Alright kids. There are a couple of COOL THINGS happening this weekend around Cardiff, so I’m doing a mini events guide. This is by no means exhaustive so please ADD YOUR EVENTS IN THE COMMENTS THANKSBYEEEEE.
A great chance to visit the “new” location on Barrack Lane (okay not so new anymore but I haven’t been there yet, soooooo). Anyway. A great independent venue, go along and support – this is a FREE EVENT supported by Cardiff Council. Yes you heard!
Perennial classic which launched Danny Dyer directly into the hearts of the British public after his fabulously awkward wanking scene. Go watch it and lament miserably over how you saw it when it came out and how are you nearly 50 now??
HOFFI 4 – LUCAS ALEXANDER / MACE THE GREAT + GUESTS @ BUNK HOUSE
Some of you might remember the Bunkhouse on St Mary Street running banging nights in their basement waaay back in the day. They closed off the basement to non-residents for years, but suddenly they seem to be smashing out massive grimey nights again. Lovely little underground venue with a great line up, go headbutt the speakers and have a wonderful bubble.
I know Jacobs are getting a double entry but what you gonna do they’re a total gem in the city. If you’ve not seen it, this classic retains its claim as the quintessential Welsh film (buy yer own feckin glue). Go buy a ticket NOW.
A full day of fun on the water and fun out of the water! Live music from Live Lounge, local food from the Farmers Pantry, coffee from Coffie Pass. This year’s Paddlefest features the first ever Welsh Championships Kayak Cross (an event that will make its Olympic debut in Paris this year) alongside the GB SUP and GB Canoe Slalom races. If you’re going along for the day, there’s a load of taster sessions for you to book – Indoor Wave, Air Trail and SUP Tasters. The white water will be flowing all weekend.
MONDAY 5 MAY
CARNEDD OPEN DAY @ Ty Wilcox, Dunleavy Drive, CF110BA, Cardiff; 12:00-21:00
If you, like hundreds before you, ever temped for Cardiff Council in the 90s or 2000s, chances are you might have humped printer paper around or spilt tea pon de replay while wearing ill-fitting brown office shoes somewhere around the maze of dim corridors in Ty Wilcox. Today, this empty monument to 1980s instant coffee Welsh brutalism has been reimagined as a CREATIVE SPACE FOR GIGS. No really. The Carnedd collective is holding an open day there on Monday 5 May (the collective comprising of SHIFT, tactileBOSCH, Umbrella, and Dyddiau Du). Thanks to Xavier Boucherat’s Through the Night newsletter for the tip on this event).
Kids In Glass Houses, a Welsh five-piece rock band consisting of Aled Phillips, Andrew Sheehy, Iain Mahanty, Joel Fisher and Philip Jenkins. With their debut album Smart Casual turning 15 this year, they have reunited and are back on the road to bring nostalgia to the kids who have been fans since 2004.
The band announced their split back in 2014 where they played a final show on Halloween in Cardiff. On their current reunion tour, they have stopped off in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Bristol and finally wrapping up in Cardiff. It felt incredibly fitting to watch Kids In Glass Houses perform on a Saturday in their home city of Cardiff, with The Nightmares as their support act.
The Nightmares are a four-piece band who describe their music as Noir Pop. The Newport band consists of Adam Parslow, Eleanor Coburn, Benjamin Mainwaring and James Mattock. With the staging set up in dark red, the band played songs from their discography with black roses attached to their microphone stands. Their vibe gave a gothic atmosphere with a melancholy crimson feel.
Kids In Glass Houses came onto the stage with bundles of energy. Aled Phillips was running around the stage and showing no sign of stopping until their set was complete. They opened with Fisticuffs and finished with Matters At All. The the eccentric dance moves from Aled, it felt like he was channelling his inner Elvis. With a sea of inflatable flamingos in the crowd, and the chanting of A.L.E.D, the final show on the tour really did end with a bang. The band were incredibly thankful that so many fans were still supporting them and selling out shows and how 15 years since Smart Casual was released has flown by. The band finished off by taking a photo with the audience and included a sign that read ‘BRB…Making A New Album!’
A festival inspired by the instrument that connects us all – the voice
“Llais is Cardiff’s international arts festival, bringing artists and audiences together for incredible live music, thought-provoking performance and inspirational talks.”
Llais Festival began back in 2016 which saw a line-up of Van Morrison, Charlotte Church and Hot Chip. Last years line-up saw artists Cate Le Bon, Midlake and Pussy Riot take to the stage. For 2023, Llais Festival is bringing along The Staves, Bat For Lashes, Gwenno and many more!
(You might recognise Gwenno from the side of Clwb Ifor Bach on Womanby Street as a 38 metre mural!)
During the weekend of October 14-15, we managed to catch the sets of: Angharad Davies, Angeline Morrison, Gwenno, Clare Marie Bailey and Elaha Soroor. What a fantastic mixture of international sound and culture.
Angharad Davies – a Welsh experimental violinist demonstrating a psychedelic experience for the audience in the Cabaret bar. Angharad slowly approached the stage and setting the expectations of her performance. She performed a 52-minute solo violin piece from her single track album titled “Gwneud a Gwneud Eto / Do and Do Again.” The performance provided the room with a sense of meditation and enchantment. Angharad describes the violin as particularly intimate with an endless wealth of possibilities. The low repetitive drones and variety of high pitched scratches truly provided the audience with the psychedelic experience they were promised.
Angeline Morrison – with a focus on storytelling, Angeline performs elements of soul music, folklore, myth and the supernatural. Angeline Morrison’s 2022 album, The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience was voted Number One Folk Album of the Year in The Guardian. Angeline shared a touching story with the audience about how she was very close with her grandfather who had dementia. Her hypnotic performance interacted with the audience through precise storytelling. The audience were applauding the end of each song ready for the next.
Gwenno – this was a one- off performance exclusive to Llais Festival, titled ‘Tair Ton | Teyr Ton | Three Waves.’ We were told to expect a ‘sensory feast with added theatrics’ and that’s exactly what Gwenno treated us to. This performance celebrated her three albums with connecting themes and featured unheard live performances from her discography. Gwenno’s performance was filled with stunning lighting and graphics throughout giving the audience a show of visual satisfaction. The crowd came wearing their red hats and ready to be captivated with songs such as N.Y.C.A.W. and Men an Toll from her album, Tresor. Gwenno was a perfect wrap up act on Sunday at Llais Festival bringing along Welsh culture and voice at its finest.
Creative Republic of Cardiff is a non-profit organisation that plans to rejuvenate Cardiff’s live music and creative culture. It was been set up by former staff & friends of The Full Moon, which closed in April 2017.
They set up an Indiegogo campaign which raised £14,000 in two weeks, which helped them to take on the building’s lease and open at the end of April 2017 as a new community-led, non-profit venue & arts space called THE MOON.
eg – securing the lease; licenses; insurance; tills; stock; accounting; legal; security; design & signage; plumbing & electrics; continuing refurbishment – painting, carpentry, tiling, loads of odd jobs and fixing stuff, lights replaced, little cloakroom/space for band gear; & everything else associated with maintaining a fully functioning venue!
Additional funds will allow us to improve the venue, carry out maintenance and provide them with basic working capital.
Creative Republic of Cardiff will use the venue to establish an environment of collaboration, networking and knowledge sharing. It will nurture, develop, organise and showcase talent from Cardiff and beyond.
The Moon has been an powerhouse for supporting grassroots artists, and supporting them is support for our independent music scene!
They’re currently offering two levels of support: £7.50 per month, or £20 per month. Here’s how they break down:
$10 (£7.50) or more per month:
Moon ‘Saviour’ T-Shirt
10% discount at the bar FOR LIFE any time you come in wearing your Saviour t-shirt
Your name will also be placed on the wall plaque of saviours
$25 (£20) or more per month:
Saviour t-shirt
10% off at the bar for life when wearing Saviour t-shirt
1 free gig per month at The Moon of your choice (subject to ticket availability)
After a couple of years in the wilderness, the crazy energy of the first Sŵns returned this year – with some new venues, and a slightly different format. And we had a great time! Our highlights included: cheeky cocktails in between shows at Blue Honey, gigs in a secret room out the back of Kongs (who knew Kongs was so big???), not getting into loads of gigs but just dancing in the street outside (sorry Estrons! We really wanted to see you, although we heard you caused structural damage to the venue?!), wonderful Gaz Coombes and wonderful Boy Azooga slotting in perfectly between Gaz and The Go! Team, a sweaty set from Hana 2K in the Moon, Al Moses, Griff Lynch, and Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard.
A return to the multi-venue, multi-day vibe all in Cardiff was brilliant. Vive la Sŵn!
We sent photojournalist Mehek Seth out into the madness, and here’s her photo essay.
In case you missed it, here’s the Spotify playlist from this year:
MASSIVE EVENT KLAXON! So those wonderfully talented folks at USW School of Music and Sound are putting on an event at the Tramshed on 7 June to celebrate the students and their musical talent.
The University of South Wales School of Music and Sound invites the city’s music lovers to an end of year festival showcase at the Tramshed!
On Thursday 7 June, come listen to 14 live new acts, enjoy the street food courtyard, a music-themed photobooth, DJ compere and glitter bar. Free entry from 4pm till late.
There are some crazy talented cats going through the school at the moment, and as well as playing LIVE for you, they’ve even pressed an album!
Featuring:
Eleri Angharad
Carolines
Lost Come Sunday
Jack Hughes
The Kelly Line
Naomi Rae
Mellt
Where’s Ed?
The Rotanas
Glass Jackets
Ravenbreed
Lead Coloured River
Knowhere
Alumni
Entry is free but booking is essential. Open to students, non students, friends, family & anyone who wants to hear Cardiff’s freshest live acts.
To support the release of their new single ‘Shades of You’ on May 4 – and in celebration of surpassing 32 MILLION STREAMS on Spotify alone – Cardiff haze poppers XY&O have announced a spring residency of live shows at The Big Top!
Entry to all shows is FREE, and each gig features support from different artists (including Safari Gold, Jack Ellis, Sønder Choir and rising stars Hvnter and The Dead Method).
WATCH: XY&O – Low Tide
XY&O’s Big Top residency shows are:
April 19th: XY&O + Safari Gold
May 4th: XY&O + Jack Ellis + Blue Honey DJ Set [single launch show]
May 17th: XY&O + Sønder Choir [semi acoustic show]
June 1st: XY&O + Hvnter + The Dead Method [presented in association with the Forte&Project]
We caught up Skip, Nick and Tudor for a mini interview before their residency kicks off!
Q. Where and how did the band form? Introduce all the members and maybe tell us a bit about your musical influences
Skip. We met in Cardiff, I was at University there. Me and Tudor crossed paths down at a little studio in Cardiff Bay and almost immediately decided that we should write some songs together. Our tastes are styles when it came to writing where similar, but also different enough so that we could spin off each other. He yinged, I yanged.
I knew Nick because I was recording and producing some tracks for a band he was in at the time, he was only about 16/17 and had an amazingly original style of playing guitar and writing even then. I thought it would be interesting to rope him in and see how his musicality fitted with the songs me and Tude had started.
My musical tastes are pretty broad. I can usually find something I like about a track or genre. Some of my biggest influences would be artists like Prince, John Martyn The Cure, Sting, stuff my Dad was listening too as I grew up. When I hit early teens and started finding my own music, then it was all about Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio and Blink 182 for a couple of years. I like heavy music, soft music and everything in between. Atreyu to Arianna Grande.
Nick. My influences constantly change, at the minute I’m listening to a lot of electronic soul type stuff as well as artists such as Mt. Joy and Jordan Mackampa.
Tudor. My musical influences are pretty broad and always changing. I love haunting and spacey music like Daughter, RY X and Sigur Ros. I’m also a massive Coldplay fan (saw them in Cardiff for the first time not so long ago and it only confirmed my obsession). I’m currently listening to a lot of traditional Colombian music (probably due to watching all of Narcos on Netflix in three days).
Q. Where are you all from originally? How did you end up in Cardiff?
Skip. I’m originally from the valleys, a little town called Abercarn. I came to Cardiff University though so lived in the city for 3/4 years at that time.
Tudor is from Barry and Nick from Whitchurch so they’re both Cardiff boys.
Q. What are your musical memories from being younger? What made you all decide to get into making music?
Skip. Most of my musical memories just revolve around listening to it. I sang in school and stuff like that but the most vivid memories for the first times I heard certain artists. I remember listening to REM, Led Zeppelin and Sting CDs in the car with my parents. I remember the first time I heard Youth & Young Manhood by Kings of Leon and amazing records like that. I used to sing and make up songs as a kid, and I guess I just never really stopped…
Tudor. Family BBQs that went late into the night with Bob Marley albums being played back to back. I’ve always been obsessed with how music makes people feel and I suppose I wanted to be a part of that process.
Nick. Listening to Jimi Hendrix in my dad’s car was a big one, I remember being pretty mind blown that those kinds of sounds existed (especially the solos in All Along the Watchtower). I think it’s that curiosity that got me into music
Q. What are your favourite music- related spots around Cardiff – venues / shops etc?
Tudor. We’re big fans of The Full Moon, Clwb Ifor Bach, Womanby Street as a whole really. Gwdihw is a pretty cool place and The Big Top of course. That’s a great venue for intimate gigs.
We’re also looking for a New York Deli sponsorship so will give them a shout out too!
Skip. Also, Bomber’s Deli…un-related to music, but if you’re in Cardiff and it’s lunch time then you need to check that place out.
Q. Tell us about the Ten Feet Tall/Big Top residency
It’s going to be a chance for us to experiment with all of our new lights, equipment and music. Our live show has evolved massively and we’re keen to show it to people in an intimate setting. We’re using the gigs to try out new songs, experiment with arrangements and just generally play some fun local shows because we haven’t really played in the city that much. We’ve made all the gigs free entry because we’d rather people just come and enjoy, critique or just listen to our new music
Q. What’s been the best gig you’ve played to date?
We actually played at Glastonbury 2016 on the BBC Introducing Stage. It was obviously pretty amazing so that always ranks highly. It was only out 10th gig as a band so very strange and looking back on it, it almost feels like a different band. Our live set up then was very different to what it is now. We played an amazing gig at The Phoenix in Exeter in the run-up to Glastonbury. It was a BBC show at a big sold out theater and the crowd were amazingly receptive to us.
Q. What are your plans and hopes for the future?
Our new single ‘Shades of You’ is scheduled to come out on May 4th so we’re excited for that. We’re shooting the music video for it next week actually.
We’ve just been picked up by the live agents Primary Talent so we’re keen to get out playing live much more. We’re hoping to use the residency to fine tune our live set too.
Tudor. We want to go over to the US and play for all the Americans that have been streaming our music for the last two years!
XY&O is the creative amalgamation of songwriters Skip Curtis, Nick Kelly and Tudor Davies.
It began in early 2015 – Skip (from the Valleys) and Tudor (from Cardiff) began writing music and songs with the intention of pitching them to other artists to use. Skip quickly roped in another Cardiff native Nick Kelly in hopes of bringing another dimension to the music. After posting some early demos online under the moniker ‘XY&O’ the trio started seeing their play count rise. They started receiving airplay on US Radio stations as well as gig offers from US promoters, some of whom assumed the band were from Cardiff, San Diego.
Early on, the boys wrote what would become ‘Low Tide’ – bringing with it the genesis of their unique style, coined by Skip as haze pop. ‘Low Tide’ was self-released and went straight into Spotify’s Global Viral Chart at number 7, reaching an audience worldwide, but was particularly well received in the US. The track has since gone on to accumulate over 20 million streams. The trio gained huge popularity on all online platforms, it was at this point the three had discovered that XY&O had somewhat unintentionally become a band.
The band slowed things down the second half of 2016 and early 2017, allowing Nick to finish his final year studies at University but have now re-focused their efforts into their live show and have recently been taken on by live agents Primary Talent. The boy’s story was picked up by the Wales Online in late 2017 which led to them being featured live on the ITV News at 6pm talking about their unusual story of being a little known Welsh band with an audience in the USA.
They hope to expand their live following over 2018 as well as release plenty of new music. New single ‘Shades of You’ is set for release on May 4th, 2018.
Who thinks a Grade II listed Banking Hall down Cardiff docks would make a good venue? I mean, it’s 4000 square feet, featuring a large glass atrium ceiling and ornate marble pillars … but apparently, the place has got amazing acoustics. Meet Portland House!
Don’t take our word for it though … Jack Feeney decided to test the place with a drum kit, synthesizer, and one camera. The following shows the results!
Portland House recently welcomed dub reggae legend, Lee Scratch Perry. Not a bad opening gig, eh?
Their next live show is OWEN PALLETT from Arcade Fire (little bit exciting!) on Wednesday 3 June 2015. For tickets and to subscribe for information about their forthcoming shows, visit Portland House: Tickets
To celebrate his forthcoming album on the Heavenly label (oooo!), the delectable H. Hawkline has escaped his tour duties with Cate le Bon and Sweet Baboo and landed his very own residency at Clwb in Cardiff, on Thursdays throughout February. Each show will have some very special guests. Read on for more info…
“I wish I knew where I’d left me keys…”
Here are the shows – more guests are to be announced! (keep an eye on the Facebook event)
For those Cardiff people who are heading to Glastonbury this year (which includes me for the first time ever!), First Great Western have put up some information about public transport by train to the festival. Great news for those wanting to travel green; if only train tickets were cheaper, maybe more people would do it! But there we go, that’s what happens when things are privatised. Big thanks to the Conservatives of many years ago for that one. But I digress …
For those Cardiff people NOT going to Glastonbury this year, every year The Moon and The Full Moon on Womanby Street put on Glasnost; a full few days of festivities, all arts and music related. Ideal for those who aren’t heading to the big G but still fancy getting their jig on. This year’s Glasnost looks better than ever – five days of bands, DJs, cabaret – and a five day pass is only £15!
We Are Cardiff 