Author: Hedd Thomas

‘Maggie Maggie Maggie’ by The Larks. ‘Margaret on the Guillotine’ by Morrissey. ‘How Does It Feel?’ by Crass. Remember these? Unless you’re a Baby Boomer or simply into your political ‘80s rock, the likely answer is ‘No’. Perhaps you remember Klaus Nomi’s ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead’ or Elvis Costello’s ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ from April 2013 when, as the ever-marmite Margaret Thatcher was lain to rest, some fans mourned while others protested and partied in the streets, reviving these morbid songs and making them more morbid still. The visceral lyrics of these songs sound shocking today. “When they…

It is either an English Lit student’s best friend or nemesis: the Male Gaze. The concept is born from when the audience or reader is presented with an idea or scene from a heterosexual, male perspective. Fundamentally, women become the object of the male observer (who is you, regardless of your gender or sexual orientation). A perfect example of the male gaze was Poland’s entry for Eurovision 2014. The music video is filled with flashes of erogenous zones and girls in traditional dress baking, dancing, or churning butter. The women flaunting their well-tanned, toned and voluptuous bodies are reduced to…

It has been an extraordinary 24 hours. Nobody could quite believe that exit poll when it emerged, not least Paddy Ashdown, who promised to eat his hat if the poll was right. Against all expectations the Conservatives were thought to be the largest party yet shy of a majority. Would they renew their vows with the Liberal Democrats to get over that magic mark of 226? Or would Tory backbenchers prefer to partner with the DUP and UKIP? Over the course of the night one big name after another dropped like crestfallen flies. Simon Hughes. Jim Murphy. Vince Cable. Ed…

If you’re planning to do the Couch to 5K Challenge or even next year’s London Marathon, here are my Top Three Tunes that you should be armed with for your next run. 1. Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘Deep Kick’ from One Hot Minute. This is a great one to start with as you can warm up while Flea recites his strange and wonderful intro. Then, as soon as he says, “We keep moving, we keep moving,” you’ll know it’s time to move. And driven by Dave Navarro’s heavy riffs, move you will! 2. Femi Kuti – ‘Beng Beng Beng’…

Seren’s Music Editor, Hedd Thomas, ran the London Marathon on 26th April. Here, he shares his story. On Sunday, months of training paid off as I ran my first marathon – the Virgin Money London Marathon. In fact, when I signed up for it last summer I hadn’t done any long distance runs before at all. Talk about starting in the deep end! It all started when a conservation charity that I support, World Land Trust, were allocated a place at the Marathon and asked for applications to take it. I entered, stating how much I admired the work they…

Reviewed by Martyna Piątkowska The British folk scene has just been brushed up with a wonderful novelty in the form of a debut album. These Gathered Branches by The Foxglove Trio was released this month. After the success of their EP Like Diamond Glances in 2013 the band did not drift into hibernation only to spring These Gathered Branches out of the blue, but have been actively sharing their music with eager audiences at gigs across the country, collecting outstanding reviews and blossoming into the mature trio that they are today. Those who are not yet familiar with The Foxglove…

The Pritchard-Jones Hall is a big room. It’s difficult to appreciate just how big with eyes alone; ears are better. An orchestra playing Schubert, Mathias and Sibelius should do. What became apparent on Saturday night, though, was that not even the full force of the Bangor University Symphony Orchestra could fill the space. This is in no way a comment on their effort, which was lustre (if that be the opposite of lacklustre), but on the Hall, which rendered loud music mezzo-forte and soft music muffled, the contrast a middle grey and the drama diminished. Roll on Pontio! Against this…

Seren’s music editor Hedd Thomas will be singing at Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed on 12th March, a new musical and visual production with a twist. He asked Katherine Betteridge, the creative and organisational brain behind the event, to share something about it: The dynamic new North Wales-based arts company, Exploration in Sound, will be holding two concerts on 12th March at 19:30 & 21:30 in Powis Hall, Bangor University. Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed is an exciting musical and visual event comprising a combination of performances by top-class professional musicians and also music students from Bangor University, alongside professional actors and…

After the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment, Middle Europeans were feeling a bit detached from their feelings and from their place in nature. Instead of grand architecture and fancy portraits, artists like Caspar David Friedrich began depicting fearful mountains and lonely woods. People were painted as tiny figures in an overwhelming environment, as in The Chasseur in the Forest, or with their back to the viewer, as in the famous Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, a painting that epitomises the period. Instead of celebrating society and civilisation, poets likewise took an introspective focus on man’s individual hopes and…

Last year, tenor James Gilchrist visited Bangor University to perform Franz Schubert’s song-cycle Die schöne Müllerin (The Fair Miller-Maid). He returned last Thursday (29th January) to a three-quarters-full Powis Hall to give a recital of that composer’s other great – many would say greater – song-cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey). Gilchrist used to be a doctor before turning to singing full-time some twenty years ago. I just hope he never had to do surgery or go poking in any orifice, as the first thing I noticed was his hands. They could not keep still. They’d reach out as if to embrace…

New Year’s Eve is a musical time. For some it’s a night for unrestrained camp and cheese at a house party, for others, big beat and DJs at the best club in town. I’ve even crossed the midnight mark with some merengue and salsa. That’s New Year’s Eve. But what about New Year’s Day? While many stay in bed to sleep off the previous night’s festivities, others will be forgiving themselves for having missed that first post-resolution morning run, but will nonetheless be rolling out from under the covers, making a mug of delicious hot chocolate and plonking themselves in…

Current and recently-graduated composition students at Bangor University have been tasked with an unusual commission opportunity for the 2015 Bangor New Music Festival. Visiting the Centre of Alternative Technology (CAT) on Monday 10th November together with Dr. Guto Puw, a composition lecturer at the university and director of the Festival, the composers viewed, examined and played with a pingpong table to germinate ideas. A pingpong table? Yes, you read that right. This was no ordinary pingpong table, however. Created by Christine Mills and Carlos Pinnati, former Artists in Residence at CAT, the idea for the piece of installation art began…

Hedd Thomas, Seren’s Sub-Editor for Music covers one city in particular, Wrocław where he has lived in the past year. He believes the hidden gem makes for the perfect city break and encourages every Bangor student to visit! Wroclaw is a favourite city for Poles but little visited by foreign travelers except for Germans, who often go to discover their family roots. Wroclaw, after all, was a German area for hundreds of years and called “Breslau”, but became part of Poland following the Second World War. A host city for UEFA Euro 2012 and the European Capital of Culture 2016, Wroclaw…

The second album by post-rock duo Gespenst, Dogma is a hypnotic, initially alluring album full of the darkness of the night that tapers in quality towards the end. Opening in a minimalist style, the first track ‘Grace’ introduces layer upon layer of electronic sounds in a tasteful and expertly mastered way, keeping you on tenterhooks as to when and where the next sound will appear. Listen to this one with high quality headphones for the full effect. You’ll want to take them off again for the eponymous track of the album, though, and turn the volume up to 11 for…

Get registered and get paid. That was the message given by John Hywel Morris, the Welsh representative for PRSforMusic, who spoke at the Careers in Music conference hosted by Bangor University on Friday 17th October. Topics included securing royalties for music, the future of music formats and the best avenues for making a living from your music. For musicians who have written their own work, be that singers performing their own songs around Bangor’s pubs, bands that have produced CDs or composers who have published their own musical material, PRSforMusic, which has around 3,500 members in Wales, claims back the…

17th century – Bantu people from Angola and the Congo are taken to Bahia to work on sugar plantations as slaves. They take with them their rhythms and dances. An early form of samba develops. Late 19th century – Emancipated slaves migrate to Rio de Janeiro, a cosmopolitan city where samba comes into contact with other African, European and Brazilian musics. It gradually develops into the sound we know today. Mid 20th century – Samba music becomes a globally-recognised symbol of Brazil and Carnival. Comprising of drums, shakers, bells and whistles, with guitars, trombones and voices sometimes added to the…