Jeff Mangum's ATP Festival 2012

PART TWO - SATURDAY


A Hawk and a Hacksaw were playing a live soundtrack to Armenian director Sergei Parajanov’s wonderful debut film from 1964, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. It’s a poetic, dreamlike take on Georgian folk tales, full of expressionistic colour and primal emotion, and shot in a constantly inventive style. It’s also a film with its own music, dialogue and sound, and so perhaps an odd choice for accompaniment. It’s more common, and makes better sense, for silent movies to be revived with alternative live soundtracks performances. The images of Parajanov’s film are strong enough to float free of the anchor of narrative logic, however. Which was a good thing in this context, since it was very difficult to gain a vantage point from which subtitles were visible. Indeed, it was very difficult to find a vantage point from which much of the screen in general was visible, hung as it was at the back of the low stage, with pillars or the stacks of the mixing desks blocking most angles of vision. The music was good, A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s usual blend of Eastern European folk styles filtered through New Mexican ears and played on accordions, fiddles and brass instruments. But I soon tired of craning over people’s necks to glimpse even a tiny fraction of the unfolding film, and people were undoubtedly tiring of me stumbling into their seated forms in the pitch darkness on the periphery of the room, so I left for the bright sunshine outside. The soundtrack is to be released in the near future, and I’ll listen to it and watch the film in more comfortable surroundings then.

Bore conduction

Later in the afternoon, the massed forces of The Boredoms took up their assigned positions on the Centre Stage in preparation for their latest musical and theatrical spectacular. The extended Boredoms family were visible around the site in various groupings throughout the weekend, and I’d seen them along the seafront the previous day, Yamatsuke Eye, Yoshimi P-We and others messing about on the machines outside the arcade and sitting for photo’s on the colourful children’s rides. They somehow seemed to fit in perfectly with the whole surreal atmosphere of the out of season and somewhat shabby English seaside town. The configuration for this performance took the shape of a double circle. In the inner ring were six drummers, including core Bores Yoshimi and Yojiro Tatekawa, who looked neat and mild-mannered, his smart casual clothing topped with a crisp new baseball cap – the Dave Mattacks of the group, his calmness offsetting Yamatsuke Eye’s more wild-eyed, hairy demeanour. Both Tatekawa and Yoshimi sat self-effacingly in the curve of the circle arcing across the stage front, facing inwards and therefore with their backs to the audience. In a concentric, containing outer ring were 10 seated guitarists, amps rising behind them like a stacked circle of technological megaliths within which the ritual would take place. A further guitarist stood beside these ten, and the circle was completed by Yamatsuke’s grafted 12 (or so) necked guitar sculpture, laddered fretboards ranked in rows of three and connected to a central megabody; Mahavishnu10. Chief Bore Eye stood inside the magic circles and conducted the unwieldy ensemble with movement of his body and loud, exclamatory vocalisations. His conduction approached the condition of dance, in contrast to the curtly imperious gestures with which Frank Zappa used to cue his band. He slowly crouched down, and the volume fell, then rose up and lifted his arms in invocation, and the surrounding sound built to a correspondingly ecstatic crescendo. The piece started with splashing cymbal taps and atonally plucked, arrhythmic guitar notes, clearly spaced apart – the pointillistic sounds of the first drops of a rain shower falling onto the surface of a lake or river. The singular cymbal splashes and guitar notes gradually coalesced into a shimmering veil of percussive rain and co-ordinated chordal thrum, swelling and dying as Eye stretched upwards and crouched down.

Superprog guitar sculpture

All this acted as a prelude to the main body of the piece, which began on Eye’s cue, the drummers launching into a thunderous, propulsive and highly disciplined rhythmic torrent. The guitars produced chordal clouds which hung in the air above, sometimes echoing back and forth in antiphonal response to Eye’s gestures. An initial climax was reached when he took up his staff (a section of curtain pole, by the looks of it) and struck massive chordal clusters from his guitar sculpture, three pre-tuned necks at a time. I can’t imagine a denser sound than that produced at these moments. It was a fairly lengthy performance of one and a half hours, and like all rituals, there were periods of lesser intensity, a marking of time building up to the moments of transcendence. But when they broke through, they were truly stratospheric. The music was unbroken but multi-sectioned, with each part evidently fully and thoroughly worked out (sounds of rehearsals could be heard as we came in on Friday, and on Saturday morning). Eye introduced a playful, childlike electronic arpeggio, to which he happily capered, and he and Yoshimi enjoyed a passage of call and response vocalisation, throwing words and sounds between each other across the circle. He also blew a whistle for a while, partly as a means of cuing the ensemble, and partly to create a startlingly loud blast of high-pitched noise. Its piercing, amplified shriek was almost unbearably shrill, leading someone to my side to stick his fingers in his ears. Luckily, having previously experienced a Boredoms performance (at Matt Groening’s ATP in 2010), I knew to wear earplugs if I wanted to hear anything else during the weekend. The whole thing was brought to a final climax with the ultra heavy riff which they’d used for their more drum-based shows at the 2010 ATP, with Eye leaping in the air to strike the guitar necks with greater force. Then the circle was completed, everything returned to the calm of the opening section, the thunderstorm dying down to individual raindrops once more. Once the last drop had fallen, a brief silence was observed before wild cheering and applause. Everyone should experience a Boredoms ritual at least once in their lives. There’s nothing else quite like it.

I caught the end of The Apple’s In Stereo’s set later on the Centre Stage, a cheerful piece of singalong pop psych, in which the Elephant 6 mob were once more invited onto the stage, along with anyone from the audience who wanted to join in. The orange-jacketed security, who were friendly, relaxed and helpful throughout the festival, were clearly not inclined to allow that to happen, so any freeform, anarchistic blurring of the divide between artist and audience remained merely notional. Then it was time to wait for Joanna Newsom to appear. This was to be the second of her two sets over the weekend, the first having clashed with Young Marble Giants. Thankfully, this repeat performance meant that I didn’t have to miss them, although apparently the songs which Newsom sang did vary over the two evenings. Thankfully there was no repeat of the technical difficulties which preceded her show at Matt Groening’s 2010 ATP, which forced people to wait for some time outside the Central Stage entrance in a dispiritingly lengthy queue. That performance saw her backed by the chamber group from the Have One On Me LP, whereas here she played solo. This left her to fill out the arrangements from Ys and Have One On Me on harp and piano alone, a considerably more involved task requiring great concentration. She didn’t shy from choosing challenging pieces, too. At one point, in between songs, she took a deep breath and commented that she really was going for it, and that maybe she should loosen up a little. She didn’t however, continuing at an equal pitch of intensity. Her voice has grown in strength since her vocal problems of a few years ago, and her wordless chorusing towards the end of Have One On Me, shared with backing singers on the record and in previous performances, was confident and almost approached a bel canto classical style. The high notes on Sadie, from the first LP Milk Eyed Mender, were also clearer now, having lost the shrill, slightly screeching quality they possessed on that record. In this sense, her progress echoes that of Kate Bush, whose vocals also grew in assurance and range (although in both cases, the early, more untutored style had considerable charm). There was a great deal of expressivity in the voice, too, with the emotions of the songs powerfully conveyed. This came through particularly in Monkey and Bear from the Ys LP, in a baroque, bardic storytelling fashion, Newsom really bringing the anthropomorphised characters to life. She caught the growth of monkey’s sharp, controlling nature, his materialistic drive which increasingly pushes bear, the romantic dreamer away, and thus brought the song’s symbolic heart to the surface and made me see it in a new light.

Indeed, her performance revealed other aspects of familiar songs to me, or brought a new clarity to their underlying themes. I noticed the recurrence of bears as a sort of emblematic (and the symbolic use of wild animals in general). There was the romantic, mystical half of the Monkey and Bear relationship, of course; The equation of bears with nobility, goodness and strength in Esme (‘brave as a bear with a heart rare and true’); and with the fear of wildness in the line ‘I took a blind shot across the creek at the black bear’ in Soft As Chalk. The concern with ‘long time’ and the sense of personal identity and place within its geological and evolutionary perspectives also came through in Soft as Chalk and Sawdust and Diamonds. Her playing was supremely accomplished throughout, with the lack of supporting musicians allowing her to display the full range of shimmering harp glissandos and rippling arpeggios, emphatically plucked or tenderly brushed chords. Her piano playing showed a light and deft touch too, with the sprightly instrumental melody which emerges in the course of Soft As Chalk dancing with a breezy, jazz-inflected bounce worthy of Oscar Peterson. She played songs from all three of her albums: Sadie and Bridges and Balloons from Milk Eyed Mender (and, I see from a Youtube video, Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie the previous evening, too); the epics Monkey and Bear and Sawdust and Diamonds from Ys, both very challenging to perform in this solo context; and Have One On Me, Jackrabbits, Soft As Chalk and Esme from Have One On Me, the latter almost unbearably tender and touching. A wonderful, wholly committed performance, and undoubtedly one of the highlights of the weekend for me.

Next up was another of my favourites, the masters of slow burning quietude from Duluth, Low. They had a perfectly balanced, symmetrical stage set up, all standing to the fore in a line. Mimi Sparhawk was at the centre behind her simple snare, trap and cymbals drum set up, which she plays standing in the Mo Tucker tradition. To her right stood Alan Sparhawk, guitarist and partner, and to her left bassist Steve Garrington. Garrington, a relatively new addition to the trio, having joined for the 2007 LP Drums and Guns, also adds a new dimension to the Low sound, retreating from the front row to sit behind the piano on several numbers. Alan greeted the audience in a relaxed manner, asking them if they were having a good time before dedicating the first song to the people of Syria. It was Nothing But Heart from the recent C’mon LP, and in the context of the dedication, its repeat to fade chorus of the song’s title became a hollow refrain, the plea of a tyrant. This false leader reveals himself in the empty promise of the opening lines: ‘I would be your king/If you want to be free’. Sparhawk immediately dedicated the next song to Syria, too, insisting that he was serious, and that ‘we’ve got to stop killing each other’. Low have always possessed a strong sense of moral purpose, without ever descending into preaching or strutting pomp. This partly derives from the Sparhawks’ religious beliefs, and partly from the asceticism and purity of approach of the punk and hardcore which inspired them. This seriousness is reflected both in the lyrics and in the stripped back sound. It’s difficult to imagine Low, for all the shifts in dynamics over the years, existing as anything other than a trio, with the Sparhawks’ delicate harmonies and simple guitar and drum accompaniments at its heart. Their seriousness can be offputting to some. I heard one party dude taking the piss out of the Syrian statements on the way out. When Alan told us that we were all angels after one particular song, someone behind me demurred, saying ‘we’re no angels’ (speak for yourself, mate). Such proclamations of holiness certainly rub against the cherished cliché of rock as the rebellious devil’s music. Their sincerity is never in doubt, however, and is inspiring and affecting for others.

Low - perfect symmetry

The lyrics often have an allusive quality, showing a deliberate disavowal of directly or easily comprehensible meaning. They also sometimes play with troubling or provocative perspectives, as with the terrorist’s prayer Murderer, from the Drums and Guns LP, played here. This attempts to get into the mindset of a religious extremist (the religion is not revealed) wishing to become a ‘fool for god’ and carry out whatever murderous tasks he might require. Alan Sparhawk can, at different times, be equally compassionate and admonitory. He ranges from the withering contempt of his judgement, in Witches, that ‘all you guys out there trying to be like Al Green, you’re all weak’, to the tender reassurances whispered on Nightingale. Both of these songs come from the excellent C’mon LP, much of which they played here, including Try To Sleep (without the stardust sprinkle of the celeste line, alas, but still gorgeous), You See Everything and Especially Me. Mimi provided the harmonies which shimmered above Alan’s vocals on most songs, but took lead on a couple. Her singing (rather than harmonising) voice has an unforced, natural quality which imbues the songs which she carries with a touching directness. Their quavering fragility is bolstered with quiet conviction. Quietness has always been a touchstone of the Low sound, and several of the songs here were played pianissimo, with Mimi lightly brushing cymbal and drumhead and Alan stroking guitar chords with his thumb – playing as if the baby was asleep upstairs. Unfortunately, the location of the Reds stage directly below meant that these intimate songs had the unwanted, Charles Ivesian addition of colliding polyrhythmic bass lines pounding through the floor, subtlety and nuance losing out to dumb heaviosity (although I don’t mean to impugn Blanck Mass, from whom these intrusive sounds originated – more on them in a sec). This sound bleeding didn’t detract unduly from the performance, however. A little mental filtering served to block it out. Perhaps more sensitive programming in the future might eliminate the problem, however. It was significant that by Sunday evening, Jeff Mangum was insisting that Group Doueh, due to go on at the same time as him in Reds, delay the start of their performance until he was finished.

Low - Sweet, sweet sunflower

Alan also turned up the volume for some songs, playing slow, expressively distorted guitar, vaguely reminiscent at times of the Neil Young of Cortez the Killer, and demonstrating what a fine player he is in his own unshowy way (although he has in fact showcased his guitar playing on a solo instrumental record, Solo Guitar). A couple of old songs were dusted off and greeted with great enthusiasm; the fierce and vaguely threatening Monkey (‘tonight you will be mine/tonight the monkey dies’) from the Trust LP, and Sunflower from Things We Lost In The Fire. It only dawned on me as I was listening to it here that the lyrics which I had previously half understood as a blend of mourning and hope might actually be lateral Christian allegory, a song of resurrection. As with Joanna Newsom, live performances of songs can bring new perspectives on familiar songs, new revelations of previously occluded meanings. Alan Sparhawk, the band’s stage spokesman, maintained a relaxed and friendly rapport with the audience throughout, and at one point invited anyone who wanted to join him for a run to meet outside the entrance to Butlins the next day at one o’clock. He was as good as his word (we happened to be heading out to town at that time) and set off with a ragged trail of spindly indie kids in tow. He is clearly a very fit man, so how long they managed to keep up with him, I don’t know. A great performance though, full of conviction and slow-burning fire.

Low - Alan Sparhawk

Heading downstairs to the Reds venue, I joined Mrs W for the latter half of the Blanck Mass set, some of which I had inadvertently experienced in filtered form. This is the solo electronica project of Benjamin Power, one half of Bristolian duo Fuck Buttons. His record was one of my favourites from last year, filled with all-engulfing ambient pieces which made for an invigorating aural wallow. Mrs W informed me that the start of the set more closely resembled the music on the album, albeit at vastly greater volumes than any at which we’d listened to it. By the time I arrived, however, it had morphed into far more abrasive sonic forms, with looped layers steadily accumulating, and deep, throbbing bass lines pulsing through the room. Swirling visuals revolved in swift, slightly dizzying orbits on the screen behind Power, who stood attentively at his laptop throughout. It still amazes me what volumes and ranges of sound can emerge from such a small and unprepossessing object. I could feel the vibrations from where I was sitting on the floor pass through the bridge to the tip of my nose, which felt tingly – a slightly disconcerting physical experience which suggested that some fairly specific wavelengths and frequencies were being brought into play. By the end, the rippling loops, thumping bass and regular drum beats meant that Blanck Mass had essentially been absorbed back into the body of the Fuck Buttons from which it had been spawned.

Dashing across the central ‘tent’ to the Crazy Horse bar, I caught the tail end of Mount Eerie’s set. In this instance, Mount Eerie was Phil Elverum playing solo, his fragile, wavering voice accompanied only by chords plucked from his small acoustic guitar. This context suited songs which were suggestive of a lonely soul in the wilderness, real or figurative (or both). There was no hint of the crashing, distorted metallic guitars which sometimes tear into his songs on the records. Elverum had to make a sudden mental adjustment some way through his performance, shyly admitting that he’d run out of material, having become used to the 30 minute duration of his support slot on the current Earth tour. A request from the audience for Voice In Headphones from the Lost Wisdom LP was gratefully received, and he rounded off his set with this haunting and beautiful song.

Earth - Dylan Carson

I returned to the Reds stage to see Earth themselves, cover stars of last month’s Wire magazine. Frontman and guitarist Dylan Carson was quietly spoken and hesitant, and played for significant lengths of time facing drummer Adrienne Davies, his back to the audience. Not that this was music for demonstrative gestures, anyway. It was stately and slowly worked out, and played at a medium volume which demanded active listening. This led to a call to turn it up, suggesting that this malcontent hadn’t been paying attention to Earth’s recent musical development, and was still hoping for the kind of crushing drone metal which they’d pioneered over a decade ago (and which Jim Jarmusch had used to such effect on the soundtrack to his film The Limits of Control). The band features Lori Goldston playing cello, hardly an instrument which would find a meaningful voice within the overwhelming volumes of a metallic onslaught, no matter how much it was transformed by leftfield impulses. The sober dress code, with Carlson in neat shirt, buttoned waistcoat and striped tie, was a further signal that this was far from heads down power chord music. Conscious clarity rather than distorted blur through overdriven volume was now the aim. It was fascinating to watch Adrienne Davies providing the gelid, creeping sloth rhythms which drove the music. Her arms raised the sticks and then hung in the air for a suspended moment before deliberately bringing them down to strike the beat. It was like watching the dreamlike movements of actors in a Japanese Noh drama, time slowed down to serve a ritualistic observance of a state beyond everyday experience. Davies was akin to a slomo version of Yamatsuke Eye, the figure at the centre of the Boredom’s roiling whirwind. Earth’s progress was more like a viscous lava flow, gradually burning a course through mountain rock. Like Eye, Davies seemed to be conducting the tempo of the music, drumsticks held up as twinned batons. No wonder, then, that it was to her that Carlson looked in the early stages of the set to get the measure of the music. The intensity picked up towards the end, if not in volume, suggesting that this is a music which needs to take its time to find resolution, and is not content to settle into easy grooves. It was absorbing to listen to and watch the concentrated quest throughout, however.

Adrienne Davies conducting Earth

Earth play with occult imagery and Blakean demonologies in their titles and covers, and Carlson talked of his fascination with English folklore and local legends in his Wire interview. This gives them something in common with the electronica duo Demdike Stare. They come from near Manchester, and have named themselves after a local seventeenth century Pendle witch (or rather someone who was accused of witchcraft), Elizabeth Southerns, known as Demdike. Miles Whittaker said of his musical partner Sean Canty, in a Wire Jukebox feature in the June 2011 edition, ‘he wanted to write a soundtrack to a horror movie that didn’t exist’. The visuals projected behind them went some way towards hinting at the movie he might have had in mind. A drone accumulated into a swarming cloud of buzzing, abrasive sound, suggesting the ominous approach of some dark, scouring force. On the screen, an old man walked across a blasted plain, billowing stormclouds massing behind him and a strong wind blowing his white hair about his face. A cowled figure approached from the other horizon. As it neared, its hood blowed back to reveal a young girl, her face a mask of lichenous scabs through which eyes blazed with malevolent triumph. And that was as much as we saw, a tantalising prelude to a film which we’ll never see. There were other sequences, some with a point of view camera prowling through deserted institutional corridors, others focussing on women’s faces filled with romantic tristesse which could almost have been taken from some forgotten Antonioni movie. The music began to develop clattering, echoing beats suggestive of empty, underground spaces. The visuals began repeating themselves, what was initially startling soon becoming overfamiliar, and they were finally overlaid by the mystic sigil Panasonic, after which no more was seen. The performance was scheduled to go on for an hour and a half, but had started late, and in the end wound down before an hour had passed. I assumed the extended running time meant they would be replicating the visual show to be performed at the Union Chapel in London on 31st March. Perhaps the breakdown of the projector led to a premature end, or maybe they were honest enough to admit that they’d run out of ideas. It was good while it lasted, but the music did seem to have got stuck into a loop which was failing to fruitfully develop. Enough was enough. And that was what we decided for the night, too. I’d have loved to have seen Oneohtrix Point Never, whose electronic music I like a great deal, but he wasn’t due on for another hour, and I no longer have any real desire to stay up until past three in the morning. This would have been endurance rather than enjoyment. There were more delights to come the next day, including some legendary titans of free jazz, so it was back to the chalet.

Matt Groening's ATP Festival

The first of this year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals at Butlins in Minehead was something of a departure in that it wasn’t curated by a band or musician, but by Matt Groening, the creator of the Simpsons and Futurama. This was his second bite at the cherry, following on from his successful stewardship of the 2003 ATP Pacific festival at Long Beach, California. Groening confesses to knowing nothing about Butlins or Minehead, which is more than just an ocean and a continent away from Long Beach, and also expresses his puzzlement over what exactly a chip butty is. Hopefully that curiosity has now been satisfied. One of the artists which he chose, Joanna Newsom, pointed out during her set that it was particularly appropriate for her to be playing at this festival since people had been saying for years that she sounded like Lisa Simpson. The line-up Matt Groening chose definitely veered more towards what might have been Lisa’s choices, rather than Bart’s. There was a strong showing for female artists and a much broader musical spectrum than has sometimes been the case. This perhaps makes a good argument for more non-musicians to be invited to be curators (I know Jim Jarmusch is curating one day of the ATP New York festival) since they’re not bound to a particular musical genre and beholden to fellow artists who operate in a similar area. Having said which, of the two May festivals, it was the one curated by Pavement for which there was a mad scramble, and which was on its way to selling out before a single further act had been announced. The rather dispiriting message seems to be that there is always more demand for the familiar and well-worn than for a more surprising, offbeat and eclectic mix. People are happier with what they already know, with an experience which will offer exactly what’s expected. To an extent, of course, an act has to be well-established to be a curator. They have to have been around the block a bit, to have built up connections and left a trail of influence in their wake. The case of the Pavement sell-out, however, seems to suggest that it is the name of the curating band as much as the acts which they choose which attracts people’s attention. At the moment, the God Speed You Black Emperor ATP in December is fast on its way to selling out too. Hopefully the festival won’t drift entirely into becoming an indie identikit festival, and will persist with offering the kind of line up which Groening himself calls ‘quite adventurous’. The slightly reduced attendance did alleviate some of the problems which had dogged previous occasions, however. The concerts were more evenly spaced, programmed one after the other on the three available stages, thus avoiding agonizing clashes. And there was less of a sweaty, beer-soaked crush in the two inside venues. On the whole, it was altogether more civilised; I only got showered with beer once (well, it’s good for the hair anyway, apparently).

The first act on Friday was James Blackshaw, who took to the Centre Stage in unassuming fashion with his twelve string guitar. He produced scintillant showers of arpeggiated notes in extended pieces which swirled around in perpetual motion. It was just James with his guitar on this occasion. The titles of Blackshaw’s LPs and pieces tend to have titles which highlight their numinous qualities, sometimes referencing particular religious works, such as The Cloud of Unknowing. He professes to be uninterested in religion himself, although perhaps now that he’s entered the orbit of David Tibet and Current 93, his opinion might be swayed. There were none of the extra colours provided by celeste, harmonium and the like which are to be found on his records; and, alas, there was no Lavinia Blackwell to vocalise as she did on the Steve Reich-like piece Cross from the recent Hermann Hesse-referencing LP The Glass Bead Game. But the guitar alone was enough. Blackshaw’s lack of stage patter meant that lengthy retuning interludes were, as he conceded, talk amongst yourselves moments, but this didn’t matter in the slightest. Each new open tuning opened a new book. Pieces tended to start with slow, exploratory strums, sounding out each new possible chord. There was a slight problem with the sound, which emphasised the bass strings over the treble, thus losing some of the finer detailed filigree overlaying the hypnotically repetitive ground. Live engineers tend, by default, to ramp up the power to emphasize heaviosity, but this seems rather pointless when dealing with an acoustic guitar. It was a beautiful start, nonetheless.

I’d spotted James Cargill and Trish Keenan of Broadcast wandering along the seafront as we approached the gateway (or should I say checkpoint) into Butlins, and, as my favourite band, they were one of the three acts which I was anticipating most eagerly over the weekend. They spent a long and vexatious time setting up their projections from a recalcitrant laptop (a common enough experience) which seemed to leave very little opportunity for sound checking. For a set which relies a good deal on vocal improvisation and subsequent manipulation, Trish’s inability to hear herself in the monitor was obviously a serious impediment, and combined with the squeals of feedback emanating from her microphone whenever she made any exaggerated movement, she was left in a state of agitated insecurity, her technology no longer under her control. She was visibly frustrated, adrift on washes of engulfing sound, which she rode out to the best of her ability. She could be seen after the performance having a few demonstrative words with the sound engineer. The set basically followed the pattern of recent shows, with the first half’s soundtrack to a slightly truncated version of Julian House’s Winter Sun Wavelengths film having a more aggressively pulsating menace than when I heard it in Cardiff towards the end of last year. It was a combination of sound and visuals which drove the senses towards a state of derangement and promised blood sacrifice and the summoning of forces from the beyond. The song section which followed found sound problems coming to the fore, and were uncharacteristically tentative as a result. There were still moments of magic, with Trish’s white dress absorbing the projected kaleidoscope of colours to become a genuinely psychedelic garment when she moved centre stage during …….But the spell, and the dance, were broken when the microphone started squealing with feedback again. The lovely synth lines which James wove into the interludes between verses in this song in previous shows also seemed to be lost in the mix. This was a great shame, particularly since artists later in the festival seemed to have no compunction in taking their own sweet time in setting up and soundchecking, even if this meant that the schedule ran significantly late. Broadcast, it seems, paid the price for their punctiliousness. They did rally for the pounding, one chord Mongolian lute (I’m guessing here) driven Kosmische drone of the final song, whose anti-materialist mantra ‘what you want is not what you need’ took on an extra admonitory tone with the more primitive sound to which they’d been reduced.

Cold Cave lived up to their name, producing icy, echoing synth pop in the mould of early Human League or Cabaret Voltaire, transforming a corner of their native Manhattan into a place that’s forever Sheffield in the late 70s. Songs like The Laurels of Erotomania and Theme from Tomorrowland suggest a similar fascination for the alienated futurescapes of JG Ballard. The band dressed in black, remained static throughout, and played in darkness, save for the cold blue lights surrounding the stage proscenium. I suspect there may have been a mild element of tongue in cheek, but I could be wrong. The songs showed a gift for melody, all in the minor key, and it was all set to a highly danceable metronymic machine beat, surprisingly produced by an actual drummer. Of all Matt Groening’s characters, this would have been Futurama robot Bender’s choice.

Iggy and the Stooges would definitely have been Bart’s choice. I’m not a fan of Iggy Pop, so the prospect of him performing Raw Power didn’t excite me in the way I know it did others (Jarvis Cocker gave his London show a resoundingly good review on his Sunday show on radio 6). I caught part of his evening show more out of curiosity than anything. We wandered in to the main stage (set up beneath the Butlins ‘big tent’ which dominates the skyline on this side of Minehead) as he reached the tail end (sorry) of Now I Wanna Be Your Dog. It was a cold weekend, with a stiff breeze blowing up the Bristol Channel, but this didn’t deter Iggy from divesting himself of his shirt. I guess this is just what people expect of him these days, and he’s trooper enough to give the fans exactly what they want. Like many other rock heritage acts, he’s long since given up on progressing into new territory (on stage, anyway) and is content to milk fond memories. And he doesn’t do it by halves, it has to be said. He also adds an element of unpredictability and potential chaos by inviting members of the audience on stage and throwing the mic into the crowd for comments. Fun House was enjoyable, with its funk and free jazz sax skronk. But the tenor of the show seemed to be set by the young female saleswomen who accosted passersby and tried to flog them expensive mp3 memory sticks of a previous concert from the tour.


Toumani Diabate was the first of the 3 African acts of the weekend, and Matt Groening can be congratulated for providing a truly continent spanning line-up, with acts from Africa, Europe, North and South America and Asia (well, 3 from Japan). No Australasians, but you can’t have everything. Toumani sat centre stage with his kora, but this was really a full on African dance band, a 9 piece outfit which included a mix of traditional and rock instrumentation, with effects driven guitar solos giving way to displays of virtuosity on the balafon, the African equivalent (and probably precursor) of the marimba. Another fellow played a tiny ukulele-like instrument, out of which he managed to squeeze a couple of plucky solos. Indeed, the solo space given to all of the musicians gave this something of the feel of a jazz gig.

I retreated to the cinema for a screening of one of my favourite films, If…, and watched until the scene in which Christine Noonan, looking not dissimilar to Trish Keenan from Broadcast, takes a stunt ride with the boys on their stolen motorbike. Then it was off to receive a sonic pummelling from the Liars. Singer and front man Angus Andrew seemed to be competing with Iggy Pop in terms of exhibitionism, leaping manically and treating the crowd to the occasional Jagger-like shake of the ass. This actually served to lighten the generally oppressive and paranoia-soaked tenor of the music, which gives Radiohead a run for their money in depicting the modern world as a locus of fear and loathing. Indeed, last time they were due to play an ATP festival in Minehead, they pulled out after having been selected to support Radiohead on tour. The material was mainly from the recent LP Sisterworld, with tracks like Scissor and Scarecrows on a Killer Slant getting the late night crowd heaving. There was an outing for There’s Always Room on the Broom from their Walpurgisnacht-themed LP They Were Wrong So We Drowned (The Liars have great song and album titles), which is maybe as near as they’ve come to a ‘hit’. The video for Scissor is great, by the way. Call me an old fart (oh, you already did) but after a while I decided it was getting a bit late for this kind of art punk barrage, good as it was, so I called it a night.


On the Saturday, after breakfasting on toast with whortleberry jam at the Apple Tree tea rooms, dining on a fine pizza at Pinocchio’s and sinking a couple of pints of Exmoor ale at the Queen’s Head, it was time for another of the three acts which I was looking forward to with particularly eager anticipation. This was The Boredoms, who I’d long wanted to see and hear (particularly after seeing the photo of the gravity defying leap which Yamatsuke Eye performs in the inner sleeve of the Vision Creation Newsun CD). They were continuing their recent tendency towards tribalistic percussion based music by staging a performance which went by the name of Boadrum. This was a circle (or horseshoe) of eight drummers, with Boredoms front man Yamatsuke Eye at the centre. The other members of the boa drum snake were fellow Boredoms Yoshimi P-We and Yojiro Tatekawa, Hisham Bharoocha of Soft Circle, Zach Hill, Butchy Fuego from Pit er Pat, Kid Millions from Oneida, Jeremy Hyman from Ponytail (also performing at the festival) and Shinji Masuko from DMBQ. The whole set up was backed by the three-walled rack of Eye’s incredible 14 necked guitar, a deliberately absurd instrument which outdoes the twin-necked efforts of 70s prog and jazz rock guitarists such as Steve Howe and John McGlaughlin by several degrees. This was as much a musical sculpture in the style of Harry Partch as it was an instrument, although it served that purpose too. It was struck percussively by Eye with a couple of long, colourful sticks, the guitar becoming a kind of bell, chiming pre-tuned chords at climactic moments during the piece. Early on, one of the drummers was carried in on a moveable platform, a kind of palanquin, from the back of the hall by some 6 or 7 bearers, and brought towards the stage, playing all the while. On this first of two shows, it was Yojiro Tatekawa who had the honour of this regal progression, which temporarily halted in the midst of the audience from where he beat the bejesus out of his drum kit in a call and response duet with the musicians on stage, before being carried forward to join them. The whole performance was orchestrated with wild yet controlled energy by Eye, whose yells and vocalisations served both as rhythmic markers, modulating the ebb and flow of the waves of percussion, and as a human face for the music. He also provided electronic washes of sound, manipulations and white noise. It was an astonishing experience and left me half deaf for the rest of the day, my eardrums evidently having pounded in sympathetic resonance. A Japanese lady danced with her small child just in front of us, occasionally pausing to play ball, and propped her on the balustrade beside where we were sitting for a while. A Bore-baby, perhaps?

After briefly sampling Danielson, with his family band dressed in home-made nurse’s uniforms, and deciding it was interesting but not really my cup of tea, the next act was Deerhunter, who cleaved more closely to the kind of indie guitar fare which has come increasingly to characterise ATP festivals (and which would certainly dominate the next weekend’s Pavement festival). They produced some great reverb-drenched songs, sending out billows of sound which expanded to fill the spaces enclosed by the big Butlins tent with a nebulous and dreamy haze. The haziness was perhaps more pronounced given that singer Bradford Cox pronounced himself to be feeling a bit poorly. He also revealed some of his own personal favourites by thanking Matt Groening for giving him the chance to see The Residents and The Raincoats. Next on the Central Stage, Konono No.1 brought their Congolese sounds to Somerset, complete with their own home made amplification and loudspeakers on poles. These produced a built in distortion which the gave the thumb pianos which are at the centre of their music a tone which paradoxically feels both very modern and like its covered with a slight patina of rust. It’s a grainy sound which contemporary electronic musicians might strive to produce using the latest digital equipment, but which is here created through junkyard experimentation. They got the room moving with a large band, which augmented the three thumb pianos with a female singer (who also accented the rhythm on timbales), a guitarist and a couple of percussionists, one of whom enthusiastically punctuated the proceeding from time to time with blasts on his playground whistle, as if alerting us to pay attention to the beat. It was the kind of music you could imagine playing well on into the Kinshasa night.

Back on the main stage, She and Him, who consisted of alt-country singer M.Ward and sometime (most of the time, really) Hollywood actress Zooey Deschanel, along with band and backing singers, provided bright, sunny pop redolent of a pre-rock (pre-lapsarian?) era of girl groups and Brill Building songwriters in the Carole King mould. It was effervescent and instantly catchy, and would have been the perfect prelude to a walk out into the sunshine and onto the beach. The prevailing meteorological conditions were against such a happy congruence, but the music created a little sunshine in our hearts.



Back on the Centre Stage, The Residents were in the midst of a soundcheck, maintaining their anonymity and sense of mystery even during the banal routines of the set up. They had rather grumpily pointed out on their website that their ATP performance would be a truncated version of their current show, but that as it was a festival audience, they probably wouldn’t care anyway. The show in question featured the band members, as always, in disguise, with the two instrumentalists perched at either side of the stage dressed in sequined ruby coats, faces covered with black masks draped with limp strands of hair, pairs of what looked like night-vision goggles in place of eyes, the whole ensemble suggesting an alien vaudeville on a toxic planet. The Residents are known for their strangeness, both musically and in terms of their appearance. If one of Matt Groening’s characters were to choose them, it would have to be Doctor Zoidberg from Futurama. It would all make perfect sense to him, and he’d break into a scuttling dance. At centre stage was the singer, standing amidst a set which represented his front room, with hearth, radio and sofa, to which he occasionally retired. He was our storyteller, an old, beak-nosed man in loose, striped dressing gown, polka-dot shorts and a pendulous, over-sized tie. He looked like an aged Mr Punch gone to seed, unsavoury, irascible and more than a little unhinged. The tales he told were ghost stories and twisted reminiscences. Two old cowboy songs were reconfigured to turn the familiar old West into a deserted, spectral landscape, guitar chords echoing in the emptiness before trailing off with an eerie dying fall. They were crying out to have accompanying films made by David Lynch. The old man essayed some bow-legged Rumpelstiltskin dance moves, with back bent and arms splaying out to the sides, tie swinging in time to the beat like the axe in The Pit and the Pendulum. It was a prehensile sway which gave the old geezer a demented, goblin-like air. We gained an insight into his disturbed inner life and memories of the past, his voice occasionally pitch-shifted into a disturbingly distorted childlike whine. This may have given an idea as to why he was alone in his room, raving about invisible soul stealers (to an invisible audience?) He told us of the unknown (and perhaps imaginary) sister, of an ill-advised childhood prank which left him motherless in a horrific fashion, and of the sinister mirror people, who he fretted about throughout. They wait patiently, plotting to steal your identity (your soul, if you will), and are occasionally glimpsed looking greedily out of the mirror, in the periphery of vision. Having warned the first few rows of the audience that they might be at risk should these phantoms become manifest, they finally burst through in an explosive burst of noise and light. The Residents show was an utterly absorbing spectacle, sometimes amusing, sometimes unnerving, and yes, I would’ve liked to have seen it in its entirety. I would have had to travel to mainland Europe to do so, however. Oh, and the mirror people really are out to get you now, you know.

On the main stage, Amadou and Mariam were the third and possibly best known of the festival’s three African acts. Anchored by Amadou’s sinuous and surprisingly forceful guitar (a key, perhaps, to why they find favour with the indie crowd) their live show was bright and well-honed, with a few of the stadium gestures which have presumably developed in the light of their huge success in France. There were traces of the kind of musical slickness with which African acts tend to become imbued once they find their way into Parisian studios, but the strength of the Malian couple’s own voice shines through such surface tampering. XX on the centre stage were, to my ears, rather colourless, both in their uniformly black clothes and in their sound. I fully concede that this is a case of my not connecting with the music in question. I know others love its sense of space, its spare arrangements and languid atmosphere. They unleashed a bone-juddering, kidney-quivering bass at some juncture, which seemed a little extraneous to the needs of the song. Perhaps it was an attempt to vary the general tone of sparsity and inject a blast of force to win over the agnostics.



Finally, after deciding that the queue for the swiftly arranged jam between Konono no.1, The Boredoms drummers and Jason Spaceman was rather too long, and feeling that the pre-arranged set by The Ruins shouldn’t really have been usurped anyway, I went along to see them. Or rather him, since the Ruins are (is) now just drummer Tatsuma Yoshida. He provided precision, stop-start squalls of drumming to a pre-recorded backing of lightning fast noise prog. This included a Mastermind ‘how many can you spot’ cut-up of classic prog themes and extracts (I scored rather poorly, only my rusty knowledge of the old Yes catalogue rising back to the surface). It was a performance of athleticism and endurance, exhausting to watch let alone play, but impressive and exhilarating. Any drummers amongst the festival audience were well and truly spoiled this year.



The Sunday gave another chance to see The Boredoms, and this time I placed myself in the thick of it to see this day’s drummer of choice, Zach Hill, carried in procession to the stage. It was a spectacle well worth seeing twice. My hearing having been largely restored, I wore earplugs this time. The old lugholes can only take so much. Matt Groening came on stage to introduce The Tiger Lillies as a ‘favourite favourite’ amongst a weekend of favourites. I wish I could share his enthusiasm, but many of their songs seem tossed off (appropriate phraseology given that one concerns a character called Masturbating Jimmy) with offhand and rather casual abandon. They occasionally hit the mark with some of their more subtle songs, but the leering obsession with Victorian sleaze and decadence, and the sledgehammer way in which it is often underlined, becomes a little tiresome. They provide an inadvertent reminder of the power of indirection and suggestion (and even clever innuendo), and despite the bluntness in which they revel, lack the depth or wit to be as offensive as they’d clearly like to be. The playing of the theremin with the contrabass was a nice theatrical touch, though, and its always nice to see someone who can manipulate a musical saw with aplomb.

Juana Molina, the South American representative, stood at her rack of electronics with guitar in hand, which she used briefly to provide short phrases which were immediately sampled and looped. Bassist aside, she was essentially her own one-woman orchestra of layered and transmogrified sound, creating a layer over which she sang, providing another layer, over which she sang, providing..etc. She managed to maintain the lightness of her songs, never allowing things to get to cluttered or overcrowded. How much of it was pre-programmed and how much improvised, I don’t know, but it was a hypnotic and bewitching performance. On the main stage, Matt Groening was on hand again to introduce Daniel Johnston, who was somewhat lost standing alone on such a large platform, amidst the furniture and instrumentation set up for Spiritualised’s band, chamber group and choir. He played a new guitar, a small solid bodied affair which looked like it had been knocked up in a woodwork class, and which sounded exactly like the battered old Spanish guitar which he used to play. He also sat at the electric piano for several songs, where his technique was a little more assured than the somewhat notional guitar accompaniement which provides for himself. Watching Daniel Johnston requires some knowledge of the history which lies behind his songs, of the early self-assurance which led to him actively seeking an audience, and the agonizing decline into serious mental illness, all played out in the public eye (and documented in the film The Devil and Daniel Johnston). In listening to him play live, you are listening to the latest chapter in his life story. It seems to have settled into a fairly calm and well-managed course, with medication and family care keeping him on an even keel. Some of the early exuberance is missing however. This could just be the passing of time, and maybe also the resignation which has come with the realisation of the permanence of his condition. There’s a certain amount of special pleading required when you approach his music, and the crowd was clearly willing him on. The best of the songs, crudely delivered though they might be, are worth hearing in their own right, though. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable when Daniel’s declaration of his mental illness raised a cheer from the audience (why?). It sounded like he was cut off from elaborating, and such a reflexive response suggests his celebrity is becoming as much based on his illness as it is on his music. It would be a shame if this were the case. We saw him after the show wandering along the seafront with some companions. He paused by one of a series of what looked like old iron torpedo casings (which may have been because they were old iron torpedo casings for all I know) which formed someone’s strange idea of a good promenade decoration.

Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, fronted by the former Mazzy Star singer (that group are due a perhaps inevitable reunion in the near future – curating an ATP festival of their own perhaps) provided a languid set of drifting dream pop, with the guitars occasionally roused to create a minor storm, but quickly settling back into a laid back state of calm. Hope remained fairly uncommunicative throughout, with only the odd mumbled word of thanks, but there was some atmospheric burbling ambient hum between numbers which obviated any awkwardness. There’s not a great deal of variance to the tone or the downtempo feel, but I didn’t find that a problem. I was drawn along in the music’s slow burning wake. Hope herself added a few extra colours to the sound with some plangent harmonica sighs and a light sprinkling of celeste stardust.

We went for a walk on the beach, the skies having cleared at last, and heard the heavenly choir backing Spiritualised’s run through of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space drifting out into the evening air. I admit to a certain antipathy towards Spiritualised’s music, which reminds me of later Pink Floyd in its overweening pomp and its amassing of large forces to convey a series of dirge-like, self-pitying plaints. Rock star drug abuse and moping over splitting up with your girlfriend (hmm, could the two be related do you think) are lyrical concerns which betoken an insular self-regard, a worldview locked into its own narrow orbit. Why should we care? Having said which, we did get to hear the free jazz freak out section of Cop Shoot Cop, whilst waiting in the queue which was amassing with worrying rapidity for Joanna Newsom outside the barricaded and security guarded doors of the Central Stage, and it was pretty good. A whole concert of that sort of thing would have suited me fine.

The queue grew larger and the doors were still not open by the time the concert was due to start. Chaos threatened to ensue, and a general state of grumbling began to fill the air, as no explanation was forthcoming. Someone said something about the sound system having packed in. Anyway, eventually we did get in, whatever the problem was. There was a tremendous sense of anticipation for Joanna Newsome’s appearance (not least from myself – she was the third of my most eagerly anticipated artists) and she didn’t disappoint. The group consisted of her drummer and percussionist Neal Morgan, who was isolated on her left, and who played a fairly prominent role throughout, and a chamber group consisting of mandolin and other assorted stringed instruments (plus recorder), two violins and, of course, a trombone. Joanna herself played her harp and a piano which was place to the rear of the stage. It’s quite difficult to play such relatively hushed acoustic music, which demands full attention, to a festival audience, particularly a well refreshed night-time one (who had been forced to queue for a long time, too) but the crowd was rapt. Most of the material was from the new Have One On Me LP, including a great rendition of the multi-part title song, with all the group joining in for the final vocal harmonies. She did a version of Inflammatory Writ from The Milk Eyed Mender, but perhaps understandably, there was nothing from Ys, or indeed from the Ys Street Band EP (Coleen would have been nice – it was one she played at the Sydney Opera House gig earlier this year). Bizarrely, she spent several minutes tuning her harp, leaving her hapless percussionist, at her suggestion, to field questions from the audience. Having replied to one questioner who asked what his favourite cheese was by replying that he didn’t really like cheese, a later disgruntled audience member asked, in an aggrieved tone, ‘why don’t you like cheese’. The mood was turning potentially nasty in this county famous for its cheesemaking (Cheddar’s not all that far away) and he threw a pleading look towards Joanna. She finished her tuning, and promptly retired to the piano for the remaining two songs. Indeed, after a rousing version of the Good Intentions Paving Company, she suddenly declared that that was it, and abruptly left the stage. It was a good number to finish on, but, with time to spare in the one hour slot, the audience clearly expected an encore, and there were boos when it became evident that they weren’t going to get one. Leave them wanting more, I guess. Apparently, Joanna was seen after the show munching on some chips. Perhaps she was just really hungry.

The Raincoats packed out the smaller Reds Stage, and obviously commanded a huge amount of affection. Their set had a winning informality, with the singers Gina Birch and Ana da Silva enjoying an easy, relaxed and chatty rapport with the audience, and with each other, and had a nice line in self-effacing humour. They seemed to be really enjoying playing, and that enjoyment communicated itself to those watching. The music was loose and a little ragged around the edges, but still possessed of an adventurous spirit. They came back after a playfully staged ‘encore’ set up (having not quite managed to actually leave the stage) and led the crowd in a singalong of Lola, which they’d covered on their debut LP back in 1980, and the odd fluffed line mattered not at all.

The final show of the night, on the Central Stage, was by Coco Rosie, the group centred around sisters Bianca and Sierra Cassady, and they continued the trend of starting late, not finally finishing setting up until about 1.20. I saw them through to about 2, and they were excellent. Bianca’s child-like voice (another Lisa Simpson) provided a counterpoint to the more classical style of Sierra, who had trained to be an opera singer (although apparently her real passion had been medieval music). Her soaring vocals projected a sense of yearning and melancholy longing. They had a new pianist in Gael Rakontondrabe, who provide a new element to their arrangements, which also found Sierra playing what looked from a distance like a harmonium, and a Celtic harp – baby to Joanna Newsom’s concert mother. The song Hopscotch from their excellent new LP Grey Oceans (the one which sees them sporting strange Pharaonic beards and false eyebrows on the cover) was put into context as they started by chanting and playing a clapping game as if they were back on the childhood streets of their hometown. There were also interjections from a human beat box, which added a touch of hip hop to this already strange amalgam of folk, jazz, torch song and operatic nursery rhyme. This was the kind of music which you could imagine playing in some dreamlike end-of-the-world saloon (the one in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film Querelle springs to mind, although that had Jeanne Moreau providing the songs) and its lulling verses accompanied me into my dreamworld. It was a fitting end to a fine weekend. Thank you Mister Groening.