ArcTanGent 2022

22 Aug, 2022

@ Fernhill Farm, Somerset

Wednesday

Sugar Horse

Sounded good from where I was hearing them, yeah! Seems they're playing a second set on Saturday in place of a band who could no longer play then and there, but then they'd be clashing with Frontierer... Once is enough!

Merch I got: ArcTanGent 2022 hoodie

The St Pierre Snake Invasion

Curious about the setlist. It was pretty much what I expected plus a few extras from their earlier releases and even new stuff... The new song they played was... interesting... good? They said they're gonna have a new album out next year, so either way, I look forward to that. I especially liked the last song they played! Sounded vaguely familiar enough to be one I've heard before from Caprice Enchante, but it could just as well be a new song... maybe older song? Requires some digging into.

6/10 (Good/10)

Thursday

FES

Before Fes, I did check out bits of both Bonnacons of Doom and Traps, the first bands on at the festival. I listened to bits and pieces of every band playing at the festival beforehand, but checking them out here still feels fresh to me, like I'm only just checking them out. Of course studio recording quality will likely differ from the live show... Traps I've heard a bit of and liked anyway, sorta heavy Math Rock or something. Bonnacons of Doom had something cool going on too with their take on Doom Metal as well.

Fes were the first band I properly saw on this day. I would guess that the Hayley Williams comparison with their singer/guitarist is potentially hackneyed in some areas, but chances are you may not be aware of them, and well... there you go! Nice indie/math rock stuff. I find it really impressive how Polyanna Holland-Wing, the singer/guitarist, is able to carry those vocal melodies and play those math rock-y guitar melodies at once. She's playing a solo set early tomorrow as well, which I'm looking forward to.

6/10

Why does every festival have the longest fucking walking paths, particularly with the entrances? Why are there steel walls placed where people could otherwise take a shortcut between stages? You think this layout has chest hair? I don't! Do VIPs get their own infallable chaffing cream and foot messages to stop their feet from aching from walking and standing so much, or is everyone else at the festival just a droid with the exterior look of a human being with indestructable flesh and organs no physical illness or skin condition can touch, engineered to make me envious of their seemingly perfect social lives?

Pijn

I'd heard about this band when they played the last ATG before this one in 2019, where they apparently had a much different lineup and instrumental setup, as is apparently normal for them. I overheard someone saying they had a lap steel guitarist before at the festival. This time around, only one violinist, but iirc they've played live with more string players before. That would've been very cool to see! The second of the two guitarists here would basically only do more atmospheric, ambient backing guitar and keyboard stuff, which is also cool.

So yeah, very cool and interesting to see live, such as I anticipated!

6.25/10

Dvne

Checked out bits of every band playing at the time here, and Seims and Skin Failure¹ both sounded pretty cool from the little I'd heard of them... hell, even Vasa sounded really good! I was getting lunch at this point anyway. Shoutout Bunny Chow!

Dvne only played 4 songs, which doesn't sound like much, but it's sufficient, aside from Mllecha's absense from the setlist... They played 'Sì-XIV' though, my other favourite from that last album of theirs! Random personal curiosity about the lead guitarist's guitars having two extra tuning pegs on them. What's that about? He's clearly not playing an 8 string.

Also caught Renfry Dedman being a back stage wanker.

(Who's Renfry? Someone who I've listened to music related podcasts on before. I mention this later, but hey, why not clarify sooner?)

6.5/10

Blodet

Was planning on just mooching around the festival site at this point to pretty much just check out a bit of every artist that was playing at the same time, but I was too tired to do that, let alone keep standing... Glad I settled for Blodet cos they sounded really really good! What I heard when I briefly checked them out at home was... well, Post-Rock... but I really enjoyed their set here, at least mostly just listening to them really.

6/10

A.A. Williams

Hey, people weren't kidding about A.A. Williams live. Sounds more like stuff from Chelsea Wolfe's heavier album Hiss Spun the way it sounds here. Cool! I completely forgot about all that until I first heard her play over here, because I was still fully expecting solo singer/songwriter-y stuff from her live for some reason.

Didn't know she was gonna be coming out with a new album later this year till now as well! Got my ears perked

6/10

Delta Sleep

This is definitely the nicest festival I've been to and I'm still struggling a little, mostly because I'm by myself and getting good signal is next to impossible.

Some may complain about me being bothered by being disconnected from the internet, but it's less so that and more so that it is very difficult to reach friends and family. Also, my feet fucking hurt.

'Pleasant' sounds like a patronizing word for describing how a band's music sounds or whatever, but pleasant is what I've been needing, more than I'd usually admit or recognise. I realise that also just with listening to Portishead lately, where it paradoxically does not invoke the wonder in me that anything above a 6/10 does² but that's also what makes it work best... or something... I dunno. Delta Sleep are similar to Fes for me in that regard.

6/10

Intronaut

A tad rough, if I were to be too picky, but it was apparently their first time playing live for over 2 years, so fair... What's not so fair is them not playing 'Speaking of Orbs', my favourite from the latest album, but they played two different songs in its place that were either new songs or older songs that I'm much less familiar with... Wanna know which ones now, cos they both sounded really cool!

6/10

Amenra

Good thing this clicked for me, because just before then I was starting to feel somewhat disassociated and anhedonic... I was getting food during Perturbator, and the main stage tent was already overwhelmingly packed, not that it wasn't later on, but that tends to actively bother me sometimes depending on my mood... What am I doing at a festival again? Anyway, I heard them from afar, and even when I tried to get close, I didn't get close enough, but it wasn't quite clicking. Alcest I wasn't quite feeling either, but I've already seen them and that one time seeing them was certainly a good enough one to remember anyway. I mainly wanted to see them play 'Protection', but the assholes had the indecency to start their set with it while I was still in the shitter.

Festival crowds suck. Anything that makes me have to line up for ages just to take a shit sucks. For a heavily Post-Rock/Post-Metal oriented festival, there was still a lot of chit-chat during especially Amenra's quieter moments, but that was the only thing that slightly bothered me there.

Yeah, Amenra live fucking owns, but I figure Cult of Luna will mostly likely own even harder... mostly cos I think there's more to Cult of Luna's music, but not to entirely write Amenra's music as one-dimensional in comparison. One of the things that especially own about Amenra is how they go about the quiet/loud contrast of going from sounding like Slint trying not to wake up their sleeping infant children to sounding like Celeste riffs at 20% the speed and... goddamn, those shrieks! Me and Leo were talking about non-DSBM bands with DSBM-like vocal intensity when they last visited, and I can't believe I forgot about Amenra till now!... And Traumatic Voyage for that matter!

I'd actually quite like to see this band live again, in the relatively more intimate setting of an indoor venue. I'd say "not too big", but even Roundhouse size might be good! Maybe that time Colin will stop being a pussy and crucify himself on stage like he did in the good old days. Also not quite sure what Caro from Oathbreaker's involvement in Amenra is like atm, because I thought she was an official member of the band by the time they put out their last album, unless I'm misremembering shit.

7/10

mclusky

Fun! Honestly, I should've expected them to be fun live anyway, I don't know why I'm that surprised they're more fun live than on record... They're good on record ofc, but y'know... I am also surprised that a near hour long set from them was consistently fun and not as tiring as that may sound.

Shoutout Damien from The St Pierre Snake Invasion again, who is currently mclusky's bassist and backup singer. Perfect fit tbh! I'd have been very pleasantly surprised to see him playing as part of the band if I hadn't already seen some recent live footage of theirs beforehand.

6/10

Cult of Luna

Yup! They fucking killed it! They already sound quite grand on record, I say with little confidence given the live experience I had with them, but yeah, they really sound and feel fucking huge live! Potentially overwhelmingly so. The strobe lighting was pretty fucking intense.

So they topped Amenra (hehe, "topped")... But hey! Two festival main stage highlights in succession, and what a great pair of bands to put one after the other! Cult of Luna had quite a fucking banging setlist here too... I say that mostly because they played my favourite song of theirs 'Ghost Trail', but 'Cold Burn' and 'I The Weapon' live also especially owned!

7.25/10

Friday

Five the Hierophant

From this point onward, I've writing these entries the day after I got back from Bristol based on notes I wrote at the time that I couldn't find the time to make into proper seen live list entries.

Between this band and Cult of Luna, I realise that something as small as a band having additional percussionists is something that appeals to me quite a bit! They only had the time to play 2 songs and the atmosphere visually wasn't quite what it was when I saw them at Desertfest 4 years ago, but that's still a near 30 minute set which was still fairly satisfying, and the music alone made for quite the atmosphere anyway of course. Most of the stages at ArcTanGent were quite big, and even the smallest stage (the PX3 stage I reckon) wasn't that small at all, and of course the main stage was the biggest, and it sure as hell is good to see them on that big a stage.

6.5/10

Pollyanna Holland-Wing

Singer/guitarist of Fes doing a solo set that was supposed to be an acoustic set but her acoustic broke at seemingly the last minute and opted for clean electric guitar instead. Still cool of course! I could only just about hear her over the sound of bands on the other stages bleeding through a little, but yeah, enjoyable otherwise.

6/10

Hippotraktor

6/10

Odradek

I'd have been getting lunch at this point so I wasn't exactly that close to the stage and in the midst of it all, but this band, from what I could very easily make out from the stage, still sounded really cool. I am very much into this kinda Math Rock!

6/10

møl

Honestly, even now, I'm still not too sure how to feel about møl's music, whether it's more of a light 6/10 or a 5/10, as far as my overall impression of their music so far is concerned... Like, everything I've heard of theirs I'd say I'd very easily prefer to most of what Deafheaven have put out after Sunbather, but their music also just strikes me as just sounding like Blackgaze in the style of Sunbather but without the bliss and wonder that Sunbather tends to or can invoke in me... That's still probably more than I can say for a lot of Blackgaze to be honest because I still hold up Sunbather to quite a standard. Maybe møl can still grow on me though, at least so I'd like to think!

Astrosaur

Got to see a significant portion of their set, however brief it admittedly felt otherwise. They also played their cover version of Pyramid Song by Radiohead, which is very different, but very much in their style and very fucking cool!

Also, there's someone at the festival who was there for a lot of the bands I saw that was blowing bubbles in the front-middle of the crowd, and I thought at the time that I had unmasked the bubble blowing baby at this point, but hell, it could be different people at different times doing exactly that... Very minor thing to comment on lol do what y'all like with your life

6/10

Tuskar

Overheard someone saying that this band was a two piece, which I didn't know about before despite having heard some of this band's music beforehand... That's cool!... Sludge more, post-rock less please...

5/10

Slow Crush

Really good, but god damn, what a point in the day for me to really feel especially drowsy lmao

That's definitely not to say that Slow Crush are boring in any way, because they aren't. I'm well into the sorta Shoegaze they play here... I've been averaging up to 5 hours of sleep per night during the time I've been staying in Bristol thanks to a number of complications with shuttle buses, taxis, and my motherfucking phone signal.

6/10

Oranssi Pazuzu

Mental to remember that it's been 7 years since I last (and first) saw this band live, and they were good then, but with the two albums they've put out since then, especially their most recent one, they've gone from 'good' to fucking 'great'! That of course translates on stage as well! I had been super looking forward to seeing this incarnation of Oranssi Pazuzu on stage, and hell yeah it was worth it! A festival highlight for sure!

7/10

Caspian

I did check out Bruit on the Bixler stage before this, but by the time Bruit got done soundchecking, they only had 12 minutes left to actually do their set, which sucks, but I kinda liked what little I heard there.

As far Caspian, for third wave Post-Rock, they're another band that I sorta like but also would sorta like to appreciate more if I could... I quite enjoyed this set though! As far as their music on record is concerned, I wish they had more loud, fuzzy, thick guitar tone sounding moments or whatever... I dunno.

And of course Renfry's being a back stage wanker during Caspian as well.

6/10

Jamie Lenman

I knew Lenman would be playing mostly new unreleased stuff anyway, so I was curious enough to try to see a bit of it before seeing a bit of Rivers of Nihil as well, and yeah, the new stuff, so far as I'd heard, I quite enjoyed! Very power poppy kinda stuff!

Lenman did say there'd be a couple of older songs in the set too, but by the time it got to that point, him and his band started playing 'Agony/Agatha', which is reason enough for me to have dipped at that point, but then, in hindsight, with their guitar tones and the vibe they had set for this set, stuff like 'Stuck in My Throat' wouldn't have fit... I do like the idea of older Reuben songs like that with female backing vocal harmonies and shit though!

Rivers of Nihil

Was kinda let down here... The stuff from The Work comes off live as like... idk, just really mid? It didn't really land for me. I saw them play 'A Home', 'Clean', and 'Where Owls Know My Name', and that was alright... which is lighter praise than I was hoping to give it here. It was overcrowded as well, but serves me right for showing up sorta mid set.

As Lenman could've played a 12+ min heavier prog epic version of 'Return of the Jedi' while I was off to watch Rivers, Rivers could've been playing 'Terrestria IV: The Work' until I showed up. Shrodinger's tunes, right? Well, Rivers of Nihil did apparently start their set with 'The Silent Life' into 'Sand Baptism', so I am kinda kicking myself there, but I still also kinda wish I stuck around for the rest of Lenman's set tbh.

It's highlighted even more here somehow the things I'm less fond of with Rivers of Nihil's sound as well, things that I tend to have problems with with modern deathcore like the sound of the growls and shit. The quality of songs and songwriting at their best tends to make up for it though, but... yeah idk

5.5/10

STAKE

Not listened to this band a whole lot before this festival and all... Perhaps I oughta check them out properly on record, because this was really cool!

6/10

paranoid void

All female Japanese instrumental Math Rock trio... Well, instrumental only for this set here at least... Tons of fun, and easily a festival highlight for me! Really tickles my Math Rock fancy, especially with that bass. Some of the best and most engaging bass playing I've seen from any band or artist live. What a fucking treat to get nearly a full hour of this sorta music as well!

Guitarist also looks a lot like my sister, but then, my sister is already legit the most Japanese-looking English woman I know of.

7/10

Palm Reader

Remember that band whose entire sound is based on a racist 4chan comment? Yeah, they were playing at the festival too, and they seemed from afar like they'd probably be enjoyable live, at least if I enjoyed their music at all but... eh.

God fucking damn... The last time I saw this band was back in 2014(?) with Employed To Serve, Baby Godzilla (aka HECK), and '68, and they pretty much just sounded like budget (2000's era) Norma Jean or something. Just really mid Metalcore/Mathcore stuff, although if memory serves me right, they were still good live back then in their own way. They've changed and evolved a fuck ton since then though. The vocals sounding overly British to me, even the harsh vocals, tends to sorta bother me on record, but I didn't really give a shit here, and the melodies on songs like 'Stay Down', 'Swarm', and 'A Bird and Its Feathers' are strong enough to make up for it.

Palm Reader are a fucking 7 piece as well, including 3 guitarists and a keyboardist... Is Renfry the 8th member or has he just been demoted from back stage wanker to side stage wanker for Palm Reader's set?

Good!/10

I did also see a teeny bit of TesseracT at the main stage as well. Caught them in the middle of 'Concealing Fate Pt. 3' and they played a new song right after that which actually sounded really cool! Fucking idiots had an entire headline set and didn't play 'Eden'... Eh, it would've been the much less good version of that song anyway...

Saturday

Garganjua

Hmmm... A bit on the mid side of Doom Metal, Post-Metal, whatever they are. Fine I guess

5/10

Jo Quail

Was hoping to catch her at some point after the set to chat about loop pedal shit and Arthur Russell and whatnot, but tough luck as a non-VIP attendee and all.

This was really cool! Cool loop pedal driven solo cello stuff. Also served to me as quite a breather as far as all the different sets on this festival were concerned, I felt I was able to recharge a bit at this point, especially with the crowd not being too noisy or disruptive at this point. Good!

Honestly, the ambience of what was going on behind her, the slight creaking and clanging of materials and stuff, whatever work was going on backstage, kinda became part of the music for me. Definitely one of the wankiest thing I've ever said on any of my 'seen live' entries tbh but still!

6/10

Ithaca

Everyone in the band except Djamila just looks like they're all cosplaying as Jamie Lenman lol

Fr tho, brief but enjoyable set!

6/10

The Hirsch Effekt

Trios own, don't they! And there've been quite a few of those during this festival! The Hirsch Effekt in particular have a very infectious energy live, and it wouldn't quite have translated with a lesser setlist than this. As such, I enjoy them on record of course, but they really really stand out live methinks!

6.25/10

Conjurer

Kind of a no brainer that this was a fun set. I was hoping that 'Rot' in a live context would land for me better, but it still really didn't, and based on the overall crowd reaction (or lack thereof), it certainly ain't just me. That was the only slight miss in a set full of hits though!... Like, really slight. Pretty much perfect setlist besides the absence of 'Thankless'. God, 'Choke', 'Retch' and 'Hadal' especially owned as well! I've not exactly kept a list ranking live musicians based on their headbanging talents, but Conjurer's bassist sure does a mean windmill!

6.25/10

Frontierer

Kinda fun I suppose but, god, their music, for how abrasive and heavy as it can be, is so one-note. They pretty much started with the best song on the setlist and I barely just made it for that, and looking at the setlist now, the picks from Oxidized overall are pretty weak, of which there's only like... 4... Bummer. It's no wonder that, especially after all that, I felt let down with this. That and I genuinely don't get the appeal of the same bonky Tony Danza riff with pitch shifted panic chords over, in Sectioned's case, some real abrasive, skull crushing chaotic hardcore. I know it's a matter of personal taste and all, but I have no intention of being needlessly judgmental or critical, I'm just genuinely curious about what makes things, particularly music, that don't click for me click for others.

Been meaning to ask Padram about tunings for the Rock/Metal Bands and Their Guitar Tunings list, but goddamn it, he's definitely not gonna wanna talk to me if he sees this entry. Fuck!

5.5/10

Devil Sold His Soul

Purely new album stuff, huh? Shame. I'd have loved to hear anything from literally any of their other full lengths at all, even if they only had so much time in their set. 'The Narcissist' is their weakest song imo, but the pleasant surprise of seeing Djamila from Ithaca and Chad from Frontierer join them on stage for it definitely made up for it.

One of the two vocalists sure as hell looks and sounds more like a twink than the other, twinkier vocal inflections, voice, emo hairdo and all. I'm gonna take him home with me and listen to Rinoa and snuggle up with him.

6/10

The Armed

So this is what Yolandi is doing now? Huh. Who'd have thought? (I know that's not Yolandi from Die Antwoord. It doesn't matter how bad my jokes or banter is, just let me riff!)

I did go and have a little look at Emma Noof Trundle's set ('Emma Noof Trundle' is a very multi-layered injoke that requires knowing about me and my sister and a very minor bit from an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia deep cut) pretty much off the back of Jo Quail's endorsement. I like what I've heard of what she's done with Thou, but as for what I heard and saw here, less so for me really. 'Slowcore Adele' sounds like quite the reductive way to describe it, but I am vaguely amused enough by that description to not mention it.

Of all the clashes at this festival, this band clashing with Mass of the Fermenting Dregs (their first UK show at that) was the most brutal of them all. Fuck! Yes, The Armed owned, but while I think they're on a high with that last album, based on what live footage I've seen of their previous tours, this didn't quite match up to that... as in, this wasn't completely batshit, but hey, it was still very fun! Noisy too! Hell yeah!

Also, one of the guitarists really looked just like my brother! From where I was standing, I legit couldn't tell if he was legit ripped or was wearing one of those muscle suits like what George Michael Bluth from Arrested Development wore on one episode.

6/10

Lightning Bolt

"When we sent in an application, we called ourselves 'emo noise metal' (something like that anyway), but we're actually 'monkey metal'."

Thanks, Brian. Very cool.

And yes, of course, Lightning Bolt fucking owned. Again, no brainer! I only just noticed this time around that that Brian's working a full vocal effects pedalboard while playing drums during the set as well. Mad chops on the dude! It also felt like they played non-stop for the last 20 or so minutes of the set... Fuck yeah!

7/10

Wheel

Finnish Toolcore band that riffs and writes songs about urinating on bonfires. Also very good fun!

6/10

Godflesh

Seeing The Armed and Lightning Bolt directly back to back, two of the noisiest bands of the whole festival, was quite something, but Godflesh afterwards as well?? GODDAMN!! Godflesh were easily up there as, not only a highlight, but just one of the most abrasive sounding bands of the whole festival, as they should be, and as I should've really expected tbh. That motherfucking drum machine goes so fucking hard! Seeing Godflesh live was so fucking worth it!

Seeing Godflesh, the heavier, dirtier sludgy stuff would've been exactly what I'd have wanted to hear anyway, even though Selfless is also a strong favourite of mine when it comes to Godflesh. I did think that if any one song from Selfless were to work in this setting, it would've been 'Crush My Soul', and lo and behold, they played it and it fucking owned! This is very much like a compact version of the dream setlist I'd come up with for them. Fuck YES!

See, I've seen a couple of people carrying around and drinking from what looked to me like a big sack full of piss, but I figured it's probably beer and not piss, but here, why the fuck was someone waving around a bottle of what looked like either super dirty bong water or strong heroin water?

7/10

Pupil Slicer

Pupil Slicer ft. a guy climbing the beams throwing CDs at people. It's not even a member of the band or anything, he just kept climbing the same two beams that were supporting the tent throughout Pupil Slicer's entire set... I swear that was the same person who did the same thing, if I recall correctly, right at the end of Conjurer's set...

This was cool! I legit don't remember there being any proper Post-Black Metally bits in their music, but I also don't recall there being some really odd sass-y vocals in any of their songs. Hm.

I think they also got a legit encore as well, totally unplanned and all... as far as I could tell anyway. And apparently they've only started touring about 6 months ago, and now they're co-headlining a stage while Opeth were playing the main stage. Mental.

6/10

Her Name is Calla

Last set of the whole festival. I didn't see Opeth because I already saw them twice, and the opportunity to see Her Name is Calla live... well, this would've literally been the only time. This is a purely one off thing, because they had basically split up just as they put out Animal Choir, which was my second pick (now probably first pick) for AOTY for 2019. There could not have been a more fitting set to end this whole festival for me. There was definitely something special about getting to see this one set, even if at this point, my feet were in fucking agony and I had already watched hours and hours of live music back to back on very little sleep.

It surprises me somewhat that, unless there was something very different about the line up this time around, they're only a 4 piece... but then, given how minimal some of their earlier stuff is especially, I suppose it makes sense. It also surprised me that Mr Renfry Dedman was absolutely nowhere in sight at this point, not even back or side stage.

I brought up his name quite a bit here, but for real, big shoutouts to Renfry Dedman, a UK journalist who I've been familiar with for quite some time who also works closely with ArcTanGent, and someone who, without their strong endorsement of the festival, I wouldn't have either heard of it or gone out of my way to get the ArcTanGent experience, and it sure as hell was worth it. As I'm sure I may have mentioned in another entry here, easily the best festival I've been to so far, what with the layout, bands, and all that shit.

I was hoping to catch Renfry in person before Calla's set to thank him personally and pick his brains about this year's festival and all, given that he wasn't gonna be around on any sort of podcast (to my knowledge) to give it full coverage and all. Ideally, I'd still love to chat to him about it personally, but that'd be tough to make happen, and my grasp of the English language takes a massive dip especially when I'm not effectively riffing by my lonesome, which is basically what this list is. Life is busy.

6.25/10

#aa williams #amenra #arctangent #caspian #conjurer #cult of luna #devil sold his soul #dvne #godflesh #her name is calla #intronaut #jamie lenman #lightning bolt #oranssi pazuzu #paranoid void #pijn #pupil slicer #seen live #the hirsch effekt