review

Normally the idea of a weekend in Butlins would fill me with a dread normally reserved for my deepest and darkest psychological fears. Indeed the very thought of swarms of screaming children, notoriously terrible food and ‘stage shows’ courtesy of the disturbing and unnaturally fervid Red Coats are surely enough to perturb anyone above the age of 12. However, this weekend this strange environment takes a turn for the surreal. Beneath the epic shadows of the dominating pavilion the children have gone and The Dirty Three, curators of this April’s All Tomorrows Parties, move in, transmuting it into a land of cowboy hats, ludicrously large sunglasses, lethal pointy shoes and massively competitive beards.

The air is thick with Aussie drawl and it soon becomes clear is that Bad Seeds member and Dirty Three front man Warren Ellis’ band have had a profoundly obvious effect on the artistes and clientele of this festival. This is the reason I love ATP. It allows the artist to curate, offering them the chance to showcase some of their best loved and most admired musical friends and influences, as well as giving other lesser known artists the chance to perform to a large crowd, probably more than they could pull on an independent tour. It can also allow for experiments and collaborations that may never have happened and for artists to perform multiple, and sometimes very different, sets to the same crowd. As a result All Tomorrow’s Parties is designed as a great learning experience for bands and audiences who want to hear something a little different.

Of course the site is intrinsically important in making this work and it has to be said that this venue is many times better than the old ATP site in Camber Sands. For a start there is working heating, (not that you need it in this weather but at The Nightmare Before Christmas ’06 I was freezing my nips off!), and you don’t have to buy the electricity to make it work. The apartments are cleaner and more pleasant and the capacity of the event is double its previous limit. The over complicated idea of the time ‘options’ adopted at Nightmare B C, which seemed to go down like a pint of sick, has been abandoned, thank goodness, and your wristband gets you in to any gig at any time.

Also boredom is never a factor as there are plenty of activities on offer. I must admit I skip the miniature golf, trampolines and go-karts, (unfortunately), but we do venture into the water park which, with its flumes, rapids and wave machine, keeps us worryingly entertained when we probably should be endeavoring on the more serious matter of watching the day’s first sets.

So what of the music? The bands with the highest expectations perform exceptionally well. Josh Pearson, the haunting, soulful Charles Manson look-alike brings down the house late on the first night and forms a delicious come-down from early show stealers The Dirty Three.

Defying all sense of taste, decency and appropriate decibel levels, Warren Ellis’ shredding, tooth plucking and monstrously-distorted violin retches dark, twisted achings to a hungry crowd. As epic and raw as the outback itself it is quite clear this band sold their souls to the Devil a long time ago, trading it in for vulgarity, discordant beauty, and music that has the power to carry you away. The two sets performed on Friday and Sunday, both equal in power are definitely a crowd-pleasing highlight of the weekend.

Unfair it may be then that, despite the hard work put in by TD3, the weekend is often referred to as ‘The Nick Cave ATP’. That said, we are lucky enough to see some musical history in the making as Nick Cave performs four one hour slots, two of which are a simple ‘best of’ sets, including brilliant renditions of ‘Deanna’ and ‘Red Right Hand’, and two more showcasing his new project ‘Grinderman’. With the tactfully named new album ‘The No Pussy Blues’ this is a welcome return to the whiskey drinkin’, grimy, fighting music sound of the ‘Birthday Party’ era, but obviously integrating more modern technology. As barrages of insane guitar effects sickeningly override mysterious drones Nick proves he is the master of exhilaration and atmosphere.

Low do a good, if slightly repetitive, job of transcendent minimalism and, despite a complete lack of energy and movement, possess a strength and power that, with your eyes closed, conjure mellow imagery of desolate seascapes. They vastly outshine the vastly overated Brokeback, who, regardless of ex Tortoise members, unfortunately bore the pants of anyone in the vicinity.

Saturday night finishes with Einsturzende Neubauten, Industrial Minimal Kraut noise peppered with moments of suicidal distortion and lapses into the wild extreme. Steeped in atypically-German determined austerity this sounds like the epic, clanking belly of some giant metal war beast. The incredible climax of the performance includes a man tipping a box of cutlery onto the stage, to rapturous applause, and even two encores at three in the morning are not enough for the crowd of die-hard fans.

Sunday kicks off with the critically acclaimed Papa M whose genteel and delicate guitar and glockenspiel work carefully soothe the heads of all those who have over done it on Saturday. This level of beauty is only later surpassed by the brilliant Joanna Newsom, whose heart wrenching sensitivity leaves many lucky enough to be present, speechless.

In my experience ATP has always been an enlightening and educational event, usually ending with me guiltily spending hundreds at the merch stall, but, for all the hype, this event was rather devoid of inspiration. While there were good times to behold and a lot of great music the festival lacked the mad eclectic range of other festivals, and the fact that so many artists repeated sets suggests that there were a lot of gaps to pad out. As a result I was disappointed with the lack of new ‘discoveries’ and left essentially empty-handed.

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