Seasonal greetings, all. Apologies for the lack of posts, which has been down to work, the inevitable busy period before Christmas, and generally feeling shitty.
Earlier this month I attended the final three-day UK festival of All Tomorrow's Parties, which took place at its original stomping grounds of Pontins Camber Sands. ATP will carry on going (including hosting a two-day fest in Iceland next summer), but have announced that it will no longer be hosting the regular three-day festivals in the UK which became its trademark.
I've been to a fair amount of the ATP UK festivals over the years (you can view pictures here from it here on Flickr - more will be added), so this really did feel, as the tagline put it, like the 'End of an Era'.
For those not acquainted with the ATP three-day music festivals which have just ended, they usually took place at a British holiday camp, with at least one band 'curating'. Said band headlined the festival and chose the other bands on the bill, as well as the films in the cinema and on the TV.
The festival began at Pontins holiday camp in Camber Sands, Essex - a desolate coastal resort with even more desolate Dungeness, famous for its bleak-looking landscape and power station, just nearby. It then moved after a few years to Butlins holiday camp in Minehead, in Somerset, a tiny town with an estuary facing the Welsh coast across the water. The first ATP at this site was the first one I went to, thus sadly missing the magic of those first ATPs in the early 2000s, which really did sound special.
Over the last fifteen years, ATP's roll call of curators is as close to comprehensive in left-field music as it's possible to get: Belle & Sebastian (as curators of the Bowlie Weekender in 1999, which morphed into ATP), Shellac, Mogwai, Slint, Sonic Youth, Vincent Gallo, Thurston More, Mike Patton & The Melvins, The National, My Bloody Valentine, The Mars Volta, The Breeders, Portishead, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Animal Collective, Pavement, even the ticket-going public themselves (with 'ATP vs The Fans'), and a ton of others...the last of which, which took place at the beginning of December, was curated jointly by ATP themselves and Loop – a band slightly before my time, but whom I've discovered subsequently while checking out the late 80s UK scene of bands such as Spacemen 3, A.R. Kane, Bark Psychosis, etc.
Unlike the hardcore ATP fans, many of whom have been to something like thirty ATPs, I have only been to a couple (well, about ten). The first was curated by Thurston Moore, at the new site of Butlins Minehead. I think the year was about 2007 or so, possibly earlier. My recollection is of the insanity of that first ATP, at Butlins with its abrasive line-up of power electronics, noise, punk, out-there rock and free jazz outfts. There was Nurse With Wound's barrage of post-industrial noise, with David Tibet (of Current 93), the latter screaming “I'll see you on the dead side of the moon!” to a stunned bar staff more used to Steps tribute bands; My Cat Is An Alien playing a two-hour long drone while I chucked chairs around the room with my pals (it was that kind of weekend); Iggy & The Stooges live onstage at Butlins, almost like a dream; The New Blockaders, a group of men in radiation outfits with a bunch of power tools onstage, much of which they revved up to a background of deafening power electronics while a front row of beards watched on, the security men looking disctinly uncomfortable (it was 1pm on a Saturday afternoon, after all); Sunburned Hand of the Man crowding the stage on Sunday night with about twenty band members, one of whom spent the entire time blowing bubbles at the audience while dressed in a Victorian outfit and oversized pink sunglasses...then there was the procession late at night with people with sheets on their head, circles cut out for them to see.
Subsequently ATPs that I've been to have been no less insane, including a 10-hour set by Oneida, the Wu-Tang Clan's GZA queuing for a hotdog, and spontaneous concerts by Lightning Bolt everywhere in the holiday camp but the stage. But going a number of times has meant that I've been able to check out delights too, such as the cinema showing ATP documentaries, the swimming pool (with underwater sounds broadcast as “Wet Sounds”), and (ahem) crazy golf.
The genus of ATP wasn't just the idea of curation by a band or individual, which hadn't really been done much before at a three-day festival. It was the setting in these faded British holiday camps such as Butlins and Pontins, with the public staying in chalet accommodation, which lent the whole atmosphere a surreal kitsch when juxtaposed with the frequently experimental nature of the music. ATP pioneered a whole other kind of festival, one smaller-scale and free of corporate sponsorship, in contrast to mega-fests such as Reading and Wireless; at ATP, a lack of VIP areas meant that bands and the public converged together in the on-site pub (literally – I was standing next to Michael Rother from Neu! at the pub counter queuing for drinks at the event this December). This smaller scale model of a festival can be echoed in festivals such as Liverpool Psych Fest, Supersonic, Supernormal, Colour Out Of Space, and others, which will be the festivals of choice for yours truly in the next few years, in the absence of ATP – who will themselves carry on with boutique festivals abroad, in exotic locations from Iceland to New York and Australia. Just not Pontins Camber Sands or Butlins Minehead. 
So au revoir ATP, it was nice knowing you. Here's to the last fifteen years of mayhem and fun.

Sad to hear the news this week upon returning from the Animal Collective-curated All Tomorrow's Parties of the passing of both Gil-Scott Heron and Ira Cohen. Both men operated in sub-cultures, with Scott-Heron touching on African-American militancy (as opposed to the afro-futurism of Sun Ra, who was operating at the same time). Cohen, meanwhile, a Beat poet whose truly hallucinogenic, lysergic-soaked photography and imagery culminated in the kaleidoscopic film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (which I once saw freak-out band Sunburned Hand of the Man perform a live soundtrack to), embodied a time when counterculture was genuinely something underground, with no Internet and little coverage in magazines. The plotless Thunderbolt Pagoda feels like watching a dream or something from the unconscious, which links it to the work of similar psychedelic countercultural directors of the 60s and 70s such as Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kenneth Anger (something that I touch on partially here).



There's something trance-like and beautiful about his images and films, as if the people in them have found peace with themselves. In a weird way, they remind me of one of the documentaries, filmed by the Sublime Frequencies crew, which was broadcast at ATP in the cinema, which showed the ecstatic faces of the Moroccan drummers and guitarists as they played their trance-like music (Cohen, in fact, lived in Morocco for a few years).
With the Foundry and the Spitz having closed down, and the Duke of Uke possibly in trouble, I sometimes wonder if there will be any space here in east London left in the end for the kind of counterculture that Cohen explored. On Old Street the homogeneity and feeling of encroachment from the Square Mile is becoming worse, with yuppie/city trader-type bars such as 'B@1' the tip of the iceberg. Still, certain venues - Cafe Oto, The Others, The Horse Hospital, Ryan's Bar, certain crossover art/music galleries, as well as others dotted around the city - have kept open and still attest to a kind of underground spirit. Yet the nagging feeling persists that while recessions in the past have led to a surge in creativity and inspiration (1978-84, as covered in Simon Reynold's book Rip It Up And Start Again, is a good example), the current one is simply leading to even higher rent than before and less alternative spaces. Oh well, there's always Berlin...

So, ATP was fun. Godspeed You! Black Emperor played three times for a combined total of seven and a half hours, and Neurosis about six, but even this was eclipsed by Oneida's ten hour set in the Crazy Horse stage, replete with all kinds of bizarre white sheets dangling from the roof (see picture below). Borbetomagus did their hour-long sonic holocaust of atonal guitar and free jazz; Tim Hecker's ambient drone was in full, blissfully loud volume in the centre stage; and "Weird Al" Yankovic was, well, "Weird Al" Yankovic. As with every ATP, the devil was in the details: the Butlins cinema showing bizarre French-Canadian avant-garde films all weekend to no doubt perplexed audience (one seemed to have clips from a Middle Eastern film involving excruciating footage of a cow being slaughtered); Jodorowsky's famously demented psychedelic masterpiece The Holy Mountain being perfectly timed for 3am Saturday, on the Godspeed channel on the TV in the chalet (just as everyone came back pissed from the Butlins clubs); decidedly mean-looking members of Neurosis in the toy shop...anyway, a Spotify playlist of the event can be heard here.

Speaking of Spotify, I have noticed this truly brilliant website, in which the detritus of the application's vast music library (which you can download here provided you live in, well, Europe) can be seen in all it's ragged glory, from Russ Abbot's 3rd album to 2 Live Jews (authors of As Kosher As They Wanna Be), Derek Bailey's Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (actually pretty good stuff - it's in one of the older posts), "Various Artists - Music For Bondage Clubs" (the mind boggles), "The Siberian Chipmunks Sing The Charts", "The Flatulent Phantoms sing 'Halloween Monster Farts'", and at least one Merzbow album (possibly not the album that was only available in a car)...there is page after page of this stuff, and it's utterly fascinating.

So, purely on the strength of their names/album covers, I nominate my own list:


Snoop Doggy Dogg - My Dirty Ho's - features "Bitches Ain't Shit" (Snoop's radical complex deconstructive post-modern critique of gender relations).


James Taylor - Covers - no idea about the music, but the man looks like an axe murderer on that front cover.



Carcass - Reek of Putrefaction - interesting...I'm still trying to decide whether I like "Pungent Excruciation", "Microwaved Uterogestion", or "Vomited Anal Tract" the best.

Jason Mraz - We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things - the album title is bad enough, but just look at that album cover. Just look at it. Did a five year old do it?


Cannibal Corpse - Gallery of Suicide - contains such singalong classics "Disposal of the Body", "Blood Drenched Execution", "Dismembered And Molested", and the charmingly reassuring "I Will Kill You". Gee, thanks for the kind words, guys....


The Handsome Beasts - Beastiality - actually I don't think this is on Spotify. But who cares, just look at that front cover (or rather, don't). As nominated by Pavement's Stephen Malkmus in 'The Inner Sleeve' section of a past issue of The Wire, in which artists nominate their favourite album covers.

This list will be updated regularly...and any contributions are welcome!

So looking forward to another ATP – my sixth one, I believe - this time curated by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, whom I saw live roughly ten years ago at the Scala and voted one of their albums on Pennyblackmusic.co.uk as the last decade’s best ever.
This ATP looks especially interesting, given the curators and some truly unconventional selections. The presence of Throbbing Gristle should be interesting, except that the pandrogynous Genesis P-Orridge (or Genesis P-Breyer Orridge, or Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, or whatever he/she/it is calling themselves these days) has decided not to continue with the latter. Therefore the remaining Throbbing Gristle members will be playing under the name X-TG, which remains a baffling prospect.
It’s easy to take ATP as a regular occurrence these days, conveniently forgetting that there was not a huge amount of alternative festivals beforehand (except in the back pages of The Wire). The idea of getting a curator – usually a band or bands, but they’ve had some eclectic choices before (Vincent Gallo, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Matt Groening) – who chooses the whole line-up has become commonplace now, but was less so before ATP began. Much less still was the idea of a festival at Butlins (or Pontins, where it was when it started, and which has not gone into administration) that featured experimental line-ups that melded avant rock, jazz and electronics, not to mention bands with names such as Berg Sans Nipple, Pissed Jeans, Jackie O-Motherfucker, Fuck Buttons and 16 Bitch Pile-Up. Looking at the Godspeed ATP line-up, there’s only a handful of other festivals in an intimate setting – Supersonic is one – which can mix such an eclectic line-up that includes ambient drone (Tim Hecker), full-on free jazz (Borbetomagus), Eastern European idioms (Boban I Markovic Orchestra), metal (Wolves In The Throne Room), modern composition (Charlemagne Palestine), and, well, “Weird Al” Yankovic to name just a few, as well as all manner of strange sounding movies hosted by various Montreal film collectives in the Butlins cinema programme.

But anyway, in honour of ten years of ATP, my favourite moments of the festival from memory:

• buying food at the stall next to the Reds stage while Prurient was unleashing his maelstrom of noise, and seeing the tortured face of the person behind the counter
• passing people playing crazy golf and go-carting while the sound of 16 Bitch Pile-Up raged in the distance (admittedly you had to be there for this one)
• David Yow of The Jesus Lizard crowdsurfing through practically their entire set
• the procession of people playing pots and pans, dressed in white sheets, at 5am in the morning
• hearing about the member of bar staff who was in tears and had to be comforted after a whole day of Boris, Earth, Sun O))), and other assorted heavy noise
• the look of pain on the security guard’s face as Sunburned Hand of the Man played a three hour jazz-freakout rock set, filling the stage with assorted weirdos including one member dressed in a pink wig, sunglasses and a Victorian suit, who proceeded to blow bubbles at the audience
• Glenn Branca’s mini guitar-orchestra and the look, once again, on the security guard’s face
• Julian Cope’s rant about stage times, ‘the X in Exmoor’, and ‘rodgering’ his wife
• the look of bafflement by security guards during the performance of Stockhausen’s Kontakte, with various space noises bubbling for half an hour
• stoned, throwing chairs around the room, while My Cat Is An Alien performed a two-hour austere drone in the background
• Lydia Lunch’s profanity-strewn reading from her book ‘Will Work For Drugs’ and the looks on the bar staff’s face
• Electric Wizard’s audience smelling to high hell
• Jah Shaka Sound System’s bass system, which practically took off the roof
• getting freaked out by the creepy accappella grunts of Blood Stereo
• the combined masses of The New Blockaders and The Haters (or was it the Skaters?) dressed in radiation outfits revving up power drills. At 2pm in the afternoon
• watching terrifying footage of Hair Police live on ATP TV…who were due to play live that day
• watching a double-bill of Ichi The Killer and Tarkovsky's Solaris on the ATP TV channel, then watching equally weird bands
  
• drinking vodka in our chalet and then watching Einsturzende Neubauten at 2am, with Blixa Bargelt onstage even more drunk than we were
  
• the party in our next-door chalet, which apparently was The Damned playing (Captain Sensible of said band took down his pants onstage, but I wouldn't call that a highlight)
• the contrast between watching a band called Porn (you can probably guess their sound from that moniker) one minute and Os Mutantes the next
• and finally...this person. Need I say more?

That post below about music in the internet age has really made me think about how technology has progressed and times have moved on when it comes to playing music. Twenty years ago, CDs had been only just been released on the market, and the idea of having your entire CD collection (and record collection too, with new technology, such as this Vinyl Adaptor) on an iPod only marginally bigger than a mobile phone must have seemed unthinkable. My iPod has up to 120GB of space - an unbelievably large amount, and enough to store an entire record shop's worth. Exactly what format music will be consumed in in twenty years time can only be imagined.
As mentioned below, the downside of the current download culture is the ubiquity of music everywhere and the slow eradication of the idea of the album as a coherent, whole entity rather than a collection of disposable, individually downloadable tracks, thus chipping away at the traditional pre-internet era thrill of buying an album from a record shop. Of course, you can still physically go into a record shop and buy an album, but there's no doubt that download culture has seeped thoroughly into the music retail market. The other issue of downloading culture is sound quality, of course, including the omniscience of compression more and more, as Simon Reynolds points out in this article.
The same thoughts above about iPods containing entire record collections also applies to the making of music, and particularly relates to a band that I'm looking forward to seeing at this weekend's ATP at Butlins curated by Mike Patton and the Melvins. Along with Silver Apples and United States of America, The White Noise are one of the original primitive experimental electronic 'rock' outfits, the difference with those two acts being that White Noise were based in Britain (albeit with David Vorhaus being American in origin), and congregated around the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, enlisting Delia Derbyshire along the way. An Electric Storm, with its panned drumming, tape loops and jarring samples juxtaposed with sweet pop melodies, must have sounded completely alien when it first came out.
The idea that the painfully-constructed sounds emanating from these mysterious rooms full of enormous primitive electronics, tape and synthesiser machines in the BBC headquarters could one day be distilled down to that coming from a laptop must have seemed incredible in the 1960s, just as with the idea of entire record collections existing on a piece of software barely the size of a phone. Consumer technology has become smaller - nanoized, you could call it - and more powerful rather than simply becoming bigger, as predicted in much old sci-fi. The downside of easy-to-use software such as Garageband that can be used in laptops now, as opposed to the painstaking work that must have took place splicing tapes in the huge laboratory-like rooms during White Noise's time, makes me think that perhaps punk's mantra of 'anyone can do it' has finally come true, liberated by the progression of technology.

Hello there everybody, and sorry for the long delay in replying - a busy December and all that, including the All Tomorrow's Parties shindig hosted by Portishead. Most ATP's that I've been to have had their fair share of madness - has anyone actually had a completely sober ATP? - but Sun O)))'s ludicrously OTT set on a seriously gruelling Sunday - Boris, Earth, and Sun O))) on the main stage, various metal-looking bands on the Reds stage, Black Mountain on the Pavillion stage - pipped the competition. With a 'singer' that looked like the an extra from the Tree People in the Lord of the Rings, more dry ice than a Sisters of Mercy gig, and a general air of ludicrousness, Spinal Tap-style, mixed in with genuine excitement from the audience, they arrived twenty minutes or so late, having assaulted (I'm assuming it wasn't real) the audience with automated fire emergency building evacuation tannoys. The following two hours (a very long two hours) eschewed all the traditional signifiers of metal - pounding drums, ludicrous lyrics about "the beast" (or some such), flashy guitar solos accompanied by headbanging - leaving a sheer magma-like trail of earsplitting guitar noise and sub-bass keyboard 'notes' combined with sheer theatrics and a sublimely pantomine-like procession of Dark Ages-looking characters onstage dressed in robes. I certainly got my money's worth, if anything else, and there was also an inter-band punch-up at the end for good measure.
Meanwhile, am I the only one who thinks that the new material during Portishead's set sounded like Broadcast meets electroclash? Perhaps they've been hanging around The Macbeth / Jaguar Shoes / the Mother bar or whatever place in Shoreditch plays electroclash these days.
Other great memories of the festival: a wizened Jah Shaka of Jah Shaka Sound System (which consisted of Jah Shaka and, well, his soundsystem) babbling repeatedly at his Echo Deck (or whatever it was) about "Bablyon" and "Jah", at which point I took the picture above; the singer of wonderful folk-rock act Lucky Luke quipping about hangovers in the middle of their set while facing an audience entirely lying down (this being 12 noon on a Sunday); Onedia and their excitable drummer; Glenn Branca (picture above) conducting his guitar orchestra that included Thurston Moore, Adrian Utley, one of Fuck Buttons, and many others; Polar Bear bringing Sun Ra vibes to the Reds stage; Julian Cope's surreal end-of-set rant about "the X in Exmoor" and religion in general; the bar staff beyond despair during the 'metal day' (as Sunday was christened); the Aphex Twin mixing in the Grandstand theme tune with his set, and finishing with an undanceable gabba noise finale, topped off with the sound of someone saying "Motherfucker" a lot, as well as a sample of a track by Whitehouse (possibly "A Cunt Like You" with William Bennett yelling "look at yourself - have some fucking decorum!", though I could be wrong); ludicrous freak-out double-drummer improv rock by Damo Suzuki with Fuzz Against Junk; A Hack And A Hacksaw playing in the middle of the audience; and Simeon of 60's primitive electronics outfit Silver Apples - a man whose probably took more acid than the entire line-up of Jefferson Airplane a few times over - resembling your Dad doing karaoke onstage; Om taking ages to kick in the distortion, at which point the bar staff look terrified; Chrome Hoof in their silver-plated glam-rock stomp pomp...I could go on.
Disappointments: not being able to find the ATP cinema (where the fuck is it?). The toilets in the Pavillion Stage. Françoiz Breut not turning up and the staff not telling us until we've waited for 45 minutes, facing an empty stage. The empty nightclubs due to late sets by bands...anyway, I'm off to Flickr.

Not long now...

...until ATP curated by Portishead. Things I am looking forward to:
- Silver Apples on at around 1:30am
- ditto for Jah Shaka Sound System, who sound terrifying and seriously bass-heavy
- ditto for Aphex Twin, hopefully sans sandpaper machine
- the Sunday triumphate of Earth, Boris and Sun O))), on one after the other, which could well send the bouncers into tears
- Fuck Buttons, whenever they are on. And A Hawk And A Hacksaw
- Glenn Branca playing twice (though one of his sets is fifteen minutes?!)
- whatever films Portishead choose to host on the ATP Portishead TV channel
- the sheer surreality of seeing GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan playing at Butlin's in Somerset
Things I'm possibly not looking forward to:
- getting soaked while walking to the venue from the chalet
- feeling hungover and soaked while watching said bands
- rubbish food in the venue
- queing to watch bands in the Centre Stage

Now this is something I wish I'd seen....

As urban guerrilla sounding in it's own way as Throbbing Gristle, drum 'n' bass or techno, Glenn Branca has always produced some awe-inspiring music. My particular favourites are 'Lesson No.1 for Electric Guitar' and 'The Ascension', in which you can hear the endless oscillating strands of sound that come from multiple guitars. Presumably an orchestra of one hundred guitars at once would produce endless micro-tonal possibilities? I actually think that the two tracks by him mentioned above sort of predate genres like shoegazing and post-rock that we've become used to. There's not a huge difference between the tracks and some of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's work, for example. Or Seefel's 'Quiqe'. Anyway, this gig is something I wish I'd went to, along with the Boredoms gig in New York, in a park with 77 drummers on the 7th July 2007, at 7pm, which would perfectly fit their frenzied drum incantations:

Sadly, though, I couldn't go to Branca, due to relocating this weekend to a new house near Walthamstow Dog Tracks of all places, where my famous neighbours will include Blazin' Squad, Daniella Westbrook (her of the nose sans septum), Teddy Sheringham, and - of course - Brian Harvey. Exactly how I've gone from Glenn Branca to Brian Harvey in one post I don't know. Still, Branca's playing two sets at the Portishead ATP in December (including one set with 'special guests' - no doubt Thurston Moore will be among them, as he's doing a solo set too), so will catch him then.

My third ATP in December...

...this time curated by Portishead, and Silver Apples have just been added to the bill! Along with four doom metal bands, Jah Shaka Soundsystem, Glenn Branca (playing twice!), the Aphex Twin, Julian Cope, and countless others, some of whom I've heard of (Oneida) and some I haven't (Crippled Black Phoenix? The Heads? Jo Volk?). Why aren't Movietone on the bill? Anyway, it confirms my theory that Portishead have always had more in common aesthetically with left-field guitar music than most electronica (and especially aberrations of the 'trip-hop' genre such as Zero 7 and Groove Armada - music for media people living in 'pads' in Notting Hill). They also take a nice swipe at another aberration of music, Mark Ronson, here. Exactly who is choosing to pay to go to Shepherd's Bush Empire and see this man do karaoke versions of the Kaiser Chiefs, among other acts, is mystifying; clearly someone is, as his gig there is sold out. Ronson is the prime example of music as background music; it can be played anywhere and, because it's not even his own compositions but rather pointless covers, it's easy to digest anywhere. You can play it on your iPod anywhere and not have to really think about the music. He's a prime example of music's superficiality in the digital age, when the sheer abundance of music negates it's importance: it's everywhere, from the clothes shop to the hairdresser. "Oh, but they're inventively done covers that add a twist to the original". So what, though? I guess I don't hang at the right parties at the Notting Hill Arts Club, so I wouldn't understand. This is Ronson's demographic. His music is seen as "cool" and "fresh" takes on old songs, which Kate Nash/Lilly Allen/Amy Winehouse types put on at parties.

At this point, I should just point I have an iPod myself and actually like it. But I also take the music on it seriously rather than treating it as background music. Which is one reason for the importance of All Tomorrow's Parties. Roll on December.

Well, All Tomorrow's Parties was fun once again, and had the added bonus of sunshine rather than a torrential downpour soundtracking Hair Police or 16 Bitch Pile-Up or Ashtray Navigation's (as per the one last December). This time it was The Dirty 3 curating - such a great idea, to have a band curate a festival and choose all the bands. What makes ATP great above the music too is the attention to detail - the ATP TV/whoever's curating TV channel, compiling all their favourite films and general weird music videos. Again I missed the other delights on offer (crazy golf, go- karting, the all-night cinema, the swimming-pool, the rodeo nonsense, etc.) Once again ATP chose to put on a ridiculously OTT film on Sunday night on the TV after the bands, when you're generally in a less than coherent state; the December fest had an excruciating, explicit Catherine Brelliat film (her of Romance and A Ma Seur) documenting a confused French teenager; this time, it was an equally grim film (the title escapes me) about the Nazi's invading Belarus in WWII, with images of concentration camp victims, general death and destruction, and a young Belorussian boy venting his anger and so on. It's fair to say that laughs were thin on the ground. In fact, it made any of Ingmar Bergman's miesterworks come across like a rom-com in comparison. Perhaps they'll show The Passion of the Christ at the one this weekend, which will doubtless get the party in the Crazy Horse stage going.
A Silver Mount Zion's stunning set on Sunday was the highlight of the festival, a magnificent evocation of exactly how 'post-rock' - whatever that means these days - should be done, with it's seamless mix of violin drones, chamber rock and pummeling all-out attack, Efrim Munuck's strangled sigh trying to make sense of a post-9/11 world, framed against the unforgettable outline of birds flying over the tent. ASMZ's deeply profound and moving set, with it's subtle, mournful lyrics and incendiary, climatic music, was the perfect antidote to blandness and corporatization (ironic, given that they were surrounded by Pizza Hut and Burger King, though that's no bad reflection on ATP); shame that they were followed by the dull boogie-woogie of Cat Power.
Other highlights: the hosts The Dirty 3, Grinderman, Low, Spiritualized, Einsturzende Neubauten (on at 1:30 in the morning!), Felix Lajko, Smog, Joanna Newsom, Papa M. Sadly I missed Suicide's Alan Vega but apparently he was a treat - your crazy grandad running around the stage shouting insults at the audience to a half-genius/half-rubbish techno soundtrack.

Recluse club night

Been well busy sorting out a new night that I'm putting on with Archslider. We'll be playing at it too. It's on March 2nd....should be awesome, and my brother's playing as well.



Also going to the next ATP, with the Dirty 3 curating. Well, the line-ups allright - first time I'll see Einsturzende Neubauten, Papa M / Pajo (or whatever he's calling himself these days) and Alan Vega (sadly not playing with Suicide, but only on his own). And there's others I've seen already but are happy to see again - Dirty 3 (obviously they're playing), Nick Cave, A Silver Mount Zion, Low, Spiritiualized ('acoustic mainlines'?), Joanna Newsom (that'll bring in the Observer readers). I have to say, though, there does look to be a bit too much acoustic singer-songwritery going on...some of that stuff's allright, but a lot can be just dreaful hackneyed shit - lyrics about shooting stars and people doing histronic sets at the Kashmir club - "can we have a little bit of Kashmir hush, please!" Still, should be great, and ATP is always a blast. Hopefully the crazy golf and go-carting will actually be on this time.

RIP Alice Coltrane - admittely I haven't really heard her stuff, but y'know, hugely influential and pioneering. Respect and alll that.

Well, All Tomorrow's Parties was a blast, if pretty stressful. Three days at Butlin's holiday camp (see original post below) checking out some pretty weird and wonderful acts.

Sadly, I missed those aforementioned greats Ashtray Navigations, 16 Bitch Pile-Up, and MV/EE + The Bummer Road. Perhaps I was busy playing crazy golf or go-carting. Jackie-O Motherfucker cancelled too, dissapointingly. Perhaps they got lost trying to find the place.

Highlights: David Tibet with Nurse With Wound (first act on of the weekend!) screeching "I'LL SEE YOU ON THE DEAD SIDE OF THE MOON!" (and seriously freaking out the bar staff); Islaja; Charalambides; watching My Cat Is An Alien with my eyes closed, feeling dazed. Iggy & The Stooges (well, obviously). J Mascis' monstrously loud distortion pedal in Dinosaur Jr.'s set. The look on the bouncers' faces during the heavy weirdo double-bill of No-Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand of the Man (no, this isn't Freddie Starr onstage), in which members of said bands blue bubbles at the audience while wearing pink wigs, and ran around with an empty crate of Stella Artois bottles on their head. The same during the Dead C's hour-plus maelstrom of howling feedback and pummeling bass. The looks at the hot-dog stall outside the Reds stage as Prurient played punishing screeching power electronics. Double Leopards. Watching an hour-long live concert of John Fahey on ATP TV. Watching a gig by Hair Police, also on ATP TV, in which they trashed a venue and attacked the audience. The first half of Magic Markers' set. Gang of Four's singer and guitarist tripping over each other by accident onstage. Being involved in a surreal discussion about 9/11 with Blood Stereo's creepy gutteral noises as a soundtrack.

Lowlights: Wooden Wand. Missing most of Richard Young's set (would have been interesting). Not being able to get into the MC5 at all due to bad organisation. The excruciating Catherine Brelliat film on ATP TV on Sunday night. The queue to get in for Sonic Youth (even though they played twice). The toilets, quite a bit of the time. Food, and the price thereof. Drunken idiots in the queues to get into the gigs (not that I was sober, I guess). The idiot who came up to me at the 'jazz skronk' stage (as the Reds stage was nicknamed) during an excruciating (but kinda cool at the same time) set by Corsano/Flaherty/Spencer Yeh and leered into my face drunkenly -with extremely bad breath- and sneered unplesantly. Said person then went on to the next bloke. It turns out that this was part of a 'trangressive', 'daring' art project filmed by some nobs with a camera, to see the reaction of people. And they decided to do it at a safe, mainly left-thinking, mainly white festival like ATP rather than on the streets of Peckham, obviously, because they're just so, like, transgressing the boundaries of what's acceptable. Sitting in the coach on the way back tearing through winding country roads while suffering from a hangover.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the event by those folks at Ecstatic Peace.

Bring on the next couple of ATP's!

Getting well excited at attending All Tomorrow's Parties for the first time. In just over a months time, I will be watching Iggy & The Stooges, Sonic Youth, Gang of Four, Jackie O-Motherfucker, Bardo Pond, Melvins, Deerhoof, Wolf Eyes, Sunburned Hand of the Man, and 50 other bands or so (it must be literally that much - just look how many bands have been confirmed in the line-up). Given that it's Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore curating the festival - ie choosing all the bands - you can expect that most of these bands aren't exactly going to sound like Hard-Fi (or Razorshite). Good, if you're inclined to sometimes like difficult music (which I do - most of the time, anyway). Obviously it'll be a little difficult to see every one of those 50 bands on the bill. In fact, it will actually be impossible, as my understanding is bands will be performing in different rooms simultaneously. Well, obviously the same band won't be performing simulatenously in two rooms, as that would require teleportation. Anyway, Moore sadly won't be playing with To Live And Shave In L.A. (you haven't heard of them? Shame on you), of which he is a sometime member. Still, it should be an experience - especially as it's at Butlins. Yes, Butlins - a veritable British institution on the English coast, the holiday camp that bored families take their whining kids. Watching Ashtray Navigations (whoever the fuck they may be) performing their "psychedelic noise project" and 16 Bitch Pile Up - who probably don't sound like a fey, jangly C86 band judging from their name - or MV/EE + The Bummer Road together with their dog Zuma doing some serious drone action in Butlins is going to be a truly surreal experience...