Sunday, 8 December 2013

ATP - An End of An Era Part 2

OM – good.  Not quite loud enough, I felt, and maybe they work better in a smaller room like, say, the exchange in Bristol.  Also, playing to a festival crowd meant less of a congregation worshipping at their sound.  The final track also did not seem to play out that well, going out with a whimper rather than a bang, which again I imagine would have worked better with a more attentive crowd.

However, it was a good start to my final ATP, having missed Thought Forms due to being sat on the M25 (though being from Bristol means that this is not the worst thing in the world).  Already being slightly drunk means that I have not really taken in the significance of being at AN END OF AN ERA ATP, but turning up later has meant that everyone else has had time to heat up Pontins for me.  Cheers.

I catch some of Eaux, but decide that eating food is more important than watching so electro band with an undermixed female vocalist, however this sets me up for Follakzoid.  Already one of my favourite albums of the year, live they certainly delivered.   Setting a certain droney level of sound over their krautrock inspired sound (it is no surprise they were not programmed too near Michael Rother) my chalet partner kept on saying, well I need to go for Shellac…but…I will stay for one more song… (admittedly each song was at least 10 minutes long).  So engrossing as they were rocking.

We are then left with the two big hitters of Friday (not even the weekend) Shellac and Slint – one cannot help but feel sorry for Civil Civic, as I cannot imagine a single person went to see them rather than the ATP house band that is Shellac.  Wearing dinner jacket t-shirts shellac offer their metallic band of punk rock for one last time.  While they do not play prayer to god (played at their London show apparently) squirrel song is good enough and a track of their “soon to be announced” new LP is equal to their older material.  Bob Westons Q & A session seems oddly truncated – maybe he is too choked up by the occasion?  Steve Albini is quoted in the programme as saying ATP changed music festivals, and I cannot help but agree – ATP offers something that Reading or Glastonbury cannot offer, and that’s more than a bed at the end of the night and two pence slot machines.

People would complain that ATP would end up booking the same bands – Shellac, for example have played an awful lot of times but how often do they play the UK?  At all?  Then you ask, how popular were the more experimental ATP’s – the Mike Patton vs. The Melvins, the Godspeeds?  Not very is the answer, even though I feel they are exactly the tonic for the same fucking bands playing in a field every fucking summer because of the way economics works.  Piffle.  But then if the choice is between Shellac in Pontins or Mumford and Sons in a field in Somerset, I think most of this crowd know where their loyalties lay.
Slint, oh Slint, who now only seem to exist to be wheeled out by ATP to play the hits.  You wonder what the younger generation think about a bunch of guys in their 40’s (including, hey, that guy from Zwan, and Interpol!!) playing music they ripped off Mogwai (though I appreciate folk nowadays have a wider musical knowledge…)  Slint don’t resort to loudness, but a subtle blend of guitar riffs and, er, undermixed male vocalists (the originator of which manages to surprise everyone, including apparently the rest of the band, by stagediving into the crowd, leaving his other band members to stand around for five minutes, until he returned slightly bedraggled to the stage).  Having seem them perform Spiderland through before (at, yes, and ATP don’t look back gig) I could appreciate their set more this time, and they seemed more relaxed, but I don’t feel like I need to see Slint live again, maybe not for another five years anyway…

I don’t stay up to dance, but retire to bed, as an old man I have to know my limits, and still recovering from last ATP means I want to be in good form for tomorrow….

At which point I am woken up at 9 to watch Two Lane Blacktop, a road movie of little dialogue, featuring Dennis Wilson doing little singing.  While you admire the attempt to make a cinema in the local hall, my feet feel more and more like a blocks of ice as I sit there…

Kandodo are first on, Simon Price from Bristolian legends the heads.  No longer bashing out the really loud riffy, or heavy psychadelia, the set offers an hour of spacey ambient pieces, which maybe feel slightly out of place so early in the day, but then again it gets dark between us going in to see the set and coming out, so maybe he has powers greater than we can imagine…his last album found a more rhythmic angle at the end, which despite playing with a live band, they do not really investigate. [I did enjoy it though!]

A winger for sullen victory next – and while Stars of the Lid were one of the best things at the Explosions in the Sky ATP, I was keen to see what they were doing at this event.  However, despite working on stage with some violinist and cellist, their sound did not quite do it for me today.  Being neither classical enough nor droney enough, they fell between the two stalls.  Occasionally I would be drawn into the music, but it would be long before the mood dropped and you found yourself back in colditz (I mean, pontins)…

Hookworms – can they top a incredibly successful year, with their LP being voted drowned in sounds best british album of the year, and a split with Kogumaza, they also had to live up to when I saw them with Mugstar at Supersonic festival in the summer.  While they did not quite live up to that show (I was probably less drunk) they play a stormer of a set.  They play a new song near the end that manages to slow the tempo down without affecting the intensity of the set, and a suitably large crowd seems to enjoy it (I was worried that they might not be that well known – what little do I know?).  Hookworms seem to be exactly the kind of band that ATP should be booking – small independent bands with attitude and passion.  Less indie shmindie bands…

Fennesz offers up a vastly alternative set.  Previously at mike patton vs. melvins atp he was besieged (is there any other way?) by technical difficulties and ended up only playing for half and hour.   Today everything goes swimmingly, with Christians combination of lap-top electronica and guitar making a loud droning racket (which winged failed to produce earlier) and while he no longer quite lays the beach-boys esque pop of endless summer, he offers a nice play to visits.  He still, however, only plays for half and hour, leaving us disappointed and hoping for more…but no.

 I watch about three minutes of 23 Skidoo (which I have been told is an ideal time to judge how good a band is) and decide they sound like a bunch of old men shouting at a bin.  One of the few dire aural experiences I have the weekend.   Feeling that the Pop Group would be the same (I later discover that they were not – ho hum!) I wait for comets on fire – expecting a hail storm of rock and roll to rain upon me…which they do but they play quite a classic rock tinged set.  As where on record they rise above their roots, I don’t feel like they quite blow the roof off, and ben chasney hides to the side, keeping his head down.  Show us guitar chops chasney!!

Loop then!  I don’t know if I am too tired, or too drunk, but Loop do not quite hit the spot despite the fact I was reallyl looking forward to them.  It is good, and if I could go and see the in Bristol on the Monday night I would (I predict exhaustation will take me).  They are still much better than Spacemen 3 mind! 

Sunday – and the last day to be spend at ATP evah!  I spot the character that played Winston from Ghostbusters (Bill Murray must have told him about it).  If you choose to stop going to an event, that’s one thing, but when you have it taken away from you then it hurts that bit more.  So the best way to start the day (after watching a couple of tracks by Jozef van Visem – whose tracks on the lute, rock posturing aside, never really seem to get going, and you sit and wait for a Jack Rose raga to get going…) is to go to a local pub, meet their cat liquorice, and eat a really decent veggie curry.  Hmmmm, the ale gets us going as well…
We feel bad about missing tall firs (though, er, not too bad), but then all is made well by Michael Rother playing the songs of Neu! & Harmonia.  Any band nowadays to be credited as sound “Krautrock” normally means they have a rhythm similar to those seminal Neu! Albums (and nothing of Can, say, or Amon Dull II). While Foals, unfathomanably, have made the 10 ten of some album of the year charts, Rother returns to show us how it is really done.  Klaus Dinger does not make his presence known (though the one song that Rother admits Dinger mainly wrote harshly gets the biggest cheer!) but the replacement drummer, who also appears to be a german in his 60’s, amply fills his roll.  They get the crowd moving more than the more ambient sounds of Harmonia, but apart from one overtly synthy 80’s track, the set is thoroughly enjoyable.  The fact that ATP chose to give them a headline set in London the following week is indicative of the power of the set.

I miss Wolf People (definitely not because I was drinking) but then go to watch The Magic Band.  Touring again after ATP asked them to reform 10 years ago, they offer a bulbous set of beefheart classics.  The only thing you miss is the weirdness, the strangeness that Don Vliet must have bought to the proceedings, as listening to Trout Mask Replica offers a completely different experience as I drift to sleep on the Monday afterwards.  However they interlocking musicians shine during the set, and you can understand why the Captain took them on board.

Braid offer a surprising set of almost ambient drum and bass, however this is just filling time, whiling away the hours, until the main acts of tonight…GOAT and MOGWAI (the first and holy original ATP curators (pretending that the Belle and Sebastian managed Bowlie Weekender never happended…)
Goat, being the band de jour, have much to live up to.  I saw them last year at Supersonic where they were hampered by appalling sound on the main stage, where their album World Music pushed to the front of your mind via the crispness and brightness of their sound, and being loud without being overcompressed.  Tonight however they are victorious.  So good that they make we want to go and buy their live album despite the fact they have only released on LP and two singles… A huge crowd are here to see them (again, unlucky draw for Ty Segall who is on downstairs at the same time)and get their rocks off to a masked band who as far as we can tell is having as much fun as we are.  They take elements of many different genres and smoosh them together with some vodoo magic.

Finally, triumphantly, Mogwai come on.  They play a stormer of a set, peppered with new songs that, seemingly like all Mogwai songs, fit swimmingly in with their old classics.  Some people feel like they have not recorded a good album in 10 years.  Phooey to them I say, see them live and still tell me that…the band go off stage, but no one believes that they will not come back on for an encore, which they duly do.  At 12.50 they finish with Mogwai fear Satan, and ATP finishes.  Other members of the public wander off as a stand, dazed, listening to Teenage Riot blaring out PA.  I feel slightly at a loss, I have been to ATP 15 odd times in the last 7 years, and wonder how many bands I would not have seen if it hand been for this gem of a festival, how differently my life would have panned out…
I walk past Barry Hogan as he plays out the festival with a DJ set, but all I can think of is passing out in bed, and being out of the chalet before that 10.00 in the morning deadline…