Why all the multi-instrumentalism? Ha! Ynyr and I can’t stick to one instrument when there are so many. So many sounds, and so much fun to be had. I’ve lost count of what instruments we play on the album, and we don’t play any of them to any great standard or anything, and some for the first time. It’s all from the heart: wanting to make a noise that does justice to the track and the feeling we’re trying to get across.
We always live by this ethos. You don’t have to know an instrument well. It’s the same as learning a language. Why would you want to speak just one? You don’t have to know it well – just have a bash and enjoy it. It opens relationships and a deeper insight into a culture. And it’s exactly the same with musical instruments.
Winning the Welsh Music Prize was just the sweetest feeling. To hear that our music is being listened to and connected with. Because that’s all you want as an artist: when you make something, and you put it out into the world, you want people to connect with it and get something out of it.
There’s a seven-year gap between our albums. Contrary to how it appears, we actually work really quickly and instinctively in the studio. But it’s just finding the time. We started recording the second album when I was pregnant with our first child and we finished it shortly before the birth of our second child. And there was a lockdown at that time. Two children and a pandemic. So that kind of put the brakes on stuff. Anyway, that’s where the title Dos Bebés comes from.
We were in school together and we both loved Spanish lessons. We found it really fascinating, and I think that’s our approach to any language: curious and playful. Whenever we go to another country, we always try and learn about the language. It’s the same way that we’d love people to approach Welsh. Not with a kind of heaviness or trying-to-get-it-rightness, but with an openness and sense of fun, a curiosity about what it can teach you about the country.
On the album, we do approach a lot of big issues: deep stuff like politics, Welsh independence, language and of course parenthood. But we try and do it in a playful way. We try in everything we do, lyrically and musically, to come at it from a slightly different angle. Most of all, we always make the kind of music we’d like to listen to.
The arts are an integral part of society, especially in Wales.
We are a very creative country, and it’s really important to celebrate that.
More:
