2 posts tagged “england”
Portishead is reforming, putting out a new album, and curating the next installment of ATP (All Tomorrow's Parties, the music festival I attended at the surreal Butlins Minehead).
I DESPERATELY wish that I could go back for this! Portishead is one of my all-time favorite acts. This will be their first full set of new material in ten years. Beth Gibbons' voice is seriously one of the sexiest things ever. I'd listen to her sing just about anything. Since they're curating the show they'll probably end up playing at least two or three sets, and show up at random sets to perform with the artists they've selected. For those who aren't familiar with ATP, the curating artists invite acts that they dig, have been influenced by, or have been associated with.
I was pretty much entirely unfamiliar with the Dirty Three ATP lineup, but I still had a wonderful time (here's the lineup for the upcoming installment; perhaps you'll have more luck with it that me). Groups like Portishead usually have pretty good taste in music. If I were in the UK I'd be there in a second just to see Portishead, even if the rest of the lineup consisted of buskers and middle school marching bands. But Aphex Twin is also going to be there <drool>. PORTISHEAD AND APHEX TWIN!!! To me, they represent all that is good about electronic music. You never know what you might get with an Aphex show. He might spin some hardcore DnB tracks, mix it with some tripped-out acid stuff, and then finish the set off with some of the most beautiful ambient music you've ever heard. Or he might just get bored and make some weird noises.
The bottom line is that I really, really, REALLY want to go to this festival. Too bad I'm not in England.
The day before I left for ATP I attended a sort of "mini conference" in the archaeology department on heritage and the environment. It was a pretty interesting day, but the most striking thing that we were shown had to be a time-lapsed video of the east Anglian coast. It is literally falling into the North Sea. This doesn't really have anything to do with sea levels rising or anything like that. It's been happening for thousands of years. The cliffs just aren't terribly solid. Many coastal towns and villages that existed in the middle ages have simply disappeared with the passage of time.
An artist named Bettina Furnee executed a number of "interventions" in the landscape around Bawdsey and several other places. The video we were shown was of a number of lines of multicolored flags that she put in the ground near the cliff edge as it was in the beginning of the project. A camera was set to take a photo of the stretch of coast every fifteen minutes. This went on for a period of at least six months, perhaps a bit longer. Either way, the results were pretty crazy. You just see the flags (and the cliff) drop as the waves lick the shore. Check it out. The version the artist showed us had slightly creepy ambient music playing in the background; this one does not. If you're interested in the rest of the project, the details are on the website.
