This month for his new Welsh music roundup, Noel Gardner is bouncing carefree from synthesised classical music to grotty weed-obsessed metal; coolly crooning jazzy pop to NATO fanfic-themed post-rock. It’s all from Wales and it’s all available to both read about and listen to below.
Bangor-born classical composer ALBERT ALAN OWEN has debut LP rescued from obscurity
Beginning this month’s new Welsh music column with a reissue, on the Liberville label, of the 1979 debut solo LP by a Bangor-born composer whose combination of acoustic and electronic elements anticipated the 80s new age boom by a few years, and whose parents had the presence of mind to give him a name beginning with A.’s Keyboards And Strings has a three-part suite, Mysteries, on its first side, the five-part On Muted Strings on the other. The piano is decidedly electric – ersatz, some classical afficionados might say – but his playing of both it and the violin is lissom and minimalist, and technology’s advantages are approached deftly rather than used as shortcuts. An obscure gem which Owen, now in his mid-70s, is hopefully getting a good royalty cut of.
West Wales stoner doom curios DOPE SMOKER return
The last album by Pembrokeshire three-piece Dope Smoker came out in late 2021, and I wrote of its “clattering production like Electric Wizard at their grimiest”. That’s certainly still in place on eight-song newie Wolf’s Castle, a self-released digital effort (though I’d expect a vinyl edition in the future, seeing as the band seem to be able to sell them). Deviations from the blueprint feature, too, such as Same Old Trip, which is like a 90s grunge mither with the production aesthetic of one of the really mad Royal Trux records. Something I’d not clocked until now: the main Dope Smoker guy Gareth Hopkins used to be hip-hop producer Hostyle. I have (somewhere) a bootleg mix CD of soul obscurities he did about 20 years ago with Secondson.
Noisy alt-rockers ENABLING BEHAVIOUR surf the Cornwall-Cardiff pipeline
Although Enabling Behaviour formed in Falmouth, most or all of them have since moved to Cardiff, where I enjoyed watching a live performance by them shortly before Christmas. Gilt!, the four-piece’s debut album, follows in its footsteps in the sense of sounding like a band working things out in real time but, as a direct result of this, making more interesting noises than might otherwise have been the case. It can’t really be tied down to any given genre but perhaps slips under the umbrellas of postpunk, gothic rock and unusual-tunings 90s alt, with songs like Stressor and War Song indicative of a Sonic Youth fandom in the group.
Two decades after chart success, nothing can kill Newport hip-hop jesters GOLDIE LOOKIN CHAIN
“Some people follow, others lead by example / Me, I just swear on a ripped-off sample.” It’s 20 years – let that sink in! – since Goldie Lookin Chain became a group who had ‘hit singles’ and could tour the UK to a receptive audience. They still do the second of those things, indeed there are samples of their Stage Banter on their latest release, The Mix Tape 6. Like a lot of mixtape releases, the difference between this and an ‘actual’ album isn’t entirely clear, but I don’t suppose it matters ultimately. Most of the 17 tracks sound more authentically like late-80s/early-90s hip-hop than GLC ever did before, and subject matter includes gaming streaming algorithms, fast food establishments who price gouge on sauce, and a sensitive treatment of the neurodivergent experience. No, really.
From Carmarthenshire to London to Disney and back again: LLINOS EMANUEL releases debut single
Llinos Emanuel has had one of those careers that’s led her to release her debut single having already chalked up an impressive-sounding CV: most recently, vocals on last year’s version of The Little Mermaid soundtrack. (I assume if it was Under The Sea she would have said.) First moving from Wales to London to work in the shadows of the recording industry, Emanuel is now back in Carmarthenshire, where she grew up, and that debut single, Golden, is really nice. It’s slow-building jazzy lounge pop with a lavish ‘1960s, but modern’ production and a vocal that dips and swoops without getting melismatic on us. There’s a Welsh-language version, Unlle, as well.
Yet another new direction for MAŁGOLA, NO with an early 00s r’n’b style album
Małgola Gulczynska, a Pole in Cardiff, seems to enjoy trying on a variety of musicals hats. As half of 100% Rabbit she makes mid-80s sounding synthpop, since joining Live, Do Nothing embellishes their orchestral indie, and as Małgola, No has ranged from acoustic piano pop to bleepy chiptune. New album Memory Loss is Gulczynska’s take on the crisp, digital r’n’b that thrived a few years either side of the millennium, and most of its nine songs are features for vocalists of her acquaintance. Local hyperpop upstart Sorry Stacy does the honours on opening track Thick Ice (as well as designing the sleeve art), with TeiFi, Truth and Scarz among others present. The low fidelity of the sound palette Małgola, No works with often reminds me of early grime more than r’n’b, which I’m fine with.
Pedal steel and partial rocking out as NO THEE NO ESS deliver LP eight
Distant Country (Surk) is the first album by Cardiff-based duo-plus-pals No Thee No Ess for nearly three years, and it’s a welcome return if misleadingly titled – in the sense that country, the musical genre that is, has been embraced more closely by Paul Battenbough and Andy Fung than ever before. Dimmer Switch, from 2021, rocked out at times – in a psych or even Krautrock manner – in between their pedal steel caressing and whiskified crooning. Over these 11 songs, organ-heavy garage rocker Laid Back & Wondering is, yes, as un-laid back as it gets. What are they like! Guest musicians including Gareth Bonello and Rhodri Viney add colour and dimensions to a creditable eighth (!) album.
Conceptual post-rock grooves from Swansea solo project ROSSER ELECTRONICS
South Wales electronic producer Rod Thomas (no relation to dance-pop artist Bright Light Bright Light, who can also be described using those first six words) has recorded a self-titled concept album as Rosser Electronics, and the concept is actually pretty cool. Rosser Electronics were a company who worked on both the BBC headquarters in Swansea and the NATO headquarters in Brussels, so it’s a fanfic-y riff on that. Rosser Electronics has a bunch of synth-voiced spoken word which clarifies the theme but arguably detracts from the instrumentation, which I really like: bassline-fuelled, lightfooted jazzy post-rock, the sort of thing that peaked in the late 90s. In fact it most strongly reminds me of Fridge, the band Four Tet started out in but no-one seems to have rediscovered despite him playing to five-figure crowds now.
Self-sufficient and slowburning in mid-Wales: SAMANA release album three
Some musicians move to Wales, and record here too, but give the impression that this has no bearing on their creative practice. For this reason I would be unlikely to include anything by Justin Broadrick (Godflesh et al) in this column despite him having lived in Abergele for over 20 years. [Samana], a duo/couple who moved from Brighton to Llandrindod Wells and often mention it, are a different matter – but does their eponymous third LP reflect their apparent rural idyll? An impossible question to answer definitively… but, yes, possibly. It’s lavishly engineered, with piano and strings draped over slowburning gothic folk and sometimes landing on an unlikely ‘Nina Nastasia meets Radiohead’ equation. Having self-released this record, it seems industry tastemakers aren’t glomming onto Samana at present, but listening now, that hardly feels like an implausible eventuality.
From the East Village to Peppa Pig World: stirring folk-rock from TANGLEJACK
Folk-rock duo TangleJack were last reviewed in this publication in 2018, since when much has changed and plenty hasn’t. I (the person writing now, as then) still have a duty to point out that one of TangleJack, vocalist and guitarist John-Paul Davies, is one of Buzz’s long-term writers. Certain instrumental elements remain on their second album The Ragged Edge, with plaintive harmonica cropping up on The Players Not The Playwright, but a gravelly vocal style I likened to Eddie Vedder back then has left the building. The harmonising style of Davies and Duncan Leigh (also vocals and guitar) lends an airy, peacenik-y mid-60s East Village vibe, but the anti-Tory jeremiad You’ve Never Had It So Good, which includes a sample of Boris Johnson enthusing about Peppa Pig World, indicates TangleJack are no apolitical simps.
Swansea bands old and (mostly) new compiled on the LOVELY UGLY / PRETTY SHITTY album
Concluding June 2024’s roundup of new Welsh music with the R*E*P*E*A*T label, who continue their quest to press the noisy bands of Swansea to circular plastic with a 15-band comp LP, Lovely Ugly / Pretty Shitty. So we have a title referencing Dylan Thomas and Twin Town, an opening track (by Helen Love) titled Swansea’s Got An Our Price and a contribution by Swansea Sound, whose ancestral band the Pooh Sticks also feature with a song from 1992. The album finishes with another archive pick, by new wave obscurities The DC10s, but otherwise it’s all contemporary selections, ranging from the punkier likes of Picsel, Baby Schillachi and Kikker, to indie types Tom Emlyn and Trampolene, to heady psych-rockers Soundwire and Egg Spectrum.
words NOEL GARDNER
