A quick recap of details for this Tuesday night.

1. It’s our final live music event until September, so a perfect and timely opportunity to witness one of Wales’ finest musicians of recent years celebrate an album of subtle, heartbroken wonders (‘Pictures In The Morning’ - out now on Recordiau Gwymon).
    
2. Our support artist, The Gentle Good, can weave stunning sunsets of the soul from his voice and expertly picked acoustic guitar. His most recent album, Tethered For The Storm, glitters with folkish gems and was shortlisted for last year’s Welsh Music Prize.
    
3. Ben ‘Soundhog’ Hayes returns to our DJ’ing ranks for the 1st time in a couple of months, fresh from a musical sojourn in France and a return to bastard pop that has put YouTube under considerable strain. He’ll be playing old and ace records for us. There are few better.
    
4. As will Elin Bach, of course. Radiating a smile we can barely contain within the beams of the Warehouse roof. Cannot. Wait.
    
5. Grey ‘n’ Pink Records return, too, this time with a stall of excellent 2nd hand LP’s & singles in the top bar. This should make it considerably easier for you to see where they are and see what they’ve got tucked away in those magical crates.
    
6. Set times will run very much like this:
   
   19:30 - 20:30hrs Adam Walton (DJ set) 
   20:30 - 21:00hrs The Gentle Good (Live)
   21:00 - 21:30hrs Elin Bach (DJ set)
   21:30 - 22:15hrs Richard James + band (Live)
   22:15 - 23:30hrs Elin Bach + Ben Hayes (DJ set)
    
7. Tickets can still be pre-ordered & picked up on the door from here:
   
   http://www.seetickets.com/Event/RICHARD-JAMES/Telford-s-Warehouse/636394
   
   You can pay on the door, too. ( £6, as opposed to £5 if you buy in advance from the link above or the venue itself. )
   
   
8. You can hear sample tracks from the artists here:
   
   http://soundcloud.com/cracklingvinyl/sets/08-05-12-telfords-warehouse/
   
   
9. Thanks to Marc Riley & Cerys Matthews at 6Music for their support. Great, great shows obviously presented and compiled by music-lovers. They’d be two of the first names on my honours list. To be fair, my ‘honours list’ would be a very unlikely development.
   
   
10. I do hope you can make it. We have brought some phenomenal artists to Chester since November. But you - the audience - are as important to the equation as anyone else. Your support has been fantastic and very much appreciated. I’d better go. I’m starting to weep! What the heck am I going to do for the next 3 months?
    
     

Cerys Matthews talks (a little) about Crackling Vinyl on her peerlessly excellent radio show this morning (53 minutes in.)

Listen now (links to the BBC iPlayer for 1 week).

Diolch yn fawr iawn Cerys! Ti’n seren. 

georgiaruthmusic:

You can listen to In Luna in its digital entirety via Spotify. 

Or you can still get hold of the limited 10” vinyl from www.sadwrn.com

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci - Patio Song … just to remind ourselves of some of our imminent headliner’s peerless pedigree. *Not* the official video, obviously. Even more obviously, this is definitely one of the finest singles of the last 50 years. And if you disagree, perhaps your only hope of salvation is to come to the gig on Tuesday.

We will do our best to save you. Honest injun x 

Exquisite Richard James session on Marc Riley 6Music. iPlayer link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01gyhd7 (18 & 46 mins in). Playing Telford’s Warehouse, Chester on Tuesday.

http://soundcloud.com/cracklingvinyl/sets/08-05-12-telfords-warehouse

http://www.facebook.com/events/112211808910506

Our next special live guest at Crackling Vinyl, Richard James ( @InChapters_PenP ) is in session for Marc Riley on @BBC6music from 7pm TONIGHT [ Wednesday 2nd May 2012 ]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c72y1

http://soundcloud.com/cracklingvinyl/sets/08-05-12-telfords-warehouse/

Richard James - ‘My Heart’s On Fire’ … Richard James @ Telford’s Warehouse is a week tonight! http://soundcloud.com/cracklingvinyl/sets/08-05-12-telfords-warehouse

[photo (c) Angel Ceballos]

On Tuesday 11^th September, Crackling Vinyl is proud to present another night of brilliant live music and superlative vinyl excellence at Telford’s Warehouse in Chester. This is our first night back after our summer break.

Tickets for Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline are £5 in advance from the venue itself (01244 390090) / £5+ booking fee from SeeTickets.com, or £6 on the door.

More information on this event’s artists follows:

 
Cate Le Bon - ‘Cyrk’

New album released 30^th April 2012 on Ovni (Turnstile)

‘Fold The Cloth’ video: http://vimeo.com/33373552

“like a Valley-born Nico locked in the cupboard with The Fall” **** Q

“Cate Le Bon follows her own path” **** MOJO

“her lyrical style recalls the whimsical, pastoral fantasy of Syd Barrett and her music jumps everywhere, from garage rock to harmony pop to electronic….with it’s own sense of logic.” **** The Times

“Le Bon is someone whose take on songwriting is so sideways, it would be completely impossible for anyone else to replicate it” Guardian Guide

“like an unearthed psych classic” NME 8/10

“absolutely brilliant” Drowned In Sound

“Le Bon’s days as a farmgirl in West Wales may be long behind her, but she’s clearly held on to certain agricultural principles: namely, that the right amounts of patience and nurturing can produce glorious yields.” Pitchfork

“How would I describe the album?” muses Cate Le Bon. “Cut a remote island in two and place one half to your ear…”

Cate Le Bon, the Cardiff-based singer who popped up on Gruff Rhys’s Neon Neon album before issuing her own debut album, My Oh My, in 2010, returns with her second album, CYRK, in April 2012. It follows Le Bon’s extensive tour with St Vincent in the USA, where the album has already been released too much acclaim and Cate is currently on her own headlining jaunt.

“CYRK is like a time travel travelogue which continually returns the sea,” says Le Bon, who took the album’s title from the Polish word for Circus and took inspiration from a trip to the Isle Of Eigg. “I mostly write about the sea, matters of the heart and animals – or a mish-mash of all three.”

Recorded with producer Krissie Jenkins in Cardiff and set for release on Gruff Rhys’s Ovni imprint, CYRK found Le Bon raiding Super Furry Animals’s collection of synths, pedals and guitars. “We spent days plugging different things into one another – it was so much fun,” she says.

Players include Le Bon’s “trusty” backing band (Andy Fung on drums, Steve Black on bass and  Niwl’s Sion Glyn on guitar) plus H. Hawkline on synths and Meilyr and Gwion from Racehorses playing brass on Great. “If you listen very carefully,” says Le Bon, “you can hear Gruff Rhys wailing backing vocals on Falcon Eyed too.”

The completed album is a 35-minute blast of colour, ever-changing as it whizzes from the garage pop opener Falcon Eyed to piano-led Puts Me To Work and the psychedelic title track. Elsewhere, the delights of Fold The Cloth, The Man I Wanted (“The only time that I have put a recorder track down and not been ridiculed for it. Result.”), the proggy Through The Mill and closing number Ploughing Out, a track so epic it demanded to be split into two parts. “The song ends with a cacophony of instruments, a mixture of everything that has appeared on the album,” says Le Bon. “It’s the finale. I make my saxophone debut; it will also be the last time I ever play saxophone. I very nearly ruptured my cheeks.”

http://www.Catelebon.com

http://twitter.com/catelebon

H. HAWKLINE

H. Hawkline has released two acclaimed albums on Shape Records, both of which plough a singular furrow across the over-farmed, muddy field of rock ‘n’ psych ‘n’ folk ‘n’ roll. Unequal parts sane Syd Barrett, John Renbourn and Paul Giovanni, H. Hawkline’s song embers will warm any heart yearning for an antidote to the inane and anodyne. He’s ace. And he has hair a stork could nest in.

http://hhawkline.bandcamp.com

http://twitter.com/h_hawkline

Chester’s excellent 2nd hand vinyl emporium, Grey ‘n’ Pink Records join us in the top bar. Cash back available over the bar.

Previous live guests at Crackling Vinyl have included: Laura J. Martin, Y Niwl, Colorama, Richard James, Toy Horses, T.G. Elias, Georgia Ruth, Chris T-T, She Makes War, Sam Airey, Houdini Dax, Trwbador, The Gentle Good, Golden Fable, Pulco, Harry Keyworth, Greta Isaac, Atlas Twins, Sophie Ballamy.

Crackling Vinyl DJ’s: Ben ‘Soundhog’ Hayes, Elin Bach, Jeremy Horrill, Adam Walton.

So, the rain is falling; zealots are peering out their windows seeking signs of an ark, I’m gently soaking in the moist genius of Richard James.

He’s playing for Crackling Vinyl at Telford’s Warehouse a week on Tuesday.

How great is that?

Tell everyone you know. If you like.