Gwenno x Gorilla vs. Bear takeover
We're psyched to hand over the site to former Pipettes frontwoman Gwenno Saunders, who released her own brilliant solo record Y Dydd Olaf last year, and will be touring the States starting next week, including a stop at Moogfest on May 21. Gwenno will be sharing some incredible obscure Welsh electronic music throughout the day, starting with Malcolm Neon; stay up on all of her posts right here:
The 80s were pretty exciting for new TV channels weren't they? The U.S launched MTV in 1981, and in Wales we got S4C - Sianel 4 Cymru (Channel 4 Wales) after a long and hard-fought campaign which spanned decades. It was a channel entirely dedicated to Welsh language broadcasting to match the new Channel 4, and was incredibly exciting and innovative during its early years. It was the only channel that I was actually allowed to watch as a kid (the volume would be turned off as soon as The Munsters came on at 5pm, but that's another story...) and luckily it was very good. From 1988-1992 Fideo 9 was commissioned, a programme dedicated entirely to new Welsh language music with enough of a budget to film pop videos in places as far away as Prague. Presented by boundary pushing dancer and performance artist, Eddie Ladd, it enabled such visionaries as Fflaps, Igam Ogam, Plant Bach Ofnus,Y Cyrff, Euros Childs and Gruff Rhys to create visual representations of their music and introduced a Welsh audience to alternative music from across the globe. I had to go to dance classes on a Thursday evening in Gloucester when it was aired, so I missed most of it at the time and I wasn't in the know enough to get anyone to videotape it for me, but thankfully some very kind and thoughtful people have uploaded quite a few of the videos onto youtube for us all to enjoy!
The one man machine from Cardigan, and the beginning of all things minimal electronic and excellent in Welsh. Malcolm Neon started his own cassette label 'Casetiau Neon' in the early 80s and released early Datblygu recordings amongst many other very interesting things, and I'm devastated that I knew nothing about it before 2011, but there you go - thank god for the Internet. -- Gwenno