Wenallt Star have shared their latest single ahead of next month’s Black Welsh Music Awards, the originally titled ‘All Gone, That Time, Those People/Pawb Wedi Mynd, Yr Amser Hynnw, Y Bobl Hynny’
Wenallt Star’s David Lambert is a Cardiff-born, Lincolnshire-based writer / musician whose creative journey took an unexpected turn.
The band are currently riding a wave of critical acclaim, which has been rewarded with three nominations at the highly antipated 2025 Black Welsh Music Awards.
Whilst completing his second novel – a story of a mixed race, polyamorous relationship in a post WWII Cardiff – David found himself at an impasse, so he laid the novel down…
Seeking inspiration he read fourteen novels in fourteen weeks, engaging, as he read, the cut-up technique made popular by William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin and David Bowie, ending up with something completely new – fourteen unique spoken texts.
Over a 14 month period David collaborated with seven musicians from England and Wales, a visual artist, an actor, three film makers, a photographer, a graphic designer and a music producer. The result … ‘all her geese are swans, a 14 track music album.
“I’d spent two years writing the novel, a lonely existence. I needed to talk with someone other than my supportive family. I needed to bounce around some ideas with like-minded creatives.”
Repurposing
Over a fourteen week period David extracted words and phrases from the fourteen novels using the cut-up technique. Over a further fourteen weeks he repurposed the words from each novel into 14 new, unique texts, or micro-fictions, all connected to the themes of his novel.
‘’The first text written had a loose song structure so I got in touch with friend and Bridgend musician Stephen Hudson.
“I sent him the text and he set the words to music. That collaboration became the composition, THIRST.’
Encouraged by the collaboration, David put together a group of musicians to collaborate with on adding musical settings to the remaining thirteen texts.
The song has that 80s TR808 drum machine vibe. Human League meets China Crisis, with a splash of Thompson Twins, maybe.
As with all the songs on the album the text is cut up from a novel. It’s a reflective song, slightly sentimental, a song about illness, aging and lost love.
Sean South, the album’s Producer worked with David Lambert, who wrote the spoken text. Lucy Leland’s voice added that required pathos on both the spoken text and singing. David was adamant about the inclusion of the Welsh refrain and consulted Gareth David Potter.
Listen to All Gone, That Time, Those People/Pawb Wedi Mynd, Yr Amser Hynnw, Y Bobl Hynny on all streaming platforms
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source nation.cymru ’
