Tristwch Y Fenywod – Tristwch Y Fenywod

Night School

Regular readers will be aware that Datblygu are probably one of the better bands of this world, for my money, and there’s a sideline there of enjoying an amount of Welsh-language music. I’m not as up as I should be, but I do know my Llwybr Llaethogs from my Fflaps. So imagine my delight (etc) when everyone’s favourite Leeds-based Welsh-language mopey goth band released their debut LP.

It’s a pared-down thing — zither, bass, electronic drums. All women because, as you’re doubtless aware, Tristwch Y Fenywod means The Sadness Of Women. Most of the arrangements are pretty spare — there’s elements of the kind of grinding ‘tribal’ stuff that occupied parts of the no wave and whatever early Swans was doing — establish the theme, repeat. “Y Trawsnewidiad” (“The Transformation”) with a spare and fractured mode on the zither over tortured vocals and faintly reminding me of Confusion Is Sex-era Sonic Youth without the affected rock-ness.

There’s a sense that this could easily be escaped from the sort of world that was ’80s — but probably more something like a vocal Metgumbnerbone (minus the grave-robbing, perhaps) or a miserabilist sect of Dead Can Dance fundamentalists. “Gelain Gors” has vocals that remind me of black metal but the kind of black metal that didn’t become the genre — Abruptum or that first-second wave transition where it became fucking horrendous and tortured without also being libertarian-fascist (cf Norwegian second wave BM).

Music that can sustain intensity like is rare and I wonder if there’s a sense that it’s better I don’t get the lyrics — as Iotar of the Freq massive has been wont to opine, lyrics that you don’t understand have the opportunity to be the best lyrics you never understood. So far as the political importance, it’s great to have one of the UK’s minority languages pushed to the fore; as an aesthetic choice, there’s a lot about the language that crunches or soars around its vowels and clustery consonants.

It’s a record with an decent amount of reverb on it. It’s one with a good grip on what an arrangement means — do what’s needed and not too much more. Drums aren’t showy, but certainly drill the pulse into your face. The bass fills in bits of harmonic space but stokes the tempest. Vocals and zither float in their own space of torpor and ankst. I don’t know what the zither is tuned to, but there’s enough modal play that it’s not by any means repetitive harmonically, even if there’s a limit to the harmonic language.

It’s a great record, and a surprising debut — though all the musicians here are well-heeled, it is a debut. But it’s a debut of astonishing vision and singularity — intensities constantly suspended in agony and dispersed like spores in silence as each track disappears into the black night. Very much recommended, and on the back of their Supersonic peformance, they’re worth catching in your locale if you get the chance.

-Kev Nickells-