I Found #6 Felix – Cardiff Arts Institute, 24 Jan

Felix are delicate like ribbons blowing in the afternoon breeze delicate. Vulnerable, pastel chamber pop swept with minimal piano and cello while Lucinda Chua’s verbose vocals undulate overhead. The sparse, distant piano stirs with the grace of Nyman and Satie, while echoing Rachel Grimes’ haunting arrangements in Rachel’s.

Seemingly effortless like a summer’s day – at times they evoke the feeling of walking through long grass, touching the tips with your fingers – there’s more than a trickle of melancholy; of reminiscence; of elegant but cutting honesty – Chua’s pining love on the Debussy-like ‘Death to Everyone but Us’ for instance. These are quiet melodies to silence a room. Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes slowed down to a crawl; Cat Power stretching awake; Max Richter curling up with Antony and the Johnsons. As soft as your slow breath as you read this.

Guardianistas and Whizzer & Chips – Buzz reviews CAI

Buzz Magazine has just posted this good piece on the opening of Cardiff Arts Institute.

It’s a fair review that picks up on the Institute’s kitsch and tongue-in-cheek approach while picking apart some of the venue’s features, such as the manifesto and the ‘Nothing Special’ wallpaper – which have already received a tiny amount of attention already – calling them “mildly masturbatory touches that didn’t quite hit the mark”.

Fuck John Lewis – here’s Cardiff Arts Institute

Cate Le Bon

The shop window of the newly-opened All Saints store on the Hayes is full of beautiful, antique sewing machines. They sit there in nice rows, neatly aligned and dormant, subservient to the window aesthetic. Once individual icons, their sole function now is just dressing for the multi-million pound St David’s 2 complex. Their heritage equally pawned and ignored as customers head for the cash-till.

Okay, they’re probably not antique anyway, they’re probably snap-fixed in Spitalfields and have less milage than Katie Price’s typewriter. But looking at those sewing machines on the weekend felt like standing outside the Point just a year ago, pondering the future of Cardiff and the embarrassing cultural death that seemed to be conspiring against it.

The Coal Exchange already closed and the Point served with a noise abatement order that would ultimately contribute to it’s closure, it felt like a solemn question mark hung over the head of everyone who loves dipping their daps into the city’s music venues. With the craggy spires of St David’s 2 emerging above the horizon it seemed the city couldn’t give a shit about our heritage. Shut down, decay and move on – like Cardiff always has done (look at pictures of the old decaying docks in the seventies for instance, and compare it with Bristol or Manchester; history you can still see and touch).

Cardiff doesn’t love us, you see. They won’t close a tiny, cobbly lane for Swn Festival and having shown little support for the Point are prepared to lose yet another venue in the Globe. But like the beautiful suckers we are, we love Cardiff. We fight to keep the Vulcan open; we put our hard-earned into Kruger and 3 Syllables gigs; we sit and watch the colours change in Bute Park. We buy chips on Caroline St, but we put the wrappers in the bin. We suffer the closure of a venue, or the loss of a promoter, but we move on; or we stand up and do it ourselves.