Y Niwl are a
surf instrumental band
from North
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
, formed in 2009. Its members are
Alun Evans
Alun William Evans (born 30 April 1949) is an English former footballer who made his name as a centre forward in the Liverpool side rebuilt by Bill Shankly at the start of the 1970s. He was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire.
Career
Evans ...
(guitar), Llyr Pari (drums), Sion Glyn (bass) and Gruff ab Arwel (organ and guitar). The band's name is pronounced ''Uh Nule'' and means 'The Fog' in Welsh.
Members of the band have also long played as backing musicians for
Gruff Rhys
Gruffudd Maredudd Bowen Rhys (; born 18 July 1970) is a Welsh musician, composer, producer, filmmaker and author. He performs solo and with several bands, including Super Furry Animals, which obtained mainstream success in the 1990s. He formed ...
.
Career
Evans has said about the band: "It's essentially not complicated music, it's just rock 'n' roll basically, simple and raw. I still don’t have much of a collection of surf music and I was never really into that particular style of music in the past. The only thing I really had was an old Shadows album on tape... Most of our material is edited jams... We usually record ourselves jamming then take out the best bits and form a song. Other times, someone will come up with an idea and we’ll work around that".
The band's debut album, ''Y Niwl'', was released on 29 November 2010 on the
Aderyn Papur label with artwork by Llyr Pierce.
It was recorded at Bryn Derwen studios and engineered by
David Wrench. The song titles are numbers in
Welsh, but do not reflect the order of the tracklisting. Evans explained: "When we started writing the songs we named them numerically in order, just to make it practical. But then when we wanted to change the track listing of the album around, we couldn’t rename the songs so we stuck with the songs and their numerical titles".
''Y Niwl'' was named ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, w ...
'' Album of the Week on 2 January 2011 and received 7/10 in reviews by the
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
and
Drowned in Sound.
The track "Undegpedwar" was used as the theme tune to the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
''.
Y Niwl kept a low profile as a band for a couple of years following single releases in 2012 but have sporadically performed gigs.
Their second album ''5'', which has been in process since 2013, was released in February 2018. It was recorded by Iwan Morgan in Stiwdio Mandi Hebron. All tracks are instrumentals, Tridegun (31), Tridegchwech (36), Tridegpump (35), Dauddegwyth (28), Tridegpedwar (34), Dauddegchech (26), Dauddegsaith (27), Dauddegnaw (29), Tridegtri (33) and Trideg (30).