Scene Report: Cardiff March 2007
By: Sofie Jenkinson
A very wise man once described the Cardiff music scene to me as being like a butterfly, with frequent cycles evolving and dying in turn, never seemingly making a mark on anything. Those that do make a mark on the large husky face of music, with its deep sunken emblazoned eyes, seem to distance themselves from this local community in one way or another. A curious effect of the music industry it may be, but it certainly goes some way to explaining certain attitudes around these parts.
Now Cardiff, or South Wales as a whole, plays host to varying styles of musical goodness, although most, at this time, seem to fall somewhere between the cardigan-clad twee folks of indie and the whining angular fringes of emo (no extra charge for these sublime stereotypes.) There is of course the altogether more complicated and closed off arena of the hardcore DIY punk movement. This is of particularly interest to me at this time for a handful of reasons, but what can be taken away from it universally are the ethics of exchange and support, which are seemingly better emphasised or maybe simply more obvious in their forum. Either way, I sometimes feel as though such ethics would be most welcomed into other forums of local music.
In a beer soaked conversation with various members of Los Campesinos! in recent months our little slice of music heaven was described as a community rather than a scene due to the fact that most of the people at the gigs of local artists are members of other bands. And this, I have slowly begun to realise, is sadly quite an accurate description.
As one of the music editors at our university magazine Quench, it was my main aim to ground the section in locality - completely immerse it with club nights, album and live reviews by local artists and the releases of local labels, and nods to people who work in the music industry around here, amongst other things. We have embraced it and have attempted to take it to the invariably lethargic student masses.
But one dark evening we could be heard shouting 'No! This just isn't enough!' And so was born Quench's Local Mixtape. A 24 page pullout covering local music related antics; a bundle of great bands, pictures, interviews, shop profiles, label profiles, information about promoters and regular nights. You name it, we tried to fit it in there. And this isn't even the best bit.
With the local music pullout comes a 17 track CD featuring many of the town's artists including Los Campesinos'! 'Death to Los Campesinos! (Demo)', The Wave Pictures' 'Airplanes of Brescia' and The Loves' 'She'll Break Your Heart...Again'. Those things will hopefully fly like hot cakes. And there is still more - on Sunday 18th March there will also be a gig where many of these wonderful bands will play and some will DJ - a gig to which anybody who is close enough should definitely come along. We all know there is nothing better to do on a Sunday. Serious, not even The Antiques Road Show is better than this.
In other extremely exciting music related news, Foals are the best new band I have seen in a good long time. They are one of the most exciting things to have hit my soggy eardrums for some time now, so much so I bought a t-shirt within the first 5 minutes of the gig. As wave after wave of their incredibly moving and clear-cut guitar over and under guitar came crashing over my head in Clwb Ifor Bach I fell into a deep state of pure, unadulterated love.
At the time of writing my renegade journalist of a boyfriend is trapped in a South London squat waiting for them to play in a dark cellar. If this isn't one of the most exciting times in music - dark cellar squat gigs and the first student publication to give away a CD - I don't know what is. I conclude that even more exhilarating times are afoot...