All Tomorrow’s Parties NY Day 2 (Saturday): This Festival Is Cool And All, But I Sure Wish Jack Johnson Was Here

Just Kidding. I noticed in the programs/schedules we got that they joked about a big thing that set ATP apart from other festivals being “that no one selected or even wanted Jack Johnson“, and if you read this blog regularly, you know I can appreciate that sentiment.

We stuck around until last call at the bar at The Raleigh Friday night, so the first band I was able to catch on Saturday was the end of Growing‘s set. The 10 minutes or so I saw, I thought sounded great. I’ll be looking hard into this noise jamming duo now. After that I gave a short listen to The Drones and Wooden Shjips, but neither was really up my alley. I watched Fuck Buttons next, and damn their set was serious. I listened to their album and thought it was decent but it didn’t really hit me as something special, but catching them in a live setting totally sold me on these guys. The two dudes used all sorts of cool devices stacked on a table including a toy mic audio recorder sent through some interesting effects resulting in sweet distorted vocals. Their sound came off to me somewhere between Holy Fuck and Indian Jewelry, which is a great place to be.

After that I decided to start partying and enjoying the facilities. The resort ATP was being held on was kitschy and weird, and at first seemed like sort of a dump. But around the second day we were starting to appreciate how cool a venue this actually was. It was really nice to have an entire resort completely to ourselves, and often times you would see the artists walking around, catching shows, and hanging. We hung out in their children’s playground for a bit and tried out some strange playground equipment I had never seen before. We hung out by the pond with all of the drinkers and smokers and chilled. The place had a lot of amenities, but was crappy enough that a festival crowd couldn’t do too much damage to it. Well, they probably could.

Anyways, I checked out about half of Edan‘s set, and that was really good. I’ve found myself getting really bored of hip-hop these days, a genre I used to love. I mean, the new Lil’ Wayne is incredible and all, but it is still pretty much the same old thing rappers have been doing for 20 years. But Edan and his partner for this show Dagha brought some originality to the game. I particularly liked how they utilized a delay pedal to accent certain syllables instead of having a “hype man” yell the last word of every line. Another trick I enjoyed was when Edan did a rap referencing all types of classic records while Dagha would shuffle through them and display each record he was referencing. I love a show that can be fun to watch and exhibit feats of musicianship and skill at the same time.

I did some more partying, caught a little bit of OM, thought it was cool but I wasn’t really in the mood for it, then did some more partying. Next up for me was Low. They really impressed me because I only liked a few of the songs from their last record, but they were making me love absolutely every minute of their “slowcore” set (which is a funny yet accurate for this band genre title). The amount of intensity they can can pack inside of such downbeat, soft, and pretty sounding stuff just dazzled me.

By the time Thee Silver Mount Zion Orchestra began their set, I realized I had been partying too hard and could not properly appreciate it. I went and grabbed some food and drink some water, and got myself back to a manageable level of intoxication. I then returned back to the second stage, laid down in the back, and just let the rest Mount Zion‘s epic two hour set wash across me. This may have been the show I enjoyed most all weekend. I am about to obtain every bit of material from this project I possibly can and get obsessed for a while, so expect more of that around here. In addition to their top notch music, I loved how the dude would respond to every single bit of crowd heckling and yelling and call people out and talk smack . All around, this show was just: Wow!

I caught the last part of Shellac‘s set and felt the same way about it that I did when trying out their records: it wasn’t bad, but nothing amazing. Among many other basic indie rock facts I learned over the weekend, I hadn’t realized this was Steve Albini’s band, and they did a little question and answer part at one point that was interesting. After that Lighting Bolt set up on the ground to the right of the stage with a big circular mirror hanging above them so everyone could see the chaos going on at the center of that sonic tornado. What a day!

I’ll have my Day 3/Wrap-Up post as soon as Biggie C gets all of his photos posted, probably around the end of the week.

Here’s a video of Shellac from ATP NY:

All Tomorrow’s Parties NY: Late Night Lightning Bolt

I’m suffering from a seriously vicious hangover right now, so my full Day 2 exploits will have to wait until I get back, but I will leave you with a little taste of the killer Lightning Bolt set finishing off another fabulous day of music:


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