Tag Archives: ATP Festival

Eclectic Mainline 27th October 2010

Tonight, to mark the fact that The Duke & The King are playing in Leeds at The Wardrobe tomorrow with Wilful Missing I repeated the session of theirs, first broadcast in Laura’s BCB Sessions back on 12th May.  You can also listen to their session again here on Untitled Noise if you so wish.

The Duke And The King at BCB, April 2010

The Duke And The King at BCB, April 2010

Amid all the excitement of the fact that we were running a competition to give away tickets to the above mentioned gig, and the fact that I was looking forward to The Twilight Sad in session in Laura’s show tonight, I forgot to wax lyrical about the fact that Animal Collective have been announced as curators of the ATP Festival next May.  This is absolutely brilliant news.  I had in my head 4 potential candidates for curating it, of which they were one.  The others, if you are interested, would have been Super Furry Animals, Polly Jean Harvey or Dangermouse.

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Don’t look back, but there’s a band over there playing a whole album

In Phil Cope’s recent review of the ATP Festival we attended, he expressed an aversion to the modern trend of artists performing a seminal album in its entirety at a gig. Phil’s objection was prompted by Spiritualized performing their 1997 album Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space at the festival. I would like to defend this increasingly popular phenomenon.

J Spaceman at ATP: which song shall we do next, band?

J Spaceman at the ATP Festival: "which song shall we do next, band?"

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ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 3

Matt Groening introducing Daniel Johnston as his favourite songwriter

Matt Groening introducing Daniel Johnston as his "favourite songwriter"

Sunday dawns and Jim becomes my hero twice in ten minutes by making me a fried egg sandwich and telling me he once saw Spike Milligan in a pub in Manchester. Simon rather coyly reveals his affection for Spear of Destiny and I resolve to play the excellent “Do You Believe in the Westworld” on the radio for him, only to forget later and feel like a dick for doing so.

We race to the Centre Stage to see Boredoms again, just to reassure ourselves that we weren’t victim to some kind of mass hallucination yesterday and they are once again, amazing. We then decamp to Reds, the smallest of the Butlins venues to see Viv Albertine’s Limerice who are excellent. Continue reading

ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 2

Saturday begins with two hours of 70’s kids cartoon Hong Kong Phooey on the excellent ATP TV channel provided for the weekend. Refreshed by the antics of the titular kung fu practicing canine, we venture forth into the unknown. [I ventured forth a little earlier than the others and caught Hello Saferide, in Reds. I was rather impressed by her Swedish knack of finding a good tune, and sentimental lyrics. Ed]

Hello Saferide - melodic and romantic

Hello Saferide - melodic romanticism

Between the four of us (me, Albert, Simon and Jim) we can conjure up little previous knowledge of Boredoms despite the fact that they appear to have been going since about 1942 and have released about half a million records. The notes about them printed in the frankly beautiful programmes (coming with 4 different covers featuring Matt Groening penned caricatures of Iggy, Joanna Newsome, Daniel Johnston and someone we didn’t recognise [either She & Him or Lightning Dust, the jury is still out – ed]) weren’t much help either. In this we simply read a breathless treatise about Boredoms being Japanese, having a penchant for using lots of drummers, and being a bit ace.

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ATP Festival curated by Matt Groening – Day 1

The first thing that hits you when you walk in to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival is the contrast between the ultra mainstream surroundings of Butlins and the heartening array of freaks who attend. This is demonstrated in microcosm within 5 minutes by a painfully thin young Japanese man wearing a surgical mask and lime green leggings draping himself with impressive languor against a wall featuring a poster for “The Peter Andre Weekend” – three nights at Butlins and a concert featuring the impressively pectoralled housewives’ favourite for a mere £98.

Broadcast

Broadcast - noise, or music?

We will return to bare chested doyens of entertainment in a moment, but our first foray was to see Broadcast, a male/female duo beloved of the hip and the trying-to-be, who amble shyly onto the stage and proceed to stand at two elevated box like contraptions and wrestle out half an hour’s worth of whirrs, drones and howls whist having experimental films “broadcast” (did you see what I did there? ) on top of them. The result is very much an ATP archetype: challenging, startling and beautiful at the same time. The effect is only diluted mid-way through the set when they resort to boring old actual songs. That’s not noise, that’s just music.

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When Big Joan Sets Up 13/5/10 – “So this is what culture sounds like then?”

And with that beautifully arch putdown overheard by our mate Jim from one of the security guards at Butlins Minehead over the weekend (during The Residents, if you’re intrested) I welcome you to our All Tomorrow’s Parties Special programme featuring mostly tracks from artists who performed at Matt Groening‘s ATP festival last weekend.

Wish you’d been there.

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Eclectic Mainline 12th May – Fuck Buttons interview

Well, another May, and another life-changing experience at an All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival.  This year, at the Matt Groening event,  it was Boredoms who turned my life upsite down.  They really were phenomenal.   I hope to have some photos to show you soon.  In the meantime, I can show you the back of my head occasionally popping into view during the start of the Spiritualized set.  Several things brought me close to tears, but this song was the one that actually did it.

Fuck Buttons did a couple of DJ sets at the festival, so it was apt that tonight we had an interview with them in my show.  If there is demand for it, I can make the interview available here on the blog as a podcast.  Here’s the tracklist for tonight’s show:

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Eclectic Mainline – 7th October 2009

Pavement to curate ATP Festival

Pavement to curate ATP Festival

Tonight I’m rather excited by the news that Pavement are curating the ATP Festival next May, from 14th-16th May. Might get tickets on Friday, as soon they’re released. Or…. I might wait a week and find out who’s curating the other weekend, a week before. I imagine the one from 7th-9th May will either be a ATP vs The Fans type affair, or another 10th anniversary type affair. Anyone got any opinions?

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