Welsh chanteuse and electronic producer Gwenno returns with an introspective third album, Tresor(Treasure), exploring the impact of motherhood on the psyche. Tresor is due for release 1 July via Heavenly Recordings, and is available to pre-order here. To celebrate the occasion Gwenno has shared the album’s first single, ‘An Stevel Nowydh’, a chiming and intriguing psych-pop gem, which comes accompanied by a striking video she directed watch below.
Commenting on the track and video Gwenno says: “An Stevel Nowydh (The New Room) is a song about finding yourself somewhere entirely new and realising that you’re completely lost, and acknowledging that the only thing to do in an existential crisis is to don your favourite hat and dance! The short is part of a longer film that I’ve created with Anglesey-born filmmaker Clare Marie Bailey due to be revealed this summer. It was shot on Super 8 in Bryn Celli Ddu, Mynydd Parys, and Porth Ia (St Ives) during Summer 2021, it was edited by Joan Pope and stars the incomparable Eddie Ladd as ‘Greddf’ (Instinct).”
Additionally, Gwenno has announced several UK live shows beginning with an appearance at the 6Music Festival in Cardiff.
UK Live Dates
01 April – Cardiff – 6Music Festival
30 April – Edinburgh – Stag & Dagger
01 May – Glasgow – Stag & Dagger
05 May – Wrexham – Focus Wales
28 May – Totnes – Sea Change Festival
03 June – Port Talbot – In It Together
12 June – Kidlington – Kite Festival
03 September – Manchester – Psych Festival
“‘Tresor'(Treasure) is Gwenno Saunders’ third full-length solo album and the second almost entirely in Cornish (Kernewek). Written in St. Ives, Cornwall, just prior to the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and completed at home in Cardiff during the pandemic along with her co-producer and musical collaborator, Rhys Edwards, Tresor reveals an introspective focus on home and self, a prescient work echoing the isolation and retreat that has been a central, global shared experience over the past two years.”
‘Tresor’ diverges from the stark themes of technological alienation in ‘Y Dydd Olaf’ (The Final Day) and the meditations on the idea of the homeland on the slyly infectious ‘Le Kov’ (The Place of Memory). Accessible and international in outlook, peppered with moments of offbeat humour, “Le Kov” presented Cornish to the world. The impact of ‘Le Kov’ was resounding, providing for the Cornish language an unprecedented international platform that saw Gwenno touring and headlining in Europe and Australia, and supporting acts such as Suede and the Manic Street Preachers.
On ‘Tresor’, Gwenno shifts focus from the external to the internal, and onto the journey of rediscovering oneself after the life-changing experience of becoming a mother.It is an exploration of desire, of reclaiming one’s body after childbirth, of working out how to exist as yourself as well as caring first and foremost for somebody else. Inspired by powerful woman writers and artists such as Ithell Colquhoun, the Cornish language poet Phoebe Proctor, Maya Deren and Monica Sjöö, ‘Tresor’ is an intimate view of the feminine interior experience, of domesticity and desire, a rare glimmer of life lived in and expressed through Cornish.
‘Tresor’ evokes the waters that shape the Cornish experience, whilst being musically far reaching with influences spanning from Ryuichi Sakamoto to Eden Ahbez and William Basinski. As psychedelically tinged as her previous work, ‘Tresor’ embeds found sounds ranging from Venice to Vienna, layering cultural and historical atmospheres, decoupling the use of Cornish from any geographic determinism, allowing for an expression of imaginative spaces that are truly free.”
