Ten Years Of ATP: Bardo Pond

Having told a handful of people that I was excited about seeing Bardo Pond I started to wonder if I actually was. On the way to Minehead I had been sipping at a bottle of whisky; behaviour which was entirely out of character for me, a cosmic badness highlighted by the pheasant we destroyed somewhere near Taunton. I stopped just short of actual inebriation, and just beyond the place where the day could still believe in its potential for self determination.

Bardo Pond were the first band I got to see at ATP’s self-congratulatory birthday party, and they have gone down as one of my favourite acts of the weekend. Not exactly a vault requiring a pole, but an immersive experience nonetheless. They’re a good band to watch, beginning my newly baptised weekend-long hobby: drummer watching. One good thing about these ATP shenanigans is that you can almost always get close enough to see what the musicians are actually doing. This dude was all downward force, his long straight hair encouraging his spine to remain perpendicular to the stool at all times.

He looked serious but somehow dispassionate (a quality which could be extended to the band and their music) and was not just a visual highlight of the Philadelphians performance. The two guitarists and the bass player don’t play riffs slower than anyone else in the world, (extremities not being number one on my list of why I like so and so’s music) but they do play slow enough to manipulate your time and space, should you be willing and disposed to such analogies. Together these three string players form a crackling, distorted broth which takes up a curious and individual position in today’s psych-rock fold.

Though they begin to tweak on the epic gland, they also maintain this impersonal and almost inhuman feel. It’s something which separates them from the more solipsistic cosmic explorer baloney, replacing pathos with size and shape; cutting the heart strings from their bonds and letting it all float out. It’s got shades of Neu! and the classical minimalists. I know that shit gets dredged up from the river on a daily basis around these parts, but I mean it. It creates a similar space in my mind.

Their sound is dense, but unlike the density thrust upon me by most of the weekend’s acts this was unobtrusive bridge building. It was not an act of domination. I don’t mean to dismiss sonic domination entirely, I just lost heart when this weekend’s most forceful bands were received with a blend of deference and fawning, creating demagogue figures who appeared to me as an amalgamation of classical heroes and ketamine dealers. But then again I don’t derive enjoyment from the repetitive consumption of alcohol, and that seems to almost render me unfit for reviewing an ATP festival. Almost.

The woman’s flute and vocal contributions float on top of it all lending simple, desperate beauty. The drums animate it all by punching precise holes like stars into the blue black sky. I’m looking forward to seeing Bardo Pond again, soon I hope.

Bardo Pond ATP Photos (From: Stu Green / shot2bits.net):