Happy Winter Solstice, turn of season, end of year, Christmas and happy whatever else you choose to celebrate around about now... see you on the otherside 

These are the things that have been in our ears this week, please explore and if it sounds interesting then just hit the links and make your own minds up, our reviews and thoughts are mere signposts designed to guide you to the things you might like to feast on yourselves... don’t you just love the instant hit of the www. 

The first Organ show of 2008 will happen on Thursday 17th January at the Metro, Oxford Street, London. headliners are that ten piece hip-hop/ska thing called IMPERIAL LEISURE, the special guests are to be announced and opening the show we have Brighton's wonderful LITTLE TROPHY. Advance tickets are on sale now, £5.00 - more details and tickets from www.blowupmetro.com

GLORYTELLERS - Glorytellers (Southern, released early Feb) - Glorytellers is the new main vehicle for Geoff Farina (Karate, Secret Stars). With this project, Farina, Luther Gray III (Ida, Joe Morris Trio), Gavin McCarthy (Karate, Cul de Sac) and Josh Larue (Mice Parade, Him) and Ty Citerman (Gutbucket) explore a similar stream-of-conciousness style to Karate whilst also drawing influence from singer-songwriter contemporaries. Needless to say, it is an exciting new project for the label.

ATLAS SOUND - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (Kranky, released mid Feb) - Deerhunter recently announced that they were on a hiatus, which peeved me off a lot to say the least. But then Kranky came back with this, the solo offering from enigmatic Deerhunter front-man Bradford Cox. On this album, Cox's sound moves out of dank nightclubs filled with eternal existential drone punk and relaxes at home in his Grant Park, Atlanta bedroom. Mixing garage rock, ambient electronic influences with laptop- based explorations and newly explored recording techniques. The
result...is very refreshing indeed!

EARTH - The Bees Made Honey In The Lions Skull (Southern Lord, released mid Feb)
After refaceting some old gems for greater illumination on Hibernaculum,  the band returns once again to its continuing evolution. Where Hex revealed in dark satanic twang and austere American beauty, The Bee Made Honey in the Lion's Skull finds Dylan Carlson and the band growing into a harder, more rock and American gospel oriented and improvisatory direction framed by a truly psychedelic production and blazing guitar sounds. Joined on this album also by legendary and virtuoso guitarist Bill Frisell, who adds a brilliant texture to the riffs of Carlson and the band. Mature, succinct...superb.

ISIS - Holy Tears (Ipecac, released late Feb) -  To celebrate Isis' 10th anniversary, Ipecac are  presenting the Holy Tears single, the first of two enhanced CD maxi-singles featuring tracks from In The Absence Of Truth album, along with videos, reinterpretations of the songs by some of their favourite artists. Not to mention exclusive live versions. Here, Ipecac label mates (and masters of the universe) Melvins & Lustmord remix “Not In Rivers But In Drops” and we are treated to a video of “Holy Tears” shot by Dominic Hailstone (Warp Films), and a live version of the title track, recorded at the Continental Airlines Arena, E. Rutherford, NJ on the 2006 Isis tour supporting Tool. Needless to say this will be a great collectors piece for Isis fans worldwide.*

THEE SILVER MOUNT ZION - 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons (Constellation, released March) - We are very very excited to be bringing you the brand new album from Thee Silver Mount Zion. Following the 2005 /Horses In The Sky/, this is going to be one of the  biggest release for the first half of 2008. Most of the original line-up remain, apart from the new drummer Eric Craven (ex-Hanged Up). This album ups the ante considerably, with crackling guitar crescendos setting the pace for dive-bombing swirls of strings, while Efrim's voice rasps and wails words of worry, hope and fury throughout. The band's hallmark group vocal passages are positively spine-tingling.
 
 

John on the phone...

"For the record, if it hasn't been mentioned yet, efterklang literally means "lingering note" or figuratively " faint echo" in Swedish anyway, and I can't imagine it has any substantially different meaning in Danish." said someone in the pond.

ORGAN TV?

ORGAN TV  is on your screens in the UK right now. Every Wednesday evening, NOW AT THE NEW TIME OF 9.30pm on the OPEN ACCESS 2 Channel on SKY160. And now due to the fine response, repeated every Sunday on SKY883 at 9.30pm.

This coming Sunday we have the following videos...

EFTERKLANG - Mirador 
THE KEITH JOHN ADAMS - The Other Side Of The Road 
THE ICARUS LINE - Gets Paid 
MUNGO - Comfort And Joy 
YIP YIP - Candy Dinner 
AARON McMULLEN - Blue From Black 
LIARS - It Fit When I Was A Kid 
KILLSWITCH ENGAGE - Fixation On The Darkness 

Next Wednesday and Sunday we have...

GOAT THE HEAD - Simian Supremecy (short version) 
CHAUFFER DRIVEN AVIATOR - Leather Jacket 
EFTERKLANG - Mirador 
THE KEITH JOHN ADAMS - The Other Side Of The Road 
MUNGO - Comfort And Joy 
YIP YIP - Candy Dinner 
EL-P - Smithereens
ASSDROIDS - Daft Crunk 
GOAT THE HEAD - Simian Supremecy 
GALLHAMMER - World To Be Ashes 
.
What's it all about? Simple, just good music, and the art of good video making...  Same musical policy as we've always had with Organ - the labels are just handy signposts, as long as the music and video making has that X factor - expect a healthy eye/earboiling mix of metal, punk, prog, beats, post rock, post punk, post man pat, hardcore, indie, alternative, pronk, whatever..... music and creativity for the open minded 
 

DEMO OF THE WEEK
YONATAN NIV – Potential Spaces – Resonating free-form ambient noise and an instrumental three piece piloted by the pleasing animal noises of a baritone saxophone alongside some unassuming percussion that’s all pulled together by the whispered live electronics of Yanatan Nin. This really is the art of avant improvisation and sound-sculpture as music. Refined and rather understated, full of  textured atmosphere and quiet seductive impressive detail. Five pieces, the longest clocking in at nine and three quarter impressive minutes. This arrived in the mail from Brooklyn, New York (we love the smell of fresh post in the morning). No sign of any website or anything, contact yonatanmiv56 at yahoo.com 

DEMO OF THE WEEK 2
INNER RAGE – Another messy raw DIY low budget set of recordings from the thrashing blistering full on technical death metal onslaught that is London based Anglo/Brazilian outfit Inner Rage, someone needs to get this band in a decent recording studio! Three ambitious tracks for people who like their metal buttered with Mastodon-like ambition and intent – www.innerrage.com

Last week's demo of the week - NAVEL

Previous demo's of the week - FILTHY HABITS / LITTLE TROPHY / THE ORIENTALISTS / HOUSEHOLD / THE JELAS / COUNTRYSIDE / BASTARDS OF THE SKIES / MEHE / THE PRETTY YOUNG THINGS / HAPPY PENGUIN HUNGRY BEAR / SOMEBODY’S MIND / INSTRUMENTS / DEATH QUNT / OAKWOOD / EPSTEIN SUPERFLU

DEMO REVIEW ARCHIVES

ALBUM OF THE WEEK 
DIMENSION X – Dimension X (KML) – A rather enticing rewarding album from a new trio and some impressive extreme avant-Jazz improvised freeform noisecore meets 50’s b-movie alien radiowave invasion. The trio maybe new but the names are familiar - Chris Corsano of Sunburned Hand Of The Man (and sometime Bjork/Thurston Moore collaborator), Massimo Pupile of Zu and David Chalmin from B For Bang. The work is based on the stories and scripts from the cult 50’s radio show Dimension X – not sure if they’re the actual recordings or reproductions/interpretations of the hysterical 50’s look into a future of robots, chaos, Martians and humankind’s quest for emotion, truth and hope. Radio art meets top quality hard-boiled improvised avant jazz/art rock, played over/alongside/underneath episodes of the radio play – it all works perfectly, the playing it intriguing anyway, this would be excellent without the radio play dialogue – indeed there are long passages of jazz that weave around nothing but fuzz, feedback and progressive drum patterns from a time before the last man disappeared from the face of the earth at the end of the third atomic war in 1991 - actually you can listen to it without the radio play parts if you switch to mono, This is an excellent album, experiment improvisation and the art of very very listener friendly creative noise. Enjoyable and highly recommended. – www.kmlrecordings.com or www.myspace.com/dimensionxxx - out on January 7th
 

ALBUM OF THE WEEK 2 THAO With THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN – We Brave Bee Stings and All (Kill Rock Stars) – Second album from the 23 year old singer songwriter from Virginia with a rather fine line in Cat Power goes Alt.Country/jazzy/folky style mellow left-field breeziness and colour. Thao Nguyan is her full name and this is a very impressive follow up to 2005’s Like The Linen. A natural unique voice, an easy inviting brave relaxing voice and some rather different songs. Spot on production from Tucker Martine, a little more rounded than you’d maybe expect from the ever rewarding KRS imprint – it does feel like classic Olympia without ever sound like that if you get my drift. Everything about braving these Bee Stings is right - the lyrics that you can wear in the lining of your jacket, the clever details in the playing, the gentle refined sounds the players make, the depth of the simple arrangements, the distressed wood and the frame shaking, the arms worked so hard so she can give you an aeroplane ride on the back of her band’s so so wonderfully uplifting songs.  Glimpses of fear and convenience and all her riches driven away in the company van You know when you hear a slice of music, a piece of song that just makes you feel good – feel different, lifted, lifted like it can’t hurt in any way, something new that just takes you with it. Carefree despite the serious nature of the songs and the subject matter – like she can brave the lot. We Brave is out on January 28th in the UK, before that the band will be in the UK for two London dates at the Enterprise in Camden on 17th Jan and The Water Rats in Kings Cross on the 18th - www.myspace.com/thaomusic or www.killrockstars.com

ALSO CHECK OUT

LOVE IS ALL – Love Is All Mixed Up (What’s Your Rupture) - In which Gothenburg’s rather excellent Love Is All get all mixed up by all kinds of creatively good people. Love Is All’s confident genre jumping edgy new wave dance-punk gets even more funked up, raved out, krauted on and generally spun, stretched and scratched in a whole manner of delightfully creative ways – ways that take us through a whole load of coherent flowing dancing soul-fuelled flavours. Josephine’s very distinctive vocals are the glue that hold the album together as one body of imaginative rewarding flowing piece of evolving work. Impressive mixes and manipulations from Chicken Lips, Fryers, Hot Chip, The Bees, Maps, Tapedecks, Studio... If anything the whole thing feels kind of Go Team in a rather positive way, and nothing is as obvious as that list of names may suggest may have been –  they all done good. The original tracks make for a an almost perfect vehicle for this set of remixes of course, this is as excellent as the idea promised it could be, highly recommended – the album is out on Jan 21st - www.love-is-all.com

ARTUR DYJECINSKI – A Year And A Half Of Rain (Bottle In The Wall) From Poland, via a childhood growing up in Canada, with some sublime, very mellow, warm, very easy singer songwriter alt.country/folk music. He’s based in London now and this is a rather exquisite, very personal, rather quietly beautiful breathy breezy album - sometimes it really is that simple. Recommended. www.myspace.com/arturdyjecinski or www.arturdyjecinski.com

WE INSIST – Oh! Things Are So Corruptible (Exile On Mainstream) – From Paris with an album that tastes of all kinds alternative musical adventure and a more than healthy set of brooding Faith No More, Primus, At The Drive-In, Tool flavoured bites of things. There are moments, like Time Is Lazy where they really grab hold of ears and demand attention in a genuinely ambitious and rather progressive King Crimson manner. Exhausted is an impressively disturbing dark track with some sinister Van Der Graaf Sax darkness and a menacing riff driving it on – bits of a Shellac, Pavement, Deus, Cake Going The Distance undercurrent in there as well, the almost spoken vocal style is very Cake. Sinister clouds and dark math movement, brooding prog and driving rhythms and this really should be pushing every one of my buttons  - for some reason it doesn’t quite, I really can’t put my finger on any reason why We Insist don’t quite do it – maybe they’ll push your buttons? Go investigate via www.myspace.com/weinsistband

PET SHOP BOYS - DISCO 4: REMIXES BY (Parlophone) - Some of us around here think Pet Shop Boys can do absolutely nothing wrong, others would prefer I kept this love for all things PSB until no one else was around. This album has been out for a couple of months now, just tidying up loose end here you see. An album of Pet Shop Boys remixes and their fingerprints, trademarks and wonderfully lush magic sprinkled all over The Killers, Atomizer, Bowie, Madonna, Yoko Ono and Rammstein (yes they did take all the guitars out, and yes alright even the Pet Shop Boys are make the preposterous Rammstein sound good). www.petshopboys.co.uk

STARVIN HUNGRY – Cold Burns (Signed By Force) – A scratchy jittery urgent blues-based garage punk thing from Canada. Thinking person punk, for fans of Bob Mould or Voivoids, maybe Stooges taking on Wire and strapping them to a whipping post. www.signedbyforce.com

QUARTERBLIND – Bleeding The Guilty (Casket) – Uncompromisingly aggressive brutal thrash metal. The intense gravel-throated vocal style that gets a little tedious after a couple of hate-filled tracks, the riffs are of an early Metallica/Slayer nature, decent enough debut, good production – relentless. If only they had a couple more dimensions, a little bit more personality and a hint or two of identity (and that damn singer would learn another trick) . They do explore a melodic introduction or two before they get in to their pounding again, I guess they’re a decent enough band to see down the local metal pub on a Thursday night and if that’s the height of their ambition then fine, here they are – we once interviewed a metal band who insisted they sounded like all the other metal bands because heavy metal was like baked beans and people didn’t want their beans any other colour than orange - www.quarterblind.com

RIFF RAFF – Rock And Roll Mutation Vol. 2 (Riff Raff) – In which the rather bizarre AC/DC tribute band from Germany take a whole load of AC/DC riffs/tunes and sing Christmas carols/songs over them in a rip crunching Bon/Brian style (rather like they’ve done previously with Abba songs/lyrics!). Curious? www.riffraff1.de
 

Last week's album of the week - AHLEUCHATISTAS / AIRBOURNE Previous album's of the week - KINDER SCOUT / 4 BONJOUR’S PARTIES / VERNON ELLIOTT AND THE VERNON ELLIOTT ENSEMBLE / JOHANN JOHANNSSON / LAZARUS / FRIGHTENED RABBIT / DEERHUNTER / KMFDM / BY THE END OF TONIGHT / TERA MELOS / RUBENS / RASHOMON / SAMARA LUBELSKI / EFTERKLANG / TAINT / AMERICAN STEEL / ATHLETIC AUTOMATON / YOU AND THE ATOM BOMB / GALLHAMMER x

ALBUM REVIEW ARCHIVES

LIVE REVIEW ARCHIVES

SINGLE OF THE WEEK
UNDERWORLD – Beautiful Burnout (underworldlive) – Second single from the Oblivion With Bells album an a eight minute slice of trademark Underworld synth swell, majestic rush and those comedown melancholic lyrics before they pick you up and coherently sweep you off again – doing just what you want Underworld to do once more. Out Jan 14th - www.underworldlive.com

ALSO CHECK OUT
THE DEVIL IN – Punching The Ice From Underneath (Stooge) – Debut EP from the Dorset band and  an outfit with a very current and maybe little too familiar sound. This five track EP, as good as it may be, sounds like a mix of a lot of things we’ve already heard in the last couple of years – that politely math/post rock flavoured emo/indie thing, that slightly whiny vocal style. Track three is drenched in warm mellow 65Days glitch, track four is full of post-hardcore energy - they do take things down atmospheric side streets – in short, over the span of the five tracks The Devil In take us on a guided tour of all things current in the lands of slightly mathy post-emo-indie rock. Hang on though, don’t dismiss them, there’s a clearly a good band here and this is a credible and rather worthy debut release and hopefully they’ll build on this decent (and sometimes impressive) start and take this to the places they’re hinting they just might. I suspect we’ll be hearing lots more, there's lots to be positive about here  - www.myspace.com/thedevilin

Last week's single of the week - WAX AUDIO/GEORGE BUSH

Previously - HAZEL MILLS / DEERHOOF / F*CK BUTTONS / IMPERIAL LEISURE / CLUB 8 / TURBO NEGRO / CANDY PANDY ATTACK / SUNS OF THUNDER / DEPARTMENT S / TERRY EDWARDS & THE SCAPEGOATS / THAT F*CKING TANK / ODD SHAPED HEAD / VESSELS / 4 OR 5 MAGICIANS / TIME.SPACE.REPEAT / WE START FIRES / LOVE AND A .45 / BLUE STATES / EFTERKLANG / NATO

SINGLE REVIEW ARCHIVES

PREVIOUSLY - THE WEIRDOS / THE MOB / ARSONISTS GET ALL THE GIRLS / THE VERVE / KHAYA / GREASY TRUCKERS PARTY / HERE AND NOW / WALLS OF JERICHO / CARTER USM / THE HOUSE OF LOVE / MONO / DEEP PURPLE / NUB / ANTHRAX / OMD

PREVIOUSLY - PARALLEL WORLDS, PARALLEL LIVES TV documentary / NEVER MIND THE SEX PISTOLS: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY – DVD / THE ZINE DIRECTORY / BATH BOMB / NEMESIS TO GO #4 / DVD: MIGHTY ROBOT: SLEEP WHEN YOU ARE DEAD / DVD: GLASTONBURY - THE MOVIE / BOOK: THE LANGUAGE OF THE BLUES – Debra De Salvo / BOOK: BERNARD SUMNER – CONFUSION / ZINE: NOISY No5 / DVD: SAMMY AND THE WABOS – LIVING IT UP IN ST.LOUIS / DVD - NAZARETH – FROM THE BEGINNING

That's it for this week -  IF YOU'VE GOT ANYTHING TO SAY then say it - response

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