On her third album Welsh Music Prize winner Georgia Ruth returns to her roots. Having moved back to her native Aberystwyth Mai was recorded in the town’s Grade-II listed Joseph Parry Hall over the course of one week in Spring 2019. Named after the renowned composer and professor, the room was used as a venue for chamber concerts throughout the twentieth century and offered musicians a view of the sun setting over the castle as they worked.

But despite this setting Mai (meaning May) is an intimate collection of songs written from within the depths of a house during stolen moments. At its heart sits a beautiful and simple setting of Eifion Wyn’s poem – ‘Gwn ei ddyfod, fis y Mel’ (I know it’s coming, month-of-honey).

Mai is a meditation on finding hope and renewal in the seasons, in a world where the certainty of Spring feels increasingly fragile. The album was produced with Iwan Morgan (Meilyr Jones, Cate Le Bon, Richard James) who also engineered mixed and mastered. Additional parts were recorded at his studio in Liverpool. With improvised strings, pedal steel and saxophone sitting alongside harp, the album presents a sound which is both lush and sparse in turn.

Just 100 pressed to black indies only vinyl, with booklet and download

1) Gardd
2) Madryn
3) 7 Rooms
4) Terracotta
5) Mai
6) Close For Comfort
7) In Bloom
8) Cosmos
9) Brychni
10) Cynnes
11) Haul