All tomorrow's parties

i'm sure more and better reviews will surface, but here's an early play-by-play:

Just back from ATP and barely conscious. A good time was definitely had by one and all.

Carl Craig was good, but as with the last time I saw him, and on The
Workout, I wish he would mix more aggressively. My favorite sets from him are always more active.

Shake's set was not his finest - seemed to be having an off night, although he and the crowd both seemed to enjoy it quite a bit despite the mixing troubles. It got much better as it went on, but the first 1/2 of the set was pretty messy. We all have these nights though...

> > b) 'Drexciyan DJ Stingray'?!

Drexciyan DJ Stingray was tight, but hearing tracks like M4 and M5 played at 45 ruins them for me. The whole set was really really ghetto tech fast, but slowed a bit towards the end. It was a bit too much for me after 2 and a half days of non-stop movement and throbbing bass. Needless to say, Venetian Snares after him were equally lethal. I lasted about 10 minutes of their set before running in fear, clinging for sanity.

However... there were tons of AMAZING moments throughout. I'll try to recap in order (and what I remember - thank goodness for this little line-up card):

Friday
====

The Fall were really good. Never seen them live. Not a ton for me to say really. Just good rock 'n roll.

Public Enemy was fantastic. Haven't lost a step, and *everyone* was getting down. You could tell they were having a great time, and it was really infectious.

Guy Called Gerald and C2 - remember liking both a lot and dancing a ton, but can't recall any specifics really. I think Gerald played a lot of house, but my memory is quite sketchy at this point.

Missed Baby Ford and Gescom- ran out of steam around 3:00 after being up since 7:30. Will see Baby Ford on Wednesday and Gescom on Saturday though, so no urgency.

Saturday (AKA the day when darkness reigned and time lost meaning)
======

Note: the venue upstairs was nearly pitch black in the middle of the day. This was severely disorienting. Recall finding out it was 7:30 pm, thinking it was 2:00 am...

Checked Disjecta for about 15 minutes (he = Mark Clifford, once of Seefeel). He was basically just improvising on a guitar with crazy effects. It was really cool, but did my head in a bit after about 15 minutes.

El-P and Murs - damn fine rather political hip hop. El-P had a nice 15
minute turntablism intro as well. Good stuff!

Kool Keith and Kutmaster Kurt - really, really dissapointing. Utter crap. What has happened to Dr. Doom???

Bola (apparently didn't show) but the visuals while they played some of his music (I think) were mind-blowing. Someone else may be able to fill in gaps about this.

[things get very very blurry]

Aphex Twin - WOW!!! Played about an hour of 110bpmish-techno-industrial-signature-aphex-god-knows-what that sounded like nothing I've ever heard before. I believe most of this was live. Concluded with an hour of drum 'n bass - lots of ragga included. Wicked.

Skam DJs. Lots of fun. Degraded into making out with some woman on the dancefloor. VERY obnoxious. Apologies to anyone who witnessed.

In bed at a healthy 7:30am.

Sunday
=====

Arrive about 1/2-way through Stasis. Playing nice house rather poorly. Strictly Kev is a no-show (or maybe showed up about 10 minutes b4 the end of his set???) Stasis played lots of hip hop. Never heard so much 'Stakes is High' in one weekend. This is good.

Checked Jim O'Rourke for about 15 minutes. Nice pure ambience (i.e. no discernable beat). Not suiting my mood. Head back for more Stasis/Kev/Whatever.

Graham Massey - appears on stage with enormous wire-lantern-bulbous-head-thing. I leave immediately.

Coil (probably my most anticipated show) - really long set-up process (like 45 minutes). Really weird experimental vocally stuff with 3 Nords?!? Cool stuff. Not right for the moment. Run downstaris for...

LFO (Mark Bell) DJ set. Had no idea what to expect from this. It probably wound up as my favorite set of the festival. Tons of techno classics mixed absolutely flawlessly (using Traktor + 1 CD player it looked like). I suspect he was cueing up two instances of the same track in Traktor and rocking doubles with it. Was really really effective. His mixing was seriously amazing. He finished with what were surely three new LFO tracks - and I can promise you, the wait has been worth it. He's gone off the IDM deep-end, but the result is pretty stunning, and really complex. I can't wait.

Shake's set previosly mentioned.

G-Man: played for about 20 minutes of his live set and some assbag pulled the fire alarm (or maybe it was a real fire???) - no one seemed to know for sure. Retreated to chalet.

Returned just in time for the beginning of Mark Broom. I danced non-stop. Always an excellent DJ - throwing in just enough bangers and just enough depth to keep it constantly interesting. It is true that we are spoiled for choice in London.

Surgeon: Holy crap! This was a proper Final Scratch workout. It wasn't the best DJ set I've ever seen, but I've never seen another set like it. He went everywhere seamlessly, and directed the pace with a mastery that's only been equalled, not surpassed.

And that about sums it up... in short the top three sets were:

LFO
Surgeon
Aphex Twin

In sum: WAY too much air hockey, blood, saliva, beer, gin and amazing music for one weekend. Not nearly enough food. Can't wait for next year when all the previous curators do one day each! This was a festival of DEMF magnitude and intensity, enhanced further by the ever-outrageous London techno massive.

Next year, Mogwai, Tortoise, and Shellac curate a day each. That sounds like an infinitely better idea to me.

Mira Calix and Andrea Parker started off poor bu tgot a lot better.

any of y'all ILM folx check it out?

FRIDAY

Thirtsin Howl III (for thinking he was still in London; for the song "I live with my Moms")

Public Enemy: for the classic shit: 911 is a joke particularly. I wish I had stood closer to Flav.

A Guy Called Gerald: mixing skills questionable; but he played "voodoo ray (housey not jungle vers.), no ufos - model500 and the 2nd half of his set had got us nicely primed for carl craig. Thirstin Howl III's other MC was checking it out. We asked if he was having a good time. He wasn't too sure about Gerald either.

Skam DJs were always good fun. And if got a bit boring GTI Tag-team rally car racing on the Cote D'Azur or House of the Dead were just round the corner. And played often. Almost hourly.

SATURDAY

Some of the NMB Allstars were alright, but I can't remember specifics. Downstairs had visuals projected on screens. Upstairs (bigger) didn't, except on occasion at the back of the stage.

Saw 15 minutes of Pita... beatless glitcheriefuckerie.
Saw 25 minutes of farmersmanual..glitcheriefuckerie ~ (highlight: when one of them - midsong - pressed a button on his powerbook, lent back into his chair, yawned, scratched his stubble and then lent forward to press another button. I haven't figured out the need for people to still treat laptop music audience-artist dynamics like rock/jazz music. There is nothing to see.)
Saw 10 minutes of Disjecta: guy, guitar, efx, timbres and tones...sounds nice...nothing to see.

El-P + Murs: fun stuff. good deejay.
Kool Keith + Kutmaster Kurt: Kurt's intro was riddick - self promotion, self-serving, - but Keith was dope.

Went upstairs to see Hecker soon after it started. Guys walking out saying, "Don't go in there. It sounds shit." Went in. Sounded like a 1000 angry bees for about 5 minutes. Then a bit like jet engines. Left soon.

Friends saw Curtis Roads. As he announced his next tonal thingy, "And now I am going to play 'Voltair 2'", they and others shouted "Woo Hoo!!" with sarcastic enthusiasm. Apparantely Voltair 2 sounded much the same as what came before.

Apparently Push Button Objects cancelled. But I thought I was watching the, Whatever,... whoever it was, did a sub-Prefuse 73 glitch-hop set, it was only good when they ran with a the samples from hiphop hits (predictably Missy, Eve) and when they inexplicably dropped the entire theme from Knightrider.

Saw 5 minutes of Sunn 0)))'s drone rock.

Saw first 1hr 10minutes of Aphex Twin. Amazing. Started off playing acidic breakbeat stuff [not his own recordings but early 90s stuff ], then moved on to ragga jungle. He seemed to doing it all on a laptop though. We were scared he'd go further andf further into drill n'bass territory and left. But he rocked the spot.

SUNDAY

Stasis.. sunday, slightly wired from saturday. Stasis plays deep housenoid grooves. A lot of people look seriously ill. I try and perk up with slow dancing and whiskey and coke.

Strictly Kev - again my friend said he didn't show. But some guy differentg to Stasis was playing hiphoppery. Bit predictable but he did play "Drop the Bomb" by Brand Nubian.

Saw S.N.D. and liked them very much. Now on my list of records to buy. Glitchery again, but the samples are evocative of classics of early house, techno, bleep and then taken on pulsing/dubby/skipping/glitch voyages.

Jim O'Rourke: friday: saw him on Londis buying a Wispa, some Drum baccy. I impeded his way to the check point by reaching across the aisle for some gum. We apologised. He looked kinda out of it.
saturday: I think after we decided to leave Aphex, head downstairs, see Jim talking excitedly on a pay-phone. sunday: see the last 2 songs of his set. Beautiful stuff, the room is packed.

Coil: saw 2 minutes: looked like a bunch of hippies. Sounded like dark mofos. Left.

Graham Massey: Not bad and quite interesting. Great visuals of Bombay.

LFO: played a terrific treated version of "Egypt Egypt" by Egyptian Lover. I can't remember why I left and went back to the chalet.

Rhythm + Sound: amazing dub selction. Seriously perfect for my slightly spaced mind.

Andrea Parker + M Calix: ok. tunes were not bad - clunky, electroish, early warp, andrea parker style stuff with long loping drones. Didn't work out if they were collaborating or just taking turns. They didn't mix the tunes. Merely left drones start as soon as the previous ended.

Next year: sounds a bit pointless, even if the curators choose acts different to those who have already played.

This year: not enough attention to detail. I should have saved my money and waited until Sonar. But BIG FUN was still had.

Rhythm + Sound were a bit mediocre i thought, partly because the upstairs sound system wasn't up to it (unlike the downstairs, which had lovely bass), and the usual half an hour delay while moronic roadies fail to set up a pair of turntables.

The fall. great to see mark e smith in the same clothes he ALWAYs wears. sound was perfect for the band with drums so piercing and clattery, and voice so pumped full of sarcasm, spite and booze. brill.

public enemy. rebel w/o pause, 911's a joke were songs of the weekend and so, so blistering. anyone wanting an education in noise should have seen rebel without a pause instead of hecker. left before the end so I could plead ignorance to them doing back in black and all that mucking about, and keep it perfect.

Gescom. suprised to find them being totally accessable (musically and literally). played energy flash. dark spooky rave hole.

Baby Ford. about 30 people in the entire main arena for his introspective tech-house set. well judged set for the time and situation (no punishing kicks and rave stabs; fluid and just danceable enough). people showed their appreciation by doing handstands.

Saturday
stright down the beach with cans quan. and no real plan to see anything before aphex.
Kool keith. entered just as keith came on. octagon stuff was excellent (automator is far superior to kutmaster kurt)v anticlimactic keith says they've run out of time they slap a few hands and piss off. groo.
loved the sweaty south american disco going on behind that curtain in the bar. especially when they played La Rock 01 oh yes. amyl oi oi!
quite some time later I
took some mushrooms and found myself questioning reality itself and finding everything strange and unnatural. if you are that guy with a skeleton mask on the back of his head you are a bastard. that was so unnecessary in my state.
sunnO))excellent.may have something to do with previous fungus intake but sunn with precisely what I needed. comforting bass drones and nothing too fast or complicated. at all. great to look at also.

after sunno)) the arena was packing out and aphex style pings and pongs were playing from the PA. I assumed that Aphex not do anything as populist as avtually take the stage and this was his DJ set that everyone was talking over. totally elated to see him actually get up there looking like he was enjoying the attention rather than attempting to deflect it. him playing ceephax acid crew marked my ascent from the mushrooms grave. murderous jungle and a decent amout of space on the dancefloor. the place was demolished. met some nice people who payed to have their picture taken with me in the portrait photo booth.

sunday.
on the beach until 9am and suddenly realised we had something approaching 9 hrs of purist techno in the downstairs room to contend with today.
awoke at 4pm and dug myself out to go and see coil. sheer quality and again,precisely what was needed at that moment. aesthetic perfectly fits the music. sorcerers, a preisthood.
shake was having a bit of a 'mare downstairs. skipping records etc. played some great stuff though and found idioteque totally apt for atp:it was always going to be a case of indie gone electronic than electronic gone indie.

surgeon. brilliant. pounding and yet so subtle and tastefully judged. knew who he was playing to as well with the inclusion ofbucephelus bouncing ball and a slowed down vers.of the drumnbass remix off two remixes by AFX.

drexciyan dj stingray. have been enjoying their recordings of late and was very excited about this. 808 detroit techno styles played at +8. tightly mixed and sequenced, seriously good. had a face bandana on and a big brown jacket saying detroit in the drexciya font. who is this man as I know that james stinson died last year?

venetian snares. I could not be arsed with in the slightest. like a trepanned bogdan with THE most irritating person in the world on lairy exortations and opera trills. fuck that.

special mention for the crude animation in the skam room of the noughts and crosses test card girl sharing a spliff with the clown.
great weekend.

HOWEVER: Sunn0))) absolutely destroyed everything. Now have confirmation it *was* Julian Cope onstage with them (some peole have swore to me it was the bloke out of Mayhem... err) giving it some on 2 mics. Most of the techno was pretty kicking, having said that it all kind of blurred into one by the early hrs of Saturday morning. Went between Gescom and Baby Ford in 20-minute bursts due to being too fucked to stand in one place for very long. Public Enemy were great entertainment, I don't think the 'live' aspect detracted from anything much, and I can now say I've seen them before I fuck the bucket. The Fall were fun enough in the same way they always are. Thirstin Howl was funny as fuck. Everyone should check out his last album.

Saturday was mostly on it. El-P and MURS I really enjoyed - great flows, great sense of humour, pretty excellent on every level. Kool Keith was, as pointed out up there, terrible. Lazy, uninterested dithering. He probably figured we should just be grateful he turned up at all. Whoever replaced Push Button Objects rocked in a danceable glitch kind of way. Russell Haswell played Whitehouse and some totally incongruous acid techno at the end. I think I headbanged. Aphex just fucked with us for two straight hours. Got a bit more gabba at the end I recall.

Sunday I could scarcely move until abt 4.30. SND burbled with purpose, if not exactly passion. Coil were like Sunn0))) the previous night (robes, drone) except not as good and instilling in you the sense that they take themselves rather more seriously than they should. The Magic Band I was actually pretty taken with, and I was entirely ready for them to suck. The direct vocal homages to the Captain I could have done without, but at least the vocalist acknowledged it. Mark Bell rocked without being remarkable. Shakir made me wander off thanks to being to tasteful and house at the start, but was rocking it once I came back. Rhythm & Sound played lush tunes, but it could have been anyone up there. Surgeon was fucking tearing it up, although he was actually less brutal than I expected. Calix and Parker were fun enough from what I recall - the bloke doing the ironing was the best bit. Finally Venetian Snares made holocaust chaos gabber sound like the end of the world. Played Skelechairs. A quite extraordinariy sadistic man.

Other good things: air hockey, getting some liquid acid, meeting Greg Anderson (and for a while there, raving with Aphex), the girl onstage during Snares' set, not being caught smuggling in beer once in about 20 goes.
Shit things: fire alarm and not getting to the beach :(

Well, that's the negative stuff out of the way - and I have to say I reall enjoyed it. How can you knock a festival where the accomodation is good, the soundsystems are top, the venue staff are friendly, the beer ain't too expensive and there's a beach!

So what was it like?

FRIDAY:

Got there a little too late for Sunn 0))), despite all efforts. A bit of a mixed blessing then when it was announced that Earth had canceled and Sunn 0))) would be doing the Saturday night slot instead.

SLUTA LETA - Never heard of these before, but they were kind of charmingly crap - certainly get me on their side with their clunky electro version of Sonic Youth's 'Tunic' - a cheap tactic perhaps, but I like it.

THE FALL - Sounded great - very tough and grinding. A greatest-hits festival set course, but distorted guitars, swaggering attitude and cyclic riffs waking everyone up.

PE - Totally rocked - lots of fun and pretty damn rightous. Their set did seem to run out of steam though. I left before the end too.

GERALD - Was great on the whole. Really beautiful techno. Had lots of fun getting down to this. His mixing was fine, except when he brought in Voodoo Ray, which was odd - maybe he was doing it live? Or maybe he just thought the crowd weren't into the other stuff and panicked? Who cares - it doesn't matter. A groovy treat.

CARL CRAIG - Well, this was a big highlight for me. He DID kick off with Alice Coltrane's 'Universal Consciousness', but his set did not sound like Giles Peterson. He played some of the funkiest shit ever, as well as some nicely abrasive shit, some beautiful detroit shit and a lot of his own shit - 'Slam Dance', 'Jam The Box', his 'Congoman' edit - oh I don't know, I was too busy getting jiggy to spot the trains.

GESCOM - Downstairs for this. Looked like Rob Young was DJing - later joined by Sean Booth on one of those little computer things. Really, really good, badass techno business. I remember hearing 'Tilapia' and that Beltram track and something of the Motor EP, but mostly I just remember grooving and grinning. If you weren't there, you weren't there.

BABY FORD - Upstairs again. His low-key house and acid was just right as someone up-thread said. Filling the sparsely populated room with spacy beats and warm sounds.

So, a top night on the whole. And a whle load more fun han could reasonably be expected.

SATURDAY -

DISJECTA - Well, I've not been too into Mark Clifford's late and post-Seefeel actiity, but this was really nice. Yes, just procesed guitar-drone-improv - actually sounding a lot like a beatless Seefeel. Not much to watch of course, but he was concentrated on what he was doing and it was good chiled start to things for my day.

EL-P - Superb. Great fun, great lyrics, really connected with the crowd. Seemed like he wanted to be there. Top stuff, and I've not been a big fan previously.

KOOL KEITH - What was he thinking? Very disapointing. Kutmaster Kurt was a joke, Dan would have been much better. Kool Keith is supposed to be crazy right? So why was he so boring? The music was pretty crap as well. It sucked - they seemed lost up there.

YASUNAO TONE - Wow - a major triumph this. As far as I could tell the whole place was getting majorly into this little 68 year old Japanese bloke playing utterly random CD-skipping jjuddering crazyness. Sonically fascinating and pretty damn rocking too. It put all the other glitchers to shame. Attempting to dance to this was hilarious. Just great that he didn't know where the music was going and seemed to delight in it. If ATP is supposed to be about the future - well this seemed like the future!

QUINOLINE YELLOW - Playing in place of Bola. Get downstairs and the room is really full - of people sitting down! I danced a lot, along with about ten others and it was great. What happened down there? Someone actually asked me if I wouldn't mind sitting down! Was there some kind of experiment going on? Was it coz it wasn't Bola. For fuck's sake!

CURTIS ROADS - Ahahahahahahah - I seriously hope there was an element of self-parody to this. If there was then top-marks to him, if not then oh dear. Very funny when he announced the 'songs' and they were all identically obtuse abstract sound doodlings. 'I'm actually promoting my new book "microsound" - it comes with a CD' - deadpan as fuck or severely retarded, I don't know but i laughed, and then went to the bar.

RUSSELL HASWELL is an evil mofo. Hiding behing his screen grinning like a hell-hobbit. He played Whitehouse and fuck-off noise and fuck-off techno probably just to see if everybody would fuck off. We probably should have told him to fuck off but we didn't coz it was great.

SUNN 0))) - Ah, Sunn 0))) What a joy to have this on at 1:30 on Saturday night. Too guys in monks cowells playing total slo-mo powerchord ambient metal soothing vibrations. Two other guys at wither side of the stage with some electronics - not sure what they were doing - additional bass frequencies and drones? Well just superb - any beats in there were completely in your head, but they were there! Ann the chords being played a year apart form ech other seemed to fill up with other riffs. And the guy witting on-stage with the two mics 'intoning' - well, it didn't look like Julian Cope - although I did see him wandering arond after Coil's set the day after so it may have been. If it was Cope it was an incredibly low-key Cope.

APHEX TWIN - And so on to Aphex Twin. He was there, on stage, waving to the crowd - how strange. Kicked off with some slow crunchy techno that reminded me of stuff from LFO's second album. And then proceeded through a load of tweeked jungle/hardcore for a very long time. Very ravey, but fukked. Got more and more crazed. Hmmm, probably would have been more fun if the room hadn't been so packed, and if so many people hadn't been more concerned with watching the guy than actually getting down. Oh well.

SKAM DJs - Downstairs again - and this is much more fun - don't know who's playing but it sounds ace. Lovely tough techno - everyone goes kind of crazy (hey it's all relative and this festival never seemed to go really really crazy, but what did you expect) when he drops 'Blue Monday'. Rarely have I heard it sound so good - didn't strike me as being a remix - maybe it was just the soundsystem - maybe it was just good to hear something that wasn't so self-consciously cool. I dunno.

SUNDAY -

You still with me?

COIL - Bit of a lie-in, Sunday lunch, beach sesh before the music today so Coil wa the first thing I caught. And this was great. I was really looking forward to it after catching them at the South Bank. A very different set this time - soft, introspective trance music with a sprinkling glitches. Nice snow projections. Gently powerful. Lots of gear (equipment that is) on-stage, but they resist the temptation to make lots of squealing noise ('too much shouting' this year says a be-bearded Balance)

BERNARD PARMEGIANI - Lots of pinging, poinging, sploinking, skretching noises pan around the room. Very spacious. The audience reaction is more interesting than the music. Sounded like Kontakt or something. Turned out he was situated in the central sound-booth. Must have dislocated my brain in some way coz I don't remember much of it - or maybe it was just boring.

THE MAGIC BAND - They sounded great. Lots of people there for the Beefheart classics and know all the songs. I don't and just really love the fact that I'm hearing some rock music played by humans. How great to hear a 'searing-acid-lead' even for just a few seconds. Of course one of the good things about the whole mcirosound glitch thing when it's done well is it does have a way of focussing and tuning the earholes, so this just sounded even better after all the electronics. The fire alarm goes off in the middle of their set and we al have to leave the venue. There's a chopper witha search light flying around outside and Police in evidence - what happened? Anyway, when we go back in the band are rocking again. Did make me want to hear Acid Mothers Temple though.

RHYTHM AND SOUND - Lovely dub and roots session. A bit of slow stepping was just what the doctor ordered. Except everyone's just staring at the fucking stage. Too many hero's methinks. Just imagine them all on the crapper folks - oh wait you can't coz they're all so goddamn anal. Well this was really good anyway, despite the sound problems and a lack of reall sub-bass.

VENETION SNARES - after some food I nip back to see this in the downstairs bit. I really like Venetian Snares - I think he does the mindfuck gabba breakbeat thing with a hell of a lot more imagination and humour and funk than most. But although it sounded absolutely fuckin incredible, and the girl dancing on stage was cool, I really couldn't be arsed with it for long. This is punk-rock, not techno - where was the moshpit?

And so that was it for me. Saw some good/bad movies on't telly as well. Overall - I loved it, but it was simultaneously impressive and oddly unsatisfying, slightly mystifying, but maybe not in the best way. A bit like Autechre actually. I did think it was really well sequenced though - YASUNAO TONE, RUSSELL HASWELL and SUNN 0))) when they played were spot-on. CARL CRAIG and GERALD provided some top disco action on the first night. THE FALL and PE were a joy. And GESCOM put on a good party - who'd a thunk it?

Message to next years bookers - give the guy from Les Rallizes Denudes a ring, please?

omg snd were playing!!!!!!!!!!
fuck! i didnt even know that they did live shows!!!
i cant believe i missed this. i would have gone just for that if i had known theyd play.

Anyone thinking of going to the last one?

http://www.atpfestival.com/events/endofanerapart2.php

sad but also deja vu: https://safeasmilkfestival.com/sam17/

Too similar to being an ATP, thus cursed by association.

Also Prestatyn Pontins is the worst dump I've ever spent time in tbh.