Allan Yn Y Fan
Album: Cool, Calm & Collected
Label: Steam Pie
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.ayyf.co.uk

These days there is a strong vein in music that seems to celebrate anniversaries and unlike weddings there doesn't appear to be a list of what to expect when a band or album reaches a milestone, particularly one with a naught or a five at the end. Though I'm sure having read this, there are marketing people scuttling away to create one, 5 years 180gm Virgin vinyl with free mp3 download, ten years, a remastered box set plus original mixes, I digress.

Allan Yn Y Fan(AYYF) have remarkably already got ten years under their belt and a comparatively fecund ten years it's been too with four albums and an EP to their credit, not counting the new album, "Cool, Calm & Collected", which has been subtitled, "Cerddoriaeth Geltaidd o Gymru". The new album being a ride through those previous releases, three from each plus one from the EP.

Rather than introduce you to the songs and tunes chronologically, AYYF have spread the tracks across the album and having done the geeky thing and reordered the tracks, I think it was the right decision as it gives the album more facets and you get a better reflection of what the band have achieved as a whole rather than at collected moments of time.

Similarly there have been changes to the line up over the years that have brought a different dynamic around the core and that again brings more variety into the album. Creating this sort of album can be more difficult than you think, the best of each album doesn't necessarily make the best compilation, it's also a fact, that compared to its Scots and Irish neighbours, Welsh music has less of a reach, so the album has, to an extent, got to create the knowledge of what Welsh music is about, as well as how the band handle it.

Both "Cool, Calm & Collected" and Allan Yn Y Fan are up to that job. I was pleasantly surprised at how quick the fifty minutes the album takes seems to pass. I reached for my coffee only to find it colder than expected as I hadn't realised where the time went and I guess the same true of AYYF, somehow it doesn't seem like ten years. It can't be, can it?

Neil King