Cam O’r Tywyllwch, the Peski Records-helmed radio programme that’s broadcast weekly on Radio Cardiff for the last two years (with a short national run care of Resonance FM), is one of the most vital and interesting things coming out of Wales right now. It presents a broad-ranging selection of contemporary experimental and avant-garde, usually electronic music from around Wales, but presents it within both a historical context (digging out like-minded and forward-thinking examples from years gone by, the likes of Ectogram, Young Marble Giants etc) and a global one (occasional selections from experimental artists from outside Wales, from Nico to Lô Borges to Maja Ratkje). It’s like a weekly bulletin from a mythical but much-needed library of Welsh cultural ephemera. “A step from the darkness”, as its title translates, or maybe a deserved light shone back inside.
The good news, then, is that Gwenno Saunders and Peski have brought the show to vinyl with this compilation drawn from the first year of broadcasts. CAM 1 isn’t a label sampler, although some here (R. Seiliog, Y Pencadlys, David Mysterious) have released for the label and many more are set to contribute in the near future. It’s in the spirit of Electroneg 1000 (four years old now, startlingly, and featuring CAM 1 artists Y Pencadlys and Geraint Ffrancon among others), collecting like-minded experimenters as a means of presenting not so much a unified scene or sound as a common approach, a spirited weirdness. It also, naturally, references Rhys Mwyn’s 1985 compilation Cam O’r Tywyllwch, the first Welsh-language alternative compilation, which introduced Datblygu, Y Cyrff and more to a (slightly) wider world.
To the music, then. R. Seiliog’s ‘Pysgod’, first up, is so instant and propulsive that it almost puts the comp at a disadvantage by opening it. It rolls like ‘Star Guitar’ gone Krautrock, all neon and glass, the point where the train on the cover speeds through twilit cityscapes barely imaginable in the leafy isolation the photo depicts. Some of Robin’s best stuff to date, another sign that his debut album will be an absolute cracker. Macho City go maximalist, too, albeit in darker territory; ‘Sweats’ is treacly analogue electro filth, laser-bright John Carpenter synth stabs piercing muggy bass throbs and grimly meandering beats. Recordiau’s ‘Corwen’ is another highlight, end of level music from a dystopian platform game, like a minor-key synth version of some ennobling call to arms. It’s as spacey as Macho City are clammy, just a few burbling synths heard under the staticky film trailing from its weightless melody.
Y Pencadlys wrongfoots the listener here, straying from his usual electro torch song bangers with an interstitial piece that could be lifted from Blue Jam, none of the booming euphoria of his usual stuff but equally mordant and interesting. The big tease. This leads nicely into Ianto Poitch’s offering, a mournful lo-fi keyboard and melodica piece which flickers and flares with a plaintive, nostalgic air befitting his DIY film-making background.
At the more awkward end of the spectrum, Location Baked up the tension with dense clusters of machine noise; the sound of banks of vintage computers unspooling raw data, the ominous hum of vital yet sinister machinery. Patterns emerge slowly and uncompromisingly, as if a coherent piece is being forged by accident rather than design as the wall of horror-synth stings and Radiophonic effects take sentient form. Twlc adds a bit of surrealist terror, some foreboding piano and clanking ghost-in-chainmail moaning recalling Gorkys’ most addled, daftly playful early stuff and the odd piercing sliver of sound like Micachu’s deeply unsettling Under The Skin soundtrack.
Carcharorion Riddim’s ‘Beth Yw’r Haf’ is a gorgeously evocative repurposing of a Welsh traditional, with Meredydd Evans’ sampled lament (“What is summer to me? Just a poor winter and a flood of tears”) booming sonorously over pleasing melodica dub, pitter-patter drum ‘n’ bass rhythms and minimal percussive clicks and claps. Of a pair with this is Lembo’s ‘Las Barricadas’, repurposing a Spanish anarchist anthem with chopped-up breakbeats and mangled stabs of ‘Planet Rock’ funk. Could have been made any time after 1987, and all the better for its timelessness. Speaking of timeless, it’s fitting the last word here goes to Llwybr Llaethog, polymath veterans here dabbling in rattling, echoey polyrhythms like a very basic Basic Channel, all haunted effects and insistent, rainy percussion. Leaning towards their dubbier stuff, there’s a lightness of touch and an ear for the kind of murky, elusive techno that would sit well on Modern Love or Blackest Ever Black. The album fades to a foggy approximation of a train horn, which is where we came in.
CAM 1 is best treated as a rough and ready collection to rummage through rather than a linear, mix-like session; that’s how it should be, befitting the spirit of its curators. It is, though, brilliantly accessible in its curious, jumbled way, welcoming and intriguing even if, like me, your wretched grasp of your mother tongue peaked somewhere around age 11. It comes back to the guiding principle behind Cam O’r Tywyllwch: Welsh music by definition, international music at heart.
http://www.peski.co.uk/cam1/index.html
https://soundcloud.com/cam-or-tywyllwch
