Truck Festival 2015 - Part 3

I wrote on Monday, in the first instalment, that I wasn't going to do this by stage. So far I haven't but now I shall. The "new stage" at Truck 2015 was the Palm City Stage but its greatest attraction was that from start until early evening on both days it was home to Gorwelion - Horizons, a joint project by The Arts Council and BBC6 Music, that seeks to promote music of all genres that comes from Wales. It is nothing specifically about traditional music, although that can of course be included, and although I didn't hear all of it the variety on offer was wide. I have a soft spot for music from Wales and therefore I have mentioned plenty of it over the years in these posts.
This first artist I mentioned recently and was therefore delighted to see that, when the line-up was revealed, she was part of it.

Hannah Grace, who hails from Cardiff.

Her powerful voice makes me think of North Wales' Casi Wyn, although the latter predominantly writes songs in Welsh. I'm not quite sure where she is with new music other than to say that she played the Gorwelion-Horizons stage at Brighton's Great Escape 2015 back in May.
This next artist, with his acoustic Americana, would not have been at all out of place at the nearby Saloon Bar stage (of which much more soon!).

Dan Bettridge, described here in the words of Gorwelion-Horizons.

These next two acts are as different to each other as they are to either of the aforementioned. That was the big appeal of this stage but also one that makes it difficult to write about. Saturday saw Haula perform a very well attended set, complete with enthusiastic audience participation. 

That is far from being something that can be taken for granted for it requires a almost indefinable empathy between artist and audience. Very well known artists can have epic fails with this kind of thing and yet she made it seem natural therefore oh-so-easy. Her heritage is Ugandan but Wales is now where she calls home.

Finally although it is actually from late Friday come the small, for it is a trio, but very determined crew of HMS Morris.

Heledd Watkins on guitar and lead vocals.

This is pop music, but not quite as you expected it. Another of the wonderful discoveries of last weekend. Some of this was sung in Welsh. 

The best discovery since the weekend is that Gwenno is indeed playing Green Man 2015. Result!

2013 In Music - EPs and mini albums

This is the post that I delayed from earlier in the week. I've been thinking about it all the while and yet I am still not sure quite how it will turn out. I think that it will just evolve over the next day or two...

There a few times, when one hears for the first time a new artist or act of which one was previously completely unaware and the first instinct is simply WTF? Festivals are happy hunting grounds for this... indeed albums by two artists that first took me this way have already appeared in this year's lists of albums.

2013 in Music - Albums - Part 1

2013 in Music - Albums - Part 2
    

This is not my first mention of an artist that I had first seen live at End of The Road Festival 2011 (although then under a different name). It was a foregone conclusion, before End of The Road Festival 2013, that this would be here...

Available in, as well as other formats, 12" vinyl (as pictured here).

The Graphite Set live at End of The Road 2013.


THESE STREETS, The Graphite Set from Louis W Hudson on Vimeo.
  

This next EP might be a tough one to convince you of the merits of and for the very same reason that may also affect one album on each of my two lists so far! The last song is the only one sung in English and will hopefully make it all worthwhile. Even finding the EP on CD can be a challenge but your best bet is here. Another artist I want to see live in 2014.

This post, as you might have already noticed is not in alphabetical order by artist. It is not in any other known order either. In the spirit of my first ever such round-up post, also of EPs and back in 2007, I'm going with whatever eligible recordings suit my mood.
It would be wrong to include any act other than on merit. If that happens to be one from not so far distant then that is all the better.

Wolfhound is signed to Bristol-based Jelli Records.

Whilst on the subject of bands including sisters, Natalie and Sally Joiner in the case of Wolfhound above and Anja Quinn on the far right, here is another .

Lily & Madeleine Jurkiewicz have now released their eponymous début album.

This EP however, on 10" vinyl, was their beautiful calling card. The comparison to the Swedish Söderberg sisters, aka First Aid Kit, is valid but not to be dwelt on to excess.
In all probability this thread will have a second post, just as the album thread will have a third. Good times.

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). 

New Music - Part 15 - all out of Wales

It is a while since I have done something quite like this, something so geographically defined. This morning, when perusing the detail of the End of The Road 2013 artists, I noticed that North Wales duo Golden Fable, whom I have mentioned before, are on it.
This then reminded me of three other artists/acts from Wales that have recently come to my attention. 
Of the five tracks on Casi Wyn's EP 1, which is released tomorrow by Welsh independent label IKACHING, the only one sung in English is the last and that is 'Winter'. To keep you on edge here it is.
  

This next is a self-titled album released at the start of April 2013 by Trwbador, a duo from west Wales, and actually their second album. It is available, if only very sparingly, on vinyl too; specifically white vinyl on their bespoke label Owlet Records.    

Trwbador - Trwbador (2013)

This is just the end of the start.

This next one was released in February 2013 by another independent label from Wales, Recordiau Gwymon, is vinyl 10" EP 'In Luna' from Aberystwyth songwriter, harpist and vocalist Georgia Ruth Williams.

Somewhere that folk meets blues, accompanied by harp, fiddle, percussion and much more:

This, from the 'La Luna EP', is Through Your Hands.

This is, interestingly, just scratching the surface of new music from Wales that has come to my attention in the last couple of months.