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Owen Shiers, aka Cynefin, a Welsh word meaning a sense of belonging and attachment to a place, is a very passionate and generous musician. As with his excellent debut album, Dilyn Afon, the West Wales native’s follow-up is equally accomplished in its music and contextual packaging. As well as making music, Owen is a cultural historian, researcher and grain grower, the latter directly linking to the album’s title, meaning a gathering of farmers, telling stories and singing songs as their oats baked around them. This old practice continued well into the twentieth century.
The song selection here tackles a variety of themes, but a consistent detail is a gaze into the past and perhaps an underlying sense of anxiety when considering aspects of our modern world, something he highlights when describing the album as “A personal dispatch from the struggle to preserve a language, culture and way of life”, but also as “a musical petition – a stake in the ground for the diverse and the disappearing in our age of homogenisation and mass amnesia.”
A starting point then is opening song Cornicyll (meaning lapwing); as Martin Simpson did on his wonderful Skydancers album, Owen addresses the sad fact of the decline of many bird species in the UK, here citing farmer and poet Dic Jones. The song is built around a delicate but intricate fingerpicked guitar line, with a wistful whistle cutting through piano and percussion and giving the song a beseeching sense of melancholy, accentuated by hints of flute and some great bass notes.
Elsewhere, the home-brewed beer as tonic is the focus on Cwrw Bach (meaning small beer), a clear and crisply played piece again taken from a poem, this time by Rees ‘Ammon’ Jones and written in 1845. The vocal refrain here is particularly effective and balances beautifully with the pretty guitar work on a simply structured song that speaks of the benevolence surrounding the eternally pleasant act of gathering to drink beer.
Owen’s role as cultural historian runs steadily through this album and comes to the fore on songs like Pont Llianio, with a recording of a past employee of a now derelict milk processing plant providing the song’s introduction. A lament of sorts built around a poem by Phil Jones, the music here begins with a stark harp line that develops at a tentative pace, framed by bass. The introduction of cello, joining the low bass, accentuates the feeling of loss permeating this one, with a long spectral violin note haunting the sound. It is musically restrained, leaving Owen’s vocals plenty of space to sing words of regret and sadness at another tradition obsolete and sprouting weeds.
Each of these eleven delicately considered songs, with Owen’s vocals plaintive and earnest, carrying the piece without upsetting the music, comes with extensive bilingual notes in a beautifully photographed booklet (you really should consider a physical copy of the album). It makes the whole project feel like an historical artefact as well as a passionate nod to a very different time and way of life that we could learn from. But Shimli is also, at its core, a wonderful set of songs with a musical backing that manages to be dynamic without becoming unnecessary. It is another remarkable release from this unique musician.
Shimli (30th January 2025) Recordiadau Smotyn Du
