Swn Festival 2012. GO!

Swn Festival is almost upon us! October 18 to 21! Below is an extension of a 'bands to see' piece that ran in the Daily Post on Friday October 12.
Of course, it does not include the likes of Liars, Django Django and The Cribs -- that'd be pointless. It is also slightly North Wales bands-heavy. There are only a couple from outside that area, that doesn't really matter, though, because they are all great, without exception. They are in no particular order.

There are also a lot of bands here from Dempsey's on Sunday. That is because it's a Crackling Vinyl stage and the line up is wonderful. You could do much worse than just camping there for most of the day. But get there early, Irma Vep start at something like 3pm.

Trwbador : O’Neill’s (Trinity St), Thursday

Sparsely constructed folk and psych is all wistful and haunting. The breathy vocals of Angharad Van Rijswijk are unavoidably beautiful. The duo have an album out soon, which is pretty exciting.



Ifan Dafydd : Undertone, Friday

DJ/electronic artist from Gwynedd, incredible musician and former flatmate of James Blake. Better than James Blake. Scheduling etc. at last year's event meant that Dafydd played to the upstairs of Clwb Ifor Bach as it started to fill up. Regardless, he was great. Hopefully a slot in the wee hours will suit him.


Irma Vep : Dempsey’s, Sunday

The solo incarnation of Klaus Kinski drummer Edwin Stevens. HAHA, his tenth full length album, was released earlier this year. Stark and visceral, it is one of the best records, I at least, have heard in aeons.
The track What's That in Your Mouth is below, but you should really just go here and listen to as much as you can.


Mowbird : Dempsey’s, Sunday

Wrexham’s Mowbird are bratty and loud. They produce jittering wedges of off-kilter surf pop that slide haphazardly between bright melody and a caterwauling yelps of guitar and keys.
This will be the second time the group have played Swn. Since last year they have become more toned and glossy, trashy, like some pulp fiction magazine. Progressing all the while yet never losing their charm or immediacy. They are thoroughly ace.


Sex Hands, Dempsey’s, Sunday

Mostly from Conwy but based in Manchester, the foursome make music inspired by the hit TV series Friends. Infinitely better than that sounds, they straddle the line irresistible melody and lo fi, teeth shattering squall. Delightful.
They are cited by more than a few as Wales' Best New Band. People, me included, have a tendency to flail about wildly with superlatives and the like. It is not hard, though, to see where the few are coming from.



Sen Segur : O’Neill’s (Trinity St), Friday

Talk to anyone about Sen Segur and among the first things they will mention is how young they are. Secondly, they are likely to use the word progressive. Progressive has become something of a dirty word. But in the vein of Yes or Emerson Lake and Palmer, Sen Segur are not a prog band
The Penmachno group lead you down the road of ace reeled in psych, making stops at Brian Jonestown Massacre and Gorky’s along the way. Refreshingly, they seem particularly disinterested in labels. They are more interested in Olympic swimmers.
[I saw them live for the first time at Green Man Festival last month. They were great, really great]

Shy and the Fight, Dempsey's, Sunday

Shy and the Fight are a 12-legged band from the border country between Chester and Llangollen. Their hearts are as big as their harmonies and choruses. Which is to say huge.

Since their inception in 2009, their early demo recordings have earned them airplay on BBC Radio Merseyside, BBC East Midlands and BBC Radio Wales – and a BBC Introducing session on 6Music.

They have a record out on Popty Ping which you should buy, partly because it's orange but mainly because it's lovely.

Sweet Baboo, Undertone, Saturday

Otherwise known as Stephen Black, he plies his trade in bittersweet pop blasts. He has performed elsewhere with the likes of Cate Le Bon, H Hawkline and Euros Childs. On his own he produces sparkling melodies swinging from darkly funny to tender. Self-deprecation never goes a miss either.

Sweet Baboo's last record, A Girl Under a Tree, is a marvellous medley of tales, a distinctly human collection of lost love, relationships and the world. There is a hell of a lot to love.

Golden Fable, CHAPTER STIWDIO, Sunday

Formed out of the ashes of the Tim and Sam Band, Golden Fable are the brainchild of Tim McIver and Rebecca Palin. They mix electronics and guitars into lush folk-influenced atmosphere.

They are though, a bolder, brassier concept than the Tim and Sam band. Pop sensibility is gratefully intact but the group owe an awful lot to Palin’s soft and swooping falsetto. The single, Sugarloaf, is a shining slice of gossamer pop. Really, and quite disarmingly, lovely.

They remind me a lot of the Vaselines, mixed with The Radio Dept. and Enya. Which isn't really helpful. Because they don't sound like that at all.

Sam Airey, O'Neill's (St Mary Street), Saturday

Very early on the Saturday of Swn 2011, a crowd of fragile heads shuffled into a Radio Wales showcase and were greeted with Sam Airey‘s dark tales of love and the sea. Perhaps in some part down to mass recovery, it was an experience as bleak as it was startlingly powerful and disarming. Through his own admission, the Anglesey musician covers slightly morose territory. His music haunts, but in a good way.

Lying somewhere between James Taylor and John Martyn he is always thoroughly entertaining.

See also:
Gallops, O'Neill's (St Mary Street), Saturday

Joanna Gruesome, O'Neill's (St Mary Street), Sunday

Plyci, Gwdihw, Sunday

We Are Animal, Gwdihw, Saturday

Gulp, Solus, Thursday

Green Man Festival 2012 : Review

This review (a shortened version of it) appeared in the Daily Post on August 24. The photos I took aren't great. They were taken on a 300 year old camera phone... The much better videos were by the excellent Folly of Youth -- on their site you can also read a much more in depth and, basically, better review of Green Man Festival 2012. So you should probably just go there now.

GREEN Man Festival is in the middle of nowhere. Well, not nowhere, people live there. It is a beautiful place smack at the foot of the Sugar Loaf. A babbling brook here, a old oak tree there.
The latter of those, situated by a glistening pond, proved a wonderful Hot Toddy Rum Ting-influenced sleeping spot while fellow campers orchestrated a 500 person strong synchronised dance routine near the Walled Garden stage.
But beyond taking a long time to get to, the festival’s proximity to anything else is outstripped by the difference in atmosphere from almost any other event.

Mowb-a-hoop.

It was a feeling brought home with a bang when confronted with footage of the shirtless, sunburnt revellers at V Festival. Or the state thousands of sun worshippers left Brighton beach in over the same weekend.
Sure, there were shirtless people. When it wasn’t raining it was baking hot. But more often than not they were pushing a pram. Around 72% of the time they had a ponytail rather than a shaved head.
The mix of good people, beautiful surrounds and activities was one of the event’s finest assets. Testament to that is making it around 200 words through a review without mentioning music. Which was, frankly, incredible.

Brooding.

Celebrating its tenth year in ineffable style, Green Man 2012 let you in gently with the charming Greta Isaac. Who, at 16, was accompanied by a confidence usually reserved for the more battle-weary of singer songwriters.
Just as confident and almost equally as young, Penmachno’s Sen Segur then let us down the road of delightful reeled in psych and prog, making stops at Brian Jonestown Massacre and Gorky’s along the way.
Their last song has a bugle in it, which was great. Also, Mr Huw was playing with them -- he sat down a lot and played a maraca, like a tired Bez/Joel Gion type.

Sen Segur.

Unfortunately for Wrexham’s Mowbird, the worst rain of the weekend was reserved for their 45 minute slot. Fortunately for those who braved the conditions they were treated to a gloriously trashy set of jilted surf punk.

Mowbird.

A lightening fast rendition of labelmates Sex Hands’ Way No Way was enough to give you blisters. A nearby bar which provided shelter from the storm was as busy as any spot on the site all weekend. Ace.

Joanna Gruesome later did something of a similar ilk, but blessed with much kinder weather. The results sent a few more pining looks to the halcyon days of 1992 and was considerably more indebted to the past that Mowbird. Still, they were very young and very (very) fun, it is just difficult to imagine them putting any foot forward when both legs seem so rooted in the 90s.
To close the first night, Cate Le Bon shimmered, flattening the Nico, Velvets and Fall records that formed her and then folding them into the most wonderful noise, the ghost of Syd Barrett smiling with approval at her shoulder. Equal parts hypnotic and haunting, the Penboyr-born songstress provided the best thing – myself, at least – would see that weekend. Probably all year.
It left me frothing at the mouth. Flapping in the mud like a still-live fish that had fallen off a passing truck.

The worst photo taken of a Cate Le Bon gig ever.

Later, during Mr Scruff, dancing in the mud proved a step to far for weary legs.

An early Saturday morning provided the Colwyn Bay-raised Sweet Baboo. A full band including brass section blasted cobwebs away in joyful pop blasts. The vocals were cracked and charming drawing an impressive crowd for such and early set (11.30).

Sweet Baboo.

The multi-instrumental Yann Tiersen later unleashed a psychedelic barrage of synths and strings. Set apart from the Parisian folk of the Amilie soundtrack the audience may have been used to. It was joyfully loud and accomplished. If not brash, it was powerful and kinetic.

[For some reason the site will only allow one Youtube video per post. But you can see Cate Le Bon playing Green Man in impeccable style here]

The second night was closed by Metronomy for an appropriate festival singalong. The Bay and The Look proved more than accepatable for the willing audience. You Could Easily Have me, a pogo causing peice of wonder.
Biggest, or most packed, crowd of the weekend was reserved for Alt-J. But where ths Cambridge foursome fell ever so slightly flat Cardiff’s Iselt destroyed. Unashamedly avant-garde This Fortune and A Bear On His Own battered and brised their way through a mid-afternoon lull. The performance culminated in what was the only acceptable way with one of their number perfectly executing a Klinsmann dive through the mud at the feet of the audience.
Jonathan Richman performed as only he knows how. A crowd pleasing set including Let Her Go Into The Darkness and Old World from one of music’s real and most untranished of gems.
Often funny and unabashedly lovable he is unafraid of the most simple of sentiments. His confidence was infectious and in a way summed up a weekend in the Black Mountains. Great music, good times and hardly an idiot in sight.
I very much want to go back. Now.

Sweet Baboo, Daily Post July 13

There was an interview with the excellent Sweet Baboo in the Daily Post on Friday (July 13). You can read it below the music if you want to. He's playing Green Man Festival in August. Listen to more here. It could have been a considerably longer article. But I have my limits. Word limits.



SWEET Baboo, formerly of Bethesda, raised in Colwyn Bay and now of Cardiff, has officially released three albums in 12 years. On face value, it falls some way short of prolific.
Otherwise known as Stephen Black, his career has not followed the trajectory of a shy and retiring bedroom musician. As well as music of his own, the past ten years have been punctuated with work alongside the likes of Cate Le Bon, Euros Childs, Slow Club, Daniel Johnston and H Hawkline.
“I started as Sweet Baboo really early but just, kind of, released CD-Rs,” he says. “Loads of the stuff I did from 18 to 21 or 22 I just did in my room and then I started playing with other bands and giving my friends music.
“It wasn’t really until I started playing with Euros Childs that I began to release music. Through him I realised it's not all glamorous and you should do things yourself.”

Nowadays, he points out he does not draw on a full 12 years of material – for reasons beyond progression.
"I tend to do new songs, you want to play the stuff you’ve never recorded.”
Black adds: “When you’ve put them on record they’re done and finished. I forget a lot of songs as well. The main reason, I suppose, is that I play so much for other people. I’ve only got enough space in my mind. Others just fall out.”
He has played with Cate Le Bon for "about eight years," something which led to being part of Euros Childs’ band. Collaborations with Sheffield’s Slow Club followed in a similar way. One of his five appearances at this year’s Green Man Festival in Brecon will be a krautrock collaboration with Le Bon and Hawkline – the first time in “about four years” the act has performed.
“The main thing I’ve learnt with other bands is that it’s not all as glamorous as you think. It is great in one way when you get to tour America – and then driving seven hours to play to 25 people isn’t too bad. But when you do that day after day.”
This year, with the look of a man still in touching distance of 20, Black reached 30. If the approach has changed over 12 years the principles have remained.
“All I ever really wanted to do was be in a band and I suppose was a lot more shy when I was younger. That was before the music industry crashed, as it were, and I thought that maybe one day I would get discovered. It – I – was quite naive.”
He continues: “It has always been kind of the same principle. I still like making, like, pop records. The main difference would be that I’m wiser on how to record things and I’ve got better gear.
“But in a weird way, when I was recording for nobody’s pleasure but my own it was a bit nicer. Now I always have to think whether someone will like it.”
A new record, the tentatively titled Ships, was completed in May after a tour with Slow Club. No release date has been set. He plays at Green Man Festival in Brecon on the weekend of August 17. To listen to Sweet Baboo visit sweetbaboo.bandcamp.com. For more information on Green Man Festival visit greenman.net.