Gwenno, aka 35-year-old Gwenno Saunders, makes surreal soundscapes from an unlikely source: Welsh science fiction. The Cardiff-based singer's debut album, Y Dydd Olaf (The Last Day), was inspired by Caernarfon-born writer Owain Owain's 1976 novel of the same name. Her lyrics, sung in Welsh and Cornish, take Owain's narrative - a dystopian world in which robots clone their human leaders - and use it as a springboard for reflections on feminism and cultural identity. "It allowed me to be honest in what I wanted to express," Saunders says of using her mother tongue. "I figured that if I made an album that was good enough, it wouldn't be any better if it was in a language most people understood." It wasn't always like this: until 2010, Saunders was one of five interchangeable singers in indie-pop band The Pipettes. She left needing to find her own voice - and found it was Welsh. "When you come from a minority language, it can feel quite claustrophobic because there are fewer of you," Saunders explains. "But it allows you an amount of freedom." She returned to Cardiff and collaborated with sound artist Rhys Edwards, who wove in field recordings, taken from Cardiff Bay, into Y Dydd Olaf, to contrast her lyrics of protest. Released in July 2015 through Heavenly Recordings, the album's lush, expansive sound was produced on a laptop that couldn't play a song without crashing. It was "the most painful thing to watch", Saunders says - but it ultimately aided her: "Having a restriction is just a really good thing creatively."
The album ended up winning the Welsh Music Prize, and has led to a UK-wide tour this summer. The DIY ethic extends to Saunders' live show - including performances at Glastonbury and Portmeirion's Festival No. 6 in September - during which she builds up her sound with a variety of sequencers, pedals and keys.
She's also busy at work on new Welsh-language material. "I feel really lucky to be creating in this era," Saunders says, "because the world is turning upside down."
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
