Africa, Japan and the oldies steal the show - Matt Groening's ATP, Butlins, England, May 7-9 2010

To think I almost didn't go! When my mates Tim and Mark floated the idea, the line-up wasn't yet as fleshed-out as it would prove to be, and I was certainly less adamant I had to go than for the 10-year Anniversary edition last December (SUNN O))), Bardo Pond and OM, for chrissakes), or indeed than I am for the upcoming Godspeed You! Black Emperor edition this year. But this ATP, curated by Matt Groening (who is, a soft spot for irritating whining female singer-songwriters aside, a man of exquisite musical taste), exceeded all expectations. The weather was mainly shite, and ridiculous levels of whisky and beer consumption on the Sunday made most of that day a write-off, but my ears got a phenomenal pleasure assault and fucking hell - I GOT JAMES MOTHERFUCKIN' CHANCE'S MOTHERFUCKIN' AUTOGRAPH!!! Ahem, sorry about that, but I needed to get it off my chest.

As per the last time, Tim, Mark and I, accompanied by our wonderful "token female with a mooncup" Harri, rocked up on the afternoon of the 7th, our car loaded with booze and cheap food, ready to overindulge, it turned out, in a weekend of jovial debauchery. The excellent planning meant that hardly any bands overlapped, and we luckily had a nice hour to settle in before the first set I desperately wanted to see, Birmingham haunt-pop duo Broadcast, who had produced one of the more beguiling albums of 2009 with their collaboration with The Focus Group, Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (Warp Records). My friends left halfway in, one later describing the pair as "shit". Certainly, the first 30 minutes were a challenge, with the influence of The Focus Group evident as Broadcast attempted a live collage piece that was weird, off-beat and, a shame given Trish Keenan's lovely voice, mostly vocals-free. It didn't always work, but I for one admired the attempt and felt the roughness of it was more due to the sound problems that would hamper a number of acts. Besides which, almost immediately after my trio of buddies departed, the band switched to standard Broadcast fair, with pulsating dance beats and shimmering psychedelic synth ambience acting as the perfect platform to launch Keenan's delightful, reverb-drenched voice at the audience. Highlighting the duo's place at the forefront of the new "hauntology" scene, their set was wistful and mysterious, as weird images were projected onto a canvas over their heads. In fact, it was probably the only one that suffered from a planning perspective as, like Bardo Pond in December, they would have been much better suited to an early morning appearance when every one would have been drunk and stoned enough to really get into their oddball sound. A shame.

I had to grab a bite then, so skipped Built to Spill, whose sound left me rather indifferent from what I heard in passing, but I was back at the Centre Stage for Cold Cave, whom I only knew from The Wire's end-of-the-year top 50 (at 49, I think). They were a pleasant surprise, performing atypically in near-total obscurity and featuring a sound halfway between the driving electro-pop of early Soft Cell or Human League, but with a suitably mournful/stroppy-sounding lead singer, some heavy post-industrial beats, and a general air of sexualised modernist decay. Plus, they have Prurient on synths!


Iggy and The Stooges were next, on the Pavillion stage, but I'd seen them a few days beforehand, and I really don't like the cavernous, impersonal feel of that setting, so after a couple of songs, where the band played almost the same set as at The Apollo and Iggy confirmed he still has enough energy for 12 men despite playing to back-to-back gigs less than a week earlier, I headed back to the chalet for a nap and a beer, returning to the Centre Stage in time for Toumani Diabate and his band, who were one of the best acts of the weekend. Far from the delicate, pastoral sound of his New Ancient Strings magnum opus, this saw the great man taking on groovy African funk, with scattered polyrhythmic percussion, electric guitar and two energetic singers. The unshackled enthusiasm onstage quickly filtered through to the crowd and soon it had become a foot-pounding, hip-shaking mass of humanity, for one of the most joyful scenes I have ever witnessed at a concert. Watching my buddy Tim in particular lose himself to the groove in a completely unfettered way was something I won't forget for a while. At half-eleven I also caught half a set by Japanese pop-punk band Shonen Knife, whose simplistic guitar riffage and cheesy shouted vocals were charmingly (if rather insubstantially) offset by their uber-sexy demeanor and amusing in-between-song banter ("Do you like sushi?").

Beer won over the rest of the acts on the Friday, but Toumani Diabate in particular had proved a phenomenal entry to the festival, and the dancing had drained me somewhat. Saturday would prove to be the big one, kicking off with Deerhunter (the two previous acts were the very uninspiring Danielson and Lightning Dust - the latter were simply dreadful) on the Pavillion stage. Bradford Cox and his band have become staples of ATP and showed themselves to be a properly well-rounded and hard-hitting rock band, somewhere between Flaming Lips at their most wistful and My Bloody Valentine, as sheets of noisy guitar jostled with sad, high-pitched voices. Cox is a charming performer, all the more so for his obvious frailty, and they were fittingly loud, with a ragged drone finale. There was a slight "going-through-the-motions" feeling at times, but I was charmed enough to grab a copy of their Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. album (4AD, 2008). Weird Era Cont. is superb, I must say.

Next up were Konono No.1, one of the most exciting bands currently emananting from Africa. You probably know the drill - they're essentially a wedding band back in their native Democratic Republic of the Congo, playing amplified finger piano's through rough-shod amps created by salvaging bits and pieces of electrical appliances. And good lord, they're loud! The rough sound and repetitive motifs they play create a massive wall of trance-like funk, somewhere between German motorik electronica and traditional African dance music. Shouts of "Bougez! Bougez!" punctuate their native tongue lyrics whilst the singers shake and grind to the furious, outlandish sounds emanating from the finger pianos. An insane live presence, and another feather in Africa's cap. The joyfulnous, energy and raw power of both Konono and Toumani Diabate's sets put a lot of the formulaic rock bands to shame.

I dutifully skipped She & Him, Zooey Deschanel's band (they sound a bit wet and dull to me), but was back in action for The Residents. I know - how mental to be seeing America's most enigmatic band performing live? The stage set the tone - a rundown TV and moth-eaten sofa had me feeling like I was staring into a warped parody of a typical American sitting room that had been visited by aliens for tea, who had left some futuristic instruments behind. And then the aliens were there! "Chuck" and "Bob", faces hidden by massive goggles, spiky dreadlocks and mouthless balaklavas, both wearing shiny red jackets and staring impassively (I guess) at their instruments as they took the stage. Then came the mad old man of this bonkers house/stage - "Randy", leader singer and storyteller, dressed in a Christopher-Lloyd-in-Back-to-the-Future mask and wearing a ratty old dressing gown and oversized bozer shorts. The Residents remain true to form - no clues as to who these guys are, or even if they are the same Residents that gave us Not Available and Eskimo. For the music was very different to those experimental pre-yet-post-punk gems, mostly a raging mix of disturbed techno, seething noise and skewed old school rock'n'roll, mashed together into an unholy, ear-shattering whole, with lyrics (either roared, mewed or screamed by "Randy", who also peppered the song intervals with creepy/funny stories of ghosts, imaginary siblings and violent accidents) so bizarre they could have been lifted from the mind of Flannery O'Connor after an all-night amphetamine binge. In many ways it had me thinking that The Residents could be the original precursors of hypnagogic pop, their madcap take on the last 100 years of American culture, filtered through noise, drone, punk and psych, being a ragged, rather scary template for the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Gary War. Sort of.

Sticking to the weird, next up, on the Reds Club stage, was Ruins, now a solo vehicle for madcap drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. His energy is astounding and whilst there are limits to this solo drumming + vocals + tapes doing the rest, it remained awe-inspiring just to see his sheer bravado, guts and power. Stumbling raucously between noise, free jazz and progressive rock, including a finale that seemed to include snippets of King Crimson and Soft Machine, it was a stirring moment of wild avant rock that didn't make me regret missing the impromptu jam session between Jason Pearce, Konono No1 and Boredoms, which filled up startlingly quickly and apparently was something of a dud. 

Ruins 45-minute set ended just in time for me to haul ass over to the Centre stage to catch The xx, also only on 45 minutes but playing twice over the weekend. As much as I enjoy their excellent debut album, as a live entity, particularly shorn of the presence of keyboardist Baria Qureshi who recently departed the fold, they still need some work. Having all keyboard parts pre-recorded meant they had no room to stretch out and any faltering on the rhythm side of things was glaringly obvious (and there were bound to be, given how tough it is to play on a drum pad at speed). But both singers are sexy in an offbeat way, with their voices strong and sultry, and it's always nice to hear songs you like in a live setting, especially as they were quite obviously very popular with a buoyant crowd. They also did a good job of twisting the end of "Basic Space" into a tetchy jam, whilst "Fantasy" featured one of the heaviest bass lines I've ever heard, including Skream and Benga! Shame "Crystalised" was a bit untidy, but they have masses of room to improve, and they remain the only band recently trumpeted by the NME to actually be worth the hype.

But the best of Saturday was saved for last, as I ducked back in to Reds to catch James Chance & Les Contortions. Anyone who knows anything about post-punk music will know James Chance, whose original Contortions took the raw, alienated, unsophisticated sound of New York's seminal No Wave scene and dumped in jerky funk, hints of disco, and even sophisticated free jazz courtesy of Chance's squalling sax. The Contortions per se didn't last that long, but at the forefront of every incarnation of the band has been this sax, plus Chance's unique vocal style, part-sneer, part-scream, part-rasp, part-yell, part-cry for mercy. His debut album, Buy, remains a classic of unruly funk-punk defined by the aforementioned sax and vocals, plus jagged lines of distorted slide guitar, and it was great to hear James Chance returning to these roots with this French incarnation of the band. When they ripped in to the opening chords of "Design to Kill" and the great man blurted out a molten sax solo before slinking up to the mic, I was in heaven, and the bastards didn't let up for the whole set, which blissfully stretched well over the alloted hour. Whether taking on James Brown-ish funk, the pure No Wave of his earlier songs, or vintage r'n'r, the attitude remained the same - fierce, ballsy and belligerent. Rock at its purest. That I the next day got to meet Chance was the cherry on a pretty substantial fucking cake.

It's possible that such a high was indirectly responsible for Sunday being such a write-off. So enthused was I by Chance's performance, and then at having met him (and also chatted to Matt Groening - do I get any cool points for that?) that I was more interested in savouring the joy, and, in true hippy fashion, sharing it with others via many a shared bottle of alcohol, than in seeing many more bands. But I did give it a shot, I swear!

Proof: I got my mind melted in the best possible way by Boredoms! In fact, a second shot of genius performing probably did it for my poor synapses, meaning the "love factor" probably got out of control (I think I later snogged a 42-year-old woman!). Boredoms were performing Boardrum, their suite for multiple drummers, bashed guitars, electronics and some guitar, with a -for Boardrum- relatively stripped-down number of drummers (7, sometimes 8), including one of my faves in Oneida's Kid Millions. The show was insane, with one of the drummers being lifted to the stage, complete with full kit and soloing in call-and-response fashion with the rest of his bandmates! But the real focus was Boredoms' insane dreadlocked frontman EYE, who danced around on stage, leapt from drums to bashing a wall of fine-tuned guitars or yelled into a range of distorted microphones, all with the energy of ten men. And all the while the 7 drummers kept up their constant, insistent, ever-shifting pounding, orchestrated by EYE's shouts, raised hands and gestures. Truly bizarre, wondrous and excessively brilliant stuff.

And what about the rest? A bottle of forgotten Jack Daniels put paid to most of it, but I did stumble through a few shows, mostly snippets:

Viv Albertine - terribly dull singer-songwriter meanderings from the former Slit. Had to leave.
Spiritualized - again one I left mid-way through, despite it being a full rendering of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. Fatuous, overblown and self-important. Blech.
Joana Newsom - Great voice and presence, but my memory lets me down a tad here
The Raincoats - I had actually sobered up a bit for this, but they started late, took ages to get going and ultimately the bar proved a more reliable companion. I'd like to say they've still got it, but such shenanigans proved tiresome.

Ok, I'll admit it - missing most of Sunday due to inebriation was lame. But damn if James Chance and Boredoms didn't make it worth it. My only true regret was missing most of The Raincoats, but at the same time it kind of preserves my image of them, which my few recollections of their set suggest might have been damaged otherwise. James Chance and The Residents at least showed that the old-time post-punks haven't lost any of their edge or ability to surprise, whilst more nuggets of pure gold came from such far-flung parts as Mali, The Congo and Japan. A fitting epitaph for one of the most eclectic festivals I've ever been to. Well done, Mr Groening!