Melin Melyn are more than just a band. They’re world-builders; storytellers absorbing various elements of the increasingly strange times around us and using them to create fables that ruminate on grief, love, and hope.
Their debut album Mill On The Hill sees the band jump between surf-rock, country, prog-rock and psychedelia with the grace and skill of a band with numerous records under their belt, held together by an efficacious and fantastical thematic principle. Melin Melyn translates to ‘Yellow Mill’ in Welsh, and on this album the Welsh six-piece invite the audience into the world they have quite literally built around them. Mill On The Hill transports the listeners to the utopian ‘Melin Village’, a Seussian world where townsfolk “bask in the beauty of song.” Enter our protagonists, the six millers who work at the titular mill on the hill, powered by the music that they create:
Formed in 2019 by Gruff Glyn (lead vocals, guitar, saxophone) Will Barratt (lead guitar), Cai Dyfan (drums) and Garmon Rhys(bass, backing vocals and who also performs as The Mighty Observer) the band was Gruff’s first proper musical project. After a year or so performing as a foursome, the band were soon joined by Rhodri Brooks (pedal steel) and Dylan Morgan (keys), stalwarts of the Welsh music scene with their solo works AhGeeBe and DD Darillo, as well as their works with Novo Amor & Boy Azooga respectively, adding further gravitas and completing the sound that the band had been looking for.