HOLDING ABSENCE & ALPHA WOLF
The Lost & The Longing (Sharptone) is a four-song split EP between Cardiff’s Holding Absence and Alpha Wolf, who are Australian but I’ll still acknowledge their contribution because I’m not that petty. Both bands contribute one song of their own here, plus a second each where one act ‘features’ on the others. Alpha Wolf sits at the nexus of metalcore, nu-metal and industrial, and the cleaner vocals of Holding Absence’s Lucas Woodland mesh well into the collaborative 60cm Of Steel. The Welsh band have shed most of their metal trappings of late: Coffin builds from twinkly synths and crooned vocals to something more bombastic, but kindly accommodate AW’s Lochie Keogh via meaty riffs on Aching Longing.
4DEE
4dee, a Cardiff rapper who can claim nearly 40 years in the culture, has a new album, Frequencies, out on his new label Veteran. Dotted with guests as venerable as he, or nearly – longterm collaborator DJ Jaffa; fellow MCs Chew and (Veteran co-runner) Joe Blow – it’s bedecked with swift scratching, recognisable fragments of soul samples and dramatic string loops. To that end, I guess it would have slotted neatly into the 00s UK hip-hop scene, though more uptempo moments like 3 Wordz are more like the Britcore of the early 90s. Really worth hearing!
GORDON ANDERSON & SPENCER SEGELOV
Here’s a five-track digital EP that could fit on a 7” single – maybe even one side of it. However, you’d sacrifice a little audio quality, which would be to the detriment of the delicate musical impressionism of Spencer Segelov, who soundtracks the poetry of Gordon Anderson here. Hotel Familiar was spawned during lockdown and is broadly on that theme: the opening piece is titled Do You Think The Pub Is Missing Us? and blends field-recorded chatter into depictions of alehouse ennui. This first-time duo are a good match for each other, and though Segelov has a decently varied body of work I don’t think I’ve heard him play in this semi-ambient style before.
ME AGAINST MISERY
About a year ago I reviewed a single song by Matthew Rhys Jones, aka Me Against Misery, and was taken with its combo of drum machine goth/postpunk and low-register, mildly histrionic Welsh-language vocals. That song, Datguddiad, is now the first on his second album Crafangau, and its quality is maintained over the following eight tracks. There are parts that lean hard into the early 80s alt-disco thumper mentality (Ysgwydd Wrth Ysgwydd), others whose guitars are windswept and almost metal (the title track): plausibly, some people who like one mode may dig the other less, but I really think this could be a cult sleeper hit if the chips fell nicely.
MERCURY CALCULUS
The first formal release by Mercury Calculus, the seven-song tape Cowboys Holiday, is also The Beauty Emporium’s first physical release as a record label, following a few months of doing epic DJ nights of record-nerd obscurities around Cardiff. I suspect the anonymous figure behind Mercury Calculus is pretty closely connected to the one behind TBE, but instead of paying it too much mind I’m going to just enjoy these surreal, droning ambient-gone-country instrumentals. Field recordings, plausibly from an airport as per the title, bleed into inscrutably incidental jazz-ish moments, equal parts Dylan Carlson and James Ferraro.
MIGHTY MOUSE
Carmarthenshire’s scuzz-rap collective Winger Records have just released One, the debut album by Mighty Mouse from Cardiff. Mighty Mouse seems to be a pretty new name, albeit with an EP on Winger from late last year – and albeit, a fresh alias for Smithy Blade who I’m pretty sure I reviewed something by absolutely ages ago. DJ Jaffa produces a couple of things here, too (the remainder being done by MM himself), and the more established Winger member Po Griff has a brace of guest spots. All of which sits very well with One’s dungeon-dank, weirder-Wu beats, occasional bouncier moments – Supermouse feels like an attempt at a theme tune – and lyrics that capture suburban seediness and defiance in the face of futility.
THE RUSTY NUTZ
The Rusty Nutz are one of the more Swansea-themed bands you might hope to hear, with their new album sporting titles such as Where The Vetch Used To Be and Who Needs The Thames (When We’ve Got The Tawe). Dating back to the late 90s, in recent years the quartet have revived their boisterous, in-jokey indie/punk/garage with the help of local label Lavender Sweep. Both parties’ enthusiasm for niche audio formats reaches its zenith here, with this release available in 21 versions including Betamax PCM and 750MB zip disk. All of which, combined with album title We Tried To Make It Big But Something Somewhere Went Wrong And We Can’t Work Out What That Something Is, isn’t wholly conducive to a review of this length.
THINKING WITH SAND
Until pretty recently, Thinking With Sand was a fully mothballed lateish-00s ambient shoegaze project featuring Linus, who also played (and still does) in grindcore band Atomçk. From what I can remember, and we’re talking ‘listened on Myspace about 15 years ago’, they were notably less rock-styled than the revived version of the band, whose debut album proper Dreams And Half Truths has just been released on vinyl by a German label, Oscarson. Newportian in origin, though Linus now lives in Bristol, it uses low fidelity to its advantage, with piercing feedback and swampy bottom end leaving the vocals fighting for recognition. Saw TWS not long ago, as a trio, and was impressed by how densely loud it was: “Flying Saucer Attack meets Hüsker Dü”, I mentally noted down, and even though Oscarson’s blurb says something very similar making me look like a copycat, I’m still jazzed enough by that concept to say it here.
WHO ARE THE MONSTERS
Three more instrumental rockers of decent length from Cardiff trio Who Are The Monsters, interviewed for Buzz by Chris Andrews on the occasion of their previous EP. On The Witchcraft Reader, whose tracks are titled so as to suggest an overarching concept, there is bluntly chunky noiserock bass; outlandish psych/proto-metal guitar wailing; a post-rock crescendo now and then. Thoughts of Earthless, Sonic Youth, Pelican and Band Of Susans came and went, yet I don’t think they sound much like any of those bands, ultimately. As such I am appreciative of WATM for locating a sonic niche that I find tricky to summarise, even if they themselves might find it very easy, and take me for a fool.
WORLDCUB
Finally, the latest in a succession of track releases by Snowdonia quartet Worldcub: their drifting, vaguely chintzy Krautrock/electronica seems like the sort of thing one would want to combine into an album, although technically they’ve already done that. Dion and Cynyr Hamer began this project in the late 00s as Castles (written CaStLeS, which doesn’t really improve matters) and released Fforesteering about six years ago, then returned a few years after with a welcome name change. Torri, their new song, has mumbly Gruff Rhys-esque vocals, an electronic rhythm that sounds pleasingly human, i.e. ready to fall apart, and a coda where that basically does happen. That’s good!
words NOEL GARDNER
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