Prologue No.2

It’s Saturday, later than planned. The ears had a ringing from the previous night and that meticulous schedule went sideways. I’d swapped seeing the bands that I’d planned to for getting to know the city’s venues, musicians and promoters. I’m new here. Well kinda. And I want to get a feel for the place. I’d already been struck by a musical comradery and all that did was make me want to be nosy. Hell…. Last night I was asked if I was a reporter, so maybe nosy’s the name of the game.

Anyhows. Later than planned I took myself to the tunes and right here are the highlights of the evening. To all the bands that I missed, I apologise. I’ll leave a few links to you in the notable mentions.  

Nova Scotia

If you’ll allow it I’m going to coin a new genre, and that new genre we are going to call Screamgaze. In this case, it’s Ethereal Screamgaze. Take the dexterity of shoegaze plus a lean into light thrash with a vocal that howls, hollers and cat-calls. Now here’s me hoping this paints some kind of picture.

At their warmest there’s a very 90s softcore of something that sits close to The Cranberries. At its hardest, there’s a twist into a pummelling grind led entirely by the toughest of skin-hitters. Make no bones, those drums tonight are getting pounded within an inch of their already beaten lives.

Above those drums drums there’s a late eighties early nineties 4AD feel to the music that’s being thrown at my feet. While one guitar grinds a fuzz there’s another chiming through with a twisted chorus effect that harks back to that warm 80s jangle. Big chords swirl, noise gets deified, and there’s off the cuff shifts in dynamics. But the best sounds, at least live, at least tonight, are in the maybe too-rare gaps between those Hard As and Hard Bs; the gaps between the quietest and the loudest. Switching between loud and soft is down to mapping, but the ramp ups between demand nuance.

And in what seems to be a running theme for the weekend, Just like Macy and like Angharad, there’s a sweetness and a giggle between songs. It’s endearing, enduring and honest. That sense of the joy and comradery seems easy.

Minas

Now where in hot hell and high heat do I start. Maybe with the worst and work up to the best. Swansea is a city with a scene that is too oft defined by its love for all things thrash and grindcore and similar. I make no secret, I’m an aficionado of neither. Half the Thrasher t-shirts and hoodies that I see in this city almost daily I probably posted from a past life as an Earache Records post-boy. And about that, let’s say nothing more. But this band makes such a blitzkrieg of sucker punch industrial, all tied up in oldschool rap sensibilities, that for the second time this weekend I am sold. Papa Jupe’s was the first to blindside me, Minas were the second of the weekend.

Every marrow of my skeletals says I’m out of my depth but damn, this band box and play clever. Every shift, every change, every drop-back and push, every tonal and aggressive lurch forward… it’s like watching a fine primed machine.

Early dubstep and hiphop synths grow loud and give a hard urgent baseline and gutter squeal to wherever they’re needed and wanted. Guts turn to growl turn to scream, then to rasp, but the hard noise is kept short and kept sweet. Mostly. And just as I wonder if I’ll bore of those big A/B shifts, the singer moves and syncs in with the sampler on hand and joins in as a second session drummer. Right here and not for the only time, there’s a bristling moment of what happens when thrash picks up trance and aggression; it’s the most aggressive of clubland euphoria, as unexpected as it is entirely impressive, bringing with it a mood of hard anger and optimism that lands with the all the subtleties of anvils.

And in that anger that’s hard felt and legitimate, there’s a want to dance in the smouldering of wreckages. Minas, you somehow managed to fix all wants at once, it’s just a shame that you’re taking a sabbatical.

Though I’ve been reassured it’s just a rebranding.

Notable Highlights and Apologies.

Cities gave a reverb soaked electronic post lights-out performance that if I wasn’t so ear-blind, I’d have stuck to. Climatic with an emphasis on patience and texture, they delivered a thick sculpted discipline to the weekend. It’s the first this festival that ‘tronics and pads took centre stage and it’s a shame the crowd for Minas thinned out.

VHS footage gave a cool retro flicker to the nu-wave post rock that swelled up and burned out in turn. Between swells there’s a tension of drone and percussion that harks back to the most originals of synth wave. At its thinnest there was John Foxx and Numan, and I’m only sorry this review wasn’t longer.

And to Monet with their spike garage splattitude, Enabling Behaviour, with your thin-wire tight tension that dances between proto punk and taut indie, to Lacross Club and Baby Schillaci whose lean and mean agro got my speakers and attention more than roused before the weekend… I’m sorry I didn’t catch you as planned.     

Epilogue

So consider these write-ups just a taster and a most non-scientific and semi-thorough rundown of what Swansea Fringe had to offer. I concede it was biased from the beginning, my experience based as it was, unfairly I admit, on choices made from Spotify and Bandcamp listens in advance. And I know it cut out a whole bunch of venues and artists and other disciplines too but hell, I only got one pair of legs and by then, barely one pair of ears.

What I did get however, and I did say I’d get back to it, was a real feel for Swansea music’s inclusion. From the venues I didn’t know to the musicians and promoters I got floozing with, there was a friendliness, a congeniality. It’s infections. And all this was maybe best summed up by the hairiest of Mwn who offered up wise and sage words: “we all pull together (in the scene here). If you’re a dick here you won’t last too long”.

In that case, yours non dickishly,
Will