Digging Sain: Don Leisure Samples Wales’ Oldest Record Label On New Album
Though it’s now been fully assimilated into the popular music vernacular, it’s easy to forget that sampling was once seen as a radical act. Early and controversial hip-hop samplers Public Enemy termed themselves “media hijackers”, while De La Soul and many others found themselves in legal hot water for their brazen flips. Even the art form’s deepest origins are boldly avant-garde; see the post-war musique concrète scene’s spliced and manipulated sound colleges.
It’s fitting then, that to celebrate their fifty-fifth anniversary, one of the most radical bodies in Welsh popular culture Sain Records have asked Cymru’s premier beatmaker Don Leisure to dig, chop and reimagine their extensive back catalogue. Founded in 1969 by singer-songwriters Dafydd Iwan (now most famous for ‘Yma O Hyd’; the anthem of the Cymru national football team) and Huw Jones, along with businessman Brian Morgan Edwards, Sain were not only the country’s first independent record label, they proved a vital cog in aiding the development of the nation’s modern cultural identity. Sain were radically DIY and proudly radical in their support of the Welsh language, along with Welsh political autonomy and other global progressive causes.
As the label celebrates more than half a century of existence and digitises its extensive discography in conjunction with the National Library of Wales, Don Leisure has put together a celebratory and aptly forward-thinking album titled ‘Tyrchu Sain’ (translation: ‘Digging Sain’), which lands on 28th February. A vibrant, colourful collection that repurposes a cornucopia of killer deep-cut samples, along with some carefully arranged original instrumentation, the album utilises guest spots from an array of famous Welsh friends new and old, from Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys to members of Heavenly-signed indie act Boy Azooga, to Don’s Darkhouse Family partner-in-crime Earl Jeffers.
CLASH met up with Don at Cardiff’s Sustainable Studio for a wide-ranging conversation that covered the art of sampling, the historical significance of Sain, the potential future of this project and much more…
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When you’re constructing the songs for an album like this, do the samples come first, or do other musical ideas?
The samples. They dictate the beat. For this one, I had a folder of samples I was constantly adding to. I’d then sit down and organise them for each song. Nine times out ten that’s my general process, although sometimes I’ll make some drums or whatever and find samples to fit them.
So were you literally taking vinyl from the Sain archive and chopping them up on an MPC?
The photos make it look like that, but I only went up to the archive at the end, when I was there to master the album. The shop Cardiff Record Exchange were very generous and let me borrow loads of Sain records. That’s where my sample library started.
Equipment-wise, I’ve got an AKAI S950, a Roland SP-606 and an SP-404 MK2. I use those as kind-of colour boxes, to make the tracks sound how I want them to sound. Then I’ll chop everything up and rearrange them in Reason, using Serato Sample. That’s my approach; a mix of analog and digital.
You’ve got this great spread of new and older Welsh acts on the album. Did they coalesce gradually, or did you plan on it from the start?
They all owed me a favour (laughs). Nah, Gruff was obviously a priority, he’s the best Welsh language musician I know. I knew I wanted to use Jessy (Allen, vocalist of Voya) and Davey (Newington, frontman of Boy Azooga) and Daf (Davies, Boy Azooga drummer) are good friends of mine, so they were a given. Che (Ahmed, producer and the other half of Darkhouse Family) also said he wanted to be on there. For Carwyn (Ellis, veteran Welsh musician) I did drum machines for one of his albums, so he said “when you’ve got something for me I’ve got you”.
Was the spread between new and old acts a happy accident?
Yeah, a happy accident. I also discovered loads of new acts that I’d want to work with, if a volume two ever happens, which it might. There’s talk and I’ve made a few beats. We’ll see how this one does.
You mentioned Daf from Boy Azooga. He recently told me that the track he drums on features a sample of a track by his dad. What’s that story?
Yeah his dad was John Davies, he played in a group called Eliffant. He unfortunately passed away recently. I was actually ironing my shirt to go to his funeral when Huw Stephens phoned me and asked if I was up for doing this record.
I found the perfect sample on a record he played on, but someone else owned the rights to it. Sain were a bit worried, but Daf’s mum called the guy up and we got the permission cleared within five minutes. She gets a special shout out. So Daf plays drums and his dad sings and plays guitar on that track. It’s one of the deepest moments of the record; connecting the living and the dead.
To what degree does the finished album resemble the thing you imagined when you were writing and recording it?
I’d say 80-85%. There were a couple of tunes that we weren’t allowed to include. Some of the samples were cover versions, which get a bit sticky when you’re trying to clear them. One was a great Welsh-language cover of a Joni Mitchell song, by Heather Jones.
There was another one that featured a sample and the creator was the only person throughout this project who declined to let us use it. Daydd Iwan asked him, Huw Stephens asked him; I was pulling out the big guns from Welsh media (laughs). But it was permission denied. He said “I only want the original to exist”.
How much did you know about Sain before this project?
A lot less than I do now (laughs). It was mainly the compilations; the Welsh Rare Beat stuff that Finders Keepers Records put out. I also went digging with Gruff Rhys for this 6 Music thing and he persuaded me to buy this Welsh rock opera called ‘Nia Ben Aur’ that the label put out in the seventies. I knew a bit about the big names, but I hadn’t fully delved into their stuff.
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Do you think this project has changed or altered your understanding of the history of Welsh popular music?
Definitely. It was interesting to see how it crossed over into non-Welsh language worlds. I heard some great stories; Delwyn Siôn told me about supporting Soft Machine, who I’m a big fan of. Then there’s the story about Meic Stevens supposedly being there the night Jimi Hendrix died.
It was cool to learn about how it was a micro-industry of its own. They didn’t really have distributors or even record shops up in North Wales. You’d have to go to a Welsh-language book shop and they’d have Sain records in there. They even stocked them in greengrocers. The Eisteddfod was the big one; they’d set up shop and people would get the records there.
The Sain office is great, it’s room after room of stuff. They also have all these VHS tapes of cartoons like SuperTed that they’d get the rights to and then dub them into Welsh. They’d do it themselves, do the artwork themselves, then sell them around Wales. It was so get-up-and-go and DIY.
They were also genuinely quite radical right? They were affiliated with the big civil disobedience campaign at the time where people were doing things like tearing down English-language road signs.
Yeah Dafydd Iwan did some of that. I met someone who’d done it and they said that one time they took down the road signs and got lost because they couldn’t figure out how to get home (laughs).
I want to ask a few things about your own history. How long have you been into sampling, when and how did you discover it?
I’ve been into hip-hop since a young age. I was listening to Dr. Dre, N.W.A. and Cypress Hill but couldn’t figure out how they were doing it. Not like how I could look at a band and see what was going on. But then when I was in year six, I was in the car with my mum and she was playing Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’, which DJ Muggs sampled on Cypress Hill’s ‘Hits From The Bong’. I was like “that’s from the Cypress Hill song” and the penny dropped.
I didn’t get a chance to do it until later, though. I got my first software around 1999. Anyone today can decide they want to make music in the morning and be doing it by the afternoon. Back then, you had to be serious and spend a lot of money.
You were a drum and bass producer first right?
I was. I interned at Dillinja and Lemon D’s Valve Recordings in South East London. Back then, Dillinja was the overlord master of everything in the drum and bass scene. Eventually I started to go into the studio with those guys and ask them questions and learn stuff. I ended up making drum and bass because I was in such a privileged position. It all happened fast, DJ Hype ended up putting one of the tracks out as well. I started to get bookings, including quite often in Cardiff and eventually I moved back here.
Then you did Darkhouse Family? What’s your relationship with Earl Jeffers, how do you guys work together?
Yep. He was initially a super underrated rapper called Metabeats. He had Action Bronson on one of his beats back in the day. He’s got an amazing internal metronome, on J Dilla levels of timing. He can knock out a drum beat that sounds exactly like him in one go, straight away. He’s my brother from another mother.
Are you planning on working together again?
Yeah we’re working on another record. We’ve got the vocalist of a band called Kit Sebastian who were on Mr. Bongo but are now on Brainfeeder singing on some stuff in Turkish. We’ve got maybe two tracks left to do then we’ve got to look for a few more features. I’m guessing it’ll come out on First Word Records, if I may be so bold. I think it’s good enough (laughs).
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‘Tyrchu Sain’ will be released on February 28th.
Words: Tom Morgan
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