Personal highlight last month was original funny bugger Max Syedtollan and CUNK the BAND, a revelatory shambles; screeching genius to bask in the fetid glow of. Also a shout-out for Come, Lord: 1969, who grow weirder n better with every name change
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
FRI APR 14: MIEDO TOTAL, ENGLAND’S COUNCIL OF LEGISLATION AND GOVERNING BODY OF HYPER REAL SIMULATIONS AND CONSTRUCTS, BEAUTY PARLOUR @ SHIFT, Cardiff, 19:30
It’s SHIFT and TTN’s big pleasure to invite you to a night of POWER, PANIC AND DIVINITY IN SOUND! MIEDO TOTAL is Welsh-Italian producer and sound artist Alex Comana, who’s been based in Swansea of late, performing his live score for National Theatre Wales’s ‘The Cost of Living’. Comana’s music is a potent blend of primeval ritualism and modern emotion, deploying monolithic electronics, orchestral motifs and thoroughly metal sensibilities; see below for a quick review of 2022’s AUGURY BY BIRDS. Seriously can’t wait for this one.
Joining him is ENGLAND’S COUNCIL OF LEGISLATION AND GOVERNING BODY OF HYPER REAL SIMULATIONS AND CONSTRUCTS, but you can call them ‘ecolagbohrsac2021’. Releases to date include ‘THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW HOW TO HAVE FUN’, a thrilling and thoroughly disorientating multimedia treatise incorporating ‘occulted grime, medieval speedcore and horse-riding ambient’. Unhinged work from someone who I suspect has played some Runescape in their time; As Quietus writer Jared Dix writes, ‘putting the fun back in dysfunction’.
Further support from myself; Beauty Parlour is an ongoing exercise in world-building, incorporating bleak ambience, flooded industrials and the otherworldly broadcasts of Cold War-era numbers stations to summon a landscape in permanent crisis. Forthcoming EP ‘King of Love’ breaks with his recent meditative / generative works in favour of bloodied, body-beat rattlers and industro-wave laments. It’s like the old house shows basically (that is to say, FUN). Some tickets here.
OTHER, EQUALLY NOTABLE GIGS
SUN APR 9: MIDNIGHT MASS W/ SHLUG, EX AGENT, SPITHOOD, MICROMANAGER AND MANY MORE @ Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, 18:30
Cardiff’s Shlug seem to have wrangled the keys to Clwb for one night only, curating a noisy nine-act Easter Sunday bill that unites them with Ex Agent’s sax-driven post-everything malaise, Spithood’s ‘Violent Gabberpunk’, Valley Grime from Fig, Business Techno COO Micromanager and many, many more. A serious bosh. Click above for full details
WED APR 12: INFINITY KNIVES & BRIAN ENNALS, HAP A DAMWAIN @ Ty Tawe, Swansea, 19:30
Last minute addition: Baltimore experimental hip-hop duo make their second trip to Swansea in a year. That’s more than me lads! In support of their outstanding new record King Cobra. Support from Colwyn Bay duo Hap a Damwain. There was tickets last time I checked but I suspect they won’t last
THU APR 13: THE TUBS, TRUST FUND, TINY CAMELS @ The Moon, Cardiff, 19:30
The London-look lot come crawling back in support of their very class ‘Dead Meat’ LP (See Feb 2022 edition); scuzz and sophistication from ex-Joanna Gruesome et al, except O Williams’ sonorous crooning has never sounded so good imo. They’re joined by Sheffield’s Trust Fund, now goin’ solo and whose recent output brings Phil Everlum to mind, albeit stranded at an M1 service station. Further support from Cardiff’s Tiny Camels
SUN APR 16: DEATH AND VANILLA, ANI GLASS, FREYJA ELSY @ The Moon, Cardiff, 19:30
Death and Vanilla are a Swedish psych-pop three piece with a penchant for old gear and library music. Recent LP ‘Flicker’ makes me think a lot of the Death Stranding OST, and so here’s my unsolicited advice: perhaps it’s time you guys started noising up Hideo Kojima? Support from magic Ani Glass, siren-songs from the forbidden periphery of collective Cymraeg fantasy, and Cardiff-based composer Freyja Elsy
FRI APR 21: PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS, ME LOST ME @ Le Pub, Newport, 19:30
Follow the smoke to the riff-filled land; I knew I’d get to write out their name in full one day, it didn’t disappoint and neither will they, presumably. Weedian ceremonials and fuzzy, ten-tonne punishment from the Newcastle stoner-sludge outfit. Joining them is fellow Tynesider Me Lost Me, aka Jayne Dent, who makes bewitching folklore electronics; sounds to call the world-eater to
SAT APR 22: NAWR: HENRIK MUNKEBY NØRSTEBØ, THE BRITISH SPACE GROUP, JACKEN ELSWYTH @ The Old Electric Shop, Hay-on-Wye, 19:30
At the age of seven, Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø joined a local marching band in his home city of Trondheim, Norway, taking up the trombone. Things have gotten weird since then: Nørstebø writes he has always had ‘mixed emotions’ about such a ‘crude’ instrument, a ‘primitive construction of brass tubes’ which he has spent his career unearthing every facet of. Listen to the ‘Second Move’ on 2022’s DYSTOPIAN DANCING and his commitment becomes evident: in just under 20 minutes, he ploughs his way through an extraordinary range of dynamics, technique and feeling.
Support from Jacken Elswyth, a London-based Banjo-player, instrument-builder and a advocate for ‘unreliable, malleable, promiscuous… imperfect’ folk. Elswyth is also a member of the excellent Shovel Dance Collective. Completing the line-up is Swansea-based Ian Holloway’s ‘The British Space Group’: 2016’s Phantasmagoria could be an SFX library for a 70’s Valley sci-fi, never made. It all sounds so excellent: shame you’re a bit fucked if you live outside Hay and don’t have a car really but we can hardly blame NAWR for the state of Welsh public transport
SAT APR 22: KRUELTY, GATES TO HELL, FINAL FORM, MALIGNANT METHODS @ The Cab, Newport, 18:30
Good to see so much happening at The Cab, much of it in the HC vein. Kruelty is my pick: bloodied, hybrid beatdowns from Japan, with support from Kentucky outfit Gates to Hell, UKHC Final Form—who I salute as continuing practitioners of the pinched divebomb—and Malignant Methods, who I’m assuming are local given the tidy sample of ‘All Through the Night’ at the start of 2020’s ‘Survival Tactics’
FRI APR 28: THE FALLEN WOMEN – ALL-FEMALE FALL TRIBUTE + KARAOKE @ The Moon, Cardiff, 19:30
This one is largely self-explanatory
SAT APR 29: J. ZUNZ, WARREN SCHOENBRIGHT, PENNY LOPE @ The Moon, Cardiff, 19:30
A truly rich mix of oddball sounds, but I would expect nothing less of the Cosmic Carnage swansong. Mexcio’s Lorena Quintanilla aka J. Zunz makes dark, divine electronic dirges which, through repetition and layering, unfurl like the spines of some alien cacti. Meanwhile, ‘noise rock’ doesn’t do London’s Warren Schoenbright any justice whatsoever; industro-dada that comes across like clandestine recordings from a factory floor they’ve no right to be on. Penny Lope is the indefatigable Rosey Brown, making loop-based electronics which last time I saw her incorporated bird song, woodwind, knackered drum machines and verge-of-sleep synths. This is going to be a heady one!
On a personal note, I just want to once again thank Rich Collins, the man behind it all, for bringing so many legends to Cardiff and keeping it real all the while, even when it meant shelling out for the occasional Premier Inn. You’re loved by so many and the veritable outpourings of grief I’ve seen on IG are relatable: where, I ask, is Charlotte Church meant to get on the piss now? All power to you, here’s hoping for some future one-offs
QUICK REVIEWS OF WEIRD WELSH STUFF
MIEDO TOTAL - AUGURY BY BIRDS
Gripping dispatches from the frontlines of some disastrous future conflict, or else a preternatural war waged in secret. Using shaped noise, treated woodwind, free-falling strings and a baritone rich in longing, Alex Comana whips up sonic atmospheres that howl and bray like a storm that’s moved in on you all too quickly. Exquisite use of tension and release give the impression that Comana is in complete control of his sound, working with a clarity of vision you don’t necessarily see much of in the wider world of—as I think is fair to describe this record—club-adjacent music. Features a remix by Xiu Xiu for some reason. Certified Real Gear
YFORY – 7”
Bilingual post-punk yn gymraeg a saesneg gyda’r legend fawr Bryony B a ffrindiau (Mark, how am I doing chief? – ED). Many-flavoured too: compare Ailgylchu’s leathered-up corner-stomping with Baled Y Dolmen’s stop-start ruminations, or Dim Siawn’s languid school-disco. The latter is a standout, with jaunty chords soaked in pheromones that prompt an entirely involuntary mutter of ‘Cool Cymru!’, the kind of thing that made me wince as a child but which I now pretend I liked all along. Is this hiraeth? If so, I’m not the only one who’s suffering: Asda Llanelli, St Fagans, male voice choirs, all are intertwined with themes of conflict and struggle, desire and the Anthropocene. A joy!
THINGS I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO:
- Shoutout to ‘Core of the Poodle’, a must-visit if you’re ever in my adopted home of Haverfordwest. Record store, charity shop, hi-fi haven, homebrew bar, it’s all of these and more and the owners are simply lovely. They do hangouts on Saturday! Favourite find has been Akira Ishikawa & His Count Buffalos – Tsugaru Jongara Bushi, a fusion of Japanese funk and traditional shamisen and taiko drum which I’d describe as ‘very rude’
- Footwork is one of my truly cherished genres, one I had what I’d call a ‘spiritual’ experience with when I was young(er) and penniless in Glasgow. What I didn’t know is that since Spinn and Rashad’s legendary 2011 in performances in Poland, experimentation on the sound has continued, and that’s why I was overwhelmed by REIFSMA, an amazing collaboration between Polish production duo IFS and Tokyo-based vocalist MA. Pure rhythmic friction; MA stalks the booth like a man possessed by Legion itself
Xavier Boucherat is a Cardiff-based musician and writer. Through the Night is published monthly on Substack. You can subscribe above.
If you are a recording artist in Wales or from Wales making anything freaky, I’d love to hear your stuff, particularly if you’re from a group that traditionally lacks representation. You can email me at throughthenightwales@gmail.com
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