Tempting to think that Talk Normal were handpicked by Wire to open proceedings with the kind of awkward experimentation the latter group long left behind, but in reality (a) Wire still hide a lot of sharp corners in the pretty conventional songs played tonight and (b) Talk Normal’s racket is totally, completely great. Comprising two Brooklynite ladies (some middle aged men in the audience will alter congratulate them in a surprised manner), it’s a noise dominated by rhythm and squall rather than melody, with Andrya Ambro’s compulsive drum beat putting needles under Sarah Register’s piercing guitar and one-finger keyboard. In their starker moments they conjure up bracing no-wave heroines Ut; in the urgent call and response yells and drawn out guitar work they just sound fucking cool, like classic NY rough edges party stars. Devastating, even in grey leggings.

There’s some obvious signs of age as Wire start, though most of them are in the audience. Despite Shouty Man In Crowd, they don’t play I Am The Bloody Fly, though chucking in Another The Letter as your second song is a sweet deal; 1978′s niggling romp sounding box fresh, and unspoilt by it’s main riff being played by a session guitarist who looks he was stolen from Kurt Vile’s backing band. There’s very little played tonight from their first three albums, the ones that saw Wire ricochet from scabrous, crossword clue punk to gloriously mutated art rock in a ridiculously short space of time. This is a fine attitude, and though the bloody minded-ness is deflated slightly by playing two flipping encores, their shark-like aheadness leaves even less dazzling songs imposing and weighty still. Please take, from this year’s Red Barked Tree, thrums with dignified melancholia, thanks to an excellently stoic vocal from bassist Graham Lewis (good facial contortions too). 1988′s The Boiling Boy adds guitar layers so subtly it’s a thrill to be suddenly caught in the crashing, krauty finale. 1979′s Great Lost Single Map Ref. 41°N 93°W moves from perfunctory version to electrifying version once Colin Newman’s vocals start yowling at the song’s end. Always their presence is physical and jarring, a fact jabbed into your temples by a slowly steamrollering Pink Flag, a roll call of buried bodies set to stately explosions. Newman follows each glowering number, each minute long thrasher, with a steady swipe of his onstage iPad. They keep going, two fingers forever.

Keef’s full review will be along shortly (along with a guide by the band themselves), but you can note these celebratory dates now. The first launch night happens in fine style at Chapter Arts Centre, taking over the monthly MovieMaker upcoming artists slot to show the ten music videos especially commissioned for the album. From Ellen Los Campesinos! to BAFTA dude Matt Brown to MovieMaker’s own hero Tom Betts, there’s some good stuff there, only some of them featuring the band being murdered. AND – live musical launching will take place at beautiful Clwb Ifor Bach a few days after, also with another of Keef’s fave bands Vvolves, as well as Without Maps and Effort’s winningly slack pop. PLUS – Kutosis take to the road with fellow Cardiff screamers Samoans for a jaunt that takes in Bristol’s Croft on the 13th. Time to get fanatical, he said poorly. 

Exciting change to the programme this month: in August we launched a contest to produce music videos for every track on Kutosis’ upcoming album, and on Monday 07/11 we’re going to be screening all the results! Admission is free and all are welcome. However, tickets still need to be collected from the box office and since so many of you lovely people have been coming lately (and the cinema only has 60 seats) it’s sometimes best to pick them up early. More details and links to previous films screened can be found on the MovieMaker blog at http://chaptermoviemaker.blogspot.com/. If you’d like more information, or have a film you’d like to show, please get in touch. Ideally submissions should be on DVD.

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Second band of the week to hit Cardiff from Calgary, Alberta, a city known more for the 1988 Winter Olympics and Bret ‘Hit Man’ Hart than as fertile indie rock outpost.  The excellent Weird Canada blog puts that right, logging countless examples of hot new Canuck thrills from scrappy DIY garage to complex, glowing avant-pop.  BRAIDS‘ roots may be low-key, but the now Montreal-based foursome definitely sit at the far end of that curve.  The arrangements on debut album Native Speaker knot together tiny, deliberate pulses into huge, complex, undulating beasts, a scholarly kind of pop music, but it’s the engaging and powerful vocals of Raphaelle Standell-Preston that capture the attention.  Cooing like Joanna Newsom, twisting phrases like Avey Tare or Dave Longstreth, strident and confident like Karen O or PGMG’s Andrea Zollo, she’s emotive and involved without the over-egged melodrama that dragged Austra’s gig last week into schlocky Twilight territory. Musically Braids take much from Animal Collective’s deconstructing and reshaping of indie rock, electronic and experimental music into something simultaneously out-there and weirdly accessible.  These cues don’t define them any more than the vocal echoes do though; there’s something slippery and intriguing about their cerebral pop that makes you want to return.

RATATOSK, you know about.  You must do.  We’ve written about him here and here and here, to the point where the superlatives to describe his haunting, captivating, immersive music start to run dry.  Warm, witty and self-effacing in person, the recently self-styled ‘Blixa Bargoed’ (oh COME ON) is fiercely committed to the many guises his music takes and, thankfully, highly prolific.  Buy lots of stuff at his Bandcamp site, learn the words and sing them back at him, he definitely won’t be freaked out.

SWN presents

BRAIDS
RATATOSK

Tues 12th July
Clwb Ifor Bach
7.30pm-10.30pm
£6 adv from www.swnpresents.com / www.clwb.net / Spillers Records and seetickets

Second of the bands we’re bringing to Wales for their first ever show after we fell in love with them at this year’s SXSW. They played last weekend’s The Great Escape where they were one of the must-see bands. Their debut album ‘Native Speaker’ is an absolute cracker and we’re delighted to bring them into Cardiff for this debut show.

here’s what you need to know…

BRAIDS was formed by four best friends in their last year of High School in Calgary, Alberta. Convincing one another to skip university, they stayed in the garage all year and practiced obsessively, even while their fingers froze during the cold prairie winters. Then, at only 18 years old, they took the bold step of moving across the country together to Montreal, where they began crafting their self recorded/self produced debut album Native Speaker.

Oscillating between density and spaciousness, BRAIDS’ sound is not easy to define. The four members construct music which is ample and rolling, perhaps alluding to the landscapes of their youth, but filled with radical texture and startling immediacy, an influence of their more recent surroundings. Delicate layering gives their experimental pop epics just enough breath to playfully explore the depth of ambient melody. Though BRAIDS dives into moments of deep obscurity and sonic experimentation, there remains embedded within the music the hypnosis of an unforgettable pop tune.

Native Speaker, is the accumulation of months of meticulous craft-work to properly capture the band’s entrancing live performance. The albums’ songs were tested and shaped through numerous performances and lyrical massages, resulting in work that is brilliant in detail and structure. Averaging over 6 minutes and never coming in under 4, the tracks on Native Speakermaintain a deep seeded focus.

BRAIDS has an unusually collaborative dynamic, generating all of their sweeping sounds live in a synergistic maelstrom. Even their name, BRAIDS, evokes a feeling of something continuous and progressive, yet lush and intertwining. It implies the interweaving of all four members’ musical ideas, favoring collective and equal input.

On January 18, 2011 BRAIDS put forth their debut album Native Speaker, a reflection of coming of age for the four intricately linked musicians. It captures a period of innocence and a period of change, yet comes off as strikingly mature beyond their years. Most importantly, it displays a yearning and striving to break through, an ambitious debut for a young band just getting started.

RATATOSK

The music of Ratatosk can be summed up in two words – miserablism and minimalism. If the initial motif is sufficiently sad and melancholy to bring a tear to the eye, then it’s explored and expanded upon with an almost zen-like repetition, using layered guitars, vocals, piano, harmonium, melodica, musical saw, theremin, and pedal steel.

Ratatosk is originally a mischievous squirrel from Norse mythology,
but in this context is some guy called Rhodri Viney. He has previously performed and released music under the names Teflon Monkey and Broken Leaf, along with being a major player in bands such as Right Hand Left Hand and Vito. He has also played live and on record with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Sophia, Brave Captain, Sweet Baboo, H. Hawkline and many others.

KONG, based on their last appearance round these parts, rock like some acid-scarred Godzilla, churning together creepy post-punk crawling, detuned spazz sections and nutso attack rock that is as scary as it is exhilaratingly, tunefully good. Secretly they are very nice people, I’m sure. BYRON VINCENT and CHRIS KILLEN are your hand-picked authors for the evening; bear in mind Balloon have never picked a boring, standard author for their shows. And if you don’t turn up early for BRANDYMAN’s last ever, ever gig I will personally kill you; Cardiff’s premier fourpiece (Kaskie of Death Of Her Money will be Matt Thomas’s stand in for this show – better get the deck shoes on) leave the live arena after a brief and stunning year-and-a-bit’s worth of twisty rock riffing, super-tight power moves and DC Gates’s caustic, blankly hilarious verbiage. They were the best. Do not miss a single repulsive second.

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‘Balloon’ has put on music and literature nights around Cardiff for 18 months now, this is by far the most ambitious. And loudest.

Headlining are mask wearing noise merchants Kong. For fans of Shellac, Fugazi, bleeding ears and ginger men in pants. Dan Carter from Radio One says that they’re “one of the best live bands in the UK right now”; the only debate is who’s better? They will be ably supported by some riff loving locals and two Northerners.

Mancunian author Chris Killen had his first novel ‘The Birdroom’ was published in 2009 by Canongate. It’s funny, dark, disturbing and desolate; unsurprisingly, Steve from Kong is a fan.

Byron Vincent is another from the North West but is now based in Bristol. He is a very funny man. Wry observations, a lot of creative swearing and a way with words that Half Man Half Biscuit would be proud of makes Vincent a talent not to be missed.

Brandyman sound a bit like Mark E Smith fronting Audioslave. They rock. They’re from Cardiff but their singer is from the North West of England. There seems to be a theme here.

It’s an early show (first act on 7.15) but it’s a royal wedding bank holiday so you’ll all be off work. No excuses for getting there late. Curfew is 10.15pm but Gary Twisted follows us with an indie disco. Get in.

Over 18 only

Tickets available here – http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_wales&query=detail&event=437223

Right, this is pretty straightforward.  Flux=Rad promoter, Radio 1 DJ and full-time 24-hour enthusiasm machine Jen Long has organised this gig to raise funds for the Red Cross’ aid effort in response to the devastating events in Japan last month.  Clwb have done their bit by waiving the hire fee and every penny taken at the gig will go to charity.  That ought to be enough to get you along to this one, but just in case it’s not there’s a tip top line-up of noisy pop fun and a bunch of other stuff to boot.

KUTOSIS headline, bringing their massively fun indie-punk-powerpop nuggets and impeccable tailoring; Jen and ex-Automatic man James Frost’s EFFORT are sloppy, grungy pop with a rictus grin; sandwiched inbetween, you should definitely check magnificently named Glaswegians GOLDEN GRRRLS, two girls and a boy toting an excellently shambling fuzzed-up indiepop noise on their debut 7″ for the Night School label.  Night School have also helmed a compilation cassette and download benefitting the Red Cross appeal and featuring Golden Grrls alongside Trash Kit, Divorce, Shitty Limits, Peepholes, Girls Names, Becoming Real and many more; it’s clearly both an utter bargain and an excellent thing to have done.  Buy it here, or here, or at the gig.  Stuff your face with cake, chance your arm on some fine raffle prizes, dig three excellent bands and leave knowing you’ve done a good thing.  No-brainer, dude.

Flux=Rad Japan Benefit Show
KUTOSIS
GOLDEN GRRRLS
EFFORT
Plus raffle, cakes, compilation CD sales and more!

Wednesday 27th April
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff / 7.30pm – 10.30pm
£DONATION ON DOOR – ALL PROCEEDS TO THE RED CROSS BENEFIT FOR JAPAN

http://www.kutosis.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/goldengrrrls

http://www.night-school.org.uk

http://www.redcross.org.uk/JapanTsunami

Hello everyone. I don’t think I need to write anything here about the terrible disaster in Japan, or try and elicit any kind of emotion in you to realise how awful it must be. So instead, let’s all get together and raise some money. We’re throwing a party at Clwb. They’ve given us the venue and flux=rad will cover the band costs so ALL MONEYS YOU DONATE AT THIS SHOW WILL GO TO THE RED CROSS. A lot of people are getting involved in this… Cardiff Craft will be giving origami lessons for donation. There will be another awesome flux=rad compilation CD available for a small donation. There will be a bake sale. There will be a raffle with prizes including SWN 2011 wristbands, Spillers goodies, Buffalo gig tickets, Music Box rehearsals, Barely Regal swag, and more… Playing… KUTOSIS Ace Cardiff punk trio who’ve just finished recording a stellar debut album. GOLDEN GRRRLS Glaswegian fuzzed out trio favoured by the likes of Pinglewood playing their first Welsh show. EFFORT Cardiff pop duo playing their first show of the year. **This is an early show with headliners on around 9.30pm** Please come down, get involved and help raise some cash. Should be a good night. flux=rad xx

In a sure to be landmark approach to reviewing live music, we now present the launch party gig for the split 7″ single of the two headlining bands (released on fine local label Barely Regal), in the form of verbatim drunken comments.

2: Are you going to network now?
1: Piss off.
3: My stomach hurts. I’m going to Burger King.
2: How will that help?
1: Let’s give Phantom Theory a chance.
3: (Silence)
2: (Silence)
1: (Silence)
3: I’m going to Burger King.
2: They make me want to peel my skin off. And frown a bit.
1: They’re popular with the MEN.
Phantom Theory: We’re from Oxford but we’re not posh.
2: They sound very posh.
1: I bet at least one of them is the son of an MP.
2: I’m going to Dempseys.
3: This band make me want to never be born.
1: Oh dear.
(After Dempseys)
1: I’m going to get a 7″.
Matt Barely Regal: I hate DHL. They haven’t delivered them yet.
Isaac Barely Regal: I saw you in the toilets.
1: Okay.
2: Strange News are on in a minute, I hope Foley pretends his bass is a giant cock again.
1: These are exactly the same jokes as Wednesday night! Look, the clipboard’s coming out now.
3: …
1: MANROCK (but good)
2: Grinding. They are good.
3: They are good.
Foley (slumped against wall): Take me drunk, I’m home…
2: Samoans. I like the fiddly guitar fingering stuff.
3: Yeah, maybe the singer should stop screaming.
Jarrett: (We can’t publish this comment – Ed.)
1: So much MANROCK (and still good)
2: Emotive.
3: Hmm. My stomach is better now. This means I can drink.
1: My hands are sticky and I can hear ‘Louie Louie’.
2: Sambuca. And I love Gary.
1: We’ve stopped talking about Samoans haven’t we?
Jimmy Strange News: Yaargh (grabs cock)
1: Aaargh!
3: Where are my badges?
2: Where are my shoes?!

ETC

To carry off a musical reinvention, especially one with a pronounced shift into the mainstream, never comes without problems.  Haters will hate, and even if it’s just a handful of disillusioned first-wave fans and the odd smirking onlooker (we’ve all been there, it’s fun, don’t deny it) a gear-change into more accessible territory needs a certain chutzpah and confidence in the material to come off right.  Enter COLD CAVE.  Wesley Eisold’s past in hardcore/screamo outfits Give Up The Ghost and Some Girls could hardly have been a more unlikely progenitor to 2009′s Love Comes Close, a glorious, glacial debut of EBM-accented synthpop which drew inspiration from Joy Division, the Human League, early Ministry and any number of glum Depeche Mode-fixated nihilists with a penchant for hi-energy disco thrills.  What set it apart from so much blank-eyed 80s-fixated revivalism was its shiny black pop core, made all the more surprising given the presence of collaborators from Prurient and Xiu Xiu.

New album Cherish The Light Years, the reason for this UK jaunt, dares to up the stakes still further; the choruses are huge, the guitars overdriven, the rhythms more frenetic than anything on its predecessor.  The likes of ‘The Great Pan Is Dead’ are the sort of glossy, widescreen electro-pop anthems that indie makeweights like Bloc Party tried on for size; but sleek, lustrous and darkly sexy where those bands came off lumpen and gauche. With the new touring line-up featuring another implausible guest (ex-Mika Miko vocalist Jennifer Clavin), expect a chilly, strobe-lit intensity but watch for the glowing, romantic pop at its heart.

Cold Cave / Man Without Country
Clwb Ifor Bach, Womanby Street, Cardiff

18+| 7:30pm | £7.50 | buy tickets

• www.swnfest.com
• www.myspace.com/coldcave
• www.manwithoutcountry.com

(Photos by the ever-brilliant Simon Ayre)

Post-Andy Gray and Richard Keys it feels weird to be staring at someone’s tits for such a long time. Kind of unavoidable tonight though: Drains singer Dan Barnett spends the gig wearing not much apart from jeans and a moustache that makes him look like he’s been drinking a poo milkshake, and foils any plan you have of trying to work out exactly what lyric he has tattooed on his chest by diving into your personal space every 30 seconds. It’s grunge that Drains cough up, great party grunge that’s raw, flippant and hacked back to the essentials. Knowledge of their other bands (Jim and Ben from Kutosis, Dan from Samoans, amongst others) will give you a pretty accurate ballpark of where they’re at musically – and Jimmy’s fuzzed up bass riffing has become a brilliant signature sound – but it’s as balls out, bar diving, sweaty torso wandering spectacle that they’re perfect Friday night entertainment. They also have a song called ‘Gunrack’, which nabs the best bit from Wayne’s World as it’s verse (“I don’t even have a gun, let alone the many guns it would take to necessitate an entire rack”) and this automatically gets them five big gold fucking stars.

To the Buffalo, with Simon Ayre and his forthright opinions, and the last few minutes of Ratatosk‘s set. What initially sounds weak and lost from the middle of a half empty venue flips almost imperceptibly into a spooky wash of multi-tracked vocals and Spanish guitar. That’s ‘The Dismal Science’, and it’s some kind of magic. Benni Hemm Hemm perform similar  sensible-shirts-into-gold tricks, yer man Benni taking to the stage looking an undertaker’s son with a kids’ guitar. Incredibly hard to describe this music without mentioning the geographical origins of much of the band: even shorn of the Icelandic accent, the songs would still call up images of wintry snowscapes, barren mountains, glowering lava and £8 pints (that may just be Buffalo though). Even with half the songs studded with bass/drums/brass flourishes it’s still weirdly quiet waters that BHH navigate – fragile and vaguely mysterious tunes that feel half murder ballad, half hushed attempt to contact the dead. Even a quicktime jaunty number feels sad, still, reserved. Even still, even still… The question is: do these songs take you from your bill worries, your failed plans, do they lift you, are they beautiful? Yeah, they’re beautiful.

Then we go to Metros.

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Shape Functions & The Joy Collective present…

Hiss Golden Messenger (with Rick Tomlinson of Voice Of The Seven Thunders)

Cate Le Bon (Full band)

H. Hawkline (Solo)

11 February 2011

Clwb Ifor Bach

Top Floor 8pm until 11pm

Special Guest DJs on the middle floor until 3am

+ Hiss Golden Messenger instore at Spillers at 5.30pm!

Tickets from: http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_wales&query=detail&event=431094 or from Spillers.

==============

Hiss Golden Messenger is one MC Taylor, North Carolinan folklorist, college lecturer and cosmic country bluesman. Having played in psychers The Court And The Spark, Taylor now travels through ragged Americana, taking elements of cleared eyed folk, gospel redemption and classic head-fried Southern soul. For this tour he’s joined on guitar by Rick Tomlinson of wigged-out psych shamens Voice Of The Seven Thunders. HEAVY.

Plus! A rare full band showing for the witchy goodness of Cate Le Bon, and an opening solo set from everyone’s favourite gangly, finger picking secret genius H. Hawkline.

Doubleplus! Once the bands finish up top it’s straight onto the middle floor for Very Special DJs, disturbingly good music, and actually disturbing dancing. Bring shades.

http://hissgoldenmessenger.blogspot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/hissgoldenmessenger

http://www.catelebon.com/

http://hhawkline.bandcamp.com/

http://shaperecords.co.uk/

http://www.thejoycollective.co.uk