ROCK
– introducing Steve Albini to Simon Minter
– Shellac on Saturday and getting to sit at Albini’s feet and use up an entire film on them
– watching Ian Scanlon force down our gift of pie under our insistent eyes
– Professor Minter’s Saturday night balcony lecture on the subject of boxes
– waving, especially at Adrian Errol’s chalet
– OXES vandalising david’s shoes
– Rachel’s, Blonde Redhead, Dianogah, The Breeders and Zeni Geva for being great
– Todd Trainer. just generally
– Stu making me sandwiches
security man in the pub asking us if we’d been burning paper. not sure if this was due to my flaming shoes and flaming belt and Stu’s flaming shirt or because we’d been burning paper

NOT ROCK
– not being able to get photographic evidence of the twin Albinis
– Stu taking multiple photos of Simon Minter with ‘celebrities’ and forgetting to use the flash
– Adrian Errol refusing our pie. sob…
– Greg Kitten HIDING AGAIN
– missing most of OXES due to picking up photo pass
– Arcwelder and Mission of Burma for not managing to hold my attention. Cheap Trick for being crap and probably getting paid more than all the rest
of the bands put together
– falling asleep during Wire even though they were great
– being too lazy to go to Leeds and see Trail of Dead
– very little fighting action and no swords
– everyone leaving really early on Monday. place was deserted before we even got up.

So, is it next year yet?

good things:

shellac. should be frozen right now and thawed out in thirty years to show people how to make perfect rock music. also, discussions on stage about band members’ beards are a good thing.
six minutes into blonde redhead‘s set, playing ‘bipolar’, warm feeling
simon albini demanding that everyone at atp listen to sonic youth and no other bands
giving ian scanlon pie
discovering that zeni geva are bluddy grate
jack daniel’s
meeting lots and lots of people who are nice and being in a proper ROCK gang
booking one of the bands who were at atp to play audioscope02

bad things:

being ill from too much alcohol, and this being directly responsible for my not meeting steve albini
adrian errol refusing pie
not seeing enough bands
ot being able to get in to see the fall
no sword fights or crazy golf, boo
cheap trick. rubbish trick, more like. also, arcwelder were disappointing, like a rubbish husker du.

Hoho. Everyone else must be dealing still with all yesterdays hangovers.

Apart from the stuff I’ve seen before (Low, Godspeed…), I was most impressed by:
The beach. Proper good sand dunes.
Zeni Geva, proper immense metal works and more than 3 people in a band is trying too hard.
PW Long, bloke with acoustic guitar who made Smog look lazy. Yeeha. On tour now but I didn’t catch the name of his band. Whoops.
And that off-kilter instrumental group I can’t remember the name of. You know who I mean.

And I owe apologies to:
Rachels
anyone I made coffee for over the weekend
anyone who tried to speak to me in the mornings
everyone I didn’t see much because I was looking at bands or dossing in my chalet too much

Okay, so official ATP over-excitement may not start til Monday [according to us] when we will start with the shrieking and the jumping up and down. But anyway, get yourself in gear for that by reading the coverage of the New York ATP on Fake Jazz. This article is the better one and they make no effort to try and cover the thing properly, they just go to exactly what they want and ponder all kinds of things around it. Sounds like the weekend was ace with possibly a little too much avant garde instrument hitting. I want to see Merzbow! Wow.

I also want to go to the Sonar festival in Spain. Look at at that line-up!! Shall have to make do with Blectum From Blechdom here on Wednesday instead. Especially since the head of department took all my remaining holiday allowance away meaning I have to struggle back to work the day after Trail of Dead. Gar!

And finally, I’m having a very odd time with the Electro Group album. I remember listening to this the day they all left for Leeds and thinking it was a vaguely nice jangly indie guitar record but I put it on yesterday and damn me if it hasn’t transmogrified into a super fantastic effects laden My Bloody Valentine swirlfest. What happened there? I’d think I ‘d been listening to the wrong CD before but a) I wasn’t that drunk and b) I remember the spooky hidden song ten minutes into the last track. Hmm, I need help.

Got to say a couple of words in praise of the Edinburgh Film Festival Early Spring thing. Some fine fine films that there’s still time to see (esp if you’re in London) but aren’t going to get released in this country. Lantana is set in Sydney, a murder mystery with a nice meandering feel and flawed, believable characters. I was even more impressed with Les Blessures Assassines (or Murderous Maids if you prefer) and have to use words like gritty, realist and ouch to describe it. It’s like Heavenly Creatures without the fluffy bits and its take on served/servant relations makes Gosford Park look like, ooh, a tedious and mannered waste of celluloid.

Consumer Protection Warning: I’ve seen an advert for Trouble Every Day, Vincent Gallo’s new film, and it’s claiming to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Deep Throat. That’s bollocks: it’s a vampire film with sex in it, directed by a French arthouse darling. That makes it The Hunger with less shoulderpads, less Bowie, less dialogue, more moodily framed shots, more meaningful looks, and a soundtrack by the Tindersticks. It’s a good film but don’t go expecting Buffy Does Dracula (that’s still in pre-production).

Hello. Fun weekend I had, with Instal on sunday just been covered well enough. Friday I went to Alec Empire followed by the 555 Records Extravaganza with Kid606.

Got attacked by Alec Empire when he invited me to mosh and I told him “actually Mr. Empire I think overall your Hypermodern Jazz album is ultimately a more rewarding experience than your enjoyable but slightly overblown for 8:30pm gabber”. “Riot!” he replied, “destroy 2000 years of culture!”

The 555 records folk are dead nice. They put out an album to celebrate their wedding. Aaaaah. Steward is the pair of them playing guitars and throwing rockstar shapes over borrowed beats from tunes like “Hey Micky, ” by Toni Basil. Can’t dislike that. Joan of Ass did similar stuff but without the guitars and a bit screechier. Amusing as all that was it did seem like Kid606 was the only one doing it properly, but he was well worth the wait. It’s somewhere between DJing and playing live and it’s fantastic he should be playing to much bigger crowds. But I can’t convince people of this so I’ll just have to console myself with saying “I told you so..” when he opens for Madonna in a couple of years time. Or she opens for him.

I was at Instal, a festival of experimental electronic and contemporary classical music yesterday and it was fantastic. seven hours and I wasn’t bored for a single moment. it was kind of like a cross between a music festival and an art gallery with new artists starting their sets in different parts of the venue moments after each other. nice mix of stuff as well although we managed to avoid most of the classical stuff which sounded least interesting to me. we did catch the Symphony for 100 Metronomes though, or rather, since we were a little late, the Symphony for 5 Metronomes. I was more interested in watching other peoples’ reactions to watching the last 2 metronomes click-click-clacking for ten minutes but then Koji Asano started his set and everyone got bored of watching metronomes. Koji Asano was probably my highlight of the event, loud but really textured and I could hear so much going on. Philip Jeck was another highlight, looking like a dusty old history teacher but bringing out the beauty of his old deteriorated records. Local acts Rhomboi and Defaalt gave different tones to the event with echoing throbbing guitar and interactive graphics respectively.

Headliners Icebreaker International were in a class of their own though. Funny, intriguing and vaguely mad in person, we left our interview just as confused as when we arrived, our heads full of economics and well-spun tales. Live, they were definitely the most acccessible act with their flowing electro-pop and NATOarts business suits. sadly they got cut short by a technical problem – a sad note on which to end such a well-organised event. I ended up stumbling home in the frost at 1am where I saw a fox watching me from the roadside. I then had seemingly endless strange electronic music soundtracked dreams and woke to a group of economists discussing world trade on the radio. my head’s been a bit odd since.

okay, now I can find time to write about the burnt out festival. very timely considering the last few days have involved burning buildings at my place of work. I just went down and took some photos of the burnt botany building. it looks pretty sad with no roof.

the burnt out festival is on all this week in glasgow and they really went to some effort. really nice old-church type venue, slide and film projections and even printing the tickets on fancy cardboard. anyway, I went on the first night for Hood and Very! Special! Guests! Mogwai!

which obviously was wee stuart b dj-ing for well over an hour. he didn’t do his mobile indie disco but instead did a damn good proper dj set with fancy mixing skills and sticking in a whole bunch of stuff from hip hop to electronica to cheesy garage to digital hardcore to heavy metal to sesame street. but I think he mainly likes dj-ing so he can put on a long record every now and again and run about getting another beer and chatting to people. I expect this to get worked in to Mogwai’s set at some point.

Hood were the main band and they were really great. it all just worked together really well. the electronicy stuff, the guitars, the projections and everything. and they did a fantastically loud rock out bit to finish on. I was rather impressed.

Good night altogether. And John from Mogwai bought me a pint! what a guy!