RECENT WELSH MUSIC YOU MAY HAVE MISSED | REVIEW
Andrew Skelton, who by virtue of his name beginning with A is lucky enough to christen May’s edition of this monthly column, sends in his new album Build A Wild Web with a note claiming trepidation, having just read a negative review of one by Luke Haines on this site. For my part, I would probably at this juncture avoid pouring cold water on little-known domestic acts and just cover something else instead, unless they were really hilariously bad perhaps, or had a near-30-year history of calling other musicians crap and stupid, like Luke Haines does. With that all said, Build A Wild Web is a gently agreeable singer-songwriter album in the style that was called ‘bedsit’ in the 70s; it doesn’t hold a (Roman) candle to Skelton’s chief stated influence, Elliott Smith, but makes a perfectly decent go of it, with closing number Everything Turns Out Alright adding organ and other sonic layers for a stirring quasi-ballad.
Not sure if BOI (styled in upper case, or maybe it stands for something) are based in any specific place, but of their five members [pictured, top], two were once in north Wales band Big Leaves, or Beganifs in their original incarnation. They’ve an album due in late June and have released two songs from it in the month since the last RWMYMHM, an acronym I have written out for the first time and like the look of. Cael Chdi Nôl, the first, is an especially promising art-glam fizzer with enervating Suffragette City electric piano; Ribidires, online only since last weekend (at press time), is more like countrified psych, although with rattly keys making matters more upbeat.
Nick Evans, recording here as Dawn-Song, is a Penarth native (though now living in the Netherlands) and graduate of the 80s anarcho punk scene. I think this album, For Morgan, is Evans’ first recording since he was in demo-only band Slaughter Tradition; his 1990s were taken up with running indie label Elemental, so thank you for the Rocket From The Crypt and Trumans Water releases Nick! For Morgan additionally arrives via his Slaughter Tradition bandmate Matt Davies’ Ffynnone Records, and is both dedicated to Evans’ son and inspired by his dad. It’s some 50 minutes of ornate, erudite folk-rock, evidently personal but not so much as to be thematically inaccessible, and for someone singing (as in actual singing) for perhaps the first time, Evans has a very nice voice.
Seems moderately likely that Death Cult Electric could become pretty well known, the fuzzy stoner punk riffs and wildman vox of new single The Fine Print carrying elements of QOTSA, Drenge and McLusky. Introducing themselves to the world in December 2019 and thus pretty much remaining on the starting grid obviously hasn’t helped, but we’re all in this together, as a promotional slogan in Marks & Spencer recently informed me. DCE feature two members of Cardiff’s Estrons, another band who seemed to be building a rep before breaking up for reasons unclear (to me).
The Boys Cosmic is the fourth album by Deep Hum, a trio who began in Bridgend but who are now part-Cardiff-based: the nine songs here are tied together, it is claimed, by a story/concept about a paranormal investigator from Maindy, where Deep Hum member Lloyd Markham lives. The album cover, despite resembling furry fan art more than many might prefer, also seems to be linked into all this. The music, meanwhile, is – as with past Deep Hum releases – off on its own axis, burbling electronic exotica and spacerock scrawl emanating from guitar and sitar alike. This band, while not being ambient as such, have a distracted, woozy air to them which can amount to something similar, but benefit from and indeed deserve close attention.
Feels like slow-rolling metal mob Kong Lives, from Newport, have been kicking around much longer than the four and a half years they state. I mean that in a good way! Thy Kingdom Kong is their debut album, following an extended player not long after their inception, and is fine fare. Its six songs – the last, Rose Ascension, is in two parts and lasts 23 minutes – has elements of doom’s mordant lumber, sludge’s punky belligerence and the expansiveness of shoegaze/post-metal.
Kyam was reviewed back in November, as part of a 12” compilation which the producer himself – real name Matthew Strangis – released on his Unbidden Audio label. Now he’s back with his third full album, Past Tense, and I think he gets better at his whole ‘experimental, paranoid drum’n’bass’ thing with every release. Its 10 tracks offer ample levels of skeletal, metallic percussion and industrial dub atmosphere, with mid-album piece Start & End deviating into (good, 90s style) post-rock guitar – not unlike Raime’s Tooth album. Elsewhere, instances of muted trumpet and cinematic drones contribute further to a set I’d heartily recommend to fans of the techno/d’n’b netherworld recently explored by acts like Pessimist and labels like UVB-76.
Ride Or Die, the debut mini-album by Laura Jazmyn, is released by newish Swansea label SWND, although I was alerted to it by Laura’s alma mater Coleg Gwent, who proudly note that she recently honed her craft there under her given name, Laura Huckbody. The six songs here find her on an organic-sounding retro soul tip, with a four-piece band variously delivering restrained melancholy and uptempo funkers; at only 17 years old, meanwhile, she’s a very assured sounding vocalist, dramatic without being showoffy in a classic soul manner.
I assumed that underrated Cardiff r’n’b group Baby Queens were no longer a going concern, but they promised “new music soon” a month or so ago, which is nice. This I gathered while penning this quick appraisal of Revolving Doors, a new single by Monique B – Baby Queens member and longstanding club DJ. “All the way from Cardiff Wales!” hollers Reuel Elijah during the intro, before a stark, lowriding beat propels a melody possibly derived from a Spanish guitar or similar. Lots of Autotune jazzes up lyrics about wanting romantic security of some kind (Monique) and being better placed to offer this than your pish ex (Reuel).
The Bended Tree is an album by Petter Rylén, a solo pianist who comes from and indeed lives in Sweden, but has spent several years in Newport and is shortly to return if I’m reading this blurb right. It’s also been remixed by his pal from the Port, George Goom, whose music-making is more on an electronic/ambient tip. Rylén’s pieces, strange minimal ripples with stranger, possibly wordless vocal exercises, are overhauled fairly comprehensively by Goom, who turns in something that makes me think of various folky IDM stuff from some 20 years ago – Minotaur Shock, maybe. Altogether these sibling albums are pretty neat so I hope their two creators are reunited in due course.
When a band begins its name with ‘Thee’ rather than the more conventional ‘The’, you just know that they’re either Elizabethan time travellers or they enjoy a certain type of arch garage rock. Thee Rakevines, from Swansea, are the second of those things, which I suppose is a bit disappointing all things considered, but that’s not their fault. They have a new single, Won’t You Join Me?, which contains Sympathy For The Devil woo-woos, use of the term “reefer” to mean marijuana, occasional vocal interjections from guest Byddia Lewis and some sort of remix or post-production work by Port Talbot’s Soundegginternational.
Five years between the release of one’s debut album, and a collection of remixes of its songs, is a long stretch, but that’s what the Cardiff-based Rogue Jones have done with U V (Blinc), which hands over stems of their 2016 full-length V U to various Welsh artists and lets them tinker at will. In the main, the people Rogue Jones have chosen work partly or exclusively in electronic realms while not exactly being prolific remixers; there are some people I’m always happy to hear from herein (Ani Glass, Frank Naughton, Ëadyth, Pat from Datblygu) and some people whose remixical fruits I’m enjoying despite not knowing who they are (Rob Ackroyd).
The latest single from Cardiff’s still-relatively-new Rose Parade Records is from Rona Mac, who lives on the Pembrokeshire coast and makes music described by the label itself as “wholesome”. Weapon certainly sounds keen to be liked, from the claims to be a “superwitch” overlaying its introductory one-chord strum (reminds me of Liz Phair, is probably aiming for those millennial alt acts who kind of update Liz Phair) to the unobtrusive electronic backing to the loosely Fleetwood Mac-y vocal melody.
Finally, Crow Spanner by Marc Roberts aka Cardiff solo act Zeuk is available as a CDR on the Folk Archive label, and if you’ve encountered the gothic/psychedelic folk he’s previously proffered under this name, you might find its general sound quite unexpected. Its drum machines, clanking synths, samples and bedroom dub excursions do however share an early 80s tape culture feel with Starlings Planet, a duo who feature Roberts and who I reviewed in this column’s November edition. There are a few moments closer to previous Zeuk releases, such as the hyperdramatic Tides, and a vocal delivery on If I Were A Clock which could almost-but-not-quite be described as rapping.
words NOEL GARDNER
