Buzz Magazine
What's On in Wales - Your Ultimate Guide
A week of heavy music in various forms this week - and though Adia Victoria and Moor Mother prove that doesn't have to mean big rock riffs and the like, Carcass, Employed To Serve and Merthyr band Florence Black offer a bit of that anyway.
There were two forces at play when Del Amitri came on stage to a huge welcome – their musicianship, and signs of rust after so long out in the cold.
You could be forgiven for forgetting that The Specials are foremost a protest band. Terry Hall’s bitter lyrics sting when the man himself is glaring the arena down as the rest of the band skanks around him.
John will never be a stadium rock band: they belong in low-ceilinged sweat-pits like this, stirring up chaos and then splitting with no encore.
A week of marquee releases including Manic Street Preachers album number 14 and a bumper-sized Metallica reissue/tribute album package. Plus Elvis Costello is redone in Spanish and there's comebacks from Martina Topley-Bird and Saint Etienne.
As COVID restrictions ease, 2021’s been anticipated as the UK’s third ‘summer of love’, and this was certainly the case at Delete’s August bank holiday party, their first event in 18 months.
"After 18 months of misery, it didn’t feel real. This was the pristine Green Man experience preserved, unwrapped, presented." Jason Machlab had a blast down by the Brecon Beacons...
Ahead of their first new album tour in 20 years, Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie tells John-Paul Davies how Nothing Ever Happens came to be the band’s first Scottish hit and the true story behind their classic Top Of The Pops performance.
New sounds ranging from Amyl And The Sniffers' Aussie punk to Auri's Finnish metal, DJ Seinfeld's Swedish club sounds and Suuns' Canadian indietronica, with a token blast from the past courtesy of the Small Faces.
After 17 quiet months, bank holiday Monday saw live music back in the heart of Cardiff once more, under the banner Live & Unlocked.
This year's Green Man Festival pulled off a widely commended four-day bash in their location by the Brecon Beacons. Hannah Nicholson-Tottle was there rocking out, camping and generally drinking in the atmosphere, and she bought a camera and some rolls of film to capture the moment. If you were there too, get nostalgic; if not, here’s the sort of things you missed.
Bank holiday bangers (and things less appropriately described) by The Bug, Chubby & The Gang, Marisa Anderson & William Tyler, Voces8 and Yann Tiersen.
Wendy James is still full of rock’n’roll vim and hungry to gig three decades after Transvision Vamp, the lurid pop-punk band that made her a star, went their separate ways. She and her band are touring the UK for the entirety of September, including two Welsh dates, as she enthuses to Carl Marsh.
Chris Andrews profiles the men behind MusicBox – a Cardiff rehearsal studio that’s been a cornerstone of the region’s rock scene for 25 years – and hears from some of the bands to darken its doors too.
It’s new album time again for boyish Nottingham troubadour Jake Bugg, and so Carl Marsh pinned him down for a quick chat about that, and this and that, including a healthy bout of football nostalgia.
New albums by Welsh stalwarts from north and south alike, The Joy Formidable and Captain Accident; black metal crossover faves, Deafheaven and Wolves In The Throne Room; and folk-rock perfection from Martha Wainwright.
New albums, mini-albums, EPs, singles and songs on vinyl, tape, CD, CDR, downloadable formats and streaming platforms. All recent, all Welsh and all music, or close enough.
American folk-rocker Lissie is getting her operation back to working order, in much the same way we all are. First up, she tells Buzz’s Carl Marsh, is a reissue of her debut album, a decade after it established her. Except they had to delay it, so it’s 11 years now. Ah well!
Watched by a socially distanced crowd of just 150, in a hall well over 10 times that capacity, and with rigorous COVID security measures in place, this was a strange setting for the return of the Manic Street Preachers.
Reviews of new music by Mountain Movers, Quicksand, Sepultura, Suzie Ungerleider and the Goitse A Thaisce compilation: psych-rock, post-hardcore, metal, alt-country and Irish folk.
John-Paul Davies checks out these crack south Wales blues-rockers, hailing the return of in-person live music with a fine set in the grand surroundings of Cardiff Castle.
Since picking up a guitar at the age of nine, Barry solo artist Jason Staddon has never looked back. Chris Andrews speaks to Jason, whose newest single Without The Fire is out now.
Mr Jukes, the funky solo alias of Bombay Bicycle Club frontman Jack Steadman, returns for his second album The Locket – and this time he’s teamed up with an MC named Barney Artist for a full set of jazzy hip-hop. Carl Marsh hears what makes the pair tick.
We catch up with these folky Brit-Americana types, who have slimmed down to a two-girl-one-boy trio for their brand new self-titled album, The Wandering Hearts. “We finished recording in Nashville …
