3 Little Swn Stories

Richard Bowen on Radio Luxembourg, Euros Childs, Thomas Truax and more at Cardiff's Swn Festival '08

RADIO LUXEMBOURG/THOMAS TANTRUM/PETE &THE PIRATES
Tommy's Bar, Friday 14th Nov 2008

One of the hardest tricks to pull off in music is to sound catchy without being derivitive. We've all experienced the deceptively ear-pleasing song that grabs you, demanding repeated listens that quickly reveals itself to be a brain-boring bug, devoid of any character or purpose besides leaving your skull a hollowed husk as you gibber and dribble out the rest of your days. (see: Razorlight, The Kooks, Scouting for Girls, etc.) This may be an exaggeration. There's no real malice in a such music, it's just the bastard progeny of laziness and a lack of imagination. So when you do encounter music that achieves this feat, knowing how much work and creativity has been put in makes the experience all the more satisfying. 

Radio Luxembourg are gratifyingly catchy, yet manage to be endlessly listenable with complex song structures, surprising shifts in pace and the treat of an occasional four-part harmony. That’s not to say that comparisons are hard to come by. Their Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci sound is impossible to avoid noting and references to the similarity may come to gall the band, but the comparison is fair and useful, particularly when you know Euros Childs has been producing the synthy Aberystwyth fourpiece, but there's little danger of Radio Luxembourg simply being aspirants to GZM's welsh-proggy-folk-pop-shaped crown. For starters they are more concise and immediately accessible than Gorky’s –not for a moment a criticism of either band, but a fact that may lead Radio Luxembourg to find a wider appeal, sooner than Gorky’s did. The band were in fine form Friday evening on the first of three nights of live music in Cardiff as part of the second annual Swn festival. Highlights included Cardiff post-punk legends Young Marble Giants, the excellent Clinic as well as the aforementioned Euros Childs, and took in twelve venues across the city including The Point, Buffalo Bar, Barfly and Clwb Ifor Bach -which is celebrating its 25th  birthday this year. On Friday at Tommy's, frontman Mei Stevens, as gangly as he is energetic and bedecked in a fetching glittering top, showed his great range both in vocal and lyrical terms, as the band tore through their crowd-pleasing set, afterwards promising more Cardiff shows before the end of the year "in costume", presumably meaning the band's favoured line in psychedelic shirts.  

Following Radio Luxembourg, hailing from the wonderfully named Goatee Beach in Southampton, were Thomas Tantrum. A favourite of one Lily Allen, their single 'Shake it! Shake it!' can currently be heard on T-Mobile TV adverts (the one that goes "I wanna talk! But I wanna talk though!" -no doubt a mobile phone hawker's dream). Small and perfectly formed, lead singer Megan Thomas isn't the most engaging of lead singers live, but her deliberately childish voice and demeanour is perfectly suited to the band's cheery art-rock. Despite being branded annoying in many quarters (including, admirably, the review cuttings posted on the band's own website), Thomas Tantrum are highly appealing, with smart, funny lyrics and a breadth of style that most bands would envy, although their wit and energy did not translate fully to the stage here.

Up next were Pete & The Pirates, who were very very very good at what they do. Some of their vocal harmonies are perfect. If this sounds a little non-committal, it's because with great cowardice, I am being wholly non-committal following an excessive night out with the band after the gig, who are just cool and lovely. However, I, personally, wrongly, I expect, didn't enjoy the set as much as the vast, vast (avast?! nervous punning here now) majority of people, who are doubtless far better judges than me, or at the very least knew Pete & The Pirates on record before seeing them live, unlike me, for which I should be flogged and ignored in these here lines.

http://radiolux.steffan.org.uk/
www.thomastantrum.co.uk
www.peteandthepirates.co.uk

EUROS CHILDS
Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, National Museum of Wales, Saturday 15th Nov 2008 

The all-seater lecture hall venue for Euros Childs had most attendees cooing and feeling very cultured, although the theatre was sadly under-attended, people perhaps not venturing out to the museum in the miserable, rainy night. Well, their loss. Mr. Childs gave a fantastic performance, breezing through the genres, spanning blues, rock and more countrified numbers from Chops, Bore Da and Cheer Gone with plenty of funny interplay with the audience and his band. Though a veritable leviathan of the welsh music scene, Childs could not be a more unassuming and amiable character. He is deserving of his top billing and of far more acclaim and recognition than he and the Gorky's Zygotic Mynci canon currently garner.

www.euroschilds.com

THOMAS TRUAX
Dempsey's, Saturday 15th Nov 2008

"This guy is pickling my brain", said a friend, turning to me halfway into Thomas Truax's set. This is a perfectly valid response to watching the self-proclaimed left-field troubadour, as he loops and reloops noise from his homemade instruments such as: The Hornicator. Sister Spinster. The Stringaling. These instruments defy easy description, cobbled together from things like an old gramophone horn, what look like bits of bike wheels, pull-chord toys, tv aerials, all-manner of coils and springs, as well as a huge amount of wit and imagination. but if you think they sound weird, wait until you hear the Truax's lyrics. In the same breath he can be both twee and nightmarish, disconcerting and enlightening, evil and cute. He paints dystopian landscapes then hands you a rose-tinted kaleidoscope to view it through. In honesty, Truax is really pretty shambolic live, particularly as he has apparently toured almost solidly for the past five years, his guitar-playing isn't very sharp and his patter is quite nervy. He's a man on the edge. Repeatedly he wanders away from the stage to stand on tables or just spin about, with one sojourn taking him into the toilets -all the while singing, hardly a care for the audience. Yet the whole act is so beguiling and endearing that seeing Truax construct his ramshackle tales is a joy akin to a successful concrete poem or a particularly mad fluxus happening. Seek him, for he should be sought.

www.thomastruax.com

In only its second year, Swn naturally is still suffering from teething problems, not least in the shape of unfortunate (perhaps to a degree unavoidable) scheduling clashes exacerbated by some lacks of coherence in grouping like-minded bands together for like-minded people to see without dashing from one end of the city to the other on blistered feet, in pouring rain with no money for a taxi due to the doubtlessly overpriced wristband (though buses were apparently laid on to help). That observation may lack universality. And sometimes incongruity rules OK. When you have the joy of seeing the ever-lovely The School on the same bill as the irrepressible Agaskodo Teliverek, it’s hard to complain, and what city-based music festival doesn’t suffer similar problems? However, some of the venues used are just not great choices, with many better suited live music locations overlooked, and the festival would be helped by greater publicity away from promotion within the venues chosen, which could hopefully banish sad sights like Euros Childs playing to half-empty theatres. Gripes aside, with a little more natural development and hard work in the right places, Swn could and should eventually grow to be the annual highlight of Cardiff’s thriving live music scene. 

Richard Bowen on Radio Luxembourg, Euros Childs, Thomas Truax and more at Cardiff's Swn Festival '08

RADIO LUXEMBOURG/THOMAS TANTRUM/PETE &THE PIRATES
Tommy's Bar, Friday 14th Nov 2008

One of the hardest tricks to pull off in music is to sound catchy without being derivitive. We've all experienced the deceptively ear-pleasing song that grabs you, demanding repeated listens that quickly reveals itself to be a brain-boring bug, devoid of any character or purpose besides leaving your skull a hollowed husk as you gibber and dribble out the rest of your days. (see: Razorlight, The Kooks, Scouting for Girls, etc.) This may be an exaggeration. There's no real malice in a such music, it's just the bastard progeny of laziness and a lack of imagination. So when you do encounter music that achieves this feat, knowing how much work and creativity has been put in makes the experience all the more satisfying. 

Radio Luxembourg are gratifyingly catchy, yet manage to be endlessly listenable with complex song structures, surprising shifts in pace and the treat of an occasional four-part harmony. That’s not to say that comparisons are hard to come by. Their Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci sound is impossible to avoid noting and references to the similarity may come to gall the band, but the comparison is fair and useful, particularly when you know Euros Childs has been producing the synthy Aberystwyth fourpiece, but there's little danger of Radio Luxembourg simply being aspirants to GZM's welsh-proggy-folk-pop-shaped crown. For starters they are more concise and immediately accessible than Gorky’s –not for a moment a criticism of either band, but a fact that may lead Radio Luxembourg to find a wider appeal, sooner than Gorky’s did. The band were in fine form Friday evening on the first of three nights of live music in Cardiff as part of the second annual Swn festival. Highlights included Cardiff post-punk legends Young Marble Giants, the excellent Clinic as well as the aforementioned Euros Childs, and took in twelve venues across the city including The Point, Buffalo Bar, Barfly and Clwb Ifor Bach -which is celebrating its 25th  birthday this year. On Friday at Tommy's, frontman Mei Stevens, as gangly as he is energetic and bedecked in a fetching glittering top, showed his great range both in vocal and lyrical terms, as the band tore through their crowd-pleasing set, afterwards promising more Cardiff shows before the end of the year "in costume", presumably meaning the band's favoured line in psychedelic shirts.  

Following Radio Luxembourg, hailing from the wonderfully named Goatee Beach in Southampton, were Thomas Tantrum. A favourite of one Lily Allen, their single 'Shake it! Shake it!' can currently be heard on T-Mobile TV adverts (the one that goes "I wanna talk! But I wanna talk though!" -no doubt a mobile phone hawker's dream). Small and perfectly formed, lead singer Megan Thomas isn't the most engaging of lead singers live, but her deliberately childish voice and demeanour is perfectly suited to the band's cheery art-rock. Despite being branded annoying in many quarters (including, admirably, the review cuttings posted on the band's own website), Thomas Tantrum are highly appealing, with smart, funny lyrics and a breadth of style that most bands would envy, although their wit and energy did not translate fully to the stage here.

Up next were Pete & The Pirates, who were very very very good at what they do. Some of their vocal harmonies are perfect. If this sounds a little non-committal, it's because with great cowardice, I am being wholly non-committal following an excessive night out with the band after the gig, who are just cool and lovely. However, I, personally, wrongly, I expect, didn't enjoy the set as much as the vast, vast (avast?! nervous punning here now) majority of people, who are doubtless far better judges than me, or at the very least knew Pete & The Pirates on record before seeing them live, unlike me, for which I should be flogged and ignored in these here lines.

http://radiolux.steffan.org.uk/
www.thomastantrum.co.uk
www.peteandthepirates.co.uk

EUROS CHILDS
Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, National Museum of Wales, Saturday 15th Nov 2008 

The all-seater lecture hall venue for Euros Childs had most attendees cooing and feeling very cultured, although the theatre was sadly under-attended, people perhaps not venturing out to the museum in the miserable, rainy night. Well, their loss. Mr. Childs gave a fantastic performance, breezing through the genres, spanning blues, rock and more countrified numbers from Chops, Bore Da and Cheer Gone with plenty of funny interplay with the audience and his band. Though a veritable leviathan of the welsh music scene, Childs could not be a more unassuming and amiable character. He is deserving of his top billing and of far more acclaim and recognition than he and the Gorky's Zygotic Mynci canon currently garner.

www.euroschilds.com

THOMAS TRUAX
Dempsey's, Saturday 15th Nov 2008

"This guy is pickling my brain", said a friend, turning to me halfway into Thomas Truax's set. This is a perfectly valid response to watching the self-proclaimed left-field troubadour, as he loops and reloops noise from his homemade instruments such as: The Hornicator. Sister Spinster. The Stringaling. These instruments defy easy description, cobbled together from things like an old gramophone horn, what look like bits of bike wheels, pull-chord toys, tv aerials, all-manner of coils and springs, as well as a huge amount of wit and imagination. but if you think they sound weird, wait until you hear the Truax's lyrics. In the same breath he can be both twee and nightmarish, disconcerting and enlightening, evil and cute. He paints dystopian landscapes then hands you a rose-tinted kaleidoscope to view it through. In honesty, Truax is really pretty shambolic live, particularly as he has apparently toured almost solidly for the past five years, his guitar-playing isn't very sharp and his patter is quite nervy. He's a man on the edge. Repeatedly he wanders away from the stage to stand on tables or just spin about, with one sojourn taking him into the toilets -all the while singing, hardly a care for the audience. Yet the whole act is so beguiling and endearing that seeing Truax construct his ramshackle tales is a joy akin to a successful concrete poem or a particularly mad fluxus happening. Seek him, for he should be sought.

www.thomastruax.com

In only its second year, Swn naturally is still suffering from teething problems, not least in the shape of unfortunate (perhaps to a degree unavoidable) scheduling clashes exacerbated by some lacks of coherence in grouping like-minded bands together for like-minded people to see without dashing from one end of the city to the other on blistered feet, in pouring rain with no money for a taxi due to the doubtlessly overpriced wristband (though buses were apparently laid on to help). That observation may lack universality. And sometimes incongruity rules OK. When you have the joy of seeing the ever-lovely The School on the same bill as the irrepressible Agaskodo Teliverek, it’s hard to complain, and what city-based music festival doesn’t suffer similar problems? However, some of the venues used are just not great choices, with many better suited live music locations overlooked, and the festival would be helped by greater publicity away from promotion within the venues chosen, which could hopefully banish sad sights like Euros Childs playing to half-empty theatres. Gripes aside, with a little more natural development and hard work in the right places, Swn could and should eventually grow to be the annual highlight of Cardiff’s thriving live music scene. 

Richard Bowen on Radio Luxembourg, Euros Childs, Thomas Truax and more at Cardiff's Swn Festival '08

RADIO LUXEMBOURG/THOMAS TANTRUM/PETE &THE PIRATES
Tommy's Bar, Friday 14th Nov 2008

One of the hardest tricks to pull off in music is to sound catchy without being derivitive. We've all experienced the deceptively ear-pleasing song that grabs you, demanding repeated listens that quickly reveals itself to be a brain-boring bug, devoid of any character or purpose besides leaving your skull a hollowed husk as you gibber and dribble out the rest of your days. (see: Razorlight, The Kooks, Scouting for Girls, etc.) This may be an exaggeration. There's no real malice in a such music, it's just the bastard progeny of laziness and a lack of imagination. So when you do encounter music that achieves this feat, knowing how much work and creativity has been put in makes the experience all the more satisfying. 

Radio Luxembourg are gratifyingly catchy, yet manage to be endlessly listenable with complex song structures, surprising shifts in pace and the treat of an occasional four-part harmony. That’s not to say that comparisons are hard to come by. Their Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci sound is impossible to avoid noting and references to the similarity may come to gall the band, but the comparison is fair and useful, particularly when you know Euros Childs has been producing the synthy Aberystwyth fourpiece, but there's little danger of Radio Luxembourg simply being aspirants to GZM's welsh-proggy-folk-pop-shaped crown. For starters they are more concise and immediately accessible than Gorky’s –not for a moment a criticism of either band, but a fact that may lead Radio Luxembourg to find a wider appeal, sooner than Gorky’s did. The band were in fine form Friday evening on the first of three nights of live music in Cardiff as part of the second annual Swn festival. Highlights included Cardiff post-punk legends Young Marble Giants, the excellent Clinic as well as the aforementioned Euros Childs, and took in twelve venues across the city including The Point, Buffalo Bar, Barfly and Clwb Ifor Bach -which is celebrating its 25th  birthday this year. On Friday at Tommy's, frontman Mei Stevens, as gangly as he is energetic and bedecked in a fetching glittering top, showed his great range both in vocal and lyrical terms, as the band tore through their crowd-pleasing set, afterwards promising more Cardiff shows before the end of the year "in costume", presumably meaning the band's favoured line in psychedelic shirts.  

Following Radio Luxembourg, hailing from the wonderfully named Goatee Beach in Southampton, were Thomas Tantrum. A favourite of one Lily Allen, their single 'Shake it! Shake it!' can currently be heard on T-Mobile TV adverts (the one that goes "I wanna talk! But I wanna talk though!" -no doubt a mobile phone hawker's dream). Small and perfectly formed, lead singer Megan Thomas isn't the most engaging of lead singers live, but her deliberately childish voice and demeanour is perfectly suited to the band's cheery art-rock. Despite being branded annoying in many quarters (including, admirably, the review cuttings posted on the band's own website), Thomas Tantrum are highly appealing, with smart, funny lyrics and a breadth of style that most bands would envy, although their wit and energy did not translate fully to the stage here.

Up next were Pete & The Pirates, who were very very very good at what they do. Some of their vocal harmonies are perfect. If this sounds a little non-committal, it's because with great cowardice, I am being wholly non-committal following an excessive night out with the band after the gig, who are just cool and lovely. However, I, personally, wrongly, I expect, didn't enjoy the set as much as the vast, vast (avast?! nervous punning here now) majority of people, who are doubtless far better judges than me, or at the very least knew Pete & The Pirates on record before seeing them live, unlike me, for which I should be flogged and ignored in these here lines.

http://radiolux.steffan.org.uk/
www.thomastantrum.co.uk
www.peteandthepirates.co.uk

EUROS CHILDS
Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, National Museum of Wales, Saturday 15th Nov 2008 

The all-seater lecture hall venue for Euros Childs had most attendees cooing and feeling very cultured, although the theatre was sadly under-attended, people perhaps not venturing out to the museum in the miserable, rainy night. Well, their loss. Mr. Childs gave a fantastic performance, breezing through the genres, spanning blues, rock and more countrified numbers from Chops, Bore Da and Cheer Gone with plenty of funny interplay with the audience and his band. Though a veritable leviathan of the welsh music scene, Childs could not be a more unassuming and amiable character. He is deserving of his top billing and of far more acclaim and recognition than he and the Gorky's Zygotic Mynci canon currently garner.

www.euroschilds.com

THOMAS TRUAX
Dempsey's, Saturday 15th Nov 2008

"This guy is pickling my brain", said a friend, turning to me halfway into Thomas Truax's set. This is a perfectly valid response to watching the self-proclaimed left-field troubadour, as he loops and reloops noise from his homemade instruments such as: The Hornicator. Sister Spinster. The Stringaling. These instruments defy easy description, cobbled together from things like an old gramophone horn, what look like bits of bike wheels, pull-chord toys, tv aerials, all-manner of coils and springs, as well as a huge amount of wit and imagination. but if you think they sound weird, wait until you hear the Truax's lyrics. In the same breath he can be both twee and nightmarish, disconcerting and enlightening, evil and cute. He paints dystopian landscapes then hands you a rose-tinted kaleidoscope to view it through. In honesty, Truax is really pretty shambolic live, particularly as he has apparently toured almost solidly for the past five years, his guitar-playing isn't very sharp and his patter is quite nervy. He's a man on the edge. Repeatedly he wanders away from the stage to stand on tables or just spin about, with one sojourn taking him into the toilets -all the while singing, hardly a care for the audience. Yet the whole act is so beguiling and endearing that seeing Truax construct his ramshackle tales is a joy akin to a successful concrete poem or a particularly mad fluxus happening. Seek him, for he should be sought.

www.thomastruax.com

In only its second year, Swn naturally is still suffering from teething problems, not least in the shape of unfortunate (perhaps to a degree unavoidable) scheduling clashes exacerbated by some lacks of coherence in grouping like-minded bands together for like-minded people to see without dashing from one end of the city to the other on blistered feet, in pouring rain with no money for a taxi due to the doubtlessly overpriced wristband (though buses were apparently laid on to help). That observation may lack universality. And sometimes incongruity rules OK. When you have the joy of seeing the ever-lovely The School on the same bill as the irrepressible Agaskodo Teliverek, it’s hard to complain, and what city-based music festival doesn’t suffer similar problems? However, some of the venues used are just not great choices, with many better suited live music locations overlooked, and the festival would be helped by greater publicity away from promotion within the venues chosen, which could hopefully banish sad sights like Euros Childs playing to half-empty theatres. Gripes aside, with a little more natural development and hard work in the right places, Swn could and should eventually grow to be the annual highlight of Cardiff’s thriving live music scene. 

Richard Bowen on Radio Luxembourg, Euros Childs, Thomas Truax and more at Cardiff's Swn Festival '08

RADIO LUXEMBOURG/THOMAS TANTRUM/PETE &THE PIRATES
Tommy's Bar, Friday 14th Nov 2008

One of the hardest tricks to pull off in music is to sound catchy without being derivitive. We've all experienced the deceptively ear-pleasing song that grabs you, demanding repeated listens that quickly reveals itself to be a brain-boring bug, devoid of any character or purpose besides leaving your skull a hollowed husk as you gibber and dribble out the rest of your days. (see: Razorlight, The Kooks, Scouting for Girls, etc.) This may be an exaggeration. There's no real malice in a such music, it's just the bastard progeny of laziness and a lack of imagination. So when you do encounter music that achieves this feat, knowing how much work and creativity has been put in makes the experience all the more satisfying. 

Radio Luxembourg are gratifyingly catchy, yet manage to be endlessly listenable with complex song structures, surprising shifts in pace and the treat of an occasional four-part harmony. That’s not to say that comparisons are hard to come by. Their Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci sound is impossible to avoid noting and references to the similarity may come to gall the band, but the comparison is fair and useful, particularly when you know Euros Childs has been producing the synthy Aberystwyth fourpiece, but there's little danger of Radio Luxembourg simply being aspirants to GZM's welsh-proggy-folk-pop-shaped crown. For starters they are more concise and immediately accessible than Gorky’s –not for a moment a criticism of either band, but a fact that may lead Radio Luxembourg to find a wider appeal, sooner than Gorky’s did. The band were in fine form Friday evening on the first of three nights of live music in Cardiff as part of the second annual Swn festival. Highlights included Cardiff post-punk legends Young Marble Giants, the excellent Clinic as well as the aforementioned Euros Childs, and took in twelve venues across the city including The Point, Buffalo Bar, Barfly and Clwb Ifor Bach -which is celebrating its 25th  birthday this year. On Friday at Tommy's, frontman Mei Stevens, as gangly as he is energetic and bedecked in a fetching glittering top, showed his great range both in vocal and lyrical terms, as the band tore through their crowd-pleasing set, afterwards promising more Cardiff shows before the end of the year "in costume", presumably meaning the band's favoured line in psychedelic shirts.  

Following Radio Luxembourg, hailing from the wonderfully named Goatee Beach in Southampton, were Thomas Tantrum. A favourite of one Lily Allen, their single 'Shake it! Shake it!' can currently be heard on T-Mobile TV adverts (the one that goes "I wanna talk! But I wanna talk though!" -no doubt a mobile phone hawker's dream). Small and perfectly formed, lead singer Megan Thomas isn't the most engaging of lead singers live, but her deliberately childish voice and demeanour is perfectly suited to the band's cheery art-rock. Despite being branded annoying in many quarters (including, admirably, the review cuttings posted on the band's own website), Thomas Tantrum are highly appealing, with smart, funny lyrics and a breadth of style that most bands would envy, although their wit and energy did not translate fully to the stage here.

Up next were Pete & The Pirates, who were very very very good at what they do. Some of their vocal harmonies are perfect. If this sounds a little non-committal, it's because with great cowardice, I am being wholly non-committal following an excessive night out with the band after the gig, who are just cool and lovely. However, I, personally, wrongly, I expect, didn't enjoy the set as much as the vast, vast (avast?! nervous punning here now) majority of people, who are doubtless far better judges than me, or at the very least knew Pete & The Pirates on record before seeing them live, unlike me, for which I should be flogged and ignored in these here lines.

http://radiolux.steffan.org.uk/
www.thomastantrum.co.uk
www.peteandthepirates.co.uk

EUROS CHILDS
Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, National Museum of Wales, Saturday 15th Nov 2008 

The all-seater lecture hall venue for Euros Childs had most attendees cooing and feeling very cultured, although the theatre was sadly under-attended, people perhaps not venturing out to the museum in the miserable, rainy night. Well, their loss. Mr. Childs gave a fantastic performance, breezing through the genres, spanning blues, rock and more countrified numbers from Chops, Bore Da and Cheer Gone with plenty of funny interplay with the audience and his band. Though a veritable leviathan of the welsh music scene, Childs could not be a more unassuming and amiable character. He is deserving of his top billing and of far more acclaim and recognition than he and the Gorky's Zygotic Mynci canon currently garner.

www.euroschilds.com

THOMAS TRUAX
Dempsey's, Saturday 15th Nov 2008

"This guy is pickling my brain", said a friend, turning to me halfway into Thomas Truax's set. This is a perfectly valid response to watching the self-proclaimed left-field troubadour, as he loops and reloops noise from his homemade instruments such as: The Hornicator. Sister Spinster. The Stringaling. These instruments defy easy description, cobbled together from things like an old gramophone horn, what look like bits of bike wheels, pull-chord toys, tv aerials, all-manner of coils and springs, as well as a huge amount of wit and imagination. but if you think they sound weird, wait until you hear the Truax's lyrics. In the same breath he can be both twee and nightmarish, disconcerting and enlightening, evil and cute. He paints dystopian landscapes then hands you a rose-tinted kaleidoscope to view it through. In honesty, Truax is really pretty shambolic live, particularly as he has apparently toured almost solidly for the past five years, his guitar-playing isn't very sharp and his patter is quite nervy. He's a man on the edge. Repeatedly he wanders away from the stage to stand on tables or just spin about, with one sojourn taking him into the toilets -all the while singing, hardly a care for the audience. Yet the whole act is so beguiling and endearing that seeing Truax construct his ramshackle tales is a joy akin to a successful concrete poem or a particularly mad fluxus happening. Seek him, for he should be sought.

www.thomastruax.com

In only its second year, Swn naturally is still suffering from teething problems, not least in the shape of unfortunate (perhaps to a degree unavoidable) scheduling clashes exacerbated by some lacks of coherence in grouping like-minded bands together for like-minded people to see without dashing from one end of the city to the other on blistered feet, in pouring rain with no money for a taxi due to the doubtlessly overpriced wristband (though buses were apparently laid on to help). That observation may lack universality. And sometimes incongruity rules OK. When you have the joy of seeing the ever-lovely The School on the same bill as the irrepressible Agaskodo Teliverek, it’s hard to complain, and what city-based music festival doesn’t suffer similar problems? However, some of the venues used are just not great choices, with many better suited live music locations overlooked, and the festival would be helped by greater publicity away from promotion within the venues chosen, which could hopefully banish sad sights like Euros Childs playing to half-empty theatres. Gripes aside, with a little more natural development and hard work in the right places, Swn could and should eventually grow to be the annual highlight of Cardiff’s thriving live music scene. 

© 2008 Richard Bowen

© Miwsig