Primavera Sound - Parc Del Forum, Barcelona 28-30/5/09

Barcelona is so lovely and the line up for Primavera Sound looked pretty amazing so I thought I'd go along and miss quite a lot of it, due to having free beer on tap all weekend thanks to my friend sorting me out with a magic ticket.

Here's some stuff I remember. The first thing I saw was Lightning Bolt, which was surprising because usually most people can't actually see them because they're on the floor in the crowd. But so this time they played on stage, I don't know if that's a first, but it was a first for me and I've seen them a whole bunch of times. Considering it's like an integral part of their shtick that they play on the floor, it was actually really great to see them play on stage. Perversely it had a kind of novelty value, I guess. Seeing a band on stage. Anyway, they rocked pretty hard.

Then I saw Jesus Lizard again, which was even better than last time I saw them a couple of weeks ago, somehow, although there was nowhere near the same level of stage diving action from Yow. He made up for it by doing a lot of freaky dancing though, which was a sight to behold. I think I saw Dead Meadow next, who were drunk as hell, just like me. It was great, they just locked into their grooves and played real slack. It was obvious they were having a good time and it really osmosed into the crowd and everyone was swaying in that drunk and stoned manner that people do at laid back psychedelic shows, until the bass player stumbled backwards a bit too much, knocked over his wine bottle and said something to the guitarist that I presume was Man I'm so fucking drunk I can't play because they stopped pretty much right then and were rewarded with much slack applause and heartfelt but flaccid whistling from the wasted crowd.

Made it back up to the big ass beer sponsored stage to drink more sponsored beers while it was fingers in your ears for My Bloody Valentine's increasingly infamous noise holocaust finale. I like watching other people watching this bit, it's funny how much everyone is looking forward to seeing MBV play and how much everyone can't stand listening to it by the end. Different strokes and all that, I just like listening to solid noise played really fucking loud.

What was next, oh yeah, Aphex played a way better set than at Bloc, despite it being a bit 'going through the motions', but I mean whaddya want from the guy? Some stuff to dance to with a bit of a fucking weirdo attitude to it, pretty much. Really great visuals too, including some scat stuff that made me glad I hadn't managed to get any drugs because that would mess with a my high something terrible.

Squarepusher played next but he's a boring old self cheering muso whose current output is overwrought, soulless bullshit really isn't he? So I called it a night.

The next two nights were far less eventful, friday starting out terribly with Art Brut, possibly the most vile band I've ever seen. Hey this next one is about when I realised that there's only two things that matter in life and that's DC comics and chocolate milkshake. Hey this next one is about heroin addiction. I mean seriously just fuck off. So damn punchable.

Thankfully Sunn O))) played a brief but great set. Seeing the Grimmrobe Demos outdoors in Spain as the sun is going down is really a special thing, especially when you turn around and the path leading down to the stage is rammed full of people throwing horns in the air. I love that shit.

Jarvis Cocker is endearing.

Shellac are incredible. I don't know if it's the intoxication of holiday, or alcohol, or heat, or what, but this set is the best I've seen them play in a long time. Solid dirty crunchy fucking snide rock music.

And that's about it. Saturday just had a disappointing Neil Young (he finished with a Beatles cover and keep on rocking in the free world for Christ's sake) an underwhelming Sonic Youth and a Zombie Zombie that played really late that I couldn't be bothered to sit through the Black Lips for because I really can't stand the Black Lips. Man I'm a bit gutted, I really wanted to see Zombie Zombie you know. Oh well.

Overall I guess I liked the festival, although it climaxed on the thursday for me and then just had two more nights pumping away with dwindling effectiveness. It was certainly nicer than Sonar, but almost all the good stuff was on the ATP stage, so I dunno who to praise really. I'm getting pretty fed up with praising ATP, but it's not their fault they keep putting on great bands now is it?

Right, now the festival is over I'm off to the beach to get constantly hounded by people trying to sell me shit. Fun in the sun, people.

BLOC Weekender - Butlins Minehead 13-15/03/09

Load of crap.

I decided to go because I had a free ticket. I decided I'd miss the Ramesses gig at the Old Blue Last on the saturday because there would be enough stuff at BLOC to make up for it. I made an incorrect decision.

Rather than go through and explain that almost everything was shit, and not just shit, but somehow shitter than when I went two years ago and had a terrible time, I'll just highlight the highlights. Because there's no need to say that Carl Craig was shit. Or that FSOL were shit and didn't even come to the festival, opting instead to play from their studio on a shit webcam. Or that pretty much dance music has just gone to shit. Or that the Butlins staff were once again being complete fucking assholes... ok I can sympathise to an extent this time, I suppose, because the punters were mostly wankers. Wankers in hats. But still, Butlins police, no thanks.

So yeah, I'll do the highlights, here goes:

Friday night - Big Alan insists that this one kid is really amazing, this one kid who's playing at fuckin' 5am or some shit. So I endure the rest (gay cowboy dancers?) and wait for Rusty. And yeah Rusty is actually dead good. Mixing all kinds of bass heavy stuff in very odd and inventive ways, with that crisp baseball cap and oversized cartoon t-shirt smirky attitude that only a genuinely talented eighteen year old can pull off. Yeah, I'm glad I stayed up for that, I'd go see him again.

Saturday - Egyptian Lover was a laugh, dead old in a fancy black shirt doing the shit you'd want to hear him do, his old electro shit. And he was dancing, which was entertaining, and he picked up his 808 and went "you know what this is? Eight-Oh motherfuckin' eight" and played with it and that was entertaining. He was a dude.

Aphex Twin and Hecker, one of two reasons I thought it would be worth coming, turned out to be disappointing. I believe the idea was to have Hecker do surround sound effects while Aphex played whatever he wanted but they hadn't tried this out beforehand and it was all a shambles and didn't work properly and was very underwhelming and the set was a disjointed load of stops and starts and hard techno and kind of naff. I got a nosebleed towards the end which I suppose counts for something.

Sunday - The second of two reasons I thought it would be worth coming, Russell Haswell, DJ'd on sunday evening and didn't disappoint, thank fuck. He did his anti DJ thing of like mixing nasty techno really badly and then abruptly stopping it to play some fucking really quiet bee swarm sounds or a helicopter ride or something. I really like it. It's completely fuck everyone.

He was followed up by DJ Bennetti aka William Bennett of power electronics legends Whitehouse, who stood there in a fur coat and mixed really bad italo disco for an hour. I was intrigued but it was no fun, and so I left.

So there you have it, an almost complete waste of time. And apparently Ramesses were amazing. Fuck you world!