Hen Ogledd – named after the Welsh term for ‘The Old North’, the historical and political region encompassing what is now northern England and southern Scotland during the Early Middle Ages – coalesced slowly in the middle of the last decade.

Davies and Dawson first began collaborating in 2013, but Hen Ogledd did not come fully into being until Pilkington and Bothwell were both involved ahead of 2018’s debut album proper, Mogic.

Third album Discombobulated marks a considerable step forward in their evolution. The initial sessions for the record took place in early 2024, having been ‘rallied’, in Rhodri Davies’s words, by drummer Will Guthrie to get into a room together to develop the various ideas each member had. Living in different parts of the UK, Hen Ogledd often have to share sketches of music remotely before coming together to hammer them into shape; often, as on this record, with producer Sam Grant at Blank Studios in Newcastle.

A quiet radicalism and fury at injustice is woven into much of its lyrical and thematic content. On the first single to be shared “Scales Will Fall”, Dawn Bothwell’s urgent vocal leads the charge with her allusions to both protest history – the women at Greenham Common and Durham Miners’ Gala – and contemporary organising against corporate greed. Her vocal performances are among the record’s most striking, charismatic features. “Although I love hip hop, I want to make it clear that I’m drawing more on the spoken word tradition. I made up this term ‘Bard rap’; that’s more how I think of it.”

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