Anyone at ATP at the weekend?  Did you manage to tear yourself away from the seaside in order to box yourself up in a dark, probably unbearably-hot venue to see any of the artists?  Can’t imagine I would have seen too many, but I reckon one of the ones I would have ventured indoors for (still in my striped, all-in-one 1920s bathing costume, with water dripping from my freshly-waxed moustache) would have been the lovely Marissa Nadler, whose album from last year Songs III: Bird On The Water is a big favourite of mine.

And what a treat of a support act Jesse Sykes was.  From behind her long hair and oversized sunglasses (I’m amazed she could even see her guitar) emerged a husky, throaty voice in the Billie Holiday tradition.  Her fingers were initially trembling as much as her voice, but she settled down to play some slow alt-country; so slow in fact that during second song “Reckless Burning” I was reminded of Earth’s most recent album.  Then I realised that Jesse’s last album was on Southern Lord, and she sang on Boris/Sunn O)))’s Altar, and the circle became complete.

Marissa Nadler looked every inch the vamp in her blood red dress and tumbling black hair, and with a hushed crowd sitting rapt at her feet (quietest audience I’ve heard in a long time), she began to sing.  Her voice is a wondrous instrument, most usually – and rightly – compared to that of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval; sweet, breathy, with great range and control (must stop, I’m beginning to sound like Paula Abdul).  It is the perfect delivery vehicle; just when you let down your drawbridge, from within this Trojan horse tumble lyrics which are fixated on birds, the colour red, and death.  In “Sylvia” and “Dying Breed” Nadler was metaphorically tending graves, slowing the songs down and wringing the emotion from them - enough to raise a lump in my throat.  She switched to twelve string guitar for “Salutations In The Dark”, and gave us a couple of songs from her next record (October, apparently), including the throbbing “Ghosts and Lovers”.  It was, she informed us, the first time anyone had heard that – except those who had been at ATP at the weekend.  Those that weren’t chasing down frisbees on Camber Sands beach, I assume.