Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moon-glow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock power-coven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys).
Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just 10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod (“The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.
The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric, occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads. Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album, particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.
The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023
PRESS QUOTES:
“Tristwch Y Fenywod had performed less than a dozen gigs and a live session before the album was made, but in the short time they have been together they have developed a sound that blends the ethereal bleakness redolent of albums like Cocteau Twins’ Head Over Heels or The Cure’s Pornography, with darkly shimmering folk. The core instrumentation, though relatively minimal – drums, bass and vocals – is enchanted by the very prevalent zither that splashes murky, detuned colour across the canvas, perhaps an echo of the “greygreens” and “grey- blues” to which the lyrics refer. On “Y Trawsnewidiad” (“The Transformation”) it punctuates the texture with commanding flourishes that sound like a spell being cast. Elsewhere, in “Byd Mewn Cysgod” (“World In Shadow”) it provides jangling church bell-like sonorities.
Vocal lines are generally undecorated, their range at the narrower end of the spectrum, giving them an incantatory feel. This makes space for other instruments to take up the melody mantle. Lovely moments come through the high bassline of “Gelain Gors” (“Bog Body”) before it ramps up and descends into bog-drowning hell for the final section, and in the dialogue between the zither and voice on “Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du” (“Girl With The Black Eyes”). The singers’ propensity to break into screams and shrieks – as in the increasingly frenzied zither strums and discomfiting vocal freakout towards the end of “Awen” – gives these songs a sense of being possessed by interior forces. As the gothic writers well knew, the torment is often within.” – Lucy Thraves for THE WIRE
“…Together the trio conjure a witchy vision of gothic avant-pop sung entirely in Welsh, the type of music for which the word “eldritch” was created: coolly eccentric but also just cool and honestly quite groovy in parts—avant and pop, after all. With crisp electronic drums cutting through tingly, trebly plucks of double zither and cavernous vocals, the vibes are fitting for our fractured times, both sleekly modern and intriguingly ancient (by which I mean the 1980s).” – Mariana Timony for BANDCAMP DAILY
“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.” – BOOMKAT