Stewart Lee All Tomorrow's Parties, Part 3: Saturday

I continue my account of the last ever ATP festival. Previous installments here & here.

I went for a stroll into sunny Prestatyn and saw none other than folkie sensation Alasdair Roberts wandering around. This was very exciting as he was on the bill for Sunday, so if he was here this meant that at least one more act I was looking forward to seeing was still going to be playing. I thought of saying hello but I did not want to be that guy who annoys famous people. Afterwards though I wondered whether Roberts might be at that level of fame where randomers saying hello to him is still exciting.

I was in Prestatyn to do some shopping (including trying to pass a prescription for "stuff" in a local Boots), so it was fitting that the first things I saw back in Pontins was the last few minutes of Shopping, who played angular music suggesting a Congolese influence. I did not see enough to have an informed impression but reports were positive. I saw more of Wolf People, who could lazily be described as a late 1960s folk-rock revival outfit. They're good at what they do, though I think further investigation may be needed to determine just how good.

I wandered along to The Raincoats in a spirit of some trepidation. As you know, they emerged in the punk era and were considered strangely novel by all being women. Their career ran its course then but with the passage of time they have experienced several revivals of interest in their work. I am a great admirer of their cover version of The Kinks' 'Lola' but when I saw them at a previous ATP I found the experience dispriting; to me they were the wrong kind of ramshackle, coming across as amateurish and incompetent.

This time I only caught the last few songs of The Raincoats' set (something I seem to have done with a great many of the performances at this festival). But either they were more on top of their game or (more likely) I was in a more receptive mood, because this seemed like strikingly good stuff. It was still a bit ramshackle but it was good ramshackle, the kind of thing that is the opposite of slick. And there was a droney element to their music that I did not recall from the last time. I came away from this thinking that I should re-engage with this band's recorded oeuvre.

I also saw the last few songs of Bevis Frond. They were like a 1970s softy rock band who had somehow travelled forward in time to the 2010s. To me they were fundamentally inessential but they might appeal to others.

So I went to see Richard Youngs on Stage 2. I know him just from some performances he gave at Counterflows in Glasgow last year. He somehow manages to straddle the disparate worlds of folkie music and conceptual art music, which means that on any given occasions when you see him you never know quite what you are going to get. In this case he came on stage and did some kind of odd a cappella piece. Then he did a song where he would sing a line and then shout "HEY!".

I like to think of myself as a broadminded individual open to new experiences, but this was all a bit too in your face artwank for me, so I wandered off. I heard subsequently that I left just before it all got interesting. Apparently he sang a line and shouted nothing, whereupon someone in the crowd tentatively shouted "Hey?". After that the concert became a bizarre event based on unpredictable performer-audience interaction.

But I saw none of that because I was making a daring raid upstairs to see Laetitia Sadier. The last time I saw the former Stereolab singer (at a previous ATP) she was playing solo. This time she had a band with her, made up of young gentlemen. The whole thing was OK but again I found it somewhat inessential. Still, I did find myself standing beside curator and TV funny guy Stewart Lee for a bit. I thought of giving him a thump and saying "Who's having the last laugh now?" except he is well known for his skill at the arts of fighting so I decided against it.

Back downstairs I caught the set by late 1980s indie sensations The Blue Aeroplanes. They are one of those bands who weren't involved in shoegaze and never went seriously indie-dance, so now they are somewhat forgotten (but not, presumably, by Stewart Lee). I did not hear much of their stuff back in the day but always had the idea that they had an interesting art-rock quality to them, so I was keen to check them out. Now their line-up is made up mostly of younger musicians but there are a couple still who are or could be original members. The drummer is of somewhat advanced years but the two key oldsters are Gerard Langley, the beat poet inspired vocalist, and Wojtek Dmochowski, dancer.

That's right, readers, they have a dancer. Some have described Wojtek as the original Bez but I think there is a different dynamic to his efforts here. Bez basically shuffled backwards and forwards in a confused haze, but Wojtek is more of the interpretative dance persuasion. Lord knows what the musicians in the band though of him, but for me his presence was a key part of what made this a great performance.

Another great thing about the Blue Aeroplanes was how up for it the band were. Sometimes one finds with long-running or reformed bands where past members have been replaced by young people that you end up with detached session musicians, but here we had a load of excited players who gave every impression of being very invested in the music (and there were even a couple of songs that did not have Gerard on lead vocals). The last song they played was a particularly mental all hands on deck tune that would have been a great encore piece, if bands in the middle of a festival bill got to do encores.

Come back tomorrow for more ATP action!

More astonishing ATP pictures

Counterflows 2015: Sunday

I am belatedly posting about my time at the Counterflows festival in Glasgow. You can see all my posts on this here and the previous day's here.

I woke up to the sound of motorbikes. A convoy of motorbikes were heading off somewhere past the flat I was staying in. Many of the bikers were wearing strange costumes. I think it might have been a charity thing. Then a parade of Sikhs went by, headed by a load of blokes carrying swords, followed by some carriages and a great mass of their co-religionists: more indeed than I have ever seen in one place. I was curious as to what would come next along the road. A parade of Orangemen perhaps, or a gathering of the Ancient Order of Scottish Highlander Cliches, but instead the road went back to its normal Sunday usage. Nessa's friend Stewart made us a mushroom breakfast, which was tasty. After that we began a long journey down to the wilds of south Glasgow where Counterflows events were taking place. We visited a park and climbed a big hill and looked off in the distance at mountains. I was also excited to see the remnants of the Red Road flats. The park was fun but eventually we forced ourselves to leave it to head down for some music action in the Glad Café.

The first thing I saw here was a performance by Andrea Neumann who was doing something with an Innenklavier: some kind of inside-out piano thing. Once I forced myself to perk up and engage I realised that this performance was one of the best things ever. As it progressed the set became more programmed and involved less physical interaction with the Innenklavier. Programmed music can be dull in the live context but Ms Neumann made things visually interesting by making it look like she was triggering the music by gestures and moves of her body. So you would get her reaching up to grab something out of the air to time with a burst of electronic noise. It was fun. Everyone liked it.

Richard Youngs was on next, playing a solo acoustic set. Apparently he is as well known as a maker of neo-folk music as for avant-garde conceptual stuff, so it was interesting to experience this string to his bow. He had young master Sorley playing with him for some songs and also he revealed that one song (called 'Fireworks' or something) was all about how great it was to have a son. If I had a son who can reliably take part in conceptual art music productions I would probably think that too.

A sudden hunger meant I missed Raymond Boni's set while I ate a tasty Glad Café meal. Then I had a small piece of cake and the nicest macchiato I have ever had outside Ethiopia. I did manage to catch the last performers: a jazz trio comprising Daniel Carter, Fritz Welch and George Lyle. Unfortunately I was stuck over to one side of the venue at the back and so had a restricted line of sight, which led to a certain alienation from proceedings. And anyway, jazz trios are best appreciated in a seated position.

That was it for the Glad Café, but there was still more to come from Counterflows. We crossed the road to enter the Langside Halls were two more acts were ready to entertain us. First up were Sacred Paws, who are two women (drummer and guitarist, both doing some vocals). They were only thing on the bill of the entire festival that could be loosely classed as "Glasgow Indie", though they were more unique than that makes them sound (as are all of the Glasgow Indie bands anyone has ever actually heard of). The guitar playing was very jangley, suggesting more Congolese players than Johnny Marr, while the overall thrust of the music was angular. I enjoyed this a lot and think their music would repay further investigation.

The last act was Noura Mint Seymali and her band. She is a singer from Mauritania and her musicians were playing desert guitars music broadly reminiscent of the likes of Tinariwen, Group Doueh, Mariem Hassan's band and the like. The combination of striking female vocals and that kind of accompaniment is something I always love listening to, particularly in the live context. This lot seemed to be particularly good exponents of the form, managing to work the crowd up into a dancing frenzy. During Sacred Paws I was thinking that their music was the kind of thing that would be great to dance to but I was too tired to do any grooving. Then during Noura Mint Seymali's set I found myself dancing like a madman to the irresistible rhythms.

Pretty quickly the crowd found themselves joining hands and dancing in a great circle, charging around with frenetic abandon. One funny thing was watching people divesting themselves of drinks, bags, outer clothing and other stuff so that they could dance more freely. It was all complete brilliance, one of the best musical experiences of my life and a great end to the festival.

Counterflows 2015: Saturday

I am belatedly posting about my time at the Counterflows festival in Glasgow. You can see all my posts on this here and the previous day's here.

On Saturday morning my host Nessa made porridge for both me and the other loafer staying with her. Thanks Nessa! Then we went to The 78, which is a café-bar, to see The Flexibles. They were a four-piece. Featured Festival Artist Richard Youngs provided some kind of mysterious electronic percussion. There was another adult playing bass and a young lad on cello, but the real star was Sorley Youngs, Richard Youngs' young son, who played guitar haphazardly and provided vocals. Having a small person on vocals (with lyrics sounding like he might have had some input into them) gave this a certain outsider quality, but only to an extent. Sorley Youngs had a focus to his performance that I think would be lacking in most people of his age. I think he must have performed live a bit because he managed to avoid the twin horrors of being either cute or coming across as some horribly precocious little monster. Instead he just got down to business and delivered us songs with these lyrics:

"Space! Space!
Solar Panal System!"

Pop stardom awaits.

Back in the CCA we watched a film called Ears Switched On And Off, directed by Chen Singing, which was about Taiwanese sound artists. It particularly focusses on Dino, Wang Fujui and Lin Chiwei. The presentation of the work by these people was interesting, as I think were the artists themselves, but I felt the film could have done with more contextualisation of the arts scene in Taiwan. Alasdair Campbell, the festival director, introduced it and said that there had been an artistic blossoming in Taiwan in the 1980s, following the lifting of martial law, with the state happily throwing money at avant-garde art; then apparently the state had second thoughts once it saw what the avant-garde artists were getting up to. There was no sense of this in the film.

One thing that was interesting was a throwaway comment in the film about how these sound artists find themselves putting on more shows in Beijing than Taiwan. Apparently there is a big arts scene in Beijing. That ran against my association of authoritarian politics with deadened cultural activity. Nevertheless the artists did have problems in Beijing. The film showed Lin Chiwei rehearsing his Tape Music piece (of which more later) with a Beijing choir. At one point we see the choir leader approaching the artists to say that she and the other choir members are concerned that his work might be some kind of covert Falun Gong plot.

I may have enjoyed the film more if I was less tired. I think by the end I was mainly appreciating it as a combination of appealing images and attractive sounds.

Nessa and I then went for lunch to the world's tastiest Lebanese restaurant that is not in Lebanon. It is called California and looks like an American diner. We ate all the food. If you are looking for this place yourself, it is on Sauciehall Street, a little bit east of the CCA.


Out in the leafy streets of Kelvinland the Glasgow University Chapel was playing host to a performance by jazz saxophonist Evan Parker and organist Stan Stendell. They were improvising together. As is the way of church organs, Mr Stendell was hidden from view, so it seemed like Mr Parker was playing against a mysterious and all pervasive self generating noise. From my seat I could hear the organ's stops being pulled out and various bits of the huge instruments internal works that make noises separate to the music that emanates from it. This led to a certain atmopshere of deconstruction. Overall I found the event relaxing. I slipped into a pleasant reverie.

A bus brought us back to the supersoaraway CCA, where we went to have a look at an installation by Ying Yong (some kind of artistic group rather than an individual person, though one can never be sure of these things). This involved a lot of standing around waiting for them to get ready, which went on so long that some became convinced that the waiting itself was the art installation. But then we were ushered into a room to sit on the floor and experience what was more like a performance than an installation. They had a set which was kind of like a house or something and they were projecting images and they had masked people doing weird things. It was bizarre and enjoyable and I feel the world needs more things like this.

That was followed by performances from the three Taiwanese artists on whom that film was most focussed. Dino kicked things off with some electronic music that my friend Colin Ferguson described as being like Whitehouse without the misogynist lyrics. I am (thankfully) unfamiliar with Whitehouse save by reputation, but having seen their offshoot Consumer Electronics I know what he means. This was loud analogue sounding electronic music that hovered between drone and brain pulverising dissonance. I liked it.

The second piece was Lin Chiwei's Tape Music. The name suggests tape loops but it was not loops of magnetic tape that this piece involves. Instead there was a long piece of fabric tape with words (or syllables) written on it. Singers from the Glad Community Choir sat in a spiral pattern and passed the tape along. When a person had a word in front of them they sang it. They seemed to have bee drilled so that the tape moved along at a uniform rate, with people all or mostly having a word in front of them simultaneously. I think they were told what note to associate with a word, as recurring words appeared to keep being sung in the same way.

The piece had some false endings where the tape went blank for long sections before words reappeared again. But it did eventually end.

The last piece was Wang Fujui and an unnamed associate doing more analogue synth stuff. Or maybe it was laptoppy. There were visuals too. It was enjoyable enough but it delivered neither the sonic nor conceptual attack of its predecessors.

At that point we bade farewell to the Taiwanese sound artists and crossed the road to see Neil Michael Hagerty in Nice'n'Sleazy. This famously scuzzy venue was well suited to Mr Hagerty's rough and ready music. As you know, he was formerly one half of the famous Royal Trux but now he plays with his own band, a three-piece. He sang and played guitar while a guy in a suit played basic drums. The third guy mostly sat by the side of the stage drawing pictures but occasionally he joined in for backing vocals.

Mr Hagerty had a certain undead look to him, with his pronounced cheekbones and detached demeanour. His between song chat was a weird version of the kind of thing smarmy Vegas perfomers say (you know, "Thank you, you've been a lovely audience" etc.).

An odd feature of this concert was that afterwards several women reported fleeing from some creepy man who kept staring at them. I suppose Mr Hagerty might attract creepy men, as might the venue, but it turned out to be he same man (not me). He was apparently some kind of Glasgow Music Scene Character. I do not know if he stares at women at all gigs or if he was just feeling a bit starey tonight.

I escaped the attentions of this creepy man and so was able to enjoy the concert to the end. The performance had an entertainingly ramshackle quality of pure rock and I am glad I caught it.

This time I managed to stay up for the late night event, which was a disco in the Art School. Some geezer called Rabih Beani was DJing there. It was basically a techno dance set with random elements thrown in: Middle Eastern music, entire jazz albums, that kind of thing. The space was fairly small but it was hard to tell precisely how small because it was so full of dry ice that I could barely see my hand in front of my face. People wandered around for hours trying to find their friends, only to realise they had been sitting on them all the time.

I spent a lot of my time there dancing, partly because the music was great but also because the people I arrived with were turning increasingly Glaswegian as the night wore on (despite not being from Glasgow); coupled with the loud music this made it more or less impossible for me to understand anything they said. But the music was good for dancing. There seemed to be a lot of randomers present who had wandered in off the street without attending any of the other Counterflows events, including many attractive young ladies. At least I think they were attractive young ladies, it was hard to tell with all the dry ice.

And so to bed.

The final episode of my awesome Counterflows review comes your way tomorrow.

Counterflows 2015: Friday

I am belatedly posting about my time at the Counterflows festival in Glasgow. You can see all my posts on this here and a post on the festival's first day here.

Today's proceedings began again at the CCA with something called Experiment for Demolished Structures for 4 Voices by Richard Youngs. Mr Youngs is not someone whose work I was previously familiar with, but he was the featured artist of the festival. This was again in the CCA theatre space and saw the room arranged with four classically trained singer in the corner singing stuff that harmonised with the audience in the middle. The audience was standing rather than seated and encouraged to move around to explore the harmonics, though people maybe did not move as much as intended because the floor was a bit creaky and the performance was relatively low volume. In setup the piece had obvious echoes of James Tenney's In a Large Open Space.

The piece was fascinating butI felt that I missed a whole element by not being able to follow the words being sung. Operatic vocals can be difficult to follow even in a language you know. There were no surtitles or programme with the words and I was not really able to make out the lyrics, so I do not really have any idea what they were singing about. But that made the event all the more mysterious and intriguing, as the imagination had to fill in the gaps.

The crowd dynamics were interesting. People could move right up to and around the performers, but it was noticeable that they tended not to look at whatever singer was closest to them. Because the singers had such an air of concentration and were putting a lot of effort into the performance, people in the audience were wary of distracting them. Also those classically trained singers are famously handy with their fists if angered.

After that piece things got a bit Wanderly Wagon as we decamped form the CCA and made our way to the nearby Garnethill Multicultural Centre, where three different acts performed for our amusement. The venue's walls were lined with Taekwondo banners and Chinese dragon heads, giving some clue as to how multicultural the place was.

The first performance was by Angharad Davies & Sebastian Lexer. Ms Davies stood more or less in the middle of the room playing a violin while people sat on the floor around her. Mr Lexer did some electronic stuff, looping and treating the sounds Ms Davies was making. The whole thing was mesmerising and hypnotic. I liked it.

I like the next performance less so. This was by Hisato Higuchi, a Japanese fellow who sang while playing guitar in a manner that called to mind the Blues. Some of the instrumental bits were interesting but overall the performance was a bit repetitive and unengaging. I might have engaged more if the lyrics had been in English, not because I am some kind of racist who will only listen to anglophone vocals but because it would have served to differentiate the songs.

The last performance was a collaboration between jazz saxophonist Daniel Carter (who also plays keyboards) and Owen Green, who does electronic stuff. It worked surprisingly well, even though Mr Green's electronics were a bit laptop based. What he was doing had a live feel to it and lacked the sterility you get from watching someone tick away on a computer. Some of the electronics were triggered or influenced by him blowing into a tube, which lent things a certain physicality, as did his having to fiddle with knobs and stuff for other pieces.

For all the enjoyable jazziness of this last performance, largely driven by Daniel Carter, I think that maybe their set did go on a bit, though that might have been because I was somewhat *tired*.

Back in the CCA there was sound installation piece by Florian Hecker. This appeared to be programmed rather than being in any way "live", though it is so hard to tell with these things (and what is "live" anyway? blah blah blah etc.). The piece had a load of speakers arranged around the theatre space from which sound emitted. People could walk around between the speakers or stay in one place or lie on the floor or whatever they wanted to do really. The sound was set up so that it seemed to move around the room from speaker to speaker. I do not remember so much about the sound itself, I think it was of the electronic burst variety. The overall experience was very enjoyable, with the combination of the darkened room, the unusual performance and tiredness working well to accentuate the strangeness.

With that event over we drifted downstairs to the foyer for a small nightcap. There was a band playing, who turned out to be called The Fish Police. The foyer is more conducive to drinking and talking than live music so I did not engage with them much at first, but once I did I realised that they were amazing. They were four smartly dressed young men (unlike some of the scruffs who had been appearing earlier) and they had a fairly standard guitar, bass, drums and vocals line-up. At first listen the music nodded towards pop reggae.

The singer's in between song banter made me think that the band might all be stoners, particularly given the lyrics of their songs being about funny mass cultural items or things they like eating. However I read subsequently that the singer is on the Aspergers spectrum so it could be that too. Either way it was an appealing kind of oddness.

Chicken and the eating thereof seemed to be a recurring lyrical theme, particularly in the insanely catchy 'Chicken Nuggets for Me'. The bassist commented that this was all a bit ironic for him, as he was a vegetarian (he may actually have been of the Rastafarian persuasion, or maybe like me he just loves animals). They also had a song about how much they like cocoa butter, another about a Japanese girl who reads so many books that she is always falling asleep, and another again about a girl with blue hair.

I should add that these tunes were all incredibly catchy. To hear the Fish Police is to love them. Everyone went mental for them.

Your favourite blog will have more Counterflows action tomorrow.