Blogs
Culture Vultures to release new 'Aros Am Byth' single via Winger Records on 12.06.20
By Ceri Shaw, 2020-05-20
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West Wales Hip Hop collective 'Culture Vultures' have teamed up with lead singer of Welsh Music Prize winning Post-Punk band Adwaith. Hollie Singer joins the group on vocals and galvanises the collaboration between both Carmarthen based artists.
Reflection (ft Hollie Singer & Dai Pump$) suceeds in painting a not so obvious stereo typical tourist board image of Wales, with its dark gritty visuals and serious topics that address opiod and social media addiction. Filmed in Cardiff the video could be described as Celtic Noir, a bleak but realistic view of isolation and confusion amongst youth in Wales today.
Reflection is taken from Culture Vultures new album WOTW:One (Way Of The Winger) released through West Wales diy collective Winger Records.
The track does not obviously sit in any genre With Hollie coming from Post punk/indie rock Welsh language band Adwaith and the Vultures having a very eclectic approach to making rap music that encompasses influences far and wide, have a listen to the album to get a better understanding off this www.wingerreords.com
WOTW: One On Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/0IM8sj06QugE8St5VMXpuq
Online Links for Culture Vultures:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ChysAVEy3O2VavkVgx5n2/about
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SquawkResidents
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/squawktownresidents/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/culture-vultures
Simon Howells reads 'Dreamcoat', a short story by Matthew G. Rees, author of 'Keyhole', 'The Word' and 'The Tip'. Matthew G.Rees is a critically acclaimed Welsh fiction writer and playwright in the fields of folk horror and fantasy.
AmeriCymru interviewed Matthew G. Rees about his recent short story collection 'Keyhole'. The interview can be seen here:- Keyhole - An Interview With Welsh Author Matthew G. Rees
You can buy 'Keyhole' here: Keyhole
The Welsh Dragon Choir and the Welsh Society of Oregon present Spring Festival Online 2020
By AmeriCymru, 2020-05-19
The Welsh Society board members hope everyone is staying safe and able to enjoy some beauty in their gardens or in nature these days.
In the midst of changing times and sheltering in place, the Welsh Society of Oregon maintains its commitment to share Welsh Language and Culture with our community. As such, we have re-formatted some of our spring offerings as an on-line festival. Below you will see participation events for all ages, for kids and for our Facebook community. We hope that you will be able to join us on May 23rd for one or both of our Noson Lawen events that day, and that you will be able to check in on the talents and creativity contributed to our Facebook page during our month-long festivities there.
You can participate either via computer or smart phone, or even just by calling in.
If you have any trouble navigating these events online, don't hesitate to send an email to oregonwelsh@gmail.com , or give us a ring at (503) 908-5630 .
A Noson Lawen Online, May 23, 2020, 7pm PDT
An interactive event with songs led in Welsh and English, hosted in English by the Welsh Dragon Choir and featuring special guests Nerys Jones, Eryl Aynesley, Andréa Wild, and others. RSVP to OregonWelsh@gmail.com for event link and details.
A Little Noson Lawen Online, May 23, 2020, 1pm PDT
An interactive event of songs, jokes, and stories for young people and their caregivers, led in English by Dragon director Jamie Webster and friends, and featuring special guest, rising Welsh singing star Bronwen Lewis, with a chance for participants to share their songs and jokes as well. RSVP to OregonWelsh@gmail.com for event link and details.
May Festival of Welsh Culture-Online! May 1-31, 2020
(Fun prizes awarded for festival highlights)
Our celebration of Welsh culture isn’t limited to Saturday, May 23! Join us for a month of fun and cultural sharing under lockdown as members of the Welsh Society of Oregon and friends share their talents, creativity, capers, and antics on social media. Please join us in submitting your own quarantine-time contributions to this community activity. Awards for festival highlights announced May 31.
Who Can Participate?: You! Our community in Portland, the state of Oregon, friends along the Pacific Coast, and any friends of Welsh culture in the USA and around the world.
What are some welcome submissions?
- traditional songs/tunes with voice and/or instruments
- virtual ensembles
- sharing stories, humor, or reminiscences
- recreating Welsh folktales/folklore with dolls/toys/stuffed animals
- copying Welsh art and folklore with household items
- Coloring contest
- See examples and coloring pdfs on our web site www.oregonwelsh.org
- Or, your own creative ways to share Welsh culture online!
How to Participate:
- Share your talents and creativity by posting on our facebook page for the Welsh Society of Oregon ( facebook.com/OregonWelsh/ )
- Visit out web page for examples and coloring pages www.oregonwelsh.org
- Trouble sharing to our Facebook page? Contact us by email at oregonwelsh@gmail.com
How the past looks from the present
and how our present will look in the future
Dunkirk is invoked for the ten thousandth time
while the Prime Minister lies in Intensive Care
during the biggest crisis of the last seven decades
masks for NHS heroes
soon we’ll all be wearing them
and the headwear of some Muslim women
will make more sense
perhaps we’ll learn to leave them alone
grim economic data arrives early
wealth versus lives
vacancies and candidates
the thinned-out workforce
of the New Deal for the Dead
feels like this is the end of something
that no matter when or how we leave the lockdown
things are going to be radically different
maybe whole countries will disappear
and a power vacuum ensues
since the outset of the crisis
the catalogue of complaints that hospital
and care home staff did not have enough
of the correct safety items to do their jobs
safely have never really gone away
a Government that had appeared asleep at the wheel
dreaming of a bit of a skive with an 80 seat majority
ushering in what would most likely be a no deal Brexit
passed up five weeks of preparation
during which they sent 400000 items
of Personal Protection Equipment to China
which was very public spirited of them
though in 2016 their own risk assessment had
highlighted the importance of PPE and ventilators
in the event of a pandemic
the whole nation follows the progress
of an order of gowns and masks
delayed on airport tarmac in Turkey
almost like on a tracking app
there’s no evidence of real urgency
and finally when it does arrive
much of it is rejected as substandard
the lubrication of international trade routes
jammed by inefficiency or worse
the glorious dead the glorious dead
in the USA armed and masked men
protest at the continued lockdown
and the impact on their livelihoods
despite their death toll exceeding that
of their armed forces in the Vietnam War
and the irony that their lack of social distancing
whilst protesting could come back to haunt them
in a way that would disarm their guns
our Ministers claim the virus does not discriminate
citing as proof the hapless fact
that the Prime Minister
the Health Secretary
the Chief Medical Officer
and Prince Charles
have had symptoms
with the PM actually shaking the hands of Coronavirus patients
though the fatality rate for BAME citizens
is much higher as it is for the poor
with areas already weakened by austerity measures
more badly affected than the more affluent areas
the glorious dead the glorious dead
a newspaper article shows photos of deserted cities
like something imagined by Wells or Wyndham
welcome to our science fiction normality
just look out of your windows
(getting the R number below 1)
we've significantly exceeded the 20000 death toll
previously considered acceptable by
the Chief Medical Officer for England
and the Government Chief Scientific Adviser
so where does that leave us?
why does the Government talk and act like this is a success?
the Minister for International Trade
resigns after being found to have intimidated
a member of the public during a dispute
the Home Secretary however has survived
bullying accusations in three Departments
meanwhile in the real world of real people
earning a living dealing with real people
a store security guard is shot dead in Michigan
for enforcing a mandatory face mask rule
they came back to slay him apparently
the glorious dead the glorious dead
(the stats fiddlers)
the Health Secretary is insincere
about meeting his own target
of 100000 tests a day
by including thousands that had
merely been put in the post
capacity over substance
targets over results
big numbers sounding good even if they're meaningless
(the deniers)
the Foreign Secretary says it is unhelpful
to compare the death tolls of different countries
especially as his now has the highest in Europe
despite the previous daily sharing
of a comparison chart of countries' figures
this graph is quietly dropped
as touchiness and embarrassment take over
and the truth disappears more completely from view
the enormity of events beginning to oppress and depress
our country seen as the Sick Man of Europe
but one must not forget that this
is the group of individuals and the mindset
that allowed Grenfell Towers to happen
the glorious dead the glorious dead
(guided by the science)
a professor who had seemed alert to the danger
resigns from a body of scientists
advising the Government on the pandemic
as it was discovered that his married lover
had visited him twice during the lockdown
more evidence of hypocritical behaviour
by our supposed leaders and educated persons
the magical thinking of an unmagical citizen
a young man from Singapore is beaten up in England
because the attacker thought he was Chinese
and therefore apparently guilty of being a disease carrier
the magical thinking of another unmagical citizen
Nightingale hospitals went up in record time
they don't seem to have been used much
which is a good thing but how many
hospitals did our Prime Minister promise us
in the most recent General Election campaign?
our suppressed fatality total creeps ever closer to 60000
which was the number of UK civilians killed in World War Two
this period of history we’re living through is a kind of war
but not the kind the politicians allude to
the glorious dead the glorious dead
and after a couple of months of unrelenting tragedy
it’s revealed following an investigation
by a newspaper and a TV news show
that there's a monumental warehouse
somewhere in brownfield England
a PPE palace stuffed
full of 62000 pallets of the stuff
ready for a major health emergency
some of its aisles are blocked
with forklift trucks unable to access these
one former employee went on record to say
that it would take all night to load just one van
thank God the Army was on hand to sort it out
funny how this was kept quiet
in the seesawing debates on this matter
had they forgotten about it despite paying
over £10 million a year for this storage facility?
who is responsible for this and other omissions
and where did we lose our country?
the glorious dead the glorious dead
“ What do you think of the wheels then?” asked Astra the professional car thief from the Gurnos.
“ Nice…!” nodded his hoodie friend Elvi$, as he climbed into the front seat of the mini-ambulance.
The vehicle sped away at breakneck speed on the Gurnos Ring Road heading towards Galon Uchaf.
“ Where did you get it?” asked Elvi$.
“ He stole it from outside the Gurnos Home for the elderly!” said a voice from the back of the vehicle.
Astra broke suddenly and a lady with whiter hair than Philip Schofield shot forward in her wheelchair to join the pair in the front.
“ Who the F*** are U?” asked Elvi$ as he came face to face with the Barbara Cartland lookalike.
“ I am the lady that was being transported to the Gurnos House before this chap here stole the van!” said the octogenarian.
“ My name is Mrs Ryder!” she said holding out a hand with a scented white glove for her abductors to kiss.
“ You have been watching 2 much ‘Downtown’ Abbey Duchess…I wouldn’t kiss my girlfriends ring - so I defo ain’t kissing URS!” said Elvi$.
“ Why Elvi$ ….surely the age of chivalry isn’t dead in Merthyr?” asked the pensioner.
“ How did you know he is called Elvi$?” asked Astra….
” Are you a coppers nark?”
“ It is written all over his face….!” Said Mrs Ryder.
It was really WAS written all over his face …. it was in fact tattooed on his forehead….at the tender age of 14 , to celebrate the birth of his second child, young Elvi$ (real name Wilfred) had got a mirror, some Indian ink and a compass from a set one kids geometry set and tattooed the name of his real father on his forehead.
His mother had copped off at the annual Elvis Weekend in Porthcawl and had her fair share of rock that weekend.
She had been so hammered with drink that she only knew that his biological father had worn blue suede shoes.
She had remembered that specifically, as Elvi$ was nearly one of twins- in the middle of ‘love me tender’ it had splattered all over the suede uppers.
On reflection, Elvi$ himself had regretted using that mirror to permanently mark his forehead, as was the ‘S’ like the boy himself was backward.
“ What do we do about HER?” asked Astra pointing at the old lady with the only thing that had ever worked in his house- his thumb.
“ Don’t tell her your name Astra and you might be okay!” said Elvi$.
“ Shall we kill her?” asked Astra.
“ Is there any point boys….I am half dead already!” interjected Mrs Ryder.
Interjected - as the two heroin addicts were busy shooting up in the front seat.
“ I reckon we take her on the Heads of the Valleys Road … let her brake off and push her out into traffic!” suggested Astra.
“ Yeah…would be fun watching this old dalek hitting traffic!” said the charming Elvi$.
“ Didn’t you have a grandmother once?” asked Mrs Ryder unconcerned with her own fate being more concerned that this lost generation of the workshy had no scruples or sense of decency.
This generation of children who had been ‘dragged’ up on a diet of video nasties and shoot ‘em up computer games.
To them there was no ‘community’ …no thought for others …as they were shunned by society as being lepers….fourth generation scum who had never had a working person living in their houses.
They thought ‘aspiration’ meant sweating in a prison gym.
“ Well gentlemen , I am not afraid to die anymore than I was afraid to be born- if anything, it will save my family the cost of sending me to a Swiss clinic so c’mn …let’s get this show on the road !” said Daphne.
The two scag-heads were thrown by this comment.
“ Come on what are you waiting for?…..like Tom Cruise in Top Gun ….I feel the need…the need for speed!” said Mrs Ryder.
“ Sorry love…we’ll all out of amphetamine…!” said Astra stunned by the reaction of the legless granny.
“ Should we decide not to kill you …Have you got any money Granny?” asked Elvi$ changing tack.
“ I’m a disabled pensioner from Essex way about to go into a Merthyr Care Home….what do you think?” replied Mrs Ryder.
“ I try not to think ….it hurts…!” said Astra …“ Nice wheels by the way!”
“ The metal in the wheelchair has to be worth SOMETHING up the scrappie!” said Elvi$.
“ Probably but you wouldn’t steal from the NHS would you?” asked Mrs Ryder.
“ He would steal from his own grandmother!” said Astra.
“ Do I know her?” asked Mrs Ryder trying a captor/hostage trick to find common ground with her abductors.
“ How old are you?” asked Astra.
“ It is not polite to ask a Lady her age…..but I am 88 this year!” said the Grannie proudly.
“ His grandmother is only 52…!” said Astra.
“ Shut up…!” ordered Elvi$....”….. Just keep driving will you!”
Outside the Gurnos Home for the elderly, the oldest delivery boy in town was scratching his head.
Former Policeman, Alan Flatfoot was puzzled.
He was sure he had parked the ambulance in the courtyard five minutes ago….and he couldn’t find Mrs Ryder the second of his two passengers.
He didn’t think it possible she would go anywhere not having any legs while he wheeled in her friend Daisy to the Centre.
He couldn’t remember if he had left the keys in the ignition or not.
He didn’t want to be charged with the offence of ‘Quitting’ by his former colleagues.
He was starting to worry that delivering all these old people with Alzheimers disease was becoming to rub off on him….like the randy old goat Edna in flat number three.
He decided to do one last lap of the building and car park before ringing his old boys in blue.
Imagine, the stick he would get if they found out.
“ Ever seen the film ‘The Fast & The Furious’ ? asked Astra.
“ Nope!” replied Mrs Ryder.
“ They are classic films about joy riding and breaking the law starring Vin Diesel!” said the driver pretending he was as macho as the Hollywood star.
“Vin Diesel….I have heard of him….said Mrs Ryder…!”
“ I often pretend to be like him!” said Astra.
“ You know he’s gay!” said Mrs Ryder.
“ No way…!” said Astra…slowing down to 60MPH in a 30MPH zone.
“ Diesel …doesn’t like unleaded green hose in his tank…!” said Mrs Ryder hitting the kid where it hurt- in his simple mind.
“ Ever heard of Gone in Sixty Seconds?” asked Elvi$.
“ No….!” gulped Mrs Ryder.
“ Because once we reach the brow of this hill…that is what you will be!” said Elvi$ cruelly.
“ Astra, keep the wheel straight I am going to slide between these seats and unbolt the back door to get rid of that old bitch!” he continued.
“ You have forgotten one thing Sonny…they have speed cameras on the Heads of the Valleys Road…you kick me out…you will be on ‘You-tube’ forever…as the Granny Wheelchair killer….that would go down well in Cardiff Prison!” laughed Mrs Ryder.
Elvi$ hated being outsmarted, even if it did happen a lot.
He had a naturally ‘suspicious mind’ …which he thought was just a by-product of the Indian Ink.
“ They don’t have them on the Glynneath bank…but that is a dual carriageway anyway…the A470 Expressway it is then “ said Elvi$ chucking evilly, like Chuckie the doll from Child’s Play.
Mrs Ryder knew she had about two miles as the crow flew to come up with a plan.
She reckoned that Astra was ‘all mouth and trousers’ but that Elvi$ was much more dark and psychotic.
She tried to remember her Wren training and catching people off guard.
She hatched a plan in her mind that she would grab her attacker with both hands and judo him off the back of the moving mini-bus.
As the bus made its way towards the Rhydycar roundabout and all those clerks sleeping at their desks in the Welsh Assembly Building, there was no chance of jettisoning the old lady and her wheelchair as the road was backed up from the Cyfarthfa Retail Park park roundabout to the Rhydycar Roundabout because of road works.
“ You do realise the bus is facing the wrong way for any delivery into oncoming traffic!” said Mrs Ryder.
“ Wrong ….my boy here has been practising his ‘do-nuts’ and ‘u-turns’ for years around the college and other car parks….all that late night squealing and burning rubber….that’s not just from the back of the Kirkhouse!” said Elvi$.
“ Very soon you… and that Oasis chair will be history!” he continued menacingly.
“ Oasis chair?” asked Mrs Ryder tying herself into the chair in anticipation with her shoelaces….belt strap and M&S Cardigan ….all with a granny knot.
“ You getta roll with it!” said Elvi$ laughing at his gallows humour.
The van screeched around the corner with Elvi$ holding his hand up to the driver as they flew across the road bridge above P & R Motors in Pentrebach.
“ Wait for it!” he said sliding past Mrs Ryder and unbolting the back doors.
“ Now !” he said.
Astra spun the steering wheel wildly.
As he uttered those immortal words….Mrs Ryder pushed at the top of the rubber wheels with all her might.
She crashed into the soft shins of her abductor and he teetered on the edge of the open doors, quiff flailing in the wind.
And then he was gone.
Elvi$ had left the building , falling over the flyover and was lying flat on his back on the bonnet of the tow-truck.
There was no hope for him even if he was in the ‘recovery position’.
He looked like a dying fly legs and arms flailing in the air spine completely shot.
Cars careered across the three lane highway in all directions as the van skidded to a halt and then restarted its acceleration back up the wrong sliproad.
Mrs Ryder rolled about more than an episode of ’Ironside’ in the van with the doors flapping.
Astra was petrified but like a charging bull he had the intelligence to neither stop or to slow down.
Forcing cars off the road, the insurance nightmare raced up the A470, sideswiping cars and barriers alike, as he headed towards Cardiff.
Mrs Ryder knew she had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire, as Astra was as unpredictable as the out of date box of fireworks he was originally named after.
Centrifugal force was keeping her in the vehicle alone but she knew once he broke, she would be history.
She dragged herself along the metal wall inch by inch and grabbed the little scrote around the throat with all her might forcing the scumbag to choke on his own Adams Apple.
“ Here is a present from ‘Granny Smith’….!” she said strangling the car thief.
Astra was so dull even though he was slowly having the oxygen squeezed out of him , he pressed the brake gently on survival instinct instead of the accelerator.
“ If there is one thing I hate!” she said.
” It is someone sullying my good name…you didn’t even have the courtesy to ask it….I’m Joy Ryder and you are not a joy rider… you are a car THIEF !”” she said as Astra’s face went blue and the car trundled to a stop in the layby .
It was the best vigilante move since Michael Winner had finally had his own Death Wish.
Listening to banned police frequencies, Alan Flatfoot put his foot flat to the floor in his Hillman Avenger, as he gunned down the A470 Expressway in search of his stolen ambulance.
The former prop from the television programme, the ‘Professionals’ had a top speed of 40 mph and had air conditioning in the floor where the clutch pedal had once been.
Letting in the ‘choke’ he spotted his van ringed by police cars in a layby above Troedyrhiw, watching a different kind of choke taking place.
They had retrieved the body of Elvi$ from Pentrebach and had just found the hostage situation much to the annoyance of Traffic Cop Ade ‘Bucket’ Edmondson it was on his watch.
“ This is beyond the pail’ !” laughed Flatfoot as he pulled in to see his old police driving instructor.
“ What you got then?” asked Flatfoot.
“ The usual- an Old woman with no legs holding a junkie car thief by the throat threatening to snap his neck!” said Bucket.
“ Why are you trying to arrest her then?” asked Flatfoot.
“ We’re not….we are trying to give her a Community Action Trust Reward….keep the crime figures down …but she has gone all psycho on us when we are just trying to help her!” said the Traffic Officer.
“ I think I know why!” said Flatfoot.
“ I was transporting her from her stay in the Old Deanery Nursing Home in Braintree Essex!”
We have always had a great lineup for Dylan Day in the past but because of lockdown this year the Birthplace is closed to visitors so we decided to bring the Birthplace to your living room! And what a response we have had from performers, musicians and poets from all over the world - so much so that we have another two programmes line up for later in the year. On top of that a previously unseen interview with the 39th President of the United States - Jimmy Carter (beginning of programme 1) . See just why he is Dylan's Number One Fan.
Orange Circus Band * Tia McGraff * Lost Hollow * Oliver Lomax * Adrian Metcalfe * Daisy Owens * Rafa Bocero * Lorraine King * Iqbal Malik + many more
It's all set to go live at 7.00am on the Birthplace YouTube channel on Thursday 14th May where the programmes will remain for you to view at your leisure www.youtube.com/
Other Events on Dylan Day Take a look at www.discoverdylanthomas.com for other Dylan Day events including the virtual International Dylan Thomas Prize hosted by Michael Sheen.
Online collective The Indoor Mortal Orchestra pull off 24 hour crowdsourced production of charity single cover of Bugsy Malone’s 'You Give a Little Love'
By Ceri Shaw, 2020-05-13
BUY 'YOU GIVE A LITTLE LOVE' HERE
Following weeks of preparation, at 9pm on 1st May, The Indoor Mortal Orchestra, a 17-strong virtually-assembled collective of music professionals, began the bewildering challenge of crowdsourcing a mini-orchestra & array of vocalists to record, produce & release a charity single cover of 'You Give a Little Love'’ — all in 24 hours.
This over-ambitious challenge was inspired by comedian Mark Watson 's 24-hour Watsonathon on-line fundraising event, whose long-form comedy shows often involve elaborate & seemingly impossible challenges set or taken on by audience members.
Over the course of a calendar day, The Indoor Mortal Orchestra’s production team pulled off the inspiring feat of assembling, mixing, editing & synching individually & remotely recorded music & vocal parts + video footage, chosen from 60+ contributors around the world, producing a joyous version of the classic movie-musical number. The end result is a glorious celebration of collaboration & community.
Contributors include Miles Jupp (vocals), Kevin Eldon (vocals), Duglas T. Stewart (vocals; BMX Bandits), Will Calderbank (cello; Mumford and Sons, The Leisure Society, Ray Davies), Jen Schande (vocals; Schande), Danny Green (vocals; DGSolaris, Laish), Simon Love (vocals, guitar; The Loves), Richard Jackson (vocals; composer, Albatros Archive), & Shenandoah Davis (vocals; singer-songwriter, Paul Williams live band alumna) + multiple amateur & talented musicians & singers who answered the call on the day.
All profits are in aid of the charities FareShare (national network of charitable food redistributors), Hospice IGN (the professional association for UK Hospice fundraisers) & NextUp ’s Heckle The Virus fund (supporting out-of-work circuit comedians.)
Help give a little love back to those who need it most right now & buy or stream to donate & assist.
Thank you x
The Indoor Mortal Orchestra
Email: theindoormortalorchestr
Facebook: https://fb.me/indoormortals
Twitter: www.twitter.com/indoo
Mark Watsons’s 24 Hour Watsonathon
Twitch: www.twitch.tv/watsonco
Event Fund: www.gofundme.com/f/the-w
Facebook: www.facebook.com/eve
Dau Gam Single
Derw’s debut single ‘Dau Gam’ is coming out on 1st May on CEG Records. Influenced by chamber pop bands like The National and Elbow, the track deals with how to find peace within yourself and what it’s like to sometimes feel like a stranger in your own mind.
Cardiff based Derw was started by songwriter Dafydd Dabson and his mother, lyricist Anna Georgina, after they got to the final round of Can i Gymru in 2018 and decided they would like to keep writing together. Fronted by Welsh/Iranian vocalist Elin Fouladi their debut EP ‘Yr Unig Rhai Sy’n Cofio’ will be released later in 2020 and features contributions from musicians from Welsh acts Zervas and Pepper, Afrocluster and Codewalkers.
Named after Anna’s father, Derwas, the band have a strong connection with the past and their family history. Full of interesting stories, the intention of ‘Yr Unig Rhai Sy’n Cofio’ is to make sure they are remembered.
Derw Bio
Derw started as a project between songwriter Dafydd Dabson and his mum Anna Georgina, a lyricist, after they got to the final of S4C songwriting competition Can i Gymru in 2018 and decided to keep writing together. The band is fronted by Welsh/Iranian singer Elin Fouladi and their debut EP 'Yr Unig Rhai Sy'n Cofio' involves musicians from Welsh acts Zervas and Pepper, Afrocluster and Codewalkers.
Drawing on chamber pop influences like The National and Elbow, the band has a strong connection with the past and their family history and is named after Anna's father - Derwas. Their family is full of interesting stories and 'Yr Unig Rhai Sy'n Cofio' (The Only Ones Who Remember) is about making sure these stories are documented, recorded and remembered.
The track 'Mikhail' is about a friend Derwas met while studying in Jerusalem in 1926. Mikhail grew up in Russia and his father was part of the imperial navy. One night in 1917, when Mikhail was nine and his mother was away, the Bolsheviks came to his house, took his father into another room and shot him. Mikhail then moved to Palestine with his mother and, when he was 19, met Derwas, a studentfrom Oxford. They then spent years exploring the wilderness together and trying to find peace.
The lyrics for 'Silver', the final track of the EP, are taken from a poem written by Anna's mother in the 1930s. She loved writing and had notebooks full of poetry she'd written. She tried several times to get them published but never managed it so it gives Anna and Dafydd a huge amount of pleasure to be able to make use of one of them now. Their debut single ‘Dau Gam’ is coming out on CEG Recordson May 1st.
Derw Online
https://www.instagram.com/derwband/
https://www.facebook.com/DerwBand
https://soundcloud.com/derwband
The Indoor Mortal Orchestra pull off 24 hour production of charity single cover of Bugsy Malone’s 'You Give a Little Love
By Ceri Shaw, 2020-05-11
Release Date: 12 May 2020 on Olive Grove Records
Format: Digital Download
Stream/download donations welcome
The Indoor Mortal Orchestra - You Give A Little Love
Between 9pm-thru-9pm 1st-2nd May, following weeks of preparation, The Indoor Mortal Orchestra, a 17-strong virtually-assembled collective of music professionals, began the bewildering challenge of crowdsourcing a mini-orchestra & array of vocalists to record, produce & release a charity single cover of Bugsy Malone’s hope-filled earworm, ' You Give a Little Love' — all in 24 hours. This over-ambitious challenge was inspired by comedian Mark Watson's 24-hour Watsonathon on-line fundraising event, whose long-form comedy shows often involve elaborate & seemingly impossible challenges set or taken on by audience members.
Over the course of a calendar day, The Indoor Mortal Orchestra’s production team pulled off the inspiring feat of assembling, mixing, editing & synching individually & remotely recorded music & vocal parts + video footage, chosen from 60+ contributors around the world, producing a joyous version of the classic movie-musical number. The end result is a glorious celebration of collaboration & community.
Contributors include Miles Jupp (vocals), Kevin Eldon (vocals), Duglas T. Stewart (vocals; BMX Bandits), Will Calderbank(cello; Mumford and Sons, The Leisure Society, Ray Davies), Jen Schande (vocals; Schande), Danny Green (vocals; DGSolaris, Laish), Simon Love (vocals, guitar; The Loves), Richard Jackson (vocals; composer, Albatros Archive), & Shenandoah Davis (vocals; singer-songwriter, Paul Williams live band alumna) + multiple amateur & talented musicians & singers who answered the call on the day. Full details of all contributors can be found in the full official music video accompanying the single release
All profits are in aid of the charities FareShare (national network of charitable food redistributors), Hospice IGN (the professional association for UK Hospice fundraisers) & NextUp’s Heckle The Virus fund (supporting out-of-work circuit comedians).
Help give a little love back to those who need it most right now & buy or stream to donate & assist.
Thank you x
The Indoor Mortal Orchestra
Email: theindoormortalorchestr
Facebook: https://fb.me/indoor
Twitter: www.twitter.com/indoo
Mark Watons’s 24 Hour Watsonathon
Twitch: www.twitch.tv/watsonco
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AmeriCymru: Hi Matthew and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. Care to introduce your short story collection 'Keyhole' for our readers.
Matthew: Thanks for having me and thanks for taking the interest that you do in writing that comes out of Wales.
Keyhole is a collection of eighteen short stories set in Wales and its borderland with England known as the Marches. The stories lean to what might loosely be called ‘the supernatural’. They’re mainly set in the present or the recent past, with, at times, explorations of history, such as the rehabilitation of wounded servicemen at a remote hospital in the era of the First World War.
An important thing to say is that, although I hope there is some strongly ‘realist’ writing in the collection, Wales is not seen in a literal way, as if captured by a camera. Instead, it is quite often viewed at a slant . . . presented askew. We see things through the eyes of characters who tend to be dislocated from their surroundings.
‘Horror’, as a blanket term, is, I suspect, inaccurate (though people have told me they have found passages in certain stories a little frightening – in a thought-provoking way). I think it’s probably important to say that the stories certainly aren’t heavily concerned with violence and gore. Neither are they full-on fantasies.
My intention is for the reader to always keep one foot in our own recognisable world, while – like my characters – reaching out and tentatively stepping into another, adjoining world.
I wrote the collection while doing a PhD at Swansea University. Only a small part of my life has been in a campus environment. I was a newspaper journalist for ten years. I’ve had a number of jobs, including time as a night-shift cab driver. I’ve also been a teacher, working in Moscow for a period. Doing the PhD and a master’s before it, was, in part, an opportunity to try to make some sense of what I wanted to experiment with. No one needs a college degree to write though. In Wales, figures such as ‘Super-Tramp’ W.H. Davies and the miner Bert Coombes, whose home as a young man was a dirt-poor smallholding in a village close to where I grew up, have taught us that.
AmeriCymru: You have said that you are interested in fiction that explores 'the liminal'. How is this distinguished from the supernatural?
Matthew: Interesting question. Without reaching for the Oxford English Dictionary, I’ll give you my take on what I think is the difference, particularly with regard to short stories. Several scholars have stressed the short story’s historic preoccupation with people and places outside the mainstream. Authors such as Melville, Chekhov and Gogol were pioneers in writing about cab drivers, minor clerks and so on – people whose lives had never really been written about previously. Guy de Maupassant, meanwhile, introduced his readers to goings-on in small towns and country villages. Closer to our own times, Raymond Carver wrote of suburban figures and their struggles in a way that made us care about them. For her part, Flannery O’Connor interested us in slightly more grotesque characters on farms in the American South. In one way or another, therefore, we’ve grown accustomed to reading about people whose lives are somehow in the margins. The critic and writer Frank O’Connor spoke of ‘submerged’ populations, though I think that term perhaps underplays how raw those margins can sometimes be. When it comes to the ‘liminal’, I think we’re that further step away again from the mainstream, to the point that we’re at the edge of the map . . . perhaps actually straddling a line or border, beyond which is a world that is recognisable and yet not quite the one that we know.
The short story has a long association with the supernatural. In the 12 th century, Walter Map, who is thought to have been Welsh, and William of Newburgh, were writing about folklore, mysteries and vampires. For me, the vampire – particularly the business of changing to and from a creature that is small, winged and furry – is an outright supernatural phenomenon: it is something that is beyond the laws of science and nature. But a story such as Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds’ (which is not at all like Hitchcock’s movie) seems very liminal. Physically, the birds are the same feathered creatures they have always been, and yet they have crossed into a frightening, brutal way of being, having lost all fear of humans. In the story, we find ourselves dealing with the known and the unknown simultaneously.
To give an example from Keyhole , in the story ‘I’ve Got You’ figures made from seashells rise from a beach where they have been studded on the shore. Many of us have perhaps seen shapes crafted from shells pressed into wet sand. For them to rise and have lives is perhaps fantastic, yet less so when we remember that they were always meant to be people.
In short, I think of the liminal as a borderland of possibility, between what is and what might be . . . the edge of the seen moon, if you like, and its dark side. It’s very important to remember though that not everything from that ‘other side’ will be negative. Just because something is mysterious doesn’t mean that it can’t also be good, as I hope one of my stories in Keyhole , ‘Dragon Hounds’, demonstrates.
AmeriCymru: You quote Arthur Machen in the epigraph to your collection. Has Machen influenced your writing and do you think that he is sufficiently recognized in the modern age?
Matthew: ‘. . . the unknown world is, in truth, about us everywhere, everywhere near to our feet, the thinnest veil separates us from it, the door in the wall of the next street communicates with it.’ The epigraph comes from Machen’s book The London Adventure , which I believe was first published in 1924. It’s a rather endearing memoir, far removed from the likes of his horror novella The Great God Pan . I’m aware of Machen, of course, and have read some of his main works such as Pan , his ‘decadent’ novel The Hill of Dreams and stories such as ‘The Bowmen’, which I reference in a story of my own (albeit not in the Keyhole collection). He was undoubtedly a central figure in the development of a genre that’s sometimes called ‘weird’ fiction or ‘weird horror’. He also wrote some lovely descriptive prose beyond that genre. He’s a writer I came to fairly late, so I don’t think he can be classed as a formative influence or someone who I’m like as a matter of routine. Quite recently, though, when writing a story, I definitely had Machen in the back of my head. Eventually, the dark humour (I hope!) in that particular story rather removes it from the realms of Machen. But when a reader – who knows a lot more about Machen than me – told me he thought certain passages were Machen-like, I was rather pleased.
I wouldn’t want to press the point too hard, but, yes, there are connections. We’re sons of the same (southern) end of the Marches and, for a period, were both newspapermen. I know certain places he mentions in various memoirs. My sister went to his school. He and I have each written dark tales set in Wales and the borderlands (in his case, ‘The Gift of Tongues’ and ‘The Children of the Pool’ are two that quickly come to mind), and so on.
Although definitely interesting, he was never a truly major literary figure. He was a jobbing writer, if you like, turning his hand to all sorts in an effort to pay the bills. The sheer volume and range of his output – translations, eccentric treatises, newspaper articles – perhaps militated against him producing a classic of the kind that might have secured his reputation (in the loftier sense).
There seems in recent years to have been a shift in the focus of many short stories, away from incidents of strangeness to what can sometimes seem less dramatic (indeed, perhaps rather domestic) matters, seemingly aimed at a college-educated and middle-class stratum of reader. With this, has been a sense that a short story should carry a message for society. These developments have, I think, damaged writers such as Machen. His contemporary Walter de la Mare comes to mind as a possible ‘casualty’.
If you look through the history of the short story you find that up to say the mid-point or third quarter of the 20 th century its practitioners in the English-speaking world often had backgrounds in, or ties with, newspapers and magazines: Edgar Allan Poe, Damon Runyon, Rudyard Kipling, Machen, Edgar Wallace, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Mavis Gallant and Graham Greene, to name but some. What was in play, I suspect, was the journalistic instinct for ‘man bites dog’, an effective continuation of the thread from those earlier times of Walter Map and William of Newburgh. Think of Hemingway’s macabre story ‘An Alpine Idyll’. Other writers, such as du Maurier and Agatha Christie, shared this approach.
These days a published story-writer is more likely to be a practising academic, a graduate of a creative writing course, or a novelist who occasionally writes a story ‘on the side’. The world is different, ‘life experience’ is different. The subjects that are written about won’t be the same. Material now, it seems, is more likely to be about issues, relationships and lives conducted in urban / metropolitan environments.
There are still huge hitters in the field of what might loosely be called ‘the supernatural’, of course, such as Stephen King and Dean Koontz. But when it comes to perhaps the ‘literary’ short story, the ‘strange’ – in terms of those stories that get attention – seems to have rather been sucked out of things (though an ‘underground’, for want of a better word, featuring some very good work at times, continues online and in print among some smaller publishers).
Machen is not alone in having suffered. A number of interesting if rather minor writers from his era, such as Richard Middleton (‘The Ghost-Ship’) and the formerly popular L.A.G. Strong (‘The Rook’) have all but disappeared.
Having said that, plenty of people are working hard on Machen’s behalf (not least the publishers of Keyhole , Three Impostors press of Newport, Gwent, who’ve brough out several special editions of his work and other interesting small books, such as their Wentwood Tales series). Machen has a not insignificant following that is said to include Stephen King, Mick Jagger and Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. That we are talking of Machen, more than seventy years after his death, is surely proof of something. However, I suspect that, for some, quite a lot of the allure is due not so much to his writing as to his ‘mystic’ involvements, the ‘set’ he was part of (including figures such as the occultist A.E. Waite) and those who were his contemporaries, such as Wilde and Beardsley.
AmeriCymru: In what way do you think that growing up in the Welsh Marches has affected your writing?
Matthew: Our environments ought to be very influential. I see young people walking through wonderful parks, or on beaches, wearing headphones, and I think, ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’ Even a bus ride is an opportunity for a writer to listen and observe (discreetly!). The Marches – the borderland between England and Wales - is a special place. So many writers have been moved by it: Thomas Traherne, Machen, A.E. Housman, John Masefield and Bruce Chatwin, to name but a few. It is neither England nor Wales. It is a place somehow on and of its own – as if those countries beside it don’t really exist, or, at best, merely wash upon its shores. My teens were in a village on the edge of a small cathedral city on the English side, though my family has been Welsh for generations.
It remains a rural borderland of farms and woodlands and hills. Machen and Francis Kilvert, the Victorian clergyman whose diary is one of my favourite books, would know it still. And yet there have been pressures . . . changes. I wonder if it isn’t perhaps becoming another ‘Chiantishire’ for the moneyed classes (both English and Welsh). Local wages, particularly in non-public jobs, have tended to be among the lowest in the UK. Services such as transport – the railway in the lovely Golden Valley closed in the 1950s – seem to me (as a bus and rail user) seriously lacking, away from the main towns. Oh that such places might have a drop of the billions in public money being pumped into the proposed new London-Birmingham railway line, known as HS2, and, in the case of communities on the Welsh side, a more meaningful share of what at times seems some very Cardiff-centric investment in Wales.
To my dismay, bats, moths, other insects and birds that I used to encounter all seem to have become depleted in a way that should worry all of us. Salmon seem terribly scarce in rivers that were famous for them. I like to think, unusual and speculative as some of my fiction might now and then seem, that it is also outward-facing and that it speaks, at times, to these serious concerns.
I think the two or three years before I started what for the most part was my senior school, were probably very influential ones for me. I roamed lanes and woods and was aware of country people of a kind who have perhaps become rare.
The weather of that time – notably the drought of 1976 and winters when we were effectively ‘snowed-in’ – certainly left its mark on me. The haunting power of that drought summer shows itself, I suspect, in my story ‘Rain’ in Keyhole .
Although not so very long ago, life was unquestionably different. We’re talking pre-Internet, pre-cell-phone, a time when there were three channels on your tv – if your set was able to receive them. Corona was a pop / soda that came from a factory in Porth, in the Rhondda, in South Wales.
I remember walking on lovely summer evenings through fields with my father, sister and our dog to our nearest pub (my mother enjoying the peace of the house in our absence), and then home again in the gloaming. On Saturdays, I’d catch a country bus into town with my sister to ‘Saturday Morning Pictures’, a show of (mainly old) movies for youngsters at an old-fashioned Odeon theatre.
If all this sounds idyllic, I should perhaps temper it with some more sombre memories. One being my awareness – and fear – at this time of a seriously nasty criminal. His name was Donald Neilson and he was known as ‘The Black Panther’ (nothing to do with politics or ethnicity – Neilson was white, but for the speed with which he moved and the dark clothing that he wore). He was a housebreaker, armed robber, kidnapper and murderer, and he brought terror to the English West Midlands, the territory adjacent to our part of the Marches. My particular fear, as an eight / nine-year-old, arose from the fact that a part of our house had served as the post office for our village. And armed robbery of small post offices was something in which Neilson specialised, violently raiding a large number.
When my parents bought our house, the fact that they had full-time jobs in teaching led to the post office re-locating to our local gas station, which was, in fact, a better place for it to be. But I still feared that Neilson might come one night, and I was relieved when he was caught and jailed (on a whole-life tariff).
I don’t watch much television but recently I had my set on late, tuned by chance to a minor channel. Suddenly, Neilson’s face was there, staring out from the screen, in a documentary about his life and crimes. It was as if The Black Panther, who’d prowled my childhood, was following me still.
I should say also that in these years I saw the destructive power of not only drought, but forces such as Dutch elm disease, which killed a lot of trees. Sometimes you would see a line of them undergoing startling, ugly deaths. I had a growing awareness too of the dangers of pesticides and the pollution of our watercourses.
All these things may go some way to explaining the sense of menace that I’m told can be found in certain of my stories.
AmeriCymru: How would you characterise your creative process? How does the idea for one of your fantastical tales seed itself in your mind?
Matthew: The creative process is one of fusion, in which all kinds of things bump up against one another. The writer Iris Gower said something about it being impossible to teach ‘creativity’, and I suspect she was right (though I think would-be writers can help themselves by doing simple things, like paying attention to the world that surround us). Things like ‘technique’ can be learned, but the creative impulse just happens. Something that occurs in my own case is that an image presents itself in my mind’s eye, which more or less demands to be written about. A physical shiver or tingle sometimes comes with it. Although I don’t wish to sound self-promoting by placing myself in their company, figures such as Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis, Stephen King and Mavis Gallant have spoken of something similar (a vision or physical sensation). Flannery O’Connor and Graham Greene spoke of the importance of the unconscious in the writing process, and I agree. Although there have been times when I have consciously developed a story from, say, an anecdote or fact that I’ve heard, that tends to be something that happens fairly rarely. Experts in this field have spoken of something called ‘unbidden perception’ – the impact on the mind of those things that creep into it when our thoughts and actions are elsewhere.
AmeriCymru: If you had to pick one story from this collection for a public reading or similar event, which one would you choose and why?
Matthew: That’s difficult. Although I have done it and will do it, I’m not over-fond of reading (something I’ve written) in public. I’m awkward about the showiness of it, as I suppose many – possibly most – writers are. When I write a story, it’s because I feel a compulsion to write that story, rather than wanting to later read it aloud to people. Above all, perhaps, I want the reader to have a sense of intimacy – the sense that this story is for them alone. I had that when I first read Raymond Carver, a long time ago. Something similar happened with the poetry of Ted Hughes, though I first encountered that in a class situation, so the feeling was a little different.
Having said all of that, we were privileged to launch Keyhole at Dylan Thomas’s home in Swansea – 5 Cwmdonkin Drive – and I did indeed read there, in what had been the Thomas family’s front parlour, which was quite something for me.
The nature of a story tends to tell me how – stylistically – it ought to be written. Sometimes the prose will need to be calm and straightforward, other times language that is perhaps more poetic or elevated will be required. Sometimes you will also want the language to reflect things such as movement, or the character of the protagonist and so on. I tried in the opening of my story ‘The Press’ to find language that would reflect the trot and bob of a boy on a horse and also give an immediate vivid sense of the countryside in which the story is set. The use there of the present tense is deliberate. Elsewhere, the aim of the language in the opening of ‘The Service at Plas Trewe’ is to cast a spell, if you like, in a story about an old Welsh house/hotel and its unlovely ghost. Different again, the language that opens ‘Sand Dancer’ hopefully helps convey the eccentric mind of its main character.
To be honest, I’d sooner have an actor do it (and make a better job), in I think the way Richard Burton did with the work of Dylan Thomas. Realistically, in the definite absence of Burton and the probable absence of Michael Sheen, I suspect I’d ask the audience if they had a request, then talk about the story for a little while, then stand and do my best to deliver.
AmeriCymru: What's next for Matthew G. Rees? Any new publications planned?
Matthew: At the time of this interview, I’m editing a collection of dark (and, I hope, at times darkly humorous) stories I’ve written, that I hope will see the light before too long. A couple of the tales are set in Wales with others set in England, Russia and America, and also, in places, Scotland and France. I hope they’ll appeal to readers with a taste for Roald Dahl, Walter de la Mare, Algernon Blackwood and, of course, Arthur Machen. More stories and a novel are in the mix. I’ve had a couple of plays performed professionally and would love to do a third when theatres are back in business. Some readers seem to think the kind of writing I do lends itself to audio and even film. Those are things I’d definitely like to explore. Interested parties can get in touch via the email address at my website www.matthewgrees.com
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Matthew: Thank you – Diolch yn fawr - for having me! I hope I haven’t rambled on too long. I also hope that anyone who reads my book will enjoy it. It’s available through selected sellers in Wales, London and the USA and via the publishers whose website is www.threeimpostors.co.uk
Anyone wishing to know more about me and my ongoing writing and publications can find information on my website www.matthewgrees.com
Finally, may I wish you all, at this time when our worlds have been turned upside down, good health. Iechyd da!
