Saturday, December 17, 2011

Nightmare Before Christmas: the stuff dreams are made of

So, about this time last week I was at ATP, somewhat worse for wear, just finishing getting blown away by No Age and gearing up for Hot Snakes. Even by the very high standards of previous festivals, this was an especially good one - thanks for that go to ATP and to the three curators Les Savy Fav, Battles and Caribou, who lent each day a slightly different flavour and who picked a pretty damn near perfect selection of favourites (No Age and Oxes chief among them) and unknown pleasures (Pharoah Sanders on Sunday in particular).

There'll be a report on here at some point (expect tales of free jazz freakouts, mindblowing Japkrautrock, more saxophonists than you can shake a stick at, purple shellsuits, riot-instigating DJ sets, Phil Collins' cover of 'You Can't Hurry Love' and a fat man in ladies' clothing drinking out of a kettle) but in the meantime you'll have to make do with the official Flickr page and the following special installment of Feel Good Hits...

1. 'Everybody's Down' - No Age
2. 'Ice Cream' - Battles (video NSFW)
3. 'Kaz Hayashi '01' - Oxes
4. 'Mirrorball' - Nissenenmondai
5. 'Sun' - Caribou
6. 'The Creator Has A Master Plan' - Pharoah Sanders
7. 'Plenty For All' - Hot Snakes
8. 'Beat On The Brat' - The Ramones
9. 'Jump' - Van Halen
10. 'Nothing Left' - Marnie Stern

6 comments:

skif said...

Twisted the knife into the heart of my jealousy with this posting! :-D

There's a chap in the front row on that Nissenenmondai video that seems to be at nearly every gig I go to (sadly I wasn't at that particular 'Mondai gig myself - although I am vowing to never miss any further London visits if I can help it).

Yet this chap and I never speak. I think we're too far down the road of mutual non-acknowledgement to make any changes to this now.

I risked little 'alright' eye-brows once but was met with a glare, so it's put me off a bit.

Welcome to London! :-)

Ben said...

Nice. Perhaps he mistook your friendly eyebrow-raise as a signal of critical bemusement at his ATP-style attire?

skif said...

I've never really taken much notice of his clobber, more the fact he looks like a wiry Eastern European henchman for a Bond villain.

What makes it even more awkward is that we're both usually on our Jack so really there should be no excuse. Ah well, my conversation is poor at the best of times, so he ain't missing out on owt.

So, what counts as ATP-style attire? My single experience thus far was not, I believe, representative.

Ben said...

These days it's tight jeans, Christmas jumper and sizeable moustache. Does he fit the bill?

skif said...

Not even close. Is that what I should be thinking about for the March ATP then?

Ben said...

Seems to be the outfit du jour, but then my party and I seem to get away without dressing up that way (though we do stand out somewhat...).