"HOUNDED BY FURY "

(Hwyl Records 2006)

  1. A Walk With Mr Gorey (1:52)
  2. Living in Shadows (5:51)
  3. Sanctify (10:15)
  4. Lost Man Found on a Railway Track (1:36)
  5. Riding the Echoes of a Strange Situation (5:59)
  6. The Darkened Shadows of a Ghost Train North (9:27)
  7. Child Woman (4:15)
  8. The Fish in the Tide (4:24)
  9. Broken Again (7:41)
  10. The Foundation of Space (3:03)
  11. Touched by Fire (5:39)
  12. Chapter 27 (3:15)

 

"ANATOMY OF DISTORT"

(Hwyl Records 2005)

Limited Edition CD-R Release Limited to 250 Copies.

Sorry - now sold out..

  1. The Life and Death of Joseph Merrick
  2. Red Herald
  3. I Love You But I Don't Like You
  4. The Wern
  5. The Face of a Social Butterfly
  6. Murder in the Cathedral
  7. The End

"As the originator and driving force behind Hwyl Nofio, Yorkshire based Welshman Steve Parry explores and exploits an ongoing collision between harmony and disharmony. Largely built around Parry’s abstract guitar patterns, the music on Anatomy Of Distort is too harsh and jagged to qualify as Ambient, but is subtly compelling as it shifts between drone, embryonic melody and crackling elemental noise. Parry has described what he does as “a marriage of dilemmas being resolved in another space”, and indeed the repeated pattern of tension and resolution provides the album with an unconventional kind of momentum, replacing rock’s normal linear dynamic with a series of fractured dialogues in which disfigured musical elements – guitar, piano, organ, strings – collide and merge with abstract blocks of sound. Parry’s previous album Hymnal, contained more musical signposts, including a brass band, but he’s travelled further off the musical map, further exploring his music’s textural possibilities."

Tom Ridge - The Wire - June 2005.

 

"HYMNAL"

(Hwyl Records 2002)

  1. A Brutality of Fact
  2. All You Knew Were Doomed
  3. Children Are
  4. Spirits
  5. Disciples of the Decibel (part 1)
  6. Head Eater
  7. Hymnal
  8. Holy Ghosts

 

 

"THE SINGERS AND HARP PLAYERS ARE DUMB"

(Hwyl Records 1999)

  1. Black River
  2. Jerusalem Lane
  3. Luminous is an Autumn Sunset
  4. Gravitate to the Green Hut
  5. The Song Tide Wanes and Goes
  6. Angel Tits
  7. The Singers and Harp Players are Dumb
  8. The Somnambulist
  9. Glass Floor No Door

"Music for an abandoned art gallery - don't play alone, at night, with the lights out..."

Buzz Magazine

 

"Supernaturally self-obsessed isolationist guitar, piano 'n' noise doodles that simply refuses to rock. I think I'm in love! And not just because the sixth track is called "Angel Tits"

Melody Maker

 

Multi instrumentalist and composer Steve Parry has produced a work of haunting beauty and timeless depth in The Singers…his ethereal piano chimes and drone-like resonance pervade this album. In a slowly unfolding landscape that seems to defy time, these pieces feel less composed than discovered: lingering like mists swirling and eddying in frost hollows. The listener almost comes upon them by accident. They are delicate yet surprisingly robust pieces of music that both unnerve and settle with equal measure.
There is something austere about Parry's modus operandi that makes every note and their place in the ensuing soundscape feel significant but also ascetic yet this is coupled with a purity of spirit that makes this music ultimately benevolent.
It unfolds with consummate ease and in a manner that feels almost predestined and presents beautifully contrasted aural textures. 'Gravitate To The Green Hut' is a good example. Parry's church organ drone builds with cyclical simplicity only to be interrupted by an exquisite banshee wail that destabilises the initial mood of the track. Throughout, compositional concepts are both elemental in structure and metaphor. Simple, yet texturally disparate, elements combine in unpredictable patterns and Stainsby's overall engineering prowess produces absolute clarity of sound, doing deserved justice to the level of compositional integrity. The layers of sampled sound input are also highly subtle: sometimes just a hint to provide an undertone or, as in the case of 'The Celestial Male Voice Choir' on the eponymous track, providing a momentary but indisputable presence.
Parry sites both John Cage and Jimi Hendrix as inspiration but the combination that immediately comes to mind, not so much in style as in attention to layered detail and the resultant overall mood, is Brian Eno's work with David Bowie. There is the same slightly mournful essence and feeling of impending desolation. This is even echoed in the 'hidden' portion of the last track, 'Glass Floor No Door', where a flock of bleating sheep have the final say. This trait must not be mistaken for morbidity, indeed Parry's work exhibits much that is life-affirming, yet the overall ambience is one of melancholy.

John Cratchley
(John Cratchley writes for THE WIRE)

 

It's kind of a hard record to explain. But I've been listening to this almost every night when I go to bed, if that tells you anything. Dark and dreamy and cinematic. Somewhere between musique concrete, Stars Of The Lid, David Darling (solo cello) and drone ala Jonathan Coleclough, Troum or Mirror. Hwyl-Nofio is Steve Parry, and the records sound centres around his restrained, haunting piano, sometimes prepared, sometimes effected, but always simple and gorgeous. Dark, slowly building sombre bass swells endlessly as melancholy piano hesitantly joins in. Warm washes of whispery rumble spread like thick rich fog, spilling from the speakers as distant high-end notes twinkle and sparkle. Wheezing dissonance is laid beneath, subtle clatter, plucked guitar, and throbbing pulses.

THIS HAS BECOME MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE BLISS OUT, LATE NIGHT, CHILL OUT RECORD EVER! SO GORGEOUS AND SO GOOD

Andy (Aquarius Records)

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