MUSIC NEWS EXTRA
SINFONIA CYMRU
This month’ s paragraph to store in a time capsule underground, so future historians will know which music venues went under when, contains the following info. Cardiff dance venue Aura closed its doors on Fri 7 June; nothing has filled the void as yet, but these are the student-free months. The Coal Exchange in Cardiff Bay, whose closure( in order to build flats) has been threatened for some years now, was forced to shut in late May due to safety issues. The venue plan to reopen when thes are resolved, however. Meanwhile, rock club Bogiez may also succumb to development hell, but despite a recent scare story in local press, they’ re set to be there without disturbance for at least another year
Mark David Boden, a graduate of Cardiff’ s Royal Welsh College Of Music & Drama, has his Chaconne For Strings premiered by Sinfonia Cymru on Thurs 4 July. Still in his 20s, Boden is considered one of the UK’ s most promising orchestral composers, and won several awards while still a RWCMD student. As such, he’ s an avatar of sorts for Classic Conversation, a short tour in which the young musicians of Sinfonia Cymru perform a programme which they assembled themselves. The aforementioned opening night is at the RWCMD itself; it visits Newport Riverfront the following day
Cardiff’ s abrasive rockers Future Of The Left. I like‘ em, you probably like‘ em, their reviews nearly always glow and Andrew the singer is sufficiently regarded as“ a funny guy” that the Guardian Guide headhunted him to write for‘ em. They’ ve not had the greatest of luck with record labels, though, so who can blame them for going it alone for album four, and requesting fans’ funds upfront via the Pledgemusic scheme. Especially when it reached its goal, and then some, in the space of a couple of days. As such, it should be released in October; an EP, Love Songs For Our Husbands, is out on Mon 1 July on their own label, Prescriptions
Festival No. 6, the loosely Prisonerthemed, loosely leftfield festival held in Portmeirion, returns for its second year with an expanded lineup of Welsh acts. In addition to headliners Manic Street Preachers, and younger upstarts like
ONE TO WATCH...
Islet and Sweet Baboo, there’ s a whole stage mostly devoted to Welshness old and new. The Clough stage, named after Portmeirion’ s founder Sir Clough Williams- Ellis, features Geraint Jarman, Bryn Fôn and Heather Jones, as well as Yr Ods, Georgia Ruth and Gwenno. Not Welsh, but likely to pack bags of fun, are guest DJs including David Holmes, Andy Votel and members of Clinic and Demdike Stare
Where are all the protest singers from these parts? Well, as I write they’ re probably just leaving the Immortal Technique show in Cardiff, but in a more general sense you can find a lot of them on Stop The G8 – Mae’ n Fucking Afiach!, a 23-song compilation released by local radical collective Afiach. Members include Steffan Cravos, who used to be in Welsh language rap group Tystion, and the mother tongue is well represented on the album, but there are also contributions from the likes of Little Eris, Cosmo, Tracey Curtis and hardcore / crust dudes Grand Collapse. Afiach have also just released an album by Lembo, a Welsh street artist who recorded this hip-hop / pop / baile funk mashup in 2010 and has dug it up for 2013
AFRO CLUSTER
Many would say that Cardiff is not famous for multi-member, MC-led partytime Afro-funk bands, and in a broad sense they’ d be right. There is a caveat, though, in that there’ s always been a pocket( or indeed a cluster) of the Welsh capital’ s live music scene that has eaten up this kind of hybrid crops. The hip-hop scene around the turn of the century, for example, gave about as much room to live instrumentation as to turntables-and-a-microphone setups. More recently, Cardiff venues Gwdihw and the Moon have both found that this stuff can be a popular draw. And also not least Afro Cluster, who formed in 2010, currently have nine members and are releasing their debut EP this month. Enter The Lion has four tracks, each of which prominently feature the rolling, positivist rhymes of Skunkadelic and colourful blasts of brass, including two trumpeters. The ingredients arrive in differing quantities: Afro Lion bounds along via an insistent, choppy bassline whose roots are in any number of old Fela Kuti records, while Break The Mould introduces itself with lairy hard rock guitar. Fear Not is bold enough to namecheck“ my man Tony Allen,” one of Afro Cluster’ s many, and largely very tasteful, influences. That said, for this listener they perhaps most often resemble Jurassic 5 big band spinoff Ozomatli, who never quote entered the musical canon but whose live shows were tons o’ fun back in the day. If Afro Cluster can approach that when they cram onto stages, they’ re be doing just fine. www. facebook. com / afrocluster one louder LIKE everyone who writes a column, I’ m a big fan of observing what my friends and acquaintances have been up to recently, and then extrapolating from this to make out that it’ s reflective of the world at large. Therefore, I’ m here to let you know that right now, having a positive major event in your life is HOT, while doing more or less the same thing week-in week-out without any notable upheaval is NOT. I attended a friend’ s stag‘ do’ the weekend just gone, as I write( since you asked: it was fun, not too blokey, we went to see Carl Craig) and was at another friend’ s wedding the week before that. Including the aforementioned stag, there are three more weddings coming up between now and mid-September. It didn’ t use to be like this, not for me at any rate. This might have something to do with being in my 30s now, and not being in my 20s, like before. As you’ re no doubt aware, weddings and their attendant ceremonial faff tend to involve ladlefuls of warm nostalgia. In the speeches, where the world and its pissed dad wheel out a cheerful anecdote about how the bride( s) and / or groom( s) met( hope you liked the way I covered all bases there); in the small talk between a bunch of people who haven’ t seen each other for years. This works well for most people because it’ s easier than trying to think about the future, which involves a lot of unknown quantities, dodgy assumptions and fuzzy predictions. Unlike the time when we were at that place and those people were doing this and that, and the results of that activity. That definitely happened and is still hilarious. Ah, where does the time go? Last month’ s issue of this magazine was a particular pain in the arse to get finished, thanks to incompetent telecommunications clowns disabling our broadband connection for a week and a half around deadline. This meant that I was frequently sat at my PC trying to find something to pass the time. In a blaze of solipsism, I decided to read hundreds of my old music reviews from 10 to 13 years ago. What a pleasant trip down memory lane this didn’ t prove to be. I mean, it was fun remembering old bands who no-one cares about anymore – everyone likes that – it’ s just that I sound like an absolute tosser when describing most of them. Filled with an unearned confidence that’ s often found in males in their early 20s, there are lots of words CAPITALISED FOR NO REASON, exhausting hyperbole,‘ provocative’ blanket statements and a general feeling that this guy actually believes music writing( his or anyone else’ s) is remotely important. Wow, here’ s a review of a Regular Fries EP for the Big Issue in which I jokingly suggest that one of the band might be called Tarquin, you know like a posh person. Hilarious! It all felt a bit like a long-view version of a post-party cameraphone video revealing that your Wildean bon mots were in fact shit and embarrassing. One of my favourite bands in the early 00s were loose cannon LA punk rockers The Icarus Line. Remember them? They have a new album this month, which sounded pretty good when I played it earlier while making breakfast. The press release dutifully mentions the pranks-cum-publicity-stunts they played on more famous musicians – notably The Strokes and Fred Durst, who are apparently“ corporate rock’ s sacred cows”. What seemed like truth speaking to power in 2002 or so now feels a bit lame and needy, especially because The Strokes and Durst are effectively nostalgia acts in 2013. Maybe The Icarus Line feel the same way, but mentioned it to jog a few memories. Or maybe they never really grew up. Maybe they’ re content in their lives. THOUGHT FORMS( Cardiff Moon Club, Fri 5), TV SMITH( Windsor Arms, Penarth, Sat 6), CHESTNUT ROAD( Gwdihw, Sun 7), NAMELESS and SCIENCE BASTARD( Clwb Ifor Bach, Fri 12), EMILY’ S ARMY( Hobos, Bridgend, Fri 19), TUNABUNNY( Buffalo, Sat 20), AKRON / FAMILY( Clwb Ifor, Wed 24), classic rock fest STEELHOUSE( Aberbeeg near Ebbw Vale, Sat 27 and Sun 28) and Cleveland hardcore legends INTEGRITY( Le Pub, Newport, Sun 28). Those are some gigs happening this month NOEL GARDNER
BUZZ 40