6 Music - Music News

For its 10th birthday celebrations, All Tomorrow’s Parties continued its legacy of bringing together bands from all genres, for a three day festival at the unlikely venue of Butlins holiday camp in Minehead (4-6 Dec).

It’s a festival with a difference, with no sponsorship and the artists all staying in the same accommodation as the fans.

The festival was formed in 1999 to create an alternative to the Reading and Glastonbury Festival, and has been curated by artists such as Mogwai and The Mars Volta.

Previous events have even given fans the chance to pick bands they want to see on the bill.

This December’s event was entitled Nightmare Before Christmas, and handed the reins to My Bloody Valentine to both headline and curate.

Frontman Kevin Shields picked an eclectic line-up, with De La Soul, Primal Scream and Sonic Youth making up the headliners and The Horrors and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart among the hot new acts.

Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth stated of ATP: "We really like and admire this festival as one of the classier kinds" before their headlining set. "It’s one of the few festivals that’s not concerned with being as big as possible and in this day and age when every festival is almost too big to be fun, that’s great."

The band went on to play a varied set including several classics and a number of tracks from their latest album The Eternal, with the grungy Anti-Orgasm proving a highlight.

The Horrors were one of the more popular draws of the festival, taking to the main stage on Saturday (5 Dec) night.

"It's one of the few festivals that's not concerned with being as big as possible and in this day and age when every festival is almost too big to be fun, that's great."

Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo

Their set comprised most of their Mercury Prize-nominated album Primary Colours, which was fitting given the inspiration drawn from My Bloody Valentine to create it.

After a year of critical acclaim, the band had lost none of their vibrancy, with an absence of early material showing them as a band that has managed to radically change their sound without losing their live spark.

Other highlights of the weekend included The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

Singer and guitarist Kip Berman said of the festival: "We’ve been almost non-stop touring since the album came out in February and this is an incredible way to end it."

Their Sunday evening set was prefaced by long queues into the venue, with those inside rewarded with a set of cheery indie-pop played to perfection.

The big story of the festival was the band to be confirmed on Sunday (6 Dec) night.

After Them Crooked Vultures played secrets shows at this year’s Reading and Leeds festivals, rumours flew around the campsite.

Some of the less plausible stories doing the rounds included Teenage Fanclub being sighted at the swimming pool and Deerhoof checking out merchandise.

All was revealed when American noise-rock duo Lightning Bolt took to the stage for their second set of the weekend, delivering a punishing set to both the curious, and those in the know who’d been following the rumours on Twitter.

It was My Bloody Valentine that were to be the main attraction of the weekend, however.

The band headlined each of the three nights at the festival, handing out earplugs at the door in preparation for their legendarily brutal set.

Tracks from their seminal 1991 album Loveless received the best crowd reaction as their often-copied but seldom bettered brand of shoegaze enveloped the room.

The band finished each night with You Made Me Realise, including their notorious full-frontal assault on the ears in the form of a white noise coda that lasted up to 20 minutes.

At this point, the earplugs were worth their weight in gold as the band created a storm of noise.

It was a fitting end to the festival, with My Bloody Valentine’s set echoing the sentiments of an event that refuses to compromise.