Why opportunity can be everything and budget nothing.

Given a suitably massive budget, and the access to resources that it brings, then surely commercial musical success will be assured? Well, for some decades that was very much the modus operandi of the major labels and for a long while it worked, in so far as the successes were more than able to bank-roll the flops as well as the often ridiculously wasteful corporate processes, functionaries and flunkies that the industry acquired along the way.
It has been seen before, and indubitably it will be seen again, in a great variety of industries... The idea that something is 'too big, for which read too self-important, to fail'.
Trains it has repeatedly been discovered do not actually run at all well when fuelled by gravy and, as any fireman will tell you, the best strategy is almost always to keep the fire even, lean and hot: The costs, both pecuniary and physical, within proportion to expectation and yet the ambition beyond both. This is a fact that the legion of independent record labels have long been acquainted with and this is a 'taster CD' from just one of them that arrived here with me today.

Owlet Music is based in beautiful, rural mid-Wales, very far from the centres of the UK music industry. That doesn't matter one bit - they have both the talent and the opportunity available to them but without the commotion and distraction of the cities. I suspect that I shall be writing much more on this and related themes in the coming months but, in the meantime, Owlet has just delivered one of the finest LPs of 2013 so far. It is hardly shaping up as a barren year and neither does it look like changing in that respect in the coming months.
That is Trwbador - Trwbador, the début album from the duo that I have mentioned before. Another one to watch, by the way, is Casi Wyn from Bangor and her EP1 (Recordiau IKaChing). 

Me Oh My (and the matter of Pet Deaths).

I'll steer away from reminiscences of EOTR 2009 for a moment, in favour of those started at Latitude 2007 and here is why...
One of the artists I saw then was Cate Le Bon and I mentioned that her début album 'Pet Deaths' would soon be out. That was now more than two years ago and it still isn't (although the 10" EP Edrych Yn Llygaid Ceffyl Benthyg appeared in 2008). That album has, for various reasons, gone the same way as the pets...

It has however been replaced by this one, Me Oh My, which is out soon on Irony Bored Records and if you want a bonus DVD to come along with it then Rough Trade in London is the place to look:
http://www.roughtrade.com/site/shop_detail.lasso?search_type=sku&sku=317252

Things That Happen When You Write Them Down

It's been a while, as someone said to me last week, so here is some new music from Wales that most will probably be unfamiliar with and the 5-track EP is available only on vinyl 7":

This is, as far as I know, the first full release of a solo recording by south Wales artist Laura Bryon amongst whose other projects is the band King Alexander, which has been mentioned here before, but while 'Despot Chic' was shouty punk this is an acoustic affair. The second track, 'The Trees They Do Grow High' is traditional while the others are self-penned and so was, I very much suspect, the artwork too. Released on Bird Records (07EGGS) this is an EP for lovers of the current nu/anti-folk resurgence. To buy it try Spillers Records in Cardiff or, to save a journey, click here instead. As the short review on their site says this is recommended to those who like the music of Cate Le Bon, and that is very true, but taking away the Welsh aspect (and none of this EP is sung in Welsh), another current point of reference would be Blue Roses.

Good Fortune Sounds - bad luck mouse.