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.