Lemongel Release New Single ‘Some Nights I Win’

Apr 24, 2023 — Leave a comment

Cardiff based groove and funk band Lemongel release new single ‘Some Nights I Win’ from their upcoming EP. This unique track is melodic with a chill out vibe.

Some nights I win,
Sometimes nights I lose,
Though we always end it in the room…

She asks why,
And I say who,
Wouldn’t fall in love with someone like you

The band say of the song:

“The lyrics for this song hit very close to the heart, extracting the essence of a relationship. Full of hardship and insecurity. Full of the best and worst moments, it can be a rollercoaster or an empty room with two people. A song about wanting the balance but struggling to find. An intense melodic ride with a vulnerable Dionysian base.

This song was written reflecting back on a difficult experience, under a new light. The pandemic helped fuel this new way of looking at things, to look forward rather than backwards, and this too is reflected in the song as none of it would have been achieved without accepting the outcome and moving on.

Their song will be showcased on the 26th April at The Flora, Cardiff and on the 29th April at All Roads Festival!

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

The Immediate Release Mold Box Set (’92 – ’93)

Apr 24, 2023 — Leave a comment

FOR FANS OF: The Who / Husker Du / The Jam / Badfinger / XTC / 60ft Dolls / Teenage Fanclub / Ride

The Immediate are a mod-ish, guitar-fuelled, power pop three-piece from Mold in north Wales.

To celebrate 30 years since our first release as The Immediate, They have compiled a C90’s worth of our best moments. ‘Mold Box Set – Wide Misses and Purple Flashes’ features highlights from our earliest years as well as recordings from our more recent albums, 2017’s ‘Manbuoy’ and 2018’s ‘More Sheep Than Humans’.

The compilation is available as a limited edition cassette (in the tradition of the original ‘The Boy Who Tried To Change The World’ tape from 1993) on bandcamp, and as a digital download / stream from all of the usual platforms.

The songs have been played on 6Music, BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio Wales and on a number of other excellent radio stations and programmes around the world.

This is the back catalogue of a band who unintentionally evaded every zeitgeist like pre-topknot Gareth Bale evaded the Milan defence. By the time Britpop slid in, we’d already been ripping off Waterloo Sunset for half a decade.

The band were always more in thrall to The Real People than they were to Oasis. They supported Stereophonics the night they were signed to V2 Records, and did nothing to stop it. Played Mansun’s debut album launch party at the Stakis Casino on the Isle of Man, confusing the gathered crowd who asked why they hadn’t played ‘Wide Open Space’ as we shuffled off stage.

Never made it to Camden, but we were massive in Crewe. For one spring / summer in St Tropez they were almost proper pop stars: not bad for dole kids from Mold, north Wales.

Adam Walton says:
“There are reasons for our lack of success; so many near miss / one-that-got-away stories, but they’re stories for another time. This is a collection of our tunes, and – if we had anything right – it was our tunes. Unironic, heart-on-sleeve, power pop anthems wrought from our love of All Mod Cons, The Who Sell Out and Ride’s first two albums.

If you love The Who / Husker Du / The Jam / Badfinger / XTC / 60ft Dolls / Teenage Fanclub / Ride there will be music here you will like, and hopefully love.

The story stretches from our first UK release in 1993 to our most recent recordings, last year. The fact that it all sounds like the same band – whether it’s the pre-Suede nocturnal psychodrama of 1993’s ‘Praying For Sunshine’ or the fierce, tight, tuney thunder of this year’s ‘Divide’ – is a matter of some pride to us.

We never sold out, probably because no one was buying, but the fact remains.”

Emily Marsden – Editor
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@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Alffa Release New Single ‘Unkind Mind’

Apr 17, 2023 — Leave a comment

Alffa consists of Dion Wyn Jones and Sion Eifion Land. The duo from North Wales Release their first single of 2023 ‘Unkind Mind’.

This gritty new single commands your full attention with it’s powerful sound. The song builds its way up into an explosive crescendo. Throughout the lyrics they speak of mental health and through repetition remind listeners to not be so hard on themselves.

The band say of the single:

“Taking visual cues from the music videos for ‘Slowly Separate – Crows’ and ‘Mother – IDLES’ my plan was to create a video that portrayed the beauty of the Welsh landscape while also having fun smashing some concrete up in my back garden.

Filmed along the serene dunes of Traeth Llanddwyn and deep within its skeletal forests along the Ynys Môn coast, shooting ‘Unkind Mind’ on a Saturday afternoon was an absolute pleasure. Even battling the unpredictable weather was a blessing in disguise that helped split the video into its two halves – the colour section and the black & white section.”

Emily Marsden – Editor
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musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Tom Emlyn Releases New Single ‘Broken Mirror’ Accompanied By A New Music Video And Announces New Album Release

Apr 17, 2023 — Leave a comment

Swansea born Tom Emlyn is one of the most prolific and inventive songwriters to emerge from Wales. Tom crafts honest, swirling evocative songs; tall tales, and dark jokes that cut straight to the bone. His current solo work maps an alternative Southwalian landscape, a hallucinated community drawn from psychogeography and local history. Written on foot and by bus, his observational, poetic lyrics and simple 60s-folk-influenced melodies explore what it means to belong to a place. Tom has been comapred to Bob Dylan or Elliot Smith.

Emlyn says: “This was a song I wrote after I came back from traveling in about 2015. It was a bit of a prototype for some of my other songs like Empire or Under the Weather, which try to use the Welsh landscape as a metaphor for a breakup. It’s not really as biographical as it sounds, there’s a lot of fiction in there too. It also deals with the choices you make in life and realising that there are many ways to look at a situation. It’s quite conversational and imagistic.”

Tom also announces details of a new album to be released on the 5th of May, ‘Return Journey Revisited: Scaredycat Vol. 15’. This album is a treasure trove of captivating songs dating to between 2016 – 2018.

Of the album Tom says:
“Abandoned work is a normal part of the music-making process, but I felt these songs deserved a second chance. I also wanted to release it as a (small) protest against certain smoke-and-mirrors aspects of the music industry. People will tell you to wait and wait, hold back all of your material for the “right time”. I can’t do that anymore; for me, a song is only new when it’s just been written, although it can be remade in live performance. I find it quite agonising to sit on this material for so many years. I’ll be thirty in 2023. That’s why I want to get this sizeable backlog of unheard material out there, so I can move on to new things, and that’s why this is the third album I’ve released in a year.”

“There were many people involved in these tracks – different engineers, studios, producers, and musicians in Swansea and Cardiff. I think the album has a unified feel despite being a bunch of stuff that was recorded in various studios and spaces, before being rescued from the cutting-room floor. It’s a bit of a lighter, ironic affair, full of magic realism and surreal images of the natural world, half-acoustic and half-electric, with an eclectic, eccentric, sprawling feel. Scraped from the bottom of a very deep barrel – but somehow holding together.”

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Focus Wales Film Festival Revealed

Apr 17, 2023 — Leave a comment

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Joseph Harvey Releases New Single ‘Flirting With Disaster’

Mar 31, 2023 — Leave a comment

Joseph Harvey ‘Flirts With Disaster’ on brand new single.

Murdered Out Records is proud to announce the release of Joseph Harvey’s brand new single Flirting With Disaster.

The third single from Harvey is an upbeat, swinging, sizzling-hot number that is sure to cure your winter blues.

“Flirting With Disaster is sung from the perspective of a hopeless romantic, yearning for the perfect trip abroad with the object of his or her desires. Something we can all relate to from time to time”.

The song will be released exclusively as a digital only single and is available to download and stream now.

So if the cold weather isn’t your thing, pour yourself a cocktail, press play and close your eyes as you’re transported to somewhere “Far away from the wind and the rain” on Joseph Harvey’s brand new single Flirting With Disaster.

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Show Dogs Release New EP ‘Y Rhwd Gwelw’

Mar 24, 2023 — Leave a comment

Composed of members of long-standing Cardiff stalwarts TJ Roberts, Rainbow Maniac and AHGEEBEE, Show Dogs meld acerbic observations of contemporary Welsh life and politics, set to a chamber-pop soundtrack. Artwork comes from photographer Elijah Lewis Thomas and Ben Wood.

On Y Rhwd Gwelw, translated as ‘The Pale Rust’, Show Dog’s continue their exploration of contemporary Welsh life and the country’s political landscape. Opening with the track ‘Tropical Republic’, the lyrics consider the potential future of a Welsh republic, particularly lead singer TJ Roberts’ propensity for romanticising such a distant prospect. Second is the single ‘Don’t Go In The Water’ which explores the pollution of welsh waters and the paranoia induced by living so close to irradiated mud. The EP closes with the band’s namesake, ‘Show Dogs’, an republican anthem dealing with national identity and monarchy.

The band continue to move towards a more rich and orchestral instrumentation, including a wide array of percussion, vintage synthesisers and twelve-string guitars evoking ‘Village Green’ era Kinks and The Boo Radleys. Engineered and produced by Thomas V Westgard and Secondson (Danielle Lewis, Super Furry Animals) at After Life
Studios. Show Dogs proclaim that punk is not dead in Wales and its message has arrived in 3-part harmony.

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Adam Walton Releases New LP ‘Looms (Qt)’

Mar 13, 2023 — Leave a comment

Following on from his album ‘Afal’, Adam Walton from North Wales has put together a collection of instrumental, ambient, field and classical recordings sketched together in his bedroom. The LP spans everything from traditional instruments to synths and effects pedals and it works to create beautiful ambiance in each track.

Intended to be listened to quietly, so the music can insinuate itself and calm the soul, This LP does exactly that. A beautifully crafted compilation of songs.

For listeners of Antonymes, Group Listening, Mogwai, Accu, King Biscuit Time, Graham Devine, Gareth Bonello, Gwenno, Brian Eno, Barrios, The Cure, Boards of Canada, Gerard Cousins, knobs.

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Show Dogs release fourth single ‘Don’t Go In The Water’ from upcoming EP ‘Y Rhwd Gwelw’

Mar 13, 2023 — Leave a comment

Composed of members of long-standing Cardiff stalwarts TJ Roberts, Rainbow Maniac and AHGEEBEE, Show Dogs meld acerbic observations of contemporary Welsh life and politics, set to a chamber-pop soundtrack. Artwork comes from photographer Elijah Lewis Thomas and Ben Wood.

Don’t Go In The Water, inspired by the Beach Boys’ own eco-protest song Don’t Go Near the Water, takes aim at the perpetual issue of water pollution on Welsh coastlines. Stemming from lead singer TJ Roberts’ paranoia of living so close to approximately 100,000 tonnes of irradiated mud, melody and lyrics jostle with a nervous energy and shifting intensity; from a delicate sincerity to an ironic apathy.

The band continue to move towards a more rich and orchestral instrumentation, including a wide array of percussion, vintage synthesisers and twelve-string guitars evoking ‘Village Green’ era Kinks and The Boo Radleys.

Engineered and produced by Thomas V Westgard and Secondson (Danielle Lewis, Super Furry Animals) at After Life Studios, the band spent the summer of 2022 recording three EPs the second of which, ‘Y Rhwd Gwelw’ (The Pale Rust) will be released on the 17th of March. Show Dogs proclaim that punk is not dead in Wales and its message has arrived in 3-part harmony.

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com

Ci Gofod Release Single ‘Rhedeg Yn Y Nos’

Mar 10, 2023 — Leave a comment

Armed with a dusty box of his fathers’ old 80s and funk records for inspiration, Bridgend singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ci Gofod (Jack Thomas Davies) made his solo debut with the sweet and soulful single ‘Castle Square’ in 2020.

Taking influences from the likes of Super Furry Animals and Sly And The Family Stone, Ci Gofod’s brand new single ‘Rhedeg Yn Y Nos’; which translates to ‘Running At Night’ is a blissful yet funky groove that melts dreamy guitar melodies over Thomas-Davies chilled out Welsh language vocals.

Davies writes and records his 80s-inspired soul-infused disco-funk grooves from his bedroom studio in the South Wales Valleys. To bring his unique brand of indie-funk euphoria to stages, his live band now consists of Josh David Read (keys, guitar, vox), Lloyd Bastian (guitar, vox), Quillian Thomas (bass), and Josh Cox (drums).

Ci Gofod’s singles have been a regular feature on Adam Walton’s BBC Radio Wales show and BBC Radio Cymru. Aled Hugh’s BBC Radio Cymru show also ran an extensive interview in Welsh.

Ci Gofod’s most successful single to date, Lose the Pressure, which will be a hit with any fans of Chic, Jungle, Sly and the Family Stone, has racked up over 46k streams on Spotify alone.

Along with his mission to fill dancefloors with his energetic and flamboyant sound, Ci Gofod also seeks to orchestrate aural melting pots of funk, indie and neo-soul that pays ode to his Welsh heritage. His sights are firmly fixed on making an everlasting mark on the South Wales music scene; his success from the outset is proving that he’s a soulful force to be reckoned with.

“Hitting play on any of Ci Gofod’s singles is a sure-fire way to get a soul fix, but for the most potent shot, delve right into the dreamy, energetic tones of Digital Conversation which captures the lament for our digital reality while allowing you to be enlivened by it. If that isn’t how you define stellar musicianship, I don’t know what is.”
– Amelia Vandergast, A&R Factory

Taking influences from the likes of Super Furry Animals and Sly And The Family Stone, Ci Gofod’s brand new single ‘Rhedeg Yn Y Nos’; which translates to ‘Running At Night’ is a blissful yet funky groove that melts dreamy guitar melodies over Thomas-Davies chilled out Welsh language vocals.

– Music Blog Wales

Emily Marsden – Editor
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com