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After taking January off writing this column, to allow things to actually be released, Noel Gardner returns with 10 more reviews of New! Welsh! Music! from jazz to folk to rock to indie to classical.
West coast weird-jazzer BOL BUWCH: mysterious no longer
The jazz multi-instrumentalist behind the pseudonym Bol Buwch (a quaint Welsh term for a cow’s stomach) gives his location as Aberystwyth on Bandcamp and titles all 10 tracks on his Dywyll Fel… album after places whose names start ‘Llan’. One, Llanerggub, is presumably an Under Milk Wood reference, albeit misspelled. Pitched as a concept album of domestic psychogeography, you’ll have to take Bol Buwch’s word for that, on account of words being absent – field recordings apparently do feature – but I really like the wonky pastoral vibe landed on here. It’s melody-driven, with BB leading on flute and clarinet variously, but consistently dedicated to upsetting its own applecart with unconventional production choices and fuzzy effects. Plus! Since publishing an earlier version of this review, I was made aware that Bol Buwch has also traded as David Mysterious, whose eccentric loop-pedal indie was a pleasant tonic in the mid-00s or so.
Warmly-recorded folk-rock from DARK AND TWISTIES on debut LP
The list of credits attributed to the five musicians in Swansea’s Dark And Twisties is extensive on their debut album Ungrateful Women, but the old cliché of the studio being an extra member feels apposite here. This is a remarkably well-produced record, and by the band themselves to boot – they’re a folk group, and use stringed instruments and harmonies in a way that affirms they know the fundamentals of the form, but layer and separate elements in the mix like a project from the pre-digital psychedelic pop era. To add some context, and possibly unwanted subjectivity, Dark And Twisties’ pop/indie approach to folk is not really to my personal taste, but if you’ve even an inkling it might be to yours, I strongly recommend this LP.
Irish violinist DARRAGH MORGAN makes a seven-composer-strong Welsh linkup
Cysgodion is a very diverting and multifaceted release, the most interesting Welsh example of what is dubbed modern composition I’ve heard in a long while. Sionci, the label releasing it, is a subdivision of Tŷ Cerdd – who commissioned violinist Darragh Morgan to perform it, and seven composers (all Welsh, Wales-based or with an historical connection to here) to each create a piece with the mentorship of Morgan (and Angharad Davies, one of the composers). Electroacoustic elements and samples are brought to the table, woven into Morgan’s deft playing – much of what’s encountered here is deeper into the avant-garde than the Irishman’s average assignment, particularly Richard McReynolds’ and Sara Evelyn’s compositions. Delyth Field, Joseph Graydon, Joshua Lascar and Natalie Roe are the other featured names.
Cardiff-based Cornishfolk ENABLING BEHAVIOUR issue six new songs in as many styles
Youthful, artful noiseniks Enabling Behaviour started band life in Cornwall and decamped to Cardiff after a short while, but have released a six-song EP, Electric Pop Songs, via Kernow indie label Krautpop (so named because it was founded in Germany by Conny Plank’s son!). You never really leave the place, see. Many people’s idea of ‘pop’ might not be represented in either this label or this release, but if you like detuned thrashing indie, Sonic Youth-esque discordance or lounge-damaged singsong postpunk, then the first half of EPS may harbour goodies. There’s psych-y shoegaze, vaguely vaudevillian goth croon and some earlyish Creation Records type dark jangle after that, too. Real fun group, this lot.
Psych, garage, punk and poetry from FROG & THE BELLIGERENCE
“We can get away with being quite highbrow [because] we don’t know how to play our instruments,” Emma Axén, guitarist for Frog & The Belligerence, told Buzz in a recent interview. Some people might listen to Have You Met Frog?, the Cardiff band’s self-released debut album, and wonder where the highbrow is, and others might think they are overstating their lack of talent for dramatic effect – but I get where they’re coming from. Not obviously aligned to any discernable scene in their home city, F&TB trade in a sort of psychedelic garage punk with thrashier moments and spoken word/poetry segments which illuminate their theatrical streak. Sort of like the Tubes or Mothers Of Invention if they went for it like the Country Teasers. Good thing to have around!
Song cycles, piano clang and (more) poetry: GARETH GLYN
If one were to talk about highbrow music, you suppose something like this – a collection of work by Anglesey composer Gareth Glyn, to mark his 75th birthday – might fit the bill. Titled Yr Oriau A Welsom and released by Ty Cerdd, it includes a nine-part song cycle structured around the poetry of T Glynne Davies, Gareth’s late father (who was in fact born 100 years ago in January). None of which is to say that this release is challenging or forbidding, although the longest single piece, solo piano work Caniad Y Gloch, makes great use of discordance and atonality in its performance by Christopher Williams. Conversely, the three-part Morluniau Môn, which follows it, is lighthearted and buoyant in the hands of Ensemble Cymru.
JON AIRDRIE AND THE OLD ENABLERS let a pal take the selection reins
The 2020s output of Jon Airdrie, a south Wales musician who also co-curates the annual Folk On The Lawn festival in Tintern, has been reviewed in these columns a few times, with a slightly altered band name each time and a varied musical palette emerging overall. For this album, titled Style Notes For The Weary, a friend, Adrian Ross, was enlisted to choose the tracklisting from Airdrie’s collection of unreleased material. The 15 songs here, recorded in the 00s and early 2010s with a variety of bandmates, are (with some exceptions) less folky or psychedelic than other parts of his discography, with a Great American Songbook sensibility – or grabbers of that baton, like Randy Newman – filtered through early-70s Bowie flamboyance.
It’s not too late for a Valentine’s gift from LILY BEAU
“The song explores asking for patience as you learn to accept a softer kind of love,” writes Cardiff singer-songwriter Lily Beau in an email to Buzz about her single Dianc, “and the release delightfully coincides with Valentine’s Day weekend.” Unfortunately, the publication of this column does not, so hopefully patience is a reciprocal virtue here. Dianc is Lily’s first release since Fix Your Expectations, from last April, and has a fairly different vibe to that song’s whomping electronic chassis and half-sung-half-rapped verses. It’s in Welsh, for one thing, and pairs Lily’s classic pop-ballad singing voice to a keyboard backing that ratchets up on two minutes… and to keep everything real, it was written for her fiancé, actor Dyfan Rees.
More Cardiffian fuzz rock action in EP form with MIDDING
There’s a membership crossover between the lineups of Enabling Behaviour and Midding, with the latter band releasing their second EP .44 this month – almost a year to the day after the first one, and again a five-song 12” on the Tough Love label. Very organised of them, and .44 is a very efficient recording, despite being laid down in spartan, analogue lo-fi manner; there’s little sonic self-indulgence to Midding’s insouciant brand of jangle-heavy garage rock, even with the closing title track running to seven minutes. All For You and Nuisance are relatively conventional in their songcraft, but For A Little While expands horizons via psychedelic collage and motorik freakout – maybe my favourite thing from this group to date.
Cascading jazzy folk-rock and…poetry: it’s SPIRITED FOLLOWERS
I caught sets by Spirited Followers at the beginning and end of 2025 and on both occasions was more than charmed by their style of cascading jazzy folk-rock, which employs bouzouki, cello and electronics as well as the striking vocals of Avaneesh Bavadekar. On their new single, Returning, he delivers some poetic imagery which has the air of being 2000 years old and translated abstractly from a lost language; he’s also got a touch of the Jeff Buckleys, which is not an aesthetic I go wild for myself but is at least here anchored to something understated and delicate rather than bombastic and leather-trousered. Marking their recent affiliation with the Bwgibwgan label, hopefully something EP-sized or bigger by Spirited Followers will soon result.
words NOEL GARDNER
