All Tomorrow’s Parties Nightmare Before Christmas 2011 Preview

Kicking off the Nightmare in a fun way is the always-entertaining Les Savy Fav (QRO photos at a festival).  The Brooklyn band (QRO photos) most recently released last year’s Root For Ruin (QRO review), but are best known for their crazy, wild live shows (QRO live review), with singer Tim Harrington running into the crowd (QRO photo), up against his band members (QRO photo), stripping to his portly frame (QRO photo), and more (QRO photos).

Amidst all of the alt-reunions, how are Archers of Loaf only reuniting now?  The Chapel Hill act were as important to the nineties alternative music scene as Pavement (QRO live review), and deserve as great a reunion tour (QRO photos at a festival).

There might not be a more ‘live’ electronic band out there today than Holy Fuck (QRO live review – whose name did bring a Canadian MP to question the nation’s support of such music acts as F*ck…), whose stated mission is make electronic music without all the studio trickery so prevalent in the genre – and which so often hampers it live (especially outside of the dance club).  Instead, the band managed to record 2007’s LP (QRO review) on the fly (with opener “Super Inuit” in front of an audience), following it up last year with Latin (QRO review), and have since worked the festival circuit (QRO photos at a festival), where there sound hasn’t wilted outdoors (QRO photos outdoors at a festival).

San Diego’s Hot Snakes mixed DIY and hardcore up until their 2005 break-up, which saw members join/form groups such as The Night Marchers (QRO photos) and Obits (QRO album review), but 2011 has brought a reunion, with one of the first dates being at ATP.

L.A.’s own young guitar & drums duo of Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt (QRO photos at a festival) have been blowing up very quickly since 2008’s Nouns (QRO review), including joining Dan Deacon (QRO live review) & Deerhunter (QRO live review) on the 2009 ‘Round Robin’ tour (QRO live review) & a controversial appearance on Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (QRO Indie on Late Night TV).  The punk rock of such tracks as “Eraser” (QRO video), “Teen Creeps” (QRO video) and “Ripped Knees” (QRO video) plays fast, but look out for a young holiday crowd to go nuts (QRO live review).

San Francisco’s The Dodos (QRO live review) aren’t your run-of-the-mill guitar-and-drums duo (QRO photos at a festival).  Their indie-folk on such records as this year’s No Color (QRO review) has always been a more complex one – and a more compelling one.

There’s a whole generation of great female guitarists coming out of New York these days, and one of the most-praised is Marnie Stern (QRO photos at a festival).

The nineties alt-rock revolution had many greats, but one of the most missed when they were gone was Portland’s Sleater-Kinney.  Various members moved through various bands such as Helium, Quasi (QRO spotlight on), and more – most recently with drummer Janet Weiss playing the skins for Stephen Malkmus’ Jicks (QRO live review), while singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein teamed up with Saturday Night Live‘s Fred Armisen on IFC’s hilarious Portlandia.

And this year, Brownstein & Weiss teamed up with Helium’s Mary Timony & The Minders’ Rebecca Cole to form Wild Flag (QRO photos at a festival), one of the most anticipated new bands of today, selling out shows before they’d ever played live in front of an audience (QRO photos).  Wild Flag lived up to the hype & hope with their self-titled debut (QRO review), so catch ‘em at ATP (QRO photos at a festival).

The Disco gets very Mobile when ‘The James’ – Ford & Shaw – bring the light & sound show that is Simian Mobile Disco (QRO live review) to ATP (QRO photos), and even if it’s just a DJ set, their lights can really shine (QRO photos).

Shooting up very quickly in indie-circles has been West Palm Beach’s Surfer Blood (QRO live review), who were gaining tons of fans (QRO photos of a packed house) long before acclaimed debut Astro Coast (QRO review) finally hit the shelves (or whatever you say in today’s digital age…).  Surfer Blood (QRO photos at a festival) then signed to Warner Brothers, so at least one major label is hoping that they the first wave of a new ‘South Florida Invasion’ (QRO photos at home).  However, QRO called them way back when (QRO photos at a festival), before they played a million-and-one festivals (QRO photos outdoors at a festival)…

Oxes

Total Control

Violent SoHo

Future Islands

The Budos Band – QRO album review 

Most instrumental-only acts are, frankly, boring to watch live.  But there are a few exceptions to the rule, such as Explosions In the Sky (QRO album review) and New York’s own Battles (QRO live review).  Though they lost Tyondai Braxton (QRO photos with him), the band is still ultra-exciting to see on stage (QRO photos outdoors), even at festivals like ATP (QRO photos at ATP USA).

Recent Beavis & Butthead-approved single “My Machines” features Gary Numan (see below), so expect at least a bit of vocals at Nightmare Before Christmas.

While Flying Lotus (QRO photos outdoors) might be best known for making the music in Adult Swim’s bumpers (that text right before a show on the cable channel), he’s also an accomplished producer, as well as making & playing music in his own right (QRO live review).

Lots of electronic music pioneers are finally getting their due, and no one is more due than Gary Numan.  His chart-topping 1979 hits “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” and “Cars” virtually introduced the world to electronic music, paving the way for New Wave and much more.  Of course, pioneers get passed by those who stood on their shoulders, and the eighties saw Numan lose the limelight, before a shift to a more industrial sound revived his career in the more alt-friendly nineties.  This century/millennium has seen virtually every artist who ever put a keyboard through a guitar pedal name-check Numan (Bowie, Beck, Blur, Basement Jaxx – and that’s just the B’s…).

Numan comes to ATP behind his latest, Dead Son Rising – and off of contributing vocals to Battles’ new “My Machines”.

It’s not an All Tomorrow’s Parties if there aren’t reunions of influential bands from yesterday’s parties – but how about a first reunion appearance?  The Midwest’s post-hardcore trio Bitch Magnet’s three full-lengths were reissued last month, and now they play their first-ever reunion show with their original line-up.

Sweden’s Axel Wilner expands electronica to the Arctic Circle as The Field.

New York’s experimental & raw rock outfit The Psychic Paramount cross the pond to play Nightmare Before Christmas.

When Cults (QRO photos) broke out last year with infectious single “We Go Outside”, they’d achieved the near impossible: being famous without anyone knowing anything about them (QRO photos outdoors).  Since then, the wall of silence has broken down, with the catchy sixties male/female duo recruiting a band, playing South-by-Southwest (QRO photos), and signing to major label Sony.  But even if you’ve got a face to put to the un-Google-able name, they’re still a hook-laden band (QRO photos at a festival).

Thank You

Nisennenmondai

Walls (live)

Phil Manley Life Coach

Underground Resistance Presents Interstellar Fugitives

Dead Rider

Matias Aguayo

Daniel Victor Snaith (QRO photos) combined electronica and psychedelica expertly with 2007’s Andorra (QRO review) as Caribou (QRO live review).  Last year’s Swim (QRO review) looks to nineties electronic beats, not as fine, but still holds up – as does his live show (QRO live review), especially at a festival (QRO photos at a festival) – he’s played an ATP, U.K. or U.S., every year since 2008!

For his curating gig, Snaith brings his ‘Vibration Ensemble’…

The Grammy Award-winning jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders – once called “probably the best tenor player in the world” – emerged from John Coltrane’s groups in the mid-sixties before going on to help to develop the style of free jazz.

The Dutch punk veterans The Ex started way back when punk started, the late seventies, before some of ATP artists were even born.   Like fellow punk originators who are still around, Wire (QRO live review), The Ex have never limited themselves to punk, drawing from a wide range of sounds & influences.  They’ve also endured line-up changes, including the departure of charter Ex G.W. Sok in 2009, after three decades in the band – but for this Christmas, have recruited Ethiopian jazz saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya.

Ontario’s Junior Boys are one of the most reliable faces on the indie-electronic scene, with their fourth full-length, It’s All True, out earlier this year.

Celebrate the Arab Spring at ATP with Omar Souleyman!  The Arab/Kurdish musician hails from northeastern Syria, a hotbed of today’s brave resistance to the (hopefully) next Mid-East dictator to fall.  Thankfully Souleyman’s traditional Middle Eastern music – much of it recorded live at local weddings – has already traveled the world.

Modern music wouldn’t be where it is today without Sun Ra.  Born before the start of the Great War, Sun Ra took the jazz of the fifties into the future & farther, including outer space.  From paving the interstellar highway for everyone from Spiritualized to Parliament/Funkadelic (QRO live review) to afrofuturism to being one of the first musicians in any genre to use electronic keyboards, there might not be anyone as singular & influential as Sun Ra.

Ra passed away in 1993, but his Arkestra has continued, now under the leadership of the sprightly 87-year-old alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, the Arkestra come to Nightmare Before Christmas after recently playing their first-ever shows in that even more distant of places, Australia.

The U.K. noisecore outfit supposedly rewards on further listens, if you can get that far.  They return to ATP after playing ATP: In Between Days last December.

U.K. post-rock electronic musician Kieran Hebden, also who’s remixed everyone from Andrew Bird (QRO album review) to Radiohead (QRO album review), tours once more as Four Tet (QRO photos outdoors), on the back of There Is Love In You, his latest since 2008’s Ringer (QRO album review).

Detroit techno/house remixer Theo Parrish plays a four-hour DJ set at ATP.

One of the ‘big names’ in ‘chillwave’, Chazwick Bundick – a.k.a. Toro y Moi (QRO photos) – had one of the new genre’s touchstone records last year in Causers of This (QRO review), but has since moved to a more rock-oriented sound, especially live (QRO photos).

Orchestra of Spheres

Silver Apples

Roll the Dice

Connan Mocksin

DJ Rashad & DJ Spinn