Forgotten punk record found and released after three decades

Nation.Cymru Staff

A long-lost punk rock album recorded three decades ago has been rediscovered and is finally set for release.

As the excitement of the grunge revolution waned, and with the so-called “Battle of Britpop” and “Cool Britannia” failing to inspire much excitement in more alternative-minded musicians, four artists from the Welsh and London indie scenes got together in a west-London basement to form Y Ci.

In the spring of 1996 they recorded a spontaneous celebration of punk and garage-rock with a little surf and Beach Boys mixed in… and promptly misplaced the master tapes for 30 years.

The album was co-written and immediately recorded mostly live and in-the-moment over two weekends by Pete Bryon (of the Welsh band Ian Rush) on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Jerry Hunter on bass and Richard Wyn Jones) on drums and backing vocals (both of veterans of several Welsh bands, include the first ones released on the influential Welsh label Ankst), and Dave Hunter (a founding member of Drugstore and soon-to-be founder of The Molenes) on lead guitar and backing vocals.

Equipment for both recording and mixing included the bare-bones demo recording setup in Dave’s Teddington basement—budget mics, an 8-track ADAT machine, a 16-track Mackie desk, and one outboard reverb/delay unit, plus a borrowed DAT recorder to which it was all bounced.

Maybe there’s something to be said for the simple approach, because the results are breathtaking: spanning the sleezy raw groove of “Dau Gi Bach,” the charming west-coast janglepop of “Gwen fel Haul,” the fuzzed-out punk of “Porffor” and the adrenaline-fueled surf instrumental of “Perro Rojo,”—and plenty more besides—the 12 tracks stake a compelling lo-fi flag in an otherwise blandified musical landscape, and provide surprisingly timeless listening today.

With the 8-track masters lost to time (and likely the rubbish heap) only the original DAT mixes remained, and that’s what we have collected here in the debut album Enw’r Ci yw Perro from the band Y Ci, released on the 30th anniversary of its recording.

Yet the energy and excitement of the sound remains compelling and contemporary, and if Pete, Dave, Jerry and Richard had recorded it all just last month, they wouldn’t want to do it any other way.

The album will be available from May 13.