We’re pretty sure we didn’t spot Uncle Bryn himself in the audience sadly but maybe if James Blunt appeared during the GlastonBARRY Festival, Bryn would be first in line for tickets.
On tour with James Blunt was Lucy Spraggan. You might remember her from The XFactor singing about Tea and Toast. The funny thing about her performing alongside Blunt is that she tried to reach out to his management a few years ago about touring with him and assumed she’d been ghosted. It was only recently that Blunt found that email in his spam so brought her along on tour with him!
The audience for James Blunt all sat in anticipation as the sarcastic comedic artist came onto stage opening with Beside You. The third song on his setlist would’ve had Uncle Bryn crying with enjoyment as he started singing Wisemen. He played a few classic tracks that filled the room with nostalgia such as Goodbye My Lover and You’re Beautiful and ended the night with 1973.
James Blunt is continuing to tour the world for the rest of the year but so far there are no announced plans for any more UK shows yet!
From a small phone screen on Tik Tok to a nominated BRITs Rising Star, 21 year-old Caity Baser is bringing a new era of pop to the forefront.
Despite its growing popularity, we all know that Tik Tok was likely the most used app during lockdown. Caity started posting videos during the first lockdown and hasn’t looked back since. Her attitude towards her music is inspiring. She knows she’s got a talent, she has fun doing what she’s doing and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it. As long as she’s thriving, we’ll continue to see her running around confidently through the streets screaming about her music.
If you attended Depot in the Castle in 2023, you probably remember seeing Caity Baser on the line-up. She made sure that she would be unforgettable. Singing songs about no longer having friendly sex, slut-shaming and haters, Caity’s lyrics are filled with honesty throughout and we love her for that.
The release of her new mixtape, Still Learning, had Welsh fans flocking to Cardiff’s Great Hall and filling the venue. Caity gave bundles of energy from start to finish to the point that she had to remove part of her outfit from sweat.
Fans were treated to some songs with story openers. ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ was introduced with the quote “if you have to question if they like you, then they don’t like you. And that’s a hard pill to swallow.” Her favourite song of the mixtape ‘Oh Well’ included lyrics like “Everything’s f–ked, but it’s okay. Sometimes you just have to say, oh well.” Caity definitely hit us all with some hard truths in Cardiff but we all know it’s exactly what we needed to hear.
Cardiff has been greeted by some fantastic artists already this year but we were able to catch Witch Fever and Big Special as April kicked in last week! Witch Fever were supporting Cassyette at The Globe and Big Special were joined by Grandmas House and Slate on their Clwb Ifor Bach tour stop.
If you haven’t heard of Witch Fever, where have you been? This band is a new era of music made up of four musicians from Manchester; Amy, Alex, Alisha and Annabelle. Screaming confrontational lyrics into crowds of moshers before Amy jumps into the action, Witch Fever are one band that should be on your Spotify playlist.
A personal favourite I’ve managed to catch live a couple of times is Blessed Be Thy. It’s the perfect ‘scream at the top of your lungs’ song. Unfortunately, Amy may have sung too heavily and has recently caught a batch of tonsillitis. They’ll hopefully continue their tour with Cassyette once it’s cleared up – you can find future dates here: Witch Fever on Tour with Cassyette Tour Dates
Making up punk duo Big Special, Joe Hicklin and Callum Moloney, the two started their DIY NOW tour in Cardiff. If we needed one word to best describe these two it’s ‘energetic.’
They’ve been described as wanting us to dance through the darkness and that’s exactly what it felt like they were achieving upstairs in Clwb Ifor Bach. Back last year, Big Special were on stage at 2000 Trees and it’s great to see that they’re only continuing to thrive. With influences from different genres, you’re likely to find a song just for you from this duo.
There’s more chances to catch Big Special as they’re just over the bridge in Bristol next month. They’re also on the line-up for Reading & Leeds this year. You can find all the information you need here: Big Special Tour Dates
A fun, free, family-friendly weekend celebrating all things print! Making its debut last summer, PRINTED FESTIVAL landed in Cardiff with a bang. Dreamed up by seasoned printers, Tom Whitehead (The Printhaus, Ed & Flo) and Aidan Saunders (Print Wagon, Prints of Hay), their mission is simple: to build on the existing print culture in South Wales, and make the art-form accessible to the masses.
With this solid foundation to build from, as well as the myriad of members who constitute The Printhaus community, PRINTED FESTIVAL couldn’t be more perfectly placed. It’s all hands on deck to make the festival the success that it is!
“We were blown away by all the positive comments from last year’s event, it was quite humbling! We begged, stole, and borrowed from everyone involved, who threw themselves into it with boundless passion! This year we want to expand and connect with more creatives and create an even better experience for visitors.” Tom – The Printhaus
PRINTED FESTIVAL 2, with the brilliant tagline – ‘Print Harder!’ – promises much of the same that made last year so good; stalls, activities, games, talks and community workshops.
Also being introduced to the line-up, will be an exciting panel discussion from print professionals, and an exclusive publication dubbed the HOLY GRAIL OF PRINTED FESTIVAL intel!
“Printed Festival went far better than I could have ever dreamed! After years of planning with Tom and Jude, we succeeded in creating an inclusive, interactive print festival that educated and inspired people to participate in creative practices. As soon as it was over, we realised Printed was but the foundation of a larger project, and we were inspired, compelled (!) to think of new and innovative ways in which we could engage the Welsh public and get them excited about printmaking. So this year we are going bigger and bolder, with more of what went well last year and some new and interesting tricks up our sleeves for this year. You can’t miss it.” Aidan – Print Wagon
A joyous celebration of print for creatives and the wider community alike, PRINTED FESTIVAL is not one to miss!
A hoy hoy friends. Today’s post is one I’ve been wanting to write for aaages, about a newsletter I signed up to a while ago that’s brought me much joy, as it covers ‘weirdo music’ in and around Cardiff. It’s called Through The Night and writer/curator Xavier was kind enough to spare me some time and some words on it. If weirdo music is your thing (and there’s all sorts of great stuff on there, so it really should be) please do sign up for Through the Night.
So, ready? Here we go!
WAC: Hello. Please introduce yourself.
I’m Xavier, from Cardiff. Since moving back in 2014 I’ve been putting on and playing shows here, initially as part of the Hotel de Marl collective, and now under the Sgarab Tapes moniker. I used to be a freelance music writer but am thrilled to say those days are behind me
WAC: You’ve been writing the Through the Night (TTN) newsletter for a while now. What inspired you to start it up?
Just before lockdown I felt we were seeing an especially fruitful time for weirdo music in Cardiff, culminating in a sell-out show in Tiny Rebel for Special Interest, a New Orleans-based outfit who play a sort of mutant no-wave dance-punk. Wild shit, largely the work of Luke Penny from Cardiff punks Cankicker. Happily, the pandemic failed to take the wind out of things, and so in Jan 2022 I threw together some listings in an effort to signpost things. There was once an outfit called ‘The Joy Collective’ who, along with putting on a tonne of leftfield stuff in Cardiff, ran a vital blog that did a similar thing, and I’m picking up where they left off.
I know that ‘Weirdo music’ is a pretty unhelpful catch-all, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t basically boil down to stuff I like, including projects I’m involved in. But fundamentally, this is a free, artist-led newsletter with no allegiances, least of all to pissant music monocultures of the sort which Cardiff Council loves to flaunt, if not actually support (see the presumably defunct ‘Music City’ project, for example), and which commercial venues are required to continuously indulge. Basically, TTN is dedicated inches for noise and drone, ambience and electronics, industrial, improv and weird jazz, anything that runs the risk of failing to draw an audience. At the same time I’m also open to including artists that are perhaps more easily pigeon-holed on paper, but in practice push boundaries, musical or otherwise, and that’s why I’ll still include certain punk & hardcore, weird metal, or club music. Ultimately I want to help anyone taking a chance, including the DIY promoters and venues; Lesson Number 1, Subvert Power Control, Paradise Garden, and on the performing arts side of things there’s TactileBOSCH.
I should point out another thing I don’t owe any loyalty to, which is publishing deadlines: in theory it’s once a month, but this doesn’t always happen since right now I am retraining as something with far, far more social utility than music-writing. Along with Cardiff I also do my best to cover similar stuff in Newport (home of Le Pub and more recently The Cab, which has quickly established itself as a righteous DIY space for punk and hardcore) and Swansea, (which is frequently the site of the excellent NAWR Music, led by the incredible Rhodri Davies, an improvising harpist from Aberystwyth), but am always concerned I might be omitting the real gear in these locations and am always keen to hear from punters on the ground
WAC: You also run a record label called sgarab tapes. Can you tell us a bit about that, and your own music production?
‘Label’ is a bit grand, for now it’s just a cassette and digital imprint for music I’ve made, on my own and with other people, but this year there will be some releases from artists whose music excites me and hopefully a Cardiff-focused compilation. Some people have asked about the logo, it’s the Summoner from the Canterbury Tales, whose job was to bring people before the church to answer for their crimes and face punishment, which is sort of what it’s like coming to our gigs
Of course, it’s a stupid time to be doing any of this; venue closures and rising costs make things like rehearsing, equipment, touring and getting people out of the house a struggle. Strangely though, it feels like things have never been better in Cardiff for adventurous sounds, at least in my time. Personally I think this is largely thanks to SHIFT, a performance space buried deep in the remains of the Capitol Centre which many, many hands have helped transform into a vital hub of experimentation, cultural solidarity and, I stress, real, actual fun. It’s been a riot, and I’ll be gutted when someone somewhere decides it’s got to go (presumably when the council finally decides to demolish the centre and replace it with unaffordable flats). A lot of highlights there over the last two years (Tara Clerkin Trio, Elvin Brandhi and Yeah You, Lo Egin, Viridian Ensemble) but a recent one that I think underlines what it’s all about was a residency by the Dutch performer Svartvit, who I suppose you could describe as an extreme noise artist. He’s also an extremely nice guy who, as part of the residency, ran a free, open workshop in which he described the processes by which he makes music, which embrace things like chance and situation, and by no means rely on expensive tech. Two of us ended up using what we learned to perform as an improv duo on the final night of his residency. I loved the name of the workshop, which was ‘democratising and de-quantising sound’, which I think is what it’s all about for me (de-quantising is a fancy way of saying working outside of traditional parameters or guidelines)
As for my own music, I perform solo as Beauty Parlour, which I normally describe as an extended exercise in world-building that looks to capture the ‘air of calamity’ I think hangs over South Wales a lot of the time. The music itself takes a few forms, from flooded ambience to manic, industrowave stuff that you can sort of dance to. I also play alto sax and sampler / synth in a band called ‘The Panama Papers’, which began as a hopelessly convoluted in-joke and has since expanded into a jazz-not-jazz-electronics outfit
WAC: Who are your favourite local musicians / artists that you’ve featured? Anyone you’d like to pick out for us to listen to?
I’ve mentioned Cankicker (goth-adjacent dirge-punk from Splott, really looking forward to their second LP which should be out this year) and Rhodri Davies (awe-inspiring improvising harpist, also plays in Hen Ogledd; last time I saw him he was supporting my favourite band of all time The Ex at Clwb Ifor Bach, and the performance was him simply going hell for leather on a smaller harp until all but two or three of the strings had snapped, it was special). A few more from across Wales who I’ve featured these past couple of years are Ardal Bicnic (duo of Rosey Brown and Heledd C Evans, no music online but whose shows have featured everything from scorching violin and clarinet loops to mic’d-up gelatine desserts), Sachasom (deranged, Machynlleth-based beatmaker; what if J Dilla had been made to watch S4C?), Ordeal By Roses (South Wales’s premier power electronics act, ‘And Darkness…’ is my favourite) Somatic Responses (prolific modular synth and electronics producer), and Ash Cooke (improvising guitarist from North Wales, currently putting on some very interesting stuff in Aberystwyth)
WAC: Any hopes / dreams / ambitions for your work for 2024?
Only that I can find the time to carry on doing this stuff. If the newsletter actually helps anyone, that’s mission accomplished. There are a couple of Sgarab releases available now:
We Are Cardiff 