A more or less coherent assemblage of truants, malcontents and other assorted Frenchmen, Traw agreed to be manacled to a rock named rhythm in the name of charity and/or community service. This was in a time when neo-cons and rapists freely roamed the land, and when the unwritten law was that water should be drunk only out of "glasses".
DISCOGRAPHY:
Cwymp Y Dwr Ar Ganol Dydd (CD, Confront , 2006) with Rhodri Davies (harp)
The outcome of this project, the six tracks presented here, are uniformly lovely, not a bad apple in the bunch. As might be expected given the initial source and the general demeanor of Davies’ music, the pieces tend toward the roughly consonant with ringing overtones abetted by percussive jangles that might have ultimately derived from interaction with the harp’s frame. But it’s the layers of tonal washes, their interference patterns and the resultant throbbing colors that make the music here. Gentle pulses emerge within beds of tiny bristles, a kind of ambient sound, often very misty, often offset by brief, harsher intrusions, always gorgeous. Sometimes the fluttering gets rather rapid, as on “Sgwd yr Eira†(the Scrabble hound in me wishing that Welsh words other than “cwm†were acceptable in that game) but the general tone of the pieces is one of mildly agitated repose and contemplation. There is something of a similar nature in the tracks, not a bad thing as each is very fine on its own, though if I had to pick a winner, it’d be “Y Pannwrâ€, a somber piece with muffled “bell tolls†and ambient percussive chatter that eventually dives into deep, deep dronage.
According to Brian Olewnick anyway, which is nice of him.
Congratulations to the Young Men of Nelson (CDr, Fourier Transform , 2006)
Improvised straight to minidisc using the (processed) sounds of egg whisks, corrugated roofing material, wooden toys and other assorted stuff. As slated by The Wire. Edition of 50 in a big fancy box.
Community Noise (CDr, Siarc Marw, 2006)
Improvised straight to minidisc using sounds collected from a public recording session the day earlier - carrots, false teeth, umbrellas, newspaper, a typewriter etc.
Fireworks (2CD, Spraingths, 2005)
Improvised straight to minidisc using field recordings of fireworks.
I Left My I Left My Heart In San Francisco In San Francisco (12", Jazz Diuretic, 2005)
Pretty self-explanatory. I had to get them to send it back to me. I should have just bought another copy instead of wasting money on postage, but there we are.
Three Men with Fruit and Vegetable Agnosia Attempting, Without Success, to Describe the Contents of Asda's Fresh Produce Aisle (2x7", The Imaginary Spaniard, 2004)
As honest and accurate a description of a recording as you're ever likely to get.
FORTHCOMING IN 2007:
H/S/T
Featuring Gary Smith and Shoji Hano. This might not ever get released for various reasons, which would be a crying shame, because it's fantastic.
BUY A COPY OF CWYMP Y DWR NOW for the meagre price of 4.99 Earth Pounds (plus p&p). This is the kind of value-for-money that economists have wet dreams about. You can't even pay to walk out halfway through a shit movie for that price.
UK + mainland Europe: £5.99
Everywhere else in the world: £7.49
