Just got back from ATP, a small festival based in a holiday camp on Camber Sands on England’s south coast. The event is curated each year by a particular band who chooses the artists that will play - basically their friends, label-mates and influences. This year was curated by The Mars Volta, who I’d never heard of, and who turned out to be white-afro-wearin prog rockers who weren’t all that great. They chose some gooood music though, mostly on the psychedlic/kraut-rock side, with some hip hop, some metal, a dab of jazzy trip hop and Anthony and The Johnsons. Who hold the dubious Mercury Music Prize and so hence I could not give a fuck about. Had heard of only a small number of the bands that were playing, having booked it pretty much on the back of Michael Rother, Damo Suzuki and Holger Czukay playing (and a good bunch of people going :-).

Friday

A big load of us went down, there was me, Mart, Rich, Gemma, Fran, Ian, Ben T, Will, Norm and Ruth. We had two “chalets” (small flatlets in a socialist style collection of two-floor blocks). Ours was right next to the main building with the two stages, about 30 seconds away. Result!

First thing after arriving, we went to check out the stages. Dälek were playing slightly rock-dirge hip hop downstairs which was OK, but not in the mood we went to check out The Locust. BWAAAWWHWHHW. I opened the door to upstairs to be hit by a wall of noise generated by four men in lighting-up gimp suits. Ben, Will and I stood there laughing for five solid minutes until it ceased to be funny. We went back to Dälek.

One of the signatures of the whole weekend was trying to work out what the bands would be like from the ridiculously pretentiously awful bios written in the programme. Awful bollocks like:

“400 Blows are either geniuses or they are not. But they do what they must, and that to me is always genius. Love it or hate it.”

Or:

“Ambitious people pushing the parameters of what punkrock supposedly is.”

Perhaps:

“High on Fire has put the power back in ‘power trio’ and forged a new archetype.”

The one that particularly caught our fancy was this review of Diamanda Galas (emphasis mine):

“The sorrow of which she sings addresses in chilling recollection, man’s inhumanity to man, songs of life and death, redemption and damnation, of human pain and suffering which is experienced directly by the audience.”

At first we vowed never to go to such a thing, but our curiosity got the better of us and we went to check it out. Her first two numbers came out like a female Tom Waits. Then the screaming began. A couple more bluesy numbers. A bit more screaming. It was OK. She obviously has an absolutely incredible voice and more blues-enjoying members of the group liked her quite a bit.

After Diamanda we heard a bit of Saul Williams, who I know as a spoken word performer, not my thing. He had some sampling stuff going on though and it was pretty good. We heard the last part of Blonde Redhead, who were OK leftfield rock type stuff (I think - getting hazy). A bit of The Kills, who were similar, and better. By this point I was getting a bit avant-rocked out. I listen to electronic music pretty much exclusively and I was getting withdrawals, so a few of us went downstairs to catch ex-Anti-pop Consortium rapper Beans, backed by unknown band Holy Fuck. Holy Fuck came on and did the first track without Beans, they rocked very hard. They’re a four man combo, a bassist, a drummer and two effects guys, basically just manipulating the sound, but without laptops or samplers, using a more analogue style. The result was probably closest to the distorto-funk sound of some of the Chemical Brothers’ tunes, but more driving. It was awesome. I danced a lot to that.

Pretty much crashed out after their set. Drank some beer, watched some TV. All the rooms had TVs hard-wired to a set of internal channels. These included yer basic Freeview channels, but also two festival-specific ones. They were showing all kinds of silliness.

Saturday

The weather was pretty crappy, rain and wind, but there was a break for an hour or so before sunset so we went to the beach, had a bit of a walk, played some frisbee. The beach was very pretty. It’s a big flat expanse of sand, but the tide was fairly high. Took some quite nice photos even just with my phone. I didn’t take my Fuji digital camera, just sticking with the W800i. I don’t regret that at all either. Really starting to like the W800i, it could certainly be better, but it’s so convenient.

Then drinking and metal! We went to check out 400 Blows, who dress like LAPD motorcycle officers under Hitler. They rocked. 3 minute heavy punk-rock/metal tracks. Plus at the end of their set the fire alarms went off. At first we just couldn’t hear them over the music, but during a break between tracks we started to wonder. They just kept going though. The organisers turned off the big PA, but they kept playing through their own amps. They refused to stop until they’d finished the next song. We thought it was pretty rock to be honest.

The fire alarm meant an emergency trip to the chalet to pick up more beer. Stocked up we went over to The Fucking Champs, who sounded a bit like Black Album-era Metallica without vocals. I thought it was cool, if a bit naff, but naff in a funny way. They were followed by Mr Quintron and Miss Pussycat. Quintron played hammond and rhodes and sang and Miss Pussycat wore a home-made dress with a dinosaur on. And sang, a bit, but her mic was way too low. They were on and off IMHO. But one track was wicked, featuring the chorus thus:

Quintron: I’m a fuckin’ badass Pussycat (and us): I’m a fuckin’ badass Quintron: You’re a fuckin’ badass Pussycat (and us): You’re a fuckin’ badass Quintron: Muthafuckin’ badass Pussycat (and us): Muthafuckin’ badass

Bad ass. It’s called Swamp Buggy Badass and it’s on their Swamp Tech album if you fancy a go. Recommended.

After that Weird War played some OK LCD/Scissor Sistery type New York stuff, which I quite enjoyed. Mart really took a disliking to the front man which ruined it for him. I thought he had good presence. They had this whole schtick about the set being improvised from the headlines. For me it worked OK, but Mart didn’t find it funny/cool/etc.

I made everyone Spaghetti Bolognaise for supper. Big cooking is good fun when it works. After that we went to check out the Mars Volta. They’d egotistically put nothing on the second stage at the same time, so it was just them, and they closed the bar. They sucked mostly, just a bit far along the white noise prog route. Totally lacking in structure. Meh. Apparently another fire alarm cut their set short though. Instead we had a few more beers at the chalet, laughed about the reviews a bit more and waited for the late nite hip hop to start. Peanut Butter Wolf’s Stone’s Throw records put on a night with DJs PBW, J-Rocc and Koushik and rappers Madlib and Dudley Perkins. The DJs all played a wide range of stuff, more like a DJ Shadow or Soulwax set than straight hip hop. Madlib did some good rhyming and also played a twenty minute drum solo, which was unexpected. The night was all good clean fun though and I stayed their dancing until they kicked us out at five.

Sunday

Sunday was Official Krautrock Day. We started off with a big fried breakfast, to get our strength up, followed by some gentle digestion accompanied by the Cinematic Orchestra. Started by Ninja artist J Swinscoe, the CO provided calming noodly live trip hop type stuff to moviez. Nice, but a touch bland. OK for a Sunday afternoon though.

Holger Czukay, ex of Can, was our next stop, but he didn’t show! We waited ages through the soundcheck, and then some other band came on, and they were crap, and the PA didn’t work properly. We humphed off. Then we humphed back later for Michael Rother. Ex of Kraftwerk (briefly) and Neu!, he was the real deal, playing a fantastic set of lovely layered synth-powered gently-fedback stuff. Very Neu! and I really really enjoyed it.

Continuing the ancient giants of rock theme for the day the next band should have been Acid Mothers Temple, followed by Damo Suzuki, also ex of Can. Should have been, Acid Mothers also failed to materialise. So we waited for Damo instead, shouting “Damo!” in high pitched voices to while away the time. He was pretty cool. His guitarist was a bit of a rock wanker and I didn’t enjoy the music all that much, but Damo was a star. Stopping during the last track and thrusting upward thumbs into the air and blowing kisses to the audience with a huge grin on his face. All from a 5-foot 50-something Japanese man. He was great.

And then it was finally time to run away from Anthony and His Johnson. I felt a bit bad for rejecting him without even trying, but Mart and I went back to the chalet to chill for a bit, review the bands so far. We did that for about half an hour before people started turning up and ranting about how shit A + T J really were. Obviously I saved myself a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

However, there was one last trick up our sleeve. The Acid Mothers had only been moved back and we pretty much all went along to check them out at 11:30. They rocked. Many aged Japanese hippy men, synths, guitars, two drummers. Rock. It was going great with 20-minute building prog tunes that really worked, the three front guys singing together provided a nice touch. Then they invited Damo on stage. Yay! Awesome, even more rock. More great tracks. Then! The guitarist started playing his guitar held vertically aloft and swinging it around like a throwing hammer. Raising it aloft once more he made the cutting throat hand sign, a cheer went up and he proceeded to destroy it! I’ve never seen anyone do that before live and I found it immensely enjoyable. It took him a while, resilient things that guitars are. The synth guy had time to look over his shoulder, see what was happening and give a pleasantly surprised chuckle. Finally the guitarist threw the remaing pieces of the neck and body out into either end of the crowd, before picking up an entirely identical guitar and continuing to play. The best part was that there was no distinguishable change in the sound of the tune through-out the whole process. Awesome, 100% of ROCK, and the best possible way to end the festival. We went back to the chalet, got more drunk, laughed, joked and shouted enthusiastically about the awesome rockness before finally passing out.