RECENT WELSH MUSIC YOU MAY HAVE MISSED | REVIEW
Presenting the second part of the final edition of this quickfire regional review roundup rundown for 2020: 10 varied musical items of many different genres, stylistic shifts made all the more jarring by me dishing them out in alphabetical order. Deal with it!
To begin, two releases constituting such jarring changes of style. Drowning is the debut single by Menna Collins, a Carmarthen solo artist who’s currently a music student at Manchester’s Royal Northern College Of Music, and was written about that very life choice, Collins says: specifically, her initial fears she wasn’t up to the task. This is a confident, accomplished-sounding piece of contemporary pop rock that builds subtly from low-lit twinkly verses to big crescendos, then back again.
City Of Forms (Outsider Art) is the debut album by Ordeal By Roses, an alias of south Wales solo performer Alexander Evans – who has honed the sound heard here for a few years now, recently moving away from fully blistering power electronics-style noise towards something more droney, almost ambient. These six tracks, self-described as “trauma electronics”, are a suitably harrowing listen nonetheless – semi-buried, often spoken vocals mixing with prickly edifices of synth and industrial thud. It’s not easy to hit on a style that actively stands out when making music like this, but Evans has done so here with a really impressive release.
Outside Broadcast aim to keep their identities as mysterious as possible, though their Soundcloud page lists them as being from Cardiff, and when one member emailed me about their new album Earth Calling he signed off as Steve. Lots of people are called Steve so I shouldn’t think any cover has been blown there. Earth Calling professes to be influenced by electronic and/or progressive music from late 60s Krautrock onwards, with an evident range of touchstones but midpaced drum machine rhythms and expansive, spacey synths a common occurrence.
Another RNCM undergraduate from Wales drops in with an assured-sounding pop single! Wonder if Menna and Pete Morgan (from, I think, Cardiff) know each other. Pete’s debut Begging (Northern Quarter) is a contemporary update on what is sometimes euphemistically called blue-eyed soul, with a Timberlake-y tenor to Morgan’s high notes.
Swansea’s The Rusty Nutz have a new four-song EP on local label Lavender Sweep; both parties seem to enjoy unusual-to-the-point-of-novelty playing formats, Farewell My Fans being released on cassette, DAT, Zip disk and reel-to-reel [pictured left]. Or just stream it via the link above and wallow in The Rusty Nutz’ moderately japey powerchord indie/punk which I think borrows the riff from Rise Above by Black Flag at one point.
Isle Of Dogs (Zelebritee), the second album from She’s Got Spies [top] – Laura Nunez plus Cardiff-sourced backing band – features songs in English, Welsh and Russian, plus one whose video was filmed in Antarctica, which Nunez visited after winning a competition to do so. There seem to be more “win a trip to Antarctica” competitions than you (I) might expect. Musically, this album starts off on a sort of Small Faces tip before pootling through pastures of synth-forward DIY psych-pop, and I can’t shake off how much the vocals remind me of Shirley Collins – latterday Shirley Collins, that is, who is about twice Nunez’s age.
Anglo-Welsh OG indie royalty right here with the debut release by Swansea Sound: Hue Williams, once of The Pooh Sticks, and Amelia Fletcher of a great many ensembles from Talulah Gosh onwards, backed by another couple of guitar-pop lifers. Again on Lavender Sweep, who this time have released (and sold all of) 50 cassettes, Corporate Indie Band is as eyerollingly sardonic as its music is jangly and tambourine-powered. B-side Angry Girl finds its rock’n’roll feet but keeps its essence sweet.
A fairly different Swansea sound comes from They Live | We Sleep, a metallic hardcore band who have a split EP with Sense Offender – also split label-wise, FHED handling the cassette version and Trepanation the CD. Sense Offender, from somewhere in northern England, submit three tracks of expansive hardcore-leaning sludge that reminds me of early 00s Hydra Head Records – that’s good – while TL|WS move away from their favoured Converge-esque battery a little with some all-consuming doom riffing, notably on second song (again of three) Suffer Silent.
Obsidilove, by WoodooMan [above], marks the return of Iwan Ap Huw Morgan to the game, having done time in a few stoner-ish bands in the 00s before some years in the musical wilderness. A solo project conceptually, though recorded with various musicians including most of those featured on the Botch Sconnet album I reviewed yesterday, Morgan’s guitar parts are possibly my favourite thing about this release, as it goes (cf Struck By Lightning). It’s not often ‘heavy’ in the sense of mammoth volume but exhibits a pronounced depth in its lyrics and approximate vibe, with songs containing elements of 60s psych, 70s hard rock and electric folk. Good stuff.
Finally, The Shining Pyramid is a compilation of experimental music inspired by Welsh occult literature such as Arthur Machen, and is released by Listen To The Voice Of Fire – Dafydd Roberts, whose music as Alphane Moon I reviewed yesterday. It’s a cassette packaged with a booklet of essays and some other fancy trinkets, and I’m not sure which of the contributing artists are Welsh (definitely not all of them) but this is a tidy wee bundle if you like abstract sonics and rural folklore. Its opening and closing tracks, respectively by Somerset folk duo Facing The Ocean and organic drone specialist Embla Quickbeam, are my picks.
words NOEL GARDNER