Remember 1995? No? Hardly surprising: nothing much happened that year. In January, a Swedish outfit by the name of Rednex took their hillbilly techno take on Cotton Eyed Joe to number one across the globe; May saw the French, with a heavy heart, elect Jacques Chirac as their leader, and in October the former US football star OJ Simpson was found not guilty on two counts of murder. This aside, a fairly quiet year. To the casual observer that is...
In actual fact 1995 witnessed a quiet but momentous occasion, as the then unknown Eilir Pierce, garreted in his bedroom on a remote farm in Denbighshire, gave birth to his very first musical musings. As we all know, what happened next was far from everyday history.
In the space of the decade that links Pierces first official album release, 1996s Album Cyntaf, to the forthcoming celebration of his talents, Degawdawns: Ten years of Eilir Pierce this one-man revolution has amassed a body of over 400 songs, and collaborated with the cream of musical talent from Tokyo to Tal-y-Bont.
Essentially - and initially, exclusively - a solo artist, Pierce has nevertheless always sought to surround himself with sympathetic yet challenging musical co-conspirators. Working in every genre from Japanese hot-poetry to the North-Walian power-ballad, he has never been keen to be shackled by the conventions of musical structure and instrumentation. Effectively navigating a path around the traditional constraints of music production, Pierce has allowed his protégés and mentors alike to empty their rivers into his lake, knowing that the true proof of creativity is not skill, rather - to borrow a farming metaphor that would doubtless remind Pierce of the old days - how many sheep can you round up?
Deferry Cornwallis, September 2006
