Edge of Arcady

The Malakites Interview

“We want people to feel like you can do anything you want if you really go for it. It don’t matter what background you’re from, or what football team you support… we’re all the same! “ – The Malakites

One band we think are about to springboard into the cosmos after making seismic waves throughout South Wales’ live music venues are rapturously transcendent guitar aficionados The Malakites. Taking the anxiety of wasted chances and turning it into a joyously boisterous anthem, their latest release, Morning After, is one of the finest tracks to come out of Cardiff’s vibrant music scene in 2023. Back in January we declared it a solid indie rock stormer with a killer false ending.

And their frankly remarkable output doesn’t halt there, with 2022’s Only Sometimes providing forthright jabs of high quality rock’n’roll ardor and debut single, Roses on the Doorstep, displaying a somewhat embryonic version of a group adroitly navigating their way around an excellent tune that’s only slightly more stripped down than the lads usual riotous fare.

The end of 2023 and the start of 2024 sees The Malakites headlining their largest hometown show yet at The Globe in Roath before taking on a slew of shows nationwide in January and February to kick off the new year. The band’s frontman Webber agreed to have a little chat with us to fill us in on where the group are at right now before their next chapter begins.

The Malakites, Hi. How do we find you today and who exactly are we speaking to?

My name is Webber, and today you find me keeping myself nice and warm inside the house with a cup of tea.

First and foremost, you’ve got a massive gig coming up at The Globe in Cardiff on 16^th December. What can we expect from the night?

You can expect love, joy, carnage, soaring guitar riffs, melodic melodies and just everybody having a good time!

Then, come the new year, you’ve got a tour in the works. Fill us in on those dates too – what are you particularly looking forward to, being out on the road?

Yes! We’re going on tour in January and February and really looking forward to be playing some cool headlines shows across England and Wales. The road trips are always fun. We’ll be playing cities such as Manchester – 20/1/24, Sheffield – 26/1/24, Liverpool – 1/2/24, Birmingham – 3/2/24, Brighton – 8/2/24, Bristol – 9/2/24, London – 17/2/24, Swansea – 23/2/24… Oh and also supporting Circa Waves at Tramshed – 2/2/24, so extremely looking forward to that!

Your shows have built up a strong reputation already. Can you tell us about your favourite live show moments so far?

I’d say our favourite live show would probably be our sold out headline show at upstairs Clwb Ifor Bach at the start of the year. Also playing Y Not Festival back in July was mint as well.

You performed at the Shiiine On weekender in Butlins a couple of weeks back. How was it? Got any stories?

It was absolutely amazing, it was an absolute pleasure to be back! I was sat opposite John Powers (The La’s/Cast) and his son Finn Power (STONE) eating pizza in the artist canteen area, so that was pretty cool. Hats off to the organisers as well… Great people and great music!

Tell us a bit about The Malakites. What impact do you want your music to make on people’s lives?

We want people to feel like you can do anything you want if you really go for it. It don’t matter what background you’re from, or what football team you support… we’re all the same! We’re doing this purely because we all absolutely adore music, and we want people to feel like they can relate to how we feel about music! A lot of the lyrics in our songs have true, deep meanings that we’re sure others can relate to.

The Cardiff music scene is excellent right now. Great artists are springing up all over the place. Where do The Malakites fit into it all?

Yes, there is many great artists in the capital right now and lots that we are very proud to call our mates. However we believe that our sound is our own… all four of us have our very own different musical influences that we believe has been blended into one sound which is us – The Malakites!

Photo Credit: @talevans_ from Shunk Fest 2023

Who are your biggest inspirations, musically or otherwise?

I can’t answer for the others as I’d probably get it wrong… but my earliest memories of music comes from listening to the band Doves and watching my dad’s old band rehearse as a child. But my favourites are The Stone Roses, U2, Nirvana and Catfish and the Bottlemen. Also been listening to a lot of the Sea Girls as of recently.

Are you able to tell us what’s coming from the band, after the UK tour is complete? Any new releases on the horizon?

Expect lots and lots of new music, bigger, bigger shows, bigger, bigger sounds and some nice, nice festival slots for the spring/summer!

Cheers Webber! Looking forward to coming along to The Globe on the 16th!

Cheers, see you there!

If you want to join us there, the last few tickets for The Globe gig are available right now, as well as tickets for all of their upcoming dates. You’re probably best off snapping them up as soon as possible before the shows start selling out.

If you’ve yet to hear it, you can check out Morning After on the youtube link below:

The Rhythm Method – Have A Go Heroes

London’s The Rhythm Method were on a sort of Streets-like wave back in 2019, the release of their debut LP ‘How Would You Know I Was Lonely?’ superbly finessing their take on spoken word road-level observations over omnifarious multi-tempo beats, after the almost accidental grass-roots success of first single ‘Local, Girl’. Afterwards, save for a couple lockdown singles and a 2021 World Cup effort, they seemed to go to ground.

‘Have A Go Heroes’ sees the sagacious duo resurface for the second time in the run up to album number two, ‘Peachy’, due for release in 2024. Giving Joey Bradbury’s sardonic scrutiny a rest, the record sees the group’s other half, Rowan Martin, lead with an uplifting Pet Shop Boys-esque tribute to the indefatigable national spirit, inspired by a psychotic episode after a 2018 gig in Hull meshed with a 600 mile stretch of motorways, service stations and equally mania-inducing or soothing meandering rowdy towns, rowdy townspeople and idyllic landscapes.

‘Have A Go Heroes’ was released on 8th November 2023 on Moshi Moshi records, setting The Rhythm Method up nicely for their soon-to-be-released second album ‘Peachy’, due out on 8 March 2024. You can pre-order the record now. We’ve put the tracklist down below:

1 – Just A Boy’s Game
2 – I Love My Television
3 – Nightmare
4 – Dean Martin
5 – Have A Go Heroes
6 – Curse
7 – Please Don’t Die
8 – Peachy
9 – Black & Blue

Feel very free to have a watch of ‘Have A Go Heroes’ below:

Everything Everything – The Mad Stone

Manchester future-art-rockers Everything Everything’s latest single ‘The Mad Stone’ is one of the central parts of their forthcoming 7^th album ‘Mountainhead’, a record that, we’re told, is a parable for modern times, mellifluously dissecting a society with the sole mission of building a greater purpose sacred mountain, leaving a resource depleted hole left behind for it’s labouring citizens to live in.

With all the dynamism and technological ingenuity of Radiohead, the oracular four-piece use lush orchestration and sumptuous choral harmonies to reveal the spellbinding, narcissistic wonder the civilization in question discovers at the mighty mound’s zenith: “At the very top, there was a screen that showed a picture of a/Man who stood there looking at a picture of a man who stood there/looking at a picture of a picture of a man on a screen”.

Prior single ‘Cold Reactor’ acts as a euphonic precursor to ‘The Mad Stone’ and the full album, ‘Mountainhead’, is due to be released on 1st March 2024. You can pre-order it right now in a range of formats. The full track list is below:

1 – Wild Guess
2 – The End Of The Contender
3 – Cold Reactor
4 – Buddy, Come Over
5 – R U Happy?
6 – The Mad Stone
7 – TV Dog
8 – Canary
9 – Don’t Ask Me To Beg
10 – Enter The Mirror
11 – Your Money, My Summer
12 – Dagger’s Edge
13 – City Song
14 – The Witness

The group have also announced the following tour dates. Check them out and find ticket links below:

March 26th 2024 – SGW3 Galvanizers, Glasgow
March 27th 2024 – Stylus, Leeds
March 29th 2024 – New Century, Manchester
March 30th 2024 – New Century, Manchester
March 31st 2024 – De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill
April 2nd 2024 – The Junction, Cambridge
April 4th 2024 – Rock City, Nottingham
April 5th 2024 – Troxy, London
April 6th 2024 – O2 Academy, Bristol

‘The Mad Stone’ was released on 17th November 2024 and you can watch it’s visualiser video below:

Rainyday Rainbow – Baby In The Basement

Wait! What’s that sound coming from the depths of the basement? No, it’s not a baby. It’s too much of a multicoloured cacophony of a melody to be a baby’s ululation. I think it’s actually Swansea psych-punks Rainyday Rainbow performing their latest mind-warping wonder of a single ‘Baby In The Basement’.

Lead by Egg Spectrum, along with Tom Emlyn (whose provoking solo work we’ve featured a few times already), Evan Collett and Osian Boland, we suspect their latest track is the result of some freakish acid-trip hallucinated encounter with a perpetually wailing bambino phantasm as the interstellar psychedelic doom jazz vibrations of King Gizzard and Osees float around the aural periphery.

‘Baby In The Basement’ was released on 3rd November 2023 and is the first we’re getting to hear from Rainyday Rainbow’s forthcoming ‘Masters Of The Cosmos’ EP, due for release on 1st January 2024. The tracklist for the ‘Masters Of The Cosmos’ EP is below:

1 – Venomous Vines
2 – Your Nature
3 – Heir Of The Dog
4 – Baby In The Basement
5 – Masters Of The Cosmos
6 – Pot Skulgrim

You can have a listen to ‘Baby In The Basement’ on the Spotify link below:

Cardinals – Roseland

You’d do worse than look to current indie luminaries Fontaines D.C. for a tip on where the best new music is coming from, so when the group’s frontman Grian Chatten declares Cork rising stars Cardinals as one of his new favourite bands then we wanna know more. Enter Cardinals debut single proper, ‘Roseland’, their first release on So Young records.

Though the song takes it’s title from a ballroom in NYC, the record’s world doesn’t leave Ireland’s second largest city, unwinding a brooding plot from MacCurtain Street police station to the harsh end of young love, soundtracked by a sparse bassline, later joined by the icy and disparate sounds of accordion, wall of sound guitars and the ecclesiastical imagery of “a tired religious vocation and a cross at the end of it all.”

The 20 year olds shun the calculable trappings of modern alt-rock to create their own cold and austere universe, immersing their songwriting in Irish trad-folk with more than a streak of a punkish intensity, like The Pogues before them, frontman Euan Manning owning the downbeat, haughty charm of Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch. Heck, there’s even a bit of Gang of Youths about them.

‘Roseland’ was produced by Richie Kennedy (U2, Interpol) and was released on 7th November 2023 through So Young records. You can view the video below now:

DAYZIES – Eskimo

If Bloc Party had a go at playing a slightly speeded up version of The Undertones 70’s classic ‘Teenage Kicks’, we reckon the resultant sound would be something akin to Newcastle indie rockers DAYZIES’ new single ‘Eskimo’, a healthy collision of hazardously angular guitars and high-spirited punk melody.

The North-East four-piece’s third single release, named after a nickname for an ex who wore a parka with a big fluffy rimmed hood rather than the snow-blighted indigenous peoples of Alaska, wields an unforgettable tune, some high-grade yelping and a brilliant middle eight. Ingredients enough for an astoundingly excellent single.

DAYZIES have a couple gigs lined up if you’re in London or the North-East over the next few months. You can find them at:

Two Palms, Hackney, London – 25/11/2023
Coastal Crawl Festival, North Shields – 17/02/2024

‘Eskimo’ was released on 3 November 2023 via the ever exciting Bubblebrain Records. Hear it for yourself on the Spotify link below:

Gruff Rhys – Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)

Inarguably one of modern Welsh music’s foremost icons, Gruff Rhys has a less-than-earnest warning for his long-serving listeners on latest single ‘Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)’, the second track to be taken from his forthcoming 25th LP. And what warning is that, we hear you ask, above the symphonic piano and scrumptious strings? Well, we’re not exactly certain, but it’s somewhere between the eccentric poetical sentiments of, and we quote: “There’s no use lining all your dreams with silver/For silver lined clouds look much like lead balloons” and “I left my dreams in a rental car/Live for now and dream afar”.

The beautiful, orchestral sounds, created almost entirely with only wooden acoustic instruments, were recorded live in a 19th-century building on the outskirts of Paris during March 2022 with the ex-Super Furry Animals frontman on vocals, Kliph Scurlock, formerly of Flaming Lips, on drums, Osian Gwynedd on piano, Huw V Williams on double bass and an overdubbed string quartet arranged by Gruff Ab Arwel, only breaking the timber-based rule to include some utterly euphoric brass from Gavin Fitzjohn. Replete with gold like this and previous single ‘Celestial Candyfloss’, Gruff Rhys’s quarter-centuplicate handiwork looks set to be one of his finest and most idyllic yet.

‘Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)’ is the second single to come off of Gruff Rhys’s forthcoming record ‘Sadness Sets Me Free’, due to be released on 26th January 2024 via Rough Trade Records and available to pre-order now. The full track list is below:

1 – Sadness Sets Me Free
2 – Bad Friend
3 – Celestial Candyfloss
4 – Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)
5 – On The Far Side Of The Dollar
6 – They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper
7 – Peace Signs
8 – Cover Up The Cover Up
9 – I Tendered My Resignation
10 – I’ll Keep Singing

‘Silver Lining (Lead Balloons)’ was released on 7th November 2023 and you can watch it on Youtube below:

iest – Lizard Skin Chic

Enigmatic singing songwriting newcomer iest has a magnificently cool blooded, blissed out space waltz in the bag for his third single, ‘Lizard Skin Chic’, putting his brittle, ambrosial vocals and washed out, lilting guitars up against obscured lyrics and a general dreamy feeling, all produced by South Welsh independent music maestro, Minas, and visually adorned with ancient arcane Sumerian reptilian statue artwork.

Angling indistinctly at illuminati cover stars, equally at aimless inner-city drives and romantic wanderings in the rain, the record meanders gracefully around various juxtaposed nomadic subjects before the slow dance shifts up a gear, briefly, with all of the surf guitars and jazz drums summoned up into a rapture of other-worldly bleeps and squalls and then adroitly released back to a hazy, revelatory calm.

iest is in the process of piecing together his debut ep ‘Everything You Know’, due for release on 18th November, which we are of the understanding will also contain prior singles ‘Disappear’ and ‘Go Slow’. There’s an essential sounding EP Launch at Rothfink Industries HQ in Bedwas on release day, as per the funky graphic above.

‘Lizard Skin Chic’ was released on 4th November and you should take a listen on the Spotify link below:

Half Happy – Say This Twice

Cardiff woozy indie-popsters Half Happy’s latest single ‘Say This Twice’ is part spoken word, part radiant melody and entirely a sublime record about irrecoverably lost love. Rose’s cool vocals give a disappointed but eloquent account of sorrowfully bored domestication alongside Pete’s lustrous, dramatic, Tame Impala-like guitars.

Having heaps in common with alt-rock contemporaries Pit Pony, Sprints and past tour-mates English Teacher, the bittersweet quartet use dreamy, heavenly sounds to communicate the mournful atmosphere of bright-eyed romance turned stale, while managing to pack in a gorgeously lilting chorus and all.

‘Say This Twice’ was released on 25th October 2023, available on all of the streaming platforms everywhere and you can watch the record’s video on Youtube below. Spoiler: it sees the band looking confusedly at a platter of spaghetti bolognese and performing to a field of sunflowers:

Megan Wyn – Familiar Faces

Megan Wyn’s second single, ‘Familiar Faces’, is as forceful and powerful as indie rock tunes come. The Welsh girl’s voice is at it’s husky finest and, along with co-songwriter Alex Quinn (The Royston Club, Lottery Winners), she’s managed to successfully forge an intensively driving alt-anthem to raging heartbreak.

As she casts off the track’s soaring chorus, Wyn resignedly warns “The devil hides in familiar faces”, finding herself cruelly torn between jealousy and rejection, over energized drums and stirring guitars that we reckon must translate excellently to being performed live, as we’re sure her many rabid legions of live show attendees would gladly attest.

You can catch Megan on tour currently (we’re not sure she ever stops touring, actually) at the following dates:

02/11/2023 – Band On The Wall, Manchester – supporting the brilliant Andrew Cushin
03/11/2023 – Kazimier Stockroom, Liverpool – headline gig
18/11/2023 – Empire, Middlesbrough – supporting Komparrison
15/12/2023 – Colours, London – supporting The Motive
17/02/2024 – Coast Festival, North Shields

‘Familiar Faces’ was released on 13th October 2023 and you can take a listen to it below on Spotify: