For those who've never quite had the stamina for the annual All Tomorrow's Parties leftfield marathon, this nine-hour celebration of the esoteric and stimulating Chicago label Thrill Jockey is a little bit of ATP shrink-wrapped and transposed to East London. Indeed, most of the bands here have played the Camber Sands avant-garde picnic at least once, notably headliners Tortoise, who curated the festival in 2001.
It'd be wrong, however, to assume the order of the day is unalloyed post-rock. Sure, that's Laetitia from Stereolab DJing between bands, but that's Sophie Ellis-Bextor she's playing. And sure, most of the acts feature at least one member of Tortoise, but that doesn't mean they all sound exactly like them. Take Eleventh Dream Day (Tortoise count: two), who've been working on a taut, scabrous reconfiguration of classic rock for well over a decade to largely mystifying indifference.
This afternoon they're superb, a kind of sturdier Yo La Tengo, bringing a touch of Crazy Horse fire that's thrown into greater relief by what has gone before it: the Miles-ish jazz of the Chicago Underground Quartet (Tortoise count: one); the twanging ambience of Brokeback (Tortoise count: one, plus one Stereolab); and Radian's excellent high-frequency glitch versus live rhythms (Tortoise count: zero - they're Austrian).
Bobby Conn, of course, is more crotch-stroking than chin-stroking. Without his frankly terrifying band of Kiss impersonators and lunatic fiddlers, Conn is, if anything, marginally scarier still. Here he is, in white shellsuit and tarty eyeshadow, playing karaoke versions of his extraordinary songs: compacted and vivid epics that take in everything deviant, sordid and taste-defective about the '70s but still stagger on, utterly compelling. "There ain't nothing child that I can't do," he announces in a kind of unearthly falsetto croon. And, terrifyingly, you start to believe him.
Trans Am, meanwhile, might similarly strive to bestow credibility on dubious music - the odd King Crimson album, say - but their technoflash-heavy set is the one real downer of the day. Occasionally, they seem to stumble into the vicinity of a decent idea, like melding hard FM rock with Kraftwerk, then proceed to show exactly why it wasn't that good an idea in the first place. Put it down to the distinct shortage of Tortoise members in their ranks.
When, finally, that band come together at 10pm, the effect is explosive. Tortoise begin with the distorted voluntary of 'Seneca' then, for the next 75 minutes, blast through most of 2001's 'Standards' with hardcore zeal and discipline, jazz flair and a collective intuition that borders on the uncanny. Most pointedly, it's a set that ridicules the stereotypes so often ascribed to Tortoise. Far from the sterile academics of lazy legend, they sound, tonight, like a great, original, multi-faceted party band.
As a genre, post-rock exhausted itself pretty quickly, but Tortoise continue to prove that the vague principles of the movement are still potent and enduring: namely, that instrumental, eclectic music can be both accessible and unorthodox simultaneously, that uplifting music need not conform to old formulae.
In a year when traditional rock'n'roll has staged a bracing creative comeback and restated its relevance, Tortoise's determination to do things differently remains every bit as refreshing. This is restless, constantly inventive, kinetic music, a fine advert for the similarly adventurous Thrill Jockey imprint. Who'd have guessed, after so much onstage melodrama in recent months, that bands who swap instruments rather than smash them could be so gripping?
