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Ok, so first off I must iterate the fact that this particular run down is in no particular order, nor is it a definitive list of the best British record labels of all time (as if such a breakdown could ever be truly quantified). It is simply a list of some personal favourites within the British...MORE>>

Well, as quickly as it came, Swn seemed to dissolve into the atmosphere, leaving behind it a plenitude of musical discoveries & a rather nasty post-festival hangover. It must be said that the former completely justified the latter.

With the concentration of events taking place on or around Womanby St. it was extremely easy to be lulled into a false sense of geographic security, I say this because several, high profile events were dotted in and about various venues outside of the city centre. The respective distances are enough of a trek without taking into account the insistence of the autumnal rain to try to dampen clothes & spirits, meaning certain happenings were only viable if a real tenacity was engaged; but I digress. The weekend was truly about championing as yet undiscovered music, not getting your feet wet, although it seemed the two were mutually inclusive this particular weekend.

The first event to take place was The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club in Gallery 14 of The Welsh National Museum. A deliberately Avant-garde affair; TVEGC’s sporadic style of often indefinable noise-rock seemed to be perfectly suited to the amphitheatre of the Arts in which it founds itself reverberating.

Another cross city jaunt, the second of many during the duration of the weekend I might add, and Gold Panda is working his electro-magic over the undulating crowd, feverishly oscillating between analogue soundscapes  &  samples from various digital sources. Amidst the miasma of dry ice, spilt drinks, strobe lighting & various other sensory distractions GP’s peaked to a near orgasmic level before the sounds & noises eventually disappeared into memory & left the crowd trickling back into the street from whence they came.

Friday was topped off with Gallops! A bands whose primary virtue is their palpable energy. What the band lack in ‘hum-ability’ they more than make up for with a polyrhythmic live show; a vehement disregard for pigeonholing  & an extremely powerful experience considering the intimacy of the venue in which it took place, a sentiment very much echoed throughout the following two days.

Friday’s plethora of treats began with Welsh Alt-Folk slow-burners, Threatmantics. Playing to a capacity crowd in the newly established Y Fuwch Goch, Threatmantics brand of partial, neo-Folk  seemed to be a paradigm for the weekend; loud & quiet, fast & slowly, soft & abrasive, the band captured the ethic of a festival where nothing is left out. A mammoth walk to Chapter Arts Centre ensued, one of the aforementioned ‘out of town’ venues, to catch newest vehicle for Welsh songwriter Sarah Howells, Paper Aeroplanes. Her songs being simply gorgeous captivated the onlookers, every ear being pricked to the heart-breaking tenderness of Howells’ songs.

From the relative restraint of Threat antics & the sublime beauty of Paper Aeroplanes, my next encounter was with the anarcho-thrash Pitbulls, Pulled Apart By Horses. A completely different world of music, and just across the road wouldn’t you know? PABH’s whirlwind set encompassed a breakneck mix of climbing, spitting, vomiting, stripping & general nastiness to whip the crowd into a tornado of anger & ferociousness. A rather cathartic experience for all concerned.

Saturday’s delights were equally edifying, a particular favourite being the Fierce Panda night with Cate Le Bon & personal favourites Goldheart Assembly, the former I have written about prior, often stating how magnificent they are. Ms. Le Bon’s downbeat stage persona could be somewhat interpreted as relying on a degree of pretence, but with songs as strong as she has, and a band as dedicated to her musical vision as she is, it’s hard to not fall in love her bittersweet recollections of love & disillusionment.

Again, Goldheart Assembly failed to disappoint, I would argue that this band have some of best songs of any band in the country, at the moment. With an album due to be released next year all that can be said is to catch them soon, before they explode, because it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.

Finally, I must give a short list of the bands that were supposed to have been excellent that I didn’t get to see; Girls, Wild Beasts, Marina & the Diamonds, Stornoway, Broken Family Band, The Leisure Society. The list could go on. This just goes to show the utter vastness of acts that played despite the geographic constraints of being in a relatively small area of a relatively small city.

Such, I could spend an inordinate amount of time milling over the virtues of various bands I wish I’d seen but didn’t & chastising myself for not being more proactive with my geography throughout the weekend, but such is the way of any festival, the things you miss are elevated to the mythic pantheon simply for that reason alone. It’s not until someone relays, to you, how they had ‘wished they’d seen such and such’ or how ‘so & so’s set was supposed to have been unmissable’, that you realise, if you were one of the lucky few there, how well chosen the proceedings were. Well, that’s how I see it anyway.