The Brooklyn Rail

FOCUS Wales reflects many similar events globally, where the facets of showcase, conference, and public gigs are intermingled, the primary aim being to transmit the word on new artists and new music. Taking over the rapidly-rising north Wales city of Wrexham (only graduating from town-status in 2022), this fourteenth edition presented an impressive number of sets, most of these limited to thirty minutes of condensed action. There were just a few established bands who were allowed to stretch further, such as Spiritualized and Snapped Ankles. The most captivating acts arrived from ports afar, illustrating how international the FOCUS has become, their stances informed by hard electronics, heavy rock, punkish melodics, and psychedelic embalming fluidity.

The Bug Club are actually Welsh, and have been gathering an enthusiastic following on the alternative UK rock scene, freshly signed to the Sub Pop label. This trio emanated a big, guitar-razoring sound, somewhat descended from the Buzzcocks, and complete with speedily delivered couplets of both serious and humorous intent, delivered via the twinned vocals of Sam Wilmett and Tilly Harris. Their crafty interlocking creates songs of hyper-concise accessibility, with frequently placed wig-out guitar solos. They played in the large park-space marquee, but still didn’t top the forty-five minute mark. Not such an impediment when their songs cut so sharply and quickly.

Worldcub (also Welsh, from the hills of Eryri) ultimately sound quite American, possessing an impressively broad stylistic range. In The Rockin’ Chair venue they sounded melodic and folk-prog introverted one minute, then switched on an intricate southern-churn garage-rollin’ akin to that of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Guitars and mainline keyboard sounds meshed to provide a tension between melody and muscle, supported by harmonized vocals.

The Penny Black dive made a suitable home for attitudinal rock, although it seemed like the haunt probably provides a mainstream club environment during non-festival times. There was a significant Canadian presence at FOCUS, from both Québec and across in the western territories. La Sécurité, from Montréal, came across more like a New York post-punk gang, such as Bodega, flecked with some retro-kitsch push from The B-52s camp. Keyboards were up in the mix, which should have welcomed more of the choppy guitaring found on their recordings. Also, the vocals didn’t sound as unhinged as they needed to be, but the set’s general momentum sufficed.

Still in Penny Black, sounding like an amalgamation of Devo, D.A.F., and The White Stripes, the DVTR duo also hail from Montréal, with just vocals and guitar as weapons, although still filling the ears with a cranked-up, angular cacophony. Distortion blankets the French-language vocals, probably intended, but still extreme, the guitar also ruptured by scarring effects.

Remaining in Penny Black for some time, we also found W!zard, from Bordeaux, with their granite bass presence humped up into an all-consuming presence. A thin, wiry lead guitar sound separated the elements, along with the high-yowling vocals. No English-language lyrics required here. Melodic shards poked through sometimes, with vestigial funk traces, but then the ballistic grind would inevitably return.

The German post-Suicide duo of Deutsch Amerikanisch Freundschaft turned out to be a major inspiration over the weekend, spreading to some of the outstanding electronic acts. Dyatlov arrived from the Canary Islands, bringing the industrial pulse of a darker city. Hard Euro-beats, with a small keyboard synth, swirl in rugged cosmic spirals, granulated dispersals heralding the next crescendo of hypnosis. It’s a tough tromp, delivered in matching black monk-hoods, the vocals shouty as they chant, with a borderline militaristic delivery, imposing a rousing mechanoid bombardment.

NFNR is Olesia Onykiienko, who’d made a two-day pilgrimage from Kyiv for her thirty minute set. Fortunately, she was a highlight of the weekend. Her music was all penned post-invasion, loaded with slammed bass beats, frosted progressions and sputtering air-trails above. Bleep layers coated the bassier fuzz-bumps, appearing as dance beats with ghostly overlays, gurgling bathyspherically.

Two of the acts who hit an hour or more during the weekend were the headlining Spiritualized and Snapped Ankles, who would probably have played Wrexham even without the support of FOCUS. Both bands set the controls for continuous sonic amassing, Spiritualized offering more waves of climax and deceleration, augmented by gospel voices. Snapped Ankles provided a monomaniac beat complexity, finding a strange sort of minimalist rock intensity. The outstanding artists presented at FOCUS had a smattering of Welshness, but there were multiple treats to be savored from Canada, France, Spain, Ukraine, and even England.