On Tuesday 28th February, Crackling Vinyl is proud to present another enchanting night of live wonderment and superlative vinyl excellence at Telford’s Warehouse in Chester.

Tickets for Golden Fable and Pulco are £5 in adv / £6 on the door, buyable from the venue itself (01244 390090) or via SeeTickets at the link below:

http://www.seetickets.com/Event/CRACKLING-VINYL-PRESENTS-GOLDEN-FABLE/Telford-s-Warehouse/619324

More information on this week’s artists below:

Golden Fable make angelic electronic folk music. They’re as unique as music making minds and bodies get. Their music is a perfect evocation of the freshness of spring – delicate, beautiful and life affirming.

Evolving from the excellent – although awkwardly monikered - Tim and Sam’s Tim and the Sam Band with Tim and Sam, Golden Fable have already earned themselves a session for Radio 1’s Rob Da Bank in the legendary Maida Vale studios.

Tim and Rebecca play Telford’s Warehouse for the first time as part of a national  tour to support their acclaimed new single, Always Golden. Bask in its sunrise wonder at the Soundcloud link below.
http://soundcloud.com/goldenfable

See the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyqrAbSRxQ8

And follow them on Twitter here:
http://twitter.com/goldenfable


Main support, Pulco, a.k.a. Ashley Cooke has visited Telford’s Warehouse before – but it was a little while ago, as guitarist & singer with the much loved ‘Derrero’. Derrero released three albums at the cusp of the new millennium, earning radio play on Radio 1, and sessions for the legendary John Peel. Their song, Radar Intruder (listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad3noW8ngCk ) featured in Peel’s Festive 50 in 1998 and also made it into his Peelenium in 2000.

Since moving up North and away from Derrero, Ashley has specialized in intriguing homemade sketchbook recordings. He’s released 5 albums of lo fi wonderment to much acclaim. Fractured beats underpin his imaginative and intriguing use of found sounds, samples and his ubiquitous – and beautifully played – guitar. Pulco perfectly fulfills the Crackling Vinyl ethos of bringing you something unique and intriguing.

http://pulcomusic.com
http://twitter.com/Pulcoman

Pulco - Whistle Frog Finds A Way

Our opening artist, Harry Keyworth, is a peerless singer songwriter, with a sound that brings to mind John Martyn at his most moving and ethereal. His percussive acoustic style gives his songs a musical gravitas and depth, apparent to heartbreaking effect in the song ‘Flux’ that you can hear on our Soundcloud page.

http://soundcloud.com/cracklingvinyl

Harry is driving up from deepest West Wales to beguile and bewitch us. Please ensure you are in the venue at 8:30pm to witness his set.

http://soundcloud.com/harry-keyworth
http://twitter.com/HarryKeyworth 


19:30hrs	-	doors open / Elin Bach (DJ set)
20:30hrs	-	Harry Keyworth (live)
20:45hrs	-	Ben Hayes (DJ set)	
21:00hrs	-	Pulco (live)
21:30hrs	-	Ben Hayes (DJ set)
21:45hrs	-	Golden Fable (live)
22:30hrs	-	Adam Walton & Ben Hayes (DJ set)
23:30hrs	-	Close

Harry Keyworth - Flux

Greta Isaac is a sixteen year old singer-song writer. She taught herself to play guitar in January of this year and the song writing followed soon after and has become her passion.

She takes her inspiration from the experiences of those close to her as well as her own thoughts and take on life. Her influences include James Taylor, Stephen Bishop, Neil Young, Bon Iver, Laura Marling, Kate Walsh and Mindy Smith and Greta's music has fitted in perfectly with the resurgence of popular folk music.

Her songs have reached a level of sophistication which is unusual, to say the least, for a girl of her age and the purity of her voice and sincere innocence have a sublime effect on her audiences. Her songs are honest and harmonically rich. She has been regularly featured on Adam Walton's Sunday night show, and has been gigging in the Cardiff and Bridgend area over the past months.

Greta Isaac - Feet Up Off The Ground

• Early demos became a word-of-mouth and internet viral success in 2010, culminating in national (BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC Wales, BBC 6music etc) and international radio play and sessions.

• Picked as a live highlight of the SXSW Festival by Nic Harcourt (KCRW, Music Editor LA Times) and Steve Lamacq (BBC Radio 2, BBC 6music)

• Début album 'Toy Horses' (2011) was recorded in Nashville, TN and produced by Ken Coomer (Wilco). The album also features members of Counting Crows, Wilco and Taylor Swift's band.

• 'Toy Horses' was among the early favourites for the 2011 Mercury Prize

• Album Reviews: "Critical List - The Independent, "Album Of The Week" - Daily Mirror, ***1/2 - Rolling Stone, "Timeless Classic" - Music Week, "The best thing to come out of Wales since the M4" - Hit Sheet

• Stephen Fry proclaims Toy Horses his "new favourite indie band" to his 3.3m followers on Twitter

• Western Mail/Media Wales (Wales' national newspaper and media outlet) award 'Toy Horses', "Top Welsh Album Of 2011"

• Adam and Tom are currently writing songs for forthcoming Jason Derulo, Drake and Sean Kingston albums

• 2012 brings new singles, new videos and new tours!

Toy Horses - And It Was You

Summer 2011. And the nippers are still making good honest rock ’n’ roll. Take Cardiff’s Houdini Dax, who have an average age of 19. What are they doing digesting records, writing songs and rehearsing when they could be playing Xbox or texting friends from the back of the bus? Weren’t “the kids” supposed to have tired of analogous music? Wasn’t the house music craze of the late ’80s supposed to have killed rock? Heck, thinking about it, weren’t the synth bands of over 20 years ago viewed as the only way forward?

No my dear music lovers, valves are not dead, rock ’n’ roll is blossoming and “the kids are alright” (as Pete Townshend so neatly put it 46 years ago). The Noughties has seen great success for young bands.  The Libertines and then Arctic Monkeys paved the way post-Brit Pop and now still barely out of the shadows come Houdini Dax, your soon to be favourite new band.

Hearing ‘The Magicians’ for the first time it’s impossible not to think of Alex Turner and his band in their early stages. Jack Butler’s edgy vocals, sharp wordplay and the stop-start, spiky New Wave tendency of the playing certainly share similarities with early Arctic Monkeys, but it’s not what defines them.  A video of a live acoustic performance for Huw Stephens’ Swn Festival ‘Swn is Sound’ video series of ‘Struggling In The Sand’ show Houdini Dax playing in a stripped back setting with acoustic guitar, bass, brushed drums and harmonies to the fore. It’s tight, honed and timeless. Yes, they have major talent. They can sing splendidly, they throw in some deft bridges and could very well sound like one of those great old acts. Yet they don’t! And when quizzed about their favourite bands, ’60s touchstones (The Beatles, The Kinks, The Sonics, The Stooges) meet latter day acts (Blur and Supergrass) and new bands (The Black Keys, The Raconteurs and White Denim). Yet You Belong To Dax Darling sounds nothing like any of them. It’s the sound of teenagers discovering what they can do.

“Recording the album was amazing,” Jack reveals. “Having Rich from The Method [another of the See Monkey Do Monkey coterie] as producer was special. We’re friends, so he won't shy away with his opinions. And he always got the best out of us.”  Mentioning how the production had elements of ’60s guitar heroics, post-punk rhythms and an element of My Bloody Valentine about it, Jack beamed back at me as if their mission statement had been achieved.”I’m glad you hear those things clashing,” he eagerly states “because we love that retro '60s style, but it’s been done so much before. It’s important for us to mix older styles with newer ones… We were aiming for a really strong debut that doesn't really let up in energy and excitement,” closes Jack. “We tried to capture this by recording in a really live way.”

And live and exciting is the order for the day for the teenage world view of Houdini Dax. Their second album may well feature strings, ballads and mellotrons but for now let the revolution begin as these youngsters play it their own way with what they have learnt from Hendrix, Syd, Gaz and co. They should be famous! 

Houdini Dax - Robin You Lie

For those of you who fancy something of a teabreak challenge (and a gig for no pounds and no pee), this is 'Interference', the latest Crackling Vinyl competition.

All you have to do is identify the different records interfering with each other in this extremely short excerpt.

There are *FIVE* different records crushed together. Extricate, identify them and then *E-MAIL* the answers over (sorry to shout - don't leave any clues in the comments below, please!).

Send your entries to: themysterytour@gmail.com

The prize? Well, 4 pairs of free tickets (1 pair for each winner drawn fairly by me - my decision is final) for Toy Horses / Houdini Dax and Greta Isaac this coming Tuesday night [ 20th March ]. The deadline is 5pm on Mon 19th March 2012.

Much more info ( & sample songs ) here: http://soundcloud.com/cracklingvinyl/sets/10-03-12-telfords-warehouse/

Have fun & good luck x

Interference [ March 2012 competition ]

A brand new track from our next headliners (April 10th, Telford's Warehouse, Chester).

You can find them here on Soundcloud:

http://soundcloud.com/coloramasound

'Wyt ti'n hapus?'

Cooked up in the kitchen of Colorama HQ in Cardiff with sonic wizard Mason Neely, 'Hapus?' is the first new song released by Colorama in 2012. And its free! At least for a while anyway... 
It also heralds an Easter mini tour taking in Cardiff Buffalo Bar (april 6th), Carmarthen Parrot (april 7th), Leeds Oporto (april 9th) and Chester Telfords Warehouse (april 10th). 
This summer will see the release of a new Colorama album called 'Good Music', produced by Mr Edwyn Collins. 
'Hapus' is the welsh word for 'happy'.

'Are you happy?'

Colorama - Hapus

Tom G Elias has spent the last couple of years garnering a loyal following in the North west of England and Wales with his spellbinding live shows and prolific songwriting. Championed by Cerys Matthews on 6 music and hailed by critics for his off kilter lyrics and soulful vocal delivery, Elias is currently working on his fifth album set for release on Viper Records (Edgar Jones) this summer.

T. G. Elias - Final Ever Fling As An Englishman

Richard James
New album ‘Pictures In The Morning’ released 23rd April 2012 on Gwymon.

Richard James, co-founder of seminal psych-folk band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, releases his third album, 'Pictures in the Morning' on the Gwymon label on April 23rd.

With songs as gentle as the rolling hills, metronomic fingerpicking and lyrics that mix storybook simplicity with heartbreaking sadness, ‘Pictures In The Morning’ is the latest album from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci co-founder Richard James. 

Richard’s first solo album, ‘The Seven Sleeper’s Den’, was a slow burning collection of love songs and instrumentals sung in English and occasionally Welsh. Somebody said it sounded like the Velvet Underground with the ratio of New Yorkers to Welsh people reversed, and they weren’t far wrong. The follow-up, ‘We Went Riding’, presented a more multi-layered, poptastic facet of Richard’s songwriting: “Brilliantly constructed pop gems,” in the words of MOJO magazine. The latest album is a return to quieter, more intimate music. “We Went Riding was fairly densely produced,” says Richard. “This time I recorded most of it live then put a few overdubs on. I wanted to keep space in the songs and through the album.” 

Written over two months in the summer of 2009, the album was recorded in two houses in Cardiff with producer/engineer Iwan Morgan. “I record everything now in houses, using every area of the building,” says Richard. “It makes it hard to do drum tracks live but you can do acoustic ones. The album is meant to be quite low key and intimate as It’s quite personal.”

Born and bred in Carmarthen, West Wales, Richard James formed Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci with schoolmates Euros Childs and John Lawrence while in their mid-teens. They recorded and released eight albums, numerous EPs and more singles, they toured the world and split up when it stopped being fun. They are today regarded as one of the main influential bands in the renaissance of folk, pop and psychedelic music.

Richard now lives and makes music in Cardiff, where he is also involved in curating the musical side of the Laugharne Weekend festival, a literary and sonic extravaganza that takes place each Easter in Wales’ strangest township. His latest venture is a called In Chapters, which staged four events last year including one at Green Man festival. The website, inchapters.com, has event info, writings by acclaimed authors and an EP to download from Pen Pastwn, a new project featuring Richard, Laura J Martin and Gareth Bonello. There’s a 45-track Pen Pastwn album being recorded, and plans to take the group to play in Sudan with the British Council. 

Before then, there’s ‘Pictures In The Morning’, an album which will be a welcome riposte to those who remember Richard James as the quiet member of Gorky’s, the architect of the band’s softer side. A strong thread of melancholy runs through its nine tracks. “It’s a sad, reflective album mainly on loss and the melancholia of making and repeating mistakes in life,” says Richard, “But I think there's hope there lurking in the songs too.”

‘Pictures in the Morning’ will be released on Monday 23rd of April. It is also possible to purchase the album directly from Sain, www.sainwales.com, or digitally through i-tunes.

For Further information, please contact Guto Brychan:
gutobrychan@me.com / 07816664185 

Some choice quotes/marks etc - 
Uncut - 8/10
LOBF – “a set of songs arresting enough to make groundbreaking innovation seem like the most hollow gimmick around.”
Lauren Laverne - 'Yes, love it!'

http://www.inchapters.com  
http://twitter.com/inchapters_penp

Richard James - Do You Know the Way to My Heart?

The Gentle Good is also known as Cardiff born Gareth Bonello, a Welsh folk singer and songwriter. His honest and tender vocals are well matched to an intricate guitar style that owes much to the great guitarists of the 60s folk revival. A dedicated multi-instrumentalist his recordings are layered with subtle string arrangements as well as banjos, mandolins and glockenspiels. 

Following a series of self released EPs, the debut album ‘While You Slept I Went Out Walking’ was released by Gwymon records in November 2008. The album received praise in the critical press, with Gareth variously being compared to Nick Drake, Martin Carthy, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, John Martyn and Donovan by the likes of Mojo and the Guardian. The mighty Bob Harris repeatedly lavished high praise on the album on his Saturday night show and radio stations throughout the UK have gradually begun to play The Gentle Good.

A captivating live performer, The Gentle Good can enchant an audience with just a guitar, weaving dark stories amongst tragic folk songs as he performs. Recent developments have seen Gareth perform with a string section – delivering a more complete sound closer to those heard on his records. 

The Gentle Good is an experienced live act, having delighted audiences at home and abroad at festivals such as Celtic Connections, Lorient Interceltique, The Green Man, End of the Road, Latitude, Swn Festival, In the City, South by Southwest and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

In the summer of 2009 The Gentle Good was one of 12 bands selected through the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition to perform at Glastonbury Festival. 

http://thegentlegood.tumblr.com
http://twitter.com/ghbonello

The Gentle Good - Aubade

Crackling Vinyl began in November 2011 as an excuse for music enthusiasts, Adam Walton, Ben ‘Soundhog’ Hayes and Elin Bach to play their favourite records in their favourite music venue (Telford’s Warehouse, Chester) far away from the weekend madness of endless requests for Bombay Bicycle Club or “The Roses”.

Crackling Vinyl quickly evolved to encompass live music. They would bring unique and acclaimed artists to Chester for the first time, at a very affordable price: a high quality watermark in a city bereft of the best, upcoming touring artists.

Previous live guests at Crackling Vinyl: 

Georgia Ruth
Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog
Y Niwl
Sam Airey
Atlas Twins
Laura J. Martin
Trwbador
Sophie Ballamy
Golden Fable
Pulco
Harry Keyworth
Toy Horses
Houdini Dax
Greta Isaac
Colorama
T.G. Elias
Chris T-T
She Makes War
The Gentle Good
Richard James

a fascinating selection of artists who have graced Radio 1, 6Music, Radio 2 and Radio Wales.

Crackling Vinyl’s next event is on Thursday 6th September at Telford’s Warehouse, and features Euros Childs (founder member of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) and The Wellgreen.

Crackling Vinyl will be hosting and DJ’ing at this year’s Green Man and Sŵn festivals.

Adam Walton is BBC Radio Wales’ longstanding new music presenter with a particular love for lysergic soul, off kilter Welsh pop and 60’s oddities. Adam’s late night, weekend radio show is a haven for strange and original Welsh sounds. 

Ben ‘Soundhog’ Hayes is one of the most respected record collectors, music enthusiasts, DJ’s and ‘bootleggers’ in the UK. At the vanguard of the new millennium’s fascination with ‘bastard pop’ Ben earned support and respect all over Europe, from the likes of XFM, MTV & BBC Radio 1. A recent return to bootlegs (Whole Lotta Helter Skelter – brilliantly grafting The Beatles to Led Zeppelin) has earned tens of thousands of views on YouTube and airplay on 6Music and Radio Wales. His DJ sets extol a kaleidoscopic love of music, particularly Moog synthesisers and compressed acoustic guitars.

Elin Bach is an artist and record lover from Mold, Flintshire. Her philosophy is brilliant and simple: all 7”s, “nothing after 1972”. Expect to hear anything from Georgie Fame to something inspirational and half-forgotten in the Welsh mother tongue. If you are very good, she will do a little dance behind the DJ booth. It’s a manifestation of the joy she has for the records she plays.

Jeremy Horrill is a new addition to the roster. Jez has been running Telford’s Warehouse since the early 90’s. He transformed a canal-side dive, spoilt by fruit machines and TV screens, into one of the North West’s most respected music venues. His catholic musical tastes have defined Telford’s pretty indefinable music philosophy: if it’s great, and interesting, and brings out the poet, bohemian or (reasonably) well-behaved punk in you, then it’s for Telford’s. It’s all about character, characters and great sounds.

http://facebook.com/cracklingvinyl 
http://tumblr.com/cracklingvinyl
http://twitter.com/cracklingvinyl

Upcoming shows:

20.07.12: The Bright Young People
06.09.12: Euros Childs & The Wellgreen
11.09.12: Autumn Crackle featuring Cate Le Bon & H. Hawkline

http://cracklingvinyl.tumblr.com

Latest Crackling Vinyl DJ set on Mixcloud:
http://www.mixcloud.com/cracklingvinyl/tegan/

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