91Èȱ¬

I've been very impressed with the way fellow Welsh music blogger, Bethan Elfyn, manages to go to sprawling festivals like Sonar and Latitude and blog about them succinctly. These are some of the most dazzling music festivals on earth. Bethan rarely wastes a syllable. I - however - stumble across a half decent busker on a side-street and my keyboard goes into a cold sweat.

I'll do my best to rip through my experience at yesterday's festival with minimal verbal casualties, I promise.

Gwyl Gardd Goll - the Secret Garden Festival for those not blessed with a Celtic tongue - is a day-long festival that celebrates music forged from hiraeth-filled Cambrian hearts. Last year's event was proclaimed 91Èȱ¬ Radio Cymru and C2's Best Festival In Wales but that hasn't stopped Gwyl Gardd Goll from relocating to the beautiful and historic Faenol Estate in Felinhelli.

Last time I was here was for the Big Weekend when much of the awesome splendour of the setting was obscured by huge stages and a massive crowd. Yesterday, little gatherings of welly-booted, fresh-faced, local folk relaxed under wire wool skies. If you live in North West Wales, you soon get used to the rain but Gwynedd's grey skies mean that the grass and the trees here are greener than almost anywhere else in the world. It's a superannuated verdancy, greener than goalkeeping emerald frogs on a bed of spinach served up by Scritti Politti at an environmental fair.

There goes the promise. Sorry.

I arrive a couple of hours after the festival has started because of nocturnal DJ duties. I've already managed to miss two of the artists I was most eager to see: and , which is a great shame because their respective explorations of electronic possibilities must have brought added dimensions to a day otherwise dominated by more traditional line-ups.

I'm here to DJ - at my own request, I don't do nearly enough this kind of thing - in between bands with the indefatigably enthusiastic and sonically bristling . As I slip-stumble into the hollow containing the main stage, I can hear polluting this hippy dream with sleazy riffs and great gurning melodies. They sound ace.

Girls in wellies and short shorts dance off early afternoon alcoholic exuberance. I avert my eyes. I do. Fuzzyfelt and I are right behind the stage, under the slope of the canvas, necks bent downwards. We play music made by minds thinking 'yn Gymraeg' from , Ffa Coffi Pawb, Texas Radio Band, , , wUw, Llan Clan, Tystion... could be here for a while. It's fun.

Dilwyn, the organiser, pops his head into the tent. He looks unflustered. The rain's holding off, there is a fair amount of people in the field, it's all relaxed and good natured.

It's only afterwards that I discover that the financial weight of staging this festival falls squarely on Dilwyn and the sponsor's shoulders. There are no grants supporting the artists and the stages, as typically happens for other events subsidised as much for their linguistic content as their musical riches. I see the need for, and fully support, any moves to promote the Welsh language.

Sometimes, however, the cash cow makes events predictable and complacent. Gwyl Gardd Goll is a much braver affair. Dilwyn says it's important to him that the festival survives on its own merits. It's an excellent attitude. I feel ashamed for not having done more to help promote the event. Its importance is dawning slowly in my ignorant mind.

Mental Post It affixed to flabby cerebrum: 'DO WHATEVER YOU CAN FOR GWYL GARDD GOLL 2011'. Guilt is a great motivator.

I've been in the car for a couple of hours and I'm desperate for the toilet. The portaloo providers must think we're in France, or something. There is a strange, open air, cylindrical object that is supposed to be the gentlemans' urinal. It appears to have holes in it through which you're supposed to... never mind. Too much information. It offends my British sense of decorum. Maybe if I'd had as much beer as those foolhardy enough to use it.

Whilst seeking something more private, I stumble across the Y Nyth stage. It's set in a beautiful barn near the entrance. Y Nyth was, I believe, an esoteric night of much musical loveliness founded in Cardiff by sound hounds and aesthetically-able designers. I negotiate my way past the smokers stood in the doorway and see on stage. My god, that man can play guitar.

Gareth Bonello:

We have a surfeit of folkish fingerpickers in Wales. People whose religion is , founded at the altars of and . Gareth brings a great, natural flow to his songwriting. I only have time for a couple of songs, but his sweet voice and beautiful songs float me and my relieved bladder all the way back to the main stage.

Where there is a crowd of folk really giving it some welly in their wellies.

are Wales' most popular festival band. Wherever they play, their enthusiastic amalgamation of ska, funk and soundtracks guarantees big smiles and half an hour of stomping with lager splashing out the top of plastic glasses. They're beyond criticism. To do so would be like inviting the effete, self-satisfied panel on Great British Menu to critique fish 'n' chips followed by jelly 'n' ice cream.

Derwyddon Dr Gonzo:

There is a reason this stuff is popular. Rushing around the crowd and telling them they should be listening to instead would be missing the point by whole light years. And even I'm not that joyless.

During Fuzzy and my next bout of DJ'ing, Gruff Crash Disco appears backstage. Have you heard Crash Disco? You must. His electronic music - well, dance music - manages to fascinate as well as move feet. I play his track GTFO as he makes his way back towards the Y Nyth area. He doesn't start dancing to his own music. He's probably the only one who didn't feel compelled to.

makes mordant, black fairytales into songs you'd unwittingly sing to soothe small children. He's easily the most subversive artist on today's bill. He can't help himself. Everything We Do has a most questionable chorus for singing out to a field filled with families enjoying a Sunday afternoon out. Its unquotable passages explain why some red-faced parents are seen ushering their children away from the strange band with its fug of cultish weirdness. Expose a five year old to this and they will never be the same again.

Hr Huw:

There's a tension and frustration throughout Mr Huw's set. He's not a crowd pleaser and he's following two of the area's most popular live music attractions. But the frustration, the unselfconscious oddness, the playground melodies and the exasperation all combine to make something unsettling and memorable. Something for readers of Bret Easton Ellis.

I desert DJ Fuzzyfelt for another wander and hear stretching an aurora of beautiful heartache under the eaves of Y Nyth. I don't get in to see them. I'm outside debating how to get music sung in Welsh on 91Èȱ¬ Radio Wales with eminent music people. Still, Yucatan (the organiser, Dilwyn's band) manage to shut our mouths - even if only for moments - with their intimate grandiosity. I remember Fuzzyfelt and skulk back to the main stage.

I've been playing for quite a few years on my show. Which, when you finally meet them in the flesh (and finely-chosen headwear), elicits shock because they must have been foetuses back then. They've earned the patronage of Huw Stephens and the interest of a hiccuping music industry for good reason. There's an irrepressible pop imagination luminously apparent in their finest moments. Hooks that would land cetaceans. I had to look that up.

Yr Ods:

It's only as I write this that I've realised quite how many times I deserted my DJ compadre during the course of the day. He must think I'm a right shirker. Within minutes of the start of our post-Yr Ods DJ set, I'm off again. I think the white lie I used this time was something pertaining to food. In reality, I end up stood next to Ashley Cooke (, formerly ) witnessing the most magical and enervating part of the day for me.

is on stage performing gemlike wonders from his two post-Gorkys Zygotic Mynci solo albums. My vocabulary is all show, really. It's sequins and zircon instead of gold and diamonds. I don't have the words to tell you how effortless, moving and truly special Richard and his excellent band sounded.

Richard James:

Great musicians hot-wire us to heaven. For those all too brief moments they're there, sharing their gift, we're transcended. I'm moved close to rapture. The religious language mightn't seem appropriate describing a man as humble as Richard James, but actually it's fitting, I don't believe in anything beyond atoms and biology until I hear something as moving as this. Then I wonder. And I'm still wondering now. Better live than on his excellent albums. How often can you say that?

have treated us to one of the finest albums of 2010 (Goodbye Falkenburg). The last time I saw them they - also - were even better than the excellence of that album. This time, as a fine drizzle begins to thin the crowd, they're not as good, but they're still a potent fizz of killer melodies and errant strangeness.

Race Horses:

Somewhere in the band's collective minds, the easy simplicity of the early 60's got compacted into the trippy out-there-ness of the true mavericks who brought bad trips to the Summer of Love. So, we get pop - but rather like the first time you taste dandelion and burdock - it's pop, but not as you know it.

Seasoned watchers of Radio Luxembourg [their previous name) and Race Horses will know they like to wig out on festival stages. Previous high profile sets at Welsh festivals have dumfounded the audience with techno(ish) meltdowns. Bloody good for them, I say. This evening's set doesn't end as spectacularly. There's a slight tiredness to proceedings. A long few months of gigs has - perhaps - dulled their flame a little. For a band whose music is all about the profusion of ideas (tunes, sounds, noises, surprises, shifts) touring an album - however good that album is - rather runs against the grain of the creative process. They looked like a band who couldn't wait to get back into the studio to make more ideas-filled music to amaze us with. I'm not the only one who can't wait.

have had to wait. It's inevitable that festivals over-run a bit. Well, it is when you don't have Glastonbury councillors at the side of the stage writing out fines in the tens of thousands for every minute over curfew.

Jen Jeniro:

By now, the drizzle is a thick mist. People who've booked taxis or need to get back for babysitters or who are just too stewed on drinking beer outdoors, have started to make their way home. Jen Jeniro pick up their instruments in front of the hardcore music lovers attending the festival. But it's a sporadic crowd and a great shame for those who miss them. I've never seen jen Jeniro live, before. They thrum somewhere a few feet above the stage. It's contemporary folkish psychedelia. Somewhat Midlake but with something dark and intriguing hidden amongst the West Coast harmonies.

Singer Syriol doesn't appear to be all there. He has something of a young Jim Morrison about him, fortunately without the exhibitionist tendencies. The end of the set smoulders in more ways than one, an illusion exacerbated by DJ Fuzzyfelt's virtuoso performance on smoke machine. The band's notes hang in the drizzle long after they've finished playing and are still reverberating around my knackered soul. Very special indeed. Their pink and yellow cassingle is destined to become as collectable as all those early releases by Super Furry Animals and Gorkys. But you should buy it because it's like discovering Narnia in your ears, without the tiresome allegories.

I loved my first Gwyl Gardd Goll. Make a date for it in 2011. You won't be disappointed.