• Marilyn Manson – Antichrist Superstar
• Radiohead – OK Computer
• Portishead – Dummy
• Massive Attack – Mezzanine
• Anathema – Judgement
• Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral
• Strapping Young Lad – City
• A Perfect Circle – 13th Step
• Tool – Lateralus
• ISIS – Panopticon
• The Angelic Process – Weighing Souls with Sand
• Deathspell Omega – Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice
• Drudkh – Blood In Our Wells
• Troum & All Sides – Shutûn
• Steve Roach – Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces

Obviously, there is a new version of Ratebird out, to celebrate 1000 downloads.  There’s some trimming, and some new stuff.  Next time, there will be some more new stuff.  And some more trimming.  Here’s to the next 1000, and subsequent taking over of the world…

1. Ulver (Queen Elizabeth Hall, London)
2. Agalloch (The Underworld, London)
3. Gregor Samsa (Corporation, Sheffield)
4. Faith No More (Brixton Academy, London)
5. Burst/The Ocean (Corporation, Sheffield)
6. Esoteric (Victoria Inn, Derby)

This year’s list is highly likely to be topped by Esoteric, at a different venue in Derby, closely followed by Rammstein at the MEN Arena in Manchester.  I doubt anything else can get close to those two – although I can always hope

Future plans include integrating the RYM enhancer script into this, once I’ve got the hang of pref management.

1. Blut aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With the Stars
2. Nautic Depths – Siberian winter
3. Mathias Grassow & Tomas Weiss – Quiet Calling II
4. Arktau Eos – Ai Ma Ra
5. Mathias Grassow – Transpersonal
6. Steve Roach – Afterlight
7. Troum – Eald-Ge-Stréon / Abhijňâ
8. The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation – Succubus
9. Wardruna – Runaljod – gap var Ginnunga
10. Isis – Wavering Radiant
11. Fall of Efrafa – Inlé
12. Steve Roach – Immersion: Four
13. Kylesa – Static Tensions
14. Raison d’être – The Stains of the Embodied Sacrifice
15. The Ruins of Beverast – Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite
16. Zu – Carboniferous
17. Yhdarl – Drone Nightmares, Part II: Buried Burnt Earth
18. Devin Townsend – Addicted
19. dredg – The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion
20. Tombs – Winter Hours
21. Cobalt – Gin
22. Urfaust – Einsiedler
23. Steve Roach – Dynamic Stillness
24. Skagos – Ást
25. Sun of the Blind – Skullreader

I tried a lot of fantastic beers in 2009, so here are my favourite bottled beers that were new to me:

1. Thornbridge St Petersburg Highland Whisky Reserve
2. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout
3. Nøgne Ø Dark Horizon First Edition
4. Thornbridge St Petersburg Speyside Whisky Reserve
5. Thornbridge Alliance PX Reserve
6. Thornbridge Alliance Madeira Reserve
7. Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter
8. Rochefort Trappistes 8
9. Ayinger Weizen-Bock
10. Struisse Pannepot
11. Spire Xtinguisher
12. Moor Old Freddy Walker
13. Thornbridge St Petersburg Imperial Russian Stout Islay Whisky Reserve
14. Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel
15. Anchor Old Foghorn Ale

…ditto for Cask Beers:

1. Thornbridge Handel
2. Marble Ginger
3. Brewdog Paradox Isle of Arran
4. Crown Ring Of Fire
5. Spire The Wall
6. Thornbridge Cherry St. Petersburg
7. Crown Wood Street Porter
8. Thornbridge Alliance
9. Fugelestou Sledgehammer Stout
10. Thornbridge Halcyon

…and again for Ciders:

1. Dunkertons Black Fox Organic
2. Sheppys Dabinett
3. Newton Court Medium Dry

I was tempted to carry on with a list of spirits and one of honeys…but I think that’s quite enough for one day.

I missed the two support acts but apparently they weren’t anything spectacular.  The Ocean started with a big puff of smoke and some vaguely generic naval-warfare themed video backdrop, and proceeded to execute their particularly epic brand of progressive sludge with exceptional tightness.  The smoke was certainly a bit too heavy and wasn’t too far way from becoming a bit Spinal Tap in places, but it didn’t seem to phase the band.  They produced a great performance but with the short (45min) set focussing on the more bludgeoning tracks in their repertoire, and the fact that they had lost a vocalist and a keyboard/samples guy compared to when I last saw them (at Hellfest last year), I felt it didn’t quite match expectations.

Burst came out to a noticeably thinner crowd, a few people obviously came to see The Ocean and left straight after they finished; they certainly missed out there as Burst totally upstaged their tour partners with a less brutal, but more cerebrally tantalising display of exceedingly progressive hardcore.   Opening with the epic ‘(We Watched) The Silver Rain’, Burst had sound issues at the start but luckily it improved significantly by the 3rd song or so.  With a stripped-down feel to their show compared to The Ocean’s smoke and mirrors, they effortlessly skipped through a large selection of tracks from the awesomely prog-tastic ‘Lazarus Bird’ album, along with a few older ones.  They were really relaxed onstage and looked like they enjoyed it massively despite the reduction in audience size (which wasn’t exactly huge to begin with).  Their main vocalist was pretty funny too, cracking a few jokes and seemingly greatly amused by the ‘balcony stage’ in the Corp 3rd room.

My only complaints were that there should have been only one support act on this double-headline tour, and Burst clearly should have reversed their set list so that ‘…Silver Rain’ (my favourite song of theirs) got the full benefit of the vastly improved sound quality at the end.

First up were Naisian; unfortunately I keep catching half their set and tonight was no different but what I did hear was just as good as last time – dynamic, sweeping tracks that seamlessly shift between progressive death metal and sludge.  Next was Tiger Warsaw, who just seem to keep getting better and better.  Their brand of mostly instrumental epic post-rock/metal was sharp, clear and incredibly tightly executed – reminding me of Pelican on more than one occasion, but with more than enough originality to avoid them being labeled a clone.  The touring support came from Pombagira, who impressed with their unholy combination of brutal sludge and drone.  They came across as quite similar to bands such as Sea of Bones and Arachnotaur (two favourites of mine), although the fact that Pombagira have only three members gives their songs a slightly more sparse, stripped-down feel.  Good stuff, but tonight was always going to be about Lesbian.  I initially got into the ‘les-bros’ through downloading songs by bands with amusing/interesting/silly/awful names; this exercise yielded a selection of truly awful goregrind/porngrind bands, a few mediocre death and black metal bands and Lesbian, who are just really difficult to categorise in any way and blew me away on the first listen.  The closest I get to describing Lesbian is psychedelic sludge with black metal influences, but that doesn’t really cover the enormity of their sound.  They opened with a very sludgy instrumental track that I hadn’t heard before (possibly a new one) before the singer/bassist stopped playing in what seemed like the last quarter of the song.  I think he just changed his mind about playing that song, so after a brief discussion with his bandmates and a change of bass they launched into ‘Irreversible’, the last track on Power Hör and the ultimate slow-burner, which undulated seemingly endlessly around the walls of the Casbah, completely engrosssing all within earshot for 25 minutes.  They were then coming up against the curfew but after a lot of noise from the crowd they went for another song – an absolutely storming rendition of ‘Black Forest Hamm’, which crammed all the epic vibes of the previous song into a blisteringly brutal 6 minute cascade of progressive blackened sludge.  Gig of 2008 so far…easily.

ATP The Nightmare Before Christmas 2007, curated by Portishead, @ Butlins in Minehead.

This was my first ATP and it was beyond awesome.  Staying in chalets really makes an improvement to the typical music festival experience, mainly due to the showering possibilities, but it’s quite easy to forget such a fact when your chalet has bloody mary all over the table, beer cans are everywhere and the only things to eat are some crappy pot noodle-esque things, a Soreen malt loaf and a melon.

We arrived typically late to the site so got wristbands for seeing Portishead on the Saturday, so missed Kling Klang who I thought sounded quite promising, going on the (typically random) festival blurb about all the bands (not an optional extra but free, woo!).  After some chalet-christening we to see Thurston Moore, not being particularly bothered about the acts beforehand.  He was pretty good from what I remember, although nothing spectacular.  The queue for Jerry Sadowitz was huge so we sat around and got food instead before Chrome Hoof, who were supremely awesome.  They had between 10 and 14 people on stage at a time, all wearing crazy silver spangly outfits and the music was very bouncy disco/funk/punk/metal stuff that was just amazing.

We just missed Fuck Buttons, who the ATP organisers seem to be raving about every 5 minutes, although all but one of the people I asked about them said they were really quite rubbish.  The next band we checked out were Gonga, who played incredibly boring hard rock stuff like a heavier Nickelback.  A quick exit led us the ‘joys’ of Silver Apples, who are apparently some early pioneers of electronic music.  What we got was an old guy behind a desk making assorted bleepy rhythms and singing in a country style, and it was pretty awful; your grandad trying to do Depeche Mode covers on a knacked old Casio was the general consensus.  That was the end of Friday so we retired for beers and general frivolity.

Saturday started with Oneida, who had an amazing drummer who seemed to be effectively carrying the rest of the band but the general sound was pretty interesting and I liked most of their set.  After Oneida I ran to catch the end of Rosie Red Rash, whose obtuse write-up was made slightly more interesting because they were all female, and two of them were hot.  Upon arrival I quickly ascertained from the last song that their music was rubbish, consisting of some vaguely punky riffs and shite semi-spoken vocals.  However, two of them were indeed hot. Afterwards I caught up with the other guys and we hung out for a bit, checking out Malcolm Middleton (Arab Strap) who was pretty much as expected – mostly nondescript acousticness.  We also saw Autolux and I seem to remember being vaguely interested in their keyboardy indie-rock before realising that they only really had two different songs.

GZA (Wu-Tang Clan) was interesting as the first rap act of the weekend, although I really wasn’t feeling it after about three tracks, so I went to catch A Hawk & A Hacksaw who were peddling some mad gypsy-folk music involving an accordion, fiddle and an impressively dextrous guy hitting assorted implements on a desk with what looked like long thin spoons.  They were good fun if not at all my musical cup of tea; however I did slightly regret leaving GZA as apparently it got better and the  the Wu-Tang massive were in full flow with a lot of “Waaaazzzuupp Minehead, Engerlaaaaand!!!” and other such ridiculosities.  We went back to the chalet after the mad gypsies before coming back for Portishead; sadly The Gas Giants were on a whole 15 minutes early so we only got to see a couple of minutes of their Portishead intro, which was a pity as what I heard sounded pretty good.  Portishead were just immense, with Beth Gibbon’s voice having lost none of its ability to poke all the right musical g-spots, reaching into you and generally playing about with your soul.  She’s also still the most unlikely and shy frontwoman ever, which might have become irritating to some people but was just endearing to me.  The set was a good mix of classics from both albums and new material and only really suffered through being a bit short and more than a little disc-perfect; a few more old tracks and some experimentation with the old material (like on the NYC DVD) would have been welcome.  Having said that, it was one of my gigs of the year and ended with an amazing new track that really showed off the more upbeat sound they seem to be going for on the new album.

After Portishead we went to check out Polar Bear, and despite taking us a while to get into the Reds stage it was worth it for the mad avant-garde Jazz that ensued.  More food was required at this point, which is where we saw GZA and his posse wandering up and down the main walkway, trying to decide between Fish & Chips and Burger King.  Comedy.  We went back to the chalet and came back for Aphex but the queue was massive and we ultimately got turned away with wristbands guaranteeing us entry into the following day’s performance.  So off to Reds for Jah Shaka Soundsystem, which was quite chilled reggae that for the most part sounded like a slightly less interesting Thievery Corporation.  Wanting to dance, I made a break for Beef Warehouse which turned out to be some guys playing an assortment of indie-rock, Slayer and general odd tunes.  Would have been vaguely fun with a crowd but there were only about 7 people there.  On the way back I gave Aphex another go and got in because more people had left by that point.  He was doing really interesting mad glitchy techno stuff that occasionally broke into some awesome Prodigy-esque loops but sadly it didn’t last, with the set getting less danceable, and then noisier, before it was all over in a haze of electronic distortion.  Apparently I’d come in towards the end of the best bits… We all met up during Aphex and consoled ourselves with copious amounts of beer before heading back to the chalet for more beer.

Sunday was initially a bit of a wash-out thanks to the previous nights drinking, I had wanted to catch Joe Volk and particularly Oren Ambarchi (Earth) but sadly it was not to be.  The first band was in fact Boris, who were doing their ‘rock’ show as BORIS.  They were typically amazing, although the guitar sound was too loud and drowned out the gong (noooooooooo!!!) and the set I saw them do in Sheffield earlier the year was better due to having a good balance of drone/ambient/psychedelic/full-on rock.  I opted to see Black Mountain instead of Earth, who I was due to see supporting Sunn & Boris in London the next day.  It turned out to be a good choice as they started off impressively good and just got better and better.  Stonery rock with keyboards and lots of proggy bits from what I can remember.  Easily one of the stand-out performances of the festival.  SunnO))) were next, and managed to set off the fire alarm with their excessive dry ice; despite this apparently the ridiculously long intro was as long as intended; when they finally came on it was 3 guitarists, an electric double bassist, two guys twiddling nobs and a vocalist dressed in bloodied sack-cloth and twigs cranking out a suitably demonic ‘set’ that droned and ebbed and droned a bit more before ending with one of the guitarists being thrown into one of the amp stacks by his bandmate.  Full explanation here.  Drone & Rrrrroll!  Like most people I wasn’t really sure whether what I’d seen was the best thing ever, or something beyond bizarre and bordering on horrific.

We missed Malakai but Crippled Black Phoenix were rather good indie-prog stuff that involved another 80 gajillion people on stage.  Atavist were noisy Khanate-a-like sludge/doom, I didn’t find them particularly interesting.  Blood Island Raiders proved to be fun, amusing one and all with lots of horn-throwing during their set of fast and well-executed stoner metal.  We got into the second Aphex show but sadly it proved to be worse than the previous night’s show (bar the Grandstand theme), being mainly scratchy bleeptronica with little potential for a bangin’ choon.

After leaving ATP in a daze I headed to London to see Earth/Boris/SunnO)))/SunnO))) & Boris.  Unfortunately due to a combination of wanting to ditch my large bag at the Spaceface’s abode, train mishaps and spending too much time in pubs off Baker St meant that I missed Earth and most of Boris’s set.  The part of Boris (doing a two-song post-rock/drone set as ‘boris’) I did see was typically good but I didn’t have much time to get into the psychedelic ambient drone they were laying down.  SunnO))) came on to a far shorter intro than at ATP, and launched into a much more dynamic set that utilised trombone at the start.  Unlike their ATP set, this performance seemed to have a defined purpose to it, with the droning chords building up to a faster, or rather, slightly less funereal climax.  All in all far better than the previous day’s set despite the better (faultier) production and (I think) greater number of amps at ATP.  The main event, SunnO))) performing Altar with Boris, started oddly with The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep), which is the most melodic song on the album.  Jesse Sykes did her vocals and they were amazing.  They continued with the first track on the album ‘Etna’, which was just immense, before ending it with the drawn-out psychedelia of ‘Fried Eagle Mind’ and ‘Blood Swamp’.  My only complaint was that the Altar album works so well as a whole that messing around with the order and missing a couple of tracks out downgraded a potentially mindblowing gig into merely an excellent one.

—————-
Listening to: Twin Zero – Monolith part 002

Basically we got there most of the way through Final, who I didn’t realise was supporting, apparently it was a one-off thing and he just did the Corp date. Anyway JKB sounded on good form although I didn’t really have any time to immerse myself in his wall of drone-ness. He’ll be back, and I got some really great CDs of his. Oxbow Acoustic Duo were next, who were completely weird in a good avant-garde kinda way…A sweaty guy singing, speaking and whispering tortured vocals over assorted acoustic blues riffs. They really caught my attention for most of their set, although towards the end it became less interesting. I listened to some Oxbow again the next day and it’s actually very similar albeit with electric guitars and a band vibe.

So then ISIS come on, and they play some songs off the new album…which are about twice as heavy as expected and they really kick gluteus maximi; Aaron whatshisface (guitars/vocals) was headbanging like a complete loon during the first two tracks. They then skip through a good mix of tracks, playing mostly from the new album but also the odd couple from Panopticon; In Fiction was particularly awesome, but that’s one of my favourites. Holy Tears wasn’t quite as crushing as I thought it would be, but it wasn’t off-putting, especially given how heavy the rest of the set was. I don’t think there were any off Oceanic but can’t quite remember – if there was then it was probably only the one track. When they came back on for the encore it started to get really interesting as they just launched into this great hypnotic instrumental jam, which went on for at least 5 minutes before they kicked into Celestial (The Tower) from Celestial, which was ridiculously heavy and extremely raw-sounding. This song, which is over 9 minutes long, didn’t really finish and they drew out the ending into an absolutely awesome layered post-rock/drone/noise jam which started off very quiet and went on for ages before ending in an immensely loud crescendo. I could have listened to that for another 30min. So anyway, very good.