music welsh releases


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,


Bay’s followup Days Like Now (Albert’s Favourites) includes a take on trad folk tune Y Gwydd, 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


and closer Red Valley pays tribute to anti-Franco Welsh conscripts in the Spanish Civil War through the medium of Afro-rock synth fuzz.


concurrent soul scene


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.


Swansea musician Angharad Jenkins, who goes by Angharad on record, debuted this spring with Because I Am A Woman. Its followup, Postpartum (Libertino), establishes a conceptual thread: Because… was a riposte to notions of motherhood being incompatible with a music career, Postpartum’s


Rhiannon Bedford and Will Frampton, who comprise The Keeling Curve, are a real asset to Cardiff’s experimental music set, even if their live performances are relatively rare. New EP Atoms On The Wall was however recorded in


and Becky claim to be inspired by Futurism, and its credo of allowing technological advances to guide artistic practice – in a modern context, this refers to AI, although it’s not clear if anything answering to that description helped to compose Pride or Bassic. I dig ‘em either way.


Sax man and improvising skronker Chris Parfitt, aka Noteherder, lives in Bridgend but gets about a bit: later this month he’s playing with Maggie Nicols in Caernarfon, in February he was half of longrunning duo Noteherder & McCloud live in Brighton, and I caught him in free jazz mode in Cardiff back in March. Noteherder’s four-part EP Green opens with a short burst of expressionist saxophone, but the two longer pieces that follow –


Essex village Bradwell-On-Sea, and there’s a psychogeographical lore to this info which adds to an already worthwhile 20 minutes. The duo recorded their parts in an ancient, spartan chapel, Bedford’s playing suggestive of folk, early music and minimalism and Frampton weaving in electronic textures; multimedia artist Nastassja Simensky added field recordings and there’s even some vocals by the Othona community, a small Christian sect who also use this church.


Exoskeleton is a new five-song EP, with an extra track if you spring for the cassette version, by garage postpunkish Swansea sorts


lyrics run through some of the less lovely effects raising a small infant has on a mother’s body. Sung- spoken in grave tones, Jenkins is backed up by discordant, gothic postpunk with a sax-led coda not unlike The Pop Group – a 180° turn from that previous single’s polished disco. All of which means that a third Angharad single, or an album, could sound like almost anything.


Jazz-folkish


Marc Bennett grew up in the Vale Of Glamorgan – his debut solo album, 2020’s Tresilian Bay, was titled in reference to that –


bass player Huw


Kikker. Vocalist Jacob Winter has clearly internalised the nasal mutter of Mark E Smith, and the


Goldie Lookin Chain’s Rhys Hutchings uses the word “finally” in relation to the release of his Dim Sglodion album as Rhys From GLC. Its opening song, American Movie, was uploaded to YouTube in 2011, so he’s not kidding on that front. “It’s a Welsh album,” he continues; “some of the words are in English but all of the music is in Welsh.” What transpires is 14 songs, recorded in fairly rudimentary manner and in a jangly glam-rock/


psych style distinctly similar to early Super Furry Animals


including Hutchings’ vocals, which seem to be deliberately imitating Gruff Rhys. Not clear whether SFA themselves are a target for lampooning here, or the various Welsh language bands who’ve bit their style over the years. Could be a heartfelt tribute I guess.


Verletzen are the best Welsh black metal band currently active, a statement which Ofnus are challenging very robustly. Now, though,


Moss And Rain, then Leaves And Sun – are crepuscular, elusive and unjazzy. The imprecise percussive clicks that propel Moss… may well involve a sax, nevertheless, and Leaves… shuffles barely-there piano improvisations with fragile woodwind and throat singing, or something like it.


musicians are on their own Fall tip at least some of the time, although at certain points I think of Wire or Pere Ubu. Lyrically, Winter is often introspective and self-critical, with plural references to his anxiety and boozing habits; conversely, I enjoyed his declaration of solidarity with the furry community on Cringe Culture.


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


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Swansea duo Movement81 also trade under their actual names, Jason & Becky, and make multimedia art. Musically speaking, two-track single Pride is chipper IDM of the more melody-centric and danceable kind, comparable perhaps to The Black Dog or other early 90s-originated acts with electro roots. Conceptually, Jason


Time Held Me Grey And Dying (Naturmacht Productions), whose title references Dylan Thomas, is the first release by Cardiff black metal band Ofnus. Eight songs spanning 50 minutes, it’s a fully- realised introduction, and one I can really envisage making a mark: I rate Ofnus-related projects Black Pyre and Asbjorn Daemonium De Noctis, but this album’s on another level. It’s got that early-90s Nordic demoncy nailed down, not least through William Philpot’s vocals,


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


I’m listening to The


–


Think I’ve previously written that


with


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 here, Verletzen again stick the best one at the end, namely Witching Hour and its crust/Motörhead assault.


punky and/or Darkthrone- NOEL GARDNER


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but adds choral BVs (notably on Exulansis) and synths to pleasingly bombastic effect. James Ponsford’s guitar solos, in eschewing BM orthodoxy


to epic doom metal, are a major standout element of a really strong album.


for something closer


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