Green Man :: 2016 :: Dyn Gwyrdd - A quick site tour.

I week ago that's where I was, in the heart of the Brecon Beacons, so I guess it is about time for some words and pictures about that. I still haven't got any real idea about how to group the artists that I saw and heard into posts.  I'll just start with something else and see whether that leads me to some kind of logistical inspiration.
That somewhere might best be a picture of the (main) 'Mountain stage' taken from a distance and under a glowering sky on Sunday afternoon. For the record the artist playing here is Julia Holter, to whom I shall return somewhat later.

It is true that the weather was less than perfect much of the time but that did nothing of significance to detract from the overall experience. Having started with a scene of the site maybe I should continue the theme for now.

The smallest of the four dedicated music stages is the 'Green Man Rising stage', which principally showcases new, up-and-coming acts.

Here it is viewed from across the pond. I had just returned from seeing Paradisia play there and was on my way back to the Mountain stage. This was Sunday lunchtime and the weather was playing nice at that point.
The Green Man, after which the festival is titled, is a large mythical figure of a different design each year, that is burned just after Sunday midnight. This is this year's incarnation.

Indeterminate weather on Saturday afternoon.

The big blue tent is the 'Far Out stage', the only dedicated music stage that is fully undercover and with a capacity of several thousand standing. Whilst the setting of the Mountain stage is arguably only rivalled by the Garden stage at End of The Road Festival, my pick of the bunch at Green Man is the Walled Garden stage and here it is.

Friday midday. The band is Welsh three-piece Plu.

Not only is it intimate and characterful but it has some of the most interesting artists, at least for my money, gracing it.

The layout at this stage (and indeed elsewhere throughout the festival site) has been much enhanced since last year, which was also rather wet. It's not possible to engineer the weather but it is certainly possible to mitigate the worst of its effects. Another change in the Walled Garden stage is this.

The bar has moved to the back of the garden and changed radically. Now, as well as a handful of beers and the usual other drinks, it hosts an array of thirty draught ciders all brewed in Wales. The seventy draught beers remain for sale in the Courtyard Bar, which is just a minute or two walk away. The result was that both bars were far less overcrowded.

Next I shall turn my attention to some of the music. That is after all what I was there for.

Dyn Gwyrdd 2015 - Green Man - Part 4 - amrywiaeth

Amrywiaeth. What's that all about?
Well this post is about a lot of things that haven't made it into the previous three posts on Green Man 2015, so what to call it was a mystery. Welsh has this one word that encompasses several English ones - such as miscellany, variation, variety, assortment - and is more appropriate in this instance than any one of them. That is my excuse.
The tented Far Out stage is large and, whilst I didn't spent as much time there this year as last, I have mentioned it hardly at all since seeing Gwenno play it on Thursday afternoon. First support Sunday evening was an Australian artist rapidly establishing herself as one of the break-out acts of 2015, following the release of her first full LP 'Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit'.

Courtney Barnett. Far Out Stage,  Green Man 2015, 23 August.

She is not the most forthcoming of artists on stage, however, tending to lurk in the shadows towards the edge and there were many such in the Far Out tent. The performance was simply breathtaking -  verging on the confessional.

In keeping with my oft-stated policy of favouring the smaller stages and the opening acts on any stage here is the smallest stage - Green Man Rising - and the opening act of the Festival on it, Seren the Heron.

A Crickhowell native, she has just released her début album Scrambled Mess. Give it a listen. Here and now.

One thing about the Green Man Rising stage is that as well as having a lovely setting overlooking a pond and a with couple of wasp nests for some excitement, it has a fantastic view across the arena of the neighbouring Mountain stage.

Here on the Green Man Rising Stage, and when I found a wasp nest for myself, Saturday lunch-time...

London three-piece Girl Ray.

It is impossible to sum up a three day festival in four posts and with twenty-something pictures, however much one might wish to try. The truth is, really, you just have to be there. Some things are so unpredictable that they can only ever be memories and this could very easily have been just another one of them.

St. Vincent, headlining The Mountain stage on Sunday evening. 

Green Man - Dyn Gwyrdd 2015 - Part 3 - The Mountain Stage

The Mountain Stage, the main one at Green Man Festival, has a strong claim to being as perfectly situated as any at a UK festival. When The Garden Stage was the main one at End Of The Road Festival, before the addition of The Woods Stage in 2012, then that was probably the one but the Mountain Stage is far bigger and its situation in an amphitheatre, the result of a long vanished country house garden and with views of the mountains (weather permitting) as a backdrop seals it. 
On early Sunday evening, with a low sun illuminating the stage, it was pretty amazing.

Jessica Staveley-Taylor of The Staves, Mountain Stage, Sunday evening.

The sun was an even rarer commodity on Saturday but during the couple of hours when it graced us with its presence one of the beneficiaries was the awesome Marika Hackman performing completely solo.

Without any doubt this set was one of the highlights of the weekend.

Indeed, Saturday afternoon on the mountain stage was on good form generally. She was followed by the always heart-warming, and every-time-better-than-the last The Leisure Society.

While, despite the release of five LPs, still not really well known in the UK Australian Darren Hanlon deserves to be more so. This was the first time I had seen him play live and it was time well spent. Songs based on observations of detail and a very special way with words.

A bonus of going to multiple festivals is that, when they share the same acts it is possible to ameliorate the situation as regards clashes somewhat. Natalie Prass, from Richmond VA, also appears this coming weekend at End Of The Road 2015.

 The other possibility, and it happened to me a couple of times last summer, is that one simply decides to see them twice!

Green Man - Dyn Gwyrdd 2015 - Part 1

Did it rain?
Well yes, quite a lot to be honest. It was also a wonderful festival and that is certainly no lie. So how does one square this circle? A great deal of this was down to the way that the festival is organised. It is not possible to prevent it raining but there are things that can be done, and importantly were pre-emptively done, to minimize the problems it causes. It was a triumph.

That doesn't help me with where to start my commentary on the music or indeed anything else! What I have decided to do is start with two very different Welsh solo artists (who both performed the most part of their sets in the Welsh language) that are very different, indeed of different generations, but both of which I very much wanted to see live for the first time.
The first, and the younger generation, was represented by Gwenno who played songs from her recent LP 'Y Dydd Olaf' (The Final Day), which is a concept album based on a 1970's Welsh-language science fiction novel of the same title, about a dystopia ruled by patriarchs. Her comments about the songs were suitably political...  It hardly sounds like a trendsetting theme but, particularly if you are from outside the UK in 2015, you might easily underestimate the sentiment.

It took place in the Stygian gloom of the tented Far Out Stage on Thursday afternoon as a heavy and relentless drizzle fell outside.

In recent years I have been trying to catch up with what I see as the greats of the UK (and wider) folk scene from the 1960s onwards. Some are no longer with us of course, but otherwise I'm doing well and this is someone that I had somehow failed to notice, or had and then forgotten, in the releases before the event. I hot-footed it to the Mountain Stage, just as the rain was abating early Sunday afternoon, to catch this. It was worth it and then some.

Meic Stevens - Mountain Stage - Green Man Festival 2015.