Most drunken person there eh? WALK A MILE IN MY FUCKING SHOES! I MISSED SHELLAC.

anyway.

Highlights:

LUNGFISH

PART CHIMP

JAMES ORR COMPLEX

I’m quite interested by the fact that no pain was caused by being in close contact with Lightning Bolt, Mogwai, Boredoms etc. but a 50 minute plane journey from London has broken my ears. Certainly I am getting old. But WOOO, best ATP ever! My top highlight was Lightning Bolt. Don’t listen to anyone who says they were crap, they’re just sulking about the playing on the floor thing. I couldn’t see them but they were still astonishingly great. So good I went next door and impulse bought the DVD. Also brilliant were Boredoms, Shellac, old skool Mogwai set and little old Chris Mack on that big stage. Tortoise, Papa M, Cat Power would have been great if I hadn’t shouted to people constantly over the former or been able to hear the latter two. I spent a lot of time being extremely un hardcore, sitting down during bands and hanging out at the chalet and thus had a 100% excellent band percentage by Saturday afternoon. My drinking antics were pathetic thanks to damaging my throat within 10 seconds of arriving in London. Most drunken person there – a tie between Chris Summerlin and Colin Kearney. Addition of the gambling area was a stroke of genius also. Yay, ATP. I’m off to have a bath now, despite spending half the weekend moaning about how our chalet had a bath instead of a shower. Go figure.

Shellac were AMAZING at my birthday party on Thursday also. I love that band. Hello to everyone I met and thanks to the kittens for my birthday pie, of which I ate 2/3rds. Mmmm, pie.

Everybody I met or spoke to at ATP – new friends or old – are great people. Seriously. Thank you all

Still too tired and confused to work out my musical highlights so far, due to not being able to take alcohol any more without getting a week-long hangover.

This seems like as good a time as any to break my blogophobic habits and rejoin the fold post-ATP. Not too much to say now, as I’m sure we’ll be putting up a diskant feature like we did last year, but HELLO to everyone I spoke to from the diskant fold – you’re all WINNERS. And HELLO to Ivory Springer, Big Joan and Ann Arbor, who are all GREAT and lovely and you should go check ’em out.

Personal highlights were Lungfish (who were even better than I thought they’d be – get that gurning!), Boredoms (who gave me the best headache EVER and made at least one of our party retire to the beach in pain), Lightning Bolt (who sounded like they were probably utterly skill from where we were standing, but were predictably only properly experienced by the 100 or so people nearest to where they set up), Uzeda (such a shame they overlapped with Shellac), Cat Power (who was TOO QUIET TOO QUIET TOO QUIET and as such didn’t seem to go down very well beyond the first few rows of people), and Shellac, obviously. AND I’m going to see Cat Power again tomorrow and Le Tigre next week, which makes up for the weekend two lineup being BETTER. Anyway, work – BOO, ATP – yay. Also, I’m a plane.

Hi all. I’m now returned from All Tomorrows Parties, as I’d imagine most of the other web-hackers on this computer site are. Suffice to say, it was great. I’m not going to write much because my eyes are about to bleed from exhausation, but what I will say is this-

– Trans Am, Boredoms and Uzeda were my favourite three bands of the weekend.

– Everybody in attendance was equally nice and friendly, barring the sub-moronic, chest-beating neanderthal who kicked me as I tried to get past him during Shellac (performance #2). He should be killed.

– If one more person excitedly taps me on the shoulder to tell me Lightning Bolt are playing an impromptu gig in a toilet/cupboard/suitcase, I will vomit hard and long.

– I lost 40 pounds somewhere on the beach.

– ‘Western Train’ is the most unusal arcade amusement I am ever likely to experience in my lifetime. ‘Players enjoy to control our train directly’, and that’s a fact.

– ‘Festabulous’ isn’t a popular word.

Now sleep.

Any diskant friends/fans/wellwishers should come and say hello to us at Shellac tonight or ATP over the weekend. Look out for our diskant badges (also pictures here)! If in doubt, come to the record sale outside the pub on Sunday. You might even get a free diskant badge! Anyone who just shouts my name at me from across the street as last ATP will get my usual suspicious glare/look of confusion and NO BADGE. So, don’t.

No updates til after the weekend obviously. Hopefully Ollie will keep you entertained here while he’s blubbing into his jumper over all the fun he’s missing.

This year the All Tomorrow’s Parties people are taking advantage of the glut of talent travelling to Camber Sands and arranging a UK tour so that the sand-allergic can join in the fun. The first gig takes place on the 22nd of March at Stereo in Glasgow and features Jackie-O Motherfucker, Bardo Pond and special guests who might be Threnody Ensemble. It’s an impressive line-up and given the size of the bands an ambitious one. I emailed Jackie-O guitarist-mainstay Tom Greenwood to see what we canto expect when the psychedelic freeform circus comes to town.

Who’s all in the band’s line-up for this gig / tour and what are they playing?

Brooke and I are the only two left from previous glasgow gigs….we’ve added Dave Bryant (godspeed) on guitar and tapes….Fluffy Toast (montreal) on banjo/saw/electronics….Jeff Mooridian (vaz) on drums /electronic drums/sequencer….Genevieve Dellinger…vocals, etc….Andy Cvar…lap steel guitar. Brooke plays piano/vibes/guitar…and I’m still playing guitar/turntables.

Being improvised I guess you can’t tell us exactly what to expect from the show but are there any clues you could give us? Like how did it go the last time you played at Stereo?

We’re working on something completely different than ever before…the sound has evolved a lot this year, due to a bunch of touring/recording…etc. Expect something that covers a huge spectrum…from tiny microscopic sounds, to giant swelling waves!!

Last time you were here I think you played with Volcano the Bear. Are they a band you feel some kind of affinity with, and are there others?

We had a great time playing with them….however, we are kind of solitary and hermitish at the moment. We’d love to open ourselves up a bit more, and i’m hoping to develop a residency in Glasgow this summer so we can do that….

Can we expect members of Bardo Pond to join you onstage at the gig?

Not likely…as we are working on a 45-60 min. composition that takes the entire set!…

Your name is quite (/very) confrontational but your sound, at least on your album for Textile Records, I found quite open and laid-back. Is this deliberate, accidental or am I completely off-planet with this question?

Things have changed a great deal from when we started the band 10 years ago….but the name is so cute…doncha think?

Last night I went to a Casino in Sydney and saw a “proper” cabaret show, you know where you sit at tables and you can only buy booze in the interval (crazy).

I saw the touring extravaganza that is The Ladyboys Of Bangkok.

Wow. Once you get over the weird Blue Velvet feeling of seeing heavily made up Oriental people miming to pop hits it becomes fun. And the compere has a terrifying voice too (“That wassssss Antoneeee and hissss SEXXXXXY girlzzzz”). Sparkling wine by the litre is recommended.

Rather than being a curious piece of freakshow entertainment it was a good laugh. A rousing version of “One Night In Bangkok” had me clapping away and I almost cried during a version of My Way performed by a slightly older member of the troupe who slowly changed from female dress into male dress and at the end of the song whipped off his wig to reveal a crew cut and, as he did so, the Liza Minelli voice changed to that of Frank Sinatra. Awesome.

During a spectacular version of “And All That Jazz” from the musical Chicago I said, slightly loudly,

“YOU KNOW, I’D FUCK ALL OF THEM. FANNY OR NO FANNY”

When I get to do ATP, The Ladyboys Of Bangkok are my headliners. And Madonna obviously.

Yesterday was January 5th and in Washington DC and in New York it was officially “Charles Mingus Day” to mark the anniversary of his death (24 years ago).

Mingus represented something that no longer exists. The world is downsized. People are unemployed because there are more people than jobs. Work decreases because the people in charge cut corners and find new ways to make more money from less people.

The music industry represents this perfectly. It’s why the role of the DJ and the covers band in the modern world is so fucking disgusting. Why hire 50 acts to play in a night when you can hire 1 to play the music of 50 people?

If you don’t know him, Charles Mingus was a composer. He’s best known as a jazz bassist but somehow that doesn’t do justice to the enormous breadth of knowledge and broad ranging sweep of musical styles he employed. Bass might have been his instrument but thats only because he didn’t have enough arms and legs to play the whole big band himself. He watched as jazz became a marginalised music form and eventually he watched as “fusion” took over jazz completely and turned it into what it is today – either a slick, calculated Kenny G sax nightmare or something that is retro to the extreme. It’s been said hip hop is the only modern form of jazz and it’s probably right. And it’s only going to be a matter of time before some fucking executive works out what’s going on and that gets downsized too. In fact maybe it’s already happened.

Mingus fought the downsizing with huge big band efforts and orchestral pieces. He struggled financially until the very end of his life (when ironically he found it easy to get gigs but physically harder to play them) but refused to yield to the times. He was a part of the free jazz movement but scoffed at it’s leading practisioners (i.e. Ornette Coleman) for their lack of formal ability. He believed in hard graft as a musician and he believed in doing it big. Whether that means a huge band line up or eating 6 steaks at a sitting.

So, there you go. Charles Mingus was a big, fat genius. Go and read more about him at MINGUSMINGUSMINGUS.COM a site run by his widow and 4th wife, Sue.

I’m very excited to hear the news that there is another INSTAL festival in Glasgow this year. Their website’s disappeared so find out more via The Arches (scroll down a bit on the right). With this line-up and the fantasticness of the previous 2 events, I shall definitely be there.

AMM: [Keith Rowe, Eddie Prevost, John Tilbury]
Vooredoms: The Boredoms
Merzbow
Ryoji Ikeda
Cosmos
Vibracathedral Orchestra
Paragon Ensemble
Whitehouse

Sun 23 November
4pm-12am £14/£10

Instal, the Arches’ annual new music blow out, is your chance to experience ground breaking and genre defining live experimental music in the unique surroundings of the Arches. In its third year, Instal features one-off performances from some of the most striking artists in contemporary music today.

You’ll also have noted that we now have Chris Summerlin blogging for us. If you don’t know Chris already, I’ll be very surprised but go read his profile by clicking his name on the left there or just go read his always-great columns. We hope to have some other new people blogging soon but they’re all ignoring me just now.