Noel Gardner takes time out of his busy schedule of whatever it is he does to listen to a big (mostly digital, occasionally physical) pile of new Welsh music you may have missed from the margins this March, and write down some thoughts on it. There must be a vowel in the month!
Delve into more double dungeon synth from ALTAR OF MOSS and AVAGDDU
There are plenty of prolific Welsh recording artists, some releasing new music every month or so, and while I respect the hustle I mainly try to keep this column’s content as varied as possible. So why is mid-Wales dungeon synth artist Altar Of Moss being featured two months in a row? In large part because on Coedwig Rhewedig, a cassette he’s released through his label Nocturnal Curse, he and a fella named Avagddu have a side apiece. Avagddu was last active in the late 00s, making extreme doom metal, but this return finds him trading guitars and blackened vocals for melodic keyboards and stately, spacerock-type basslines – in other words, synthstrumentals more akin to AoM and innumerable others in the global dungeon scene. He’s still a master of atmos though, for sure.
AMETHYST PHOENIXX: drone, improv drumming, Syd Barrett’s spirit
I’ve seen a couple of Amethyst Phoenixx live performances in the last year or so and known the musician behind them for longer, which obviously isn’t a prerequisite for appreciation but does give added cheer that this nine-plus-minute track – the first under the name to be released into the wild, I think – has manifested. Jon, the Phoenixx in question, plays improv drums but with a guitar fixed to the front of the kit, which creates a droning soundbed triggered by the drumming. On Have You Got It Yet?, whose title references some Syd Barrett trivia, this results in a very nice immersive type of psychedelic minimalism.
Haverfordwest doom rockers GOAT MAJOR sling sludge and fuzz on debut LP
I thought that if I never encountered another doom metal band with ‘Goat’ in their name, it’d be one too many, but these geezers from Haverfordwest have bowled me a googly with their reference to the goats who serve as mascots for the Welsh infantry and undermine the operation by arsing about, eating tin cans etc. As for their jams, Goat Major’s debut album Ritual arrives via dependable US metal label Ripple Music and offers eight songs of low-slung fuzz sludge with garage rock production aesthetics. Electric Wizard did this first and best, let’s not mince words, but this trio have plenty of paradoxical bong energy, wah pedal action to wax yer surfboard to and maybe even a little strung-out shoegaze sound.
Slowly building atmospheres and big riffs from GUARDBAND
Guardband, a duo from Cardiff, did have their first release reviewed in this New Welsh music roundup some 18 months ago, but I didn’t hesitate to give this follow-up, Long-Term Vexation And Grief, similar treatment. With five songs ranging from seven to 10 minutes in length, they give themselves room to bloom, moving from quieter melodic passages to downtuned metallic sections; Akrotiri Station, that 2022 debut, suggested that Guardband were a slowcore band utilising doom/sludge tone and volume, but on this album – in particular its first two songs, Feeding and Catch – it feels more like the opposite. That the arrangements give the impression of more than two musicians at work might be down to some studio smarts, though Guardband can also create this impression onstage.
Hardy perennials of Welsh folk reunite as LAUFORD CRIPPS
South Wales folk trio Lauford Cripps’ hybridised name also contains an internal portmanteau, with Geoff Cripps joined by Laurence Eddy and Wynford Jones, aka Lauford. All three members were also in The Chartists, who were pretty much the last word in Gwent folk-rock throughout the 1980s, and after a few decades apart have got back together for live shows. One of those, on a Blaenau community radio station, has now been released as Live At BGFM Nantyglo on Cripps’ label Steam Pie. A take on Ewan MacColl’s School Days Over (you might know any of a few versions) accompanies two trad. arr.s and six originals, whose topics include the Senghenydd mining disaster of 1913 and the 400,000 people who visited Barry Island on one day in 1934.
Shoegaze groovers MIDDING pivot to lo-fi on their debut tape
The other week I found a nine-song cassette by Cardiff’s Midding for sale on a table at a gig, and took up the offer. Unusually, at the time of purchase there was no online evidence that this tape, titled Kitchen Song, existed, and though it’s now available on streaming services the general vibe presented is a detour from previous, rocking shoegaze ventures by Midding, including under their first name Clwb Fuzz. The general fidelity suggests home recordings, with big riffs in short supply relative to massaged amp distortion, and there’s a cover of Psychic TV’s 1985 indie chart hit Godstar. I’m not sure where Midding view this release in terms of their evolution as a band, or if whatever they do next will much resemble it, but am very appreciative of the mindset that led them here.
Folk-rocker Jon Airdrie unearths a clutch of lost songs as PIECES OF WORK
Jon Airdrie, a longstanding south Wales musician who organises the Folk On The Lawn festival in addition to singing in various bands of his own, returns with a new quintet, Pieces Of Work, and a 10-song CD titled Rejuvenation. The grouping, says Airdrie, is less than a year old, but the songs on the album were written in the early 00s and have, I think, lain unused until now. Featuring bandmates from local, somewhat likeminded acts Blind River Scare and Dark Valley Revival, it’s not a chasm away from Airdrie’s other current band the Enablers, but circles back closer to straight-laced folk-rock than previous jazzier or more psychedelic turns. There’s always something a bit crepuscular and agreeably eccentric when Airdrie’s on the mic, though, penultimate song Fun a standout example.
Modern composition with a disco diversion from Aberystwyth’s RICHARD BAKER
The Tyranny Of Fun is an hour-long album of modern composition by Aberystwyth-based composer Richard Baker which forms part of the NMC label’s Debut Discs series. That name is technically accurate, in that this is Baker’s first ever ‘artist album’ as it were, but liable to paint him as a newcomer – in fact, the works on here date as far back as 1994, and Baker has been a favourite of critics and ensembles for some 25 years as well as working with the likes of Music Theatre Wales and Bangor Music Festival. Here, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group perform the majority of his compositions, including the disco-influenced title piece, with CHROMA Ensemble doing the honours for the six-part Motet II, a meditation on George Floyd’s murder.
Post-hardcore alt-rockers SHELL put their big sound on big vinyl
Another 18-month gap between releases returns Shell, a four-piece from Cardiff, to this New Welsh music column, with three-song debut Feel Nothing now joined by a newer, bigger sibling (hey, it could happen). The Need To Separate is a six-song EP released on 12” by the Best Life label, and it’s a big advance on what were already some hefty post-hardcore moves. “Shoegaze gone grunge” is what I said about Feel Nothing’s guitar sound at the time, and on The Need… Shell have moved closer to the former, overall, with melancholy vocals and wind-tunnel textures abundant – they’re not unique in pursuing a metallic take on 90s alt, and in part remind me of what Torche were doing in the mid to late 00s, but are putting their own stamp on it.
words NOEL GARDNER
