"I think it's like walking in for the very end of an hallucinogenic, avant-garde, arthouse film," I say.
"I think they're awful," says he. I notice the skin on the end of his nose is purple and peeling. He can't keep his eyes off the stage.
He clearly loves the fact that he hates them. One convert for the Islet cause at least, then.
I go to buy a beer, end up calling one of the security staff a 'fascist' (raised on the Young Ones, what do you expect?) and they threaten to escort me off site. I've only been there for 10 minutes. It's not my fault their bar system is farcical beyond words. If it had been a band, even I - in a straitjacket of fair-minded magnanimity, unable to wield a critical plastic spoon, let alone a flaming chainsaw of vitriol - would have slaughtered them. They weren't 'fascists', though. That word was busy reclaiming the full horror of its meaning in Norway.
"Weren't Islet amazing?" says another friendly face as I skulk away from the shaven-headed men in luminous git jackets.
A band from Liverpool called are on the second stage. They're good, but they aren't Welsh, so my remit forbids me from wasting any more words on them.
News filters around the site that Amy Winehouse has died. I've been at festivals where rumours have spread before. No matter how big or small the festival, you feel completely removed from the outside world, even if you only left it a couple of hours previously. I've heard, variously, that Paul McCartney had passed, that Liverpool had bought Zidane, that Prince was DJing techno from a noodle bar (Glastonbury 1995). None of those rumours had any foundation of truth in them. They were all received with cynicism. But everyone believed the Amy Winehouse rumour the moment they heard it.
Jen Jeniro
Jen Jeniro were one of the highlights of last year's Gŵyl Gardd Goll. They crowded onto the tiny stage like a football team of frogs on a bonsai lily pad. This year they've got much more room to roam around. They don't. They have all the motive energy of if he'd been dropped into a cauldron of pure THC instead of that suspect magic potion.
But the lack of jumping and thrusting (and the somnambulent burn of their music) is just perfect for this sun-tinged hour of the evening. Bryn Terfel's staggeringly big back garden may have played host to some of the world's finest trained voices, but few can have matched the perfect harmonic synchronicity of this. Jen Jeniro blow shimmering West Coast melodies out over our heads. It's narcotic and wonder-filled. would nod their heads in approbation. We just nod our heads, and the colours flow.
All I was under the influence of, I promise you, was the reddening sun.
I start to unwind a little bit. Lara is here, and David and Alan. And Dyl and Dil. And Theston, Carwyn, Kev, Dic and Llyr. I speak broken Welsh. It's a small crowd, far fewer than the festival deserves. But everyone is relaxed and nicely sun sozzled. I (kind of wish) that Klaus Kinski or Bastions or Future Of The Left or Saturdays Kids were here to shake the spell. But I only wish that for the most fleeting of moments. It's good to float.
Honestly, I haven't touched a thing.
"I hated Islet. They're arse." This was said with some vehemence. Admittedly, the vehemence of someone who looked like they'd been sat in the sun drinking cheap lager all day. Lucky this wasn't a football match.
Land Of Bingo
Back to the second stage for . They were the loudest thing I heard all weekend. Big fat electronic kick drums, cranked up to the max, bouncing off Snowdonia behind us, loosening shingle and unwary climbers. Land Of Bingo's music is far from aggressive. But it is muscular, and beautiful. It makes me feel about as homoerotic as I ever do feel.
I admire the well-defined, beautifully structured curves of its -like abs. A bicep of bass bulges every now and then, and I go all Ancient Greek and dizzy. Tunes like tousled, sun-bleached hair glint and shimmer. It's beautifully cool music that prickles the skin with a frisson of glisten. I have to leave the tent before their set finishes because I need some fresh air and a paracetamol.
"Did you see Islet? They were AMAZING!"
The AMAZING was bawled right into the middle of my Land Of Bingo-damaged ear. It's still echoing around now, in amongst the tinnitus.
Jonny
So, we get to Jonny. are Euros Childs, formerly of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Euros Childs, and Norman Blake, formerly (and still, I bloody hope) of . 'Super' groups rarely work. But if I were to formulate one, and the dream line-up of Andrew Falkous (guitar and vox), John Cale (bass, cello and cheekbone appeal), Helen Love (annoying noises and backing vox), Mike Gibbins (drums) and Cate Le Bon (keys and vox) wasn't available, Euros and Norman would make a dream (and, let's face it, more harmonious and feasible) second choice.
I've loved Gorky's Zygotic Mynci for so long, I suspect I loved them before they were formed and, thus, had something of an omnipotent hand in their formation and subsequent playful glory. I've seen Gorky's many times, and Euros on a few occasions. All the memories burn brightly. Gorky's should be taught in Welsh primary schools.
Their legacy is an inspiration to anyone who has been peddled the myth that you need to learn all the expression and accidents out of an instrument before you can actually play them in public or record with them. They should be a key part of our curriculum. They've certainly done more for the standard of living in Wales, and our international reputation, than simultaneous equations. FACT SQUARED.
I've loved Teenage Fanclub for as long I've been able to badly roll a cigarette, or order alcohol whilst looking down my nose at freshers. A friend once crassly described them as "the musical equivalent of Last Of The Summer Wine, with slightly better harmonies", which made me want to punch him on the nose repeatedly, until his nose went into his brain and recommended that he'd better reconsider his heathenism before I went to work on the eyeballs too. But I don't mind that description.
Teenage Fanclub grew up and away from any need to reinvent the wheel early on in their career. From their album Grand Prix onwards, it was all about heart, craft, humour and melodies that would survive passage through a black hole. And what is not to like about those things? I love Teenage Fanclub. I'd choose Bandwagonesque and Grand Prix over almost all other recorded works. They just fit me perfectly, like gloves of love around my heart.
I'm leaving that in, even though I'm appalled by it as a simile. I'm hoping it may grow on me. You never know.
So, from the moment they start their set with anti-bombast, melodiousness, accidental set-list reading (get some new glasses Norm!) set to a number well below 11, because 11 is crass and a bit of a joke too far, I've got a smile completely circumnavigating my big fat head that doesn't leave my big fat head until I squeeze my big fat head into my car to drive my big fat head home.
Many songs from their eponymous début album are played and the combination of Euros's Rolf the Dog keyboard playing, Norman's green grass strums, and the cloud-dispersingly brilliant way their voices combine, levitates each and every member of the audience, who we could possibly have named here without breaking the word count limit. There was sighing and singing along, shared warmth and humour, and many of the rare good things in life rolled into one. Like a spring walk in Snowdonia. The last home game of the season when your team has already won the league. Christmas with a broken telly. A good food festival providing ample excuse to sample real ales. Or Last Of The Summer Wine, but with much better harmonies.
I loved English Lady and Cave Dance. Where were you to love them, too?
Back to the second stage. The second stage is in a big, long tent. The kind of tent that half posh people have their wedding receptions in. For most of today, the second stage tent has looked as if it could have been waiting to hold a half posh wedding reception. Crowd has been sparse on the ground, but as Yr Ods wrestle technical gremlins to get their set started, all of a sudden it looks like a proper festival. There are hundreds of teenagers here. Where did they come from? Some drunk dancing ensues. That's more like it. There's going to be all kinds of rum shenanigans to give parents nightmares going on tonight.
Yr Ods
are three bands in one. But like the similarly monikered oil, they're very good at doing a lot of jobs well. They're good at Two Door Cinema Club-like uptempo; good at Cure-ish stumble pop; good at billowing riffs that'd have Brandon Flowers lime-faced. I like Yr Ods a lot. I like the fact that they point out in the audience and then say, "it's okay, he loves the attention, don't you Dave?"
I like the fact that they're exuberant. I'm not so keen on some of the synth sounds that appear to have been stolen from the currently out-of-work Europe tribute band from down Felinhelli way (most appropriately, given the venue we're at, called The Faenol Countdown).
I just wish they were more uniformly Yr Ods. A stronger identity of their own throughout everything would benefit them, I think. But I'm aware that the sunburn is kicking in, now. It might have affected my mood.
My day ends watching treat a tiny audience as if they were the biggest, most important audience in the world. Seriously. After the Bunnymen allegedly pulled out of the recent Chester Rocks festival, because - laudably - they refused to support a tribute band (Australian Pink Floyd), I worried they may have seen their backsides over the small crowd here. But no, quite the opposite. They sounded taut, brilliant and thrilling.
I left before they played Killing Moon, top contender for my funeral song, because I had a long drive ahead of me.
And the talk on the radio was all about death. Celebrations of life and music like Gŵyl Gardd Goll felt all the more important against that bleakest of bleak backdrops.
| 12:15 UK time, Friday, 29 July 2011
Adam Walton
Bethan Elfyn
James McLaren
Laura Sinnerton
