A fertile month in the fields of independent Welsh music… treat that term however you like but expend your energies on listening to this stuff rather than quibbling over definitions! Noel Gardner has written some words on 10 musical items, to that end.
ADJUA starts to tease an EP and we’re all ears
When artists do that (increasingly common) thing of dripfeeding individual songs with the promise of ultimately releasing them as an EP, my instinct is usually to wait for the EP, but Can’t Lose by Adjua is dead good so let’s say nice things about all three and a half minutes of it! The Cardiff vocalist/producer was off my release radar in 2025 but played some useful festival dates, and returns in studio form with a song which matches up some mildly unlikely aesthetics in lovely and congruous ways. Early 00s-style r’n’b smoulder links up with fuzzy shoegaze textures and Gareth Giles’ ambient desert rock guitar – I hope the rest of Adjua’s EP stands out like this.
Sibling revelry and anarcho slapstick from DAEMÖNIK FONCE
On reviewing the debut album by Daemönik Fonce in an edition of this column three years ago, I was keen to highlight that the band’s founding brothers, Paul and Stewart Summers, have a musical story that starts in a mid-80s Briton Ferry anarcho punk band, Shrapnel. Oh Corita, the opening song on its followup DFII, pays homage to Crass with a chant of “Fight war, not wars!” and stencil-lettered artwork, meaning the reference is less shoehorned in this time. Musically, Daemönik Fonce are closer to Denim/Mozart Estate than anything Crass-like, though there’s an uptick of Thin Lizzy-like proto-metal guitar – and an ex-Angel Witch drummer in Andy Prestidge – plus a song claiming that the Summers’ dad “had the first banana in Cymmer after the war”.
Low-key alt delights from goth survivors DEAD MAN’S COUCH
Now here’s an unexpected comeback that is also welcome! It is that of Nomi Leonard who for a few years in the early 2000s sang in Wendykurk, a band from Holyhead on a lurid gothic rock tip. I should revisit their two EPs to see if they sound as good to me as they did at the time. Now, though, Leonard is principal songwriter in Dead Man’s Couch, with extra musicianship from Dave Sunerton-Burl, and their debut EP Glass Headstones is a stylistic grab-bag with a common thread vibe-wise. Big riffs are rare, though discord is more abundant, with an organ lending a muggy psychedelic air at points; the duo’s low-key take on alt-rock is electronically treated in a manner you heard a lot in, well, the early 00s. But I dig it!
Glass Headstones by Dead Man’s Couch
THE DOGS: there can only be one
The new EP by The Dogs of south Wales is called The Only Band Called The Dogs, pretty self-explanatory you’d think. Yet bizarrely, not long before settling down to review this disc – released as a lathe cut 7” on Max Warren’s doughty Gob Nation label – an email purportedly about another band called The Dogs, garage rockers from Oslo it said, flopped into my inbox. I know a scam when I see one, and after the email was passed on to the authorities this cracking shit-fi punk dispatch soundtracked my evening of relaxation. The Dogs began with a drum machine and now have a human drummer too; I think both feature on here, helping these four Oi!-meets-protopunk songs about glue, fighting and mental elf sound extra individual.
“The Only Band Called The Dogs” by The Dogs
EDWIN R STEVENS brings out ‘A Plague Of Gimps’
Edwin R Stevens’ first album under that name – he’s been in a rash of bands since Conwy noiserockers Klaus Kinski, in the late 00s – was a jammy countrified delight, and is presumably the last new music on Wales’ great Ankst label, as founder Emyr Williams died in early 2024, shortly after its release. For his second, A Plague Of Gimps, the dually Somerset/Shropshire-based Wrong Speed Records have done the honours, and Stevens has handed them 10 songs recorded between his childhood and current homes, Llanfairfechan and Glasgow. Assisted by violist Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh and violinist Dan Bridgwood Hill, the results are yearningly melodic and outwardly sweet but harbour laugh/gasp-out-loud imagery and a malevolent, lacerating streak. Recommended!
A Plague Of Gimps by Edwin R Stevens
HUW MARC BENNETT channels the sound of medieval Glamorgan
I’ve heard (against my will) of a staycation, but Huw Marc Bennett takes the biscuit. In the last 10 years, he has been on a literal journey, recording his 2016 debut album as Susso in Gambia; under his own name, with Heol Las his third such LP since 2020, Bennett has become increasingly fixated with the lost culture of what is now the Vale Of Glamorgan, where he’s from. One track, Yr Abaty, has its roots in medieval times, and is suitably quest-ready (some might say dungeon synth-adjacent) electronic folk. That’s closer to the median vibe on Heol Las than the sound of his previous two solo albums, which have plenty of psych-funk among the folk, and Bennett may have landed on a singular sound of his own here.
OWAIN K: the sound of Detroit, Cologne, Bristol and Cardiff
Deep techno architect Owain K, or Kimber if you’re feeling familiar, flew the Welsh nest some time ago but will always keep his heart here. Kimber, who cut his teeth DJing at the late lamented Holodeck nights in the early 2000s, only went as far as Bristol to be fair, but has collected a book of contacts that goes far wider, with new 12” EP Kinematic Equations released on 200, a label from Cologne. It’s lovely stuff, measured without being MOR and sporting Detroit-coded synths worthy of losing yourself in; I particularly like how Open Cluster’s vocal loop lurks in the background like a field recording, and the moment on Ghost Of Jupiter where the melody makes itself known.
Kinematic Equations by Owain K
Avant-folk couple PEIRIANT reach album three
Hay-On-Wye experimental folk duo Peiriant have released three albums: one digitally, one on CD and one on vinyl, with the latter and latest Plant also marking gig promoters Nawr’s expansion into a record label. Dan Linn-Pearl, who with his wife Rose comprises Peiriant, is also part of the Nawr collective, but Plant is a lovely way to start anything off, including your day. Rose’s violin style is grounded in Celtic folk cadence but also has a more droning, hypnotic quality, while Dan’s guitar instrumentals can also be relatively unadorned – pedals, effects and synths abound, though, with early-on number Pwls standing out for putting kosmische keys under Rose’s plucked strings and the later Velfed bringing back the repetitious perseverance.
R.E.D: hypnotic techno from Bristol via south Wales (again)
Sophie Redmond is a Welsh techno sort who started off as a DJ/promoter in Cardiff and now lives in Bristol, as do the people behind the Amity label releasing Symud, her debut EP as R.E.D – as far as I know, she’s not shared any of her own productions with the wider world until now. The three tracks here bed down in a dub techno groove, with each of them doing something distinct with that. Vroom is spacious yet busy, with 90s techno boings and hypnotic, handdrums-but-digital percussion; Sludge Walk, which is also reprised via a remix from Elpac, places the most emphasis on the Basic Channel-type dub chords, and Cerdded manipulates an alluringly listless vocal atop nocturnal bassy synthpop.
ZEBRA CACTUS: the decet who are more than decent
Missed the debut Zebra Cactus live performance the other week, but the group put their three-song debut EP on Bandcamp on the same day, so that has sufficed until the next chance presents itself. Zebra Cactus are a group of up to 10 members who formed via the Bwthyn Sonig scheme for learning disabled musicians – a picking up of the baton, sort of, from a similar setup in Scotland, Sonic Bothy. With John Thomas, also of Islet and other things, assisting on songwriting, production etc, this self-titled EP is a thoroughly experimental jam session with a babel of vocal input and an impulsiveness like the wildest 80s DIY releases. There are great learning disabled scenes elsewhere in the UK already and it looks like this is a Welsh one.
Zebra Cactus – Demo EP by Zebra Cactus
words NOEL GARDNER
