Merry Christmas and Coming Soon——-
Nadolig Llawen/Happy Christmas to all attendees and supporters for Listen to the Voice of Fire past, present and future!
It’s been an awesome year, every concert has been a pleasure to host and been a discovery.
Of course the project and performance with the great Toshimaru Nakamura visiting wet West Wales (DEBUT) was a long term ambition and came together in stupendous fashion.
It was humbling, touching, overpowering to be honest to see so many of you characters thronging to the Ceredigion Museum for the concert with Nakamura. I was blown away.I am working on the CD now and this should be available in the first quarter of 2019.
The music on the night-wow- Jenn Kirby amazed, Ed Wright dazzled, Barret’s Dottled Beauty transcended, Arai Tatsuru—stupefied, Andrew Leslie Hooker howled and the trio of Nakamura, Rhodri and Angharad Davies-smacked gobs with nuance, space and edge. Meeting up with the marvellous Ed Pinsent was another high point-thanks for coming Ed and for your sketches of us all 
Yes-we have this night on audio and must do something with it in due course.
There are tooo many to thank but a few whilst I remember. John Whatling and Les Wilkins- you jumped into deal with issues whilst I crumbled-thanks both. And Ed Wright thanks too, as I faltered you were calm!
We’ve kept to this odd routine of March, July and November-and performances at all of these have made my year-thanks for coming, for creeping out of the woodwork and sharing my sort of music. Dear Duncan Chapman-a long term supporter of LVOF brought his collaborator Mike McInnerney (sp.,) along, and together they conjured deep layers of shakuhachi and electronic haze. It was a pleasure to meet you and for our dinner discussion at the Treehouse the day before. And we were joined by the rather excellent Richard Craig.
Richard’s whole approach has been personally very affecting. This was a subtle and understated performance which capitalized on attentive listening, space, speaker location intimacy and fractured tonalities. Good humour and intelligent insightful discussion, a good Indian meal was had before hand-thankyou Sir.
Steve Moyes destroyed his cello and the electroacoustic phase from Audiomulch wizzadry was fantastic. Steve-you have been a long term supporter of LVOF-it’s been great to hear you play and I am looking forward to more collaboration in the future. It was a hazy summer’s night in July and what can I say-thanks all.
For me this business of LVOF is a personal journey of reconnecting with myself-if that makes any sense., and I very much enjoyed meeting Richard and the discussions we had, at the Light of Asia and the Treehouse with Duncan and Mike-and of course the concert and approach. Thanks! And for those of you who did not make it, it was another blinder.
November seems a year ago. Ffrwd-dropped into my horizon I think thanks to Malcolm Gwyon, and I am so glad he did-this was-captured perfectly by Felix’s photos-overwhelming avant musique concrete with Cymric twists, we must have this fellow back-Nord, Power Tools, Welsh hymnody and Nord modular-what is not to like.
I knew we were going into modular heaven with Subversive Frequencies, encroaching on Hawkwind-ish levitational powers this tech heavy set was super saturated with psychedelic but unsettling visuals and imagery swirling and projected behind this troupe, with the silhouetted attendees in the stalls it made the whole evening very surreal, until Ffrwd appeared and twisted us off to another dimension. . Marc Snell manned this ship and also provided much technical solutions on the night-big thanks Marc.
Susan Mathews and Ian Holloway-thanks for bringing another dimension to what we try to do with LVOF. Dreamy piano Satie-esque impressionism, with drones and home made devices-kitchen bowls’ inharmonic frequencies never sounded so good. Their set was the perfect antidote and I hope we meet again soon.
So where does this leave us now, oh yes-Merry Christmas.
And set your diaries for the weekend of Friday 15th and Saturday 16th of March.
Friday 15th: If all goes according to plan we shall have a 1 day symposium at the National Library of Wales “In a Strange Garden” addressing hermeticism, acoustic ecologies and sound process, with concert and exhibition of rare alchemical texts. Participants to be announced soon-expect some surprises!
Friday 15th: Evening a fantastic spread of essential psychedelic noise drone visits Aberystwyth. You cannot get these characters normally and here they are coming to visit, please tell your friends and do not miss out on this.
itdreamedtome—-legendary obscure haze ambient drone
Laura Netz——– harsh ambient experimenter
Bell Lungs——–Scottish psychedelic infused songstress
Sharron Krauss—–Folk horror legend
Saturday 16th:
Ashtray Navigations—–the premier DIY underground aesthetes, they’ve long been in my dreams to play at Aber, descend and expect to be thrilled, if you have any interest in independent minded and inspirational DIY underground legends beloved of The Wire and Thurston Moore-you must attend this.
Kitchen Cynics—-another legend, a marvellous singer of finely poised songs, who plays psychedelic and folk related compositions and has been a long time player on the DIY underground, pre internet tape swapping labels of yester year, but so what—his music remains direct, emotionally charged and spellbinding- you must not let opportunity this slip!
Hawthonn- a commanding and striking combo, whose deep astral folk and electronic esoterica will spin you to another place. Phil Legard you will know from his many releases and academic writing on occult matters is joined by Layla Legard, after last year’s Red Goddess release one of the Quietus’ albums of the year), this is the icing on the cake, for the curious and for those in the know, please come along and tell your friends, never to be repeated at these time space co-ordinates.
Tickets will be available on the door and for those attending the conference a batch deal., subject to me pulling my finger out.
So last year was awesome—-next year will be ultra, ultra—– draft poster attached to pass around to your friends. Blog to be updated soon, follow me on Twitter-it’s the easiest way for me!
Anyhow, rest up, don’t eat to much and see you on the flip side
Dafydd