Cerys Hafana – Edyf

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Cerys Hafana has a gorgeous, lush voice’ a natural instrument that exudes character singing pitch-perfect melodies with a tongue that prises all manner of wonderous sound shapes from her mouth. How strange then, when it is the voice that draws me into this fine new album, that I cannot understand a word Cerys is saying. She is a Welsh language progressive folk artist who makes a mockery of my belief that I am a lyrics man, for what she demonstrates to me definitively is that it is the sound and energy of an artist that will hook the listener in, all deeper exploration into lyrical meaning can come later. Primarily, the music itself is almost always the thing that counts and here, with her second album ‘Edyf,’ Cerys Hafana’s sound is simultaneously ancient in feel and yet impossibly, intriguingly modern. It is also in a field of its own; there is nothing else quite like this around, at least that I am hearing.

The instrument at the centre of Cerys Hafana’s sound is the Welsh triple harp, it is the thread that knits this album together from beginning to end, but it does not lead to uniformity of texture. The triple harp is like a conventional harp but has three parallel rows of strings instead of one. Its sound harks back to the Renaissance period, and is most regularly associated with Traditional Welsh music. Cerys has indeed been diving into the archives of the Welsh National Library for this album, but she does not create like one on a museum curator’s mission. Instead, you sense that her drive is to push these pieces, this sound and the tradition of Welsh language singing into the modern realm by making music that is pounding and shimmering with vital, 21st-century edginess. The track ‘Y Mor O Wydr’ actually seems to take the instrument into the area of distortion, the aggression in the sound turning the song’s key hook into something of a heavy metal harp riff.

Hafana pushes the envelope in her search for new forms, and her interests in found sounds and electronic manipulation also provide moments of tension. ‘Crwydro’ is like the pensive, descending motion incidental music to some imaginary folk-horror picture. ‘Tragwyddoldeb’ picks up some pace with resounding rhythmic thumping, the fast-breathing vocal a little reminiscent of Bjork in her singular pomp. Other instrumentals, such as ‘Y Pibydd Coch’, are like impossibly intricate sounding workouts which serve to highlight Cerys’ supreme command of her instrument. This one worked especially well, and for me, felt like a kind of Baroque Prog as her hands conjured up big, sparkly movements through key changes and modes.

This music does not stand still for one minute; it is always heading somewhere new, where fresh destinations continue to open more and more doors. Albums like this can confuse you; they do not seem to follow any recognisable path or template, but then aren’t these the records that endure the longest? Their layers of delight reveal themselves slowly with every listen; ‘Efyd’ does exactly that.

Order Edyf via Bandcamp: https://ceryshafana.bandcamp.com/album/edyf

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