Locked in the Vault: Llwybr Llaethog, BBC Sessions, and the Forgotten Archive

Llwybr Llaethog, the long‑running experimental Welsh-language band from Blaenau Ffestiniog, have been actively subverting genres since 1985. Their music, a heady mix of hip‑hop, dub, punk, reggae, and sharp political commentary, remains one of the most distinctive sounds to come out of Wales.

Back on August 4, 2002, they performed a live session for Adam Walton’s BBC Radio Wales show, a programme known for giving airtime to some of the country’s most innovative underground acts. But unless you happened to catch that particular broadcast, you’re out of luck. That session, like so many others, is now buried deep in the BBC archives. Not available to stream anymore, not on YouTube, not even listed in most session databases.

Whereas a John Peel session holds the reverence it deserves, I find it criminal that these recordings on Adam's show—important cultural documents—are locked away and rotting in obscurity. These aren't just old tapes. They're snapshots of musical history, capturing the raw, (often) live energy of artists at pivotal moments in their careers.

So why can’t we hear them?

Is it a resource issue? A lack of staff or funding to digitize and release them? Or is it purely about copyright control? The BBC typically owns the rights to these sessions, and that ownership may extend to restricting access, possibly even from the artists themselves.

Whatever the reason, it’s frustrating. Personally, I would happily volunteer my time to help digitize and share these sessions, officially or otherwise, if only I could get my hands on them. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of unique recordings gathering dust while fans, historians, and curious listeners remain locked out.

In a digital age where music discovery is everything, it’s time to open the vault.

The Trials of Cato: on Adam Walton - BBC Radio Wales Session

Rising folk trio The Trials of Cato appeared in session on Adam Walton’s BBC Radio Wales show, a key platform for emerging Welsh talent. The broadcast came during a breakout period for the band, just months after the release of their critically acclaimed debut album Hide and Hair, which would go on to win Best Album at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

Formed by friends Tomos Williams, Robin Jones, and Will Addison, the band began life in Beirut, Lebanon, where the trio lived and worked as English teachers before returning to the UK to pursue music full-time. Tomos and Robin both hail from Rhosllannerchrugog, near Wrexham, grounding the band’s international trajectory in North Wales roots.

Known for their powerful musicianship, sharp songwriting, and a modern take on traditional folk, The Trials of Cato’s music quickly gained traction across the UK. Their appearance on Walton’s show — long respected for supporting independent Welsh artists — helped further cement their reputation as one of the most exciting new acts in the genre.

*Do you have a recording of this? Or a link? - Please get in touch*

Cream Tangerine session on Adam Walton’s BBC Radio Wales show

 

🎸 Cream Tangerine – Band Profile (Wrexham, Wales)

🧱 Formation & Line-up

• Formed: Summer 1999, Wrexham, North Wales

• Members:

  • Gini – guitar, vocals

  • Joni – keyboards

  • Laszlo – drums

  • Zen – bass

  • Joey – guitar

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🎶 Style & Reception

• Described as eclectic with “good material”.

• Blended alt-rock with melodic and experimental tones; likened loosely to early Elbow, Geneva, or Six By Seven in spirit, though remaining very much underground.

• Gained positive attention from Adam Walton on BBC Radio Wales, a key champion of Welsh emerging music.

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📀 Releases

1. EP: Horseface – released April 2002

2. EP: 7 Deadly Skins – July 2003

3. Track: Kerb This – March 2004 (included on Glastonbury Unsigned Bands 2004 compilation, Concrete Recordings)
   

   
   
   

📻 BBC Radio Wales Session

• Live airplay: Adam Walton’s show in March 2003

• Radio session: 31 July 2005 (does anyone have a recording of this?)

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🎤 Live Performances

• The Stand, Rhyl – 30 September 2000 – broadcast live on Radio Wales

• Supported:

  • The Bluetones

  • The Stands

  • Haven

• Active in the North Wales–Liverpool circuit (notably Sound, Central Station, Barfly, and Telfords Warehouse venues)

Adam Walton - Ear Buzz Column (Neil Crud)

{Adam Walton wrote his "Ear Buzz" column for the Daily Post starting in the late 1990s and continuing into the 2000s. The column was a weekly feature that primarily covered local music topics and the underground scene in Wales.}

An emergency of almost cataclysmic proportions rocked the world of underground Welsh err rock this week: Neil Crud, one-time sporter of Rhyl’s finest Mohican; errant gob and snot for 4Q, North Wales’ Crass Pistols; 'editor' of the most obscene publication that ever littered its way out of the locale (Crud fanzine – ask your parents), an ex-Son of Selina, former manager of Pocket Venus, and currently a worm farmer who almost accidentally deleted half of his website, link2wales.co.uk; an internet encyclopedia of whoever has been who, and whatever has been what, in the Welsh music scene.

I’ve always wondered what Crud meant – now I know it’s an acronym for Computer Retard Undoes Database!

Computers might be a panacea for people, like me, who have no real friends, and find it much easier to strike up a relationship with coloured pixels jumbled up in provocative poses; but for those doing mission critical work, the computer’s still-too-frequent predilection for vacating your to forget to back up your hard work, and then giving you the blue screen of death, is a cause of great stress and sleeplessness.

Whaddya mean, “big deal”? For many hundreds of rabid musicians who had the misfortune to be creating music in Wales before the lifting of the Leek Curtain in the mid-90s, link2wales is the only way we will be preserved for posterity; especially if my home lab experiments into cryogenic suspension continue to be such an unmitigated failure.

Failure is this way because many of the bands were original and excellent, just naive in the way that they tried to attract attention; and 2) the stories of failure should prove to be excellent inspiration and educational material for the current crop of excellent bands visible up the area.

There’s no excuse for making the same mistakes we did, when those mistakes are so excellently chronicled online.

But link2wales.co.uk is most important as a place where these sore heads can meet and – hopefully – begin to tell their own, more positive and friendly stories.

Such is the communal genius of link2wales that the site actively encourages those with any pertinent information about Welsh bands to contribute.

Were you, for example, the bass player in Smiley Headstock, Mold’s short-lived answer to the Happy Mondays, playing Shamans tunes through cheap, Casio keyboards?

Do you have any amusing anecdotes about the time you saw Mike Peters' first band, The Toilets, in some rubbish pub on the coast, and turned to your mates and said, “You know, one day this lot’ll end up touring America with Bob Dylan,” to the general amusement of anyone within earshot.

Then, do not delay, but dust keyboard, get your memories preserved in ASCII before they rest into oblivion, and e-mail neilcrud@gmail.com, thus enriching what is already the richest and most irreverent resource on our beautiful musical pasts, presents and futures.

Let’s just hope his pun-addled brain remembers to back the bloody thing up this time!

{© Adam Walton is on BBC Radio Wales every Saturday night 10pm – 1am.}