Showing posts with label swathes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swathes. Show all posts

28 October 2010

Swathes: More Stuff


The music made by Swathes is enjoyable. But it's also highly impressive. The instrumental noise of Swathes, reminiscent of much of the shoegaze scene of yesteryear; droningly swirling and bloating, is quite incredibly made by one man alone.

I've almost seen Matt Webber, the man behind Swathes who is based in North Wales, live twice. The first time was at Cardiff Arts Institute (complete technology fail) and the second at 1234 Shoreditch (though at one of the festival's after-parties, not the festival itself, it transpired). Both times I was pretty annoyed, but pleasantly I can now sit here alone in this cold, bland bedroom of mine, shut my eyes, and imagine myself with a beer in hand standing in a crowd of skinny-jeaned types finally managing to experience all of the loops, drum machines and guitar noise unfold right before my eyes; for Matt has posted a link (he did it months ago but I've only just noticed) to a live radio session.

Download the four live tracks from Swathes' very own bandcamp here, and don't forget to say "thank you".

10 March 2010

I Went To A Gig Last Night... Well, Sort Of



I went to a gig last night. Swathes was being put on by FLUX=RAD, a brilliant little weekly night at Cardiff Arts Institute who play great music and put on gigs, usually for free. To convince you how good they are, last night's DJ-ing was opened with Georgia by Yuck and followed by Surfer Blood... great! And only a few weeks ago did they put on Beach House. So yeah. They're good. But last night things didn't quite go to plan.

Cardiff-based support band Among Brothers ' set was really good and passed without any problems. They play a sort of blend of Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros with some electronics chucked in for good measure and are definitely worth checking out.

But one-man-band Swathes' (aka Matt Webber) set wasn't so successful. Opening with a wall of noise, reverb and distortion, everything sounded really good only for his laptop to start playing silly buggers and cutting out randomly for a few seconds at a time. A reboot and a few guitar smashes to the floor later and it turned out things could not be saved, which is a real shame because when they laptop was working, things sounded very good.

It was still a good night. I heard enough of Swathes set to confirm my suspicions that his music is very good, and I found a new band in Among Brothers.

Swathes - Distances

Swathes - Very White