Noel Gardner insists that a musical diet of subterranean Welsh sounds – from classical piano maestros to dungeon synth, hard techno to trap beats – is good for what ails you in these gloomy times. Go on, give it a try: here’s the best in new Welsh music you may have missed this February.

Delve into double dungeon synth from ALTAR OF MOSS / YSBRYDNOS

First up for this February’s releases of the best new Welsh music is the dude from mid-Wales who records black metal and dungeon synth – lately, more of the latter than the former – under the name Ysbrydnos, and has just dropped two split releases with similarly inclined projects. One, A Cursed Path, is under a newly minted moniker, Altar Of Moss, and both he and a Missouri musician calling themselves Frost Void contribute two instrumental tracks each. Frosty’s dungeon synth brace are melodic, soothing even, while Ysbryd’s are cinematic and barrel-chested. Fathoms Of Celestial Sorrow, the other split is longer, over 50 minutes in fact, and pairs Ysbryd with Atlantean Sword “from the druidic vale of Englande”. Both sides of the tape are again solid if you’re a dungeon synth nut, with Ysbrydnos’ productions a bit subtler and less dramatic here.

CERYS HAFANA mixes traditional harp with modern synth & beats

Powys folk performer Cerys Hafana has built a decent profile in the last few years, with a non-traditional approach to the triple harp and a songbook drawn from some obscure nooks of the Welsh ballad archive. On The Bitter, a self-released five-song CD, she expands her horizons to the folksong of England and Scotland, and the chosen selections are better known on average (Lyke Wake Dirge is foundational to folk music, and several centuries old) but performed non-reverentially, with beats and synths accompanying Hafana’s harp work. There’s also The Bitter Withy, whose lyrics are a sort of Muppet Babies-type prequel to the New Testament, and some Welsh at the last thanks to Iestyn Tyne’s spoken intro on Willy O’Winsbury.

DOUVELLE19: what the Asteroid Boys alum did next

A recently published book, Where We Come From by Aniefiok Ekpoudom, is a compelling three-pronged history of recent UK rap scenes – including south Wales, with grime/rock hybridists Astroid Boys the focal point there. It definitely cast that now defunct band in a new light for me, and concludes with a short profile of Elliot Brussalis, who went by Dell then and now produces springy, upfront garage as Douvelle19. Skin To Skin collects his four most recently released tracks on one digital EP, and I’m into it: from the guest vocals (by one Kaisha) on the title track, to the classic 2-step skippy beats on Swimming, to Shook’s journey from melancholy to mayhem, to concluding slowjam Green Light.

Classic Welsh pianist LLŶR WILLIAMS’ take on Schumann

North Walian pianist of renown Llŷr Williams adds more classical excellence to this month’s new Welsh music crop, continuing his recording artist relationship with the Signum Classics label by releasing a selection of Robert Schumann’s Piano Works. Running to two full CDs, so around two and a half hours, it’s a substantial slice of the German composer’s oeuvre, spanning his teenage-era work in the late 1820s to the drama-laden Carnival Scenes From Vienna, completed in the early 1840s. An emotionally varied programme results, with Williams offering both lighthearted miniatures of less than two minutes’ length (or even one) and more complex, challenging sorties, notably the three-part Fantasy, Op. 17 spanning more than half an hour.

South Wales rapper OGUN blends Nigeria and Newport

In the last couple of years, south Wales rapper Andrew Ogun has juggled a growing musical profile with more officially sanctioned, if you will, cultural work including taking on the role of the Arts Council Of Wales’ ‘agent for change’. Fair play to him! For my part, and what are my ingrained presumptions, that sort of work doesn’t have me anticipating an especially hard or street-level sound, but Ogun’s new Trial By Fire – billed as an EP, seemingly, but more or less album-length – delivers just that. Its 10 tracks chop up crisp post-trap digital drums with eerie, drip-drop synth melodies. Ogun’s MCing accent keeps plenty of its Nigerian inflexion amidst flashes of patois and Newport bluntness.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY LIGHTNING return with Bowie-tinged synthpop

This band existed for about half of the 1980s in Swansea and released one 7” of wild UKDIY that goes for three-figure sums now. They made another couple of albums in the early 00s which I think I have in a box here somewhere, and 20 years later have made their second Lazarus-like comeback with No, Not Now, Never, recorded as a duo of Syd Howells and original Photographed By Lightning member David M Mitchell. I truly love that stuff like this exists and crosses my path, and – helpfully – I dig the music on here too: 11 jabs of eccentric synthpop with a certain Bowie-type theatricality about it but a noisier grounding, the closing Some One Thing an especially chewy dirge.

Cardiff’s SILENT FORUM are like no other band on album number two

This Cardiff band have consistently modified their sound over their eight years active in a way that suggests they’re forever searching for their platonic ideal form. Domestic Majestic (Libertino), their second studio album, might not prove the last word in that respect but carries itself with what sounds like a brash certainty. The melodic, limber postpunk of previous releases remains in place, with electronic and (courtesy of producer Charlie Francis, who also plays some keyboards) orchestral touches too, while vocalist Richard Birt-Wiggins seems to be moving in a more James Dean Bradfield-esque direction, tongue-twisting syllable-stuffed lines and all. Silent Forum don’t bear much resemblance to other bands kicking around at present – a good thing even if you find this LP an acquired taste.

TUCKER: the DJ pumping hard techno into Welsh clubs

Callum Tucker is a DJ and producer from south Wales who looks to have had a fruitful 2023 and currently has residencies at Platform11 in Pontypridd as well as with roving club promoters Solo and Outrage. He seems to be very much locked into the ‘hard techno’ explosion among young ravers, which has seen a crop of (mostly) European DJs selling out clubs they couldn’t have got arrested in a few years earlier. Mother Fu*ker (asterisk not Buzz’s), a three-track EP on Portuguese label TFT, is Tucker’s latest release, and with its hardcore-derived kickdrums and reverse bass it’s grist to the mill of my feelings about the new wave of hard techno, namely that a lot of this stuff is rebadged and partially tweaked hardstyle more than a continuum from, say, DJ Rush or even Chris Liebing.

WRKHOUSE are coming for Bastille’s crown

This band are from north Wales – not clear if dispersed or a specific part of it – and used to be called Lewys, which is also the first name of their singer. The press material for Getaway, their first single as Wrkhouse, alludes to this previous incarnation but requires you to go and find the details yourself. Fortunately, I am passably competent at putting keywords into Google! Anyway, onto their music and Getaway does that sort of low-lit modish pop-rock thing that younger types love despite it coding very ‘adult’ to me: Guitar Music at root, but so fulsomely produced (by Eddie Al-Shakarchi of Voya) it ends up more on the Bastille side of the tracks.

LEEKS & BEETS gathers a noisy harvest from Bad Shout and more

Lastly on this roundup of new Welsh music this February is a four-band, 16-song compilation LP released by a label, R*E*P*E*A*T, who are dually based in Swansea and Cambridge. The chosen bands, accordingly, are from south/west Wales (Bad Shout and Monet) and Cambridge (Acid Alchemist and The Monoliths). Bad Shout donate five songs of garagey pop-punk not unlike early Replacements; Monet four tracks of gawky and slightly circus-y post-hardcore. Acid Alchemist’s two songs (totalling less than half the running time of any of the other bands’ contributions) include a highly endearing basement-metal number titled Chuggasaurus Sex and Monoliths dish up some clattery theatre kid prog-punk.

words NOEL GARDNER