissed off for long when Steve Earle is around; “Steve’s new music video for City Of Immigrants, directed by Steve Buscemi, is out now. Huge thanks to everyone who helped bring this video to life”. so said Mr Earle. it came out a week ago, May 13th, we are all immigrants….
Previously…
THE ORGAN 