Show #2591: Saturday 27th April 2024 - EYE / Obey Cobra / Melys
Adam Walton, BBC Radio Wales, 27th April 2024: EYE interview / The Long Song - Obey Cobra 'Blue Hour' / Behind The Track - Melys 'Chinese Whispers' + more
Listen again via BBC Sounds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001ymtg
PLEASE NOTE: This isn’t an official BBC / BBC Wales post. All words / opinions expressed here are my own.
Wrexham has always had uranium in its veins.
When I was a gig-hungry kid in the late 80’s / early 90’s, when any gig would do, Wrexham’s War Memorial Hall was somewhere you’d be guaranteed scabrous, opaque, off-centre noise with your Newcy Brown. That subculture of kids into skating, hardcore / anarcho punk, death and speed metal - who commandeered the sixth form stereo and drove out the casual sweats (DC and Guns ’n’ Roses… yawn) with occasional blast waves of Nuclear Assault, Napalm Death, Conflict, The Dead Kennedys, Subhumans, Slayer were the coolest kids in school.
Quite how that scene developed in Wrexham - or who was booking the gigs at the War Memorial - is lost to me. The effect - though - must have been similar to the effect that Cheap Sweaty Fun’s US-punk-in-TJ’s had on Newport’s musical ecosystem, just with less recognition.
This - after all - was the underground, not ‘alternative’ in the way that Taylor’s Swift’s current double album is called by some ‘alternative’… distinctly set apart and other: music to turn conservatives into bedwetters and Daily Mail letter writers.
Even John Peel barely scraped the surface. Fanzine culture, a DIY ethos and word of mouth would have been the breezes that blew these dark seeds as well as the concurrent nights of filthy noise and unrelenting riffing within travelling distance of northeast Wales, centred around Planet X in Liverpool and a handful of nights in Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Bangor.
I think the legacy of these nights and pockets of noise culture still has detuned echoes now, exemplified by the dark, doomy beauty of Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard’s four acclaimed albums; Primitive Knot and Cromlech’s brutalist noise incantations, and - now - the debut album from EYE, a band centred around the compelling vision of MWWB’s singer / guitarist and occasional cellist Jessica Ball.
‘Dark Light’ is hypnotic, a salve, and rides along on blissful waves of layered comet trail vocals. Listen to the title track for a darkly sublime experience: truly, truly beautiful.
But it’s not gossamer or insubstantial in the way some ambient music can be. The ethereal here ghosts over dark, febrile eddies of fuzz and metronomic, glacial drum patterns courtesy of Gulp’s Gid Goundrey (his first recording turn on the drums… and outstanding they sound, too). The rhythmic foundations of the song 'The Other Sees' are cosmic scale funk, and throughout the album there are waves of noise, riffs so deep they could have been dredged up from the ocean beds, a reminder of Jessica's other, renowned outfit.
The skilful weaving of heavy slow noise with luminous guitar lines and Jessica's plaintive vocals are what characterise EYE and are an obvious pointer to why the album is called what it is called. But there are other reasons for that title, as Jessica mentions in an interview on this week's programme. There's a human response to the dark and the light that transcends - precedes, even - religion and spirituality.
And psychedelic as the album undoubtedly is, it's not the psychedelia of head shops and revivalism... its patterns are innate, shamanic and primal.
But it's also pop. These are beautiful, memorable, hook-laden songs. The band call it "nightmare pop" and that's about as perfect a summation as there could be.
If you want reference points to draw you in, these might be appropriate: Nine Inch Nails, Disintegration-era Cure, Massive Attack, Cocteau Twins, Gwenno, Slint, Sunn O))), Galaxie 500, Lana Del Rey and - no doubt - other artists operating in slower, gloaming realms.
And - at its heart - radioactive elements laid down in the Wrexham area decades ago, that still make the Geiger Counter tick... slow and strong.
The Long Song this week is - perhaps - mined from some similar veins. South Wales' Obey Cobra are still very much a mysterious entity to me. I've been playing their music since 2020 and have no idea what they look like (until I just found the photo above on their bandcamp page), where they're from; my love for their music is refreshingly unadorned with any biographical knowledge.
Which makes their current single 'Blue Hour' all the more intriguing. Like EYE they wield a sound forged from contrasting elements: K Wood's vocal inveigles us in so that when the guitars explode they're all the more shocking: they're sheet lightning, more Big Black / Rapeman, than psychedelic. A hauntological Sonic Youth alternate soundtrack for Part 8, Season 3 of Twin Peaks. In fact it would make a perfect soundtrack for that particular episode.
Obey Cobra's new album, 'Mwg Dwrg', is out on 3rd May on Rocket Recordings, with a headline gig at Clwb Ifor Bach the same night to coincide.
Our 'Behind the Track' feature looks at Melys' classic recording from 2001, 'Chinese Whispers'. I wrote at length about my love for Melys here, but it's well worth noting that a fantastic compilation of their BBC Session recordings - for (mostly) John Peel, Huw Stephens, Radio Cymru and for my show (in 2004) - was released on Sylem Records to coincide with this year's Record Store Day. There's an excellent vinyl pressing. It's ample evidence of what a unique and special band they were and continue to be. One of the albums of the year so far.
Please do send new music excellence to me via the BBC Introducing Uploader or as a download link to my BBC email address. You'll work it out. It has a dot between my first name and my last name.
Keep on trucking x
THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST
Groom The Giant - 'Schnauzer'
Llangollen / Wrexham
http://facebook.com/groomthegiant
Lizzy Farrall - 'MadHotel'
Cynwyd / Wrexham
http://facebook.com/LizzyFarrallmusic
Adwaith - 'Mwy'
Carmarthen
http://facebook.com/adwaithmusic
Manic Street Preachers - '1985 (Gwenno Mix)'
Blackwood
http://manicstreetpreachers.com
Overmono & The Streets - 'Turn The Page'
Monmouthshire / Birmingham
Slate - 'Shade in Me'
Cardiff
http://instagram.com/slatecaban
Melys - 'Skating (Adam Walton Session 2004)'
Capel Curig / Betws Y Coed
http://facebook.com/melysmusic
Gerard Cousins - 'Saman (Arr. for Guitar by Gerard Cousins)'
Brecon
http://gerardcousins.com
Angharad - 'Outsider’s Map of Wales [explicit]'
Swansea
Ifan Dafydd - 'Llonydd (Featuring Alys Williams)'
Llanrug
http://facebook.com/IfanDafydd
Man Up A Tree - 'Pressure Buss'
Llanddarog
http://instagram.com/manupatreednb
St Vincent - 'Big Time Nothing'
Oklahoma, U S A / Carms producer
http://ilovestvincent.com
ACROBVT - 'Neon'
Barmouth connections
http://www.acrobvt.com
Elio - 'Asphalt Rodeo'
Swansea
Aisha Kigs - 'Unattainable'
Cardiff
http://www.facebook.com/aisha.kigs
Evrah Rose - 'The Great Deceiver'
Wrexham
THE LONG SONG #041
Obey Cobra - 'Blue Hour'
South Wales
Laura J. Martin - 'Living on The Wall ft. Iwan Morgan (Radio Edit)'
Liverpool
http://laurajmartin.net
Georgia Ruth - 'Duw Neu Magic'
Aberystwyth
http://georgiaruth.co.uk
Sue Denim - 'In Dreams'
Bangor
Melys - 'So Good (John Peel Session 29.08.02)'
Capel Curig / Betws Y Coed
http://facebook.com/melysmusic
BEHIND THE TRACK #011
Melys - 'Chinese Whispers'
Capel Curig / Betws Y Coed
http://facebook.com/melysmusic
Magi - 'Cerrynt'
Pontypridd
http://linktr.ee/magi_sounds
INTERVIEW WITH JESSICA BALL FROM EYE
EYE - 'Window'
Cardiff / Wrexham
http://eye-uk.bandcamp.com
EYE - 'Dark Light'
Cardiff / Wrexham
http://eye-uk.bandcamp.com
EYE - 'See Yourself'
Cardiff / Wrexham
http://eye-uk.bandcamp.com
Sam Kitt - 'Don't Stop'
Cardiff
http://soundcloud.com/samkitt
Calum Morgan - 'Hold You Down'
Llandrindod Wells
http://djcal.uk
Finnlay K - 'Dead Time'
Rhyl
http://facebook.com/FinnlayK
Son Of Man - 'Down'
Swansea
http://sonofmanmusic.net
Shimmer - 'So Much Regret'
Swansea
http://linktr.ee/shimmeruk
Epileptic Lizards - 'Telltale Boogie'
Cardiff
http://instagram.com/epileptic_lizards
Daniel Mark Williams - 'Chère Bassette'
Ynysybwl
Francis Rees - 'Pell'
Tywyn
http://instagram.com/pugh_rees
SHOW STATS
571 diff songs/ 637 Total. 407 Artists in 17 shows since 1st, Jan '24 (~Songs per:37, Unique artists per:24) Welsh:99% Cymraeg:11% (feat. lyrics in Welsh); Source: Uploader:42%, Direct:16%, Bought:17%, Plugger:21%, Commission:2%
Comprehensive Session / Interview List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w-rIPj0l0QhUcbEm08PUPLUWh-416mwlteG_8wpNWtQ/edit?usp=sharing
Subscribe to my Substack: https://adamwalton.substack.com
Adam Walton