Tristwch y Fenywod
An utterly addictive masterpiece of Welsh-sung queer goth folk, the debut recording by Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys) is among this decade’s most bewitching albums, bar none - unmissable for fans of Cranes, Dead Can Dance, Svitlana Nianio, Cocteau Twins' 'Head Over Heels', The Cure's 'The Top' era.
Under a handle translating to ‘The Sadness of Women’, Tristwch Y Fenywod have played 10 acclaimed shows and issued a live recording, made in 2022 in Gwretsien and Leila’s native Leeds, that staked the band as alien daughters of Leeds’ legendary goth scene. With their self-titled maiden studio recording TYF pay up on the promise of that striking demo and captivating performances with a timeless grimoir of talon-strummed strings and ricocheting percussion quite unlike anything else in the current field. It’s musick that grips from the gut and quivers with a rarefied, elegiac, negative ecstasy, and has quite frankly had us in the throes of addiction ever since first setting ears on their demo. We can safely confirm that their first studio recordings, faithfully mastered by Rashad Becker, portray the sepulchral, eldritch and arcane beauty of their sound at its swooning best, and will surely endure in the underground, gothic imagination for eons to come.
Like a rare orchid blooming on grounds consecrated by Leeds’ goth elders, the album summons its energies from the same rolling ridges that spawned Sisters of Mercy and Annie Hogan in the early ‘80s, and came to harbour lost, mutant souls from Yorkshire and farther afield over the decades. Tristwch Y Fenywod can be heard to hail Leeds as a dark honey pot (or a centre of evil, as Thighpaulsandra would put it) with a meld of native and “other” energies that take its lineage of goth, alt.rock, and DIY experimentation to somewhere ancient-sounding, yet new and uniquely thrilling. Most notably Gwretsien draws from formative years spent in North Wales, and her memory of its mother tongue, to really define the band’s sound with lamenting vox encrypted in Welsh and wreathed in plangent FX that surely reverberate the aesthetics of 4AD’s original bat box, but with the chthonic quality and intimacy of the city’s renowned basement shows.
In stark, martial motion with her sisters, Gwretsien soars over Sidni’s perfectly sinuous bass revs and Leila’s primitive but pointed drums (she learned them especially for the project, after a decade fronting Coil-inspired folk duo, Hawthonn, with AshNav-orbiting Phil Legard) in eight songs that mostly mirror their demo, and add two new ones. The lead ‘Blodyn Gwyrdd’ still knocks our head off with its possessed 6/8 procession of twin zither and stygian bass hingeing around whipcrack snare, and the likes of their lurching ‘Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’, or the spine-trickling melodies of ‘Y Trawsnewidiad’, and Sidni’s coiled SoM bassline on ‘Llwydwyrdd’ all sound more haunting than ever. The three new songs are equally precious, with ‘Byd Mewn Cysgod’ dipping to their slowest and sepulchral, shades away from This Mortal Coil, and ‘'Nes i Ddawnsio Efo'r Lleuad’ now closing the album out with a slowly intense dervish of thrum und drang.
Whilst all members bring something special to Tristwch Y Fenywod, it should come as little surprise to fans of Gwretsien’s work as The Ephemeron Loop (or her role in free-jazz-noise improv duo Guttersnipe, beside many, many others) that she’s the connective tissue between two of the outstanding projects of our time. Whilst considerably different on their own terms, both share a concentration of energies that defies our flailing attempts to define them, and should be recognised by lovers of music of all stripes as utter genius in effect - arguably among the greatest of her generation.
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An utterly addictive masterpiece of Welsh-sung queer goth folk, the debut recording by Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys) is among this decade’s most bewitching albums, bar none - unmissable for fans of Cranes, Dead Can Dance, Svitlana Nianio, Cocteau Twins' 'Head Over Heels', The Cure's 'The Top' era.
Under a handle translating to ‘The Sadness of Women’, Tristwch Y Fenywod have played 10 acclaimed shows and issued a live recording, made in 2022 in Gwretsien and Leila’s native Leeds, that staked the band as alien daughters of Leeds’ legendary goth scene. With their self-titled maiden studio recording TYF pay up on the promise of that striking demo and captivating performances with a timeless grimoir of talon-strummed strings and ricocheting percussion quite unlike anything else in the current field. It’s musick that grips from the gut and quivers with a rarefied, elegiac, negative ecstasy, and has quite frankly had us in the throes of addiction ever since first setting ears on their demo. We can safely confirm that their first studio recordings, faithfully mastered by Rashad Becker, portray the sepulchral, eldritch and arcane beauty of their sound at its swooning best, and will surely endure in the underground, gothic imagination for eons to come.
Like a rare orchid blooming on grounds consecrated by Leeds’ goth elders, the album summons its energies from the same rolling ridges that spawned Sisters of Mercy and Annie Hogan in the early ‘80s, and came to harbour lost, mutant souls from Yorkshire and farther afield over the decades. Tristwch Y Fenywod can be heard to hail Leeds as a dark honey pot (or a centre of evil, as Thighpaulsandra would put it) with a meld of native and “other” energies that take its lineage of goth, alt.rock, and DIY experimentation to somewhere ancient-sounding, yet new and uniquely thrilling. Most notably Gwretsien draws from formative years spent in North Wales, and her memory of its mother tongue, to really define the band’s sound with lamenting vox encrypted in Welsh and wreathed in plangent FX that surely reverberate the aesthetics of 4AD’s original bat box, but with the chthonic quality and intimacy of the city’s renowned basement shows.
In stark, martial motion with her sisters, Gwretsien soars over Sidni’s perfectly sinuous bass revs and Leila’s primitive but pointed drums (she learned them especially for the project, after a decade fronting Coil-inspired folk duo, Hawthonn, with AshNav-orbiting Phil Legard) in eight songs that mostly mirror their demo, and add two new ones. The lead ‘Blodyn Gwyrdd’ still knocks our head off with its possessed 6/8 procession of twin zither and stygian bass hingeing around whipcrack snare, and the likes of their lurching ‘Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’, or the spine-trickling melodies of ‘Y Trawsnewidiad’, and Sidni’s coiled SoM bassline on ‘Llwydwyrdd’ all sound more haunting than ever. The three new songs are equally precious, with ‘Byd Mewn Cysgod’ dipping to their slowest and sepulchral, shades away from This Mortal Coil, and ‘'Nes i Ddawnsio Efo'r Lleuad’ now closing the album out with a slowly intense dervish of thrum und drang.
Whilst all members bring something special to Tristwch Y Fenywod, it should come as little surprise to fans of Gwretsien’s work as The Ephemeron Loop (or her role in free-jazz-noise improv duo Guttersnipe, beside many, many others) that she’s the connective tissue between two of the outstanding projects of our time. Whilst considerably different on their own terms, both share a concentration of energies that defies our flailing attempts to define them, and should be recognised by lovers of music of all stripes as utter genius in effect - arguably among the greatest of her generation.
An utterly addictive masterpiece of Welsh-sung queer goth folk, the debut recording by Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys) is among this decade’s most bewitching albums, bar none - unmissable for fans of Cranes, Dead Can Dance, Svitlana Nianio, Cocteau Twins' 'Head Over Heels', The Cure's 'The Top' era.
Under a handle translating to ‘The Sadness of Women’, Tristwch Y Fenywod have played 10 acclaimed shows and issued a live recording, made in 2022 in Gwretsien and Leila’s native Leeds, that staked the band as alien daughters of Leeds’ legendary goth scene. With their self-titled maiden studio recording TYF pay up on the promise of that striking demo and captivating performances with a timeless grimoir of talon-strummed strings and ricocheting percussion quite unlike anything else in the current field. It’s musick that grips from the gut and quivers with a rarefied, elegiac, negative ecstasy, and has quite frankly had us in the throes of addiction ever since first setting ears on their demo. We can safely confirm that their first studio recordings, faithfully mastered by Rashad Becker, portray the sepulchral, eldritch and arcane beauty of their sound at its swooning best, and will surely endure in the underground, gothic imagination for eons to come.
Like a rare orchid blooming on grounds consecrated by Leeds’ goth elders, the album summons its energies from the same rolling ridges that spawned Sisters of Mercy and Annie Hogan in the early ‘80s, and came to harbour lost, mutant souls from Yorkshire and farther afield over the decades. Tristwch Y Fenywod can be heard to hail Leeds as a dark honey pot (or a centre of evil, as Thighpaulsandra would put it) with a meld of native and “other” energies that take its lineage of goth, alt.rock, and DIY experimentation to somewhere ancient-sounding, yet new and uniquely thrilling. Most notably Gwretsien draws from formative years spent in North Wales, and her memory of its mother tongue, to really define the band’s sound with lamenting vox encrypted in Welsh and wreathed in plangent FX that surely reverberate the aesthetics of 4AD’s original bat box, but with the chthonic quality and intimacy of the city’s renowned basement shows.
In stark, martial motion with her sisters, Gwretsien soars over Sidni’s perfectly sinuous bass revs and Leila’s primitive but pointed drums (she learned them especially for the project, after a decade fronting Coil-inspired folk duo, Hawthonn, with AshNav-orbiting Phil Legard) in eight songs that mostly mirror their demo, and add two new ones. The lead ‘Blodyn Gwyrdd’ still knocks our head off with its possessed 6/8 procession of twin zither and stygian bass hingeing around whipcrack snare, and the likes of their lurching ‘Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’, or the spine-trickling melodies of ‘Y Trawsnewidiad’, and Sidni’s coiled SoM bassline on ‘Llwydwyrdd’ all sound more haunting than ever. The three new songs are equally precious, with ‘Byd Mewn Cysgod’ dipping to their slowest and sepulchral, shades away from This Mortal Coil, and ‘'Nes i Ddawnsio Efo'r Lleuad’ now closing the album out with a slowly intense dervish of thrum und drang.
Whilst all members bring something special to Tristwch Y Fenywod, it should come as little surprise to fans of Gwretsien’s work as The Ephemeron Loop (or her role in free-jazz-noise improv duo Guttersnipe, beside many, many others) that she’s the connective tissue between two of the outstanding projects of our time. Whilst considerably different on their own terms, both share a concentration of energies that defies our flailing attempts to define them, and should be recognised by lovers of music of all stripes as utter genius in effect - arguably among the greatest of her generation.
An utterly addictive masterpiece of Welsh-sung queer goth folk, the debut recording by Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys) is among this decade’s most bewitching albums, bar none - unmissable for fans of Cranes, Dead Can Dance, Svitlana Nianio, Cocteau Twins' 'Head Over Heels', The Cure's 'The Top' era.
Under a handle translating to ‘The Sadness of Women’, Tristwch Y Fenywod have played 10 acclaimed shows and issued a live recording, made in 2022 in Gwretsien and Leila’s native Leeds, that staked the band as alien daughters of Leeds’ legendary goth scene. With their self-titled maiden studio recording TYF pay up on the promise of that striking demo and captivating performances with a timeless grimoir of talon-strummed strings and ricocheting percussion quite unlike anything else in the current field. It’s musick that grips from the gut and quivers with a rarefied, elegiac, negative ecstasy, and has quite frankly had us in the throes of addiction ever since first setting ears on their demo. We can safely confirm that their first studio recordings, faithfully mastered by Rashad Becker, portray the sepulchral, eldritch and arcane beauty of their sound at its swooning best, and will surely endure in the underground, gothic imagination for eons to come.
Like a rare orchid blooming on grounds consecrated by Leeds’ goth elders, the album summons its energies from the same rolling ridges that spawned Sisters of Mercy and Annie Hogan in the early ‘80s, and came to harbour lost, mutant souls from Yorkshire and farther afield over the decades. Tristwch Y Fenywod can be heard to hail Leeds as a dark honey pot (or a centre of evil, as Thighpaulsandra would put it) with a meld of native and “other” energies that take its lineage of goth, alt.rock, and DIY experimentation to somewhere ancient-sounding, yet new and uniquely thrilling. Most notably Gwretsien draws from formative years spent in North Wales, and her memory of its mother tongue, to really define the band’s sound with lamenting vox encrypted in Welsh and wreathed in plangent FX that surely reverberate the aesthetics of 4AD’s original bat box, but with the chthonic quality and intimacy of the city’s renowned basement shows.
In stark, martial motion with her sisters, Gwretsien soars over Sidni’s perfectly sinuous bass revs and Leila’s primitive but pointed drums (she learned them especially for the project, after a decade fronting Coil-inspired folk duo, Hawthonn, with AshNav-orbiting Phil Legard) in eight songs that mostly mirror their demo, and add two new ones. The lead ‘Blodyn Gwyrdd’ still knocks our head off with its possessed 6/8 procession of twin zither and stygian bass hingeing around whipcrack snare, and the likes of their lurching ‘Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’, or the spine-trickling melodies of ‘Y Trawsnewidiad’, and Sidni’s coiled SoM bassline on ‘Llwydwyrdd’ all sound more haunting than ever. The three new songs are equally precious, with ‘Byd Mewn Cysgod’ dipping to their slowest and sepulchral, shades away from This Mortal Coil, and ‘'Nes i Ddawnsio Efo'r Lleuad’ now closing the album out with a slowly intense dervish of thrum und drang.
Whilst all members bring something special to Tristwch Y Fenywod, it should come as little surprise to fans of Gwretsien’s work as The Ephemeron Loop (or her role in free-jazz-noise improv duo Guttersnipe, beside many, many others) that she’s the connective tissue between two of the outstanding projects of our time. Whilst considerably different on their own terms, both share a concentration of energies that defies our flailing attempts to define them, and should be recognised by lovers of music of all stripes as utter genius in effect - arguably among the greatest of her generation.
Glow In The Dark Vinyl Edition
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An utterly addictive masterpiece of Welsh-sung queer goth folk, the debut recording by Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys) is among this decade’s most bewitching albums, bar none - unmissable for fans of Cranes, Dead Can Dance, Svitlana Nianio, Cocteau Twins' 'Head Over Heels', The Cure's 'The Top' era.
Under a handle translating to ‘The Sadness of Women’, Tristwch Y Fenywod have played 10 acclaimed shows and issued a live recording, made in 2022 in Gwretsien and Leila’s native Leeds, that staked the band as alien daughters of Leeds’ legendary goth scene. With their self-titled maiden studio recording TYF pay up on the promise of that striking demo and captivating performances with a timeless grimoir of talon-strummed strings and ricocheting percussion quite unlike anything else in the current field. It’s musick that grips from the gut and quivers with a rarefied, elegiac, negative ecstasy, and has quite frankly had us in the throes of addiction ever since first setting ears on their demo. We can safely confirm that their first studio recordings, faithfully mastered by Rashad Becker, portray the sepulchral, eldritch and arcane beauty of their sound at its swooning best, and will surely endure in the underground, gothic imagination for eons to come.
Like a rare orchid blooming on grounds consecrated by Leeds’ goth elders, the album summons its energies from the same rolling ridges that spawned Sisters of Mercy and Annie Hogan in the early ‘80s, and came to harbour lost, mutant souls from Yorkshire and farther afield over the decades. Tristwch Y Fenywod can be heard to hail Leeds as a dark honey pot (or a centre of evil, as Thighpaulsandra would put it) with a meld of native and “other” energies that take its lineage of goth, alt.rock, and DIY experimentation to somewhere ancient-sounding, yet new and uniquely thrilling. Most notably Gwretsien draws from formative years spent in North Wales, and her memory of its mother tongue, to really define the band’s sound with lamenting vox encrypted in Welsh and wreathed in plangent FX that surely reverberate the aesthetics of 4AD’s original bat box, but with the chthonic quality and intimacy of the city’s renowned basement shows.
In stark, martial motion with her sisters, Gwretsien soars over Sidni’s perfectly sinuous bass revs and Leila’s primitive but pointed drums (she learned them especially for the project, after a decade fronting Coil-inspired folk duo, Hawthonn, with AshNav-orbiting Phil Legard) in eight songs that mostly mirror their demo, and add two new ones. The lead ‘Blodyn Gwyrdd’ still knocks our head off with its possessed 6/8 procession of twin zither and stygian bass hingeing around whipcrack snare, and the likes of their lurching ‘Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’, or the spine-trickling melodies of ‘Y Trawsnewidiad’, and Sidni’s coiled SoM bassline on ‘Llwydwyrdd’ all sound more haunting than ever. The three new songs are equally precious, with ‘Byd Mewn Cysgod’ dipping to their slowest and sepulchral, shades away from This Mortal Coil, and ‘'Nes i Ddawnsio Efo'r Lleuad’ now closing the album out with a slowly intense dervish of thrum und drang.
Whilst all members bring something special to Tristwch Y Fenywod, it should come as little surprise to fans of Gwretsien’s work as The Ephemeron Loop (or her role in free-jazz-noise improv duo Guttersnipe, beside many, many others) that she’s the connective tissue between two of the outstanding projects of our time. Whilst considerably different on their own terms, both share a concentration of energies that defies our flailing attempts to define them, and should be recognised by lovers of music of all stripes as utter genius in effect - arguably among the greatest of her generation.
Estimated Release Date: 06 December 2024
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An utterly addictive masterpiece of Welsh-sung queer goth folk, the debut recording by Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys) is among this decade’s most bewitching albums, bar none - unmissable for fans of Cranes, Dead Can Dance, Svitlana Nianio, Cocteau Twins' 'Head Over Heels', The Cure's 'The Top' era.
Under a handle translating to ‘The Sadness of Women’, Tristwch Y Fenywod have played 10 acclaimed shows and issued a live recording, made in 2022 in Gwretsien and Leila’s native Leeds, that staked the band as alien daughters of Leeds’ legendary goth scene. With their self-titled maiden studio recording TYF pay up on the promise of that striking demo and captivating performances with a timeless grimoir of talon-strummed strings and ricocheting percussion quite unlike anything else in the current field. It’s musick that grips from the gut and quivers with a rarefied, elegiac, negative ecstasy, and has quite frankly had us in the throes of addiction ever since first setting ears on their demo. We can safely confirm that their first studio recordings, faithfully mastered by Rashad Becker, portray the sepulchral, eldritch and arcane beauty of their sound at its swooning best, and will surely endure in the underground, gothic imagination for eons to come.
Like a rare orchid blooming on grounds consecrated by Leeds’ goth elders, the album summons its energies from the same rolling ridges that spawned Sisters of Mercy and Annie Hogan in the early ‘80s, and came to harbour lost, mutant souls from Yorkshire and farther afield over the decades. Tristwch Y Fenywod can be heard to hail Leeds as a dark honey pot (or a centre of evil, as Thighpaulsandra would put it) with a meld of native and “other” energies that take its lineage of goth, alt.rock, and DIY experimentation to somewhere ancient-sounding, yet new and uniquely thrilling. Most notably Gwretsien draws from formative years spent in North Wales, and her memory of its mother tongue, to really define the band’s sound with lamenting vox encrypted in Welsh and wreathed in plangent FX that surely reverberate the aesthetics of 4AD’s original bat box, but with the chthonic quality and intimacy of the city’s renowned basement shows.
In stark, martial motion with her sisters, Gwretsien soars over Sidni’s perfectly sinuous bass revs and Leila’s primitive but pointed drums (she learned them especially for the project, after a decade fronting Coil-inspired folk duo, Hawthonn, with AshNav-orbiting Phil Legard) in eight songs that mostly mirror their demo, and add two new ones. The lead ‘Blodyn Gwyrdd’ still knocks our head off with its possessed 6/8 procession of twin zither and stygian bass hingeing around whipcrack snare, and the likes of their lurching ‘Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’, or the spine-trickling melodies of ‘Y Trawsnewidiad’, and Sidni’s coiled SoM bassline on ‘Llwydwyrdd’ all sound more haunting than ever. The three new songs are equally precious, with ‘Byd Mewn Cysgod’ dipping to their slowest and sepulchral, shades away from This Mortal Coil, and ‘'Nes i Ddawnsio Efo'r Lleuad’ now closing the album out with a slowly intense dervish of thrum und drang.
Whilst all members bring something special to Tristwch Y Fenywod, it should come as little surprise to fans of Gwretsien’s work as The Ephemeron Loop (or her role in free-jazz-noise improv duo Guttersnipe, beside many, many others) that she’s the connective tissue between two of the outstanding projects of our time. Whilst considerably different on their own terms, both share a concentration of energies that defies our flailing attempts to define them, and should be recognised by lovers of music of all stripes as utter genius in effect - arguably among the greatest of her generation.