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Oct 22, 2025 By Lewis Oxley Photography by Ashlea Bea (lead photo) Web Exclusive

Day 1: All lines lead to Cardiff (eventually)

Sŵn Festival (pronounced “soon”) has ushered itself as a pinnacle event in the Welsh music calendar alongside The Green Man festival and the National Eisteddfod, the latter seen more as the Welsh equivalent of the Edinburgh fringe. Whilst it is scattered, like so many festivals situated in a city centre, the variety and extent of musical talent is not lost on them. Started by John Rostron and well-recognised former Radio 1, turned 6 Music regular Huw Stephens in 2007, the festival is at the pulsating heart of Welsh culture, Welsh being the key word with many of the acts on the line-up choosing their mother tongue and not adopting English for those coming from further afield.

It’s Thursday afternoon: 2:30 pm in Cardiff. Everything in the city is free flowing and easy. This was in direct contrast to the previous four and a half hours we had spent travelling. It was going well until the voice over the tannoy spoke in a muffled voice: “Sorry ladies and gentlemen, there appears to be a line fault from Birmingham, we are waiting to hear back from Network Rail. We will let you know as soon as we can.” Thinking this would be a minor delay would turn out to be a huge mistake. We boarded the train just after ten that morning and had spent most part of the journey being told to keep an eye on a few fellow passenger’s bags as they headed to the toilet one by one. However, despite the sluggish journey, we made it here.

The most integral venue is easily Clwb Ifor Bach (I’ll refer to it as Clwb from now on) with it being a sizable venue as well as its status as an independent venue, mostly due to it being featured as part of Independent Venue Week. Having heard so much about this venue, it was only right to check if it was as worthy of the acclaim as others give it.

After some well-earned recuperation, I head to Clwb to check out psyche-folk outfit Brown Horse. The Norwich natives are keen to prove that east beats west. Having lived in Norwich at university, it was nice to be reminded of some of the great gems from that part of the world, Brown Horse themselves being such an example. The synthesis of melodic folk and stormy rock is well measured and characterizes itself as a sound built on the remote inhabitants trying to find their way around a crowd who have perhaps seen them for the first time. The dedicated drive from Norwich to Cardiff is a long one for these guys, but is one certainly worth waiting for. Roaming through Cardiff’s ornate arcades to the hybrid theatre-turned-live music venue Porter’s plastered with old seaside arcade paraphernalia and endless collages of vaudevillian posters from the golden age of music hall. Times have changed much since then, but music is still vibrant in this place. Casual Smart are one of the local acts just setting up when I have a quick chat with them about the music scene in Wales and their latest tour with Porridge Radio. We agree that it is very vibrant, much more than I anticipated and that it is important for festivals like Swn to exist and, as guitarist Emily says “ to give guys like us a chance”. The band are straight from the improvised math rock with jazz sound that brought Black Country, New Road their fame at the start of the decade. The line-up is fun, but the omission of a bass player is a slight disappointment. The sullen harmonies and the fervourous sound of a saxophone is what makes these guys sound passionate and eager to impress. Heading back Clwb, and, by this point , things are certainly getting hot and intense.

Heading downstairs is a tight affair: “ONE IN. ONE OUT!” bellows the security man in the strongest South Wales accent as the venue it at total capacity. After banking on someone going out for a smoke, we enter, but the bar is the only place where you can get a reasonable view no matter how tall you are. Canadian art-rockers PISS are currently performing with a tenacious anger about them, the polemic rants and recital of prose graphically depicting their sexual desires and experiences, doesn’t make them a choice for the faint-hearted. Their expressions are brutal. An ugly fusion of Kathy Acker-esque prose and the dark romanticism of Patti Smith conjures up an image with too much subcutaneous fat to chew.

We head upstairs for Pale Blue Eyes, whose dream-pop exploits have cross-bred with kraut-infused electronics and modern euro-pop to build something catchy and energetic. This is a set with so much colour, motion and fervour amongst the band and audience alike that it is really impressive to see a band totally confident and in their element even with a man down (keyboard player, Lewis, was at his mate’s wedding as best man). Their set goes down like a storm, and despite various clashes elsewhere, this is a band people are rooted to, not flocking away by the back door to be the first ones out before the riff raff. The only shame for such a mesmerizing set was it lasted just less than 45 minutes, and despite each act having their own slot, inevitably, there were going to be impromptu endings or slight overruns. Elsewhere, CLT DRP are on hand to shower us with heavy beats and a sharp attitude. The trio are intrinsic, well-rounded and rebellious, and with acrobatic stage antics who prefer to tell; not show, everyone who they are and what they are about. Thursday night is closed off with a dive to Boho, Cardiff’s answer to a bar turned cave dwelling with local upstarts Why Horses? From previously chatting with Casual Smart, it was them I credit with the decision to round the night off with them. These guys are purely impulsive and act as puppet masters with the crowd, toying with them till they can gyrate, swoon, clap and contort themselves no more. It is a weird and wonderful set with multimodal influences and a rant about Talking Heads being compared with Kurt Vonnegut insisting “there is no fucking difference”. Whilst I have no time for grovelling artists who bend at the knees, it is amusing to see a young band call this out, exposing the salient truth that we are all hypocrites. The night climaxes with “I’ve Got a Fever”, with its infectious beat and drawling prose reminiscent of Belo Lugosi’s Dead and its dub-inspired beat keeping you moving even if you’ve been on your feet all day.

Day 2: Things are getting busier

Friday morning starts with a slow stroll to the Cornerstone building where the Swn Connect conferences are taking place alongside the live music. The venue is a converted church ordained by its stained glass windows and altar poking out from behind the stage area. After a fill of connecting and hearing from other freelancers, promoters, artists and fellow journalists, not to mention the copious amount of bara brith and Welsh cakes consumed, we move in search of more music; things are bound to get busier from here on in.

Prima Queen is on hand to launch us straight into the Friday feeling. To the packed out Clwb Ifor Bach, they warm up everyone by asking what they’ve had for breakfast before shouting that they had “Oates! The transatlantic duo are built on strong friendship that goes back many years and it’s a bond strengthened by their music too. The duo come somewhere between First Aid Kit and CMAT for more of their contemporary influences, a modern take on the laurel canyon sound with cheesy lovelorn lyrics and an undercurrent of electro-pop tying everything together.

The dense, brooding acoustics of Clwb are in direct contrast to St Johns Baptist Church where, after being greeted in Welsh, by a volunteer, we take to an empty row of pews to witness Gruff Rhys perform a solo acoustic set with all the material performed in Welsh. Rhys, who has released five albums in the Welsh language (four solo, one with Super Furry Animals), did not disappoint. His voice is truly distinctive with his Bangorian accent coming through instantaneously (it is very different from the Valleys’ accent, which comes across when anyone tries to do a Welsh accent). Rhys couldn’t have picked a better place for a set with his voice reverberating immensely from the altar to all directions facing the congregation. It is a true litany of pleasures and showcases him as one, if not the, true bastion of Welsh music and the language in a popular context. The set reflects the best of his ability as a creative to portray the different parts of Walsh history and his knack for abstract artistry with Pang!, his Americana and Zulu influenced track, from the album of the same name, being the main highlight of the set. This performance was much anticipated and it delivered just that.

The atmosphere was still strong in St Johns with Gulp, the band composed of Scottish singer Lindsay Leven and her partner, Rhys’ Super Furry’s bandmate, Guto Pryce. Although billed as a duo, they are accompanied by a full band, which was surprising given the mood setting of the Church and the fact it’s now Friday evening. Despite these preconceived of how church performances go, the additional band are the perfect supplement with lucid guitar playing and the ethereal electronic sounds turn this into a dreamcasting experience be it to the spirits of the Californian desert or the Black Mountains. The warm vocals of Leven are matched with Pryce’s mellow base tones and the rumble of drums conjure up an elemental soundscape that’s packed with exotic fluidity. This side project shows the best elements of SFA (even if they are on hiatus, but due to tour next year for the first time in 10 years.) with its revelry into psychedelia and ambitious use of electronics and lucid tones.

The festival has more celtic connections with the Irish act Scustin determined to showcase their take on the flourishing Irish post-punk scene. Back at the ever-claustrophobic Boho, where getting to the bottom of the stairs but outside of the door constitutes being able to watch a band, glimpses and flickers of Scustin, and their philosophy of Scustinism, can be caught. If it wasn’t for a few generous people leaving, due to the overcrowding, we would have joined them. Finally being given a spot gave us the chance to actually breathe. This philosophy is on the basis of living in the moment, something we all struggle to do. It’s for that reason people didn’t just stand and record the set from their phones. The band’s style is based on “pub talk” - a mixture of Joyce-ian, Stream of Consciousness prose as well as rambling, semi-coherent thoughts of the pub regular who could clear out a bar in no time. It is no wonder why their debut album is titled Confessions of a Pub Talker. By crafting something like this into tonight’s social scene, it’s hoped the band will spread their philosophy far and wide.

Roaming back down to Clwb past the imperious Millennium stadium for Whitelands, where, unlike the previous day, the downstairs half of the venue isn’t heaving to the point of being trapped like sardines. Whitelands are excited for what is only their third trip to Cardiff and the eagerness is reciprocated by the increasing amount of folk creeping up the platforms for a higher vantage point. The band burst into a set that fuses the futurist elements of post-rock such as Mogwai with the energy of so called “Obama-era” indie rock, be that Temper Trap, Arcade Fire or Yeah Yeah Yeahs; anything released from 2008 to 2012. That short window seemed to grip guitar music by the neck with its intricate playing over dubbed vocals and spacious hooks. This influence on the London-based quartet is just as powerful as the cosmic shoegaze influences that the band cite. Their playing is delicate and unique and branches on to other scenes such as funk driven Zam-rock of the 70s.

Friday finishes in the realm of the Welsh language and Breichiau Hir, who take to the luminous parapet of sweaty music fans at Jacob’s basement. It is hard to believe that this place is an auction house by day. The five-piece fuse soft-metal and emo-rock, which sounds quite soothing in the Welsh language. It isn’t before long that the moshing starts and the 15 hours you’ve been awake takes its toll when you are dying on your feet. A fitting time to end.

Day 3: Diolch a hwyl fawr / thank you and goodbye

During the course of this festival, I have been accommodating myself. This is a well known theory that people pick up accents and phrases whenever they visit somewhere. I don’t mean this like visiting a foreign land, but whenever you visit a different city in the UK, there is a chance you’ll pick up the accent when you leave. I went further still by learning Welsh on Duolingo, and having my friend Chloe, who lived in Cardiff, being with me.

Saturday was much anticipated due to the billing of a secret set at Porters, where the rumours started flying as to who it might be. Would it be Cate le Bon? Super Furry Animals, given the news of next year’s tour? After much deliberation, It was The Bug Club who emerged as the secret slot act. The Welsh three-piece have made themselves well known and as one of the best live acts to come from Wales in recent years. They are a band that are very good at “just doing their job” , nothing too pretentious for people to roll their eyes at them. They are incredibly tight-knit and far from being off kilter, just straight-up twangy punk. This is just what any festival needs, a band capable of a short set to get the nerves going. This turned out to be a very welcome surprise. Following on from the injection of excitement via the Bug Club, we turn again to the pristine acoustics of St Johns and to Naima Bock, whose angelic choral yearns are a perfect fit for this setting. Naima is accompanied by Oliver Hamilton, who has played on each of her records since the beginning as the pair have a tight working relationship that has amassed into an exceptional body of work. The pair shyly introduce themselves before gently going through a delicate set of tender folk songs accompanied by Hamilton’s droning violin and binaural sounds that capture the true sense of autumn to leave us free to wander in thought. These abstract compositions evoke the sentimentality we engage with when thinking conceptually about space and time.

From the hazy evocations of nature to the bellowing heavy beats of Stockton duo Benefits. From the aerial comfort of an old church to the confining space of a basement where the homogenizing atmosphere is not one to take. Benefits are an intense duo who bring together aggressive political polemics with a fierce cacophony of underground dub and rave music. As they put it, they are “goth’s wearing Kappa”. The lighting is particularly apt for this as the neon lights turn a hellish red. Tonight you enter the demon’s lair! You have been warned. Benefits are the guardians of this lair, which only those who want to experience another world beyond the fringes of everyday life will seek out. Benefits don’t play music rather play a game of catch with noise until the moment they drop it and pandemonium descends. The atmosphere reaches its zenith with a transcendent rendition of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” and Underworld’s “Born Slippy”. This experience is, for anyone who witnessed it, will probably take a week to fully sink in before heading back to reality.

From that other worldly experience to the closer comforts of Fuel. Firstly from Lover’s Skit, whose unconventional appeal isn’t as appetising for the respective venue - a place more accustomed to heavy rock than pop. The burden of having such a low ceiling doesn’t help and there are far too many people chatting and on their phones. Bristol-based quartet Grandmas House are on hand though to make up for the mismatch of the previous act. This was a chance to put things back on course and so it proved. This was a band that understood the pain of rehearsals and the pitfalls of not being able to get the crowd they play to, but it was safe to say they struck the right chord. Lead-vocalist Yasmin Berndt is key to show off her dynamism by singing in French as well as English to the pleasant surprise of everyone and drummer Poppy Dodgson reals of killer fills whilst reminiscing with anecdotes about falling off a drum stool met with laughs by those to have lived to tell the tale. The raucous, lively playing style makes up for the time they told us about their Covid ordeal and how they all got very ill.

Sŵn concludes with a band well known for curating an exhibition of chaos. Squid seemed to be like the perfect band to finish off three days of celebrating Cardiff as a music city, and it’s no surprise that they are the ones to conclude it. For a band to have churned out three expansive and critically acclaimed albums in just four years is impressive to say the least. They have also created a platform that has allowed them to become one of the best live bands with horns, strings and eclectic percussion instruments featuring heavily on stage. They have managed to send half of all the young artists, students and musicians from one end of Cardiff to the other at the historic Tramshed. They thrive on such hype and interest tonight is no different. Drummer and leader vocalist Ollie Judge delivers in his signature drawl that rattles past like a raccoon in the headlights. It’s a primal style that taps into the inhibitions of a crowd wanting to lose its mind. The set is experimental both figuratively and literally, each phase of music is dependent on variables that both can and cannot be controlled. From the swampy “G.S.K” to the surreal intensity of “The Cleaner” this is a band that has refined what live experiences aspire to be going forward. The ground swells like never before and this crater is set to take host the biggest and wildest mosh pit that I have ever witnessed. When the beat drops. Bodies are entangled like human spaghetti, stuck in places where their feet don’t touch the floor and the feel of the music is too intense to let go. There hasn’t been anything like this I’ve seen for a long time. When the set is concluded it is to the relief of no one. Everyone is still looking for a piece of action now that it’s all over.

The past three days have shown Cardiff to be a city abundant with an appetite to expose new music and push boundaries. It shows how successful and thriving the Welsh music scene is in ways that perhaps outsiders had thought otherwise. For just three days in October, Cardiff welcomes you and you become accustomed to all its creative nooks and crannies.. To forgive the pun, living in Cardiff: it’s a design for life.

Diolch a hwyl fawr