All Tomorrow's Parties: Jake Chapman on why the chance to curate another festival proved irresistible

Only an All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival set in November could deliver an off-season British holiday camp from the bleak presentiment of tumbleweed and the ghostly still of the winter months. Those especial sounds of a Pontin’s summer – blistered infants happily paddling in the chlorine shallows, Tannoy pronouncements and amusement arcade jingles – the call to Mecca bingo, the teeter of pennies precariously balanced at the edge of a small fortune – all these sounds suddenly swept away by ATP’s dark sonic wash – as if the feedback unleashed by an ATP occupation purged the camp of the in-season sun, and erased any trace of the optimism refracted beneath its friendly glow.

We were first invited to curate an All Tomorrow’s Party festival in 2004, officially designated as the Nightmare Before Christmas, which occurred at Pontin’s Holiday Camp in Camber Sands. If nothing else, it was an object lesson in population migration – the ATP faithful converging upon the seasonally deserted Pontin’s holiday camp.

Much like a scene from Romero’s Night of the Living Dead – when the first bands were due to play, the festivites filtered through the canyons of chattering arcade machines, indifferent to the array of twinkling lights and gimcrack rewards, drawn instead to a greater carrot, thus headlong into dread, pulled towards the sound of Lightning Bolt, Peaches, Throbbing Gristle, Wolf Eyes, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Liars, Aphex Twin, LFO, Comets on Fire, Hecker, Russell Haswell, Destroy All Monsters, The Fall and Violent Femmes...

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There is something about an empty amusement arcade that gives rise to certain eschatological thoughts. The onslaught of strobe lights, jingles and schizoid mantras advertise their desire to please, but such hysterical adoration to the service of human stimulation occurs whether or not a single human is present. One could be forgiven for imagining a surplus electricity persisting even after the power-station technicians and energy consumers have all turned to dust. The reactors might still hum, radioactive decay powering arcade madhouses to burn with the same festival of jingles and mantras, empty arcades, no humans – playmate machines calling out to the nuclear-proof cockroaches who crawl across the scorched earth.

When I crawled across Pontin’s threshold to activate the mantle of my curatorial role, I was guided to my very own personal holiday chalet – the kind of user-friendly existential cell, where, unlike a single-night stay at Dignitas, one might even bother to bring an alarm clock, order breakfast or even a newspaper. The chalet room was comfortable, clean, well aired, warm, with ample natural light. The simple fold-out bed was well-sprung. I unpacked my weekend clothes whilst watching an experimental art film on the ATP TV channel – objects were bumping into other objects, swinging around, tipping, and causing other objects – tires, springs, buckets – to move in a cascade of choreographed motion.

Suffice to say, on exiting, and the door being pulled-to before my maiden excursion out into the holiday camp and its numerous environs, I henceforth failed to return to my chalet for the next three days and nights of All Tomorrow’s Parties duration, not for want of trying – thus forfeiting the spare socks and pants that I assume that either Pontin’s in-house management or ATP’s Barry Hogan most likely inherited.

Given the widely respected non-corporate continuity of ATP, its legion of eminent curators: Deerhunter, TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The National, The Drones, Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs), Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel), Battles, Caribou, Les Savy Fav, Amos, Animal Collective, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Jim Jarmusch, Pavement, The Flaming Lips, The Breeders, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Mike Patton & Melvins, My Bloody Valentine, Explosions In The Sky, Pitchfork Media, Portishead, Fennesz, Dirty Three, Thurston Moore, The Shins, Sleater Kinney, Dinosaur Jr., Devendra Banhart, Mudhoney, The Mars Volta, Vincent Gallo, Slint, Stephen Malkmus, Mogwai, Tortoise, Shellac, Sonic Youth, Autechre, Modest Mouse, and Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening – select bands, DJ’s, writers, performance artists, poets and other notable post-avant-garde riff-raff, it’s not surprising that the festival organisers – Barry Hogan and Deborah Kee Higgins – command a die-hard following and cult status harvested from the delicate balance of chaos and music.

It is an irrefutable index of respect and affection for ATP that curators and musicians return to work with them again and again. When the familiar voice on the telephone called up to once again summon me and Dinos to help curate another Night Before Christmas, my mind first swam with the heady febrile imaginings of sun-drenched Long Beach, LA, Brisbane, or Barcelona – to name some of the more temperate locations of previous ATP festivals. But a nihilistic predilection for doom treats sun worship and the leisure activities refracted through its prism as an apex of human idiocy, and certain music cannot be played in daylight, let alone sunlight. I did of course see the error in my superficial fixation upon the sun – and chastised myself with the readjustment mantra that says the difference between punk and grunge was the blasphemy of good health.

The brochure says “Pontin’s Prestatyn Sands in North Wales is set in a beautiful seaside location! Prestatyn Sands is famous for its picturesque beaches with a backdrop of rolling sand dunes. We are proud to announce some great new amusements here at Prestatyn Sands. We have fabulous Water Walkerz, Crazy Golf or ride around the Park on the Fun Bikes! Indoors we have the Amusement Arcade and the Fun Factory too, not forgetting the evenings we have entertainment and Live Cabarets and so much more!”

This coming November, the fans will converge upon Pontin’s Prestatyn Sands in North Wales for The Nightmare Before Christmas 2.0, curated by our good selves. The fans will undoubtedly notice the beautiful seaside location, the picturesque beaches with a backdrop of rolling sand dunes, high wind and churning sea. They will travel the last few miles by minicab or bus, enter the camp, pass by the Water Walkerz, the Crazy Golf – they will find their allocated chalets, unpack, perhaps watch a little ATP TV. They might even elect to go to the cinema to watch one of the many films especially selected for their amusement. But when the music starts we will all move en masse through the arcades to seek out Courtney Barnett, Built to Spill, Om, Max Richter, The Notwist, The Album Leaf, Chelsea Wolfe, Natalie Prass, Jessica Pratt, Total Control, Warm Soda, Holly Herndon, Micachu and the Shapes, Viet Cong, Andy Stott, Lightning Bolt, Braids, Loop, Suuns and Jerusalem in my Heart, Micah p. Hinson, Ought, Pharmakon, Vatican Shadow, Follakzoid, Warm Graves, Dead Rider, Blanck Mass, Iceage, Dinos Chapman, Death, Xylouris White, Russell Haswell, Andrew Hung, Younghusband, Vision Fortune, Black Pus, Emptyset, Extreme Precautions, Helm, Paus, Fumaca Preta.

The machines will sing out and the lights will flash. Forget the sun, nothing congeals a crowd into the dark recesses of an All Tomorrow’s Parties holiday camp than sideways rain.

All Tomorrow’s Parties 2.0 The Nightmare Before Christmas curated by Jake and Dinos Chapman is on 27 Nov 2015 to 29 Nov at Pontins, PrestaAll yn, North Wales. Tickets are on sale now