NoNewWaveNoFun

    Green Man Festival line up The thought of going to a festival barely seemed real at the start of the summer; certainly not with the more cautious Welsh government's approach to allowing large scale events. Two test events in Liverpool, a reduced capacity Download and then a full  Latitude  seemed to show a positive summer for festivals.  However, the lack of convincing and thorough insurance policies and the fact all three test events were run by Festival Republic, ensured many small independent events struggled to get off the ground.                      📷 Natalie Wright But as England removed social distancing measures and the legal requirement to wear masks in public places, Wales held off as the Delta variant began to take hold - things looked bleak for Green Man. But then came the news that fans of the festival were waited for - The Welsh government relaxed the rules and it was on! It had a full line up(see above) and all with a month to spare.    Earlier in

T he long-awaited new album from 60s Pop enthusiast Joe Kane a.k.a The Poppermost, came out on July 30th. Ryan Doyle Elward takes us through this playful new release.   With 'Hits to Spare', The Poppermost boost flashbacks of bright orange and all other casts of psychedelic colors (well, pre-psychedelic technically), returning to an era bygone, of  Rickenbackers and biting, bare reverb.  There is a surrealness by this design, an occurrent awe and almost bewilderment to the quality of replication as The Poppermost (don’t think they but actually he, just him, Joe Kane ) are able to suspend time and place,to be for a moment transmutable in all but skin as a result of such an authentic and total reconstruction of ‘60s sound.   But out of the early part of that decade it is The Beatles specifically who are here reanimated, where for each of the album’s songs or intra-song elements there are near- Beatles equals: observe the likeness between ‘Ticket to Ri

          Future Colours I'm not going to go on about it much, in fact, we'll gloss over it. There's been a large amount of football since I last posted and England seemed to have done quite well in those matches. GOOOAAAAALLLL. In fact, they're in a final for the first time in 55 years - you may have heard.  All of this was achieved whilst embracing the works of Marx and Engels and posing a threat to the fabric of society with their symbolic knee gestures. I'm really surprised anyone from the British establishment have been going to the matches - they do realise their heads are going to be paraded on spikes down Wembley  way in the newly-named Sterlingrad,  IF the result goes the right way don't they? I'm not going to go on about it. SHHIIINNNPAAADDS.  The team have been scoring lots of goals and getting rather fortunate penalties, whilst the ever-sporting fans have been booing National Anthems, laughing at crying kids on big screens

Manchester's Absurdist Prog Pop explorers  Legs on Wheel are back with their new 'Idelia' E.P; three tracks that straddle multiple genres. Ryan Doyle Elward  guides us through it.   ‘ Milktop Mandy’ opens Idelia E.P with incipient psilocybin affective, an unfurling dream surging into a 70s prog-rock collage; a careening freakshow caravan destined for adventure, and thus an anomaly compared to the remaining material from Legs on Wheels’ latest release, since the next two tracks don’t sustain the same sort of pace and direction in an exploration of the hot sonic landscape under the guidance of a rather puerile narrative as established in their antecedent. ‘ Move Closer ’ is smooth, cool tones from mouth to mind with a basis of funk for the body in a way that is Steve Miller Band , that is Steely Dan . For some these are jams, but for another majority, songs of the kind elicit little more than a shrug.                                     Legs on Wheels Funk/jazz

Pop can be a dirty word to some people; especially those of us who've willingly jumped head-first onto the murky depths of Rock n' Roll's sordid waters. I'm not going to deny, I certainly had that attitude when I was younger and was obsessed by the lure of Punk Rock revisionism. Strangely though, perhaps due to some mellowing with age, Pop has become much more interesting to my ears - and seemingly - much more subversive. An artist that can be considered to be producing such subversive and interesting music is ya. ya is the work of Anna Akopyan, who is originally from Russia, but is now based in Spain. I first heard ya during the early days of the blog and was intrigued by the eclectic nature of her music; we featured her on our first  Submission Hold  section soon after.  Releasing her debut album ' CHANGE UR BODY' in January, ya has produced a new video for a track that is one of the highlights of the album:  'Movie' - it's a song that

              Vice Killer - Alone, In This World E.P I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced by the concept of an 'Addictive Personality'. I mean - I have one if you're going by the true definition - but I don't think that definition is as set in stone as it seems. I read ' The Psychopath Test ' by Jon Ronson several years ago and that provided me with the inspiration behind my thinking. In the book, Ronson explores the nature of how Psychologists score psychopathy on a spectrum on which we all score; perhaps raising the possibility that can change throughout life. Is it possible that addiction has the same type of spectrum? Why am I asking this? Well, I've just given up smoking. I haven't had a cigarette in over a month now, and if truth be told I don't miss it. The only time I'm tempted is if I have a drink and that's not a regular occurrence now either; perhaps my propensity towards addiction has shifted.  I'm probably

   Mondo Trasho - Pure Trash By now, it's entirely possible that we could of all re-written the lyrics to  Ian Dury's  sardonic classic  'Reasons to be Cheerful'  over and over again - and that's just since the turn of the year. Uncertainty has entered into our lives again just as it looked like the corner had been turned without the need to look back, new variants of Covid threaten to de-rail the full scale opening of UK P.L.C once again. For music of course, this continued alternative version of ' Groundhog Day'  could completely ruin the entire summer. Festivals are dropping one by one again, despite the successful pilot events in  Liverpool,  with the lack of tangible Insurance policies making it increasingly impossible for the independents to have a safety net to fall back on; indoor live venues watch on with baited breath. Thankfully, new music keeps coming out, whether or not it can be played live without social distancing.  Mondo Trasho 

  With their 'Live From Toad Hall' E.P arriving on June 4th, Ryan Doyle Elward  listens to the current single ' Bring Out Your Dead'  and give us his thoughts.   The latest single ' Bring Out Your Dead' from New Zealand based Horror in Clay is in many ways a shimmering memory of  My Bloody Valentine's ' Loveless' or  ' Souvlaki' by Slowdive . Steady, droning lyrics float on big and washy fuzz, finishing off with a broadcast bit that’s at once both sobering and yet further trance inducing. That’s all to say: they’ve forgotten nothing and then some in their recollection of the shoegaze-days atmospheric and that soundscape for a mind adrift. Horror in Clay confounds expectations with their new single, given that it is in such stark contrast to their 2019 self-titled E.P, which was resplendent in its bleakness. Full of tracks truly intoxicating in their unease, the album is jarring and composite, binding adjacent genres like the stitch work

Mutes - Dreams of Being Cornered This is the first review for the site from  Dan Tanswell .  Dan  is a non-binary North Walian writer living in Cardiff. They are mostly sustained by biscuits and white noise.  I haven’t written anything for a long time - I’m being honest, maybe too honest - not anything that anyone has read anyway.  I’m finding things I was good at as a kid therapeutic and the other thing is writing about music is a great way for the analytical area of the brain to get a good work out. I came at this release blind. The press pack describes Mutes as a ‘prog-punk trio’, but I was pleased to find this release leaned into the prog element of that really hard. The opener is a lo-fi Porcupine Tree- esque affair that feels like it was designed to ease us in before track 2 jolts us awake. ' Identifier'  switches between layered guitars and melodies and more distorted driving heavier riffs with ease and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the next single. It’s more

CHIHUAHUA - Violent Architecture E.P It's been a long old week here at NNWNF headquarters. I awoke on Wednesday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck - and not in the ultimate expression of love ' There is a light that never goes out' type way. I was drenched in sweat and had, what I can only describe, as a honking cough. It made me sound like a defensive Sealion fearing for the safety of it's young. Inevitably, I had to get myself a test to ensure I wasn't struck down by ..you know what. Thankfully, after getting my result a day later, I was negative of..you know what. The relief was tangible, but I still felt like a sack of spuds. Unfortunately, this has meant this review has taken a bit of a back burner until I felt vaguely human. The aches and pains have eased somewhat, but I'm still indiscriminately coughing up fragments of my thigh bone. Anyway, enough of my woes, let's get NOISY.  The power of noise can never be underestimated. I'm

  Frail Jonny, AKA Jonathan Wright   hails from Ashville, North Carolina and creates rich, expressive alternative pop   with multiple themes.   We got our new writer Ryan Doyle Elward to take a listen to his new E.P.   Afterlives Vol. 1 , NC artist Frail Johnny’s first major release under the moniker, begins with ‘The End of It’, by youthful vocal tones adjoined to reverb-heavy piano, where it seems to parallel for a time some of the same soft sounds and thoughtful stories found in Death Cab for Cutie’s more boyish ballads. Track one matures quickly though, taking on layers of strings mid-way and addressing ideas of impermanence. In fact, the full effect of certain elements in the first song are only felt after listening to the album in its entirety, giving the bloom of voices at the word honey - a haunting presence that comes from ruminating on painful memories. ‘ Our Secrets ’ continues that exploration of his past, highly specific and personal at first, then expanding into a