Elspeth Anne & Jennifer Reid

Elspeth Anne & Jennifer Reid bring their radical folk show to Cardiff! A word from them to set the scene... Together we’re starting to build a ‘blazing world’: a self-contained performance born from our lived experience as femme performers and dreaming a softer alternative into existence. We organised these shows together with the intention of giving ourselves the experience of touring that we truly crave - to explore and enjoy places, not just arrive and depart. For the land between the shows to count as part of the experience. And for the gig itself our aim with this show is to create a held space that’s ritualised, intentional and contained, from the moment people enter through to the end of the night (including merch). We want to invite the audience to turn off their phones, build this world with us and be present. Elspeth Anne Elspeth Anne is a queer performer and producer working with voice, drones and textural sound, field recordings, and traditional songs of the British Isles. Based on the English- Welsh border, her practice is informed by the wilder landscape and the liminal undercurrent of the area. Elspeth's work has been championed recently by artist and folk researcher Ben Edge and Lankums Ian Lynch on his podcast Fire Draw Near. Her third album, Mercy Me, has received highly favourable reviews from the Guardian, KLOF mag and TradFolk, with KLOF mag describing it as “an album full of ideas, but more importantly, full of feeling, a raw, moving triumph.” Elspeth has supported artists such as One Leg One Eye, Stick in the Wheel and Richard Dawson. “The whole performance is sonically raw, emotionally raw, and arrestingly beautiful. Whether on wry originals or loving renditions of ‘Peggy Gordon’, ‘When I Was A Young Girl’ and ‘The Brisk Lad’, Elspeth Anne’s music is spellbinding” – Emily Doyle, Birmingham Review links: www.elspethanne.bandcamp.com www.instagram.com/elspeth.a www.youtube.com/elspethannemacrae Jennifer Reid Sixteen years in, Jennifer moves between worlds with ease. She was once described as having “irreverent puckish vim” in a mag. She plays Barb in Shane Meadows’ The Gallows Pole, has opened for Pulp and John Cooper Clarke and performed for Chanel’s Metiers d’Art. She’s toured with Eliza Carthy for 18 months, and in 2025-6, took her songs to Aotearoa to critical acclaim. ˜”*°• Rooted in archives and oral histories, her work braids nineteenth-century music with the present: teaching, performing, researching, sharing, advocating and supporting spaces for memory and making in the tradition. •°*”˜ She studied at Oxford, specialising in the ballad collections of Manchester and has shaped sound for radio, stage and screen. She is published by DIY organisations and academia. Her research has taken her from Venice to Dhaka via New York, where she asked whether the Industrial Revolution ever really ended. She’s spoken on weaving songs in Bangladesh and Manchester, worked with scientists, poets, musicians, historians and universities and still finds time to sing stories that refuse to be forgotten. “Jennifer as a performer and writer breathes life back into these fascinating songs that vividly describe the tumultuous environment of the industrial North West. Taking their subject matter from the urban street and people the ballad effectively bridges the gap between folk and pop music as we know it today.” - Jeremy Deller “She is singing our belonging to our land, history, ancestry, with streetwise modernity” - Casey Orr links: www.JENNIFERREID.bandcamp.com www.instagram.com/JENNIFERBALLADSS WWW.JENNIFERBALLADS.COM https://www.youtube.com/@jenniferreid3407 Pasta Now is a listening collective aimed at supporting women, trans and non-binary people in experimental music. Our listening sessions run sporadically in and around Cardiff, please sign up to our mailing list on the night for further updates or come have a chat if you want to find out more on how to get involved, I will be wearing a big textiles badge that says PAM on it. Keep an eye out for our future gigs!