KHAMIRA

Cymro-Indian jazzers Khamira have waited the best part of three years to release Undod / Unity (Tŷ Cerdd), their second album, so they could tour it. Far from ideal, but it’s not like the enchanting liquidity of these seven pieces were in danger of sounding dated. Khamira’s two percussionists, Aidan Thorne and tabla player Vishal Nagar, are subtle foils for one another but can positively cook in tandem, as on Saraswāti: The Goddess Of Music, while if you checked out and enjoyed the recent LP by trumpeter Tomos Williams’ other group Burum, you’ll undoubtedly like him here too.

LSN & ROGER ROBINSON

LSN are a six-strong production team who generally operate in the vicinity of meditative dubstep and halftime drum’n’bass; their homestead is in north Wales, though they might have dispersed a bit since their debut release in 2014. Roger Robinson is a dub poet who you might know from the TS Eliot Prize he won a while back, or his presence in King Midas Sound with Kevin Martin. On Always Sinking (Artikal Music), LSN and Roger join forces for a gently powerful four-track EP. The latter delivers his vocals with silken tone and precise enunciation, while LSN assist him by scaling back their aggier production tendencies in favour of more measured arrangements – though that doesn’t preclude the appearance of doomy rumbles of bass on, notably, Brown Eyes.

MARY HOFMAN & RICHARD ORMROD

Released by Tŷ Cerdd, simultaneously with Khamira, is a digital album by Mary Hofman & Richard Ormrod, a married couple living in north Wales. Respectively a violinist and pianist, on Unbroken Threads they perform music by five composers – all contemporary and active, although in the case of the pieces by Sarah Lianne Lewis, Rhian Samuel and Hilary Tann these originated as responses to Beethoven sonatas. Completed by Steph Power and Eleanor Alberga (who lives on the Herefordshire side of the Marches; the others are all Welsh or live in Wales), this is a suite of variable moods, from Samuel’s three-movement Sonata For Violin And Piano alternating between buoyant virtuosity and shivering atonality to Lewis’ Until The Thread Breaks, where Hofman employs frequencies so high we end up mainly hearing the base sound of bow meeting string.

NATHAN HALL & THE SINISTER LOCALS

“Arthur Lee and Roger McGuinn and David Crosby…” begins the chorus to the first song on Golden Fleece, the new album by Cardiff’s Nathan Hall & The Sinister Locals. It’s about getting tipsy at home and dreaming oneself to the late-60s West Coast. Hall, a member of the Soft-Hearted Scientists – ditto Michael Bailey, who despite the name comprises the rest of the Sinister Locals – is doubtless satirising his own laser-focused music taste to some degree; either way it might clue you in to whether the duo’s lolloping, whimsical, electronically treated psychedelic jangle is for you. If it is, you might wish to know there are five previous Sinister Locals albums and a sheaf of SHS output to boot.

PIXY JONES

Bits N Bobs, released by Super Furry-affiliated label Strangetown, is the debut solo album from Pixy Jones, who as a member of El Goodo has spent over 20 years toiling in the vintage-sounding garage/psych/powerpop mines. On the evidence of this effervescent 13-tracker, El Goodo’s recent disbandment wasn’t due to a lessening of love for their sound: Bits N Bobs, parts of which were written with El Goodo in mind, carries on down that road, albeit with a reduction in instrumentation. There’s a couple of Byrds-y country-rock turns, other parts on a loosely Zombies or Gorky’s tip, leadoff number I’m Not There is like the ghost of California Dreamin’… As with Nathan Hall, Jones knows what he likes and when it comes round I like hearing it.

SANGUELIA

Titled, in arch fashion, 2015 – After The Fall Of Newport, this is the second cassette album from horror-disco/synth-prog outfit Sanguelia. The first came out eight years ago and was recorded as a duo, with live drums; this one, as per the title, was intended to be a swift followup but is only being released now, via south Wales’ Two Man Tape Co microlabel, and is a solo release by Sanguelia founder Linus. Reverting to drum machines gives the sound a more tangible electro feel (Net Confoundment has a raw analogue thud a la Legowelt) but these eight instrumental tracks are surely fuelled by a long, mentally fulfilling life of watching obscure video nasties. One of Linus’ other current projects, Thinking With Sand, were reviewed last month, and he has other things cooking too.

SORRY STACY

Anastassia Svets, from Estonia and living in Cardiff, has music going back to 2015 on Bandcamp – but a few live shows, and latest EP The Fifth Stage, under her Sorry Stacy alias is my first encounter with her as an artist. Happy to have the acquaintance as these five songs are pretty cool: hyperpop, I guess you might call it (certainly has the vibe of someone who grew up online), but runs the gamut from relatively mnstrm Gaga-leaning numbers to stranger things with a PC Music twist to a spot of metal vocalising on Dog’s Life. (A brief perusal of Svets’ Twitter uncovers her fandom of American experi-metal composer Lingua Ignota, which tracks in this instance.) Not all the songs fully land for me but each have interesting ideas at a minimum.

THEY LIVE | WE SLEEP

The Bandcamp page of They Live | We Sleep from Swansea has a headspinning range of purchase options for their new four-song EP Sorrowful World – red or white tape shell? Short or longsleeved shirt? – but keep your eyes on the prize and you will find about a quarter-hour of gnarly, chaotic metallic hardcore that betters their previous two releases comfortably, even without advancing their sound greatly. Some of the drumming borders on blastbeats, certainly I suspect a grind influence creeping in, and final number A Sorrowful World gestures to the cold industrial jaw-clamp of Godflesh. TL | WS are still pretty audibly fans of Converge, Nails et al, but every region needs a solid band playing in that style, IMO.

THUGWIDOW

What would you do if I told you the best spaced-out hardcore/jungle album of the year came straight outta Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? You’d be on tenterhooks for more info, of course. There is a caveat here, which is that Alex Lowther-Harris aka Thugwidow wrote his latest full-length Seventh Circle Of Litness (Western Lore) while living in London for the most part, but he’s since made the smart person’s decamp to Anglesey so let’s take advantage of that and big up this 71 minutes of rugged galaxy brain breakbeat science! Encounter, here, some right stellar drum programming – ever-mutating clatterfest Funkiest Funk – and genre curveballs like Universal Indicator-style acid rinseout Overall Failure. Thugwidow’s synths and samples often tilt towards ambient climes, even when the beats are going ham over the top, Light On Earth being one fine example of many. High recommendation!

UNITY

Cardiff rapper/graf artist Amelia Unity – just Unity on record – is putting music out at a solid rate, with last November’s debut album being followed by this five-song EP, Red & Blue. It doesn’t so much show the two sides of her approach as drag them in distinctly opposing directions. On one hand you have Faith Makers, which features Missy G (generally heard MCing over drum’n’bass sets) and producer Leone Vuetivavalagi, and musically speaking at least is the most boisterous track released under this name. On the other, High Street Bullshit, Dead Boy Walking and Faith Makers itself are downcast meditations on the fallout of deprivation in Wales: this is a profoundly bleak release all told, for good reason.

words NOEL GARDNER