The All-new Sanbox ATP thread where we actually talk about bands and shit and not just FAPs, but probably mostly talk about Foundation's incompetence

That wristband thing sounds like a bad thing. How did that work then? Were you allotted the show you wanted to see when you checked in?

On the other hand Foundation have always been terrible at organising anything (I fear for that ATP vs. the fans one next year). Isn't ATP just turning into a weekend where you pay £120 for the 'atmosphere' and going to the pub? That's more of a pull than the lineups they have for the festivals in the last few years (I haven't been since 2004).

also phenomenal: the new blockaders and the haters, playing in balaclavas, tight focus noise pain, delivered straight and lethal, couldn't take my eyes off em

but i pretty enjoyed all of the performances I saw - Nurse with Wound, Richard Youngs, Dead Machines, Double Leopards, Corsano/Flaherty/Yeh (another fucken highlight), Brotzmann/Bennik, MV/EE and the Bummer Road, Comets on Fire, Bark Haze, the Skaters, Wolf Eyes, Monotract, Mouthus (perhaps the most original and confounding show I saw all w/end, these geezers are really reaching into some new zone of zonk), No-Neck Blues Band.

I didn't experience any of the queue nightmares that seem to have blighted many ppl's fun (it obv helped that I mostly stuck to the smaller two rooms/give cldn't give a fuck abt any more 'punk rock' legend reunion shows, but I had no probs getting in to see Wolf Eyes, Nurse with Wound, Dead C etc in the big one.)

Sonic Youth and the Stooges did two shows, one for each colour of band and was planned to be that way - I actually suspect it was self-catering one time, 'room-only' the other. MC5 they just made up on the day and were supposed to get a sheet through your chalet door telling you there was a 2 hour slot you could pick up wristbands if seeing them was a "priority" for you.

Isn't ATP just turning into a weekend where you pay £120 for the 'atmosphere' and going to the pub?

I think it might be. See Goth Bowling.

can you tell me a bit more about NWW. what did they play / how many were on stage / did stapleton have any on stage banter etc?

There were about 5 on stage. Stapleton on decks, a guy playing a gong, Potter with tone generators and a mixing desk, a bass player and one more - a sax player? It was pretty unstructured to begin with, and I'm not that familiar with the material to immediately recognise what it was, but the last 15 minutes or so sounded a lot like what I imagine the Staple-Tone material must sound like. Stapleton silent throughout, waved at the crowd at the end.

NWW = stapleton (wearing a baseball cap, mostly sawing away at a treated gtr and in the latter half of the set playing loops and some crunchy, almost hip-hop beats), colin potter at big computer type thing, a percussionist with a set up of gongs and shit, a baldie playing bass and electronics, another baldie playing more electronics and david tibet turning up at the start and end. i'm afraid i didn't recognise any of the material as such, but the whole performance seemed quite 'pre-planned', it was almost like an hour-long 'version' of a new NNW alb or something. surprisingly bass heavy sound which sort've made clear the 'debt to dub'. stapleton didn't say anything, but did a nice friendly smile/wave at the end, it looked like he'd enjoyed himself and the crowd gave him a gd reception

they DIDN'T play two shaves and a shine

best sets of the weekend:

the dead c were magnificent, awesome reserves of a kind of melancholic/masochistic POWER that isn't always so clear on their albs - one longish continuous set/performance, a few classic song fragments but mostly loudasfuck skree - towards the end bruce russell moved to the drumkit, it was the biz

right fucking on. they were the highlight, for me.

the new blockaders and the haters "tribute band," Richard Youngs, blood stereo, bardo pond, charalambides and lambsbread were my highlights. left for london on sunday morning so i missed all of that, but hey that's okay - i just went through customs/immigration a few hours ago with double leopards, negative approach, wolf eyes, wooden wand and matt valentine/erika elder! hahahahaha, nutty. i guess they were on a direct flight from bristol.

xpost - HI KEITH!!!! i'm gonna try to make it to the may one, maybe i can squeeze in some time to make it to glasgow.

i'm so raging i missed this atp. i had a gig that was booked months ago so couldn't go and then the promoter cancelled it at the last minute. arghhh!!

i can't imagine what a "full scottish breakfast" entails, btw. i met some raging drunk dudes from glasgow who claimed to have lsd but i didn't get a chance to buy any off them.

Tickets for ATP being sent out barely a week before, and only then because their ticket agent sent somebody across town to pick out the paperwork Foundation hadn't sent them despite the ticket agent harassing them for over a month for it.

You know, I'm not saying organising something like this is easy, but you shouldn't have to put on extra shows. Having enough capacity so everybody can get in to see something (more than once there were queues in all three halls) should be part of basic planning.

After the last SCGs at ATP when they did a bizarre Mariachi routine I had no real interest in seeing them again, but they were turning people away from them from about halfway through their set just because people realised it was the only way to get to Go4. I think that fills a "show up early" criteria.

well it probably didn't help that security dudes (who are not foundation dudes, btw) told people at the exits after scg played to not leave if you wanted to get back in. i left anway since i didn't care about gof4, so i just shrugged when the dude told me, and left. i was temporarily bummed about the long line the night before for the stooges but then saw other good stuff, and people told me they got in fine once the band started playing.

there were other shows i saw by awesome bands that weren't full, so i dunno what to tell you. perhaps if people were more adventurous and wanted to see top-shelf stuff as opposed to reunion tours, sets by blood stereo or richard youngs would've been packed, but they weren't. there's no accounting for taste.

makes me excited cos I'm seeing them and Charalambides tonight.

Fuck complaining though. When it came, my bus ride was accompanied by hilarious Blowfly anecdotes courtesy of Rat Bastard. What a funny guy. And of the many other highlights: Aaron Dilloway, like secretly watching a possessed composer at work at his desk, he somehow made sitting down completely engrossing. Sonic Youth and the Stooges completely living up to expectation, and Lambsbread and the Notekillers (both new to me) also destroyed. More plz.

Absolute peak though was No-Neck. A complete mind-wipe!

Highlights for me = The Dead C, Gang of Four (second show - didn't make the first one because it sort of hadn't occurred to me, having not ventured out from the not-that-busy main stage all night on Friday, except when Iggy/Sonic Youth were on, and having no subsequent problems getting back in for The Dead C, that there were going to be completely ridiculous queuing issues), but the weekend completely stolen right at the end, for me, by MC5. Flipper were kind of awesome too.

Goth bowling to the Bugsy Malone soundtrack was fun, as was watching Alix nonchalantly ruling at it. I did try to wander down on Sunday night to Dayglo late-night bowling, but you either hadn't made it, or had gone home. It was probably for the best in terms of my health.

My voice still hasn't come back yet. I've decided to take the day off.

Really? They're playing up the road from me tomorrow and I wasn't planning on going as I imagined they might be pretty lame live - is this wrong?

wrt queues of doom, they made a fairly decent effort to compensate for thier fuck ups, but it really shouldn't have been as badly conceived as it seemed; it somehow seemed like they had never even considered that anything could go wrong.

that is indeed wrong. they were fantastic. only surpassed by melvins, stooges, bardo pond and the corsano trio.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58769676@N00/

Iggy & the Stooges - No Fun (from the Friday show - I was right up the front for this! Too chicken to invade the stage though):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhAOkYhAxM

Wolf Eyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITkhPoKuW-4

Nurse With Wound:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw7fiBAfnuA

Negative Approach:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_mv5SsETjw&NR

Does that Negative Approach clip have you getting hit over the head with a chair? Because I might watch all the way through to the end if it does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkWyiHwOigs

My principal surprise was at just how freakin loud the sound was, esp. in the main room. That one seemed to be a pretty hardcore PA, maxed out most of the time (I'm sure I remember hearing it distorting and clipping during someone's set). Was it specially brought in for the event or was that just the standard Butlins ents' backline? It was bone-crunching at points and this seemed to fire up the crowds even more.

My highlights - NWW (great start to the weekend, so loud I had to sit on the floor in the middle of the crowd), The Stooges (fucking full on, righteous, Iggy spitting vitriol barely able to keep his jeans on), The Dead C. (totally whacked out but sounded so good, like the Dead C. of yore - nice guys, dazed and funny), Melvins (superb, pile-drivingly awesome, the two drummers, Crover and protégé, were the most entertaining thing to watch of the whole festival), Sun City Girls (YES! - guitar/bass/drums, proper songs, 'Lets Just Lounge', 'Dreamland' and Uncle Jim - need I say more?), Major Stars (righteous and funny, with Kate's anecdotes and Wayne's furious stomping around and his climactic massive run-up-and-dive on to his guitar - something I would love to see again), Notekillers (relentless, taught, powerful, aggressive instro math rock), Negative Approach (so hardcore, so angry, so good - also chair smashing guy made my weekend), and NNCK (I feel some kind of drawing would probably describe their set better than words could).

Like, too much for one weekend really, considering those were just the highlights for me and nearly everything I saw was good. Fuck the security guys for trying to remove me from the site at 4am on Monday morning tho. And fuck the massive blow to the back of my head that I gave myself in the swimming pool on the Sunday morning (the throbbing is only now receding after four days).

But really all bands seemed up for the party, mostly operating at maximum intensity the whole time. Maybe that was a reaction to the crowds, queues and debauchery of the whole event. Or maybe John Olson was giving everyone a little 'pep talk' before they played. I guess we'll never know. Whatever, I'm glad I was there. Even if I never did manage to find Chalet no. 6.

...I'll see what I can do, bro.

I only had to queue once, for no more than 15 minutes, and I watched full sets by 16 different acts, including three on the big stage. Nearly everything I saw was gd to great to v. v. great. Obv. it helps to avoid 'punk rock' reunion school acts, and have a taste for free jazz and noize, but I put in a bit of 'planning' ahead of time and it worked for me!

I mean fuck, what other UK festival but ATP cld pull off, say, Nurse with Wound's first live appearance in the UK for something like twenty years? That was the first thing I saw on Friday aft, and it was just a perfectly judged opening performance, setting the whole tone (LOUD! DRONEY!) - David Tibet screeched his lungs out, Stapleton and Potter and co effortlessly moved from one piece/mode of expression to another and yeah, even got kind of funky towards the end.

After NWW, I next went to Richard Youngs on Stage 3, who was hitting the kids w/ a split set of flute improv and accapella singsong, it wuz nice but I kinda wanted to see him play a guitar too, or brew up more of a drone thing (but then, this was not a fest short on guitars or drone brews, so gd for R Young eh)

Then on Stage 2 I saw Dead Machines, a fruity sex noize collab between John Olson of Wolf Eyes and his wifey Tovah. They would kind of stare at each other and then twist some knobs and make some thuddingly horrible SCREEEE from out of their noize briefcases. At the end of their set Olson gave his wife a big french kiss, tongues and all.

After my all night coach flight I was totally wiped by this point, so went back to my toasty lil micro-pad and zoned out for a cpl of hours. This meant I missed Charalambides on the Friday evening, which might have been awesome but might also have been a bit shit in the noisy venue 3 (aka the Crazy Horse bar - one of the weird things abt Butlins Minehead is the way that lots of the venue made reference to American genocide and exploitation - the chalet, with fine views of the sea, was located on 'Plantation Quay' ffs, and this on a bill largely dominated by white male Americans...)

It seemed as if a lot of the bands were playing esp. hardcore/loud/noisy sets, partly because the sound systems in all three venues were ultraloud, encouraging yr sonic violence/confrontation, but also cos any quieter sounds/moments got kind of eaten up by the bar hum and air hockey clack etc. When Wolf Eyes briefly tuned up before playing on the main stage on Sunday, one of the hairies set off a drum machine that made the loudest single sound I think I've ever heard, but their actual set was not THAT deafening or punishing if viewed even halfway back. (W/Eyes drew the biggest crowd I saw over the w/end, and were of course insanely intense rockfun, tho they didn't seem to play for that long. Their slangy on-stage banter (ALL TOMORROW'S PLAYAS, Olson kept saying) and interaction w/ the audience made them sound like a hip-hop group and you know their bass is as low as human hearing/feeling can go.)

When I awoke around midnight on Friday I went 'straight' to 'Centre Stage' and caught the last 20 mins or so of Sonic Youth's set, funnily enough one of the few groups who seemed to be having sound 'issues' (ie a bit boomy in the bass) o/er the weekend. Wld it be predictable of me to say that Mark Ibold is nowhere near the musician that Jim O'Rourke is? Cos the jammin I heard just wasn't as flyin' as when Jim was on the bass.

Still, managed to get myself a pretty sweet spot near the front for Dead C, watched these three gnarly old noise fucks set up, Bruce Russell smoking a cheroot and twangin his gtr on quite a small lookin' amp, Michael Morley all hair and goofy gogs opening up a laptop and setting his gtr up too, and Robbie Yeats svelte and severe, with a relatively small drum kit and again not much ampage.

So I just wasn't prepared for the awesome POWER of the Dead C 2006 live experience, their sound/overall conception not just seriously loud (originally typed: load) but thick and crunchy and really nasty: angry and engaged but also self-lacerating/defining. Dead C recs reference wars and bombs and their hour long set was like one big bang, played w/out gaps, all noise morph, song fragments and improv detonations (there was one bit when Michael Morley started farting around w/ his puter that I thought for sure my ears were gonna burst.) Towards the end, Russell and Yeats swapped instruments and the sound/shape of the music changed, it was like a textbook demonstration of the power of primarily improvised music over rigidly structured and predictable songform. My festival highlight, easily.

It would've been nice to have pondered on the beauty of the Dead C's set for like a week or so in a monastery but the v. next day I was back at the noize coalface for the New Blockaders/The Haters, a big time old skool pain sesh on Stage 2, Saturday afternoon, you shoulda been there. A group all in black, wearing balaclavas, stood in front of a table of electronic equipment; one of them, perhaps the most 'dominant', had the remnants of a guitar fretboard tied to their chest and also a metal tin that seemed to make the most gutwrenching skreech whenever they shook it - and they shook it a lot, baby! Behind the standing bunch a couple of new haters crouched on the floor, they seemed to be jiggling a big wire, like a hot sausage on a griddle, at one point. My 2nd fave thing I saw at this fest - totally.

I can't believe I saw Double Leopards so up close and personal next, Stage 3 at 6.45pm. Poor fucks were up against some heavy competition but I kept the faith and was rewarded. Double Fuckin' Leopards man! two guys two gals playing guitars and machines and singing and humming and generally levitating the listener to a sweet sonic spot somewhere above, in this instance, Minehead via the Taj Mahal. Sometimes they crouch (cf Byron Coley's booklet discourse on the phenomenon of 'buttcrack cleavage' amongst sexy noizers bending over their equip) but this time they mostly stood, Marcia Bassett in black like a blonde Keiji Haino shemale (HOTT!) thrashing her black guitar, Maya Miller entering into a trancelike state in front of the amplifiers, as the group moved closer together - magicians!

The rest of Saturday I spent in Stage 2, for a great evening of music, pretty much OWNED by American ex-pat drummer Chris Corsano, who to begin w/ played a BLAZIN' free jazz set w/ saxophonist and beard champ Paul Flaherty and violinist and throat gurgler C. Spencer Yeh, who totally won me over w/ his post-Conrad rock action stylings this eve after previous uncertainties. Corsano's energy and stamina are almost superhuman, and sometimes almost indecent to watch, he really is the greatest.

One of the bigger idiocies of the programming was, to my mind, frequent 'like-for-like' pairings - ie Corsano/Flaherty/Yeh, one of the v. few pukka free jazzxxor acts on the bill, followed by Brotzmann/Bennik, one of the v. few blahdiblahs on the blah. I'd never seen Brotz before, and I hate to say it, but on this evidence his blood-vessel bursting days are well behind him - at times he sounded positively sweet and musical and def. part of a idiomatic jazz tradition, but maybe that was the context and shit. Certainly the crowd totally got off on Bennik's chops and fun and funk, who wouldn't, and Brotzmann really did look the part of a master European improvver, with blackcoat and greybeard.
.
Corsano returned for MV/EE and the Bummer Road's long, set-closing jam on 'Death Don't Have No Mercy' (olde blues tune also covered by the Grateful Dead on Live/Dead). The whole thing was great, hard-hitting folk rock psych and blues, lotsa peachy Garcia gtr noodle and unison throat-thought, but the dual drumming aktion crescendo was esp. exciting.

Tho not quite as exciting as the Comets on Fire set that followed. Total white light energy and riff noise action and no fucking slow ones. Again, Corsano took up the drums on the last song, Spencer Yeh, a fourth gtrist! and a second geezer on electronics also turned up for a cosmic egg-splitting last gasp of transcend rock. And then to bed.

It's just a restless feeling, that Sunday Morning (oblig VU ref). So I eased myself in w/ Bark Haze, one of Thurston's noize side projects - he goes through em like other ppl go through socks (s'ok, some of my socks must be ten years old, easy!) This one involved a Magik Marker on drums and another guitarist and was surprisingly straight-forward, bliss-pretty noise rock.

Stayed on in the same venue for West Coast dronekings the Skaters, who I'd seen in Glasgow the week before: then they played a very short set, light and airy with lotsa bells and drums, whereas at ATP they played for slightly longer and were louder and heavier, their 'waking the dead' chanting deeper in the murk mix. I always find the Skaters slightly spooky, like they've tapped into some kind of auditory wormhole where ppl shriek and gibber for all eternity. Brrrrr, man. Fiona seemed to enjoy em!

After Wolf Eyes on Sunday I was early enough to catch a set by Monotract on Stage 2, my one 'unplanned' gig. They were very loud art-noise rock in the brutalist Ut/Harry Pussy tradition only with slightly weaker 'songs'. I'd actually gone to see Mouthus, an Americian guitar/drum noize rock duo who I really enjoyed at the Subcurrent Fest earlier this year. Of all the groups I saw over the weekend, Mouthus were in some ways the most original, in that it was difficult to nail down who they actually sounded like- the closest I can come is to tell ppl they sound a bit like earlyish Royal Trux only w/ funkier, Jaki Liebezeit-type drumming and cloudier vocal/gtr effects, the whole thing drenched in reverb and fugly fug. Great set, one of the least well-attend shows I saw, bummer.

I was really slowin down by this point but managed to haul my fat ass over to Stage 3 in time to catch a surprisingly country-rock set closer from Six Organs of Admittance, w/ guest Rick Bishop from the Sun City Girls on 2nd 'axe'.

After a fairly long interval, the No Neck Blues Band from NYC kicked off their set with some female frontal nudity courtesy of their sax playing lead screamer; after some more artplay and performance fuckery, NNCK moved into one of their heaviest freak psych noize jams, w/ a guy just stumbling round stage w/ a cardboard box on his head, a blindfolded beardo tapping a weird percussion contraption while basso mumbling into the mike, and various guitarists and drummers playing heavy on both conventional and non-conventional equip. About halfway through a fire alarm went off, the lights went on for a moment or two, but NNCK totally stayed locked in their groove. A nice hour of stoner surrealism that seemed to be a gd ending for the whole fest. And for my whole ATP-going life.

but there is almost nothing else on my LJ, not worth bothering w/. you should join sink3r's sukrat grp, lotta hot julio d action there

That Guided by Voices reunion didn't last long (short item about ahlf-way down):
http://www.atpfestival.com/newsview/1112071500.php

Guided by Voices have not split up and continue to work on new material together. In addition to the album release of Let's Go Eat the Factory for January, the band are at work on another album, Class Clown Spots A UFO. Robert Pollard will also be releasing a solo record in March called Mouseman Cloud.

Unfortunately Guided By Voices are canceling their appearances at Primavera and ATP/I'll Be Your Mirror, due to personal reasons. The band apologizes for any inconvenience and disappointment, and thanks Primavera, ATP and the fans for their longterm support.

weird. Where's the above from?

hmm it is somewhat unsourced: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2011/12/guided_by_voice_17.html

That was fun!

do tell!

ATP was wicked!

http://sickmouthy.com/2011/12/12/the-nightmare-before-christmas-all-tomorrows-parties/

i feel awkward writing about ATP on such a negative fucking thread cos i had an AWESOME time, as i pretty much always do.

the ex and getatchew mekuria were probably my favourite thing, totally new to me and sheer delight.

I think this Nightmare Before Xmas was a bit undersold in terms of capacity - a friend who goes every year said it wasn't as packed as he'd seen it, and we were able to get into almost every performance (we saw 15) without ever really queueing. It was still pretty rammed for most of the gigs we saw - I woudln't have wanted any more people jammed into Centre Stage for Battles or Caribou, or into Reds for The Field or No Age.

it was undersold, yeah - there were still tickets going on the website, and lots of people on the facebook group trying to offload spares.

I couldn't get in for No Age :( (actually I didn't mind that much, it was just annoying cos my friends were in there)

I saw someone tweet that they thought it might be undersold because of the lack of "genuine legends", i.e. no MC5 / Stooges / Go4, etc etc. Which strikes me as sad, because LSF, Battles, and Caribou are all, to my mind, big awesome alternative music heroes RIGHT NOW, and the line-up was great, right up my street (hence it being the first one I've been to).

Yeah, ppl are spoiled assholes. The New Jersey one is always full of "WAHHHH I CAN SEE ANY OF THESE BANDS IN NEW YORK" which is like 100% missing the point

wow! @ nissenmondai. I for some reason thought they had broken up or something

I was looking after the wee man all day Friday but Saturday and Sunday were fucking awesome. Seriously, Caribou's day was an embarrassment of riches. The Ex, Underground Resistance, The Arkestra, Factory Floor, Caribou's early set, Battles and Psychic Paramount especially.

Sunday was fantastic, yes - the Arkestra were probably my favourites over the weekend, but I also loved Pharoah Sanders, The Ex (I was excited to see them for the first time, but then since I had distinct recollections of their trumpet player who dances like a six year old girl at a birthday party, I guess I must have seen them before...), Omar Souleyman (one of those ones were you're left wondering what the Butlins staff must be thinking about the proceedings), what I saw of Silver Apples - including that beat drop in 'Oscillations' that would've made Theo Parrish proud - and then Theo himself being a great way to wrap it up. Also Future Islands being ridiculously intense and powerful once I got over the sense of affectedness, No Age being the funnest I've seen them by far, Wild Flag... fuck I saw 23 live things and only three were less than great.

despite my misgivings about such a homogenous (bearded, jumper-wearing) crowd of corny indie fuxxors

me, btw. :'( i did get my jumper from primark, surely i lose some fuxxor points for that?

20 being 'great' is a big of an exaggeration tbh but who cares. also i thought that this year i had regained the youthful energy of my early twenties as i wasn't feeling the back pain i had by the end of the last few atps, except then when i got home i slept for 14 hours and still feel i haven't caught up properly. oops.