Newyddion Rasal

Alun Tan Lan yn y 10 Uchaf

Y mae ail albym Alun Tan Lan 'Y Distawrwydd' wedi cael ei gynnwys yn y '10 albym Cymreig gorau erioed' ym mhapur newydd yr Observer.

Mewn erthygl gan Richard Hector-Jones a Gruff Rhys, mae Alun yn derbyn camoliaeth mawr, ac yn ymddangos ochr yn ochr a rhai o gewri cerddoriaeth Cymru gan gynnwys Super Furry Animals, Manic Street Preachers a Meic Stevens.

Am fwy o wybodaeth am Alun Tan Lan neu 'Y Distawrwydd' cliciwch yma.

5 Alun Tan Lan
Y Distawrwydd (Rasal)
Alun Tan Lan is widely regarded as being at the forefront of the next wave of young Welsh-speaking musical talent. His new album, Y Distawrwydd, may only have just come out but his potential as an acoustic songsmith well-versed in the banjo, mandolin and bazouki is there for all to see.

Sunday August 21, 2005
The Observer

Cymru Feel The Noise

Super Furry Animals' frontman Gruff Rhys traces his country's homegrown sounds from their timid orgins to today's burgeoning catalogue of styles

The Welsh rock and pop scene is very strong at the moment, but then it always has been. As a child, I recall my parents owning a lot of welsh records and, later, i bought a substantial amount myself. I also saw a lot of the bands live; bands that put out records on labels like sain, recordiau'r dryw, cambrian and welsh teledisc. To us, Welsh music existed in a parallel universe to anglo-american pop culture.
The first Welsh language long-haired, psychedelic pop record came out in 1968 by a band called Y Blew. This really was the starting point, not least because it marked a break from the music's polite past. There were an unusually high proportion of women in Sixties Welsh pop, most of whom were in uniform, in girl groups and on the Cambrian label. In fact, Mary Hopkin started out singing in Welsh before being discovered by Paul McCartney, signing to Apple and scoring a transatlantic number one.
Meic Stevens is the pivotal figure in Welsh music. When he returned from the London folk circuit of the Sixties he had various hippies in tow, like Syd Barrett. Stevens released records at some time or another on most of the Welsh labels, though his most notable album is 1972's Gwymon. People liked him because he was a lot more world-weary and rock'n'roll than all these polite bands born out of singing at Eisteddfod meetings. And he really is the boss, a real free spirit.
In the late Sixties, for example, he formed a subversive prank folk band called Y Bara Menyn with Geraint Jarman and Heather Jones. Which was the holy trinity of Welsh pop in one group.
The main concert promoters of this period were The Welsh Language Society, a youthful political pressure group that organised direct yet non-violent campaigning to fight for more rights for the language. There was a lot of political turmoil in those days, which is reflected in the lyrics. The flooding of the Tryweryn Valley in 1965 really kickstarted a new insurgency among the Welsh speakers; ramshackle guerrilla organisations such as The Free Wales Army and the Welsh Defence Movement were set up.
After the Welsh referendum for devolution was lost in 1979, though, lyrics became less self-conscious. People sang in Welsh because it was their first language rather than out of political or moral duty. The result was the Eighties' post-punk scene, which was angry yet creative. It displayed an urge to engage with the outside world and take the music to an international audience.
Out of this period came bands like Y Brodyr, Anhrefn, Datblygu and Y Cyrff. Fronted by David Edwards, Datblygu were the most influential band of the Eighties and Nineties, evoking the Fall crossed with Serge Gainsbourg.
Anhrefn Records released a series of fine punk records and compilations in the Eighties that were championed on the European anarcho-punk circuit and by John Peel; Ofn Records, run by future Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals' producer Gorwel Owen, released great electronic music by Ofnus and Eirin Peryglus; and Ankst was the dominant label for Nineties guitar bands such as Topper and Fflaps. They faced stiff competition, though, from Fflach and Crai. The latter were responsible for early Welsh language records by Catatonia, who later gatecrashed the national charts alongside the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics and Super Furry Animals.
Now because of the explosion in digital home recording there's an enormously vibrant new music scene epitomised by online shops like www.sebon.co.uk and labels such as Fitamin Un, Slacyr, Recordiau and Boobytrap.
Meanwhile at this year's National Eisteddfod in Bangor people will be eagerly awaiting new material by ace acoustic singer-songwriter Alun Tan Lan , who se 2004 album, Aderyn Papur, set a new benchmark for Welsh-language rock.

The OMM recommended 10

Richard Hector-Jones selects the principality's finest albums

1 Super Furry Animals
Phantom Power (Sony) £ 14.99
A Super Furry Animals album is always a deft combination of oddball influences but rarely has this mixture been better realised than on the masterful 'Slow Life', the band's electro- rock masterpiece about modern life spiralling out of control.

2 Meic Stevens
Disgwyl Rhywbeth Gwell i Ddod Box Set (Sain) £17.99
Stevens is the undisputed godfather of Welsh folk whose material commands a high price on the collectors' circuit. Of the available material - alongside Outlander - this collects much of his Sixties/Seventies work, some of which is impossible to find elsewhere.

3 Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
Patio (Ankst) £8.99
Gorky's wonderful mix of folk and psychedelia is wilder and weirder than that of their contemporaries. As their first album proper, the hard to find Patio is an early incarnation of the band's sound, but there's no arguing with its infectious, upbeat content.
4 Manic Street Preachers

The Holy Bible (Sony) £8.99
Very much the critics' choice, there are few pop albums as bleak as the Manics' last featuring Richey Edwards. Dropping stadium rock in favour of an angular darkness, The Holy Bible stands next to Nirvana's In Utero as an example of rock as exorcism.

6 John Cale
Paris 1919 (Warners) £9.99
The Velvet Underground mover and author of the book What's Welsh for Zen? has enjoyed his fair share of career highs. But Paris 1919, on which he mined a rich strain of melancholia, is undoubtedly Cale's apogee. After this, regrettably, his solo work became a lot harsher on the ear.

7 Heather Jones
Goreuon Heather Jones (Sain) £11.99
Jones is one-third of the 'holy trinity' of Welsh musicians (alongside Meic Stevens and Geraint Jarman). Hardly surprising, then, that Goreuon Heather Jones is a memorable collection of the nation's cultural ambassador's folk and rock material.

8 Catatonia
International Velvet (Blanco Y Negro) £12.99
Overfamiliarity with 'Road Rage' and 'Mulder and Scully' might lead the listener to forget what a great singles album International Velvet is. Worth it alone for the title track wherein Cerys Matthews sings the immortal lines, 'Every day when I wake up, I thank the Lord I'm Welsh'.

9 Datblygu
Wyau/ Pyst/ Libertino (Ankst) £15.99
Fronted by Wales's very own Mark E Smith figure, David Edwards, Datblygu were at the forefront of the new Welsh language underground sound of the mid-Eighties. This two-CD set is a must-have, collecting as it does three of the band's five albums in one fell swoop.

10 Various
Welsh Rare Beat (Finders Keepers) £11.99
Badly Drawn Boy associate and DJ Andy Votel and Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys dig deep into the vaults of north Wales label Sain and unearth innumerable fine examples of the imprint's esoteric folk, beat and prog rock, from Sidan's 'Di Enw' to Eleri Llwyd's 'O Gymru'.