WELSH


RELEASES


Alaw, a bedroom instru- mental hip-hop producer from north Wales, is not to be confused with the Celtic folk band Alaw and actually goes by AlawJ if you listen to Debut EP Metamorphosis on Soundcloud. Either way it sounds fullgrown while


it before, too, Rhodri Daniel previously playing guitar in south Wales indie band Estrons. Daw Eto Haul, the first taste of an already writ- ten album, is a showcase for a borrowed haul of analogue synths and a maximalist psych-dance sensibility akin to a meeting of Kelly Lee Owens and Surrender-era Chemical Brothers. This is also Daniel’s return to music after taking time off to deal with the onset of tinnitus, so fair play.


promising more; proclaim- ing the inuence of J illa and DJ Shadow, Alaw’s sam- ple-heavy and languid style is not quite your “chill-hop beats to study to”, in that that implies a generic functional- ity of which she’s not guilty, but may well be a calm-in- ducing balm. The closing Split, built from jazzy horns and mysterious man with an RP accent, is my standout.


Swansea foursome Bandi- coot have inched their way into legit Welsh-indie-scene popularity over time: Buzz’s review of their album launch gig in a sold-out Clwb Ifor Bach sounded like a right hoedown. On debut album Black After Dark they hark back to Wales’ indie land- scape of about 25 years ago – Super Furries, natch, or less


Holy Coves’ The Hurt Within is again the first taste of an LP due in the second half of 2022 – in this case it’ll be the Snowdonia band’s third, and first for a decade. Their chief vibe seems to be anguished blok- ey psychedelia – think The Black Angels etc – although this leaves room for Oa-


now, but following on from that


King Goon muse “I feel so ordinary” on this de- but album’s own song two, Three Cheers For The Fat Italian, and I can only hear


last item,


Swansea’s


opposed to just sounding like no-one knew what they were doing. All The Best, concluding matters over 11 and a half minutes, snaps out of its swampy, noiserock-ad- jacent riff sesh for a slower, quieter passage full of back- masking and other wavy FX. Elsewhere, the knuckles- cabbed blues-rock inertia of songs like No Other Way, likewise Chris Horgan’s may-prove-divisive vocal style, give me a Harvey Milk vibe.


it as a nod to New Order’s True Faith. They certainly don’t sound like New Order, in fairness. The culmination of a decade’s activity, Admit Nothing! Deny Everything! Lie! Lie! Lie! has a ska foundation (the previous- ly mentioned song is a bit ey’s and punk leanings, though when these mani- fest it’s more like moody post-hardcore than ska-punk. The cumulative sounds on this album will probably ensure that no-one except- ing King Goon themselves enjoys all of it, and kudos to them for that.


sis-style key-changing and an Alice In Chains bassline. Essentially, Holy Coves is a vehicle for Scott Marsden, with an entirely new lineup this time out including ex- Gorky’s guitarist John Law- rence and Spike T Smith. Spike has an absolutely mad drumming CV that also com- prises Sacrilege’s Turn Back Trilobite, four years touring with Morrissey and – the last thing he did before this by the looks – the 2021 album by Karl Willetts’ post-Bolt Thrower band Memoriam.


renowned bands like Topper. They like their blue-denim boogie chug, sometimes par- layed into a kind of pub rock sa solo was that a thing, but also nod towards glam and prog sounds with a light dusting of experimentation. As new LPs by bands of twentysomethings from the southern half of Wales doing 70s rock collage go, I would definitely recommend Black After Dark over any others answering to this descrip- tion.


Based on precisely four words – the musical alias and the song title, which is repeated throughout as its sole lyric – you might like to think of Heddlu as a new Welsh language act on the


Speaking of finding Seattle grunge elders where you don’t expect ‘em, False Start, the debut EP by south Wales duo James And The Cold Gun, is released by Stone Gossard out of Pearl Jam on his indie label Loosegroove (c/o Venn in the U. Who knew that was still a thing? Not me! These five alt-punk songs are noisy


Lawd Zah’s The Bats Of Light is the debut release under this name by Car- diff-based Lloyd Markham, a sometime novelist who also makes strange and good spacerock exotica as part of the band Deep Hum. It


DWA DNI and For Simon H. Fell are the first releases by Swansea-dwelling ex- perimental harp manipulator and general class act Rhodri Davies for over 18 months. Released concurrently on Amgen, his own label, the first of these albums features 15 instrumental pieces which mostly come in under three minutes, have Polish track titles, and are performed on what’s referred to as the


ONES TO WATCH:


Dactyl Terra


Playing a lively, groove-laden brand of psychedelic rock, Dactyl


Terras thrilli live shos have turned them into a key act on


the forieces debt  comes via their own Wasabi Overload Records label. George told Buzz abot the bads oriis ad their plans for the future.


When and how did Dactyl Terra form?


In 2018 I think... we had all actually known each other for a few years before that. So it was just a matter of time until we would form a band.


Your music is linear, groovy and comprises


in, they’d each need their own side of LP vinyl were it released on that format pieces of feedback-ridden moody drone. Heir To The Black Palace goes bigger on the guitars, Glass Em- perors Zone on the synths and Sacred Bells Guide You Through The Fog introduc- es more distinct melodies, in a Cluster or Terry Riley-ish context maybe. Good stuff – play loud and/or through headphones for max results, I’d wager.


in


produced sort of way and feel like the fringe parts of an early evening early-00s TV playlist: ueens Of The Stone Age, DFA 1979, Rival Schools maybe. EP closer Long Way Home, mu- sically and moreso lyrically, lifts so


Song 2 by Blur it has to be a knowing homage to some- thing which, at 25 years old, is now an immovable part of rock’s furniture. Yikes.


block. You may also have en- countered the person behind


40


Not sure if I’m listening too hard for this sort of thing


substantially from


five-piece in a dilapidated mansion in west Wales”. Said recording is bleakly lo-fi, albeit in a way that accentuates the prickly un- ease of these five songs as


a very professionally


Swansea sludge band Mines released their debut EP near- ly five years ago, as a duo, and in the form of Your Ever Failing Happiness present their third, recorded as a


sweetshop, with a clock logo printed on, and there are two clock badges thrown in too. Seems that Zeuk is a sod for timepieces! Musically, this is a curveball relative to the gothic folk he has most often served: there are 23 songs on here, nearly all less than a minute long though still plenty psych and peculiar. I keep thinking of Guided By Voices and Cleaners From Venus in spirit and fidelity, although I don’t think either are inuences.


three long (as


MOGIC lap harp. The play- ing is raw and clustery, but with the instrument’s melod- ic potential exploited. Simon H. Fell, a UK jazz musician, was a longstanding cohort of Davies until his death in 2020: this hour-long piece was recorded very shortly before that sad event, in the knowledge of his condition. Performing here on a concert harp, Davies largely eschews melody, attending to strings in unconventional fashion and imbuing silence/deep quiet with emotional heft. A continuation of, and tribute to, the British peculiarities inherent to free improv.


10 months since Marc Rob- erts last released a CDR un- der his Zeuk pseudonym, here’s another – Minutes, via the Folk Archive label. My copy is packaged in a stripy paper bag, such as you might get from an old school


very eeretic ca yo elai a little of your writing process? Thanks! It’s different for every song I guess. Some start from song ideas, some from jams. We like to jam more than anything, so we just meet up and play and each of us throws in ideas that we might have. It’s good when a song spontaneously forms from a jam.


You have an EP coming out this month – who did you record it


ith ad hos it bei released We recorded it ourselves with a few mics plugged straight into a laptop, and then Ed Boogie mastered it. We recorded it in a space we used to put on live music nights in Blackwood. We didn’t really know what we were doing; we just knew we wanted to make a record ourselves because if we started doing it that way we would be able to make lots of future records whenever we wanted. So we got it pressed on vinyl and are releasing it on a label we started, Wasabi Overload. We want to help get more bands’ music recorded and pressed on vinyl in the future.


Your live shows are consistently


reat, hats bee some of yor favourites? We all loved playing the Moon in Cardiff after not being able to play shows for over a year, or however long it was during the pandemic. Halloween was also fun last year, with Bandicoot and Sweatbox at the Fork & Tune in Cwmcarn. Everyone was dressed up funny and it was just a good laugh. We’ve loved playing all of the shows really.


Any plans for the future beyond the EP release? Yeah! We have a bunch of new songs written and we play some of them live but haven’t recorded anything properly yet. I think we’re going to start recording them soon.


Dactyl Terra play Cwrw, Carmarthen on Sat 9 Apr supporting dwaith. Tickets: £6. Info facebook.com/ cwrwcarmarthen EP 1 is out now on Wasabi Overload.


dactylterra.com TOM MORGAN


soth ales ostlockdo live music scene. Comprising George itar/vocals, oe itar/syth, ri bass ad ke drms,


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