So what’s happening with the Organ website? We needed a big spring clean – we may or may not put some of the old interviews and reviews and on-line issues back up again, then again we may not. We’re here for what’s happening today, not what happened last year or what we did in 1995  - THIS IS A GOLDEN AGE OF EXCITING CREATIVE ALTERNATIVE MUSIC – LIVE IT NOW 
 

This is a PUBLIC RELATIONS EXERCISE
Hello you, Just a message to let you know that we, Public Relations Exercise, are getting back out on the road with GIANT RED VAN/DEATHBOX! These gigs are, hopefully, coinciding with our Debut Single, Subteniente, which will be available through Field Records. So Including the Single we'll be playing 3 NEW TRACKS on this tour-ette!!!

Anyhow, here are the dates:
19th April - ROYAL PARK CELLAR (LEEDS) w/An Emergency, BreakNeckStatic
21st April - FIREBUG (LEICESTER) w/Meet Me In St. Louis & You Slut!
22nd April - FACE BAR, (READING) TBC
23rd April - SATAN'S HOLLOW (MANCHESTER) w/Charlottefield, Kong & loads more
28th April - THE PLANET (WOLVEHAMPTON)
05th May - THE DOG AND PARROT (NEWCASTLE) w/Meet Me In St Louis
11th May - JUNKTION 7 (NOTTINGHAM) w/Meet Me In St Louis
15th May  - GLASSHOUSE (DERBY)
18th May - FIGHTING COCKS (KINGSTON)
Also, we will have a fresh batch of PRE t-shirts, badges, CD's and Stun Guns with us. It's probably worth mentioning that we will be doing another tour in June/July with our new friends Score One For Safety and older friend Frank 'used to be in Million Dead' Turner. It's booked and so on, but that's a story for another day.

More Information on all that P.R.E is available here, here & here
www.publicrelationsexercise.com
www.myspace.com/publicrelationsexercise
www.field-records.co.uk
 

John on the phone......

ORGAN ON YOUR RADIO @ RESONANCE 104.4FM - NOW IT'S WEEKLY! Because writing about music is like dancing about architecture - Organ on the air.. Sean and Marina from Organ present underground music, goings-on from beyond and who knows what. Alternating with the on air duties and styles, one week Marina, the next week Sean. On air every Sunday night, invading your taxi cabs, your bath times and all of your airwaves. One hour every Sunday, kicking off at 10.30pm all over London on proper radio on 104.4FM and all over the world via the web at www.resonancefm.com  Marina brings you  “The Other Rock Show” – The Other Rock is the musical exploration of the avant perverse and complex rock, progressive adventures beyond the safety of 4/4. Sean will be bringing you whatever the hell he wants, who knows?

X

DEMO OF THE WEEK
CARTRIDGE  - Meticulously thinking, smiling, constantly blinking. This one jumped right out, an opening song that stopped everything and demanded complete attention. A different band, a band with personality, a band who don’t want to sound like a low-rent version of their record collection, different breathing patterns. There’s more to unwrap with every play of their relaxed refine easy on the ear clever bouncy bendy sound. Starts off kind of sounding like a scratchy thin (Southpark theme) Primus for artrock fans until it goes in to slightly operatic/classical lush piano bit and the 60’s French pop singer sound of the girl and the deeper voiced boy and a whole movie in one short pop song - meticulously thinking, smiling, constantly blinking. It was the first song that instantly grabbed, but now that we’ve played endlessly for hours we don’t know which of the three is best. Oh and on further investigation there’s all kinds of icons of elegance to uncover and other projects and I think we’ll be hearing more in future Organs. Cartridge are Tom Farncombe, Catherine Kontz, Dave Smith and Henri Vaxby. 
        “Cartridge are a pan-European four-piece with deep roots in many styles but no ties to any styles.  Dave, Cat, Tom, Henri - an explosive jazz drummer, a Feldman-esque pianist, a hardcore bass player and a noisy guitarist - come together to make loud and exhilarating pop music with a twist. Vocal harmonies/instrumental dissonance are combined in an ever changing roller coaster of sound”. That’s what we found on the website....  www.cartridgetheband.com

ALSO CHECK OUT
SAN ZEN - Scott (Drums) and Ben (Guitar), both ex of My War with another explosively intense set of slicing hardcore metal screamathon tunes. “Fast moving”, they clearly want us to say that they make “fast moving music” - they do. A fast moving scathing five piece from Nottingham - twisted riffage, half-time beatdowns, screamingly relentless don’t make eye contact-on-the-bus disturbed-man vocal style - Medulla Nocte/Iron Monkey non-stop in your face screamation. Four tracks and not a single negative thing to say about any of them.... oh yes, the real deal - locked, loaded and waiting for you. Highly recommended. www.myspace.com/sanzen.

COLLAPSE  - We’ve been playing this one on the radio (have you been tuning in? Pay attention, they’ll kick us off soon then you’ll kick yourselves) It’s that lurching angular thing, proper angular though, not your slight bumps in degrees that gets everyone and their three legged dog called Angular and on daytime XFM playlist these watered down let’s rip off The Gang Of Four days. Proper awkward lurching and twitching angular like they’re going to fall over but never actually do.  Should that fall have a capital letter? Yes, The Fall, awkward like The Fall or those Gag type Scissormen bands and that scratchy moving backwards to a beacon receptor in a modern city. Four tracks, well three and some slightly throwaway experimental thing. I know not where Collapse are from, somewhere in the UK - someplace somewhere that has nothing to do with any plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower and death did not come from above 1979 and no atoms were punished...  good good food, must be, we wouldn’t have been playing it at you on the radio if it wasn’t would we? www.collapse.co.uk

THE SURGENS - From the box of demos rejected by others at ResonanceFM. A blues thing demanding to be taken to it’s hanging ground, a kind of White Stripes for Captain Beefheart fans who like their country blues a little twisted and scuffed around the edges (and theramins or maybe steel guitars and mouth organs) and afflictions that represent the evil things they used to be. Their pappies carry two shot guns each and they look like the folk out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and someone is crying in their cell and pulling the strings... Yep, that’s them below. They sure don’t sound like they’re from Peterborough, they sure do sound like they should be on a soundtrack for a Tarentino movie - www.thesurgens.co.uk

Last week's demo of the week - PERHAPS CONTRAPTION

Previous demo's of the week - THE PROCESS VOID

ALBUM OF THE WEEK
ENABLERS - Output Negative Space (Neurot) - This album floors you within thirty seconds.  A spoken word like with the hypnotic impact of the best of preachers or dictators grips you and, like the ancient mariner, forces you to listen to the story. Riding along with him the band ebbs, flows and sways with the music of his rich, rolling voice, catching snatches of mysterious events.  This is poetry.  It unravels slowly upon reading, dense layers of meaning crossing back and forward, as good as any, maybe Auden-good; caught up with the drums, guitar and Hammond of this four-piece without the libretto to hand the words shimmer and catch at you.  This is an album that has anyone passing through the room going, wow, what's this. Every single track.  Then there's the magnificent On Monk, which builds and builds from perfection to shattering beauty. (At which point Sean walks in and says, someone just emailed to ask what was that first track I played on the Other Rock Show last night, and I say, this one...).
       Yes, the Enablers - San Francisco based band - sonically resemble Shellac, Birthday Party, but are their own creature. This is warm, human, deeply emotional and uplifting.  The Enablers should be dominated by the words and voice of Pete Simonelli, but this is an outfit - Joe Byrnes on drums, Kevin Thomson and Joe Goldring on guitar and guitar/Hammond respectively - that more than complement that artistic tour-de-force, a band capable of glorious, exultant dynamics of the highest order. Enablers are the sound of supple, unfettered drumming and au natural grungy guitar, the sound of our times: they are that sound taken to some kind of visionary creative peak.  They miraculously understand the meaning between the lines of Simonelli's words, and render them out as music. Dazzling. It hurts to think of this band remaining in underground obscurity, however romantic that may be. Spread the word.   www.neurotrecordings.com

ALBUM OF THE WEEK 2
PSAPP  - The Only Thing I Ever Wanted (Domino) - Psapp sound like their delightful cover: a little unhinged, a little like they really do have an orchestra of cats running over piano strings in their basement, like they live in a giant dolls house stuffed with multi coloured xylophones. Plinky plinkety electro-acoustic giddy warmth and delicate fragile treats that you really have to believe in if you’re going to enjoy it. You need to believe in it like the way you believe in Bagpuss or the way that it really is bad luck to walk on the cracks and the way you believe that violin can be mixed with old Casio samplers and recorders and the ‘strangeness’ of Tom Waits and The Cure and those Dresden Dolls and the inside of old clocks and dusty sun-shaft drenched sheds full of forgotten treasures. Gallia Durant, Carim Clasmann and their beautiful band make deliciously soothing music, not so weird or hard boiled or in need of any effort, Psapp are so easy, so clever and so simple and delightful and warm. Her voice is relaxing, innocent, beautiful, their music is crafted and considered and never ever, despite all the delights, messy or cluttered. Made in Kings Cross (London) on glinting laptops in a bric-a-brac bohemian bolthole. The Only Thing is a gorgeous pop album. Laced with such refined beautiful emotional ambiguities, such fine details, so effortless (I’m sure it wasn’t an effortless thing to make) and you should make the effort, you really should make an effort to hear it and explore it and get lost for hours in the wonder of it. www.psapp.net

ALSO CHECK OUT
NEBULA - Apollo (Sweet Nothing) - Fourth son of Zeus-shaped psychedelic stoner metal album from the LA power trio. Nebula are the real-deal blisters-on-the-brain twisters of the groove. Probably the best Nebula album you ever heard, Yeah, feed my brain, I like what they got. You kind of know what you’re going to get with the one time Fu Manchu bodies - but then you never quite do. Stoner metal - groooooved out psychedelic hard rock with bite. Nebula are more out there with the slightly left field players, bands like Mudhoney, Clutch, Kyuss, with their rushing down the white-line galaxy-bursting biker-stomp and lumps of righteous 70s heavy prog rock. Sweet metamorphic earfood to keep the reality outside, it ain’t no lie, your mind is real, ride with it. Nebula’s finest album yet. www.cargorecords.co.uk

TODD - Comes To Your House (Southern) - Primordial bonkers heavyweight rock from London-based Todd. If I thought this lot were coming to my house, I'd make sure the neighbours were out. You know things are getting heavy when one of the more accessible numbers features Eugene from Oxbow on vocals (and lyrics, something or other about fighting off a rabid dog). Paint-blistering sludge monstrosity, that one. Nice thing about Todd (can we really use the word 'nice' here?) is that they're antsy, they don't just perfect their noise scunge rock thing and get on with is, but fidget, push off in search of the odd and unexpected.  They get scratchily, noisily experimental, messing with cut up sound but always crunchy and very loud.  Right up your street if you like Lightning Bolt, Trencher, Butthole Surfers, Todd are guitar demons with a cheerily organic, confident take on psyched-out/psychotic distortion. www.toddranch.com  / www.southern.net

ALEX WARD - Hapless Days (Copepod) - This chap has to have appeared in every avant rock, experimental or freeform improv band in the Home Counties at some time or other, playing pretty much every instrument going. Off the top of my head: Camp Blackfoot, Nought, A Suitable Case For Treatment, working with Derek Bailey, numerous stints at Klinker Club soirees and ResonanceFM fundraisers, and probably the odd orchestra or marching band.  Alex Ward gets around because he's a splendid musician and a nice guy, but all these demands have been depriving us of his own work, until now.  Somehow, Alex has avoided the demands of his friends long enough to create this really rather good and unique album.  These are dark, lyric-driven songs with a little of the angularity of Camp Blackfoot, without the extremes of heavyness; all instruments and vocals, aside from a little flute and violins, performed by Ward.  If it can be compared to anything at all, it's an energetic, contemporary Van Der Graaf or Peter Hammill - Alex's voice also reminiscent of Marc Almond - with cynical, angry, smart lyrics, and injections in places of the crisp harshness of Wire.   The tunes are as twisted and sardonic as the words, excluding the cheery and brilliant Sounds Like Someone We Knows, a slightly Dylan-ish anthem to having a really bad time.  'Hapless Days' really is exhilaratingly pessimistic and bleak: You've got so much to live down to/ All the meaningless opinions and misguided acts... When the game you play is imitating imitators/ You're bound to win... Some of the best moments of Camp Blackfoot are echoed in the descent into madness of Persona Non Grata.  Delivered with depth, clarity and variety, the multi-layered instrumentation never overwhelming the impact of the words, these songs are involving and cathartic.  Worth the wait, and we'd like more. www.alexward.org  /  www.copepod.co.uk

BRIGAGE  - Lights (Mighty Atom) - Thank you hungry one, them hero types never do their job properly. Brigade do have a big bold heroic sound – it’s that indie emo rock sound, they have passion, a little urgency and a little more colour in there with their pop rock hooks. Bold, epic, heroic, and yeah emotional as well - and you’ve probably heard it lots before from other bands, hundreds of other bands. Brigade do it rather well though, that big hearted indie/emo thing – now get it out of here please! www.mightyatom.co.uk
 

Last week's album of the week - SUNN O))) / CATNAP Previous album's of the week - THE DRESDEN DOLLS / PROUDFLESH / all the past has been deleted (for now)

"Marty, Marty listen to me. Bring me something the kids will cry for. Get out there, and get us stoked!"

Go! 

Books about Evanescence (are not punk rock!), Guns ‘n Roses watches (are not punk rock!), Hello Kitty iPod cases (are not punk rock!), Rob Zombie lunch boxes (are not punk rock!), Slipknot binder paper (is not punk rock!), Tinkerbell pillow cases (are not punk rock!), Sponge Bob wristbands are not punk rock (the good MC did forgive the wise-ass with the Sponge Bob wrist bands down the front of the pit) – “Hot Topic is a contrived identification with youth subcultures to manufacture an anti-authoritarian identity and make millions. The $8 you paid for the Mudvayne poster would be better spent used to see your brother’s friend’s band”. 

“DIY ethics are punk rock, 
Starting your own label is punk rock, 
G.G. Allin was punk rock” 

“When a crass corporate vulture feeds on mass-consumer culture, then spending mommy’s money is not punk rock!”

Edgar Allan Poe is very punk rock - well when Lars and the raven are knocking on the door anyway. 

Go! Go where? Where were we? You and me baby we ain’t nothing but mammals. 

It’s tough living in London, where we gonna go tonight? MC Lars or Sikth? 93ft East or Barfly, we want to be in at least two places at once (again), it’s no real contest on the venue front. 93ft is one of the finer places to see a band – good sound, friendly attitude, don’t feel like you’re being marketed at. Barfly? We just don’t go to the soul-sucking Hot Topic of a place if we can help it. Tonight we can’t help it, it’s an early evening guerrilla-raid drop off of a big pile of Organs on the Sikth merch desk. Swing by the Underworld with another healthy stack, dodge past the unsubtle whispering skunk sellers on the way to re-stock The Dev - it’s a non-stop operation this Organ thing. (I still don’t believe those doggy skunk sellers actually sell anything, they must be undercover cops or something, they’re far too obvious). Let’s get out of Camden right now, that’s enough Organ delivering for one night, we got a gig to go to - off via the tube to Unmentionable Street station and over to the delicious smells of Brick Lane (one last Organ drop at The Spitz – we work hard, these sacks of Organs are damn heavy, want to help out?).

Who's that (who's that) rapping? 
Who's that rapping at my chamber door? 
Mr. (mister) Raven! 
All up in my grill like, "Nevermore." 

Hey, come on, when did you last catch somebody rapping Edgar Allen Poe on a wet Tuesday night down the East End? “America's favourite anti-transcendentalist” and Brooklyn’s finest, MC Lars. Yes indeed, MC Lars is back in town supporting his best album yet – The Graduate. Pop is eating itself once more, give me big mac, give me fries to go - no no, burn those arches down, it is feeling a little like a rather positive Pop Will Eat Itself Beastie flashback in here tonight though – what comes around goes right around again and again – the Ad Rock of the iGeneration is in the East End house and the place is jumping from the off. Well he did warm up the crowd – no; he really did warm up the crowd! Rocky theme playing on the PA, out he comes like a boxer entering the ring to warm everyone up “reach to the left, jog on the spot, stretch those calves” – mass mosh-pit warm up aerobics courtesy of the not quite in tip-top shape MC Lars. Go! Rapping like Poe, Mr Raven, twenty one songs that didn’t make the album and Tetras samples like it’s Christmas 1985 – straight out of Stockholm (via NY) looking like a muthafugging rolemodel in his faded stretched public Enemy shirt, A’s baseball hat and regulation looking hardcore/geek band (yep, this is coming right at you live and raw). Laptop staring centre stage on a wooden table in front of the rather good drummer, audience knowing every word (old and new stuff), thrashing through Hot Topic Is Not Punk Rock, throwing out that Passenger riff (and sampling straight off from the live guitar) and the Mr record company man baiting and that Supergrass sample with the Ahab tale and... 

Seems someone has been saying he’s nothing but a joke rap version of the Bloodhound Gang, so they’ve learnt a cover that they say they’ve started doing half way through this UK tour after reading that not very complimentary review – that’s the way to shove it all right back - and what a fine rendition of that Mammals on the Discovery Channel song, it takes an already notched-right-up-gig up yet another notch – sweat baby sweat! This is fun, it’s more then fun though, he says most of it with his tongue in his cheek, he does have a lot of good things to say, there is substance here, questions are being asked, points are being made and smiles are wide. 

“Say Shakespeare London!” and then there’s that one about My Space being as addictive as crack that brings up the very English guest girl and two pasty skinny boy rappers.  And the Six Degrees of Kurt Cobain fame and how many times can he say ‘awesome’ in one night and you see the difference here is fun and substance - this is not shallow Goldie Looking Chain 15 minutes of fame piss taking, don’t file MC Lars in the throwaway joke box, this is Beastie boy good, this is proper punk rock. And then there is the glorious emo-shooting bubble-penetration cattle auction treat that is the sound of that finest of fine major label emo bands Hearts That Hate, ‘let’s full the room with emo love, everyone yell die - Marty... we've got a hit.”  The pit kicks off as the guitars kick in and in he dives - Screamo, emo, he’s diving like Nemo in to the teenage emo pit, delicious double take irony. 

Post punk laptop rap is what he calls it; laptop rap for the iGeneration – “Logged in dropped out, MTV took track.  They sold it back to us and claimed no correlation. The iMac, iPod, iGeneration.  And I'm waiting for the day we can get out. The world is ours, that's the story no doubt.  Want to be more info super highway traffic, want to be more than a walking demographic!” 

"Hey! You're part of it." Talking about the iGeneration 

Yep, MC Lars is proper punk rock..... fun with substance, a fine time was had by all, go take a look/listen, there’s a lot to be found here... the Ad Rock of the iGeneration

www.myspace.com/mclars

Last week's single of the week - PSAPP

Previously - GREENSPACE
 

PAST ISSUES -

ORGAN 152 - 

ORGAN 151 - Out in print now, 40 pages A5 APRIL Organ

ORGAN 150 - NEXT LIFE, CRETIN, HAWNAY TROOF, SYMMETRY, GREENSPACE, DRUGDEALER CHEERLEADER, LAST PARTY, ALEX WARD, BURNT, INTENTION , TRACTOR SEX FATALITY, THE DRESDEN DOLLS, PROUDFLESH, THE GHOSTS, SPEED THEORY, EL TOPO, THE CULT WITH NO NAME, THE PROCESS VOID. 

all the past has been deleted (for now)