RECENT WELSH MUSIC YOU MAY HAVE MISSED | REVIEW
Presenting the first part of the final edition of this quickfire regional review roundup rundown for 2020: 10 varied musical items of many different genres, stylistic shifts made all the more jarring by me dishing them out in alphabetical order. Deal with it!
Alphane Moon, aka Dafydd Roberts, is currently based in Aberystwyth (I think – the events he promoted as Listen To The Voice Of Fire definitely were) and has made stark, minimalist space rock under this name and others since the 1990s. You Dark Gone Days compiles eight examples of such from his archives, starting on a loner folk kinda tip and graduating to all kindsa blissed-out whooshing synthiness. It’s available digitally from the link above, or on CDR from the Reverb Worship label unless it’s sold out by now.
Alula Down continue us on an odd-folk path for a minute, and also mark my first occasion of geographical cheating to get something I want to write about into this column, as they’re in fact from Hereford. Which is of course historically Welsh, and the football team used to play in the Welsh Cup. Anyway, the duo’s latest release Postcards From Godley Moor, Autumn 2020 combines seven digitally-released songs with a set of art cards, the latest in their run of seasonal releases; musically, it’s equal parts rural folk traditionalism and more avant-garde sound design rooted in field recordings (quite possibly from an actual field).
Billed as “Wales’ national youth folk band,” and assembled by Trac Cymru, Avanc [top] also take a part-trad, part-not approach to the form, but in a very different way. Their latest release, a track titled Fitz (which seems to be two compositions segued together), begins with what sound like digital drums, quickly pivots to a Celtic-misted hoedown and eventually employs the busy clack of clog dancing as a percussive backdrop.
Cardiff-based musician/visual artist Andy Fung has recorded under a few names since the 90s; the latest is Botch Sconnet, which also features his brother Dave, possibly making his musical debut here. Back To Yours (Surk; available on vinyl or CD direct from the band here) gives UK hip-hop a backdrop of beat-driven psychedelia, perhaps akin to The Beta Band or something Twisted Nerve Records would have released 20 years ago, and a general dishevelled ribaldness encapsulated in token heavy rocker Hashfinder. Sidemen and guest musicians include producer Frank Naughton, Steven Goundrey of Ghostlawns and Iwan Ap Huw Morgan, who we’ll return to in the next segment of this column.
Another Welsh stalwart trying something a bit different is Newport’s Chi Lameo, who has sung and played guitar in the doom-rocking Spider Kitten since the start of the millennium. His more eclectic tastes generally get aired on his solo releases: Tender Espionage is the latest of these, opening with a title track which, over nearly nine minutes, exhibits an unexpected shuffling baggy groove a la Happy Mondays. The following three retain the synthesised beats but bend back towards the 70s classic rock Chi digs, in terms of his gravelly vocal delivery and occasional proggy guitar solos.
Cardiff quartet DD Darillo were founded by Dylan Morgan, also keyboard player in popular indie ensemble Boy Azooga, and doesn’t fall a vast distance from that tree with Out Of Control, the debut DD Darillo single. It’s an ode to the mixed emotions that come with moving out of a Welsh backwater town, and the indie-ish spin on 60s garage psych builds into something almost Krautrockishly repetitive in the song’s latter third.
Released via the Safe Suburban Home label, two-song cassette single Another Day / Yeh is my introduction to Fins ‘N’ Tins, a surf-rock band based in Swansea. Apparently it’s much more laidback than their normal fare, largely on account of singer/guitarist Jacob Roberts having to record it on his own for lockdown-related reasons. Indeed, I don’t hear anything I’d describe as surf-rock here, more 90s slacker-indie with a faint sort of Roy Orbison melancholy, but it’s rather pleasant.
Cardiff indie-synth duo HMS Morris [above], in conjunction with label Bubblewrap, sneak out a five-song EP just before the widely-welcomed end of 2020 – you can buy Pastille from just before this column is published, as a 12” with a t-shirt and/or enamel pin, but will have to wait until Fri 18 Dec to stream it online. A jumble of clanky electro beats, epic synthpop riffs, ethereal (maybe Animal Collective-ish?) production touches and Heledd Watkins’ bilingual lyrics await you.
Pianist and songwriter Ify Iwobi comes from Swansea – not certain where she lives at present but I guess we’re most of us stuck in our houses, right – and follows up a three-song EP from early October with a new single, Solo. It is in fact not solo (Iwobi usually enlists guest vocalists, I think), featuring Luna Lie Lot also from Swansea, for two and a half minutes of agreeable soul-pop with a notionally simple frame but a bunch of neat, subtly odd things going on in the beats.
Following a plug for his tape as Derehctub in the first edition of these monthly columns, Cardiff-based experimental geezer Jaxson Payne is back with another self-issued cassette collecting music created over several years. In Order To Solve This Particular Problem You Must Solve All The Problems is entirely built from samples, layered and manipulated so the original owners (probably) couldn’t identify their creation. Sometimes it’s arch in the style of People Like Us, sometimes sleepy/creepy like Nurse With Wound. Both modes get my vote!
words NOEL GARDNER
