Show #2568 Saturday - 18th November 2023
Adam Walton, BBC Radio Wales, Sat 18th Nov 2023: Ceitidh Mac interview / Private Party One Track Find / Gareth Potter chooses… Geraint Jarman
Listen again via BBC Sounds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001skb0
This week’s show is more incontrovertible evidence that Wales is disproportionately (to its size) brilliant at music . Please give it a listen / subscribe / share via the link above.
In a rush? Aim for:
1'17'00: Private Party's 'One Track Find'
1'38'00: Ceitidh Mac 'Seabird EP' interview
2'14'44: Johanna Warren ‘One Side Of…’
I hadn’t heard of Ceitidh Mac until the summer just gone. An email appeared - amongst all the usual mailing list chaff (some irony in me saying this, I know) - directing me to an artist of such resonant naturalistic soul, I was smitten from the first note. Ceitidh grew up in Pembrokeshire and now resides in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
Her first / main instrument is the cello, but like her Monmouthshire-grown peer Ailsa Tully, she brings a new dimension to the instrument, using it as a minimal foundation for songs that have some kinship with the folksouljazz of John Martyn or Nina Nastasia’s earliest releases.
I speak with Ceitidh about her magnificent new EP ‘Seabird’. It’s a deeply satisfying and elevating listen. As well as the reference points already mentioned, the EP also has echoes of mid-90’s artists like Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky. So a fitting serendipity that Ceitidh was in Bristol when I spoke with her.
We talk about the sea, nature, how Ceitidh builds layers from her voice, photography and working with producer Sam Grant (Pigsx7, Richard Dawson).
A most captivating artist and interview guest.
Elsewhere Private Party are recipients of this week’s One Track Find. I first heard them when I was a panellist for a Battle of the Bands-type affair, involving music colleges from across Wales. This was during one of of the lockdowns back then, so the entire event was beamed into my kitchen via Zoom. It takes some musical and personal charisma to communicate down a glorified security camera, but Private Party managed it. They haven’t had any of their them-ness ironed out by over tuition or consideration. As with all the greatest bands, they’re a sum of their contesting parts. Too often, courses / mentors / the music industry want to devolve the awkward differences into something more recognisable and congruent, whereas the chance for an original identity - and something proper new and fresh sounding - exists exactly where those gangly musical limbs most stick out.
Thankfully Private Party have been allowed - or, indeed, encouraged - to be themselves. They’ll remind old farts like me of C86 jangle indie pop: Marine Girls or Talulah Gosh, but with punk kerosene in their veins, a couple of the most complimentary guitarists I’ve heard in a band in recent times, and a drummer in a race with Kliph Scurlock.
I’m not sure how many people of consequence are paying attention at the moment, but they should be. And if the band can stick together beyond their college years - when life has a tendency to want to tear line-ups apart and deposit the constituent parts in zero hours contracts at opposite ends of countries, they will become very special indeed. They are already, to my mind.
We’re awash with brilliant new Welsh albums at the moment: Edwin R. Stevens, Los Blancos, Kim Hon, Ahgeebe, Chroma… in the last couple of weeks alone. The album isn’t a dying art-form. Young musical souls haven’t been distracted from the LP by hop-scotching on Spotify. To celebrate this fact - and a particularly great album that came out on Friday (17th November 2023… future digital archaeologists, scraping / brushing this post in 3089) - I’ve started a new feature on the programme.
One Side Of… will give us the opportunity to put everything else aside and listen to one side of a great new Welsh album on a weekly-ish basis. Some weeks there mightn’t be anything worth celebrating, but this week there most definitely is…
Johanna Warren is the real deal, a songwriter operating at a dizzying echelon of musicianship, poetry and vision. I’m still not entirely sure of where she came from before she landed in a beautiful, off-grid wilderness in Powys (Florida, I think). She’s a few albums deep into a notable artistic existence, and has made a decision to quit touring, for the time being at least. I don’t know the reasons for this, but I suspect that an endlessly peripatetic lifestyle is at odds with Johanna’s wider, more naturalistic philosophies. Almost all of my friends who have toured intensively have been changed by the experiences, mostly for the better, but a rootlessness develops that can dislocate them from friends, family, their world… as opposed to the world, which they get to visit on a mostly superficial and exhausting level.
Johanna’s new album ‘The Rockfield Sessions vol.1’ is a crystallisation of her live set. Stripped back, live versions of her quietly extraordinary songs. It is no exaggeration to say that she’s up on the top table with Joni Mitchell and Elliott Smith.
Eminent Welsh DJ, musician and musicologist Gareth Potter returns to our fray this week too, to share music from one of the true godfathers of Welsh language music, Geraint Jarman. And if you’d been of the impression that Geraint’s métier was mostly reggae-inspired, then the track that Gareth picks for us shows us another facet of Geraint’s hugely influential catalogue.
And - of course - there’s a selection of the absolute best music that has landed either in my inbox, or on the BBC Introducing Uploader, over the last week.
Quick - but important - note to say that this post isn’t an official BBC post / communication. These are my thoughts and opinions and not the thoughts or opinions of the corporation as whole.
If you’ve heard or seen anything brilliant that I should be listening to / featuring in the show, please tell me about it below.
Do come back next week. Stay safe.
Diolch yn fawr iawn x
THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST
SZWÉ - 'The End'
Cwmbran / Carmarthen
Blackgold - 'Back With Another One'
Cardiff
http://facebook.com/BLACKGOLDHG
Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons - 'Too Much Is Never Enough'
Pontypridd
http://facebook.com/pg/PhilCampbellATBS
Minas - 'The Public Ain’t Spoken ft. Freddy Forbidden'
St Davids / Caerphilly
http://facebook.com/MinasSound
The Joy Formidable - 'Share My Heat'
Mold
http://thejoyformidable.com
Vala - 'Fishes'
Denbigh
http://facebook.com/ValaManchester
Ski Lift - 'Living The Dream'
Tref-y-clawdd, Powys
http://facebook.com/helloskilift
Lacross Club - 'Spar Song'
Pembrokeshire
http://instagram.com/tenbylacrossclub
Sybs - 'Gwacter'
Cardiff
http://facebook.com/SYBSband
Nicki Wells - 'Sidelines (Kit Carpenter remix)'
Monmouth
http://nickiwells.com
Kim Hon - 'Milkshake'
Dyffryn Nantlle
http://facebook.com/kimhon420
Colorama - 'Llythr Y Glowr'
Benllech
Buddug - 'Dal Dig'
Llanrug
No website details.
CVC - 'The Remortgage Anthem'
Cardiff
http://cvcband.com
Junior Bill - 'Youth Club'
Cardiff
Nia Wyn - 'Loves Me Not'
Llandudno
http://linktr.ee/niawyn
Niques - 'Don't Do Me Wrong'
Cardiff
http://facebook.com/Niquestheartist
Amanda Whiting - 'Discarded (Scrimshire Remix)'
Cardiff
Dream State - 'Still Dreaming'
Swansea
http://facebook.com/DreamStateUKOfficial
PRIVATE PARTY ONE TRACK FIND #021
Private Party - 'bahama mama'
Swansea-ish
Tokomololo - 'Gafael yn Sownd'
Wales
No website details.
Crash Disco - 'Catdisco (M-Digidol remix)'
Bangor
http://facebook.com/pages/CrashDisco/10150091457360262
Angharad Jenkins x Huw Warren - 'Myn Mair'
Swansea
http://thisisangharad.bandcamp.com
AhGeeBe - 'Water Between'
Creigiau
No website details.
CEITIDH MAC INTERVIEW
Ceitidh Mac - 'Seedling'
Pembrokeshire
http://ceitidhmac.com
Ceitidh Mac - 'Sail Away'
Ceitidh Mac - 'Goldfinches'
Until The Ribbon Breaks - 'Nature Mother ft. Emoni Wilkins'
Penarth
http://untiltheribbonbreaks.com/
Modular II - 'Echo'S in Bass'
Cardiff
http://facebook.com/DJApolloUK
ONE SIDE OF...
Johanna Warren - 'The Garden'
Castell-paen, Powys
http://johannawarren.bandcamp.com
Johanna Warren - 'Lunar Landing [album]'±
Johanna Warren - 'Hopelessness Has Done Nothing For Me [album]'
Johanna Warren - 'True Colours'
Johanna Warren - 'Mine To Take'
Johanna Warren - 'Cause or Effect'
Johanna Warren - 'This Is Why'
Wynt - 'Cut Your Teeth'
Rhondda Cynon Taff
http://facebook.com/Wyntband
Zac And The New Men - 'That's OK'
Swansea
http://facebook.com/zacandthenewmen
GARETH POTTER CHOOSES...
Geraint Jarman A'r Cynganeddwyr - ''Steddfod Yn Ddinas'
Denbigh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraint_Jarman
Chroma - 'Head In Transit'
Pontypridd
http://chroma.band
Flash Hearth - 'So Long Ago ft. Ian Hawgood'
Swansea
SHOW STATS
1407 diff songs/ 1818 Total. 693 Artists in 45 shows since 1st, Jan '23 (~Songs per:40, Unique artists per:15) Welsh:97% Cymraeg:13% (feat. lyrics in Welsh); Source: Uploader:29%, Direct:17%, Bought:14%, Plugger:30%, Commission:9%
Comprehensive Session / Interview List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w-rIPj0l0QhUcbEm08PUPLUWh-416mwlteG_8wpNWtQ/edit?usp=sharing
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Diolch o galon,
Adam Walton
