By the time this issue is printed, Newport’s Le Public Space venue will have had its soft launch, with an official opening party on Fri 25 Aug. A successor to Le Pub, which traded on Caxton Place for 25 years before closing at the start of July as its landlord wanted to retire and sell up, Le Public Space is found on the High Street. At four floors high, it’s bigger than its predecessor, and will be used for gigs, rehearsals, film screenings, art exhibitions… and just having a pint or two. In related, less edifying news, the current owners of Newport TJ’s were recently fined over £50,000 for doing literally nothing with the building and letting it fall into near-ruins
South Wales’ pantheon of music venues, while covering many bases, has always lacked a dedicated venue in that 15,000-ish-capacity sweet spot – the home of bands who are too big for venues like the Motorpoint Arena but not quite big enough for stadiums. The Welsh government agree – although the specific example economy minister Ken Skates had in mind was the Sports Personality Of The Year award ceremony – and proposals are currently percolating as regards the building of such an arena in Cardiff. You weren’t daft enough to think they might build it elsewhere, were you? That said, both Swansea and Newport have 3,500-capacity venues in the works, with Swansea’s aiming to open by 2020 and Newport’s (specifically a conference centre within Celtic Manor) by 2019
Cardiff bar Porters, which opened in 2012 and is a favourite among the local theatrical community, has been awarded a cool £10,000 purse as winner of the PRS’ Music Makeover prize. This was set up to raise awareness of what benefits music can bring to local businesses, and shine a light on those who give it a good platform. Not one of the more renowned Cardiff live venues (it’s a lovely and indeed popular place, but its booking policy basically consists of a rota of 12 or so cover bands), Porters manager Lewis Morgan said they’d use the prize to “give back to the artists who are the lifeblood of this venue”. Kizzy Crawford [pictured] and Sweet Baboo played the celebratory party last month
The opening two songs on the new album by El Goodo are titled I Sit And Wonder and It Makes Me Wonder, with any resulting impression of daydreamy inertia hardly dispelled by the knowledge that By Order Of The Moose is the Neath-area band’s first album since 2009, and second since 2005. It’s a charming and impressive LP, though, recorded piecemeal over the years with inexpensive gear and scaling great heights in 60s-soaked psychedelic pop. Heavy with harmonies, strings and brass, El Goodo’s pop stylings here are ornate in the manner of forebears from The Zombies to Love to Lee Hazlewood. Their finest work to date, By Order… comes out on Cian Ciaran’s Strangetown label on Fri 8 Sept
Talking of overdue comebacks: remember Welsh hip-hop label SFDB? It did sterling business in the early 00s, with releases by the likes of Fleapit, Secondson and Sir Beans OBE earning their place in UKHH history, but vanished after a Humurak D Gritty 12” in 2006. Well, after a decade off doing two other, non-hip-hop labels among other ventures, SFDB boss Leon West (aka Secondson) has resurrected the imprint for a five-track EP by mysterious UK MC Nomad. Preludes was produced by Dan and Mark Richardson, a brotherly duo who make alluring instrumental patchwork in old-skool ‘turntable, breaks and sampler’ style, while Nomad’s lyrics are inventive and audacious. This could have been released in SFDB’s heyday, but that’s no bad thing