I judged this year’s Welsh music prize – and Don Leisure’s w...

What if I told you that this year’s Welsh music prize shortlist featured an eclectic mix of desert blues, weird folk, malevolent trance and indie rock? Impressed? OK, what if I told you that all this merely describes the first album on the shortlist?

Such is the radical eclecticism of female trio Adwaith’s Solas, a double album, sung in Welsh and recorded in various locations including the Outer Hebrides and the drummer’s parents’ barn. How, I wondered – just 20 minutes into a playlist of 15 albums that stretched over 10 hours – was anything expected to beat this?

When I agreed to be a judge for this year’s WMP, now in its 15th year, it wasn’t as if I was unaware of the strength and diversity of Welsh music. Previous winners have included Joanna Gruesome’s noise-pop debut Weird Sister, harpist Georgia Ruth’s Week of Pines and last year’s winner Blood, Sweat & Fears by rapper Lemfreck.

But still, there were dazzling records on this shortlist by artists I’d never even heard of, though in the case of Tai Haf Heb Drigolyn’s Ein Albwm Cyntaf Ni, my ignorance can perhaps be excused given that was only physically released on a limited edition cassette run of 50, and its biggest bit of press to date seems to be an enthusiastic endorsement from 67-year-old punk poet Attila the Stockbroker in the Morning Star. It turned out to be a defiantly lo-fi yet irrepressibly melodic way to spend half an hour.

I had my own favourites on the list – indeed, I had to resist wearing my Tubs T-shirt for the judging session for fear that it might have been deemed a subversive attempt to swing the jury in favour of my favourite indie band in years. The Tubs’ debut Dead Meat hijacked my stereo throughout 2024 in a way that bordered on obsessional. Cotton Crown was a strong follow-up, not least because the band’s ability to marry sunny jangle-pop with sharp lyrics about deteriorating mental health reached its zenith on the final track Strange, in which singer Owen Williams opened up about the suicide of his mother, the musician and writer Charlotte Greig. Choosing to focus on the more peculiar aspects of grief nobody prepares you for – the way friends would only bring it up when they were high, the things Williams might say to play it down (“I say it makes me more interesting / Then we laugh, and then it’s all fine”) – this was evidence that Williams is one of the most insightful lyricists around at the moment.

Kelly Lee Owens’ Dreamstate also made a big impression on me – a synth-driven reframing of daydreaming as an act of resistance to capitalism. It opened with precision-honed dancefloor tracks but also slowed down the tempo for a few ballads in its relentless quest for transcendence.

Other judges on the panel passionately championed their own choices. We went through the shortlist album by album, covering anthemic emo (Breichiau Hir’s Y Dwylo Uwchben), uplifting Taylor Swift-esque pop (teenage singer Buddug’s Rhwng Gwyll a Gwawr), inventive solo piano compositions (Cerys Hafana’s Difrisg), diaristic dreamscapes (Gwenno’s Utopia), Emitt Rhodes-style power pop (Keys’ Acid Communism), cinematic electronica (Siula’s Night Falls on the World), drunken punk (Panic Shack’s self-titled debut) and – what else? – a psychedelic concept album about a utopian village in which the local mill is powered by music (Melin Melyn’s Mill on the Hill). The Gentle Good’s Elan was notable for its track Desert of Wales, a collaboration with Rajasthani folk pioneers SAZ. Sage Todz’s Stopia Cwyno (which translates as Stop Moaning) involved the rapper exploring his own version of Welsh patriotism.

And yet despite the formidable competition, there was one record that seemed to encapsulate everything so vital and vibrant about this shortlist. Don Leisure is the stage name of producer Aly Jamal, a crate-digging hip-hop artist who was invited to get inventive with the freshly digitised catalogue of esteemed and historic Welsh label Sain. Like a one-man Welsh Avalanches, Jamal dived into the nooks and crannies of the catalogue, digging out some extremely niche cuts from the 60s and 70s – alongside more present-day recordings – and transforming them into fresh new sounds. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t heard this source material before – I had no idea Welsh music had ever sounded like this.

Listen to Tyrchu Sain blind and you’d probably guess its source material was taken from across the globe – there are harpsichords, spiritual chants, psychedelic rock riffs. Even the more traditional material, such as Delwyn Sion’s Aros yn Dy Gwmni, is given a crackling makeover: Gruff Rhys is enlisted to transform Sion’s original into a gorgeously dreamy outsider pop song.

Jamal has talked about how digging into the history of Welsh music led to him think about his own family’s roots in India and east Africa. That’s maybe the genius of Tyrchu Sain: that it feels like a tour of the world as well as a tour of Welsh music history; a record that encompasses the past, present and burning bright future of Welsh music.