Sŵn Blog: Friday
Friday’s chilly evening started with a trip down to the wristband exchange, and to pick up a copy of this year’s Sŵn festival programme.
Sŵn, meaning ‘sound’ in Welsh, is a music festival based in Cardiff, and this year sees its fifth birthday. The exchange was at The Full Moon on Womanby Street, a building that was once occupied by Clwb Ifor Bach’s sister club, Y Fuwch Coch; and newly opened too, opening on just the first of this month.
We first headed over to Cardiff Solus Bar to see The Joy Formidable. A Welsh group, hailing from the north, were Friday’s biggest attractions. Supported by Northern Ireland’s post rock group And So I Watch You From Afar, Joy Formidable headlined the Solus bar, and did a magnificent job in doing so. Borrowing from such diverse acts as Sigur Ros and creating a rich and atmospheric sound landscape, but sharp nonetheless. It’s impressive as to what a three piece group can do with just their own instruments and the use of one or two electronic backing tracks. Poppy; easy to see why they were such a hit, and front woman Rizty possessed strong stage presence, and at one point, actually striking a giant gong that was bigger than herself.
Accidentally (and rather sorrowfully) missing Kerouac, a hardcore group at Clwb Ifor Bach, we headed down to Undertone, a bar and a venue beneath Buffalo Bar’s sister club, Ten Feet Tall. It’s here where we realised that there was a pattern emerging on Friday night; Undertone was home to the experimental, Dempsey's to the art rock, Clwb to the independent, the uni to the popular groups and of course, The Full Moon as one of its numerous launch pads. We caught the set of Team Sports, who consisted of a cellist, a drummer and a synth player, manipulating it into a sound they called free-jazz. Free form jazz it may be, and experimental it certainly is; I’m not that familiar with noise as a ‘genre’, and it reminded me of Japanese noise terrorist Merzbow more than anything else. Captivating the audience and holding its gaze, Team Sports expanded their noise with lire reverb, playback until it reached into a track, with many, many layers.
Last, but not least, we headed back to Womanby Street. After trying rather fruitlessly to get into O’Neills to catch five-piece group Other Lives ( complete with a pianist, and a cellist), a group who had recently supported cult folk musician Bon Iver on tour. We settled for Gallops!, a highly technical art rock group. playing at Dempsey’s on Castle Road Using live samples of guitars and drums and looping them; riffs turned into dance tracks over a synth, floating somewhere in between sci-fi Ratatat and math rock. Quickly and soon followed by the Victorian English Gentleman’s Club. Impressive in their sound after so many years as a band, incorporating Heddwyn’s electric violin sound well into the mixture; post punk rock complete with electronic violin, picking up where PJ Harvey left off.
So came an end to the first night of Sŵn; tomorrow brings Evening Chorus, The Fall, Houdini Dax and so many more. Keep checking back for updates!
2 Comments – Post a comment
Sprout Editor
Commented 7 months ago - 22nd October 2011 - 16:43pm
Great blog!
neilramsden
Commented 7 months ago - 23rd October 2011 - 14:24pm
Joy Formidable are my new favourite band! They were so good. But, I left a bit early and just about managed to get into Other Lives. They were really good too, a bit Mumford and Sons-y.