"With sly humour and punkish jangles, Whitney K’s mastered the depths of avant folk country. Sounding like a freewheeling Townes Van Zandt fronting the Velvet Underground; his ‘Trans-Canada Oil Boom Blues’ careens from uplifting to sombre, upbeat to sad - a bundle of drunken nu-Dylan contradictions. Essential. "
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See event details
A
gig
held at Strange Brew
on Friday 11th November. The event starts at 19:00.
Yukon's Golden Boy Goes West https://whitneyk.bandcamp.com/album/hard-to-be-a-god
Country, Americana and all that garage-lark never quite clicked with me TBH. That was until the wandering stalwart Konner Whitney came into my life via Maple Death Records.
The renaissance Ghost Rider is hitting these shores for the first time, with a full-band in tow. The soundtrack to waking up, sparking up and listening to the coffee burble.
Do ya self a favour and spend the next couple weeks immersed in these SONGS, they will grow on you & into you. Get ya heart-strings tugg'd back into place via his rootsy, widescreen Street Hassle. Bring yr mam & pap, bring their pap & mam...
FFO: VU, Reed, Cale, Cohen, Kristofferson, Van Zandt, Nilsson, Dylan etc.
"Folklore and realism becoming reckoning and truthfulness, what was outsider folk is now political poetry, life in motion delivered through a freeway ridden baritone voice that transforms the mundane into extraordinary.
Words, harmony, arrangements all dance in the same direction, free flowing through songs about change and memory. A voice as an instrument.
This is not simply a ‘kill yr idols’ situation, this is an open conversation, where storytelling becomes visionary and frames personal, poetic and often playful dérives through the histories of their imagination, bending and elevating a whole serious inventory of dreams."
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Since '17 I've had a pen-pal of sorts. I can't remember how we first connected, but Eva & I have been sending each other niche folk musics for over five years now. She has THE Best Ear for beautiful songwriting and has expanded my listening habits, no doubt. Check out her Jan '18 Schwet mix and then her show from last week for Noods Radio. https://evamay.bandcamp.com/track/remembering
At some point she began sharing some her own music with me. Incredibly intimate, evocative and vulnerable, it was as good as anything else she had sent over. It always felt like a secret she kept hidden, often deleting tracks off Soundcloud the same week they were uploaded. An Avonian Sibylle Baier in the flesh, a dour yet solemn private-press Sky Girl in our midst.
It was 5 years ago I began asking her to play at a Schwet show. For a variety of reasons she could never commit, but equally I never relented. Roughly 15x offers later, she has finally succumbed and will present a live-band performance, 'm a tad excited...
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Bristol's best new experimental rock band, Quade complete the bill. https://quadebanduk.bandcamp.com
They have been slowly been making waves for a couple years now and v. happy to finally have them at Schwet. I only used that trash-phrase 'making waves' cos that's kinda what they do. Throbbing, lolloping, wave-y repeato-rhythms for violin, synth, bass & drums. Languid yet poetic vocals atop soaring strings, their forte is that form of minimalist rock that achieves it's best thru restrictions. Distinctly downtempo, they manage the accessible/experimental praxis with ease. Mildly freak-ish folk-ish drone-ish, psych-ish ambient-y hypo-kraut-dub. Upward trajectory likely.
+++ All World Cowboy Romance (AKA Daddy BKV AKA Leather Rats Vokillz) will be pushing his schlockabilly agenda all night long.