Tunng have built one of the most unique catalogues in modern British music. Folk meets electronic, their other-worldly charms are at once permanent and
Tunng have built one of the most unique catalogues in modern British music. Folk meets electronic, their other-worldly charms are at once permanent and traditional, but also questing, forever reaching to the unknown.
Debut album ‘Mother’s Daughter And Other Songs’ emerged from ad hoc shows around London, late night recording sessions in borrowed spaces, and endless conversation, with friendship at the heart of the band’s progress.
As it happens, Tunng are ready to toast 20 years of that release with something new – out now, ‘Love You All Over Again’ underlines their status as devoutly independent creators, working totally outside time and trend.
Tunng co-founders Sam Genders and Mike Lindsay map out the band’s unique universe in this special guide for CLASH readers.
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‘Tale From Black’
Sam: Mike was listening to a lot of English folk guitarists like Davy Graham and Bert Jansch as well as lots of non-vocal electronica from the record label next door to his studio – Expanding Records.
I turned up at the studio one day – which was under a ladies clothes shop in Soho… you literally had to walk through the back of the changing cubicle Narnia-style to reach the staircase down into the dark windowless box beneath… anyway… I turned up one day and he’d written ‘Tale From Black’ – everything apart from the lyrics and melody. I started playing about with these odd dark words inspired I think by The Wicker Man soundtrack which Mike had recently played me..and Mike loved them and that was that and I remember after that something clicked for us about the kinds of music we might be able to write together.
There is a special, resonant magic that happens when a song’s lyrics and melody mingle and merge. Take the gently meandering poetry of “Maryan” off [Robert Wyatt’s] Shleep album. The lyrics unroll and bend with the melody like a river unrolling to its delta. There’s a tonal consistency to the song, a timelessness like a drone with downstream force ― addressing only its own flow (cue Wagner’s Rheingold prelude). It’s a beguilingly complex-as-simple song structure that comprises a long melodic verse, and some equally long instrumentals over basic but unexpected chord changes. There is no chorus, and then the verse is repeated ― the last word ‘Maryan’ stretching and rising in extended harmony. But it’s one of the longest verse-melodies in the business ― I think only Prince’s “7” comes close in duration ― and there too a distinct chorus is lacking, unnecessary. The lyrics and words pitch and bend to conform with the colourful melody just as the sound and vibe of the song remain harmonious with the natural setting.
Over an ocean away, Like salmon…
Actually, the salmon isn’t going downstream but back to the icy source of the river. Which is a woman. It’s a lovely dream-like tension of thematic undercurrent and execution. Unhurried, layered with trumpet and violin, harmonious like a small ecosystem of song. Circle of life stuff. Vaguely Joycean. And perfectly tuned to the subconscious themes of Shleep. Inspiration and return to nature via art.
A note should be made of the great run of Wyatt albums beginning with Shleep: Wyatt is singular in a way that’s difficult to transcribe ― he’s one of the most musical songwriters in a way that takes from free jazz and prog and pop, and yet he makes completely satisfying albums (in the old school sense) that are as intelligent as they’re artistic. He has more genius than tradition. He is an internationalist, a player in all styles living in Britain; wholly self-made and maturing on an ongoing basis. I’m tempted to call him the Dylan of Britain as there are touches of the 60s experimentalist about Wyatt, and I wanted to parallel his run of albums with Dylan’s late explosion from Time Out of Mind on ― but by revealing contrast, Dylan’s recent run is a devolution to genre whereas Wyatt’s is a true extension of the craft ― stretching and trialling free experiments of melody and form. His a wonderfully active musical brain. A song scientist using moody, disconcerting chords, gnomic impressionism, bemused wit and tender dilation as his alchemic tools. Singular and yet containing multitudes, as they say.
Wales has a rich musical heritage, and the next generation is ready to take centre stage.
By Vivian Lam
Wales has always had more than its fair share of great musicians. From Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey in the 1960s, to Budgie and Badfinger in the 1970s, The Alarm in the 1980s and Super Furry Animals, Catatonia and Manic Street Preachers during 1990s Britpop.
Since then, Marina, Funeral For a Friend and Bullet For My Valentine have been among the more popular recent music acts to emerge from Wales. And today’s Welsh music scene continues to feature a huge variety of artists who create a plethora of styles.
Here are four rising acts who continue the tradition set by their predecessors.
1. Cerys Hafana
Since the release of her first album Cwmwl in 2020, harpist and multi-instrumentalist Cerys Hafana has emerged as one of the most original voices in contemporary Welsh folk music. Mixing folk with more modern styles, Hafana plays the harp, Wales’ national instrument.
By subverting traditional Welsh folk songs and composing her own, sometimes minimalistic influenced music, Hafana simultaneously continues and breaks with tradition.
On her second album Edyf (2022), Havana used the National Library of Wales archive to resurrect old folk manuscripts. Recordings such as Cilgerran and Comed 1858 display a mystical emotion which somehow combines old melodies with more contemporary arrangements.
2. Minas
Fans of James Minas, or just Minas, call him a hip-hop artist. But the Cardiff-based producer and bandleader sees his work as part of a post-punk lineage that celebrates DIY creative independence and diversity. He’s happy with any number of genre labels, as long as they are meant kindly.
Minas’ music certainly uses a punk energy as a way of relating to and understanding the way the world works. For example, the song All My Love Has Failed Me is a prolonged surge of angry adrenaline, layering monotone rhythms that build into short looped riffs. It takes two minutes to change chord, but the music is constantly building and evolving up to that point.
Minas’ parents were punks so he heard this kind of music as a child. But as is clear on songs like Payday, he is also influenced by grime, and that helped him hone his production skills before taking his band and music to the stage.
Proud of his Welsh-Greek identity and having grown up around the different accents of the capital city and valleys, Minas never thinks about how to speak or sing when performing. In his discernible Cardiff accent, he won’t do more than three takes of a track when recording. He aims for the opposite of “manufactured” by keeping the live feel, even in the studio.
3. VRï
The trio VRï started in Cardiff when classical music students, Jordan Price Williams and Patrick Rimes, discovered a shared interest in their native Welsh folk music, language and traditions. Together with Aneurin Jones, they fuse the classical music approach and instrumentation of two violins and cello with Welsh folk music and energy. All three sing on tracks too.
Live, the band helps its fans feel a sense of ownership over the music. They’ve released two albums to date, Tŷ Ein Tadau in 2019 and 2022’s Islais A Genir. The song Cainc Sain Tathan is typical of their style, with its clever arrangements and blend of voices and instruments, song and extemporisation.
The music they play has been through the hands of Welsh people for hundreds of years and is the product of those who have cared for, curated and celebrated it for centuries. The energy and precision of their arrangements and performances put it in safe hands and carry it forward for the next generation.
4. Nogood Boyo
The track One Day says a lot about the band Nogood Boyo, named after a character in Dylan Thomas’ play Under Milk Wood. It’s bilingual with alternating lines in Welsh and English, but the lines are not straight translations and bilingual listeners will experience something different from it. The track fuses electronic dance and rock music with folk-style fiddle and accordion playing. It’s also in an oddly lilting 6/4 beat that catches out the incautious or inebriated dancer.
The video tips a Welsh hat to folk-horror and the supposedly strange stuff that rural people get up to – such as speaking a language that has survived almost 750 years of oppression, reputedly by only being spoken when an English person enters the room.
Live, the band fizzes with energy and galvanises a loyal audience into an energetic dancing mass who hang on, and sing along to, every word of each song. Nogood Boyo has coined itself the label “trash-trad” but this disguises the subtlety of the material. And the band’s commitment to fusing traditional music with contemporary forms neatly sums up the more rap influenced songs such as Not My King. Let’s just say Nogood Boyo is not looking to be on any forthcoming honours lists.
