Le Guess Who: Part Two

This is part two of my account of November's Le Guess Who festival in Utrecht. Part one can be seen here. This part deals with Friday 9 November, the second day of the festival.

The main part of the festival was taking a break during the day, which left us with an opportunity to visit a place called BAK to see an exhibition entitled Forensic Justice that was being shown in conjunction with Le Guess Who. This had been put together by Forensic Architecture, a radical architectural organisation headed by Eyal Weizman, whose work has previously appeared in the LRB (the other paper of record). We watched a series of videos where the Forensic Architecture people carefully dissected video and other evidence to investigate official narratives of events. These were interesting as examples of how the panopticon society in which we live does not just lead to a Big Brother society in which the State continuously watches us, but one in which non-state actors have the tools to expose illicit state action.
Some of the Forensic Justice installations were pretty intense, like the reconstructions from multiple CCTV images of a hospital in Aleppo being bombed by the Syrian air force, which showed people being thrown around by the force of an explosion, or their analysis of the killing of two Palestinian school children (unarmed, not obviously taking part in rioting or even demonstrations, apparently on their way home from school), which showed they were killed by Israeli soldiers firing live bullets but falsely claiming to have fired only rubber bullets.

For me though I think the most upsetting was an analysis of the fatal beating of Pavlos Fyssas, a Greek anti-fascist, by members of the Golden Dawn, with the analysis of Forensic Architecture showing that the Greek police had stood by and let the attack happen. What made that the most disturbing I think is that crazy things (hospitals being bombed or soldiers shooting school kids) seem almost normal in crazy places like Syria or Palestine, but they are much more unheimlich in an urbane and democratic country like Greece. Good job nothing like that happens closer to home, eh readers?

The last examination we saw by Forensic Architecture was something of a relief as it did not involve anyone losing their life. Instead by careful analysis of several video clips they appeared to disprove the assertion of the Italian coast guard that a sea rescue vessel was operating in concert with people smugglers.

There was more of Forensic Justice that we could have watched (something to with the unfortunate plight of Orangoutangs) but I can only take so much, so we left BAK and headed off to Lombok, which is another area of Utrecht where a Le Guess Who satellite festival was taking place. Beside an impressive mosque there was a food market taking place, with stalls selling a variety of tasty noms. We sampled their wares. Lombok seems to be multicultural bit of Utrecht so we were also treated to some guys walking around playing drums and those squeaking trumpets they have in the Orient. There were also some children doing some class of traditional dance for us; I think they might have been Turkish rather than Arab but it's hard to tell. I definitely admired their intense concentration.

And then we strolled around Lombok looking for further excitement. And we found it in the form of some class of Dabke flashmob taking place outside a church. If you do not know Dabke, it is the traditional dance thing from Syria and Palestine and other places round there, typically done by guys joining arms, often forming rings that rotate frenetically. This is what was going on here, with some attempt to bring home to Whitey that Dabke does feature actual steps and is not just all about the speed. We watched amusedly from a distance, careful not to be drawn into the maniacal gyres.

At some point we were sated by Dabke, so pretty much at random visited a place called the Ubuntuhuis, where some chap called Cengiz Arslanpay was going to be combining electronic music with his ney flute (ney!). The Ubuntuhuis turned out not to be a place for people to hang out working on the latest Linux releases but rather some class of centre for homeless people and persons newly arrived in the country. The venue where Mr Arslanpay was playing was living room sized and we were all more or less on top of the player but that made it all that bit more entertaining. Sadly he was unable to treat us to his electronics for reasons but he did play a succession of different Turkish flutes.

My Beloved and I reunited with our spiritual guru Mr B— in the Tivoli complex and went to see some chap called Serpentwithfeet (I think he might call himself serpentwithfeet but I do not hold with proper nouns beginning with lower case letters; frankly he should be glad I am leaving the spaces out of his name). Mr Feet is not actually a serpent, footed or otherwise, but an impractical red anorak wearing fellow from the USA. He apparently used to be a choirboy but now he makes music that is sometimes classed as experimental but seemed to me to be a fairly accessible form of R&B. The real joy of his performance came from his persona as presented to the audience, which was basically camp and endearingly positive. Everyone who saw him was happier than they were beforehand.

We then split off to the Janskerk again to see some of Vashti Bunyan, the lost folkie sensation who is now back in action. Ms Bunyan whispers very quietly between songs but then when singing projects at an audible but restrained volume suiting the delicate nature of her songs. She is also a bit of a roffler, quipping at one point that back in the day she was told her music had no commercial potential before launching into 'Train Song', from whose relentless use in films and advertisements she has made a mint. Overall though I wished that scheduling had meant that I arrived early enough to get a good seat at the front.

Back in the Tivoli complex I let myself be brought to see Paddy Steer, wondering if I had made a terrible mistake. For the first song I thought that maybe I had but then either he got better or I was reprogrammed. Mr Steer's music is an odd combination of analogue synth sounds and live drumming, with his vocals affected by the vocoder type thing he has in the space helmet he wears for some of the songs. I was intrigued by the question of whether all of the music was strictly live, as the drumming seemed pretty intricate and hard to imagine someone doing while also playing synths but it was impossible to be certain either way as he had a bank of equipment largely obscuring our view of whatever he was doing with his hands. We nevertheless did get to see his impressive space suit. Overall Paddy Steer hovers gamely on the borderlands between weirdo art music and novelty shite, staying I think on the right side of that boundary.

I stuck my head briefly into where Blanck Mass were playing and was a bit surprised by what I saw. Blanck Mass have a membership overlap with Fuck Buttons, but the my sense of how they divided was that Fuck Buttons played the more heavy beaty stuff while Blanck Mass play music that is not entirely dissimilar except that it is a bit beat free, making the music a weird kind of in your face ambient (use your Babbage machine to compare Fuck Button's 'Brainfreeze' with Blanck Mass's 'Chernobyl'). But on the face of this performance Fuck Buttons and Blanck Mass appear to have converged, with the music on offer tonight featuring lots of big fucking beats. I reckon this would have been great to dance to if you were so inclined. Even as listening music it was not unentertaining, but we were a bit *tired* so we repaired to our house and caught some Zzzzzs.

Day three coming soon!

Exhibition image source:

The Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Hospital in Aleppo (Forensic Architecture: Forensic Justice)

More of my Le Guess Who photographs

More of my Utrecht photographs

Bowlie 2: Sunday

I am writing about the recent(-ish) Bowlie 2 festival in Minehead, curated by Belle & Sebastian, the people who brought us the original Bowlie Weekender back in 1998. I have italicised the names of artists who played at the original festival.

On Sunday morning I dragged myself out of bed at some ungodly hour in order to catch some of Stevie Jackson's set. Steve "Action" Jackson is the guitarist, co-front man, and shy sex god from B&S, though we could not but notice that (like the rest of us) he has chubbed out a bit over the years. His solo stuff was amusingly whimsical – enjoyable to listen to but possibly not something you would ever bother spending money on, unlike some of the underappreciated classics he has written for B&S. However, I was unimpressed by the song he finished with, a song about popular artist Vincent Van Gogh that built up to a lamer pun that only works if you use the incorrect American pronunciation of the artist's name.

Folk sensation Vashti Bunyan was playing upstairs. As you know, she recorded one album back in the 1960s, no one bought it, and she dropped out of the music business to bring up children and stuff before being rediscovered and having a second career. She sings a bit shyly but is nevertheless an endearing stage performer with many attractive songs. She was also saying that this would be her last concert with her current band line-up, which I hope does not mean that she is going back into retirement.

After that we went into Minehead to meet people in a pub for lunch. Originally this was going to be a mini-Frank's APA meetup, but then someone who shall remain nameless remembered that his chalet mates were doing a hog roast for him, so he made his excuses and did not show up. The rest of us went to not to the nice pub in the CAMRA guide but the easy to find one in the harbour. However, we were informed that due to a spike in demand it would be an over an hour before we got any food, so we left too – much to the delight of the inbred yokels drinking there. We had a nice cream tea in a nearby tearoom, but this had the odd feature of not having toilet facilities available for customer use, which seemed like some kind of breach of health and safety regulations.

One anti-Minehead rant out of the way and we were back in the Butlins for more concert action. This time round we were in the swish upstairs venue for a concert by Ethio-jazz sensation Mulatu Astatqé. This was a considerably more satisfying concert than when we saw him playing with some other Ethiopian jazzers and the Either Orchestra in London. The Either Orchestra guy was slightly annoying, but tonight we had what seemed very much like Mulatu leading his own band. The upstairs venue was the perfect place for this, as we were able to sit at tables and sip cocktails while listening to that sophisticated Addis Ababa sound. For me this was very much one of the festival highlights.

And then The Vaselines. These were a band from back in the late 1980s fronted by a man (Eugene Kelly) and woman (Frances McKee) who used to make sexy time with each other. They recorded one album and then they split up, both musically and sexually. But now they are back together, at least for the music. In their first run The Vaselines were a pretty obscure outfit, but the passage of time means that they are now very well known as key players on the Glasgow indie scene, so they were playing at the festival on the largest stage and to a lot of people. I am not sure the change suits them, as they are very much a small venue kind of band, but they still managed to do the job.

Now, if you know the band on record you will know that some of the songs are a bit rude (e.g. 'Rory Ride Me Raw', various lyrics to other songs). Some of this works particularly because Frances McKee has the kind of voice you expect to hear singing nice folk tunes. They really played up to their saucy rep with their between song yap, with a great many allusions to their former sex lives with each other. It was all a bit much, frankly – these people are in their forties, so they have no business to be talking about bunga bunga. Small wonder that I saw several aghast and blushing sailors fleeing from the venue.

Laetitia Sadier probably did not go on about her sex life, although she was often singing in French so it is hard to be sure. The sometime Stereolab singer was playing solo, accompanying herself on guitar. I liked this a lot more than I thought I would – she seemed to have less of the hauteur that sometimes marred her appearance with her old band. Her guitar playing seemed a bit basic, but the uncomplicated lines seemed like a good minimalist accompaniment to her impressive voice.

And that, dear readers, was the last musical performance I saw at Bowlie 2. We have inexplicably turned against indie-pop stalwarts Camera Obscura so we did not stay to watch their set. There were other bands playing later (notably Them Beatles, a Beatles tribute act who were, I suspect, friends of people in the other bands or else people in the other bands moonlighting), but sitting in the chalet playing a train building game with my chalet-mates seemed a bit more appealing.

I did venture back to the venues to hear a bit of the Finders Keepers / B-Music DJs, playing where How Does It Feel? had been packing them out the night before. Their tunes were excellent, but sadly they were playing to almost nobody. There was another disco on in one of the other bars, playing tunes that could only be described as lamer faux alternative wankerboy music, but this one was completely rammed in a not particularly pleasant way, so we called it a night.

An inuit panda production

Homelights

Homelights was this folkie festival thing taking place in Whelans over a couple of days. We bought tickets for just the Sunday and then only came down to see what was on in the evening. When we arrived, Adrian Crowley was playing. It was nice to catch him, as my understanding is that he had organised the festival. He seems to be one of those singer songwriter fellows, and he played tunes accompanying himself on guitar. He also had some woman with him playing fiddle or something like that; I think she might have been temporarily recruited from another band playing at the event.

I am not sure Mr Crowley was that great, with the tunes being not all that, and what was good about them live was often the stringy arrangements, possibly lacking when he plays on his own. I did like one song that he played near the end, but I thought it might be a cover; discussions with my beloved suggested that it might just be one of those songs that sounds very like a song by someone else. I straightforwardly liked the last song he did, something about three saucy sisters where he liked the shy one best (matron), even if the lyrics seemed a bit odd. And it is only fair to say that Mr Crowley has an appealingly understated stage manner.

Next up was Andy Irvine. Handy Andy always delivers the goods live, and here he treated us to something of a greatest hits set – so we had 'Arthur McBride (And Then We Bate The Shite Out Of Them)', the one about Woody Guthrie, the one about the farmer whose crops have dried up, the one about the soldiers, the one about the gold miner who meets a lovely young lady, etc..

The gold miner one is a particular favourite. I remember him saying a while ago that he has never recorded it, because it is the kind of song that loses its magic once preserved in such a format. I could not but agree with him, on seeing the reaction of an audience who seemed largely to be hearing it for the first time. The one about Woody Guthrie also went down well, with everyone loving the 'All You Fascists Bound To Lose' sing-a-long refrain.

And then Vashti Bunyan. She is one of those people who recorded one folkie album back in the 1960s before disappearing off into obscurity, only to have come back to musical life in the last few years with new recordings, concerts, and suchlike. She has some oddly contradictory qualities – she is obviously a bit shy and nervous about playing live, yet she seems to really enjoy playing and gets a real thrill from bringing her music to an appreciative audience. The contradiction actually contributes to how enjoyable her music is live. The delightful songs are also an obvious help here.

Sadly I could not pay too much attention to Ms Bunyan, as the heat and close atmosphere of the venue (in stark contrast to the cold and damp outside) meant that I became a little bit faint and had to go and sit down at the back. I am so un-rock and roll.

an Inuit Panda production.

Trapped In The Chalet: part three

Sunday was the day curated by Davendra Banhart. I had intended to make my way to the musical pub quiz scheduled for 2.00 pm. These plans foundered on the copious quantities of alcohol consumed the night before, and the deleterious effect of said consumption on my functioning. On eventually reaching a a stage where leaving the chalet was possible, I resolved to try an interesting experiment – to spend a day at All Tomorrow’s Parties abstaining from all mind altering chemicals, whether they be alcohol or adrenachrome cut with Japanese heroin. How differently would I discern the music without such things blurring my powers of observation?

First, though, I went for a walk along the beach, and ate a particularly vile repast of fish and chips that I wondered if shunning solid foods might in fact have been a better plan for the day.

As discussed, Devendra Banhart was curating today, meaning that there was a surfeit of folkies performing. The first act I saw were Espers. They were folkies. I seem to remember quite liking them, but nothing about them imprinted itself in my memory, suggesting that abstention from alcohol damages the memory. Vetiver are also folkies, and have a certain rep among Banhart-lovers for essentially being his backing band, even though they have a separate prior existence. They are a bit hairier than Espers, and I recall finding them fairly enjoyable.

Then I went downstairs to see Jandek. He wears a hat and is a bit more avant garde than the other acts on today. In general I liked him – this is good avant garde rather than bad avant garde – but I felt he could do without singing. He’s not very good at it, and the music seems to work instrumentally.

Bert Jansch is an old lad who sings and plays guitar. He is some kind of inspirational force to lovers of old-school folky music, and I was under orders to go and see him. He was playing upstairs, and was maybe a bit lost in the size of the venue, but yes indeed he was very impressive. I would like to see him in Whelans sometime, yes.

Folkie legend Vashti Bunyan played on the main stage too. Maybe you are aware of her story? She released an album back in the late 1969, it did not do that well, and she dropped out of the music business, moving to a remote location to concentrate on the bringing up of her children. Over the years that album (Just Another Diamond Day) began to be seen as a lost classic of another era. In the recent past it was re-released to considerable acclaim from the people who like that sort of thing, coaxing Vashti out of obscurity. She recorded and released a second album – Lookaftering – and now here she is playing a concert at All Tomorrow’s Parties.

I may affect a certain scoviness towards these folkie types, but Vashti Bunyan’s two albums are both very popular here in Carwash Mansions. So I was looking forward to her set, and was not disappointed. Her voice remains as beautiful and delicate as ever, and the songs all work perfectly as ever. Her stage demeanour is quite engaging, as she is both very comfortable in front of an audience while also coming across as being a bit *shy*. She also told us little stories about the processes that had led to the writing of individual songs – the unfortunate love life of her younger self seemed to be a recurring theme.

After that, I saw Ramblin’ Jack Elliott play the last song or two of his set. Oddly, it seemed very similar to that ‘The Plains of Kildare’ horse-racing one that Andy Irvine does, except it was about a different horse taking part in a race in the USA. Man, how many songs about horses are there?

I loafed around for a bit with yer man Ady from Vacuous Pop and his friend The Martian. Ady shouted “Jog on!” occasionally. The Martian was telling me about the importance of drinking lots of water. Hey man, I’m a former raver, no need to tell me. We also got talking to some guy who runs that Lazybird club.

And then Devendra Banhart. You know the old joke about what the Grateful Dead fan say when he runs out of drugs? I was a bit like that with Devendra Banhart. This is not music you can appreciate in an unaltered state, and as his set advanced I moved from a state of not liking it to actively loathing his performance with such an emphatic rage that it was a wonder I did not rush the stage and treat Mr Banhart to a stout pummelling. In and of itself the music was not so bad, except that it was the kind of sounds an uninspiring Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison tribute act might serve up. I could have endured if it had not been for Banhart’s tiresomely phoney in-between song banter. This was all “Hey cats, we’re gonna keep things mellow for a bit but then we’re gonna groove on out a bit”. And then there was his anti-war song, which was like something from A Mighty Wind. GRRRR! I am falling into one of my RAGING FURIES just thinking of it.

Still, you’d have to wonder if maybe I am the one at fault here. Lots of otherwise sensible people seem to like Mr Banhart, so maybe there is something to him that I am not noticing.

Or maybe I am hearing the sound of banjo strings tuning up.

Anyway, I was standing there having my nads ground by Devendra Banhart when I that the clock was nearing midnight, meaning that Genesis of the Daleks was due to start on the Bowlie TV. So I made my way back to the chalet to meet the young man you know as Braised By Wolves, where we watched the first couple of episodes. But then oh no! wor chalet mates returned from Devendra Banhart, and were all *tired* and needed to sleep and stuff, putting an end to our TV watching pranks. BBW went off looking for somewhere else to watch the dawn of the Daleks, while I went for walk and then crashed.

ATP runs for three days, so that's all there is to say about this year's, right? WRONG. Keep tuning in to Inuit Bikini Scarlet Carwash and you will soon get to discover what happened after the festival ended.