When: 16th August 2025
Where: Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, Wales
Saturday at Green Man for GIITTV is, with a couple of most notable exceptions and to quote those German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk, Musique Non-Stop. From an early afternoon delight at the Walled Garden in the company of the charismatic Manchester-based singer-songwriter jasmine.4.t to a couple of superb late night headline shows from Underworld – the Welsh duo of vocalist Karl Hyde and keyboardist Rick Smith – and Mercury Prize winners, English Teacher on the Mountain and Far Out stages respectively, it is wall-to-wall sound.
The two deviations from this continuous sonic landscape are both suitably off-kilter and similarly absorbing. In Babbling Tongues, Lisa Wright is In Conversation with journalist and author Will Hodgkinson and Lawrence of Felt, Denim, and Go-Kart Mozart fame. Hodgkinson had spent a year with Lawrence and this experience is captured in the award-winning book, Street-Level Superstar, reflecting Lawrence’s uneasy relationship with the world and his continual striving for fame, recognition, and wealth. Should Lawrence achieve the latter he would buy four properties in North, East, South and West London, none of which he’d live in!
Later in the consistently creative Cinedrome, there is the gorgeous 2024 documentary The Extraordinary Miss Flower with a brilliant soundtrack from Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini plus Nick Cave, amongst others, reading a letter or two that were written to the eponymous Miss Flower by lovestruck men in the 60s and 70s and which were subsequently found in her London flat after her death.
The soundtrack to our day includes some wonderfully diverse sets from Fulu Miziki – the Afrofuturist music ensemble from the Democratic Republic of the Congo – the Anatolian psych-pop sensations Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, and a typically atmospheric and hugely reassuring performance from Gwenno. To this trio of acts you can add MJ Lenderman & the Wind who deliver what is surely the set of the day. A full 90 minutes of it, no less. “Hell, yeah,” as MJ himself rightly points out. And the fabulous Irish musician and singer CMAT affirms that her star continues to be in the ascendancy with yet another show-stopping performance full of playfulness, showbiz pizzazz, and some really top, top tunes. Cracking stuff on what is a truly cracking Saturday.
Additional reporting: Chris Cody
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos from Saturday at Green Man Festival 2025
