All Tomorrow’s Parties
Nightmare Before Christmas
Pontins, Camber Sands
summary : ireallylovemusic's John Doran gives us the rundown on recent noisy happenings @ camber sands :December 3 - December 4 - December 5
December 4
Kicking off proceedings on Saturday, Destroy All Monsters start off promisingly enough with a pompous slab of post rock that sees swathes of doom drenched guitar swell to fill the near empty big hall. The sound throbs between dampened chord harmonies and shuddering power chords over an insistent and tribal rhythm. The guitarist, who looks like a geology lecturer on Open University circa 1972, keeps on throwing handfuls of glitter into the air. But after this it nose dives into the effluence. The band embark on a painfully awful and atonal jam while one member (who presumably thinks of himself as a “sound manipulator” or “sonic architect”) picks up household items and then shakes them at a microphone. That he thinks that he has achieved all that he can with conventional instruments and is now exploring the sonic possibilities of rubbing a hamster on an anvil says more about his lack of vision than me being narrow minded. I can’t be more explicit than this: any group of men well into their fifties who can play jazz expertly but then choose to start playing it like a bunch of teenagers twatting about in their 6th form music room as some kind of ironic ‘joke’ should be put against a wall without blind fold or cigarette and shot in the fucking face. It isn’t post modern; it’s just post enjoyable.
Downstairs Comets On Fire arrive just in time to soothe frayed nerves. Much has been made of their similarity to perma-stoned space rock warriors, Hawkwind and this is with good reason. Their krautrock 101 rhythm section, vintage oscilloscopes and chugging guitars practically taste of bong water. Live however, they up the pace and ferocity of execution becoming altogether more visceral and exciting, being (laudably) reminiscent of the Butthole Surfers live circa ‘Locust Abortion Technician’.
And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead are, surprisingly, the best act of the weekend. Their new material sees them abandoning their looser Sonic Youth inspired sound in favour of grooves that are oozing steroids from every pore. This is the sound of yesterday’s young Turks after a spell on the wagon, a year down the gym and some time listening to The Stooges, Ennio Morricone and Black Flag. (And as I’ve said before to anyone who’ll listen: from the Glitter Band to the Butthole Surfers via Adam and the Ants, you can’t beat a group with two drummers.) ‘Richter Scale Madness’ remains the best song about small town alienation and anger since Big Black’s ‘Kerosene’.
Downstairs the Aphex Twin plays other people’s records in a pre-determined order. (To be fair to him, this is the most dance floor friendly set I’ve ever seen him do and includes ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’ and snatches of ‘Energy Flash’ in among the breaks, beats and Rephex acid squelches.)
Ever since Mercury Rev (understandably) parted company with the unreliable David Baker they have struggled to recapture their gift for creating beauty out of chaos and they seem to have become the phrase ‘law of diminishing returns’ embodied. Their set tonight is so studied, staid and pompous that it practically screams out ‘Please give me a South Bank Show special!’ Now, I’m all for bands singing about spacemen and goblins but to demand critical kudos at the same time suggests a cake ownership/mastication scenario. (A band they are often compared to, The Flaming Lips, realise the ultimate daftness of what they are doing and have the common sense to acknowledge this by turning every show into a celebration.) Admittedly the ‘Rev’s formula works well live; opium warm guitar tones spill from the stage, synths that sound hilariously tinny and old fashioned on record sound magisterial tonight and even Jonathan Donanue’s tremulous falsetto takes on a new transcendent power. But nothing can erase the suspicion that they are little more than a bad Cure tribute act with a Dungeons and Dragons obsession. And by the second harmonica solo you start realising that this is the kind of music that Simon Mayo listens to when he’s in an ‘indie’ mood. Tracks such as ‘Holes’ manage to raise the proceedings out of the mire temporarily but the new songs are almost unutterably shite soft rock work outs. In an alternative universe Mercury Rev are quite happily providing backing music to Jane ‘The Cruise’ McDonald on a UK wide tour of bingo halls. I manage to stand a full hour but then have to leave as the big, sweaty rolls of fat all over this naked emperor’s body are making me feel quite nauseous.