Tystion in session for John Peel

Gangster rap Cymraeg - Tystion were pretty dangerous. Outspoken and determined to spread their message through the medium of hard hip-hop, they punched a hole in the Welsh language and made you shrug off your complexes.

BBC Radio One DJ, John Peel took a shining to their no-nonsense approach and championed them on his evening show. 

Tystion had put out three discourteously barbed albums before August 2002 when the imposing figure of Steffan Cravos announced on stage at Maes B that it was to be their last gig.

[Session was aired again 03.08.2000]

Super Furry Animals / The Fall at Cooper’s Field, Cardiff

Warm Welsh summer air, swirling clouds, and a crowd that felt alive. SFA, perched on the brink of their second album Radiator, delivered a performance that felt both nostalgic and forward-looking—melding psychedelic riffs with catchy melodic hooks built for arena or intimate field stage alike.

The support bill featured The Fall, bringing their characteristically uncompromising post‑punk energy to the stage—a surprise element for many, but a perfect foil to SFA’s evolving sound.

Radiator, due out just a matter of weeks later, echoed live in the way vintage synths met driving guitars—woven through Gruff Rhys’ expressive delivery and the subtle psychedelia that would go on to define the album’s legacy.

Posters and flyers distributed before the show featured familiar artwork and bold block letters, announcing Cooper’s Field as the epicentre for a Welsh music milestone. Meanwhile, scrawled memories from those in attendance recall a night that felt both pioneering and warmly rooted in SFA’s hardcore Cardiff following.

This show would go down not just as a local anthem but as a turning point—signalling the rise of Radiator-era SFA and reaffirming Cardiff as ground zero for Welsh alternative creativity.

Review: Dial M for Merthyr

 

The Welsh music scene has been bubbling away for a while now, and Dial M for Merthyr, released this month through Fierce Panda in association with Townhill Records, attempts to bottle that momentum in one ambitious compilation. Spanning 21 tracks from a mix of rising hopefuls and already-established names, it’s both a sampler and a statement: Wales is producing guitar bands at an impressive rate, and this record wants to prove it. Well, OK South Wales (we don't up here unless you're Melys).

The compilation feels less like a carefully polished “best of” and more like a snapshot of a scene still finding its shape. There’s a certain rough-and-ready energy running through the record—what one might fairly call a dose of guitar-led lunacy from bands that are still young, still experimenting, and still eager to be heard. That looseness works in the album’s favour. Instead of a tidy narrative, the listener gets a burst of regional creativity that feels immediate and alive.

Part of the attraction is the presence of bands already making serious waves beyond Wales. Tracks from Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, and Catatonia lend the compilation a sense of credibility and draw, but they’re only part of the story. Alongside them are artists such as 60ft Dolls, Helen Love, and Dub War, bands whose sounds range from brash indie-pop to heavier alternative rock. That contrast between the familiar and the lesser-known gives the record its real purpose: discovery.

The Manics’ early contribution “Strip It Down” will inevitably draw attention, but it’s the variety across the compilation that keeps things interesting. There are bursts of jangly pop, flashes of punkish aggression, and plenty of straightforward guitar-driven indie rock. Rather than presenting a single “Welsh sound,” the album reveals just how diverse the country’s music scene has become.

What Dial M for Merthyr ultimately captures is a moment. Wales—hardly the largest music-producing nation in Britain—is suddenly turning out a remarkable number of bands capable of attracting national attention. This compilation brings them together in one place, not as a definitive collection but as evidence of a thriving local movement that seems to be gathering speed.

Like most compilations, it’s uneven in places, and not every track demands repeated listening. But that’s almost beside the point. Dial M for Merthyr works best as a document of a scene in motion: scrappy, ambitious, and bursting with potential.

For anyone curious about where the next wave of British guitar music might be coming from, this record makes a strong case for looking west.

Super Furry Animals give away their single

On 7 August 1996, something quietly historic unfolded in the small Carmarthenshire village of Cross Hands. In a modest venue—the Gwernllwyn Club—Welsh psych-pop trailblazers Super Furry Animals handed out a gift to those lucky enough to attend: a free, exclusive 7″ vinyl single titled “(Nid) Hon Yw’r Gân Sy’n Mynd I Achub Yr Iaith.” Translated, the title means “(This Is Not) The Song That Will Save the Language.”

It was never intended as a commercial release. Only 500 copies were ever pressed, and they were given away—no fanfare, no press circus, just a one-night-only gesture to fans who had followed the band to the heart of rural Wales. And yet, almost three decades on, this short and sharp blast of Welsh-language punk has become one of the band’s most prized rarities. A collector’s gem. A cultural curio. A time capsule of 90s Wales.

What makes this moment so special isn’t just its scarcity, but what it represents. Super Furry Animals had already begun carving out a space for themselves in British music with their debut album Fuzzy Logic. But where many acts from Wales rode the Cool Cymru wave in English, the Furries doubled down on their heritage. They weren’t afraid to be weird, wild, and wonderfully Welsh.

The song’s title itself is disarmingly honest, even self-effacing. In a period of Welsh cultural revival, when language politics were bubbling up through art, activism, and identity, the band sidestepped grandiosity. This wasn’t the song to save the Welsh language—it probably wouldn’t change anything. But it mattered anyway. It was a middle finger to linguistic fatalism, wrapped in fuzzed-out riffs and howled slogans. A defiant little anthem that told you everything about the band’s ethos.

If “If You Don’t Want Me to Destroy You” was the smooth-talking single released to the masses later that year, then “(Nid) Hon…” was its scrappy, homegrown cousin—raw, regional, and real. It’s fitting that it was only heard (and held) by a few hundred people in a working men’s club in Dyfed.

And maybe that’s the point. Some songs are meant for stadiums, others for streaming. But once in a while, a song finds its home in a room filled with shared air and shared heritage. For one night in 1996, Super Furry Animals didn’t try to save the Welsh language—they just celebrated it. Loudly. Joyfully. On their own terms.

And for those who still have that 7″ tucked away on a shelf, it’s more than a record. It’s a reminder that some of the most revolutionary moments in music don’t happen in the spotlight—they happen at the fringes, in places like Cross Hands, carried by those who were lucky enough to be there.

ECTOGRAM release I Can’t Believe It’s Not Reggae

(The actual release date is a bit sketchy - I have it as today, other sources state 1st July - but I'm always right, so the rest of you can all fuck off)

It had to happen. Having wowed us so spectacularly with Super Furry Animals, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and their overhauling of glam and prog, it was never going to be long before top Welsh imprint Ankst uncovered yet more native talent, and accordingly, selected another unsuspecting age-old genre they could unleash it on.

This week: Krautrock. Sort of. Your hosts are the crazed dudes of Ectogram; who don’t so much carefully subvert Germanic noodlings as break into their local school’s music department and run riot with them for ages. And then a bit longer.

This is a colossal tinkle-fest of a debut, which starts out with the rumble of a vacuum cleaner and erupts into a series of open-ended improv jams – including prog-rock monastery chants (“This Is How It Is”), a befuddling bilingual tribute to Syd Barrett (“Syd – who’s a bit of a spiritual forefather here) and numerous other instinctively fused organic grooves.

Things – though they’re not exactly great – are at least unfamiliar. Wrer you to suggest they were a bit like Mercury Rev as folk-obsessives with a mystic Celtic grandma on vocals, you’d be fairly close. But what Ectogram are up to is continuing a tradition of resourceful and somewhat odd Welsh music; the “in” sound from way, way out… through a valley, up several large hills and into a strange spiritual spot only normally inhabited by a goat, three druids and Julian Cope.

Definately not reggae. (6)
(N.M.E., 20.07.96)

ANKST 069

Valstumps release Cadwyn EP at Neath Eisteddfod

Valstumps were Huw Roberts – Rhodri Llywelyn – Gareth Roberts – Llywelyn Roberts – Gareth Williams. 

The summer of 1992 was a turning point in the musical experience of 6 boys from Bangor. Even though playing in a group was not a new experience for them, but the use of the unusual name of Valstumps started a new phase for the group. 

The musical backgrounds of the individual members of the band helped them form their unique musical style. They made their first public appearances playing in Bangor’s small clubs & pubs with unusual English-language groups; singing in Welsh added to Valstumps’s originality in the city’s English rock scene. 

Finding a way into the Welsh Rock Scene was the group’s ambition, this was achieved when the group won the main prize in the new groups competition at the National Eisteddfod in Llanelwedd 1993. 

This helped the band’s development – after this, the band started to appear more on stage with the “big groups”, they recorded one of their songs for the Welsh Language Society’s compilation tape called – Oi! Gwrandewch Arna I! (Oi! Listen To Me!). 

They also received a grant to record their own tape in Les Morrison’s studio, the result was this tape, called Cadwyn (Chain), on Madryn Tapes and released in the Neath Eisteddfod of 1994.
After this they disbanded and went off to college.

Smash Apathy 1994

Smash Apathy – was a campaign in the mid-90s led by Rhyl band GMX Stuns & Llanrwst band Meringue to awaken North Wales to the fact that the scene was dying through apathy. Widespread media coverage and countless gigs ensued, and even a 7" single!

The clip above was filmed at the Swallow Falls Hotel in Betws-y-Coed in July 1994 and aired on Inside Out - a TV show that was a 30-50 minute deep dive into specific local stories, replacing the national focus with a purely regional one.

Smash Apathy's goal was to push bands and concert-goers "off their arses" and promote a DIY (Do It Yourself) ethos. The aim was to foster a more vibrant, supportive, and collaborative music community in North Wales. And the core of the campaign was organising an actual Smash Apathy Tour with local bands playing together in regional venues.

Several bands from the area were key to the campaign and the tour, including: 

GMX Stuns

Meringue (an indie band from Betws-y-Coed)

Sigmoidoscopy (from Rhyl)

The Immediate (from Mold)

The Innocents

Mr Grimsdale

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