My baby is alright
She doesnt mind a bit of dirt
She says horror vampire bat bite
She says horror vampire
How I wish those bats would bite
Whooah bite! bite!
‘Release The Bats’ –The Birthday Party
When Nick Cave sang about bats up his baby’s skirt he wouldn’t have known that 27 years later All Tomorrow’s Parties would appropriate it for their bumper Halloween celebrations with two nights in London’s awesome Forum and Birmingham’s Custard Factory.
But ATP have made a habit of ignoring the mainstream and championing the finest alt. rock sounds for a few years now, their Don’t Look Back gigs - which see bands perform classic albums in their entirety - have started a trend for groups reforming and playing fan-favourite sets, from The Melvins to Public Enemy. Their festivals at Butlins resorts in Camber Sands and Minehead are never less than a superb assortment of peripheral musical excursions.
Stephanie and Dan ventured down to deepest, darkest Kentish Town for a night of Halloween Havoc. Here’s what we made of it:
Lightning Bolt
Pissed Jeans
When I learnt the idea was to come to the show in fancy dress inspired by one of the bands I toyed with the idea of coming as pissed jeans. But I think the tube journey there might have been embarrassing. The walk home would have been easier, making my way up out of Camden at two in the morning with soiled trousers is nothing. Pissed Jeans played coiled up, sinewy Harsh Rock while singer Matt Korvette pulls his best Mick Jagger shapes. But it’s not worth wetting yourself for. (D)
The Wooden Shjips
The band’s name was the first thing to annoy us. That’s not a typo – and sadly I still can’t explain what a ‘shjip’ might be. This is more of a ‘vibe’ than actual music. It’s quite pleasant to the ear, and a fuzzy feeling permeates most of the crowd. A sizeable cohort retreats to the bar. The frontman has a beard worthy of a Persian emperor and a gold turban, but there is zero interaction with the crowd. These guys are, mentally, in a secluded garage, somewhere in the Californian forest. When the thick, voiceless, wandering tones trail off, I feel sleepy. (Stephanie)
Les Savy Fav
Tim Harrington walks out with the band, whose faces are painted white with skull markings. Harrington’s in a cloak and everything starts quite sedately, and I begin to think maybe the last time I saw them, last June, was a wild, flailing, deafening fluke – but then the cloak comes off and Harrington’s just wearing some linen pirate pants. The crowd sees where this is going, and we get excited. People are hopping up and down a little. And the noise is going up! During the intro to ‘Patty Lee’ Harrington gets bored of the stage and climbs to the central balcony, rubs himself against some fans and then gets them to hold his ankles as he dangles from the edge upside-down. We can see now that he’s wearing quite a bit of body paint, but it’s rapidly sweating off or being generously smeared on the audience. To the relief of the tense security staff, Harrington follows his mic wire back to the stage and dances with a funny-looking Halloween decoration – a green, glowing effigy of a baby.
At this point I am singing along, completely focused on the flashing oddity of the act, and then suddenly a projectile arcs above. He is throwing rolls of toilet paper into the crowd. They unspool surprisingly fast and elegantly in the air and wrap themselves around a lighting rig before landing on us, and we pick them up and we re-launch them right away. We are all sad when it ends, after a screaming rendition of ‘Who Rocks the Party’ and some valiant crowd-surfing. This is a band that hasn’t released new music for six years – but the hilarious, near-shamanic performances just about make up for that. (S)
Shellac
It’s hard to sing along to Steve Albini. He has a spoken-word thing going on, so you have to ‘speak’ along with him . . . or, like everyone else, raise your hands up in appreciation for a hero of modern music. Shellac have a history with ATP (they curated the 2001 festival) and also a reputation for prankish Halloween performances – they once put on a Halloween show as The Sex Pistols, pulling in Jesus Lizard singer David to dress up as Johnny Rotten. This time around, Todd on drums was a vampire, Bob on bass was Frankenstein (I think) and Steve was a mummy. The acoustics in the Forum lent themselves perfectly to Shellac’s minimalist yet LOUD sound. The crowd gets swept up in inarticulate enthusiasm, fists in the air – and then they start to play ‘The End of Radio’, a song that, I think, does everything a ‘minimalist rock’ song should do. This set has an older, sparser, more portentous atmosphere than Les Savy Fav: the coloured lights go down and the group are washed out by a white spotlight. They are all carrying extra drumsticks and gather around Todd to layer on more and more cymbal banging, arms stretched out stiffly like the undead. Between the songs, humour and dystopian growling of the instruments, to me this is the zenith of the Release the Bats experience, in the middle of a mass of costumed people that are laughing and feeling a little afraid at the same time. (S)
Om
Shellac finish at about 11.30pm and almost everyone leaves, which is a damn shame because Om’s trance-doom-drone is simply magnificent. The second and final drum ‘n’ bass pairing of the night features bassist Al Cisneros (ex-stoner titans Sleep) and new-ish drummer Emil Amos bathed in blue light, singing praises to the godhead. Words like ‘hypnotic’ are thrown around with abandon but Om’s set is a punishing initiation into a Sonic cult that draws on lava flow riffs and mantra-like grooves. They draw heavily from a pseudo-Oriental mysticism and mythology, switching from awesome, cavernous distortion to vibe-y, smoked out melodicism. They’re the first rays of the new rising sun, the fall of Rome, the peace that passeth understanding. When pound out the last few minutes of ‘Bhima’s Theme’ I’m headbanging so hard I think my head is trying to detach itself from my body to travel through the void like Unicron’s at the end of the Transformers: The Movie. Best part is that ATP have got Sleep to reform and play Holy Mountain at their ‘The Fans Strike Back’ Festival next May. Get a ticket and worship! (D)
For more info see: All Tomorrow's Parties main site
