More about: swn festival

In most contexts, a deluge of rain forecast over the weekend of any festival is bad news, however for Cardiff’s eminent new music festival — Sŵn, it had the capacity to instead invited troves of music prospectors and fans indoors into its multi-venue format, offering a welcome respite from the biblical skies.

Brought into the festival calendar by DJ Huw Stephens in 2007, Sŵn has since remained the proving ground for artists (local and further afield) to showcase their lilting melodies at the whims of the stoic Welsh audience. Past delights have included The Murder Capital and Cate Le Bon gracing the pink poster, with a heavy focus on regional musicians and the burgeoning post-punk, noise and indie scenes that heavily influence the underground clime in Cardiff.

Friday saw the glitz and glamour of Prima Queen open the festival, as part of a smaller pre-weekend taster in the newly converted Tramshed venue, just west of the city centre. They blasted out indie pop moments before the more reserved Lime Garden shared a joyous rendition of ‘Clockwork’ in their laidback, striking style. Following a last-minute drop out from BC Camplight due to ‘significant personal circumstance’, Bristol’s affable Katy J Pearson stepped in with her folk-pop band in full costume, delivering a rapturous singalong of 2020’s ‘Tonight’, making headlining appear easy.

As the rain continued to fall over the weekend, Driffield’s Priestgate found their rhythm in the cellar of Jacob’s (an antique store very well equipped with a stage and stocked bar) on Saturday afternoon. They delivered a measured performance of scathing post-punk, with vocalist Rob Schofield’s onstage chemistry with his band akin to a young, loose Mick Jagger orchestrating a macabre quartet. Home Counties filled the upper ground of Clwb Ifor Bach with their synth-driven, role-switching electro-punk, musing about tube stations, ‘modern yuppies’ and the droll happenings of an unspecific middle-english town. Elsewhere DAMEFRISØR occupied rock club Fuel with their distinct noise rock that sat halfway between delicate shoegaze and no wave (nogaze?), making way for the essential listening of Brighton’s DITZ, an exciting swelling band that created one of the most unforgettable records of 2022 in ‘The Great Regression’.

After much commotion and whispers about L’Objectif and Thumper’s concurrent sets, I settled for the latter and enjoyed a brazen performance of the outfit’s masterpiece ‘Fear Of Art’. Having garnered much word-of-mouth praise for their explosive live show, it has to be seen to be believed. Pop-rock anthems from the pseudo-headliners raised the roof of Jacob’s underground digs. 

Sunday flew into action with Bingo Fury’s avant-jazz, fixated on the release of their most recent EP ‘Mercy’s Cut’, whereas a standout act of the entire festival followed 30 mins later just up the road. Subversive, volatile and truly brilliant, Lunch Money Life had heads nodding from the word 'go', enlivening a jazz cadence with flecks of daring prog, crooning EDM and sporadic laughter from vocalist Spencer Martin’s erratic tension building. SNAYX were too tall to even stand up for their set in The Moon pub, delivering the classic Frank Carter hearkening punk attack that puts the blue back into blue-collar whilst vocalist Charlie takes to the floor in an effort to rally the packed room into a riotous union. Next door, Welsh rockers Slate gave a compelling show that tapped into art rock, leaning on repetitive bass hooks and scuzzy almost surfer guitar to frame each track.

Glasgow’s finest underground agitators VLURE raised the volume back in Clwb Ifor Bach, fulfilling their role as dance-floor fillers exceptionally well, with Hamish Hutcheson’s vitriolic delivery opposed effectualy by keyboardist Alex Pearson’s dulcet lulls. Laying to bed the festival was recent Welsh Music Prize winners Adwaith, offering a ritualistic set rife with colourful guitar tones, delivered in their chosen tongue of Welsh, a fitting end to a festival that works so hard to highlight independent Welsh music. Decidedly unbarred by genre boundaries, it felt like the event was proactively curated to showcase the acme of independent musicians that pepper the local landscape and beyond — even fighting through the ever-present downpours to get in line for a venue felt quaintly honest to the holistic Welsh experience.

See all the sights, captured by Kyleen Hengelhaupt below:

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More about: swn festival