IT TAKES a lot to get me travel to London to watch a 30-minute set by a new band a third of my age these days, especially after a sequence of two gigs and two football matches in five days culminating in a late-night drunken celebration after Brighton’s 3-0 demolition of Brighton reserves (aka Chelsea) on Tuesday night.

But that’s what I did last Wednesday, determined to see Tai Haf Heb Drigolyn live on stage for the first time. They are the most original, challenging and inspirational musical experience I’ve had in years.

There are obvious indications of Welshness, and indeed that’s what they are — from Aberystwyth and their name means Uninhabited Summer Houses, which is very appropriate given the number of second homes bought by the English there.  

They sing (and intone, and shout) in Welsh too, and their music is absolutely indefinable. It is simultaneously beautifully melodic and crunchingly atonal, structured and chaotic, rigid and experimental.

Unique and impossible to categorise. Pointers? Think Velvet Underground, Can, ’60s psychedelic pop — but above all think ’80s low-fi indie pioneers Datblygu, pioneers of the underground Welsh language scene, their late leader David R Edwards a friend of mine for over 30 years.  

It was via a Datblygu Facebook page that I first heard about Tai Haf Heb Drigolyn a couple of years ago, and I sent off for their debut release, a 50-only limited edition cassette tape, each one individually recorded over something else, thus adding interference and hiss to their already febrile mix.

Now they’ve done about 40 gigs, released a proper debut album (Ein Albwm Cyntaf Ni — Our First Album) and are making waves not just in Wales, but all over the country. They’ve already been played on 6 Music, have a live session soon and Wednesday’s was their second gig in London and my first chance to see them. There was a decent crowd waiting for them.

Line up: a couple of keyboard/sequencer things, recorder, violin, guitar, bass, drums (leader Simon moving from one to the other with aplomb). The set started with Simon charging around the room playing the recorder frenziedly and they moved through abstract noise to sweet psychedelia to demented pop and Stockhausenesque messiness, incorporating a Datblygu cover on the way.

Spellbinding, indefinable stuff: best thing to do is give their album a listen, which you can find here.

Moving to the other end of our life cycle, nattily dressed former Chumbawamba anarcho-intellectual Dunstan Bruce has a new project now called Interrobang (a punctuation mark simultaneously expressing curiosity and surprise, if you didn’t know, I don’t have one on this keyboard so I can’t show you).

They have a new album out called Rethink Everything in which he analyses and parodies the certainties and uncertainties of a late middle-aged revolutionary in a shit world getting shitter with passion and aplomb: “Dismantle! Rebuild! Make your own tools!”

Musically it hits all the spots for me: Kraftwerk arguing with Sigue Sigue Sputnik while Jani Novak from Laibach stirs the pot. You can give me a lift in that handcart we’re all going to hell in anytime, Dunstan.

Two gigs await in Manchester next week. On Thursday I officially launch my new poetry book Fiery Words for Hellish Times at Manchester Central Library: on Friday I’m alongside two great new local bands, MancUnion and Brian & the Onions, at a fund raiser for We Shall Overcome at its HQ, The Station in Ashton under Lyne. Tom Hingley from the Inspiral Carpets will be doing a spot as well.

And also on Friday we say goodbye to Paul “Jacko” Jackson, the driving force behind my favourite DIY venue ever, The Adelphi in Hull. I’ll be writing about this in my next column. Cheers everyone.