music clubs
TRULY MADLY Fam Jam @ Jacob’s Market, Cardiff Fri 26 Nov
After a year and a half delay, new house/ garage/techno night Fam Jam finally gets a long-overdue launch party at Jacob’s Market with headliner Truly Madly. Fam Jam was formed just before the pandemic hit, by a group of south-Wales-based DJs dedicated to finding and sharing the music they love. Self-confessed crate diggers, the guys behind Fam Jam want to showcase DJs and artists from across the globe who share the same passion for record collecting and whose sets have inspired them over the years.
Fam Jam’s first booking is Truly Madly, who was meant to headline their original launch event back in April 2020. Truly Madly is an elusive artist: you’ll struggle to find much about him in the public sphere. However, he’s forged an impressive following and reputation over the years for sourcing rare, obscure house and techno tracks and curating these into his effortless, expertly mixed sets.
Truly Madly has been around since the 90s, bringing stand-out mixes and coveted track lists to the UK and, more recently, the wider world. He founded
his own imprint, MindHelmet, during lockdown and launched the label in September of last year, with releases from Gene on Earth, Sweely, Nathan Pinder, and some other names worth checking out. This summer, he’s returned to parties and festivals at home and overseas – his impeccable Dimensions Festival mix is one to listen to if you want to relive the warmer, hazy days of a few months’ back. A resident for The Pickle Factory, Truly Madly makes regular appearances in London, so it’s exciting to see him on a line-up in the Welsh capital for Fam Jam’s launch event.
Fam Jam have waited a long time to share their love for great music and records with a crowd. The sheer joy of finding a killer track at the back of a dusty pile in a record shop, or after falling down a Discogs rabbithole, is hard to put across in a live set. However, Truly Madly manages it every time – and expect the Fam Jam guys to nail it too.
Tickets: from £14. Info:
fam-jam.eventcube.io
FRANCESCA GARDNER
FABULOUS
Cathays Sports & Social Club, Cardiff Sat 27 Nov
One of the team of people responsible for mod-centric club night Fabulous, Paul Reeves, emailed Buzz with a warm recollection of the magazine running a feature on the night back in the late 90s. At the time, they were pretty new on the scene, and much water has passed under the bridge since then of course: Dempseys, their longstanding host venue, is now a destination
burgers, but for what Fabulous are calling their 23rd anniversary party they’re over in Cathays, and you can expect the vibe to be as much like old times as possible.
Fabulous was borne out of the south Wales mod/scooter scene, and has maintained a playlist policy to match. Mod music tastes are more diverse than music categorised as mod tends to be, although expect DJs (Chris Francis, Moz and Ken Dunn) to draw on the 1960s predominantly. Think Northern soul bangers, Motown and Stax hits, slightly earlier R&B and uptempo ska and reggae numbers.
Tickets: £5. Info:
mojokingclothing@gmail.com
NOEL GARDNER for Bundesliga and bad
SASHA
Manipulate_ @ Academi, Bangor Fri 5 Nov
North Wales club promoters Manipulate_ – don’t forget the underscore! – have labelled this one their 20th birthday party, adding that progressive house titan Sasha’s last DJ date in Bangor predates their existence. This is noteworthy due to it being his hometown: not exactly a dance epicentre either in the late 80s or now, the young Alexander Coe discovered house music at Manchester’s Haçienda, coined his DJ name and the rest is history.
Twenty years ago, Sasha was still reaping the spoils from the ‘superstar DJ’ era – which had seen his profile rise through dual sets and mix CDs with John Digweed, jointly riding the prog house and tech-trance tiger, and a remix of Madonna’s Ray Of Light. He, like most of the DJing A-list of that time, doesn’t command quite such astronomical fees today, but is a widely respected elder statesman of British club culture who never compromised his musical ideals when it would have been comfortably done.
Tickets: £12-£19.50. Info:
facebook.com/ manipulatewales
NOEL GARDNER
KOVEN + SOMETHING
SOMETHING Bassline @ Sin City, Swansea Sat 20 Nov
For Swansea-area fans of drum’n’bass and dubstep at its most neon and frothy, meanwhile, boy does Sin City have a night for you this month! Bassline in fact rescheduled this one from its original date in late September, probably not for the purpose of us running a preview of it but thanks all the same.
Koven are a London two-piece of Max Rowat (music) and Katie Geraghty (singing), and their rise up the ranks is more or less exactly concurrent with that of EDM as a scorned genre name, then billion-dollar industry. Releasing through Monstercat, perhaps EDM’s definitive label, the duo bring a sort of power ballad aesthetic to electronic music: tearjerker vocals, swelling keyboards and ruthlessly crescendoing explosive basslines.
Also on the bill is Something Something – UK-based German DJ Steffi Schulz, relatively new on the circuit but whose breakthrough moment, winning a competition with the Hospital label, gives a clue to the vocal-heavy buoyancy of her sets.
Tickets: from £10. Info:
sincityclub.co.uk
NOEL GARDNER
EXIT RECORDS
CARDIFF Twisted Roots @ Frontal Lobe Warehouse, Cardiff Fri 19 Nov
Welsh drum’n’bass promoters Twisted Roots launched in November 2019, also at Cardiff’s Frontal Lobe Warehouse, and if their two years to date has been one of mostly restricted activity, they’ve come back in style by booking connoisseurs’ d’n’b label Exit for its first showcase night in Wales’ capital. Minted by UK producer dBridge nearly 20 years ago, its favoured the darker and more cerebral side of the genre, with audible roots in Detroit techno and 90s techstep, over simple-pleasure jump-up or pop-friendly, vocal-led produce.
Ashley Tindall aka Skeptical headlines the night, with a 90-minute set promised. On the scene for a little over a decade, he’s an itinerant collaborator, with past 12”s including co-productions with Dub Phizix, Loxy and dBridge himself. Expect a set that’s glowering and rhythm-led but remembers to offer fun. Fixate, or Declan Curran, is also down for the night, as is SP:MC, a major vocal foil in this corner of d’n’b.
Tickets: £6-£18. Info:
twisted.roots.events @
outlook.com
NOEL GARDNER
34
Khali Ackford
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
