David R Edwards, who has died aged 56, was the vocalist for the experimental Welsh-language group Datblygu from its inception until his death this week. In his short life, he played a pivotal role in crafting a Welsh music underground, of which he will be remembered as an icon.

Described by the NME as sounding like ‘Kraftwerk with a hangover’, Datblygu—meaning ‘develop’ or ‘evolve’—were formed in 1982 by Edwards and his schoolfriend T Wynn Davies in the Cardiganshire town of Aberteifi, with Patricia Morgan joining soon after. At that time, the Welsh language had long been associated with a somewhat backwards-looking culture of hymns, ruins, and traditional events like Eisteddfodau. Datblygu was happy to undermine this sombre, competitive pomp; in an early video interview, Dave and Wynn scowl through their sworn desire to tear up that whole tired ceremony, while Dave would quip 35 years later that ‘the difference between yoghurt and Welsh culture is that yoghurt has a living culture.’

Throughout the 60s and early 70s, Plaid Cymru and Cymdeithias Yr Iaith had been taking direct action to increase the status of the Welsh language, winning on key fronts such as bilingual government forms, a Welsh TV channel, and—infamously—road signs. Datblygu’s lyrics took regular aim at the hypocrisy Dave saw in fellow Welsh speakers smugly taking the levers of power while doing nothing to challenge its structures. The swingeing call-out of ‘Can I Gymru’ poured disdain down on this cultural elite (sometimes called the crachach or establishment) for, in his words, taking season tickets on the trên grefi that gave them Volvos adorned with nationalist bumper stickers, cushy jobs working three hours a day at BBC Wales, and private harp lessons for their children, costing them nothing but anxiety over their choice of lounge curtains.

While Dave would have sooner chopped up a Bard’s chair for firewood than accepted the moniker of ‘poet’, it’s also hard to call his writing anything but poetry. Employing bent echoes of cynghanedd, a Welsh poetic tradition of internal rhyme and alliteration, Dave’s mercurial incantations involved archly layered puns that turned in on themselves like raging mobius strips (no small part of the reason the lyrics refuse easy translation.) He mimicked the patchworked absurdist references of his hero Mark E Smith to better castigate his personal hate figures, from Dafydd Iwan and Elton John to Carol and Margaret Thatcher, to name a few.

Datblygu’s consistent nose-thumbing and their off-kilter sound locked them out from mainstream Welsh media for many years. However, the dial shifted considerably when they found an unlikely fan in the form of John Peel, who recorded no less than five Peel Sessions with the band on his Radio 1 show. Welsh punks tired of compulsory participation in a suffocating re-enactment culture were listening in avidly, too. Owing to the fact that the Welsh TV channel S4C was mandated to fill its airwaves with Welsh language content in the 80s, you could, according to Pat, ‘get on S4C for farting if you farted in Welsh.’ The upshot of this was a centrally planned, fully funded, yet anarchically DIY-executed explosion in Welsh language music videos by groups like Traddoddiad Ofnus, Pop Negatif Wastad, Fflaps, Y Cryff, Anrhefn – and, of course, Datblygu.

Dave briefly became a secondary school teacher in the mid-90s but was deemed unfit for work for, among other issues, smoking in front of the kids. Years into long-term unemployment, he would comment, ‘I don’t see how anyone who’s done a day’s work in their lives can fail to be left wing.’ Later Datblygu songs dealt with the abject cruelty of the education system, from bullying headmasters to government hypocrisy. Describing himself as an internationalist, Dave had a vision for the comfy salaries of Senedd members: ‘The authority of the antiseptic National Assembly,’ he said, ‘should be abolished and the budgets divided equally between Wales’ inhabitants. Including children.’

Having struggled with alcoholism and with deteriorating mental health, Dave was eventually sectioned in 1996. In a cruel irony, at the precise moment so many bands which had been directly inspired by him stormed the charts under the banner of ‘Cool Cymru’, Dave fought his demons alone, unable to write. With the final major stint of hospitalisation behind him by 2012, a steady renaissance began to build, which would eventually include a 7” and three full-length albums. The band were even coaxed into a slot performing at All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival by Stewart Lee in 2016.

In the middle of the pandemic, Datblygu released Cwm Wagle (‘Void Valley’), the LP that would prove to be their last. Some of the music (written in Pat’s Abergavenny home) and words (from Dave’s Carmarthen council house) were shared with the other member prior to arriving at the studio, but most was not. That an album like this could be even semi-improvised is testament to a uniqueness of a musical and personal partnership of shared intuition, friendship and creative vision that shone until y dydd olaf.

If Datblygu remained partially inscrutable but still fascinating for non-Welsh-speaking fans who could fall for Dave’s tones and Pat’s bleeps alone, then for those of us able to grasp—even partially—the wit, yearning, and tragic beauty of the lyrics themselves, they were The Welsh Gospel itself, in the words of noted Datblygu acolyte Super Furry Animal’s Gruff Rhys. Dave never considered writing his lyrics in English—’It’s in Welsh because it is, and so are we’—and, while increasingly disgusted by nearly everything, he remained in love with the words and the people of his country.

There’s a moment in Death to Welsh Culture, Its’ Meat and Tradition—an unflinching and slightly heartbreaking video portrait of Dave shot in 2017—where he saunters over to the Football Association Wales sign at the empty ground in Carmarthen and jabs a finger more nicotine than flesh at the motto on the wall which reads: ‘Gorau chwarae, cyd chwarae.’

‘See that basically means, ‘The best form of play is playing together.’ It doesn’t say working together, does it? No. Because work is shit!’

His voice softens.

‘Play, mun. Whatever you’re doing. Just Play. Enjoy.’