Noel Gardner has a bag and in it are 10 musical releases that hail from Wales’ broad underground and came out in the last few weeks. Unbuckle it, and take a look inside…
CAL & AL sprinkle tech, deep and dub on their house snacks
YumYum is a south Wales record label whose logo is an anthropomorphic doughnut. Time will tell if it makes a big enough splash for that logo to be embroidered on baseball caps worn by 27-year-olds with moustaches (the spiritual home of anthropomorphic doughnuts), but Valley Mentality, the debut 12” on the label, is a strong start. It’s by Cal & Al, aka Callum Davies and Aled Wynne aka YumYum’s founders, and over nearly half an hour the duo establish their house production credentials. EP opener Jump And Twist combines tech-house shufflebeats with deep house airiness, with Harrison BDP contributing a remixed version; Tell U is a suave and measured Guidance Records type groove and Tie Ya Shoes Lace works in a dub influence.
Welsh black metal alliances forged through CWLT DRAIG
Black Dragon Cult is the second album-length tape by Cwlt Draig, a sort of solo black metal project seemingly based in Pembrokeshire. I say ‘sort of’ because one person, Neidr, writes all the songs and plays most of the music, with Gofid from Iselder – also a quasi-solo affair, sharing with Cwlt Draig an interest in Welsh nationalism and history – on guitar. Someone from Verletzen (more Welsh BM stuff, and an actual band) was on vocals at some point, but not on this album I don’t think. Any road, this is good! Songs move at a fair old pace, the bass is chunky and the drum machine lends a bit of an industrial vibe to Black Dragon Cult’s general war metal mania.
Introducing DADDY DRWG, a seasoned face with a new name
Richard Proctor has done his time in a few south Wales bands over nigh-on 30 years, listed by him in an email to Buzz plugging his latest venture. Quicksand Charlie were a hair before my time, noughties groups They Walk Among Us and The MeMeMes more definitively on my radar. At the moment he is recording solo under the name Daddy Drwg, which sounds like a fetish hookup site username but does not foreshadow obvious sex pervert music. Rather, Black Thread – the second song released by this alias – is a tender swell of sophistipop-meets-Britpop quasi-balladry, ripe with soft synths, guitar twinkling and reverb and giving me sort of ‘Suede album track’ vibes.
Do you use your Dictaphone? HORRID HILL want you to
“Please note, these tapes can only be played on dictaphones and various answer machines.” Mysterious guy synthgazer Horrid Hill is always pulling some stunt like his whenever the project releases new music, and the Lavender Sweep label – Swansea-based, as is Horrid Hill – commit even more doggedly to the ‘goofy format’ bit. Good thing streaming exists and we can all listen to latest HH EP The Road To Our Memories with ease. Three tracks weigh in at around 30 minutes in total, with Arlane’s Meditation Tape accounting for half of that: its ecstatic droning dazzle recalls acts like Emeralds, and is worth your time on its own, although the more eldritch tones of Answering Machine Afterlife and the title track pull their weight too.
What is Cambria Nocturna? HUW CADWALADR might tell you
Huw Cadwaladr lives in Cardiff but is from north Wales, where he and musical partner Gruff Pritchard made music as Carcharorion in the mid-2010s. The eight-minute I Believe sees the duo writing and recording together for the first time in a decade, but now under Cadwaladr’s name specifically; they also describe it as “the first glimpse into the world of Cambria Nocturna” without explaining what that might be. It does in fairness feel like a suitable name for the music here, well-dressed synthpop with dub-influenced production – somewhere between Junior Boys and The Blue Nile, which is good – and spoke-sung vocals that make Cadwaladr sound about twice the age I assume he is.
Friends reunited on 12 classy inches of house from MALWEN
Castan is a 12” of nocturnal, vintage-sounding Welsh house from Malwen, a north Walian known formally as Huw Feesey. Strictly speaking, it seems to be London which has moulded Malwen the DJ and producer – he’s been releasing music for about three years, I think, with Castan his vinyl debut – but there’s a cute subplot to this release in the form of a remix by Tywi, the main guy behind Cardiff label/club night Haws. Seems they went to school together, lost touch but reunited thanks to the congeniality of dancing to dance music, and the result is Tywi cranking the toms on Malwen’s Fru and adding some tech-trance echoey bass. Feesey’s other two originals are rumpshakers too.
PANEDENI sprinkle globally-sourced sounds into their folk mug
Panedeni’s short June tour of their native Wales was previewed in that issue, and ahead of this listener actually hearing their music, the stated premise – “a blend of Welsh and Arabic influences” – harboured potential for me, for sure, but not infallibly so. Debut EP Atamaana, released to coincide with the tour, however makes good with that premise. Very good! The brainchild of Wrexham-based singer and pianist Yasmine Latkowski, Panedeni seek to occupy the common ground between Celtic, Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk motifs, and though they ply their trade with some polish it largely maintains a desired degree of real-people bite. A bagpipe-fuelled version of Bosnian standard Moj Dilbere kicks off six songs which burn brightest when oud and flute rear their heads – and peaks when Ayoub Boukhalfa drops in to duet with Latkowski on the title track.
POPETH: pure pop for Welsh-speaking people
Ynyr Roberts brings his award-winning, all-Welsh language Popeth project to fruition of sorts with debut album Disglair… award-winning you say? I must hear more! That’s right, he won the PPL Award for Most Played New Independent Artist at the 2025 AIM Awards – no idea what that means in practise but Fat Dog, who appear to be a legitimately popular band, were also nominated. Disglair is, for the most part, what a certain listenership denotes as ‘pure pop’, which is to say resolutely electronic, frothy and helium-powered – some of it sounds like vintage SAW fodder (Hapus is a rework of a song by Diffiniad, who were sort of doing in the early 90s what Roberts is doing now), other more EDM-coded parts bring us bang up to, ooh, 2016.
Other people’s drug stories are the theme of STEREO MINUS ONE’s latest one
Dan Haines has released 11 albums in 25 years under his Stereo Minus One alias, counting this latest, The Acid Tape – it’s his fifth in half a decade, too. My warm words for the previous four shall be echoed here, though it’s a stylistic and conceptual departure for the New Zealand-based Welsh electronica producer. Haines, we learn, has acquired a cassette featuring a monologue by an unidentified American woman, concerning her experiences doing LSD with friends. His 12 compositions here form the soundtrack to her frankly interminable ramblings, and where Stereo Minus One can often be abrasive and kinetic, The Acid Tape is largely more ambient and Berlin School-adjacent, though with a pronounced eerie underbelly.
Wales’ rockingest women get bundled up for a new compilation EP, SPLAT ATTACK!
Anyone with experience of buying or selling vinyl knows that 10” records are, on average, absolutely cursed. Virtually everything released in the format is destined to sit in its own awkward section on your shelf or in second-hand shops, being ignored by everyone. R*E*P*E*A*T Records of Swansea have however defied this wisdom and released Splat Attack! – a compilation, on top of everything else, of four young Welsh bands with mostly female members. No-one else in the country is doing what this label do, essentially, so big respect. Of the bands, Spwci (90s alt via shouty punk) and Flatcat (gothy dreampop) are newer to me than Sold For Parts (fuzzy guitars, drama-class vox) and Hairdye (powerchordy indie), but it’s all complementary.
words NOEL GARDNER
