MUSIC NEWS EXTRA
Jolene: THE INDIE FOLK STAR
A spate of upheaval, most of it less than positive, in the wacky world of south Wales music venues. Newport’ s 200 Club, located on Stow Hill and brought to life by Ashley Sicolo, grandson of late Newport TJ’ s big man Jon Sicolo, announced its closure in mid-May, after a spate of noise complaints since its opening last year. Further into the valleys, Pontypool biker / rock pub the Hog & Hosper has also thrown in the towel in recent weeks, a victim of the recession and waning profits. The Scene Club in Swansea, which mainly hosts bands from the blues-rock and covers circuit, is closed for extensive building work, with no planned reopening date. There’ s a new Cardiff club opening on June 1, though: Base on Charles Street, which has moved a couple of nights from Mill Lane’ s Aura
As it rustles up names from the great and good of burgeoning indie for its sixth weekender, Swn festival has been awarded something called a Grass Roots Festival Bursary. This has been provided by ID & C, who make wristbands for events like this one; it’ s to the tune of £ 2,500, which is to be spent on wristbands and security passes. Obviously, most people don’ t find wristbands very exciting, but the point is this frees up a bunch of cash to spend on actual cool stuff. For example, American indie-fuzz icons Deerhunter, who headline Swn’ s Friday bill( 18 Oct) and are the first act announced for 2013. Tickets will go on sale on Mon 10 June
A chap called Jamie Adams, who used to do gig-promoting, band-playing type things down in Porthcawl, has moved into film-making, and has directed his debut full-length. Jolene: The Indie Folk Star is set for a late 2013 release; a trailer is on YouTube now, and depicts Jolene plus writing partner escaping the London music industry by attending a festival in Wales. Shot improve-style in only five days, the cast includes Charlotte Richie( Oregon from Fresh Meat), Craig Roberts( Submarine) and Rosamund Hamson( Smell from This Is England)
Ex-Gorky’ s Zygotic Mynci singer Euros Childs, in line with many other indie sorts of his approximate age and pedigree, has been self-releasing music
ONE TO WATCH...
for the last few years – in his case, on a label he’ s dubbed The National Elf Library. This month, he’ s plunging back into vinyl with the release of the debut LP by Short & Curlies. At The Dance is a more or less instrumental album which promises to be a stretch away from the pop-song format his previous solo records have employed. In addition to Childs, it features his sister( and fellow ex-Gorky) Megan on violin, plus Sweet Baboo, H Hawkline and R. Seiliog( the men who front those bands, that is)
In the works for Cardiff-based jazz label Edition Records is the debut album by Slowly Rolling Camera, a new project from Edition’ s co-founder Dave Stapleton. Going on their own description, it promises to step further outside jazz’ s parameters than anything the label’ s yet released. Joined by producer Deri Roberts, drummer Elliot Bennett and Cardiff soul singer Dionne Bennett, Dream A Life – SRC’ s one teaser track to date – is powered by strings, weighty double bass, Dionne’ s charged vocal and a sound design that harks back to good-era Mo’ Wax releases. They make their live debut at Chapter Arts Centre on Thurs 20 June
CONTINENTS
If you care about metalcore, even in the sense of actively disliking it, then you might appreciate the vagaries of what Continents have achieved in the last 12 months. They’ re a quintet from south Wales( hailing from five different small towns) who formed in 2010 and have quietly built themselves a credible rep on the UK metalcore scene, in the wake of bands like Bring Me The Horizon and Your Demise going‘ totes mnstrm’. In June last year Continents signed to American label Victory Records, who released their debut album Idle Hands at the start of 2013. Victory has existed for almost 25 years, and even a decade ago their patronage of a band from these parts would have been a hefty fillip. Nowadays, it spends its time releasing novelty rubbish like The Bunny The Bear( look them up, seriously) and getting sued by its former roster. Not great omens for Continents, perhaps, but not in fact a reason to dismiss the keenly realised Idle Hands. Phil Cross’ vocals suggest a death metal influence, but this isn’ t deathcore; breakdowns can usually be spotted from a distance but are highly effective. The ancestry of Will Haven and The Dillinger Escape Plan seems apparent at its fiercest, and Richey Beckett’ s sleeve art is a visual treat. By the time you read this, Continents will have recently returned from a short tour of Japan, they also play Leeds’ metalcore-tastic and highly popular Ghostfest at the end of June. Whatever the future promises, they’ ve long sailed past Local Band status. www. facebook. com / continentsband one louder IT’ S said that there’ s no such thing as bad publicity. It’ s also said, by me, that this is a facile statement which generally signals an attempt to appear worldly-wise and able to guess the true intentions behind people’ s actions. You could, of course, say that that sentence was itself a dismal example of aloof cynicism... but as long as I stay one step ahead of those other cynics, that means I’ m winning, if I correctly understand how the modern world works. In this age where ideological battles are fought not at the ballot box but at the comment box( I know, that is so profound!), people who make poor decisions can often find the consequences escalating at a rapid rate. From the last fortnight and a bit, three examples immediately come to mind – all given a spotlight thanks to the internet, naturally. One was the car driver who knocked a cyclist off his bike, cheerfully tweeted about it and then laid low when several people, including the police themselves, suggested this might be a matter for the police. Another was the husband-and-wife duo who run a cafe in Scottsdale, Arizona – a place I will never visit, but it doesn’ t matter any more! – appeared on a Gordon Ramsay cod-reality show in which Gordon deemed them a lost cause, then had a lengthy and highly quotable meltdown when people mentioned it on their Facebook page.(“ I AM WONDER WOMAN. I AM A GREAT CHEF, A GREAT WIFE, AND A GREAT MOM TO MY KIDS. AND WE WILL BE PARENTS TO A HUMAN KID, ONE DAY TO.”) And the third, not quite as viral but enough to give you a nagging cough, took place in Wales, where this magazine is also from! Unfortunately it was Llandudno, in the north where we’ re too scared to go. On the other hand, the selfclowning ovens in this particular episode call themselves Venue Cymru – a rather grand name for your theatre and its programme of as-seen-on-TV MORtainment – so let’ s assume they’ re trying to fly the flag for all of Wales. Well, they had perky indie band The Vaccines there the other week; perhaps acknowledging that most fans of The Vaccines are young and naive, the venue thought this a good time to try and be proactive about a pickpocket problem they’ d been having. The security team did this by hauling people from the queue at random and quizzing them on basic Vaccines info: what’ s their singer called? What’ s the title of their new album? Those who floundered, thereby indicating they weren’ t there for the music, were stripped of their tickets and ejected, including one fella who was affronted and savvy enough to tattle to several choice media outlets. As has been observed, one flaw in the security tactic was that almost no-one knows the Vaccines singer’ s name. The band seem to be in that air pocket of success where you’ re commercially buoyant, but without any great passion among those that follow you. Another was that it was in a town where big indie concerts are rare enough for people to come out just for the thrill of it. And after all that Dave Sewell, commenting on the Walesonline story about this incident, sniffed:“ A cynical person might think that those who have not heard of this band( I am one such person) now have.” Your Dave Sewells think that this is how everything works: NME cover stars The Vaccines tried to get a PR legup by having people turfed from their gig for specious reasons, so that the wounded parties would lash out on social media. Vaccines singer Tommy‘ Banana’ Johnson twirls his moustache and says,“ that’ s so goddamn crazy... it might just work.” All you uncomprehending suckers who think a cigar is just a cigar: wake up, sheeple. Who are the lead singers of GUARDIAN ALIEN, MXLX and HIS NAKED TORSO( Undertone, Cardiff, Sun 2 June)? NO ZODIAC and BUN DEM OUT( The Moon Club, Thurs 6)? JACCO GARDNER and THE KEYS( Gwdihw, Wed 12)? FAIR OHS( The Moon Club, Sat 15)? BOBBY CONN( Clwb Ifor Bach, Thurs 20)? MELT YOURSELF DOWN( 10 Feet Tall, same day)? TIM BARRY( Buffalo, Sat 22)? THE MUSIC TAPES, Y PENCADLYS and LOCAL SPORTS TEAM( Clwb Ifor, Sat 29)? Also, has anyone seen my phone? NOEL GARDNER
BUZZ 52