ATP: I’ll be Your Mirror – Alexandra Palace, London - 23rd-24th July 2011 (Live Review)
Monday, 01 August 2011
Written by Ben Bland
Whatever you may have heard about the sound quality for gigs at Alexandra Palace, expel it from your mind because the almost certain negativity of such thoughts can now be banished...at least while ATP are in town. Some hard work has been put into ensuring that festival goers are treated to a Great Hall that, for a change, allows bands to sound their very best. With a weekend of quality music chosen by ATP and special curators Portishead, the “I’ll be Your Mirror” festival is located at one of London’s most charming venues and comes with a line-up that those with an eclectic taste will find truly delightful.
DD/MM/YYYY are an entertaining band to kick off the entertainment on Saturday afternoon. The Canadian art pop troupe have such short attention spans that their songs have a tendency to dart about in completely random directions without even a moment’s warning.
Featuring just percussion and screechy vocals, Foot Village, are very strange but jolly good fun. Featuring Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, electronica trio Beak> are always an exciting live act and this hour long set opening the Great Hall for the day is no exception. Doom in this case is the British born, New York based hip hop artist with the ‘metal face’ mask and not the Birmingham crust band. Disappointingly an hour long set consists mostly of the man himself ambling about the stage with an unknown fellow rapper whilst some tinny backing music emanates from a laptop at the rear of the stage. Sadly it is thoroughly unexciting and the pair of rappers look suspiciously like they were responsible for the appallingly long food queues earlier in the afternoon, moving like they have consumed one too many Pieminister specials before taking to the stage. This wouldn’t matter if the performance matched up to the excellent material Doom has to draw on...it just doesn’t. The Books shouldn’t be up to much either, on paper, but their bizarre backing videos make their pleasant folktronica work surprisingly well live.
PJ Harvey (main pic) draws most of her set from new album 'Let England Shake' but her hour on stage is also strangely static and uninteresting, which is a shame as she remains the finest female singer-songwriter around. Reformed hip-hop legends Company Flow are far better than what precedes them. They look delighted to be back and the tightness of their set is extremely impressive for a band returning after a long absence. Portishead may draw their live set almost exclusively from those three albums and throw in nothing that suggests that they may actually be recording a new record, but they are a live force to reckon with. Few bands have a back catalogue that allows them to make almost every song they drop a stone cold classic. If possible, Beth Gibbons’ vocals are even more beautifully fragile on stage than they are on record and every classic Adrian Utley guitar part is greeted by a packed Great Hall like an old friend. At the back of the stage, Geoff Barrow oversees the likes of 'Mysterons' and 'Glory Box' like a well trained conductor. Beth’s surprising venture down to the front row of the crowd as 'We Carry On' reaches its conclusion is a suitable end to a fine night. However Factory Floor are still to come in the West Hall and their pounding industrial rave noise is rather superb, albeit headache inducing after a long day.
To have Godspeed You! Black Emperor starting the music on Sunday in the West Hall may seem strange and it is. Frankly there are very few other bands that could live up to the ultimate majesty of the two hour set by the reformed post-rock septet. Ignore any of the mixed opinions floating around as to the quality of their post-reformation sets, they are absolutely incredible. Liars need to be at their very best to follow on in the Great Hall but sadly they are the one band of the weekend who cannot get a grip on the sound and thus their disappointingly short set falls rather flat.
Dream popsters Beach House suffer due to being rather non absorbent, especially in comparison to Adrian Utley and Will Gregory’s score of 1928’s cinematic classic 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' next door. Although the score is excellent, it is the movie itself that is really stunning. Built largely around close-ups, it is a rather disturbing tale but almost impossible to tear oneself away from. Swans delight fans of musical extremity but scare away plenty of others. Michael Gira’s mob may have been forgotten by many but since their reactivation remain one of the most important bands around. Live, their haunting compositions frequently double or triple in length as the sextet attempt to pummel Alexandra Palace into the ground with the power of pure noise. Somehow it is an hour and a half of pure joy.
Grinderman (small pic) may not have the songs of the Bad Seeds but Nick Cave is still capable of turning a phrase or six and is, quite simply, one of the finest performers around. Bounding about the stage and into the crowd like a man of 23 rather than the 53 year old that he is, it is his stage presence that makes Grinderman’s hour set so incredibly exhilarating. As on Saturday, Portishead are splendid. Despite having to dump 'Chase the Tear' from the setlist after six attempts at getting past the introduction, they are a delight to behold and reaffirm the fact that they are one of the UK’s true musical treasures.
Sadly the desire for bed means that Stereoboard misses Caribou closing the weekend but it really doesn’t matter. The ATP team have done themselves proud once again. For a festival based in London, the organisation is rather impressive. The occasionally bizarre direction between stages will surely be sorted out as will the rather limited food options so, providing that they can find someone equally brilliant to fill the curator role for 2012 and beyond, this should become something to pencil in on the festival calendar.
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Grinderman (small pic) may not have the songs of the Bad Seeds but Nick Cave is still capable of turning a phrase or six and is, quite simply, one of the finest performers around. Bounding about the stage and into the crowd like a man of 23 rather than the 53 year old that he is, it is his stage presence that makes Grinderman’s hour set so incredibly exhilarating. As on Saturday, Portishead are splendid. Despite having to dump 'Chase the Tear' from the setlist after six attempts at getting past the introduction, they are a delight to behold and reaffirm the fact that they are one of the UK’s true musical treasures. 
