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DEATH MONKEY is launching it’s Summer Showcase event at Sin City in Swansea this August Friday 17th! Tickets are £4 in advance available from Derricks Records or £5 on the door.

We’re taking over SIN CITY for our Showcase this August with hypnotic Brit-Pop Phycadelia SOUNDWIRE, Sixties inspired garage- rock WINDSHAKE and headlining, a band who are new to the scene but very much smashing it with a string of high impact gigs already, PORTRAITS. who pedal their own unique brand of new-wave rock.
PORTRAITS. take their cues from a variety of influences throughout the last six decades of rock, punk, and metal and manage to mix it with a very modern sound which results in a genre clash that is explosive!

We will have releases from two of the bands on the line up out very soon, Lighthouse by PORTAITS. and Accept it From Me by WINDSHAKE will drop later this month and you can catch them both being played Live at SIN CITY on Aug 17.

Psychedelic Garage-Rock band WINDSHAKE are going into the studio this week with Producer Dave Milsom to record an exclusive single for Death Monkey at Abertawe Rd. Studios.

WINDSHAKE who are known for their self produced recordings and strong DIY ethic have agreed to the enter the studio this month to record a one off single as part of Death Monkey‘s new SINGLES CLUB.

The SINGLES CLUB will see artists record exclusive songs for DMR and give the opportunity for some awesome collaborations with more artists far and wide, as we seek to extend our mission to promote Welsh fringe music and make connections with other international scenes.

You’ll be able to hear the new single by WINDSHAKE in the next couple of months and it will be available to stream and Download.

Abertawe Rd. Studio and Death Monkey Records are teaming up from this July to make the studio home for all DMR’s recording needs for our artists. Studio owner Pez Anderson has always been a supporter of the music scene in Swansea and is well known to many generations of bands who have used the studio in Uplands, Swansea to rehearse.

Abertawe Rd is Swansea’s longest running Analogue Studio and is home to a STUDER 24trk Tape Machine that was used to create the soundtrack for Lord of the Rings. The Studio was also in the papers when some old tape stock which had been bought from ebay, was discovered to contain the original multitrack recordings for the 90’s rock band Thunder, which were instantly recognisable to Pez as they were one of his favourite bands!

While the illustrious analogue equipment won’t routinely be used for Death Monkey recordings, in-house producer Dave Milsom will be hoping to make use of it on the right projects, to add the famous ‘analogue warmth‘ which is so revered by audiophiles and indie music fans alike.

The partnership between ARS and DMR will make the recording process a lot easier for Death Monkey and it’s artists, as well as providing a base of operations for the label. We have in the past used a number of different amazing studios all around South Wales to record our albums ‘dry hiring‘ and moving in for the duration of the recording with our own gear. We can now focus our efforts on giving a Swansea institution the recognition it deserves and increase its role in making Welsh music known far and wide.

With Pez and his studio on board, we look forward to offering bands an amazing recording experience, in a studio which is considered by many to have one of the best drum room sounds in Swansea.

Death Monkey Records were at the recent BBC Radio 1 Academy which took place on 21st May at Swansea Grand Theatre. We were there with one of our NEW bands and took part in a Q&A session about the regional music industry as part of a panel of industry experts.

Death Monkey invaded the BBC event bringing along one of our newest signings Portraits, who helped tell people a bit more about the label and having a record deal from an artists point of view. Christian and Dom from the band were also performing acoustic sets throughout the day.

We were really glad to be a part of the Academy on the panel of industry experts and had a great time, however we do reserve a bit of criticism for the BBC. Since we began the label in 2010, we’ve seen a marked decline in the organisations support for local music, having axed all its regional Introducing programming which used to spotlight and give airplay to local bands on a regular basis. The infrastructure still exists, but is now a lot more regimented and contained and not celebrated in the same way as it used to be. Grassroots material is much reduced in scale and relegated to late night programming rather than the more visible mid evening slot it used to occupy on regional channels. There is also now less capacity to hear original and grassroots music on the network.

Presenter Adam Walton stands out as an exception to this trend, with a varied and eclectic curation of fringe music in Wales and a high standard for submissions to his show. Unfortunately, Adam seems to be what remains of what used to be a whole host of presenters throughout the BBC who would showcase NEW, experimental and unheard music, from ‘up and coming’ artists as well as previously unknown bands.

We would like to see a return to the sort of support the BBC previously gave to showcasing Grassroots music. Their current Introducing framework only seems to focus on bands after they have made a name for themselves, and the output also seems to be a lot more ‘commercially’ orientated. Airplay is still a significant achievement for new bands and while streaming and play-listing has become much more increasingly relevant, it still doesn’t replace the human connection and influence that a presenter can achieve with an audience.

There’ll be more NEWS from recent signings Portraits in the coming weeks.

A NEW collective the Welsh Sound Board has been formed in Swansea to support and connect the music scene in South West Wales. The initiative has been setup by a group of independent businesses and creatives involved in the music and arts industry in the region, with a forum to be held on the March 13 which is open all interested to get involved.

We’re super excited that Death Monkey is to be included in the founding members of the new organisation, which is based around the idea of a community of creatives and business’s in the local music industry interacting with each other and sharing expertise to better serve the scene they represent.

Collaboration has always been at the heart of Death Monkey and we believe that in order for a scene to grow and stay strong, working side by side with other organisations is essential. The aim of growing the scene in the region has always been one of our founding objectives and this opportunity to strengthen the grassroots community and create a truly independent micro industry in Wales, gives us a lot of hope for what could be achieved.

The first forum of many planned will be held at Creature Sound Music Hall and subsequently rotated around surrounding venues who are signed up to the collective. Significantly, the open forum on the 13th gives both musicians and fans a chance to have their voice heard by local organisers and let them know the changes they want to see in their scene, by people who want to make those changes happen.

Hollywood conceptualist Keith Williams has been working with “World Vs. World” on their latest video shoot for their next single ‘Sea of Glass‘. The single and video are due out on Feb 16 and will be available from the bands youtube channel and across social media.

Keith Williams who is originally from Neath, made his name from his involvement in a number of high profile music videos during the 80’s and 90’s, most notably Michael Jackson‘s ‘Billie Jean’ and prolifically what is credited as MTV’s very first concept music video The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. He is also known for his work with Elton John, as well as a host of other big names as well as providing material for a number of movie theme treatments including the massive Ghostbusters.

“World Vs. World” attracted Keith’s attention due to their previous self produced and impressively choreographed videos. Along with their cinematic style this blended with his own sense of highly conceptualised storytelling.

The NEW Single Sea of Glass is an apocalyptical warning about the threat of impending nuclear war, an extremely potent topic right now given the heated exchanges between the current volatile POTUS and trigger happy commander of everyones favourite rogue nation, who has recently been newly minted with experimental nuclear war heads.

This next release promises to see “World Vs. World” stay firmly on form after the stunning collection of songs from their last album, but we can look forward this time around to an added touch of Hollywood glam to this next single at least.

Womanby Street in Cardiff has won an immense victory by music fans campaigning to save it from developers this month. A new ‘Agent of Change‘ principle just passed in Wales means venues which are already established, should be protected from new developments setting up around them and then subsequently making noise complaints. The twats.

Womanby Street has long been the centre for independent music in the capitol but there has been a recent spate of applications for new hotel and student developments which would have inevitably seen noise complaints being made against their neighbouring live music venues, which pump out alternative tunes well into the early hours and would have been the end of the night life culture on the street if they went ahead.

Thanks to intense campaigning and protest marches by the like minded people of Cardiff and beyond, who don’t want to lose what is one of the last places in the city for independent bars and music venues in Cardiff and see them replaced by soulless corporate chains, selling cocktails squirted out of condiment bottles and “craft” beer authentically produced from industrial breweries.

Wetherspoons squatted its corpulent arse at one end of the street some time ago and has been instrumental in the troubles with its plans to expand. We’ve already lost Dempsey’s which hosted probably one of Cardiff’s longest standing grassroots live venues upstairs, now transformed into a shitty sports bar, as if there’s not enough of them. Luckily Clwb Ifor Bach still sits at the centre of Womanby street as its most prolific resident, despite concerns for its future in the past and has been joined in recent years by a cluster of bars which keep the streets spirit of independence alive and provide alternative offerings to the usual malaise of pop music and jager bombs elsewhere .

In Swansea, venues face similar worries, but also a host of other problems, with continued gentrification meaning there’s not even half the number of live music venues which used to be around in the ten last years, The Scene, being the most recent casualty. The ‘Agent of Change‘ policy is a very welcome, if not long overdue and a complete no brainier.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!

Here’s a link to a Walesonline article which explains the situation in detail:

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/victory-live-music-campaigners-government-13062039?fbclid=IwAR27Feaf1UQ2qNHNXBwwg2406e_wRoXXF4qssjfbQkyKOsurg_ayA0PRE74