Back in April we featured Angharad, the first single from Yucatan‘s new album Uwch Gopa’r Mynydd. The album, their second following quite a long break, has now been released, so we thought we would say a little more about the whole thing. The band make ethereal, celestial ambient post-rock, and draw inevitable comparisons to a certain Icelandic act, but I’m going to avoid mentioning Jonsi and co as much as possible as it does Yucatan a disservice.
You should probably know from the outset that Yucatan are from Wales, a location which the band rely on for much of their inspiration. Indeed they describe their music as recorded “beneath vaporous skies, at the foot of slate grey peaks…from where song rises from within the soil.” The band come from Snowdonia, an area of incredibly scenic mountainous national park, and capture the natural beauty of their homeland by writing almost exclusively in their native tongue (the title of the album translates as ‘Above the Mountain Summit’), a language of which J.R.R. Tolkien said “For many of us it rings a bell, or rather it stirs deep harp-strings in our linguistic nature”. As someone who is currently attempting to learn the language for more practical reasons, it’s nice to hear it used to construct something so otherworldly, to be reminded its mythical, ancient quality.
The album opens with ‘Ffin’ (which translates roughly as border or frontier), with its thudding drumbeat and quivering violin/cello in background. Things are lushly understated until halfway point, when big guitars enter the fray and things get a little more bombastic. ‘Cwm Llwm’ (‘Bleak Valley’) is a patient build, its soft guitars and vocals undergoing a gradual increase in intensity, eventually joined by an insistent, anticipative drumbeat and mournful strings, the eventual payoff arriving as everything marries together and drums come crashing down. The track also has a piano-led cooling off period, ending in atmospherics that sound like ghosts real or imagined on misty a hillside. This is followed by the only English-language song on the album, ‘Word Song’, which begins with gentle icy tinkles before blossoming with lush arrangements and cooing background vocals. Next up is ‘Halen Daear a Sŵn y Môr’ (‘Ground Salt and the Sound of the Sea’ – I think!), another shimmering slice of panoramic beauty.
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‘Ochenaid’ (‘Sigh’) continues in the ethereal majesty with glacial vocals and strings, minimal electric guitar and thumping The National-style drums, while ‘Llyn Tawelwch’ (‘Peace Lake’) opens with sparse instrumentation, the vocals taking centre stage, building and building to a finale which swoops and soars over snowy peaks. Lead single ‘Angharad’ twinkles and floats before a pounding, cymbal-heavy climax. The title track closes up in suitably resplendent fashion, its triumphant horn-led final third finishing things with a celebratory air.
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You can buy Uwch Gopa’s Mynydd right now as a download, CD or vinyl (heck the Yucatan website for a list of suppliers). People of Germany, Austria and Switzerland can grab a copy via Stargazer Records.