Sappenin’ butt. Thank you everyone who came along to Lo Egin / Shimmering Tomb / Panama Papers, an extraordinary night! Turns out there’s a real bloody appetite for this stuff. You’ll be glad to know I’m off the crutch
In terms of gigs, doesn’t seem there’s much going on next month or so tbh but scroll down for some killer stuff in the reviews. As always, you can hit me up if I’ve missed something big at throughthenightwales@gmail.com
A REMINDER
You can now grab the first Sgarab Tapes release off our Bandcamp: ‘KING OF LOVE’ by Beauty Parlour, four manic cuts of bloodied industro-wave. Comes with a limited edition BP Foxhound Insignia and a copy of a print zine I’ve done for the newsletter. It looks very nice I promise
GIGS
MON AUG 7: FROZEN SOUL, CELESTIAL SANCTUARY, WALLOWING @ Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, 19:00
Brighton’s Wallowing return to Cardiff. April’s ‘Earth Reaper’ is sheer cosmic devastation; four paint-stripping salvos of sci-fi doom, suffused with the same weirdo textures and oddball structures that have made em so good to date. Hugely impressive. Catch them supporting Texas death metal lot Frozen Soul and Cambridge crew Celestial Sanctuary
SUN AUG 20: TACTICLEBOSCH PRESENTS CONGREGATE W/ THE STONE CLUB, DAN JOHNSON, TIM BROMAGE, TEDDY HUNTER, DOMINIQUE FESTER @ Penarth Cemetery Chapel, Penarth, 14:00 – 19:00
This looks grand: an afternoon of talks and performance at Penarth Cemetery Chapel. The Stone Club was founded by Artists Lally MacBeth and Matthew Shaw, and aims to bring together stone enthusiasts—old, new and as yet unknown—to birth new perspectives on prehistory in cool, collaborative ways. Joining them is Bristol performance artist and percussionist extraordinaire Dan Johnson, who you may have caught in Cardiff over the last performing ‘Rope Piece’ and ‘The Bellflower’. Further support from SHIFT residents Tim Bromage and Teddy Hunter
MON SEP 4: BIG BRAVE, JESSICA MOSS @ The Moon, Cardiff, 19:00
Southern Lord affiliates Big Brave hail from Montreal, and it sounds like Steve O’Malley’s let them have it in amp closet; lead-jacketed, bone-shaking minimalism, think Earth’s latter-day penchant for songcraft but with their early intensity. Support from fellow Quebecois Jessica Moss; violinist, composer and a former long-term member of Silver Mount Zion, her solo releases draw on numerous, unexpected influences including klezmer and Balkan music
WED SEP 6: RAW BRIGADE, UNCERTAINTY, TRENCH ROT @ The Cab, Newport, 18:30
Another plug for The Cab, Newport’s ‘ardest. Have said it already but very cool to see the space fully established and quickly building a rep for itself. Maximum respect. RAW BRIGADE from Bogata, Colombia, do it straightforward and do it well: fast, hard, and not so proud that they can’t include a beatdown in every song. Support from Bristol Queer HC newcomers Uncertainty and Trench Rot, who I’m not sure I could find online: I assume it’s not the Bolt Thrower worship act from Philadelphia (although I’ll be f*ckin pleased if it is)
WED SEP 13: DEXYS @ St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, 19:30
Seems a few people I trust and respect think the new record’s good! No idea personally but Dexys are the pick of the bunch as far as St David’s goes: am particularly interested to know who has booked live podcast show ‘Trash Taste’, which is three dudes talking about anime. Tickets start at forty pounds. ‘The boys have infiltrated the US!’, are the bewildering words written under ‘event description’. If that’s the dark hand of Live Nation at work already, it’s worse than we could have imagined
QUICK REVIEWS OF WEIRD WELSH STUFF
ALTAR OF MOSS – VOL 1: AMIDST A FORGOTTEN GLADE
Time to get the Old Toby out folks; turns out Welsh black metal auteur Ysbrydnos also makes dungeon synth under the moniker Altar of Moss. This first collection comprises eleven tracks for the questers, charting a journey from the eponymous glade to the altar itself. ‘Leaving Home’ is an early highlight, with cavernous, lo-res percussion quietly thundering beneath plucked synths and melancholy flutes. ‘Through Mirkwood’ is another favourite, its swampland synths thick with foreboding, whilst ‘Hedge Maze’ sounds to me like the pensive meditation of someone who’s got difficult decisions to make. On closing track ‘Return’ we hear horns accompany what might be a dwarven chorus; their guttural warbling suggests neither quite triumph nor tragedy, leaving the fate of our heroes (that is, if there are any) uncertain. Excellent world-building! You can get the pre-order off the Ysbrydnos bandcamp now
DJ GUY – ARCHIVED TRACKS 1998-200
Cardiff’s Guy Evans dips into his enormous unreleased back catalogue once more, this time handing over the contents of minidiscs unearthed when recently moving house. A real treat, and a fascinating snapshot of UK club sounds at the turn of the millennium: as he told us last year, Guy has never shied away from soaking up the influences of the time, and this latest collection careers happily between broken-beat swingers, moody downtempo bubblers and a particularly rich mix of jungle / drum’n’bass from a time when both styles were fragmenting across numerous subgenres; my favourites are ‘Bronx Tale’—claustrophobic rhythmic maximalism under M25 pads—and ‘Jungle 1999 3’, which pairs icy, austere synths with rough blends of rolling percussion. But for all this, what’s really great to hear is some of Guy’s signature weirdness: case in point is ‘Babylon Stomp 1998’, which kicks off innocently enough before descending step by step into a loose, low-end jam which sounds at points like someone’s left the crossfader open for some dual-plane action. Seriously heady gear
ASH COOKE & KAWOL SAMARQANDI – YN SYLLU AR SAIN
This is a wonderful collaboration between improvising guitarists Ash Cooke and Kawol Samarqandi, with parts recorded in their respective environs: North Wales in Cooke’s case, whereas Samarqandi hails from the pleasingly oblique ‘Seaside Japan’. In that spirit, the call and response of opener ‘Moel Wnion’ has the feel of a fractured, long-distance phone-call: one sounds freshly out of bed, peeling sweet country resonance from a bright acoustic. The other sounds knackered, a few nama-birus deep, wringing surly, dislocated blues from a grimy, tin-can electric. The effect is entertaining, and the sonic polarity creates a rich, full sound for just two guitars. From there the pair intwine as they head into more cerebral territory: ‘Drosgl’s meandering melancholy is a highlight for me, as is Gerlan’s ambling low-end fuzz and chime-like strikes
Ash is something of a legend in experimental Welsh circles, and I’m hoping to feature him and his many endeavours sometime in the next few months
JAHEED - SNEAKY PETE TYPE BEAT VOL. 1
To Mid-Wales now: ‘Pendrwm’ is a new, Machynlleth-based label helmed by Izak Z, who you may know as Sachasom. This first release comes from Mach’s own JAHEED, whose sculptured, granular beats and taste for the cinematic bring Amber-era Autechre to mind. ‘Gimmiemyventolin’ is a standout, with fizzy, warbling pads that float like whispers in a glade, all over a thudding, workman-like shuffle. Things boil over as it reaches its conclusion, with synthetic voices brought to life, and rhythms crunched and mangled. The cybernetic determinism of ‘Existentialdread’ has echoes of Kuedo’s Severant, with crystalline synths reaching skyward, whilst ‘Moribund’ is an excellent snippet of scorched valley ambience that’s truly after my own heart: the sound of Skynet wiping future Wales off the map, heard from afar
You’ll have to look this one up yourself I’m afraid; I’m told it’s on all the streaming services and I’m on a train to Bangor atm and can’t figure out how to embed that kind of thing
CARDIFF PUNKS CAN KICKER HAVE A VIDEO
That’s right, shot by Paper Editor Ol Gabe and @p.u.n.e.r, featuring a performance from Joe Grey Adams. They’ve done it upstairs in Inkspots, sorry what’s that? You can’t see what’s going on? Well weh weh, grow up you enormous baby, if lighting’s so important to you why don’t go and take it up with the mysterious geezer who’s somehow ended up with the keys to the place
THINGS I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO:
- You may have heard but I broke my foot last month, which means I’ve had time to plough through the Drew McDowell Lamina boxset a few times. It’s a belter, I’m always a bit sus about ‘rarity’ comps but some of the stuff included here I think is genuinely intruiging. Check out tracks 53, 54 and 55 (particularly VCDB) for some post-Coil rhythmic ice
- RIP Brotzmann. This from a 2001 interview with then-president Clinton:
Don’t it make you sick
Through the Night is by Xavier Boucherat, a Cardiff-based musician, promoter and writer. You can listen to my music here. Through the Night is published monthly on Substack. You can subscribe below.
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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