***Welsh musician GWENIFER RAYMOND's 2018 debut album, You Never Were Much of a Dancer, introduced a new voice on acoustic guitar, receiving 5 stars in The Guardian, big spreads in MOJO and UNCUT, and airplay on multiple BBC programs. This led to months of touring on the European festival circuit. Her latest, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, finds Raymond ranging into unexplored experimental territory, drawing from her Welsh roots. “My new album, 'Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain', has eight songs in it. All were recorded in a basement flat in central Brighton, locked-down amidst a global pandemic. I recorded them myself and neither I, nor any of the songs saw said outbreak coming. Coronavirus may have dictated the circumstance under which the album was recorded but it did not otherwise inform any of the compositions that run through it; like I said, we didn't see it coming. Growing up in Wales was not a theme strongly present in my first record (perhaps not too surprising in an album of 'American Primitive'), but I feel as though my memories of that time have started to insinuate themselves in the tunes here. In my opinion, landscape does a lot to shape a community's folk music; from my childhood I recall tall, spooky trees, black against the grey sky, breath misting in cold air, and I have tried to take something of Welsh folk horror to make my own 'Welsh Primitive'. Whilst this isn't the only theme present in the album,...
LP $15.50
11/13/2020
CD $12.75
11/13/2020
Tompkins Square is very proud to release the new album by Welsh multi-instrumentalist, Gwenifer Raymond. Hailing from Cardiff and now residing in Brighton in the South of England, Raymond began playing guitar at the age of eight. Tompkins Square released her debut 7" on Record Store Day. Early praise via The Wire, MOJO, and more. In her own words : When I was about eight years old a pretty formative thing happened to me ... my mum bought me a tape of Nirvana’s Nevermind. and what I heard blew my little 8 year old mind. I don't know what it was about that wall of sound that so captured me, but I spent many hours running around the house with headphones on, volume at full blast, and Nevermind on repeat. I spent all my teenage years playing either guitar or drums in various punk and rock outfits around the Welsh valleys, but around that time I was also getting seriously into older stuff, Dylan, The Velvet Underground and the like. I found that a common influence amongst these guys was pre-war delta and country blues, as well as Appalachian music. Eventually I discovered Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Roscoe Holcomb, and they became the holy trinity of musicians I so wanted to able to play like. Eventually, I tracked down a blues man in Cardiff who could teach me and it was in studying these guys that I was introduced to John Fahey and the whole American Primitive...
LP $15.50
06/29/2018
CD $13.00
06/29/2018
***A teaser 7-inch to the upcoming debut album from Welsh multi-instrumentalist GWENIFER RAYMOND, who's been playing guitar since the age of eight. Includes the album track "Bleeding Finger Blues," backed with the non-LP B-side "Deep See Diver." Already buzzing via Uncut, Mojo and the like. Edition of 600 copies worldwide. (RECORD STORE DAY RELEASE - STREET DATE - 4/21/2018)
7" $7.25
04/21/2018