GWENIFER RAYMOND
Gwenifer Raymond has a PhD in astrophysics, lives in Brighton and designs video games for a living. Originally from Cardiff, she began playing guitar at the age of eight shortly after having been first exposed to punk and grunge. After years of playing around the Welsh valleys in various punk outfits she began listening more to pre-war blues musicians as well as Appalachian folk players, eventually leading into the guitar players of the American Primitive genre. She has since been playing her own moody and often-times manic original American Primitive styled compositions on guitar and banjo around the UK and the US. Her first album, You Were Never Much of a Dancer came out in 2018 and was in the Observer’s top ten releases of the year.
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Mae gan Gwenifer Raymond radd PhD mewn astroffiseg, mae’n byw yn Brighton ac mae’n ennill bywoliaeth drwy gynllunio gemau fideo. Daw o Gaerdydd yn wreiddiol. Fe ddechreuodd chwarae’r gitâr pan roedd yn wyth oed - yn fuan ar ôl iddi glywed cerddoriaeth pync a grunge am y tro cyntaf. Wedi blynyddoedd o chwarae mewn bandiau pync o gwmpas cymoedd De Cymru, fe ddechreuodd wrando mwy ar waith cerddorion blues o’r cyfnod cyn y rhyfel yn ogystal â cherddoriaeth werin Appalachiaidd, a arweiniodd yn ei dro at chwaraewyr gitar genre ‘American Primitive’. Ers hynny mae wedi bod yn perfformio ei chyfansoddiadau ei hun ar y gitâr a’r banjo ledled y DU ac UDA. Mae ei cherddoriaeth yn gyfuniad o’r oriog a’r lloerig (ar adegau) ac yn adleisio’r arddull ‘American Primitive’ gwreiddiol. Rhyddhawyd ei record hir gyntaf, ‘You Were Never Much of a Dancer’, yn 2018 a chafodd ei gynnwys ar restr yr Observer o ddeg record gorau’r flwyddyn.
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