ALBUM REVIEW - MC Mabon – The Hunt for Meaning

 

MC Mabon – The Hunt for Meaning (2001, Ankstmusik)

★★★★☆

The Hunt for Meaning is a bold and eccentric concept album from Welsh experimentalist MC Mabon. Out today on Ankstmusik, it follows the fictional character Iago Prydderch on a surreal, genre-bending quest for existential clarity.

Fusing Welsh and English lyrics, Mabon delivers a mashup of downbeat electronics, American rock textures, and oddball pop sensibilities. The standout single, People Are So Stupid, sets the tone—cynical, humorous, and unpredictably catchy.

Songs like The Ballad of MC Barley Crusher showcase the album’s playful ambition, blending lo-fi aesthetics with sweeping narrative arcs. Mabon isn’t afraid to shift tone mid-track, embracing noise, melody, and absurdity with equal confidence.

It'll probably receive little attention from mainstream media, but it is essential listening with its refusal to conform.

For fans of Super Furry Animals, Peaches, or anything Ankst-adjacent, The Hunt for Meaning is a gem of Welsh underground music— erratic, heartfelt, and fiercely original (apart from the very Beck-esq track Route!)

Lunatic Magnets - Terminally Cool

It’s not often something reaches out & not only grabs your love spuds but also kneads your buttocks in the process. Always the advocate of all things North Wales, I have written time & again that the area is at saturation point when it comes to musical talent, many of these bands would be very successful given the right backing. 

Prestatyn’s Lunatic Magnet(s) are no exception & they are also exceptional. For a 1st release they stuck to their guns & steered clear of a radio friendly, people friendly, I wonder if mum’n’dad’ll like this friendly recording that most young bands opt for.
These guys have thought ‘bollocks to that’ & give us 4 tracks that sound like the aborted faeces of Trent Reznor after he’d been buggered dry by the 70 Gwen Party, the title track takes the mantel here though Wrong Side of Maybe, Chemical Beats The Weapon (& its remix) do a good job at holding it there.
There are no rules followed on these songs & I suggest LM keep live performances to a minimum to maintain a mystique – do gigs in record shop, head shops or sex shops, keep it off the beaten track – play behind a black curtain or a smoke screen – do a gig of just one 15 min song & leave straight after. The Lunatic Magnets, like Bangor’s Skinflick are the moles that come out at night & dig up the gardens of the local underground scene. Can’t wait to hear more as this is Terminally Cool.

Barry Cawley (Y Cyrff) – 1963 – 2000

 

Barry Cawley, former guitarist with Llanrwst post-punk band Y Cyrff has been killed when he was cycling near Betws-y-Coed.
The 37 year old, rose to prominence with Y Cyrff as they plotted their way to Welsh stardom with their Clash-like stance and prolific recorded output.
After the band split up he went behind the scenes and worked with Catatonia for more than 10 years as a roadie.
Catatonia guitarist Mark Roberts said: “Cerys [Matthews] is really distraught. Everyone has treated her like a queen – but not Barry. He treated her like a real person. He would tell her something like: ‘Get your own drink.’ She appreciated that – he kept her feet on the ground.”

He worked with the band from their days playing tiny clubs until they hit the charts with hits such as Road Rage and Mulder and Scully.

“He went to 16 countries with us last year. He was very talented but just as a ruthlessly ambitious as the rest of us,” said Mark Roberts.
His girlfriend, nurse Meryl Harrison, said: “Barry knew Tom Jones and was close to Cerys – but he would never show off about any of it. He would never brag about what he’s done or who he’d met. It’s awful. We were planning to have children and we were soulmates,” she said.

Mr Cawley will be buried on Monday in his trademark Levi jeans and denim jacket.

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.