ATP Festival curated by The National (E)

7 - 9 December 2012 Camber Sands, southern England

(auf deutsch)

Perfect size for a festival , sold out, with probably a little less than 3000 people

I first found out about "All Tomorrow's Parties” - ATP for short - a London based promoter when Belle & Sebastian had their their Bowlie 2 two years ago. For many years now ATP have invited musicians / bands in to curate on of their fine little festivals. The picked artists are pretty much given free rein and it seems to be an honor to be chosen. Unfortunately when it was Belle & Sebastian’s turn I couldn’t find any friends who liked the band or the idea of the festival as much as I do. But this year in January when The National announced that they were going to curate an ATP Festival in December the wintery England trip together with two friends was immediatelly fixed. Due to contractual problems with the originally planned venue in Somerset on the West Coast, the festival was moved to the much smaller summer Seaside Resort Pontins in Camber Sands on the south coast. Good for us: Camber is only about two hours away from London Heathrow. Small meant less than 3000 guests which is a pretty good size for a very small and familiar festival. The festival ticket included 3 days of music and 3 nights at the resort. They had no day passes or tickets without the overnight stay. The whole event felt a bit like summer camp with 16 and with The National as scoutmasters.

Richard & Bryce listening to Local Natives

The National: The curators of the event, of course, so vitally important that they get their own report.

 

The lineup: It almost reads like a "who's who" of the global indie scene with a focus on Brooklyn, peppered with a little (modern) classic (Nico Muhly, The Kronos Quartet, Hauschka) and cherished music pioneers (Michael Rother, Boris). As a friend of folk-rock and also of more quiet sounds, not to mention as a huge fan of The National, there were of course plenty of bands to my liking, so I went without plunging into the history of electronic music. There were a few bands I already knew quite well (Sharon van Etten, Wye Oak), or at least a bit (My Brightest Diamond, Kathleen Edwards, Richard Reed Parry, This Is The Kit, Hayden), others were totally new to me Menomena , Luluc, Bear In Heaven, Local Natives) and a few others had to be sorted out due to the schedule and the unfortunatelly limited attention span at a festival (The Antlers, Dark Dark Dark, Lower Dens, Owen Pallett, Deerhoof and even some more). For the musicians it must have felt like a kind of highschool reunion: friends, relatives, acquaintances, who had accompanied The National in recent years. Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak) complained about her still bothering jetleg but had to admit that she had to blame herself since she hadn’t been in bed earlier due to all the nice friends she was meeting here. And Kathleen Edwards was quite happy that she had met long time friend Hayden again, who had not shown up on stage for the past five years.

 

The stages: The whole event took place in the main building of the now rather dated resort. Pontins Camber Sands somehow seems to be famous for its good entertainment programs in the summer time and has two large venues, both equiped with cozy filthy carpets, solid bars and in the bigger one even with a hotdog stand. Stage 1 with a capacity of approximately 3,000 people and Stage 2 takes at least another 900 spectators. Unfortunately the sound in Stage 1 sometimes left a lot to be desired. In Stage 2 everything has always worked well and even with the smaller capacity there was no bottleneck at anytime. Not for a single gig you had to be there more than 5 minutes in advance and still got a spot in the front third. There also was a pretty ageing amusement park in the main building that still found its friends and then a cozy, albeit empty cleared pub for the after-show parties and for relaxing in between the shows. However we were only 3 minutes away from our heavenly nightmarish apartment.

 

The security: A big difference to what we are used to back home: no grim glances, no wannabe macho posturing, no bag checks and body searches! Very relaxed and totally friendly. After two days, the guys knew your faces and gave you a warm welcome, they opened the doors for you and gave away their candy. Quite apart from that there were no separate and inaccessible artist areas. That's exactly how I fancy a perfect festival atmosphere.

 

The chronology of my music: At the very beginning it didn’t work out too well with Nico Muhly and us, too demanding for our ears. So the real start was Canadian singer / songwriter Hayden Desser, who was very happy to be back on tour after a hiatus of five years. He handed in a folky, rocking, really lovely first set with a few new (the album has been announced for February) and a few old songs.

Hayden

After a short break we got some very good impressions of contemporary classic playing New Yorker Kronos Quartet in stage one before we went on to listen to the second part of Luluc.


Male part of Luluc

Luluc are a duo from Melbourne, who seem to live mainly in New York. One of my discoveries: great female voice, very classic songwriting. Matt Berninger (frontman of The National) was in the audience. Within the following days his presence showed up to be a good indicator in terms of my personal taste in music.

Bear In Heaven

I had somehow heard of Brooklynites Bear In Heaven before, but I had no idea of their music. It turned out to be very coherent, perfectly matching the moods synthpop stepped up with some loud guitars and very good drums. A brilliant Friday night finale.

Richard Reed Parry, multi-instrumentalist of Arcade Fire opened our Saturday with his second of three sets, a nice, nature-loving folk show.

Richard Reed Parry

Meanwhile Lower Dens from Baltimore shrouded in almost complete darkness on stage one, a very interesting version of shoegazing. While listening to Jana Hunter's voice and viewing her dimly lit appearance I'm asking myself if I’m not seeing a pretty small male person in front of me. Lower Dens are exciting, but it's still a bit early in the afternoon. The highlight of the second day: This IsThe Kit. Kate Staples and her band were in great spirits. I love her voice and that perfect feel-good sound. According to the program notes Aaron Dessner is going to produce her new album (to be released in 2013) and so it is not surprising that he appeared on stage for three songs.

This Is The Kit

Canadian Kathleen Edwards looks quite well-behaved, especially when she picks up her violin. In fact she uses the f-word in every other sentence and tells us her story when she got totally wasted in London a few days before and fell asleep in the bathtub and after about an hour her longtime-tour-roomie (her keyboarder) got in panic and had to safe her. A witty, fine gig to end her Voyageur tour 2012.

Kathleen Edwards

Sharon van Etten didn’t have a very good day. She also did not look happy at all. Of course Aaron Dessner showed up on stage to join his protégée for her song "Ask". There were some problems with the sound in stage one as well. Tramp still remains one of my albums of the year and I hope that SVE will finally come to southern Gemany one better day.

Sharon van Etten

Pretty bulky, fat instrumentalized indie rock from Menomena from Portland to end the Saturday. I thought it was quite fascinating how one of the two vocalists could sing very well and at the same time serve his drums.

Menomena

For us the third day - Sunday - was opened by My Brightest Diamond. Just wow!

The Philistine Jr.

The Philistine Jr. the band of The National's producer Peter Kadis and his brother Tarquin are funny and Perfume Genius a little later sounds sonorous, but rather boring.

Perfume Genius

I was very much looking forward to Wye Oak. They rock, are fun and it's very fascinating to see the musical explosions of a band of only two members.



Wye Oak

The Local Natives from LA entered the big stage just before The National. What a perfect support act: psych folk, awesome drumming, a great discovery and again Aaron Dessner has his fingers in the pie as well.

Local Natives

DJ set of the Devendorfs: Unfortunately we were not able to make it very much longer on our first night. The National’s rhythm section - Scott and Bryan Devendorf – were supposed to deejay and Scott started way after midnight. We can’t even say if Bryan made it to the turntables later on. Die-hard Depeche Mode fan Anni had made the prophetic prediction that her favorite band would definitely be part of a DJ set of her second favorite band. When the prophecy came true with Scott playing “Enjoy The Silence” as his forth song we decided to leave and test the gravel mattresses for the first time of the weekend.

Scott at the turntables

The most emotional moment: Shara Worden aka My Brightest Diamond dedicated her song "I Have Never Loved Someone", which she had written for her son, to the cherished curators. Her singing, the melody and especially the clear lyrics flipped an unknown switch and I couldn’t hold back the tears for minutes.

Shara Worden

The bars: The English are very patient and drink a lot. And at some point also the artists were forced to queue at the bars. It could happen that suddenly Aaron Dessner was standing next to you or Hayden was desperatly mumbling that he was always invisible at a bar. At least he was in possession of a valuable 20-pound note when we asked him. During his performance he had told the audience that before his departure he had been very lucky to find plenty of English money from long-ago trips in his foreign money jar but when he got to London and wanted to buy his first pint the money turned out to be worthless.

Karaoke: Every night the Queen Victoria Pub turned into everybody’s stage for a few hours. Actually we just wanted to have a brief look but before we knew it, we sang along with ablout 80 other indie nerds and hipster chicks to Bonnie Tyler's “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”, Bob Dylan's “Like A Rolling Stone” or even Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You”. Even the security could hardly contain himself and somehow it happened, that we let The Antlers be The Antlers and ordered another pint at the bar of the pup.

The chalets (nice English pronunciation): To be housed in small very, very sparsely furnished apartments that you would not even want your kids in for a summer camp, turned into a very bonding situation. Matt Berninger (singer of The National): "We curated everything for you not only the music but really everything … We sew the mattresses by hand and filled them with gravel and small pieces of wood." And when I think about it the whole story actually sounds pretty realistic. I had never read so very bad reviews on relevant hotel rating websites. In fact, it could only get better and at least it was fairly clean, the linens were fresh (ironed and you had to put them on yourself) and the electric meter in our apartment was broken, so we didn’t have a limit and started warming up the whole environment and after the first night it was toasty warm inside. Very interesting, you had to buy your electricity in advance and slip those little token cards 1 Pound each into the meter to get light, hot water and heating. Our biggest problem was the bathtub with separate faucets in cold and boiling hot and no separate shower head. I could be solved sisterly. You just needed a second person to wash your hair who filled a pot of water at a pleasant temperature and served as the quasi shower head. "I feel like being back in the 18th Century "! Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak also got to the heart of it: "Living in those chalets ... it's like a childhood dream ... gone wrong." The Pontins Camber Sands’ mantra: everything’s better than a tent, everything’s better than a tent, everything’s better than tent ...

The knit jumper: This time of year the British hipster wears a knitted pullover decorated with pre-Christmas ornaments. The models vary from glittery knitted snowflakes, abstract 80s patterns and cute reindeers. Hopefully this trend will never make it to the continent. Kathleen Edwards expressed her thoughts a little clearer in a recent Twitter message: "Just wanted to mention that all you dudes in England sporting the" ironic Christmas sweater "look, you look like a bunch of assholes."

The festival cinema: Camber Sands Memorial Hall is situated on the opposite side of the road just outside of the resort probably some kind of community center. During the three days you can watch high quality footage chosen by the curators in there using a video projector with screen. The well-educated and sophisticated guys of The National had provided some a pretty ambitious program. Very exciting that they had even picked two German films: "The Lives of Others" and a documentary about the painter Gerhard Richter. The Richter movie fitted well into our schedule on Sunday afternoon, there was no language barrier and it was really interesting. Besides us only a handful of other festival goers were also in the mood for a subtitled cultural program.

The beach: A dream! If only England was famous for stable summer weather!

Rye: The next bigger town is the beautiful Rye with its medieval cobblestone downtown, a defiant church and one cute little shop after the other all of them very English. Definitely worth a Saturday morning trip in bright winter sunshine.

London Heathrow: The gates are given out on short call only a few minutes before boarding. All passengers on international flights spend the time in a huge waiting hall staring at the display boards. Funnily right there I met three music nerds from my hometown, who are also waiting for the announcements of our flight back from the most amazing festival weekend of our lives.