Marina was up first for a brief, but brilliant twenty-minute set. She’s got one of the best and most unique voices I’ve heard in ages, and her powerful vocals easily won over those lucky enough to be there earlier enough for her set, tracks like “We’ve Got Obsessions” and “Simplify” standing out as some of her more awe-inspiring highlights.

MP3: “We’ve Got Obsessions” (Demo) – Marina & The Diamonds
MP3: “Simplify” – Marina & The Diamonds

Next came criminally unknown up-and-comer Nick Mulvey, who’s one of the more special talents I’ve had the pleasure of seeing live this semester. I first caught him at Cross Kings pub (the closest you can get to Brooklyn in North London) in February, but this was the first full-length set I’d heard him play. Given the nigh-on unfathomable hype surrounding Vampire Weekend and the current music climate, you could be forgiven for passing off any indie act rocking an afrobeat influence as mere bandwagon jumpers, but tagging Nick Mulvey as such would be doing the young London troubadour a significant injustice. For starters, he just finished a degree in ethnomusicology focusing on African music and has been making a name for himself as a percussionist in award-winning modern jazz four-piece Portico Quartet for a few years now. Then there’s the small fact that he’s fluent in Congolese… yeah. He’s also one of the more gifted guitarists I’ve ever seen in a live setting, so yeah, it’s safe to say Mulvey’s one to keep an eye on. All of Mulvey’s talents are on display on “I Didn’t Have Time”, which bounces along on sunny guitar melodies and his unique bilingual charm, and it was easily the highlight of his thirty-minute set last Wednesday.

MP3: “I Didn’t Have Time” – Nick Mulvey

Finally, it was time for Gotye to take the stage and fuck if he didn’t put on one of the more amazing shows I’ve taken in during my time here. Easily the most impressive one-man show I’ve ever seen, Gotye bounced back and forth between keys, a sampler and his drum kit, with captivating visuals (like this and this) projected behind him all the while. The drums were and always will be his first love, a point made obvious during his hour-plus performance, in which he frequently returned to the kit to pound out drum solo after awe-inspiring drum solo to take his songs to a whole new level of brilliant intensity. Singles “Heart’s A Mess” and “The Only Thing I Know” were incredible early highlights, but it was underrated album track “Thanks For Your Time”, which stole the show during the main portion of his set with its streaking strings samples and Wally’s piercing “Oh, oh!” backing vocals.

MP3: “Thanks For Your Time” – Gotye
MP3: “Hearts A Mess” – Gotye

For the encore, Nick Mulvey returned to join Wally on the stage for a collaboration the duo had spent the entire day working on in the garden behind the office. A Mulvey-enhanced acoustic version of “Puzzle With A Piece Missing” was a change of pace from the rest of the set and lacked the energy that made his main set so stimulating, but it was more than made up for by his collaboration with Mulvey on a brilliant cover of Paul Simon’s “Gumboots”, which also featured the talents of Gideon Brazil on saxophone. Rounding out the night, Mulvey left the stage as Gotye and Brazil launched into a truly awe-inspiring rendition of future summer smash “Learnalilgivinanlovin”, on which Wally just destroys the drums and unleashes his most impressive vocal performance to date, and it provided the perfect end to one of the best nights of music one could as for.

MP3: “Gumboots” – Nick Mulvey

Dude is a special talent, folks – remember the correct spelling because the rest of 2008 belongs to one man, and his name is Gotye.

We’d been planning on skipping Friday, as Les Savy Fav were set to play a warm-up gig in Oxford that night and we were just going to hitch a ride down to Camber Sands with them, but at the last minute everything fell through, as their booking agency somehow forgot to submit their working papers. I’m still not sure how they sorted it so that they could still do ATP, but we met Syd and company at Camber Sands Saturday, the only band of significance missed during the opening day of the festival being Vampire Weekend, and considering I’ve seen them nearly 20 times now, it wasn’t that big a deal. Saturday totally ruled, but as all the bands I saw I’ve already reviewed in these pages for (or you’ve surely read countless reviews of elsewhere), I’m gonna be sparse with the details (do you really need me to go on about how good Les Savy Fav are live again?). Yeasayer was an unexpected highlight, with “2080″ going down as the best song of the festival and one of the best songs you will ever hear in a live setting. That chorus, those shouts, that energy… shit was unreal. The only letdown of their set was the absence of the visuals that have been taking their live show to new heights over the past few months. The man responsible for said visuals – which are unbelievable, by the way – is my main man and good friend Sam Muglia, so to say we were bummed when the extension cord came up like two feet short is an understatement. Still a great set and one of the highlights of the festival though.

MP3: “2080″ – Yeasayer

Beyond that, the festival was everything you’d expect. Hot Chip ruled, Of Montreal ruled, Les Savy Fav REALLY ruled, the Hold Steady ruled and Black Mountain were decent but threw a damn fine party at their chalet Saturday night. Aside from the highlights, I wasn’t really feeling the Black Lips, whose antics were decidedly tame considering the legendary stories of golden showers and broken equipment I’ve always heard surrounding their live reputation. Also, we overslept because we’re fuck-ups and missed Bon Iver on Saturday (and then Jens Lekman on Sunday), and we tragically had to leave before Caribou’s festival-closing set Sunday night, as my roommate (who moonlights as the better half of Fresh Prints) and I both had finals the next day and needed to catch the last train home. Thus, there’s no real reason for me to post this, but I’ve been listening to it too much recently not to give it some love.

MP3: “Melody Day” (Four Tet Remix) – Caribou

All in all, it was easily the best weekend I’ve had yet in England. The beach (the “sands” in Camber Sands) ten minutes from the holiday centre was unreal, the largest stretch of sand in all of England, and the weather was the best I’ve ever experienced in Britain. 80 degrees and sunny, and people are swimming in mid-May. In England. Crazy. Granted, I’ve never seen more frighteningly pale bodies in my life, but it was nice just to take in some cosmic rays and get away from the city for a little while. More live reviews from the past wee (including Gotye’s debut UK gigs and the Great Escape) to come as I recover from finals and get back on track.

THINGS TO MAKE THIS POST SUCK LESS
I’m really not a fan of my live reviews, so here are some bonus jams to keep you coming back for more. Kicking shit off, here’s a collaboration that remarkably few blogs have picked up on, given the immensity of the names involved. Fresh off last summer’s chart-topping megahit, “With Every Heartbeat”, Kleerup’s back again, swapping Robyn for her shit-hot understudy Lykke Li on “Until We Bleed”. It doesn’t immediately stop you in your tracks like “Heartbeat” did, but it’s refreshing to her Lykke’s vocals in a new sonic context and “Bleed” is a damn fine single in its own right.

MP3: “Until We Bleed” (ft. Lykke Li) – Kleerup

I’ve been searching for some Fyfe Dangerfield solo material for as long as I remember, and now James has done us all a SOLID solid and brought this into the collective consciousness of this here blogworld. While not an original composition per se, this here cover is a fucking gem. I’ve never been much of a Larrikin lover, and was significantly less sad than many of my contemporaries when they broke up last year, but the original version of “Well, Love Does Furnish A Life”, featuring Mechanical Bride on backing vox, was the closest thing I had to a favorite track on their first and final record, The Freedom Spark. Fyfe’s interpretation treats it with a gentle introspection that seems more fitting of the lyrics, and it stacks up quite nicely with any of the more sentimental moments on Red.

MP3: “Well, Love Does Furnish A Life” – Fyfe Dangerfield

At the polar opposite end of the sonic spectrum, here’s the bangin’-est remix I’ve heard in a minute. I’m not exactly trailblazing here, as this has been making the rounds for a good bit now, but if there’s one track that’s absolutely destroyed dancefloors during our sets, it’s when we mix from the Robyn remix of “Sexual Eruption” into this bad boy and lay waste to anyone in a 40-foot radius of the DJ booth.

MP3: “Lights & Music” (Moulinex Remix) – Cut Copy