ATP End of an Era: Part 3 — Sunday

This is part three of my account of a trip to the last ever UK All Tomorrow's Parties festival. Part 1 can be seen here & Part 2 here

On Sunday morning most of my chalet mates went off to see either Dungeness or to visit Rye, but Irene and I made our way to the downstairs venue at the unnaturally early time of 12.30 pm to catch a performance by Josef van Wissem. He is this Dutch guy who plays a lutey thing and has previously collaborated with the likes of the United Bible Studies as well as releasing a zillion records of his own. His instrument is this huge stringed thing like nothing else I have ever seen. He himself looks like he would be more at home playing guitar for some grease-rock band or carrying things around for Hawkwind, but his mastery of the lute is incredible. His tunes were all instrumental and I think all original compositions rather olde folkie songs. I liked them and came home with a Jozef van Wissem album, which I also like.

Van Wissem did a fair bit of striking poses with his lute. At first I thought this was because he needed to turn around the instrument to get at particular stings, but soon registered that this was not the case. Rather he was showing off the lute to us. It also made him look incredibly rock and roll. Towards the end of the concert he left his seat and the mike stands and walked along the front of the stage, playing the lute and letting people get a closer look at it. What was very striking to me was how loud it was – even without amplification, it was still clearly audible.

We should maybe have gone to see Tall Firs as they were entertaining at a previous ATP, but a walk on the beach beckoned. On returning, we made our way upstairs to see Michael Rother, the genial veteran of Neu and Harmonia. I think he had some other old fellows from the German music scene of the 1970s playing with him – people he described as his “chaps”. Sadly they were not all wearing tweed jackets, sporting astonishing moustaches while smoking pipes; such is life. But they did play some great tunes, music that was surprisingly dancey in the live context. Rother himself was a bit of a roffler, albeit of the extremely deadpan sort, and spoke with the kind of very deliberate English that I associate with Germans.

I caught the last two or three songs by Wolf People (Rarrrr!). They seemed pretty entertaining in a blues-psych-stoner rock kind of way (as in I cannot really remember too much about them but do recall liking them and am trying to guess what they sounded like on the basis that my retro friend M— is a pal of theirs). After that I saw The Magic Band. These are some former members of Captain Beefheart’s band playing the music of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band with some other musicians. I gather this particular outfit were conjured into being to play an ATP some years ago. Quite a few people I know were a bit sniffy about them before they came on, claiming that they are little more than a Captain Beefheart tribute act (something that the world is apparently over-laden with). John “Drumbo” French was also criticised for abandoning the drumkits and instead becoming the band’s frontman, with many seeing it as grossly inappropriate that anyone should try to imitate the good Captain.

But I myself loved this lot. Beefheart-esque music is not something you get to hear often in a live context, which is surely a bad thing. Getting to hear it from people who had some part in making the originals is a treat for all people of forward thinking musical tastes. And as M— pointed out, members of the original Magic Band suffered doubly from the fickle cruelties of an indifferent public and from the harsh rule of a musical genius not too big on apportioning credit or treating colleagues like human beings. On that basis it seemed only fair to give them some overdue respect.

The Magic Band seemed happy to be onstage playing to an appreciative audience. And contrary to what I had previously heard, John French made for a great frontman. Still, it was funny hearing him talking about how they formed the Magic Band to keep the music of Captain Beefheart alive. It must be weird when your own main claim to musical fame was being sideman to someone with whom you had a problematic relationship.

Goat were from Sweden. By the time they came on I had changed into my tuxedo and donned my fez, as the ATP organisers had declared a black tie dress code for Sunday night. I knew nothing about Goat, but had taken a punt on them being interesting by buying one of their t-shirts, as it had an interesting design on it (of a goat). The font on the t-shirt (similar to that used by BATHORY) and the slightly demonic image suggested that Goat would be some kind of Black Metal outfit. This was not to be the case.

Goat are one of those bands where there are loads of people onstage and they all wear funny clothes. Most of them were masked or had their faces somehow obscured – perhaps in Sweden they all have secret identities and do not want anyone to know they play music. They were fronted by two women (at least, I think they were women) who sang and danced, and had an army of others playing various instruments. It all made for great visual spectacle but maybe the music was for them a bit of an afterthought? My recollection is that it started off being almost neo-folkie but did head off into more psych-rock territory as the performance went on. They certainly seemed more musically engaging by the end and I found myself thinking that I would like to see them again sometime. I am also open to investigating their recorded output.

After a trip back to the chalet for some refreshing alcohol (far less time consuming than trying to queue at the bars in Pontins, proud employers of the world’s worst bar staff), we returned to catch the latter half of the set by Mogwai. It was only towards the end of this that my amaze brain remembered that the Mog had curated the first ever ATP, something I had missed because I tend to think of the Bowlie Weekender at the actual first. And as with ATP 1, I found myself less than enthusiastic about seeing them play, but rather impressed once I had them in front of me. There is a power and grandeur to their music, as well as an elegiac quality that matched the occasion well.

But the greatest moment in ATP history ever occurred after Mogwai finished and 'Teenage Riot' came on quietly over the PA while they started clearing the upstairs venue. People started dancing to this and eventually the sound people turned up the volume as everyone went increasingly mental to it. The whole thing made for an intriguing and completely unplanned communal end to the festival.

Though it was not the real end. We ended the night downstairs, where Barry Hogan (ATP Fuhrer) was DJing. He played a variety of gangsta hip hop tunes, which went down well with the white audience, and then finished off the night with the Velvet Underground & Nico’s ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’, a tune that it is impossible to dance to. Things got a bit emo. I found myself wondering how I would discover new TV programmes to buy on DVD without ATP (this year’s find being the IT Crowd, a programme you have no doubt all been watching for years).

On Monday we walked into Rye and went first for lunch and then for a little drink in the Mermaid, where we said hello to some other ATP randomers. And then back to Gatwick and home.

Linkage:

Jozef van Wissem

The Magic Band

Michael Rother

An interview with GOAT

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ATP End of an Era: Part 2 — Saturday

I am continuing to tell the exciting tale of my trip to the last ever UK All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Camber Sands. Part one can be seen here.

Saturday began with the traditional walk along the beach, after which we went into Rye. There we bought things and met my beloved who was only now arriving off a train thanks to the ministry of Satan. We went for lunch in the Mermaid, that olde worlde pub & hotel that everyone who goes to Rye loves. We thought about coming back to Rye and staying in the Mermaid, which would probably be amazing.


Back in Camber Sands the first band I saw on this memorable day was The KVB, playing on the downstairs stage. They were a duo, with a bloke who did vocals (and played guitar) and a woman who did stuff with synthesisers and keyboards. They both wore black and looked pretty goth. The music was a bit goth too, calling to mind the claustrophobic gothgaze of bands like Curve, though the programmed beats had a certain glitterband quality to them. They are apparently supporting the reformed Loop on their UK tour, so if you are going to that I recommend catching them.

Also playing downstairs were Dirty Beaches. They were three guys playing somewhat avant-garde music that was still beaty enough that they could jump around and dance to it. They were alright, but again I thought they were maybe not as cool as they thought they were.

Hookworm upstairs were being done no favours by the ropey sound, but even with that I think they were not really that good, for all that they seemed to be a band playing the kind of music I ought to like (muscular end of gaze music, can you dig it?). I did like their star struck story of having previously come to ATPs as punters and now getting to play the last one. Even my not liking them that much will never take this away from them.

23 Skidoo playing downstairs were one of the bands of yore who had been added to the bill. I think now I will discuss them together with another olde band who played upstairs, The Pop Group. They are both reformed bands from the post-punk era, and both in their heyday were a bit avant-funk. There was a tendency to compare them, with most people seeming to prefer The Pop Group, with partisans of 23 Skidoo sounding a bit defensive. The Pop Group’s secret weapon was their frontman, Mark Stewart. On record he has failed to impress me, coming across as some annoying shouty man, but live he provides an energetic focus for the audience. Conversely, 23 Skidoo do not really have a frontman. They do have a bloke who does whatever vocals feature in their songs, but he also played other instruments and did not serve as a focus in the way that Stewart did. He seemed in fact to be deliberately anti-charismatic, remaining quite static and affecting an aloof demeanour. It could be that he was just *shy*, but I think there was a different aesthetic approach on display here, something designed to be less populist. I suppose what I mean is that the superficial avant-funk similarity of the bands masked a deep difference in approach that made it possible to like one without thinking them better than the other.

And then there was Loop. Old-timers may remember Loop, they were contemporaries of Spacemen 3 and the other proto-shoegaze bands. I mansplained them to Irene by saying that they sounded not unlike Spacemen 3, but only like their more rocking songs (i.e. not the smacked out tunes where the Spacemen get all god-bothery or start extolling the virtues of a romantic other who is clearly just a metaphor for heroin). They were playing upstairs, as befits the headliners of the festival.

With the passage of time I had somehow let myself develop the idea that Loop were a bit second division and nothing like as iconic as their contemporaries. Thus I was a bit surprised to see them headlining the last ATP – it would be like a Britpop festival headed by Menswe@r [sic]. Yet Eoghan’s enthusiasm for seeing Loop again swept me along and I found myself towards the front of the venue getting ready for them to come out onstage. When they did, two things immediately struck me. My memory of Loop back in the day was that they were a bit hairy-beardy, like a lot of bands back then, but tonight they were all clean cut and nicely dressed, as is so often the case with people when they have moved on from their youth. The one of them who did vocals and seemed like the main guy in the band looked less like a dirty drone-rock boy from the early 1990s than as the kind of guy who might show up at one of those retro events Mark goes to. That is what his hair and nice shirt said to me, anyway.

The actual commencement of the concert cast aside rapidly any nonsense about Loop somehow being a second division outfit. They rocked like a train and I found myself transported back to the happy days of the early 1990s. The crowd went batshit crazy and started acting like they too were remembering the early 1990s or wished they had been there. So the powerfully muscular sounds of Loop were immediately responded to by the most full-on moshing I have ever scene yet an ATP, which is just what you would have got in days of yore. I could not hold myself back for long and soon threw myself into the fray, albeit engaging in a short mental debate about the potentially problematic gender politics of moshing and its possibility for creating an exclusionary male space at the front of concerts; seeing that in fact there were people of both genders being thrown around satisfied me this was an affair with at least some pretence towards equal opportunity. At the front I was continuously thrown about by the roiling sea of people, forever on the lookout for crowdsurfers, of which there were many. And there was music, music, pounding music. Small wonder I came away from this determined to dig out all my old Loop vinyl. Small wonder either that the next day saw me buying a triple CD compilation of music by this amazing band. I hope they come to Ireland on their reunion tour.

Linkage:

The KVB

KVB image source

Loop

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ATP End of an Era: Part 1 — Friday

Join me, gentle reader, as I tell the tale of my trip to the last ever All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in the UK. I have been to a fair few of these over the years so I felt I had to see them out, making my way back to Camber Sands (near Rye) for this festival, curated by the reformed Loop. Camber Sands was where ATP started so it was fitting that it ends there too. Returning there I found that things were largely unchanged — the chalets are slightly less pokey than they used to be (with new floors preventing the night-time slug invasions that could often prove problematic) but they still have that annoying fold out bed in the living room that stops you having somewhere in your chalet that isn't a bedroom. But hey, we weren't there to hang out in our chalets.

This is one of those festival write-ups where I chug through the artist I saw without trying to arrange things thematically. Be prepared for lots of yap about people you have never heard of before and possibly never will again.

The first people I saw were in fact Les Colettes, a French trio all of whom were women. Because I am very sexist I somehow developed the idea that they would be three glamour girls trading on their looks. This proved not to be the case, as they were musically interesting. They played music that seemed to owe debts to Irish or Breton folk music, but also with drone elements (the one who played the violin did so far more to add drone than to add diddley iddley noises). The instrumentation was quite minimal, with the only percussion coming occasionally from the singer. The most conventionally “rock” element to their sound was probably the guitarist, but overall their Spartan musical approach reminded me the most of the Young Marble Giants. They mostly played original songs, but they did also play an intriguing version of the woman-in-the-radiator song from Eraserhead. I think they would be worth further investigation.

I saw a couple of minutes of Om, before registering that despite their impressive drone rock name they are not really my cup of tea. The weedy sound in the upstairs venue did not do them any favours either. So I made my excuses and left. Later I returned to see Fuck Buttons. They are one of those bands who seem to play at every ATP but whom I have somehow never managed to see. Previously I have avoided them because of the gratuitous swearing in their name and people telling me they are not up to much, but as this was to be the very last ATP I decided to check them out for myself, as otherwise I would never get to hear them. And I am glad I did, because they are amazing.

I had previously made the acquaintance of Fuck Buttons offshoot Blanck Mass, purveyors of dark ambient sounds used to great effect in that film A Field in England. The music of Fuck Buttons themselves is curiously like that, except that it comes with added big chunky beats you can dance to, which makes them sound a bit avant-garde and dancetastic at the same tyme. Live they had a great stage set up – the two of them playing strange synthesiser things facing each other, with funny visuals behind them onto which silhouettes of them playing were projected.

So yeah, they were great and people in the crowd were really getting into them. I do not know if it was the power of their music or excitement at this being the last ATP, but for some reason there was a sudden outbreak of mass crowd surfing at Fuck Buttons. And a surprisingly high proportion of the crowd surfers were women (like at least a third, possibly as many as a half). In some ways this seemed strange – one associates crowd surfers with punk gigs rather than electronic dance outfits – but it seemed to fit the kind of ecstatic abandon the music was trying to engender.

I mentioned that many of the crowd surfers were women, but the most noteworthy was a man – a man who was crowd surfing while holding a half full pint of beer in one hand. He seemed not to spill any of the beer, at least until he fell down himself.

After this awesomeness, self-described “lean, loud, retro-futurist party-band” Civil Civic had a lot to live up to, and they largely failed to do so. Their retro-futurist party music turned out to be basically an evocation of certain types of music from the 1980s that are best left un-revived. That said, I cannot fault their musicianship and should admit that they won over the crowd in the downstairs venue. But I think they could have done with a vocalist and even if they had one they are just offering an art-ponce version of what local covers band Spring Break do far better.

I was feeling a bit tired when I went up to see Shellac playing upstairs, which may have been why my initial impression was that for all their reputation as stars of the alternative scene they were just treating us to unexciting cock rock. But I warmed to them somewhat when they played early Shellac classic ‘Wingwalker’, which features a strange playful moment when the three band members pretend to be aeroplanes while still playing their instruments. There should be more of this kind of thing.

As the evening wore on I was feeling very tired indeed (having had to get up early to catch flight after a busy week at work and being late to bed the night before blah blah blah) so I decided to catch only the first couple of songs by Slint as a way of investigating whether this other band of ATP stalwarts have anything going for them. I found them a bit dull, but this may be the tiredness speaking. More annoying, though, were the noisy drunken cockfarmers my friend E— and myself found ourselves standing near. When I left after a few songs it was partly to get some sleep and partly because I feared that a fight would break out between E— and them (which I realise means that I was leaving a friend to face the drunken gobshites on his own, but he is a lean mean fighting machine and I would only have held him back). Did a fight break out? Only E— can tell you. And only my other friend N— can tell you of the downsides of being at a concert with loads of crowdsurfers.

Linkage:

Les Colettes

A Field in England

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