After a scarcity of live music I’m feeling properly gigged out. And here’s why. I don’t really do gig reviews, like ever, but I thought I’d make an exception for the awesomeness that was ATP and the following gigs I went to:
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.
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Listening to: Twin Zero – Monolith part 002
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