Another 10 domestic doozies fresh in the virtual racks, or maybe even actual ones in some cases, with Noel Gardner (plus a token takeover from Emma Way) casting an eye over the Wales music scene of post-rock, punk rock, psych-rock, jazz and black metal to find the best new Welsh music this July…
AARONSON
The debut album from Barry-based post-rockers Aaronson acts out its chosen style with the sort of exacting efficiency you might expect from a band who named themselves so they could feature first in alphabetised review columns. I’m not saying Aaronson did do that, just that it would jibe with The Great Swells That Carry Us Will Pull Us Under, possibly the most textbook ‘post-rock album title’ I’ve ever seen. Wordless in perpetuity, twinkling and crescendoing at whichever points are most appropriate, the trio tick every genre box you can think of, from the lapping water sounds which begin album opener Lowest Tide onwards. If you’re someone who gets up early to catch the first bands at the Arctangent festival, this could be an album for you.
BAD SHOUT
In Buzz’s interview with Cardiff band Bad Shout, they mention regional radio DJ Adam Walton describing them as “a mutated mix of early Hüsker Dü and Supergrass”. Which, having been given that prompt, I can hear! To avoid this review just being me using someone else’s description instead of coming up with my own, though, I will treat that as more of a challenge, and try to get further to the nub of Bad Shout’s hardscrabble punk/garage/powerpop/jangle sound. It’s sort of like post-Ramones UK bands (The Lurkers, say) dipping into Sham 69 herbertry meeting millennial-era US garage oiks like Jay Reatard and maybe No Age in the guitar sound. I like it.
BEAUTY PARLOUR
This Cardiff-based solo project has changed up its identity (it was a duo in one early incarnation, in fact) and aesthetic quite a few times over the years, but the lo-BPM EBM MO that Beauty Parlour (aka Xavier Boucherat) has adopted for his second tape EP under this name is the most satisfying yet, to me. King Of Love, on the artist’s newly minted label Sgarab Tapes, has driving mid-80s style perv-club rhythms as its foundation, like a pitched-down DAF, but also beats that betray an interest in rather more contemporary dance music, dramatic crooning alt-pop vocals and still more unorthodox production touches. I am compelled to note that at the 3:50 mark on closing song I Hear A Voice, the keyboard part sounds like Fairground by Simply Red.
BLUE AMBER
Cardiffian solo-project-turned-band Blue Amber released debut album Rockland’s Workshop in the spring of last year, and I called it “jazzy post-rock of the ‘interesting textures’ rather than ‘big riffs’ type”. It’s since formed the basis of a six-song EP, Rocklands Workshopped, which opens with the original album’s title track and continues with five remixes of others – or a ‘rework’ in the case of Minas, who adds his own agitated muttering vocal and robust beats over Blue Amber’s own wispier melodies. The mysterious (to me) Rubie marries wonky electronica to leery sax on West Coast Renaissance, Ani Glass adds some reverby FX and not much else to Fencing, and Shreddies takes the opposite tack and jettisons most of Old Breed, Pt II for some high-octane house jamming.
HUW MARC BENNETT
Jazz-folkish bass player Huw Marc Bennett grew up in the Vale Of Glamorgan – his debut solo album, 2020’s Tresilian Bay, was titled in reference to that – and, even though all his music-making of significance has been done since moving to London, is fastidious about presenting a Welsh identity in his releases. Tresilian Bay’s followup Days Like Now (Albert’s Favourites) includes a take on trad folk tune Y Gwŷdd, previously interpreted by Khamira and Ffynnon and in Bennett’s hands a highly suave instrumental saunter somewhere between Astral Weeks and tropicalia. Pinc Sunset is like early-70s psych-folk if it cribbed from the concurrent soul scene and closer Red Valley pays tribute to anti-Franco Welsh conscripts in the Spanish Civil War through the medium of Afro-rock synth fuzz.
LLYN Y CWN
More callbacks are necessary thanks to this self-released CDR by Benjamin Powell, trading as Llyn Y Cwn: I reviewed this Snowdonia-region ambient composer’s 2022 album Du Y Moroedd and noted its final track Stratigraphy’s half-hour runtime. Turns out it was edited down from twice that length, and so here’s the full thing, split into three 20-minute parts. Suffice it to say that Du Y Moroedd’s extreme oceanic ambience, created through field recordings on a research ship, is taken to a platonic zenith of drifting drones and humming atmospheres. It’s not at all clear which sounds, if any, have been created in-studio by Powell, or even how much the recordings have been processed, and that’s fine. Coldest release of summer!
MIDDING
“Long live Midding!” Joe Woodward announced in 2022. Today the lineup looks very different but Anything (Until You Sleep) is only a confirmation of the former. With the bed of this single buried underneath static dissonance and unsettlement, Midding’s newest venture resembles a psychedelic x shoegaze rebirth. There are multiple walls of vocal combining to lift the melody above the wall of noise, but not much let up in terms of the dynamics. See, distortion is a constant paid actor here. For its two-minute, 36-second duration the track serves as an introduction of what’s to expect – allow the obnoxious, uncompromising stirring sound of feedback drift you off to sleep.
words EMMA WAY
OFNUS
Time Held Me Grey And Dying (Naturmacht Productions), a title adapted from a line in a Dylan Thomas poem, is the first release by Cardiff black metal band Ofnus. Spreading its eight songs across 50 minutes, it’s a fully-realised introduction, and one I can really envisage making a mark: I rate Black Pyre and Asbjorn Daemonium De Noctis, projects containing one or more Ofnus members, but this album’s on another level. It’s got that early-90s Nordic demoncy nailed down, not least through William Philpot’s vocals, but adds choral BVs (notably on Exulansis) and synths to pleasingly bombastic effect. James Ponsford’s guitar solos, in eschewing BM orthodoxy for something closer to epic doom metal, are a major standout element of a really strong album.
VERLETZEN
I’ve previously written that Verletzen are the best Welsh black metal band currently active, a statement which Ofnus are challenging very robustly. Now, though, I’m listening to The Blackened Crusade (Marwolaeth) – Verletzen’s second album – and it’s volleyed that ball right back over the net. It’s on a pretty similar tip to 2022’s Evil Will Triumph, screeching vocals and speedy, monolithic drums laid down with punky and/or Darkthrone-esque fidelity; Invocation, a creepy instrumental interlude that comprised one of EWT’s seven tracks, is reprised twice here. Of the eight more demonstrably black metal-styled bangers that complete The Blackened Crusade, Verletzen again stick the best one at the end, namely Witching Hour and its mighty sick crust/Motörhead assault.
ZEUK
Minutes Two, released by the Folk Archive as a CDR, follows up a similarly titled album by Cardiff’s Zeuk from early 2022. To conclude a column festooned with Welsh music I’ve reviewed before – guess that’s just how the chips fell this month – I shall note that compared to the previous Minutes, Zeuk (Marc Roberts) has swung back round slightly to his more regular gothic folk vibe on this album, which fits 23 songs into 18 minutes. Songs tend to be basically just a verse and a refrain, or sometimes evade even this description: it could be a lost relic from the early era of low-budget home recording, but where those artists would have probably had a four-track Tascam, Roberts recorded this on his phone before giving the pieces some minor digital embellishment. What a time to be alive!
words NOEL GARDNER