It’s tough to pigeonhole Howl Griff. With members from Aberystwyth, Bolton, Merseyside & Texas, their record collections & influences are as diverse as their birthplaces. They’re a little bit new wave, a little bit psychedelic, a little bit rock & a little bit pop. When they sing in multi-part harmony (in English or Welsh) you may detect The Byrds, Dr Feelgood, Neu!, Talking Heads or Teenage Fanclub. Call it what you like: melody, harmony, belting lyrics & big smiles are always present at a Howl Griff gig.
Once upon a time in Falmouth Art School, there were two songwriters called Andy Fung & Ashley Cooke. One day they met a keyboard player, Mary Wycherley & bassist Dave Hirst. Thus, Derrero was born.
In June 1997 Derrero’s self-titled ebut was released on Big Noise, followed by 2 EPs, each demonstrating a steady musical progression. Each of these releases featured heavily on both regional & national radio, including daytime airplay on BBC R1.
Derrero became a favourite band of Steve Lamacq & John Peel, & The track “Radar Intruder” featured in Peel’s Festive Fifty (1998) & Peelenium (2000).
Derrero toured alongside Super Furry Animals, Catatonia, Sebadoh, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, & Grandaddy, receiving excellent reviews in Melody Maker & NME. During the particularly balmy August of 2001 Derrero recorded “Comb the Breaks”, after the relase of which Derrero went their separate ways.
SWIGEN is their first gig together in 10 years.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/derrero
Cardiff’s No Thee No Ess is based on an experimental recording technique of layering tracks as an aural collage & then trying to find some coherence in the result. The main protagonists are Andy Fung & Paul Battenbough, swelled to a six-piece for the live experience by John Pulman on bass & voice, Jon Elvis Berry (pedal steel), Steve Prior (drums/vox) & Mat Wigley (keys/vox). Think harmony laced melodic psychedelia with cut-up collage sounds & words.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/no-thee-no-ess
Meilir’s distinctive approach to his craft creates interesting melody driven songs with experimental elements. Adopting an innovative approach to making live performances interesting Meilir uses unconventional instrumentation as accompaniment such as a Typewriter, box of gravel, singing wine glasses & a thumb piano. The result is an awe inspiring & ethereal sound, which once experienced will never be forgotten. Meilir’s releases to date Bydd Wych & Cellar Songs have been very highly praised. Work on a third EP to complete the trilogy is well under way, as well as a full album. Bydd Wych.
http://soundcloud.com/meilirmusic
Mother Of Six are from North Wales. They play a self styled mixture of Stoner, Doom, Pop, Prog & Rock. Formed in late 2006 in the small town of Wrexham, they have been writing music & playing a wide range of interesting & varied shows both in the UK & abroad, collecting a loyal fan-base along the way. Songs have come & gone but these gigs were a testing ground.
Mother Of Six play both electric & acoustic sets (in both English & Welsh) &, following a few line up changes, they have settled on a formidable team & are about to release their début album, The Integral.
Golden Fable are Tim McIver & Rebecca Palin. The couple met in North Wales & were the driving force behind cult multi-instrumentalist instrumental group Tim & Sam’s Tim & The Sam Band with Tim & Sam. After a heavy touring schedule, a highly acclaimed album & many radio sessions, the duo decided that it was time for a new challenge - Golden Fable was born.
Any illusions of a stripped back acoustic duo quickly dissipate when listening to debut single Chill Pt2. Quirky beats & percussion introduce multi-layered synths, acoustic guitars & Rebbecca’s choral vocal style, which bubbles up to a crescendo of electric guitars & duetting vocals. This caught the attention of Rob Da Bank, who offered the band a BBC Radio One session at Maida Vale before the band had even played their first gig. Their SWIGEN gig is one of their very first.
http://soundcloud.com/goldenfable
Operating under the moniker Pulco, Ash Cooke, former front man of Welsh indie-rockers Derrero, released his wonderful new album, his 7th, of lo-fi ditties entitled Small Thoughts on the superb Folkwit label earlier this year.
Albatross Archive are a musically confusing bunch of fellows. Based in Cardiff, built around a fondness for strange sound, manwiches & drinking gallons of tea, this quartet enjoy nothing more than to play music while awkwardly discuss irrelevance in front of an audience of the baffled. They have recently released their debut E.P. ‘THINGS’. It is pretty bloody good.
http://soundcloud.com/albatrossarc
NIA (formerly SUNRISE SUNSET)
North Walian Nia Roberts (formerly Sunset Sunrise) has developed her own style influenced by mid-20th century artists such as Bob Dylan, the Beatles & the Velvet Underground, as well as various literature & philosophy. Nia’s music has been described as ‘folk/psychedelic’, & over the last 3 years she has played in a venues in North Wales, Manchester, Chester & Cardiff.
In 2009, Nia was acclaimed by British comedian & writer Stephen Fry via social networking website Twitter.
Now based in London, she hopes to broaden her pathways as a musician & artist.
http://www.myspace.com/nia-music
CHARLOTTE GREIG & ANTHONY REYNOLDS
Charlotte Greig is a writer & musician. She has made five albums of original & traditional folk music. She is also the author of an internationally acclaimed novel, A Girl’s Guide to Modern European Philosophy. Her last stage play I Sing of a Maiden toured in 2007. She has recently written two plays broadcast on Radio 4, The Confessions, & Against the Grain.
Anthony Reynolds is a Welsh born singer/songwriter/performer who has released 8 critically acclaimed albums. He has collaborated with many European musicians, & in 2000 sang with the Moscow Philharmonic. Other collaborations include works with the novelist Dan Fante, the writer Colin Wilson, & folk legend Vashti Bunyan. In 2009 he joined the live production of And What Exactly is a Joke, an interpretation of the songs of Syd Barratt. Anthony has also published several books of poems & biographies on The Walker Brothers, Jeff Buckley & Leonard Cohen. He is currently writing an opera about growing up in the Cardiff suberb of Splott, entitled A Small Spit Of Land.
Charlotte Greig & Anthony Reynolds collaborated on a cabaret-styled set of songs in the voices of Freud’s early patients, including the Wolf Man, the Rat Man, Dora, & Anna O. Their ‘musical’ debuted at the sold out Freud Museum in September 2010 & garnered massive critical praise.
Guitarist Ed Mugford will accompany them on stage at SWIGEN.
“Marvellous songs … an enthralling & memorable theatrical experience.” Babylon Wales.
http://themoontoplaywith.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/dr-freuds-cabaret/
BAANEEX are part B-movie noise pop, part Dracula garage punk, part Medieval dance music & probably a few parts missing. The band released their debut EP ‘Weird Dance’ on Odd Box Records in January of this year.
http://soundcloud.com/baaneexband
HEHFU is Cardiff’s Bradley Clark’s project & he makes guitar indie pop music on his laptop in his bedroom. After favourable reviews & airplay on various radio shows he found Tom Archibald on the internet to play live shows with. HEHFU’s first album release will be out this Autumn through Bleeding Gold records.
SWIGEN is HEHFU’s debut live gig.
http://soundcloud.com/hehfu/tracks
“Jewellers come from a part of the world that has been almost untouched by the music they create; Newport, Wales. Despite the lack of local contemporaries, their work is mesmerizing & unnervingly enchanting, the two-piece manipulate & distort drones into remarkable grooves & melodies with ease” — Joel Chima, Crack in the Road.
Their Sleep Education LP, which you can stream below, is released October 10th via The Sounds of Sweet Nothing.
Taking inspiration from all that existential nonsense that we try to ignore in everyday life & putting it out to pasture on a 12-string guitar…
Molly Zacharias has recently self-released her first album, Vespers, recorded in two parts in early 2011.
http://www.soundcloud.com/ms-pants-1
Elephant & Soldier is Sam Goudie, supported by a changing cast of musicians & friends. He is currently recording a new record entitled ‘The Hum’, as a follow up to the well received 2009 debut EP ‘First Shots’.
http://www.elephantandsoldier.co.uk/
Laurence Made Me Cry is musician & artist Jo Whitby. Originally from Bristol but now calling Cardiff her home the music of LMMC is a deeply honest & melancholic take on folk music with simplicity at its core.
In 2011 Jo released the 5 track record called ‘The Rain Song EP’, which received immediate airplay on BBC Radio Wales & a host of positive reviews on blogs worldwide.
Ellie James makes DIY music on an acoustic guitar & any other instruments that are lying around from her home. She is 17 years old & possess a piercing vocal talent & anincredible ability for songwriting; her music has been described as ‘huggable’ & ‘bittersweet’.
She recently made it to the final of The Big Gig the search for an act to open up this year’s Cardiff Big Weekend.
http://elliemakesmusic.tumblr.com
Energetic North Walian indie rock five piece The Scene have played alongside artists such as Fenech Soler, The Charlatans, Masters in France, Mani (Stone Roses), & Clint Boon Inspiral Carpets). To date The Scene have played ovover 120 gigs in their two years together, in venues all over the country, from intimate small pubs to the O2 Arena, London. Further cementing their reputation as one of North Wales’ hardest working live bands, whom possess the knack to raise the roof off any live venue where they perform!
http://www.myspace.com/thescenewxm
Newport’s Kai Lena will take you on a journey of mysticism, whirling loop the loops, harmonies, melodic piano missions & story telling through song.
http://soundcloud.com/kai-lena
Brecon based troubadour Joe Coleman performs original songs of living, loving & moving about. In a pub, in a hall in your basement, at the end of your street with a hat out for loose change.
http://www.myspace.com/joecolemanfolk
These 3 Cardiff youths are a unique acoustic outfit comprising of ukulele, melodica & Guitar. With their unique lyrical insights a&to folk rock: Inconsiderate Parking are Cardiff’s teen busking sensation.
They’ve supported the likes of Kids In Glass Houses & Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. They’ve played gigs in London (Royal Albert Hall) & Birmingham (O2 Academy, London). They were also recent winners of Cardiff Youth Big Gig 2011.
http://soundcloud.com/inconsiderateparking
Ceri Frost is a songwriter & producer from Cardiff. Last year saw the release of his first official album Cui, a 20 track album of demos Go Magnificent Octopus, & the EP Kittens. He is currently recording a new album, expected January 2012.
http://soundcloud.com/cerifrost
THE SMILES & FROWNS (Adam Mattson solo set)
Phoenix, AZ’s The Smiles & Frowns, are singer & multi-instrumentalist Adam Mattson & multi-instrumentalist Christopher James. 1n 2010 they released their self-titled debut album on akoustic anarkhy in the UK. A sparkling eight-track oddity, it’s a golden ticket into the duo’s strange, hugely imaginative world, comprising what the duo describe as “haunted train ride songs, children’s theme music songs & psychedelic science fiction songs”
This is an escapist fantasy world in which every song tells a story, a series of fables set to music that occupies a space somewhere between Randy Newman, Elliott Smith & Pink Floyd. Says Adam: “When I close my eyes, I see cartoons playing in the darkness of my mind, so I usually write about those”
http://thesmilesandfrowns.com/The_Smiles_and_Frowns/home.html
THERE WILL ALSO BE OPEN MIC SLOTS AVAILABLE ON A FIRST-COME FIRST-SERVED BASIS TO ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO PERFORM ON THE DAY. CONTACT US FOR DETAILS.
