Y Niwl are a surf instrumental band from North

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

, 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 b ...

(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 forme ...

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 ''

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'' Album of the Week on 2 January 2011 and received 7/10 in reviews by the

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and Drowned in Sound. The track "Undegpedwar" was used as the theme tune to the

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television show ''

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''. 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).

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Niwl, Y Welsh alternative rock groups Welsh rock music groups Musical groups established in 2009