9Bach

I reviewed 9Bach's debut for a national newspaper back in 2009 and it remains my favourite album of theirs. Ten years on, Real World Records are releasing it again, with a new cover (though the original matt cardboard sleeve cannot be beaten for cool, minimal impact), featuring Lisa Jên rising from a pool of water (echoes of Cape Fear, The Ring, or simply an image for contemporary Welsh folk rising up from the groundwater maybe?).

Lisa Jên and her husband Martin Hoyland had started 9Bach three years before, composing new settings for traditional Welsh songs – hazy guitars and trip-hop beats – to open them up and speak to a contemporary audience. ‘I wanted to interpret traditional songs in a different way,’ she said around the release of their first single in 2008, ‘Yr Eneth Gadd ei Gwrthod’, which features on the album along with two new tracks harking back to these folk roots, one a capella and one with subtle electronics. 9Bach sought and found a sound-world beyond conventional acoustica, or what you'd hear at the Eisteddfod. With this album, she and Hoyland fashioned a terrifically distinctive, rich molasses of a set that oozed its songs, rather than just sequenced them, so they took on a life of their own. It's great to see this classic of contemporary Welsh folk back in print.