The Moss Twins
Valley doo-wop. Two voices, one grave.
One Birth Certificate, One Death Certificate
Between 1961 and 1967, alone in a terraced house in Cwmparc, a quiet Rhondda clerk named Gethin Moss recorded fourteen songs on a secondhand tape machine — bathroom reverb, overdubbed vibraphone, a musical saw. Every track carries two voices in close twin harmony, and two distinct pairs of handclaps. His twin sister Eira was stillborn in 1943. The suitcase of tapes surfaced in 2002 when a demolition crew pulled it from under a collapsed ceiling; vocal analysis found identical formants "consistent with twins raised together." The National Library of Wales files the collection under "Unattributed Female Vocalist."
"I typed what I heard." — Mairwen Griffiths, the archivist who named them
"The headstone names only him. The tapes remember both."
Discography
Play the discography — or tap a cassette for that track.