WELSH


RELEASES


Swansea’s Ian Holloway, who I always chucklingly clarify is no relation to the Westcountry-accented foot- ball manager of the same name as if there was ever a strong chance of confusing the matter, has been releas- ing CDRs (mostly) of his exceedingly pared-back, almost incidental ambient drone music for nearly 20 years. The latest, The Ma- chinery Of The Moment, is under his The British Space Group pseudonym, comes via the Wyrd Britain label and is bolstered by an approving quote from War- ren Ellis (the comics guy rather than the Bad Seeds member, this one being more ambiguous). Two-thirds of its running time is taken up by one track, Ghost Fre- quency, which despite


low-key sonics captivates with delicate dub pulses and tiny pieces of pointillist pro- duction detail.


its


Ways album released on the mysterious and collect- ible Verdant Wisdom label, based on the Welsh border. Did the reviewer manage to score a copy of its evoc- ative, folk-leaning keyboard instrumentals? Only the seers know… Purporting to be inspired by time spent in the lush countryside around VW’s patch, it sits in a sweet spot between minimal synth, dungeon synth and new age: all slowly unfurling me- lodic figures which I could sometimes


reappropriated in a brasher, beat-based context (Taking Shelter) but is in effect her- metic and calming.


envisage being


While Anglesey-originated psych-pop multi-instrumen- talist Carwyn Ellis has usually dictated the sound of his various projects, Across The Water is also his first solo album. A laudably char- itable venture, with half of each purchase donated to Cardiff refugee centre Oasis, this choice circles back to the release’s lyrical content and inspiration, the wretched treatment of displaced peo- ples by the West. One song, Bound For Lampedusa, is a cover of Ellis’ peer The Gentle Good; elsewhere, he is content with plaintive pi- ano instrumentals that make their point via their titles. Seventy Four,


2017 tragedy which claimed that number of migrant lives, landed awkwardly with me, its chintzy pop wistfulness failing to convey the gravity of the event.


referring a


Ghost Signs and Veins Full Of Static’s collabo- rative tape, four tracks in about 45 minutes, is titled For The Reverend Jason Molina in reference to a late country-rockish American of that name. His music was in- variably bleak and so is this, but in a rather different way: gauzy droning ambience that might have involved a guitar or similar somewhere but has certainly been greatly processed to create what we hear. Released on Manches- ter microlabel Decaying Spheres, the two artists in- volved assembled this with- out having met; Veins Full Of Static, who lives in south Wales, I had a prior familiar- ity with, and had him down as Boards Of Canada via dub techno. Ghost Signs, from Belfast, is new to me, but here they make a great team.


The Pope John Paul Van Damme project, titled in the grand tradition of ‘gets funnier every time you hear it’, has been kicking around for a couple of years. Tom, the person behind PJPVD, is a participant in the Cardiff IDM/weird rave community that seemed, counterintu- itively, to flourish during lockdown. He’s released two albums almost simultane- ously, This Is Not For You and You Can’t Deal With My Infinite Nature; I’ll con- centrate on the latter, newer release, which is very ‘gold- en era Rephlex Records’ in its crisp, multifaceted drum programming, tweaky acid burble and moodier synth underbelly, but very well executed. The six original PJPVD tracks


mented with five remixes by people I’m otherwise unfa- miliar with (one, Tookey, is south Walian) but who are all waiting for your ears on Bandcamp.


are supple-


Cohen aka Stereo Minus One, is a bit of a false fright- ener: its grizzly stormclouds of electronics are on brand for the project, but so are more palatable numbers like the fuzzed-out dub techno of the title track and the spring- heeled IDM of Switched and the archly-titled Empty The Floor. There is melod- ic sunlight peeking through pinholes in these rumbling, bass-dominated, sometimes industrial constructs, mean- ing Lodestone is never just flat-out computer music moodiness – but it’s one best appreciated with no distrac- tions, and perhaps a preex- isting liking for the output of labels like PAN or Mille Plateaux.


ONES TO WATCH:


Adwaith


Gwenllian Anthony and Heledd Owen, aka Carmarthen trio Adwaith, have reached larger and more appreciative audiences in the last few years, with second album Bato Mato and a rash of summer gigs on the horizon.


Spurious Transients is a electronic psych project from somewhere in Pem- brokeshire,


Total depths-of-Bandcamp outsider goofin’ here with two short EPs on Speedham- mer, a new label from Ab- erystwyth.


By the time you read this there’ll be a tape version of Dun Burr’s Ruralistic


is ran by one Ethan Parsons and I am fairly sure he is also the sole performer on both the Mindset and Rot demos, although the former is nominally a full band. Mindset’s Killing Spree fea- tures two songs of deranged punked-up crossover speed/ thrash metal with a card- board box drum sound and finger-in-the-socket vocals, plus an acoustic instrumen- tal outro that’s like if The Shaggs were a neofolk band. Rot is Parsons’ dungeon synth project and, even by the standards of this often quite strange genre, The Descent is some primitive murk, with 8-bit videogame melodies bound up with a sufficiency of cassette fuzz.


Speedhammer


features Gavin Lloyd Wil- son and intermittently other people too: on Fake Music, the latest Spurious Tran- sients album, he assembled everything apart from a few samples. There are rather a lot of samples on the album, it should be noted – much of it sounds like dialogue from American psychological experiments, or dramatisa- tions of it. Musically, Wil- son appears to have moved more towards beat-based electronica than the last Transients album I heard, in 2020, which seemed more geared towards guitars. My highlight is the penultimate Why Did Mother Come Out So Frequently?, which cooks up an almost ambient jungle atmosphere to go with its evocative title.


which always


WoodooMan, or Iwan Ap Huw Morgan, had this solo- with-pals project percolating for a while before nailing it in-studio, but Y Nos is his second full-length, fol- lowing debut Obsidilove in late 2020. I like this one for much the same reasons as I did that – energetic, psyche- delic bluesy hard rock with appreciable heft, possessing cosmic depth and a sense of fun – but Y Nos seems more fully realised, thanks most likely to the contributions of Cardiff musicians like Frank Naughton, Kate Wood and Andy Fung. A song like In The Night, piano-driven and bedsit-folkish without the shroud of distorted guitars, could have exposed Mor- gan’s shortcomings if they were apparent, but holds up as well as anything here.


Going into the studio this time around, did you feel more assured in your creative process? Heledd: Yeah, I think we trusted it a bit more. We had the time to kind of experiment and play around with weird sounds and stuff which I probably would have been a bit scared to do before. Gwenllian: With the first album, we’d wrote the songs a few years before we recorded them. So, I guess it was harder to experiment with things. This time, we wrote it apart from each other because of lockdown, and then went to the studio and could feel free to experiment.


What themes did you want to explore within Bato Mato? Gwenllian: We were inspired by our trip to Siberia. That trip and the landscape was kind of the main theme for us. The first Adwaith album was about growing up in your teens – this one is the next step, being in your 20s and realising things are not so positive all the time. Hitting reality.


You’re playing several Welsh festivals this summer, from In It Together to Green Man – what are your favourite things about them? Heledd:


The folk-tinged alt-rock/postpunk sounds of Hollie Singer,


pressurising. Nice crowds. Gwenllian: FOCUS Wales, in Wrexham, is one of our favourite festivals to play. A lot of people from the Welsh scene are there and everyone’s supporting each other.


This one came out in March, but I must shout out The Forest Howls At Dusk, Ysbrydnos’


A forbidding opening few minutes to Lodestone, the eighth album by transplant- ed Cardiffian Dan Haines


debut album of black metal from near Llanelli. It’s a solo project in essence, though the soloist in question (Ysbryd) is aided by a drummer and flute player. Should you be sceptical of the latter parts, they work like a charm, lending this pummelling second wave-styled romp a mystical, almost medieval air. Spectral Hounds Of Annwn – most song titles reference Welsh history or geography – has an almost speed metal-type intro but reverts to a consuming, acid-washed blur in due course. The bombastic sound achieved here is combined by a largely polish-free production aesthetic, often a winning BM combo.


storming


Do you mind that festivals are often that sort of environment where people watching haven’t come to see you necessarily, and you have to kind of persuade them to stay? Hollie: That’s how you get new fans, I suppose. We were walking through Wrexham and some random guy asked, “do you know if there’s any music on?” We were like, “come see us!” and handed him our flyers. It’s just nice to meet new people and introduce them to our music. Whether that bloke came or not, who knows…


Adwaith’s Bato Mato is released on Fri 1 July via Libertino. They play Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff on the same day. Tickets: £10. Info clwb.net facebook.com/adwaithmusic


EMMA WAY


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37


They’re welcoming, not


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