Tag: Richard Wileman

Swindon Gets Shuffling!

Despite the population of Devizes throwing confetti and paint at each other in their most celebrated annual ritual, I believe I picked the right weekend to visit Swindon; deffo, or are they always ‘aving it there?!

The Wildcats whipped butt at their first league game of the season on Friday, but my Saturday was dedicated to exploring the arts, something criticised stereotypically by outsiders. I could sigh, with partial agreement, historically perhaps. Swindon caressed industrial boom, somewhere along the line forgoing its arts and culture. This is changing, and fast, the Shuffle is a skeleton key opening said transpose.

What’s not thankfully changed is Old Town, while central Swindon is unrecognisable compared to twenty years ago. Just as Swindon Paint Fest has decorated the walls with impressive street art, the Swindon Shuffle is the event pushing the town’s boundaries in locally sourced live music. There’s few annual events in Wiltshire showcasing entirely local music, I best liken the Shuffle to The Bradford Roots Festival at the Wiltshire Music Centre. Save, this is spread across the choicest pubs in Swindon rather than under one purpose-built complex.

And it is a mammoth simultaneous exhibition of musical talent, a taster of what the county offers, of which it’d be impossible to witness entirely; best I approach this diary-like, apologies to the many bands I missed. We’re talking over seventy acts spread across nine venues for this four-day beast in its eighteenth year, and it remains free, fundraising via donation buckets for Prospect Hospice. 

Available for the Saturday only, my intention is to take as big a bite of it as I can, taste some known favourites and cross a number of must-sees off my ever-growing list.

Swindon Shuffle is a beautiful thing, a convention for local musicians, promoters, media types and aficionados. I stepped off the bus at The Tuppenny, in a hurry and frustrated I’d now missed Sienna Wileman and likely Chippenham’s singer-songwriter Meg, to bump into Sienna’s father Richard, big Shuffle chief Ed Dyer on the door, and luckily, Meg’s dad Paul; the latter meaning Meg was still playing and I managed to catch the last few songs of this unique and emotive rising star.

This tavern was bustling yet functioning happily, a crowd immersed in Meg’s magical words, set the stage for Americana soloist Jol Rose, up next. Something of a Swindon optimistic Dylan, he retains his concentrated narrative songs in favour of the more lighthearted ditties and banter to appease, though there was a poignant one on the Gaza conflict, but whichever his outlook, Jol is a proficient entertainer and skilled master of his craft.

Breaking familiar territory, new one for me, David Corrigan of The Astral Ponies followed, with an inspiring set of acoustic versions of his band’s songs. The dilemma of going tried and tested against treating the Shuffle as a voyage of discovery set in; solved by the next few hours whereby acts I’m making a beeline for I’m aware of but yet to see live. I tend to get over-excited about such prospects, and figured drinking cider like water might help.

Make no mistake, I could’ve cemented myself in at The Tuppenny, such is its comfy atmos, but, hot on this must-see list, Swindon’s Afro-Latin collective Zambalando are due in a coffee shop on Commercial Road called Baristocats, so I’m moving on. The café was bustling and I was early, recalling a Facebook post that the Midlife Krisis sound system was set up in the courtyard of Level III, exterior to the Shuffle program. I thought I’d temporarily breach the Shuffle and check. Bass rolling down the street like the millennium never happened, I turned one corner to find a throbbing little afternoon rave going on, with their symbolic milk-float fronted DJ booth, a wall of sound and smiley ravers giving it some.

Observing street art of city magnitude I left assured, Shuffle or no, Swindon has embraced diverse arts on a level unrivalled by its recent history. Only the thought of Zambalando dragged me away from the old skool vibes, but upon arrival back at Baristocats it seemed they’d cancelled. Nevertheless I commandeered a sofa, tea and toastie, chatting to Swindon’s premiere reggae/ska keyboardist Erin Bardwell, who’s collective Subject A played the Shuffle on Thursday. Baristocats are hip, make a damn fine toastie, and XTC’s keyboardist Barry Andrews, aka Stic Basin, was taking us on a blissful journey of ambient dub.

If I’m complimenting Swindon, may as well include some infrastructure too, for tucked behind the now commercialised Regent Circus is the steep Prospect Hill, ingeniously with a pub at both the top and bottom. This would be my resting place for the duration, the short distance from the Beehive to the Castle manageable, if uphill, to switch between multi-musician Richard Wileman & singer and saxophonist Amy Fry’s gorgeous experimental jazz-come-psychedelia at the Beehive, and Liddington Hill who’ve created their own subgenre, Celtic-grunge, and were currently giving it what’s for at The Castle. Allowing me to cross two must-sees off my list. Liddington Hill was brilliantly loud and in your face, everything I’d imagined and more, and crowds gathered to salute that.

Unlike the Beehive, I was unfamiliar with the Castle, yet felt immediately at home; it had been invaded by both ‘Talkers’ awaiting the headliner, and cheesemakers from Calne, real ones! It’s fine, off territory, no dispute, love The Real Cheesemakers’ hilarious wurzel take on heavy rock, and boy did they blast it superbly!

Only good things heard about the next band were certainly not fibs. The Belladonna Treatment is a remedy for an off-balance in indie-rock, pop and punk; all subgenres were subtly intertwined idiosyncratically, and beguilingly delivered to sardine-packed admirers, and a new fan here. Unfortunately Trunk, the penultimate act at the Castle I had to miss due to an emergency burger mandate. It’d be fifteen minutes wait at the chippy, I was content, it’s opposite the Victoria, Swindon’s stalwart music venue and one I unusually gravitate towards.

Age thing, the lineup was particularly heavy and aimed at the younger demographic at the Vic tonight, NervEndings headline, and I’m well aware of their force of nature as they spawned in Devizes, adding our quintessential blues module to their furiously yet accomplished sound. A whistlestop no longer than a burger on a grill, enough to note it was equally as packed and having it there as the Castle, Lucky Number Seven were ensuring it.      

But if you know me well enough you’ll know if indie-pop virtuosos Talk In Code are there, so am I. It’s a march back to the Castle for a grand finale of eighties-tinged goodness. I never doubt, Talk in Code pulled it out of the bag, the place was thumping, the crowd were jumping, and the end, for me, to Swindon Shuffle was the icing on an exceptionally tasty cake.

The show continued Sunday, had to miss Concrete Prairie, Courting Ghosts, Cooper Creek, Leon Daye, and others, but I believe I took a fair bite out of this extravaganza, this local music expose, certainly enough to know if you only spend one weekend a year in Swindon, you’d be best advised to make it this one.

You can still donate online to Swindon Shuffle’s fund for Prospect Hospice HERE.

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Richard Wileman on the Forked Road

Fashionably late for the party, apologies, the fellow I’m not sure if he minds me calling “the Mike Oldfield of Swindon,” though it’s meant as a high compliment, Richard Wileman, released his fourth solo album, yesterday (Friday 12th Jan,) The Forked Road. I’ve been lost in its gorgeous blend of prog-rock experimentation and acoustic folk goodness for a while now, perhaps too much to get around to telling you about it!

It is more usual for Wileman to separate his two defining subgenres into composing under the pseudonym Karda Estra, for the experimentally ambient prog-rock, those lush Pink Flyodesque vibes of deep instrumental, and using his own name for the more acoustic folk moments. Yet since Led Zeppelin’s debut in 1969, the two have been married, and here, Richard combines them to great effect. Indeed, it is the former style which draws you deep undercover as a way of a dawning, The Last Book of English Magic is four minutes of lush and gentle instrumental introduction, easing you into this album, the most diverse I’ve heard of Richard’s, playing it out with a reprise, the First Book of….

He takes vocals on the second airbourne tune, Butterflies, a floaty beauty you’d know already if you had just bought our compilation album for Julia’s House, as it was contributed to that project. Wileman describes the album as a “prog-folk horror concept album, rooted in his home county and charting the encounter of a comet with Earth, resulting in the undead rising and converging on The Ridgeway, all bookended by the last and first books of English magic.” If author Philip Carr-Gomm transports us across England’s vast scholaric of occult arts and explores its history of magical lore and practice, Wileman captures this in music as wonderfully as Zeppelin did with the fictional magic of Tolkien; only this Shire is Wiltshire.

The title track again find us on the experimental instrumental path again, and it’s enchantingly cobblestone, teetering with whimsical harps, from Chantelle Smith, like sorcery evaporating into mist, only to be followed by the summit of this adventure, The Children of the Sun, a duet with Amy Fry, which is blissfully sublime; dreamy is the benchmark here.

Just like the Horses of the Gods album, We Wish You Health, if you’re not whisked into a timeless magical realm within the mystics of your own county by now, seek medical attention! Avenue & Circle is more harp and melodica driftiness, like wandering into the crystal shop in Avebury. Finally, the scene is set, and Richard brings back Amy Fry to vocalise the diegesis unfolding. Comet Vs the Earth is Wileman’s Forever Autumn, if Justin Hayward was Jeff Wayne’s scene setter in his musical version of War of the Worlds, and what can be more of a Wiltshire related comparison than that?!

Harpist Chantelle Smith duets with Richard on the next tune, Old Bones, delicately resurrecting, never does this venture into anything horrifically jumpy, rather flows gently throughout, even if things are becoming spooky in the next instrumental piece, Spectres of the Ridgeway, which in its very name suggests the narrative of the concept.   

Alongside guest vocalist, Amy Fry, who also adds saxophone, and harpist Chantelle, and his daughter Sienna, who captured sound recordings of Avebury, Richard’s multi-instrumental skills are at the forefront, taking on guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards, percussion bouzouki, Appalachian dulcimer, accordion, melodica, and finalises his projects with artwork.

We’re nine tracks into this storyline, concluding with a dramatic ambient piece. Wileman’s faint lamentation leaves you wondering if the Inevitable Beast is metaphoric and you’ve missed a reality within the plot, and it’s followed by the aforementioned reprise. Combined this album is awash with the timelessness of prog-rock concept albums, of Bowie, and The Who, yet dreamy as Pink Floyd, all this I expected, but in listening to the past two sections, of Richard’s acoustic solo work largely with Amy Fry, and the more experimental angle of   Karda Estra, I’ve longed for the two to embrace, and here it is, and it’s all rather lovely, wrapped in mystical narrative; top marks!

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Song of the Day 44: Sienna Wileman

Never assume a father posting their daughter’s song on the ol’ book of face is motivated purely by parental pride, and you’ll need to bite lip and humour them.

Learned this lesson once before, when a fellow cartoonist friend, Des, did so, and his daughter, Emma Langford was shortly after awarded the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Award for Best Emerging Artist in 2018, shortlisted in the category of Best Folk Singer two years later, and was the first person to be awarded The Dolores O’Riordan Music Bursary Award by Limerick County Council!

Besides, this time around the Dad is Swindon’s renowned musican Richard Wileman of Karda Estra, so I expected sonething rather special, but this still knocked me for six.

Sienna Wileman’s accomplished and beautiful single “Petals,” released today is as a chip off the old block as Ziggy Marley is to Bob. Yet through her father’s trademark enchanted ambience there’s also a sense of youthful freshness about it, the accompanying video assists.

It is, in short, a little piece of wonderful, and you can buy/stream it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09QFPQ999/

Baber and Wileman set to Chill

Meditatively strap yourself into a comfy recliner, as under his pseudonym Karda Estra, Swindon’s prolific experimental virtuoso Richard Wileman is in collaboration with Sanguine Hum keyboardist Matt Baber for an album taking their names as the title, Baber-Wileman. It’s released tomorrow (Monday 10th Jan 2022) on Kavus Torabi’s Believers Roast label.….

Under his own name, Richard projects acoustic folk songs, yet never without fascinating instrument experimentation, yet as Karda Estra soundscapes of surreal gothic and cosmic compositions evoke mood as a film score should.

With a pungent fusion of Zappa and Canterbury influenced instrumental compositions, Sanguine Hum was formed a decade ago from the ashes of the Joff Winks Band and the Antique Seeking Nuns. Known for complex ensemble work, reflective song-writing and distinctively striving instrumental pieces, Sanguine Hum’s defining characteristics owes much to Matt’s keys, who released his first solo album, Suite for Piano and Electronics on Bad Elephant Music in 2018.

The pair first met at RoastFest in 2011, where Sanguine Hum were performing, and soon afterwards, Matt and Richard did their first collaboration track, Mondo Profondo 1, which appeared on the Karda Estra album Mondo Profondo.

Returning to the studio together towards the end of 2020, initially intending to put a couple of tracks down, the sessions went so well, they continued co-composing through 2021 and the project evolved into this album, which is chilling me to the bone.

Richard’s long-time vocal and clarinet player Amy Fry also guest appearances on three of the nine enchanted tracks. At times, like the finale, The Birth of Spring, this sounds like it could’ve been recorded on a light dewed grassy knoll, under a troll bridge of a Tolkienesque landscape, at others a Kling Klang type Düsseldorf studio towards the end of the seventies, but the steam of this melting pot perpetually reeks of influences further and wider.

With Matt’s clear progressive-rock influence, tracks like Passing Wave and the penultimate Day Follows Night, hold woozy psychedelic swirls of a Hawkwind free festival, yet the classical piano concertos of Claude Debussy ring through interludes like Three Audio Slow and 2009.

It’s a wonderous journey, mellowly twirling through gorgeously uplifting, sometimes haunting soundscapes, as ambient as The Orb, as methodically composed as Mike Oldfield, as peculiar as The Art of Noise, as moody electronically progressive as Tangerine Dream, and melodically unruffled as Jefferson Airplane.

The second tune, after Karda Estra-fashioned haunting intro, sounding like a spooky film score by William Orbit, Souvenir is vocally a prime example of the folk-rock influence of Jefferson Airplane, but only a slight segment of styles blended here, of which the magnum opus of the album, Emperor combines all aforementioned elements sublimely. This one is as Mike Oldfield created Primal Scream’s Higher Than the Sun from Screamadelica; yeah, it’s that beautiful, all too beautiful!

Find a Richard Wileman track on our compilation album!

Arcana & Idols of the Flesh: Ambience and Chamber-Prog with Swindon Composer Richard Wileman

One portion my nostalgia rarely serves, and that’s my once veneration for spacey sounds, apexed through the ambient house movement in the nineties, but not comprehensively; we always had Sgt Pepper, Pink Floyd and Hendrix’s intro to Electric Ladyland. I’ve long detached myself from adolescent experimentation of non-licit medications, lying lone in a dark bedroom chillaxing to mood music, and moved onto a full house of commotional kids; progress they call it.

Incredibly prolific, Swindon’s composer Richard Wileman might yet stir the memories, if these headphones drown out the sound of a nearby X-Box tournament. Best known for his pre-symphonic rock band Karda Estra, there is nothing vertical or frenetic about his musical approach. Idols of the Flesh is his latest offering from a discography of sixteen albums. Yet far from my preconceptions of layers of decelerated techno, as was The Orb or KLF, or psychedelic space-rock moments of my elders, which our own Cracked Machine continue the splendour of, Richard’s sounds with Karda Estra bases more orchestrally, neo-classical, as if the opening of a thriller movie. Though, so intense is this sound you need no images to provoke you.

Idols of the Flesh is dark and deeply surreal, with swirls of cosmic and gothic hauntings which drifts the listener on a voyage of bliss. Nirvana is tricky to pinpoint in my household, but with my ears suctioned to my headphones I jumped out of my skin upon a tap on the shoulder, daughter offering me some sweets! Momentarily snapped back in the room as if I’d surfaced from a hypnotist’s invocation, but aching to fall backwards into it once again.

Agreeably, this is not headbanging driving music, neither does it build like Leftfield for those anticipating beats to start rolling after a ten-minute intro, it simply drifts as a soundscape, perhaps coming to its apex at the eloquently medieval church organed Church of Flesh, one of two named tunes out of the six on offer, the others given part numbers. Then, with running water, the final part echoes a distant chant of female vocals as if a wind blowing across a sea for another eleven minutes, it’s stirring, incredibly emotive and perfected.

Along a similar, blissful ethos Richard Wileman served up Arcana in September this year, a third album this time under his own name. While maintaining a certain ambiance, it’s more conventional than his Karda Estra, more attributed to the standard model of popular music. It’s an eerie and spectral resonance, though, with occasional vocals which meander on divine folk and prog-rock; contemporary hippy vibes, rather than timeworn psychedelia. Released on Kavus Torabi’s Believers Roast label, a sprinkling of Byrds and Mamas & Papas ring through with an unmistakable likeness to a homemade Mike Oldfield. When vocals come into effect, with one guest singer Sienna Wileman, it’s astutely drafted and beguiling.

Select anything from the bulging discographies of Karda Estra or Richard Wileman and you’re onto a mood-setting journey, composed with expertise and passion. If ambient house is lost in a bygone era, this is reforming the balance of atmospheric compositions with modernism, so mesmeric it remains without the need for intoxication. Now, where did I stash my old chillum?! Probably in a dusty box in the loft with my Pete Loveday comics and some Mandelbrot fractal postcards….