Ishmael Ensemble & Los Campesinos! offer advice about starting out, and Jason Solomons from the Cinedrome speaks to Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley about his latest endeavour
The Green Man PodcastShow Notes
Feeling inspired to start a band? Come to the Mountain Stage, where Ishmael Ensemble & Los Campesinos! reflect on their careers, the people who have championed them along the way, and how to get your music out there. We then wander through Einstein's Garden and up to Cinedrome where the host of the Cinedrome Jason Solomons talks to Adrian Utley about the film 137.
Pete Cunningham cut his teeth as a teenage DJ playing at raves in quarries, before sampling some of the finest club culture his home city of Bristol has had to offer. He’s a saxophonist as well as a DJ and producer, and since 2017 has led eclectic collective Ishmael Ensemble to increasingly epic heights. Last year’s Rituals upped the ante with a generous use of drones and drums you might hear on a metal record, and the result: vast, textured Massive Attack-style soundscapes that will sound right at home in the Welsh mountains
Cardiff indie rockers Los Campesinos! met during freshers’ week at university and seven albums on, achieved their first Top 20 album, All Hell — self-produced and self-released and with a total marketing spend of £190.86. They’re true champions of the independent DIY spirit and when they’re not at their day jobs, they’re making songs about “local football, doomed romances, and the fall of capitalism” that are made to be danced to.
An exploration in free thought and improvisation, 137 is the combined sonic force of Adrian Utley (Portishead), Larry Stabbins, Jim Barr (Get the Blessing) & Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear, Patti Smith). Brutal noise interlaced with meditative rhythms, ferocious yet fragile, 137 will venture into the world of expanded cinema playing in symbiosis with avant-garde experimental film.
More from The Green Man Podcast
The worlds of pop and rock owe a much greater debt to the classical canon than we realise. A direct and fascinating lineage draws from the experimentalism of Pierre Henry to The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows, from Stockhausen to Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. In her new book Everything We Do is Music, Elizabeth Alker shines a light on the fertile ground that exists between the borders of classical music and pop. Elizabeth is in conversation with broadcaster Huw Stephens.
Two of our comedy heroes putting the world to rights? Oh, go on then.
Power, resistance, and the race to save our world.
Cameron Picton is the former black midi guitarist and bassist and his new project, My New Band Believe, has hit upon a sound that could have taken multiple albums to establish. The debut album released in April is urgent and jangly, almost tripping over itself in its eagerness to be heard.
In his astonishing and subversive memoir, Bless Me Father, Kevin Rowland lays bare his unvarnished life story for the very first time. From the juvenile courts of his troubled teenage years to the early days of the New Romantic scene in the late ’70s and beyond, he recounts his darkest hours, deepest desires and greatest joys. Back with a new album as Dexys Midnight Runners, Kevin Rowland is joined in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Sophie Williams.