ATP, Einstürzende Neubauten
I have had way too much work and way too little sleep in the last few days. But it's been worth it.
We went to All Tomorrow's Parties on the weekend.
I was dreading it, to be honest.
The venue was sports centre/wedding reception/indoor rock climbing/bingo hall complex out in Altona. Metro decided that that weekend would be a good time to do track work, so there was no public transport. And it was stupidly hot all weekend.
It could have been awful.
The heat was relentless, but we survived by drinking lots of the free water and fanning ourselves with the festival lineup postcard. ATP ran shuttle buses and they worked surprisingly well. The venue was daggy enough that it was kinda cool.
And most importantly, the music was excellent.
Saturday:
Swans made vast slabs of rhythmic pulses, dark, punishing, and shamanistic.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor were lush, atmospheric, droning, and my highlight for Saturday.
A lot of people raved about My Bloody Valentine. I was never that familiar with their music, and I was a bit underwhelmed. They did their twelve-minutes-of-pure-noise break in 'You Made Me Realise', but it felt simplistic after the nuanced racket of Swans and Godspeed.
Sunday we decided to take things a bit easier.
We sat down to listen to My Disco and their noise funk. Crime and the City Solution were mellow. We skipped out on the Drones to eat dinner and rest up, which I feel a bit guilty for, since they were curating the festival. Pere Ubu were cantankerous and crazy and cool - I can clearly see the influnce they had on the Pixies.
Beasts of Bourbon were good, but their lighting mixer was atrocious. They appeared to be just pressing buttons at random.
During the gap between bands, we made our way up towards the front so we could get a good position for Einstürzende Neubauten.
And Neubauten were amazing. Mellow and delicate one minute, gloriously loud the next. Some bands have guitar solos. Neubauten had dropping-scrap-metal solos. Blixa was debonair and theatrical and amusing. Bass player Alexander Hacke looks like he escaped from Spinal Tap. N. U. Unruh looks like your nerdy uncle, but did the craziest banging on homemade scrap metal instruments.
The only disappointment was that they had to drop their planned encore so that people could catch the buses home.
Fortunately, we got to see them again last night at the Palace.
Crossposted from sharplittleteeth.dreamwidth.org
You can comment here, or over there using OpenID.
comments there.
We went to All Tomorrow's Parties on the weekend.
I was dreading it, to be honest.
The venue was sports centre/wedding reception/indoor rock climbing/bingo hall complex out in Altona. Metro decided that that weekend would be a good time to do track work, so there was no public transport. And it was stupidly hot all weekend.
It could have been awful.
The heat was relentless, but we survived by drinking lots of the free water and fanning ourselves with the festival lineup postcard. ATP ran shuttle buses and they worked surprisingly well. The venue was daggy enough that it was kinda cool.
And most importantly, the music was excellent.
Saturday:
Swans made vast slabs of rhythmic pulses, dark, punishing, and shamanistic.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor were lush, atmospheric, droning, and my highlight for Saturday.
A lot of people raved about My Bloody Valentine. I was never that familiar with their music, and I was a bit underwhelmed. They did their twelve-minutes-of-pure-noise break in 'You Made Me Realise', but it felt simplistic after the nuanced racket of Swans and Godspeed.
Sunday we decided to take things a bit easier.
We sat down to listen to My Disco and their noise funk. Crime and the City Solution were mellow. We skipped out on the Drones to eat dinner and rest up, which I feel a bit guilty for, since they were curating the festival. Pere Ubu were cantankerous and crazy and cool - I can clearly see the influnce they had on the Pixies.
Beasts of Bourbon were good, but their lighting mixer was atrocious. They appeared to be just pressing buttons at random.
During the gap between bands, we made our way up towards the front so we could get a good position for Einstürzende Neubauten.
And Neubauten were amazing. Mellow and delicate one minute, gloriously loud the next. Some bands have guitar solos. Neubauten had dropping-scrap-metal solos. Blixa was debonair and theatrical and amusing. Bass player Alexander Hacke looks like he escaped from Spinal Tap. N. U. Unruh looks like your nerdy uncle, but did the craziest banging on homemade scrap metal instruments.
The only disappointment was that they had to drop their planned encore so that people could catch the buses home.
Fortunately, we got to see them again last night at the Palace.
Crossposted from sharplittleteeth.dreamwidth.org
You can comment here, or over there using OpenID.
comments there.