HOTEL DEL SALTO
Likeable solo fodder from a Carmarthen resident, J Francis, who I very dimly recall performing under that name some years back. Hotel Del Salto’s Stand For Your Right is experimental bedroom pop – perhaps not literally, but stylistically – built from muffled vocals, a drum machine threatening to crumble to dust, and a junkshop’s worth of riffs, drones and beats interlayered until gauzy and toasted. The drum breaks echo Beck’s Mellow Gold and I think I might detect an indiemo (that’s indie meets emo) influence guitar-wise. NG
LO PAN
Tom Wallace plays bass for Masts, a Cardiff group whose other members are nearly all called Tom too. While they’ve mostly been inactive lately, Wallace – as Lo Pan – has burrowed into his solo nook of jazzy, instrumental hip-hop, the sort of thing filed under ‘blunted beats’ in 1995 by record shops that no longer exist. Beat Soup Vol 2, his latest collection, has a deft way with a boom-bap rhythm and a snaky vinyl-crackle jazz sample that is worth cueing up alongside your favourite DJ Krush and Attica Blues tracks, if you have any. NG
WASABI
Although it’s not clear what purpose a record label serves for a one-song digital single, Wasabi’s Blah Blah Blah has been released by Goldie Lookin Records. I assume this is connected in some way to the group Goldie Lookin Chain, whom the song in question couldn’t sound less like. It’s gently psychedelic Welsh-language indie (the accent suggests a band from the north) with cute bleepy synth bits and the boisterous feel of bands who get released on the I Ka Ching label instead. NG