So, of course you recall the Green Man special of Pulse; you read it repeatedly, religiously, and listened to every bit of sound recommendation that the charming young man who wrote it made. So, of course you’re familiar with 9Bach, the exquisite Welsh language band, who play an ethereal and mythical amalgam of folk, indie, atmospherics, and vocal acrobatics. So, of course they are now your new favourite Welsh language band. So, of course I don’t really have to tell you much about them. Humour me while I do though.
9Bach are a six piece band that have been doing the rounds for nine years now, and this year has seen them release their newest album, TINCIAN, which is an immersive spot of magic so it is, and they’ve also been hitting the festival circuit hard. I won’t ramble on too much, as you’d no doubt much prefer to read the interview what I did with Martin Hoyland and Lisa Jen instead. So here you go, 9Bach in the words of the band themselves…
Hello, how are you?
We’re very well, if a bit confused. We’re not sure whether to take our wellingtons or sun cream to Festival Number 6, so we’re taking both!
For our readers that aren’t up to speed, tell them a bit about yourselves and your sounds? Also that name.
Well 9Bach, is a play on words, and numbers, if you say the number 9 “nine” in English, it sounds exactly the same as the Welsh word “Nain” which means “Grandmother”, and bach literally means “small” but can also be a term of endearment, you can say “Oh Morgan bach……” or “Nain bach!”
We are a six piece band, 3 part female vocal harmonies, a harp, and drum and bass “dub” rhythm section, with atmospheric guitars. We can’t really asign ourselves to any living genre, but someone once recently said of “Ffarwel” from our recent album TINCIAN, “that’s not a song, that’s a work of art”
You recently played Green Man, how’d you enjoy the experience? You mentioned on stage that you’d actually originally formed to play Green Man…
Yes, great to be back at Green Man, loved playing this year, 9 years after our first ever performance, which was at Green Man 2005. Lisa and I (Martin Guitarist) were just jamming a few Welsh Folk songs that Lisa had introduced me to, and my good friend Ali, who’s a drummer I’d met on the post Brit Pop Rock scene, asked me what I was up to, and I told him! He said he knew the organisers of this festival in Wales, and sounds like we’d be perfect for it, and he got us the gig! We then realised we needed to get a band together for this gig, and to get the full sound we really wanted, so we did, and it seemed rude not to ask Ali to be our drummer!
A lot of songs are significantly story based, often politically or historically charged, was that something you’d always intended to do lyrically?
No I (Lisa) have never wanted to be a song writer, I didn’t even want to be in a band, Martin made me do it! Our first album was all Folk songs, and we knew we had to move on from that, but how? In 2011 we were asked to collaborate with the Australian Aboriginal super group “The Black Arm Band” for the cultural Olympiad, and on the flight out there I turned to Martin and said “what the hell are we doing, I can’t write songs, what shall I do, sing them some folk songs?” Martin just said “lets see what happens” and on the first day of meeting these wonderful people, I was writing my first song, and then over the next few weeks I was vomiting songs, I had the bug!
The themes on Tincian are also inspired by that trip, we learnt many stories through the BAB, and how the Aboriginal people are so connected to the land they belong to, and that surrounds them. When I got back home to Bethesda, I started looking at my village and history again, with new and open eyes, and many of the songs on Tincian are inspired from that.
Tincian came out recently, how have you found the response to it?
It’s been amazing: 4 and 5 star reviews all over the place, totally unexpected, you have to keep a level head though, and stay focused, and believe yourself in what you’re doing, as you can’t live or die by reviews. If they weren’t so good you may never make music again!
As a kind of career spanning question, what’s been the highlight, if you can pick one, of your band life?
There’s been so many, but picking just one was the recent standing ovation we received at Colours of Ostrava: a festival in the Czech Republic
Not a great thing to dwell on, but have there been any particular lowlights? Or, if you’d prefer, any funny anecdotes?
Well it was tough when we started, we literally couldn’t get a gig in England because we were singing in Welsh, no one wanted to put us on, so from the mountains of North Wales, we hired a venue, a PA, printed posters, sent out press releases, and put on our own show in London!
Many funny anecdotes, the best one was at Green Man 2010 funnily enough, Lisa and Ali had some nerves just before going on stage, and had to quickly go to the toilet, and luckily enough there were two cubicles next to each other near our dressing room. We then went on stage and Lisa announced to the crowd “Hello Green Man, me and Ali have just been back stage having a tandem shit” !
So, we’re getting to know you a bit more, are there any bands you’d recommend we look into aside from yourselves? Friends? Contemporaries? Heroes? Influences?
Lleuwen Steffan, Stelios Kazantzidis, Francis Bebey, The Gentle Good , Heather Jones ( 70’s psych rock icon)
Most scenic spot of Wales you’d recommend our readers have a visit to?
Come to where we live in the Snowdonia National Park, beautiful.
Say you had a pet vulture, that was particularly cultured, what would you name it?
Clever Cedric.
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