Welsh Music Wednesday
Helo pawb, this week I want to introduce to you one of the coolest rock duos I've met, the Welsh hard rock band Alffa!
Alffa are a guitar-and-drums duo from Llanrug in North Wales. They've been playing together since their school days in 2015, Dion Jones as their singer and guitarist, and Sion Land on the drums. These boys get LOUD and are a really impressive live duo (which I can say because I had the pleasure of seeing them in a dim-lit pub at a showcase festival last year, far away from Wales, where the crowd was hooked to their every word as they played songs in a language most of the audience did not speak, but could not ignore their electrifying energy).
Alffa became the first musical artist to have a song in the Welsh language that crossed 1 million streams on Spotify back in 2018, when their single Gwenwyn (Poison) got picked up by the curators of a large rock playlist on Spotify. Many called it just another indication of how healthy the Welsh-language music scene was at the time, and it has showed no signs of slowing down— certainly, neither have Alffa.
They released their debut album, Rhyddid o'r Cysgodion Gwenwynig (Freedom from the Poisonous Shadows) the following year in 2019, and it has one of my favourite Alffa songs on it, ‘Babi Mam’, a song about men's mental health, that they released with guest vocals by Iwan Fôn, singer from the band Kim Hon (a future feature on the Welsh music Wednesday series for sure). There is a glorious taped performance of it from 2019's Maes B when Alffa played the Eisteddfod and Iwan joined them on vocals.
I don't have a Bandcamp page to link you for them unfortunately, but if you're into physicals, they are on Recordiau Côsh, and in lieu of a stream I will just embed a second track, this from their lovely second album that came out last year called O'r Lludw (From the Ashes), with just the duo of Dion and Sion, called ‘Breathe Free’. A bit of an intense rock-disco track! (Personally, ‘Darnau Mân’ is one of my favourite songs on the album, so listen to that too).
