HAUL AR YR EIRA

Pretty much unknown to the rest of the world, PERERIN was a staunchly Welsh band that enshrouded itself in national pride, singing all its lyrics in the Welsh language as well as printing its liner notes with no English translations. The band's name means "Pilgrim" and was one of the most popular bands in Wales in the early 1980s as they performed traditional Welsh music that ventured into the more adventurous arenas of progressive folk. The band released four albums and emerged from the progressive rock band Brân which itself released three albums of bluesy rock centered albums in the 1970s. Consisting of Arfon Wyn ab Eurig (guitars and vocals), Charli Goodhall (guitars, bass and vocals), Einion Williams (percussion ? bongos, congas and bhodran), Aneurin Owen (flautist) and Nest Llewelyn (keyboards and vocals), PERERIN narrated traditional tales of their homeland and featured a rich array of complex folk music elevated by the large swath of instrumentation.

HAUL AR YR EIRA (Sun On The Snow) was the group's debut that emerged in 1980 and along with the second release, "Teithgan," said to be the most progressive era of the band's musical style. While based on traditional Welsh folk styles, the music of PERERIN was totally original and woven into a spacey mix of progressive folk with exquisite melodies and divine harmonic vocal performances with the angelic Nest Llewelyn providing the female counterpart to the three male singers. A mellotron also adds a nice atmospheric texture to the band's sound and the occasional use of chilled out acid guitar effects add a touch of psychedelia. The album features ten tracks with two guitars, keyboards, bass and an abundance of dreamy flute usage. The traditional sounds of the bodhran also add a flair of authenticity and the percussion is delivered any congas and bongos rather than a rock drummer.

The band members were masters of exquisite songwriting with elegant compositions that perfectly represented the traditional Welsh culture in a dreamy and creative display of infusing the timeless style into the modern world of progressive folk with slight rock elements. While Welsh is a fairly esoteric language for most of the world, the language makes for a great musical accompaniment and a pleasant foray into a Celtic culture still thriving after so many centuries of English domination. The album was actually recorded in a cow shed near Caernarfon, Wales that a brilliant engineer decided to put a recording studio in! The beautiful cover art was created by Arfon Wyn's brother Ifor Wyn and was derived from an old illustration from a book called "Pilgrim's Progress" by John Bunyan. The album was released on the small Gwerin Records that specialized in folk and pop music from Wales.

Overall this is a divinely beautiful album with rich harmonies and gorgeous timeless melodies that take you back centuries to some disclosed performance hall in anywhere Wales when the culture was still relatively pristine and unaffected by colonizing intrusion. The use of dynamics and creative guitar and drum work is quite impressive. The best aspect of the album surely has to be the exhilarating vocal performances as both the male and female singers deliver their tales with a passion and vocal precision that is of the highest calibre. One could very well consider PERERIN the Welsh equivalent of English progressive folk bands like The Pentangle or Steeleye Span as the traditional elements are very much in the forefront with the modern excursion kept to a minimum. Considering Welsh traditional music remains an estranged force for most of the world to experience, bands like PERERIN deliver a most dynamic way of experiencing the beauty and uniqueness of Welsh music which is nothing like its Irish cousins' folk music to the West.