Bang Bangor
Post categories: Events,ÌýNorth Wales
| 10:09 UK time, Thursday, 15 October 2009
In a little over a week I'll be hopping down to Cardiff for the annual . Swn is an intimate sprawl of excellent leftfield music spread around many of Cardiff's venues, clubs and pubs. Radio 1 and C2's Huw Stephens told me that the festival was inspired by other city-based music events, like in New York, Manchester's , Brighton's and the in London.
In three short years, Swn has raised the caché and cultural profile of
Cardiff, bringing acclaimed artists to the city and acting as a timely
boon for local businesses (from hotels to graphic designers). It's an
unmitigated critical success.
One thought that permeated my alcohol-infused head as I wandered around the late-night Cardiff streets was that it would be very cool if someone tried something similar in north Wales. Not on the same scale, of course. We don't have the population to support a couple of thousand people visiting gigs in one town/city over the course of three nights. But we do have the talent. And something like Swn, that is a great showcase for new and original Welsh music, should work very well in north Wales, admittedly on a smaller scale, because we have the talent to draw people to the area and the potential audience to support it.
It's all well and good thinking these things after a few Guinnesses, it's a different matter entirely putting such half-cut flights of fancy into practice.
Which is why it's a good thing that the organisers of the imminent music festival aren't me because they haven't dropped the idea in a hangover; nope, they've managed to pull something truly momentous together for Bangor, in particular, and north Wales as a whole.
Bang Bangor is a four night, city-wide celebration of some of Wales' finest contemporary music. It starts on Wednesday 28th October at Hendre Hall, Tal-Y-Bont with a bill that would flatter any city in the land. Highly-acclaimed, new folk troubadour travels down from Edinburgh to headline a bill that also includes Bangor's intimate and magnificent . Their eponymous debut album has won high praise from the broadsheets and music magazines. It's an album of traditional Welsh songs reimagined for the 21st century - steeped in subtly-embraced influences from the likes of Massive Attack, Sigur Ros and Jah Wobble. Nothing short of a stumble off this mortal coil will keep me away. Even if that happens I'll be straining my ears from the fiery lake.
For the three nights following, various venues around Bangor will treat the city to an excellent and eclectic selection of some of the best artists in Wales at the moment. For example, you'll get Wrexham's masters of spidery and thunderous guitar-splintered electronica (guitronica?), at Y Menai on Thursday night. Over at The Academy on the same night you will be treated to warped pop Cymraeg from . The so-good-it's-very-hard-not-to-swear-at-this-point make a rare visit to Northern climes to play Y Menai on the Friday night. Their unreleased second album is rumoured to be the Great Welsh Hope. Something to remind the world that there's more to our country than the Stereophonics.
On a completely different tip, some of the UK's finest exponents of electronic music - from circuit-bending to techno - will fill Bar 342 with their own cutting edge and compulsive invention on the Friday night.
Saturday will treat us to subtler, acoustic delights from the glorious (The Glôb) and (Patrick's), whilst guitars get attacked with venom and no little skill at Bar 342 by , and .
Truly, this is as essential and exciting an addition to the Welsh musical calendar as Swn Festival. For North Wales, it has no equivalent. (Mold's excellent Y Ffin Festival is something different again.)
For too many years North Wales' musicians and music-lovers have had to migrate out the area to get their musical fixes. All of their hard-earned pennies get spent in bars and venues in Liverpool and Manchester. Bang Bangor is a great opportunity to reverse that trend. To have all the funky taillights travelling in the right direction along the A55.
The festival will be joyous for those of us who make the effort to experience it; it'll be a much-needed boon for the area's talent, and it will bring in vital income to Bangor's pubs and venues at a time when such enterprises have never needed the support more.
See you there.
One thought that permeated my alcohol-infused head as I wandered around the late-night Cardiff streets was that it would be very cool if someone tried something similar in north Wales. Not on the same scale, of course. We don't have the population to support a couple of thousand people visiting gigs in one town/city over the course of three nights. But we do have the talent. And something like Swn, that is a great showcase for new and original Welsh music, should work very well in north Wales, admittedly on a smaller scale, because we have the talent to draw people to the area and the potential audience to support it.
It's all well and good thinking these things after a few Guinnesses, it's a different matter entirely putting such half-cut flights of fancy into practice.
Which is why it's a good thing that the organisers of the imminent music festival aren't me because they haven't dropped the idea in a hangover; nope, they've managed to pull something truly momentous together for Bangor, in particular, and north Wales as a whole.
Bang Bangor is a four night, city-wide celebration of some of Wales' finest contemporary music. It starts on Wednesday 28th October at Hendre Hall, Tal-Y-Bont with a bill that would flatter any city in the land. Highly-acclaimed, new folk troubadour travels down from Edinburgh to headline a bill that also includes Bangor's intimate and magnificent . Their eponymous debut album has won high praise from the broadsheets and music magazines. It's an album of traditional Welsh songs reimagined for the 21st century - steeped in subtly-embraced influences from the likes of Massive Attack, Sigur Ros and Jah Wobble. Nothing short of a stumble off this mortal coil will keep me away. Even if that happens I'll be straining my ears from the fiery lake.
For the three nights following, various venues around Bangor will treat the city to an excellent and eclectic selection of some of the best artists in Wales at the moment. For example, you'll get Wrexham's masters of spidery and thunderous guitar-splintered electronica (guitronica?), at Y Menai on Thursday night. Over at The Academy on the same night you will be treated to warped pop Cymraeg from . The so-good-it's-very-hard-not-to-swear-at-this-point make a rare visit to Northern climes to play Y Menai on the Friday night. Their unreleased second album is rumoured to be the Great Welsh Hope. Something to remind the world that there's more to our country than the Stereophonics.
On a completely different tip, some of the UK's finest exponents of electronic music - from circuit-bending to techno - will fill Bar 342 with their own cutting edge and compulsive invention on the Friday night.
Saturday will treat us to subtler, acoustic delights from the glorious (The Glôb) and (Patrick's), whilst guitars get attacked with venom and no little skill at Bar 342 by , and .
Truly, this is as essential and exciting an addition to the Welsh musical calendar as Swn Festival. For North Wales, it has no equivalent. (Mold's excellent Y Ffin Festival is something different again.)
For too many years North Wales' musicians and music-lovers have had to migrate out the area to get their musical fixes. All of their hard-earned pennies get spent in bars and venues in Liverpool and Manchester. Bang Bangor is a great opportunity to reverse that trend. To have all the funky taillights travelling in the right direction along the A55.
The festival will be joyous for those of us who make the effort to experience it; it'll be a much-needed boon for the area's talent, and it will bring in vital income to Bangor's pubs and venues at a time when such enterprises have never needed the support more.
See you there.
Adam Walton
Bethan Elfyn
James McLaren
Laura Sinnerton
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