27th February 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
Real strings always sing ‘organic’, as well as ‘mournful’, however they’re played, at least to my ear. There’s an ache these sounds inspire which feels in some sense almost biological in the way they resonate. And with violin – and acoustic guitar – being the primary instruments on this gentle instrumental album, there’s an inescapable air of melancholy and a tug of internal tension, even when they slide uptempo and wander lighter, and more mellow, settled territories.
After the fractured soundscape of ‘Agor Llygaid’, which consists initially of pings and sighs and what to some may sound like tuning up, before some loosely-structured pastoral folk emerges, the second piece, ‘Pwis’, switches toward a more electronic-sounding, Krautrock style, and while the pulsating grooves are vaguely Tangerine Dream, the picked strings are altogether folksier – not quite Steeleye Span, but there’s a real feel that Peiriant’s inspirations lie in the 1960s and 1970s, while at times also reaching much further back, to a point that’s difficult to pinpoint – it’s not medievalism, it’s not pre-Christian paganism – but it is something more ancient, more steeped in nature and some deeper, more primal core of human existence. Fumbling and digging for the words to articulate the experience, all I can say is that Plant does something beyond words: it has a depth which feels cellular.
The stuttering, fractured intro to ‘Wrth y Bwrdd’ brings some of the promised experimentalism, before delicate acoustic guitar and sweeping violin take centre stage. Meanwhile, ‘Hwiangerdd’ brings the feel of mournful, minor-key traditional folk crossed with a subtly droning atmospheric. It’s the drone which comes to the fore on ‘Tynnu’. ‘Velfed’ stands out, with its pulsating, almost Krautrock undercurrent bubbling beneath the sawing strings which lock into a tight back-and-forth repetition.
Quite how they achieve their sound, I can only begin to imagine: it doesn’t sound particularly processed, but then, oftentimes, it doesn’t sound like any regular acoustic instrumentation. What’s clear is that Rose & Dan Linn-Pearl are remarkable musicians who have a rare mastery of their instruments, which is matched – and perhaps even exceeded – by their vision and their capacity to innovate.
From the title to the performance itself, Plant is magnificently understated, but possesses a subtle power, not to mention range. It extends far beyond its basic premise of being ‘experimental folk’, and being an instrumental work, its representing Welsh-language acts is somewhat peripheral. Instead, what this does is speak in a way which transcends language – any language – and the result is… quite special.
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Aural Aggravation 