For all to have pilgrimaged to Minehead, or more precisely to a fairly grotesquely constructed, glorified teepee plonked down in the middle of a decadent, bungalow-strewn holiday resort in order to bask in some of the most pioneering music of generations past, present and future, the benefits of home comforts (beds, bathrooms, kitchens, TV with the addition of a few channels to have you choking on your [INSERT GENERIC CEREAL BRAND NAME HERE] etc.) are as self-evident as the journey southwestwards is wearying. However, with ATP's introduction of the already-bordering-on-seminal
I'll Be Your Mirror series to the chin-stroking, noise-devouring British consumer, for many it's now your own bed you doze off in come the ears-still-ringing early hours, your own bathroom you do bathroom business in and so on and so forth. That said, Alexandra Palace, a similarly decadent setting to its distant Somerset relative (were both born of Barry Hogan for the sake of argument) is this weekend filled with as many distant dialects and languages as it is with Devo tees, the multiculturalism diffused across the venue's numerous stages also pervading those gawping up at heroes and heroines, through into the abyss of impending headache. It's all pretty wonderful, having a different language streaming in each ear, before predominant silence greets every last act meticulously selected/hauled out of hiatus by the weekend's deservedly much-lauded curators.
Upon traipsing into the Palace, past glimmering helium sacks and vending machines, quite inexplicably, that inimitable stench of rotting, sliced and diced hotdogs that overpowers every experience in Butlins' Centre Stage permeates the vastness of the hilltop Victorian leviathan, the nasal lifeblood of ATP seeping into the genetic fibre of its latest offspring. In terms of clientele, it's the customary spattering of almost exclusively black garb (band moniker emblazoned boldly across chest), beard, and backpack (hence predominantly male), as the programme's incited "No Assholes Policy" is dutifully observed. Musically meanwhile, suitably, ingenuity dictates, as the weekend assimilates a "West Country does North London" slant, as even eateries Pieminister and a reincarnation of the Blue Juice café shack up amidst the omnipresent rubicund sausages smothered in perturbingly fluorescent sauce.
All-encompassing in their roving through a vast musical spectrum, inordinately innovative multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow's
Beak> continue to astound even in the Great Hall which, in bluntness, is probably a little too Great for their rattling, introversive and often claustrophobic percussive bass clatter. The skittering top-end synths of Iron Acton, hovering above Billy Fuller's sultry low-end palpitation, threaten to engulf Barrow's elegiac, processed drone, whilst the ecstatic, ascending rumble of Blagdon Lake gushes with a sanguine optimism, before the euphoric hanging C of set closer Battery Point relaxes what feels a little like tendinous tension, elevating everything to the subliminal apex of mid-afternoon enjoyment. Revered reggae ensemble and fellow Bristolians
Black Roots, whilst a little deficient on the ability to wholeheartedly engage having been largely inactive for over a decade, embody the metaphysical soul of St. Paul's, creditably promoting positivity in place of recent afflictions in the despair-stricken zone. Back in his birthplace,
DOOM then takes to the Great Hall, backed by a MacBook and an accomplice that incessantly fiddles about with an iPod, insistently celebrating how true Daniel Dumile's live vox are to their recorded counterparts, presumably in order to shave away suspicions of whether it's actually the gravel-voiced wordsmith or an impersonator upon which we gaze, yadda yadda yadda. The levels are all askew either way with the grumble and hiss of voluptuous bass overriding all, although the man behind the mask is most probably DOOM, and he's returned to Blighty with the belly to attest his authenticity.
Rather more svelte in every sense are
the Books, whose
recent LP The Way Out proved a rather special record. Cobbled together from abandoned self-help psychotherapy tapes on the brink of extinction, it truly was "music specifically created for its pleasurable effects upon your mind, body, and emotions", yet it was probably equally likely to fluster sanity as it was to treat mental instability. However live, nonsense is untangled into a quite direct experience, like an Otto Zitko scribble strung out, delineated, to reveal a truly logical import, salvaged VHS visuals hacked up and reassembled to resemble a twisted take on a demented focal point or frontman. Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto take to various strings, as a depilated head floats in that "orange colored liquid" frequently cited during Group Autogenics I. Envisage the head of a decapitated Stephen Hawking bobbing about in Tango and you've a vague sketch of the bewildering imagery projected onto the back wall of the West Hall at 5pm on a midsummer Saturday afternoon. It's evidently a little too radical for some, as several never make it to the frenetic, hugely idiosyncratic funk of I Didn't Know That (doubtless fewer in attendance previously knew its lyrical subject matter were golf), before the rather less polarising acoustic twangs of Tokyo intervene. Free Translator, an exemplary illustration of the Books' endeavours to challenge language, is unveiled as a "very well-known folk song" that's been warped beyond most recognition by noncommittal online translators and, with Nick Zammuto on fractured vocals, is about as spectacular as the NYC duo get, with the hip hop-like scratch swagger of Chain Of Missing Links and the fraught, quasi-hysterical A Cold Freezin' Night wooing similarly. Highbrow; erudite; bookish: yes; yes; yes. Brilliant: yes.
A vast throng then swells in the Great Hall ahead of what may well be the weekend's most heavily anticipated hour, the witching hour if you will, as
PJ Harvey gracefully hexes. Drawing nigh on exclusively from
her phenomenal February LP Let England Shake, if her set weren't morose enough already, more dislocated than a luxated limb, texts of Wino's demise stream to consequently add further wretchedness and woe to Polly Jean's tales of butchered flesh dangling from raggedy trees (The Words That Maketh Murder) and undiluted, glorious patriotism (absolutely anything from the aforementioned record). Geographically removed from her backing band comprised of long-term collaborators John Parish and Mick Harvey, alongside drummer Jean-Marc Butty, her porcelain-like figure is veiled in what looks like the exterior aesthetic of dozens of crows, as she stands rigid beneath luminescent glare stage-right, autoharp clasped tight. Painstakingly creeping through the entirety of Let England Shake, Harvey proves staggering from the opening plink of the eponymous title track to the final martial thud of The Colour Of The Earth, with only the rickety lo-fi majesty of Pocket Knife, crestfallen acoustic Angelene and C'mon Billy to cut through the grizzly nationalism of the latest record. The most affecting Black Hearted Love imaginable.
There's a quite bemusing one-way system in operation which transforms Ally Pally into something of a labyrinthian maze. One wrong turn, a stumble through an undesired door and you're out in the (not so) cold Alexandra Park winds. Eventually locating an entrance to the murky West Hall, the first UK
Company Flow show in a decade fizzles rather than flares, their set unapologetically curtailed three tracks from climax. Nonetheless the sight of innumerable wriggling fists and forearms raised skywards, slinking to the sound of Population Control, is practically meritorious of postcard incarnation.
And so to tonight's headliners, the weekend's curators, Bristol's greatest cultural product, a trio capable of shattering convention into infinite shards of elation. The return of
Portishead to the UK circuit always promised to flabbergast, yet from the moment their curved logo hums and tremors behind their elaborate stage set-up it becomes devastatingly apparent that Beth Gibbons, Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow are here to once again redefine aural intrepidity, the desperate orchestrations of Silence opening up a truly overwhelming set.
Mysterons follows, and sees Barrow turn to the Technics as hazy scratches meet sparse yet cinematic Jazzmaster echoes and preternatural resonances, all beneath Gibbons' unearthly, doleful contralto. The acoustically tinged sonic collage that is The Rip is heart-melting, arresting, whilst Chase The Tear sounds titanic enough to fracture the gargantuan stained-glass window at the opposite end of the vast Great Hall. Wandering Star sees Barrow mosey on out from behind his bank of gadgetry to hammer out its crackling bass despondence on a weather-beaten Fender, the trio left to their own fierce devices in a moment of stadium-sized pomp, before the agitating Threads has Gibbons vehemently protesting how "tired" and "worn out" she feels. In reality she looks barely a day older than she did back in '98 during the Roseland NYC show, and sprints the length of the front row during encore closer We Carry On, conversing intimately with those crumpled over the barrier. She returns centre-stage to light up and swig from a San Miguel, almost more maternal than frontwoman in aesthetic, entirely overwhelmed by the patent adoration that rings through the venue. As the clanging Krautrock tendencies of Factory Floor emanate from the perpetually sunless West Hall, perhaps the most leisurely post-festival voyage imaginable awaits...
