"This is an album of ambition and great bravery. I think it is one of the greatest musical
achievements of any Welsh band, ever." - Adam Walton, BBC Wales
"They create a hypnotic, heart melting sound that's simultaneously life affirming and
post apocalyptic, the glow on your child's face after a screaming fit" - God Is In The TV
You might have assumed that Glow was dead, and that would have been a reasonable assumption to make, as (a) we haven’t done any gigs for ages, (b) we’d given up on the myspace, (c) we haven’t sent any emails out for months, and (d) we’d kinda been working on other projects through most of 2009.
Well – you were WRONG! We’re NOT dead!!! We’re definitely still going, and if you want proof, we have just finished a lovely EP of brand new songs!
Basically, after several months in hibernation, we decided it would be nice to get together and make some music again. So we gathered ourselves together around the mixing desk one rather relaxed and happy weekend in late 2009, and what we got at the end of it was the bones of three new songs. So after a short break to catch our breath we got together again for another relaxed and happy weekend to finish them off… and here they are for you, presented as a lovely EP, free to download and listen to from this link!
Enjoy it.
Oh – and when you’re done, you might want to take another listen to “I, Yeah!”, which is (a) now available on iTunes and Amazon MP3 and (b) is one of BBC Wales’ Adam Walton’s Top Ten Albums Of The Decade. Both facts should hopefully influence you enough to tell all your friends to buy a copy, who will then tell their friends, and then their friends’ friends… and we can then finally get around to living fast and dying young as we were clearly born to do.
A friend of Glow’s, Jason Bevan, recently made us the subject of his masters project (sorry, I can’t remember the proper title!) and so we went over to Cardiff to film a music video for Chimes. This is the result. We really like it and think Jason has done an excellent job! Plus, we had great fun and got to dance about in front of a green screen with Chimes at half-tempo.
Jason also filmed a gig earlier in the year at the Buffalo Bar in Cardiff and used the footage to create a video for Broken Wings, also as part of his project. Here is that video!
Jason has been kind enough to let us upload these videos for your (and our) enjoyment. Thanks Jason!!
Bristol-based trio Glow met while studying music at uni. You might expect, then, an album of virtuosic knob-twiddling and lab-tested musical perfection: and, though that does fuel this extraordinary debut, it runs more on a sheer fascination with music and all its strange, atmospheric possibilities. Thickly layered beats and samples, melancholy, sighing glides of brass, twitches and swerves from sequencers and keyboards: textbook electronica thus far. What’s far less expected is their pairing with Ben Johnson’s downbeat, almost nakedly honest vocals. There are echoes of Radiohead’s nervy electronica or Spiritualized’s celestial comedown drone, but there’s more warmth, emotion and vulnerability than either. Highlights: ’Open Your Heart’, a duetted autopsy of a relationship; ‘Tape Riser’, a twitching, bewitching beast, feverishly kinetic like The The’s epic synth/drum thumpalongs. And ‘Mathematikoi’ simply entrances: synth and trumpet that sound like a new planet being discovered.
4/5
Venue is a weekly magazine, which featured reviews of gigs, albums, singles and details of goings on in and around Bristol and Bath. www.venue.co.uk
We’ve just booked a last-minute gig supporting Halflight at Cardiff Barfly.
It’s this Wendesday – 11th June. Tickets are £5 (£4 with a flyer – we’ll try and get some) and doors are open at 7:30pm.
The original headline act pulled out, so Halflight took over as headline and kindly asked if we’d like to play. We love Halflight and have never played at the Barfly, so we’re really looking forward to it.
If you’re free on Wednesday, please come along and show your support. We’ll thank you by playing some excellent tunes and giving you free CDs, badges etc.
We’ve been a bit quiet this month… After our gig in Chester early in May, where we showcased tracks from the new album, we took a bit of time off.
Now it’s June and we’re back, eager to show more people our new tracks and aim for world domination. Ha!
Upcoming this month we have a couple of great gigs. The first is next Sunday, the 8th of June, at Raglan Baptist Church. It’s part of Raglan Music Festival and the evening is being very kindly hosted by Rob Atkins of Frost at Midnight. The fun is kicking off at 5pm with a BBQ (weather permitting). Next up is music from Armstrong and then us. It’s only £3 and we’ll be giving a first airing of Borderline alongside new favourites Tape Riser, Contradiction and Your Turn.
Next up after that is a gig at the legendary TJ’s in Newport. Deano, who used to run nights at the Riverside Tavern, has moved over to TJ’s and started up ‘Black Cherub’ Promotions to showcase the best new music in South Wales. We’re playing there on Wednesday 25th June, alongside Project Serpo and Thinking with Sand.
So, a couple of gigs there for you lovely folk. Soon we’ll book some more gigs outside of South Wales.
Oh, one last thing… We’ve got a new toy. It’s a 1995-built harmoniser. Come along to one of our upcoming gigs to see it in action!!
Last night we went over the bridge to Cardiff to record a radio interview with Adam Walton for his show on the Big British Castle’s Radio Wales. You can hear the interview by using the BBC’s listen again feature here.
In other news, all three of us have done remixes of Radiohead’s ‘Nude’. The band offered up the track to the general public this month and we though “yeah, why not”.
