Audiopilot by MagLab Cardiff

AUDIOPILOT MUSIC : UNSIGNED & UNMISSABLE

OFF THE RECORD:

SIﾃ年 RUSSELl JONES Between sets with the singer-songwriter

pioneers of sound, past & present

The bosses behind the biz John Rostron & Pete Lewis on what it takes to make it

PRELUDE

Who we are

Sick of your playlist? On a quest for a cool new venue where you can sweat to sweet sound? Audiopilot is here to do the dirty work for you: we are your definitive guide to the underground. We bring you the best artists and venues you’ve never heard of, freshly pressed and delivered to your doorstep. When you’re discovering new music, it’s important to have someone to play Mr Miyagi to your playlist. When you first hear about The Beatles, you need someone to say: ‘Listen to Sgt Pepper’. We painstakingly scout and sift through the subculture to bring you an Unsigned Hero each month. Of course, one artist does not a playlist make; we include a variety of other acts across genres to keep your music levels topped up. Whether this means moshing with metalheads, stalking outside studios or flat-out fangirling for a scoop, we’re committed to bringing you the best artists, gigs and venues around town. Offstage, we chase promoters, technicians and producers to give you a wider perspective of the business behind the sound. South Wales has a fantastic community of artists, venues and promoters and it can be a bit daunting as to where to begin your journey of musical discovery, but don’t worry, we’ve got your back. If it were up to us, you would never be musically malnourished again.

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CONTENTS

3 On the Radar

Upcoming gigs around town

4 Unsigned Hero of

the Month

Siôn Russell Jones in the spotlight

6 Soundbites

Behind the scenes with John Rostron, Pete Lewis & Skunk Boy Project

7 Retrospect 2

A look at subculture of the 70s & 80s through the eyes of Moira & The Mice

ON THE RADAR

UP AND CYMRU

You don’t want to miss these exciting gigs and artists around town

Astroid Boys

IMAGES Ashlea Bea, Emma Lewis, Alex-Jay, Nadine Ballantyne

Clwb Ifor Bach 15 December, 7.30 PM Astroid Boys are bringing their hip-hop tunes back to the city in a homecoming gig. Fresh from performing alongside grime legends Lethal Bizzle and P Money, these Cardiff boys sure know how to work a crowd. With MCs Traxx and Benji providing hardhitting vocals over the beats of DJ Comfort, this is not to be missed.

Carriages Dempsey’s 8 Jan, 8 PM

Tendons Gwdihŵ Café Bar 17 Jan, 8 PM Tendons are a five-piece, harmony-led indie band based in Cardiff, who will be bringing their timeless, beautifully crafted melodies to the intimate and cosy Gwdihŵ Café Bar.

Formed in 2012, Carriages are an experimental folk twopiece made up of producer Harry Bookless and singer-songwriter Aaron Page. The boys say that they draw their inspiration from forests, beaches and abandoned rooms, so prepare to be transported to another world.

Colum Regan The Live Lounge 3 Jan, 8 PM

For the Record 10 Feet Tall 6 Jan, 7.30 PM

Is there anything Colum Regan can’t do? A talented guitarist, percussionist and vocalist, his soulful music is making a much anticipated return.

Showcasing some of the most talented independent bands and musicians Wales and the UK has to offer, this weekly event will help keep you in the know about up and coming artists.

UNSIGNED HERO

OFF THE RECORD Siôn w it h

o ne s J l l sse

Well known on the Cardiff music circuit, Siôn speaks to Louise Heath about making music, the scene and his favourite venues iôn Russell Jones is a busy man. Sgigging Whether he’s writing one of his soulful solo pieces, around his hometown, Cardiff, or going hard

with his metal band Dimensions, he is always working on something. Despite the fact that he has just slipped out of a studio session, he is surprisingly fresh, and talks animatedly about his new project. “I’ve started a duo with my mate. We’re writing a sketch show, so we’re working on our pilot programme,” Siôn reveals. “We’ve written about five songs and we’re going to see if we can get it commissioned. It’s a bit of a long shot, but it’s a lot of fun anyway.” Global success He recorded his first album And Suddenly in October 2010 while studying music at the University of Glamorgan and since then Siôn has seen incredible success. The Llandaff-born musician has played at festivals around the world, icluding The Acoustic Festival of Britain and SXSW in the USA. The guitarist’s intricate melodies have also received airplay on radio stations such as BBC Wales and SF3 in Switzerland. But what inspired his inclination to sound? “I grew up around a lot of musicians and quite a few people in my family are musical; some of my cousins are in bands,” he says. Influenced by the music around him, Siôn began to play guitar at the tender age of seven. He instantly fell in love with it and was soon writing his own songs, some of which he still plays to this day.

“Sometimes you will get a track in about twenty minutes and other times it can take weeks or years to think of a formula for the song” Creative thinking You might not think holding a melody and strumming the guitar is the hardest job on the planet, but Siôn divulges that creating music is not so simple. He says the thought process behind every song is different. “Sometimes you’ll get a track in about 20 minutes, other times it can take days, weeks or years to think of a formula for the song. I still haven’t figured out how some tunes can work, but when I do, they’re going to be really good.”

ON A SIDE NOTE Do you have any pre-performance rituals or lucky charms? I’ve got a silver horseshoe charm that I always wear around my neck. My grandma gave it to me, so it’s kind of an antique. If it’s a scary gig, I’ll give it a quick kiss to carry me through.

IMAGE: SJR Music

What’s the biggest gig you’ve ever played? The 02 Indigo – it holds about 10,000 people and it was all sold out.

The musician’s enthusiasm for music is contagious and it is evident that this passion rubs off on his audience during a live show. A fan of performing in front of a crowd, Siôn gigs as much as his schedule allows him. While he is a regular on the Cardiff music scene, he has a definite favourite: “I love Clwb Ifor Bach, I’ve had most of my album and EP launches in there,” he enthuses. With Siôn’s career going from strength to strength, where does he see himself in the future? “I hope I’ll still be making music. Ideally, I’ll be signed but as long as I’m playing gigs and recording, I will be happy.”

Do you prefer playing big or small shows? I think it depends on the quality of the crowd and how much they’re into it. You can play a big show but if everybody’s talking that’s shit. It’s as nice to play an intimate gig where everybody is super in tune with it. What’s your favourite Cardiff band? At the moment, I love Houdini Dax. How would you describe the music scene in Cardiff? There’s lots of variety! It’s definitely grown since I arrived on the scene. What advice would you give to musicians who are just starting out? All I can say is don’t stop making music. Listen to more of Siôn on our Pilot Playlist at http://bit.ly/audiopilotsoundcloud

SERIOUs BUSINESS

EDITORIAL

SOUNDBITES

We ask the bosses behind the business for an insider’s perspective on what might restrict today’s unsigned artists

JOHN ROSTRON, Co-founder, SWN Festival & Chief Exec, Welsh Music Foundation

PETE LEWIS, Manager, The Live Lounge “There’s a big market for new artists in Cardiff, which means more and more people are doing it, so getting your foot in the door is very difficult. I get between 50 and 60 emails a week from bands wanting to book a slot. They can send in a CD or YouTube link but we’re only comfortable taking on artists with a firm recommendation, or if we’ve heard them live. It’s also become very difficult to get revenue from performing. If you have a job, it gets harder. How do you pay the rent? Is it going to work out? However, Cardiff is a good place to be. You can live affordably in the area and become part of the music circuit. To start, you can make money by doing covers and that will lend you the recognition you need to make your own material.”

“For acts who want to make a living, there are issues like the VAT rate on a ticket price being a killer for small shows. The economy of music is such that a small promoter puts on a band and loses money, but when they become successful, the promoter loses them to a bigger one and the money they initially invested doesn’t trickle back down to the grassroots scene. We need a change in economic structure where those higher in the hierarchy can help. There need to be laws ensuring money is reinvested into grassroots music – it could be making sure that multi-national companies pay a tax. There’s no lack of talent within Cardiff but because of the above, there are a lack of spaces for them to play. That’s the biggest barrier for everybody.”

IMAGE: Francis Brown

take

with Skunk-Boy Project

#1 #2

The ukulele-playing idea came up by accident “It got left behind when my brother went to university and I started playing it.” He’s kind of schizophrenic about his sound “The EP I made with my brother is a departure from my live performances – it’s got a much bouncier, electronic style than my acoustic sets.”

#3 “Coming up with a song I enjoy playing means the most to His biggest thrills are the creative ones me because songs stay with me forever.”

#4 “Producer John Etkin-Bell invited me up to Brighton and I Brighton has a bad influence on him

#5 6

got really pissed and threw up in his guest bedroom. Not a regular occurrence, just so you know.”

In his opinion, the WMC beats all other venues “I love playing at the Welsh Millennium Centre because they’ve got the piano. I don’t get a lot of opportunities to play on a piano when I can’t request one.”

Nate Swettenham is the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist behind Skunk-Boy Project

The basement of the Great Western hotel was a legendary venue for Cardiff bands to gig and mingle

Post-punk’s original Cardiffian femme fatale and lead singer of Moira and the Mice, speaks to Brionie Pereira about the good old days and a sepia-toned subculture we can only now glimpse in pictures Moira and the Mice played from 1979-81

B hot-bed for sound. In the sweaty basement efore Cardiff ’s gentrification, it was a

of The Great Western, audiences were moshing to the grimy, ‘f**k you’ firebrands of prog rock, post-punk and nasty pop, and Moira and The Mice were right in the middle of it.

Fighting the patriarchy Moira Morgan was a 15 year old living in the Valleys when second-wave feminism arrived in England and Wales with the release of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. She credits the book with changing her life. All around, gender inequality was rife, but women were finally sitting up and taking notice. Looking back, Moira says, “It was a struggle for females. We had smashed the old rules, but we didn’t know what the new rules were.” The sum of these conflicts was the angry, “monstered” Marxist woman who fronted Moira and The Mice and brought her post-punk rumble to The Lion’s Den, the Paddlesteamer and other clubs around town during the period between 1979 and 1981. The band, who produced singles like I Eat My Young and Heart Like A Whore, were frontrunners in the post-punk movement, and made original music – a departure from the many cover bands that proliferated the scene. Even so, the idea of a woman in a rock band was peculiar at the time. Moira describes her songs as a way of “trying to be a woman in an alien landscape.” She harks back to some of her struggles as a woman rocker. “We showed

up at a gig once - myself and two female bandmates - and the manager said ‘Oh, the groupies are here,’ so I caught him by the collar, looked him dead in the eye and said ‘We’re the f***ing band, mate!’”

Moira describes their sound as a departure from the “rockist” and prog rock music of the time – outfits they viewed as self-indulgent. “We wanted it cut to the bone; to get to the point, deliver the message, make it powerful – and no showing off.” The message they were trying so hard to deliver was about class and gender inequality in an era populated with the issues. “I listen to the lyrics now and they were so much of that time,” she reminisces. “Dub and reggae were delivering similar messages in a more subtle way, but we had no subtlety in us,” she adds.

Written in blood Moira’s movement has passed, but even now the subculture has trickled down and endured. Still, you can’t help but wonder if Cardiff might ever see the grime-riot golden days again, as they were for the embattled bands of the past. Moira thinks there’s hope for us still. “I went to see the Scissor Sisters a few years ago and Ana Matronic said ‘You Welsh guys – you’re so punk rock. Everyone’s down on you and you just get in there. I’ve got Welsh ancestry in me so I just say: kiss my white Welsh a**!’” It seems you can take the punk out of the Paddlesteamer, but you can’t take it out of our blood.

A RIOT GIRL AND THE RUMBLE

RETROSPECT

9 THE FRIARY RD L L GORSEDD A H GDNS Y T

CI H RT NO

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11-12 CHURCH ST

11 WINDSOR PL RK

61 A41

RD GREYFRIARS RD

PL TOL CAPI E R N E C T

WOMANBY ST E ST

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MILLENNIUM STADIUM

WOMANBY ST

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THE Venue guide

6 GUILDFORD CRES

ORP ARE OINT NA

CASTLE GREEN

CARDIFF CENTRAL STATION

L IL

HARLECH COURT

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