Having missed the last couple of ATPs, and certainly never dipping my toes into the icy waters of the Nightmare Before Christmas (seaside – yes! December – ummm, no, are you insane?), I’d never been to Butlins Minehead before.  I’d been told that it was “nicer than Pontins Camber Sands”, which is pretty unhelpful, being akin to being described as “less murderous than Stalin”, or “being possessed of more musical talent than Mika” (please note: I have little idea who Mika is, feel free to replace this with the fancy-panted chart-striding colossus of your choice.  I am aware of Stalin’s somewhat less fancy-panted work, however).  So my mind was pretty open, and being pretty open, it chose to fill itself with searingly vivid images of a land full of colourful flying horses and candy floss, the air rich with the aroma of happiness being burnt on sticks and not a single mine, never mind one placed in close proximity to a head.  Minehead was not to be the warzone of the Camber of my diseased and drink-addled recollection (or indeed that of my previous ATP reviews, reviews so professionally written that I managed to get the year wrong in one of them).

It looked at one point as if we might not make it, particularly when Neil’s car hissed itself to a steamy standstill at the roadside; if it could have called Green Flag itself it would surely have done so.  He is trying to sell it.  Hey, don’t let me put you off.  After a crash course in how cars work (they run on water?  What is this? The future?), we resumed the long long looooong procession down the M5, on past the town of Portishead itself and onto Minehead.

As it turns out I wasn’t far off the mark with my feverish imaginings of the location.  For Butlins had a swimming pool. It had “raft based flume rides”. It had air hockey.  It had pool tables.  It had arcade games on which I had to thrash my limbs with some pretence at co-ordination. It had machines stuffed with toys just begging to be grabbed by the non-grabby grabby claw dangling limply above.  It had bars in abundance, all staffed by confused locals who chatted amiably about how long it was ‘til their next break. It had a  huge Tesco mothership next door, so huge in fact that it was threatening to break off into the Bristol Channel and secede from Somerset entirely.  It had an eerily-glowing church nestling amongst the chalets so that we could sacrifice the geese that were milling around in an appropriate venue.  It had quiz machines so attuned to the intelligence quotients of the average Butlins-goer that in order to keep to their 72% payout ratio they spat money at you if you were clever enough to locate the start button.  And, the proverbial icing on the great big fluffier-than-kittens Victoria sponge, some bands played.

Ah yes, the bands (finally, I hear you say).  Friday came first, which seemed logical enough, and hence all the bands described in the programme as playing on Friday shuffled themselves onto a variety of stages.  First up, Sparklehorse were reduced to a solo and slightly nervous Mark Linkous for only the second time, and he eased us into the weekend.  The late arrival to Minehead meant that we had been handed the black wristbands of doom signifying that we were required to see Portishead on Friday, and thus required to miss Thurston Moore’s nine billionth ATP appearance.  We caught the first (and best) two tracks of his last album though, he seemed on chirpy form. 

The Bristolian curators (and newly-outed doom metal afficionados) themselves surpassed expectations – old classics like “Roads” and “Glory Box” melted hearts into the Centre Stage’s sticky carpet, while newer material rocked out much to our surprise, with Adrian Utley even taking a knife to his guitar much in the manner of the aforementioned floppy-haired fella downstairs. 

A period of lost puzzlement resulted in us staring blankly at Francoiz Breut when we were expecting the potty-mouthed Jock Sadowitz, before we settled back in upstairs for a tremendous Silver Apples performance.  I didn’t know quite what to expect after all these years, but when I saw him playing with some founds sounds from two radio stations – “You never know what you are going to get with that one” – I was quite awestruck.  So much so that I spent Chrome Hoof in a bit of a daze, barely rousing to throw some acclaim in the direction of their special guest Damo Suzuki.

The crashing inevitability of Saturday and its attendant hangover was accompanied with the crashing inevitability of another ATP performance by Autolux – a band I alone in the large crowd they attracted appear to find overrated; in their sub-SY/MBV guitars and boxy drumming I could find no succour.  But wait, what is this sound?  “WHAT’S UP MIIIIIIIIINEHEAD?”.  Ah, that would be the polite enquiry of that charming GZA fellow from the Wu-Tang crown green bowling club.  Despite all the nonsense about slapping me with his AK-47, this was a thoroughly entertaining show from Genius, rapping with machine-gun intensity and precision – his team-mates (the delightfully-named Dreddy Kruger and Killah Priest) sounded a bit turgid in comparison.  I even threw some Ws in the air, and waved them around like I had long since forgotten how to care.

Glenn Branca followed that with some twin-bodied harmonic guitar noodling, before leaving his wife Reg Bloor’s band Paranoid Critical Revolution on stage to set the place ablaze with a scintillating distillation of Branca’s music to a solo guitar and drums format.  [Incidentally, I asked Branca and Bloor afterwards about whether Symphony #13, Hallucination City - that one for 100 guitars - was due a CD release, and the answer is most likely not for some time.  Apparently there still isn’t a recording they are happy with.  Is that an exclusive?  Bit of a crap and disappointing one if it is]. 

Beardy hobo Seasick Steve won the crowd over in the big tenty stage with his bluesy three-stringed boogie and songs about strange insects that live in your legs.  Then we dashed to the other place for the stark contrast of Om’s increasingly-black (literally; every song was punctuated by requests for the lights to be turned down further) bass frequencies and drums.  Eyes closed, heads nodded – this was a performance of quite hallucinatory power.  Richard James mopped up with some Aphex acid which seemed to get increasingly unhinged as it went on, the room finishing as one big spastic twitch of happily vibrating people.

The Lord’s day was to bring much that would inevitably cause him to shift discomfitedly on his cloudy seat.  Oren Ambarchi was the first to make use of the black barrage of amps that littered the back of the stage, and he delivered a set which mutated from vibrating tones to throbbing waves to alien chatter and then up to a pleasingly distorted metallic crescendo, all while looking like Will Self dismantling a hoover.  This was undoubtedly one of the performances of the weekend. 

Boris hauled the amps to the middle of the stage and circled them round a gong, one which would remain frustatingly inaudible amongst the pummelling guitar.  Although to be fair, they started with some ethereal Ege Bamyasi atmospheres before accelerating rapidly through the gears towards some less fulfilling Sabbath riffs.  Earth kept the doom quotient topped up, but did so via a compelling blend of their patented low guitar frequencies with some country-ish steel and honking trombone.  I’m not sure whether they played five songs or just one long one with four gaps for applause, but sitting with my head pressed against the wall feeling the deeeep vibrations I couldn’t have cared less. 

Given the choice of more sonic sludge from their spiritual heirs (and perpetual ATP-invitees) Sunn O))) and some hip-hop buffoonery from Madlib I opted for the latter.  The party mood created by an astonishing display of DJ dexterity from J-Roc was sullied by Madlib’s eventual entrance and fairly charmless and sloppy display. I opted out before the end, finishing the weekend thrashing away on the electronic drumming game in painful, pointless, blister-inducing fashion.

On the (less eventful) journey home, we listened to a recording of a fascinating Jon Ronson Radio 4 show in which he tried to find out how to become invisible.  Over the course of the weekend I had stumbled upon the answer – turn up at ATP with shoulder length hair and beard, wearing a t-shirt with a band’s name on it.  Woolly hat optional. You would disappear into the crowd like a puff of smoke into one of many of the grey clouds which had spent the weekend looking on disapprovingly from above.

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