From Friday 14th Mayto Sunday 16th May Iwas in Minehead formy first ever ATPfestival, this onecurated by Pavement.Like most of mymusic IdiscoveredPavement onlymonths or

weeksbefore theysplit up. Iwas completelywowed by ShadyLane and then mydreams shattered whenthey broke up. When Ifirst heard theannouncement thatthey had reformed Iknew that I'd have tosee them no matter thecost. That cost turnedout to be £170 plusaround another £80 fortravel, food, and other

festival expenses.It was all worthit. What followedwas a weekend ofwine, friends andseeing many bandsthat I hadn'theard of beforein addition toone of thebest gigsthat I have

ever beento... thisyear.Part of mewished that I hadinstead just goneto their (muchcheeper) gig inLondon. I alsowish that Ihadn't accidentallybooked adouble bedinstead ofdobuleroom.

PAVEMENTMINEHEAD 2010

Or... Balding men socialclub. "Jokes" aside thisis really one inventiveband. Similar toSaccharine Trust thisband has spoken word vocals over ratherinteresting and complex music. Whilst SaccharineTrust draws on jazz, Enablers are definitely morepost­rock/progressive. Their front man throwshimself around on stage like some lunatic, but itmatches his style of story telling. I couldn'ttell what the stories were about, but it wasprobably something quite sinister.

I wasn't looking forwardto this one. I'd listenedto some of their stuffbefore the festival andit seemed like very basicpunk with some guyspeaking over it. Afterseeing them live I feel frikkin' stupid. At aguess it seems like their straight­up punk stuffwas their earlier work, 'cause most of what Iheard was jazz­fused punk. Their lead singer waseither stoned, drunk, drunk and stoned, sufferingfrom some sort of mental illness or just a reallygood performer. He feigned falling over,constantly threw himself around and between songswould go on about love, freedom or some shit likethat.

saccharine

Boris are one of those bandsthat I probably should havechecked out earlier. The onlyproblem is that there's so manypost rock and sludge bands outthere that it'd be impossible toknow of them all.Boris was a somewhat welcomechange to the indie­fest that wasbeen Pavement ATP. For theirfirst performance there was a lotof technical glitches, but they

soon got over that and blastedout the musical delights.They really do like the moodyatmosphere. They all wore blackand the whole stage was backlitand filled with smoke. Like mostpeople I left early so that I couldget a good spot for Pavement,but luckily they played anotherset on Sunday. For this they didan extended rendition ofFarewell. It was amazing.