ALAW

First up in this month’s roundup of new Welsh music you may have missed is Alaw. A bedroom instrumental hip-hop producer from north Wales who is not to be confused with the Celtic folk band Alaw – and actually goes by AlawJ if you listen on Soundcloud instead – Metamorphosis is a debut release that both sounds full-grown and promises more. Proclaiming the influence of J Dilla and DJ Shadow, Alaw’s sample-heavy and languid style is not quite your “chill-hop beats to study to”, in that that implies a generic functionality of which she’s not guilty, but may well be a calm-inducing balm. The closing Split, built from jazzy horns and a mysterious man with an RP accent, is my standout.

BANDICOOT

This Swansea foursome have inched their way into legit Welsh-indie-scene popularity over time: Buzz’s review of their album launch gig in a sold-out Clwb Ifor Bach sounded like a right hoedown. Debut album Black After Dark is out now via Libertino Records (unless you want it on vinyl, which is due in April) and they sound like a consummate Libertino band, likewise a hark back to Wales’ indie landscape of about 25 years ago – Super Furries, natch, or less renowned bands like Topper. They like their blue-denim boogie chug, sometimes parlayed into a kind of pub rock sax solo (was that a thing?), but also nod towards glam and prog sounds with a light dusting of experimentation. As new LPs by bands of twentysomethings from the southern half of Wales doing 70s rock collage go, I would definitely recommend Black After Dark over any others answering to this description.

DAEMÖNIK FONCE

Daemönik Fonce is a London-based band, so what is my flimsy excuse for featuring Eye Love (Property Of The Lost) on this page? Well, it marks what I believe is the musical reunion of twin brothers Paul and Stewart Summers, who in 80s/90s south Wales were members of Welsh anarcho punx Shrapnel and the pop-punkier Duvals. Paul later played in the millennial toilet circuit faves Ten Benson, whose budget rock silliness is a more useful reference point for this album. It’s full of earworm bozo-glam riffs, frothy keyboards and songs like Needle Inna Donut and the unforgettable Badgers And Ferrets which flagrantly fail to address the gravest sociopolitical issues of the era.

DAVID J BULL

An American tape label, DKA from Atlanta, is the moderately unlikely home for the debut release by David J Bull. If you’re a Cardiff clubber who leans towards the less commercial end of house and techno, you might know him as a promoter and DJ from the Studio 89 and Teak nights, but now he’s making his own tracks – and a good job too, as Body & Beat is fully class. It’s more or less an homage to the new beat scene that took over Belgium in the late 80s (before the techno it inspired swept it away), with four selections of raw, mid-paced menace: industrial darkness with a pop sensibility and electro danceability. Possession has both the hardest bassline and shiveriest vibe but it’s all highly worthwhile.

JON AIRDRIE & THE ENABLERS

Gwent-area folk-rock sort Jon Airdrie has been quietly releasing albums in a succession of bands, and with a variety of backing bands, as is the case here with the self-released Other Stories. The five-strong Enablers, who are no relation to any other groups of that name, bolster the songwriting and am-dram-meets-Bowie voice of Airdrie with arrangements that on a certain level feel smooth but, with their slow-burning jazz takes on 70s electric folk, are ultimately quite unorthodox. Sweet River, towards the end of the album, combines piano-driven pop-rock with gospel-ish backing vocals from Enablers members Martha Lee and Jem Ponsford.

LAWD ZAH

The debut release under this name by Cardiff-based Lloyd Markham, a sometime novelist who also makes strange and good space-rock exotica as part of the band Deep Hum, Lawd Zah’s The Bats Of Light comprises three long (as in, they’d each need their own side of LP vinyl were it released on that format) pieces of feedback-ridden moody drone. Heir To The Black Palace goes bigger on the guitars, Glass Emperors Zone on the synths and Sacred Bells Guide You Through The Fog introduces more distinct melodies, in a Cluster or Terry Riley-ish context maybe. Good stuff – play loud and/or through headphones for max results, I’d wager.

LLYN Y CWN

North Wales’ Benjamin Powell makes solemn ambient electronic music under a couple of pseudonyms. The oldest is Mank, but he’s also recorded since the late 00s as Llyn Y Cwn, which takes its name – by any measure a more appealing one than Mank – from a Snowdonian lake. Du Y Moroedd (Cold Spring) fills nearly an entire CD’s capacity with fearfully stark beatless isolationism, created from recordings made by Powell on the Prince Madog – a research ship that works in the Irish Sea – as well as samples of Greenland ice being sailed through and a vintage Anglesey lighthouse bell. A half-hour-plus closing track, Stratigraphy, concludes a disc of deep listening with an involving concept.

MINES

This Swansea sludge band released their debut EP nearly five years ago, as a duo, and in the form of Your Ever Failing Happiness present their third, recorded as a five-piece “in a dilapidated mansion in west Wales”. Said recording is bleakly lo-fi, albeit in a way that accentuates the prickly unease of these five songs as opposed to just sounding like no one knew what they were doing. All The Best, concluding matters over 11 and a half minutes, snaps out of its swampy, noiserock-adjacent riff sesh for a slower, quieter passage full of backmasking and other wavy FX. Elsewhere, the knucklescabbed blues-rock inertia of songs like No Other Way, likewise Chris Horgan’s may-prove-divisive vocal style, give me a Harvey Milk vibe.

PLASTIC ESTATE

“My 80s influence comes from modern bands that are influenced by 80s bands,” said Stanley Fouracres, half of the songwriting duo behind Cardiff’s Plastic Estate, in a recent Buzz interview. There are enough such artists – some very adept and good! – these days to give me no reason to question that, but Plastic Estate’s self-titled debut album, on Italian label Avant!, certainly sounds like its creators know their onions, with its high-gloss synth melodies, lightly gloomy vocal approach and robust postpunk basslines on songs like Berlin. Think the latest album by LA’s Black Marble, with less lo-fi synthpop leanings and more of, say, Simple Minds before they were an arena band.

TRADDODIAD OFNUS

North Wales’ Ankstmusik label is only semi-active these days, but when it stirs it’s usually to bring us something good, and so it is with their reissue of Welsh Tourist Bored, the sole LP by Traddodiad Ofnus. Released in 1987 on Constrictor, a German post punkish label, the group lived in southern England but were part of a fruitful uptick of Welsh language music that combined rock with electronic beats and experimental noise. Main members Gareth Potter and Mark Lugg would regroup in the ravier Tŷ Gwydr shortly after the last, acid house-influenced Traddodiad Ofnus 12” Rh.2 – included here as part of an extensive selection of bonus tracks. WTB is, from what I can tell, little known even among people who’ve discovered the likes of Datblygu in recent years, but deserves to be placed among that small, perfectly-formed canon.

ZEUK

A mere 10 months since Marc Roberts last released a CDR under his Zeuk pseudonym, here’s another – Minutes, via the Folk Archive label. My copy is packaged in a stripy paper bag, such as you might get from an old school sweet shop with a clock logo printed on it, and there are two clock badges thrown in too. Seems that Zeuk is a sod for timepieces! Musically, this is a curveball relative to the gothic folk he has most often served: there are 23 songs on here, nearly all less than a minute long though still plenty psych and peculiar. I keep thinking of Guided By Voices and Cleaners From Venus in spirit and fidelity, although I don’t think either are influences. Mostly, these miniature tracks ride their one idea or motif and bow out when it’s exhausted. “Emily, where’s your mask?” asks Emily’s Mask, several times over – a reference perhaps to the metaphorical masks that society compels us to wear, or just a song about having to deal with the general public? Only Marc, and perhaps Emily, know for sure.

words NOEL GARDNER