Aur

Amazingly, this is only the fourth studio album from the long-established Cardiff-based traditional music group, Carreg Lafar. These champions of Welsh music and song formed in 1993 and the core of that band remains: fiddler Rhian Evan Jones, flautist James Rourke and Antwn Owen Hicks on pipes and whistle. Vocalist Linda Owen Jones has been with them since 1994. The only comparatively new addition is guitarist Daniel Kilbride, who has been with the group for a decade. This very purist album is a collection of ten traditional Welsh ballads, jigs, slip jigs, polkas and reels. These are simple songs of Welsh pastoral and village life, including the perennial tale of young men leaving their loves to set sail to unknown shores.

There is a stateliness and dignity to the music throughout – even in the more boisterous jigs – and useful liner notes in Welsh and English guide the listener through this entirely Welsh-language release. An important cultural contribution and one that is sure to carry the group to North American shores again, where they have a good following on the Celtic music circuit, this is an assured album – and certainly one for those who like their folk music straight up.