Video Of The Week #78: Los Blancos – Cadi [PREMIERE]

Los Blancos recently released the scruffy noisy glory of their new double A-side single ‘Clarach’ / ‘Cadi’ through Libertino Records. Today we premiere the video for ‘Cadi‘ a ragged hook-filled rattle of noise pop redolent of the frenetic riffing of The Wedding Present or the insistent percussion of The Velvet Underground threaded with a shot of wry, tuneful Cymru, happy/sad vocals. Watch the video directed by Nico Dafydd, above.

He says of the video: “I’d been commissioned to shoot a video for the band’s other single ‘Clarach’ for Ochr 1. It’s a sad song and it was a melancholic video, and I thought ‘fuck it,’ as I have them here I might as well shoot two. So I bought some cheap, nasty dog masks and asked the band to go and act like dogs whilst we set up the shots. The resulting video, with some help from archive footage and Osian’s videos of the song’s subject – his dog Cadi – is an ode to dogs. It’s a sort of companion to ‘Clarach’. The be-in-the-moment to ‘Clarach’’s doom and gloom.” 

‘Clarach’ / ‘Cadi’ display the emotional complexity that is at the heart of Los Blancos songs which makes them mesmerising. Playful and loud at times yet they always possess a vein of melancholy. As Dewi Los Blancos Bass Player explains:

“‘Cadi’ is dedicated to rhythm guitarist Osian Owen’s dog. His songwriting influence can be heard through the driven, energetic guitars, which offer a contradiction to the more sensitive theme of finding solace through someone whilst everything around you seems to be falling apart. Although light-hearted, fun and energetic in nature, you will also find a depth to the track which sums up the band ethos.”

The eventual birth of these songs is a myth in itself, studio flooding and dying computers meant the band lost much of their already recorded debut album and were forced to re-record everything during one adrenaline-filled recording session with producer Kris Jenkins aka Sir Doufus Styles (SFA, Gruff Rhys, Cate Le Bon, H Hawkline, Gulp) in a closed community centre on a rainy Sunday in the centre of Cardiff. 

Clarach is a small beach on the Cardigan coast north of Aberystwyth and is the backdrop to this emotionally turbulent but delicate song. Lost love, lost summers and the loss of innocence are all here in Gwyn Rosser’s broken vocals. This is a band to believe in, gritty and uncompromising as The Replacements – a new exciting chapter for Welsh music.