GWENNO
Announces new album, Le Kov,
due 2nd March on Heavenly Recordings
Live dates from December through ’til April 2018
Watch the new album trailer:
https://youtu.be/AJolLbtbz1c
Having last month signalled her 2018 return, Gwenno has today announced the release date of her new album Le Kov on 2nd March via Heavenly Recordings and available to preorder here. The album’s artwork and tracklisting can be found below.
Gwenno has also shared a new LP trailer, which can be viewed HERE, and announced a bunch of live performances in support of the album, beginning in early December in Falmouth and Merthyr Tydfil and running through to April 2018 with a show at London’s Hoxton Hall. Dates/info below:
Friday 1st December – MERTHYR TYDFIL – Redhouse
Saturday 2nd December – FALMOUTH – The Poly
Saturday 20th January – HOLYHEAD – Ucheldre Centre
Thursday 8th March – BIRMINGHAM – Hare & Hounds
Friday 9th March – MANCHESTER – Gullivers
Saturday 10th March – LEEDS – Brudenell Social Club
Friday 16th March – BRIGHTON – Rialto Theatre
Saturday 17th March – RAMSGATE – Music Hall
Thursday 22nd March – BRISTOL – Louisiana
Friday 23rd March – OXFORD – Bullingdon Arms
Sunday 25th March – ABERYSTWYTH – Ceredigion Museum
Thursday 12th April – LONDON – Hoxton Hall
Sharp-eyed observers will note that that’s also a song from Aphex Twin’s 2001 album Drukqs. “I imagined Richard D. James coming across this ‘long lost Cornish 70s folk rock song’ on vinyl in a charity shop in the city of Le Kov, and stealing the title,” says Gwenno. It’s one of just two songs where she references the city directly. The next is Herdhya (Pushing), a hypnotic song “about the feeling of isolation after the Brexit vote, and realising that you’re stuck on an island—Britain—with perhaps many people who are trying to push society back to a regressive idea of the middle ages that has never existed, and imposing that on everyone else,” says Gwenno. By contrast, Le Kov is “dhyn ni oll” (for us all), a sanctuary city and analogue for the importance of understanding that diverse identities are the foundation of any place.
There’s darkness on Le Kov, but beauty, too. Tir Ha Mor (Land And Sea) is a tribute toPeter Lanyon, the St. Ives school painter who learned to fly a glider plane in order to “get a more complete knowledge of the landscape” where he lived, and died after crashing his aircraft in August 1964. “Marghek an Gwyns was his Bardic name,” says Gwenno. “Rider of the Winds.”
And Gwenno’s playful side shines through, too. Daromres Y’n Howl (Traffic In The Sun) is a low, groovy tribute to Cornwall’s clogged roads in the summertime, featuring Gruff Rhysrapping amid dissonant brass that evoke the angry horns of tourists on the A30. And Gwenno’s favourite song is Eus Keus? (Is There Cheese?). It comes from one of the oldest surviving Cornish phrases: “Is there cheese? Is there or isn’t there? If there’s cheese, bring cheese, and if there isn’t cheese, bring what there is!”
Over the course of making Le Kov, Gwenno reconciled her anxiety over her right to make a Cornish-language pop record, and realised that, in the age of Brexit, isolationism and hostility towards the rich cultures that make modern Britain, it had a wider resonance, too. “This album is a combination of accepting the culture which your parents have valued enough to want to pass on to you, regardless how small, and utilising it in a positive way to try and make sense of the world around you, it’s also about having to accept and respect the nuances that make us all different and discovering that all of our stories share the same truth.”
Photo credit: Michal Iwanowski
1. Hi a Skoellyas Liv a Dhagrow
2. Tir Ha Mor
3. Herdhya
4. Eus Keus?
5. Jynn-amontya
6. Den Heb Taves
7. Daromres y’n Howl
8. Aremorika
9. Hunros
10. Koweth Ker
CONNECT
www.gwenno.info
https://www.facebook.com/Gwennomusic/
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