Last week north west Wales was the birthplace of a brand new festival. Bang Bangor was billed as “Bangor’s celebration of the city’s vibrant music and culture scene (and) will be held for the first time this year!” but the question has to be asked, did the festival deliver?

Never wanting to be accused of not putting our money where our mouths are, theAbsurd headed over to Bangor on the Friday afternoon armed with… well, a camera, a laptop, and lots of beer money – it was a festival after all.

We arrived at Patricks to see two Flintshire favourites kick off the Friday evening’s shenanigans. Andy Hickie played a foot-stomping set of traditional Irish-folk-inspired songs about love, life and, of course, death, including the 17th century ballad ‘Matty Groves’, which is an absolute Absurd favourite. Andy was followed by Meilir Tomos and although the two artists are firm friends their musical styles couldn’t be more different. Where Andy played rousing drinking songs Meilir’s laments rang out through the venue. Meilir’s music was taken from his recently released album Bydd Wych and even as a solo set it is clear that he has not lost any depth or edge to his work and he remains one of Wales’s most original and unique musicians.

Our wristbands gave us entry to a number of venues for the evening and we were determined to get the most out of them. So we scurried along Upper Bangor to the Greek in time to see Anglesey band Yucatan. Comparisons to Sigur Ros are too an easy option, this band go way beyond that, especially with their live set that conjured epic soundscapes with the introduction of Spiritualized style sonic-ness. We then decided to stay put to catch Colorama (with a few brief wanderings in case we’d missed something). Currently in-between dates supporting the legendary Edwyn Collins, Colorama, fronted by multi-instrumentalist Carwyn Ellis, treat the audience of The Greek to their swirling 60’s tinged psychedelic-folk-pop.

If there was one complaint about the evening (and it’s not even a complaint) is that we also dived into a few other places to try to catch other artists but missed them. This also led to an awful lot of ‘come on drink up’ being hollered which is fatal when trying to stay relatively compos-mentis for the evening… but being the troopers that we are, we soldiered on.

The fact that it was Halloween also added a rather surreal edge to the whole weekend’s events as bar after bar filled with students covered in blood, face-paint and wearing the most outlandish outfits imaginable. By the time we got to the Menai we’d missed Mr Huw, which we were exceptionally gutted about. However The Keys were just about to kick off. The Keys saw Colorama's Matthew Evans switch roles to vocals and lead guitar, taking the crowd to the edgier, rockier side of 60s psychedelia.

At about quarter past one we were told that they doors to Bar 342 were about to close. This meant us doing a full-on-challenge-Anneka-style-hike across Bangor if we wanted to see the end of the Warm Data event, and most especially Acid Casuals. Unfortunately we failed. About half way across town we realised that we were drunk and knackered, and decided to call it a night.

Saturday night started off with a surprise for us. Turnstone are not a band we’d heard of before, but squeezed into the corner of Patrick's Bar Turnstone play a luscious set of tunes at times reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac and Massive Attack with the grand sound of Bond theme tunes. The vocals of Shelia from the Bluebelles held the set together as she sang with an almost Shirley Bassy-esque richness and confidence; this band was a real find for us, an absolute must-see.

With the sound of ‘drink up!’ again ringing in our ears we legged it over to the Greek. (Unfortunately this meant missing Stacey Cohen’s gig, but more of that later). Back at The Greek, Sweet Baboo (otherwise known as Stephen Black) played a solo set that wooed the crowd with his outrageously catchy tunes and witty tales. "Play one about drinking!" a voice cried out…"They're all about drinking." replied Sweet Baboo. This is the kind of artist that makes people in the room stop what they’re doing and totally engage with his music – a difficult feat on a Saturday night in Bangor when you’ve only got your voice and a guitar – and here we’d found another artist that we want to book for theAbsurd sometime very soon.

In between musicians in the Greek theAbsurd’s Sophie McKeand and our columnist Rhys Trimble offered the audience some brief poetic interludes. Rhys Trimble has a unique ability to cross the boundaries between populist and literary poetry that many lesser mortals try, yet fail, to achieve. Rhys is a poet who appeals to many within the audience, and even when he began shouting ‘you’re all fucking slaves!’ at the audience we all still cheered him on.

A quick race up the street and we squeezed into The Glôb to catch the last few songs from the "one man folk army" that is Huw M. He used a loop station to build delicate tunes with percussion, keyboards and guitar that added real texture to his tunes. Straight after Huw's jangly-pop-folk set was folk of a different style. Amongst the rather surreal setting of what was slowly becoming a Halloween fancy dress party, Nia Morgan's haunting and heartfelt songs were enough to melt the hardest of hearts.

Then it was back to the Greek; we’ve seen The Roseville Band perform as a full electric set-up, and a fantastic experience that is. But it's the inter-changeable paired down version (front-man Andy Jones on vocals and guitar, Steve on trombone and Phil on keyboards) that they occasionally do that makes the real beauty of the songs shine through. We then only had time to catch a couple of Manchester based Kev Fox's emotive acoustic tunes as this time we were determined to make it to Bar 342 to see Race Horses. Entering the dark, neon-lit nightclub after two days of bars and cafes felt quite bizarre especially as we were greeted by the beautiful sonic drone of the end of Jen Jeniro's set – we’ve since vowed to see this band play live again.

So, finally, for our very last band of the festival, Race Horses jumped to the stage just after midnight. The crowds were swelling and the tunes just kept coming. The place got hot, very hot and busy. Race Horses have never disappointed us yet – they continue to produce brilliantly intelligent music that doesn’t lose its pop-sensibilities. A perfect ending for us as we then staggered out into the streets of Bangor to be met by hoards of ghosts, ghouls and fairies…

So, ‘did it all go with a bang?’ As far as we at theAbsurd are concerned, yes it did. We had a brilliant time. We were totally spoilt and saw more bands in one weekend that we’d usually see in 6 months, and they were all of the highest quality, and the majority were Welsh. The organisers did a brilliant job of showcasing some of the most important and relevant artists from Wales and nobody could be disappointed with the line-up. But we do want to give a full-picture of the event and although our Bang Bangor experience was faultless there were a few people and artists who didn’t have such a Banging time. Some of the bars got overrun with students out for Halloween who weren’t at all interested in the music, and I did hear that Stacey Cohen had to climb through the window in Patricks as she couldn’t get out. A similar thing happened to Nia Morgan, although we heard that she at least managed to make it out through the door.

When a festival as ambitious as Bang Bangor comes forth into the world there are bound to be teething problems. Speaking to promoter Bethan Lloyd after the event she’s definitely been made aware of issues that people had with certain aspects of the festival. Has this put them off doing it again next year? Absolutely not. They’ll do what any self-respecting organiser does in this situation - they’ll take all comments on board and work to iron out those creases for next year. It’s all that anybody can do in this situation. But as far as we at theAbsurd are concerned this is exactly the kind of thing that north Wales has been screaming out for and what it needs is more people getting involved, more people putting on more events under the Bang Bangor banner and more artists who want to be a part of such an important cultural gathering in north Wales.