Y Niwl is a surf

Surf music

Surf music is a genre of popular music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Orange County and other areas of Southern California. It was particularly popular between 1961 and 1965, has subsequently been revived and was highly influential on subsequent rock music...

 instrumental band from North Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, formed in 2009. Its members are Alun Evans

Alun Tan Lan

Alun Tan Lan is a Welsh singer-songwriter. He sings exclusively through the medium of the Welsh language.When Lan was 14 he formed the punk rock band Dail Te Pawb, he later went on to join Boff Frank Bough playing bass....

 (guitar), Peter Richardson (drums), Sion Glyn (bass) and Gruff ab Arwel (organ and guitar). The band's name is pronounced Uh Nule and means 'The Fog'.

Style and influences

Alun Evans has said: "I still don’t have much of a collection of surf music and I was never really into that particular style of music in the past. The only thing I really had was an old Shadows album on tape.”" Singer-songwriter and Super Furry Animals

Super Furry Animals

Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band that lean towards psychedelic rock and electronic experimentation. Since their formation in Cardiff, Wales in 1993, the band has consisted of Gruff Rhys , Huw Bunford , Guto Pryce , Cian Ciaran and Dafydd Ieuan Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band...

 frontman Gruff Rhys

Gruff Rhys

Gruffydd Maredudd Bowen Rhys is a Welsh musician, performing solo and with several bands, including Super Furry Animals who obtained mainstream success in the 1990s. He also most recently formed the electro-pop outfit Neon Neon with Boom Bip. Their album Stainless Style was nominated for the 2008...

 has said: "Y Niwl live in the mountains and they're the world's highest altitude post-surf band. They sound like post-rockers gatecrashing a Tarantino soundtrack."

Recording

Alun Evans said: "Most of our material is edited jams... We usually record ourselves jamming then take out the best bits and form a song. Other times, someone will come up with an idea and we’ll work around that."

Y Niwl (album)

The band's debut album, Y Niwl, was released on 29 November 2010 on the Aderyn Papur label. It was recorded at Bryn Derwen studios and engineered by David Wrench. The songs' titles are numbers in Welsh

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

, but do not reflect the order of the tracklisting. Evans explained: When we started writing the songs we named them numerically in order, just to make it practical. But then when we wanted to change the tracklisting of the album around, we couldn’t rename the songs so we stuck with the songs and their numerical titles.

Y Niwl was named The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...

 Album of the Week on 2 January 2011 and received 7/10 in reviews by the NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

 and Drowned in Sound

Drowned in Sound

DrownedinSound.com or DiS is a UK based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway . The site is an editorially independent music website.-History:...

. The track Undegpedwar was used as the theme tune to the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 television show Football Focus

Football Focus

Football Focus is a BBC television show, broadcast on BBC One on Saturday lunchtimes, covering football, presented from the 2009/2010 season by Dan Walker...

.