Aitch Nicol captures the action from the latest night organised by ace Sheffield promoters Buds and Spawn, featuring VÄLVĒ and Juliana Day.
Juliana Day is a recorder player, whistle player and vocalist based in Sheffield. She has performed for TV, theatre, opera and radio including for the BBC, Royal Shakespeare Company, Manchester Collective and Yorkshire Silent Film Festival.
She co-directs Emergence Collective, an improvised minimalist ensemble, featuring a revolving line-up of around 30 musicians. They have just released their second album which was featured in Loud & Quiet magazine and Quietus’ Music of the Month.
Touring to celebrate the release of their second LP, Tiny Pilots on Slowfoot Records, released Nov 17th 2023, VÄLVĒ performed with an expanded band: Chlöe Herington and Emma Sullivan (Chrome Hoof ) were joined by Craig Fortnam (NSRO, Arch Garrison) on Phillichorda and guitars. Frank Byng (Snorkle, This Is Not This Heat) was due to perform on drums but was trapped in an M1 timewarp that eventually spat him out but too late for him to perform.
What is VÄLVĒ? Folk lullabies re-imagined by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Found-sound collages interrupted by Welsh language orations and sudden outbursts of fuzz bass. Gleaming synthpop workouts that collapse into swirling dreamscapes of sax and harp. Tiny sounds opening out onto the epic. Hi-tech and no-tech, deployed with equal measures of discipline and abandon. Carefully sculpted disorder. Uncanny geometries of noise and melody. Dizzy and gleeful and drawn in notebooks. That is VÄLVĒ. – Buds & Spawn (promoter)
Photography by Aitch Nicol
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