Beginning 2025 after taking December off, Noel Gardner has some catching up to do in the service of telling you about class underground Welsh music, which is why there is a Christmas album included in this 10-strong rundown. Buy it in preparation for the end of the year! Or do as you will, really.
It’s the dawning of a new age for mid-Wales’ AISHA VAUGHAN
The incarnation of Aisha Vaughan we encounter on The Gate, a six-song LP-or-possibly-EP released on LA label Leaving, is a fairly comprehensive reinvention from the late 2010s, when she made sparse alt-soul as Chaouche. Bristol-based then, having grown up in Swansea, she’s now living near Rhayader and making electronically treated nu-new age music. Vocals, though very much part of the equation, are employed texturally more than lyrically, interwoven with Vaughan’s harp and flute playing but collectively processed into slow, meditative segments of hum and shimmer. Her self-applied ‘Celtic’ label strikes me as something that’d pass a listener by if not informed of it, but there’s plenty to sink into without worrying about that too much.
North Walian nu-hard rockers ALFFA release the beast on album two
The passage of time and associated jadedness has not stopped the feeling of amused novelty I get whenever a press release uses a quote from this magazine. “Caernarfon duo Alffa,” Buzz apparently once wrote, “have the energy of caged beasts released into the wild.” I sadly don’t have the lived experience to assess the veracity of this claim, so will settle for saying that Alffa’s second album O’r Lludw (From Ashes) (Côsh) is a solid set sitting somewhere between stoner-adjacent alt-rock in the Queens Of The Stone Age lineage, neo-grunge and bottom end-heavy postpunk, with Caea Dy Lygaid a real standout in the latter style. Frontloaded in terms of hooks and anthemic choruses, O’r Lludw darkens its mood as it progresses and is more interesting when doing so.
AMANDA WHITING (still) wants to give you a jazzy Christmas cwtch (probably)
“‘Cwtch’ is the most important word to Welsh folk,” claims Amanda Whiting, explaining the title of her new album A Christmas Cwtch (First Word). Is this an empirically true statement? Quite possibly, many listeners in the Cardiff-based jazz harpist’s non-domestic audience may now consider it one. Whiting has after all picked up a fanbase in the last few years among headnodder jazzbo types, a collaborative mini-album with Don Leisure among her recent successes, and if you want 14 instrumental interpretations of Christmas music both traditional and less so, this release is your saviour. With Aidan Thorne on bass and Mark O’Connor drumming, it could not only be a swish jazz soundtrack to any soirees you have planned but generate some cooing approval when people ask you what it is.
Say goodbye to BAD SHOUT with six songs of fast garage punk
Volatile (R*E*P*E*A*T), Bad Shout’s third EP and most comprehensive at six songs, obliges me to again note the presence of a Buzz colleague (Ones To Watch/social media stalwart Emma W) in the lineup. However, since this record’s release the south Wales trio have also announced their imminent breakup, leaving them unable to reap the rewards of the positive review they are about to receive. Only showing ‘progression’ from previous releases in the sense of the songs being faster and more raucous, Bad Shout bestride punk, garage rock and powerpop in a way that fleetingly reminds me of a lot of things from a lot of eras but never so much that I’d deign to presume their inspirations. It’s all very fun though and I hope all involved kick on soon.
It’s raining cats and dogs over synthpop duo BRRDS’ way
Dave Hughes of Glamorgan duo Brrds emailed, 18 months after our last correspondence, to share a lament about the bad weather of the moment and flag up his band’s third album, Underneath The Jet Stream. It is, in fact and in part, an album about bad Welsh weather, not that I needed those particular seeds planted in my mind. Though continuing to tap into reserves of vaguely hauntological analogue synthpop, I fancy that UTJS is more sonically upbeat than Brrds’ predecessor, 2023’s Soon Comes Forever. Riffs of a sort (and vocodered vocals) enter the fray on The Ones And The Zeroes, and at times the melodic nous and arrangement feels like ELO-type powerpop rerouted through a bank of keyboards.
DEHEUBARTH impress on this Ghast-ly, grandiose debut album
Formed some 11 years ago by Pete Davies directly after the breakup of Ghast, a Swansea group who had a great and underrated line in sludgy black metal, Deheubarth’s long-coming debut album Revel In Occult Chambers (Infernum) is more melodic and midtempo than the older band, but still pegs the trio (all of whom played in pre-Ghast band Mulch) as fervently dedicated to an authentically blackened sound. Exhilaratingly paced at times, as on mid-album highlight Traveller Of The Night Sky, Deheubarth also have slower passages indicating a doom and gothic metal influence, and these eight songs’ lyrics combine imagery of fantastical quests and the like with grandly-phrased expressions of self-doubt.
THE DOGS: the only band called The Dogs ever
“THE ONLY BAND CALLED THE DOGS EVER” it says, on The Dogs’ Instagram page. Who would you prefer to believe, them or some nerds who tried to dispute this claim? If you are an intellectual with good taste you will certainly be in the corner of this south Wales punk band on hearing Total Dog Shit, two digitally released demos pressed to 12” vinyl by LA label Under The Gun and Mendeku from Spain. Comprising three fellows who all played in hardcore band Asid among various other things, with drums done on a machine for added trashiness, the vibe is kinda like early Oi! meets The Spits and the sort of bands who got compiled on the Killed By Death LPs. There’s a mangled Velvet Underground cover in the middle too. It’s conceptually perfect.
The return of 90s-vintage Welsh indie faves MELYS bodes well for ‘25
Melys formed nearly 30 years ago in Betws-Y-Coed, a tiny Snowdonian village, but became a popular draw across Wales and beyond with their distinct brand of synthesised indie rock. They disbanded in 2005, playing the odd reunion gig since, but as of now look to be actively back together for the first time; 2025 will see the release of their sixth album and Santa Cruz is the first song from it. Inspired by long drives on America’s west coast – reflected, you’d suppose, in the Kraftwerk-style cruise control rhythms – and the feeling of outstripping people’s expectations of you, this iteration of Melys is more electronic and more pop than ever before (if there are guitars on this song, I can’t hear them) and they make it work very nicely.
Crisp electronic delight from the latest POPE JOHN PAUL VAN DAMME album
Tom Wallace rattles out albums as Pope John Paul Van Damme (and sometimes other aliases) at a fair old rate, and here’s another one, Disinfamy, on the Machine label. It’s not an ‘artist album’ as such, comprising three previously released tracks and four new ones, but hangs together perfectly ably. It opens with a sample of late wrestling icon Owen Hart, correctly foreshadowing a certain borderline-breakcore levity on Whodoyouthinkyouareiam, but subsequent tracks revert to slightly more solemn IDM melody. I tend to think these latter tendencies – see Argento’s Glove – showcase PJPVD at his best, much as his moments of frothing-over breakbeat crispness can be more than invigorating.
A shoegaze and spacerock grounding goes into STRATA FLORIDA’s chiming psych
Sleep Of Apples is the third album by Strata Florida, a duo named after an abbey in Tregaron, near where they live. On paper they’re an unlikely musical coupling, respectively of an early 90s and early 70s vintage: Louise Trehy in shoegaze outfit Swallow, Pete Pavli of proto-metallers High Tide and Hawkwind-related entities. It’ll cost you £100 or more for an original copy of either member’s first LP, but for £10.99 you can buy Sleep Of Apples on CD and be treated to eight songs of easy-paced chiming guitar which folds in plenty of psych and folk texture but shifts Strata Florida’s sound closer to late-80s style indie than previous, more guitar-heavy releases.
words NOEL GARDNER